HISTORY OF THE LIFEWORLD
FROM HUSSERL TO MERLEAU-PONTY
Phenomenology is often criticized by
poststructuralists1 and others for its ahistorical
approach, aiming to arrive at a priori structures
of consciousness and the world without situat-
ing them in a specific context. In this essay I
will examine the way in which Husserlian phe-
nomenology treats the question of concrete
historical changes in thinking and perception,
focusing on the lifeworld as a solution to the
crisis of modern culture. I will argue that
Husserl does not seem to integrate his own his-
torical findings in the phenomenological
structure of the lifeworld. However, such inte-
gration is possible if we apply Merleau-
Ponty’s concept of radical reflection as an
analysis of the past which is at the same time a
creation of the present and the future.
The Crisis of Sciences and the Crisis of
Humanity
The Crisis of European Sciences and Tran-
scendental Phenomenology, whose first two
parts were published by Husserl in 1936, an-
nounces, as indicates its title, a crisis.2 But al-
though we would expect the crisis to concern
the sciences alone, we soon learn that its extent
is much broader, affecting European humanity
as a whole.3
Husserl retraces the history of the crisis,
starting with the will of European culture dur-
ing the Renaissance to change its form of exis-
tence, aiming at an existence which would be,
as in ancient times, philosophical. Living
philosophically consists, says Husserl, in
“freely giving oneself, one’s whole life, its rule
through pure reason or through philosophy”
(CES 8). Renaissance society wanted to create
for itself a new foundation which would be
reason, leaning on philosophy as a theoretical
activity of observation and reflection, “unfet-
tered by myth and the whole tradition” (ibid.).
Moreover, it was not only a matter of the theo-
retical and scientific aspect of life, since “theo-
retical autonomy is followed by practical au-
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
294
Eran Dorfman
tonomy” (ibid.). This means “not only that
man should be changed ethically [but that] the
whole human surrounding world (Umwelt),
the political and social existence of mankind,
must be fashioned anew through free reason,
through the insights of a universal philosophy”
(ibid.).
However, continues Husserl, this ideal of
Renaissance, or more accurately of Enlighten-
ment, led quickly to a major disappointment
due to the ever growing gap between the suc-
cesses of the positive sciences on the one hand
and the failure to create a sustainable meta-
physics on the other hand. This failure, which
partly remained unexplained, entailed the
“collapse of the belief in ‘reason’” (CES 12),
“the collapse of the belief in a universal philos-
ophy as the guide for the new man,” and finally
the collapse of “the faith in the meaning of his-
tory, of humanity, the faith in man’s freedom,
that is, his capacity to secure rational meaning
for his individual and common human exis-
tence” (CES 13). Husserl claims that the his-
tory of philosophy has therefore become the
history of the struggle for the meaning of
existence, the struggle of humanity for its self-
understanding.
The task of philosophy prescribed by
Husserl is no less than the reestablishment of
the meaning of existence and the meaning of
humanity. But in order to achieve this task we
need first to understand the reasons and the ori-
gins of the crisis, which Husserl tries to capture
by criticizing the naïveté of modern rational-
ism. The latter, aiming at a totally new begin-
ning, has pretended to found everything upon
reason alone. Consequently it has seen itself as
a primary establishment or foundation, an
Urstiftung, but has forgotten or lost its roots,
that is its own foundation and ground. The
Husserlian enterprise in its final period con-
sisted in finding this forgotten foundation as a
condition of living a meaningful life. Philoso-
phy should no longer be considered as a theo-
FALL 2009
retical, sterile, and immobile reflection. From
now on it has the task of accompanying the hu-
man being and supporting him or her in the
perpetual struggle for finding and founding
meaning.
The Forgetfulness of Foundation
What, then, is this foundation, forgotten by
modern rationalism? And how can one find
and restore it? Husserl goes back to Galileo in
order to locate the historical moment in which
mathematization and idealization of the uni-
verse began. Every science, he tells us, is de-
pendent on observation and intuition, using
empirical and sensual data in order to proceed
in theory. It is the practical world of intuitive
experience which stands as the foundation
(Fundament) of the derived world of geometri-
cal and mathematical idealizations which
comes only later (CES 49). Galileo’s mistake
was to overlook this foundation of the ideal-
ized world and to ignore the immediate world
of intuition.4 But it is important to note that
Husserl does not reproach Galileo for his ide-
alizing method per se, but only for its blind
use. Science aims at an exact, measurable
world, but fails to acknowledge that if we re-
turn to intuitive experience itself, we never
arrive at exact forms but only at possible ones.
What does this mean? Intuitive experience
is a direct form of experience, prior to any ma-
nipulation, but also to any conceptual frame-
work. Therefore it does not consist of self-en-
closed, well-defined objects, but only of vague
and loose forms which Merleau-Ponty will
subsequently characterize as pre-objective.
These forms have not yet received a name, and
therefore incarnate a multitude of possibilities,
a variety of subsequent names, categories, and
objects which will be based on them. On the
other hand, scientific method, or more pre-
cisely naturalistic method, is an objectifying
one, aiming to reach exact, quantifiable cate-
gories and objects, which subsequently be-
come rigid and frozen, hiding any contingency
they may contain. Galileo, for instance, first
saw shapes, light and shade, which he only
subsequently grouped into objects. This is, of
course, the way science works, but one must
remember that these shapes, lights, and shades
could have been grouped differently and could
have become different objects. This is why
Husserl claims that inherited geometrical ide-
alizations, i.e., geometry that has been
instituted for a long time and consequently has
forgotten its foundation in intuition, loses its
vitality, vigor, and dynamism. It accepts
things, objects, and categories as they are and
therefore gets imprisoned in a narrow perspec-
tive. The crisis of the sciences (and of Euro-
pean humanity as a whole) is thus not only a
crisis of meaning, but also a crisis of an ever
shrinking field of possibilities, that is, a crisis
of action.5
It is thus no wonder that Husserl declares in
the 1935 Vienna Lecture that “Europe’s great-
est danger is weariness,” prescribing two ways
out of it: either barbarism, resulting from the
loss of faith in rationalism, or “the rebirth of
Europe from the spirit of philosophy through a
heroism of reason that overcomes naturalism
once and for all” (CES 299). We know today
all too well what option Europe took in the
thirties, but is it now taking a different one?
Can philosophy save European humanity by
overcoming naturalism “once and for all”?
And if so, how?
Lifeworld and the Crisis
Husserl suggests resolving the crisis of
Western civilization by returning to the hidden
foundation of any objectivity, that is, the world
of immediate experience and intuition. He
names this world lifeworld (Lebenswelt). But
once he begins to concretely describe the
lifeworld, something strange happens to the
descriptive point of view. Whereas in the intro-
duction to The Crisis Husserl depicts the crisis
of rational thinking from the angle of its histor-
ical development, this dimension gradually
disappears when it comes to the lifeworld.
Husserl acknowledges first the contextual di-
mension of the lifeworld, but he soon subordi-
nates it to a general, a priori structure: “But this
embarrassment disappears as soon as we con-
sider that the life-world does have, in all its rel-
ative features a general structure” (CES 139).
The lifeworld is, then, presented as an eternal,
universal, and ahistorical structure. It stands
indeed at the basis of naturalism and
objectivism, but cannot be influenced by them
in return: “This actually intuited, actually ex-
perienced and experienceable world, in which
practically our whole life takes place, remains
HISTORY OF THE LIFEWORLD
295
unchanged as what it is, in its own essential
structure and its own concrete causal style,
whatever we may do with or without tech-
niques” (CES 50–51).6
The lifeworld, serving as foundation and
ground for any subsequent technique, inven-
tion, or idealization, is independent of its cul-
tural and historical context, and is therefore ex-
empt from the crisis of meaning. This may
sound strange at first, but it stems from the fact
that Husserl maintains a vertical model of the
history of perception, which is contained in the
notion of sedimentation, a metaphor of a geo-
logical structure consisting of perceptive lay-
ers, the deepest of which serves as foundation
for the more recent ones. This primitive and
hyletic layer is the lifeworld, which is subse-
quently covered by all sorts of successive
structures and superstructures founded upon it
without influencing it in any way.
But does the lifeworld actually remain at the
bottom of any subsequent perception? The
lifeworld is treated throughout Husserl’s writ-
ings with an ambiguity attested to by the gap
between, on the one hand, the earlier Ideas II,
in which the notion of lifeworld is anticipated
by the personalistic, everyday active attitude,7
and, on the other hand, Experience and Judg-
ment, where the lifeworld is presented as the
passive background of primary experience, as
a vague, pre-given, silent world, serving as a
foundation for any subsequent linguist
objectification.8 Husserl seems to vacillate be-
tween these two notions of the lifeworld: one
of a pre-given level and another of a world of
action; one of a foundation of everyday life
and another of everyday life itself.9
Some interpreters juxtapose Husserl’s os-
cillation between the two notions of lifeworld
with his shift from a notion of active constitu-
tion to a more passive one. But it is important
to note that both notions of lifeworld are pres-
ent in the mature text which is The Crisis. The
ambiguity of the lifeworld appears to be rather
essential, as we can see for example in
Husserl’s analysis of induction: on the one
hand scientific induction functions according
to the same principle as everyday induction,
but on the other hand Husserl refuses to as-
sume that the lifeworld itself is characterized
by (active) inductions: “To be sure, everyday
induction grew into induction according to sci-
entific method, but that changes nothing of the
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
296
essential meaning of the pre-given world as the
horizon of all meaningful induction” (CES
50). Inductions, idealizations, and objectifica-
tions are a part of the everyday, and yet they al-
ways appear against the background of a pre-
given world. Is this pre-given, silent world the
lifeworld? And if so, what about the everyday,
linguistic and historical world?
Husserl ultimately tries to resolve this prob-
lem by assigning a double process of epoché,
that is a suspension of elements of the
lifeworld. In the first epoché (CES §§35–36)
we move from the scientific, objectivist and
naturalistic lifeworld to a direct and natural
one.10 This procedure is not necessarily philo-
sophical, and Husserl affirms that a cobbler
can effect it as well as a phenomenologist
(CES 137). The second epoché (CES
§§39–41) goes further and makes the transcen-
dental move, as it is described in Husserl’s ear-
lier texts. It suspends all our engagements in
the lifeworld in order to arrive at its a priori
structures. Whereas the first epoché arrives at a
lifeworld which is still relative and multiple,
the second, transcendental epoché is absolute
and universal.11 But although we would expect
the first, everyday lifeworld to be influenced
by the crisis of European humanity, this is not
at all the case. Surprisingly, no trace of such
crisis is to be found in either notions of the
lifeworld. So not only does the double proce-
dure of epoché not resolve the question of the
historical character of the lifeworld, it actually
renders it more obscure.
Foundation, Ideality, Language
A text which may help us shed some light
on the historical dimension of the lifeworld is
The Origin of Geometry, a late manuscript
which aims to clarify the question of percep-
tive historicity.12 Moreover, this text has been
meticulously analyzed by Merleau-Ponty in
his 1959–1960 seminar at the Collège de
France, titled Husserl at the Limits of Phenom-
enology. Following Merleau-Ponty’s interpre-
tation of the text, we may be able to grasp
Husserl’s conception of perceptive sedimenta-
tion, together with Merleau-Ponty’s transfor-
mation of it.13
Merleau-Ponty considers The Origin of Ge-
ometry as an investigation of the pre-ideal,
which he characterizes as an Urstiftung, i.e., a
primal institution or foundation of meaning,
conditioning any further meanings (HLP 19).
Although this is an accurate analysis of the
Husserlian text, there is an important diver-
gence between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty,
expressed in the latter’s affirmation that the
primary sense “had to appear in history”
(ibid.). This remark may seem trivial, but if we
take it seriously we are forced to reshape our
understanding of perceptive historicity. For
the movement of history does no longer goes,
according to Merleau-Ponty, in only one direc-
tion, from the foundation up toward idealiza-
tion, but in both directions: “The main effect of
every ideation, which is dated and signed, is to
make its literal repetition superfluous, to
launch culture toward a future, to achieve for-
getfulness, be overcome, to outline a futural,
geometrical horizon. . . . Reciprocally, it is es-
sential for any ideal whole to be born; it is of-
fered to us with a wake of historicity” (HLP
6).14
The objective historical future depends on
its origin, its Urstiftung, and yet it seems that
the origin, too, depends on its continuation,
since its aim and its end is to be overcome. This
mutual dependence of the ideal sense and its
pre-ideal origin is expressed by the notion of a
“wake of historicity” (sillage d’historicité).
This is an intermediate, thick layer which
stands between, on the one hand, the founding
moment of any ideal whole, and, on the other
hand, the self-enclosed ideality pretending to
be universal and eternal. None of the two ex-
treme points can be grasped independently of
this thickness which envelops them and is en-
veloped by them. But how can we grasp the
wake of historicity itself?
In order to answer this question we need to
acquire a better notion of the phenomeno-
logical method: while Husserl speaks of a
method of Rückfrage, backward investigation
from top to bottom in the opposite direction of
the original foundation, this vertical model
seems to be turned upside down in Merleau-
Ponty. For if the origin must appear in history,
if intuition needs ideality in order to complete
it, it follows that the investigation itself must
change its status. It no longer only goes down
into the depths of objectivity presumably in or-
der to find its pre-objective and pure founda-
tion, but also up, becoming itself a kind of ori-
gin. The mutual dependence between the
Urstiftung and its objective historicity obliges
the investigation to participate in this historic-
ity by reactivating it, contributing to it, and to a
certain extent creating it. Merleau-Ponty thus
claims that “reflection is not simple analysis. It
is the interrogation of a tradition” (HLP 19),
but this philosophical interrogation is itself a
part of a larger institution and tradition. As
such, it constantly calls for a “spiritual muta-
tion” (HLP 11), so we find in the history of phi-
losophy the same tension between (a) primal
foundation, (b) the tradition which is based
upon it, and (c) its subsequent overcoming.
This tension, Merleau-Ponty claims, is partic-
ularly present in Husserl, since he “looks to ex-
press the Erleben (lived experience), to make
silence speak” (HLP 12).
I asked above if the lifeworld was silent or
linguistic, and we now see again that the ques-
tion of foundation, institution, ideality, and
historicity is from the start a question of lan-
guage. Language makes possible the founda-
tion of geometry, says Husserl, but language it-
self is a foundation. Language is historical,
and as such it is trapped in the same ambiguity
and duality as any tradition: it has an instituted
part which is static, hidden, and forgotten, and
an instituting part which is active, productive,
and in a constant process of renewal. Yet, the
two parts are closely intertwined: “Within my-
self, in the exercise of language, I experience
activity each time as the other side of passivity.
And it is thus that ideality ‘makes its
entrance’” (HLP 8).
If language is ambiguous, can it be part of
the lifeworld? Although The Origin of Geome-
try discusses at length the question of ideality
and language, the lifeworld is rarely men-
tioned in it. This may seem strange if we re-
member that the text was written at the same
time as The Crisis and was meant to be incor-
porated into it. But the reason for the omission
of the lifeworld here seems to be simple. The
Crisis starts with a description of scientific cri-
sis in order to finally arrive at its solution in the
lifeworld as an ahistorical ground of ideality,
independent of sedimentation and institution.
In this sense it follows the method of
Rückfrage, beginning from ideality and histo-
ricity in order to arrive at the primordial foun-
dation which is the lifeworld. From this per-
spective, The Origin of Geometry is only one
step in the way back towards the lifeworld, a
HISTORY OF THE LIFEWORLD
297
step which does not arrive there itself and
needs to be completed by further steps down.
But does it follow that sedimentation does not
affect the lifeworld at all? If we now recall
Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the
Rückfrage we can no longer answer this ques-
tion affirmatively. In order to examine this let
us look at two of the rare passages in which
Husserl does evoke the lifeworld in The Origin
of Geometry:
The Seduction of Language
Husserl claims that although every sedi-
mentation is made upon the basis of intuition
in the lifeworld, the latter nonetheless finds it-
self immediately threatened by linguistic sedi-
mentation: “It is easy to see that even in human
life, and first of all in every individual life from
childhood up to maturity, the originally intu-
itive life which creates its originally self-evi-
dent structures through activities on the basis
of sense-experience very quickly and in in-
creasing measure falls victim to the seduction
of language” (HLP 100).
Intuitive life deteriorates or at least gets
transformed by language, which raises again
the question of where exactly to situate the lin-
guistic and sedimented life in relation to the
lifeworld. Language is presented as a danger,
almost as a Fall in the sense that Heidegger
gives to “idle talk.” But doesn’t language, for
example philosophical language, also reveal
and reactivate intuitive life? Isn’t the method
of Rückfrage itself a use of language which in-
fluences the lifeworld by reviving it through its
objective manifestations?
Husserl’s difficulty in fully embracing the
Rückfrage seems to create an opposition be-
tween, on the one hand, idealizing, objective
and speaking science, and, on the other hand,
pure and silent lifeworld. But this leaves every-
day human life hanging by a thread: it is nei-
ther here nor there, and most of the time it is
simply ignored and abandoned to confront
alone its state of crisis. Thus, Husserl does not
explain how we can resist the “seduction of
language,” but rather what scientists should do
in order to avoid rigid idealizations and con-
structions. Husserl specifies some concrete
measures, such as the procedure of reactiva-
tion of the Urstiftung from the very beginning
(HLP 102–03). But is it not possible to take the
same measures in everyday life? It seems that
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
298
the answer is positive, as can be seen from a
second invocation of the lifeworld.
Reading a Newspaper
Husserl describes a superficial reading of a
newspaper, when we passively and uncriti-
cally receive the news without further reflec-
tion. Husserl shows how, by an active reading
of some sentences in the newspaper we can
achieve a new articulation and a new synthesis
of what has been until now only a vague unity.
In this way a new active production takes place
and a new layer of sediments is formed, so that
the read material receives new life and fresh
meaning.
This example shows how an everyday activ-
ity can be transformed by an act of foundation
and sedimentation. Moreover, Husserl de-
clares that we have “the capacity of complete
freedom to transform, in thought (umdenken)
and fantasy (umfantasieren), our human his-
torical existence and what is there exposed as
its life-world” (HLP 111). It seems that
Husserl refers here to the phenomenological
method of reduction and of free variation as
one of the ways to transform our lifeworld, at
least in thought and imagination. This implies,
as we have already seen above, that the
lifeworld is not only a static, primitive layer,
but also a dynamic one which can be influ-
enced by every one of us. The lifeworld is not
only the basis for further sedimentation, since
sedimentation in its turn can influence and
transform the lifeworld: the two are interde-
pendent.
Does this mean that the lifeworld is, after
all, to be situated in history? Husserl warns us,
at the end of his text, against a romanticism of
history, against a false nostalgia and the myth
of a magical creation in science, an imaginary
moment of “Eureka” (HLP 114). But whereas
Merleau-Ponty takes this warning seriously,
developing a notion of the lifeworld as a con-
tinuous creation, as an intertwining of past,
present, and future, Husserl seems to ulti-
mately see history as a danger, as something
which should be overcome in philosophy. He
thus concludes his text by claiming that the
only possibility of finding sense in history is to
ground it upon “the fundament of the universal
historical a priori,” which is the human sur-
rounding world: Umwelt or Lebenswelt. But
the latter, in turn, “is the same today and al-
ways,” independently of the tradition it founds
in the Urstiftung (HLP 115).
Reflection as Foundation
Despite his long hesitation, Husserl seems
to finally prefer a notion of the lifeworld as a
primitive and primal layer which is never
sedimented or transformed. Now, how can we
use Merleau-Ponty’s position in order to arrive
at a notion of the lifeworld which would en-
compass both its passive and active aspects?
We saw above that for Merleau-Ponty lan-
guage is an intertwining of activity and passiv-
ity, which is the condition of appearance of any
ideality. I asked if this could mean that lan-
guage is part of the lifeworld, but it seems that
for Merleau-Ponty, too, the answer is negative.
Thus, he defines the lifeworld as the
Ineinander (intertwining), i.e., “the inherence
of the self to the world and of the world to the
self, of the self to the other and of the other to
the self,” but he immediately adds that this
Ineinander is “silently inscribed in integral ex-
perience . . . and philosophy becomes the en-
deavor, beyond logic and given vocabulary, to
describe this universe of living paradoxes”
(RC 152; my emphasis).
The lifeworld remains silent for Merleau-
Ponty, but would it not be more accurate to say,
as is indicated by some passages and working
notes in The Visible and the Invisible,15 that the
Ineinander of the lifeworld is not only that of
the self, the world, and others, but also of lan-
guage and silence? Would it not be more accu-
rate to say that even if the lifeworld is indeed
not entirely linguistic, it is certainly not totally
exempt from language? If we accept this prop-
osition, then we need to see the lifeworld not
only as the ground for any action, but also and
foremost as that which already participates in
a ny a c t i o n t h r o u g h t h e p r o c e s s o f
sedimentation.
A hint of this participation of the lifeworld
in (linguistic) sedimentation was given to us
by the philosophical method of Rückfrage, and
we can see here again that the question of the
linguistic status of the lifeworld is connected
to the question of philosophical method.
Merleau-Ponty assigns to philosophy the task
of “describ[ing] this universe of living para-
doxes.” Indeed, one of the most important
questions which runs through all Merleau-
Ponty’s writings, starting from the introduc-
tion to the Phenomenology of Perception, is
that of the possibility of philosophy, which
h a p p e n s t o b e t h e t i t l e g ive n t o h i s
1958–1959 seminar.16 The philosophical en-
deavor to put silence into words is analogous
in many ways to the way the lifeworld gets
sedimented. Philosophy attempts to grasp
ideality (concepts) in order to arrive at its ori-
gin in intuition (lifeworld), but this work must
pass through a certain production and reactiva-
tion of the same ideality, since “the only way to
grasp an idea is to produce it” (HLP 7). Philos-
ophy looks for the origin of ideality, for the pri-
mal institution, using past tradition and in this
way forms a Nachstiftung, secondary institu-
tion or foundation. But this in turn already pre-
pares the ground for the Endstiftung, the re-
placement of one (philosophical) tradition by
another.17 It follows that “every spiritual
production is a response and an appeal, a co-
production” (HLP 8).
Indeed, Merleau-Ponty does not want to say
that these productions and co-productions are
necessarily philosophical, but he does give
philosophy or phenomenology the status of a
special institution. Moreover, he defines phe-
nomenology as a “living, actual, and primal
[originaire] contact between the elements of
the world.”18 Phenomenology has a privileged
access to the world, and as such it may repro-
duce idealities and transform the history of the
lifeworld as it is manifested in everyday life. It
is here that philosophy can regain its relevance
to life, not only by adequately describing it, but
also by reviving and transforming it to a certain
extent.
What specific method should be employed
for such a transformation? In Phenomenology
of Perception, Merleau-Ponty develops the no-
tion of radical reflection, which, contrary to
intellectualist reflection, is conscious of its
own acquisitions and effects.19 In The Visible
and the Invisible he continues in this direction,
calling for “a sort of hyper-reflection that
would also take itself and the changes it intro-
duces into the spectacle into account. It ac-
cordingly would not lose sight of the brute
thing and the brute perception and would not
finally efface them.”20
Now, if we combine this notion of radical
reflection with the necessity of going through
the production and the reproduction of ideality
HISTORY OF THE LIFEWORLD
299
in order to reach the pre-ideal, we arrive at the
conclusion that radical reflection (or hyper-re-
flection) actively participates in this process of
sedimentation and foundation, so that it can
never arrive at a pure, pre-ideal and pre-lin-
guistic origin. This is not, however, to be con-
sidered as a disadvantage or limitation. For
philosophy can use its productive force in or-
der to contribute to the reactivation and
(re)foundation of sense. And this sense con-
cerns not only science, but also culture in
general and everyday life in particular.
However, this productive force is always
threatened by the tendency of every ideal form
to freeze, so that “sedimentation which makes
it possible for us to go further is also responsi-
ble for us being threatened by hollow thoughts
and for the sense of origins becoming emptied
out” (HLP 8). It is important to note that phi-
losophy should not look for the origin, but
rather for the sense of origin. And this sense
can be empty or full according to the degree of
reactivation exercised upon it. This is why, at
the end of his seminar on Institution, Merleau-
Ponty says that entire civilizations can be open
or closed, depending on their institutions be-
ing constantly reactivated or passively con-
sumed.21
Indeed, my suggestion to consider philoso-
phy itself as actively participating in the reacti-
ENDNOTES
1. Although it is common to attribute such criticism to
Derrida, it is important to note that the latter’s atti-
tude to historicity in Husserl is rather complex. In
fact, far from denying historicity in Husserl, Derrida
rather aims to locate and deconstruct it, interpreting
the Husserlian notion of Rückfrage as the transcen-
dental which is ultimately understood as différance.
See Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl’s Origin of
Geometry: An Introduction, trans. J. P. Leavey Jr.
(Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press, 1989), as well as the earlier The Problem of
Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy, trans. M. Hobson
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 2003), esp. 153–78. It is beyond the scope of
the present paper to show in detail to what notion of
historicity Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserl
leads. However, I will briefly touch this subject in
the context of Merleau-Ponty’s commentary on The
Origin of Geometry.
2. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences
and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
300
vation the foundation of culture and even of
everyday life is to be found only between the
lines of Merleau-Ponty, and always with hesi-
tation and ambiguity, inherited from the
Husserlian wish to arrive at an ahistoric a priori
lifeworld. But this ambiguity seems to have a
deeper, more latent motive. In order to reacti-
vate the thought of his teacher, it is essential for
Merleau-Ponty to constantly, and very often
implicitly, transform it, so that philosophical
reflection becomes an activity somewhere in
between theory and praxis, contemplation and
production.
Philosophical reflection can thus help reac-
tivate thought and action by revealing the liv-
ing source hiding behind rigid structures. And
yet, it would never be able to arrive at this
source in one leap, only in small steps, starting
with idealities, concepts, and words. It is only
by recognizing its own structure as foundation
and institution that philosophy would be able
to help resolve the crisis of both science and
modern life. Modern life, I say, and if one in-
sists, lifeworld. But not an immobile one; not a
merely passive and ahistorical ground, but
rather lifeworld (or, better, life-worlds) as
something always in motion, always in a pro-
cess of sedimentation and foundation: always
in a crisis.22
Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1970). Hereafter cited as CES.
3. This point is further emphasized in the 1935 Vienna
Lecture, “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Hu-
manity,” which appears as Appendix I in the English
translation of the Crisis (269–97).
4. Husserl repeats this argument in the Vienna Lecture,
but this time he extends it to Einstein’s physics: “Ein-
stein’s revolutionary innovations concern the formu-
lae through which the idealized and naïvely
objectified physics is dealt with. But how formulae
in general, how mathematical objectification in gen-
eral, receive meaning on the foundation of life and
the intuitively given surrounding world—of this we
learn nothing; and thus Einstein does not reform the
space and time in which our vital life runs its course”
(ibid., 295). We can see here the unfulfilled potential
of science to affect everyday life, potential which al-
ways remains ambiguous in Husserl, even in his late
texts. Science is mainly presented as what freezes
life, and it is not clear if it can ever penetrate and
 stimulate it. This seems to be rather the role of
phenomenological or transcendental psychology,
whose concrete character and functioning remain
vague in Husserl.
5. Don Ihde suggests that Husserl’s critique of science
focuses primarily on physics-astronomy and ne-
glects other sciences, such as medicine, whose pri-
mary interest is precisely the living body and thus
the lifeworld. Bodies in Technology (Minneapolis
and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002),
56–57. Ihde moreover argues that the scientific
praxis is never detached from the lifeworld, since it
is always mediated by technology (ibid., 56,
67–87). I accept Ihde’s critique, but I would like to
radicalize it. Indeed, science never ignores the
lifeworld, but its treatment of it, especially via the
use of new technologies, is not only linked to every-
day perception but actually transforms it. It is this
constant historical transformation of everyday per-
ception that Husserl seems to leave in the dark.
6. Elisabeth Ströker paraphrases this move in the fol-
lowing way: “every lifeworld in its concreteness
changes from society to society, and even in the
same society a change takes place in the course of its
history. The main question which arose from this
fact for Husserl and Gurwitsch was whether there
are also invariant features or even an invariant struc-
ture pertaining to every possible lifeworld.” “Sci-
ence and lifeworld: A Problem of Cultural Change,”
Human Studies 20 (1997): 304. See also Aron
Gurwitsch, Studies in Phenomenology and Psychol-
ogy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1966), 418–26. This is in line with my claim that
Husserl’s (and Gurwitsch’s) goal was to overcome
the historical and contextual aspect of the lifeworld
rather than elucidate it. Ströker herself gives some
interesting descriptions of the changing, modern
lifeworld of the twentieth century. However, she fo-
cuses on the deterioration of experience, becoming
mediated and distant from what she names “original
experience” (312–13). This is reminiscent of
Heidegger’s descriptions of das Man, and seems to
pose an authentic lifeworld against an inauthentic
one, a direction I would prefer to avoid, as it brings
us back to the misunderstanding of historical
changes.
7. “But it is quite otherwise as regards the personalistic
attitude, the attitude we are always in when we live
with one another, talk to one another, shake hands
with one another in greeting, or are related to one
another in love and aversion, in disposition and ac-
tion, in discourse and discussion. Likewise we are in
this attitude when we consider the things surround-
ing us precisely as our surroundings and not as ‘Ob-
jective’ nature, the way it is for natural science.”
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phe-
nomenology and to a Phenomenological Philoso-
phy, Second Book, trans. R. Rojcewicz and Aandré
Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 192. Husserl
further adds that the personal world is the lifeworld
(ibid., 302n). See also ibid., 147–51, 183–94,
294–302.
8. “If, therefore, we wish to return to experience in the
ultimately original sense which is the object of our
inquiry, then it can only be to the original experience
of the life-world, an experience still unacquainted
with any of these idealizations but whose necessary
foundation it is.” Edmund Husserl, Experience and
Judgment, trans. James Churchill and Karl Ameriks
(London: Routledge, 1973), 45. The pre-predicative,
pre-linguistic character of the world seems to lie in
its passive, self-evident dimension: “We can also say
that an actual world always precedes cognitive activ-
ity as its universal ground, and this means first of all a
ground of universal passive belief in being which is
presupposed by every particular cognitive opera-
tion” (ibid., 30). The relationship between passive
and active synthesis in Husserl is one of the most
complicated questions in Husserlian scholarship, but
it is sufficient for our purpose to note that both these
dimensions are to be found in the lifeworld. For a
thorough analysis of this question see B. Bégout, La
Généologie de la Logique (Paris: Vrin, 1999). See
also Carr’s introduction to the Crisis, xl–xlii.
9. I therefore accept Carr’s interpretation, underlining
the discrepancy “between life-world as cultural
world and life-world as world of immediate experi-
ence” in his “Husserl’s Problematic Concept of the
Life-World,” in Frederick A. Elliston and Peter Mc
Cormick, eds., Husserl. Expositions and Appraisals
(Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1977), 208, against Joseph Kockelmans who
sees the lifeworld as a rather unified notion. See Jo-
seph J. Ko ckelmans, E dm und H us s e r l ’s
Phenomenological Psychology (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1967), 288–301, and
Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology (West Lafayette:
Purdue University Press, 1994), 335–46). See also
Ströker, “Science and Lifeworld,” 305.
10. This move from the naturalistic to the natural atti-
tude is parallel to the one described in Ideas II,
183–94.
11. Both the empirical and the a priori Lifeworlds remain
however quite formal in Husserl, who is content to
describe their general temporal and spatial struc-
tures. An impressive development of these descrip-
tions is to be found in Alfred Schutz. But although
Schutz focuses on the question of sociality, he does
not go beyond Husserl’s transcendental and eidetic
model, and consequently historicity remains for him
too a formal rather than a dynamic notion. This is
quite surprising if we remember how Schutz’s own
HISTORY OF THE LIFEWORLD
301
 lifeworld had been transformed due to the events
leading to World War II. Cf. Alfred Schutz and
Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-
World, trans. Richard M. Zaner and T. Engelhardt
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, and
London: Heinemann, 1973).
12. Edmund Husserl, “The Origin of Geometry,” in The
Crisis of European Sciences, 353–78. A slightly
modified translation of the text appears in Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomen-
ology, trans. and ed. Leonard Lawlor and Bettina
Bergo (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
2002), 93–116. Merleau-Ponty’s book is hereafter
cited as HLP.
13. For an analysis of this text with regard to the changes
introduced by Fink in its 1939 version, see Ronald
Bruzina, “Language in Lifeworld Phenomenology:
The ‘Origin of Geometry’Was Not the Final Word!”
Philosophy Today 40 (1996): 91–102. Bruzina
shows how Eugen Fink has transposed the accent
from the “surrounding world” to the “a priori of his-
tory” (ibid., 95), the latter being the ultimate
grounding soil. Indeed, before Merleau-Ponty it
was Fink who tried to introduce history into
Husserl. However, Fink speaks of history or histo-
ricity as an a priori structure and is not interested in
its concreteness. For a fuller comparison of the ways
in which Merleau-Ponty and Fink have treated
Husserl see Bruzina, “Eugen Fink and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty: The Philosophical Lineage in Phe-
nomenology,” in Lester Embree and Ted Toadvine,
Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 2002), 173–200.
14. A similar claim is made by Derrida, interpreting the
Hussserlian Rückfrage: “This means—by a neces-
sity which is no less than an accidental and exterior
fate—that I must start with ready-made geometry,
such as it is now in circulation and which I can al-
ways phenomenologically read, in order to go back
through it and question the sense of its origin. Thus,
both thanks to and despite the sedimentations, I can
restore history to its traditional diaphaneity”
(Derrida, Introduction, 50). Leonard Lawlor locates
the similarity between Merleau-Ponty and
Derrida’s commentaries on Husserl’s Origin of Ge-
ometry in their focus on writing. He shows that all
three philosophers agree that writing attests to the
insufficiency of ideality, since the latter must be
written down and reactivated in order to regain its
evidence (Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology,
xxi–xxxii). However, it is important to note that the
insufficiency of ideality and the notion of Rückfrage
as based on zigzag, circle and interplay (Derrida, In-
troduction, 50–51) come, for Derrida, hand-in-hand
with a certain acceptance of Husserl’s unidirec-
tional vertical model. Thus, Derrida claims that the
PHILOSOPHY TODAY
302
Rückfrage is “asked on the basis of a first posting”
(ibid., 50). It seems that Derrida interprets too rigidly
Husserl’s presuppositions, just in order to later de-
construct them too radically. He therefore ends his
Introduction identifying the Rückfrage with the tran-
scendental as a constant deferring/deferred delay,
namely the différance: “The primordial Difference
of the absolute Origin, which can and indefinitely
must both retain and announce its pure concrete form
with apriori security . . . that is perhaps what has al-
ways been said under the concept of ‘transcendental’
through the enigmatic history of its displacements.
Difference would be transcendental” (ibid., 153).
We can therefore conclude that Derrida’s concern
with The Origin of Geometry is motivated by the ab-
sence of the origin, which therefore always remains
transcendental. This also explains the relatively
small place which Derrida gives to the lifeworld
(ibid., 117–21), since the latter is soon replaced by
what Derrida names “transcendental historicity”
(ibid., 121). My interpretation, on the other hand,
puts the accent on the concrete participation of the
origin in a given act of foundation within the
lifeworld, manifested in Merleau-Ponty’s notion of
radical reflection.
15. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisi-
ble, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwest-
ern University Press, 1968), 154–55, 263, and in par-
ticular 203–04.
16. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Résumés de Cours (Paris:
Gallimard, 1968), 141–56.
17. See The Crisis of European Sciences, 70–73.
18. Merleau-Ponty, Résumés de Cours, 65. It is curious
however to note that when, in a second and comple-
mentary seminar of the same year, Merleau-Ponty
analyzes some concrete phenomena of passivity, he
chooses to focus on sleep, dream, hallucination and
the unconscious, i.e., cases of extreme passivity, in
which the intertwining of passivity and activity, si-
lence and language, is rather dominated by the first
of the two poles. But wouldn’t more balanced cases,
such as memory and historicity, be a better place to
look for the intertwining? A support for that is given
to us in The Prose of the World, in which Merleau-
Ponty evokes, concerning the history of painting, the
“need to restart in a different manner and give the
past not a survival which is the hypocritical form of
oblivion, but the efficiency of resumption or ‘repeti-
tion’ which is the noble form of memory.” Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, La Prose du Monde (Paris:
Gallimard, 1969), 96.
19. “When I begin to reflect, my reflection bears upon an
unreflective experience; my reflection cannot be un-
aware of itself as an event, and so it appears to itself
as a truly creative act, as a change in the structure of
consciousness, and yet it has to recognize, beneath
 (en deçà) its own operations, the world which is
given to the subject because the subject is given to it-
self.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of
Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1962), x; translation modified. In a
lecture given one year later, Merleau-Ponty is even
clearer regarding the role of reflection as a philo-
sophical institution: “It is true that we discover the
unreflected. But the unreflected we go back to is not
that which is prior to philosophy or prior to reflec-
tion. It is the unreflected which is understood and
conquered by reflection. Left to itself, perception
forgets itself and is ignorant of its own accomplish-
ments. Far from thinking that philosophy is a use-
less repetition of life, I think, on the contrary, that it
is the agency without which life would probably
Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel 84105
dissipate itself in ignorance of itself or in chaos. But
this does not mean that reflection should be carried
away with itself or pretend to be ignorant of its ori-
gins. By fleeing difficulties philosophy would only
fail in its task.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Pri-
macy of Perception and Other Essays, trans. James
M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1964), 19; translation modified.
20. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 38.
21. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’institution. La Passivité
(Paris: Belin, 2003), 122.
22. I would like to thank Emmaneul Alloa, Keren Dotan,
Dani Issler, and Michael Lewis for their careful read-
ing and comments. I am especially grateful to Havi
Carel for long-lasting stimulating discussions and
friendship.
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