Abstract
In this chapter I explore a less well known part of Husserl’s theory of embodiment: the idea that subjective life is not embodied in the world merely in “lived bodies” but is rather, in a specific sense, spread all over the lifeworld penetrating all aspects of its givenness. In Husserl’s terms the experienced world is given as something that always harbors within itself “a kind of inner life” by “embodying” various types of higher “spiritual”, “cultural” or “subjective-relative” meaning, i.e. meaningfulness that refers to different dimensions of human communal life. I will first explicate the structure and mode of givenness of this subjective meaningfulness of the environment and then focus on its formation in the constitutive dynamics of activity and passivity. I will argue that the key to understanding the constitution of spiritual meaning lies in the often overlooked “secondary passivity”, which results from the interplay of two fundamental structures of passivity, namely habituality and association.
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Notes
- 1.
HuaXXXIX: 427. All translations of Husserl’s texts are my own unless stated otherwise.
- 2.
cf. HuaIX: 113, 410; HuaIV: 238.
- 3.
cf. HuaIX: 111ff.; HuaIV: 236ff., esp. 239, fn.1.
- 4.
cf. HuaIX: 112, 114; HuaI: 124; HuaIV: 239.
- 5.
- 6.
cf. HuaXXIX: 181; HuaVI: 176, 207f.; HuaIX: 111f.
- 7.
cf. HuaIX: 110ff., esp. 111.
- 8.
cf. HuaXXXIX: 427; HuaIX: 112.
- 9.
Husserl’s terminology is in regard to this “spiritual meaning” (geistige Bedeutung/Sinn) very rich and multifarious but not systematically developed. First of all Husserl uses equally and synonymously both expressions “geistige Sinn” and “geistige Bedeutung”. In general the qualifying term “geistige” has two basic connotations: on the one hand, it refers to a meaning that originates from subjective act of institution and meaning-constitution, and, on the other hand, it refers to meaning that is related to the broadly speaking practical engagements of the human subjectivity and community. The emphasis is most often on the latter. Throughout his published works and manuscripts Husserl also uses synonymously lots of other terms that have similar but slightly varying connotations, e.g. praktische Sinn, humane Bedeutung, teleologische Sinn, subjektiv-relative Sinn, Kultursinn, kulturale Bedeutung, humane/menschliche Gesicht der Welt and also speaks equally for instance of a humanisierte Welt, menschliche Umwelt and Kulturwelt.
- 10.
For a detailed analysis on Husserl’s idea of material nature, i.e. a totality of spatio-temporally existing realities, as the fundamental core of the experientially given world, see Nenon (Intersubjectivity, Interculturality, and Realities in Husserl Research Manuscripts on the Life-World (Hua XXXIX), in this volume).
- 11.
cf. HuaIX: 112; HuaIV: 236ff.; HuaVIII: 151.
- 12.
HuaIX: 111ff., 118, 384f., 408f.; HuaIV: 236ff.
- 13.
HuaIX, 118, 384.
- 14.
cf. HuaIX: 118, esp. 384. Husserl in fact argues that because the formal and universal subject-relation of “experienceability” applies equally to all objects, it cannot in any way determine the meaning of these objects, i.e. what these objects are as objects. In contrast to this formal universality, the substantial subjective-relative meaningfulness belongs exactly to “specific meaning-determination” (besondere Bestimmungsgehalt) of the object: it is something that determines the meaning of the object exactly by relating it in a specific way to subjects and their practical engagements. (cf. HuaIX: 384–5). For a more detailed analysis on the subjective-relative experienceability of things and the limitations that its universality has in terms of normality and abnormality of our bodily capabilities, see Nenon, Heinämaa and de los Reyes (Intersubjectivity, Interculturality, and Realities in Husserl Research Manuscripts on the Life-World (Hua XXXIX), Transcendental Intersubjectivity and Normality: Constitution by Mortals, and The Body as a System of Concordance and the Perceptual World, in this volume).
- 15.
- 16.
HuaIX: 118, my emphasis; cf. HuaIX: 384–5, 408ff.; HuaIV: 197; HuaXV: 8.
- 17.
cf. HuaIX: 118, 406ff.; HuaXXXIX: 311ff., 319ff., 325; Husserl 1948, 55.
- 18.
HuaIX: 385.
- 19.
Whereas the material nature is, according to Husserl, equally shared by all human beings, this fundamentally subjective-relative nature of cultural objects exposes them to yet another relativity, i.e. relativity in terms of accessibility and sharedness in relation to different cultures and cultural homeworlds. For a more detailed account on cultural relativity and relativism in Husserl, see Heinämaa and Nenon (Transcendental Intersubjectivity and Normality: Constitution by Mortals and Intersubjectivity, Interculturality, and Realities in Husserl Research Manuscripts on the Life-world (Hua XXXIX), in this volume).
- 20.
HuaIX: 112; cf. HuaIV: 197; HuaMatVIII: 402.
- 21.
- 22.
HuaIV: 236–247; HuaIX: 111f.; HuaXXXIX: 427f. Molly Flynn (2009) develops a more thorough analysis on the peculiar unity of material body and spiritual meaning in the case of cultural objects by analysing how this unity can be approached through Husserl’s idea that cultural objects “express” a spiritual meaning in a similar manner as our bodies express our spirit.
- 23.
HuaIX: 112.
- 24.
cf. HuaIX: 112, 118; HuaIV: 238f., 242f.
- 25.
HuaIX: 118, cf. 384f.
- 26.
- 27.
HuaIV: 238, my emphasis.
- 28.
cf. HuaIV: 181–185, 239.
- 29.
HuaIV: 183, 238f.
- 30.
HuaVIII: 151.
- 31.
HuaXXXIX: 273, cf. 266, 306–334.
- 32.
- 33.
- 34.
HuaXXXIX: 328.
- 35.
cf. HuaIX: 112f., 114–115, 118; HuaI: 124; HuaMatIV: 123f., 138; HuaXXXIX: 266.
- 36.
cf. HuaXVII: 365; HuaMatVIII: 203; HuaXIX/1: 423; HuaXXXI, 4–8.
- 37.
- 38.
- 39.
- 40.
Husserl 1948, 74, my emphasis; cf. HuaI: 112, HuaIX: 209, HuaMatVIII: 260.
- 41.
- 42.
As for example Victor Biceaga notes, Husserl’s usage of the term “affectivity” (Affektivität) is idiosyncratic in the sense that the notion is neutral in respect to feelings and strivings and simply denotes something that stands out as prominent in the margins of awareness (cf. Biceaga 2010, 31f.; HuaXI: 148ff.; HuaXXXI: 3ff.). According to Husserl, all affection relies on associative constitution of a contrast: things can stand out as prominent only against a contrasting background (cf. HuaXI: 149f., 159ff.; Husserl 1948: 78f.). Affection is, however, not a matter of simple contrast but rather can have various intensities. According to Husserl, the marginal background of attention thus forms a kind of a “relief” (Husserl is here alluding to the relief sculptures, where figures arise in various heights from the background), i.e. a heterogeneous field that consists of different intensities or “heights” of affective forces (cf. HuaXI: 166–168). However, the distinction between active focus of attention and affective background is absolute, not relative: there is no smooth transition in degree from background to foreground, but rather our attention is always solely on some particular thing while everything else remains in the background, no matter how strongly something affects us and lures our attention towards itself (cf. Ibid., HuaXXXIX: 357 ff.).
- 43.
HuaMatVIII:100, 269–270; HuaXXXIX: 327–328, 432.
- 44.
For more elaborate analysis on different senses of “passivity” in Husserl, see Steinbock 2001, xxxviii ff.
- 45.
- 46.
cf. Husserl 1948, 23f.
- 47.
HuaXXXI: 3, cf. HuaMatVIII: 260; Husserl 1948, 24.
- 48.
Steinbock 2004, p. 23. This line of thought of emphasized in the writings of some of the most influential and well read Husserl commentators. (cf. Sokolowski 1964, pp. 138f., 197, Zahavi 2003, p. 73, Steinbock 2001, pp. xxxviii–xliii.) The focus on “pure passivity” has helped greatly to uncover Husserl’s analyses on the deepest core structures of consciousness and to defy some traditional criticisms that allege that Husserl’s phenomenology is focused solely on conscious activity. In the following I however want to put more weight on the often disregarded “secondary passivity” and in the end argue that the sphere of pure passivity is not a concrete part of our experience but rather an abstract domain that is in the concretion of our experience taken over and even substituted by the secondary passivity – which is exactly not pure in the sense of being free of any influence of higher conscious activity. The fundamental significance of secondary passivity is emphasized recently also by Biceaga (2010) and Smith (2010), but not directly in this connection.
- 49.
This is why Husserl often thematizes the purely passively given sensible data as the “primordial hyletic materiality” (Urhyle, Urmaterial) of consciousness, and sharply contrasts the passive sensibility, the “animal grounds” of subjectivity, to the dimension of active “reason” and its possible higher meaningful formations (cf. HuaXI: 161; HuaXV: 384f.; HuaXXXIX:16f.; HuaMatVIII: 70). Concerning the traditional distinction between “reason” and “sensibility” as a distinction between “activity” and “passivity” in Husserl see HuaIV: 222, 332 ff.; HuaXI: 342; HuaMatIV: 176.
- 50.
- 51.
The most comprehensive analysis on Husserl’s notion of association is to be found in Holenstein (1972). However, Holenstein does not take up association in the context of constitution of higher cultural meaning but rather focuses on its role in the more primal levels of experience.
- 52.
A more detailed account on Husserl’s phenomenology of habituality and its relationship with the broader discourse of habits and habituality can be found in Moran (2011). For an account on habituality both in subjective and intersubjective setting, see Nenon (Intersubjectivity, Interculturality, and Realities in Husserl Research Manuscripts on the Life-world (Hua XXXIX), in this volume).
- 53.
HuaXXXIX: 47.
- 54.
- 55.
HuaXI: 342.
- 56.
HuaXV: 367.
- 57.
- 58.
HuaIX: 118.
- 59.
- 60.
cf. HuaXXXIX: 34f.; HuaMatVIII, 251, 295f.; Husserl, 1948, 74ff., esp. 78–79. For this reason Husserl even at times names association as the “general title for unity-formation [Einheitsbildung]” (HuaMatVIII: 298, cf. HuaXI: 153).
- 61.
cf. HuaI: 142f.; HuaXV: 15.
- 62.
- 63.
cf. HuaXXXIX: 7ff., 431,450, 465; HuaI: 142–144; HuaMatVIII: 253, 269–270.
- 64.
- 65.
- 66.
- 67.
HuaXXXIX: 35.
- 68.
- 69.
HuaXXXIX: 36.
- 70.
cf. HuaMatVIII: 100.
- 71.
HuaXI: 218. Husserl uses here the Hegelian notion of “Aufhebung” (translated here as “resolving”) and clearly in a very Hegelian sense: to indicate that in the course of consciousness lower levels of experience are taken over by higher ones. However these levels are not altogether dissolved or annulled: in fact the quotation continues in a very Hegelian tone “[…] but not altogether lost in these higher levels, but rather at any time ready at hand for corresponding orientations of interest and demonstrations.”
- 72.
HuaMatVIII: 203.
- 73.
I’d like to thank Professor Dermot Moran for pointing out that this cannot mean that the environing world would be fully prefigured and completely familiar to us. However, it is equally important to note that, at least according to Husserl, this is a quantitative restriction, not a qualitative one: although the world that we are marginally conscious of is to a large extent unknown or only partially determined, this partial determination can consist of any kind and level of habitual meaningfulness.
- 74.
- 75.
- 76.
HuaMatVIII: 70, 100, 269–270; HuaXXXIX: 8, 327–328; HuaXIV: 379.
- 77.
HuaMatVIII: 372, 410.
- 78.
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Pulkkinen, S. (2013). Lifeworld as an Embodiment of Spiritual Meaning: The Constitutive Dynamics of Activity and Passivity in Husserl. In: Jensen, R., Moran, D. (eds) The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 71. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01616-0_7
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