The Future of Husserlian Phenomenology: Time and Epoché
Louis Sandowsky
The Intertwining
(
Ineinander) of Time and Epoché
To ask about the future of Husserlian Phenomenology
at this time is actually quite a natural gesture – caught up, as it
is, in the anxiety wrought by the difficulties that come with the beginning
of a new millennium and the malaise of the post-modern. Though, it must
be borne in mind that it is a gesture that simultaneously puts the sense
of ‘naturalness’ into question. It answers to a conscientious
zeitgeist that seeks to catch itself in mid-act (between breaths) –
as an attitudinal re-orientation, break, or moment of suspense – in
order to find its bearings and to re-discover its responsibility as a
rigorous philosophical praxis. And, as it does so, the history of the movement of
phenomenology exemplifies nothing other than the constant re-iteration of
this turn to momentarily step outside its history (or, at least, a naïve,
un-reflective attitude to it) in order to re-turn to itself with greater
clarity and precision. This is the
epoché at the heart of phenomenology
as it
unfolds in time. Thus, in order to re-gather itself and to
re-establish the sense / significance of its time / history so as to forge
ahead, phenomenology must perpetually return to its beginnings. This is,
arguably, the essence of the meaning of phenomenology as an ‘infinite
task.’
This infinite task is none other than an infinite
re-iteration of phenomenological questions that always remain open
to further analysis. Such is the thought of a ‘phenomenology of phenomenology,’
which traces itself throughout Husserl's work.(
1)
To ask about the
future of Husserlian phenomenology already problematizes the idea of a ‘terminus.’ If this elicits
panic and alarm in certain philosophic and scientific domains then this
is only the effect of an orientation that has not grasped the meaning of
epoché. It is a question of a change in consciousness itself – a transformation
of the manner of waiting-towards the not-yet. The apparent pointlessness
of what seems to be nothing other than a Sisyphean task is actually the
sign of a naïveté that requires examination. Of course, the issue of ‘how’
this critique might be conducted is a question that remains left over –
thus inspiring hope at the very same time that it undermines it. The method
or way only resolves itself in the doing. The movement of unfolding the
question, if conducted conscientiously (with rigour), brings with it the
true sense of what it is to ask about the future of Husserlian phenomenology
and to what extent it may retain its Husserlian trace.(
2)
To this end, which must not be confused with
a terminus,
Time and
Epoché must be thought together.
As I prepare this writing for the submission
date of February 2007, what is foremost in my mind is that it marks the
centennial of the lecture course (of 1907) in which Edmund Husserl first
introduced the working method of phenomenological reduction / epoché (later
published as
The Idea of Phenomenology (
3)
).
Developmentally, it owes a great deal to the remarkable series of lectures
that he presented at Göttingen in the winter semester of 1904-5 on the phenomenology
of the consciousness of immanent / internal time. (
4)
Though the reduction is not thematized in the time-lectures
as such,
its trace is operative throughout the analyses.
Dorion Cairns reports in his journal of 1931:
“Husserl said that at the
time of the 1905 time-lectures he had not yet come upon the phenomenological
reduction, but that these lectures were what urged him on to think of the
phenomenological reduction.” (
5)
With the publication of Husserl’s
Ideen
1 in 1913, there ‘began’ a systematic account of the method
of
epoché, whose elaboration gradually turned into the most fundamental
task of phenomenology. (
6)
Though
the question of temporal constitution took a backseat during this middle-period
of Husserl’s writing further application and development of the epoché
inevitably led to questions of genesis, thus bringing time back into the
foreground of his philosophy. It is the interwovenness of the themes of
time and epoché that dominate his later and more mature transcendental phenomenology.
2. The Time of the Epoché
Existentialism (existential-phenomenology)
and deconstruction have had a considerable effect on how Husserlian phenomenology
is re-read today – particularly in regard to the themes of time and
the epoché. It is important to note that Husserl’s egological investigations
and the method of phenomenological reduction have been severely criticized
by other phenomenologists, e.g., Aron Gurwitsch and Alfred Shutz, (
7)
including the existential phenomenologists, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul
Sartre, on the basis of a common misunderstanding. Allegedly, both elements
in Husserl’s phenomenology disregard the intersubjective pre-conditions
of their possibility. For Shutz and Gurwitsch, the phenomenology of the
Other / social existence / intersubjectivity – as exemplified by Emmanuel
Levinas’s discourse on alterity and the primacy of ethics, Martin Heidegger’s
thematization of the fundamental role of ‘Mitsein’ / ‘Being-with’
in the constitution of Dasein, or Martin Buber’s ‘I-Thou’
relation, etc. – takes precedence over an egological route of inquiry
into the constitution of the one shared Lifeworld. It is further claimed,
according to a purely solipsistic interpretation, that the method of epoché
– particularly the transcendental reduction is counter to the whole
concept of the Lebenswelt. This is brought out famously in Jean-Paul Sartre’s
early work
The Transcendence of the Ego, (
8)
which argues against the notion of the transcendental Ego and the suitability
of the epoché by emphasizing that the structure of the ego always already
implies the Other, not the other way round.
In essence, it may be true that alterity is always already implied
by discourse on the ego (from the standpoint of the Lebenswelt) but, at
the beginning of the philosophical turn toward a truly phenomenological
orientation on this question, it is not so ‘self-evident.’ For
it is always ‘I’ the meditator / practicing phenomenologist who
must first take this step, even if the outcome – after rigorous examination
– should be the phenomenological-eidetic-deconstruction of my particularity
to the general (communal / intersubjective) structures that permit the possibility
of any ego. The author may lose its ontological priority by such a movement,
but it wins back its existential authority – in constitutional terms
– through that which is disclosed by this activity. The interplay of
time and epoché is the unfolding of the alterity that lies at the heart
of the shared Lifeworld to which I belong. It is in me just as I am inside
it. This interpenetration is vertical as well as horizontal. There is no
hint of solipsism here – which has always proved to be an impoverished
determination of the meaning of epoché. Of all Husserl’s disciples,
Eugen Fink (and perhaps Ludwig Landgrebe) probably came closest to understanding
the intrinsic complementarity of egology (which is only one of the turns
taken by the phenomenological reduction) and discourse on alterity in Husserlian
phenomenology. This is evident in Fink’s fascinating
Sixth Cartesian
Meditation: the Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, as endorsed
and annotated by Husserl himself. (
9)
The all-embracing theme that binds these issues together is temporality. Jacques Derrida’s
various deconstructive re-readings of Husserl’s phenomenology of immanent
time consciousness will, I believe, have a profound impact on how his discourse
on time will be engaged by the most ‘careful’ philosophers over
the next few decades. It is the theme of time itself that is, perhaps, the
most outstanding problem of phenomenology – to the extent that it is
a horizon of research that is inextricably linked to the problem of the
unfolding of phenomenological methodology itself. On the one hand, Derrida’s
deconstructive critiques demonstrate that time and its articulation are
irreducibly tied to metaphysical conceptuality, while realizing that Husserlian
phenomenology in its very ‘aim’ – through the continuous
implementation of the methodological epoché – transcends or transgresses
this limitation. Then again, every time that time is subjected to an epoché
(in its many similar but non-identical forms of suspension, neutralization,
bracketing, etc) there is still the
time of the epoché. (
10)
This is nothing other than the most primordial dialectic operating at the
heart of temporality, Being, and the relationship between phenomenology
and itself.
Some commentators consider this kind
of formulation to be philosophically absurd. Many phenomenologists –
and I am forced to use this expression loosely since the practice of ‘phenomenology’
has come to signify a number of fashionable, but fundamentally incorrect
determinations of its meaning (the same could be said of deconstruction)
– dispute the relevance or correctness of Derrida’s deconstructions
of Husserl’s work. I would like to see more readers in the ‘phenomenological
camp’ re-read both Husserl and Derrida more carefully. (
11)
With respect to the theme of time
and the relations between epoché and temporization, I believe that the question
of the future of Husserlian phenomenology is intertwined with that of the
future of Derridian deconstruction. This is where the line between the past
and futurity finds itself smudged again and again as phenomenology must
return to the question of the task that lies
before it
after deconstruction. (
12)
3. Time
as Epoché
Despite the importance of Husserl’s 1905
lecture course on the
Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness – which radicalized Western philosophical discourse on time as much
as Einstein’s theory of relativity (spacetime) (
13)
revolutionized the way in which objective time came to be thematized in
the physical sciences – the text is not well known, especially in the
English-speaking world.
Husserl’s phenomenological meditations
on temporality are elegantly complementary to those of Einstein and certainly
just as significant philosophically, scientifically, and above all historically.
Einstein’s papers of 1905 that introduced the Principle of Relativity
(or the Special [Specific] Theory of Relativity), which first thematized
the exotic forms of temporal dilation that occur at velocities close to
that of light – thus refuting the classical concept of Absolute time
– were published in the same year that Husserl presented his lecture
course on the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time. When
taken together, their different orientations – Husserl’s ‘subjective’
discourse and Einstein’s ‘objective’ account – fulfil
one another in exquisite harmony. This is even more markedly the case with
the addition of Einstein’s General theory of relativity (1915/16). Husserl’s phenomenological discourse on Primordial Flux expresses
the fundamental interplay of temporalization and spatialization – where
successivity and simultaneity must be thought together. Heidegger’s
concept of time-space surely finds its inspiration here as does Merleau-Ponty’s
concept of chiasm. In extension, Derrida’s use of the neologism
différance – which equiprimordially combines space and time
as difference
and delay – is probably his greatest contribution
to phenomenological thought on time and the epoché
as temporization.
In every case,
the traditional disjunction between time and space has been problematized.
Temporalizing and spatializing cannot be articulated adequately within the
bounds of the classic dyad. The twentieth century stands out as the epoch
that truly radicalized discourse on the interrelated themes of spatialization
and temporalization – through the many strands of thought that deconstructed
the differences that have traditionally ‘separated’ the treatment
of time (as an order of successions) from that of a spatial order (as an
order of coexistences). In contemporary terms, it is rather a question of
intertwining (Ineindander). For example, the conceptual framework of Einstein's
theory of relativity is such that space and time should be treated as one
word: spacetime.
Einstein’s Special theory of relativity
demonstrates that it is no longer possible to speak of an Absolute time
irrespective of an observer and their particular frame of reference while
Husserl’s phenomenological investigations of temporal awareness demonstrate
the primordial intentional / temporal conditions of possibility by which
there can be such a thing as an observer.
Einstein’s
post-Copernican reversal in astronomy, which ostensibly places the measuring
observer at the centre of the universe, raises the problem of instantaneity
/ intersubjective contemporaneity – an issue that remains unquestioned
in Newtonian theory. Due to the finite velocity of light (by which things
make their appearance) anything that is at a distance from the observer
actually lies in the past – including other observers. The classical
substantive distinction between space as an order of coexistences and time
as an order of successions breaks down here. For both Einsteinian cosmology
and Husserlian phenomenology the perennial distinction between
things
as they are and things as they appear owes its intelligibility to a
certain temporization / delay. The possibility of the measurement of this
delay requires a radical re-situation of the meaning of the present and
the notion of intersubjectivity since the rhythms of objective spacetime
do not keep pace to a single universal beat.
The suspension of the idea of Absolute time
– along with the suspension of Absolute contemporaneous space –
has the extraordinary effect of bringing into the foreground the lived temporal-spacing
through which they are already interwoven in manifold complexes of different
frames of reference: fields of relativity. The methodological correlate
to this suspension in phenomenology is the epoché.
It is fundamental to remember that phenomenological
reduction is irreducible to doubt and the solipsism that seems to follow
from the scepticism that it would otherwise engender. It is rather a question
of the ‘suspension’ of a thesis – a ‘deferment’
of judgement. The issue of the
solus ipse takes on quite a different
meaning in phenomenology – and likewise, when considered according
to relativity – since reality is certainly
not reduced to a
‘point.’
The temporization announced by temporalization
and its various cognates – e.g., ‘extension’ in the sense
of ‘postponement’ as well as to ‘stretch-out’ –
performs as the common tie between time and epoché. Such expressions of
temporization as ‘to-suspend’ and ‘to-put-off-until-later’
articulate the ‘how’ of the reduction. To echo Derrida: it is
a question of
différance – where difference of a spatial order
and deferral in temporal terms are inextricably intertwined. (
14)
This is where the significance of Husserl’s
analyses of immanent time-consciousness stands out with respect to the future
of phenomenology itself. His richly descriptive discourse on the longitudinal
and transversal intentionalities in play in the temporalization of consciousness
provides us with the material to re-think the meaning of the
future of Husserlian phenomenology in full regard to the rigour of the praxis that
it names.
In the lectures on immanent time consciousness
the route of inquiry is not strictly linear. Husserl actually spends far
more time talking about the essential interplay of the now and the past
(primal impression and retention) when describing the constitution of the
ever-flowing present. The reader has to wait quite a while before the signifier
of the future is uncovered. It is understandable that some readers have
arrived at the conclusion that the givenness of futurity is somehow less
original in Husserl’s phenomenology. This is by no means the case!
Interestingly, the reader has to wait for its signification to arrive through
the very theme of
waiting itself. It is in part 26, “Differences
between Memory and Expectation,” of the time lectures that it is revealed
how expectation, as the futural correlate of reproductive (secondary) remembrance,
points to a more primordial form of anticipation: ‘protention.’
At first, it seems rather strange that it
took Husserl so long to get round to the question of the originarity of
protention, but if we look at his writing retroactively from the point of
view of existentialist discourse on anxiety, then the detour that he takes
through reproductive memory before disclosing the primordiality of protention
makes perfect sense. Since Husserl is concerned to show how objectivities
are given – that is, to demonstrate the experience of the
giving of the
given – then protention announces the problem of the
giving of that which does
not give itself. This is not to
confuse such a lack of givenness with the sense of re-presentation that
merely reproduces / substitutes without giving, since it points to a more
primordial lack of givenness that originally motivates it. The original
coming toward us of futurity is a waiting toward possibility, which is intrinsically
discomforting. Unlike expectation, which fills the futural space of uncertainty
that is disclosed by the originary intuitive openness of anticipation with
familiar repetitions of an objective order that create the illusion of determined
limits / certainty, protention is open and, in a peculiar sense, objectless. Husserl’s own narrative strategy
and his route of inquiry had to proceed by way of the same unremitting tendency
of consciousness to focus on the given. However, since his analyses traverse
the path that leads to the question of the
‘giving’ of
the given, the giving of that which does
not give itself (objectively)
is finally permitted, somewhat belatedly, to announce itself – even
though it is, in a certain sense, more primordial.
Unlike expectation, which projects determinate
(objective) phantasies that await their fulfilment in a future now (which
is a kind of extension of memory into the not-yet), protention is actually
open. It first unfolds the not-yet as the site in which we may project futural
possibilities. This restores the future ekstasis to what is none other than
the tri-partite union (triumvirate) of past, present and future in what
Husserl comes to name as the Living Present (
lebendige Gegenwart)
– which literally means ‘waiting-towards.’
Since expectation is a kind of memorial projection
into the not-yet where futurity expresses itself as an extended act of foreclosure
– initiated and maintained in the ever-flowing present – we are
to understand that it is to wait for some
thing: to await the fulfilment
of an
objective. Protention, in contrast to the former, is openness
upon an ever receding futural
horizon of possibilities whose essence
as ‘surprise’ exceeds any expectational delimitation. The articulation
of this horizon of excess first makes room for that which would be projected
into it, often flaunting its transcendence in the face of any naïve hopes
of fulfilment. Protention names a dimension of intentionality where expectation
is built upon a more primordial form of anticipation as the condition of
its possibility.
Protention
is the originary opening upon the fissure of the not-yet through which anxiety
pours in as the prime indicator of what it is to exist or to be-thrust-into-the-world.
Its objectlessness is what most significantly differentiates it from fear,
which always has some kind of object. Protention correlates with anxiety
as the horizonal opening through which one may first be motivated by one’s
expectations – fears and hopes. It opens the lived-space of
waiting-towards – that self-
transcending sense of intentionality that is intrinsic
to the structurality of the Living Present (
lebendige Gegenwart).
The movement of phenomenology is an unfolding
of ‘depth.’ It aims at fleshing out the whole. But, this holistic
telos is actually an ‘infinite task’ – of foundering –
which is irreducible to a foundational
ism. Husserl's implementation
of the epoché,
in its many different phases (all of which invariably
involve an eidetic component of fictionalizing) expresses the fundamental
importance of a form of recuperation through distanciation – for distanciation,
also read transcendence as it announces itself through delay and duration.
It also expresses a certain kind of open-endedness with regard to possible
modifications in orientation – which may free the 'depth' of the 'whole'
from the 'shallow' limits of any totalizing grasp. In the case of protention,
the movement is that of 'opening' rather than that of the 'closure' of expectation.
The
epoché is a rip in the fabric of lived experience from which
pours forth the very structure of its own possibility – the opening-up
of structurality. It is a movement of dehiscence. In these terms, it is
the methodological analogue to the retentional and protentional interwovenness
of time in its spacing – where retention passively provides the Other
face of a transformational return, which is to be distinguished from memory
as an act of evocation, through which active expectation
as foreclosure answers to the primal and passive call of protention
as opening.
The
temporization in the play of epoché expresses the profound temporal resonance
of what it is to postpone taking up a position / to defer metaphysical speculation.
Everything remains left over, though a certain delay is in play with respect
to any judgement concerning actuality or non-actuality (putting into suspense
the two extremes of doubt and certainty). It is a question of working towards
freedom by restoring the
openness of protention as distinct from
the
foreclosure (constraints) of expectation. And, it is precisely
through the temporization / deferral of that which would otherwise beguile
us with the promise of completion / totalization that it becomes possible
to deconstruct our prejudices; to entertain the hope of achieving true philosophical
rigour, thereby extending toward that which is most Husserlian in the future
of phenomenology.
Notes
(
1) See, in particular, the Conclusion (‘conclusion’ being somewhat of a misnomer
in this context)to Husserl's
Cartesian Meditations. Trans. Dorion
Cairns
. Martinus Nijhoff. 1960. [Original German text – 1929].
Husserliana
I [
Hua]:
Cartesianische Meditationen
und Parisier Vortrage. Edited by S. Strasser.
The Hague
: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1963. 2nd ed.
Also,
see Husserl’s fascinating remarks about a “…phenomenology of the phenomenological reduction” in
The
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (
Crisis,
Part III B, sec.71, p.247) – which translates as a ‘reduction
of the reduction.’
Hua VI: Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale
Phänomenologie.
The Hague
: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1962.
(
2)
The movement of Husserlian phenomenology carries the implicit invitation
"to go with Husserl beyond Husserl" – as Donn Welton puts
it in his introduction to the collection of essays by Ludwig Landgrebe,
entitled:
The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. P. 30. Edited by Donn
Welton (various translators).
Cornell
University
Press. 1981.
(
3)
The Idea of Phenomenology. Trans. W.P. Alston and G. Nakhnikian.
Martinus Nijhoff. 1964. [lectures of 1907]. See also, E. Husserl, Collected
Works VIII:
The Idea of Phenomenology. Trans. Lee Hardy.
Dordrecht
, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1999.
Hua II: Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Edited
by Walter Biemel.
The Hague
: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950.
(
4)
The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness. 1928. Edited by Edith Stein and
Martin Heidegger. Trans. J.S. Churchill.
Indiana
University
Press. 1964. [Lectures of 1905
and appendices of 1910]. See also:
On
the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Translated
by John Barnett Brough. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1991.
Hua X: Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893-1917).
Edited by Rudolph Boehm.
The Hague
: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.
(
5)
See Conversations
with Husserl and Fink. (1931-1932). Edited by
the Husserl-Archives in
Louvain
, with a Foreword by Richard M. Zaner. Martinus Nijhoff / The Hague
/ 1976 [
Conversations]).(p.
38.
XXIV: Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 9/11/31).
(
6)
In XXVII: Conversation with Husserl and Fink, 20/11/31, Dorion Cairns reports
that…
“[I]t is his [Husserl’s] conviction that the most important
thing about his whole philosophy is the transcendental reduction. He repeated
what Fink had told me before, that the phenomenological reduction is something
which must be continually repeated in phenomenological work” (p.43, Conversations).
(
7)
Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence
of Alfred Shutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959. Edited by Richard Grathoff; translated
by J. Claude Evans; foreword by Maurice Natanson.
Indiana
University
Press. 1989.
(
8)
Jean-Paul Sartre.
The Transcendence of the Ego.Trans. Forrest Williams and Robert
Kirkpatrick. Octagon. 1972. [Original French text:
La Transcendance de l'ego.1936-7].
(
9)
Eugen Fink.
Sixth Cartesian Meditation: the Idea of a Transcendental
Theory of Method – with textual notations by Edmund Husserl. Translated
with an introduction by Ronald Bruzina (1995).
Indiana
University
Press.
Published in German as Eugen Fink,
VI Cartesianische Meditation.
Teil
I.
1988. Kluwer Academic
Publishers B.V.
(
10)
See Derrida’s M.A. dissertation (1953-54):
The Problem of Genesis
in Husserl’s Philosophy – particularly, pp. 66 and 91). Translated
by Marion Hobson. The
University
of
Chicago
Press. 2003.
Le probléme de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl. Presses Universitaires de France.
1990.
(
11)
Other than a few texts by such authors as Rodolphe Gasché, David Wood, Claude
Evans and, in particular, Leonard Lawlor, there is a huge degree of misunderstanding
in the literature regarding the theoretical, strategic, and methodological
relations between phenomenology and deconstruction.
(
12)
It should be noted that, along with Merleau-Ponty, Derrida distinguished
his position on Husserl’s philosophy from the ‘French’ phenomenological
scene of the early 1950’s by re-reading the history of phenomenology
through Eugen Fink’s writing collaboration with the old master. In
this regard, see Derrida’s M.A. dissertation 1953-54:
The Problem
of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy.
Ronald Bruzina
(who translated Eugen Fink’s
Sixth Cartesian Meditation into
English) has produced a fascinating article entitled, “
The Transcendental Theory
of Method in Phenomenology; the Meontic and Deconstruction” (Husserl
Studies 14: 75–94, 1997. Kluwer Academic Publishers) which equates Fink’s logic of ‘foundering’ as distinct from
‘foundationalizing’ with the most radical form of epoché in Husserl’s
phenomenology and demonstrates how it functions in Derrida’s deconstruction
as writing under erasure (
sous rature).
(
13) Albert Einstein.
Relativity: The Special and General Theory.© 1920 (written in 1916 – this revised
edition: 1924). Translated: Robert W. Lawson (Authorised translation). First
Published: December, 1916. Methuen & Co Ltd.
(
14)
See Derrida’s extraordinary essay, “Différance.”
Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. The Harvester
Press. 1982.
Marges de la Philosophie.
Paris
: Les Editions de Minuit. 1972.
And, for a detailed examination of the various senses of delay implicated
by the operation of the epoché, see
Edmund Husserl's "Origin of
Geometry": An Introduction by Jacques Derrida. Translated with
a preface and afterword by John Leavey, Jr. University of
Nebraska
Press. 1989. Copyright 1962 by
the Presses Universitaires de France.