ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at grasping the meaning of Husserl’s notion of the pre-predicative, which was taken over by French phenomenology (in particular in Merleau-Ponty) as synonymous with the requirement to return to a form of wild experience devoid of all logicity. Does this understanding, however, accurately interpret Husserl? We shall unfold the following questions: First, what type of connection is aimed at here between the intuitive and discursive spheres, the predicative and pre-predicative? Is that connection a foundation, a structural prefiguration, or a genetic anchorage? Second, what concept of experience is designated by the term pre-predicative? Is it the empiricist or sensualistic concept, the Kantian concept, or an enlarged concept that takes into its grasp the givenness of essences? Third, is it even possible to posit the existence of a dimension of pure experience devoid of any linguistic element and of any conceptual determination? We show that, for Husserl, the pre-predicative dimension is far from being identical to the sphere of experience; it is, rather, the terminus ad quem of a genetic regress from the forms of pure logic toward their pre-conceptual prefigurations; its elucidation, moreover, requires the implementation of three methods of reduction: the deconstruction of scientific idealizations, the deconstruction of linguistic idealities, and the deconstruction of intersubjectivity.
