The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy

Abstract

Derrida's first book-length work, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy, was originally written for his diplome d'etudes superieurs in 1953 and 1954. Surveying Husserl's major works on phenomenology, Derrida reveals what he sees as an internal tension in Husserl's central notion of and gives us our first glimpse into the concerns and frustrations that would later lead him to abandon phenomenology and develop his now famous method of deconstruction. For Derrida, the problem of genesis in Husserl's philosophy is that both temporality and meaning must be generated by prior acts of the transcendental subject, but transcendental subjectivity must itself be constituted by an act of genesis. Hence, the notion of genesis in the phenomenological sense underlies both temporality and atemporality, history and philosophy, resulting in a tension that Derrida sees as ultimately unresolvable yet central to the practice of phenomenology. The Problem of Geneses complements Husserl's posthumously published Origin of Geometry and Derrida's own Speech and Phenomena, showing the development of Derrida's approach to phenomenology as well as documenting the state of phenomenological thought in France during a particularly fertile period, when Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur and Tran-Duc-Thao, as well as Derrida, were all working through it. But the book is most important in allowing us to follow Derrida's own development as a philosopher by tracing the roots of his later work in deconstruction to these early critical reflections on Husserl's phenomenology.

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