Etiqueta: Phenomenology

Rajiv Kaushik: Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism: The Matrixed Ontology

Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism: The Matrixed Ontology Book Cover Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism: The Matrixed Ontology
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Rajiv Kaushik
SUNY Press
2019
Paperback $25.95
202

Reviewed by: Keith Whitmoyer (Pace University)

The wealth of literature that has emerged (and continues to emerge) on Merleau-Ponty’s thought is striking considering that the span between the publication of the author’s first work, The Structure of Behavior (1942), and his last, posthumous work, The Visible and the Invisible (1965), was only a touch more than two decades of active, “serious” academic production.[1] Reading through much of this commentary, one encounters a series of issues and motifs that seem to circulate through discussions of this philosophy: the living body, perceptual experience, motor intentionality, the flesh, the chiasm, reversibility, the place of painting and with respect to these, the author’s engagement and relationship with Husserl on matters autochthonous to phenomenology. This list, of course, goes on. As a reader of both Merleau-Ponty and literature on his thought, one wonders what, if anything, remains to be said.

Kaushik’s work, Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism, I think, clearly indicates that the answers to the above question—whether and what remains to be said—are yes, and much. It makes this indication, however, by rethinking what it means to read and write about the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty by showing that there is a thought and philosophy here that goes well beyond the well-trodden signs that have typically framed approaches and discussions of this author and his work. Kaushik shows us quite eloquently that readers of Merleau-Ponty’s work need no longer rehearse a series of questions that have already been well-documented (perhaps over-documented) and that there remains much to be thought and discussed. Rather than discourse about the lived body, perceptual experience, the flesh, and so forth, we are introduced to another set of signs that frame and render Merleau-Ponty’s thought and which re-constitute its legibility: the symbolic matrix, the elemental, the oneiric, and most importantly, the event.

In addition to opening the field of Merleau-Ponty studies to a series of questions and motifs that have for the most part been unconsidered, Kaushik’s book accomplishes a second task. To the extent to which Between Philosophy and Symbolism provides another set of signs for entering the domain of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, this work also repositions this thought with respect to the history of 20th Century continental philosophy. In a manner that is the analogue to way in which a set of signs gets recycled within the literature on this thinker, Merleau-Ponty is almost invariably attached to the 20th Century’s “phenomenological curve,” the upslope being the work of Husserl and his immediate constellation, the peak probably being Heidegger, the beginning of the downward slope including its rise in France and the immediate post-war period, ending, of course, with the rise of “post-phenomenology” in the figures of Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida, who all in their own ways tried to ring its death knell. By recasting the signs by which we would enter Merleau-Ponty’s thought, Kaushik, I think, succeeds in dismantling this curve (which surely deserves no less and probably worse). Not only does Merleau-Ponty appear as belonging more to “post-phenomenology” than as a member of the movement but the very terms by which we would want to define “phenomenology” in contrast to “non-phenomenology” (including “post”-phenomenology) become (rightly) contested. By re-framing the approach to the work of Merleau-Ponty, Kaushik’s book re-frames the manner in which we can make sense of what means to belong (or not to belong) to the phenomenological movement and what “phenomenology” can signify in the first place. I want to take the opportunity to explore these transformations through a series of concepts that make up the infrastructure of Between Philosophy and Symbolism, the analysis of which will constitute this writing: the matrix, the symbolic, the element, and the event.

The subtitle of Kaushik’s book, The Matrixed Ontology, already indicates the central role that this concept will play in his reading. A matrix or “matrix event” is positioned against a theory of the transcendental field where the transcendental as such is identified with some form of ipseity: a self-identical, discrete consciousness that occupies the role of referent for the sense of a world it constitutes. Of course we find such a theory of the transcendental most clearly in Kant’s “I think that must accompany all my representations,” the transcendental unity of apperception; in Husserl through the various iterations of transcendental consciousness and egoicity; and of course in Sartre’s theory of consciousness as the active, centripetal constituting agency of the world’s meaning (“nothingness”). Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is distinguished from these theories at the point where the transcendental field is now reconceived—not as the privilege of a constituting self—but as the interstice, fissure, or, as it were, silent lacuna, the écart (divergence) of difference within beings that allows them their phenomenality. In other words, Merleau-Ponty, on Kaushik’s reading, gives a theory of the transcendental that not only allows for but requires internal differentiation. This is a crucial claim because, as Kaushik indicates, it is this revised theory of transcendentality that immunizes Merleau-Ponty’s thought against the critique that phenomenology necessarily eliminates difference, and in so doing, occludes the possibility of thinking the event as such.

Thinking through the configurations and operations of matrices, as well as their corresponding eventualities, occupies much of the individual analyses of the text. We nonetheless encounter some indications in the Introduction, to which I will briefly turn. Kaushik states:

Matrix events do not emphasize self-consciousness at the cost of difference. They are, in fact, called matrices because they constellate difference as difference…. A matrix event may be equated with differentiation in several ways: in addition to difference between human and animal, it can refer to the exterior and interior, public and personal, language and speech. A matrix event runs a circuit through these differences. But the loop of matrix events is never closed, and neither are the terms that they snap up into them. This is crucial, for unless Merleau-Ponty thinks that, through the event, differences are reduced to an identity, he is not guilty of the typical criticism that befalls phenomenology—that it transforms nonsense into sense and makes what is incoherent coherent.[2]

The typical criticism would be that, in its attempt to trace the lines of force that produce and shore up the everyday appearance of the world and the sense it has for us, phenomenology will discover an absolute origin that constitutes this sense. Such an origin, as the origin of all difference, would not itself be subject to difference. It would be a purely centripetal, outwardly oriented movement that thinks but is not an object thought, sees but is not seen, speaks but which cannot be heard, constitutes a time to which it would not be subjected, and constitutes a space in which it would not be found. As Kaushik indicates, such an origin could, by definition, not abide any exteriority, could have no relation to anything that would not in principle be subjected to its sense-making movement, and in this way could not stand in relation to anything radically other to it. A matrix event, by contrast, produces sense but in such a manner that it nonetheless still includes and even welcomes what is beyond its sense. Whereas the traditional, phenomenological view of the transcendental ends with a closure into sense and the elimination of non-sense, a matrix event remains constitutively open to non-sense and what is outside, and in this way is “adventurous:” the matrix event is never complete but remains on its way, unterwegs, as Heidegger might say, but “on its way” only to difference. Kaushik notes in this regard:

An event is not singular but plural. Its plurality, furthermore, prevents the event from being teleological. That there is a temporal character to the matrix event means neither that it is an origin from which other times succeed nor that it is a destination into which all times lead. The event is neither an origin nor a destination.”[3]

Matrix events are made legible over the course of the text through a second concept, the importance of which is already suggested by the title, symbolism. Kaushik, borrowing from Merleau-Ponty, will also speak of the “symbolic matrix,” and one also hears very clearly through the invocation of this concept the “symbolic form,” and both Ernst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky are on the horizon here, filtered through Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on Institution in Personal and Public History and his last publication, “Eye and Mind.” I want to consider symbolic form and symbolic matrix under the general rubric of symbolism, which I believe should be understood verbally.

In the Institution lectures, Merleau-Ponty says:

The parallel [of painting] with philosophies is acceptable only if philosophies themselves are taken not as statements of ideas, but as inventions of symbolic forms. Shortcoming of Cassirer’s philosophy consists in thinking that criticism is the endpoint, that philosophical sense has a directing value even though this sense itself is taken up into sedimentation. Consider criticism itself as a symbolic form and not as a philosophy of symbolic forms.[4]

The idea at play here, taken up again in the essay Eye and Mind, is that, as Merleau-Ponty famously says, “every theory of painting is a metaphysics.”[5] That is to say, every theory painting—even one that attempts to ignore or deprecate it such as we find in Descartes or Kant—is a theory of expression, a theory about how the sense of what is comes into being, and every theory of expression is already metaphysics, since metaphysics has only ever been the attempt to think the becoming—the expression—of what is. The significant claim here is that we need to hear “metaphysics” not as the “statement of ideas”—metaphysics in a profound sense has nothing to do with the articulation of theses about being—but “as the invention of symbolic forms,” i.e., the invention of ways and means that allow for the expression of a certain point of view, a certain perspective, or way of seeing. Renaissance painting is of course just this: the presentation and making visible of a certain Weltanschauung, a certain frame—one might even say Ge-stell—for what it means to appear, what it means to be.

Kaushik makes the following commentary on the text from the Institution lectures:

His last sentence here, ‘consider criticism itself as a symbolic form and not a philosophy of symbolic forms,’ is sweeping and radical in its proposal to alter both the method and aim of philosophy. If philosophy criticism is itself a symbolic form, this would mean that the ground for every truth claim in fact enfolds a symbolic component. The height of philosophical criticism would then, counterintuitively, eventuate in the symbolic. If so, philosophical criticism becomes absorbed by something very much counter to its usual goals, a form only ever discovered in mutation and that is never itself.[6]

If metaphysics is the invention of symbolic forms, then the tasks for philosophy as well as its very nature are reconfigured and rethought. It means that the symbolic is no longer a regional matter for a specified branch of philosophical discourse but that the symbolic—symbolism in the verbal sense—is at the very center of philosophical discourse. This means, according to Kaushik, that philosophy cannot hope to arrive at a final diapason of self-consciousness or absolute knowledge but that it encounters at best “a form only ever discovered in mutation and that is never itself.”[7] In being oriented by and in terms of symbolic forms, philosophical inquiry is constitutively defined by a certain delay, an internal slippage as its symbols defer their sense. As a result (or even as a function) of this slippage, phenomenological method (now oriented in terms of symbolic forms) can no longer be understood as the disclosure of an absolute origin, but as indicated earlier, must be thought in terms of an ineliminable difference. Kaushik summarizes this as follows:

The symbolic does not, however, mediate or bring beings together with being but opens up and is the very difference between them. It is in other words, on an adventure and is not a destination end or even a proper origin. It takes or is always on an excursion—between consciousness and unconsciousness, body and world, oneself and another, and the things of the world—while also being no place otherwise.[8]

The adventure of sense, its radical openness, and the necessity of the event for phenomenological method are, in a way, thus premised on the symbolic. This adventurousness, however, requires another concept. If the symbolic introduces a function of slippage and differentiation within the articulation of sense, the principle of this slippage must still be clarified. Kaushik accomplishes this by invoking another term: the element, to which I will now briefly turn.

“Element,” of course, immediately recalls the oldest metaphysics of the Western tradition, the φυσιολόγοι, as Aristotle said, those who discoursed on φύσις or “nature.” We should be careful, however, not confuse the use of element at stake in Between Philosophy and Symbolism with a theory of nature, however, nor should we assume that by invoking this pre-Socratic notion that Kaushik wishes to recover or return to some absolute ὑποκείμενον beneath the phenomena that would explain or even express them. As the third term in the triad matrix-symbol-element, the elemental here designates both the plane of excess of sense and the unexpressed (and inexpressible) silence necessary and intrinsic to any event of phenomenality. In other words, the element is the invisible, the absent and by definition indeterminable interstices or lacunae within the world that allow for the visible, which would precisely be their inverse. Kaushik says:

The elements are, to my mind … by no means determinate, by no means exterior to the explicit phenomenon, and do not oppose it. They are rather within the phenomenon and even if they are not themselves phenomenal. They therefore do not introduce a new reality. The only reason they cannot be located is because they are always differentiated and have no specific locale.[9]

The element is, as it were, the unidentifiable, non-localizable and yet silent interior of things that gives but is not given, that makes possible while itself not being a possible object of identification. As such, the element provides the needed principle of slippage since it appears only in its absence, appears only as missing, known only indirectly through indication and never encountered as such. The element in this sense is elicited through analyses of Merleau-Ponty’s remarks on light in connection with Heraclitus’s use of ἁπτόμενον, “kindling.” As Kaushik says a propos of illumination in Merleau-Ponty:

In the logic of light, it is important to Merleau-Ponty that what issues illumination is also within the illuminated. This means that, for him, illumination contains no original source or point of view that can itself be illuminated. It means, in other words, that illumination is in effect also dark—that it is in fact darkness that makes illumination possible. There can therefore be no general ontology of light that does not have to do with its regional context and its inability to be seen…. [Light] penetrates everywhere, explores the phenomenal plane, and yet can never be a single source from which we know about visible things…. Rather than a source, light is an endless refraction and flash-like. This refraction never shows. Its primary character is diversion. Yet both phenomenon as well as its disclosure are because of the very texture of this always diverted light.[10]

Light or the “kindling” Heraclitus speaks of, the spark-like flash in which things appear, is elemental precisely at the point where light itself shows the phenomena but in its function as showing, itself withdraws and is not seen. I see the visible surface illuminated by the light but do not and cannot see the light itself. There is, as it were, then, a darkness, a shadow within all light that makes it possible as light, but in virtue of this darkness light itself remains elusive: vision only operates in virtue of our constitutive belatedness with respect to light—we see only after the fact, after the light itself has vanished, leaving behind only a trace in the form of the visible thing we see. Understood through light and lighting, the elemental is thus not identifiable with any kind of substrate, atom, matter, or even with a “basic ingredient.” The element, or elements, or elemental must be understood verbally: elementality is what happens, indeed, the event, when the things of the world flash up before us, where that flashing, that “deflagration” of the world’s sense comes to pass through an inverse event of recession, darkening, and shadow—a partial disintegration of the world’s sense around the edges, where sense emerges thanks to non-sense and without eliminating it. Elementality is the event of this lighting-darkening, a penumbric passage from one to the other in which the element as such is encountered only through its inverse, through what it allows and not, as it were, “in the flesh.”

The conceptual triad, matrix-symbol-element, as they function across the specific analyses of Between Philosophy and Symbolism, re-orient Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in such a way that we could no longer say with certainty that we are still in auspices of “phenomenology,” at least given the traditional sense of this as “transcendental science.” Indeed, through the mechanism of this conceptual triad, the very sense and meaning of “transcendental” becomes contested. Rather than a transcendental philosophy in the tradition of Kant and Husserl, through Kaushik’s reading, we must now situate Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy on the side of thinkers such as Deleuze and Derrida—thinkers of difference, slippage, and the event. I want to close this consideration of Between Philosophy and Symbolism by turning to the event in more detail.

Since the publication of Badiou’s Being and Event (1988), it has become fashionable for “philosophies of the event,” including Badiou but also figures such as Meillassoux and so-called “speculative realism,” to pose what is supposed to be a fatal critique of phenomenology. The critique, as Kaushik nicely phrases it, operates like this:

The assumption is that phenomenology reorients incoherency to coherency, inconsistency to consistency, nonsense to sense, and therefore also closes itself to the truly abnormal aspect of events… a philosophy of the event does not exclude the transcendental per se…. Only when it is conceived in terms of an intention, whether subjective or bodily, does the transcendental exclude the event…. An event would break from all forms of intentionality so radically that it cannot be an origin, destination, or even a preexisting referent, and its eventfulness would instead be utterly spontaneous.[11]

The conceptual triad matrix-symbol-element undoes intentionality—it makes sense of the birth of sense without reducing this genesis to an intentional form that would erase its excess, other, and outside. In other words, what the reconfiguration of Merleau-Ponty’s thought at stake in Between Philosophy and Symbolism accomplishes is the articulation of a phenomenology that allows for incoherency, inconsistency and nonsense to dwell within the sense of the world and that the emergence of sense does not exclude these. Kaushik reiterates this in the conclusion of the text, where he says “The impossible is internal to all senses, configuring them from within. This matrix, between sense and the meaning that cannot possible make sense, implies that no sense ever exhausts its non-sense.”[12] If the impossible is internal to all senses, if sense itself requires a non-sense internal to it, then it would seem that phenomenology—at least the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty—is already a philosophy of the event.

If Kaushik’s analyses are correct, and the close reading and analyses of the text indicate that they are, then the supposed fatal critique of phenomenology posed by philosophies of the event is not only not fatal, but premised on a misreading of phenomenology—or at least a misreading of the thought of Merleau-Ponty. Furthermore, by making Merleau-Ponty’s thought legible in terms of and through the matrix-symbolic-element, the traditional series of concepts that typically make up the currency of Merleau-Ponty studies—body, perception, flesh, etc.—are recast such that their internal relationship as well as Merelau-Ponty’s original contributions to philosophy (his engagement with Husserl, his conceptualization of phenomenology and its method, etc.) now come to fore clearly in a way hitherto undocumented. That being said, I will only add that Between Philosophy and Symbolism indicates that the more traditional interpretations of Merleau-Ponty’s thought (lived body, perception, flesh, etc.) are, in a sense, already in the past and that they most likely belong there, footnotes to a philosophy that itself continues to thrive and live. The readers of Merleau-Ponty’s work who are yet to come will leave these traditional readings there, in the past, and instead take Between Philosophy and Symbolism as their point of departure.

[1] Contrast Heidegger, who published Being and Time in 1927 and whose academic activity seems to have lasted at least until the late sixties, almost twice the output of Merleau-Ponty.

[2] Kaushik, Rajiv. Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism: The Matrixed Ontology. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2019), xii.

[3] Ibid., xiii.

[4] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Institution and Passivity. Trans. Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010), 44; Kaushik, Rajiv. Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism, xviii.

[5] Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “Eye and Mind,” in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader. Ed. Galen Johnson. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), 132.

[6] Kaushik, Between Philosophy and Symbolism, xviii-xix.

[7] Ibid., xix.

[8] Ibid., xx.

[9] Ibid., xxii.

[10] Ibid., 64-65.

[11] Ibid., xi-xii.

[12] Ibid., 128.

Graeme Nicholson: Heidegger on Truth: Its Essence and Is Fate

Heidegger on Truth: Its Essence and its Fate Book Cover Heidegger on Truth: Its Essence and its Fate
New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
Graeme Nicholson
University of Toronto Press
2019
Cloth $45.00
200

Reviewed by: Daniel Regnier (St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan)

In Heidegger on Truth Graeme Nicholson, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, provides a close reading of the Heidegger’s works published under the title “On the Essence of Truth” (Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: WW). Heidegger delivered lectures under this title on four occasions in 1930 and the work was published in written form first in 1943 and then in a second edition in 1949 (another version dating from 1940 also exists but is virtually identical to the 1943 version, Nicholson tells us (8)). Nicholson provides a developmental account of Heidegger’s thought on truth by identifying the differences between the 1930 lecture versions of WW and the later published essays.  Accordingly, the book is divided into two major parts.

Part I of Nicholson’s book is dedicated to the 1930 lectures and provides a very good detailed analysis of some of the key innovations in Heidegger’s view of truth developed in them. Nicholson explains the fundamental phenomenological strategy that Heidegger uses to account for truth writing, “A phenomenological account will treat experiences as the wellspring of statements and by the same token the birth place of truth” (31).  In this context Nicholson explains how in accordance with notions developed in Section 33 of Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) Heidegger points to “conduct” (Verhalten) as the point at which openness to a thing occurs. Conduct has a “revelatory power,” Nicholson points out (35).  And he rightly identifies a Kantian moment in Heidegger’s claim that “the essence of truth is freedom” (indeed, Heidegger also lectured on Kant’s notion of freedom in 1930). Graeme explains, “Our conduct can only adjust itself, accommodating the standard set by the thing, if it is free or open, ready to receive orientation” (39). This amounts to “letting-be” (Seinlassen).  And it is at this juncture that Heidegger moves from a relatively ahistorical phenomenological approach to truth to an analysis conditioned by historical considerations.  Heidegger writes,

It is in the letting-be of beings as such that such a thing as a being ever becomes unconcealed, that is, de-concealed. The unconcealed was known to Western philosophy in its decisive beginning with Heraclitus as ta alêtheia (47).

Nicholson defends Heidegger’s reading of alêtheia as unconcealedness and proceeds to show how this notion accords with Heidegger’s understanding of Dasein.

Nicholson addresses the difficult problem of the relationship between truth and non-truth in Heidegger (expressed as the “Non-essence” (Unwesen) of truth, and as “error” (Irre)).  Nicholson is at his best when interpreting texts such as the following where Heidegger writes,

Then, if the essence is to realize its full scope and authority over us, would it not have to retrieve this Non-essence, i.e. untruth, and admit it explicitly into the essence of truth? Certainly! (57)

Nicholson shows how Heidegger’s way of dealing with truth is grounded in a contextualism that takes account of a totality and can be better understood when seen against the background of the treatment of attunement (Gestimmtheit) from Section 29 of Being and Time. Nicholson remarks that attunement in WW is, in contrast to the account in Being and Time, “not phenomenally evident to Da-sein” (63).  This leads to the discovery that, as Nicholson puts it, “erring and the mystery are contained within that essence [i.e. of truth]” (73). And it is philosophy that is equipped to deal with this mystery according to Heidegger in 1930.  Yet, as Nicholson points out in his conclusion to Part I of his book, “Here and elsewhere through the 1930’s Heidegger tended to speak of philosophy as a body of ontological knowledge rather than the experience of questioning or the encounter with mystery” (87). This foundationalism in understanding truth is, Nicholoson suggests, related to Heidegger’s understanding of philosophy’s leading role in relation to the other disciplines. Nicholson essentially suggests that Heidegger had not yet fully developed the implications of his own thought which consequently contains certain inconsistency.

Before proceeding to Part II, Nicholson inserts a section entitled “Intermission: Political Storms” (83-94).  It is however, much more than an intermission, because it is a key in understanding the developmental account that is at the heart of the Nicholson’s reading of Heidegger. In this section Nicholson puts Heidegger’s work on truth in the context of his Rectorship of the Freiburg University 1933-34 and his relationship with the Nazi party.  Nicholson comments on the lectures Heidegger gave during this period, on the Black Notebooks as well as other documents.  In general, we might say that without releasing Heidegger of responsibilty, Nicholson argues that Heidegger’s thought is not compromised by the “Political Storms” of the period of the rectorship.  Nicholson writes,

But the “Heidegger Case” is not one of simple opposition between pro- and anti-phenomenology, or pro- and anti-Nazism, or even pro- and anti-Heidegger. I would suggest instead that Heidegger’s life and work exhibited a cleft or bifurcation that many of this readers, especially his critics, have not noticed, have not understood, and consequently have misunderstood grievously. (93)

This position serves Nicholson as a hermeneutic principle. Accordingly, Part II of his book is entitled “Later Work: the Pathway Rectified.”

Nicholson writes “After 1930, or rather 1934, Heidegger moved to correct the overconfident doctrine of this earlier period that an a priori Seinsverstgeriod that an a prioir 4, Heidegger moved to correct the overconfident doctrine of thi searlier s, have not noticed, have not uändtnis (“understanding of being”) gave guidance to the sciences but can be traced in every human encounter with the world.”  Nicholson’s treatment of truth in the later Heidegger follows a historical structure from the Plato lectures (of 1931-32) which begin to expose Plato’s role in distorting the original Greek experience of truth (Part II, A) a section dealing with Medieval thought (Part II, B) and a section dealing with the present-age (Part II, C).

In Part II, A Nicholson shows how Heidegger understands Plato to have compromised truth as alêtheia by mixing with it the idea of truth as correctness (Richtigkeit, orthotês), a problem which subsequently became embedded in Western thought (105). Nicholson argues that Heidegger revises his understandings of freedom, unconcealedness and Dasein. Here Dasein functions differently than in Being and Time, Nicholson tells us, insofar as it the “hidden essential grounding of the human being” (129).  Heidegger writes, “In Da-sein, the essential ground, long ungrounded, on the basis of which human beings are able to ek-sist, is preserved for them” (125). The notion of the “clearing” (Lichtung) which does not appear in WW but elsewhere in later Heidegger serves for Nicholson to better understand the idea of openness expressed in the Da- of Dasein. As Nicholson puts it, “Da-sein brings us, through ek-sistence, to belong to the Da-, or the open region” (131).

In Part II, B Nicholson deals with the notion of truth as adequatio rei ad intellectum and various permutations of this formula. Nicholson says that the idea of truth as adequatio persists in Western thought even when detached from notions of creation and God. In this section Nicholson deals briefly with truth as certainty in Descartes, grounding in Leibniz and with Hegel on certainty.

Nicholson opens Part II, C with consideration of the following undated marginal note which Heidegger had written in the 1943 edition: “Between 5 and 6 the leap into the turning (Kehre) (whose essence unfolds in the event of appropriation (im Ereignis wesende)” (142). The numerals refer to chapters of Heidegger’s text. Readers familiar with Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy will recognize the terminology of the marginalium, and it is precisely to this work that Nicholson turns to explain the way in which Heidegger deals with truth in the context of his later thought.  Nicholson explains why Heidegger begins to spell being (Sein) with a “y” beyng (Seyn), namely “because he which to speak not of an object of thought, noumenon, but of what might prompt thought and give rise to it after the concealment of all the beings” (146). That is, being is thought as en-owning (Ereignis) (146).

Overall, Nicholson provides an insightful and very useful reading of WW. This reader found Part I of Nicholson’s book to be more successful than Part II. No doubt, this is largely a matter of the difficulty of later Heidegger. (Trying to explain WW by referring to Contributions could be considered an attempt to explain obscurum per obscurius!)  But the brevity of some explanations towards the end of Part II seem to me unjustified (for example, the one sentence paragraph labeled “On Psychology” on page 164). A remark on the book sleeve suggests that this might be a good pedagogical tool. I am not so sure about this. On the one hand, there are very lucid discussions of key notions in Heidegger. On the other hand, certain aspects of the text assume a lot on the part of readers: knowledge of the certain debates in the secondary literature and knowledge of key Heideggerian works. I do think that the work would certainly be of interest to graduate students and scholars. When the book does deal with secondary literature it tends to be recent secondary literature in English. One might have hoped for somewhat more attention to scholarship in other languages. Nicholson suggests at the beginning of the book (5) that he will apply contemporary issues and the Conclusion is entitled “Against Self-Expression.”  However, the conclusion is very brief. One gets the sense that either the author might either have simply left out reference to contemporary issues or developed this section more.  In sum, Heidegger on Truth: Its Essence and Is Fate is a very welcome addition to Heidegger studies.

Thomas Arnold: Phänomenologie als Platonismus

Phänomenologie als Platonismus: Zu den Platonischen Wesensmomenten der Philosophie Edmund Husserls Book Cover Phänomenologie als Platonismus: Zu den Platonischen Wesensmomenten der Philosophie Edmund Husserls
Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie 133
Thomas Arnold
De Gruyter
2017
Hardback €109.95
ix, 333

Reviewed by: Pier Alberto Porceddu Cilione (University of Verona)

The problem of determining whether or not Husserl belongs to a broader «Platonic» tradition is destined to remain open. The philosophical importance of Thomas Arnold’s Phänomenologie als Platonismus. Zu den platonischen Wesensmomenten der Philosophie Edmund Husserls rests on the fact that this text places the issue on a solid theoretical basis. Arnold’s work, in fact, through its paratactic structure, helps us to avoid an historical reconstruction or a mere scholarly discussion of the problem, and advocates the idea that a Plato-Husserl confrontation has to be analyzed through «Wesens-Momenten,» through «essential moments.» In what sense does our approach to Platonism change, when seen through a Husserlian perspective? First of all, it is useful to read how the idea of ​​“Platonism” should be understood:

«‘Platonismus'» wird im Folgenden nicht nur als Bezeichnung einer Familie von realistischen Positionen innerhalb des Universalienstreits oder spezieller der Ontologie der Mathematik verstanden, d. h. als Synonym einer schmal verstandenen ‘Ideenlehre’, sondern vielmehr als Name einer ganzen Philosophie» (6).

[«‘Platonism'» is here understood not only as a designation of a family of realistic positions within the problem of the universals, or more specifically, of the ontology of mathematics, i.e. as a synonym of a narrowly understood ‘theory of ideas’, but rather as the name of an entire philosophy”].

It is clear that the intention of the book is not to trace a conceptual filiation between Platonism and phenomenology, but rather to measure how philosophy quo talis, that is, in the spirit of Husserl, philosophy «als strenge Wissenschaft,» can be fully achieved by Plato or by Husserl. In a few words, the underlying idea is that, regardless of the diversity of conceptual vocabularies, the gnoseological requirements of the two authors coincide in many points. Arnold even goes so far as to hold that already in Plato there are the «regional ontologies» presented in Husserl’s Ideen, tracing a correspondent symmetry in Platonic dialogues:

«Regionale Ontologien finden sich etwa im Phaidon (Ontologie der psychê), in der Politeia (Ontologie der Kunst) oder im Timaios (Ontologie der Natur); neben pädagogischen und epistemologischen Querelen der Ethik stellt auch die Ontologie der Tugend ein Problem dar, bis sie im Gorgias und weiter in der Politeia als ‘Ordnung’ erkannt wird» (58).

[«Regional ontologies can be found in the Phaedo (ontology of psychê), in the Republic (ontology of art) or in the Timaeus (ontology of nature); in addition to the pedagogical and epistemological quarrels of ethics, the ontology of virtue also poses a problem until it is recognized as an ‘order’ [Ordnung] in the Gorgias and further in the Republic”].

But regardless of the possible conceptual symmetries between the texts of the two authors, the question always remains a theoretical one. The ambition of philosophy coincides with its claim to an absolute foundation, or to a conceptual foundation of the Absolute:

«Die sogenannten Wissenschaften sind bloße Techniken, insofern sie ihre Voraussetzungen nicht aufklären können. Wissenschaft muss absolut fundiert sein. Absolute Fundierung ist Fundierung im Absoluten. Nur Philosophie kann die Normen der absoluten Reflexion erfüllen. Sie ermöglicht damit Wissenschaft und ist selbst absolute Wissenschaft» (35).

[«The so-called sciences are mere techniques in that they cannot elucidate their pre-conditions. Science must be absolutely founded. Absolute foundation is foundation in the absolute. Only philosophy can fulfill the norms of absolute reflection. It enables science and is itself the absolute science»].

To do this, the text elaborates two strategies: firstly, underlining an analogical relationship between the Platonic and the Husserlian argumentative processes, it challenges the pre-eminence of the Cartesian approach, placing Husserl, through a Rückblick to Plato, already beyond modernity; secondly, in order to understand the Platonic analogies in Husserl, it assumes the existence of an already «phenomenological» Plato (30). In continuity with the Platonic and Husserlian arguments, Arnold claims the idea that philosophy does not exhaust itself in a mere gnoseological or epistemological approach, but it invests the very idea of «life.» According to this view, philosophy becomes the «absolute Rechtfertigung des Lebens» (Arnold: 129) [«the absolute justification of life»], overcoming the abstract antagonism of doxa and episteme:

«Die Radikalität der Phänomenologie selbst, kombiniert mit dem Selbstverständnis ihrer Stellung in der teleologischen Entwicklung des Menschen in Richtung Rationalität, erzwingt den Antagonismus zwischen Tradition (doxa) und Philosophie (episteme)» (129).

[«The radical nature of phenomenology itself, combined with the self-understanding of its position in the teleological evolution of man toward rationality, forces the antagonism between tradition (doxa) and philosophy (episteme)»].

Nevertheless, the most striking continuity between the Platonic and the Husserlian philosophical approach is the fact that «ideas» occupy the central theoretical position, i.e. the idea that the proper philosophical activity coincides with an act of Wesenschau. The «idea of ​​idea» represents the conceptual strategy through which the essence of an «intentional psyché» is realized, contesting every naturalization of the mind, even in ancient times (Anaxagoras) and particularly in modern ones (Psychologism) (see, Arnold: 136). Ideas are the intelligible structures of things, «d. h. das, was ihre erkennbare, allgemeine Bestimmtheit ausmacht, ihr ‘Prinzip der Bestimmtheit’ oder das ‘Organisationsprinzip einer Gegenstandseinheit’, d.h. auch das ‘Kriterium’ (Uhlmann), dem gemäß ein Gegenstand ein solcher und nicht ein anderer Gegenstand ist» (Arnold: 207) [“i.e. what constitutes their recognizable, general determinateness, their ‘principle of determinateness’ or the ‘organizing principle of an object-unity’, i.e. also the «criterium» (Uhlmann), according to which an object is such and not another»]. The fundamental importance of ideas and essences, both in Plato and Husserl, suggests the fact that philosophy still aims to be, according to the Husserlian perspective, a «science of essences»:

«Wesen sind für Husserl die intelligiblen Bestimmtheitsstrukturen der Gegenstände und das, was ihnen ihre Möglichkeiten apriori vorgibt; ein Gegenstand, der ein Eidos instantiiert, hat in diesem Eidos seine Bestimmung» (214).

[«For Husserl, essences are the intelligible structures of the definiteness of objects, and what gives them their possibilities a priori; an object that instantiates an eidos has in this eidos its determination»].

The fundamental purpose inscribed in every platonic/realistic approach is to reflect on how and why our gnoseological capacities provide us with the ability to get in contact with ideas/essences, which, although transmaterial, possess the concreteness of a specific Gegenständigkeit. As Arnold points out, «die Ideen sind keine sichtbaren Dinge und keine Gedanken, aber sie sind nichtsdestotrotz in einem bestimmten Sinn eigenständige Gegenstände» (Arnold: 220) [«Ideas are not visible things and neither thoughts, but they are nonetheless – in a certain sense – independent objects»]. Tracing the idea of ​​an essential analogy between Plato and Husserl, Arnold’s work provides a new conceptual legitimacy to the fundamental terms of our philosophical tradition. Through Plato and Husserl, a transhistorical conceptual vocabulary still conserves those certain powerful words, which are the very glory of philosophy: «idea,» «science,» «justification,» «essence,» «Absolute.»

 

Günther Anders: Phénoménologie de l’écoute, Éditions Philharmonie de Paris, 2020

Phénoménologie de l'écoute Book Cover Phénoménologie de l'écoute
La rue musicale
Günther Anders. Martin Kaltenecker (Traducteur), Diane Meur (Traducteur).
Éditions Philharmonie de Paris
2020
Paperback 16,90 €
448

Mark Leffert: The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd, Routledge, 2020

The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd: Existentialism and Phenomenology in Contemporary Psychoanalysis Book Cover The Psychoanalysis of the Absurd: Existentialism and Phenomenology in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Mark Leffert
Routledge
2020
Paperback £23.99
248

Edmund Husserl: Logic and General Theory of Science

Logic and General Theory of Science: Lectures 1917/18 with Supplementary Texts from the First Version of 1910/11 Book Cover Logic and General Theory of Science: Lectures 1917/18 with Supplementary Texts from the First Version of 1910/11
Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works, Volume 15
Edmund Husserl. Translated by C.O. Hill
Springer
2019
Hardback 88,39 €
L, 437

Reviewed by: Matthew Clemons (Stony Brook University)

In a passage (§56) from his 1929 Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl expresses frustration at a particular group of interpreters of his Logical Investigations. Fearing the specter of the historical-empiricist move that denies the objectivity of the ideal, these interpreters reject the phenomenological investigations in Volume II of the LI. This rejection  is based on the critiques of psychologism that Husserl provides in Volume I. Presumably, what the interpreters found to celebrate in the LI was its insistence that logical formations—e.g. judgments, proofs, theories—are not mental events, which secured the possibility of a purely formal logic. Their disappointment with the foray into the constitutive acts correlative to the logical formations in Volume II likely persisted in light of Husserl’s subsequent publications. Around the time of the publication of Ideas I (1913), Husserl admits to having cooled to formal logical investigation, preferring instead the examination of transcendental subjectivity.[1]

For this reason, Claire Ortiz Hill’s 2019 translation of Volume 30 of the Husserliana Series entitled Logik und Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie may come as a surprise to an English-speaking readership. The volume, with the English title Logic and General Theory of Science, consists of the final version of a series of lectures given by Husserl on the topic of formal logic, its bounds, fundamental formations, and its relation to the Idea of science in general. The lectures date from the Winter Semester of 1910/11 through Winter 1917/18, the same decade that saw the publication of his Ideas I and Ideas II. Given those dates, it would seem that, whatever his interest in the constitutive acts of logical formations, his interest in those objective formations themselves did continue.

The volume is divided into three sections with a series of appendices added to the main text. In Section I, Husserl is concerned with setting the bounds for formal logic. This is a preparatory step for the  formal logical investigations in Section II that seek to develop systematically a theory of the forms of meaning. Section III deals with the Idea of Science, which for Husserl includes formal logic but, as he outlines, encompasses more than just formal logic. The appendices are Husserl’s notes and additions to the lectures. In what follows, I give a brief overview of each of the three sections.

Setting the Bounds of Formal Logic (Section I)

The first section is entitled “Fundamental Considerations for the Demarcation and Characterization of Formal Logic.” Husserl begins the section with a series of reflections on the understanding, which, as the activity that sets norms for both the sciences and extra-theoretical life, serves as a leading clue for the scope of logic. Rather than reflecting on the acts of understanding, those “mental activities and achievements” (§1) at work in the norm-setting, we can inquire into the norms themselves, or the forms that the various acts of understanding imprint on their content. The work of logic, Husserl suggests, is to fix these forms conceptually and systematically.

However, before that work can get underway, it is necessary to distinguish understanding as norm-setting from understanding as a mental event. Interpreting the norm-setting activity of understanding as a mental event would result in subsuming logic under psychology, the science that deals with the “inner sphere.” Note that, just as in the earlier Logical Investigations and the later Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl is again careful at the outset to disentangle logical investigation from psychological investigation. The major difference between psychology and logic is that, while the latter is normative, the former is not. In other words, logic strives after normative laws by which to measure if purported knowledge is actually knowledge. The origin of the norms of logic lies in, in Husserl’s own words, “the ideal essence of acts of understanding and their contents” (§4), whereas the understanding figures in psychology only as a mental event to be explained according to natural, i.e., causal laws. One of the major consequences of this distinction is that the logical norms are unconditionally binding and discoverable regardless of any reference to factual, or empirical, existence.

Anticipating the controversy of his position (he predicts that he will be pejoratively dubbed a “Scholastic” or “mystic” (§4)), Husserl retorts that the psychologizing interpretation of logic falls prey to the prevalent naturalistic prejudice in the sciences. By naturalism, Husserl understands the rejection of any sort of any non-natural, i.e., non-empirical, non-spatiotemporal, objectivity. Thus, any ideal objectivity, be it logical norms, cardinal numbers, or self-evident statements is reinterpreted psychologically. In contrast, Husserl insists on the admission that Ideas are genuine objects that merely give themselves differently (“as eternal, selfsame, as non-temporal and non-spatial, as unmoved, as unchangeable” (§8)) than spatiotemporal objects.

This difference in position on the status of Ideas proves consequential for formal-logical investigation. On the one hand, Husserl identifies the failure to recognize Ideas as the basis of a series of errors propagated by traditional logic, a point substantiated more in Section II of the volume. On the other, acknowledging the genuineness of Ideas at the outset opens up an avenue of inquiry in formal logic, namely investigating according to ideal meaning forms rather than empirical contents. To that end, Husserl notes that in these lectures he is foregoing a noetic orientation, i.e., one that takes up the cognitive and related acts constitutive of logical objectivities, for a noematic one. To clarify what he means by a noematic orientation, he points us to a series of distinctions, beginning with that between knowing and known. The former is a cognitive act while the latter leads us towards the ideal. A parallel distinction between judging and judgment (§7) and another between naive judgment as directed at the state-of-affairs and judgment as proposition and Idea (§9-10) help to clarify. Judgments as ideal objects are importantly not determinate, therfore not empirical, and yet they have ideal properties (e.g., all judgments with the form of a contradiction are false). When the idea is made into an object of reflection, it becomes the basis of norms sought in logical investigation.

As far as the demarcation of formal logic goes, the introduction of the Idea of judgment places us in the terrain of apophantics, or the logic of affirmative statements. This harkens back to Aristotle’s original demarcation of pure logic, which he called analytics. Husserl sometimes adopts this term. It is worth noting that he employs several related terms synonymously throughout the lecture, namely analytics, along with pure logic, formal logic, and the mathesis universalis (more accurately, he uses these terms to emphasize different aspects of the same science). In contrast to Aristotle, Husserl’s own demarcation of analytics is not limited to affirmative statements. It includes an underlying level of investigation into more basic forms of meaning. This level both serves as a foundation for a second level of logic and also provides some crucial conceptual distinctions that allows for its expansion. It could be said that one of the ubiquitous features of Husserl’s thinking on formal logic is its effort at expansive unity. The second level of logic, for instance, is not only concerned with the logic affirmative statement (“A is b”), but also with its modifications (e.g. “It is possible that A is b”). Further, in a series of complexifications that occur at the second-level, Husserl further expands the notion of logic to include cardinal and ordinal numbers, sets, and eventually a third level. This third level, the highest of analytics, is the formal theory of manifolds, or the theory of theories (§47).

For Husserl, then, formal logic is a three-tiered science, connecting disciplines and Ideas that were once thought to belong to disparate sciences. Importantly, Husserl’s insistence on the genuineness of Ideas makes this possible. As ideal, the basic meaning forms that constitute the first-level of logical investigation and are the basis of the other two exhibit an ideal structure and conformity to law. These basic meaning structures can then combine in indefinitely many ways in accordance with their conformity to laws, allowing an ideal building up and out of formal logic that itself occurs with lawful regularity. Husserl compares this structure to crystals in that each form exhibits its own structure that is also taken up in the crystal system (§27 B).

The Systematic Investigation into Forms of Meanings (Section II)

If Section I concerns the demarcation of formal logic, Section II jumps into the discipline itself. Husserl’s strategy is to start with the most basic forms of meaning and, insofar as it is possible in a lecture-series, to obtain a systematic overview of the possible kinds. From there, he gradually builds his way up to propositionally simple judgments and beyond to more complex judgments, to inferences, and to theories. My own synopsis of the section is divided into two parts. First, following Husserl, I give a very general outline of the development from the most basic meaning components up to the highest tier of formal logic. Second, I indicate a handful of the concrete ways in which, as I stated above, Husserl imagines that traditional logic’s rejection of Ideas leads it astray.

The point of departure for the investigation of meaning forms is the ideal distinction between independent and dependent meaning (§20). Independent meanings are those which are capable of standing alone, i.e., complete propositions. Dependent meanings, on the other hand, are those that, although they may express something, intrinsically belong to an independent unit as a component. These dependent meanings cannot be put together in any half hazard way, but fall under fixed types governed by laws (e.g., in the proposition S is p, grammatically speaking, p cannot have any kind of meaning (§22)). Any basic component also admits of a conceptual distinction between syntactical form, which refers to its role within the proposition (e.g., the subject-form, object-form, predicate-form), and syntagma, or the “stuff” (§24), the content of the component. The phrase “ethical human beings,” for instance, can function as the subject-form in one case, the antecedent in a hypothetical in another, but in any case retains the same content, namely “ethical human beings.” A further, parallel distinction in the syntagmas between the nucleus-form (e.g. nominal-forms, or adjectival-forms) and the nucleus-stuff gives us the most basic components in our investigation of the meaning of forms. This last distinction is especially important because the nucleus need not contain any definite content and could instead be “an empty something.” For one thing, it allows for the entrance of generality, or universality and particularity. For another, formal logic, says Husserl, is characterized by this emptiness (§26 B), as this emptiness signifies its being ideal rather than empirical.

Equipped with the most basic meaning components, namely the syntagma, Husserl moves on to the basic forms of simple judgments. He arrives at that basic form by considering in what way the fewest syntagmata might unite to form a judgment. Similarly to Aristotle, he decides that the most basic form involves one nominal and one adjectival syntagma (S is p) (§28). This simple judgment-form is then the basis for another series of variations and complexifications. Of note, here, is his discussion of the effect of empty syntagma (§32), of plural judgments (S is p and/or n) as the origin of the Ideas cardinal numbers, arithmetic, and sets (§34–37), and existential and impersonal judgments (§40). After the simple judgment-forms, Husserl turns to the propositionally complex judgment-forms (conjunction and disjunction) (§41–42), following which is his introduction of modifications (e.g., possibility and probability). This latter topic is of particular note in that it is accompanied by an extended treatment of the Ideas of law, apodicticity, and analyticity (§44–45). Husserl insists not only that analytic (apodictic) laws have been crucial in the investigations up to this point in apophantics, but that a proper conception of analyticity allows for the connection between formal logic, formal ontology, and mathematics to emerge (§46). Finally, Husserl turns to inference, whose ideal laws allow for the introduction of the third-level of formal logic, i.e., the theory of manifolds, or the theory of theories (§47, §54), a discussion which spills over into Section III (§46–59).

That suffices for a general outline of Husserl’s thinking in Section II. Because he is insistent on the unity of what might seem, from the perspective of the history of logic, like disparate disciplines, it might already be visible in broad strokes how Husserl’s own account differs. Additionally, there are several, concrete, and persistent logical problems dealt with in the course of Section II. In general, if Husserl disagrees with logicians, it is on the grounds of their mistakingly rejecting Ideas, and so of not sufficiently recognizing the ideal as the guide in formal logical investigations. For instance, Husserl accuses logicians of conflating equivalence and identity (§29, §39, §48). Two judgments might be equivalent in their relation to a state-of-affairs, but not identical with regard to their ideal meaning form. Among the errors that Husserl identifies in this regard are:

  1. Traditionally, affirmative and negative judgments (S is p; S is not p) are thought to be coeval. But if analyzed according to their meaning-form, it seems that the negative is a modification of the affirmative, which must then be prior.
  2. Instead of recognizing the difference in meaning-form between determinative judgments and functional judgments (universal and particular judgments), traditional logic takes all judgments to be either universal, particular, or individual.

These are far from the only topics of interest that Husserl treats in Section II, but it suffices to give the examples mentioned above as an indication.

Reflections on the Idea of Science (Section III)

In Section III, the final section of the lecture, Husserl concludes the thorough, systematic investigation of the forms of meaning and begins to consider the relationship of the science of analytics to other theoretical sciences. By theoretical science, he means those that are not normative and practical and whose primary interest is explanatory. Theoretical sciences, insofar as they are applicable to any particular science without that particular science’s forfeiting its unique domain, comprise the general Idea of science. Analytics has priority because, insofar as it deals with those activities present in every science, it is operative in every science. But there are other sciences that can be included in the Idea of science as well, and even those that deal with a particular region of being can be included insofar as they deal with it in an a priori manner. Among these sciences are pure natural science, which deals with objectivity and spatiotemporal being in general (§61), the science of consciousness, both individually and communally (§63-64), and formal axiology (§61). The final chapter in the Section offers some reflections on noetics, which, as mentioned above, Husserl has set aside in these lectures in favor of a noematic analysis. Central in this chapter is the question of justification of knowledge and the relevant concepts of Evidenz and givenness.

Husserl, of course, says much more than I am able to relay here, but the above should suffice as direction for further inquiry. Those who do delve into the volume further will find it  readable, and well-edited and translated. As Ortiz Hill mentions in her introduction, that these are lectures make them clearer and more transparent than some of the writings published during Husserl’s lifetime. For any given point, Husserl offers a variety of examples, and approaches it from several directions. Further, Ortiz Hill provides a lucid translation of an already well-edited volume. There are a handful of pesky German terms that are difficult to translate, which she either alerts readers to or leaves untranslated. She decides on “presentation” for Vorstellung, but points to its ambiguity in Husserl’s writing (xliv-xlv)—Husserl himself also notes the difficult ambiguity of the term. I should also note that, in the case of terms like “nucleus-stuff,” the “stuff” is presumably translating Stoff, which more generally means material in German (der Stoff des Mantels—the material of the coat). Given that terms like “nucleus-stuff” are often contrasted with something formal, it might seem more appropriate to translate Stoff as material. However, Husserl does use the latinized Materie sometimes making it seem worthwhile to translate Stoff differently. Only in the case of the terms Geist and Gemüt do I hesitate with the translation. The former, she translates as “mind” (l), which might seem strange in the context of the discussion of community and culture in Section III. For Gemüt and its variations, Ortiz Hill employs adjectival expression with the word “inner.” Although I think this doesn’t quite capture the emotive connotation that translations like “heart” do, this term plays almost no role in the volume. The few passages in which it  could cause some confusion, such as its being contrasted with will and understanding at the beginning of Section I (§1), do not interfere with the trajectory of Husserl’s thought. Beyond these terms, there are a handful that Ortiz Hill leaves untranslated, e.g. Unsinn, Widersinn, and Evidenz. In each case, I appreciate the choice to leave the terms in their original German. In the case of the first two, no English equivalents readily suggest themselves that capture their contrast. In the case of Evidenz, the English cognate “evidence” suggests something like external proof, which is different than the “consciousness of fulfillment” that Husserl has in mind.

In closing, I offer a few words on the significance of the volume. For those primarily interested in Husserl or more broadly in phenomenology, the edition offers an interesting link between different periods of Husserl’s thought. Many of the topics that he addresses in Section II, for instance, harken backward to his Logical Investigations (which he himself notes on occasion) and also point forward to the concerns of Formal and Transcendental Logic (such as the preoccupation with the unity of disciplines thought to be disparate under the banner of formal logic). This is especially significant for those who, as I suggest above, accuse Husserl of abandoning formal analyses in favor of transcendental ones. For those primarily interested in formal logic, or in topics predominately discussed in analytic philosophy, the volume represents a significant overlap of concerns. In both the translator’s introduction and a review of the German edition, Ortiz Hill does a remarkable job at indicating the overlap and ultimate differences between Husserl and the school of thought that emerges from Frege and runs through Russell, Carnap, Hilbert, and Gödel.[2] At any rate, readers of all kinds may be surprised to find Husserl undertaking a systematic survey of formal logic in the decade of the 1910’s, and that makes the volume a welcome contribution to the scholarship.

[1] See Ursula Panzer’s “Einleitung” in the original German volume, quoted in Ortiz Hill’s “Introduction.”

[2] Ortiz Hill, Claire. “Review of E. Husserl, Logik Und Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie. Vorlesungen 1917/18, Mit Ergänzenden Texten Aus Der Ersten Fassung 1910/11.” History and Philosophy of Logic, 1998.

Drew M. Dalton: The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute, Bloomsbury, 2020

The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute Book Cover The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute
Drew M. Dalton
Bloomsbury Academic
2020
Paperback £26.09
224

Didier Franck: La constitution du temps, Vrin, 2020

La constitution du temps Book Cover La constitution du temps
Bibliothèque d’Histoire de la Philosophie
Didier Franck
Vrin
2020
Paperback
124

Martin Koci, Jason Alvis (Eds.): Transforming the Theological Turn: Phenomenology with Emmanuel Falque, Rowman & Littlefield, 2020

Transforming the Theological Turn: Phenomenology with Emmanuel Falque Book Cover Transforming the Theological Turn: Phenomenology with Emmanuel Falque
Martin Koci, Jason Alvis (Eds.)
Rowman & Littlefield
2020
Hardback £85.00
214

Christina M. Gschwandtner: Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy

Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy Book Cover Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy
Christina M. Gschwandtner
Fordham University Press
2019
Hardback $75.00
352

Reviewed by: Andrew Oberg (Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kochi, Japan)

The Crucifix and the Candle: Gschwandtner on (Lived) Orthodox Liturgy

I. Stepping into the Narthex

For those of us unfamiliar with Orthodox Christian modes of worship, or indeed those unfamiliar with Christian worship in general, Christina M. Gschwandtner’s text provides an introductory route in while pointing to phenomenological possibilities for a study thereof, but also an account that at times presumes perhaps too much reader background knowledge of ritual form, and hence will have one reaching for a good dictionary (…if online does one still “reach”?). To give the reader of this review some idea of my own inadequacies, I admit having to look up, amongst many others, the term “narthex” – but then used it in the section title here, so that at least is something.

Gschwandtner gives us many somethings in her book, broadly divided into seven distinct topical chapters and framed with unnumbered but important introduction and conclusion chapters. The topics, in order of appearance, are: Temporality, Spatiality, Corporeality, Sensoriality, Affectivity, Community, and Intentionality. Each chapter opens with an overview of the pertinent theological issues as discussed in the Orthodox literature, moves to a review of relevant philosophical concerns from phenomenological thinkers, and then lastly to Gschwandtner’s application of the latter to the former, now finding relevance and now not, seeking to enlighten via her own analyses and personal experiential and/or evidential references. Although there is no sole overarching argument that could be considered singularly sustained (other than, perhaps, that liturgy can be studied phenomenologically), the focus on Orthodox liturgy as lived by its adherents does provide a naturally unifying (although rather broad) thematic thread, and Gschwandtner mentions that in this her work fills a gap heretofore left open by the preponderance of other such studies’ almost exclusive concerns with Roman Catholic perspectives. In the below I should therefore like to more or less follow the roadmap Gschwandtner lays in her chapter divisions, summarizing and commenting along the way, before finishing with some general remarks on the book as such. Let us begin.

II. Standing in the Nave

1. Introduction

In her Introduction Gschwandtner seeks firstly to equip her enterprise with a properly phenomenological methodology by making the case that despite the tradition of dividing religious experiences (and those of God in general, inside or outside religious settings) as transcendent or absolute and therefore apart from the working portfolio of phenomenology – a tradition started by Husserl himself, reinforced by Heidegger, and re-reinforced by more contemporary (French) writers like Marion, Lacoste, and Falque – the tools themselves match perfectly well to the task. Criticizing what she takes to be a false dichotomy (religious experience from the “science of phenomenology”), she states that:

it is hard to see how this neat division can be fully maintained. On the one hand, is it possible to speak about something like an experience of the “Absolute” without the religious structures and practices that give some content to what that might mean? Without some reference to how the Absolute actually has been or currently is encountered, how is this any more than a purely abstract thought experiment rather than the examination of “the thing itself as it shows itself”? (10)

There of course arises here a question of whether it is even possible to write of the “Absolute” (and note that Gschwandtner herself uses those quotation marks/inverted double commas) as itself (or rather, “Itself”?) experienced instead of e.g. the idea of the “Absolute” as experienced, and this query indeed is very much in line with Heidegger’s general objection regarding religious experience as ontic but not ontological – hence fair game for one type of analysis but not another. This is important and is a point we will return to, as does Gschwandtner in her book as her considerations go on, but I raise it here at the outset more to highlight a certain underlying friction than to confront it in depth. That can be – conveniently perfectly Husserlean – “bracketed” for later.

Suffice it to conclude that Gschwandtner’s emphasis is on the essential impossibility of a genuine objectivity as academics’ dissections will inevitably be colored by their own personal religious backgrounds (to whatever degree); her working methodological definition is therefore given as: “As long as it maintains the attitude of the reduction – allowing phenomena to unfold rather than imposing scientific parameters upon them – and investigates the structures and meaning of these practices rather than simply describing particular empirical instantiations, it remains phenomenological.” (12) I am inclined to agree, and whatever his ontic/ontological stance in the matter, I think that Heidegger’s more robust “world” expansion of Husserl’s “lifeworld” concept makes the necessary room available for a reading of this type to be made and position taken. We can arguably consider liturgical structures in similar ways to those we do for other structures of social being, and hence perhaps more accurately put the case as one in which we analyze empirical experiential involvement with notion-related/notion-building praxes aligned with (transcendental) abstractions instead of claiming an explanatory capability for the “Absolute” as such. It is the doing, and the effects thereof, inherent in religion; I believe mentally framing it thusly allows us to agree with both the Husserl/Heidegger cautionary side and the Gschwandtner embracing side.

2. Temporality

On the element of time (Temporality), Gschwandtner writes that liturgical practice involves both memory and anticipation as it is inherently cyclical and repetitive, and that it moreover fuses future and past in the present. The liturgical “world” (or liturgical life or living) is not a linear one, and nor, argues Gschwandtner, is linearity the only way to experience time. (Instances of déjà vu come to mind for me here, where the past seems to spiral into a re-introduced now in a way both remembered and yet felt as entirely new.) Gschwandtner also makes what I consider to be the very apposite point that the rites and rituals involved in liturgy are not merely repeated from one’s personal past but are portions of a legacy stretching for centuries (at least in the Orthodox tradition), and thus the acts themselves are transcendent, we “are thrown into it [i.e. liturgy], and we always come to it in media res.” (55) We might combine these thoughts such that liturgical time is/has become participatory and beyond participation, identitarian and ever-identity (re)forming, and the deeper the heritage received the more deeply so.

One issue of contention I did have in this section was on Gschwandtner’s frequent expression of liturgical references as being to (specific) historical events, which to me as a reader indicated that assumptions were being made about quite controversial historicities, and furthermore seemed to foreclose without discussion that such might be (“only”) narrative truths instead of historical/empirical truths. This is unfortunate, I think, as when it comes to a topic such as described religious experience a narrative truth (by which I mean a non-literal accounting held to be “true” in the soft sense of the ideational truth it imparts – e.g. whatever the veracity of what the New Testament gospels relay about what came out of Jesus’ mouth the tales, if we accept them, could help us live in a manner that may prove beneficial or partially beneficial) would be no less valuable than an historic/empirical truth, and indeed such would likely be more valuable as they would not face the risk of crumbling should the empirical edifice(s) be removed by further discovery.

3. Spatiality

Spatiality is dealt with by Gschwandtner along the pleasingly novel lines, suggested by the Orthodox theologians whose writings she considers, of cosmoses and microcosmoses. The architectural church itself mirrors the “realms of heaven and earth” and the Church’s teachings state that what happens within its walls influence the wider physical world, it is “weighty” space filled with memory and pre-habited by previous worshipers and the presence of the multiple icons that are greeted and venerated upon entry. All of this, Gschwandtner writes, leads to liturgical spaces (those set aside and regulated areas in which defined practices are appropriately performed – a necessarily public aspect) that is intuitively meaningful to believers, but “this ‘meaning’ becomes possible because it is ‘intentional’ space, because it has been prepared by the ‘intentionality’ directed towards it and organized in concrete ways that allow for an intuitive experience to occur.’ (72-73)

One does wonder if by this assertion Gschwandtner does not think it possible for a non-Orthodox Christian or non-Christian altogether to be able to intuit meaning from participating in (to whatever extent is allowed for an “outsider”) – or perhaps only by observing – the liturgy since at least some shared intuitive reactions appear possible given what is common across religious and/or sociolinguistic lines, yet an argument is not forthcoming and the question is probably anyway not pertinent enough to warrant one. For those in the Orthodox “world” or “lifeworld” the sacral space adds layers of experiential content that become meaning-making while being always reinforcing of the doctrine the faithful have accepted as participants, with subsequent experience rising or falling by the degree, one would think, of that acceptance. The more fervent one believes in the veracity of what one is engaged in while within that specialized area the more potently it is likely to be felt.

4. Corporeality

In her highlighting of the performance aspects to liturgy Gschwandtner makes a case that these result in a form of training, aimed at an alteration in adherents’ lifestyles, which is centered in the present act of doing and thus is neither a threshold nor a crossing (e.g. into another way of being). The transformation (or “growth”) that is espoused here is evidently an evolutionary one, attained over a long(ish) period of time through repetitive physical practices that “through” the body also affect the “mind, emotions, and affects… [teaching or training one] to be ‘bent into’ a shape that allows it [i.e. the body; the rendering of such as “it” is revelatory and we will need to comment on this] to be receptive to the call addressed to it in liturgy.” (92) Gschwandtner moreover argues that the penitent stances taken in Orthodox liturgical acts like bowing to one another, hugging one another, confessing before one another, et cetera, amount to a manner of being that is more authentic than the one Heidegger has famously promoted because it is more revealing of the self than a defensive or protective mode would be, and that this “more authentic” way “may not ultimately be about a resolute grasp of one’s own being (as Eigentlichkeit in Entschlossenheit), but instead an exposure and offering of one’s self to the other – whether divine or human.” (97)

I have some real problems with the thoughts in this section, but the most minor first. I am not sure why a less personally defensive attitude/behavior vis-à-vis the social realm would by itself be more authentic in a Heideggerean sense, and without further defining what she means by “authenticity” I am afraid we must conclude Gschwandtner is using the term in this same Heideggerean manner (particularly given her references to him). If so, then why her version should be perceived as more (or greater) than the “self-examined, self-sufficient subject, in charge of its own life and thought” (as she relates Heidegger’s “authentic self”, 97) at least requires some form of argumentation beyond the assertion that exposure of oneself drops the “covering up” typical of everyday being, that mode (the “everyday”) that is inauthentic. There may be good reasons for this, but I should like to know them from Gschwandtner’s point of view before considering the point further.

Another, and deeper (at least for me), issue I have with this chapter is that I sense an unacknowledged dualism lying behind Gschwandtner’s account. As indicated above, her phrasing of “it” (the body) as conduit through which mind, emotions, et cetera, become reformed or reshaped implies the body being understood in a “vehicular” sense as regards the mind, and even perhaps segregating “emotions and affects” (and I would like the latter defined as well if they are to be cut out from the former) further yet. This is certainly not the place to enter fully into the discussion, but the centrality of the mind/body question in philosophy historically and still (perhaps more so) today calls, I think, for a more delicate treatment than is given here. If we reject a Cartesian model we find ourselves approaching instead one where mind is emergent in some way from the workings of the brain, and the brain is clearly (merely) one part of the body, thus mind is not something to be trained “through” the body, it simply is body and the training of one is the selfsame and simultaneous training of the other (although there is no “other”, really!). Thus it is only a single training of a unitary node, and if we insist on delineating mind out of body (or affixing labels like “mind-body unit” rather than “person”) we only perpetuate the Cartesianism we thought we had left behind. All of this naturally requires argumentation as well, and again sadly this is not the place for that, and it may even be that Gschwandtner accepts Descartes’ account, but she does not state so and does state that the corporeal is centrally important. Hence as a reader I find myself left wanting.

This dimension of mind/body, or mind-body, or mind and body, raises my final objection, one that falls along experiential lines. Gschwandtner writes that “We do not leave the world behind in prayer – at least not in any way that would be phenomenologically discernible” and “to assume that encounter with the Absolute [i.e. in liturgy] constitutes a radical break with the world is a theological interpretation, but no longer a phenomenological description of actual liturgical experience or of the overall structures it displays.” (96 and 97, respectively) These quotes occur in the context of arguing against Lacoste’s position in his Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man (trans. by Mark Raftery–Skeban. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004.), and Gschwandtner’s objections are valid and interesting as far as that goes, but purely with regards to the actual phenomenological situation engaged in prayer or the thoughtful (willed) practice of liturgical ritual I take them as amiss since in deep prayer it does feel like we leave the world, break radically with it, and this I think is what generates the ontic side that is phenomenologically discernible and describable as such. Indeed perhaps the structure of liturgy when viewed from an external Husserlean observer (or the like) framing does not, but that is distinct from the experience one undergoes when directly executing that structure and/or pouring oneself into prayer (as opposed to only mouthing the words emptily, for example). Once more aspects of mind are relevant, and will too, which actually is Gschwandtner’s final main chapter (Intentionality), and so let us now behave like the priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan and leave the body by the wayside, carrying on down our road.

5. Sensoriality

This chapter deals with the spectacle, as it were, of Orthodox liturgy, and of especial interest was its treatment of icons and the Eucharistic meal. Gschwandtner describes how in Orthodox churches the sheer multiplicity of icons makes one feel as if one were being viewed by them “from everywhere”, and how due to the inverse perspective employed by the images this aspect of “watched” is further enforced, as opposed to a more Western approach of outside or objective contemplation (we might shorthand this as “being before” versus “standing before”: in the former we are present perhaps with entirely other considerations, in the latter we are present purposely to enact an observation). The notion of oneself as passively surveilled by surrounding holy icons is an intriguing – possibly disturbing – one, and Gschwandtner adds that liturgy can even be overwhelming with its sights, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes. Yet, she also warns, “the bedazzlement comes from the sensory experience itself, not obviously from a ‘phenomenon of revelation.’ Certainly the experience can be interpreted in that way, but that is an activity of interpretation, not the immediate phenomenological experience.” (118) Furthermore, on this aspect of interpretation and specifically in regards to one’s reception of the Eucharist, that:

What ought to be clear up front is that phenomenology makes no metaphysical or ontological claims about what the eucharistic [sic.] body “is”; language of substance and accidents or of a correspondence between the material of the bread to the sacrificed body of Christ cannot be sustained phenomenologically and are not really experienced, even when they are “believed”. (121)

I think Gschwandtner is certainly correct on the first point here but I am not so sure on the second. Interpretation is another issue altogether from the phenomenological peruse, whether about a potential revelation or the ontology of the bread and wine used in a Eucharistic rite, but on my analysis a fervent belief in X would be sufficient to generate an experience of Y: the qualia would all be there, it would “feel like” one were eating the “sacrificed body of Christ” in a way that would be altogether separate from the physical taste sensation involved yet would nevertheless still be there experientially. It might be objected that such would only be psychological, but is not the psychological just as much a part of human phenomenology as taste or touch? Again, we must come to terms with mind/body, mind-body, mind and body, what have you. An “as”, I think, can without question feel enough like an “is” that whatever the abstract definitions may indicate, for the subject in her being an equality is established.

6. Affectivity

On this central area of feeling we continue. In this section Gschwandtner distinguishes between the emotions an individual has (or may have) during the time spent in liturgical ritual and the constructing mood(s) of the ceremony itself, that “one can say more fundamentally that the experience of liturgy is never ‘neutral,’ but always characterized by an essential ‘atmosphere’ that is sensed on multiple levels”, and moreover such become foundational parts of what is the “fundamental phenomenological liturgical attitude of openness to each other.” (138 and 140, respectively) It is clear that Gschwandtner hereby establishes two stages upon which liturgy operates (or within which a worshipper engages): the personal and the communal (which indeed is her next chapter: Community), and it is interesting to think as well that the latter might be emergent from the former in at least some ways even while it influences and generates particular affects in its participants, differing, one would presume, in degrees that are highly dependent on the many other embedded factors involved in each believer’s wider life. On the whole Gschwandtner emphasizes the shared experience inherent in liturgical feeling (if we may compound a phrase like “liturgical feeling” – would these not simply be “standard” feelings that happen to be experienced in or generated by the activities of liturgy?), and exalts this process somewhat by declaring that it “acknowledges our finitude and frailty and gives them room for expression in the various demonstrations of guilt, sorrow, and even despair”, and then furthermore adds that it also “allows for a redirecting and even transforming of disabling and destructive emotions and directs them toward a deeper underlying affect of contrition, desire for forgiveness, and determination to change. It cultivates new dispositions…” (141).

The Aristotelean-type virtue ethics implications at the end of that last quote match her earlier remarks on the self-building potential of liturgical practice, but again such are contended to occur “across and via the body and expressed through and by it” (141), appearing at first to maintain either by an unacknowledged default or with purpose the dualism we previously saw presented. However, Gschwandtner does state thereafter that “These elements [i.e. emotions, affects, dispositions] are always already intimately connected, separated only in thought or description, not in experience.” (141) While I would like a clearer parsing of her usage of emotions, affects, dispositions, moods, feelings, et cetera, and how she might consider them differentiated, the more holistic approach to mind/body as evidenced in this chapter is quite welcome. Emotions, as one portion of our ever-ongoing biological functioning, are after all an excellent example of the difficulties involved in (and undesirability of) trying to force a dividing line between the mental and (other dimensions of) the physical.

7. Community

As alluded to immediately above, Gschwandtner places much emphasis on what is experienced in common within liturgical settings, and naturally rightly so. In this her portion on the communal properly considered, she evocatively reminds the reader that the very term “liturgy” means “work of the people”, that it is plural and is something designed expressly to make of its parts a unified whole. What is perhaps of especial interest is the claim – justifiably, I think – that this “plural” is both a before and an after, constituted by one’s (either literally familial or “familial” in a looser co-religionist way) ancestors and predecessors in the faith, and too an inheritance that one will oneself someday bequeath, assuming that one brings one’s children into the same grouping or otherwise engages with others’ children who have been so brought in. The cycles of doing the same things with the same people at the same time of year, year after year, cannot but act as an adhesive, garnering strength by and for the social.

The social may, however, cut both ways. As her topic is within Christianity Gschwandtner calls in the notion of sin to argue that liturgy does not accuse but rather opens space for the recognition of fault and its necessarily – or so she asserts – corresponding loneliness into a re-entry of community, forgiveness, and transformation (see especially 165). I admit that I find this a bit too generous with regards to that heavy idea of “sin” (and guilt) that we in Western cultural traditions are so (overly) familiar with. By its very remonstrations and recognitions of what is wrongdoing and requires (demands?) the requesting of forgiveness from the divine and/or one’s fellows liturgy very much acts in an accusatory role, supporting and based on the reinforcement of dogma which functionally establish the defining features of “sin” and without which one would have a very different (or none at all) conception of personal fault. Is polyandry a sin while polygyny is not? How would the community react if one sat (and stood and knelt, et cetera) with one’s multiple husbands in an Orthodox liturgical service? Of course multiple wives would not be accepted in this instance either, but I do not raise this counterfactual imagining to compare matriarchal societies with one approach to marriage versus patriarchal societies with another, I simply wish to highlight that however much the liturgy might claim “all have sinned” or employ phraseology like “I am the worst of sinners” uttered in unison (examples Gschwandtner references), the fact of the matter is that one will have individualized guilt pressed upon one in a liturgy that includes such abstractions as “sin”. Possibly this is rightly so, possibly it is extremely beneficial for human sociality and modes of existence to be structured in this way; my argument is not against that (but neither is it for it), I mean only to point out that in such religious settings as the various Christianities execute in their liturgies (of course other religions too) accusation will not only occur but be inevitable. Orthodox Christianity might have a milder version of accusation – I honestly do not know – but it will be present. If such further builds the community it might be a price some consider worth paying, but that is an issue beyond our scope and Gschwandtner does not raise it.

8. Intentionality

The final main chapter in Gschwandtner’s work concerns itself with the question of will in experience and the phenomenological (study) role thereof. Initially she makes what is probably the rather self-evident case that within a liturgical context a hermeneutics will always be bound up with an experience, that whatever a believer might take from a period of liturgy and then apply to their thinking and living as an instance – a gift – of revelation, a previously held prejudice towards such an interpretation is required. We come into liturgy with certain expectations of interaction on spiritual planes and not only community ones – sometimes they are met and sometimes not, but for such to ever be met they must first already be there. Note that this does seem to close out miraculous interventions like Moses’ encounter with the burning bush as relayed in the third chapter of Exodus, and this “pre-packaged” stance is affirmed by Gschwandtner when she writes that, “God does not come in entirely unforeseeable, unpredictable, utterly overwhelming fashion, but whatever is experienced in liturgy is experienced in temporal, spatial, corporeal, sensorial, affective, and communal ways that have been prepared for us and precede us.” (181)

Many believers may wish to take umbrage with Gschwandtner on this, and the Biblical record at least does contain many narratives of God doing precisely that and appearing out of the blue, but our concerns in the present are more down to earth. The notions of will and expectation have already been broached in our thoughts on the Introduction, and here we return to them. There is undoubtedly a manner in which the conceptual set held by an individual will act to influence and/or produce the perceptual within that person’s “lifeworld” – Husserlean horizons, core to any decent phenomenological undertaking – but how Gschwandtner approaches this makes one think immediately of Heidegger’s “ontic but not ontological” objection to the study of religion, and in that we find ourselves having looped right back to Gschwandtner’s opening arguments for the methodology she employs, only this time now questioning whether she has not been on shaky ground all along.

Moreover, I think it fair to raise the facet of meaning here too, because even if these liturgical/revelatory experiences are purely self-generated they would remain as experiences for the experiencer, and in that one would think deeply personally meaningful and meaning-generating. Such would also remain, whatever metaphysical status may or may not be attributed by others to the reported instantiations of revelation, the divine, or more broadly numinous. We find ourselves pondering these queries when Gschwandtner then rescues herself and us along with her through the riposte that, “Phenomenology instead (albeit not in opposition [that is, to hermeneutics]) examines how such [interpretive] expectation is marked in human experience, how it shapes the self, what it does to our bodies, minds, and emotions.” (182) Save for the repeated buried dualism lingering in a segregated triad like “bodies, minds, and emotions” we appreciatively agree.

9. Conclusion

Gschwandtner’s summary largely focuses its attention on what she considers the perceived benefits of liturgical practice to be (self-transformation, self-opening, finding the “sacred” or “holy” in the everyday, discovery of transcendence, et cetera), but she does also directly return to Heidegger’s comment on appropriateness (i.e. theology is “merely” ontic while phenomenology is ontological), answering it with: “Religious expression – maybe especially engagement in ritual practices – do reach a primordial level of human experience (assuming levels must be distinguished in this way in the first place.” (201) Again, this is intended as a rejoinder to Heidegger’s stratification, but as far as I can understand the distinction being made, Heidegger’s emphasis is on defining and not reaching. However that may or may not be (and I might be off mark myself), what I take Gschwandtner’s very apposite final thought to be is that any phenomenological concern with experience of the divine is one for and about human experience, and that “can be examined as such, without theologically extrapolating in regard to the existence or nature of God.” (202)

III. Peeking Under the Altar

Finally I would like to make some very brief general comments on the book as such, as a book. Gschwandtner writes with a welcome transparency and obvious wellspring of knowledge that runs extremely deep, especially when it comes to phenomenologists in the French tradition, and her chapter structuring of firstly reviewing background Orthodox theological concerns, background phenomenological concerns, and then applying each to her own concerns vis-à-vis liturgical praxis was clear and easy to follow. It was also, however, unfortunately rather surgical and I found myself engaged with the text only in rare instances.

There is a tendency too towards repetition, in which a particular point is made and then immediately remade via rephrasing; both this aspect and the general style adopted made me think that the work is perhaps aimed at an undergraduate audience, meant to be used as a course textbook. Naturally there is nothing amiss with that, and anyone teaching a subject where this might fit could well benefit from its inclusion; I mention it only as an impression imparted. What would really have helped my reading experience (phenomenology!), however, would be the inclusion of a glossary for the detailed and undefined Orthodox and/or broadly Christian terminology that Gschwandtner frequently uses. I am not sure why the publisher did not include a listing at the back or a similar device (I presume this was an editorial decision, but perhaps it was an authorial one), but terms like troparion, kontakion, Theotokos, Pascha, ekphrasis, Aposticha, parousia, eschaton, and kenosis will in likelihood only be fully understood by a small set of readers, whereas a text internal guide or reference would be gratefully accepted by all. Those issues aside, scholars of whatever sort will find food for thought in Gschwandtner’s work and an addition to the subfield of the phenomenology of religion that is ready for comparison with other studies that either do not overtly cover liturgical matters or do so from a differing tradition.