taminiaux, 'the metamorphoses of phenomenological relation

THE METAMORPHOSES OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL

REDUCTION

The Aquinas Lecture, 2004

THE METAMORPHOSES OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL

REDUCTION

Jacques Taminiaux

Under the auspices of theWisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taminiaux, Jacques, 1928- The metamorphoses of phenomenological reduction

/ by Jacques Taminiaux.— 1st ed. p. cm. — (The Aquinas lecture ; 2004) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Phenomenology—History. 2. Methodology—

History. I. Title. II. Series. B829.5.T29 2004 142’.7—dc22

2003027872

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© 2004 Marquette University PressPrinted in the United States of America

Prefatory

The Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the International Honor Society for Philosophy at Marquette University, each year invites a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aqui-nas.

The 2004 Aquinas Lecture, The Metamorpho-ses of Phenomenological Reduction, was delivered on Sunday, February 22, 2004, by Jacques Tamin-iaux, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College.

Jacques Taminiaux was educated at the Uni-versity of Louvain, where he earned a B.A. in Phi-losophy in 1948, Doctor Juris in 1950, a Licentiate in Philosophy in 1951, a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1954, and a Maître agrégé in Philosophy in 1967, with the dissertation, “La nostalgie de la Grèce à l’aube de l’Idéalisme allemand.”

Professor Taminiaux has been professor of philosophy at Boston College since 1989. Prior to that he was professor of philosophy at Lou-vain-la-Neuve. He was also visiting professor at Universidad Federal, Rio de Janeiro, in 1980, at Université Laval in 1970, and at Boston College, every other year from 1968 to 1990.

Professor Taminiaux’s publications include the following books: Naissance de la philosophie Hégélienne de l’état: Commentaire et traduction

6 Jacques Taminiaux

de la Realphilosophie d’Iéna (1805-1806), Paris, 1984; Dialectic and Difference: Finitude in Modern Thought, London, 1985; Lectures de l’ontologie fon-damentale: Essais sur Heidegger, Grenoble, 1989; La fille de Thrace et le penseur professionel: Arendt et Heidegger; Paris, 1992; Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology, Albany, 1993; Le Théâtre des philosophes: La tragédie, l’être, l’action, Grenoble, 1995, and Sillages phénoménologiques / Auditeurs et lecteurs de Heidegger, Brussels, 2002. He has also published well over one hundred articles and has delivered many invited lectures.

In 1977 Professor Taminiaux received the Prix Francqui, which is awarded annually by the King of Belgium to the nation’s outstanding scholar. He is a member of the Academie Royale de Belgique, the Institut International de Philosophie, and of the Academia Europaea, Cambridge, U.K. He was awarded a medal by the National Foundation for Scientific Research, Belgium, in 1990, and received an honorary degree from the Pontificia Universita Catolica del Peru, Lima, in 1996.

To Professor Taminiaux’s distinguished list of publications, Phi Sigma Tau is pleased to add: The Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction.

The Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction

byJacques Taminiaux

The title I have announced is: “The Metamorpho-ses of Phenomenological Reduction.” The word “metamorphosis” belongs to ordinary language; it means a change of form or of character by develop-ment. The word “reduction” is a technical word which designates the principal methodological rule of phenomenology. Hence, the title of my lecture is meant to suggest that in the development of the phenomenological movement the methodologi-cal procedure called “reduction” underwent several changes of character. In order to analyze and elucidate those changes, I have decided to focus primarily on two topics, the body and the mind, because the way the found-ers of the phenomenological movement—Husserl first, then Heidegger—dealt with those two topics makes intelligible the metamorphoses at stake, i.e., not only the changes that occurred with the transi-tion from the phenomenological work of Husserl to the phenomenological work of Heidegger, but also with subsequent developments and changes that occurred in the wake of those two authors, thanks to their students and readers. Indeed, the

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treatment by Husserl and Heidegger of the two topics I just mentioned reveals on close inspection several blind spots, which were to arouse objec-tions and to incite other approaches that claimed to be more phenomenological, more faithful to the phenomena than the previous ones. I use reduction as a point of reference for a simple reason that I shall now elucidate.

ISince its inception with the publication of Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen at the beginning of the twentieth century, the philosophical trend called “phenomenology” has been an attempt to be the logos of all phenomena appearing within the scope of human experience, or to give those phenomena the opportunity to show as precisely as possible what characterizes them specifically. Focusing thereby his investigations on the descrip-tion of what appears in the field of human expe-rience, Husserl repeatedly claimed that the only possible method for the strictly descriptive way of doing philosophy that he was proposing was what he called reduction (Reduktion). In order to approach any topic whatsoever within the sphere of human experience without prejudice, without systematic distortion, without taking for granted traditional theses—let alone prevailing Weltan-schauungen—without succumbing to fascination

Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction 9

for the successes of modern science, and in order to allow the topic at stake to display its distinctive characteristics, it is necessary, Husserl repeatedly claimed, to practice again and again a reduction. Nobody can become a phenomenologist without practicing reduction as a methodological principle for any descriptive investigation. It is important to notice that the methodological rule of reduction combines two moves: a nega-tive one, and a positive one. The negative move consists in suspending what blocks the way to the phenomena. The positive move is a return—a re-ductio—to the specific mode of appearing of the phenomenon. Let us pay attention first to the way the phenom-enological reduction operates in Husserl’s work. He calls the negative move of suspending by the name epocha Greek word that designates a pause, a cessation, or an abstention, whereas he insists that the positive move of return to the matter itself (die Sache selbst) in its specific way of givenness consists in getting a view of a relationship called intention-ality, a relationship that characterizes consciousness as such in the entire range of its modes. One may wonder at the outset if the character-ization by Husserl of these two moves on a strictly methodological level, in his initial articulation of a definition of the phenomenological way of doing philosophy, does not already involve a certain

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notion of the body as well as a certain conception of the mind prior to the thematization of these two topics, thanks to a descriptive investigation. I, therefore, propose to deal successively with these two points, i.e., 1) to inquire into the implicit presence of a certain notion of the body and of the mind in Husserl’s theory of method, and 2) to interrogate the explicit thematization by Hus-serl of the body and of the mind on the level of a descriptive investigation. 1a) As far as methodology is concerned, it is well known that Husserl practiced his research in a specific field of investigation before reflecting on the method of his research and before attempting to characterize his philosophical project. That field was the one upon which German philosophers were focusing during the last decades of the nine-teenth century, a field they called Erkenntnislehre, theory of knowledge. With respect to that field, the German thought at the time was divided into two major trends: Empiricism and neo-Kantian-ism. Having been trained as a mathematician, Husserl spontaneously borrowed his conceptual tools from one of those two trends when he first began to reflect philosophically. Indeed, in his early attempts to provide an answer to the question: What makes arithmetic possible as a science?, he more or less naïvely adopted the views of empiri-cism. Now, it turns out that many representatives


of empiricism in the Germanic world were strongly indebted to the teaching of John Stuart Mill, who clearly subscribed to a specific notion of the body and of the mind. Let me explain. Establishing a theory of knowl-edge requires an investigation into the foundations of logic considered in its twofold sense: formal logic taken as a study of the inner consistency of cognitive assertions and their connection, and material logic taken as an elucidation of the claim that these assertions and reasonings “reach” reality and, therefore, are true. According to the empiricist theory of knowledge, the investigation into these foundations depends on a strictly induc-tive observation of facts in conformity with the method that was supposed to have assured the obvious successes of the sciences of nature, above all, the tremendous advances of physics. As a result of this methodological principle, the empiricist theory of knowledge took it for granted that the facts liable to clarify the foundations of knowledge in the twofold sense of formal logic and material logic were observable facts occurring in the mind, the mental facts each of us is acquainted with, facts that in the last decades of the nineteenth century were focused upon by a new empirical science, empirical psychology, a discipline which aspired to become a physics of our mental life considered as a region of nature.


On close inspection it appears that the empiricist conception of the theory of knowledge presupposes a definite notion of the mind that is itself a transpo-sition of a definite notion of the body. The notion of the body upon which the empiricist notion of the mind is modeled derives from Descartes. It is the notion of the res extensa, which is offered partes extra partes to the resolutive-compositive method described in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii and in The Discourse on Method. Indebted to the teaching of John Stuart Mill, German empiricism was by the same token historically indebted to the theoretical impulse that has its roots in Thomas Hobbes’ admiration for Descartes’ mathesis uni-versalis and in Hobbes’ refusal of the Cartesian metaphysics. More precisely, the debt at stake consists more precisely in the decision taken by the author of Leviathan to discard the Cartesian dualism of two finite substances—res cogitans and res extensa—and to preserve one substance only, matter, and consequently to envisage the life of the mind as a system of elements that are the subjective effects of material motions and that are themselves linked together by diverse motions. But whatever the relevant previous historical developments may be, whatever may be the part played after Hobbes, by John Locke and David Hume, there is no doubt that the empiricism of John Stuart Mill looked for the foundations of


knowledge in elementary mental occurrences, such as sense-impressions, linked together through spa-tial and temporal associations, which were them-selves of a strictly factual nature. Of course, it would be simplistic to enclose within the limits of such a framework the empiri-cism which inspires the early philosophical research of Husserl on the concept of number and on the foundations of arithmetic. As a matter of fact, he was less influenced by Mill and his disciples in the German speaking world than by Franz Brentano, whose peculiar empiricism was more nuanced than the movement just described. Indeed, in the work which forged his reputation, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874), instead of defining mental facts as subjective by-products of physical facts, Brentano attributed to them an intentional character of which there is no trace in physical facts. Moreover, instead of decomposing them right away into elementary parts in confor-mity with the rules of the resolutive-compositive method, he insisted that they deserved a careful description. Finally, instead of stubbornly cel-ebrating the merits of induction, he underlined the importance of intuition (Anschauung) in the study of mental life. Nevertheless, despite these nuances in Brentano’s work, in his early research Husserl seems to have shared with the empiricist theory of knowledge the idea that the founda-


tions of logic, either formal or material, are to be found in mental facts such as they are observed by empirical psychology. In other words, he seems to have taken for granted that the roots of logic are psychological, and thus at least to that extent he submitted logic to psychology. When he claimed, for instance, that the origin of the concept of number is to be found in a mental procedure of collectively binding together, which itself derives from a psychological penchant for unification, by the same token he deprived mathematical objects of their intrinsic consistency, and turned them into by-products of causal psychological events. More precisely, he deprived mathematics of its necessity and universality by reducing it to contingent and arbitrary psychological events, such as interest. In his review of Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic, Part I (1894), Gottlob Frege concluded his very critical appraisal with the following words:

If a geographer was given an oceanographic treatise to read which gave a psychological explanation of the origin of the oceans he would undoubtedly get the impression that the author has missed the mark and shot past the thing itself in a most peculiar way. The present work has left me with exactly the same impression. . . . Reading this work has enabled me to gauge the extent of the devastation caused by the irruption of psychology into logic, and I have


taken it to be my task to exhibit that damage in the proper light (Frege 1984, 209).

1b) Phenomenology as a specific field of research had its origins in Husserl’s meditation on these objections. Phenomenology emerged when he realized that his early psychologism was a kind of reductionism and that there is indeed, as Frege claimed about numbers, an objectivity other than that of the natural bodies, an objectiv-ity that is not physical but ideal; and when he realized simultaneously that the life of the mind, instead of being limited to a flow of contingent factual occurrences, has its own consistency and is articulated in a diversity of modes of intentionality which have a specific essence liable to be intuited and described as such. As a result of that reversal, the birth of phenomenology introduces a sharp opposition between two conceptions of the mind. As opposed to the conception propagated by radi-cal empiricism, a conception according to which the mind is a subjective transposition of a definite picture of nature in terms of factual juxtapositions and sequences of infinitesimal material elements related to one another by diverse motions, Hus-serl’s incipient phenomenology proposes a view no longer factual, but essentialist, in which the mind instead of duplicating matter and motion is inde-pendent of nature and related to a quite different


sphere of an ideal character. This sharp distinction is the backbone of Husserl’s first phenomenologi-cal work, Logical Investigations. It is fully operative even before the author attempted to articulate a theory of the phenomenological method, i.e., the methodology of reduction. Indeed, the sharp distinction I just evoked underlies all the aspects of the critique of psychologism that are developed by Husserl in the Prolegomena to his first book. And the same distinction underlies the descrip-tive investigations in the book itself. The opposi-tion in question is clearly expressed by Husserl at several places, for example in Investigation II entitled “The Ideal Unity of the Species,” when he warns against what he takes to be a typical flaw of empiricist epistemology:

the mixture of two essentially different scientific interests, one concerned with the psychological explanation of lived experiences, the other with the ‘logical’ clarification of their thought-content or sense, and the criticism of their possible achievement as acts of know-ing. In the former regard we seek to establish empirical bonds tying the thought-experiences in question to other facts in the flux of real happenings, facts responsible for them causally, or on which they exert effects. In the latter regard we are intent upon the ‘origin of the concepts’ that pertain to our words. We seek


to clarify their ‘true meaning’ or significance through plainly establishing their intention in the sense of their fulfillments, which are first realized when suitable intuitions are adduced. To study the essence of these phenomenologi-cal connections is to lay bare the indispensable foundation for an epistemological clarifica-tion of the ‘possibility’ of knowledge (Husserl 1970b, 348).

But it is precisely the sharpness of that contrast which is questionable. At any rate, the historian of the phenomenological movement cannot avoid asking with regard to Husserl’s critique of psycholo-gism whether the sharp contrast between facts and essences insisted upon by such critique does not run the risk of reviving the dualisms of Platonism, or at least the Cartesian opposition between res extensa and res cogitans. Is it not appropriate to sus-pect that some sort of Cartesian dualism underlies the care with which Husserl at the very beginning of the first Investigation distinguishes expressions as they function in communication from expres-sions as they function in solitary life, the former kind of expression being limited by an intimat-ing or indicative function, whereas the latter is purely attuned to the ideality of a meaning? Is it not appropriate to suspect that the same dualism likewise underlies the care with which the sixth Investigation distinguishes categorial intuition


from sensible intuition? If it is true, as Husserl claims in the first Investigation, that expression as indication merely announces what it expresses and, therefore, offers a merely putative grasp of what it expresses, whereas expression as meaning is adequately offered to a fulfilling intuition, are we not allowed to suspect this distinction to be a transposition of Descartes’ distinction between the body as a selfless entity submitted partes extra partes to an endless exteriority and the cogito as an entity essentially present to itself, whatever the diversity of its cogitata? Do we not find a similar transposition in the emphasis put by the sixth Investigation on the radical difference between sensible intuition and categorial intuition, if it is the case, as Husserl claimed there, that the sensible intuition is governed by the a posteriori reception of a hyletic flow of sense-data, whereas categorial intuition does not in any way suffer from such a dispersion because it actively bestows meaning upon what is intended by it and is able to reach a fulfilling insight of that meaning? 1 c ) What happens to this dualistic framework when phenomenology, after having been first practiced in the Logical Investigations, subsequently undertakes to define its methodology, which is to say to justify the necessity of the celebrated reduc-tion, considered in its twofold move of suspension of misleading approaches and of deliberate return


to the phenomena? This justification took place six years after the publication of the opus magnum, in a series of five lessons that have been published as The Idea of Phenomenology, but which were originally given as an introduction to a lecture course whose topic was the constitution of spatio-temporal things. On close inspection it turns out that the terms used by Husserl in these five lessons to character-ize the two moves of phenomenological reduction involve a sharp duality between a definite notion of the body and a definite notion of the mind. The basic terms selected by Husserl in his attempt to exhibit to his students the specific traits of the phenomenological method are “transcendence” and “immanence.” The meaning he attributes to these two notions makes manifest the duality in question. Let me try to clarify this by following briefly the train of thought of the five lessons. Let us note first that a duality is introduced right away in the first lesson when Husserl distinguishes between a science of the natural sort, originating from what he calls the natural attitude of mind, and a philosophic science, originating from the philosophic attitude of mind. Of course, the philo-sophic science he has in mind is phenomenology itself. His purpose is to demonstrate from the outset that the prevailing philosophy of his time cannot pretend to be a philosophic science because,


instead of originating from a strictly philosophic attitude, it remains trapped within the natural atti-tude of mind. The natural attitude of mind is a way of intuiting and thinking which is operative in everyday perception as well as in all of the sciences: sciences of nature, cultural sciences, and formal sciences, such as mathematics or pure grammar. All those modes of the natural attitude are focused on existing objects, on “actualities” (Wirklichkeiten), either of a real character or of an ideal one, and for all of them the knowledge of these existing objects is a matter of course. As Husserl writes, “Thus, natural knowledge makes strides. It progressively takes possession of a reality at first existing and given as a matter of course and as something only to be investigated further as regards its extent, its elements, its relations and laws” (Husserl 1964,18). The trouble begins when that natural way of think-ing starts reflecting on the relationship of cognition and object. Since the natural attitude is focused on existing actualities, the reflexion in question turns knowledge into a sequence of existing actualities occurring in the mind. Consequently, the very possibility of breaking out of the sphere of those mental processes in order to reach objects beyond them becomes enigmatic. An inclination to skepti-cism, with all its contradictions and absurdities, is unavoidable when the reflection on the possibil-ity of knowledge is based on the natural attitude,


more precisely when it is based upon the results of natural sciences, such as psychology, biology or anthropology. Phenomenology claims to be able to avoid all of these difficulties by basing itself on a strictly philosophic attitude, which rather than focusing on existing actualities focuses instead on essences and deliberately disregards and refrains “from using the intellectual achievements of the sciences of a natural sort and of scientifically undis-ciplined natural wisdom and knowledge” (Husserl 1964, 24). This deliberate disregard is the negative move called epoche introduced by Husserl in the follow-ing manner at the beginning of the second lesson: “At the outset of the critique of cognition the entire world, nature, physical and psychological, as well as one’s own human ego with all the sciences which have to do with these objective matters, are put in question. Their being, their validity are suspended” (Husserl 1964, 29). The epoche thus discards every presupposition, more precisely all “pregiven” knowledge, its own included. At this point it might seem that the theory of knowledge cannot get underway. On the contrary, however, Husserl claims that the elimination of every pre-given cognition taken from elsewhere does not make it impossible to acknowledge a primal self-given cognition. Recalling the Cartesian doubt, Husserl writes that “it is at once evident that not

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everything is doubtful, for while I am judging that every thing is doubtful, it is indubitable that I am so judging. . . . And likewise with every cogitatio” (Husserl 1964, 30). This acknowledgment of the absolute and indubitable givenness of the cogito along with the entire range of its cogitationes makes possible the second, positive move of the phenomenological method. In Husserl’s language, the negative move of epoche suspends all transcen-dence, and the positive move that opens the way to phenomenology is a return to immanence. The point is to realize that these words do not have in phenomenology the meaning they have in the mis-leading psychologistic theories of knowledge. For the psychologistic theorist of knowledge, cognition is immanent in the sense of a sequence of facts that actually occurs within the mind and that can be evidently seen as facts along with their factual components. On this interpretation, the object that cognition claims to know is transcendent in the sense that it is neither actually contained as a factual component in the mind nor seen in it. As a consequence, the possibility of knowledge becomes problematic. By contrast, for the phenomenologist immanence is an appropriate point of departure free of puzzlement because it is not a sequence of facts occurring in the mind and to be explained from without by what the sciences teach about natural facts. It is instead an articulated variety of

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essences that are offered to the phenomenological seeing as intrinsically relational, in the sense that it belongs to the essence of each type of cogitatio to be open to a specific type of object. The emphasis put on essences offered to a peculiar seeing, the Wesenschau, allows Husserl to characterize the posi-tive move of the phenomenological method as an “eidetic reduction,” i.e., as a return to the essence of each type of cogitatio, considered in its specific relational or intentional character. It is important to note—for it determines the entire development of Husserl’s phenomenology up to The Crisis of the European Sciences—that the dualities I have recalled—natural attitude versus philosophic attitude, transcendence versus imma-nence, actual facts versus essences—are primarily, and perhaps even exclusively, concerned with the distinction to be made between two ways of know-ing. Indeed, the epoche of the natural attitude is described less as a reflective stepping back from the diversified range of relations (ethical, pragmatic, aesthetic, erotic) to oneself, to the Other, and to the things that determine our everyday experience than as a denial of a certain type of knowledge, the knowledge that is not enlightened by a clear and distinct view of itself and of its intentional correlates. But it is one thing to criticize the one-sidedness of the theories of knowledge that by turning cognition into a factual epiphenomenon

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of factual natural causes simply abolish intention-ality and the very possibility of knowledge. And it is another thing to claim that the recognition of intentionality demands a Cartesian absolute and indubitable givenness of the cogito to itself. Such a claim runs the risk of introducing an inverse one-sidedness, an immanence so purified of all transcendence, that the cogito tends to become a self without any dependence upon anything else (the world, the body, the others, history). 2) Considering the diversity of the descriptions carried out by Husserl as soon as he had opened the field of his new philosophical science, one may wonder whether the turns taken by phenomeno-logical reduction in his own work do not have much to do with the fact that the very practice of description made him realize—on the job as it were—that the concrete requirements of descrip-tion did not perfectly fit in with the clear dualities I have pointed out. To be sure, if the goal is to the-matize the basic categorial notions and structures belonging to pure logic, a very general concep-tion of the cogito as a universal vantage point and function of transparency may suffice. But if all cogitationes deserve to be carefully described, the consciousness offered to inspection is no longer merely a universal and anonymous function; it is the lived experience of every individual, and it is on the basis of individual Erlebnisse, unpretentious


though they may seem, that each of us is invited to reach the Wesenschau of his intentional life. Among these modest Erlebnisse, it is well known that perception is given top priority among Hus-serl’s descriptions. But one cannot see how a cogito as a universal function could perceive, if it is true, as Husserl rightly claims, that the adumbrations through which the perceived thing presents itself to my eyes do not call forth the intellectual syn-thesis of a formless manifold of sense-data, but a power of bodily exploration of corporeal entities that straightaway manifest themselves from the outset as identifiable totalities. The perceived qua perceived does not appeal to an “I think,” but to an “I can,” and the corporeal character of that potentiality does not belong to a Körper with clearly definable partes extra partes, but to a Leib, which is less a portion of matter or a part of space among other parts than an individuated power of approaching or withdrawing, of moving freely in various directions. Moreover, such individuated potentiality is not so much situated within time as it is a source of temporalization, for perception has its own duration, a duration in which the per-ceiving individual, while exploring the perceived, combines a retention of just past Abschattungen with a protention of imminent adumbrations. In other words, perception is a phenomenon that compels us to qualify the duality of body and


mind. In addition, the same phenomenon does not fit with the definition of the entire sphere construed in terms of an immanence character-ized by a solitary selfhood. Indeed, the perceiving consciousness is immediately aware that the sides of the thing that remain hidden to it are offered to the gaze of other perceiving individuals. As Hus-serl himself insisted, we do not perceive alone but miteinander, with one another. Finally, if it is true that the range of the cogitationes is linked to lived experiences, hence to the life of living individu-als, reduction cannot simply entail a retrieval of Cartesian dualism. On the contrary, it requires that we recognize that the Cartesian concept of nature as matter and motion is an abstraction and not a phenomenological characteristic of the world in which our perception occurs. It requires that we acknowledge that our intentional life is related to a Lebenswelt, a life-world shared in common with other intentional lives than ours. And since life as a phenomenon is inconceivable without living beings who are born from other living beings and destined to disappear after a short while, it is necessary in order to be fair to the phenomena to acknowledge that there is a genesis and a history of the intentional cogitationes, including the purest and apparently most atemporal modes of rational-ity, such as mathematical concepts and deductions.


There is, to quote a famous Husserlian title, an “origin of geometry.” I apologize for making those remarks at random. Their only purpose is to suggest that the phenom-enological reduction is not the precondition of a system of infrangible theses, but an opening to a constellation of flexible approaches. Mer-leau-Ponty, who repeatedly found in Husserl’s manuscripts an inspiration for his own phenom-enological research, was right, I believe, to claim that the most important teaching of reduction is that it cannot be fully completed. In one of his last lecture courses at the Collège de France, during the academic year 1958-59, Merleau-Ponty observes that there is something paradoxical in Husserl’s method of reduction, for it turns out that what reduction alone is able to reveal is “something that we already knew thanks to the ‘thesis of the world’ in the natural attitude” (Merleau-Ponty 1970, 149). The ‘constitution’-by-the-mind towards which reduction is oriented meets a resistance within its own phenomenological field insofar as “it seems difficult to ‘constitute’ from attitudes and operations of consciousness,” such as theoretical ideation, “the corporeal infrastructure of our rela-tion with the things and with the others” (Merleau-Ponty 1970, 149). Moreover, as Merleau-Ponty observes, the actual practice of phenomenological reduction turns out to be paradoxical, not only


because on close inspection the practice reveals that “reduction is much less a method defined once for all than an index for a multitude of problems” (Merleau-Ponty, 1970, 149), but also because the transcendental philosopher has to realize that he is unable to overcome radically the “naïve belief ” in the intersubjective world to which he belongs as an empirical man (Merleau-Ponty 1970, 149). A similar paradox is noticeable, I believe, in Husserl’s handling of topics, such as the person and ethical values. When he argues in the frame-work of rigorous science for the principle of pure immanence as philosophical ground, he defends a strictly egological notion of the person and of the axiological judgments orienting personal conduct. In this context it seems that ethical values, taken to be intentional correlates of a pure ego without situation and contingency, are strictly parallel, in the practical realm, to the ideal categories of the logical realm; on this interpretation it would seem, then, that what makes it possible for someone to be a responsible person would be the mere con-sequence of a pure Wesenschau of moral norms in the solitude of his immanence. But Husserl does not argue in these terms when he acknowledges that the universal aims of prac-tical reason cannot be dissociated from a history which is inconceivable without taking into account


intersubjectivity, i.e., the interaction of a plurality of intentional agents. This tension is noticeable in the writings of the last period, which gravitate around The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenol-ogy. On the one hand, there are several echoes in these texts of the views of Hegel about the dis-tinction to be made between an absolute science, which is philosophy itself, and the naturalistic and objectivistic concept of science vindicated by the Aufklärung. Against the naïveté of naturalism, which defines the mind as an annex of the body having a spatial and temporal reality within nature, and thereby fails to notice that the subjectivity that creates sciences has no legitimate place in them, Husserl seems to be tempted by a revival of Hegel’s conception of history as a teleology progressively absorbing the An Sich into the absoluteness of an ultimate Für Sich. In such a perspective it seems that human individuals become persons by being the functionaries of a process which overwhelms them and of which they are the organs. But on the other hand, Husserl’s writings that meditate on the European crisis insist on a topic that does not fit with the principle of an implemen-tation by Spirit of a blueprint of self-knowledge. That topic is the Lebenswelt, the lifeworld. On close inspection it turns out that the lifeworld, which is obliterated by the exclusively objectivistic


tendency of naturalism, again and again provides new resources not only to the various sciences, but to philosophy itself. Merleau-Ponty perceptively acknowledged that, as soon as they are translated in terms of lifeworld, the dualities or antinomies of Husserl’s thought are no longer “hopeless”:

The point is no longer to understand how on the basis of its absolute solitude a for-itself is able to think another one, or how it can real-ize that the world is pre-constituted even as the for-itself constitutes it. Experience taken as a whole is such that the inherence of the Self to the world or of the world to the Self, of the Self to the Other and of the Other to the Self, what Husserl calls the Ineinander, is silently inscribed in it. Experience composes those incompossibilities, and philosophy becomes the attempt to describe beyond the given logic and its vocabulary a universe of living paradoxes. Reduction is no longer a return to the ideal Being; it leads us back to the soul of Heraclitus, to a string of horizons (Merleau-Ponty 1970, 152).

When Husserl’s meditation is focused on the lifeworld, it is not far from acknowledging that the human individual becomes a person by being inserted within a plurality of interactions and shar-


ings of words instead of by being an agent of an overwhelming universal. At any rate, once understood in terms of the Lebenswelt, reduction is less a return to pure immanence than the recognition that conscious-ness belongs to a common world of appearances.

IIWhat about the second founder of the phenom-enological movement, Martin Heidegger, to whom Husserl, according to legend, once said: “You and I, we are phenomenology.” It is difficult to imagine how, without taking up again the method of “reduction,” Heidegger would have been able in Being and Time to make the explicit claim that his research “would not have been possible if the ground had not been prepared by Edmund Husserl, with whose Logische Untersuc-hungen phenomenology first emerged” (Heidegger 1962, §7). Moreover, Heidegger added the follow-ing precision in a footnote: “If the following inves-tigation has taken any steps forward in disclosing the ‘things themselves’ the author must first of all thank E. Husserl, who, by providing his own incisive personal guidance and by freely turning over his unpublished investigations, familiarized the author with the most diverse areas of phe-nomenological research during his student years in Freiburg” (Heidegger 1962, §7v).


It is surprising, therefore, that the word “reduc-tion” is not even mentioned in Being and Time. As a result, several distinguished scholars—Jean-Luc Marion among them—did not hesitate to conclude that Heidegger’s phenomenology was a phenomenology without reduction. However, the publication during the last decades, in the Gesamtausgabe, of the lecture courses given by Heidegger, first in Freiburg, then in Marburg, at the time he was preparing his opus magnum, makes it clear, on the contrary, that reduction was at the core of his theoretical project. In other words, the negative move of suspending what blocks the way to the phenomenon, as well as the positive move of return to the matter itself, remain no less decisive for Heidegger’s investigation than they were for Husserl’s. This does not mean of course that the twofold procedure in question remains identical in the two thinkers. Heidegger himself underlines both the differ-ences and the kinship in the introduction to a lecture course on The Basic Problems of Phenom-enology, which he gave at the university of Marburg in the summer of 1927, the year of the publication of Being and Time. Here is what he wrote:

We call this basic component of phenom-enological method—the leading back or re-duction of investigative vision from a naively


apprehended being to being—phenomeno-logical reduction. We are thus adopting a central term of Husserl’s phenomenology in its literal wording though not in its substan-tive intent. For Husserl, the phenomenological reduction, which he worked out for the first time expressly in the Ideas Toward a Pure Phe-nomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), is the method of leading phenom-enological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness. For us, phenomenological reduction means leading phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be the character of that apprehension, to the understanding of the being of this being (projecting upon the way it is unconcealed). Like every other scientific method, phenom-enological method grows and changes due to the progress made precisely with its help into the subjects under investigation. Scientific method is never a technique. As soon as it becomes one it has fallen away from its own proper nature” (Heidegger 1982, 21).

It remains to be seen whether this metamorpho-sis of the phenomenological reduction does not


also entail difficulties similar to those detectable in Husserl. Heidegger himself orients us towards a clarification of the issue. Indeed, immediately after the lines just quoted he adds an important precision. Reduction, he says, considered in its new meaning “is not the only basic component of phenomenological method.” It must be com-bined with two other components: construction and deconstruction. Phenomenological construction, Heidegger claims, is made necessary by the fact that Being is not simply found in front of us like a being. As he remarks, “it must always be brought to view in a free projection” (Heidegger 1982, 21-22). Because the understanding of the being of being is a proj-ect focused on the unconcealment of being, the phenomenologist has to develop a construction in which the ontological structures of that project are made visible. These ontological structures are the ‘existentials’ which articulate that project. The third component of the method, phenom-enological deconstruction, is required because “all philosophical discussion, even the most radi-cal attempt to begin all over again, is pervaded by traditional concepts and thus by traditional hori-zons and traditional angles of approach, which we cannot assume with unquestionable certainty to have arisen originally and genuinely from the domain of being and the constitution of being


they claim to comprehend” (Heidegger 1982, 22). Deconstruction consists in bringing down (i.e., reducing) the traditional concepts “down to the sources from which they were drawn” in order to determine whether or not they correspond to the ontological structures which genuinely determine the understanding of being (Heidegger 1982, 23). It is well known that thanks to the conjunction of these three components whose definition is given in ontological terms, Heidegger’s phenomenology is intended to be a “fundamental ontology,” i.e., an investigation focused upon Being in the verbal sense of the word. It is also well known that in that new context, the constructive and deconstructive reduction is no longer a return to the intentionality of consciousness, but rather a return to the projec-tive way of being of the human Dasein. The central position of human Dasein in phenomenological ontology is due to the fact that the human being is the only being for whom “to be” is an issue and who, therefore, is intimately aware of the meaning of Being and able to respond to the Seinsfrage. The use of the word Dasein as an appellation of the human being is meant to designate that intimate connection, since the word “dasein” in German is a verb which simply means “to exist” or “to be there.”


Consequently, the primordial task of funda-mental ontology is to analyze rigorously the way of being of Dasein. This analytic demonstrates that the Dasein, which now replaces Bewusstsein as the vantage point of phenomenology, instead of being a universal and neutral criterion like the cogito, is considered as radically individuated, experienced in each case and on each occasion as mine, so much so that the question, What? has to be replaced by the question, Who? The point is no longer to disregard the factical in order to reach the essen-tial, but to approach the central phenomenon of the investigation in its factical character. The analytic also demonstrates that the Dasein cannot be conceived as an immanence purified from all intermingling with a pregiven transcendence, for it is thrown in the world, essentially related and open to the world, thanks to the individual project that characterizes its existence, so much so that the word “transcendence” becomes its definition. Moreover, the analytic demonstrates that mean-ings, instead of owing their origin to a constitution performed by a transcendental Ego, emerge on the level of the factical mobility of the diversified project that animates existence in the world. It is by dealing with the world that the projective Dasein discloses and apprehends meanings, inter-prets them, and expresses them in such or such a


discursive modality. Thereby, Being-in-the-world amounts to Being-in-truth, provided that truth is understood as aletheia, or unconcealment. Finally, the analytic of Dasein in its factical life demon-strates that the projective character of existence is torn between, on the one hand, an everyday concern wherein attention is paid by the Dasein to entities other than itself and to the average char-acter of entities at each time publicly available to everybody and nobody in particular, to das Man, to the They and, on the other hand, an authentic care in which Dasein confronts what is properly its own, its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, which is its Being-towards-death. By letting everyday-ness prevail upon its ownmost potentiality, Dasein falls away from its ownmost Being and allows an average concept of Being—either in terms of pres-ence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit) or in terms of readi-ness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit)—to cover up its own finiteness. In the final analysis, such fallenness leads to a conception of time as an infinite sequence of nows, thereby covering up the only possible horizon for the intelligibility of Being, an horizon that is a quite different temporality determined by openness to a future end and, therefore, essentially ek-static as well as finite. Hence, the title under which that fundamental ontology is developed: Being and Time.

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It remains to be seen whether this metamor-phosis of phenomenological reduction does not entail difficulties connected with the emphasis put by Heidegger on several dualities which, although they are no longer identical to the antinomies insisted upon by Husserl, nevertheless by reason of the sharp dichotomies that they introduce like-wise weigh heavily upon the description. Since the difficulties we detected in Husserl’s implementa-tion of reduction were ultimately dependent on the stubborn proclamation of the privilege of the Self, the question to be raised now is: Are we not allowed to suspect in Heidegger’s phenomeno-logical descriptions a commitment to a similar privilege? What motivates our suspicion in the first place is the fact that, despite the significant metamorphosis we have just evoked, Heidegger in Being and Time claims that his own research takes for granted the teaching of Husserl’s first and sixth Logical Inves-tigations. This deserves close examination. As I mentioned when I was dealing with Husserl, the first Logical Investigation draws a neat distinc-tion between two types of sign: the sign as the expression (Ausdruck) of a meaning (Bedeutung) and the sign as a mere indication (Anzeichen). Husserl applies this distinction to language, i.e., to the medium that pure logic cannot avoid using, at least provisionally. Hence, the distinc-


tion between the linguistic expression such as it functions in ordinary communication, where it remains impure because it is burdened by indica-tion, and, on the other hand, a pure linguistic expression which offers the pure intuition of a meaning to a solitary consciousness. Such intu-ition is the categorial intuition that is the topic of the sixth Logical Investigation. Husserl here claims that even ordinary linguistic expressions, in which we articulate what we perceive through our state-ments and which, therefore, seem to be the mere mirroring of what we perceive, involve a surplus of meaning in regard to what is intuited by our senses. For example, when I say, “This paper is white,” the meaning-intention of what I am saying goes beyond my sensuous intuitions. As Husserl says, “The intention of the word ‘white’ only partially coincides with the colour-aspect of the apparent object; a surplus of meaning remains over, a form which finds nothing in the appearance itself to confirm it” (Husserl 1970b, 775). Husserl adds that I do not mean simply the colour-aspect of what is offered to my eyes here and now. I mean “white” as a general adjective, which could be attributed as well to something else that I do not perceive now. Likewise, I do not simply mean by the noun “book” this perceived entity; I mean a substance of a certain type to which several other accidental properties, such as “red” or “black “or


“blue” may be attributed as well. Likewise, for the word “is” about which Husserl, in agreement with Kant’s dictum, “Being is no real predicate,” writes the following:

I can see colour, but not being-coloured . . . . Being is nothing in the object, no part of it, no moment tenanting to it, no quality or intensity of it, no figure of it or no internal form whatsoever, no constitutive feature of it however conceived. But Being is also nothing attaching to an object: as it is no real internal feature, so also it is no real external feature (such as the right and the left, the high and the low, the remote and the near, etc.) and therefore not in the real sense, a ‘feature’ at all. . . . For all these are perceptible, and they exhaust the range of the possible percepts, so that we are at once saying and maintaining that being is absolutely imperceptible” (Hus-serl 1970b, 780).

However, though it cannot be intuited as a per-cept, being, like the other meanings mentioned before, is nevertheless offered to an intuition, a non-sensuous one, which Husserl calls the catego-rial intuition. In his last seminar to which I had the honor to be invited, Heidegger did not hesitate to claim that Husserl’s discovery of categorial intuition was for


him decisive. As he put it, Husserl understood that the meaning of Being is beyond the whatness of beings: “Husserl’s tour de force consisted precisely in this presencing of Being made phenomenally present in the category. By means of this tour de force, I was finally in possession of the ground.” (Heidegger 1976, 315). Heidegger appropriates these two teachings of the Logical Investigations in his own theoretical project. But because his research, instead of being focused on pure logic, is focused on fundamental ontology, the appropriation entails a metamorpho-sis of Husserl’s theses. Since the basic question of fundamental ontology is the question of the mean-ing of Being, which is an issue for each human being thrown in the world, the central point of reference is no longer intentional consciousness. It is rather the projecting Dasein considered in its comprehension of Being. Once oriented and transformed by that new point of reference, reduction also transforms the distinction between indication and meaning that Husserl pointed out in the first Logical Investiga-tion, and transforms as well the function attributed to categorial intuition in the sixth Logical Inves-tigation. Indeed, reduction from now on, instead of being a suspension of the natural attitude of cognition and a return to intentional conscious-


ness, is rather a moving away from the average apprehension of the being of beings prevailing in the everyday dealings with them and is a return to the ownmost comprehension of Being, which grounds the project that each Dasein is. Accord-ingly, the new reduction, while making its own Husserl’s teaching, demonstrates its relevance for the description of the contrast between everyday projects and ownmost project, between what Hei-degger calls concern (Besorgnis) and what he calls care (Sorge). As a result of this transformation, Heidegger claims that the discourse of the speaking Dasein is torn between indication and genuine meaning, or between what Aristotle called the semantikos and the apophantikos, the former of which occurs without intuitive fulfillment, whereas the latter is offered to insight. It is in everydayness that indication definitely prevails over genuine meaning. Because an essentially practical concern rules Dasein’s deal-ings with useful entities and its cooperation with other users for a variety of goals to be reached in a surrounding world, the everydayness of Being-in-the-world can be described as “a non-thematic circumspective absorption in references or assign-ments constitutive for the readiness-to-hand of a totality of equipment” (Heidegger 1962, §16). In such circumspection an understanding and inter-

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pretation of what is ready-to-hand is at work. But Heidegger insists that “when Dasein is absorbed in the world of its concern—that is, at the same time, in its Being-with towards others—it is not itself ” (Heidegger 1962, §26). Dasein becomes itself by moving away from the totality of involve-ments, thanks to which any entity ready-to-hand is assigned to a “towards-which” or to a “for-which,” and by reaching a deeper understanding wherein the point is no longer to interpret, but to see immediately that “the totality of involvements” itself goes back ultimately to a “towards-which in which there is no further involvement”—for it is no longer a “towards-which” but a primordial “for-the-sake-of-which.” This primordial and sole authentic “for-the-sake-of which” is the very Being of Dasein, “for which, in its Being, that very Being is essentially an issue” (Heidegger 1962, §18). Such a contrast between the “towards-which” and the “for-the-sake-of-which” induces a contrast between ordinary and authentic discourse. Ordi-nary discourse is communication with another. But in communication there lies an “average intel-ligibility” or “average understanding,” wherein a genuine relationship to the entity talked about tends to get lost, for “it is on the same average-ness that we have a common understanding of what is said.” Hence, in communication discourse runs the constant risk of becoming a “Gerede,” an


“idle talk,” in which what is decisive is “the domi-nance of the public way in which things have been interpreted” (Heidegger 1962, §35). By contrast, authentic discourse is a purely ontological response by the conscience of a solitary Dasein to the silent call addressed to it by its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, a potentiality which is essentially finite for it pertains to its Being-towards-death. This originary discourse is not only a monologue of conscience; it is also intimately pervaded by a clear view of an ultimate meaning which is that very potentiality-for-Being. It is here that Heidegger’s metamor-phosis of Husserl’s categorial intuition into an ultimate ontological insight reaches its summit. Indeed, that potentiality-for-Being, which is, as Heidegger says, a Bedeutung that “Dasein ‘signifies’ (bedeutet ) to itself ” (Heidegger 1962, §18), is not only in a position of surplus with respect to what the Dasein is, hence beyond any “real predicate” attributable to it; it is also the theme of a specific “sight” (Sicht), the deepest one, that Heidegger calls “transparency” (Durchsichtigkeit ) (Heidegger 1962, § 31). It is not an exaggeration to claim that the contrast I have just sketched entails as many dif-ficulties as those implicit in Husserl’s concept of reduction. In fact, the subsequent development of the phenomenological movement in the works of the early students of Heidegger may best be


interpreted as a reply to these difficulties and a reaction against several biases in his notion of reduction, despite their expressions of gratitude for the inspiration he provided to them. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration, either, to claim that in the wake of Heidegger’s teaching there occurred new metamorphoses of phenomenological reduction. Allow me to evoke briefly these post-Heidegge-rian metamorphoses with reference to the topics I have discussed in my analysis of Husserl: body and mind, the person, values. Since Heidegger’s notion of authenticity obvi-ously entails the primacy of the Self as opposed to the fallenness of Dasein under the dominance of the They in everydayness, let me start with the notion of the person. In the final analysis the Dasein cannot be properly individuated in every-dayness. It becomes irreplaceable qua individual by withdrawing from the everyday sharing in deeds and words of a world common to a plural-ity of human beings. The question, Who is the Dasein? which replaces Husserl’s question, What is Bewusstsein?, finds its only possible answer in the solitary vision by Dasein of its own mortality. This means that the question Who? is addressed to the individual Dasein by itself and consists in an interpellation by one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being.


To this notion of individuation there are strong objections made by the philosophical work of Hannah Arendt, who had been among the early students of Heidegger in Marburg and who on sev-eral occasions claimed that she considered herself a phenomenologist. In her book, The Human Condi-tion, of which she wrote in a letter to Heidegger (May 8, 1954) that the book would not have been possible without what she had learned from him in her youth, she describes a quite different form of individuation. Instead of being focused on death and on the ultimate solitary contemplation of the ontological root of meaning occurring in the confrontation with one’s own mortality, her description is focused on natality and plurality, whose interplay is the specific condition of action understood as the conduct by human individuals of their own life. In this new context, the question “Who?” taken by Arendt, as it was by Heidegger, to be more essential than the question “What?” undergoes a significant transformation. Indeed, the question is no longer raised by the Self, but by Others who invite all individuals, as soon as they are inserted, thanks to natality, into a web of interactions and interlocutions, to show in words and in deeds, i.e., by expressing their views and by taking initiatives, to show to their human fel-lows who they are. In this new context, reduction remains in play since Arendt’s analysis is a careful


description of phenomenal distinctions, often con-cealed but nevertheless necessary, between basic modes of activity, such as labor, work, and action. By showing that communication and interaction within a plurality of individuals, all alike but all different, is what makes individuation possible, Arendt was led by the same token to tie her reduc-tion to a deconstruction of Heidegger’s retrieval of several dualistic biases, above all the antinomy between aletheia and doxa, which emerged at the very beginning of the philosophical tradition and which are condensed in the parable of the cave, wherein Plato drew a sharp contrast between every-dayness and what he took to be the only authentic existence: the bios theoretikos. With regard to the body, the impact of the dual-ity between everydayness and authenticity is no less obvious. In a way, the basic ontological terms of Heidegger’s description of everydayness suggest, at least implicitly, the universal presupposition of the body. Indeed, once it is focused on the projective Dasein, Heidegger’s phenomenology demonstrates that the ontological character of the entities dealt with primarily and most of the time by the everyday concern is readiness-to-hand. But hands are organs of a living body. Hence, the very notion of readiness-to-hand refers to a living body moving in a surrounding world where it deals with available tools. The body is also referred to by

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Heidegger’s deconstruction of traditional ontology. Indeed, deconstruction claims that in its attempt to define the Being of beings, traditional ontology repeatedly understood such Being in terms of a presence-at-hand, a notion that once again does not make sense without reference to the human body. Because the constructive and deconstructive reduction is meant to lead back from the everyday concern towards the authentic care, phenomeno-logical investigation demonstrates not only that presence-at-hand results from a falling away from readiness-to-hand, but also that the dominance of readiness-to-hand results from a falling away from the only truly fundamental mode of Being, which is the ek-static transcendence of existence. At this juncture, when ownmost transcendence is faced in the transparency of a solitary conscience, it looks as though Dasein has become disembodied. How could embodiment remain relevant if the uncanniness that is revealed to conscience in the attunement of anxiety “puts Dasein’s Being-in-the-world face to face with the ‘nothing’ of the world, and if it is in the face of this ‘nothing’ that Dasein confronts its ownmost potentiality-for-Being” (Heidegger 1962, §57)? By being without any home, the authentic Self turns out to be bodiless as well.


This implied disembodiment occasioned many objections among the successors of Heidegger in the phenomenological movement. One of these objectors is Hans Jonas, who had been one of the best students of Heidegger in Marburg. In his first work Jonas had used conceptual tools provided by Being and Time to interpret ancient Gnosticism, but he subsequently came to realize that the dualities emphasized in the analytic of Dasein resulted in a new version of Gnosticism. According to Jonas, the Heideggerian focus on a purified Self induces what he calls in The Phenomenon of Life an “anthropological acosmism” (Jonas 1982, 216), which involves, as was the case in Gnosticism, a sort of contempt for our belong-ing to organic life and even for nature as a whole. Such a focus on a detached Self tends to overlook the simple fact that death is primordially an essen-tial possibility of life, in the organic sense of the word. To be sure, in Being and Time Heidegger acknowledges that “death in the widest sense, is a phenomenon of life” and that “life must be under-stood as a kind of Being to which there belongs a Being-in-the-world,” but such acknowledgment is immediately qualified by him in the following terms: “Only if this kind of Being is oriented in a privative way to Dasein can we fix its character ontologically” (Heidegger 1962, §49). This means that “the existential interpretation of death takes


precedence over any biology and ontology of life” (Heidegger 1962, §49). Jonas reacted against this reference to Dasein as a paradigm. He attempted to show that, on the contrary, in a concrete phe-nomenology of Being the paradigm ought to be the organism considered simultaneously in its metabo-lism with nature and in its specific opening to an external environment. He thereby revived in a new way the teaching of Aristotle’s De anima, in which life is understood in terms of a hierarchy of levels, which all preserve, while also transforming, the lower levels on which they depend. In the context of this new paradigm, Jonas claimed not only that Heidegger had overlooked the organic basis of the life of the mind, but also that he remained prisoner of the legacy of Descartes’ dualism between res cogitans and res extensa (Jonas 1980, xii-xiii). Another significant objector to Heidegger’s notion of the body is Emmanuel Levinas, who had been a fascinated auditor of Heidegger in Freiburg and who always recognized his debt to Being and Time. Although he found consider-able inspiration in Heidegger’s claim that the task of ontology is to investigate the relationship that man, as an existing being, sustains with its Being or its existence, he objected very early to Heidegger’s definition of this relationship in terms of an ekstatic project. The very title of his first book, De l’existence à l’existant, is quite significant


in this regard. Indeed, it indicates a reversal of Heidegger’s problematic since the point in his fundamental ontology is to manifest a process that leads from the existent towards existence, that is, from a condition in which the human Dasein is an entity among other entities determined by them from without in such a way that its mode of being is not properly its own, towards a mode of being which is properly “existence” understood as Dasein’s care for its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. In Levinas’ language such a process moves away from the condition of a “substantive” towards the condition of a “pure verb.” In his first book, Levinas’ meditation is an attempt to demonstrate that an ontological investigation should take the reverse direction and demonstrate first of all how the human being emerges as a substantive out of a condition which is primarily verbal. This is why he focuses, in deliberate opposition to Heidegger’s emphasis on the ek-stasis, on a phenomenological description of what he calls “hypo-stasis,” a word which literally means: “staying under.” This notion is introduced in order to show that the primary relation of the human being to Being cannot be understood in terms of a ‘project’. On the contrary, it has to be understood as a position here and now which is not primarily projective, but repeatedly subjected or submitted to the overwhelming embrace of an anonymous and neutral “There


is.” The description of this subjugated position shows that both Husserlian intentionality and the Heideggerian ‘project’ overlook what is decisive in embodiment: the fact that it entails a burden. This is manifested in phenomena such as fatigue, lazi-ness, insomnia, which had no place in the earlier phenomenology for the simple reason that they do not fit with the themes of intentionality and ‘project’: one cannot intend or project to undergo insomnia. However, these signs of subjugation to a burden are not the only characteristics of embodi-ment; they are merely the latent presupposition of Being-in-the-world. Beyond such subjugation, another aspect of embodiment, also overlooked by Heidegger, has to be taken into account in the description of the relation of the human existent with the world. This aspect is the phenomenon of contentment or satisfaction. At this juncture, Levi-nas once again objects to Heidegger’s description of the duality between everydayness and authenticity. And the definition of the former as a for-which falling away from the for-the-sake-of-which defin-ing the latter, fails to recognize “the secular nature and contentment” of Being-in-the-world; it fails to recognize that the world is “a bountifulness of ter-restrial nourishment” (Levinas 1978, 42), offered to our desires and fulfilling them without being in any way a web of means for further ends. As he says, there is no fallenness in eating one’s daily


bread, in dwelling in a home, in wearing clothes. By calling all of that everyday and condemning it as inauthentic, Heidegger fails “to recognize the sincerity of hunger and thirst.” Or, to put the issue in ontological terms, Heidegger fails to recognize that this secular world, “far from deserving to be called a fall, has its own equilibrium, harmony and positive ontological function: the possibility of extracting oneself from anonymous Being” (Levi-nas 1978, 45). It is important to note that Levinas considers that in his own description he remains faithful to the twofold move of reduction: epoche and return to the matter itself (Levinas 1978, 42) This contrast with Heidegger’s description does not mean, of course, that the contentment of Being-in-the world is the last word in Levinas’ phe-nomenology. This would substitute a new version of the Selfhood of the Self for the analysis of the authentic potentiality-for-Being. On the contrary, the emphasis put by Levinas on position and on contentment is provisional and meant to introduce a radical break with the previous predominance of the Self in phenomenological thought. Here we reach the point where another controversial topic must be introduced, that is, the issue of values, more precisely of ethics. As regards values, it is obvious that the substitu-tion of Dasein for Bewusstsein protects Heidegger from the temptation of developing, like Husserl,

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an axiology which would be parallel in the practi-cal realm to what pure logic is in the theoretical realm. The cradle of all valuation is no longer the cogito, but Being-in-the-world. But here again the duality between everydayness and authentic-ity poses a difficulty. Heidegger claims that in everydayness the practical circumspection which orients ordinary concern is what reveals values to Dasein. A tool is good or bad when it allows us to perform or not to perform the task assigned. It is in the pursuit of a variety of ends in the surround-ing world that things and other human beings demonstrate value predicates. But such values are in a position of fallenness with respect to the only authentic valuation, which for the Dasein consists in the confrontation face to face with its ownmost potentiality-for-Being and the recognition and resolute acceptance of its originary guilt (Schuld) or responsible indebtedness. In this context Heidegger makes his own the famous motto of Plato about the Good—to agathon epekeina tes ousias—provided that it be understood in a strictly ontological sense and consequently translated into the central formula of fundamental ontology: Dasein exists for the sake of itself. It is obvious that Heidegger’s retrieval of Plato’s motto is therefore entirely encapsulated within the sphere of the Self, without any essential opening to the Other.

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It is significant that in his first book Levinas already attributes to Plato’s motto, which he takes to be “the general guideline” of his preparatory phenomenological investigation a meaning which is not primordially ontological but ethical. In a deliberate objection to Heidegger, he writes that Plato’s motto means that the Good is beyond Being, and he specifies: “the movement which leads an existent toward the Good is not a transcendence by which that existent raises itself up to a higher existence, but a departure from Being and from the catagories which describe it: an ‘ex-cendence’ (Levinas 1978, 15). This first book was a prepara-tion for a further phenomenological description which was carried out a few years later in Totality and Infinity, a book in which the departure from the circle of Being is the central issue. The latter book shows that the primordial face-to-face does not occur in the circular relationship of the Self with itself but in an asymmetrical relation of facing another without possibility for myself of reaching an ultimate insight, because the otherness of the Other is a height which remains invisible and breaks from above the totalizing tendency of the Self. This face-to-face encounter is for Levinas “the matter itself ” to which the phenomenological reduction opens the way. As a result of the primacy of the Other over the Self, it turns out that ethics has a precedence over ontology. Consequently, this


book is a phenomenological revision of almost all the basic notions of the analytic of Dasein. Instead of being a call that Dasein addresses to itself, the condition for the possibility of discourse is a demand coming from the Other, who is my ethical teacher. Similarly, instead of being the ontological indebtedness of my freedom regard-ing my ownmost potentiality-for-Being, guilt is no longer a feature of the autarchy of the Ego; on the contrary, it is imposed upon me by the Other, whose ethical demand is the only justification of my freedom and is its “investiture.” Likewise, the origin of truth is not to be found in the disclosing character of my project but in justice, that is, in the welcoming of the Other. Finally, it goes with-out saying that in this ethical phenomenology the egological privilege of theoria is put into question: If the otherness of the Other infinitely transcends all thematization, an ultimate transparency no longer makes sense. I hope these remarks are enough to suggest that the adventure of the reduction in the work of the two founders of phenomenology entailed in their wake ever renewed metamorphoses.


Works Cited

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

Arendt, Hannah, and Martin Heidegger. 2002. Briefe 1925-1975 und andere Zeugnisse, ed. U. Ludz. Frank-furt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Brentano, Franz. 1973. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and L. L. McAlister. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Frege, Gottlob. 1984. Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, ed. B. McGuinness, trans. M. Black et al. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time, trans. J. Maquarrie and E. Robinson. London: SCM Press.

———. 1982. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana Univer-sity Press.

———. 1986. Seminare (1951-1973), ed. C. Ochwadt. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Husserl, Edmund. 1964. The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. W. Alston and G. Nakhnikian. The Hague: Nijhoff.

———. 1970a. The Crisis of European Sciences and Tran-scendental Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

———. 1970b. Logical Investigations, 2 volumes, revised edition, trans. J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.

———. 1970c. Philosophie der Arithmetic, 2nd edition, ed. L. Eley (Husserliana XII ). The Hague: Nijhoff.


———. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, Book I, trans. F. Kersten. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Jonas, Hans. 1980. Philosophical Essays. From Ancient Creed to Technological Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1982. The Phenomenon of Life. Toward a Philosophical Biology. Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press.

Levinas, Emmanuel. 1978. Existence and Existents, trans. A. Lingis. The Hague: Nijhoff.

———. 1979. Totality and Infinity, trans. A. Lingis. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1970. Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France 1952-1960, trans. J. O’Neill. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Taminiaux, Jacques. 1991. Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, trans. M. Gendre. Albany: State University of New York Press.

———. 1997. The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker/ Arendt and Heidegger, trans. M. Gendre. Albany: State University of New York Press.

——. 2002. Sillages phénoménologiques / Auditeurs et lecteurs de Heidegger. Brussels: Ousia.

The Aquinas Lectures 59

The Aquinas LecturesPublished by the Marquette University Press

Milwaukee WI 53201-1881 USA

1. St. Thomas and the Life of Learning. John F. McCor-mick, S.J. (1937) ISBN 0-87462-101-1

2. St. Thomas and the Gentiles. Mortimer J. Adler (1938) ISBN 0-87462-102-X

3. St. Thomas and the Greeks. Anton C. Pegis (1939) ISBN 0-87462-103-8 4. The Nature and Functions of Authority. Yves Simon

(1940) ISBN 0-87462-104-6 5. St. Thomas and Analogy. Gerald B. Phelan (1941) ISBN 0-87462-105-4 6. St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil. Jacques Maritain

(1942) ISBN 0-87462-106-2 7. Humanism and Theology. Werner Jaeger (1943) ISBN 0-87462-107-08. The Nature and Origins of Scientism. John Wellmuth

(1944) ISBN 0-87462-108-99. Cicero in the Courtroom of St. Thomas Aquinas. E.K. Rand (1945) ISBN 0-87462-109-7 10. St. Thomas and Epistemology. Louis-Marie Regis,

O.P. (1946) ISBN 0-87462-110-011. St. Thomas and the Greek Moralists. Vernon J.Bourke

(1947) ISBN 0-87462-111-912. History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education.

Étienne Gilson (1947) ISBN 0-87462-112-713. The Natural Desire for God. William R.O’Connor

(1948) ISBN 0-87462-113-5 14. St. Thomas and the World State. Robert M. Hutchins

(1949) ISBN 0-87462-114-3

60 The Aquinas Lectures

15. Method in Metaphysics. Robert J. Henle, S.J. (1950) ISBN 0-87462-115-1

16. Wisdom and Love in St. Thomas Aquinas. Étienne Gilson (1951) ISBN 0-87462-116-X

17. The Good in Existential Metaphysics. Elizabeth G. Salmon (1952) ISBN 0-87462-117-8

18. St. Thomas and the Object of Geometry. Vincent E. Smith (1953) ISBN 0-87462-118-6

19. Realism And Nominalism Revisted. Henry Veatch (1954) ISBN 0-87462-119-4

20. Imprudence in St. Thomas Aquinas. Charles J. O’Neil (1955) ISBN 0-87462-120-8

21. The Truth That Frees. Gerard Smith, S.J. (1956) ISBN 0-87462-121-622. St. Thomas and the Future of Metaphysics. Joseph

Owens, C.Ss.R. (1957) ISBN 0-87462-122-423. Thomas and the Physics of 1958: A Confrontation.

Henry Margenau (1958) ISBN 0-87462-123-224. Metaphysics and Ideology. Wm. Oliver Martin (1959)

ISBN 0-87462-124-025. Language, Truth and Poetry. Victor M. Hamm (1960)

ISBN 0-87462-125-926. Metaphysics and Historicity. Emil L. Fackenheim

(1961) ISBN 0-87462-126-727. The Lure of Wisdom. James D. Collins (1962) ISBN 0-87462-127-528. Religion and Art. Paul Weiss (1963) ISBN 0-87462-128-329. St. Thomas and Philosophy. Anton C. Pegis (1964) ISBN 0-87462-129-130. The University in Process. John O. Riedl (1965) ISBN 0-87462-130-5 31. The Pragmatic Meaning of God. Robert O. Johann

(1966) ISBN 0-87462-131-3


32. Religion and Empiricism. John E. Smith (1967) ISBN 0-87462-132-133. The Subject. Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1968) ISBN 0-87462-133-X34. Beyond Trinity. Bernard J. Cooke (1969) ISBN 0-87462-134-835. Ideas and Concepts. Julius R. Weinberg (1970) ISBN 0-87462-135-636. Reason and Faith Revisited. Francis H. Parker (1971)

ISBN 0-87462-136-4 37. Psyche and Cerebrum. John N. Findlay (1972) ISBN 0-87462-137-238. The Problem of the Criterion. Roderick M. Chisholm

(1973) ISBN 0-87462-138-039. Man as Infinite Spirit. James H. Robb (1974) ISBN 0-87462-139-940. Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics

of Religion. Charles Hartshorne (1976) ISBN 0-87462-141-0 41. The Problem of Evil. Errol E. Harris (1977) ISBN 0-87462-142-9 42. The Catholic University and the Faith. Francis C.

Wade, S.J. (1978) ISBN 0-87462-143-7 43. St. Thomas and Historicity. Armand J. Maurer, C.S.B.

(1979) ISBN 0-87462-144-5 44. Does God Have a Nature? Alvin Plantinga (1980) ISBN 0-87462-145-345. Rhyme and Reason: St. Thomas and Modes of Discourse.

Ralph Mcinerny (1981) ISBN 0-87462-148-846. The Gift: Creation. Kenneth L. Schmitz (1982) ISBN 0-87462-149-647. How Philosophy Begins. Beatrice H. Zedler (1983) ISBN 0-87462-151-8


48. The Reality of the Historical Past. Paul Ricoeur (1984) ISBN 0-87462-152-6

49. Human Ends and Human Actions: An Exploration in St. Thomas’ Treatment. Alan Donagan (1985)

ISBN 0-87462-153-450. Imagination and Metaphysics in St. Augustine. Robert

O’Connell, S.J. (1986) ISBN 0-87462-227-151. Expectations of Immortality in Late Antiquity. Hilary

A Armstrong (1987) ISBN 0-87462-154-2 52. The Self. Anthony Kenny (1988) ISBN 0-87462-155-0 53. The Nature of Philosophical Inquiry. Quentin Lauer,

S.J. (1989) ISBN 0-87562-156-954. First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philo-

sophical Issues. Alasdair MacIntyre (1990) ISBN 0-87462-157-755. Descartes among the Scholastics. Marjorie Greene

(1991) ISBN 0-87462-158-5 56. The Inference That Makes Science. Ernan McMullin

(1992) ISBN 0-87462-159-357. Person and Being. W. Norris Clarke, S.J. (1993) ISBN 0-87462-160-7 58. Metaphysics and Culture. Louis Dupré (1994) ISBN 0-87462-161-5 59. Mediæval Reactions to the Encounters between Faith

and Reason. John F. Wippel (1995) ISBN 0-87462-162-360. Paradoxes of Time in Saint Augustine. Roland J.

Teske, S.J. (1996) ISBN 0-87462-163-161. Simplicity As Evidence of Truth. Richard Swinburne

(1997) ISBN 0-87462-164-X62. Science, Religion and Authority: Lessons from the

Galileo Affair. Richard J. Blackwell. (1998) ISBN 0-87462-165-8


63. What Sort of Human Nature? Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology. Marilyn McCord Adams. (1999) ISBN 0-87462-166-6

64. On Inoculating Moral Philosophy against God. John M. Rist. (2000) ISBN 0-87462-167-X.

65. A Sensible Metaphysical Realism. William P. Alston (2001) ISBN 0-87462-168-2.

66. Eschatological Themes in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Arthur Hyman. (2002) ISBN 0-87462-169-0

67. Old Wine in New Skins. Jorge J. E. Gracia. (2003) ISBN 0-87462-170-4.

68. The Metamorphoses of Phenomenological Reduction. Jacques Taminiaux. ISBN 0-87462-171-2.


About the Aquinas Lecture Series

The Annual St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture Series began at Marquette University in the spring of 1937. Ideal for classroom use, library additions, or private collections, the Aquinas Lecture Series has received international acceptance by scholars, universities, and libraries. Hardbound in maroon cloth with gold stamped cov-ers. Uniform style and price ($15 each). Some reprints with soft covers. Complete set (67 Titles) (ISBN 0-87462-150-X ) receives a 40% discount. New standing orders receive a 30% discount. Regular reprinting keeps all volumes available. Ordering information (purchase orders, checks, and major credit cards accepted):

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taminiaux, 'the metamorphoses of phenomenological relation

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