Abstract
I develop two fundamental ideas about sexual difference on the basis of classical phenomenology. The first idea concerns the perceptual world and its structures. Using the phenomenological distinction between perceptual type and empirical concept, I argue that sexual identity is not one unitary objectivity but includes two different levels of objectivity: one sensuous and the other conceptual. Moreover, our concepts of man and woman do not automatically emerge from our pre-conceptual perceptions of sexed bodies but are constituted by an active focus of attention. Conversely, our critical work on concepts and forms of discourse cannot change or undo the pre-conceptual structures of perception even if it may allow a reflective distance from these structures. The second argument is based on the phenomenological account of selfhood and its temporal nature. I explain the concept of the transcendental person as a temporal unity and show how this concept helps to establish a non-naturalistic philosophy of sexual difference. Ultimately, I show that the subjects that constitute the sense of being are not sexually neutral “consciousnesses” or “humans” (Dasein) but are feminine and masculine persons with different sensual lives and lived motivations. This means that sexual difference is not just an ontological difference but is also a structure in the foundations of ontology.
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Notes
- 1.
Feminists influenced by the Foucaultian theory of power have argued that the categories of sex and gender are constructed in discursive and ideological practices that vary according to historical and social circumstances. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble(1990) is the most influential of such arguments. Butler begins her work by questioning the legitimacy of the epistemological and ontological base of gendered thinking and experience: “What happens to (…) the stability of gender categories when the epistemic regime of presumptive heterosexuality is unmasked as that which produces and refines the ostensible categories of ontology?” (viii) Butler sets to “expose the foundational categories of sex, gender, and desire as effects of a special formation of [heterosexist] power” (viii). Based on this analysis, she argues that feminist politics and feminist thinking become more efficient if they abandon the assumption of a universal and unitary feminine subject (4ff.). Compare Butler’s argument to Collette Guillamin’s work Sexe, race et pratique du pouvoir: l’idée de nature (1992). Both Butler and Guillamin are influenced by Monique Wittig’s early essays which build on a historized version of Beauvoir’s idea of becoming woman. See for example Wittig’s Les corps lesbien (1972), “La pensée straight” (1980) and “On ne naît pas femme” (1980).
To be sure, such a discursive approach, when developed in extreme, is able to provide sexual difference with an ontological status. This is possible if one takes the transcendental “linguisticist” stand according to which the sense of being is constituted in discourse, speech and writing. Based on this idea, one can contend that woman and man are nothing but effects of language or discursive positions and at the same time argue that as such they are ontological units.
- 2.
By the term “gender identity” I refer to the identities of persons as women and men (and as girls and boys). Thus, I do not use the term merely for the cultural interpretations of our reproductive sexuality, but to cover all the aspects of our identities as women and men, bodily and mental, natural and cultural, material and spiritual. For the multiple problems of the sex-gender distinction, see Heinämaa, “Woman—nature, product, style?”
- 3.
Cf. Haslanger “Feminism and Metaphysics,” “What Are We Talking About?” and “What Good Are Our Intuitions?”
- 4.
A good introduction to Husserl’s reformulation of transcendental philosophy is provided by Dan Zahavi in “Husserl’s Intersubjective Transformation.”
- 5.
Stein published her essays and lectures in the 1930s but her work remained largely unrecognized by later feminist philosophers. There are several different reasons for this neglect: Stein left academic institutions and the Husserlian circles relatively early; she started to develop her own thinking which combined phenomenological philosophy with Christian doctrines and Thomistic anthropology; and she worked as a teacher in a Dominican girls’ school and wrote her lectures on women for educational purposes and pedagogic audiences. Stein died in the second world war in dramatic circumstances in Auschwitz. For Stein’s philosophical anthropology and theory of personality, see her Der Aufbau (1932–1933) and Die Frau (1928–1932), but compare also to her Einführung (1920). For an introduction to Stein’s feminist ideas and arguments, see McAlister “Edith Stein: Essential Differences” “Edith Stein”; Calcagno, The Philosophy of Edith Stein. Stein’s lectures on women’s education have been translated into English and published in the second volume of her Collected Works, Essays on Women (1996).
- 6.
In his latest publication, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl devised a series of genetic transcendental problems to be solved by genetic phenomenology. Among these he included the “problem of the sexes.” The philosophical task was not to provide causal explanations, empirical theories, or cultural-historical interpretations about the sexes but to inquire back to the ontic sense of sexual difference and its constitutive genesis within our conscious lives (Die Krisis 191–2/The Crisis 188).
- 7.
Compare to Beauvoir’s explication of her idea of woman’s becoming in The Second Sex: “(…) animals constitute fixed species which can be described statically (…) whereas humanity is endlessly in becoming(…). It is only in a human perspective that we can study the female and the male of the human species. But the definition of man is that he is a being who is not given, who makes himself what he is (…). Woman is not a fixed reality, but a becoming. She should be compared with man in her becoming, that is to say, her possibilities should be defined” (Le deuxième sexe I 71–3/The Second Sex 66).
- 8.
Genetic phenomenology explicates the temporal order of meaning constitution. It does not confine itself to the investigation of individual histories but, by the methods of eidetic variation, aims at illuminating the essential steps and phases in all temporal institution or establishment of meaning and sense. The mature Husserl argues that static analyses are a necessary part of phenomenology but not sufficient in themselves because phenomenology aims at accounting for the structures of meaning as well as for their genesis and origins (Cartesianische 100–14/Cartesian 66–81, Phänomenologische Psychologie 208–17, Formale und transzendentale Logik 277–81). For an introduction to genetic phenomenology, see Steinbock, Home and Beyond; cf. Bachelard, A Study of Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic; Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution; and Kortoom’s Phenomenology of Time.
- 9.
See, for example, Husserl Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie; Erstes Buch 141–3/Ideas 160–2; Cartesianische 178–83/Cartesian 151–6.
- 10.
Compare to Linda María Alcoff’s denunciation which betrays her pragmatist convictions:
Husserl’s phenomenology remains (…) too wedded to the goal of establishing certainty and too confident about the possibility of the transcendental reduction. The reduction attempts to achieve through philosophical means that interruption of familiarity that one gets from driving on the opposite side or entering a foreign culture, but can such an interruption be achieved by philosophical reflection alone without a change of location or practice? Husserl’s concept of the transcendental ego remained in important respects disembodied, with its valorization of critical detachment as the route to a reasoned assessment of immediate experience. (“The Metaphysics of Gender” 109; cf. “Phenomenology, Post-structuralism” 255–6).
I cannot discuss the misconceptions involved in such forms of critique within the limits of this chapter, but I need to state at least the basic principles to avoid further confusions: The very beginnings of phenomenological studies make clear that consciousness is not unitary, homogenous, or “transparent” but is an intentional opening; that conscious experience always has obscure, unlighted horizons; that reduction is not a performance but a permanent task; and that perceptual consciousness is embodied by necessity.
- 11.
See also Dan Zahavi’s “Phenomenology and Metaphysics.”
- 12.
Cf. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie iv–vii/Phenomenology of Perception x–xiii.
- 13.
Cf. Stein, Die Frau 2–4; Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe I 13, Le deuxième sexe II 9/The Second Sex 15, 33.
- 14.
Everyday experience also includes conceptual structures; these are mixed with structures of typicality. Husserl argues, however, that a completely non-conceptual experience of purely typical objects can be distinguished as a limit; and that non-conceptual experience is genetically a primary form. Cf. Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation.
- 15.
Cf. Stein Zum Problem 128/On the Problem 115.
- 16.
There is some empirical evidence to support the notion that gender classification is early in development and is not based on experience of genitalia or reproductive functions; see for example, Wasserman and Stern, “An early Manifestation of Differential Behavior” 129–37.
- 17.
For an argument, see Heinämaa, “Feminism” 289–308; cf. Stein, Die Frau 80ff./Essays on Women 88ff.
- 18.
Cf. James, Principles of Psychology 194.
- 19.
Cf. Husserl, Analysen 33–7/Analyses 72–6.
- 20.
Compare to interpretations of Wittgenstein’s discourse of family resemblance, e.g., Nammour, “Resemblances and Universals” 516–24; Beardsmore, “The Theory of Family Resemblance” 131–46. See also Lohmar, “Husserl’s type and Kant’s schemata” 109.
- 21.
For one possible line of argumentation, see Held, “Fysis ja syntymä [Physis und Geburt]” 201–16; cf. Edmund Husserl, “Grundlegende Untersuchungen.”
- 22.
For analyses of motility, see Young, “Throwing Like a Girl;” Grimshaw, “Working Out with Merleau-Ponty;” Reuter, “The Body at Century’s End;” Chisholm, “Climbing Like a Girl.”
- 23.
The pure concepts of the eidetic sciences, such as geometry and phenomenology, differ from the empirical concepts of the experimental sciences by their extensions: whereas the extension of an empirical concept may be “unlimited” at the best, the extension of a pure concept is evidently infinite:
With empirical concepts, infinity of extension implies that only that I can imagine an arbitrary number of like particulars without its actually being evident whether, in the progress of actual experience, this presumptively posited ‘again and again’ might perhaps undergo a cancellation, whether this being able to continue might one day actually reach a limit [Grenze]. With pure concepts, on the other hand, this infinity of actually being-able-to-continue is given with self-evidence. (Husserl, Erfahrung 410/Experience 340)
- 24.
Cf. Lohmar, “Husserl’s Type and Kant’s Schemata” 109.
- 25.
Cf. Husserl, Logische 661–2/Logical 274–75.
- 26.
As such Husserlian types can be compared with Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance concepts.” Both types and family resemblance concepts unite individuals on the basis of series of overlapping likenesses, a whole “network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing,” to use Wittgenstein’s words (Philosophische Untersuchungen §66, 57/Philosophical Investigations 33). What is decisive for membership is not any essential feature, or any set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but an open series of partial likenesses. Wittgenstein’s prime example of such a unity is that of games. We call a multitude of practices and events by this name, but the name does not unite equal instances of a universal; it connects partially similar individuals: “Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games.’ I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?—Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called games’”—but look and see whether there is anything common to all.—For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!” (Philosophische Untersuchungen 2003 §66, 56–7). Cf. Hilary Putnam’s explication of meaning in “The Meaning of Meaning” 131–93, and to prototype theories developed in philosophy of cognition and cognitive science, e.g., Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.
- 27.
Cf. Lohmar, “Husserl’s Type and Kant’s Schemata” 109–110.
- 28.
For a detailed comparison, see Lohmar, “Husserl’s Type and Kant’s Schemata’”; cf. Schutz, “Type and eidos” 92–115; Lohmar, “Die phänomenologische Methode der Wesensschau” 65–91, “Kategoriale Anschauung” 209–37.
- 29.
Concepts are of three different kind: empirical concepts (e.g., plate), pure a priori concepts of sensibility (e.g., circle), and pure a priori concepts of understanding (e.g., causality). The schemata which mediate in the application of the pure concepts, or categories of understanding, to sense impressions are called “transcendental schemata.”
- 30.
Kant’s schemata are usually described as procedural rules which prescribe how concepts must be related to sense impressions: on the one hand, they prepare sense impressions to the ordering of the concepts; on the other hand, they realize concepts by connecting them to sensibility.
- 31.
The Kantian framework is complex because both empirical concepts and pure concepts of sensibility and understanding have their own schemata. In all cases, schemata serve the purpose of bridging between intuitions and concepts, but as the role of the concepts differ, so also the function of the schemata varies. Moreover, Kant’s Critique of Judgment includes an alternative account of the relation between the universal and the particular; for this, see his discussions on reflective judgments in the Introduction (esp. Section IV) and the First Introduction to Critique of Judgment. I am grateful to Martina Reuter, Juliette Kennedy, and Robert Hanna for illuminative discussions concerning this aspect of Kant’s thinking.
- 32.
For such arguments see, e.g., Devor, Gender Blending; Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Cf. Lohmar, “Husserl’s Type and Kant’s Schemata” 108–9, 112–14.
- 33.
For such approaches, see, e.g., Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant; Simms, The Child in the World.
- 34.
Cf. Steinbock, “From Phenomenological Immortality” 25–40.
- 35.
Husserl had first written “Cartesian meditator” but then replaced the term “Cartesian” with “transcendental”. In Crisis, he states: “As transcendental ego (…) I am the same ego that in the wordly sphere is a human ego” (Die Krisis 267–8/The Crisis 264), and in a manuscript from 1930 he explains: “I the human being in the world, living naturally only as this human being and finding myself in the personal attitude as this human person, am accordingly not another ego as that which I find in the transcendental attitude (…) The transcendental ego as pole and substrate of the totality of potentialities is, as it were, the transcendental person which comes to be primarily instituted through the phenomenological reduction. This ego now enters the universality of the concrete transcendental and takes on for itself the all-embracing life which brings into play all potentialities and which can now actualize all possible modes of self-sustainment” (Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion 200–1). I am indebted to Sebastian Luft for pointing out this latter paragraph. For Luft’s interpretation of the paragraph, see his “Husserl’s concept of the transcendental person.” Compare also the paragraphs quoted to what Husserl writes in Phänomenologische Psychologie 294.
- 36.
Cf. Steinbock, “From Phenomenological Immortality;” Rinofner-Kreidl, Mediane Phänomenologie.
- 37.
Cf. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität Nr. 16, 438–65; Stein, Zum Problem 129/On the Problem 115–16.
- 38.
Cf. Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe I 15/The Second Sex 1987, 15.
- 39.
For a complete account of the phenomenological transcendental concepts of act-pole, person, and monad, see Sakakibara, “Das Problem des Ich;” Mertens, “Husserls Phänomenologie der Monade.” Cf. Heinämaa, “Selfhood, Consciousness and Embodiment;” MacDonald, “Husserl, the Monad and Immortality;” Steinbock, “From Phenomenological Immortality”.
- 40.
Cf. Sepp, “Geschlechterdifferenz” 58–9.
- 41.
The phenomenological concept of person differs from the traditional concept which is defined by the ideas of social roles and role playing. Cf. Waldenfels, “Fremdheit des anderen Geschlechts” 65.
- 42.
See, e.g., Husserl, Die Krisis 222/The Crisis 218.
- 43.
Cf. Kortooms, Phenomenology of Time 212.
- 44.
For a detailed argument, see Heinämaa, “On Luce Irigaray’s Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity” 243–65.
- 45.
Cf. Heinämaa, “What Is a Woman?” 26–7; cf. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology 79.
- 46.
Such as, for example, in Schutz’s “Husserl’s Ideas, Volume II” 33.
- 47.
For these connections see Heinämaa, “Feminism” 500–13, “Cixous; Kristeva and Le Dœuff.”
- 48.
Cf. Kristeva, “La génie féminin” 7–20, “Y a-t-il un génie féminin?” 537–66/“Is there a feminine genius?” 403–27.
- 49.
Cf. Plato, Symposium 210d–e, 493.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Charlotte Witt, Anthony Steinbock, and Sonja Rinofner for their critical comments and insightful suggestions, which helped me to develop the argument and formulations of this chapter.
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Heinämaa, S. (2011). A Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Types, Styles and Persons. In: Witt, C. (eds) Feminist Metaphysics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3783-1_9
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