


Can we still validly study the notions of intuition and understanding? Do the shifts in meaning to which these words have been subject exclude a renewed attempt to look for the unitary meaning that may subtend their various uses? For instance, in Latin, the word intuition comes from the verb intuèri, which alludes to the domain of visual perception (tuèri literally means "to look at"). On the other hand, as Gadamer reminds us in Truth and Method, "understanding" expresses the idea of relation to another, meaning that has its source in the legal domain. Indeed history has charged these terms with ever richer meaning; on the other hand, however, can the ultimate signification of each of these terms be understood without referring to what has always been intended by those who use these words?



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Alessio Rotundo
Trópos
Introduction: 
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Monografica
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Alessio Rotundo
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Introduction: 
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                                                            trópos • anno X • numero 1 • 2017 – ISBN 978-88-255-0482-8
                                                                 DOI 10.4399/97888255048281 – pag. 5-10 (giugno 2017)




                                                                                       Introduction
                    Variations of Intuition and Understanding
                                 Phenomenology and Hermeneutics at the Limits

                                                                                 Alessio Rotundo⇤




The first document of the phenomenological movement, Edmund Husserl’s
Logical Investigations (1900–1901), inaugurated what seemed to many to be an
entirely new way of reflecting on questions concerning meaning, truth, and
knowledge. Husserl’s Korrelationsforschung appeared in fact to have burst all at
once the dogmatism of an immanent consciousness filled with “representa-
tions” and that of an external reality which had to be “ascertained” in order to
be known. On the contrary, consciousness is intentional, which means that we
are always in the matter (we might be allowed to say “bei den Sachen”) and
not simply enclosed in ourselves. Thus Husserl was attacking the traditional
theory of knowledge at its roots. The theoretical “constructions” that vowed
to make the relationship between consciousness and world intelligible were
therefore to give way to a renewed focus on the living link of subject to world.
   The thematization of such a “link” took many different shapes in the
development of the phenomenological movement in the 20th century, wi-
th corresponding variations in the conception of knowledge, reality and
experience. This complex history of variations on the philosophical motive
inaugurated by Husserl’s program can be told in many different ways depen-
ding on the current historical or thematic interest. Due to its obvious crucial
place in the history of the phenomenological movement, a vast literature has
developed around the relationship between Husserl and Martin Heidegger’s
own appropriation of phenomenological concepts and methodology.1 No less
important for an understanding of the variations on the phenomenological
idea is Eugen Fink’s collaboration with Husserl in his last Freiburg years.2
    ⇤
        Duquesne University (rotundoa@duq.edu).
     1. Concerning the Husserl–Heidegger relationship, a good survey is still: Fenomenologia. Edmund
Husserl, Martin Heidegger (Milano: Unicopli, 1999).
     2. An exceptionally detailed and comprehensive account of the Husserl–Fink collaboration is
found in Ronald Bruzina’s work: Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink. Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology.
1928–1938 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2004).


                                                                                                                    5
6      Introduction


What these two examples have in common is that both emerged from a living
conversation with Husserl (I am limiting myself to mention perhaps the two
most eminent cases, which are by no means the only ones of course). Yet,
even after the death of the “Master,” the tragedy of National–Socialism and
the Second World War, at a time when phenomenology in Germany was
practically extinguished, critical or renewed approaches to Husserl’s venture
multiplied and flourished in his “shadow,” as Merleau–Ponty put it, compli-
cating considerably the panorama of the “effective history” of variations on
phenomenological motives.
    The tradition of hermeneutic philosophy represents a crucial point of re-
ference in this history. This tradition entered into a productive confrontation
with Husserl and his program in the wake of Heidegger’s inspired approach
to the factual and historical dimension of human life. The way Husserl set
out to articulate the living experiential correlation of subject and world by
means of a Cartesian return to a pure consciousness, in spite of Husserl’s
own qualifications of such “return,” opened itself to Heidegger’s criticism
in particular as it separated the “concrete” or “empirical I” from the “pure”
or “transcendental I.” By following the clues within the transitive direction
of the experiential correlation, Husserl’s overall characterization of the li-
ving link of subject–world resorted to traditional schemata (the schema of
subject–object epistemological correlation, the schema of act–intentionality
in constitution, the schema of egoity in the analysis of the living temporal
presence, and the schema of personal identity for transcendental subjecti-
vity).3 In so doing, Husserl’s descriptions tended towards an inversion of
the ordo essendi with the ordo cognoscendi resulting in the determination of
the overall antecedency of subject with respect to validity.4 Heidegger’s
radicalization of the notion of “understanding” (Verstehen) following the
tradition of hermeneutics was meant to represent a radical remedy to the
tendencies of Husserlian egology, his theory of intuition, and the demand of
a presuppositionless stance, by emphasizing the presence of a non–thematic
understanding operative at the onset of every dealing with reality.
    The present issue of TROPOS intends to focus on the hermeneutic
variation of, and original contribution to, the phenomenological motive
following the specific thematic thread oVered by the concepts of “intui-
tion” and “understanding.” These concepts appear in fact to be qualifying
terms in the context of the general confrontation between the traditions
of phenomenology and contemporary hermeneutic philosophy. The task
that the present issue sets itself is therefore that of exploring the semantic
possibilities of “intuition” and “understanding” within and between the con-

    3. See Bruzina, Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink, p. 370.
    4. Bruzina Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink, p. 328.
                                                             Introduction    7


frontation/collaboration of various authors coming from the two influential
philosophical traditions of the last century.
    The interrogation is inaugurated by Erwin Sonderegger’s comprehensive
essay on non–empirical foundations of knowledge and understanding (Nichtem-
pirische Begründungen von Wissen und Verstehen). This contribution tackles
the notion of understanding by oVering a clear survey of historical positions
about the question of the beginning of understanding as access to reality.
With reference to Husserl’s “transcendental ego” and to the hermeneutic
notion of “totality” (das Ganze), Sonderegger presents both phenomeno-
logy and hermeneutics as non–empirical theories of understanding, i.e., as
theories that overcome the empirical assumption of understanding as result
of a “chain” of events, and that instead elaborate a notion of understanding
as “background” (Hintergrund) or “ground” (Boden). In a compelling series
of remarks, Sonderegger stresses, however, the radical mundane situation
of any beginning understanding. This is done by elaborating an original
theory of Meingungswelten that seems to constitute an eVective bridge bet-
ween the phenomenological idea of the primordial intuition of a world
(Urdoxa) and the hermeneutical conception of the eVectivity of prejudices
in understanding (Sonderegger’s Meinungen). This approach might prove
especially helpful in order to rethink the Western notion of “rationalism”
and its upshots (e.g., the universal constituting subject or the community of
rational minds) in a historical perspective. The question of the basic features
involved in the origin of knowledge is further thematized in a historical per-
spective by Maja Soboleva (Plato, Hermeneutics, and Knowledge) and Jan–Ivar
Lindén (Apperception and Experience. Some Ontological Perspectives). Soboleva
provides evidence for locating the origin of the contemporary hermeneutic
notion of understanding in Plato’s notion of doxazein, as articulated oblique-
ly in the Theaetetus, a dialogue which many have (wrongly, as the author
persuasively shows) described as aporetic. The notion of “intellectual percep-
tion” (doxazein) as “a meaningful reference to phenomena that precedes the
judgment and enables it” (Soboleva) is thus argued to establish the historical
antecedent of the rehabilitation of practical philosophy in the tradition of
contemporary hermeneutics. Soboleva’s interpretation of Plato’s doxazein
not as “judgment” but as a form of direct contact with reality however ap-
pears to oVer the insight for a valuable integration of the sense of the living
“seeing–as” that philosophical hermeneutics attempts to articulate. This
approach appears to be particularly eVective as it shows the possibility, on
conceptual grounds, to detach the hermeneutic conception of Verstehen as
vor–urteilhaft from its almost exclusive reference to the logos and the lingui-
stic sense, as this seems to be the tendency of Gadamer’s conception of the
“understanding.” Jan–Ivar Lindén eVectively situates an incisive interroga-
tion of the role played by apperception in experience and understanding in
8     Introduction


the context of historical debates surrounding key epistemological categories,
such as sensation, perception, imagination, and apperception. With recourse
to Aristotle’s psychology and its putative influence on the Leibnizian notion
of “small perceptions” (les petites perceptions), Lindén shows the possibility
to elaborate a conception of conditions of possibility that is based on the
distinction between “perception” and “apperception,” thereby opening up
the possibility of a “transcendental” philosophy outside of the Cartesian
tradition of a philosophy of consciousness. The essays by Justin L. Harmon
(Interpretation from the Ground Up: Luigi Pareyson’s Hermeneutics of Inexhausti-
bility and its Implications for Moral Ontology), W. Clark Wolf (Analogy as a Mode
of Intuitive Understanding in Ricoeur), and M.A.C. Jennings (De–fusing the Ho-
rizons? Content Analysis and Hermeneutics) explore possibilities of integration
of the features of “intuition” and “understanding” through the lens of the
major representatives of philosophical hermeneutics in Europe: Luigi Parey-
son, Paul Ricoeur, and Hans–Georg Gadamer. Harmon develops a detailed
account of an object–oriented hermeneutics with reference to the work of
Luigi Pareyson. Harmon’s contribution presents Pareyson’s “hermeneutic
of inexhaustibility” as a particularly eVective way “to preserve the diYculty
of relationality,” most notably over against anti–correlationist and new realist
positions. With reference to what Harmon calls “the unfathomable infinity
of the object,” he shows how Pareyson develops an ontology with ethical
underpinnings that, however, is diVerent from Hans–Georg Gadamer’s re-
habilitation of practical philosophy in that it does not reduce all “experience”
(Erfaruhng) as an experience of the “Thou” to a moral phenomenon that is
totally mediated through language. Instead Pareyson’s aesthetic theory, by
focusing on the “sensuous voice of the matter” (Harmon) and by returning
the intuitional dimension of the senses, which are especially highlighted
in the experience of artistic performance, elaborates an ontological con-
ception of interpretation as “originary opening to reality” in which not
only the eVectuality of historical aspects but where also geographical aspects
(embodiment in place) are in play. Pareyson’s notion of “natural intentio-
nality” emerges thus as particularly rich for establishing lines of dialogue
with the phenomenological tradition. Wolf presents Paul Ricoeur’s unique
contribution to the debates surrounding the respective roles of intuition
and discursivity in hermeneutic philosophy. Ricoeur’s theory of “analogy”
and his conception of “metaphor” are the means by which Wolf illustrates
the possibility of overcoming the Kantian opposition between intuitive
and discursive understanding. By reference to the hermeneutical “seeing
as,” Wolf points to the way in which Ricoeur’s analogical hermeneutics
elaborates the notion of “discursive intuition” or “intuitive understanding,”
i.e., a form of intuition arising out of a discursive and constructive process.
By tracing the genealogy of the notion of “intuitive understanding” back
                                                             Introduction    9


to Kant’s critical philosophy and then focusing on Goethe’s elaboration of
the notion of an “intuitive perception,” Wolf sheds light on the historical
antecedents constituting the conceptual framework for Ricoeur’s recasting
of the idea of intuitive understanding. This seems especially important in
order to make sense of Ricoeur’s account of “metaphor.” Goethe’s notion
of an “eye of the mind” and Kant’s “productive imagination” are set here
in a productive dialogue that is useful for a clarification of the relationship
between verbal meaning and articulation and perceptual sense in Ricoeur’s
thought. Jennings’ contribution then open a confrontation with the theory
of “content analysis” that proves particularly relevant in the growing context
of practices of digitalization. Jennings refers to Hans–Georg Gadamer, Paul
Ricoeur, and Max Weber to disclose the ineluctable hermeneutic basis of
any “content analysis,” however deductive or use–oriented the method may
be. What emerges from Jennings’ account is that “content analysis” repre-
sents a form of “technization” of the meaning of a text in that it reduces
any textual meaning to its “context of use” or the discourse with which
one attempts to approach a text (such as research questions, methodology,
etc.), thereby operating a “de–fusion of horizons” between the horizon of
the reader and that of the text. Emmanuel Alloa (“Laddove c’è prova, non c’è
testimonianza”. Le aporie del testimone secondo Jacques Derrida) and Alessio
Rotundo (The Cogito in Nature and History: Phenomenological and Hermeneuti-
cal Aspects) address the question of “intuition” and “understanding” from
the standpoint of the phenomenological tradition with special reference to
Derrida’s and Merleau–Ponty’s variations on the phenomenological motive
of “intuition.” In Alloa’s essay, the figure of the “witness” and the “grammar
of the witness” developed by Jacques Derrida open up the possibility to
rethink the phenomenological primacy of the notion of “evidence.” The
paradoxical figure of the witness in fact calls into question the Husserlian
paradigm of linguistic expression as founded upon perceptual evidence (e.g.,
Ideas I, § 66), since with the witness we are forced to realize a gap between
linguistic presence and the absence of a direct perceptual experience. By
means of the medial structure articulated by Derrida’s notion of remedia-
tion, Alloa highlights the final aporetic nature of any witnessing experience.
The witness in fact in virtue of her mediating role with respect to a direct
living experience aims at annulling such mediacy in order to let emerge
the sensible immediacy of an absent event. Rotundo’s contribution shows
the development within the phenomenological tradition of the attempt to
recover the natural aspect of pre–reflective life as a recovery of the identity
between “sensible” and “sensing” of Aristotelian descent, and as a way to
regain an understanding of the “intuition” involved in this identity and
of its “immediate” character. This is what Merleau–Ponty sets out to do
in the Phenomenology of Perception. The study of the “lived” or “perceived
10    Introduction


world” in the Phenomenology of Perception, in spite of Merleau–Ponty’s later
critical qualifications regarding its success, are presented as being already an
explicit working back from reflective explicit self–consciousness through a
phenomenology of living corporeality that focuses on the primacy of sense
as the grounding mode of appearance and as a gestaltic whole whereby
appearance is ultimately integrative as the sensing of a sensible in perceptual
experience.
    These contributions should be considered a type of thematic map of
orientation around the key–themes of “intuition” and “understanding”
within the conceptual frameworks opened by phenomenology and herme-
neutics. The lines of focus presented in this volume should serve therefore
as the point of departure for a further Selbstbesinnung about the scope of
“intuition” and “understanding” beyond their respective role in phenomeno-
logy or in hermeneutics, or even in a complementing “coupling” of them
in order to make up for their respective deficiencies when taken in isolation
from each other that would solve all residual issues. Instead the further ela-
boration of the phenomenological and hermeneutical features of “intuition”
and “understanding” for articulating the level of pre–reflective experience
should “work back” on questioning the methodological demands on the
level of final philosophical explication that is the striving of both traditions
as enterprises that push philosophy to its limits.
