Active, passive

Here's a way to think about the relation of three thinkers to the activity or passivity in intentionality--that is, in the emphasis or accent placed on one or the other, such that intentionality does not become so strictly Husserlian but rather turns into an interpretation of what Husserl is or should be getting at (so when I speak of intentionality, obviously none of these thinkers--and especially Husserl--would call it by that name):

For Heidegger, the fundamental intention is anticipation beyond anticipation in being-towards death.  One could label this activity beyond activity.

For Levinas, the fundamental intention is awaiting beyond awaiting in the ethical relation to the death of the other. So one could call this passivity beyond passivity.

For Derrida, the fundamental intention is living-on, or sur-viving, anticipating that is already beyond what it anticipates, or awaiting that is already missing what it is ready for. In other words, it could be called passivity beyond passivity to the point that it is indistinguishable from activity beyond activity.

Each one of these "intentionalities" implies a temporality (but also a spatiality--in the case of Heidegger it would be absent, or, more technically, involve the dispersion of the ecstases out of futurity to the extent that one would be talking about time when one properly talked about space... besides this, one wonders about Levinas), too: for Levinas, for example, time is what is given in relation to the other. Upon the institution of this relation, I am related to a future that is never to be here, that is disproportionately other than any any now or even any presence--or, perhaps put in a better way, to anything that has being. Being is secondary to or merely an effect of a relationship to the other that is temporal and gives me time.