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ABSTRACT
In this paper, I suggest an ethical reading of Husserl’s theory of primordial reduction, which has been criticized for excluding the other from the outset and not doing justice to genuine alterity. I propose to interpret primordial reduction as a “putting into question” not only the intentional relatedness with the other but also transcendental ego’s activity that confers meaning upon the other, so as to understand the other’s primordial givenness that precedes egoic act. I argue that this reading can reveal two correlated issues: first, primordial reduction essentially alters the transcendental sphere by decentralizing the transcendental ego; second, primordial reduction is radical only to the extent that it is existentially motivated by a transcendental other. I suggest that Husserl’s theory of primordial reduction implicitly comprises of an ethical aspect that is of fundamental affinity with Levinas’s methodic operation in Totality and Infinity.
Acknowledgements
This paper is supported by China National Support Program for Distinguished Young Researchers (No. 2022WRQB02) and Sun Yat-Sen University with the project Existential feelings in both phenomenology and Confucianism (No. 22wkqb10). I would also like to thank Wenjing Cai for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of the paper, and two anonymous reviewers and the editors at the JBSP for their helpful comments.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See, for instance, Theunissen, The Other; Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology; Lee, “Static-Phenomenology”; see also Haney, Intersubjectivity Revisited.
2 Schutz, “Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity”; Reynaert, “Intersubjectivity and Naturalism”. Søren Overgaard argues that reduction is precisely designed to methodically avoid such sort of circularity (Overgaard, ‘Epoché’).
3 Luft, “Husserl’s Theory”; Overgaard, “How to Do Things”; Bernet, “Phenomenological Reduction”.
4 This reading is in part inspired by Nam-In Lee’s paper ‘Static-phenomenological and Genetic-phenomenological Concept of Primordiality in Husserl’s Fifth Catresian Meditation’(2002), where he distinguishes between the static and the genetic kind of primordiality. And in line with genetic primordiality, the most primordial givenness of the other seems amount to a givenness that precedes any egoic spontaneity.
5 In his lecture series of First Philosophy (1923–24), Husserl did mention once the concept of “ethical epoché” (Hua 8/319), which is connected with the normative aspect of moral actions, such as whether one should take this or that action. However, in this paper, the concept “ethical” is used in a Levinasian sense insofar as it is concerned with the fact that transcendental subjectivity itself must be “suspended” so that the genuine alterity of the other can manifest as primordially as possible. For recent surveys of phenomenological ethics, see Drummond, ‘Phenomenological Method’; Loidolt, ‘Value, Freedom, Responsibility’; and Waldenfels, ‘Responsive Ethics’.
6 The first and perhaps the only work so far on Levinas’s theory of reduction is Rolf Kühn’s paper “Emmanuel Levinas” (2003), where he succinctly summarizes Levinas’s practice of reduction. Some (Levinasian) commentators hold that Levinas’s ethics is far beyond the scope of phenomenology and should thus be seen as a fundamental substitute for the Husserlian phenomenology. For a brief review, see Drabinski’s Sensibility and Singularity, introduction. By contrast, other (Husserlian) readers criticize Levinas for misinterpreting Husserl, e.g., Römpp, “Der Andere”; Lee, “Phenomenology of Feeling”; Bernet, “The Encounter”; Overgaard, “Levinas’s Critique”; and above all Derrida’s famous critique in “Violence and Metaphysics” (2001). I think this mutual dismissal is due to unfortunate misreading from both sides. I think a more appropriate strategy is to read Levinas’s project within a phenomenological context (as Levinas insistently claims himself to be) and show fundamental affinities and significant developments between Levinas and Husserl. For some recent attempts in this direction, see, e.g., Walsh, “Husserl and Levinas”; Drabinski, Sensibility; Crowell, “Why is Ethics First Philosophy”; Bergo, “Reading Levinas”; Bergo, “Levinas and Husserl”.
7 TI, 28, 29; see also Otherwise than Being, 183. In this paper, I shall focus on Levinas’s methodic account of “putting into question” as it is laid out in Totality and Infinity and leave aside Levinas’s own conception of “reduction” in Otherwise than Being. In the latter, Levinas defines “reduction” as an attempt to reduce the said to the saying or the signification (OB, 43–45), so as to lead from established thought back to the concrete process of restless signifying, such that we can reveal the forgotten horizon in which the said or the thought originally appears. This is a general method that Levinas, following Husserl, employs to pursuit the concreteness and to reveal its a priori structure (OB, 183; Critchley, The Problem, 7); and I also think Levinas’s method of “putting into question” serves a rather specific purpose as Husserl’s primordial reduction does, that is, it is a self-critique that targets at the ego’s own naïve self-conception. Thanks for a reviewer at the JBSP for insisting this clarification.
8 Hua 1/150; Hua 6/187. I follow normal practice and refer to Husserl’s works in the Husserliana with the abbreviation Hua, followed by volume number and page number (page number of English translation will be added if available).
9 Hua 1/137[134].
10 Hua 6/138[135].
11 Cf. Hua 1/59[19], 6/139[136].
12 Hua 6/214[220].
13 Hua 6/139[136], 6/147[144].
14 Hua 1/126[95], 1/59[19], 1/60[20].
15 Hua 1/60[20–21].
16 Hua 6/§35, 6/143[140], 1/65[28]. See also, e.g., “imperturbably I must hold fast onto the insight that every sense that any existent whatever has or can have for me – in respect of its ‘what’ and its ‘it exists and actually is’ – is a sense in and arising from my intentional life, becoming clarified and uncovered for me in consequence of my life’s constitutive syntheses, in systems of harmonious verification” (Hua 1/123[91]).
17 Hua 1/59[19].
18 Hua 8/483; cf. 1/65[28]. Here we can fend off a typically Levinasian critique, as if Husserl’s transcendental reduction amounts to reducing what is transcendent to egoic immanence, the other’s alterity to egoic ipseity. See Levinas’s words, e.g., “their alterity is thereby reabsorbed into my own identity as a thinker or a possessor” (TI, 33).
19 Hua 6/175[172]; cf. Hua 1/122, 6/187.
20 Hua 6/118[116].
21 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 9. See also Hart, The Person, 7.
22 See Hua 1/135[105]; 6/191[187]. This point can’t be emphasized enough, and it may serve as common ground for both Husserl and Levinas to investigate the experience of the other. For an elaboration of this, see Crowell, “Why is Ethics First Philosophy”, 2–3.
23 Hua 1/124[93], 1/126[95], 15/6, 6/187[183].
24 Hua 1/124[93].
25 Haney, Intersubjectivity Revisited, 29; Theunissen, The Other, 57f.
26 Hua 6/187[184]; see also Hua 1/67[29].
27 Hua 6/187[184].
28 Hua 1/121; my italics.
29 That is the reason why Husserl, when he explores the realm of pure sensibility, needs to enact a genetic reduction that is supposed to suspend all egoic activity, because passive manifestation is by definition something that precedes egoic activity. For a further discussion, see Lee, ‘Static-phenomenological’; Aguirre, Genetische Phänomenologie. Interestingly, a similar line of thought can also be found in Levinas, see, e.g., Bergo, ‘Reading Levinas’.
30 Hua 1/126[94]; italics altered.
31 Carr, “The “Fifth Meditation””; Theunissen, The Other; Overgaard, “Epoché”; Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology; Lee, “Static-Phenomenology”; Crowell, “Why is Ethics First Philosophy”; see also Haney, Intersubjectivity Revisited.
32 Hua 1/124[93], 15/6; italics added.
33 For this line of interpretation, see, e.g., Zahavi, Husserl and Trascendental Intersubjectivity, 27; Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 110; Overgaard, “Epoche”; Crowell, “Why is Ethics First Philosophy”.
34 Hua 6/206.
35 Hua 1/126.
36 Hua 1/125.
37 Hua 1/135; cf. Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 27.
38 In a related note when Husserl discusses different levels of empathic experience, he distinguishes between a pre-thematic experience when egoic activity has not been put into play, and a thematic one when egoic activity is in place (Hua 15/462), and he further specifies that the pre-thematic empathy takes on the form of the other “calling” (Anrufenden) to the ego, exercising an affective allure on the ego.
39 Hua 1/131[100], 1/137[107], 8/495, n.2.
40 Hua 1/137.
41 Hua 1/127.
42 Hua 1/125.
43 Hua 1/131.
44 Zahavi, “Horizontal Intentionality”, 306.
45 For an examination of this line of critique, see Tengelyi, ‘The Role of Interpretation’.
46 Hua 1/126.
47 Hua 1/131.
48 Cf. Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 29. To be noted, despite his severe criticisms of Husserl, Levinas agrees with him upon this point, as he explicitly states, “the alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other, is possible only if the other is other with respect to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure, to serve as an entry into the relation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. A term can remain absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I” (TI, 36; italics mine).
49 Cf. Hua 14, Beilage VIII.
50 Hua 1/134, 1/127-29; cf. Hua 15/445.
51 Hua 1/133.
52 Theunissen, The Other, 80.
53 Theunissen, The Other, 91.
54 Hua 1/137.
55 Theunissen distinguishes two forms of alter-ation at different levels: the first alter-ation consists in a sort of physicalization in the sense that the constituted other registers an external perspective on “me,” such that I become fully constituted as a physical being in the world; the second alter-ation amounts to a mundanization in that I become a human being among others through the encounter with the other (cf. Theunissen, The Other, 88f). In this paper, I argue that there is an even deeper form of alter-ation that already takes place at the primordial level, where the delineation between one’s own genuine sphere and the other’s as such alters the pure transcendental ego, to the extent that it essentially characterizes the primordial sphere in terms of a here-there schema.
56 In his Time and the Other, Levinas suggests that the sort of exteriolization brought about by the encounter with the other is not only spatial but also temporal. On the one hand, the encounter with the genuine other draws the ego or the existent out of her solitude and, thus, into the spatial exteriority; on the other hand, Levinas thinks that the phenomenon of death illustrates an event of the future that is “what is not grasped, what befall us and lays hold of us” (Levinas, Time and the Other, 77). Importantly, death thus understood reveals a relation with radical alterity that can by no means be absorbed or re-assimilated by the ego or existent; on the contrary, “in death the existing of the existent is alienated” (75), in so far as death breaks down the ego’s very being with herself in solitude and brings the ego into “an encounter with radical alterity” (fn.52). In this regard, death or the encounter with radical alterity implies a type of “the exteriority of the future” that is different from spatial exteriority 76). For a further elaboration of this regard, see, e.g., Mensch, ‘Levinas on Temporality’. Thanks for a reviewer at the JBSP for pointing this out.
57 Lee, “Static-Phenomenological,” 175.
58 Lee, “Static-Phenomenological,” 175.
59 Hua 15/42; my italics. See the original German: “der Andere, den ich von meinem primordinalen Sein her in Einfühlung, also in der bekundenden Vergegenwärtigung erfahre, ist für mich anderes Ich, ist so wie ich Subjekt für diese Welt, diese selbe, zu der ich als Konstitutierender Beziehung habe, er ist von mir als Konstituierender erfahren.”
60 See also Luft, ‘Husserl’s theory’.
61 Hua 6/200[197].
62 Hua 6/272[338].
63 Hart, The Person, 27f.
64 A fuller explication of this point can be found in Alphonso Lingis’ “Translator’s Introduction” to Levinas’s Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1997, pp. xvii–xviii), where Lingis sketches Levinas’s ethical conception of responsibility in contrast to Husserl’s conception of self-responsibility that serves the ultimate aim of theoretical life.
65 Cf. Crowell, “Why is Ethics First Philosophy”, 7.
66 TI, 67.
67 Drabinski, Sensibility, 8.
68 TI, 43; cf. Theunissen, The Other, 92.
69 TI, 28; cf. Walsh, “Husserl and Levinas”, 295; Critchley, The Problem, 7; Kenaan, “Husserl and Levinas”, 490; Bergo, “Levinas and Husserl”.
70 Drabinski, Sensibility, 8.
71 TI, 51
72 Drabinski, Sensibility, 38.
73 Loidolt, “Value, Freedom, Responsibility”, 709.
74 TI, 81; my italics.
75 For a further discussion of Levinas’s methodology, see, e.g, Walsh, “Husserl and Levinas”; Peperzak, “Levinas' Method”; Bergo, “What is Levinas Doing”; and recently Large, Levinas’ Totality and Infinity, chapter 1, and Flatscher and Seitz, “Einleitung”.
76 TI, 82-83.
77 TI, 43, cf. TI, 81.
78 TI, 43.
79 TI, 79.
80 TI, 80.
81 TI, 75.
82 Cf. TI, 75.
83 TI, 63; cf. OB, 47; see also Loidolt, “Value, Freedom, Responsibility”, 709.
84 TI, 87.
85 Cf., TI, 84.
86 TI, 86.
87 TI, 87.
88 TI, 83.
89 TI, 252.
90 TI, 40.
91 Levinas, “The trace”, 346.
92 TI, p.84; cf. 43, 86, 171, 303.
93 TI, 84.
94 TI, 85. A similar line of thought can be found in Husserl’s genetic analysis of the other, as Theunissen observes, “that the other sees me falls, as his act, entirely outside the scope of my own act. It is a fact removed from my freedom that I can neither make use of nor present. The becoming seen is already, however, the authentic alter-ation” (Theunissen, The Other, 92).
95 TI, 84–5; cf. TI, 86, 89.
96 TI, 84-85.
97 TI, 253.
98 TI, 225.
99 TI, 63.
100 TI, 218–19.
101 For a further discussion of the issue of individuation in Levinas, see Bergo, “Reading Levinas”.
102 TI, 214; my italics.
103 Walsh, “Husserl and Levinas”, 295.
104 TI, 271.
105 TI, 26.
106 TI, 245; see also TI, 214.
107 Bernet, “Levinas’ Critique”, 90.
108 TI, 43; cf. TI, 304.