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HORIZON 6 (2) 2017 : I. Research : J. Mensch: 13-29
ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ • STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY • STUDIEN ZUR PHÄNOMENOLOGIE • ÉTUDES PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUES
I. ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ
ИДЕЯ ЖИЗНЕННОГО МИРА У ЭДМУНДА ГУССЕРЛЯ THE EDMUND HUSSERL 'S IDEA OF THE LIFE- WORLD
LIFE AND THE REDUCTION TO THE LIFE-WORLD
JAMES MENSCH
PhD in Philosophy, Professor.
Charles University, Faculty of Humanities.
158 00 Praha 5-Jinonice, Czech Republic.
E-mail: james.mensch@gmail.com
Husserl's Crisis contains his final attempt to understand the world in terms of an ultimately constituting consciousness. The path he chooses is that of a reduction to the "life-world," the world that appears when we bracket the results of the objective sciences. His claim is that "the 'objective' a priori [of the natural sciences] is grounded in the 'subjective-relative' a priori of the lifeworld". It is from the latter that he attempts to achieve his vision of "a universal, ultimately functioning subjectivity". In this article, I question whether this is possible. If the world were the product of this functioning subjectivity, the latter could not be part of the world. But, the inherent sense of the reduction to the life-world leaves us with the sensuous embodied subject, who is a part of the world. How can we think of the a priori in terms of this subject? I conclude by considering both Merleau-Ponty's and Patocka's attempts to conceive of such an a priori.
Key words: Life-world, subjectivity, a priori, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Patocka, Hans Jonas. ЖИЗНЬ И РЕДУКЦИЯ К ЖИЗНЕННОМУ МИРУ ДЖЕЙМС МЕНШ
Доктор философии, профессор.
Карлов университет, факультет гуманитарных наук.
158 00 Прага 5-Йинонице, Чешская Республика.
E-mail: james.mensch@gmail.com
«Кризис» Гуссерля является последней попыткой понять мир в терминах конституирующего сознания. Путь, который он выбирает, — это путь редукции к
© JAMES MENSCH, 2017
«жизненному миру», миру, который появляется, когда мы заключаем в скобки результаты объективных наук. Его тезис состоит в том, что «"объективное" априори [естественных наук] основывается на "относительном субъекту" априори жизненного мира». Последнее показывает, что он пытается достичь видения «универсальной, предельной функции субъективности». В настоящей статье я ставлю вопрос, возможно ли это. Если мир является продуктом этой функции субъективности, то таковая не может быть частью мира. Но имманентный смысл редукции к жизненному миру оставляет нас подле чувствующего, воплощенного субъекта, который является частью мира. Как мыслимо априори в терминах такой субъективности? Я завершаю статью рассмотрением попыток Мерло-Понти и Паточки постичь такое априори.
Ключевые слова: Жизненный мир, субъективность, априори, Гуссерль, Мерло-Понти, Паточка, Ханс Йонас.
1. INTRODUCTION
Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology bears an interesting subtitle. He calls it An Introduction. What we confront in his final work is yet another way of introducing transcendental phenomenology. The approach this time is through an analysis of the crisis of science and the attempt to resolve it by the reduction to the lifeworld. Ultimately, however, Husserl's goal remains the same. It is the vision of an ultimately constituting consciousness, one which he first expressed some twenty years before. Thus, in 1913, he asserted in the Ideas that the entire spatial-temporal world is, "according to its sense, merely intentional being. ...It is a being that consciousness posits in its experiences [and] ... beyond this, however, it is nothing at all"1 (Husserl, 1976, 106). This means that "the existence of nature is only as constituting itself in the actual connections of consciousness" (Husserl, 1976, 109). The same doctrine appears in the Crisis, when Husserl asserts that "the world, which continually exists for us in the flowing change of modes of givenness, is a universal spiritual acquisition. It has developed... as a product of sense, as a product of a universal, ultimately functioning subjectivity" (Husserl, 1970, 113, translation modified). The question that I would like to raise is whether the reduction to the lifeworld is actually the way to reach this goal. Since the world is the product of this functioning subjectivity, the latter cannot be part of the world . But, as we shall see, the inherent sense of the reduction that Husserl practices in the Crisis leaves us with the sensuous consciousness of embodied living beings. Its residuum is the subjectivity of beings that live from the world
1 Unless otherwise noted, all translations from German are my own.
2 If it were, we would have the "absurdity" of "a component part of the world, its human subjectivity," constituting "the whole world" and thus itself (Husserl, 1970, 179).
and are part of it. As such, the reduction to the lifeworld actually works a transformation of phenomenology. The second half of this paper will consider the implications that Merleau-Ponty and Patocka draw from this.
2. THE CRISIS OF REASON
In Husserl's view, the crisis of science involves the rationality that first made its definite appearance with the Greeks. Based on experience and deductive reasoning, its conclusions claimed a universal validity — a validity that had nothing to do with a person's social situation. For Husserl, "the teleological beginning, the true birth of the European spirit as such," begins with the "Greek primal establishment" of this conception of rationality (Husserl, 1970, 71). The telos referred to is that of a "scientific," rational understanding of the world, one that leaves nothing out and is available to everyone. This goal sets the path that distinguishes the European spirit. The break in this tradition comes with Galileo's transformation of science and the rationality associated with it. It is no longer taken as a rationality that seeks to understand being as such, applying its methods to both consciousness and the world. Assuming the form of what Husserl terms "objectivism," it undercuts itself. It does this because it can no longer find a place for consciousness. It thus undermines its own possibility since, as science, it presupposes the scientists, who observe the world and formulate its objective laws. Such observation and formulation are conscious activities. Yet science assumes, since Galileo's time, a view of reality that excludes consciousness. The upshot is not just a crisis in the European sciences. It is a crisis in the European humanity that defines itself in terms of rationality. The transformation of rationality into a form that excludes those that practice it affects the self-understanding of Europeans. It undercuts the goal that has guided them since the time of the Greeks.
In the Crisis, Husserl traces this transformation back to Galileo's separation of the primary and secondary qualities of reality. The secondary are those given by our five senses. They are the tastes, textures, sounds, sights and smells of the world. The primary are the qualities that can be measured and numbered — for example, the lengths, areas, and volumes of things as well as their weights, positions and speeds. To understand the relation between these two types of qualities, we have to recall that the terms "primary" and "secondary" refer historically to Aristotle's distinction between primary and secondary senses of being. For Aristotle, "being," in the primary sense of the word, is substance. This is something that can exist on its own. In a secondary sense, being consists of the
qualities that are attributed to substances — for example, the colors, sounds, extensions, etc. that characterize them. These qualities can only exist by inhering in some individual thing. Galileo takes this ontological distinction and applies it to the qualities themselves. The primary qualities of reality can exist on their own. Since these are the qualities that are capable of being expressed mathematically, the result, Husserl writes, is a transformation of nature. In his words, "through Galilee's mathematization of nature, nature itself is idealized under the guidance of the new mathematics; nature itself becomes ... a mathematical manifold" (Husserl, 1970, 23). Its primary reality, in other words, is mathematical. It consists in the mathematical formulas that express its measureable relations.
The point of this transformation, Husserl notes, is to "overcome the relativity of subjective interpretations, which [relativity] is, after all, essential to the empirically intuited world" (Husserl, 1970, 29). Each of us, in other words, has his own subjective presentations. He or she sees things through his particular perspectives, interprets them through the lens of his personal history, his prejudices and so on. But, there can be no dispute with regard to what can be counted and numerically measured. Thus, Galileo's insight, Husserl writes, is that, by limiting reason to such aspects, we can "attain an identical, nonrelative truth of which everyone who can understand and use this method can convince himself. Here, then, we recognize something that truly is" (Husserl, 1970, 29).
The difficulty with this method concerns consciousness. Far from being a mathematical manifold, it cannot even be numerically measured. One chair, for example, may be so many meters from another chair, but we cannot make the same claim about our perceptions of the chairs. Our perceptions, in fact, have no definite size. But if the consciousness that consists of such perceptions cannot be measured and expressed mathematically, we cannot, according to this reasoning, say that it is "something that truly is." To put this in Aristotelean terms, we are forced to say that consciousness has no reality in a primary sense. What would have reality in this sense would be the physical (and measureable) brain processes that underlie its functioning.
3. THE REDUCTION TO THE LIFEWORLD
Husserl considers the results of this method to be catastrophic. He writes, "If the intuited world of our life is merely subjective, then all the truths of pre-and extra-scientific life, which have to do with its factual being, are deprived of value" (Husserl, 1970, 54). How, then, can we face the social and political crises that are confronting Europe? What aid can reason, reduced to mathematical
reasoning, offer us? For Husserl, the only way out is to reopen the question of reason — this, by bracketing the science that limits its truth claims to the numerical aspects of reality. What is required then, is "an epoche of all participation in the cognitions of the objective sciences, an epoche of any critical position-taking which is interested in their truth or falsity, even any position on their guiding idea of an objective knowledge of the world." This is, he adds, "an epoche in regard to all objective theoretical interests, all aims and activities belonging to us as objective scientists" (Husserl, 1970, 135). The result of this suspension is to "place oneself completely upon the ground of this straightforwardly intuited world." It is to return to the "lifeworld" (Husserl, 1970, 123).
What exactly is this world that we return to? Insofar as science distinguishes primary from secondary qualities, the epoche suspends this distinction. The world we return to is, then, the world of directly intuited, secondary qualities. Now, for Husserl, the lifeworld of such qualities continues to have its own inherent rationality. In all its "relative features," it has, he asserts, "a general structure. This general structure, to which everything that exists relatively is bound, is not itself relative. We can attend to it in its generality and, with sufficient care, fix it once and for all in a way equally accessible to all" (Husserl, 1970, 139). The way we do so is to focus on the "how" of appearing. In Husserl's words, we "establish a consistent universal interest in the 'how' of the manners of givenness and in the onta themselves, not straightforwardly but rather as objects in respect to their 'how'" (Husserl, 1970, 144). Thus, we notice that the world's spatial-temporal objects appear perspectivally. Their size increases as we approach them and so on. In all this, we regard the world "with our interest exclusively and constantly directed toward how, throughout the alteration of relative validities, of subjective appearances and opinions, the coherent, universal validity [of the] world — the world — comes into being for us" (Husserl, 1970, 144). Such remarks indicate the path that Husserl will follow. Beginning with the "how" of appearing, he will proceed to examine the objects that appear through their various manners of givenness — the ultimate object, here, being the world itself. He will also proceed in the opposite, noetic direction to examine the syntheses of consciousness through which subjective appearances are grasped together so as present particular objects. The ultimate goal here is, as I noted, to see the world "as a product of sense, as a product of a universal, ultimately functioning subjectivity" (Husserl, 1970, 113).
Can Husserl actually take this path from the lifeworld to this ultimate subjectivity? Is the world of secondary qualities such that it can lead in this direction? As Descartes observes in his Meditations, such qualities are often deceptive. He writes that he sees "nothing to make it impossible that I was so constructed by nature that I should be mistaken even in the things which seem to me most true" (Descartes, 1990, 73). Thus, it seems most true "that in an object which is hot there is some quality similar to my idea of heat; that in a white, or black, or green object there is the same whiteness, or blackness, or greenness which I perceive; that in a bitter or sweet object there is the same taste or the same flavor, and so on for the other senses" (Descartes, 1990, 77). None of this, however, is true. These apparent qualities have their origin, not in the objects apprehended, but in the particular structure of our human senses. The purpose of these senses, however, is not truth, but rather survival. In Descartes' words, his bodily senses are there "only to indicate to my mind which objects are useful or harmful" to his embodied state (Descartes, 1990, 79). As such, the information they provide is strictly relative to it. Like Galileo, Descartes moves to the primary qualities of nature in order to escape this relativity. He does so by limiting himself to the numerable aspects of reality. Thus, no matter what my senses are, as long as they allow me to distinguish elements, I can number them. What I do number pertains to the objects themselves; the same holds for the formulae relating what I number.
The point of this procedure is an abstraction from our embodiment. It enacts, on a practical level, Descartes's famous mind-body distinction. Thus, limiting myself to what I can measure and number, none of the features that specify my embodiment, be they those of my race, gender, birth or personal history, enter into my judgments. When, however, I suspend this procedure, I also suspend this separation. The lifeworld I thereby return to is, thus, that of my embodied consciousness. This is the consciousness that, by virtue of its sense organs, internalizes the world. It is also the consciousness whose embodiment thrusts it into the world. It is, then, the consciousness that has to assert, with Merleau-Ponty, "I am in the world and the world is in me" . Husserl, of course, would object that the world that includes me is a constituted sense. It is the result of the actions of an ultimately functioning subjectivity, one that is independent of the world. But, can we reach this once we return to the world of secondary qualities? Can we think of subjectivity apart from them? Such qualities form the
3 This, according to Merleau-Ponty, is our natural, perceptual faith. In his words, "The 'natural' man holds on to both ends of the chain" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 8).
sensuous interiority of a living being. They give it a radical individuality. Thus, the warmth you feel as you face the sun, the taste of a fresh peach as you bite into it, and so on are not public objects. They mark the sphere of the personal and private. The subject of the lifeworld cannot be abstracted from such qualities. Without them, it would lose its individuality. It would, as Husserl himself elsewhere admits, become only an "empty form"4. This, however, implies that this subject depends on the world that offers it these qualities. It "lives from" such qualities, as Levinas writes5. Such dependence, however, signifies that it offers no basis for the move to the ultimately constituting subjectivity. The subject of the lifeworld is tied by its affective life to the world. It is, irremediably, the subjectivity of an individual living being.
4. ALTRENATE A PRIORI
All this raises the question of rationality. The reason why Husserl returns to the lifeworld is to present an alternative to the "universal 'objective' a priori " of the objective sciences — an a priori that makes consciousness impossible. His claim is that "the 'objective' a priori is grounded in the 'subjective-relative' a priori of the lifeworld" (Husserl, 1970, 140). Can we still speak of an a priori of the lifeworld, once we see the latter as the world of living beings? Is there an a priori of embodied consciousness? This is a question that, in varied forms, has occupied phenomenologists since Husserl's time. Here, I will consider only the positions of Merleau-Ponty and Patocka6.
4 According Husserl, "An ego does not possess a proper general character with a material content; it is quite empty of such. It is simply an ego of the cogito which [in the change of experiences] gives up all content and is related to a stream of experiences, in relation to which it is also dependent ..." (Husserl, 1921, 18). Such dependence is not just that of the "awakeness" of the ego on the presence of the stream; rather it is the dependence of it in its individuality on the stream. As contentless, the ego is not unique since it lacks the material features which would distinguish it from another ego. In other words, considered by itself apart from the stream, it has only the general character of an egological structure, an "empty form" of an ego. As Husserl puts this: "One can say that the ego of the cogito is completely devoid of a material, specific essence, comparable indeed with another ego, yet in this comparison an empty form which is only 'individualized' through the stream: this in the sense of its uniqueness" (Husserl, 1921, 18).
5 See: (Levinas, 1969, 135-6).
6 I could, equally, have taken up Levinas's position. One can, for example, read "Section II. Interiority and Economy" of Levinas, 1969 as a description of the structures of the human lifeworld. The apriori here is that of the "atheist" self-sufficiency, which characterizes our life of sensuous enjoyment, dwelling, and labor. Such self-sufficiency stands as a presupposition for our ability to be called into question by nother person. For Levinas, this calling into question, which interrupts our enjoyment and pragmatic engagements, is the birth of objectivity. What is interrupted is the sense the object has for me, the sense given to it by my enjoyment and by the
The a priori, for Merleau-Ponty, is taken to be that of "flesh" or the living body. It involves the fact that selfhood, as embodied, has to be taken as both immanent and transcendent — that is, as both subject and object. To show this, Merleau-Ponty uses the example of the touching of hands. My right hand when it touches an object functions as a subject. This means that, in its touch sensations, it serves as the immanent place of the appearance of the touched. The same, hand, however, can also be touched. As such, it becomes a transcendent object — i.e., a part of the appearing world. Merleau-Ponty calls the relation that exists between the hands an "intertwining" or "chiasm." Three elements, commentators agree, characterize it. There is, first of all, the fact that perception must be embodied. As embodied, the perceiver, like his object, is perceivable. There is, then, as Ted Toadvine notes, "an ontological continuity or kinship between the sentient and the sensible" (Toadvine, 2012, 340). The second element is the fact that, although each hand can function as either subject or object, it cannot simultaneously function as both. In Merleau-Ponty's words, "the moment I feel my left hand with my right hand, I correspondingly cease touching my right hand with my left hand" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 9). There is "a sort of dehiscence" or bursting apart that "opens my body in two," splitting it "between my body looked at and my body looking, my body touched and my body touching" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 123). As M.C. Dillon has remarked, this non-coincidence is essential to perception. Given that perceiving something is distinct from being it, "there must be a distancing of it" (Dillon, 2004, 298). The third and, most significant element of Merleau-Ponty's a priori is the reversibility that we find in hand touching hand. The hands can exchange roles. Each can, alternately, assume the role of the touching or the touched hand. This reversibility extends to the relation of the sensible to the visible. Thus, generally speaking, I can touch what I see and see what I touch. A colored surface, for example, has a texture that can be felt; and the solidity that allows it to be touched also renders it visible. This does not make visibility the same as tangibility. Rather, as Merleau-Ponty writes, "There is double and crossed situating of the visible in the tangible and of the tangible in the visible; the two maps are complete, and yet they do not merge into one" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 134). As with hand touching hand, a gap remains between the two.
As commentators have pointed out, Merleau-Ponty's attempt to see the chiasm as the form of the lifeworld as such suffers from an overriding difficulty. It involves the asymmetry that appears once we pass beyond the hand touching hand
uses that I put to it. Facing an alternative sense asserted by the Other, I also confront the question of what the object is "kath' auto" — i.e., what it is according to itself.
example. Thus, while I can touch worldly things because I myself am a worldly thing, this does not mean that our relation is symmetrical. I can feel my hand being touched when I touch it with my other hand, but I cannot feel the table being touched when I touch it with my hand . Similarly, a painter may see the trees that he paints, but it does not follow that they see the painter . The difficulty with such asymmetry is that the intertwining is not just a relation designating our relation to the world. It has an ontological import. It is crucial for Merleau-Ponty's attempt to conceive of a non-dualistic ontology. This becomes apparent in his treatment of flesh. For him, flesh involves our embodiment. It expresses "a relation of the visible with itself that traverses me and constitutes me as a seer" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 140). But as such, it involves more than this. It "is the formative medium of the object and the subject," which means that "we must think of it... as an element, as the concrete emblem of a general manner of being" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 147). What is emblematic is the "reversibility of the seeing and the visible, the touching and the touched" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 147). It is this that allows our selfhood to straddle the divide between subject and object, being both immanent and transcendent. The fact that it can be both is supposed to integrate consciousness with the world. It is at the heart of the non-dualistic ontology advanced under the title of flesh. Such an ontology is crucial if we are to move from the subjective-relative a priori of the lifeworld — the world of flesh or embodied consciousness — to an objective a priori.
The difficulty is that while such reversibility characterizes my body's relation to itself, it does not characterize the world as such. Yet Merleau-Ponty, in moving from our body to an account of being, is compelled to claim that the body is an "exemplar sensible" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 135). He conceives it as an example of sensibles in general. This, however, implies that the sensible is, like flesh, also sensing. This is the implication of Merleau-Ponty's statement, "When we speak of the flesh of the visible, we do not mean to do anthropology, to describe a world covered over with all our own projections, leaving aside what it can be under the human mask. Rather, we mean that carnal being. is a prototype of Being, of which our body, the sensible sentient, is a very remarkable variant" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, 136). Our body exhibits the reversibility between the sentient and the sensed. In its case, the sensed is also sentient. But we cannot say
7 See: (Dillon, 2004, 299).
8 See: (Dillon, 2004, 300). This holds even though, as Merleau-Ponty quotes a painter, "In a forest, I have felt many times over that it was not I who was looking at the forest. I felt, on certain days, that it was rather the trees that were looking at me..." (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, 31). Unless otherwise noted, all translations from French are my own.
that the visible world, though sensed, is inherently sentient. To say this would be to claim, for example, that the forest that I regard also regards me.
Renaud Barbaras remarks in this regard that the "predetermination of the subject as flesh is absolutely ruinous" when we try "to comprehend how the subject... can be simultaneously situated on both sides of the world" — i.e., stand before it as a perceiver and within it as perceived (Barbaras, 2013, 34). Thus,
there is my flesh, i.e., my seeing body, and there is the flesh of the world, which precisely corresponds to the inscription of my flesh in the depths of the world... but it is impossible to comprehend how the same flesh can both be facing the world [as sentient] and be at its heart, how the subject can, in the same sense, belong to the world and make it appear. (Barbaras, 2013, 34)
Here, the appeal to flesh is no help since, as Merleau-Ponty recognizes in a note to his manuscript, "the flesh of the world does not sense like my flesh — it is sensible but not sensing"9. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 304). Given this we cannot make the move from our flesh to the flesh of the world considered as a "style of being"10.
It is because of this that Barbaras considers Patocka to have made a decisive advance over the thought of Merleau-Ponty. The advance consists in Patocka's attempt to think of the a priori of the lifeworld, not in terms of flesh, but rather as an a priori of motion. In Barbaras view, "this approach according to movement. constitutes the sole satisfactory version of what Merleau-Ponty was trying to think at the end of his life under the title of the intertwining or chiasm. In other words, the mutual enveloping of the subject and the world can only be satisfactorily
9 The citation is from (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 304). This note is not included in Merleau-Ponty, 1968. Barbaras cites it in (Barbaras, 2013, 34).
10 Referring to the same note, Barbaras asserts that "the split between the subject that makes things appear and what appears exterior to it divides [the sense of] flesh itself into a proper and a merely metaphorical sense" (Barbaras, 2003, 187). This split signifies that Merleau-Ponty has not advanced beyond the position of the Phenomenology of Perception: « Autant dire que nous n'avons pas avancé d'un pas par rapport à la Phénoménologie de la perception. En ce sens, la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty demeure une philosophie de l'incarnation plutôt qu'elle n'est une philosophie de la Chair — incarnation de la conscience dans un organisme et, partant, du sens dans une extériorité — et elle demeure en cela une philosophie de la conscience » (Barbaras, 2003, 188). Merleau-Ponty, thus, leaves us suspended between a transcendental phenomenology and an ontology of flesh: « J'en conclus d'abord que la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty, en raison de sa radicalité phénoménologique ou, comme on voudra, de sa non-radicalité ontologique, est une philosophie essentiellement instable, dans laquelle on ne peut demeurer. Elle nous projette nécessairement en-deçà ou au-delà d'elle-même : en-deçà, dans une phénoménologie transcendantale qui demeure sa vérité la plus profonde, ou au-delà, dans une ontologie de la Chair ou de la Vie au seuil de laquelle elle a été conduite sans pouvoir l'assumer » (Barbaras, 2003, 188).
thought in terms of movement"11. This is because movement, as opposed to "flesh," is common to animate and inanimate nature. In other words, while it is "impossible to comprehend how the same flesh can both be facing the world [as sentient] and be at its heart," this does not hold for motion. This praise, however, is combined with his question whether motion can really account for subjectivity, i.e., position it as distinct from the world. As Barbaras puts this, "nothing in this movement calls for the arising of the subject that we are. It is impossible to proceed backwards on the road that has lead us to the primary movement, proceeding from this to the acts by which we make the world appear." Thus, we
know that "our existence is movement, but we cannot explain the singularity of
12
this movement since it presupposes a separation" of ourselves from the world .
J. APPEARING, MOVEMENT, AND BEING
Is Patocka's account of motion incapable of explaining the arising of the subject? To answer this, we must first outline his position on appearing as such. Patocka considers appearing "something completely original." This means, he writes, that "manifesting in itself, in that which makes it manifesting, is not reducible, cannot be converted into anything that manifests itself in manifesting" (Patocka, 2002, 24). It cannot, in other words, be explained by the beings that appear; it cannot be deduced from them or their properties. This holds both for subjects and objects, taken as appearing entities. In Patocka's words, "showing itself is not any of these things that show themselves, whether it is a psychic or
13
physical object" .
What then is this original appearing? Patocka refers to it as "a field of self-showing, a field that must have its own definite structure if the thing itself is to
11 (Barbaras, 2013, 33). See also: (Barbaras, 2011b, 35), where he repeats this claim.
12 (Barbaras, 2011a, 156). As Barbaras elsewhere writes, "to affirm that the unicity of movement overcomes the duality of its forms is certainly to affirm that their difference does not compromise its identity. But it is also to confront the task of taking into consideration the duality that begins in this identity, [the task] of generating the difference. It is not certain that this genesis is possible with the framework of a Patockian cosmology." This holds since "this division [between the movement of the subject and that of the world] is the source of subjective existence and thus cannot be founded on subjective existence as Merleau-Ponty and, to a certain extent, Patocka himself are still inclined to think" (Barbaras, 2013, 35).
13 "Showing is not then, as it may seem, merely an objective structure, because the objective, material structure is that which shows itself. Showing is also not mind and it is not the structure of mind, because that is also just a thing; it is also something that is and that eventually can also manifest itself.... showing itself is not any of these things that show themselves, whether it is a psychic or physical object. and yet it is still the showing of those things" (Patocka, 2002, 22).
present itself and appear"14. For example, if a spatial-temporal object is to appear, its appearing must be structured perspectivally. A similar necessity holds for the horizonal character of experience with its structures of near and far, presence and absence. The objects that we encounter have their internal horizons — the sets of appearances that are required to determine their features ever more closely. They also have their external horizons of appearances, which link them together as we move between them. Such horizons are a structural feature required if objects are to appear as part of a field of things — and, ultimately, if they are to appear as part of the world15. A crucial element in the structure of appearing is, of course, the subject — understood as that to whom things appear. Thus, if things appear perspectivally, they must be related to a definite view-point. The same holds for the horizonal structures of appearing. Given that these structures consist of connected sets of perspectivally ordered appearances, they also require a subject occupying a view-point. Patocka asserts that this requirement for a subject is "a fundamental law of appearing," according to which "there is always the duality between what appears and the one to whom this appearing appears." This means that "appearing is appearing only in this duality"16. In other words, if something is to appear, there must also be a subject to whom this thing appears.
As the above examples indicate, appearing as such consists in a collection of possibilities coordinated in an if-then manner. According to Patocka, "[t]he original possibilities (the world) are simply the field where the living being exists, the field that is co-original with [this world]." They determine the world "as a field of appearing' (Patocka, 2000, 124). As for "my totality of possibilities," this is just "a selection" made from this (Patocka, 2000, 123). While the former possibilities signify appearing as such, understood as a set of "legalities," the selection designates appearing to a particular subject. On the level of appearing as
14 Patocka takes this field as "the authentic discovery of the Logical Investigations." See: (Patocka 1991, 274).
15 As Huserl writes in this regard, "The individual — relative to consciousness — is nothing for itself; perception of a thing is its perception in a perceptual field. And just as the individual thing has a sense in perception only through an open horizon of 'possible perceptions,' ... so once again the thing has a horizon: an 'external horizon' in relation to the 'internal'; it has this precisely as a thing of a field of things; and this finally points to the totality, 'the world as a perceptual world'" (Husserl, 1962,165, my translation). See: (Husserl, 1970, 162) for Carr's translation.
16 (Patocka, 1995a, 127). What we confront here is, in fact, a "world-structure," one embracing both things and subjects. In Patocka's words, „Und da dies Erscheinen von der Präsenz der Dinge und der Welt im Original nicht abzutrennen ist, ziehen wir es vor, das Erscheinen als eine Dinge und Subjekt umspannende und umfassende Struktur aufzufassen. Die einzige Dinge und Subjekte umfassende Struktur ist aber die Welt selbst, und deshalb möchten wir sie als Weltstruktur aufgefaßt wissen" (Patocka, 2000, 123).
such, we thus have, "the impersonal order of the totality of possibilities, possibilities not pertaining to any being in particular." On the level of appearing to me, we have "my totality of possibilities as a selection made from the sphere of the first" (Patocka, 2000, 123). Thus, the "impersonal order" of appearing as such involves pure possibility. It forms "a simple field of specific legalities" (Patocka, 2000, 126). The human totality of possibilities understands these legalities in relation to us, i.e., in terms of our possible experience.
To speak of possibilities does not give us any actual appearing. Something must be added if the formal structure of possibilities is to characterize the appearing of a given world. This, according to Patocka, is motion. Through its motion, an entity affects its environment. This affecting is its appearing in the sense that it causes the entity to stand out and, thus, to distinguish itself from its environment. For Patocka, then, "movement. first makes this or that being apparent, causes it to manifest itself in its own original manner" (Patocka, 1990, 243). Thus, an oscillating set of charged particles affects its environment through an expanding series of electro-magnetic waves. These waves, encountering a sentient creature with appropriate eyes, also affect its vision by initiating the appropriate motions in its perceptual systems. As a result, the charged particles appear as a source of light. In this example, motion occurs between existent objects: a light bulb and an sentient creature. What is unique about Patocka's position is that motion is not just behind appearing; it is also at the root of being. For him, "movement is what gives things the being that they are; movement is a fundamental ontological factor" (Patocka, 1988, 129). What this signifies is that "movement. is not itself a reality in the same sense as determinate realities" (Patocka, 1995b, 42). It is, rather, the realization of such entities — this, regardless of their determinations. As Patocka expresses this, "Movement is what makes a being what it is. Movement unifies, maintains cohesion, synthesizes the being's determinations. The persistence and succession of the determinations of a substrate, etc., are movements" (Patocka, 1995b, 31). Thus, behind the being of light is the oscillation of charged particles as well as the movement of the electromagnetic waves that this sets up. Similarly, behind the being of the perceiving creature is the movement excited in its perceptual systems. Supporting this, of course, are all the organic movements that maintain the creature as a living entity. The necessity for this doctrine follows from Patocka's assertion that appearing as such "cannot be converted into anything that manifests itself in manifesting." If appearing as such is prior to entities, the movement that realizes appearing must equally be prior. In other words, by taking movement as prior to
the moving being, Patocka can describe appearing in terms of movement without reducing appearing to the beings that appear, i.e. without explaining it in terms of such beings.
6. THE ARISING OF THE SUBJECT
How are we to explain the arising of the subject within this framework? What is the movement that distinguishes the sentient being from the sensible? The answer, I believe, can be found in the motion that distinguishes animate from inanimate existence. Here, I shall rely on Hans Jonas's description of metabolism. Living creatures, he observes, are both composed of matter and yet differ from it. Since the matter composing them "is forever vanishing downstream," they must constantly take in new matter to replace this. Thus, an organism is "independent of the sameness of this matter" but "is dependent on the exchange of it" (Jonas, 1996, 86) The underlying motion of all life is, then, that of metabolism (Stoffwechsel). To be, living beings must actively replace the matter they have lost. This means, Jonas writes, "organisms are entities whose being is their own doing... the being that they earn from this doing is not a possession they then own in separation from the activity by which it was generated, but is the continuation of that very activity itself' (Jonas, 1996, 86). The underlying goal of this activity is, in other words, not particular objects, but the activity itself as the actualization of their being alive. This implies that, in living organisms, "need" is more than a need for this or that object. It is, rather, an ontological condition. In Jonas' words: "This necessity (for exchange) we call 'need,' which has a place only where existence is unassured and [is] its own continual task" (Jonas, 1996, 86). In fact, such need expresses an organism's relation to the future. Thus, a living entity has a future insofar as its being is its doing, i.e., stretches beyond the now of its organic state to what comes next. Here, its "will be" — the intake of new material — determines the "is" as represented by its present activity. As such, it drives the motion that actualizes the organism's existence. This teleological motion places the organism in the world as a material object. Yet, it makes it more than a material component. It turns the organism into a goal, one that it has to actualize. Such actualization, as involving motion, both differentiates the organism and discloses it. The living being appears as present in the world, as affecting its environment. Affecting it, it stands out from it. This standing out involves what is not present in the world — namely the organism as a goal, i.e., as future. The same actualization discloses the world as it relates to the organism's goal, which is itself. Acting to fulfill its needs, it reveals its environment as predator and prey,
sexual partner, competitor, etc. Here, it both belongs to the world and makes it appear.
To expand this picture, we have to speak of the motion of evolution, the motion that over millennia continually adapts living beings to their changing environments. Such beings are what Patocka calls "concrete subjects." Biologically, they "stand in causal connections with other worldly things, and this connection is a specific one: it concentrates the effects [of the other things] in specific, highly differentiated, acting organs [those of the senses and the brain], and thereby actualizes the possibility of letting a perspectival world appear, a world that appears to someone" (Patocka, 2000, 126). Does this mean that appearing can be understood in terms of such causality? Not according to Patocka. He writes, "Causality in no way signifies the creation of the appearing as such, but rather the adaptation of the organic unity to the structure of appearing, which co-determines the world and in a certain partial sense grounds it" (Patocka, 2000, 132). Put in terms of the motion of evolution, one can say that the evolution of organic beings takes account of the structure of appearing. Their evolution involves their adapting to this structure when such adaptation offers a survival advantage. The evolution of sensory organs and central nervous systems, thus, provides them with the causally determined apparatus that makes the structure of appearing applicable to their organic functioning. The motion of evolution, in other words, actualizes a specific set of possibilities of appearing — one that results in the creature's appearing world. It is in terms of such a world that the creature distinguishes itself as a goal.
The fact that each creature has its world does not mean that these worlds are unrelated. Natural selection, Darwin writes, "can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends" (Darwin, 1967, 65). The latter is the goal of the selection. Its point is the organism itself. That said, one has to acknowledge that the notion of this "being which she tends" and its benefit becomes highly ambiguous once we observe, with Darwin, "how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life" (Darwin, 1967, 63). If, as Darwin suggests, every being is ultimately defined by every other, the "being" tended by "nature" can only be life itself understood as the whole web of relations and entities. With this, we can say that the appearing worlds of sentient creatures are ultimately related through the web of life. Like the individual
creature engaging in metabolism, such life chooses itself. Its goal is its own continuance.
To speak of rationality in these terms is to return to the field of appearing and its interrelated possibilities. Patocka writes in this regard, "Phenomenology intuitively investigates the basic structures that allow the world as such to appear." These are the structures that make possible the knowing that forms hypotheses and confirms or disproves these hypotheses. According to Patocka, "What phenomenology accomplishes here would be a new science of an intuitively accessible a priori, a contribution to metaphysics as the science of the formation
17
of world structures, and [would be] a basis for the objective sciences" . As with Husserl, the goal is to base the objective a priori of the sciences on the a priori of the lifeworld. For Patocka, however, this lifeworld is that of living beings or "concrete subjects." What realizes the a priori is not some ultimately functioning subjectivity, but life itself. More precisely, it is motion that is definitive of it — the motion that actualizes both being and appearing. Viewed in this light, Patocka's final work can be seen as both the transformation and culmination of the project of Husserl's Crisis.
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