The Concept of Passivity in Husserl's Phenomenology [Paperback]

Building upon Husserls challenge to oppositions such as those between form and content and between constituting and constituted, The Concept of Passivity in Husserls Phenomenology construes activity and passivity not as reciprocally exclusive terms but as mutually dependent moments of acts of consciousness. The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication. The detailed study of the phenomena of affection, forgetting, habitus and translation sets out a distinction between three meanings of passivity: receptivity, sedimentation or inactuality and alienation. Husserls texts are interpreted as defending the idea that cultural crises are not brought to a close by replacing passivity with activity but by having more of both.

In Chapter 1, I explain why temporal syntheses, although distinguished from associative syntheses, count among the most fundamental phenomena of the passive sphere. I draw on Husserls account of absolute consciousness, which sublates pairs of opposites such as form/content and constituting/constituted, to show that activity and passivity mutually determine one another.

In Chapter 2, I further expand on pre-egoic components of sense-giving acts encompassed by original passivity. I explain the function of primordial association (Urassoziation) in passive genesis with special reference to the problem of syntheses of similarity and contrast. Then, I turn to the difficult issue of the relation between affection and prominence (Abgehobenheit) in thelÓ'