Challenging the transcendental position: the holism of experience

Cont Philos Rev (2011) 44:1–21 DOI 10.1007/s11007-011-9165-x

Challenging the transcendental position: the holism of experience Claude Romano

Published online: 15 March 2011 ! Presses Universitaires de France 2011

Abstract Taking the problem of perception and illusion as a leading clue, this article presents a new phenomenological approach to perception and the world: ‘‘holism of experience.’’ It challenges not only Husserl’s transcendentalism, but also what remains of it in Heidegger’s early thought, on the grounds that it is committed to the skeptical inference: ‘‘Since we can always doubt any perception, we can always doubt perception as a whole.’’ The rejection of such an implicit inference leads to a relational paradigm of Being-in-the-World that differs from Heidegger’s on many points. Keywords Holism ! Heidegger ! Husserl ! Skepticism ! Evenemential hermeneutics

Phenomenology has had no other task than the elucidation of the problem of the world, or rather what Husserl called its ‘‘enigma’’ (Ra¨tsel), that is, its paradoxical mode of givenness, its remarkable transcendence with respect to consciousness, qua all-enveloping, all-inclusive horizon—the ‘‘horizon of all horizons.’’ This ambiguous mode of givenness, oblique and elusive, was first approached on the basis of a fixed philosophical framework—that of transcendental thought. To the question of the phenomenological status of the world, of how this phenomenon (if it can be called a ‘‘phenomenon’’) is given, Husserl answers by tracing this mode of givenness back to the constitutive operations of a pure ego. However, varied the answers subsequently surfacing within the phenomenological movement have been, Translated by Michael B. Smith, Berry College ([email protected]). C. Romano (&) Universite´ Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]

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they all have a ‘‘family resemblance.’’ In Heidegger, for example, though the whole idea of constitution has been abandoned, the Dasein nevertheless remains, by its finite ontological project, ‘‘world-forming’’ (Weltbildend), and thus the world remains a characteristic of its transcendence, a moment of its unitary ontological structure, Being-in-the-World. In the following reflections I would like to attempt to outline, not so much a new answer to the problem of the phenomenological status of the world or a new solution to its ‘‘enigma,’’ as a new framework in which to be able to formulate this problem itself. I call this framework ‘‘holism of experience.’’ ‘‘Holism’’ comes from the Greek to holon, the whole. As a first approach, let us consider that a holistic conception rests on the adage according to which ‘‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’’ A holism of experience thus applies this same adage to experience as such—and to the world in that it forms the ‘‘milieu’’ of all experience. An experience is only an experience if it fits into the entirety of experience, which is not the simple sum of its parts.

1 The transcendental position and the problem of skepticism In a sense, the approach I propose is not new. It was anticipated many times by authors as varied as Dilthey, James, Bergson, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, to name a few. Thus, for example in Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, Dilthey tries to shed light on the phenomenon of the unity of life (Lebenseinheit), which he also refers to as ‘‘connectedness of life,’’ Lebenszusammenhang. This sort of unity, such as a biography, for example, tries to recapture, resides in a meaningful connection between the parts and the whole of that life itself: ‘‘Life and what is re-experienced manifest a special relationship of parts to a whole, which is that of the meaning of parts for the whole.’’1 ‘‘The category of meaning designates the relationship of parts of life to the whole as rooted in the nature of life.’’2 In other words, life is a meaningful totality to the extent that each of its parts contains meaning only in virtue of its being a part of the totality of life. It is the totality of life that primordially possesses the characteristic of being endowed with meaning—which the parts of that life possess only by derivation. The phenomenon of life can, therefore, only be apprehended in the perspective of a holistic conception in which the whole is not reducible to the sum of its parts. In phenomenology stricto sensu, it is probably Heidegger who, in the wake of Dilthey, most clearly validated such an approach. As early as in 1919 he rejected an ‘‘atomizing analysis (atomisierende Analyse)’’3 as an approach to the phenomenon of life, and recommends a ‘‘structural analysis (Strukturanalyse)’’4 that does justice to the holistic constitution of the experience of life as such. This idea links Heidegger’s first conceptuality, elaborated in the framework of a ‘‘hermeneutics of factical life,’’ to that of fundamental ontology. The ontological structures of Dasein 1

Dilthey (2002, p. 249); id. (1992, p. 229).

2

Dilthey (2002, p. 253); id. (1992, pp. 233–234).

3

Heidegger (1999, p. 61) [Below Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe is abbreviated GA #, p. #].

4

Ibid., p. 5.

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are in each case total, impossible to break down into elements: ‘‘Being-in-the-World is a structure which is primordially and constantly whole.’’5 The different ‘‘moments’’ of that structure that can be distinguished through analysis only have meaning against the background of the indecomposable unity of that structure taken as a whole. ‘‘The determination of Dasein as being-in-the-world is a unified and original one…. [This basic constitution] is still always wholly there as itself…. The bringing out the individual structural moments is a purely thematic accentuation and as such always only an actual apprehension of the whole structure in itself.’’6 All the originality of the phenomenology of Sein und Zeit resides in the light it sheds on structural totalities (the In-der-Welt-sein, the Mit-sein, the Sein zum Tode, etc.) that do not consist of a sum of elements, and are not reducible to a string of ‘‘lived experiences’’ having the mode of existence of subsistence (Vorhandenheit). Although it is possible to find in phenomenology (and outside of it) cases that anticipate a holistic-oriented approach to our experience (or to what might better be termed our primary and primordial openness onto the world), it remains nonetheless the case that this approach has hardly been conceptualized in a rigorous manner as such. Its originality cannot be said to have been singled out in the least; and most importantly, the implications and critical significance of that approach with respect to the transcendental dispensation that has prevailed in phenomenology even after Husserl have scarcely been noted, even by the authors who have adopted and thematized it. What is it, then, that constitutes the force and critical potential of a holism of experience? First of all, how can a holism be characterized more specifically? Many versions of holism have flourished in contemporary philosophy: epistemological holism (Duhem-Quine), a holism of beliefs and interpretation (Davidson), semantic holism (Wittgenstein), conceptual holism (Sellars), mental holism (Descombes). Let us pause to consider the example of beliefs. A holism of beliefs stipulates that it is impossible to have a belief without ipso facto having many others, and in reality without having a system of beliefs, since a belief is compatible or incompatible with other beliefs, can be derived from certain other ones, and itself plays an inferential role in the acquisition of new beliefs. In other words, there is no such thing as an isolated belief. A belief cannot possess the properties it does (have meaning, be verifiable, and intervene in reasoning) unless there are other beliefs possessing the same properties, with which it bears logical relations. These properties can be qualified as ‘‘holistic’’ to the extent that a belief only possesses them within a whole. In a holistic system, certain parts of the system only possess at least some of their properties if other parts possess the same or other properties (complementary properties, for example). Thus, certain beliefs can only have meaning if other beliefs also have meaning; but certain beliefs cannot be true unless others (their negations) are false. Hence we can characterize a holistic system as being a system whose parts do not possess at least some of their properties unless other parts of the system possess the same or other properties; and consequently whose parts only possess 5

Heidegger (1962, p. 225) [Below Heidegger’s Being and Time is abbreviated BT, p. #]; id., (1986, p. 180) [Below Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit is abbreviated SZ, p. #].

6

Heidegger (1992, p. 157); GA 20, p. 211.

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these properties within the whole of which they are parts, and in virtue of the relations they bear to the other parts of the system. We now understand what a holistic conception of belief means. But what does a holism of experience mean? Let us take the concept of experience in its broadest sense, including not only experiences in the strong and ‘‘original’’ sense—those in which the thing itself is given in praesentia (leibhaft, as Husserl would say), but also affective, emotive, remembered, imaginary, and oneiric experiences, which are only ‘‘experiences’’ in a modified sense (and sometimes in the ‘‘as if’’ modality). Among these experiences, some open onto the world itself: These are classically called ‘‘perceptions.’’ A holism of experience maintains that the property of being a perception is a necessarily holistic one. An experience is a perceptive experience if and only if it blends in seamlessly with the whole of the perceptive experience—that is, if it presents a structural cohesion with the system of perceptive experience in toto. This property of cohesion is not coherence in the logical sense. Coherence applies to beliefs or propositions; cohesion applies to phenomena. The latter consists in a set of structural invariants (spatiotemporal ones, for example) that underlie all variation of phenomena. A perception possesses a cohesion with other perceptions if, through their succession, a certain number of structural invariants are preserved—those, for example, which make possible the manifestation of the identity of an object through space and time and in changing perspectives. Thus, we can reformulate the holistic principle that is at work in perception by saying that an experience cannot possess the property of being a perception, that is, an experience in the originary sense, unless it presents a structural cohesion with other experiences that are themselves perceptions, i.e., unless it is integrated with the whole of perception, which possesses primarily the aforementioned property of cohesion. In fact, what is true of perceptive experience also applies to what that experience is the experience of: the world. The same holistic principle can, then, be formulated a parte objecti: the characteristic for a thing’s being perceived is itself dependent on the cohesion of that thing with its surroundings, but that cohesion is first a characteristic of the whole, that is, of the world itself, before being a characteristic of one of its given parts, and in order to be able to become one. Only a whole endowed with structural cohesion (a world) can be perceived, and it is only to the extent that it is blends seamlessly into a world that a thing can, in turn, be perceived. These still preliminary formulations only bear on the experience in its first and originary sense: ‘‘perception.’’ In no case are they to be construed as excluding the possibility that other holistic aspects can be found in other modalities of experience—in memory, for example, or in affective dispositions. I leave this problem aside. We begin, in any case, to get a sense of the type of problem—or challenge even—to which a holism of experience has as its vocation to respond. This problem is that of knowing what permits us to assert that our primary experience of things, our ‘‘perception,’’ does indeed open onto the world itself. This difficulty was posed to phenomenology historically in the wake of skepticism, to the point of orienting and conditioning phenomenology’s entire approach to the problem (or the enigma) of the world. Indeed, the skeptic asks, What assurance do we have that our perceptions, as simple experiences of consciousness, ‘‘representations’’ or ‘‘ideas,’’ do indeed relate to objects outside us, and that they put us in

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contact with the world itself? Reduced to its hard nucleus, skepticism with respect to the ‘‘outside’’ world rests on the following inference. Since we can always doubt any particular perception, we can always doubt perception as a whole. Since a local doubt—and a local illusion—are always possible, a general doubt—and a general illusion—are also possible. Must we accept this inference? It is precisely this question that it is the role of holism to answer. Before confronting this difficulty head on, let us note that the inference underlying skepticism’s doubt about the existence of the world is not only an ingredient of Descartes’ hyperbolic doubt, but also the basis of the entire transcendental problematics of Husserl. Until we have understood the role played by that inference in the economy of transcendental phenomenology, we will have no way of making a positive or negative evaluation of phenomenology’s ultimate characterization of the world. It goes without saying that every perception may turn out to be illusory after the fact. But just because a punctual illusion, affecting a punctual perception—which reveals itself by that very fact not to be a perception— is always thinkable, must we conclude that a generalized illusion is also thinkable? Husserl’s response to this question, like Descartes’ before him, was undeniably affirmative. This is attested not only by the hypothesis of the annihilation of the world as presented in section 49 of the Ideen I, but also by the transcendental mode of conceptualization as a whole. Indeed, that entire conceptuality rests on the separation between a realm of absolute certainty—the ego and its cogitationes—and another one that is subject to doubt—the realm of transcendent objects. More precisely, despite the ‘‘breakthrough’’ of intentionality beyond a philosophy of representation, Husserl continues to contrast the domain of absolute givenness (that is, the absolutely given, which he thinks of in the first phase of his thought as real immanence, before enlarging that immanence, at the time of his transcendental turn, to immanence in the intentional sense, which includes within it all the real transcendences) with the domain of real existences ad extra, the things of nature, the evidence of which remains forever ‘‘presumptive,’’ that is, subject to skeptical doubt. Thus, the pre-transcendental distinction of Cartesian origin between givens really immanent in consciousness (hyletic and noetic data) and really transcendent givens (external objects) is at once transcended and paradoxically conserved under the transcendental dispensation. As R. Boehm notes, phenomenology attributes ‘‘a new meaning to these terms [immanence and transcendence]’’ while at the same time ‘‘a parallel use of these same terms in the traditional sense (of ‘‘real’’ immanence and transcendence) will prove indispensable and be retained.’’7 And since these concepts are enrooted in the ‘‘doubt’’ approach, Cartesian doubt is at once rejected (because it ends up in a mundane ego) and confirmed in its rights by transcendental phenomenology. Husserl continues to maintain that the external world can collapse into illusion at any moment, and that transcendental consciousness alone is exempt from doubt. But, through the transcendental turn, this consciousness from now on includes the world as a noematic correlative, as the horizon of its constitutive operations.

7

Boehm (1959, p. 486).

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Husserl, despite the fact that he attempts, thanks to intentionality, to clear the path toward a non-Cartesian conception of the pure ego in its relationship to the world, remains tributary to the Cartesian approach, because he continues to consider the ‘‘doubt’’ approach itself, and its end product, the ‘‘cogito’’ as self-evident, regardless of whatever change of orientation he may impart to them. He does not raise the least question about the validity of a generalized doubt. Three affirmations flow directly or indirectly from that idea: 1.

2.

3.

The epistemological primacy of the ego vis-a`-vis the world. The ego, given to itself in absolute self-evidence, is the first entity knowable in principle [en droit], and the only one knowable apodictically, whereas knowledge of the world remains always subject to doubt. This epistemological disparity between ego and world is extended into an ontic disparity: consciousness constitutes a self-sufficient (selbststa¨ndig), absolutely self-enclosed sphere, whereas the world exists only relatively to consciousness; its being is a dependent one. ‘‘If we exclude pure consciousness,’’ he was fond of saying in his Go¨ttingen seminars, ‘‘then we exclude the world.’’8 The twofold primacy (epistemological and ontic) of the ego with respect to the world leads to making subjectivity the locus of primary truths that are absolutely exempt from doubt, lending themselves to a transcendental philosophy, and taking precedence over truths merely derived from the other sciences. In other words, adherence to the skeptical inference ends up in an epistemology of absolute foundations in virtue of which transcendental phenomenology can offer a foundation for all the sciences, be they a priori or empirical.

There is good reason to recall the radical dependency of Husserl’s transcendental position on the skeptical idea of a generalized doubt. Even in the undertakings that resolutely break with phenomenology understood as ‘‘twentieth-century Cartesianism,’’9 there remain troubling structural analogies that raise the delicate question of the degree to which these undertakings have truly gone beyond what has hitherto served as our frame of reference. In Sein und Zeit, for example, even though ‘‘the ambiguities of the concepts of immanence and transcendence’’ (to borrow Boehm’s expression once again), are abandoned in favor of a conception of In-der-Welt-Sein that strips Dasein of all interiority and divests the being to which it relates of all exteriority—even though Heidegger asserts with the utmost clarity that ‘‘the question of whether there is a world at all… makes no sense…’’10 so that ‘‘the skeptic… does not need to be refuted’’11; in sum, even though he seems to reject the entire problematics underlying Husserl’s neo-Cartesian perspective by reasserting what he had been saying since 1919, namely that ‘‘the true resolution of the problem of the reality of the external world lies in the understanding of the fact that this is in 8

Ingarden (1975, p. 21). [‘‘Streichen wir das reine Bewusstsein, so streichen wir die Welt.’’].

9

Husserl (1998, p. 3); id., Husserliana [abbreviated below as Hua] 1, p. 3. See also Husserl (1973, p. 1); id., Hua 1, p. 43.

10

BT, pp. 246–247; SZ, p. 202.

11

BT, p. 271 [trans. slightly modified—Tr.]; SZ, p. 229.

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any case not a problem, but rather an absurdity (Widersinnigkeit),’’12 it is quite easy to detect troubling similarities that remain between his conceptuality and that of Husserl. First of all, Dasein, by its comprehension of being, which only de-centers it in appearance, holds the originary opening, the Erschlossenheit, that makes all within-the-world discovery of entities possible, so that Dasein, or, rather, the comprehension of being in it—remains the condition of the (quasi-transcendental) possibility of appearing of the world and of entities as a whole. ‘‘There is world only and as long as Dasein exists,’’13 Heidegger writes. This generates an idealism of a new kind, which no longer betokens the tracing of entities as a whole back to a privileged entity, but rather the tracing of the being of these entities back to the understanding of being that belongs to the exemplary existent,14 which by the same token makes that being into ‘‘‘that which is transcendental’ for every entity,’’ and makes of this ontological transcendentalism the ‘‘only correct possibility for a philosophical problematic.’’15 What comes of all this is a primacy of Dasein that is no longer simply ontic, as in Husserl, but ‘‘ontico-ontological’’ for the formulation of the question of being. According to a new version of Descartes’ ‘‘tree of philosophy,’’ Dasein, insofar as it possesses a comprehension of being, is the condition of possibility of all the regional ontologies, and consequently of all the corresponding sciences: ‘‘the ontico-ontological condition for the possibility of any ontologies.’’16 It is true that, with fundamental ontology, the emphasis has shifted from a primary and exemplary entity to the being of that entity, but this shift has only loosened, not broken, the initial Cartesian shackles. Heidegger asserts that skepticism’s problem is an absurdity, but he does not say for what reason. On the contrary, he continues to maintain certain themes that might lead us to believe that the skeptic’s problem is well posed. He says, for example, that the world is ‘‘subjective’’ through and through, in the sense of ‘‘the well-understood concept of the ‘subject,’’’17 Dasein as Being-in-the-World: ‘‘The world is something Daseinish…. It is there, as is the being-there [Da-sein] that we ourselves are; in other words, it exists.’’18 The world in the ontological sense is thus nothing but a moment of the ontological constitution of that entity, and this is the case—paradoxical as it may seem—regardless of whether that entity, Dasein, exists or not in fact, and whether there does or does not exist a ‘‘world’’ (in a derived sense) in which this entity exists in fact. ‘‘If I say of Dasein that its basic constitution is being-in-theworld, I am then first of all asserting something that belongs to its essence (Wesen) and I thereby disregard whether the being of such a nature factually (faktisch) exists or not.’’19 The world that belongs to the ontological constitution of Dasein as beingin-the-world is not, then, the ‘‘world’’ (in a derivative sense) in which Dasein exists 12

GA 56/57, p. 92.

13

Heidegger (1988 p. 170); GA 24, p. 241.

14

BT, pp. 255–256; SZ, p. 212.

15

BT, p. 251; SZ, p. 208.

16

BT, p. 34; SZ 13.

17

Heidegger (1988, p. 216); GA 24, p. 308.

18

Heidegger (1988, p. 166); GA 24, p. 237.

19

Heidegger (1984, p. 169); GA 26, p. 217.

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or does not exist de facto, no more than the facticity of that entity (Faktizita¨t) is reducible to its factuality (Tatsa¨chlichkeit), no more than its existence (Existenz), qua ontological determination, signifies its reality (Wirklichkeit) in such a ‘‘world.’’ But then the world has become twofold, and the one in relation to which the skeptical problem is meaningless is no longer the one focused on by the skeptic through the expression of his doubt. The ‘‘subjective’’ world of the ontologically well-conceived subject remains a ‘‘configuration’’ (Bildung) of the latter, as will be stated in the Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. It is not insignificant that the reduction, that transcendental procedure par excellence, is able to continue to play a role, albeit a discreet and largely implicit one, in the economy of fundamental ontology. Anxiety remains analogous to an epoche¯. Heidegger, because he was unable to give a positive formulation of what makes the skeptical problem a false one, despite his advances and revolutionary intuitions, remains largely a prisoner of Husserl’s (and thereby, partially at least, of Descartes’ and Kant’s) transcendental perspective; he conceives of Being-in-the-World in a way that remains symptomatically ambiguous, for he attempts to free himself from transcendental theses without leaving the problematic framework in which these theses are set.

2 What does the holism of experience mean? Heidegger is certainly right not to take the skeptic’s problem seriously. But he is wrong not to take seriously the reasons that must lead us not to take this problem seriously. Instead he says nothing about them, and thus remains bogged down in a post- or crypto-transcendental conceptuality rather than trying to understand the openness to the world that is inherent in all true experience—and essentially so. From all appearances it would seem that Heidegger was content here, in resolving the difficulty, to impose a new paradigm, the In-der-Welt-sein, by fiat, without dwelling on the reasons that make it necessary. But in philosophy the forceful fiat never has as much force as the patient resolution of a problem in the form of sound argumentation. Let us then attempt to confront directly the problem Heidegger leaves partly unresolved, the broad outlines of which we have begun to bring into view. What is it that makes the problem of skepticism an ill-posed one? Let us return to the case of perception. What is it that makes the inference ‘‘since one can always doubt any particular perception, one can always doubt perception as a whole’’ illegitimate? On Husserl’s view, it is the always open possibility that the world may dissolve into an illusion that obliges us to maintain an unbridgeable eidetic difference between the being of the cogitatio and that of its cogitatum—between the experiences given in indubitable immanence and the objects in the world which may or may not correspond to them. This eidetic difference is no less valid for perception than for the other intentional modalities. Thus, declares Husserl, a ten-storey building standing before us in the flesh can very well be perceived—we may even say that its perception is its being given in the flesh (leibhaft)—and it should be added that this would still be the case, even if we were victims of an illusion; that is, even in the absence of a ten-storey building in the world. ‘‘The foregoing

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characterization’’ [Leibhaftigkeit], he specifies, ‘‘is not to be understood in the sense that there would pertain to the essence of every perception as such the existence of the perceived Object, the persistence of that which stands there in it in the mode of presence in the flesh. In that case, talk of a perception whose object did not exist would indeed be countersensical; illusory perceptions would be unthinkable.’’20 But in Husserl’s view, given the abyss of meaning separating the absolute being of the cogitatio from the ‘‘dubitable’’ being of the real thing ad extra, it must be possible to talk about the perception of something, i.e., about its mode of givenness ‘‘in the flesh,’’ without that thing existing in any way. Deferring to ordinary usage, in which ‘‘perceiving’’ is contrasted with ‘‘being the victim of an illusion,’’ or with ‘‘hallucinating’’ an object (such that ‘‘to perceive that p’’ implies ‘‘p,’’ while ‘‘to hallucinate that p’’ implies, on the contrary, ‘‘not p), Husserl maintains a fundamental and irreducible difference between Leibhaftigkeit, which applies to all perception regardless of whether or not it is marred by illusion, and Glaubhaftigkeit, the belief bestowed on an object when it exists and which must be withdrawn from it in the case of an illusion: The former is ‘‘fundamental and essential to perception as such,’’ while the latter ‘‘can either supervene or be lacking.’’21 Not every departure from ordinary usage constitutes in and of itself a philosophical ‘‘error,’’ let alone ‘‘nonsense’’; but certain cases can raise formidable difficulties. Is it really possible to isolate within perception a ‘‘nucleus’’ common to ‘‘true’’ and to ‘‘illusory’’ perception (since Husserl’s innovation consists, among other things, in authorizing the use of ‘‘illusory perception’’), namely givenness ‘‘in the flesh,’’ Leibhaftigkeit, which, if we are to believe the founder of phenomenology, constitutes a descriptive characteristic of all perception, whether the thing thus given (in the flesh) exists or not? How can a perception open up for us the thing itself in the flesh without that thing’s existing in any way? Husserl maintains that it must be possible to distinguish between the object given in the flesh qua intentional correlate of the act of perception and the real object, which may or may not correspond to it, in view of the fact that the latter is in principle subject to a generalized doubt. In other words, because the skeptical argument is valid, we must affirm that a perception may have no object (in the sense of a res existing in the world) without ceasing thereby to be a perception. There must be an element common to perception and illusion on the basis of which they are differentiated. Hence the search for additional criteria that would make it possible to distinguish between true corporeal givenness and an illusory corporeal givenness. For Husserl, these criteria are two in number. 1.

Perception is a positional consciousness whereas the consciousness of an illusion replaces the ‘‘thesis’’ of consciousness with a ‘‘counter-positing’’ (Gegenthese).22

20

Husserl (1997, p. 12); Hua 16, p. 15.

21

Husserl (1997, p. 13); Hua 16, p. 16.

22

Husserl (1982, p. 332); Hua 3.1, p. 320.

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2.

Perception and illusion differ as to the mode of linkage of the adumbrations or silhouettes (Abschattungen) through which the object appears: Perception is a flux of concordant silhouettes, constantly confirming and corroborating one another in the unity of an experience—illusion a flux of discordant silhouettes, exposing the emptiness of their object through the outburst of a conflict. Obviously these two criteria are of a piece: A doxic modality of belief is attached to a concordant flux of silhouettes, while the discordance, the outburst of a conflict between concurrent appearances brings about a doxic neutralization at the conclusion of which the object is no longer given as anything but a ‘‘mere appearance.’’

There is therefore an element common to both the actual apparition and the mere appearance, or to the experience and the pseudo-experience, and that element is supplied by the Abschattungen, which are truly immanent to consciousness. In the first case they confirm and corroborate one another, while in the second they ‘‘explode’’ in conflict; but they inhabit consciousness regardless of whether the perceived object exists or not. As a result of this common element, perception may be said to be reducible to an illusion that constantly confirms itself, and the illusion to a perception that conflicts with itself. Identical immanent givens or Abschattungen can at one moment underlie authentic perceptions, and at another support mere appearances, depending on how they are linked or coordinated with one another. Illusion is a contradicted or crossed-out reality, and reality, to adopt Husserl’s Leibnizian formulation, a ‘‘coherent dream.’’23 Let us call this conception ‘‘conjunctive’’: It claims that one and the same experience could just as well be a perception as an illusion, depending on how it is coordinated with other experiences. A conjunctive conception of perception rests on a non-eliminable remnant of psychologism or mentalism. Indeed, once there is an element (the Abschattung) common to both the apparition ‘‘in person’’ and the merely seeming appearance, a ‘‘phenomenon’’ that is neutral with respect to that distinction and that is present in consciousness regardless of whether the object that appears exists or not, this ‘‘phenomenon’’ must be logically distinct from the object that appears. It can be nothing other than a mental intermediary. And indeed in Husserl the Abschattungen do retain, even after the transcendental turn, a status that is entirely different for the objects that emerge through them: They are really immanent givens, whereas their objects are transcendent. Despite his break with psychologism, Husserl constantly slips back into its well-worn passageways. Moreover, the conjunctive conception of perception he defends does not even succeed in truly accounting for the difference that exists between a perception and an illusion. Let us suppose that it is legitimate to distinguish between blue as a pure immanent content of my present perception of the vase, and blue as an objective, really transcendent property of that object; let us suppose, further, that the second can always turn out to be illusory, whereas the first alone is indubitable. By coming closer or by changing the lighting I may discover that the vase is not blue, but green. The conflict between incompatible appearances brings about the crossing-out of my 23

Husserl (1973, p. 17); Hua 1, p. 57.

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earlier perception. But in thus placing the difference between perception and illusion in the way the silhouettes are interlinked, in conceiving of illusion as a crossed-out and obliterated perception and of perception as a confirmed illusion, we have already yielded to skepticism on the essential point. For if a perception can only legitimately be considered a perception for as long as it proceeds in a concordant manner, it can never rightfully be considered a perception, since the concordance of its silhouettes is always provisional, essentially exposed to the specter of illusion; and, if I do not know already at the present moment with certainty that what I have before me is a blue-colored vase, it is hard to see how I could end up discovering this. In placing the perception/illusion distinction at the end of a confirmation process that is in principle infinite—endless—Husserl has merely endorsed the skeptic’s doubt, the thesis of which is precisely that it is impossible, on the occasion of a presently lived experience, to determine whether it is a perception or an illusion. And it is pointless to respond by arguing that my reasons for accepting the existence of the vase gradually take on more ‘‘weight’’ the longer the perception lasts: The tenth time I circle that object, its existence will be no more certain than the first time. Either it is certain from the start or it never will be. But doesn’t the error lie in the supposition of an element common to true apparition and mere appearance—those Abschattungen that, being neutral with respect to this distinction, can be nothing but an interface between the world and us? In opposition to a conjunctive conception, which propounds that the same lived experience can be both perception and illusion, differing only by the way it is coordinated with other lived experiences, and that consequently an illusion and a perception can be indiscernible on all points while they are being experienced, we must propose a disjunctive conception, which affirms that an experience is either perception or illusion, but never both at once. There is nothing in common between the true apparition in person and the mere appearance. Thus, strictly speaking, there are no illusory perceptions, but only illusions of perception. In truth the stumbling block for the conjunctive conception is an insufficient phenomenology of the illusion contrasted with perception. If we describe perception and the illusion in a phenomenologically adequate manner, we see that the modality of givenness of their object is as different as night and day: An apparent object is only apparently an object, it is a pure fictum that cannot be given in the same way as a real thing in the world. There is no need, here, to postulate an element common to illusion and perception, which, in the case of the latter, would somehow slip in between our openness onto things and those things themselves. Let us examine the typical case of hallucinations, an in-depth description of which has been given to us by Erwin Straus and Merleau-Ponty. The victim of a hallucination rarely ‘‘believes’’ in the existence of the object of the hallucination in the same way he or she believes in the existence of the perceived object. In an experiment by Zucker24 that speaks eloquently to this issue, the schizophrenic patient thinks he sees a man posted regularly beneath his window. He describes his general bearing, his height, his clothing. A male nurse is asked to stand at the same place, dressed in a similar way, 24

Qtd. by Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 334).

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and to imitate that person’s bearing as closely as possible. The patient immediately perceives the difference. ‘‘It is true that there is someone,’’ he says. ‘‘It is someone else.’’ The fact is, the object of the hallucination has the appearance of a perceived object, but is manifested otherwise, and as it were on a different stage than that of the real world. ‘‘The illusion of seeing,’’ Merleau-Ponty writes, ‘‘is, therefore, much less the presentation of an illusory object than the unleashing and letting run crazy, so to speak, of a visual power which has lost any sensory counterpart.’’25 The foxfire of the illusion is a fleeting upsurge—unstable, indeterminate. It has nothing of the regulated process through which the appearing thing is enriched with ever new determinations. The hallucination consists in ephemeral ‘‘phenomena,’’ shimmering glints and glimmers, sounds, shivers, lights and shadows that vanish almost immediately and do not give purchase for a true grasp: harbingers of a pseudopresence; not a presentation of objects—even fictive ones. When we are dealing with identifiable ‘‘things’’—persons, animals, and so on—these hallucinatory ‘‘things’’ present no more than a generic style and physiognomy. Of course a phenomenology of the illusion should give an account of the irreducible diversity of illusory phenomena, which extend from hallucinations in the strict sense to false judgments about true perceptions. This task cannot be undertaken here. One might be tempted to raise the objection that there must be an element common to perception and illusion, since the latter passes itself off as the former. Is it not part of the essential nature of appearance to fool us with respect to the true nature of what appears? Now, in order for an illusion to pass itself off as being a perception doesn’t it have to be indiscernible from one during the moment of its being experienced, that is, for as long as it does not give itself away as being an illusion? But that objection rests on a sophism. From the circumstance of our being sometimes induced to err by a misleading appearance it is just as impossible to infer that this appearance is identical with a true apparition as it is absurd to conclude, based on the fact we sometimes make mistakes in adding up numbers, that the two results, the correct and the incorrect one, are equivalent. Are we then such infallible creatures that we can make mistakes only in cases where it would be impossible to avoid doing so? Of course the illusion fools us, plays us along, and appears to be something it isn’t—but that does not make it homogeneous with perception. The illusion is no more a false perception than the perception is a true illusion. The hallucination of an object should not be put on a par with its perception: It is a pseudo-givenness of an object and not the givenness of a pseudo-object, to be thought of according to the same paradigm as the givenness of a real object in the world. It is an appearance of givenness and not the givenness of an appearance. This ‘‘disjunctive’’ conception of perception, thus baptized by Hinton,26 and since adopted by such authors as Austin, Putnam, and McDowell, was probably defended for the first time by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception. ‘‘The illusory thing and the true thing,’’ he writes, ‘‘do not have the same structure’’; and, it should doubtless be added, the ‘‘thing’’ of the hallucination and the perceived ‘‘thing’’ are not things in the same sense. ‘‘The hallucinatory phenomenon is no part 25

Ibid., p. 340 [trans. modified—Tr.].

26

Hinton (1973). See also Austin (1962), Putnam (1999) and McDowell (1998).

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of the world, that is to say… there is no definite pathway leading from it to all the remaining experiences’’; ‘‘The hallucination is not a perception, but it has the value of reality, and it alone counts for the victim.’’27 What attests to this fact is that all illusions can only be pointed out as such in the context of the perceived world, i.e., against the background of a world possessing a structural cohesiveness. Being an illusion is precisely not being inscribed within a unified and unshakable world; it is to enter into conflict, not with other isolated perceptions, but with perception as a whole. At this point, we come to the limits of the disjunctive conception, which in reality is but a first step in the procedure attempting to show the vacuity of the problem of skepticism. As long as we are content with asserting that there is no neutral sense of appearing that is common to both perception and illusion, or to the apparition in person and the mere appearance, we continue to assume that our perceptive experience could be adequately described as made up of ‘‘building blocks’’ that are always isolable in principle, and will be superimposed on one another and assembled in such as way as to form a totality. But perception cannot be so described. Experience in its original sense, neither a ‘‘synthesis’’ of lived moments always ideally isolable nor a ‘‘flux’’ of such moments, possesses an essentially holistic constitution. The skeptical doubt founders when it is confronted with the fact that to be a perception is not a property that can be ascribed to a lived moment or an experience taken in isolation. It cannot be ascribed to the part unless it is first ascribed to the whole of which the part is part, since each perception taken from this whole is only a perception to the extent that it possesses a cohesion with all the others—that cohesion being a property of the whole before becoming a property of the parts and making it possible to become a property of those parts. We can doubt any perception, but not perception as a whole, because a perceptive ‘‘error,’’ an illusion, or a hallucination, presupposes the perceived world, i.e., the world already possessed of structural cohesion, failing which they would not be able to be decried as such. Hence a necessary reversal: The world is not the correlate of an experience indefinitely confirmed—which, since it is ceaselessly confirmed, might just as easily not be confirmed—but that which has no need of confirmation, since all confirmation and information presuppose it. As Merleau-Ponty says, ‘‘We must not, therefore, wonder whether we really perceive a world, we must instead say: the world is what we perceive.’’28 The world is not presumed to be true as long as its coherence is confirmed; its coherence is prior to all presumption of truth or falsity; it is that alone on the basis of which something can be presumed to be illusory. This is why the idea of an entirely illusory world has no meaning. An illusory world would have to be able to manifest its artificial nature against a background of perceptive coherence; thus it presupposes exactly what the skeptic wished to eliminate by that hypothesis: a coherent and real world, beyond all possible illusion. Nevertheless, in order to think this through to the end, we must abandon a certain number of ideas and even a whole framework of thought that Merleau-Ponty continues to consider established: that which makes of the ‘‘cogito’’ the 27

Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. 344, 339, 342, respectively).

28

Ibid., xvi.

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Archimedean point of all thought and all phenomenology. The requirement of a primordial, indubitable truth is part and parcel of the Cartesian theory of science, that is, of the epistemology of absolute foundations that claims to furnish knowledge as a whole with a fundamentum inconcussum. But is not science rather a collective, constantly self-correcting undertaking, such that each of its statements may be called into question, but not all at the same time? That, in any case, is the Cartesian conception of knowledge that led Husserl to seek in the cogitationes qua cogitationes self-certifying ‘‘foundations’’ beyond all possible doubt. On this view, these lived experiences [ve´cus] are necessarily true qua lived experiences, but they could turn out to be false from a different perspective, namely in their claim to put us in relation with external things. Our experiences are evident in themselves, and therefore indubitable, but they are always questionable with respect to their claim to open onto a world. Thus, an experience can continue to be an experience while at the same time having nothing corresponding to it in reality. But is it not part of the essence of an experience qua experience to put us in touch with the world? It is on this point that a holism of experience suggests a complete reversal of perspective. The false presupposition underlying the entire Cartesian tradition (with its ramifications in phenomenology) consists in maintaining that it is meaningful to attribute such a thing as truth or falsity to experiences considered in isolation, conferring on some of them a relation to objects, and on others not. The truth is that an experience is only an experience if it is integrated in a coherent way to the whole of experience—if it possesses cohesion with experience as a whole. Or to speak in terms of ‘‘perception’’: An experience is only a perception if it is integrated into the whole of perception, so that an experience that fails to meet this criterion is not a deceptive perception—it is not a perception at all (but a hallucination, illusion, etc.). In short, it makes no sense to attribute to an isolated experience the property of being a perception (and therefore also the property of not being a perception), in the absence of its integration into the whole of perception. It is the whole that deserves the appellation of ‘‘perception’’ properly so called; such and such a perception separated off from that totality is called perception only in a derivative sense. Something may be said to be ‘‘perceived’’ only if it emerges from a world endowed with a structural cohesion. Experience is not a synthesis of lived moments [ve´cus] that could be true or false taken in isolation; there is no experience that is not ‘‘genuine,’’ because it is not an experience unless it is integrated seamlessly within the totality of experience, and therefore there is no experience unless it opens out onto the world as such. Thus, perception is a phenomenon that is not only holistic, but radically holistic: The property of being perceived is a property of the whole, that is, of the world, before being a property of its parts. Only a world endowed with structural cohesiveness is perceived (and is by that very fact a world) and only a thing that is integrated into such a world can be perceived. In this sense, being a perception is a property of a more holistic nature than being a belief, to revert to the example with which we began. Indeed, it is true that to have a belief presupposes having others with which that belief possesses logical relations. I cannot have one belief unless I have a whole system of beliefs. For all this, I am not an automaton rationale: my

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system of beliefs can have flaws in it, and in most cases it does. All my beliefs are not coherent, but this does not keep them from remaining, at least provisionally, beliefs (pending my knowledge of which beliefs I will have to sacrifice in order to restore a coherent system). But with perceptions things are quite otherwise: A perception that does comport with the whole of perception, that is, that does not emerge from a world endowed with structural cohesiveness, is simply not a perception. To perceive is essentially to perceive a world, that is, a whole endowed with cohesion. Perception does not just happen to be of the world: there is no perception but of the world. The holism of perception inevitably ends up, then, with what might be called a ‘‘descriptive realism,’’ which must be rigorously distinguished from a metaphysical realism—the latter being most often expressed in the form of a causal realism. If to be a realist means to conceive of perception as ‘‘an event in the world to which the category of causality, for example, can be applied,’’29 to use Merleau-Ponty’s formulation, one would be right to conclude that such realism is a failure.30 Indeed it is absurd to claim to explain experience itself and its ability to put us into a direct relation with objects and events on the basis of the objects and events taken from that experience, and on the basis of their causal relations to a subject. On this point, we must agree with Husserl’s antinaturalism. The intentional discourse is irreducible to a causal discourse, and the relation of appearing is irreducible to an external relation. Experience is a giving of the thing itself without mediation of any kind, whereas the links of causality introduce a virtually infinite number of mediations between reality and us. Causal realism is a hybrid conception that rests on an endless confusion between the level of a pure description of apparition and a genetic explanation of its content. But the difficulties in which such a realism gets bogged down are by no means inexorable. There is a descriptive realism that in no way reduces our primary experience of the world to causal links of whatever degree of number and complexity, for the simple and good reason that all causal relations are atomic while our experiential relation to the world possess a holistic constitution. Here, descriptive realism is a consequence of the holistic approach to experience, and not the other way around. From the point of view of a pure description of the phenomena, the only coherent position consists in maintaining that experience opens onto the world itself in the absence of any intermediary. The perception of the world presupposes its existence and is indissociable from it. This is what makes of the skeptical problem that haunts phenomenology to the point of becoming entangled with a great many of its fundamental affirmations a problem that is irremediably ill posed.

29

Ibid., p. 207. See also BT, p. 251: ‘‘But what distinguishes this assertion [‘‘the external world is Really present-at hand’’] is the fact that in realism there is a lack of ontological understanding. Indeed realism tries to explain Reality ontically by Real connections of interaction between things that are Real.’’ 30 Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. 49, 363–364, 369); ‘‘The return to perceptual experience… puts out of court all forms of realism,’’ Ibid., p. 47.

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3 The phenomenon of the world The reversal of the problem induced by holism destroys at its very root the possibility of the skeptical doubt, which constitutes the presupposition—never challenged—of the separation between two spheres of being, the independent being of consciousness, and the dependent being of the world, and thus underlies the entire transcendental account of things. Experience, as a totality that cannot be broken down into elements, is better apprehended in terms of ‘‘being-in-the-world.’’ But the idea of being-in-the-world that is pertinent here, while being free reformulation of the one developed in Sein und Zeit, is not identical with it. A holism of experience can only lead to the pure and simple abandonment of the transcendental perspective that continues to be decisive up to and including the first Heidegger. Being-in-theworld is nowise a characteristic just of Dasein—or of Dasein taken in isolation: an ontological determination of that entity considered in itself, minus the world in which it is ‘‘factually’’ situated at birth. Being-in-the-world is a structural characteristic of a system, the one formed by a ‘‘subject’’ endowed with practical abilities and the world. And therefore it is equally impossible for openness, Erschlossenheit, to be an ontological characteristic of Dasein minus the existence of a world to which it is open. Being-in-the-world designates a structure that is both relational and holistic, and for that reason it cannot be thought in the terms of a transcendental philosophy, in which the ‘‘subject’’ and it alone would play the role of ultimate ‘‘condition of possibility.’’ In order to understand being-in-the-world, we must attempt to deepen the sense of this dual structural affiliation of a ‘‘subject’’ involved in a world and a world to which this ‘‘subject’’ is open. For the moment, we have limited ourselves to perception and its correlate, the perceived world. The world is not only the totality of what is perceived, but far more the totality of the perceptible or of the experienceable as such. To speak of the ‘‘perceptible’’ and the ‘‘experienceable’’ is to evoke a capability on the part of the subject: the capability of perceiving and experiencing. The world cannot be the totality of the perceptible without a ‘‘subject’’ capable of perceiving (it), i.e., endowed with a specific ability. But the crucial point here is the following: Such ability is only given to a ‘‘subject’’ that constitutively belongs to the world through its body and is situated and corporeally embedded in it. The body’s belonging to the world is a necessary condition for the bestowal on the subject of a capacity of a certain kind—a capacity in virtue of which the world can in turn be qualified as the totality of the perceptible or the experienceable as such. The capacity of perception can be possessed only by a ‘‘subject’’ who belongs to the world essentially as a body, and that capacity can be exercised only in relation to the world in which this ‘‘subject’’ is situated. The opening onto the world for the experiencing subject presupposes that the latter belongs to the world. But the world is not only that in relation to which one sole capacity, perception, is exercised. The world is rather that to which the manifold of capacities of a ‘‘subject’’ having a world is related. We do not relate to the world just within the perceptive register, but in multiple practical and affective modes, bringing into play in each case specific modes of comprehension. Already at the level of what we

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commonly call ‘‘perception,’’ the panoply of things, beings, and events are not simply manifested to us, but are manifested with determined meanings. These meanings are not ‘‘added on’’ by consciousness to a neutral given that would be analogous, in the ‘‘psychic’’ domain, to ‘‘brute facts’’ as supplied by physics; they are part of the very manner in which things declare and present themselves to us at first encounter. The sea that shimmers in the deep announces itself to me compellingly as a refreshing promise, inviting me in for a swim; the granite ledges lining the sea’s steep shoreline call out to me as accessible, scalable. All these ‘‘living meanings’’ depend essentially on my goals, and address my practicable pursuits. The appetitive vectors are not projected upon things arbitrarily, but rather flow forth from the system that the objects offered to perception form with a ‘‘subject’’ endowed with goals and abilities of various orders. If the sea winks from afar with its sempiternal virginal air, it is not because I somehow already had it in my head to go swimming—otherwise such a project could never germinate; on the contrary, it is because I have the capacity to entertain such projects and to go for a dip when the circumstances lend themselves to it. Here two distinct senses of the ‘‘possible’’ emerge. The world is presented as a manifold of opportunities, i.e., of possibilities offered to my repertoire of potential physical acts in virtue of which things acquire a meaning, show themselves to me with a significance that is their very way of appearing to me and of manifesting themselves. Correlatively, such possibilities can only belong to things and give them the pre-linguistic meaning they have—always already, for me—because I possess corresponding abilities. The sea can only reveal itself in the distance as a call to go swimming if I have the capacity to dive in and swim; the granite ledges can only appear to me as climbable if I have the ability to keep my balance as I move across them, and so on. These trivial observations allow us to draw attention to a vital point: Things can show themselves to us with meaning, and the world present a certain side of things that calls up possible paths of action, only for a ‘‘subject’’ endowed with specific capacities, and these capacities, in turn, are of such a nature as to require a world to be able to be possessed and exercised: They are ‘‘world-involving,’’ as Charles Taylor would say. They are capacities that can be possessed only by a subject who himself appears in situ, within a world, through his body: They do not belong to a subject simpliciter, but to a subject-in-the-world. And, consequently, the meaning with which things present themselves to us beginning at the level of perception is a holistic characteristic of the system a ‘‘subject’’ forms with the world. Here a second acceptation of the term ‘‘holism,’’ distinct from the one we have been using, comes to light. It is no longer just a question of asserting that every experience depends in its essence on the whole of the experience within which it has its place and which alone can make it an experience. Now we must emphasize that the meaning with which things manifest themselves to us are offered to our understanding as practical modalities of our ongoing transactions with them. This meaning is not conferred on them from the outside by a ‘‘subject’’ that would hold the key to it, in virtue of an arbitrary and a-contextual assignment of meaning, but is rather a characteristic of the system that a specific environment forms with a ‘‘subject’’ endowed with capacities of several orders. Meaning is not the product of a Sinngebung, nor, consequently, of a constitution of objectivity by successive

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strata, as Husserl thought. Nor is it something freely conferred on the world in virtue of projects carried out by the work of a subject. This meaning emerges at the juncture of a world that takes on a certain look and a subject endowed with certain abilities, or more precisely, it emerges from the system they form together. It is a relational characteristic of an indecomposable totality. The meaning that comes to light in things depends on the very manner in which a subject is able to approach them in light of his or her possible practices. These possibilities, rooted in capacities, are of three orders: ‘‘natural’’ possibilities, in virtue of which a piece of fruit looks tasty, or the sea, inviting; ‘‘cultural’’ possibilities; as when the same inlet may immediately make me think of Estaque a la Ce´zanne or Derain; and ‘‘existential’’ possibilities, of a particular and noteworthy nature. This last requires our further attention. Indeed, man is not only capable of acquiring new capacities as a result of his experiences or his conditioning within a group, as is the case with certain higher animals. He is capable of acquiring capacities on his own. This means that he is capable of forming his own projects, of relating to his existence itself sub specie possibilitatis. In truth, man not only forms projects in the sense of plans conceived in advance and capable of reaching goals determined by his ‘‘nature’’—for example all the vital requirements he shares with other animals. He sets ends for himself, as Kant would say, or, putting it another way, he not only makes first order choices, deciding on some particular action, but second order choices as well, i.e., choices involving the sort of existence that seems desirable to him, or the person he aspires to be. He is capable of life projects that concern his idea of himself, and thus the entirety of his existence as such. For example, standing before an accessible ocean in the mid-day sun, I may or may not decide to go swimming, based on whether I am in the mood, the amount of free time I have, and objective dimensions of the situation, such as whether or not swimming is allowed in that cove. But placed before that possibility, I can ask myself a different sort of question: Assuming I feel like going swimming and the circumstances lend themselves to it, should I or should I not go swimming? Is it desirable or not, with respect to the sort of person I aspire to be? Is lazing around in the sun all day worthy of me, or had I not better get to work? Is that the way I want to live? Is that what I want to do with my life? Thus, existential possibilities may by defined as possibilities that appear to me to be compatible with the sort of person I aspire to be, the way I understand myself, and the way I view my own existence. Put more simply, something is possible in the existential sense if it is in agreement with a life project, i.e., with an existential project. The intrinsic characteristic of existential possibilities is that with respect to them we can never avoid the necessity of decision. To exist as a human being is to exist in such a way that our existence is an issue from which we cannot escape, so that any refusal to decide in this case remains a kind of decision—in the form of a renunciation of all decision-making. For to remain in a state of indecision is still a way of deciding about the type of individual we aspire to be. Human existence is therefore such as to require, in order for it to be the existence that it is, that we exist it in the first person in deciding on the sort of existence that seems desirable for us. Human existence is such that it falls to us to choose it, and to project ourselves into

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it in order to give it an overall orientation in keeping with a fundamental project— because for a human being that is what it is to exist. The world as it presents itself to us from the point of view of a phenomenology is therefore not just the totality of the possible in the sense of the perceptible and the experienceable, but also what we can relate in the light of capacities of various orders that belong to us as human beings, including the highest of them, which contrasts man with other animals: the capacity of deciding about one’s entire existence as such. The world is the structured totality of possibilities that are afforded us in light of our practical capacities of different orders. Insofar as comprehension is one of these practical capacities, the world is also a signifying context, a horizon of meaning. As Heidegger writes, the world is ‘‘the totality of the essential intrinsic possibilities of Dasein.’’31 These possibilities are structured and hierarchized in keeping with a means-end relation. Certain projects depend on others, and are subordinate to them, but all ultimately depend on a general project of existence that defines me as such. The world, then, is definitely not a simple totality of objects, facts or states of things that could be experienced and known; it is also, and no doubt first and foremost, a system of possibilities relative to capacities of several orders in light of which all that can be presented to the ‘‘subject’’ takes on a meaning—a system of possibilities that are subordinated to that noteworthy capacity the subject possesses of deciding by himself about his own existence. Thus we have attained a concept of world such that it no longer makes sense to say that it is unilaterally ‘‘configured’’ by a Dasein. Indeed, many possibilities that come to light for us in the world depend on our capacities, but they are assuredly not made possible by them. For example, all that can present itself to us perceptually depends on possibilities of essence, and notably on the universal space–time a priori which structures all experience: These possibilities of essence are obviously not (no more than are logical possibilities, as a matter of fact) ‘‘made possible’’ by us. If the world does indeed designate a universum of possibilities, these possibilities are certainly not all such that it would make sense to say of them that they are ‘‘configured’’ by Dasein—nor, consequently, that Dasein is, as such, ‘‘the configurer of the world’’ (Weltbildend). On the contrary, we should insist on the fact that with the exception of these noteworthy possibilities that only ‘‘exist’’ to the extent that Dasein has always already projected itself into them, and that I have called ‘‘existential possibilities,’’ most of the possibilities are not configured by a ‘‘subject’’ but offer themselves to it in the form of a situation it has not desired or decided upon: They are opportunities that depend on the circumstances. Of course there are only opportunities for one who is capable of grasping them in the pursuit of goals, and—in the case of the human being—because he has given himself goals in determining his entire existence as such. But it does not follow that these possibilities are made possible by him. Capacities and opportunities appear on the contrary as strict correlatives. We must replace the transcendental paradigm, which still haunts fundamental ontology, with a relational paradigm, in virtue of which all that is given to us by the world, and the world itself, are only meaningful in reference to the capacities of 31

Heidegger (1984, p. 192); GA 26, 248–249.

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several orders of a ‘‘subject’’ that is itself in the world as a body, and that belongs to the world by its very nature. If, consequently, we think of this mutual belongingness in virtue of which we are only in the world to the extent that we belong to the world, and we only belong to it to the extent that we are in it—only then can we attempt to grasp the following critical point. The existential possibilities are not projected once and for all by a ‘‘subject’’ without moorings in the past, without a history. More originary than the possibilization of the possible by the decrees of Dasein are the possibilities that precede it and are born of founding events. Vulnerability to the event, the passibility qua immeasurable exposure to what goes beyond our powers, to what ‘‘strikes us with powerlessness’’ in and through its very upsurge, thus appear more originary than all self-possibilization. An event is not only what catches me unprepared and by surprise, what strips me of my expectations and takes the ground from beneath my feet at the moment I least expect it; it is first and foremost that which wreaks havoc with my fundamental projects in light of which I understand myself and my own existence, and hence my possibilities in the existential sense— configuring them from beginning to end. And since the possibilities that structure the world are interrelated and form a system, since for us there are never any detached possibilities, such upheavals of existence strike the possible as such at its root: They overturn the world as such and no longer allow us to understand ourselves as ‘‘the same.’’ Of course an event first strikes certain possibilities and circumstances, but in affecting specific possibilities, it falls back onto the possible as a totality; it reconfigures the world itself at its birth. Thus, for beings like ourselves, who are vulnerable to the event, the possible per se as a whole—the world—is always suspended above the abyss of the event, always exposed to these critical transformations in which existence as such hangs in the balance, changing us through and through. The world hangs in the balance in the event; it has been forever self-originating for us in inaugural events—beginning with the remarkable one of our birth. For this reason, the phenomenological analysis of the world arises, in one of its aspects at least, from what I have called an ‘‘evenemential hermeneutics.’’

References Austin, J.L. 1962. Sense and sensibilia. London: Oxford University Press. Boehm, R. 1959. Les ambiguı¨te´s des concepts husserliens d’’immanence’ et de ‘transcendance’. Revue philosophique de la France et de l’e´tranger 84: 481–526. Dilthey, W. 1992. Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 7, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften.Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, Go¨ttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 229. Dilthey, W. 2002. In The formation of the historical world in the human sciences, ed. R.A. Makkreel, and F. Rodi. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and time (trans: John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson). New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. 1984. The metaphysical foundations of logic (trans: Michael Heim). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. 1986. Sein und Zeit. Tu¨bingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Heidegger, M. 1988. The basic problems of phenomenology (trans: Richard Rojcewicz, and Andre´ Schuwer). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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