Heidegger, Martin

Heidegger, Martin. “The Age of the World Picture”. In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. NewYork: Harper & Row, 1977.

The modern age is defined, according to Heidegger by a set of phenomena that take part in the particular experiencing of this age and differentiate it from medieval age and classical (ancient) times: science, technology, art as perceived through subjective judgment, the invention of culture, and the loss of the religious experience of god. The one phenomena he chooses to focus on in his phenomenological observation is science as the foundation for the apprehension of the other phenomena of the modern age.

Heidegger claims that science in the modern age is essentially defined through research. One of the essences of research is defined by the exactitude of the science. He takes physics as an example, and shows that certain procedures and knowledge that make for the research as a whole rely on the exactitude of basic mathematical calculations of spatio-temporal principles. In contrast, science that deal with living things (social science and humanities) must not be exact.

Methodology, the second essence of research, is the means through which facts can be represented and clearly explained. This explanation is achieved through investigation that in the natural sciences means experimenting. At the essence of an experiment lies the a hypothesis that needs to be confirmed or disproved. This hypothesis is built into the procedures that, within an institutionalized science, become a tool to justify the specific world view developed by the specific science. Thus the sciences secure the objectivity and objectifying of whatever they research – be it physical phenomena or history. This objectifying is done through a specific representation of the thing at hand, which cannot be misinterpreted. This kind of representation is at the essence of the methodology of research and, therefore, of science. This was originally set in the writings of Descartes and permeates through all of modern science.

Since this way of representation is at the essence of modern science, and modern science is the fundamental determinate of the modern age, the very essence of the modern age lies in representation.

This representation establishes the interplay of subject and object as its core and creates the world picture. This picture is not an image of the world, but it is the world as perceive and apprehended wholly by “Man” [sic] as subject. Humans are also represented in the world, as part of the world; but, in decisively positioning themselves within the world picture, and in front of it, humans take part in determining their relationships with its objects. Thus, humans as subjects to which the world is represented as subjective experience takes precedence over other positioning of humanity.

“The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as picture. The word “picture” now means the structured image that is the creature of man's [sic] producing which represents and sets before. In such producing man contends for the position in which he can be that particular being who gives the measure and draws up the guidelines for everything that is. Because this position secures, organizes and articulate itself as a world view , the modern relationship to that which is, is one that becomes, in its decisive unfolding, a confrontation of world views.” (134)

Heidegger, Martin

Heidegger, Martin. “The Fundamental Discoveries of Phenomenology, its Principle, and the Clarification of its Name.” In Moran, Dermot and Timothy Mooney (eds.) The Phenomenology Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002.

This chapter is based on a lecture Heidegger delivered in 1925 in which he explicates phenomenology’s main concepts, specifically as a response to critique from some of his contemporary philosophers. As part of his attempt to clarify the basic notions used in phenomenology, his explanation focuses on three principle terms – intentionality, categorical intuition and the original sense of the a priori (Heidegger explenation of the third is not included in this edition of he lecture). He particularly tries to clarify how Husserl’s phenomenology and use of these terms differs from the way they were used by Brentano, who originally established them as part of his psychological theories.

Intentionality, according to Heidegger, is the direct and unmediated perceptual contact of our body/self with objects in the world. He specifically stresses that intentionality is not an active part of the psychic or of the representation of things in the world, but rather a structural principle of perception that connects with the object that is perceived as such. It is not, however, an independent factor that connects one’s being with the world to enable experience and is thus between them; it is, in a sense, what experience is or its direction (broadly speaking). Through intentionality we come in contact with the un-interpreted presence of things.

Heidegger goes on to show how knowledge is built out of representation of things in the world, which is the given-ness of things to perception. When perceiving a chair, for example, we may become aware of how hard its surface is. This intentionality presents the hardness of the chair to us as a factual aspect of the chair. Through such intentionalities we come to know the world and the world is present to us. Representation, moreover, is how reality itself is perceived through intentionality. It is always a re-presentation of something that is real and that exists. There is no separation here between what is being perceived, its perception and its representation. They are all intentionally connected. Appearances, therefore, are real things in the world and not psychic or mental phenomena.

There are, however, various kinds of intentionality. “Empty intending”, for example, is the representation of things that are not present here and now. Yet, it is still the intending of real things. For instance, through remembering we recall a perceptual experience of an existing thing. When an empty intentionality is fulfilled, when the perception of an object we imagined is confronted with the perception of the object when it is present, an evidential truth is created. The apprehension of the present object that is physically there is called intuition. The disclosure of truth can only occur through intuition. Truth in its most basic form arises when a presumed reality (through empty intentionality) is identical to its intuited reality. The basis of truth, then, is in being in touch with things in the world as a perceptual experience. Knowing the truth, therefore, means living in the truth. From this sense of truth comes truth that is the act of proving, the intentionality towards truth that is embedded in knowledge. The truth that arises as a result of these two forms of truth—that are, in fact, always intertwined—is the factual basis of being in the world.

Husserl, Edmund

"Material Things in their Relation to the Aesthetic Body." In Don, Welton (ed.) The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999: 11-23

Husserl focuses on the object-subject relationality and establishes the conditions through which phenomenological observation enables an objective stance for a given subject. Objectivity, according to him, can only arise within a subjective standpoint. Phenomenological observation, thus, allows a specific body/subject a view onto the truth of objects in the world. This truth is always in relation to one’s own body as the “zero point of orientation” (p. 12) in the “normal perceptual conditions” (p. 14). He establishes the body’s senses and ability to move freely as what constitute the apprehension of spatial world for the body/subject even as it exists within the world. According to him, things in the world appear to us in two interwoven ways: the first consists of the thingly parts of things, actual pieces of the whole that can each be considered a thing in itself; the second consists of aspects that cannot exist separately from the whole, for example, color, texture, or the sequence of appearances of things through time that constitute the causality of things in the world.

Husserl makes a distinction between the Natural Attitude, in which we experience and identify the world and things as they are given to us, and the (phenomenological) Subjective Attitude, in which the “given-ness” of things can be scrutinized through the spatio-temporal relation to the subject/body. Only in the second attitude, he claims, can observation become objective for the subjective body in relation to the things observed and/in the world.

“The Constitution of Psychic Reality through the Body.” In Don, Welton (ed.) The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999: 23-38.

Here Husserl starts off by following the sense of touch to demonstrate its doubleness: when a hand touches an object it perceives the tactility of surface of the object as well as its own tactility. In this sense, the touching body knows itself through touching things in the world. This double sense of touch is complicated by the ability of the body to move towards touching and as it touches, thus taking an active role in the sensing process. Once again the body perceives itself through its intentionality towards things in the world.

Husserl goes on to discuss the difference between the senses, particularly between vision and touch. From this distinction he concludes that it is through touching that the body knows itself and becomes a body; that is, the hand exists through the perception of touching and being touched as well as to the ability to move freely as the manifestation of the subject’s free will. It is, then, present to us quite differently than all other presences in the world. We apprehend it as a real thing in the world through its integration with the causal nexus of things in the world. It is in this relationality that the self is constituted. Psychic reality exists, therefore, only through the perceived reality of the world, in the nexus of spatial and causal-temporal perception of the world and of things in the world in relation to one’s body/self as the subjective center of this process.

Additional Notes

Husserl’s language is not easily understood and deciphered. Many of the terms he uses may appear to have a counterintuitive meaning in the way he uses them. Intentionality, for example, has nothing to do with conscious decision that the word intention connotes. It is the ability to perceive, the channel through which perception operates and which links our body to the “thingly-world”. In order to, once and for all, grasp the full significance of his work I turned to other sources for clarification. I read Donn Welton’s chapter “Soft, Smooth Hands: Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Lived-Body.” (in Welton, 38-56). I also turned to Introduction to Phenomenology by Robert Sokolowski (New York: Cambridge UP, 2000) which delineates the fundamental ideas of phenomenology methodically and in simple language.

One of the things that strikes me while reading Husserl is the feeling that he is trying to escape Decartes' assumptions about our being in the world while being trapped in a Cartesian language. For example, he repeatedly mentions the body and the ego: the first as the material extension of the second. Thus, Husserl's attempt to go against Cartesian duality requires the use of a language that reinforces that duality. If Body is extension of Ego then there is an Ego separate from the Body. Though he tries to escape this paradox, it seems to be within the confines of Cartesian Language.

Reading timeline

September – foundation

Heidegger, Martin

Husserl, Edmund

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice

Wilshire Bruce

October – Phenomenology and Theatre

States, Bert O.

Garner, Stanton B. Jr.

Rayner, Alice

Zarrilli, Phillip B.

November – Beyond Theatre

Farleigh, Sondra.

Jones, Amelia.

Young, Iris Marion.

Reading course sylabus

Graduate Program in Theatre Studies

Course Number: THST 6500A 3.0

Term: Fall

Credits: 3

Start Date/Completion Date: Sep. 1^st/Dec 1^st , 2008

Professor: Laura Levin

Student: Ofer Ravid

1. Proposed Course Title: Phenomenology and Theatre

2. Description: In recent years phenomenology has increasingly become an important approach in the study and analysis of theatre and performance. This course will serve as a platform to explore phenomenology and the ways in which it is used in theatre research. The first part of the course will focus on the core writings of some of the most important phenomenological theorists—namely Husserl, Heideger, and Merleau-Ponty. The second part of the course will explore the way phenomenology has been used in theatre and performance studies.

3. Previous courses taken: THST 6100 Methods of Research, THST 6200 Canadian Theatre History, THST 5020 Performance and Culture, THST 5021 Theories of Praxis, THST 6500 Independent Study: Theories of Embodiment in Performance

4. Future courses you plan to take: This course completes my credits requirement.

5. Objective: Phenomenology is the main theoretical methodology I will use in my dissertation research. There is currently no course offered in phenomenology and theatre. This course will deepen my understanding of phenomenology as a theory in itself and, more specifically, as an approach for research in theatre and performance studies. In addition, it will assist me in preparing for my comprehensive exam as well as for my research.

6. Assignment breakdown:

Assignment Title Percent of Grade

Blog entries 40%

Oral Presentations 20%

Final paper 40%

7. Assignment description:

The blog entry for each one of the readings will consist of: a critical analysis of the reading, its context within larger critical arguments, its theoretical implications and key passages from the reading.

Oral Presentations will be delivered by phone at the end of each month. The presentations will synthesize readings and reflect on their relation to the larger dissertation project.

The final paper will be an extensive annotated bibliography. Each annotation will be at least 500 words in length, and the bibliography will be 20-25 pages.

8. Bibliography

Farleigh, Sondra. “A Vulnerable Glance: Seeing Dance through Phenomenology.” Dance Research Journal, 23.1, (1991): 11-16.

Garner, Stanton B. Jr. Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1994.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Age of the World Picture”. In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. NewYork: Harper & Row, 1977.

---. “The Fundamental Discoveries of Phenomenology, its Principle, and the Clarification of its Name.” In Moran, Dermot and Timothy Mooney eds. The Phenomenology Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Husserl, Edmund. “Material Things in Their Relation to the Aesthetic Body.” And “The Constitution of Psychic Reality through the Body.” In Don, Welton (ed.) The Body: Classic and Conte,porary Readings. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

Jones, Amelia. Body/Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.

---. The Visible and the Invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1968

Moran, Dermot and Timothy Mooney eds. The Phenomenology Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Rayner, Alice. Ghosts: Death's Double and the Phenomena of Theatre. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 2006.

States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater. Berkeley: U. of California P., 1985.

---. “The Phenomenological Attitude.” Critical Theory and Performance. Eds. Reinalt, Janelle G. and Joseph Roach, Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan P., 1992: 369-379.

Wilshire, Bruce. Role Playing and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.

Young, Iris Marion. On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays. New York: Oxford UP, 2005.

Zarrilli, Phillip B. "Toward a Phenomenological Model of the Actor's Embodied Modes of Experience." Theatre Journal 56.4 (2004): 653-66.

9. Frequency of meeting with course supervisor: Most communication will be through the blog with weekly entries and responses on each of the readings accompanied by email. Live discussions and oral presentations will take place at the end of each month by phone.