Infinity, Ideality, Transcendentality: The Idea in the Kantian Sense in Husserl and Derrida

ABSTRACT

When Derrida translated and commented on Husserl’s manuscript The Origin of Geometry in 1962, he gave a central place to what Husserl called the Idea “in the Kantian sense”. This article reflects on the use and function of this Idea in Derrida’s reading of Husserl. It critically interrogates the relationship between the Idea in the Kantian sense and mathematical ideality, as well as the use of this Idea in the interpretation of the Thing (Ding) and the stream of experience (Erlebnisstrom). In the centre of the discussion stands what Derrida calls “pure thinking”, on which he tries to ground the Idea in the Kantian sense.

KEYWORDS:

• Idea in the Kantian sense
• mathematical ideality
• exact essences
• rationalism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is the famous Beilage III of Husserliana VI (Husserl, Crisis, 353–378 (Appendice VI of the translation)) written by Husserl in 1936. The manuscript was originally published by Eugen Fink in 1939 under the title “Die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Geometrie als intentionalhistorisches Problem” in the Revue Internationale de Philosophie. Derrida published the translation and his long “Introduction” in 1962.

2 Derrida, “Introduction”, 154/140.

3 Bernet, “Endlichkeit und Unendlichkeit in Husserls Phänomenologie; Carta, “On the distinction”; De Muralt, L’idée de la phénoménologie; Pradelle, Par-delà la révolution copernicienne; Schuhmann, Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie; Tengelyi, “Experience and Infinity in Kant and Husserl”, Welt und Unendlichkeit.

4 Most of the literature on Derrida’s philosophy pays no attention to this notion: Gasché, The Train of Mirror. Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection; Royle, Jacques Derrida; Stocker, Derrida on Deconstruction; Cazeaux, Metaphor and Continental Philosophy.

5 DeRoo, Futurity in Phenomenology.

6 Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl.

7 Hopkins, “Husserl and Derrida. On the Origin of Geometry”, 68.

8 It is important to notice that the mathematical theories that were important to Husserl were those of Bernard Bolzano and Georg Cantor, two mathematicians who worked on infinity. As early as 1884/5, Husserl attended courses from Brentano on Bolzano’s Paradoxien des Unendlichen (Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 14) and Cantor’s Theory of Manifolds occupies a central place in Husserl’s epistemology, which he discusses in his Prolegomena to a Pure Logic as well as in Formal and Transcendental Logic (Cf. also: Hill, “La Mannigfaltigkeitslehre de Husserl”).

9 As M. Richir has shown, this transformation was not primarily brought about by Newton and his (theological) conception of an absolute space, but already by the thinking of the infinite in Nicolas de Cuse and Giordano Bruno (Rirchir, La crise du sens et la phénoménologie, 31).

10 Husserl, Crisis, 15/17. Without making it explicit, Husserl takes up the conception of history of the Lumières, in particular of the Encyclopedists, Diderot and d’Alembert, who identify history with a process of accumulation of scientific knowledge, carried out collectively by the whole of humanity. (Diderot & d’Alembert, “Encyclopédie”, 415.)

11 Dastur, Husserl, 111.

12 Husserl, Crisis, 19/21.

13 Husserl, Crisis, 12/13.

14 Pradelle, Par-delà la révolution copernicienne, 200. Kant’s alleged psychologism is the most constant reproach that Husserl makes against Kant throughout his life-long reception of the philosopher from Königsberg (cf. Kern, Husserl und Kant).

15 Husserl, Prolegomena, in: Logical Investigations, 216–217.

16 Pradelle, Par-delà la révolution copernicienne, 203–211.

17 Husserl, Ideas, I, 138/133.

18 Husserl, Ideas, I, 138/133.

19 Husserl, Ideen, III, 133.

20 Husserl, Natur und Geist, 219. In contrast to Kant, where geometric forms depend on the construction of a concept in intuition (Anderson, The Poverty of Conceptual Truth), in Husserl, geometric concepts are what is fundamentally non-intuitionable – and their non-intuitionability guarantees their correctness.

21 Husserl, Ideas, I, 138/133.

22 Derrida, “Introduction”, 145/133.

23 In underlining the intellectual character of the apprehension of mathematical idealities, Derrida anticipates a series of phenomenologically inspired French epistemologists, such as Jean-Toussaint Desanti (Les Idéalités mathématiques), Maurice Caveign (Le problème des objets dans la pensée mathématique), and most recently, Dominique Pradelle (Intuition et Idealités). These thinkers claim the intratheoretical character of mathematical objects for which a direct, intuitive donation on the model of sensible intuition is categorically excluded. Against Husserl, they claim that the mathematical object is dependent on logical demonstrations based on axioms and that it cannot exist outside of such a theoretical and nomological framework.

24 Derrida, “Introduction”, 150/153.

25 Husserl, Thing and Space, 138/114.

26 Derrida, “Introduction”, 148/136.

27 The introduction of the Idea in the Kantian sense in 1909 anticipates Husserl’s renewed interest for (mathematical) infinity (in the form of Cantor's transfinite), which Tengelyi dates around 1910 (Tengelyi, Welt und Unendlichkeit, 534). Tengelyi explains this renewed interest by the success of Ernst Zermelo who, in 1908, provided an axiomatic foundation for Cantor’s set theory.

28 Husserl, Ms. D 13 II/146: “Das besagt nicht, dass im Voraus der ‘Gang der Natur’ durchaus (bzw. der Fluss des absoluten Bewusstseins) bestimmt sein müsste; aber wohl […] dass zugleich die Form der Natur, der Rahmen sozusagen, der durch die immer neue Faktizität ausgefüllt wird, absolut feststeht. Wenigstens könnte man sich damit begnügen, obschon es weniger ist als Kants Idee der Natur. So ist denn die empirische Wahrheit, folglich auch das Sein der Natur eine Idee in Kantischem Sinne.” (I express my gratitude to the director of the Husserl Archives in Leuven, Prof. J. Jansen, for her permission to quote from Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts.)

29 Husserl, Ideas, I, 331/285.

30 Derrida, “Introduction”, 153/139.

31 E. Husserl, Ideas, I, 185/159.

32 E. Husserl, Ideas, I, 166/159.

33 E. Husserl, Ideas, I, 166/160. Since the sentence is grammatically complex, I quote the German original: “Es ist eben das Eigentümliche der eine Kantische ‘Idee’ erschauenden Ideation, die darum nicht etwa die Einsichtigkeit einbüßt, dass die adäquate Bestimmung ihres Inhaltes, hier des Erlebnisstromes unerreichbar ist.”

34 Derrida, “Introduction”, 150/137.

35 DeRoo correctly identifies the central role of the idea in the Kantian sense in the integration of non-adequate elements into the phenomenological field (DeRoo, Futurity in Phenomenology, 109). But he fails to grasp the intrinsic link, in Derrida’s interpretation, between non-adequate givenness and “pure thinking”, as well as Derrida’s overall strategy, which seeks to ground the phenomenological field on such a “pure thinking”.

36 Derrida, “Introduction”, 153/139.

37 Husserl, Ideas, I, 91/78.

38 Husserl, Thing and Space, 14/12.

39 Husserl, Ideas, I, 315/271.

40 Husserl, Ideas, I, 91/77.

41 Husserl, Ideas, I, 91/77.

42 As D. Lohmar showed, the apprehension of non-given parts of the transcendent object does not rely on pure thinking, but on a certain kind of productive phantasy, which has a certain degree of quasi-perceptual fulness (Lohmar, Phänomenologie der schwachen Phantasie).

43 Carta, “On the distinction”.

44 Husserl, Ideas, I, 139/133.

45 Carta refers to a passage of Husserl’s Lectures on Passive Synthesis (204/256), where Husserl says that the Erlebnisstrom is the “first transcendence”.

46 Husserl, Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der eidetischen Variation, 81.

47 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 70/208.

48 For instance, Husserl, Ideen, III, 36: “Im Wesen des originär gebenden Bewusstseins überhaupt gründen kardinale Scheidungen nach Grundarten, die systematisch aufzusuchen und wissenschaftlich zu beschreiben eine der vornehmsten Aufgaben der Phänomenologie ist. Jeder solchen Grundart entspricht offenbar ein regionaler Begriff, der die Sinnesform der jeweiligen Grundart gebender Anschauung umgrenzt, und entspricht in weiterer Folge eine Gegenstandsregion, alle Gegenstände umspannend, denen dieser Sinn zugeeignet ist.” Cf. also Pradelle, Par-delà la révolution copernicienne, 208.

49 This is clearly expressed by Martial Guéroult in his influential work Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons, 77: “l’intellect pur est présent dans tous les modes de la pensée, même dans ceux qui lui sont le plus étrangers comme l’imagination, le sentiment, la volonté, car ces modes doivent être nécessairement rapportés à la ‘substance intelligente’ du fait qu’ils enferment quelque sorte d’intellection.”

50 Descarte, Regulae, 144f.

51 Descarte, Regulae, 144f.

52 Brunschvig, “Husserlian Perspectives on Galilean Physics”, 34.

53 Bernet, “On Derrida’s 'Introduction’ to Husserl’s Origin of Geometry”, 145.

54 Bernet, “On Derrida’s 'Introduction’ to Husserl’s Origin of Geometry”, 145.

55 My reading of the “pure thinking” in Derrida therefore rather supports L. Lawlor’s interpretation of the mathematical object as being “the source of Derrida’s concept of presence, being as presence […].” (Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl, 105)

56 From 1952 to 1956, Derrida studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris. In 1950, Jean Laporte published the second edition of his Rationalisme de Descartes, and in 1953, Martial Gueroult published the two volumes of his important book Descartes selon l’ordre des raisons. During the time of Derrida’s studies at the ENS, Gueroult lectured at the Collège de France (1951–1962), just some blocks away from the ENS. As a philosophy student in Paris at that time, it was impossible not to know these important interpretations of Descartes. Furthermore, in 1963, just one year after the publication of his “Introduction”, Derrida presents his impressive answer to Foucault’s Histoire de la folie under the title “Cogito et histoire de la folie”, in which he shows his precise and holistic knowledge of Descartes’ philosophy.

57 Derrida, “Introduction”, 58/68.

58 De Muralt, L’idée de la phénoménologie, 26: “Or, l’idée est forme, c’est-à-dire essence. C’est ici le nerf de l’exemplarisme husserlien : l’essence est norme ou la forme est exemplaire.”

59 “Tout objet en général est en effet l’exemple factice de son idée qui est réciproquement son exemplaire idéal.” (Ibid., 13) “Toutes les idées husserliennes peuvent être comprises comme des limites, limites idéales donc infinies, qui ne terminent pas réellement mais idéalement (à l’infini).” (Ibid., 19) As well as: “[…] l’eidos est bien évidemment une idée et un télos.” (Ibid., 29).

60 “D’une manière générale donc l’idée est la conscience transcendantale elle-même dans sa forme téléologique.” (Ibid., 349)

61 A coherent interpretation of transcendental phenomenology through the different regulative ideas that teleologically prescribe various structures of fulfilment to the different ontological regions has been successfully put forth by D. Pradelle, Par-delà la révolution copernicienne.

62 De Muralt, L’idée de la phénoménologie, 350.

63 Derrida, “Introduction”, 58/68.

64 Derrida, “Introduction”, 154/140.

65 Derrida, “Introduction”, 162/146.

66 Derrida, “Introduction”, 162/146.