The culture of Modernism: From transgressions of art to arts of transgression (original) (raw)
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Aesthetic Forms through Time and in Time-based Arts
In this essay, I analyse how it is possible that aesthetic forms can survive through history and genres. In the debate about the historicity of the aesthetic experience, the two main approaches differ on a fundamental point. On one hand, the symbolic theory, based on the cultural tradition (see from Gadamer to Danto), points at the recognition of the proper conceptual contents of the aesthetic properties in order to explain the possibility of the experience of an artwork. On the other hand, there is the post-structuralist theory, for which in the perception both the senses and their means (see C. A. Jones) intervene. This theory asserts that the medium, previously any conceptual mediation, is responsible for the most significant effects in the aesthetic experience. I will argue why both theories are unsatisfying. The idea I want to defend, and which I will ground with a cognitive model based on biological and neurophysiological investigations, is that there are aesthetic mechanisms that can significantly affect our perception to make it focus upon some specific sensitive properties of the object. These properties are neither merely formal nor are sings for symbols, but are perceptively meaningful and, as such, can orientate the aesthetic experience to concrete symbols or meanings. In doing so, it will be possible to understand why some signs or properties (aesthetic forms) are used along art history in relation to some meanings or topics (like Gombrich suggested). (...)
The Relational Structure of Time-Consciousness: the Horizontal Retention and the Double Present
In the detailed analyses of his Time-Lectures of 1905, Husserl meets the insidious problem of the infinite regress: self-constituting means for a consciousness to be conscious of the process of self-constitution, and this being-conscious recalls in turn a consciousness which is conscious of its own being-conscious, of its being-consciousness, and so forth. Is the phenomenology fated to lose itself in the fatal reference game represented by the classic problem of the regressus in infinitum? To avoid this question and free the phenomenology from the aporias of self-multiplying of consciousness, Husserl elaborates the notion of horizontal intentionality of retention (Längsintentionalität), which allows the consciousness not only to come back to itself, but also to constitute itself just by this coming back. The preservation – retention – of each single phase produces the unity of the whole of consciousness. It is valuable to join to this basic notion of consciousness another concept, which Husserl introduces almost thirty years after the Lectures, in his latest manuscripts on time-constitution, namely the one of double present. This concept describes the co-presence within the same present moment of the current perception and of the retentions of what is just-now elapsed. The duplicity derives from the capacity of the present moment (Gegenwärtigung) to transcend itself into the dimension of the de-presentation (EntGegenwärtigung), which on its part refers directly to this fleeting actuality from which it originates, hence assuming again the form – albeit a new form – of the present (Ver-Gegenwärtigung). The aim of the article is first of all to stress the inner coherence of the Husserlian thinking: though it doesn’t deal with the problem of the infinite regress, the notion of double present concerns what occurs in that short-lived interweave between impression and retention and for this reason it represents the structural condition of the self-constitution of the flow. Secondarily, I aspire to show the basically relational trait of the intentional consciousness, which lives by means of the continuous and uninterrupted interconnection of its own temporal moments.
2014
In my thesis I have tried to develop a phenomenological account of temporality based upon a reading of Husserl’s work and I defend this against the criticism that is directed at Husserl under the heading of a metaphysics of presence. Initially, I offer two models of this absolute consciousness that I find to be in consistent. First, the Hua X, Text No. 54 model describes absolute consciousness as functioning through two types of intentionality: horizontal intentionality, which constitutes the unity of the flow of consciousness, i.e. its self-appearance, and transverse intentionality, which constitutes the unity of the object-point throughout its flowing-away. Because consciousness is intentional there is a difference between the constituting and the constituted. Since Husserl moreover believes that only intentionality can be carried over into intentionality, the self-constitution of this primal consciousness requires that there is an ultimate consciousness that is an unconscious consciousness. The second model, L III, describes the primal presentation as the fulfilment of a protention. Consequently, we can describe immanent time as being constituted on the basis of a retentional and protentional tendency. These flick over at what is called the culmination-point, the point of maximal fulfilment. There is no longer a now-point in this model. With these two models in mind I discuss the criticism of Derrida and Heidegger. Derrida bases his criticism on an understanding of time-consciousness that relies on the conceptual basicness of the primal impression. Derrida argues that since we can only become conscious of what is given through concrete perception, i.e. retention and primal impression, that the primal impression is invested with non-originarity. I show against this reading that the L III model does not succumb to this criticism since it does not rely on a primal impression as source of originarity. Instead, with Rodemeyer I speak here of the zone of originarity, a temporal field as it were, that is constituted by the retentional and protentional tendencies and characterized by a matter of degree, that might have a culmination-point, but which we do not understand as the source of originarity. Heidegger’s critique aims at the supposed preference of immanence over transcendence and of the present albeit in a broad sense over the farther past and future. I argue that his critique is rooted in the epistemological orientation that Heidegger criticizes Husserl on, particularly in his treatment of the phenomenon as being split into that which appears and the appearing. I show however that the notion of pre-consciousness that we discover in the C-manuscripts can be understood as a primordial transcendence, which calls for the epochē. Thus, I show on the one hand that Husserl does recognize the priority of transcendence and on the other hand, I justify his “epistemological” prioritization of the present over the past and future from the necessity of the epochē that I believe the discovery of pre-consciousness gives motivation to.
A Brief History of Time-Consciousness: Historical Precursors to James and Husserl
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2009
The decades bracketing the end of the nineteenth century saw two colossal developments in the philosophy and psychology of the experience of time. The first was William James’ highly influential Principles of Psychology, published in 1890; the second was edmund Husserl’s Zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins, based on notes written largely during the first decade of the twentieth century, but first published in 1928. Associated with each of these developments is a standard, largely unchallenged understanding of its historical precursors: James was chiefly synthesizing a good deal of work that had been done over the previous three decades or so in experimental psychology in Germany, primarily under the influence of Wundt, and framed this synthesis in terms of a philosophical idea he credited to “E. R. Clay,” namely, the specious present doctrine (henceforth, SP doctrine). Husserl was reacting to, and building on, attempts by Brentano and Meinong to provide analyses of time consciousness, and was also familiar with work in experimental psychology, including James’ work, and with the expression ‘specious present’ that James had used for the doctrine. But as we shall demonstrate in this paper, the standard picture is crucially incomplete. There is a clearly discernible line of philosophical debate about the temporality of experience which began with Thomas Reid, ran through a number of nineteenth-century Anglophone philosophers, and culminated in two independent termini: “E.R. Clay,” identified by James as the author of the anonymously published The Alternative: a Study in Psychology; and the work of the now nearly-completely forgotten Shadworth Hollway Hodgson. The first goal of this paper is discerning and describing this line of development and its two termini. Both of these termini were significant influences on James. The second goal of this paper is to argue that the second terminus, Hodgson, was also a significant and unappreciated influence on Husserl. Sections 2 through 5 discuss, in turn, the relevant doctrines of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, and William Hamilton. Exposition of these authors establishes that discussion of the temporal character of perceptual experience was already underway prior to James, while tracing how distinct stances on relevant premises concerning consciousness and experience eventually led to the formulation of the SP doctrine. Section 6 discusses Robert Kelly (alias ‘E.R. Clay’) who named and (co-)developed the SP doctrine James made famous. Section 7 discusses Hodgson’s early work and his own independently-developed version of the specious present doctrine. Section 8 turns to Hodgson’s later work and the specific issue of his influence on Husserl. Section 9 concludes, and considers the reception of Hodgson and Kelly’s work.
The Temporalizations of the Absolute Flow of Time-Consciousness
One of the most problematic issues with regard to Husserl’s phenomenology of time concerns the definition of the relationship between the time of the intentional acts and the absolute pre-phenomenal flow of time constituting consciousness. In this regard, Brough distinguishes between the intentional acts (such as perception and recollection) and the specific dimension of the absolute flow of time-consciousness in terms of a distinction between two different levels. In the book Self-awareness and Alterity, Zahavi questions the validity of this distinction: the inner time-consciousness should not be regarded as an additional flow aware of the intentional act, but it is nothing but the pre-reflective self-awareness of the act. Despite essential differences, a common presupposition characterizes both of the above mentioned interpretations of the absolute time-constituting flow: the absolute flow is indifferent to the acts; it always flows in the same way, automatically; the form of the absolute flow is unchangeable. In my essay I will challenge the validity of this thesis from two different angles: (1) I will show the essential ambiguity of Husserl’s configuration of the absolute flow not only in the context of the Zeitvorlesungen 1905, but also in relation to the Bernauer Manuskripte. (2) I will take into consideration Husserl’s analyses of specific temporal experiences: the time of the unclear Phantasia and the experience of the radically new.
Catharsis of Ripening and the Fractals of Time in Fragments of Being
The disintegration of the concept of Modernism, the idea of stable growth, of utopian social transformation,recognisable authority, the foundation of the social structure on relations of production, technical and scientific rationality and the autonomy of the world of high art, through the energy and intellectual crises of the seventies and the profound changes in the political economy, with the arrival of global, multinational capitalism as the dominating social nexus that has modernised the whole world, indicated, as Lyotard puts it, the end of the big stories that offered a way out for philosophy, science, politics and art, of stories about advances towards a growing consensus and unity in knowledge and freedom. In the spiritual history of the world, periods in which some concept of development is exhausted are frequently, to a greater or lesser extent, marked by some kind of mannerism, which reflects the dominant sentiments of the transitional period; this is not just an expression of spiritual crisis, but also of maturation of the understanding that the quondam world has been shaken beyond redemption. With the mercantilisation of knowledge in the late capitalist society, the objective is no longer stable unity on the way to common achievement but explosive growth through competition, increased flexibility and social fragmentation. Hence too the plurality of truths (among which some of the old Modernist versions subsist, but without any aura of exclusiveness), differences, the privileging of rhetoric over logic, linguistic games, ephemerality, even the eclectic appropriations of the style of past epochs and the legalisation of mass culture and the consumer mentality that in the postmodern period are considered fully equal aesthetic values. Indeed, it seems that in the post-modern period the only constants are on the one hand aesthetic permissiveness, and on the other hand the universal aestheticisation(even of everyday life, through fashion, design and the media) which could in a way be the end of a long period of history talking, since, when the aesthetic has become a central theme of social life and in fact the only socially acceptable manner in which truth can be expressed, it can intuitively be sensed that substantive truthfulness and the aspect of material production have disappeared into the background. And accordingly, itis quite intelligible that the remarkable oeuvre of artist Vlatko Vincek, which in a certain way witnesses to and embodies this transitional time, needs observing from several aspects.
The Disarticulation of Time: the Zeitbewußtsein in Phenomenology of Perception
In an effort to reassess the status of Phenomenology of Perception and its relation to The Visible and the Invisible, this essay argues that Merleau-Ponty's engagement with Husserl's text and his discussion of the “field of presence” in La temporalité are intended to think through the field in which time makes its appearance as one of passage. Time does not show itself as presence or in the present but manifests itself as Ablauf, as lapse or flow, an écoulement that is simultaneously an explosion, an éclatement. Merleau-Ponty's account of temporality in these pages is thus legible as recovering the primordial experience of time as a self-differentiating déhiscence in its dual power of articulation and erosion. Time is thus simultaneously the vehicle of the world's appearance and of its “disarticulation”, the passage of a rhythm of affirmation and disintegration.
The Hyletic Time-Consciousness and the Embodied Subject
Novotny, K., Rodrigo, P., Slatman, J., Stoller, S., (Eds.), “Corporeity and Affectivity: Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Discussion”, Brill, Leiden , 2014