Fred Kersten

Fragments on the phenomenology of music

(1976). Fragments on the phenomenology of music. Music and Man: Vol. 2, In Search of Musical Method, pp. 5-71.

Stuffed Cabbage in the Old New School Cafeteria

The purpose of this lecture is to celebrate the memory of Aron Gurwitsch by examining and enlarging the domain of phenomenological clarification of some elements of what Gurwitsch called the ’’logic of reality.‘‘ Chief among those elements are the nature of the taken-for-grantedness of our existential belief, the difference between presentive and non-presentive indices of reality and the ground for the self-illumination of the ’’world of working.‘‘

Thoughts on the Translation of Husserl’s Ideen, Erstes Buch

There are two parts to this essay. The first part, §§1–3, traces the genesis of my translation of Ideen I. The second part, §§4–5, sketches the gist of what the author learned from the study of Ideen I, including the realization that Husserl’s “phenomenological ‘idealism’” does not exclude a “phenomenological realism.”

The Philosophy of Aron Gurwitsch

At various times I have had occasion to reflect on different aspects of the Philosophy of Aron Gurwitsch: on the critical center of his thought (“The Constancy Hypothesis in the Social Sciences”), on the bearing of some of the results of his thought on contemporary problems in transcendental phenomenology (“Heidegger and Transcendental Phenomenology,” “The Life-Concept and the Life-Conviction”), even on the philosophical attitude that seemed everywhere to underlie his thought (“Remarks on the Philosophical Attitude and Approach in the Philosophy of Aron Gurwitsch”), and, as a result of my last conversation with Aron Gurwitsch, on the “originality” of his transformation of the phenomenological problem of intentionality (“The Originality of Gurwitsch’s Theory of Intentionality”).2 In addition, the experience of translating some of Gurwitsch’s work into English provided a unique opportunity to explore many of his ideas with him (such as those in “The Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Pure Ego” dealing with the inner workings of Gestalt psychology as much as with the telos of the inner workings of his gradual transformation of basic ideas in Husserl concerning attention, the ego, and the internal organization of the noema.

The Order of Transcendental Phenomenological Inquiry that Wills to Return to the “Things Themselves”

The preceding chapters have sought to identify the various transcendental phenomenological refrainings from those positings in which the naturalness of my mental life consists so that, step by step, there are uncovered the layers of actional and passive oriented constituting of the real, objective world and of my real, objective mental living in the world. Even though a diversity of Husserl’s texts were consulted as a guide for establishing the phenomenological discriminations and their correlative reductive unbuildings (and, correspondingly, by implication the various stages of reductive building-up to be elaborated in the second part of this book), the basic literary expression and philosophic touchstone has remained the definition of transcendental phenomenology expressed in the Introduction to the three books that comprise the uncompleted Ideas Pertaining to a Purely Descriptive, Eidetic Transcen-dentally Pure or Transcendental Phenomenology and to a Transcendental Phenomenological Philosophy.

Transcendental Phenomenological Building up of Quasi-Objective Space in Primary Passivity

The last chapter made thematic some of the ways in which several prespatial sensum-fields are intended to and posited as continuously spread out wholes with differentiated parts. Objectivation of those spreads provides a basis for distinguishing between a broad and a narrow meaning of the term, “prespace.” The former consists of positing the spreadoutness of a sensum-field as undergoing changes in sensa meant and intended to as identical in correlation with co-intendings to flows of kinaesthetic sensa-sequences; it is the phenomenological residuum attendant upon discriminative refraining from positings of the quasi-objective unities that function as quasi-objective appearances of the phantom organism, phantom tactual, visual and auditory appearances. The latter consists of positing the spreadoutness of a sensum-field as undergoing changes that do not include co-intendings to correlative flows of kinaesthetic sensa-sequences; it is the phenomenological residuum attendant upon still further discriminative refraining designated by the phrase, “setting kinaesthesia at zero.” And just this last refraining is a clue to the building up analysis of the oriented constitution of the real, objective world and its spatio-temporal form.

The Transcendental Phenomenological Reductions

The full title of Husserl’s book, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, applies to three projected books of which only one, the first, was published during Husserl’s lifetime and with the subtitle, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1912).1 Appended to the First Book was an “Introduction” to all three books which Husserl continued to reprint with the First Book despite his dissatisfaction with the manuscript of the Second and the continued non-existence of the Third Book. Yet the full sense of the fragmented whole of Ideas may be recovered from the “Introduction” in the light of which the title to all three Books may be expressed in these words:2 Ideas Pertaining to a Purely Descriptive, Eidetic, Transcendentally Pure or Transcendental Phenomenology and to a Transcendental Phenomenological Philosophy.

Specific Transcendental Phenomenological Procedures

Phenomenology was defined in the last chapter as a descriptive, eidetic science of transcendentally purified mental life-processes in the natural transcendental attitude. When seized upon in reflection those processes, moreover, are found to exhibit a noetic-noematic plane of demarcation according to which all actional and secondary passive mental life-processes are founded on and “presuppose” all primary passive mental life-processes (although the converse is not the case). This noetic-noematic plane of demarcation provided a clue for determining the correct methodic order in which the step-by-step transcendental phenomenological refrainings and reductions are to be carried out by means of what Husserl called “abstractive” or, perhaps better expressed, “discriminatory,” procedures that will reveal and objectivate the variously reduced strata of oriented constitution. By making explicit these procedures for refraining from the general positing in which the naturalness of the natural transcendental attitude consists it will be possible at the same time to critically examine the specific context in which Husserl introduces the notion of oriented constitution in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation: objectivation of the constituting of the “primordial quasi-objective world.”

Time, Space, Other

Most broadly expressed, the phenomenological theme investigated in the preceding chapters is: “being in the real, objective world pertaining to my mental living as transcendental mental living in the natural attitude.”1 More narrowly expressed, this theme was developed with respect to the “genesis” of the ideas of time and space as products of subscientific-philosophic thinking and experiencing that take for granted the positing of the naturalness belonging to the natural attitude2—a development that consciously set aside the “naturalistic conception” of the ideas of time and space with respect to their specifying assumptions exercised in modern philosophy and science.3 In particular there were two central specifying assumptions singled out for attention and on which the epistemic and ontic claims of modern scientific and philosophic thinking and experiencing rest (section 38ff.). The first is the idea that geometry and kinematics define space, and if space defines reality it would seem to follow that geometry and kinematics define reality.4

Transcendental Phenomenological Unbuilding to the Tactually, Visually and Auditorily Presented in Prespace

Because it critically incorporates most of the modern scientific and philosophic thought about space perception, the Kantian formulation of the intuition of space will serve, in what follows, as the central point of reference to the historical setting of the problem of space. That setting is important not just because its conflicting specifying assumptions motivate exercise of the phenomenological epoche. It is equally important because the setting requires that a phenomenological account of space establish a basis for distinguishing between kinaesthetic and other sensa-processes while at the same time tracing the ways in which the inherently prespatial acquires the “appearance” of the quasi-objective or objective space of the real world (cf. above, sections 27ff., 37). In its Kantian formulation, the historical setting would seem to require that a phenomenology of space begin with the second step of unbuilding reduction. But this requirement is not so much the demand that a certain reflective procedure be carried out to resolve a certain set of problems as it is that the very innermost possibility of the second step of unbuilding reduction be explored and its limits established.