Before we get on to Derrida’s commentary on the Origin, lets take a look at Husserl’s text.
The opening reference to Galileo puts us within the thinking of The Crisis. The specific question of the piece, ‘the origin of geometry’ is an unexpectedly historical one’. Husserl has no interest in the ‘historical’ first geometers, even if they could be determined (which is highly unlikely). What Husserl is interested in is the genesis of the idea, the original sense of geometry – the point at which it ceased to be a psychic object – in the head of one ‘inventor’, and became an ‘ideal object’, accessible for everyone, at any time, in any place or language, and the manner in which it did so. What are the conditions of such a genesis, and what might have been lost in the process?
Now, there are a range of moves which Husserl needs to assure, in order to justify his investigation, and provide it with a sure footing, and it’s fascinating to watch Husserl’s mind at work – so rigorous, methodical and careful. Geometry takes on an exemplary role in this investigation: through this investigation Husserl is hoping to “take possession of the meaning, method, and beginning of philosophy, the one philosophy to which our life seeks to be and ought to be devoted.” Not only does the origin of geometry reveal problems of meaning, science, history of science, and universal history in general (as if these weren’t enough!), but it also merges with the problem of the securing of the unity and meaning of philosophy itself.
Firstly, Husserl must establish the manner in which he might “reawaken” such origins. He proceeds through the function of traditions and their horizon of human civilisation. For geometry, as for all sciences, their beginnings are contained, “submerged” within their traditions. From their first “acquisition” onwards, all acquisitions of a science contain their validity as part of a continuous synthesis, sedimenting previous acquisitions beneath the most recent. Thus, geometry, though ideal, must have had an historical beginning.
But within its meaning as science, geometry includes its progression from acquisition to acquisition. Therefore, at the first acquisition, geometry was not present in its full meaning as science. Which is to say, the inventor of geometry would not be aware of geometry as a science, while the first inheritors of geometry as science had already received it from the past, already existing.
Even the successful realisation of geometrical self evidence within the head of the inventor does not count as ideal objectivity. Psychic objectivity is not ideal objectivity. Rather, it is through language – and therefore within the context of an intersubjective and linguistic community, that the geometrical object receives its “linguistic living body”.
No Comments Yet