Phenomenology and the problem of visuality. Part 1

The purpose of the article is a consistent analysis of the problems of phenomenological movement in the theory of vision. It is shown that the theory of vision is connected in the phenomenological project with the tension of playing out subjectivity: 1) in a phenomenologically passive observer, on the one hand, and, 2) in the form of a subject-actor (both the View of grasping phenomena, and the Self constituting the world), on the other hand. The studies of phenomenologists within the framework of considering passivity revealed it in a positive way as affectation. This allowed philosophers to identify a number of so-called deep phenomena (face, Gaze of the Other, trace, etc.). However, the tension between subjectivity in the form of a field of acts and a field of affects was never resolved. Moreover, this tension eventually led to the figure of the aporia of the gift and the given, when the underlying phenomenon cannot be grasped in the presence of vision. This leads to subjectivity being detached from its own world, the Other, and itself. Being only formally ascertained, affectation is thrown into the blind zone of research, which leads to problems in grasping the fullness of vision. The search for a way out of the framework that classical phenomenologists imposed on themselves leads the third generation of researches to the project of counterintentional subjectivity. Projects of conceptualization of the subject of vision given in postphenomenology by M. Henry and J.-L. Marion will be discussed in the next article.