Abstract
In order to examine the relation between phenomenology and literature, this chapter reflects on the role of fiction for phenomenological method. With Husserl, we will see how world emerges as the central concept for phenomenology, and with Heidegger, we learn how literature can open up worlds for us. Worlds are given by way of various elements: air, earth, water, fire. The chapter will explore air with Rudyard Kipling before addressing earth with Paul Bowles’ novel The Sheltering Sky. For water, we will turn to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and, finally, explore fire with the myth of Prometheus in Plato’s Protagoras. Overall, literature helps us attend to the world in its various elemental manifestations and sense-qualities which we otherwise take for granted.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Husserl (1976, 163). Most translators render ‘Lebenselement’ as ‘vital element,’ which is perhaps more elegant, but we would like to keep the affinity to ‘lifeworld.’
- 2.
Not only has the ‘eidetic reduction’ been a crucial element in early phenomenology, but it stays important as the search for essences through variation continues, in transformed, more ‘lifeworldy,’ and thus ambiguous ways. By way of imagination, we can ‘play’ with the phenomena and vary them, with the purpose of ascertaining when we have gone ‘too far,’ as it were, and have crossed the limit of what something is. The limits, the borders of an essence, are particularly difficult to discern, and discerning them through overstepping them is a useful idea. See Kearney (1998, 2002). As Jansen (2010) has shown, phantasy variation by no means becomes redundant with the move to genetic phenomenology. In fact, one could argue that phantasy variation becomes even more potent in the context of the later methodology since Husserl develops a more convincing concept of imagination or phantasy (Jansen 2010).
Yet eidetic variation also immediately confronts us with the main specters of phenomenology: relativism, solipsism. It is again through ‘fiction,’ namely, through thought experiments, that Husserl defeats them. For a discussion of the thought experiments that Husserl conducts to overcome the ‘illusion of solipsism’ in his discussion of intersubjectivity, see Staehler (2008).
- 3.
That which evades all mathematization might, in fact, be the very essence of the sense-qualities which would call for phenomenological rather than scientific analysis. Heidegger describes this evasion in his ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ as follows: ‘Color shines and wants only to shine. When we analyze it in rational terms by measuring its wavelengths, it is gone’ (Heidegger 1960/1971, 172/170).
- 4.
Heidegger interprets the lines ‘Since a conversation we are…’ (‘Seit ein Gespräch wir sind und hören können voneinander’) that stem from a fragment of a poem by Hölderlin. According to Heidegger’s reading, it is originally the gods who are addressing us (Heidegger 1980, 70). On the basis of this being addressed by the gods, a conversation between human beings and their Being-together is possible.
- 5.
It is a strange coincidence that Heidegger, too, chose essentially an epitaph (Rilke’s poem) to speak of the importance of poetry in creating the same openness that Kipling reveals though his narrative.
Bibliography
Barnes, Jonathan. 1987. Early Greek Philosophy. London: Penguin.
Bowles, Paul. 1947. The Sheltering Sky. London: Penguin.
Conrad, Joseph. 1902. Heart of Darkness. London: Penguin.
Heidegger, Martin. 1959. Vom Wesen der Sprache. In Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske [(1982), The Nature of Language. In On the Way to Language, trans. P.D. Hertz. New York, NY: Harper & Row.]
———. 1960. Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Stuttgart, reclam. [(1971), On the Origin of the Work of Art. In Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. and ed. A. Hofstadter, 15–86. New York, NY: Harper & Row.]
———. 1980. Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein”. Freiburg Lecture Course Winter 1934/35. Gesamtausgabe vol. 39. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann.
Husserl, Edmund. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Husserliana VI. Edited by W. Biemel. The Hague: Nijhoff [(1970), The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.]
———. 1976. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Husserliana III. Edited by K. Schuhmann. The Hague: Nijhoff [(1982), Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Dordrecht: Kluwer.]
———. 1993. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Supplementary Volume to the Crisis: Posthumous Texts 1934–1937. Husserliana XXIX. Edited by R. Smid. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Irigaray, Luce. 1970. The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger. Translated by M.B. Mader. London: Continuum.
Jansen, Julia. 2010. Imagination in Phenomenology and Interdisciplinary Research. In Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Dordrecht: Springer.
Kearney, Richard. 1998. Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post-modern. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
———. 2002. The Wake of Imagination. London: Routledge.
Kipling, Rudyard. 1997. At the End of the Passage. In The Best Short Stories, 35–51. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth.
Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Edited by John Cooper. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
Staehler, Tanja. 2008. What is the Question to which Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation is the Answer? Husserl Studies 2: 99–117.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kozin, A., Staehler, T. (2018). Phenomenology. In: Stocker, B., Mack, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54793-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-54794-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)