James Dodd: Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World: Exercises in Philosophical Anthropology

Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World: Exercises in Philosophical Anthropology Book Cover Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World: Exercises in Philosophical Anthropology
Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology, 16
James Dodd
Brill
2017
Hardback €110,00
viii, 298

Reviewed by: Kevin Berry (University of Pennsylvania)

James Dodd’s Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World: Exercises in Philosophical Anthropology examines the built environment, as the artifactual composition of human involvement, from the perspective of phenomenological intentionality. From this perspective, “meaning,” as Dodd succinctly states, “is originally the accomplishment of the intentionality of lived experience” (57). Dodd’s formulation of the matter is most clearly expressed in chapter seven which directly explores, among other things, the topic of architectural meaning. The built environment is not a set of meanings inscribed upon buildings as if a “text to be deciphered,” but rather a series of existential paths open to inhabitants (199). As the material arrangement of human intentional involvements, the built environment is meaningful as “a sense of directedness” in “hodological form.” This seems to be the thesis of the text: an argument that phenomenology allows us to read the built environment’s meaning hodologically, rather than textually (215-216). In fact, that and how the world is given in meaningfulness is a large part of the “problematicity of knowledge,” the key issue in the text.

Though Dodd writes for philosophers, the text opens an equally important perspective for architectural historians. It points to the need to investigate architecture phenomenologically, a project which has suffered a legitimation crisis in the field of architecture since the late 80’s and early 90’s saw a rush of publications on the topic, the most notable being Questions of Perception. So many architectural theorists and historians in this tradition have used Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Hannah Arendt (the four main characters of Dodd’s text) without full awareness of the ontological critique of Cartesian conception of worldhood at the base of phenomenology. Architects, evoking these phenomenologists’ names, still read architectural meaning as being first of all a visual, or textual, matter. Architecture is not something we look at, or read, though. It is something we live in and, more precisely, are involved in. This insight, which Dodd’s text points out, would help bolster future attempts in architecture to apply phenomenology to the concept of architecture, the city, or the built environment.

The text has eight chapters set between an introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1, “Knowledge and Building” examines “the kind of knowledge operative in the activity of building,” tracing a philosophical argument in the historical debate between the architect and engineer as two distinct kinds of builders. Subsequently, chapter 2, “Building and Phenomenon” examines “the built as something encountered in experience” (8-9). The elegance with which the chapter titles interlock is impressive. Each has two key terms, displaying to the reader the flow of the argument; this can be seen in the word “Building” in first and second chapter titles. The flow continues: chapter 3, “Phenomenon and World” leads from Phenomenon to world. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 interlock concepts of “World” and “Thing,” chapter 6 flows from “Thing and Built Space,” into chapter 7, “Built Space and Expression,” and finally, chapter 8, “Expression and Presence.”

The chapter titles and section headings, while they reveal the flow of the argument, dissolve into one another, literally and figuratively. To this reader, one downside to this otherwise elegant structure is that it caused the text to read too fluidly, making it difficult to discern the main conclusions and objects of study, which are both architectural objects and philosophical texts. It is well written and the prose holds an impressive stride. The argument flows from one point to the next, with the reader often being led through illustrations of foundational ideas in phenomenological methodology. It is certainly not an introductory text, as Dodd states, but it holds a desire to continually return to the base of each problem. In short, it reads as an extensive phenomenological meditation, returning to questions of method as often as it turns to its objects of study. Dodd’s text rewards a patient reader.

For instance, it is hard to know what to subsume, exactly, under the concept (or, more accurately, figure) of the ‘labyrinth’ introduced in chapter 3, especially when the figure of the labyrinth plays such a pivotal role throughout the next two chapters, and not just in the subsections which have the word in their title. Edward Casey, Bernard Tschumi, and Indra Kagis McEwen are all employed in discussions of the labyrinth. The dense fabric this organization weaves is as impressive as it is demanding. Its conceptual complexity is not a point to be criticized, of course. My criticism here is much more limited. I can only say that the book is truly dense; at points, it seems overpopulated with insights. Signposts are needed to help distinguish major and just minor conclusions, as there are so many woven into each chapter. Internal to the argument, there are just four points I find disagreement with.

First, distinctions need to be sustained more thoroughly between the built environment, artifact, and architecture. Is the built environment to be understood as a composition of artifacts in this text? Or is it something over and above this, a whole greater than its parts? What is the difference between artifact and tool, or the difference between Heidegger’s equipmental totality and the idea of an artifactual totality (or composition) as it appears in the text? There seem to be many different ways of conceptualizing these key terms given the many theorists referenced.

Second, the attempt to rehabilitate phenomenology by creating what Dodd calls “classical phenomenology” by synthesizing Husserl, Heidegger, and Arendt, especially for a text which already copes with the workload involved in straddling multiple fields. The unresolved and irresolvable tension between Husserl, Heidegger, and Arendt is most apparent in chapter five, which asks the reader to jump from Husserl’s world of Abschattungen (adumbrations) – a topic already discussed in a previous chapter – to Heidegger’s world of Sorge (care)., by way of Steven Holl’s notion of parallax and Duchamp’s nude. This ten page section is certainly an impressive composition, and the illustrations are engaging, but the technical nuances in which Dodd engages often reveal the distance between these thinkers at those points in which they seem most closely related. I am sure Dodd recognizes that classical phenomenology is no monolith, and never could be, but the methodology of the text betrays a desire for it to be, especially chapter five.

Third, there is a set of competing ends operating in the argument. For instance, the reader is informed that the investigation is ultimately seeking “the development of a descriptive vocabulary for the analysis of built space” (50), but also that it is focused on “the problematicity of knowledge.” In the end, the latter concern appears to win, but the reader is still left wondering if the problem is ethical, concerned with developing a philosophical understanding of the built environment’s contribution to the meaningfulness of human existence, or epistemological, as the text more explicitly claims.

Again, it seems the latter wins. That this text on the built world begins with a chapter on “knowledge” is no accident. Dodd, it seems, asks philosophers to turn to the built environment, but only so they may turn back to questions of epistemology. This becomes clearer as the reader moves into the middle chapters, which grow increasingly epistemological, concerned with rethinking key concepts of intentionality, constitution, the epoché, and perception in light of the built environment. The text reads as an epistemological investigation with a special concern for the perceptual structures of meaning in the built environment. This is especially true in his example of an experience in Café Hawelka in Vienna (87). Descriptive analyses of European cafés are a staple of architectural phenomenology, and so the reader expects to be pulled into the built world, into living experience, but this does not happen. Rather, Dodd asks of perceptual experience in the café, “What does this entail?” and turns to a thorough excursus on Husserl’s notion of Abschattungen (90). Dodd concludes chapter 3 by drawing the conclusion from this that «in living through an experience, I fully inhabit the whole of experience at once» (93). In a way, this is just the epistemological issue at stake, and shows why phenomenology so often seems to spill over from epistemology into ontology. The café will return in the conclusion, this time as Sartre’s missing Pierre in Being and Nothingness (263-265).

My final point of criticism is that this is not a book on architecture, which it claims to be. The examples are never fully architectural. The phenomenological analysis of the way in which a pebble, in its material shape, holds cognitive indications concerning its uses and intentional possibilities, for example, is insightful, but this moment of analysis – one of the more important in the text – does not concern the architectural. Figures such as Eisenman, Tschumi and Le Corbusier do make appearances, as do some famous monuments and ruins, but they are always there for the elucidation of a concept and are not objects of study themselves. This leads me to ask, does Dodd actually discuss architecture at all? Regardless of how one answers this, as I indicated at the outset, this is a text architectural writers interested in philosophy must understand.

Perhaps Dodd’s intended philosophical audience explains why architecture remains conspicuously absent from the book. The ideas of phenomenology remain strongly in the fore, and artifacts often illustrate these, but architecture nowhere fully appears. Dodd’s decision to explain his argument through more typical environmental situations — sitting at a library, reading in a café, enjoying the view of a valley on a park bench, etc. — makes sense, because Dodd’s aim is to study the built environment not by applying concepts of Husserl and Heidegger to architectural objects, but by determining where, in the unique ontological picture of phenomenology, the built world fits. After all, most works of architecture populating the “canon” of architecture are built as perceptual experiences for the trained eye of the designer, and composed more for the attitude of disinterested aesthetic contemplation than the average inhabitant of day-to-day involvement. Architecture seems to be at odds with the idea of the built environment as a cultural setting, in this sense, or at least seems to bear an ecstatic, to use Heidegger’s term, relationship to it.

The title of Dodd’s text thus points out an issue. There seem to be two conceptions of architecture which need to be distinguished more carefully by those operating within the philosophy of architecture today: architecture as defined by the profession, its objects, and the discrete acts of professional architects designing individual buildings; and, second, architecture as understood anthropologically, as the act of arranging “the material-cultural world in which we are enmeshed,” as Dodd says so well, into a purposive whole (29). This second, anthropological conception of architecture, as an ontological condition of human communal existence in the material world, is the “architecture” of Dodd’s investigation.

Examining architecture’s significance, the way in which architecture means something to inhabitants in everyday, circumspective activity is an important and remarkably overlooked issue. Too much of architecture theory has acted as if architectural meaning only existed when architecture was looked at as a signifier or as an aesthetic object of disinterested contemplation. Dodd’s attempt to think architectural meaning in the foreground of human life, in the immediacy of the practically and socially absorbed activity of the occupant, that mode of experience in which the building is usually experienced and, somehow, understood, is a welcome addition. It seems phenomenology might have something left to contribute to this project, showing how the built environment needs to be thought through not as a cultural “objectification,” as recent sociological investigations of architecture have thought it, but as a material conception of Husserlian operative intentionality or transcendental subjectivity. (For an instance of such a sociology of architecture, see Silke Steets, Der sinnhafte aufbau der Gebauten Welt: Eine Architektursoziologie. Suhrkamp, 2015.)

It is surprisingly how little attention has been given to the connection between this broad conception of architecture and phenomenology, a tradition which so often thought in spatial, if not explicitly architectural terms – think of Heidegger’s illustration of the equipmental totality constituting worldhood in section 16 of Being and Time, or of the issue of “ego orientation” (152), both of which Dodd himself points to. Dodd’s work shows how phenomenology might offer a framework for studying the built world as a “cultural expression” in more complex terms than has been done so far. Phenomenology, Dodd shows, offers a way of thinking subjects’ interaction with artifacts’ meaningful structures in terms of operative intentionality.

Günter Figal: Freiräume: Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik, Mohr Siebeck, 2017

Freiräume: Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik Book Cover Freiräume: Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik
Philosophische Untersuchungen
Günter Figal
Mohr Siebeck
2017
Cloth 75,00 €
300

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (Ed.): Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, Routledge, 2017

Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty Book Cover Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty
Routledge Research in Phenomenology
Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (Ed.)
Routledge
2017
Hardback £105.00
178

Current Debates in Phenomenology & Overcoming the Continental-Analytic Divide (Held March 31-April 1, 2017, at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, USA)

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On March 31-April 1, 2017, Marquette University (USA) hosted faculty and graduate students in attendance for the conference “Current Debates In Phenomenology & Overcoming the Continental-Analytic Divide.” The two-day event examined the philosophical inheritance of the Divide and how it impacts work in phenomenology today. Sebastian Luft (Marquette University), and graduate students Jered Janes (MU), Clark Wolf (MU), and Ben Martin (LUC), served as lead organizers. The spring conference grew out of the ongoing inter-university series of seminars and workshops jointly organized by phenomenology research groups at Marquette University and Loyola University Chicago. The event was made possible by through the generous support of The American Friends of Humboldt, the philosophy department of Marquette University, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).

The conference included three faculty keynote lectures, six papers presented by graduate students from Marquette University and Loyola University Chicago, and a concluding panel discussion. Papers and lectured varied in their approaches to the main theme of the conference; some addressed the Continental-Analytic Divide directly, while others attempted to occupy a space for philosophical thought beyond the presuppositions of the Divide. James Dodd (The New School) delivered the first keynote lecture, titled “The Promise of an Asubjective Phenomenology.” The lecture offered a close and careful engagement with the thought of Jan Patočka. What philosophical resources does the Czech thinker provide to develop an asubjective phenomenology? Dodd argued that an asubjective phenomenology is not a non-subjective phenomenology. The classical influence of Husserlian phenomenological subjectivity endures in Patočka’s thinking, but is reoriented around the dichotomy of “inwardness/periphery” rather than “subject/object.” Such reorientation invites a rethinking of topics within phenomenology, including embodiment, the role of literature for phenomenology, the constitution of self and others, and the purported self-transparency of consciousness. Dodd tied together the several strands of Patočka’s rethinking into a Patočkian proposal for a revision of Husserl’s principle of all principles and a counterproposal for a “non-objectival” form of clarity available in reflection.

 The second keynote lecture, titled “Realism and the Ontological Question,” was delivered by Paul Livingston (University of New Mexico). Livingston took up a selection of arguments from his book The Logic of Being: Realism, Truth, and Time (2017). His primary aim in the lecture was to treat ontological questions, drawn from Heideggerian discourse, in a manner compatible with a realist ontology. Livingston took up a Lacanian meditation on formalization, and its limits, as the basis for proposing a kind of meta-formal realism. Livingston’s meta-formalism proposed a realist stance premised on “the experience of formalization whereby it problematically captures and decomposes its own limits.” He distinguished meta-formal realism from empirical realism, metaphysical realism, and correspondence realism. On the contrary, he argued, the meta-formal realist position treats questions about the basic sense and meaning of our formalization of the real, rather than dealing with entities, or domains of entities. Livingston situated his discussion with a historical reflection on different orientations of realist thought. The concepts of coherence and consistency came to the fore as disjunctive indicators of post-Cantorian orientations of realism. Either the orientation is complete without being consistent, the “paradoxico-critical” orientation (ex. Derrida, Late Wittgenstein). Or the orientation is consistent without being complete, the “generic” orientation (ex. Badiou, Gödel). Livingston developed the historical reflection into an appraisal of the meaning of being and truth in Heidegger’s philosophy and presented truth as a phenomenon arising out of the paradoxical structure of the ontological difference. The lecture concluded with a realist interpretation of the temporality of Dasein in Heidegger’s Being and Time, taking up the structures of ecstasis, reflexivity, and auto-affectivity as purely formal structures without underlying dependence on a constituting agency or subject. The realist interpretation mobilizes the paradoxical structure of the ontological difference to open up the possibilities of the experience of time both as time of the individual Dasein and time as “world” or “public” time.

The third keynote, titled “Culture as Second Nature,” was delivered by Sebastian Luft (Marquette University). The lecture took as its point of departure the interpretation of the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer offered by Clarence Smith Howe, translator of an English edition of Cassirer’s The Logic of the Humanities (1961) [Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften (1942)]. In Howe’s introduction, he interprets Cassirer’s philosophy as a kind of naturalism, albeit a “culturalistic” naturalism. The interpretive claim, so argued Luft, seems to be at odds with more conventional interpretations of Cassirer as first and foremost a philosopher of culture. However, Howe’s claim is adopted by Luft as an opportunity to set up a confrontation between Cassirer’s symbolic idealism, in which the experience of nature is culturally mediated, and John McDowell’s version of naturalism, which arises out of his rejection of “bald” or “naive” naturalism. After reviewing the basic commitments of Cassirer and McDowell with respect to the experience of nature, Luft introduced Howe’s notion of “idealistic naturalism” (or culturalistic naturalism) as a mediating link between the naturalism of Cassirer and McDowell. In a concluding comparison of the two thinkers, Luft argued that Cassirer’s position was preferable to McDowell’s insofar as the former thinker allows “cultural intelligence” to have a wider purchase than mere ratiocination. That is, our human nature finds expression in cultural refuges — such as art and language — that are bound up with, but not reducible to, the rationality of McDowell’s space of reason.

The graduate student papers were presented in the mornings and afternoons, over the course of the two-day conference. Pete Burgess (Marquette University) explored different accounts of mental causation in “Are Acts and States Incompatible?: Mapping Versus Explaining Consciousness.” Justin Nordin (Loyola University Chicago) addressed the topic of moral normativity in “A Levinasian Approach to Moral Obligation.” Amelia Rhys (LUC) used philosophical resources in the work of Michel Foucault to treat a topical issue in bioethics in “The Contribution of Foucault’s Analysis of the Clinical Gaze to a Trans-Affirming Bioethics.” Daniel Adsett (MU) engaged Donald Davidson’s triangulation argument with respect to norms for speech and communication in “Coherence, Totality, and the Rational Subject.” Kyoungnam Park (LUC) provided a phenomenology of sensation and intuition in “Duration and Sense Impressions.” Gregory Trotter (MU) marked the intersection of phenomenology and psychoanalysis in “Fantasy and Freedom in Sartre and Psychoanalysis.”

The conference concluded with a brief presentation, given by Sebastian Luft, on funding opportunities available for academics interested in study in Germany, as well as a panel discussion. The panel discussion, titled “The Analytic-Continental Divide Today,” scheduled to include Andrew Cutrofello (Loyola University Chicago), James Dodd (The New School), Hanne Jacobs (Loyola University Chicago — absent), Paul Livingston (University of New Mexico), and Sebastian Luft (Marquette University), took up again the central theme of the conference in light of the discussion of the present and previous day. The panel participants were given an opportunity to present brief opening remarks before the discussion was opened to the general audience. Among the topics discussed: what is the nature of the Continental-Analytic divide? Is it a historical, political, sociological, etc., phenomenon? What strategies can be used to overcome the divide? What professional interests are invested in preserving the divide? What can we learn from an antinomarian reading of the divide? What is the future of philosophy beyond the divide? Can we project ourselves beyond the divide, or are we beyond the divide already?

Reviewed by: Michael Gutierrez (Loyola University Chicago), PhD student in philosophy and co-organizer of the phenomenology research group at Loyola.

George Kovacs: Thinking and Be-ing in Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)

Thinking and Be-ing in Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) Book Cover Thinking and Be-ing in Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)
Heidegger Research
George Kovacs
Zeta Books
2015
Paperback €28.00
480

Reviewed by: Stuart Grant (Centre for Theatre and Performance, Monash University)

How could a review of a commentary of Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), be construed as anything other than a twice-removed betrayal of the intent of the original writing? To the uninitiated reader, this question, which would be clear to one acquainted with the work, requires some background explanation.

The publication of the Beiträge in 1989, fifty-three years after its writing, and the subsequent first translation into English, by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly in 1990, brought much controversy, and responses ranging from contemptuous ridicule as gibberish nonsense, to laudatory praise as Heidegger’s second magnum opus. Even among dedicated Heidegger scholars, the responses to these apparently fragmentary, obscure, and difficult writings veered from scorn to intrigue. Consequently, the last two and a half decades have also produced a number of how-to-read guides, interpretations, and companions-to. The controversy also gave rise to the perceived need for an alternative translation in 2012 by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu. The book reviewed here, Thinking and Be-ing in Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), by George Kovacs, enters this fraught field.

Kovacs’ book belongs firmly in the camp that believes the Beiträge to be Heidegger’s second great work. To state my own position, before reviewing the book, I would affirm that I not only agree with Kovacs as to the importance of the work, but that I am tempted to go further and say that I believe, despite the inevitable unevenness of its success, that in its intent, in its philosophical gesture, and in the magnitude of its epochal sweep, the Beiträge is a more important moment in Heidegger’s work than Being and Time, which I understand as a mere prelude to the later work.

The problem of this review is the same problem of Kovacs’ book, and the problem of the Beiträge itself. Heidegger’s book, which he never thought of as a book, and which he consequently assiduously refrained from publishing in his lifetime, was not meant to be, “about something and representing something objective”, but rather attempted to enact a saying which “does not describe or explain, does not proclaim or teach…does not stand over against what is said…rather the saying itself is the ‘to be said’” (Heidegger 1999, 4). As such, the Beiträge is performative in its intent. It is not a series of assertions aimed at a correct correlation, description or analysis of a state of affairs, but the production of “being-historical-thinking”, of the event of the bringing forth of that which it says as it says it; and as such, it should be used as a directive towards an enjoinment to further action.

To be brief, Heidegger realised that Being and Time had only managed to outline the problem of the need for a new approach to the asking of the question of Being, which would require the “necessity of transforming our orientation of questioning, which entails our entering into this fundamental occurrence”. (Heidegger 1995, 360-361). Heidegger found that as soon as he began to talk about Being, he was no longer in Being, that the access to or participation in Being had become obscured by the mode of questioning, and in the consequent objectification, had become construed merely as a being, another being, rather than Being itself. This is the problem of ontological difference, between beings and Being. To approach Being in itself, it was necessary to find a new way of questioning; a new way of thinking which would escape the representational mode of Western metaphysics, grounded in its epistemology of subject and object, and guaranteed in assertions which could be assessed as more or less true or false. In a sense, Heidegger’s task would necessitate speaking forth Being from within. This, in his estimation, would require a complete revision of the concepts of truth, thinking, and knowing, and a radical new approach to language, which he attempts in the Beiträge, and which has led to the decades of controversy since its publication in 1989.

So, the question is whether the work of a book on the Beiträge should be assessed on how it attempts to interpret or clarify the meaning of Heidegger’s work, or whether it should ultimately be judged on what it does, how it takes up the “directive” (Heidegger 1999, 4), of the former work, and contributes to opening the way of thought that the Beiträge demands. If the latter were to be the case, the measure of Kovacs book would need to be assessed in terms of what it contributes to the possibility of the proposed rethinking. How does it move Heidegger’s project forward?

Before addressing Kovacs’ contribution, I would note that there are a number of fine commentaries on the Beiträge, most notably: Daniela Vallega-Neu’s Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy: An Introduction (Vallega-Neu 2003); Richard Polt’s The Emergency of Being; On Heidegger’s ‘Contributions to Philosophy (Polt 2006); Parvis Emad’s On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Emad 2007); and Companion to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Scott et al. 2001) , edited by Charles E. Scott, Susan Schoenbohm, Daniela Vallega-Neu, and Alejandro Vallega. These works have undeniably added clarity to the wider understanding of Heidegger’s intention in the Beiträge, and rendered its accomplishments available to a wider audience, but they remain commentaries and guides to the understanding of the work.

Kovacs, on the other hand, seeks to take up Heidegger’s directive, acknowledging “that it would be a mistake to simply reconceptualise and resystematize Heidegger’s insights, the open and free play of moves and ventures of his journey of thought” (Kovacs 2015, 67). Rather, he seeks to think “through and with” Heidegger’s work, taking a “’step back’ from the closure of metaphysics at the center of the philosophical tradition…and ‘step into’ the thinking of Be-ing as enowning from the closure of metaphysics” (67). For an avid reader of the Beiträge, this is an exciting prospect, and one that Kovacs’ book fulfils amply.

A primary value of Kovacs’ book is in the regathering of the main concepts and movements which are dispersed, repeated, varied, and counterpointed throughout the fugal structure of the Beiträge. Kovacs piles them up, rearranges them, and takes them to places Heidegger had not ventured. His emphasis, pertinent to the intent of the original work, is on what Heidegger is attempting to do, or more accurately, to prepare for what needs to be done to make the leap the new beginning of thinking. Rather than a secondary interpretation, this book, at its best, is an effective and illuminating activation of Heidegger’s intention.

An example of Kovacs picking up Heidegger’s intimations to open new ways into thinking the leap beyond metaphysics, can be found in the link between questioning and believing in a relationship of faith (116). One of the more provocative aspects of the Beiträge and other works by Heidegger in this period, is the redefinition of truth, not as correspondence or certainty, but as Being coming into its ownmost through the process of Be-ing. The definition of faith is rethought, from within the Turning (Die Kehre), the moment of its coming forth. Faith is defined through its relationship with knowing. From within its ownmost, knowing is understood in terms of enowning, one of the shades of meaning of ereignis, (in everyday German, event) as the play of coming into its own and withdrawing. Thus, the understanding of faith becomes holding for true what is completely withdrawn from any knowing (117). To understand this, the reader must have a familiarity with Heideggerian expressions such as “withdrawal”, “turning”, “enowning”, and “what is ownmost to truth”. Moreover, it is necessary to become accustomed to dwelling with radical redefinitions of everyday taken-for-granted terms such as “knowing”. The Beiträge requires a long slow apprenticeship and a patient stillness of thinking. Kovacs takes this course in his analysis of faith. To the uninitiated reader, the language of Kovacs’ book appears as repetitive, murky and apparently incomprehensible as Heidegger’s own. In a review of this length it is impossible to offer sufficient detail to the multiplicity of neologisms, redefinitions, and connotational complexity in this phase of Heidegger’s writings. To understand these concepts requires an attunement with the thinking of the Beiträge itself. Kovacs dwells in the relationships and definitions with the steady tread of someone who has spent time in the stilling silence demanded by this path of thinking.

The renovated idea of truth mentioned above relies on a rethinking of the relationship of language and Be-ing, in which truth is no longer about holding something for true, but of holding oneself in the truth. In the final chapter, “The Thinking of Being and Language”, Kovacs takes Heidegger’s observations on the need for a language of Be-ing which differs from the everyday “language of beings, from utilitarian, instrumentalized, machinational language”; and which also, more importantly, addresses the “need for restoring the full saying-power to language (416). Kovacs begins with the observation that “the thinker of Be-ing itself…runs up against the boundaries of the language of beings, of the system of metaphysics”, and finds himself with the question: “Is it possible to say ‘something’ of the unsayable. Of that which is not ‘something’ at all?” (413).

Kovacs claims to enact Heidegger’s understanding of language as the site of “the shock, the powerful shift in understanding of the ‘to be’”, which constitutes a “‘leaping into the essential unfolding of Be-ing’ in such a way that Be-ing itself unfolds its essential power as en-owning”, (Heidegger, cited in Kovacs 2015, 82). This occurs because, in the Beiträge, language is figured not as a semiotic or representational enterprise, but rather as the means of attunement of the thinker to Be-ing. “The human being, as speaking and thinking being, is ‘guardian…of the truth of Be-ing’, and both language and human being ‘belong equally originarily to Be-ing’”; thus, human being is “‘essential’ for determining what is ownmost to language’”.. (Heidegger, cited in Kovacs 2015, 451). “In Language…Being is coming to word; thinking listening to the voice of Be-ing” (Heidegger, cited in Kovacs 2015, 452).

This relation of human being, language, and Be-ing is central to the Beiträge, and central to the task of taking up the directives of the Beiträge. By entering the relation between human, language, and Be-ing, the thinker participates in the coming forth of Be-ing, rather than staying in the metaphysical representational function of language. Heidegger calls this enthinking, enowning, inceptual thinking. Kovacs seeks to enter this mode of thinking-saying-writing. According to Kovacs, the speaker here enters “the inner dynamics and the range of the saying, disclosing potential of language” and its “capacity to say the unsayable”. The key to this enterprise is the hermeneutic temporality of the human and language belonging “equally originarily” to Be-ing. (452).

At this moment of equal originariness, “knowing, i.e. what is ownmost to truth, is the clearing opening for the self-sheltering concealing of Be-ing. Knowing awareness is the holding oneself in this clearing” (117). This is the temporality of participation in the presencing of the moment of the coming forth, rather than the depicting of a past which has already occurred. This temporality allows a knowing, a truth, which is “not a mere representation of an encounter but a persevering within the breakthrough of a projected opening, which through enopening comes to know the very Abgrund that sustains it” (Heidegger 1999, 258).

For the purposes of my own sojourn with the thinking of the Beiträge, Kovacs’ venture into the question of the Abgrund, in “Chapter II, Rethinking Thinking”, takes me further into being underway than any previous account I have read. The most important moment, for me, in this section, is the relationship between questioning and the Abgrund. If one is in questioning, then one is not in certainty, one is in that which is withdrawing, the unknown. And then, to stay in the unknown, to stay in the questioning, to stay in that which is withdrawing, is to hold fast to what is ownmost to truth, the play of concealment and disclosure. Because questioning is precisely not knowing with certainty, but finding a way to dwell in the slow craft of that which is ownmost to thinking, the aforementioned clearing opening for the self-sheltering concealing.

Finding home, abiding, and thus truly being there in the course or movement (lived experience) of questioning, as Heidegger’s Beiträge and his other texts teach the attentive, listening reader, steak (sic) out the range and sense of direction, the worth and power (the ways and craft) of thinking, of essential, being-historical, and more and more mindful thinking (Kovacs 2015, 100)

Here, the sense of Kovacs’ appropriation of Heidegger’s concepts and use of language comes to life in taking up his own abode in thinking, to hear, respond, and listen to that which “calls us to think” (Kovacs 2015, 97). In this, I find clear evidence that, for me, as a baffled, hesitant, mostly silent wanderer on the path of thinking, Kovacs’ book succeeds in Heidegger’s task of the foray into the participation of the coming forth of the enowning and the preparation for the transition from metaphysical speculation to being-historical thinking. This is the great worth and excitement. of Thinking and Be-ing in Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis).

 References:

Emad, Parvis. 2007. On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy: University of Wisconsin Press.

Heidegger, Martin. 1995. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Translated by William McNeill, Studies in Continental Thought. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press.

Heidegger, Martin. 1999. Contributions to Philosophy: (From Enowning). Translated by P. Emad and K. Maly, Studies in Continental Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kovacs, George. 2015. Thinking and Be-ing in Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Bucharest: Zeta Books.

Polt, Richard F. H. 2006. The Emergency of Being : On Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Scott, Charles E., Susan Schoenbohm, Daniela Vallega-Neu, and Alejandro Vallega. 2001. Companion to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Studies in Continental Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Vallega-Neu, Daniela. 2003. Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy: An Introduction, Studies in Continental thought. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Klaus Held: Zeitgemäße Betrachtungen, Klostermann, 2017

Zeitgemäße Betrachtungen Book Cover Zeitgemäße Betrachtungen
Klostermann Rote Reihe 95
Klaus Held
Klostermann
2017
Paperback 19,80 €
206

Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch: A mente corporificada (2017, Edição Revisada)

The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Revised Edition) Book Cover The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Revised Edition)
Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch. Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn
MIT Press
2017
Paperback $30.00
392

Reviewed by:  Adrian Spremberg (State University of Campinas-Brazil, Psychiatry Department/University of Heidelberg-Germany, Clinic for Psychosocial Medicine, Section Phenomenology)

A envolvente obra de Varela et al. (1) que aqui será resenhada é um marco no pensamento interdisciplinar entre filosofia (principalmente fenomenologia) e as diversas ciências da cognição. O livro The Embodied Mind, ou ‘’A Mente Corporificada’’ foi originalmente lançado pela ‘’MIT Press’’ em 1991, quando alcançou considerável interesse de leitores das mais diversas áreas do conhecimento. Desde ali, a obra se tornou leitura essencial a leigos e estudiosos da filosofia, ciências da cognição, antropologia, etc. Os autores desenvolvem, em seu livro, uma crítica tenaz ao modelo cognitivista ‘’representacionista’’ e computacional das ciências cognitivas, que se encontrava em voga na época e, em diversas instituições de pesquisa, ainda hoje. O argumento principal delineado pelos autores é o de que para que haja um modelo integrativo de ciência, é preciso considerar aspectos „em primeira pessoa”, ou experiencias, de maneira que estes também possam ser incluídos em estudos empíricos tais como desenvolvidos pelas ditas ciências naturais. Ou seja, cientistas, assim como biológos ou médicos, por exemplo, não devem apenas focar nos fatores biológicos e ‘concretos’ de suas respectivas investiagações, mas incorporar estes no ambiente em que se encontram, e na constante intrerrelação entre sujeito, corpo (organismo), e mundo. Para tanto, Varela et al. argumentam que a ciência cognitiva (e porquê não as restantes, também?), precisariam ser entendidas a partir de um movimento circular entre fenômenos e processos experienciais, aspectos biológicos (organismo como um todo) e ambiente (mundo).

Para os autores, a mente e seus processos não poderiam simplesmente serem entendidos como estando ‘’imbuídos’’ no cérebro e em seus processos neurofisiológicos. Não, o sujeito entende e vai de encontro com a realidade por meio de um corpo vivido também, um corpo ‘’experiencial’’. Para que tal fato possa ocorrer, é preciso que exista uma interação sistêmica bastante complexa entre mente, corpo, e mundo: uma regulação organísmica ‘’autopoiética’’ e autônoma, que confere significação ao sujeito em imediato contato com o mundo. Ou seja, processos cognitivos como ações, comportamentos, percepções, e outros, se dão em uma interação significativa e e-nativa entre sujeito e mundo. Portanto, o sujeito se auto-regula de maneira a significar o mundo e o contexto no qual se encontra. Em ‘’A mente corporificada’’, os autores também acrescentam aos seus argumentos a necessidade de incluir, para que possa haver um entendimento ainda mais mais aprofundado e heurístico sobre a ciência da cognição como inseparável de sua base humana, alguns aspectos da filosofia oriental (budista). Os autores focam principalmente no conceito de ‘’mindfulness’’, que resumidamente corresponde a um estado de profundo autoconhecimento da consciência, no qual o sujeito alcança um estado de consicência ‘’pura’’ acerca de si e seus estados mentais.

Trata-se aqui, certamente, de uma obra brilhante, que deverá continuar rendendo novos frutos aos interessados em pesquisas interdisciplinares. É importante também ressaltar que o livro foi escrito, assim dizem seus autores, de maneira a não ‘’encaixar-se’’ em nenhuma disciplina do conhecimento em particular: ‘’A Mente Corporificada’’, deverá ser tomado como uma obra a ser lida de fato interdisciplinarmente, e o leitor deve ter em mente que é exatamente isto que a destaca dentre tantas outras escritas na grande área das ciências cognitivas. Para os autores, é preciso entender a ciência cognitiva através de uma perspectiva mais abrangente, de acordo com a qual a expêriencia humana estaria constantemente relacionada a processos cognitivos (mentais e corporais). Para tal, o conhecimento humano deve concernir todos os sistemas cognitivos mentais intrínsecos e invariáveis que nos fazem humanos, a partir da junção de processos sensíveis (experienciais) com processos cognitivos e comportamentais, os quais se dão a partir da interação do corpo tanto físico, quanto «vivido» com o mundo. Assim sendo, esta resenha será dividida em duas partes: (1) primeiro, esboçarei brevemente, em sequência, alguns dos temas e argumentos apresentado pelos autores nesta obra. (2) por fim, abordarei alguns aspectos do novo prefácio que foi escrito especialmente para esta nova edição, expondo desta maneira alguns aspectos críticos com os quais os autores já não concordam mais, nos quais é possível perceber o quão substancialmente o próprio entendimento que dois dos autores (Evan Thompson e Eleanor Rosch) têm de que sua obra se modificou com o passar dos anos, e qual seria o impacto presente- e futuro desta para os pesquisadores e pensadores da ciência cognitiva e interdisciplinar. Após estas considerações, também apresentarei uma pequena observação questionadora de cunho pessoal, sobre a importância dos estudos interdisciplinares entre as ciências da cognição e a saúde mental, especificamente a psiquiatria e psicologia.

No primeiro capítulo da obra, Varela et al. apresentam o arcabouço teórico conceitual a partir do qual eles desenvolverão a crítica a modelos de ciência cognitiva baseadas em modelos computacionais e ‘’representacionistas’’. O principal autor da tradição fenomenológica com o qual os autores dialogam é Maurice Merleau Ponty (2), que, em grande parte de suas obras desenvolve uma fenomenologia da corporeidade e da percepção ancorada na ideia de que mente e corpo se encontram intrinsecamente relacionados, de maneira direta. Ou seja, o sujeito percebe e se engaja com a realidade por meio de uma intencionalidade direta que acontece tanto por meio de processos mentais, quanto também corporais. Para que esta dialética relacional e intencional possa ocorrer, certo processos corporais, como a ação, ocorrem de maneira situacional: por exemplo, o sujeito tem consciência de um copo de água e movimenta seu braço para pegá-lo e, por fim, tomar a água. Torna-se então possível dizer que o braço estendido faz parte de um campo significativo: a percepção do copo de água, em conjunto com a sede (desejo fisiológico), e ação, fizeram com que o sujeito percebesse e agisse no mundo de maneira significativa. A percepção »corporal» que o sujeito teve com o mundo então não ocorreu somente por meio de um ato visual perceptivo, mas o próprio corpo também se engajou, ao mesmo tempo e naquele instante, em um processo significatório, que levou então o sujeito a uma ação. Portanto, a cognição humana não se encontra fundamentada em uma ontologia cartesiana que separa pensamento de corpo, mas em um sistema circular enativo: mente, organismo, e corpo se encontram intrinsecamente inter-relacionados.

Portanto, pode-se dizer que nesta obra, mundo (realidade) e sujeito são constituídos e se constituem por meio de uma constante atividade experiencial vivida: a cognição como um sistema se dá por meio de uma relação direta que o sujeito tem com o ambiente. Para tanto, processos mentais ocorrem, de fato, em ação conjunta com o corpo e o organismo ( sistema neurológico, por exemplo). Assim sendo, os processos cognitivos não devem ser entendidos como sendo puramente fisiológicos ou fundamentados na ideia de que processos mentais podem ser co-relacionados a processamentos computacionais, nos qual a informação perceptual, por exemplo, é recebido como »input», processada pelo cérebro, e então representada para o sujeito. Não, os processos são, de fato, enativos; ou seja, eles ocorre sempre tanto internamente (constituição do self autônomo), quanto externamente, por meio de ações emergentes que então »regulam» e situam significado sobre objetos, outras pessoas, etc.

Um aspecto interessante que os autores sobre o qual os autores também discorrem é a questão relativa a »Análise Experimentativa e Experiencial» (Experimentation and Experiential Analysis). Para Varela et al., o ‘experimentar’ é frequentemente relacionado à uma ciência paradigmática que se baseia em fundamentos e asserções empíricas clássicas. O budismo, por outro lado, pode ser entendido como uma ciência que investiga fenômenos (especialmente aqueles relativos a estudos em primeira pessoa), por meio de »mindfulness», ou um acesso experiencial à consciência e ao mundo subjetivo. Portanto, para os autores, os diversos processos cognitivos sempre se dão em conjunto com o mundo e a subjetividade:

»particularmente impressionante para nós é a convergência que nós descobrimos em meio a temas centrais da doutrina budista, fenomenologia e ciência da cognição-temas relacionados ao self e à relação entre sujeito e objeto»(3).

Os autores continuam analisando e criticando, nos subsequentes capítulos, o viés filosófico-científico cognitivista clássico. A ciência cognitiva dita clássica se iniciou com pesquisas feitas, principalmente, nas áreas da robótica e cibernética. Consequentemente, um dos argumentos fundamentais do cognitivismo clássico é que a inteligência, entre outros fundamentais processos cognitivos, poderia ser basicamente entendida como ocorrendo por meio de computações de representações.

Brooks (7), por exemplo, desenvolveu um primeiro importante passo utilizando sistemas cognitivos ‘’simples’’: ele desenvolveu robôs com sistemas funcionais capazes de ‘’entenderem’’, por meio de processos computacionais, certos aspectos relacionados ao mundo.Portanto, poderia-se dizer que os primeiros sistemas complexos auto-organizadores foram pensados a partir de estruturas que funcionavam, de fato, como um computador. Os robôs eram capazes de elaborarem comportamentos simples que condiziam com estímulos ambientas que eles recebiam. Estes simplesmente processavam informações que recebiam de seu ambiente, por meio de processamentos computacionais; desta maneira, eles já interagiam com o mundo, por meio de comportamentos simples de contato e comunicação, ‘’reconhecendo’’ portanto que tipo de comportamento simples produzir.

Os robôs de Brooks foram um primeiro importante passo rumo a uma ciência da cognição que incorporava processos ‘’mentais’’ e informacionais ao ambiente, que fornecia aos robôs a possibilidade de agir, por exemplo. A partir daí, alguns aurores começariam a explorar a ideia de que a cognição (humana) se dá à partir de um contato direto com o ambiente. Em vista disso, foram desenvolvidas novas perspectivas que tentariam ir além de componentes computacionais que pudessem dar ao sujeito as capacidades de entender e agir em seu ambiente.

Esta hipótese tradicional é obviamente incompleta, por motivos bastante claros: de que maneira estes inputs computacionais podem explicar aspectos referentes à subjetividade, consciência, e fenômenos relacionados? Ou seja, de que maneira um modelo computacional poderia instanciar, por assim dizer, aspectos fenomenais? Para uma grande variedade de pesquisadores em ciência da cognição clássica (4), é preciso que o sujeito represente o mundo, de certa maneira, em sua ‘’mente’’ (no cérebro), por meios de processos ligados à funcionamentos neurofisológicos, para que seja então possível significá-lo. Assim sendo, o sujeito encontra-se assim ‘’conectado’’ com a sua realidade por meio de processos mecanicistas, fundamentado em uma ontologia ainda cartesiana e materialista: mente, corpo e mundo não interagem, realmente, entre si. A representação da realidade é dada ao sujeito por meio de intermediações processuais computacionais: o sujeito tem certas sensações físicas, por exemplo, que são processadas pelo cérebro, que então constrói uma representação interna relacionada à sensação, percepção, ou qualquer outro processo, seja este mental ou corporal, por assim dizer.

Se houver então consciência, ainda assim, esta seria instanciada pelo cérebro, por meio de processos puramente neurofisiológicos, e a experiência seria apenas um epifenômeno. Para os cognitivistas tradicionais, para que tanto processos mentais como corporais possam acontecer, é necessário que o cérebro do sujeito tenha alguma ‘’capacidade’’ de conceber o mundo por meio de processos neuronal-representacionistas que o levem a inter-agir com o ambiente. De que maneira seria então possível correlacionar estados intencionais (experienciais) com processos neurofisiológicos que poderiam levar a alguma ação ou percepção?

Porém, Varela et al., durante todo o percurso de ‘’A Mente Corporificada’’, nos lembram que é de suma importância concebermos que a cognição se faz por meio de uma relação intencional, tanto experiencial quanto organísmica, que o sujeito entretém com o mundo. O próprio organismo intra-celular mantém uma variedade de processos, uma regulação contínua que leva o sujeito a agir, sentir, pensar, etc. Portanto, tanto processos mentais quanto corporais ocorrem, intrinsecamente, por meio da tríade entre sujeito-corpo/organismo-mundo.
Sendo assim, para os autores, a cognição se dá em contato direto com o mundo por nós experiencialmente e corporalmente articulado.

Entre outros autores importantes que destacam o papel da relação primordial entre a percepção visual e a articulação com processos regulatórios sensos motores são O’Regan e Noë (6), por exemplo. Para os autores, a articulação intencional e consciente entre sujeito e mundo não ocorre somente por meio da percepção visual, mas também por meio de certos posicionamentos e ações corporais pelos quais este percorre e »explora» seu ambiente. Consequentemente, o corpo (tanto físico quanto vivido) é, de fato, componente intrínseco desta autorregulação organísmica que dá ao sujeito alguma experiência sobre si- mesmo, significando também o mundo através do dispositivo »sense-making» (trad. livre: processo significativo), como diz Thompson (5). O processo de Sense-making se refere a capacidade que o sistema autorregulatório tem de, por meio dos mais variados processos cognitivos e mentais, significar o mundo para o sujeito. O sujeito dá sentido ao seu mundo por meio de ações e percepções incorporadas; que se tornam implícitas a partir do momento no qual o sistema enativo se relaciona com o mundo e o contexto em que este se encontra. Ou seja, o sujeito encontra-se sempre situado cognitivo-corporalmente em um certo contexto vivido, que pode então ser significado experiencialmente.

O self, para os autores, deve aqui ser entendido como uma estrutura móvel e experiencialmente acessível ao sujeito; não por meio de »introspecção», como diriam autores que, novamente, reduziriam alguma capacidade de uma possível sensação sobre »si mesmo» a estados puramente mentais e internos. O self se dá, ele »acontece» durante a interação que o sujeito tem com o seu mundo, tanto por intermédio de processos mentais como percepções, o imaginário, etc., tanto como processos corporais e fisiológicos como ações, movimentos corporais, entre outros. Varela et al. (3) fazem, neste ponto do livro, uma interessante relação com algumas tradições budistas que tomam o self como estrutura que não é permeada por experiencial alguma ‘’sobre si’’. O termo para este estado, em inglês, é chamado de selflessness. Ou seja, a mente estaria esvaziada de qualquer conteúdo experiencial, estado afetivo, etc. Portanto, o self deverá, penso, ser entendido de fato como um »algo» maleável e em constante transformação, e não como estrutura fixamente localizável no cérebro, por exemplo.

Aqui, os autores de »A mente corporificada» continuam desenvolvendo um framework holístico em relação a uma ciência cognitiva que leva em conta os diversos fatores experienciais que também engendram a visão enativista que é proposta na obra. Sendo assim, o self é também composto por uma variedade de fatores »disposicionais» que constituem a maneira pela qual o sujeito entende seu mundo: a cognição, por exemplo, ocorre aqui em um processo auto-regulatório e »significador», é necessário que o self também seja entendido como uma unidade intimamente pertencente ao organismo, sendo constituída por afeto, percepção, corporeidade, impulso, etc. Ou seja, o self não é uma estrutura mental, por assim dizer, mas um processo relacional com o mundo e outros que também inclui, em diferentes níveis de funcionamento, disposições e atividades cognitivas, mentais, biológicas, etc.

Evan Thompson e Eleanor Rosh, em seu novo prefácio escrito especialmente para esta edição revisada, fazem uma série de críticas conceituais com as quais eles dizem não estarem mais satisfeitos, anos após a publicação da primeira edição (1). Isto se dá, também, a meu ver, com os avanços técnico-empiricos das ciências médicas. A psiquiatria contemporânea, por exemplo, conta com instrumentos diagnósticos que têm o poder de localizar mudanças neurofisiológicas mínimas, recorrentes em alguma localização bastante específica do cérebro. Portanto, a neuroimagem certamente se tornou »parceira» indispensável para pesquisadores na área de neuropsiquiatria. Ainda assim, imagino que Varela et al. nos mantêm constantemente em alerta sobre a importância da pesquisa »naturalista-biológica» ser feita em conjunto com as ciências humanas. Por conseguinte, enquanto a medicina avança com importantes achadas neurobiológicos, a subjetividade e o significado da existência humana precisarão também ter o seu espaço em uma interação de fatores que muitas vezes é mais complexa do que aquela que uma visão puramente naturalista nos dá.

Esta nova edição da obra de Varela et al. (3) proporciona ao leitor uma perspectiva ampla e bastante inovadora em sua proposta de esmiuçar uma ciência cognitiva que integra uma grande diversidade de outras concepções e visões de mundo tanto científicas (de cunho empírico e teórico) quanto práticas. Por exemplo, se inserido (o que já têm sido feito por alguns) no contexto das ciências da saúde, mais especificamente mental, que vantagens a proposta enativista poderia vir a trazer à psicopatologia, às diversas abordagens psicoterápicas, etc.? Quais seriam as vantagens que esta proposta poderia vir a trazer nas atuais e relevantes discussões interdisciplinares entre as ciências humanas, médicas e biológicas? A leitura desta obra, assim espero, abrirá horizontes de expansão intelectual para seus leitores, que certamente se enriquecerão com uma proposta tão atual e heurística acerca de tudo que nos faz humanos. Vejo como absolutamente necessário que os pesquisadores, estejam estes desenvolvendo os seus trabalhos nas mais diversas áreas do conhecimento, partam do princípio de que é sim necessário pensar e praticar ‘’além’’ da própria disciplina, indo assim ao encontro do que é feito e pensado em outras áreas. É claro que não será nunca possível dedicar-se unicamente ao estudo de uma grande diversidade de autores, áreas do conhecimento, etc. Mas as colaborações interdisciplinares se fazem importantes, já que é desta maneira que pesquisadores poderão construir »pontes de conhecimento». Varela et al. certamente se empenharam neste quesito, mostrando o quão frutífera a pesquisa multidisciplinar pode ser.

Por fim, ainda vale expor um breve parágrafo sobre as introduções reescritas por Evan Thompson e Eleanor Rosch ainda se faz necessário. Os autores retomam alguns aspectos do momento em que a obra foi originalmente publicada, acessando criticamente alguns dos pontos temáticos que, com o passar dos anos, se modificaram com relação aos pontos de vista e argumentos da maneira pela qual estes foram inicialmente apresentados. Infelizmente não será possível aqui analisar todos os pontos apresentados pelos autores, mas vale a pensa considerar, por exemplo, a importância que todo o framework enativo desfruta, hoje em dia. A filosofia »incorporificada» se tornou aliada importante das ciências naturais, configurando assim novas bases empírico-teóricas para a apreciação dos mais diversos fenômenos subjetivos, cognitivos e inter-relacionais humanos. Já existem, além da perspectiva enativista, outras versões dos chamados »e-approaches» à mente, que cada vez mais se estabelecem como contraponto às divisões demasiado dualistas das ciências, em geral.

Porém, é óbvio que entre estas perspectivas também há divergências teóricas bastante significativas: algumas ainda se apoiam em uma ontologia dualista, outros propõem modelos internalistas ou externalistas no que diz respeito a eventos e conteúdos mentais e perceptuais, etc. De qualquer maneira, a fenomenologia atual também se encontra muito mais avançada em sua investigação rigorosa das estruturas experienciais, desta maneira se destacando como importante aliada, principalmente, do movimento enativista. Para Rosch, e eu apoio completamente esta linha de argumentação crítica, a grande pergunta, de agora em diante, seria*, dentre muitas outras: o que mais temos a aprender, no que diz respeito as ciências naturais e ao método investigativo da primeira pessoa, ou subjetivo?

O enativismo, como proposta filosófico-empírica de investigação das estruturas processuais cognitivas e experienciais deverá, a meu ver, tentar adequar-se a entendimentos científicos materialistas e/ou reducionistas, para que seja possível encontrar assim caminhos investigativos que possam ser feitos em parceria. Certamente será muito importante que os pesquisadores se mantenham atentos a estes questionamentos, para que não haja exageros de ambos os lados: a ciência natural precisa cuidar para que ela não se aprisione em enquadramentos demasiado reducionistas, e o enativismo, com a sua investigação de sistemas autônomos experienciais e cognitivos complexos, deve manter-se aberto para a eventual e cuidadosa integração de aspectos que vão além de seu escopo investigativo.

Literatura:

Brooks, R. (2002). Flesh and Machine: How Robots Will Change Us. New York: Pantheon.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The Phenomenology of Perception. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

O’Regan, J. K., Noë, A. (2001a). A sensorimotor account of visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 939 –973. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X010007.

Thagard, P., “Cognitive Science”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL .

Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind (1st ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. MIT Press.

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (6th ed.). Cambridge, MA.

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., Rosch, E. (2017). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA.

Denis Seron: Apparaître: Essai de philosophie phénoménologique, Brill, 2017

Apparaître: Essai de philosophie phénoménologique Book Cover Apparaître: Essai de philosophie phénoménologique
Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology, 16
Denis Seron
Brill
2017
Hardcover €204,00
xii, 213

Burkhard Liebsch (Hg.): Der Andere in der Geschichte — Sozialphilosophie im Zeichen des Krieges

Der Andere in der Geschichte - Sozialphilosophie im Zeichen des Krieges. Ein kooperativer Kommentar zu Emmanuel Levinas' "Totalität und Unendlichkeit" Book Cover Der Andere in der Geschichte - Sozialphilosophie im Zeichen des Krieges. Ein kooperativer Kommentar zu Emmanuel Levinas' "Totalität und Unendlichkeit"
Burkhard Liebsch (Herausgeber)
Verlag Karl Alber
2016
Paperback 40,00 €
432

Reviewed by: Anne Clausen (University of Göttingen)

Das 1961 erschienene erste Hauptwerk von Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalité et infini. Essai sur l’exteritorité, hat auch im Jahre 2017 nichts von seiner Aktualität verloren. Die darin behandelte Frage nach der Andersheit und dem Anspruch des (ganz) Anderen behält angesichts von Flüchtlingskrise, Terrorismus und kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen in vielen Teilen der Welt seine thematische Relevanz, die zu dem Denken über Gerechtigkeit, Ethik und Ansprüche wie es etwa im Kontext von Habermas oder Rawls geschieht, eine ernst zu nehmende Infragestellung und Alternative darstellt.

Lévinas steht für ein Denken von Alterität oder Ander(s)heit, die sich jeder Verfügung entzieht und nur als Überschuss verstanden werden kann, der zugleich das Subjekt in seiner oder vielmehr als Verantwortung für den Anderen konstituiert. Er eröffnet damit den Blick für einen Bezug auf den Anderen, in dem wir schon stehen, bevor wir Verträge schließen und Politik treiben. So bringt er zur Sprache, was „‚zwischen uns’ geschieht, bevor es überhaupt zu normativen Fragen des Guten und des Gerechten kommen kann“ (Liebsch, 23). Der Andere begegnet dem Ich als Gesicht bzw. Antlitz und das Einzige, was positiv über ihn gesagt werden kann, ist gerade, dass er konstitutiv nicht in dem Eigenen aufgeht. Diese Fremdheit des Anderen macht zugleich seine Freiheit aus, die zu schützen die unbedingte Forderung ist, die an das Ich ergeht.

Die radikale Unverfügbarkeit des Anderen sprachlich zu fassen stellt ein Paradox dar, das Lévinas zu immer neuen Formulierungen an der Grenze der Sprache treibt. Dabei geht es darum, ein Jenseits des Seins zu denken bzw. den Anderen anders zu denken denn als „Teil einer als ‚Schauspiel’ aufgefassten Welt oder als ‚Theater’ eingestuften Weltgeschichte“ (vgl. Liebsch 46). Die Geschichte ist nicht das „Maß aller Dinge“ (Vgl. Lévinas, Schwierige Freiheit 151), sondern kann und muss von der Beziehung Von-Angesicht-zu-Angesicht her korrigiert werden (vgl. Liebsch 11), die sich der Totalität entzieht. Notorisch problematisch bleibt dabei die Frage, wie radikale Geschichtskritik und anti-historisches Denken der Alterität doch wieder mit der Geschichte und vor allem mit dem Politischen zusammenzubringen sind. Es resultiert das dringende „Desiderat, in diesem alteritätstheoretisch anspruchsvollen Sinne ethisches und historisches Denken zusammenzubringen“ (Liebsch 14).

Diesem Desiderat nähert sich Burkhard Liebsch an und fügt mit seinem 2016 im Karl Alber Verlag erschienenen kooperativen Kommentar der breiten Literatur einen neuen und informativen Beitrag hinzu, dessen Alleinstellungsmerkmal darin besteht, sich dem vieldiskutierten Werk in Einzelanalysen zu widmen, die sich chronologisch  den einzelnen Abschnitten des Werkes widmen. Der 400 Seiten starke Kommentar ist dafür in 16 Einzelanalysen plus Einführung und Nachtrag des Herausgebers organisiert, in denen bekannte Namen der Lévinas-Forschung jeweils einen kurzen Abschnitt des Werkes behandeln. Anstelle einer akribischen Interpretation bemühen sich die einzelnen Autoren und Autorinnen dabei, die Thematik des jeweils behandelten Abschnittes in einen größeren Kontext zu fassen und auf je eigene Weise zu fokussieren. Die einzelnen Analysen unterscheiden sich dabei erheblich darin, ob sie sich ganz auf den Ausschnitt beschränken oder diesen eher zum Anhaltspunkt für weiterführende Überlegungen nehmen. So entsteht ein sehr reichhaltiger Überblick mit detaillierten Einzelinterpretationen, der zudem – nicht zuletzt dem Schreiben von Lévinas selbst geschuldet – mit der Polyphonie der Stimmen ein Sagen und Wieder- bzw. Wider-Sagen der zentralen Motive beinhaltet. Die großen Themen wie der Genuss und die Sinnlichkeit des Subjekts, ein anderes Denken der Intentionalität, die Vorgängigkeit des Anderen und die Verantwortung für ihn, Ontologiekritik und das Jenseits des Seins und natürlich das Gesicht bzw. Antlitz werden so immer noch einmal neu perspektiviert. Im Gespräch mit Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, aber auch Proust und Beckett werden einzelne Diskursstränge herausgeschält, gesagt und wi(e)der gesagt. Neben der vorwiegend affirmierenden Lektüre richten sich dabei auch einige kritische Fragen an den Autor, die insbesondere die Implikationen des Alteritätsdenkens und die philosophische Haltbarkeit der vorgebrachten Thesen betreffen. So entsteht ein lebendiges, reiches und auch spannungsvolles Bild des Werkes, das zeigt, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit Lévinas auch nach mehr als 55 Jahren nicht abgeschlossen ist.

Zum Auftakt thematisiert Hans-Christoph Askani die Beziehung zum ganz Anderen, die das Ich sich selbst entreißt und die Lévinas als Metaphysik bezeichnet . Er zeigt, dass der hiermit angezeigte Bruch mit der Totalität sich in der Sprache und als metaphysisches Begehren ereignet, das dem (weltlichen, leiblichen) Bedürfnis entgegensteht. Dieser Bruch wird als Bedingung der Möglichkeit von Frieden ausgewiesen; es gibt aus der Totalität und d.h. vom Krieg „einen Ausgang, weil es in sie einen Einbruch gibt.“ (87)

Der Herausgeber selbst, Burkhard Liebsch, nimmt sich Lévinas’ „sozialphilosophisch gewendet[e]“ (89) Lesart von Descartes vor, mit der dieser  zu zeigen versucht, dass das Soziale, verstanden als Begegnung mit dem ganz Anderen, das Epistemische fundiert (vgl. 90f.). Diese Begegnung ist, so Lévinas, nur möglich in einem getrennten Psychischen, das sich der „Aufhebung in Geschichte“ (95) widersetzt. Das Begehren des Anderen bewirkt dann eine Umkehrung oder „Konversion“ des Seienden, in der es sein Glück, seinen Genuss, für den Anderen aufzugeben bereit ist. Liebsch stellt jedoch die beschriebene Selbstgenügsamkeit dieses Subjekts der Trennung in Frage – „Können wir wirklich in psychischem Leben derart bei uns selbst ‚zuhause’ sein […] ?“ (110) – die zudem in Spannung mit Lévinas’ späteren Andeutungen steht, denen zufolge das Subjekt immer schon ein Empfangenes, d.h. dem Anderen schon begegnet sei.

Bernhard H.F. Taureck gibt den wohl am wenigsten favorablen Ausblick auf Lévinas. Seine Analyse der Freiheit stellt „kritisch-polemische“ und „eklektische“ „Evidenzen“ heraus, die nur durch die weitere „Evidenz“ der „Verklärung“ eine gewisse Attraktivität erhalten, und sieht Lévinas letztlich in einer Komplementärstellung zu Beckett: „Wenn Levinas die Verwüstung verklärt, so wird hier die Verklärung verwüstet. […] Was der eine befestigt, reißt der andere ein und umgekehrt.“ (134f.)

Auf den dann folgenden Seiten stellt Sophie Loidolt die „Intentionalität des Genießens als Grundstruktur der Subjektivität“ (136) heraus, die sowohl zu der Intentionalität Husserls als auch zu der Sorgestruktur des Daseins bei Heidegger eine Alternative darstellt. Als „leben von…“ hat Existenz eine irreduzibel sinnliche Qualität, die es nur gestattet, eine Unabhängigkeit des Subjekts in der Abhängigkeit von etwas zu denken, die die Voraussetzung für die Begegnung mit dem Andern ist. In dieser Darstellung fährt Alwin Letzkus fort, der den Genuss als „die eigentliche, weil tiefste Wurzel der Intentionalität“ (161) herausstellt: Die Vorstellungen des Bewusstseins selbst sind vom Genuss getragen. Nur diese Konzeption eines nicht auf Intentionalität und Repräsentation reduzierten Bewusstseins soll es erlauben, die Transzendenz des Anderen zu denken.

Pascal Delhom arbeitet die „Struktur der bedingten Bedingung“ (186) heraus, die sich zuerst in der doppelten Vorgängigkeit von Gegenständen und Ich zeigt (176f.) und sich bezüglich der Begegnung mit dem Anderen wiederholt: Einerseits setzt diese die Trennung des Individuums voraus, andererseits ist diese Trennung aber nur möglich, weil das Subjekt dem Anderen bereits begegnet ist, d.h. von ihm empfangen wurde. Delhom sieht hier „jenseits aller Dialektik“ eine spezifische Verbindung von Aktivität und Passivität beschrieben, die die Setzung eines Ichs ermöglicht, das der Offenbarung des Anderen fähig ist (vgl. 187).

Auch Gabriella Baptist stellt die Vorgängigkeit der Begegnung mit dem Anderen heraus, durch die eine „Dimension der Aufmerksamkeit eröffnet [wird], die sich vom Genuss der Elemente und von den Bedürfnissen des Lebens und deren Nahrung befreien kann“ (192) und die letztlich auch die Enteignung durch den Anderen, nämlich das Geben, erlaubt. Die Autorin kontrastiert Lévinas’ Darstellung der Bleibe mit dem In-der-Welt-sein bei Heidegger, dem sich auch Antje Kapust noch einmal als der Bedingung und dem Anfange menschlicher Bezugnahme zur Welt widmet (vgl. 203).

Matthias Flatscher und Sergej Seitz gehen auf die Rolle der Sprache ein, die bei Lévinas „nicht in epistemologischer Hinsicht betrachtet, […] sondern als ein responsives Geschehen gefasst [wird]“ (220) und Transzendenz ermöglicht (vgl. 223). Der Andere sei kein Inhalt, der sich thematisieren ließe, sondern er wird angesprochen und drückt sich aus; ihm gegenüber steht das Ich in der Verantwortung, die es erst konstituiert. Gegen die Selbstkritik von Lévinas an seinem eigenen Werk schlagen die Autoren vor, „eines der produktivsten Momente von Totalität und Unendlichkeit [] [in dem] Anbieten eines alteritätsaffinen Seinsbegriffs [zu] verorten“ (234).

Der Frage, wie etwas zugleich Modalität des Bewusstseins und Exteriorität sein kann, widmet sich Alain David. Um diese paradoxe Qualität des Gesichts zu denken, muss – gegen Husserl und Heidegger – eine Sinnlichkeit gedacht werden, die die Intentionalität des Bewusstseins überschreitet und bei der es nicht um „die Offenbarung der Welt, sondern [um] diejenige der Sprache – als Sprache des Anderen“ (255) geht.

In einem stärker systematisch orientierten Zugang beleuchtet Werner Stegmaier die Destruktionen, die Lévinas vornimmt, indem er den Blick für die ethische Beziehung zum Anderen öffnet: An die Stelle des Spekulativen, des Prinzipiellen, des Theoretischen und des Definitiven rückt das Über-sich-hinaus-gezogen-werden des Denkens, die ethische Beziehung, die Umorientierung im Denken des Denkens, der Sprache und der Gesellschaft. Der Beitrag von Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann hat eine ähnliche Stoßrichtung, indem er den Institutionen, dem Werk und der Geschichte, in denen das Individuum nicht als solches erhalten bleibt, den Pluralismus entgegensetzt, der sich in der Beziehung zum Anderen ereignet und durch die Geduld, die Epiphanie des Antlitzes und die Verantwortung expliziert wird. Wie der Autor zeigt, ermöglichen es diese Figuren, eine Subjektivität zu denken, die sich von sich selbst entfernt, ohne dass dies als Unterwerfung unter das Universelle zu denken wäre.

Vor dem Hintergrund eines Überblicks über die großen Themen, die in Totalität und Unendlichkeit verhandelt werden, – die Priorität der Alterität vor der Identität, die (Inter-)Personalität und Pluralität vor Universalität und Rationalität und die Individualität und Responsivität vor der Intentionalität und Totalität – gibt Christian Rößner ein Bild jener „Phänomenologie des Eros“ (313, nach einer Überschrift in Jenseits des Seins), wo die „Zweisamkeit zu keiner erotisch-platonischen Einheit“ (316) verschmilzt. Dabei stellt er heraus, dass dieser Teil des Buches, der vor allem feministische Kritiken auf sich gezogen hat, seine literarische Vorlage in Prousts Albertine hat. Christina Schües stellt die Fruchtbarkeit, die Lévinas im letzten Teil seines Werkes behandelt, als eine Möglichkeit heraus, Transzendenz zu denken, indem sich das Subjekt hier nicht „mitnimmt“ und damit die Einheit der Selbigkeit aufgebrochen wird. Der Sohn bedeute die Befreiung des Vaters und erlaube es, eine unendliche und diskontinuierliche Zeit zu denken, in der Vergebung möglich sei.

Dieter Mersch stellt im Sinne der „Konversion des Bezugs“ (351), die die Destituierung der Ontologie, die Priorisierung der Passivität vor der Aktivität und eine Ethik der Alterität beinhaltet, das „Von-Angesicht-zu-Angesicht“ als Quelle des Sozialen heraus, das einerseits dieses Soziale anders verstehen lässt – nämlich nicht als Gefüge von „‚Interaktion’ bzw. den Regeln interpersonaler Verständigung“ (359) – und andererseits eine „Ethik ohne Gesetz“ (369) begründet.

Und schließlich differenziert Alfred Hirsch zwei Stufen der Freiheit: zuerst jene willkürliche und einsame Freiheit des genießenden Subjekts und dann die moralische Freiheit, in die das Ich durch den Anderen eingesetzt wird. Hirsch sieht durch den Eintritt des Dritten die „Möglichkeit der Symmetrie, des Austausches und die Gerechtigkeit“ (386) gegeben, wobei es der „Asymmetrie des ethischen Anspruches durch den Anderen “ bedarf, die „verhindert, dass der Staat nicht zum Unrechtsstaat mit gutem Gewissen wird.“ (387)

Hiermit kehrt das Buch letztlich zu der Ausgangsfrage nach der Stellung des Anderen in der Geschichte zurück. Abschließend lässt sich sagen, dass es sich bei dem kooperativen Kommentar um eine solide Einführung in das erste große Hauptwerk von Lévinas handelt, die zudem an vielen Stellen Bezüge zu anderen Schriften des Autors herstellt und Verbindungen zu anderen Autoren eröffnet. Naturgemäß werden die bekannten Gedankenfiguren behandelt, die für Lévinas-Vertraute eher keine Neuigkeit darstellen werden. Darüber hinaus bietet das Buch aber auch Fokussierungen auf randständigere Aspekte des Werkes und besticht durch detail- und kenntnisreiche Analysen. Der im Titel angekündigte Geschichtsbezug wird dabei allerdings nur sporadisch aufgegriffen und darf durchaus auch weiterhin als Desiderat gelten

Donata Schoeller, Vera Saller (Eds.): Thinking Thinking: Practicing Radical Reflection

Thinking Thinking: Practicing Radical Reflection Book Cover Thinking Thinking: Practicing Radical Reflection
Schriftenreihe der DGAP
Donata Schoeller, Vera Saller (Eds.)
Verlag Karl Alber
2017
Hardcover 30,00 €
240

Reviewed by: Étienne Pelletier (University of Montréal)

Thinking Thinking: Practicing Radical Reflection, edited by Donata Schoeller and Vera Saller, is a collection of essays that reflect on the very process of reflection. The topics revolve around the activity and the experience of thinking. As such, the nine authors address questions related to language-use, the body as source of meaning, and subjective experience. They offer a broad picture of contemporary discussions and debates in phenomenology, philosophy of language, and psychotherapy.

In a way, each essay points toward theoretical constructions and attempts to define their epistemological blind spots. The phenomenological postulate stating that what is described is tightly linked to the way it is given and to the experience of the subject for whom it is given lies at the root of every contribution. The «logical, syntactical and semantic structures of propositions (11)” are insufficient to account for the complexity of thought-in-process. Furthermore, it is the contributors’ conviction that these habitual conditions of thinking leave aside the vitality of the process. This implies that we should consider the embodied processes and the preconscious dimension accompanying thinking.

Claire Petitmengin’s chapter invites us to take account the corporeal experience of the scientist at work. The author collected a series of scientists’ descriptions of their ideational processes to clarify a source of pre-reflective meaning. In so doing, she provides interesting epistemological considerations regarding the relation between lived experience and the genesis of new ideas. In this perspective, “non-rational” tasks such as walking and drawing prove to be decisive in many researchers’ methods of investigation. Albeit underexamined, this “shifting of the center of attention from the head to the body (34)” should be considered. By turning away from discursive modes of thinking, the scientist can open to a “‘felt’ dimension of experience which seems to be…the very dimension of meaning (37).” The skeptic is tempted to question the probity of a so-called felt meaning. But we should keep in mind that such questioning weakens the moment we give up rigid distinctions between body and mind.

In her chapter, Susan A. J. Stuart similarly situates bodily experience at the center of her investigation, this time in explicit relation to language. Discussing Thomas Reid’s theses on artificial language and natural language, she argues for a priority of kinaesthetic, perceptual, and especially “enkinaesthetic” (i.e., the affects we have of our neuro-muscular processes) determinants at the origin of language and considers them as “artificial.”

Eugene Gendlin also approaches an implicit dimension of cognition. He argues that this “background” is not as vague as we might suppose. From the outset, it has a certain “precision” and is decisive, for example, in the formation of concepts. The author suggests various analytic possibilities for this “thinking with the implicit.” Referring to a similar notion of “background,” the prime concern of Donata Schoeller’s chapter is the “thoughtful process of articulation.” She argues that “what is said clarifies aspects of a background that functions in the meaning of what is said (112).” In other words, she examines the cultural and biographical ‘contexts’ that come into play when we formulate and articulate any experience through language. The essay is particularly interesting for its discussion of new possibilities in the methodology of scientific inquiries. These possibilities extend to the theory and practice of psychotherapies.

Both Terrence W. Deacon and Vincent Colapietro’s chapters examine the role of language in relation to the process of thinking. The former offers a neurologically-oriented account of language as “a variation on the emergent dynamics of mental processes in general (157).” He argues that this best fits with our experience of language (i.e., not as a construction and analysis following rules). As for Colapietro, he discusses Peirce’s fallibilism and the experience of ignorance and error as constituent of self-knowledge.

Language is also central in the last chapter, that of Steven C. Hayes’. He examines the relation between knowing and its verbal-symbolic correlate. His thesis is that “human language and cognition…fundamentally alters and shapes our subjective experience and the perspective from which we view it (209).” However, despite the ostensible simplicity of this statement, the author shows clearly that this commonplace appearance arises from our failing to question the meaning of the very terms and concepts used in its formulation. The concern of Hayes’ contribution is the specific meaning of language, cognition, symbols, and perspective-taking, as well as our use of them. This is especially relevant if we are to manipulate them in theoretical investigations concerning their role in our subjective life.

Vera Saller’s contribution addresses the notion of abduction, understood as the “creativity within the framework of rational thinking (182).” Peirce argued that abduction was the “only logical operation which introduces [a] new idea (183),” and should be distinguished from hypothesis. The author also points out that Peirce compared abduction and perception (201). As to the possibility of new ideas, Saller stresses the importance of everyday thinking in their formation: “it is in the problem solving of everyday life, that new thoughts arise (186).”

Remember the story of a Buddhist monk whose disciple urgently asks him about a serious spiritual issue. The master answers with a question: “Have you finished eating?” “Yes,” answers the impatient disciple. The master then replies: “Then go wash your bowl!” In short, there is no better way of solving a preoccupying reflective problem than going about our everyday tasks hoping for the “momentary but significant flash (190),” i.e., the abductive moment. This moment of understanding is clearly not of an exclusively cognitive nature, the more so that it “comes along with a pleasant bodily emotion (202).”

But Saller’s contribution is also interesting as she compares this process with the detective metaphor in psychoanalysis. The literature examining the detective leitmotif in psychoanalysis sometimes commits a crucial error: neglecting the patient’s own work. This is often in favor of a misguided image of the analyst as the sole investigating instance in the cure. The analyst is thus constantly chasing the truth of the subject lying on the couch. Moreover, in this conception of the analyst, he or she attributes to the patient a knowledge that can only come from him/herself. The author points out this mistake and brings forth the “abductive inferences” that the method of free association is supposed to facilitate.

Thinking Thinking: Practicing Radical Reflection serves multiple purposes, including theoretical inquiry (scientific and philosophical), as well as practical concerns (psychotherapy and other social practices). Combining numerous perspectives, notably phenomenology and the philosophy of language, it is relevant to a broad range of researchers and practitioners.