Geniusas 2024 The Origins of Sedimentation in Husserl S Phenomenology. European J of Philosophy

Received: 12 September 2022 Revised: 14 April 2023 Accepted: 20 December 2023
DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12931
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The origins of sedimentation in Husserl's

phenomenology
Saulius Geniusas
Department of Philosophy, The Chinese

University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Abstract
New Territories, Hong Kong SAR Husserl is the philosopher who transformed the geological
Correspondence metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept.

Saulius Geniusas, Department of Philosophy, While tracing the development of Husserl's reflections on
The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Rm. 427 Fung King Hey Bld., Shatin, sedimentation, I argue that the distinctive feature of Huss-
New Territories, Hong Kong SAR. erl's approach lies in his preoccupation with the question
Email: geniusas@cuhk.edu.hk
concerning the origins of sedimentations. The paper dem-
Funding information onstrates that in different frameworks of analysis, Husserl
Lietuvos Mokslo Taryba; Research Council of
Lithuania, Grant/Award Number: SMIP-22-17
understood these origins in significantly different ways. In
the works concerned with the phenomenology of time con-
sciousness, Husserl searched for the origins of sedimenta-
tion in the field of subjective experience, and more
precisely, in impressional consciousness. By contrast, in the
later works concerned with history, he maintained that the
origins of sedimentations lie in the field of historical past
that stretches beyond the reach of individual experience.
Building on the basis of these resources, I argue that the
Husserlian concept of sedimentation has three distinct com-
ponents of senses: static, genetic, and generative. In the
static sense, sedimentations are modifications of retentions
and necessary conditions of recollection. In the genetic
sense, sedimentations are necessary for the formation of
types, habits and moods, and as such, they shape present
experiences. In the generative sense, sedimentations refer
to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2024 The Authors. European Journal of Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Eur J Philos. 2024;1–17. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ejop 1

14680378, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejop.12931 by Cochrane Romania, Wiley Online Library on [08/02/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
2 GENIUSAS
1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N
In the author's preface to the English edition of the first volume of his Ideas, Edmund Husserl provocatively
maintained that phenomenology must free itself from all obscurity at the level of fundamental concepts, for only so
can it live up to the idea of a genuine philosophy. For this very reason, “it must create its original concepts,” which
would be adequately adjusted to “radical reflexion,” through which alone philosophy can come to terms with “pure
pre-conceptual experience" (Husserl, 2012, p. xlviii). These observations are of great importance when it comes to
our understanding and appreciation of numerous neologisms that we come across in phenomenology, both Husserl-
ian and post-Husserlian. They are of no less significance when it comes to our understanding of the difficulties
involved in any attempt to express phenomenological insights in non-phenomenological terms. Yet the creation of
new concepts in phenomenology is not a creatio ex nihilo. Rather, the original concepts that we come across in phe-
nomenology were borrowed either from other fields of research, or from natural languages, taken over and radically
reinterpreted in line with phenomenological methods, goals and principles. The concept of sedimentation is of such a
nature. Here some conceptual ambiguity is in place. Husserl employs two closely related terms, Sedimentierung and
Niederschlag, which are often translated with one and the same English term, sedimentation. This is to a degree
understandable, since Husserl himself often uses these terms interchangeably. The term Niederschlag is borrowed
from everyday speech and it refers to precipitation, rainfall, and sediment. By contrast, the concept of Sedimentierung
is borrowed from geology, where it refers to a natural process through which rock formations come into existence,
starting with small pieces of sand, stone and other materials that have been left over by water, ice, or wind. Sedimen-
tation belongs to the larger group of terms, which phenomenology has borrowed from other fields and which it
transformed into a genuinely philosophical concept, whose exact meaning can only be grasped in light of the phe-
nomenological goals, methods, and principles.
There are good reasons to speak of the origins of sedimentation (Sedimentierung) in Husserl's phenomenol-
ogy, and in more senses than one. First, Husserl is the philosopher who transformed this geological metaphor
into a philosophical concept. Thus, any contemporary thinker who employs this concept in the phenomenologi-
cal sense of the term remains indebted to him. Second, thematically, Husserl was concerned with the origins of
sedimentations and with their genesis. On the one hand, the phenomenological method was supposed to unveil
these origins in experience. Yet on the other hand, since the disclosure proved to be an excruciatingly complex
affair, the phenomenon of sedimentation also motivated Husserl to rethink the fundamental methodological
principles on which his phenomenology was based, so much so that the discovery of genetic phenomenology is
associated with reflections on the sedimented nature of experience. One of my central goals here will be to
clarify how Husserl understood the origins and genesis of sedimentations, and this will demand that we take a
closer look at the temporal structures of experience. As we will see, Husserl associated these origins with
impressional consciousness and their genesis with retentions and their further sinking into the “night of the
sedimented” (Husserl, 2014, p. 62). However, third, phenomenology of time is not the only framework within
which Husserl has addressed the origins of sedimentations. It will be necessary to recognize the role that sedi-
mentations play in the formation of typification, habitualities and moods. Moreover, fourth, it will also prove
necessary to recognize that not all sedimentations originate in the life of consciousness, that there are sedi-
mentations of meaning that consciousness takes over from others, and that therefore, sedimentation belongs
to the group of those concepts that have pushed Husserl to the realization that phenomenology will remain
incomplete for as long as it remains ahistorical.
2 | T H E TE M P O R A L O RI G I N S O F S E D I M E N T A T I O N
According to Husserl, any experience that consciousness undergoes in the present is first and foremost given in the
form of an impression: “the ‘sourcepoint’ with which the ‘production’ of the enduring object begins is a primal
GENIUSAS 3
impression” (Husserl, 1991, p. 30). Suppose you are playing a scale on the piano: do is replaced with re, then comes
mi, etc. While you are playing do, do is the impression; once it's gone, re is the impression, then it's mi, etc.
When re replaces do, do does not evaporate from consciousness; if it did, you wouldn't hear the scale,
just the note (stricto sensu, not even a note, since it itself is given as a duration). You continue to be con-
scious of do through retention. It's not that you remember it. Rather, the consciousness of re—your current
impression—is such that it is colored by the previous consciousness of do. “The tone-now changes into a
tone-having-been; the impressional consciousness, constantly flowing, passes over into ever new retentional
consciousness” (Husserl, 1991, p. 31). Had re been preceded by a different note (say, fa or la), re would
sound differently. Through retention, you are now conscious of do as that note that precedes re. And even
when re is replaced by mi, you are still conscious of do, as the note that preceded re, which in its own turn
preceded mi. Again, had a different note preceded mi, it would sound differently, and in effect, you would
hear something different from what you hear.
According to Husserl, the temporal structure of experience is such that every impression is replaced
with other impressions as well as retentions of former impressions. This is what Husserl calls the inter-
twining of transverse and longitudinal intentionality (Querintentionalität and Längsintentionalität [see
Husserl, 1991, pp. 84–88]). While transverse intentionality is directed at the object, longitudinal intentional-
ity is self-referential: it is directed at the temporal flow. We can represent the fusion of both forms inten-
tionality as follows:
A B C D
0 0
A B C0
00
A B00
A000
Transverse intentionality refers to the horizontal line: A, B, C, D. One impression replaces another impression in
the temporal flow, and each of these impressions is object-oriented. Longitudinal intentionality refers to vertical
lines: B A0 , C B0 A00 , D C0 B00 A000 . While you hear a new impression, you retain former impressions. You remain
conscious of a retention and of a retention of a retention, etc.
This brings us to an important question, which is of crucial importance as far as sedimentations are
concerned: Does the self-referential awareness of former impressions ever “evaporate?” Does consciousness
ever lose the awareness of the sinking of each impression into the retentional past? Experience suggests that
consciousness does not indefinitely retain the awareness of all past impressions. At a certain point, an impres-
sion loses all retentionally intended affective force, it sinks into forgetfulness: longitudinal intentionality
reaches a zero point of intensity. Thus, after practicing playing the scale on the piano for 10 min, you no longer
retain the awareness of the note that you had played, say, 7 min ago; and what you hear when you now play re
is no longer colored by the notes you had played 7 min ago. “You no longer retain” means: you have forgotten;
the notes you had played have slipped out of the field of intuitive consciousness. They are no longer there,
in your present field of experience. We thus have to distinguish between the past impressions which
consciousness retains and those impressions which slip out of the present field of consciousness. The former
are those impressions which, to use Husserl's terms, consciousness retains through primary memory (retention);
the latter are those impressions which escape the grasp of primary memory. It would be only appropriate to call
this mode of slipping out of conscious grasp forgetfulness.
What is this forgetfulness? It is undeniable that consciousness can remember not only what it retains, but also
what it has forgotten. But how is this possible? It is with this question that we stumble across sedimentations. Husserl
argues that even when the past impression is no longer retained, it does not slip out of consciousness. If it were no
longer in consciousness in any sense whatsoever, recollection, understood as episodic memory, would not be
4 GENIUSAS
possible. When I remember episodes from my distant past, I reach across the sphere of forgetfulness and awaken
what I had forgotten. Memory reaches far beyond the sphere of living retentions, it enters into the zone of
retentional zero and brings back to life what had been forgotten. This suggests that what has sunk to the level of a
retentional zero has not escaped the grip of consciousness. It is still there, in consciousness, whatever this is sup-
posed to mean. This being there, in the mode of forgetfulness, is what Husserl calls Sedimentierung. Once an impres-
sion loses all affective power, once it is no longer grasped by means of primary memory, it is sedimented in
consciousness.
Husserl does not employ the concept of sedimentation either in his early works, in which he still understood
phenomenology as descriptive psychology, or in those works of the middle period, which precede the discovery of
genetic phenomenology. Thus, in the manuscripts on time compiled in Husserliana X (1893–1917), we do not come
across the concept of sedimentation, not even on a single occasion, even though such concepts as impression, reten-
tion, forgetfulness and memory are at the very center of Husserl's attention. It is only in the works that he wrote
after 1917, which already fall into the period of genetic phenomenology, that we come across the concept of sedi-
mentation. Yet does this fact by itself mean that the concept of sedimentation is a distinctly genetic concept? We
should not rush too quickly to this conclusion. I will still come back to this issue below.
Consider an interesting and important passage from Husserl's Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis, sometimes
recognized as the most renowned series of lectures that Husserl delivered (on three occasions) in the 1920s:
Initially, however, we want to say that every accomplishment of the living present, that is, every
accomplishment of sense or of the object becomes sedimented in the realm of the dead, or rather,
dormant horizonal sphere, precisely in the manner of a fixed order of sedimentation: While at the
head, the living process receives new, original life, at the feet, everything that is, as it were, in the final
acquisition of the retentional synthesis, becomes steadily sedimented (Husserl, 2001, p. 227 [emphasis
added—SG]).
We can understand these metaphors of the head and the feet as references to transversal and longitudinal intention-
ality. “At the head, the living process receives new, original life" means that the life of consciousness is characterized
by one impression replacing other impressions, and so indefinitely. To follow up on the earlier example: re replaces
do, mi replaces re, fa, replaces mi, etc. These impressional changes clarify what Husserl means when he speaks of the
living process receiving original life. “At the feet, everything …becomes steadily sedimented" means: Sooner or later,
the chain of retentions (A0 replaces the A, A00 replaces the A0 , A00 ’ replaces the A00 , etc.) reaches the zero point of
affection, it becomes sedimented; and this characterizes all impressions.
One could argue that sedimentation, understood as a mode of forgetfulness, is not genuine forgetfulness. This is
because—so the argument would run—to forget x is no longer to be conscious of x not only intuitively and themati-
cally, but in all other possible senses of the term. To forget x is not to be conscious of x, period. If one holds such a
view, then one cannot help but ask: can consciousness forget anything? Or is it the case that anything that con-
sciousness lives through is sooner or later sedimented in consciousness? We will have significantly different concep-
tions of consciousness depending on how we answer this question.
One might be inclined to say that phenomenology does not have the means to exclude the possibility of radical
forgetfulness, understood as a complete “letting go” of retentional modifications, their radical abandonment, or their
transition into radical emptiness, a complete zero point of affection. It might be so that impressions sooner or later
escape the sphere of consciousness. Maybe this is more often than not the case. Consider Husserl's observation in
the Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis: “One is only acquainted with sleep by waking up; so too here, and in an
entirely original manner. Waking up sedimented sense can initially mean that it will become affective once more"
(Husserl, 2001, p. 178). That is, we can only acquaint ourselves with sedimentations by awakening what is
sedimented; but if so, then we can never know anything about those past contents of experience that remain
unawakened. Therefore, we cannot draw the implication that all that we have lived through is sedimented. This
GENIUSAS 5
implication just doesn't follow. We cannot exclude the possibility that after an impression passes into a retention,
and after the retention loses all affective force, it is no longer there, in consciousness, not even in the mode of sedi-
mentation. It therefore seems that we need to exercise modesty and caution and simply state that, for better or
worse, we simply do not know if everything that consciousness lives through is retained as a sedimented possession
or not.
While recognizing the cogency of the proposed view, one can nonetheless risk a stronger interpretation. There
are, in fact, good reasons to do so, for otherwise, one would have to explain why only some retentions pass into the
sphere of the sedimented, while others do not. This cannot be explained with reference to the fact that while we
remember some impressions, we forget others. An explanation of this nature would be a matter of getting the cart
before the horse: clearly, not everything that is sedimented is recollected. While it is undeniable that consciousness
cannot recollect everything, it is equally incontestable that impressions do not have any intrinsic features that would
block their transition into the sphere of the sedimented. That is, while I cannot remember everything, still, in princi-
ple, everything that I now live through is open to the possibility of being subsequently remembered. In effect, this
means: just as every impression passes into retention, and just as every retention passes into a retention of a reten-
tion, so also, sooner or later, it transitions further into the sphere of the sedimented. Precisely because all impressions
are sooner or later sedimented, they can be—although they need not be—subsequently recalled. While some sedimented
impressions will reemerge in the present field of consciousness, others will forever remain dormant in the night of
the sedimented.1
But is it really true that sooner or later all impressions enter “the night of the sedimented?” It seems that some-
thing speaks against it, viz., the so-called repressed memories.2 Consciousness might repress some of its experiences
in such a fashion that they will never see the light of day in the form of episodic recollection. This introduces some
doubts about my earlier contention that sooner or later all impressions are sedimented in consciousness. Yet the
phenomenon of repression does not convince us that some of our experiences escape sedimentation, for it is unde-
niable that episodic recollection is not the only way in which repressed memories can see the light of day. In the pre-
sent context, suffice it to refer to body memory, flashbacks, nightmares, and various kinds of conversion symptoms
as alternative ways in which repressed memories can reemerge in the present field of consciousness. It is the
sedimented nature of repressed memories that makes these diverse modes of manifestation possible.
Such being the case, we have good reasons to assert that the unavoidable destiny of all impressions is that
sooner or later they are absorbed in the dark sphere of the sedimented. Not only retentions, but also sedimentations,
are necessary intentional modifications of impressional consciousness. Just as all impressions are necessarily
retained, so also, all retentions are necessarily sedimented. But sedimented where? There is something strange, even
paradoxical, about the suggestion that sedimentations lie in consciousness. If they were really in consciousness, then
consciousness would have to remember them; and if they were remembered, then they would be either still retained
(primary memory), or already awakened (secondary memory), and thus, in either case, not forgotten. What sense can
it possibly make to claim that even when former impressions are no longer retained, and not yet remembered, they
are nonetheless in consciousness? What is this mode of givenness that appears to be characterized by complete
absence?
Reflections on sedimentation and its paradoxical presence in consciousness leads Husserl to introduce a new
concept into phenomenology, viz., the concept of the unconscious. Husserl's answer to the questions here posed runs
as follows: sedimentations are to be found in the unconscious. In Husserl's writings, the concepts of the unconscious
and of the sedimentations are indeed closely tied to each other.3 In Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl writes:
“Sedimentation in the inconspicuous substratum (unconsciousness)” (Husserl, 1969, p. 318). On occasion Husserl
maintains that this is the only sense in which we can meaningfully speak of the unconscious in phenomenology.
Once retentions lose their affective force, they sink into (i.e., they are sedimented in) the unconscious. Yet to this it
is crucial to add that, according to Husserl, the unconscious is not cut off from consciousness, for if it were, we
would not be able to account for the possibility of remembering. If I can only remember what is in some form in con-
sciousness, then the unconscious is a dimension of consciousness.
6 GENIUSAS
At this point, we can understand why J. N. Mohanty would claim, while commenting on sedimentations in
Husserl's phenomenology, that “sinking back into retentions further into the past, one comes upon the idea of
sedimentations within the unconscious. We ultimately reach a null of retention, a complete vanishing of Erlebnis”
(Mohanty, 2011, p. 92). The phenomenon of memory, understood as episodic recollection, requires that we
acknowledge sedimentations as a necessary, that is, eidetic feature of the temporal structure of experience. The very
fact that consciousness can remember what it had previously forgotten is the evidence that supports the view that
conscious life involves a layer of sedimentations.
To bolster the view here presenting with some further textual support, let me draw attention to the following
passage from the Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis: “Here as everywhere it becomes clear to us, and it
will become even more clear to us later, that everything that consciousness undergoes through changes and
transformations, even after the transformations, remains sedimented in it as its ‘history,’ and this is, so to
speak, the destiny of consciousness” (Husserl, 2001, p. 38). Here Husserl explicitly contends that everything
consciousness lives through sooner or later enters into the night of sedimentation; he even asserts that this is
the destiny of consciousness.
But what can we say, phenomenologically, about the unconscious?4 Should we characterize it as a sphere
of deeply hidden mechanisms that cannot be probed by way of phenomenological analyses? If this were so,
then there would be hardly anything important that phenomenology could tell us about the unconscious. Yet
we can ask: what happens with retentions of foregone impressions once they are sedimented in the uncon-
scious? Do sedimentations mark the end of retentional modifications? This would suggest that sedimentations
are fixed deposits of meaning, as though locked up in a hidden chamber in the house, which on occasion can be
unlocked and different items from it can be brought back into the sphere of consciousness. Or, alternatively,
should we insist that retentional modifications continue even in the unconscious, although consciousness is no
longer aware of these modifications?
Husserl addresses this question in the C Manuscripts (see esp. Text Nr. 13 and Text Nr. 87). Here he suggests
that retentional modifications must continue in the sphere sedimentations. He contends that the sphere of the
unconscious is also a sphere of “original constitution,” and that “sedimented intentionality continues the process of
temporalization” (Husserl, 2006, p. 59). According to Husserl, alongside patent intentionality, we also need to
acknowledge the functioning of latent intentionality, which could be also characterized as unconscious intentionality.
The temporalizing process stretches into the sphere of the unconscious; the retentional process does not cease even
when retentions no longer affect wakeful consciousness. In Text Nr. 87, Husserl asks: “What does zero of retention
mean? A real cessation of retentional modifications and thereby the disappearance of experience itself? But what
can awakening and the possibility of recollection mean then? (Husserl, 2006, p. 376) Here Husserl suggests that
retentional modifications must continue in the sphere of the unconscious; if this were not so, awakening of recollec-
tions would no longer be possible. Yet admittedly, the view that Husserl puts forth here is not a firm conclusion; it
remains hypothetical, and the manuscript in which he articulates this view is full of unanswered questions.
How are we to understand Husserl's suggestion that the sphere of the unconscious must be layered if recollec-
tion is to be possible? Consider in this regard Klaus Held's following remarks: “When I recollect, I ‘wake up’ what has
sunk down — we might call them ‘sedimented presents’ — and I am able to locate them in the past because I have a
‘sleeping,’ unthematically functioning consciousness of the chain of retentions from their place in the past up to the
present, and I can refer to this consciousness” (Held, 2003, p. 46). This suggests that consciousness is always
nonthematically aware of all its past life. That is, if the sphere of the unconscious were not layered, we might be able
to recollect the distant past, but we would not be able to provide our recollection with a temporal location. Despite
its errors, misjudgements and approximations, our capacity to do so indicates that, as Klaus Held has it, we have a
“sleeping,” unthematically functioning consciousness of the chain of retentions in the sphere of sedimentations. To
clarify how the fact of being layered involves modifications, we can return to the schema presented earlier and
expand upon it while taking into account the difference between the levels of wakeful and sedimented
consciousness:
GENIUSAS 7
The level of wakeful consciousness:
A B C D E F G H
0 0 0 0 0 0
A B C D E F G0
A00 B00 C00 D00 E00 F00
000 000 000 000
A B C D E000
The level of sedimented consciousness:
A0000 B0000 C0000 D0000

00000 00000
A B C00000
A000000 B000000
A0000000
The C Manuscripts is not the only place where Husserl suggests that retentional modifications continue in the
sedimented sphere of the unconscious. In Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis he offers us a hint that the uncon-
scious has a layered structure: “the sediments of the unconscious element are continuously layered upon one
another, so too is the potentiality of awakening one that continues to infinity” (Husserl, 2001, p. 244). It is therefore
imprecise to think of the unconscious as a hidden chamber in a house where all the precious possessions are stored.
Sedimentation is a geological metaphor, which suggests that the unconscious has a layered structure. Instead of
likening the unconscious to a secret room in a house, we should liken the unconscious to layers of secret tunnels
running beneath an old city.
So far, I have shown that, as seen from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology, sedimentations
form a necessary condition of possibility without which memory, understood as episodic recollection, would
not be possible. Thus, if one asks, what is the phenomenological evidence that underlies Husserl's reflections
on sedimentation, one can point at intuitive recollection. The very fact that we can remember what we had
forgotten relies on certain transcendental conditions, which Husserl articulates under the heading of the
concept of sedimentation. As Husserl puts it in First Philosophy, “But behind this immediately retentional
past lies the realm of the, so to speak, sedimented finished pasts, which is equally now conscious in a cer-
tain sense as an open horizon, into which a searching and awakening gaze can direct itself, a realm of what
can be reawakened through recollections” (Husserl, 2019, p. 351). Yet as mentioned in the introduction,
there are yet other highly important ways in which the concept of sedimentation is addressed in Husserl's
phenomenology.
3 | SEDIMENTATION AND MEANING FORMATION: TYPIFICATION,

HABITUALITY, MOODS
In Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl writes:
Continuous retentional modification proceeds up to an essentially necessary limit. That is to say: with
this intentional modification there goes hand in hand a gradual diminution of prominence; and pre-
cisely this has its limit, at which the formerly prominent subsides into the universal substratum — the
so-called ‘unconscious,’ which, far from being a phenomenological nothing, is itself a limit-mode of
consciousness. The whole intentional genesis relates back to this substratum of sedimented
8 GENIUSAS
prominences, which, as a horizon, accompanies every living present and shows its own continuously
changing sense when it becomes ‘awakened.’” (Husserl, 1969, p. 319)
Much of what is said in this passage can be clarified on the basis of the foregoing analysis. Thus, sedimentations are
tied to retentional modifications. So also, sedimentations relate to the unconscious, which is itself understood as a
limit mode of consciousness. But there is also something new in this passage. Here Husserl claims that the substra-
tum of sedimented prominences, as a horizon, “accompanies every living present.” What sense are we to make
of this?
This is certainly not an isolated remark. Consider also Husserl's observation in the C Manuscripts: “Assuming
one could clarify this preservation, this being more or less distant and more or less covered up as an intentional mod-
ification, we would have therein a sedimentation that runs through the whole wakefulness and naturally through the
whole synthetic system of wakefulness” (Husserl, 2006, p. 376). What sense are we to make of the suggestion that
sedimentations, understood as intentional modifications, run through the whole synthetic system of wakefulness?
We already saw that the problematic of sedimentation is inseparable from that of awakening of what recedes
from the conscious grasp. In general, one can say that, in Husserl's phenomenology, the concepts of sedimentation
and awakening walk hand-in-hand. Awakening is a reawakening of what has been sedimented. But there are different
forms of awakening. As we already saw, awakening can be understood as a recollection. But, to borrow a Kantian
term, it can also be understood as schematization.
The phenomenological analysis of sedimentations invites us to rethink Kant's doctrine of schematism (see
Kant, 2007, A137/B176–A147/B187). Under this doctrine, Kant aimed to explain how intuition are subsumed under
categories of understanding and how categories are applied to appearances. According to Kant, it is not our knowl-
edge that must conform to things, but vice versa, things, insofar as they are known, must conform to concepts. Yet
as Kant further shows, we must know how to use our concepts appropriately. This is the problem of schematism,
that is, of the production of the schemas of sensible concepts, which in the present context cannot be addressed in
any great detail.5 Consciousness must schematize its concepts, i.e., align them with forms of intuition, so as to render
them applicable to the spatiotemporal manifold. What do sedimentations add to such a transcendental framework?
In one word: historicity. We can characterize sedimentations as historically-formed schematizations, which shape the
contours of our experience, knowledge and understanding.
Schematism is a Kantian term that Husserl uses only on very rare occasions. Yet he employs other “original con-
cepts” to address a closely related set of problems that Kant had dealt with in his doctrine of schematism. One such
concept is that of a type.6 Without sedimentations, there would be no types and no typification. Here again, Analyses
Concerning Passive Synthesis proves highly helpful:
The living force of awakening, which radiates out from the impressional present, flows over into the
retentional sedimentations of memory in accordance with the principle of similarity: The prominent
intentional objects, the singularities and connected complexes of the intuitive present, link up with
similar objectlike formations that are implicitly constituted in memorial sedimentations; they radiate
toward them via the awakening force (Husserl, 2001, p. 192).
Thus, x, which is given in impressional present, awakens the retentional sedimentations of x0 , x00 , and x000 , and due to
such awakening, I can apperceive x the way I do. Had the awakened retentional sedimentations been different, my
present apperception of x would also be different. Due to such associative awakening, I recognize the phenomenon
given in the impressional present as belonging to this or that type; I apperceive it as X, or Y, or Z. As Lanei
Rodemeyer puts it, “a sedimentation of multiple experiences of similar objects, all chairs — maintained in retention —
allows me to recognize this as a chair as well” (Rodemeyer, 2003, p. 144). Or as Donn Welton has it, “previously
active constructions become sedimented and thus part of our sensibility; our sense of things falls under their spell as
well” (Welton, 2003, p. 280).
GENIUSAS 9
To clarify sedimentations in the framework of any kind of schematization, one needs to pay careful atten-
tion to association.7 What is given at the moment awakens the past in the sense that the phenomenon is recog-
nized as similar to the ones seen before; and this affinity is what motivates consciousness to apperceive the
phenomenon in this rather than that way. In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,
Husserl provides a helpful example: “It is similar to the way in which certain cultural objects (tongs, drills, etc.)
are understood, simply ‘seen,’ with their specifically cultural properties, without any renewed process of mak-
ing intuitive what gave such properties their true meaning” (Husserl, 1970, p. 26). It thereby becomes under-
standable why, as J. N. Mohanty maintains, “empirical types, which pervade our experience from the very
beginning, are results of sedimentation of all apperceptions and their habitual efficacy based on associative
awakening” (Mohanty, 2011, p. 246). This does not mean, however, that sedimentations are at work only in the
formation of empirical types. Rather, as Dieter Lohmar has argued especially forcefully, types can be both spe-
cific and general and they are “downright voracious” (Lohmar, 2003, p. 117).
What I have said thus far about typification characterizes that domain of experience, which Husserl identifies as
prepredicative experience. It is of crucial importance to recognize that sedimentations are also at work in the domain
of judgment, which Husserl contrasts with prepredicative experience. “Something is sedimented in it as its abiding
characteristic, and when the ego now repeats the judgment, it ‘actualizes,’ it effectively realizes only the decision
that was in it from the previous time as its abiding resoluteness” (Husserl, 2001, p. 443). By this we are to under-
stand that in different times and places, I can return to the same judgment by awakening it from my sedimented past;
I thereby transplant it from the past into the present, and without any need to run through all the steps that have led
to its validation (to this I will still come back). Or as Husserl puts it in Ideas II, “Hence this also is a law: each ‘opinion’
is an instauration which remains a possession of the subject as long as motivations do not arise which require the
position taking to be ‘varied' and the former opinion abandoned or require, with respect to its components, a partial
abandonment, and with respect to the whole, a variation” (Husserl, 1989a, p. 120). By this we are to understand that
judgment can be formed in the living present; it can be retained in consciousness in and despite the flow; it can move
into the sphere of the sedimented past; it can be reawakened in the new present, and when it is reawakened, it
retains its former validity, unless there are solid reasons either to modify it, or to abandon it.
We can recognize sedimentations at work not only in the formation of prepredicative experience and judgments,
but also in the domain of emotions and affects. Admittedly, Husserl provides us only with some helpful hints regard-
ing how we are to further analyze the sedimented nature of our affective life.8 These hints, however, are of impor-
tance. For instance, as Husserl puts it a manuscript that was published as a supplementary text to Ideas II, “it might
already be said of affects (whose domain is the immanent sphere and in particular what is in the foreground there)
that their sediment is a passive habituality in the Ego” (Husserl, 1989a, p. 324).
At this point, we can say that sedimentations do not only account for the possibility of recollections. They also
tacitly shape all of our experiences. It is first and foremost due to the sedimented nature of conscious life that one
obtains the right to claim that one is one's past—not because one remembers it, not even because one retains it, but
rather, because it tacitly shapes one's present experiences. As Nicolas de Warren puts it, “my sedimented past is not
“behind” me as something that I have left behind. In an emphatic sense, I am the accomplishment of my past
(De Warren, 2009, p. 174).
4 | T H E H I S T O R I C A L OR I G I N S O F S E D I M E N T A T I O N S
In his genetic phenomenology, which characterizes most of Husserl's investigations from 1917 onwards, Husserl
thematized consciousness not only as temporal, but also as cumulative and developmental. In such a framework, an
inquiry into the formation of typification and habits proved indispensable. By contrast, in his so-called “generative”
phenomenology (see especially, Steinbock, 1995), which characterized many of Husserl's investigations in the 1930s,
we come across a further highly important transformative development. It is not just that “the ego constitutes
10 GENIUSAS
himself for himself in, so to speak, the unity of a ‘history’” (see Husserl, 1960, p. 75), meaning thereby the history of
its individuation, as Husserl had famously maintained in the Cartesian Meditations. Rather, the life of reason, under-
stood in the broad Husserlian sense (as not just theoretical, but also as practical and axiological) is made possible by
taking up ideas that are sedimented culturally and historically. As Husserl in some of his manuscripts remarks, what
makes such modes of historical sedimentation possible is first and foremost empathy (Einfüllung): I “take over” from
others what they have constituted in their own primordial experiences and thus, their experiences become, in a
mediated and modified fashion, my own experiences (see Husserl, 2008, p. 497). Building on such a basis, Husserl
further contends that human subjectivity can take over experiences not only from its contemporaries, but also from
its predecessors. Against such a background, David Carr pertinently remarks that in his earlier writings “Husserl
seemed to believe that the individual consciousness, in its pursuit of theoretical understanding, could simply tran-
scend its concrete social situation and go directly to the truth. What he finally saw in the 1930s was that the very
pursuit of theoretical truth is conditioned and determine by history” (Carr, 1991, p. 105). We inherit the pursuit for
truth from others, from within a history, to which we ourselves belong. Yet what is said here does not concern only
theoretical reason. Rather, as Husserl's post World War I writings on ethics make clear, our practical lives also unfold
against the background of historical and cultural sedimentations (see Geniusas, 2023a). As seen from the standpoint
of generative phenomenology, not only theoretical, but also practical and axiological reason is historical through and
through, which means: taken in all its fundamental modalities, rational life unfolds against the background of histori-
cal sedimentations.
Not surprisingly, in Husserl's late writings from the 1930s, the concept of sedimentation undergoes a further
and a highly significant transformation. In such late works as The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology and “The Origin of Geometry,” Husserl no longer thinks of all sedimentations as sedimentations of
consciousness, he also recognizes that there are sedimentations of a tradition, which take us beyond the sphere of
individual experience.9 This is especially important when it comes to ideal entities, which do not exist just within the
personal sphere of consciousness, but are objectively there for everyone (see Husserl, 1970, p. 356). We can call this
a generative broadening in the phenomenology of sedimentations. In the C Manuscripts, Husserl provides us with a
helpful clue regarding how such a generative broadening is to be understood. Husserl writes: “I experience commu-
nity with others in empathetic appresentation, understood as a parallel to recollection” (Husserl, 2006, p. 436). This
is, indeed, crucial: as we saw, recollection relies on certain conditions, viz., on the sedimentations of former impres-
sions and on their reawakening. If there is indeed a parallel here, and Husserl suggests that there is, then we should
also be able to say that besides reawakening what we have previously experienced, we can also reawaken what we
ourselves have never experienced, but what was experienced by others. As Anthony Steinbock puts it, “Now, rather
than writing of the sedimentation of retention, Husserl writes of the sedimentation of a tradition, rather than
reawakening and reactivating a temporal past, Husserl writes of reawakening and reactivating an historical past”
(Steinbock, 1998, p. 180).
Yet here we touch upon something quite paradoxical. As we saw in our earlier analysis, sedimentations refer to
those past experiences, which sink into the unconscious, understood as a dimension of consciousness. Yet it makes
little sense to claim that generative sedimentations are in the unconscious, for according to Husserl, in the uncon-
scious we can find only those forgotten contents, which were previously given in other, more original, modes of
experience. In the present case, we are faced with meaning formations, which consciousness had not previously
experienced in any sense of the term. Where, then, are we to find these generative sedimentations? They must be
objectified, and they are first and foremost objectified in language. As objectified, they are passed down to us as
meaning formations that are devoid of sense, yet whose sense can be reawakened in our own experience.
It would be a mistake to think that such generative sedimentations that are objectified in language constitute a
regional set of objects of experience. Everything and anything that we can experience is always already interpreted
and reinterpreted. Regarding sedimentations that are deposited in the unconscious, we can say: there is something
in consciousness that consciousness itself does not explicitly recognize or know. So also, regarding generative sedi-
mentations that are deposited in a neutral, non-conscious medium, we can say: there is a deposit of sense in the
GENIUSAS 11
objects around us that we do not recognize. Such a generative and, one can add, hermeneutical broadening of
the field of sedimentations necessitates one to acknowledge the constitutive function of language.10 If some sedi-
mentations did not originate in our lives, then their reactivation cannot mean their reawakening either in the sense
of recollection, or even in the sense of associative schematization. Rather, sedimentations of such a nature must be
passed down to us, and, according to Husserl, one of the fundamental ways in which generative sedimentations
reach the sphere of consciousness is through language.
For Husserl, such sedimentations constitute a source of serious problems. He thus maintains that “I must not talk
vaguely on, must not follow vague traditional concepts or the sediments of passively accumulated experiential residues,
analogies, etc.; rather, I must create my concepts anew in autonomous thinking through pure intuition” (Husserl, 1970,
p. 303). Yet here we are on the brink of a misunderstanding, for clearly, a phenomenologist is not in the position to cre-
ate a new language, as many post-Husserlian thinkers have pointed out. Like everyone else, a phenomenologist also
cannot help but must engage in philosophical reflections against the background of pregiven languages. Yet as I have
already stated in the introduction, the creation of new concepts is not a creatio ex nihilo. If it were, then we would have
to conclude that the phenomenological ambition to create original concepts has been a tremendous failure, for we can-
not come across a single original concept thus understood in the whole of phenomenology (or, for that matter, in any
other philosophical tradition). In one way or another, original concepts in phenomenology already rely on other con-
cepts, which phenomenology takes over either from everyday speech, or from other traditions, while radically
reinterpreting these concepts in light of the phenomenological principles. In this sense, the concept of sedimentation,
like other concepts, such as intentionality, noema, noesis, hyle, empathy, etc., is an original concept.
The generative turn here described marks a significant transformation in Husserl's phenomenological reflections
on sedimentations. Now, on occasion, Husserl employs the concept of sedimentation and that of traditionalization
interchangeably (see, e.g., Husserl, 1970, p. 56). Everything that is taken for granted is now recognized as a field of
prejudices, which in all their obscurity derive from the sedimentations of a tradition (see Husserl, 1970, p. 72). As
Janet Donohoe puts it, “the process of discovering the origins of those sedimentations involves delving into a history
broader than simply the subject itself" (Donohoe, 2004, pp. 35–36). While in the 1920s Husserl's reflections on his-
tory were of a limited scope, focused mainly on the history of philosophy, his ever-deepening reflections on sedi-
mentation in the 1930s pushed Husserl to the realization that besides engaging in the history of philosophy, he must
also develop a philosophy of history. As Husserl contends in the Crisis:
If he is to be one who thinks for himself [Selbstdenker], an autonomous philosopher with the will to
liberate himself from all prejudices, he must have the insight that all the things he takes for granted
are prejudices, that all prejudices are obscurities arising out of a sedimentation of tradition — not
merely judgments whose truth is as yet undecided — and that this is true even of the great task and
idea which is called “philosophy.” (Husserl, 1970, p. 72)
Here we see that Husserl recognizes in sedimentations a great danger that confronts thinking. It is sedimentations,
understood as prejudices, that must be counteracted with a philosophical liberation. As Husserl argues in a manu-
script written in 1931, “the battle against the tradition, against what is supposedly self-evident in ‘life-experiences’
… is always and in the full sense a battle against the ‘situation,’ against the sedimented acquisitions … which have
become ‘self-evident things’” (Husserl, 2008, p. 542). Yet how is this battle against prejudices to be undertaken? For
Husserl, the answer is first and foremost methodological. Thus, in a different context, Husserl refers to the method
of dismantling, or unbuilding (Abbau), as a phenomenological solution:
It is necessary to dismantle [Abbau] everything which already pre-exists in the sedimentations of

sense [Sinnesniederschlägen] in the world of our present experience, to interrogate these sedimenta-
tions relative to the subjective sources out of which they have developed and, consequently, relative
to an effective subjectivity. (Husserl, 1973b, p. 48)
12 GENIUSAS
We can take this to mean that phenomenology reinterprets things as configurations of meaning; that it further
takes the Kantian step and addresses these configurations as effects of schematization; to this Kantian step, it adds
a further, distinctly phenomenological twist: it contends that schematization is irreducibly historical; and to this we
now further add: historical not only in the sense that what we see is shaped by our personal history, but also shaped
by the traditions to which we ourselves belong.
“The Origins of Geometry” provides a further and highly important elaboration of such a generative concept of
sedimentations. Especially in this text Husserl makes it patently clear that generative sedimentations need not be
understood only in a pejorative sense, as a source of illegitimate prejudices from which consciousness necessary has
to liberate itself. Sedimentations also performs a scaffolding function: they enables one to engage in various opera-
tions, and not just cognitive ones, while relying on prior accomplishments, both subjective and intersubjective, both
personal and historical.11 Sedimentations liberate consciousness from the task of thinking everything from ground
up repeatedly.12 If consciousness had to do this, that is, if consciousness were incapable of forming any sedimented
structures of sense, then, among other detriments, no science would be possible.13 The progress of scientific thinking
requires that consciousness be capable of taking certain things for granted, that is, that it should be able to use prior
accomplishments as a new ground of thinking. In this regard, Husserl's concept of sedimentation turns out to have
the same duplicity as Plato's φάρμακον, understood both as a remedy and a poison. It enables progress in thinking,
while at the same time exposing thinking to the danger of being emptied of sense. At one and the same time, it
requires that thinking progress further on the basis of some pregiven sedimentations, and more precisely, those sedi-
mentations that can be justified in accordance with phenomenological principles.
Yet at the same time, we need to admit that it is just not feasible to bring all sedimentations on which the sci-
ences rely under phenomenological scrutiny. For better or worse, in the sciences, one always has to rely on some
untested sedimentations. Yet such a factual state of affairs should not be taken as an excuse to rely on any set of
sedimentations. It rather means that phenomenology is confronted with an infinite task, namely, the endless task
of turning self-evidence into a problem, of bringing into question what we otherwise take for granted.
In “The Origins of Geometry,” Husserl contends that propositions are passed down to us from a tradition,
and these propositions “claim, so to speak, to be sedimentations of a truth-making that can be made originally
self-evident” (Husserl, 1970, p. 367). Propositions reach us as mere words that are emptied of sense, yet the
meaning entailed in these words can be fulfilled in intuition. The fulfillment of which we speak here is what Husserl calls
“reactivation.” Let us not overlook that here Husserl speaks of sedimentations being made originally self-evident. This
means that reactivation need not be a reactivation of what one has already experienced. The specific nature of
historical reactivation lies in the capacity to reactivate those contents, which one has never experienced. If reactivation
is a reproductive act, which it is, then, quite paradoxically, the reactivation of generative sedimentations turns out to be
at one and the same time reproductive and original. Moreover, this further means that the life-world that we inhabit
is historical through and through: it is filled with deposits of sense, which can be reactivated. Here there are no
guarantees: a deposit of sense can remain what it is—a deposit, whose sense remains concealed from us. Against such a
background, Husserl presents his specifically phenomenological conception of history: “history is from the start nothing
other than the vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of
meaning” (Husserl, 1970, p. 371). This dialectic between what is original and what is sedimented suggests that precisely
because we are historical, we are capable of original formations of meaning, yet these formations always already rely on
prior sedimentations of meaning, which in their own turn derive from even more original formations. This is what makes
history into a generative tradition.
Yet can the dialectic between sedimentations and original formations be truly irreducible? Does history not have
a beginning? If it does, then it would seem that it must rely on some original acts that precede sedimentations, under-
stood as their modifications. It seems that sedimentations are by definition something secondary, that they must rely
on prior acts that makes them possible. Just as temporal sedimentations must derive from prior impressions, so his-
torical sedimentations must be grounded in original acts. Yet while we can formally acknowledge the validity of such
a regressive inference, we also have to admit that we cannot recover these original acts in their purity: their content
GENIUSAS 13
is forever beyond our reach. Even if we rely on the phenomenological methods of dismantling, or unbuilding (Abbau),
we still cannot uncover the first not-yet-sedimented acts, which we could identify as the birth of history. Thus, in his
reflections on the first geometers, Husserl already speaks of accomplishments that rely on yet other accomplish-
ments, that the first geometers had inherited from the tradition.14 What it means to be pre-historical cannot be
reactivated. As far as phenomenological reflection is concerned, we cannot break out of the dialectic of original for-
mations and sedimentation.15
Husserl's ultimate philosophical ambition was to give an account of the constitution of the world. With the turn
to genetic phenomenology, Husserl grew to realize that without incorporating the problematic of sedimentations
into phenomenology, his account of world constitution would remain abstract and incomplete. Sedimentations had
to form a vital element of world constitution. Yet does the discovery of the generative dimension of sedimentations
not threaten the cogency of such a constitutive framework? The answer depends on how one understands constitu-
tion. If one thinks that it refers to the accomplishments of a solipsistic consciousness, then indeed, generative sedi-
mentations would appear as obstacles and a source of insurmountable difficulties. Yet this is not what Husserl
means by constitution, for he recognizes explicitly and repeatedly that world constitution is an intersubjective and
intergenerational affair. Insofar as one admits the primacy of intersubjectivity, one also has to admit that the genera-
tive broadening of sedimentations bolsters the Husserlian account of world constitution by leading us to recognize
that the temporal genesis of sedimentations must be further coupled with their historical genesis.
While all activity unfolds against the background of passivity, Husserl's investigations of the sedimented struc-
tures of experience brings to light that what we often presume to be a passivity is, in truth, a sediment of earlier
activities. This concerns not only our understanding of objects of experience, taken in all their variety, or of our-
selves, as subjects of experience, but it also concerns our understanding of the overall horizon of experience, which
in Husserl's phenomenology is equated with the world. The world that I find myself in is always already a humanized
world, which means that it always already entails dimensions of sense whose validity derives from a sedimented his-
tory, both personal and interpersonal. This hidden history is nothing other than the history of world constitution. In
numerous manuscripts composed in the 1930s, Husserl repeatedly maintained that world constitution is a constitu-
tive achievement of Allsubjektivität, which unfold over diverse levels of constitution. Drawing on some of these man-
uscripts (most of them have been published in Husserliana XV and Husserliana XXXIX), we can single out the
following levels as most fundamental: (1) the constitution of my own singular primordiality and of the primordial
world; (2) the constitution of the first alter ego and the simultaneous co-constitution of oneself as a human being in
a shared world; (3) the constitution of other alter egos and the simultaneous co-constitution of a primordial commu-
nity (Gemeinschaft) within a communal world; (4) the historical broadening of the primordial community by the fur-
ther constitution of the community's generative history and of the historical world; (5) the further constitution of a
society (Gesellschaft), which already entails a plurality of communities and is itself given in the broader framework of
other societies (in Husserl's case, the German state among other states); (6) the further constitution of society's gen-
erative history; (7) the further constitution of a broader social “humanity” (such as, in Husserl's own case, European
humanity, which already incorporates a variety of cultures and traditions, while itself is given in the framework of a
more encompassing world); (8) the further constitution of the social “humanity's” generative history; (9) the constitu-
tion of the world as an open endless totality, that is, as the horizon of all horizons; (10) the subsequent constitution
of the world's generative history. In the present context, it is not possible to clarify in further detail what falls under
the heading of each of these constitutive levels. It should be stressed, however, that the “transition” from one stage
to another marks the decisive moments in Husserl's transcendental history of world constitution. The “transition” of
which we here speak should be understood not only in the vertical, but also horizontal sense, by which I mean that
each constitutive level is “built” upon the sediments of more basic constitutive levels, which in effect means
that world constitution unfolds in what Husserl himself calls “the process of sedimentation” (Husserl, 1973a, p. 438).
As Husserl explicitly remarks in a different manuscript, written in 1931, the being of transcendental subjectivity lies
in its becoming, which unfolds in the endless transcendental genesis (see Husserl, 1973a, p. 392). It thereby becomes
understandable that the history of which Husserl speaks in his analyses of generative sedimentations is not history
14 GENIUSAS
as such, but rather that phenomenology transforms mundane history into an index of transcendental history, within
which the life of transcendental subjectivity unfolds.
5 | CONCLUDING REMARKS
In place of a conclusion, I would like to consider the common view, which suggests that the concept of sedimenta-
tion is a genetic concept. One could support such a view with historically oriented observations. Husserl does not
employ this concept before 1917, that is, before he draws an explicit distinction between static and genetic phenom-
enology and before he starts searching for ways to supplement the eidetic account of conscious experience with an
inquiry into the genesis of the eidetic structures of conscious life. It is only with the discovery of genetic phenome-
nology that Husserl comes to employ the concept of Sedimentierung as well as engage in reflections on its function
and significance. Are we then to say that the concept of sedimentation is a distinctly genetic concept? Against the
background of the foregoing analysis, I would contend that such a view is too restrictive and in effect it suppresses
the richness that this concept entails. One can speak of sedimentation as a static concept, a genetic concept and a
generative concept. Let me explain.
The account offered in the first section of this paper, which was focused on the temporal structures of sedi-
mentation, is a static account. Admittedly, in the manuscripts collected in Husserliana X, which includes manu-
scripts on time written between 1893 and 1917, Husserl does not employ the concept of sedimentation, not even
on a single occasion. In the Bernau Manuscripts, which include manuscripts on time written in 1917–1918, the
concepts of Sedimentierung and Niederschlag are already employed, although only on a few occasions. It is only in
his late manuscripts on time, that is, the C Manuscripts, composed between 1929 and 1934, that Husserl fre-
quently employs the concept of sedimentation. Yet historical observations of this nature do not suffice to establish
that the concept of sedimentation is a genetic concept. Insofar as we think of sedimentation as a condition that
underlies episodic recollection, we rely on the structures of experiences that were already described in static phe-
nomenology. Insofar as sedimentation refers to the emptying of retentional awareness, which in its own turn
forms a condition of possibility of recollection, sedimentation is a static concept. Much like the concepts of
impression, retention and protention, sedimentation refers to an eidetic structure of experience, a necessary com-
ponent of time-consciousness. We thus have good reasons to speak of a static phenomenology of sedimentation
avant la letter.
When it comes to the set of issues addressed in the second section, that is, when it comes to the concept of
sedimentation employed in the context of clarifying the formation of types, habits and moods, we confront sedimen-
tation as a distinctly genetic concept. The genetic account suggests that the concept of awakening that is coupled
with sedimentations need not be understood only as intuitive recollection. As seen from the genetic standpoint, the
whole past of conscious life continues to color the present consciousness, so much so that it colors the meaning of
appearing phenomena. This whole past is constantly reawakened in the course of experience. Robert Sokolowski
(see Sokolowski, 1964, p. 162) provides a helpful example to illustrate such a genetic concept of sedimentation: the
meaning of noema, father, differs depending on whether it is intended in a consciousness of a 5-year-old child or a
60-year-old man. This is undeniable, but why? The foregoing analysis here offered suggests that the meaning of any
noema is colored by the sedimentations of previous experiences.
Finally, in Husserl's late writings from the 1930s, we come across a generative account of sedimentations. In
contrast to the genetic account, the generative one suggests that the meaning consciousness ascribes to appearing
phenomena is not just colored by the sedimentations of one's own past life. It is rather colored by the sedimenta-
tions of a tradition to which subjectivity belongs. “Our human existence moves within innumerable traditions. The
whole cultural world, in all its forms, exists through tradition” (Husserl, 1970, p. 354). We can now say that in
Husserlian phenomenology, the problematic of sedimentation is inseparably bound to that of reawakening and that
reawakening can be understood in a variety of ways: either as intuitive recollection, or as a kind of schematization,
GENIUSAS 15
or as a reawakening of a tradition. We can thus speak of sedimentation in three fundamental ways: as a static,
genetic and generative notion.
A further exploration of phenomenological reflections on sedimentation in post-Husserlian phenomenology is
not possible in the present context.16 Yet let me briefly note that post-Husserlian phenomenology was especially
concerned with the tensions that arise between these three determinations of sedimentation that we come across in
Husserl's phenomenology, and especially with the implications that follow from Husserl's realization that the phe-
nomenological account of sedimented consciousness will remain incomplete for as long as it does not include reflec-
tions on historical sedimentations. If consciousness inherits sedimentations from a tradition, then should we not
transition from the exploration of the origins of sedimentation to the analysis of the sedimentation of origins? This
question has a central place in Alfred Schutz's, Merleau-Ponty's, Paul Ricœur's and Jacques Derrida's reflections on
sedimentation—the four thinkers who continue to consider sedimentation a highly important concept and theme.
Despite the important differences between these thinkers, they all shared the suspicion that Husserl's project of
addressing the origins of sedimentation cannot be carried through and that therefore, the analysis of the origins
of sedimentation needs to be supplemented with a further analysis of the sedimentation of origins. While a critical
evaluation of the plethora of issues associated with this transformation cannot be addressed in the present context,
let me stress that the preoccupation with the origins of sedimentations is the most distinctive feature of Husserl's
phenomenology of sedimentations.
FUND ING INFORMATION

This work was supported by the Research Council of Lithuania (Grant Number SMIP-22-17).
ORCID
Saulius Geniusas https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6086-8309
ENDNOTES
1
The view I here present is consistent with Husserl's conception of death, understood as a dreamless sleep, from which
one never awakens. As Husserl puts in in one of his manuscripts, while every human subjectivity has its own sedimenta-
tions as its own developmental inheritance, when it dies, it does not lose this inheritance, but sinks with it into absolute
sleep (Husserl, 1973a, p. 609).
2
Dermot Moran has insightfully remarked that “Husserl does not have a specific concept of repression as such, but he
does have the concept of ‘sedimentation’” (Moran, 2017, p. 15).
3
Although it is not my goal in the present context to explore this issue, let me note in passing that the bond that ties sedi-
mentations to the unconscious characterizes not only of Husserl's, but also of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. See
especially Merleau-Ponty (2010, p. 15), also Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 180).
4
See in this regard Bernet (2002), the articles collected in Lohmar and Brudzinska (2012) and in Legrand and Trigg (2017),
as well as Geniusas (2022a).
5
For a recent phenomenological interpretation of Kant's schematism as a precursor to the phenomenological accounts of
productive imagination, see Geniusas (2022b, esp. 25–36).
6
For an account that binds Husserl's concept of typification to Kant's concept of schema, see especially Lohmar (2003).
7
Elman Hollenstein's study of association (see Hollenstein, 1972) to this day remains an outstanding investigation that
provides us with the most penetrating analysis of this central issue in Husserl's genetic phenomenology.
8
I speak here only of helpful hints because, to the best of my knowledge, Husserl has not provided as detailed an account
of sedimentations in this framework of experience as in others. For instance, although the second part of the recently
published volume, Studien zur Struktur des Besusstseins, is focused on feelings and values, in the manuscripts here included
we do not come across any explicit analyses of sedimentation.
9
This does not mean, however, that in generative phenomenology, Husserl was no longer concerned with the sedimenta-
tions of consciousness. Rather, the new realization that we come across in his late writings is that the phenomenological
elucidation of the sedimented nature of consciousness will remain incomplete for as long as one does not incorporate
reflections on cultural and historical sedimentations.
16 GENIUSAS
10
There are a few reasons why I speak here of a hermeneutical broadening. First, in contrast to Husserl's static phenomenol-
ogy of sedimentations, which addressed sedimentations as conditions of episodic recollection, and in contrast to Huss-
erl's genetic phenomenology, which thematized sedimentations as the formative elements of habits and typification,
Husserl broadened his analytic framework in generative phenomenology by focusing on sedimentations that exceed the
bounds of individual consciousness for the reason that they are not found in consciousness as such, but rather in
language. Second, when it comes to such language-bound sedimentations, which did not originate in individual conscious
life, but reach consciousness from history, culture and traditions, their reactivation cannot be clarified in terms of a pure
reproduction. Rather, what we face here is reactivation understood as a mode of innovative appropriation, which Husserl
on occasion addresses while employing such terms as Urstiftung, Nachstiftung and Endstiftung, other times in such terms
as “mediated recollection” or “reconstruction in mediated levels of evidence” (see Husserl, 1973a, p. 393). Although it is
not possible to expand upon this in the present context, let me note in passing that it was the hermeneutically oriented
phenomenologists, such as Paul Ricœur, who subsequently transformed Husserl's juxtaposition of the concepts of
sedimentation and reactivation with the collocation of sedimentation and innovation (see Ricœur, 1990a, Vol. 1, pp. 68,
76–77, 79, 166, 229, 1990b, p. 25, 1990c, p. 219; see also Geniusas, 2024). In the present context, I refer to the “herme-
neutical broadening of the field of sedimentations” in Husserl's phenomenology so as to emphasize that this shift from
the phenomenology of reactivation to the hermeneutics of innovation was already anticipated in Husserl's generative
phenomenology. As Husserl himself put it in a lecture, “Phenomenology and Anthropology,” which he delivered to the
various Kant societies on three occasions in Frankfurt, Berlin and Halle in 1931, “an authentic analysis of consciousness
is, so to speak, a hermeneutics of the life of consciousness” (Husserl, 1989b, p. 177).
11
As Husserl puts it in “The Origins of Geometry,” “We understand its persisting manner of being: it is not only a mobile
forward process from one set of acquisitions to another but a continuous synthesis in which all acquisitions maintain
their validity, all make up a totality such that, at every present stage, the total acquisition is, so to speak, the total premise
for the acquisitions of the new level” (Husserl, 1970, p. 355).
12
As Woelert insightfully puts it, “the cognitive scaffold that is obtained by means of sedimentation “liberates the thinking
of the human individual from the impossible task of thinking everything simultaneously and constantly anew” (Woelert,
2011, p. 120). This concerns not only cognitive scaffolds, but all other types of sedimentation here addressed.
13
For a recent discussion of this issue in the context of philosophy of experimental science, see Steinle (2010).
14
For instance, with attention to science in general and geometry in particular, Husserl contends that “a more primitive
formation of meaning necessarily went before it as a preliminary stage” (Husserl, 1970, p. 356).
15
While in some of his late manuscripts Husserl suggests that world constitution relies upon “pure experience” (reine
Erfahrung), which he identifies as the experience of “pure nature” ( pure Natur) (Husserl, 2008, pp. 517–518), in other
manuscripts he contends that in the framework of generative phenomenology, nature itself is reconceptualized as a
formation of transcendental history, which he further qualifies as an “endless” history (Husserl, 1973a, pp. 391–392).
16
In some other publications, I have explored some chief ways in which the concept of sedimentation has been employed
in post-Husserlian phenomenology. See especially Geniusas (2023b, 2024).
RE FE R ENC E S
Bernet, R. (2002). Unconscious consciousness in Husserl and Freud. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, 1(3), 327–351.
Carr, D. (1991). Time, narrative, and history. Indiana University Press.
De Warren, N. (2009). Husserl and the promise of time: Subjectivity in transcendental phenomenology. Cambridge University
Press.
Donohoe, J. (2004). Husserl on ethics and Intersubjectivity: From static to genetic phenomenology. Humanity Books.
Geniusas, S. (2022a). Towards a phenomenology of the unconscious: Husserl and Fink on Versunkenheit. Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology, 53(1), 1–23.
Geniusas, S. (2022b). Phenomenology of productive imagination: Embodiment, language, subjectivity. Ibidem Press.
Geniusas, S. (2023a). Destiny, love and rational faith in Husserl's post world war I ethics. Human Studies, 46, 443–465.
Geniusas, S. (2023b). Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of sedimentations. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 54(2),
155–177.
Geniusas, S. (2024). From phenomenology of reactivation to hermeneutics of innovation: Paul Ricœur on sedimentation as
the dialectical counterpart of productive imagination. International Journal of Social Imaginaries, 3(1), Forthcoming.
Held, K. (2003). Husserl's phenomenology of the life-world. In D. Welton (Ed.), The new Husserl: A critical reader (pp. 32–64).
Indiana University Press.
Hollenstein, E. (1972). Phänomenologie der Assoziation: Zu Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips der passiven Genesis bei
Edmund Husserl. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (1960). Cartesian meditations. (D. Cairns, Trans.). Nijhoff.
GENIUSAS 17
Husserl, E. (1969). Formal and transcendental logic. (D. Cairns, Trans.). Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. (D. Cairns, Trans.). Northwestern
University Press.
Husserl, E. (1973a). In I. Kern (Ed.), Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil:
1929–1935. Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1973b). Experience and judgment: Investigations in a genealogy of logic. (J. Churchill & K. Ameriks, Trans.).
Northwestern University Press.
Husserl, E. (1989a). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. Second book: Studies in
the phenomenology of constitution. (R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer, Trans.). Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (1989b). In T. Nenon & H. R. Sepp (Eds.), Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922-1937). Kluwer Academic Press.
Husserl, E. (1991). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893–1917). (J. B. Brough, Trans.). Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (2001). Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis. Lectures on transcendental logic. (A. J. Steinbock, Trans.).
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (2006). In D. Lohmar (Ed.), Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte. Springer.
Husserl, E. (2008). In R. Sowa (Ed.), Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem
Nachlass (1916–1937). Springer.
Husserl, E. (2012). Ideas: General introduction to phenomenology. (W. R. Boyce Gibson, Trans.). Routledge.
Husserl, E. (2014). In R. Sowa & T. Vongehr (Eds.), Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der
Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik. Springer.
Husserl, E. (2019). First philosophy: Lectures 1923/24 and related texts from the manuscripts (1920–1925). (S. Luft & T. M.
Naberhaus, Trans.). Springer.
Kant, I. (2007). Critique of pure reason. (N. Kemp Smith, Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Legrand, D., & Trigg, D. (Eds.). (2017). Unconsciousness between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Springer.
Lohmar, D. (2003). Husserl's type and Kant's schemata: Systematic reasons for their correlation or identity. In D. Welton
(Ed.), The new Husserl: A critical reader (pp. 93–124). Indiana University Press.
Lohmar, D., & Brudzinska, J. (Eds.). (2012). Founding psychoanalysis phenomenologically. Springer.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2010). Institution and passivity. Course notes from the Collège de France (1954-55). (L. Lawlor & H. Mas-
sey, Trans.). Northwestern University Press.
Mohanty, J. N. (2011). Edmund Husserl's Freiburg years (1916–1938). Yale University Press.
Moran, D. (2017). Husserl's layered concept of the human person: Conscious and unconscious. In D. Legrand & D. Trigg
(Eds.), Unconsciousness between phenomenology and psychoanalysis (pp. 3–24). Springer.
Ricœur, P. (1990a). Time and narrative (Vol. 1. (K. Blamey & D. Pellauer, Trans.)). University of Chicago Press.
Ricœur, P. (1990b). Time and narrative (Vol. 2. (K. Blamey & D. Pellauer, Trans.)). University of Chicago Press.
Ricœur, P. (1990c). Time and narrative (Vol. 3. (K. Blamey & D. Pellauer, Trans.)). University of Chicago Press.
Rodemeyer, L. (2003). Developments in the theory of time-consciousness: An analysis of protention. In D. Welton (Ed.), The
new Husserl: A critical reader (pp. 125–156). Indiana University Press.
Sokolowski, R. (1964). The formation of Husserl's concept of constitution. Martinus Nijhoff.
Steinbock, A. (1995). Home and beyond: Generative phenomenology after Husserl. Northwestern University Press.
Steinbock, A. (1998). Spirit and generativity: The role and contribution of the phenomenologist in Hegel and Husserl. In
N. Depraz & D. Zahavi (Eds.), Alterity and facticity: New perspectives on Husserl (pp. 163–203). Springer.
Steinle, F. (2010). Concepts, facts, and sedimentation in experimental science. In D. Hyder & H.-J. Rheinberger (Eds.), Science
and the life-world (pp. 119–216). Stanford University Press.
Welton, D. (2003). The Systematicity of Husserl's transcendental philosophy: From static to genetic phenomenology. In D.
Welton (Ed.), The new Husserl: A critical reader (pp. 255–288). Indiana University Press.
Woelert, P. (2011). Human cognition, space, and the sedimentation of meaning. Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, 10,
113–137.
How to cite this article: Geniusas, S. (2024). The origins of sedimentation in Husserl's phenomenology.
European Journal of Philosophy, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12931

Geniusas 2024 The Origins of Sedimentation in Husserl S Phenomenology. European J of Philosophy

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Geniusas 2024 The Origins of Sedimentation in Husserl S Phenomenology. European J of Philosophy

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Received: 12 September 2022 Revised: 14 April 2023 Accepted: 20 December 2023

The origins of sedimentation in Husserl's

Department of Philosophy, The Chinese

Correspondence metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept.

Eur J Philos. 2024;1–17. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ejop 1

The level of wakeful consciousness:

The level of sedimented consciousness:

A0000 B0000 C0000 D0000

3 | SEDIMENTATION AND MEANING FORMATION: TYPIFICATION,

In Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl writes:

It is necessary to dismantle [Abbau] everything which already pre-exists in the sedimentations of

FUND ING INFORMATION

You might also like