Review: The Lessons of Phenomenology

Author(s): W. Wolfgang Holdheim

Review by: W. Wolfgang Holdheim
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1979), pp. 30-41
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464782
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 THE LESSONS OF
PHENOMENOLOGY

W. WOLFGANG HOLDHEIM
' Yr...i:

Robert R. Magliola. Phenomenology and Literature: An Introduction.

West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1977.

Phenomenology, let us face it, is very much an imported article.

There are distinguished phenomenologists on the scene who have done
their best to enhance our knowledge about that seminal movement, but
they have not really succeeded in acclimatizing the esoteric plant in our
philosophical soil. At the same time, however, phenomenology has been
pressing in (as it were) through the back door of literary studies, largely
through the mediation of the French with their unique talent for catching
our attention in that field. They were able, of course, to lean on impor-

~a~a~p~I tant philosophical developments in their own country, whereas we have

had to handle the literary influx with little aid from our philosophical
establishment. The task has been tackled by courageous literati, usually
committed to the French (or Franco-Swiss) tradition alone. Now at last we
get a study which seeks to introduce the Anglo-Saxon reader systemat-
ically to phenomenological literary theory and practice, placing both in
their philosophical habitat. It is an understatement to say that the book
fulfills a glaring need! The First Part of Professor Magliola's study is de-
voted to criticism, the Second to formalized aesthetics, and the relative
autonomy of the two sections accurately reflects the relationship be-
tween two related disciplines that have a nodding acquaintance with
each other but rarely meet.
It is obviously the Second Part that points the way to the author's
own most burning preoccupations. Its main body deals with the
phenomenological literary theories of Roman Ingarden and Mikel Du-
frenne. The exposition cannot be summed up here. Even Magliola's
chapter-length treatment of each can merely serve as an overall intro-
*. I duction, urging and preparing the reader to work through the original
texts themselves. These tasks, however, it fulfills very well indeed. Actu-
ally Ingarden's theory, for all its complexity, seems to emerge much
more clearly than Dufrenne's. I think that this is to be attributed to the
subject. The Polish philosopher, for one thing, deals squarely with The
Literary Work of Art, whereas the Frenchman's remarks have to be ex-
tracted from a universal Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. More
importantly, Dufrenne (in 1953) is already the product of an extensive
phenomenological and existentialist traditon. This leads to fertile in-
sights, but also to a certain dispersive syncretism, with a perhaps over-
generous admixture of speculativeness that is typical of postwar French
philosophizing. It contrasts sharply with the spirit of Husserl's student,
who (for all his disagreements with his former master) still stands close
to the original phenomenological inspiration. The Ingarden chapter re-
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flects some of Husserl's single-minded intellectual passion, of that almost ruthless
purity of determination which present-day expositions too often fail to transmit.
Magliola's Second Part, however, is not a mere r6sum6 but has a central theme.
It takes up the challenge of an American non-phenomenologist who has consid-
erably influenced (and, I should say, inflected) our view of the phenomenological
and hermeneutic tradition. E. D. Hirsch is concerned with valid meaning. The main
points of his theory are familiar: the interpretation of a text has the purpose of
determining the factual intention of its author-a rigorous form of research guided
by codifiable rules and norms of validity; subsequent judgments on a text thus
validated are permissible but constitute "criticism," not interpretation. While dis-
agreeing with Hirsch's solution, Magliola focusses on his problem, formulating it in
his first chapter (on Hirsch and Husserl). Then in his final chapter, he works towards
a Heideggerian theory of meaning and validity.
Perhaps this purpose should give us pause. I know that everyone is nowadays
concerned with "meaning." Analytic philosophers assiduously seek to determine its
locus and modality. Structuralists talk about its absence and its "creation." Decon-
structionists have a wonderful time playing havoc with it, opening up the ancient
sluices of romantic irony. If we cannot overcome our linguistic habits and do away
with the noun "meaning," let us at least squarely view it as a gerund, a substantivized
verb. Qua noun, "meaning" is not much more than the allegorization of a process so
elemental that it is implicit in the most rudimentary form of perception. The very idea
of an absence of meaning is nothing else than a category of meaning! We "mean"
the way we breathe, except that (unlike breathing) we do it transitively: we always
mean "something." And this is the whole point of the notion of intentionality, that
phenomenological discovery par excellence. Intentionality is intending, tending to-
wards, meaning; it is meinen, vermeinen and bedeuten. And the so-called "object"
of perception is nothing other than that which is thus intended-the "something"
we mean, tend towards, meinen and bedeuten. If, of course, we raise the figure of
speech to the dignity of a concept, then we are bound to be puzzled by its status; if
we reify the process into an entity, then its whereabouts and its identity become as
elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel. But we should realize that this way of posing the
problem is quite unphenomenological from the outset. Professor Magliola wants not
only to expose the phenomenological tradition, but to put it to work for solving a
question that is "in the air" amongst us-but does he not slightly distort the
perspective in the process? Merging traditions is a tricky thing indeed!
Of course, one can locate references to "meaning" in the work of the chief
phenomenologists. The trouble is that the effort is rather a chase for the tangential.
Hirsch deals mostly with the Logical Investigations, where the matter does receive
some attention-but it is Husserl's earliest major treatise, belonging to his pre-
phenomenological phase. Magliola concludes that Hirsch (who wants to locate
meaning in the "object" of cognition) finds scant support in that work and would
have been better advised to appeal to the somewhat later (decidedly phe-
nomenological) Ideas. There, it is stressed that everything found in noesis (the
cognitive act) has its mirror-like correspondence in the noema (that which is posited
by the cognitive act). Meaning as well can therefore (if we so wish) be placed, among
others, in the "object." Isn't this making rather too much of a marginal implication?
Besides, the very term noema is meant to avoid references to an "object" with its
realistic flavor, and the entire theory of noetic-noematic parallelism purports pre-
cisely to transcend the Cartesian subject-object duality which has become so deeply
ingrained in our way of thinking. I submit that the dualistic, realistic Hirschian
perspective of the argument is really superimposed.
It seems that Ingarden places meaning in the intentional act, whereas Dufrenne
(albeit ambivalently) sees it in the object. We hardly register these facts, however,
since Magliola's conscientious treatment of the two aestheticians has the effect of
relegating the problem to its proper marginality. Its questionable character becomes
palpable in the final Heideggerian chapter. The discussion centers on ? 32 of Being
and Time, and we must applaud this concentration on what is indeed the most

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important single section in all of Heidegger's work, and the very foundation of
contemporary hermeneutics. I must point out, however, that the section is not
entitled "Meaning," but "Understanding and Interpretation." It does contain a pas-
sage on "meaning" which Magliola (wrongly, I think) tries to use for his specific
purpose. Let us, in a very general way, place it in its context. Heidegger conceives
human existence (Dasein) as being-in-the-world, thereby expanding Husserl's
dialectic of intentionality into a complex less bound to cognitive intellectualism.
"Understanding" is the (often pre-intellectual) basic mode in which Dasein projects
itself towards a disclosure of its possibilities. Interpretation is grounded in under-
standing, not vice versa-it is the elaboration, the articulation of understanding.
What, then, is "meaning" [Sinn]? It is defined as (if I may be permitted my own free
translation) "the formal structure [skeleton, trestle: Gerust] of what is essential in the
result articulated by interpretation" and "the formal-existential Gerust of the dis-
closure that pertains to understanding" [Martin Heidegger, Sein undZeit (Tubingen:
Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1972), p. 151]. Obviously, meaning is a very derivative thing
indeed-a mere stage, an aspect of a larger process. But skeletons pose threats to
processes, since they are quintessentially ossificatory; figures of speech have a way
of coagulating into substances. Heidegger knows this and goes to considerable
trouble warning us against it. When we say something "has" meaning, we simply
mean it has been understood. Meaning is not an entity nor indeed a property of an
entity. We cannot even say that "meaning" is what we understand: we understand a
thing, an entity, or Being, and "meaning" is nothing but a word for the aura in which
understandability is articulable [Heidegger, pp. 151-52]. Trying to locate such a non-
entity would be manifestly absurd. Magliola's conclusion [p. 180] that Heideggerian
meaning is "nexical," that it lies neither in the subject nor in the object but pertains
to their interaction, is really a recognition of that fact-couched in the Cartesian
terminology Heidegger has rejected for good reasons. Magliola's subject matter
outstrips his announced purpose by exposing the limitation of any "theory of
meaning" whatsoever. When he seeks to catch up with his own argument by equat-
ing "meaning" with interpretation, indeed with understanding, he clearly reverts
from Heidegger's specified aspect to the overarching figure of colloquial discourse,
thereby covertly reintroducing the logical hypostatization into a concept which ev-
eryday language unconsciously fosters and reflects.
But Magliola has yet another concern: he argues that a text may have several
valid meanings (read: interpretations), as against Hirsch's insistence that there can
be only one. He is right, but again tends to short-circuit his own position by allowing
Hirsch's perspective to shape the argument. Of course he does not mean that all
interpretations are equal: we still need a standard of validity. He seeks it in Being and
Time again, in the famous passage on fore-understanding which (according to
Heidegger) has to be elaborated "in terms of the subject matter [things: Sachen]
itself" [Heidegger, p. 153]. Thus stated, this seems less a rule of validity than a pious
wish. Is the question not precisely how to validate such a correspondence to the
things? Hirsch would here raise the spectre of relativism, a view against which Ma-
gliola appeals to the intersubjective cultural langue (I customarily call itZeitgeist) that
gives constancy to the perspectives and values of each historical era [p. 189]. And it is
indeed important to make this point against the Zenoesque reasonings of Hirsch,
who professes to discover no essential difference between a hundred years and one
year, between a historical horizon and individual caprice. But such constancy hardly
suffices to solve our problem here. Nor can we delegate the solution to the critics of
the various periods. They always disagree, and we would like to turn to the good
ones only. Which ones are good? "The critic's audience adjudicates the validity of his
interpretation" [Magliola, p. 187]. But surely we can have but few illusions about the
downright asininity of many contemporary judgments, and are both too proud and
too lucid to seek refuge in a mere history of taste! Besides, are all historical perspec-
tives equally valid? A delegated problem does not cease to be a problem, and we
cannot solve this one by shifting it around.
This is why Magliola adds yet another criterion: different critical schools should

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reflect various facets of Being, and we can discount those which do not [pp. 189-90].
At this point, the philosophy of the later Heidegger enters the framework set by the
earlier one. It is clear, in fact, that Magliola is fascinated by the increasingly specula-
tive, increasingly oracular and decreasingly phenomenological Heidegger of the
later years, to whom he devotes what is probably the finest section of his First Part.
He there performs true feats of elucidation. He has the courage of tackling even the
forbiddingly turgid pre-Socratic acrobatics of an essay like "The Thing," shaping it
into a comprehensible statement. There arises a recognizable image of the mystic,
transcending his early concentration on Dasein towards a direct contact with Being
itself-and of the literary theorist, rejecting the "representational" conception of
truth in favor of a "commemorative" one in which the work of art becomes an
immediate "presencing" of Being [Magliola, pp. 65-66]. It is an image more or less
recognizable even by me, and I am one of those-their existence is regretfully
acknowledged by Magliola [p. 79]-who are quite incapable of intuiting the essences
in question here. Magliola also reveals the striking contrast between the late
Heidegger's theory and his critical practice, which is shown to be conventionally
thematic and allegorical [pp. 75-78]. Is it merely my incompetence in mysticis that
makes me view this incongruity as in indication that "commemorative truth" may not
be a critically meaningful notion? At any rate it cannot be a workable standard of
validity as demanded by the context of Part Two.
Adaptation to the subject matter, Zeitgeist, commemoration of Being: all that is
too little and too much. Too little, for not one of these criteria can furnish a secure
norm of validity. Too much, for their accumulation betrays a wavering between
phenomenological, historical and mystical inspirations. Above all, it suggests that
the problem of validity itself has hit a blind alley. And that is small wonder, for it had
from the start been posited in a way excluding a solution in phenomenological or
Heideggerian terms. From Heidegger we know that interpretation involves asking
the proper questions, and we are simply not dealing with a question Heidegger can
be asked. "Validity" is a positivistic concept, committed to the primacy of method: it
demands preformulated prescriptive rules methodically applicable to the verification
of neutralized "facts." And it admits of no nuances: things are not more or less valid,
they either are valid or are not. Phenomenologists are not really concerned with
rules of validity, they are more likely to be worried about the characteristics of
apodicticity which make intuition (Anschauung) clear and indubitable. What
Heidegger (quite phenomenologically) demands in Being and Time is that an in-
terpretation be appropriate to its subject matter-a notion related less to the ver-
ificatory procedures of science than to the aptum of rhetoric. It is a matter of qualita-
tive degrees and nuances. It cannot be abstractly preformulated and methodically
applied, it is the ever open (the never definitive) result of a practice elaborated in
concreto. Its medium is not theoretical reason but hermeneutic tact.
I should mention that Professor Magliola has expanded his final chapter into a
long essay that will appear (so I understand) as an appendix to his next book. A word
is in order about the development of his approach in this elaboration, which I have
seen in manuscript form. The points made in the chapter are developed in much
greater detail. This is especially the case for the late Heideggerian inspiration, which
is related to parallel themes in Oriental mysticism and which clearly emerges as the
author's chief preoccupation for the future. Here, however, it still has to share his
attention with the criterion of "appropriateness," a word which (revealingly) is in-
troduced for the first time. Even more importantly, it is explicitly recognized that the
only phenomenological "verification" is corroborative description and the concrete
experience of critical practice-surprisingly late, in fact, for that insight is already
contained in the First Part of the book as it now stands. Phenomenology has here
overcome the inappropriate framework of "validity." Indeed Magliola points out that
Heidegger avoids its German equivalent, Geltung, because it is too positivistic, al-
though he himself declines to follow suit. The reason is, no doubt, that the English
word does have a dimension of vagueness of which Geltung cannot boast: loosely
speaking, things can after all be more or less valid, and "validity" can mean anything

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at all. But just as in the case of "meaning," a relapse into colloquialism may all too
easily betoken a surreptitious introduction of the concept in its restrictive sense, and
thereby a pseudo-synthesis of irreconcilable criteria. Let us draw lines and keep
distinctions clear!
After an introduction on the philosophical background, the First Part of
Phenomenology and Literature proceeds to discuss the Geneva School, then (after
the previously mentioned chapter on Heidegger) ends by confronting phenomenol-
ogy with Parisian structuralism. It should be noted that the Heidegger chapter con-
tains a section on Ludwig Binswanger, a psychologist and critic hitherto (to my
knowledge) virtually unknown in the Anglo-American world.' The same laudable
broadness characterizes the approach to the Geneva Movement, which deals not
only with the actual members but also with predecessors like Marcel Raymond and
Albert Beguin, and with such related figures as Emil Staiger and the early Hillis Miller.
The treatment is synoptic, centering on the ontology of the literary work and on the
critical methodology, as revealed both in critical performance and programmatic
statements. Therefore the group, despite its variety, can appear as a more or less
recognizable configuration in the history of ideas-an advantage worth the price we
have to pay for it: individual critics tend to emerge and re-emerge more or less ad
hoc after somewhat schematic introductions; the lines between purpose and prac-
tice are often blurred, and one is occasionally prejudged in terms of the other. What
does bother me is Magliola's excessively positive judgment on Georges Poulet, in
whom he seems to see the phenomenological critic par excellence-mainly, I think,
because the approach should ideally be universal and because Poulet is really quite
unable to refrain from writing on anything whatsoever. But if "appropriateness" is a
legitimate concern, one should acknowledge the difference between the elucidating
touch of a critic like, for example, Starobinski, and a pretentiously all-embracing
structural impressionism that can hardly (as it is here) be hailed as a "rigorous
dialectic" [pp. 34-35].
The section on methodology is enlightening. The author shows parallels be-
tween Husserl's "phenomenological reduction," his "eidetic reduction" and "intu-
ition," and the procedures of the Geneva critics. In a Husserlian fashion, they try to
unveil recurrent experiential structures and within them general essences that are
woven into essential typologies. The essences never appear in pure form but always
in Abschattungen or surface configurations. Husserl's phenomenological epoche
(the "bracketing" of all presuppositions as to empirical reality) is supposedly re-
flected in the critics' rejection of extrinsic factors, in their attempt to describe the
phenomena as pure phenomena. The general trend towards "immanent" criticism
here appears in a phenomenological variation. Husserl's call to go "to the things
[Sachen] themselves" has come in for some stringent criticism. We are told that
there is no presuppositionless knowledge, nor is there a "pure" description of
things as they are. Let us reflect that it would be paradoxical to accuse Husserl of all
people (the idealist who views the contents of knowledge as essentially posited by an
intentional act of consciousness!) of realistic epistemological naivete! His battle cry
of 1910 (contained in the manifesto "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft") is di-
rected against speculative and ideological superimpositions and distortions. It
should also be seen as a plea to return to substantive problems, in a period that had
gotten bogged down in mere Problemgeschichte, the history of problems, in com-
mentaries on commentaries and critiques of critiques. Yet we here touch upon one
of the sensitive points of the Husserlian enterprise. On one hand, Husserl's insis-
tence on the systematic practice of epoche does seem to overtax man's ability to
neutralize fore-understanding; on the other hand, his own phenomenological de-
scriptions do strike us as genuine returns "to the things."

' The only substantive study known to me is Paul de Man's essay, "Ludwig Binswanger and
the Sublimation of the Self" in Blindness and Insight [New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971].

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 This is a question which we cannot presume to solve here. We can note, how-
ever, that Magliola encounters it in his own context. Fore-knowledge is inescapable,
"all methodology implies a metaphysic" [Magliola, p. 40], and therefore the Gene-
vans as well have their metaphysical assumptions: they work with modes of con-
sciousness such as time and space, cognition and volition, and with contents of
consciousness such as World, Happenings, Self and Others [cf. Magliola, p. 36].
Why, then, does their criticism so often strike us as genuinely "immanent," where
that of Freudians, Marxists, Catholics and others seems extrinsic? Magliola gives two
reasons [pp. 42-43]. First, the Genevan categories reflect a less elaborated
metaphysic, they are elemental enough to be (with some good will) universally
recognized. Second, they are personal in nature, describing an author's
"phenomenological ego" (his ego as found in the text) in his own terms; the more
ideological approaches are metapersonal and reinterpret the text in terms other than
its own. Though this distinction often works in practice, it needs some refining.
Above all, it should be removed from thematic criteria and focussed on the primary
question of the critic's attitude. The essential difference is then related to that be-
tween method and appropriateness, which has been touched upon before. The
ideologist has a prefabricated frame of reference, a construct which he applies
methodically in order to explain the phenomena (which amounts to reducing them
to something else). The non-ideologist has an open-minded understanding which he
is willing to expose to the text, to risk and modify in the process-and interaction
that is to render the phenomena explicit. The line of distinction runs between reduc-
tive explanation and hermeneutic explicitation and understanding. If the "imma-
nent" procedure is more often personal, this is because understanding is by its very
nature not abstract but concrete and human. The opposition between the "elemen-
tal" and the "elaborate" may do as a thumb rule, but what counts is less the degree
than the locus of elaboration: even a detailed Marxist critique can be "intrinsic" if it
does not preempt the text but is built up from within. Conversely, an interpretation
can be ever so "elemental," can juggle for pages on end with time and space, with
Selves and Others, and still be unphenomenologically superimposed (have I not
named a Genevan example further up?). Above all, I have misgivings about the
argument that all fore-understanding, however natural, is "metaphysical." The case
can be made only by a very broad definition of the term. Is it advisable to make it in
our present intellectual climate? Having heard the news that knowledge is never
neutral, some of our contemporaries are jumping at the facile conclusion that all
presuppositions are equal and equally enforceable-pretending that they cannot
distinguish a general background from a rigid system, an open-minded though di-
rected question from a foreclosed construct. It is only one step to the simplistic
decision that we can interpret away at will. That step is taken, for example, in the last
lines of Roland Barthes' essay, "History or Literature?", where we are told that we
can apply any "system of reading" provided that we say what it will be [in On Racine,
transl. Richard Howard (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964), p. 172].
It is decidedly dangerous to foster such confusion. It is the kind of confusion
Husserl can clear up. Unfortunately the treatment of Husserl is precisely what is most
unsatisfactory in Magliola's book. I do not want this statement to be misunderstood:
Husserl's name and his ideas appear again and again; the author is familiar with his
work and with its importance for the subject. This last determination, however, here
points to a certain limitation. Just what is important for the subject? It is difficult to
decide how far an "impact" study should be pushed. Some limitation is necessary,
but it seems to me that the discussion of Husserl here remains too much ad hoc, too
fragmentary-too closely tied, in each case, to the material at hand. The meth-
odological discussion is better than the ontological one. The doctrine of the "mutual
implication" of the subject and object of knowledge, used throughout to identify a
phenomenological approach to literary criticism, is but a very distant echo of
"intentionality"-often too unclear even for its momentary purpose. In the first
chapter of Part Two, of course, intentionality is taken up at greater length, but only in
a very restricted and technical perspective. The helpful sections on the two reduc-
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tions remain narrowly instrumental to the practice of the Geneva critics; their con-
nection with the Husserlian inspiration is somewhat tenuous; one would have
hoped for a somewhat more intensive investigation, accompanied by a somewhat
wider sweep. The author wishes to supply that sweep in his initial remarks on the
"Philosophical and Linguistic Background," but precisely that chapter must incur the
reproach of being weak. It reads like something the author has done out of
conscientiousness, before turning to the really important matters. Here we some-
times, uncharacteristically, get flabby formulations, and generalities of the kind one
might find in standard histories of philosophy. What does it really mean that
"phenomenology [ ..] believes it can get at reality through a recognition of 'es-
sences' revealed in consciousness" [p. 4]? What is not sufficiently evoked is (in
Faust's words) the "spiritual link" between the parts, the inner dynamic of the Hus-
serlian enterprise.
We should be made to appreciate, most of all, that exciting atmosphere of
freshness and renewal that cannot be readily imagined in a tradition of which
phenomenology is no part. Of course phenomenology as well has proved subject to
the process of aging. It has developed its own traditions, with many offshoots and
variations. It has engendered descendents who, even when they were original, have
not always been able to avoid the pitfalls of clever effeteness and speculative opacity.
"Woe to you for being an heir," said Goethe's Mephistopheles. But this is not the
spirit of the ancestor, who set out to take a lucid new look at things and problems,
freeing them from their elaborate sedimentations and incrustations-who was never
afraid of digging in in order to discover the world anew. This has made of him a rare
human archetype: that of the authentic Thinker who, in the very midst of the
spreading of his ideas, stood in tragic isolation. What he represents is not intellectual
entrepreneurialism but rigorous intellectual reflection. He is not a coquettish
philosophical game-player but "one who has lived through a philosophical existence
in all its seriousness" [quoted in Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological
Movement (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), p. 73]. Who dares affirm that such
an existence presents us with no lesson? The quotation is taken from the last of
Husserl's numerous writings, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Philosophy, which appeared posthumously, like many of the others, since Husserl
continually refused to publish his works because he felt they were not finished. I
submit that this is yet another lesson for a polygraphic and promiscuously publica-
tory epoch such as ours, where the unfermented (often under such symptomatic
titles as "Towards a Theory of. . ." or "Pour une sociologie de . . .") has come close
to making up a respected genre of its own. Needless to say, we are still feeding on
what Husserl hesitated to serve, often enough without even knowing it. As for his
ideas, one should not allow technical discussions of intentionality (for example) to
obscure the overriding importance of the concept-so revolutionary that Husserl
himself in his early period (and certainly in the Logical Investigations!) failed to grasp
its full significance. After all, the discovery that consciousness is a dynamic process
of intending explodes the mechanistic and static duality of associationist psychology.
Realizing that the mind is initially "outside" as much as it is "inside," it places in
question the entire discipline of epistemology, which wants to bridge the alleged gap
between the two. We already know that the notion of intentionality undermines the
subject-object division which Heidegger as well will take such trouble to abolish-a
task that Husserl attacks at its roots by a critique and redefinition of the Cartesian
cogito. Methodologically, the new approach recognizes at last the primacy of syn-
thetic configurations, thus undercutting the sacrosanct practice of decomposing
phenomena into abstract imaginary units. Husserl's work on the Cartesian Medita-
tions also examines the realm of intersubjectivity (a basis for the Sartrean pour-
autrui), advancing the completely novel thesis that it founds the "objective" world of
common sense and science. Perhaps these few select examples will help to locate
the real point of origin of the philosophical revolution of our time, and contribute to
an understanding of its spirit. For we need that spirit at least as much as when
Husserl first appeared upon the scene. Then, things were threatening to dissolve in

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their history; now, they seem prone to disappear in the theory of their theory. Many
of us can no longer distinguish between the primary and the tertiary, and would
approach problems (or their shadows) only with shame-faced obliqueness by crit-
icizing the critique of their critique by other critics. We have become blind to the
thick line that separates sophistication from sophistry. Triumphant epigones, we are
enamored of the ancillary, gripped by a fetishistic passion for the derivative. The time
has come for restoring some perspective, for the fresh air of a Husserlian "return to
the things."
It is, however, not only for our own sakes that we need a broader and more
intense understanding of Husserl's undertaking: we need it for the simple purpose
of evaluating such a phenomenon as the Geneva School. A technical, meth-
odological filiation will not do. As we follow the logic of Magliola's remarks on the
Genevans, we suddenly become aware of the odd fact that an outsider is the hidden
hero of the Movement. Let us concede that he is only partly hidden and sometimes
abruptly comes into view. This happens most resoundingly in a passage on the
problem of distinguishing between an author's Zeitstil and his individual style. "The
master of discernment in cases of this kind," we read, "is (in my opinion) that old
German polyhistor, Leo Spitzer himself. Though of course not a member of the
Geneva School, he sets the best example for it. He penetrates into the past, yet
salvages singularity" [p. 44]. Magliola proceeds by citing as evidence Spitzer's essay
on Du Bellay's Sonnet 113. It is only one of the many studies he could have referred
to. I think he merely meant to acknowledge Spitzer's adeptness in one particular
area, for although the virtuoso critic's name does recur elsewhere, it is only in
passing. Thus the Geneva School's "interpretative circle" (the practice of moving to
and fro between individual works and collective interpretations) is related to
Spitzer's "philological circle" within the general context of German hermeneutics,
going from Schleiermacher via Dilthey to Heidegger. More significant is an excursus
on the various procedures of entry into the text [Magliola, pp. 52ff]. Magliola distin-
guishes three of them, all equally legitimate, each practiced by one or more of the
Geneva critics: through modes of consciousness, contents of consciousness, and
language. We have to go back twenty pages [to p. 33] to be reminded that it was
Spitzer who insisted that the inner unity of a work can be approached in any way and
from any point of vantage, and that he chose language merely because he happened
to be a linguist. Here we also find his famous reference to the "spiritual etymon" of a
writer, to be uncovered through his work. Wherein does this quest for the etymon
differ from the Genevans' search for concealed patterns of experience? I submit that
the Austrian polyhistor is more and more emerging as the human etymon of the
Swiss enterprise! The Genevans (Magliola tells us) "scrutinize" or "intuit" a work so
as to get a grasp on its essential structure [p. 48]. How does this depart from Spitzer's
practice of reading and rereading, which finally produces the renowned "inner
click" when he approaches the "inward life-center" of a work? J.-P. Richard refers to
"words of crystallization" coordinating the various "profiles" of a poem; J. Hillis
Miller, in his phenomenological years, wants to juxtapose various passages of a
novel to pinpoint its organizing form: the Spitzerian parallels are becoming too
obvious to require exposition. And how can the Genevan quest for empathy be
differentiated from the Spitzerian urge for communion with the author's deeper
soul? The case is clinched, I think, by Magliola's distinctions between the Swiss and
Anglo-American approaches [pp. 55-56]: the former can overcome the opposition
between formalist and psychological criticism, and seeks latent essence rather than
surface likeness. Exactly the same claims could be made for Spitzer, who (heaven
knows!) had enough polemics with American critics to prove it. I must conclude that
Spitzer is in most important matters the best of the "Genevans"; the only difference
(not much greater, really, than some between various bona fide members of the
Movement) would lie in the thematic concerns emphasized, and in the more exclu-
sive concentration on the individual work.
This reopens the question of the exact historical position of the Geneva School.
Is it, then, nothing else than a branch of the ancient trunk of Philologie? Magliola

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suggests that there is in fact a duality of inspiration: these literary phenomenologists
have not quite freed themselves from the old German tradition of "objective her-
meneutics," represented by Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and more recently by Ugo
Betti [p. 16]. Hirsch as well, as we know, associates himself with this tradition, and
Spitzer stands in its line.
How, incidentally, can the programmatic objectivism of a Hirsch be brought
under the same heading as the practice of a Spitzer, which has sometimes been
denounced as subjectivistic and whose roots (as witness his very terminology:
"soul," "experience," "inward life-center," "spirit") are consciously romantic? And
how indeed can a romanticist like Schleiermacher, the theorist of "divinatory in-
terpretation," stand at the origin of a thing called "objective hermeneutics"? The
answer lies in the realization (initiated by Husserl) that Cartesian dualism founds all
subsequent subject-object dichotomies, and that the two poles go together like two
sides of one coin. The Cartesian subject may superficially look unlike a romantic self,
but the difference is merely one of emphasis. Descartes (this is Husserl's critique in
the Crisis) does not really reduce the subject of cognition to its proper radical trans-
cendentality but defines it as mens sive animus sive intellectus, thus squarely
psychologizing the transcendental ego. It is empiricized into a "soul"-substance that
can later be easily expanded into a romantic soul. And where there is an autonomous
substantial subject, there is always a commensurable object-subjectivism and ob-
jectivism invariably go hand in hand. Thus it is quite typical that Hirsch's narrowly
objectivistic concept of "interpretation" (as determining the actual authorial inten-
tion) is supplemented by a subjectivistic view of "criticism" (as the right to judge the
interpreted as one pleases). In general, interpreting (in this tradition) means relating
to an empirical authorial mind-be it by empathizing divination, be it by the meth-
odically objectivistic statement that the author meant this or that.
So much in passing about the older, the pre-Heideggerian hermeneutic tradi-
tion, which supposedly interferes with the phenomenological purity of the Geneva
School. This interference, in Magliola's view, chiefly takes the form of lingering
psychologism, the sin which Husserl had tried to eradicate. The Geneva critics do
distinguish between the author's empirical self and his "phenomenological ego," his
moi profond. They try to "live" the moi profond exclusively but are sidetracked by
empirical, psychological remnants [pp. 8-9, 15-16]. And even the aestheticians (In-
garden, Dufrenne), who "take great pains to avoid psychologism" [p. 9], do so with
disputable success. Are they as well, then, still hampered by traditional hermeneu-
tics? We are not told, but somehow it seems less likely than in the case of practicing
critics-and moreover, I must admit that the positivistically external explanation of a
dual influence fails to satisfy me in any case.
Let us rather see whether the School's pure, unmarred phenomenological pur-
pose stands up to scrutiny. Something in it should strike us as rather odd. How
indeed can one "live" an ego (or anything) that is not empirical, psychological?
"Living" a thing can only refer to the mode of cognition called empathy, that bears
by definition on the domain of psychic experience which Ingarden rejects [cf. p. 9].
Are we to conclude that the School's relapse into romantic hermeneutics takes place
already on the level of its methodological ideal and that it should have sought
another cognitive approach?
Perhaps we are still shifting the problem around on a superficial level. What
exactly is the nature of the moi profond which the phenomenological critic wants to
grasp? It is the author's self as it presents itself not on the surface, but in underlying
experiential patterns, and as it is enverbalized or inviscerated in the text. But what
makes those hidden patterns extra-empirical? Are the subconscious patterns
brought to light by psychoanalytic therapy, for example, perchance outside of the
domain of the psychic? Husserl's never-ending struggle with his problems makes it
hard at times to pin him down to one-sided definitions of his terms. It can be safely
affirmed, however, that he indeed considers such patterns as non-empirical: they
are not substantial properties of a "soul" but a priori forms in which knowledge and
experience will occur. But if they are transcendental, they are not so in the most radical

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sense. We have to distinguish, in fact, between the empirical and the psychological:
there is such a thing as transcendental anthropologism, as aprioristic psychologism.
The ego that is uncovered in its a priori structures, though not a "substance," still
presents itself in psychological particularity; the operation of uncovering it still takes
place within the confines of the natural attitude.
How, then, do I gain access to pure consciousness in its pristine transcendental-
ity? Initially by self-reflection, introspective immanence, but not in the psychological
sense. The process demands an ascetic exercise of the "phenomenological
reduction"-an epoch6 that suspends what Husserl calls "the general thesis of the
natural attitude": the belief (or, for that matter, the non-belief) in the existence of
the "objects" of cognition. What I place between brackets is any concern or in-
volvement with the reality of what I perceive. This radical change in attitude permits
me to study the phenomena such as they truly appear: as pure phenomena for my
consciousness which constitutes or posits them, and endows them with their claim
to being. This constitutive consciousness alone is a phenomenologically autono-
mous sphere, posited absolutely in and by itself [cf. E. Husserl, "Nachwort zu
meinen 'Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen
Philosophie'," in Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und phanomenologische Forschung, XI,
1930, 558-59]. Emphatically, this "phenomenological ego" is not an "I" in the sense of
either empirical or aprioristic uniqueness. It is the ground of knowledge, the pure
nucleus of constitution, in which the noetic performance can be grasped as such.
Grasping it is not an act of empathizing, for empathy is an identification with psychic
forms or contents. Moreover, it is essentially not knowledge of self but of another.
Indeed the notion of empathy is so problematical that Husserl wants to have no part
of it even in his analysis of transcendental intersubjectivity in the Fifth Cartesian
Meditation, where he demonstrates that and how one encounters other transcen-
dental (monadic) egos: he introduces a rather involved concept of "appresentation"
that is to avoid both the immediacy of empathizing intuition and the indirection of
logical analogy. But if empathy will not do as a means of access to the deeper ego,
neither will detached observation resulting in apophantic propositions. Clearly the
transcendental ego, the ground of knowledge, cannot be reduced to an object of
knowledge.
Is literary criticism, then, to try its hand at transcendental self-reflection? Of
course not: that is not its business. As a mode of communication, criticism is essen-
tially concerned not with self but with the other-and this means: with the other in
his psychic particularity (be it empirical or aprioristic), in his otherness which is to be
understood. Communication, of course, is a form of knowledge, and criticism is a
cognitive enterprise; but it is always one particular act of cognition, not an investiga-
tion into the founding processes of knowledge as such. It is a matter of understand-
ing, not of transcendental constitution; it moves in the realm of the hermeneutic,
not at all in that of the "phenomenological" in its ultimate and radical sense. It takes
place within the limits of the natural attitude. Therefore the "phenomenological
epochS" can be applied to criticism only with great reserve. That application comes
close to being a misunderstanding. Of course misunderstandings can be fruitful, and
one may claim that this one has proven so. It is a claim I would support-with the
proviso that misunderstandings have a way of being fruitful only when practiced by
those who would be good critics even without them. Magliola argues that the
phenomenological tenet of the "mutual implication" of subject and object makes for
good criticism. So it does-but has there ever been a worthwhile critic who failed to
practice that tenet, even without the benefit of philosophical conviction? Ultimately,
the Geneva School at its best has contributed less a methodology than a particular
flavor and certain perspectives. The process of understanding is one, although it
manifests itself in many ways.
We are now well beyond the positivistic assumption of a dual influence. The
Genevans try to empathize, and fall into "psychologism," not because their views
are hermeneutically tainted, but because criticism (whatever it wants to be) is her-
meneutic. Theory is never quite germane to good criticism: that is the true lesson of

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the Geneva School's Spitzerian "impurities." Actually Magliola, although he reports
the transcendental aspirations of the Geneva critics, does not seem to take them very
seriously. Otherwise he could not write, as he repeatedly does, that what they seek
is an empathizing elucidation of an author's Lebenswelt-which is, of course, the
very essence of his natural attitude. The term comes from Husserl's last work, the
Crisis, and Magliola uses it very loosely, to designate an author's individual experi-
ence, Erlebnis, or personal universe. But Husserl's concept of the "life-world" by no
means refers to any one subjective realm of experience, but rather to something that
had never before become an object of philosophical reflection: the intersubjective
patterns which all such realms have in common, the world of experience per se.
I still would not quarrel with Magliola's cursory usage of a word so handy and
picturesque, were it not that the concept as developed by Husserl can cast light on
the very problem raised in the final chapter of Part One: that of the confrontation
between phenomenology and Parisian structuralism. Synthesizing seems the or-
der of the day, and that chapter is a case in point. Magliola looks for signs that the
chasm between these two modern orientations can be bridged. Thus on the
phenomenological-hermeneutic side, Paul Ricoeur insists that the awareness of
"meaning" and that of structure are complementary [pp. 90-91]. In the structuralist
camp, Todorov [pp. 88-90] has admitted that there is an untheorizable part of litera-
ture which escapes and subverts scientific language and that the level of "meaning"
is as important as that of form; at times he even assumes the germaneness of an
authorial subjectivity, is interested in a work's sequential unfolding, and goes so far
as to introduce a concept of literary evolution. Let us note, however, that this last
point does no more than make him an heir to the very early theorist Tynjanov. And in
fact all these are mere interpretive gestures in the direction of the dynamic and the
creative, on the part of one whose ideological presuppositions have not succeeded
in totally subordinating a critical esprit de finesse strengthened by familiarity with the
Russian formalists. Such ad hoc compromises, even if occasionally successful, can
yield no more than ad hoc results. They cannot bring about a fundamental fusion
between two utterly discrete approaches. Nor can Ricoeur's more systematic investi-
gations, which make structural analysis a mere stage, instrumental to the primary and
ultimate process of hermeneutic understanding.
How, in any case, could the sought-after fusion be brought about? In an earlier
chapter, Magliola lists what he calls "one very important contrast" between
phenomenologists and Parisian structuralists [p. 55]: in linguistics, the
phenomenologist starts with the semantic level and works his way down to the
grammatical one, whereas the structuralist begins with grammar and phonemics,
building up the semantic level from there. This is more than just a contrast: it is the
very difference of differences! What is primary and fundamental: concrete dynamic
configurations [Gestalten] or abstract, neutral, static units? We are dealing with
nothing less than the opposition between synthetic and analytic knowledge, be-
tween intuition and methodical estrangement, between understanding and manip-
ulatory construction. And let us note that even now, it is the phenomenological
approach that is novel and revolutionary! The analytic method is as old as Descartes'
breakdown of problems into simple and mathematically measurable entities, as old
as the imaginary simple "sensations" of psychological associationism; the com-
binatory exercises that seem to represent the Parisians' intellectual ideal are as aged
as the mechanical statue of Condillac. And all this is placed in perspective by Husserl's
last work on the Crisis-a worthy link in the long line of cultural diagnoses that
started with Fichte's 1804/05 lectures on Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters.
Why is it (that question is Husserl's point of departure) that the very triumphs of the
positive sciences have merely engendered a feeling of crisis, a profound sense of
vacuity and malaise? The causes go back to the Renaissance. And here Husserl
introduces the concept of Lebenswelt-the world of experience from which the
ideology of mathematical positive science has been derived. The latter, founded
upon certain requirements of practical existence (foresight, control of surroundings,
etc.), has come to forget its very particular filiation. Erecting its limited scope into an

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absolute, universalizing its purely instrumental purposes and procedures, it thus
ends up with a complete mathematization and technicization of reality in which
abstract idealities are arbitrarily substituted for living experience-without, however,
fundamentally modifying the Lebenswelt, which remains the essential context even
for the scientists themselves. The result has been a widening gap between
Lebenswelt and its unconscious offshoot, between practice and theory-between
the desire for sense and a restrictive, objectivistic, manipulatory view of things that
poses as an autonomous form of universal comprehension. Sooner or later the crisis
had to come, for theoretical reason cannot cut its umbilical cord, and cannot perma-
nently fool us into believing that means are ends and that the part is the whole. To
unmask the false radicalism of a scientistic metaphysic, Husserl sets out to describe
the ignored yet ever-present patterns of its foundation in experience.
Scientific objectivism as an ideology is founded upon a colossal failure of
philosophical self-reflection, an enormous (though limitedly useful) epistemological
naivete. What, I ask, would Husserl have to think of Parisian structuralism? He could
only see it as a blind expansion and exacerbation of that naivete, and of the crisis that
results from it. The overextended, unexamined idola of scientistic faith are doing
their best to suffuse even the "human sciences," starting with language-and for a
cause, for language is the mainspring of human creativity, and that creativity can thus
be undermined and denied at its very source. It is a well-known psychological
phenomenon that some, faced with crisis, will (instead of taking counsel) plunge in
more deeply with a vengeance. This is the way a thorough and consistent
phenomenologist, a reader of the Crisis, would have to evaluate the deeper implica-
tions of Parisian structuralism. Needless to say, he would fail to see the basis for a
meaningful synthesis. Nor would this bother him, for the true question, for him,
would be: are we going to heed the lucid diagnosis of the lonely old master of
Freiburg-to learn his lesson, to take account of his final warning? Or are we going to
ignore them?

W. Wolfgang Holdheim is the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of Liberal Studies at Cornell.

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