“brace yourself today; we’re taking big steps, from Heidegger via Husserl to French existentialism. From Iris Marion Young to Judith Butler.”
As part of this tour de force, prof. will (try to) clarify why some people talk about transcendental phenomenology, and ascribe that to Husserl, and why some talk about realist, or empirical phenomenology, and ascribe that to other authors.
Judith Butler is someone who wouldn’t call themselves a phenomenologist, but prof. will try to show that they are.
Hammers
Heidegger tried to investigate the being of beings; tool-being, equipmentality.
What characterizes tools in general? (=) What is the essence of tools?
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a tool, as they only exist in relation to users.
What differentiates equipmentality is the instrumentalist attitude towards the world as a whole. This becomes part of a more developed critique of technology in Heidegger, a critique of the increasing ways in which technologies take hold of our everyday life influences the way that we engage with the world, and with other people in general. It is not just tools that we come to treat as tools, but also other people.
The being of those entities (= of those beings).
das Sein = ontological
dieser Seienden = ontic
There is a difference between the ontological analysis - focusing on the being of beings - and an ontic analysis - which only analyses the beings themselves.
a priori vs. empirical analysis is related.
Ontology = investigation into the Being of beings
Dasein = the Being of those beings for whom Being is of concern = ‘being-in-the-world’ for whom there is a world
Dis-closure of what is ‘concealed’ in ordinary (‘mundane’) experience in a continuous ‘hermeneutical circle.’
Heidegger thinks that the term consciousness implies a ready-made subject that is able to enter into external relations with other subjects/objects. Instead, Heidegger says that there is an intrinsic being-there (Da-sein) to the subject. There is an intrinsic always-already-there engagement with the world.
Being-in-the-world which is really understood in a verbal way; not being as an entity, but being as a verb, one [is being] - the activity of being in the world.
The kind of truth-finding that is supposed to happen through phenomenological research, Heidegger’s aletheia and the search for truth as unconcealing of phenomena that always hide themselves from us.
It’s not about finding principles, discovering truths in a different kind of realm, or only in the scientific world; rather, the truth of matter is something we are already in touch with, we just understand them imperfectly, partially.
Even though Heidegger speaks of these high ontological categories, you do get phenomenology engaging in everyday-ness (worldliness). Being-in-the-world is first and foremost everyday life.
Rather than thinking of phenomenology as a rigorous science, and a mode of reflection that happens under very special circumstances (as for Husserl), Heidegger says that we are first and foremost familiar with things in our everyday experience, we’re just mistaken about what these things really are.
Husserl has this language of the eidetic, of the a priori, of essences, and understands phenomenology as investigation into that which is invariant in different types of object, in different types of experiences.
We must consider as many examples as possible, and direct our interest towards the invariances that we find across these variations, and we do all this under the epoche, thus bracketing the question of the existence of these things in order to first of all understand the nature of the phenomena. This is what makes Husserl’s project a transcendental one (he advocates what he calls the transcendental reduction) he says we should consider whatever we’re investigating, whether it’s a feeling, a certain type of object, a domain of objects (scientific, artistic, or whatever), we have to understand it in terms of a correlation between the what that we’re trying to investigate and the modes of engagement or experience that are intrinsically linked with them.
In terms of values, let’s say, we shouldn’t just think about “these things are good,” “these things are bad.” Instead we go, let’s say, stop talking about whether this is good/bad, but about ‘how does this manifest itself as something good?’ Is it under the conditions of an experience of pleasure, happiness, an experience guided by ethical norms or religious beliefs? It’s always about the correlation between an experience and something that is experienced.
Husserl, in an attempt to get away from the old subject/object distinction is here appropriating (perhaps not a very rhetorically fortunate choice) the noesis and noema.
Noesis, again, is an activity, it is experiencing, and engagement with. Not a mind, a particular kind of entity, but a doing. An experiencing, a reaching, an engaging with that is always correlated with the relatum to that - the what that it is engaged with.
The last thing about Husserl today - in this correlation between noesis and noema [we will not be asked in the exam ‘what is a noesis and noema’, prof. more interested in our understanding of the dynamics and structures] there
transcendental means that the noesis pole of the correlation is osmehow constitutive of what it is about. Good or bad things, for example, aren’t just there as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ things, but are constituted as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on the basis of certain experiences. They acquire the sense of good or bad in correlation to experiences that constitute those senses in the first place.
They are not being produced themselves, but they can only in correlation to a consciousness acquire a sense - the sense of being good/bad/real/fictional/loved/hated/hateful/lovable - all this correlates with certain experiences and acts that, first of all, constitute those senses. The constituting element here is called transcendental.
Consciousness is transcendental because it is constituting sense, it is making sense, that’s what we do. The existentialists would say - we can’t reject our involvement in the making of sense.
This is really what transcendental means - constituting. Transcendent, then, is what is constituted. F.e., I’m finding somebody lovable. The transcendental mode of it is that I have certain experiences that constitute the sense of that person as lovable. And in that, first of all, the person becomes lovable. It’s not that ‘lovable’ is something that is just there, that sense is constituted in that experience. ‘loving-consciousness’ constitutes the ‘lovable.'
'perceiving-consciousness’ constitutes the sense of being a perceptual object. Doesn’t mean the objects are produced, but they can only acquire a sense in correlation to a consciousness.
Sense or meaning are not just natural things in the world,, they are, as senses or meanings, generated in engagements with objects. This is why there is a transcendental consciousness in the activity of constitution.
Transcendental is not ‘purely formal’ or … ; there is nothing otherworldly, abstract, or formal about loving. It is a concrete experience. But nonetheless it is transcendental in this sense.
In Judith Butler the quesiton is - what constitutes the world in which we find ourselves with the senses it has; this relating to gender and sex. There is an epoche, we’re not just taking ‘gender’ - even something we think is natural - ‘sex’ - is constituted through certain experiences (/ performances). Doesn’t make ‘sex’ any less real, it just means that its meaning/sense is something that can only be understood in relation, not just to individual consciousnesses, but to collective consciousnesses, practices, and so on.
Transcendental in phenomenology has a broad meaning, and that includes, as the who or what constitutes something all things that in the Kantian paradigm would be merely empirical. You can go transcendental on Foucault.
Sartre
is somebody who thought Husserl was too close to Kant, and that all talk about the transcendental will still push us/mislead us to construing consciousness as being too abstract.
Google: critical phenomenology. It tries to combine post-structuralism, critical theory, and phenomenology. One often finds the above objection there.
Sartre redirect the idea of phenomenology to an existentialist sense that was partly anticipated in Heidegger with the ideas of Dasein, being-in-the-world, and so on.
S. tries to stress (also what prof. tries to emphasize) don’t think of consciousness as something like a mind, with interiority and representations and memory that we have, but rather that consciousness is a relating, an engaging with. ← see Heidegger and being-in-the-world.
There is also a kind of self-relating. S. makes it very strong that consciousness
consciousness is always a being-for-itself (being for whom things are, ≪ in whose engagement with ≫ things acquire the sense they have),
We are beings that are necessarily self-aware; unless, if uninhibited consciousness is transcendence, always beyond itself, always with objects, not “in here” and you’re “in there”, and one is trying to get to the other, but always in this kind of engagement.
Consciousness can be described as something that is always already beyond itself.
S. says “consciousness is nothingness” → in a way it is only a relating to something, it is not itself something.
consciousness is nothing but the relation to being
S. reject Husserl’s transcendental consciousness because, even if it’s meant in a different way, it pushes us too much in the direction of abstract thinking.
S. also rejects the notion of phenomenology as a rigorous science.
Heidegger is really the one who, more than Husserl or Sartre, wants to exploit the European philosophical tradition - the pro-Socratics, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Duns Scotus, classical ontologies. He really tries, in that sense, to do more conventional philosophical business.
The French existentialists drew much more inspiration from literature. And Husserl drew much more from science.
De Beauvoir
Directly influential on I. M. Young
In The Second Sex she picks up on what one finds as motifs in phenomenology in general.
It’s a rejection of essentialism; an argument against it, however, does not solve the matter, you must rather work against essentializing tendencies in philosophical practice.
You also have to spot essentialism; few people outright say ‘i’m an essentialist and this is what i think is the essence of x’
Anti-reductionism
Existence precedes essence!
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”
Consciousnesses, Daseins, beings, people, - are never merely located in the world (would be wrong way of thinking about being-in-the-world). No, people find themselves in a situation.
There is always the possibility of relating in a situation; it’s more than a spatial positioning, as it already has an intrinsic relating-to. The situation can enable you to do this or that, or inhibit you therefrom - not on the causal level.
“we always in a situation” - liberation is about understanding your position as a situation, as it is only then that you can do something about it.
I. M. Young
All women find themselves in a (peculiar) situation; but there is a typical situation which women are in. Young thinks it insightful to think about these typicalities without making grand statements about all women being the same in some or another respect.
Throwing like a girl
She opposes an essentializing interpretation of empirical literature - f.e., that there is an essentially female style of moving; even if there are typical bodily comportments for women.
Modes of motility
- Ambiguous Transcendence
- Inhibited Intentionality
Intentionality:- Subject/object relation. A woman simultaneously experiences herself as an agent, but also worries about what she looks like when she does it (taking herself as an object).
- Embodied consciousness
- Body (Körper) vs. Lived Body (Leib). The lived body has a kind of unity. If I have to use a cane as a result of losing a limb, the cane will eventually become part of the lived body, into the lived unity.
If one looks at their body in an objectifying (my nose too big, my face too ugly or whatever) manner they revert away from a continuous, integrated body.
- Discontinuous Unity
Unity:- Body-image vs. Body-schema.
Modes of Spatiality
- Space as enclosed or confining
- Space as having a dual structure
My space vs. the space of others, rather than openness for one to take. - Sense of being Positioned in Space
A feeling of not being allowed to move much, having to wait until someone tells her that she may move.
What is the situation…
... that leads to this feminine style of motility and spatiality?
... then and now? What has changed?
... for men?
... for other groups?
One always must be critical to what they are told in these regards; Throwing Like a Girl was written 40 years ago, we’re generally much more sensitive to cultural differences, and stuff happens so maybe analysis should not be reduced only to what is already written.
Judith Butler
What is the being of sex and gender?
Butler argues that it’s not just gender that has to do with society and culture, but sex as well. The very distinction between nature and culture - sex and gender - is constituted in certain acts, or performances.
We perform sex (стать).
Reality is engaged with and experienced differently than, say, the fictional. That doesn’t mean that the real is a mere social construction.
Sex is a social construct, but it is still ‘real’.
The body is a paradigmatic site for the delineation of insides and outsides.
Anxieties about bodily fluids and vaccinations are not just anxieties regarding specific effects (say, AIDS transmission), but also about the destabilization of boundaries.
Sedimentation of cultural norms [social constructivism hello] goes so deep, and has such a complexity that we cannot just oppose it or redirect it, or find an argument that would refute it. Subversive performance is a way forward; the consequences are unpredictable, but the performativity intrinsic to social phenomena means that one can always perform otherwise.