Husserl’s Concept of Urstiftung: From Passivity to History

Abstract

My main purpose is to highlight the central philosophical meaning of the concept of Urstiftung (and all other related concepts). I will argue that this legal concept enables us to understand the twofold dimension of the institutions of sense upon which all our subjective, intersubjective, and inter-generative experiences are based. On the one hand, the institution of sense implies a certain reception, namely in the form of a first discovery of something pre-given (see Hua XXXIX, 134), since a Stiftung is not something arbitrary or ex nihilo but something motivated from its very roots in experience. On the other hand, despite this motivational background, the Urstiftung is in fact a sort of act of creation (as an institution of sense), which opens new directions for the future by configuring all coming experience. To sum up, it is a concept that can describe both dimensions: that which can be called pre-given and makes up the motivating condition for something to emerge, as well as the active moment, namely that of the active participation that ?institutes? sense in the present and for the future. I believe Husserl intentionally uses this double semantic connotation in order to highlight the ?passive? and motivational background that leads ultimately to the ?active? and instituting response implied in the very act of an Urstiftung. This double connotation speaks of the semantic richness of this concept that?beyond the strict bounds of Husserlian phenomenology?provides an extraordinary conceptual tool for understanding certain phenomena that cannot be reduced either to a mere factual givenness or to an arbitrary decision of an active agent.