Derrida and Husserl Structure and Genesis.

“Reason, Husserl says, is the logos which is produced in history. It traverses Being with itself in sight, in sight of appearing to itself, that is, to state itself and hear itself as logos. It is speech as auto-affection: hearing oneself speak. It emerges from itself in order to take hold of itself within itself, in the “living present” of its self-presence. In emerging from itself, hearing oneself speak constitutes itself as the history of reason through the detour of writing. Thus it differs from itself in order to reappropriate itself.”[1]

What follows has emerged from a close reading of the text "Genesis and Structure," which appeared in the textual unity referred to as Writing and Difference. The text might aptly have been named Structure or Genesis, or even Genesis as Structure, perhaps, having the effect of introducing the structure of its debate at the moment of its genesis for the reader. Perhaps, this would have been an overly aggressive gesture—introducing the tension in question in the name of a work—even for Derrida. I qualify my reading as a close one, by this I mean proximally, in the sense that it has not strayed far off the subject matter dealt with in the Introduction to Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry­­­­—the latter text being my first serious reading of any of Derrida’s spiritual products; I also use it in the sense of a careful, or attentive going over. I have found it difficult to attend to the thought of Derrida, perhaps, this is precisely the point Derrida would have me attend to. It is, therefore, in the interest of attending to the thought of Derrida that I have selected the above quote, from Genesis and Structure, as an example of the “reduction of meaning.”[2] The quote is offered as a kind of response to the Husserlian reduction, which seems to provide access to the eidos of a history in general. For Husserl, this move is necessary in order to account for the presence of idealities and the possibility of scientific exactitude in general. It would seem that Husserlian phenomenology, in the Derridean reading, is continuously caught in an impossible tension between the demands of structure, or structurality, and the demand for an origin, foundation, or grounding of structure. For Derrida, Husserl’s insistence on grounding, on origins, will necessitate the move to reduce the eidos of historicity in general. Husserl will posit this necessary reduction as one responsible for the existence of all structural ideality in general. Given over to a Derridean reading, this reduction is not naïve metaphysics in the classical sense; however, it remains subject to the epoch of the metaphysics of presence. Derrida’s encounter with Husserl seems to have imposed the thought of differance upon him. Differance, if it were a word amongst words, a name, or an existent in the realm of the sign, could seemingly resolve the tension in Husserl’s phenomenology. However, differance is not, and cannot be and therefore retains within its non-self the tension, which it seemingly addresses. Differance is the absence of grounding the impossibility of a closed structure, the impossibility of genesis being a structure, but, simultaneously, the possibility of genesis and structure in general.
The Work of Beginnings and the Transcendental reduction:
Husserl seems to have be motivated by a certain opposition to the Platonic notion of form[3], that is, as an absolute ideality derived from some infinite Reason. Husserl’s phenomenology, properly understood as a method, is guided in principle by a principle:
“It is plain that I, as someone beginning, philosophically, since I am striving toward the presumptive end, genuine science, must neither make nor go on accepting any judgment as scientific that I have not derived from evidence, from “experiences” in which the affaires and affair-complexes in question are not present to me as “they themselves”.”[4]
The foundation of objectivity in general cannot arise from something objective, or perhaps, stated differently, objectivity cannot serve to ground itself.[5] Husserl’s move toward a “transcendental experience,” the opening of the phenomenological field, must be understood as a reduction of the world as an empirical pre-given experience, what remains, rather is the “phenomenon-of-the-world-for-my-consciousness.”[6] The world, in this reduction, appears as a movement beyond the transcendental ego, as such and toward a sense, which was already its intended sense. Intentionality is nothing other than the intention of a sense and is not an empirical existing object in itself. The opening of this field is precisely the opening of the possibility, the transcendental possibility, of meaning, as simultaneously activity and passivity.
“At this point, following Descartes, we make the great reversal that, if made in the right manner, leads to transcendental subjectivity: the turn to the ego cogito as the ultimate and apodictically certain basis for judgements, the basis on which any radical philosophy must be grounded.”[7]
This simultaneity of the ur-region, the unity of consciousness as such appears for Husserl as the originary archi structure—the irreal and active pole of the noetic-noematic intentional structure, and the real and purely passive morphe-hyle structure. Husserl refers to this ur-consciousness as the flowing cogito. On the one side, the side of noesis and noemata, we would have the form of intention without content and on the side of the morphe-hyle we would have content, or sensate, without form. The noema, therefore, is the meaning, form, or idea, of the intended hyle, which is content without form. These structures run parallel to each other, in a kind of interweaving, which for Husserl is always already a synthesis.
“Their unity is a unity of synthesis: not merely a continuous connectedness of cogitations (as it were, a being stuck to one another externally), but a connectedness that makes the unity of one consciousness, in which the unity of an intentional objectivity, as “the same” objectivity/belonging to multiple modes of appearance, becomes constituted.”[8]
On both sides we are in the vicinity of an opening, on the side of the intention we have the noema[9], which is meaningful but irreal, and on the other, we have the hyle as the real, and hence temporal, immanent object of the intention.
Internal Time and the Idea in the Kantian Sense:
It seemed necessary to open the current examination with a general discussion of the move to transcendental experience[10], as the uncovering of the world as phenomena, and the uncovering that the “whole of conscious life is unified synthetically.”[11] Thus far we have dealt solely with the transcendental eidetic of the ego, which has seemingly led us to the site of an abyss, between the noema, as the location of meaning and the intending of the opposing side of the hyle or immanent meaningless object. How is the transcendental object, the hyle, or sensed thing in general given to the noematic intention? Or, perhaps, how is activity and passivity unified in the universal synthesis of the fundamental form of consciousness? The hyle as a temporal imminent object in general provides for the possibility of the genesis of the unity of the fundamental form of consciousness. Perhaps, it is as Husserl claimed in the Cartesian Meditations:
“At first, to be sure, the possibility of a pure phenomenology of consciousness seems highly questionable, since the realm of phenomena of consciousness is truly the realm of Heraclitean flux.”[12]
Husserl’s treatment of time, in The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, allows him to import the idea of the ‘now’ as the moment, which although failing to appear in-itself as such, allows for the noematic re-presentation, or ‘presentification,’ of the hyle. Husserl treats “perception as the ‘self-giving’ of an actual present, which has its correlate in the given of what is past,” however, the ‘now’ only appears in ‘recollection’ in a manner wholly other than the ‘now’ of perception.[13] The second now is ‘not perceived,’ as ‘self-given’ but ‘presentified.’
“However, if we call perception the act in which all “origination” lies which constitutes originarily, then primary remembrance is perception. For only in primary remembrance do we see what is past; only in it is the past constituted, i.e., not in a representative but in a presentative way.” [14]
The ‘idea’ of the ‘now’ allows for the ‘retention’ of a just past, which would, however, be nothing itself without the possibility of ‘protention’ as the going forth of a modified ‘now’ into a ‘now’ which is only anticipated. We are seemingly “in the strange presence of the Idea in the Kantian sense,” the infinite idea, or perhaps the deferral, delay, which allows for the unification of the “Heraclitean flux of consciousness,” the object, and the world through the opening of a horizonal telos. This opening, of the Idea, the telos, not only provides for the possibility of objective ideality in general, but also allows for the ultimate deferral of its meaning which, in turn, allows for the persistence of all theoretical projects including those of which phenomenology is but a particularly “rigorous” type. Notice that both in the noema, and internal time-consciousness, the Idea has been the source of the possibility of going forth, of allowing the structure to stand and remain open as possibility. The idea seems to be marked by both its presence and a certain absence, without which the possibility of going forth as such would be impossible. It is here that we must move firmly into the Derridean reading of Husserl, for it is this Idea which allows for the Husserlian reduction of the eidos of history in general, which remains our primary concern in the current examination.
Derrida’s Response:
Derrida’s critique of Husserl seems to be derived from a number of developments in the trajectory of his thought. Firstly, Derrida’s reading is informed by a particular reading of the Saussurean diacritics of the sign.[15] Secondly, Derrida sees the entire tradition of western philosophy as dominated by the determination of Being as presence. Husserl, to be sure, does not escape this determination in the Derridean reading; rather, Husserl’s use of the concept, of eidos and form, are nothing more than the presence of this metaphysical determination of Being as presence. This logocentric metaphysics brings along with it a number of presuppositions, or privileged moments, which Husserl seems to maintain in the entirety of his project. Husserl privileges speech over writing, in a kind of phonocentrism, wherein the auto-affection of speaking to oneself, and of hearing oneself speak exists in a kind of transparent self-presence, or giveneness to self.[16] The style of Derrida’s thought allows him to construe his reflection as a type of epochality, wherein it is not a question of choice, but rather a matter of necessity.[17] Finally, for Derrida, “the strange presence of the Idea in the Kantian sense”— which expresses both its origin, and its content, however is never given to intuition as such, but rather serves as the promise, or announcement of a future unity—is both the transgression of the phenomenological principle of principles and the origin of the phenomenological project itself. The emergence of infinity, in finite consciousness, is the opening of a telos, or a project for consciousness. It is that which, at once, allows for the exactitude of science, the limit condition, and allows the structure to remain an opening. It is precisely this opening this Idea, as a deferred and differed, which makes each reduction necessary, essential, and incomplete.
We began our treatment of Husserl by stating that his entire endeavor seemed to be motivated by a certain opposition to the Platonic forms, that is an opposition to the form as emanating from a kind of infinite Reason, or from a topos ouranios. Let us return to the quote provided at the onset of the examination a see how Derrida engages with it. “Reason Husserl says, is the logos which is produced in history,” or perhaps as Husserl puts it in the Cartesian Meditations :
“Reason is not an accidental de facto ability, not a title for possible accidental matters of fact, but rather a title for an all embracing essentially necessary structural form belonging to all transcendental subjectivity.”[18]
Reason, for Husserl, is therefore, the essential structure of transcendental ego, or of transcendental subjectivity, which is thereby, made responsible for the constitution of objects, the sedimentations, in short the discursivity, or traditionalization of the logos.[19]
“It traverses Being with itself in sight, in sight of appearing to itself, that is to state itself and hear itself as logos.” It emerges from itself in order to take hold of itself within itself, in the “living present” of its self-presence. “In emerging from itself, hearing oneself speak constitutes itself as the history of reason through the detour of writing.”
The logos, therefore, seems to call to itself and moves toward itself as telos or an infinite project, through the mediation of a transcendental subjectivity which becomes responsible for it. However, “Logos is nothing outside history and Being, since it is discourse, infinite discursiveness and not an actual infinity, and since it is meaning.”[20] If we think of the logos as telos, as Derrida proposes we do, have we not already encountered something else with a similar structure? If the “Idea in Kantian sense” is that which has grounded each structure, albeit, while at the same time delaying, and deferring it leaving it incomplete, does the “Idea in the Kantian sense” not have the same structure as the logos itself. Furthermore, the noema, or the intentional act, which is neither properly subjective, nor an immanent object of the world, is merely the bringing forward of this Idea of this logos which never appears as such. The noema is premised upon its own irreality, or as Derrida states it:
“However, there is no doubt that this non-reality of the noema (a very difficult and decisive notion) may be what, in the last analysis, permits the repetition of sense as the “same” and makes the idealization of identity in general possible.”[21]
The quote, which has been in or purview, has privileged the notion of presence, of the self-presence in the ‘Now’ of the “living Present.” However, what we have endeavored heretofore has been a demonstration that within each instance of presence, or ground has simultaneously been the site of an absence or lack of presence, a deferral of presence in the present. In each case it is this absence which has allowed for the going forth, the expression of ideality and exactitude as such. It is in this light that the detour of writing becomes definitive in that only through writing, as the possibility of ideal objectivity in general, can any transcendental subject in general be absent. Or perhaps, even further, the absence of the transcendental subject is what allows for meaning to free itself from its limits within a given community.[22] The space of transcendental history is thus opened up as a space wherein ideal objectivity, given over to the sign, is sedimented and freed from all transcendental subjectivity in general. It is the infinitization of an ideal sense.


Perhaps, the remainder of the quote might make things clearer.
“Thus it differs from itself in order to reappropriate itself.”
What is articulated through each presence of the telos, logos, or the Idea in the Kantian sense, each case the site of a delay or a deferral, of the presence of the logos, of meaning? Is it God, the absolute which can only be given as absent, as a horizon, or a project? If “it differs from itself in order to reappropriate itself, is this appropriation, or re-appropriation ever given in history? Is it not simply the infinite putting off, the consciousness of an absolute delay, perhaps differance?
“Being has always made “sense,” has always been conceived or spoken of as such, only by dissimulating itself in beings; thus in a particular and very strange way difference (is) older than the ontological difference or the truth of Being.”[23]
Tradition, therefore, would be nothing other than intentionality itself, never given to either its beginning or its end. The telos remains open, an opening as such, toward the trace, of something never present, never given to the present.
“The primordial Difference of the absolute Origin, which can and indefinitely must both retain and announce its pure concrete form with apriori security: i.e., the beyond this-side which gives sense to all empirical genius and all factual profusion, that is perhaps what has always been said under the concept of “transcendental,” through the enigmatic displacements of its history.”… “The pure and interminable disquietude of thought striving to “reduce” Difference by going beyond factual infinity toward the infinity of its sense and value, i.e. while maintaining Difference—that disquietude would be transcendental.”[24]
We have attempted to attend to the thought of Derrida, as Derrida attended to the thought of Husserl. We have, herein, perhaps, merely demonstrated how it was that the thought of differance seemed to impose itself upon him in his reading of Husserl. Furthermore, we have pointed toward the thought of the end of metaphysics, which will be a major theme in the paper that will follow this one. It would seem that at the limits of phenomenology its origins are at stake. The Idea, which animates the project is not, and cannot be given to its principle of principles. Husserl’s attempt to rethink the origins of philosophy, science, and ideal objectivity in general, marked the end of metaphysics of the Cartesian persuasion. However, if we are attentive to the Derridean deconstruction of meaning, we see that a new metaphysical artifice has been erected in its stead. The journey has been valuable nonetheless, leaving its fellow travelers with a question at the end of metaphysics.

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Derrida, Jacques. Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Trans. John P. Leavey. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1976.

Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays On Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations. Norwell: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.
Husserl, Edmund. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. James S. Churchill. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1971.

Ricoeur, Paul. Husserl An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Trans. Edward. G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967.





[1] Jacques Derrida, Genesis and Structure. Appearing in Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. p. 166.
[2] “Now, if one considers that the critiques of anthropologism in the last great metaphysical systems (Hegel and Husserl, notably) was executed in the name of truth and meaning, if one considers that these “phenomenologies”­­-which were metaphysical systems-had as their essential motif a reduction to meaning (which is literally a Husserlian proposition), then one can conceive that the reduction of meaning-that is, of the signified-first takes the form of a critique of phenomenology.” Jacques Derrida. The Ends of Man. appearing in. Margins of Philosophy. Trans Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. p. 134.



[3] This desire to ground the concept of eidos, or form, would have provided an origin for ideal structures in general, seems to have continued throughout Husserl’s phenomenological project. This desire, to save the form from the Platonic realm, finds its articulation as early as the Philosophy of Arithmetic and seems to be the primary motivation behind The Origin of Geometry. As Derrida points out: “Husserl, for his part, seeks to maintain simultaneously the normative autonomy of logical or mathematical ideality as concerns all factual consciousness, and its original dependence in relation to a subjectivity in general; in general but concretely.” Derrida. Genesis and Structure. P 158.
[4] Edmund Husserl. Cartesian Meditations. Norwell: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. p. 13.
[5] “The being of the world, by reason of the evidence of natural experience, must no longer be for us an obvious natural fact; it too must be for us, henceforth only an acceptance phenomena.” Ibid., p. 18.
[6] Paul Ricoeur. Husserl An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Trans. Edward. G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967. p. 87.
[7] Husserl, Cartesian Meditations. P. 18.
[8] Husserl. Cartesian Meditations. p. 41-42.
[9]“The Noema which is the objectivity of the of the object, the meaning and the “as such” of the thing for consciousness, is neither the determined thing itself in its untamed existence (whose appearing the noema precisely is), nor is it a properly subjective moment, a “really” subjective moment, since it is indubitably given as an object for consciousness. It is neither of the world nor of consciousness, but it is the world or something of the world for consciousness.” Derrida. Genesis and Structure. p. 163.
[10] We must come to understand the radicality of this move, which is a movement away from, and beyond Descartes who seemed to have uncovered it in his Meditations, however, was unaware of its importance. Through the reduction to the transcendental we have simultaneously a critique of classical metaphysics and the possibility of a new ground for objectivity in general.
[11] Husserl. Cartesian Meditations. p. 42.
[12] Husserl. Cartesian Meditations. P. 49.
[13] Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. James S. Churchill. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1971. p 63.
[14] Ibid., p. 64.
[15] “The inflation of the sign “language” is the inflation of the sign itself, absolute inflation, inflation itself. Yet, by one of its aspects or shadows, it is itself still a sign: this crisis is also a symptom. It indicates as if in spite of itself, that a historico-metaphysical epoch must finally determine as language the totality of its problematic horizon.” Jacques Derrida. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1976.p. 6.
[16]“Taking auto-affection as the exercise of the voice, auto-affection supposed that a pure difference comes to divide self presence. In this pure difference is rooted the possibility of everything we think we can exclude from auto-affection: space, the outside, the world, the body, etc. As soon as it is admitted that auto-affection is the condition for self-presence, no pure transcendental reduction is possible.” Jacques Derrida. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays On Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. p. 82.
[17] “The privilege of the Phone does not depend on a choice that could have been avoided. It responds to a moment of economy (let us say the “life” of “history” or of “being as self-relationship”).” Derrida. Of Grammatology. P. 7.
[18] Husserl. Cartesian Meditations. p. 57.
[19]“Not that the logos is the father, either. But the origin of the logos is its father. One could say anachronously that the “speaking subject” is the father of his speech. And one would quickly realize that this is no metaphor, at least not in the sense of any common, conventional effect of rhetoric. Logos is a son, then, a son that would be destroyed in his very presence without the present attendance of his father.” Jacques Derrida. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. p. 77.
[20] Derrida. Genesis and Structure. p. 166.
[21] Jacques Derrida. Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Trans. John P. Leavey. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. p. 66-67.
[22]“The possibility of writing will assure the absolute traditionalization of the object, in its absolute ideal Objectivity” Writing ‘frees’ the ‘bound’ ideality from the synchronic exchange within the institutive community; thereby opening the ‘transcendental field’ wherein all factual subjectivities may be absent. At the same time, however, the absolute Objectivity, as a kind of assertion, remains in the legitimate purview of a transcendental subjectivity and retains within itself its essential historicity. The space of transcendental history has, through this movement been illuminated.” Derrida. Introduction: Origin of Geometry. p.77.
[23] Derrida. Speech and Phenomena. p. 154.
[24] Derrida. Origins of Geometry. p. 153.