Abstract
According to Lisa Guenther’s concise account, critical phenomenology seeks to expose not only the transcendental conditions of seeing and making the world (such as subjectivity, embodiment, and temporality), but the “quasi-transcendental” ones we find in contingent historical and social structures, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity (2020, 12). This excellent formulation raises the question of its central distinction: from what position would the critical phenomenologist be able to distinguish transcendental from quasi-transcendental conditions, or universal from contingent structures? This question recalls post-Heideggerian treatments of transcendental historicity (Crowell & Malpas 2007) and the possibilities of critical theorizing, e.g., the Habermas-Gadamer debate on lifeworld and critique (How 1995). These issues also remind us of earlier attempts to forge alliances between (post-)phenomenology and critical theory by scholars shuttling between Freiburg (or Paris) and Frankfurt. At times, these went under the label “critical ontology” and often sought to develop a coherent vision out of Western Marxism and phenomenology, with a special focus, it seems, on Adorno and Heidegger (Dallmayr 1991; Guzzoni 1990; Mörchen 1981; Macdonald & Ziarek 2008).
Highlights
According to Lisa Guenther’s (2020) concise account, critical phenomenology seeks to expose the transcendental conditions of seeing and making the world, but the “quasi-transcendental” ones we find in contingent historical and social structures, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity (12)
It may help to note at the outset that below we will present some of Derrida’s central moral and political concepts, in particular double affirmation, as both a reading of Heidegger and a “radicalization” of Marxist critique
A primarily ontological approach hearkens back to the older meaning of “ethics” as an abode or dwelling, and insists that moral and political philosophy first and foremost consider, not why and how much we owe according to some principle, but how human beings are constituted in relation to each other and situated in the contexts in which social and terrestrial life occurs
Summary
According to Lisa Guenther’s (2020) concise account, critical phenomenology seeks to expose the transcendental conditions of seeing and making the world (such as subjectivity, embodiment, and temporality), but the “quasi-transcendental” ones we find in contingent historical and social structures, such as white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity (12). (In the context of reading Derrida below, I will characterize the normativity in question as a ‘normativity beyond norms,’ irreducible to but lending force to norms.) While Being and Time stressed the call’s origin in Dasein, the later work sees Dasein as always-already responsive to being’s call In this later work, Heidegger found it misleading to make of human existence the starting point of the ontological inquiry into being. I would like to discuss how this Heideggerian normativity can be developed further, on its own premises, as a critical stance
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