CHAPTER III

 

THE SIXTH MEDITATION

 

RICHARD HOLMES

 

 

In what follows I am primarily interested in setting the stage for appreciating a set of basic problems with the enterprise of Husserlian phenomenology and then briefly sketching what I believe is a fruitful way to approach these problems.

Written as a continuation of Husserl’s five Cartesian Meditations, the Sixth Cartesian Meditation was drafted by Eugene Fink and then worked on and critiqued by Husserl.1  It is subtitled "A Transcendental Theory of Method" and was intended to show

 

that the methodological question in phenomenology, in the ‘radical self-reflection’ that phenomenology puts into practice, the question of the nature of the move back to the beginning beyond which questioning cannot go, is ultimately going to involve the central substantive difficulty of the nature of the difference and identity between human and transcendental subjectivity, between the subjectivity that lives and subsists with the world and the subjectivity that constitutes the world and all in it.2 

 

This is a question of how a phenomenologist can explicate a subjectivity that both belongs in the world and yet constitutes objectivity and its world. Fink’s answer is to the effect that to explicate the sense of world and subjectivity within it (again from the translators introduction) "requires a dimension of reflective analysis in phenomenology that works beyond the strict limits of the intuitional giving of something in its very self [Selbstgebung]."3  That is, it seems to require we violate the fundamental principle of phenomenology to not accept "any judgment as scientific that I have not derived from evidence, from "experiences" in which the affairs and affair-complexes in question are present to me as "they themselves."4 

For Fink this root problem concerns as well whether the intersubjective enworlding that is a necessary condition for phenomenological reflection on how world and subject are constituted "is to be characterized in terms of, and parallel to, the individuality and multiplicity of human subjectivity."5  This leads us to ask how we can develop "the analysis of primordial temporality and the metaphysics of individuation."6  In other words, we need an analysis of the individuation of subjectivities and their world to work out the difference and identity between human and transcendental subjectivity.

I want to focus on this analysis which underpins the further analysis of intersubjectivity by asking the question: How can I explicate the world and my subjective life within it as both the product of my subjective life and as having as part of their sense that they are independent of, and apart from, this subjective life? Put otherwise, Ego and World are subject and object poles of my constituting subjective life but are they essentially unavailable to a phenomenological analysis and yet essentially apparent in it? I come back to this type of answer that seems to violate the sense of what it means to do phenomenology later, but first another version of the problem and an answer. 

Fred Kersten tackles the same question in his essay on the Sixth Meditation entitled: "Notes from the Underground."7  To set up the problem he quotes Husserl: "This division between constituting and phenomenologizing living now defines the concept of the absolute: it is the synthetical unity of antithetical moments."8  What is antithetical, according to Kersten, is the subjective life that constitutes itself as an Ego and its World on the one side, and this Ego and World which are not given to it in evidence, in the strict limits of the intuitional giving of something in its very self, on the other. The question basically revolves around how the subjectivity and the world are observable and describable as objects independently and apart from the subjectivity that is world-constituting. The subjectivity that is constituting is also constituted; it is a synthetical unity of antithetical moments. The Ego and World are described and characterized as apart from and independently of the subjective life that is the focus of phenomenological analysis. And yet the Ego and World that appear as its subjective and objective poles cannot be so focused on. We must ignore or forget the subjective life in order to describe them. Kersten’s own take on how this is possible relies on a phenomenological insight of Merleau-Ponty and I return to it later.

To properly explicate an answer to this question requires, I suggest, re-thinking what is usually believed to be happening as the subject and world crystallize in our experience. I start this by looking at a basic example of a subjectivity being aware of an object. I take my clue from Hume for reasons that will soon be apparent. In the Enquiry he states: "Nothing so like as eggs, yet no one, on account of this appearing similarity, expects the same taste and relish in all of them."9  Awareness of an egg includes the egg appearing with sense of an object which exists independently of my awareness of it and it stands out as such from a background of the world which includes all objects of whatever type or description. Initially, objects do not become constituted as transcendencies, instead they are given as such immediately by virtue of their always pointing beyond themselves toward further "seeings" of themselves and the system of objects within which they are found. In addition, the subjectivity appears with the sense of an Ego engaged in this awareness and who exists as a subjective pole. Just as Husserl distinguishes the object intended to from the properties imputed to it, so we can distinguish the Ego from the Ego’s engaging in a particular subjective awareness. In this way we can distinguish both the subject pole and the object pole from the subjective life they are described and characterized as apart from.

The question becomes how to explicate the appearance of the Ego and the object so that their appearance is not confined and contained only in the particular awareness of an object. Or, to simplify even more, how do we explicate the appearance of the Ego such that we capture its being characterized as apart from any particular engagement in an awareness of whatever and yet retain the insight that we only have access to it through those particular engagements. This is the problem Fink and Kersten make very clear; we seem to have to step outside of phenomenology’s commitment to staying within the limit of the intuitional giving of something in its very self. Or, in Kersten’s terms, characterize "the Ego apart from any engagement in mental processes, independently of the polarity of mental processes and acts, and thus the phenomenological reductions are not required to describe and characterize the structuring itself of the transcendental Ego."10  I have to forget that of which I am aware to be aware of the Ego and world. Put otherwise, and in Husserl’s terms, a subject and its object are each the synthetical unity of antithetical moments.11 

Kersten suggests a solution to this dilemma can be found in considering, as does Merleau-Ponty, the example of the way Rembrandt in The Nightwatch makes us see a hand pointing to us by the use of the play of light and shadows that we forget, do not see, when we "see" the hand. We somehow see the hand while we do not see the premises for our seeing it –the play of light and shadows. I examine the painting and there is no finger pointing to me, only the shadow on the soldier next to him. Similarly, we become aware of the antithetical nature of seeing the Ego and World, as we advert from our subjective life to the Ego and World. We forget the subjective processes themselves, the premises of Ego and World, which are then thematized as objects independently and apart from the subjective life. But how is it possible to both use and not see that which enables our seeing? I believe it requires working out an analogy with how to interpret quantum physics.

If I send light towards a barrier in which there are two slits, I can observe and record a pattern on the wall behind the barrier which demonstrates that light is wavelike. Einstein has proven, and I can replicate the necessary experiments to validate his proof, that light is particle like as well. Yet, if I perform this experiment using only single particles at a time – namely, single photons – then when both slits are open, the photon cannot behave as if only one were open. Rather, it conforms to a wave pattern. This means it will strike a particular place on the wall with a certain probability. It will hit someplace in the wavelike pattern caused by the interference of two waves going through the two slits, and not where it would hit if only one slit were open and a stream of single photons were going through one slit. Important to all this is seeing that, although I cannot calculate exactly where any one photon will land, I can calculate precisely the probability that it will strike at a certain place by calculating a wave function which includes the various possibilities. This wave function is a mathematical synopsis which gives a physical description of what could happen if I made an observation or measurement. At the point of observation the wave function collapses – it is an abrupt collapse of all the developing aspects of the wave function except for the one that actualizes; the photon hits somewhere.

The best way to understand this is to say that, until a measurement or observation is made, there exist only tendencies, or probabilities, for a photon to actualize at slit one or at slit two. No real particle called a photon existed until one actualized at slit one or at slit two. There is only a developing potentiality in which a photon is going to slit one and to slit two.

This is to say that, prior to my observation, the light was wavelike and could best be described by a probability function so that, if I had thought ahead to the future and had asked what would happen, I could have described the probability of a photon landing in a particular area. But unless I intervene, there is not a photon landing here, rather than there. What I expect to find comes from the future as informed by the past but only because I "get into" the situation. These probabilities are known only because of past experiences, but that too was only known because I observed and measured – because I was in-the-world. Without me, or us, light continues to be and do whatever, but if I insert myself into the situation with my observations and expectations then what-is stands out, becomes crystallized; the photon hits somewhere.

This example points out the possibility to readjust what we mean by an Ego, a single photon or an egg. I see the egg and believe it to have a certain origin, inside appearance and taste; this is contrary to Hume who could not always be sure of what his eggs would be like inside due to a lack of refrigeration. Part of what I see is its having had a continuous objective existence independently of my awareness of it. But by analogy with my interpretation of quantum physics, I can say that no object was there previously – only developing possibilities which crystallize and are later experienced as eggs or photons. As I observe, I thematize and individuate; the egg crystallizes and is meant as having been previously on its way to being the egg I now experience and mean as having been wherever and whenever.

So too in the case of a subject. When I think or say "I was reading" the ‘I’ was not present at the time of the reading. There was only awareness of the book; the developing possibilities which may be crystallized and make possible seeing and saying ‘I’. As is the case with the Rembrandt painting, I must forget there was no I or egg in the developing possibilities and see and say "I saw the egg." Subjects and objects are at the notional end of constitution and are the synthetical unity of antithetical moments.

As Sartre states of the relation of the self to the consciousness on which it is founded and from which it and its meaningful actions are the precipitate, there is a circuit of selfness (Circuit de ipséité).12  This is a relation of the possible ways the self may be seen as carrying out its goals to the consciousness which is acting. As it acts, consciousness does so in light of possible courses of action, or of possible selves it might become. These possibles are automatically there as the horizon for the projects of consciousness, and when reflection takes place the enacted ones are then seen as having been there "already." Sartre illustrates this point: The self appears as having desired to drink from the glass while "the-glass-drunk-from haunts the full glass as its possible and constitutes it as a glass to be drunk from."13 

There is a fusion as the possible ways of the self and its objects are developing and are merged with and evident in the present on-going subjective life. The circuit of selfness encompasses the possibles and incorporates them so that as crystallized they were "already there." Or, to use an example from George Steiner, possibly the writers of the Homeric epics were actually only one person, but he transcribed the Iliad and while doing so thought up the Odyssey, of which he was the creative author.14  As the relation of circuit of selfness implies, even as he transcribed he would see his self as possibly writing the Odyssey, and as having written it. As Sartre further elaborates this, "world" is the "totality of being in so far as it is traversed by the circuit of selfness." "The world (is) mine because it is haunted by possibles, and the consciousness of each of these is a possible self-consciousness which I am; it is these possibles as such which give the world its unity and its meaning as the world."15  The world is the synthetical unity of the possibilities and the enduring totality haunted by them.

This interpretation depends on changing the concept of objectivity so that objects are not directly objectivated and described as having properties independently of consciousness. Correlatively, there is no concern or need to believe in an objective world which founds the experienced one and makes it appear as it does. According to this interpretation, we do attribute a definite existence or property to an object independent of and prior to its being experienced. But this is a change in the concept of objectivity; a change to a type of realism which affirms that there is a real world meant as independent of our awareness of it but we know it only as we, the plurality of mutually incompatible awarenesses, so constitute it. The world is the crystallized product of the interaction of the possibilities which are enacted by, and which then appear as, natural phenomena. In effect, the world and all objects are postulated as being, and having been, what they are so constructed to be. In addition, and put in more Sartrean language, the World and Ego are haunted by the possible self-awarenessnesses which I, and we, could become, just as the photon was the set of developing possibilities before it became actual.

Although we are characterizing the Ego and World as apart from and independently of the polarity of subjective life and its objects they are within the limits of the intuitional giving of something in its very self. They crystalize in the reflection that reveals them. They are synthetical unities whose origin is present in the on-going subjective life and yet are meant as absent; as existing independently of this subjective life. Just as the hand appears to be there in the painting by Rembrandt so too do the Ego and World appear to there independently of my subjective life. As Sartre speaks of the circuit of selfness and the world so too in our analogy with quantum physics the Ego and World are to be described and explicated as subject and object whose origins are in the developing possibilities and who are haunted by them even as they become Ego and World. Human and transcendental subjectivities are genuinely unified as moments that are not antithetical in the same way that saying a photon is going to slit one and slit two is not a contradiction.

The solution to the problem of how to explicate the subject as both constituting the world and itself as in the world while being independently and apart from the world appears in seeing that the subject and object are present only as I constitute them and not before. The photon was not somewhere before it is detected nor is the egg or I.

 

NOTES

 

  1. Eugen Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, tr. Ronald Bruzina, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

  2. Ronald Bruzina, "Introduction" to Eugen Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. xlviii-xlix.

  3. Ibid., p. lviii.

  4. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, tr. D. Cairns, Dordrecht: Nijhoff Publishers, 1977, p. 13.

  5. Bruzina, "Introduction," p. lviii.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Fred Kersten, "Notes from the Underground: Merleau-Ponty and Husserl’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation" in The Prism of the Self: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Maurice Natanson, ed. Steven Galt Crowell, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995.

  8. Ibid., p. 49; Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, II/I, p. 157.

  9. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV, Pt. 2.

  10. Kersten, "Notes," p. 52.

  11. Ibid. 

  12. Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel E. Barnes, London: Methuen, 1957, pp. 102 ff.

  13. Ibid., p. 104.

  14. See George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998, and No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1995, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

  15. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 104.