File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9803, message 161


Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 03:59:34 +0800
From: Malcolm Riddoch <riddoch-AT-central.murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Heidegger on Husserl



Hi Anthony, how's things?


>the Ego is (for Husserl) not 

>Being-alongside from the start of philosophy. So in *that* very 

>important sense, Husserl is still essentially Cartesian. 


hmmm...how can an ego-thing be alongside anything? 


>That distinction between theoretical seeing and non-thematic 'seeing'


>is *not* present in Husserlain phenomenology, despite the 

>appearances.


I would perhaps say that the distinction *is* present in Husserlian
phenomenology. Have a read of the pre-Ideen Husserl of the Logical
Investigations and the 'internal time consciousness' (ITC) stuff. In
these the ego cogito is itself grounded in the flux of perceptions and
the flux is 'pre-egological' in that it is what first constitutes
something like an ego as process in the unity of perception. That is,
in the unity of identification an object gives itself over a series of
perceptions but this identity over time is not itself explicitly given
in those perceptions. The categorial intuition of objective being, or
bodily presence is not in any sense a 'meaning by virtue of which we
refer to perceptual objects' as in Dreyfus' interpretation of Husserl.
It is rather, an intuition of the objectively given self-sameness of
the things themselves, and this implicit and 'non-representational'
identity belongs to the intentionally directed structure of human
perception. Such categorial intuitions go largely unnoticed in the
ongoing series of perceptions that constitute everyday life simply
because "what is perceived in the series, what is rendered objective in
it, is solely the sensible object, never its identity with self"
(Husserl, LI6, p. 790-791/150). Husserl points out that the identity of
the object as given to consciousness is not itself consciously
constituted in this lived stream of experience. Yet neither is this
identity in some sense a characteristic of the objective world that
cognition must somehow grasp for itself. There is no need for an ego to
transcend its subjectivity in grasping what is 'external' to it, for
identity, "it is clear, is not first dragged in through comparative,
cogitatively mediated reflection: it is there from the start as
experience [Erlebnis], as unexpressed, unconceptualized experience" (p.
696/34-35). In the ITC he goes on to explicitly make a distinction
between merely thinking about or representing a thing and seeing it in
a straightforward perception, and this distinction is carried right
down to the level of the retentional structure of perceptions of the
things themselves as the difference between retention and
reproduction/recollection/representation. Which also means, as you
point out:


>The 'non-thematic seeing' you mention is, for Husserl, 

>still a constitutive synthesis belonging to consciousness, precisely 

>because the very Being of the world has been suspended from the start


>in the phenomenological reduction. 


But I take it you're pointing towards _Ideen I_? Husserl is there
concerned, in a very general sense, with how something like a Cartesian
ego can represent the world to itself as it gives itself in the noetic
process. What I've been pointing towards in this thread, however, is
pre-Ideen Husserl and the way in which his 'representational' or
neo-Cartesian analyses are grounded in first the Investigations and
then the 'ITC'. In these the notion of a controlling or
self-representing ego is not yet a problem, instead the
'pre-egological' intentionality of the flux of perception is the
problem. And it's precisely the temporal structure (originary
Zeitlichkeit) of straightforward 'non-thematic' perception that I find
fascinating in Husserl's analysis of time. 


>Heidegger explains it in the following way. In "practical 

>comportments," a thing does not appear as "a thing," but IS its use -


>a hammer is not "a hammer," but simply "hammering the wood in this 

>room under sky..." Therefore, in "practical comportment," the "thing 

>itself" is not experienced as "a thing," but as just the flow of its 

>practical activity, 


Yep, and so we get the 'practical context' of the existential
structures, and no this isn't the context of a controlling ego setting
up its projects etc...but the 'non-thematic' pre-Ideen point is that I
presume we all still 'see' a hammer even if we don't represent it as
'this objectively given thing'....no? You have to be able to see or
feel the hammer, cos if you're blind and deaf with no limbs and no
tactile sense then I'm not sure you will have much of a flow of
practical activity. You might want to argue otherwize but that would be
rather absurd don't you think? But if you then admit perceptions in
this non-thematic sense then you admit straightforward perception in
Husserl's ITC sense.  


>> Huh? I presume that you are conscious when you 'see' openness...or
do

>> you go into some sort of quasi-mystical unconscious fugue state? 

>

>To interpret the 'openness' in readiness-to-hand as "consciousness" 

>is to already analyze the non-thematic thematically. Nothing appears 

>"to consciousness" in readiness-to-hand, because there is then no 

>thematic distinction between cogito and cogitatum, which is the 

>distinction upon which Husserlian intentionality depends.


No, I agree that Husserl doesn't theorize about non-thematic
readiness-to-hand...the existential structures remain 'outside' a
representing ego's conscious ordering...all I am saying here is that we
have to be conscious as opposed to comatose in order to use the hammer.
And the same goes for any philosophical disclosure as regards the
difference between openness and presencing. If you're dead to the world
you might not have much of a fundamental experience of the Da, I
presume here that we have to at least be conscious in order to open
ourselves to Gelassenheit. I also consider any argument to the contrary
an absurdity cos consciousness in this simple 'straightforward' sense
is not an ego's meaningful mediation of sense data (mere Cartesianism)
but simply being awake and absorbed in the matter at hand. This
straightforward sense of consciousness is the one Husserl works with in
the ITC but neither does he theorize 'openness' nor in any sense
whatsoever am I :


>equating 'openness' with 'consciousness,' the distinction 

>between which is not merely semantic. When I use the hammer, I am 

>indeed 'open,' but I am not necessarily "conscious" of it, because 

>"consciousness" implies a thematic distinction between cogito and 

>cogitatum - a distinction which cannot be said to apply to the mode 

>of readiness-to-hand without assuming precisely that presence at hand


>is philosophically prior to readiness-to-hand. 

>

>Anthony Crifasi


Again, you're working with Ideen-Husserl where he is taking up the
problem of the Cartesian ego and its noematic structure. But this ego
analysis is grounded in the temporality of consciousness which has
nothing to do with an ego's constitution of the world cos (as I've
repeated endlessly in this thread) both the ego-process as a unity of
consciousness that follows on the unity of perceptions of things are
constituted in originary temporality (Zeitlichkeit). And so yes we're
open to using the hammer but not in a representation of that openness.
I would guess that if we represent anything while using the hammer it
would be something to do with problem solving (maybe the hammer's
broken) or perhaps wondering if what we're making is going to turn out
to be a piece of crap....do you sing to yourself as you hammer away? Or
maybe you're a control freak who has to think out every movement and
relate it to these object-things and their possible use values
etc...but then as Heidegger's analysis shows, we can only do that cos
we're already hammering; the practical context has already brought us
into a relation to the things themselves, a relation that transcends
any representing ego. 


But then what about 'pre-egological' non-thematic consciousness? You
still have to be awake to come to a non-thematized relation to zeug,
and while awake you still have to be able to non-thematically perceive
things. The hammer must be seen and felt, how else can you use it? And
those manifold sensible perceptions must have an ongoing unity, cos the
hammer remains what it is over time. It doesn't suddenly transform into
a bunch of flowers for instance...but such is the objective being of
the hammer. And with that perceptual unity there goes a unity of time
consciousness such that the non-thematic feeling of first picking up
the hammer is related to the feeling of heaving it down. There is a
flow of non-thematic consciousness, always falling into the 'now', that
is in each case one's own. For Husserl these unities are constituted in
the temporality of perception, an originary temporality that is not
itself 'in time' cos it constitutes our objective sense of time as a
linear sequence. Zeitlichkeit structures the way in which this
momentary flux of consciousness is constantly constituted as the same
consciousness of the same things themselves. 


Yet according to Husserl there must also be another mode of
intentionality that gives order to the flux and its various phases;
which means that we aren't generally confined to the moment as it gives
itself but rather this lived moment is always related to the past and
the future in general such that life becomes a 'whole' of meaningfully
lived everyday experiences. This ultimate controlling intentionality is
what Husserl calls the self-aware transcendental ego in _Ideen I_, and
off he goes on his neo-Cartesian travels. I have suggested that the
ultimate intentionality must be what Heidegger calls practical
comportments within which the representing ego can make its sense. 


If I remember rightly Anthony don't you follow Dreyfus' reductive
reading of Husserl where phenomenology becomes a sort of naive
Cartesianism based on Searle's cognitivist account of intentionality?
Much of my interpretation of Husserl has been organized around a
refutation of the Husserl=Cartesianism equation,
Husserl=neo-Cartesianism maybe but this Ideen analysis is still
grounded in the pre-Ideen phenomenology of time. 


Regards, 


Malcolm Riddoch


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