Abstract
In this chapter, I present some systematic thoughts on a phenomenology of attention. There are two angles from which I will approach this topic. For one, the phenomenon in question is quite important for Husserl, but his thoughts on the topic have not been known to the public until recently through a new volume of the Husserliana (Hua XXXVIII) that presents the only analyses in Husserl’s entire oeuvre dealing with this phenomenon. As it turns out, attention, as located between passive perception and active, synthetic consciousness, plays a key role in genetic phenomenology and its attempt to work out the levels of consciousness from passivity to activity. Hence, one part of this paper has the intention of presenting some of Husserl’s thoughts on attention and the systematic role it plays in his phenomenology of constituting consciousness. Secondly, in order to further the systematic point of the phenomenon, I turn to Goethe’s reflections on the primal phenomenon (Urphänomen) that can, I believe, be brought to bear on attention. Indeed, the primal phenomenon as a phenomenon that immediately and forcefully seizes our attention Goethe once compares to “the most beautiful pearls” in a chain of related phenomena. Among the phenomena appearing to us, some “simply” have a special quality in that they beckon us to investigate them, very much in the way in which Husserl describes the manner in which some phenomena lure us to focus our attention on them. Finally, if it is the world which “chooses,” as it were, certain phenomena for us to be drawn into their meaningful contexts, this observation has serious consequences for phenomenology as transcendental idealism. I want to put it as a question: What does it mean for a theory of world-constitution through consciousness that the world is “designed” such that certain phenomena are privileged from within the world to leap out at us, enticing us to explore it? Does attention bring us before the limits of phenomenology as transcendental idealism?
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Notes
- 1.
The quotation I use to bolster this interpretation uses the term in singular (Perle); however, since I later relate it to Goethe ’s theory of the primary phenomena, of which there exists a plurality, I believe it is permissible to use the term in plural here (as well as in the title).
- 2.
Since this area of phenomenological research is fairly new, there is only a rather small body of research dedicated to the phenomenon of attention in Husserl in particular, in phenomenology writ large. For some inroads, cf. the works by the Freiburg scholars (where the edition was largely carried out) Bégout (2007), Breyer (2011) and Wehrle (2010). Waldenfels (2004) has written a book on a phenomenology of attention, but although he has integrated Husserl’s work in his writings (the book appeared the same year as Hua XXXXVIII, the work from which I quote), Waldenfels’ writings are of the creative and original nature typical of him. Thus, he takes Husserl’s analyses as a springboard for his own—unorthodox—reflections.
- 3.
This is also the manner in which he redacted the Logical Investigations for the second edition of 1913: the analyses themselves are allowed to stand; what changes is their “status.” These corrections can be traced in the critical edition of the Logical Investigations, Hua XVIII & Hua XIX/1 & 2.
- 4.
Husserl is clear that such a “pure” perception is seldom, if ever, experienced in pure passivity, but that it is mostly “shot through” with meaning elements. That is to say, perception and attention are not to be meant as strata lying on top of each other like wooden boards that can be lifted out from the stack and analyzed in isolation. Rather, such an isolation is an abstraction. In truth, the relations between these types of acts are dynamic and interpenetrative.
- 5.
Notice the same ambiguity, which one can exploit phenomenologically, of the term ‘mind’ and its verb ‘to mind.’ “Minding the world” is here to be understood as in “minding one’s own business,” thus transitively. I owe this point to John Drummond .
- 6.
This state of attention has been described in literary fashion in Peter Handke’s novel Versuch über die Müdigkeit. Fatigue, then, could equally be spoken of in a phenomenological, not psychological, register. The transcendental subject, hence, can become tired, just as it can become (to use a better known example by Heidegger ) bored! I take it that Heidegger is also not talking about a psychological episode.
- 7.
Elsewhere, Husserl also speaks of the light of reason shining into the dark regions to be penetrated by phenomenological research: namely in the areas of emotive and volitional consciousness (see Hua XXIV). In the same sense, Husserl says in the present context: “In general the dark sphere does in no way come into consideration for a critique of cognition. All analyses with respect to a critique of cognition have to be carried out in the sphere of clarity and distinctness, and it lies in the nature of these analyses, which are, to be sure, clarifying analyses of meaning, that a different sphere as such can in no way come into consideration” (Hua XXXVIII, 122, my trans.). Putting these two remarks together sheds an interesting light on the status of phenomenological description: in each region of consciousness, what is to be analyzed is meaning, which has to be wrested from the darkness prior to a “critique of cognition.” Phenomenology, thus, is a critique of cognition (a term borrowed from the Neo-Kantians) with respect to consciousness: a “logic” (to speak with a term from the Marburg School) in each sphere of consciousness. This passage also indicates that there can be no phenomenology of the unconscious for Husserl—or the moment light is shone into it, it no longer is an unconscious.
- 8.
See for a support of this reading Wehrle (2010).
- 9.
This is not to say that Husserl does not consider the noematic side of things, after all the conceptual pair ‘noesis – noema’ is his coinage. Cf., e.g., Hua XI, 3–24, where he shifts back and forth between the two perspectives. When it comes to the phenomenon of attention, however (not mere perception), Husserl does indeed not consider the noematic side (which he undoubtedly could have).
- 10.
The difference between Newton’s mathematized natural science and Goethe ’s organic view of nature have been subject to many studies, cf., e.g., Cassirer (1995). The difference in paradigm driving both researchers’ work cannot be discussed here but is also not relevant for the current discussion, since Goethe ’s stance is taken here at face value as seen from the standpoint of phenomenology.
- 11.
Cf. Förster (2012, esp. ch. 11, pp. 250–276). This is not say that I fully agree with the role Goethe plays in Förster’s account, which is nonetheless quite intriguing, but Förster’s interests lie elsewhere. Goethe plays a certain role, that of the missing link, in his overall narrative from Kant to Hegel, though Förster does touch upon Goethe’s theory of the primal phenomena.
- 12.
That Goethe’s thought on phenomena are phenomenological in nature has been recognized before, see, for instance, Seamon (2005).
- 13.
On Goethe ’s essay “Der Versuch als Vermittler zwischen Objekt und Subjekt” cf. Förster (2012, 254–57).
- 14.
As reported by Goethe in his essay “Glückliches Ereignis” (the happy event being his friendship with Schiller), cf. Goethe (1980, 4: 85).
- 15.
This is Förster’s interest in his narrative leading up to Hegel’s notion of experience.
- 16.
This numbering is the standard numeration of Goethe’s Maximen und Reflexionen. All translations are the author’s.
- 17.
“575. Das Höchste wäre: zu begreifen, dass alles Faktische schon Theorie ist. Die Bläue des Himmels offenbart uns das Grundgesetz der Chromatik. Man suche nur nichts hinter den Phänomenen: sie selbst sind die Lehre.”
- 18.
This is the manner in which Cassirer situates Goethe , cf. Cassirer (1995, 103–148).
- 19.
1227. Wer ein Phänomen vor Augen hat, denkt oft schon drüber hinaus; wer nur davon erzählen hört, denkt gar nichts.
“1228. Die Phänomene sind nichts wert, als wenn sie uns seine tiefere reichere Einsicht in die Natur gewähren oder wenn sie uns zum Nutzen anzuwenden sind.
1229. Die Constanz der Phänomene ist allein bedeutend; was wir dabei denken, ist ganz einerlei.
1230. Kein Phänomen erklärt sich an und aus sich selbst; nur viele, zusammen überschaut, methodisch geordnet, geben zuletzt etwas, das für Theorie gelten könne.”
- 20.
Quoted in Förster (2012, 255).
- 21.
“156. Ein Phänomen, Ein Versuch kann nichts beweisen, es ist das Glied einer großen Kette, das erst im Zusammenhange gilt. Wer eine Perlenschnur verdecken und nur die schönste einzeln vorzeigen wollte, verlangend, wir sollten ihm glauben, die übrigen seien alle so, schwerlich würde sich jemand auf den Handel einlassen.”
- 22.
In the words of the commentator Hecker (Goethe 1976, 283).
- 23.
“412. Von den Urphänomenen, wenn sie unseren Sinnen enthüllt erscheinen, fühlen wir eine Art von Scheu, bis zur Angst. Die sinnlichen Menschen retten sich in’s Erstaunen; geschwind aber kommt der tätige Kuppler Verstand und will auf seine Weise das Edelste mit dem Gemeinsten vermitteln.”
- 24.
I wish to thank Maren Wehrle and Julia Jansen for their extensive comments on an earlier version of this paper. I have attempted to incorporate their suggestions. A shorter version was delivered at the conference “Perception, Affection, Volition: Newer Research in Phenomenology” at the University Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile, in November 2012 (organized by Roberto Rubio), and at a workshop on “Issues in Phenomenology” of the Chicago Area Consortium in German Philosophy (organized by Rachel Zuckert), in March 2013. I am grateful for the interventions by Roberto Rubio, Roberto Walton , Graciela Ralón de Walton and Søren Overgaard , in Santiago, and for those by Hanne Jacobs, Andrew Cutrofello and Daniel Rodriguez Navas, in Chicago. Thanks to Dana Fritz and Clark Wolf for their help with grammar and style.
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Luft, S. (2017). “The Most Beautiful Pearls”: Speculative Thoughts on a Phenomenology of Attention (with Husserl and Goethe). In: Walton, R., Taguchi, S., Rubio, R. (eds) Perception, Affectivity, and Volition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Phaenomenologica, vol 222. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55340-5_5
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