Synopses & Reviews
My dissertation provides a systematic account of the horizon-problematic in Husserl's phenomenology, starting with the Logische Untersuchungen (1900-1901) and ending with the Krisis (1937). While in post-Husserlian traditions, the privileging of the question of the progressive fusion of horizons delegitimizes the question of their genesis, my dissertation shows that Husserl's central contribution to the horizon-problematic consists in obtaining a standpoint that discloses not only the emergence, but also the perpetual reconfigurations of the horizons. I contend that by evading the bond that ties the horizon-problematic to the question of its origins, our understanding of the horizon remains fractional, and, more importantly, our understanding of subjectivity remains imprecise and distorted. I argue that the question of the origins of the horizon lends itself to a threefold interpretation. Accordingly, my dissertation is divided into three parts. Part I addresses the origins of the horizon as a philosophical notion and a philosophical theme. I argue that Husserl is the philosopher who introduced this concept into the philosophical vocabulary and who transformed its phenomenality into a problem of central philosophical significance. Part II focuses on the origins of the horizon as a structure of lived-experience . By genetically thematizing the horizon, this part discloses the scope and the limits that pertain to phenomenology's engagement in the origins of the horizons of subjectivity. Part III addresses the world-horizon, identified by Husserl as the rudimentary figure of the horizon. This part distinguishes between three different senses of the world-horizon and shows how the horizons of subjectivity are limited by the manifestation of nascent alterity. My analysis is geared toward the realization that the horizon is a figure of intentionality, which ineradicably binds subjectivity to the world. Therefore, the notion of subjectivity implicated in the horizon-problematic is neither what precedes experience by formally conditioning it, nor what is thrown onto the ground of experience. Husserl's trenchant contribution to our self-understanding consists in thematizing subjectivity in terms of concrete experience . Subjectivity thereby proves to be a progressive accrual of new horizons of sense; it proves to be a store of sedimented accomplishments from which things and the world derive their sense-configurations.