Passivity and leveling Husserl, Heidegger and Hugo Ball

pages: 225-236

Abstract

The first part of this paper explores the kinship in diagnosis of contemporaneity of Hugo Ball and Martin Heidegger. Both thinkers recognize leveling as an important trait of their age. In Ball’s terms, leveling is identified with the apocalyptic abolishment of humanity. That happens by equalizing all of human creation, which becomes possible only after the abolishment of the hierarchy of values, thanks to which it was previously possible to distinguish a work of art from an average work. With Heidegger, leveling is equated with the perverted forms of curiosity. Unlike the former forms of curiosity, coupled by the common desire for deeper insight, modern curiosity is fairly superficial, let loose with no boundaries to all the impressions which supersede the expected and already seen. In the second part of the paper, Husserl’s term of passive synthesis is examined, so we can observe the intervention of phenomenology from the perspective of deconstruction of the effects of leveling. I conclude with a warning that we cannot protect ourselves from the world to which we are exposed by natural subjectivity and conventional forms of knowledge. Which insight leads us to revert to the sources of subjectivity, the idea common to both the avant-garde and the phenomenologists. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179007] Keywords: passivity, leveling, classical, avant-garde, phenomenology