Nachverstehen

Husserl's term from "The Origin of Geometry" (HUA 371), taken up by Merleau-Ponty in his 1959–60 course as naming a mode of understanding that is fundamentally different from reactivation. Reactivation aims at total survey — "reactivating everything" (BN 13). Nachverstehen (reunderstanding) "works with passivity" (BN 40): it is the passivity-activity coupling through which ideality is generated without coincidence or survey. MP proposes that total reactivation would be "the death of the logos since forgetfulness makes tradition fruitful" (BN 9).

Key Points

  • "Husserl emphasizes that thought is sedimented and that, in relation to it, reactivation is only a possibility, that the Nachverstehen and Mitverstehen are not, cannot be reactivation" (BN 13).
  • Nachverstehen encounters the Nichturpräsentierbarkeit (originary nonpresentability) of the other — it cannot possess the other's interior life but must respond to it.
  • It is "neither simple passivity nor simple activity... neither association nor survey, but coupling" (BN 12/30).
  • The result is not das Gleiche (the similar) but das Eine (the numerically one): a shared spiritual Gebilde that exists "between" subjects, at the "hinge" of their connection (BN 12).
  • "Taken positively, ideality is a myth: there is no Erzeugung which is a total reactivation. We are in the truth; we are not making it" (BN 31).
  • Lawlor proposes that Nachverstehen substitutes for "originary faith" (foi originaire) in these course notes — the word "faith" does not appear, but the structure is the same: a "knowledge of nonknowledge" (BN 8, 11, 14).

Details

The Three-Stage Emergence of Ideality

MP tracks ideality's emergence through three moments, each involving passivity-activity coupling:

  1. Within a subject: I remember a past Erzeugung (production) not as a passive event but through renewed production. The coincidence (Deckung) of past and present activity is the basis of intrapersonal ideality — but this remains within "the possibilities of a subject" (BN 29).

  2. Across subjects (Nachverstehen proper): When someone speaks to me, I encounter their thought as a trace that I must reactivate — but I cannot fully reactivate it, because the other's interior life is nichturpräsentierbar. This limit forces a creative response: "Nachverstehen is Nacherzeugung [reproduction]. In other words, with Merleau-Ponty, every time I understand again, I institute again" (Lawlor Foreword). The impossibility of total access generates genuine novelty.

  3. Through writing: Sense achieves permanence as "virtual communication" — the written as grimoire makes reunderstanding possible beyond the death of all interlocutors.

Why Reactivation Would Kill the Logos

MP argues that the impossibility of total reactivation is not a defect but a condition of possibility. If we could reactivate the entire chain of sedimentations back to the Urstiftung, we would have pure coincidence — and coincidence is death:

"Is there coincidence with the totality of the Urstiftung, if the tradition is always forgetfulness?... Wouldn't coincidence be the death of the logos since forgetfulness makes tradition fruitful?" (BN 9)

The fruitfulness of forgetfulness consists in this: sedimentation creates "pivots, hinges, matrixes of possibilities, negative equivalents or traces of positive acts, things forgotten that are fruitful, that is, operative negations" (BN 13). These operative negations are what allow tradition to generate new sense rather than merely preserving old sense.

Connections

  • contrasts with philosophy-of-reflection — reflection seeks total transparency; Nachverstehen works with opacity
  • extends passivity — the passivity-activity coupling in Nachverstehen is a specific instance of the "lateral passivity" developed in the 1954–55 course
  • grounds sedimentation — sedimentation is not a defect because Nachverstehen (not reactivation) is the proper mode of relating to sediment
  • presupposes intercorporeity — the Nichturpräsentierbarkeit of the other is an intersubjective structure
  • generates verflechtung — the interweaving of man-world-language is the milieu in which Nachverstehen operates
  • substitutes for perceptual-faith in the domain of history and language — Lawlor: "the word 'faith' does not occur... but Nachverstehen substitutes for it"

Open Questions

  • MP claims that Nachverstehen produces das Eine (the numerically one) rather than das Gleiche (the similar). What justifies this? The argument relies on the structural isomorphism between temporal self-relation and intersubjective relation, but does not address the skeptical challenge that the "coincidence" might be illusory.
  • Is Nachverstehen restricted to the domain of ideal objects (geometry, science), or does it describe the general structure of understanding? The course notes focus on geometry, but the concept's connection to faith suggests the wider scope.

Sources