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ABSTRACT
In this article, I aim to cast light on the genetic analyses of the apperception of the other that the phenomenologist Marc Richir develops in his late masterwork Phénoménologie en esquisses (2000). My reading hypothesis is that these analyses consist in the original contribution that Richir makes to the standard phenomenological account of empathy from within his overall project of a non-standard revision/refoundation of the Husserlian genetic phenomenology. To test this hypothesis, I trace Richir’s reinterpretation of two texts from Husserl’s so-called phenomenology of intersubjectivity (Hua XIII, 10 and 13), in which Husserl interweaves together the questions of the I’s implication in phantasy and of the apprehension of the other’s living body by presentification. As my examination develops, I show that Richir finds in these texts the phenomenological attestation of the nomadic and presubjective phantasia that, on his reading, Husserl had discovered in his earlier 1904–05 lectures on phantasy.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Richir, Phénomenologie en esquisses : Nouvelles fondations, 276 (hereafter referred to as PE). In this article, all translations from PE are mine.
2 As Scheler puts it, by unfolding the parti pris of the standard phenomenological account of empathy: “Our primary knowledge of Nature is itself a knowledge of the expressive aspect of living organisms; mental phenomena therefore (which are invariably presented only within a structural context), are always given, in the first instance, in unities of expression” (The Nature of Sympathy, 218). On this text, see Zahavi 122–23.
3 Ratcliffe 334–35.
4 Zahavi 150.
5 Moran 297.
6 Hua XI, 372.
7 Ibid., 372–73. For a resonating account of empathy, see Edith Stein’s demarcation of analogizing and association by similarity from analogical inference, in Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 59 and Moran 309–10. For Husserl’s concept of apperception, see Zahavi 128–29.
8 Ibid., 297.
9 Identified as one of the three key-figures of Neue Phänomenologie in France, with Michel Henry and Jean-Luc Marion (see Gondek and Tengelyi, Neue Phänomenologie in Frankreich), as Alexander Schnell argues, perhaps more justly, Richir stands as a singular figure in the phenomenological tradition tout court (Le sens se faisant). For an introduction to Richir’s work, see Richir and Carlson, L'écart et le rien.
10 On this understanding of standard genetic phenomenology, see PE 40 and Niel, “Husserl’s Concept of Ur-Stiftung: From Passivity to History.” On Richir’s overall project of revision/refoundation, see Forestier, La phénoménologie génétique de Marc Richir.
11 This reading centres on Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, 288–312 (n.10); 333–41 (n.13). For an introduction to these texts, see Kern, “Husserl’s Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity.” For an overview of Husserl’s treatment of intersubjectivity throughout his work, see Walsh, “Husserl on Other Minds.”
12 PE 61–112. On Richir’s non-standard interpretation of Husserl’s lectures on Phantasie, see Schnell, Temps et phénomène, 35–70, and Le sens se faisant : Marc Richir et la refondation de la phénoménologie transcendantale, 34–48, and Senatore, "Where Do Centaurs Come From?".
13 PE 112–34.
14 PE 134–50. For an overview of Richir’s treatment of intersubjectivity, see Fazakas, Le clignotement du soi, 31–63, which focuses on later texts by Richir.
15 PE 267–91.
16 A partial French edition of Husserl’s Hua XIII, including the two texts examined by Richir, is published in French in the year subsequent to the publication of PE. Cf. Husserl, Sur l’intersubjectivité, 304–13 (vol. I) and 30–56 (vol. II).
17 For a standard reading of Husserl’s phenomenology of phantasy, see Bernet 75–117.
18 Hua XIII, 298–99.
19 Ibid., 300–01.
20 On Husserl’s concept of Leib, see Heinämaa, “On the transcendental undercurrents of phenomenology.”
21 Hua XIII, 302. On the Husserlian concepts of kinesthesia and sensible fields, see Taipale 21–66.
22 Hua XIII, 304.
23 Ibid., 306.
24 Ibid., 306.
25 For an introduction to Richir’s Leib-Philosophie, see Schnell, Le sens se faisant, 82-89, which argues for a continuity with the project of recasting transcendental subjectivity in terms of Leiblichkeit undertaken by Merleau-Ponty in his Phénoménologie de la perception (1945).
26 PE 137.
27 On Husserl’s trouble in enacting the phenomenological reduction in/of the awaken dream, see Richir’s analysis of lecture 44 of the second part of Husserl’s course on Erste Philosophie (1924) in PE 116–34.
28 Ibid., 138.
29 Ibid., 138. On “transpassibility,” as the possibility of the blind metamorphosis of phenomenological foundations, through a coherent deformation, into the architectonic register of the founded symbolical institution (and on transpossibility, as the reversed possibility), see Richir and Carlson 183–86.
30 PE 141.
31 Ibid., 143.
32 Ibid., 141.
33 Hua XIII, 308.
34 Ibid., 311.
35 Ibid., 311: “Da ich immerfort Sinnesfelder habe, ausgefüllte, so kommt es, dass ich nicht Sinnesfelder vorstellen kann, ohne dabei meine aktuellen Sinnesfelder in Erregung zu versetzen. Eine gewisse Deckung, Überscheibung tritt ein. Sehe ich eine fremde Hand, so fühle ich meine Hand, bewegt sich eine fremde Hand, so juckt es mich, meine Hand zu bewegen usw.“ As Taipale remarks, “Husserl is not referring to an external similarity” but to “the lived-body as a whole.” Therefore, Taipale explains, the movement of one’s own hand “appears as if not generated by an external cause, but by itself,” “as an expression of spontaneity” (Phenomenology and Embodiment, 83).
36 Ibid., 312. On Husserl’s treatment of empathy in Hua XIII, see Lorelle.
37 Ibid., 313.
38 For Husserl’s notion of zero-point, see Summa 252–65, and Taipale 60–61.
39 PE 144–45. On Richir's analyses of imaginary intersubjectivity, see Senatore, “Pathologies of Imagination and Affectivity.”
40 PE 145.
41 Ibid., 145.
42 Ibid., 145.
43 Ibid., 269. This point is remarkable as it suggests that another self, that is not the real I, an ipseity, as Richir calls it elsewhere, is associated to the aforementioned kinesthetic series. On the recourse to anonymity in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, see Taipale 73–74.
44 Ibid., 148.
45 Ibid., 148.
46 Hua XIII, 309–10.
47 Ibid., 310–11.
48 Ibid., 311.
49 Ibid. 311–12.
50 PE 271–72.
51 Ibid., 272.
52 Ibid., 273.
53 Ibid., 273–74.
54 Ibid., 274.
55 Ibid., 275. It is worth noting that here, Richir explicitly demarcates his idea of Leib from Merleau-Ponty’s late conception of “chair.” On this point, see Richir, “La phénoménologie de Husserl dans la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty. Questions phénoménologiques.”
56 Ibid., 275.
57 Ibid., 274.
58 Ibid., 275.
59 Ibid., 275.
60 Ibid., 275–76. On this kind of phenomenality, which the hyperbolical epoché of phantasia reveals, see PE 474–506.
61 Ibid., 276.
62 Ibid., 275.
63 Ibid., 276–77.
64 Ibid., 278.
65 Ibid., 279.
66 Ibid., 279–80.
67 Hua XIII, 333–34.
68 Ibid., 336.
69 Ibid., 338.
70 Ibid., 339.
71 On the trajectory of Husserl’s treatment of gestural expressivity, see Heinämaa, “Embodiment and Expressivity in Husserl’s Phenomenology.”
72 Ibid., 339.
73 Ibid., 342.
74 Ibid., 281.
75 Ibid., 281.
76 For Richir’s phenomenology of language, see Méditations phénoménologiques, 191–328, and Carlson, “Aproximaciones richirianas a la fenomenología del lenguaje.” It is worth noting that Richir further develops this phenomenology within the framework of his non-standard genetic analyses in PE 166–84 and 329–92.
77 PE 284.
78 Ibid., 284.
79 Ibid., 284.
80 Ibid., 285.
81 Ibid., 287.
82 Ibid., 288.
83 Ibid., 289.
84 Ibid., 290.
85 See Phantasia, imagination and affectivité (2004) and Fragments phénoménologiques sur l’espace et le temps (2006).