Heidegger, fenomenologia, hermenêutica, existênciaSedimentation is a term found in Husserl ’s later work, e g. Phenomenological Psychology, Formal and Transcendental Logic (Appendix Two § 50), in Crisis (§ 9 h, p 52, VI 52); The Origin of Geometry (Crisis, p 361; VI 371), and Experience and Judgment § 67. It appears also in his Lectures on Passive Synthesis. The term is not found in his earlier work, e.g the Logical Investigations or indeed in his Cartesian Meditations Husserl uses both the noun (‘sedimentation’) and the verb (‘to sediment’) primarily to express how new experiences settle down and become habitual convictions [289] that inform a person’s cognitive outlook. Thus in Experience and Judgment Husserl explains sedimentation as: ‘the continuous transformation of what has been originally acquired and has become a habitual possession and thus something non-original’ (EU § 67, p. 275). In this context, sedimentation expresses how experiences become embodied in one’s actions, become habitual, and forms one’s character and individual style. What is sedimented belongs in the background of one’s beliefs. Husserl speaks of it as belonging to the ‘underground’ of the ego (Hua IX 481). It is what is ‘suppressed’. Sedimentation complements spontaneity and the activity of the ego. When something new is learned there is a kind of Eureka moment or ‘aha experience’ but with familiarity, this new insight becomes bedded down and eventually it simply forms part of one’s background beliefs. It may even be forgotten entirely yet continue to operate, e.g. driving a particular route to work becomes routine so that one does not have to think about it. Neither can one necessarily remember the first time one took the route. Sedimentation has a number of stages. There is the primary activation of a judgement and then its retention or even abandonment. In the Crisis, Husserl says that the implications of a particular theory may perhaps not be seen because they have become obscured through ‘sedimentation or traditionalization’ (Crisis § 9h, p. 52; VI 52). There is a cumulative tradition involving what Husserl calls sedimentation (Sedimentierung, Crisis 362; VI 372) whereby certain earlier experiences become passively enfolded in our ongoing experience, just as language retains earlier meanings in its etymologies. As Husserl puts it in the ‘Origin of Geometry’, ‘cultural structures, appear on the scene in the form of tradition; they claim, so to speak, to be sedimentations (Sedimentierungen) of a truth meaning that can be made originally self-evident’ (Crisis, p, 367, VI 377). Knowing how to speak a language is a case of the reactivation of sedimented knowledge. Husserl also speaks of sedimented judgements being ‘re-activated’ when they are consciously endorsed and deliberately embraced. New judgements can be formed on the basis of earlier judgements which give particular shape and direction to experience (FTL, p. 325). Sedimentation complements spontaneity. However, it is not completely passive but has its own peculiar form of activity. Sedimentation is part of what Husserl calls passive synthesis. In The Origin of Geometry (Crisis, p, 361; VI 371) Husserl speaks of an awakening to sense which is experienced passively. Writing down geometrical insights in words brings about their ‘sedimentation’. Husserl [290] speaks of sedimentation in this context as a kind of secondary passivity. Thus he writes in Experience and Judgment
It then sinks ever further into the background and at the same time becomes ever more indistinct; the degree of its prominence gradually lessens until it finally disappears from the field of immediate consciousness, is ‘forgotten.’ It is henceforth incorporated into the passive background, into the ‘unconscious,’ which is not a dead nothingness but a limiting mode of consciousness and accordingly can affect us anew like another passivity in the form of whims, free-floating ideas, and so on. In this modification, however, the judgment is not an original but a secondary passivity, which essentially refers to its origin in an actual spontaneous production. (EU § 67b, p. 279)
Husserl even speaks of this process as governed by the ‘law of sedimentation’ (EU § 68, p. 282). Sedimentation is brought about by association of like with like so that experience is organized in types. Someone who, knows how to play guitar has sedimented or an intuitive knowledge of the) appropriate finger movements and pressures to be applied. Sedimentation characterizes the manner in which a learned skill is possessed without being actively present in consciousness. Husserl speaks of ‘originally sedimented judgments’. For any act of judging to take place, certain other judgements must already be present in consciousness (EU 23, 46, 48). Sedimentations belong to the realm of doxa. They provide the context and material for further judgements and hence are critically important for knowledge. Sedimentations belong to the very experience of being in the world (p. 48). Sedimentations are revealed by a kind of ‘regressive inquiry’ or ‘questioning back’ Husserl writes:
We then understand ourselves, not as subjectivity which finds itself in a world ready-made as in simple psychological reflection but as a subjectivity bearing within itself, and achieving, all of the possible operations to which this world owes its becoming, In other words, we understand ourselves in this revelation of intentional implications, in the interrogation of the [291] origin of the sedimentation of sense from intentional operations, as transcendental. (EU § 12, p. 49)
