Summary
Although imagination is not one of the subjects treated extensively in Husserl’s phenomenology, it is one of its most important `instruments’. In his phenomenology as a work of imagination, imagination even acquires for Husserl primacy over perception. But in his phenomenology of imagination as its subject matter, Husserl seems to repeat the old distinction between original and image in his differentiation between perception as the realization of full bodily presence and imagination as referring to inferior modes of presence.
The author critically analyses Husserl’s distinction (within imagination) between phantasy and image-consciousness. The fact that Husserl describes the image-object in image-consciousness as a “mere image” which appears only as “a nothing” on the scene of actual presence, and the fact that Husserl distinguishes phantasy from image-consciousness by its lacking any representational consciousness, leads one to suspect greatly that Husserl reverts to a content-based approach which was to have been excluded by his theory of intentionality.
In the last section the author outlines a reorientation according to which imagination is thought of not in reference to presence (as has been done in the history of metaphysics), but in reference to an appearing, an imaging, a showing, that would never be a matter simply of presence, but rather of spacings that would fracture presence. This conception of imagination could explain the power of imagination to open up phenomenology.
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Notes
The terminology is not entirely stable. Phantasie is also called, for example, freie Phantasie and sometimes freie Imagination or schlichte Imagination. Bildbewufitsein also Bildobjektbewuf3tsein and Bildlichkeitsbewuf3tsein. See the discussion in Maria Manuela Saraiva, L’Imagination selon Husserl,The Hague. (Martinus Nijhoff) 1970, p. 58. As will be seen with respect to the terms schlichte Phantasie and eikonische Phantasie,the variations in terminology are not always as extrinsic as they might seem but sometimes directly reflect developments in Husserl’s analyses.
Edmund Husserl, Phantasie, Bildbewuf3tsein, Erinnerung: Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen,Husserliana 23, ed. Eduard Marbach. The Hague (Martinus Nijhoff 1980), p. 3. Subsequent references to this volume will be indicated in the text by Hus. 23, along with the page numbers.
Logische Untersuchungen,fünfte Auflage. Tübingen (Max Niemeyer Verlag) 1968, zweiter Band, I. Teil, p. 424.
See Saraiva, L’Imagination selon Husserl,p. 22. Also my Delimitations: Phenomenology and the End of Metaphysics. Bloomington (Indiana University Press) 1986, chap. 1.
See Saraiva, L’Imagination selon Husserl,p. 41.
Since the apprehension [Auffassung] of anything as an image presupposes an object intentionally given to consciousness, we should plainly have an infinite regress were we again to let this latter object be itself constituted through an image or to speak seriously of a `perceptual image’ immanent in a simple perception, by way of which it would refer to the thing itself.“ Logische Untersuchungen,zweiter Band, I. Teil, p. 423.The relative instability of the distinction between phantasy and image-consciousness in the Logical Investigations produces a certain vacillation or even conflation that renders Husserl’s argument against the image-theory less than compelling. Whereas the image that Husserl shows to be founded on perception, hence to presuppose it, is that of image-consciousness — he gives the example of a painting — the image on which the image-theory would found perception would — if there were such — have a character like that of a phantasy image. Hence, from the beginning the differentiation and subordination of imagination to perception will have proved much less easily accomplished than Husserl supposed.
Ibid.,zweiter Band, II. Teil, p. 56.
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie and phänomenologischen Philosophie, erstes Buch, Husserliana 3/1, ed. Karl Schuhmann. The Hague (Martinus Nijhoff), 1976, p. 91.
Perceptual appearance and phantasy appearance are so closely akin, so similar, that they immediately suggest the idea of the relation between original and image.“ Hus. 23: 10.
Ideen I, p. 163.
The close affinity between the phenomenological epochè and phantasy is evident in Husserl’s descriptions of the latter as a neutrality modification, even though he does insist on a certain differentiation. See Ideen I,§111–112; Hus. 23: 571. In addition, that moment of image-consciousness corresponding to what Husserl calls the image-object (i.e., the appearing image as depicting something else) is as such even more akin to the neutrality modification effected by the phenomenological epochè. See Ideen I, §111. On the basis of these analyses it is difficult not to suppose that imagination plays an indispensable role in the opening of phenomenology from within what will prove to have been the natural attitude. The connection is even more direct in the case of the insight into essences, phantasy providing that range of examples that is necessary for the intuition of essences. Husserl even points back to the need to fructify (befruchten) one’s phantasy (for example, through art and poetry) in order that it be equal to the task that it is called on to perform in gaining intuition of essences. These are the analyses that lead to Husserl’s statement of the paradox regarding fiction as the source of truth. See Ideen I,§70.
Ibid., §70.
Logische Untersuchungen, zweiter Band, I Teil, p. 374.
Husserl continues to stress this exclusion of the phantasy object from the well-ordered perceptual field. For example: “while all perceptions with regard to the objects intended in them join together in a unity and have reference to the unity of a single world, the objects of phantasy fall outside this unity; they do not join together in the same way with the objects of perception in the unity of a world intended as such.” Erfahrung und Urteil, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe. Hamburg (Claasen und Goverts) 1948, p. 195.
What is phantasied is always something temporal…; but its time is a quasi-time.“ Ibid.
As early as 1909 Husserl came to have serious reservations about the schema of apprehension/content. His reservations stemmed largely from the difficulty that he found in the supposition of a given content that would be simply preintentional. Most notable in this regard is the manuscript of 1909 entitled “Phantasie als `durch und durch Modifikation.’ Zur Revision des Inhalts-Auffassungs-Schemas,” in which Husserl writes as follows: “But in the case of perception we do not first have, as the concrete experience [Erlebnis] in it, a color as apprehension-content and then the character of apprehension which produces the appearance. And likewise in the case of phantasy we do not have a color as apprehension-content and then an altered apprehension, that which produces the phantasy-appearance. Rather: `Consciousness’ consists through and through of consciousness, and sensation as well as phantasm is already `consciousness ’ [Vielmehr: Bewußtsein’ besteht durch und durch aus Bewußtsein, und schon Empfindung so wie Phantasma ist Bewußtsein’].” Hus. 23: 265.
Es war falsch, die Phantasie als ein eigentümliches Auffassen anzusehen, dessen Auffassungsinhalte die `Phantasmen’ seien. Phantasie ist eine Modifikation der entsprechenden Wahrnehmung, die Phantasieinhalte sind Modifikate entsprechender Empfindungsdaten…“LI199b.
J.-J. Rousseau, Emile, in Oeuvres Complètes. Paris ( Gallimard, Pléiade ), 1959, 4: 304.
Resemblance between two objects, however precise, does not make the one be an image of the other. Only a presenting ego’s power to use a similar as an image-representative of a similar — the first similar given intuitively, while the second similar is nonetheless meant in its place — makes the image be an image. This can only mean that the image as such is constituted in a peculiar intentional consciousness.“ Logische Untersuchungen, zweiter Band, I. Teil, p. 422.
The subtitle of Husserliana 23 is “Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen.”
The phantasy image does not appear in the objective context of present reality, the reality that is constituted in actual perception, in the actual field of vision. The centaur that now hovers before me in phantasy does not seemingly cover a part of my visual field.… The phantasy field is completely separated from the perceptual field.“ Hus. 23: 49. See Ideen I, 23.
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Sallis, J. (1992). Spacing Imagination. In: van Tongeren, P., Sars, P., Bremmers, C., Boey, K. (eds) Eros and Eris. Phaenomenologica, vol 127. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1464-8_16
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