The Phenomenon of Ego-Splitting in Husserl’s Phenomenology of Pure Phantasy

ABSTRACT

Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination embraces a cluster of different theories and approaches regarding the multi-faced phenomenon of imaginative experience. In this paper I consider one aspect that seems to be crucial to the understanding of a particular form of imagination that Husserl names pure phantasy. I argue that the phenomenon of Ego-splitting discloses the best way to elucidate the peculiarity of pure phantasy with respect to other forms of representative acts (such as remembering) and to any simple form of act modification (such as neutrality modification). First, I unravel the phenomenological distinctions which, respectively, oppose phantasy to perception, on the one hand, and phantasy to other forms of the so-called “intuitive re-presentations”. Second, I introduce the difference between presentative and representative acts, arguing that this cannot help us to single out the defining feature of phantasy experiences. The third section draws again an important distinction between pure phantasy and neutrality modification, which allows me to finally determine an internal trait of phantasy experiences, which Husserl refers to as the “Ego-splitting” (Ichspaltung). In this way, I hope to contribute to a refined characterization of Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination.

ORCID

Marco Cavallaro http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1640-4646

Notes

1 Cf. for instance Saraiva, L’imagination selon Husserl; Volonté, Husserls Phänomenologie der Imagination; and Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel dans la philosophie de Husserl.

2 Cf. Husserl, Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), hereafter referred to as PICM (Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung, hereafter referred to as Hua XXIII).

3 I follow John B. Brough translating the German Vergegenwärtigung with re-presentation.

4 PICM, 63, translation modified (Hua XXIII, 58 f.).

5 Cf. Turnbull, “Aristotle on Imagination: ‘De anima’ iii 3.” Christian Wolff famously rephrased the Aristotelian dictum as follows: imagination is “facultas producendi perceptiones rerum sensibilium absentium” (Wolff, Psychologia Empirica, §92). For reasons that cannot be expounded here, Husserl rejects in toto the psychology of faculties that we find both in Aristotle’s and Wolff’s definitions. Nonetheless, he remains faithful to the also tradition-laden formula which describes phantasy in terms of the consciousness of an absent object.

6 Cf. Treatise of Human Nature, I, I, 1–2 and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, II.

7 PICM, 13 f. (Hua XXIII, 14; cf. also ibid., 100). A propos Hume’s concept of “vivacity” and its Brentanian revival, see in particular Hua XXIII, Nr. 1, §46, 96 ff.

8 PICM, 64 (Hua XXIII, 60). Cf. also Hua XXIII, 93 f.

9 Now published in Brentano, Grundzüge der Ästhetik, 3–87. Husserl himself refers to these lectures in his“Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano,” 153, 157) and Hua XXIII, 4.

10 For a critique of Brentano’s theory of phantasy, see especially Hua XXIII, Nr. 1, §4, 8 ff. and §45, 92 ff.

11 PICM, 18 (Hua XXIII, Nr. 1, §8, 16). Cf. also PICM, 107 (Hua XXIII, 100) and Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917) (Hua X), 34.

12 For this particular form of representation, cf. Hua X, 60 f., 69, Fink, “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” 44 ff.; Volonté, Husserls Phänomenologie der Imagination, 220 ff.

13 Fink, “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” 21 f. (my translation).

14 Cf. ibid., 46.

15 Cf. Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, 1893–1917 (PCIT), 112 (Hua X, 107). For a discussion of this aspect in Husserl’s phenomenology of time, see for instance Schnell, Temps et phénomène, 35 ff.

16 Cf. Bernet, Kern, and Marbach, Edmund Husserl, 135; Bernet, “Unconscious Consciousness in Husserl and Freud,” 336 f.

17 Cf. for instance Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik (Hua XVII), 276.

18 Such a conclusion has been purported by Maria Manuela Saraiva in her classical work on Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination; see Saraiva, L’imagination selon Husserl, 141 ff. Cf. also Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel dans la philosophie de Husserl, 23 ff.

19 Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Ideas I), p. 244 (Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Hua III/1), 233 f.). Husserl explicitly criticizes his early conception of phantasy as intentional modification in the late manuscripts (cf. PICM, 621; Hua XXIII, 520; see Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel, 75 f.).

20 Ideas I, 260 (translation modified; Hua III/1, 250). Cf. also Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24) (Hua VIII), 112–13; Hua XXIII, 322; Bernet, Kern, and Marbach, Edmund Husserl, 137–38; Saraiva, L’imagination selon Husserl, 204–16; Volonté, Husserls Phänomenologie der Imagination, 214 ff.

21 Cf. Hua III/1, §§9–14, 247–62.

22 Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (Hua XIX/1), §§39 f. For a general assessment of Husserl’s doctrine of neutrality modification, see Brainard, Belief and its Neutralization, 157–79 and Ni, Seinsglaube in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls, 189–204.

23 Cf. Bernet, Kern, and Marbach, Edmund Husserl, 137.

24 Ideas I, 59. Cf. also Schuhmann, Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, 36 f.

25 To put this in perspective, cf. below the discussion of the Panopticum illusion.

26 See, for instance, Hua XXIII, 571.

27 Cf. Hua XXIII, 573; Hua VIII, 112 ff.

28 Cf. Hua XXIII, 571–90.

29 Cf. Hua XXIII, 571–74. See also Depraz, Transcendance et incarnation, 265 ff.

30 PICM, 694 (Hua XXIII, 576).

31 PCIM, 695 (Hua XXIII, 578). In an analogous way, Fink states that pure phantasies “sind durch keine bestimmten Motivationen verbunden” (Fink, “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” 48).

32 Ideas I, 259 (Hua III/1, 249).

33 See, for instance, Bernet, Conscience et existence, 106 ff.

34 Notice that I willingly do not mention the case in which the stick is contemporaneously touched by my hand and seen by my eyes in the water. Here, we would perceive the object at the same time as bent and as straight so that the belief about the bendiness of the stick would not be affected but would remain in an open conflict with the belief about the straightness of the stick. This cannot be regarded as an illusion but, as we shall see in a moment, as a particular case of perceptual phantasy.

35 Cf. Hua XIX/1, Fifth Logical Investigation, §27.

36 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 138 (my emphasis).

37 Bernet, Conscience et existence, 108 (my translation).

38 Cf. Bernet, Conscience et existence, 115 and Bernet, “Phantasieren und Phantasma bei Husserl und Freud,” here 4 f.

39 Cf. Hua XXIII, 464 ff.

40 It should be added that, differently from the actual world which is one and the same independently of who is intending it and at which time she is intending it, phantasy world is inherently plural. It is another one every time we perform a phantasy or someone different from us does it.

41 Cf. Bernet, Conscience et existence, 111 and Bernet, “Phantasieren und Phantasma,” 5 f.

42 PICT, 130 (Hua X, 126).

43 Infinite regress is just one of the many objections a reflection theory of self-awareness encounters. For a detailed discussion of these issues in relation to Husserl as well as other phenomenologists, cf. Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity.

44 Bernet, Conscience et existence, 6 (my translation). Cf. also PICM, 34 (Hua XXII, 33).

45 Fink, “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” 46 (passage already quoted above). However, consider also Husserl’s own formulations about the specific character of phantasy time as detached from the absolute time of perception in Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil (EU), §39, 195 ff.

46 Hua VIII, 116 (my translation). Cf. also PICM, 556 (Hua XXIII, 467).

47 Cf. Husserl, Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907 (Hua XVI), 302, 308 ff.; Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Hua IV), 127; Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (Hua XIV), 342, 351, 375, 455; Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (Hua IX), 297 f.; Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie (Hua IX), 157.

48 I am grateful to Penelope Allsobrook for letting me think of this point.

49 “On aurait affaire à un cas de folie par dédoublement de la personnalité, schizo-phrénie au sens littéral” (Depraz, Transcendance et incarnation, 263). Cf. also Bernet, Conscience et existence, 112.

50 Cf. EU, 195 ff. See also Bernet, “Wirkliche Zeit und Phantasiezeit”.

51 The term “life-history” has a twofold meaning (cf. Tengelyi, “Lebensgeschichte als Selbstkonstitution bei Husserl”). On the one hand, it connotes the narration we continuously produce in order to make sense of our own lives. On the other hand, it defines the life itself regarded as temporal becoming objectively independent from the sense we bestow upon it. In this paper, I use the term in the latter sense.

52 For reasons of space, I cannot dig into the fundamental splitting of the I in this paper. See instead my “The Phenomenon of I – Splitting in the Transcendental Philosophies of Kant and Husserl” (forthcoming).

53 Such a distinction underpinned in a way the previous analyses, but was not made explicit.

54 Of course, an indispensable condition for this is that the two acts belong to the same stream of consciousness.

55 I wish to express my gratitude to Penelope Allsobrook for her patient work of rendering my English more comprehensible.