The world-horizon as the wherefrom of experience

pp. 177-193

in: Saulius Geniusas, The origins of the horizon in Husserl's phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2012

Abstract

In this chapter I argue that (1) Husserl's notion of the world-horizon is to be conceived as the ultimate origin from which all sense-formations spring, that (2) the notion of the world-horizon can be understood as the wherefrom, wherein, and the whereto of experience, and that (3) the world-horizon conceived as the wherefrom of experience constitutes the most original figure of the world-horizon. I argue that in its most rudimentary manifestation, the world-horizon is given as non-objective, non-thematic, and non-intuitive, yet despite such a threefold negative qualification, one is in full right to speak of the givenness of the world-horizon. This realization motivates one to give up the assumption that the horizon as a phenomenological concept can be conceived on the basis of the background/foreground schema.