Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Ruminations on the Dative of Disclosure

Steven Nemes comments on my long Husserl entry:

[Robert] Sokolowski’s reflections in his Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge University Press, 2000) are also helpful. He maintains that the transcendental ego is not substantially different than the empirical ego. In other words, the transcendental ego is not some different substance from the empirical ego, i.e. the [animated] human body. It is simply this empirical ego considered from the point of view of its being a dative of disclosure, a mihi to whom the world is disclosed.

I don't consider this helpful. To be blunt, I consider it confused.

Husserl backyardThe claim seems to be that the transcendental ego is just the empirical ego when the latter is considered as that to which the world and the objects in it appear, including that very special object which  is one's animated body.  This gives rise to the question: Who is doing the considering?  That is, who is it by whose consideration the empirical ego acquires the property of being the dative of disclosure?

It has to be me.  But it cannot be me qua object, since qua object I am not the dative, but the accusative of disclosure.  I am one of the objects that appears. So it has to be me qua subject, qua dative but not accusative of disclosure.  And let us be clear that there cannot be a dative without a nominative. There cannot be an appearing-to that is not an appearing-to something.  There could, however, be an appearing that is wholly non-relational: things just appear, are revealed, manifest themselves, but not to a subject.* But if there is an appearing-to, then there must be that to which the appearance appears. No dative without a nominative.  Either non-relational appearing or we go 'whole hog' with Husserl: ego-cogito-cogitata qua cogitata.

From this is follows that the duality self as subject-self as object is (a) inexpungeable, and (b) located within the ego.  The duality cannot be collapsed into an abstract unity, nor can the subjectivity of the subject be referred to someone or something external to the ego. I am a subject intrinsically, not relationally, not in virtue of being considered to be a subject. That is to say: the transcendentality of the ego cannot accrue to it ab extra by the the empirical ego's consideration of itself as transcendental.  Hysteron proteron! This puts the cart before the horse:**  it is because I am a transcendental ego that I can apperceive myself as a human being in nature.  As a human being, I simply lack the power to function transcendentally, to execute acts including acts of apperception. 

Of course, there cannot be two egos. The empirical ego is an ego only by analogy (equivocation?)  The true ego is the transcendental ego.  I am being faithful to Husserl here.

So I don't see that Sokolowski, or rather Sokolowski as presented by Nemes, contributes anything to the solution of the problem I posed in my long post.

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*This, I take it, is Heidegger's  notion of phenomenon which differs markedly from Husserl's.

**Joke: A philosopher took up residence in a bordello, thinking to enlighten the 'sex workers.' He soon left disillusioned after he found that he could not put Descartes before the whores.

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Bill Vallicella

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3 responses to “Ruminations on the Dative of Disclosure”

  1. Hector Avatar
    Hector

    ‘There could, however, be an appearing that is wholly non-relational: things just appear, are revealed, manifest themselves, but not to a subject.’
    Could you explain this in more detail? This seems important, but I can’t quite make sense of it. As I understand it, Heidegger defines three ways phenomena manifest themselves to us – appearance, semblance, and the phenomenon itself. Here are two pertinent passages in the introduction to Being and Time for others who might be interested:
    ‘Phenomenon – the self-showing in itself – means a distinctive way something can be encountered. On the other hand, apppearance means a referential relation in beings themselves such that what does the referring (the making known) can fulfill its possible function only if it shows itself in itself – only if it is a “phenomenon”. Both appearance and semblance are themselves grounded in the phenomenon, albeit in different ways.’ (Being and Time, “Introduction”, 7. A., Basic Writings p.32)
    ‘Appearance, as the appearance “of something”, thus precisely does not mean that something shows itself; rather, it means that something makes itself known which does not show itself. It makes itself known through something that does show itself. Appearing is a not showing itself.’ (ibid, p. 31)
    Does Heidegger not presuppose a subject or something like it who is doing the perceiving of these relationships? How would these concepts make sense if not in relation to a perceiving subject – they seem to be based on distinctions based on our perception? Doesn’t the Lichtung presuppose some kind of connection between Dasein and the phenomenon showing itself? But perhaps I am making Dasein into something too much like the typical conception of the perceiving subject.
    Even Levinas’s ‘there is’ – though as I understand it, it is the being ‘behind’ all phenomena – seems to require a subject to perceive it, even if the subject is subsumed by the perception of the nothingness of being in the ‘there is’.
    I’m no doubt showing my ignorance and faulty memory here!

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  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Hector,
    The second quotation makes no sense unless ‘semblance’ is substituted for ‘appearance.’
    >>Does Heidegger not presuppose a subject or something like it who is doing the perceiving of these relationships? How would these concepts make sense if not in relation to a perceiving subject – they seem to be based on distinctions based on our perception? << One might think so. But I recall my old teacher Maraldo saying that Heidegger undercuts the subject-object dichotomy. I would put it this way: he tries to. Whereas Husserl is decidedly Cartesian in many of his works, Heidegger is Cartesian in none. 'Dasein' is not a name for the transcendental ego. For the later Heidegger, Dasein is the Da of Sein, the There of being, the 'place' where Being opens up a 'space,' a 'clearing' within which beings show themselves. Ortschaft des Seins, usw. As I read Heidegger, appearing is not an appearing-to. Appearing is non-relational. Thus there is nothing subjective about appearing. This allows a sort of aletheiological reduction of ens qua ens to ens qua verum. You can find something like non-relational appearing in Sartre, Butchvarov, and Butchvarov and analytical proponents of 'externalism.'

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Hector,
    Thanks for mentioning Levinas. His prose is typically French & squishy but he has an interesting critique of Heidegger. I should post something about it.

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