Self-Awareness, Temporality, and Alterity: Central Topics in Phenomenology

233 Pages·1998·6.23 MB·English

by  Yorihiro Yamagata (auth.)

SELF-AWARENESS, TEMPORALITY, AND ALTERITY
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY
IN COOPERATION WITH
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY
Volume 34
Editor:
John J. Drummond, Mount Saint Mary's College
Editorial Board:
Elizabeth A. Behnke
David Carr, Emory University
Stephen Crowell, Rice University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
J. Claude Evans, Washington University
Jose Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University
Joseph J. Kockelmans., The Pennsylvania State University
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitiit, Mainz
Gail Soffer, New School for Social Research, New York
Elisabeth Straker, Philosophisches Seminarium der Universitiit Koln
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
Scope
The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy through
creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in culture generally,
offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that call for creative responses.
Although the work of several generations of thinkers has provided phenomenology with many results
with which to approach these challenges. a truly successful response to them will require building on
this work with new analyses and methodological innovations.
SELF-AWARENESS,
TEMPORALITY,
AND ALTERITY
Central Topics in Phenomenology
edited by
DANZAHAVI
University of Copenhagen,
Denmark
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.Y.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Printed on acid-free paper
ISBN 978-90-481-5031-1 ISBN 978-94-015-9078-5 (eBook)
00110.1007/978-94-015-9078-5
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998
All Rights Reserved
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998.
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
Table of contents
Preface . . ........... , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 7
Part I
The Self or the Cogito in Kinaesthesis
Yorihiro Yamagata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 9
The Fracture in Self-Awareness
Dan Zahavi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 21
James and Husserl: Time-consciousness and the Intentionality of
Presence and Absence
Richard Cobb-Stevens .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 41
Intentionality, Phenomenality, and Light
James G. Hart ............................................ 59
Can I Anticipate Myself? Self-affection and Temporality
Natalie Depraz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 83
The Physis of Consciousness and Metaphysics
Torn Tani ................................................ 99
The Horizon of the Self: Husserl on Indexicals
Denis Fisette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 119
Part II
My Time and the Time of the Other
RudolfB ernet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 137
Temporality and the Point: The Origins and Crisis of Continental Philosophy
Anthony Steinbock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 151
The Shadow of the Other
Linda Fisher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 169
The Ethos of Democracy from a Phenomenological Point of View
Klaus Held .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 193
The Foreignness of a Foreign Culture
Dieter Lohmar .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 207
Stromdichtung and Subjectivity in the later Heidegger
R. Philip Buckley ......................................... 223
Index .......................................................... 239
Preface
In December 1996 a conference entitled Self-awareness, temporality, and alterity
took place at the University of Copenhagen. The explicit aim of that conference was
to clarifY and discuss three issues very much at the center of current
phenomenological thinking-issues that were already central to Husserl, but which
have gained particular prominence through the writings of French phenomenologists
such as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Henry, and Derrida.
This anthology is comprised of papers presented on that occasion. It has
been divided into two parts. The first part, containing papers by Yamagata, Zahavi,
Cobb-Stevens, Hart, Depraz, Tani, and Fisette, all address the three central topics
in a fairly direct way through analyses of kinaesthesis, self-affection, self
manifestation, time-consciousness, intentionality, and indexicality. The second part
contains papers by Bernet, Steinbock, Fisher, Held, Lohmar, and Buckley. These
papers expand the focus to include areas like historicity, generativity,
interculturality, hermeneutics, ethics, and politics.
I am grateful to all of the contributors for their readiness to participate in
this common venture. The organization of the conference would not have been
possible without the support and advice from my colleagues at the University of
Copenhagen. I am particularly indebted to Joan Conrad, Peter Sandoe, Frederik
Tygstrup, and Frederik Stjernfelt. Financial support was provided by the Department
of Philosophy, Education, and Rhetoric, as well as by the Faculty of Humanities of
the University of Copenhagen. Finally, thanks are also due to John Drummond, the
editor of Contributions to Phenomenology, for his help with the preparation of the
volume.
The Self or the Cogito in Kinaesthesis
Y orihiro Yamagata
Osaka University-Japan
I. Merleau-Ponty's concept of flesh
The concept of flesh is capital in Merleau-Ponty's last works, L'(£i/ et l'esprit and
Le visible et l'invisible. The author uses it to elaborate once more the concept of the
body he presented in Phenomenologie de la perception. In his last book, the flesh
signifies primarily our living body.
What is the flesh? The word is defined as the reversibility of the seer and
the visible, and generally speaking, of the sentient and the sensible. The body as
flesh is both sentient and sensible, and more particularly the seer and the visible
simultaneously.
But what experience induced the author of Le visible et l'invisible to build
up a concept that allows the body to be seen from this angle of reversibility? As he
has asserted in Phenomenologie de la perception, it is the movement ofthe look
that can see an object. The look enfolds, touches, feels the visible; it moves "as
though it were in a relation of pre-established harmony with them, as though it
knew them before knowing them."! On what is based this relation between the seer
and the visible that Merleau-Ponty poetically describes as an "intimacy as close as
between the sea and the strand"(VI,130-131)? It lies in the simple fact that the body
is visible. If this seeing body can prepossess the visible so as to enter into a pre
established harmonious relationship with it, this is because it is also a visible thing,
possessed by the visible, "is ofit"(VI, 135).
In order better to understand this prepossession of the visible by the seer,
one must reexamine a tactile experience. To see, for Merleau-Ponty, is to let the
look, by its movement, touch, and in this sense it is merely a variant of a tactile
experience. Vision is the look's touch. Tactile experiences involve the same type of
relationship as the eye's movement in relation to the visible, but in a more palpable
way, like the hand exploring a texture it will discover to be smooth or rough. This
agreement between touching and the information given by touching, says Merleau
Ponty,
... can happen only if my hand, while it is felt from within, is also
accessible from without, itself tangible, for my other hand, for example,
if it takes its place among the things it touches, is in a sense one of them,
opens finally upon a tangible being of which it is also a part. (VI, 133)
9
D. Zahavi (ed.), Self-awareness, Temporality, and Alterity, 9-19.
© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
10 THE SELF OR THE COGITO IN KINAESTHESIS
The concept of flesh as the reversibility of the sentient and the sensible is
thus based on the banal tactile experience consisting of touching with the left hand
the right hand touching an object. But can one conclude that the reversibility of the
concept of flesh signifies the identity, or concordance, of the touching and the
touched, the seer and the seen? Does the concept offlesh imply that the seer and the
visible coincide, and consequently that the thinker finds himself in and by reflection
as a thought? No, the reversibility of the flesh never consists in the identity of the
touching and the touched; if they can be reversed, it is not because they are
identical. As Merleau-Ponty puts it,
to begin with, we spoke summarily of a reversibility of the seeing and
the visible, of the touching and the touched. It is time to emphasize that
it is a reversibility always imminent and never realized in fact. My left
hand is always on the verge of touching my right hand touching the
things, but I never reach coincidence; the coincidence eclipses at the
moment of realization, and one of two things always occurs: either my
right hand really passes over to the rank of touched, but then its hold on
the world is interrupted; or it retains its hold on the world, but then I do
not really touch it-my right hand touching, I palpate with my left hand
only its outer covering. (VI, 147-148)
We will therefore never be able to catch the movement of the look or the
hand at the exact moment it acts upon the sensory, whether touched or seen. For
Merleau-Ponty, who since Phenomenofogie de fa perception has been inclined to
look for the origins of reflection in the dual tactile sensation, should this everlasting
non-realization not imply the incapacity of reflection to reach reality, however one
defines the reality, whether as phenomenal body or transcendental SUbjectivity? By
no means, because, quite simply, it is in no way a failure, but rather a success in
failure. This failure has a positive meaning, "for," says Merleau-Ponty,
if these experiences never exactly overlap, if they slip away at the very
moment they are about to rejoin, ifthere is always a 'shift', a 'spread',
between them, this is precisely because my two hands are part of the
same body, because it moves itself in the world, because I hear myself
both from within and from without. I experience-and as often as I
wish-the transition and the metamorphosis of the one experience into
the other, and it is only as though the hinge between them, solid,
unshakable, remained irremediably hidden from me. (VI, 148)
This imminent but never realized superposition that I try to effect between
my touching and the touched hand reveals the existence of the something that
makes the transmutation of the touching into the touched possible. This something,
Yorihiro Yamagata 11
this "'element' ofBeing"(VI, 139) guarantees the reversibility of the touching and
the touched like a hinge. And this "element of Being" is precisely what Merleau
Ponty calls flesh. The body's reflexivity that one experiences between touching and
touched indicates the existence of the flesh, their common texture. Or rather, what
is substantial is the flesh; touching and the touched, seeing and the visible are but
the verso and the recto of the same tissue of flesh.
II. Wahrnehmen and Sich bewegen
One might well compare Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the touching-touched
experience in the elaboration of the concept of flesh with Husserl's analysis of
Empfindnis, in which the problems of self-consciousness, of otherness and of
kinaesthesis are intertwined, as Dan Zahavi has pointed out in his fine paper, "Self
awareness and affection."2 We will not go into this intertwining here, but content
ourselves with a few brief remarks on kinaesthesis and its reflexivity as they appear
in a direct reading of Le visible et l'invisible.
In his Notes de travail (VI,249), Merleau-Ponty stresses that the body, as
Sich bewegen, is endowed with reflexivity,
it [my body] is not one mobile or moving among the mobiles or
movings, I am not conscious of its movements as a distance taken by
relation to me, it bewegt sich whereas the things are moved. This means
a sort of 'reflectedness' (sich bewegen), it thereby constitutes itself in
itself.
Merleau-Ponty also equates the experience of self-moving with that of self-touching
or self-seeing. He thus understands the self of self-moving, of Sich bewegen,
through the self of self-touching. And the results of his analysis of the seeing and
the visible apply also to this self-touching's self:
To touch oneself, to see oneself, accordingly, is not to apprehend oneself
as an ob-ject, it is to be open to oneself, destined to oneself (narcissism)
[00']' Nor, therefore, is it to reach oneself, it is on the contrary to escape
oneself, to be ignorant of oneself, the self in question is by divergence
(d'ecart), is Unverborgenheit of the Verborgen as such, which
consequently does not cease to be hidden or latent [ ... ]. (VI,249)
What is this self he alludes to? It is the reverse of my tactile or visual
appearance.
12 THE SELF OR THE COGITO IN KINAESTHESIS
In fact I do not entirely succeed in touching myself touching, in seeing
myself seeing, the experience I have of myself perceiving does not go
beyond a sort of imminence, it terminates in the invisible, simply this
invisible is its invisible, i.e. the reverse of its specular perception, of the
concrete vision I have of my body in the mirror. The self-perception is
still a perception, i.e. it gives me a Nicht Urpriisentierbar (a non-visible,
myself), but this it gives me through an Urpriisentierbar (my tactile or
visual appearance) in transparency (i.e. as a latency)[ .. .]. (VI,249-2S0).
Why does the Sich bewegen only perceive itself as an absence of self, as
the reverse of its perception? It is precisely because
Wahmehmen and Sich bewegen are synonymous: it is for this reason that
the Wahmehmen never rejoins the Sich bewegen it wishes to apprehend:
it is another of the same. But, this failure, this invisible, precisely attests
that Wahmehmen is Sich bewegen, there is here a success in the failure.
Wahrnehmen fails to apprehend Sich bewegen (and I am for myself a
zero of movement even during movement, I do not move away from
myself) precisely because they are homogeneous, and this failure is the
proof of this homogeneity: Wahrnehmen and Sich bewegen emerge from
one another. A sort of reflection by Ec-stasy, they are the same tuft.
(VI,2SS)
As perception and moving are homogenous, perception is by essence
incapable of retreating enough to see in relation to self-moving. This is the
fundamental presupposition on which the concept of flesh is based. Merleau-Ponty
expresses this presupposition by quoting Ma1ebranche in these words:
(Malebranche) it [my body] reads its own modifications [in the
things](because we have no idea of the soul, because the soul is a being
of which there is no idea, a being we are and do not see). The touching
oneself, seeing oneself, a 'knowing by sentiment'[ ... ]. (VI,249)
Is it true that perception and self-moving are homogeneous or
synonymous? Is the self-moving that Landgrebe will later identify with kinaesthesis
really reduced to perception? Is the perceptible the only and exclusive correlative
of kinaesthesis? Does kinaesthesis, self-moving, not have its own positive world,
a world different from that of perception, and is the visible world not derived from
this? Is it not possible that self-moving apprehends itself as such, not as the absence
of its self in the visible nor as the reverse of its appearance? We have just quoted
these words, "the touching oneself, seeing oneself, a 'knowing by sentiment' ." For