Phenomenology and Imagination in Husserl and Heidegger
(BRIAN ELLIOTT)
Reviewed by Julia Jansen
Page 3
Source: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=7323
IFurther, in Elliott's view, Husserl does not only ignore an entire dimension of the phenomenology of imagination (namely the dimension of the capricious and the dissonant) but he also fails to realize the full reach of his own observations for his general account of consciousness. Because "phenomenology is merely an operation of making explicit the pre-phenomenological dynamic of consciousness itself" (60; original emphasis), the relevance of imagination cannot be merely methodological. It stems from a "basic dynamic of consciousness" (59) that enables us, in general, to intend the possible and to gain independence from the actual. This is vital for all kinds of human activities, not only eidetics or phenomenology. "The way to theory for conscious life both in general and in the particular case of phenomenology is principally by way of imagination." (59)
However, while the important role that our ability to imagine possibilities has for our conscious life in general is obvious, Elliott's conclusion that therefore the most basic structure of consciousness must itself be imaginative does not follow. I therefore fail to see the fundamental tension that Elliott identifies in Husserl's overall position on imagination. Elliott claims that the
thoroughgoing equivocation with respect to the fundamental status of time for conscious life is a crucial index of the principal unresolved dualism at the heart of Husserl's sense of phenomenology. (61)In other words, on the one hand, Husserl sees all appearances as exemplifications of recurring extra-temporal essences; on the other hand, he claims that all appearances are given to temporalizing consciousness 'originally' and as temporal. (cf. 61) Thus, he oscillates between asserting the primacy of the ideal and proclaiming the primacy of the real. Moreover, "as Husserl's analysis of conscious life is in all respects directed in advance by an idea of synthetic unity" (61) he continues to be engaged in the attempt to bridge this gap -- an attempt at which, according to Elliott, he ultimately fails.
But Elliott might be overstating the case by construing Husserl's intention/fulfilment relation as "an a priori pre-figuration" that "would lend to any concrete perception the quality of quasi-remembrance". He also interprets Husserl's notion of 'originary impression' (against Husserl's own view) as "a source point for all consciousness without necessary synthetic connection to other moments in the flow of consciousness" (62). However, a different reading than Elliott's is possible (and more coherent with Husserl's view). This reading does juxtapose a priori pre-figuration and purely impressional consciousness. But it understands Husserl as trying to capture both the sense in which the world appears to us as regulated (in ways which we can become aware of but which we experience as essential and independent from us) andthe sense in which we experience an ongoing encounter with the appearing world (an encounter which we do not control but to which we are exposed).On this reading it might be part of our feeling 'exposed' that we are unable to grasp the moment of encounter -- hence Husserl's insistence that "the now is precisely only an ideal limit, something abstract, which can be nothing by itself . . . but is continuously mediated" (PCIT, §16).
The notion of an "imaginative synthesis at the heart of primitive sensible givenness" (63) runs counter to both of these senses, unless one is -- like Kant but unlike Husserl -- interested in an explanation instead of a description of consciousness. Indeed if one wants to explain how perceptions can, in general, be compatible with concepts, then it makes sense to think of a synthetic process that renders intelligible perceptions from sensations.Depending on one's notion of imagination, it might make sense to attribute this synthesis to imagination. Within the Husserlian project, however, to "identify the imagination as the ultimate origin of conscious life itself" (63) would mean to 'irrealise' experience and to give up the distinction between the actual and the possible. This would be to ignore both senses in which we precisely do not feel free in our experiences of the world and in which we do not experience ourselves as authors of our own experiences.
That said, Elliott does not aim at historical reconstruction but at a "productive transformation of Husserlian phenomenology" (79). And it is worthwhile following his argument regardless of possible disagreements with his presentation of either Husserl or Heidegger. There is a sense in which Heidegger seems, however, treated more 'fairly' by Elliott while Husserl is largely understood from a broadly Heideggerean perspective. This is, of course, consistent with Elliott's belief that it is Heidegger who first comes close to a radical notion of imagination as producing the basic temporal horizon of human understanding and to a "hermeneutical transformation of the phenomenological project [at which] the imaginative apprehension both of difference and radical singularity takes centre stage" (80).
In chapters 5-7 of this book, Elliott then carefully excavates the developing notion of imagination from Heidegger's hermeneutical critique of Husserl, from his appropriation of Kant's notion of productive imagination around the themes of temporality and finitude, towards a strong notion of 'ante-human' freedom and transcendence. In the end, however, as Elliott convincingly shows, this trajectory collapses under the weight of Heidegger's turn which brings to a halt his earlier attempts to place imagination at the centre of phenomenology.Instead, Heidegger removes historical truth from the sphere of human freedom and replaces it with myth; that is, he substitutes the transcendental-aesthetic with a mythical-poetic figure of imagination. In Elliott's words, this
move is understood here as marking an abandonment of phenomenology in any meaningful sense, that is, it constitutes the 'ab-sence' of phenomenology within Heidegger's thought. (141)At the same time, however, this 'ab-sence' brings forth a new phenomenology that seeks dialogue not with science but with art.
Elliott ends his book with a critical chapter that makes explicit both the political dangers and the philosophical potential of this move. On the one hand, it enables Heidegger to make an attempt to "relegitimize the 'transcendent'" by which "all claims of philosophy become subject to an ultimately opaque mediation" and philosophy "necessarily finds itself on the wrong side of the line that divides what Kant distinguished as enthusiasm and fanaticism" (150).On the other hand, it opens up "an unrealised future possibility of phenomenological thinking" (ibid.), a "phenomenology as aesthetics" (154).This future phenomenology will have to negotiate the very risks that Heidegger's case makes so obvious. Elliott indicates that this aesthetics
would have to be 'archaeological' in Foucault's sense of being directed towards the historical dimension of experience as discontinuity and rupture rather than continuity and integration. (154)Presumably, this will also require a new transformation of imagination, which would have to capture the communal and situated aspects of human existence. It will be exciting to see how this future will emerge.
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