Abstract
To begin with, I would like to present something like a manifesto of Husserlian phenomenology. Therefore, in this chapter, I would rather not discuss this or that specific point related to Husserl’s phenomenology yet, but rather address some general questions about the particularity of phenomenology as such. More precisely, I would like to begin by suggesting a different way of answering one question that most readers have surely heard many times—adressed sometimes friendly, sometimes mockingly, sometimes aggressively—from students, friends, colleagues, and critics. The dreadful and not-so-inevitable question is the following: “What is phenomenology actually all about?”
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.Groucho Marx
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Notes
- 1.
“The philosophical value of his theory of constitution is the philosophical value of phenomenology as a whole, and the weakness and difficulty attached to this concept are the weakness and difficulty inherent in phenomenology as a philosophical method.” (Sokolowski 1964, p. 223)
- 2.
I have limited myself here to positional meaningfulness (being, being-so) though the argument clearly extends to all practical and axiological meaningfulness. Some remarks on this aspect of the question can be found in Majolino and Trizio (2014).
- 3.
Let us recall that Husserl further distinguishes between static and genetic constitution, and that “genetic constitution,” by its turn, should not to be conflated with the “passive genesis” of founded higher order objects (see Hua I, §38), which deals again with the first type of objects (types, pure and “impure” essences, generalities, etc.) from the point of view of their sedimented meaning, introducing the idea of layers of sedimentation. So we have at least four levels of constitution: static constitution of ideal objects (noetic-noematic correlations) and of individuals as instantiating such idealities; genetic constitution of individualities (passive synthesss); genetic constitution of higher-order objects (active syntheses) and passive genesis of higher-order objects (sedimented syntheses).
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
This is clearly not the mature definition of a Cantorian set, which can be found in the Beiträge, written in 1895, but only an early conception. It is, nevertheless, the one explicitly considered by Husserl—and that is what matters here. I will come back to this point in Chap. 8.
- 7.
- 8.
See the Seefelder Manuskripte über Individuation (1907) in Hua X, pp. 237–65.
- 9.
While the whole thing appears in each adumbration (although always from a different angle), red as such appears in each instance (although always differently exemplified). There cannot be a thing given without adumbration just as there cannot be a species given without instances. However, as already noticed, the relation of instantiation/exemplification is specific to idealities, while the relation of adumbration/ presentation is specific to things.
- 10.
That will bring Husserl, especially in the Bernauer materials, to the distinction between the temporal constitution (Zeitlich) of individual things and the omnitemporal (Allzeitlich) constitution of idealities. See Hua XXXIII, p. 91.
- 11.
“Einheiten einer absoluten nicht erfaßten Mannigfaltigkeit.”
- 12.
“Zum Wesen dieser Einheit als zeitlicher Einheit gehört es, daß sie sich im absoluten Bewußtsein ‘konstituiert.’”
- 13.
“Die wesentliche Beziehung des immanenten Objekts auf ein gebendes Bewußtsein fordert hier die Lösung des Problems dieser Gegebenheit, d.h. es müssen genau die Bewußtseinsmannigfaltigkeiten und ihre Einheiten studiert werden in denen sich die Objekt ‘konstituiert.’”
- 14.
“Bewußtsein ist immer Zusammenhang und notwendig Zusammenhang. Wir haben den originären Zusammenhang, den des ursprünglichen Zeitbewußtseins, und in diesem haben wir die Mannigfaltigkeit der impressionalen Inhalte.”
- 15.
Of course, recognizing that transcendental subjectivity is itself constituted is not sufficient enough of an argument to conclude that constitution—in the sense of constitution of manifolds—is not constituted by a transcendental subject. In fact, transcendental subjectivity is for Husserl both itself constituted and itself constituting. This dual fact brings to a series of problems that I will not be able to address here.
- 16.
It has to be stressed that, although Husserl is certainly aware of the difference between the non-technical meaning of Mannigfaltigkeit—as “multitude of …”—and the technical meaning of “manifold,” he often takes advantage of the equivocity of the term to bridge the technical and the non-technical meaning. This happens especially in Thing and Space. Again, I will come back to the correlation between the technical and the non-technical sense later.
- 17.
It is precisely for that reason that the eidetic variation, in undoing such “togetherness” while revealing the meaningfulness of a concept, is so crucial for phenomenology as such.
- 18.
Of course, since the expansion of constitution via the thread of multiplicity is not antithetical to the thought that constitution is constitution by a transcendental (inter)subjectivity, and since with the inter-subjective dimension, we get at the veritable sense in which transcendental subjectivity is both itself constituted and itself constituting, we could even say that transcendental inter-subjectivity is as broad as constitution. On the other hand, what is phenomenologically relevant in transcendental inter-subjectivity is precisely the fact that we are dealing with a new form of togetherness, irreducible and yet related with others forms of togetherness.
- 19.
- 20.
At this point, it is not difficult to imagine the political and cultural implications of the shift from being to manifold, and from each manifold to its own different variety of constitution. Such a shift is related to the abandonment of the so-called “problem of being” for an investigation focused on the emergence of manifolds out of multiplicities and the possible points of reference for meaningful experiences.
- 21.
- 22.
I have received the interesting suggestion to consider this Husserlian account in consultation with Proclus, especially in relation with §138 of the Elements of Theology. In that section Proclus restates what Plato had already introduced in the Philebus and Cantor will later recognize as the ancestor of his idea of Mannigfaltigkeit: being is a unified multiplicity insofar as it is made of limit and infinity. The conclusion of the passage is, roughly, that to be is to be many-as-one. But as the equivocity of Husserl’s Mannigfaltigkeit points out, this cannot be the main point. The main point is rather that manifolds are constituted as differentiated the one from the other. This is what I have stressed in contrasting the traditional opposition between One/Many to the twofold relation multiplicity/manifold on the one hand and manifold/other manifold on the other. I am still not sure, however, whether something in Proclus approximates this point.
- 23.
- 24.
And I have to confess that I am not sure whether the question of who or what brings about the constitution still has any meaning as a problem for phenomenology.
References
I – Works of Husserl
II – Other Works
Husserl, E. (1939). Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (L. Landgrebe, Ed.). Meiner. 1999. (English Translation by Churchill, J. S., & Ameriks, K. Experience and judgment. Investigations in a genealogy of logic. Northwestern University Press, 1973).
Cantor, G. (1883). Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre. Ein mathematisch-philosophischer Versuch in der Lehre des Unendlichen. In Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1932) (pp. 165–209) (E. Zermelo, Ed.). Teubner.
Heidegger, M. (1927). Sein und Zeit. Niemeyer.
Heidegger, M. (1979). Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Gesamtausgabe 20). Klostermann. English translation by T. Kisiel, History of the Concept of Time. Prolegomena. Indiana University Press, 2008.
Majolino, C. (2006). Les essences des ‘Recherches Logiques’. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 49(1), 89–112.
Majolino, C. (2010). La partition du réel : Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience. In F. Mattens, H. Jacobs, & C. Ierna (Eds.), Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl (pp. 573–660). Springer.
Majolino, C., & Trizio, E. (2014). Husserl and the Truth of Hedonism. In S. Ferrarello (Ed.), Phenomenology and Intersubjectivity of Values in Edmund Husserl (pp. 83–94). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Sokolowski, R. (1964). The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution. Martinus Nijhoff.
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Majolino, C. (2023). Multiplicity, Manifolds and Varieties of Constitution. In: The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 124. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_2
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