Communication instinct: Husserl and the embodied temporality of the social

This dissertation revisits the question of the temporal constitution of sociality. What is the role of subjective time-experience in the understanding of other people and the formation of communicative environment? This problem is considered in a generative phenomenological context. The investigation traces analytically the “stages” of communicative constitution: from the explicit intentional modes of interaction back to the pre-affective and habitualized social sense-accomplishments. The task is approached through a systematic exposition of Edmund Husserl's generative concept of communication proper (Mitteilung, Kommunikation). A widespread view in the classical and more recent phenomenological scholarship is that Husserl’s concept of communication must be derivative of the more fundamental categories of empathy and intersubjectivity (Einfühlung and Intersubjektivität; Schütz 1957; Held 1972; Zahavi 1996). The theoretical potential of the concept of communication for a phenomenology of sociality has thus been largely overlooked. The dissertation challenges this long-established model and attempts to reaffirm the central constitutive role of communication, to redefine its function in contradistinction with that of empathy. It does so by considering Husserl’s later “genetic phenomenology” where temporal experiences are construed in the background of the sphere of “primal flowing living present” (urströmende lebendige Gegenwart). On this basis, the notion of communication is uncovered as transcendentally rooted in the structure of pre-conscious instinctual Ineinander. This perspective is radicalized and validated through an extensive analysis of Levinas’s implicit debate with Husserl regarding the temporal constitution of alterity and also translated into a problem of the ethical meaning of objective forms of social communication. The central argument of the dissertation is that an interpretation of Husserl’s concept of communication in connection with the notions of primal temporal flow, instincts, and pre-intentional passive synthesis affords the elaboration of a generative phenomenological concept of “intermonadic communication” which grounds empathy rather than deriving from it. Such an interpretation might further prove productive for the study of both nonverbal interaction (also in relation to treatments of autism) and the developmental basis of social behaviour. Its potential to validate an ethical theory of interpersonal understanding is also affirmed through a comparative analysis of Husserl and Levinas's concepts of subjectivity, sensibility and common time.

Communication instinct: Husserl and the embodied temporality of the social

This dissertation revisits the question of the temporal constitution of sociality. What is the role of subjective time-experience in the understanding of other people and the formation of communicative environment? This problem is considered in a generative phenomenological context. The investigation traces analytically the “stages” of communicative constitution: from the explicit intentional modes of interaction back to the pre-affective and habitualized social sense-accomplishments. The task is approached through a systematic exposition of Edmund Husserl's generative concept of communication proper (Mitteilung, Kommunikation). A widespread view in the classical and more recent phenomenological scholarship is that Husserl’s concept of communication must be derivative of the more fundamental categories of empathy and intersubjectivity (Einfühlung and Intersubjektivität; Schütz 1957; Held 1972; Zahavi 1996). The theoretical potential of the concept of communication for a phenomenology of sociality has thus been largely overlooked. The dissertation challenges this long-established model and attempts to reaffirm the central constitutive role of communication, to redefine its function in contradistinction with that of empathy. It does so by considering Husserl’s later “genetic phenomenology” where temporal experiences are construed in the background of the sphere of “primal flowing living present” (urströmende lebendige Gegenwart). On this basis, the notion of communication is uncovered as transcendentally rooted in the structure of pre-conscious instinctual Ineinander. This perspective is radicalized and validated through an extensive analysis of Levinas’s implicit debate with Husserl regarding the temporal constitution of alterity and also translated into a problem of the ethical meaning of objective forms of social communication. The central argument of the dissertation is that an interpretation of Husserl’s concept of communication in connection with the notions of primal temporal flow, instincts, and pre-intentional passive synthesis affords the elaboration of a generative phenomenological concept of “intermonadic communication” which grounds empathy rather than deriving from it. Such an interpretation might further prove productive for the study of both nonverbal interaction (also in relation to treatments of autism) and the developmental basis of social behaviour. Its potential to validate an ethical theory of interpersonal understanding is also affirmed through a comparative analysis of Husserl and Levinas's concepts of subjectivity, sensibility and common time.

Topic relevance as the basic structuration of the field of consciousness

My aim is to depict Schutz's theory of topic relevance as his own distinctive phenomenology of consciousness. I will show that his conception of consciousness is elaborated from at least three types of elements. First, I will disclose Husserl's influence on Schutz in this matter. I will list a few Husserlian terms that Schutz takes into consideration such as noema, horizon, parts and wholes, attentional ray and passive synthesis. Second, I will show that Schutz turns to Gurwitsch's idea that consciousness is a field of experience where the previously listed elements are held together and find their relational meaning. Third, I will expose how all these elements taken from Husserl and Gurwitsch are reinterpreted by Schutz as being relative to relevance as a basic phenomenon of our mind's selective activity which puts at work different levels of our personality according to the schizophrenic ego hypothesis.

Tiempo y asociación. Acerca de la relación entre los Manuscritos de Bernau y los Análisis sobre la síntesis pasiva

Los Manuscritos de Bernau representan una obra clave para quien busca entender la teoría del tiempo husserliana. Tanto los intérpretes sobre el tema, como el propio Husserl indican que estos escritos constituyen su obra maestra (Hauptwerk). Pero la indiscutible relevancia de estos manuscritos no quita la dificultad que implica dar cuenta de una lectura consistente del texto. Nuestra intención aquí consistirá en evaluar la relación que pueda establecerse entre esta obra y los Análisis sobre las síntesis pasivas. La idea que guiará el trabajo será que la labor experimental encarada por Husserl entre 1917 y 1918 provocó, en el contexto del estudio de la temporalidad, el descubrimiento de nociones centrales que luego serían profundizadas bajo el tópico de la asociación. En particular, analizaremos las transformaciones que se presentan en la noción de protención y las descripciones de la modificación retencional.The Bernau Manuscripts represents a crucial work to understand the Husserlian theory of time. The interpreters of the subject, as much as Husserl himself, point out that this studies are a master piece (Hauptwerk). But the unquestionable relevance of Bernau does not minimize the implied difficulty to achieve a consistent interpretation of the text. Our intention here is to determine the relation between this text and The Analysis Concerning Passive Synthesis. The main idea of this paper will be that the experimental work performed by Husserl between 1917-1918 leads to, in the context of time studies, the discovery of key notions. The developpment of this notions will be accomplished under the topic of association. Particularly, we will analize the transformations the notion of protension presents and the descriptions of retentional modification.

Affective Pre-Givenness and Accumulation of Oneself

Based on the analysis of the previously unpublished heritage of Eh. Husserl, the so-called “Bernau-manuscripts” in the horizon of genetic phenomenology, a holistic consideration of subjectivity from the affectively pre-given to the Self as a collection of the self is outlined. Passive synthesis and passive genesis are analysed at the level of sensuality, which refers to the pre-predicative experience of affеction and genetically precedes the thematic correlation between the subject and the world. The accumulation of one’s own Self takes place in onto-reflexive processes through effective communication. Where the Self itself is the identical center, the pole with which the entire content of the stream of experiences is correlated.

Husserl

Following the Kantian “Copernican revolution,” Husserl’s phenomenology is the most powerful idealistic reformalization in twentieth century philosophy. He “corrected” Kant’s transcendental deduction and second-order investigation of mind by arguing that thoughts, associative memory, and affects were available to phenomenological description. In his mature, 1920s investigation into passive synthesis and the complexity of “subjective” time, Husserl approached affects in light of dynamic forces running up and down the temporalizing flux of consciousness. As “retentions,” they joined representations, sometimes clustering around the Schwelle des Bewusstseins (threshold of consciousness), and returning through association. With the transcendental “ego” defined as a universal flow, experiences within the latter, which Husserl defined as retentions and protensions, remained active and betokened in memory, phantasy, and affects.

Copula is an intuitive predicate of consciousness on fulfilment of knowing and judging acts

The recent investigations into knowledge and its elements viz facts, skills and objects have become prominent in various subfields of philosophy and other areas like linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. These investigations have been mainly on understanding the relation between the intentionality and its referential entities to know how they enrich knowledge with their existence. This article starts with an exploration of the fundamental aspects of judgemental sense from the knowledge origins perspective. To explain the consequences of this, I start with reconstructing the notion of categorial intuitions described in Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigations by relating it to ‘knowledge origination’ as an intuitive fulfilment of signifying acts. This offers a relation of perceptual synthesis, operating implicitly among the signifying intentions upon grasping intended objects, in view of language structures such as copulas. This leads to the synthesis of intuitive aspects mainly from the categorial elements for a judgemental sense or thinking and the attitude from the very sphere of perception. The tension between categorial intuitions is understood as foundational acts and founded acts. Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigation describes the notion of passive synthesis, the genesis of categoriality in every realm of sensibility that allows one to formulate the relational role among the ‘act of knowing’ and phenomenological approaches to the judgemental sense. Thus, the investigation focuses on perceptual judgements and categories, which fulfils the judgemental sense of categorial elements and attitude.

Kant's Idea of Association and Passive Synthesis

When Kant discusses the comprehensive role of transcendental imagination, he mentions the role of an empirical synthesis, which is the basis of perceptual activity, but if it is based on empirical synthesis then the contradiction of a priori comprehensive ability and empirical synthesis has occurred, and the relationship between active synthesis and passive synthesis of consciousness has now become a problem that must be solved. The description of the association idea has already incorporated the passive synthesis component, which actually provides a solution to this contradiction.