It's Not About the Gift: From Givenness to Loving - Softcover

Steinbock, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178660826X ISBN 13: 9781786608260

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018

Synopsis

Leading phenomenologist Tony Steinbock intervenes in contemporary discussion around the concept of the gift, providing a critical reading of the main figures on the problem of the gift and offering a new perspective on the gift, situating it in the emotional sphere, specifically in relation to loving and humility.

About this title

About the Author

Anthony J. Steinbock is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Phenomenology Research Center at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His many publications include Moral Emotions (2014), Phenomenology and Mysticism (2007), Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology After Husserl (1995) and the English translation of Husserl's Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis (2001).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It's Not about the Gift

From Givenness to Loving

By Anthony J. Steinbock

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2018 Anthony J. Steinbock
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78660-826-0

Contents

Introduction, ix, 
Chapter 1: Surprise, the Gift, and Humility, 1, 
Chapter 2: What Gives?: Heidegger, Machination, and the Jews, 25, 
Chapter 3: Overcoming Forgetfulness: Henry's Challenge of Self-Givenness, 49, 
Chapter 4: The Poor Phenomenon: Marion, Givenness, and Saturation, 85, 
Chapter 5: Resituating the Gift in Maimonides: Participation and Liberation, 103, 
Conclusion, 125, 
Bibliography, 131, 
Index, 137, 
About the Author, 141, 

CHAPTER 1

Surprise, the Gift, and Humility

Although the experience of surprise is prevalent in everyday experiences and seems to be self-evident, it is a distinctive experience that is anything but clear. Indeed, although many philosophers and scientists of different traditions do mention it as a crucial experience, surprise as a theme has not been dealt with systematically in philosophy (or in the sciences). In contemporary literature in which the gift becomes a topic of discussion, the gift is commonly and simply assumed (somehow) to be coupled with surprise. In this chapter, I am interested in how surprise is related to a gift and the essential, crucial distinctions between them.

To do this, I want to ask: Does surprise have an affinity with perceptual and general epistemic functions and acts? What is its relation to the future? Does it have an epistemic import? Is surprise an affect? An emotion? What is surprise's relation to moral or interpersonal emotions? It would be too ambitious to respond in detail to all of these questions, but I do want to bring them into focus by determining surprise within the problem-field of feeling and then situate it in relation to the gift.

More specifically still, I examine surprise in terms of its belief structure, clarifying it as a believing what I cannot believe and, ultimately, distinguishing it from a startle (1). I then suggest that surprise is a being caught off guard, which is related to being attentively turned toward something (2). As the latter, I qualify surprise as an emotion in its being thrown back on an experience (3). This constitutes surprise as a disequilibrium in distinction to a diremptive experience like we find in the moral emotions of shame or guilt (4). Finally — and contrary to a common interpretation — I distinguish a surprise, which presupposes an expectation, from a gift, which is peculiar to the experience of humility and which (while it has its own futural temporality) is that in which precisely nothing is expected. I then suggest that surprise is an emotion although being neither an affect, like a startle reflex, nor a moral emotion, like shame, guilt, or humility.

1. THE BELIEF STRUCTURE OF SURPRISE

Surprise can be characterized by a peculiar relation to being. Allow me to describe this relation by examining its "belief structure," especially where the future is concerned. I do this because it is commonly held that surprise is simply a rupture of what is expected.

Expectation: Acceptance of What Is to Come

Within the phenomenological tradition, we discern temporal modes of time-consciousness relating to the present, the past, and the future. Where the future is concerned, we can observe a "protention," or an anonymous sketching out of the future that is based on a present occurrence and how that occurrence was retained as past. This takes place without any egoic activity or explicit attention to what is to come; it takes place through the "passive synthesis" of sense. An expectation is similar to a protention insofar as it is open to a futural occurrence arriving in the present, and it is also unfurled from the present and the past. Expectation is different from protention, however, insofar as expectation is an active comportment toward the future. In relation to this, we can see how an anticipation can be a more intensive attentiveness to the futural event.

For example, as I run to Times Square on New Year's Eve, my steps protend an even pavement; I place one foot in front of the other without even thinking of it. All of this happens as I expect the taxi to come to a stop so I can cross the street, and this takes place as I anticipate with bated breath the ball to drop in Times Square. These are all distinctive orientations toward the future, even though they all may be lived simultaneously. Now, to discern how surprise is dependent upon this futural orientation in the latter's various modes, let me describe the belief structure inherent in such a futural temporal mode of givenness.

For the sake of simplicity, let's stay with an expectation. Intrinsic to the act of expectation is the fact that the existence of something futural is posited. Expectation is carried out in the mode of belief as an unbroken, straightforward relation to something in the future. When I see the police car in my rearview mirror with its lights flashing (after I know that I have been going too fast), I expect the police car to pull up behind me and signal for me to pull over. When I expect this, I implicitly posit the existence of the officer, the police car, the lights, the forthcoming ticket, and so on. That is, the being of the officer, and so forth, is accepted in terms of the sense or meaning it has as going to come to pass; I live in the mode of natural, straightforward acceptance. This is another way of saying that when I expect something, I expect it as actually going to happen, not as something possible, or as possibly going to happen.

When I see the police car I "posit," or accept, it as actually behind me and as going to pull me over; when it speeds past me, going after the car in front of me, I accept with relief its actual passing, its "going to pull over that car." Further, expectation in all of its forms is not a rupture of belief; it is another kind of belief as a mode of time-consciousness, a straightforward one oriented in the direction of future actuality. In expectation, I count on the futural event as it is foreshadowed in the present. Thus, expectation is a temporal belief-act that is oriented toward the future as a mode of time-consciousness; it arises as motivated on the basis of, is demanded by, what has occurred in the present and is immediately retained as past.

Now, there are ways in which this straightforward futural acceptance can be modified or modalized. For example, something can be given as possibly going to occur, as likely to happen, as probably going to arrive, and so forth. For instance, I believe that the experiment to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson will probably work. Or, if there are too many counter-indicators — let's say that the equipment malfunctioned — I am doubtful it will work this time. The point here is that likelihood, possibility, probability, even doubt, are all kinds of belief postures or modes of belief. Aristotle seems to place the phenomenon of surprise here. In the Poetics, Aristotle connects ekplektikon/ ekplexeos — which can be translated as "surprise" or "being struck in "awe" or "astonishment"— with subjective discoveries through probable incidents. Thaumaston, from thaumazein or wonder, on the other hand, is more open for the improbable; in fact, it is produced through improbable (or unexpected) incidents in relation to one another, which yields a great epistemic effect. Wonder [thaumaston] for Aristotle, then, is a different phenomenon and cognitively "higher" than surprise [ekplektikon/ekplexeos] — both related to the probable and improbable.

Initially, we might want to say that surprise is the experience of the unexpected and, in this way, it may well sever its relation to belief. Adam Smith, for example, distinguishes between three "sentiments" that can initiate philosophical inquiry: wonder, surprise, and admiration. Wonder is excited by the new and novel; admiration is provoked by the beautiful; surprise is motivated by the unexpected, which for him is tied to the sudden, but not the rare. Where Edmund Husserl's phenomenology is concerned, Smith's surprise would be a "disappointment," whereas Smith's wonder would be a "discordance."

I Believe What I Can't Believe

Let's return to the experience of surprise in relation to an expectation. How do we characterize its peculiar belief-structure? When we are surprised, it often feels like an "I can't believe it," an "I can't believe what has just happened," or an "I can't believe what is happening." This experience entails a being caught off guard. This is why we can be surprised even in relation to ourselves (i.e., I can also surprise myself): "I can't believe what I just said" (say, I lost my temper, but I never lose my temper!) or "I can't believe what I just said; I know I said it" (I accept it), "but it goes against what I expect of myself."

The expressions given above that we find in our everyday experience are important clues to the experience of surprise, but if we were to remain simply with this aspect of the experience, it would conceal the deeper process of the constitution of sense in surprise. By "belief," I understand a basic "doxic" attitude, posture, or disposition that accepts the being of what arrives, has arrived, and what is to come in a straightforward manner. In this respect, "belief" does not have to be an active reflective commitment to or positing of being, but it can be a "presupposing" or "passive-positing" of being in a kind of pre-predicative "taking in" what takes place or what is.

With this understanding, we can more accurately portray what is happening in surprise. Surprise can be characterized as a movement of an "I am now believing what I could not believe at first," or again, "I am somehow accepting what I can't (in other circumstances) accept," or "I am living what I did not expect." In short, we have an "I believe what I can't believe," "I accept what I can't accept." For example, I never expected a birthday party, but here it is! Or more tragically, I can't believe she took her own life; she seemed so happy and successful, but she did commit suicide! In surprise, it is as if what happens comes out of nowhere, precisely because it is otherwise than the expected flow or unfolding of what is to come. But for the event to be experienced as surprise, I must still accept it. Thus, in surprise, there is an overall reconstitution or reconfiguration of sense where the event in question is concerned.

Accordingly, surprise, even on this descriptive level, is more complex and more "pre-reflective" in its doxic posture than, say, Donald Davidson or Daniel Dennett portrays it. Davidson is too judicative, holding that surprise is the realization that the previous belief was false in the sense that there is an objective reality independent of previously held beliefs. On the other hand, Dennett is partially correct when he writes that "Surprise is only possible when it upsets belief," but he does not specify how surprise is also the acceptance of this so-called "upset."

If the "I can't believe" were entirely decisive and not encompassed with an "I now believe what I didn't believe would happen," then we would have something like a shock instead of surprise. Here, the event would not be reconstituted and reintegrated in its belief-attitude. In this case, we would experience an "I cannot accept what I cannot accept." If there were not an acceptance of what I cannot otherwise accept — if the rupture of the straightforward relation to such a peculiar event were not accepted in some way — I would not live this experience as a surprise.

Epistemically, we might want to classify surprise under the category of a disappointed perception, a disappointment that arises through a short-term or long-term rupture or discordance that is gradually reconstituted in sense. But in part because of its severity and intensity and in part because it issues in an immediate reconstitution of sense, surprise is distinctive from a disappointment. Put in more Husserlian colorful terms, we could say that surprise is the experience of the "shattering" of the noema, the sense-content of my ongoing intentional acts. Such a shattering of the noema in surprise is exemplified in the film The Crying Game: when Fergus (Stephen Rea) discovers that his new lover, Dil (Jaye Davidson), is a man, not a woman! What is demanded is a radical reconfiguration of sense, a new one supplanting the old (Husserl also writes of being "thrown from the saddle"). As is the case with any like reconfiguration of sense, the presence of the previous sense is retained, not erased, but as retroactively crossed out in its very reconfiguration as it is held on to in the past in the retention or primary passive condition of remembering. For this reason, in surprise we find constituted an acceptance of what occurs against all expectation. This is one reason why surprise is something other than a mere disappointed or discordant perception, where certain aspects are modified only to yield a coherent sense of the whole.

Thus, we can discern two moments of the surprise-experience in relation to its belief structure. On the one hand, there is a "being caught off guard," a radical "otherwise" in relation to expectation and the unfolding of sense: as otherwise expressed in the "I can't believe," which is the noetic expression co-relative to the "shattering" or "explosion" of the noema or sense-content. On the other hand, there is precisely a belief, an acceptance of the very nonacceptance. In terms of the belief-structure, this rupture is more than a disappointment; nevertheless, this rupture is not decisive because it is encompassed by a belief in what I otherwise could not believe at first.

Startle and Surprise

I would like to distinguish further between a startle and a surprise. In a still different example, we can imagine being in deep concentration while reading a book, then, suddenly someone who just came in let the screen door slam! I jump; I am startled. The startle is certainly a response to an unexpected givenness, a rupture, and it is sudden; but the startle in this instance takes place affectively without any reconstitution of sense. This has to do in part with the instantaneity of the startle. That is, if surprise is a believing what I cannot believe such that it entails a reconfiguration of sense, and shock is an I can't believe what I can't believe as a resistance to the reconstitution of sense for my meaningful world, then startle is neither of these. Accordingly, startle can be viewed in two registers, a static and a genetic one. A startle is characterized temporally with a suddenness, "now." We have two possibilities as to its constitution. On the one hand, it is neither reconstituted nor integrated in a flow of experiences — even if it presupposes a futural protention — which is why we can be startled in the first place! But, on the other, if the startle is viewed over time in the flow of experiences, it can be said to be "integrated" in the flow, but now as a "mere" disruption or rupture (or discordance) in the otherwise concordant or harmonious flow of meaning. But this does not mean that its presence demands a reconfiguration of the sense to be a startle.

Here, startle takes place under the threshold of the surprise and the shock. It is not a matter of not believing what I can't believe (shock) or believing what I can't believe (surprise). A startle takes place on a purely passive level of experience, and this is why it is appropriate to speak in terms of a startle reflex.

The question of suddenness has been a tricky issue in traditional descriptions of the surprise phenomenon. For example, in The Passions of the Soul, Descartes considers wonder [admiration] to be the first among the six passions. When we judge something to be new or very different from what we formerly knew or what we supposed that it ought to be, it surprises us, and this causes us to wonder. Hence, Descartes can write that "wonder is a sudden surprise of the soul." It is wonder that makes the soul consider the objects with attention — objects that seem to it rare or extraordinary. Notice that it is surprise that is even more "primary" than wonder and is itself founding for wonder. Further, Descartes's statement can be read in such a way that surprise is itself not essentially connected to the sudden. For Descartes, surprise arises from a judgment of something being new or quite different. So although surprise for him is connected to novelty and founded in a judgment, it is ambiguously tied to suddenness. When surprise is sudden, it issues in wonder.

For me this is a clue. Although suddenness as a temporal experience can accompany surprise, suddenness need not accompany the rupture of experience to have an experience of surprise. From a phenomenological perspective, it is startle that is essentially tied to suddenness, not surprise. Let's take another example, this time of the experience of a jack-in-the-box. I want to maintain that we are startled, not surprised, when we — especially when we were children — turn the crank of a jack-in-the-box: we know that "jack" is going to pop out, we turn and turn the crank, we wait and wait (we expect, without knowing precisely when), and then "pop!" out springs "jack." In fact, if "jack" does not pop out (something goes wrong), we will become disappointed (and maybe surprised, but not startled). This is similar to buying a ticket to go on a haunted house ride: we know we will be scared (or startled!), but we are not surprised by what happens. In fact, we expect it. Again, we might instead be surprised (and certainly disappointed) if the so billed haunted house were just an ordinary open house tour listed by a real estate agent as a ploy to get us to see the house. Similarly, when the officer in the police car in back of me turns on her lights, I fully expect her to pull me over, turn on her lights, and so on, but when she turns on her siren, I am startled.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from It's Not about the Gift by Anthony J. Steinbock. Copyright © 2018 Anthony J. Steinbock. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 178660826X
• ISBN 13: 9781786608260
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 155