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Le Développement de l'Intentionnalité dans la Phénoménologie husserlienne,
by Denise Souche-Dagues, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, coll. Phænomenologica, 1972, 306 p.

            Ms. Souche-Dagues’ book changes the rapports of Husserlian posterity with the Master. We remember that in his preface to Phénoménologie de Husserl, Q Lauer judiciously distinguished three types of exercises that aim to “comment” on a work: the strict commentary of the text, the exhaustive research of the author’s thought, and finally reflection on the problem posed by the author. Husserl has known these three fortunes: the notes that Mr. Ricœur appended to the translation are rigorously explicative; K. Schuhmann, in his Dialektik der Phänomenologie attempts to totalize the aspects of the Husserlian reflection; L. Eley’s two books: die Krise des Apriori and Metakritik der formalen Logik think the concept of the essential a priori and that of formal logic in the light of Hegel. In her work, Le Développement de l'Intentionnalité dans la Phénoménologie husserlienne, Ms. Souche-Dagues distinguishes herself from these approaches and, in a certain sense, reproduces the aim of numerous studies published by M. Nijhoff: much research parts from the delimitation of a precis theme, which has an enormous theoretical scope given the a-systematic and evolutive character of the Husserlian quest for a system of effectuations of the ego; such is the case of the author that is attached to intentionality. Nevertheless, the perspective changes: the goal is not to restitute Husserlian speech with a maximum of fidelity but to initiate an appreciative and critical dialog with this proper speech. Giving phenomenology its sense then no longer signifies re-giving the salient traits of a thematic but to think with and against Husserl by inscribing within the phenomenological lieu and the problematic that architectures it. At the antipodes of an external critique, the critical logos takes root in the Husserlian philosophical ground and is deployed with maturity, without any concession other than that of being instituted from a chosen thematic: intentionality, that serves as an armature to solidify the reasoning. Our proper gaze is employed in approfounding and unveiling Ms Souche-Dagues’ perspective; i.e., that it will be, before all, about the truth of the Husserlian text that we will attempt approach at the horizon of Ms Souche-Dagues’ subject [propos], by respecting the latter that, with honesty, seeks to deploy phenomenology’s problem.

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            In her introduction, the author poses herself the question of the unity of Husserl’s thought by founding on the two opposed dimension of the concept of transcendental constitution, established by Fink and Biemel respectively: creative of the world or restitutive of the sense of the appearing object, constitution knows a dangerous ambivalence that resounds on the integrity of the of the concept of phenomenology. A great principle at work in phenomenology nevertheless serves as a landmark: “the superior is always present in the inferior” (p. 15). This constant allows to reanimate the “sense one” of Husserl’s thought that is “repeated” on different planes, but “within the identical” (p. 16) of an omni-validity issued from the possibility of iteration. Whence, intentionality, qua theme of analysis, illustrates the actuality of this semantic fundament. By questioning Ms. Souche-Dagues we can ask ourselves if intentionality is indeed, as she indicates, the terrain where the hypothesis of the unity of Husserl’s thought should originate. This affirmation by the author (p. 20) is in fact itself an implicit hypothesis that we will have to reexamine.

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            The first chapter is the pedestal on which the work reposes. The author puts intentionality and objectivity in a relation of affinity, in the Kantian sense of the term. The theme of evidence regulates all of the chapter of which the title however showcases the limitless power of “objective reason”. De jure, Husserl work in the clarity of truth: intentionality takes a mathematical connotation (p. 31) insofar the consciousness-object rapport is “analytic” (p. 31) and not synthetic. The tautological dimension of the truth implies the refusal of the dualism of sensibility and the understanding. The absence of limits of reason knows its consecration within a depsychologized experience of truth, a letting-arise the object evidently confers the intrinsic signification of objectivity. Phenomenology evolved in a “pure milieu of intuition”. Thus, it is clear that de-subjectivization entrains the establishment of phenomenology within the accumulation of perceived immediacies: it is an anti-dialectical thought. At the limit, immediacy is pushed back ad infinitum, the present Eidos is transformed into the Idea (p. 45): it is the case of sensible perception for example. However, from the Eidos to the Idea only the (originary-anticipated) mode of presence is differed.

            The problematic of objective truth is really phenomenology’s ferment. In  Formale und transzendentale Logik, we observe that the first orientation of the judgement aims at the object; then the orientation towards the judgement subordinates the subjective to the assumption of the truth of the judgment, which has the real object as its correlate. The critical theme pierces the consciousness of which the essential function is validating auto-critique. This internal exigency prepares the substitution, in the posterior works, of consciousness for Reason; the latter flourishes in effect in the “logical works”. Transcendental logic thus finds its motive, in the same way as transcendental reduction, that is established from the truth. Alone, the mode of givenness of the truth is transformed: perceived truth is replaced by the exercise of “infinite verification” (p. 58). Here, we assist objectivity’s return on itself, to the evidently reiterated auto-affection.

            This last proposition illustrates how much the superior is within the inferior. The author however debuts her research in the illumination of the objective truth, which confers to discourse the same monolithic aspect as that of Prolégomènes that theorized the idea of science. This gives to think that Phenomenology commences with the Logishe Untersuchungen, that the “logic” of Philosophie der Arithmetic is extra — and not ante­ — phenomenological. The “logic” of the latter work is necessarily an aberration of the truth, it is perfectly insituable, and especially not within an inferiority, or else it would bear the truth in germ. However, Husserl explicitly gives to his true logic — that of Formale und transzendentale Logik — a root in Philosophie der Arithmetic. This is a problem. Our question is all the better founded that Ms. Souche-Dagues affirms that Husserl’s thought is deployed in (musical) “variations” parting from a given theme (p. 19). There is therefore somewhere an antecedence in Husserl’s first published work. Thenceforth, the prepotency of the theme of truth is at least relativized. An a contrario argument goes in the same direction. If the absence of phenomenology’s limits depends on the omnipresence of the truth, why would it be necessary in these conditions to accord the absence of limits to the consciousness-reason? The full acceptation of Ms. Souche-Dagues’ proposition would even join the Husserlian preoccupation, that erupts in in Ideen I, of only referring to the truth, by carefully avoiding every preliminary theorization (Ideen I, p. 69), every point of view. Now, it is in Ideen I that Husserl elaborates, within and through reduction, the function of the transcendental subject. It is equally in her First chapter, centered on objectivity, that the author refers the latter to reason, even by voiding the latter and unlimiting it. The function of the transcendental subject shows well how awareness [prise de conscience] is not only an analytic truth’s operation on itself. Consciousness is not expletive. The fact of voiding Reason of its content seems to show that Ms. Souche-Dagues universalizes and thematizes a particular point of view and, herein, is shifted in relation to Husserl, but by default, since Husserl at least operates the junction of two points of view.

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            The second chapter is announced by the distortion between truth and verification, “view” and “reserved view”. The adequation between given truth and truth to be given arouses a theory of the possible. The author stops at the difference between perception of (eidetic) essence and sensible perception — ordinated to the Idea of the object (p. 69). Object and essence are intuited in the same manner (p. 69-70). Whence, according to the author, essence assures the construction of the theme of ideality that culminates in a “pure possible”. The latter masters the dialectic of perceptive sketches that are thus said of a “same object” (p. 72). But the equivalence between perception of a given of essence and a perceptive given puts the status of the imagination in question: the latter presentifies the perceptive object by operating temporal recoveries. Moreover, it de-presentifies the object within eidetic variation. The imagination is quartered [écartelée] between two directions: on the one hand, the mode of givenness of the eidetic object confirms the presence of the eidos. On the other, the givenness of the sensible object implies the recourse to the transcendental conditions of the latter’s constitution. The unity of two absolutes — the eidetic and the transcendental — it is indeed this that is to be thought. The fundamental homogeneity of these two domains proceeds, according to the author who refers to the theory of the “relevance of nuclei”, from the connection of the “syntactic” and the “semantic” (p. 85); in effect: “it is through the presence in the breast of the a priori of contents of real experience that eidetic science passes to transcendental phenomenology” (p. 85). Not only is the unity elucidated but also the passage from the eidetic to the transcendental is spawned. Whence the possible precedes the reel like the absolute conditions the relative; we thus comprehend that the Platonic eidos is subordinated to the Kantian Idea. The dimension of the pure possible is the Faktum: “the eidos… unveils the Faktum”, the author says again (p. 95). In sum, transcendental logic itself is absorbed in these eidetic conditions of possibility.

            The universalization of the normalization by essence is operated within this theory of the possible. It is true that the role of essence is significative, without contradict. If the essential legislation nevertheless prescribes to phenomenology its semantic tenor in the ineluctable repetition of the same that imposes the fundamental category of iteration, and if the superior is really uniquely the inferior repeated, then phenomenology has the status of an ideality. At the limit, the “development of intentionality” is only an appearance; there is nothing “operatory” left in phenomenology. Now, the author easily admits that “something is happening [se passe]” since she attempts the description of this passage. It even seems that the “variations” on the theme of the same (p. 19) are very important. What is more, could we not pose the hypothesis according to which the thematic tautology is only an extrinsic fulcrum for preventing the variation from degenerating into a rhapsody? The Husserlian givens will go in this sense: it is undeniable for example that the concept of Faktum is not confounded with the affirmation of essence: the fact (Tatsache) is contingent; the Faktum-essence is the antidote to contingency; in addition, there exists a Faktum beyond essence and that subordinates the latter (Husserliana, vol. 15, p. 386, lines 18-20). An “X” is sought that crosses its path with essence, and the concept of Faktum measures our ignorance, which however perceives a displacement of the concept, a shift that suffices for us. This status of the Faktum in return clarifies that of essence: just as the fixity of the signifying Faktum hides the mobility of the corresponding signified, it seems altogether possible to a pose, as a test, that the repetition of the essential truth-form covers the movance [mouvance] of a process to be discovered. As such, L. Eley has shown well in die Krise des Apriori that the essence-form is empty. The real phenomenological content is therefore developed somewhere else, even though essence is extrinsically called as guarantor. In a straight line, we could then affirm that evidence would hide a synthetic denotation behind analytic and tautological connotations.

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            In chapter II, the author shows how phenomenology is limited: essence plays a fundamental role. Chapter III develops this problem of the limit across the theme of the world. The concept of the world has a double scope: on the one hand, it is a “categorial objectivity” (p. 100) that decomposes into layers that render an account of the exact sciences. This world is posed as a thing. In this perspective, there exist as many worlds as there do scientific practices (p. 106). On the other hand, the world, above all in the “second” Husserl, is “lifeworld” (p. 100). The world is identified to the horizon, “it is what we have, the available, that towards which I can always route myself, and towards which I can always enfunce myself” (p. 105-6). Then, I live in only one world that is never presented under a plural mode. However, the two dimensions of the world can be articulated narrowly: there exist numerous texts where “world” is replaced by “nature”. We nevertheless know that nature is founded within the experience of singular things while the world founds this very experience. The author comes to consider, after demonstration, that “nature” is the name that is given to the world when we cease to think it as horizon and objectify it (p. 116). Thus, a domain of definitude and decidability (p. 117) is aroused: nature replaces the world because Husserl obeys the intention of mastering — i.e., of closing and opening at will — an open infinity of horizon. In addition, nature constitutes an ultimate founding layer in the interior of the world. The nature-world rapport thus instituted will last until the Krisis, the time where Husserl will abandon the thematic of objectification. The persistence of the relationship finds an echo “in the properly insurmountable difficulties that the thought of the “lifeworld” encounters in coming to light in the writings where it starts to be thematized: i.e., principally in Ideen II” (p. 125). The fact that the theme of objectification is dominant leads in Ideen II to the institution of an a-dialectical thought that does not practice the Aufhebung: The reintegration of all of the anterior layers in the spirit world does not imply a surpassing; on the contrary: “the abstract nature of the sensible and its no less abstract correlate, the pure I [Je], have not been surpassed in it, but only repeated, and, so to speak, renewed” (p. 129). Therein results an essential problematic for phenomenology, that marks the latter until in its ultimate developments despite the deviation of the Krisis: Husserl’s thought is taken in the necessity of conciliating the world as fundament of objectivity and the world as constituted object.

            The analysis that Ms. Souche-Dagues practices culminates well, the last citation makes it very neatly seen, in a conception of the spirit world that illustrates phenomenological iteration. The spirit world is the receptacle that culminatively assembles the objectified repetitions of the truth-form. It seems that we encounter the essential moment of the demonstration when the author affirms that Husserl thinks the world both as horizon and totality (p. 118, note 44). This signifies that the totality has the function of “recurving” (p. 118) the Idea onto the eidos and thus engendering, in particular, objectification, and more generally, an anti-dialectical thought. The Hegelian perspective from which phenomenology is surrounded here delivers all of its sense: it is the negation of immediacy that is motive [mortice], according to Hegel. Difference is therefore always negation. Now, is it not possible that alterity be thought as such, without being referred to the alterity-of-something? There exists exactly one properly Husserlian way to disentangle this problem. The Geistwelt is founded on the Animalia; however, by the very virtue of the signification of the concept of foundation, it is no more enfeoffed to them than the categorial idea is to the founding sensible perception. It is therefore necessary to admit the surrection of a new individual. From this instant, we can say that there exists an aspect of the totality-world that holes the eidos-Idea reciprocity, in lieu of “recurving” the Idea onto the eidos. However, does the iterative logic of objectification not have difficulty anew by “recurving” the content of the concept of the spirit world onto those of the pure I and nature, i.e., by repeating contents within the content “world”? To respond clearly, philosophical contents or concrete analyses of the world are not lacking in Husserl’s socio-phenomenology. Ms. Souche-Dagues would respond to us that “these analyses (…) taken in themselves are uninteresting” (p. 139). If they are disconcerting for sociology, this research clarifies a fundamental phenomenological law: in effect, the concepts of Mensch, Geist, Person, Seele, Staat introduce a solidarity of connection: Mensch sends back just as well to Körper and Natur as to Geist; in Person we retrieve the mutual implication of the singular (Mensch) and the universal (Geist); Staat just as well connotes a juridical voluntarism — the State is the concordance of individual wills and liberties—, founded in the respect of the Person and the Körper, as an essentialism occasionally near to Kelsen’s normativist positivism. Thenceforth, Husserl’s socio-phenomenology illustrates a traffic of non-stabilized concepts, a semantic circulation. Parallelly to this dynamic, it is interesting to note that the concepts of consciousness, intentionality even, association, etc. that make a part of the fixed corpus, break the essential repetitivity and impede phenomenology from taking the status of a categorial object. Underneath the iterative analytic form of truth therefore swarms the life of operatory concepts. There nevertheless remains that Husserl lacks a method of investigation; in this frame, eidetic variation is not a veritable method but the simple seizure-assumption of the being-that-is. Contrariwise, the Husserlian route towards the thematization of the veritable phenomenological reduction corresponds to the search for a law of organization of the sematic cosmos; the exercise of neutralization—that makes every essence hanging from the sky of truth “fall”—is only a negative premise of a positive exercise to be discovered. In fact, the great merit of Ms. Souche-Dagues seems to be of bringing out the function of essence. It is after, only, that the elucidation of the destiny of phenomenology is situated. The taking of position in relation to the latter succeeds to the highlighting [mise en exergue] of essence.

 

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            In continuity with her principal perspective, the author interrogates, in the course of chapter IV, Husserl’s philosophy under the species of genesis. It is real that the genetic preoccupation is on par with static phenomenology, the two composing, according to Husserl, the complete phenomenological reflection. Ms. Souche-Dagues shows that temporal genesis has the role of unveiling the normative — and not historical — sources of the law. The necessity of essence is principial (p. 147-8). This “return to essence” masks every real relationship between “the levels of constitution” (p. 149); for example, the givens of “receptivity” are only the result of “the state of affairs” — produced by the activity — insofar as the latter is retro-jected within passivity. Thus, spontaneity “prepares in front of itself” (p. 155) the — passive — conditions of its “proper operation”. In these conditions, genetic research is unexplanatory (p. 164): genesis is bound to describing a precession, of a repetitive character, not a production (p. 167-8). This proposition permits thinking the more general problem of history. The “good usage of history” supposes the determination of the fixity of sense, i.e., the acceptation of a temporal course structured by the “repetition of identical essence” (p. 175). The author clearly places essence, the structure of the temporal horizon, and the tradition in equation. Philosophy must retrieve the tradition, or iteratively reactivate the structure of the temporal flux (p. 176). That is why historical texts must be interpreted in the light of “logical writings”: the trace of history is obliterated in the return to essence.

            The author expresses the extension of the thematic of objectification afresh with force: my historicity and the history of the world repeat the essential — traditional — structure. History’s place is therefore well marked: time is the signifier of iteration, the mobile image of eternity. Nevertheless, the function of history in the body of phenomenology is not really elucidated. How is it, notably, that the theorization on the validating origin of the law — that determines an epistemological “situated” —, calls a theorization on the originary — that here sends back to a temporal “situated” — ? Not marking the importance of this question comes back to consider Husserl as if he were an aborted Hegel and limited himself to the confinement of thought within the iteration of immediacies. It seems that we have to come back to the question of pre-constitution and the circle that this phenomenon entrains. We can thus ask ourselves if this is not the very force of Ms. Souche-Dagues’ problematic, a problematic axed onto the semantic isotopy introduced by a thematic of the omni-truth, that imposes the forgetting of the conditions of emergence of the truth to the phenomenology-of-the-truth. For example, the author’s developments have the tendency to fix notions: passivity, receptivity, and activity are certainly not psychological steps in the constitution of “superior objectives” (p. 149); but that the nature of their link be “always ambiguous” (p. 149) is only a difficulty for a thought that introduces the objectifying-closing perspective within an ad-vention [ad-venir] of concepts that visibly escape this rule. Husserl affirmation that hesitates to de-limit activity and passivity should be taken seriously: the concepts lose their “individual essence”. Phenomenology is therefore indeed more than a fact. That is why, we come back, more generally, to the already underlined necessity of according the absence of limits issued from the truth to consciousness, while insisting on the theme of repetition, so well analyzed by Ms. Souche-Dagues. Whence, by analyzing the phenomenological doing, it is possible to detect the mathematical origin of iteration in Philosophie de l’arithmétique: consciousness and objectivity are now taken in new rapports of which an account should be rendered. We are in any case struck, in the author’s analysis, by the indifference of temporal genesis to the establishment of “objective sense”, to such a point that the Husserlian “recoil” (p. 164) in front of the difficulty would dig an abyss between “objective unity” and the genesis of the object. As far as we are concerned, we are tempted to dig the fundaments of the highlighted structure of iteration; thus, the domination of the theme of objectivity, that institutes an analytic milieu of ideality, would only be one perspective—certainly true but limited—on a conceptual becoming that passes through objectification, but also surpasses it. Ms. Souche-Dagues would thus herself introduce, not only apropos certain concepts but more generally, the thematic of the closure-limit.

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            In a sense, nevertheless, the author’s analysis presents a community with our propositions. On the chapter bearing on Reflection, the emphasis is put on the Husserlian surpassing of mathematical exemplarity: the eidetic is dissociated from the “fixed model of idealization that mathematics brings it” (p. 197). In effect, the Idea offers the possibility of another mode of access to the ideal (p. 200); what is repeated is the “form” by which the content is posed (p. 201). In this case reflection, or repetition of form, is imposed. It appears in this new context that the structure of repetition, accompanied by the thematization of the horizon — i.e., the possibility of repeatability — command the position of being-same (p. 201). Reflection permits access to a systematic horizontality that masters the process of objectification. Thenceforth, subjective reflection does not distance us from the problematic of objective validity. The importance of the Idea is the confirmation of the emphasis bearing only on the true, and the reflection that thematizes the Idea-horizon goes in the same direction. That is why egology principally sends back to an ontology: ontology is the originary terrain of every truth. It is transcendental philosophy itself (p. 211). The engagement in research of validity is extreme: the I has, according to the author, a design of identity as its identity; furthermore, there exists a hierarchy of reductions (p. 226) that goes hand in hand with a difference introduced into evidence: adequation is in effect distinct from apodicticity. The research of objectification is still the epistemological rampart. However, the author notes that a progressive “enfuncement” of the problem of reflection is operated. This “gravity” of the question is contemporaneous to the inscription of phenomenology within a new theoretical constellation that is articulated around the concept of life. Life is a whole of interdependence apart from where nothing is thought, where objectification and subjectification compose (p. 232). Time finds an employment in this new theorization: in the phenomenology of life, an elucidation of auto-temporalization should be accomplished, i.e., a clarification of the sense’s coming to itself. Intentionality changes signification: the object is no longer the transcendence aimed at but being itself is transcended within its coming to itself (p. 238).

            The employment of the concept of time, that radically upsets the signification of intentionality, justifies our point: terminal identity no longer confirms the identity of repetitions of objectifying acts. There exists a phenomenological plurivocity since the sense of being is defined — and is not repeated — in immanence. Awareness [prise de conscience] is constitutive: this point moreover justifies the difference between adequation and apodicticity that leaves the field free to a constitutive, and not only restitutive, hermeneutics. Furthermore, the insertion of intentionality within subjective immanence opens towards an important problem. It in effect appears that reflection is taken within the reflected — that comes to itself. More profoundly, reflexive questioning itself depends on the central phenomenological question that captures it: we are allowed this sliding insofar we agree with the author to part from Husserlian premises for developing them; now, phenomenological theory is the temporal subject’s awareness, which integrates theorization within time and make an ambivalent “reality” of the question both temporal — real and theoretical — and ideal. From this liminary elucidation, we should remark that the author tackles the question of phenomenology by using the questioning on objectification. In lieu of leaving reflection to be captured by the reflected, she thinks all the reflected from one reflection. Of course, we let ourselves be governed by a fundamental hypothesis: accepting at first what Husserl says to take it up again later. In this strict frame, it would perhaps be preferable to start from the question, or from the context of questions, and then let the successive questionings be determined. The author, on the contrary, starts from the questioning on intentionality to show the evolution of the latter that, in return, makes the phenomenological question evolve. De jure, we encounter the problem of the access road to phenomenology: a theme of approach cannot be chosen.

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            In the last chapter of her work, at the end of her questionnaire, Ms. Souche-Dagues brings out the unity of phenomenology’s design: “It is in terms of ontology that the theme of intentionality is expressed in the first writings: it is in the same terms that the world is thought in the later years” (p. 242). Here, unity is seen under the illumination of the extension-transformation of the theme of objectifying intentionality. Phenomenology is universal ontology. For example, the world is a universal structure of pre-givenness of objects and reproduces the rapport of the eidos to the Tatsachen (p. 242). Nevertheless, reflection works within immanence: the term Wesen replaces eidos whose utilization is reserved for the characterization of eidetic variation. Whence, nothing impedes the world from being a factor of apodicticity (p. 244), which was refused to it until now; apodicitivity proceeds from the definition of the world: an infinite but unobjectifiable set, an open horizontal infinity of the undetermined. The devaluation of the model inspired from mathematics is consummated. The world-horizon makes us comprehend how Husserlian rationalism culminates in reflexive awareness and no longer in an objectification (p. 258, 271). The central phenomenon is life itself within which the Ur-hyletic predomination of the world originarily fuses, and not the objectification that combines matter and form, or hyle and morphe. Life is disobjectified, i.e., depresentified and decentered (p. 264); it co-functions with a temporal horizon. Thus, the ultimate cosmological proposition resounds so: I am-the-world-is (p. 270). The transformation of objectification culminates in the awareness of my-being-world. Insofar as the objectifying root of reason is metamorphosed, it is possible to derive reason from the instinct that confounds hyle and morphe—the alliance of which is very difficult in the process of objectification—in a whole accorded to universal life. In continuity with this movement, the reconstruction of the me-world passes through steps, including that of the ego, that lead to God through a non-confessional way (p. 282). God is the point of arrival of reason’s coming to itself.

            Definitively, the author therefore neatly insists on the devalorization of objectifying intentionality, the changing of eidos into Wesen and the putting in foreground of the world as absolute caution. Following Ms. Souche-Dagues, we interrogate on the pre-givenness of the world. The set of hyletic givens no longer compromise — as in Ideen I — a process of objectification. Indeed, on the contrary, the Ur-hyle and its horizontal co-belongings have a function of apodicticity as soon as they are re-seized. Sensation changes sign: a previously negative index, it is at present installed within a positivity. The C Manuscripts bearing on time moreover develop proto-noetic positivity. In general, the recognition of the temporal form that assumes the objectivity of the present or remembered object leaves place for the assumption of a logic of temporal contents. The important point characterizes the sliding of the sequence: mathematism — definitude — objectification­ — form of time, within the sequence: life — indefinitude — de-centration — content of time. Thus, the theoretical fulcrum of apodictic time introduces a generalized reflection where all the reflected comes to itself, where contents take intentional form. Reflection and reflected are covered in the maturation of the sense. This concordance proves that, within time, the questioning is equal to the question. Our pursuit of Ms. Souche-Dagues analyses indicated how much the phenomenologico-temporal question is indeed the attractive center of the canvas on which the problematic of repetition-objectification rolls. The unity of design proceeds from the unification of the question. In these conditions, it seems that the author must pay a tribute to her discovery of the new form of intentionality. Given that the questioning on intentionality is reabsorbed within the question that make phenomenology gravitate, the author’s enterprise knows a particular destiny. In effect, before all, Husserl’s enterprise is epistemological: it is attached to the truth, and we come to see that the latter absorbs the objective truth. That is why Husserl seeks a commencement to his philosophy that is not a historical departure. Inversely, the commencement is instituted at the moment when the phenomenological totality is auto-founded. The consequence fits in an alternative: either the author’s questioning is accepted, but on a mode that is preparatory to phenomenology and extrinsic, or the reflection on intentionality is to be rejected, if we proceed from truthful center.

            The type of research inaugurated by Ms. Souche-Dagues is therefore properly passionate since it includes the commentator in the commentated sphere. Thus, no writing leaves innocent from its entry-within-phenomenology that itself takes hold of the writ-on-it. An example will be illuminating. The author starts from the consideration of an analytic milieu of ideality that rules the ordinance of logical writs: truth equals being equals evidence. Doing so, a Husserlian though is found re-thematized. Furthermore, Ms. Souche-Dagues elaborates a subjective equivalent of the objective modality, that takes form in correspondence with objectivity: sense of the world (ideality) — apodicticity of auto-elucidation (truth) — consciousness-world (being). This structural redict continues an aspect of phenomenology, that comes out of reiteration. It is the element of conservation of phenomenology, the anti-rhapsodic function that fortifies the author’s thesis on the prevalence of essence. Nevertheless, phenomenology is played in return for this thesis: the redict corresponds exactly to the reformulation of the a priori of the subjective-objective correlation on which Husserl insists so much. It remains despite everything to reconsider this a priori as a research theme and moreover our propositions are perfectly inserted in this goal: our insistence that bears on the maintenance of the reattachment of truth-ideality to consciousness convers a program aiming at separately distinguishing and developing the order of analytic truth and the order of synthetic truths, and at re-elaborating the problematic of iteration in the very breast of time that is the true point of departure. These elements are propaedeutic to the elucidation of a veritable phenomenological method of which the neutralizing epochè is only an announcement. It is only in this method’s accession to science that we encounter the access road to phenomenology. Ms. Souche-Dagues has followed the royal road of transparency, of the absence of limits of objective ideality with firmness. At the same time, she has sketched another path: by writing in Husserl’s manner — at least at the start of her investigation —, she teaches us that phenomenology awaits every writ that perpetuates its writing[1]. The pursuit of dia-log, insofar as it is absorbed within the milieu of phenomenological life, progressively unveils the Idea of science to itself, until the advent of a specific transcendental saying that still defaults.

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[1] [trans.]: While écrit and écriture would usually both be rendered “writing”, the distinction between the former as an achieved work and the latter as a process is important, hence the use of the archaic (in every context save for the legal) “writ”.

 
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