Thinking that Grounds: Toward an Understanding of History and Phenomenological

Method

Abstract

Here I investigate the connections between notions of phenomenological reduction, unreflective

and reflective consciousness, and history in the early philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Jean-
Paul Sartre’s writings on phenomenology. I do so to locate and clarify a concept that seems to
me unclear in treatments of phenomenology – namely, what history is and how it is a problem
for formulations of phenomenological consciousness. I define phenomenological consciousness
as consciousness described according to phenomenological methods. My argument is that
descriptions of consciousness by Husserl and Sartre rely upon a distinction between thinking and
knowledge where the latter is derivative of the former. This means that said descriptions of
consciousness are attempts to ground human knowledge via recourse to an originary act of
thought. Phenomenological consciousness constitutes anew the problem of history as a concept
anterior to consciousness by at once acknowledging the validity of the sciences as bodies of
knowledge that are artefactual in nature – that is, constituted by record – while positing a
disjuncture between the immediacy of consciousness and mediacy of knowledge. Mediacy is
aligned with a kind of historical constitution that seems external to the immediacy and
spontaneity of thought. Fields of knowledge are external insofar as they not only exceed
individual perspectives in being common, or universal, but also anterior to the immediacy of
thought. Thus, thinking is a priori to knowledge, but knowledge historically is a priori to
thought. The problem of grounding knowledge in thought is then, in part, the problem of
approaching anteriority in one’s present, the problem of narrating an origin that constitutes one
of the central problems of history as a concept and as a discourse. As such, critiques of
phenomenology rooted in concerns about reifying what-is contra what-can-be must be engaged
at the level of what phenomenological reductions purport to do on the basis of the distinction
between thinking and knowledge, a point I unpack in my conclusion.
 Annotated Bibliography

Theodor Adorno. Negative Dialektik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1966.

I briefly examine Adorno’s critiques of Husserl, Bergson, and Heidegger. The critique is
relatively similar vis-à-vis all three thinkers and extends into the larger treatment of what is at
stake in rethinking dialectics and systematic thinking according to negativity, rather than what
Adorno sees as a positivity that is recalcitrant in post-Hegelian thought. This critique is
important to consider for the present paper because Adorno draws basic phenomenological
ideas into a larger discussion of what philosophy is and can be with regard to thinking and
history broadly speaking. 1-2 Paragraphs.

Theodor Adorno. Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,
1966.

I focus on Adorno’s notion of concepts, the difference between positive Hegelian and his
own negative dialectics, and the differences between systems of philosophy and thinking
systematically. These are important aspects to consider alongside of Adorno’s direct critiques of
phenomenology because his own constructive position appears at times in stark contrast and
with interesting similarities to phenomenological questions raised in the works I cite by Husserl,
Heidegger, Sartre, and Marion. 1-2 Paragraphs.

Enrique Dussel. La filosofía de la liberación. Segunda reimpresión FCE. Ciudad de México:

Fondo Cultural Económico. 2015.

I briefly examine Dussel’s relationship to the Levinasian distinction between ontology

and metaphysics, and the implications of this distinction for his positioning of phenomenology as
a discourse that can only speak to what-is rather than what can be. The political critique is
already evident at this juncture. As for Levinas, Dussel is concerned with preserving a notion of
hope that will allow for liberative praxis. Phenomenology it seems can only ever deliver
descriptions of what already is the case and is thus incapable of being liberative vis-à-vis the
condition of what already is. I will do this in my concluding section following a reading of
Levinas. 2-4 Paragraphs.

J.G. Fichte. Über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre. Leipzig: Fritz Eckhardt Verlag, 1911

Here, in conjunction with my points about how Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre position
their comments regarding consciousness, I explicate Fichte’s argument for why a “knowledge of
knowledge” requires a unifying principle or act. This question is taken up anew in Husserl and
Heidegger’s respective thinking vis-à-vis what phenomenology, or fundamental ontology, does
in relation to other modes of inquiry. By noting the similarities and differences between the
Fichtean and phenomenological treatments of this question of the relation between thinking and
inquiry, I am able to pose the question regarding whether phenomenology can be thought as a
true break from previous discourses. 1-2 Paragraphs.

Andrea Gentile. Bewusstsein, Anschauung und das Unendliche bei Fichte, Schelling und Hegel:
Über den unbedingten Grundsatz der Erkenntnis. Freiburg: Karl Alber Verlag, 2018.

I explicate Gentile’s descriptions of limit concepts, and what is at stake for Kant and
post-Kantian idealism. I put the description of what a Grundsatz is meant to do in dialogue with
a reading of what is at stake for Husserl and Heidegger in relation to other disciplines.

Martin Heidegger. Sein und Zeit. GA I. Bd. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977.

I highlight Heidegger’s description of phenomenology as apophantic and fundamental

ontology in the two introductory chapters.

Martin Heidegger. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. GA 1. Bd. 3. Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann, 1991.

I explicate Heidegger’s description of Kant’s first critique and place his reading into
dialogue with my readings of Sein und Zeit and Husserl and Sartre.

Edmund Husserl. Die Idee der Phänomenologie: fünf Vorlesungen. Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1950. 1973.

I pay attention to how Husserl describes phenomenology’s relation to other modes of

inquiry, and how Husserl defines the terms phenomenon, consciousness, reduction,
transcendence, and immanence. My goal is to provide a basic picture of how Husserl’s
conceived phenomenology in 1907, and to highlight how central the historical question is when
seen as coincident with the question about how thinking relates to modes of inquiry
(Wissenschaften).

Edmund Husserl. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1973.

I pay attention to how Husserl describes phenomenology’s relation to other modes of

inquiry and focus on his description of phenomena and other disciplines. I will pay close
attention to the way he aligns his notion of the reduction with Descartes. Between Die Idee and
this book, my goal is to explicate the stakes of Husserlian phenomenology as he conceived it to
this point in time.
Immanuel Kant. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1956.

I will highlight the basic contours of Kant’s notion of transcendental philosophy, his
notion of intuition, and his idea of a transcendental unity of apperception. I will read these
concepts within the context of distinction between thinking and knowledge. I will spend maybe
one paragraph or two between Kant and Fichte. 1-3 Paragraphs.

Angèle Kremer Mariette. Jean-Paul Sartre et le désir d’être : une lecture de L’être et le néant.
Paris : L’Harmattan, 2005.

I engage and rely upon Mariette’s book at many places for my interpretation of Sartre’s
book and his connections to German Idealism.

Emmanuel Levinas. Totalité et infini : essai sur l’extériorité. Paris : Livre de Poche, 1991.

I will describe Levinas’ distinction between ontology and metaphysics and why ethics is
taken up at first philosophy contrary to questions of cognition. In my concluding section I will be
attentive to how the notion of the other contributes to a notion of signification that at once
appears as a counterpoint to and a version of certain phenomenological notions of cognition
and engagement with others and the world. 2-4 Paragraphs.

Jean-Luc Marion. Étant donnée : essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation. Troisième édition
corrigée. Paris : Quadrige/ PUF, 2005.

I engage Marion’s recounting of the history of phenomenological reductions and his own
proposal for a third reduction. 3-4 paragraphs.

Quentin Meillassoux. Après la finitude  : essai sur la contingence. Paris : Seuil, 2008.

I briefly describe Meillassoux’s description of the problem of anteriority as a relevant

issue for phenomenologists given what reductions are meant to accomplish.

Liangkang Ni. “The Phenomenological-Ontological Dimension of Philosophy of History: The

Problem of History in Husserl and Heidegger.” Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2018
VOL. 10, NO. 1, 7–20 https://doi.org/10.1080/17570638.2018.1440496

I explicate Ni’s arguments and position myself not against, but adjacent to their readings
of Husserl and Heidegger. Where Ni seems to locate a distinction between Husserl and
Heidegger at the level of descriptions of phenomena, I argue that both are committed to
structurally similar arguments regarding how phenomenological insights are insights into the
relation between thinking and knowledge, whether said insights are about consciousness or
fundamental ontology.

Jean-Paul Sartre. L’être et le néant  : essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris : Gallimard,

1943.

I analyze main points from Sartre’s argument regarding consciousness, negation, and
being for and in itself. I look to the ways Sartre is concerned with feeling as a link to questions
regarding history. I rely upon the Angele Mariette’s book for my own consciousness of Sartre as
a philosopher of feeling.

Jean-Paul Sartre. La transcendance de l’ego : esquisse d’une description phénoménologique.

Paris : Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1966.

This is the Sartre text I engage the most. I explicate his descriptions of unreflective
consciousness, his description of phenomenology, Kant, and where both Husserl and Kant are
incorrect. The goal is to lay the groundwork in connection with Husserl for a discussion of how
the description of unreflective consciousness, not unreflective consciousness itself, is meant to
narratively ground a larger notion of cognition and the sciences.