Secondary passivity

pp. 43-66

in: Victor Biceaga, The concept of passivity in Husserl's phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

One of the most important tasks of Husserlian phenomenology is that of explaining how consciousness achieves objective evidence through the fusion of distinct profiles of the same object. Neither the temporal schema of impressions, retentions and protentions nor the production of hyletic configurations by way of similarity and contrast offers conceptual tools equal to this task. If a full understanding of objective self-givenness is to be obtained, then the focus of the analyses must shift from pre-active or originary passivity to post-active or secondary passivity.¹ In this chapter, I will show that the accomplishment of the "synthesis of coinciding that forms identity" (APS 111, 257) relies in an essential way on secondary passivity.