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DIDIER FRANCK
Translated by Joseph Rivera and Scott Davidson
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
www.bloomsbury.com
ISBN: 978-1-4411-2614-6
Notes 167
Index 217
,
.
* Parmenides
Translators Introduction
Joseph Rivera
Didier Franck began a long and fruitful career upon the 1981
release of his book Chair et corps: sur la phnomnologie de
Husserl, which we translate here. Prior to this publication, and
before he began lecturing at the University of Paris X Nanterre
as a promising philosopher whose potential was evident but still
incipient, he devoted himself to studying the phenomenology of
his day in its original idiom, a necessary exercise if this German
philosophy itself was to be truly grasped in all of its teutonic
complexity. It is no surprise, then, that the occasion of his
first academic contribution was a translation of an important
collection of thematic essays written by Eugen Fink (1974) (other
than Heidegger, Fink was perhaps Husserls most accomplished
student). This book would, in the end, prove not only indicative of
the Husserlian path Franck would pursue in the ensuing decades,
but also of the phenomenological composition of all his thinking,
imparting into his work a careful and critical apprehension of
the limits and possibilities of phenomenological enquiry itself.1
Even though his doctoral advisor was Paul Ricoeur, under whose
guidance was written Chair et corps, early on Franck came under
the decisive influence of Jacques Derrida, and much later befriended
another elder statesman in the French academy, Michel Henry.2 It
is also worth noting that after 1984, when he replaced Derrida at
the cole normale suprieure (ENS), Franck shared some lecturing
responsibilities at Nanterre with a young and fledgling descendant
of Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, whose work now enjoys a wide
readership and is celebrated especially in America.3 Philosophical
discourse in France, when Franck and Marion were just appearing
2 FLESH AND BODY
deep within the ego, and Franck admits that Husserl tends to leave
open possibilities12 in this regard, Franck nevertheless argues that
Husserl anchors the intentional life of the ego in a passive, intran-
sitive primal-presencing a living present that is invariable. For
Franck, the living present accommodates a logic perfectly suited
to explain how temporality is possible in the first place. The living
present holds within itself as its most pure inner moment the uncon-
stituted flow of temporality, the a priori form of temporality that is
immovable (like the bedrock underneath a river that supports the
fast flow of the water).13 Franck, naturally, wants to get beyond
such a phenomenological viewpoint insofar as the Husserlian living
present, where intentio and intentum exactly coincide, renders philo-
sophical discourse incapable of bringing into view the embodied
subject, and this for obvious reasons: how can I possibly engage with
the other, account for the non-ego or the givenness of the world,
if I am immovable and inside a homeland without an embodied
passageway through which I can step into the alien land?
One may challenge whether Francks paradigm shift is warranted
at all. Perhaps a closer study of the concept of world (and the
various intonations of that term in Husserls vocabulary)14 would
have certainly enriched and further corroborated his central claim
in Flesh and Body and, perhaps, prevented the move toward
his later claim (even if it is a measured claim) that egoism
pervades Husserls transcendental ego. In no way does this critique
undermine the interpretative value of Flesh and Body, but it does
call into question the completeness of its argument and highlights
the lack of appreciation it has for the complexity of Husserls
notion of the world. The world is perhaps the greatest phenomeno-
logical problem, because the phenomenologist has
The concept of world, the unity of the lifeworld and the transcen-
dental constitution of the world are all themes in Husserl to which
Franck does attend in his volume, and yet they are developed only
to the extent that they illumine the nature and function of the
Translators Introduction 7
pp. 120ff.). But what of the way in which Husserl understood the
soul (Seele) and the spiritual world of flesh? How might an analysis
of sensation in relation to both Leib and Krper be instructive
for how we approach Husserls concept of incarnation? These
and many other questions remain outstanding precisely because
Franck does not incorporate within his analysis of flesh more
lessons on display in Ideas II. In other words, this gap in Francks
book highlights an incommensurability between the analytic of
incarnation he advances and the idiomatic arrangement of Leib
(subjective body) and Krper (objective body) that occupies so
much of Ideas II. I am not contending that if Franck highlighted
all of the key themes in Ideas II that his interpretation of Husserl
would be greatly altered, or that the analytic of incarnation would
assume a fundamentally new philosophical tone. It is, instead, to
maintain that any phenomenological examination of incarnation
will have to be fully informed by the phenomenological articulation
of the Leibkrper in Ideas II.
As we have mentioned, the final two chapters cast the flesh
body relation in a temporal light, which yields some radical results:
The flesh as both my own and not my own [propre et impropre]
gives rise to time. This signifies, at the very least, that flesh the
sense of flesh does not derive from temporality (p. 165). What
Franck indicates here, and begins to spell out only in outline form,
is that the analytic of flesh is not derivative of temporality but that
temporality, as the product of two fleshes interconnection, is deriv-
ative of flesh. Temporality, despite what Heidegger may contend,
is not most basic. In recent years there have been several secondary
studies of temporality in Husserl that could be read as supple-
ments to Francks subtle investigation of the relation that joins
together flesh and time as two mutual poles of lived experience.
Nicolas de Warrens book comes to mind, as does James Menschs
study, both released since 2009. Menschs book contains a chapter
on Embodied Temporality that may promote a fruitful contrast
between two established interpreters of Husserl.16
A final way in which one may contextualize Franck is to situate
him within the theological turn that has aroused considerable
debate since the 1990s. Named among this cadre of French intellec-
tuals are familiar figures such as Ricoeur, Levinas, Derrida, Marion,
Henry, Lacoste, etc. Franck maintains a complicated relationship
with this movement in that he is specifically not interested in
Translators Introduction 9
Self-Givenness and
Incarnate Givenness
The thesis that all cognition has intuition as its goal, has the
temporal meaning that all cognizing is making present. Whether
every science, or even philosophical cognition, aims at a making-
present, need not be decided here. Husserl uses the expression
make present in characterizing sensory perception. Cf. his
Logische Untersuchungen, first edition, 1901, vol. II, pp. 588
and 620. This temporal way of describing this phenomenon
must have been suggested by the analysis of perception and
intuition in general in terms of the idea of intention. That the
intentionality of consciousness is grounded in the ecstatical
unity of Dasein, and how this is the case, will be shown in the
following Division.23
Science as Egology
The differences, though subtle, are decisive. On the one hand, the
reduction (to which we will return momentarily) does not operate
by doubt: it never implies a negation. It is definitive and universal,
inasmuch as it also includes the psyche. On the other hand, truth
and reality are the noematic correlates of evidence. According
to Husserl, evidence requires an immense work of clarification
which is the task of intentional analysis that Descartes never
undertook, given that he was overly assured about the sense of
being and of reality. This clarification begins with a distinction
between types of evidence, whose importance appears much later.
The perfection of evidence can be understood in two ways: first,
evidence is perfect when intuition comes to fill the intention, or
conversely, when the signifying intentions do not exceed intuitive
givenness; second, evidence is perfect when its object, as posited
to exist, withstands the test of imaginary annihilation. Perfection
can signify either adequation or apodicticity, though the latter
can belong to inadequate evidence as well. The question of the
beginning of science thus takes the following form: is there an
evidence that is prior in principle to all other conceivable evidence
and that possesses at least a recognizable apodictic content, which
would have to give us some being that is firmly secured once for
all, or absolutely, by virtue of its apodicticity?2 At the threshold
of the reduction, note that Husserl drops the and for everyone.
The reduction is pivotal and the permanent theme of Husserls
entire enterprise. It is the pure origin of all meaning and opens the
phenomenological domain. In contrast with other expositions of
it, here it is very rapidly introduced and put to use. This is done
under the constraints of apodicticity which can only be formulated
on the presupposition of the pre-givenness of the field of transcen-
dental experience.3 The reason for Husserls brevity here is surely
to be found in his assumption of the validity of the Cartesian
heritage.4 What is the first apodictic evidence? Is it the evidence
of what is there, constantly given in experience, the world as the
universe of objects, the world within which I exist and remain, the
world to which the established sciences continually return as their
ground? But the necessary existence of the world is not required
by its own givenness; the argument outlined in the first Meditation
faithfully reproduces the one in 49 of Ideas I. It can be the case
that the flux of lived-experiences is no longer guided by the world,
for It is quite conceivable that experience, because of conflict,
Science as Egology 29
lived experience. Since reflection does not repeat the original but
describes it, there is nothing in reflection that would undermine
the phenomenological project at its roots, for Its beginning gives
pure expression of pure experience according to its own silent
meaning.23 The reflexive attitude yields a new intentional process,
which, with its peculiarity of relating back to the earlier process
[Rckbeziehung auf das frhere Erlebnis], is awareness, and
perhaps evidence awareness, of just that earlier process itself, and
not some other.24
From the outset, reflection has a temporal sense. The reflecting
and giving lived-experience necessarily comes after the lived-
experience that is given and reflected on. Without this delay,
no access to the origin would be possible; without this delay
that Husserl calls retention, consciousness could not be taken
as an object and phenomenology as a science could not come
into existence.25 But it also has the effect of splitting the ego
[Ichspaltung]. Under the reduction, the ego can be described in
the following way: the mundane ego has an interest in the world,
and the world can only appear as such to the transcendental ego
who regards the world as a noema. This ego, in turn, can only
escape from anonymity (Husserl thus notes the withdrawal of
the ego from its own constituting activities) through a transcen-
dental spectator who is absolutely disinterested in the world and
is attentive only to its noeses, or more precisely, attentive only
to the noema as it is intentionally included and constituted in
the noeses. In other words, transcendental reflection requires the
reduction. The problem then arises concerning the identity of
these egos, which conceals the most basic insights into the archi-
tectonic of the phenomenological system.26 We can return now to
address the question raised above by Heidegger. For Husserl, what
unifies these egos is the instance of the living present: In the living
present I coexist as a doubled I and the acts of the I [Ichaktus]
are doubled.27 It is thus necessary for retention not to alter the
living present and for it to be a perception.28 Husserl oscillates on
this decisive point. On the one hand, by contrasting the self-giving
act of perception with reproduction, he makes retention a form of
perception:
But if we call perception the act in which all origin lies, the act
that constitutes originally, then primary memory is perception.
Science as Egology 35
Constitutive Analysis
Lets return to the analysis of the noema. Is not the noematic core
the pure objective sense for which we are searching? And is it not
through its core that the noema refers to the object? This can
be shown by transposing on to the noema, as authorized by the
noetic-noematic parallelism, an earlier distinction that emerged
in the analysis of acts in Husserls Fifth Logical Investigation.
There what Husserl calls the intentional matter of the act estab-
lishes a relation with an object, while the intentional quality
specifies whether it is a representational act, a judging act, etc.7
The matter of the noema its quid is what Ideas I later calls
its core; this is what puts it in relation to an object (whereas the
quality corresponds to the thetic modality). But the object must
be included in the noema, just as the noema is included in the
noesis. And a noematic intentionality, parallel to a noetic inten-
tionality, must be exhibited in order for the object in question to
be the same as the object of the noesis.8 A more refined analysis
of the core thus becomes necessary.
Each lived experience is directed toward an object, and every
noema has its own object. If in the description of the noema, that is
to say of the object as it is intended, I abstract everything belonging
to its mode of givenness, then an invariable content a quid (Was)
48 FLESH AND BODY
This difference leaves the sense untouched and concerns only its
mode of fulfilment. Two types of fulfilment are thus possible:
original and non-original. They correspond with the previous
distinction between self-givenness and incarnate self-givenness. If
the fulfilment is original and intuitive first in the foundational
order then Husserl observes that
to two questions that have been left open: only evidence can
motivate and found the certainty for which reality is the noematic
correlate; only evidence as givenness in the flesh can assure me
that the intended object is indeed a real object.
As original givenness, evidence is an archi-phenomenon of
intentional life, the a priori structural form of consciousness.
This amounts to saying that reason is an essential and universal
structure of transcendental subjectivity and perhaps already implies
that transcendental subjectivity is intersubjective. To constitute an
object is to return it to the synthesis of the evident acts which have
given it, which do give it, and which under certain conditions will
give it in the flesh. To constitute is to provide evidence of incarnate
givenness. But this runs up against some difficulties concerning the
constitution of flesh itself. Let it be noted, for the time being, that
they are parallel to the difficulties of the constitution of time: in
both cases, what is constituting must also be what is constituted.
Constitutive analysis has a universal status and concerns all types
of objects. So it thus takes the form of a tireless differentiation of
the types of evidence that correlate with the types of objects: if the
sense of the being of real objects is not the same as that of ideal
objects, then the given evidence must be carefully distinguished
in relation to the universal definition of evidence provided by the
principle of principles:
The ego can thus be taken as the source of this regard that
is directed to the object; it runs through every actual cogito.
Consequently, it remains identical, and, as the subject of its
own predicates, corresponds noetically to the noematic X. It
cannot be turned into a real moment of lived experience, a real
or immanent moment. Its life unfolds in each actual cogito, but
54 FLESH AND BODY
How can we define more precisely the habitus? This does not
concern the noematic identity but the identity of the ego and
whether it can remain in the same aim. It concerns the identity
of an ego who is able to repeat the same acts. The habitus points
back to a first time and to the possibility of reactivating it. It
thus points back to immanent temporality. The egos own histo-
ricity emerges from its habitus. Does it also indicate its finitude?
The I has its history and on the basis of its history it creates an
I which persists for it habitually as the same I.9
If the habitus is a permanent noetic structure that is to say
freely repeatable then its noematic correlate is nothing other than
the constituted object in the entire depth of its in-itself. The in-itself
[en-soi] as a correlate of potential evidence is thus integrated into
the full concreteness of the ego. Husserl states:
be less sure, and Husserl was not unaware of this fact. To imagine
myself as an other might eventually be to attain my essential forms,
but certainly not those of the eidos ego. These forms remain those
of a de facto ego. More profoundly, the use of the eidetic reduction
presupposes that immanent temporality the temporality of the
ego has been constituted. It implies that an ego has been given;
without that, the reduction to the eidos could not take place. As
the condition of its possibility, the ego will always escape from
variation. It thus becomes necessary either to allow a duplication
of the temporal flow, which would amount to giving the other and
abandoning egology, or to recognize an original fact in the ego. In
a text from November 1931, Husserl explicitly recognizes that the
eidos ego implies intersubjectivity and is oriented toward an archi-
facticity.17 Husserl states:
What can phenomenology say about this original fact that is the
ultimate foundation of the distinction between fact and essence,
between possibility and reality in short, that is the foundation
of its discourse? At the end of its faithful descriptions, does
phenomenology not encounter something that will never be
capable of being described or reduced? Will the passage to inter-
subjectivity permit the reduction of this archi-facticity? Whatever
the answer may be, it appears that the constitution of the alter
ego will be responsible for the whole of phenomenology. Husserl
writes in the same 1931 text:
These questions, which are ultimate in more than one sense, are
not addressed in the Cartesian Meditations. After having aligned
the eidetic reduction with the necessities of an egology to which
he still holds, Husserl writes, strangely, with respect to the
phenomenological explication of the ego:
Phenomenological Idealism
sense of the other? And does this not indicate that the other has
been constituted in me?
The only way of breaking this circle is to undertake the task
of phenomenological explication indicated in this connexion by the
alter ego and carry it through in concrete work.4 This procedure
entails at least one decision: the other can only be a sense, and as
such, can only have its origin in me. This decision repeats the one
which inaugurates phenomenology: every conceivable object in
general is a formation of sense by pure subjectivity. Does one not
risk, from the outset, missing the other as irreducible to me and
thereby risk carrying out one of the more subtle and violent reduc-
tions, the reduction of the phenomenon itself? Is not the other the
unthinkable par excellence? But, in order to be able to denounce
this operation to say that the other has been missed and that the
other is phenomenologically unthinkable must one not have had
prior access to the other? This line of thinking is based on the same
erroneous principle as the theories that replace the perception of
incarnate givenness with the consciousness of a sign or an image.5
If the others being-for-us is something very strange that we all
feel, it is only at the end of an intentional analysis that it will
be possible to recognize this strangeness in its full legitimacy. Or
rather, only a phenomenology is able to say that the other escapes
from its jurisdiction and then turn this lack of conformity into an
essential and positive structure. Husserl writes:
We must, after all, obtain for ourselves insight into the explicit
and implicit intentionality wherein the alter ego becomes evinced
and verified in the realm of our transcendental ego; we must
discover in what intentionalities, syntheses, motivations, the
sense of the other ego becomes fashioned in me and, under the
title, harmonious experience of someone else, becomes verified
as existing and even as itself there in its own manner. These
experiences and their works are facts belonging to my phenom-
enological sphere. How else than by examining them can I
explicate the sense, existing others, in all its aspects?6
will be able to work back toward them. The other can only be
perceived, and regardless of the singularity of this perception
(its noema is a noesis), it does not seem to require, at this stage
of the description anyway, a transformation of principles. The
other appears on the scene of perception without contributing to
its establishment nor, so to speak, participating in its operation.
To make the other a noema amounts to excluding the other from
playing a role in the constitution of the ego. The purity of the
egologicalmonadic closure is maintained here. We are calling
attention to this point here, because it will turn out later that
Husserl will be forced to alter this purity.
Here is the first exemplary description:
than me. The syntax of this other than me [autre que moi] already
indicates that I cannot have an experience of the other (however
singular or strange this experience may be) without first having
an experience of what is ownmost to me.9 The experience of
ownness [du propre] is the essence [le propre] of experience. This
proposition is just as important for phenomenology as it is for
Kantianism, which states that: The conditions for the possibility
of experience in general are at the same time conditions of the
possibility of the objects of experience.10 The layer of ownness
is foundational (can it only be considered a layer, then?) in the
sense that no experience of transcendence is possible that does not
presuppose the experience of ownness. The condition of the possi-
bility of experience is given to experience; this, in the eyes of Kant,
would have been a monstrosity.
Husserl states: Let us observe more closely the result of
our abstraction and, accordingly, what it leaves us. From the
phenomenon world, from the world appearing with an Objective
sense, a substratum becomes separated, as the Nature included
in my ownness.11 What is this nature included in my ownness?
Since all objectivity and all idealization are put out of play, it is
not a nature in the sense of physical science which abstracts every-
thing that is mental from the lifeworld in order to deal only with
an idealized corporeality. This exposure of nature (idealization,
Husserl sometimes says, is a clothing) is of a pure multiplicity of
perceived bodies that cannot be put into the form of objective space
and time; it is a purely subjective nature. Even if it maintains the
sense of a group of extended things, it is characterized first and
foremost by its heterogeneity. Husserl again writes, and we quote
at length:
And what holds for ownness also holds for what is near to
me: My flesh is among all things the nearest, the nearest for
perception and the nearest for my feeling and willing.16 Is there
anything that is more originally my own, more near and more
mine than the origin of ownness, of the near and of what is
mine? Ownness, proximity, and mineness are not conceivable
prior to flesh. Nothing based on the pre-understanding of my
sphere of ownness, proximity or mineness could be thought prior
to the flesh. Flesh is their origin. If the essence of experience is
the experience of ownness, then the most essential experience of
ownness is my flesh. Without a thematization of flesh, phenom-
enology risks to lose its radicalism; it risks to contradict its most
essential vocation and to support the interpretation that it is
insufficient.
The sphere of ownness, in the second instance, is heterogeneous
because my flesh is also bodily. It is given descriptively, to be
sure, but this givenness must be explained. It is thus a question
of knowing how, in the purely egological sphere of ownness, my
flesh can acquire the sense of a body. To do this, the analysis of its
constitution as flesh is a necessary prerequisite. Husserl undertakes
this analysis in the second volume of his Ideas Pertaining to Pure
82 FLESH AND BODY
The Incarnation of
Another Body
alter ego, and the term ego here refers to myself. In what sense
and in what way? First of all, as an ego constituted within its own
world, as a psychophysical unity, as an ego ruling over its own
flesh and through it ruling over its own primordial world, and
secondly, as an absolute constituting ego. The appresentation of
the other must therefore be interconnected first with a presentation
of myself. But also, and secondly, it must be interconnected with a
presentation of the others body as a bodily ownness like any other
one. We quote Husserl at length here on this very point:
which two distinct data are offered as a unity within the same
consciousness. This is the basis of a unity of resemblance and
constitutes them as a couple or pair. When two analogous bodies
are perceived simultaneously in the same space, consciousness
is conscious of a type of unity in which one is not without
the other, the similar refers to similar, or, to borrow a word
frequently employed by Husserl in this context, the one awakens
(weckt) the other. When I am affected by the one, this reinforces
an affection by the other and vice versa. In other words, this mode
of consciousness has an essential tendency of passing from the one
to the other, an intentional overreaching [Ubergriefen], coming
about genetically (and by essential necessity) as soon as the data
that undergo pairing have become prominent and simultaneously
intended.11 The members of the couple exchange their sense, the
one is apprehended in conformity with the sense of the other.
Two conditions are required for this pairing to take place: (1) the
preliminary constitution of the objective sense of each member of
the couple; (2) the purely egological constitution of temporality
through associative and passive syntheses (within which a genesis
is possible); for if, in passing from one objective sense to the other,
I could not maintain a retentional hold on the first one, then no
coincidence of sense (not even a partial one) could appear to me.
In the case of the pairing association of the ego and the alter
ego, can these conditions be fulfilled? To answer this question, it
is necessary to commence by highlighting the constituting apper-
ception of the other. The description of it is perhaps not always as
accurate as it should be. It begins as follows: pairing first comes
about when the Other enters my field of perception.12 If the other
can enter into my perceptual field, then it is not a permanent and
constitutive structure. How would I be able to know that it is the
other that appears to me and not just any body whatsoever, unless
I were to abandon the regime of the transcendental reduction and
the reduction to the sphere of ownness in order to return to the
natural attitude where the other is already constituted? And if the
description is carried out in a more rigorous way, it presupposes
nevertheless that the flesh was able to be incorporated (to possess
the sense of body) within the sphere of ownness where my live
body (Leibkrper) is always there and sensuously prominent; but,
in addition to that and likewise with primordial originariness, it is
equipped with the specific sense of an flesh.13
Pairing and Resemblance 115
body and his governing Ego are given in the manner that charac-
terizes a unitary transcending experience.14
This is a strange description, for how can the body of the other
his body be a part of my sphere of ownness? How can the
body that is presented to me be a bodyflesh, since it is through
apperception that it must acquire the sense of flesh? Everything
happens here as if respect for alterity were incompatible with
respect for the closure of egology, which was the required point
of departure for a transcendental phenomenology.
Provisionally, lets accept what Husserl says for the sole purpose
of determining the mode of confirmation of analogical apperception.
The presented body is given in a series of concordant adumbrations
and is confirmed by them. In virtue of the resemblance that pairs it
with my flesh, it thus receives its sense as flesh and thus appresents
an egoic life, another I. The harmony of presentations establishes,
or indicates, a harmony of appresentations. The experience of the
other is the experience of an indication; what gets confirmed here
is an index, but not what it indicates. The experience of the other
obtains the status of an experience through interpretation.15 It thus
comes under the broadest definition of indication furnished by the
first Logical Investigation:
in spite of all appearances, that the past comes to the ego through
its relation to the other? We have already encountered this question
earlier, when we asked whether temporality was not defined as a
relation to the other.21
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
flesh is given in the mode of a central here, then other bodies are
given in the mode of there. Here and there are relative, and there is
determined in terms of here. The orientation of there with respect
to here can change if I change my here:
Now the fact that my bodily organism can be (and is) appre-
hended as a natural body existing and movable in space like any
other is manifestly connected with the possibility expressed in
the words: By free modification of my kinesthesias, particularly
those of locomotion, I can change my position in such a manner
that I convert any There into a here that is to say, I could
occupy any spatial locus with my organism.13
The other is given to me as seeing the same thing that I see, because
if I were over there, in the others place, I would see the same thing
as the other. The presupposition of a common and intersubjective
space is thus fully in play here.
Manifestly what has just now been brought to light points to
the course of the association constituting the mode of Other.14
How does this occur? First of all, in order to respect alterity as
much as possible, this association cannot be direct or immediate.
As a result, it cannot take place between a body in my world which
is over there and my flesh which, in the same world, is here. Such
an association would have the sense of an association with myself
(the monad) and would only ever constitute a copy of myself.
Generally speaking, this is the risk that Husserl tirelessly seeks to
avert, although, as we will see, he is perhaps unable to do so. What
appearances are associated, then? Husserl writes:
The pairing association that gives the other has a very complex
structure that we will try to untangle.
Unless one grants that flesh can be separated from its corporeal
aspect, the association will take place between a body over there
and my corporeal flesh as if I were over there. Two questions are
thus opened. (1) How, and in virtue of what, can a body over
there evoke and awaken my corporeal flesh to appear as if I were
over there? And (2), prior to this, how can my own corporeal
flesh appear to me as if I were over there? It is only on the basis
of my here that my corporeal flesh can appear to me as if I were
over there. I must then be simultaneously here and over there; I
am both seeing from here and seen over there. But in seeing, my
corporeal flesh must be able to duplicate itself and perceive itself as
something outside of itself. But, as Husserl indicates, it is absurd
124 FLESH AND BODY
Two resembling data are given at the same time, or at least in the
same time, and they are associated by the partial coinciding of
their objective sense. It must be emphasized that no associative
synthesis can occur without presupposing the syntheses of the
original consciousness of time. The data can only be associated
within a single temporality. The first datum belongs to a system
The Dynamic of the Apperceptive Transfer 131
A pair has its own unity and has its peculiar unity simply as
a pair. It is a subjective mode, a subjectivity that links into a
132 FLESH AND BODY
This fusion does not take place between the acts themselves
but between their noematic correlates. The presented object
merges with the appresented object without the presentive and
appresentive acts themselves overlapping and coinciding. And
yet Husserl mentions a presentation which is at the same time
(zugleich) presentation and appresentation (that is to say, a
re-presentation). If the pure temporal flow unifies a presentation
and re-presentation in succession, it is difficult to understand how
the acts that phenomenology posits as irreducible to each other
(presentation and appresentation) can be united in simultaneity.
140 FLESH AND BODY
The relation between the broad concept and the narrow concept,
the suprasensible concept (that is to say that which is constructed
beyond sensibility, or the categorical concept) and the sensible
concept of perception, is visibly not an extrinsic or contingent
relation, but a relation which finds its founding in the thing
(Sache). It is comprised within the grand class of acts located in
the sphere of ownness, a sphere in which something appears as
effective and as truly given itself.14
The synthesis that identifies the body presented over there with the
other flesh appresented in an absolute here also identifies my own
nature with the others own nature. This give rise to the consti-
tution of an objective nature. Husserl observes:
in what sense the term is being employed here. At the same time,
we will define positively the residue of the reduction of objective
time, that is, the phenomenological datum.
What the suspension of objective time involves will perhaps
become clearer still if we work out a parallel with space, since
space and time exhibit such significant and much-noted analogies.7
To be conscious of space is to have the contents of visual sensations
[Empfindungsinhalte] that found the appearing of things situated
in space. After abstracting every transcendent signification, what
remains are the primary contents8 that Husserl in Ideas I calls
the hyle. The analogy with the reduction of qualities becomes even
more explicit:
This analysis turns the imagination into the origin of time, but
its result is that there is no perception of succession and change.
We believe that we hear a melody and therefore that we still hear
what is just past, but this is only an illusion [Schein] proceeding
from the vivacity [Lebhaftigkeit] of the original association.19
Whatever may be the psychological character of this theory,
Husserl recognizes the presence of a phenomenological core within
it, before going on to criticize it. Succession and duration do
appear; in other words, the unity of the consciousness that
encompasses intentionally what is present and what is past is a
phenomenological datum.20 But do the past, and more generally,
time, appear in the mode of the imagination, as Brentano believes?
If that were the case, then one would not be able to differentiate
between the perception of a succession and the memory of the
perception of a succession at some other time, or even an imagined
succession. This difficulty suffices to call into question Brentanos
entire analysis of the original consciousness of time, and it calls
for a phenomenology of time consciousness which, as always,
begins by disentangling the equivocations resulting from the lack
of necessary distinctions and by further scrutinizing its presupposi-
tions. Brentanos basic presupposition is that the apprehension of
a temporal succession can only be non-temporal [intemporelle] or
that the intuition of a lapse of time can only be a fixed point, but
this is contradicted by what is given phenomenologically:
However, I need two things all the time: on the one hand, the
flowing field of lived experiences which constantly is linked
to an Ur-impression, which vanishes in the retention and
before, the protention; and on the other, the I is affected by and
motivated toward action. But is the Ur-impression not already
an apperceptive unity, something noematic coming from the
I, and does the regressive inquiry not always lead back to an
apperceptive unity?19
Is this not to say that the flux of hyletic data refers to another
flux, and that this is iterated infinitely? Without, once and for all,
deciding these dilemmas through which phenomenology tries to
recapture its proper origin, it is possible to trace them back to a
common root, to provide an account of them, and to interpret
them.
Flesh and Time 163
Did Husserl ever reach this ultimate clarity that would allow
him to die in peace? Did he ever have to acknowledge that
philosophy as a rigorous science, even apodictically rigorous:
the dream is over?33 But what awakening led philosophy to
appear as a dream? Husserls wife reports that, when he was on
his deathbed, she came to him one morning. He seemed to have
awoken from a deep sleep. With a striking expression of joy on
his face and his arms wide open, he said: Ich habe etwas ganz
Wunderbares gesehen. Nein ich kann es Dir nicht sagen. Nein!
[I have seen something very wonderful. No, I cannot tell you.
No!]34
NOTES
Translators Introduction
1 See Eugen Fink, De la phnomnologie, trans. Didier Franck (Paris:
Les ditions de Minuit, 1974).
2 It is interesting to note here that a question from Franck to Henry
about the nature of the relation between Henrys phenomenology of
life and Husserls phenomenology of the impression gave rise to
Henrys fascinating 1990 critical study of Husserl entitled Material
Phenomenology, trans. Scott Davidson (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2008), p. xii.
3 The biographical details of Francks academic career as well as his
perceptions about the Catholic phenomenology I discuss below
have been obtained from conversations with Franck himself.
A collection of interviews with Jean-Luc Marion in which his
relationship with Franck is briefly discussed has just been released:
see Jean-Luc Marion, La rigueur des choses: Entretiens avec Dan
Arbib (Paris: Flammarion, 2012).
4 See, for example, Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure
Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second
Book, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andr Schuwer (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic, 1989), 40. Also, see that the French version of
the Cartesian Meditations translates the expression leibhaftig as en
chair et en os (in flesh and bone), while the English translates it as in
person. The French rendering better preserves the idiomatic emphasis
of Leib in German. See Husserliana, Bd. I, p. 139; Mditations
cartsiennes et les confrences de Paris, trans. Marc de Launay (Pairs:
PUF, 1994), p. 157; the first translation of the Meditations into French
was undertaken by Emmanuel Levinas in 1930, see Mditations
cartsiennes Introduction la phenomenology, trans. Gabrielle Pfeiffer
and Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Vrin, 1930). For the English, see
Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans.
Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), p. 109.
168 Notes
Introduction
1 Hegel writes, With Descartes the culture of modern times, the
thought of modern Philosophy, really begins to appear and With
him the new epoch in Philosophy begins. See G. W. F. Hegel,
Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume 3: Medieval and
Modern Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson
(Omaha, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 217 and
223 respectively. Similarly, Heidegger writes The whole of modern
metaphysics, Nietzsche included, maintains itself within the
interpretation of the being and of truth opened up by Descartes.
He continues, With Descartes, there begins the completion of
Western metaphysics. See Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track,
trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), pp. 66 and 75 respectively.
2 Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences, p. 395.
3 Ibid., 16, p. 73. Husserl also writes, Though in a very general
sense, all modern philosophy is Cartesian, and similarly, all physics
is Galilean. Husserliana, Bd. VI, p. 425.
4 See Husserl, Ideas II, 32, p. 58.
5 See Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1999), passim.
6 Edmund Husserl, Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and
Mathematics, trans. Dallas Willard (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,
1993), p. 251.
7 Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and
to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten
(Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983).
8 Heidegger writes, And what is the matter at stake in philosophical
investigation? In accordance with the same tradition, it is for
Husserl as for Hegel the subjectivity of consciousness. For Husserl,
the Cartesian Meditations were not only the topic of the Paris
lectures in February of 1929. Rather, from the time following the
Logical Investigations, their spirit accompanied the impassioned
course of his philosophical investigations to the end. See Martin
Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking
in Basic Writings: from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of
Thinking (1964), ed. David Farrell Krell, expanded edn (London
and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 439.
9 Husserl writes, A work currently in preparation that is to appear,
170 Notes
Chapter one
1 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 2, p. 5.
2 This is to say a non-empirical historicity, as is shown in the Crisis
of European Sciences: To bring latent reason to the understanding
of its possibilities and thus to bring to insight the possibility of
metaphysics as a true possibility this is the only way to put
metaphysics or universal philosophy on the strenuous road to
realization. It is the only way to decide whether the telos which
was inborn in European humanity at the birth of Greek philosophy
Notes 171
come closer to the French text which shapes Francks analysis, then,
we have opted for the phrase intuitive givenness.
9 In 59 of Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl writes:
Evidence, as has already become apparent to us by the above
explanations, designates that performance on the part of
intentionality which consists in the giving of something-itself [die
intentionale Leistung der Selbstgebung]. More precisely, it is the
universal pre-eminent form of intentionality, of consciousness
of something, in which there is consciousness of the intended-to
objective affair in the mode itself-seized-upon, itself-seen
correlatively, in the mode: being with itself in the manner peculiar
to consciousness. We can also say that it is the primal consciousness:
I am seizing upon it itself originaliter, as contrasted with
seizing upon it in an image or as some other, intuitional or empty,
fore-meaning. Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic,
trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 59,
pp. 1578.
10 Husserl, Ideas I, 39, p. 83. Translators note: the French reads
auto-prsence incarne for the English own presence in person.
To remain close to Francks claim, we render this in his text as
incarnate presence.
11 Ibid., 3, p. 10. Translators note: Francks text renders personal as
incarnate, thus explaining the transition to the next paragraph.
12 Husserl writes, Originally, the I move, I do, precedes the I
can do. See Husserl, Ideas II, 60a, p. 273.
13 Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena,
trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1985), pp. 401.
14 Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, p. 43. Also, Heidegger
writes, What is characteristic of perception? A participant says,
, and is then told that with the Greeks, and precisely in the
distinction between and , hell has already begun.
What is important is the notion of corporeality [Leibhaftigkeit]: in
perception what presences is bodily [leibhaftig]. The translation is
here from the seminar on Thor dated 8 September 1968. See Martin
Heidegger, Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and Franois
Raffoul (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 31.
15 We stick here to the texts published by Husserl himself. We know
now that, from this point of view, the essential is acquired after the
five lectures of 1907 published in his The Idea of Phenomenology.
16 Ibid., p. 63.
Notes 173
Chapter two
1 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 5, p. 12.
2 Ibid., 6, p. 16.
3 Husserl writes, I distinguish between this transcendental reduction
or phenomenological reduction from the apodictic reduction which
is linked to it. The latter has the task of making possible the
phenomenological reduction. Before I put into practice the apodictic
critique, I must open up a field of critique, here a sphere of experience,
and this transcendental self-experience, I have it thanks to the method
of the phenomenological reduction. Husserliana, Bd. VIII, p. 80.
4 I note in passing that the much shorter way to the transcendental
epoch in my Ideas toward a Pure Phenomenology and
Phenomenological Philosophy, which I call the Cartesian way
(since it is thought of as being attained merely by reflectively
engrossing oneself in the Cartesian epoch of the Meditations while
critically purifying it of Descartes prejudices and confusions), has
a great shortcoming: while it leads to the transcendental ego in one
leap, as it were, it brings this ego into view as apparently empty
of content, since there can be no preparatory explication; so one
176 Notes
Chapter three
1 Husserl writes, The first breakthrough of this universal a priori of
correlation between experienced object and manners of givenness
(which occurred during work on my Logical Investigations around
1898) affected me so deeply that my whole subsequent life-work
has been dominated by the task of systematically elaborating on
this apriori of correlation. See Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences,
48, p. 166, fn.
2 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 15, p. 37.
3 Husserl, Crisis, 46, p. 160.
4 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 17, pp. 3940.
5 Husserl, Ideas I, 40 and 43.
6 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and Invisible, trans.
Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1968), pp. 9ff.
7 Husserl, Ideas I, 42, p. 91.
8 Husserl, Ideas II, 18, p. 61.
9 The description in Ideas I commences: Constantly seeing this
table and meanwhile walking around it, changing my position,
180 Notes
very moment where one seeks to comprehend the origin. See also by
the same author, Do vient lambigut de la phnomnologie? in
Bulletin de la Socit franaise de philosophie 2 (1971).
13 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 18, p. 43.
14 Merleau-Ponty writes, The body is nothing less but nothing more
than the things condition of possibility. (Body here translates the
German Leib translators note). See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs,
trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press, 1964), p. 173.
15 Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal
Time, pp. 301. Husserl characterizes the primal impression as
something absolutely unmodified, the primal source of all further
consciousness and being and further as the living source-point of
being. See Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of
Internal Time, pp. 70 and 71 respectively.
16 Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, trans. James Churchill
and Karl Ameriks (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1973), pp. 71 and 82 where leibhafte Gegenwart is translated as
living present.
17 Phenomenological explication [Auslegung] makes clear what is
included and only non-intuitively co-intended in the sense of the
cogitatum (for example, the other side), by making present in
phantasy the potential perceptions that would make the invisible
visible. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 20, p. 48.
Chapter four
1 Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, p. 10.
2 Husserl, Ideas I, p. 326. (Chapter introduction).
3 Ibid., p. 214.
4 Husserl contends, We must distinguish, in relation to the intentional
content taken as object of the act, between the object as it is
intended, and the object (period) which is intended. Husserl,
Logical Investigations vol. II, p. 113.
5 See Husserl, Ideas I, 91 and 99.
6 Ibid., 128, p. 308.
7 Husserl states, Quality only determines whether what is already
presented in definite fashion is intentionally present as wished,
182 Notes
Chapter five
1 Husserl writes, These contents have, as contents generally have, their
own law-bound ways of coming together, of losing themselves in more
comprehensive unities and, in so far as they thus become and are
one, the phenomenological ego or unity of consciousness is already
constituted, without need of an additional, peculiar ego-principle
which supports all contents and unites them all once again. Here as
elsewhere it is not clear what such a principle would effect. Husserl,
Logical Investigations vol. II, p. 86. In the second edition, he writes,
The opposition to the doctrine of a pure ego, already expressed
in this paragraph, is one that the author no longer approves of, as is
plain from his Ideas cited above (see ibid., 57, p. 107; 80, p. 159).
Husserl, Logical Investigations vol. II, p. 352, fn. 5.
2 Husserl, Ideas I, 37, pp. 756.
3 Ibid., 57, p. 133. Also see Husserl, Logical Investigations vol. II,
8ff.
4 Husserl, Ideas I, 81, p. 194. Sartre notably writes on this issue:
But it is characteristic that Husserl, who studies this subjective
unification of consciousness in Vorlesungen Zur Phanomenologie
Des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins, never had recourse to a synthetic
power of the I. See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego,
trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (New York: Hill
& Wang, 1960), p. 39. Certainly Husserl affirms that As shocking
(when not initially even absurd) as it may seem to say that the flow
of consciousness constitutes its own unity, it is nonetheless the case
that it does. And this can be made intelligible on the basis of the
flows essential constitution. He then immediately adds, Our regard
can be directed, in the one case, through the phases that coincide
in the continuous progression of the flow and that function as
intentionalities of the tone. But our regard can also be aimed at
the flow, at a section of the flow, at the passage of the flowing
consciousness from the beginning of the tone to its end. Husserl,
On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, pp.
845. It is on the basis of this regard that Husserl will arrive at the
pure ego in Ideas I.
5 Husserl, Logical Investigations vol. II, p. 353, fn. 8.
6 Husserl, Ideas I, 81, p. 193. He continues immediately
afterwards: Fortunately we can leave out of account the enigma
of the consciousness of time in our preliminary analyses without
endangering their rigour.
Notes 185
Factum and Eidos. This text was published in the third and
final volume of Husserliana devoted to the phenomenology of
intersubjectivity. Husserliana, Bd. XV, pp. 37886.
18 Husserliana, Bd. XV, p. 385. Also see 95 of Formal and
Transcendental Logic, where Husserl characterizes the I am as an
arch-facticity (Urtatsache). See Husserl, Formal and Transcendental
Logic, p. 237.
19 Husserliana, Bd. XV, p. 386. At the same time, it is the question
of history that is raised if History is the grand fact [Faktum]
of absolute being and the ultimate question, metaphysically
or teleologically ultimate, or only founded with questions of
the absolute meaning of history. Husserliana, Bd. VIII, p. 506
(texts from 1921 or 1924). Jacques Derrida notes, We pass from
phenomenology to ontology (in the non-Husserlian sense) when we
silently question the upsurge of the stark fact and cease to consider
the Fact in its phenomenological function. Then the latter can no
longer be exhausted and reduced to its sense by a phenomenological
operation, even were it pursued ad infinitum. The Fact is always
more or always less, always other, in any case, than what Husserl
defines it as when he writes, for example, in a formula which marks
the highest ambition of his project: fact, with its irrationality, is
itself a structural concept within the system of the concrete Apriori
(Cartesian Meditations, 39, Husserls emphasis). See Derrida,
Origin of Geometry, pp. 1512, n. 184.
20 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 41, p. 85.
Chapter six
1 Husserl, Authors Preface to the English Edition, in Ideas: General
Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London and New York:
Routledge Classics, 2012), p. xxxv.
2 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 41.
3 Ibid., 36, pp. 745.
4 Ibid., 37, p. 76.
5 Derrida writes, For, of course, the reactivating reduction supposes
the iterative reduction of the static and structural analysis, which
teaches us once and for all what the geometrical phenomenon is
and when its possibility is constituted. This means by a necessity
Notes 187
Chapter seven
1 Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences, p. 294.
2 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 42, pp. 8990. Husserl is aware
of this in connection with the exposition of idealism in the preface
to the English edition of Ideas I: The account given in the chapter
indicated suffers, as the author confesses, from lack of completeness.
Although it is in all real essentials unassailable, it lacks what is
certainly important to the foundation of this Idealism, the proper
consideration of the problem of transcendental solipsism or of
transcendental intersubjectivity, of the essential relationship of the
objective world, that is valid for me, to others which are valid for
me and with me. And yet, I must not hesitate, however, to state
quite explicitly that in regard to transcendental-phenomenological
Idealism, I have nothing whatsoever to take back, that now
as ever I hold every form of current philosophical realism to
be in principle absurd, as no less every idealism to which in its
own arguments that realism stands contrasted, and which in fact
it refutes. Given a deeper understanding of my exposition, the
solipsistic objection should never have been raised as an objection
against phenomenological idealism, but only as an objection to
the incompleteness of my exposition. Husserl, Ideas: General
Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, pp. xlxli.
3 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 42, p. 89.
4 Ibid., 42, p. 90.
5 On the difference between Einfhlung and image consciousness, see
Husserliana, Bd. XIII, pp. 1878 and Chapter 11 in this book.
6 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 42, p. 90.
7 Ibid., 43, p. 91.
8 To designate the perception of the flesh by itself, Husserl speaks
of somatic perception. See Husserl, Phenomenology and the
Foundations of the Sciences: Third Book of Ideas Pertaining to a
Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, trans.
Notes 191
Chapter eight
1 Ibid., 44, p. 93.
2 Ibid., 44, p. 95. Husserl says elsewhere: Here I mention distinctions
such as living vs. lifeless things and, within the sphere of living things,
the animals, i.e. those living not merely according to drives but also
constantly through ego-acts, as opposed to those living only according
to drives (such as plants). Among animals, human beings stand out, so
much so, in fact, that mere animals have ontic meaning as such only
by comparison to them, as variations of them. Among lifeless things,
humanized things are distinguished, things that have signification (e.g.
cultural meaning) through human beings. Further, as a variation on this,
there are things which refer meaningfully in a similar way to animal
existence, as opposed to things that are without signification in this
sense. Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences, 66, p. 227. We will return
to the relation between drives and intentionality in Chapter 14, n. 7.
3 Husserliana, Bd. XV, p. 177.
4 Ibid., p. 182.
5 Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences, p. 272.
6 To this end, Husserl writes: As regards this, nothing prevents
starting at first quite concretely with the human life-world
192 Notes
Chapter nine
1 Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, 96a, p. 241. We
quote here an interleaved sheet concerning 44 of the Cartesian
Meditations and we take it from the critical apparatus of the
German edition: The question is not one of other people but of
how we can, as the ego who is the transcendental spectator that
learns transcendentally, is constituted in the distinction between
the I and the other-I a divorce that occurs in the first place in
the phenomenon of the world, as a difference between my human
I, the I in the ordinary sense, and the other human I, the other I.
Husserliana, Bd. I, p. 241.
2 Husserl observes, If even the self-constitution of the ego as a
spatialized, a psychophysical, being is a very obscure matter, then
it is much more obscure, and a downright tormenting enigma,
how, in the ego, an other psychophysical Ego with an other psyche
can be constituted; since his sense as other involves the essential
impossibility of my experiencing his own essential psychic contents
with actual originality, as I do my own. Husserl, Formal and
Transcendental Logic, p. 239.
Notes 195
Chapter ten
1 Husserl, Experience and Judgment, 24c, p. 117.
2 Ibid., 24c, p. 118.
3 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 46, p. 102.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 46, p. 103. (Translation modified.)
6 Ibid., 47, p. 104
7 Husserliana, Bd. XIV, p. 379.
8 From JanuaryFebruary of 1922 Husserl declared, The ego
is not thinkable without the non-ego, through which it relates
intentionally. Ibid., p. 244.
9 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 49, p. 107, already cited.
10 Long extracts of this course have been published in volume XIII of
Husserliana, pp. 11094.
11 Husserliana, Bd. XIII, p. 160.
12 Ibid., p. 161.
13 Ibid., p. 162.
14 See Husserl, Ideas I, 85 and 97. Husserl writes: Everything
hyletic belongs in the concretemental process as a really inherent
component .... Husserl, Ideas I, p. 238.
15 Husserliana, Bd. XIII, p. 170.
16 Ibid., p. 171.
17 Husserliana, Bd. XIV, p. 246.
18 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 48, p. 106.
Chapter eleven
1 Ibid., 49, p. 107.
2 Husserl writes: Consequently, the constitution of the world
essentially involves a harmony of the monads: precisely this
harmony among particular constitutions in the particular monads;
and accordingly it involves also a harmonious generation that goes
on in each particular monad. That is not meant, however, as a
metaphysical hypothesizing of monadic harmony, any more than
the monads themselves are metaphysical inventions or hypotheses.
On the contrary, it is itself part of the explication of the intentional
Notes 197
Chapter twelve
1 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 51, p. 112.
2 Husserl indicates this when he writes: But then new questions
impose themselves in regard to this mankind: are the insane also
objectifications of the subjects being discussed in connection
with the accomplishment of world-constitution? And what
about children, even those who already have a certain amount
of world-consciousness? After all, it is only from the mature and
normal human beings who bring them up that they first become
acquainted with the world in the full sense of the world-for-all,
that is, the world of culture. And what about animals? There
arise problems of intentional modifications through which we can
and must attribute to all these conscious subjects those that do
not cofunction in respect to the world understood in the hitherto
accepted (and always fundamental) sense, that is, the world which
has truth through reason their manner of transcendentality,
precisely as analogues of ourselves. The meaning of this analogy
will then itself represent a transcendental problem. This naturally
extends into the realm of the transcendental problems which finally
encompass all living beings insofar as they have, even indirectly
but still verifiably, something like life, and even communal life
in the spiritual sense. Also appearing thereby, in different steps,
first in respect to human beings and then universally, are the
problems of genesis [Generativitt], the problems of transcendental
200 Notes
Chapter thirteen
1 This issue is discussed, however, in great depth in the group D
manuscripts and in the course from 1907, Ding und Raum, now
published as BD XVI in Husserliana. (The 1907 course has been
since translated into English: Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907,
trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997)
trans. note).
2 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 53, p. 116.
3 Husserliana, Bd. XIII, p. 115.
4 Husserl, Ideas II, 36, p. 153.
5 Husserl writes: The flesh [Leib] as such can be constituted
originarily only in tactuality. Husserl, Ideas II, 37, p. 158.
In a brief not from February 1927 entitled Empathy. A
principle that indicates each flesh as my flesh, each I as myself
Husserl characterizes the tactile level as the archi-nodal point
[Urkernschichte]. Husserliana, Bd. XIV, pp. 4834.
6 Husserl writes: Hence in this way a human beings total
consciousness is in a certain sense, by means of its hyletic substrate,
bound to the Body. Husserl, Ideas II, 39, p. 160.
7 Husserliana, Bd. XIII, p. 239.
8 See Husserl, Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological
Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The Original Ark, the Earth,
Does Not Move, in Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, eds.
Leonard Lawlor and Bettina Bergo (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 2001), pp. 11731. See Derrida, The Origin of
Geometry, pp. 82ff. and Merleau-Ponty, Rsums de cours: Collge
de France, 195260 (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), pp. 168ff.
9 Husserl, At the Limits of Phenomenology, p. 123.
10 The Heideggerian analysis of the spatiality of Dasein, founded
on remoteness and orientation, could be without doubt closer, in
Notes 203
Chapter fourteen
1 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 54, p. 118.
2 Dorion Cairns, in recording his interviews with Husserl, notes: I
asked Husserl whether, if, were it impossible for the body to have
reflex perception of itself (one hand touch the other, the eye see the
hand, etc.) there would then be the possibility of the constitution
of a world, or a body He answered no. See Dorion Cairns,
Notes 205
Chapter fifteen
1 Ibid., 55, p. 120.
2 Ibid., 55, p. 121.
3 Ibid., 55, p. 122.
4 See Chapter 14, n. 3.
5 See Chapter 6, n. 19.
6 Husserl, Experience and Judgment, 16, p. 74.
7 See Chapter 1.
8 Husserl, Ideas I, 99, p. 244. See also 43, p. 93: In perception
the same object is still described as specifically incarnate by
opposition to the modified character of floating before us or
re-presented.
9 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 55, p. 122.
10 See Chapter 3. Also see Husserl, Experience and Judgment, 19,
pp. 834: Every perception which presents the object to me in this
orientation leaves open the practical transition to other appearances
of the same object, specifically to certain groups of appearances. The
possibilities of transition are practical possibilities, at least when it is
a question of an object which is given as enduring without change.
There is thus a freedom to run through the appearances in such a
way that I move my eyes, my head, alter the posture of my body, go
around the object, direct my regard toward it, and so on. We call
these movements, which belong to the essence of perception and
serve to bring the object of perception to givenness from all sides
insofar as possible, kinaestheses.
11 Heidegger, Four Seminars, p. 65.
12 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. II, p. 775.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 788.
Notes 207
15 See Ideas, I, already cited above: The vision of the essence is thus an
intuition; and, if it is a vision of a strong meaning and not a simple
and perhaps vague re-presentation, it is an intuition given originarily
which seizes the essence in its incarnate ipseity. 3, p. 9.
16 Heidegger writes: In order to unfold the question concerning the
meaning of being, being must be given in order to enquire after its
meaning. Husserls achievement consists in just this making present
of being, which is phenomenally present in the category. Through
this achievement, Heidegger adds, I finally had the ground:
being is no mere concept, no pure abstraction arising by way of
deduction. Heidegger, Four Seminars, p. 67.
17 In the 19278 course devoted to the Critique of Pure Reason
Heidegger defines intuition thus: What does intuitio mean?
Intuition means the manner by which something is represented to
me concretely [leibhaftig] as something. To interpret it briefly, to
intuit means to allow something to give itself as the concrete thing
that it is. See Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kants
Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 58.
18 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 55, p. 122.
19 It is not, and cannot be, the case that the body belonging to my
primordial sphere and indicating to me the other Ego (and, with
him, the whole of the other primordial sphere or the other concrete
ego) could appresent his factual existence and being-there-too, unless
this primordial body acquired the sense, a body belonging to the
other ego, and, according to the whole associative-apperceptive
performance, the sense: someone elses flesh itself. Ibid.
20 Provided, of course, that one assumes to have resolved all the
difficulties that intentional analysis of the other has put before us.
21 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 55, p. 123. Husserl resumes the
constitution of objectivity by saying: On the contrary, the identity-
sense of my primordial Nature and the presentiated other
primordial Nature is necessarily produced by the appresentation
and the unity that it, as appresentation, necessarily has with the
presentation co-functioning for it this appresentation by virtue
of which an Other and, consequently, his concrete ego are there
for me in the first place. See Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 55,
p.124.
22 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 55, p. 124. See also Husserl,
Formal and Transcendental Logic, 96a, p. 241: All Objectivity, in
this sense, is related back constitutionally to the first affair that is
208 Notes
Chapter sixteen
1 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 55, p. 128.
2 Husserl, Experience and Judgment, 36, p. 158.
3 Husserl, Ideas I, 85, p. 203.
4 Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal
Time, p. 4.
5 Dorion Cairns reports this statement by Husserl: Heideggers
analysis [of time] is ontological, not constitutive. The acts he speaks
of are not zeitigende Akte (temporalizing acts) but possible ways
of coming to a temporality which is already there as otherwise
210 Notes
Chapter seventeen
1 Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal
Time, p. 29.
2 In 8 of ibid., entitled Immanent temporal objects and their modes
of appearance, Husserl writes: What we have described here is
the manner in which the object in immanent time appears in a
continual flow, the manner in which it is given. To describe this
manner does not mean to describe the appearing temporal duration
itself, for it is the same tone with the duration belonging to it that,
indeed, was not described but presupposed in the description. See
ibid., p. 26. If the temporal identity of the tone can be given only
by multiple modes of appearing, one can understand in depth what
motivates the choice of example of an analysis of the constituting
consciousness of time. Husserl also writes later: Temporal objects
and this pertains to their essence spread their matter over an
extent of time, and such objects can become constituted only in acts
that constitute the very differences belonging to time. See ibid., p.
41. G. Granel also writes: The melody is thus an example that bears
an evident philosophical signification: in the melody the moment of
identity does not cease to be carried on the waves of its constitution,
in the very time that the stream continually deploys as identity. See
Granel, Le sens du temps et de la perception chez E. Husserl, p. 57.
We note, however, that the example possesses a phenomenological
signification before having a philosophical one.
3 See Chapter 3, n. 13.
4 See Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of
Internal Time, pp. 2930.
5 See ibid., pp. 301.
6 See ibid., p. 33.
7 Husserl writes: Retention is not a modification in which
impressional data are really preserved, only in modified form: on
Notes 213
and did exist previously, that they succeed one another in time or
are simultaneous with one another, and so on. But no doubt we
can and must say: A certain continuity of appearance that is, a
continuity that is a phase of the time-constituting flow belongs
to a now, namely, to the now that it constitutes; and to a before,
namely, as that which is constitutive (we cannot say was) of the
before. But is not the flow a succession, does it not have a now,
an actually present phase, and a continuity of pasts of which I am
now conscious in retentions? We can say nothing other than the
following: This flow is something we speak of in conformity with
what is constituted, but it is not something in objective time. It is
absolute subjectivity and has the absolute properties of something to
be designated metaphorically as flow; of something that originates
in a point of actuality, in a primal source-point, the now, and so
on. In the actuality-experience we have the primal source-point and
a continuity of moments of reverberation. For all of this, we lack
names. Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of
Internal Time, p. 79.
13 Husserl says: Subjective time becomes constituted in the absolute
timeless consciousness, which is not an object. Ibid., p. 117.
14 Manuscript C 7 I, p. 17.
15 See Chapter 5, n. 4.
16 For more on this see Chapter 6, n. 23.
17 Manuscript C 17 I, p. 18. (Translators note: this text was translated
from the French because the citation here is incorrect; however,
Franck was unable find the proper manuscript bibliographic data).
18 Husserl writes: In a certain sense, therefore, all experiences are
intended through impressions or are impressed. Husserl, On the
Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, p. 93.
19 Manuscript C 7 I, p. 18.
20 See Chapter 13, n. 6.
21 Husserl states: Hyletic data are data of colour, data of tone,
data of smell, data of pain, etc., considered purely subjectively,
therefore here without thinking of the bodily organs or of anything
psychophysical. Husserl, Phenomenological Psychology, p. 128.
22 John Locke, for example, states, Our Senses, conversant about
particular sensible Objects, do convey into the Mind several distinct
Perceptions of things, according to those various ways, wherein
those Objects do affect them: and thus we come by those Ideas,
we have of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet,
Notes 215
and all of those which we call sensible qualities, which when I say
the sense convey into the mind, I mean, they from external Objects
convey into the mind what produces there those Perceptions. This
great Source, of most of the Ideas we have, depending wholly
upon our Senses, and derived by them to the Understanding,
I call SENSATION. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1979) book II, 3, p. 105.
23 See Chapter 14, n. 7.
24 Manuscript C 6, p. 7.
25 See Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of
Internal Time, 24.
26 Derrida, Origin of Geometry, p. 153.
27 Husserl writes: But ever new now is precisely new and is
characterized as new phenomenologically. Even if the tone continues
so utterly unchanged that not the least alteration is apparent
to us, hence even if each new now possesses precisely the same
apprehension-content with respect to moments of quality, intensity,
etc., and carries precisely the same apprehension even if all of this
is the case, an original difference [ursprngliche Verschiedenheit]
nevertheless presents itself, a difference that belongs to a new
dimension. Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness
of Internal Time, p. 67.
28 Manuscript C 6, p. 10.
29 See Husserliana, Bd. XV, p. 16.
30 Manuscript B III 2, p. 20 (1931).
31 See Chapter 12.
32 See Chapter 1.
33 Husserl, Crisis, p. 389.
34 Cited in K. Schumann, Husserl-Chronik, p. 489.
INDEX
flow of time 3841, 547, 59, existential analytic 246, 64, 147,
645, 72, 94, 134, 139, 165, 208n. 26
1526, 1589, 162, 184n. extension partes extra partes 40
4, 213n. 12
immanent time 41, 150, 160, Fink, Eugen 125, 170n. 12, 177n.
163, 210n. 6, 212n. 2 13, 178n. 26, 183n. 11,
intentionality of 42, 67, 97, 197n. 10, 202n. 20, 204nn.
117, 14953, 160, 163, 22, 2, 211n. 14
188n. 13, 205n. 7, 211n. flesh
14 as absolute here 39, 83, 1201,
original time-consciousness 42, 138, 143, 149
52, 645, 102, 130, 149, constituted originally in touch
154, 1612, 179n. 29 120, 145
consciousness of the other vs. and Dasein, 1656
consciousness of the sign or does not derive from
image 104 temporality 165
constitution of objectivity 55, incompletely constituted 103
102, 127, 132, 143, 207n. as medium of all perception
21 23, 39, 80, 146, 200n. 5
in relation to the Fifth non-spatiality of 1201
Meditation 137, 142, process of enworlding 90
constitution of the other, a priori in relation to temporality
126 1635
constitutive genesis 63 flesh of the other as first object
crossing between temporality and 68, 87, 97, 101, 132, 145,
alterity 104 207n. 22
Foundational Investigations of the
death 76, 11213 Phenomenological Origin
Derrida, Jacques 176n. 9, 179n. of the Spatiality of Nature:
30, 183n. 23, 186n. 19, The Original Ark, the Earth,
186n. 5, 191nn. 11, 12, Does Not Move 120
197n. 9, 198n. 16, 201n.
16, 202n. 8, 215n. 26 givenness 1726
Descartes 11, 18, 28, 29, 31, 69, immediate 29, 54, 77, 80, 102,
171n. 6, 175n. 4 107, 121
origin of modernity 12, 169n. mediate 77, 80, 87, 115, 144
2 of the other 102, 115, 121,
1645
eidos ego 33, 589, 61, 62, 68, Granel, G. 209n. 33, 212n. 2
113, 125, 145, 185n. 17,
191n. 11 habitus 56, 64, 96, 108
Empfindnisse 82, 112, 163, 193n. Hegel, G. F. 49, 169n. 2, 169n. 9,
18 189n. 29
Index 219