Читать книгу Phenomenology of Productive Imagination: Embodiment, Language, Subjectivity - Saulius Geniusas - Страница 16

A common objection against Husserl’s phenomenology of phantasy is that Husserl degrades phantasy to the point of being a frail replica of perception. Allegedly, his phenomenology can do no more than open up the inferior and incomplete presence, which is fundamentally secondary when compared to the full bodily presence, characteristic of perceptually given reality (see Ricœur unpublished; Drost 1990; Sallis 1992). Proponents of this objection claim that, in his reflections on phantasy, “Husserl has virtually reconstituted one of the oldest oppositions, that between image and original, reconstituted it precisely in its traditional role of serving for the differentiation of presence” (Sallis 1992, 203).

The foregoing analysis suggests that this widespread objection is an instance of a misplaced criticism. Admittedly, Husserl qualifies phantasy as an essentially reproductive mode of consciousness. However, the analysis here offered clearly shows that Husserl conceives of phantasy as essentially reproductive in the noetic sense of the term, a conception which, nonetheless, leaves open the possibility to conceptualize it as productive noematically. This happens in at least in three different ways: First, phantasy can intend objects and scenes, which do not copy perceived reality. Second, it opens a path for pure possibilities, which make up the field of phenomenology. Third, it proves to be indispensable for transcendental socialization and for the constitution of cultural reality.

Admittedly, in Husserl’s published and unpublished writings, we do not come across a systematic analysis of the role that imagination plays in the constitution of cultural worlds. Nonetheless, I have tried to show in this chapter that Husserl does indeed leave us with a set of clues, and that these clues provide the basis to maintain a robust conception of imagination, a conception that performs a vital role in the process of world constitution. My goal here has been to follow these clues in a way that highlights the indispensable role reserved for phantasy in Husserlian phenomenology.

One of the great achievements of Husserlian phenomenology of imagination lies in its capacity to clarify the structure of productive phantasy. According to the structural interpretation I here offered, productive phantasy should not be conceived as a phantasmatic intending of sensuous objects within the perceptual field, but instead as a transference of meaning from the field of phantasy to the field of actuality. On such basis rests my claim that phantasy is productive, not because of its alleged capacity to permeate perceptual consciousness, but rather because it can generate patterns of meaning, which subsequently shape our subjective and intersubjective experiences of things and of the world at large. It is this transference of meaning from the field of phantasy to the field of actuality that justifies the Wittgensteinian insight that seeing always involves “seeing as.” And yet, even though it justifies this Wittgensteinian insight, it does not abandon the Sartrean view that phantasy and perception represent two incompatible attitudes of consciousness.

In his early work, Husserl held the position that Kant’s concept of productive imagination lacked phenomenological justification. While Kant conceived of imagination as a specific faculty, or as a power of the mind (Einbildungskraft), which is supposed to bridge the gap between the other two faculties, namely, between the understanding and sensibility, Husserl generally considered the theme of faculty psychology to be illegitimate for phenomenology. When viewed from a phenomenological standpoint, imagination is not a faculty, but is, rather, like perception and memory, a specific modality of intuitive consciousness, which has a distinct structure that calls for phenomenological clarification. Thus, in a recent essay on Husserl’s and Kant’s respective conceptions of imagination, Maxime Doyon argues that “in Husserl’s phenomenology, and contrary to Kant’s, the imagination does not assume a synthetic or transcendental function in perception” (Doyon 2019, 180). More precisely, “the result of Husserl’s transformation of Kant’s transcendental conception of perceptual intentionality is that there is no need to have recourse to the imagination to explain these experiences” (Doyon 2019, 184). These experiences concern the amodal character of perception (that is, the recognition that what we experience is not just a profile of a thing, but the thing itself), the identity of a perceptual object across time, and the subsumption of the manifold under a specific perceptual schema. But if Doyon is right, then the current ambition to inquire into the role that productive imagination plays in Husserl’s phenomenology might appear anachronistic. In short, Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination is a phenomenology of Phantasie, not a phenomenology of Einbildungskraft. However, by the time he turned to genetic phenomenology, Husserl explicitly spoke of Kant’s great discovery of the “twofold operations of understanding” (see, for instance, Kern 1964, §22 and §23, Depraz 1998, 39, Jansen 2010, 145-146). In this context, we should not overlook one of the supplementary texts published in Hua XI (for the English translation, see Husserl 2001), which explicitly focuses on Kant’s doctrine of productive imagination (see Husserl 2001, 410). In this text, written in 1920/21, Husserl speaks of “Kant’s brilliant insights” from his “profound but obscure doctrine of the synthesis of productive imagination.” Much like Heidegger after him, although for significantly different reasons, Husserl expresses his admiration for the First Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: “but in our view, that is nothing other than what we call passive constitution…” (see Husserl 2001, 410). More precisely, Husserl calls the Deduction carried out in the First Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason the “subjective deduction,” while also identifying the Deduction carried out in the Second Edition as the “objective deduction.” He stresses the importance that imagination plays in the subjective deduction and contends that the synthesis of imagination in the subjective deduction paves the way for what Husserl himself calls “genetic constitution.” By contrast, objective deduction, Husserl contends, obscures the possibility of genetic constitution, since it confers the leading role not to imagination, but to understanding. However, as Natalie Depraz remarks, “Husserl never fully elucidated his own theory of imagination in the course of his analysis of passivity” (Depraz 1998, 30). Taking this into account, we can say that in the genetic framework, Husserl reinterpreted Kant’s distinction between sensibility and understanding as the distinction between passive and active synthesis.28 No less importantly, Husserl’s reflections on the constitution of monadic intersubjectivity open the possibility to claim that, in the absence of productive imagination, transcendental subjectivity would remain largely enclosed within its sphere of ownness in the sense that it could not constitute higher level objectivities, conceived as unities of sense that arise in the unanimity of intersubjective experience.

The approach I have here presented opens the possibility to interpret the plurality of cultural worlds as diverse configurations of meaning. These diverse configurations of meaning are the constitutive accomplishments of productive phantasy, which are irreducibly social and historical. Despite Husserl’s explicit concern that Kant’s transcendental imagination cannot find phenomenological justification, his phenomenology provides a highly intriguing reinterpretation of Kant’s view that imagination, when it takes the form of schematism, turns out to be “a secret art residing in the depths of the human soul, an art whose true stratagems we shall hardly ever divine from nature and lay bare before ourselves” (Kant 2007, A141/B181). When reinterpreted phenomenologically, productive imagination turns out to be “an art” hidden in the depths of the human body, whose true operations are to be divined from the cultural world itself. I speak of imagination being hidden in the body, rather than in the soul, because, as it has been demonstrated in this chapter, phantasy proves to be productive when it creatively appropriates configurations of sense from other subjectivities, whose constitution first and foremost relies upon their embodied presence. Yet this is not the only reason why we are able to characterize productive imagination as a secret power hidden in the body, rather than in the soul. As we will see in the next chapter, productive phantasy is strongly bound to drives, desires and instincts. This justifies the claim that productive imagination is bound to the body in a different sense from the one that was articulated in this chapter.

1 Here I am alluding to the distinction between image consciousness (Bildbewußtsein) and phantasy (Phantasie) that is of fundamental importance in Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination. We can understand the difference between them as a difference between seeing an image of an object in a photograph or on a smartphone screen and having a direct phantasy of an object without the mediation of any material object whatsoever. In other words, image consciousness is a type of intentional consciousness that is founded in a perception of an object, which, apperceived as an image, refers to a different object. By contrast, phantasy is not founded in the perception of any object, but is a quasi-perception of an imagined object.

2 Daniele de Santis is right to point out that a meaningful discussion of the intermediate position of Einbildungskraft presupposes a duality of Sinnlichkeit and Verstand. “Now, has not Husserl himself dismissed and abandoned that “duality” once and for all?” (De Santis 2019, 270) Already in his early work, Husserl replaces the opposition of Sinnlichkeit and Verstand with the distinction between meaning intentions and meaning fulfillment. Yet, when it comes to this duality, there is no need for a mediating term. It thus seems that in the framework of Husserl’s phenomenology the concept of Einbildungkraft is superfluous.

3 As Natalie Depraz puts it, “for the phenomenologist, imagination is nothing like a faculty, a power of the mind, as it is for a classical and even a Kantian interpretation. Like perception and remembrance, imagination is an act of consciousness, but one which does not entail that the intended object would have to be posited as existent or as real” (Depraz 1998, 29).

4 There are, however, some noteworthy exceptions. While discussing “how a passive synthesis can be a synthesis of the imagination” (Depraz 1998, 31), Natalie Depraz argues that an implicit phenomenology of productive phantasy runs through Husserl’s writings and that the task of phenomenology is to render explicit what in Husserl is only implicit. So also, in his noteworthy analyses of phenomenology and psychoanalysis, Rudolf Bernet has presented a compelling way to speak of productive phantasy in phenomenology. His analysis leads to the realization that just as perception can be independent of a prior phantasy, so phantasy, too, can be independent of a prior perception; and just as perception can actualize a prior phantasy, so also, a phantasy can replicate a former perception. In short, both phantasy and perception are equiprimordial, which means that they can enter into an intimate relation, thereby replicating the content from one sphere to the other (see Bernet 2003, especially 209-210). See also Andreea Smaranda Aldea’s recent article, where she presents her analysis of the subversive dimension of imagination and defends the compelling view that “what presents itself in everyday intelligibility processes under the guise of metaphysical necessity is actually naturalized contingency” (Aldea 2019, 209). See also the recent contribution by Augustin Dumont, where he argues that imagination gives the “impetus to a style in the actual perception of an object” (Dumont 2019, 302). Dumont goes on to suggest that “the entire world may be dependent on Phantasie, that is to say, on what Husserl calls a pure possibility” (Dumont 2019, 303). See also my recent contribution, which this chapter is based on (Geniusas 2020b).

5 As Paul Ricœur has argued in his studies of productive imagination, which will be addressed in detail in the later chapters of this study, insofar as one conceptualizes imagination alongside perception as a distinct type of intentional consciousness, one inevitably ends up limiting imagination to its reproductive function. Ricœur thus asks: “if an image is not derived from perception, how can it be derived from language?” (Ricœur 1991, 121) So also, in the framework of his analysis of Husserlian phenomenology of imagination, John Sallis speaks of a “reorientation prompted by several of Husserl’s analyses … despite the massive constraints that Husserl thus employs to restrict imagination to the horizon of perception. It is preeminently a matter of reorienting the analysis to the site of appearing …. It is, then, at this site, in the appearing of the image-object, that the hold of presence is broken and imagination is drawn to spacing” (Sallis 1992, 212-213).

6 Besides being merely reproductive, as in Peter’s case, imagination can also be combinatory, as in the case of mermaids or unicorns. Yet combinatory imagination is essentially reducible to reproductive imagination: its fundamental elements (a horse and a horn, in the case of a unicorn, or a woman and a fish, in the case of a mermaid) are reproductive copies of pregiven reality.

7 Although Husserl himself rarely focused on the various accounts of phenomena that we come across in the history of philosophy, in Text No. 20 in Hua XXIII, after indicating that “‘phantasy’ is already related to the sphere of reproduction in Aristotle,” Husserl further notes that the history of philosophy has not succeeded in clarifying the meaning of reproduction: “To be sure, the linguistic usage at present is not entirely univocal” (Husserl 2005, 692).

8 Thus, with regard to the manuscripts collected in Hua XXIII (for the English translation, see Husserl 2005), Eduard Marbach—the editor of the volume—writes: “In der Tat dokumentieren die Texte, die in vorliegendem Bande zur Veröffentlichung gelangen, eindringlich Husserls Weg von der Lehre der Phantasie bzw. Erinnerung als einer Form von Bildbewusstsein über die Kritik dieser am gewöhnlichen Sprachgebrauch sich orientierenden ‚Bildtheorie’ und den Ansatz der schlichten Vergegenwärtigung zur Theorie der intentional komplexen Reproduktion von Akten, die in Verbindung mit den Setzungsmodalitäten (Aktualität, belief—Inaktualität, Neutralität) zu studieren ist“ (Hua XXIII, LI).

9 For the English translation, see Husserl 2005.

10 In another manuscript, published as Appendix XXXIII in Hua XXIII, Husserl further conceptualizes such an act of mere apparency as time-constituting consciousness. Husserl suggests that the act of mere apparency could be also qualified as an impression, yet only if we understand impressions in a broad sense. In the narrow sense, the concept of impression applies to those experiences which unfold in the abstract and formal now that lacks any kind of temporal extension. In this regard, Husserl distinguishes impressions from retentions and protentions. In a broad sense, the concept of impression marks the unity of the originary present, the originary just-having-been and the originary yet-to-come. In this broad sense, the concept of impression excludes reproductions, conceived as reiterations of impressions, retentions, and protentions. In this broad sense, the concept of impression signifies the act of mere apparency.

11 As Husserl famously puts it in §111 of Ideas I, “universally phantasying is the neutrality modification of ‘positing’ presentification, therefore of memory in the widest conceivable sense (Husserl 1983, 260). With this in mind, we can represent the Husserlian view of different forms of intuitive consciousness as follows: while impressional consciousness is original, retentional consciousness is a modification of impressional consciousness; a reproductive consciousness – which Husserl qualifies as a memory (Erinnerung), and which must be further conceived in its three modalities as a memory of the past (Wiedererinnerung), a memory of the present (Miterinnerung), and a memory of the future (Vorerinnerung) – is a further modification of retentional consciousness. Following this logic further, phantasy can be qualified as a neutralizing modification of memory (Erinnerung).

12 We are to understand “by empty intentions” those intentional rays that help consciousness intend the absent features of the intended object. The distinction between phantasy consciousness and empty consciousness is essential not only to Husserl’s but also to Sartre’s classical account of imagination in his The Imaginary (see Sartre 2004, 120-122).

13 As we will see in the later chapters of this study, many post-Husserlian phenomenologists question this view.

14 Husserl’s remarks in Text Nr. 1 in Hua XXIII thereby become more understandable: “[a] phantasy thing does not appear in perception’s field of regard but instead appears, so to speak, in an entirely different world” (Husserl 2005, 62). Precisely because phantasy consciousness is a modified consciousness, consciousness necessarily forestalls positing its object as a real being. With this in mind, Bernet emphasizes that “knowledge of the phantasy qua phantasy obviously belongs to the performance of phantasy itself. Phantasy knows itself as phantasy because it is an inner reproductive consciousness of a (quasi)-perception” (Bernet 2003, 209).

15 I do not mean to suggest that Sartre’s account of imagination is exclusively an account of reproductive imagination and that it is incompatible with any account of productive imagination. Such a view has been brought into question in recent literature. See especially Lau 2018 and Levy 2019. I will return to this issue in the later chapters of this study.

16 Apperception is a matter of intending something that is not originally present as if it were originally present: this is the core meaning of the concept that we come across in highly diverse contexts of analysis in Husserl’s phenomenology. See in this regard Geniusas 2020a.

17 Transformation of this nature can take place in the framework of perceptual consciousness; however, when it comes to analogical apperception, which is constitutive of the Other, such a transformation is in principle excluded. The constitution of intermonadic community will be the focus of the next section.

18 For a detailed analysis of the concept of motivation in phenomenology, see Husserl 1989. Also consider the following account from Husserl’s Lectures on Passive Synthesis: “By viewing an object I am conscious of the position of my eyes and at the same time—in the form of a novel systematic empty horizon—I am conscious of the entire system of possible eye positions that rest at my disposal. And now, what is seen in the given eye position is so enmeshed with the entire system that I can say with certainty that if I were to move my eyes in this direction or in that, specific visual appearances would accordingly run their course in a determinate order.” (Husserl 2001, 51)

19 As Bernet puts it, just as perception implies the possibility of a phantasy modification, so also, “phantasy implies the possibility of a perception” (Bernet 2003, 210).

20 For a detailed discussion of such mixed experiences, see Ferencz-Flatz 2009.

21 As Husserl remarks in §26 in the Third Cartesian Meditation, “we can be sure something is actual only by virtue of a synthesis of evident verification, which presents rightful or true actuality itself” (Husserl 1960, 60). As he further remarks, “it is evidence alone by virtue of which an ‘actually’ existing, true, rightly accepted object of whatever form or kind has sense for us” (ibid).

22 In the critical literature on the Cartesian Meditations, it was Ricœur who stressed the important role that the imagination plays in the constitution of the alter ego (see Ricœur 1967, 128-129). According to Ricœur, it is though the imagination that the ego coordinates the perspectives of the alter ego. This coordination is indispensable not only for the constitution of the alter ego, but also for the constitution of the common world. It is unfortunate that, in his commentary, Ricœur did not elaborate upon this insight in any great detail. My hope is that the following remarks will fill this gap in the literature.

23 As Tanja Stehler insightfully remarks, “no matter how hard I try to take the Other as a mere abstraction, that is, as a mere physical object, the Other will alert me that there is an alien sphere of ownness that is inaccessible to me, or accessible in the mode of inaccessibility” (Stehler 2008, 112)

24 For Husserl’s own discussion of the significance of communication in the constitution of a common world, see Husserl 1989, §51.

25 In “Phenomenology as Archeology vs. Contemporary Hermeneutics,” Angela Ales Bello brings such a view into question, and for legitimate reasons. With references to anthropologically-oriented studies of primitive societies, she writes: “the primitive undoubtedly sees the tree, he is well aware of its remoteness or proximity, but what significance does the tree have for him? It may be that not all tress have a sacral-cultural significance for him, but one may well wonder whether the trees are then ‘things’ of a nature seen ‘naturalistically’ or even ‘mechanistically’” (Bello 1991, 13). We will have good reasons to come back to this theme in Chapter III, when we turn to Scheler’s account of productive imagination.

26 The view of imagination that I am here presenting finds further confirmation in the enactivist’s account of imagination. The enactivist claims that imagination is not so much a matter of seeing, but of doing, a claim which emphasizes the embodied and social nature of imagination. Resisting the spectatorial view of the imagination, which depicts imagination as an inner theater, the enactivist’s account emphasizes that, as Medina puts it, imagination is “something that we do, something that requires active participation” (See especially Medina 2013, 319). According to the enactivist, imaginings are not “in the head” but are “rehearsals of embodied and interactive explorations of the world” (Medina 2013, 320). According to the view I am here presenting, rehearsals of this nature underlie our transcendental socialization. The enactivist further corroborates this view by interpreting the expressive behavior of non-human animals as proto-enactive imagination.

27 In Husserl’s own words, “that every such predicate of the world accrues from a temporal genesis and, indeed, one that is rooted in human undergoing and doing, needs no proof…. With this continual change in the human lifeworld, manifestly the men themselves also change as persons, since correlatively they must always be taking on new habitual properties” (Husserl 1960, 135).

28 Consider in this regard Dieter Lohmar’s telling remark: “For Kant, sensibility is a ‘turmoil,’ a ‘chaos,’ as long as the understanding does not intervene and regulate it through concepts. Husserl, however, departs from Kant at this point, for he believes that there are in sensibility so-called ‘prominent features’ (Abgehobenheiten), which stand out (abheben) in ‘passive synthesis’ in contrast to homogeneous and heterogenous realm in the field of intuition” (Lohmar 2003, 115). With this in mind, we can confirm Julia Jansen’s insightful observation that “Kant’s distinction between intellect and transcendental imagination is transformed by Husserl into the distinction between ‘active synthesis’ and passive synthesis’” (Jansen 210, 146).