Bodily Protentionality

Elizabeth A. Behnke

Published online: 28 May 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract This investigation explores the methodological implications of choosing

an unusual example for phenomenological description (here, a bodily awareness

practice allowing spontaneous bodily shifts to occur at the leading edge of the living

present); for example, the matters themselves are not pregiven, but must first be

brought into view. Only after preliminary clarifications not only of the practice

concerned, but also of the very notions of the ‘‘body’’ and of ‘‘protentionality’’ is it

possible to provide both static and genetic descriptions of the phenomena in

question, leading to concluding meditations on the differences between an ‘‘inte-

grating’’ consciousness engaged in a project of knowing and an ‘‘improvisational’’

consciousness open to radical transformation. In the end, however, the Urzeitigungin which what is protended is simply ‘‘more time’’ holds good as the invariant

governing the deep structure of both of these styles of consciousness.

1 What is at Stake in the Investigation

When we are engaged in Husserlian phenomenological practice1—adopting the

appropriate attitudes and deploying Husserlian methods in the description and

analysis of the ‘‘phenomena themselves’’ (Hua II, p. 60; Hua XVI, p. 9; Hua VI,

E. A. Behnke (&)

Study Project in Phenomenology of the Body, P.O. Box 66, Ferndale, WA 98248, USA

e-mail: sppb@openaccess.org

1 As Stroker (1997, p. 11) points out, it is not enough to know ‘‘about’’ such distinctive

phenomenological methods as transcendental and eidetic reduction: ‘‘Rather, doing phenomenology is

itself the phenomenological project proper’’ (see also, e.g., Van de Pitte 1988, pp. 31ff.), and this is the

aim of the present essay as well as of my other ‘‘experiments in phenomenological practice’’ (see, e.g.,

Behnke 2007). An earlier form of this essay was presented at the 2005 meeting of the Husserl Circle in

Dublin, and I thank participants for their comments and questions.

123

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

DOI 10.1007/s10743-009-9060-z

p. 123)2—our phenomenological findings will necessarily depend upon the

phenomena we choose to investigate, guided by the examples we take as leading

clues. And our choices will depend in turn upon the larger context of motivation

sustaining our research.3 All this seems almost too obvious to mention. Yet in the

course of actually putting phenomenological methods into practice on certain themes

rather than others, we are not only elucidating these matters, but also simultaneously

honing or fine-tuning the very methods we are using (and hence the methodological

reflections based on them), as well as developing and enriching the vocabulary and

the working notions that define Husserlian phenomenological practice and distin-

guish it from other endeavors. On the other hand, the methods already at our disposal

as we set about our task, along with the key concepts and distinctions that inform our

practice, are acquisitions bearing their own genetic history and predelineating, in and

of themselves, a certain style of further work within a certain horizon of interests (cf.

Hua XXXIV, pp. 324f.). This is, in part, what allows Husserlian phenomenological

practice to function as a nexus of inherited methods and results that the open,

generative community of researchers can refine, build upon, and correct, producing a

coherent (and cumulative) historical tradition.4

When we choose an unfamiliar phenomenon or style of experience as a theme for

phenomenological investigation, however, we may find that there is a greater

tendency for our working tools to change shape in our hands, as it were, while we

work, and we may find ourselves compelled—by the very matters we are

investigating—to appropriate familiar phenomenological notions in a significantly

different way: the choice of a starting point for phenomenological description not

only determines the findings we come up with, but may also motivate us to reflect

on the presuppositions of our practice. This paper accordingly has a double task. I

will not only be reporting some of the research results of my Husserlian

phenomenological meditations on the theme of bodily protentionality, but will also

be inviting the reader to walk with me along the paths that have led to these results.5

2 For a critical appreciation of the general program of a turn to the ‘‘things’’ or ‘‘matters’’ themselves, cf.

Zirion (2006).3 See, e.g., Husserl’s diary entry for 25 September 1906, which situates various specific projects within

the context of a thoroughgoing critique of reason (Hua XXIV, pp. 445ff.); cf. Stroker (1997, p. 11), on

Husserlian phenomenology as foundational theory of science.4 To make sense of this claim in light of the diversity of ‘‘phenomenologies’’ within the

phenomenological tradition in a broad sense, it is helpful to recall the distinction that Husserl repeatedly

makes between ‘‘phenomenology’’ and ‘‘phenomenological philosophy’’—see, e.g., not only the title of

the Ideen, but the distinction between ‘‘phenomenology’’ and ‘‘phenomenologically founded philosophy’’

(and the claim that phenomenology is a field of rigorous scientific research whose results are fruitful both

for philosophy and for other sciences—cf. also Hua XIX/1, pp. 6f.) in the foreword to the inaugural issue

of the Jahrbuch (Hua XXV, pp. 63f.), as well as the distinction in the title of the London lectures between

‘‘phenomenological method’’ and ‘‘phenomenological philosophy’’ (Hua XXXV, p. 311); see also

Aguirre (1970, pp. 23ff.). The present project is concerned with what happens when we put Husserlian

phenomenological methods into practice for ourselves, using them to investigate particular themes, rather

than with specifically philosophical interpretations (including Husserl’s own self-interpretations) of either

the methods or the findings produced by these methods.5 Husserl not only frequently uses the metaphor of a path or way (Weg), as in the issue of various ‘‘ways’’

to the reduction, but emphasizes that we must actually take these paths for them to be fruitful (see,

e.g., Hua XXIV, p. 445; Hua XXXIV, p. 291; Hua IV, p. 123).

186 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

In other words, I want to thematize one way (not the only way) of actually doing

Husserlian phenomenological description, first of all by providing a rather extensive

set of preliminary reflections (including clarifications both of the notion of the

‘‘bodily’’ and of the notion of ‘‘protentionality’’) before turning to the descriptive

findings per se. Hence I will be concerned not only with the phenomenological

critique of presuppositions—making no use of inherited assumptions that have not

received a genuinely phenomenological realization6—but also with the possibility

of accepting and drawing upon previous phenomenological work that has indeed

been tested against the touchstone of Evidenz, building upon such work while

expanding it, where necessary, in new directions. In a sense, what I ultimately want

to bring into view is precisely how I have brought into view the phenomenon I am

working with in this investigation, for the ‘‘matters themselves’’ are not necessarily

standing around waiting to be seen and described,7 but are the correlates of certain

performances carried out within certain attitudes under the sway of certain aims,

assumptions, and acceptances, involving certain modes of attention and interest, and

so on8—all of which can be thematized as part of the phenomenology of

phenomenology.9

In what follows, then, I will first clarify what sense of ‘‘embodiment’’ is at stake

in the present research project (Sect. 2). Next I will briefly describe a particular—

and perhaps unfamiliar—style of bodily awareness and comportment that can serve

as a leading clue for an investigation of bodily protentionality (Sect. 3). After

considering various ways in which the key phenomenological notion of protention

can be understood (Sect. 4), I will present some of the main descriptive findings of

this investigation (Sect. 5). Finally, I will turn to the question of the broader

research project within which the phenomenological investigation of specific

6 ‘‘Eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung, die ernstlichen Anspruch auf Wissenschaftlichkeit erhebt,

muß, wie man schon oft betont hat, dem Prinzip der Voraussetzungslosigkeit genugen. Das Prinzip kann

aber unseres Erachtens nicht mehr besagen wollen als den strengen Ausschluß aller Aussagen

[Annahmen], die nicht phanomenologisch voll und ganz realisiert werden konnen’’—Hua XIX/1, p. 24

(cf. 28f.). For a 1930 echo of this key passage from the Logische Untersuchungen, cf. Hua XXXIV, p.

176: ‘‘Ich will absolut ‘vorurteilslos’ vorgehen, d. h. jedwede Vormeinung, jedwede Mitmeinung, die erst

durch eine kunftige Schau bewahrt werden musste, ausschließen’’ (and see also Hua XXXIV, p. 66;

Behnke, in press, a).7 This is emphasized in, e.g., Waldenfels (1992, p. 17). Cf. Hua III/1, p. 135: ‘‘Nicht liegt das neue Feld

so ausgebreitet vor unserem Blicke mit Fullen abgehobener Gegebenheiten, daß wir einfach zugreifen

und der Moglichkeit sicher sein konnten, sie zu Objekten einer Wissenschaft zu machen, geschweige

denn sicher der Methode, nach der hierbei vorzugehen ware.’’ For Husserl (Hua Mat IV, pp. 73f.), this

gives the method of phenomenological reduction an entirely different status from the methods used in

existing sciences of whatever sort: ‘‘In allen solchen Wissenschaften sind die Gebiete durch Erfahrung

oder durch eidetische Intuition vorgegeben, und ‘Methode’ ist der Titel fur technische Veranstaltungen,

die sich fur eine theoretische Bearbeitung des jeweiligen Gebietes als nutzliche Mittel erweisen lassen. In

unserem Fall aber, in dem der Phanomenologie, ist gerade das Gebiet nicht vorgegeben, und es bedarf

allererst der Methode, um dasselbe, um das reine Bewusstsein und seine reinen Phanomene in den

theoretischen Blick zu bringen …’’ (Hua Mat IV, p. 74).8 Cf., e.g., Stroker (1997, pp. 25ff., 111ff., 265).9 The present essay can only offer a modest and local contribution to the lofty goal of methodological

self-responsibility that Husserl expects of us (cf., e.g., Hua III/1, p. 136; Hua VIII, pp. 3, 10ff., 195ff.); cf.

also Behnke (in press, c). On broader issues pertaining to the phenomenology of phenomenology, see,

e.g., Luft (2002).

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 187

123

themes finds its place (Sect. 6), and indicate some of the implications of my own

choice of a starting point (Sect. 7).

2 The Body in Question

In my view, a fully worked out Husserlian phenomenology of the body leads to a

radical critique of the very notion of the ‘‘body.’’ Here it is not possible to present

this critique in full detail. Instead, I will briefly draw upon this work in order to

bring to light—and place in brackets—certain performances in which the ready-

made body is constituted, which will in turn allow a different dimension—the

experiential dimension to be thematized here—to emerge.10

As we might expect, a first step requires setting aside—putting out of play, making

no use of—the naturalized body as a material reality that is the object of such

positive natural sciences as anatomy, physiology, and a host of more specialized

subdisciplines. The orthodox thing to say here is that we suspend such a body—the

body as Korper—in order to thematize the body as Leib, as lived body; the turn to

experiential evidence would then involve, for instance, the ‘‘direct somatic

perception’’ that each researcher has only in the case of his/her own body (Hua V,

p. 8). And this is precisely what Husserl appeals to in the first chapter of Ideen IIIwhen he takes up the older term ‘‘somatology’’ but enriches the science it stands for,

so that such a science is now to comprise not only a ‘‘physical somatology’’ that

belongs to the broader domain of the ‘‘general science of material nature,’’ but also

an ‘‘aesthesiological’’ somatology or ‘‘somatological aesthesiology’’ (Hua V, pp.

18f.). The turn to the aesthesiological involves dealing with ‘‘a new basic form of

experience’’ (Hua V, p. 8)—with the ‘‘somatological experience’’ in which the

‘‘sensitivities’’ peculiar to living organisms are concretely felt as sensuous states of

the soma concerned (Hua V, p. 9).11 Such an aesthesiological somatology could then

10 From this it can be seen that I am not carrying out the type of investigation that simply reflects on

natural attitude experience in its own terms so as to make the tacit structures of the Lebenswelt patent.

Instead, I am proceeding within a transcendental attitude: the transcendental reduction not only enables

me to inquire into the subjective activities through which everything receives the validity and sense, the

being and being-thus, that it has for me (Hua XXXIV, pp. 279ff., especially 280, 285), and thereby to

pursue radical freedom from prejudices (Hua Mat VIII, p. 41), but also opens up transcendental

experience as a radically new style of experience (see, e.g., Hua XXXIV, pp. 291f. et passim), a new

transcendental ‘‘dimension’’ (Hua II, pp. 24f.; Hua XXXIV, p. 121; Hua VI, pp. 114, 120ff., 209) that is to

be investigated by ‘‘phenomenological-transcendental science’’ (Hua XXXIV, p. 291).11 For Husserl, it is both obvious that a basic form of experience—somatological sensitivity—

deserves a science that investigates it in its own right, and comprehensible that this science never

actually historically emerged, since it presupposes ‘‘ungewohnte phanomenologische Analysen, und

eine Abwendung des Blickes von dem in den vollen Auffassungen Gegebenen und unsere

naturlichen Blickrichtungen Bestimmenden’’ (Hua V, p. 10). However, the contemporary field of

somatics (see, e.g., Behnke 2007; in press, b) does indeed thematize somaesthetic experience.

Husserl indicates (Hua XXXIV, p. 297) that moments of self-awareness within waking life in the

natural attitude—including being practically occupied with self-education—can be transformed into

transcendental parallels once the transcendental epoche is in play, and I do indeed find that the rich

repertoire of body and movement awareness practices within the field of somatics can serve as fine

resources for work in phenomenology of the body (with, of course, any accompanying naturalistic

explanations or other mundane positings placed in brackets).

188 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

be supplemented by further accounts of the body as experienced in the personalistic

attitude, and the text that has come down to us as Ideen II offers a number of

descriptive points in this regard.12

However, this approach does not provide an appropriate mode of access to the

theme of the present investigation because it still moves within the inherited

framework of the existing sciences without tracing the regional articulations they

rest on to their roots. In other words, as ‘‘an eidetic ontology conducted within the

scope of the natural attitude,’’ regional ontology can elucidate the essential

structures pertaining to the regions of reality corresponding to the pregiven sciences,

but takes for granted the historically sedimented ‘‘divisions, distinctions, and mutual

differentiations’’ that yield a particular array of possible regions13—e.g., Ding–Leib/Seele–Geist (Kultur)—along with a particular model specifying the relationships

among these regions, here the model of a hierarchy of strata, with each level

founded on but irreducible to the next lower level.14 Thus, for example, the human

being is categorized as a psychophysical reality because our aesthesiological

sensitivities distinguish the type of entity termed a lived body from the region of

sheerly physical things,15 while such a body has in turn ‘‘the position of a reality

founding the psyche’’ (Hua V, p. 14). To put it another way, despite the decisive

importance of Ideen II and III for the development of a phenomenology of the body,

the body in question in these works (and in many other texts by Husserl) still seems

to stand under the sway of a presupposition that Husserl eventually does explicitly

identify as a presupposition: namely, the psychophysical apperception per se, which

is not simply to be naively accepted in its ongoing efficacy, but must be retrieved

from its anonymity and investigated in its own right as an achievement of

constituting transcendental subjectivity (see, e.g., Hua XXXIV, pp. 398f.; cf. 299f.).

One important context in which Husserl himself thematizes the efficacy of the

psychophysical apperception is that of the mundanization of transcendental

subjectivity as a ‘‘human being,’’16 and correspondingly, of transcendental life as

psychological. What drives the mundanizing apperception, however, is the

psychophysical ‘‘incarnation’’ of this life in the world as one reality among

12 Husserl frequently builds on these analyses in other works—cf., e.g., Hua XXXV, §2, especially pp.

15ff.13 Stroker (1997, pp. 14f.).14 Cf., e.g., Hua V, pp. 14ff.; Hua Mat IV, p. 145.15 Hence the ontological region of Leiblichkeit has an ontological a priori of its own (see, e.g., Hua Mat IV,

p. 212; Hua VIII, p. 227; Hua XXXII, p. 225) and can be studied in its own right (cf., e.g., Hua VIII, p. 491, for

a concise list, recapitulating many points from Ideen II, of its distinctive properties), even if the somatology

that studies it falls under the category of objective anthropological science, with all of this standing in

contrast to pure transcendental investigation (see Hua VIII, p. 226).16 Since this mundanization is itself an accomplishment of transcendental subjectivity, Husserl refers to

‘‘den Geltungssinn ‘Mensch’’’ as ‘‘nicht sozusagen das vermenschlichende, sondern vermenschlichte Ich’’

(Hua XXXIV, p. 286). Note that the theme of Vermenschlichung must be distinguished from the

‘‘humanizing’’ (‘‘Humanisierung,’’ ‘‘sich humanisierende’’) through which the social world is constituted

as a field of communal goals, etc.—see, e.g., Hua XV, pp. 205, 317; Hua Mat VIII, pp. 112 n. 1, 349 n. 1,

389; Hua XXXIV, pp. 313, 334, 364f.; Hua XXXIX, pp. 311, 529.

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 189

123

others.17 In short, under the sway of the psychophysical apperception, Verleibli-chung = Vermenschlichung = Verweltlichung (Hua Mat VIII, pp. 344f.; Hua

XXXIV, pp. 398f.; Hua XXXIX, p. 570). To put it another way, Husserl’s accounts

of the effect of the psychophysical apperception offer a mirror image of the ways to

the reduction that reach transcendental subjectivity precisely by excluding the body

that roots the psyche in the world—a body that is always already taken as inherently

mundane because it is necessarily given through adumbrations or appearances.18 As

Husserl acknowledges (see, e.g., Hua XXXIV, pp. 290f.), however, his sketches of

the chain of apperceptions at stake here require further development. And in my

view, such further development must address the assumption that the lived body can

only be a mundane object, for the line of investigation just mentioned is one-sided

as it stands: by recognizing the transcendental status of subjective life, it liberates

the ‘‘psychic’’ side, as it were, from the unquestioned efficacy of the psychophysical

apperception, but does not touch the automatic apperception of the bodily side as

something ‘‘physical’’—and more specifically, as an externally perceived thing.Thus the emphasis on the psychological-transcendental axis must be complemented

by investigations addressing the possibility of what Landgrebe (1974) later calls the

body as constituting, or what Mohanty refers to as a dimension of corporeality

proper to the very structure of transcendental subjectivity.19 Such investigations

would, for example, include and deepen Husserl’s own analyses of kinaesthetic

sequences as constituting transcendent things without themselves falling into the

latter category.20 What is important in the present context, however, is simply to

suspend any automatic acceptance of the basic and pervasive assumption that the

body that is of interest for my phenomenological investigation is a thing (even a

privileged thing of a very special kind) at all.21

17 See, e.g., Hua XXXIV, p. 290, where Husserl uses his usual term, ‘‘verleiblicht’’; ‘‘verkorpert’’ (Hua XV,

p. 323) and ‘‘inkorporiert’’ (Hua VIII, p. 72) also occur, as well as ‘‘einverleiben’’ (Hua VIII, p. 72) and even

‘‘einlegen’’ (Hua VIII, p. 74). The other side of such ‘‘incarnation’’ is the ‘‘animation’’ of the body by the

psyche (see, e.g., Hua VIII, p. 74; Hua XXXIV, pp. 49, 112, 145).18 An especially clear statement can be found in Hua Mat IV, pp. 64ff.; cf. also, e.g., Hua III/1, pp.

116ff.; Hua XXXV, p. 68; Hua VIII, pp. 56f., 74, 81, 128, 173. For more implications of the

psychophysical apperception, see Behnke (in press, b); cf. Behnke (2008a, §5).19 See, e.g., Mohanty (1985, pp. 128, 133, 163, 211, 220, 242).20 What is at stake here is basically the theme of the paradox of subjectivity (see, e.g., Hua VI, §§53f.; Seebohm

1992, and cf. Stroker 1965, pp. 170f.) as played out in a bodily register. Examples of passages in which Husserl

explicitly tries to separate constituting kinaesthetic capability from the object, ‘‘lived body,’’ include Hua XIV,

pp. 540 n. 2, 547, and Hua XXXVI, pp. 165f.; there are also a number of texts in Hua XV where Husserl is

grappling with this issue (see, e.g., Text Nr. 17, Beilage LI, Text Nr. 37, among others). However, it is beyond

the scope of this essay to address such issues as the mundanization of kinaesthetic capability.21 This is not to dispute the circumstance that the body is in fact routinely constituted as an externally

perceivable thing; indeed, as Mohanty (1985, p. 107) points out, the world of the natural standpoint ‘‘is

the world of sense-perception whose central category is the concept of the thing’’ (cf., e.g., Hua XXII, p.

275; Hua III/1, p. 25; Hua IV, pp. 53f.), and as Husserl emphasizes (Hua XXXIV, pp. 64f.), the habitual

thematic direction within the natural attitude is toward objects of external apperception, to such an extent

that even subjective activities are apperceived objectively and thereby mundanized. My task here is

nevertheless to suspend this reigning apperceptive style so as to allow alternative styles of experience to

emerge. It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the implications of such a move for Husserl’s

account of intersubjectivity, which relies heavily on the external (and primarily visual) givenness of lived

bodies; cf. Behnke (2008a).

190 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

Here what must be set aside is not only an ‘‘external’’ apprehension of my body

as a visible thing in space, but also the perception of my own body as a peculiar

‘‘inner’’ quasi-thing, a transtemporal unity and identity given through a wide range

of types of somaesthetic sensations or Empfindnisse.22 Instead, I will offer a phrase

borrowed from Richard Zaner as a preliminary characterization of the experiential

dimension to be thematized here: namely, ‘‘embodiment’’ as ‘‘a continuously on-going act.’’23 However, I am going to take the notion of embodiment as a

continuously ongoing act in a somewhat different direction than Zaner does. For

him, the phrase signifies that ‘‘the animate organism, in so far as it is experienced

concretely by consciousness, is the continuously on-going embodying of the flux of

mental life,’’ and he goes on to enumerate a number of ways in which this is the

case.24 This way of proceeding respects the traditional notion of embodiment

according to which there is ‘‘something’’ that is embodied in the embodying (and

presumably, something other than the body itself, e.g., ‘‘mental life’’25). In contrast,

I will focus on kinaesthetic consciousness, not just as a consciousness that is

conscious-of movement (even its own), but as a consciousness capable of motility.26

And I will approach this primal capability in terms of the notion of kinaesthetic

22 See Behnke (2001). Note that I am using the term ‘‘somaesthetic’’ to refer not just to surface sensitivity

to contact, but to any sensations that can be felt bodily with the ‘‘mineness’’ peculiar to the Eigenleib.23 Zaner (1964, p. 249); as he goes on to say, ‘‘It is not the case that embodiment is something which is

‘once done, forever done.’’’ Thus the dynamic activity of embodiment differs from an ‘‘action’’ that

comes to an end when it has reached its goal (see, e.g., Hua XXXIV, pp. 355f.). Instead, on my reading,

what is at stake in the ongoing act of embodiment is the subjectivity of acts in contrast to that of

sensations: both are ‘‘mine,’’ but in a qualitatively different way, such that sensations are something that

the I ‘‘has’’ as ‘‘possessions,’’ in contrast to the ‘‘I do’’ (Hua IV, p. 317; cf. 214f., and see also 284).24 Zaner (1964, p. 249; for the various ways, see 249ff., 257ff.).25 See, e.g., Hua VIII, pp. 60f., where what is ‘‘embodied’’ in the ‘‘externality’’ of the lived body is

‘‘psychic life’’ as an ‘‘inwardness’’ that is thereby ‘‘expressed.’’ For the purposes of this paper, however, I

am setting aside the issue of the expressive, communicative body.26 The classic introduction to kinaesthetic consciousness remains Claesges (1964), at least until more of

Husserl’s D manuscripts are published; cf., e.g., Husserl’s 1934 ‘‘Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,’’

published in 1940–1941 (henceforth abbreviated NR). See also Rohr-Dietschi (1974, pp. 72–88).

Descriptions of the constitutive efficacy of kinaesthetic consciousness require retrieving it from its anonymity

and thematizing its performances without freezing it into an ‘‘object’’ over against ‘‘me.’’ For one approach to

a style of lucid awareness in which this is possible, see Behnke (1984), and cf. Mohanty (1985, pp. 129, 149;

2008, p. 231). Note that the term ‘‘kinaesthetic’’ takes on a particular technical sense in Husserl, one that

emphasizes kinaesthesis as ‘‘act’’ rather than ‘‘sensation’’ (cf. n. 23 above): Cairns (1976, p. 64) reports that

‘‘what Husserl means by kinaesthesia is not the bodily sensations accompanying movement or muscular

tension, or the inner sensations, but rather something volitional or quasi-volitional that remains when one

abstracts from such sensations,’’ although ‘‘there are in certain cases hyletic concomitants which necessarily

accompany the kinaesthesia’’ (Cairns 1976, p. 73; see also, e.g., Hua Mat VIII, pp. 320, 326, 341). Here I will

simply emphasize the moment of kinesis (and especially the sheer ‘‘I could’’ of capability-consciousness)

rather than entering into the complex problems linked with the aisthesis moment that is linguistically

sedimented in the term ‘‘kinaesthetic,’’ and I will thus be setting aside not only the localization of kinaesthetic

capability in somaesthetic sensibility on the one hand and the role of kinaesthetic receptivity in undergoing

our own somaesthetic sensations on the other, but also the significance of these issues for what I have termed

(see n. 20 above) the bodily version of the paradox of subjectivity (see, e.g., Claesges 1964, §§20c, 22, and

cf. Hua IV, p. 284).

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 191

123

‘‘enactment,’’ i.e., actually putting into play a particular kinaesthetic constellation,27

thereby actualizing certain possibilities within the global kinaesthetic system and

not others.28 The resulting notion of embodiment as the current kinaesthetic

actualization of particular kinaesthetic possibilities can be fine-tuned by distin-

guishing between ‘‘enactments’’ in the sense of focal gestures or actions—for

instance, reaching for something or leaning back—and ‘‘entailments,’’ which are

kinaesthetic performances that typically proceed without the active engagement of

the I, but function to support the focal gestures or actions (allowing me, for instance,

to keep my balance as I reach or lean).29 But we are always already in the process of

enacting certain kinaesthetic possibilities rather than others, even when we are at

rest.30 Thus any new kinaesthetic enactment arises from a constellation of

kinaesthetic possibilities already in play, and this continual actualization of

kinaesthetic capability is precisely what the phrase ‘‘embodiment as an ongoing act’’

signifies here.31

To link this with the notion of ‘‘body’’ that we have been placing in question and

transforming,32 we might introduce a distinction between the body-as-enacting and

the body-as-enacted. The former would refer to the ideal system of kinaesthetic

capabilities as a nexus of particular, horizontally organized kinaesthetic systems

(such as the possibilities pertaining, for instance, to arm, hand, and finger

movements) that can work together in various ways (e.g., several systems

27 The notion of kinaesthetic ‘‘constellations’’ comes from Husserl (see, e.g., Hua XIV, p. 552; Hua XV,

pp. 304f.). He also speaks of the kinaesthetic ‘‘situation’’ that is currently actual at any given moment

(see, e.g., Hua XV, pp. 275, 304), as well as using the metaphor of being ‘‘brought on stage’’

(Inszenierung) to refer to certain kinaesthetic possibilities being put into play (see, e.g., Hua XV, pp. 270,

275; Hua Mat VIII, p. 235). In addition, however, he emphasizes that kinaesthetic consciousness is

simultaneously a capability-consciousness (cf., e.g., Hua XIII, p. 422; Hua XIV, pp. 291, 378; Hua XV, p.

621; Claesges 1964, pp. 75ff.; Bergmann and Hoffmann 1984, p. 300) that embraces the kinaesthetic

system as a whole—‘‘Denn auch das kinasthetische System in irgendeinem Stande momentan aktueller

kinasthetischer Situation ist originaliter bewusst’’ (Hua XV, p. 304)—as an ideal system of possibilities

that is irreducible to any momentary actualization (see, e.g., Hua XIII, p. 355; Ms. D 13 I, 18, cited in

Claesges 1964, p. 78).28 Note that the subjective activity of actualizing a possibility is of a completely different order than the

givenness of something objective through adumbrations or appearances; the ‘‘I can’’ of kinaesthetic

consciousness stands on the same footing as the ‘‘I can’’ pertaining to other capabilities of consciousness

(see, e.g., Hua XXXV, pp. 159ff., and cf. Mohanty 1984, especially pp. 26ff.; 1985, pp. 43f.).29 A move functioning as an entailment on one occasion may well be explicitly enacted on another, so

that we cannot necessarily establish a clear demarcation between a set of ‘‘voluntary’’ enactments on the

one hand and a set of ‘‘involuntary’’ kinaesthetic performances entailed by these enactments on the other.

Moreover, for Husserl, even the latter belong to the realm of the I in the broader sense—see, e.g., Hua IV,

p. 317; Hua XIV, pp. 447ff. (and cf. 89); Hua Mat VIII, p. 336.30 As Husserl points out, ‘‘die Kinasthese ist niemals total starr’’ (Hua XV, p. 652); not only is ‘‘holding

still’’ an ongoing kinaesthetic activity (Hua VI, pp. 108, 164), but it may also happen that I lie down to

relax and find myself continuing to enact a body of worry and tension, or a readiness to leap back into

action at any moment, etc.31 Embodiment in the sense meant here must therefore be sharply distinguished from the Verleiblichungand Verweltlichung discussed above; instead, it has to do with the ongoing streaming life of the I, which is

not some sort of ‘‘disembodied mind,’’ but ‘‘Ich, das transzendentale Ich, mit meinen transzendentalen

kinasthetisch-erscheinungsregierenden Aktivitaten’’ (Hua XV, p. 286).32 See Hua XXXIV, p. 293, on the need to exercise a reduction on the language we use (here, the term

‘‘body’’) so as to preclude its mundane connotations; cf. Stroker (1997, p. 42).

192 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

combining vectorially in a single gesture, certain systems compensating for or

supporting movement in other systems, etc.), forming a total system of interartic-

ulated possibilities (with, e.g., some possibilities requiring or precluding others,

etc.). In contrast, what I am calling the body-as-enacted can be approached through

the notion of ‘‘making a body.’’ We are familiar with the phrase ‘‘making a face’’—

but what is the face I am ‘‘making’’ when I am not explicitly ‘‘making a face’’? And

we know what it means to ‘‘make a fist’’—but what shape is my hand ‘‘making’’

when I am not ‘‘making a fist’’? Similarly, an actor might deliberately create the

posture and gait of, for example, a much older person, thereby explicitly ‘‘making a

body’’ as a whole in a specific way—but what is the typical ongoing shape and

movement style of the body one is effectively ‘‘making’’ in everyday practical life?

To put it another way, as ‘‘enacting,’’ kinaesthetic capability per se as primal

motility is a horizon-consciousness whose correlate is the system of possibilities

afforded by the kinaesthetic system as a whole. At any moment, however, whatever

is ‘‘enacted’’ is a particular actualization of certain possibilities, and these are

manifested in such registers as bodily shape (both in my posture as a whole and in the

details, e.g., the relation of my hand to my arm); tonus (including both ambient tonus

and the effort involved in a particular gesture); articulation (where I am free to move

and within what limits); and movement style (e.g., swinging freely, or contained and

controlled throughout the trajectory).33 Moreover, although a phenomenological

investigation of bodily relationality shows that our kinaesthetic performances will

vary situationally in many ways,34 each individual will also tend to display a certain

sedimented style of embodiment. It is at this point that we might characterize the

body-as-enacted as a ‘‘habitual body’’—not just as a visible thing that manifests

one’s typical manner of making a body and of employing certain familiar

possibilities in the service of typical tasks, but as a nexus of specific kinaesthetic

tendencies whose reiteration constantly renews the habitualities in question. But this

is not merely a matter of conserving the postural patterns already in play (and the

kinaesthetic possibilities already at my disposal), for it also provides the deep

structure or root premise for any further skills I may acquire. Thus, for example, if I

start to learn to play a musical instrument, my general manner of maintaining upright

posture will already be presuppositionally swung into play each time I approach my

instrument in order to learn the gestures it requires of me.35 And even though upright

posture per se is indeed a practical presupposition for countless human activities, the

inner restrictions of my own way of maintaining upright posture may well limit my

ability to rise to new occasions, as well as preventing me from doing my best in

familiar ones. The purpose of this investigation, however, is not to offer a full

account of the habitual body, but to elucidate its possible transformation: if, for

example, chronic patterns of tension have become—for whatever reason—part of my

own deeply sedimented style of embodiment per se, entailed in any gestures I may

33 Cf. Behnke (1997, pp. 186f.).34 Cf. Behnke (2007). Note that the notion of ‘‘embodiment as an ongoing act’’ at stake here is a broader

category that does indeed include the full spectrum of relational kinaesthetic comportment; however, in

light of the style of experience serving as the leading clue for the present investigation, my discussion

emphasizes the more specific phenomenon of making a body.35 Cf. Behnke (1990; in press, e).

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 193

123

enact or any activities I may undertake, how can I allow these patterns to shift?36 One

way—the way that is to serve as a leading clue for the present investigation of bodily

protentionality—is to thematize not the body-as-enacted as, so to speak, a faitaccompli, but the enacting itself, in the act, through the type of awareness proper to

the protentional body practice, to which I will now turn.

3 The Protentional Body Practice

Just as the theoretical approach to embodiment sketched in the previous section

suspends automatic acceptance of the body in the usual sense—the body as

constituted through the psychophysical apperception—the unfamiliar style of

experience to be presented in this section effects a practical suspension of bodily

‘‘business as usual,’’ i.e., living along in habitual patterns of bodily engagement with

the world. Thus I will not be dealing with the body of everyday life in the natural

attitude, but with a liminal body—and with a bodily lability that emerges under

special circumstances requiring special shifts in attitude and special modes of

attention. More specifically, what I have called the protentional body practice37

couples a particular mode of awareness and comportment with a particular

dimension of interest. The dimension of interest here is embodiment as an ongoing

act in the sense just described.38 And the mode of awareness and comportment

consists of lucidly living in the leading edge of this ongoingness and not-knowing

what will happen next, while at the same time actively allowing whatever is

emerging within the dimension in question to emerge. Since I cannot assume that

this practice is as familiar as, e.g., perceiving, judging, valuing, etc., I will briefly

comment on the elements of the practice before addressing the question of what

notion of protentionality is implied in such a practice.

As I have indicated, with the turn to embodiment as a continuously ongoing act,

my interest is not in my own body as a transcendent formation with certain

determinate and determinable features, but in how I am ongoingly embodying

myself by actualizing certain kinaesthetic possibilities and not others. Thus at each

moment, my interest lies not in the body-as-enacted (e.g., my current posture), but

in the enacting that produces and maintains this particular configuration. And here it

should also be recalled that motility is normally also registered somaesthetically: we

can feel ourselves moving and sense the felt difference between, for example,

making a tight fist and lightly wiggling our fingers (even if this register of sensuous

experience is often ignored in everyday life). Nevertheless, in keeping with

Husserl’s own distinctive use of the notion of kinaesthesis, the accent here is on the

36 I do not want to downplay the importance of the habitual body and its rich repertoire of skills, which is

an important topic for both static-structural and genetic-developmental descriptions (cf., e.g., Bergmann

and Hoffmann 1984, especially pp. 300ff.); nevertheless, what is at stake here is that the habitual body

may not always be optimal (cf., e.g., Behnke, in press, d, especially §3).37 I first presented the protentional body practice at conferences and workshops in 1990. See also, e.g.,

Behnke (2001, p. 99; 2004, pp. 35ff.).38 Other dimensions in which the type of awareness and comportment to be discussed here may fruitfully

be explored include musical improvisation (cf. Behnke 1986), embodied peacemaking (cf. Behnke 1999),

and further types of bodily relationality (cf. Behnke 2007).

194 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

enacting per se, not on the corresponding somaesthetic feelings (be they local

saliences or the familiar feel of my habitual bearing as a global background). To put

it another way, the dimension of interest within which this practice moves is the

ongoing activity of kinaesthetic capability in general (and of making a body in

particular) rather than its felt texture, and thus with the sich bewegen konnen rather

than the Empfindnisse conjoined with whatever possibilities are being enacted in

any particular case.39

Let us say, then, that I am thematically engaged with the ongoingness of

whatever kinaesthetic enactments are currently in play (e.g., continuing to hold my

head at just this angle, or perhaps continuing to lie quietly with my limbs disposed

in just this fashion, and so on).40 Moreover, let us say that the mode of awareness I

bring to the occasion is not that of a spectator contemplating an object (‘‘my body’’),

but involves lucidly living in the process of ‘‘embodying’’ as an ongoing subjective

activity, as something that I (in the broadest sense) am currently doing, even if the

active, awake I-center is not explicitly directing all the details. Now, maintaining

this dimension of interest and this style of awareness, I ‘‘align’’ my awareness with

the leading edge of this ongoingness, living along with it—not leaping into the

presentified future of ‘‘expectation,’’ but staying right here, continually poised at the

brink of the most immediate protentional future (cf. Hua Mat VIII, p. 93), where

the now stretches itself freshly forth in the continual welling up of ‘‘more time.’’

This means that I am not only suspending any interest in a past that would be

reached by recollection, but am also refraining from any retentionally accented

engagement with what has just now been given—for example, refraining from

savoring it, as it were, as one would savor the taste of wine or chocolate. Thus I am

not ‘‘reflecting’’ in the sense of looking back at a flow standing over against me and

streaming away from me; instead, I am ‘‘inhabiting’’ a moving, leading edge of

time, ‘‘swimming along with it’’ in a heightened, ‘‘proflective’’ awareness.41

39 The emphasis here on primal motility as sheer kinaesthetic capability can be complemented with

investigations of the ‘‘fuhlendes Dabei-Sein’’ (Hua Mat VIII, pp. 351f.) that is at stake in the directly lived

experience of somaesthetic affection; cf. Behnke (2008b). Even in the latter case, however, I can often

choose to focus on ‘‘how’’ I am receiving these somaesthetic givens rather than on ‘‘what’’ I am feeling

(although this may not be possible if I am suffused, for instance, with unbearable pain). It is nevertheless

important to distinguish the kinaesthetics of undergoing from the kinaesthetics of making a body, even

though these are also intimately related.40 Theoretically, this practice can be explored in a wide variety of settings and circumstances.

However, it is usually easier to begin by tapping into the kinaesthetic enactments sustaining the body

at rest rather than starting with examples involving more complex kinaesthetic performances. Lying

quietly, for example, effects a practical suspension of the sedimented manner of maintaining upright

posture that is presuppositionally swung into play as I go about my daily tasks, holding it in

abeyance, as it were, yet without utterly effacing its deep structure, which remains available for

investigation and transformation.41 ‘‘Wir folgen dem Ereignisverlauf, wir schwimmen im Fluss der Zeit mit’’ (Hua XXXIII, p. 270). See

also Hua III/1, p. 94; Hua XI, p. 368; Hua XXXV, pp. 117, 118f., 129f., and cf. Mouillie (1994, p. 196):

‘‘reflechir ‘sur le coup’ (et non plus ‘apres coup’ comme nous le faisons a l’ordinaire).’’ I borrow the term

‘‘proflection’’ from Hoffmann (1997, p. 116), but use it with a somewhat different nuance. The term is

also used by Waldenfels (1971, p. 102), who refers to pro-flection as ‘‘ein Sich-nach-vorn-beugen, das

nicht nur rekapituliert, was bereits ist, sondern interessiert bleibt an dem, was noch nicht ist’’; as he later

points out, however, such pro-flection does not yet reach the goal of a true and complete rationality ‘‘in

der die stumme Erfahrung zur vollstandigen Aussprache ihres eigenen Sinnes gebracht wurde’’ (1993,

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 195

123

Now in addition to the modification through which I am living at the leading edge

of the now rather than the trailing edge and its ‘‘comet’s tail’’42 of retentions, I

deliberately adopt a mode of ‘‘not-knowing’’ in which what is at stake is not a

factual lack of knowledge about what will happen next within this dimension of

experience; rather, ‘‘not-knowing’’ is a distinctive mode of comportment in which I

deactivate my anticipation of any specific ‘‘content’’ in particular, while at the same

time maintaining my interest in this experiential dimension in general (in this case,

the ongoing activity of making a body, however it may proceed). Furthermore,

while continuing to maintain my dimensionally-defined interest, my engagement

with the leading edge, and my inhibition of any specific contentual anticipations, I

also adopt an attitude of ‘‘actively allowing’’ time to proceed and the emerging to

emerge, rather than imposing any specific sort of ‘‘doing.’’ Such an attitude—which

is geared in with the ongoing dimension of embodying per se, but uncommitted in

advance to any particular way in which this open dimension will be filled in the

most immediately emerging future—can then function as a practical condition of

possibility for a spontaneous bodily shift or release.43 On some occasions, what

emerges without my active ‘‘doing’’ actualizes a possibility I am already familiar

with. On other occasions, however, what emerges is utterly surprising (e.g., a

shimmer of movement opens a horizon of further kinaesthetic possibilities beyond

the repertoire of my usual ‘‘I can’’). Sometimes the shift can have an almost

explosive character, as if something stuck is suddenly leaping loose; at other times,

the shift itself is preceded by a dawning sense of something impending, as if living a

body that is brimming with its own next move, but with no indication of exactly

when and where a shift will occur or what its character will be.44 On many

occasions, the shift is relatively subtle, involving, for example, a brief quiver, a

deeper breath, or a gentle easing that allows something held ‘‘in’’ to let go or

something held ‘‘back’’ to move on, as though completing a stalled trajectory, and

the release may be multidirectional or volumetric. Moreover, even if I am primarily

engaged with what I am currently enacting in one particular kinaesthetic system, the

shift may actually happen somewhere else, or may affect the ongoing ‘‘how’’ of my

embodiment as a whole. But the experience is not that of a ready-made body

moving through an already constituted objective space; instead, the shift itself opens

Footnote 41 continued

p. 272 [cf. Hua I, p. 77]). Thus the proflective, protentionally accented awareness serves other goals than

the project of knowing (cf. Sect. 6 below). In any case, what is at stake here is the possibility of living in

the upwelling ‘‘Heranstromen’’ rather than the ‘‘Verstromen’’ within the ‘‘urtumlich stehende Stromen’’

(Hua XXXIV, p. 384), in the ‘‘Aufquellen’’ rather than the ‘‘Verquellen’’ within the ‘‘‘urquellende’

Phase’’ (Hua Mat VIII, p. 79; cf. 113).42 Hua X, pp. 30, 35, 377f.; Hua XXIV, pp. 263f.; Hua XXXV, pp. 127f., 415; Hua Mat VIII, p. 267 (cf.

58).43 The term ‘‘spontaneous’’ is ambiguous here. On the one hand, the shift happens ‘‘of its own accord’’

rather than being deliberately initiated by the primary active, awake I; on the other hand, it is not a mere

mechanical response to some external ‘‘stimulus,’’ but stems from a bodily agency working at very deep

levels, yet still belonging to the broader realm of the ‘‘I’’ (see n. 29 above). Bodily spontaneity in the

sense meant here thus presupposes the absolute passivity of primal temporalization while also displaying

further structures of its own that will be investigated in Sect. 5 below.44 Cf. Depraz (1998, p. 93).

196 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

the space that accommodates it, as if the kinaesthetic system itself is dilating as a

whole. Yet the shifts do not always have the character of a ‘‘release,’’ for in some

cases, an existing tension may be heightened or an existing shape exaggerated as the

enactments and entailments in place are intensified. And I can then repeat the entire

process, lucidly living in the new kinaesthetic configuration at the leading edge, not-

knowing what will emerge but actively allowing it, letting it happen without

impeding its unfurling and without positing some ideal bodily state as a goal toward

which ‘‘corrections’’ would gradually converge. Nevertheless (and precisely by

refraining from positing any specific configuration as a goal), the practice tends to

enrich kinaesthetic possibilities, producing a body that is less rigid and more

supple—one that is less likely to reiterate old responses to traumatic events, less

likely to settle into routine ways of automatically moving along habitual pathways

toward pregiven goals, and more likely to respond creatively to fluid situations, as

well as to perform familiar activities more effectively.

Much more could, of course, be said about this practice in its own right. But

my aim here is merely to describe it fully enough for readers to try out this

unusual mode of experience for themselves in the spirit of the general

phenomenological principle of cashing in written descriptions for the fulfilling

evidence (whether it leads to confirmation or correction of the description).45 In

service of another general principle of phenomenological method, however—

namely, that of allowing phenomenological practice itself to be open to

question46—I must acknowledge that in my presentation up to now, I have

simply been uncritically accepting the notion of protention as part of the legacy of

previous phenomenological work. Now that I have addressed the way in which

embodiment is to be understood in this investigation and introduced the unusual

bodily practice that I am taking as a leading clue, it is time to turn to the notion of

protention and to offer at least a brief clarification of the way in which I am

taking it up in the present context.

4 Varieties of Protentionality

As is well known, Husserl’s initial analyses of time-consciousness had far more to

say about retention than about protention. But the Bernau manuscripts (1917/1918)

do include much more detailed descriptions of protentionality, and the publication of

these materials in Husserliana XXXIII (which appeared in 2001) has spurred some

new discussions in the literature.47 For the purposes of the present investigation,

45 Some of the strongest statements of this principle occur in Husserl’s 1913 draft of a new preface for

the Logische Untersuchungen—see, e.g., Hua XX/1, pp. 319–326.46 Husserl recognizes that one must first naively make use of a method before proceeding to its

transcendental justification (see Hua Mat VIII, p. 7; cf. also Hua XXXIV, pp. 295f.). Thus actually putting

phenomenological methods into play in specific concrete investigations is a condition of possibility for

the methodological self-responsibility that Husserl also demands (cf. n. 9 above).47 See, e.g., Kortooms (2002), Schnell (2002), Brough (2002), Zahavi (2004), and Dodd (2005), in

contrast to, e.g., Shin (1978), which nevertheless includes (pp. 19ff.) interesting material on the prehistory

of the term ‘‘protention.’’

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 197

123

Dieter Lohmar’s ‘‘What Does Protention ‘Protend’?’’—which both draws on and

goes beyond Husserl’s treatment of protention in the Bernau manuscripts48—

provides the most suitable starting point, since it offers a number of extremely

helpful distinctions between levels and among types of experience. My purpose

here, however, is not merely to acknowledge the work he has already accomplished,

but to attempt to complement it. Thus I will begin by emphasizing certain points

from Lohmar’s essay (Sect. 4.1), before turning to some questions arising from

these points (Sect. 4.2); approaching the question of bodily protentionality in both

static (Sect. 5.1) and genetic (Sect. 5.2) terms; and suggesting how investigations

carried out within different research contexts require different concepts of

protention (Sect. 6).

4.1 Hyletic Protention

Here it is not possible to report in full on Lohmar’s essay.49 Instead, I shall allude to

four important sorts of distinctions he brings out.

First, it is possible to distinguish what Lohmar calls ‘‘R-protentions’’—proten-

tions of further retentions, i.e., protentions of the ‘‘further retentional sinking’’ of

already present retentions into ‘‘deeper levels of retention,’’ in a ‘‘rigid process’’ that

is almost inevitably fulfilled—from what he calls ‘‘H-protentions,’’ i.e., ‘‘protentions

of coming hyle,’’ which are in fact frequently disappointed (p. 158); here H-

protentions are understood (at least initially) as protentions whose content is

determined solely by the present hyletic data and its chain of retentions (pp. 158f.).

Second, it is possible to distinguish levels of analysis, e.g., a first level

investigating the constitution of ‘‘sensual data and their duration’’ as temporal

objects within inner time-consciousness; a second level devoted to the passive

syntheses of homogeneity and heterogeneity that unify such data into saliences; a

third level analyzing the way in which the saliences are gathered into the embrace of

an emerging apperceptive ‘‘type,’’ yielding a perception of a real thing about which

we form pre-predicative judgments; and finally, an investigation of the predicative

judgments achieved under ‘‘an explicit interest in cognition’’ (p. 157), with each

subsequent level built upon, and presupposing, the preceding strata.

Third, it is possible to distinguish passive experiential processes proceeding

mechanically or automatically from experiential processes that are ‘‘activities’’ not

only in the sense that they have a dynamic, ‘‘continuously flowing’’ character (EU,

p. 118), but in the sense that an agent can participate in them to varying degrees and

in various ways: thus, for example, retention per se happens ‘‘according to an

absolutely fixed law without any participation of the activity radiating from the ego-

center’’ (EU, p. 122), whereas still-holding-in-grasp—which involves apprehending

48 See Lohmar (2002). Lohmar’s approach in this essay should be situated in the broader context of his

work on pre-predicative experience in general, and on the themes of apprehension, apperception, and

anticipation in particular—see, e.g., Lohmar (1993–1994; 1998, especially III.5; and 2006, as well as the

works cited in 2002, p. 167 n. 38).49 Parenthetical page references in this subsection refer to Lohmar (2002); Erfahrung und Urteil(= Husserl 1999) is cited using the abbreviation EU.

198 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

various phases as phases ‘‘of’’ one and the same enduring temporal object—arises

only by virtue of the I or ego turning toward the selfsame, enduring object and

remaining occupied with it (EU, §23); the parallel that Lohmar (p. 161) proposes

similarly contrasts protention per se, as sheerly passive, with any ‘‘real activity in

the mode of anticipatory grasping’’ (EU, p. 123).

And finally, it is possible to distinguish various kinds of protention. Lohmar

(p. 160) identifies ‘‘permanent’’ protention—when red is given, red simply

continues to be protended until the protention is disappointed; ‘‘typological

differentiated’’ protention—encompassing, e.g., such cases as the red becoming

brighter, or a tone generically protended as a ‘‘tone’’ but with the ‘‘how’’ of its exact

quality or intensity left open (Hua XXXIII, p. 14); protention within a particular

sensory field—e.g., what is protended is ‘‘a’’ color within the visual field, but not

necessarily ‘‘the same’’ color as the one I now see; ‘‘unspecific’’ protention as an

‘‘empty’’ protention of ‘‘something’’ sensuous in whatever sensory field, such that

‘‘even the ‘unexpected start’ of a new hyletic givenness is somehow foretold, i.e.,

announced in advance, by protention’’ (p. 160); and ‘‘altering’’ protention, which

involves a determinate anticipation based on past experience of ‘‘events of this kind

in the world’’ (p. 161), and hence is more a matter of a higher level ‘‘expectation’’

that can nevertheless ‘‘‘sink down’’’ (p. 162) and influence protention at the lower,

utterly passive level. For example, as I am waiting for a traffic light to change, the

current color is continually protended in ‘‘rigid H-protentions’’ (as in ‘‘permanent’’

protention), motivated solely by current (and immediately retended) temporally

individuated facticity, while in conflict with the latter, ‘‘H-protentions of expec-

tation,’’ motivated by an already acquired acquaintance with this type of

phenomenon in general, are protending the color that I already know is about to

appear when the light changes (p. 163). And one of Lohmar’s own concerns in the

essay (pp. 160ff.) is to clarify precisely how the higher-level ‘‘expectation’’ or

anticipatory grasping of the familiar can modify what I might term the inertialprotention in which what is protended is ‘‘more of the same’’ at various levels (more

red; more brightening of the red; more color, whatever it may be; more sensuous

experience, of whatever sort), all proceeding automatically, governed exclusively

by laws pertaining to ‘‘pure passivity’’ (EU, p. 123).

But the relevance of his exposition for the present study is somewhat different,

and can be initially formulated in terms of a series of questions. If protention is an

utterly passive process in which current sensuous content (and its living horizon of

fresh retentions) automatically motivates a protention of more of the same content,

then how am I able to appeal to protention within the context of a process that I am

actively engaging in—here, the protentional body practice—and that leads to

spontaneous shifts yielding precisely something other than ‘‘more of the same’’?

How can protentionally accented awareness somehow motivate a release from the

familiar and the expected, even when—as with chronic bodily patterns of tension—

there is a great deal of ‘‘retentional depth’’ built up in such enduring tensions, and

therefore a correspondingly strong protention of continuing ‘‘the same as before’’

(p. 161)? What understanding of ‘‘protention’’ does this practice imply?50 And

50 I will set aside considerations of the genetic origin of time (cf., e.g., Depraz 2000).

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 199

123

given these concerns, how might Lohmar’s rigorous and perspicacious analyses

motivate further reflections on protentionality?

4.2 Critical Considerations

The answers to these questions will depend not only on how the term ‘‘protention’’

itself is defined, but also on certain broader methodological issues that Husserl was

still grappling with while writing the Bernau manuscripts. A point of entry to these

issues may be gained by recalling that although Lohmar does mention R-protentions

(protentions of further retentions), he focuses on H-protentions (protentions of

hyletic content)—and understandably so, given Husserl’s own preoccupations

(cf. Sect. 6 below). Moreover, as I have already indicated, Lohmar’s account

emphasizes differences among levels of analysis; thus, for example, an analysis of

the passive process knitting together the green I see now with the retended green and

the protended green is directed toward a different level than the analysis of, for

instance, my progressive explication and determination of the features of a green

thing of a certain type, which not only involves the engagement of an I or ego

interested in the object, but also the apperceptive foreshadowing through which I am

already recognizing it as a thing ‘‘of this type’’ in the first place.

Now it is true that one way to differentiate such various levels of analysis may

well be to distinguish ‘‘lower,’’ ‘‘passive’’ processes from the ‘‘higher,’’ ‘‘active’’

ones that are built on them. However, the distinction between ‘‘lower’’ and ‘‘higher’’

does not necessarily coincide with a simple ‘‘passive–active’’ distinction. Although I

cannot consider this complex issue in detail here, I can at least suggest that to limit

the concept of ‘‘protention’’ to the ‘‘level’’ of the hyletic, thereby sharply

distinguishing it from any form of ‘‘higher’’ activity, still seems to move within

some version of the framework of the Auffassung-Inhalt model (and the suitability of

this model is, of course, one of the main themes of the Bernau manuscripts).51 For if

we stay within at least one version of this framework, then in order to honor the

passivity of protention, we must confine the concept of protention to whatever

content can be forecast solely by the interplay between the sheer facticity of sensuous

givenness and the sheer automaticity of the ‘‘absolutely fixed law’’ (EU, p. 122)

governing what can be protended in the protention. Anything beyond this would

already count as an activity of some sort (even if this activity remains at a ‘‘lower’’

level—for example, receptively apprehending the sensuous data, grasping them as

they emerge—and falls short of ‘‘higher’’ levels such as explicit judicative activity).

At this point, I am still deferring any discussion of the larger methodological

motivations for establishing such a firm link between the concept of protention and

the realm of the hyletic (considered as the sheerly sensuous, prior to any of the

various strata of activities that contribute to our making sense of the sensuous

51 See Hua XXXIII, Part III. Although the metaphor of ‘‘higher’’ and ‘‘lower’’ levels may work for static

analyses of hierarchical, one-sided founding relations, and although Husserl himself continues to use the

metaphor of vertically arrayed ‘‘strata’’ even in the context of genetic analysis (see, e.g., the reference to

phenomenological archaeology in Hua Mat VIII, pp. 356f.), such a model is not entirely satisfactory; cf.

Behnke (in press, a). I will nevertheless continue to use the language of ‘‘levels’’ as shorthand for degrees

of complexity.

200 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

display). Instead, I shall offer an alternative approach to the entire question of

protention. Rather than always taking the word ‘‘protention’’ to signify ‘‘a’’

protention (whatever one we might choose), in the sense of a particular passively

protended sensuous content of some sort, I want to begin from a broader notion of

‘‘protentionality’’ per se, taking the word ‘‘protention’’ to refer to a passive process

of protending,52 without specifying in advance exactly ‘‘what’’ is thereby protended.

In other words, I am starting with an inherited phenomenological concept—

protention—that is used as a title for what is claimed to be an essential structure of

lived experience; my task is to test this claim, which requires moving beyond the

empty word ‘‘protention’’ by turning to the appropriate fulfilling evidence.53 And if

I do not assume from the start that what is protended in protention is always some

sort of sensuous content, then I can readily ascertain that acts (perceiving,

remembering, phantasizing, judging, etc.) are also ongoing temporal processes

(‘‘Aktus als Prozess’’—Hua XV, p. 578) with their own immediate retentional and

protentional horizons54 at the trailing and leading edges of a now whose renewal

does not require the activity of the I who is the agent of the acts. Thus as the

example of ‘‘still-holding-in-grasp’’ indicates, it is possible to discern a passivity

pertaining to the very structure of activity, precisely as ‘‘continuously flowing

activity’’ (EU, p. 118): namely, a passivity that does not serve as a ‘‘base’’ or

substratum for an act, but operates within an act as ‘‘a kind of passivity in activity’’

(EU, p. 119)—and one in which an ‘‘anticipating foregrasp’’ continuously

‘‘cooperates with the still in grasp’’ (EU, p. 118) as part of ‘‘a fixed, passiveregularity, which, however, is a regularity pertaining to the activity itself’’ in a

passivity that ‘‘thematizes or cothematizes objects’’ (EU, p. 119).

I will return to such ‘‘thematizing’’ in Sect. 6 below. Here the point is simply that

activity too stands under passive laws of temporalization. Hence we can still

accommodate Husserl’s basic thesis that the term ‘‘protention’’ does not refer to an

‘‘act’’ that ‘‘I’’ (the active, awake I) am ‘‘doing,’’ but to a welling-up that happens

‘‘automatically’’ at the immediate leading edge of the now. How this plays out—and

how it is filled out—may indeed be very different at different levels of analysis.

Throughout, however, there is an immediate fore-casting of ‘‘more of the same’’ not

only at various ‘‘levels’’ of complexity,55 but also on both sides of the correlational

a priori, and thus not only in various sensuous registers—the realm of affectivity—

but also along various dimensions of activity.56

52 See Besnier (1993, pp. 338f.) for some parallel suggestions with regard to retention; cf. Husserl’s use

of the dynamic terms ‘‘protentionalisierend’’ and ‘‘retentionalisierend’’ (see, e.g., Hua Mat VIII, pp. 115

n. 1, 265f., 270).53 In other words, even fundamental concepts are to be brought to original itself-givenness—cf.,

e.g., Hua Mat IV, p. 112.54 Cf., e.g., Hua XXXIII, pp. 116f., 121ff., 184 n. 2, 222; Hua Mat VIII, pp. 196ff.; EU, pp. 122f., 304

(= Hua XXXIII, p. 318); Cairns (1976, pp. 36f.).55 Note in this connection that Husserl uses the term ‘‘style’’ at many levels of analysis; cf. Behnke (2004, pp.

25ff.).56 It is interesting to note in this connection that in 1934, when Fink was applying for financial support

for his work on Husserl’s time manuscripts, he emphasized that the Bernau manuscripts in particular had

to be supplemented with ‘‘‘comprehensive analyses of protentionality, of the temporality of acts, and of

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 201

123

This can be seen even when we return to the simplest case of inertial H-

protentions, for if a particular sensuous content is indeed currently given (thus

protending its own continuation), it is given in correlation with a particular set of

motivating kinaesthetic circumstances whose own protentionality is intimately

linked with that of the contents (cf., e.g., Hua XI, pp. 185 n. 1, 428). For example,

the sensuous experience of continuing to see the color green—where what is

protended is ‘‘more green’’—requires that my gaze continues to hold it in view (cf.,

e.g., Hua XXXV, pp. 160f.). The simplest case is one in which the same kinaesthetic

circumstances are ongoingly maintained, although more complex collaborations

among individual kinaesthetic systems (e.g., oculomotoric and cephalomotoric)

routinely happen, often motivated by an ongoing interest (e.g., in something green)

maintained across various levels of engagement, including an initial turning-toward

as a gleam of green catches my eye; a simple, receptive apprehension and

contemplation of a green something as a whole; and the explicative contemplation

that penetrates into the inner horizon of the green thing in a process of progressive

enrichment and further determination (e.g., is the green uniform, or are there

differences of shading)—all requiring the ongoing deployment of appropriate

kinaesthetic capabilities.57 But even just ‘‘continuing to maintain the same

kinaesthetic circumstances’’ is an ongoing temporal process whose leading edge

we can readily thematize. And if we add to this the possibility of an intensified ‘‘not-

knowing’’ what is about to emerge58 and a deliberately undertaken ‘‘actively

allowing’’ that opens a welcome for whatever may come, we find still more

examples of ongoingness at the leading edge. But this does not necessarily mean

that we have a plurality of times, all going on simultaneously at various levels and

in various dimensions.59 Instead, it is possible to understand all of the examples in

terms of a single invariant. Here I am referring to a structure that lies even deeper,

Footnote 56 continued

the temporality of kinesthesis’’’ (cited in Bruzina 2004, p. 292). See also Kern (1975, pp. 92f.) on the

activity of sensing in its openness to the immediate future.57 See, e.g., EU, §§19, 22. Note that the kinaesthetic enactments in question can be either voluntary or

involuntary (cf. Hua Mat IV, p. 184), although since they do often run off ‘‘automatically’’—penetrating

into familiar directions (Hua XXXII, p. 114) along accustomed paths (Hua XV, pp. 203, 330) without my

actively directing them—they are usually labeled ‘‘involuntary,’’ even though they do have ‘‘the character

of an active, subjective process’’ (EU, p. 89; cf. Hua XIV, pp. 447 n. 1, 452 n. 1, and see also Cairns 1976,

p. 92). Moreover, as I have indicated, every ‘‘voluntary’’ kinaesthetic enactment will be accompanied by

‘‘involuntary’’ kinaesthetic entailments, so that the voluntary and the involuntary always work together.

Finally, note that in the case of kinaesthetic capability, the relation between the ‘‘passive’’ and the

‘‘active’’ cannot be captured by a contrast between, say, the ‘‘passively pregiven’’ and ‘‘higher,’’

‘‘mental’’ activity built on it.58 Husserl uses the lovely image of a grasping (Erfassen) that receives the new now ‘‘with open arms’’

(Hua XI, p. 368; cf. 74, 323, and see also, e.g., Hua XXXV, p. 130; Hua XXXIII, p. 4; Hua XV, p. 349).

We must nevertheless recognize that in normal experience, these open arms are already adjusted in

advance, as it were, to embrace something in particular: ‘‘Ein unerwarteter Anfang kann nicht mit offenen

Armen empfangen werden’’ (Hua XXXIII, p. 37 n. 1). Thus ‘‘not-knowing’’ is not merely a cognitive

affair, but also entails a specific sort of ‘‘not-doing’’ that is not a mere stasis or inaction, but a form of

bodily epoche that involves suspending or refraining from automatically deploying the modes of

‘‘readiness’’ we have already developed (cf. Hua XI, p. 217), e.g., specific styles of kinaesthetic

Vorgreifen.59 Brough (2002, pp. 144f.).

202 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

and is even more universal, than Lohmar’s ‘‘empty’’ protention of ‘‘something’’

sensuous (whatever it may be). For in a way that parallels the R-protentions (which

protend the continued retentional sinking away), what is immediately and passively

protended in these truly empty primal protentions is simply more time (cf. Hua

XXXV, p. 419; Hua XV, p. 452; Hua Mat VIII, p. 93)—more welling-up of more

‘‘now’’ at the leading edge of the living present (cf. Hua X, p. 72; Hua XXXV, p.

142), providing an ever-opening horizonal readiness for the prolongation of a ‘‘this’’

of any sort into its immediate ‘‘more,’’ whether this be more ‘‘green,’’ more

‘‘holding my gaze steady,’’ more ‘‘making a body,’’ more ‘‘following an unfurling

train of thought,’’ and so on (cf. Hua X, p. 106)—or just more ‘‘now’’ (cf. Hua

XXXIII, p. 297 [= EU, p. 470]).60 In other words, the invariant that I can confirm

across any possible example—at whatever level, in whatever experiential dimen-

sion, and in terms of any sort of enduring temporal object or process whatsoever—is

a horizonality of ‘‘absolute’’ time-constitution that is not itself temporally

individuated (and hence not ‘‘in’’ time at all), precisely because as an eidetic

necessity of temporalization per se, it is always already at work as an a priori

condition of possibility for any and every temporally individuated experiential

process we might consider (including experiential sequences whose correlates are

ideal or fictional).61

‘‘Protention,’’ then, can be understood as a process that is born in passivity,

although it admits of certain ‘‘attentional modifications’’ (Hua XXXIII, p. 262), such

as lucidly living at the leading edge62; that proceeds in terms of a principle of

immediate adjacency (the immediate spilling forth of the now, in contrast to a

distant and expected ‘‘future’’); that is at work in any dimension of experience at

any level, from the simplest to the most complex, and on both sides of the

correlational a priori; and that is shot through with an ineradicable presumptivity, for

whatever is protended—even something as basic as the very next breath—is

protended precisely as ‘‘coming,’’ rather than ‘‘here and now.’’

60 Cf., e.g., Hua Mat VIII, p. 94, on the distinction between a protentional streaming understood in terms

of (contentual) fulfillment, and the constant protentional predelineation of the protentional horizon per se

(see also 95 n. 2, 96f., 97 n. 1).61 Cf. Brough (2002, pp. 149ff.) for a summary of the issue of levels of time-constitution. Note that the non-

objectivating awareness in which the absolute ‘‘flow’’ is consciousness of its own process is essentially non-

objectivating insofar as the ‘‘objectivation’’ of a temporally distributed object is only fully completed when the

process of objectivating comes to the end of its duration and can sink, as a whole, into the past—Brough (2002,

p. 149); Hua XXXIII, p. 137. But as long as I am alive, my living present has a living protentional horizon, and

once this ceases, I am no longer there, as a living, constituting subject, to experience myself as a fully

constituted, dead object: the transcendental I cannot experience itself, firsthand, as dead—cf. Hua XXXIII, pp.

368f.; Hua XXXV, pp. 141f., 419; Hua XI, pp. 377ff.; Hua XV, p. 452; Hua Mat VIII, pp. 96ff. (cf. 102f.).62 Lohmar (2002, pp. 155f.) points out that in languages where the verb comes at the end of the sentence,

‘‘the limit of retentional givenness may be extended’’ (cf. Hua Mat VIII, p. 72); a parallel case for

protention might be what musicians call ‘‘phrasing’’: not only is each current note already aiming toward

the next one, but from the very beginning of the phrase, the living protentional horizon is stretched to

encompass the arc of the phrase as a whole (note that from the active standpoint of the player, it is the

protentional horizon that is stretched, whereas from the listener’s standpoint, it is the retentional

horizon—cf. Hua XXXV, p. 128).

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 203

123

5 Two Approaches to Bodily Protentionality

If we are now willing to entertain a general concept of protentionality that embraces

activity as well as affectivity, what can we go on to say about specifically bodilyprotentionality, and especially about the protentionality involved in the ongoing act

of making a body (rather than the protentionality that pervades, for instance, the

specific kinaesthetic circumstances implicated in the perception of transcendent

things in space)?

5.1 The Living Structure of Bodily Protentionality

At the most fundamental level of bodily protentionality, what is protended is ‘‘more

kinaesthetic functioning’’ as the sheer capability that allows ‘‘this’’ kinaesthetic

constellation to move into ‘‘another’’ one.63 And like the fundamental structure of

Urzeitigung (cf., e.g., Hua XXXIV, p. 300), where what wells up from ‘‘this’’ now is

‘‘more’’ time, lived movement too displays a basic ‘‘this’’/‘‘more’’ structure.

However, we must respect certain distinctions. In the case of movement through an

already constituted space, it is true that each spot I occupy takes the role of the

‘‘here’’ serving as my current center of orientation, while the spatial array of

‘‘there’s’’ is given in advance as a field of possible ‘‘here’s,’’ i.e., locations into

which I can move in order to adopt a new standpoint (including there’s that I may

not be able to occupy at the moment because something else is ‘‘already there,’’ as

well as there’s that I cannot effectively transform into vantage points without

equipment—for example, I cannot hover in midair, but must climb a ladder, etc.). In

contrast, primal spatialization opens space in the first place at the leading edge of

every movement, so that what wells up from ‘‘more kinaesthetic capability’’ is

simultaneously ‘‘more space.’’64 Thus just as in primal temporalization, a new now

continually wells up at its own leading edge, so also each momentary here spills into

a new here as I move, and this primal spatialization is presupposed in all of the

various modes of lived space that are constituted as correlates of various styles of

lived bodily comportment.65 There are nevertheless important differences between

the respective ‘‘this’’/‘‘more’’ structures. These include, for example, the multidi-

mensionality of lived movement—in contrast to the monodimensionality of primal

temporalization (cf. Hua X, p. 380) or the bidimensional ‘‘before–after’’ continuum

of immanent time—as well as our ability to reverse its direction at will, in contrast

to the celebrated irreversibility of time. Moreover, we can functionally inhibit the

63 The notion of ‘‘more kinaesthetic functioning’’ per se not only includes both moving and holding still

(cf. e.g., Hua XV, pp. 319ff.; NR, pp. 24ff., 29), but also includes cases of weakness or restriction as

factual disappointments that nevertheless—qua ‘‘disappointments’’—confirm the original protention of

being-able-to-move that is the essential feature of kinaesthetic capability, since this is precisely what has

been disappointed.64 Here it is not possible to enter into the question of movement that is checked by the resistance of things

(cf., e.g., NR, pp. 225f.); of the experience of my own body as offering resistance I must overcome; or of

the role of visual experience—with its freedom to survey vast stretches without the panorama resisting the

gaze that sweeps over it—in the constitution of open-empty space.65 Cf. the discussions of attuned space, the space of action, and the space of intuition in Part One of

Stroker (1965).

204 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

primal opening of ‘‘more space’’ protended at the leading edge of every movement

by ‘‘holding still,’’ maintaining ‘‘this’’ particular kinaesthetic constellation as the

multipotential ‘‘here’’66 from which the next move (in any direction) will come. Yet

continuing to hold still does count as ‘‘more movement,’’ since further ongoing

kinaesthetic enactment (and entailment) is required. Thus kinaesthetic ongoingness

can (within limits) pause and linger with a particular ‘‘this.’’ In contrast, the null-

moment serving as the orientational center from which ‘‘past’’ and ‘‘future’’ are

gauged is always the newest now (cf. Hua XXXV, p. 420), and I cannot hold time

still so as to continue to take one particular, temporally individuated now as the

standpoint from which all temporal perspectives are established; instead, the current

now spills of its own accord into its own immediate future ‘‘in an absolutely passive

process,’’67 and the active awake I is not free to vary its fundamental temporal

orientation at all.68

Now at the level of each temporally individuated phase of embodiment as an

ongoing act, more specific protentions also arise above and beyond the protention of

‘‘more kinaesthetic functioning’’ per se—‘‘vectors’’ that are protended on the basis

of whatever is currently being enacted and are forecast as possibilities before

actually being enacted. Moreover, co-protended with the ongoingness of kinaes-

thetic capability per se there is a parallel protention of ‘‘more localization of

kinaesthetic capability in somaesthetic sensibility.’’69 Let us consider several

possibilities: (1) what can come at the leading edge of the now is ‘‘more of the

same’’ in the sense of a prolongation of the current kinaesthetic constellation (and

the accompanying bodily feeling), as in, e.g., holding still; (2) what can come at the

leading edge of the now is an increase or decrease in the amount of effort it takes to

maintain the current bodily shape unchanged (an effort that is enacted on the

‘‘kinesis’’ side of kinaesthesis and registered on the ‘‘aisthesis’’ side); (3) what can

come at the leading edge of the now is the beginning phase of a movement

proceeding along familiar trajectories, swinging familiar patterns of enactment/

entailment combinations into play, and not only arriving at a familiar type of goal,

but producing—if I attend to them at all—familiar bodily feelings as a familiar

deployment of kinaesthetic capability is localized in a familiar sort of somaesthetic

sensibility; or (4) what can come at the leading edge of the now can—as with the

practice serving as the leading clue for this investigation—remain protentionally

indeterminate with regard to its specific shape, direction (or lack of direction), and

effort, while the focus on the how of the ongoing act of making a body is still

maintained as the open-empty dimension of interest along which or within which

‘‘what is just now coming’’ moves. In all of these cases, the kinaesthetic system as a

66 The intricate issue of ‘‘inner spatiality’’ as a parallel to (transcendental) ‘‘inner temporality’’

(cf. Seebohm 1992, pp. 162f.) cannot be addressed here, but deserves a separate investigation.67 Hua Mat IV, p. 178 (and cf., e.g., Hua XXXIII, p. 143; Hua XXV, pp. 223ff.).68 Thus whether I am remembering in such a way as to transplant myself into my own past and relive its

sequence of nows, or maintaining a recollective focus on one particular moment, the temporal standpoint

of these activities themselves is always the current now, and I cannot hold it back in the same way in

which I can check a movement.69 For the sake of simplicity, I am setting aside the kinaesthetics of undergoing these somaesthetic

sensations, but this too has its leading edge that can be thematized in the manner described.

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 205

123

whole is co-involved, right here at the leading edge—for example, some

kinaesthetic systems may merely be playing an ongoing supporting role, holding

still (or adjusting as necessary) while there is local movement in another

kinaesthetic system. Yet even if I am moving volumetrically or multidirectionally,

in a way that involves many kinaesthetic systems, all of the directions (along with

any necessary adjustments elsewhere in the total kinaesthetic system) are

simultaneously accommodated within the current now of the movement as a whole,

so that many space-opening leading edges—where the movement proceeds into the

immediately adjacent spatial location—share the same temporal leading edge,

which is, of course, the one and only leading edge of the ever-welling now.70 And

since the kinaesthetic system as a whole is always globally involved in some way in

every local kinaesthetic enactment, it might initially seem that in the case of the

practice under discussion, the fourth possibility mentioned—where what is

protended is ‘‘the just coming way of making a body, however that may be’’—

would accordingly also have the kinaesthetic system as a whole as its Spielraum of

possibilities.

However, like temporalization, movement and spatialization too proceed by a

principle of immediate adjacency. Thus for any total kinaesthetic constellation,

analyzed in ‘‘freeze-frame mode’’ as a current ‘‘this’’ (i.e., ‘‘this not that’’) and

considered in terms of its horizon of possibilities per se (suspending any interest, at

least for the moment, in which possibilities will in fact be actualized as the

movement flows on), there is a quite particular multidirectional ‘‘halo’’ of practical

possibilities that can be immediately actualized ‘‘from here,’’ i.e., from whatever

enactively individuated constellation is currently in play.71 Other possible

deployments of the total kinaesthetic system are not thereby canceled in principle,

but receive an index of ‘‘reachable by non-immediate, path-like adjacency.’’ For

example, my hand may take many different pathways in order to reach an object that

I am not currently touching, but it must take some pathway: there is no way to reach

‘‘there’’ from ‘‘here’’ without traveling a trajectory of some sort. And at each

leading edge of the now, if I interrupt the trajectory, there is a new halo of

immediate spatial adjacency—an effective horizon of practical freedom that

includes the beginning phases not only of habitual, but also of non-habitual ways to

proceed ‘‘from here.’’ Thus not-knowing how making a body will proceed, and

70 That the protentionality proper to any kinaesthetic functioning whatsoever presupposes the

fundamental passive Urzeitigung of ‘‘more time’’ can also be seen when we consider that the

spontaneous bodily shifts occurring in the practice in question can be sudden or gradual, and indeed, all

actualizations of kinaesthetic capability display an organic rhythm and tempo—but the very notion of

‘‘tempo’’ is senseless for the seamless prolongation of the now. Even when Husserl produces his various

visual diagrams and displays the series of nows as spatially equidistant in order to indicate the steady

sinking-away of the continuum of retentions, he does not mean to convey that time itself proceeds at a

certain tempo in the same way as melodies or kinaesthetic sequences do (cf. Hua X, p. 370).71 Husserl’s references to the kinaesthetic sequences that can be actualized ‘‘from here’’—from the

‘‘currently actualized kinaestheses’’ (Hua XXXIV, p. 372; cf. Hua Mat VIII, p. 52)—typically address

these kinaesthetic possibilities in terms of the appearances they correlatively make available from the

horizon of possible appearances of the perceptual object (including the further possibility of actualizing

kinaesthetic systems pertaining to other sensory fields). But the structure, ‘‘immediately actualizable from

here,’’ also pertains to experiences whose aim is not to explore horizons of appearances in the context of

constituting a coherent objective world (cf. Sect. 6 below).

206 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

actively allowing whatever way of making a body is just about to emerge at the

leading edge (while simultaneously suspending any deliberate ‘‘doing’’ in this

regard), frees up every current possibility within this halo—habitual and non-

habitual alike—as an equally possible way to proceed from here. And indeed, the

leading edge of the living now is exactly where to turn if we want to allow

alternatives to habitual paths to emerge, for it is only here, at the leading edge, that

any immediately adjacent possibility (whether habitual or non-habitual) can in factbe actualized—or inhibited—at all. What changes with the practice in question is

that while the habitual remains possible, it is now merely one of many possible ways

to proceed, from here, with the ongoing act of making a body. This is true not only

with regard to my current bodily shape, but also with regard to the degree of effort

deployed in maintaining my habitual postural patterns: this entire currently/

ongoingly actualized configuration is now ‘‘possibilized,’’72 which means that the

possibility of maintaining the exact same configuration is now but one possibility

among a multidirectional halo of immediately adjacent possibilities, each of which

might allow a frozen shape to melt just a bit.

So far, I have approached bodily protentionality in terms of a static analysis (in

the technical sense in which we can speak of a ‘‘static’’ account of a dynamic

process) oriented toward identifying the fundamental structural regularities and

constraints governing the experiential dimension of interest. Thus, for instance, I

have emphasized the protention of ‘‘more kinaesthetic functioning’’ per se; its basic

‘‘this’’/‘‘more’’ structure; the principle of immediate adjacency, which governs the

multidimensional halo of possibilities that can be immediately actualized ‘‘from

here,’’ i.e., from whatever kinaesthetic constellation is currently actualized; and the

structural primacy of this larger halo of immediately available possibilities (be they

familiar or unfamiliar) over whatever specific possibilities might be habitually

protended as ‘‘about-to-be-actualized.’’ Yet even if we acknowledge this plurality of

(habitual and non-habitual, familiar and unfamiliar) possibilities, all accommodated

within the one leading edge of time and all possible in principle ‘‘from here,’’ they

cannot all be actualized at once. What can be said about the genetic motivations

whereby within each kinaesthetic system’s halo of immediately realizable

possibilities, certain possibilities in particular—and with the practice in question,

perhaps non-habitual ones—will be singled out for spontaneous actualization?

5.2 Questions of Genesis

It is indeed possible for kinaesthetic shifts to be motivated by somaesthetic feelings;

think, for example, of involuntary movements away from temporary pain or

discomfort,73 or of kinaesthetic patterns arising while coping with injury—if ‘‘it

only hurts when I do X,’’ I will find ways of moving that avoid X. Or I can

voluntarily prolong a pleasurable stretch, and so on. But I shall set aside such

72 See Zaner (1981, pp. 175ff.).73 See, e.g., Hua IV, p. 260; Hua XIV, p. 450. Note that the research question is still directed toward the

ongoing act of making a body and not, e.g., toward the affective motivations pertaining to the

kinaesthetics of perceiving transcendent things and bringing them to optimal givenness, etc.

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 207

123

examples here in order to focus on genetic principles proper to kinaesthetic

capability per se, with particular emphasis on those principles, native to the sichbewegen konnen, that come into operation in the kind of bodily not-knowing and

actively allowing that is at stake in the protentional body practice.74 In other words,

I want to inquire into the essential principles of motivation governing which of the

possibilities within the immediate protentional halo will be summoned forth by the

current constellation of enactments (and entailments) to emerge at the leading edge.

At the most fundamental level, the governing principle is motility itself.75 This is

readily seen in cases where a specific ‘‘restriction’’ motivates a corresponding

‘‘freedom,’’ or when a pattern of ‘‘tension’’ already provides the clues for an

appropriate multidirectional easing: the ongoing style of ‘‘contracting’’ or ‘‘hold-

ing’’ not only motivates the need to ‘‘release’’ in general, but prescribes the

immediate means available ‘‘from here.’’ But the principle of motility also requires

that what is currently slack can move toward firmness and strength. What is

required, in other words, is that instead of being stuck in any position, or at either

end of the holding-on/letting-go spectrum, I am free to move, which means

(voluntarily or involuntarily) being able to vary what is going on in the current now.

And this includes allowing continuous, unrelenting enactment to be relieved by

moments of rest. Thus under the rule of the genetic motivation proper to such primal

motility, what is immediately protended at the leading edge of the living now is

precisely not ‘‘more of the same,’’ but a kinaesthetic constellation that will be

significantly different in some way (whether a different shape, or a different vector

or trajectory, or a different degree of effort and a different style of the ‘‘how’’ of the

movement, and so on). One sort of example might involve ‘‘stalled’’ gestures (such

as ‘‘trapped’’ gestures related to traumatic events) moving toward completing their

initial trajectories; another sort of example might involve rhythmic alterations or

oscillations, as in breathing, with the very end of an exhalation motivating the

inception of a new inhalation, and the very end of the latter motivating a new

exhalation, and so on. In short, the genetic principle that is at stake here is a matter

of ‘‘moving on,’’ rather than reiterating the currently actualized possibility.

And such a principle is obviously very different from the kind of ‘‘inertial’’

hyletic protention whereby if ‘‘green’’ is what is given now, what is protended is

‘‘more green,’’ as if protention really were the mirror image of retention (cf. Hua

74 Here I am presupposing a system of already developed kinaesthetic capabilities (cf. NR, p. 24) without

describing the origin and development of my mastery of this system per se (cf. Hua Mat VIII, pp. 326ff.);

I am also setting aside the task of describing both the genesis of ‘‘habitualities’’ as sedimented styles of

action and the associative awakening of these habitual patterns ‘‘under certain circumstances,’’ in order to

focus on the genetic motivations functioning within the protentional body practice as I have presented it.

Methodologically, it should be pointed out that much of the difficulty of actually carrying out concrete

phenomenological investigation involves maintaining a clear focus on that which is to be described while

distinguishing it from related descriptive tasks: no matter how much work one does, at each stage it is

clear that there is more work yet to be done, and this, I think, is the directly lived experience motivating

the characterization of phenomenological science as an infinite task requiring ‘‘resolute cooperation’’

among generations of researchers (Hua XIX/1, pp. 16f.). Cf. also Hua XXXIV, p. 296, on the necessity of

proceeding ‘‘abstractively,’’ working step by step and stratum by stratum while keeping the concretion in

mind as a whole, even if at this stage, it is only a mute horizon that is yet to be explicated.75 Note that the protention of ‘‘more kinaesthetic capability’’ per se identified in the static inquiry is a

protention of possibility, whereas what is at stake here is the actualization of a (motivated) possibility.

208 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

XXXIII, p. 24) and followed, like the latter, a principle of conservation or

preservation, with protention preserving the given in advance, as it were, even as the

retentional modification is conserving it as a green that has in fact been given.

Instead, the protention proper to motility can be seen as operating under a ‘‘telos

toward optimality.’’ This, however, is qualitatively different from the ‘‘telos toward

optimal givenness’’ of an object of interest, where the kinaesthetic circumstances

are motivated by the need to keep the green object in view, to approach it more

closely in order to determine it in more detail and feel its texture, or to retreat to the

proper distance in order to grasp it as a whole, and so on—all of which is, again,

informed by a principle of conservation, so that ‘‘one and the same object’’

undergoes a progressive contentual enrichment, while previously determined

features are either preserved as is, or acquire a sedimented history of modalization.

In contrast, the telos toward optimality that is at stake here refers to the kinaesthetic

performances themselves, rather than to constituted objects. It is true that habitual

enactments still remain possible at the leading edge. But the kinaesthetic telos

toward optimality dispenses with the obligatory nature of one’s habitual way of

making a body (and engaging, bodily, with the world), in favor of an immediateprotentional motivation of ‘‘what is needed next here’’76—right now, as the now

begins to spill into more (and as yet empty) time, and just here, in the halo of the

most immediate adjacency. Thus the telos toward optimality can motivate very

specific, local shifts.

On the other hand, such local moments of moving on to ‘‘what is needed next’’

are informed by a more ‘‘global’’ telos toward optimality where what ‘‘optimality’’

means is not a specific state, but a kinaesthetic ‘‘lability’’ that is not confined to

one’s accustomed styles of perception and praxis, but is a balanced, yet fluid and

open readiness to enact any available kinaesthetic possibility, familiar or unfamiliar.

This arises not only by way of a general attitude of ‘‘not-knowing’’ what will

emerge at the leading edge, but also through a global and specifically kinaesthetic

comportment of ‘‘not-doing’’ in which all that is protended is ‘‘more situated,

responsive motility.’’ In other words, by not presuming anything in particular as a

foregone conclusion, I am correlatively not committed in advance to any specific

(immediately available or mediately aimed at) constellation of enactments and

entailments. Thus there is no protention of any particular, familiar kinaesthetic

course; instead, everything is ready to move, i.e., to alter what is currently going on

in multifarious ways (shape, tonus, trajectory, movement style; relation to ground

and gravity, to things, tools, and others, to the affective tone of the situation, etc.).

This in turn helps to facilitate an appropriate response to fluid situations and to

novel occasions for which no stereotyped responses are already in place, because no

possibility—familiar or unfamiliar—is foreclosed in advance. In other words, we

are not dealing with a routinized body; instead, what I have been describing is a

style of embodiment proper to improvisational consciousness and comportment—an

76 This is a key notion in the work of Eugene T. Gendlin (see, e.g., Levin 1997, p. 28), and the same

principle is at work in various transformative somatic practices as well (cf., e.g., Behnke 2007, pp.

79ff.; in press, b, Two.A.7).

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 209

123

ongoing style of making a body that can rise to occasions in the making, and

welcome—or even invite—the unforeseen (cf. Behnke, in press, e).

But this already raises deeper questions. I have been describing an open-ended

bodily lability that can partner the event of sense as sense in-the-making precisely

because it is a body that emerges through a practice of not-knowing and actively

allowing at the leading edge and its open ‘‘more,’’ rather than a body always already

engaged in Vorgreifen and Sinngebung along known lines of apperceptive

foreshadowing.77 On the other hand, it is certainly also possible to describe how

a habitual posture, with its repertoire of familiar kinaesthetic possibilities, is the

correlate of a familiar, pregiven world that we strive to bring to optimal givenness in

its Sein and Sosein and to alter in familiar practical respects. What is going on here?

What more encompassing research horizon is guiding the investigation in each

case? The following is not a definitive answer, but merely attempts to formulate the

problem and to situate the research reported here in a broader context of motivation.

6 Integrating Consciousness in Contrast to Improvisational Consciousness

As we have seen, the choice of an unusual bodily awareness practice as a leading

clue for the investigation has led me to emphasize a notion of open protentionality

in which what is truly protended is ‘‘more time.’’ Thus even though a particular

dimension of attention and interest78 is indeed at stake here (i.e., making a body,

rather than, for instance, free musical improvisation), I have primarily been

concerned with possibility rather than actuality. This stands in sharp contrast to a

theory of protention focused on facticity—e.g., a theory in which protended content

is only retrospectively (or retroactively) identified as such in reflection on a past

stretch of already settled, determinate experience.79 For example, looking back, I

can clearly see that as my gaze moved up the trunk of the huge tree, then suddenly

stopped short at the ragged edge, the shock of surprise that I experienced had its

roots in an automatic protention of further sensuous contents appropriate to

experiencing a tree of this size and type. And although a subsequent analysis may

indeed bring out various levels of synthesis that are at work here, it is characteristic

of everyday experience in general that it proceeds in much the same way as does the

lived experience of hearing a familiar melody (cf., e.g., Hua XXXII, pp. 153ff.).

Whatever is given firsthand in the opening phases of the experience not only

awakens specific contentual anticipations of what is just now coming (the

77 The notion of sense in-the-making has been addressed in, e.g., Waldenfels (1995), where what is at

stake is Merleau-Ponty’s notion of truth in-the-making. Waldenfels’ concern with such matters as open

situations and productive (rather than reproductive) action is echoed in other authors’ concern with a

phenomenology of the ‘‘event’’ (see, e.g., Dastur 1997). The present essay—which uses Husserlian

methods to describe a mode of lived bodily comportment attuned to the new in such a way that a

corporeal correlational a priori still holds good—can be seen as bearing on the question of whether, and to

what extent, ‘‘classic’’ phenomenology can contribute to elucidating the spontaneous emergence of new

and unforeseen experiential possibilities. Cf. also Behnke (2004, pp. 32ff.).78 Cf. Hua XXVI, §4a, especially pp. 20ff.79 Cf., e.g., Hua XXXIII, p. 377; Hua XXXV, p. 415; Hua XXXII, p. 255; Hua XV, pp. 349f.; Hua XXXIV,

p. 170 n. 1; Hua XXXIX, p. 374; Hua Mat VIII, pp. 30, 44, 82, 90ff., 395.

210 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

continuation of the tune)—or in visual perception, what would appear if I were to

actualize the appropriate kinaesthetic circumstances (further profiles of the thing

I’m looking at)—but also already projects, and stands under, an anticipation of

another sort: namely, that of the constitution of a transtemporal unity and identity(of whatever type)80 as an abiding achievement (i.e., one to which I can return

experientially, even if only in memory should the identical unity itself no longer be

experienceable, for whatever reason).81 This in turn stands as the founding moment

within a general project of knowing (cf. Hua Mat VIII, p. 261) whose various pre-

predicative and predicative levels are traced in Erfahrung und Urteil, including, for

example, turning-toward; grasping and apprehending- or apperceiving-as; contem-

plating and explicating in progressive determination; relating and comparing; and

eventually judging, predicating, etc. However, this general project of knowing is not

necessarily thematic for the consciousness that is carrying it out, and is certainly not

confined to scientific cognition per se; instead, it is part of the very structure of the

natural attitude. More specifically, if it is the function of the general thesis of the

natural attitude (including its ‘‘Vorglauben’’82) to posit the being of the world per se,

then the function of the general project of knowing (including its ‘‘Vorgreifen’’83) is

to determine this world in its being-thus (cf. Hua XXXV, p. 569). And these two

moments are intertwined precisely at the leading edge (and its further protentional

horizon), where the confirmation (or disappointment and correction) of protended

contents serves (and conserves) the straightforward positing of an actually existing

object that is to be determined more closely along the lines of an already

predelineated style.84 It is the essential presumptivity of protention (cf. Hua XIV, p.

14), then, that fuels the need for what Husserl calls the presumption or pretension in

the broader sense, as when he writes, for instance, ‘‘External perception is a constant

pretension to accomplish something that, by its very nature, it is not in a position to

accomplish’’ (Hua XI, p. 3, and cf. Hua XIX/2, p. 589; Hua XXV, p. 211; Hua XVII,

p. 288).

These reflections can now allow us to see the larger, systematic research project

into which analyses both of inertial hyletic protention and of habitual styles of

embodiment are meant to fit. Although Husserl’s philosophical program was not

confined to a single issue or concern, it is nevertheless the case that one of his major

aims was to work out a comprehensive philosophy of science, a task that includes

not only offering a philosophical critique of the fundamental concepts of existing

sciences, but also providing a critical clarification of the regional articulation of the

pre-scientific world into provinces to which the relevant sciences are devoted.85

80 Cf., e.g., Hua XXXV, pp. 461ff.81 Cf., e.g., Hua XI, p. 9; Hua XXXV, p. 132; EU, §48; Hua XXXIV, p. 456 n. 1.82 Cf., e.g., Hua XXXVI, p. 130; Hua XXXV, p. 717; Hua XXXII, pp. 104, 140f.; Hua XXXIV, p. 123 (cf.

610f.); Hua Mat VIII, p. 96; Mohanty (1996, p. 20). Husserl also uses the term Vorgeltung (see, e.g., Hua XV,

p. 353; Hua XXXIV, p. 444, and cf. 222), as well as Vorgewissheit (Hua XXXIV, pp. 327ff.).83 Cf., e.g., Hua XI, p. 86; Hua Mat IV, p. 99; Hua VIII, pp. 45, 221; Hua XXXIV, p. 423 (cf. 607); EU,

p. 118.84 See, e.g., Hua Mat IV, pp. 99f.; Hua XVII, pp. 253, 289.85 Cf., e.g., Hua Mat IV, Part II; Hua XXXV, pp. 304ff., 481ff.; Hua IX, §§6ff.; Hua XXXII, passim.

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 211

123

Yet the task does not end there, for it also includes pointing out cases where the

resulting essential distinctions have not been respected (e.g., attempts to treat the

realm of Geist with scientific means modeled on the realm of Natur) and identifying

cases in which a specific science seems to be missing (e.g., somatology or

aesthesiology), as well as supplying an appropriate corresponding eidetic phenom-

enology (e.g., phenomenological psychology or eidetic somatology).86 And insofar

as the lifeworld provides the foundation upon which the edifice of science is erected,

a phenomenological philosophy of science requires a thoroughgoing description of

the ‘‘natural objective attitude’’ (Hua XI, p. 214), carried out not in the naivete that

is native to this attitude, but under the sign of transcendental-phenomenological

epoche and reduction. Thus working out a specifically hyletic protentionality

elucidates an essential moment of a transcendental aesthetic (in Husserl’s sense87)

that is to be seen from the start as the foundation for a transcendental logic88—all in

service of an ultimately legitimating critique of the possibility of any valid

knowledge whatsoever of a transcendent world that is given, of essential necessity,

in temporally individuated appearances,89 and therefore requires an integratingconsciousness.90

An improvisational consciousness, however, need not stand under the rule of the

integrating performances through which every moment is already subsumed, in

advance,91 into the architecture of a whole whose provisionality typically only

comes to the fore in modalizations of various sorts, nor does it even have to posit a

determinate world at all. Instead, improvisational comportment more truly honors

the ineradicable presumptivity of protention. Think, for example, of a free atonal

improvisation—where the coming tone could be anything (cf. Hua XIV, p. 252)—

producing only momentary, local associations and connections while continually

refraining (not only at a cognitive level, but at more fundamental strata) from the

project of knowing that would knit the emerging sonorous moments into a single,

repeatable whole. Yet even this sort of radically un-ordinary case still rests on the

empty, passive protention of ‘‘more time’’ as the current now stretches itself into the

new. Thus both improvisational consciousness and integrating consciousness can be

taken as variations across which open, empty protentionality stands out as an

invariant pertaining to the deep structure of Urzeitigung itself.92 In this way both

86 Cf., e.g., Hua Mat IV, p. 212.87 See, e.g., Hua XV, p. 214 n. 1; Hua XVII, pp. 297, 457; Hua Mat IV, pp. 21, 152, 168, 171f., 174, 177,

179f., 182, 186, 189, 193, 195, 197ff., 208, 212; Mohanty (1996, pp. 20f.).88 Cf., e.g., Hua Mat IV, pp. 198ff.; Hua XXXII, Ch. 4, especially p. 110, §18, pp. 120ff.; Hua XVII, pp.

447ff.89 Cf., e.g., Hua XXXIII, pp. 291ff. (= EU, pp. 463ff.).90 See Hua XXXIII, p. 122; EU, pp. 308f.; Hua XXXII, pp. 140, 156, and cf., e.g., Hua XXVI, Beilage

XIII; Hua Mat IV, Beilage IV.91 In other words, it is not a matter of a linear ‘‘summation’’ of parts that only subsequently form a

whole—cf. Hua XXVI, pp. 178f.; Hua XXXV, p. 463.92 Here it is important to remember that transcendental accounts bring out moments not normally

thematized within the natural attitude, but as moments, with no claim that they are in fact self-sufficient

elements. Hence the descriptive project of discerning the moment of ‘‘more time’’ as an invariant running

through both the integrative preservation of the familiar and the improvisational openness to the radically

212 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

integrating and improvisational consciousness and comportment confirm a funda-

mental phenomenological finding governing not only the stream of hyletic facticity,

but also the ongoing style of eidetic possibility.

7 Coda

Husserl himself already recognized phenomenologizing as an ‘‘unnatural’’ enter-

prise (Hua VIII, p. 121; cf. Hua XXXIV, p. 323). But my project here has perhaps

been even more ‘‘counter-natural,’’ for it is neither a project of producing legitimate

knowledge of a determinate world in its Sein and Sosein, nor one of reflecting,

phenomenologically, on the ultimate legitimacy of such knowledge. Instead, my

project has to do with radically bracketing ‘‘the way things are’’ in order to allow

things to become otherwise, yet without knowing in advance precisely what. Thus

my paradigm here is not the kind of experience in which an identical, stable,

unaltered thing is exhibited, determined, and verified, but the kind of experience

found in the upsurge of artistic creation in-the-making at a primal stratum that is

perhaps most fully exemplified in the lived experience of free improvisation. And

when I investigate the lived experience of embodiment itself within the latter

context, I find that my own body is not just a special kind of ‘‘thing,’’ but a co-

horizonality that can be lived at the leading edge in such a way that whatever actual,

temporally individuated way of making a body is currently being enacted, this

ongoing style of embodiment is always already shot through with an openprotentionality that is not limited to ‘‘more of the same,’’ but is generous enough to

accommodate deep change.

In the end, then, this body that is not a thing93 is neither an identical unity

appearing within the temporal stream of a non-bodily observer’s experience, nor a

passive, material site already inscribed with a past that determines its future once

and for all, nor an utterly anonymous habituality that roots me in the world while

remaining resistant in principle to phenomenological explication; rather, I, the

transcendental, kinaesthetic I (cf. Hua XV, p. 286), have the time of my life in

ongoingly enacting a style of embodiment that can conserve its habits, or let them

slip away in favor of an emerging innovation or improvisation. This, however,

makes for a liminal body, not only because its ongoing enactments and entailments

are renewed or transformed right here, at the leading edge of the living now, but

also because such a body only comes to prominence in special circumstances that

may stretch the limits of our usual styles of awareness. And it may be stretching the

limits of phenomenological research itself to take a body that is lived at the leading

edge as a leading clue for the investigation. Nevertheless, my choice of a starting

Footnote 92 continued

unfamiliar does not yet provide an answer to such questions as whether time itself exerts a connective

force above and beyond the specifically hyletic ‘‘fusion’’ of similarity (cf. Hua Mat VIII, p. 88), or

whether a truly ‘‘empty’’ time is ever actually experienced (cf. Mohanty 2008, p. 276).93 Like my other ‘‘experiments in phenomenological practice,’’ the present essay is a preliminary study

for a larger project whose current working title is This Body that is Not a Thing: A HusserlianInvestigation of Embodiment.

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 213

123

point has at least allowed me to propose a way of complementing existing work on

hyletic protention and the temporality of affectivity with some provisional analyses

of the structure and dynamics of embodiment as an ongoing activity. And along the

way, perhaps I have also demonstrated how a renewed attempt to carry out concrete

phenomenological investigation can at least encourage us to reflect on the terms in

which and on which it is done.

References

Aguirre, A. (1970). Genetische Phanomenologie und Reduktion. Zur Letztbegrundung der Wissenschaftaus der radikalen Skepsis im Denken E. Husserls. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Behnke, E. A. (1984). World without opposite/flesh of the world (a carnal introduction). Felton, CA:

California Center for Jean Gebser Studies; rpt. at www.lifwynnfoundation.org.

Behnke, E. A. (1986). The craft of improvisation: Sounding the integral world. Beitrage zur integralenWeltsicht, 2, 55–78.

Behnke, E. A. (1990). At the service of the sonata: Music lessons with Merleau-Ponty. In H. Pietersma

(Ed.), Merleau-Ponty: Critical essays (pp. 23–29). Lanham, MD: University Press of America/

Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology.

Behnke, E. A. (1997). Ghost gestures: Phenomenological investigations of bodily micromovements and

their intercorporeal implications. Human Studies, 20(2), 181–201.

Behnke, E. A. (1999). From Merleau-Ponty’s concept of nature to an interspecies practice of peace. In H.

P. Steeves (Ed.), Animal others: On ethics, ontology, and animal life (pp. 93–116). Albany, NY:

State University of New York Press.

Behnke, E. A. (2001). Hyle, Empfindnisse, field, and frame: An experiment in phenomenological practice

(II). Part II.C of E. A. Behnke, Phenomenology of embodiment/embodied phenomenology:

Emerging work. In S. Crowell, et al. (Eds.), The reach of reflection: Issues for phenomenology’ssecond century (pp. 94–117). Boca Raton, FL: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology/

www.electronpress.com.

Behnke, E. A. (2004). On the dynamization of phenomenological concepts: An experimental essay in

phenomenological practice. Focus Pragensis, 4, 9–39.

Behnke, E. A. (2007). Bodily relationality: An experiment in phenomenological practice (VII). In

L. Embree & T. Nenon (Eds.), Selected essays from North America, vol. 5 of Phenomenology 2005(pp. 67–97). Bucharest: Zeta Books.

Behnke, E. A. (2008a). Interkinaesthetic affectivity: A phenomenological approach. ContinentalPhilosophy Review, 41(2), 143–161.

Behnke, E. A. (2008b). Husserl’s protean concept of affectivity: From the texts to the phenomena

themselves. Philosophy Today, 52(SPEP Supplement), 46–53.

Behnke, E. A. (in press, a). Phenomenologist at work. Santalka.

Behnke, E. A. (in press, b). The human science of somatics and transcendental phenomenology. Zmogusir Zodis.

Behnke, E. A. (in press, c). Working notions: A meditation on Husserlian phenomenological practice. In

P. Blosser & T. Nenon (Eds.), Advancing phenomenology: Essays in honor of Lester Embree.Dordrecht: Springer.

Behnke, E. A. (in press, d). The socially shaped body and the critique of corporeal experience. In

K. Morris (Ed.), Sartre and the body. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

Behnke, E. A. (in press, e). Null-body, protean body, potent body, neutral body, wild body. Forthcoming

in a collection of essays edited by K. Maclaren & D. Morris.

Bergmann, W., & Hoffmann, G. (1984). Habitualitat als Potentialitat. Zur Konkretisierung des Ich bei

Husserl. Husserl Studies, 1(3), 281–305.

Besnier, B. (1993). Remarques sur les Lecons sur la conscience intime du temps de Husserl. Alter, 1, 319–

356.

Brough, J. B. (2002). Time and the one and the many in Husserl’s Bernauer Manuscripts on time

consciousness. Philosophy Today, 46(SPEP Supplement), 142–153.

214 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

Bruzina, R. (2004). Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and ends in phenomenology, 1928–1938. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Cairns, D. (1976). Conversations with Husserl and Fink. Husserl-Archives (Ed.). The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff.

Claesges, U. (1964). Edmund Husserls Theorie der Raumkonstitution. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Dastur, F. (1997). Pour une phenomenologie de l’evenement: L’attente et la surprise. EtudesPhenomenologiques, 25, 59–75.

Depraz, N. (1998). Can I anticipate myself? Self-affection and temporality. In D. Zahavi (Ed.), Self-awareness, temporality, and alterity: Central topics in phenomenology (pp. 83–97). Dordrecht:

Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Depraz, N. (2000). Hyletic and kinetic facticity of the absolute flow and world creation. In J. B. Brough &

L. Embree (Eds.), The many faces of time (pp. 25–35). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Dodd, J. (2005). Reading Husserl’s time-diagrams from 1917/18. Husserl Studies, 21(2), 111–137.

Hoffmann, G. (1997). Die Zweideutigkeit der Reflexion als Wahrnehmung von Anonymitat. HusserlStudies, 14(2), 95–121.

Hua I: Husserl, E. (1950). Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage. S. Strasser (Ed.),

Husserliana I. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua II: Husserl, E. (1950). Die Idee der Phanomenologie. Funf Vorlesungen. W. Biemel (Ed.),

Husserliana II. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua III/1: Husserl, E. (1976). Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischenPhilosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einfuhrung in die reine Phanomenologie. K. Schuhmann

(Ed.), Husserliana III/1. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua IV: Husserl, E. (1952). Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischenPhilosophie. Zweites Buch. Phanomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. M. Biemel

(Ed.), Husserliana IV. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua V: Husserl, E. (1952). Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen Philosophie.Drittes Buch. Die Phanomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften. M. Biemel (Ed.),

Husserliana V. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua VI: Husserl, E. (1954). Die Krisis der europaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentalePhanomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phanomenologische Philosophie. W. Biemel (Ed.),

Husserliana VI. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua VIII: Husserl, E. (1959). Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phanomenologischenReduktion. R. Boehm (Ed.), Husserliana VIII. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua IX: Husserl, E. (1962). Phanomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925.

W. Biemel (Ed.), Husserliana IX. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua X: Husserl, E. (1966). Zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893–1917). R. Boehm

(Ed.), Husserliana X. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XI: Husserl, E. (1966). Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten1918–1926. M. Fleischer (Ed.), Husserliana XI. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XIII: Husserl, E. (1973). Zur Phanomenologie der Intersubjektivitat. Texte aus dem Nachlass. ErsterTeil: 1905–1920. I. Kern (Ed.), Husserliana XIII. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XIV: Husserl, E. (1973). Zur Phanomenologie der Intersubjektivitat. Texte aus dem Nachlass.Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928. I. Kern (Ed.), Husserliana XIV. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XV: Husserl, E. (1973). Zur Phanomenologie der Intersubjektivitat. Texte aus dem Nachlass. DritterTeil: 1929–1935. I. Kern (Ed.), Husserliana XV. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XVI: Husserl, E. (1973). Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907. U. Claesges (Ed.), Husserliana XVI.

Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XVII: Husserl, E. (1974). Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischenVernunft. P. Janssen (Ed.), Husserliana XVII. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XIX/1: Husserl, E. (1984). Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. I. Teil: Untersuchungen zurPhanomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. U. Panzer (Ed.), Husserliana XIX/1. Den Haag:

Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XIX/2: Husserl, E. (1984). Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. II. Teil: Untersuchungen zurPhanomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. U. Panzer (Ed.), Husserliana XIX/2. Den Haag:

Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XX/1: Husserl, E. (2002). Logische Untersuchungen. Erganzungsband. Erster Teil: Entwurfe zurUmarbeitung der VI. Untersuchung und zur Vorrede fur die Neuauflage der Logischen

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 215

123

Untersuchungen (Sommer 1913). U. Melle (Ed.), Husserliana XX/1. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic

Publishers.

Hua XXII: Husserl, E. (1979). Aufsatze und Rezensionen (1890–1910). B. Rang (Ed.), Husserliana XXII.

Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XXIV: Husserl, E. (1984). Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie. Vorlesungen 1906/07. U.

Melle (Ed.), Husserliana XXIV. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XXV: Husserl, E. (1987). Aufsatze und Vortrage (1911–1921). T. Nenon & H. R. Sepp (Eds.),

Husserliana XXV. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XXVI: Husserl, E. (1987). Vorlesungen uber Bedeutungslehre. Sommersemester 1908. U. Panzer

(Ed.), Husserliana XXVI. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Hua XXXII: Husserl, E. (2001). Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1927. M. Weiler (Ed.),

Husserliana XXXII. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Hua XXXIII: Husserl, E. (2001). Die Bernauer Manuskripte uber das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18). R.

Bernet & D. Lohmar (Eds.), Husserliana XXXIII. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Hua XXXIV: Husserl, E. (2002). Zur phanomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935). S. Luft (Ed.), Husserliana XXXIV. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Hua XXXV: Husserl, E. (2002). Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23. B. Goossens (Ed.),

Husserliana XXXV. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Hua XXXVI: Husserl, E. (2003). Transzendentaler Idealismus. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1921).R. D. Rollinger & R. Sowa (Eds.), Husserliana XXXVI. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Hua XXXIX: Husserl, E. (2008). Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrerKonstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). R. Sowa (Ed.), Husserliana XXXIX. Dordrecht:

Springer.

Hua Mat IV: Husserl, E. (2002). Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919. M. Weiler (Ed.),

Husserliana Materialien IV. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Hua Mat VIII: Husserl, E. (2006). Spate Texte uber Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte.

D. Lohmar (Ed.), Husserliana Materialien VIII. Dordrecht: Springer.

Husserl, E. (1940–1941). Notizen zur Raumkonstitution (A. Schuetz, Ed.). Philosophy and Phenome-nological Research, 1, 21–37, 217–226 (= NR).

Husserl, E. (1999). Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (L. Landgrebe, Ed.).

Hamburg: Felix Meiner (= EU).

Kern, I. (1975). Idee und Methode der Philosophie. Leitgedanken fur eine Theorie der Vernunft. Berlin:

Walter de Gruyter.

Kortooms, T. (2002). Phenomenology of time: Edmund Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness.

Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Landgrebe, L. (1974). Reflexionen zu Husserls Konstitutionslehre. Tijdschrift voor filosofie, 36, 466–482.

Levin, D. M. (Ed.). (1997). Language beyond postmodernism: Saying and thinking in Gendlin’sphilosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Lohmar, D. (1993–1994). Grundzuge eines Synthesis-Modells der Auffassung. Kant und Husserl uber den

Ordnungsgrad sinnlicher Vorgegebenheiten und die Elemente einer Phanomenologie der Auffas-

sung. Husserl Studies, 10(2), 111–141.

Lohmar, D. (1998). Erfahrung und kategoriales Denken. Hume, Kant und Husserl uber vorpradikativeErfahrung und pradikative Erkenntnis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Lohmar, D. (2002). What does protention ‘‘protend’’? Remarks on Husserl’s analyses of protention in the

Bernau Manuscripts on time-consciousness. Philosophy Today, 46(SPEP Supplement), 154–167.

Lohmar, D. (2006). Old and new experience: On the function, modification, and change of types in

apperception. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference (pp. 217–227). Tokyo:

Phenomenology for East-Asian Circle.

Luft, S. (2002). ‘‘Phanomenologie der Phanomenologie.’’ Systematik und Methodologie der Phanome-nologie in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Husserl und Fink. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic

Publishers.

Mohanty, J. N. (1984). Husserl on ‘‘possibility’’. Husserl Studies, 1(1), 13–29.

Mohanty, J. N. (1985). The possibility of transcendental philosophy. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Mohanty, J. N. (1996). Kant and Husserl. Husserl Studies, 13(1), 19–30.

Mohanty, J. N. (2008). The philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A historical development. New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press.

Mouillie, J.-M. (1994). Etre temps (Husserl et la question de la donation du temps). Alter, 2, 159–244.

216 Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217

123

Rohr-Dietschi, U. (1974). Zur Genese des Selbstbewußtseins. Eine Studie uber den Beitrag desphanomenologischen Denkens zur Frage der Entwicklung des Selbstbewußtseins. Berlin: Walter de

Gruyter.

Schnell, A. (2002). Das Problem der Zeit bei Husserl. Eine Untersuchung uber die husserlschen

Zeitdiagramme. Husserl Studies, 18(2), 89–122.

Seebohm, T. M. (1992). The paradox of subjectivity and the idea of ultimate grounding in Husserl and

Heidegger. In D. P. Chattopadhyaya, et al. (Eds.), Phenomenology and Indian philosophy (pp. 153–

168). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Shin, G. H. (1978). Die Struktur des inneren Zeitbewußtseins. Eine Studie uber den Begriff der Protentionin den veroffentlichten Schriften Edmund Husserls. Bern: Peter Lang.

Stroker, E. (1965). Philosophische Untersuchungen zum Raum. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio

Klostermann.

Stroker, E. (1997). The Husserlian foundations of science (2nd rev. and enl. ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer

Academic Publishers.

Van de Pitte, M. M. (1988). Phenomenology: Vigorous or moribund? Husserl Studies, 5(1), 3–39.

Waldenfels, B. (1971). Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs. Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen inAnschluss an Edmund Husserl. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

Waldenfels, B. (1992). Einfuhrung in die Phanomenologie. Munchen: Wilhelm Fink.

Waldenfels, B. (1993). Husserls Verstrickung in die Erfahrung. In E. Husserl, Arbeit an den Phanomenen.Ausgewahlte Schriften (B. Waldenfels, Ed.) (pp. 263–277). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

Waldenfels, B. (1995). Verite a faire. Zur Herkunft der Wahrheit. In Deutsch-FranzosischeGedankengange (pp. 124–139). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Zahavi, D. (2004). Time and consciousness in the Bernau Manuscripts. Husserl Studies, 20(2), 99–118.

Zaner, R. M. (1964). The problem of embodiment: Some contributions to a phenomenology of the body.

The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Zaner, R. M. (1981). The context of self: A phenomenological inquiry using medicine as a clue. Athens,

OH: Ohio University Press.

Zirion, A. (2006). The call ‘‘back to the things themselves’’ and the notion of phenomenology. HusserlStudies, 22(1), 29–51.

Husserl Stud (2009) 25:185–217 217

123