History, critique, and freedom: the historical a priori in Husserl and Foucault

This special issue emerged out of an interest in exploring the complex concept of the historical a priori as it is powerfully articulated in the work of Edmund Husserl and Michel Foucault.¹ This concept not only forms a bridge between the work of Edmund Husserl and that of Michel Foucault, it also plays a crucial role in the thought of each philosopher. In Husserl studies, the historical a priori raises important questions about the structures and conditions for the possibility of the phenomenological method. This concept has the power to illuminate Husserlian phenomenology as a whole and also to bring out core questions and puzzles that have yet to be resolved within the tradition. Similarly, for Foucault, the idea of the historical a priori is central to his early, archaeological work, but continues to exert a strong influence on his later conceptions of historical ontology and critique. The concept of the historical a priori raises crucial questions about Foucault’s distinctive historico-philosophical method. Our hope in putting together this special issue is that a dialogue between these two traditions focusing on the historical a priori would not only help to illuminate our understanding of the relationship between Husserlian phenomenology and Foucaultian post-structuralism but could also shed light on fundamental questions within each tradition. In this introduction, we aim to stake out some of those fundamental questions—questions regarding critique, method, normativity, and teleology—as they play out in the work of Husserl and Foucault, respectively, in an effort to situate the essays that follow.

The difficult notion of the historical a priori is central to any understanding of Husserl’s mature transcendental phenomenology. Many commentators, such as Merleau-Ponty, have questioned the feasibility and coherence of Husserl’s philosophical program as he discusses it in his final work, the Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty 2014, 51–59). Here, Husserl proposes a radical ‘reorientation’ of the transcendental approach (C, 3–1)—which is now to pursue its eidetic goals through the guidance of ‘teleological-historical reflection.’ As David Carr points out in his translator’s introduction to the Crisis (see also Carr 1974), rendering the transcendental program dependent on a historical approach that ‘takes our history seriously’ seems to defeat the former’s commitment to uncovering the universal structures of meaning constitution. Is the a priori of correlation historically bound on Husserl’s 1930s view? If so, what necessity does this ‘a priori’ carry if not the universal a-historical kind? Relativism—which Husserl so empathically criticized in Philosophy as Rigorous Science—here looms large. And yet, as Carr discusses in the present volume, doing phenomenology entails beginning with one’s own lived experiences, in their historical, cultural, and socio-political situatedness. Can the threads of this prima facie aporetic bind between the eidetic and the historical be productively woven?

Several contributions in this volume suggest interesting ways of answering this question affirmatively. Whether through an unpacking of the a priori through the lens of the conditions for the possibility of a ‘theoretical tradition’ (Crowell), or through a discussion of ‘deep history’ (Dodd), or ‘communalization’ (Moran), Husserlian phenomenology must be understood as a specific kind of transcendental critique: a radical reflection of philosophy (here phenomenology) on its own history, conditions for possibility, conceptual resources, theoretical decisions, normative commitments, and motivations. Such a reflection necessarily entails an examination of the relationship philosophy has to scientific thought, whose ebb and flow do not leave it untouched. What makes this reflection ‘critical’ is the infinite, propaedeutic examination of how philosophy itself—in its dynamic with science and the everyday—constitutes systems of meanings, knowledge, values, and norms. In other words: how it comes to deem its theoretical efforts worthy of pursuit, how it conceives its methods as epistemically potent, and how it delineates its domain as well as its results in terms of what is possible and what is necessary. Phenomenology is to be ‘without a ground, yet not groundless’ (C, 180–181). Therein lies the core of Husserl’s radical ‘reorientation.’

All theoretical thought grounds itself—and becomes ‘traditional’—through decisions, interests, and commitments to certain principles and methods (Crowell). These come to gradually recede from the foreground, as Husserl shows in his discussions of Galileo (cf., OG and C, §9), becoming covert ‘intentional origins’ guiding what inquirers deem knowable, possible, and conceivable (C, 168; 181). Historical reflection must uncover these origins, or ‘depth problems’ (C, 353), which function as delineators of entire styles of meaning constitution and knowledge acquisition.² A close look at Husserl’s 1920s genetic work on passive synthesis uncovers the systemic approach of his analyses of transcendentality.³

Meaning-constitution occurs inter-subjectively, at the communal level, in ways that establish and maintain a harmonious (CM, V) system of accomplishments (epistemic, as well as practical and normative; see e.g., Drummond 1990; Held 2003a, b). A veritable inertia—sustaining and reinforcing the established system, resisting all conflict and discrepancy by seeking confirmation and the return to optimality—motivationally drives knowledge acquisition and accumulation. This is what Husserl refers to as typification (cf., EU, §§80–81, and C, §34a).⁴ We passively conceptualize, classify, and organize our lifeworld in a habituated manner, which ‘voraciously’ resists change and modification (Lohmar 2003). Any elasticity and adaptability are restricted to ensuring that what initially gives itself as ‘other’ is ultimately brought back into the epistemic and normative fold.

Husserl is here primarily examining meaning-constitution in the natural, non-theoretical attitude; however, as his Origin of Geometry shows, the non-theoretical and the theoretical (here the scientific) are not two clearly delineated, separate spheres of knowledge acquisition. The lifeworld and nature (i.e., the latter being the correlate of the naturalistic attitude) are intricately intertwined systems of meaning. First, actively constituted concepts—seemingly independent of all typified, inert habituation—gradually recede, sediment in the background, becoming deeply embedded guides to subsequent knowledge acquisition. Widely relied-upon concepts and principles dictate, with an iron fist, what scientists deem epistemically possible as well as worthwhile. As such, these ‘depth problems’ are pervasive modal organizers exercising a potent epistemic and normative pull in a ‘hidden’ manner (C, 177–178). Thus, many of the theoretical decisions and interests driving a scientific tradition are neither actively nor critically embraced. The very possibility of traditional thought depends on the sedimentation of epistemic and methodological commitments. Second, the flip side of the sedimentation of actively constituted concepts, principles, values—of scientific accomplishments broadly construed—is these accomplishments’ streaming-into (einströmen) the very fabric of the lifeworld where all theoretical thought, including philosophy, begins (cf., Hua VI, 174, 275–276, 370–371, 512; also, Hua XXIX, 362–420). Husserl’s Crisis example of mathematization clearly captures this pervasive process; a contemporary example would be the way in which we have come to empathically understand and relate to others through the lens of psychopharmaceuticals.

It is under the aegis of this systemic framework of meaning-constitution and knowledge acquisition that Husserl calls for his ‘radical reorientation’ of philosophical inquiry. Like science, philosophy is not immune to the workings of covert forces whose epistemic lineage we have long lost trace of. Transcendental critique must have two complementary dimensions if it is to succeed in ‘retrieving’ and exposing the ‘intentional origins’ at work not only in philosophy, but also in science and everyday life. On the one hand, it must be historical in its (re)orientation. Husserl’s language here is telling: Radical reflection unearths intentional origins by ‘asking back’ (rückfragen) into what organizes entire conceptual and epistemic systems across theoretical and non-theoretical motivations. It is a zigzagging ‘looking back and looking forward’ through historical leaps (historische Sprünge), a ‘going back’ (Rückgang) to depth problems (C, §9l): constellations of concepts and principles that delineate entire styles of knowledge accumulation and sedimentation. One such constellation—whose reach is still very much at work—consists of the concepts at the heart of the Scientific Revolution, including the Modern notion of subjectivity.⁵ The method of historically reflecting back is meant to help us ‘strike through the crust of the externalized “historical facts” of philosophical history, interrogating, exhibiting, and testing their inner meaning and hidden teleology’ (C, 18). Thus, on the other hand, critique must also be teleological.

One way of understanding the Husserlian notion of teleology is to identify it with a certain commitment to an Enlightenment notion of scientific rationality driven toward complete knowledge. This view comes with additional hefty commitments, especially one to a notion of history as progress. No doubt, this reading is encouraged by Husserl’s own writings, such as the Vienna Lecture. However, following some of the contributors here (Carr, Moran), we should locate the notion of teleology in the context of Husserl’s transcendental idealism. An alternative way of understanding it grows organically out of Husserl’s systemic approach to the analysis of meaning constitution. Critique must be teleological in order to uncover not only conceptual systems, but also their epistemic and normative typified styles and their modal weight. Phenomenological investigations must thus examine what guides and drives knowledge acquisition as well as how this process unfolds given distinctive, historically embedded meaning-constituting frameworks. Through these investigations, what is ultimately at stake is theoretical freedom itself. That Husserl was deeply concerned with securing a positive freedom of inquiry is well known. All of his programmatic texts speak emphatically of the import of a ‘disinterested,’ ‘presuppositionless,’ ‘pure’ stance. This being said, what Husserl proposes in the Crisis under the guise of teleological-historical reflection undoubtedly challenges his previous views regarding the neutrality of philosophical thought. Historical-transcendental critique does not always already have the luxury of a sweeping bracketing gesture, as Husserl portrays entering the phenomenological attitude in Ideas I. Sedimentation, streaming-in, and passive-synthetic ‘grounding’ processes render the phenomenological reductions insufficient on their own. One is bound by one’s own epistemic and normative legacy, a legacy to which, one is, for the most part, blind. What is necessary for theoretical freedom is the unearthing work only a hermeneutically resolute historical reflection can perform.⁶ This is what it means for phenomenology to be ‘without a ground yet not groundless.’ Critique is necessary precisely because neutrality is not immediately accessible. We are our theoretical commitments—even when we are not wearing the theoretical hat.

As teleological, however, critique aims at more than just securing (or at least working toward) neutrality understood as negative ‘freedom from’ presuppositions. It also stretches open—by mapping established epistemic and normative landscapes—a space where the positive freedom of engaging the otherwise can occur. Several contributors here (Huffer, Han-Pile, Oksala) understand Foucault’s genealogy as just this kind of movement. Perhaps this is a point where despite glaring differences (such as Husserl’s commitment to an eidetic program and Foucault’s rejection of it), these two thinkers’ views regarding the task of philosophical-historical critique converge. For Husserl, ‘the otherwise’ is best construed modally as that which is possible outside the confines of what the established styles deem conceivable (i.e., epistemically worthwhile, feasible). This sense of free possibility, as opposed to possibility bound by overt as well as covert commitments, is a good indication why for Husserl the eidetic remains in play despite a historicized philosophical program: he never ceased to hold the view that ‘[t]his world is historically changing in its particular styles but [is] invariant in its invariant structure of generality’ and that philosophy is able to access this invariant structure (C, 347). Husserl’s essences—the noetic-noematic structures of meaning constitution—are ideal possibilities.⁷ Their necessity and modal weight lies in their ability to organize and delineate horizons of possibilities beyond the scope of historically concrete, instantiated epistemic and normative systems. They are the radically ‘other’ by definition. The very possibility of a transcendental critique—of thinking through the bedrock of established epistemic and normative frameworks—is tied, for Husserl, to the eidetic as ideally possible in this sense.

Returning to our initial aporetic bind, we can weave the eidetic and the historical into a ‘historical-eidetic’ phenomenology by understanding Husserl’s historical a priori as the overarching, ideally possible structure of meaning-constitution: of intentionality itself systemically and modally construed. Its necessity is thus universal for us as belonging to historical communities. This is not a logical necessity—hence, Husserl would reject the Analytic philosophical view of modality as that which carries beyond the ways in which we could (structurally or in principle) experience our lifeworld. It can, however, radically challenge our understanding of how we have been experiencing it, as well as how we could. This is where a third way of interpreting Husserl’s notion of teleology presents itself: a view that draws on a different strand of Enlightenment thinking about progress by holding that philosophy must be a teleological-historical critique given its commitment to the betterment of the human condition in all of its dimensions. Husserl chooses the language of potentiability (Vermöglichkeit) (Hua VIII, 354–355) in order to capture this normative—even ethical—demand of transcendental phenomenology.⁸

Not unlike Husserl, Foucault uses the term historical a priori in ways that are closely bound up with his distinctive method. However, in Foucault’s case, questions about method have prompted a long-running and lively debate about whether he is better understood as a philosopher or a historian.⁹ While some commentators have argued that Foucault’s works are essentially historical and thus not philosophical in the Modern sense of that term (Gutting 2003), others, including one of the contributors to our special issue (Han-Pile), have insisted that Foucault’s work is essentially philosophical, directed to answering the traditional philosophical question of the conditions of possibility of knowledge, albeit in a non-traditional way.¹⁰ One reason that this question proves so difficult to answer is that there is textual evidence from Foucault’s oeuvre on both sides. On the one hand, in a 1967 interview, in response to a question about the reception of The Order of Things, Foucault deliberately situates himself as a historian alongside the members of the Annales School (OWWH, 279–280); on the other hand, in an interview from the mid-1970s, Foucault claims “for all that I may like to say that I’m not a philosopher, nonetheless if my concern is with truth then I am still a philosopher” (QG, 66; also cited in Han, “Reply to Gary Gutting,” 2). (Which is not to concede that we should let the author of “What is an Author?” have the last word on this question.) But perhaps the deeper reason that this question proves so difficult to answer has to do with the way that the question is framed as an either/or choice. Foucault’s work is distinctive precisely for its attempt to articulate not only the historicity of philosophy but also the historicity of History; as a result he is a philosopher, but not, to be sure, a “Modern” one, and a historian but not a Historian. The aim of articulating the historicity of philosophy Foucault shares with Hegel and others. The aim of articulating the historicity of History represents his radical departure from Hegel and the Hegelian tradition. Both of these aims come together in the difficult concept of the historical a priori.

Anyone familiar with the path that Hegel took away from Kant will be able to make some sense of what is meant by talk of the historicity of philosophy. Foucault’s work offers a sustained reflection on the historically specific conditions of possibility of thought, subjectivity, experience, and agency. Foucault uses the term historical a priori to refer to the fact that the conditions of possibility for thought are both necessary for us—in the sense that we can’t think without or outside of them—and also historically contingent—in the sense that they have been otherwise, and could be again (Flynn). In this way, Foucault can be seen as taking up and transforming from within the Kantian notion of critical philosophy, precisely by historicizing it.¹¹ But what does it mean to talk about the historicity of History? This is a complex question, but as a first approximation one can say that it involves Foucault’s critical refusal of a certain philosophical conception of history as continuous, dialectical, and, above all, progressive—what he refers to as the philosophical myth of history (or, simply, History with a capital H)—and his attempt to develop a different approach.¹² One of the keys to Foucault’s alternative approach is the attempt to tell the story of the emergence of the modern historical a priori without “supposing a victory, nor the right to victory” on the part of modernity (HM, xxviii). And this idea, in turn, is central to Foucault’s effort to make our late, Western modernity strange for us, its inhabitants, to de-naturalize it by revealing its rootedness in so many contingent events, to analyze the historical conditions of possibility for thinking, being and doing, thereby opening up the space for thinking, being, and doing otherwise. Which is to say that the historicity of History is closely related to Foucault’s notion of critique.

How is the historical a priori related to this attempt to reveal the historicity of History? Although Foucault’s anti-teleological, non-progressive, discontinuous conception of history is quite obviously opposed to Hegelian philosophy of history, it is perhaps best understood as an attempt to historicize that conception of history. In that sense, Foucault’s aim is to offer a genealogy of History. This is, to be sure, a paradoxical project, one that requires, as Foucault acknowledges, that the genealogist “change roles on the same stage” (NGH, 384). Writing a genealogy of History demands that we inhabit a historical mode of thinking that we have inherited from the nineteenth century without being seduced by the consolations of dialectical History. The genealogist must take up the project of History and transform it from within; it is “only by being seized, dominated, and turned against its birth” that History can become genealogy (NGH, 384). Above all, writing a genealogy of History requires more than just thinking of the conditions of possibility of knowledge in terms of a succession of discontinuous historical a prioris (Thompson). Rather, insofar as the notion of History is definitive for the modern historical a priori, writing a genealogy of History requires understanding our historical a priori as both historical and Historical. This means that, even though something called “history” holds a privileged place in Foucault’s methodology, this privileging is not tied to any universal or trans-historical claims about the historicity of reason or of philosophy as a rational enterprise. Rather, as Foucault puts it, “if history possesses a privilege, it would be…insofar as it would play the role of an internal ethnology of our culture and our rationality, and consequently would embody the very possibility of any ethnology” (OWWH, 293). That is to say, history is important for Foucault not because we are essentially historical beings or because all philosophical knowledge is essentially historically conditioned, but rather because History is central to our modern historical a priori, so much so that we might even call our historical a priori the “Historical historical a priori.” Hence, if we want to engage in the difficult work of critiquing our modernity, History is what we must think through, and we must think through it historically.

All of which suggests, as some of the contributions to this volume explore in different ways (Han-Pile and Huffer), that there is a very close connection in Foucault’s work between the historical a priori and freedom. Tracing the limits of our historical a priori—coming to understand that it is both historical and Historical—is an inherently normative project for Foucault precisely because it is only by tracing those limits that we can free ourselves up in relation to them.

This way of reading the historical a priori—as bound up not only with the historicity of philosophy but also with the historicity of History—also suggests the specific sense in which Foucault should be understood as an anti-teleological thinker. It is only because he understands the teleological notion of history—History—to be so central to the modern historical a priori that his own view of history is anti-teleological. In other words, it is precisely because his aim is a critique of modernity that will allow modern subjects to free themselves up in relation to their modern historical a priori that he posits an anti-teleological conception of history. As Foucault explains, the attempt to define the modern age, to trace the limits of the modern historical a priori, requires “pulling oneself free of that modern age,” which forms the very conditions of possibility for our own thought and practical activity (OWWH, 293). While the shape and configuration of an age other than our own could be uncovered “through gentle digging,” when it comes to articulating the discursive and non-discursive practices that serve as conditions of possibility for our own historical a priori, “then archaeology, like Nietzschean philosophy, is forced to work with hammer blows” (OWWH, 293). The anti-teleological conception of history is one such hammer blow.

These hammer blows serve to illuminate and open up gaps and fissures—what Foucault calls “lines of fragility” or “kinds of virtual fracture” (EW2, 449–450)—in our own historical a priori. Such lines of fragility and fracture allow us to see how “that-which-is might no longer be that-which-is” (EW2, 450). In other words, they create some distance between ourselves and our historical a priori. The space that they open up within it is our historical a priori is the space of freedom, and the work of opening it up is the work of critique.

This work of critique is no easy feat on either the Husserlian or the Foucaultian model. As both thinkers stress, it is difficult to shake the seduction of established ways of thinking and knowing. Like Husserl, Foucault could be understood as uncovering something like sedimentation in his archeological and genealogical work. Historical-philosophical critique must make itself—and its own epistemic and normative context—uncanny, to use a Heideggerian term. Only by rendering the familiar unfamiliar can we successfully perform this critique from within. This entails, for Husserl, not only exposing the intentional origins, constellations of axial concepts and principles, but also the epistemic and normative trajectories they motivate and sustain. This tracing of epistemic lineages is indeed teleological. However, it is worth noting that this does not necessarily commit Husserl to a view of history as a story of continuous development and progress. This being said, it is also clear that Foucault’s synchronic mappings of historically discontinuous conditions for possibility is little—or not at all—interested in such teleological tracing. Indeed, for Foucault, it is only by resisting the seductive call of teleological History that we can engage that which lies at the limit—and beyond—of our modern episteme.

The only necessity exhibited by Foucault’s historical a priori is a contingent one. Husserl’s historical a priori carries an altogether different kind of necessity: the kind pertaining to the universal structures of meaning constitution, which, while bound to historical expression, decidedly remain outside the sphere of such instantiation. While for Foucault the otherwise is factical and contingent, for Husserl, it is, strictly speaking, the ideally possible: the universal governing infinite contingent manifestations. As such, this otherwise functions for Husserl as condition for the possibility of phenomenological critique. In other words, only by thinking beyond the factual can we think through our history. This method alone, Husserl thinks, can ‘strike through’ the impervious ‘crust’ of sedimentation. Whether to expose ossified conceptual constellations, along with their epistemic and modal inertia, or fissures and ruptures where the contingently ‘other’ can emerge, historical-philosophical critique in both its Husserlian and Foucaultian modes works ceaselessly toward securing our theoretical and normative freedom. In light of Foucault’s emphasis on freedom, even as he wants to leave the notion of freedom undefined, could it be that Foucault’s performance of critique is a call to arms not completely devoid of a forward looking, ‘quasi-teleological’ commitment to the betterment of our condition?

In the introduction to the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl laments the state of the philosophy of his day: the congresses where ‘philosophers but philosophies do not meet,’ where instead of a ‘serious discussion among conflicting theories that, in their conflict, demonstrate the intimacy with which they belong together, the commonness of their underlying convictions, and an unswerving belief in a true philosophy, we have a pseudo-reporting and pseudo-criticizing, a mere semblance of philosophizing seriously with and for one another’ (CM, 5). In putting together this special issue of Continental Philosophy Review and organizing the workshop on which it was based, our goal was to create a conversation that would allow for a serious discussion among phenomenologists and Foucault scholars whose views, in their conflict, would demonstrate the intimacy with which they belong together. We hope the reader will agree that this volume is a testament to the fact that rich and productive dialogue across traditions is possible even in the face of deep and even intractable disagreements.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Husserl abbreviations

1.1 Husserliana (Hua)

Hua VI (1954). Die Krisis de Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie. Walter Biemel (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua VIII (1959). Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der Phänomenologischen Reduktion. Rudolf Boehm (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XXIX (1991). Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Erganzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1934–1937). Reinhold D. Smid (Ed.). Den Haag: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

1.2 Translations and other texts

C The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. David Carr (Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970.

CM Cartesian Meditations. Dorion Cairns (Trans.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970.

EU Erfahrung und Urteil. Ludwig Landgrebe (Ed.). Hamburg: Claassen & Goverts, 1948.

Ideas I Ideas Pertaining to A Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. D. Dahlstrom (Trans.). Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014.

OG ‘Origin of Geometry,’ in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. David Carr (Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970.

Appendix 2: Foucault abbreviations

EW2 Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984, volume 2: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. ed. Paul Rabinow and James D. Faubion. New York: The New Press, 1997.

HM History of Madness, ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. New York: Routledge, 2006.

NGH “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, volume 2, ed. James D. Faubion. New York: The New Press, 1998.

OWWH “On the Ways of Writing History,” in Essential Works of Michel Foucault, volume 2: Aesthetics, Method, Epistemology, ed. James Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1998.

QG “Questions on Geography,” in Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

RS “Foucault répond à Sartre,” pp. 21–22, cited in O’Farrell, Foucault: Historian or Philosopher?.