Phenomenology and Archeology: Methodological Insights and Thematic Inspirations

Abstract

Particular layers of re-constitutive analyses, the access to the structure of the core (Kern), the “unbuilding,” as well as the “building-up”—there is a complex and structured notion of the movements of the phenomenological method that can lead us to challenges of that kind of investigation in which phenomenology and archeology overlap. We find several legitimate questions: Where does the concept of archeology occur in the phenomenological context? What kind of methodological tools does it use and what are the results of archeological discovery? The sphere where we can elaborate this kind of thinking represents methodologically anchored investigation and it leads phenomenology to its boundaries, to its borderline characterization as well. In this context we situate the question of origination and emergence. Our contribution will be based on Husserl’s manuscripts collected in Husserliana Materialien VIII and Husserliana XXXIV, in which the problematics of reduction and time analyses are intertwined.

This paper was created at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences as a part of VEGA grant Nr. 2/0050/14. I would like to thank Radomír Masaryk, Peter Šajda and David Clayton for consultations and language editing of the English text.

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

What does the phenomenological archeology as a part of the phenomenological methodology mean and which place does it occupy in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl? We start with a general characterization, that there are several possible ways in which we can grasp the phenomenological method in the meaning of its performance and impact. There are various manners in which it can be applied, uncovered or caught in its movements, without weakening its radical claim. And the method is determined by this achievement too. We shall pursue the issue in accordance with this dynamic (reciprocal) “logic” of reduction. At this point we choose three points of view which mean three different optics in the framework of our chosen problem.

The first circle will be associated with different forms of borderline phenomena. That which can be on the level of its appearing called “limit,” can shift us also to other boundaries and limits: thus to the boundaries of the method and to its possibilities, as well as to the possible structure of the phenomenology. In other words, the first range of questions will be enacted on the line thematic—methodic.¹ What we subsequently find out about the character of the method then we develop further in the second point when we focus on the topics as discovering, originating, generating, transforming, which are by their nature also very difficult to be addressed and which are also very important in a methodological context. At this point we shall pay particular attention to the manners of phenomenological archeology as a special part of the phenomenological achievement. In the third point we shall outline how both of these methodological accounts can function in the context of intersubjectivity and communicativeness (of phenomenology/archeology). This presents a feasibility test of these borderline phenomenological lines of thought (from the thematic and methodological point of view).

These reflections will be based on the texts in which Husserl problematizes and radicalizes his methodological considerations. They belong to the 1926–1934 period and diverge in two directions—toward temporal analyses (Hua-Mat VIII) and toward phenomenological reduction (Hua XXXIV). As a supplement we shall use Eugen Fink’s insight into phenomenology of phenomenology and Husserl’s answers in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation (VI CM and Dok. II/1).² These selected texts are important and their scope is wide from the thematic and interpretational perspective, and they have been researched in depth in further phenomenological literature. We shall draw from these resources selectively with regard to the three chosen problematic areas of our interest.

The Method and Its Possibilities, Shifting of Boundaries and New Challenges

Each problem which stands aside the common range of investigation because of its specific nature is a kind of challenge which requires a distinctive approach, a specific “sensibility”³ or a specific method. Husserl notices this in different points of his texts—although in his own work of exposing we can see that some problems come into the field of view earlier, some appear later, thanks to the change of optic or thanks to the deepening or broadening of the investigation and its tools. Not every phenomenon can be investigated in the same (phenomenologically common) way.

We can start with one distinctive and paradoxical case, which can in the end return us to the question of emergence, to the context where this question could be raised. “Only that is ‘unthinkable’ for me that I cease to exist transcendentally. The ending as a man in the objective world, dying, whereas others are bodily living further, that needs another interpretation, which does not belong here.”⁴ What is being suggested here? Thematically this opens up the sphere of other, “new” phenomena; and it is also a new level of investigation.⁵ The development of this investigation can bring forward significant distinctions which in turn cast light on the possibilities of the method. The broader background of the problematic of death represents—as the phenomenon itself indicates—the temporal question of understanding the future, or the horizon of future. Its consequent thematisation is not appropriately available to static analysis and it is beginning to open up on the background of the question of the living present as a considerable phenomenological problem. The phenomena connected to the past and to the future have their specific nature partly linked to the characterization as possibility, ambiguity, lack of clarity, doubtfulness, almost nothingness—however, in both cases of past and future they are defined in specific ways, because the future is not accessible to investigation in the same way as in the case of the past.⁶ The living present is a key, which opens and starts up this analysis in two directions as well as anchors it in I as a Limes of the beginning and the end.

Husserl asks: “How do we come to Limes or rather to ending?”⁷ We need to come to the borderline which lets new options “enter” the problematic, the borderline that should “let through” the heterogeneity and thus make it thematised in a certain kind of way. We arrive to the borderline of experience and the borderline of its regularity. It is a problematisation of the question, how is this kind of differentiation possible within the continuity, sameness?⁸ Let us mention three problematic spheres which can occur here: The example of stopping represents not only death, ending, but also sleeping, falling asleep, the unconscious, passivity, but also exhaustion, faintness, illness, which are slow forms of stopping, losing interest, decline of attention or ceasing any activity. There are different forms of “leaving.” An example from the other part of the range of “beginning–end” is a birth, which stands aside the common range of understanding mainly by minimal overlapping of the past and the future⁹ compared to the adult—who always orients with regard to his or her past and future horizons. The third sphere of borderline forms are animal beings with different degrees of intentional “distancing” (Entfernung), plants, different kinds of pathological anomalies, which thanks to their particularity in turn cast light on subjectivity and its normality—thus they co-determinate it.

Husserl indicates: “The original source of ‘intuition’ for all the possibilities of a transcendental subject lies always in myself, in the modifications of my inwardness. Possibilities through modifications occur also in the higher ‘intuition’ as borderline cases.”¹⁰ We could say, that these examples lead to the level of transformation, modification or in other words, of depth of that which is “psychic inward” (Innerlichkeit). The road there could be opened by the kind of method that is associated with acquiring the form of the world in the infinite opened progress of uncovering the horizon (as pointed out in the text C 6, No. 22).¹¹

In these examples Husserl on the one hand continuously uncovers particular layers of the life of subjectivity, which cover the following: I and its life, different modes, forms of its directedness, which create a special style or centralization of I; he discusses the higher degree of reflection and its pre-conditions, the constitutions of practical interests, the relationship between affectivity and activity, etc. On the other hand gradual deepening and layering enable us to open the theme of the horizon (the horizon of the world and the horizon of the situation), the foreground and background, implicit and the explicit. He thus brings into the game different possibilities of “the allowed,” the acceptable or adequate thematisation. As we can see, some themes can fall out of the scope of investigation and are missing in its optic because they require another degree of approach or a different methodological index.

What do these examples suggest to the understanding of the phenomenological method with regard to the problematic of emergence? The thematic casts light on the methodological; the methodological on the other hand releases the thematic. On one hand, both spheres appear heterogeneous in their nature, i.e. they refuse simple or causal parallelism. On the other hand, they influence each other, they are intertwined. This double exposure is efficient and becomes obvious also as a result of the analysis of borderline cases. This analysis points out not only to limits of the method but also functions positively to enlarge its scope. We may relate this understanding to Georgy Chernavin’s description who writes about different methodological strategies, potentialities and alternatives being “different perspectives of developing the phenomenological method.”¹²

These methodological examples nevertheless need not be on the same level which moves us to yet another issue. This is the matter of a more complex outlook on the form, the build or the structure of phenomenology. As Husserl wrote, it is the case of layering. As we get more intense in investigating phenomena—and this goes hand in hand with problematizing of “how” and “if” we may explore them—there appears in the final analysis the problematic of phenomenology within the phenomenology of phenomenology. The layered nature of phenomenology is described by Eugen Fink in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation: (1) self-consideration is radicalized in the form of (2) the phenomenological reduction, bracketing, which leads to the transcendental onlooker and to the question of the constitution of the world. The next step is (3) the transcendental theory of elements (Elementarlehre) with the scope of examination of regressive and constructive phenomenology. And the highest level (4) is the transcendental theory of method.¹³ Each layer has its own problem sphere of investigation. Other possibilities of structuring however offer different outlooks on the steps of reduction and epoché, as colorfully described and realized in particular texts by Husserl.

This approach which works with a certain kind of “classification” on one hand systemizes the process of investigation; on the other hand it frames the functioning of the method. Such framing can exclude a potential discovery of other contexts. Static phenomenology thus cannot see the genetic and the generative; the descriptive level should be adequately elaborated¹⁴; the analysis can enable the passage toward the interpretative, hermeneutic connections; or the basic constitutive analysis may not be sufficient for the deeper archeology, etc. Such enumeration points out the extent of achievement of the method. On the background of the notions of layering nature of phenomenology, there appears the question of new possibilities, plurality and pluralisation of the phenomenological method. Within the formalizing and systemizing approach there may also appear different characterizations of the method bringing forth something newer and more efficient—and the manner in which this happens shall be described in the upcoming example of phenomenological archeology as a possible access to the topic of emergence.

Movements and Transformations

The principle of plurality in relation to the nature of the method and its boundaries does not need to function only on the quantitative level (as snowballing of new possibilities) but also in the form of deepening, intensifying or radicalizing.¹⁵ Thereby we can once again open the question of reflecting upon motivation with regard to the phenomenological method which functions as “a disturbance,” a turning point in the common way of perceiving, living; reflecting its iteration, it is “the decision that is being decided each time, anew;”¹⁶ and reflecting on its movements, movements of its performances. Husserl also uses the word “Windung,” wrapping something around, winding something around (or also winding something off), which metaphorically suggests that neither the direction nor movements of the method are not straightforwardly linear but work within the variousness of layers. Similarly, in the relationship between attitudes (if we talk about the main differentiation between the natural and the phenomenological attitude; in the more narrow meaning of the attitude-thematic we may talk about the plurality of attitudes) it is not just parallelism that functions there, the transitions between attitudes do not occur along the same “avenues” from one to another and back. The focus of the phenomenological method—not only in the genetic phenomenology, but also in analyses of earlier texts—takes different courses and develops in different dynamics. The polysemy that occurs around the phenomenological method is in some later texts supplemented by the overlapping of epoché and reduction, or by some kind of liberation. This outcome is partly natural due to thematic variety. This specific development of the phenomenological method could be shown in Husserl’s texts in the volume XXXIV that are focused on reduction: on one hand they are thematically divergent which on the other hand reflects their inner fixation within the methodological context.

The optic that captures the methodological variety is connected with the issue of layering, and phenomenological archeology brings forth the act of de-layering. The work of an archeologist—and by analogy also a researcher as well as a philosopher—functions as: progressing toward Abbau, walking backwards (Rückgang), the uncovering (Aufdeckung) of elementary structures. Behind these instructions (mentioned e. g. in the text C 6, No. 23) we can find Husserl’s insights toward what he calls the kernel structure (Kernstruktur): “The primal hyle in its own temporalization is so to speak a core, alien to I, in the concrete present.”¹⁷ An archeologist proceeds by several steps by which he or she goes through different layers. What is uncovered on the first layer is my flowing present in the epoché (my past and my future), on the second layer we reduce the specific flowing present through Abbau “to primal impresional immanent presence-of-a-matter, to the ‘alien to I,’ i.e. the immanent hyle.”¹⁸ The movement through which we disclose these layers is indicated in the movement of Abbau, the movement back, zurück—through searching for different forms and layers of the (hidden) transcendence toward the original (pre-)impressional sphere, toward the hyletic core.

This “kernel” layers as if had two meanings. It is essential in that it creates the grounds or the “footwall” that we may examine, but we can go further from it and build up on it. In one of the key passages Husserl explicitly describes the archeological work:

Phenomenological archeology, the excavation of constitutive building elements concealed in their structural members, the building elements of apperceptive sense-achievements that present themselves in their readiness as experiential world. The questioning and the laying bare of individual achievements that create the sense of Being all the way to that last, archai, to letting rise up again in the spirit the natural unity of variously founded validations of Being with their relative beings. As by the common archeology: reconstruction, understanding in ‘zigzag’.¹⁹

Let us first look at the movement of this process. To move in the zigzag fashion means to go further but not in the linear direction but respecting layers of the “soil” through which we move. It provides a special dynamic to the phenomenological method and at the same time it casts light on the specific interconnectedness, on relationships uncovered in this manner.

So we already defined the shape of the trajectory of this movement and now comes the question of its direction, “from where” it goes and “to where” it progresses. To the passage from Husserl quoted above we could add the explanation by Roberto J. Walton: “On the one hand, it amounts to a restoration that advances in the opposite direction of unbuilding, and employs the elementary constituents that have been unearthed as a cornerstone for the reconstruction of what was unbuilt. It sets itself the task of ‘letting rise up again’…what has been dismantled out of the archai provided by deconstruction … On the other hand, building-up can be understood as an extension in the same direction into further depth dimensions.” It is not just simple movement “from here to there,” as Walton notices: “It is not a reversion but rather a continuation of unbuilding.”²⁰

Phenomenological archeology which at first sight seems like continuous disassembling to the level of elements incorporates thus—paradoxically—the question of creating, origination, emergence. What could archeology say about that? Let us note two moments: The first point is orientational meaning that if we want to capture ephemeral events of origination, creation, ontopoiesis, the deeper meaning and possibilities of modification, as a result of phenomenological archeology we can situate, anchor this problematic within the layers of phenomenological investigation. This point is essential for the methodological line of thought. With the help of Ronald Bruzina we would like to put this problem in the specific framework: “It is crucial, of course, to realize that this phenomenology of temporalization is not a rival to the cosmological account of the evolution of the physical universe.” In the part of his analysis called “Limitations to the disclosure of origination” he also writes about a “careful theoretical critique of the limits in phenomenology’s investigation into origins.”²¹

Clarifying this problem from the methodological point of view and situating it in the specific phenomenological investigation is connected also with its development which represents the second point—we can call it nodal. Archeology “unlocks” this problematic on one hand in its center, on the other hand it then gets developed further, it is further thematisation. In other words, origination is here not only the theme as such, but it is developed in complex phenomenological connections. Husserl looks at it from different angles, more general or more partial, which are connected by the question of modification, transformation (Umwandlung)—in several philosophical differences as well as in inherently methodological matters. We shall present here two examples of two (possible) contexts of its development which serve as two cross-sections through this problematic:

• 1. In a broader sense origination is a matter of large steps of the phenomenological method: “The transcendental-phenomenological I (and then the transcendental we) comes in this action to a new self-creation, to a transformation of the natural I into an I of a radically pure self-consciousness, in radical and ultimate truth, and so to a radical and ultimate knowledge of the world and of everything.”²² It is a special kind of transformation, a radical turn in the natural way of life, which is connected with a series of consequences related to its methodological peculiarity. Therefore Husserl turns to the need of describing the original method (Urmethode) of phenomenology. As Ronald Bruzina writes: “The antecedency of transcendental origination is not temporal antecendency in the world; it is an antecedency of what can only be found as of that which it gives rise to…It would be, in other words, a sense of antecedency wholly specific to phenomenology, and drawn from its specific methodology.”²³

• 2. In a narrower sense the second type of analysis appears: “This determines the system of tasks: (1) We have to learn in the primal modal present and learn to understand it in its double or triple primal modal transformation, in the primal modal not-egoic transformation, in primal temporalization in which a hyletic quasi-world, alien to the ego, has its pre-being; (2) then the ego for which this pre-world is and through which or through the functioning of which, in affection and action, the proper world comes to creation, in a plurality of levels of creation, to which relative worlds correspond.”²⁴ Such special insights show the thematic depth of the problem of origination. It appears in its explicit as well as implicit scope and contains not only transformation, modification, variation, creation but also the rise of unity and difference, diversity, otherness—the building-up of a horizon or “stages, in which the ego does not distinguish itself from the world,”²⁵ as described by Roberto J. Walton. They are exposed in the constitutive and re-constitutive sense, in the steps of archeological unbuilding, exposed in their basis, but also developed further within their efficacy or functioning. It is the sphere where unbuilding as well as building-up appears. “In the primal streaming standing present, in the absolute life of my I, we founded primal intertwining, unity, and primal difference (primal statement, primal un-unifying), which do not found unity, but rather distance and differentiation. Distance from the unity, manifoldness in joint action with intertwining, which brings about the unity.”²⁶ This extends the analysis of subjectivity to other dimensions—which are located on its boundaries and could be discovered using a specific methodological approach—but it remains in frameworks that describe the tension as well as the primal blending of both spheres, the sphere of I and not-I.²⁷

“What,” “How” and “With Whom” of Communication

The next level represents the perspective of intersubjectivity,²⁸ which broadens both previous parts. It has however been already included in them. In which way? The series of borderline phenomena, as was mentioned in the first part, casts new light on the intersubjective scope of phenomenology, while it brings forth the specific Miteinander which is for example associated with a child, his or her world, shaped on the embryonic level especially by the body of mother (instinctive intentionality of the first childhood in mother’s body—as described e.g. in the text No. 7). Their world constitution is different from that of an adult. We could develop the analogy with the constitution of animals (No. 55), too. Furthermore it is the world of others in a wider sense, the world of another nation, other traditions, cultures. The intersubjective level opens itself up in its “breadth”—with all variety of the other and possible layers of their investigation. When we look into the “depth,” we could however find it in its very core, in the centre of constitution where Miteinander and Ineinander overlap. Husserl describes the fundamental level as “primordium”: the level of the primordial where we can observe the layer of the primal experience as well as the primal alteration—“the alter immanent with the alter I, thus it alters for me the alter conscious world, alter-primal conscious”—the iteration of alteration, the other of the other.²⁹ The potentiality of archeology is applied also on the level of intersubjectivity, which is a part of unbuilding of fundamental construction layer of (inter)subjectivity. In this sense, we are still in accordance with that which was already described in both previous parts. But the new dimension by which we want to extend this line of thought however means to communicate phenomenology, or in a specific sense to communicate phenomenological archeology.

How could this kind of analysis be communicated? To whom should this message be addressed? How and why should it be conveyed further? We can once again overlap the Sixth Cartesian Meditation with Husserl’s texts from the volume Hua-Mat VIII. The sixth meditation points to one important dimension which is the appearing of phenomenology, the localization in the natural world, “making into a science,” transforming it to a communicable science. This is the meeting point of both chosen texts, even the point where we may go beyond their scope or where we may try to move to generative phenomenology.

This generative broadening of the horizon anchors phenomenology in history, tradition, in how phenomenology becomes a concrete phenomenon, “cultural construct.”³⁰ The output of phenomenology is a very complicated theoretical transition of its emergence in concrete historical situation; but we can observe also concrete everyday praxis, different activities, phenomenological achievements and work. As Eugen Fink writes about it: “…the phenomenological cognizer philosophizes as a functionary of the human community, he fits himself into the human generative habituality of philosophizing, he transmits, lectures, publishes, etc.”³¹ In this context we can speak about the idea of university, importance of research, sense and value of institution, about fellowship, loyalty, etc. Let us supplement this with the text C 16, No. 83: “When I practice with my co-philosopher a phenomenological world consideration, a layering of absolute traditions is uncovered for me and for us, a layering in which the world is already constituted, and is there for everybody and each possible communicative-social society with its formed special sense and horizon of possible development.”³² In communicating and applying, the phenomenologist turns mainly to other performers of reduction—and in our case in the scope of archeology. This creates the community of scientists. The place of co-philosophizing is here a natural sphere of communication. But its potential is however not exhausted by this. The alterity enters in play also here. The other can appear here not only as the other philosophizing subject, but—and this is essential—also as a non-phenomenologist, a mundane scientist, a non-scientist, a member of other cultural tradition etc. On this level such a person meets with a phenomenologist who can offer his or her knowledge as communicable, or even for further development.

“The communicative surrounding as a field of communicative praxis has its intersubjective structure,”³³ that also applies to outcomes of the methodological process. As a result following the phenomenological archeology we can highlight three aspects in this regard:

• 1. Specific layers of investigation bring forth their own possibility of communication, verification, or further application of their processes. This makes it more complicated (limitary) for archeological research or borderline forms of givenness. This layer takes into account mainly the phenomenologist’s investigation of “how”.

• 2. On the other hand this is associated with the shift toward others, toward the question “with whom.” On the intersubjective level there enters the diversity which influences the level of communication, where a phenomenologist communicates with an otherwise engaged actor, et vice versa.

• 3. Phenomenological archeology is at the same time interesting by moving the boundary of thematisation when bringing the specific “what,” specific content of communication. In the context of Hua-Mat VIII phenomenological archeology brings specific deepening of investigating the layers of subjectivity, a certain in-depth egology, correlatively we could speak about the region investigation with regard to emergence (to which belongs the research on the boundary of I and not-I, research of temporality, history, or intersubjectivity), or some kind of “radicalized” uncovering. And it brings—this was our issue within the chosen topic—conclusion even in the area of methodology.

Concluding Notes

The three areas chosen to look into phenomenological archeology in this paper were referred to as the three optics through which we followed our problematic. The optic of borderline phenomena brought the opportunity to talk about variability and possibilities of the phenomenological method. The second optic followed movements of the method which brought us to the place where the themes of origination, emergence and archeology meet. The third optic focused on intersubjective and practical consequences.

Although we focused primarily on specifics of the method and particular levels of investigation where archeology occurs, in conclusion let us mention yet one more methodological note. We will do it with the help of Anthony J. Steinbock who remarked that “phenomenology as regressive or ‘archeological’ reconstruction, then, belongs to a static phenomenology: It is ‘phenomenological’ inasmuch as it inquires into the accomplishments of sense; but it is static because it questions back and then merely lays out the single sense accomplishments.” On the other hand Steinbock admits the “possible genetic interpretation of reconstruction.”³⁴ As we mentioned the differentiation of static, genetic and generative phenomenology, or other cross-sections/outlooks on the layers of investigation (for example through particular steps of the phenomenological method) they make some questions feasible yet avoid others. The strategy that we could borrow from phenomenological archeology is reflected in the peculiar “zigzag” movement, in transitions through individual layers (and in turn in exposing them to the reflection of their relationship), in the modification of the method, in a different outlook as we would have expected, and in asking what it would bring for us.³⁵