Ethically Structured Processes

4Universality and Responsibility

4.1. Unlike phenomenology

It is worth distinguishing the thesis on the possible that is explored in this first part of the book from the detailed discussions on the topic in phenomenology, notably those of Husserl and Heidegger.

It is not simply a matter of following in their footsteps and giving priority to the possible over the real. This was the action of the two founding fathers of phenomenology, who intended to reverse the order identified by metaphysics, in particular, according to them, by Hegel [SER 16].

Claudia Serban has meticulously retraced the stages of the dual enterprise of Husserl and Heidegger. Both of them declared the priority of the possible over the real before proceeding to overcome such a static opposition and instead emphasize their interweaving and co-generation in what they called the real. Thus, both showed the presence of the possible within the real, and this is a decisive step in the shared action of their “phenomenology of possibility” [SER 16, p. 292].

However, and this is where we must note the gaps in relation to phenomenology, the possible interests us here in that it has always already taken up effectiveness¹. The concordance of the possible and effectiveness is an element. The forgetting of this element, and the logical deployment that builds on this forgetting, is called necessity. By possible, I mean the effectiveness, the fluid surplus of latency, before forgetting (which is a suffered constraint). In ...