Working With Husserl
 

Sophie Loidolt

            
                         

   This brief outline on the future of Husserlian phenomenology is rather a commitment with a few thematic references than a typical academic text. To point out how we can encounter and account for Husserl’s legacy, I would like to refer to the methodological aspect which is so essential to phenomenology. Therefore I am not going to develop any special motifs that are to be engaged in future philosophical debates but simply try to highlight the always striking benefits of working with Husserl. Whatever issue we engage in, whatever questions we ask, we can try to think our way through with the directives and tools Husserl consigned to us: a carefully developed way how to work with phenomena as such insofar as they are regarded without any methodological precondition; thus, a method that is committed to its object to such an extent that it coincides with it and tries to become the non-method par excellence or the method without any content but that what is ‘given’; and, most important, the understanding of the given as meaning (Sinn) for a consciousness that has to be investigated in its structure and genesis. It is the last point I would like to build my argument on with the aim to show what makes a phenomenological approach so fruitful. This includes the thesis that the future of Husserlian phenomenology still lies in the unique perspective on phenomena as meanings for a consciousness – a perspective in which numerous issues have not been considered yet or need to be reconsidered in the future. 

To Look at Something as a Meaning: Reduction and Consciousness

    To look at something as a meaning means to go back to the most elementary category of human understanding. Everything appears in the horizon of meaning (which thus includes absurdity as the borders of meaning) and to take this apparently so trivial fact seriously into account is a unique quality of the phenomenological approach. What turns meaning into meaning? Meaning is always meaning for . . .  . In the broadest sense, meaning is for a consciousness. May it be ‘anonymous’ (as for the early Husserl) or the consciousness of a transcendental ego, in any way we need a conception of consciousness to be able to speak of meaning at all and vice versa. To speak of meaning or of consciousness as consciousness of something leaves the subject/object divide behind and focuses on the correlation which marks the very essence of consciousness. If we take a step back and look at consciousness itself we find that it is that correlation und thus the domain of meaning. We can also see that this ‘step back’ is not a step out of the world but consciously into it with the realisation that everything we can mean by ‘world’ is already conscious and thus within consciousness. In short: It is not consciousness that is within the world, but the world itself is conscious. This view opens up a whole new sphere where the accomplishments of consciousness that make our world a meaningful world can finally be visible – and these accomplishments go to the very basic point of perceiving and thus constituting the category of ‘reality’ itself. The eidetic structures and correlations Husserl has sketched out, work as a perfect ‘map’ of that normally hidden sphere of consciousness which is mainly a sphere of accomplishments. For philosophical and other investigations this field of building-up of or generation of meaning (Sinnbildung) cannot be neglected, if a theory is intended that takes the basic structures of experience (Erleben and Erfahren) into account. Neither the basic tools nor concepts can be neglected that Husserl developed for this purpose, such as ‘consciousness,’ ‘intentionality,’ ‘correlation,’ ‘act and content’ etc.

To Look at the Structures of Sinnbildung: Intentionality and Constitution

    Husserlian phenomenology renders the possibility to take a close look at the different stages and structures of ‘Sinnbildung.’ The key term of intentionality allows a systematic differentiation between act and content and more elaborated, between noesis and noema. On the one hand, the investigation of ‘noesis’ is an investigation of the intentional ‘Erlebnis’ (e.g. the Erlebnis of ‘judging’ in judgement: das Urteilen im Urteil) that looks at it like an object and thus makes those accomplishments visible which produce meaning. On the other hand, the intentional ‘Erlebnis’ is consciousness of something: this noematic correlate now contains all the layers of meaning in the aspect of the given (the Perceived, the Judged, the Intended…) as such. This twofold analysis developed by Husserl grasps the eidetic structure and essence of consciousness as Bewusstsein von… and makes its apriori of correlation (Korrelationsapriori) clear. The insight that all reality is through Sinngebung within this correlation leads to the transcendental turn in Husserl’s philosophy. However, the activity of the transcendental ego is not necessarily an all over sovereign that is the only ‘competent authority’ of the building up of meaning. Especially Husserl’s style of investigation and devotion to the phenomena (Zu den Sachen selbst!) has led him to diverse explications in the complicated structures of Sinnbildung – I will only mention a few aspects and exemplary approaches: Husserl’s concept of passivity as well as the aligned modalities of sedimentation and habitualisation show, how meaning is produced, stored, modified and reproduced without the direct participation of an ego. At the same time, the core analysis of time that touches the deepest layers of consciousness possible, fleshes out the thesis that this ego is not a mere construction but a living ‘nunc stans’. Furthermore, the analysis of the body leads to the recognition of a passive intentional drive (Triebintentionalität) in kinaesthesis; it engages phenomena like severe pain that turn around the structures of normal experience and make a subject visible that is constituted by its openness. All these differenciated approaches that include so many aspects, will make Husserlian phenomenology indispensable also in the future. Its enormous potential lies in highlighting the multiple dimensions and modalities of Sinnbildung – even if Husserl himself emphasizes sovereign achievement of experience. This has to do with his preference for the capacity of self-preservation of the subject and a certain tendency to harmonize experience. But what is the case for Husserl is not necessarily the case for Husserlian phenomenology: there are numerous developments and radicalisations of themes and indices that were raised by Husserl himself – this is why working with Husserl still starts from a very fruitful ground, where many issues are still in question. It is important that with Husserl it is possible to come to an edge of experience where some philosophers have chosen to speak of counter-intentionality instead of intentionality, where Sinnbildung turns into Sinnereignis and where the sovereignty of constitution is deeply in question. But at the same time, subjectivity is never out of sight or out of question but appears as the indispensable core of self-affection and self-awareness that ensures the possibility to have experiences at all. Given this possibility of a balanced analysis, it is possible to talk about the generation of meaning in terms of intentionality, motivation and acts of a transcendental ego, without ignoring the impact of the body, of intersubjectivity or of the mundane structures of the social and historical world. Husserl’s phenomenology thus is a transcendental philosophy that engages the fundamental structures of sensuality and acknowledges their right and role in the process of Sinnbildung.

To Look at the Genesis of Sinnbildung

    One of Husserl’s most successful concepts is that of genesis or genetic phenomenology. This includes another dimension of Sinnbildung: while static phenomenology deals with validities, genetic phenomenology investigates the genesis of these validities. Again, the transcendental perspective is crucial because the genetic structure reveals the conditions of the possibility of experience by starting from experience itself. Investigating the fundamental conditions of consciousness in the genetic perspective renders the key features how to think and conceptualize a core form of subjectivity. It gives an outline of the most passive layers of fungierender Intentionalität and shows the importance of association, affection and succession in Sinnbildung not only on a psychological but on a transcendental level. The striking characteristic feature of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is the elaboration of a prepredicative sphere which in itself already shows structures of receptivity that have a preparing character for the entry of spontaneity. As Husserl has demonstrated this for logical categories, the whole life of reason with its justifying features could be newly understood from the prepredicative sphere. Husserl offers a possibility to speak about reason without the exclusion of sensibility or, more precise, to speak of reason within a subject that is also determined and pre-structured by its receptivity. This also allows a comprehensive approach on intersubjectivity that embraces all dimensions from the affective to the reasonable in ethic and social life.
    Through the genetic question the issue of Sinnbildung reaches a profoundness that cannot be neglected in future philosophical discussions on any question that concerns subjectivity and intersubjectivity and its constitution of a meaningful world.

How to Work with Husserl: The Idea of Arbeitsphilosophie in the Future

    The aim of this brief sketch was only to give a short idea about the richness and profoundness of topics in Husserlian phenomenology viewed under the core term of Sinnbildung. Concerning the future significance of Husserlian philosophy it is very probable that Sinnbildung as a term and a whole issue has the potential to engage in all sorts of discussions: be it a classical philosophical question on the role of the transcendental, be it a dialogue with the cognitive sciences on the question of consciousness as such, be it a new phenomenological approach in the social sciences, be it an effort to engage in the analysis of phenomena like violence and war that touch the borders of meaning and understanding. To achieve this wide range of subject matters, it is however, important to reflect on what it means to work with Husserl. Of course it does not mean that we regard his writings as a ‘system’ that is completed – not only the style of Husserl’s work but primarily his own concept of phenomenology would prohibit that perception. It is known that Husserl thought of phenomenology as methodische Arbeitsphilosophie: he regarded the new ground of experience (Erfahrungsboden) that was opened up through the phenomenological reduction as an infinite field where all kinds of philosophical questions could be newly posed and decided on.
    The way how to work fruitfully with Husserl’s phenomenology has been practiced in the past and will also guarantee the future of Husserlian thought: To a high extent it was French philosophers who opened up Husserlian phenomenology to its own more radical potential. They demonstrated that looking for the dissonances and fractures in Husserl’s opus was often more productive for phenomenology than keeping an orthodox reading. Phenomenology is after all, a method that coincides with its object. The fact that phenomenological reflections have kept and will keep phenomenology in motion, even unorthodox modifications or alterations cannot run contrary to Husserl’s intentions and will keep his legacy truly alive.