Abstract
Edmund Husserl observes that “the task of a systematic analysis and description” of the world is “a major and difficult problem.” As his inquiry develops it spells out, without endangering the coherency of his account, six characterizations that can be grouped into three pairs each with its own distinctive feature. The first pair turns on uniqueness and concerns the world as the universal horizon and its thematization in a world-representation. The second pair highlights the essential unity of the world and depicts it as a totality connected by a form. The third pair focuses on the temporal structure of horizonality and shows the world both as a ground that is the outcome of past experiences and sustains present modalizations, and as an idea that is open for future world-experience.
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Notes
- 1.
Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937, ed. Reinhold N. Smid, Husserliana XXIX (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), 426. Henceforth cited as ‘Hua XXIX’ with page reference.
- 2.
My interest in horizonality and the nature of marginal consciousness owes much to Lester Embree’s edition of Aron Gurwitsch’s Marginal Consciousness (Athens, OH/London: Ohio University Press, 1985). In the closing passage of his noteworthy “Editor’s Preface,” we read: “[…] methodologically speaking, if one wishes to comprehend this doctrine correctly and thus be able to verify, correct, refine, and extend it, one must start by taking a reflective attitude and be prepared, with Aron Gurwitsch, to reflect above all noematically” (xlii). Having followed this guideline in “On the Manifold Senses of Horizonedness. The Theories of E. Husserl and A. Gurwitsch” (Husserl Studies, 19 [2003]: 1–24), I attempt in this article to shed light on marginal consciousness as the consciousness both of an underlying ground and an undifferentiated domain by considering its relationship with innerworldly objects.
- 3.
Edmund Husserl, Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass, ed. Rochus Sowa, Husserliana XXXIX (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 129. Henceforth cited as ‘Hua XXXIX’ with page reference.
- 4.
See Edmund Husserl, Späte texte über die Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte, ed. Dieter Lohmar, Husserliana-Materialien VIII (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 4. Henceforth cited as ‘HuaM VIII’ with page reference.
- 5.
Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana IX (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), 95. Henceforth cited as ‘Hua IX’ with page reference.
- 6.
Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 146; English translation: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 143. Henceforth cited as ‘Hua VI’ with German and English page references respectively.
- 7.
Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, Husserliana XIX/2, ed. Ursula Panzer (The Hague/Boston/Lancaster: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1984), 841.
- 8.
Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana XV (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 340. Henceforth cited as ‘Hua XV’ with page reference.
- 9.
I wish to thank Prof. Dr. Rudolf Bernet, Director of the Husserl Archives in Leuven, for permission to quote from Husserl’s unpublished writings.
- 10.
See Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 2: Ergänzungsband, ed. Guy Van Kerckhoven, Husserliana Dokumente II, vol. 2 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 90 ff.
- 11.
Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (Hamburg: Claassen, 1964), 33; English translation: Experience and Judgment. Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 36. Henceforth cited as ‘EU’ with German and English page references respectively.
- 12.
Steven Galt Crowell highlights “the Husserlian infrastructure” of Heidegger’s work, and contends that “the ‘parting of the ways’ between the two phenomenologists makes better sense as an immanent criticism of Husserl’s transcendental program rather than as a wholesale revision. It then becomes possible to project a significant rapprochement between Husserl and Heidegger, one that leaves neither totally unrevised” (Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning. Paths Towards Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 4, 181.
- 13.
See Søren Overgaard, Husserl and Heidegger on Being in the World, Phaenomenologica 173 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004). Overgaard refers to “certain structural similarities between the two accounts” (126). First, the world is not conceived as a totality of entities, but as “a structure that allows entities to come forth” (127). Second, the world is given as a nonthematic background, i.e., as something that normally does not announce itself. Third, both views start with the individual entity and show that through its “references to” alone can the world be understood, so there is an agreement in the “characterization of the world as a whole of reference” (128). Furthermore, Overgaard observes that transcendental subjectivity “is defined as the dative of manifestation of each and every object, as well as the world-horizon in which objects are manifested” (191). Hence, referring to the Husserlian and Heideggerian accounts of the world, he can state: “In both accounts, the world is a ‘transcendental notion,’ something that allows entities to manifest themselves” (203). The purpose of this paper is to show that further points of convergence can be outlined.
- 14.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 10th ed., 1963), 85; English translation: Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York: HarperCollins, 1962), 118. Henceforth cited as ‘SZ’ with German page reference and English page reference respectively. The published translation has been sometimes altered.
- 15.
According to Stephan Strasser; Heidegger development of the concept of the world on the basis of totalities of involvements “must be envisaged as a further shaping and reshaping of Husserlian motives” (“Der Begriff der Welt in der phänomenologischen Philosophie,” Phänomenologische Forschungen 3 (1976), 189). At this point Husserl’s use of the German expression “dabei hat es sein Bewenden” can be recalled. He makes a distinction between independent actions in which everything falls under the unity of a final purpose, and actions in which the outcome is only a means of accomplishing a further goal. Hence in the latter the particular aiming at something “is dependent, the matter does not rest by its end (es hat bei ihrem Ende nicht sein Bewenden). In an intermediate situation the final purpose can go into the background so that “the matter also rests for a longtime by relative ends (bei relativen Enden […] hat es auch für langhin sein Bewenden) […]” (Hua XXXIX, 373 f.). For an analysis of the German expression, see Being and Time, 115, Translators’ note 2.
- 16.
See Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), 113; English translation: Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960). 79 f.
- 17.
In Joan Stambaugh’s English translation of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996)), these relationships are characterized as “relations of in-order-to, what-for, for-that, and for-the-sake of which” (333).
- 18.
Heidegger’s example of the heavy hammer comes up in a manuscript from 1933 or 1934 in which Husserl formulates the contrast between the three moments concisely in terms of the kind of usefulness that this tool has for a given accomplishment by virtue of its qualities: “The functional form (Zweckform) of the hammer. The wooden handle.- Toward what? (Wozu?). And the heavy head of the hammer: its ‘toward-this’ (Dazu). Each in a particular familiar configuration, and as something correlative: to achieve ‘something’ in this way (not to achieve everything, but rather to drive nails into the wall, to hammer them into wooden boards, etc., or to strike uneven metal sheets, etc.). […] This is a general fitness-to-an-end (Zweckmäßigkeit), for many ends a kind of means, a kind of usefulness” (Hua XXXIX, 325). Whereas driving nails into something is that “toward which” the hammer is referred, or what it is assigned for because of its usefulness “in order to” attain this end, its head is something ready-to-hand that, by virtue of its heaviness, is useful for that, i.e., appropriate for advancing “toward this” end.
- 19.
Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 1908–1914, ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana XXVIII (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 109–122, 232.
- 20.
In a marginal note to Heidegger’s characterization of letting-something-be-involved (Bewendenlassen) (SZ, 353/404), Husserl poses the question: “Is not this to set goals, to search for means, to make actual, and so forth?” (“Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,” Husserl Studies 11 (1994): 41).
- 21.
Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937), ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana XXVII (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 227.
- 22.
Comparing Husserl’s and Heidegger’s account of the world, Donn Welton stresses the “deep continuity between the methods as well as what is genuinely different in the content of their phenomenologies,” and points out three differences. First, he argues that, for Heidegger, the movement between the ready-to-hand and the present-to-hand is not, as for Husserl, a vertical movement between a lower founding stratum and an upper grounded stratum, but rather a lateral movement in which both terms can be apprehended independently. Stratification has to do with this first objection, which could be countered by recalling that Husserl does not refer to a temporal sequence in which bare nature is there before a spiritual world, but rather to the possibility of an abstractive unbuilding of cultural predicates in order to attain a core of nature. See HuaM VIII, 402. Second, Welton believes that, for Husserl, the world is an object of experience and not a transcendental structure as for Kant and Heidegger. As regards the second point, it has been argued in this paper (1.1.) that the notion of world as object has a specific sense that does not undermine its condition of transcendental structure. See also Overgard’s view mentioned in note 13. Third, horizons are, for Husserl, “nexuses of identificatory schemata,” which means that identity is primary and difference derived, and, for Heidegger, “nexuses of differential schemata,” which means that the identity of an object and its similarity with other objects depends on its place within a context of oppositions. Nevertheless, articulation entails the possibility of an expansion that proceeds not only by identification according to a predelineated style but also by integration of alien and different homeworlds in a higher-order homeworld (Hua XV, 226, 233, 430 ff.). This diminishes the force of the third objection. See Donn Welton, The Other Husserl. The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 367–370.
- 23.
See Martin Heidegger, Prolegomena Zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, ed. Petra Jaeger, Gesamtausgabe 20 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979), 252; and Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, ed. Klaus Held, Gesamtausgabe 26 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978), 269. In this respect, see Lilian Alweiss, The World Unclaimed. A Challenge to Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003), 138 ff.
- 24.
However, this separation amounts to an abstraction: “All what I know about the world is precisely surrounding world; and, insofar as I know about it as a universum, the world purely and simple coincides with the surrounding world” (Hua XXXIX, 681).
- 25.
With regard to the inner horizon of objects, Husserl asserts that “the explicate is encompassed by a residual horizon (Resthorizont) of confusion” (EU, 140/125). This applies also to objectifying intentions in the outer horizon.
- 26.
See Jean-François Courtine, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (Paris: Vrin, 1990), 235; and Rudolf Bernet, La vie du sujet. Recherches sur l’interprétation de Husserl dans la phénoménologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 113.
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Walton, R.J. (2010). The Worldhood of the World and the Worldly Character of Objects in Husserl. In: Nenon, T., Blosser, P. (eds) Advancing Phenomenology. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 62. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9286-1_10
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