Seeing Things

OK. This is a stretch. And I am prepared to be totally shot down. But it seems to me, as a very non-purist non-philosopher, that the three parts of PP are just begging to be named something like the following: (I) The Body, (II) The World as Perceived by the Body, (III) The Body and the World: Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World. Now, this goes beyond the words that MP used. And, thus, it is not a literal translation. But it seems to explicate the logic that MP had in mind. And it certainly helped me understand the logic of what seems to be going on, when phrased in that way. So, there may or may not be a way to do this, or something like this, with scholarly integrity. Maybe you could just say that some of these words go beyond what MP had articulated, but the text is so rich and dense, and so in need of guideposts, that exercising this liberty is acceptable, since it is consistent with MP’s logic and intentions, and it can help the reader. (If, indeed, this is an accurate rendition of what MP had in mind.) I’m way out on a limb on this, but it’s late, and why not?

In any case, on the more general issue of, Is it helpful and appropriate to use MP’s analytical table of contents? even though he did it after he wrote PP, and may not have included it himself in the publication of PP (I’m assuming he did not)? My answer is, Yes. I’m always helped by structures that are made explicit. And if this is a structure that MP himself provided, or a way of structuring what he had already written, then why not include it, in some way? Then the question might be: In what way? For example, it could be an appendix. Or it could be a Table of Contents, with the part and section and sub-section titles very prominent in both the Table of Contents and the text. Or the Table of Contents could include only the part and section titles, while the text could include (in addition to the part and section titles) the sub-section titles, but in a more subdued fashion - so that they can be seen and read, but not as major, bolded, separated titles of major sections that are cleanly cut off from each other. Just thinking out loud. But my first impression, after looking at the analytical table of contents, is that some version of that would be very helpful to the reader, in some fashion.

Tom: Thanks again for your useful suggestions. It’s certainly true that MP is trying to highlight the idea that perception is the domain of our entire body and not just enclosed within a world of purely mental sensations; in a phrase, that perception is an “embodied act.” For that reason, adding “body” to the titles of the second and third parts is generally in the spirit of his work. I’ll have to think more, though, about whether this is a good idea given what he actually said. It might be less invasive to leave the titles literally as they are but put a comment on them at the bottom of the page, or in the introductory essay. If you explain carefully the sense in which the “perceived world” is the world as encountered by an embodied agent acting in it, you might be able to achieve the same effect without changing the words. I guess one of the things I’m worried about is that by making the title longer and more complex, you run the risk of multiplying possible misinterpretations of it. (Whose body? Do corpses count? What part of the body? The eyes?) Anyhow, it’s certainly an important issue how to label the parts of the book, so I’ll think about it more.

As to the more general issue of the analytical table of contents, I’m beginning to feel more settled about this. Some people have suggested that the analytical table was written after the text, though I don’t know what the evidence for this is. But whether that is true or not, it was definitely included with the very first French edition of the text. That’s the edition I have. So the whole idea of an analytical TOC is with the book from the start. What he didn’t do is indicate where in the text each of the sub-titles goes. I did discover yesterday, though, a translation into German from 1966 that does what seems to me a very good job of incorporating them into the text. Each sub-section is numbered consecutively starting from §1 in each of the four parts (including the introductory part). And in the text the sub-titles are offered in square brackets, so the reader knows they have been interpolated by the translator. I think this is a very good idea. Indeed, I think it will help me, and every reader, think anew about how the text is organized. The fact that these sub-titles are completely absent from the Smith translation seems a big deficiency.

Sounds good. I like the idea of keeping his Part titles as he wrote them, but in footnotes and the introductory essay saying a bit more about the logic and the connections (ie body, world as experienced by the body, etc.) and the issues (such as: which parts of the body and do the bodies have to be alive?). And I like the idea of incorporating the subsection titles in the text, to help the reader. Another way to do that is to put all the subsection titles of a section in an italicized paragraph, right below the section title and right before the regular text of the section. This might be prudent if you find there are difficulties lining up the subsection titles exactly and satisfactorily with the paragraphs in the text. That way you give the reader help, the benefit of MP’s thought about the key ideas and the flow, without having to intrude the translator’s judgment about where exactly the subsection titles go. (Or maybe MP didn’t even indicate where the section titles were to go, so the italicized stuff might have to include all the section and subsection titles for a part, which might make it a bit unwieldy.) Several reasonable options here.

Sean, I would like to propose another idea for assisting the reader by further demarcating the text: include titles for the sections within a given chapter. For example, in the Preface I’ve labeled each section as follows in my notes: Man and World, The Phenomenological Reduction, Essences, Intentionality, and Phenomenology. This has helped me understand the general issue in each section as well as relate the general points he makes in the Preface.

Sean: A purely autobiographical point - about a year ago I scribbled the TOC into my own copy of the Smith transaltion, according to Guerriere’s mapping. It pretty much transformed my ability to read the book. I’m all for it.