The Living Future of Phenomenology

Nicola Zippel



The future of phenomenology is inscribed within phenomenology itself. Indeed, phenomenology is a philosophy of time, because it moves within a temporal shape.
    The continual development of Husserl’s reflections on the meaning of phenomenology involves an ontological and theoretical growth of thickness of phenomenological consciousness, which correlates with the concept of time. The study of the phenomenological subjectivity, that becomes increasingly more accurate, deep and critical, shows not only that the subject as consciousness is temporal by essence, but also that this temporality transcends the subject in a transcendental meaning, to be precise, in a constituent meaning. Because it gives itself originally as temporal, consciousness becomes part of a genetic process. The relationship between subject and time seems to assume the form of an original asymmetry: Time founds in original and permanent way the subject, namely, it constitutes the subject because it confers sense to the consciousness-being of the subject. It must be considered what is meant for the subject as consciousness to obtain sense from its own temporal-being, in accordance with the authentic meaning that Husserl gives to the concept of transcendental.
    In the whole process of its self-reflection, of its Selbstbesinnung, the Ego remains ever included in the permanent – and transcendental – shape of temporality. As Husserl explains in an important passage of Cartesian Meditations, this process develops in “levels, all of which fit the universal persisting form, temporality, because the latter itself is built up in a continual, passive and completely universal genesis, which, as a matter of essential necessity, embraces everything new” (Hua I, tr. by D. Cairns, 1960, p. 80, first emphasis mine). Through the way of the phenomenological reduction, the subject reaches the heart (Kern) of its being, i.e. its existence by the form of a temporal being, from whom, with an historical-genetic route, it develops itself through the concrete forms of intentionality and constitutes itself as Monade-Ich with its objective-wordly system. In the 1920s, i.e. at the beginning of the genetic turn of his thought, Husserl writes about the transcendentality of time and its connection with the life of subject: “Ich, das transzendentale Ich, lebe ein transzendentales Leben, das sich in kontinuierlicher transzendentaler Erfharung in einer eigenen transzendentalen Zeitform  darstellt» (Hua VIII, 1959, p. 86, emphasis mine).
    Husserl calls the urtümlicher Kern by the name of lebendige Gegenwart, whose originality is such, only if it is possible to consider the living present as the structure of consciousness-stream, and, for this reason, as anterior to the Ego’s intentionality itself, as its condition. Nevertheless, I do not intend to say that there is in Husserlian philosophy any dimension without the Ego; and yet, if there is a temporal permanent form for which the Ego has to be suitable, regarding its self-constitution as original temporality, it is possible to see an asymmetry between time and subject; this asymmetry does not mean the disappearance of Ego, but makes it difficult to understand in which sense the subject is still original. The Ego, in the original movement of self-constitution as lebendige Gegenwart, assumes the temporal form and in it, only in it and by it, achieves its own irreducible transcendental unity. So, the intentionality of the subject derives from the original gesture of Selbst-Zeitigung, which is an Ur-Faktum that precedes any constitutions and, for this reason, is the Ur-Quelle for each sense and meaning.
    The enigma of lebendige Gegenwart, as  Klaus Held correctly called it (see Held, 1966, pp. 94-122), has its origin in the ambiguous relationship that develops between time and subject within the phenomenological horizon; an enigmatic situation, where, nevertheless, it seems clear that the subject, when revealing itself originally as temporal, becomes part of a genetic process, that is dominated by a diachrony; the subject is not able to determine this diachrony,  but, on the contrary, it has to be suitable for it. The consequences of this diachronic asymmetry could be serious for phenomenology, because they concern its theoretical and methodological premise, that has an eidetic perspective, which is the origin of the subjective apriori. The premise of phenomenology is the un-historical ideality of constituent sense; nevertheless, the subject is temporal by essence and, in its original development, it moves within temporality. This temporality transcends the subject in a transcendental meaning, to be precise, in a constituent meaning. The temporal being of the subject means its innate historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), which contradicts the essentialist request of phenomenology. Instead of the irreell motionless eidos, subjectivity seems to move ab initio within the strömend-werdend shape of time and history, that are an apriori that the reduction reveals, but does not determine. 
    Time, as the original form of passive genesis, is the transcendental history where subjectivity always, immer schon, finds itself. As a transcendental history, time is the ultimate genesis; nothing else lies beyond this dimension. Within time, every reality constitutes itself and finds its sense, because first of all the subject, chief reality, constitutes itself and derives its sense of being within the temporal historical-genetic shape. What does it mean that time is anterior to subjectivity? Does it bring into question the intentionality of the Ego? The subject’s passivity, namely its being suitable to a genetic process, means first of all that you have to recognize the existence of a non-intentional shape, or, as Husserl says, a nicht-ichlich, Ich-fremde shape. Does this outcome represent the subject’s overcoming along with its eidos itself? It seems a paradox, an insuperable aporia. Or, on the contrary, could the phenomenological method, just as a method, in the strict sense of meta+hodos, of “through the way”, allow to cross this blind alley? I believe the answer belongs to this paradoxical essence of consciousness, i.e. to its temporal being.

   Under the way of the reduction, temporality constitutes the transcendental ground on which the subject’s life moves and this time resists the act’s reductive power. Once the reduction revealed (in the sense of  a-letheia) the inner structure of subjectivity, then time allowed the Ego to keep a lively memory of what is revealed. The will of the subject cannot intervene in time’s ultimate articulations, rather, it has to suit them; nevertheless, by the help of these articulations it can take possession of what always belongs to the subject itself. This appropriation occurs within an infinite and constant retention. According to this point of view, reducing means remembering, in the peculiar sense of German word Er-innern, i.e. an interiorizing movement (see Derrida, 1984, tr. by A. Bass, pp. 207-271). The flowing life of the Ego exists by the original shape of living present; this life goes before the awareness that the subject has about it once the reduction is carried out. In this sense, the Lebensstrom is vor-ichlich. And nevertheless, in an other sense, the I, as it returns on itself, through a methodological and transcendental self-reflection, gives a specific sense to the being of the original flow, and, in this way, the subject carries out the inmost and fundamental Sinngebung. As Husserl writes: „Das Leben geht immer vorher des auslegende Methode, und die Methode ist selbst Leben usw. Aber die denkende Auslegung stellt dies erst fest, dass es so ist, das ist ihr Ergebnis, und so geht sie dem Sein im Sinn der Wahrheit voraus“ (Hua XXXIV, 2002, p. 175, emphasis mine). That is the originality of the Ego. The asymmetry and diachrony of time and subject mean therefore a relationship which is based on an original alterity; the same structure of the Ego is relational, because of the feature of essence, in accordance with which the I is fundamentally consciousness-of, Bewusst-von, namely it is articulated by the intentional manners of relationship. This structure emerges in awareness only on the level of the phenomenological attitude and reveals the Ur-Form of the subject’s life: the relationship between temporality and consciousness. Because of the subjective root of this relationship, its two poles are determined in their actual reality only a subiecti, through that Sinngebung, which allows the possibility to recognize the relation itself. The phase displacement between time and subject is therefore functional to the phenomenological method, which works in the wake of this original alterity. 
    Uncovering the relational being of subjectivity allows to understand its relationship with the world. Indeed, through the reduction to its authentic being, the I sheds light on its own original articulation and, from that, it returns to the world, which is grasped in its essential correlation to the subject. Only phenomenology, through the method of reduction, sees the inner connection between world and subject and grasps its hearth in the temporal structures of the consciousness field, whose study becomes necessary as the true way (hodos) to the genuine understanding of reality.  The concept of “constitution” that refers to the activity of the subject’s intentional-temporal Sinngebung, is the link on which the relationship I-world takes roots. The phenomenological descriptions, which retrace  the Ego’s structures to the original sphere (Kernsphäre) of living present, culminates in the recognition of the correlation between subjectivity and world; this correlation is based on the unique apodictic premise of phenomenology: the thinkable-being of the world – in accordance with the consciousness structures. This premise is what presses the philosopher to go all over the ways of self-reflecting method and it proves its validity by the discovery of constitutive subject’s relational-being, i.e. intentionality, which means the Ego’s theoretical opening to the alterity of transcendence. At this point, the subjective structures become the filter through which it is possible to read the sense of the world. So, the concept of time, though it corrodes the proposition of supremacy of the subject, develops the authentic possibility of phenomenology, because temporality is finally the origin and the structure of subject, which is the being that makes the transcendental - phenomenological turning as its theoretical and ontological fulcrum.
    Hence, the future of phenomenology is inscribed within the phenomenology itself, since the subject is structured so as to develop the phenomenological method and, once the reduction is started, the subject cannot have forgotten what appeared to its look, namely its origin, which is at the same time an infinite history. As a method, phenomenology means going back up the various ways of this history, through a continual reflection, a constant return on itself, which assumes the form of specific anamnesis in order to try to cure the Krisis of our being-in-the-world. The phenomenological attitude seems to be moved by a philosophical nostalgia, which presses to undertake a recherche du temps perdu. But this nostalgia does not become poetry, rather it aims to gain the features of a rigorous science, which has the endless consciousness field as object and, in a fertile paradox, as also subject of research. Studying the inner life of subject, its living present, entails a philosophy in touch with a living present that shows the topicality of phenomenology as a method of research, also with regard to the new sciences which study the questions of mind, consciousness and brain (see, e.g., Marbach, 1993).
   Husserl taught us that understanding the subject means understand its temporal being and understanding its temporal being helps to understand its being-in-the-world.