2.1. In What Sense Might We Speak of a Metaphor of Sedimentation?

From the outset, we need to ask how a metaphor such as sedimentation can become a concept, phenomenologically rather than cognitively or neuronally.

In this article, sedimentation will not be regarded as a construction of the mind that has been elaborated upon to test various hypotheses, as is typical in analytic philosophy, for example, with John Searle’s Chinese room (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 248–266). Nor will it be construed of as a “de-constructionist” metaphor, at least in the sense of Jacques Derrida himself, for whom “de-construction” rhymes with “de-sedimentation” (Derrida, Reference Derrida1997, p. 10). I will, rather, take up sedimentation as follows:

1. 1) as an embodied metaphor, that is, not just transferring meaning (metonymy), but epitomizing meaning in an embodied subject — one who is not necessarily conscious and introspective, as is commonly assessed (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 12, 36, 103).

2. 2) as an “apt” metaphor inasmuch it plays a significant role in structuring a discourse (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 72, 227, 530) — this discourse being the phenomenological experience of time, history, language, art, and psychology.

3. 3) as a “real” metaphor, that is, which appears functional to “arrive at workable understandings of the situation we are in” (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, p. 109) — regarding knowledge and faculties such as remembrance, and anticipation.

4. 4) as a “complex” and not primary metaphor, because it is inherently structured in a sophisticated manner — and not simply in the sense that it combines sub-metaphors together, such as the stream of time (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 149, 158).

5. 5) and, lastly, as a “deep” and “generative metaphor,” in the sense that it surely generates “new perceptions, explanations, and inventions” that deepen an analysis (Schön, Reference Schön and Ortony1979), but nonetheless begets enduring problems for the description.

Thus, from the outset, it is important to distinguish this generative sense of the metaphor of sedimentation from the genetic phenomenological account of the concept of sedimentation, which is described as follows:

2.2. The Phenomenological and Hermeneutical Significance of Sedimentation

Also from the outset, I want to highlight the diverse uses of sedimentation in phenomenology as follows:

1. 1) “Sedimentation” (Sedimentierung, Niederschlag) belongs to Husserl’s gamut of geographical metaphors, along with the earth (Husserl, Reference Husserl and Farber1940), as well as astronomical ones, such as the comet (Husserl, Reference Husserl1966a, pp. 30, 35, 295, 355, 377; Reference Husserl1991, pp. 32, 37, 306, 366, 389), whose conceptualization appears consequential for phenomenology.

2. 2) As Husserl argues: “Phenomenology will remain incomplete for as long as it remains ahistorical” (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1022). Thus, after Husserl, the metaphor of sedimentation is historically traceable in the works of eminent phenomenologists, such as Alfred Schutz (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025c) in Austria and Nitta Yoshihiro in Japan (Nitta, Reference Nitta1998, pp. 25, 227). In France, Merleau-Ponty inherits sédimentation as a crucial and lifelong conceptual workshop (Johnson et al., 2020, p. 168). Furthermore, an increasing number of studies have ferreted out the relevance of the motif of sedimentation in the thought of contemporary French phenomenologists, such as Derrida (Igrek, Reference Igrek2010; Jonkus, Reference Jonkus2023) and Paul Ricoeur (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2024; Kenzo, Reference Kenzo2009).

3. 3) By no means am I contending that all tenets of the phenomenological school address sedimentation as a weighty concept. Importantly enough, Heidegger does not use the Latin-based substantive Sedimentierung, and constantly criticizes the ontical promotion of the process of “precipitation,” using a German-based verbalized substantive (Niederschlagen). In line with his dispute with Ernst Cassirer in Davos, Heidegger castigates the schematical precipitation of symbolical forms in the contemporary philosophy of culture (Heidegger, Reference Heidegger1995, p. 75; Reference Heidegger2004, p. 113). What is more, he later holds that the topological “end” of philosophy is incomparable with the mere institutional “consequence of a precipitation of research results” (Heidegger, Reference Heidegger1971, p. 42; Reference Heidegger1985, p. 130). Yet it is meaningful for our argument here that he nonetheless assigns an ontical weight to the precipitate (Niederschlages), which participates in the inexorable reclusion of thought within the realm of beings (Heidegger, Reference Heidegger1959, p. 77; Reference Heidegger1983, p. 82).Footnote ²

The conclusion that can be drawn from this brief survey is that sedimentation already represents a widely discussed conception within phenomenology, which testifies to the contrasting and conflicting uses of it made by the major thinkers in the field.

In addition, the discussion has not been limited to phenomenology. Sedimentation itself has been treated as an interpretable concept (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019), and weighs significantly upon hermeneutics itself. Yet Hans-Georg Gadamer’s paradigm strikes me as an ambiguous one. On the one hand, in Truth and Method, he transposes sedimentation on the promising grounds of language, referring to “the conventions of meaning that have become sedimented (niedergeschlagen) in language” (Gadamer, Reference Gadamer1990, p. 405; Reference Gadamer2006, p. 402). In his afterword, he even imparts the concept with a keen hermeneutical dimension, by alluding to “the interpretation of the world sedimented in language (sprachlich sedimentierten Weltauslegung)” (Gadamer, Reference Gadamer1993, p. 460; Reference Gadamer2006, p. 565). And yet, on the other hand, he does not elaborate on sedimentation explicitly as a fully hermeneutical concept, with the result that the topic of Gadamerian sedimentation still requires a fuller treatment (see Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025c). Be that as it may, it still remains accurate to say that even if Heidegger and Gadamer ignored sedimentation nominally, they ruminated on the phenomenon per se, under the auspices of historicity and prejudice (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2024, pp. 33–34).

In the wake of hermeneutics, sedimentation might also tally well with philosophical exegesis. One might investigate the works of Emmanuel Levinas, for example, for whom exegesis must reveal the very “letters” or written “traces” of God in sacred writings (Calin, Reference Calin2005, p. 344). Yet this takes place apart from the question of meaning, which remains central to an orthodox phenomenological reading of the notion. Everything happens as if the generative metaphor of sedimentation were capable of contaminating other domains, far beyond its phenomenological birthplace.

2.3. The Epistemic Price of Sedimentation: The Issue of Critique

There is thus a weight of sedimentation we encounter in the literature since it appears significant for phenomenology and hermeneutics. Nevertheless, commentators bemoan a “paradoxical duality of sedimentation” (Bloomberg, Reference Blomberg2019, p. 87; see also Dastur, Reference Dastur2001, p. 180). I will emphasize that such a paradox confers an “epistemic weight” on sedimentation, especially in relation to the critical attitude in phenomenology. This weight lies in the fact that if, on the one hand, sedimentation nurtures critique, then, on the other hand, it heavily shoulders responsibility for a non-critical stance.

On the one hand, as Husserl argues in Experience and Judgment, if what is sedimented loses its seal of originality, it remains empowered with the possibility of grounding the formation of types and habits (Husserl, Reference Husserl1939, p. 385; Reference Husserl1973b, p. 321), hence, to yield a stable basis for a “critical position-taking” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1939, p. 331; Reference Husserl1973b, p. 275). Consequently, sedimentation nurtures critique, including the phenomenologically critical stance itself. This argument will be reworked by further phenomenologists, for example, at the level of “critical forms of language” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1973a, p. 110; Reference Merleau-Ponty2004, p. 122). In a fragment linked to his philosophical testament, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (the Krisis), Husserl adds that, in return, the mission of a genuine “critique” in philosophy is to redirect us to “traditionally sedimented reserves (Bestände)” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, p. 402). Interestingly enough, the critical attitude thus dialectically yields to traditionally sedimented reserves to the extent it is able to address the sedimentation of tradition itself.

Now, on the other hand, if it is true that the mission of critique is to unveil traditional sedimentations, and not just to sit passively and rely on them, it is equally because they might work to hinder the critical gesture. In a fragment of his posthumous manuscripts gathered under the title The Life-World (Die Lebenswelt), Husserl speaks of a “fight against tradition,” against both the tradition of “life-experience” and “the sedimented acquisitions […] evident by themselves” (Husserl, Reference Husserl2008, p. 542; see also Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1031). In brief, sedimented forms of vitalism lurk in the life-world and might run counter to the promotion of genuine phenomenological life. In other words, “self-evident” sedimentary truth (Selbstverständlichkeiten) might become inherently uncritical. As a result, a “sedimented state” might be “taken for granted” (Sokolowski, Reference Sokolowski2000, p. 166), and that sedimentation might induce a spontaneous accumulation of habits, namely, “ways that become so deeply entrenched that they seem ‘natural’” (Whiteside, Reference Whiteside1988, p. 68).

The upshot of this analysis of the paradox of critique is that the epistemic weight of sedimentation is critically intensified by what might be labelled the “cost” of sedimentation. Namely, as Husserl himself observes in a fragment contemporary to the Krisis, there is a high price to pay for sedimentation. It amounts to a phenomenon of “darkening” and “forgetting” of the “original giving of meaning (Sinngebung)” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, p. 345; see also Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1960, p. 218; Reference Merleau-Ponty1964, p. 173), which might blur the pristine quality of our evidence.

Such a forgetfulness (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1024) casts light on the differentiation between sedimentation and memory: The sediment, such as an axiomatic proposition or a tradition (Husserl Reference Husserl1993, p. 345; Reference Husserl2008, p. 13), happens to be individually or collectively immemorial, although it can be reactivated, as we shall see. Conversely, an alternative approach inspired by the thought of Michel Henry, which apparently sidesteps sedimentation, foregrounds the body as embodied memory and a “memorial” to habituality (Kühn, Reference Kühn2009, pp. 228–230).

Recent scholarship has shown that sedimentation thus represents a pharmakon (φάρμακον), i.e., that which is both a remedy and a poison for scientific knowledge (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1032). Again, what is sedimented appears as self-evident: On the one hand, it is for the better, given that we can freely rely on it in our quest for true knowledge; but, on the other hand, it is for the worst, because it might impede such a quest and enslave us in its falsity.Footnote ³

Furthermore, in The Origin of Geometry, Husserl alludes to sedimentation as taking part within a process that endangers our legitimate promotion of truth over falsity:

In this restricted sense, one may speak of a “de-constructionist” trend in Husserl. He does not claim that sedimentation represents a danger in itself; the danger, rather, “follows from the process” (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019, p. 85) of associative constructivism. He contends that sedimentation contributes to fixing spiritual formations, so as to somehow to “democratize” them, inasmuch as they need to be made further accessible to others. Sedimentation thereby smooths over their free and undue associations, to the extent that this might even endanger the promotion of truth over falsity.

Indisputably, Husserl’s account of the danger remains indirect. Merleau-Ponty, lecturing on Husserl, would more acutely perceive the “threat” that results from the very making of sedimentation. In his summary of the lectures, he writes:

I shall leave aside such references to the making (faire) of sedimentation (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty2022a, p. 470; Reference Merleau-Ponty2022b, p. 753). In the lectures themselves, and no longer in their summary, he devotes a full section to this epistemic problematic of “truth” and sedimentation, and frankly stresses the danger: “Sedimentation (‘secondary passivity’) is a danger (the seduction of language)” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1998, p. 79; Reference Merleau-Ponty2002, p. 65). According to the context, this perplexing statement means that sedimentation is dangerous for truth, insofar as it stirs up the temptation of a total (and impossible) reactivation of what is sedimented in language, and vainly promotes secondary passivity at the rank of total activity.Footnote ⁴

To sum up, the phenomenologist doubly groans under the epistemic weight of sedimentation, given that this last notion transpires as overwhelmingly substantial for phenomenological research, but nonetheless expensively burdens the quest for truth.

2.4. The Dynamical and Ontological “Weight” of Sedimentation

Surveying the epistemic weight of sedimentation already presupposes delving deep into what shall now be christened as the “dynamical weight” of sedimentation.

It is insufficient merely to remind that its concept is both substantial and costly for knowledge. The real problem comes down to asking why it “is” so. In other words, a sediment figures as an element that weighs upon knowledge if and only if it “exists” as such in time and space; that is, if it is somewhat loaded with a sort of “being” that grants it its own dynamical weight. We find here a motive to justify why sedimentation, in contrast to other metaphors that do not denote the idea of weight (space, place, memorial, or neuronal traces), ignites an ontological approach.

I will begin by probing the following hypothesis: Any form of sedimentation is “weighty” not only since, as already stated, it critically supports phenomenological description, but also because phenomenology faces complexities in justifying such a dynamical weight. One might speak of such a “weight” in the sense that sedimentation requires an attractive force. In this respect, it is important to realize that the metaphor is not strictly spatial as it might appear in a Ricoeurian paradigm (Downes, Reference Downes2016; Reference Downes2020; Vendra & Furia, Reference Vendra and Furia2021). It is rather dynamical, or more specifically gravitational, in a reduced Newtonian sense instead of an Einsteinian one (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 227–230), given the macroscopic scale of the type of physical phenomena being considered. The canonical example of this is the sediments of the Nile that sink under the action of gravity to fertilize the banks of the river (Buffon, Reference Buffon1749, p. 365), the surveying of which constitutes the origin of geometry (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019, p. 82).

My query is: How do we account for such a gravitational force within a phenomenologically reduced context, which is no longer either a “physical,” “physiological,” “neural,” or “computational” one? By “reduction,” Husserl means the phenomenological suspension of all ontological theses of spatiotemporal existence and value, the epochē (εποχή) (Husserl, Reference Husserl1950, pp. 57, 198–199; Reference Husserl1983, pp. 61, 232–233). The query might be restated as follows: in what sense is sedimentation an aptly phenomenological “fiction” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1950, p. 132; see also Reference Husserl1950, p. 160), in contradistinction to a mathematically or physically reduced “fiction” (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, p. 227; see also pp. 159–160)?

I will reflect on this problem in the works of Husserl, for whom sediments can be wedded to a number of different phenomena: meanings, values (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, pp. 197, 345; Reference Husserl2008, p. 543), accomplishment (Leistung) and activity (Husserl, Reference Husserl1989, p. 226; Reference Husserl1993, pp. 346, 529), judgements (Husserl, Reference Husserl1939; Reference Husserl1973b), monads (Husserl, Reference Husserl1973a, p. 609), styles, goals, crafts, religious practices (ritual) and institutions (church) (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, p. 346), as well as traditions and history (Husserl, Reference Husserl1969, pp. 245, 250; Reference Husserl1974, pp. 252, 257; Reference Husserl1993, pp. 13, n. 1, 346). My investigation thus runs as follows: What kind of force deposits them as sediments, i.e., as something that is to be deposited?

Again, we need to get the focus right. This particular issue is distinct from the technical one regarding the plurivocity of sedimentation in Husserl’s works (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019), along with the thematic one regarding its temporal and historical origins, which enable one to distinguish a static, a genetic, and a generative sense of sedimentation (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a).

My query is rather of a dynamic sense, as it asks: What is the driving force that enables such sedimentation to take place?

Let me outline the Husserlian setting of the answer. According to the authoritative Lessons on Time Consciousness, the stream of time does not beget sedimentations in the way a physical stream does — just to relativize (and reduce) the indisputably metaphorical grounding of the notion of stream (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 158–159). As such, it rather carries them along within the inexorable “sinking back (zurücksinken)” of retentional modifications (Husserl, Reference Husserl1966a, pp. 24–26, 62–70; Reference Husserl1991, pp. 25–28, 64–72). Sediments alternatively stem from phenomenological retentions, not because they are kept outside the stream, but because, as Merleau-Ponty comments, it is a given phenomenon that they are being “retained” within it and not being set “aside” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1996b, p. 127).

Accordingly, sedimentation is problematically possible whereby there is a deposit, a pause within the flow, which cannot totally be provided by the retentional phase. Husserl somehow addresses this “problem” by describing the persistence of the temporal place (Zeitstelle) of the temporal object within the stream. He remarks that what is modified is simply the way the place is “given,” namely, as shifting into the “past,” according to a “givenness of the past (Vergangenheitsgegebenheit).” But, typically, he does not pay heed to the possible weight of the very impressional “matter” that fills such a place, and that he mentions in this passage (Husserl, Reference Husserl1966a, p. 68; Reference Husserl1991, p. 70).Footnote ⁵

The problematic might be restated by asking: What is the force that allows sediments to carry their own weight, and why are some entities sedimented more weightily than others? The concepts of “force” and “strength” surely convey a formidable metaphysical content, whether physical or moral (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 83–84, 214–215, 298–301). My point here, however, is to investigate this question within a strictly Husserlian context. An initial hypothesis would thus be whether such a force stems from the intensity of the “primal impression” (Urimpression) or from that of the “original temporal position” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1966a, pp. 67–68; Reference Husserl1991, p. 70). But apart from the complexities that are triggered by such an answer (Franck, Reference Franck2001, pp. 112–123), the argument can hardly be corroborated, since, by definition, we can neither stand witness to its origin nor manage phenomenal access to it.

A second hypothesis would be whether that weighting force of the sediment is being exerted by the steadfastness of its retention. But the intensity of the retentional flux inexorably dwindles, and any impressions are systematically sedimented when they “reach[] the zero point of affection” (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1024). I will thus propose another hypothesis: such a force derives from a potential of re-actualization that permeates the sediment itself. Surely, this will require us to impute a protentional aspect of sedimentation that Husserl does not seem to have considered as such.

At the least, Husserl delineates a phenomenological frame for the conceptual metaphor of sedimentation, rather than a semantic, cognitive, neural, or unconscious one (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 116–117), which incorporates the problem of the dynamical weight of sedimentation. But neither has he nor any other phenomenologist seem to have grappled with it straightforwardly.

Is it because this is not a genuine phenomenological problem? Does the phenomenological epochē dissipate such physical and ontological metaphors? On the contrary, the problem persists afresh within the reductive stance. For the force that endows a sediment of meaning with the potential to be reactivated — provided we grant this deposit the right to be “available (disponible)” (Dastur, Reference Dastur2001, p. 183), that is, to be at our disposal and to be restored (as in the case of a luggage locker) — is definitely not a force in the gravitational sense that is merely put into brackets and ignored.

The core problem becomes: In what sense is it possible to speak, not only of “pulsion,” “intensity,” and “force” (Franck, Reference Franck2001, pp. 112–121), but also of “gravity” and “weight” in a phenomenologically reduced, physical, and psychological context? A sediment is no longer a sediment if it has no weight, but such a phenomenologically altered “weight” can no longer be conceived of as a purely physical weight that will inexorably lead it to disappear.

This is the reason, for Husserl, that sediments were not dragged down by their own physical weight, but were rather put into reserve according to their proper weight, on the horizon of re-actualization. In brief, “to sediment” does not mean “to sink back” into the past under its own weight, but “to be stored in reserve,” albeit for the future. Now such a storage is not simply implemented for the preservation or communication of meaning (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019), but with a view to enable a new creation of meaning, through which means subjectivity transcends itself (Derrida, Reference Derrida and Husserl1962, p. 158; Reference Husserl1989, p. 143). In brief, for a sediment to be deposited implies an alternative form of weight, in order to exert weight upon the future.

2.5. The Living and Revitalizing Mode of Sedimentation

The above considerations presuppose two essential operations that the phenomenological analysis must bring to the fore, namely, revitalization and reactivation.

Sediments qua phenomena are not dead concretions, such as fossils, which, lying inert somewhere (in a closed temporal place), indicate where a fish or a plant had once been physiologically alive. Nor are phenomenological sediments equivalent to dead written documents, which, left open to a plurality of interpretations, need to be de-sedimented (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019, p. 92). By themselves, as sediments, they constitute formations of meaning that are fully charged with spiritual life, insofar as they are vitally charged to do something. Husserl accordingly speaks of a “reservoir of the sedimented” (Husserl, Reference Husserl2014, p. 63; see also Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2022, p. 20), which ultimately merges within the whole world of life itself (Lebenswelt).

In the Krisis, Husserl depicts a sediment as essentially re-actualizable and as somehow living. This means that it is not “dead” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1976a, p. 152; Reference Husserl1981, p. 149), but can be reactivated qua the living (Husserl, Reference Husserl1976a, pp. 152, 488: wiederaufleben [revived or revitalized]; Reference Husserl1989, p. 226: wieder lebendig zu machen [to bring back to life]). No phenomenological resurrection occurs, but, as stated above, a possible modification of the sedimented status occurs, which itself modifies the actual status of the constitutive I or ego (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, p. 197). The sediment is not to be construed of as dead, in opposition to life, just as the sedimented unconscious is not the negation of consciousness, but a limited mode of it (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1025; Reference Geniusas2025b; Husserl, Reference Husserl1969, p. 319; Reference Husserl1974, p. 319). A sedimented “sleeping consciousness” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1969, p. 289; Reference Husserl1974, p. 295), for instance, is not falling totally asleep, but a state wherein the consciousness appears drowsy and can be awakened at any time (Husserl, Reference Husserl2008, pp. 322, 472). Similarly, Merleau-Ponty adds that the forgetting of the origins is “never complete,” but something that “we have to reactivate” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty2020, p. 128). This inflexion on the constitutive ties between sedimentation and consciousness is crucial to sever sedimentation from what is accounted for as purely unconscious metaphorical expressions (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 9–14).

It ought to be obvious, therefore, that a sediment does not belong to the regime of “primal being” (Ursein), nor to that of “original impression” (Urimpression) (Husserl, Reference Husserl1966a, p. 69; Reference Husserl1991, p. 71), nor ultimately to that of the self-constituting flux of time consciousness. The sediment is rather constituted ontically therein as “something that is” (‘Seiendes’) (Husserl, Reference Husserl2002a, p. 172). Nevertheless, its “is-ness” is not constituted as a thing that can die, or be lost, or left to nothing. Categorically speaking, sedimentation rather partakes in the establishment of the realm of “having” (Haben), since a sediment is constituted of something that can be held again (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, p. 345), especially as a living possession (Habe) and habit (see Kühn, Reference Kühn1998, pp. 37, 304), while no longer as a durable possession or state (ἕξις hexis) (Aristotle, 2002, p. 24).

In this respect, this specific metaphor of sedimentation, far more than any of the others, admirably expresses the flowing dynamics of life-consciousness. As a river, the stream deposits sediments along its course, but to the extent that they have weight, they have to matter to and influence the course of the river they are in, and eminently represent the alluvia for “new formations” of meaning (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, p. 345). Consequently, the phenomenological conceptualization of sedimentation refines the scope and content of the metaphor. Phenomenological sediments are surely akin to small traces of sand or gravel that have settled from the waters. But, above all, they act as enlivened alluvial silt, in the ancient Greek sense of ilus (ἰλύς) (Aristotle, 1911, p. 388b), which is open to revitalization.

In a word, the weight of sedimentation is not fatal, as would be the case in the iconic metaphor of “the degenerate city, which crumbles under its own weight (pessum sua mole sidentis)” (Seneca, 1970, p. 38). To borrow a thanatologically authorized metaphorical phrase (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 84, 124–125, 206, 212), such a weight is not a lethal charge that entails life to death, but rather a living resource that enables life to be reinvigorated.

2.6. The Weighting Reactive-Ability of Sedimentation

Let me deal now with the second essential phenomenological operation of consciousness involved in sedimentation, and parallel to revitalization, namely, reactivation.

By itself, sedimentation is a mode of passive synthesis (Kühn, Reference Kühn1998, pp. 37, 411). But just as there is no life aside from consciousness, neither is there revitalization without reactivation (Reaktivierung). When Husserl introduces the metaphor of sedimentation in The Origin of Geometry, he conspicuously underscores its visceral connection with reactivation, an aspect that is sometimes underestimated (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019, pp. 89–91). Husserl states that in the written sign, the meaning-structure, “so to speak sediments itself. But the reader can let it become evident again, reactivate it” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1976a, pp. 371–372; Reference Husserl1981, p. 361).Footnote ⁶ His emendation is crystal-clear: A non-reactivatable sediment would be self-contradictory.

This point is clarified in Experience and Judgment: Sedimentation is possible in the perspective of a reawakening gesture, which is multifaceted (temporal recollection, typical schematization) (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1028). Here Husserl eidetically refers to “the law of sedimentation with its possibility of reactivation” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1939, p. 339; Reference Husserl1973b, p. 282). As Merleau-Ponty comments, sedimentation is essentially reactivatable, and such reactivation is necessary for that process, even if it does not occur necessarily (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1998, pp. 29–30; Reference Merleau-Ponty2002, p. 26; see also Reference Merleau-Ponty2020, p. 132). Yet he adds that a total reactivation is impossible (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1968b, p. 112; Reference Merleau-Ponty2010b, p. 148; see also Dastur, Reference Dastur2001, p. 190). Nonetheless, as Derrida points out, if sedimentation ideally includes the “possibility of meaning,” it still complies with the law of original donation, the principle of the principles (Derrida, Reference Derrida and Husserl1962, p. 100; Reference Derrida1989, p. 99).

By no means am I digressing from the question of the weight of sedimentation. To the contrary, in a Husserlian perspective, this weighting seems to lie within this possibility of reactivation, which is dynamically connected with a potentiality acquired through sedimentation (Husserl, Reference Husserl1973a, p. 610; Kühn, Reference Kühn1998, pp. 304, 435). The weight of sedimentation does not lurk only in the biased inertia of prejudices, for example, in the endlessly unactual profile of ourselves, that enduring sediment which is no longer true of us (think about your internet profile, for instance). It preferably lies in the infinite reactivate-ability of the sediment, which nurtures its very own (re-)institution, for better or worse (think about the threat of Nazism, for instance).

That said, reactivation is not tantamount to a voluntary choice. In that regard, the originality of the phenomenologically metaphorical weighting of sedimentation lies in the fact that it differs from gestural metaphors, such as “Choosing Is Weighting,” and is more generally derived from social and moral metaphors connected with the faculty of will (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 85, 412–426). Still, sedimentation remains intimately tied to the reactivating activity of consciousness.

2.7. The Historical Weight and Lightness of Sedimentation

Or course, Husserl does not put it in these terms, but the argument might be elaborated as follows: The very possibility of being reactivated testifies to the fact that the sediment is not heavy as an apodictic being would be, that is, totally fixed and inexorably compelled to act (in the sense of Aristotle’s energeia (ἐνέργεια). In a way, sedimentation enjoys a subtle “lightness of being” (la légèreté de l’être), that is, the power of a being opened to apodictic possibilities, in the sense of Nicolas Malebranche (Pinchard, Reference Pinchard1998, p. 12). The genuine dynamical weight of sedimentation transpires as the reverse form of a relentless physical gravity or of a temporal sinking back. Phenomenologically, such weightiness does not appear as heaviness, but as a delicate balance struck between heaviness and lightness, indeed, as a subtle form of weighting.

Consequently, gravitation positively remains a physically inspired and phenomenologically reduced philosophical conceptual metaphor, inasmuch as it is rule-bound and enables weighting, balance, and prediction. In that regard, it differs from economically focused metaphors of gravitation, whether heuristic (Freeman, Reference Freeman2006) or rhetorical, as eminently found in the works of Adam Smith. The latter actually uses the notion to express the instability of market exchange relationships between persons subjected to the vagaries of imperfect rhetorical persuasion (Kennedy, Reference Kennedy2015). I shall here leave aside Smith’s alternatively economical and moral metaphor of the invisible hand (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 298, 323).

My analysis confirms the fundamental argument that the stream of time, in itself, cannot generate sedimentation. As Husserl explains in Formal and Transcendental Logic, if sedimentation is originally reactivatable, that is because it originates from the retentional gesture of a “sleeping consciousness,” not from primal impressions (Husserl, Reference Husserl1969, p. 289; Reference Husserl1974, p. 295). Once again, such a retention is co-originally associated with a protention that has implications for reactivation, even though Husserl hardly ponders the vital link between protention and sedimentation.

As a result, time appears pervaded with a kind of temporal thickness and even sedimented in history, and one might even bring the phenomenon of “aging” into the picture. Yet, regarding time, there is neither sedimented “original impression” (Urimpression) — an expression which might be taken as one more instance of self-contradiction — nor sedimented fragment of immanent time. In brief, there is no sedimented time per se. Moreover, regarding history, Husserl merely mentions a “sedimented history (Geschichte),” such as the record of the problem of intentionality initiated by Franz Brentano (Husserl, Reference Husserl1969, pp. 245, 250; Reference Husserl1974, pp. 252, 257), as well as a sedimented collective history (History) (Husserl, Reference Husserl1993, p. 543), an idea that will become a pivotal stake for Merleau-Ponty.

Accordingly, the weight of sedimentation acquires a historical magnitude rather than a temporal one. This is the reason, in the Krisis, that Husserl contends that sediments do not constitute inert “documenta,” as Gérard Granel translates it (Husserl, Reference Husserl1976b, p. 542), such as the improbable archives classified (as lost) forever, but rather that sediments document the present anew. In this perspective, “documented (dokumientierten) [thoughts] and under this form sedimented thoughts” (Husserl, Reference Husserl1976a, p. 488), can thus be animated and reactivated so as to document, testify, justify, and prove (dokumentieren) a present affair, and thereby carry some weight. The problematic of sedimentation appears thus crucial for archival studies, as already alluded to above.

Taken together, Husserl envisioned a fairly sophisticated phenomenological dynamics within which sedimentation takes place. According to the vertical intentional axis of retention (Husserl, Reference Husserl1966a, p. 80; Reference Husserl1991, p. 84), the stream of consciousness constantly pushes impressions into the past. Such a repulsion is prone to be hastily construed of as an attraction exerted upon the impressions that are sinking back into the past, with the effect that their primal source is veiled, according to a mechanism that I dissect elsewhere. However, it would be more accurate to perceive this as a transversal intentional deposit. Geologically speaking, this deposition leads to a horizontal stratification that is actually moving upward (Blomberg, Reference Blomberg2019, p. 85). Phenomenologically reduced, such a deposit remains lodged in the protentional perspective of the vitally horizontal intentional axis, wherein the stream constantly projects itself toward the future and opens up the possibility of reactivation. Hence, it is no coincidence that the problem of sedimentation disappears where there is no horizontal analysis (Kühn, Reference Kühn2009, p. 228).

All in all, the richness of Husserl’s treatment of sedimentation speaks volumes about the enrooted nature of the notion within the phenomenology of knowledge, time, and life. Sedimentation appears crucial for the critical gesture, when temporalized both vertically and horizontally, and is likened to a vitally reactivating process. However, Husserl only provides indirect interpretive clues to address the question of the weight of sedimentation. Because of such a blind spot, everything happens as if sedimentation itself were once again being deposited and sedimented, leaving its full treatment to be searched for elsewhere.

3.1. The Redefinition Stake of Sedimentation: Phenomenological Perplexities

Unlike Husserl,Footnote ⁷ Merleau-Ponty strives to redefine sedimentation, in the sense that he seeks to state what sedimentation is doing (its making), rather than what it is (its essence). As a paradigm of this struggle with the notion, I have narrowed it down to four definitions by Merleau-Ponty in the Prose of the World, in this order:

1. 1) In the temporal perspective of speech: “Sedimentation: the fact of the Stiftung [institution] of a meaning which will be nachvollziehbar [re-apprehend-able]. Expressivity is temporary. But one will be able to return to the present in the past. There is a repetition of another past by my present. Each act of speech repeats all the others, that is why there are no absolute limits between languages. Sedimentation and reactivation” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1973a, p. 38; Reference Merleau-Ponty2004, p. 53; see also Reference Merleau-Ponty1992a, p. 43).

2. 2) In the perspective of algorithmic language, sedimentation realizes: “An integration” of “one creation upon another” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1973a, p. 100; Reference Merleau-Ponty2004, p. 142).

3. 3) In the general perspective of scientific language, sedimentation means: “To contract a series of operations in the evidence of a single formula which no longer needs to be made explicit for us to work with it” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1973a, p. 107; Reference Merleau-Ponty2004, pp. 151–152).

4. 4) In the further general perspective of language, the proper realm of sedimentation lies in “the power of critical forms of language […] to find for the same signification several expressive embodiments, to blend and recapture through one another its successive or simultaneous operations, and thus to combine them in a single configuration and a single truth” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1973a, pp. 110–111; Reference Merleau-Ponty2004, p. 157).

It falls beyond the scope of this article to gloss these four highly tentative definitions, or better yet, characterizations of sedimentation, as well as others in the corpus, published (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1960, p. 120; Reference Merleau-Ponty1964, p. 96; Reference Merleau-Ponty2020, p. 132) or unpublished (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1992b, p. 251). At the very least, they testify to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perplexity regarding the notion. In what follows, I will attempt to pinpoint the motive that makes Merleau-Ponty repeatedly extract his definition of sedimentation.

3.2. The Astonishment Over Stake of Sedimentation: Metaphysical Interferences

This motive lies in the fact that the notion of sedimentation clearly puzzles Merleau-Ponty, as it possesses a critical epistemic weight (both substantial and aporetical).

Furthermore, more frequently than Husserl, Merleau-Ponty wonders about the process of sedimentation. In the Phenomenology of Perception, he contemplates the way an individual person is astonished by the “sediments of a previous constitution: I am, as a sensing subject, full of natural powers of which I am the first to be filled with wonder” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty2009, p. 260; Reference Merleau-Ponty2012, p. 223). More reflexively, the phenomenologist appears simply “astonished” by the sedimentation process, i.e., the fact “that the spontaneous acts through which man has articulated his life themselves become sedimented on the outside and thereby lead an anonymous existence as things” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty2009, p. 405; Reference Merleau-Ponty2012, p. 363).

Does such a sense of wonder lead him to suspect a weight of sedimentation? By no means. In reality, such astonishment (étonnement) only epitomizes the first degree of what Merleau-Ponty conceptualizes later as “metaphysical consciousness.” This consciousness typically rises to the recognition of a praxis that progresses beyond sheer astonishment (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1991, p. 94; Reference Merleau-Ponty1996a, p. 115). This is exactly what happens with the second quoted passage of the Phenomenology of Perception. A few pages later, Merleau-Ponty endeavours to justify why these “spontaneous acts” become anonymous in sedimentation by posing the problem of intersubjectivity. He then resolves it by recognizing the praxis of a community that shares this perspective. There is accordingly “a single world in which we all participate as anonymous subjects of perception” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty2009, pp. 410–411; Reference Merleau-Ponty2012, p. 369). Typically, the recognition of the intersubjective nature of the work tends to dispel the sense of wonder about sedimentation itself. In brief, the awakening of metaphysical consciousness regarding the intersubjective making of sedimentation tends to interfere with one’s wondering about the phenomenological issue of sedimentation itself, and forecloses the possibility of enduringly wondering about its weight.

A crucial predicament is that Merleau-Ponty, by recognizing such a praxis, bends under the yoke of the fact of sedimentation, without questioning it any further. As such, he finds himself weighed down by the very sedimentation he first beheld with wonder. This aporia later transpires in a first marginal note for the Prose of the World, at the end of which he makes a second marginal note which is the above-mentioned first definition of sedimentation. In the first note, he introduces the analysis of sedimentation for language, in a rather aporetic way, simply relying on the authority of three unjustified facts.

It is demonstratively unconvincing that Merleau-Ponty should, first, wonder at the existence of an epistemic “problem” with sedimentation; then, second, recognize it as an inexplicably perceptive fact that is logically grounded in the inherent rationality of the aesthetic world; and third, in the marginal note, redefine sedimentation as “the fact of the Stiftung [institution].” This last intriguing characterization, which becomes the first definition stated above, testifies to his concern to provide a better account of the phenomenon, which echoes the three other definitions that he gives in the Prose of the World. But such a process of definition strikes me as fairly incomplete and provisional, even if it is full of insights. Accordingly, the first definition makes one ponder the vital relationship between sedimentation and institution, and the “fact” of sedimentation, reappropriated as a verbal act in the making (as stiften [to institute]).

But this approach nonetheless merely leaves us at the threshold of the problematic of the dynamical weight of sedimentation. If Merleau-Ponty wonders about sedimentation, it is not to enweigh it, that is, to fathom it in its intrinsic ontological character. It is not to ask, to couch it in a Heideggerian way, how the sediment sediments (das Sediment sedimentiert), how a sort of weight precipitates the substantive into the verb. In the last analysis, it is rather to construe the very making of sedimentation from the metaphysical conceptual perspective of the making (faire).Footnote ⁹ It is not a coincidence if in the four highly tentative definitions of sedimentation, there is nevertheless a salient eidetic feature: Sedimentation invariably appears in the making, as a verbal act, richly expressed in relation to the verbs stiften, nachvollziehen, as well as to integrate, to contract, to find, to blend, to recapture, and to combine.

3.3. The Sinking and Geological Stakes of Sedimentation: Logical Connections

Despite such metaphysical interferences, it is true that Merleau-Ponty somewhat alludes to the weight of sedimentation once in the Prose of the World.

This incisive passage figures in a comprehensive and meaningful footnote. Making his first point, Merleau-Ponty restates his analysis of sedimentation for painting, spurred on by André Malraux’s reflections. In a second point, he extends the compass of the analysis to language. In a third point, he issues a reservation regarding this parallelism freshly drawn between painting and language, by alluding to a kind of weight of sedimentation in art. In abridgment:

I will comment on this passage by glossing the two expressions that I underlined in the quotation above, where the John O’Neill translation is somewhat misleading.

First, Merleau-Ponty begins point 3 by a “réserve à faire,” an expression that does not mean “what remains to be done.” It rather indicates that there is a “reservation to be made” regarding the preceding logical parallelism drawn between painting and language. Actually, the idea that something “remains to be done” is already conveyed by the fact that this “ultimate question,” which corresponds to the “reservation to be made,” is to be “left to logic” (question dernière à renvoyer à la logique).

Such a “logic,” which is by no means a “masquerade,” sounds intriguing. It reminds us that Merleau-Ponty acts not only as a phenomenologist and a metaphysician (Dalissier, Reference Dalissier2017), but somehow as a logician inasmuch as he tackles questions of parallelism, more exactly chiasmic accounts such as: “All of this, then, that is true of painting is also true of language,” and especially: “Language is painting as painting is language.” Retrospectively, one might unearth such an account within Merleau-Ponty’s first definition of sedimentation: “One will be able to return to the present in the past. There is a repetition of another past by my present.” Anticipating what follows, this chiasm should eventually concern a mutual sedimentation between art and language, history, and geography.

I now turn to the second translation issue. The expression “Retombe à mesure qu’elle se fait” can hardly be rendered by “collapses to the extent that it is achieved.” For, in this case, if sedimentation could be achieved but were to collapse, there would be no such thing as sedimentation of art at all. This thesis overtly contradicts Merleau-Ponty’s explicit claim in point 1 above, namely, that metamorphosis in art relies upon sedimented reserves (“It is possible only because the datum was painted”). Thus, one must render this statement literally: “The sedimentation of art drops back inasmuch as it is making itself.” Yet is not sediment incapable of totally sinking back into the past, according to Husserl himself?

Merleau-Ponty intimates that, despite the parallelism alluded to between painting and language, a logical shift exists between artistic and linguistic sedimentation. Artistic sediments surely do not, as deposits, totally sink into the past; nonetheless neither do they linger in the same manner as linguistic sediments. I would surmise that he assumes that the sediments of art are mute, dated data; yet they drop back into the past, not indeed as if disappearing into it, but as something loaded onto it, insofar as they belong to a certain epoch of artistic creation (Classicism, Romanticism). In contrast, the linguistic sediments of language are lighter, less regressive, to wit, less charged with such an epochal character, thus further intemporal in nature, further reactivatable as such, and in this sense remain unachieved. Thereby, there is a linguistic unity between us, René Descartes, and Stendhal, even though the historical idioms change.

It is noteworthy that the very question of the weight of sedimentation logically smooths out the delineation between sediments within art and language. All the same, it remains difficult to generalize this local argument to assert that Merleau-Ponty perceived the problem of the dynamical weight of sedimentation per se. This reluctance on my part notwithstanding, there might be one further clue to fuel this hypothesis. It is by no means a coincidence that he returns to sedimentation at the end of an insightful working note that deals with transcendental geology, in June 1960. I briefly focus here on the cataphatic part of this note, where he asserts the following:

These cryptic words are often commented upon. I will venture the following paraphrase. To address the fundamental problem of sedimentation, geography serves as a better phenomenological guideline (Leitfaden) than history, preferably the transcendental geology that describes the earth as “arche-originary” or “originary arch” (Ur-Arche Erde) as an unmoving soil (Husserl, Reference Husserl and Farber1940). Merleau-Ponty argues that transcendental geology succeeds in pre-figurating the nexus of history and geography. As he puts it: “The Earth as Ur-Arche brings to light the carnal Urhistorie [originary history],” and thus paves the way for a primal institution (Urstiftung) of both geology (referring to: Ur-Arche) and history (referring to: Urhistorie). Structurally indeed, transcendental geology inaugurates the reactivation of the sedimented body of geography and history.

In the perspective of the problematization of sedimentation, might such a privilege of geology (that connotes stratification, sedimentation, weight, immense periods of time), such an insistence upon the earth (that connotes a formidable weight, layers, gravitation), entitle us to maintain that the belated Merleau-Ponty was about to tackle the question of the weight of sedimentation? In the last analysis, might not the phenomenological “gravity” of the Ur-arche somehow induce dynamical weight; in other words, might not the soil (Boden) attract the sediment (Bodensatz)?

Of course, this line of questioning goes too far afield to be dealt with here. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that transcendental geology becomes the theoretical framework to cope with what Merleau-Ponty affirms as the “fundamental problem: the sedimentation and the reactivation.” Again, a logically chiasmic structuring between them (the “and”) might be modelled on the nexus of history and geography, weightily sedimented and mutually reactivating each other, according to the motif of “a historical landscape and a quasi-geographical inscription of history.” In that sense, the weight of sedimentation appears not only to be artistically regressive, but also as one that is in progress, not only within an unachieved language, but also structurally and mutually within an enstructuring transcendental geology. The metaphor of sedimentation also appears to possess a generative quality in this sense.

One last import of Merleau-Ponty’s account of sedimentation is to free the notion from consciousness. For Husserl, all sedimentation is not necessarily conscious, but must be related to the retentional, protentional, and reactivating activity of consciousness, implemented by the ego. For Merleau-Ponty, this restriction is suppressed: Sedimentation is impersonally connected to the re-apprehending function of language as a paradigm, but also of other sensitive, intersubjective, and artistic anonymous activities, all located in the so-called pre-personal body (Aguiar de Sousa, Reference Aguiar de Sousa2017; Trigg, Reference Trigg2017). Logically, it stems from the mutual reactivation of human art and language, at a pitch, of the proto-geology and history of being.

To sum up, Merleau-Ponty efficiently helps one to detect the unprecedented metaphysical and logical dimensions of sedimentation that go far beyond the orthodox phenomenological reading of the notion. Following this line of thought, are we not obliged to leave the orbit of phenomenological research in order to grant the notion of sedimentation its full metaphorical and conceptual weight?

4.1. The Accretive and Regressive Weight of Sedimentation: The Frequency of Repetitions

In History of Madness, Foucault already diagnoses sedimentation at the levels of individual affections and medical institutions.

First, regarding madness, he moots that the melancholic murderer speaks with his demon because this image “has been profoundly engraved” in his brain, and this figure “is like a sedimentation in the body of an infinitely repeated discourse about God’s punishment” (Foucault, Reference Foucault1972b, p. 253; Reference Foucault2009, p. 235). In this pathological case, the weight of sedimentation in language springs from the impact of the image impression and undergoes an intensification through the frequency of repetition of the sentential discourse. The serendipity of Foucault’s approach lies in the inflexion given not only to repetition but to the frequency of repetition: “infinitely repeated (indéfiniment ressassé).”

I speak thus of a progressive and accretive weight of sediments that acquires heaviness through frequency of repetition. In this extreme pathological case, it amounts to a panicked and selfsame reactivation. But the focus on repetition also enlighteningly connects to the reactivation taking place within Husserl’s conceptual frame, where, as we saw, the weighting seems to lie within the possibility of reactivation, which is potentialized through sedimentation. And it especially connects within Merleau-Ponty’s first definition of sedimentation, in its chiasmic repetition of the present and the past and the universal repetition of acts of speech.

Second, when Foucault contemplates the institutions of madness, he proves that the hospital does not belong to “the most recent geological stratum” of therapy, namely, the one that should make therapy prevail over the internment of mad persons. Contrariwise, he holds that the hospital is actually:

Again, the “gravitational pull” consisted of the increasing historical frequency that turns into the sedimenting force, as the hospital, the medical institution, was “increasingly attracted (n’a cessé d’être attiré).” Accordingly, Foucault here grants a weight to archaically sedimented institutions such as hospitals, inasmuch as they do not represent a form of “progress” (Foucault, Reference Foucault1972b, p. 137; Reference Foucault2009, p. 120) within the history of the treatment of madness, but rather a regress to the medieval conception of the status of the insane, who were isolated as such. One can speak correspondingly of an inverse and regressive weight of sedimentation, which increases with the uneasiness to be reactivated in a creative way. Such a Foucauldian account might clarify the kind of weight that Merleau-Ponty suspected to exist in the artistic sediment.

Let me stress the importance of the concepts of liberation and repetition to approach sedimentation. Commentators stress the liberating potential of the notion: Whereas for Jean-Paul Sartre a “radical liberty” prevails over sedimentation (Whiteside, Reference Whiteside1988, pp. 69–70), in a different sense than for Simone de Beauvoir (Webber, Reference Webber and Zahavi2018, p. 300), for Husserl “sedimentations liberate consciousness from the task of thinking everything from ground up repeatedly” (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a, p. 1032; Woelert, Reference Woelert2011, p. 120). Such a liberation is noticeable with Merleau-Ponty as well, for whom “sedimentation is not only mechanical repetition” (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty1998, p. 30; Reference Merleau-Ponty2002, p. 226), given that “originary sedimentations liberate the embodied consciousness from the task of continuously reconstituting the unity of the sensory fields” (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2023, p. 169).

Now, for Foucault, in return, the very weight of sedimentation appears temporally potentialized through the repetition process itself. For the insane, sedimentation becomes weightier through the frequency of repetition of the sentential discourse. But for the sane historian of ideas, sedimentation is first fortified through temporal and local repetition, as will be stressed later. All in all, the paradoxical conclusion of this analysis is that repetition emerges as what, when freshly sedimented, freely dispenses with the burden of repetition. Phenomenologically, the weight of sedimentation, far from existing as an inexorable vertical form of gravity, is rather to be measured, ultimately, in its horizontal repetitiveness and freedom.

4.2. The Heaviness of Sedimentations: Contextual Magnetization

A further reading of his magnum opus reveals that Foucault is perfectly aware of the Husserlian legacy concerning sedimentation (Foucault, Reference Foucault1966, pp. 332, 338, 342; Reference Foucault1994a, pp. 330, 326, 330), and that he revisits this notion predominantly at the level of language (Foucault, Reference Foucault1966, pp. 109, 142; Reference Foucault1994a, pp. 93, 129), somewhat like Merleau-Ponty. But the author of Words and Things also innovates in disclosing what is at stake in the phenomenological account of sedimentation, that is, it is not only its epistemic weightiness and critical potential, but also the very weight that it represents.

In an intriguing passage, as a paradigm, Foucault complexifies what he labels the “modern cogito,” as being both immediate and mediate to itself, in a context that is transparently reminiscent of the Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty, Reference Merleau-Ponty2009, pp. 427; Reference Merleau-Ponty2012, p. 387). He then refers to such a weight of sedimentation in the following terms:

Here Foucault’s analysis advantageously relays that of Merleau-Ponty. It is true, as the latter claims, that it is impossible to reactivate all sedimentations. But while that is true, might we add with the former, that it is so because these sediments carry their own heaviness within themselves, which our thought is unable to counterbalance. It has been documented that Husserlian sedimentation possesses three distinct senses: static and recollective, genetic and typical, and generative and historical (Geniusas, Reference Geniusas2025a). Foucault also urges us to question the heaviness of the notion, not only in an accretive and regressive sense, but also in a dynamic and gravitational one.

The crux of the matter is: From whence does such heaviness come? The incisiveness of Foucault’s approach dwells in the act of deepening the phenomenological analysis. If all sediments cannot be reactivated because of their totally overwhelming weight, it does not imply that their weight is not involved in the process of reactivation. On the contrary, their weight appears to be “magnetically attracted” to it, as it were, by the context of reactivation, and thereby apprehended through it.

This aspect is phenomenologically telling, since it has been remarked that “sedimented cultural and categorial forms […] are effective; they generate a cultural field of force. They are like strong magnets buried in the ground” (Sokolowski, Reference Sokolowski2000, p. 166). Again, the gravitational paradigm for the metaphor is Newtonian and not Einsteinian. For Foucault, the weight of sedimentation is reducible neither to a sinking out in time, nor to a regression within history. In its most positive form, it has been adumbrated above as an accretive weight. Already in Husserlian terms, since sedimentation essentially factors in the possibility of reactivation, its weight stands in its potentializing a new circulation of the past within the present and the future. In a Foucauldian vein, such a potentializing emanates from its frequency of repetition. Is it possible to dig deeper into this idea?

4.3. The Inertia and Gravity of Sedimentation: Temporality, Sociality, and Thinkability

Three years later, in the Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault revisits in his own fashion the distinction between sedimentation and reactivation (Husserl) or spontaneity (Merleau-Ponty). He ascribes sedimentation to a specific form of the history of ideas, besides a first group that deals with active and spontaneous “inventions, changes, transformations.” The second group appears meaningful for the analysis of sedimentation:

In this extensive statement, Foucault conjugates both the phenomenological and the hermeneutical imports regarding sedimentation. He states that there is both a temporal inertia (pesanteur) of history (“accumulation of the past”) and a linguistic weight of history (“sedimentation of things said”). In addition, he offers both a negative and a positive explanation about the way historical statements must be treated not singularly, but “massively” (par masse Footnote ¹¹ ) and commonly. The bulk of the argument is that such a collective mass of statements (i.e., of things said and accumulated) conforms to the weight and inertia of history and outstrips the individual weight of each statement.

This is why, negatively speaking, Foucault states that the collective mass of historical statements is given: first, neither by their intrinsic duration and durability, which are always finite (“their unique occurrence may be neutralized”); second, nor by their idiosyncratic and authoritative value (“the importance of their author’s identity”); and third, nor by their vertical context of circumstances (“the time and place of their appearance”).

Even more positively, the collective mass of these statements, composed of temporal inertia and linguistic weight, is measured as an intersubjective persistence and extension in time and space: first, by the frequency of their repetition (“the extent of their repetition in time and place”); second, by their intersubjective and social permeability (“the groups in which they circulate”); and third, by their horizontal potential of thinkability (“the general horizon that they outline for men’s thought”).

Interestingly enough, Foucault no longer focuses on the frequency of repetition (“unique occurrence,” the “extent of their repetition”) but offers two more criteria to characterize the ontological weight of sedimentation in history. In a nutshell, all such weight is enweightened not only in a regressive sense but also triple progressively: temporally (occurrences, duration, repetition); intersubjectively (authors, groups); and gnoseologically (appearance, horizon, thought). The weight of sedimentation represents, by excellence, a conceptually generative metaphor within human culture, which is not limited to history.

Additionally, Foucault’s archaeological grasp of the weight of sedimentation remarkably emphasizes its intersubjectivity and sociality. His analysis confirms a tendency already present in the strict phenomenological treatment of the problem. Namely, it reveals the relevance of the conceptual metaphor of sedimentation to address social issues such as institutions and human groups, however “social” a metaphor by itself might be (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999, pp. 277, 417), and however related the notions of metaphor and society might be (Schön, Reference Schön and Ortony1979; Sternberg et al., Reference Sternberg, Tourangeau, Nigro and Ortony1979).

Of course, Foucault’s archaeology is by no means reducible to the history of ideas. But his analysis of the second form contributes to the problematic of the weight of sedimentation. It suggests measuring this weight by the yardstick of not only temporal duration qua repetition, but also of intersubjective persistence qua circulation, and of epistemic idealization qua limitation. To sum up, the merit of an “archaeological” grasp of the problem of sedimentation, which is recognized as phenomenologically relevant (Sokolowski, Reference Sokolowski2000, p. 167), is not to take Foucault into phenomenology, as has been attempted (Visker, Reference Visker1999). It is rather to uncover, at the school of phenomenology, a weighty phenomenon, already at work within phenomenology.

In March 1968, Foucault confessed to Jean-Pierre Elkabbach:

Would it be possible that Foucault’s interest in the weight of sedimentation stems from this original phenomenological legacy? Would it be defensible to say that his insightful focus on the notion is germane to this belated phenomenon of specialization within intellectual practices? This article has tried to suggest ways of answering positively to these questions.