[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

If thus the world in its entirety is affected by the reduction, then obviously it affectsthe status not only of material objects, but also that of cultural objects and of other people.But what about the past? This is a difficult question, one that can be answered on differentlevels. In one sense, “pastness” should pose no particular problem to phenomenology. Onthe contrary, the theory provides exemplary means to analyze the intentional structure ofthe flow of time, its dialectic of presence and absence, etc., which was demonstratedvividly already in the early lectures on internal time consciousness. 11 Yet time and temporalityconstitute perhaps the most serious threat to the self-assertion of phenomenology.Husserl raises the question himself, when he asks, in Cartesian Meditations: “Does nottranscendental subjectivity at any given moment include its own past as an inseparablepart, which is accessible only by way of memory?” 12This question seems to open up an abyss in the center of the whole project. Thereduction has disclosed the field of transcendental subjectivity as a fundamental ground,from which all human experience can be assessed and explicated as to its intentionalstructure. But with the continuous passing of time, this very same ground seems to haveaccess not even to itself, except indirectly (like any other empirical subjectivity) throughmemory.From this sketchy background one can see how the phenomenological project, as aresult of its ambitions to reach a radical Selbstbesinnung, carries with it an inner momentum,so to speak, which forces it, at one point or another, to face the necessity of a reductionoperating not only on the World but also on history, as the history of transcendentalsubjectivity itself. And it is from this viewpoint that one can affirm, with Ricoeur andothers, the continuity of Husserl’s reflections as they are presented in the Vienna lecture.Somehow the voice of transcendental subjectivity, speaking from within the individualphilosopher, must claim to have a privileged access to the past, in order to be persistentin its original ambition.The next step in my argument is to look at some of the problems and conflicts whichseem to arise from within phenomenology itself, once this attempt is made.How then is history realized from the point of view of the transcendental subject? Thisis the question I now wish to turn to, by initially looking at some of the general ways inwhich phenomenology classifies the given.The phenomenological description operates from within the stream of transcendentalsubjectivity, but with an eye, not to its particular transformations but to its eidetics, i.e.,what is typical and persistent. The ultimate generality is always the object in general (derGegenstand überhaupt), but from there on down, one can distinguish any number of moreparticular types, such as formal, material, animal, etc. Every object has its own mode ofgivenness, and as such it signifies a rule-structure of transcendental subjectivity, which canbe displayed in intentional analysis. 13The most easily exemplified mode of presentation is of course the visible physicalobject, such as a house, a dice, or a table, which are all examples that Husserl likes to use.It is part of their structure of appearance that they are never fully accessible, i.e., there isalways an alternative perspective to be taken, from which they can be viewed. This, however,does not diminish their accessibility in any essential way. It is part of their meaningthat whatever is absent from one perspective can be made present from another, or bymeans of some manipulation of which I am (in principle) capable.The situation is somewhat different, when it comes to that which is not immediatelypresent, but only indirectly so through memory. The time which has passed can never be111213Cf. Husserliana, vol. X.Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 22.Ibid., § 21.239