PHENOMENOLOGICAL EPOCHE: PLACIDITY OR DESPAIR?

Abstract

The article deals with the question of the mundane motivation and affective character of phenomenological epoche. An attempt is made to show that, despite the fact that the epoche is interpreted by Husserl as a methodical operation, suspending engagement with the world – the affective engagement with the world as well as the one, constituted by the naïve belief in the existence of the world – the phenomenological epoche, like the skeptical one, is inextricably linked to the pursuance of the certain affective state, namely the state of placidity, and is motivated by the mundane interests, which it, at the same time, sublates retroactively. Thereby, the epoche turns out to be the radical affective engagement with the world as such. The first section of the article shows that in the classical description of the epoche in § 31–32 of Ideas I the reasons Husserls gives for the epoche are not the theoretical, but the existential-practical ones. The epoche should enable those who practice it achieve total freedom towards the world. The author demonstrates that the freedom is nothing but the placidity in the phenomenological sense or the ataraxy. The second section explicates the way the epoche is tied to the natural engagement with the world. The epoche motivation cannot be reduced to the freedom, since the epoche, according to Husserl, can be performed only in relation to something that can undergo modalization, that is, to be given as that which is dubious, nonexistent, possible etc. Thus, the epoche is also motivated by the fact, that the world can undergo modalization. But the modalization presupposes the initial engagement with the word the epoche just suspends. Through the epoche the engagement is disclosed as the one which cannot be realized. Therefore, the affective nature of the epoche consists not only in the placidity, but also in the despair, which is forgoing the hope of realizing the mundane interests and sublates them in hindsight. In contrast to the natural experience the epoche as placidity and despair is true affective engagement with the world as world.