Temps et individuation : le sens du transcendantal dans la philosophie de Kant et de Husserl : métaphysique, ontologie, phénoménologie

摘要

The notion of the individual is the object of a trivial intuition. It is so naturally delivered by our experience that it seems to constitute the basic core of any kind of naïve ontology. But in philosophy, the problem of individuation opens up a wide range of metaphysical issues that have been tackled in the wake of Aristotle’s scholastic posterity. Denounced in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and recast as the metaphysics of Dasein which is critical of Kant, then extended and exceeded within the phenomenology of givenness, Metaphysics would appear to have been abandoned by the modern post-kantian (especially phenomenological) legacy until Husserl came to restore an issue pushed aside by every kind of subjective phenomenology : namely, individuation. By making individuation the issue of “the constitution of the individual human being (thus “factual”) in general and according to its essential fundamental forms” along with “the resolution of the deepest transcendental problem”, Husserl, in 1918, made this central issue reach its height. While writing the Bernau Manuscripts, he undertook a project which is ambitious and remarkable for two reasons : first, because it appears to be a metaphysical resurgence within his phenomenology, and then second, because it engages a phenomenological reading of Kant, yet not Heidegger’s. The first part of this analysis aims at highlighting the transcendental meaning of the issue of individuation in comparison with the traditional metaphysical approach. Secondly, this invites us to see to what extent there is indeed an issue of individuation at the core of the Critique of Pure Reason, relying on synthesis and imagination in the constitution of the Kantian phenomenon. The third part accounts for time in Kant and Husserl as the transcendental operator fitted to the solving of this problem. It endeavours to analyse what makes them similar and what sets them apart. The fourth and last part reveals how the problem of individuation sheds a new light on eidetics and Husserl’s concept of constitution.