Ebook: The Concept of Passivity in Husserl's Phenomenology

Building upon Husserl’s challenge to oppositions such as those between form and content and between constituting and constituted, TheConcept of Passivity in Husserl’s Phenomenology construes activity and passivity not as reciprocally exclusive terms but as mutually dependent moments of acts of consciousness. The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication. The detailed study of the phenomena of affection, forgetting, habitus and translation sets out a distinction between three meanings of passivity: receptivity, sedimentation or inactuality and alienation. Husserl’s texts are interpreted as defending the idea that cultural crises are not brought to a close by replacing passivity with activity but by having more of both.

In Chapter 1, I explain why temporal syntheses, although distinguished from associative syntheses, count among the most fundamental phenomena of the passive sphere. I draw on Husserl’s account of absolute consciousness, which ‘sublates’ pairs of opposites such as form/content and constituting/constituted, to show that activity and passivity mutually determine one another.

In Chapter 2, I further expand on pre-egoic components of sense-giving acts encompassed by original passivity. I explain the function of primordial association (Urassoziation) in passive genesis with special reference to the problem of syntheses of similarity and contrast. Then, I turn to the difficult issue of the relation between affection and prominence (Abgehobenheit) in the perceptual field.

In Chapter 3, I explore the sphere of secondary passivity – a generic name for the modifications undergone by constituted meanings once the process of constitution is accomplished. I give particular consideration to the passive components involved in the phenomena of memory fulfillment and forgetfulness.

Chapter 4 continues the previous chapter by expanding the discussion of secondary passivity from the subjective to the intersubjective level of sedimentation. I focus on Husserl’s account of habitus and language as passive factors responsible for cultural crises. I use the example of translation to show, against Husserl, that passivity, understood as alienation, can also provide the palliative for cultural crises.

In Chapter 5, I question the relation between the three meanings of passivity: receptivity, inactuality and alienation. I present the distinction between the lived body and the physical body as a form of self-alienation. Then I discuss the intersubjective significance of the concept of pairing association. Finally, I turn to the problem of Fremderfahrung in the broad sense, that is, the problem of the interaction between home worlds and alien worlds. I defend the harshly criticized idea of analogical transfer by reversing it and by showing that homecultures, one’s own body and also one’s self manifest themselves in similar modes of accessible inaccessibility.