Category: Reviews

Phenomenology, from its inception, has been interested in the problem of inception, especially in its connection to the act of conception: not just the question of how we think abstractly, but also the question of how we begin to think abstractly, has been a central focus for the phenomenological tradition since the late 19^th century. Owing to this intimacy of inception and conception—of beginning and thinking abstractly—as the source of a constellation of research questions, we should not be surprised that the origins of the phenomenological tradition itself should present itself as an area of research for people working in that tradition today. If, after all, there is in fact a close connection between the very possibility of a form of abstract thought and the shape of a methodological approach (defined by means of its psychological and/or historical determinations), then surely the arrival of phenomenology as method must itself be a matter worthy of phenomenological investigation.

Notwithstanding this fundamental and overarching “rightness” of the origins of Phenomenology as an object for phenomenological analysis, there’s something distinctive and interesting about the phenomenon of the “return to the sources” of Phenomenology transpiring during our current decade. This review will focus on one distinctive entrant to this broader dynamic, and through a close engagement with both (some of) its details and its overall mise en scene, will try to say something about Cairns’s work in phenomenological philosophy, Embree’s work in (re-)presenting Cairns’ work to the community of phenomenological researchers, and our work moving forward. It will surely emerge from what follows, but let me state strongly here that I am—and I believe we should be—very grateful for the work of both Cairns beginning already some eight decades ago and Embree’s recent work in bringing it forward, and offer the following remarks in the spirit of mobilizing their work moving forward. That said, it is impossible to offer an overarching assessment of Embree’s project in releasing Cairns’s manuscripts now as this volume, containing Cairns’s 1933 dissertation, is only the first of a series of volumes (perhaps six), and only when (at least some of) those additional volumes appear will we really know what the community of phenomenological researchers have to gain from this publication of Cairns’s articulation of Husserl’s project.

With that much said by way of a general introduction, let us turn to the structure of Cairns’s 1933 dissertation, The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl, and what is to be gained by reacquainting ourselves Cairns’s attempt at exegesis, translation and exposition of Husserl’s basic philosophical system up to the publication of the Formal and Transcendental Logic (in German) and Cartesian Meditations (in French).  The chief virtue of this volume for current discussions in phenomenology will be the feature of Cairns’s method to which he himself calls attention in the preface, namely the fact that in writing this exposition of Husserl’s philosophy (up to 1931/2) as such, Cairns is working not so much with the published works from the 1890s until 1930 that we know well, but rather a combination of Husserl’s manuscripts (often subsequently published but not always translated into English anyway) and most importantly Cairns’s conversations with Husserl in 1920s and again in 1930-31. I will later expound on the value of access to such conversations for me personally in my current work on Husserl’s reception of Greek mathematical thought, specifically with reference to apodicity, Euclidean space, and the problem of history in transcendental phenomenology.

Beyond the benefit of gaining access to Cairns’s conversations with the Husserl in the period 1924-31 for the contemporary reader and interpreter of classical Phenomenology and of Husserl in particular, the chief benefit of the current volume might be the way in which Cairns offers a series of remarkably clear formulations of basic (foundational) issues in phenomenological philosophy. Take, for instance, his depiction of the “themes of the present essay” in the Summary (pp. xiii-xvi) which are “(1) transcendental being, and (2) the world (with all that is in and of it) as its intended object,” on occasion of which Cairns offers glosses of key terms such as: attitude, both transcendental and natural (discussed in detail in chapters 11-12, especially pp. 108-14); syntactical structure (discussed in detail in chapter 20, especially pp. 229-35); meaning (discussed in detail in chapter 21, especially pp. 247-52); and, of course, intersubjectivity (discussed in detail in chapter 26, especially pp. 287-92). One very practical “use” of this newly published and yet “old” work would be to take up these chapters in the service of developing one’s personal glossary of some of the key terms of phenomenological analysis, as practiced by Husserl and is early followers, especially in investigating the extent to which this practice is or is not consistent with Husserl’s work—and that of his later followers—after the time of Crisis.

In that light, we must note the debate about how, if at all, these key features of Husserl’s original approach to phenomenological philosophy ought best to be understood, translated, and used, which continues to rage today. In this midst of this sea, we search for a compass, and while the classic guide for contemporary appropriations and extensions of Husserl’s project will continue to be Zahavi’s Husserl’s Phenomenlogy (Stanford, 2003) together with the Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology that he edited (Oxford, 2014), Cairns’s attempt to provide a similar systematic basis for those who would carry on Husserl’s project is still of value. I shall conclude the current review with some examples of how, beginning with the most famous of Husserl’s terminological innovations—the epochē—and then looking at three aspects of phenomenological analysis in which Husserl’s reception of Greek mathematics is especially telling, namely: apodicity; Euclidean space; and the problem of history for phenomenological analysis as such.

The transcendental reduction. Nothing is more “originary” (or primitive, basic, foundational) for phenomenological analysis than this feature of Husserl’s thought. And readers of this reissue of Cairns’s dissertation will be well-served by consulting his presentation of the epochē in chapter one. Here, we find Cairns asserting the primary fact about knowledge (ultimately “science” as Cairns has it), which is the only possible object of philosophy, and which we “do not have” but “are seeking” (p. 1), namely, that while there are different subject matters in science, “all subject matter is one in the sense that each separate subject-matter is a part of, or essentially related to, the world” (p. 4). This is the fundamental starting point for a phenomenological analysis: there is an underlying unity to all truth, to all scientific knowledge, and this unity is of a piece with the world-participation of the knowledge and the knower who discloses it. This means that, as Cairns memorably puts it: “All knowledge that I as a human being possess is knowledge either for or about the world, about myself as part of the world, or about the rest of the world” (p.5). ” Thus, surely, in order to understand something about understanding itself, to arrive at knowledge worthy of the name, is to come to terms with the world-object that is known as part of the unity of the world as it is for the knower. And this can only be by means of the epochē, the procedure by which the world-as-known to the knower can be known in part or in whole for the knower, insofar as one has “bracketed” one’s belief in the object of knowledge so as to “test” the knowledge as knowledge. As Cairns (p. 7) summarizes: “To exercise epochē on the whole world is not to lose it from sight. It is still there for me, but no longer as believed —or rather, I still believe it but also merely look at it as believed, without—for my theoretical purpose—“sharing” in my own belief. The “world” is now my “phenomenon.” What I find singularly helpful in this (re-)presentation of the basic orienting claim of Husserl’s phenomenology as something to consider some 80 years on is the way in which the three elements of Husserl’s intellectual project—the philosophical psychology (“philosophy of mind”), the philosophy of science, and what he came to call (in Crisis) teleological-historical reflection—are all united.

Apodictic knowledge. In describing how the epochē works, Cairns turns, for non-accidental reasons to the example of the Pythagorean theorem. “Non-accidental” I say because, though Cairns does not flag this fact here, Greek mathematics is absolutely paradigmatic for Husserl’s understanding of how we can employ the epochē in order to understand truth. The reason for this essential reference to Greek mathematics can be seen when Cairns (p. 6) asserts that for Husserl, “no knowledge of particular ‘external’ world-objects is possibly apodictic,” with the implicit contrast that it is with respect to universals alone that apodictic knowledge is possible. Cairns (pp. 6-7) then tests this claim is then tested against the locus classicus for attention to Greek mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem: “Thus, if I wish to test the Pythagorean theorem, I do not necessarily doubt the theorem, but I ‘disregard’ my belief in it, do not use it to help prove itself. Similarly, if I want to test whether or not a thing I see is ‘real,’ exists. It is evident that this attitude can be taken then toward certainties as well as toward doubtful matters.” The lesson is clear enough: it is only with respect to knowledge claims framed universally that it is possible for the bracketing of the conditions of our knowledge to bring us closer to the ideal of pure apodictic knowledge. But while Chapter 1 does not further clarify why and how this example from Greek mathematics is the ideal expression, a discussion of space and time as conditions of sense-perception in Chapter 14 does, in the context of discussing how space functions in Euclidean geometry. And it is to this that we turn now.

Euclidean space. The key feature of “Greek” mathematics from the perspective of phenomenological analysis and in particular the application of the epochē, is its incompleteness with respect to a pure ideality. Such an ideality, for Husserl, is both the condition of the possibility of a knowledge of universals, and also of the distancing of the thinker from the embeddedness within the physical manifold that is characteristic of sense-perception. This Cairns (p. 132) explicates not in the context of using the Pythagorean Theorem to instantiate the epochē, but rather in describing the nature of Euclidean space as opposed to pure (i.e., “infinite,” abstract, ideal) space: “‘Infinite space’ means, in the first place, infinite space of the same order as is given in sense-perception, infinite morphological space. It too is an ‘ideal’ object and comes to the most original possible givenness as the objective-sense of an ideally unlimited fulfilling of the external spatial horizon of the sensuously presented world.” Here we see what is most characteristic of phenomenology in its resistance to the dichotomy of the real and the ideal, the abstract and the concrete, the rational and the empirical: the ideality of the geometrical object of knowledge—the point, the figure, the plane. It is this ideality that Greek mathematical thought introduced but could not address, Cairns (p. 133) writes, because, for Husserl, such “an essence as ‘Euclidean space’ is still a ‘material’ essence. It may be ‘formalized,’ i.e., in a new act founded in the act of grasping the material essence we may grasp its pure logical-mathematical form, the ‘Euclidean manifold,’ which is not determined as ‘spatial.’” In other words, Greek mathematics introduces as an object of possible knowledge a kind of ideal manifold (the “space” of “pure mathematics”) but it does not possess any such objects of knowledge, because Cairns explains (p. 133) “in the general theory of manifolds, pure mathematics (or logic) studies yet higher essences, of which such manifolds as the “Euclidean manifold” are but particular instances.”

Transcendental phenomenology and the problem of history. This status of Greek mathematics, as on the one hand introducing the possible class of objects for a study a pure mathematics, and at the same time lacking the truly non-material essence which is a condition for its possibility, brings us to the problem of history as such for the practice of the epochē and of transcendental phenomenology more broadly. While there are those who would say that Husserl’s thought is largely ahistorical before the time of Cairns’s dissertation and only turns to historiographical matters and really engaged with Historicism as a tradition of thought in the wake of his perceived waning influence in the early 1930s, a careful reading of Cairns’s dissertation gives credence to those who would say that the concern with historicity was always there. I have tried to show this with reference to the appearance of the Pythagorean Theorem and Euclidean Space in Chapters 1 and 14, but let us conclude by looking at what has to say about “historicity,” what he analyzes as the psychological intersubjectivity of the world as an experienced determination, in the concluding Chapter 27. Cairns (p. 291) writes: “This psychological intersubjectivity of the world is for each mind in part an experienced determination of the world, namely in so far as that mind is directly aware of the minds of others.” The analysis of the intersubjective ground of all possible experience, through the framework of an “experienced determination of the world,” cannot but raise specifically historical problems, as Cairns (p. 294) concludes: “the specific transcendental problems of phenomenal biography and history, i.e., of the essential forms of endurance, development, and decay in world-time peculiar to individual men, societies, institutions, and traditions. Not only the basic individuals but also the derived syntactical objects within each region must be taken as clues to their constitution.” Having arrived at the conclusion of his book he leaves analyses of these “regions” for further research—with which of course we are familiar from his later published works and those of his students and others of the next generation of phenomenological analysis—but this open-ended conclusion is fitting for his work and for our appreciation of it as we return to it with the hindsight of the better part of a century. It shows us that however much Phenomenology aspired (and aspires?) to be an abstract science, its classic Husserlian articulation—even before the Crisis—ought always also to be understood as a study of the history of world-determinations within which the work of transcendental reduction can be enacted.

In short, this reader’s imagination was stimulated and intuitions were surprised on multiple occasions by reading Cairns’s book, and hopes that others who continue to think about “foundational” issues in Phenomenology will also find reason to look inside and re-think the picture they have of the basics of Husserl’s thought.

Heidegger’s Hegel

This installment in the Studies in Continental Thought series from Indiana University Press continues the recent string of excellent translations of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe, bringing volume 68 of the German Klostermann editions to English readers for the first time. Heidegger’s slim volume on Hegel belongs to the third division of the Gesamtausgabe, “Unpublished Treatises: Addresses-Ponderings,” of which Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) was the first to appear. The recent (2012) retranslation of the Beiträge as Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) seems to have marked a renewed commitment to Heidegger’s oeuvre by the IU Press, as well as the broad acceptance of an approach to translation that has greatly enhanced the general readability of Heidegger’s work in English. This review will do three things: 1) address the strengths and weaknesses of Hegel as a work of translation; 2) at times, briefly situate Hegel among Heidegger’s overall project; and, 3) confront the text itself as a treatment of Hegel in the context of Heidegger’s all-important Seinsfrage, or the question of Being.

As a work of translation, Joseph Arel and Niels Feuerhahn do an admirable job of rendering this often dense and sometimes fragmented work in more or less accessible English. The well-known and much-lamented difficulty in translating Heidegger is the way in which he plays on German grammar and the associations among roots, prefixes, and suffixes that dominate the technical, philosophical vocabulary of the German schools, and German Idealism after Wolff and Leibniz in particular throughout Hegel. Arel and Feuerhahn demonstrate a real sensitivity to this difficulty, especially where Heidegger makes crucial connections from Kant, to Hegel, to his own work – something of a recurrent theme in this text. Where Heidegger plays on the meaning of prefixes by deploying hyphenations, the translators preserve the hyphenation in English when they are afforded a basically direct correlation between German and English. Where this is not possible, as it often is not, the translator’s have opted to include the German in brackets to clue readers in on Heidegger’s game, while providing a sensible English alternative that allows readers to more intuitively grasp the moves Heidegger makes. I generally agree with this approach, as it benefits both readers who have a knowledge of German and those who do not. Those with serious interest in Heidegger should know some German, and the indication of the original text is illuminating. However, even the most scholastic of Heidegger scholars must appreciate the benefits of a readable English text that does not constantly disrupt the reader with bizarre and unintuitive locutions and neologisms, throwing the reader out of the flow of the text and making it even more difficult to follow the line of thought therein. The translators navigate this pitfall adroitly, and when the text suffers I think the fault is Heidegger’s and not his translators. Let Heidegger do the work and lay his own traps. Successful translators of Heidegger allow the slow and tedious transformation of concepts to unfold as Heidegger seems to have intended without attempting to shoehorn ready-made interpretations into unnecessary and distracting neologisms and ugly faux German hyphenation schemes. Arel and Feuerhahn are successful far more often than not.

With that said, Hegel is certainly a book for students of Heidegger or Hegel, and not at all a good general introduction to Heidegger’s philosophy, and even less so to philosophy generally. Without some basic knowledge of Heidegger’s project, readers would quickly become lost in this text. Some basic knowldege of Hegel is only marginally less important, and greatly aids in making the text accessible. Even still, some of this book is extremely challenging, for reasons that differ wildly depending on the part of the text under consideration.

Hegel is split in two, the first part composed between 1938-39 and revisited in 1941. The second part dates from 1942 and deals at length with the Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in a much fuller and more robust style than is exhibited in the first part. Arel and Feuerhahn do well to make clear the sources of Heidegger’s Hegel, as well as outline their general approach to translation, in their brief introduction. Again, the problems of producing a proper scholarly edition of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe are well-known and documented. The Heidegger estate, executed by his son Hermann, does not allow what they deem to be extraneous or otherwise excessive scholarly apparatuses to be attached to the work of the Father, who is considered the final word on all matters philosophical. Thus, even in English, Heidegger’s works lack helpful indexes (something set to change with the publication of the first volume of Black Notebooks this spring, 2016), or extensive interpretive introductions. I suppose I can do without the interpretations, though an index would be a great boon to all Gesamtasugabe editions. Nevertheless, Arel and Feuerhahn have worked within these parameters to provide some helpful context and clarify their decisions regarding translations in a brief introduction.

The first part of Hegel is fragmentary and comes from notes Heidegger was preparing for an oral presentation to a small gathering of colleagues. Whether or not Heidegger ever delivered these remarks on “Negativity” remains unclear. However, there are striking connections to other works on nihilism (the Nietzsche lectures, his 1955 essay in celebration of Ernst Junger translated as “On the Question of Being” in Pathmarks, and, in particular, his 1957 lectures published as Identity and Difference, which Heidegger himself viewed as among the most important of his works after Being and Time) and also to the 1942-43 essay published as “Hegel’s Concept of Experience” in Off the Beaten Track. The latter essay reiterates Heideggers meditations on the meaning of Hegel’s addition of the word “experience” to his subtitle “Science of the Experience of Consciousness” in the 1807 edition of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In his Hegel book, Heidegger works out the history of Hegel’s manipulations of the title and fixes his analysis on uncovering the importance of “experience” to the phenomenon of consciousness central to the Hegelian system. This later emphasis on experience stems from his engagement with Hegel at the end of Being and Time, where Hegel was deployed in an effort to work out the transcendence of Dasein; ultimately, the view that Dasein is itself the transcendent, since it is the Dasein that exists temporally as that which oversteps itself. However, for the remainder of the 1920s, Heidegger largely shifts his focus to Kant and, in 1929, publishes Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, a text that marks the end of the Being and Time era and in which we see the first signals of the turn toward the truth of Being and the history of Beyng. Heidegger does not seriously concern himself with Hegel again until 1930-31, when he gives a winter seminar on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

In Hegel, Heidegger again returns to the thinker of absolute Spirit in his private pondering, and attempts to trace the development of Hegel’s system, as well as the bearing of Hegelian philosophy on Heidegger’s own project. The text is remarkable for its clear elucidation of Hegel’s shifting system of logic and the role his Phenomenology plays in the overall system. The first part of Heidegger’s short book is fragmentary, and those not intimately familiar with Heidegger’s project will find that it offers them very little. It is certainly provocative, and therein is really the value – not that Heidegger gives us the answers to questions concerning the “correct” interpretation of Hegel, but rather that Heidegger makes brief pronouncements on Hegel that spur us on to think more deeply and critically about the issues at hand. Less frustrating, and much more fully developed, are the comments Heidegger makes concerning the fundamental negation at the heart of Hegel’s logic, wherein self-conscious being must enact a negation in order to stand out from its surroundings, but then covers over this negation in the disclosure of beings that appear to it. If Heidegger does violence to Hegel’s text, it is certainly where he tries to find traces of his own ideas about the ontological distinction and the covering over of Being, its withdrawal in the wake of the appearance of things. However, when read carefully, these sections give us powerful insight into Heidegger’s philosophical inspiration and the source of his ideas, which are certainly new and exciting for his time, but are also deeply immersed in and connected with the history of metaphysics.

The second half of the book is much fuller and more developed, and it deals with Hegel’s Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit in detail, going paragraph by paragraph through the text to give very clear exegesis while simultaneously developing his own insights through this “confrontation” with Hegel. There are strong resonances here with the lecture course from 1930-31, with what is published a year later as “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” and, in addition, a robust commentary on the relationship between transcendence and dialectic in Hegel’s understanding of the experience of consciousness (self-consciousness). Heidegger rigorously exposes self-consciousness as a journey, which begins with a painful separation from the self and continues down the path opened by absolute spirit, lighted by the “ray” that connects an individual consciousness with, effectively, the World Spirit. Whatever self might exist exists only insofar as it is a projection forth, but also then a rebounding back wherein the self comes to see itself as such by recognizing itself in the revelation of the things it cognizes. Although, surprisingly, Heidegger does not venture into the well-worn metaphor of Hegel’s “Odyssey,” there is an obvious parallel here between Heidegger’s own interpretation of Hegelian philosophy and that interpretation which reads absolute Spirit coming to see itself as such in terms of an Odyssey – a painful separation and journeying away from itself only to return to itself in the end as a self-conscious being.

For Heidegger, then, we best understand Hegel’s philosophy as the place where we can first see Dasein itself as the transcendent because of the dialectic procedure of self-consciousness as such, experienced as this journeying forth and back, that journey marking the transcendence of the Dasein itself. Of course, Heidegger does not claim that Hegel himself quite saw it that way. As always when dealing with the history of philosophy, Heidegger goes from delivering very clear and precising explanations of Hegel’s text, to then push that text further, developing his own unique insights from a critical engagement with past thinkers. Careful readers will have no problem parsing out these two threads within Heidegger’s writing, however, one does need to be careful, especially when this particular book exhibits its fragmentary character. I find that in those moments, where the text becomes provocative, annunciatory, quasi-poetic (though poorly poetic in poetry’s own terms), Heidegger is often exposing himself most fully, that is, putting forth his own unguarded thoughts without much in the way of explanation. Some readers will find this philosophically suspect, though regular readers of Heidegger and those familiar with this particular division of the Gesamtausgabe will no doubt be unsurprised by Heidegger’s style.

Before closing I do want to say that I think the Hegel book is most illuminating when considered in conjunction with the final chapter of The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, which translates a lecture course delivered in 1927, and is considered to be, in part, the scene of Heidegger’s informal completion of Being and Time where he gets to the destruction of metaphysics promised in his unfinished magnum opus. There, Heidegger talks about the temporalization of Dasein as a “stretching” that is the ontological basis of dimensionality itself. The stretch marks a very clear and explicit analysis of Dasein itself as the transcendent, and the notion of stretch makes a crucial contribution to Heidegger’s understanding of Hegelian dialectical procedure in the Hegel book. According to Heidegger in Hegel, Hegel errs and falls into the history of metaphysics exactly where he treats the transcendent as some being toward which we would overstep in an act of transcendence. Again, typical of Heidegger, Hegel is accused of not being mindful of the ontological distinction, and thus erroneously treats the transcendent as a being among other beings. What Heidegger has in mind, and again, this is made very clear in the 1927 lecture course and reiterated at length in Hegel, is that when we carry out the proper analytic of Dasein, we find that the transcendent is not some being toward which we overstep, but that the transcendent is in fact the very overstepping itself, which is exactly the dialectical procedure of Dasein’s own historical standing forth from Being. It is not surprising, then, that Heidegger is beginning to develop his philosophy in the direction of the history of Beyng at the same time he is seriously reengaging with Hegel’s philosophy. Here too, although it outstrips the purview of this review, we see why Heidegger is so enthused by Aristotle’s treatment of time and movement, which Heidegger reads as an essential phase in the understanding of Being as the temporality of Dasein’s transcendent essence.

In the end, this is an excellent translation of a difficult and sometimes frustrating work by Heidegger. Certainly an insightful text for students of German philosophy, the book suffers from its sometimes fragmentary character, which makes it mostly unsuitable for anyone not already familiar with Heidegger or Hegel. Those just coming to Heidegger, phenomenology, or Continental philosophy for the first time will do well to avoid this text lest they be frustrated by the depth of Heidegger’s commitment to the vocabulary of Hegel and Kant, as well as his sometime cryptic pronouncements on Hegel and Being. However, philosophers with serious interest in Heidegger, and in particular with Heidegger’s relationship with German Idealism and his own philosophical development during the crucial “turn” of the 1930s, will find this volume illuminating and occasionally inspiring.

Recension originale publiée dans Bulletin heideggerien 4, 2014

Les études réunies dans cet ouvrage s’inscrivent entre deux termes extrêmes, le Natorp-Bericht de 1922 – dont l’A. avait donné une excellente traduction française en 1992 (Cf. Interprétations phénoménologiques d’Aristote (Tableau de la situation herméneutique), Mauvezin, TER, 1992) – et les essais des années 1950 rassemblés dans Unterwegs zur Sprache : ce sont autant de coups de sonde qui problématisent l’itinéraire de Heidegger sur trente ans, envisagé selon la possibilité ou l’impossibilité d’une phénoménologie herméneutique. Ces études détaillées s’éclairent d’une thèse forte permettant de reconstruire un axe d’intelligibilité autour duquel se déploie tout le corpus de Heidegger : l’élaboration progressive, avec ses impasses, ses détours et ses retours, de ce que Jean-François Courtine nomme une « archéo-logique ». La mise au jour de cette strate « archaïque » en deçà de la logique et de la grammaire de l’être passe par un double biais, celui d’une « destruction de la logique » et celui de l’ouverture d’un rapport herméneutique au monde : le hermeneutischer Bezug, « archi-herméneia » par laquelle l’homme, selon une dimension quasi acroamatique, prête l’oreille – et la voix – aux phénomènes, pour aboutir, chez le tout dernier Heidegger, à la notion « alogique » d’une « phénoméno-phasis » (Auszüge zur Phänomenologie aus dem Manuskript “Vermächtnis der Seinsfrage” (1973-1975), Jahresgabe der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft 2011/2012, hors commerce, p. 76).

D’une part, le fil conducteur d’une archéo-logique permet de rendre compte,   dans   toute   sa   complexité,   d’une   certaine   réinterprétation herméneutique de la phénoménologie husserlienne, opérée au début des années 1920, singulièrement dans le cours de 1923 – Ontologie. Hermeneutik der Faktizität –, et assumé rétrospectivement, en 1953/1954, dans Aus einem Gespräch der Sprache, lorsque Heidegger évoque « le sens originel de l’hermeneuein » qui lui aurait permis de caractériser la phénoménologie alors qu’il travaillait aux premières esquisses de Sein und Zeit – travail dont le chapitre V propose une mise au point généalogique en examinant notamment les deux « centres nucléaires » de cet Aristoteles-Buch en puissance, ainsi que le problème de son interruption ou « échec ». L’A. reprend et élargit la question toujours débattue du statut de l’herméneutique dans la phénoménologie dans le syntagme « phénoménologie herméneutique », au-delà d’une « greffe » de l’une sur l’autre (P. Ricœur) mais aussi d’un « tournant herméneutique » de la phénoménologie (J. Grondin).

Le chapitre II développe admirablement cette question de l’herméneia ou das Hermeneutische – interpretatio si l’on y tient, mais non au sens moderne de l’élucidation d’une chaîne signifiante par d’autres chaînes signifiantes, mais au sens de l’expression, de l’explicitation, voire de la traduction ; autrement dit, au sens très formel, la transmission de quelque chose de signifiant, par le logos comme voix signifiante (phonè semantikè, cf. De int., 4, 16 b 26), la question étant de savoir si ce processus herméneutique est limité à la proposition déclarative, ou logos apophantikos, sans parler de la possibilité d’une herméneia non linguistique, comme l’herméneia des animaux, selon l’exemple aristotélicien.

Pour Heidegger, on le sait, l’herméneia ne se limite pas au logos apophantikos, à la proposition déclarative, ou plus largement à la « saisie théorique (theoretisches Erfassen) » (GA 20, 116), alors même qu’elle est susceptible de donner quelque chose à comprendre (Verstehen), comme par exemple une prière, une question ou une exhortation (De int., 4, 17 a 2-5) ; c’est sans doute l’un des résultats discrets mais décisifs de sa lecture, au cours de la première moitié des années 1920, du Peri Hermeneias, lecture ou « destruction » critique qui non seulement conteste l’équivalence admise par la majorité des commentateurs du traité aristotélicien depuis Ammonius mais engage la définition, ou la re-définition de la phénoménologie à l’époque de Sein und Zeit où le logos de la phénoménologie se présente comme un logos essentiellement herméneutique, « annonce » du phénomène ou « message » (Kunde/Kundgabe), s’il est permis de revenir aux analyses platoniciennes de l’Ion et du Théétète, que Heidegger, comme le rappelle l’A. p. 46, sollicitait dans Unterwegs zur Sprache, mais aussi, déjà, dans le cours du semestre d’été 1923.

On lira ainsi comme un point d’aboutissement de cette herméneutisation de la phénoménologie la définition au § 7 C de Sein und Zeit : « Le λόγος de la phénoménologie de l’être-là a le caractère de l’ἑρµηνεύειν qui annonce [qui manifeste, notifie, communique : kundgeben, terme également employé, notons-le en passant, par Husserl au § 69 de la VIe des Logische Untersuchungen pour décrire les actes communicants non objectivants, kundgebende Akte et kommunikative Aussagen] à la compréhension de l’être (Seinsverständnis) incluse dans l’être-là le sens authentique de l’être et les structures fondamentales de son propre être. La phénoménologie de l’être-là est herméneutique au sens originel de ce mot, qui vise tout ce qui a trait à l’explicitation (Auslegung) » (SZ, § 7, 37).

La « destruction de la logique » au fil archéo-logique de l’herméneia, ne va pas sans une portée « éthico-politique », dans la mesure où l’« herméneutique de la facticité », en charge de la question augustinienne quaestio mihi factus sum – analysée au chapitre III à partir du retour à Descartes de 1923/1924 –, a pour corrélat principal l’auto-aliénation (Selbstentfremdung) qu’il s’agit de « détruire » pour « faire la vérité », facere veritatem (p. 49). La destruction de la logique, toujours déjà uniment phénoménologico-herméneutique, s’applique à l’ipse aliéné par das Man, parlé par la lingua aliena du On commandé par un concept traditionnel de la vérité propositionnelle qui réfère, en dernière instance, à un temps nivelé, axé sur l’être interprété – “vécu” – comme Anwesenheit. En effet, l’A. y insiste à juste titre (p. 59), la « destruction de la logique » doit aller jusqu’à la mise en évidence de l’ursprüngliche Zeitlichkeit originellement herméneutique d’un « se mouvoir compréhensif », d’un comportement ou proto-articulation de la « vie facticielle », d’un Als ou en-tant-que primordial orienté sur la Bedeutsamkeit réduite et recouverte par la détermination logique de l’apophansis comme legein ti kata tinos.

Et il est permis de se demander, en outre, si Heidegger ne trouve pas l’une des ressources pour penser cette proto-articulation de la vie facticielle précédant la distinction logos apophantique/non apophantique, dans l’intuition catégoriale de la VIe Recherche logique corrigée par l’idée aristotélicienne d’une « sorte de logos » inhérent à l’aisthèsis – de an., 424 a 27, glosé par Heidegger dans le cours de 1923/1924, GA 17, 29 –, logos tis qui confère à la perception une dimension appréhensive permettant à l’être vivant de se rapporter au monde, à l’objet perceptible qui se donne dans son aspect, tel qu’il apparaît, cette perception sensible, dit Aristote, étant « toujours vraie » – De an., 427 b 13, passage glosé au § 7 B de Sein und Zeit – quand elle saisit un objet perceptible qui lui est propre. Car, par son caractère quasi pré-intentionnel, le Verstehen herméneutique apparaît comme ordonné à une intuition qui donne l’étant même ou la chose même – « Die Sache selbst gibt die Anschauung », selon la formule en GA 21, 105 – « en chair et en os (in seiner Leibhaftigkeit) ». Nous pourrions demander alors dans quelle mesure, plus généralement, cette inflexion herméneutique de la phénoménologie conduit à une certaine réhabilitation, chez Heidegger, de l’expérience pratique ou, comme dit l’A., de « la dimension originairement “pratique” ou “praxique” » (p. 60), face à l’ordre du langage, à une certaine réhabilitation, donc, du « contact » antéprédicatif inhérent à la perception compréhensive face à l’ordre prédicatif et apophantique.

Dans cette hypothèse de lecture, la destruction/répétition du De interpretatione et du De anima mais aussi de la Rhétorique d’Aristote apparaît comme solidaire d’une phénoménologie de la perception antéprédicative articulée autour du concept d’un « toucher » propre au noûs poietikos, où Heidegger voit, sorte d’intuition catégoriale sans égologie, un mode éminent et matriciel du dévoilement non apophantique : cet intellect « produit » l’intelligible qu’il reçoit pourtant passivement (De an., 430 a 14-20), et ce toucher noétique est un percevoir, un Ver-nehmen, passif (Ver-) et actif (-nehmen), une saisie réceptive qui articule l’« en tant que herméneutique » immédiatement donné et pris, le Vermeinen, la visée intentionnelle, et l’en tant que apophantique et théorique, ne pouvant qu’en dériver. En tout cas, c’est ce que Heidegger semble confirmer dans son cours du semestre d’hiver 1929/1930 où le noûs poiétique est lu comme un percevoir, Vernehmen, formateur d’unité et comme condition de possibilité du voilement et du dévoilement du logos apophantique (GA 29/30, 454-455), conduisant au concept original, bien que filtré par le schématisme kantien de l’imagination transcendantale, de formation du monde, de Weltbildung où il faut sans doute lire aussi, et déjà, le pouvoir poiétique archi-originaire et “mythique”, non apophantique, de la Dichtung, par excellence de l’Ur-Sprache de Hölderlin, un thème configurateur pour l’horizon de pensée du deuxième Heidegger.

D’autre part, en effet, la thèse de l’« archéo-logique » éclaire singulièrement certaines problématiques chez le deuxième Heidegger, la problématique d’un logos pré-apophantique et non johannique, puisée aux paroles présocratiques de Parménide, Héraclite et Anaximandre, mais aussi et en même temps – aspect décisif que l’auteur a raison de souligner fortement – à Hölderlin. Le chapitre VI (Polemos/Logos) tente ainsi une reconstruction chronologique fine de la lecture heideggérienne du célèbre fragment B 53 d’Héraclite et du concept central de polemos, de la Rektoratsrede de 1933 et du cours du semestre d’hiver 1933/1934 aux Vorträge und Aufsätze en passant par l’Einführung in die Metaphysik de 1935, le premier cours sur Hölderlin de 1934/1935 où est affirmée pour la première fois l’identité polemos/logos, et la version de 1935/1936 de Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Le retour à Héraclite s’inscrit dans la volonté heideggérienne de revenir à une strate pré- métaphysique, archéo-logique du logos conçu comme polemos logos – « polemos et logos sont le même » –, formule directrice et emblématique du projet de « destruction de la logique » ; mais, aspect à notre sens déterminant, l’accès à l’archéo-logique héraclitéenne ou plus généralement présocratique est déterminé par la lecture de Hölderlin et dans une moindre mesure par celle de Nietzsche, comme le rappelle l’A. (p. 146).

Ce rôle configurateur et matriciel de Hölderlin ne saurait être négligé si l’on entend retracer et rendre intelligible l’itinéraire de Heidegger à partir de 1929 ; ceux qui en douteraient encore pourront dès lors suivre avec profit les nombreuses pistes et indices que l’A., grand connaisseur du poète – nous lui devons par exemple le volume Hölderlin, Fragments de poétique, (Paris, Imprimerie nationale, coll. « La Salamandre », 2006) – dégage et développe pour appréhender cette influence hölderlinienne sur l’élaboration, disons donc  « archéo-logique », de la Seynsgeschichte, en rappelant (p. 183), pour commencer, cette indication rétrospective donnée en 1941/1942 (GA 71, 89) : « Au moment de rejeter les ultimes contresens inhérents à l’histoire de la métaphysique, c’est-à-dire au moment où l’être lui-même et sa vérité sont devenus au plus haut point dignes de question (Conférence de 1929-30 sur la vérité), la parole de Hölderlin, connue auparavant comme celle d’un poète parmi d’autres, devint un destin. » Et on pouvait déjà lire dans les Beiträge de 1936-1938 : « La destination historique de la philosophie culmine dans la reconnaissance de cette nécessité : créer une écoute à la parole de Hölderlin » (GA 65, 422). « Wer Ohren hat, der höre… » Enfin, n’oublions pas cette remarque, là aussi on ne peut plus claire, dans l’entretien quasi testamentaire donné au Spiegel en 1966 : « Ma pensée se tient dans un rapport incontournable à la poésie de Hölderlin » (GA 16, 678).

L’un des enjeux majeurs, nous semble-t-il, pour comprendre la nature et l’horizon du projet heideggérien est dès lors de saisir la portée, à côté du retour, concomitant, aux présocratiques, de ce que Hans Blumenberg a pu appeler d’une formule bien pesée « l’impact mythique Hölderlin (der mythische Einschlag Hölderlin) » (Hans Blumenberg, Manfred Sommer, Beschreibung des Menschen, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2006, p. 436). Jean-François Courtine hésiterait peut-être à appeler « remythification » ou « remythologisation » le geste « archéo-logique » qui se met en place à partir de 1929, à partir de la lecture de Hölderlin – préparée voire influencée par Otto, Hellingrath, Gundolf, Kommerell… Il ne semble cependant pas récuser totalement la possibilité de cette caractérisation ; lorsqu’il commente l’évolution du concept de Geschichte/Geschicklichkeit depuis Sein und Zeit, l’A. se demande en effet s’il est possible de voir dans le tournant de la Geschichte/Geschehen vers la Geschichte/Geschick comme « adresse historiale », c’est-à-dire vers la Seynsgeschichte, le « signe d’une rechute dans une pensée mythique et étymologisante » (p. 181 ; cf. aussi p. 192 : « s’agit-il d’une nouvelle “mythologie”… ? » – question que se posait également Gadamer, perplexe, à la sortie de la conférence de Francfort « Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes » en 1936). Toujours est-il que dans ce tournant, le rôle de Hölderlin, instance de la fondation poétique de l’« autre commencement », est décisif, comme l’affirme fort justement l’A. : « le véritable tournant dans la pensée heideggérienne de l’histoire et de l’historicité pourrait bien être la lecture de Hölderlin et de sa “philosophie de l’histoire” que Heidegger articule encore une fois à l’histoire de la vérité, faisant ainsi de Hölderlin une figure destinale et quasi prophétique » (p. 183).

Or, ce dialogue (Gespräch) avec Hölderlin, ce dialogue entre philosophie et poésie, n’est-il pas conçu par Heidegger lui-même, par exemple en 1942, comme mytho-logie, au sens où il entend par mythologie « le “processus” historique (geschichtlicher „Prozess’’) par lequel l’être lui-même vient poétiquement à paraître » (GA 53, 139) ? Mais cela supposerait sans doute de lire cette mythologie – et le rapport archéo-logiquement « déconstruit » entre mythos et logos – à la lumière de la réappropriation heideggérienne du fragment théorique Über Religion (1796/1797) où Hölderlin parle de l’expérience historique comme d’une production mythisch et schicksalhaft, mais aussi, plus généralement, à la lumière de la Mythologie der Vernunft et du Polytheismus der Einbildungskraft dans l’Ältestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus dont Heidegger aura pu prendre connaissance dès 1925 chez Ludwig Strauss, « Hölderlins Anteil an Schellings frühem Systemprogramm » (Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 1926, n° 5, pp. 339-426) ou chez Cassirer (Philosophie der symbolischen Formen II, p. 6).

Au-delà de la question de l’éventuelle et problématique réactualisation du mythe sous le nom de Sage, nous souscrivons sans réserve aux propos de Jean-François Courtine lorsqu’il souligne la dimension « théologico-politique » de la figure de Hölderlin : « Si donc pour Heidegger, Hölderlin représente une figure tout à fait singulière et proprement “destinale”, susceptible de jouer un rôle déterminant jusque dans le projet de dépassement de la métaphysique, c’est parce qu’il contribue de manière décisive à établir le ternaire : peuple, langue (poésie), histoire, et qu’il ouvre aussi directement sur la thématisation de la vérité comme Wahrheitsgeschehen, advenir-historial » (p. 185), c’est-à- dire comme : Ereignis. Cette dimension théologico-politique de l’Ereignis, la « reprise par Heidegger de cette “philosophie de l’histoire” ou “hiéro-histoire” hölderlinienne, devenue théologie-politique » (p. 189), nous paraît toucher au cœur de l’entreprise heideggérienne dans les années 1930 et nous ne pouvons que saluer la remarquable méditation, singulière dans le commentarisme heideggérien, qu’on peut lire dans le chapitre VIII (« Une a-théologie post- métaphysique ») assurément destiné à devenir une référence paradigmatique pour la question de la théologie ou de l’a-théologie de Heidegger et la situation du dieu – et des dieux… – à l’époque des Beiträge et au-delà (Dans les limites du présent compte rendu nous ne pouvons évidemment nous engager dans une discussion détaillée de cette importante méditation et de la problématique complexe qu’elle met au jour. Qu’il soit permis de renvoyer à notre ouvrage Heidegger avec Hölderlin. Théologie politique de l’événement ).

La question directrice que cette méditation entend esquisser s’énonce ainsi : « ce retour à Hölderlin, cette (sur)évaluation de Hölderlin dans sa portée historiale-destinale, n’est-ce pas encore à son tour une illusion métaphysique ? Est-ce que la théologie du dernier dieu contribue positivement à rejeter les ultimes mécompréhensions inhérentes à la métaphysique ? Ou bien s’agit-il d’une nouvelle “mythologie” qui, loin d’accentuer la Fragwürdigkeit de l’être, de sa vérité et de son histoire, menace de la faire retomber dans l’ontico- idéologico-politique ? Si dans son entreprise de surmontement du dieu défini comme causa sui – figure achevée du principe dans la métaphysique des modernes –, l’autre pensée ou la pensée de l’autre commencement doit bien réinterpréter le divin, cette tâche peut-elle se confondre avec l’invention d’un nouveau dieu ou l’élaboration hölderlinienne d’une nouvelle mythologie ? » (p. 191-192)

D’où vient le motif du dernier dieu et de son passage (Vorbeigang) ? Il importe d’emblée de noter que la source de ce thème est moins Ex 33.19 – ou 1R 19.12, comme avait pu l’affirmer Schürmann – mais, comme toujours, Hölderlin (p. 197). Suggérons que le passage ou Vorbeigang du dernier dieu doit moins à l’AT, ou à un Augenblicksgott à la Usener, qu’à la Vergänglichkeit des Himmlischen des vers 50-54 de la Friedensfeier de Hölderlin (« So ist schnell / Vergänglich alles Himmlische ; aber umsonst nicht ; / Denn schonend rührt des Masses allzeit kundig / Nur einen Augenblick die Wohnung der Menschen / Ein Gott an, unversehn, und keiner weiss es, wenn ? ») Il en va de même, soit dit en passant, du dieu qui seul pourrait encore nous sauver invoqué dans le Spiegel-Gespräch : « Da ich ein Knabe war,/Rettet’ ein Gott mich oft ». Plus généralement, la question est de savoir si le thème du dernier dieu inscrit la pensée de l’Ereignis à l’époque des Beiträge dans le champ ontothéologique et résolument métaphysique, comme tendait à le penser Schürmann, ou s’il s’y soustrait. Pour approcher cette question, Jean-François Courtine choisit d’emprunter une autre voie, en se demandant comment l’attente du dernier dieu surgit du dedans même de la Seinsfrage, voire à partir de l’Ereignis : vom Ereignis. Tout en se gardant de déceler dans cette « préparation » de la venue du dieu « la version raffinée de quelque néo-paganisme » (p. 205 – un point cependant qui mériterait plus ample discussion, ne serait-ce qu’en raison du polythéisme fondamental, violemment anti-judéo-chrétien, de la théologie des Beiträge et du puissant et inquiétant motif de la terre, Erde, interprétée comme « sacrée », implicitement dans « Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes » et   explicitement   ailleurs),   l’A.   souligne   la « nouveauté » de la question heideggérienne : il s’agit de savoir « si et comment une apparition du dieu est possible dans un âge post-métaphysique » (p. 205-206). Cette idée d’une possible épiphanie du dieu dans l’espace de l’être même est d’abord « une idée philosophique destinée d’une certaine façon à prendre le relais, dans le cadre de la pensée de l’être comme événement, de la “théologie” spéculative et/ou mystique » (p. 206).

N’hésitons pas à demander dans quelle mesure cette « a-théologie post- métaphysique » et, ajoutons-le, post-ontothéologique dès les Beiträge, se déploie en fonction d’une répétition plus ou moins déformante de la théologie hölderlinienne, voire en réponse historiquement surdéterminée à ce que Hölderlin appelle « unsere heilige Religion », d’essence poëtisch. Certes, le projet des Beiträge et des traités seynsgeschichtlich rédigés dans leur sillage ne saurait se réduire à cette répétition – qui est d’ailleurs plus une traduction –, mais il faut reconnaître que la question de l’être comme pensée de l’Ereignis est pour ainsi dire commandée et structurée dans sa possibilité la plus intime par l’attente du dernier dieu hölderlinien et ne paraît tirer sa pleine légitimité que de la « préparation » de cette attente – appel à l’attente eschatologique du dieu réitéré dans le Spiegel-Gespräch trente ans plus tard. L’Ereignis, dans son éventualité kairologique d’Augenblick, n’est-il pas défini à plusieurs reprises comme la coappartenance indéfectible de l’homme et du dieu ? L’Ereignis n’est-il pas pensé comme la réserve du letzter Gott ? Et ce dernier dieu, ou dieu ultime, comment le penser autrement que le dieu, fût-il transitoire et évanescent, d’un peuple particulier, le prétendu « peuple de l’être » en attente d’une Rückbindung (religare, religere…), pour employer le terme déconcertant mais significatif du cours de 1934/1935 ?

Voilà autant de questions cruciales et troublantes, éminemment difficiles, que la méditation de l’A. permet d’envisager, notons-le, en les nouant à leur dimension politique, ou nous dirions méta-politique, au-delà même du contexte immédiat idéologiquement saturé des années 1930. L’A. n’oublie pas de relever que le projet heideggérien, à l’époque des Beiträge, s’ouvre « sur le pluriel d’un peuple rassemblé en une nouvelle alliance et chargé d’une mission » (p. 212), peuple allemand, exclusivement, censé attester de cette nouvelle alliance avec le dieu. Face à cette « transposition théologico-politique de l’analytique existentiale de Sein und Zeit », il est permis de rester « perplexe » (p. 213) ; mais peut-on réellement séparer « la pensée, neuve et féconde, de l’événementialité ou de l’éventualité de l’être », d’une « historicisation radicale » (p. 213) comme « détermination politique-communautaire » sans abandonner le nerf du projet heideggérien à cette époque, projet de ce qu’on peut donc appeler, en première approximation, une théologie politique, ou « méta- politique » donc, assez désastreuse – mais « Wer gross denkt muss gross irren… » – du peuple allemand, dans le cadre ontico-national d’une Augenblicksstätte pour le dernier dieu, site historial censé investir le pôle du Staat à régime despotique tel qu’il s’installe depuis 1933 sous l’égide d’un Staatsschöpfer que Heidegger inscrit fatalement – effet du Geschick ? – dans une collaboration rêvée avec le Dichter (Hölderlin) et le Denker (lui-même) d’une Allemagne future censée surpasser une Grèce toujours déjà idéalisée ? Autrement demandé : peut-on réellement détacher la teneur herméneutico-phénoménologique du propos heideggérien sur l’Ereignis de son corrélat eschatologique, hautement spéculatif, dans la mesure où l’Ereignis n’est autre, précisément, que le déploiement historico- historial de la vérité de l’être destinée à un peuple particulier ? La question est ouverte, son enjeu, on en conviendra, n’est pas mince. Quoi qu’il en soit, nous partageons les « perplexités » de l’auteur qui ne manque pas de préciser, à l’issue de son étude magistrale, qu’elles restent « les nôtres aujourd’hui », en prenant ces difficultés « pour un encouragement à poursuivre la recherche » (p. 214).[:]

[:en]Recension originale publiée dans Bulletin heideggerien 3, 2013

Du neuf avec du vieux ? Non : du classique avec du moderne. Tel est le secret de fabrication du dernier ouvrage de Françoise Dastur, le premier qui, eu égard à son titre ou à son sous-titre, ne porte pas littéralement sur une question chez Heidegger – contrairement à Heidegger et la question du temps (1990), Heidegger et la question anthropologique (2003) et Heidegger. La question du logos (2007) –, sans doute parce qu’il les pose toutes dans l’horizon de ce qui s’avère, du moins à nos yeux, la question la plus digne de question chez ce penseur : celle, précisément, de sa pensée, c’est-à-dire de la pensée à venir. Classique donc, ce livre l’est d’emblée pour reposer sur des études qui, depuis 25 ans, ont modelé la compréhension la plus large et l’interprétation la plus juste de la pensée heideggérienne en France – autant qu’à l’étranger, étant donné les diverses traductions des travaux de l’A. et leur réception, notamment américaine. Moderne, ce livre l’est aussi pour proposer ces textes « dans une version nouvelle, et pour certains, profondément remaniée et augmentée » (p. 251), certainement afin de coller au plus près aux progrès de la littérature primaire – les récentes livraisons de la Gesamtausgabe – et de la littérature secondaire – les préoccupations actuelles de l’exégèse internationale. D’où, parfois, la sensation d’une paramnésie de reconnaissance, ou illusion du déjà vu, sinon du déjà lu. Si, ici et là, nous pensons en effet relire l’A., ce n’est pas qu’elle se répète – pas plus que le bon professeur qui se doit de reprendre afin de faire apprendre –, mais parce que nous répétons avec elle ce que, depuis longtemps, elle nous enseigne : l’intelligence du texte heideggérien – au double sens et du mot, et du cas : l’ingéniosité qui est la sienne comme l’entente que nous en avons.

Prenant, dans ce volume, comme « axe privilégié de référence » la Kehre des années 1930, qui fait passer Heidegger « de l’approfondissement de la métaphysique traditionnelle à [son] “dépassement” » (p. 7), autrement dit à son « assomption » – puisque, l’A. le rappelle, l’Überwindung se comprend comme Verwindung (p. 219) –, Françoise Dastur se donne pour fin de « prendre toute la mesure de la “révolution du mode de penser” à laquelle en appelle Heidegger », (p. 10) et pour moyen d’étudier cette « pensée à venir » dont il est dit, sinon prophétisé par lui en 1946 qu’« elle ne sera plus philosophie » (GA 9, 364). Douze chapitres répartis trois par trois dans quatre parties distinctes, soit quelque 240 pages plus loin, l’objectif est atteint, et cela après une introduction aussi interrogative qu’apéritive : « La pensée à venir : une phénoménologie de l’inapparent ? » (pp. 11-24). Car cette mise en bouche assure exquisement – et même exotiquement – la mise en tête de ce syntagme : après un retour sur, non pas l’école à laquelle appartient Heidegger, mais la méthode qu’il met en œuvre – la phénoménologie –, et avant un détour par l’intérêt dont il témoigne pour l’Orient et, plus particulièrement, pour le vide de la scène dans le nô – l’inapparent –, l’A. évoque la formule par laquelle le penseur, dans le séminaire de Zähringen, définit ultimement sa pensée – « phénoménologie de l’inapparent » (GA 15, 299) –, tout en suspendant là son propos. Il faudra patienter jusqu’à sa quasi fin pour que le thème liminaire refasse surface, bouclant ainsi la boucle (p. 225). Eussions-nous aimé que Françoise Dastur opte pour une relecture de l’œuvre heideggérienne à rebours, afin de voir comment et de savoir pourquoi le travail du penseur demeure, de bout en bout, phénoménologique ? Vœu pieux. Elle préfère que nous avalions dans l’ordre les sections de son livre, en terminant par son menu.

Or, c’est à lui que nous voudrions borner ce compte rendu, tant il est, dans ce recueil de reprises revues et corrigées, non seulement l’unique part inédite, mais plus encore le morceau de choix. C’est qu’en cette « table des matières » (p. 253) sur laquelle se clôt l’ouvrage se contemple de l’A. toute la maestria. Intitulée « De Être et temps à la pensée de l’Ereignis », la première partie articule, plus que les motifs du monde (pp. 27-43), de l’espace (pp. 45-58) et du temps (pp. 59-75), le traitement de chacun par les trois Heidegger – celui du Tournant, comme celui d’avant ou d’après lui. Intitulée « Une autre pensée de l’être de l’homme », la deuxième partie renvoie anthropologisme et anthropomorphisme dos à dos (pp. 79-96), unit la question de l’être à celle que nous sommes (pp. 79-96) et, derrière le dire de son dit, ressaisit l’éthique de Heidegger comme « éco-nomie de l’Unheimlichkeit » (pp. 119-132 ; ici p. 129). Intitulée « Une autre pensée du divin, du néant et de l’être », la troisième partie – toutes pièces à l’appui insistons-y – , instruit les dossiers de la relation de Heidegger à la théologie jusque dans la « théiologie de la pensée » (pp. 135-154 ; ici p. 153), de sa conception du nihilisme dans sa différence d’avec celle de Jünger (pp. 155-169) et de sa compréhension du commencement grec dans l’explicitation de la parole d’Anaximandre (pp. 171-185). Intitulée « D’une pensée qui ne serait plus philosophie », la dernière partie s’interroge sur l’existence d’une philosophie de l’histoire chez Heidegger (pp. 189-206), sur la signification de la fin de la philosophie sous sa plume (pp. 207-226) et sur le sens de l’avenir de la présence humaine dans l’événement de l’être (pp. 227-250). Tout n’est-il pas là ? Tout, c’est-à-dire chacune des lignes de force que nous observons à lire les lignes dédiées par Heidegger à l’établissement de cet autre commencement de la pensée qui fait sa pensée ?

L’herméneute le plus fin d’un penseur toujours en chemin se doit d’offrir au lecteur, pour traverser son œuvre, la meilleure des boussoles. Avec Heidegger et la pensée à venir, Françoise Dastur, en offre une très bonne. Mais si le diable se cache dans les détails, Hermès se niche ici dans le sommaire.

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Norman Sieroka’s book is about “the systematic, structural relations between phenomenological and (neuro)physiological aspects of perception, consciousness, and time, with a specific focus on hearing” (p. 4), based on Leibniz’s and Husserl’s views. While Sieroka displays a great depth of knowledge in his discussions of these two philosophers, his main aims are not exegetic, but consist, rather, in casting new light on the said philosophical and interdisciplinary issues. However, the scope of his interpretative project is ambitious. There is, on the one hand, Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, for whom perception is, first and foremost, conscious. On the other hand, there is Leibniz, the great rationalist metaphysician, who stands out in his era for bringing center-stage various kinds of unconscious perception. Sieroka effectively reconciles these seemingly very different perspectives, as he argues for numerous points of similarity between them and synthesizes them for mutual enrichment.

In Part I of his book, Sieroka gives an overview of the scope and methodology of his study. He describes the Leibnizian methodology as involving extrapolation from conscious to unconscious perception, and pursuit of the structural analogies between the physical and the perceptual. His interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenological method emphasizes similarities with these Leibnizian ideas, enabling Sieroka to broaden the Husserlian conception of perception to cover unconscious states, and bring it into closer contact with empirical disciplines. He rejects what he refers to as foundationalist readings of phenomenology, insofar as they disallow the idea that phenomenology may be guided by empirical research. He also believes that he is, in effect, following Husserl in proceeding mainly by abductive and transcendental argument, rather than phenomenological description (p. 37).

In Part II, Sieroka introduces Leibniz’s account of perception, including notions such as appetite and expression, as well as the distinction between conscious and unconscious perception. Perception, for Leibniz, is an activity of the monads. The mental and the physical aspects of perception stand in a relation of a pre-established harmony. Sieroka pursues a secular version of this idea, with a focus on the Leibnizian concept of “expression”. To say that the mental and the physical express each other is to say that they stand in a kind of relation of structural resemblance, which Sieroka interprets based on the mathematical notion of homeomorphism, falling short of an isomorphism. Unlike the other major philosophers of his time, Leibniz allows for unconscious perception, distinguishing between unnoticeable and merely unnoticed (or “minute”) unconscious perceptions. Sieroka discusses Leibniz’s reasons for proposing these distinctions, and compares these views with Dretske’s, Block’s and Dennett’s. Sieroka also lays considerable emphasis on Leibniz’s notion of an appetite, or a monadic striving to evoke new perceptions, providing clarifications of the relations between the ideas of perception and appetite, and construing appetites as part of a framework of final causation, distinct from the efficient causation that governs the physical universe. He then devotes a chapter to discussing empirical research, to garner support for the Leibnizian view of perception. He invokes the Leibnizian unconscious appetites in providing an alternative account of the results, otherwise credited with disproving the existence of free will, of an experiment by psychologist Benjamin Libet. In the last major development in Part II, Sieroka discusses Leibniz’s view of the transition from unconscious to conscious perception, viz., that it takes place in the course of the accumulation of minute perceptions, with consciousness arising when a certain threshold of distinctness of perception is attained. Sieroka interprets this as a one-level intentionalist view of consciousness, as opposed to higher-level views (p. 109). He further elaborates this view by invoking the notions of attention, reflection, memory, and apperception, and assumes the Leibnizian perspective to voice his reservations, in some final remarks, towards the influential view that conscious and unconscious states are rightly demarcated based on whether or not they possess the requisite what-it-is-likeness (pp. 118-119).

Part III is presented as a brief “intermezzo”, consisting of just one chapter, in which empirical findings are discussed and given a Leibnizian construal. The physiology of perception is considered at different time-scales, with a focus on the range of 1s to 6-8s and the phenomenon of mismatch negativity (MMN), or a kind of sensitivity to breaks in patterns of auditory stimuli. Sieroka argues that MMN are physiological analogs of Leibnizian unnoticeable perceptions, and also brings to bear the Leibnizian notions of immediate memory and pre-attentive anticipation (p. 148).

In Part IV, Sieroka proposes a Husserlian-Leibnizian account of perception, which he then uses to discuss the topic of time. In the merger of the two views, Leibnizian views of perceptual presence are articulated and developed in terms of the more thorough Husserlian account of the extended present, invoking the apparatus of retention, protention, and primal impression. The Husserlian account is extended to cover unconscious perceptions, and viewed as structurally analogous to the underlying physiological processes. Sieroka highlights various points of similarity between the two philosophers’ views. Thus, he interprets the Husserlian distinction between causation and motivation as being analogous to the Leibnizian distinction between efficient and final causation (Section 7.1), and he draws parallels between the Leibnizian ideas of simple reflection and appetite, on the one hand, and the Husserlian immediate memory and immediate anticipation, on the other (Section 7.2). He furthermore contrasts his Husserlian-Leibnizian account with other views and ideas, such as William James’s specious present (p. 177), and Barry Dainton’s extensionalist model of time consciousness (p. 184), criticizing these accounts for unduly privileging physical time over experienced time. Interestingly, Sieroka sees an affinity between his Husserlian-Leibnizian approach and Francesco Varela’s neurophenomenology. He argues that the significance of Varela’s approach, as well as other kindred approaches, should be seen not so much in their invoking some particular mathematical apparatus (e.g., dynamic systems theory), but more generally in their making use of a system of formal notation to investigate the structural parallels between the phenomenological and physiological levels (p. 220).

In sum, Sieroka has developed a kind of empirically-informed Husserlian-Leibnizian parallelist account of perceptual and physiological phenomena. He duly updates Leibniz where needed: instead of regarding God as the origin of the parallelism, he has effectively placed time at its core (p. 226). Throughout the book, he develops his views with great rigor, and in many passages brings to bear his perspective on current debates, attesting to the current relevance of his account. The book is very clearly written, rendering the Leibnizian and Husserlian views accessible to a broad philosophical and scientific readership, and providing a framework to organize one’s thoughts on the topics of perception and time.

This 2010 monograph, by the Freiburg philosopher (published in English translation in 2015), follows his previous work, Gegenständlichkeit: Das Hermeneutische und die Philosophie (Objectivity: Philosophy and the Hermeneutical), which appeared in an English translation in 2011. Although Figal is a major continental philosopher and scholar of the German philosophical tradition, he is perhaps less known outside of European circles, particularly in the Anglo-American sphere. In a perfect world, the present work would make his name more prominent among scholars in the philosophy of art, in both the continental and analytic persuasions. Aesthetics as Phenomenology: The Appearance of Things is an important and potentially major contribution to the philosophy of art, despite some weaknesses that I will outline below. Although this monograph comprises a dedicated work of phenomenology, it also poses some powerful, if unspoken, rejoinders to current trends on the analytic side of aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

Figal’s stated aim in the book’s introductory preface is to recover the primacy of the question of art for philosophy at large (1). An implicit assumption on this score is that Western philosophy has slowly neglected the concept of art considered in its own right; this, after the philosophy of art, saw something of a climax in the philosophy of Kant.

In its execution, the scope of Figal’s study would be best described as a phenomenology of art, representing all of the best features of phenomenological philosophy: vigorous and provocative questioning of longstanding assumptions embedded in the subject matter, emphasis on description of phenomena rather than argumentation, and especially important for the phenomenology of art, significant engagement with the phenomenon of art arising concomitantly with subjective experience. Indeed, one of the most powerful rejoinders Figal’s book makes to contemporary philosophy of art vis-à-vis leading positions in Anglo-American work, is an emphasis on the temporal, spatial, and generally intermedial character of the experience of art works.

Stylistically, readers may find Figal’s prose to contain a mixture of accessibility and density. He writes in an often sparse, formal philosophical voice that sometimes leans toward the abstract and theoretical, especially in the book’s first two chapters, though his central position does become more concrete and transparent as the book proceeds. Throughout, however, he also writes with a stately grace and elegance, particularly when weaving between observations formulated in his own philosophical voice and contributions leveraged from the thought of other philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Gadamer, Heidegger, and Valéry. When his writing is clearest and most engaging, Figal’s style may even strike the reader as very close to Gadamer’s prose in Truth and Method; when it favors the abstract, Figal’s writing may come across as somewhat Hegelian. This book is one for specialists and advanced scholars of phenomenology and the philosophy of art.

The main position of the first two chapters, which sets the stage for the remaining three, is that an art work comprises a true phenomenon, par excellence, in the classical terminological sense of phenomenology. This to say that works of art are appearances that self-show, and this is the way that they are the only beings that effect this accomplishment. This character of art works reflects the fact that their ontological makeup lay in their capacity to appear – to appear as appearing – and thus, not to be encountered as, say, mere useful objects or natural things (86). Figal uses Kant’s philosophy of beauty (from the latter’s third Critique) as a lift-off point for broader exploration of the nature of art. Despite his emphasis on phenomenology, Figal’s understanding of art works remains Kantian at the core, though as the book develops, his position takes on a more Heideggerian note. Figal summarizes his position, definitive for the remainder of the book, in the following passage:

[T]he beautiful as such is a decentered order that stands for itself as an appearance. A decentered order does not permit of being assigned to any conceptually identifiable object and thus being made comprehensible through this object. The order only exists by appearing. In artworks, this appearance is deictic. Something appears in its decentered order—for instance that which a picture shows, or that which a novel narrates. This something is shown, but only in such a way that an artwork itself shows itself. Artworks do not point to something that exists beyond them and that would be intended by the works themselves. What they show is rather only in them and with them, in the way that they show it (4).

Figal’s sustained interest in Kant seems to stem from the observation that the latter’s work represents the last major attempt to describe aesthetic experience in a manner that does not subordinate art and the aesthetic to other ontological categories. Whereas after Kant, philosophers such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger all render the ontology of art in terms such as “spirit” or “truth”, for Figal, this issue is problematic in that such approaches overlook the unique phenomenologico-ontological character of art works. In other words, Figal wishes to describe the ontology of art in a way that is not parasitic on other categories of being, and which instead stems from art’s way of self-showing.

In order to appreciate what is controversial about Figal’s aims here, one may consider by contrast the recent text Beyond Art (Oxford University Press, 2014), a major work by analytic philosopher Dominic McIver Lopes, to see how unfashionable essentialist or systematic ontologies of art have become in mainline philosophical circles. Lopes’ book defends the argument that there is no “art” in the sense of an over-arching metaphysical umbrella that pervades both colloquial talk as well as philosophical discussion of art. Rather, Lopes argues, there are merely “arts”, that is, individual art media that share a name but little else.  Lopes makes this claim on the ground that key seminal moments in the philosophy of art never made a definitive case for the existence of art as such, but were concerned with issues such as taste and beauty. Other Anglo-American philosophers who have suggested a view in line with Lopes include Derek Matravers (Introducing the Philosophy of Art in Eight Case Studies, Acumen, 2013). Although Figal’s book does not take up such contemporary perspectives, readers may wish to take note of just how radically opposed his approach is compared to these other leading positions. Figal is right to say that art is not the major concept of interest it once was for philosophers.

The third, fourth, and fifth chapters of Figal’s book fill out the picture considerably, taking up the topics of art forms, nature, and space, respectively. The third chapter presents the most original and powerful material of the book, with the fourth and fifth mostly serving the role of amplifying Figal’s core position. In the third chapter, Figal proceeds from the observation that art works manifest themselves in certain frequently occurring guises; it is not the case that art manifests itself in random types of human-fashioned objects. Yet at the same time, it is difficult to understand why this happens—it is difficult to comprehend why art historically seems limited to common media like painting, music, and poetry, and offshoots of these three (95-96). Figal addresses this issue with an altogether original and in fact quite stunning account: he suggests that art works share a common foundation by virtue of originating in the ontological overlap of image, text, and rhythm. That is, the forms and thus, the genres that art works exhibit stem from an underlying ontology of “master” categories (129-30). This may sound like a grandiose series of claims to defend, but Figal proceeds in all seriousness, with a citation of Plato to boot. The underlying suggestion is that art works originate as phenomena in the guise of rock-bottom categories, namely, the poetic, musical, and imagistic. This ontology is evidenced by the fact that art works are by and large “mixed” media, phenomenologically speaking. Visual works such as sculptures and paintings can be read as texts, often demanding “textual” analysis. Or at least, it is obvious even to lay reason that visual art always has composition and structure; imagistic works are never comprehended at one glance. Similarly, literary and poetic works tend to exhibit musical structure. Poetry for its part has historical roots in meter and song. And musical works of art have their effect by lending themselves to imagistic meaning or textual reading. The larger point in force here is not simply about interpretation. Figal’s account emphasizes that art works truly consist of these three basic forms, such that no art work can be said to consist solely of any one of them in isolation (138). So the accomplishment of this incredibly rich reckoning is that Figal ends up recasting the ontology of art in terms on the one hand Platonic and on the other hand strongly Heideggerian. Although Figal devotes significant space throughout the text to critiquing Heidegger’s philosophy of art, especially the “Origin of the Work of Art” and “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” essays, Figal’s overall position comes across as a more thorough and improved version of Heidegger’s phenomenology of art, having its strengths (vis-à-vis Heidegger) in the development of detail and extensive use of examples.

Figal’s Heideggerian approach probably also reveals the most prominent weakness of his book’s central position, namely that it seems more successful in the abstract than when one starts to think of examples and problem cases that Figal does not address. For instance, Figal seems mostly uninterested in taking up the hard cases posed by the advent of 20th-century modern art. It seems very difficult at first glance to consider how broadly Figal’s thesis applies to all art; it may be that his thesis only sufficiently describes certain historical instances of great art. Nor does he give much sustained attention to postmodern works in literature or music. From a general philosophy-of-art standpoint, Figal’s appreciation of art seems rather narrow compared to the more inclusive, thoughtful vision of influential philosophers of art like Arthur Danto. In the end it seems that Figal’s understanding of art is quite strongly steeped in the same classical European tropes that occupied Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. But perhaps this shortcoming can be forgiven, in light of the merit of Figal’s ambition.

The fourth and fifth chapters exhibit a similar mixture of broad ambition and narrowness of vision, but do not significantly add new content to Figal’s general position. The fourth chapter takes up the concept of nature, in order to engage the historically problematic question of how art works differ ontologically from nature or natural phenomena. Figal presents the notion that art works have their character in revealing nature while also originating in nature (154). Art serves to call out nature in its distinction from the human as well as in nature’s intersection with the human. The paradigm case he uses to illustrate this view is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, a seminal work of an art medium if there ever was one. While Figal’s ensuing illustration is thorough and exhaustive, one cannot help but wonder about its broader applicability to the philosophical issue of distinguishing art from nature. As an example supporting a thesis about art’s contrast with nature, Fallingwater comes across as too singular, and moreover, too convenient and easy to serve the purpose at hand.

A similar lack of self-critique seems to pervade the book’s final chapter, which takes up the topic of space. By “space” Figal does not mean three-dimensional, Cartesian space, but instead something akin to Heidegger’s phenomenological accounts of space in terms of nearness and distance. Art, Figal concludes, serves the purpose of defining and articulating human space, such that art works reveal to the human subject a world beyond the boundaries of her own perception. The experience of art reveals to one the limited nature of one’s own person, through the revelation of decentered orders, loci of possible meaning fundamentally beyond oneself (220-221). At this point of the book it seems that Figal is speaking largely metaphorically and in terms too sweeping in order to be very persuasive. This last chapter perhaps works better if read as an outline of a much fuller account to be made. The discussion of space in particular may strike some as akin to an idealism rather than phenomenology. At the same time, this book’s contribution to the philosophy of art should not be ignored, and I hope it will be taken further by others.

There are so many significant figures in the phenomenological tradition that it proves difficult to cover all of them in an introduction. This book gives us an overview of the history and development of phenomenology from its 18^th Century philosophical background to contemporary debates in cognitive science, philosophy of mind and psychology, as they are informed by phenomenology. The core of this introduction is organised around three theses. First, the authors expose how the faithful understanding of human beings by phenomenologists can provide an ontological ground to (radical) embodied cognitive science. Second, they explore how responses towards the frame problem (e.g. dynamic system theory, enactivism and the sensorimotor approach), which share similar ideas with phenomenology, “are doing phenomenology” (p.3). Third, putting in perspective the sharp distinction between “continental” and “analytic” philosophy, the authors claim that a “traditional analytic philosophical problem” is pursued in the phenomenological movement.

Continue reading S. Käufer and A. Chemero: Phenomenology – An Introduction

With this clearly argued and engaging study of Saussure, Beata Stawarska has done a great service to the broad, ongoing effort to radically reassess the established historiography not only of structuralism or phenomenology, but of pre-war European intellectual history as a whole. By convincingly making the case that one should liberate Saussure’s thought from its infamously strict dichotomies (langue-parole, synchrony-diachrony, signified-signifier), explore its entanglements with Hegelian and Husserlian phenomenology and give heed to its positive echoes in Merleau-Ponty rather than its critique by Derrida, Stawarska contributes crucial elements to a new historiographical account that presents structuralism and phenomenology not as antagonistic schools tightly bound to their respective founding figures, Saussure and Husserl, but as intermingling, even complementary threads in the still misunderstood interdisciplinary, highly networked and pan-European scientific context of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Instead of the unproductive opposition or mutual ignorance that have mostly characterised the relations between structuralism and phenomenology since the early 1960s, Stawarska correctly intimates, the rediscovery of their entangled history opens the way to a “rapprochement” and carries the promise of new vigour for both traditions.

Continue reading B. Stawarska: Saussure’s Philosophy of Language as Phenomenology

Transcendental phenomenology has a reputation of avoiding engagements with other scientists and philosophers, contemporary or past. Pure description of absolute consciousness demands, according to Husserl, a ‘bracketing’ of all scientific results, philosophical ideas, and of argumentation altogether. The phenomenological philosopher operates in a self-enclosed and systematically expanding field that is built up entirely from a priori principles, without being misguided by the theories and systems of knowledge constructed in the worlds of dogmatic science and philosophy.

Continue reading A. Staiti: Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology. Nature, Spirit, and Life