Psychanalyse et critique littéraire (1969-1970)
Le soulèvement du monde. Un voyage phénoménologique sur les pas de Nicolas Bouvier
Yoga and Phenomenology on Consciousness
The Experience of Noise: Philosophical and Phenomenological Perspectives
Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Luc Nancy
Point d'orgue
Inschibboleth Edizioni
2025
Paperback
140
Heidegger on Technology’s Danger and Promise in the Age of AI
Reviewed by: Giorgi Vachnadze
“How exactly is technology transforming us and our worlds, and what (if anything) can and should we do about it?” This is the opening question in Thomson’s (2025) book: Heidegger on Technology’s Danger and Promise in the Age of AI. No doubt a very much needed and anticipated reflection on how the original ideas in, for instance, the Question Concerning Technology[1] would react with the contemporary discourse on Artificial Intelligence. No less importantly, Thomson combines the algorithmic anxieties of our age with fears concerning things that have been lurking in our globalized (inter)cultural unconscious throughout the 20th and 21st centuries: nuclear technology, genome engineering and synthetic biology. As we enter the new stage of the Anthropocene[2] with Utopian promises and Dystopian nightmares, Thomson’s work could give us a compact handbook to reanimate the Heideggerian call to start thinking and (therefore) acting in new ways through the use and abuse of technological artefacts.
Thomson’s approach is both historical and philosophical, tracing the trajectory of Heidegger’s thoughts on technology while contextualizing them within modern advancements. The exploration of Gestell (enframing) as the operative mode of revealing that structures human perception of reality is central, as AI is situated within the larger continuum of destructive, panopticonic (Foucault, 1995) and subjectivating (Foucault, 2008) technological “advancements”[3]. Thomson addresses Heidegger’s notion of Gelassenheit (releasement) as a potential means of cultivating a more reflective, in some ways poetic engagement with technology, succumbing neither to its charms, nor rejecting it outright.
The review will outline Thomson’s key arguments, exploring how he applies Heidegger’s ideas to AI and other technological concerns of the present. We will explore the book’s central themes, discuss the main insights, and consider its broader relevance. By revisiting Heidegger in this context, Thomson invites us to reassess the ways in which technology not only transforms the world but also reshapes the very conditions of human thought and action.
Technology is a provocation to philosophical thought. Precisely in so far as it is a challenge to thinking itself. Technological thinking threatens to make thinking redundant by rendering it reductively computational. Philosophy is thereby cornered; if thinking is calculation, then philosophy as the art of thinking becomes obsolete – replaceable. If the simulacrum of thought (Baudrillard, 1994) becomes thought itself, then technological thinking would easily automate the philosopher’s job. But the real concern (Sorge) here is what happens to thinking as such in a technological age. And how can philosophers still think something that is relevant, new and most importantly; irreducible to algorithmic thinking (Vachnadze, 2024a 2024b) or “mere” calculation? Among many other questions, Thomson explores how Heidegger could help us step outside the confines of our episteme (Foucault, 2005) and think the thought of the Outside (Debnar, 2017) through technology.
In the chapter: From Atomic Weapons to Genetic Engineering and Artificial Intelligence the author takes on a monumental task of tracing the ontological shifts induced by three of the most consequential technological advances of the modern era. Thomson’s discussion of nuclear technology is one of the chapter’s strongest sections. Thomson frames the nuclear age not just as a political and military development, but as an ontological rupture—an epochal shift in how humanity relates to power in so far as it relates so to itself through the fundamental ontological structure of Dasein – anxiety. Major global catastrophes; more so their potential eruption, occupies a fascinating ontological space vis-a-vis the human psyche. The general sense of an impending doom, with no clear indication of which direction the destruction will come from, bears a strong resemblance, acting as pretext almost to the fundamental anxiety that structures human experience. What under different circumstances would have been “pure” anxiety, just the existential condition of being-in-the-world for Dasein, is now triggered by a material, yet no less ethereal threat of world-annihilation. But this time no longer only in the metaphysical, but in the literal sense as well.
Modern thought and its obsession with enframing (Gestell), an obsessive attempt to measure, optimize and calculate every aspect of the world, seems to find a kind of culmination with generative AI and Natural Language Processing software. ChatGPT tends to – or effectively does – turn thinking itself into a standing reserve. If we assume Cartesian dualism (another symptom of modern thinking), it seems then that genetic engineering would be enframing the body, whereas Artificial Intelligence would enframe the mind (through the enframing of language). Leading consequently to a total Neoliberal bio-commodification and the splitting up of the human lifeworld (Husserl, 1970). Nothing short of capitalist eugenics.
Returning to Thomson’s work; the author takes multiple moments to expose the distortions and ideological manipulations of both the utopian and fatalistic narratives around AI that have now reached eschatological dimensions (Vachnadze, 2024c). Heidegger offers a fruitful middle ground that avoids the pitfalls of both corporate hype and nihilist doom. In chapter 3 Thomson elaborates on Heidegger’s infamous diagnosis of the cybernetic age. The notion that the essence of technology – which strictly speaking is not an “essence” in the classical sense of a fixed abstract Platonic core, but more something along the lines of a process-philosophical understanding of the term – is something rather indeterminate. It is, one could say, an essence of becoming technological, a style of being. More importantly, as Thomson notes, quoting Heidegger, the essence of technology is “nothing technological” (2025). That is, the essence of technology is quite different from its material manifestation in the form of various concrete apparatuses and tools. It is thereby neither abstract nor empirical. It is a kind of thinking, a mode of “going about” in the world that precedes and establishes the conditions of possibility for technology. Thereby Thomson, via Heidegger, offers an insightful exposition of the contemporary episteme. In short, the essence of technology is precisely what we mentioned earlier: An enframing of nature that makes the world into a standing reserve ready to be exploited, extracted and used. One could go as far as to say that the essence of technology is a kind of ethical attitude, or more importantly perhaps, an unethical attitude or concern that Dasein exhibits toward the world, toward other Daseins, and toward itself.
Thomson argues that modernity consists of two distinct epochs continuous with one another: early modern subjectivism and late-modern enframing. Together they constitute the modern subject establishing Dasein’s fundamental concern with being and technology. The guiding question here is whether Heidegger’s philosophy allows for a postmodern alternative beyond the nihilism of late-modern technological enframing. Each epoch, Thomson continues, is temporarily stabilized through a unique ontotheology – a dual structure that anchors both an inner, foundational understanding of being (ontology) and an external, overarching framework that grants meaning to existence (theology). Throughout Western history, these ontotheological foundations have given successive epochs their coherence.
Late modernity marks a radical departure from the historical ontotheological pattern. The late-modern age is thoroughly Nietzschean. Dominated by the “metaphysics” of will to power and eternal recurrence. Here the Western tradition reaches an impasse: rather than anchoring reality to a stable ontotheological foundation, the contemporary episteme dissolves and gives way to a groundless, ceaseless flux of mere competing forces. As a result, modernity’s attempt to achieve mastery over being through rationality, science, and technology culminates in a paradox: Dasein that once sought control over reality becomes itself reduced to an object, stripped of all metaphysical or phenomenological privilege. Marking the transition from modern subjectivism to late-modern enframing[4].
This paves the way for a post-modern Heideggerian attempt to make a clearing for thought that could potentially escape both the constraining dispositif of computational reductionism as well as the threat of complete chaotic dissolution into non-sense. “When a metaphysics is truly “great” (in Heidegger’s terms), it quietly spreads a new “understanding of being” far and wide until it has settled into taken-for-granted common sense (Thomson, 2025). Ontotheology, far from a whimsical flight of the philosophical imagination, is what provides the most basic foundations for our understanding of the world. Despite being foundational, it is nonetheless subject to change, as each epoch reflects on its own conditions of existence quite differently. Thomson traces the emergence of subjectivism in early modernity, focusing on the Cartesian and Kantian traditions. Cartesianism establishes human cognition as the foundation of certainty, Kant further develops this framework and makes the rational subject the cornerstone of ethics, politics, and aesthetics. Subjectivism, Thomson argues, is Heidegger’s term for the modern drive to establish mastery over the totality of what-is – a metaphysical project that underlies the scientific and technological developments of the modern age.
At the same time Heidegger explains how this framework mischaracterizes human experience by treating the world as a collection of objects external to the subject, rather than an integrated network of beings. The subject, in the quest to master the world, inadvertently sets the stage for her own self-objectification. As modernity progresses, subjectivism increasingly loses its metaphysical coherence, giving way to the late-modern epoch of enframing. Enframing is a self-overcoming of subjectivism. The subject-object dichotomy is no longer viable. The will to mastery becomes an endless process of optimization, in which the subject loses its ontological distinctiveness and becomes indistinguishable from the technological systems it once used to steer.
The danger of enframing, and danger is an important component here, also creates the possibilities of thinking the Outside of the given epistemic formation. The very forces that threaten to enclose human existence within technological enframing might also contain the potential for an alternative mode of (thinking) being. The possibility for a post-metaphysical alternative that does not attempt to establish a new ontotheology but seeks rather to twist free (verwinden) from technological enframing would involve shifting from a mode of instrumental rationality toward one of meditative thinking (Besinnung), where being is encountered as something that both informs and exceeds conceptualization. Thomson argues that the postmodern revolution can already be traced through the works of figures like Hölderlin, Van Gogh, and Nietzsche. “Heidegger’s postmodern revolution began over two centuries ago” (Thomson, 2025). The dispersed and polysemic thinking offered by these and similar writers/artists; a thinking of multiplicities perhaps, contain insights that could help resist nihilistic-technological enframing.
The initial question returns in new and altered form as we reach the final culminating chapter: Thinking a Free Relation to Technology, or: Technology and the Other (Postmodern) Beginning. What in the beginning was posed as “How exactly is technology transforming us and our worlds, and what (if anything) can and should we do about it?” has now become: “How do we move beyond the nihilistic tendencies of late-modern enframing and into a genuinely free relation to technology?” Thomson weaves previous discussions on technology, metaphysics, and postmodernity together into a coherent Heideggerian response to the technological age.
Our relationship with technology has to be untangled or unframed from its original reductive-computational form not through reactionary rejection, but through a postmodern attunement to being. The phenomenological capacities of technology need to be reactivated in order to make an alternative clearing in Dasein’s relationship with the various tools at its disposal. This implies first seeing; noticing the said alternative potential of deterritorializing artifacts as immanent to technological becoming, and consequently – making use of this potential in a creative way. An event that would see technology as a site of ontological disclosure rather than a device for turning beings into standing reserves of energy is what Heidegger terms Gelassenheit (releasement or “letting be”). Gelassenheit entails the bracketing of the exploitative attitude of enframing by letting beings be and allow beings to reveal themselves differently; on their own terms. A fundamental change of aspect (Wittgenstein, 1953) where we cultivate an open and thoughtful engagement with technology, employing artefacts in new and meaningful ways while rejecting the optimization imperative. Heidegger offers us a techno-political aesthetics of difference.
The optimization imperative is Neoliberal through and through; the reduction of all human activity to the extractive logic of cost/benefit analysis. We have seen the disastrous effects of technological enframing in every institutional domain throughout the world: labor, education, sexuality, jurisdiction etc. Teachers still see AI as an educational problem, rather than the symptom of making students into a standing reserve of labor and profit. The widespread use of AI in and outside the classroom is symptomatic of the optimization crisis. When students view learning as an obstacle between them and the labor market; as a tool of improving one’s credentials for employment rather than a transformative process, the use of AI to generate essays or answer exam questions, far from an ethical lapse or instance of academic misconduct, is rather an entirely logical response to a system structured around efficiency and productivity rather than meaning. A direct consequence of technological enframing.
Thomson’s meticulous engagement with Heidegger’s philosophy reveals a profound tension between the promise and peril of technology. At its core, Heidegger’s critique of enframing is not a reactionary rejection of technological progress but rather a diagnostic tool for understanding the historical shift in our relationship to being. This shift, as Thomson convincingly argues, has now reached a critical point with the emergence of artificial intelligence. As contemporary AI systems increasingly dictate the parameters of knowledge production, human creativity and thought risk being reduced to mere instrumental functions, evaluated through the capitalist diagram of efficiency and calculability. To repeat; however, the essence of technology is nothing technological – meaning that any escape from its grasp cannot be found in a simple reversal but in a transformation of our mode of thinking itself. Motion without movement.
Thomson’s analysis of late-modern enframing shows how AI, genetic engineering, and nuclear technology represent powerful forces that restructure the conditions of human existence. The danger of technological enframing is twofold: It positions human beings as mere objects within the Bestand (standing reserve), reducing all things – including thinking – to a matter of managing resources; and it obscures the possibility for an alternative mode of being, foreclosing Dasein’s imaginative and existential destiny. Gelassenheit opens up a path to the Outside – a way of inhabiting technology that neither facilitates the production of a Homo-Oeconomicus (Foucault, 2008) nor retreats into the helpless nostalgia of a pre-technological age. In order to ‘let beings be’ one would require a form of thinking that resists the impulse to master and control, cultivating an openness to the unfolding of being in its plurality.
The implications of this stance are far-reaching. If modernity’s drive for mastery has led to an epoch of nihilistic enframing, then our task is not to overcome technology in the traditional sense but to reorient our relationship to it. Thomson’s invocation of Hölderlin, Van Gogh, and Nietzsche suggests that art and philosophy provide crucial sites of resistance – spaces for the emergence of alternative modes of world-disclosure. This is particularly relevant for recent developments in AI, where the optimization imperative has all but stripped language of its poetic function, making a standing reserve out of thought and all creative human activities through reductive computationalism. Can we re-infuse technology with a poetics of being? More so, can we achieve this with AI and not in spite of it?
The crisis of technological enframing is, once again, also an opportunity: “… where there is danger some salvation grows there too” (Hölderlin, 2018). An opportunity for a philosophico-poetic clearing where philosophy can reclaim its role as a site of genuine thinking rather than mere calculation. A difficult undertaking. The Neoliberal structure of global capitalism is deeply invested in technological enframing, ensuring that resistance to optimization is met with skepticism, hostility and recently – open fascism. One must bear in mind, once again, that the ontotheological structures of our epochal thinking are not fixed; they are subject to transformations – ruptures, which those tasked with the work of thinking must uncover. We are indeed on the cusp of another major shift – an epochal flight that may only become legible in hindsight. Let us hope that the philosopher does not arrive too late.
Ultimately, the task of philosophy in the age of AI is not to offer prescriptive solutions but to cultivate a different attunement to the world. Heidegger’s concept of Besinnung, meditative thinking, offers a potential path forward – a way of engaging with technology that does not seek to dominate but rather to listen, to dwell, to allow beings to disclose themselves on their own terms, according to their unique internal logic. This is not a call for passivity but for a radical form of engagement – one that refuses the terms of technological enframing and seeks out new modes of relationality. In this sense, Thomson’s work is in many ways a call to reanimate our mode of being and to make it genuinely conducive to an ethical and political metamorphosis.
The book’s final provocation, whether a free relation to technology is still possible, remains aptly and intentionally open-ended. Following the path-marks laid down by Heidegger, one should bear in mind that every attempt to resolve the problem in advance would throw us back into the mode of enframing, leading to a foreclosure of the very openness that allows for genuine thinking. Thomson leaves us with anxiety – the future of technology is, as it should be, undecided. The forces of enframing are what constitute power today; and thought must resist by twisting itself free from the algorithm. Whether we succeed in doing so remains contingent on our willingness to embrace the challenge that Heidegger and Thomson set before us: to think, in a world increasingly governed by calculation. What could it mean to stubbornly resist and philosophize today?
Bibliography:
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by S. Glaser. University of Michigan Press
Davies, J. (2016). The birth of the Anthropocene. University of California Press.
Debnar, M. (2017). Michel Foucault on Transgression and The Thought of Outside. European Journal of Science and Theology, 13(1), 59-67.
Ellis, E. C. (2018). The Anthropocene: A very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Foucault, M. (2005). The order of things. Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 (G. Burchell, Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Vintage Books.
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology, and other essays. New York: Garland Pub.
Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press.
Hölderlin, F. (2018). Selected Poetry. Bloodaxe Books.
Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. A. (2018). The human planet: How we created the Anthropocene. Yale University Press.
Thomson, I. D. (2025). Heidegger on Technology’s Danger and Promise in the Age of AI. Cambridge University Press.
Vachnadze, G. (2024a, October 17). Cybernetic discourse analysis: “Mother was an AI”. Blue Labyrinths.
Vachnadze, G. (2024b). The incomputability of calculation: Wittgenstein, Turing, and the question of artificial intelligence. Newsletter on the Results of Scholarly Work in Sociology, Criminology, Philosophy and Political Science, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.61439/URSA3237
Vachnadze, G. (2024c). Christian Eschatology of Artificial Intelligence: Pastoral Technologies of Cybernetic Flesh. Becoming.
Wittgenstein, L., & Anscombe, G. E. M. (1953). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Basil Blackwell.
[1] Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology, and other essays. New York: Garland Pub.
[2] See; Ellis, E. C. (2018), Davies, J. (2016), Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. A. (2018).
[3] Throughout the review I make several connections with Foucault’s work. These connections are my own, Thomson does not make these connections and he does not use Foucault’s texts in his work.
[4] The two together define Modernity proper.
Saint Paul and Contemporary European Philosophy: Outcast and the Spirit
Edinburgh University Press
2025
Paperback
232
Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One’s Breath
Reviewed by: Dr Angelo Bottone
(Dublin Business School)
In Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One’s Breath, Jean-Louis Chrétien (1952-2019) focuses on ten ordinary words which are also “decisive in the spiritual tradition,” as he explains in the Preface. Each word is a path, and in questioning them, Chrétien does not seek to master or define them, but rather to let them speak, to allow their resonance, their biblical, philosophical, and poetic echoes to unfold. The act of meditating on these words becomes a form of attentive listening, where language itself is received as a gift and thinking takes the form of response.
Originally published in 2009 under the title Pour reprendre et perdre haleine: dix brèves méditations, this is the first time the work has been translated into a foreign language.
The ten terms Chrétien explores are: breath (souffle), way (chemin), temptation (tentation), attention (attention), recollection (recueillement), blessing (bénédiction), peace (paix), gentleness (douceur), abandonment (abandon), and wound (blessure).
Each meditation may be read in isolation, but Chrétien suggests considering them as a progression that moves from the most general, breath, which also inspires the book’s title, to the most specific, wound, a theme he has explored in other works such as La joie spacieuse (2007). The trajectory is not linear or developmental in the traditional sense, but contemplative and intensifying: beginning with the elemental experience of breathing, Chrétien gradually draws the reader deeper into the vulnerabilities of human existence, until reaching the wound as the place where all previous themes converge. The wound, in Chrétien’s thought, is never merely a mark of suffering; it is a place of encounter, where fragility becomes the threshold of transcendence. Chrétien approaches these words with reverence and vulnerability, seeking not to explain them from without but to dwell with them from within, allowing the voice of tradition and the fragility of human existence to illuminate their hidden depths.
Chrétien’s style in these ten meditations (“brief meditations” in the original title Pour reprendre et perdre haleine: dix brèves méditations, published in 2009) is deliberately slow, poetic, and resonant. It resists systematic exposition and instead unfolds through a kind of contemplative circling, like a long-breathed conversation, in a low voice. This stylistic choice is not incidental; it mirrors the very rhythm of breath that structures the book: the inhalation of silent attention, and the exhalation of praise, surrender, or poetic invocation. Chrétien writes with what might be called a phenomenological lyricism. His prose blends philosophical reflection with scriptural allusion, patristic echoes, and poetic imagery, weaving a polyphony of voices such as Saint Teresa of Avila, Malebranche, Silesius, Dante, Kierkegaard, and above all Augustine, into a living tapestry of meaning. The result is a form of writing that is as much addressed to the heart as to the intellect. It invites not just interpretation, but inhabitation. One reads slowly, contemplatively, letting the words breathe rather than submitting them to conceptual closure. In this way, the style itself becomes a spiritual exercise: the reader must pause, attend, and receive, echoing the very structure of prayer that the book so gently evokes.
Chrétien’s dialogue with Augustine is particularly vital. Augustine is not merely cited but becomes a kind of subterranean guide. Chrétien draws on Augustine’s notion of the inner word (verbum mentis) and the dilated heart of Psalm 119 to articulate a theology of interiority oriented toward generosity and praise. The voice, for both Augustine and Chrétien, is where the soul becomes manifest, and the dilation of the heart signals the soul’s readiness to respond to God. In this way, Chrétien’s meditations do not simply echo Augustine; they translate Augustinian insight into phenomenological attentiveness.
“This book aims to be European,” Chrétien specifies in the Preface. In fact, each term is often explored in its semantic variations across major European languages, primarily French, but also Latin, German, Spanish, English, and Italian. Chrétien is attentive not only to etymology but to the spiritual and poetic nuance each linguistic tradition carries. For example, in the meditation on attention, the resonance of the Latin attendere (to stretch toward) contrasts subtly with the modern English “to attend,” which has lost its meaning of “waiting” while retaining that of vigilance and assistance. This philological sensitivity is never merely scholarly; it serves Chrétien’s larger spiritual and phenomenological aim: to illuminate how words, when listened to with care, become sites of lived experience and theological depth. Through this multilingual, intertextual weaving, Chrétien constructs a space that is unmistakably European in its cultural lineage, yet open to the universal dimensions of spiritual life. The small book thus positions itself not only as a contribution to philosophy or theology, but also as a work of cultural memory, echoing the shared breath of Europe’s literary, mystical, and philosophical traditions.
Although Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One’s Breath is among Chrétien’s more lyrical and accessible works, it remains firmly grounded in the philosophical commitments that shape his wider corpus. At the heart of Chrétien’s thought is the idea that human existence is fundamentally structured as response: we are not self-originating subjects but beings addressed by the world, by others, by God, and constituted in our capacity to answer. This response is not reducible to verbal or intellectual articulation; it is enacted through the body, and especially through the voice, which Chrétien in his La Voix nue (2007) has described as the site where interiority is exposed, offered, and made vulnerable. The voice is not a neutral instrument of expression; it is the manifestation of the self in its vulnerability. Unlike writing, which can be revised or deferred, the voice is immediate, ephemeral, and exposed. It gives the speaker before any content is communicated.
Breath, then, is not only physiological but metaphysical; it is the silent precondition of all voice, all responsibility, all praise. Each meditation in this volume can be seen as a variation on this theme: the human person as appelé à répondre, called to respond. Whether in attention, abandon, or blessing, the author emphasizes that we do not initiate meaning or mastery; we listen, receive, and offer ourselves in return. His phenomenology resists the ideal of sovereign subjectivity in favor of a relational approach in which being human means having been addressed first. This commitment aligns him with other figures associated with the so-called “theological turn” in French phenomenology, but Chrétien distinguishes himself by placing emphasis not on concepts like the invisible or the saturated phenomenon, but on the embodied, voiced, and prayed experience of being touched by transcendence. In this sense, Ten Meditations does not diverge from his more explicitly theoretical works as it enacts them, allowing his philosophy to take on a liturgical and poetic form.
The book does not fit neatly into any single genre or discipline. It is neither a philosophical treatise nor a theological tract; neither a devotional manual nor simply a collection of essays. It is all of these and more. Rooted in phenomenology, it adopts the stylistic cadence of spiritual writing. Its rigor lies in fidelity to lived experience, not conceptual closure. For this reason, it resists easy classification but rewards deep attention. Like the best of the mystical and poetic traditions from which it draws, its authority arises not from argument but from resonance.
A particularly illuminating insight into Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One’s Breath comes from Andrew Prevot[1], who proposes that Chrétien’s meditations are not merely about prayer but are themselves a form of prayer or, more precisely, a text that invites the reader into a posture of prayer. According to Prevot, Chrétien’s style of writing, with its peculiar rhythm, tone, and theological poetics, functions analogously to lectio divina, the traditional Christian practice of slow, meditative, receptive reading of Scripture. Chrétien’s prose does not proceed by systematic demonstration or argumentative clarity; instead, it unfolds contemplatively, circling around key spiritual words such as souffle (breath), recueillement (recollection), bénédiction (blessing), and blessure (wound). These meditations are phenomenological in method, but liturgical in spirit, drawing the reader into a rhythm of interior attentiveness and affective response.
This rhythm is not incidental. As Chrétien makes clear in the opening meditation, which is also the one that inspires the title, breathing is not only a biological act but a spiritual posture. To breathe is to receive life from beyond oneself, to exist in openness, exposure, and dependency. The movement between catching one’s breath and losing it is not merely physiological, but theological: it names the structure of spiritual existence, in which one receives (grace, word, silence) and responds (in prayer, love, or abandonment). Chrétien’s meditations unfold this structure across ten variations, each tracing a movement from interiority to gift, from attention to response, from wound to song. His words operate in this sense not only as analysis but as invitation: the reader is called not to evaluate them critically from a distance, but to enter into them, to pray them, to let them reorder one’s breath.
Prevot highlights this feature with remarkable clarity: “Chrétien’s works are also spiritually edifying. They invite one not merely to think but to pray with them. Indeed, I believe it would be possible to turn to Chrétien as a spiritual guide, to go on a personal retreat structured by his books (perhaps especially the ten meditations in Pour reprendre et perdre haleine)”.[2] What Chrétien offers, then, is not simply a theory of prayer, but a form of philosophical praying, a writing that breathes with the cadences of invocation, silence, and praise. The language of the book is saturated with Scripture, poetry, and theological resonance, but it is never dogmatic or didactic. Instead, it is polyphonic and contemplative, weaving the reader into a web of listening. For Chrétien, as Prevot stresses, prayer is not a private act but a choral response to divine excess. This choral dimension is crucial: to pray is always to pray with others, even in solitude. Chrétien’s prose, by echoing voices from biblical characters, medieval mystics or modern poets, places the reader inside this community of response, and asks them to breathe in its rhythm.
This makes Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One’s Breath a unique and remarkable work in the phenomenological tradition. It is a book that not only interprets spiritual experience, but that becomes spiritual experience, a kind of literary liturgy, a textual prayer. It does not aim at conceptual mastery but at spiritual transformation, leading the reader gently but insistently toward a more attentive, wounded, recollected, and surrendered existence. To read it, as Prevot notes, is to discover that “Chrétien has given us the gift of thinking prayer and praying thought.” The text breathes, and invites the reader to breathe with it—to catch one’s breath in wonder, and to lose it in love.
The rhythm named in the title – to catch and to lose one’s breath – is more than a poetic flourish; it is the structural and spiritual heart of the book. Chrétien uses this double movement to articulate a phenomenology of contemplation and self-gift. Reprendre haleine, to catch one’s breath, names the moment of interior gathering, a pause of attention and recollection in which one prepares to speak, to listen, or to act. This inhalation is not idle; it is a way of opening the self to receive what is given: from language, from others, from God. It is the very posture of prayer, of philosophical meditation, of poetic readiness. But Chrétien does not allow this moment to close in on itself. Each meditation ultimately gestures toward perdre haleine, losing one’s breath, which signifies not exhaustion but generous expenditure, surrender, and praise. The breath that is recollected in silence is given back in song, in blessing, in abandonment. The highest breath, Chrétien suggests, is not the one we keep, but the one we offer. This rhythm animates the entire progression of the meditations, from the elemental fragility of breath to the sharp exposure of the wound. Contemplation is not the opposite of action; it is its condition and its source. In this light, the book’s structure mirrors the logic of the gift: what is most interior becomes most truly itself when given away. In this, Chrétien articulates not only a phenomenology of prayer, but a vision of human existence grounded in receptivity and generosity: a life lived between the breath we receive and the breath we return.
It is fitting that the final meditation in the series is dedicated to blessure (wound). If souffle (breath) introduces us to our dependence, our need to receive life and meaning from beyond ourselves, blessure brings that vulnerability to its highest intensity. The wound is where the breath falters, where speech breaks, and where the self is opened, often involuntarily, to what exceeds it. Chrétien does not romanticize suffering, but neither does he treat the wound as merely a deficit to be healed. Rather, he sees in it a site of revelation and transformation. The wound is the mark of having been touched by love, by grief, by God, and it is often in the wound that the deepest form of prayer emerges: the silent cry, the sigh, the breath that can no longer be held. This final meditation gathers all the others by showing that every moment of attention, recollection, and blessing ultimately leads to a place where we are undone, not annihilated, but rendered porous to grace. The breath we have received and given finds its limit here, but also its completion. In the wound, Chrétien suggests, we are most exposed and most available to the divine. This is not the culmination of a dialectic, but the intensification of a rhythm: breath given, breath lost, self offered. The meditation on blessure thus brings the reader to the edge of voice, where silence is no longer absence but a form of communion—a shared fragility that opens onto transcendence.
Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One’s Breath is not only a work by Jean-Louis Chrétien. It is also a translation of his work by Steven DeLay, a novelist and philosopher himself. Translating Chrétien is no small task: his prose is dense with theological, philosophical, and poetic resonances; his style favors nuance, rhythm, and allusion over clarity and conciseness. Yet DeLay manages to preserve the contemplative cadence of the original French while rendering the text in an English that is both faithful and fluid. His translation succeeds not only in accuracy but in tone, and it breathes with the same reflective pace and reverent attention that mark Chrétien’s voice. Moreover, DeLay’s editorial presence enhances the volume in subtle but significant ways. His editorial footnotes, which were absent from the original French edition, serve to clarify linguistic choices, point the reader to relevant works by Chrétien, and provide essential theological or philosophical context where needed. These notes are never intrusive; rather, they assist the reader in navigating Chrétien’s references and concepts without disrupting the meditative flow. Importantly, in the Translator’s Introduction, DeLay recounts how this project began with Chrétien himself, who, the first time they met in 2017, among almost thirty published works, selected Pour reprendre et perdre haleine as the book he most wished to see translated by DeLay. This personal invitation adds a layer of fidelity and responsibility. DeLay is not only the translator, but the one entrusted by Chrétien to carry this particular voice across into English. In this sense, DeLay’s work goes beyond translation: it is a form of interpretive accompaniment, making the text more accessible to Anglophone readers while preserving its depth and integrity. In doing so, DeLay not only brings this important work into the hands of English-speaking readers, but also contributes meaningfully to the growing reception of Chrétien as a central figure in contemporary phenomenological theology, one whose voice, now more audible across linguistic boundaries, continues to challenge, console, and inspire.
The volume also includes a brief but illuminating foreword by Emmanuel Housset, one of Chrétien’s closest students and collaborators. Housset situates the book within the broader arc of Chrétien’s life and thought, and reads it as a “reminder of philosophy’s indebtedness to words. For it is in words that we think, it is also words that make us think”. (p. ix)
Taken as a whole, Ten Meditations for Catching and Losing One’s Breath is not a loosely connected sequence of spiritual essays, but a tightly woven theological and phenomenological meditation on what it means to live a life of attention, receptivity, and self-offering. It exemplifies Chrétien’s distinctive voice within the landscape of French phenomenology, a voice that insists on the primacy of response over initiative, of listening over mastery, of vulnerability over control. More quietly than his overtly theoretical works, this book nonetheless enacts many of the central motifs of Chrétien’s philosophical project: the structure of call and response, the exposure of the self through the voice, the liturgical nature of human embodiment, and the ethical demand that arises from being addressed. The meditations are phenomenological not because they analyze phenomena as such, but because they dwell in the phenomena of prayer, praise, recollection, and fragility without reducing them to abstract categories. In doing so, Chrétien gives us a rare kind of writing, at once philosophical and poetic, theological and personal, rigorous and prayerful. It is a book that does not merely speak about the breath; it breathes. And in doing so, it invites us to breathe with it, to catch our breath in silence and contemplation, and to lose it in love and praise.
Bibliography
Chrétien, Jean-Louis. La Voix nue: phénoménologie de la promesse. Paris: Minuit, 1990.
Chrétien, Jean-Louis. La Joie spacieuse: essai sur la dilatation. Paris: Minuit, 2007.
Chrétien, Jean-Louis. Saint Augustin et les actes de parole. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002.
Bloechl, Jeffrey. Fragility and Transcendence : Essays on the Thought of Jean-Louis Chrétien. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.
Gonzales, Philip John Paul, and McMeans, Joseph Micah (eds). Finitude’s Wounded Praise: Responses to Jean-Louis Chrétien. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2023.
Peruzzotti, Francesca. “Human Spirituality: Jean-Louis Chrétien and the Vital Side of Speech” in Religions n. 7, vol .12 (2021), p. 511.
[1] Andrew Prevot, “Praying with Jean-Louis Chrétien,” in Geffrey Bloechl (Ed.) Fragility and Transcendence, Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 117-129.
[2] Ibid, p. 118.
Husserl and the A Priori: Phenomenology and Rationality
Reviewed by: Shuai Zuo (Fudan University)
It’s unusual to write a review of a book published four years ago. However, one research book doesn’t lose its value because it is in the past. The problem of a priori, and a series of concepts such as idea, eidos, essence, rationality etc., are apparently not as attractive as the concepts such as reduction, pure consciousness, time etc. This is understandable, since it seems that many discussions of the a priori revolve around metaphysical problems, which are speculative instead of descriptive. However, phenomenology doesn’t start with transcendental reduction, there are hidden motivations that lead Husserl step by step to transcendental reduction. To thoroughly study a priori truth is no doubt one of those motivations. Actually, we could find the structure of ontological concern – transcendental concern in Husserl’s important books, such as two volumes of Logical Investigation; the first Chapter and the others in Ideas I, the first half and the second in Formal and Transcendental Logic. We should take serious of Husserl’s “metaphysical” thought. There is a reason why Heidegger said ontology is possible only as phenomenology (cf. Heidegger 1967, 35).
What just said is corresponding to Santis’s ambition, which is clear in the very beginning of this book. Santis worries that if Husserl scholars have eyes only for present, phenomenology might lose its propria principia, and disappear in the future (cf. De Santis, 2021, 3-4). Maybe one of the examples of “present” refers to the frontier interdisciplinary research between phenomenology and other sciences. This kind of research is no doubt pivotal for phenomenology to keep alive. However, to what extent could it keep alive as itself? Only by understanding that question clearly could phenomenologists truly know their position and what they could contribute in the interdisciplinary trend. In this sense, Santis’s book is very inspiring. For example, it’s impressive to trace Husserl’s thought back to the rationalism, i.e., from Descartes to Kant (Part VI). What Santis has done is not only put Husserl in a historical line, instead, he points out the most profound contribution that phenomenology provides to philosophy, and that is the understanding of Rationalität/Vernünftigkeit.
This book is not a straightforward, step-by-step argument but rather resembles a circular labyrinth. The questions Santis raises at the beginning are only addressed at the end. He juxtaposes his thoughts in between, and those thoughts are also relevant. On the one hand, some parts of the argument have overlapping tasks, for instance, the discussions of essence, idea in the third part and the discussions of eidos in the fifth part. On the other hand, every part contributes to the understanding of the ultimate question: a priori. This is also the author’s interpretation of the system of the book through Schopenhauer’s mouth: a single thought must “preserve its most perfect unity. If, all the same, it can be split up into parts for the purpose of being communicated, the connection of these parts must once more be organic, that is, of such a kind that every part supports the whole just as much as it is supported by the whole” (8). It’s obvious that the whole and the part support each other, but in my view, this organic nature is still hidden in the fog and can be clarified by summarizing. Before the specific summary, let’s take a look of the basic theme and structures of this book.
The central question of this book is the relation between ontic a priori and constitutive a priori. Among the eight parts of the book, apart from the introduction in the first part and the conclusion in the last part, strictly speaking, only the seventh part deals with the constitutive a priori. Parts II to VI are all concerned with the ontic a priori. Santis provides the background of some crucial concepts by analyzing their historical development, especially in part III and IV. Accordingly, these parts tend to consider ontic rationality (Rationalität). In part VII, Santis starts discussing constitutive a priori in the perspective of genetic phenomenology. Santis tries to argue that the a priori laws have its resource in the self-constitution of monad. If Santis successfully finish this argument, we would understand Husserl’s position between realism and idealism. However, since Santis’s main concern is ontic a priori rather than constitutive a priori (8, 9), this problem is only touched upon and there left a space for further discussion. I would like to take the structure of ontic a priori – constitutive a priori, or the dichotomy between Rationalität and Vernünftigkeit as a main clue in this review.
I’ll start with Part III. If it’s proper to say that the book is a circular labyrinth, then the real circle starts in Part III. Part III is the longest part in the whole book, the first half of this part concerns why Husserl gradually replaced “idea” with eidos, which is actually the only meaning of a priori. The second half provides a detailed analysis of the development of concepts such as species, idea, essence, a priori, laws and necessity.
Let’s begin by stating that a priori is an adjective that describes nouns. The next question is: what kinds of nouns can it describe? Essences and ideas are certainly among them. Besides, some particular judgments could also be regarded as a priori. The key standard is foundation (Begründung). A proposition, a knowledge, or even a truth could be called a priori “means nothing else but stating its own specific Begründung” (126). The foundation is conceptual essentialities (126), pure essence (128-129). According to the first half of part III, pure essence is eidos, and they are both distinguished from species. Species is universal (Allgemeine), which is obtained by generalization, while essences are obtained by formalization. Husserl realized this in around 1905. In around 1912, pure essence or idea is gradually separated from the other two meanings of essence. Essence could still be intuited while pure essence couldn’t, instead, it could only be obtained through extrapolation (Herausschauung) (118). Just like geometrical concepts, pure essences are also ideal limit. (119)
To be more specific, pure essence are also foundation for a priori laws (138). That means, the pure essences in themselves have certain laws. If some particular judgments are necessary, the reason would be that they are the particularization of relevant laws. For instance, the proposition “this yellow must extend over one flat” is necessary, because the pure essence of color is independent of pure essence of extension.
Therefore, pure essence is the key concept. We are committed that there are pure essences and corresponding laws. Pure essences and laws could be particularized into individual judgments, and the latter could also be purged or retrieved to the former. Here we are first confronted with Rationalität and Rationalisierung. If we could successfully retrieve any particular judgments to laws governed by pure essences, then this judgment is rational. We could also explore pure essences and laws in phenomenological perspective. Then the question is on what acts does the pure essences and laws are grounded? In contrast with a posteriori empirical judgment, as Santis quoted, “essential judgments are characterized by the fact that they do not need perception and experience, yet still some intuition through which their states of affairs are given” (134; Hua V 42). Although Santis doesn’t explicitly mention, here concerns the problem of constitutive a priori. How does subjectivity constitute pure essence and laws? What does it mean by saying “still some intuitions are given”. Only solving this question could we understand phenomenological Vernünftigkeit, which refers to the acts that conform with pure essences and laws. We should keep this in mind, for it will be touched upon in detail in the seventh part.
The fourth part discusses three methodological variations through Logical Investigations to Ideas I, i.e., ideation, eidetic attitude and eidetic reduction. This part intersects with part III, since it discusses the method apprehending pure essences.
First method is ideation or idealizing abstraction. We could abstract some specific moment from other moments in some given empirical thing, besides, individuality should also be abstracted (De Santis, 2021,159). For instance, there is a red stone in front of me, I could abstract red quality from extension and other moments, and I could also abstract the idea red from “this-here”. I no longer grasp spatiotemporal thing, but the intemporal pure essence instead. Ideation or idealizing abstraction is categorical act, and it is founded on sensuous act. “Foundation” doesn’t mean that categorical acts must first intend the objects of sensuous acts, then to idea. As Santis summarizes as Ideation 7: “The act of ideation, or universal intuition, is a categorial act of the type that does not co-intend the objectuality originally given by the founding act” (163). Therefore, abstraction is not the proper term anymore. Categorical acts intend to idea or pure essences directly, there is nothing to be abstracted from.
The second method is eidetic or a priori attitude. According to what is discussed in part III, it is not difficult to understand a priori attitude. In empirical attitude, objectualities of existence (Daseinsgegenständlichkeiten) are given, while in a priori attitude, objectualities of essence (Wesensgegenständlichkeiten) (168). The distinctive feature of the a priori attitude is that, under this attitude, it is not only ideas that are given; rather, it is the ideal world itself that is emphasized as being given (168).
The third method is eidetic reduction in Ideas I. In analogy with transcendental reduction, we could distinct three steps of eidetic reduction.
In all these three stages, we can find one similar structure. In ideation there is founding sensuous acts and founded categorical acts. In the second stage, there is basing empirical attitude and based a priori attitude. In the third, there is exemplar as the beginning, and then the operation of reduction. We can summarize them as sensuous acts-categorical acts; empirical attitude-a priori attitude; exemplar-pure essence. In all of these three pairs, how could we obtain the latter from the former, and guarantee that the latter is eidetic? This is also the key problem between ontic a priori and constitutive a priori in the whole book. This clue is always implied in Santis’s arguments, although he doesn’t mention that.
Part V meticulously analyzes the first chapter of Ideas I, it is divided into three themes. First is to explain further what eidos is; then, based on the understanding of eidos, Santis analyzes eidetic science; finally, the complicated concepts “region” and “material ontology” are clarified. The first two steps are leading to the third, and material ontology plays a crucial role in part VI. We could even argue it is Husserl’s special material ontology that distinguishes him from the traditional rationalism.
In both part III and IV, eidos had already been discussed. It is different with species and individual essence. Part V clarifies the difference between eidos with essence once again. Essence is “the stock or set of predicates pertaining to an ‘individual object’ as an entity that is in such and such a way”, while eidos “comes under ‘truths’ belonging to ‘different levels of universality’” (188). That means eidos doesn’t affiliate to empirical objectuality, rather, it is a new kind of objectuality. It might be proper to distinguish two structures, essence-individual and eidos-exemplar. I hold that the latter structure is solid in the whole book from now on.
Based on the discussion of eidos, we can understand what eidetic science is. The task of eidetic science consists in “a systematic rationalization of the empirical”, and the paradigm is geometry (205). The process from exemplar to eidos is identified as an act of rationalization, then eidetic science designates a rational system of empirical realities. Here things become complex, because under the title of “eidetic science” there are two possibilities, one is pure formal sciences, such as pure logic; the other is material ontology, such as pure phenomenology. Remember in part III we take idea as Kantian limit concept, for instance, “2” and “the eidos red” are both limit idea. Now we should keep in mind that although we could use Rationalität and eidetic science to describe the process from two tables to “2”, and from red table to the “eidos red”, there are slightly differences between them. I’ll leave this for now and only focus on the third point of this part, i.e., region and material ontology.
In §9 of Ideas I, region is simply the highest material genus, while in §16, Husserl gave a more rigorous definition of region: “With the concepts ‘individuum’ and ‘concretum,’ the scientific-theoretical and fundamental concept of region is also defined in a rigorously ‘analytic’ way. Region is nothing else but the entire, supreme generic unity belonging to a concretum, i.e., the essentially united connection of the supreme genera that pertain to the lowest differences within the concretum” (Hua III, 36). This is the sentence that leads Santis’s exploration. Region is no longer highest genus. For instance, sensuous quality could be the highest genus of one particular red, but it is not region. Region is the unity of the highest genera. But not any highest genera could be held together, only those that belong to the lowest differences within the concretum could become a unity. Unlike abstractum, concretum or concrete essence are independent. Color essence, for instance, is abstractum because it can only exist with extension. By contrast, stone essence or computer essence are concretum, since they don’t need to be with others. However, stone or computer are not lowest difference yet, because they could further be subdivided to diamond, laptop etc. Below lowest differences there is no more species. Lowest differences could only be individualized through tode ti. If a concretum is individualized according to this path, then we obtain individuum. Others such as one ruby red is individual rather than individuum.
We can only understand region by this seemingly “tedious” explanation. But this is not some intellectual game invented by phenomenologist. Instead, this implies several crucial points. For example, it means that eidetic reduction always commences with individuum, and what’s more important, the laws mentioned in earlier part are exactly the “regional axioms”, i.e., “the highest synthetic and a priori ‘laws’ that rule over the genera and species subordinate to it” (220). It is also clear now why the laws are founded on genus, and strictly speaking, on region.
Therefore, there is solid eidos-exemplar structure. Through rationalization, exemplars could be retrieved to their laws, which are based on region. The laws in region are different with the laws governed by pure formal field such as pure logic. But they are both eidetic sciences. Before distinguishing these two kinds of eidetic sciences in detail, Santis put Husserl in the history of philosophy. This movement precisely responses his concern at the very beginning of this book. Instead of staring at present, he tries to focus on past and clarifies Husserl’s unique contribution to philosophy.
I take Part VI as the most impressive in the book. Santis put Husserl in the tradition from Descartes to Kant, presents the Husserl’s breakthrough of rationalism. The writing style may lead one to become engrossed in contemplating each individual philosopher’s questions, while neglecting the overall interest. I contend that there is one leading thread: from modern philosophy to Kant, all neglected material a priori.
Husserl belongs to the rationalism tradition, and he placed its historical origin in Plato (cf. 248). The belief of rationalism is reason (Vernunft), i.e., individual experience acts could be rational. Spinoza represented the first radical peak of rationalism, who argued that “the totality of being” is immanently rational (242). Husserl would agree with this, since the function of eidetic science is the rationalization of experiences. According to Santis, Husserl borrowed Spinoza’s term “sub specie aeternitatis” to describe this function (243). Sub specie aeternitatis can be interpreted as seeing something from the perspective of eternity, which, in fact, means adopting an eidetic attitude (237). Husserl’s use of Spinoza’s terminology was based entirely on his own philosophy. We must understand eternity in the structure of eidos-exemplar. That means Husserl only partly agree with Spinoza and other rationalist. Santis summaries it as follows: “Husserl agrees on the form but disagrees on the content; he embraces the very same philosophical aspirations of the old rationalists, yet he rejects the way in which their project was first understood and carried out” (245). What “content” didn’t Husserl agree on?
Santis traces the history of rationalism from Plato according to Crisis. In Plato’s ancient philosophy, idea and empirical things are not completely divided, empirical world are méthexis of the ideal world. Even in Euclid’s geometry, ideas can always be applied to the world of experience (252). Galileo followed but reshaped (umgestalten) this path, radically mathematizing nature and thus nature itself is idealized (ibid.). Galileo’s nature purified all real things into mathematical or physical expressions, so that every real had a mathematical index. Everything in the natural world, including psychological experiences, is seen as part of this grand universe dominated by causality. Modern philosophy, beginning with Descartes, adopted an understanding of rationality influenced by Galileo. In other words, modern philosophy pursues the path of formal a priori. Spinoza’s imitation of the geometry and Leibniz’s mathematica universalis are examples. Husserl criticized Leibniz for failing to recognize rationality within experience itself. Instead, Leibniz rationalized experience through thought (Denken), resulting in an experience that was reduced to being purely mathematical. Leibniz didn’t see the difference between formal a priori and material a priori (263); Wolff traced all experience back to the law of contradiction (264). Kant is an exception. Kant is opposed to an extreme logicism (264), since he argued “synthetic a priori”. However, Kant still failed to see the rationality inside the material, missing the real sense of the material a priori. Therefore, from Descartes to Kant, the neglect of material a priori is the content that Husserl disagreed with.
Besides the main thread of formal and material a priori, the analysis of modern philosophy is also accompanied by logical rationality (Rationalität) and transcendental reason (Vernunft). By idealizing nature, Galileo’s theory should be monistic, because psyche is also collected into causal nature. However, the dualism has already been prepared (254). Why? I think Santis implies that it wasn’t feasible to naturalizing psyche completely. We could indeed rationalize and study psyche in the way of natural science, however, modern philosophers also realized that there is transcendental reason. Descartes’s “I think” and Leibniz’s “monad” are proof. Unfortunately, modern philosophy has always failed to highlight this unique transcendental reason of psyche, and always confused it with naturalized psyche. This is the meaning of “misadventure of rationality” in the title of this part.
Only now could we understand clearly the two kinds of eidetic sciences, one is exact science such as pure logic; the other is descriptive science such as phenomenology. The whole modern science, and also Kant, emphasized exact science, hence only emphasized one kind of rationality. The particular rationality of material, which leads to material ontology, is missing.
Material ontology are explained in part VII by genetic phenomenology. According to the critical acceptance of modern science, now we could understand material a priori, it refers to the rationality immanent to empirical entities. Material has its own laws. Just like Husserl said, color is inseparable with extension, this is material a priori, instead of analytic a priori (cf. Hua XXVIII, 403). How two understand the unique laws belonging to material? Santis analyzes two similar laws according to the second version of the third logical investigation:
a. example of formal law: There cannot be a king (master, father) without subjects (servants, children) etc.
b. example of material law: A color cannot be without something colored, or A color cannot be without some space that it covers. (De Santis 2021, 275)
Husserl must prove that the latter is synthetic law. Both these two kinds of law are different with another kind:
c. example of pure analytic law: A whole cannot be without parts. (275)
For our purpose, we can only focus on the first two. What’s the difference between the relation king-subject and color-something colored? They have different correlatives. Santis gives a final determination about correlative after solid research: “Two expressions are correlative when their relation is included in them as an implicit content, or, better, as an implicit meaning” (281). According to this determination, when we say “color”, the expression doesn’t implicitly include its relation with something colored. By contrast, the expression “king” or “father” actually implies its relation with “subject” or “child”. I think it need more research to reinforce this argument[1]. But I will accept it and turn to following constitutive a priori.
Until now, the discussion is confined in ontic a priori, formal laws and material laws are directly accepted. The analysis up to this point maybe serve as the strongest defense of Husserl as a realist. As for constitutive a priori, Santis analyzes it and its relation with ontic a priori by genetic phenomenology.
The structure of synthetic a priori disclosed above has its root in ego’s “form-system”. “[W]ith the genesis of the ego itself implying at the same time the ‘genetic development’ of the ontological structure in question” (289). In the constitution of egoic monad, the ontological structure is simultaneously constituted. Both formal a priori and material a priori are grounded in the constitution of monad. With this turn, “formal a priori” is changed to “innate a priori”, while “material a priori” to “contingent a priori”.
“Innate” (eingeborene) doesn’t mean people could find out formal laws in their head, instead, it means “the lawfulness that rules over the process of the intentional self-constitution of the monad” (291). There are laws in the self-constitution of the monad, only then the monad could be regarded as rational. Constitutive laws and ontological laws overlap each other. Which “comes first”? Is it legal to ask this question? Let’s turn to contingent a priori first and then ponder in this question.
Material a priori is synthetic, it designates laws pertaining to two different moments. This kind of law is also independent of empirical material, and also refers to universality. But it is restricted compare with the universality of formal a priori (cf. 297).
How to understand this restriction? If we turn to the perspective of subjectivity, then “material” is changed to hyle or hyletic. If subjectivity is constituted, various formal laws are required—such as the intrinsic formal laws mentioned earlier. Even hyle itself is a formal concept (p. 298), for subjectivity is inconceivable without perceptive capacity. However, what is perceived concretely, i.e., hyle, is entirely contingent (kontingent). For example, if a subject is affected by color, this is contingent; a person born blind has never been affected by color. Yet, once affected by color, the subject gains insight into the essence of color, such as the essential relation between color and extension.
Furthermore, the dimension of subjective genesis also triggers a change in the understanding of the temporality of “essence” or “idea.” In Logical Investigations, what stands in opposition to reality is the idea. Real entities are individuated and has spatiotemporal positions, whereas ideal entities are characterized by in-temporality. In genetic view, what opposes reality is no longer the idea but irreality, since ideas/irreality can fully participate in reality. The temporality of irreality is no longer in-temporality, but omni-temporalit instead. Being omni-temporal means irreality still has a form of temporality, which allows the irreality, such as idea, pure essence, eidos or essential relations, to establish a connection with subjectivity. This connection is twofold: on the one hand, the omni-temporal irreality can be reactivated (Reaktivierung) by the subject, undergo particularization, and enter into the mundane world. On the other hand, irreality inevitably undergoes subjective constitution (311).
In light of this argument, the a priori relations constructed by irreality—whether analytical or synthetic a priori—are embedded within the genetic constitution of the monadic ego.
If the earlier parts describe Husserl as realism, part VII describes Husserl as idealism. Santis also deals with this dichotomy in conclusion (319). Santis argues that there are two forms of intelligibility, we could call them ontological and transcendental rationality. These two must be combine together (ibid.). How to understand this combination in detail? This is not the main task of this book, as Santis claims more than once that the Vernunft and Vernünftigkeit is only hinted (such as 317). Also, Santis makes it clear that the task is not to explore how a priori is embedded in the monad (289). However, it could be questioned. How the formal and material a priori is embedded, or constituted in monad? Once we ask, there might be the risk of collapsing into psychologism.
We could ask, how does the innate laws, such as motivations, constitute formal laws? If the formal laws are traced back to the self-constitution of monad, and even rationality is defined by the innate laws. What’s the difference with psychologism then? Doesn’t it mean that ontological structure depends on the subjective structure? To avoid this, could it be that formal laws do not “embed” within the monad, whereas material laws do? Then could we distinguish realism Husserl with idealism Husserl according to different kinds of laws? I cannot explore it here but it might at least be a question worth to think.
Bibliography:
De Santis, Daniele. 2021. Husserl and the A Priori: Phenomenology and Rationality. Cham: Springer
Heidegger, Martin. 1967. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Husserl, Edmund. 1952. Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften. Hrsg. M. Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. 1988. Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre. 1908–1914. Hrsg. U. Melle. Den Haag: Kluwer.
[1] Whether this is semantics analysis? Santis denies it in one footnote (276-277). But still, “color includes no other implicit meanings”, this sounds very semantical. To put it another way, when we perform fantasy variation starting with a single individual color, we arrive at ‘colored something’ as the invariable element; and when we begin with a specific individual, like a king, we arrive at the ‘subject.’ What is the difference between these two types of invariable elements?
In Search of Speech: Talking, Reading and Praying in an Age of Words
Explorations in Philosophy and Theology
Bloomsbury
2024
Hardback
208