TECHNOLOGY Philosophy of technology,

as distinct from philosophy of NATURAL SCIENCE, is a

relatively new arrival within contemporary philosoph­

ical subspecializations. Its historical roots, also distinct

from those in the philosophy of science, are largely de­

rived from severa! European traditions including neo­

HEGELIANISM, MARXISM, CRITICAL THEORY, and EXISTEN­

TIAL PHENOMENOLOGY, as well as HERMENEUTIC AL PHENO­

MENOLOGY and American pragmatism. Philosophy of

science, in contrast, became dominated early by LOGI­

CAL EMPIRICIST and ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHICAL traditions,

particularly in English-speaking countries.

CARL MITCHAM, the most thorough historian and bib­

Iiographer of the philosophy of technology, contends

in Thinking Through Technology (1994) that there are

two dominant directions in the philosophy oftechnol­

ogy: the engineering and the humanities directions.

The oldest work actually bearing the title Grundlinien

einer Philosophie der Technik was authored by a neo­

Hegelian, Emst Kapp, in 1877. But it was not un tii the

interstice between the world wars that philosophy of

technology in its contemporary sense could be said to

ha ve begun, and then the two most prominent ancestors

were MARTIN HEIDEGGER in Europe and John Dewey in

the United States. It was primarily through Heidegger

that philosophy oftechnology received its phenomen­

ological rootage.

Although it was clearly Heidegger who brought

technology to the forefront as a philosophical theme,

some intimations are also traceable to the founder

of phenomenology in its technical sense, EDMUND

HUSSERL. But intimations are ali that can be claimed.

Husserl's own concems map much more closely upon

traditions that are consonant with the theory prefer­

ences of classical philosophy of science. And although

CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY can aJso be termed "ex­

istential" with its emphasis upon PERCEPTION and even

more thoroughly upon BODY with respect to the consti­

tution ofknowledge, Husserl himselfpays little direct

attention to the incorporation oftechnologies into per­

ceptual and bodily schemata. The most notable excep­

tion, and certainly a pregnant one, is the recognition of

the ro le of writing in the constitution of a progressively

layered LIFEWORLD. Yet for the most part, and even in

the Die Krisis der europăischen Wissenscha.ften und

die transzendentale Phănomenologie ( 1936), Husserl 's

major focus remains fixed upon the movement from

very simple practices toward increasing idealizations

in the construction of natural science. His treatment of

Galileo, for example, focuses almost exclusively upon

the way Galileo mathematizes science and hen ce drives

early modern science in an abstractive and idealizing

trajectory away from embodied perception. He thus

misses the equally important ro le that instrumentation

(technology) plays in the Galilean praxis. The use of

equipment is seldom mentioned in ARON GURWITSCH's

work and that there are some thoughts about technol­

ogy in ALFRED SCHUTz's work has only recently been

noticed.

Even earlier than the Krisis, there had been severa!

simultaneous movements in German philosophy that

foreshadowed the !ater philosophy of technology. In

1927, for example, the neo-Kantian Friedrich Dessauer

(1881-1963) published Philosophie der Technik, an

early work in the engineering tradition, which nev­

ertheless still maintained the primacy of theory over

practice. It was in marked contrast to both Dessauer

and Husserl that Martin Heidegger's early Sein und Zeit ( 1927) could be noted as paradigmatically revolu­

tionary in initiating contemporary philosophy oftech­

nology in its phenomenological sense.

The model for what was !ater to develop into a more

full-blown philosophy of technology was the analy­

sis of tool use in his discussion of entities encoun­

tered in the environment. First, Heidegger argued that

readiness-to-hand experientially precedes the kind Of

objectification that becomes presence-at-hand, which

is equivalent to placing praxis as prior to theory. This

pre-theoretical experience is precisely what occurs in

tool use, and under this mode of experience the tool is

not experienced as an object, but as a means by which

some praxical ACTION within the environment is under­

taken. Then, in a model ofphenomenological analysis,

Heidegger shows not only how the tool "withdraws" in

experience, but also how it belongs to a context of in­

volvements. The praxical experience of tools, then, is

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, 690 Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

TECHNOLOGY 691

a kind of tacit knowledge, not necessarily conceptual,

but bodily engaged with an environment. The !ater Heidegger subsequently went on to make

technology a central theme ofhis philosophy. Modem

scientific technology, indeed, was the outcome of the Westem metaphysical tradition. The !ater interpreta­

tiau of technology- for example, in "Die Frage nach

dem Technik" (The question concerning technology,

1954) - was one that argued ( 1) for the ontologica!

priority oftechno1ogy over science; (2) for technology

tobe seen as a way of revealing rather than some mere

collection of artifacts used by subjects; and (3) for the

totality oftechnology tobe seen as a way of enframing

Nature itself as a type of"standing reserve" (Bestand).

Ali of these themes had already occurred in the tool analysis insofar as praxis precedes theory, tools relate

Dasein to a world, and in the process the tool "with­

draws" or ceases to be an abject- and, one can say,

the engagement is one that presupposes what is acted

upon as a kind of use-reserve for Dasein. But only in

the !ater Heidegger is modern technology totalized as

a metaphysical view. In another context, MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY cou]d

be said to have followed a similar trajectory with

respect to human embodiment and tool use. In his

Phimomenologie de la perception ( 1945), Merleau­

Ponty argued that tools such as the blind man's cane

are experienced as the extensions of the sooY. The

embodied subject's experience of embodiment is ex­

tended through the cane and engages the environment

through the artifact, a position held by MAX SCHELER

in Uber Ressentiment (On ressentiment, 1912), the French translation ofwhich was reviewed by the young

Merleau-Ponty. Again the artifact becomes partially

transparent and taken into the "body-subject." But un­

like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty did not go on to make

such incorporated artifactual experiences into an appli­

cation to technologies as such. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE's con­

tributions to the philosophy oftechnology are marginal

but not uninteresting. Technology was of serious philosophical interest

to many philosophers in the years before and after

World War Il, and virtually every major Continen­

tal thinker had something to say about it. Nicolas Berdyaev (1874-1948), ORTEGA Y GASSET, Ernst Junger

( 1895-1984 ), KARL JASPERS, and Jacques Ellul ali wrote

about the technologization of contemporary life, but

Heidegger remained the primary phenomenologically

oriented and most systematic ofthese thinkers.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of

North American philosophers began to adapt pheno­

menological themes in the analysis oftechnology. Us­ing published books as a benchmark, o ne ofthe earliest

thematic and serious attempts to apply phenomenology to techno]ogy was HUBERT DREYFUS's What Comput­

ers Can 't Do: A Critique of Artţficial Reason ( 1972).

He applied insights of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and

Heidegger to the then burgeoning "ARTIFICIAL INTEL­

LIGENCE" programs that began with radical extrapola­tions ofwhat such programs could do. Dreyfus showed

that the weaknesses of such programs revolved around

(!) the computer program's failure to recognize pat­

terns and gestalts, common perceptual achievements

in humans and animals; (2) the failure to deal with

open contexts, again a characteristic of any LIFEWORLD

in contrast to any closed system; and (3) the failure

tobe motile. In short, he argued, in Merleau-Pontyan

style, that computers cannot "think" because they do

not have (Jived) bodies. Here was a direct application

of the phenomenological primacy of PERCEPTION, em­

bodiment, and motile action as the hasis ofknowledge

to an important aspect of contemporary technology.

Dreyfus bas continued this work into the present with

a series of publications and has spawned, indirectly,

a whole generation of computer designers who have

taken his critiques seriously. The first book that explicitly identified itself as a

philosophy oftechnology and appeared in a major phi­

Josophy of science series was DON IHDE 's Technics and Praxis: A Philosophy ofTechnology ( 1979). That work

opens with a four-chapter sequence in a "phenomen­ology of instrumentation." Here a phenomenological

analysis, based upon both a Husserlian and a Heideg­

gerian version of INTENTIONALITY, undertakes to differ­

entiate different structural modes ofhuman-technology

relations. lhde shows that embodiment relations - a

term that he uses to capture the previous analyses of

Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty for tool uses as noted

above- are relations in which embodied human per­

ception symbiotically takes into itselfthe artifact used.

But in addition to such relations, Ihde describes other types of human-technology relations, includ­

ing hermeneutica! relations that are more LANGUAGE­

oriented or quantitatively designed and less perceptu-

692 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

ally direct (such as those found in the use of instru­

ment panels or other types of display instrumentation)

and background relations that are environmental and

taken-for-granted technological contexts not explictly

brought to the foreground in experience (such as living

in the presence of automatic heating or lighting ma­

chinery). Ihde has continued this development through

a series of subsequent books, the most systematic of

which is Technology and the Lifeworld (1990).

PATRICK HEELAN's Space Perception and the Philos­

ophy of Science (1983) comes more directly from the

philosophy of science. But although this work is more

focused upon the construction ofscientific knowledge,

it incorporates significant phenomenological analysis

of instrument uses as well. His variant upon the bod­

ily, perceptual, and praxis emphasis therein consists

in hermeneuticizing the process more fully. He argues

that instruments are "readable technologies" that in­

corporate and become equivalent to the perceivable,

thus yielding a horizonal and hermeneutica! realism to

scientific knowledge.

From the 1980s into the present, there has begun

to appear a rather wide range of studies of tech­

nology drawing upon phenomenological resources.

These studies are notably Heideggerian for the most

part. For example, the work most directly descended

from this tradition is Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( 1984 ), by ALBERT BORGMANN.

This analysis of contemporary life is one in which

Borgmann draws a strong distinction between a "de­

vice paradigm" and "foca! activities." Technological

devices, Borgmann argues, may often disrupt previ­

ous human engagements with an environment and thus

disengage humans. Automatic heating machinery dis­

places the hearth, while the latter technology engages

a whole series ofactivities that caii upon direct human

engagement. Borgmann argues for a reform of tech­

nologies that would introduce more foca! activities to

reengage basic human actions.

MICHAEL HEIM analyzes word processing in his Elec­

tric Language: A Philosophical Study ofWord Process­

ing (1987). Again, often Heideggerian in tone, Heim

takes account of the way word processing has altered

the process ofwriting. And while he cites Heidegger's

distinct dislike for even typewriters (which degrade

the "hand") and argues in part for word processing po­

tentially being destructive of "books," it is apparent

that Heim 's own stance is more one of a love/hate re­

Jationship with computers. He subsequently takes his

technological inquiry into virtual reality as well with

The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality ( 1993 ).

ROBERT CREASE, again related to philosophy of sci­

ence concerns, nevertheless takes a phenomenologi­

cally oriented inquiry into the ro le of experiment. His

The Play of Nature (1993) examines the primacy of

praxis in large-scale experiments in the recent history

ofscience.

At present, the philosophy oftechnology is rapidly

becoming recognized as a serious subspecialization

within philosophy. It is pluralist in approach, but

within its pluralism the strands of phenomenological

approaches are more obvious and dominant than in

cognate areas, such as the philosophy of science.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Ballard, Edward. Man and Technology: Toward the Measure­ment of a Cu/ture. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1978.

Blumenberg, Hans. Lebenswelt und Technisierung unter As­pekte der Phănomenologie. Turin: Edizione di Filosofia, 1963.

Borgmann, Albert. Technology and the Character of Con­temporary Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Crease, Robert. The Play ofNature. Bloomington, IN: Indi­ana University Press, 1993.

Dreyfus, Hubert. What Computers Can 't Do. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

-. Mind Over Machine. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1985. Embree, Lester. "Schutz's Phenomonology of the Practica!

World." In Alfred Schiitz. Neue Beitrăge zur Rezeption seines Werkes. Ed. Elisabeth List and llja Srubar. Amster­dam: Rodopi, 1988, 121-44.

Flynn, Thomas R. "Sartre and Technological Being-in-the­World." In Lifeworld and Technology. Ed. Timothy Casey and Lester Embree. Lanham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology/University Press of America, 1990, 271-87.

Heidegger, Martin. Die Technik und die Kehre. Pfullingen: Neske, 1962; [selections translated in] The Question Con­cerning Technology. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977.

Heim, Michael. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.

-. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. Oxford: Oxford Uni­versity Press, 1993.

Ihde, Don. Technics and Praxis. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979. -. Existential Technics. Albany, NY: State University of

New York Press, 1983.

THEATER 693

-. Technology and the Lifeworld. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990.

-.Instrumental Realism. Bl0omington, IN: Indiana Univer­sity Press, 1991.

Jonas, Hans. Philosophical Essays from Ancient Creed to Technological Man. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hali, 1974.

Scheler, Max. "Uber Ressentiment und Moralisches Wert." Zeitschriftfiir Pathopsychologie 1 (1912); extended form in Vom Umsturz der Werte ( 1915). 4th rev. ed. Gesammelte Werke 3. Bem: Franke, 1955.

Wa1denfe1s, Bernhard. "Reichweite der Technik." In his Der Stache! des Fremden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990, 137-50.

Zimmerman, Michael. Heidegger:~ Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politic.~. Art. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990.

DON IHDE State University of New York, Stony Brook

THEATER In order for any extremely com­plex, multilayered, and multifaceted higherorder ex­perience, such as AESTHETIC experience, experience of RELIGION, or experience of POLITICS, to be examined phenomenologically, the more basic phenomenologies of PERCEPTION, the IMAGINATION, MEMORY, and EMOTION

will already have to have been accomplished. This is because higher-order experiences bring into play ali of the powers, ali ofthe expectancies and resources ofthe individual at once, ali together, in very complex ways. Just as the power of speech uses bodily organs, each with its own specific function distinct from LANGUAGE,

for the purposes of linguistic expression, so also re­ligious experience, for instance, brings into play not just one or two emotions, one or two human needs and powers, but ali of them at once. This is certainly nowhere more complicated than in what goes under the name of aesthetic experience. So it comes as no surprise that extensive phenomenologies of aesthetic experience in general, of literary experience, or ofthe­atrical experience are hard to achieve and few have been undertaken.

A great playwright, like a great novelist, creates different imaginary worlds, situated in different frame­works oftime and space, ali with their own consistency and coherence as possible worlds, which we can enter and leave at will, to which we can retum, from which

we can leam more and more, which we can reenact again and again in real time and space without ever be­ing able to exhaust them. These worlds of experience fumish us with endless possibilities for the phenomen­ological examination of experience.

But the phenomenological literature on these sub­jects is up to now very restricted. As regards the pheno­menology of the theater even ROMAN INGARDEN, in his two magisterial tomes on Das literarische Kuntswerk ( 1931) and Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerk (Cognition of the literary work of art, 1968), mentions the theater only incidentally, as being "a borderline case of the literary work of art'' precisely because it involves, over and above the language of the text of the theatrical play itself, the actual peiformance ofthe text, a matter he does not address.

Only JEAN-PAUL SARTRE among the major phenome­nologists has written systematically on the theater. This is in a series of scattered and occasional articles that provide us with the outline of his theory. He was an authentic disciple of EDMUND HUSSERL in his extremely nuanced understanding ofthe phenomenologies of per­ception and imagination that he took from Husserl's chef-d' oeuvre, Ideen zu einer reinen Phănomenologie und phănomenologische Philosophie I (1913 ), and these play a central role in ali his major philosoph­ical and theatrical writings. Sartre is one of the few major philosophers in history to write short stories, novels, and plays as well as technical works of philo­sophical argument. Moreover, like only a handful of playwrights, including Pirandello and Brecht, Sartre held a theory of acting, which he exemplifies in his own plays. He focuses on the phenomenological prob­lem ofthe enactment of a text.

Sartre bases his theory of the theater on a theory of acting, of role-playing in everyday life and in the the­ater. To begin on the commonsense level, any specifi­cally human act has moral and even legal implications; it is an act for which a person is responsible, for which he or she is held accountable, for praise or for blame. It is an act deliberately and freely done with some knowl­

edge ofthe consequences. In everyday life we have no script according which to act; each choice is irrevoca­ble; each action sets our course for the future without any fixed or fated plan, without any guarantee as to the outcome. We are subject to the laws of irreversible time, contingency, uncertainty. There can be no science

Lester Embree, E/izabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

694 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

of a particular, individual life. It is precisely because there can be no science of particulars, no science of contingent facts, no science of HISTORY, that Aristotle held dramatic poetry tobe higher than, ofmuch graver import than, and much closer to philosophy than his­tory. Dramatic poetry gives us the typical, not the story of what actually happened but of what could happen, what ought ta happen, of what is instructive, of what repeats through time; even ifwe were to put Herodotus into verse, he says, we would not get poetry.

Here we enter the literary text as opposed to history or biography: unlike history, a text can be repeated; it is not for one time only; it is allographic. While the text of a play depends for its existence on the imagi­nation and on the work of a really existing, historical playwright, it is itself an ideal entity capable of be­ing repeated in its ideal meaning again and again. The "idea" of a play, its philosophical and "typical" im­port, is an eidetic and nota real object; it always eludes our present grasp; it is a Polidee, Husserl would say, a limit-concept that teleologically transcends and rules ali its possible versions and interpretations. True, it can only be enacted by these actors, under this director, in this theater, for this audience, here and now, but a given performance never exhausts the meaning of the play. As HERMENEUTICS and STRUCTURALISM have taught US,

the meaning of the text of a play always exceeds the real psychological intentions ofthe author, and authors are in no privileged position to interpret the meaning of their own work. Writers as diverse as Dostoyevsky and Pirandello ha ve testified that an author leams the story from the characters in the novel or play, who emerge with their own independent lives and motivations in the author's own imaginary and literary creation as he or she writes. They, as much as anyone, teach the au­thor what to write. Once one has conceived them in imagination, one no longer writes as one wills but as one can; there is an inner logic to each literary text that requires that the characters, once given life in imag­ination, teach the author and the audience their own story.

Sartre first focused on the phenomenological impor­tance of role-playing, or "acting," in his "phenomen­ological ontology," L 'etre et le neant ( 1943 ). There, in isolating the "existential-ontologica!" structure of"bad faith" he uncovered a necessary, eidetic structure ofhu­man existence. On the behaviorallevel, "bad faith" is

not opposed to "good faith." One can never escape bad faith; everyone is always in bad faith; the opposite of bad faith is not "good faith" but authenticity, namely, the recognition that everyone is always in "bad faith," that every consciousness is forever "not what it is but is what it is not."

At first sight, the distinction between acting in ev­eryday life and play-acting seems unbreachable. No matter who plays the role of Hamlet, the character in its ideal independence is not affected. The character of Hamlet is as fixed as a Platonic idea; his acts, thoughts, destiny are fixed by the idea ofthe play. But the actor, as actor, has other purposes and more knowledge than the character in the play (because he has already read the script and is living in the real, nonimaginary world of human freedom and responsibility). No one- not even the actor- can enter the time and place of the play from the outside without disrupting it as play.

But what about role-playing from a moral point of view in everyday life? What Sartre calls "bad faith" holds an essential place both in his metaphysics and in his theory ofhuman reaJity, his PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHRO­

POLOGY. In L 'etre et le neant he gives usa plethora of examples: the grocer, the student, the soldier, the gam­bler, the flirt, the waiter, and others who show that no performance of any ro le in everyday life is ever wholly what it seems, that in numerous instances we have to pretend to "be ourselves," that there is only a difference of degree between the real, "sincere," unselfconscious performances in which we act ourselves, and the "dis­honest," calculating, fully conscious staging of a scene for a given public, in short, that it is impossible ever fully tobe oneself. And this playing of ro les is essential to society: "A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer. There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is, as if we lived in perpetua! fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition." In his radical theory of a transcendental, non-ego logica!, operating conscious­ness that experiences both the world and itselfprior to reftection, Sartre ejects ali "objects" from conscious­ness. Not only does consciousness objectify and give MEANING and VALUE to things, but it is also capable of objectifying itself, its own acts, states, emotions, and dispositions. Even these are "essences" or "objects" of consciousness and I am myself cut off from my own

THEATER

essence "by the nothingness that I am." The noetic attitudes of interrogation such as ab­

stracting, isolating, imagining, doubting, and denying ground the possibility of experiencing the WORLD oth­erwise than as it is, as composed not only of positive bits of being but also of absences and otherness, of possibilities and potentialities, of the unreal and the imaginary, of the "ideal" reality of the objects of in­ference and demonstration, even of moral and physical

evi!, of psychophysical limitations and contingency. The experience of an absence is not the absence of an experience; on the contrary, it is a very intense experi­ence. When Pierre does not arrive for a rendezvous at

the Cafe Bonaparte as he promised, I experience his ab­sence, not from some particular spot but from the whole cafe. I do not conjure up some image or "species" of Pierre distinct from Pierre himself; rather, I "perceive" his absence as a possible presence by "nihilating" the

actual cafe as the ground upon which he appears as

not-being-there. Consciousness adds nothing to being except the "unreal."

It is of the essence of consciousness to be able to reftect on its own acts, to objectify itself, to be able to take itself as an object. "Phenomenology," writes Sartre, "has taught us that states are objects, that an emotion as such (a love ora hatred) is a transcendent object and cannot shrink into the interior unity of a 'consciousness.' Consequently if Paul and Peter both speak of Peter 's !o ve, for example, it is no longer true that the one speaks blindly and by analogy ofwhat the other apprehends in fui!. They speak ofthe same thing. Doubtless they apprehend it by different procedures, but these procedures are equally intuitional. And Pe­ter's emotion is no more certain for Peter than for Paul ... Doubt, remorse, the so-called 'mental crises of con­sciousness,' etc.- in short ali the content of intimate

diaries- becomes sheer performance." It is impossible to discuss Sartre 's theory of acting,

and therefore his theory of the theater, except on the basis ofhis ethical philosophy ofthe "free act." There are two existential facts about human reality-namely,

( 1) that it is situated, determined, in a place, contingent, not necessary, factical, limited, and particular, and (2)

that it is, in this situation, absolutely free, its own basis, its own source.

Since it is always easier to discuss Sartre's theories

on the basis of his examples, let us take the exam-

695

ple of the story of Abraham, on the basis of which Kierkegaard established his notion of religious faith

as "the teleological suspension of the ethical." We ali know the story: God appears to Abraham in his sleep

and orders him to take his only son up Mount Moriah and offer him up as a human holocaust to the divinity.

Abraham, being a "man of faith," does not hesitate to obey this command. This can be called the "Abraham

complex." But Sartre asks: how did Abraham know the vision he had was from God and not that of a ly­ing demon from Egypt? Only Abraham, alone, could decide this for himself. Even if there are signs, di­vine commands, even if there are moral laws written on tablets of stone, only humans can interpret them. Sartre is Kantian without being Lutheran. Like KANT,

he holds that even in accepting the divinely sanctioned morallaw, it is the individual human being who must recognize it as the voice of God, alone, and on their

own authority. That is not an act that God can do for them. Humankind is isolated in its own subjectivity and must choose and invent, find a path for itself.

A given person's subjective aloneness in recogniz­ing the voi ce of God is even more accentuated by an­other Kantian moral principle: each moral choice has a legislative dimension. By performing a moral act we are, in effect, saying "go thou and do likewise." This legislative burden is the source of our "ethical anx­iety." We cannot not choose; we are condemned to be free. Not to choose is itself a choice. At each in­stance we are capable of being forced to make moral

decisions, choices, and we always have to make these choices without full knowledge ofthe consequences of our actions, assuming a responsibility for choices that may turn out to have been wrong. There is an even more fundamental sense of freedom in Sartre than the freedom and the necessity to choose: it is the "noetic freedom" to become "unstuck" from the things that make up our world and to which consciousness alone

gives structure, meaning, and value; it is our permanent possibility "of dissociating ourselves from the causal series which constitutes being and which can produce

only being." Thus there can be no ETHICS built up of self-evident

or universal laws. There can be no generalized exis­tential ethics at ali; there are only right choices. The Biblica! injunction to "do unto others as thou wouldst

be done by," or the Kantian moral imperative never to

696 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

treat another human freedom as a means to an end but only as an end in itself, are true but empty. Whenever we are faced with applying these laws in any concrete, actual case of moral choice they are of no help at ali. Every ethical choice is situational, always a "particular nihilation."

In order to develop his ethics Sartre wrote both his existential PSYCHOANALYSIS and his philosophy of the theater. It is precisely because of the imperatives of individual freedom and the impossibility of an ethics based on universal principles that Sartre gives us his most important ethical insights in his existential psy­choanalyses of individual cases and in the "myths" he forged in his plays, elevating examples of individual choices to the level of "the typical," "the mythical," just as the ancient tragedians did.

Sartre's existential psychoanalysis was not meant to be a therapeutic method, but rather an exercise in philosophical anthropology, a series of studies that ap­proaches a theory of humankind through the investi­galion ofinstructive individual cases: Baudelaire, Tin­toretto, Flaubert, Jean Genet. Most of his case studies deal with historical personages; only Genet was a "li ve subject," and even there, much ofthe evidence exam­ined was taken from Genet's published short stories and plays.

His theory begins with a negative criticism ofFreud. He rejects the "materialistic mythology" of Freud both because of its mechanistic conception of human be­ings and because it makes the ego into a weak play­thing of subliminal "causal" forces, ali the while sur­reptitiously reintroducing into the "unconscious" the structures of consciousness as such. The "censor" or "superego" knows, for instance, which libidinal desires to suppress. Stated positively, his method replaces the search into the causal origins of present behavior with an examination of the meaning of present behavior in terms of its future-oriented intent and implications. Sartre approaches the life of a given, mature adult­who lives this life (sometimes barely) within the limits of normality- as a unified whole, not as a "bundle

of drives" haphazardly juxtaposed. Person and world comprise a unified, structured whole. He writes: "The principle ofthis psychoanalysis is that man is a totality and not a collection. Consequently he expresses him­self as a whole in even his most insignificant and his most superficial behavior."

But Sartre's rejection of Freud's conception of the unconscious does not rule out unconscious or precon­scious intentionalities, because the meaning of surface behavior is not immediately intelligible; it must be interpreted. There is a large realm of pre-reflcctive. pre-logical, pre-predicative behavior that primarily de­fines our individual choices of lifestyles, our ways of being-in-the-world. One ofthe reasons Genet (the sub­ject of Sartre's most successful "existential psycho­analysis") is so interesting is that he does not write "about" thieves, homosexuals, and deserters, but as a thief, as a homosexual, as a traitor who deserts in the face of the enemy. The behaviors examined arc just those that would be examined in any theory of indi­vidual psychotherapy: sexuality, eating, interpersonal relationships, ways ofpossessing and using things and persons. Sartre's aim is to discover those free (but fre­quently pre-reflective) individual choices ofbeing that are unique in each life, that pattern of action that will reveal the meaning of an individual life in its total, complex, existential density. This is the "fundamental project" or primary choice of a way of being-in-the­world. And ali a person 's individual choices reveal his or her "fundamental choice," if only we know how to "decipher" them.

Sartre believes in going down to the most minute details, usque ad minima. If a given man "is what he prefers," ifhis way ofbeing-in-the-world is revealed in the way he possesses "the world through any particular object," ali his behaviors of "having" or of possession reveal the particular concretization of his "fundamen­tal choice." "To eat," he writes, "is to appropriate by destruction: it is at the same time to be filled up with a certain being ... It is not a matter of indifference whether we like oysters or clams, snails or shrimp, if only we know how to unravel the existential sig­nificance of these foods." Moreover, to appropriate, in whatever fashion, is never "innocent." If I climb a mountain, I affix my flag to it; if I seduce this woman she becomes mine. In appropriating 1 necessarily al­ter and transform ("digest") what I possess, and at the

same time there is always the "surreptitious appropri­ation ofthe possessor by the possessed." Knowledge, like exploration, is a "rape ofthe world."

To summarize, the "three big categories of con­crete human existence," writes Sartre, are ta be, to have, ta do. And since we "are what we do," since we

THEATER 697

secrete our essence by our actions while our actions

are revealed in our ways of "having" (i.e., possessing, appropriating, absorbing, digesting, assimilating, de­

stroying) the objects that make up our world, we will find that each person 's fundamental choice of a way of

being-in-the-world is revealed by the categories of pos­session and these are, in turn, revealed by the categories

of acting. And action brings us to moral categories: to

freedom and responsibility. The importance of an existential analysis is to hold

up to us, on the basis of an individuallife, a mirror in

which we can see ourselves more clearly. As there is the

"reversibility ofmerits" in which we ali take the credit

for the work of the great heroes, inventors, prophets

among us, so there is a "reversibility of crime" accord­ing to which even the analysis of Genet's misdeeds

reveals not just another case history, but the descrip­tion of our own "human possibility." The story of the

martyrdom of "Saint Genet" is as edifying as that of

Saint Sebastian. Sartre's essays in existential psychoanalysis lead

necessarily to his theory ofthe theater as the final cul­mination of an ethics ofthe free act. Sartre calls himself

a "forger of myths." His theater is a theater of situa­

tions opposed to the psychological theater that has held

sway in Europe sin ce the great tragedians of the 16th

and 17th centuries and is typical of Anglo-American theater at the present time.

Sartre does not believe in a ready-made "human na­ture." Existence precedes essence: as individuals, we

create our own essence as we go along, by our acts.

A theater of situations will present a free human being

in a particular social environment in which he or she

makes an irrevocable choice. Sartre's theater presents

us with " ... a free being, entirely indeterminate, who must choose his own being when confronted with cer­tain necessities, such as being already committed in

a world fu li of both threatening and favorable factors

among other men who have made their choices be­fore him, who ha ve decided in advance the meaning of

those factors. He is faced with the necessity ofhaving

to work and die, of being hurled into a life already complete which is sti li his own enterprise and in which

he can never ha ve a second chance; where he must play

his cards and take risks no matter what the cost. ... We

put on stage certain situations which throw light on

the main aspects ofthe condition ofman ... and have

the spectator participate in the free choice which man makes in these situations."

We are living in the second half ofthe 20th century;

God is dead, or absent; the human race is certainly not

at the center ofthe uni verse; human nature is no longer

fixed and stable, and the situation of the individual is uncertain and difficult to think through. In this con­

dition people need "myths" of freedom in their effort to understand the nature of the human situation in the

present. Each of Sartre's plays, including his rewriting ofthe Greek myths, presents an individual in a partic­

ular situation in which one must make an ethical com­mitment without full knowledge of the consequences

of one's actions, but which is nevertheless an authentic

free choice, o ne way of understanding, and "dominat­ing," making sense of, giving a specific meaning and

value to that situation by this decision to act. His plays are often written for the sake of a single

scene. As in classic tragedy, we enter upon the ACTION,

the agon, at the very moment it is headed for catas­trophe. "Our plays are violent and brief," he writes,

"centered around one single event; there are few play­ers and the story is compressed within a short space

of time, sometimes only a few hours. As a result they

obey a kind of'rule ofthe three unities,' which has been

only a little bit rejuvenated and modified. A single set,

a few entrances, a few exits, intense arguments among

the characters who defend their individual rights with

passion ... " There is, therefore, passion; however, it is not

merely or even primarily induced by psychological

conflicts and opposition, but by moral dilemmas, con­flicts ofrights. The three unities oftime, place, and plot

are observed; Huis el os and Les sequestres d 'A/tona,

plays of final judgment, human not divine, take place in

very confined spaces. Le diable et le bon dieu, Sartre's

only "epic," while stretched out in time and location,

still takes place within the Faustian time of "one year

and a day" and is actually focused on just two juxta­posed scenes, the wager and the final accounting.

Sartre's theater is "austere, moral, mythic, and cere­

monia! in aspect," focused on great social and religious

questions. It deals with the great themes of death, exile,

and !o ve. It is nota theater of symbols or ofthe natural­

istic presentation of psychological rivalries and exag­

gerated emotions. It is rather a matter of "the rights of citizenship, the rights of the family, individual ethics,

698 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

collective ethics, the right to kill, the right to reveal to human beings their pitiable condition .... We do not reject psychology," he says, "but integrate it into a struggle over opposing moral claims." In Les mains sales the drama is not exhausted by the question of whether or not Hoerderer has seduced Jessica, though the psychological duel between Hugo and Hoerderer over Jessica and Hoerderer's love is central to the play; the chief source of drama !ies in answering the question of who, Hugo or Hoerderer, is ultimately in the right, the Stalinist or the Trotskyite.

The theater must will tobe moral (which does not at ali mean "didactic" in the Brechtian sense). "It was not," he wrote, "a question of the opposition of char­acter between a Stalinist and a Trotskyite; it was not in their characters that an anti-Nazi of 1933 clashed with an S.S. guard; the difficulties in international politics do not derive from the characters of the men leading us; the strikes in the United States do not reveal con­flicts of character between industrialists and workers. In each case it is, in the final analysis and in spite of divergent interests, the system ofvalues, of ethics and of concepts of man which are lined up against each other."

What is essentiaJ in Sartre's EXISTENTIAL PHENOMEN­

OLOGY ofthe theater is the meaning of a free, individual human act in a situation that gives it a dramatic, instruc­tive, "mythical" import. He distinguishes the three lev­els ofpsychological, social, and philosophical meaning in each individual choice not to write a general ethics of principles, but to give insight into the true human situation in the 20th century in ali its precarious ethical contingency.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Edie, James M. "Sartre as Phenomenologist and as Existen­tial Psychoanalyst." In Phenomenology and Existential­ism. Ed. Edward Lee and Maurice Mandelbaum. Balti­more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967, 139--78.

-. "The Problem of Enactment." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1971), 303-18.

-. "Appearance and Reality: An Essay on the Philosophy of the Theater." Phi/osophy and Literature ( 1980), 3-17.

-. "The Question of the Transcendental Ego: Sartre's Cri­tique ofHusserl." Journal ofthe British Society for Pheno­menology 24 (1993), 104-20.

-. "The Philosophical Framework ofSartre's Philosophy of the Theater." Man and World 27 (1994), 415-44.

Ingarden, Roman. Das literarische Kuntswerk. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1965; The Literary Work of Art. Trans. George G. Grabowicz. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Uni­versity Press, 1965.

-. Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer, 1968; The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. Trans. Ruth Ann Crowly and Kenneth R. Olson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. "La transcendance de !'ego: Es­quisse d'une description phenomenologique." Recherches philosophiques 6 (1936-37), 85-123; The Transcendence of the Ego. Trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirk­patrick. New York: Noonday, 1957.

-. L 'imaginaire: Psychologie phenomenologique de l'imagination. Paris: Gallimard, 1940; The Psychology of the Imagination. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Philosophical Library, 1948.

-. Saint Genet. comedien et martyr. Paris: Gallimard, 1952; Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Braziller, 1963.

-. Qu 'est-ce que la litterature? Paris: Gallimard, 1964; What is Literature. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

-. Un theatre des situations. Paris: Gallimard, 1973; Sartre on Theater. Trans. Frank Jellinek. New York: Random House, 1976.

Smith, Jadmiga S. 'The Theory of Drama and Theater: A Continuing Investigation of the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden." Analecta Husserliana 33. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991, 3--62.

Wilshire, Bruce W. Role Playing and Identity. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982.

JAMES M. EDIE Northwestern University

TIME Time and the consciousness of time are central themes in Husserlian phenomenology. They also figure prominently in the thought of MARTIN

HEIDEGGER, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, and MAURICE MERLEAU­

PONTY, who were familiar with Husserl's writings on time and whose own reflections often show Husserl 's influence, even when they take a different course.

Husserl understands the consciousness of time to be a uniquely important form of INTENTIONALITY, that defining feature of conscious life according to which it is always the consciousness of something. Time enters into everything ofwhich we are aware, and every inten­tiona! experience presupposes time-consciousness as a necessary condition of its constitution. Husserl reflects on temporality within the boundaries ofthe phenomen­ological EPOCHE ANO REDUCTION, which means that he is interested in time and temporal objects just as they

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Ca", J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

TIME

appear in the experiences that intend them, and in the

essential structures of those experiences precisely in­

sofar as they are instances of time-consciousness. He

does not investigate time as a matter of psychologi­

cal or empirica! fact subject to scientific calculation

and measurement, but rather directs a refiective EIDETIC

METHOD toward it. Because he does not view temporal­

ity as a simple phenomenon, Husserl offers no single

definition of time. In their complexity, his refiections

mirror the mosaic of problems, issues, and levels that

make up temporality as we experience it.

Temporal objects form the most obvious of these

levels. What concerns Husserl is not the specific con­

tent of the object- the fact that it is a train rushing

into a station, for example - but what characterizes

it as a temporal object. Temporal objects endure, and

some of them, such as melodies, display an interna!

succession of phases. They are concrete, individual,

unitary, changing or unchanging, and appear as simul­

taneous or in succession. They may be transcendent to

consciousness, as the train is, or immanent to it, as is

the act ofperceiving the train. Although not all objects

are temporal objects, even those that are not, such as

theorems in mathematics, presume time as the back­

ground against which their timeless character stands

out. Temporal objects are experienced with these fea­

tures because o ne is aware of them as now, past, and

future. Now, past, and future are the specifically tem­

poral modes of appearance. They are not things, con­

tainers for things, or parts of the objects presented in

them. Nor are they points making up objective time.

They are rather the ways in which temporal objects

appear, analogous to the spatial perspectives in which

objects appear in SPACE. The past, for example, is no

more part of the temporal object than an aerial view

of a town is part of the town; both are simply ways in

which something appears. Among the temporal modes, the now enjoys a priv­

ileged sta tus. It is the absolute point of orientation for

the life of consciousness: past and future are always

oriented toward it and constantly change in relation to

it. It is also the living source-point of new temporal

objects and new temporal positions. As the source of

temporal positions, it is a continuous moment of in­

dividuation. Something can become individuated only

by appearing ata particular point oftime, which it first

699

does in the mode of the now. Of course, what appears

as now will immediately sink into the past, but it will

remain identified with the temporal location at which

it first appeared. The now is also characterized by its

hospitality. Because it is not itself a thing or part of a

thing, it can play host to many temporal objects at once.

Indeed, simultaneity, understood as many objects ex­

isting at the same time, is originally "same nowness."

Despite its privileged status, the now does not exist

independently ofthe other temporal modes. It is never

without its horizon of past and fu ture, the larger whole

of temporal appearance formed by the modes in their

continuous mediation with one another. Now, past, and

future maintain their identities within this whole, how­

ever, neither dissolving into one another nor appearing

apart from one another. Husserl therefore avoids the

prejudice ofthe now, according to which one is imme­

diately aware only ofwhat is now. He also rejects the

opposing view that what is now escapes before one can

experience it as now. He insists that the now is indeed

experienced, but always with its horizon of past and

future, and always as fieeting.

That the temporal object is the object-in-its­

temporal-position appearing in ever-changing tempo­

ral modes explains Husserl 's observati an that time is

both fixed and fiowing. Time is fixed in the sense that

the object's temporal position remains the same as it

recedes into the past; the object, glued to its place, pre­

serves a rigid relationship to what carne before it and

what followed after it. Objective time is precisely this

sequence of temporal positions in which experienced

temporal objects find their fixed locations. Time fiows

in the sense that the object-in-position, as it runs offfor

consciousness, appears in continually different tempo­

ral modes in relation to the living now. Time as fixed is

measured by the objective relationships of before and

after; time as fiowing appears in the always shifting

modes ofnow, past, future. The fixed relationships are

experienced only in the changing modes.

Experienced time and temporal objects form one

of the dimensions of temporality that Husserl in­

vestigates. He also asks what the structure of time­

consciousness must be if it is to intend time. Husserl

first addressed this question primarily through the ex­

ample of perception. An act of PERCEPT!ON has phases,

only one of which will be actual at a given moment.

Ifthe perception is tobe aware of an object as tempo-

700 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

rai, the actual phase of the perception must intend the

object as now. But since the object is extended intime

and not simply now, the actual phase ofthe perception must also "reach out beyond" the now, that is, intend elapsed phases of the object and phases yet to come.

Each actual phase of a perception, therefore, refers in­

tentionally to an extended section of a temporal object and not merely to its now-point.

But reaching out beyond the now, while necessary, is not sufficient to account for time consciousness. If, for example, one remained conscious of the just elapsed

notes of a melody in precisely the way in which one is conscious of the present note - as now - one

would hear a crash of simultaneous sounds, not the

melody. The actual phase of consciousness must there­fore intend elapsed phases ofthe object and phases yet

to come in a modified way, specifically, in appropri­ate modes of past and future. Only then can one be aware of the phases as elapsed or yet to come, and of

the object as extended in time. Ali of this is possible, Husserl claims, because each phase of consciousness possesses a triple intentionality: "prima! impression" intends what is actually present as now; "retention"

or "primary memory" intends what has just elapsed as

past in varying degrees; and "protention" intends what is yet to come as future. Prima! impression, retention, and protention, although distinguishable, are not self­sufficient acts. They are dependent moments of a phase oftime-constituting consciousness, no more capable of independent existence than now, past, and future, the

temporal modes of appearance correlated with them. Husserl characterizes prima! impression as the ab­

solutely original consciousness, the prima! source for ali consciousness and being. It is the wellspring ofthe

new on the side of intending consciousness, just as its correlate, the now, is the mode of appearance of

the new on the si de of intended objects. Retention and protention are also forms of original consciousness, for it is in them that the senses ofpast and future first be­come constituted. Retention is the original conscious­ness of the past in severa! senses. It is the moment

of consciousness in which we initially become aware

of something as past. It is also original in the way in

which it gives the past. Retention or primary memory

"sees" the past, "presents" it, as opposed to ordinary

recollection or secondary memory, which gives the past

again, "re-presenting" rather than presenting it. More

precisely, retention is the direct and immediate con­

sciousness of what is just past as it slips away from

the now. It occurs "automatically" in the sense that it is neither freely undertaken nor free to change what it

is aware of. Ordinary MEMORY, on the other hand, is a self-sufficient act of consciousness that one can begin

or end at will. Rather than simply presenting the con­

tinuai flowing away of what is past, it re-presents the whole experience again, as if it were running off for

consciousness anew. Furthermore, as RE-PRESENTATION

rather than original presentation, ordinary memory is free to speed up the remembered event, lea ve out parts,

perhaps even tinkerwith their order-possibilities not

open to retention as the original consciousness of the

past. Protention, the original consciousness ofwhat is to

come, presents its correlate in the mode of the fu ture,

but without the fulfillment that characterizes prima!

impression and retention. What is future is precisely

what has not yet made its appearance "in person" by

presenting itself in the mode of the now. Protention

is therefore the perpetua! and immediate openness to

more experience that marks conscious life. Whatever

content it has will conform to what one is presently

experiencing. If one is in the midst of listening to a

symphony by Mozart, the content of one's protentions

will be the continued hearing of just this symphony. Thanks to protention, one would be surprised if the

music suddenly died or were interrupted by a scream. Protention 's possession of some content or other does

not mean that it is equivalent to expectation. EXPECTA­

TION, in which one anticipates the fu ture as if one were

perceiving it, is a full and independent act, just like

secondary memory. Around 191 O, Husserl carried his investigation to a

deeper level by introducing a final dimension of tempo­

ral awareness, "the absolute time-constituting flow of consciousness." Husserl's earlier analyses had focused on the way in which temporal objects, particularly per­

ceived objects, appear, and on the structure ofthe acts

that intend them. The latter are themselves temporal

objects- immanent rather than transcendent- and

one is aware of them as temporal. The absolute flow

accounts for the consciousness of such immanent uni­

ties as they run off in interna! time. This awareness, in

contrast to the thematizing consciousness one has of

a perceived or remembered object, is implicit or non-

TIME

thetic. In Husserl 's technical language, o ne perceives

an event unfolding in the world, while one experiences

( erlebt) the temporally extended act that intends it. The

absolute flow is precisely the experiencing or consti­

tuting of such immanent temporal unities. The metaphor of "flow" conveys the dynamic and

continuous character of this ultimate level of con­sciousness. Phases ofthe flow ceaselessly well up and

pass away, dovetailing with one another without gaps or breaks. One phase of this flux will be actual at any

moment, while others will ha ve elapsed or not yet oc­

curred. According to Husserl, the flow possesses a dou­ble intentionality: it is conscious of itself in its flow­ing and, through its self-awareness, also conscious of

immanent temporal objects. One may plausibly inter­pret this dual intentionality as follows. The three inten­

tiona! moments of impression, retention, and proten­tion, which Husserl originally introduced in connection

with perception, he now takes tobe the essential struc­

ture of each phase of the absolute flow. The moment

of prima! impression belonging to the actual phase of

the flow is the consciousness of the now-phase of the immanent object. The retentional moment ofthe actual

phase directly intends, not the just elapsed phase ofthe

object, but the just elapsed phase of the jlow. Since the latter originally intended a phase of the immanent

object as now through its prima! impression, by re­taining the elapsed phase of the flow o ne also retains

the just elapsed phase of the object correlated with it. This pattern of retention retaining elapsed phases of

the flow and thereby elapsed phases of the immanent

object repeats itself as far as retention extends. In the other direction, protention is open to phases

of the flow yet to come and to immanent objects cor­related with them. If the immanent object constituted

by the flow is an act directed toward a transcendent

temporal abject, then the awareness of the transcen­dent abject becomes constituted as well. The flow's

two intentionalities are therefore inseparable aspects

of a single consciousness. They require one another

like two si des of one and the same thing, for the flow

intends immanent objects only by bringing itself to appearance.

Husserl says that we lack appropriate names for the

absolute flow. Ordinary temporal predicates - now,

past, future- ha ve already been bestowed on the tem­

poral objects that the flow intends. To apply them to the

701

flow itself would risk con fus ing the flow with what it constitutes. Husserl does say that the flow possesses a

"quasi-temporal" character insofar as it flows and has an actual phase and post-actual and pre-actual phases.

As the universal and necessary condition of our tempo­ral awareness, however, its temporality remains unique

and irreducible to that of its objects. It is important to note that Husserl ca lis the flow "absolute" because it is

the founding level oftime-consciousness, not because it is any kind of mystical or metaphysical absolute.

Furthermore, while it may be distinct from the imma­nent objects it founds or constitutes, the flow is neither

separate nor separable from them in its existence and self-appearance. It simply is the experiencing of tem­

poral unities in immanent time. The conception of the absolute flow opens up in­

teresting possibilities for phenomenological reflection. The flow's double intentionality, for example, enables

Husserl to account for the sense in which the succession

of consciousness is the consciousness of succession. It

is precisely because the succeeding phases of the ab­

solute flow are intentionally related to one another that

the flow itself can be experienced in its succession

of phases and temporal objects can be experienced in

their successive moments. The flow of consciousness, far from rendering problematic the awareness oftem­porally extended objects, makes it possible.

The absolute flow illuminates the hospitality of con­sciousness as well. As sheer experiential conscious­ness, the flow is not any particular act or content and

is therefore open to the myriad conscious experiences

that one lives through in the course of one's life. The flow makes possible, for example, one's experiencing

of memory and perception and joy simultaneously as well as in succession. But if the flow opens one up

to the multiplicity of experience, it also provides the ground for the abiding unity and identity of one's con­

scious life in the face of that multiplicity. Particular experiences come and go; the flow abides, supporting

the interplay of unity and multiplicity, of identity and difference that marks the life of consciousness intime.

Finally, if the absolute flow is seen as the first stage

in the constitution of the transcendental EGO, then the ego, at least in Husserl's conception of it, can hardly

be seen as a nontemporal monad sealed up in eterna!

self-presence: it is openness and transcendence at the

very point of its genesis, and its being is inseparable

702 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

from temporality. This is a theme Husserl develops in

his !ater reflections, in the unpublished C manuscripts, on what he calls the "living present."

Later figures in the phenomenological movement, such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, share

certain fundamental positions with Husserl, even if

they are sometimes blind to the fact. They agree, for

example, that temporal awareness depends on the ca­pacity to reach out beyond the now, that consciousness

or the human being gathers itself together into a total­

ity out of its temporal diaspora, and that the time one

experiences is not a sequence of isolated now-points, but an ever-changing synthetic structure of now, past,

and future. These shared positions are developed in different settings.

Husserl investigates temporality as a complex in­stance of intentiona! consciousness. MARTIN HEIDEGGER

approaches it from the radically different perspective

of the meaning of Being. Specifically, he addresses

the question ofbeing by interpreting DASEIN, the being

whose Being is an issue for it, in terms of its tempo­rality. Since Dasein is practica! human being-in-the­world rather than the Husserlian transcendental con­

sciousness, Heidegger analyzes, not the consciousness of temporal objectivity, but the everyday temporality

ofDasein as it pursues its projects in the world. Heidegger distinguishes authentic or primordial

temporality from inauthentic temporality. Inauthentic

temporality - time as it is ordinarily understood --is conceived as an infinite sequence ofnow-points ar­ranged in relations of before and after. "Past" refers

to points that are no longer actual, "future" to points

that are not yet actual. Inauthentic time presents it­

self as an autonomous system involving human reality only as occurring in it factually or as something that

occasionally takes its measure through acts of mem­ory, expectation, and perception. Authentic temporal­ity, on the other hand, is identica! with the structure

of Dasein itself. Heidegger describes this temporality

as "ee-static," in the original etymological sense of

the term - that is, Dasein, in the process of "tem­

poralization," always "stands outside" or transcends itself. Dasein is outside itself in its past as what it has been; it is outside itself in the present by making­

present entities in the world; and it is outside itself

in the future that "comes toward" it. Past, present, and

fu ture, as "ec-stases" oftemporality, are neither succes-

si ve time-points nor temporal modes of appearance nor

the intentiona! correlates of memory, perception, and expectation. They are Dasein's ways of being-in-the­

world. Among the ecstasies, the future enjoys priority. The activities in which Dasein engages are not oriented

around the now, but around the ends toward which they

project. Dasein is always ahead ofitself; it is "futural."

Dasein's projecting into the future grounds authentic past and present by making them the past and present

of the project in which Dasein is engaged. The tem­poral ecstases therefore form a unity in Dasein, which

exists as futural being that makes things present in the very process ofhaving been.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE's investigation of temporality

owes much to Heidegger, from whom he borrows the

notions of ee-static temporality and authentic and in­

authentic time, and to Husserl. He commends Husserl

for not resorting, in his published writings on time

consciousness, to the transcendental ego in order to ac­

count for the unity of consciousness. Husserl 's absolute

flow, by intending itself in its flowing, hand les the task.

Sartre nonetheless thinks that Husserl 's mature position

is thoroughly ego logica! and that consciousness-as-ego

precludes the reaching out beyond the now that is es­

sential to the awareness of time. Imprisoned by the

ego in the now, retention and protention- in Sartre 's

vi vid image- batter in vain against the windowpanes

ofthe present. That the absolute flow may be the orig­

inal moment of the Husserlian ego 's self-constitution

and that its windows are wide open to past and future

does not seem to have occurred to Sartre. His under­

standing of the temporal ec-stases is determined by the division in his ontology between being-for-itself

and being-in-itself. The for-itself or consciousness is

defined as not being what it is conscious of, that is, being-in-itself. Past, present, and future, as modes of

being ofthe for-itself, are therefore ways in which the

for-itself surpasses itself toward what it is not. The

past is the for-itselfbehind itself as what it was but no

Ion ger is; the future is the for-itselfbefore itself as what

it will be but is not; the present is the presence of the

for-itselfto what it is not. Sartre describes the for-itself

in its temporal structure as a flight- specifically, "a

flight outside of co-present being and from the being

that it was towards the being that it will be."

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY Jinks Heidegger's tempo­ral ec-stases with the triple intentionality of Husserlian

TRAN DUC THAO 703

time-consciousness. He focuses on the conscious sub­

ject rather than Dasein, but this is an embodied sub­

ject engaged in the world. Time is a dimension of the

subject's being and not an object ofknowledge consti­

tuted by an ego standing outside time. The subject is

time. To elucidate this claim, Merleau-Ponty draws on

Husserl's conception ofthe absolute fiow. The subject

is a network of intentionalities, at once manifesting

itself and the world in its temporality. Presence en­

joys a privilege in this process because it is there that

our ee-static temporalization is centered. In !ater texts

Merleau-Ponty expresses reservations about whether

Husserl adequately recognized the transcendence that

exists at the heart of presence. JACQUES DERRIDA, more

recently, would agree with these reservations, seeing

in Husserl a late representative of the "metaphysics of

presence." One might argue, however, that Husserl 's

phenomenology oftemporality is, in fact, a careful ex­

amination of absence, offering grounds for a defense

ofthe view that absence can finally be understood only

in terms of its intimate intentiona! relationship with

presence.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Bemet, Rudolf. "Einleitung" [Introduction]. In Edmund Husserl. Texte zur Phănomenologie des inneren Zeitbe­wusstseins (1893-1917). Ed. Rudolf Bemet. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985, xi-xvii.

Brand, Gerd. Welt, Ich und Zeit. The Hague: Martinus Nij­hoff, 1955.

Brough, John B. "The Emergence of an Absolute Conscious­ness in Husserl's Early Writings on Time-Consciousness." Man and World 5 (1972), 298--326; rpt. in Husserl: Ex­positions and Appraisals. Ed. Frederick A. Elliston and Peter McCormick. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977, 83-100.

-. "Husserl 's Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness." In Husserl s Phenomenology: A Textbook. Ed. J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna. Lanham, MD: Center for Ad­vanced Research in Phenomenology/University Press of America, 1989, 249--89.

Evans, J. Claude. "The Myth of the Absolute Conscious­ness." In Crises of Continental Philosophy. Ed. Arleen Dallery and Charles E. Scott, with P. Holley Roberts. Al­bany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990, 35--43.

Heidegger, Martin. Die Grundprobleme der Phi:inomenologie [ 1927]. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Gesam­tausgabe 24. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975; The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982.

Held, Klaus. Lebendige Gegenwart. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.

Husserl, Edmund. Zur Phănomenologie des inneren Zeitbe­wusstseins (1893-1917). Ed. RudolfBoehm. Husserliana 10. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966; On the Pheno­menology ofthe Consciousness of Interna! Time (1893-1917). Trans. John Bamett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.

-. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Ed. Margot Fleischer. Husserliana 11. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.

Mclnemey, Peter K. Time and Experience. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

Miller, Izchak. Husserl, Perception, and Temporal Aware­ness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984.

Minkowski, Eugene. Le temps vecu: Etudes phenomenolo­giques et psychopathologiques. Paris: J. L. L. D' Artey, 1933; Lived Time. Trans. Nancy Metzel. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1970.

Seebohm, Thomas. Die Bedingungen der Măglichkeit der Tranzendental Philosophie. Bonn: Bouvier, 1962.

Sokolowski, Robert. Husserlian Meditations. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1974.

Wood, David. The Deconstruction of Time. Atlantic High­lands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989.

JOHN B. BROUGH Georgetown University

TRAN DUC THAO Thao was bom September

16, 1917, in Thai Binh, in what would !ater become

North Vietnam. He left for FRANCE in 1936 where he

pursued his philosophical studies. It was then and there

that he met JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, MAUR! CE MERLEAU-PONTY,

and JEAN CAVAILLES, who introduced him to the phi­

losophy of EDMUND HUSSERL. In 1941-42, under the

direction of Cavailles, Thao wrote his doctoral disser­

tation on the Husserlian method, and under the strong

infiuence of Merleau-Ponty, tumed from common in­

terpretations that made of Husserlian phenomenology

a doctrine of eterna! essences to a philosophy ofTIME,

ofhistorical subjectivity, and of universal HISTORY. For

as Husserl used to say, "atemporality is an omnitem­

porality, which is itselfbut a mode oftemporality."

It was then that lengthy dialogues took place be­

tween Sartre and Thao. These conversations were taken

down in shorthand with the aim of publishing them.

Thao gave his own version ofthem when he stated that

Sartre's invitation was for the purpose of proving that

EXISTENTIALISM couJd peacefully coexist with MARXISM

on the doctrina! plane. Sartre minimized the role of

Marxism insofar as he recognized its value solely in

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna,

Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 K luwer Academic Publishers.

704 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

terms ofpolitics and social history. The sphereofinfiu­ence would be shared by both Marxism and existential­ism, the former being competent with respect to social problems. Thao tried to point out to Sartre that quite to the contrary, Marxist philosophy was tobe taken seri­ously since it grappled with the fundamental problem of the relation of consciousness to matter. These dia­logues with Sartre, along with the destruction of Ger­man Fascism, necessitated a radical choice between either existentialism or Marxism, Sartre and Merleau­Ponty having already opted for the former. Owing to his phenomenological orientation, Thao broke with ex­istentialism, first with the publication ofhis article "La phenomenologie de 1 'esprit et son contenu reel" ( 1948) and !ater with Phenomenologie et materialisme dialec­tique ( 1951 ). Owing to this same orientation, the choice of Marxism created for Tran Duc Thao a need to rid the dual Hegelian and Husserlian phenomenologies of their idealistic form and metaphysical elements in or­der to salvage whatever else was left valid and place it at the service of dialectica! materialism for a scientific solution of the problem of subjectivity.

Tran Duc Thao's analysis of Husserlian phenomen­ology - especially the !ater writings, Die Krisis der

europăischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phănomenologie (1936) and "Die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Geometrie als intentional-historisches Problem" ( 1939) - led him to a complete rejection ofphenomenology altogether. The practica/ results of Husserl 's analyses are incompatible with the theoreti­cal framework in which they originated. MEANING that originates at the pre-predicative level cannot be the work of a transcendental ego who constitutes the mean­ing ofthe world outside of space and time, but is, rather, the work of a consciousness immersed in a histori­cal becoming. Husserl's transcendental EGO turns out to be the actual consciousness of each human being, within their own actual experience. At this juncture, Thao points out, Husserl falls into a total relativism: "the merchant at the market has his own market truth." Husserl 's theory of the constitution of the world with the contemplation of eterna! essences turns out to be a nihilism; therein consists the crisis of Western hu­manity, which in turn gave birth to irrational humanity, the existential human being whose claim is that the only sense of life is the lack of any sense, or MARTIN

HEIDEGGER 's "being-toward-death."

The solution to the crisis of Western humanity and others !ies for Thao in dialectica! materialism, thus the second part of the book: "The dialectic of real move­ment." What Thao stresses here is Husserl 's investi­galion turned right side up, by ridding it of idealistic formalism and thereby constructing a new rationality, a stress on the concrete contents of experience. The relationship between consciousness and its intentiona! object is explicated by reference to the pre-predicative level of conscious experience mediated by human la­hor. "The notion of production takes into full account the enigma of consciousness inasmuch as the object that is worked on takes its meaning for man as a hu­

man product." The realizing of meaning is precisely nothing but the symbolic transposition of the material operations of production into a system of intentiona! operations in which the subject appropriates the object ideally, in reproducing it in his or her own conscious­ness. "This is true reason for man, who, as being in the world, constitutes the world in the intensity of his lived experience." And the truth of any constitution such as this is measured only by the actual power ofthe mode ofproduction from which it takes its model. The humanization of nature through labor is how Thao ac­counts for how matters become life and, consequently, assumes human value.

Tran Duc Thao !ater frankly admits that an interpre­tation ofMarxism subject to the conditions of a person­ality cult engulfed Phenomenologie et materialisme di­alectique in a hopeless metaphysical juxtaposition of phenomenological content to material content which paved the way for the return of an idealistic dualism. In his studies between 1960 and 1970, Thao found that in order to avoid this danger, he had to minimize phenomenology, without thereby overcoming the jux­taposition. These essays form his second major work: Recherches sur l 'origine du langage et de la conscience (Investigations into the origin of language and con­sciousness, 1973). His analyses are divided into three parts: ( 1) the origin of consciousness by means of the indicative gesture, (2) the birth of LANGUAGE and the making of tools, and (3) Marxism and PSYCHOANALY­

srs. We will briefiy outline the first two investigations, for they truly present Thao's original contribution to the fields of anthropology, linguistics, and, of course, philosophy.

Thao's investigation into the genesis of conscious-

TRAN DUC THAO 705

ness finds it tobe due to the development oflanguage,

which, in turn, is generated by human activity in the

development of material conditions that precisely com­

prises human labor as social labor. The transition from

animal psychism to human consciousness is effected by the prehominid. What distinguishes the prehominid

from the animal is the indicative sign, which consti­tutes the original form of consciousness. The indica­

tive sign consists in pointing to a "relatively" distant

object and thus establishing a relationship between the subject (prehominid) and an object that is externa! and

independent. The reader will recognize here Thao's

vers ion ofphenomenology's thesis ofthe INTENTIONAL­

ITY of consciousness, which states that consciousness

is always consciousness of an object. Animals are in­

capable of pointing or indicating anything whatsoever

as a distant or externa! object. At the prehominid stage,

however, indicative gestures - pointing to the game

to be chased - serve to coordinate group movement

in hunting expeditions. As yet the indicative gesture

remains a natural and unconscious gesture as it occurs

only in an immediate biologica! situation. This uncon­

scious gesture will become conscious when the mem­

bers of the hunting expedition will not only indicate

game to other members, but to themselves individu­

ally, which means that the material gesture advances

from a linear form (indicating the object to others) to

a circular one (signifying back to oneselfas a member

of the group ). The reciprocity of the indicati ve ges­

ture is thus essential not only for consciousness, but more importantly, for self-consciousness. Humanity's

objective material relationship with the environment

entails a meaning experienced immediately, before it

emerges on the conscious level as language. Thus there

is a language ofreallife that develops for the material

conditions of sociallife. Language is not arbitrary; it is

a foundational moment of consciousness. Conscious­

ness is language, pre-thematic or subconscious at first

insofar as it is immersed in action, and thematic or fully

conscious when the lived experience of material con­

ditions is interrupted, providing thereby a pause- the

pause that is precisely what occasions consciousness

to take a look at or reftect upon that experience.

For Tran Duc Thao the origin of humanity, i.e.,

the moment when prehominid became hominid, co­

incides with the elaboration of the instrument into a

tool. The most intelligent of the higher apes, such as

chimpanzees, can only use their hands, and when they

manipulate objects they do so only to satisfy their iru­

mediate biologica! needs. Here Thao makes an enor­

mously vital distinction between the instrument and

the tool. The instrument as a separate or externa! ob­ject tobe manipulated by the organism is never viewed

as separate or externa!. The animal works only under the compulsion of a situation of biologica! need, and

thus can never abstract the moment of labor for the

satisfaction of a need to introduce a mediating element

between itself and the object of need. The object of

biologica! need always occupies a central position to

the animal's perceptual field. Hence it cannot go be­

yond the stage of immediate and direct manipulation,

since the total dynamic field does not allow for the

introduction of a second object, in other words, does

not allow for mediation, which is precisely what com­prises thinking. With humans, however, the needed

object is transformed through the mediation ofthe tool

into an object of labor. Thus productive labor, which

marks the beginning of human activity, and the tran­

sition from nature to culture, becomes possible only

when prehominids have gone beyond simple pointing.

At this stage they are already capable of an idealizing

representation of the absent object to themselves, but

they can also create the ideal and typical form to be

actualized in the tool. Hence the transition from the presentative indica­

tive sign of the absent this is the first form of reftec­

tion and the manifestation of that "liberation of the

brain" whereby humans transcend the limitations of

the present situation, which always imprisons the ani­

mal. After a certain dialectica! development, however,

it also permits them to escape reality and confine them­

selves to symbolic construction by denying the reality

of human life. Idealism is born from the transforma­

tion ofthese symbolic constructions into principles and

therefore the negation of objective reality. Thus ideal­

ism, according to Thao, must once aga in be turned right

side up. When years !ater Tran Duc Thao carne to reftect

upon this investigation, he confessed to having become

stagnated on the pure formalism ofthe threefold com­

bination ofthe (here or absent) "this" (T) in the motion

(M) ofthe form (F). At the same time, the development

ofthese figures should have been able to account forthe

development of the various semiotic structures of lan-

706 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

guages as they originate in both humanity and the child. But a purely mechanistic combination done almost en­tirely within the horizon of dialectica! materialism was expected to bridge the gap between the animal and the human. Thus Thao concluded that he had confused two entirely different semiotic formations - the gestures of the prehominid and language properly so-called, or verbal language which is specific to humans - in a single confused representation of language. In short, from the years 1960-70 to the early 1980s, Thao was confusing the gestures ofthe prehominid with the lan­guage of early humans so that, on the semiotic plane, he was suppressing the essential difference between the most evolved animal and the most primitive hu­man by reducing the specificity ofhuman language to the development of a simple combination of emotions and gestural signs. This reduction, Thao admits, was due to the mechanistic metaphysics, a metaphysics that denies the dialectica! unity of human history, thereby depriving humanity of its real meaning.

Thao confesses that the third investigation, "Marx­ism and Psychoanalysis," was written primarily as a concession to the times. The events of 1968 had profoundly influenced inteliectual Communists who naively thought that PSYCHOANALYSIS was promising the world by shedding light upon the mystery of lan­guage. It did not take long for Thao to realize that psychoanalysis would be ofno help with regard to the problem of sentence formation.

Mention has already been made that in his Recherches sur l 'origine du langage et de la conscience Tran Duc Thao had tried to correct Phimomenologie et materialisme dialectique by minimizing or even neglecting phenomenology in order to undertake an entirely materialistic approach to the genesis of con­sciousness, one rid ofphenomenological subjectivism. This neglect, confesses Thao, was not so much a matter of choice as a response to the dictates of the politica! dogmatic deformation of Marxism engendered by the "proletarian cultural revolution." Today, Thao could rid himself of ali philosophical taboos by developing a knowledge of humanity thereby restoring the dialec­tica! unity of both theory and practice in a globalistic comprehension of world history.

Tran Duc Thao retumed to France in September 1991, taking up residence in Paris in order to renew his, by now, enthusiastic research with the aim of elab-

orating the project of the unification of science and philosophy starting with the origins of consciousness and its development with the historicity of the world. Enriched now by the contributions of Husserlian stud­ies ofhis third period, Thao began to write feverishly, intuiting correctly that he had little time left in which to author what would be his last book. It was not to be completed, for Thao died tragicaliy as a result of an accidental fali on April24, 1993. He was seventy six.

Tran Duc Thao and DANIEL HERMAN, his major En­glish translator, became very active correspondents for about a year before his sudden death. Herman was translating his unpublished French manuscripts as soon as he would receive them from Thao, who hoped that his forthcoming book would somehow alieviate his dire financial situation as weli as leave to posterity his final philosophical testament. This testament now con­sists ofthree essays with two appendices. One ofthese essays with the appendices was published by Analecta

Husserliana in 1995. The first essay "Pour une logique formelie et dialec­

tique," sets up dialectica! logic in stark opposition to formal LOGIC that, at first impression, would lead one to think that the former logic is very much in opposi­tion to the customary way of thinking. Formal logic, with the "three laws of thought" comprising its back­bone, considers the present instant to be immobile, so that movement would constitute a passage from one immobile instant to the next, with the net result that formal logic could not possibly be faithful to reality, as movement would turn out tobe a succession ofjux­taposed instants. Such a metaphysical conception of things that thinks in terms of strong disjunctions -eitherlor, yeslno- is a thought that thinks outside of time, outside of the temporal flow. Against this false metaphysics according to which something either ex­ists or not, Heraclitus a vers to the contrary, "everything is and at the same time is not, for it flows." ·

This formal logic with its successive instants was also refuted by HEGEL when he rejected the excluded middle term. Formal logic says that something is ei­ther A or "'A; there is no middle term, to which Hegel replies that there is a third term in that very same the­sis. A is itself that third term, for A can either A+ or "'A. Thus A is itself the third term that o ne wants to ex­el ude. The formula ofHeraclitus, taken up by Hegel­"everything is and equally is not'' - was abbreviated

TRAN DUC THAO 707

in such a way as to give rise to regrettable confusions,

for one was led to think that for dialectica! logic being

itself is not, which is contrary to common sense. Thus

both logics, opposed to each other as they were, had

to be synthesized, sin ce both did justice to reality and

common sense. According to Thao, in "La dialectique comme dy­

namique de la temporalization," this task was left to

Husserl, and was accomplished by means of the tem­

poralization in the living present. Real time, according

to Husserl, is not clock time as Aristotle conceived

of it in his famous definition, "time is the measure of

motion, according to a before and an after," a defini­

tion that until Husserl had never been challenged. Thao

seems to forget Bergson here, since his famous distinc­

tion between clock time and real duration undoubtedly

influenced Husserl. Be that as it may, Aristotle's con­

ception of time makes the instant an immobile instant,

and motion is once again made incomprehensible, for

how can it be reconstructed given its immobility? For

Husserl, on the other hand, "the present that flows (i.e.,

the living present) is the present of the movement of

flowing, of having flowed, and of having yet to flow.

The now, the continuity of the past, and the living

horizon ofthe future outlined in protention occur con­

sciously 'at the same time' in an 'at the same time'

that flows." With phenomenological time, time is no

longer considered as a fourth dimension of space, says

Thao, and we are now able effectively to reconstruct

history as the measuring ofhumanity with its wealth of

real relations instead of as the abstraction of recipro­

ca! relations. Thus Thao applies the theory ofthe living

present in "La theorie du present vivant comme theorie

de l'individualite" as a theory that alone can account

for individuality in the sciences, especially biology.

Thao once again finds fault with Aristotle when he

maintained that "science concerns only the general,

existence concerns only the singular." For over two

thousand years this Aristotelian motto went unchal­

lenged, or a science of singular existence was never

fully considered, even though in its practica! applica­

tion science had to deal with that existence. Those very

dealings, however, only amounted to meeting points.

Science would never grasp existence in itself or the

singular individual as such with the individuality of

the existence being reduced as it was to an abstract

point. The living present, continues Thao, is first of ali

and essentially the concrete individuality of singular

existence constituting itself at each instant in the tem­

poralization or intrinsic movement ofthat very instant,

in its interval ofbecoming- the completion of which

is accomplished by itself in its passage to the following

instant. The evidence of the interna! dialectic of the !iv­

ing present can be found in the analysis of biologica!

temporalization. Suffice it to say, in Thao's own words,

that "at each instant biologica! individuality surges as a

system offunctions inherited from the past, that which

has been sedimented in its past and yet remains actu­

ally present in retention which blends with the actual

now, which provoked tension in the metabolism ofthe

functioning ofthese functions, or inprotention into the

imminent future." It is sincerely hoped that Tran Duc Thao, emi­

nent Marxist and phenomenologist, will finally tind

his rightful place in the global history of meaning.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Caveing, Maurice. "Review of Tran Duc Thao, Recherches sur 1 'origine du langage et de la conscience." Raison Presente 3 (1974), 118-24.

Lyotard, Jean Fran~;ois. La phenomenologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992.

Ricceur, Paul. "Phenomenology." Trans. Daniel J. Herman and D. V. Morano. Southwestern Journa/ of Phi/osophy (1974), 149--68.

Rousset, B. "Tran duc Thao." Dictionnaire des philosophes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984, 2528-30.

Thao, Tran Duc. "Marxisme et phenomenologie." Revue In­ternationale (1946).

-. "La phenomenologie de 1 'esprit et son contenu reel." Les temps modernes 3 ( 1948).

-. Triet iy dă di den dău? (What is the state ofphilosophy?). Minh Tan, 1950.

-. Phenomeno/ogie et materia/isme dialectique. Minh Tan, 1951; rpt. New York: Gordon & Breach, 1971; Fenomenologia e materialismo dialettico. Trans. R. Tomassini. Milan: Lampugnani Nigri, 1970; Phenomen­ology and Dialectica/ Materialism. Trans. Daniel J. Her­man and D. V. Morano. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986.

-. "Le noyau rationel dans la dialectique hegelienne." La Pensee 19 ( 1965).

-."Le movement de l'indication comme forme originaire de la conscience." La Pensee 128 ( 1966).

-."Du geste de !'index a l'image typique." La Pensee 147-49 (1969-70).

-. Recherches sur 1 'origine du langage et de la conscience. Paris: Editions Sociales, 1973; Investigations into the Ori­gin ofLanguage and Consciousness. Trans. Daniel J. Her­man and R. L. Armstrong. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984.

708 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

~. "La naissance du premier homme." La Pensee 254 (1986).

~. Laformation de l'homme (1986]. Unpublished. ~."La double phenomenologie Hegelienne et Husserlienne"

[ 1992]. Unpublished in French; "The Dual Hegelian and Husserlian Phenomenologies." In Analecta Husserliana 46. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995, 160--3.

~. "La dialectique de la societe primitive." Unpublished in French; "The Dialectic of Ancient Society." In Analecta Husserliana 46. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995, 163--6.

~. "Pour une logique formelle et dialectique" [1993]. Un­published.

~. "La dialectique logique comme dialectique generale de la temporalisation." Unpublished in French; "Dialect­cal Logic as the General Logic of Temporalization." In Analecta Husserliana 46. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995, 155--9.

~. "La theorie du present vivant comme theorie de l 'individualite" [ 1993]. Unpublished.

DANIEL J. HERMAN

University of West Florida

TRUTH In the Logische Untersuchungen

( 1900-1901) EDMUND HUSSERL gives an account oftruth

that in ali its variants is based on EVIDENCE. He does

not share the traditional view thatjudgment is the only

place of truth. Even simple objects - e.g., sensuous

objects- can be intuitively (evidently) given and in

this sense be "true." Nor can Husserl 's concept oftruth

be reduced to the traditional idea of a correspondence

or adequatio between thought and object, despite his

use on severa! occasions ofthe term "correspondence."

Transcendental philosophy inquires after the mode

and the conditions of possibility in which an object

and beliefs are constituted in consciousness. We be­

lieve that objects exist and that they ha ve certain qual­

ities. But in the transcendental perspective we cannot

presuppose the existence of real objects that are pre­

given independently of our consciousness ofthem and

to which our consciousness has only to adjust. (We

tind this notion objected to already in KANT's Kritik

der reinen Vernunft.) In the Logische Untersuchun­

gen Husserl avoids the model of a correspondence of

thought and object. Rather, he searches for the condi­

tions of possibility of the correspondence among dif­

ferent subjective acts that refer to the same object.

He recognizes the correspondence ofmy judging with

the judging of others as weli as the coherence of my

own intendings in their referring to the same object

as conditions of objectivity and objective truth. Both

are founded on the possibility of having intuitions of

objects and state of affairs. The idea of objectivity

implies that the intended object is valid at ali times

and for everyone, and is thus communicable. We ha ve

to make clear how it is possible to express states of

affairs in an appropriate form of communication and

conversely, how by understanding this expression, we

can relate it back to an act, possibly even an intuitive

one. This means that everyone (including myself) can

actualize the very same meaning, whether emptily in­

tended or intuitively given. Objectivity and objective

truth are founded on the possibility ofhaving identica!

MEANING. Truth for Husserl is connected with evidence, i.e.,

where objects and states ofaffairs are given intuitively

as they themselves are oras given in person. Evidence

always has degrees and levels. The levels of evidence

are connected to the modes of apprehension. The low­

est degree of evidence is formed by signitive ( or sym­

bolic) acts. Signitive acts intend their object by asso­

ciation, i.e., by using a sign. Pictorial acts represent

their objects by means of an image, i.e., analogically.

Among pictorial acts there are differences of intuitive­

ness, depending on the number of details represented

and the degree of similarity. The maximum intuitive­

ness in pictorial acts is achieved by the representa­

tion of ali individual elements in the greatest possible

similarity to what is intended. Intuitive acts, however,

present the object itself, even if only by perspectiva!

adumbrations, e.g., in the intuition of real things. The

ideal aim ofthis gradualiy increasing fulfillment of an

intuitive intention is termed adequate evidence. In ad­

equate evidence every perspective of an object would

be presented at once in the most intuitive way.

Evidence is not a feeling that guarantees beyond

doubt the truth of a judgment. Evidence is not a cri­

terion of an absolute and unchangeable truth. Husserl

characterizes evidence as the experience of truth, i.e.,

as an intentiona! act in which the intended object is

presented intuitively, though in different degrees of

fulfiliment. Evidence always has degrees. The possi­

bility of increasing the degree of evidence sometimes

(though not in every case) leads to the ideal aim ofad-

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

TRUTH

equate evidence in which the object is given just as it is intended. In adequate evidence each partial intention is perfectly fulfilled.

Husserl 's first concept of truth (T 1) is grounded in the concept of adequate evidence. In §39 of the sixth ofthe Logische Untersuchungen, Husserl characterizes subjective (noetic) truth as an act in which there is a perfect coincidence ofthe intended and the intuitively given. TI can be described objectively (noematicalty) as the objective correlate of this act of adequate evi­dence. Truth is the objective correlate o fan act that both identifies the object and at the same time intuitively and completely fulfills its intention. Thus Husserl can speak oftruth as an identity. In adequate evidence we experi­ence the complete coincidence ofthe emptily intended and the intuitively given.

Sensuous perception of real objects is never com­pletely adequate. Objects in time and space always have a non-visible side and change through time. Propositions conceming the real world can only be valid presumptively. They are valid only until they are "invatidated" by new experience. In contrast, the achievement in adequation of an unchangeable "truth in itself' (established once and for alt) is an ideal that can only be realized in LOGIC and MATHEMATICS. Husserl uses the concept of a "truth in itself," derived from Bolzano, in his search in the Logische Untersuchungen for a foundation of pure logic. Later on he recognized that his concept was to close to Leibniz's verites de raison.

But every truth, even that which presents itself as valid "in itself," has to legitimate itself in acts of our consciousness and, from a transcendental perspective, it thus contains an unavoidable relation to its consti­tution in subjective acts. In the use of adequate evi­dence as the foundation of his concept of truth there !ies hidden (at least in the Logische Untersuchun­gen) another presupposition: I cannot doubt adequate evidence. Adequacy impties apodicticity. In the first book of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phănomenologie und phănomenologischen Philosophie ( 1913) Husserl loosens this connection by pointing out that evidence is bound up with a concordant and continuous synthe­sis. Thus even evidence presumed to be adequate can be disappointed in further experience. Adequate evi­dence is no longer presupposed as an achievable aim. Now adequation is characterized as a regulative idea

709

in Kant's sense. In his !ater work Husserl recognizes that even apodictic evidence can be disappointed, but only by means of another apodictic evidence. Truth re­mains the correlate of originary evidence, which is the "source of alt justification." In Cartesianische Med­itationen [ 1931] Husserl points out that there can be apodictic evidences of objects, e.g., the ego cogito, that are not adequately given.

In §39 of the Sixth Investigation, Husserl presents three supplementary concepts oftruth. They appear to point back to the first concept oftruth (TI) and expli­cate individual aspects of the coincidence of intention and intuition by reformulating them in the form of sep­arate concepts oftruth.

While TI is directed to the provisional empirica! experience of evidence, the fult concept of truth goes beyond the experience of an individual act. The objec­tivity of truth implies validity for everyone and at alt times. The second concept of truth (T2) is character­ized as the relation of complete fulfiltment on the level of eidetic laws, i.e., as an idea. The ideal relationship of total coincidence of an intending act with a fulfilt­ing act is taken as the idea of absolute adequacy. Its correlate is the idea of truth.

The third concept of truth (T3) is oriented to the ful­filting, intuitive act and is characterized as the evidence ofthe intuitively given object. The given object is ex­perienced as the fulfilting or "truth-making" object of an intention. Even in the Logische Untersuchungen this concept (T3) maintains priority in regard to the other concepts oftruth. As a designation ofthe truth-making intuition it sustains TI and thus also its ideatized ver­sion T2. Hen ce as the truth-making evidence, T3 has to be the foundation of every traditional concept of truth as "coincidence." In Ideen !Husserl mentions only T3, although with the qualification that adequate evidence is only a regulati ve idea. In Formale und transzenden­tale Logik ( 1929) he mentions that T3 is "in itself' the first concept of truth.

Thefourth concept oftruth (T4) is characterized as correctness of judging. The judgment (and its expres­sion in language) has to adjust itself with re gard to the intuitively given object. The proposition "corrects" itself with respect to the intuitive state of affairs. In Formale und transzendentale Logik Husserl points out that T4 is the concept of critically justified truth which is the aim of science.

710 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

In the Logische Untersuchungen, the contrary con­

cept of falsehood is presented (analogously with the

concept of truth) as a negative ideal of ultimate dis­appointment. In the case of falsehood, disappointment

and conflict do not simply indicate the mere lack of ev­

idence, but rather rest on the intuition of a conflicting

intention. Thus falsehood is dependent on the intuition

of an opposed state ofaffairs. The first conviction is an­

nulled by the intuition ofthe opposite case. The priority

of T3 manifests itself in the fact that truth and false­

hood can only be grounded in evidence. Thus truth in

the sense of T3 can ha ve no counterconcept of false­

hood. The mere lack of evidence is not an evidence for

the opposite fact. T3 is the foundation ofpropositional

truth because it allows a correspondence (in the sense

of T4) of the proposition with the intuitively given

state of affairs (in the sense of T3). Thus the compli­

cated problem of propositional truth can only become

intelligible when the process of categoria! intuition is

elucidated. Each of the concepts T2-T4 thematizes a certain

aspect of T 1 : T2 characterizes the idea of truth, while

T3 refers to the basic concept of fulfilling evidence.

And in T4 we see that T3 is the primary starting point

ofHusserl's theory of evidence and truth. The concept

T4 stresses that the intention has to adjust itselfto the

intuitively given object. As the proposition "corrects"

itself it "moves" el o ser to the intuitive state of affairs. When we tie truth and especially propositional truth

to evidence, we need to extend the concept ofintuition.

Not only can there be intuition of real concrete sensu­

ous objects, there can also be intuition of states of af­

fairs. Husserl ca lis the latter categoria! intuition. Propo­

sitional truth is grounded in the intuition of a state of

affairs. But we should not forget that intuitively given

sensuous objects can be "true" in the sense offulfilling

evidence. In his !ater work Husserl examines the foundation

and the sense ofthe modern sciences. They understand

the concept of truth as correctness (T4) as a critica!

approximation to "the" truth. Formal logic (with the

logica! principle ofthe excluded middle) and the exact

sciences understand truth and falsehood as a quality

that belongs to the ideal judgment once and for ali.

In this idealized view every proposition is "in itself'

true or false. Husserl inquires after the justification ofthese idealized principles in his genetic phenomen-

ology by tracing their evidence back to the originary

evidence of individual objects. In this respect logic

needs a theory of experience. Husserl carries out this

recourse to the experience of individual objects as the

substrate of the most basic type of evidence in Er­

fahrung und Urteil (1939). In this work his interest is

the realm of pre-predicative experience and its trans­

formation in predicative judgment. He is searching in

the realm of pre-predicative experience for the origin

ofthe basic logica! categories that are given in nucleo

in pre-predicative experience and that are transformed

into their complete form in predicative activity. Thus we find a renewed interest in the problem of the ful­

fillment of categoria! intuition from the perspective of

GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY. From the point of view of a sense-critique of sci­

ence, the problem of the justification of idealizations leads to an extension of the phenomenology to the

realm ofuFEWORLD. The idealizations (the principle of

the excluded middle, the idea of an unextended center

ofgravity) in the context oflogic and the exact sciences

are self-evident presuppositions. If we are aiming at a

critique of idealizations we must lea ve the judgments

of experience in full concreteness, and therefore we

ha ve to investigate them outside of the scientific con­

text in the prescientific lifeworld. Methodologically, it

is reasonable that an idealization can only be justified in a realm in which it is not valid in a self-evident way. In

the lifeworld there are only truths that are subjectively

and historically relative to the situation. How is it pos­

sible against this background to show the justification

ofthe idealized exact scientific truth? We cannot claim that the lifeworld in which we live every day is presci­

entific. The insights of the idealizing modern sciences are constantly "flowing into" our concrete Iifeworld.

In Die Krisis der europăischen Wissenschaften und die

transzendentale Phănomenologie ( 1936) Husserl uses the EIDETIC METHOD to find the nonrelative structures

that remain the same in every concrete surrounding

world. These nonrelative structures he will call "the"

lifeworld and he believes them to be an appropriate

justification for scientific idealities. In his existential ontology, MARTIN HEIDEGGER

searches in a completely different way for an origi­

nary dimension of truth that can be the basis for an

understanding of propositional truth and the traditional

concept of truth as correspondence. He criticizes the

TRUTH

traditional concept of adaequatio intellectus et rei. He

asks for the sense ofthe correspondence, which seems

to him to be very general and empty. In which sense do thought and abject correspond (Sein und Zei!, §44

[ 1927])? Intellectus cannot refer to the judgment as a real event but only to the ideal contents of judg­

ment. Yet how can we conceive of truth as a relation between the ideal contents of a proposition and the real abject ontologically? For Heidegger the attempt to clarify truth as correspondence is misleading. The positing of the members of the relation of correspon­

dence in two different regions of being does not suit the problem.

Heidegger's way of understanding the originary phenomenon oftruth is to "make clear the mode ofbe­ing ofthe cognition itself." His starting point is apropo­

sition that is not based on intuition. Someone says with his or her back to the wall: this picture hangs askew. The proposition embodies the claim to ha ve discovered the picture (as a being) in the "how" (the mode) ofits being. The proposition displays this "how" of being

in LANGUAGE. In the attempt to verify the proposition by sensuous experience, the recognition, according to Heidegger, is directed only to the intended being (the

picture) and not to the proposition. It is directed to the being itself (which is to be verified by perception) in its mode of uncoveredness (Entdeckt-heit), i.e., in its showing-itself. Confirmation (Bewahrung) means this showing-itself of the being in the same way in which it is intended in the proposition.

A true proposition shows the being in its mode of uncoveredness. The phenomenon of "originary truth" does not have the character of correspondence. It is the ground of the concept of truth in the sense of cor­respondence and propositional truth. By unfolding the

meaning of aletheia Heidegger shows us a more orig­inary sense of truth as unconcealment ( Unverborgen­

heit). He wants to show that this concept coincides with the first and originary concept of truth in Greek thinking. In this primary sense only the discovering hu­man DASEIN can be "true" while it is Being-discovering

(Entdeckend-Sein). On the other hand, beings (Seien­

des) that we can find in the world can only "be" in a secondary mode, i.e., as being-discovered (Entdeckt­

sein). They can only make a claim to uncoveredness.

Their fundament is the Being-discovering of the hu­man Dasein. The being-true of a discovered being is

711

only possible as being discovered by human Dasein as being-in-the-world.

The authentic Being of Dasein, the being-in-the­truth, presupposes disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of

the world in states-of-mind (Befindlichkeiten), under­standing, and discourse, i.e., the constitution ofthe be­ing (Seinsverfassung) of human Dasein as thrownness ( Geworfenheit) and project (Entwurf). The mode ofbe­ing ofDasein is characterized equiprimordially (gleich­

urspriinglich) by the possibility of both authenticity (being-in-the-truth) and the deficient mode (Verfalls­

form) ofinauthenticity. In the mode ofthe "they" (das

Man ), of obstruction ( Verstelltheit), of gossip ( Gerede ),

Dasein is in untruth. Thus the being-in-the-world of human Dasein is determined at the same time by truth and untruth. We must always fight anew for the truth of Dasein (Being-discovering). Following Heidegger, the negative expression "a-letheia" expresses the fact

that hiding itself is a main characteristic of Being. In the hiding-itself of Being, human Dasein is hidden for itself in the mode ofuntruth.

Heidegger wants to make evident how the transi­tion from the originary concept of truth as aletheia to

"correspondence" came about. He wants to make clear that correspondence is only a derived form oftruth: in a proposition Being should be displayed in the mode of its uncoveredness. In the inauthentic forms of mere reproducing and hearsay, the proposition becomes it­self something ready-to-hand (Zuhandenes). Thus we have to engage in the demonstration of the uncov­eredness that is preserved in the proposition. In this way the relation between proposition and discovered being then itself becomes something present-at-hand (Vorhandenes) and can be understood as a correspon­dence of proposition and being (intellectus and res).

The fact that we are used to disregarding the originary dimension of truth is an aspect of our forgetfulness of

Being (Seinsvergessenheit). The originary dimension of truth in human Dasein

"is given" (gibt es) only as long as there is Dasein. Ali

truth is relative to the being of Dasein. Thus the claim

that there could be "eterna! truth" seems to Heidegger to be "fantastic." Against the background of this rela­

tivity of truth to the being of Dasein, Heidegger asks anew: why must we presuppose that truth "is given"?

His answer is that the possibility oftruth (authenticity)

and untruth (inauthenticity) belongs to the facticity of

712 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

human Dasein. From the point of view of existential ontology, the being of human Dasein (its disclosed­ness) and truth are synonyms.

Heidegger's "Kehre" in his !ater philosophy- e.g., in "Vom Wesen des Grundes" ( 1929) and "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit" ( 1930)- includes a modified approach to the problem oftruth. In the Kehre Heidegger defini­tively lays asi de the idea of a final foundation ( oftruth) in subjectivity. He determines the essence of truth as "freedom," i.e., as "Freisein zum Offenbaren eines Of­

fenen" or, otherwise put, as "Seinlassen des Seienden."

In opposition to Sein und Zeit, where he understands freedom as a project from out of the situation into which Dasein is thrown, freedom is now characterized as the revealing (Entbergung) of Being. This event (Geschehen) occurs (ereignet sich) in human Dasein, but it is hubris (Vermessenheit) if humans take them­selves as the measure of ali beings. Ek-sistent, reveal­ing Dasein owns humankind, so that the appropriate attitude towards the originary truth of Being (as such in totality) is no longer a decisive project, but rather releasement ( Gelassenheit).

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Dupre, Louis. "The Concept of Truth in Husserl's Logica! lnvestigations." Philosophy and Phenomenological Re­search 24 (1964), 345--54.

Farber, Marvin. "Heidegger on the Essence ofTruth." Philos­ophy and Phenomenological Research 18 ( 1958), 523-32.

Heuer, Jung-Sun. Die Struktur der Wahrheitserlehnisse und die Wahrheitsauffasuungen in Edmund HusserL~ "Logis­chen Untersuchungen." Amersbek: Verlag an den Lott­beck, 1989.

Oleson, Soren Gosvig. "La verite dans les 'Recherches logique' d'Edmund Husserl." Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 49 ( 1987), 452-65.

Pietersma, Henry. "Truth and the Evident." In Husserl s Phenomenology: A Textbook. Ed. J. N. Mohanty and William R. McKenna. Lanham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology/University Press of America, 1989,213--47.

Tugendhat, Ernst. Der Wahrheitshegriffbei Husserl und Hei­degger. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970.

Waelhens, Alphonse de. Phenomenologie et verite: Essais sur l 'evolution de l 'idee de veri te chez Husserl et Heideg­ger. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953.

DIETER LOHMAR Husserl-Archiv, Universităt zu Kăln