Abstract
Normality, for Husserl, is said in many ways. While the most detailed treatments of this technical Husserlian concept are usually found in discussions concerning the constitutive dimension of the lived body and intersubjectivity, little attention has been paid to the notion of normality understood as the tacit regularity of nature. Indeed, the normal can also be understood as the causal background which is presupposed, tentatively, in the anticipation of uniform processes of change, as well as in poieticinstrumental experiences, that is, in experiences involving the production and use of objects. The subject that elaborates, manipulates or uses objects is installed in nature. Hence, in our productive-instrumental confrontation with objects in the world, we operate under the assumption that the potentially mutable causal scene surrounding our acting life will retain its style. This assumption of normality is the world, in one of the many ways in which Husserl characterizes this concept. The world qua background of normality becomes thematic, retrospectively, precisely when it ceases to cooperate with the agent’s initiatives. This, on my view, is what lies behind Husserl’s assertion that the world is a “super-object” or “higher-level theme”.
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Notes
See Vicuña (2019).
As far as I can see, these are the main senses in which Husserl technically refers to the world, namely: (i) as horizon of all horizons, or the surroundings of my surroundings (Husserl 2008: 362); (ii) as Frage-Boden, “basis [Boden] of all questions,” or “apodictic basis for every modalization” (Husserl 2008: 256, 128; Husserl and Fink 1988: 38, n. 95; closely followed in this respect by Fink 2008: 60; 2018: 501–502, 528; and Merleau-Ponty 1945/2012: 384); (iii) as presumption (Präsumtion), total acquisition (Totalerwerb), prejudice (Vorurteil), or “universe of all my prejudices” (Husserl 2008: 213–214, 225, 234–236, 726, 604, 492, n.1; Husserl 2006: 41); (iv) as resource or “universe of materials” for practical life (Husserl 2008: 327); and (v) as Könnenshorizont or “universal field of all actual and possible praxis” (Husserl 2008: 363–368; Husserl 1976: 145 [142]). In this article I will examine the concept of world taken mostly in sense (iii).
See Ms. A V 24: 9b. All references to Husserl’s work are to the original German. When English translations are available, I include the reference within square brackets corresponding to them only when those translations do not incorporate the Husserliana pagination (e.g., Husserl 1976: 359 [345]). I follow the same rule when citing the works of Gadamer and Ricoeur. References to Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts are abbreviated as Ms., followed by folder and page number.
See Gurwitsch 2010: 496–497.
See also Husserl 1959: 149.
See Husserl (1968: 102).
“Jedes Reale ist erfahren mit einem Erwartungshorizont und weist auf zugehörige Umstände hin. Also ein Kausalstil liegt vor” (Husserl 2012: 267).
Following Mackie, we can say that, under this example, each member of this constellation of factors is an INUS condition, namely: “an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition [for the produced effect]” (Mackie 1980: 62; my italics). Accordingly, taken individually, my agential intervention is not necessary for this effect, because the same effect could have occurred as a result of a different constellation of factors that does not include my contribution (e.g., the rest of circumstances being identical, someone else might have dropped the ball). On the other hand, taken individually, my agential intervention is not sufficient for the effect, because without the concomitant presence of other factors (e.g., the ball needs sufficient air pressure), the effect that actually occurred would not have occurred.
The example, to which I will return in the last section, is due to Husserl (Ms. D 13 I: 119).
I readapt the original example in Hart and Honoré (1959: 33).
The thesis concerning the mutual substitutivity of cause and condition, clearly stated in Mackie (1980) and Hart and Honoré (1959), was already formulated by Reinach in 1905. Usually, if X gives a poison to Y and Y dies after ingesting it, one will single out Y’s involuntary ingestion of the poison as the immediate cause of Y’s death. Consider, however, the following situation. A chemist gives a poison to a person P. P suffers no significant harm. Furthermore, the chemist himself ingests the poison and suffers no harm either. Subsequently, another person A ingests the poison and dies. Surprised, the chemist notices that A’s prior state of health was extremely weak. Based, then, on this unexpected discovery, he blames A’s atypical physical condition and not the ingestion of the poison as the cause of A’s death (cf. Reinach 1989 1: 19). After all, had A had a normal physical condition—the chemist might speculate, counterfactually—he would not have died.
I readapt the example from Romano (1998/2012: 68).
This illustrative expression is due to Vigo (2010a: 596).
See Gurwitsch (2010: 493–498).
I follow here Woodward (2003: 19).
I cannot find a better term to express this “if–then” relation. In an equivalent example, Husserl simply uses the substantivized construction “The If–Then [das Wenn-So]” (Ms. D 13 I: 119a).
See Vicuña (2019).
See Brandom (2008: 107).
See also Husserl 2008: 702.
See Liddell & Scott (1843: 1457).
In other contexts, Husserl even characterizes perception as a species of πρᾶξις, and its terminal result, namely the intuitive verification of the empty anticipations of the horizon, as a Werk or Enderzeugnis (Husserl 2008: 381, 383). To avoid the potential objection of being insensitive to the central Aristotelian distinction between poietical activities and properly practical ones—namely, πράξεις or “immanent” activities which, unlike ποιήσεις, we do not pursue merely in virtue of the external product resulting from them (e.g., think of morally virtuous actions the end of which is simply acting well [ἡ εὐπραξία], such as an act of disinterested generosity), and which are ultimately grounded on our capacity to reason, holistically, about what it means for us to live well as a whole (πρὸς τὸ εὖ ζῆν ὅλως) (ΕΝ VI 5, 1140b7; 1140a28; 2 1139b1-4; Pol. I 4, 1254a5-6; I follow also Höffe 1996: 198)—, in this article I will follow Husserl in using terms such as “practical,” “agent,” and their derivatives in a deflationary sense, in agreement with their common use. Attending to this distinction, interpreters who are well aware of the Heideggerian reappropriation of these Aristotelian categories, like Volpi (1984/2012) and Vigo (2014), cautiously prefer to use compound expressions such as “practical-technical” or “practical-operative” when referring to activities involving our pragmatic confrontation with worldly entities, a kind of behavior which is irreducible to our strictly practical acting—that is, to our self-reflective capacity to decide about and evaluate our own selves (Vigo 2010b and 2008: 60ff; in close agreement with Taylor 1985, Chapters I.1–2)—, although it is subordinated to it. For an illuminating analysis of the similarities and differences between the spheres of the technical and the properly practical, see Gadamer (1990/2004: 320–329 [312–321]).
Cited in Walton (2010: 215).
See Ricoeur (1950/1966: 393 [418]).
See EN VI 4, 1140a1-2.
Alva Nöe and Kevin O’Regan are an exception in this regard. They write: “Our preference would be to take the strict sense of attention in which attention = awareness, and to say that without attending to something (i.e., without being aware of anything), by definition the visual field cannot look like anything at all” (O’Reagan and Nöe 2001: 955; cited in Thompson 2007: 262).
Here I am following Crowell (2013: 217ff. and 243ff.).
See, in this connection, Aristotle’s distinction between poietic instruments (ποιητικὰ ὄργανα)—which are employed for the sake of an external result apart from their use (παρὰ τὴν χρῆσιν), such as a shuttle—and practical instruments or instruments of action (πρακτικὰ ὄργανα)—which are acquired or made for their use alone (ἡ χρῆσις μόνον)—such as a garment or a bed (Pol. I 4, 1254a1-8). This distinction seems to be perfectly applicable to Heidegger’s example: the poietic instrument would correspond to the hammer, the use of which is subordinated to the production of a practical instrument, namely a dwelling place, which I build, primarily, for its use. Put differently: with the poietic instrument (e.g., a needle, a hammer) I make (ποιεῖν) something (e.g., a garment, a bed, a cabin) in order to do (πράττειν) something (e.g., clothe myself, rest, protect myself from the inclement weather; see for this the useful translator’s note c in Aristotle 1932: 17). This is another way of illustrating the Aristotelian thesis (EN I 1 1094a1-18; 5 1097a25-35; VI 5 1140b6-7), later reelaborated by Heidegger, of the subordination of the ends of our productive acting to our eminently practical objectives.
For a pioneering analysis of Heidegger’s reappropriation of Aristotle, in particular of Book 6 of his Nicomachean Ethics, I refer again to Volpi (1984/2012, pp. 91–114).
See also Ms. A V 24: 2b.
Pollock (2008: 452) uses the expression “defeasible assumption of stability” to defend an equivalent idea within the discussion of the so-called frame problem. Lack of space prevents me from exploring these promising connections in further detail.
See for this Cartwright (1999: 65–85).
See Husserl 1976: 130 [127].
See Vicuña (2019).
See also Husserl 1959: 221.
This is Husserl’s own example (cf. Ms. D 13 I: 48a). The idea of “absences” (e.g., lack of irrigation) and human omissions (e.g., a doctor’s non-adherence to a standard medical protocol) as being perfectly admissible as causes in a prescientific sense can be found in Hart and Honoré (1959: 30–38).
Vigo (2010a: 603–605) presents a very similar argument, to which I am debt, in a lucid reconstruction of Aristotle’s conception of accidental causality.
A Luftpumpe, says Husserl (Ms. D 13 I: 119a).
With the exception of play, the above exemplifications of possible ways of being pragmatically oriented toward worldly entities are taken from Heidegger (2005: 353).
The association of the notion of cause with the idea of an intervention (or omission) within a previously established background of normality—often defined according to pragmatic considerations—agrees with common sense. In our pre-scientific life, we ask for a causal explanation when there is “an abnormal failure of a normal condition,” or, if human agents are involved, when there is “a deviation from a system or routine” (Hart and Honoré 1959: 37, 36). Rather than as an instantiation of laws, the ordinary observer tends to thematize a cause as a contrastive phenomenon (e.g., “the basketball ceased to bounce because it deflated; had things been different, it would have kept bouncing;” “I missed my flight due to a traffic accident on the road; under normal circumstances, I would have made it on time”). The idea that the explanations of science ought to be seen as continuous with this pre-scientific, intuitive view of causal explanation has been defended in an influential book by James Woodward (2003; see also the recent Pearl and Mackenzie 2018: 290). As this author argues, the “sophisticated practices” of science are only “a better version” of our rudimentary counterfactual inferences. More specifically, he declares that “an explanation ought to be such that it can be used to answer what I call a what-if-things-had-been-different question: the explanation must enable us to see what sort of difference it would have made for the explanandum if the factors cited in the explanans had been different in various possible ways” (Woodward 2003: 19, 10–11). Woodward’s theory is, therefore, phenomenologically grounded, insofar as it takes its point of departure from the causal beliefs of the ordinary subject (cf. Woodward 2003: 137).
See Husserl (2008: 83).
See Vicuña (2019).
See Tengelyi (2014: 372).
The elaboration of this article was possible thanks to the financial support of the Onassis Foundation and CONICYT, Chilean Government. For their lucid comments on earlier versions of this manuscript, I would like to thank Charles Bennison, Richard Bernstein, David Carr, Zachary Hugo, Dmitri Nikulin, and my dissertation supervisor, James Dodd. Zachary Hugo is also the author of the translations of the passages in German of which there are no available English translations. For a fruitful conversation that allowed me to modify some of my initial statements in this paper, I thank Alejandro Vigo. The suggestions of the anonymous reviewer allowed me to make several corrections. Lastly, a special word of gratitude is owed to Roberto Rubio and Roberto Walton for their detailed revision of the final version of the manuscript.
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