The Unconscious in Phenomenology

The expression “phenomenology of the unconscious” seems to have an undoubted oxymoronic quality. In phenomenology, the concept of a phenomenon is strictly concerned with consciousness and with its transcendental structure. Nevertheless, there exists in phenomenology, and especially from Husserl onwards, a strong sensitivity to the passive, receptive, affective dimension, understood as a dark, confused dimension, not lit up by the intentional ray. On the other hand, the profoundly epistemological character of Husserl’s phenomenology does not seem to allow for an absolute unconscious. Insofar as it is submerged in an abyss, the unconscious is in fact always a “thing” of consciousness. The transformation of phenomenological gnoseology into phenomenological ontology, the profound revisiting of the notion of temporal flow, the emergence of the theme of the impersonal in Merleau-Ponty, and that of otherness in Ricoeur grants us more radical tools with which to sound that “dark depth” from which phenomenology starts out.