The Phenomenology of Pain. Saulius Geniusas

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СКАЧАТЬ rather, one must explain. Insofar as genetic explanation is a matter of interpretation, one could characterize genetic phenomenology as genetically oriented hermeneutics of subjective life and the life-world (see Luft 2004, 226). Yet, obviously, not any kind of explanation or interpretation is phenomenological in the genetic sense of the term. Here we turn to the crucial question: What, then, are the fundamental principles that make up the methodological core of genetic phenomenology? Despite the basic nature of this question, it is extremely difficult to answer.²³

      The fundamental methodological difference between static and genetic phenomenology can be clarified by focusing on the different paths to the phenomenological reduction.²⁴ While static phenomenology relies upon the so-called Cartesian path, genetic phenomenology offers two alternative paths, which Husserl identifies as the path through psychology and the path through the life-world.²⁵ A detailed account of these two paths is not possible in the present context. Fortunately, it is also not necessary. My task here is to portray these two genetic paths in broad strokes and to highlight their common methodological features. It is these common features, I will suggest, that make up the methodological basis of genetic phenomenology.

      Both genetic paths to the reduction are alternatives to the Cartesian path, which is dominant in static phenomenology. The Cartesian path is motivated by the recognition of the irrevocable contingency that characterizes the general thesis of the natural standpoint. This thesis runs as follows: “the” world as actuality is always already there (see Husserl 1983, §30; and Husserl 1959, §33). The recognition that this thesis is irretrievably contingent calls for a radical alteration of the natural thesis, which Husserl conceptualizes under the heading of the phenomenological epoché. In its own turn, the epoché provides us with the possibility to turn our attention to the field of pure experience, conceived of as the phenomenological residuum. The phenomenological reduction is nothing other than this “universal overthrow” (Husserl 1959, 68) of the natural attitude, which one could also characterize as the radical deliverance of attention from its worldly absorption and its redirection to the newly discovered field of transcendental experience.

      As seen from the genetic standpoint, the Cartesian path to the reduction suffers from two chief limitations. First, it gives the false impression that the transcendental field of experience is empty of content (or at least any content that would clearly correspond to the content of mundane experience). It thus seems that phenomenology is reinvigorated Platonism, which liberates us from the shadows in the cave and directs us away from the field of everyday experience to another world of ideas and essences. Second, the conception of the reduction that prevails in static phenomenology, and especially when coupled with the method of eidetic variation, gives the misleading impression that phenomenology can conceptualize the field of pure experience only synchronically (that is, in terms of eidetic structures, which characterize all possible experience) and not diachronically. It thus seems that such an approach to the reduction overlooks the full-fledged significance of the temporal nature of the experiential field, conceiving of it only as a pure form, and not as a field of genesis.

      The path to the reduction through psychology is marked by the refusal to suspend the thesis of the natural attitude in one go. This path prefigures transcendental phenomenology. It invites the investigator to focus on specific acts phenomenologically, even before one performs the universal epoché and the universal reduction.²⁶ To follow this path is to engage in mundane phenomenology, which still hasn’t brought into question the belief in the world (see Held 2003, 28–29). We can thereby see how the genetic approach overcomes the first limitation of the static approach I have identified above. Anything and everything we come across in the natural attitude can be reabsorbed within the field of transcendental experience and thereby transformed into a phenomenological theme.²⁷ Following the psychological path, one demonstrates that the field of experience is not empty of content: there is absolutely nothing in the field of mundane experience that cannot be redeemed phenomenologically. Moreover, following the genetic path also enables one to overcome the second limitation, which concerns the prospects of a diachronic analysis of the field of experience. If it is indeed true that all acts of mundane experience can be “translated” into transcendental acts, then we can say the following: “Just as I in the natural attitude, as I-this-person, retrospectively and prospectively know about my past and future life, so also, as I practice the transcendental reduction, I know about my transcendental being or life in the past and the future; and I know this from my transcendental experience” (Husserl 1959, 84; my translation—SG). The goal of the psychological path to the reduction is to unveil the full content of universal transcendental experience: to deliver the transcendental present, past, and future and thereby provide the resources needed to further conceptualize the field of experience as a field of genesis.

      The ontological path to the reduction is also marked by the refusal to suspend the general thesis of the natural attitude at the outset. While the path through psychology directs the phenomenologist’s attention to the psychological acts of mundane consciousness, the ontological path leads to the general correlate of all mundane acts, namely, it leads to the life-world. The life-world is to be understood as the world that the natural attitude has as its correlate. It is the subjective-relative world, conceived of as being at once the ground and the horizon of all human action, both natural and scientific. The ontological path to the reduction leads us to the life-world, conceived of as the forgotten ground of scientific accomplishments, and further thematizes the life-world as the constitutive accomplishment of transcendental subjectivity. In this regard, one may rightly claim that the ontological path faces a twofold task. Its first central task is to purify such a world of all idealistic and naturalistic misconceptions, to recover its original meaning prior to that meaning having been covered up by the “veil of ideas” that experience itself has imposed on the world. Put paradoxically, the first task is to offer a science of the prescientific world, which would provide us with the understanding of its most essential structures. Yet this first task must be coupled with the second one, namely, to demonstrate that such a prescientific world is itself a hidden accomplishment of transcendental (inter)subjectivity. As seen from the perspective of genetic phenomenology, our understanding of the life-world remains limited for as long as we do not recognize that the life-world is an intentional correlate of transcendental (inter)subjectivity.

      In light of the above, one can say that the second and the third ways to the reduction are complementary in three ways: they both begin at the level of mundane experience, they are both regressive, and they both culminate at the level of transcendental (inter)subjectivity.²⁸ What makes such a methodological orientation genetic is its regressive nature, and so as to understand it more precisely, we need to supplement the foregoing analysis with reflections on the method of intentional implications.²⁹ At first glance, this method might appear inconsequential. To follow up on Husserl’s own examples, within the field of reduced experience, my act of recollection intentionally implies my foregoing act of perception; so also, my act of anticipation intentionally implies my future perception (although, admittedly, with a different kind of evidence). Thus, “I recall having a conversation with you in the hallway” intentionally implies “I had such a conversation with you in the hallway.” Claims of this nature border on being trivial. Nonetheless, the method of intentional implications proves to be remarkably resourceful, and it would be hardly an overstatement to qualify it as the engine of genetic methodology in general. What is ultimately at stake in this method is not just the recognition of the double-sided complexity inscribed in the reproductive acts of recollection, phantasy, and anticipation.³⁰ Of much greater methodological significance is the realization that the method of intentional implications enables us to conceive of present experiences as configurations of sense that rely upon more basic experiences. Conceived of from a genetic point of view, each and every intentional experience always intends more in the object than is given in pure intuition, and this surplus of meaning points to the intentional accomplishments of foregoing experiences. The method of intentional implications is designed to demonstrate that my whole past is intentionally implicated in each and every one of my present intentional experiences. In the final analysis, the method of intentional implications provides the methodological basis upon which to thematize the realm СКАЧАТЬ