Philosophy as a Way of Life, Volume 4
Brill
2023
Paperback
xii, 369
Reviewed by: Shawn Loht (Delgado Community College, New Orleans, USA)
This edition marks the first English-language translation of Über Den Anfang (GA 70), an entry in Heidegger’s so-called “esoteric writings.” These writings consist of private notebooks from the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, in which Heidegger tries out different approaches for describing the phenomenology of the origins of being and meaning. Notably, none of these writings were available to the public during Heidegger’s lifetime, as he intentionally chose for them to become available only after his death. Contributions to Philosophy (Beiträge zur Philosophie) (GA 65) is the most well-known of the esoteric writings, but other titles now familiar to Heidegger scholars include Mindfulness (Besinnung) (GA 66) and The Event (Das Ereignis) (GA 71). As with these other texts, in On Inception Heidegger does not present a systematic or progressive exegesis. Rather, the text is loosely organized according to general themes, with short sections that provide microstudies on specific topics. On Inception is divided into six principal divisions, with the first two of these taking up more than half of the book. Both of these first two divisions analyze at length the phenomenon of “inception,” while the remaining four study “event” and being-there, interpretation, the history of being/beyng, and Heidegger’s own work Being and Time, respectively. In all instances, the numbered sections comprising these divisions of the text show significant repetition and thematic overlap. One gets the sense in the course of reading that Heidegger is experimenting to find the words and locutions for what he wants to say, in a manner that no single statement or argument is meant to be authoritative.
In what follows, I will highlight some of the text’s key concepts and some of the notable positions Heidegger develops. First and foremost, as he describes in the first division, the term “inception” (Anfang) signifies for Heidegger the dawn of being in the West, the moment in which being (Sein) takes hold and history eventuates. Likewise, inception marks the moment at which the ontological difference comes to life, such that human thought begins to identify both “being” in general, and “beings” or specific things as such. But “inception” does not denote a temporal unfolding. It is not an event happening in time, and it does not mark a point between “before” and “after.” Finding the right language to express this dimension poses a challenge. “Inception” refers to the moment in which time comes to be, and in which “being” arrives as a meaningful concept. (In the third division, Heidegger describes pre-inception reality as “the beingless” (98).) Indeed, in most of the passages devoted to this theme, Heidegger uses the more archaic Seyn, or in the English translation, “beyng,” to indicate the primordial sway of being in terms of effecting an origin and destiny. He often refers to beyng in terms of the entire historical epoch of the West, whereby “being” is instantiated as such.
Much of the account of inception involves describing the phenomenology bound up with such a beginning of being. For instance, Heidegger characterizes inception as, on one hand, concomitant with a clearing or unconcealment, through which world and things first become ontologically conspicuous. On the other hand, this clearing entails a concomitant “receding” (Untergang), whereby being withdraws further and further from view. This latter phenomenon for Heidegger reaches its apex with the total abandonment of being in the epoch of twentieth-century technology. Whereas Heidegger leaves many gaps in the explanation of this historical phenomenon in more popular writings like “The Question Concerning Technology” (GA 7) and An Introduction to Metaphysics (GA 40), the analyses in On Inception suggest that he regards receding as a definitive, necessary dimension of inception. (“In the first inception the arche emerges, but incipience begins only in the intimacy of retreat” (12). The moment of inception at the dawn of Western history immediately entails an unnoticed concealing, such that what is at first most illuminated is countered by a receding that becomes less conspicuous with the duration of history. The clearing in which being comes to appearance is countered by its unseen groundlessness. For Heidegger, this receding that counters the clearing is just as relevant at the end of beyng’s history as it is at the beginning.
As expressed in other writings from this period of Heidegger’s career, the “end” of inception’s initial reign at once makes the beginning fully apparent, and discloses hints of a second or “other” inception. Here, however, Heidegger inclines toward describing the second inception as merely the next in a potentially infinite series. This is to say, he uses less frequently the locution “other beginning” (andere Anfang) known from texts like Contributions to Philosophy and Basic Questions of Philosophy (Grundfragen der Philosophie) (GA 45), favoring a view in which inception has a cyclical character, though it need not manifest the same shape every time. Similarly, a contrast with Contributions Philosophy’s better-known concept of “appropriation” (Ereignis) that one sees in Heidegger’s account of inception is an emphasis on inception’s atemporal character, out which space-time comes to be. Whereas Heidegger’s accounts of Ereignis emphasize the twofold, appropriative correspondence of being with being-there occasioned in Ereignis, the account of inception places more focus on the very moment of inception itself, asking as it were, what it means to describe beyng purely as inception (Anfang), as having a beginning. Heidegger often invokes the keyword “incipience” (das Änfangnis) to describe inception’s continuous, singular character, according to which it is constitutive of history. For instance, Heidegger writes “Incipience determines and ‘is’ the essential unfolding of inception” (6). Incipience signifies “a way whose scope and configuration is in inception’s being in itself the essence of history” (Ibid.).
Beyng (Seyn) is essentially bound up with describing inception. In this text, beyng (Seyn) refers not simply to being (Sein), and definitely not to beings (Seiende). Instead, the “question of being,” Heidegger suggests (echoing the scope of the Being and Time project), is more deeply the question after inception: “Being remains, always, what is said; however, the essence of beyng is not beyng, but is rather the incepting inception. From this, and as this, beyng incepts (and that also means recedes) into its proper domain” (10). In other words, we do not and cannot cease to live amongst beings, from which our reckoning with the question of the meaning of being is always determined. Yet, to ask about the dawn or origin of being entails inquiring more deeply into the inception (Anfang), or literally, the taking-hold (An-fangen) of beyng. Heidegger writes: “Incipience is the ground of the poetic character of beyng” (18).
The second division of the text, entitled “Inception and Inceptive – Thinking the Creative Thinking of Inception,” continues the themes of the first division while placing emphasis on a kind of meditative reflection. In Section 72, Heidegger makes explicit that inception is a singular phenomenon but with multiple manifestations, that is, multiple inceptions. Each subsequent inception is nonetheless a manifestation of the same underlying movement. “Each inception is more inceptive than the first, and thus is this inception itself in its singular future” (71). An appropriate intuition of an inception to come calls not for action but instead for a meditative waiting and thoughtfulness. Although one cannot predict how inception will unfold, simply the ability to distinguish the name of “inception” and what it entails offers some preview of the impending epoch (87). Referring to the historical moment at his time of writing, Heidegger observes that German culture in contrast has mistakenly pursued goal-setting, machination, and achievement, all of which only lead to destruction. He echoes and recasts here the famous passage from An Introduction to Metaphysics that begins “All distances in space and time are shrinking…”, published just a few years before this writing, stating “No longer can it be asked: ‘To what end?’ The simple plight alone is to be knowingly accepted” (Ibid.). He concludes that there is no sense in thinking of present history as having a human-directed “purpose” or destiny, because the destitution of the age is under the sway of beyng (Ibid.). There is not some other historical trajectory that human beings can bring about by sheer force of will. Thus, he gives a preview here of his later concept of Gelassenheit or “letting-be.” In the following section, he draws this point out in observing that preparedness for inception will become manifest when language and images cease to yield food for thought (72). This passage echoes statements from elsewhere in the esoteric writings to the effect that in a future time, thinking will become “imageless,” viz., that in this future guise, we discover a kind of thinking that does not rely on the affordances of sight or the outward look of things. Whereas in the present, we are still under the way of being understood as idea, what is visible (75).
The fourth division of On Inception pivots from the earlier themes of the book, with a series of reflections on poetry and the legacy of Hölderlin. One key theme is the appropriate understanding of “interpretation,” where this concept in its modern context is taken to mean correct “reading” of history and texts. Heidegger takes issue with the proposition that interpretation involves “correct” or “objective” analysis, maintaining instead that interpretation involves hearing the inceptive word. He writes: “For interpretation must first ground itself more inceptively from out of itself, surrendering to inception and to history, so that it might emerge more inceptively from its inception” (121). In contrast, to talk of “escaping” the hermeneutical circle that is typically invoked in discussions of “objective” interpretation overlooks that the sway of beyng dictates the circle within which one moves. Indeed, there is no escape, nor is there any such circle to be inside or outside of, aside from beyng (126). Regarding Hölderlin, Heidegger goes on to state that this poet’s importance has nothing to do with seeking knowledge or founding truth. Instead, the poet poetizes being, “naming therein the domain of historical decision in its own poetic essence” (132). Here Heidegger describes that Hölderlin does not “think” the other inception, in the way that this is the subject matter of his work. Rather, Hölderlin’s poetry provides clues about the other inception for those who are able to think ahead to the epochal decision the poems indicate (Ibid.). For Heidegger, the futural phenomenon Hölderlin identifies is the “holy” (130).
The fifth division of the text, entitled “The History of Beyng,” finds Heidegger meditating on how to understand the time-instantiating dimension of beyng or “inceptive history” (144). A central question concerns how to describe beyng as an occurrence that itself is not temporal. Heidegger writes of this occurrence: “Nothing happens. The event eventuates. The evental appropriation takes on what it at the same time clears as its own: the clearing itself, which is the ownness of beyng” (143). To seek for a whatness, something that can identify the history of beyng’s essence, misses the point, mistaking the history of beyng for a being proper. The history of beyng is groundless; it “happens” as itself (Ibid.). Consequently, the history of beyng cannot be studied or known as an object of historiography (Ibid.). Similarly, other phenomena occasioned with the history of beyng, such as concealment, unconcealment, clearing, and being-there, are likewise irreducible to temporal moments (143, 145). Instead, they comprise the inceptive, groundless ground in which the temporal can take hold at all.
Another theme receiving treatment in the fifth division (already peppered throughout the first four divisions) is the growing conspicuousness of inception (147), by virtue of its distance from the present. While Heidegger observes that inception is essentially concealment, and moreover, concealment that becomes more and more hidden as history elapses, this concealment has a double effect of becoming more silently conspicuous over time as its absence becomes further pronounced. For Heidegger, this progression is manifested in the history of metaphysics and its subsequent abandoning of being for the sake of beings, such that at the end of metaphysics, it becomes painfully obvious that being no longer has any meaning; being has become an empty notion (148). Here and elsewhere, Heidegger is not much re-inventing the wheel or introducing new vocabulary. But he is offering some deeper and more patient phenomenologies that fill in considerably many claims from the more well-known texts in his corpus.
In the final division of the text, Heidegger reflects on the relevance of the phenomenon of inception to the Being and Time project. In Section 172, he comments that Being and Time reflects “onto-historical inceptive thinking,” viz. that the project of that work is essentially about inception in its scope (161). Although, Heidegger’s implication is that his own writing of Being and Time did not sufficiently comprehend this fact. Continuing, he writes, with a series of line breaks:
Being and time are the same.
Being is inception.
Time is inception.
The incipience of inception (Ibid.).
He concludes by remarking that “the age is not ripe” to engage in a full criticism of Being and Time vis-à-vis its relevance for the phenomenon of inception, because readers are too eager to interpret the work merely as a continuation of metaphysics. The register of this statement implies that critics of Being and Time are unable to comprehend the broader phenomenological direction that work opened up. (Here, we have to remember that, as Heidegger is writing this text a mere 12-15 years after Being and Time’s publication, most of Heidegger’s audience would have had no inkling of his concerns regarding inception, the appropriative event, or the history of beyng, and so forth.) To similar effect, in Section 174 Heidegger invokes Kant and Hegel in order to contrast his own understanding of the Being and Time project with views of critics that Being and Time concerns only transcendental conditions for the possibility of experience. Kant’s project, Heidegger remarks, only takes up conditions for experience regarded from knowledge of beings or objectivity. Similarly, Hegel’s project purports to unravel the conditions for experience based on an “unconditioned”; however, like Kant, Hegel fails to realize that arriving at the unconditioned fundamentally differs from insight into beyng. In this aspect, Hegel does not overcome the transcendental but only draws out its metaphysical implications. Heidegger concludes “All conditioned is abysmally separated from appropriative event” (163).
In Section 175, communicating his own assessment of what Being and Time failed to achieve, Heidegger concludes:
Only one thing was already clear and fixed at that time; that the way into the truth of being headed toward something unasked and could no longer find support in what came before, as other pathways were to be investigated.
Initially, nonetheless, supports were borrowed from metaphysics, and something like an attempt at overcoming metaphysics through metaphysics was advanced.
[…] although the direction of the question has already leapt over all metaphysics (Ibid.)
Heidegger’s self-criticism here ostensibly centers in the notion that, while the Being and Time project began with metaphysics, any attempt to resolve the question of the meaning of being necessarily entails pressing the language of metaphysics to its limits. This outcome enables one to envision what new language must arise next.
To conclude, On Inception offers many helpful explorations that supplement themes from Heidegger’s entire corpus. In this way, the book has something for everybody among readers of Heidegger. Nonetheless, its immediate audience will be very narrow, given that it is a private writing not originally conceived for publication. Scholars who stand to benefit most from engaging with this book will be those studying Heidegger’s accounts of the history of being/beyng and the appropriative event (Ereignis). The book’s value for providing insight into Heidegger’s actual thought will be somewhat more tenuous. The experimental style of the book makes questionable whether the content represents positions Heidegger wishes to advance or whether Heidegger is simply trying out various ideas. Current Heidegger scholars including Thomas Sheehan and David Kleinberg-Levin favor treating the esoteric writings as primary sources informative for comprehending Heidegger’s philosophy overall. Yet, some care is surely called for in this approach. In this regard, I suggest that caution may be in order if one is tempted to place On Inception on equal ground with books Heidegger published in his lifetime.
Reviewed by: Michael Maidan
Also a History of Philosophy (hereafter abbreviated AHPh), originally published in German in 2018 in two volumes, is presented in English translation in a three-volume edition. The first volume, corresponding to about half of the German first one, will be followed next year by a second. A third and final volume will be published in 2025. Habermas —or his translator— provides a justification for the tripartite division (AHPh, p. 83). While the editorial decision to divide the original work into three volumes is understandable considering its length, it means that the English-language reader will have to wait another two years to become familiar with and evaluate the work in its entirety.
The editorial decision to release the book in three volumes also demanded some small adjustments to the text. Whereas volume One carries the subtitle: “The Project of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking”, the German original is “Die okzidentale Konstellation von Glauben und Wissen”. Ciaran Cronin, who translated the book and is a veteran translator of Habermas, chose to substitute the original subtitle with the title of the first part of volume One (“Zur Frage einer Genealogie nachmetaphysischen Denkens”). There are advantages and disadvantages to this move. It can be argued, on the one hand, that Cronin’s choice depicts better the whole project than the original subtitle. Indeed, Cronin’s decision directs us to read the Occidental constellation as a particular subset in the development of postmetaphysical thought. But, as a matter of fact, the Western way is the only subset dealt with substantively. From this point of view, the new title promises more than what it can deliver. The translator promises to include a disclosure of the translation and editorial decisions in the third and final volume (AHPh, x). Readers interested in having an outline of the complete work can refer to pages 396-405 for an overview.
As Habermas makes it clear in the Preface, the genealogy to which we are invited in this work is the genealogy of philosophy, or, more precisely, of a form of philosophy that evolved from, and left behind its metaphysical impedimenta. That philosophy is understood here broadly, is possibly hinted at in the title, which refers to this genealogy as being “also” a history of philosophy. But, why does Habermas make this recourse to philosophy? What can still count as an appropriate understanding of the task of philosophy in our times? (AHPh, xvii). While the term “philosophy” appears in many of Habermas’ writings, most notably in his The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (German 1985/English 1987), it has seldom been thematized. In a 1981 essay, “Philosophy as Stand-In and as Interpreter,” Habermas proposes a redefinition of philosophy’s role in a culture that carved out the traditional understanding of reason into three orientations or research traditions: (a) modern natural science, (b) positive law and morals, and (c) autonomous art and art criticism (Habermas, 1981: 17). As each of these research traditions becomes more and more compartmentalized and specialized, they face the problem of how to mediate between the “experts’ culture” and the general one. Philosophy can be conceived, according to Habermas, as the repository of a will to unity, a will that nevertheless acknowledges that individual matters can only be developed and argued in each one of the differentiated cultural spheres. This is what Habermas characterizes as the post-metaphysical philosophy, which is opposed to the old understanding of philosophy as a kind of usher that oversees the proper sitting arrangements for each of the sciences.
In AHPh, Habermas may have returned to a more traditional understanding of philosophy. Habermas writes that philosophy cannot and should not renounce its holistic ambitions. To do so, even if Habermas acknowledges that those ambitions are unreasonable, would signal a betrayal of its identity, (AHPh, xx). The question is, “What can still count as an appropriate understanding of the tasks of philosophy today?” (AHPh, xvii).
Habermas starts from the observation that, based on his participation in contemporary discussions, there seem to be two different philosophical camps. One takes individual subjects, their ideas, intentions, behavior, and dispositions. The other starts with shared systems of symbols, rules, languages, practices, and forms of life. What Habermas proposes is a reconstruction of both camps because “only an understanding of the reasons that have compelled the philosophy of the subject since the Reformation to undertake an anthropocentric shift in perspective, and above all to embrace the postmetaphysical rejection of belief in a restitutive or ‘redemptive’ justice, will open our eyes to the degree of willingness to cooperate that communicatively socialized subjects must demand of the use of their rational freedom” (AHPh, xxi).
To proceed with this genealogy, Habermas takes a few unconventional steps. He first declares that philosophy, in its origins, is but one of the several metaphysical and religious worldviews of the axial age (AHPh, xxi). Then, he points out that Western philosophy’s origins trace back to an “osmotic process” between Greek philosophy and early Christianity, a process in which religious concepts were assimilated by Philosophy, and at the same time, religious traditions and concerns were transformed into justifiable knowledge, i.e., one that can be argued about conceptually. This process did not end in late antiquity or the Middle Ages but continued well into the modern period, and its traces can still be found in the themes of rational freedom and in basic concepts of practical philosophy.
It may be objected, though, that traces of Judeo-Christian heritage are to be found only in one of the contemporary branches of postmetaphysical philosophy, whereas the empiricist and naturalist branch succeeded in making a complete break with their religious and metaphysical heritage. Habermas rejects this conclusion. The Kantian-Hegelian branch, with its own criticism of religion and metaphysics, preserved an interest in detecting “the traces of reason in history and, in general, an understanding of their philosophical work as oriented to fostering rational conditions of life” (AHPh, xxi).
In an important paper, written after completing the manuscript and before the release of the book, Habermas provides several useful comments to AHPh. In his paper, Habermas qualifies his foreword to AHPh as a grandiose declaration that he now prefers to downplay a few notches. First, he rejects the idea that philosophy can become a “normal” science, i.e., a discipline with a delimited subject matter and a commonly agreed methodology. That would amount to the disappearance of philosophy, a loss in Habermas’ eyes. He elaborates: “The cultural self-understanding of modern societies—and thus the present mode of social life itself—could not remain unaffected by the disappearance of this form of reflection” (Habermas, 2021: 5). Habermas also explains that his account rests on basic concepts and assumptions of social theory on the “emergence, function and progressive desocialization of world views” (Habermas, 2021, 5). From this point of view, the history of philosophy, traditionally centered in discussions between rival schools, is presented by Habermas as a societal process which he summarizes in the formula: “from world views to the lifeworld” (Habermas, 2021, 5).
Habermas’ history of philosophy is not a philosophy of history. But neither is Habermas’ reconstruction of the history and development of philosophy a sociology of philosophy, as practiced by Randal Collins or Pierre Bourdieu and his school, but the reconstruction of an evolutionary process which should suffice to embed the history of philosophy into social theory.
Habermas introduces his project in section I (“On the Question of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking”). This is followed by a second section, which introduces the notion of “axial age,” a hypothesis first formulated by the philosopher Karl Jaspers, according to which we can identify a number of more or less simultaneous and similar breakthroughs in several civilizations in antiquity (China, India, Iran, Israel, and Greece). The third and last section of volume One compares the different approaches and insights of each one of the axial age civilizations. The volume ends with the “First Intermediate Reflection”, in which Habermas takes stock of the work accomplished up to this point and points to the way to be pursued in the remaining two volumes.
According to Habermas, Christian Europe had engaged in repeated bouts of self-examination, which exhibited as a recurring pattern a reflection on Graeco-Roman antiquity. This pattern was disrupted in the 17th century with the emergence of a new type of modernity, which distanced itself from Christianity, and not only from antiquity, as in previous ones. This movement was driven by a reflection on the mathematical natural sciences and by the influence of the Reformation, which questioned the concept of a universal Church. Christianity, and religion in general, become an object of interest for philosophy. But it was only with the Age of Enlightenment that the reflection on the Christian faith takes on the form of a foreign element whose contemporaneity, or to use Habermas’ expression, “whose contemporary configuration of spirit”, becomes problematic. This secularized philosophy bifurcates into a positive and a negative concept. “I am interested” writes Habermas, “in this caesura because the Age of Enlightenment ushered in by philosophy represents a parting of ways for secularized philosophy at which postmetaphysical thinking itself bifurcates.” (AHPh, 5). However, this bifurcation does not correspond to the common one between continental and analytical philosophies (AHPh, 7). Habermas prefers to speak of two different heritages, one tracing back to Hume and the other which continues the tradition of the young-Hegelians. He then offers an interpretation of those heritages based on 4 criteria: (1) attitude to religion and theology (2) a cognitive versus a non-cognitive (or communicative) concept of practical reason; (3) their respective evaluation of the philosophical relevance of the human sciences; (4) their respective positions on the historical location of philosophical thinking (AHPh, 8). In the philosophies of Herder, Schleiermacher, Humboldt, and Hegel, Habermas notes a categorial shift from a paradigm of the subject to a paradigm of language: “With its detranscendentalization of the mind, post-Hegelian thought, in contrast to empiricism, learned simultaneously to reconstruct the activity of a meanwhile situated reason from the participant perspective and to describe it from the observer perspective in the historical context in which it is embedded.” (AHPh, 12). Habermas presents this turn as a “detranscendentalization of the mind”, which learns to simultaneously reconstruct the activity of reason from the perspective of the participant and to describe it from the perspective of the observer. This “dual perspective” is what makes it necessary for philosophy to be humble and to learn from the human sciences (AHPh, 13).
Volume One is divided into three parts. Part I introduces the question of a genealogy of post-metaphysical thought and its legitimacy. The rest of the book is a historical and reconstructructive analysis played on two levels, sometimes parallel and sometimes divergent, of Western philosophy and of the alternative but complementary system of thought elaborated in the Orient. Part II presents the hypothesis of an “axial transformation”, which frames the development of Western philosophy in the broader scheme of the breakthrough that took place around 500 BC in different civilizations. Part III presents a somewhat detailed comparison between the different worldviews that emerged from the axial breakthrough. Volume One ends with a provisional summing up of Habermas’ argument.
Habermas presents the problem of postmetaphysical thinking from three points of view. The first consists of an analysis of the criticism of modernity and of a presumed withering away of the political that was elaborated by a number of German philosophers —e.g., Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Karl Löwith, and Martin Heidegger— in the first half of the 20th century. Habermas contests this melancholic approach and emphasizes instead Hans Blumenberg’s re-evaluation of modernity. According to Habermas’ interpretation, Blumenberg answers to the declinist understanding of modernity with a theory of philosophy as a learning process, because of which, some reasons no longer “count” (AHPh, 35). But this answer demands clarification. How is it that we came to accept only postmetaphysical patterns of explanation as plausible? We cannot answer this question in a direct way, without making a detour through history, understood as a series of learning processes. And Habermas reaffirms his position that patterns of argumentation that emerge from learning processes that we understand in a rational way are the only ones that do not require additional justification (AHPh, 36).
The second point of view regards the relationship between philosophy and religion, and finally, the third involves the suspicion that Western philosophy does not have any claims to universality, and that is, first and foremost, a narrow European perspective.
Why call this interpretation of philosophy conceived as the reconstruction of societal and cultural learning processes with the value-laden name of “genealogy”? The obvious reference is Nietzsche’s thought (AHPh, 36-37). Habermas claims to follow a suggestion made by Amy Allen to differentiate between “subversive,” “problematizing,” and “vindicatory” genealogies. “Vindicatory” genealogy is one that not only refers to the contingency of the context in which one’s ideas originated, something it has in common with other forms of genealogy, but also considers the distance from a naivety of understanding of the world that disappears once we become aware that its structure is the results of a learning process. Briefly, while the first form of genealogy appears to correspond to its use in Nietzsche, and the second to Foucault, the third would be the one chosen by Habermas, and is not only negative like the former forms, but has a positivity that results from its reinscription as results of learning processes (AHPh, 37).
Habermas’ example is meaningful. We see the secular premises of postmetaphysical thinking in a different light when we discover that these are not only the result of a return to premises of Greek thought, Christianized and forgotten during the Middle Ages, but from a protracted theological discourse on faith and knowledge. The kind of genealogy that Habermas has in mind preserves, at the logical-semantical level, the validity of its propositions (AHPh, 37). But characterized in those terms, Habermas genealogy is also a crypto-dialectic. Indeed, echoes from Hegel’s philosophy are much present in this work. What Habermas hopes to find in a genealogy is, in addition to a cognitive function, also a social cohesive one (AHPh, 38). Early on, in the societies of the Axial Age, the aspect of social integration took the form of a political theory legitimizing the imperial kingdoms. In the Christian West, because of the division of labor with philosophy, religion took over this role. Later, with the secularization of the state, philosophy took on the role of providing justification for constitutional norms. Ultimately, philosophy could not satisfy itself with the normative perspective and had to incorporate findings acquired from an observer perspective, i.e., from the social sciences. Habermas claims that philosophy was able to do so only after the scientization of the knowledge of culture and society. The observer’s perspective and knowledge are either integrated into the existing “interpretative framework” or lead to its restructuring. Also, in the case of the normative realm, changes in the form of social integration translate into an expansion of modes of cooperation and the development of normative ideas. Habermas also adds that worldviews can store problem-solving potentials that remain latent until they can be fully utilized (AHPh, 39-40)
Section 2 deals with the question —that occupies Habermas in his more recent work— on the status of religion in modern society. There are two interpretations of Habermas’ belated interest in religion. The first interpretation stresses the continuity of Habermas’ interest in religion, starting with his earliest writings. The second restricts his interest in religion to a late stage, necessitated by the evidence of a re-emergence of religion in Western Europe and the USA, and the renewal of political theologies worldwide. Both camps can find elements in Habermas’ late work that sustain their interpretation. In what respects to volume One of AHPh, Habermas clearly subordinates the question of religion to the acknowledgment of the important role that the relationship between faith and knowledge had in the development of Western philosophy. But he also considers the effects of the decoupling of philosophy from religion. Accordingly, he introduces a distinction between secularization at the level of our understanding of self and the world, and the process of secularization of state power and society. The latter is a matter of functional differentiation between the state and a church that has been relieved of the task of legitimizing political rule.
Section 3 confronts the question of postmetaphysical thought’s universality claims.
Habermas acknowledges the skeptical argument against the claim to universality. This is why we must consider Western philosophy as one of many voices in the concert of axial worldviews (AHPh, 66). This would also apply to postmetaphysical thinking, which can be defended only in an intercultural discourse among equal participants. To that effect, Habermas proposes what he denominates a “thought experiment” that would explain the legitimate role that postmetaphysical thinking can assume in discourses that are polyphonic and intercultural (AHPh, 73-82). This experiment corresponds to a translation of the vague aspirations of post-metaphysical thinking to the concrete experience of the development of international and interregional organizations based ultimately on disparate nation-states having different histories, cultures, and religions. The question that Habermas presents is whether “reaching an intercultural understanding on principles of political justice can be conceived as possible in a multicultural world society at all, even though the parties who encounter each other there are shaped by the cultural legacies of competing world religions.” (AHPh,75). In other words, “how an international community could reach an agreement on interculturally recognized principles of political justice at all.” (AHPh, 75). Habermas adds that the experiment that he is proposing has as an objective to identify the level of reflection on which the claim to universality could be clarified (AHPh, 76). Here, Habermas restricts the discussion to the domain of religions, disregarding the influence of economic, social, and other interests, as if only consideration of salvation and morality are operative in this situation.
The analysis is conducted in two parts. In the first, Habermas considers the viability of dialogue between religious and secular thought in which both parties accept the same principles of political justice for the same reasons. The second version of the argument requires that the religious party accepts that secular thought is sufficient for a self-supporting “rational justification”. (AHPh, 79). Habermas agrees that this is a unilateral challenge to the religious side (AHPh, 81). He proposes two ways of resolving this contradiction. One asserts that the development of the worldviews of the different civilizations is broadly similar. Second, that those differences that cannot be reconciled by recourse to the previous observation “would have to be dealt with in intercultural discourse.” (AHPh, 82; 117).
After this extended introduction, Habermas presents in sections II and III the hypothesis of an axial breakthrough, taking place independently at approximately the same time in five ancient Asian civilizations. He deals first with the general characteristics of the axial turn and goes later into a specific comparison of the major traits of each of the axial civilizations. According to Habermas “The term ‘Axial Age’ stems from Karl Jaspers’ conception of the year 500 BC as an ‘axis’ around which the rotation of world history accelerated, as it were. This development was prompted by similar revolutions in the mentalities of the elites in the early Eurasian advanced cultures that occurred independently during a comparatively short period. Out of these revolutions emerged “strong” religious teachings and metaphysical worldviews that remain influential to the present day.” (AHPh, 115). This approach, which Habermas borrows from Jaspers, has some problems. Out of the monotheistic religions, both Islam and Christianity are missing, and is difficult to see how they could be integrated into the axial approach. Egypt is missing, even though Greek philosophers thought of Egypt as the origin of at least some of their wisdom. Regarding monotheism, Habermas polemicizes with the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, who advocates a different interpretation and evaluation of the development and consequences of monotheism. To make room for everybody would require an expanded notion of axial breakthrough, which means not just the five breakthroughs that Jaspers identified, but also their offshoots. But Habermas is more interested in addressing a different problem: how these evolutionary events continue to influence contemporary societies. For this purpose, we need to discard a one-sided, intellectualistic interpretation of religion and metaphysical worldviews. Religions are not just worldviews; they connect interpretation with ritual and remain connected to an archaic experience. This realization leads Habermas into a lengthy exploration of ritual, language, social integration, and political rule. Ultimately, this provides an interpretation of the inner dynamics that lead to the axial turn, and also explains the persistence of religion in the contemporary world.
Habermas dedicates an important excursus to the question of the origins of language, referring to the research conducted by the developmental and comparative psychologist and linguist Michael Tomasello. He uses Tomasello’s reconstruction of language acquisition to ground his insight that “cultural transmission, which replaces genetically controlled natural evolution, depends on an intersubjective relationship between speaker and addressee and their ability to share intentions aimed at something perceived in the objective world. And it is precisely this elementary interlocking of a horizontal relationship between persons with a vertical relationship to states of affairs proceeding from this shared basis that is made possible by the interposition of a public gesture perceived and understood by both sides as a symbol.” (AHPh, 155). Habermas reconstruction of the communicative situation puts into play five elements whose presence are required for the success of communication: (1) a deliberate gesture; (2) adjustment of perspectives; (3) reference to a state of affairs; (4) that the gesture refers for the speaker and for the addressee to the same state of affairs; and finally, (5) that the addressee interprets based on a shared normative background (AHPh, 154). In the communicative situation, Habermas distinguishes a communicative use of the symbol which refers to an interpersonal relationship, from a representational use of the symbol, which points to the world. Entering into an interpersonal relationship, the participants adopt each other’s perspective and thereby create shared knowledge (AHPh, 156).
In the following section, Habermas extends the model of communication to interpret ritual behavior. Ritual is a more primitive form of communication, than, e.g., myth. Myth presupposes a grammatically developed language. (AHPh, 163). Not so ritual, which builds on the mimetic skills of our ancestors (rhythm, dance, pantomime, sculpture, painting, body painting, found objects, and so forth). What sets ritual apart is its self-referentiality. Ritual does not refer to something in the world (as is the case in linguistic communication) but is self-contained (AHPh,164). Ritual is a kind of “speech before language” (AHPh, 165). Habermas connects this description with a functional one. Ritual is a response to specific disturbances within the social collective, that are related to a vulnerability of the communicative form of socialization. In the following pages, Habermas presents an explanation of the origins and function of ritual as a learning process. With the new level of communication and openness to the world, the individual is exposed to an increased flood of information. What is new must be integrated into familiar contexts. Myth is a response to this cognitive challenge (AHPh, 169-172). But rituals are not discarded; rather, they are combined with mythical narratives to which they provide already symbolically encoded experiences (AHPh, 173). Ritual steps in when the balance between individual self-assertion and the preservation of the collective. “Acute shocks to the social balance bring a practice into play in which individual members assure themselves of their dependence on the powerful collective by means of an aggression-inhibiting ‘submission to the superior’” (AHPh, 179).
In part III Habermas discusses in more detail the specific configurations of the worldviews elaborated in the different axial age cultures. The analysis contained in this section of the book is deemed to be provisional, in the sense that Habermas acknowledges his lack of expertise in each of the religions or cultures that he introduces briefly. Starting with a general discussion, Habermas concentrates on the rejection of paganism in ancient Judaism, the teachings and practice of Buddha, Confucianism, and Taoism, concluding with two sections on Greek philosophy, the first on Natural philosophy and the second with Plato’s theory of Ideas.
Habermas finds some interesting similarities between Plato’s theory of ideas and the cosmocentric Asian worldviews of the axial age: (1) Ontologization of the powers of salvation and misfortune into the moral and esthetic of the truly existent; (2) elaboration of the distinction between being and appearance into a theory of level of knowledge and being; (3) inquiry and knowledge are represented as a path to salvation; (4) moralization of the sacred, perfectionistic ethics that prescribe a way of life characterized by wisdom, prudence, courage, and justice; (5) repudiation of idolatry and magic. In the case of Greek philosophy, though, de-coupling of doctrine from cult (AHPh, 316). Habermas also ponders the paradox of the politically advanced conditions of Athenian democracy and their inability to be projected to the whole of the population of the polis.
In the “First intermediate reflection” that concludes the present volume of AHPh, Habermas notes that since the breakthrough of the axial age, the paths of the major civilizations have diverged, and declares himself unable to explore in detail their development. He concentrates instead on the “Western way”. Nevertheless, he offers a few remarks on the commonalities in the development of the different civilizations, as they become visible “from a great distance”. Habermas indeed claims that the different “worldviews” seem to have had similar starting conditions for their emergence and their dynamic development. This is essential for Habermas’ hypothesis. A mere simultaneity, or even similar starting conditions but not similarities, will not satisfy the conditions required for a dialogue between contemporary societies beyond vague claims of either a clash of civilizations or relativism. Habermas lists a number of similarities and emerging conditions (AHPh, 323): (1) a connection of the “sacred complex” with the new bureaucratic structure of the state; (2) a revolution in the intellectual elite which was enabled when written culture reached maturity; (3) a mythical tradition that got a literary expression that provided legitimation through a differentiated pantheon; (4) changes in cultic practices which took the form of state rituals on the one side, and of individual worship, on the other. Habermas also notes that there are some similarities in the geopolitical situations of the nations that played the lead in the axial breakthrough. Those were peripheral regions, removed from the center of power, afflicted by political unrest, foreign domination, or new modes of production. Habermas emphasizes the centrality of a normative turn: “the religious and metaphysical worldviews of the axial age gave rise to generally binding norms that the ruler could no longer embody but could only represent to the extent that he himself was subject to them” (AHPh, 325). The axial breakthrough produces a limited disenchanting of the world. This process was different in the Asian cultures and in Greece, which allowed the emergence of philosophical idealism. But, the “religious and metaphysical worldviews” (except perhaps for Greek philosophy) played an ambivalent role, providing spiritual and intellectual resources for subversion and resistance and to their stabilization (AHPh, 324).
Volumes 2 and 3 —which are forthcoming in English— deal exclusively with Western philosophy, from Christian Platonism to Pierce’s pragmatism. While more in line with traditional histories of philosophy in the array of subjects treated, Habermas’ choices are idiosyncratic. Not a pedagogic work, not a generic history of philosophy, and certainly not a philosophy of history, Also a History of Philosophy is intimately linked to the inner dynamics of Habermas’ project.
Bibliography:
Habermas (1981), “Philosophy as Stand-In and as Interpreter” in, Jurgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Cambridge, UK and Maldon, USA, cs1990.
Habermas (2021), “An author’s retrospective view”, Constellations, 2021;28:5–10 (DOI: 10.1111/1467-8675.12570).
Reviewed by: Celia Cabrera (CONICET/ National Academy of Sciences of Buenos Aires)
Giulia Cabra’s book, Il valore dell’altro. Intersoggettività, amore ed etica in Edmund Husserl, proposes an insightful analysis of the intersection between two central themes of Husserlian phenomenology: Intersubjectivity and ethics. As indicated by the title, the guiding question that runs through the work concerns the value of the other, a topic of great relevance in phenomenological ethics. The question can be resumed as follows: How is the other given as a subject of value? More specifically: What conceptual elements of Husserl´s phenomenology provide the basis for recognizing the value of the other? Answering this question makes it necessary and justifies Cabra’s proposal for a complementary approach, insofar as it is a theme that besides being addressed at the axiological-ethical level must be anchored in the most basic foundations of Husserl´s theory of the experience of the other. Cabra´s book shows that this overlap of themes is fruitful in both directions: Ethical-axiological analyses expose the deeper meaning of some basic elements of Husserl´s transcendental theory of intersubjectivity (especially, with regard to his understanding of the lived body), and the transcendental theory of intersubjectivity lays the groundwork for an ethical account of alterity that goes beyond its own means (especially, through the analysis of love). In the author´s own words, the hypothesis that serves as a point of departure of the work is that “a synergistic reading of Husserl’s reflections on intersubjectivity and ethics allows for theoretically original and fruitful outcomes for the deepening of both realms within the author’s thought” (p. 307). Certainly, the task is not easy and requires a reading of a wide range of texts in which Husserl devoted himself to reflections on both intersubjectivity and ethics, at various stages of his philosophical production and with different methodological approaches. Cabra’s work proposes a journey through multiple writings of Husserl, tracing a thread that extends from the analyses of the experience of the other in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation to the research manuscripts on ethics from the Freiburg years, and which covers static, genetic, transcendental, personalist, and communitarian approaches.
In the process of laying the groundwork for addressing the question of the value of the other, the book delves into various topics in detail, many of which cannot be fully covered in this review. In the following sections, I will outline the main aspects developed in the book and delineate its broader argumentative strategy.
The book is divided into two main sections, each of which follows one of the two proposed paths: The first section follows the path through the lived body (Leib), while the second section follows the path through love (Liebe). Broadly speaking, the three chapters that make up the first section of the book (entitled La via del Leib: Individuazione, libertà, valore) aim to shed light on the fundamental elements that explain the constitution of the experience of alterity. This is accomplished by first delving into Husserl´s analyses of the sphere of owness and later going deeper into the intersubjectively shared world.
The first chapter is devoted to the transcendental theory of the experience of the other (Fremderfahrung) as developed by Husserl in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation and in related research manuscripts published in volumes XIII, XIV, and XV of Husserliana. The key question posed by the author there is whether such transcendental analysis contains elements that make it possible to highlight how the other subject is experienced as a subject of value (cf. p. 21). The chapter begins with a focus on the primordial sphere. Against this background, the author aims at showing the centrality of the lived body as an organ of perception (Wahrnehmungsorgan) and an organ of the will (Willensorgan). The role of corporeality in the constitution of perception, as developed by Husserl in the Dingvorlesungen (Hua XVI), is addressed showing that the lived body is a system of passive and free kinesthesia, on which perception depends. In order to clarify how the passage from the perceptual level to the volitional level is motivated, Husserl´s analyses of the “I can” in Ideas II are considered. The result of these analyses is that the lived body is the primary form in which the “awake subjectivity” (wache Subjektivität) manifests itself. Moreover, the Leib is the place where the perceptual-sensory layer and the personal-spiritual layer intermingle, and where the freedom of the incarnated transcendental ego is established (cf. p. 310).
Chapter 2 turns to the dynamics of the encounter with the other subject. A special analysis is devoted to the phenomenon of expression (Ausdruck), i.e., to the fact that the other appears always through an expressive body that manifests different degrees of will. It is by virtue of expression that the other appears as a subject of free movement, as a free subject. This chapter introduces one of the most important ideas of the work, namely, the freedom of the person which the author anchors on Husserl´s conception of the lived body. According to Cabra, given the conditions that make it possible for the other subject to be recognized as a transcendental subject, the same conditions also enable their recognition as a free subject. The Leib makes this transition possible and indicates the fundamental freedom of the other (cf. p. 313). This freedom is evidence of the fact that the person has a value of its own (Eigenwert). The proper value of the person is linked to their status of being a free individual, capable of being an ethical subject (as she will show later, this means responding to the categorical imperative). As she claims later on: “This confers upon it the predicate of the value of dignity (Würde): freedom makes the person different from every other worldly being and confirms the initial intuition of inviolability by the personal subject, already indicated by the identification of the Eigenheitssphäre” (p. 313). Bringing the themes of freedom and dignity to the fore is one of the merits of this book. To my knowledge, few works in the exegesis of Husserl´s writings address these themes, which remain in the background of his ethical account of the human person.
In this point, it is noticed that those elements of the experience which are the conditions of possibility of the intersubjective experience are not completely reducible to the primordial sphere, but refer to a personal intersubjective dimension of the Umwelt that only are disconnected from the Eigenheitsphäre by means of abstraction. This indicates the path taken in Chapter 3, which serves as a bridge to the second part of the book devoted to the axiological and ethical analyses. Cabra shifts there to the personalist perspective to consider intersubjective experience as a part of the surrounding world (Umwelt), which is a shared world. This shift of perspective to the personalist attitude is a crucial step to approaching the topic of the work: the comprehension of the other as a subject of value. As Cabra explains, “The encounter with the other, which is made possible because they appear through the Leib, is always inserted in a personal horizon. Only from this perspective is it possible to find the value of the other” (p. 159).
The second section of the work (La via della Liebe: Dovere e chiamata, empatia, prossimità), divided into four chapters, proceeds along the lines of the previously announced change of perspective, from the attitude focused on the sphere of owness to the personalist attitude. This section focuses on Husserl´s reflections on ethics from the Freiburg years, especially, on his analyses of love published in the fourth section of Husserliana XLII, Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie.
Having introduced the Husserlian approach to love in Chapter 1 of this section, in which the author highlights the intentional emotional nature of love and its normative dimension, Chapter 2 has the precise aim of elucidating its inherently intersubjective character. Love takes on various forms, one of which is love as a phenomenon between persons, distinct from love for an object, for science, nature, etcetera. According to the author, personal love is love in the original, primary, and fundamental sense (cf. p. 232) or, as she also points out, the “paradigm of love” in that, through the experience of love, the value of the other subject and the duty toward them are experienced. Love is, thus, the founding moment of ethics. Since the primary reference (Bezug) of love is the other person, “neighborly love” (Nächstenliebe) is characterized as the highest ethical form of love.
The consideration of love as inherently intersubjective calls for an elucidation of its intentional structure and fulfillment. This is the task of the third chapter which explores the relationship between love and empathy (Einfühlung). Love does not fully coincide with empathy, it is a special form of empathy and, in a certain sense, it transcends empathy (cf. p. 237). In order to understand the connection between love and empathy, the double meaning of empathy, which goes back to Husserl´s manuscripts published in Hua XLII, is emphasized. On the one hand, empathy in a basic sense, which is analyzed by Husserl in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, is a theoretical-cognitive form of grasping the other. This fundamental form of empathy is to be distinguished from empathy in an emotional sense, as a “participation in the life of the other” (p. 238) which enters into the individuality of the other person and is fulfilled through love. The introduction of the theme of individuality gives the reader a glimpse of the author´s aim: love grasps the other in their individuality, and this lays the grounds for grasping them as having a “value of uniqueness” (Einzigkeitswert). This aspect is developed in Chapter 4, which presents the guidelines for an axiology of love. I will discuss this final chapter in more detail since it introduces some complex ideas that deserve a deeper analysis, and it integrates the previous results of the investigation into its own argumentation.
While the previous chapters have reflected on the specific features of love as an intentional act -emphasizing its emotional and volitional character-, Chapter 4 aims to analyze the values of love (Liebeswerte). In other words, the focus now shifts from love as an act to what love is directed at. Among the aspects developed in this chapter, I would like to draw attention to three themes that hold a central place in the author´s line of reasoning: (1) The discussion of the subjectivity-objectivity of the values of love; (2) The comprehension of the relationship between the descriptive, axiological, and normative dimensions; (3) finally, the approach to the universality-singularity of the ought revealed through love. These aspects, which I separate only for the sake of exposition, are interrelated in the work.
With the first theme, Cabra addresses a classic problem of the philosophy of values: Is the value dependent upon the subject giving the value? And, if so, does this imply that the value is reducible to such act of giving? The question becomes more compelling when we consider that the focus of the work is the value of the other. That is, that the elucidation of the status of the values of love is a corollary to addressing the value of the other subject. In this context, the question can be reformulated as to whether the value of the other person is contingent upon the subjective turning towards in the act of valuing, or if it is an objective value “recognized” by the subject. In the author´s view, the values of love have both a subjective and an objective dimension. On the one hand, values of love are dependent upon the turning towards of the subject from her personal core, since they are connected to the innermost center of the person. In this regard, they possess a subjective dimension. On the other hand, love in a proper sense is directed toward that which holds value (cf. p. 271). In other words: Genuine love is love for what is worth loving. How is this dual character of values of love, both subjective and objective, to be understood? Cabra´s proposal can be summarized as follows: Values of love are objective values which have subjective relevance because they have a unique meaning for the singular person. In this way, the author seeks to illustrate the dynamics of constitution wherein something given as objective is apprehended through a subjective position taking. The textual foundation of her interpretation is to be found in the lecture Einleitung in die Philosophie from 1919/1920 where Husserl refers to values of love as “the same objective value as individual, subjective value of love” (Hua Mat IX, 146, note 1). In light of this, two implications can be drawn: (1) every value of love has an objective value and (2) every objective value can become a value of love (p. 266). With this, the author aims at distancing from the interpretations that “emphasize solely the subjective side of the constitution of the values of love without considering that subjective preference does not lack a fundamental objective level” (p. 267)
What is the outcome of this interpretation for the understanding of the value of the other? Applying the same dynamic between the subjective and objective dimensions, the conclusion is that the other subject is subjectively preferable (vorzüglich) and at the same time objectively endowed with value. The other is objectively a subject of value to the extent that they have a fundamental dignity as a person (p. 285).
At this point the work turns to the distinction between two forms of empathy developed in Chapter 3. The basis for recognizing the other as a subject of value is established by recognizing the other as a transcendental subject in empathy (in the first sense previously distinguished). What does love add to this level of recognition in empathy? The dimension of “exclusivity” and the “value of uniqueness” (Einzigkeitswert) of the other, which cannot be reduced to any of the previous levels of constitution (cf. p. 288). In the author´s words: “Love fulfills this first objective-formal level of personal valuation recognizing not only the `objective´ value of the other, that is, their being a transcendental subject with their individuality, but also considering them as a `unique´ subject, `subjectively preferable´ concerning other values, and deciding in their favor.” (p. 317) Interestingly, the general idea that the other is the primary value to be promoted, i.e., that love is primarily love for the other, which has been defended throughout the work, leads the author to an incisive proposal of a hierarchy of values of love, which could solve Husserl´s conclusion of a tragic “sacrifice” when confronted with the choice between values of love. Since, according to the author, each value of love derives from the value of the other, “the choice between different values of love would not have the character of a tragic conflict if it were a matter of Liebeswerte of different hierarchy according to different degrees to which love is realized as Nächstenliebe.” (p. 302)
With regard to the second point mentioned, although Cabra`s analyses in this chapter concentrate specifically on the values of love, her reflections also put forward a thesis regarding the broader question of the relationship between facts and values, broadly considered. In the author´s interpretation, Husserl´s theory of value responds to the demand to consider that facts and values are not opposing categories, and that there is no unbridgeable gap between the descriptive and normative moments (cf. p. 279). In fact, the idea that something has value because it is worth of value aims to express the close connection between empirical properties and value properties (although, as the author affirms, Husserl does not clarify the nature of this connection). This would bring Husserl´s position closer to that of Brentano and distance it from Schelerian axiology (cf. p. 277).
It is also interesting to note how the work thematizes the absolute ought (absolutes Sollen) that is manifested to the person through love. The values of love have a normative and motivational force that becomes a guiding principle for the person´s life. Because of its connection to values, it is argued that in love the absolute ought is manifested immediately to the person. This means that the normative level does not “supervene” or is superimposed, but is implicit in the axiological dimension (cf. p. 304). In this way, not only is the axiological level not extrinsic to the descriptive level but also the normative level is not extrinsic to the axiological level.
Finally, the transition from the axiological level of values of love to the normative level of the absolute ought provides the author with the opportunity to reflect on the special relationship between universality and singularity that love brings about: In the dynamics of love, the universal is manifested in the singular. The other subject is experienced as a value whose realization enables the fulfillment of the universal categorical imperative. In other words: Through love, the universal categorical imperative is unveiled to the singular individual. Thus, love and vocation represent the “singularized universal” ( p. 302) since it is only in the encounter with another subject that the person can respond to the call to act according to the categorical imperative.
A final aspect of this chapter that I would like to mention is that throughout the analyses devoted to Husserl´s phenomenology of values, the author offers a clarification of the meaning of concepts that can easily lead to ambiguities, and proposes its own interpretation regarding their distinction: Among other things, a special consideration is given to the use of the terms “value of love”, “personal value”, “subjective value”, and “individual value” (cf. pp. 267-270), and to the difference between “having value”, and “being a value” (cf. p. 271). These clarifications are important not only for the reader of this book but also for the reader of Husserl’s work, especially when dealing with texts on the emotional-evaluative sphere, which due to its elusive nature requires the use of a complex set of terminology for its description.
The work wraps up with a conclusion that summarizes how the two paths taken (Leib and Liebe) intersect and it offers a methodological reflection on how the static approach inherent in the analysis of the Fremderfahrung is complemented by the genetic perspective. According to this, love brings with it a revision of the static foundational model in that the other subject is immediately experienced as endowed with value, as a ‘phenomenological absolute’: “On the one hand, the analysis of the Fremderfahrung, and within it the primary role of the Leib, show the static conditions of possibility for recognizing the other subject as a subject of value, through the consideration of their freedom, expressed in the Leib. On the other hand, love as a gaze that reveals the genesis of the primary manifestation of the value of the other subject and the duty towards them, represents the place where intersubjectivity and ethics meet at its highest form” (p. 319).
Summing up, it is impossible not to notice that this book is the result of an extensive and meticulous research. In addition to the level of detail achieved in the analyses, and the careful interweaving of the different themes and methodological approaches in the construction of the work, I would like to highlight the originality of Cabra’s proposal. From the perspective of the precise question she aims to answer, she puts forward reading hypotheses on difficult aspects of Husserlian phenomenology of values that are still not settled by Husserl´s scholars. This is very fruitful in a context where Husserlian analyses of values are being rediscovered and increasingly debated, thanks to the publication of the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins (Hua XLIII, 1-3). More generally, as the author affirms, with the exception of Janet Donohoe´s work Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity from 2016,[1] the explicit connection between Husserl´s analyses of intersubjectivity and his ethical thinking has been missing in the critical literature on his work to date (cf. p. 5). Il valore dell`altro fills this gap through a deep study, documented in detail in Husserl’s texts that reveals to the reader a path to grasp the profound connection between these two themes. In addition to being a valuable tool for scholars, her work contributes to the understanding of the unity that permeates Husserl’s philosophical project, and to further promote the growing studies of Husserlian ethics and value theory.
[1] Janet Donohoe. 2016. Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity. From Static to Genetic Phenomenology. University of Toronto Press.