Abstract
Dorion Cairns correctly interprets the preconstituted stratum of Edmund Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation to be the primordial ego and not the social world, as was thought by Alfred Schutz, who considered Husserl to be insufficiently attentive to the social world’s hold upon us. Following Cairns’s interpretation, which involves recovering and reconstructing strata that may never exist independently, one better understands how the transfer of sense “animate organism” involves automatic association, or somatic apprehension. This sense-transfer extends to any animate organism, not just humans, and draws on extensive unreflected-upon similarities despite the distinctive fact that the other’s body is never given to oneself as is one’s own. Following Cairns’s interpretation, one can also understand the second epoché as an imaginative, reconstructive abstraction rather than as an example of failed ascesis. Consequently, Husserl appears as less intellectualized in his approach to empathy than often thought to be and more confident in the phenomenologist’s capacity to imagine and attend selectively to experience.
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Notes
In Kersten’s new translation, Cairn’s comments are placed in footnotes in the essay “The Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Husserl.” See Schutz (forthcoming). The German comments of Cairns, however, are placed at the end of the document in Schutz (1957).
Lee admits that at the time of Cartesian Meditations, Husserl was not clear on the distinction between static and genetic phenomenology—indeed the specific evidence Lee (2002, p. 181) gives for Husserl’s clear recognition of the distinction is dated 1933. Husserl (1973b, p. 477) himself comments on the strange kind of genesis underlying Einfühlung, a genesis which cannot presuppose that there would be a world without foreign subjectivity, and he calls it a “fictive genesis” (“fiktiven Genesis”). For a particularly clear account of static phenomenology as explaining the conditions of the possibility of experiences as experiences, see Husserl (1973c, pp. 616–617).
“…so muss der Körper dort, der als Leib doch aufgefasst ist, diesen Sinn von einer apperzeptiven Übertragung von meinem Leib her haben, und dann in einer Weise die eine wirklich direkte und somit primordinale Ausweisung der Prädikate der spezifischen Leiblichkeit, eine Ausweisung durch eigentliche Wahrnehmung ausschliesst.” The italics in the English text are mine.
See also Cairns in Schutz (forthcoming, pp. 14n.25, 16n.29, 17n.30, 18n.31, 19n.34, 19n.36).
“Den ersten bestimmten Gehalt muss offenbar das Verstehen der Leiblichkeit des Anderen und seines spezifisch leiblichen Gehabens bilden: das Verstehen der Glieder als tastender oder auch stossend fungierender Hände, als gehend fungierender Füsse, als sehend fungeiernder Augen usw., wobei das Ich zunächst nur also so leiblich waltendes bestimmt ist und in bekannter Weise sich beständig bewährt, sofern die ganze Stilform der fur mich primordial sichtlichen sinnlichen Verläufe, der von eigenen leiblichen Walten her typicsch bekannten beständig entsprechen muss.”
Cairns in Schutz (forthcoming, p. 16n. 29).
As long as the other behaves as an animate organism and not a wax statue, the apperceptive transfer “animate organism” is upheld, see Cairns in Schutz (forthcoming, p. 17n. 30).
“…dass noch irgendeine Analogie mit unserer Leiblichkeit apperzeptiv kräftig ist, sei es auch nur, dass eine Analogie mit einer Hautempfindlichkeit und mit Reaktionsbewegung, wie dem Zucken in der Haut.”
“…unter ähnlichen Umständen Ähnliches zu erwarten, ähnliche Präsumptionen anzuknüpfen, das ist eine Grundtatsache des Bewusstseins.”
“Nun braucht die ‘Gleichheit’ auch im engeren Mehrheitskreis keine allseitige, keine volkommene <zu> sein.” Husserl (2008, p. 431) continues, that “it is possible that narrow similarity overlappings, similarity associations, can take place, joining together narrower pluralities,” [“es können abermals engere Ähnlichkeitsdeckungen, Ähnlichkeitsassoziationen statthaben, engere Mehrheiten zusammenschliessend.”].
“…die nachmals konstituierten höherstufigen Weltlichkeiten der konkreten objektiven Welt, wie sie also Menschen- und Kulturwelten für uns immer da ist.”
Other places where Cairns allows for later transfers at a higher level can be found in Cairns in Schutz (forthcoming, pp. 14n.24, 14n.25, 16n.29, 17n.30, 18n.31, 19n.34, 19n.36).
Cairns precisely describes the kind of division of spheres that Husserl hoped to achieve when he wrote, “The consciousness of the Other, but not the Other of whom I am conscious, now belongs to <the sphere of my ownness>.” See Cairns in Schutz (forthcoming, p. 7n.6).
Centering the investigation in this manner may not be all that far from what Husserl himself does at his best, as when, for example, he speaks of the primordial sphere as including a “peculiar Nature” (“eigenheitliche Natur”) (Husserl 1960 p. 96; 1950, p. 127), with bodies (Körpern) [including my own (Leib)](Husserl, 1960, p. 97; 1950, p. 128), and “objects” and “physical things,”(Husserl 1960, p. 98; 1950, p. 129). Husserl, no doubt, applies quotation marks here because these objects and things, like the Nature and bodies, are meant to be purified from every sense pertaining to other subjectivity (“von allem Sinn fremder Subjectivität gereinigte”) (Husserl 1960 p. 96; 1950, p. 128) and so are not experienced as they would be on the higher level objective level.
Maurice Natanson (1983, pp. 258–259) draws a similar contrast between what he calls “methodological” and “existential” ways of understanding the phenomenological reduction.
The ascetical approach involves “screening off all empathy” (“Ich blende alle Einfühlung ab.”) (Husserl 1973b, p. 344) (This manuscript in which this phrase was mentioned was produced at the end of 1924); reducing others to “mere phenomena” (“blosse Phänomene”) (Husserl 1973b, pp. 387-388); retaining empathetic experiences but not the others experienced in them (Husserl 1973b, pp., 51–52); and refraining from any presupposition of others (Husserl 1973b, p. 110). The abstractive approach, by contrast, is described as focusing on how the other appears in original experiences (Husserl 1973b, pp. 411–417); placing what has to do with others, including cultural properties outside of thematization (“ausserthematisch”) (Husserl 1973b, pp. 445–446); a mere “looking away” (“wir sehen…ab”) from the other and all that its being presupposes (Husserl, 1973c, p. 7); a process of “unbuilding” (“Abbau”) toward what lies on the horizon of the transcendental (Husserl 1973c, p, 466 (this text is dated 1932); see also Husserl 2008, p. 265); adopting an distinctive “primordial theoretical attitude” disclosing how “the primordial subjectivity is an abstract layer (Schichte) of the concrete transcendental ego, which is based in a self-enclosed being-thematic, namely that of the pure primordial [thematic]” (Husserl 1973c, p. 536); a setting out of validity without making disappear the apperception by which I recognize others (Husserl 1973c, p. 572); and the setting out of play (Ausserfunktionsetzung) of all [intersubjective] expression (Husserl 1973c, p. 507).
Husserl concludes here: “Of all this there is no talk.”
“Eine eigentumliche Art thematischer epoché.” See also Husserl 1960, p. 95; 1950, p. 126, where it is presented as a novel (neuartigen) epoché.
This nature is likewise, Husserl comments, the result of abstraction,” (“Diese erwächst zwar auch durch Abstraktion.”).
Husserl (1973c, p. 573) clarifies that the nature that results from the abstraction of the primordial reduction has its own species of causality which is not that of the scientifically constructed world but more like that of life-world experience, without, of course, the intersubjective dimensions. Husserl (2008, p. 268) also speaks of our ability to make ourselves “blind” to the entire cultural world.
Carr (1973, p. 28) insists that the reduction to the sphere of ownness is not another phenomenological reduction at all. For Husserl’s own use of similes to get at the experience of the other, see Husserl (1973a, pp. 51, 222, 235, 347, 475) (appresentation); pp. 56, 227, 269, 317–320, 339, 455, 474 (and Husserl 1973b, p. 185) (the analogy to memory and representation); and Husserl (1973a, pp. 340, 343) (comparison with the perception of things).
There are, of course, ascetical overtones in his description, see Husserl (1960, p. 93; 1950, p. 124).
“Sie überschauend darauf zu achten, wie Fremdes sinnmitbestimmend auftritt und es, soweit es das tut, abstraktiv auszuschalten.”
Husserl (1959 p. 176) expresses these features quite clearly in the following:
It is still possible to complete a phenomenological abstraction or so to limit the phenomenological experience and the investigation resting on experience, that one only moves in the concrete unity-contents of the single transcendental subjectivity, looking away from every empathy, taking into account no other subjectivity. This of course is to think of one’s own life in a modified way… For very important methodological reasons it is necessary in broad stretches of investigation to purposefully limit oneself and so to trace out first a systematic egology, or so to say, a solipsistic phenomenology.
Es ist jedenfalls möglich, eine phänomenologische Abstraktion zu vollziehen oder die phänomenologischen Erfahrung und auf Erfahrung beruhende Forschung so zu beschränken, dass man nur in dem konkreten Einheitzusammenhang der eigenen transzendentalen Subjektivität sich bewegt und von jeder Einfühlung absehend, keine fremde Subjektivität in Rechnung zieht… Aus sehr wichtigen methodischen Gründen ist es sogar notwendig, in weiten Untersuchungsstrecken sich absichtlich so zu beschränken, also zunächst eine systematische Egologie, sozusagen al seine solipsistische Phänomenologie, zu entwerfen.
One problem unaddressed here concerns Schutz’s question in part 5 of his essay about how it is possible for me to ascribe to the other the sense “you can” or “you could” on the basis of “I can” or “I could” (Schutz forthcoming, pp. 21–22; 1957, pp. 19–20/035235-035236; 1966, p. 68). Cairns (Schutz forthcoming, pp. 22n.41, 22n.42) thinks that since such a transfer would not involve transposing my ego but only my “de facto” animate organism as this body here, the best that could transferred would be a sense, to be continually checked for validation, that “he” could do such and such because he has an animate organism. The transference of my potentialities to another on a purely empirical plane (e.g. on the basis of my de facto body here) is as precarious as Schutz suggests, and one must be more rigorous about one’s eidetic methodology. Far from being methodological rigoristic, in this case Husserl, seems almost to let his imagination run away from him.
At the end of his discussion of verification, ins section #53, Husserl (1960, p. 117; 1950, p. 146) introduces the idea of the potentialities of the primordial sphere and their function in the apperception of the other and he introduces the language of “here” and “there,” with the “here” being equivalent to “the functional center for his governing” (“Funktionszentrum für sein Walten”). In a sense, these potentialities pertain to locomotion (one could move to a “there” as can the other move to “here”), but these potentialities flow almost deductively from being an animate organism in which oneself and the other govern, meaning that they can mobilize and direct their organs as they move from one place to another. Insofar as Husserl (1973b, p. 378) defines my “I” as an “I of possibilities” (“ein Ich der Vermögen”) and insofar as he regularly ends up attributing concrete conscious states to others (e.g., the other is going to a swimming pool or looking out a window) (Husserl 1973b, p. 521, see also p. 499 and Husserl 1973a, p. 297), when others engage in movements that remind him of the conscious states he would have experienced upon executing such movements, it is not surprising that he attributes potentialities to others. It is certainly possible to attribute potentialities that would pertain to an other insofar as they are an animate organism, including the potentialities that could be further developed (e.g. locomotion) by any animate organism insofar as it is an animate organism, and it would be possible to establish through eidetic analysis the potentialities that would pertain to any being on a higher plane than mere animate organisms (e.g. human being). However, when it comes to transferring potentialities from oneself to the other Schutz and Cairns rightly seem cautious about preserving the boundaries between the eidetic and empirical, or the de facto, as Cairns puts it. Indeed, Schutz (forthcoming, pp. 16–20; 1957, pp. 15–18/035231-035234; 1966, pp. 64–66) displayed a similar concern when he interpreted Husserl as transferring senses from myself to the other on the higher psychic spheres (e.g. attributing anger or happiness to another) that would draw too much on the standards of normality of particular cultures.
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Barber, M. Somatic Apprehension and Imaginative Abstraction: Cairns’s Criticisms of Schutz’s Criticisms of Husserl’s Fifth Meditation. Hum Stud 33, 1–21 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-010-9135-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-010-9135-z