Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology

1. Genesis as the Basic Problem of Phenomenology

1 Genesis as the Basic Problem of Phenomenology It is well known that Eugen Fink’s 1933 Kantstudien essay, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism ,” ¤nally expanded the French understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology ;1 in particular, Fink introduced terms such as “act-intentionality,” “radical re®ection,” and “archeology,” terms which Merleau-Ponty would adopt in his discussions of Husserl.2 Indeed, Fink’s “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl” provided “a fundamental interpretation of phenomenology in the unity of its development”;3 it provided the basic principles, in other words, of all of Husserl’s phenomenology. This is why, in a 1966 review of Fink’s Studien zur Phänomenologie (the volume in which “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl” was collected), Derrida himself claims that this book is one of the most remarkable monuments in the history of the interpretation of Husserl’s thought.4 In fact, Fink is the only Husserl commentator that Derrida either cites or explicitly mentions in all three of his books on Husserl.5 If we want to understand Derrida’s interpretation of Husserl, then we must begin with Fink.6 In fact, only an examination of Fink’s 1933 essay shows that Derrida’s philosophy—his deconstruction—is continuous with Husserl’s phenomenology. 1 As is well known, in “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism,” Fink responds to Husserl’s contemporaneous neo-Kantian critics. He demonstrates that the then-current criticisms of Husserl’s phenomenology—which focused primarily on the Logical Investigations and Ideas I—were based on one presupposition: that Husserl’s phenomenology wanted the same thing as critical philosophy. Critical philosophy believed, in other words, that phenomenology held the same idea of philosophy as it held (PP 96/90). What is needed, there- fore, according to Fink, is a “destruction” (Zerstörung) of critical philosophy ’s basic presupposition (PP 99/93). A destruction can be achieved only by illuminating the “radical difference” (PP 106/100) that separates phenomenology from critical philosophy. As Fink says, “If it is true that every philosophy reveals its innermost essence less in its theoretical accomplishments . . . than in the basic question which is its motivating force, the difference between phenomenology and critical philosophy is principally de-¤ned as a difference in their basic problems” (PP 100/94). According to Fink, critical philosophy wants to provide an account of the conditions for the possibility of human knowledge, in particular, human theoretical knowledge. This desire means that critical philosophy wants to go beyond the naive attitude of positivism, in which knowledge is restricted to knowledge of particular beings or things. Superseding the epistemological attitude restricted to facts, critical philosophy ascends to the ideal validities (Geltungen) which give sense (Sinn) to beings.7 These validities are the presuppositions of every experience of beings as theoretical objects. In Fink’s words, what critical philosophy wants then is to answer “the question concerning that realm of sense [Sinnsphäre] which forms the presupposition of all beings” (PP 100/94). In its greatest generality , this presupposition amounts to the “a priori form of the world” (PP 100/95). The a priori form of the world is “the relationship of theoretical validities, which are prior to all experience, to the pure form of consciousness . . . ” (PP 100/95; cf. also 85/80). For critical philosophy, the pure form of consciousness is an epistemological ego (the transcendental apperception ), and, as such, it must be determined as non-ontological and as unknowable . Being the condition for all beings, the pure form of consciousness cannot be said to be; it is not a being or a thing. Being the condition for all experience, it cannot be said to be given in experience; rather, the pure form of consciousness must be constructed. On the basis of this analysis, Fink interprets the critical idea of philosophy as mundane and world-immanent (PP 102–03/97). Its transition from the naive, positivistic attitude to the critical, transcendental attitude merely abstracts from beings within the world; the presuppositional validities or ideal meanings are meanings of this world. Finally, the pure form of consciousness that it constructs is a pure form of the consciousness of a being which resides within the world: man (PP 151/141). In other words, critical philosophy constructs the relation between the theoretical validities and the pure form of consciousness on the basis of beings (PP 100/95). In contrast, Fink interprets Husserl’s phenomenology as world12 Derrida and Husserl [3.133...