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Edmund Husserl's "Origin of Geometry": An Introduction
Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry": An Introduction (1962) is Jacques Derrida's earliest published work. In this commentary-interpretation of the famous appendix to Husserl's The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology , Derrida relates writing to such key concepts as differing, consciousness, presence, and historicity. Starting from Husserl's method of historical investigation, Derrida gradually unravels a deconstructive critique of phenomenology itself, which forms the foundation for his later criticism of Western metaphysics as a metaphysics of presence. The complete text of Husserl's Origin of Geometry is included.
214 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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About the author
Jacques Derrida
650 books1,795 followersJacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
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May 18, 2014Rather than give a review, which I am not inclined or qualified to provide, I think it would be more beneficial for myself and others, should they read this, that I give a sort of collection of useful pedagogic assistances: an introduction to Derrida's.
{Also, I decline from giving this work any rating-stars, because, given the circumstances, I'm not at all sure what that would mean.}
First, I think it would be exorbitantly useful to clarify some of the recurring technical terms and distinguish them from false friends (terms we are wont to read in a normal way but are meant anyway but).
Husserl’s Origin
Lifeworld - Fundamental to Husserl’s later project; a prescientific understanding of the world: the fact that all of science and geometry derives from real experience. In some ways, similar to saying that scientists are not hyper-real avatars that do not eat or sleep but only discover truths of the world. Scientists are people like us, and the world they study is the same world that gave rise and meaning to Beethoven’s Ode and Macbeth. The purpose of the notion of the lifeworld is to secure the sanctity of real lived experience, and also serve as a foundation for the unity of all the sciences (human, and otherwise).
Sedimentation - The fact that discoveries in the sciences become commonplace. We take it for granted that magnets have magnetic fields that operate by polarity, or that we have libraries. Sedimentation is Husserl’s technical term for taking facts of knowledge for granted. The origin of Geometry would be a profound example of cultural sedimentation, which Husserl spends as much of the Crisis as I’ve read digging out. {As a sidenote, I want to mention the term doxa , which is Greek for ‘opinion’ (think orthodox, heterodox, etc.). Doxa roughly relates to ‘received opinion.’ What we have left of a concept after it’s origin, genesis, and self-evidence, is almost a conceptual placeholder, not rigorously defined or clearly understood.}
Reactivation - A counter move to the process of sedimentation. “…[T]his is the capacity for reactivation that belongs originally to every human being as a speaking being.” And, “It becomes sedimented, so to speak. But the reader can make it self-evident again, can reactivate the self-evidence” (164). Husserl’s Origin, which is a companion piece to the Crisis is essentially a Rückfrage meant to demonstrate a reactivation that, if successful, brings us back to the sanctity and fundamental unity of our experience of the lifeworld.
Rückfrage - German for “query,” but alternatively translated by Leavey as “return inquiry.” Not so much a false-friend as a stranger, this is the process by which Husserl attempts his reactivations. It is a methodical investigation that will surprise you by how deeply it seeks to understand an issue.
By no means is this a complete list, but, I hope it at least inspires the potential reader to work through the Origin first before Derrida’s Introduction.
Derrida’s Introduction
Historicity - Next to ‘reactivation,’ one might consider it the star of the piece. History, commonly used, is the study of past, empirical, and recorded happenings. Historicity is the slightly metaphysical term we give to the possibility of their being something like history at all. Apparently, there are nearly as many nuanced meanings of Historicity as there are thinkers who employ it, so I will give you a succinct utterance from Derrida: “history’s appearing and the possibility of it’s appearing” (150). For the sake of intellectual honesty, let me mention that Derrida was not defining ‘historicity,’ but was indicating how it is equivalent to ‘sense.’
Another excellent moment: “That is what Husserl means when he opposes internal or intrinsic (innere) historicity to external (aussere) history” (95).
Let us summarily say, then, that historicity is that quality of being that allows for there to be such a thing as history. For there to be a history, that continues to accrue (and, coincidentally, sediment), there must be a historicity, that grants the possibility and contains the conditions to allows for history (and histories).
Tradition - Remarkably similar to our layman’s use of the term. The tradition of Geometry, for instance, is the sum total of geometrical facts, axioms, historical evidences, developments, and instances. A major difference, though, between our layman’s use and Husserl and Derrida’s technical use, is one of scope: for us, Tradition has strong historical connotations (the tradition of southern hospitality, etc.). For the phenomenologist, Tradition includes things unknown by history: kids struggling with geometry in school, the production of geometry textbooks: the entirety of the Culture of Geometry. Let’s say that we might extend this sort of lifeworld-ly analysis to the Tradition of Literature, as well.
Sense - My not having a strong grasp of the phenomenological/technical use of this term hurt my reading of the text, I’m afraid. Perhaps I can dissuade potential readers from making the stame mistake. “…[S]ense is nothing other than the sense of reality or of factuality….” (46, fn).
I’m dissatisfied with the preface’s suggestions of various interpretations of ‘sense’ in the text. Let us, then, settle for a small roster of possible meanings,
1. Sense as in sense-experience: touch, sight, etc. But also, and more subtly, imagination.
2. Sense as in the sense of a word, meaning.
3. Sense as in the overall meaning and project of a tradition: ‘the sense of science.”
4. Sense as in ‘a sense of reality,’ having substance in the order of actuality; opposed to ideal.
Horizon - Traditionally, in phenomenology, a horizon consists of the pole, the field, and then the horizon proper, or, the edge of possible experience. For Derrida, “[h]orizon is the always-already-there of a future which keeps the indetermination of its infinite openness intact (even though this future was announced to consciousness)[(117)]. For Derrida, the origin and end (or, telos) is always beyond the edge of the horizon, constantly deferred. Let me try to emphasize the importance here: we, as living persons, are always the subject-pole of our total experience. Our past is on the horizon behind us, and our future is on the horizon before us. This not only applies to us as persons, but also to traditions (like geometry). The origin (in a special, semi-historical, phenomenological sense) of geometry is obscured, and so is its ultimate realization and completion, but we are certain there is a tradition known as Geometry, and it has a past, and as long as we are around, it will have a future.
Responsibility - is the purpose of commencing a reactivation in the first place. We are custodians of the entirety of the scientific project. For a scientist, or person of letters, or even a geometer: to merely seek Truth in your field is not enough. You must also bring the truth home, but never by disparaging the experiential unassailability of the lifeworld itself. This is to say that we must not gain truth at the expense of our actual involvement and presence in the world itself. We cannot trade in the farm for a seed, as it were.
Diagrams of certain convoluted relationships between concepts:
(Please forgive me if the diagram of the sign is overly ambitious; my hope was that, by using Scholastic semiology and Metaphysics, and joining it with Saussurean semiotics, I might be able to help the reader navigate the briar patch of Derrida’s analysis.) {Also, my Scholastic semiology is from Sister Miriam Joseph’s The Trivium.}
And then, other suggestions:
http://digitool.fcla.edu/R/PY5JYI7S46...
http://sweb.uky.edu/~rsand1/phi516/
The Review of Metaphysics
"Edmund Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry': An Introduction by J. Derrida; John P. Leavey"
Review by: J. Barnouw
as a segue to Derrida's overall project:
Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy
"FINDING A SYSTEMATIC BASE FOR DERRIDA'S WORK"
GALETTI, DINO
Autumn2010, Vol. 15 Issue 2, p275-300. 26p.
Derrida and Husserl:
Page 88
"5: The Root, That Is Necessarily One, of Every Dilemma: An Investigation of the Introduction to Husserl’s “The Origin of Geometry”"
{Also, I decline from giving this work any rating-stars, because, given the circumstances, I'm not at all sure what that would mean.}
First, I think it would be exorbitantly useful to clarify some of the recurring technical terms and distinguish them from false friends (terms we are wont to read in a normal way but are meant anyway but).
Husserl’s Origin
Lifeworld - Fundamental to Husserl’s later project; a prescientific understanding of the world: the fact that all of science and geometry derives from real experience. In some ways, similar to saying that scientists are not hyper-real avatars that do not eat or sleep but only discover truths of the world. Scientists are people like us, and the world they study is the same world that gave rise and meaning to Beethoven’s Ode and Macbeth. The purpose of the notion of the lifeworld is to secure the sanctity of real lived experience, and also serve as a foundation for the unity of all the sciences (human, and otherwise).
Sedimentation - The fact that discoveries in the sciences become commonplace. We take it for granted that magnets have magnetic fields that operate by polarity, or that we have libraries. Sedimentation is Husserl’s technical term for taking facts of knowledge for granted. The origin of Geometry would be a profound example of cultural sedimentation, which Husserl spends as much of the Crisis as I’ve read digging out. {As a sidenote, I want to mention the term doxa , which is Greek for ‘opinion’ (think orthodox, heterodox, etc.). Doxa roughly relates to ‘received opinion.’ What we have left of a concept after it’s origin, genesis, and self-evidence, is almost a conceptual placeholder, not rigorously defined or clearly understood.}
Reactivation - A counter move to the process of sedimentation. “…[T]his is the capacity for reactivation that belongs originally to every human being as a speaking being.” And, “It becomes sedimented, so to speak. But the reader can make it self-evident again, can reactivate the self-evidence” (164). Husserl’s Origin, which is a companion piece to the Crisis is essentially a Rückfrage meant to demonstrate a reactivation that, if successful, brings us back to the sanctity and fundamental unity of our experience of the lifeworld.
Rückfrage - German for “query,” but alternatively translated by Leavey as “return inquiry.” Not so much a false-friend as a stranger, this is the process by which Husserl attempts his reactivations. It is a methodical investigation that will surprise you by how deeply it seeks to understand an issue.
By no means is this a complete list, but, I hope it at least inspires the potential reader to work through the Origin first before Derrida’s Introduction.
Derrida’s Introduction
Historicity - Next to ‘reactivation,’ one might consider it the star of the piece. History, commonly used, is the study of past, empirical, and recorded happenings. Historicity is the slightly metaphysical term we give to the possibility of their being something like history at all. Apparently, there are nearly as many nuanced meanings of Historicity as there are thinkers who employ it, so I will give you a succinct utterance from Derrida: “history’s appearing and the possibility of it’s appearing” (150). For the sake of intellectual honesty, let me mention that Derrida was not defining ‘historicity,’ but was indicating how it is equivalent to ‘sense.’
Another excellent moment: “That is what Husserl means when he opposes internal or intrinsic (innere) historicity to external (aussere) history” (95).
Let us summarily say, then, that historicity is that quality of being that allows for there to be such a thing as history. For there to be a history, that continues to accrue (and, coincidentally, sediment), there must be a historicity, that grants the possibility and contains the conditions to allows for history (and histories).
Tradition - Remarkably similar to our layman’s use of the term. The tradition of Geometry, for instance, is the sum total of geometrical facts, axioms, historical evidences, developments, and instances. A major difference, though, between our layman’s use and Husserl and Derrida’s technical use, is one of scope: for us, Tradition has strong historical connotations (the tradition of southern hospitality, etc.). For the phenomenologist, Tradition includes things unknown by history: kids struggling with geometry in school, the production of geometry textbooks: the entirety of the Culture of Geometry. Let’s say that we might extend this sort of lifeworld-ly analysis to the Tradition of Literature, as well.
Sense - My not having a strong grasp of the phenomenological/technical use of this term hurt my reading of the text, I’m afraid. Perhaps I can dissuade potential readers from making the stame mistake. “…[S]ense is nothing other than the sense of reality or of factuality….” (46, fn).
I’m dissatisfied with the preface’s suggestions of various interpretations of ‘sense’ in the text. Let us, then, settle for a small roster of possible meanings,
1. Sense as in sense-experience: touch, sight, etc. But also, and more subtly, imagination.
2. Sense as in the sense of a word, meaning.
3. Sense as in the overall meaning and project of a tradition: ‘the sense of science.”
4. Sense as in ‘a sense of reality,’ having substance in the order of actuality; opposed to ideal.
Horizon - Traditionally, in phenomenology, a horizon consists of the pole, the field, and then the horizon proper, or, the edge of possible experience. For Derrida, “[h]orizon is the always-already-there of a future which keeps the indetermination of its infinite openness intact (even though this future was announced to consciousness)[(117)]. For Derrida, the origin and end (or, telos) is always beyond the edge of the horizon, constantly deferred. Let me try to emphasize the importance here: we, as living persons, are always the subject-pole of our total experience. Our past is on the horizon behind us, and our future is on the horizon before us. This not only applies to us as persons, but also to traditions (like geometry). The origin (in a special, semi-historical, phenomenological sense) of geometry is obscured, and so is its ultimate realization and completion, but we are certain there is a tradition known as Geometry, and it has a past, and as long as we are around, it will have a future.
Responsibility - is the purpose of commencing a reactivation in the first place. We are custodians of the entirety of the scientific project. For a scientist, or person of letters, or even a geometer: to merely seek Truth in your field is not enough. You must also bring the truth home, but never by disparaging the experiential unassailability of the lifeworld itself. This is to say that we must not gain truth at the expense of our actual involvement and presence in the world itself. We cannot trade in the farm for a seed, as it were.
Diagrams of certain convoluted relationships between concepts:
(Please forgive me if the diagram of the sign is overly ambitious; my hope was that, by using Scholastic semiology and Metaphysics, and joining it with Saussurean semiotics, I might be able to help the reader navigate the briar patch of Derrida’s analysis.) {Also, my Scholastic semiology is from Sister Miriam Joseph’s The Trivium.}
And then, other suggestions:
http://digitool.fcla.edu/R/PY5JYI7S46...
http://sweb.uky.edu/~rsand1/phi516/
The Review of Metaphysics
"Edmund Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry': An Introduction by J. Derrida; John P. Leavey"
Review by: J. Barnouw
as a segue to Derrida's overall project:
Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy
"FINDING A SYSTEMATIC BASE FOR DERRIDA'S WORK"
GALETTI, DINO
Autumn2010, Vol. 15 Issue 2, p275-300. 26p.
Derrida and Husserl:
Page 88
"5: The Root, That Is Necessarily One, of Every Dilemma: An Investigation of the Introduction to Husserl’s “The Origin of Geometry”"
May 17, 2011
It would probably be more helpful to read Husserl´s brief text and then go back and read Derrida's introduction. The introduction is close to seven times the length of Husserl´s Origin, which is a relatively brief fragment. The quality of Derrida's writing here tends toward academically safe, in comparison to his later writing, but I think this was his first publication. It introduces the central concerns which animated the his thought across the remainder of his career. Problems of structure and history, the contradictory treatment of which in Husserl's idealism, leads to the possbility of Derrida's reading. It is probably not deconstruction ´as such´ yet, but all the essential concerns are already there in this first essay of Derrida's.
September 8, 2015
Only took me two years to read
December 13, 2016
Derrida: how many layers of transcendental phenomenology are you on?
Husserl: like 5 or 6 right now, my dude.
Derrida: you are like a little baby. watch this.
Ｄ ｉ ｆ ｆ é ｒ ａ ｎ ｃ ｅ
Husserl: like 5 or 6 right now, my dude.
Derrida: you are like a little baby. watch this.
Ｄ ｉ ｆ ｆ é ｒ ａ ｎ ｃ ｅ
September 12, 2007
Eureka! If Dr. H pictures taking a bath with his clothing on completely nude, then ...
June 29, 2022
Definitely not an "introduction" of any kind, this long essay uses the "Origin" as the opportunity to meditate on Husserl's take on history and historicism. It runs the whole vast gamut of Husserl's work and very much presumes that you have too, gentle reader. Only for big fans of the little man Jack.
I came to this book a couple years ago when I had completed Husserl's "Crisis of European Sciences" which included the "Origin" essay. I had fallen in love with "Crisis" and the heartfelt plea against general logico-positivo-empirico-mathiness, and the prophetic sense that all that math-worship was going to end up costing us actual understanding and maybe our souls too. "We don't need no education" and all that. I was down for anything that could keep the romance going, so when I ran across this little short book, and having felt like I was in the zone w/ my man Edmund, I hit "buy now."
Also, full disclosure, I thought it would be a great chance to try to heal the trauma of that undergraduate ass-kicking J.D. had given me. Like a lot of American smart-punks in the 90's, I'd had Derrida dropped on me like a box of rocks with none of the background to really get what was happening, but feeling pretty sure that something important was going on in the midst of the verbal punishment. I think in retrospect that feeling had more to do with the shoulders of the giants our wee scrivener was standing on (E.H. for one), but that's for another day.
So I read this book, and the thing is, I really felt like J.D. was just in here to score some points on the old master. (This was written when J.D. was not only short but young.) Not once did J.D. extend or even engage with the attack on scientism which was the point of E.H.'s exercise in imagining "the first geometer" to begin with. Instead he ran the table on a bunch of Husserl-related jargon and the usual verbal whirlwind before getting down to arguing that Husserl's imagining of a first geometer proves EH didn't understand historicity as good as JD understands it. I mean, from what little I could could glean, because he is just not going to give an inch to anyone who hasn't read everything Husserl's ever written, which I think is just a shitty way to be, frankly.
For me, it was just a downer, and didn't add, illuminate or extend E.H.'s good work. Sure, in France at the time this so-called Introduction was written, Husserl was the big man, and why not take shots. And in America being a Husserl fan in 2022 is like it's 1979 and you're trying to explain the Sex Pistols to your mom. So different contexts. But still.
In a way, I think it was actually a nice corrective to the sense the training of my youth had given me that JD was like the final boss in the Super Philosophy Brothers. Now I started feeling like dude is genuinely possibly kind of sus', even if he does breathe fire.
Last thing: Somewhere in there JD takes his hat off to James Joyce's version of "historicism" as kind of a knock on E.H., and I think that says a lot. Like, fuck Finnegan's Wake for real at this point. Call me crazy, but in 2022 I feel like the Crisis of European Sciences needs to be translated into some kind of old school Marxist pamphlet form, printed on the pulped and recycled remains of every copy of Ulysses in existence, and just mailed straight to every citizen in the G8 countries, so MFers will wake up and maybe we don't all have to die in a fiery conflagration.
Maybe throw Derrida's "Introduction" in the chipper while you're at it.
I came to this book a couple years ago when I had completed Husserl's "Crisis of European Sciences" which included the "Origin" essay. I had fallen in love with "Crisis" and the heartfelt plea against general logico-positivo-empirico-mathiness, and the prophetic sense that all that math-worship was going to end up costing us actual understanding and maybe our souls too. "We don't need no education" and all that. I was down for anything that could keep the romance going, so when I ran across this little short book, and having felt like I was in the zone w/ my man Edmund, I hit "buy now."
Also, full disclosure, I thought it would be a great chance to try to heal the trauma of that undergraduate ass-kicking J.D. had given me. Like a lot of American smart-punks in the 90's, I'd had Derrida dropped on me like a box of rocks with none of the background to really get what was happening, but feeling pretty sure that something important was going on in the midst of the verbal punishment. I think in retrospect that feeling had more to do with the shoulders of the giants our wee scrivener was standing on (E.H. for one), but that's for another day.
So I read this book, and the thing is, I really felt like J.D. was just in here to score some points on the old master. (This was written when J.D. was not only short but young.) Not once did J.D. extend or even engage with the attack on scientism which was the point of E.H.'s exercise in imagining "the first geometer" to begin with. Instead he ran the table on a bunch of Husserl-related jargon and the usual verbal whirlwind before getting down to arguing that Husserl's imagining of a first geometer proves EH didn't understand historicity as good as JD understands it. I mean, from what little I could could glean, because he is just not going to give an inch to anyone who hasn't read everything Husserl's ever written, which I think is just a shitty way to be, frankly.
For me, it was just a downer, and didn't add, illuminate or extend E.H.'s good work. Sure, in France at the time this so-called Introduction was written, Husserl was the big man, and why not take shots. And in America being a Husserl fan in 2022 is like it's 1979 and you're trying to explain the Sex Pistols to your mom. So different contexts. But still.
In a way, I think it was actually a nice corrective to the sense the training of my youth had given me that JD was like the final boss in the Super Philosophy Brothers. Now I started feeling like dude is genuinely possibly kind of sus', even if he does breathe fire.
Last thing: Somewhere in there JD takes his hat off to James Joyce's version of "historicism" as kind of a knock on E.H., and I think that says a lot. Like, fuck Finnegan's Wake for real at this point. Call me crazy, but in 2022 I feel like the Crisis of European Sciences needs to be translated into some kind of old school Marxist pamphlet form, printed on the pulped and recycled remains of every copy of Ulysses in existence, and just mailed straight to every citizen in the G8 countries, so MFers will wake up and maybe we don't all have to die in a fiery conflagration.
Maybe throw Derrida's "Introduction" in the chipper while you're at it.
July 25, 2007
pengantar yang dibuat derrida ini lebih tebal dari bukunya husserl yang harus dihantarkannya.
mumet membacanya, nggak ngira kalau ada cara lain memandang geometri. alberto perez-gomez masih setia pada huserl, tapi derrida... masuk dari pintu lain.
saya belum paham benar buku ini, tapi penulisnya sudah kepalang pergi...
mumet membacanya, nggak ngira kalau ada cara lain memandang geometri. alberto perez-gomez masih setia pada huserl, tapi derrida... masuk dari pintu lain.
saya belum paham benar buku ini, tapi penulisnya sudah kepalang pergi...
July 15, 2007
also read the spring before this
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February 16, 2018what can I say? the entirety of Derrida is based upon this translation/Mistranslation/possible translation of Husserl. the Husserl text is interestingly visible/invisible after reading Derrida's intro... and all in English translation
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February 24, 2018Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry": An Introduction (1962) is Jacques Derrida's earliest published work. In this commentary-interpretation of the famous appendix to Husserl's The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Derrida relates writing to such key concepts as differing, consciousness, presence, and historicity. Starting from Husserl's method of historical investigation, Derrida gradually unravels a deconstructive critique of phenomenology itself, which forms the foundation for his later criticism of Western metaphysics as a metaphysics of presence. The complete text of Husserl's Origin of Geometry is included.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews