trechos – 4

” Therefore it is not the case that objects are at first present as bare realities, as objects in some sort of natural state, and that they then in the course of our experience receive the garb of a value-character, so they do not have to run around naked. This is the case neither in the direction of the experience of the surrounding world nor in the direction of the approach and the sequence of interpretation, as if the constitution of nature could, even to the smallest extent, supply the foundation for higher types of objects. On the contrary, the objectivity, “Nature”, first arises out of the basic sense of the Being of the objects of the lived, experienced, encountered world. “

” Life, as caring, lives in a world and, in the manifold ways of the corresponding relations, actualizations, and maturations, cares for the objects encountered in experience at any particular time and cares for the encounters themselves. The object of the care is not the meaningfulness as a categorial characteristic but, instead, is in each case something worldly which finds its corresponding objective expression and which life itself forms. Meaningfulness is not experienced as such, explicitly; yet it can be experienced. The ‘can’ possesses its own specifical categorial sense; the transition from explicitness to non-explicitness is, in an eminent way, ‘categorial’ (interpretation of the categories!). Meaningfulness becomes explicit in the proper interpretation of life with respect to itself, and thence we can first fully understand what it ‘is’ and ‘means’ to live factically ‘in’ meaningfulness.  ”

Martin Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle, pg. 68.

trechos – 3

wired

Um pouco do original…trecho esclarecedor do Heidegger ‘derridiano’ de Theodore Kisiel, no segundo dos grandes livros que dedicou a Heidegger: 

” The primary given is the world, not things, the primary presence is meaning and not objects. The inconspicuous non-objective presence of worldliness and its correlative concernedness takes primacy over the overt bodily presence correlative to perceivedness. World can never be reached by intuition but only by way of understanding and its interpretation, here, by way of the concerned preoccupation by which we get around that world. The basic mode of knowing here is no longer intuition but instead interpretive exposition out of its prior meaningful whole.’ The way of access is the concerned preoccupation of’ ‘getting around’ and not a free-floating and isolated perception of a thing. The view that reality can be found in bodily presence and this in turn in the isolated thing of nature will even more strikingly prove to be a phenomenal and thus phenomenological deception’ (GA Bd. 20, History of the Concept of Time). In the context of the environing world, ‘what is truly given immnediatly is not what is perceived but what is present in concerned preoccupation, the handy within the scope of our reach and grasp.’ Such a presence of the environmental, which we call handiness, is a founded presence. For more original than handiness is worldliness in its ‘pale and inconspicuous presence’, in which the presence of the handy is accordingly grounded, founded. ‘But if this handily nearest, the handy in concern, is already a founded presence, then this applies even more so to the character of reality that we learned about earlier and that Husserl claims to be the authentic presence of the world, what he calls bodiliness’ (GA Bd. 20). Bodily presence is ‘in no way a primary character but rather is grounded in handiness and what is immeadiatly is available within concern’. Bodily presence is the kind of encounter with world-beings that occurs in pure perception, but this can occur only when our getting around the world ‘is denied its full possibility of encounter’. It occurs only when the ‘primarily given and experienced world’, which is in fact our primary encounter, ‘is in some manner blocked’ (GA Bd. 20). It occurs when the looking around that accompanies our getting around the world is interrupted or, noematically, when the referential relations that reveal the environmental thing in its very handiness are breached, as in the experience of the broken hammer, such that it is now merely viewed. Looking around thus becomes looking at, circumspection is modified to inspection, the world-thing decays into a mere thing, its unemphatic worldly presence becomes and obtrusive,’naked’ bodily presence. (Blossen). All this occurs simply by covering up or ‘masking’ the network of relations that constitute the world-thing precisely as wordly. “

Heidegger´s Way of  Thought, pg. 181.

Claro, há toda a idéia do mundo e do primado da percepção em conjunto sobre o ato isolado, entre outras coisas que afastam Heidegger de Husserl. Mas a imagem do tecido ôntico do mundo rompido faz lembrar algumas referências óbvias às leituras que Jacques Derrida fez de Husserl, principalmente a respeito do intertwining temporal que acontece em qualquer experiência perceptiva, dado o excedente de significação da presença, que a mantém enlaçada na ausência, a corroendo de dentro. 

 

trechos – 2

Do review que Taylor Carman dedicou ao livro de Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of Meaning: 

In 1923, before moving to Marburg, for instance, Heidegger wrote to Karl Löwith with the following account of his presentation of Husserl’s work in class: “In the final hours of the seminar, I publicly burned and destroyed the Ideas… I am now convinced that Husserl was never a philosopher, not even for one second in his life. He becomes ever more ludicrous.” And of his lectures that summer he tells Löwith, “The old man will … realize that I am wringing his neck — and then the question of succeeding him is out. But I can’t help myself.”⁴ And in December of 1926, with Being and Time nearly finished, he writes to Jaspers: “If the treatise is written ‘against’ anyone, it’s against Husserl, and he saw it immediately but clung to the positive from the outset. What I write against, only indirectly of course, is pseudophilosophy (Scheinphilosophie).”⁵ The scales eventually fell from Husserl’s eyes, and he would later describe his realization of Heidegger’s duplicity as “one of the most difficult ordeals of my life.”⁶

Como diz o link de um download sobre a relação entre Husserl e Heidegger, not every family is happy 

 

 

trechos

Daqui em diante vou postar trechos breves, indicações formais – formale Anzeichen – de passagens que favoreçam a trajetória que estou tentando desenvolver em minha tese. O trecho seguinte, embora não mencione nominalmente Blanchot, obviamente lhe diz respeito.

De Phenomenology World-Wide, de Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, pg. 462:

” From the start Derrida was critical of Heidegger´s thought on being, strongly recalling that the (metaphysical) opposition between the original and the derivative is only displaced in Heidegger. Once again, it is the thought of presence that occurs in Heidegger´s antagonism between the proper (eigen) and the improper, ‘propriation’ (Ereignis) and ‘dis-propriation’ (Enteignis), ‘authenticity’ (Eigentlichkeit) and inauthenticity, ‘appropriation’ (Zueignung, Aneignung) and forgetting, etc.  ‘ Heidegger´s problematic’, Derrida says, ‘is the most profound’ and ‘powerful’ defense of what I am trying to query, under the title of thought of presence (Positions). Even in its heideggerian form, this antagonism indicates at first, one might say, the necessity of returning to a purity of origin, of a Schritt zurück or an Aufhebung towards the ‘thing itself’ in its pure immediate presence. In this sense it must be replaced by the irreducibility of the difference between the ideal and the real, by the necessary interlacing of presence and non-presence. The absolute and original presence to self in the transcendental experience is never pure. Necessarily, it always reveals itself as already contaminated by non-presence, non-life, by an inalienable non-originalness. “

the gaze of orpheus

Da Wikipedia: 

“ The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that of his wife Eurydice (also known as Agriope). While fleeing from Aristaeus (son of Apollo), Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel. Distraught, Orpheus played such sad songs and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus traveled to the underworld and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (he was the only person ever to do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. In his anxiety he forgot that both needed to be in the upper world, and he turned to look at her, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever. “

Ainda a Luz – 4

A mais óbvia das referências, a imagem mais repetida de todas.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

[...]

The Holy Bible, King James Version. 

Ainda a luz – 3

Da República de Platão ficou conhecido o sétimo livro, onde está exposta a alegoria da caverna. Mas no livro seis já se encontra a idéia fundamental da luz enquanto terceiro termo ou a idéia do Fiat Lux:

 

 

” Sócrates – Considera o seguinte: o ouvido e a voz precisam de algum elemento de espécie diferente, o primeiro para ouvir e a segunda para ser ouvida, de modo que, se esse terceiro elemento vier a faltar, o primeiro não ouça e a segunda não seja ouvida?

Adimanto – De modo algum.

Sócrates – Eu penso que as outras faculdades não precisam de nada semelhante. Ou pode citar-me alguma?

Adimanto – Não.

Sócrates – Mas não sabes que a faculdade de ver e ser visto precisa disso ?

Adimanto – Como assim?

Sócrates – A visão pode estar situada nos olhos, e estes podem ser usados para enxergar; a cor, da mesma maneira, pode estar nos objetos. Contudo, se a isso não for acrescentado um terceiro elemento, a vista nada verã e as cores não seram percebidas.

Adimanto – De que elemento estás falando?

Sócrates – Aquele que denominas luz.

Adimanto – Tens razão.

Sócrates – Logo, o sentido da visão e a faculdade de ser visto estão unidos por um laço incomparavelmente mais precioso do que aquele que estabelece as outras uniões, desde que a luz não seja uma coisa desprezível.

Adimanto – De maneira alguma ela é desprezível.

Sócrates – Qual é, então, na tua opinião, de todos os deuses do céu, aquele que pode realizar essa união, aquele cuja luz faz com que os nossos olhos vejam da melhor maneira possível, e os objetos visíveis sejam vistos ?

Adimanto – O mesmo que tu e todas as pessoas reconhecem como senhor: o Sol.

Sócrates – Então, não está a vista, pela sua natureza, nesta relação com esse deus?

Adimanto – Que relação?

Sócrates – Nem a vista é o Sol, nem o é o olho, onde a vista se forma.

Adimanto – Evidente que não.

Sócrates – Porém, de todos os orgãos dos sentidos, o olho é, no meu entender, o que mais se assemelha ao Sol.

Adimanto – Sim, sem dúvida.

Sócrates – Muito bem ! E o poder que o olho possui não lhe vem do Sol, como uma emanação deste ?

Adimanto – Certamente.

Sócrates – Não é verdade que o Sol, que não é a vista, mas seu princípio, é percebido por ela?

Adimanto – Sim, é.

Sócrates – Pois o Sol que eu chamo de filho do bem, que o bem engendrou à sua própria semelhança. Aquilo que o bem é, no campo da inteligência em relação ao pensamento e aos seus objetos, o Sol o é no campo do visível, em relação à vista e aos seus objetos.

Adimanto – Como assim? Explica-me isso.

Sócrates – Tu sabes, logicamente, que os olhos, quando contemplam objetos cujas cores não são iluminadas pela luz do dia, mas pela claridade dos astros noturnos, perdem a acuidade e parecem quase cegos, como se não fossem providos de visão clara.

Adimanto – Sem dúvida.

Sócrates – Admite, portanto, que se dá o mesmo a respeito da alma. Quando ela fixa o olhar naquilo que a verdade e o ser iluminam, compreende-o, conhece-o e mostra que é dotada de inteligência; mas, quando olha para aquilo que está obscurecido, para o que nasce e morre, sua vista fica embaçada, passa a ter apenas opiniões, indo sem cessar de uma a outra e parece desprovida de inteligência. “

 

Ainda a luz – 2

 

Da luz e da visibilidade em Nietzsche e Blanchot. Ainda que o assunto seja a relação entre Heidegger e Blanchot, a dobra entre o visível e o invisível é um tema recorrente na filosofia francesa depois de Merleau-Ponty e outros. Então proponho uma série de referências à visibilidade, desde a filosofia grega até as últimas. Vamos ver se ao menos um projeto não fracassa. 

                   Já se cansou de falar disso (Derrida, Blanchot, Foucault, Deleuze, etc.), mas eu repito: a fenomenologia, empreendimento radical por excelência – desde os primeiros motivos da obra de Husserl até o remix com o estruturalismo na obra de Derrida – carrega ainda em seus modos de formular os problemas uma herança ” oculocêntrica “, a história de um olho que reflete em seu âmago o todo do ser revelado, ao qual é destinada toda a amplitude do ser, por meio da mimesis da intuição e dos atos refletidos – em Husserl – seja na Origem da Obra de Arte de Heidegger, onde a obra é o lugar do combate entre céu e terra, imanência e transcendência, o chiaroscuro que é o ser razurado dos últimos escritos de Heidegger, o ser pervertido pela escrita. Essa é a opinião de Blanchot, ao menos. Mas checando as referências na literatura ” universal “, é difícil afirmar o contrário. Essa vai ser a série: citações dos lugares da literatura onde a luz tem um significado ontológico, onde a luz é fonte do sentido, sentido do ser e da verdade. Essas evidências são gritantes por toda a parte, acho.   

“ Nietzsche recognized – this is the meaning of his untiring critique of Plato – that being is light, and he submitted the light of being to the labor of the most severe suspicion. A decisive moment in the destruction of metaphysics and, even more, of ontology. Light gives pure visibility to thought as its measure. To think is henceforth to see clearly, to stand in the light of evidency, to submit to the day that makes all things appear in the unity of a form; it is to make the world arise under the sky of light as the form of forms, always illuminated and judged by this sun that does not set. The sun is the overabundance of clear light that gives life, the fashioner that holds life only in the particularity of a form. The sun is the sovereign unity of light- it is good, the Good, the superior One that makes us respect as the sole true site of being all that is ‘above’. At first Nietzsche criticizes in ontology only its degeneration into metaphysics: the moment at which, in Plato, light becomes idea and makes of the idea the supremacy of the ideal. His first works – and there is a trace of his first preferences in nearly all his works – maintain the value of form, and in the face of an obscure Dionysian terror, the calm luminous dignity that protects us from the terrifying abyss. But just as Dionysus, in dispersing Apollo, becomes the unique force without unity in which everything divine holds back, so does Nietzsche little by little seek to free thought by referring it back to what does not allow itself to be understood either as clarity or as form. Such is finally the role of the Will to Power. It is not as power [pouvoir] that the will to power [puissance] imposes itself in principle, and it is not as a dominating violence that this force becomes what must be thought. But force escapes light: it is not something that would simply be deprived of light, an obscurity still aspiring to the light of the day. Scandal of scandals, it escapes every optical reference; and thus, while it may only act under the determination and within the limits of a form, form – an arrangement of structure – nevertheless always allows it to escape. Neither visible nor invisible. “

Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, pg. 160. 

 

Ainda a luz

” The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal bookcase. One of the free sides leads to a narrow hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the hallway there are two very small closets. In the first, one may sleep standing up; in the other, satisfy one’s fecal necessities. Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances. In the hallway there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that its polished surfaces represent and promise the infinite … Light is provided by some spherical fruit which bear the name of lamps. There are two, transversally placed, in each hexagon. The light they emit is insufficient, incessant. “ 

Borges, The Library of Babel

Dark Matter, Dark Energy

Inspirado pelo 2099 em seu post recente sobre a matéria escura. Acho que isso tem algumas implicações fenomenológicas que não foram exploradas, tudo no sentido que venho falando aqui, claro. Talvez seja uma interpretação rápida demais. 

           Dark Matter, Still Elusive, Gains Visibility, no NY Times de 8 de janeiro de 2002:

“ For centuries people have found meaning — or thought they did — in the sky, in the forms of the constellations, the sudden careering of comets, the stately dance of the planets, the filigree of galaxies, spanning space as far as the telescope can see, like an old jeweled fishing net cast across the void.

But what if all this is just an illusion? Suppose the real universe is something we can’t see and all the glittering chains of galaxies are no more substantial, no more reliable guides to physical reality, than greasepaint on the face of a clown? “

               New York Times, Out There, 11 de março de 2007:

“ The difference with “dark,” however, is that it lies not only outside the visible but also beyond the entire electromagnetic spectrum. By all indications, it consists of data that our five senses can’t detect other than indirectly. The motions of galaxies don’t make sense unless we infer the existence of dark matter. The brightness of supernovae doesn’t make sense unless we infer the existence of dark energy. It’s not that inference can’t be a powerful tool: an apple falls to the ground, and we infer gravity. But it can also be an incomplete tool: gravity is … ? “

             Blanchot, em Parler, ce n´est pas voir (escrito entre 1953 e 1969):

“ C´est qu´il y a peut-être une invisibilité qui est encore une manière de se laisser voir, et une autre qui se détourne de tout visible et de tout invisible. La nuit est la présence de ce détour, particulièrement cette nuit qu´est la douleur et cette nuit qu´est l´attente. Parler est la parole de l´attente où les choses sont retournés ver l´état latent. L´attente, l´espace du détour sans digression, de l´errement sans erreur. Là, il n´est pas question pour les choses de se montrer, de se cacher, pour autant du moins que ces mouvements seraient jeux de lumière. Et dans la parole qui répond à l´attente, il y a une présence manifeste qui n´est pas le fait du jour, une découverte qui découvre avant tout fiat lux, découvrant l´obscur par ce détour qui est l´essence de l´obscurité. L´obscur s´offre, dans sa dérobée, au tour qui régit originellement la parole. “

“ É que há talvez uma invisibilidade que é ainda uma maneira de tornar visível, e uma outra que se desvia de todo visível e todo invisível. A noite é a presença desse desvio, particularmente essa noite que é dor e espera. Falar é a palavra da espera onde as coisas retornaram a seu estado latente. A espera, o espaço do desvio sem digressão, da errância sem erro. Aí, não é questão das coisas se mostrarem, se esconderem, tanto menos, pois esses movimentos seriam ainda jogos de luz. E na palavra que responde à espera, há uma presença manifesta que não é o fato do dia, um desvelamento que desvela antes de todo fiat lux, desvelando o obscuro por esse desvio que é a essência da obscuridade. O obscuro se oferece, em sua furtividade, à virada [tour, Kehre] que rege originalmente a palavra. “

              Blanchot, como se vê, já havia antecipado essa possibilidade confusa antes dela se concretizar diante dos olhos vítreos dos astrônomos

Anish Kapoor – 2

Vejo essa imagem de uma escultura de Anish Kapoor em Nova York e me lembro que a errância do ser carrega consigo essa necessidade abstrata mais ou menos escrutável de uma sutura na fauna desarranjada das coisas. É isso que esses sky mirrors indicam, em minha opinião: um intervalo ontológico no meio da cidade, denunciando a cidade enquanto espaço. Esperar das coisas um significado, ver nelas o abrigo. É disso que fala a obra de Kapoor. A realidade espelhada por Kapoor apresenta-se distorcida, ela mostra-se em curva, como os telescópios orbitais vêem e calculam a massa escura do universo (tema que obviamente seria caro a Blanchot e Pessoa), por refração. Denuncia à luz do dia nossa necessidade de dar consistência e realidade às coisas, de apreendê-las na continuidade do fio do dia: a interrupção é nesse sentido o único tema da obra de Kapoor, ou o tema metafísico por excelência (mais uma vez em minha opinião). Sei que repiso esse tema o tempo todo quando há gente melhor falando disso, mas esse apego às coisas tristes como são, às coisas como aí estão não é algo de que se possa despir de repente; são obras como essas que estão aí pra mostrar que a opção de Heidegger pela angústia (Angst, o fenômeno descrito em seu livro como lugar onde as coisas perdem sentido enquanto todo) não é uma opção estética: não é mesmo uma opção. Vivemos, escrevemos nossa morte em nossos signos, presumimos em nossas letras e vozes a imediatez preenchedora das coisas e nessa divagação nos perdemos, até que a despedida de uma amiga ou qualquer fato melancólico menor nos retire do curso ameno das coisas e nos lembre do jeito incompleto e desaprumado das coisas serem.

Fosse imortal, desejaria amargamente estar vivo e pertencer ao perecer indigno e obrigatório de todas as coisas que são

já tem tempo…

…que não posto. Mas nos últimos dias tenho lido alguns ensaios seminais sobre a diferença entre o projeto heideggeriano e o de Husserl. Espero terminar o primeiro capítulo da tese nessa madrugada – e ficar livre pra postar algum esboço do estado da arte das coisas. 

 

Google Books

Realmente esse google books está esparrado. É uma procura dentro de textos que são vendidos nas grandes livrarias da internet, basicamente. Que ferramenta escrota: pesquisar os termos dentro dos livros. Se digitando a chave certa rola de resolver um problema dos grandes. E conhecer livros antes de comprá-los, livros que muitas vezes (como no meu caso que pesquiso Heidegger em inglês) custam absurdos na Livraria Cultura, algo em torno de 400 reais. Inacreditável. É daqueles momentos de se fazer crer que a internet é a perversão do Espírito da História hegeliano (Vattimo)

http://books.google.com.br

Heidegger e Husserl

O título do outro post – Resposta de Heidegger – contém um contrasenso: Heidegger não procura a reposta, mas a questão. Um dos textos onde se discute mais extensamente a relação com Husserl é o curso de 1925, História do Conceito de Tempo, do qual seleciono alguns trechos.

c) The basic constitution of intentionality as such

a) The perceived of the perceiving: the entity in itself (the environmental thing, natural thing, thinghood)

“ In opposition to this scientific account, what we want is precisely naiveté, pure naiveté, which in the first instance and in actuality sees the chair. When we say ‘ we see ‘, ‘ seeing ‘ herre is not understood in the narrow sense of optical sensing. Here it means nothing other than ‘simple cognizance of what is found’. When we hold to this expression, when we also understand and have no difficulty in taking the immediately given as it shows itself. We thus say that one sees in the chair itself that it came from a factory. We draw no conclusions, make no investigations, but we simply see this in it, even though we have no sensation of a factory or anything like it. The field of what is found in simple cognizance is in principle much broader than whaty any particular epistemology or psychology could establish on the basis of a theory of perception. In this broad sense of perceiving anjd seeing, what is perceived even includes, as we shall see later, all of what I have said about thingness, that this thing itself includes materiality, that to materiality belongs extension as well as coloration, which in turn has its own kind of extension. “  

 

Heidegger parte da noção de que a redução husserliana do mundo natural aos seus correlatos – os atos intencionais da consciência – é por princípio insuficiente para explicar a questão de que trata: a imediatez contém mais mistérios e a vida cotidiana contém toda a filosofia possível. Blanchot vem pra dizer que não contém ainda a filosofia do impossível e que essa imediatez SEMPRE supõe uma mídia, uma interrupção. Será um truísmo ? Ou uma sequência natural na estrutura dessa retórica da fenomenologia ? De qualquer modo parece supor a presença de algo a si mesmo, a presença do ser a si mesmo – o que também é um contrasenso no sentido heideggeriano da coisa, afinal o ser só se mostra se furtando. O ser não encontra o ser, penso. É aí que acontece o fenômeno e a doação do fenômeno: o tempo não dá o ser nem vertical nem horizontalmente, não o dá em platitudes – dá em um sobe e desce radical de que talvez somente a experiência de um comedor de ópio dê conta minimamente. Estamos habituados às certezas. O próprio conceito de opinião remete a um personalismo tão abstrato e enclausurado que nossa existência não tem resolução possível. A resposta para a questão da ambiguidade, diz Blanchot, é a própria ambiguidade

         Não são poucos os que pensaram a doação fenomenológica do mundo e da consciência desde Husserl. Se Heidegger conseguia penetrar no enigma de dentro de sua cabaninha kitsch encrustada em um lugar que por si era enigmático são outros quinhentos

 

Elegias a Duíno

Poderia citar – ao lado de tantos outros – a oitava elegia, a do animal que com todos seus olhos perscruta o aberto. Mas fico com a segunda:

The Second Elegy

 

Every Angel is terror. And yet,

ah, knowing you, I invoke you, almost deadly

birds of the soul. Where are the days of Tobias,

when one of the most radiant of you stood at the simple threshold,

disguised somewhat for the journey and already no longer awesome

(Like a youth, to the youth looking out curiously).

Let the Archangel now, the dangerous one, from behind the stars,

take a single step down and toward us: our own heart,

beating on high would beat us down. What are you?

Early successes, Creation’s favourite ones,

mountain-chains, ridges reddened by dawns

of all origin – pollen of flowering godhead,

junctions of light, corridors, stairs, thrones,

spaces of being, shields of bliss, tempests

of storm-filled, delighted feeling and, suddenly, solitary

mirrors: gathering their own out-streamed beauty

back into their faces again.

For we, when we feel, evaporate: oh, we

breathe ourselves out and away: from ember to ember,

yielding us fainter fragrance. Then someone may say to us:

‘Yes, you are in my blood, the room, the Spring-time

is filling with you’….. What use is that: they cannot hold us,

we vanish inside and around them. And those who are beautiful,

oh, who holds them back? Appearance, endlessly, stands up,

in their face, and goes by. Like dew from the morning grass,

what is ours rises from us, like the heat

from a dish that is warmed. O smile: where? O upward gaze:

new, warm, vanishing wave of the heart – :

oh, we are that. Does the cosmic space,

we dissolve into, taste of us then? Do the Angels

really only take back what is theirs, what has streamed out of them,

or is there sometimes, as if by an oversight, something

of our being, as well? Are we as mingled with their

features, as there is vagueness in the faces

of pregnant women? They do not see it in the swirling

return to themselves. (How should they see it?)

Lovers, if they knew how, might utter

strange things in night air. Since it seems

everything hides us. Look, trees exist; houses,

we live in, still stand. Only we

pass everything by, like an exchange of air.

And all is at one, in keeping us secret, half out of

shame perhaps, half out of inexpressible hope.

Lovers, each satisfied in the other, I ask

you about us. You grasp yourselves. Have you a sign?

Look, it happens to me, that at times my hands

become aware of each other, or that my worn face

hides itself in them. That gives me a slight

sensation. But who would dare to exist only for that?

You, though, who grow in the other’s delight

until, overwhelmed, they beg:

‘No more’ -: you, who under your hands

grow richer like vintage years of the vine:

who sometimes vanish, because the other

has so gained the ascendancy: I ask you of us. I know

you touch so blissfully because the caress withholds,

because the place you cover so tenderly

does not disappear: because beneath it you feel

pure duration. So that you promise eternity

almost, from the embrace. And yet, when you’ve endured

the first terrible glances, and the yearning at windows,

and the first walk together, just once, through the garden:

Lovers, are you the same? When you raise yourselves

one to another’s mouth, and hang there – sip against sip:

O, how strangely the drinker then escapes from their action.

Weren’t you amazed by the caution of human gesture

on Attic steles? Weren’t love and departure

laid so lightly on shoulders, they seemed to be made

of other matter than ours? Think of the hands

how they rest without weight, though there is power in the torso.

Those self-controlled ones know, through that: so much is ours,

this is us, to touch our own selves so: the gods

may bear down more heavily on us. But that is the gods’ affair.

If only we too could discover a pure, contained

human place, a strip of fruitful land of our own,

between river and stone! For our own heart exceeds us,

even as theirs did. And we can no longer

gaze after it into images, that soothe it, or into

godlike bodies, where it restrains itself more completely.

Ainda o fogo

 

Perdão pelo Copyright, se for quebrado. É só poesia. 

Visto que o poema anterior reclama uma referência, seguem alguns fragmentos dos 126 que nos deixou Heráclito. 

 Clemente de Alexandria, Exortação, 22. 

” A quem profetiza Heráclito de Éfeso ? Aos noctívagos, aos magos, aos bacantes, às mênades, aos iniciados; a estes ameaça com o depois da morte, a estes profetiza o fogo; pois os considerados mistérios entre os homens impiamente se celebram. “ 

” O mundo, o mesmo em todos, nenhum dos deuses e nenhum dos homens o fez mas sempre foi, é e será, fogo sempre vivo, acendendo segundo a medida e segundo a medida apagando. “

The Ister

Esse tenho como um dos mais fantásticos em língua alemã.

 

The Ister (Der Ister)

Now is the time for fire!
Impatient for the daylight,
We’re on our knees,
Exhausted with waiting.
It’s then, in that silence,
We hear the woods’ strange call.
Meanwhile, we sing from the Indus,
Which comes from far away, and
From the Alpheus, since we’ve
Long desired decorum.
It’s not without dramatic flourish
That one grasps
Straight ahead
What is closest
To reach the other side.
But here we want to build.
Rivers make the land fertile
And allow the foliage to grow.
And if in the summer
Animals gather at a watering place
People will go there, too.

This river is called the Ister.
It lives in beauty. Columns of leaves burn
And stir. They stand in the forest
Supporting each other; above,
A second dimension juts out
From a dome of stones. So I’m
Not surprised that the distantly gleaming river
Made Hercules its guest,
When in search of shadows
He came down from Olympus
And up from the heat of Isthmus.

They were full of courage there,
Which always comes in handy, like cool water
And a path for the spirit to follow.
That’s why the hero preferred
To come to the water’s source, its fragrant yellow banks
Black with fir trees, in whose depths
The hunter likes to roam
At noon and the resinous trees
Moan as they grow.

Yet the river almost seems
To flow backwards, and I
Think it must come
From the East.
Much could
Be said further. But why does
It hang so straight from the mountain? That other river,
The Rhine, has gone away
Sideways. Not for nothing rivers
Flow in dryness. But how? We need a sign,
Nothing more, something plain and simple,
To remind us of sun and moon, so inseparable,
Which go away — day and night also —
And warm each other in heaven.
They give joy to the highest god. For how
Can he descend to them? And like earth’s ancient greenness
They are the children of heaven. But he seems
Too indulgent to me, not freer,
And almost scornful. For when

Day begins in youth,
Where it commences growing,
Another is already there
To further enhance the beauty, and chafes
At the bit like foals. And if he is happy
Distant breezes hear the commotion;
But the rock needs engraving
And the earth needs its furrows;
If not, an endless desolation;
But what a river will do,
Nobody knows.

As if on a holiday

Vou postar os poemas presentes nos ensaios de Heidegger (Hölderlin e a essência da poesia, 1936) e Blanchot (Hölderlin e a palavra do sagrado):

As on a Holiday

        As on a holiday, when a farmer 
        Goes out to look at his fields, in the morning, 
        After cool lightning has fallen through the hot night, 
        And thunder still echoes in the distance, 
        And the stream returns to its banks, 
        And the earth becomes green and fresh, 
        And drops of joyful rain from heaven rest 
        Upon the vines, and the trees in the grove 
        Stand shining in the quiet sun — 
 

        Thus poets stand in favorable weather: 
        Those whom no master, but rather Nature, 
        Mighty and beautiful in its divinity, wonderfully 
        And universally present, educates with gentle embrace. 
        And when Nature appears to sleep at some seasons, 
        Either in the sky or among plants or nations, 
        So the aspect of poets is also mournful. 
        They seem to be alone, but their foreknowledge continues. 
        For Nature itself is prescient, as it rests. 
 

        Now it is day!  I waited to see it come, 
        And what I saw — my words bespeak holiness! 
        For Nature, who is older than time, 
        Standing above the gods of the Occident and Orient, 
        Has awakened to the sounds of arms. 
        All-creating Nature feels the enthusiasm anew, 
        From Aether down to the abyss, 
        As when she was born of holy Chaos, 
        According to the established law. 
 

        And as fire shines in a man’s eye 
        When he plans something great, 
        So a fire is kindled again in the minds 
        Of poets, by the signs and deeds of the world. 
        What happened before, scarcely sensed, 
        Becomes apparent now for the first time. 
        And those who plowed our fields 
        In the form of smiling laborers 
        Are now recognized as the all-living 
        Forces of the gods.

  
        Would you question them?  Their spirit moves in song, 
        Grown from the sun of day and the warm earth, 
        And from storms, those of the air, and others 
        Originating farther within the depths of time, 
        More perceptible and meaningful to us, 
        Drifting between heaven and earth, and among nations. 
        They are thoughts of the common spirit, 
        Quietly ending in the mind of the poet, 
 

        Which, long familiar with the infinite, 
        Is struck quickly, and shakes with the memory. 
        Set on fire by the holy radiance, 
        It creates a song — the fruit born of love, 
        The work of gods and man, 
        Bearing witness to both. 
        Thus lightning fell on Semele’s house, 
        As poets relate, since she wanted to see 
        A god in person.  Struck by the god, 
        She gave birth to holy Bacchus, 
        The fruit of the storm.

  
        Thus the sons of earth now drink in 
        The fire of heaven without danger. 
        And it is our duty, poets, to stand 
        Bare-headed under the storms of God, 
        Grasping with our own hand 
        The Father’s beam itself, 
        And to offer the gift of heaven, 
        Wrapped in song, to the people. 
        If our hearts are pure, like children, 
        And our hands are guiltless,

  
        The Father’s pure radiance won’t sear; 
        And the deeply shaken heart, sharing 
        The suffering of the stronger god, 
        Will endure the raging storms when he approaches.

        But alas, if from – - – - – - – - -

        – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

        Alas!

        And if I now say – - – - -

        I had come to see the gods, 
        They themselves cast me down to the living, 
        Me, the false priest, down to darkness, 
        That I sing a song of warning to those able to learn. 

        There – - - 

É isso.

textos fundamentais

 Blanchot e Lévinas. Foto dos anos 20.

Para compreender Blanchot e Heidegger. Alguns textos fundamentais: 

” A Época da Imagem do Mundo ” – texto de Heidegger presente em Holzwege, ou Chemins qui ne mènent à nulle part, etc. Para contrastar. 

” Kant et la question de la métaphysique ” – livro de Heidegger sobre Kant. de 1929. 

” L´origine de l´oeuvre d´art ” – ensaio de 1935 sobre a obra de arte. 

” La Littérature et le droit à la mort ” – ensaio seminal de Blanchot que foi editado junto a De Kafka à Kafka na França e junto à Parte do Fogo no Brasil.

“ Les deux versions de l´imaginaire ” – texto de Blanchot presente como anexo em L´espace littéraire. 

” La pensée du dehors ” – ensaio de Foucault sobre Heidegger que se encontra entre o que de fundamental se escreveu sobre Blanchot. Fundamental também para entender a obra de Foucault. 

” Au fond des images ” – alguns textos do belo livro de Jean Luc Nancy. Sobre a imagem ontologicamente percebida. 

” L´Imaginaire ” – capítulo do primeiro livro que se escreveu sobre a relação de Blanchot com a filosofia. De Françoise Collin, Maurice Blanchot et la question de l´écriture. 

” Le regard du poète ” – ensaio de Lévinas sobre Blanchot e sua relação com Heidegger. Presente no livro Sur Maurice Blanchot.

foto

Achei uma foto, numa resolução razoável, da ” escultura ” que abria a exposição de Anish Kapoor que mencionei anteriormente.

 É ou não perturbador?

Anish Kapoor

 

Anish Kapoor – Ascension

Já faz um tempo que vi uma versão reduzida da exposição de Anish Kapoor, Ascension, em Brasília. Perturbador.

A arte de Kapoor responde ao anseio primal que dá origem à arte, algo que é descrito no artigo de Georges Poulet citado no post anterior: a tentativa de trazer à luz a destruição sempre repetida que permite que as coisas se situem tão placidamente diante de nossas existências confusas. É mostrar – e de mostrar se trata – o opaco, o que não se revela, o que reserva em seu excesso o todo da metafísica. Há uma obra em especial, que não consegui reproduzir aqui, que me impressionou sobramaneira: dois espelhos convexos posicionados um diante do outro. Se encontram logo à entrada de uma das salas da exposição, surpreendendo o visitante. Ao nos situarmos diante de um deles, a surpresa é total: tais são as dimensões do espelho que o olhar não consegue encontrar em meio à distorção uma posição confortável, uma pausa ou um sustentáculo além do movimento incessante. O posicionamento dos espelhos reserva ainda outra surpresa: a acústica faz com que qualquer voz ricocheteie e se repita indefinidamente, eco que só faz aumentar a sensação de vertigem. Fantástico.

Não pretendo exaurir a complexidade de cada elemento da obra em comentários genéricos. Ainda estou à procura do texto adequado. Esse é o primeiro de uma série de posts.

Mi Camino en la Fenomenologia

Para entender Heidegger:

” Por bastantes indicaciones de revistas filosóficas yo me había enterado de que el modo de pensar de Husserl estaba influido por Franz Brentano, cuya disertación de 1862 Del múltiple significado del ente según Aristóteles había sido guía y criterio de mis torpes primeros intentos de penetrar en la filosofía. De un modo bastante impreciso me movía la reflexión siguiente: «Si el ente viene dicho con muchos significados, ¿cuál será entonces el significado fundamental y conductor? ¿Qué quiere decir ser?» El último año de mi época del Bachillerato había tropezado con el escrito del por aquel entonces catedrático de Dogmática de la Universidad de Friburgo, Carl Braig: Del ser. Compendio de ontología, que había aparecido en 1896, cuando su autor era profesor extraordinario de Filosofía en la Facultad friburguesa de Teología. Las secciones principales del escrito llevaban siempre al final largos textos de Aristóteles, de Tomás de Aquino y de Suárez, a más de la etimología de los términos correspondientes a los conceptos capitales de la ontología. ”

trecho de ” Meu Caminho na Fenomenologia “, que consta na edição antiga de Os Pensadores. Citado do site de horacio potel.

Mais:

 

 Inscrição de uma frase de Lutero feita por sua esposa no pórtico de sua casa em Freiburg:

“Behüte dein Herz mit allem Fleiß; denn daraus geht das Leben.”

Em Inglês:

” Guard your heart with all dilligence because from there springs life.”

Em Português:

” Guarda com toda diligência teu coração, pois dele brota a vida. “

Resposta de Heidegger. 1.

Vou publicar agora uma série sistemática de posts: todos onde Heidegger responde explicitamente à fenomenologia husserliana, ao menos até onde ele mesmo (Heidegger) acompanhou o debate.

Primeiramente esse trecho de ” The Basic Problems of Phenomenology “, nome dado a dois cursos espaçados em sete ou oito anos no tempo. Nos referimos ao curso de 1927 ( Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, GA 24, verão de 1927. O outro curso é o do inverno de 1919-20 ), que é tido como a segunda sessão jamais escrita de Ser e Tempo, a que daria sequência à destruição da ontologia. Retoma o tema central do post anterior: Heidegger procura explicitar de modo sutil sua diferença em relação à fenomenologia.

Obviamente são ecos da escrita de Ser e Tempo, ainda um work in progress nessa época. Segue em azul o que considero mais importante ressaltar, inclusive pelo caráter pé-no-chão das observações de um Heidegger ainda jovem, sobre assuntos diversos como a diferença entre sua concepção existencial e a de Husserl, sua noção de história da filosofia e uma das formulações da Destruktion da história da ontologia :

The basic components of a priori cognition constitute what we call phenomenology. Phenomenology is the name for the method of ontology, that is, of scientific philosophy. Rightly conceived, phenomenology is the concept of a method. It is therefore precluded from the start that phenomenology should pronounce any theses about being which have specific content, thus adopting a so-called standpoint.

We shall not enter into detail concerning which ideas about phenomenology are current today, instigated in part by phenomenology itself. We shall touch briefly on just one example. It has been said that my work is Catholic phenomenology – presumably because it is my conviction that thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus also understood something of philosophy, perhaps more than the moderns. But the concept of a Catholic phenomenology is even more absurd than the concept of a Protestant mathematics. Philosophy as science of being is fundamentally distinct in method from any other science. The distinction in method between, say, mathematics and classical philology is not as great as the difference between mathematics and philosophy or between philology and philosophy. The breadth of the difference between philosophy and the positive sciences, to which mathematics and philology belong, cannot at all be estimated quantitatively. In ontology, being is supposed to be grasped and comprehended conceptually by way of the phenomenological method, in connection with which we may observe that, while phenomenology certainly arouses lively interest today, what it seeks and aims at was already vigorously pursued in Western philosophy from the very beginning.

Being is to be laid hold of and made our theme. Being is always being of beings and accordingly it becomes accessible at first only by starting with some being. Here the phenomenological vision which does the apprehending must indeed direct itself toward a being, but it has to do so in such a way that the being of this being is thereby brought out so that it may be possible to mathematise it. Apprehension of being, ontological investigation, always turns, at first and necessarily, to some being; but then, in a precise way, it is led away from that being and led back to its being. We call this basic component of phenomenological method – the leading back or reduction of investigative vision from a naively apprehended being to being phenomenological reduction. We are thus adopting a central term of Husserl’s phenomenology in its literal wording though not in its substantive intent.For Husserl the phenomenological reduction, which he worked out for the first time expressly in the Ideas Toward a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy(1913), is the method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness. For us phenomenological reduction means leading phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be the character of that apprehension, to the understanding of the being of this being (projecting upon the way it is unconcealed). Like every other scientific method, phenomenological method grows and changes due to the progress made precisely with its help into the subjects under investigation. Scientific method is never a technique. As soon as it becomes one it has fallen away from its own proper nature.

Phenomenological reduction as the leading of our vision from beings to being nevertheless is not the only basic component of phenomenological method; in fact, it is not even the central component. For this guidance of vision back from beings to being requires at the same time that we should bring ourselves forward toward being itself. Pure aversion from beings is a merely negative methodological measure which not only needs to be supplemented by a positive one but expressly requires us to be led toward being; it thus requires guidance. Being does not become accessible like a being. We do not simply find it in front of us. As is to be shown, it must always be brought to view in a free projection. This projecting of the antecedently given being upon its being and the structures of its being we call phenomenological construction.

But the method of phenomenology is likewise not exhausted by phenomenological construction. We have heard that every projection of being occurs in a reductive recursion from beings. The consideration of being takes its start from beings. This commencement is obviously always determined by the factual experience of beings and the range of possibilities of experience that at any time are peculiar to a factical Dasein, and hence to the historical situation of a philosophical investigation. It is not the case that at all times and for everyone all beings and all specific domains of beings are accessible in the same way; and, even if beings are accessible inside the range of experience, the question still remains whether, within naive and common experience, they are already suitably understood in their specific mode of being. Because the Dasein is historical in its own existence, possibilities of access and modes of interpretation of beings are themselves diverse, varying in different historical circumstances. A glance at the history of philosophy shows that many domains of beings were discovered very early – nature, space, the soul – but that, nevertheless, they could not yet be comprehended in their specific being. As early as antiquity a common or average concept of being came to light, which was employed for the interpretation of all the beings of the various domains of being and their modes of being, although their specific being itself, taken expressly in its structure, was not made into a problem and could not be defined. Thus Plato saw quite well that the soul, with its logos, is a being different from sensible being. But he was not in a position to demarcate the specific mode of being of this being from the mode of being of any other being or non-being. Instead, for him as well as for Aristotle and subsequent thinkers down to Hegel, and all the more so for their successors, all ontological investigations proceed within an average concept of being in general. Even the ontological investigation which we are now conducting is determined by its historical situation and, therewith, by certain possibilities of approaching beings and by the preceding philosophical tradition. The store of basic philosophical concepts derived from the philosophical tradition is still so influential today that this effect of tradition can hardly be overestimated. It is for this reason that all philosophical discussion, even the most radical attempt to begin all over again, is pervaded by traditional concepts and thus by traditional horizons and traditional angles of approach, which we cannot assume with unquestionable certainty to have arisen originally and genuinely from the domain of being and the constitution of being they claim to comprehend. It is for this reason that there necessarily belongs to the conceptual interpretation of being and its structures, that is, to the reductive construction of being, a destruction – a critical process in which the traditional concepts, which at first must necessarily be employed, are de-constructed down to the sources from which they were drawn. Only by means of this destruction can ontology fully assure itself in a phenomenological way of the genuine character of its concepts.

These three basic components of phenomenological metho – reduction, construction, destruction – belong together in their content and must receive grounding in their mutual pertinence. Construction in philosophy is necessarily destruction, that is to say, a de-constructing of traditional concepts carried out in a historical recursion to the tradition. And this is not a negation of the tradition or a condemnation of it as worthless; quite the reverse, it signifies precisely a positive appropriation of tradition. Because destruction belongs to construction, philosophical cognition is essentially at the same time, in a certain sense, historical cognition. History of philosophy, as it is called, belongs to the concept of philosophy as science, to the concept of phenomenological investigation. The history of philosophy is not an arbitrary appendage to the business of teaching philosophy, which provides an occasion for picking up some convenient and easy theme for passing an examination or even for just looking around to see how things were in earlier times. Knowledge of the history of philosophy is intrinsically unitary on its own account, and the specific mode of historical cognition in philosophy differs in its object from all other scientific knowledge of history.

The method of ontology thus delineated makes it possible to characterise the idea of phenomenology distinctively as the scientific procedure of philosophy. We therewith gain the possibility of defining the concept of philosophy more concretely. Thus our considerations in the third part lead back again to the starting point of the course.

Discrepância

Incrível a discrepância entre a frase que eu imagino ter lido em um livro e o que de fato estava escrito. Aí, talvez, o mistério da poesia, da representação diferida que não faz referência a nenhum presente em especial. É a citação que dá nome ao blog:

 

Sim, passaremos todos, passaremos tudo. Nada ficará

do que usou sentimentos e luvas, do que falou da morte e da

política local. Como é a mesma luz que ilumina as faces dos

santos e as polainas dos transeuntes, assim será a mesma

falta de luz que deixará no escuro o nada que ficar de uns

terem sido santos e outros usadores de polainas. No vasto

redemoinho, como o das folhas secas, em que jaz indolentemente

o mundo inteiro, tanto faz os reinos como os vestidos

das costureiras, e as tranças das crianças louras vão no mesmo

giro mortal que os cetros que figuraram impérios. Tudo

é nada, e no átrio do Invisível, cuja porta aberta mostra apenas,

defronte, uma porta fechada, bailam, servas desse vento

que as remexe sem mãos, todas as coisas, pequenas e grandes,

que formaram, para nós e em nós, o sistema sentido do

universo. Tudo é sombra e pó mexido, nem há voz senão a

do som que faz o que vento ergue e arrasta, nem silêncio

senão do que o vento deixa. Uns, folhas leves, menos presas

de terra por mais leves, vão altas do redopio do Àtrio e caem

mais longe que o círculo dos pesados. Outros, invisíveis

quase, pó igual, diferente só se o víssemos de perto, faz cama

a si mesmo no redemoinho. Outros ainda, miniaturas de

troncos, são arrastados à roda e cessam aqui e ali. Um dia, no

fim do conhecimento das coisas, abrir-se-á a porta do fundo,

e tudo o que fomos — lixo de estrelas e de almas — será

varrido para fora da casa, para que o que há recomece.

Procurando entender Husserl – 2

Talvez seja útil ir direto aos originais. Do verbete de Husserl (Phenomenology) para a Encyclopaedia Britannica ( http://www.hfu.edu.tw/~huangkm/phenom/husserl-britanica.htm) :

 

7. The Transcendental Problem.

            To the essential sense of the transcendental problem belongs its all-inclusiveness, in which it places in question the world and all the sciences investigating it. It arises within a general reversal of that “natural attitude” in which everyday life as a whole as well as the positive sciences operate. In it [the natural attitude] the world is for us the self-evidently existing universe of realities which are continuously before us in unquestioned givenness. So this is the general field of our practical and theoretical activities. As soon as the theoretical interest abandons this natural attitude and in a general turning around of our regard directs itself to the life of consciousness – in which the “world” is for us precisely that, the world which is present to us — we find ourselves in a new cognitive attitude [or situation]. Every sense which the world has for us (this we now be-come aware of), both its general indeterminate sense and its sense determining itself according to the particular realities, is, within the internality of our own perceiving, imagining, thinking, valuing life-process, a conscious sense, and a sense which is formed in subjective genesis. Every acceptance of [28] something as validly existing is effected within us ourselves; and every evidence in experience and theory that establishes it, is operative in us ourselves, habitually and continuously motivating us. This [principle] concerns the world in every determination, even those that are self-evident: that what belongs in and for its self to the world, is how it is, whether or not I, or whoever, become by chance aware of it or not.

Once the world in this full universality has been related to the subjectivity of consciousness, in whose living consciousness it makes its appearance precisely as “the” world in its varying sense, then its whole mode of being acquires a dimension of unintelligibility, or rather of questionableness. This “making an appearance” [Auftreten], this being-for-us of the world as only subjectively having come to acceptance and only subjectively brought and to be brought to well-grounded evident presentation, requires clarification. Because of its empty generality, one’s first awakening to the relatedness of the world to consciousness gives no understanding of how the varied life of consciousness, barely discerned and sinking back into obscurity, accomplishes such functions: how it, so to say, manages in its immanence that something which manifests itself can present itself as something existing in itself, and not only as something meant but as something authenticated in concordant experience. Obviously the problem extends to every kind of “ideal” world and its “being-in-itself” (for example, the world of pure numbers, or of “truths in themselves”). Unintelligibility is felt as a particularly telling affront to our very mode of being [as human beings]. For obviously we are the ones (individually and in community) in whose conscious life-process the real world which is present for us as such gains sense and acceptance. As human creatures, however, we ourselves are supposed to belong to the world. When we start with the sense of the world [weltlichen Sinn] given with our mundane existing, we are thus again referred back to ourselves and our conscious life-process as that wherein for us this sense is first formed. Is there conceivable here or anywhere another way of elucidating [it] than to interrogate consciousness itself and the “world” that becomes known in it? For it is precisely as meant by us, and from nowhere else than in us, that it has gained and can gain its sense and validity.

Next we take yet another important step, which will raise the “transcendental” problem (having to do with the being-sense of “transcendent” relative to consciousness) up to the final level. It consists in recognizing that the relativity of consciousness referred to just now applies not just to the brute fact of our world but in eidetic necessity to every conceivable world whatever. For if we vary our factual world in free fantasy, carrying it over into random conceivable worlds, we are implicitly varying ourselves whose environment the world is: we each change ourselves into a possible subjectivity, whose environment would always have to be the world that was thought of, as a world of its [the subjectivity's] possible experiences, possible theoretical evidences, possible practical life. But obviously this variation leaves untouched the pure ideal worlds of the kind which have their existence in eidetic universality, which are in their essence invariable; it becomes apparent, however, from the possible variability of the subject knowing such identical essences [Identitäten], that their cognizability, and thus their intentional relatedness does not simply have to do with our de facto subjectivity. With the eidetic formulation of the problem, the kind of research into consciousness that is demanded is the eidetic.