Abstract
Over the course of the history of philosophy, very different answers have been given to the question regarding the relationship between ‘logos’ and ‘aisthesis’. If ‘logos’ is taken to be tantamount to conceptual propositionality, sensible experience (‘aisthesis’) is both been declared totally non-propositional and sometimes wholly consistent with propositionality. In a first step, the paper aims at clarifying the position of Husserl’s phenomenology on this point, explicating the sense of this project of an analysis of the “logos of the aesthetic world”. In a second step, the paper argues that striking similarities can be found between Husserl’s own project and Aristotle’s inquiry into the structure of ‘aisthesis’. In a third and slightly provocative move, the paper explains why there are good reasons to consider that Aristotle should be read as a proto-phenomenologist, and that his work ‘De anima’ (On the Soul) is, for the most part, a phenomenology of perception. The main claim will be that the where Aristotle and phenomenology converge is on the fact that the structure of predication is inconmensurable to the structure of phenomenality.
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Notes
- 1.
Edmund Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, Hua II, ed. W. Biemel, 2nd ed, Den Haag: Nijhoff 1976, p. 62 (trans. The Idea of Phenomenology, Lee Hardy, Springer 1990, p. 45–47).
- 2.
Ibid., p. 62 (modified translation, P. 47).
- 3.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, p. 319 (trans. The Visible and the Invisible, Alphonso Lingis, Evanston: Northwestern 1968, p. 266.)
- 4.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1993, § 7 (Being and Time, trans. John McQuarrie and Edward Robinson, Oxford: Blackwell 1962).
- 5.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signes, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, p. (trans. The Philosopher and Sociology, in: Signs, Evanston: Northwestern 1964, p. 105).
- 6.
Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, Paris: Gallimard, 1964, p. 71 (“Eye and Mind,” trans. Carleton Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception, ed. James Edie, Evanston: Northwestern UP 1964, p. 182).
- 7.
See my Resistance of the Sensible World, New York: Fordham 2017, chapter IV as well as, more specifically on the relationship of logos and aisthesis in Merleau-Ponty: “La parole oblique. Merleau-Ponty et les enjeux d’une éthique de l’indirect,” in Phainomenon. Revista de Fenomenologia 18 (2011), p. 157–174.
- 8.
Edmund Husserl, “Brief an von Hofmannsthal, 12. I.1907,” in: Husserliana Dokumente vol. III: Wissenschaftlerkorrespondenz, eds Karl and Elisabeth Schuhmann, Dordrecht u.a.: Springer 1994, p. 133–136. See also Edmund Husserl, “Ein Husserlmanuskript uber Ästhetik” (1906), ed. G. Scaramuzza and K. Schuhmann, in: Husserl Studies 7/3 (1990), p. 165–177.
- 9.
Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft (1929), ed. Paul Janssen, Hua XVII, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974, p. 256–258 (Formal and transcendental logic, trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978, p. 291–293).
- 10.
Ibid., p. 256 (trans. p. 292).
- 11.
Ibid., p. 17(trans. p. 19).
- 12.
Ibid., p. 257 (trans. p. 292).
- 13.
Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928, Hua XIV, ed. Iso Kern, Den Haag, Nijhoff, 1973, p. 198.
- 14.
Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, Marburg Lecture Winter Semester 1923/24, GA 17, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1994 (Introduction to Phenomenological Research, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005).
- 15.
Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink, Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1976, p. 5.
- 16.
Among others, see Pierre Rodrigo, Aristote, l’eidétique et la phénoménologie, Grenoble: J. Millon, 1995; Richard Cobb-Stevens, “Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy,” The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy, ed. Ricardo Pozzo, Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2004, pp. 231–247; Robert Sokolowski, “How Aristotle and Husserl Differ on First Philosophy,” in Life, Subjectivity & Art, eds. R. Breeur and U. Melle, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2012, 1–28; James Dodd, “Aristotle and Phenomenology,” Phenomenology in a New Key - Between Analysis and History, eds. J. Bloechl and N. de Warren, Dordrecht: Springer, 2015, 181–207;; Pavlos Kontos, ‘Aristotle in Phenomenology’, in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology, ed. D. Zahavi, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 5–25.
- 17.
What follows is just a brief sketch, with references reduced to the minimum, of some aspects of my attempt of a reconstruction of Aristotle’s thinking of the sensible in Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen Phänomenologie, Berlin/Zurich: diaphanes, 2011 (2018 revised edition), Part II (English translation forthcoming).
- 18.
Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, p. 53. (Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 48).
- 19.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer 1993, p. 33 (Being and Time, trans. John McQuarrie and Edward Robinson, Oxford: Blackwell 1962, p. 56).
- 20.
See Johannes Lohmann, Musiké und Logos: Aufsätze zur griechischen Philosophie und Musiktheorie, Stuttgart: Musikwissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft 1970.
- 21.
It is significant that the alleged inventor of modern aesthetics, A. G. Baumgarten, rather fortified than invalidated the divide between the aisthêta and the noêta. “The noêta are the object of Logic while the aisthêta are the object of the epistemê aisthêtikê, in other words: of Aesthetics” (Meditationes philosophicae de nonnulis ad poema pertinentibus (1735), CXVI).
- 22.
Heidegger , Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, p. 23 (trans. p. 17).
- 23.
For a more detailed account of these implications, as well as further textual references, see Alloa, “Metaxy: Aristotle on Mediacy,” Media and Classics, ed. Pantelis Michelakis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (forthcoming).
- 24.
Aristotle, On the soul 430a and On memory 450b. Plato, Theaetetus, 191c–195b.
- 25.
Charles Kahn, “The Role of Nous in the Cognition of First Principles in Posterior Analytics II 19,” in Enrico Berti (ed.), Aristotle on Science. The Posterior Analytics, Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Aristotelicum, Padova: Antenore 1981, p. 385–414. Michel Narcy, “Κρίσις et αἴσθεσις (De anima III, 2)”, in Corps et Ame. Sur le De Anima d’Aristote, ed. G. Romeyer-Dherbey, Paris: Vrin, 1996, p. 239–256. Barbara Cassin, “Enquête sur le logos dans le De anima” in: Corps et âme, ibid., p. 257–293. Jeffrey Barnouw, Propositional Perception. Phantasia, Predication, and Sign in Plato , Aristotle and the Stoics, Lanham: University Press of America 2002.
- 26.
Stanford Cashdollar, “Aristotle’s Account of Incidental Perception,” Phronesis 18 (1973), 156–171. Andrew Barker, “Aristotle on Perception and Ratios,ˮ Phronesis 26 (1981), 248–266. Wolfgang Welsch, Aisthesis. Grundzüge und Perspektiven der Aristotelischen Sinneslehre, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1987. Pierre Rodrigo, “Comment dire la sensation? Logos et aisthesis en De Anima, III, 2,ˮ Études phénoménologiques 16 (1992), p. 47–78. Franco Volpi, “Le problème de l’aisthesis chez Aristote,” Études Phénoménologiques 17 (1993), p. 27–49.
- 27.
Robert Drew Hicks, De anima, with translation, introduction and notes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1907, p. 528.
- 28.
Heidegger, Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, p. 26 (Introduction to Phenomenological Research, p. 19).
- 29.
On the specifics of imagination in the context of Aristotle’s psychology, see Emmanuel Alloa, “Phantasia. Aristoteles’ Theorie der Sichtbarmachung,ˮ in: Imagination. Suchen und Finden, eds. G. Boehm, E. Alloa, O. Budelacci, G. Wildgruber, Munich: Fink, 2013, p. 91–112.
- 30.
Heidegger , Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, p. 31 (Introduction to Phenomenological Research, p. 23).
- 31.
Heidegger, Introduction to Phenomenological Research, p. 32 (Introduction to Phenomenological Research, p. 23).
- 32.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 1869–1874, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 7, Berlin-New York: De Gruyter, 1988, p. 445.
- 33.
Ibid.
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———. 1995. Aristote, l’eidétique et la phénoménologie. Grenoble: J. Millon.
Sokolowski, Robert. 2012. How Aristotle and Husserl Differ on First Philosophy. In Life, Subjectivity & Art, ed. R. Breeur and U. Melle, 1–28. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
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Welsch, Wolfgang. 1987. Aisthesis. Grundzüge und Perspektiven der Aristotelischen Sinneslehre. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
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Alloa, E. (2020). How Much Logos Is There in Aisthesis? Aristotle’s Phenomenology of Perception. In: Lau, KY., Nenon, T. (eds) Phenomenology and the Arts: Logos and Aisthesis. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 109. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30866-7_12
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