Beilage XLV. The Child. The First Empathy. (July 1935)

The first act - what is its "foundation?"

The I already has the "world-horizon" - the primally original horizon, in which the human world-horizon is implicitly born, as the temporalization of the temporalization-horizon is already implicit in the primal beginning, as temporalization, in which constantly new temporalization implicitly lies, and so all in all the earlier is implicitly in its place.

The primal horizon, heredity is in its primal sense an empty horizon. The first hyle, the first affection comes to a first grasping, it is in the first givenness a first thema as a first fulfilling.

The I before this awakening, the pre-I, the not yet living, in its way already has a world, in the pre-way, its inactual world "in" which it is nonliving, for which it is not awake. It is affected, it receives the hyle as a first fullness, the first part in the world to awaken, the living I-subject, what is already with-one-another in living connection and what with it goes over thereby into a first birthly connection: it has parents, and these are in one total community of the living I in the historical all-temporality, to which it belongs.

The primal child - in what way is it I, directed in polar fashion to the first data, in which its "instinctive" habituality persists? In the body of its mother, the child already has kinaestheses and its "things" as kinaesthetically moving - already a primordiality builds itself up in the primal level.

The infant, the newborn. How is it constituted as the I of its data as it is affected by these, and how is it constituted for itself in its I-acts. It is already an experiencing I of a higher stage; it already has experiential acquisitions from its existence in its mother's body, it already has its perceptions with its perceptual horizons. Moreover, new data, emphatic elements in the sense-fields, new acts, new acquisitions from the underground, which is already pre-acquired, is already the I of higher habitualities, but without reflection on itself, without a built-up temporality, without available recollections, streaming present with retentions and protentions. Construction of primordial "things," construction of the primordial body, of every single special organ, moving kinaesthetically. The mother as primordial corporeal [koerperliche] unity? But we are going too fast. Later construction of an entire perceptual field in the moving identification of recognition, but without built-up memorial repetition. The mother as visual and tactual unity - change of "sensuous images" related to certain chief viewpoints -, but not mere kinaesthetically motivated unity. The child desires the mother in the normal "case" in which the original needs of the child are fulfilled; it proceeds involuntarily, frequently "effecting" that. Much later the child first has space with spatial bodies and the mother as a body in the spatial field. The first mother as something identical, something recognized and as "premises" for the fulfillment of desires; when she comes and is present, then empathy enters. But empathy does not yet exist. The instinctive in relationship to its own body, its own already constituted organs, the lips in speech, the eyes in eye-movements, etc. to the lip-movements and the speaking of the mother etc. The foreign living body as living body and empathy.

The first empathy - difficulties, which must be understood in their occurrence, afterwards the body as organ and the sense organ-functions are already constituted for outer things. The maternal living body, the maternal hand, its going and self-distancing from me in actively moving in space, etc. The first having of one's own body, the external space of things as resting and moving, under the kinaestheses of the living body, under the functioning of its organs. The I is hidden insofar as it is not thematized as I. But it is the center of affections and actions, of identification, of capacities. Repetition in Others, synthesis - the same mundanity. The same Leibkoerper of the Other in its and my primordiality. The I-Thou connection. Binding acts together, the synthesis of the I-center. Speech, the names of common things. Signs are produced whereby it recognizes Others, whereby it is understood from them as the communication of its own acts, its own willing directed to it [?]. Previous induction, one remembers differently in certain circumstances, then voluntary establishment of such memory-marks; in particular, originally involuntary noises as inductive awakenings, references to processes, to their significance for the subject, to whom they appear, etc.

Commerce - connection through communication which has as its presupposition names for common things - without empathy.

Names for human beings. The child learns from the mother to understand spoken noises as references, as signs which are linked to what is designated.

Let us note: the child externalizes involuntary noises in involuntary kinaestheses, it repeats them, produces the same voluntarily, learns to repeat all its noises willfully and to produce them voluntarily (generally used in generality). Enabling kinaestheses belong to its noises. But the mother on her side externalizes similar noises, at first imitations of the childish. The child hears them, has them, but without its accompanying kinaestheses, which are associatively awakened... instead of these it has null-kinaestheses, ... well - what role can that play.

Names at first have their presupposition in the objective world. The child learns to understand the names of its mother and father etc. ...

The child first learns "mother," "papa" etc. as names. The mother does not say to the child, "I am coming," "I am bringing it," but "Moma is coming," "Moma is bringing it." How does the child come to say "I" - how does it learn to address the "thou," the "he," the "we," the "they" - how does it understand the personal pronouns...? In addition, all words that have a personal orientation - "here" and "now," "near" and "far," "right" and "left" etc. ...the "present," "past," and "future" - all subjectively relative words as such, in all of their relationships of gradation, which belong to subjectivity, thus ultimately to the historical surrounding world, the surrounding world as present and as ours, the surrounding world as past etc., the surrounding world of human beings, etc.

Then we must accomplish the phenomenology of the subjective - of the objective (relatively objective) in its subjective manners of appearances, in the modi of what presents itself for the subject and of correspondingly other presentations for Others (wherein all spatio-temporal orientation belongs).

I in my streaming life, in streaming world-consciousness, in my proceeding activity, in my praxis, which for the mature is world-praxis - praxis in the valid world that always stands in it but in changing modes of givenness. My life, validity life, validities with meaning - reactivation, acts with act-horizons, etc. In my life the worldly, in my life other human beings and me as human belonging to the world. Everything real <is> in what is valid for me in my life in current modi in the validity-horizon of the world, which is for me a horizon in the present. My acts, my total activity is related to entities, but it lapses in intending and effecting purely in subjective connection.

The ontic as unity of ontic-subjective modi of subjective modes of givenness with the core of experiencing, of connections of possible experience, of active directions, aimings and goal-modalities, aiming at experience, self-givenness, fulfillment, harmony. The Others already human, already objective. But subjects of their lives, their activity, their validities and goals, their objects as such through the streaming modes of appearance - the same, the others who have validities in the modes of appearance, have as goals, and which I myself have.

I act, I think, I in my activity - my activity in connection with Others. Basic connection of experience in which the same object is experienced as in my and foreign modes of appearance, my and foreign validities of being, what stands thereby in connection with one another (I in the Others, the Others in me accomplished as a co-validity); connection in othering acts, practical unification, practical strife, practical construction with respect to one another, practical penetration, producing a new altered object which is however an object for all. Meaning-character for me, meaning-character for additional ones, for all, but with subject-relatedness. Inside the community.

The thing-world, the human being (and animal), intersubjectivity as correlate of objectivity - of the objectification of humans. Humans as objects for everyone. Humans in modes of appearances - each has its present with respect to the Others. Each human object in the manner that its modes of appearances of humans also objectively belong to it, like those of things. In being-in-one-another an infinity, horizonality. I have the Other in my modes of appearance, his living body appears to me as objective body in the horizon of the primordial modes of appearance, as substrate for empathy, in which the same objective body of the Other appears in its special modes of givenness as living body and as organ. Further: the Other has a surrounding world in its modes of appearance; I am present in its field, and appear to him with my modes of consciousness; what I say to him is enclosed in his consciousness; that goes precisely so far - an infinite reciprocal "reflection," which is of course only an intentional implication, an iteration, the one potentiality of the stages of empathy.