Subject and Passivity in Husserl and Deleuze: A Debate around the Contemporary Reception of Kant´s Doctrine of Productive Imagination

ANDRÉS MIGUEL OSSWALD

Deleuze at the End of the World. Latin American Perspectives

Rowman & Littlefield

Año: 2020; p. 129 - 143

Although Edmund Husserl´s and Gilles Deleuze´s theories onpassivity are mostly independents, both philosophers share a commonbackground: they find in Emmanuel Kant not only the most relevantinfluence for their own thought on this matter but also a designatedtarget for their criticism. It is very unlikely that Deleuze wasaware of the publication in 1966 of Analysen zur PassivenSynthesis and therefore that the 11th volume of Husserlianahas been a major source, if anyat all, for the elaboration of Difference and Repetition,appeared in France two years later. In general terms, Husserl doesnot play there a major role; heis onlymentioned sporadicallyregarding other issues relating foremost to the LogicalInvestigation´speriod1. By contrast, Husserlis a moreprominent reference in Logicof Sense, published in 1969. Butin that work Deleuze tends topresents Husserlian phenomenologyas an eminent representative of contemporary subjectivism and thus asone ofhis conceptual opponent. However-and despitethe relative distance between the two philosophers- I believe thatthey share a common intention to overcome the rigid oppositionbetween synthesis and passivity inherited from the Kantianphilosophy. In such a context, Ipropose to analyses, in first place, the critique interpretation thatboth philosophers made on the role that imagination plays in theCritiqueof Pure Reason. Inthissense,I claim that the main hermeneutic difference has to be found, on theone hand, in the strongdistinction that Deleuze traces -followingKant-between sensibility and understanding inhis theory of passive synthesisand, on the other hand, the Husserlian readingthat tends to blursuch rigiddifference between the faculties. In terms of thedistinction between activity and passivity, consequently,theDeleuzian interpretation separatestheorders, thatHusserl thinks as non-independent parts of a continuum (1. Synthesisof imagination). Ageneral consequence for a theory of the subject could be drawn fromthe foregoing: if activity and passivity are heterogeneous realms,the subject has to be necessarily divided; if it is not the case, asubject entailsa unity whichextendswithout a break between passivity and activity, The first option-that Deleuze seems to make his one-canbe traceddownin the so-called `paradox of inner sense´ (2.Self-knowledge).Thesecond alternative is embraced by Husserl, who claims that passivesyntheses-in particular, the synthesis of immanent time- area condition of possibility for the unity of subjectivity and, bydoing so, a general condition for activity (3. Self-appearance).Furthermore, the debatearound the subjective unity and the character of the relationshipbetween activity and passivity implies also consequences fortranscendental philosophy. If the subject is unrestricted identifiedwith active processes-a Cartesian Ego- andwith the vague concept of `person´, then it has to be conceived inmetaphysical terms as an `effect´ of a transcendental field definedby the notes of passivity, a-subjectivity, neutrality andproductive. Thecontinuity between active and passive processes, by contrast, allowsto think that the Ego is alsoa founded level ofsubjectivity butby virtue of passivesynthesesthat are subjectivesas well (4. Transcendentalphilosophy and subjectivity).p.sdfootnote { margin-left: 0.6cm; text-indent: -0.6cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 100%; background: transparent }p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; background: transparent }a:link { color: #000080; so-language: zxx; text-decoration: underline }a.sdfootnoteanc { font-size: 57% }