Abstract
Before addressing the idea of archeology in the phenomenological perspective of Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur, which will be the main concern of my essay, let me first briefly delineate how archeological questioning has gained philosophical significance at all. In the second part of my contribution, I’ll distinguish, at least in a cursory fashion, main directions of archeological thinking in phenomenology. In the third and last part of my considerations, I will focus on one of these directions, namely the one which grew out of an intermingling of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. I will bracket the more fundamental question of whether phenomenology itself must be conceptualized as a sort of archeology.
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Notes
Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft,§§80, 82; Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, Zweiter Teil (E). On Kant’s role as a contributor to evolutionary thinking, see R. Löw, Philosophie des Lebendigen (Frankfurt 1980), p. 190; E.-M. Engels, Erkenntnis als Anpassung (Frankfurt 1989), pp. 461–2; W. Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte (Frankfurt 1978), pp. 38–40; A. Seifert, Cognitio Historica (Berlin 1976), p. 191.
Cf. A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Boston 1933); B. Glass, O. Temkin & W. L. Strauss (eds.), Forerunners of Darwin 1745–1859 (Baltimore 1959).
Cited in S. Toulmin and J. Goodfield, The Discovery of Time (London 1967), p. 145.
Cf. E. Haeckel, Die Welträtsel (Stuttgart 1984), p. 111.
Cf. D. Ross, Stanley Hall (Chicago, London 1972); A. Vergote, “La psychoanalyse, limite interne de la philosophie”, in Savoir, faire,espérer: les limites de la raison. T.2 (Bruxelles 1976), pp. 479–504 (cf. p. 496); P. Ricoeur, Die Interpretation (Frankfurt 1974), p. 357.
See D. Ross, Stanley Hall.
J. M. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race (New York 1895), p. 28.
This follows from Baldwin’s theory of “genetic modes”, which he developed in accordance with an ontogenetic application of evolutionary thinking. Here, however, it is not possible to explain at length the outlines of this theory; cf. J. M. Baldwin, “The Origin of a ‘Thing’ and its Nature”, Psychological Review (1895), pp. 551–573; Development and Evolution (New York 1902).
Cf. A. Vergote (see ann. 5), p. 496; S. Bernfeld & S. Cassirer-Bernfeld, Bausteine der Freud-Biographik (Frankfurt 1988), p. 237; S. Freud, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse (Frankfurt 1969), p. 204; Zwang, Paranoia und Perversion (Frankfurt 1973), p. 203.
S. Freud, Hysterie und Angst (Frankfurt 1971), p. 54.
Ibid., pp. 59–60; cf. A. Grünbaum, Die Grundlagen der Psychoanalyse (Stuttgart 1988), p. 437.
Freud, Hysterie und Angst, p. 60.
E. Fink, “Das Problem der Phänomenologie Husserls”, Revue Internationale de Philosophie (1939), p. 246.
Ibid., pp. 242, 245, 252; cf. L. Landgrebe, “Lebenswelt und Geschichtlichkeit des menschlichen Daseins”, in B. Waldenfels, J. M. Broekman and A. Pai:anin (eds.), Phänomenologie und Marxismus (Frankfurt 1977), Bd. 2, pp. 53–55.
“Phänomenologische Archäologie, das Aufgraben der in ihren Baugliedern verborgenen konstitutiven Bauten, der Bauten apperzeptiver Sinnesleistungen, die uns fertig vorliegen als Erfahrungswelt. Das Zurückfragen und dann Bloßlegen der Seinssinn schaffenden Einzelleistungen bis zu den letzten, den ‘Archai’, um von diesen aufwärts im Geist entstehen zu lassen die selbstverständliche Einheit der so vielfach fundierten Seinsgeltungen […] Wie bei der gewöhnlichen Archäologie: Rekonstruktion, Verstehen im ‘Zick-Zack’ !” (Cited in A. Diemer, Edmund Husserl [Meisenheim am Glan 19652], p. 11.) Husserl’s still unedited manuscript “Phänomenologische Archäologie” bears the number C 16 VI (Husserl-Archives, Leuven); Merleau-Ponty refers to the notion of archeology in his Éloge de la philosophie, in his preface to A. Hesnard, L’cruvre de Freud et son importance pour le monde moderne (Paris 1960), pp. 5–10, and in Le philosophe et son ombre.
Cf. R. Bernet’s preface to the German edition of J. Derrida, Husserls Weg in die Geschichte am Leitfaden der Geometrie (München 1987), p. 16, and, in Derrida’s text, p. 67; E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (Hamburg 1982), p. 63 (= § 9,1); P. Thévenaz, De Husserl à Merleau-Ponty (Neuchâtel 1966), p. 37.
Cf. A. Vergote (see ann. 5), p. 501. This problem pervades especially Husserl’s late genealogy of experience; cf. Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg 1985), §11.
Cf. “Un inédit de M. Merleau-Ponty”, in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 67 (1962), pp. 401–49; Vorlesungen I (Berlin, New York 1973), p. 5.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Le philosophe et son ombre, in Signes (Paris 1960), p. 208. cf. Das Auge und der Geist (Hamburg 1984), p. 50.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris 1964), p. 211; cf. Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare (München 1986), p. 208.
Cf. B. Waldenfels, “Phänomenologie unter eidetischen, transzendentalen und strukturalen Gesichtspunkten”, in M. Herzog & C. F. Graumann (eds.), Sinn und Erfahrung (Heidelberg 1991), p. 75.
Cf. P. Ricoeur, Finitude et culpabilité, T II, 1. L’homme faillible (Paris 1960), pp. 44–6. cf. Die Fehlbarkeit des Menschen (München 1971), pp. 46–49. P. Ricoeur, “New Developments in Phenomenology in France: the Phenomenology of Language”, Social Research 34, no. 1 (1967), pp. 1–39; “Philosophie et langage”, in R. Klibansky (ed.), Contemporary Philosophy in France. Philosophie contemporaine (Firenze 1969), pp. 272–295; A l’école de la phénoménologie (Paris 1986), pp. 9–14.
Cf. annotation 15.
A. de Waelhens, “Réflexions sur les rapports de la phénoménologie et de la psychoanalyse”, Existence et signification (1959), pp. 191–213 (cf. p. 200). See also P. Ricoeur, Die Interpretation, p. 391.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 468, 396.
Ibid., p. 350.
Ibid., pp. 429–504.
“M. Merleau-Ponty à la Sorbonne. Résumé de ses cours établi par des étudiants et approuvé par lui-même”. Bulletin de Psychologie, no. 236, (1964) I. XVIII, 3–6, p. 311.
Cf. P. Ricoeur, “Hegel aujourd’hui”, Etudes théologiques et réligieuses 49 (1974), no. 3, p. 347, Die Interpretation, pp. 475, 479.
Ricoeur, “Hegel aujourd’hui”, p. 347; cf. Hermeneutik und Strukturalismus (München 1973), p. 33; Le conflit des interpretations (Paris 1969), p. 25. (In the following annotations, the italicized references refer to the original editions).
Ibid., pp. 145/239.
Ibid. Ricoeur seems thereby to imply that the unconscious forever keeps the “bodily origins of sense” in a distance which no striving for a reappropriate existence could overcome.
Ricoeur, Die Interpretation, p. 475.
H. Arendt, Das Leben des Geistes,Bd. 2, Das Wollen (München, Zürich 1989), p. 133.
Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, Die Prosa der Welt (München 1984), pp. 69–133/66–160.
Ricoeur, Zeit und Erzählung (München 1991), Bd. 3, pp. 232–4/211–2, 396–8/355–9, 437/392. These doubts finally lead to the notion of ipséité as an itself temporalized structure of existence — in contrast to any substantialist notion of being a self.
In this context, Ricoeur claims that an “ontology of past future(s)” must be developed; cf. Zeit und Erzählung, Bd. 1, pp. 236/222–3, 240/226, 281/263, Bd. 2, pp. 69/63–4. See also B. Groethuysen, “De quelques aspects du temps”, Recherches philosophiques. T. V (1935/6), pp. 139–195; H. R. Jauss, Zeit und Erinnerung in Marcel Prousts ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ (Frankfurt 1986), pp. 23–5.
Zeit und Erzählung, Bd. 2, pp. 25/26–7.
Ibid., p. 41/40.
P. Ricoeur, “The Human Experience of Time and Narrative”, Research in Phenomenology IX (1979), pp. 17–34 (cf. pp. 331–2). To this idea corresponds the conception of a ’reflective philosophy“, which Ricoeur borrowed from Jean Nabert (cf. Die Interpretation, pp. 58–9). Referring to Nabert, Ricoeur keeps up the ideal of reflection as carrying with it ”the desire for absolute transparence, a perfect coincidence of the self with itself […]“ It is this ideal, however, which phenomenology and hermeneutics ”continue to project onto an ever more distant horizon […1“ On a personal level, the striving for the realization of a ”repetition“, which may verify itself through archeological working-through of one’s history, seems to be the equivalent of philosophical ”reflection“; cf. P. Ricoeur, ”On Interpretation“, in A. Montefiore (ed.), Philosophy in France Today (Cambridge 1983), p. 188.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung (Berlin 1966), Dritter Teil, §§14–15/pp. 469–495.
Cited from the Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London 1962), p. 346.
This statement stresses a problem and is not to be understood as a final judgment about Ricoeur’s thinking about the relation of archeology and teleology.
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Liebsch, B. (1993). Archeological Questioning: Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur. In: Burke, P., van der Veken, J. (eds) Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective. Phaenomenologica, vol 129. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1751-7_2
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