Bodilyness (Leibhaftigkeit) and History in Husserl

Abstract

Beginning with Landgrebe’s interpretation of phenomenology we will examine a few essential aspects of the difficult relationship between temporality and absolute subjectivity. Our enquiry will focus upon two closely interwoven themes which have in a certain sense remained at the edge of Husserl’s central interest, the theme of bodilyness and the theme of the inner historicity of the monads. A deepening of our understanding of such themes would, on the one hand, lead to the necessity of revising the concept of “sensory data” and thus to the clarification of the special sense of the Husserlian “phenomenological-transcendental idealism”; on the other hand, the internal division in phenomenology and its possible convergence with Heidegger’s hermeneutics would thereby become clearer.

Translator’s note: Generally speaking, I have followed Dorion Cairns’ Guide for Translating Husserl (The Hague, 1973), as well as Cairn’s conventions of translating Ego as “ego” and Ich as “Ego”; Objekt is “object” and Gegenstand is “object”. Leib is always “lived-body”. Where English translations of quoted texts are available, I have utilized them and cited them in the footnotes. (Kenneth L. Heiges)