Abstract
Phenomenology is traditionally considered to be a thought of presence, assigned to a phenomenon that is identified with the present being, or with an object for consciousness. In all cases, the phenomenon with which phenomenology is concerned always seems to be accessible to a conscious experience. Indeed, consciousness itself is nothing but a form of presence, i.e., a presence to self. As a thought of presence, and of presence to consciousness (itself, then, a form of presence), phenomenology would know nothing of the unconscious. However, I will suggest in the following pages that phenomenology is haunted by the presence of a certain unappearing dimension, an alterity that escapes presentation, which led Heidegger to characterize the most authentic sense of phenomenology as a “phenomenology of the inapparent.” I show how the “inapparent” plays in phenomenality and in phenomenology, stressing its ethical import as this withdrawal of presence within phenomena involves a responsibility to the otherness of a secret. Ultimately, this secret is a dimension that constantly haunts phenomenology, and to which it belongs, whether it knows it or not.
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Notes
- 1.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1953), p. 28. I draw from both extant English translations: Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), and Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Revised and with a Foreword by Dennis J. Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). Hereafter cited as SZ, followed by the German pagination.
- 2.
Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 16.
- 3.
Martin Heidegger. Seminare, ed. Curd Ochwadt (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1981), GA 15, p. 399. Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 80.
- 4.
On this belonging of the unconscious to a Cartesian philosophy of consciousness, see Michel Henry, The Genealogy of Psychoanalysis, trans. D. Brick (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).
- 5.
Martin Heidegger. Feldweg-Gespräche (1944/45), ed. Ingrid Schüssler (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1995), GA 77, p. 183. Country Path Conversations, trans. Bret W. Davis (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2010), p. 119.
- 6.
Martin Heidegger. Zollikoner Seminare, ed. Medard Boss (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2006), GA 89, p. 260. The Zollikon Seminars, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001), pp. 207–208.
- 7.
Jacques Derrida. “Différance,” p. 20.
- 8.
Jean-Luc Marion. Being Given. Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, tr. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 8. Hereafter cited as BG.
- 9.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern U. Press, 1968), p. 151. Hereafter cited as VI.
- 10.
This invisibility was already named by Kant when he wrote in the first Critique of the “invisible” or “unappearing” character of time as pure form of intuition: as pure form of inner sense, time itself is not visible in the outer dimension of space. “For time cannot be a determination of outer appearances; it belongs neither to a shape or a position, etc., but on the contrary determines the relation of representations in our inner state.” Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), B 50, p. 163. 473, Hereafter cited as CPR, followed by the A and B edition pages, and page number of the translation. Time can only be represented in space by way of analogy: “And just because this inner intuition yields no shape we also attempt to remedy this lack through analogies, and represent the temporal sequence through a line progressing to infinity, in which the manifold constitutes a series that is of only one dimension, and infer from the properties of this line to all the properties of time, with the sole difference that the parts of the former are simultaneous but those of the latter always exist successively.” CPR, B50, p. 163.
- 11.
Martin Heidegger. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet (1931–1932). Ed. Hermann Mörchen (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1988, 1997), GA 34, p. 144. The English translation reads: “the concept of being loses its primordial innermost meaning, i.e., presence; the temporal moment is completely shaken off.” The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and “Theaetetus.” Trans. Ted Sadler (London: Continuum, 2002), p. 104.
- 12.
Françoise Dastur, “Présent, présence et événement chez Heidegger,” Heidegger, le danger et la promesse, eds. G. Bensussan et J. Cohen (Paris: Kimé, 2006), p. 121.
- 13.
Martin Heidegger. Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, ed. Walter Bröcker and Käte Bröcker-Oltmanns (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2nd edn, 1994), GA 61, p. 87. Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 66. Hereafter cited as PIA.
- 14.
Martin Heidegger. “Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation,” Dilthey-Jahrbruch für Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften 6 (1989), 237–74; reprinted in Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Ausarbeitung für die Marburger und die Göttinger Fakultät (1922) (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2003). Phenomenological Interpretations in Connection with Aristotle: An Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation trans. John van Buren, in Heidegger, ed. John van Buren, Supplements: From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond (State University of New York Press, 2002), p. 117.
- 15.
Martin Heidegger. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt—Endlichkeit—Einsamkeit, ed. Friedrich- Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 3rd edn, 2004), GA 29/30, pp. 7–8. English translation The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics; World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 5–7.
- 16.
Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze (1936–1953), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2000), GA 7, p. 256. Early Greek Thinking, trans. David F. Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 96.
- 17.
Martin Heidegger. Holzwege, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1977), GA 5, p. 337. Off The Beaten Track, ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 253, 254.
- 18.
Martin Heidegger. Zur Sache des Denkens , ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1962), GA 14, p. 101. On Time and Being, trans. Joan Staubaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 82, my emphasis.
- 19.
Jacques Derrida. The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 50. Hereafter cited as GD.
- 20.
Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 103. Hereafter cited as EN.
- 21.
Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), p. 77. Hereafter cited as EI.
- 22.
The French word visage immediately gives a human character to the face as thematized by Levinas, as visage refers exclusively to the human face, whereas for animals one speaks of a gueule. The humanism of Levinas’ thought is thus as it were pre-inscribed linguistically in the French language.
- 23.
Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1996), p. 141. Hereafter cited as AE.
- 24.
Jean-Luc Marion. In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), p. 51.
- 25.
Emmanuel Levinas, Is It Righteous to Be? Ed. Jill Robbins (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 144–145.
- 26.
Jacques Derrida. “Autrui est secret parce qu’il est autre” [Autrui is secret because it is another], interview by Antoine Spire, Le Monde de l’Education (July–August 2001), www.lemonde.fr/mde/ete2001/derrida.html.
- 27.
Jacques Derrida. “Passions,” in On the Name (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 1995), p. 24, my emphasis. Hereafter cited as P.
- 28.
Jacques Derrida. “A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event,” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Winter 2007), p. 451.
- 29.
Jacques Derrida et Elisabeth Roudinesco. De quoi demain… (Paris: Fayard/Galilée, 2001), p. 91.
- 30.
Jacques Derrida. Paper Machine (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 2005), p. 162.
- 31.
On this point, I take the liberty of referring to my The Origins of Responsibility (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U. Press, 2010).
- 32.
Martin Heidegger. Einleitung in die Philosophie (1928–1929), Ed. Otto Saame and Ina Saame-Speidel (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), GA 27, p. 340.
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Raffoul, F. (2017). Phenomenology of the Inapparent. In: Legrand, D., Trigg, D. (eds) Unconsciousness Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 88. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55518-8_7
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