Language in Lifeworld Phenomenology

Abstract

Texts, once they are printed, can be freely used in many ways, and are. But it is a principle of interpretation that no text stands without a context, especially that of other texts with which the text in question is interwoven in its origins. This is the context of texts that I wish to represent for Husserl's famous essay on the origin of geometry, particularly inasmuch as this essay is usually read as the final treatment of language in his phenomenology. Texts in Context: Two Men and a Batch of Manuscripts essay in question was meant to figure into Husserl's Crisis writings in some way, but in fact was never integrated into that body of writing.l Eugen Fink, Husserl's last research assistant, first published the essay in heavily edited form in 1939 (after Husserl's death) under the title, The Question of the of as an Intentional-Historical Problem,2 and that has been its name ever since. As with most of the main text of the Crisis itself, its earliest extant form is the typed version Fink made for Husserl; for once put into typed form in August, 1936, Husserl's original manuscripts for the essay were either discarded or used for writing down further ideas. Yet while there is no full stenographic manuscript corresponding to it, one other manuscript of Husserl's parallels it at many points, namely, K III 22, from the latter half of November, 1936.3 When, now, Fink's August typescript, the closest thing to an original version we have, is compared to manuscript K III 22 and then to the edited version Fink published in 1939, we shall begin to grasp the context within which to interpret the Origin of Geometry text itself. First of all, Husserl's manuscript from November, K III 22, represents an effort on his part: a) to go over the question of language in the context of the Crisis project, and b) to work this treatment of language into the topical development of Part II of the Crisis text as it then stood. But what must also be realized is that Husserl's efforts here took place within a whole on-going oral discussion between himself and Fink about integrating the topics of language and the history of intellectual developments into the work then under way. This can be traced through the actual documents each at that point produced for the project, Husserl's being principally the Origin of Geometry and K III 22, and Fink's being principally the Proposal for Husserl: MS on `History as Analysis of Origin.'4 On Fink's side, however, there is another large set of texts, his detailed hand-written notes from a four-month long tutorial on logic and language that he was holding for an American graduate student named Dorothy Ott, who had come to do a dissertation with Husserl.5 This tutorial, given from the middle of November 1936 to the beginning of March 1937, took place right in the period of the discussions between Husserl and Fink about how to fit the material on language and the history of meanings into the main Crisis text. Here, now, with the combined manuscript materials from both Husserl and Fink, we finally have the context of origin for understanding the ideas and issues represented in the Origin of Geometry essay and its treatment of language. Text and Its Thematic Context When Fink typed up the August 1936 version of the text, he very likely did some editing of Husserl's original; this was his normal practice. But between the 1936 typescript and the text as Fink prepared it for the 1939 publication we find large differences. extensive modifications that we find here neatly correlate in great part with points Fink was developing for the phenomenological treatment of language in the Ott tutorial. changes made for the 1939 publication are not, therefore, matters of mere stylistic preference, nor are they merely Fink's personal view. Rather they fit into a whole program for overcoming the limitations that Fink saw still remaining in the material he was working with. …