Abstract
For a number of reasons, no phenomenological account of the distinction between activity and passivity can afford to sidestep the question of internal time-consciousness which, in Husserl’s view, ranks among “the most difficult of all phenomenological problems.”1 First, temporal syntheses fall within the compass of the passive sphere. Second, as both active and passive synthetic accomplishments are grounded in temporal syntheses, the former can only be understood within the framework provided by the latter. Third, Husserl’s account of time-constituting consciousness ‘sublates’ pairs of opposites, such as form/content and constituting/constituted, and invites a similar reconsideration of the relation between activity and passivity.
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Notes
- 1.
Husserl. 1991. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, p. 286 (trans: Brough, J.). Dordrecht: Kluwer, hereafter referred to as PCIT.
- 2.
In Physics, Book IV Chapter 10, Aristotle already formulated this puzzle. A theory that considers time as a whole with past, present and future as its parts withers under criticism. For how can time be a whole if one part, the future, has yet to be, whereas another part, the past, is no longer? And how can the present be a part of time as a whole if it is only the non-extended limit separating the past from the future?
- 3.
Commenting on the historical details of this dispute, David Wood notes that, in the lectures collected in On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, Husserl does not consider Brentano’s own later revisions of his earlier positions. Consequently, Husserl’s critique of Brentano’s theory of time-consciousness is not entirely fair. For more on this subject see Wood, D. 1989. The deconstruction of time, 62–67. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc.
- 4.
Husserl takes it as a matter of phenomenological evidence that protentions are different in this respect from retentions. It is the intentional directedness of protentions that allows Husserl to say that the present meets the future “with open arms” (APS, 116).
- 5.
On occasion, Husserl regards the out-of-time-ness of the flow as evidence for the immortality of the transcendental ego (APS 467). In another place he points out that “the subjective time becomes constituted in the absolute timeless consciousness” (PCIT 117). Robert Sokolowski notes the contentious character of such remarks. The postulation of the absolute flow may seem “philosophically excessive” and may amount to no more than an “artificial construction.” Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp.130–145).
- 6.
For a detailed discussion of the concept of pre-reflective self-awareness see Dan Zahavi Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003) pp. 86–93 and Self-awareness and Alterity. A phenomenological Investigation (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1999) pp. 67–82 and “Self-awareness and Affection” in Natalie Depraz and Dan Zahavi (eds.) Alterity and Faciticity (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998).
- 7.
“Self-awareness and Affection” in Natalie Depraz and Dan zahavi (eds), Alterity and faciticity. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998, p. 210.
- 8.
Dan Zahavi makes the point that “prereflective self-awareness must be conceived not as a simple static, and self-sufficient self-presence but as dynamic and differentiated openness to alterity” (Self-awareness and Affection, p. 221).
- 9.
Birnbaum, Daniel. 1998. The hospitality of presence, p. 83. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wicksell International.
- 10.
The following passage from Ideas II makes it clear that passivity and activity are mutually dependent facets of the same experience: “We find, as the originally and specifically subjective, the Ego in the proper sense, the Ego of “freedom,” the attending, considering, comparing, distinguishing, judging, valuing, attracted, repulsed, inclined, disinclined, desiring and willing Ego: the Ego that in any sense is “active” and takes a position. This, however, is only one side. Opposed to the active Ego stands the passive, and the Ego is always passive at the same time whenever it is active, in the sense of being affected as well as being receptive, which of course does not exclude possibility of its being sheer passivity “(Ideas II, 224–225).
- 11.
“ […] das konkrete Ich hat in seinem Leben als Bewusstseinsleben beständig einen Kern von Hyle, von Nicht-Ich, aber wesentlich ichzugehörig. Ohne ein Reich der Vorgegebenheiten, ein Reich konstituierter Einheiten, konstituiert als Nicht-Ich, ist kein Ich möglich” (Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjectivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928, Husserliana vol. XIV, p. 379).
- 12.
“Ichliche Activität setzt Passivität voraus – Ichliche Passivität – und beides setzt voraus Assoziation und Vorbewusstsein in Form des leztlich hyletischen Untergrundes” (Ms. C3 41b-42a quoted in Zahavi (1998), 216).
- 13.
Janet Donohoe interprets this subpersonal dimension as an anonymous and pre-egological field that attests to the implication of the other in the constitution of the ego: “the ego is always alienated from itself, distanced from itself in the sense that it can never take up its streaming present as streaming present but can only take it up as past. The dark [i.e., hyletic] core provides a possibility of an openness to another ego that is copresent, simultaneous to the ego pole” (Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity, Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2004, p. 64). Donohoe rightly notes that on the pre-egological level there is only a “limited separation” between I and Other. But her argument for a “radically immediate” being-with-the-Other seems to cover up the gap between the alterity of the hyle and the alterity of the alter ego.
- 14.
For this reason, Daniel Birnbaum claims that Husserl defends an idea of “radical otherness of the Other” (Birnbaum, p. 168).
- 15.
Marc Richir ties the distention of the sphere of presence by means of passive synthesis to rhythm in two of his essays on Husserl – “Synthèse passive et temporalisation/spatialization” in Husserl, eds. Eliane Escoubas and Marc Richir (Grenoble: Jerôme Million, 1989) and “Discontinuités et rythmes des durées: abstraction et concretion de la conscience du temps’’ in Rythmes et philosophie, eds. Pierre Sauvanet and Jean-Jacques Wunenburger (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 1996). Marc Richir reads Husserl’s reference to rhythm as a sign of his acknowledging the necessity of enlarging the primordial sphere in response to the many inconveniences hidden by the sensualist abstraction of an originary impression trapped in an isolated Jezt.
- 16.
On the question of simultaneity in Husserl, I find Jay Lampert’s comments to be most illuminating. According to Jay Lampert, “simultaneity is not an identity of what is present in a moment, but is the experience of a staggered differential between two or more time-sequences” (265). The intuition that temporal sub-flows must be coordinated does not make it any less difficult to establish how the individual stages of the sub-flows correlate with one another. On the one hand, the experiences of objects must elapse at multiple tempos for consciousness to be aware that objects occur simultaneously. On the other hand, even though concrete objects undergo change at different rates of acceleration, it can be posited a priori that “all world processes overlap in spite of not lining up” (267). This allows consciousness to “abstractly create a crossover intention that simultanizes across tempo-lines” (267). Yet, each definite phase in the experience of a given object coincides with necessarily indeterminate stages in the experience of some other object. If judgments of simultaneity are inherently indeterminate (p. 265), it is because consciousness always goes back and forth between two types of flow: to pinpoint definite phases in measured flows whose beats fall into regulated cadences means to detach them from a background of non-metrical vague flows progressing toward stopping-points not yet determined. See Lampert, Jay. 2006. “Derrida’s solution to two problems of time in Husserl”. In The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy VI, 259–279.
- 17.
The attempt would be vain to rival Pierre Sauvanet’s acumen in his exploration of rhythmic phenomena. From ancient cosmology to contemporary cardiology, from anthropology to numerology, from Paul Klee’s paintings to John Cage’s music, Sauvanet draws on a variety of sources to suggest that any type of rhythm, whether natural, mechanical or artistic, combines at least two of the following elements: structure, periodicity and movement. In its strong sense, rhythm merges all three components: rhythm is “le cycle d’une forme en devenir” or “une structure périodique en movement.” Sauvanet gives Husserl credit for laying out the conceptual tools for a phenomenological investigation of rhythm but deems the Husserlian, as well as the post-Husserlian phenomenology (Henri Maldiney, Jacques Garelli and Marc Richir) to have remained dominated by too analytical a conception of time. See Sauvanet, Pierre. 2000. Le rythme et la raison, vol. 1, p. 110. Paris: Kimé.
- 18.
In Latin, the verb obaudire (to obey) is derived from the verb audire (to listen) and in German the verb gehorchen (to obey) is also derived from hören (to listen). In many Romance languages, the equivalent of the verb to listen also means to pay attention to something or to obey spontaneously a command. The French verb écouter is a case in point. Don Ihde’s phenomenological reflections on the penetrating or invading nature of sounds confirm this etymological kinship. See Ihde, Don. 1976. Listening and voice, p. 81. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.
- 19.
Nicolas Abrahams finds that spontaneous rhythmatizing activities have a certain emancipatory quality. Rhythmatizing consciousness is able not only to transform noise into articulated configurations but also to unsettle mechanical repetitions. For example, the sequence of gestures required in assembly line work is periodic not rhythmic. Yet, assembly line workers can accompany their labor with songs. By thus rhythmatizing their experience, the workers guard themselves against the numbing effects of mechanical periodicity. Nicolas Abraham ‘‘La conscience rythmisante. Essai sur la temporalité du rythme’’ in Rythmes de l’œuvre de la traduction et de la psychanalyse (Paris: Flammarion, 1985) pp.75–86.
- 20.
Commenting on the dispositional nature of rhythm Sauvanet notes that the question is not that of the subject’s creating rhythm but rather that of the subject’s having or becoming rhythm: “ce qui se joue ici n’est autre que la dépossession de soi par le rythme, le moment où l’activité cède la place à la passivité, le passage du ‘je suis rythmant’ au ‘je suis rythmé’. Ce qui se joue dans le rythme, c’est à la fois la position du sujet et son déplacement, son décentrement” (Sauvanet 2000, p. 134).
- 21.
Marc Richir considers the form of the living present far too rigid for explaining the emergence of phenomenological unities (1989, p. 34) and suggests that passive syntheses should be thought of as strictly autonomous with respect to inner-time consciousness. Had Husserl pursued a radical phenomenological epoché, he would have bracketed the centration on the ego. This would have allowed him to disclose an originally spaced phase of presence as location of proto-temporalized and proto-spatialized world-phenomena or “phenomena as nothing but phenomena” (1989, p. 11). Whereas thing-phenomena fluctuate in accordance with precise rules, world-phenomena are originally plural and radically indeterminate, escaping all forms of symbolical codification. World-phenomena are passively synthesized by the “phenomenological unconscious” (1989, p.12, 22 and 28) whose ‘activity’ establishes a non-conceptual cohesion between heterogeneous elements, in other words, a rhythm.
- 22.
It is in this direction that some phenomenologists pursue their more or less systematic reflections on rhythm. When Merleau-Ponty addresses the issue of the communication of the senses he invokes the notion of rhythm: “Sensation is intentional because I find that in the sensible a certain rhythm of existence is put forward – abduction and adduction – and that, following up this hint, and stealing into the form of existence which is thus suggested to me, I am brought into relation with an external being, whether it be in order to open myself to it or to shut myself off from it” (PP 262). In a similar vein, Erwin Straus argues that rhythm brings about an original unity of the senses because sensation is immediately connected to movement. To say that rhythm is passively received would be to surreptitiously insert a distance between subject and world. More appropriate would be to say that rhythm is the source of a “motric induction” which expresses the pathic communication of the subject with the world (Straus, Phenomenological Psychology, pp. 10–11). For more recent comments on this topic see Bernard Waldenfels, “Vom Rhythmus der Sinne” in Sinnesschwellen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999).
References
Sauvanet, Pierre. 2000. Le Rythme et la raison. Paris: Kimé.
Zahavi, Dan. 1998. Self-awareness and affection. In Alterity and faciticity, ed. Natalie Depraz, and Dan Zahavi. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
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Biceaga, V. (2010). Passivity and Self-temporalization. In: The Concept of Passivity in Husserl's Phenomenology. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 60. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3915-6_1
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