Sojourns. The Journey to Greece
Also a History of Philosophy, Volume 1: The Project of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking
Reviewed by: Michael Maidan
Also a History of Philosophy (hereafter abbreviated AHPh), originally published in German in 2018 in two volumes, is presented in English translation in a three-volume edition. The first volume, corresponding to about half of the German first one, will be followed next year by a second. A third and final volume will be published in 2025. Habermas —or his translator— provides a justification for the tripartite division (AHPh, p. 83). While the editorial decision to divide the original work into three volumes is understandable considering its length, it means that the English-language reader will have to wait another two years to become familiar with and evaluate the work in its entirety.
The editorial decision to release the book in three volumes also demanded some small adjustments to the text. Whereas volume One carries the subtitle: “The Project of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking”, the German original is “Die okzidentale Konstellation von Glauben und Wissen”. Ciaran Cronin, who translated the book and is a veteran translator of Habermas, chose to substitute the original subtitle with the title of the first part of volume One (“Zur Frage einer Genealogie nachmetaphysischen Denkens”). There are advantages and disadvantages to this move. It can be argued, on the one hand, that Cronin’s choice depicts better the whole project than the original subtitle. Indeed, Cronin’s decision directs us to read the Occidental constellation as a particular subset in the development of postmetaphysical thought. But, as a matter of fact, the Western way is the only subset dealt with substantively. From this point of view, the new title promises more than what it can deliver. The translator promises to include a disclosure of the translation and editorial decisions in the third and final volume (AHPh, x). Readers interested in having an outline of the complete work can refer to pages 396-405 for an overview.
As Habermas makes it clear in the Preface, the genealogy to which we are invited in this work is the genealogy of philosophy, or, more precisely, of a form of philosophy that evolved from, and left behind its metaphysical impedimenta. That philosophy is understood here broadly, is possibly hinted at in the title, which refers to this genealogy as being “also” a history of philosophy. But, why does Habermas make this recourse to philosophy? What can still count as an appropriate understanding of the task of philosophy in our times? (AHPh, xvii). While the term “philosophy” appears in many of Habermas’ writings, most notably in his The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (German 1985/English 1987), it has seldom been thematized. In a 1981 essay, “Philosophy as Stand-In and as Interpreter,” Habermas proposes a redefinition of philosophy’s role in a culture that carved out the traditional understanding of reason into three orientations or research traditions: (a) modern natural science, (b) positive law and morals, and (c) autonomous art and art criticism (Habermas, 1981: 17). As each of these research traditions becomes more and more compartmentalized and specialized, they face the problem of how to mediate between the “experts’ culture” and the general one. Philosophy can be conceived, according to Habermas, as the repository of a will to unity, a will that nevertheless acknowledges that individual matters can only be developed and argued in each one of the differentiated cultural spheres. This is what Habermas characterizes as the post-metaphysical philosophy, which is opposed to the old understanding of philosophy as a kind of usher that oversees the proper sitting arrangements for each of the sciences.
In AHPh, Habermas may have returned to a more traditional understanding of philosophy. Habermas writes that philosophy cannot and should not renounce its holistic ambitions. To do so, even if Habermas acknowledges that those ambitions are unreasonable, would signal a betrayal of its identity, (AHPh, xx). The question is, “What can still count as an appropriate understanding of the tasks of philosophy today?” (AHPh, xvii).
Habermas starts from the observation that, based on his participation in contemporary discussions, there seem to be two different philosophical camps. One takes individual subjects, their ideas, intentions, behavior, and dispositions. The other starts with shared systems of symbols, rules, languages, practices, and forms of life. What Habermas proposes is a reconstruction of both camps because “only an understanding of the reasons that have compelled the philosophy of the subject since the Reformation to undertake an anthropocentric shift in perspective, and above all to embrace the postmetaphysical rejection of belief in a restitutive or ‘redemptive’ justice, will open our eyes to the degree of willingness to cooperate that communicatively socialized subjects must demand of the use of their rational freedom” (AHPh, xxi).
To proceed with this genealogy, Habermas takes a few unconventional steps. He first declares that philosophy, in its origins, is but one of the several metaphysical and religious worldviews of the axial age (AHPh, xxi). Then, he points out that Western philosophy’s origins trace back to an “osmotic process” between Greek philosophy and early Christianity, a process in which religious concepts were assimilated by Philosophy, and at the same time, religious traditions and concerns were transformed into justifiable knowledge, i.e., one that can be argued about conceptually. This process did not end in late antiquity or the Middle Ages but continued well into the modern period, and its traces can still be found in the themes of rational freedom and in basic concepts of practical philosophy.
It may be objected, though, that traces of Judeo-Christian heritage are to be found only in one of the contemporary branches of postmetaphysical philosophy, whereas the empiricist and naturalist branch succeeded in making a complete break with their religious and metaphysical heritage. Habermas rejects this conclusion. The Kantian-Hegelian branch, with its own criticism of religion and metaphysics, preserved an interest in detecting “the traces of reason in history and, in general, an understanding of their philosophical work as oriented to fostering rational conditions of life” (AHPh, xxi).
In an important paper, written after completing the manuscript and before the release of the book, Habermas provides several useful comments to AHPh. In his paper, Habermas qualifies his foreword to AHPh as a grandiose declaration that he now prefers to downplay a few notches. First, he rejects the idea that philosophy can become a “normal” science, i.e., a discipline with a delimited subject matter and a commonly agreed methodology. That would amount to the disappearance of philosophy, a loss in Habermas’ eyes. He elaborates: “The cultural self-understanding of modern societies—and thus the present mode of social life itself—could not remain unaffected by the disappearance of this form of reflection” (Habermas, 2021: 5). Habermas also explains that his account rests on basic concepts and assumptions of social theory on the “emergence, function and progressive desocialization of world views” (Habermas, 2021, 5). From this point of view, the history of philosophy, traditionally centered in discussions between rival schools, is presented by Habermas as a societal process which he summarizes in the formula: “from world views to the lifeworld” (Habermas, 2021, 5).
Habermas’ history of philosophy is not a philosophy of history. But neither is Habermas’ reconstruction of the history and development of philosophy a sociology of philosophy, as practiced by Randal Collins or Pierre Bourdieu and his school, but the reconstruction of an evolutionary process which should suffice to embed the history of philosophy into social theory.
Habermas introduces his project in section I (“On the Question of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking”). This is followed by a second section, which introduces the notion of “axial age,” a hypothesis first formulated by the philosopher Karl Jaspers, according to which we can identify a number of more or less simultaneous and similar breakthroughs in several civilizations in antiquity (China, India, Iran, Israel, and Greece). The third and last section of volume One compares the different approaches and insights of each one of the axial age civilizations. The volume ends with the “First Intermediate Reflection”, in which Habermas takes stock of the work accomplished up to this point and points to the way to be pursued in the remaining two volumes.
According to Habermas, Christian Europe had engaged in repeated bouts of self-examination, which exhibited as a recurring pattern a reflection on Graeco-Roman antiquity. This pattern was disrupted in the 17th century with the emergence of a new type of modernity, which distanced itself from Christianity, and not only from antiquity, as in previous ones. This movement was driven by a reflection on the mathematical natural sciences and by the influence of the Reformation, which questioned the concept of a universal Church. Christianity, and religion in general, become an object of interest for philosophy. But it was only with the Age of Enlightenment that the reflection on the Christian faith takes on the form of a foreign element whose contemporaneity, or to use Habermas’ expression, “whose contemporary configuration of spirit”, becomes problematic. This secularized philosophy bifurcates into a positive and a negative concept. “I am interested” writes Habermas, “in this caesura because the Age of Enlightenment ushered in by philosophy represents a parting of ways for secularized philosophy at which postmetaphysical thinking itself bifurcates.” (AHPh, 5). However, this bifurcation does not correspond to the common one between continental and analytical philosophies (AHPh, 7). Habermas prefers to speak of two different heritages, one tracing back to Hume and the other which continues the tradition of the young-Hegelians. He then offers an interpretation of those heritages based on 4 criteria: (1) attitude to religion and theology (2) a cognitive versus a non-cognitive (or communicative) concept of practical reason; (3) their respective evaluation of the philosophical relevance of the human sciences; (4) their respective positions on the historical location of philosophical thinking (AHPh, 8). In the philosophies of Herder, Schleiermacher, Humboldt, and Hegel, Habermas notes a categorial shift from a paradigm of the subject to a paradigm of language: “With its detranscendentalization of the mind, post-Hegelian thought, in contrast to empiricism, learned simultaneously to reconstruct the activity of a meanwhile situated reason from the participant perspective and to describe it from the observer perspective in the historical context in which it is embedded.” (AHPh, 12). Habermas presents this turn as a “detranscendentalization of the mind”, which learns to simultaneously reconstruct the activity of reason from the perspective of the participant and to describe it from the perspective of the observer. This “dual perspective” is what makes it necessary for philosophy to be humble and to learn from the human sciences (AHPh, 13).
Volume One is divided into three parts. Part I introduces the question of a genealogy of post-metaphysical thought and its legitimacy. The rest of the book is a historical and reconstructructive analysis played on two levels, sometimes parallel and sometimes divergent, of Western philosophy and of the alternative but complementary system of thought elaborated in the Orient. Part II presents the hypothesis of an “axial transformation”, which frames the development of Western philosophy in the broader scheme of the breakthrough that took place around 500 BC in different civilizations. Part III presents a somewhat detailed comparison between the different worldviews that emerged from the axial breakthrough. Volume One ends with a provisional summing up of Habermas’ argument.
Habermas presents the problem of postmetaphysical thinking from three points of view. The first consists of an analysis of the criticism of modernity and of a presumed withering away of the political that was elaborated by a number of German philosophers —e.g., Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Karl Löwith, and Martin Heidegger— in the first half of the 20th century. Habermas contests this melancholic approach and emphasizes instead Hans Blumenberg’s re-evaluation of modernity. According to Habermas’ interpretation, Blumenberg answers to the declinist understanding of modernity with a theory of philosophy as a learning process, because of which, some reasons no longer “count” (AHPh, 35). But this answer demands clarification. How is it that we came to accept only postmetaphysical patterns of explanation as plausible? We cannot answer this question in a direct way, without making a detour through history, understood as a series of learning processes. And Habermas reaffirms his position that patterns of argumentation that emerge from learning processes that we understand in a rational way are the only ones that do not require additional justification (AHPh, 36).
The second point of view regards the relationship between philosophy and religion, and finally, the third involves the suspicion that Western philosophy does not have any claims to universality, and that is, first and foremost, a narrow European perspective.
Why call this interpretation of philosophy conceived as the reconstruction of societal and cultural learning processes with the value-laden name of “genealogy”? The obvious reference is Nietzsche’s thought (AHPh, 36-37). Habermas claims to follow a suggestion made by Amy Allen to differentiate between “subversive,” “problematizing,” and “vindicatory” genealogies. “Vindicatory” genealogy is one that not only refers to the contingency of the context in which one’s ideas originated, something it has in common with other forms of genealogy, but also considers the distance from a naivety of understanding of the world that disappears once we become aware that its structure is the results of a learning process. Briefly, while the first form of genealogy appears to correspond to its use in Nietzsche, and the second to Foucault, the third would be the one chosen by Habermas, and is not only negative like the former forms, but has a positivity that results from its reinscription as results of learning processes (AHPh, 37).
Habermas’ example is meaningful. We see the secular premises of postmetaphysical thinking in a different light when we discover that these are not only the result of a return to premises of Greek thought, Christianized and forgotten during the Middle Ages, but from a protracted theological discourse on faith and knowledge. The kind of genealogy that Habermas has in mind preserves, at the logical-semantical level, the validity of its propositions (AHPh, 37). But characterized in those terms, Habermas genealogy is also a crypto-dialectic. Indeed, echoes from Hegel’s philosophy are much present in this work. What Habermas hopes to find in a genealogy is, in addition to a cognitive function, also a social cohesive one (AHPh, 38). Early on, in the societies of the Axial Age, the aspect of social integration took the form of a political theory legitimizing the imperial kingdoms. In the Christian West, because of the division of labor with philosophy, religion took over this role. Later, with the secularization of the state, philosophy took on the role of providing justification for constitutional norms. Ultimately, philosophy could not satisfy itself with the normative perspective and had to incorporate findings acquired from an observer perspective, i.e., from the social sciences. Habermas claims that philosophy was able to do so only after the scientization of the knowledge of culture and society. The observer’s perspective and knowledge are either integrated into the existing “interpretative framework” or lead to its restructuring. Also, in the case of the normative realm, changes in the form of social integration translate into an expansion of modes of cooperation and the development of normative ideas. Habermas also adds that worldviews can store problem-solving potentials that remain latent until they can be fully utilized (AHPh, 39-40)
Section 2 deals with the question —that occupies Habermas in his more recent work— on the status of religion in modern society. There are two interpretations of Habermas’ belated interest in religion. The first interpretation stresses the continuity of Habermas’ interest in religion, starting with his earliest writings. The second restricts his interest in religion to a late stage, necessitated by the evidence of a re-emergence of religion in Western Europe and the USA, and the renewal of political theologies worldwide. Both camps can find elements in Habermas’ late work that sustain their interpretation. In what respects to volume One of AHPh, Habermas clearly subordinates the question of religion to the acknowledgment of the important role that the relationship between faith and knowledge had in the development of Western philosophy. But he also considers the effects of the decoupling of philosophy from religion. Accordingly, he introduces a distinction between secularization at the level of our understanding of self and the world, and the process of secularization of state power and society. The latter is a matter of functional differentiation between the state and a church that has been relieved of the task of legitimizing political rule.
Section 3 confronts the question of postmetaphysical thought’s universality claims.
Habermas acknowledges the skeptical argument against the claim to universality. This is why we must consider Western philosophy as one of many voices in the concert of axial worldviews (AHPh, 66). This would also apply to postmetaphysical thinking, which can be defended only in an intercultural discourse among equal participants. To that effect, Habermas proposes what he denominates a “thought experiment” that would explain the legitimate role that postmetaphysical thinking can assume in discourses that are polyphonic and intercultural (AHPh, 73-82). This experiment corresponds to a translation of the vague aspirations of post-metaphysical thinking to the concrete experience of the development of international and interregional organizations based ultimately on disparate nation-states having different histories, cultures, and religions. The question that Habermas presents is whether “reaching an intercultural understanding on principles of political justice can be conceived as possible in a multicultural world society at all, even though the parties who encounter each other there are shaped by the cultural legacies of competing world religions.” (AHPh,75). In other words, “how an international community could reach an agreement on interculturally recognized principles of political justice at all.” (AHPh, 75). Habermas adds that the experiment that he is proposing has as an objective to identify the level of reflection on which the claim to universality could be clarified (AHPh, 76). Here, Habermas restricts the discussion to the domain of religions, disregarding the influence of economic, social, and other interests, as if only consideration of salvation and morality are operative in this situation.
The analysis is conducted in two parts. In the first, Habermas considers the viability of dialogue between religious and secular thought in which both parties accept the same principles of political justice for the same reasons. The second version of the argument requires that the religious party accepts that secular thought is sufficient for a self-supporting “rational justification”. (AHPh, 79). Habermas agrees that this is a unilateral challenge to the religious side (AHPh, 81). He proposes two ways of resolving this contradiction. One asserts that the development of the worldviews of the different civilizations is broadly similar. Second, that those differences that cannot be reconciled by recourse to the previous observation “would have to be dealt with in intercultural discourse.” (AHPh, 82; 117).
After this extended introduction, Habermas presents in sections II and III the hypothesis of an axial breakthrough, taking place independently at approximately the same time in five ancient Asian civilizations. He deals first with the general characteristics of the axial turn and goes later into a specific comparison of the major traits of each of the axial civilizations. According to Habermas “The term ‘Axial Age’ stems from Karl Jaspers’ conception of the year 500 BC as an ‘axis’ around which the rotation of world history accelerated, as it were. This development was prompted by similar revolutions in the mentalities of the elites in the early Eurasian advanced cultures that occurred independently during a comparatively short period. Out of these revolutions emerged “strong” religious teachings and metaphysical worldviews that remain influential to the present day.” (AHPh, 115). This approach, which Habermas borrows from Jaspers, has some problems. Out of the monotheistic religions, both Islam and Christianity are missing, and is difficult to see how they could be integrated into the axial approach. Egypt is missing, even though Greek philosophers thought of Egypt as the origin of at least some of their wisdom. Regarding monotheism, Habermas polemicizes with the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, who advocates a different interpretation and evaluation of the development and consequences of monotheism. To make room for everybody would require an expanded notion of axial breakthrough, which means not just the five breakthroughs that Jaspers identified, but also their offshoots. But Habermas is more interested in addressing a different problem: how these evolutionary events continue to influence contemporary societies. For this purpose, we need to discard a one-sided, intellectualistic interpretation of religion and metaphysical worldviews. Religions are not just worldviews; they connect interpretation with ritual and remain connected to an archaic experience. This realization leads Habermas into a lengthy exploration of ritual, language, social integration, and political rule. Ultimately, this provides an interpretation of the inner dynamics that lead to the axial turn, and also explains the persistence of religion in the contemporary world.
Habermas dedicates an important excursus to the question of the origins of language, referring to the research conducted by the developmental and comparative psychologist and linguist Michael Tomasello. He uses Tomasello’s reconstruction of language acquisition to ground his insight that “cultural transmission, which replaces genetically controlled natural evolution, depends on an intersubjective relationship between speaker and addressee and their ability to share intentions aimed at something perceived in the objective world. And it is precisely this elementary interlocking of a horizontal relationship between persons with a vertical relationship to states of affairs proceeding from this shared basis that is made possible by the interposition of a public gesture perceived and understood by both sides as a symbol.” (AHPh, 155). Habermas reconstruction of the communicative situation puts into play five elements whose presence are required for the success of communication: (1) a deliberate gesture; (2) adjustment of perspectives; (3) reference to a state of affairs; (4) that the gesture refers for the speaker and for the addressee to the same state of affairs; and finally, (5) that the addressee interprets based on a shared normative background (AHPh, 154). In the communicative situation, Habermas distinguishes a communicative use of the symbol which refers to an interpersonal relationship, from a representational use of the symbol, which points to the world. Entering into an interpersonal relationship, the participants adopt each other’s perspective and thereby create shared knowledge (AHPh, 156).
In the following section, Habermas extends the model of communication to interpret ritual behavior. Ritual is a more primitive form of communication, than, e.g., myth. Myth presupposes a grammatically developed language. (AHPh, 163). Not so ritual, which builds on the mimetic skills of our ancestors (rhythm, dance, pantomime, sculpture, painting, body painting, found objects, and so forth). What sets ritual apart is its self-referentiality. Ritual does not refer to something in the world (as is the case in linguistic communication) but is self-contained (AHPh,164). Ritual is a kind of “speech before language” (AHPh, 165). Habermas connects this description with a functional one. Ritual is a response to specific disturbances within the social collective, that are related to a vulnerability of the communicative form of socialization. In the following pages, Habermas presents an explanation of the origins and function of ritual as a learning process. With the new level of communication and openness to the world, the individual is exposed to an increased flood of information. What is new must be integrated into familiar contexts. Myth is a response to this cognitive challenge (AHPh, 169-172). But rituals are not discarded; rather, they are combined with mythical narratives to which they provide already symbolically encoded experiences (AHPh, 173). Ritual steps in when the balance between individual self-assertion and the preservation of the collective. “Acute shocks to the social balance bring a practice into play in which individual members assure themselves of their dependence on the powerful collective by means of an aggression-inhibiting ‘submission to the superior’” (AHPh, 179).
In part III Habermas discusses in more detail the specific configurations of the worldviews elaborated in the different axial age cultures. The analysis contained in this section of the book is deemed to be provisional, in the sense that Habermas acknowledges his lack of expertise in each of the religions or cultures that he introduces briefly. Starting with a general discussion, Habermas concentrates on the rejection of paganism in ancient Judaism, the teachings and practice of Buddha, Confucianism, and Taoism, concluding with two sections on Greek philosophy, the first on Natural philosophy and the second with Plato’s theory of Ideas.
Habermas finds some interesting similarities between Plato’s theory of ideas and the cosmocentric Asian worldviews of the axial age: (1) Ontologization of the powers of salvation and misfortune into the moral and esthetic of the truly existent; (2) elaboration of the distinction between being and appearance into a theory of level of knowledge and being; (3) inquiry and knowledge are represented as a path to salvation; (4) moralization of the sacred, perfectionistic ethics that prescribe a way of life characterized by wisdom, prudence, courage, and justice; (5) repudiation of idolatry and magic. In the case of Greek philosophy, though, de-coupling of doctrine from cult (AHPh, 316). Habermas also ponders the paradox of the politically advanced conditions of Athenian democracy and their inability to be projected to the whole of the population of the polis.
In the “First intermediate reflection” that concludes the present volume of AHPh, Habermas notes that since the breakthrough of the axial age, the paths of the major civilizations have diverged, and declares himself unable to explore in detail their development. He concentrates instead on the “Western way”. Nevertheless, he offers a few remarks on the commonalities in the development of the different civilizations, as they become visible “from a great distance”. Habermas indeed claims that the different “worldviews” seem to have had similar starting conditions for their emergence and their dynamic development. This is essential for Habermas’ hypothesis. A mere simultaneity, or even similar starting conditions but not similarities, will not satisfy the conditions required for a dialogue between contemporary societies beyond vague claims of either a clash of civilizations or relativism. Habermas lists a number of similarities and emerging conditions (AHPh, 323): (1) a connection of the “sacred complex” with the new bureaucratic structure of the state; (2) a revolution in the intellectual elite which was enabled when written culture reached maturity; (3) a mythical tradition that got a literary expression that provided legitimation through a differentiated pantheon; (4) changes in cultic practices which took the form of state rituals on the one side, and of individual worship, on the other. Habermas also notes that there are some similarities in the geopolitical situations of the nations that played the lead in the axial breakthrough. Those were peripheral regions, removed from the center of power, afflicted by political unrest, foreign domination, or new modes of production. Habermas emphasizes the centrality of a normative turn: “the religious and metaphysical worldviews of the axial age gave rise to generally binding norms that the ruler could no longer embody but could only represent to the extent that he himself was subject to them” (AHPh, 325). The axial breakthrough produces a limited disenchanting of the world. This process was different in the Asian cultures and in Greece, which allowed the emergence of philosophical idealism. But, the “religious and metaphysical worldviews” (except perhaps for Greek philosophy) played an ambivalent role, providing spiritual and intellectual resources for subversion and resistance and to their stabilization (AHPh, 324).
Volumes 2 and 3 —which are forthcoming in English— deal exclusively with Western philosophy, from Christian Platonism to Pierce’s pragmatism. While more in line with traditional histories of philosophy in the array of subjects treated, Habermas’ choices are idiosyncratic. Not a pedagogic work, not a generic history of philosophy, and certainly not a philosophy of history, Also a History of Philosophy is intimately linked to the inner dynamics of Habermas’ project.
Bibliography:
Habermas (1981), “Philosophy as Stand-In and as Interpreter” in, Jurgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Cambridge, UK and Maldon, USA, cs1990.
Habermas (2021), “An author’s retrospective view”, Constellations, 2021;28:5–10 (DOI: 10.1111/1467-8675.12570).
misReading Plato: Continental and Psychoanalytic Glimpses Beyond the Mask
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy
Reviewed by: Gabriele Baratelli (University of Cologne)
This volume arguably represents the most ambitious and complete attempt until today to collect in a uniform form a series of highly qualified contributions on the entire spectrum of phenomenological philosophy.[1] Given the peculiar character of each entry of this Handbook, it will be no surprise if the text will be taken as a useful guide by students entering for the first time in the difficult terrain of phenomenology as well as by experienced scholars. On the one hand, the book is, in fact, certainly meant as an introduction, as a “conceptual cartography” that alludes to the answers and to the immense potentialities that this philosophical practice has expressed in its history. This is done by means of the precise but not esoteric description of its language and conceptuality. On the other hand, with diverse gradations, the entries are also original contributions that certainly make significant progresses in phenomenological research.
The text is divided into five main parts. The first one is devoted to history, conceived in two senses. The first essay of this section, written by Pierre-Jean Renaudie, gives an excellent and concise overview of the history of the phenomenological movement itself. The others concern instead the conceptual heritage of phenomenology and the original transformation of traditional doctrines and methods coming from the history of philosophy that it brought about. The style of the contributions varies a lot. This is certainly a virtue for the expert, but it can easily become a limit for the beginner. To make a comparative example, Burt Hopkins’ “Phenomenology and Greek Philosophy” provides an analysis of one of the classical themes of phenomenology, namely its relationship with ancient metaphysics. This is realized in three steps. Since the terms of the discussion have been laid out by Heidegger in the 1920s, Hopkins takes into critical account at first his interpretation of Husserl’s method through the lens of Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies. It is argued that both Heidegger’s identifications (of the doctrine of categorial ideation with Aristotle’s doctrine of the apprehension of eide, and of the theory of intentionality with Plato’s statement that speech is about something) are totally unwarranted. This technical assessment of Heidegger’s miscomprehension of Husserl’s main tenets leads Hopkins afterwards to the related conclusion that the entire Heideggerian conception of Greek philosophy has to be recognized as the “myth not only of Plato’s philosophy being limited by a prior understanding of the meaning of Being as presence, but also of it being a fundamentally driven by an ontology”. After a brief intermezzo devoted to a not very well-known Husserlian discussion over the origins of philosophical thought and the role played in it by the sceptics and Socrates, Hopkins presents Jacob Klein’s account of Plato’s doctrine of the eide. Besides its intrinsic interest, this last part helps clarifying Hopkins’ critical account of Heidegger. It has moreover the merit of assigning to Klein’s analyses of Greek philosophy the deserved position next to the other classical phenomenological interpretations. The presentation of the subtlety of his arguments as well as the skilful use that Hopkins makes of them to confute and correct Heidegger’s shortcomings is certainly proof of the richness Jacob Klein’s thought. To come back to our concern, it is clear that this text has strong theoretical claims, whose authentic appreciation could require the reference to the other texts of the author and, especially for the beginner, to the other entries of the Handbook (including the one dedicated to Klein himself).
Francesco Valerio Tommasi’s “Phenomenology and Medieval Philosophy” has instead a less demanding theoretical commitment, as it displays an historical outline of the different approaches to Medieval philosophy (and religion and theology in general) that characterizes phenomenology (Tommasi focuses on Brentano, Scheler, Stein, Heidegger and Marion). The reconstruction is driven from the outset by a clear interpretative idea, namely, as Tommasi puts it: “The history of the relationship between phenomenology and medieval philosophy is, for the most part, the history of the relationship between phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism”. The paper has then a twofold utility: by studying the reciprocal influences of two of the greatest philosophical tendencies of the XXth century, it shows indirectly, so to speak, the noteworthy role that Medieval thought played in phenomenology itself. Regarding the conceptual viewpoint, the key-concept that allows Tommasi to give uniformity to his reconstruction is arguably that of analogia entis. This “fragile architrave” of Scholastic thought gathers together the initial emergence of a phenomenological conceptuality in Brentano (for whom, as it is well known, the encounter with Aristotle’s doctrine of category and Being was decisive) and some of its most radical outcomes, including Heidegger’s philosophy. On this view, significant differences among the phenomenologists can be detected through the analysis of their appropriation of this pivotal notion. This undoubtedly sheds new light on phenomenology overall and on its conflicting relationship with Neo-Scholasticism. Without this common ground, in fact, even the “very heavy blow to the Neo-Thomist model” provoked by Heidegger’s critique of “ontotheology” would remain inexplicable.
The other essays concern the relationships with the Cartesian tradition, British empiricism, German idealism and Austrian philosophy.
The second section is the real core of the text. It presents a list of concepts and issues that form, so to speak, the basic ingredients of phenomenology. The entries are either fundamental concepts that often immediately refer to a specific author, for example “Dasein” and “Life-World”, or general topics, like “Ethics”, “Time”, “Mathematics” and so forth. The order is alphabetic, so that any hierarchical connotation and immanent principle of organization is excluded. The complex technicality of phenomenological vocabulary is here analysed thanks to a useful kaleidoscopic operation. Since many terms have already taken upon various meanings, one the strategy followed in the texts of this section is to refract the successive sedimentations of meanings showing the hidden reasons and the misunderstandings responsible for their complex conceptual history. Paradigmatic of this choice is the crucial entry “Phenomenon”, written by Aurélien Djian and Claudio Majolino, in which the connotations of this fundamental concept are unfolded throughout the history of phenomenology. Among the important shifts that characterized this history, two of them appear probably as the most significant ones: Husserl’s departure from Brentano’s notion of phenomena, and Heidegger’s departure from Husserl’s. Thus, in the first case, while for Brentano a phenomenon is “what appears as it truly is, something whose existence is tantamount to its appearance”, for Husserl is rather “what appears beyond existence and non-existence, something whose existence is indifferent with respect to its appearance”. This change clearly determined the “eidetic” character of Husserlian phenomenology as a “purely descriptive” science in the Logical Investigations. This feature will be constant in Husserl’s further reflections, despite the increasing sophistication of his method and the corresponding substantial modifications of the concept of phenomenon itself (modifications that are recognized in three further steps and painstakingly described in the paper). Heidegger’s case involves something else. Thanks to a precise clarification of the famous §7 of Being and Time, the authors explain how Heidegger considered phenomenology as a method that has to deal with the “how” things show themselves, and not with a certain “what”, namely phenomena themselves. Moreover, he distinguished between the “vulgar concept of phenomenon”, something that “initially and for the most part” shows-itself in the world, namely entities, and something that, by showing itself, is essentially concealed, namely Being, the “proper phenomenological concept of phenomenon”. A different phenomenological method corresponds to each pole of this ontological difference: the one of positive sciences and the one of hermeneutical ontology, i.e., “a method to wrestle from its concealment what essentially does not show itself (Being) and yet is fundamental with respect to the immediate and unproblematic self-showing of worldly entities”. This new peculiar scientific attempt is then irreducible to Husserl’s original one, as it focuses not on “phenomena” simpliciter, but exclusively on “the most exceptional phenomenon of all”. The final part of the essay reconstructs the more recent developments of phenomenology by showing the “Heideggerian logic” they embody. Be it Levnias’ phenomenon of the Other, Henry’s Life or Marion’s Givenness, in all these cases it is reiterated that the idea of an authentic phenomenological thought has to face the most exceptional phenomenon of all. The differences lie rather in determining which is the most fundamental one. This paper, therefore, alongside with many others, not only elucidates a central theme in conceptual and historical terms, but it also offers indirectly an interpretation of the sense of several, apparently contradictory, phenomenological trajectories.
The third part is composed of a list of major phenomenologists. For each of them is given an overview of their work. It is noteworthy that this section dedicates deserved space to authors that are still little known (the list includes, for example, Aron Gurwitsch, Jacob Klein, Enzo Paci). Here, the ideas analytically set forth in the previous section form specific constellations of meanings within the unitary production of each philosopher.
The fourth part, —“Intersections”—concerns the significant influence of phenomenology on other philosophical traditions and the positive sciences. This section not only stresses once again the peculiarities and the theoretical richness of phenomenology, but also its fundamentally relational nature. In “Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy”, for instance, Guillaume Fréchette takes into account the vexata quaestio of the alleged fracture between “continental” and “analytic philosophy” that occurred during the XXth century. The author recollects the most significant episodes of dialogue (and reciprocal incomprehension) of the last decades and gives an overview of the philosophers that, explicitly or not, tried to “bridge the gap”. However, Fréchette underlines the fact that this divide is exclusively determined by contextual and institutional factors, and not by fundamental theoretical principles, as it has been usually the case for conflicting schools of thought in the history of philosophy. In the last part of the essay he conceptually formulates both traditions by invoking the realist/anti-realist distinction. On the one hand, this analysis proves the previous thesis, since it is shown that these opposing tendencies are equally present in both traditions. On the other, by an overarching reflection concerning the so-called “philosophy of mind”, it sheds light on the (often undervalued) similarities and influences that, besides any actual recognition, inform the course of recent philosophical research. Other papers are instead devoted to the relationships with psychoanalysis, medicine, deconstruction, cognitive sciences.
The fifth and final part of the text connects phenomenology, historically grounded in the Western world, to other areas and thus to conceptualities apparently distant from the philosophical tradition. As Bado Ndoye notes in the first essay of the section dedicated to “Africa”, this operation can even appear odd, if not paradoxical, if we think that when Husserl mentioned “African or non-Western people in general, it was always in order to make a contrast with what he used to call the ‘Idea of Europe’, as if the very essence of the latter could not be cleared if not opposed to a radical exteriority”. Husserl’s “eurocentrism”, however, is of a peculiar kind since it privileges the role of European humanity as that which factually revealed the authentic idea of reason and science. The content and especially the telos of this idea are not of course limited to one culture, but rather represent the common horizon that has to define humanity as such. Given this premise, the wide interest that phenomenology received all over the world cannot be a surprise and does not imply eo ipso an endorsement of relativism. Ndoye shows precisely this by analysing the work of Paulin J. Hountondji and his critique of the philosophical Western prejudices over Africa from the exact standpoint of Husserl’s universal idea of science. This happens in Hountondji’s account of Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy (1947), which is charged with confusing philosophy and ethnology, and in this way creating “philosophemes” attributed to a “fantasized vision of African societies”. This attitude does not rule out the importance of empirical research but is useful, on the contrary, to appreciate its authentic role and meaning. Ndoye suggests that in this sense Hountondji’s trajectory repeats Husserl’s, inasmuch as the latter finally encounters the question of the life-world as the unavoidable dimension that precedes every objective science. Despite the plurality of its manifestations, the correct interpretation of this original dimension helps “to pass through the element of the particular, in this instance the local cultures, as a gateway to the universal”.
Two things have to be certainly recognized in the editorial composition of this Handbook. The first is to have successfully produced and assembled a useful and insightful instrument for further phenomenological studies. The second is the courage behind the realization of such a project. The unity of this book, in fact, surpasses the collection of excellent contributions that it contains. Through its pages, phenomenology is not presented in the rigor mortis of definitions and historical analyses dictated by an eccentric scholarly curiosity. It is instead fierily depicted as a “living movement” whose role within and outside the philosophical sphere is not exhausted. In other words, this book does not impose the seal of the past to phenomenology, but rather it vividly presents it in its actual force, as a cultural project that is still in becoming in such a way that it can still meaningfully respond to our present needs.
Now, if this is what motivated, at least partially, this enterprise, then a very basic assumption is here presupposed. Namely, the fact that phenomenology, whatever it really is, exists. Given a superficial knowledge of the history of philosophy after Husserl up to the present, a sceptic could simply deny this alleged fact: the contrasts among philosophers at first recognizing themselves as belonging to the same scientific community inspired by Husserl’s works are so fundamental and the paths taken from them so diverse that any possible feature giving an acceptable unity and coherence seems to vanish. The sceptic could find in the constant appeal to metaphors describing the course of phenomenology further evidence for his thesis. For instance, in Renaudie’s already mentioned historical essay, it is said that phenomenology cannot be characterized as a systematic doctrine, having fixed and clear fundamental principles and a cumulative-like progress. On the contrary, what is common to its different manifestations is only a “philosophical style”. As a consequence, Renaudie himself describes the history of phenomenology through a series of “conceptual shifts” (“transcendental”, “existential” and so forth) and he finally compares this flourishing of expressions to a plant, “the wilting of which does not necessarily prevent its growing back under a new and rejuvenated shape”. On this view, the many unorthodox interpretations stemming from Husserl’s texts would not destroy the sense of the entire project but, on the very contrary, would be essential to foster its development. Surely fascinating, but again, the sceptic would reply: is it really so? Is it not just a verbal escamotage to cover the historical failure of phenomenological thinking, whatever it tried to be at the end? Is not this narrative even more doubtful in contrast to Husserl’s own words, where in the Crisis the existence of almost as many philosophies as philosophers is presented as an urgent contemporary problem?
As said before, the editors do not elude this question and, in the introduction, they give a few remarkable hints to clarify their position. Even more clearly, perhaps, the collection of essays itself indicates a possible reply to the sceptic. The way in which they are organized, as well as the very diversified contents and perspectives offered, reveal a tension towards two complementary directions. The first one has to do with the “origin” of phenomenology, and specifically with the inevitable theoretical heritage of Edmund Husserl’s epoch-making work. Without Husserl, that is, without his immense factual influence, phenomenology, and therefore any history of phenomenology, would have never been arisen. Having in mind Paul Ricouer’s notorious dictum, namely that phenomenology is the sum of Husserl’s works and the heresies that stemmed from them, the editors suggest that this history has to be primarily described as a “‘self-differentiating’ history, a series of more or less dramatic (theoretical or even spatial) departures from Husserl, or even as a sum total of all the one-way train and air tickets away from him”. This does not amount to saying that the inevitable coming back to Husserl has to be meant as a return to “the things themselves”, in the sense of an auroral locus in which phenomenology was authentically conceived and practiced, untouched by its successive distortions. This solution cannot work since the sceptical arguments could be in fact repeated on this level. After all, who really is Husserl? Given the profound changes that mark his philosophical career, not to mention the various interpretations and criticisms to which his work underwent, the sceptic would maybe paraphrase what Einstein once bitterly said of Kant, namely that every philosopher has his own Husserl. Be that as it may, the state of affairs that occasioned the “ongoing cluster of heresies of heresies”, is not in contradiction with its grounding in Husserl’s texts. The latter do not contain a fixed and coherent system of doctrines, but rather (despite the huge amounts of material) a “small beginning” that has to be still understood and, when necessary, criticized. The very content of Husserl’s ground-breaking philosophizing, in other words, has not finished to be unfolded with his death: new shades appear in a circular motion in which phenomenology tries to define itself in such a manner that “Husserl’s own doctrine assumes a constantly new aspect and shape as it is looked at from such and such an angle”. The ultimate reference point, therefore, is not a mythological Husserl, “the true one”, but the conceptual space that he opened and that still waits for its authentic discovery.
The other side of the reply to the sceptic involves a certain view of the future. The connection to an origin meant in this way cannot but find its verso in a unity that is still to come. Now, despite the appearances, it is undoubtful that phenomenological doctrines share a certain “family resemblance”, whose sense points beyond each of them. Just like “the many different adumbrations do not exclude the dynamic unity of what is experienced though them”, the multiple directions presented in this text are directed to a common ideal pole. In other terms, each of them cannot live without the others in a multiplicity of positions that, insofar as they are genuinely phenomenological, contribute to build the very same “Husserlian” theoretical space.
In conclusion, this book is a great guide for everybody who is looking for an orientation in a certain domain of phenomenology. But we could say, it is a phenomenological guide, a book of phenomenology, that gathers a (empirical but ideally infinitively extendable) community whose project is shared. The implicit tension that crosses the contributions hides thus a promise, the promise that many heard at first in Husserl’s own words and that this text has succeeded in making audible once again. The restoring of this philosophical ambition is what preserves the necessary looking back to the past into a nostalgic and antiquarian task and at once what projects the very same enquiry into the future.
[1] To my knowledge, the only comparable text in English is The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology (2012) edited by D. Zahavi, published by Oxford University Press, which is limited to a smaller portion of this spectrum.