Generative Worlds: New Phenomenological Perspectives on Space and Time 9781666914894, 9781666914900, 1666914894

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Generative Worlds

Generative Worlds New Phenomenological Perspectives on Space and Time Edited by Luz Ascarate and Quentin Gailhac

LEXINGTON BOOKS

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Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available 978-1-66691-489-4 (cloth : alk paper) 978-1-66691-490-0 (ebook) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To our parents

Contents

Acknowledgments ix ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Introduction: Generativity:  Between Generation and Life Luz Ascarate and Quentin Gailhac PART I: EMERGING LIFE ‌‌‌‌‌Chapter 1: Born to Oneself Natalie Depraz

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‌‌Chapter 2: Decision as Urstiftung Bruce Bégout PART II: GENERATIONS



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‌‌Chapter 3: Between Generation and Genesis:  A New Stiftung Mariana Larison ‌‌Chapter 4: Generative Temporality Claudia Serban



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Chapter 5: Thinking Space-Time as Earth-World: Husserl, Heidegger, and DeLillo Tanja Staehler‌‌

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PART III: HOMES

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‌‌Chapter 6: On the Generation of Meaningful and Valuable Space: The Place of Feelings in Generativity Andrew Barrette

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Contents

‌‌‌Chapter 7: Phenomenology of the Book and Hermeneutics of the Text: Touching and Interpreting Space Francisco Diez Fischer ‌‌‌‌‌‌Chapter 8: Belonging and Cosmology Renaud Barbaras Index



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About the Contributors



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Acknowledgments

We would first like to thank each of the contributors to this volume, each of whom we admire and with whom it has been an honor to work. All our thanks go to the Centre for German Studies and Research (CIERA) of Sorbonne University, which granted each of us a scholarship to carry out the research at the Husserl Archives in Cologne that made this book possible. We are also grateful to Thiemo Breyer and Dieter Lohmar for hosting us as Visiting Scholars at the Husserl Archives between August and November 2021 as well as between March and June 2022. We are very happy to have been part of the Husserl Archives of Cologne family and thank all those we met during these internships, many of whom have become great friends. We also would like to strongly thank Marco Dozzi for his fine reading and help with the English revisions of the Introduction and of the translations. Furthermore, all our thanks go to Jana Hodges-Kluck and her team for welcoming us into this beautiful collection and for their support and help in editing this volume. Last but not least, we are especially grateful to our families for their emotional support at every stage of the development of this work.

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‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌I ntroduction

Generativity Between Generation and Life Luz Ascarate and Quentin Gailhac

To date, no collaborative volume has sought to account for the phenomenological concept of generativity. We ask if phenomenology reaches its own concreteness through the study of generation (as the origin of life and meaning, as well as historical legacies). We also ask whether it manages to redefine certain dimensions of space and time which, in other orientations of the Husserlian method, remain too abstract and detached from the constitutive becoming of experience. We define the phenomenological method founded by Husserl as a philosophical description of what appears—namely, the phenomenon. However, as is well-known, this philosophical description can have two orientations (Hua XV, 6). The first one, which is purely “static,” is concerned with the problems that arise from the relationship between the thing that appears and the person to whom it appears—a relationship that can be described from the perspective of interpretation, understanding, or the constitution of meaning. This first orientation attempts to describe a correlation that arises within the problem of appearing. A second orientation, which we understand as “genetic,” is concerned with the origin or genesis of the problem of appearance. “Origin” here is a notion that is ontologically linked to the problem of appearing. This return to the originary is part of the Husserlian method of the Rückfrage deployed in the Krisis (Hua VI). Anthony J. Steinbock argues in his ground-breaking book for the phenomenological problem of generativity and its discussion (Steinbock 1995)1 that a new, generative orientation appears in this late text, even if it was not made explicit by Husserl (cf. also Steinbock 2017, xiii). 1

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According to this new, implicit orientation, we inquire retrospectively into the origin—but far from going back to the genesis of meaning which is proper to the genetic orientation of the method, we move toward an originary whose explanation attempts to go beyond the limits of the phenomenological method and traverses several philosophical generations (Steinbock 2017, xiii). A generative phenomenology concerns the meaningful movement that has come to be expressed as the interrelation of geo-historical, social, and normatively significant lifeworlds, or homeworlds and alienworlds (Steinbock 2017, 63). According to Laurent Perreau, Steinbock’s effort to make generativity a consistent phenomenological theme tends to reduce the problematic nature of the concept, which can only be fully understood in relation to the question of the common world as a world “for all.” In Perreau’s view, the challenge of a phenomenology of generativity is to think of the particular embeddedness of the subject in a specific community; that is, in the relativity of a socio-historical experience (Perreau 2013, 334). For Perreau, the problem of generativity is also linked to the problem of generations. He argues that the phenomenology of generativity should allow us to understand that the lifeworld necessarily gives itself to us only through a normative and generational context that always has its own laws, its own normality, and determines the formations of meaning of the world (Perreau 2013, 320). Thus, the concept of generativity immediately calls for a reflection on the question of generation. This question is linked, first, to the unity of the meaning appearing in history and, second, to the unity of the process itself. GENERATION AND HISTORICITY For Steinbock, whose view is based upon a certain reading of Husserl, generative philosophy in its most fundamental, but also most provisional sense means “both the process of becoming—hence the process of ‘generation’—and a process that occurs over the ‘generations’—hence specifically the process of ‘historical’ and social becoming” (Steinbock 1995, 3). The two are naturally linked, but it is precisely the question of their connection where the problem of unity must arise. Indeed, the meaning reached at the end of a generational process presupposes not only the unity of this meaning as such, but may also entail the unity of the succession of generations. In this respect, the problem of the unity of philosophy as it is posed in the Krisis (Hua VI) seems to indicate some answer concerning the unity that is contained within generations. Indeed, it is the sense of a philosophy as “the one all-encompassing science (allbefassenden Wissenschaft), the science of the totality of what is (der Wissenschaft von der Totalität des Seienden)” (Hua VI, 6; 8). In relation to this science of the totality, the different sciences will thus appear



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as so many “branches of the One Philosophy” (Hua VI, 6; 8). The unity of philosophy is thus directly linked to its totalizing destination. This totality is itself philosophy, and all the other sciences are subordinated to it. In turn, the sciences benefit from a foundation that assures them a double unity: one corresponding to their own advancement, and one corresponding to their relation to all the other sciences. As a totality and as a unity, philosophy can thus be represented by the image of the edifice or the tree of knowledge. As Descartes stated in the Letter-Preface of the Principles of Philosophy (AT IX 2), philosophy should be conceived as a tree whose roots are metaphysics, whose trunk is physics, and whose branches are the other sciences (of which the three main ones are medicine, mechanics, and morality). In § 3 of the Krisis (Hua VI), the question of generations and their unity in time is introduced by means of the image of a building. Thus, it is the edifice of knowledge that supports the unified succession of generations: In a bold, even extravagant, elevation of the meaning of universality, begun by Descartes, this new philosophy seeks nothing less than to encompass, in the unity of a theoretical system, all meaningful questions in a rigorous scientific manner, with an apodictically intelligible methodology, in an unending but rationally ordered progress of inquiry. Growing from generation to generation and forever, this one edifice of definitive, theoretically interrelated truths was to solve all conceivable problems—problems of fact and of reason, problems of temporality and eternity. (Hua VI, 6; 8–9)

The image of the edifice must, however, be understood in the perspective of generations. Indeed, Descartes had used the same image in the Discourse on Method not to designate the unity of an edifice to which several people would have contributed, but to show the imperfection that would result from a multitude of interventions: (. . .) things made up of different elements and produced by the hands of several master craftsmen are often less perfect than those on which only one person has worked. This is the case with buildings which a single architect has planned and completed, that are usually more beautiful and better designed than those that several architects have tried to patch together, using old walls that had been constructed for other purposes. (Descartes 2006, 12)

In his commentary on this passage from the second part of Descartes’s Discourse, Alexandre Koyré has explicitly designated the multitude of architects in terms of a succession of generations (Koyré 1991). Whereas in Husserl’s work the concept of generation (taken in the trivial meaning of the term) presupposes the unity of a higher purpose, in a Cartesian orientation it seems to refer to a multiplicity without order; that is, to an absence of unity. In

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this view, a succession of generations would in no way ensure a unified process. It is because this succession is always understood as presupposing some unity that it can incorporate a multitude of investigations and individuals. We can thus understand what interest a Rückfrage has for Husserl. It not only designates the centrality of the question of the history of philosophy for the exercise of philosophy itself, but it also allows philosophers to think of themselves according to the image of a succession of generations. Accordingly, we will use this question to understand how it is that generations not only succeed one another but are also conscious of themselves as doing so. This consciousness is precisely the reality of the historical communication between philosophers: “we must inquire back into what was originally and always sought in philosophy; what was continually sought by all the philosophers and philosophies that have communicated with one another historically” (Hua VI, 16; 17–18). The unity of the succession of generations is thus partly assured by the fact that historical reflection makes us “heirs of the past (Erben der Vergangenheit)” (Hua VI, 16; 17). By practicing philosophy, we inherit certain problems, and the permanence of these problems produces certain essential connections between philosophers: these connections give meaning to the term “generation.” That is why generation is here always indicated in the plural: the common problems are what allow us to describe the succession of philosophers as if it were a succession between generations, although the term “generation” must be understood here in a metaphorical sense. In Appendix XXII to §73 of the Krisis, the metaphorical character of the concept of generation appears in the examination of the peculiar historicity of science. After having first distinguished two types of historicity (art and practical activity), Husserl takes up science; immediately insisting on the latter’s singularity. As Dominique Pradelle has shown, different types of historicity are defined according to the double criterion of the mode of temporalization and the mode of intersubjectivation in this text (Pradelle 2013, 295–301). Following these two criteria, science is distinguished from the other two activities by the omnitemporal character of its results and by the nature of its community, which is restricted to a minority of scholars. Husserl recognizes here in what sense the idea of a ‘truth in itself’ disrupts the very nature of historicity. This is a “new historical development of human life; a historical development whose entelechy is this new idea and the philosophical or scientific praxis belonging to it, the method of a new sort of scientific thinking” (Hua VI, 271; 336). Within this new historicity, savants of different “generations” unite in the “intentionality of a common experience (Intentionalität des miteinander Erfahrens)” (Hua VI, 507). This intentionality is not only a fact of human beings in the present: it also links all the generations of savants. In that case, however, is it necessary to consider generation in a figurative sense:



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“the concept of generation here is a peculiar and figurative one (der Begriff der Generation hier ein eigener und übertragener ist)” (Hua VI, 507). LIFE AND POSSIBILITY The concept of generation is not the only way to make sense of generativity. For Alexander Schnell (2015a, 340),2 generativity has nothing to do with a question that crosses generations, nor with geo-historical, cultural, or intersubjective themes: rather, it refers to the dehiscence of a surplus of meaning that remains beyond and below what is describable. According to Schnell, since this genesis of the surplus is made possible by the imagination, generative problems highlight the genetic-imaginative processes of meaning. We believe that in the Husserlian concept of generativity we can detect this sense if we understand imagination as intrinsically linked to possibility conceived as potentiality. The notion of generativity appears in Husserl’s work in the 1930s. We find the word “generativity” in Husserliana Materialen VIII (Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution [1929–1934]: Die C-Manuskripte) in an essay entitled “Über intermonadische Weltkonstitution in Generativität und Tradition. Der Konnex mit fremden Völkern” (Hua Mat VIII, 365) which was written in 1933. In Husserliana XV, we also find a text that Iso Kern claims was written in 1931. In a footnote, however, Iso Kern also indicates the following: “Husserl subsequently dated the manuscript to 1933, but it probably dates from January 1931. In August and September 1933, Husserl was occupied with analogous problems to those contained in this manuscript, and therefore probably dated it erroneously to that time.”—Ed. Note. (Kern in Hua XV, 172, fn.1) Whether we believe Husserl, in which case the first appearance of “Generativität” dates from 1933, or whether we believe Iso Kern, in which case the first appearance of “Generativität” dates from 1931, the word “generativity” is not used by Husserl prior to the 1930s. What motivated this change? Notably, Husserl’s criticisms of Heidegger and Scheler in the text on anthropology and phenomenology date from the same period. Yet Husserl is also invited to contribute to a Festschrift in homage to Thomas G. Masaryk (Fisette 2019, 321) on the occasion of his 80th birthday. He decides to write a short article entitled “Über Ursprung,” which is inspired by Brentano. As we know, Masaryk introduced Husserl to Brentano and encouraged him to study with the latter in Vienna. Husserl does not finish this text, but it becomes a first draft of the lecture he will deliver in Prague on the 14th and 15th of November, 1935, entitled “Die Psychologie in der Krise der europaischen Wissenschaft,” which, as is well-known, constitutes one part of the reflections

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of the Krisis (Hua VI). Husserl is thus called upon to think of a foundation of existence that celebrates life against finitude, as well as to reflect upon a phenomenological project that has its origins in Brentano, but which is also a generational project that responds to the same philosophical question found in ancient Greek philosophy. Generativity thus responds, we believe, to the attempt to make sense of the history of phenomenology from its origins. It also responds to a thought on the vital origin that links generation, creation, and vitality, which stands in contrast to the importance that Heidegger attaches to being-toward-death. It is a unity of life and not a unity of death that unites us with others, with foreigners, and other forms of animal life: I understand people in the world in general as generatively interrelated in open, mutual endlessness and I understand the being of the world that I experience as the same that has been experienced by human beings through the endless chain of generations. This is proven by unanimous experience in its connection (and through mutual correction), and given as provable as it will be in evident foresight. Through the life units of human beings, which are limited by birth and death, there extends a unity of human life: this is the unity of a mediated, yet united universal human experience and of a tradition that is based on it. Thus, I understand humanity as historical: the reaching out of world time, of time filled with worldly occurrences, beyond my lifetime and that of my fellow human beings who are with me in the present. (Hua XV, 168–169)

This sense of generativity is close to the Greek notion of possibility as a potency that founds nature as well as all that dynamically exists. While Husserl uses the expression “possibility” in a logical and epistemological sense—that is, in connection with the notions of imagination, fantasy, horizon, neutrality, and the “as-if”—he does not make this connection between possibility and generativity. In fact, he affirms that “reality precedes possibilities” (Hua XXIX, 85–86), opposing possibility and reality. However, we are convinced that Husserl’s notion of generativity points to an original and ontological concept of possibility. This nexus can only be understood from the perspective of the generative orientation, which is also a method that allows us to go through the generations of philosophers who preceded phenomenology and who are present at the origin of metaphysics. The generative revision of the origins of metaphysics has not yet been achieved. It is in this sense that we understand Gilson when he says that what our time needs is a metaphysics of being conceived as prolegomena to all phenomenology. Nothing is more curious to observe than the contrast between the penetration, the meticulous care or even the genius that existentialists lavishly devote to their analyses of “being,” and the carelessness with which, in the



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span of a few pages, they summarily unpack metaphysical problems whose conclusions, which they too easily accept, sometimes compromise the accuracy of their analyses and always distort their interpretation. To ascribe to existentialism the only sure foundation one can conceive is exactly the opposite of ignoring its importance. The true metaphysics of being has never had the phenomenology to which it was entitled, modern phenomenology does not have the metaphysics that can alone found it and, in founding it, guide it. It is therefore desirable that these two philosophical methods eventually come together. Achieving this cannot be the work of a single person. (Gilson 2008, 21–22)

Here Gilson praises phenomenology for its rigor while constructively criticizing its method. Moreover, he admits the urgency of having recourse to a reformed phenomenology by admitting that our time needs a metaphysics of being which would be conceived as prolegomena to all phenomenology. It is at the origin of metaphysics that we find a concept of possibility as potentiality which is close to the concept of generativity. In fact, for Aristotle, metaphysics is opposed to physics: the latter deals with nature or moving beings, which is where we find the conceptual pair δυνάμιs / ἐνέργεια. Aristotle’s God is the principle and finality of the whole, the potency of nature, but does not hold a power that he would exercise over beings (Aubry, 2020). Nonetheless, this pure actuality grounds nature insofar as it exists as a possibility that is found in all that exists. Generativity allows us to rediscover this ontological foundation which corresponds to the original sense of possibility, even if we have to go beyond Husserl himself (or further back before him) in order to sustain it: this movement is entailed by the concept of generativity. Indeed, for J. A. Steinbock, generativity begins with Husserl but continues in his legacy. It is this which makes us generative phenomenologists: drawing inspiration from Husserl, but going beyond him in order to generate new possibilities for doing phenomenology, just as is stipulated by the subtitle of the founding work in contemporary studies of Husserlian generativity: “Generative phenomenology” as such emerged after Husserl: hence the subtitle of Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Working “after” Husserl in this way also makes us who “stand within generativity” generative phenomenologists, because we also generate the meaning of phenomenology and the meaning of generativity. (Steinbock 2017, xiii)

Insofar as the notion of generativity points to this vital creation of a great multiplicity of possibilities in which imagination resembles nature, it seems to be the perfect concept to begin this task of renaming phenomenology.

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ON SPACE AND TIME These last concerns shape the first part of this book, entitled “Emerging Life.” It will concentrate on the question of the radical origin that makes the appearance of the generative orientation in Husserlian phenomenology possible. The first chapter, written by Natalie Depraz, is concerned with the issue of one’s birth in a generative sense; that is, the generation of the self. She first deals with the question of birth starting from the Husserlian theory of time and passivity to then find in Heidegger a being-toward-birth that is another end of Dasein that contrasts with the well-known being-toward-death. The second chapter, by Bruce Bégout, treats the question of the living origin of the decision and will be linked to the problem of the institution (Stiftung) in Husserl’s thought and life. Bégout develops, first, what we might call Husserl’s rational decisionism, namely the theory of the volitional character of the decisional act as a “primordial institution” (Urstiftung). Secondly, he identifies the philosophical meaning of decision in a life and a world in crisis (those of Husserl) where universal ethical norms are no longer guaranteed by a solid social order. The concept of institution (Stiftung) drives us to investigate the relationship between time and generativity. As said above, one of the first appearances of the term “generativity” takes place in Husserliana Materialen VIII (The C-Manuscripts), a volume partly devoted to the theme of time. The phenomenology of time runs through Husserl’s work, from the first philosophical investigations of 1893 to the late texts gathered under the title The C-Manuscripts (dated between 1929 and 1934). Between these dates, certain essential milestones punctuated Husserl’s reflection on time. Several stages can be distinguished in this journey, each corresponding to different periods of Husserl’s philosophy. The 1905 Lectures on the Inner Consciousness of Time, given during the 1904–1905 winter semester in Göttingen—first published by Edith Stein in 1917 (Ingarden 1962, p. 155–175) and then by Heidegger in 1928 (Husserl 1928)—undoubtedly form—if not the starting point—at least the first attempt at a formal analysis of the inner consciousness of time. In fact, we must chronologically extend that attempt to 1917 if we are to count 1) the important supplements added by Husserl to his lectures between 1905 and 1910 (Hua X) as well as 2) the complementary texts, running until 1917 and grouped in part B of Hua X, which are presented as a “deepening of the problematic” initiated around 1905. This formal approach, which founds intentional experiences in the flow of absolute consciousness (§ 36), would be continued—albeit significantly changed—in the Bernau Manuscripts of 1917–1918. Yet The C-Manuscripts constitute a meaningful evolution in Husserl’s preoccupation with time. Husserl will be less concerned here with the constitution of consciousness



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than with the constitution of the world which is related to an original flow that is situated in a layer below the ego which is called the pre-ego: Vor-Ich (Hua Mat VIII, 352). It is here that generativity appears, where it is linked to the problems of intersubjectivity, tradition, and the foreign. While the problem of generativity becomes more and more important in Husserl’s later writings, the theme of time consciousness is displaced by themes linked to the concreteness of time. However, Husserl does not finish developing a generative phenomenology in these terms. To elaborate a generative phenomenology thus entails going beyond Husserlian phenomenology, and that is what will occur in the second and third parts of this book. The second part, entitled “Generations,” is focused on the concreteness of time and in so doing returns to the issues of historicity and the legacy of traditions. In the third chapter, Mariana Larison deals with the theme of the institution (Stiftung) from a different perspective than that of Bruce Bégout. Larison gives us the basis of a phenomenology of Stiftung inspired by Merleau-Ponty. This phenomenology is able to integrate the generative and genetic perspectives of Husserlian phenomenology. What is at stake here is historicity as the main discovery afforded by the notion of generativity. By extending the Husserlian perspective to Levinas’s reflections on time, Claudia Serban shows us in the fourth chapter that temporality involves the encounter with the Other and the inter-generational relationship between parents and children: our time is co-determined by the time of Others. Inspired by Levinas, Serban develops the approach of generative temporality, which ultimately leads to the de-formalization of time. We can understand this de-formalization as a way to think time beyond a formalist and objectivist perspective. The themes of generativity and temporality are then closely linked, even for phenomenological perspectives that try to go beyond Husserl. The concreteness of time leads us to inquire into the relationship between time and space, which is what Tanja Staehler deals with in the final chapter of this part of the book. This chapter asks about our historical belonging to the world in a generative horizon, which involves the interweaving of space and time in an Earth-World. Staehler performs this by means of a reflection on DeLillo’s literary work. The concept of the Earth-World leads us to ask whether the generative perspective—which implies an emphasis on the concrete—does not result in space being made into a concept that is more fundamental than time. Turning to Husserl, one finds a concern with space in his early writings prior to the Prolegomena to Pure Logic (Hua XVIII). In this period of his thought—which is situated on the horizon of mathematical research (Hua XII)—space is defined as a geometrical property. In this respect, we can refer to the texts on geometry, which were to constitute a second volume of the

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phenomenology of arithmetic (Hua XXI, 262–416). Husserl was never able to complete this work (Brisard 2007; Caracciolo 2017). In the phenomenological stage of Husserl’s thought, the new importance given to time leaves space in the background, but we can still find a phenomenological approach to space in Husserliana XVI. Within his theory of perception as a starting point, Husserl takes a static approach to the constitution of space in this text. However, with the turn toward generativity—which brings Husserl’s interest closer to the concrete—space acquires a preponderant importance which could be understood as an inversion of the relation between time and space. Thus, we find a text from 1931 (Husserl 1946 [1931], Manuscript D12 IV) in which Husserl deals with the constitution of the ambient world outside the flesh as a primordial feature of the living present. Yet we first find a generative description of space in his texts “Umsturz der kopernikanischen Lehre . . . ” (Husserl, 1940a, Manuscript D 17) and “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution” (Husserl, 1940b, Manuscript D 18). The importance of these texts for the phenomenological movement is clear, as one finds analyses of them ranging from commentators such as Merleau-Ponty (2010) to Derrida (1989). The latter assigns them the utmost importance for understanding the texts collected in Husserl’s Origin of Geometry (Hua VI; 1975). These texts, which comprise a section of the Krisis, show us that geometry opens and closes the trajectory of Husserlian thought. Yet it is only in the last stage of his thought—in the light of his discovery of generativity—that space will be the original element which makes possible the constitution of the Earth-World and our situating ourselves in it as a home. As constitutive of being-at-home, space joins a historical perspective (it is about a home that finds meaning through generations) and a vital one (it is about the grouping of our vital possibilities in a terrestrial world). The last part of the book, entitled “Homes,” will explore this possibility of a generative approach that takes space rather than time as being the most fundamental generative concept. Accordingly, Andrew Barrette investigates, in the sixth chapter, the symbolic aspect of this Husserlian generative space that responds to feelings and values which cross generations of our being in an Earth-World and which make it possible to feel at home. Based upon a generative study of mythological narratives and an analysis of their sense of spatiality, he is able to find that there is an original representation of the relationship between one’s own world and the world of others. By investigating the symbolic aspect of generativity, this book goes beyond the frontiers of phenomenology and inserts itself into the field of hermeneutics. We will see that the generative sense of space can enrich this perspective. Thus, Francisco Diez Fischer will show in the seventh chapter—which concerns the hermeneutics of spatiality—that touch is the primordial foundation of experience which is constituted by space. For his analysis, he uses the example of the



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phenomenon of the book as inspired by the descriptions of Henri Maldiney. The book has a symbolic aspect—namely, the act of interpretation—but it also has a sensorial aspect: namely, the phenomenon of touch, in which space opens itself up to subjectivity. Diez Fischer investigates the relation between, on the one hand, our capacity to interpret the text of the book—that is to say, our capacity to phenomenalize—and, on the other hand, our body: more specifically, the sensoriality which is mobilized by a hand that touches a book and which generates a habitable space which we belong to by means of the confluence between hand and book. The fundamental question involved here is the one about the relation between our capacity to phenomenalize (usually interpreted as a hermeneutic of distancing from the world), and our belonging to it. This same question is formulated by Renaud Barbaras in a cosmological perspective. By doing this, Renaud Barbaras, in the last chapter, draws the final consequence of the argument of the whole book: that space is more fundamental than time in a phenomenological perspective. Standing on the horizon of a cosmology of belonging, Barbaras reverses the positions that traditional philosophy takes on time and space (for whom time constitutes our inner being and space our external perception). According to Barbaras, for the cosmology of belonging, if we define ourselves as being born from a soil, it is space—which is deployed or phenomenalized by beings in movement—that will constitute life and our inner being. Correspondingly, permanence—or time—will be an aspect that constitutes that which is lifeless, like stone. This cosmology of belonging is not a reversal of the Husserlian perspective of generativity but stands in continuity with it. Indeed, Barbaras cites Husserl to advance our understanding of the fundamental aspects of the soil that is the Earth which does not move but which comes with us whenever we move. This last phenomenalizing movement is rendered determinate between two immobilities: one, our ontological roots—which, in truth, are situated below all mobility—and two, our location on this Earth. Barbaras claims that if we think (along with Husserl) of the Earth as that which corresponds to flesh, it is the phenomenalizing movement as the “consciousness” of the human being which, in a second and derivative moment, comes to fill the gap between body and flesh (i.e., Earth as soil). ‌‌*** ‌‌We will conclude this introduction with some formal indications. All translations of texts in another language are by the authors of each chapter, except in cases where the bibliographical information of the English translation is indicated. In cases where the author of the chapter refers to two paginations, this indicates the original work and its published translation: first the year and page of the original version is given; this is followed by the year and page of

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the English translation (which is given after a semicolon and is indicated in the body of the text in parentheses after the name of the referenced author). In cases where the author of the chapter quotes a published English translation, the year and page of the English translation have been placed in the body of the text in parentheses; more specifically, at the end of the quotation and after the author’s name, and after this, separated by a semicolon, the year and page of the original version if the author has deemed it necessary to indicate the latter. References to the Husserliana collection have been indicated in the body of the text in parentheses with the abbreviation “Hua” followed by the volume, which in turn is followed by the page or section (§) number. In cases where the author refers to two paginations—which correspond to the page in Husserliana and the page of the published translation—we have first placed the abbreviation “Hua” and then its corresponding volume, page or section (§) number, and then, followed by a semicolon, the page of the English translation only. In these cases, the year of the English translation is found along with its complete bibliographical information in the list of references that concludes each chapter (this applies to all cases, i.e., regardless of whether the author simply makes a reference to a source or provides a quotation from it). NOTES 1. Even if Husserl uses the expression “generative problems” in the Cartesian meditations (Hua I, 169), it is not properly speaking about generativity as a problem. 2. See also: Schnell 2015b.

REFERENCES Aubry, Gwenaëlle. 2020. Dieu sans la puissance. Paris: Vrin. Brisard, Robert. 2007. “Les premières articulations du fonctionnement intentionnel: le projet d’un Raumbuch chez Husserl entre 1892 et 1894.” Philosophiques 34 (2): 259–272. Caracciolo. Edoardo. 2017. “Le teorie dello spazio di Husserl: tra Raumbuch e Dingvorlesung.” PhD diss., Università degli Studi di Torino/École Normale Supérieure (Paris). Derrida, Jacques. 1989 [1962]. Edmund  Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Translated by John P. Leavey Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Descartes, René. 2006. A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Translated by Ian Maclean. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



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———. AT. 1989. “Lettre-Préface.” Les Principes de la Philosophie. In Œuvres de Descartes. Ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: CNRS/Vrin. Fisette, Denis. 2019. “La crise des sciences et le fondement de la psychologie. La double vie de la phénoménologie dans les derniers écrits de Husserl.” In Husserl. La phénoménologie et les fondements des sciences, edited by Dominique Pradelle and Julien Farges, 319–341. Paris: Hermann. Gilson, Etienne. 2008. L’être et l’essence. Paris: Vrin. Husserl, Edmund. Since 1950. Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, 1859–1938 (Hua). The Hague/Dordrecht/London/New York: Martinus Nijhoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Volumes used in this chapter followed by a translation if it is required: ———. Hua I. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Ed. Stephan Strasser. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Dorion Cairns. 1960. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. Hua VI. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by David Carr. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. Hua X. 1966. Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893– 1917). Ed. Rudolf Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———.Hua XII. 1970. Philosophie der Arithmetik: Logische und psychologische Untersuchungen. Ed. Lothar Eley. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XV. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–1935. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XVI. 1973. Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907. Ed. Ulrich Claesges. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz. 1997. Thing and Space. Lectures of 1907. Dordrecht: Springer. ———.Hua XVIII. 1975. Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XXI. Studien zur Arithmetik und Geometrie. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1886 –1901). Ed. Ingebord Strohmeyer. The Hague/Boston/Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XXIX. 1993. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1934–1937). Ed. Reinhold N. Smid. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, Edmund. Since 2001. Husserliana: Husserliana Materialien (Hua Mat). Dordrecht/London/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. ———. Hua Mat VIII. 2006. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte. Ed. Dieter Lohmar. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 1928. Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewustseins, in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. Ed. Martin Heidegger. Halle: Niemeyer. Husserl, Edmund. 1940a. “Umsturz der kopernikanischen Lehre in der gewöhnlichen weltanschaulichen Interpretation. Die Ur-Arche Erde bewegt sich nicht. Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen Ursprung der

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Körperlichkeit der Räumlichkeit der Natur im ersten naturwissenschaftlichen Sinne. Alles notwendige Anfangsuntersuchungen. Manuscript D 17. 1934.” In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, edited by Marvin Farber, 307–325. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Translated by Fred Kersten. 2002. “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does not Move.” Rev. Len Lawlor. In M. Merleau-Ponty, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, edited by Len Lawlor and Bettina Bergo, 117–131. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002. Husserl, Edmund. 1940b [1934]. “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution. Manuscript D 18.” In Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, edited by Alfred Schütz, 1 (1): 23–37. Husserl, Edmund. 1946 [1931]. “Die Welt der Lebendigen Gegenwart und Die Konstitution der Ausserleiblichen Umwelt. Manuscript D 12 IV.” In Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, edited by Alfred Schütz, 6 (3): 323–343. Ingarden, Roman. 1962. “Edith Stein on her activity as an assistant of Edmund Husserl.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23 (2): 155–175. Koyré, Alexandre. 1991. Introduction à la lecture de Platon, suivi d’Entretiens sur Descartes. Paris: Gallimard. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2010. Institution and Passivity. Course Notes from the Collège de France (1954–1955). Translated by Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Perreau, Laurent. 2013. Le monde social selon Husserl. Phaenomenologica, No. 209. Dordrecht: Springer. Pradelle, Dominique. 2000. L’archéologie du monde. Constitution de l’espace, idéalisme et intuitionnisme chez Husserl. Phaenomenologica, No. 157. Dordrecht/ Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2013. Généalogie de la raison. Essai sur l’historicité du sujet transcendantal de Kant à Heidegger. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Schnell, Alexander. 2015a. “Subjectivité et transcendance dans la phénoménologie generative.” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 71 (2–3): 339–354. ———. 2015b. La déhiscence du sens, Paris: Hermann. Steinbock, J. Anthony. 1995. Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2017. Limit-Phenomena and Phenomenology in Husserl. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

PART I

Emerging Life

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‌‌‌‌‌C hapter 1

Born to Oneself Natalie Depraz1

The following sketch could be called: prolegomena to a phenomenology of birth. Why prioritize birth over death? In no way is this a question of a purely polemical reversal of Heidegger’s emphasis on being-toward-death. Rather, for a reason more strictly internal to the Husserlian enterprise, it is a question of recognizing the importance of Husserl’s insistence on the past and the presentification of this past through remembrance in his treatment of temporality, instead of criticizing this insistence as unilateral. The phenomenological structure of birth makes it a limit phenomenon. On the one hand, birth is a mediate experience: (a) which is never presented to me directly. I do not attend my own birth; (b) which is not even presentified by me in memory; (c) that can be presentified to me by imagination; (d) which is nevertheless endowed with a certain apodicticity: my birth is indeed indubitable. I cannot doubt that I was born at a certain point in time in a certain place. Yet this “apodictic” certainty of my being born is coupled with a fundamental inadequacy of the experience that attests to it. This “apodicticity” is not an unmistakable certainty deriving from the necessity of mathematical ideality, or of the experience of an essence, or of the immanent experience of consciousness in internal perception. It is an unmistakable apodicticity but one that remains presumptive, (e) my birth is an experience that has a content of meaning that is signitive; that is to say, non-intuitive: the memory of my birth is necessarily mediated by material, graphic, or pictorial media; by testimonies—oral or written—of parents or relatives. The experience of my birth has meaning only through the experience of others. On the other hand, birth is an immediate experience: (a) which is presented to me directly, which is given to me intuitively: I give birth and I have the experience in the flesh of this donation as “having come into the world”; (b) which is a fortiori presented to me by memory: I remember having given 17

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birth; (c) which is also presentified to me by imagination: I imagine I can give birth. This imagination is here referred to a tension, to a projection into the future; (d) which is apodictic: there is impossibility of doubt and absolute necessity of the experience of birth of which I am at the origin as author; (e) that is adequate: this experience of “giving birth,” when it takes place, is fully intuitively fulfilled: it is both instantaneous and definitive, although it is prepared during the gestation process; which is to say, temporalized. There are thus two aspects of this experience, which are necessarily complementary as soon as we try to grasp its phenomenological content. These two poles indicate a certain ambivalence of the experience; they make it a limit-experience which is given both intuitively and non-intuitively—or even not given. Whatever the case, it is an experience with multiple layers, simultaneously signitive and intuitive. There is a donation with a signitive basis of birth for a being insofar as it is being born, and there is a donation with an intuitive basis of birth for a being insofar as it giving birth (= generating). To be sure, one might object that these are separate instances and that the experience of the birth of the child—whose active instantiation is the parent couple—is not the experience of my own birth. However, do I have a possible access to my own birth—in the terms of an original experience—if I do not know that I am potentially generating? The complexity of the experience of birth is played out in this bipolarity which is common to every human being: to be both nascent (begotten) and engendering, according to a correlation that gives the phenomenon of birth its properly phenomenological content. BIRTH AS AN ORIGINAL PASSIVITY We must therefore rethink the singular experience of birth, given its proper and primary anchoring in the sphere of passivity. Let us simply note here that many of Husserl’s writings, relatively late for the most part, conceal this dimension of passivity which is at work in phenomenological experience, even if the Heideggerian inflection of phenomenology reserves a central place for it under the title of “facticity.” This aspect of experience appears in the Analysen zu passiven Synthesis, for example, whose corresponding texts span between 1918 and 1926 (Hua XI). Our question is thus not strictly Heideggerian. Rather, it is a matter of showing how Husserl’s questioning incorporates in advance and makes possible, in its inaugural and all-encompassing dimension, the path that Heidegger deployed in his wake.

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Generativity and Teleology: An Experience of Loss? What is this original passivity inherent in the gift of life? Does Husserl not speak extensively of affection, facticity, and neutrality of the act? Is not this ego to which life is given—and which certainly can also give life itself—not entirely voluntary or active when it transcendentally reinvests this gift in a birth to oneself? Is there not an irreducible loss to the gift of life, the consecutive digging of a lack that would not simply be a “lack-to-be-gained,” but a “dry loss”? It is therefore necessary to question in a new way what the possible difference regarding the status of the act of giving birth is for a woman and for a man. We have already noted the specific value and scope of the gift of birth for each sex, while insisting above all on the unity of the resulting couple up to this point. Let us now try to clarify the differentiation at work in this unity in terms of the experience of birth. Indeed, it will be said in traditional terms that the woman alone “gives birth,” that she “is childbearing,” or that she “brings life into the world.” All these expressions factually refer to the moment when the fetus is expelled from the womb and then definitively separated from the mother by the cutting of the umbilical cord. The woman establishes the beginning of the independent life of the child, which is biologically characterized by the establishment of pulmonary breathing. The empirical moment of birth corresponds to the autonomization of a being which is individualized from that moment on: from one being there arises two. However, as we have said, birth is transcendentally anticipated from the moment of conception, and it continues by a self-temporalizing that occurs not only during gestation, but in equal measure during the first months of the child’s acquisition of spatial and then temporal landmarks, which culminate in a linguistic one.2 It is this beginning of the transcendental temporalization of birth that gives back to the father a proper experience of the act of giving birth. The factual basis of this experience is probably not present to the same degree, nor even in the same form. We can therefore question the status of the transcendental dimension of an experience whose “natural” anchoring and impulse are mediated in this way. This differentiation of the experience of birth specific to each sex is effective: the transcendental unity of the couple is defeated, so to speak, and emphasis is placed on the facticity of the experience in its singularity. This facticity nevertheless has an eidetic dimension in the sense that experience is always structured by a law of essence which is specified on the occasion of its incarnation in one sex or the other. The transcendental unity conceals a factical, eidetic duality of the experience of birth, which could result in an experience of birth being experienced in a differentiated way: in one case, there is loss of one’s self of energy in the interest of the being which is to be born; in another, there is a self-fulfillment realized by the future birth. In any case, the anchoring in the facticity of the experience

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compels us to emphasize the passivity of this loss. Is one then born to oneself by the worldly birth of a child? Does one not also partly lose oneself in giving birth, even irreducibly so? To this objection to the attempt to think of the experience of a (transcendental) birth to oneself as being rooted in the natural experience of birth, one could try to answer with the following argument: is there not a circulation of the gift of birth in the figure of a counter-gift—namely, the generation of grandparents by the birth of a grandson or granddaughter? Is there not a fair return of the gift of life which is certainly a loss of a part of myself, but which is given to me again in the figure of the grandchild? This counter-gift does not compensate for the first gift: there remains an asymmetry between the two gifts, but the gift is nevertheless reinvested in a sense in another form. The loss of self that follows the birth that is given is thus not of a purely entropic nature: it receives meaning within a filiation that is called “generativity.” What teleology does this generative process fit into? Is this teleology to be understood as the self-generation of the ego by itself, the perpetuation of the ego in the other to which it gives birth? This would seem to ensure that the ego generates a certain mastery of the generative process. Or is it rather a question of seeing in this teleology the inscription of the ego in a process that it does not control, one that penetrates it and surpasses it? The ego is thus understood here as a pole that is fixed upon its punctual present. What is this passive genesis of the ego? What activity is it able to be invested with? My birth is an original passivity: the only experience which I can have of it is necessarily analogical. This possible experience comes from my own power of engenderment. Access to this originally passive experience is not possible through an experience that resembles it. According to an analogizing experience that is described very well by Husserl himself (Hua I § 50 ff.), I put myself in the place of the one who has engendered me; I imaginatively transpose myself into them. The only possible conversion of the passivity originating from my birth to a form of activity corresponding to it is therefore imaginary. The phenomenological experience of birth thus seems to be able to be thought of only in terms of an analogizing grasping: in the image of the experience of the other—and this must be done without reducing oneself to the other, since the originally passive dimension of their experience is in no way exhausted by such grasping. The recapture of the experience of birth in its fundamental passivity makes an original facticity appear: one that is more radical than that of the facticity at work in the experience of death, which is always known even if one is in constant uncertainty concerning when it will factually appear. I wait more or less consciously for my death, but I do not in any way remember my birth. The greater descriptive ease which is offered by the privileged link of birth to the past ultimately proves to be an insurmountable difficulty. The

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transcendental conjunction of birth and death seems to be defeated here by the primordial passivity inherent in birth. The appeal to the Heideggerian problem should allow us to evaluate the heterogenous mode of these two experiences in all its complexity. GESCHEHEN ET EREIGNIS: A PASSIVE AND FACTICAL TRANSCENDENTALITY The second section of Sein und Zeit, entitled “Dasein and Temporality,” opens with the thematization of the existential Zum Tode Sein, which is central to the analysis of temporality itself. In the fifth chapter, the penultimate of this second and last section (assuming that the text is incomplete), this “existential” is apparently relativized: “death is, after all, only the ‘end’ of Dasein, and formally speaking, it is just one of the ends that embraces the totality of Da-sein. But the other ‘end’ is the ‘beginning,’ ‘birth’” (Heidegger 1996, 342). Space is thus made for the other end, Zum Anfang, which is symmetric to Zum Tode Sein—it is also named in the first chapter of this section “Zum Ende Sein.” What is the status of this “other end”—birth—in relation to death? Heidegger notes well the omission of the other end in the previously conducted analysis. However, he compensates for this oversight by thematizing “the extension of Dasein between birth and death,” or of the “connection of life” (Heidegger, 1996, 373). Why is “the being-toward-the-beginning” again “left without examination” in this thematization—and is it? In other words, does Heidegger substitute “the question of the beginning” with another question—the one corresponding to “the connection of life”—or is it the same question? What is the status of birth? Historiality of Dasein: Birth as “Happening” (Geschehen) Birth is thematized by Husserl on the background of an analysis of temporality. For Heidegger, this question begins with an analysis of historicity (Heidegger 1972, § 72–77). However, the analysis of historicity is itself included in a more all-encompassing analysis of temporality. The latter clearly appears as the original rooting of historical analysis itself. Husserl also seems to thematize what could be a historical dimension in the group of texts devoted to the Krisis, particularly via the notions of generativity and teleology. However, is there an explicit connection to the question of temporal birth conceived as a flow of experiences and historicity conceived as teleological generativity? Sometimes this appears to be the case. Nonetheless, it is quite often up to us to make the connection. Heidegger offers us a systematic

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articulation of temporality and historicity, in regard to the question of the “connection of life,” which is a thematic occurrence of birth as Geschehen. According to Françoise Dastur, this thematization is fully satisfactory in the internal economy of Sein und Zeit The moment of being-thrown means that Dasein has not placed itself in existence and is in some way always behind itself with respect to its own opening: it is in fact always already open as being-in-the-world. Such facticity is not a once-and-for-all past event. An existential analysis of birth could show that, no more than death, it is not confused with a datable event. On the contrary, as long as Dasein exists, it does not cease to occur, like death: man comes into the world only once, on the day of his birth, but he constantly comes into Dasein as long as he lives. Heidegger only scratches the surface of this theme. (Dastur 1990, 62–63)

Heidegger thinks of birth not as a punctual event and a limit to our life (the latter appears as an interval between two limits), but as the very extension of Dasein. Birth is in this sense therefore not “of the past,” nor death “of the future”: these two events are not of a non-effective order in relation to each present point of time, which would be effective. No, “factical Da-sein exists as born (gebürtig), and, born, it is already dying in the sense of being-toward-death” (Heidegger 1996, 343). The extension of Dasein is therefore its very nativity; a structure of totality that encompasses any emphasis that is “unilaterally” placed either on being-toward-death or on being-toward-birth. “In the unity of thrownness and the fleeting or else anticipatory being-toward-death, birth and death ‘are connected’ in the way appropriate to Da-sein” (Heidegger 1996, 343). Heidegger calls this connection “happening” (Geschehen) or “provenance” (Herkunf). To understand Dasein as “Geschehen” is to simultaneously understand it as historical (geschichtlich). Dasein is “primarily historical” (Heidegger 1996, 349) as a “dagewesen” (having been) and not as a “gewesen” (past). However, Heidegger maintains the rooting of historicity in temporality as its original constitution (Heidegger 1996, 347–348), and reintegrates the future and being-toward-death as the “concealed ground of the historicity of Da-sein” (Heidegger 1996, 353). Why again this inflection on “being-toward-death”? Heidegger admits at the end of § 74 that the question of the connection of life is still insufficiently posed. How do the following sections (§ 75–77) give us this superior position regarding the question of “happening”? Don’t they begin to fall back into worldliness after a plunge into originality at the beginning of chapter V (§ 72–74)? What should we conclude from this? That the thematization of birth as “happening” is not accomplished in Sein und Zeit? What does it mean to mention “the enigma of being” and the “movement”

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that constitutes it (Heidegger 1996, 358)? What remains obscure in this thematisation? At the origin of and prior to the extension of life that characterizes Dasein as happening, we should return to being-toward-the-beginning—that is, being-toward-birth—which Heidegger voluntarily leaves unexamined. What corresponds to being-toward-birth conceived as the very origin of the question of the connection of life? The History of Being: Birth as Ad-vent (Ereignis) In what way can the notion of Advent, without even attributing it first to Geschehen or Ereignis, allow us to question more precisely the idea of a being-toward-birth? Ad-vent (ad-venir in French) means to come in proximity, to get closer. But it is also to come to oneself from a certain distance from oneself. The term Ereignis appears in a thematic manner in “Time and Being,” a conference given in 1962 in Freiburg im Breisgau and whose title corresponds to the third section of the first part that Heidegger originally planned to be included in Sein und Zeit. To be sure, when discussing the relation of the two texts, Heidegger forbids us to read the notion of the Ereignis as being related to or a continuation of the question of being-toward-birth, which remains “obscure” and enigmatic: “What is contained in the text of today’s lecture—which is written 35 years after Being and Time—cannot be directly connected to the text of Being and Time (Heidegger 1970, 91). However, immediately afterward he adds: “In truth, the driving question has always been the same, but that only means that the question has become even more questioning, and on account of this, more foreign to the spirit of the current age” (Heidegger 1970, 91). Thus, we are finally authorized to read the Ereignis—if not as an original soil or even less as an origin—at least as a questioning that is “more questioning” of the connection of life itself, reconceptualized under the figure of being-toward-birth. Moreover, translating Er-eignis, which usually means “event” in the sense of what happens (Heidegger 1970, 42) as “advent (ad-venir)” seems to be permitted by François Fédier, the French translator of “Time and Being”: “Heidegger understands Ereignis as: er-eignis, that which leads to being properly (eigen) its property. Ereignen is to let come to oneself. If we understand event as advent, then we are already closer to what Heidegger understands here” (Heidegger 1976, 51). The term “being” (Seins) in the expression “Ereignis des Seins” is suddenly relativized to the Ereignis itself. However, Heidegger a contrario refuses to understand the Ereignis as “the encompassing general concept under which Being and time could be subsumed” (Heidegger 1972, 21). It is thus a question of thinking of the arrival of oneself as such; that is to say, without making it either an encompassing

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term or a simple modality. To come to oneself, Heidegger tells us, is, in the same movement, access to its own (appropriation) and de-appropriation in the sense of “it preserves what is its own” (Heidegger 1972, 23). This double component of the Ereignis is solidified by the process of Vereignen (reappropriation) which allows the return of what is its own (Heidegger 1972, 23). Ultimately, this analysis of the Er-eignis should be compared with what has been thematized by Husserl as a “birth to oneself.” Is not to come to oneself indeed to be born to oneself? Is the reference to being still necessary here, and does it not rather leave to Heidegger himself the question of what is its own and one’s giving to oneself, just as the reference to the “self” would be substituted by Husserl as the ego? In other words, to be born to oneself would probably not be equivalent to being born to being, but much more to being born to what is most its own. The very notion of “what is its own” therefore appears itself to be suspect, insofar as what is discovered in this ad-coming to oneself (ad-venue à soi-même) is a “self” rather than an “ownness” which is too egologically connoted with the terms that can be derived from it: possession or property. To come to oneself would be to be born a second time—that is, to bring out the deep self that is often masked by the sphere of “what is its own.” In this sense, it is indeed a question of thinking of a being-toward-birth as a self always to be born—always native and nascent—characterized by these two movements of an exit out of oneself: the fact of the first birth, and the fact of a grasping of oneself in the form of a second birth. If this filiation of the texts from 1927 to 1962 proves relevant, it makes it possible to attest to the existence of an autonomous ontological problem of birth in Heidegger himself. Yet does the ontological level of analysis better allow for a differentiation of the experiences of birth than the transcendental level of experience does? It would appear so. However, the conversion of the description on a plane that is even slightly removed from factuality—whether transcendental or ontological—seems to leave open the risk of a unification of experiences. In both cases, only the constantly reactivated memory of the rooting of birth in a factical passivity makes it possible to avoid the illusion of a compact and massive unity, and to think of the differentiated unity of the experience of birth and death. Translated by Quentin Gailhac

NOTES 1. This chapter was published originally in French as part of the article:  Depraz, Natalie, “Naître à soi-même” in Alter 1, 1993: 81–105. We have translated a

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shortened version of the following sections: Introduction and Preliminary Remarks (81–84), Birth as Originary Passivity (94–99) and Geschehen et Ereignis: A Passive and Factical Transcendentality (94–103). 2. See Hua XV, Appendix XLV.

REFERENCES Dastur, Françoise. 1990. Heidegger et la question du temps. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Heidegger, Martin. 1970. Zur Sache des Denkens (1962–1964). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 1972. On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. ———. 1976. Questions IV. Temps et être. La fin de la philosophie et la tâche de la pensée. Le tournant. La phénoménologie et la pensée de l’être. Les séminaires de Thor. Le séminaire de Zähringen. Translated by Jean Beauffret, François Fédier, Jean Lauxerais, Claude Roëls. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1996. Being and Time. A Translation of Sein und Zeit. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York. Husserl, Edmund. Since 1950. Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, 1859–1938 (Hua). The Hague/Dordrecht/London/New York: Nijhoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers/ Springer: ———. Hua I. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua VI. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by David Carr. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. Hua XI. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XV. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–1935. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

‌‌C hapter 2

Decision as Urstiftung Bruce Bégout

There is always something mysterious about a decision, whether large or small, important or trivial. In the moment when it intervenes, and which perhaps puts an end to a long period of reflection, this surge of the will is always astonishing, sometimes inexplicable. When the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould decided in 1964 to give up giving concerts, this decision, to which he would hold all his life, surprised his friends and his contemporaries. No matter how much he justifies it, gives it reasons, indicates that it was the result of long interior deliberation, it nevertheless emerges as an obscure and almost scandalous event.1 Thus a decision rarely seems reducible to the various reasons given to it, as if it refused to be the product logically resulting from their influence. A gray area, an irrationalis hiatus slips into it, between the reasons which justify it and the moment of its actualization. In the days when Husserl lives and writes, this dark conception of decision is on the rise. Following Kierkegaard’s reflections on the aesthetic, ethical and religious stages of human existence and on how to move from one to the other through a kind of leap, the decision appears to many thinkers as a sudden and supremely free act which can never simply derive, as in the classic model elaborated by Aristotle in book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, from a chain of reasons. The idea that, in a modern world which has lost its theological foundation and where values that have become relative don’t provide fixed and transcendent benchmarks, the decision is no longer based on already established norms, but creates its own meaning, becomes a crucial theme of thought at the end of the 19th century, a theme that we find in Nietzsche, Weber and Schmitt. This is usually called decisionism.2 By this is meant the fact that an authentic decision, far from corroborating a system of values from which it logically derives, but for lack of justifications of this type in a historical and relative world, invents its own reasons and gives 27

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meaning to existence. Faced with such a polytheism of values, namely an absence of rational justification for a system of values, it is the will that alone decides any standard. How does Husserl fit into this lively debate in German thought around the decision? Can he ignore, especially after the First World War, this new way of seeing in decision making a sort of heroic position taken by subjectivity in the face of what appears to be the crisis of meaning and values? Because, in fact, in particular in the articles of Kaizo on the “Renewal” which must respond in some way to this concern of the European man about the rise of nihilism, Husserl uses in an abundant and grandiloquent way the category of the decision. With an equally dramatic tone, he gives it a very strong existential meaning and makes it a key moment in the philosophical conversion to a life dedicated exclusively to the search for truth. The concept of decision intervenes in Husserl at different levels. We will distinguish here at least four, which, it should be noted, are always intertwined with each other as belonging to a “transcendental doctrine of spontaneity” (Hua XI, 361; 445). The concept of decision refers first of all (a) to the theory of judgment and to the question of the doxic position of the subject who judges. From there it extends (b) to the question of the persistent identity of the ego through its decisions and decision-making habits. It then covers (c) the field of the philosophy of will and practical phenomenology, as it unfolds in the Lessons on ethics and the theory of value (Hua XXVIII). And it finally flourishes (d) in an ethical and historical reflection around the vocation of the philosopher to entirely configure his existence according to the search for apodictic truths. It is not our intention to retrace this whole path of thought through these four main stages and thus follow the metamorphoses of the concept of decision. This would be the object of a study in itself which would require a theoretical development undoubtedly exceeding the time of a simple lecture. We would rather question the Husserlian concept of decision in resonance with the decision-making climate in which it develops. To do this, our paper will revolve around a few questions which seem to us, from this perspective, central and which will allow us to shed light on what we could call Husserl’s rational decisionism, namely those of the volitional nature of the decision-making act as a “primordial institution” (Urstiftung) and finally the philosophical meaning of the decision in a life and a world upset, where universal ethical standards are no longer guaranteed by a fixed social order or by a theological foundation.

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URSTIFTUNG AND WILL There is a creative element in Husserl’s understanding of decision that makes it something other than the simple conclusion of logical reflection. In this sense, the decision does not simply follow from the best rational choice. Even if the decision is based on unquestionable values, it nevertheless expresses a form of practical self-determination of the subject that is irreducible to even the best axiological reflection. In the theory of judgement, the moment of taking a position introduces a double novelty, from the noetic point of view as an act, since nothing like a deliberate act of judgement exists in the passive and receptive sphere—“Obviously, belief, and any position-taking, is an event in the stream of consciousness” (Hua IV, 223; 235)—and from the noetic point of view as the creation of a new and unreal objectivity, the judged state of affairs. It is this creative element of the decision, constantly emphasized by Husserl, that we must now interrogate. To do this, we will start from the continuous identification of the decision with an Urstiftung. If a decision is always a conscious and voluntary act, like all the intentional acts of egoic consciousness, it is above all, Husserl emphasizes, a “free” (frei) and “creative” (schöpferisch) act. By free, we must understand first of all an act that has the capacity to tear itself away from the passive determinations coming from the basis of perception and habit and to found itself on itself. This freedom of decision can even be, in the case of epoché, a freedom from values, a Rickertian or Weberian Wertfreiheit as a suspension of valuational involvement in decision making. In chapters 59 and 60 of volume II of the Ideen, Husserl insists on this free character of the decision: A passive compliancy in the “I move,” etc. is a subjective “pro-cedure,” and it can be called free only insofar as it “pertains to my freedom,” i.e., insofar as it, just like any subjective pro-cedure, can be, by the centralized Ego, reined in or given its freedom again. That is to say, the subject “consents,” says “yes” to the invitation of the stimulus precisely as an invitation to yield to it, and gives its fiat in practice. (Hua IV, 257; 269)

Now the “free decision” (freie Entscheidung) is not simply free from the constraining influence of passive life (the simple passive “doing (Tun)”), it is not simply inhibition and consent, it also signals itself as creative. This creativity, admittedly framed by the limits of the “I can” (the practical possibilities) and the concrete situations (the circumstances) that are offered to me—“I cannot will anything that I do not have consciously in view, that does not lie in my power, in my competence” (Hua IV, 258; 270)—designates first of all the self-determination of the self. The fact of the decision already expresses this free and new emergence of the will that modifies reality. This is the reason

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why, in this text as in others, Husserl continually associates an Urstiftung with the decision: In that case it no longer has the character of a mere demand to which I yield and which determines me from the outside; it has become a position-taking that issues from my own Ego and is not merely a stimulus coming from the outside and retaining the character of a borrowing of something that came forth from another Ego, of something that has its primal instauration (Urstiftung) in him. (Hua IV, 269; 281)3

Indeed, the decision presents several aspects that are consistent with the idea of an original institution. If, by Urstiftung, we mean an act which produces, and not only constitutes, a meaning and which, consequently, institutes this new meaning as an a priori framework determining in the future all meanings of the same kind, then the originary institution possesses an eidetic power, as the historical-empirical creation of an essence henceforth serving as an eidetic nucleus, and a deontic power, as the creation of a practical necessity insofar as it designates what is to be4: “One should doubtless note here that every judicative resoluteness (and thus no less every valuing and willing) is in no way merely a momentary act of the ego; rather, every act is either primordially instituting (urstiftende) or a merely repeated act. As primordially instituting, it institutes an abiding resoluteness of the ego with the decision.” (Hua XI, 360; 443) When I decide something, I am bound by what I have decided. The decision creates a firm and constant validity that obliges: The same applies here just as in the case of “the” predicative conviction, which is my lasting sustained conviction, my possession, and which I can grasp in repeated acts, and in acts repeatable as often as I like, as the one and the same conviction, as the one that I constantly have. I arrive at the conviction on the basis of a deliberation and through certain motives; here it is instaurated as my lasting conviction. Later, I will return to it as to a familiar conviction of mine. (Hua IV, 116; 113)

It is from this deontic power of decision that the strength of convictions derives, a strength on which the self itself is founded in its unitary and constant self-constitution. Such is indeed what Husserl affirms: if the self is certainly subjected to the force of the passive motivations that excite and influence it, it nevertheless possesses a force of self-determination: But that is an entirely different motivational force and an entirely different motivational efficacy than the motivational force of [passive] apperceptions [. . .].

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I am motivated in the decision, I am motivated to make a decision, and if the passive motivation has some analog, although only an analog, to mechanical force and causality, it in no way exists for egoic motivation. (Hua XI, 359; 442)

The influences incline but do not necessitate. Astra inclinant non necessitant. This force is not only suspensive, it does not merely silence tendencies and habits, it is also creative in that it produces a new kind of necessity, neither natural nor logical. It is because it expresses this deontic power from a practical point of view that the decision is a true primordial institution. This instituting role of the decision is particularly visible in the constitution of habitus. If, following a decision, what has been decided lasts and is maintained as a decision, thus forming, not a simple passive and empirical habit, but a habitus possessing both a lasting content and the obligation to respect it that goes with it, it is because every decision, as a free act of a will, institutes a must-be. The habitus not only preserves the content of the decision but also and above all its deontic force, and it is in this that the ego is not an empty form, but constitutes its own persistent unity through its convictions maintained over time. The habitus is something that the ego possesses permanently and on which it relies to make new decisions: The habitus that we are concerned with pertains not to the empirical, but to the pure, Ego. The identity of the pure Ego does not only reside in the fact that I (sc. the pure Ego), with regard to each and every cogito, can grasp myself as the identical Ego of the cogito; rather, I am even therein and apriori the same Ego, insofar as I, in taking a position, necessarily exercise consistency in a determinate sense: each “new” position-taking institutes a persistent “opinion” or a thema (a thema of experience, of judgment, of enjoyment, of will, etc.) so that, from now on, as often as I grasp myself as the same as I used to be or as the same as I now am and earlier was, I also retain my themata, assume them as active themata, just as I had posited them previously. (Hua IV, 111–112; 118)5

But it should be noted that the habitus itself derives from a decision (from a stance); it is nothing other than the sedimentation of a decision and the maintenance, in the course of this sedimentation, of its force of obligation, what the following text calls the “not-being-able-to-do-other”: My thesis, my position-taking, my deciding from motives (the null-point included) is something I have a stake in. As long as I am the one I am, then the position-taking cannot but ‘persist,’ and I cannot but persist in it; I can carry out a change only if the motives become different. (Hua IV, 112; 119)

All this means that the habitus preserves the doxic modality of the decision in the sense that its passive sedimentation does not modify it.6 If the ego did

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not respect its own decisions and therefore constantly changed its opinions according to the wind, it would be incapable of forming habitus, but above all it would be inconsistent with itself, unfaithful to itself. Fidelity to oneself is the expression of the deontic force of the habitus, namely the persistence of the original decision: Likewise in the case of decisions of every other kind, value-decisions, volitional decisions. I decide; the act-process vanishes but the decision persists; whether I become passive and sink into heavy sleep or live in other acts, the decision continues to be accepted and, correlatively, I am so decided from then on, as long as I do not give the decision up. (Hua I, 101; 67)7

From this it follows that the unity of the self is not the simple passive synthesis of the subjective temporal flow, the unity of all experiences, but it is “a second kind of synthesis” (Hua 1, 100; 66), namely that of the immediate recognition of the self in each of its acts and of its acts modified into habitus. Personal identity does not come, as in Locke, from the temporal coincidence between several experiences of the self, but from the capacity of its own convictions to establish a persistent unity. In a sense, the self derives its own persistence from the persistence of its decisions. The “continued validity (Fortgeltung)” of the decision becomes the continued validity of the self of the decision. Any new decision must somehow agree with the previous decisions transformed into habitus, decisions that the self can reactivate at each moment. Here again, the decision does not arise ex nihilo, but it is inscribed in the “unity of a history” of the ego (Hua 1, 109; 75). The history of the self is the history of its decisions. Moreover, it is not the content of the conviction as an unreal state of affairs (what has been decided) that guarantees this persistent identity (as could a mathematical ideality possessing the character of omni-temporality),8 but rather the relation between the subject and his decision that has become a conviction. In other words, the source of the maintenance of identity lies in the particular link that is established between the ego and its decisions. It is because the decision possesses this power, that of obliging, and in the first place that of obliging the one who made it, that it is instituting: “Hence this also is a law: each ‘opinion’ is an instauration which remains a possession of the subject as long as motivations do not arise which require the position-taking to be ‘varied’ and the former opinion abandoned [. . .].” (Hua IV, 113; 120) Nevertheless, even when reinscribed in this persistent continuity of the self, the decision still appears as an act that is not satisfied with constituting a meaning, but with producing it and, in the same movement, instituting what is produced as having force of law. While being instantaneous and radiating

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from the egoic pole, the act of decision creates something that endures beyond this act and establishes a bond of obligation. In this case, while based on the best of reasons, the decision has something absolutely irreducible to the realm of values. In truth, it is not the values (ethical or gnoseological) that are binding, roughly speaking the rational motivations, but the decision to follow them and to fulfil them in concrete acts. However rational the decision may be, insofar as it is based on legitimate and obvious motives, it possesses something absolutely new that the simple reference to rational motives does not contain, a creative and absolute novelty that the concept of fiat expresses in its own secularized meaning. It is true that the free decision is only free to determine itself according to authentic reasons, and in a sense this decision is always both a self-determination of the subject and an obligation to obey what has been determined. It is therefore never “arbitrary.” There is only freedom of the will based on good reasons. Here we find the apparent paradox of every free act which is command and obedience, and which decides on its own and at the same time refers to universal norms. On the one hand, the will is purely self-founding, i.e., de jure free from all motivations of experience, the will to will and not to will. On the other hand, it is only free to determine itself de facto according to validated rational norms, the will to achieve the best. This tension is obvious in every text of Husserl’s that deals with practical decision. This is especially the case when this decision is not only practical, in the sense that it is the will to modify the behavior of the subject who wants to, but ethical, insofar as it refers to ideas of good and evil. Does this mean that the normative character of the decision derives from the decision itself and not from the norms to which it refers? That, in a sense, it is the spontaneous and free act of deciding for oneself that prescribes a requirement and not the reference to the purest normative values? If this were the case, then the decision would be the creator of what makes a value a value, namely its normativity, and, as a result, it would no longer depend on an order of prior values. But to insist on this creative and instituting character of the decision, which, far from deriving from a normativity already recognized as legitimate, establishes it, is it not to return to a philosophical position close to that of decisionism? THE DECISION OF A LIFE In order to answer these questions, we must now question the way in which Husserl, after the drama of the First World War, directs his reflection very clearly toward the practical conditions of a philosophical life. In other words, the way in which Husserl puts forward the ethical dimension of philosophy insofar as it refers to an existence entirely dedicated to the sapientia

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universalis. Already, before 1914, the fight against naturalism and its skeptical and relativistic consequences in terms of knowledge, in the name of philosophy as a rigorous science, was presented as a response to the distress of the present. In Volume I of the Ideen, published in 1913, the emphasis on epoché as a radical change of attitude of subjectivity toward the world also outlined a form of ethical consideration. But it was not until after 1918 that Husserl, in the disarray of defeat and the ensuing social unrest, really abandoned the purely logical-formal approach to practical and axiological life. From now on, what counts for him in his practical reflection are the conditions in which the philosophical decision establishes a new mode of existence governed by the guiding idea of absolute truth. In all this abundant production, which ranges from articles for the Japanese review Kaizo to the sociohistorical analyses of Krisis, including Volume II of the Erste Philosophie on the phenomenological meaning of reduction and numerous research manuscripts devoted to the philosophical vocation, production that has given rise to an abundant critical literature over the last twenty years, we would like to show above all how the theme of decision, as it was first elaborated in the theory of judgement, then in the theory of the practical will, is reinvested to receive a properly existential meaning. From being a doxic position or a practical creation of obligation, the decision thus becomes the pivot axis of a whole ethical reflection around the necessity for each one to abandon an ordinary life, prisoner of mythical and traditional thought, and to convert, on the model of the Platonic metanoia, to a serious and obstinate search for science. It is through and thanks to science that one can “submit one’s whole life (sein gesamtes Leben) in its open futural infinity (in seiner offenen Zukunftsunendlichkeit) to a demand for principles originated from one’s own free will (aus eigenem freien Wollen entsprungenen Regelforderung)” (Hua XXVII, 27), that one can create oneself as “an absolutely rational being” (Hua XXVII, 36) and that one commits “its own whole future life of knowledge (gesamtes künftiges Erkenntnisleben)” (Hua VIII, 6). Philosophy can only arise from a free decision of the will. Husserl repeatedly describes this fundamental moment of decision and its consequences. But each time he explains the way in which a subject converts to the philosophical search for truth through a radical change of attitude, he always does so starting from the originally instituting act of the decision.9 Whether from the point of view of the individual, who has to respond to the challenge of modern scepticism and relativism which undermine any idea of true science and lead to a form of nihilism, or from the point of view of European humanity in the way it has had, since the Greeks, to tirelessly aim at the true in itself and to invent critical procedures to access it, Husserl highlights the key moment of the decision: “It is a decision (Entscheidung), in which the

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subject itself ‘absolutely identifies’ itself in a certain sense with this Best (mit diesem Besten)” (Hua VIII, 11). Here again, in this description of what we might call the philosophical decision, we find the problem already encountered in the theory of judgement or of the will. This act of decision is indeed depicted as an act that must, first of all, resist the passive motivations of habit and tradition, and then establish something absolutely new, guided in this by leading ideas of rigorous science, apodictic truth, definitive legitimation. Here again, the decision is at once (a) a certain moral force that opposes the involuntary forces of passive life, (b) the capacity to establish something absolutely new, and finally (c) an attitude conducted according to rational norms. And as in the case of the rational decision, the philosophical decision expresses a free self-determination of the ego “able to move mountains” (Hua XXVII, 5) and obeying theoretical and practical norms from which it cannot escape. It is a decision that he must take alone and once and for all, whatever help he may receive from others (Hua XXVII, 43).10 If we return to the moment of the decision itself, to its “style” (Hua VIII, 12), we see that an internal struggle is played out within it between the fact that this decision originally establishes something that did not exist before— thanks to the “free primordial institution or primordial generation (freie Urstiftung oder Urzeugung)” (Hua XXVII, 43)—and the fact that this original establishment is more or less motivated by the pre-philosophical life that precedes it. But on this point Husserl often seems to hesitate. Sometimes he insists on the absolutely innovative character of the philosophical decision, in the sense that what it posits does not exist in any form in the pre-philosophical life of the individual or of society (“since no motive of this life would have yet pushed to its conception [sofern noch kein Motiv dieses Lebens zu ihrer Konzeption hindrängte],” Hua XXIX, 380),11 for example the Greek society that Husserl is constantly working on. Sometimes, on the contrary, as if to avoid the leap of the decision itself and to show a certain continuity between this pre-philosophical life and the decision itself, he points to individual (e.g. “the painful (peinlich) lived experience of negation and doubt” (Hua XXVII, 26) that creates the will to get out of this discomfort of uncertainty by devoting all one’s efforts to the search for the true) and historical motives (the relativity of ways of life and the religious aspiration to a total explanation of nature) that can lead to it. When Husserl insists on the irruption of the new, on its historical breakthrough and the upheaval it brings in its wake, he is primarily interested in the specificity of the original attitude and purpose that emerges. Here the decision is truly meaning-making, and even if it is directed toward a goal, namely the constitution of rigorous science, it draws from itself a “motivation to set a new goal for knowledge” (Hua XXVII, 30).

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When Husserl, on the contrary, wishes to anchor this new attitude in a psycho-historical continuity, he brings to light elements in the pre-philosophical life that prepare and motivate its advent, for example, to return to the Greek emergence of philosophy as a science of the universal, on (1) the one hand, the historical and multicultural confrontation of the Greeks with other social and political models (Persians, Egyptians, etc.) which obliges them to an effort of self-reflection, and on (2) the other hand, the orientation of their mythological thought toward the understanding of the totality of the world. In this case, philosophy appears as a project that unfolds “from historical motivations stemming from the human world” (Hua, XXIX, 407). In a way, the pre-philosophical world, natural and mythological, contains within it factors that will help the irruption of the new philosophical attitude and thus motivate more or less directly the decision that founds it. The most surprising thing is that, sometimes in the same text, Husserl can indicate that the decision “is produced in a single stroke” (Hua XXIX, 418), thus using the decisionist vocabulary of the immediate leap, and that this same decision is predisposed by favorable conditions that help it to happen. This hesitation between preparation and irruption is notably manifest in the way Husserl conceives the phenomenological epoché in particular. In fact, it concentrates in nuce all the theoretical problems of philosophical decision. The epoché is the decision par excellence, the decision of decisions, the one that implies “the greatest existential transformation (der grössten existentiellen Wandlung)” (Hua VI, 140; 137), “a thoroughly new way of life (eine durchaus neue Weise des Lebens)” (Hua VI, 153; 150). It is therefore not surprising that the very meaning of philosophical decision is at stake. Moreover, Husserl, when he describes the particular way in which the individual tears himself away from the world of natural life in order to access a new domain of meaning and value, does not hesitate to speak of epoché in a sense that is not technical but extended—“as a kind of epoché” (Hua XXIX, 393)—, since it is not a question of the voluntary suspension of the world’s thesis, but of the individual’s simple practical conversion to scientific and philosophical research. But, obviously, the ambiguity of the decision itself is found especially in the theory of the phenomenological epoché stricto sensu, insofar as the latter constitutes the first and great decision of the philosophical life, or more exactly of the phenomenological life. We will not repeat here the whole debate initiated by Fink in the VIth of the Cartesian Meditations around the “absence of motivation” (Motivlosigkeit) of the epoché. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this debate is directly related to our question of the status of decision. If, in fact, for Husserl, epoché as an act has no “precedent” in natural life (Hua VIII, 122), since there is an “abyss of meaning” (Hua III, 93; 111) between it and this life, this means that it possesses absolute originality as an originary institution. The epochal decision is absolutely

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free, as Husserl constantly reminds us in Volume I of the Ideen. Only an absolutely free act can free itself from all worldly interests. This also means that nothing in the natural life motivates it, not even the ideal of rigorous science, since many scientists who know, or even recognize, this ideal in their scientific life do not, as phenomenologists, practice epoché. There is thus in it a radical qualitative leap beyond both natural and historical life and rational norms, which philosophical consideration is not enough to achieve. And it is undoubtedly in this that the epoché reveals to us “its questionable character (ihre Fraglichkeiten)” (Hua VI, 151). It is therefore not enough to imagine the ultimate end, namely the idea of rigorous science, one must want to accomplish this idea in the firm and resolute mission of a whole life. From this point of view, only the decision is capable of transforming the apodictic ideal of life into practical reality.12 We could certainly say, and we would be right to do so, that the decision, even conceived as an irruption, is always backed by rational norms and scientific ideals. It therefore always gives itself reasons to act. What motivates the rational subject in particular here is the desire to live up to the goals set. Decisions are always made on the basis of rational foundations, for example, in the phenomenological regime, on the basis of the principle of self-evident donation. Except that, here again, the infinite goals that one sets for oneself (for example, the love of truth) are not necessarily susceptible of an obvious intuitive fulfillment, so that the teleological idea of self-evidence is not so obvious, because it does not correspond to the model of truth that it establishes. There is a kind of internal flaw in the system: the idea of truth on which rational norms are based cannot be directly applied to them. Thus, we are returned to the absolutely unfounded character of the decision which, on the one hand, is torn away from passive motivations and which, on the other hand, is not founded by rational norms, since the latter appear more as regulating ideals than as constituting principles of truth. When the subject, moved by the ideal of scientificity, decides to dedicate his life to science, responding to the call of his vocation or to the refusal of scepticism, he thus bases himself on practical norms whose phenomenological legitimacy, based exclusively on the only evident donation, is far from being assured. However powerful the particular motives that engage a philosophical life, it is not these motives that explain the decision as a decision. This is for a good and simple reason: the decision is not an intentional act directed toward an end, but it is the absolute beginning of the realization of this end which, as an absolute beginning, is not contained in this end. To return to individual and collective philosophical life, we can therefore safely say that apodictic truth is more an ethical requirement than an experience. For what reasons? This is mainly because the requirement to submit one’s life to a rule does not come from the rule itself but

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from one’s “own free will” (Hua XXVII, 27). Moreover, as Husserl remarks, what is truly apodictic in this rational will-to-be is more the “freedom” (Hua VI, 275) than the idea. It is therefore not certain that “authentic knowledge follows action” (Hua XXVII, 87), as if knowledge of the true motivated the practical decision. It is more likely that it is from action, i.e., from the decision to submit one’s life to rational norms, that authentic knowledge can be derived. This also means that rationality is a gamble that stems from the decision itself, which is unfounded and foundational: “Therefore, in relation to this situation, a great conclusive resolution regarding life (Lebensentschluss) is now requested (bedarf es nun): to assume the risk and to set one own’s life for it (dafür sein Leben einzusetzen—für das Wagnis)” (Hua VIII, 22). Here again, the shadow of decisionism seems to hang over Husserl’s head. But it is a somewhat special decisionism since it is founded on the rational, namely on the fact of tending toward the obvious and apodictic donation, on a practical decision that cannot, as an act, be immediately fulfilled by the type of truth it aims at. This decision does not create meaning or value, but it establishes, as a free act, the will to live according to the highest meanings and values. In a way, it is not the rational idea that motivates the decision, but the decision that, taking a firm stand for this rational idea that has no apodicticity in history, then gives it theoretical and above all practical legitimacy. The rational decision is a decision in favor of reason rather than from reason. If we intend to obey the “principle of pure evidence” (Hua VIII, 32), it is we who decide to obey it, it is not this principle, even if it is celebrated as a teleological ideal that can compel us to do so. Otherwise we would not understand why all men of good will would not comply with it. Taking up the cause of rational normativity, it creates its own practical legitimacy; it is a “primordial self-creation” (Hua VIII, 19).13 Does it therefore emerge from nothing? Certainly not, since on the one hand it rejects passive life and on the other aspires to rational life, but the fact remains that the creative power it expresses comes only from itself. Even if the decision is driven by a clear intention and is based on rational motives, the project of constituting philosophy as a rigorous science and devoting one’s life to this task is not sufficient to produce this decision. From the theoretical consideration of the true to the will to achieve it, there is a gap in continuity, and therefore, in order to cross this gap, something more must enter the scene. This something more and enigmatic is the decision itself, this leap out of passive or rational motivation as the original establishment of the new. The teleological idea may have a certain normative force as an appeal, but it alone cannot engage the will. Even if it is prepared by the passive motivating life or by theoretical reflection on norms and values, the decision, as a free and creative act, emerges as an unprecedented event that cuts through the possibilities. One does not decide from nothing (the arbitrary act) or for nothing (the gratuitous act), but

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as nothing, because the act of decision itself is always a creative nothingness, an Urstiftung whose originality is absolute and irreducible to all motivations. NOTES 1. Of course Gould justified this decision by evoking himself multiple motives such as the artificial and theatrical character of the concert where the music fades in front of the performance of the pianist who, like a monkey in a cage, becomes the object of the shameless attention of the public, the feeling of no longer belonging by giving himself in this way in shows throughout the world, the lie of applauses, the wandering life away from home and recording studios, the constraints of concert life, the intimate conviction that the concert is doomed to disappear in favor of the recording, etc. He even indicated that this decision had already been taken at the age of fifteen. However, even if we take into account the carefully considered nature of this decision, or even of its planning, we can only wonder, more than fifty years later, about this renunciation and its irrevocable nature. Often, moreover, the multiplication of justifications appears as a kind of camouflage of the spontaneous and somewhat obscure nature of the decision itself as if the subject, faced with his own abyss of his decision, felt the need to fill this abyss after the fact with multiple bridges to serve as points of attachment. On a commendable attempt to reconstruct the history and biography of this decision, see Bazzana 2004, 145–230. 2. On this theme, we can read with profit the texts of Van Krockow (Van Krockow 1958), Kuhn (Kuhn 1950), or the important article of Karl Löwith (Löwith 1984). 3. The same idea is developed here as well: “Hence this also is a law: each ‘opinion’ is an instauration which remains a possession of the subject as long as motivations do not arise which require the position-taking to be ‘varied’ and the former opinion abandoned or require, with respect to its component, a partial abandonment, and with respect to the whole, a variation” (Hua IV, 113; 120). 4. Although the passive sphere has a certain strength of influence, it is never an expression of “you must” (Hua XI, 359). 5. We find this same foundation of the persistent unity of the self through the maintenance of his decisions in habitus in chapter 32 of the Cartesian Meditations: “For example: If, in an act of judgment, I decide for the first time in favor of a being and a being-thus, the fleeting act passes; but from now on I am abidingly the Ego who is thus and so decided, ‘I am of this conviction’ ”(Hua I, 100; 66). 6. Nevertheless, we can ask ourselves, particularly with regard to the history of science as practiced by Husserl, whether the habitus of a theoretical decision does not undergo, like any fluid experience of consciousness, an intuitive weakening but above all a modification of its meaning and its original thesis. Otherwise, we would not understand how and why, in history, certain fundamental original instaurations have seen their created meaning forgotten, or even diverted, as in the case of the history of the ideal of truth, covered over and transformed by objectivist and naturalist deviance from the seventeenth century onward. In this case, there has been a long-term modification of the theoretical decisions and their position, which have lost their validity. It

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is true that we are no longer in the intra-subjective unity of an ego recognizing itself in its decisions, but in the supposed intersubjective and generative unity of humanity, and in particular of the community of scholars. This perhaps explains this. 7. Any habitus is not the transformation into a persistent possession of an act; the events of the passive sphere are themselves transformed into habitualities, so that, because of the integration in the temporal flow, of passive and active experiences, we have two kinds of habitus. It should be noted that at no point does Husserl base the persistent unity of the self on the maintenance of passive habitus. Only the habitus resulting from decisions have this capacity to be valid beyond the moment of their production. This shows that the deontic force of conviction does not come from its sedimentation in habitus, but from the act of decision originally instituting it. As Husserl says in Appendix IV of Hua XI, “The habituality (Habitualität) belonging to the general nature of subjectivity is precisely of a different mettle in passivity and in activity” (Hua XI, 360; 443). 8. “It is not a question here of the conviction’s content, everywhere identical, as an ideal unity, but of the content as identical for the subject, as proper to the subject, as acquired by him in earlier acts, and which does not pass away along with the acts but instead belongs to the enduring subject as something which remains lastingly his” (Hua IV, 116; 123). 9. “Only science establishes final rational decisions (endgültige Vernunftentscheidungen) value” (Hua XXVII, 12). For the simple reason that this scientific ideal is based on “a life of ‘renewal’ (ein Leben der ‘Erneuerung’), arisen from its own will (aus dem eigenen Willen heraus geboren) to shape itself (sich selbst . . . gestalten) in the form of an authentic humanity (zu einer echten Menschheit), in the sense of the practical reason (im Sinne praktischer Vemunft)” (Hua XXVII, 22). 10. Or, a little further on: “it is only from his own freedom that a man can reach reason and give himself (. . .) a rational configuration” (Hua XXVII, 43). 11. Same idea in Hua XXVII, 43: “Then, what primarily stimulates (erregt) the theoretical interest is not the field of experience, in which our daily activities take place. Such a concrete praxis does not yet need a science.” 12. It also goes without saying that the philosophical decision is philosophical because it obliges the subject to devote his life to the realization of philosophical ideals. The decision to become rich, famous or powerful, to devote one’s life to commerce, the arts or politics, according to the three examples that often appear in Husserl’s writings, can be absolutely radical and involve a whole life, but it is not philosophical. Here it is not so much the philosophical character of the decision that is important to us as its radical character. Now the radicality of the decision as an irruption does not seem to depend on the ends that orient it, whether these ends are mercantile or noble. 13. We could find the same idea in the articles for the Kaizo review, cf. Hua XXVII, 36: “the absolutely rational person is therefore, from the point of view of his rationality, causa sui.”

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REFERENCES Bazzana, Kevin. 2004. Wondrous Strange. The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Husserl, Edmund. Since 1950. Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, 1859–1938 (Hua). The Hague/Dordrecht/London/New York: Nijhoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers/ Springer. Volumes used in this chapter followed by a translation if it is required: ———. Hua I. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Dorion Cairns. 1982. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. Dordrecht/London/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua III. 1950. Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. I. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Fred Kersten. 1982. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Dordrecht/London/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua IV. 1952. Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. II. Phänomenologischen Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. The Hague: Nijhoff. Translated by R. Rojcewicz A. Schuwer. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book. Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Dordrecht-BostonLondon: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua VI. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by David Carr. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. Hua VIII. 1959. Erste Philosophie (1923–1924). Zweiter Teil. Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XI. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Anthony J. Steinbock. 2001. Analysis Concerning Passive and Active Synthese. Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua XXVII. 1989. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937). Dordrecht/ Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua XXVIII. 1988. Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre (1908–1914). Ed. Ulrich Melle. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua XXIX. 1993. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937. Dordrecht/London/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Kuhn, Helmut. 1950. Begegnung mit dem Nichts. Ein Versuch über die Existenzphilosophie. Tübingen: Mohr.

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Löwith, Karl. 1984. “Der okkasionelle Dezisionismus von Carl Schmitt.” In Heidegger—Denker in dürftiger Zeit. Sämtliche Schriften, Band 1, 32–71. Stuttgart: Metzler. Van Krockow, Christian Graf. 1958. Die Entscheidung. Eine Untersuchung über Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt und Martin Heidegger. Stuttgart: Enke.

PART II

Generations

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‌‌C hapter 3

Between Generation and Genesis  A New Stiftung Mariana Larison

As we know, and as the successive publication of his unpublished works confirms, Husserl develops a growing interest in the generative aspect of constitution in his later years. A striking example are the generative analyses published in various volumes of Husserliana, but especially in those dedicated to the analyses of intersubjectivity—and, within them, the later writings grouped in Husserliana XV. Based on these analyses, some authors have even proposed a new absolute starting point for phenomenology: that of familiar life and foreign life, which is irreducible to the isolated egological subject of these experiences. Here we are thinking primarily of Steinbock’s theses in his great Home and Beyond (1995), a book of remarkable depth and undisputed influence—although some of his theses appear excessive to us, especially those that refer to an apparently exclusive alternative between generative and genetic phenomenology, beginning from and going beyond Husserl.1 It is not my intention to weigh in on this discussion, but rather to point out a third alternative which does not exclude but reincorporates both perspectives. I do not refer to it either as genetic or generative phenomenology, but—for reasons I will explain—the phenomenology of institution. It seems to me that this term, which takes its force from the Latin translation proposed by Merleau-Ponty of Husserl’s Stiftung, allows us to transcend the alternative between the generative constitution of meaning and the genetic constitution of meaning. It proceeds from a third perspective, which opens up historicity as such.2 As I would like to show here, the possibility of a phenomenology of institution is sustained by these two aspects: on the one hand, a rereading of Husserlian Stiftung; on the other, in the extension of the processes of 45

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institution even to pre-personal life—that is, to subjective life in its organic and affective-primordial dimension, which relates to the sphere of primordial bonding and in a certain way makes it possible to overcome the idea of an exclusive alternative between generativity and genesis. The Merleau-Pontian studies on institution outlined in his 1954 course on the subject show a surprising continuity with the task which is opened by Husserlian phenomenology, but also a reformulation of it. However, this continuity has not yet been explored. The following opens several lines of investigation into the topic. HUSSERLIAN STIFTUNG As we said, the term Stiftung acquires a technical sense from its usage in Husserl’s genetic analyses. Genetic phenomenology deals with the processes of genesis, transmission, and transformation of meanings within the life of consciousness. The first appearances of the term Stiftung in Husserl’s work occur as early as the early 1910s, but its systematic use is established in the writings corresponding to genetic phenomenology—which some authors place as early as 1917—and it becomes more pronounced from the 1920s onward.3 Already in the genetic analyses, the notion of Stiftung appears mainly linked to the moment of the Urstiftung, and in general it is deployed in various modalities: the institution of a primary meaning—that is, its foundation (Urstiftung)—is also the opening of a telos that guides experience, of a goal (Endstiftung). This goal can always be rectified by a reinstitution of its meaning (Nachstiftung) or give rise to an institution of a new order (Neustiftung). In other words, the Stiftung does not refer so much to a particular type of act as to a process, to the history of a meaning that has a founding moment and that unfolds from subjective reactivations which can always rectify this process at every moment without one being fully aware of doing so—that is, without this being made explicit. This process is manifested as much in the formation of subjective-individual experience—that is, in the sedimented habitualities of the subject—as it is in intersubjective and intergenerational experience. In the former it refers to the acts that delineate the lifestyle of subjective consciousness, which form its historicity: its habitualities and the empirical types that are its correlate. They also refer to the constitution of subjective capacities with respect to action in the context of practical life and, from there, of ethical life. In the latter, the genetic process refers to the formation of cultural senses (in a broad sense)— that is, both to the formation of a transcendental intersubjectivity and to the historicity of cultural formations within a tradition. It is within the framework of this type of descriptions that Husserl analyzes the genetic process per se,

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insofar as it reveals itself as the source of historicity’s validity as such and, thus, of any particular factual history. At any level of genetic analysis, it is not a question of an empirical history of the aforementioned processes and their destinies, but of the lawfulness of the articulation that is inherent to experience as such, of the structure of remissions that connect an origin with its continuity, thus forming a process that is implicated in all experience. In the particular case of cultural formations, the description of the historicity of experience will be revealed as the description of an a priori: of the a priori of historicity as such. This process is the one that is described in detail in the Krisis, and quite particularly in the opuscule published as “Appendix III,” called “The Origin of Geometry” (Hua VI). There Husserl explicitly proposes a new and profound way of thinking about and approaching the historicity of cultural formations. “The Origin of Geometry” exemplifies how the process of forgetting the origins or forms of evidence that found the meaning of the exact sciences occurs—but also, and more generally, it explains the possibility of forgetting the founding character of concrete experience in terms of the ideality of meaning as such. In this way, Husserl shows in a curious operation how the origin of any tradition— even of geometry as a disciplinary tradition—is sustained by certain founding acts that are linked to the pre-scientific, sensible world, thereby also showing the a priori character of all historicity in general. This represents a bold proposal and a paradox that must be overcome. Husserl’s goal in carrying out genetic phenomenology, and particularly with “The Origin of Geometry,” is thus to overcome the alternative between the lawfulness of experience and its real historicity, between the a priori of a historical reason and the experience of history itself. “The Origin of Geometry” makes this process explicit and shows how it is possible. In general terms, Husserl’s approach in this text is the following. Every cultural formation, every science—and among them, geometry—has an origin. It is not an empirical beginning, and it is not a question of knowing who the factual individuals who initiated it were, but of understanding that all formation has an origin: a first and original sense that founds a new register of meanings which is instituted by a precursor and is taken up indefinitely by other subjects. So, two aspects constitute the origin and continuity of a tradition: it can only be realized when a new meaning is instituted—a meaning that endures over time as the same—and by the recovery of multiple individual subjects that each time, in different spatio-temporal moments, retake the meaning and reactivate it. While sensible expressions of meanings or spiritual formations have a spatio-temporal individuation, this does not occur with the meaning itself, which is an ideal objectivity.

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To find the meaning of the founding act—the one by which a new order of meanings is instituted—it is necessary to discover the essential structure of the transmissions, with their sedimented meanings and their re-realizations, until one reaches the first materials of the first formation of meanings that lie, unfailingly, in the pre-scientific human world; in the lifeworld. It is not a question of knowing the facts, but of knowing the network of transmissions and reactivations that configure them and that, as a framework, are an a priori of history that leads us to its founding meaning. Husserl argues that all factual history will be blind insofar as it does not thematize the essential structure that underlies it, which extends from the present back to the original evidence that underlies its basis in view of the future which is opened as the goal of that project, as an idea in the Kantian sense—that is, an infinite task. Therefore, to the extent that the essential link of the present with its original meaning is not made explicit, it is not possible to understand the historicity of a science. In other words, a phenomenology of the historical a priori must be able to make comprehensible a mode of temporality that is common to the structure of personal as well as interpersonal history. This structure is— at least on the level of effective history—an intentional network articulated from a successive flow of temporal moments of consciousness. With the appearance of the texts concerning intersubjectivity grouped in Volumes XIII, XIV and XV of Husserliana, an earlier dimension of the historicity of meaning appears much more clearly: the properly generative dimension. In these writings (primarily the later ones grouped in Hua XV), generativity is treated as a primordial mode of intersubjectivity, which is understood as the production, transmission, and adoption of meanings through generational ties within a primordial community—even instinctive ones—which thus make up a subjective proto-historicity as well as a world that is already proto-historicized at the beginning of subjective life.4 Considering constitution from the point of view of the lifeworld, Husserl distinguishes several elements as a condition of effective historicity, elements that compose what can be called—following the order proposed by Robert Walton—the level of proto-historicity. The component elements are the Earth as ground, the instinctive proto-generativity, and the familiar world as the first stage of an intersubjective life. Sustained in the archaic dimension of the Earth, proto-generativity indicates the phylogenetic process sedimented in each subjectivity. Conceived as a sort of evolutionary inheritance, it is a generative intersubjectivity which is rooted in each one of us in the form of intersubjective instincts that establish links—which we could well call “species links”—and which are the condition of any tradition of a higher order. In this way, they are also constitutive of the a priori of history in general.

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The enchainment of historicities is also consistent with a constitutive element of the historical a priori and which is found at the most original level of all historicity: the eminently teleological character of the historical process. This trace is already found in the very order of the instinctivity that is played out in the generative sphere: it is an “originary instinctive referentiality” and a “generative implication” which comprises the development of humanity in its totality (Hua XLII, 429). As Walton points out, the transfer of meaning that properly arises in genetic analysis has an analogy in the inheritance of meaning at the generative level. Along with the institution of meaning, it is necessary to recognize an adoption or assumption of meaning, for meaning is here pre-given: the result of the practices of a community across generations in a common history: Consequently, pointing to an origin that is beyond the possibilities of one’s own subjectivity, Husserl observes that each human group relates “to the meaning embedded in its familiar surrounding world” (Hua XV, 433), and resorts to expressions such as “stem kinship” (Stammverwandtschaft) (Hua XV, p. 432 fn) or ‘stem congregation’ (Hua XXXIX, 201) (Stammgenossenschaft) to indicate the meanings and validities coming from its ancestors. (Walton 2019, 20)

In this way, generativity branches out into multiple domains: this allows us to understand the opposition between internal history and external history, which concerns (respectively) the familiar world and the foreign world. The familiar world, the fundamental stage of the generative dimension, has its center in the home as an extended, intimate existence. There we find the first experience of common life; of acting and suffering with one another. It is there that the care of life takes place, the incorporation into the tradition of generations, and the instinct of love, generative love or a protoform of neighborly love. There is also a spatio-temporal configuration inherent to this home. On the one hand, it is a “universal instinctive intentionality that unitarily constitutes each primordial present as a permanent temporalization and in a concrete way continues to drive from present to present” (Hua XV, 595). Through this universal intentionality, each temporalization is linked to the rest, and singular temporalities occur on its basis. Moreover, a system of spatio-temporal orientation takes place within the home—conceived as the territory of the familiar world—and it simultaneously constitutes the possibility of a common, primordial praxis. Thus, by ordering these analyses, we can identify an order of proto-historicity composed of instinctive proto-generativity, crossed by a dimension of protointersubjectivity. On this basis, we can further identify a layer that corresponds to the development of subjective life in the familiar environment; a generative dimension par excellence where a first traditionality and community are

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constituted from an instinctivity of affective order—an instinct of love—and by means of the adoption of meanings that are inherited by generational links. On the basis of this primordial constitutive dimension, an effective history can take place—both at the subjective and intersubjective levels—one that occurs on a path that is already properly genetic and which the texts of the Krisis have so carefully pointed out to us. At all levels, an intentional teleology unfolds; a meaning is transmitted through a structure of remissions in which a subjective experience is inscribed. A structure of remissions sustained in a temporality that, under the mode of a succession always apprehended from an original present, connects generations and traditions. STIFTUNG AS INSTITUTION As we have mentioned, and as we have shown elsewhere (Larison, 2022), Merleau-Ponty’s translation of Stiftung by “institution” is both explicit and complex. Explicit because it is an assumed theoretical decision that clearly inscribes the Husserlian tradition within it, in the precise framework of genetic research. However, it is also linked to the tradition via a discussion of the meaning of Hegelian and, above all, Marxist dialectics and history.5 Merleau-Ponty’s purpose is, in effect, to think history, and institution is a decision about the way history is thought: “It is this development of phenomenology into the metaphysics of history that we wished to prepare here” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 79). In this perspective, Husserlian Stiftung is introduced by the same gesture into a tradition foreign to its German meaning, a tradition shaped by a Latin thought of institution that resurfaces in French social thought, one within which Merleau-Ponty himself disputes the meaning of the concept of institution (Larison 2016). All in all, and focusing exclusively on our problem—that is, the program opened by Husserl with his generative and genetic investigations on historicity—I would like to show here that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of institution is, above all, a reappropriation of the genetic perspective that presupposes the incorporation of the generative perspective. Merleau-Ponty’s Institution and passivity (2010 [2003]) is presented in two main parts. One part introduces the fundamental theses and working hypotheses. The other presents the different analyses that will take place throughout the seminar and which constitute the bulk of the notes compiled for publication. These analyses define various types of institution, which Merleau-Ponty calls (respectively) “pre-personal,” “personal,” and “interpersonal” institutions. Each of these modes of institution, through the various modalizations found within them (which Merleau-Ponty himself names as Ur-stiftung, End-stiftung, or Nach-stiftung),6 refers to the processes of historicization of

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meaning that unfold in embryonic life, in the development of the behavior of the living animal, in the affective life of the living human being, in works of art, culture or knowledge and, finally, in community history. The thesis of this work can be formulated as follows: what we are dealing with in a phenomenology of institution is a descriptive analysis of the experience of personal life: not of the life of consciousness, but of personal life.7 What we are also dealing with is the institution of subjective life—that is, of primary organic formations, of its primary habitual formations, of its behavioral style, as well as of the institution of its interpersonal experience through works. Another way of considering subjective life as personal life (in its diverse modalizations) leads then to other ways of thinking about the relationship with others, with acting, and with time. In my view, the treatment of time in these brief passages and its development in the phenomena of institution constitute the key to the richness of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of institution and its central difference with Husserl’s perspective, both generative and genetic. We will return to this later. Merleau-Ponty states that “time is the very model of institution: passivity-activity, it continues, because it has been instituted, it fuses, it cannot stop being, it is total because it is partial, it is a field” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 7). Time is the model of institution—and therefore the model of all historicity of meaning—insofar as institution designates the double aspect of this process, which is both instituting and instituted in a manner of flowing processuality that is always in movement: Therefore institution [means] establishment in an experience (or in a constructed apparatus) of dimensions (in the general, Cartesian in relation to which a whole series of other experiences will make sense and will make a sequel, a history. The sense is deposited. . . . [It is deposited] as something to continue, to complete without it being the case that this sequel is determined. The instituted will change but this very change is called for by its Stiftung. Goethe: genius [is] posthumous productivity. All institution is in this sense genius. (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 8–9)

Proceeding from this central idea, it is possible to understand the developments established by Merleau-Ponty (2010): a proto-institution even in the ontogenetic dimension, outlined through discussions with some theories on the genesis and development of animal organisms, and proposing the notion of institution to think the instinctive dimension of the living. A perspective that allows us to think beyond the classical discussions between the innate and the acquired, even at the embryonic level. From animal behavior to the affective life of the human living being, Merleau-Ponty explores the possibilities of the concept of institution by describing the processes of imprinting and

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libidinal investment, taking up the analyses of Lorenz’s ethology and Freud’s psychoanalysis. Against the Husserlian proposal of a universal intentional instinctivity—which transports an always-reborn temporality in an intergenerational way, but which retains the form of a successivity that is apprehended in each living present—Merleau-Ponty provides a discussion that opposes Husserl’s concept of instinct as such. He also proposes a change in the way of understanding temporal movement itself. In the first case, the notion of institution is opposed to instinct when the latter is understood as a blind behavior that is dictated by the species. Following the studies of Ruyer and Lorenz, Merleau-Ponty points out how behavioral studies, even of animals, show the presence of a search for an open meaning within more or less narrow limits. In the same way, he will show how a founding sense of subjective history always implies an open search and a reinstitution not merely of future meanings, but of the founding meaning itself. In all these generative processes, in those in which the sense of a process of historicization is established, a peculiar temporality—that of institution— is implemented: in Husserlian terms, a generative time; in Merleau-Ponty’s terms, an originary transtemporality. For Husserl, it is a way of establishing transmission links, a trunk kinship. For Merleau-Ponty, it is “Lateral kinship of all the ‘nows’ which makes for their confusion, their ‘generality’” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 7). An original transtemporality is “neither decadence (delay back upon itself) nor anticipation (advance forward upon itself), but it is on time, the time that it is” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 7). These studies describe a new way of thinking about time: an original transtemporality that not only flows in succession but also in simultaneity, and whose consequences are yet to be measured. We will now approach the institution of a feeling—more particularly, love. Husserl would call it the first feeling toward the other; Merleau-Ponty would call it the model of my whole love life. In his work, Merleau-Ponty provides a description of the phenomenon of love through the study of Proust and his various investigations. There are also discussions dedicated to the institution of the work of art from the point of view of its genesis in the artist’s own style, as well as of its genesis within the tradition of which the work forms a part. This is followed by the institution of a knowledge, or, in Husserlian terms, of a cultural formation. Merleau-Ponty refers here to formal knowledge such as mathematics, which does not seem to deal with open meanings, but rather with timeless systems of ideas—just as Husserl was previously concerned with geometry. In all these phenomena is a fine description of the way in which diverse positive forms of knowledge bring us closer to them. As in Husserl, every institution has an origin; a first and original meaning that founds a new

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register of meanings and which is instituted and retaken indefinitely by the subject or subjects. This referential process is in turn sustained in a temporal connection. For Husserl, it is a teleological process which is already encrypted at the instinctual level. For Merleau-Ponty, the legality of the process of institution is configured in a structure that links an originary meaning but, far from developing a predetermined yet infinite telos—far from remaining the same meaning—it always keeps latent the possibility of a resignification of the origin from the opening of its own possibilities—in other words, from a possibility that is proper to the very polysemy of meaning. That is why every reinstitution is both continuity and rupture of a past origin that can become, at the same time, a future. That is why the structure of these re-sendings, of this process, is transtemporal. Finally, at the end of Institution and passivity (Merleau-Ponty 2010 [2003]), the institution of history appears in the form of a discussion of the very possibility of a universal history. CONCLUDING REMARKS: MERLEAU-PONTY AS A READER OF HUSSERL As we have seen, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of institution takes up each of the strata proposed by the generative and genetic analyses: from instinctive intergenerational transmission, from the familiar world as the place of formation of the first affective feelings toward the other, to the effective history of cultural formations within a tradition. This is the program and the development of Institution and passivity (2010 [2003]). Consistent with Merleau-Ponty’s approach to phenomenological reduction, the epoché proposed by this phenomenology does not lead to the sphere of consciousness, but to the reduced phenomena of disciplinary prejudices about subjective experience themselves. Just as in Phenomenology of Perception (2012 [1945]) the return to the experience of one’s own body meant reducing the prejudices of rationalism and empiricism—or of Cartesian physiology and intellectualist psychology—to return to the subjective experience of the processes of institution of meaning is also to suspend certain disciplinary prejudices about them. And just as in this work (2012 [1945]), describing subjective experience does not mean abandoning the positive perspectives of the disciplines involved: rather, it entails interpreting them in the light of the phenomena—that is, where the sciences can no longer think them because of the very limit that constitutes them as disciplines, and which philosophy instead has the task of thinking.

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Nevertheless, and despite his personal style of doing phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty seems to follow the task proposed by Husserl about the various strata of historicity point by point. When considered side by side, the similarity of the two programs is surprising. This is so especially if we remember that, from what we know of Husserl’s unpublished works, it does not seem feasible that Merleau-Ponty had access to Husserl’s manuscripts that were more specifically linked to the generative dimension, although he did have access to the texts related to genetic analysis. Herman Leo Van Breda’s very valuable account (1962) allows us to know with certainty the texts that Merleau-Ponty consulted during his visit to Louvain in April 1939, as well as the texts that were subsequently available to him. From his first-hand word we know that in 1939 he did indeed consult Landgrebe’s transcription of Ideas II, the basis of Husserliana IV; and the 1936–1938 transcription, also by Landgrebe, of 24 pages classified by Husserl himself in folder D 17 written in 1934 (Husserl 1940). Finally, he used Fink’s transcription of paragraphs 28 to 73 of the Krisis (Hua VI). It was not until May 1940, Van Breda explains, that the 1,550 pages of group D (primordiale Konstitution, Urkostitution) of the Husserl-Archive were transcribed. The texts consulted—which are very present in The Phenomenology of Perception (2012 [1945])—do not in fact take up the generative dimension as such, but nevertheless explore the sphere of proto-historicity: the Earth as Ur-Archè is precisely a proto-home that serves as the basis for all human activity, since all developments—all relative histories—have to that extent a single proto-history (Urhistorie), to which their episodes belong (Husserl 1940). The same is true for the texts deposited in Paris between 1944 and 1948, to which Merleau-Ponty may have had access:8 a first series of manuscripts that is 2,100 pages long and comprises the text of the Cartesian Meditations (Hua I), an integral copy of the third part of the Krisis (Hua VI), Die Idee der Phänomenologie und ihre Methode (of 1909), and 42 dossiers (870 pages of manuscripts) belonging to group C and concerning temporality which were composed by Husserl after 1928 called Zeitkonstitution als formale Kostitution (Van Breda 1962). Taking this historiographical information into account, we can conclude that it is perhaps precisely for this reason that Merleau-Ponty was able to develop a generative perspective that is centered, not merely on the dimension of the self and the other and its various declinations, but which is fundamentally situated in the perspective of historicity. On this basis, another mode of the common then seems possible. In a certain way, this seems to be the reading that Klaus Held enables when he identifies a “bridge” between the static analyses of the Cartesian Meditations (Hua I) and the genetic studies of the Krisis (Hua VI) regarding

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the problem of the constitution of a common world. This bridge follows the course, proper to generativity, between the primordial constitution of the self and the other: In the era of the planetary convergence of humanity, a series of texts in volume XV of the Husserliana that revolve around the problem of the constitution of the unique world in the encounter between the native world and the alien world acquire special relevance. On the one hand, the problem is still situated in the context of the “Fifth Cartesian Meditation,” but on the other hand, it already points to a characteristic aspect of the Krisis. The “Fifth Cartesian Meditation” deals with the constitution of the intersubjective world as an objective world. The objective world is one for all human beings in general. The main idea of the Krisis is the teleological perspective of the one world of a rationally communicated humanity. Thus, the question of the constitution of the one world systematically forms the bridge between the analyses of the “Fifth Cartesian Meditation” and the Krisis.” (Klaus Held 1991, 305)

And while the “Fifth Cartesian Meditation” (Hua I) is still framed in a static framework, Held argues that it is possible to establish an analogy that allows the domestic cultural world to be extended to a foreign cultural world on the basis of a common primordial foundation that historically broadens the horizons. In this sense “Husserl also explicitly uses the term genesis in § 58 (cf. 437). Although the original transgression of the primordial sphere is not a genesis, Husserl can nevertheless compare to it the historical transgression of a domestic cultural world” (Held 1991, 306). What is certain is that, perhaps precisely by not approaching the question from the perspective of generativity and the genesis of meaning, but from the perspective of history, Merleau-Ponty offers an alternative to the exclusion of points of view that an analysis such as Steinbock’s seems to suggest, while at the same time opening the doors to another way of thinking of a phenomenology of Stiftung, now as an institution. NOTES 1. Steinbock affirms the priority of generative analysis in this sense, which would transform the genetic perspective to the point of excluding it: “we would have to challenge the assumptions that Derrida attributes to Husserl about phenomenological method, and maintain instead—in the spirit of much of Derrida’s work on Husserl— that in many if not most cases, static structures are surpassed through ‘deeper’ genetic analyses, and genetic matters and methods ‘rattled’ or ‘ruined’ by generative ones” (Steinbock 1995, 265).

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2. In a way, some Husserl scholars seem to take this position by thinking of both perspectives as strata of the same problem. Cf. Walton 2019, chapters. 1–4. 3. In fact, some authors have pointed out that there are uses of the term Stiftung in Husserlian works prior to the genetic ones, in which it already presents the function of formation of units of meaning within the life of consciousness. Cf. Niel, 2017 and Diez Fischer 2018. 4. In his illuminating book, Roberto Walton (2019) shows the way in which historicity is organized in Husserlian thought in its various strata, ranging from proto-historicity to the higher forms of practical and theoretical history while also passing through effective history. We shall broadly follow this reading, which is solidly supported by the multiplicity of Husserl’s published and as yet unpublished texts. 5. “Husserl: consciousness is traditionality, and the latter is understood as forgetfulness of origins [. . .]. [There is at once] positive forgetfulness and negative forgetfulness. Conquest of sense and evacuation of sense, realization which is also destruction. Every institution involves this double aspect, end and beginning, Endstiftung at the same time as Urstiftung. That is what sedimentation is: trace of the forgotten and thereby a call to thought which depends on itself and goes farther. Evidence, das Erlebnis der Wahrheit, is the experience of this double relation. It is the experience of a resumption which is loss, not totalization, and which precisely for that reason is able to open another development of knowledge. Wesen ist was gewesen ist. But [in a sense] different from Hegel, because it is thought in perceptual terms (soil of knowledge, horizon), this becoming can truly anticipate [. . .] and because conversely the resumption of the past in the present leaves it in its originality, does not truly ‘surpass’ it, does not flatter itself to contain it all [in its entirety], plus something else” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, 58–59). 6. Merleau-Ponty mainly uses the terms Ur-stiftung and End-stiftung. The concept of Nach-stiftung, central to his analyses, generally appears already in its Latin form: reinstitution. 7. This does not necessarily mean an abandonment of the idea of consciousness, but only of the way of understanding consciousness under the form-content scheme. 8. A second batch of texts was consulted by Merleau-Ponty in 1942. That year Van Breda made available to Merleau-Ponty another series of texts: the entry “Phenomenology,” from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written in 1929, in which a very brief reference to the generative dimension appears; and a detailed index to the second part of a large study which, under the title Studien sur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Landgrebe had written in 1925 from a manuscript Husserl had given him. This second group was called Wertkonstitution, Gemüt, Wille. Van Breda also made available to Merleau-Ponty the complete list of § 1–73 of the Krisis, and the full texts of § 38 and 53, and finally the copy of the letter sent by Husserl to Lévy-Bruhl in 1935 (see Van Breda 1962).

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REFERENCES Diez Fischer, Francisco. 2018. “Genealogía de la noción de Stiftung: sus antecedentes teológico-reformistas en Husserl,.” Devenires 19 (37): 135–185. Held, Klaus. 1991. “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt.” Phänomenologische Forschungen 24–25: 305–307. Husserl, Edmund. Since 1950. Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, 1859–1938 (Hua). The Hague/Dordrecht/London/New York: Martinus Nijhoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Volumes used in this chapter followed by a translation if it is required: ———. Hua I. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua VI. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XIII. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil. 1905–1920. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XIV. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil. 1921–1928. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XV. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–1935. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. Hua XXXIX. 2008. Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihre Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Ed. Rochus Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. Hua XLII. 2014. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte, Metaphysik, späte Ethik: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937). Ed. Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 1940. “Umsturz der kopernikanischen Lehre in der gewöhnlichen weltanschaulichen Interpretation. Die Ur-Arche Erde bewegt sich nicht. Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen Ursprung der Körperlichkeit der Räumlichkeit der Natur im ersten naturwissenschaftlichen Sinne. Alles notwendige Anfangsuntersuchungen. D 17. 1934.” In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl. Ed. Marvin Farber, 307–325. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Larison, Mariana. 2016. “Stiftung et pensée du social.” Chiasmi International (18): 363–376. ———. 2022. Vers une phénoménologie de l’institution. Essais de néo-socratisme merleau-pontienne, forthcoming. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2010. Institution and Passivity. Course Notes from the Collège de France (1954–1955). Translated by Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Translation of L’institution. La passivité. Notes de cours au Collège de France (1954–1955). 2003. Paris, Belin. ———. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London/New York: Routledge. Translation of: Phénoménologie de la perception. 1945. Paris: Gallimard.

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Niel, Luis. 2017. “Husserl’s Concept of Urstiftung: From Passivity to History.” In Perception, Affectivity, and Volition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Phaenomenologica 222. Edited by Roberto Walton, Taguchi Shigeru and Roberto Rubio, 137–161. Cham, Springer. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995. Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Van Breda, Herman Leo. 1962. “Merleau-Ponty et les Archives-Husserl à Louvain,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 67 (4): 410–430. Walton, Roberto. 2019. Historicidad y horizonticidad, Bogotá, Aula de Humanidades.

‌‌C hapter 4

Generative Temporality Claudia Serban

According to the Krisis of European Sciences, § 55, the “generative problems” of phenomenology embrace the issues of “transcendental historicity” as well as those of “birth and death,” and the transcendental constitution of their meaning for subjective and intersubjective life. Nonetheless, Husserl’s late reflection on temporality, as it can be found, for instance, in the C-Manuscripts on Time-Constitution, might at a first glance seem not to consider the “generative connections (Generationszusammenhang)” that go through the field of (inter)subjectivity and account for its specific historicity. Developing Husserl’s incipient analyses in his research manuscripts, this paper aims to interrogate and elucidate the significance of an intersubjective temporality that would present itself as properly generative. This endeavor will reveal an unexpected convergence with Levinas’s own view on temporality that can be traced back to The Time and the Other (Levinas 1987; 1979): subjective time is not to be considered as merely egological—limited to the immanent field of consciousness or existence—but already involves the encounter of the Other; furthermore, the intergenerational (or properly generative) relations between parents and children (or, in Levinas’s terms, “fecundity”) demand to elaborate a new model of temporalization. Thus, the claim of a generative temporality intends to take the full measure of the fact that “my” time is always measured and co-determined by the time of others, and especially by the time of those who were there right before me—before my birth—and of those who are most likely to survive my death. Accordingly, it becomes easier to understand why Husserl held, against Heidegger, that far from being the ultimate horizon of our existential time and future, being-toward-death has to be considered from the standpoint of generativity—that is, in relation not only to birth, but also to the generative intersubjective community that every existence belongs to. 59

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WHAT IS GENERATIVE PHENOMENOLOGY? First of all, it might be useful to clarify the meaning of generativity and generative phenomenology in Husserl. As it is well known, it is at the end of the 1920s, when the project of the Cartesian Meditations took shape, that transcendental phenomenology revealed or rather confirmed the central place it granted to the theme of intersubjectivity. The transcendental life, although individuated, is not a solitary or solipsistic life, but a relational and communal life. However, the precise understanding and scope of this community cannot fail to raise the extremely debated question of the relationship between transcendental phenomenology and anthropology. Let us recall the “resolution,” proposed by Husserl in the Krisis, § 54, of the “paradox of human subjectivity,” which he understands as a “self-objectification of the transcendental ego” (and in this way, the transcendental and anthropological dimensions of subjective life are indissolubly linked and separated at the same time). The particular problems one encounters once one admits that transcendental subjectivity is “objectified in mankind” (Hua VI, 190; 187) relate primarily to what we might call anthropological diversity, which means that this objectification is not homogeneous or unambiguous: Husserl jointly evokes the cases of madness, of the child, of the animal, to which “we can and must attribute [. . .] their manner of transcendentality” (Hua VI, 191; 187). And he continues: This naturally extends into the realm of the transcendental problems which finally encompass all living beings insofar as they have, even indirectly but still verifiably, something like “life,” and even communal life in the spiritual sense. Also appearing thereby, in different steps, first in respect to human beings and then universally, are the problems of generativity (Generativität), the problems of transcendental historicity, the problems of the transcendental inquiry which starts from the essential forms of human existence in society, in personalities of a higher order, and proceeds back to their transcendental and thus absolute signification; further, there are the problems of birth and death and of the transcendental constitution of their meaning as world occurrences, and there is the problem of the sexes (Geschlechterproblem). (Hua VI, 191–192; 187–188, trans. modified)

This is a famous locus insofar as it is one of the very rare published texts where Husserl speaks about sexual difference and suggests that the sexual being, even if somewhat absent in his descriptions of individual or intersubjective life, does have a place among the issues that transcendental phenomenology must take in charge. But what interests me is rather the whole constellation of problems that is drawn here: generativity, transcendental historicity, birth and

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death, sexual difference. These topics are undeniably related, and the claim of a generative temporality emerges precisely from this relation. In Husserl’s published works, another significant mention of this field of problems is to be found in the Cartesian Meditations, § 61 (within the Fifth Meditation), which raises the question of the genesis of the psyche in a particular manner: “The child, to consider things objectively, comes into the world; how does he come to a beginning of his psychic life?” (Hua I, 168; 192). And Husserl immediately wonders if such a psychological and psychophysical questioning (far from having to be reserved, for instance, to genetic psychology) does not ultimately refer to “the most essential questions specific to a phenomenology which is as a transcendental philosophy,” precisely insofar as human beings, as well as animals, are “self-objectifications” of “absolute transcendental monads” (and it is here, when the thesis of a self-objectification of the transcendental in the human being is evoked, that the parallelism with the page of the Krisis that I have just mentioned becomes perfectly clear). There appears then, for the Husserl of the Cartesian Meditations, the need to distinguish between the genetic problems revolving around “the constitution of the internal consciousness of time and the whole phenomenological theory of association,” and another set of problems which Husserl calls “generative.” These generative problems are those “of birth, death and the generative nexus of living beings (Generationszusammenhang der Animalität),” and Husserl considers that, compared to the issues of genetic phenomenology, “they belong to a higher dimension and presuppose such a tremendous labor of explication pertaining to the lower spheres that it will be a long time before they can become problems to work on” (Hua I, 169; 142, trans. modified). Husserl’s words seem to have here the allure of a prophecy and to suggest that the development of a generative phenomenology was to remain in gestation for a long time, but one has to admit that such a prophecy was in fact quite quickly contradicted and that the importance of the generative problems raised by transcendental phenomenology did not go so long unnoticed. Merleau-Ponty already referred, in the third part of the Phenomenology of Perception, to “our birth, or, as Husserl put it in his unpublished works, our ‘generativity’” (Merleau-Ponty 2000, 491; 452), thus choosing to access the realm of the generative problems through the privileged entry of birth (even if it is somewhat abstract and incomplete to speak of birth without taking into account the “generative link” or the “generative connection,” the generativer Zusammenhang with the ascendants that it implies: such an objection, as we shall see, stands also against Heidegger). In Husserlian literature, however, it is not the prism of birth that has most often been favored in the approach of the generative problems, as it can be seen in Anthony Steinbock’s major work, Home and Beyond, subtitled Generative Phenomenology after Husserl

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and published in 1995. For Steinbock, who highlights the double proximity of this field of problems to that of the Cartesian Meditations and to that of the Krisis, “generativity concerns historical and intersubjective becoming” (Steinbock 1995, 258), but his approach eventually favors the homeworld (Heimwelt)/alienworld (Fremdwelt) polarity. Quite remarkably, this polarity reflects the generative dynamics of intersubjectivity in terms that are rather spatial, even if the historical dimension is never entirely absent. In what follows, I will attempt to show what one can gain by considering transcendental historicity in terms of generative temporality: namely, a clearer determination of the constitution and nature of an intersubjective time. But as I have already suggested, this also requires to elucidate why generativity has to be regarded as an important element of Husserl’s phenomenological account of intersubjectivity. THE MEANING OF A “GENERATIVE CONNECTION (GENERATIVER ZUSAMMENHANG)” In the Krisis of European Sciences, § 71, Husserl writes the following: Factually (faktisch) I am within an interhuman present (in einer mitmenschlichen Gegenwart) and within an open horizon of mankind; I know myself to be factually (faktisch) within a generative framework (ich weiss mich faktisch in einem generativen Zusammenhang), in the unitary flow of a historical development in which this present is mankind’s present and the world of which it is conscious is a historical present with a historical past and a historical future. Of course I am free here to transform actively [the factual details]; but this form of generativity and historicity is unbreakable (diese Form der Generativität und Geschichtlichkeit ist unzerbrechlich), as is the form, belonging to me as an individual ego, of my original perceptual present as a present with a remembered past and an expectable future. (Hua VI, 256; 253)

This quote is particularly enlightening for several reasons. First, it translates the inscription of the ego in “an open horizon of mankind” in temporal terms, as the fact of belonging to “an interhuman present”—which also implies, one might add, an interhuman past and future (my past and future as they are intertwined with the past and future of humanity). More broadly, as Husserl puts it, the ego always finds itself in “a generative framework” which, as we shall see, designates not only its belonging to an intersubjective community, but also, more precisely, the dynamical historicity of such a community, resting primarily on the relation between ascendants and descendants. This, however, seems at first to have only an empirical, factual meaning, as if it were only as a human being that I find myself in a generative framework.1 Yet,

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Husserl insists, the form of generativity and historicity resists to any (eidetic) variation of myself: I can imagine, for instance, that I have other parents or that I was born in another country, but I cannot imagine that I was never born from parents or in some specific community; or rather, if I do so, I give up the form of existence that is my own, I am no longer speaking about an ego like me. Does this mean that the form of generativity and historicity has a transcendental meaning? Husserl doesn’t state it openly here, but the analogy with the form of immanent temporality is undoubtedly precious: just as I live in a present given with a double horizon of past and future, I am caught in a generative framework which is essential to my historicity. The idea of a “generative framework (generativer Zusammenhang)”—that we have already stumbled upon in the Cartesian Meditations, § 61, which mentioned the “generative nexus of living beings (Generationszusammenhang der Animalität),” and that I have also highlighted in the quote above—is abundantly present in Husserl’s late writings (especially in his research manuscripts) and expresses an important feature of his comprehension of intersubjectivity as it becomes more concrete and more clearly historical at the same time, as generative intersubjectivity.2 Thus, in one of the late research manuscripts published by Iso Kern in 1973, one can read: “Every human being, as long as he/she lives in his/her consciousness of the world, or as long as he/she is an ego-subject for the world that is certain for him/ her in its being, is for him/herself a person within a generative framework that is infinitely open, within the chaining and branching of generations” (Hua XV, 178).3 By dint of this generative connection (this would be an alternative translation for Zusammenhang; Husserl also speaks sometimes of generativer Konnex), a person “is (and knows he/she is) the child of his/her parents, that he/she has become mature through education thanks to them and to communicative co-subjects that are and have become mature, and now he/ she is him/herself operating as their co-educator; generally speaking, he/she determines his/her personal being in an immediate or mediate connection to them and perhaps he/she is him/herself a father or a mother, etc.” (Hua XV, 178). One can see here quite clearly that the generative framework of humanity primarily concerns every human being’s relation to his/her ascendants (parents) and descendants (children).4 But once again, it might seem that only the empirical, mundane dimension of human life is concerned by this: that it is only insofar as I am “an ego-subject for the world” that I am caught within the generative framework. This would imply that, through phenomenological reduction, I could remove myself from it, that I could break the “form of generativity” and that, in the end, such a form has only an anthropological5 and no transcendental meaning.

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Progressively, however (even not necessarily in the sense of a linear progression), Husserl is led to acknowledge that generativity does concern transcendental life. Thus, it inevitably has to be taken into account when one of the most difficult problems of transcendental egology, that is, the problem of the beginning of the ego, is raised. The generative framework demands to consider oneself with respect to “childhood,” to “birth,” in “connection with parents,” and to take place within a humanity that has preceded us (Hua XXXIX, 477). But can this be the answer to the question of a transcendental beginning of egological life? Wouldn’t this imply a serious confusion between the empirical and the transcendental? Undoubtedly, Husserl is conscious of this dreadful difficulty, as he wonders in a research manuscript from the late 1920s: “What motivates, what ‘grounds’ [. . .] my transcendental beginning? Is it the generative connection with my parents and ancestors? But doesn’t that confront us to important difficulties?” (Hua XV, 38). Our birth, as another research manuscript puts it, designates our “generative beginning.”6 But doesn’t the “paradox of human subjectivity,” diagnosed in the Krisis, demand to admit at the same time my generative, historical beginning and my transcendental immortality?7 As we shall see, the claim of a transcendental historicity and, correlatively, of a generative temporality requires us to significantly nuance such an opposition. Raising the question of a “transcendental beginning” of subjective life also amounts to asking whether birth and childhood are only empirical issues. Can or must they acquire a transcendental meaning? Furthermore, given that birth is also an intersubjective event (as I am not born from nowhere or from no one), isn’t the “transcendental beginning” itself intersubjective or relational? The “problem of the beginning of (primordial) subjectivity”—this is the title of an important 1931 research manuscript now published in Husserliana, vol. XXXIX—demands to reflect not only upon “my beginning as a child” (Hua XXXIX, 467) but also upon my “connection with [my] parents,” which is a “generative connection (generativen Zusammenhang)” (Hua XXXIX, 477). Such a connection that necessarily relates me to other subjectivities has to be taken into account insofar as I am born. This is why, perhaps, birth is the generative problem par excellence, or the key to all the others, which also means that, from a generative standpoint, an asymmetry must be acknowledged between birth and death. To elaborate this point, I will rely on the more recent analysis of Anthony Steinbock in his Limit-Phenomena and Phenomenology in Husserl (2017), where the American scholar comes back to the problem of the meaning and scope of generative phenomenology. In particular, the chapter “From Immortality to Natality in Phenomenology: The Liminal Character of Birth and Death” examines how the consideration of natality emerges within a generative phenomenology, suggesting that “not only [. . .] birth and death become phenomenologically significant for

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meaning-constitution, but [. . .] birth or natality becomes the more significant constitutive feature within a generative phenomenology” (Steinbock 2017, 21). If within genetic phenomenology the immanent egological temporality allowed the unfolding of an endless time (given that nothing, within the structure of my living present, could suggest that my time is finite) or, to speak in Merleau-Ponty’s terms, an “existential eternity” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 229, 241, 318, 321; 175, 187, 265, 267) which, for Husserl, amounted to the immortality of the transcendental ego as “an eternal being in the process of becoming” (Hua XI, 381; 471), generative phenomenology discloses “Birth and Death as Essential Occurrences for World-Constitution” (according to the title of a research manuscript from the beginning of the 1930s: see Hua XV, 171–72).8 Accordingly, one can no longer reason “as if generativity, with birth and death” were only “an incidental fact of the world” (Hua XV, 171), but has to acknowledge once and for all their transcendental significance. This also leads Husserl, in one of the C-Manuscripts on Time-Constitution, to attribute a transcendental significance to childhood itself and to state that, insofar as childhood concerns the constitution of the world, “the world itself has a childhood” (Hua Mat VIII, 74). If Steinbock, faithful to his work hypothesis from Home and Beyond, considers that “it is Husserl’s analyses of the experience of the alien, and more profoundly, his analyses of the inter-dynamics of homeworld and alienworld that allow him to treat within a broader concordance the constitutive features of birth and death, thus transcending the sphere of self-temporalizing genesis” (Steinbock 2017, p. 30),9 it might also be the previously discussed “problem of the beginning of (primordial) subjectivity” that leads Husserl to consider the meaning of birth for world-constitution. Placing the ego within a generative connection, birth (but also, importantly, prenatal life that Husserl defines as Urkindlichkeit)10 reveals the necessary precedence of intersubjectivity or of the other(s). If one can only agree with Steinbock when he writes that “the smallest generative unit of a homeworld Husserl considers to be the intergenerational home of mother or parent and child” (Steinbock 2017, 30), it should perhaps be added that the intergenerational home of mother or parent and child is not only the smallest generative unit of a homeworld, but also one of the most fundamental intersubjective relations and thus, a fundamental, unbreakable articulation of generativity itself. One of the decisive innovations of generative phenomenology consists in acknowledging not only that birth and death essentially determine transcendental subjectivity and intersubjectivity,11 but also that, accordingly, the generative connection of subjectivities has a transcendental meaning: subjectivity always belongs to an intersubjective community, not only in a static, horizontal or synchronic way defined by contemporaneity, but also in a dynamic, profound and diachronic manner that explains why generativity and

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transcendental historicity are so closely related.12 Thus, generativity gives a specific direction to the understanding of transcendental historicity: the latter doesn’t only concern my belonging to a specific historical community, but also the way I am placed within it through birth and through the privileged relations to my ascendants that my birth implies. Sensitive to this point, Anthony Steinbock states that “my progenitors and successors” (my parents or my children) are my “transcendental home-companions” (Steinbock 2017, 30), dismissing the belief that we are talking here about merely empirical, anthropological structures of human life with no transcendental significance. Consequently, in the C-Manuscripts, Husserl speaks of the “transcendentally unified connection of the transcendental generations (transzendental einheitlichen Zusammenhang der transzendentalen Generationen)” (Hua Mat VIII, 392), clearly asserting that the generative relations that underlie the dynamics of the intersubjective community do have a transcendental significance. Transcendental intersubjectivity is generative insofar as it is a historical community whose dynamics imply the fact that each subjectivity is not only born and meant to die but born from others and perhaps having its own descendants. Even though Husserl sometimes seems to be strongly attached to the claim of the immortality of the monadic or transcendental ego, he is eventually led to acknowledge that monads are not created, as they were for Leibniz, once and for all: as the C-Manuscripts also suggest, monads themselves are determined through generativity13—that is, through birth and death, as well as through the relation to these “first others” that are the parents.14 GENERATIVE TEMPORALITY Having examined the meaning of the “generative connections” that run through the field of intersubjectivity, we can finally elaborate the idea of a generative temporality. If genetic temporality designates the immanent self-temporalization of the ego, the idea of a generative temporality delineates the realm of an intersubjective time that cannot be immanent in the same way but is neither transcendent in the sense of exterior or objective (it cannot be purely amounted to world time or to social time, but appears rather as their deepest level, given that generativity underlies social community and determines world-constitution). It should be clear by now that the claim of a generative temporality does not arise from an arbitrary articulation of two research fields of the late Husserl, generativity and temporality, but is announced and partially developed by Husserl himself.15 In a 1931 research manuscript pertaining to the phenomenology of intersubjectivity, he writes: “If we put into play generation, then this progression in terms of concretion (Fortschritt in der

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Konkretion) is also a concretization of the remaining co-humanity, mother, i.e., parents and child, etc.; and at the same time we have a more concrete, generatively formed temporalization and historical environing world (eine konkreter, generativ geformte Zeitigung und historische Umwelt)” (Hua XV, 138 fn. 2).16 What interests me here, of course, is this important idea of a “generatively formed temporalization” that manifestly exceeds the immanent self-temporalization taken in charge by genetic phenomenology and opens the possibility of an intersubjective time or an original co-temporality—a dynamic Mitzeit that goes beyond the static contemporaneity of subjective lives. Quite significantly, Husserl also presents it as a “more concrete” temporality, while he emphasizes the fact that, in general, the generative standpoint allows progressing in concreteness. The generative dimension of my temporality not only means that I am born and meant to die, but also that the way I experience time depends on the intersubjective connections that I am caught in from the outset. Revealing me as intersubjectively generated, generative temporality also assigns my place within a generation; accordingly, being situated between birth and death is not a homogeneous situation. This is why childhood, as well as growing, growing up and aging17 have a particular significance for a generative phenomenology and for its account of temporality. Indeed, the fact that I am born also means that, as a newborn, I receive myself from others, I awake to conscious, meaning-giving life in relation to others—that is, I exist intersubjectively before being a subject. This implies that for the child, generative temporality is lived passively and not in a fully conscious manner;18 and in return, as Husserl puts it, “only adults as normal human persons within the unitary connection of their communicative life and with the unitary form of their personal temporality are subjects for the world that is their own. Each of them counts on it in his/her temporal being (which is a stretch of this generative-communicative time (Strecke dieser generativ-kommunikativen Zeit)) only according to his/her normality, in which he/she operates for “the world’s constitution” (Hua XV, 178). It is only for humans,19 and even, only for human adults, that generative temporality becomes a “generatively communicative time,” resting upon the full consciousness and comprehension of one’s belonging to generative connections. Accordingly, humanity is “universally communicative (universal kommunizierende)” insofar as it is generative, insofar as generativity determines the very specificity of its historical time (Hua XV, 207).20 Thus, the “generative connection” of the intersubjective community implies an “open temporality”21 as well as an “open framework of communication” (Hua XV, 203).22 Thus, far from dividing humanity into small, separate generative communities (families or nations), generativity maintains it united.23

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But let us make a step further and examine how generative temporality, as intersubjective, is likely to reshape egological time. What has to be stressed, first of all, is that my past and future receive a new dimension from generativity. Thus, the past that genetic phenomenology dealt with—the past disclosed through remembering and the iterations of memory—must be broadened toward a “generative past” (Hua Mat VIII, 392)24 that should perhaps designate not only the dimensions of my past that I can only account for intersubjectively (my first moments of life, my early childhood), but also the past of those to whom I am generatively related (as, for instance, my first moments of life are intertwined with my parents’ past, and as, since my birth, our temporalities are parallel not only in an exterior, accidental manner), and eventually the past of the entire humanity, insofar as I am its successor and inheritor. As Husserl puts it in a research manuscript from 1930: “The reference of each being to its birth means first of all: each individual has a beginning and from there on, a unity of development in constant realization of her/ his possible self-preservation. It also means that the development goes further back to the developing parents and ancestors—through all this generative past (generative Vergangenheit)” (Hua XLII, 100). Thus, being historical means disclosing an “infinite generative past” (Hua XV, 393) that eventually covers the entire intersubjective community that I belong to. Significantly, for Husserl, the generative past is not radically immemorial (this is a quick hint to Levinas, of course): the impossibility to reactivate it through memory doesn’t imply its inaccessibility, for the generative past can always be acknowledged indirectly, through testimonies or through its effects. This is perhaps easier to understand when the generative past is considered with respect to the historicity of meaning. It is indeed the specificity of Husserl’s remarkably unified conception of transcendental historicity that the generativity of human, intersubjective community also implies the generativity of meaning: thus, the generative past also concerns the historicity of meaning. This is why the Freiburg phenomenologist can sometimes speak, for instance, of a generativity of philosophy (Hua VI, 488 and 489) in order to designate the specific historicity of philosophical meaning (and at this level at least, generativity is replaced within a teleological horizon— which would be definitely more problematic to assume for intersubjective generativity). The history of philosophy, as a discipline and an activity, can then be regarded as a way of disclosing and reactivating the generative past of philosophical configurations and problems. In this way, the generative past requires that which another appendix to the Krisis of European Sciences calls a “generative memory (generative Erinnerung)” (Hua VI, 301; 321) that immerses me into the intersubjective past of my community (that is, for the historian of philosophy, the community of philosophers that has its own generativity). More precisely, within the context of the Krisis, what is at stake

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with such a “generative memory” is the “universal reflection with which the humanistic scientist can and must begin” in order to understand him/herself as “a functionary of the community in communal work” (Hua VI, 301; 321). In short, generativity pertains to the intersubjective, communal dimension of meaning itself,25 and the generative past expresses the historical depth of the intersubjective past that goes beyond individual memory and rests upon the intersubjective intertwining and connection of memories. Furthermore, historically and intersubjectively considered, the present itself becomes generative: from the standpoint of generativity, as we are replaced within “our generative existence” and “our generative past and future,”26 it is the plurality and the overlapping of “generative presents”27 that becomes visible. In its generative structure, intersubjective time is related to the fact of belonging to the same world—or, in Husserl’s account, constituting the same world. For this reason, the late C-Manuscripts on Time-Constitution invite to connect the generative account of temporality to the problem of the transcendental constitution of mundane temporality.28 It is remarkably the case for text n° 90, written at the beginning of the 1930s and titled by Dieter Lohmar, editor of the C-Manuscripts, Transcendental Temporalization of the Objective World.29 Husserl insists in this research manuscript on the fact that the immanent transcendental self-temporalization is also a temporalization of the world; world-temporality is already given within immanent time: the transcendental ego temporalizes the world within its transcendental or monadic time (Hua Mat VIII, 391). But insofar as the “transcendental givenness of the world” involves the generative connection of intersubjectivity, the world itself is “generatively temporalized (generativ gezeitigt)”—through an intersubjective temporalization that “goes through all the finite temporalizations” (Hua Mat VIII, 391).30 The fact that every ego is caught within a generative framework implies indeed that such a connection also relates all subjective temporalities within a generative network of intersubjective time. Since the transcendental givenness of the world is itself generatively temporalized, it ultimately appears that the two fundamental directions for the comprehension of generativity that have been identified above—the duality between homeworld and alienworld, on the one hand, and the inscription of each subjectivity, through birth, in an intersubjective historical connection and horizon, on the other—are in fact very closely related. As the fifth Cartesian Meditations, § 58, puts it: Each man understands first of all, in respect of a core and as having its unrevealed horizon, his concrete surrounding world or his culture; and he does so precisely as a man who belongs to the community fashioning it historically. A deeper understanding, one that opens up the horizon of the past (which is codeterminant for an understanding of the present itself), is essentially possible

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to all members of that community, with a certain originality possible to them alone, and barred to anyone from another community who enters into relation with theirs. At first such an individual necessarily understands men of the alien world as generically men, and men of a “certain” cultural world. Starting from there, he must first produce for himself, step by step, the possibilities of further understanding. Starting from what is most generally understandable, he must first open up ways of access to a sympathetic understanding of broader and broader strata of the present and then of the historical past, which in turn helps him to gain broader access to the present. (Hua I, § 58, 160–161; 133)

The generative account provides a “broader access” to my homeworld and a “broader access” to my subjective time: thus, generative temporality is an “open temporality”31 that goes beyond the limits of egological time. Accordingly, insofar as it extends beyond the limits of my own past, the generative past might seem to play the role of the alienworld that goes beyond the limits of my homeworld. But the analogy is fallacious, for the generative past belongs primarily to my homeworld itself and expresses its temporal, historical depth. Undoubtedly, however, the generative dimension of my temporality and my world expresses the fact that, as a transcendental subject, I exist intersubjectively, “I participate in more than myself” (Steinbock 2017, 32). It becomes then easier to see how Husserl’s idea of a generative temporality anticipates Levinas’s innovative account of time. LEVINAS: TIME AND OTHERNESS, TIME AND FECUNDITY In a 1975 exchange published a few years later in Of God who Comes to Mind (1988 [1982]), Levinas emphasizes the peculiarity of the approach of time that he had developed for almost thirty years, which consists in “treating of time from the starting point of the Other” (Levinas 1988, 95). This implies, he adds, more than the simple fact of remaining faithful to his 1947 work, The Time and the Other: it amounts to elaborating a new “‘phenomenology’ of time” (Levinas 1988, 95). For Levinas, who was a great admirer of Husserl’s 1905 Lectures on Time but was not familiar with the late research of the Freiburg phenomenologist, Husserlian temporality is inescapably confined within the immanence of subjectivity; and in effect, as we have seen, from the perspective of a merely genetic phenomenology, there seems to be no room for a properly intersubjective temporality. Heideggerian existential temporality, on the other hand, in spite of the shift from consciousness to Dasein, remains immanent in its own way, for it is within the immanence of one’s own existence, delimited by the horizon of one’s own being-toward-death (Sein zum

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Tode), that the dynamics of ecstatic temporality deploys. In both cases, from Levinas’s point of view, time is exclusive of any transcendence and otherness. His approach, then, consists in proposing a radically new alliance between time and exteriority, time and transcendence, time and otherness.32 Leaving behind the ancient dilemma between objective and subjective time, Levinas claims that “time itself refers to [the] situation of the face-to-face with the Other” (Levinas 1987, 79). To put it in more Husserlian terms, time only emerges in an intersubjective context, from an intersubjective encounter. But while for Husserl, the intersubjective time that he calls generative might first appear like a necessary extension of subjective, egological time,33 Levinas’s radical claim is that there is no proper time before the encounter of the Other: intersubjective time is not secondary or derived, it is original. Levinas can assert this insofar as in his view, time designates in the first place the surpassing of the present toward the future, and such a surpassing cannot be the deed of the mere ego, who always remains riveted to its present: “the encroachment of the present on the future is not the feat of the subject alone, but of the intersubjective relation”; accordingly, “the condition of time lies in the relationship between humans, or in history” (Levinas 1987, 79). The Other gives me time insofar as he/she opens up a future for me. I cannot open the future for myself; the Heideggerian scenario of being-toward-death doesn’t work in Levinas’s view, since the future of death doesn’t yet reveal the true meaning of the future. In its veritable, radical significance, the future implies a transcendence that goes beyond my transcending myself toward the ultimate possibility and the end of my existence. Or, as Levinas puts it, the future involves fecundity. The consideration of fecundity provides a fruitful perspective for confronting Levinas’s account of time with Husserl’s proposal of a generative temporality. While both Husserl and Levinas are sensitive to the historical, intersubjective dimension of time, Levinas’s insistence on fecundity (in The Time and the Other, but also in Totality and Infinity) privileges one particular dimension of Husserlian generativity,34 namely birth and the parental and filial relations it involves. To be more precise, Levinas focuses mostly on paternity, that is, on the manner in which “the father outlives himself in the son” (Sandford 2000, 68):35 it is the parent’s temporal situation rather than the child’s that interests him. For the father, fecundity opens up an “infinition of time”; but this infinite time “is not thereby continuous,” but it is “ruptured by birth and death” (Sandford 2000, 67 and 68). By extending the magnitude and depth of the future, fecundity and the birth of the child prove the impossibility to open up the future from one’s own present. And it is precisely, as Levinas writes fourteen years later, in Totality and Infinity, “The relation with such a future, irreducible to the power over possibles, we shall call fecundity.” The

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latter “denotes my future, which is not a future of the same,” and yet “it is my adventure still, and consequently my future in a very new sense, despite the discontinuity” (Levinas 1991, 267 and 268). This is how time is called to express the fact that, through fecundity, I am transcendent to myself. Through fecundity, my future becomes plural: to quote Sophie Galabru, the parent is “a being in several times” (Galabru 2020, 189)—a polychronic being, one might say, even though the term’s current meaning takes us in a different (yet not entirely divergent) direction. It is notable that in his account, Levinas is more attentive to the future of the parent than he is to the “generative past” (to use Husserl’s expression) of the parent or of the child. This attention is confirmed by his emphasis on aging, described as the “passive synthesis” of time, which also amounts to implicitly criticizing Husserl’s depiction of temporality in his Lectures on Time for having only considered the “active syntheses” of time—that is, the longitudinal intentionalities of the self-constitution of the immanent time—regardless of any passivity—that is, regardless of the fact that time is also endured, it affects me, it ages me. Levinas will then speak of a “passive synthesis of aging” (Levinas 1998, 108), but, as he focuses on the parent alone, he doesn’t consider what one might call the passive synthesis of growth, specific to the child’s temporality, where time rhymes with productivity and development—the perspective of growth and development being much more present in Husserl’s account, which will much easier provide us with a phenomenological account of childhood.36 At the same time, even if it is not entirely absent,37 the consideration of aging is undoubtedly underrepresented in Husserl’s account of generativity. In this respect, one might say that Husserl’s and Levinas’s accounts of temporality remarkably complement each other (they also do so through the fact that Husserl pays a special attention to the mother38 and the mother-child relation, and that, once again, he doesn’t only adopt the point of view of the parent, but also that of the child). GENERATIVE TEMPORALITY: AN IMPLICIT HUSSERLIAN RESPONSE TO HEIDEGGERIAN EXISTENTIAL TEMPORALITY? As I come closer to the end of my inquiry, I would like to show that Husserl’s idea of a generative temporality can also be regarded as a reply to Heideggerian temporality. It is well known that it was Heidegger who (officially) edited Husserl’s famous lectures on internal time-consciousness, one year after publishing Sein und Zeit, and it seems that Husserl’s motivation for releasing his lectures was related to the publication of Heidegger’s opus magnum.39 If, quite curiously, the late C-Manuscripts on Time-Constitution show

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no direct confrontation with Heidegger’s account of temporality, premises for a frontal debate can be deduced from another late manuscript, from 1936, published in Husserliana XXIX, and titled by the volume’s editor, Reinhold N. Smid, “The Anthropological World.” One can find in this text one of the very rare occasions where Husserl doesn’t refrain his criticism of Heidegger’s existential analytic.40 His immediate target is Heidegger’s understanding of the Sein zum Tode as, quite ironically, he writes the following: “Death will hardly put up with the dazzling, profound ways in which Heidegger deals with it (Die blendenden, tiefsinnigen Weisen, in denen Heidegger mit dem Tode umspringt, wird sich der Tod schwerlich gefallen lassen)” (Hua XXIX, 332). The immediate continuation of this quote takes up a well-known leitmotif of the final part of the Krisis, pertaining to the “paradox of human subjectivity” that we have already encountered: “In true phenomenology, which is grounded in transcendental reduction, in the phenomenology which draws from the absolute sources of evidence (in which all objective evidences become objects of absolute subjective evidence), death is the retirement (Ausscheiden) of the transcendental ego from its self-objectification as a human being” (Hua XXIX, 332). But before mentioning Heidegger, Husserl’s analysis deals precisely with that which the Krisis calls the generative problems of phenomenology: “Here it must be considered that the world is a time-world, that it as world already presupposes the transcendental intersubjectivity as apodictic being—although its being comes from me and from the proto-original apodicticity of the I-am. Therein lies generativity, therein lies everyone’s being as being born and having been a child, and also as having to die once” (Hua XXIX, 332). It remains somewhat problematic to decide to what extent the generative account is limited here to the mundane, anthropological dimension of the I. But there is no doubt that Husserl plainly opposes the consideration of generativity to Heidegger’s approach of death within the existential analytic. In one of the C-Manuscripts on Time-Constitution, Husserl even speaks of a “generative death” with respect to the question of the egological future,41 confirming that generative phenomenology does provide us with a new understanding of mortality. Undoubtedly, death itself has to be inscribed within the generative connection of subjectivities, and the emphasis on generativity amounts to claiming that my own death doesn’t disclose the ultimate meaning of future, as Heidegger argued. As we have seen previously, Levinas himself, while emphasizing fecundity and paternity, objected to Heidegger that death is not the ultimate horizon of my time and my future. One has to acknowledge, though, that in Sein und Zeit (2001 [1927]; 1996, quoted SuZ), Heidegger didn’t neglect the dimension of “birth”: the analysis of historicity (§ 72) significantly regards the consideration of birth as necessary in order to delineate the full extension of existence: the extension (Erstreckung) between birth and death and,

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accordingly, the “connection (Zusammenhang)” (SuZ, 373; 342) between the two. Therefore, Heidegger can remarkably state that Dasein “exists natively” and “dies natively” (SuZ, p. 374; 343, trans. modified). Nonetheless, birth is never considered intersubjectively or from the standpoint of the Mitsein, of the being-with: it is not regarded as being born, or being born from and thus being related to others, but only as the beginning of my life-extension. Dasein, states Heidegger, “stretches itself” between birth and death, and the “between” of birth and death “already lies in the being of Dasein” (SuZ, 374; 343). The “rootedness of historicity in care” (SuZ, 376; 345) also makes it difficult to situate such a model of Geschichtlichkeit within the horizon of the Mitsein. Nonetheless, Heidegger lapidarily attempts to do it in § 74, where he speaks of the Dasein’s Mitgeschehen and of destiny (Geschick) as “the occurrence of a community, of the people (das Geschehen der Gemeinschaft, des Volkes)” (SuZ, 384; 352). Perhaps this is where he comes the closest to the consideration of that which Husserl designates as generativity; he even writes: “The fateful destiny of Da-sein in and with its ‘generation’ constitues the complete, authentic occurrence of Da-sein (Das schicksalhafte Geschick des Daseins in und mit seiner ‘Generation’42 macht das volle, eigentliche Geschehen des Daseins aus)” (SuZ, 384–38; 352). But even if, in the same § 74, Heidegger also speaks of heritage (Erbe), we are still far from the realm of generative historicity. From the past, Dasein will only “choose its heroes” and retrieves “possibilities of existence that has been (Wiederholung einer gewesenen Existenzmöglichkeit)” (SuZ, 385; 352): in the end, “authentic being-toward-death, that is, the finitude of temporality, is the concealed ground of the historicity of Da-sein (Das eigentliche Sein zum Tode, das heißt die Endlichkeit der Zeitlichkeit, ist der verborgene Grund der Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins)” (SuZ, 386; 353). Dasein is historical qua temporal, and being historical doesn’t alter or enrich the structure of its existential temporality. What is more, the dimension of Mitgeschehen or “the occurrence of Dasein in being with others” (SuZ, 386; 353) remains symptomatically underdetermined, and the possible articulations of a common time (a genuine Mitzeit, so to say) are never considered. For this reason, even if, as Heidegger admits in § 72, “factical Da-sein exists as born and, born, it is already dying in the sense of being-toward-death” (SuZ, 374; 343), nonetheless Dasein doesn’t appear to have grown or to have had a childhood (or at least, childhood doesn’t seem to have any existential or ontological value), neither does it seem to age (and of course, as the title of a paper by Lanei Rodemeyer says, Dasein never gets pregnant and could never give birth). If it is well known that the embodiment of Dasein is a very delicate issue in Sein und Zeit—“Leiblichkeit ausgeschaltet,” as Husserl himself noticed in his Randbemerkungen,43 while in the late 1920s Heidegger more

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directly asserted that embodiment (Leiblichkeit) as well as sexual difference (Geschlechtlichkeit) reflect the dispersion (Zerstreuung) of Dasein44—it must be highlighted that Husserlian generativity does take into account the embodiment of subjectivity. Generativity is not only a formal structure, a pattern of historicity, but also an embodied connection between subjectivities and thus, an embodied kind of historicity: for this reason, in the 1936 “Anthropological World” research manuscript, Husserl can suggestively speak of a “historicity of lived bodies (Geschichtlichkeit der Leiblichkeiten)” (Hua XXIX, 334). Instead, when Heidegger deals with heritage (Erbe), it is to qualify the range of Dasein’s existential possibilities rather than its intersubjective emergence or the generative dimension of its being-with. As ultimately determined by the horizon of its Sein zum Tode, Heideggerian historicity cannot really take on the dimension of generativity or make sense of what Levinas will analyze in terms of fecundity or paternity. And if existential historicity remains nongenerative, or unable to integrate the generative problematic within its framework, it is most likely because the Dasein’s being-with (Mitsein) lacks decisiveness and radicality (that is, ontological or existential primacy) within Heidegger’s analytic. Husserlian generative temporality can then be read, if not as a direct reply, at least as an alternative to Heidegger’s account of existential historicity. It is indeed manifest that Husserl’s appropriation of the Diltheyan motive of the Lebenszusammenhang, present in Sein und Zeit, § 72, passes through generativity.45 Paradoxically, generative temporality provides a model of historicity that, even when transposed at a transcendental level, might seem more concrete than Heideggerian existential historicity: namely the “living, original historicity of generative existence (lebendig-ursprünglicher Historizität des generativen Daseins)” (Hua XV, 436).46 For, as Husserl puts it in a 1931 research manuscript dealing with the historical being of transcendental intersubjectivity: “The history of human existence, in the world that has emerged from it, including the growing into this world of those who were born, the passing away of the dying, the generative connection and the history community that it carries as the history of mankind—all of this has transcendental significance and becomes revealed through the phenomenological method” (Hua XV, 391). ‌‌*** ‌‌I now come to my conclusion, which will be brief. In the 1988 interview “The Other, Utopia and Justice” given to the magazine Autrement, Levinas explained that the “essential theme of [his] research [was] the deformalization of the notion of time” (Levinas 1998, 232; 1991, 244). For Husserl himself, disclosing the generative dimension of temporality enables a “progression in concreteness” in the phenomenological account of time, just as generativity

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makes our understanding of intersubjectivity and of its transcendental historicity undoubtedly more concrete. However, in Husserl’s view, generative temporality could appear prima facie as being only secondary and derived. If the author of the Krisis doesn’t state its original character as explicitly as Levinas does, further investigations into the field of generativity—and in particular into that which Husserl calls original childhood (Urkindlichkeit)— might lead to the Levinasian conclusion: it is always the Other that opened up time for me. NOTES 1. Cf. Hua VI, 13: “Menschentum uberhaupt ist wesensmässig Menschsein in generativ und sozial verbundenen Menschheiten.” 2. See Hua XV, 199: “generative Intersubjektivität.” 3. And Husserl feels the need to add here that “the generative connection embraces newborns as well as ‘early children,’ that is, embryos, understood as preliminary stages for real children” (Hua XV, 178). 4. Husserl seems indeed to consider generativity and descendance (Deszendenz) as synonyms. See Hua XV, 179. 5. The anthropological meaning of generativity is undoubtedly present and fundamental. See for instance Hua VI, 327 and 488. 6. Hua XXXIV, 470: “Anfangen (Geborenwerden) eines Ich als generatives Anfangen.” 7. See, for instance, Hua XV, 471: “Die Monaden sind ‘unsterblich,’ das Monadenall ist ‘unsterblich.’” But the inverted commas could suggest here that the true, undisputed immortality of the transcendental ego comes from generativity—and is an immortality within death or in spite of death. 8. As Anthony Steinbock puts it, “For birth and death to be constitutive features at all, the scope of phenomenological analysis must extend even beyond genesis, that is, the genesis of the transcendental subject as self-temporalizing.” What is more, it must be highlighted that “Husserl’s point of entry into these reflections is the problem of intersubjectivity” (Steinbock 2017, 28). 9. See as well Steinbock 2017, 55–56: “The primary loci of this generational movement are normal and abnormal geo-historical lifeworlds, or what Husserl calls in a constitutional regard, respectively, ‘homeworld’ (Heimwelt) and ‘alienworld’ (Fremdwelt).” 10. See, for instance, Hua XLII, 222. 11. See Hua XXIX, 87: “Zur transzendentalen Intersubjektivität in ihrem Kern gehort das Generative mit Geburt und Tod.” 12. It is why Husserl sometimes treats them as synonyms (see for instance Hua XLII, 235). More precisely, generativity determines the meaning of the first level of historicity that Husserl distinguishes in a famous appendix to the Krisis: “ursprüngliche generative Historizität” (Hua VI, 502).

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13. See Hua Mat VIII, 369: “Aber jede Monade hat auch ihre Seinsgenesis als generativ geborene und sterbende.” 14. See Hua Mat VIII, 436: “Mit der Erweckung der neuen Monade ist erweckt oder vorerweckt die elterliche Habitualität; aber die neue Monade hat eine neue Hyle und die elterliche ihre eigene Habitualität (als tote).” See as well Hua XV, 596. 15. Curiously, however, this development received little attention in the late Husserl’s classical readings. In Gerd Brand’s Welt, Ich und Zeit (1955), the question of generativity (and even that of intersubjectivity) is almost entirely absent. In his 1966 Lebendige Gegenwart, Klaus Held does not ignore the intersubjective problematic, but he does not articulate it with the views on temporality. Only Lanei Rodemeyer’s work, Intersubjective Temporality (2006), closely relates the two thematic fields; but while she ignores neither the late Husserl’s attention to the historical and generative dimension of intersubjective life nor Anthony Steinbock’s emphasis on generative phenomenology, she never determines the meaning of intersubjective temporality from generativity. 16. Anthony Steinbock already referred to this important passage in the Conclusion of his Home and Beyond (Steinbock 1995, 265–266). I am quoting here his translation. 17. See Hua XV, 168, for one of the very rare references to aging. 18. See Hua XV, 140. 19. Like children, animals lack an “interpretation of generative temporality (Auslegung der generativen Zeitlichkeit)” (Hua XXIX, 5)—even though, as Husserl admits most of the time, animals do belong to a generative community of its own kind. See for instance Hua XV, 173, 183, 623; Hua XXXIV, 40. There are at least two exceptions, though, where nonetheless, it is not generativity itself, but a generative world that is denied to animals (see Hua XV, 160 et 181), even though the question doesn’t seem to have been solved: “Leben die Bienen in ihrer Umwelt generativ so wie wir?,” Husserl asks himself a bit further (Hua XV, 183). 20. Hua XV, 207: “die universal kommunizierende Menschheit und als generative mit ihrer historischen Zeit.” 21. Hua XV, 196. 22. Husserl also stresses here the fact that it is through the generative connection that the world is determined as temporal (Hua XV, 203: “in dem generativen Zusammenhang, wodurch die Welt in ihrer sukzessiven Zeitlichkeit ihre Seinsgeltung auslegt, und so im offenen Zusammenhang der Kommunikation”). 23. Husserl is perhaps too optimistic about it when he writes: “Ich kann mich in alle Zeiten versetzen, in alle historischen Zeiten, bezogen auf die generativen und kommunikativen Menschheiten in der Einheit einer Menschheit” (Hua XV, 239). See also Hua Mat VIII, 438: “In der Welt finde ich Geburt und Tod im Zusammenhang der Generationen, die ewig sich zusammenschließen zur Einheit einer Generation, die alle miteinander kommunizierenden Menschen verbindet. Dabei die Möglichkeit wirklich getrennter Generationen, die erst nachher in Kommunikation und in generative Synthesis treten.” 24. More generally, the generative past designates “the past of the world before my birth (Hua Mat VIII, 444: “Die Weltvergangenheit vor meiner Geburt”).

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25. Generative memory might indeed help in disclosing an “intersubjectively and generatively constituted meaning (intersubjektiv und generativ konstituierten Sinn)” (Hua Mat VIII, 394). 26. Hua XV, 439. 27. Hua XV, 393–394. 28. Sometimes, more than succinctly; see Hua Mat VIII, 217: “Lebenszeit des Einzelnen—Allzeit, Weltzeit, das Generative.” 29. And also for text n° 83, titled by Dieter Lohmar Über intermonadische Weltkonstitution in Generativität und Tradition. Der Konnex mit fremden Völkern (Hua Mat VIII, 369–372). 30. See as well Hua Mat VIII, 393: “Die Transzendenz, in der die Welt konstituiert , besteht darin, dass sie sich mittels der Anderen und der generativ konstituierten Mitsubjektivität konstituiert und ihren Seinssinn als unendliche Welt dadurch gewinnt.” 31. Hua XV, 196. 32. See Bouton 2008, Galabru 2020, Serban 2022. 33. As suggested, for instance, by this interrogation: “Aber ist der Generationszusammenhang der Subjekte nicht von mir her und dann für einen jeden nicht von der Endlichkeit her iterativ konstituiert?” (Hua XV, 199–200). 34. Even though, once again, it doesn’t seem that Levinas paid particular attention to Husserl’s inquiries into the generative problematic. 35. I will not discuss here the fact that the 1947 Levinas regards fecundity exclusively through the father-son relation. For a critical discussion of this point, see Sandford 2000 and Sebbah 2006. 36. See Allen 1976. 37. See, once again, Hua XV, 168. 38. It is known that, in Otherwise as Being (1974), Levinas also seems to shift from the consideration of paternity to that of maternity. Yet his account of maternity remains partial and unsatisfying for many reasons. See, once again, Sandford 2000. 39. See the introduction to the English translation of Hua X (Hua X; 1991, XII). 40. See as well Hua XXXIV, 259–260 and 264; Hua XXXIX, 489–490. 41. See Hua Mat VIII, 155–156: “Stellen wir jetzt die Frage der egologischen Zukunft und ihres eventuellen Endes, also dessen, was nachher dem generativen Tod entsprechen muss.” 42. When using the term of generation, Heidegger refers to Dilthey’s work. 43. Husserl 1994, 25. 44. GA 26 (Heidegger 1978, 173). 45. See, for instance, Hua XXIX, 422: “Lebenszusammenhang der Menschheit (so wie er von der ursprünglichen Generativität her als historisch begründet ist und sich kontinuierlich fortsetzt).” 46. See as well Hua XV, 219, where Husserl speaks of the “unity of the generatively bound history (Einheit der generativ gebundenen Historie).”

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REFERENCES Allen, Jeffner. 1976. “A Husserlian Phenomenology of the Child.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 6 (2): 164 –179. Bouton, Christophe. 2008. Temps et liberté. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail. Brand, Gerd. 1955. Welt, Ich und Zeit. Nach unveröffentlichen Manuskripte Edmund Husserls. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Galabru, Sophie. 2020. Le temps à l’œuvre. Sur la pensée d’Emmanuel Levinas. Paris: Hermann. Heidegger, Martin. 2001 [1927]. Sein und Zeit (quoted SuZ). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. 1996. Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York. ———. 1978 [19902, 20073]. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 26 (GA 26). Ed. Klaus Held. Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann. Held, Klaus. 1966. Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, Edmund. Since 1950. Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, 1859–1938 (Hua). The Hague/Dordrecht/London/New York: Martinus Nijhoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Volumes used in this chapter followed by a translation if it is required:  ———. Hua I. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ed. Stephan Strasser. Translated by Dorion Cairns. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer.  ———. Hua VI. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by David Carr. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.  ———. Hua X. 1966. Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893– 1917). Ed. Rudolf Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by John B. Brough. 1991. Оn the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917). Dordrecht: Springer.  ———. Hua XI. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Anthony J. Steinbock. 2001a. Analysis Concerning Passive and Active Synthese. Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua XV. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–35. Ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.  ———. Hua XXIX. 1993. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1934–1937). Ed. Reinhold N. Smid. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

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———. Hua XXXIV. 2002. Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935). Ed. Sebastian Luft. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.  ———. Hua XXXIX. 2008. Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihre Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Ed. Rochus Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer.  ———. Hua XLII. 2014. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte, Metaphysik, späte Ethik: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937). Ed. Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. Since 2001. Husserliana: Husserliana Materialien (Hua Mat). Dordrecht/London/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. ———. Hua Mat. VIII. 2006. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934), Die C-Manuskripte. Ed. Dieter Lohmar. Dordrecht: Springer.  Husserl, Edmund. 1994. “Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik.” Ed. Roland Breeur. In: Husserl Studies vol. 11 (1–2): 3–63. ‌‌Levinas, Emmanuel. 1974. Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. 1998. Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ———. 1987. Time and the Other. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press. Translation of: Le temps et l’autre. 1979. Paris: Fata Morgana. Reedited Presses Universitaires de France.  ———. 1988. Of God who Comes to Mind. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Translation of: De Dieu qui vient à l’idée. 1982. Paris: Vrin. ———. 1991 [1961]. Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Translation of: Totalité et infini. Essai sur l’extériorité. 1961. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1998. On Thinking-of-the-Other. Translated by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia University Press. Translation of: Entre nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre. 1991. Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2000 [1945]. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard. Translated by Donald A. Landes. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 1964. Le visible et l’invisible suivi de notes de travail. Paris: Gallimard. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible Followed by Working Notes. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Rodemeyer, Lanei. 2006. Intersubjective Temporality: It’s About Time. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 1998. “Dasein Gets Pregnant.” Philosophy Today 48: 76–84. Sandford, Stella. 2000. The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in Levinas. London and New Brunswick: The Athlone Press. Sebbah, François-David. 2006. “Levinas: Father / Son / Mother / Daughter.” Studia Phaenomenologica 6: 261–273.

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Serban, Claudia. 2022. “Dieu et le temps, le temps et l’Autre. Levinas et l’infinie dia-chronie.” Revue philosophique de Louvain 119 (1): 53–77. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995. Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2017. Limit-Phenomena and Phenomenology in Husserl. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Chapter 5

Thinking Space-Time as Earth-World Husserl, Heidegger, and DeLillo Tanja Staehler‌‌

This essay will focus on time and space from a phenomenological perspective, leading up to a reconceptualization of time and space as world and earth, with Husserl and Heidegger. For support, the American fiction writer Don DeLillo will be called upon whose novels point in the same direction as Husserl’s claim, to be explored in this essay, that the encounter with an alienworld can make us aware of the world in such a way that the context we normally take for granted is disclosed to us as such. In order to see the significance of such concepts as world and earth and the way in which they can be understood as a deepening of time and space, we need to turn to the foundations of phenomenology as a method. “World” is the answer to a crucial question in Husserlian phenomenology, and for Heidegger, it is a crucial component of our mode of being (which emerges as being-in-the-world). “Earth,” although initially neglected by both Husserl and Heidegger, was then described by them as our human ground for embodied orientation and dwelling. THE PROBLEM OF WORLD IN HUSSERL’S PHENOMENOLOGY The significance of world and especially lifeworld for Husserl emerges as he continues to refine his idea of phenomenology as a method. In particular, world is a response to two crucial problems which the original presentation 83

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of phenomenological method poses. In retrospect, Husserl designated the original version of introducing his method as the “Cartesian way”; this designation points ahead to the two problems which could be called the problem of motivation and the problem of emptiness. Every way into philosophy begins with the natural attitude, the attitude in which we always already find ourselves. As long as we remain in the natural attitude, we are naively convinced that objects exist independently of our experience of them. Even in cases where we are mistaken, when we falsely posit the being of the object, our conviction regarding the being of objects in general is not shaken; we simply replace the mistaken judgments with a new, improved one. What this indicates is that every object given in perception is not isolated but is surrounded by horizons that point to perceptual possibilities of other objects. These horizonal possibilities are never given exhaustively, for they are embedded in the universal world horizon. The natural attitude can be characterized by the universal judgment “The world is.” The core element of the phenomenological method then consists in suspending this universal judgment—that is, refraining from passing judgment on the being of the world. This suspension or refraining is called epoché, from Ancient Greek skepticism (Ancient Greek epéchein = to refrain). Husserl proposes that we engage in a special kind of doubt: a doubt that neither affirms nor denies the being of world and things in the world but stays properly in the middle. We are thus supposed to “bracket” (einklammern) or “put out of action” (ausschalten) the general thesis of the natural attitude (Hua III, 54; 65). This movement allows us to take on the phenomenological attitude. If we no longer pass judgments about the being of objects and of the world, we are still left with objects and world as they appear to us—and this is, on closer consideration, all that we have access to anyway. Husserl thus rightfully states that “we have not lost anything” (Hua III, 119; 113). Although Husserl continues to modify this account throughout the development of his philosophy, the essential characteristics more or less stay the same. But when he reflects back on his earlier philosophy, Husserl realizes that his introduction to phenomenology in Ideas I had a distinct disadvantage: The Cartesian way is indeed short, but “one is at a loss, at first, to know what has been gained by it” (Hua VI, 158; 155). Since it is difficult to outline the benefits of phenomenology upfront, that is, before conducting thematic analyses, it is also difficult to explain why one should be motivated to engage in phenomenology. Husserl maintains that the “Cartesian way” is justified since it takes us right into philosophy, and future phenomenological analysis could simply fill in the seemingly empty content. However, a different way, namely, a historical one, is for Husserl more advantageous since it is “closer to the principles and more systematic” (Hua XXIX, 426).

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Husserl thus proposes a historical way into phenomenology to resolve two problems: the problem of an alleged emptiness after the move to phenomenology (i.e., not knowing at first what has been gained) and the problem of motivation. By motivation, Husserl does not mean that which is brought about by the force of reason or by natural causality. Rather, he means a type of impulse or impetus toward a change in attitude—such as the one that motivated the Ancient Greeks to philosophise. In his Vienna lecture, a text that appears prior to the Krisis, Husserl refers back to Plato and Aristotle, who regarded wonder, thaumazein, as the origin of philosophy (Hua VI, 331; 285). According to Husserl, the significance of wonder is that it is an entirely unpractical, “theoretical attitude” (Hua VI, 331; 285). It remains questionable, however, whether it is justified to characterize wonder as an attitude, for it seems that Husserl usually refers to attitudes as that which we take up out of free will. Wonder, on the other hand, is a pathos, a mood, something we are overcome by, something not at our disposal. Husserl thus talks about the “passion of a world-view and world-knowledge” (Hua VI, 331; 285). Why is it that philosophy originated in Ancient Greece? What distinguishes the situation of the Ancient Greeks from that of other peoples and other times? Husserl investigates the de facto motivation for the emergence of philosophy and asserts that everything historically generated has its factual motivation “in the concrete framework of historical occurrence” (Hua VI, 331; 285). Husserl’s descriptions become more illustrative than usual, particularly when he considers the role the Greeks had as a trading nation. What is important about these historical considerations is his claim that the encounter with the alien, with alien nations, has led to the institution of philosophy. According to Husserl, it is in the encounter with alien nations that an essential distinction comes to forefront: on the one hand, there are relative home and alien conceptions, interpretations, and mythologies; and on the other hand, there is a core of identity which relates to all these conceptions and which remains the same throughout. “It is the same sun, the same moon, the same earth, the same sea, etc. that are so differently mythologized by the different peoples according to their particular traditionality” (Hua XXIX, 387). Philosophy originates from such experiences and sets out to search for being as such, for a stable sense of truth, for the identical being in itself in contrast to the various subjective ways of grasping it. The difference between one’s own nation and alien nations thus brings to the fore the difference of relative ways of givenness and a non-relative core. Husserl immediately answers the obvious objection: Why is it in the encounter with the alien that this distinction first arises? Is it not already in the intersubjective communication of individuals within our surrounding world that we get to know differences of diverging conceptions which refer to the one and same object? Husserl replies that those differences belong to

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the “long familiar form of everydayness in which normal practical life takes place” (Hua XXIX, 388). This normality is only ruptured in encounters with the alien. What is this special feature of the relation between home and alien? When we encounter an alien thing, it is not only a thing unfamiliar and incomprehensible to us, but a thing that seems to belong to a context alien to us. The alien thing seems to have a meaning that is unfamiliar to us, but familiar to other people; it points to other things that are equally more or less alien to us. An alien tool is still recognized by us as a kind of tool that supposedly fulfils a certain function, e.g., is not a work of art, and so on. It belongs to an alien world. The rupture of the home by the alien, in other words, makes it clear that all beings in general appear in contexts, in horizons, that they belong to a world. The homeworld is the world familiar to us, the world in which we are at home in the broadest sense of the term. The homeworld can only be grasped in a historical approach, as a process which encompasses our ancestors and descendants. Husserl calls the essential difference between home and alien a “fundamental category of all historicity” (Hua VI, 320; 275). A homeworld is constituted in and through various processes such as rituals, traditions and narrative. With regard to the alien, the typicality of the homeworld fails. The alien cannot be integrated into our world; the alienworld is something unique and unpredictable. Therefore, the encounter with the alienworld can inspire us to wonder. However, in his draft for an introduction to phenomenology, Eugen Fink criticizes the idea that the encounter with the alien could be a motivation for philosophy. According to Fink, there are motives occurring in everyday life which lead us to the problem of the world: experiences like limit-situations, confrontations with death and transience all make the world uncanny and questionable (Fink 1988, 30). “The unfamiliarity arising from such a disturbance—from the basic experience awakening philosophy—thus is not an intrusion of the alien into the narrow circle of the familiarity of the homeworld, but concerns the homeworld itself” (Fink 1988, 33). Fink’s objection is certainly correct in that it is indeed the homeworld itself that has to be put into question in order for us to be moved to philosophize. The experience of something alien as merely unfamiliar always enables us to fall back on the homeworld in which everything is safe and familiar. Yet, when the alien is truly experienced as such, it is encountered in an alienworld, and this alienworld simultaneously calls our homeworld into question. Our perceptions and our conceptions are complemented by alien perceptions and conceptions; our homeworld is constituted and transformed in and through the encounter with an alienworld.

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Fink’s claim that our own homeworld needs to become questionable for philosophy to happen is thus compatible with Husserl’s idea of an encounter with the alienworld if we take Husserl’s concepts of homeworld and alienworld in their proper sense and consider their consequences. For wonder in the face of an alienworld does not come to rest in the alienworld. The fact that there are alienworlds makes us aware of our home context which we are not conscious of in everyday life, and at the same time, this homeworld is put into question by the existence of alien homeworlds. The relativity of our home conceptions becomes apparent, and their taken-for-grantedness is ruptured. Along with the possibility of radically questioning these concepts, the possibility for a critique and renewal of the homeworld comes to the fore (Hua XXVII, 3–94). Yet how is an alienworld given in experience, or more specifically, how is an alienworld given in our present experience? I claim that the experience of art, literature in particular, is one important way in which an alienworld is encountered. I want to clarify this point by turning to Heidegger’s descriptions of how a world is set up in a work of art. HEIDEGGER ON SETTING UP A WORLD AND SETTING FORTH THE EARTH THROUGH ART In his essay, “On the Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger wants to understand the traditional conception of art in a new and more appropriate way. Traditionally, a work of art is described as consisting of two layers or levels, be they called form and content or spiritual and material side. As a phenomenologist, Heidegger turns toward the work of art and investigates how it appears, how it is given. The main thesis of his essay is that the essence of a work of art is the setting-to-work of truth. In and through the work of art, truth in the sense of Ancient Greek aletheia, unconcealment, comes into appearance. Truth is not to be understood here as something that is primarily found in a judgment or that can be conceived as the conformity of knowledge with the matter; truth means that something shows itself in a genuine and actual way. The essence of truth as unconcealment is to emerge from an original concealment. This concealment can never be eliminated or removed; it remains as a permeating element of aletheia: truth is “never a merely existent state, but a happening (Geschehnis)” (Heidegger 1960, 52; 1993, 179)—a happening of opposition. The work of art sets truth as unconcealment to work by disclosing what and how a particular being is. This disclosure of truth takes place in a twofold movement: setting up a world and setting forth the earth. The world that is set up in the work of art is neither a collection of things in the world nor a mere framework for those things. If world consisted of

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things or were something like a container for them, then world would be the whole with things as its parts. In this case, it would not make sense to talk of the work of art as setting up a world; for a work as a mere part of the world could not possibly set up a world. Moreover, world as sum of things would itself be an object, even if an extraordinarily large one. But this concept completely misses the essence of world: “World is the ever-nonobjective” (Heidegger 1960, 41; 1993, 170). World is not a being; world “is” not, “world worlds” (Heidegger 1960, 41; 1993, 170). World that is set up in the work is a referential context in which everything as it appears points to something else. Referential implications can be taken up or neglected; if we follow up on an implication, new ones become obvious. World is becoming, is developing in the course of history. The work of art opens up the world of a “historical people” (Heidegger 1960, 45; 1993, 174). The work of art sets up this world by disclosing what remains hidden in our everyday life. Usually, we take up referential implications without reflecting on the context as such. Art ruptures this everyday course. “Setting forth the earth” is Heidegger’s attempt to conceive of the putative setting forth of a work of art out of some material in a new way. Heidegger shows that the setting forth of the work is not a production of the work by a human being, but a setting forth of the earth by the work. In the work, the material does not vanish (as it does in equipment that is all the better the less its material “resists vanishing” (Heidegger 1960, 42; 1993, 171). Rather, it is in the work that the material comes forth: The massiveness and heaviness of the stone, the brightening of color and the resonance of tone appear as such. The work sets itself back into the stone, the color, the tone, and so forth. In this sense, Heidegger calls that which shelters the work by giving a place to it, the earth. The earth that is set forth in the work is that which comes forth and shelters. Upon the earth, human beings ground their dwelling in the world. The earth shatters every attempt to penetrate it, e.g., by measuring it—and yet earth can appear, namely, in the work of art. The earth appears in the work of art since the work lets the earth be an earth; it lets the earth be as sheltering, as that which is essentially undisclosable. World and earth are in a conflict; in this very strife, each opponent is raised into the self-assertion of its essential nature. The world always rests upon the earth and yet strives to surmount it; the earth is moved into the open region of a world and yet strives to draw the world into itself and shelter it there. This strife is carried out on the ground of truth as the original belonging together of concealment and unconcealment. Heidegger emphasizes that “truth does not exist itself beforehand, somewhere among the stars, only subsequently to descend elsewhere among beings” (Heidegger 1960, 61; 1993, 186). Truth only exists when it establishes its open region. One way in which truth can establish itself among beings is by setting itself to work. Therefore, truth has

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an “impulse toward a work” (Heidegger 1960, 60; 1993, 185)—a tendency to bring itself to Being in a work of art. Heidegger contends that all art is essentially poetry (Heidegger 1960, 73; 1993, 184). Although he takes poetry in the broadest sense here, he claims that the linguistic work of art has a privileged role. The unique and privileged role of linguistic artwork, according to Heidegger, is grounded in the very meaning of language. The everyday conception of language as a means of communication misses the essence of language. Heidegger argues that language does not express that which has already been disclosed; rather, language is the very act of disclosure itself. By naming things, language brings beings to appearance. According to common understanding, language is a subsequent expression of what has been disclosed beforehand. Heidegger contests this: It is not that we know a dog beforehand and then get to know that this being is called “dog”; rather, we only know what a dog really is after the word has opened up what a dog is for us. Poets are aware of this connection: The poet “has experienced that only the word lets appear and come into being the thing as the thing it is” (Heidegger 1959, 168; 1982, 65). This even holds for the accomplishments of modern science and technology, although we would think that they are produced by human beings in an autonomous way and that a word is then attributed to the thing invented, without language playing a decisive role in this process. If that hurry, in the sense of the technical maximization of all velocities, in whose time-space modern technology and apparatus can alone be what they are — if that hurry had not bespoken man and ordered him at its call, if that call to such hurry had not challenged him and put him at bay, if the word framing that order and challenge had not spoken: then there would be no sputnik. No thing is where the word is lacking. (Heidegger 1982, 62; 1959, 165)

Only language lets the thing be a thing, and only on the basis of language’s disclosive power is a conversation (Gespräch) possible. Only in and through language can humans be with each other. We have to realize that usually, we conceive of the relation between humans and language in the wrong way: Language is “not anything that man has, but on the contrary, that which has man” (Heidegger 1980, 74). Speech is no autonomous action; we do not produce anything, but a thought comes to us. Therefore, Heidegger says that “language speaks” and that “man speaks insofar as he corresponds to language (der Sprache ent-spricht),” that is, listens to it (Heidegger 1959, 12 & 33). Language enables us to be what we are. Only because language speaks to us can we be human beings. For it is the essence of human beings to be with

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each other, and more specifically, to be in a conversation with each other: “What human beings are—we are a conversation (Was der Mensch ist—wir sind ein Gespräch)” (Heidegger 1980, 74).1 A conversation cannot be reduced to a mere exchange of information; a conversation presupposes our ability to listen. A listening conversation of this kind is only possible because we are able to listen to language, which lets us see things. We are always already familiar with language; “we are within language, at home in language, prior to anything else” (Heidegger 1959, 241; 1993, 398). DELILLO’S WHITE NOISE AND ALIENWORLDS Though all forms of art share the same essence of setting up a world, Heidegger maintains that the linguistic form is the exemplary form. With the help of Don DeLillo’s fiction, I would like to provide examples to show that this indeed holds true for setting up alienworlds, which in turn can facilitate the move to phenomenological philosophy. In an interview, DeLillo describes his encounter with an alienworld in ways which are quite close to Husserl’s reflections discussed above: Perhaps the novelist is able to see in a clearer, sharper manner what’s already there. But that doesn’t make the writer a prophet. I lived in Greece for three years and when I came back to the US I saw it in a way that was slightly new. I remember going into a supermarket and seeing it as if for the first time. In this sense perhaps I was seeing a reality that the average American couldn’t make out. In particular the amazing number of products supposed to protect us from toxic danger. The (anti) toxic pills became the central element of White Noise. (DeLillo, 2005)

The world set up by the linguistic work is a world alien to us, yet a world not wholly separate from our own world. In other words, the world set up in literature sheds new light on our world. In our normal and everyday life, we are not aware of the given context; the world is not revealed. The experience of art, however, ruptures the normality of everyday life, and such a rupture is the critical move to philosophy I discussed earlier. “In the nearness of the work we were suddenly somewhere else than we usually tend to be,” Heidegger says (Heidegger 1960, 29; 1993, 161). Where we usually tend to be is the natural or everyday attitude; art as a way of setting-truth-to-work can take us into philosophy by setting up a world which might cause us to wonder. My first example of what I take to be the disclosure of a world through literature is taken from Don DeLillo’s White Noise. A person from the alienworld enters the homeworld, in this case the homeworld of a particular

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family, and calls this familiar world into question. The setting of the scene chosen is a visit of Jack Gladney’s daughter Bee (a daughter he had with one of his former wives) who comes to the place where Jack lives with his wife and four children. Bee has travelled a lot, particularly in Asia; she is described as a traveller “who collects impressions,” as “both worldly and ethereal” (DeLillo 1986, 94). Bee made us feel self-conscious at times, a punishment that visitors will unintentionally inflict on their complacent hosts. Her presence seemed to radiate a surgical light. We began to see ourselves as a group that acted without design, avoided making decisions, took turns being stupid and emotionally unstable, left wet towels everywhere, mislaid our youngest member. Whatever we did was suddenly a thing that seemed to need explaining. My wife was especially disconcerted. If Denise was a pint-sized commissar, nagging us to higher conscience, then Bee was a silent witness, calling the very meaning of our lives into question. (DeLillo 1986, 94) In bed two nights later I heard voices, put on my robe and went down the hall to see what was going on. Denise stood outside the bathroom door. “Steffie’s taking one of her baths.” “It’s late,” I said. “She’s just sitting in all that dirty water.” “It’s my dirt,” Steffie said from the other side of the door. “It’s still dirt.” “Well, it’s my dirt and I don’t care.” “It’s dirt,” Denise said. “It’s my dirt.” “Dirt is dirt.” “Not when it’s mine.” Bee appeared at the end of the hall wearing a silver and red kimono. Just stood there, distant and pale. There was a moment in which our locus of pettiness and shame seemed palpably to expand, a cartoon of self-awareness. Denise muttered something violent to Steffie through the crack in the door, then went quietly to her room. (DeLillo 1986, 96)

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DeLillo provides us with the concepts to show the relation to our previous considerations on historicity and alienworlds: Bee inflicts self-consciousness and self-awareness on Jack’s family. They become aware of their flaws and unjustified habits. Alienness in the Husserlian sense is not limited to foreign countries, although it definitely includes those. Bee is an alien because of her travel experiences, but she is alien already because she is a stranger in the homeworld of this family. They find themselves in a cartoon of sorts, realizing that their actions suddenly call for explanations yet that they are at a loss when it comes to giving such accounts. Whenever we read or listen to literature, we are confronted with a world alien to us, and we become estranged from our familiar world. The world set up in a work of art is, like every world, essentially determined by moods. Wonder is the mood from which, according to the Ancient Greeks, philosophy originated. But is wonder still a mood of our present world? If our actual experience is that of a crisis and of distress, as Husserl explains in his late philosophy, and yet the historical investigation leads to wonder as the beginning of philosophy, the question of how these two belong together emerges. According to Husserl, we experience a crisis measured against that at which we were originally aiming. Therefore, a historical reflection is inevitable if we want to know who we are and what could be a new beginning that would get us out of the present crisis. The crisis points back to the origin, back to the original sense. We cannot simply repeat the Greek beginning, but if we can understand the impulse guiding the ancient Greeks, it can lead us to question how we can do justice to the primordially instituted sense today. For Husserl, transcendental phenomenology corresponds to the ideal of a universal, presuppositionless science. Given the insights of Husserl’s late philosophy, however, presuppositionlessness can no longer mean a radically new beginning, but the following of the primordially instituted sense that was handed down to us, and this sense means not taking over anything without calling it into question. In this way, it is possible that the experience of a crisis inspires us to wonder. Yet wonder which evokes a beginning for philosophy could not come to rest in a single being; in wonder, the context itself is put into question: wonder is ultimately wonder in the face of a world. Pathos thus plays an important role in the motivation to do philosophy; philosophy is not a matter of free will; it is not fully at our disposal. Nevertheless, a motivation to do philosophy can never be a forced one; rather, an experience or a mood moves us to turn toward philosophy. However, the point is how we respond to wonder, how we take it up for us—or, as Fink puts it: “Yet the emergence of the philosophical problem out of wonder is no passive occurrence, but only becomes real in our free engagement in the astonishment, in enduring wonder and carrying it out—in other words, if we succeed in transforming

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the occurrence into a spontaneous projection of the problem” (Fink 1976, 69). Philosophy thus comes into being in the interplay of the experience of wonder that overcomes us and our active engagement in this wonder. Thereby, we no longer take the world for granted, but look at how it is given to us as historically generated in the interdependent constitution of home and alien. For Heidegger, history and art are essentially connected: “Whenever art happens [. . .] history either begins or starts over again” (Heidegger 1993, 201; 1960, 79). Ultimately, history is world history, history of the world as happening. World is always given to us in and through moods which open up the world for us. When history begins, this goes together with a particular mood, a fundamental mood which permeates the whole of the world. According to Heidegger, wonder is the fundamental mood belonging to the Greek beginning of philosophy, the first beginning, but not the fundamental mood of our present world. If a beginning should be possible for us today, then the corresponding fundamental mood of this “other beginning” might be startled dismay (Erschrecken), reservedness (Verhaltenheit), or awe (Scheu) (Heidegger 1989, 22; 16). As soon as we fixate this mood with just one term, we are misled. In fact, wonder and startled dismay are essentially connected because, ultimately, there is only one fundamental mood which comes to appearance in different ways, depending on the historical situation. Even wonder and anxiety are intimately connected because wonder relates to the “there is (something)” whereas anxiety emerges in the face of the “nothing” which constantly threatens but also defines the “there is.” Hence the significance of anxiety before death in Heidegger’s Being and Time—and in DeLillo’s White Noise. As our encounter with fundamental mood depends on the historical world we live in, it also holds true that the fundamental mood of a historical epoch determines the world set up in artworks that belong to this epoch, if they are to be artworks in the genuine sense. Since this fundamental mood is—in spite of its historicity—essentially one, art makes it possible to encounter worlds alien to us—that is, past worlds. Those worlds, however alien they might be, are to some extent accessible; this is due to the fact that they are worlds in which the fundamental mood comes to appearance. Only by responding to the historical fundamental mood can a beginning of philosophy be possible. The challenge of Heidegger’s thought is to realize that beginning is not anything we can effect ourselves; however, this does not imply that we do not need to do anything or that it does not matter what we do. Every beginning must be repeated permanently; we misunderstand beginning if we think of it as of something altogether new. At the same time, beginning is not eternal. Rather, “Only what is unique is retrievable and repeatable” (Heidegger 1999, 39; 1989, 55). To think beginning in this way means to take history seriously. Art can help us to get closer to the essence of history: “Art, as founding, is

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essentially historical” (Heidegger 1993, 202; 1960, 80). Art’s historicity is not based on its appearance in the course of time or on the fact that we can study art history. Art is historical because it lets truth originate, a truth which is itself historical—and not eternal. Art is “in its essence an origin: a distinctive way in which truth comes into being, that is, becomes historical” (Heidegger 1993, 202; 1960, 80). In order to understand what the essence of origin is, it is helpful to inquire into the origin of the work of art. The origin of the work of art does not lie in us, but in art itself. We as finite beings are not an origin at all. Therefore, beginning is not at our disposal; we find ourselves as beings who have always already begun, from within the world in which we find ourselves. EXPLORING EARTH-WORLD WITH DELILLO’S FALLING MAN Art can make us aware of the world as historical, where evolving/happening is indeed the nature of world. It also reveals to us that world has a counterpart in earth, and that phenomenology in its early days did not sufficiently consider this concept. When Husserl improves on the Cartesian way and involves historicity and wonder, he still only thinks in terms of world. Heidegger follows an equivalent path, in Being and Time, which takes him to the historical world. But time cannot be separated from space, and historical world cannot be separated from earth. They can be distinguished, but not properly separated, because both of them are dimensions of everything there is, or the whole. Therefore, Heidegger places significant emphasis on earth in The Origin of the Work of Art, and Husserl also acknowledges the significance of earth-ground. Furthermore, Heidegger points out that time and space belong together and coins the expression time-space (Zeit-Raum) (Heidegger 1989, 372; 88). Building on our previous considerations regarding world and earth and drawing again on DeLillo, it transpires that world-earth would be the best way to think about time-space, from the perspective of historical phenomenology (which we can find in Husserl’s and Heidegger’s late works). In his 2007 novel Falling Man, Don DeLillo engages with the event of 9/11. To my mind, this novel is particularly useful for phenomenological studies because the extraordinary event of 9/11 is approached in terms of the mundane, following the Heideggerian principle of starting from concrete average everydayness. Furthermore, the concept of world is made central in the opening pages of Falling Man, and in such a way that it also points to its intricate connection with earth, as I would like to show. Let us start from the beginning: “It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night” (DeLillo 2007, 3). This opening

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statement of Falling Man describes the transformation from that which was a street, inconspicuous and taken for granted, to a world. Through the event of 9/11, the character of street gets changed to such an extent that it is disclosed as world. Ordinarily, world stays in the background as the familiar context of involvements in which one thing points to another. In the case of a street, this would be traffic, shops, pedestrians, bus stops, parked cars, etc. Yet the event of 9/11 has turned this familiar context into something unfamiliar: “a time and space of falling ash and near night.” That which normally makes sense to us by way of its internal references now stands out as the movement of falling ash, which points to the intimate connection of time and space: ash is falling, showing a movement in space. More precisely, it is falling down, pointing to the ways in which the most basic forms of orientation still figure within this radically transformed context: ash—itself part of earth—is falling onto the earth, and earth is that which ash is falling toward. Earth is also, albeit much more dramatically, that which falling bodies and the falling man move toward. The sentence mentions not only “falling ash,” but also “near night.” This is a further indication of how world and earth belong together. Just as we understand earth as our dwelling ground by way of the movement of falling, so we understand the movement, the evolving and revolving of earth through the cyclical movements of day and night. Day and night were exemplary for elemental states in Heraclitus, in fragments such as this: “God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger; he undergoes alteration in the way that fire, when it is mixed with spices, is named according to the scent of each of them” (Kirk and Raven 1957). Day and night are elemental states in our temporal orientation, and they are part of larger circles such as seasons (winter summer). They are also parts of the larger human states of affairs, namely, war and peace. All of these are elemental states which permeate time or rather, historicity. Intimately connected with this but on a different plane, namely that of earth, we have fire perform an equivalent movement, taking on different qualities as if mixed with spices. When fire is mixed with destruction and death, ash falls. The way in which earth is internally differentiated is discussed in “The Origin of the Work of Art,” as we saw above. Space is not homogenous as the Newtonian world view would have us believe. Rather, space is concretely encountered by us always as filled, as things connected to their places, as Heidegger puts it, or as elemental states which acquire their meaning and sense for us always through their corresponding counterpart. The most fundamental corresponding counterparts are world and earth. The loving strife between world and earth provides us with the openness and sheltered grounding on which our embodied existence depends. While world is

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organized through homeworlds and alienworlds, earth is organized by way of elementals. Back to DeLillo’s descriptions. He describes the way in which the extraordinary event has turned street into world. The event has brought about a radical transformation: “This was the world now” (DeLillo 2007, 3). World can endure such transformation; it can become alien without falling apart. We are used to the possibilities of alienworlds. But only major events reveal the alienness at the core of our own world, as we saw with Fink. When this happens, we come to encounter “otherworldly things” (DeLillo 2007, 3). Between the many recognizable mundane things, there are unrecognizable things, as if from an alienworld, or from no world at all. They appear as otherworldly because their context is unrecognizable. But what holds world together and brings us back down to earth is our being with others: “The world was this as well, figures in windows” (DeLillo 2007, 4). Other humans remind us that despite all alienness, world is still what we give meaning to, what we shape together. Even if we find that meaning is radically disrupted and that nothing makes sense for a while, this reveals the nature of world as meaningful context to which the disruption points back: “There was something critically missing from the things around him. They were unfinished, whatever that means. They were unseen, whatever that means, shop windows, . . . Maybe this is what things look like when there is no one here to see them” (DeLillo 2007, 5). It might appear as if this description raised the non-phenomenological, epistemological question of what things would be like if there really was nobody to perceive them, and whether there still would be a reality. This would be a question excluded from phenomenology as the epoché exactly prevents such speculation. But to my mind, DeLillo is not asking what it would be like if nobody existed to see things. Rather, he is describing the actual experience of still perceiving world, but as radically altered, where everything has lost significance because humans, disturbed by the event, are not paying attention to them. In that sense, the description is reminiscent of the way in which Heidegger describes in Being and Time (Section 40) how anxiety makes everything sink away. As a result, the radical uncanniness of world is revealed. Yet even in the midst of such uncanniness, things prevail. Things, which are manifestations of world and earth, persist because their earthly nature allows them to rest in themselves. As they are resting in themselves, they can remind us of the elemental qualities of the earth. They can also remind us that despite the radical transformation, world and earth are still there for us, and even a lot of the mundaneness of existence still persists, as DeLillo shows very well in his novels. The trajectory of this essay was at several junctures concerned with problems that emerge from entering phenomenological philosophy in the

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right way. My excitement about the way in which wonder in the face of an alienworld provides us with a compelling and, to my mind, elegant entryway to phenomenology and the possibilities offered by DeLillo’s literature to facilitate such an encounter with an alienworld, have hopefully not distracted us from the main purpose of this essay. This purpose, in line with the theme of the collected volume, has been a new phenomenological exploration of time and space. In contrast to the scientific presentation of time and space as homogenous, we have encountered them both as filled as well as evolving. Time has emerged as the happening of world, filled with meaning to the extent that it becomes uncanny. Space is given by way of places and elemental regions which form oppositions and ground us in our embodied existence. What makes world and earth inseparable, as world-earth, are we: this is who we are, meaning-givers but also embodied, fragile creatures who traverse many challenges in our paths between birth and death, and between earth and world. Just like our bodily side can only be distinguished, but not separated from our spiritual side, so it goes for world and earth which hold us, suspended, between dimensions. No wonder then that anxiety and awe are intricately connected for us. DeLillo said at some point: “The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That’s really what writing is—an intense form of thought” (DeLillo 2010). Moreover, as we have seen, art and especially literature can give us the necessary distance to allow for such deeper thinking, allowing us to reflect on that which we take for granted— such as time and space which emerge as world and earth. NOTES 1. Heidegger interpretes the lines “Since a conversation we are . . . ” (“Seit ein Gespräch wir sind und hören können voneinander”) that stem from a fragment of a poem by Hölderlin. According to Heidegger’s reading, it is originally the gods who are addressing us (Heidegger 1980, 70). On the basis of this being addressed by the gods, a conversation between human beings and their Being-together is possible.

REFERENCES DeLillo, Don. 1986. White Noise. New York: Penguin. ———. 2005. “A Conversation with Don DeLillo: Has Terrorism Become the World’s Main Plot?” By Stéphane Bou and Jean-Baptiste Thoret. Translated by Noel King. Don DeLillo’s America—A Don DeLillo Site [First published in Panic 1: 90–95]. November. http:​//​perival​.com​/delillo​/interview​_panic​_2005​.html. ———. 2007. Falling Man. New York: Scribner.

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———. 2010. “Don DeLillo: ‘I’m not trying to manipulate reality—this is what I see and hear.” By Robert McCrum. The Observer, August 8. https:​//​www​.theguardian​ .com​/books​/2010​/aug​/08​/don​-delillo​-mccrum​-interview. Fink, Eugen. 1976. Nähe und Distanz. Freiburg/München: Alber. ———. 1988. VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 2. Ergänzungsband. Dordrecht/ London/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Heidegger, Martin. 1959. Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Klostermann. Translated by Peter D. Hertz. 1982. On the Way to Language. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1960. Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Stuttgart: Reclam. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. 1993. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In Basic Writings. Edited by David Farrell Krell. San Francisco: HarperCollins. ———. 1980. Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein.” Freibur­ger Vorlesung Wintersemester 1934/35. Gesamtausgabe Band 39. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.  ———. 1989. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936–1938). Gesamtausgabe vol. 65. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. 2000. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Indiana: Indiana University Press. Husserl, Edmund. Since 1950. Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, 1859–1938 (Hua). The Hague/Dordrecht/London/New York: Martinus Nijhoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Volumes used in this chapter followed by its translation if it is required: ———. Hua III. 1976. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Translated by Fred Kersten. 1982. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua VI. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by David Carr. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. Hua XXVII. 1989. “Fünf Aufsätze über Erneuerung.” In Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937). Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua XXIX. 1993. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937. Dordrecht/London/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Kirk, Geoffrey S. & John E. Raven. 1957. The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PART III

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On the Generation of Meaningful and Valuable Space The Place of Feelings in Generativity Andrew Barrette

Generative phenomenology has shown its significance for deepening our understanding of matters as well as methods. The contributions to this volume further attest to this fact. Much of our work thus far has focused upon the generation of meaning, however. In this paper, we aim to locate the place of feelings in generativity. By this, we mean that our feelings as responses to values are both situated in a meaningful and valuable socio-historical context and that at least some of them are generative of this context. To elucidate our point, we focus here upon the sense of symbolic space as a matter that evokes feelings which span across generations and that unite generative values—that gives a feeling of home. The paper has three main parts. The first part gives a brief sketch of meaning and value in terms of a phenomenological intentionality analysis—their structure, genesis, and generation. This sets the counters of a second part, which takes up the symbol as an intertwining of meaning and value. Such intertwining gives sense to the evocation of symbolic space, insofar as it appears in the lived experience of a person and communities of persons. The third part concludes with some reflections on the role of feelings in a critical, communal self-reflection.

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OF MEANING AND OF FEELING In this first part, we rehearse what we call the spheres of logos and heart in terms of an intentionality analysis. With the former, we mean the sphere of meaning and truth; with the latter, we mean the sphere of feeling and value. Although these are distinct, we understand them as relating within the concrete unity of the person. Rather than beginning with the personal and interpersonal, however, let us set some basic points, following the analyses of Edmund Husserl and Bernard Lonergan. This gives the foundation for our understanding of symbolic space and further investigations of feelings in generativity. Much of Husserl’s breakthrough work attempts to formulate a method that would give an account of meaning.1 Following his teacher, Franz Brentano, his phenomenology begins with a turn inward, to an analysis of intentionality. As the literature on this often begins, Husserl uses the term to describe the characteristic relationality of consciousness, that “consciousness is always consciousness of” some given, some data. The “unnatural” phenomenological turn of attention is to the data of consciousness itself, attending to how meaning appears rather than what appears as meaningful.2 Such statements must be qualified, however. For one presupposes too much if one imagines consciousness as directed to some ready-made object or objects. Husserl finds instead that it is objectifying or objectivating, through various acts. Thus, we must be careful to distinguish the “awareness” concurrent with consciousness, as we are “being-aware” (Bewusst-sein), from the object of which consciousness is aware appears through gradations of being-aware. With the latter, objectivation unfolds from the dimmest passive, perceptual acts up to the clearest active, intellectual verifications or judgements of objectivity. With the former, there is the more original or “earlier” than any objective awareness, subjective “being-aware,” without which there would not be the luminosity of consciousness at all (Hua XVIII; § 6).3 So, there is a difference between awareness of an object and that proper to a subject. By objectifying one’s own consciousness via phenomenology, one discovers a peculiar sort of givenness, namely of the subject to the subject as well as the subject in the world. The subject is not merely objectified but “wakes up” to an interior life, raising oneself to self-awareness. Thus, phenomenology means to show how the life of the subject is a meaningful one, how it “makes sense,” as it were. Husserl finds the rudiments of meaning in how the intending subject means an intended object as meant. As is now familiar to us, an intention is fulfilled as meaningful, if that which is given accords with or is congruent to that which is meant. Of course, even an empty and disappointed intention is not

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without meaning, insofar as they become constituted as such and so, but to be meaningfully fulfilled, strictly speaking, there must be a coincidence of the given and the meant—this is what Husserl calls evidence.4 In evidential fulfillment, there is a synthesis which yields meaningfulness. As mentioned above, Husserl himself will more clearly expound the fundamental distinction between active and passive synthesis in his later, so-called genetic work. There, he shows how perception has its own sphere of meaning in a passive sphere, without active participation of the ego.5 As Anthony Steinbock expounds, passivity relates to the active sphere in two directions: from below, so to speak, perception has the sense of “truth-taking” (Wahr-nehmen) as it gives or “pre-gives” the conditions needed in order that the active sphere can turn to it; and, from above, the active ego’s turning can determine further meaning in acts of “intellect,” e.g., by grasping ideational structures or by judging it categorically as true. We should note, however briefly, that the givenness in the passive sphere carries a certain force toward activity, to which I can turn, I am free to turn, thereby relating a perceptual receptivity from intellectual spontaneity that is directed toward determination of the object. Such a process of objectivation may be broadly construed as the life of logos or reason in the constitution of an ever more meaningful world.6 In parallel with logos, Husserl also treats the distinct sphere of the heart. Let us begin, then, by noticing how, for Husserl, a value is given in a feeling-intention. Analogous to how perception is a “truth-taking,” feeling is a “value-taking” (wert-nehmen); here, the value is the objective pole of the subjective valuing.7 With one’s feeling, one apprehends a value, takes it as the objective term of an intention. In a practical situation, for example, the feeling that presents a value implies it as a good to be realized. In this, the meant value may be realized for the subject: there may come the evidence of its objective value in the fulfillment of the feeling-intention. If, say, one becomes hungry on a hike and, upon catching sight of a mulberry tree, follows the feeling of the fruit’s value and begins to eat, the nourishment is itself evidence of the objectivity of the intended value. Of course, it may be that the feeling was “wrong,” that a disvalue is “mis-taken” as a value. Now, we should stress here that the heart carries its own demands for evidence. Thus, in the simple example above, there is an evaluating that occurs without bringing the value explicitly to question, that is, without bringing it to any rational assessment. The feeling may be disappointed without this entrance of intelligence, if the intention is left unfulfilled or disappointed; it is possible, however, for one to ask whether the value is truly so, if one should prefer this or that possibility.8 Although the preference itself is a matter of feelings, the intelligent weighing of the possibilities relates reason to these. We may ask, for example, whether this possibility will

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really bring satisfaction or joy, whether this unripe fruit will fulfill the hunger, realize the intended value, assess whether the feeling was properly ordered to the value at all. Intelligence plays a role, in other words, in determining that which is truly valuable. The heart itself operates according to a priori normative laws, though. In other words, the heart itself feels disorder and demands a renewal. Indeed, higher and lower values appear as more or less adequate to a fully realized life, according with the interior demands in the very operation of the heart. Nevertheless, reason may play a double role for the person here: not only may one ask about which possibility to prefer, whether this value is truly or merely apparently a value, ask questions about best courses of action, open one’s heart to values, be true to oneself and the best options presented, but one might also reflectively evaluate and assess oneself—in what Pat Byrne (2017) identifies as discernment (Hua XXXVII, § 45). These points suggest an intertwining of the two spheres of logos and heart in the person. Indeed, phenomenology itself can bring an ethics of renewal through such an insight into the normative dimension of the person. For there may be not only a mere single instance of mistaken preference, but there may also be a habitual orientation of one’s emotions to disvalue, an entirely disordered scale of values given from the interpersonal and intergenerational environing world; as such, not only might the individual be well ordered or dis-ordered but also the very homeworld in which they live. Thus, finding how the heart relates to reason, how true values appear at all, is essential. Rather than separating the two, phenomenological philosophy discovers how they come to be in concord in the constitution of an ever more valuable world and in discord in its decline. In this respect, Bernard Lonergan likewise speaks about meaning and value in terms of intentionality analyses, especially in his later works (Lonergan 2017, 115).9 He relates them to reason, insofar as we may have sufficient or insufficient insight into what is valuable, might judge our values well or poorly, decide to act in a way that is in accord with the best course of action or not, or even set our entire life in a good order or disorder. Thus, Lonergan finds, understanding more can help one make better decisions, correct one’s misdirected heart, and reorder one’s scale of values.10 He does so in two directions that illuminate some further points: with the first, he thematizes the world mediated by meaning and value and, in the second, he presents the importance of being open to the origin of value in a critical self-reflection. Let us rapidly set the former point in relation to the phenomenology generativity, in order to prepare for an analysis of symbol and symbolic space in the next part. We will return to the latter point about self-reflection in the final part. In the first place, Lonergan is attentive to how the world is given as already meaningful and valuable. A world “empty” of these is never given; no, it is

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given always already as socio-historical, from a historical horizon wherein our experience and questions emerge and operate. We may relate the basic point to a fundamental, threefold distinction in the phenomenology of generativity: making thematic or thematizing objects in the world, taking the world as an object, and taking the world as horizon from which objects appear.11 As the condition for givenness, it at once delimits possibilities by referring to those horizons of givenness already present but also gives the possibility of new and novel possibilities. This is a “generative” dimension, in the sense that it generates new possibilities, not arbitrarily, but within a range or horizon.12 This range is set according with previous accomplishments, that is, in history. In Lonergan’s language, again, the world is mediated by meaning and value. Of course, a difficulty in attending to this last, transcendental or modal aspect to horizon is that any attention to it naturally begins to objectify it. As Husserl will say, “The sea itself changes to land wherever it is pursued” (Hua XXXIX, 139). This realization of how the horizon is “filled-out,” as it were, requires a special attention, though. Both thinkers call this way of reflection a Besinnung. This is, as Lonergan puts it, “a growth in self-consciousness” (Lonergan 1988, 222). Or, as Steinbock says, explicating Husserl, “Besinnung intimates a mediating reflection, a thoughtful or mindful inquiry that takes the criteria of clarity and distinctness as a goal rather than starting point” (Steinbock 1995, 83). It means, in other words, a critical reflection upon how the world takes on sense which becomes increasingly aware of itself as standing within the process. It is therefore not grasped “once and for all” but must be continually practiced. To clarify such critical reflection, we first note a few points about being at home in generativity. To begin, as Steinbock has showed us, following Husserl, home is not merely a constitutive achievement of an individual, but our home, as it is passed across generations, enduring through a “generative unity.” This, his succinct formulation of generativity, is at once a process of becoming and a socio-historical dimension to that process which extends across generations.13 This means that it is generative for new meaning structures to appear and that this occurs across generations in a basic structure, namely of home/alienworld. This need not occur through a critical reflective understanding, however, but simply through participating in the homeworld’s constitution; one belongs to one’s home regardless of reflective awareness of “home.” It is sense, as Husserl sometime says, something “pre-had” (Vorhaben): the ambiguity here of Vorhaben as a “project” or plan is intentional, for it indicates how one takes up such sense as already meaningful beforehand. It is, in short, the fact of the world already mediated by meaning. Clearly, this perspective calls into question the genetic individual as selfgrounding. Rather than the individual as constitutive of space through the lived body as a “zero point” of orientation, a generative perspective treats the

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home in terms of geo-historical territories, of meaningful spaces. The earth itself has a significance for such grounding of meaning; indeed, as Husserl puts it, the earth becomes a ground (the “earth-ground”) upon which meaning and, as we bring to the fore, value develops.14 In other words, the location and landscape—the space—in which a people are “at home” is constitutive of sense. Yet, the alienworld, too, is already constituted in relation to the home. To the Greeks, for example, Mt. Olympus was not some abstract place but that mountain upon which the gods dwell: a specific mountain in Greece, remote from cities, difficult to reach, and inhospitable to human dwelling—that is, “otherwise than home,” or alien, it is also the home of the Greek gods. In this way, there is already movement of transformation, as the space is brought nearer to the home. Such a process echoes across generations, too, making manifest the possibility of the loss of the original meaning of the space.15 Still, insofar as a unity of the process remains across generations, there is the possibility for renewal, for reawakening the meaningfulness. It is especially here that we might begin to wonder about the feeling of home, to which we turn now. SYMBOL AS EVOCATIVE OF FEELINGS AND BEARER OF VALUE If the above broaches meaningful generation, the present part takes up the generation of values. It does so by attending to the sense of symbol and symbolic spaces. Our main point is that such spaces yield a feeling of home. From this, we offer a brief analysis of the feeling of being at home, of yearning for a return home, and of yearning for a home that is yet to come. This prepares us for the remarks of the concluding part, which suggest phenomenological philosophers must take into account such horizons of feelings in order to meet the ideals and values of their task. To begin, let us accept what Lonergan means by symbol, namely “an image of a real or imaginary object that evokes a feeling or is evoked by a feeling.”16 In doing so, we wish to bring out the way in which at least some symbols are essentially given generatively. Again, following the parameters of generativity, this is so in two directions: they are given in a meaningful and valuable socio-historical context and they are generative of this context, now construed in the sense of evocation of feelings which span across and unite generations. Taking the lead from Lonergan’s remarks on symbol, we turn, finally, to symbolic space and a feeling of home.

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We note, straightaway, how Lonergan remarks that a symbol either “evokes a feeling” or is “evoked by a feeling.” Once, again, we must understand this in terms of intentionality analysis, without supposing the symbol as a ready-made object “already out there now.”17 The symbol is in a constitutive relation with feelings: there is a feeling response to the symbol such that it bears a value, even before the image or object is determined to be truly valuable. Understood thusly, symbols are abundant in the horizon of our experience; they are, to be more precise, the stuff of the horizon of our feelings.18 As Lonergan says, “The symbol, then, has the power of recognizing and expressing what logical discourse abhors: the existence of internal tensions, incompatibilities, conflicts, struggles, destructions” (Lonergan 2017, 64). This does not mean we cannot find a way to reflect upon them; to the contrary, it underlines the need to find a proper order for them, to allow them appropriate force.19 To more exactly determine the sense of symbol itself, though, let us compare it a bit with what we do not mean, and then narrow it further to symbolic spaces. For we do not mean by symbol here any variable that represents something, as an “X” in an algebraic equation. No, by it we mean more how our feelings respond to that X: as one who likes to solve equations responds with gleeful apprehension when the equation is given; or, as one who dreads algebra may respond with hesitation, when the problem appears. This is a dynamic relation of feelings, in the nexus of the person in a world mediated by meaning and value. Nor do we simply mean to point out that symbols function in generativity, for, insofar as persons are in a homeworld, their symbols function therein. Even the mathematical “symbol” emerges and operates in a socio-historical world-horizon, after all, and these may become laden with value, evocative of feelings, as our above example suggests. Beyond these, we mean to bring to the fore that there are symbols that cannot be separated from generativity without losing their sense. For example, the mathematical “symbol” may in fact be abstracted from its generative context and retain its functional sense as mathematical. We need not be attentive to and understanding of the roots of algebra for these functions to operate in mathematics. The generative symbol, on the contrary, may not be so abstracted without losing its sense. If such a symbol is given at all, it would be given as generative of meaning and value. So, to find out if there is, we turn now to feelings in the homeworld and symbolic spaces. We begin with the feeling of “being at home.” Indeed, in each homeworld, there are particular spaces that evoke such a feeling: a baseball diamond or the orchestra; the pine stand or palm frond’s shade; the circular or rectangular dinner table; the earth itself or even the “pale blue dot” puts one in the space of the cosmos. The list is indeed endless, in a generative sense, and must be made determinate by each of us. These are, in German, die Heimaten:

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distinctive traits of being at home. Our essential point, though, is that it is not only the meaning of the space but its very value to which we respond with a feeling: it is the value of our home, with its meaning and values, all the persons and communities of persons, that is given in the feeling. One cannot abstract from this without losing its very sense. In fact, we suggest that such a space yields a peculiar generative dimension to feeling. In the feeling response, the feeling of home, there is present a relation of past and future such that one relates previous events to the possibility of future, new and even novel meaning and values. When one walks by, say, the Symphony Hall, there may be a rush of memories, charged with feelings; these may not be only given as a reminiscing of past performances, but rather a motivation for further events, for attending them with friends, for introducing them to children. In this, one does not restrict the experience to what one had but is open to that horizon in which one was brought up; in other words, it opens to the possibility that the space is communal, such that persons bear it in their unique way but in relation to others, including others to come. If one loses such a unity, one loses the sense, the feeling of home; there is no longer the generative dimension to the space. To make the point more concrete, in an illuminating article, Rita Hammer writes about the lived experience of being at home. Her study focuses upon elder treatment, in which people were no longer in a space they felt was home (Hammer 1999). Here, we find the disruption of the presented unity of past and future given in the feeling of “not being at home.” As Hammer summarizes, “[Those] who felt at home had strong feelings of satisfaction with their lives, security, autonomy, and purpose. Those older adults who did not feel at home were anxious, angry, and depressed, and were consumed by a desire to be elsewhere” (Hammer 1999, 10). The attention and emphasis here on feeling is important to notice, for it highlights the constitutive dimension of the feeling of home; the response to the space itself shows how the home can be generative of meaning and value. Indeed, we might suggest the “desire to be elsewhere” mentioned above is, in fact, the desire to be home. Thus, with respect to elder care, we find a group of studies suggesting how certain spaces must be cultivated in such living situations in order to promote a feeling of home.20 It is inadequate to merely recreate what a “typical” home looks like, say, a living room, with a couch and television; rather there must be a space, as we might put it, that is generative. This is so not only in the sense of meaningfulness—this too, of course—but also with values, that yield the feeling of home such that it is generative of new feelings. If not, the very sense of home is lost, and so a desire, a longing to be at home persists. Hence, we think, Hammer’s understanding

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that these communities must cultivate the spaces carefully “to establish a sense of home” for which they strive (Hammer 1999, 10). We should distinguish such a desire for being at home from wanting to return home. We sometimes identify with the term, derived from Greek, nostalgia—νόστος (“return home”) and ἄλγος (“pain” or “yearning for”). The great literary example of this is, of course, the quest of Odysseus. The Odyssey shows how one’s feeling horizon is in relation to one’s homeworld, as home is evoked everywhere for Odysseus: where others seem to forget, as in the eating of lotus, he is reminded; where he seems to need reminding, as when hidden away on an island, it appears. It appears in such places, for one need not be at some particular space for the evocation of a feeling; rather, home is constitutive of the horizon of feelings—it is that from which feelings appear. Thus Odysseus, according to Athena, suffers great pains (algea) while being trapped on the island of Calypso, since he cannot return home.21 Whence the pain? From the fact that it is still possible for him to return to that home, to be sure; but this relates to the horizon of feelings, according to which matrimony and patrimony press as symbols of this home. One can also respond to place not yet constituted as home, however. The German word, long popular with travelogues, Fernweh gives a clue to this feeling. This implies a sort of “wanderlust,” another German term, of course, but one which English borrowed directly instead; but more exactly, it is a yearning (-weh) for places away (Fern-). One cannot really understand this without putting it in relation to the home, to the meaning and feeling of die Heimaten. As near and far are constituted only in relation, so too the sense of Fernweh here. Wanderlust is not quite the same feeling, then, as it does not directly relate itself to the near, to the home. When one is wandering, one might feel Heimweh; but, if one does, the space itself evokes the feeling of home, now only as a yearning for it. We would be remiss to neglect the feeling of yearning for a home to come. Often, there is a religious significance to this feeling. In the Abrahamic tradition, for example, it may indicate hope for a space beyond that which is given here below. It is, as the Pslamist puts the prayer of Moses, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations” (Psalm 90:1, in Coogan 2010, 858). It, too, is generative of symbolic spaces, inasmuch as sacred spaces evoke a feeling of a presence of such hope. Let us leave the investigation of these points for another essay, however. Instead, with the above a sketch, let us make some concluding remarks. In them, we will turn back to the importance of becoming aware of one’s horizon of feelings in phenomenological philosophy.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS: REMARKS ON THE ROLE OF FEELINGS IN CRITICAL SELF-REFLECTION This paper sketched a few points regarding feelings in a phenomenology of generativity. By no means exhaustive, it points to the need and possibility for further work. In this respect, there is not only much left unsaid in the constitution of spatio-temporality, especially in following the fine details of Husserlian phenomenology, but also about types of symbols, feelings and emotions, as well as about the scale of values, progress and decline, loss and renewal. In this brief concluding part, we suggest that the phenomenologist of generativity has the function of inviting others to their own critical self-awareness which includes feelings, through which this development and differentiation would occur. As Husserl does not tire of repeating, phenomenological philosophy is a task. Further, such a task spans and unifies generations. So, though one must undergo a self-examination for oneself, one does so under this invitation passed across generations. Now, the phenomenological philosopher must attend—critically—to how matters are given: if one allows a presupposition to enter, to skew attention, to preclude evidence, then its ideal is transgressed, and one is alienated from it. Our basic point is that, to meet this ideal, we must attend to how one relates to other persons; and, in so doing, one finds given feelings and feeling horizons in a generative dimension. There comes the question of how to proceed in a way that is open, in a way that does not allow “merely relative” feelings, does not presuppose feelings. An open heart does not allow just any feelings, though. Rather, as Lonergan formulates, it allows a “notion of value” to properly unfold (Lonergan 2017, 35–37). Again, it is essential for the heart to find its right reason, as it were; in other words, the notion of value intends the truly valuable, not the merely apparently valuable. The apparently valuable is not fulfilling, is not satisfying, does not bring joy, just as the spaces that are only apparently home do not bring feelings of home. Rather, the notion of value intends the objectivity of values, without reducing the value to the subjective feeling. To be sure, it is present in our feelings, in our emotions; it is passed through the world mediated by meaning and value, given in that tension we feel in spaces that remind us of home, as well as the fulfillment we feel while being at home. The notion of value is generative of such feelings, insofar as we participate in it through the constitution of our ever more valuable world. So, we find, a demand for the phenomenological philosopher to have a certain openness of heart. At present let us simply mean by this that one’s “pre-given” emotions (if we may play on the etymology of the German das Gefühl, insofar as the prefix Ge- suggests a constellation and disposition of

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feelings) do not preset analyses but rather guide them. We must not abstract from them but bring them to question, become aware of them in a critical self-reflection.22 If we do not, we fail to live up to the norms and ideals which we have set for ourselves, not abstractly, but as discovered in our own operation. To meet them, though, we must consider further feelings in generativity, only a few of which we have indicated here. We must, indeed, participate in a community, the spaces of which are essential. It is in these spaces that a phenomenology of generativity itself finds a home.23 NOTES 1. We need not lay out the details of his aim of founding logic as a normative discipline. But we should note that the simple point that science proceeds with declarative, apophantic sentences; these sentences make a claim to truth or falsity. Husserl realized that a critique of cognition was needed to found a logic. 2. See Hua XVIII, § 3. 3. In what Husserl calls “Das ‘innere’ Bewußtsein,” we render, interior consciousness. For further discussion, see, Zahavi 2003, 157–180. 4. See Hua III § 36, et al. 5. See, e.g., Anthony Steinbock’s “Translators Introduction” to Hua XI; 2001a, es, xxxviii-xliii. As this reference suggests, there are further points of complexity in Husserl’s analyses of the passive sphere, including matters of individual and communal historicity, sedimentation, and so on. 6. See, e.g., Hua III; 1983, 200, 291, et al. 7. See, e.g., Hua XXXVII, 71–72. 8. See, Hua XXXVII, § 45. 9. Bernard Lonergan gives a scale of values (“vital, social, cultural, personal, and religious values in an ascending order”) and analyzes their disorder and decline (via ressentiment, forms of bias, and so on). 10. See Lonergan 2017, 30ff. For a phenomenological discussion of this, see Steinbock 2009, esp. 1–21; also see, Byrne 2017, esp. Chapters 8 and 9. 11. Husserl’s transcendental or, what Steinbock identifies, with Klaus Held, as a “modal,” notion that treats the world-horizon (Welthorizont) as that from which objects emerge; see Steinbock 1995, 107. 12. Lonergan will give a detailed analysis of this as “emergent probability,” especially within what he names a “genetic method.” For the sake of clarity, however, we remain with the distinction of static, genetic, and generative, as Steinbock explicates, following Husserl. Although we recognize important differences between the thinkers, which we will not address in the present paper, we understand them to be attending to and explicating similar matters. See Lonergan 1992, esp. 144–150. 13. Cf., esp. Steinbock 1995, 3. 14. For this point, see Husserl, 1940; 2002.

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15. There are various possibilities of such transgressive experience, as Steinbock calls it. We will not enumerate them all here, though doing so would be necessary in a full treatment of feelings in generativity. See, Steinbock 1995, 179, 181, and 236–254. 16. We are indebted to Pat Byrne’s emphasis on the point, and his working out and development of Lonergan’s ethics (Byrne 2017). 17. A favorite locution of Lonergan’s, which indicates this very point. 18. See Byrne 2017, 160–175ff. 19. Lonergan recognizes the significance of depth psychology and psychoanalysis in this respect; his method, though it learns a great deal from them, differs in important ways which we cannot address here. For more, however, see, e.g., Doran, 2006. 20. E.g., Johnson and Bibbo 2014; Gillsjö, Schwartz-Barcott and von Post 2011; Angus, Kontos, Dyck, Mckeever and Poland, 2005. 21. See, esp. Homer, Odyssey, v. 1, Bk 5, II, ln. 7–20 (Homer 1945, 170–171). 22. Hence Lonergan’s point about the “possibility” of Besinnung—that is, the conditions for its possibility is love. See Lonergan 1988, 222. 23. Professor Steinbock has long provided such a space with this Phenomenology Research Center, in which his workshops occur, taking after the philosophical spirit expressed by Husserl.

REFERENCES Angus, Jan E., Pia Kontos, Isabel Dyck, Patricia Mckeever and Blake Poland. 2005. “The personal significance of home: Habitus and the experience of receiving long-term home care.” Sociology of health & illness 27 (2): 161–187. Byrne, Pat. 2017. Ethics of Discernment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Coogan, Michael D. (ed). 2010. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doran, Robert. 2006. Psychic Conversion and Theological Foundations: Toward a Reorientation of the Human Sciences. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Gillsjö, Catharina, Donna Schwartz-Barcott and Iréne von Post. 2011. “Home: The place the older adult can not imagine living without.” BMC Geriatrics 11 (10): 1–10. Hammer, Rita M. 1999. “The lived-experience of being at home. A phenomenological investigation.” Journal of Gerontological Nursing 11: 10–18. Homer. 1945. Odyssey. Translated by A.T. Murray. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Husserl, Edmund. Since 1950. Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke, 1859–1938 (Hua). The Hague/Dordrecht/London/New York: Martinus Nijhoff/Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer. Volumes used in this chapter followed by a translation if it is required: ———. Hua III. 1976. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Ed. Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Fred Kersten. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to

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a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua XI. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by Anthony J. Steinbock. 2001a. Analysis Concerning Passive and Active Synthese. Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. Hua XVIII. 1975. Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated by J.N. Findlay. 2001b. Logical Investigations: Volume I. London: Routledge. ———. Hua XXXVII. 2004. Einleitung in die Ethik. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920 und 1924. Ed. Henning Peucker. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. Hua XXXIX. 2008. Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihre Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Ed. Rochus Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, Edmund. 1940. “Umsturz der kopernikanischen Lehre in der gewöhnlichen weltanschaulichen Interpretation. Die Ur-Arche Erde bewegt sich nicht. Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen Ursprung der Körperlichkeit der Räumlichkeit der Natur im ersten naturwissenschaftlichen Sinne. Alles notwendige Anfangsuntersuchungen. D 17. 1934.” In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, edited by Marvin Farber, 307–325. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Translated by Fred Kersten. 2002. “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does not Move.” Rev. Len Lawlor. In M. Merleau-Ponty, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, edited by Len Lawlor and Bettina Bergo, 117–131. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002. Johnson, Rebecca A. and Jessica L. Bibbo. 2014. “Relocation decisions and constructing the meaning of home: A phenomenological study of the transition into a nursing home.” Journal of aging studies 30 (2014): 56–63. Lonergan, Bernard. 1988. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan: Volume 4: Collection. Ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 1992. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan: Volume 3: Insight. Ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran. Toronto: Toronto University Press. ———. 2017. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan: Volume 14: Method in Theology. Ed. Robert Doran and John D. Dadosky. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Steinbock, Anthony. 1995. Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2009. Phenomenology of Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zahavi, Dan. 2003. “Inner Time-Consciousness and Pre-reflective Self-awareness.” In The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, edited by Donn Welton, 157–180. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Phenomenology of the Book and Hermeneutics of the Text Touching and Interpreting Space Francisco Diez Fischer

Books are an essential part of our daily literate culture. In them we find the places where the histories and thoughts of both individuals and societies endure. In them, imaginary subjects and different generations meet. In them, the transmission of knowledge and ideas takes place. These are roles that are determined more by the textual content than by the book itself. A book whose text cannot be read is apparently a worthless space. In the realm of philosophy, hermeneutics stresses the primacy of the text over the book. One of its creators, Hans-Georg Gadamer, considers all interpretation as a dialogue whose interlocutor model is the text: “The most important thing is the question that the text puts to us” (Gadamer 2004, 366). The text is a Socratic interlocutor that bursts in with a questioning voice and speaks to the reader, so that he stops listening only to himself. Its alterity resists the reader’s immediate comprehension of it and suspends his previous expectations of interpretation. It opens him to dialogue. It both transforms the reader and makes him a co-player of the game of interpretation, generating, as well, a place for this playful encounter to happen.1 Thus, philosophical hermeneutics ensures the textual primacy. The text—published or not in a book—is the privileged referent of interpretation because it is both the visible presence of the language of words and the audible presence of its voice. Comprehension and interpretation apply to the content that is decipherable for the reader (that appears to his eyes and speaks to his ears). Hermeneutics, thus, rarely applies to the materiality of the book. The materiality of the book is perceptible by touch: my hands grasp the book, feel its cover, its spine, its 115

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book block, its pages, and so forth. These elements are materially perceived by haptic sense in the case of a physical book, and they are virtually perceptible by touch technology in the case of eBooks. They have different palpable properties: the weight and texture of the paper, the quality of the binding, even the typesetting and the page editing. These tangible materials make the text visible and readable, but they are not subjected to interpretation. However, in the realm of art—also examined by hermeneutics, language is not necessarily language of words. In plastic, pictorial, musical language, the tangible forms and the readable content are inseparable. The infinite meanings that a work of art “expresses” is interpreted in its material representation. The importance of materiality in the realm of texts can be traced to cases, such as poetry books and artists’ books. In the first case, the page editing and typesetting have a poetic role that must be interpreted to understand the textual content. In the second case, the inseparability of both dimensions is more evident. The artist’s book is a book that pretends to be a work of art. It is worthy in itself—legible or not, and this is the reason why it is collectible. An example that brings together both cases is Stéphane Mallarmé’s Poésies (1932). It is a book of poetry and one of the first artists’ books where Mallarmé’s poems are illustrated by Matisse’s drawings. Leaving aside these few exceptions, the reader is interested more in the visible text than in the tangible book. Thus, he forgets that the original meaning of the word “text” refers to a “texture” and the material form of the book affects how the text is conceived, constructed, and read (Macken 2018). In opposition to the textual primacy of hermeneutics, phenomenology— more attentive to the lived body—can offer a balanced approach between material book and textual content. The book can be analyzed as an integral phenomenon where the tangible forms and the readable text are related. Although the same content may appear in different forms—hardcover or softcover, paper or eBook, paperback—the way in which it appears cannot be taken as a mere complement to the text, as something not worthy interpreting. Except for Henri Maldiney, however, little attention has been paid to this phenomenology of the book. Maldiney is sensitive to daily phenomena, and he believes that books are something we usually do not pay attention to, because we are driven by its content and hardly consider it as such. Hence, he examines the case of artists’ books and poetry books in order to grasp the essence of the phenomenon “book,” concluding that they aim at generating a meeting space. The book “is not a text closet” (Maldiney 2014, 38): it is not an already constituted place that can vary to contain the same text. It is a phenomenon where an open space happens and comes into existence. It is a phenomenon of spatialization that involves the encounter between the opening of the book and the opening of those who are open to it (Diez Fischer 2021a). Whatever the content is, the book “responds to its mission only if it

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puts into play a poetics of space by responding to the poetic space that it has the duty of making visible” (Maldiney 2014, 27). The aim of this paper is to bring together the phenomenological approach to the book with the hermeneutical approach to the text: What is it that can be touched in the open book by interpreting its textual content? What is it that can be interpreted in the open book by being tactful with its content? To answer these related questions, I will first examine the contributions of Gadamer’s text hermeneutics. Secondly, I will examine Maldiney’s contributions to the phenomenology of the book. Finally, I will show the impact of these contributions to understand how the space in the tangible book is generated so that an interpretive encounter with the readable text takes place. The hypothesis is that the intersection between the two approaches allows us to understand the inseparability between the content of the text that is interpreted and the space of the book that is touched. This is the cornerstone of a haptic hermeneutics. HERMENEUTICS OF TEXTUAL PLACE The privilege given by hermeneutics to the readable and interpretable text entails minimizing the importance of the material and tangible book. However, Gadamer’s hermeneutics offers a productive mediation that could foster a first approach to understand the mutual implication of book and text by acknowledging the need of tact with the text in the act of interpretation. According to Gadamer, tact is “the supreme virtue of the true interpreter” (Gadamer 1993b, 442). It does not refer to the realm of perceptual sense, that is, to the physical contact (“touch”) with the text in the book. It refers to the interpreter’s “sensitive approach” (“tact”) to the text. When we interpret a text, it is necessary to “be tactful” with it. The finitude of our understanding requires knowing how to deal with the infinite interpretations opened by the textual content. This hermeneutical skill is neither transmitted nor taught. It is acquired by dealing assiduously with texts, accepting its unpredictability, for the text refuses our previous expectations of understanding it (Gadamer 1993a, 40). In short, the virtuous skill of tact regarding the infinitude of the text is formed in the interpreter’s recognition of his own finitude. In this way, the alterity of the text opens a space for dialogue and generates the place where the hermeneutic sensibility is educated. Concerning the virtue of tact, Gadamer is the heir of different legacies (Diez Fischer 2021b; Diez Fischer 2021c)—on the one hand, Helmholtz’s legacy of the epistemological dimension of tact in the Geisteswissenschaften, and on the other hand, the legacies of Humboldt, Herder, Husserl, and Aristotle concerning the linguistic, perceptual, and ethical dimension of tact.

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These legacies deepen the hermeneutic virtue beyond what Gadamer has proposed. They reveal an inseparable link between tact as virtue and touch as perceptual sense. In effect, there is not only a metaphorical or analogical closeness between both meanings, but an intimate correspondence between them, as Heyd has shown when he claimed that “tact is conditioned by contact” (Heyd 1995, 221). The hermeneutic virtue of tact cannot be formed without the sense of touch. The tactile or haptic perception is fundamental because the body is attested as being my own (my body) thanks to a double sensation (touching–being touched). To feel oneself is to appropriate the body in tactile apperception. But the body’s appropriation is inseparable from its affection. At the same time, not only touch offers my body to myself, but it also affects the body in exposing it to the others. It produces the sensation of my pain and my pleasure.2 Just as touch exposes my body to the sensation of pain in dealing with otherness, so tact exposes myself to the painful denials of my interpretative expectations in dealing with text. Undoubtedly, the text denies my expectations of understanding, but it does not physically touch nor hurt my body. However, one could wonder if someone who is apathetic to feel any bodily pain would be hermeneutically tactful. How could the questioning voice of the text be heard without any pathos of feeling? In short, there is no virtuous hermeneutic intentionality without an embodied and powerless intentionality. The virtue of being tactful with the infinite content of the text is formed within the finite body—appropriated and affected—of the interpreter. The formation of the supreme virtue of tact in the textual interpretation presupposes the fundamental sense of touch in bodily exposure. Hermeneutics and embodiment are inseparable, just as interpreting and touching are inseparable in their ethical and perceptive dimension.3 This expansion of Gadamer’s hermeneutics reveals some advantages and disadvantages for the purpose of this paper. On the one hand, its advantage is to be found in that it gives a key role both to tact in the interpretation of the text, and to the place needed for a dialogue to take place. The first approach between the virtue of tact and the tactile sense brings together hermeneutic interpretation and haptic embodiment. On the other hand, its disadvantage resides in that this approach does not attend to the connection between the virtuous interpretation of the text and the tactile sensation of the book. Hermeneutics fails to acknowledge the haptic perception of the materiality of the book. However, in touching the book, the reader exposes himself to the body of the book and feels his own body even before he starts reading and interpreting. What does the reader touch in the book when he picks it up and opens it to read it? How could we understand the virtue of tact in the hermeneutical process of interpreting? Maldiney’s phenomenology of the book offers contributions that surprise a hermeneutics that is too distracted by the textual content.

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF BOOK SPACE Maldiney develops his phenomenological analysis of the book in The Space of the Book published in 1990 (Maldiney 2014). He does not start from the question about the essence of the book or its space, but from the examination of a unique and irreducible case: the artist’s book. This is due to his idea of phenomenology. According to Maldiney, the understanding of phenomena happens in a communicative encounter between unique existents. Hence, the general understanding of the book requires the encounter between the artist’s book and Maldiney. I will summarize four key conceptions of phenomena to understand the phenomenon of the book and the generation of space in its haptic exploration. Firstly, phenomena cannot be attended to at the level of perception. Perceived objects are not phenomena. Real phenomena are unique and irreducible alterities that occur at the level of feeling and resist immediate comprehension. They call out our “passibility.” Passibility is our capacity to suffer and open ourselves to phenomena at the level of feeling before perceiving them as objects. Because they are unique, they are strange to those things that are expected as being possible. Phenomena are “trans-possible” events insofar as they are beyond the possibilities that we can anticipate. Hence, receiving them at the level of feeling entails to be surprised by them: “Reality only appears in the very moment of our own surprised existence. This is very important. To be surprised by existing is a rare thing, because in a life existence is rare” (Maldiney 2007b, 182). That the book is a phenomenon means that the book is not an object perceived by the reader, but the event of a unique and irreducible alterity that resists immediate comprehension. It is a transpossible phenomenon because it is beyond the anticipated possibilities of reading and writing. It calls out so that it can be received at the level of feeling: one suffers from it by opening oneself to it. Thus, the book surprises those who encounter it. In correlation to this openness of feeling, the book is an opening phenomenon. This is a key idea: whatever the content is, the destiny of the book is to be opened. Hence, the book is a work whose unique and irreducible appearance is its openness. It exposes itself. The book is outside of itself from the very moment it exposes itself to the one that will open it; in this exposure, it demands to be taken and to be open, and, therefore, it calls out the one who opens it to open and expose himself to the book. In short, it is outside itself and calls to be opened to those who open it. Hence, the book is a “face-to-face” encounter, and it is not an already “done” fact but an ongoing process of becoming by opening. Secondly, the open encounter with the transpossible event communicates with the ground of the world. “By the marginal, the thing communicates not

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with other things but with the ground of the world, which constitutes the moment of reality—prior to all thematization in terms of objectivity—of everything that exists . . . existing precisely the ground” (Maldiney 1974, 49). The ground of reality is, according to an expression that Maldiney borrows from Hofmannsthal, the “insignificant significance of Being.” He also calls it by other names. The Void (Wu chi) and the Open, that he borrows from Chinese painting and from the poets Hölderlin and Rilke. The Nothingness as Rien is at the root of Res (thing). Also, the ground (Grund) of every event is borrowed from Schelling. In short, the event of phenomena is a communicative encounter with the bottomless ground of the world—that is, with the Void, the Open, the Nothingness. This communicative encounter puts in tension the feeling and the lived body. On the one hand, the Void of reality redefines our feeling as “trans-passibility.” Our capacity to suffer and to open ourselves receptively does not concern the world only, but what is beyond the entities—that is, the nothingness through which the world opens. Transpassibility is the transcendent quality that is proper to human sensibility. It is the capacity to become passible of “nothing” which is to become passible of “all” infinity of unexpected real things. On the other hand, the Void as the ground of the world is also the ground of our body.4 That is why the horizontal dimension of Void as ground of the body intersects with the vertical dimension of depth as abyss. “I am open to the ground that constitutes ‘this depth of things that makes them precisely things’” (Maldiney 2007a, 295). The real event bursts in, communicating and tensing both spatial dimensions of the lived body. It is destined to open and to lead toward the abyss of the world to rise and mobilize horizontally on the bottomless ground. The void is therefore the original landscape and the primordial crisis of embodied existence: “man is alone in the landscape, in a landscape without men” (Maldiney 2010a, 128). Being lost in the empty landscape feels like vertigo. Vertigo is the feeling of sinking and dissolving into the abyss due to the inversion of the near and the far. A vertiginous empty space cannot be inhabited, so those who are lost call out to each other. The encounter with another being transforms the void into a habitable space and, at least for a moment, it liberates us from being lost. In the case of the book, its white pages connect us with the ground of nothingness which turns an encounter with a book into a transpossible event. The page is the minimal and fundamental unit of the book. More than a rectangular space already constituted, the page is the necessary emptiness for the transcendent movement of those who open and meet in whiteness. Whoever opens itself to a blank page feels its white emptiness like vertigo. He cannot live there. The vertiginous movement of the page demands him to receive it transpassibly and transform it into an open and habitable space. Thus, the book haptically involves one’s body and obliges it to move into a space of

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encounter—that is, to get out of itself and to form forms. Whoever is “author” is called to the graphic behavior that forms writing. He responds haptically to the demand of the book by engaging in writing with his body, the letters on the white page. Whoever opens himself to the white pages of the book— reader or illiterate—is called to a transpassible gaze. He looks—before reading—and feels in his body the surprise of the communicative encounter with the white and empty depth of the page. Thirdly, the transpossible event and the transpassible encounter with the ground sets in motion the transcendent transformation that is the proof of a co-birth into existence. This co-birth is the real phenomenon and the ground of all things. Firstly, the one who is lost comes into existence. Called to exist by the event, man responds by opening himself and going out of himself: “Everything is impossible, beginning with existence for him who is only there. It is necessary to leave if one were to take place” (Maldiney 2012d, 174).5 Strange as it may seem, we do not exist. Being habituated to existence entails that we do not exist in the proper sense: we can say that we “are,” but not that we “exist.” Only rarely, in the encounter with the nothingness opened by the event, do we come into existence—that is, we leave our familiar habitat behind and take a step into the wild, so that we live in wonder. Secondly, reality and the ground of all things both come into existence. We exist because both reality and the ground of all things exist. The ground of nothingness transforms itself into itself and exists. In order to express this transformation, Maldiney uses the lowercase and uppercase letters: open/ Open, nothing/Nothing. The nothing becomes Nothing and exists thanks both to the reception (accueil) of an event at the level of the vertiginous feeling in us, and to the recollection (recueil) coming out of us, internalizing the outside by our works and modes of being. That is our “existential transposability” (Serban, 2016): the transcendent capacity to be and to act beyond what we believe to be possible and passible. In the case of the open book, there is a co-birth as far as the book is called into existence and becomes existent together with the one who opens to it. The white nothingness of its pages is received and transformed, existing as Nothingness and generating habitable space to exist. The writer of a book does not exist until he starts his transpossible adventure by writing; before writing, he is habituated to his being. Writing entails to come out of oneself. It is not just the engraving black strokes on a white support. Writing is the testimonial form of the graphic behavior of one’s body in front of the irruption and reception of nothingness.6 The empty space becomes a habitable space so that one can exist by the rhythmic encounter between the page and our writing. In this way, the book is not an object produced according to the writer’s plan. It is the testimony of the nothingness that surprises and mobilizes him. Therefore, what is given to our gaze in the book is not primarily

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a textual content decipherable to the reader’s vision; it is rather the proof of coming into existence in the generation of open space. Whoever opens—not writes—a book is also habituated to being himself. His transpossible adventure of existing entails to go out, moved by the challenge that the gaze poses us. The surface of the open book becomes a face for the gaze. The book looks at oneself by calling on the white page—not in the black letters of its text, and the one who is lost is also calling by looking. Unlike the intentional gaze that reads, the transpassible gaze empties itself. It transpassibly receives the vertiginous nothingness of the surface of the page, and transpossibly gathers the proof of its existence. Fourth and finally, the above claims bring together two key ideas: space and rhythm. On the one hand, space is the central category of every embodied being that is There (Dasein). Space is not a place. It does not pre-exist and then is filled. It is generated from emptiness. It is the opening to exist that arises in and from nothingness. On the other hand, the communicative encounter, by which the vertiginous void is transformed into habitable space, is rhythmic.7 Rhythm transforms the nothingness that sinks into open space that rises. “We are in rhythm” (Maldiney 2012a, 20), but rhythm is neither said of the existent nor of the event; it is there, in between the two. Rhythm is always in danger of annihilation due to the two possibilities in which the encounter and the movement do not take place: one possibility is inertia in a stopping “here” (lack of existential transpossibility), and the other is dissipation in wandering “outside” (lack of transpassibility) (Maldiney 2012c, 214). In between these dangers, rhythm is constantly reborn from nothingness and generates open space for movement and transcendent encounter. Rhythm articulates the transpossibility of the event (1) that demands our transpassibility (being open) (2), which awakens our transpossibility (being workers), (3) and whose results are, in turn, the advent of transpossible events (1). There, in this rhythmic intersection, the habitable space is generated so that the event of nothingness and the advent of existence become one. In the context of the generative relationship between rhythm and space, Maldiney develops the key concept of “haptic vision” borrowed from Aloïs Riegl (Maldiney 2012b, 255). This concept assumes the phenomenological role of the sense of touch for the constitution of lived body. Touching and being touched are the original way of feeling and participating with my body in the intercorporeal process of space-making. Maldiney uses this concept to explain the embodied encounter with works of architecture, e.g., with the St. Sophia Cathedral. The work opens itself to the body that enters the building. The embodied visitor does not walk through the building optically but haptically. Looking and walking are the bodily behaviors that respond to its emptiness, because the body jumps over nothingness in every step it takes. Thanks to the immersion due to the tactile feeling, the body is involved in

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the encounter with the architectural work in an immobility tensioned by the horizontal of the floor and the vertical of the depth. Thus, the rhythmic encounter between the visitor’s body and the body of the building transforms the vertiginous architectural void into open and habitable space for the cobirth of existence. Rhythm and space are key to understand what finally happens in the haptic encounter with the book. The art of the book is to create space in the pages. The space is “the foundation of the art of the book; where existing, starting from the page, the book appears in the authenticity of its essence” (Maldiney 2014, 19–20). The space of the book does not pre-exist on the pages. It is generated by the emptiness of the white pages in the rhythmic encounter between the opening of the book and the opening of the one who is lost and opens his body to the vertiginous nothingness. The rhythm is not something of the book nor of the embodied existent: rhythm is there in-between the two and is spatialized in every page and in the whole book. In each page, the spatializing rhythm requires the white nothingness that calls to come out and to form forms. There is no rhythm and habitable space in which to exist if there is no emptiness. For this reason, the white void of the page is primordial.8 The transpassible gaze feels the vertiginous emptiness of the white page and participates in the rhythmic genesis of the habitable space: “space and gaze unfold in each other as the ubiquity of emptiness and the openness of reception (accueil)” (Maldiney 2010a, 136). In this bodily generativity, the black strokes—letters, drawings, typography—and the white page are opposites in tension, just like Yin and Yang. In the encounter with the gaze, they are transmuted into rhythmic unity in the Void (Wu chi).9 The gaze is not optical but haptic because it involves the standing body. The gaze descends and ascends vertically on the surface of the page, going down and up. It moves horizontally, approaching and moving away. Its vertical-horizontal behavior does not yet imply a reading and perceiving of the eye. It belongs to the haptic feeling of the body in the emptiness. The haptic gaze replicates the rhythmic and miraculous movement of embodied existence in tension with the ground, sustaining itself in and from nothingness. Like the rhythm of breathing, walking, or climbing a mountain, the body opens a book and looks at the page. It receives and gathers in an immobile tension the attitude of transcendence: it goes out of itself and exposes itself to the danger of becoming out of nothingness in each page. By the spatializing rhythm between the page and the haptic gaze, the whole book opens itself and generates space in turning the pages. The verticality of each page passes over the horizontal of the book. It is the ebb and flow of the open pages. They rise and sink in the unfolding and folding of the book. This movement between the book and the hands goes from the initial Void to the final Void—the blank pages at the front and back of the book. Hence,

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one can understand the importance of the bodily rites of opening and closing the Sacred Books during the ceremonies. In short, the encounter with the entire open book is the pathic moment of the embodied generation of space— touching and being touched opens the space. It is the rhythmic movement of diastole and systole, of perpetual going out of itself, to return and take place there existing. Therefore, every open being, called to exist, dwells in the open space of the book, not only the literate. Space is the unique and irreducible reality of all embodied existence that opens itself by exposing itself, and that acts and works in existing. The spatial phenomenology of the book uncovers some advantages and disadvantages for the purpose of this paper. The advantage is to be found in the attention to haptic sensibility with the book and the embodied generation of open and habitable space to exist. Space exists and we exist because our body is open and in touch with the open book. The disadvantage, however, is the absence of a hermeneutics of the textual content in the space of the book. How does the text that interrogates and forms virtuous interpretation articulate with the book that generates space in the tactile encounter? Does the haptic behavior in dealing with the book generate space for hermeneutic virtue in dealing with the text? How does the voice of the black strokes articulate with the folding and unfolding of the empty, white pages? These questions lead to a second and final approach between the tactile sensation of the book and the virtuous interpretation of the text. TOUCHING AND INTERPRETING IN THE OPEN SPACE Gadamer’s hermeneutics is based on being tactful with the text, but pays no attention to the fact that we are being touched by the open book. Maldiney’s phenomenology operates almost inversely. Some efforts are currently being made to bridge this haptic gap between text and book. The digitization of the literary medium urges the search for a more embodied hermeneutic experience for the interpreter (Naji 2021). Linguistic studies inquire into the haptic structure of language (Komel 2019). Hermeneutic studies expand their application field and deal with the materiality of things (Ihde 2022), with places (Janz 2017), with the flesh (Kearney and Treanor 2015)—substituting book for body, reading for feeling, writing for sensing. These efforts, along with the elements examined in this paper, encourage a communicative encounter between hermeneutics of the text and phenomenology of the book. In fact, they are both related to each other in many ways: for example, the text, as conceived by Gadamer’s hermeneutics, can be considered as a transpossible event, as conceived by Maldiney’s phenomenology. The text, like the book, are alterities that resist immediate comprehension and

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refuse anticipated interpretations and perceptions, respectively. Likewise, the text calls for our transpassible feeling. The listening reception of the text’s questioning voice empties us from our expectations and makes the impossible be possible, for it opens us to dialogue and makes us passible to the infinity of the text. In this way, each interpretation is transpossible and our existential transpossibility is to become the impossible—that is, to transform ourselves from deaf interpreters, who just listen to themselves, into virtuous interpreters, who are surprised by alterity. This transformation takes place in the rhythmic encounter and formative dialogue of hermeneutical virtue. Given these proximities, which suggest the phenomenological grounds of hermeneutics, one could ask if it is necessary to pay more attention to the text than to the book? This question reveals the central contribution that the phenomenology of the book brings to the hermeneutics of the text. The book generates the open and habitable space in the tangible encounter which enables a dialogic space to take place so that the text is open for virtuous interpretation. In other words, the materiality of the book embodies the generation of space that makes possible the hermeneutical approach to the text. This involves the behavior of open and gathered bodies. This is the cornerstone of a haptic hermeneutics that links interpretation and touch, language and flesh, as two mediations of the same kind. In concluding, I would like to sketch out three guiding ideas for further research. Firstly, the book generates space in the encounter because it is a body that opens itself to touch and exposes itself to be touched. The transformation of the void into habitable space entails this haptic encounter of open material bodies in touch. The book—not the text—generates habitable space because nobody lives within the bricks of a building, but in the open space left by these. If there would be no emptiness, we would only have monuments, not homes. All contact requires distance; otherwise, there is fusion. In fusion, it is not possible to approach nor to touch. For this reason, the book is sometimes considered as an intermediate meeting place between the body of the author and the body of the reader (Nancy 1993). This consideration turned writing and reading into a matter of touch that takes place in its pages. However, the book is more than an intermediate place for the encounter between literate bodies. It is itself a tangible, exposed and open body that calls to be opened and touched. Those who are called are spatially closed and deaf beings who need to learn the virtue of knowing how to treat each other by opening the sense of touch. At this point, the book reveals the importance of being tactful in touch. Before any reading or interpretation of its text, the nakedness of the open book looks at us and demands that we touch it tactfully. Touching a book, opening its exposed body by opening oneself to it, entails a careful physical dealing. This phenomenon is a sensitive matter that articulates the rhythm of existence. It articulates the essential bodily action of touching, and

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the essential intellectual action of interpreting. Thus, the tactile perception of the space in the book is both the basis and the culmination of virtuous tact with the texture of its text—that is why there are many different stories about the ways of opening and inhabiting a book (Borsuk 2018). Secondly, the haptic encounter with the open body of the book generates inhabitable space not only for the interpreter’s exposed body, but also for the textual bodies themselves. In visible terms, the text can only appear on the white of the page. It is neither seen in black on black, nor interpreted without tension. The empty space of book is needed for a hermeneutics of the text. In audible terms, the text can speak because the white void of the book is the rib cage for the voice of the text. No voice sounds in a place full of noise. Every voice requires empty space. In the human body, those spaces are the open mouth and the attentive hearing; in the body of the book, the white silence of its pages gives rise to the voice of the text before reading and listening to it. In short, only the haptic generation of space gives rise to the infinite vocal inflections of the text. That is why the book is not a place but an open void that no interpreter can fill in with his answer. The text can be a horizon for the seer and a dialogue for the listener because the book is a landscape in vertical and horizontal tension where the encountered bodies reverberate with each other by contact, just like embodied diapasons (Diez Fischer 2022). On the one hand, in the space generated by the contact with the body of the book, the text collides with the reader’s anticipations and demands a virtuous interpretation from him. On the other hand, the reader’s body interprets the text by intervening haptically in the book emptiness: he marks the page, makes some notes at the margins, highlights, and underlines words, and so on. This haptic genesis of space goes unnoticed to the objectifying reading. Literate readers, busy with text, forget their bodies and do not feel the material interaction with this daily phenomenon of the book. Literacy often mutilates bodily sensitivity and introduces us into a place without inhabiting the space. Thirdly, it is already clear that the generation of space is not governed by the vocal semantics of the text but by the bodily syntax of the book. Syntax are the rules of formal and material construction by which meaning can be articulated, although they themselves have no meaning. The syntax of the book finds an explanatory image in architecture (Macken 2018). Along with Maldiney’s phenomenology, hermeneutics of text also established some connections with architecture (Ricœur 1998; Gens 2017; Gschwandtner 2017; Seamon 2017). The spatial configuration of architecture (building) corresponds to the temporal configuration of text (narrating). The book is once again forgotten by hermeneutics. In effect, the book is the architecture that makes it possible to generate the needed open space for a text to take place. Layout, design, and typesetting are, like writing and gazing, architectural practices. The construction in the language, by which the narrative can be

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read, requires the construction in the materiality, by which the book can be opened and treated haptically. Thus, a text, although it can be deconstructed, receives unity because the book has a first and a last page. Despite Borges’s wish in The Book of Sand or The Library of Babel, the materiality of the book cannot be infinite. However, in the finitude of the book, the text is infinitely interpretable. The book is this miraculous provisional victory of matter over the ephemeral. Its architectural skill is to contain infinite meanings in a finite matter. The materials of the book both take place and generate space. Hence, touching its tangible body requires the hermeneutical skill of being tactful. Ultimately, these analyses bring together hermeneutics and phenomenology. The result of this encounter is twofold: the examination of the space of the book takes place in a text and the textual content appears in the touched material. In short, the book you are reading is more than a text. In the moment you open the book, you are exposed to the adventure of existence. Your hands touch the open space to exist. 無 NOTES 1. Paul Ricœur (1986), another key thinker of this tradition, ratifies this primacy and consolidates pantexualism. He proposes the text as a model of acting and being. Every action can be understood as a text to be interpreted. 2. Ricœur (1990) outlines that the other can affect my body in two different dimensions: (1) the other in me, that is, the otherness of my own body, for example, when it gets sick and hurts me; (2) the other distinct from me, that is, other men, for example, when they hurt me or give me pleasure in my body. 3. For that reason, the formation of the virtue of tact also offers a gain for the sense of touch. Knowing how to treat others sharpens the very feeling by which one treats them. To understand is to understand oneself but also to apperceive oneself better. 4. The Taoist inspiration of Maldiney’s meontology intersects here with its Heideggerian matrix and its phenomenological-genetic bodily basis. Villela Petit (2007) points out that the notion of ground in Maldiney is linked to embodiment through Scharmasow’s influence on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty: “That which we name background is the underlying basis of all permanent configurations of things that are arranged around us. It is important to realize clearly that this background plane, universal basis, is firstly the surface of the ground beneath our feet” (Maldiney 2010b, 424). 5. “The ex- of ex-sistir is the prefix of an adventurous presence, of an exit into the open for openness” (Maldiney 2010b, 418–419). 6. In his idea of writing and language, Maldiney is influenced by Ricœur. Of his own act of writing, he says: “Writing for whom? This is not the first question. I write for those for whom the writing will awaken. . . . to what? To that for which I am

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writing. I write as a witness to the significance of Being that irruptively crosses me and envelops me. This leads to a book. But I am not the master of a work. I am the witness of a work” (Maldiney 1991, 202). 7. “To awaken us from being lost without leaving the space of the landscape: the rhythm.” (Maldiney 2010a, 129) 8. Christin (2009) has shown how the interpretation of this white as lack and absence is a Western ostracism caused by the very structure of our alphabet as an alienated code. 9. “Efficacy belongs to the strokeless, to the emptiness that opens white, providing a place to the black stroke” (Maldiney 2014, 36). The form of the words “is broken by the whites, by the voids that separate and free the words, giving them the pure function of naming that which makes them to call them. It is in the ‘in-between’ of the words, in these middle gaps, that the word is calling” (Maldiney 2014, 34).

REFERENCES Borsuk, Amaranth. 2018. The book. Cambridge: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge. Christin, Anne-Marie. 2009. Poétique du blanc. Vide et intervalle dans la civilisation de l’alphabet. Paris: Vrin. Diez Fischer, Francisco. 2021a. “Libro, Transpasibilidad y Transposibilidad.” In De la transpasibilidad. Henri Maldiney ante el acontecimiento de existir, edited by Patricio Mena Malet and Felipe Johnson, 192–239. Buenos Aires: SB Editorial. ———. 2021b. “Universalidad y Límites del lenguaje en Hans-Georg Gadamer. Otra aproximación al tacto hermenéutico.” Revista Contrastes 26 (3): 7–24. ———. 2021c. “Hermenéutica táctil.” In Filosofía Hoy. Un abordaje interdisciplinario de lo humano, edited by Darwin Reyes-Solís, 9–31. Quito: Abya Yala. ———. 2022. “The reverberation phenomenon from Ricœur’ philosophy to social praxis. Notes for the development of a sound phenomenology.” Conference presented at the Phenomenological Transfers. Representations, Images, and Social Imaginaries. Virtual Conference Series. Lima, CIphER: March–June 2022. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1993a. “Wahrheit in den Geisteswissenschaften [1953].” In Gesammelte Werke 2, 37–43. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 1993b. “Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du [1986].” In Gesammelte Werke 9, 383–451. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2004. Truth and Method [1960]. London/New York: Continuum. Gens, Jean-Claude. 2017. “The Configuration of Space Through Architecture in the Thinking of Gadamer.” In Place, Space and Hermeneutics, edited by Bruce B. Janz, 157–168. Cham: Springer. Gschwandtner, Christina M. 2017. “Space and Narrative: Ricoeur and a Hermeneutic Reading of Place.” In Place, Space and Hermeneutics, edited by Bruce B. Janz, 169–182. Cham: Springer. Janz, Bruce B. 2017. Place, Space and Hermeneutics, edited by Bruce B. Janz. Cham: Springer. Heyd, David. 1995. “Tact: Sense, Sensitivity, and Virtue.” Inquiry 38: 217–231.

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Ihde, Don. 2022. Material Hermeneutics. Reversing the Linguistic Turn. London: Routledge. Kearney, Richard and Brian Treanor. 2015. Carnal Hermeneutics. New York: Fordham University Press. Komel, Mirt. 2019. The Language of Touch: Philosophical Examinations in Linguistics and Haptic Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Macken, Marian. 2018. Binding Space: The Book as Spatial Practice. London: Routledge. Maldiney, Henri. 1974. Le Legs des choses dans l’œuvre de Francis Ponge. Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme. ———. 1991. Écrire, résister. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. ———. 2007a. “De la transpassibilité.” In Penser l’homme et la folie, 263–308. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon. ———. 2007b. “Entretiens avec Henri Maldiney.” In Henri Maldiney. Philosophie, art et existence, edited by Christiane Younès, 181–212. Paris: Cerf. ———. 2010a. “L’espace du paysage en Occident.” In Ouvrir le rien. L’art nu, 125–160. Varese: Encre Marine. ———. 2010b. “L’œuvre d’art comme essence.” In Ouvrir le rien. L’art nu, 411–459. Varese: Encre Marine. ———. 2012a. “Notes sur le rythme.” In Henri Maldiney: penser plus avant. . . . Actes du colloque de Lyon (13 et 14 novembre 2010), edited by Jean-Pierre Charcosset, 12–22. Paris: Les Éditions de la Transparence. ———. 2012b. “L’art et le pouvoir du fond.” In Regard Parole Espace, edited by Christian Chaput and Philippe Grosos, 231–270. Paris: Cerf. ———2012c. “L’esthétique des rythmes [1967].” In Regard Parole Espace, edited by Christian Chaput and Philippe Grosos, 201–230. Paris: Cerf. ———2012d. “Tal Coat: solitude de l’universel [1965].” In Regard Parole Espace, edited by Christian Chaput and Philippe Grosos, 167–174. Paris: Cerf. ———. 2014. L’espace du livre [1990]. Paris: Cerf. Mallarmé, Stéphane. 1932. Poésies. Eaux-fortes originales de Henri-Matisse. Lausanne: Albert Skira & Cie Éditeur. Naji, Jeneen. 2021. Digital Poetry. Maynooth: Palgrave Macmillan. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 1993. Corpus. The birth to pre-sence. Translated by Brian Holmes and others. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ricœur, Paul. 1986. Du texte à l’action. Essais d’herméneutique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. ———. 1990. Soi-même comme un autre. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. ———. 1998. “Architecture et narrativité.” Urbanisme 303 (novembre-décembre): 44–51. Seamon, David. 2017. “Hermeneutics and Architecture: Buildings-in-Themselves and Interpretive Trustworthiness.” In Place, Space and Hermeneutics, edited by Bruce B. Janz, 347–360. Cham: Springer. Serban, Claudia. 2016. “Du possible au transpossible.” Philosophie, 130 (3): 58–71.

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Villela Petit, Maria da Penha. 2007. “Espace et existence dans la pensée de Henri Maldiney.” In Henri Maldiney. Philosophie, art et existence, edited by Christiane Younès, 39–58. Paris: Cerf.

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Belonging and Cosmology Renaud Barbaras1

Belonging can be understood in three senses, which are captured by the following three expressions: being within the world (être dans le monde), being of the world (être du monde), being in the world (être au monde). First, belonging to the world means being situated in it. Yet this situation obviously does not mean the occupation of a location in the extension, unless we immediately reduce the being to material corporeality. By situation, we must strictly understand the position inherent to the beingness of the being, to its existence as individuated existence. We might as well say that the being is always situated within an originary spatiality, that it necessarily occupies a position: it is here rather than there. But it is not necessary to occupy a circumscribed location, nor even to coincide with a fragment of extension to be here rather than there. The locality of which it is a question here refers only to the fact of being an element within a multiplicity and the “distance” between here and there is thus confused with a pure difference. This originary locality is synonymous with the position inherent in the act of existing within this world, of being part of it. In Leibnizian terms, it would correspond to the point of view of the monad, which refers to a metaphysical rather than geometrical locality. I call site this first, strictly topological, sense of belonging. However, to belong to the world can have a more radical meaning: not only to occupy a site within it, to be within one among others, but to be made of the same ontological texture as it, to be taken in its thickness. To say that the being is of the world is thus to say that it comes from it, that it owes its being to it. From this point of view, the beings are no longer distinguishable: all are also of the world and thus communicate by this fundamental belonging. I will name soil this second, ontological sense of belonging to mean that the world is no longer only what the being rests on, in other words where it is situated, but what it feeds on and from which it thus comes in its beingness. One will 131

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have understood it, the distinction between the site and the soil expresses, in the framework of a phenomenology of belonging, the difference between the being and the world. Every being distinguishes itself from the world as a being and it is in this exact sense that it occupies a site, the proper content of this one consisting in this very difference. By putting forward this distinction, we thus introduce within any being a gap between where it is and, on the other hand, that of which it is and to which it participates in some way. Because of this double belonging, the being is not only where it is: precisely insofar as it is, in other words is of the world, it necessarily exceeds its site, radiates beyond its topological locality. As we shall soon see, this duality is decisive for the understanding of the third meaning of belonging. In any case, to say of a being that it belongs to the world is to affirm at the same time and indistinctly that it occupies a point within it and that it plunges into it, is in ontological continuity with it: from the first point of view, the world must be understood as multiplicity, from the second point of view, the world signifies the ontological fabric of any being, that from which it proceeds as it is, regardless of what it is. Yet there is a last sense of belonging which refers to being in the world. This is the dynamic meaning of the expression, which distinguishes it from being within the world. Indeed, to belong also means to actively occupy, to inhabit, or to invest. The emphasis here is no longer on inclusion or inscription, nor on ontological kinship, but on the active sense of belonging as participation. Just as belonging to a movement or a current means investing oneself in it and making it be by taking part in it, that is, by committing oneself to it, so belonging to the world mean advancing in it; going toward it, committing oneself to it and making it be by means of this commitment itself. In short, it means taking part in its work of world. This activity that is called “belonging” is none other than phenomenalization: the very opening of a world, what phenomenology has restrictively called “intentionality,” it being understood that it is a matter of understanding this intentionality from belonging, of bringing to light the mode of occupation of the world in and by which the world can appear as world. To this third sense of belonging corresponds a new sense of the world, no longer as multiplicity or soil but as that which is deployed or configured by an existent, its element or its milieu. We are here quite close to a phenomenological sense of the world which emphasizes its correlation with an existence: whether it be the Husserlian Lebenswelt or the Heideggerian ambient world. This last, active, sense of belonging allows us to bring to light a form of reciprocity, which will be at the center of our investigation. To affirm that belonging is participation is indeed to recognize that this mode of inscription in the world is equivalent to a form of possession of the world and thus of inscription of this one into the existing, just as the participation in a movement means that this one exists only by those who

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make it being and is thus contained in those that it contains. When we affirm that such a subject belongs to the world in the sense that he is engaged in it, where he inhabits it, we say exactly that the world exists by this very engagement and, in this sense, belongs to the one who belongs to it. There is thus a double envelopment at the heart of belonging, since the inscription of such and such a being in the world has as its reverse the inscription of the world in this being. To be more specific: the ontological inscription of such and such a being in the world has as its reverse the phenomenological inscription of the world in this being. We might as well say that the belonging of a subject, for example, is the other side of a phenomenalization: the subject is at the same time and indistinctly in front of the world and within it, inserts itself in it and makes it appear, possesses it as a phenomenon insofar as it is possessed by it as a being, in such a way that, by a kind of fundamental iteration, the subject is at the same time at the threshold of the world and in its heart: any step toward the world is already a step in the world. In fact, these three meanings of belonging are one and the same; they refer to dimensions, already abstract, of the same fundamental situation that the concept of belonging names, so that the real question we have to face is to know how these three dimensions are precisely one, and in particular how the ontological inscription of a subject that is topologically situated in the world can be synonymous with the inscription of the latter in the subject, in short with phenomenalization. To say, then, that belonging is one is to affirm that it is under the same relation and not by virtue of an internal division, as the tradition has always claimed (that of the transcendental ego and the empirical ego or of my flesh and the flesh of the world), that the subject inserts itself into the thickness of the world and makes it appear. As we can see, it is indeed the question of the body, or rather the underlying question to which the body constitutes a false answer, that is posed here. To say that I have a body is to say that I belong to the world and, more precisely, in view of the distinctions that we have proposed, it is to say that the insertion in the world and the appearance of the world, the situation within it and the opening to it, are rigorously synonymous, that the two envelopments are the same. This has a major consequence which we must take into account. Indeed, if there is an exact equivalence between ontological belonging and what we call phenomenological belonging, we have to recognize, when we consider the variety of beings and thus the degrees of belonging, that these two dimensions of the same fundamental belonging will vary together—in other words that the degree of phenomenalization or possession of the world by a being will be exactly proportionate to its degree of inscription in it, that such a being will have all the more world as it will be more deeply enveloped in it. The more a being is of the world, the more he makes it appear, the more a being belongs

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to the world, the more it belongs to him, the more he is dispossessed by the world, the more he possesses it. By affirming this, we take the opposite of what the whole tradition affirms, namely that the aptitude that a subject has, a term that is appropriate in this case, to make the world appear is measured exactly by its distance from it, by its belonging to it insofar as metaphysical exteriority is the condition of this appearance. Such is the motivating leitmotif of the transcendental philosophies, from Kant to Husserl: with the latter, for example, it is in the exact measure where the subject is out of the world, foreign to the world, where there is thus an “abyss of meaning” between the existence as consciousness and the existence as thing, that he can constitute it—which also implies that he will have to constitute himself as subject, that his empirical being by which he belongs to the world will be a matter of a self-mondanization. It is exactly this cut between belonging and metaphysical exteriority, or to put it in Husserlian terms, this primacy of the intertwining (of the subject and the world) by perception over the intertwining by incarnation, that our phenomenology of belonging allows us to overcome. If belonging is one, if the second and third senses that we have distinguished are indeed moments of a unitary phenomenon, then we must conclude that the subject is all the more distant from the world, from the states of the world, as a phenomenalizing subject, that it is ontologically close to it, and that the subjects that we are are only likely to make the world appear as a world if they are inscribed in it in a much more radical way than mere things. There is thus no longer any alternative between being situated at the heart of the world and in front of it, between being made of the same texture as it and making it appear, this ontological kinship being on the contrary rigorously the condition of phenomenalization. It is precisely the univocity of the concept of flesh, of which we saw that Merleau-Ponty failed to give an account, that we have to understand. Far from my flesh being “to be felt” unlike the flesh of the world, as Merleau-Ponty persists in thinking, it is on the contrary in the exact measure where I am of the world that I can feel it—in which my flesh, as feeling flesh, is in radical continuity with that of the world—it is in the measure where I am situated in the deepest part of the world that I can make it appear as what it is, namely as world. At this point, the dispossession by the world and the possession of the world, the incarnation and the perception become strictly equivalent—at this point the two interweavings become one. Conversely, the stone for example, which is situated in a way at the other end of the chain of beings, is incapable of relating to the world and represents in this sense the zero degree of intentionality in the exact measure in which it is situated, so to speak, at the surface of the world, is not inscribed in its depth, insofar as it belongs to it only by occupying a fragment of extension there.

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I name place this phenomenological meaning of belonging, or rather what corresponds to it, a concept that must obviously be understood in its difference with that of location. As it is what is actively occupied by a being, the place cannot be geometrically delimited; the place is not what is statically occupied but that which is invested or inhabited and deployed by this very habitation. In this sense, the place is always where something takes place; it is the spatial correlate of an event and not the geometrical limit of a corporeal thing. We might as well say that there are no places in themselves, that the place is always the place of because it is only a place for and by: it refers to a spatialized space or a space of investment and this is the reason why its edges are blurred, as indeterminable as the action that deploys it is incomplete. Thus, the place is neither where the being is, nor what it is made of but where it exists in the active sense, that which it deploys from its site. This concept of place thus refers to what we could call the phenomenal space, a space of which it covers the whole extension insofar as there are as many places as there are active modes of belonging and as many active modes of belonging as there are beings [. . .].2 These analyses call for at least three remarks. First, let us underline that they deliver the elements of a genesis of the phenomenal space, to which corresponds what we name place. Indeed, space is the way in which an ontological soil, founding a first belonging, gives itself to the one who is separated from it by its own ontic position—that is to say by its site; the phenomenal distance is the form under which the transcendence of the world is given and lost at the same time. Now, this distance is only delivered to the one who tries to reduce it; this proximity that names the place refers to a movement of approach, which amounts to saying that the phenomenal space is intrinsically dependent on the movement. We are here quite close to the Heideggerian Entfernung, even if he refrains from highlighting the living movement that necessarily commands it. But we are also very far from it as soon as we understand that this “dislodging” has first of all an ontological meaning. It is an attempt of appropriation of a soil which, as such, always evades this attempt: the space opened in this approach is then like the trace of this failure, the proper way in which an impassable ontological transcendence is given— in short, the presentation of the soil in its very absence or its unpresentability. Under any phenomenal distance there is always another distance, this time ontological and therefore impassable, which presents itself only by being absent. Because the soil to which this first distance refers is ours, we do not cease to approach it, but because in it our being would dissolve, this approach remains impossible or rather incomplete: what we call space is exactly the trace of this incompletion. Space is the way in which the ontological soil slips away from a subject who tries to join it dynamically; the spatial distance is

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the proper presence of this absence. It is not time but space that is the mark of our impotence. Secondly, if it is true that the spring of the movement and thus of the place resides in an ontological defect, in what is accomplishment, then it is necessary to recognize that for any being, the deployment of the place is at the same time accomplishment of oneself, which amounts to affirming in another way that belonging defines the very identity of the being and that it is thus by going toward its soil by the place that it goes at the same time toward itself. If the being has a site, this one cannot correspond to anything else than to its very act of existing, in which it remains, so to speak, empty, empty of the soil from which the site separates. It is in the movement of advancement toward the soil, the movement of dwelling as the disposition of a place, that this site will, so to speak, fill itself, constitute itself as the site of this singular being. If the being of the being resides in the soil, the constitution of the being will be parallel to the conquest of its soil—that is to say to the deployment of place. One might as well say that the identity of the being proceeds entirely from its place and that, in this sense, it is indeed a question of its being in its place: a being is nothing other than a way of inhabiting, of making itself being from a soil from which it necessarily remains separated. The identity of the being is thus confused with the way in which it is separated from itself, or rather in which it makes its separation and thus its ontological incompleteness appear by trying to overcome it. It is necessary, lastly, to confront a difficulty, which refers to the essence of what we call desire. It is true that desire tends toward what it does not have, without which it would not desire it, but it is equally true that it is already initiated to that toward which it tends and therefore possesses it in this sense, without which it could not even tend toward it, for lack of a direction in which to engage. This means that not only is the other toward which desire is directed only the self, or the being of the desiring, but that this otherness on which the subject’s fulfillment rests must be given in some way, that he be initiated into it precisely in order to be able to direct himself toward it. Before this phenomenalization in which dynamic belonging consists, the soil, in its very absence, must appear in some way. In other words, the subject could not reach its soil and thus deploy the place from its site if it did not already possess it: the spatializing movement supposes not only that the world is the ontological soil of the subject but that it gives itself as such. The space deployed in the form of the place rests therefore on an even more fundamental test, a test in and by which the soil as such emerges before any advance into it, before any deployment of a space, as both the term and the very milieu of this advance. Such is precisely the status of the depth. It is the way in which an ontological soil is primitively given to a subject that is already separated from it by its site. This dimension, which, unlike the others,

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is never deployed, which I really possess only by advancing it, is the modality under which the ontological soil manifests itself to the subject as the very condition of its spatialization. Depth is, in other words, the originary mode of phenomenalization of the soil, the primary presence of the ontological in the phenomenal. Such is the reason for which this dimension does not have the same status as the two others. The latter are related to the space spatialized by the subject, but this one refers to this first test of the soil without which the advance would be impossible and this is why it is at the foundation of the two others. Thus, there is a place because the subject advances toward the world but there is no possible advance except within the depth: this one is thus not yet a place but the dimension that contains all of them insofar as it allows their deployment. In that, it is at the point of articulation between the site and the soil, the outcrop of the soil in the site before any dwelling, or still the way in which the inexhaustibility of the world is given from the start. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “What I call depth is either nothing, or else it is my participation in a Being without restriction, first and foremost a participation in the being of the space beyond any point of view” (Merleau-Ponty 2007, 363). It is necessary to hear it in the letter and not as a simple rhetorical alternative. In a sense indeed, depth is nothing, if not a width seen from another point of view, which simply means that it is not a dimension in the same way as the others, that it is never deployed. But if it is something it is then much more than a simple dimension, namely the ontological texture of things, this common soil which founds their being together, their envelopment beyond their differences. We are thus always below or beyond the depth as a simple dimension: below in so far as it does not appear before us, beyond in so far as in it is figured the ontological thickness of the world, that by advancing in it—which is the only way to appropriate it—we join our soil. From then on, it names our very participation to the Being—in other words, our ontological belonging. Of this belonging, it is the unique phenomenal attestation and, as such, presence of the soil within the site in the form of the infinity of the horizon and thus of the principial explorability of the world. As the only point of passage between the site and the soil, it guarantees and allows the advance that gives birth to the places. As such, it can be characterized as this unique and originary locality within which all the places take place. In The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1963), Bergson distinguishes two bodies: an interior and central body, “minimal body” and a “vast body.” Indeed, against the Pascalian idea of the thinking reed, which means the minimal place that we occupy by our body and the fragility of this one, it is necessary on the contrary to affirm that “For if our body is the matter to which our consciousness applies itself it is coextensive with our consciousness, it comprises all we perceive, it reaches to the stars” (Bergson 1963, 246). But,

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adds Bergson, “But this vast body is changing continually, sometimes radically, at the slightest shifting of one part of itself which is at its centre and occupies a small fraction of space” (Bergson 1963, 246). This part of itself is obviously what we name properly body, namely the proper body. Thus, specifies Bergson, “This inner and central body, relatively invariable, is ever present. It is not merely present, it is operative: It is through this body, and through it alone, that we can move other parts of the large body” (Bergson 1963, 246–257). Now, insofar as it is the action that counts, in other words where we are where we act, one concludes from this that the consciousness is enclosed in the minimal body, which then becomes our body, to the detriment of the immense body. It is thus only from the point of view of the privilege conferred on action that one comes to locate consciousness where it acts and consequently to circumscribe it to the minimal body; conversely, as soon as one turns away from this orientation on action, one realizes that nothing justifies limiting consciousness to this body and that, consequently, the immense body is just as much one’s own—in short, that it is there and, by this very fact, goes up to the stars. Everything rests precisely on the way we understand the expression “is there.” If I am only where I am able to act immediately, then, indeed, I am where this tiny body is. But if I am where my consciousness can be applied, then my body goes to the stars. We see that, at this first level of analysis, it is the extension of the consciousness that commands that of the body, or rather it is the necessary belonging of the consciousness to a body that allows us to conclude from the extension of the consciousness to that of the body and thus to determine the place where I am (being understood that I am where my body is). My consciousness reaches the stars; but this one has a body; therefore its body reaches the stars. Instead of remaining astonished by this assertion, we must ask ourselves why we resist such a position. In truth, consciousness as consciousness escapes strictly speaking from the extent, so that, by itself, it is nowhere. What then is going to justify its being circumscribed or attributed to such and such a body, if not that it maintains a relation with it? It is thus the nature of the relation, the order of relation that is privileged, that will determine the decision as to the body. We will say then that the only body that is mine is the one that is circumscribed by my skin, in the name of the fact that I can move it and make it act directly and that I feel something there, precisely feelings (pain, thirst). But, in truth, I am also in relation with the “immense body” by the sight, the hearing, even the touch. This dimension of the consciousness that is the sight transports me well beyond the point where my minimal body is and it would be necessary to add that there are feelings that are aroused by this immense body and only by him, or rather that testify of a form of intimacy with this cosmic body—for example, the feeling of the sublime. We see then that it is only in the name of the privilege conferred

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to the immediate action rather than to what it applies, as well as to certain experiences of consciousness—to say quickly to the feelings rather than to the perceptions—that we are going to circumscribe the consciousness to this body that we call proper. But, in truth, I am no further away from the world by sight than I am from my so-called own body by feelings. It should even be added that, by perception, I am very far from the central body, which, in truth, is very largely impenetrable, much further than I am from the world. In truth, we must recognize that the very condition of perception is the oblivion of this central body, even if the situation varies according to the sensory fields. Thus, in the touching of something, I always touch myself at the same time, or rather the test of the touched object can always be reversed into a test of the surface of my touching body, whereas, through sight, I am at the farthest distance from my body: everything happens as if it were done from nowhere, was like a kind of window on the world and was thus confused with the appearance of a seen world (this is why the idea of consciousness as nothingness rests on a primacy granted to vision). But, in any case, I first inhabit the immense body through perception and it is only through an accident or an obstacle within perception that I discover that I also have a minimal body. It is, for example, the overcoming of a certain threshold of sound intensity or temperature that will bring me back from the sound heard by my ear or from the liquid touched to my hand. It will be retorted that, certainly, I see the stars but that I am not there strictly speaking and that they cannot therefore be in continuity with my body, insofar as sight is only a representation of it. But this is precisely the massive presupposition that a rigorous phenomenology of space will lead us to overcome. To see the stars is not to enter into a relation with the stars themselves, where they are, that is to say, to be there. It is obviously the status of consciousness that is at stake here, at the same time as that of space: would not consciousness suppose a primary relation and a form of proximity to or habitation of that of which we are conscious? And if we refuse this and reduce it to representations (of which one wonders where they are), don’t we definitively deny ourselves the possibility of giving an account of its relation to its object, of the access that it opens to that of which it is aware? Is it not the occupation that determines the representation rather than the representation the occupation, so that one cannot be conscious of anything without actually being in it and, consequently, without also being it? It is necessary to say then that I can only be conscious of the stars because I am there, or rather that to be conscious of them is a way of being effectively there; but then, if I am effectively there my body goes as well to the stars. Even if Bergson starts from consciousness to determine the extension of my body, this priority is only heuristic since what underlies the analysis, although Bergson does not formulate it, is the idea that any relation of knowledge supposes a relation of

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being, that to be conscious of something, one must first be there; the presence to the object cannot be based on representation alone, but it must be ontological to be cognitive. In other words, it is not necessary to distinguish the event of the consciousness from its object as effective and thus transcendent object, what Descartes named formal reality and objective reality of the idea: the being-consciousness of the consciousness rests on the appropriation of an (to an) object, far from the fact that the consciousness can have a consistency by itself, independently of the objects on which it is carried. Consequently, consciousness happens where it is applied, or rather it is born from an object that is then its own. In a radical inversion of the Husserlian perspective, it is no longer the object, as an object that is always intentional, that rests on intentionality and, in a way, belongs to it; on the contrary, it is the real object that commands intentionality, in the sense that only the bodily presence to this object allows an intentional presence of this same object. One cannot better say that this mode of deployment of the place that is here the consciousness of the stars rests on the ontological belonging of the subject to the stars, on the immense body, and comes to reduce the tension between the site, to which corresponds the minimal body, and the soil, which is none other than the cosmos itself: the consciousness reaches the stars, in which they become its place because they are first of all its soil. This is also what Husserl deeply understands in the famous Manuscript D 17 of 1934 (Husserl 1940) entitled “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does not Move.” (Husserl 1940 [2002]). What does this formula mean if not that all my movements unfold on a soil which, as such, does not move and conditions the very possibility of movement? This Earth, whose parts are bodies but which is not itself a body, within which there is movement and immobility but which is itself neither in movement nor in rest, is exactly what we have named soil, soil that I take with me even if I go into space and thus leave the planet Earth. But we must then conclude, even if Husserl does not, that it is precisely the tension between the topological belonging of the subject who moves and this ontological belonging to the Earth, which is the real reason of the movement on this Earth and consequently the condition of the appearance of the world within it. In other words, it is because, wherever I go, I am already on the Earth-soil, that I can effectively go there and phenomenalize it in the form of a place, which can be a world; the ontological already-ness is the condition of the phenomenological movement taking place from the here of the subject in movement. The phenomenalizing movement is thus played out between two immobilities, of which it erases and maintains at the same time the gap: that of my ontological roots, which are in truth situated below all mobility, and, that, provisional, of my site within this Earth. Now, if we think of the Earth as what is correlative of my flesh, as Husserl does, we

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must conclude that the phenomenalizing movement (the “consciousness”) is what comes to fill and to deepen at the same time the gap between my body (site) and my flesh (soil). In the terms we wish to go beyond: the body has consciousness because it has flesh—that is, it belongs to the Earth. This is what Heidegger himself sees in his own way when he writes, admittedly in a completely different context, that: We always go through spaces in such a way that we already sustain them by staying constantly with near and remote locales and things. When I go toward the door of the lecture hall, I am already there, and I could not go to it at all if I were not such that I am there. I am never here only, as this encapsulated body; rather, I am there, that is, I already pervade the space of the room, and only thus can I go through it. (Heidegger 1993, 359)

Translated by Luz Ascarate

NOTES 1. This chapter was published originally in French as part of the second chapter of Barbaras, Renaud, L’appartenance. Vers une cosmologie phénoménologique, Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 2019, entitled “Les trois sens de l’appartenance” (23–31 and 49–56).  2. Pages 31–49 following this section of the translated text have not been included in this translation.

REFERENCES Bergson, Henri. 1963. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Translated by R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton with the assistance of W. Horsfall Carter. Westport: Greenwood Press Publishers. Heidegger, Martin. 1993. “Building, Dwelling, Thinking.” In Basic Writings. From Being and Time to The Task of Thinking. Edited and revised by David Farrell Krell, 343–363. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco. Husserl, Edmund. 1940. “Umsturz der kopernikanischen Lehre in der gewöhnlichen weltanschaulichen Interpretation. Die Ur-Arche Erde bewegt sich nicht. Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen Ursprung der Körperlichkeit der Räumlichkeit der Natur im ersten naturwissenschaftlichen Sinne. Alles notwendige Anfangsuntersuchungen. D 17. 1934.” In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl. Ed. Marvin Farber, 307–325. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Translated by Fred Kersten. 2002. “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The

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Originary Ark, the Earth, Does not Move.” Rev. Len Lawlor. In M. Merleau-Ponty, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology. Eds. Len Lawlor and Bettina Bergo, 117–131. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2007. “Eye and Mind.” In The Merleau-Ponty Reader. Edited by Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor, 351–378. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Index

alienworld. See world being-towards-birth. See birth being-towards-death. See death belonging, 9, 11, 66, 67, 69, 88, 131–138, 140 Bergson, Henri, 137–139 birth, 6, 8, 17–24, 59–61, 64–69, 71, 73–74, 76n8, 77n24, 97, 121, 123, 137 book, 10–11, 115–127 born, to. See birth concreteness, 1, 9, 67, 75 cosmos, 107, 140. See also world death, 6, 8, 17, 20–22, 24, 59–61, 64–67, 70–71, 73–74, 76nn7–8, 86, 93, 95, 97 decision, 8, 27–38, 39nn1,5–6, 40n7, 40n9, 40n12, 50, 91, 104 DeLillo, Don, 9, 83, 90–97 earth, 9–11, 48, 54, 83, 85, 87–88, 94–97, 107, 140, 141. See also world earth-world. See earth and world father, 19, 63, 71

generation, 1–6, 8–10, 20, 35, 46, 48–50, 52–53, 59, 61, 63, 65–67, 74, 76n9, 77n23, 78nn33, 78nn42, 101, 104–107, 109–110, 115, 119, 122, 124–125, 126 generative. See generativity and intersubjectivity generativity, 1–2, 5–11, 20–21, 39n6, 45–46, 48–56, 59–76, 76n7, 77n15, 77n19, 77n22, 77n24, 78n25, 78n34, 101–102, 104–111, 112n15, 122; feelings in, 101–102, 111, 112n15; problems of, 12n1, 60; meaning of, 1, 60, 64, 74, 76nn4–5, 76n12 genesis, 1–2, 5, 9, 20, 45–56, 61, 65–68, 70, 76n8, 101, 103, 105, 111n12, 123, 126, 127n4, 135 genetic. See genesis Heidegger, Martin, 5–6, 8, 17–19, 21–24, 59, 61, 70–75, 78n42, 87–90, 93–96, 97n1, 132, 135, 141; Dasein, 8, 21–23, 70, 74–75; existential temporality from, 21, 70, 72; historicity from, 21, 75 hermeneutics, 10, 115–118, 124–127 historicity, 4, 9, 21–22, 45–51, 54, 56n4, 63, 68, 73, 75, 86, 92–95, 111n5; 143

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Index

generative, 50, 74; transcendental, 59–60, 62, 64, 66, 76 history, 2, 6, 32, 38, 39n1, 46–55, 56n4, 71, 75, 78n46, 88, 93–94, 105. See also historicity of philosophy, 4, 68, 93 home, 10, 39n1, 49, 54, 65–66, 85–87, 90, 93, 101, 105–111, 125. See also world and homeworld homeworld 2, 62, 65, 69–70, 76n9, 86–87, 90, 92, 96, 104–105, 107, 109. See also home and world Husserl, Edmund, 1–12, 17–21, 24, 27–30, 33–38, 39n6, 40n7, 40n12, 45–55, 55nn1–2, 56nn3–5, 56n8, 59–76, 77n15, 77nn19–24, 78n34, 78n46, 83–87, 90, 92, 94, 102–103, 105–106, 110, 111n1, 111n12, 117, 132, 134, 140 institution, 8, 28, 30–31, 35–36, 45–46, 49–53, 55, 56n5, 85 intentionality, 4, 49, 101–102, 104, 107, 118, 132, 134, 140 intergenerational. See generation intersubjective. See intersubjectivity intersubjectivity, 9, 39n6, 45–46, 48–50, 55, 59–60, 62–72, 74–75, 77, 78n25, 85 Levinas, Emmanuel, 9, 59, 68, 70–73, 75–76 life, 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 19–23, 28–29, 33–38, 45–46, 48–49, 51–52, 59–61, 63–68, 74, 83, 86–88, 90, 102–104, 119 lifeworld. See life and world Lonergan, Bernard, 102, 104–107, 110, 111nn9–10, 111n12, 112nn16–17, 112n19, 112n22 Maldiney, Henri, 10, 116–124, 126, 127n4 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 116 memory, 17–18, 24, 68–69, 78n25

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 9–10, 45–46, 50–56, 61, 65, 134, 137 mother, 19, 63, 65, 67, 72 myth, 10, 34, 36, 85 oneself, 19–20, 23–24, 32–34, 64, 102, 104, 118, 121, 125, 127n3, 132, 136 origin, 1, 6, 8, 23, 47, 49, 53, 85, 92, 94 passivity, 8, 18–21, 51, 72, 103 Perreau, Laurent, 2 phenomena, 53, 116, 119–120 phenomenology, 1–3, 5–10, 17–18, 28, 45–48, 50–51, 53–55, 59–61, 65–68, 70, 73, 83–86, 94, 96–97, 101–102, 104–105, 110–111, 116–119, 121, 124, 126, 132, 134, 139 place, 67, 106, 109, 116, 122, 125–126, 135–138, 140 possibility, 5–7, 71, 122, 125 potency, 6–7 religious, 27, 35, 109 Ricœur, 127n1 Riegl, Aloïs, 122 self-generation. See generation Schnell, Alexandre, 5 Steinbock, Anthony, 1–2, 7, 45, 55, 61–62, 64–66, 70, 76nn8–9, 77nn15–16, 103, 105, 111nn11–12, 112n15, 112n23 Stiftung. See institution site, 131–132, 135–137, 140–141 soil, 11, 23, 56n5, 131–132, 135– 137, 140–141 space, 1, 9–11, 21, 83, 89, 94–95, 97, 101–102, 104–111, 115–117, 119– 127, 128n7, 135–141 temporality. See time time, 1, 3, 6, 8–11, 17, 22–23, 31–32, 47–48, 50–52, 54, 59, 61–76, 77n19, 83, 94–97, 110, 136 touching, 118, 122, 124–125, 127, 139

Index

transpossibility. See Possibility Ur-Stifttung. See institution Van Breda, Herman Leo, 54 Walton, Roberto, 48–49, 56n4

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Welt. See world world, 2, 6, 8–11, 18–20, 22, 27–28, 34, 36, 39n1, 47–49, 53–55, 60–63, 65–70, 73, 75, 76n9, 77n19, 77n22, 77n24, 83–88, 90–97, 102–107, 109– 110, 110n11, 119–120, 131–140

About the Contributors

Luz Ascarate is currently working on a second PhD dissertation, on the phenomenology of the possible, under the supervision of Renaud Barbaras, at the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. She holds a PhD in Philosophy and Social Sciences from the EHESS in Paris. She is the author of the book Imaginer selon Paul Ricœur. La phénoménologie à la rencontre de l’ontologie sociale (Paris: Hermann, 2022) and of several articles on phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as books of poetry. She has been Visiting Scholar in the Husserl Archives of Cologne (Germany) in 2021. She is a member of the Peruvian Cercle of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (CIphER, PUCP). Renaud Barbaras is professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and member of the “Institut Universitaire de France.” He was awarded the “Grand Prix de philosophie de l’Académie française” in 2014 for the totality of his work and, in 2017, the “Prix Cardinal Mercier” (UCLouvain, Belgium) on Metaphysics. His main works are: The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (trans. Indiana University Press, 2004), Desire and Distance. Introduction to a Phenomenology of Perception (trans. Stanford University Press, 2005), Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life (trans. Indiana University Press, 2022), La vie lacunaire (Paris: Vrin, 2011), Dynamique de la manifestation (Paris: Vrin, 2013), Le désir et le monde (Paris: Hermann, 2016), Métaphysique du sentiment (Paris: Cerf, 2016) and L’appartenance. Vers une cosmologie phénoménologique (Leuven: Peeters, 2019). Andrew Barrette is visiting professor of philosophy at Boston College. He wrote his dissertation on Edmund Husserl, under Anthony Steinbock at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. During that time, he also researched at the Husserl Archives at KU Leuven as a Fulbright Scholar. He is currently finishing translations of Edmund Husserl’s ethical writings and writing a book on the topic. He is also General Editor of the Collected 147

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About the Contributors

Works of Joseph Maréchal, SJ, with Jesuit Sources. Among other articles, he has forthcoming pieces on “Bernard Lonergan’s Developing Reading of Edmund Husserl,” in Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies, “Contributions to the Phenomenology of the Smile,” in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. Bruce Bégout is philosopher, essayist, and novelist. He is a tenured professor of philosophy at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne and is a member of the Archives Husserl in Paris. He is the author of numerous books, including La généalogie de la logique. Husserl, l’antéprédicatif et le catégorial (Paris: Vrin, 2000), Recherches phénoménologiques sur la vie, le monde et le monde de la vie, (2 vol., Chatou: La Transparence, 2007, 2008) or recently Le concept d’ambiance (Paris: Seuil, 2020). Natalie Depraz is professor at the University of Rouen-Normandie (France) and an academic member of the Husserl Archives in Paris. Specialist and translator of Husserl, she is the author of numerous works, including Transcendance et incarnation, L’intersubjectivité comme altérité à soi chez E. Husserl (Paris: Vrin, 1995), On becoming aware: A pragmatics of experiencing (with F. J. Varela and P. Vermersch, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003) and Attention et vigilance. À la croisée de la phénoménologie et des sciences cognitives (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2014). She founded the phenomenology journal Alter. Francisco Diez Fischer holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires (2012). He is an adjunct researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET) in phenomenology and hermeneutics (since2014). He is professor of philosophical anthropology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. Recent related publications include: “Libro, transpasibilidad y transposibilidad” in De la transpasibilidad. Henri Maldiney ante el acontecimiento de existir (Buenos Aires: SB Edit., 2021); “Universality and limits of language in Hans-Georg Gadamer. Another approach to hermeneutical touch,” in Contrastes. Revista Internacional de Filosofía (26/3, 2021). Quentin Gailhac is Agrégé in philosophy and a non-tenured lecturer and researcher (ATER) on philosophy at the Sorbonne University (EA 3552, Centre Victor Basch). PhD Student at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Quentin Gailhac is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. He has been Visiting Scholar in the Husserl Archives of Cologne (Germany) in 2022. He published several articles in philosophy (Archives de philosophie, Études phénoménologiques, Revue

About the Contributors

149

Philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, Philosophiques), and a book entitled De la répétition. Langage musical et formes de l’invariance (Paris: Musica Falsa, 2022). Mariana Larison holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Trained in Buenos Aires, Paris and São Paulo, she is currently working on the problematic of the institution within the framework of genetic phenomenology. She is a researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research of Argentina (CONICET) and at the National University of General Sarmiento and the University of Buenos Aires. Her publications include Being in Form. Dialectics and Phenomenology in Merleau-Ponty’s Last Philosophy (Mimesis, 2016). She has also authored numerous articles and organized dossiers in international journals, and translated philosophical works into Spanish, among others La institución. Resúmenes de curso en el Collège de France 1954- 1955. Vol. I, II, by M. Merleau-Ponty (AnthroposUMSNH, 2012/2016). Claudia Serban is tenured assistant professor at the Toulouse Jean Jaurès University (France). She holds a PhD from the Sorbonne University and is an associated researcher at the Husserl Archives (Paris), where she is currently coordinating the French translation of Husserl’s C-Manuscripts on TimeConstitution. She has published several papers on German and French phenomenology and Kantian idealism, as well as the book Phénoménologie de la possibilité: Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2016). She has co-edited with Iulian Apostolescu the book Husserl, Kant and Transcendental Phenomenology (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). Tanja Staehler teaches European philosophy at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include Plato, Hegel, Phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida), Aesthetics, Philosophy of Pregnancy and Childbirth. She has written books on Plato and Levinas: The Ambiguous Out-Side of Ethics (2010); (with Michael Lewis) Phenomenology: An Introduction (2010); and Hegel, Husserl, and the Phenomenology of Historical Worlds (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016).