PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION Aalborg Universtetsbibiotek '530000983429-— ANAL029102551 CONTENTS Preface pase vi INTRODUCTION: TRADITIONAL PREJUDICES ‘AND THE RETURN TO PHENOMENA. 1 The Sensation’ asa Unit of Experience 3 2 “Associaton” andthe "Projection of Memories a 3 “Altetion’ and Judgement 6 “4 The Phenomenal Field 2 PART ONE: THE BODY Experience and objetve thought. The problem of the body 67 1 The Body as Object and Mechanistic Pysology 2 2 The Experience ofthe Body and Classical Psychology 90 13 The Sputalty of One's own Body and Motity 38 4 The Syatheis of One's own Boy 8 5 The Body in its Sexual Being 134 6 The Body as Expression, and Speech m4 PART TWO: THE WORLD AS PERCEIVED “The theory of the body i already a theory of perepton 20 1 Sense Experience 207 2 Space 2 3 The Thing andthe Natural World 9 “4 Other Selves and the Human World a6 PART THREE: BEING-FOR-ITSELF AND BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AARON UNWERSITETSCENTER 1 The Cogito ms ‘iverstetbiolkel 2 Temporality aio 3 Freedom 4 Bibliography as Index aPREFACE WHAT is phenomenology? It may seem strange that this question has still tobe asked alfa century after the ist works of Husser. The fact remains that thas by no means been answered. Phenomendlogy is the study of essences; and according toi all problems amount to finding defiitions ofesences: the cessence of perception, orthe essence ‘of consciousness, for example. But phenomenology it also a pio ‘sophy which puts essence back int existence, and doesnot expect to arsive at an understanding of man and the world from any stating point other than that oftheir actiiy. It isa transcendental pil Sophy which places in abeyance the asertions arising out of the natural attitude, the beter to understand them; but itis leo a pilo- Sophy for which the world is alway ‘already there’ before reflection begins—as'an inalienable presence; andallits efforts are concentrated ‘upon reachieving a direct and primitive contact with the world, and endowing that contact with a philosophical status Iti the search for 8 philosophy which shall bea ‘rigorous science’, but it also offers aa Account of space, time and the world as we live them. It tries to give 8 direct description of our experience asi is, without taking aceount of its psychological origin and the causal explanations which the Scientist, the historian or the sociologist may beable to provide. Yet ‘Huser in his last works mentions a “genetic phenomenology’ and ‘even a ‘constructive phenomenology’ One may try to do away with these contradictions by making a distinction between Huser’ and Heidegger's phenomenologies; yet the whole of Seln und Zeit springs from an indication given by Huser! and amounts to no more than an ‘explicit account ofthe ‘natlcher WeltbegrfT” ofthe ‘Lebenswelt which Husser, towards the end of his lif, identified as the central theme of phenomenology, with the result that the contradiction te= appears in Husser!’s own philosophy. The reader pressed for time will be inlined to pve up the idea of covering a doctrine which says everything, and will wonder whether a philosophy which cannot Aefine is scope deserves all the discussion which has gone on around it, and whether he isnot faced rather by a myth or & fashion 1 Méstation cartenner op, 20. 1 Sete opsblahel Si Wedaaton creme, ete by Bagn Pak 0 ido erper as tndy rated =<Even if this were the case there would stil be a need to understand the prestige ofthe myth andthe origin ofthe fashion, and the opinion ‘of the responsible philosopher must be that phenomenology can be ‘practised and identified asa manner or style of thinking hat it existed Gia movement before arriving at somplete awareness of self as a ‘Philosophy I hasbeen long on the way, and is adherens have ds- ‘Covered it in every quarter, certainly in Hegel and Kierkegaard, but ‘equally in Mars, Nietzsche and Freud. A purely linguistic examina- tion ofthe texts in question would yield ao proof; we find in texts ‘only what we put oto them, and if ever any Kind of history has sug- ‘gested the interpretations which should be put ont itis the history of Philosophy. We shall ind in ourselves, and nowhere else, the uty [and true meaning of phenomenology It is ess a question of counting ‘up quotations than of determining and expressing in concrete form ‘this phenomenology for ourselves which has given a numberof present- day readers the impression, on reading Huser or Heidepaet, not so ‘much of encountering a new philosophy as of recognizing what they had been waiting for. Phenomenology is acessble only through & ‘phenomenological method. Let us, therefore, try systematically to bring together the celebrated phenomenological themes as they have {grown spontaneously together in life. Perhaps we shall then under- and why phenomenology bas forso long remained a aninitil stage, faz. problem tobe solved and a hope to be realized Ic is a matter of descbing, not of explaining or analysing. Hsser' fist directive to phenomenology i is early stages, to be a “descriptive psychology’, or to return tothe ‘things themselves’ is from the tarts foreswearing of science. Lam not the outcome or the rmecting-point of numerous causal agencies which determine my bodily or psychological make-up, Teantot conceive myself as nothing ‘but abit oF the world, a mere object of biological, psychological or sociological investigation. I eannot shut myself up within the realm of fcieace, Ally knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of view, or from some experience ofthe World without which the symbols of science would be mesningles. The whole universe of science is built upon the world at ditetly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive ata precise assesment of its meaning land scope, we must begin by eawakening the basic experience ofthe ‘World of which scence is the second-order expression, Science has hot and never will have, by its nature, the same significance qua form ‘of being asthe world which we perceive, forthe simple reason that it isarationale or explanation of that world. Lam, nota'livingcreature’ fot even a ‘man’, nor again even ‘a consciousness’ endowed with all the characterstis which zoology socal anatomy or inductive psycho- logy recognize in these various products ofthe natural or historical procesr—am the absolute soute, my existence doesnot stem from fy antecedents, from my physical and social environment; instead it moves out towards them and sustains them, for I alone bring into ‘being for myself (and therefore into being inthe only sense that the word can have for me) the tradition which I elect to carry on, o the horizon whose distance from me would be abolished—since that distance ie not one ofits propertis—ifT were not there to scan it with ‘my gaze. Scientific points of view, according to which my enstenceis ‘moment ofthe work's, ae always both naive and at the same time Sishonest, because they take for granted, without explicitly mention- ing it, th other point of view, namely that of consciousness, through ‘which fom the outset a world forms itself round me and begins to exist forme. To return to things themselves i o etur to that world ‘which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in Felation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and “erivaive sgn-langusge, as is geography in relation tothe country- ‘sie in which we have lent beforehand what a forest, a prairie o “This move is absolutely distinct from the idealist return to con- sciousness, andthe demand fora pure description excludes equally the procedute of analytical reflection on the one hand, and that of scent explanation on the other. Descartes and particularly Kant ‘detached the subject, or consciousness, by showing that I could not possibly apprehend anythingas existing unless I fist of allexperienced rysel s existing in the act of apprehending it. They presented con- sSousnes, the absolute certainty of my existence for myself, as the ‘condition of there being anything at all; andthe act of relating a the basis of relatedness I is tru thatthe act of relating is nothing if divorced from the spectacle of the world in which relations are found; the unity of consciousness in Kant is achieved simultaneously with that ofthe world. And in Descartes methodical doubt doesnot ‘deprive us of anything, since the whole world, atleast in so far as we ‘experience itis reinstated in the Copte enjoying equal cetaiaty, and ‘imply labelied “hought of... But the relations between subject ‘and World are not sticdy bilateral: if they were, the certznty of the world would, in Descartes, be immediately given with that of the Cogito, and Kant would not have talked about his ‘Copernican evolution’. Analytical rection starts from our experience of the ‘world and goes back to the subject as to a condition of possbilit Gistinet from that experience, revealing the allembracing synthe that without which there would be no world. To this extent it ceases toremain part of our experience and offers, in place ofan account, &