Crisis and Husserlian Phenomenology

A Reflection on Awakened Subjectivity

Kenneth Knies

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781350201378
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350145238
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

Shedding new light on the theme of "crisis" in Husserl's phenomenology, this book reflects on the experience of awakening to one's own naïveté. Beginning from everyday examples, Knies examines how this awakening makes us culpable for not having noticed what was noticeable. He goes on to apply this examination to fundamental issues in phenomenology, arguing that the appropriation of naïve life has a different structure from the reflection on pre-reflective life. Husserl's work on the "crisis" is presented as an attempt to integrate this appropriation into a systematic transcendental philosophy.

Crisis and Husserlian Phenomenology brings Husserl into dialogue with other key thinkers in Continental philosophy such as Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. It is suitable for students and scholars alike, especially those interested in subjectivity, responsibility and the philosophy of history.

Part One

Awakened Subjectivity

Division A

The Phenomenology of Having Presupposed

1. Bringing Presuppositions Back to Life

Some preliminary distinctions will help fix the terms that describe our topic. We will be using the term “presupposition” to pick out one of the many phenomena to which it refers in ordinary and philosophical usage. We do not mean to imply that the phenomena covered by these other uses are reducible to presuppositions in our sense. We rather wish to isolate and examine a particular phenomenon with special importance for phenomenology. We will delimit this phenomenon, first in terms of its formal and epistemological features, then its developmental structure, and finally its significance for someone’s life. From here, we can move from delimitation to description and begin the investigation.

Treated as a strictly formal topic, presuppositions have one basic feature. A presupposition is a potentially independent part of a whole it forms with a part (its ground) that depends upon it. For instance, the grass’s being green is a ground upon the presupposition of its being colored. We may apply the same terms to the moments of a judgment that articulates such a whole. We can then treat the ground-presupposition judgment as if it were composed of two separate judgments, A (“the grass is green”) and B (“the grass is colored”), and attend to their truth values. If we do this, the compound judgment will share certain features with the truth-functional conditional. For instance, there can be no true statement that “A presupposes B” when “A” is true and “B” is false. However, to judge “A presupposes B” is to see that the ground depends upon its presupposition, not to notice the patterns of truth values correlated with this dependency. The ground-presupposition judgment discerns a whole comprised of parts in just this way. Then, when we state of the analyzed judgment itself that “‘A’ presupposes ‘B’” the word “presupposes” expresses our understanding that the truth of the judgment’s ground moment requires that of its presupposition moment.

To stand in these relationships, the contents formed as ground and presupposition must be expressible as assertions. Not only the whole but also each part contains a thought about what is, is not, or might be the case. With respect to the presupposition in particular, it can be true without the ground’s being true, and refers to a state of affairs that is a potentially independent part of the ground-presupposition whole. We will therefore avoid using the term “presupposition” for the hypothetical conditions expressed in counterfactual clauses. “If I were young again …” is not a presupposition in our sense, nor is “… I would do things differently” a ground, whereas “If I were young again I would do things differently” is a possible presupposition and a possible ground. We reserve the term “supposition” for hypothetical conditions and their expression. Grounds and presuppositions are beliefs in the broad sense that they bear a rational commitment.

Conditional relationships guide various kinds of inquiry, only one of which deals with presuppositions in our sense. Antecedent and consequent are ground and presupposition only when one is interested in the truth of the latter in order to determine the truth of the former. The truth of the ground is at stake in the consideration of the presupposition. This excludes from our topic not only the converse interest that looks into the antecedent in order to determine the truth of the consequent but also several other directions of inquiry. Given some reliable truth, one may, for instance, search for whatever it entails. What one finds are its necessary conditions but not its presuppositions in our sense. Because the truth of the ground is at stake in the consideration of the presupposition, the ground must be able to turn out false. The presupposition, however, may be a judgment that is perfectly certain. This is an exceptional case that we will examine. For now, we may distinguish our use of “presupposition” from that which designates assertions that lack sufficient evidence. Such “suspicions” are presuppositions only if they have the formal and epistemological features outlined above.

Presuppositions enter into concrete episodes of reasoning in a remarkable way. The assertion of the ground precedes any consideration of the ground-presupposition whole in which the ground is ground. During the initial assertion of the ground (or the content that will become ground), the presupposition is neither affirmed nor denied, nor entertained at all. It is during this phase that the presupposition will count as the correlate of an “act” of presupposing. Among necessary conditions, we thus distinguish presuppositions in our sense from every freely posited “assumption” and every habitually functioning “conviction” to which one can voluntarily direct attention. For the reasoning subject, the presupposition is not available while it is presupposed, but only in a retroactive realization. Only then does the one who has presupposed confront the whole truth of which the ground is a part, if the ground is true. We use the term “ground” for the dependent part of the ground-presupposition whole because it comes to attention as what was naively relied upon. The realization of the presupposition uproots the ground. We will explore the possibility of attributing unrealized presuppositions to someone in order to explain what she thinks or does. However, the presupposition actually enters into an episode of reasoning through a realization that retroactively assigns it to a naïve life-phase that the realization itself puts to an end. The presupposition is a moment of the larger phenomenon of having presupposed.

As is already clear, the term “presupposition” refers to a multidimensional subject matter. Ontologically, it refers to the potentially independent part of a whole it forms with a part that depends upon it (its ground). Logically, it refers to the moment of a judgment that discerns the presupposition in the former sense and that, when analyzed, mirrors the consequent in the truth-functional conditional. Epistemically, it refers to an object of inquiry in which the truth of the ground is at stake. Mentally, it refers to the “act,” constituted retroactively in a realization of naïveté, of not noticing the presupposition in the prior senses. It is this final sense that encompasses the others and is decisive for a study of realizing presuppositions as one’s own.

Having presupposed is the object of retroactive realization, and thus belongs to an experiential development in the life of a subject. What has been presupposed has a definite logical form. However, this form need not concern the one who realizes a presupposition. The fact of having presupposed, on the other hand, necessarily concerns her. Having presupposed is of concern because it puts something at risk to which one was committed. The ground is embodied in an ongoing project that has become questionable in its viability, the presupposition in an unnoticed circumstance the realization of which has transformed the viable project into a dependent moment of a new practical whole. As judgment moments, ground and presupposition refer, respectively, to dependent and potentially independent parts of this situation, which we will term a “predicament.” Thinking about the predicament can, but need not, involve the explicit consideration of propositions that bear upon it. So long as this situation is thematic as the subject’s own, even the formal analysis of ground and presupposition is bound up with a trial of subjectivity we will call “jeopardy.” For a subject committed to a project she cannot let go, this trial takes on special existential importance—it becomes a “crisis.”

Having presupposed ultimately concerns the subjectivity of the realizing subject. The realization “I have presupposed …” always includes a definite presuppositional content. It is this content and its relation to its ground that ordinarily captures attention. However, attention to presuppositional content is undergirded by a narrative and evaluative self-understanding. Whoever has presupposed takes responsibility for failing to have noticed the presupposition. This negligence is apparent in the realization itself. When a presupposition is realized, it exposes a fault in the one who has presupposed. Having presupposed involves a devaluation of the life-phase during which one was presupposing, a positive valuation of the realization itself, and a need to revisit one’s uprooted commitments from a perspective no longer dominated by the presupposition. It will prove difficult to fix criteria that distinguish genuine presuppositions from “pseudo-presuppositions” that fail to prompt this self-assessment. In any case, the devaluation and valuation at work here, as well as the tasks they orient, concern the one who has presupposed not only as the author of something uprooted in the predicament but as an I. Presuppositions in our sense are necessary conditions, the retroactive realization of which places in question the very “I” of the one who has presupposed.¹

We can now offer a preliminary description of our topic: a presupposition is a necessary condition that becomes evident in a realization that I am jeopardized by my past naïveté. The analyses of this division will develop this description by examining the experience from which it is drawn. We can begin only by targeting its most general features. Further, because the experience is composed of intertwined moments, our initial findings will complement and reinforce one another rather than build in a linear progression. They will be like snapshots whose overlapping edges indicate their place in an arrangement. Only in subsequent divisions can we think in terms of the comprehensive view they afford. We also have to forestall critical questions about our method of trying to understand what something really is by reflecting on the experience in which it becomes evident. One teaching of phenomenology is that the meaning of such questions depends upon the extent to which we have interrogated presuppositions so elementary that they shape every subject matter available to attention. In these initial explorations, however, we will ignore those responsibilities phenomenology entrusts to the “reflection on experience.” This way of proceeding is necessary because these initial explorations, while naïve from a phenomenological standpoint, will indicate a broader development that illuminates the significance of that very standpoint.

2. Realization and Reflection

The similarities, differences, and relations between realization and reflection are of great importance to this study. Realizations apprehend a state of affairs as only now coming to attention for the first time. The “for the first time” distinguishes realizations from forms of consideration that grasp what was previously attended to as such. The “only now” distinguishes them from forms of taking notice that move within a purview, a field of what is potentially noticeable in familiar ways. This “only now … for the first time” character inheres in what is realized and is not derived from an additional judgment directed toward it. It is thus different from receiving a piece of news that I subsequently decide has arrived too late. This character can inhere in the realization because of the way it builds upon a prior history of understanding. The realization that x entails that x was not ready to be noticed, was not held in a purview that indicated it as potential object of attention. Yet, the realization that x builds upon a previous acquaintance with the rational motives that could have prompted its being noticed. Because what is now realized was implied but not discerned as implied in the previous acquaintance, realization supplies what the realizing subject was missing in a special sense.² Realization is an apprehension that lags behind what it apprehends.

The sudden character of realization is due to this lag. Whereas the discovering explication of what is now implied fulfills or disappoints expectations, the realization only now of what was implied sneaks up without expectation. This sneaking up is the passive undercurrent of realization: something dawning. What dawns eludes the monitoring of potentialities that guides ordinary finding out about things. It breaks into an object of realization without following any train of thought. But what dawns is not incomprehensible or even unforeseeable. What is realized was before it was realized. It dawns out of the past. The paradigm for the sudden is not the intrusion of something novel that catches one off guard. If we go far enough in this direction, we find events that would lack any meaningful contrast with expectations and produce no effect. The paradigm for the sudden is rather the appearance of something that was implied but missed as implied. When we go further in this direction, by multiplying the implications and extending the period during which they obtain, as do certain plot forms, we enhance the effect. Realization emerges on the basis of this passive undercurrent of something suddenly dawning. But it itself is a realization that, a directedness toward how things stand, not a mere sensation of surprise. In this respect, realization is similar to a remembering that breaks into an otherwise occupied course of experience. The essential difference is that any remembering is based upon a previous apprehension of what is now remembered.

Like realization, reflection makes explicit what was implicit in a previous acquaintance. However, the pre-reflective acquaintance already held what is seen in reflection in the purview of potential attention. The shift in focus that brings the reflected upon object into view does not supply what was missing, but rather brings into the foreground something already available. Yet it is a shift in focus because it breaks with the course of explication projected in the pre-reflective acquaintance. In doing so, it engages other points of view already at the disposal of the one reflecting. For everything experienced, certain of its features and connections are salient and others are in the background, depending upon the concerns that govern unreflective involvement with it. Most reflection steps back from the courses of explication suggested by what is salient and showcases its object in view of something pertinent to, but not prominent in, this initial involvement. As a special case, simple reflection showcases merely that and how the object of pre-reflective acquaintance is. In either case, reflection is the suspension of a governing interest that freely returns to its object in order to consider it in a new light. In the case of simple reflection, the light “shines” directly from the object of pre-reflective acquaintance itself.

This account of reflection conforms in many ways to Husserl’s in Ideas I (§§ 38, 45, 77). However, it differs in one important respect. Whereas Husserl defines reflection as the way in which consciousness knows itself, we define it, by way of contrast with realization, in terms of how it notices the unnoticed, leaving the nature of its object open. On our definition, many reflections do not concern consciousness at all. In using an appliance, one can reflect that such appliances did not exist just fifty years ago, so long as this fact was not salient during the initial use and one is familiar with it. This approach will allow us to consider problems concerning the role of both reflection and realization in the discovery of subjectivity at various levels.³ “Know thyself!” may be an insufficient slogan for the task of self-responsibility if it means “Reflect! Turn within!” It may require supplementation with: “Want to realize what you cannot now reflect upon!” This latter is an appeal to desire, rather than an effective imperative, because it points beyond what is within one’s own power.⁴

Let us now spell out the most crucial differences between reflection and realization. First, their temporal character differs. Reflection is a free return to what was there before, which it now “takes up again in a new light.” Realization, on the other hand, is overtaken by what was previously unnoticed, which it confronts “only now for the first time.” Second, their relation to the implicit differs. What was implicit in the unreflective acquaintance was already familiar to the one who now reflects in its light. Reflection only finds what the one reflecting held in the background of the unreflective acquaintance and does so by actualizing an available direction of possible attention. Realization, by contrast, brings something into view that was outside the purview of the previous acquaintance, and thus missing. Third, their starting points differ. Reflection begins from a free stepping back that suspends a governing interest. Realization begins from an uncanny dawning that delivers what is realized in advance of all method.

Realization and reflection are different ways of taking notice of any object. While it is clear that any object of realization can become an object of reflection, it might seem that certain objects cannot be realized because they are by their nature already available to reflection. The case of consciousness is especially difficult and will occupy us at length. It is also tempting to suppose that lawful connections between objects or object moments guarantee that in thinking of the one, one is already implicitly thinking of the other, so that the lawfully connected whole cannot be realized only now for the first time. But unless we conceive the thinking subject as the executive of every ideal law, such connections only determine w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Also Available from Bloomsbury
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One Awakened Subjectivity
• Part Two The Crisis Problematic
• Conclusion: Owning Philosophy
• Notes
• References
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Copyright Page