Reading Derrida and Ricoeur

Improbable Encounters between Deconstruction and Hermeneutics

Eftichis Pirovolakis

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781438429502, 9781438429496
• eBook ISBN: 9781438429519
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Lingüística

Written in the aftermath of the deaths of the French philosophers Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), this book is an important and innovative study of the contentious relation between deconstruction and hermeneutics. Offering close readings of Derrida's and Ricoeur's writings on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralist linguistics, and Levinasian ethics, Eftichis Pirovolakis introduces the motif of 'improbable encounters, ' and explicates why the two thinkers may be said to be simultaneously close to each other and separated by an unbridgeable abyss. Pirovolakis complicates any facile distinction between these movements, which are two of the most influential streams of continental thought, and questions a certain pathos with respect to the distance separating them. Pirovolakis also translates Derrida's brief tribute to Ricoeur: "The Word: Giving, Naming, Calling, " which appears here in English for the first time. The book is essential reading for anyone immersed in continental philosophy or literary theory.

Chapter 1

Ricoeur on Husserl and Freud

From a Perceptual to a Reflective Present

In his well-informed and instructive Imagination and Chance and, more specifically, in a brief chapter on Husserlian temporalization, Lawlor maintains that “Ricoeur's reading of Husserl discovers that immediacy and continuity precede spatial separation and discontinuity. Mediation or distanciation, traces or absence, derive for Ricoeur from immediacy and should return to it. Immediacy, as we shall see, supports all of Ricoeur's theories.”¹ This chapter will evaluate Lawlor's claim with respect to Ricoeur's approach to consciousness and temporality.

The first section will focus on the constitution of the perceptual present and on Ricoeur's interpretation of Husserl's account of time-consciousness in Time and Narrative. One of the issues at stake here is Husserl's introduction of “retention” into the heart of the living present. How does Ricoeur interpret the relation between primary impression and retention? To what extent does he privilege identity and immediacy at the expense of difference? Does he unreservedly subscribe to the self-evidence of an original intuition, or does he, on the contrary, problematize the idea of immediate presence? How does he deal with the tension between, on the one hand, the phenomenological yoking together of intuition and the punctual stigmē, and, on the other, the description of time as continuous and flowing, something that compromises the rigorous identity of the now? Although Ricoeur admits that Husserl cannot be reproached for ousting difference altogether from the realm of perception, he maintains nonetheless that phenomenology construes mediation and exteriority as secondary to an originarily self-present consciousness. Ricoeur's reservation is grounded in his belief that Husserl regards perception primarily through the prism of the ego's self-identity and immediacy.

The last two sections will establish that, for Ricoeur, Freud's thought, by allowing for an irreducible distance in the conscious present, instantiates a radical break with phenomenology. Freud's neurological reflections and later metapsychological texts on the unconscious and repression directly challenge the phenomenological claims about a self-sufficient and self-constituting subject. In this light, Freud is said to be a better archaeologist than Husserl, to be capable of reaching deeper into the psyche in order to discover an origin more ancient and more secret than the transcendental ego. However, Ricoeur will eventually assert that the primordial non-presence unearthed by the psychoanalytical “archaeology of the subject” is dialectically articulated with a telos where the meaningful presence of a reflective consciousness is not so much a given as a task to be pursued jointly by the analyst and the patient.² Both Ricoeur's endorsement of a continuous, albeit mediated, temporality in Husserl, and his insistence on the teleological organization of Freud's thought will reveal the extent to which he is committed to a dialectical reading of difference and identity.

Ricoeur Reading Husserl: The Thick Present and Continuity

The first section of the third volume of Time and Narrative, entitled “The Aporetics of Temporality,” is a comparative investigation into various philosophical readings of time: Aristotle versus Augustine, Kant versus Husserl, and finally Heidegger.³ The Aristotelian and Kantian accounts are classified as cosmological, in view of the fact that they regard time as either an objective category or an a priori intuition that remains inscrutable and invisible. Augustine and Husserl are thought to have interpreted time in terms of its constitution within subjectivity; as a result, they are subsumed under the phenomenological approach. Heidegger reached the highest point of critical reflection and perplexity by resolving many of the aporias of Husserlian and Augustinian thought. However, he is seen as still working within the limits of a hermeneutic phenomenology that verges on hermeticism.⁴

The discussion of Husserl's theory of temporalization, anchored directly in perception in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1928),⁵ is strategically situated immediately after Ricoeur's reflection on Aristotle, and is said to address many of the issues left unresolved by the Greek philosopher. The objective of this volume of Time and Narrative is to establish the “mutual occultation” of the phenomenological time of human experience and the cosmological time of physics with a view to affirming narrated time as a “third time” mediating between the two opposing perspectives (TN, 3:245). The discussion of Husserl functions as a rejoinder to Aristotle's conception of time on the basis of measurable movement, and to the prioritization of the undifferentiated instant at the expense of a dialectically unified present. As a consequence, Ricoeur's reading of Husserl makes a point, against Aristotle, in favor of the continuity and unitariness of the human experience of time.⁶

Ricoeur initially draws attention to Husserl's ambition to make time itself appear by means of an appropriate method, to submit the appearance of time as such to a direct description. In order to gain access to the internal time-consciousness freed from every aporia, Husserl had to exclude objective time and all “transcendent presuppositions concerning existents” (PITC, §1, 22). His work, therefore, begins by performing the famous “phenomenological reduction” or epochē, by bracketing out objective time; the latter coincides with the first level of temporal constitution where things are experienced in world time.

The second level of temporal constitution is that of immanent unities, the order of temporal objects (Zeitobjekte). Husserl seeks to provide an explanation of the duration in consciousness of such objects as the same from moment to moment. How is it possible for our perception of these objects to endure, and how does this lived experience come about? It is in response to these questions that his two great discoveries, according to Ricoeur, occur: the description of the phenomenon of retention (Retention), and the distinction between retention (primary remembrance) and recollection (secondary remembrance) (TN, 3:25–26). Husserl is interested in sensed objects and their mode of continuance rather than perceived or transcendent objects. In this respect, the central example in his discussion of retention is that of a sound, a minimal temporal object that can be constituted, thanks to its simplicity, in the sphere of pure immanence. A melody would be something far too complex to deal with on this level.

One of the first things Husserl affirms is that the immanent object that the sound is has a beginning and an end. Its beginning coincides with a now-point that corresponds to a primal impression (Urimpression) or impressional consciousness involved in continuous alteration. When the sound stops, one is conscious of this now-point as the end-point when the duration expires. The whole duration of the sound is made up of individual nows, each of which corresponds to a primal impression that gradually sinks back into the past as the duration proceeds toward its end. While the impression of a tonal now sinks back into the past, says Husserl, “I still ‘hold’ it fast, have it in a ‘retention,’ and as long as the retention persists the sound has its own temporality. It is the same and its duration is the same” (PITC, §8, 44). Before the sound began, one was not conscious of it. After it has stopped, one is still conscious of it in retention for a while. For as long as the sound lasts, one is conscious of one and the same sound as enduring now.

The retention of a just passed now in each actual now guarantees that the same sound continues to resonate throughout a succession of individual nows. Defined as a “modification” of the primal impression (PITC, §11, 50–51), retention makes possible the expansion of an immediate intuition taking place in an actual now into a duration. Husserl designates each intuitive now as a “source-point” (Quellpunkt), remarks Ricoeur, “precisely because what runs off from it ‘still’ belongs to it. Beginning is beginning to continue…. Each point of the duration is the source-point of a continuity of modes of running-off and the accumulation of all these enduring points forms the continuity of the whole process” (TN, 3:30). “Modification” implies that each actually present now is modified into the recent past, and that the original impression passes over into retention, thereby thickening the now of perception into a broadened present including both a new impression and the retention of a just passed impression. The determination of retention as a “modification” bears witness to Husserl's wish “to extend the benefit of the original character belonging to the present impression to the recent past” and its retentional consciousness (TN, 3:30).

Thanks to the expansion of the punctual now-point, not only is the recent past connected with the present now but also it retains its intuitive aspect even if it is no longer present stricto sensu. As soon as a now-point has expired, the primal intuition corresponding to it continues to exist in the form of retentional rather than impressional consciousness. The two kinds of consciousness are intimately bound up with each other and with protention, hence the transformation of a point-like stigmē into a thick present. One of Husserl's major contributions to philosophical reflection on time was the idea that

the “now” is not contracted into a point-like instant but includes a transverse or longitudinal intentionality (in order to contrast it with the transcendent intentionality that, in perception, places the accent on the unity of the object), by reason of which it is at once itself and the retention of the tonal phase that has “just” [soeben] passed, as well as the protention of the imminent phase. (TN, 3:26)

Each tonal now of consciousness retains the now that has just passed and anticipates the next one. As a consequence, it encompasses a continuity of retentional modifications while at the same time being itself a point of actuality that shades off and becomes a recent past in order to give rise to the next now which will be itself a continuous modification of the previous one, and so on and so forth.

Commenting upon Husserl's phrase “the sound still resonates,” Ricoeur notes that the adverb “still” entails both sameness and otherness. There is otherness not only because of the diminishing clarity of the impression of expired now-points but also because of the incessant piling up of retained contents. Far from saying that Husserl dogmatically excludes discontinuity, Ricoeur admits that he allows for a certain difference between impression and retention, and that this difference is indispensable: “[If it] were not included in the continuity, there would be no temporal constitution, properly speaking. The continuous passage from perception to nonperception (in the strict sense of these terms) is temporal constitution” (TN, 3:33).

Nevertheless, he underlines that “what Husserl wants at all cost to preserve is the continuity in the phenomenon of passing away, of being drawn together, and of becoming obscure. The otherness characteristic of the change that affects the object in its mode of passing away is not a difference that excludes identity” (TN, 3:28). In spite of the fact that, by putting forward the lingering on of the just passed now, Husserl has introduced some otherness into the perceptual present, such otherness does not pose a threat to the continuity of the duration. Ricoeur observes that Husserl, in order to account for the provenance of continuity, splits intentionality into two interdependent aspects: one of them, designated as “longitudinal intentionality,” is directed toward the continuity between the retained and the actual now, whereas the other is an “objectifying intentionality” directed toward the transcendent correlate that is always other through the succession of nows. Retention and the longitudinal intentionality ensure the continuation of the now-point in the extended present of the unitary duration and preserve “the same in the other” (TN, 3:28).

Temporal constitution entails first and foremost continuity, even though the prefix re- of “retention” indicates a chasm between itself and impression. The motif of broadened perception is claimed to privilege sameness, immediacy, and continuity at the expense of a radical discontinuity. Difference is regarded as a smooth passage from intuition to retention, and is relegated to a secondary position with respect to the primacy of continuity:

The notions of difference, otherness and negativity expressed by the “no longer” [of the retained now] are not primary, but instead derive from the act of abstraction performed on temporal continuity by the gaze that stops at the instant and converts it from a source-point into a limit-point…. Primary remembrance is a positive modification of the impression, not something different from it.⁷ (TN, 3:30–31)

Subsequently, Ricoeur turns to Husserl's second major discovery, and argues that his claim about the prioritization of continuity is corroborated by the apparently unbridgeable chasm between retention and recollection. On the one hand, primary remembrance retains the just passed now-point within a thick present that has some duration; it is the “comet's tail” of a just passed source-point while being a new source-point itself (PITC, §11, 52). On the other hand, secondary remembrance or memory refers to a distant past that has no foothold in the present. Husserl deploys the example of a melody recently heard at a concert: whereas retention takes place for as long as the melody lasts and when it has just stopped, memory begins a while after the melody has ended. After the event recalled has finished, one's memory aims to do no more than reproduce it. When one tries to remember it, the melody is “no longer ‘produced’ but ‘reproduced,’ no longer presented (in the sense of the extended present) but ‘re-presented’ (Repräsentation or Vergegenwärtigung)” (TN, 3:32). Husserl stresses the “wieder” of “Wiederinnerung” (recollection), which marks a discontinuity between perception and reproduction, presentation and representation. Prima facie, Ricoeur rightly diagnoses that this account downplays the role of difference and consolidates the continuity between impression and retention:

This primacy of retention finds further confirmation in the unbridgeable aspect of the break that separates re-presentation from presentation. Only the latter is an original self-giving act…. The “once again” has nothing in common with the “still.” What might mask this phenomenological difference is that major feature of retentional modification that, in fact, transforms the original or reproduced “now” into a past. But the continuous fading-away characteristic of retention must not be confused with the passage from perception to imagination that constitutes a discontinuous difference. (TN, 3:33)

What is at issue, then, is the difference between two types of difference: a continuous one between the just passed now and the actual now yoked together under the aegis of a broadened perception, and a discontinuous one between perception and recollection or imagination. The before-instant of impression and the after-instant of retention are different point-like nows. Yet the gap between them is considered to be a continuous one; it is this temporal continuity that gives rise to internal time-consciousness. Any proper difference is subsequent to this primordial continuity. Ricoeur underlines the radical discontinuity between perception and memory, whose corollary is that the represented past is relegated to the realm of the “as if,” which has nothing in common with presentative intuition.

Ricoeur's discussion of the second level of temporal constitution concludes with two critical remarks. The first one concerns Husserl's privileging of the past and memory to the detriment of expectation. One reason for this is that his major preoccupation was to resolve the issue of temporal continuity, so the distinction between retention and recollection was sufficient to that end. Moreover, to the extent that the future takes its place in the temporal surroundings of the present and that expectation is integrated in those surroundings as an empty intention, Husserl did not think he could deal directly with such futural categories. Expectation is portrayed as merely an anticipation of perception: either it is characterized by the emptiness of the not-yet, or, if the anticipated perception has already become present, it has sunk down into the past. Expectation is not regarded as the counterpart of memory, which remains, says Ricoeur, “the major guideline” of Husserl's analysis (TN, 3:37). This remark signals Ricoeur's belief that Husserl conceives of intuition and recollection in terms of a fulfilled intention alone, which somehow contravenes his declaration, in “Kant and Husserl” (1954), that the distinction between intuition and an unfulfilled intention is totally unknown in Husserl.⁸

The paradoxical effect of such emphasis on memory is its insertion into the same series of internal time where retention belongs, something that mitigates the previously established opposition between recollection and retention. If memory is directed toward a perception that has already occurred in the past, it can be aligned with retention under the aegis of the past. Ricoeur draws attention to Husserl's contradiction whereby he first affirms a rigorous dichotomy between memory and retention, between the “wieder” and the “re,” only in order to bring them back together by inserting them into a single temporal flow: “Reproduction is itself also called a modification, in the same way as retention. In this sense, the opposition between ‘quasi’ and ‘originary’ is far from being the last word concerning the relation between secondary and primary remembrance” (TN, 3:37).

Ricoeur's second remark concerns the extent to which Husserl's discussion of temporal objects remains inseparable from a previous understanding of objective time, despite having initially set time out of play. The temporal series in which both memory and retention are inserted is a serial order made up of identifiable temporal positions (Zeitstelle). This is not to suggest that Husserl collapsed the material of lived experience to the formal objectivity of those temporal positions, for he cautiously distinguished between the two phases of temporal constitution: one focusing upon the immanent object and its appearance to consciousness, the other upon the identity of the temporal position. Ricoeur, however, points toward what appears to be an essential law in Husserl:

The sinking back of one and the same sound into the past implies a reference to a fixed temporal position. “It is part of the essence of the modifying flux that this temporal position stands forth as identical and necessarily identical” (p. 90). Of course, unlike what has to do with an a priori of intuition in Kant, the form of time is not superimposed on pure diversity, since the interplay of retentions and representations constitutes a highly structured temporal fabric. It remains nonetheless that this very interplay requires a formal moment that it does not seem capable of generating. (TN, 3:39)

By highlighting Husserl's unsuccessful attempt to derive a homogeneous objective time from the lived continuum of a transcendental ego's retentions, Ricoeur questions the constituting ability of intrasubjective temporality. The closest Husserl gets to such a derivation is when he defines recollection as the power to transpose ev...

Table of contents

• Series Page
• Chapter 1 Ricoeur on Husserl and Freud
• Chapter 2 Derrida and Rhythmic Discontinuity
• Chapter 3 Ricoeur's Hermeneutics …
• Chapter 4 Secret Singularities
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography