ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
The Phenomenology of Pain. Saulius Geniusas
Читать онлайн.Название The Phenomenology of Pain
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780821446942
Автор произведения Saulius Geniusas
Жанр Социология
Серия Series in Continental Thought
Издательство Ingram
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 of pure experiences as a developmental field of apperceptive accomplishments.
We thereby obtain the methodological basis for studying the formation of preconceptual understanding in terms of “lawful regularities that regulate the formation of apperceptions” (Husserl 2001, 624). Apperceptions are intentional lived-experiences that prescribe to the given phenomenon dimensions of sense that exceed their intuitive justification. The phenomenological concept of apperception is meant to capture the excess of meaning that trespasses the boundaries of the phenomenon’s intuitive self-givenness.31 As seen from the standpoint of genetic phenomenology, each and every consciousness is apperceptive: “We cannot even conceive of a consciousness that would not go beyond the strict present in its essential flux from presence to new presences” (Husserl 2001, 626). It is, however, not enough to characterize apperceptive consciousness as a consciousness of the surplus of meaning that exceeds the bounds of intuition and that accompanies each and every experience. Apperceptive consciousness is focused on what is given intuitively and it finds within the intuitively given a motivation for a consciousness of something that exceeds the boundaries of intuition. That is, apperceptive consciousness is not just conscious of something intuitively given and in addition still conscious of dimensions of sense that exceed the boundaries of intuition; rather, it is a consciousness that intentionally points toward the nonintuitive as that which is motivated intuitively (see Husserl 2001, 627). To a large degree, the goal of genetic phenomenology is to discover the fundamental principles in accordance with which apperceptions are formed and in accordance with which ever-new apperceptions necessarily arise from other apperceptions.32 They can be formed at different levels of experience, which Husserl (2001, 631) identifies as the level of pure activity, the intermediary level between passivity and activity, and the level of pure passivity.
At this point we can come back to the twofold question raised at the beginning of this section: How does preconceptual understanding originate, and how does it develop? Having addressed the fundamental methodological principles that underlie genetic phenomenology, we are in the position to appreciate the remarkably rich answer genetic phenomenology offers to this question. This answer is fundamentally twofold. On the one hand, by focusing on the hidden accomplishments of transcendental subjectivity, genetic phenomenology demonstrates that preconceptual understanding originates and develops within the framework of subjective experience. Genetic phenomenology focuses on the field of transcendental experience from a diachronic standpoint and inquires into the fundamental laws and principles in accordance with which transcendental experience develops. On the other hand, genetic phenomenology also strives to show that preconceptual understanding originates and develops in the life-world. In this regard, the questions that prove central to phenomenology concern the life-world’s fundamental structures, the way in which objects in the life-world obtain their meaning, and the way in which our basic rootedness in the life-world prefigures our theoretical activities.
We are finally in the position to ask: Of what significance is the genetic method for phenomenologically oriented analyses of pain? What we just said about preconceptual understanding in general, we can also say about such bodily experiences as pain. We can ask: How does the experience of pain originate and how does it develop? The second and third paths to the reduction, coupled with the method of intentional implications, provide us with the methodological basis for addressing these questions phenomenologically. Following the guidelines of genetic methodology, we can investigate how the experience of pain originates both in the field of experience in general and in the life-world. In this regard, in what follows it will be important to show that pain originates as a rupture in the field of experience that unsettles one’s otherwise natural absorption in the world of things. In the natural course of life, we are, for the most part, delivered from internal life. Everything for us is outside, in the world, on the road, in the town, in the midst of the crowd (see Sartre 1970, 5). The emergence of pain puts a stop to our natural excentricity: the door through which we used to naturally fly out into the world is now, as it were, blocked with a mirror, in which we see reflected the incapacity of the inborn movement to get off the ground. Pain belongs to a group of feelings that compel us to discover our own immanence. Yet pain does not only occur, it also lingers, which means that one cannot grasp its nature without understanding its temporality.