HC NYC Proceedings

THE 41ST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE HUSSERL CIRCLE Hosted by The New School for Social Research

Theresa Lang Center 55 W 13th Street, New York City

TABLE OF CONTENTS Discursive Power 3

Algis Mickunas (Ohio University) 3 Husserl‟s Hermeneutic Phenomenology 15

Harry P. Reeder (University of Texas at Arlington) From „We‟ to „ I ‟ and Back: Still Learning from the New School Three 37

Lester Embree (Flor ida Atlantic Un iversity) Praxis and Passivity: A Hidden Naturalistic Assumption in Husserl ‟s Transcendental Phenomenology 47

Steven Crowell (Rice University) The Question of Naturalizing Phenomenology 63

James Mensch (St. Francis Xavier University) Überschau and The Givenness of Life in Hus serl ‟s Phenomenology 74

Andrea Stai ti (Boston College) The Husserlian Project of Formal Logic and Individuation 86

Carlos Lobo (Caen) Husserl ‟s Notion of Leib and the Primary/Secondary Properties Distinction 103

Emil iano Triz io (Husserl Archive Paris/Poincaré Archive Nancy) The Lebenswelt : Subjectivity and Objectivity in Husserl and Patočka 118

Lubica Učník (Murdoch University) Husserl ‟s Notion of the Primal Ego in Light of the Hermeneutical Critique 131

Saul ius Geniusas (James Madison Universi ty) Reduction to Evidence and Its Liberating Function: Husserl ‟s Discovery of Reduction Reconsidered 144

Shigeru Taguchi (Yamagata Universi ty) Phantasie and Husserl ‟s Phenomenological Inquiry 156

Smaranda Aldea (Emory University) Back to Space 174

Lil ian Alweiss (Trinity Col lege, Dublin) Husserl ‟s Phenomenological Idealism and t he Problem of Realism 193

Maxime Doyan (McGil l University) Jan Patočka‟s “Care for the Soul” in the “Nihilistic” World 204

Ivan Chvatík (Center for Theoretical S tudies, Prague)

Discursive Power Algis Mickunas (Ohio University)

The phenomenon of power is implicit in Husserl's critique of modern sciences and their methods, resulting in the crisis of rationality. Our analyses will follow two intentionalities, the vertical and the horizontal, showing that the modern scientific rationality assumes principles which exclude the vertical. Thus conception of the method as a way of mastering the material world intimates also a restriction of linguistic sign systems and uses to specific modes at the expense and exclusion of other forms. If not deliberate, there is a specific ―bracketing‖ that was performed by the philosophies and sciences of the modern age that allotted the constitution of the primacy of power to linguistic articulations. The result of this development is manifested in the current claims by the semioticians and the deconstructionists that language or discourse is the primary power in all domains of human experience and praxis. While at first sight outlandish, this claim is well justified on the basis of our above analyses of modernity, with its ontology and scientific method.

Our approach will trace out this ―bracketing‖ and show what phenomena become discarded and what ―phenomena‖ remain in order to be constitutive of power. It is hoped that the result of this investigation will reveal specific formations which belong to no one, are ―nowhere‖ and yet comprise the very modalities of our modern awareness. What is meant here by ―awareness‖ consists of specific ―noetic practices‖ ruled by, and expressive of, a set of intentionalities. In addition, the noetic practices constitutive of power are also ruled by a specific form of ―transcendence‖ lending such practices their ―freedom.‖ The latter is expressed in numerous ways across various socio-political, economic and scientific formations, aims, and imageries. It lends an appearance of a total transcendental arbitrariness to the noetic practices at all levels. The phrase ―noetic practices‖ encompasses what the human actually does in relationship to the world of objects of whatever type. 1. The Given

The emergence of modern understanding of power rests on a specific constitution of the ―given‖ seen as ―transcendence‖ and inaccessible to direct intuition. The configuration of the given requires a precise deformation of qualitative awareness, its ―bracketing‖ and hence its reduction to the ―immanence‖ of the subject. This immanence is subsequently designated in terms of psychology and physiology.1 This form of bracketing can be called the Cartesian skepsis. As we have seen, the modern revolution deems reality to be a material extension of atomic parts that are not accessible to experience, although

1 Dennet, Consicousness Expla ined .

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manageable by a method of mathematical manipulation. Following this, the entire modern view claims that what is beyond skepsis is a constitution of a precise reflective method offering univocal and indifferent approach to a specifically constituted objectivity. This is to say, the endless totality consists of an univocal rationality correlative to the precise requirements of methodology. There is a need to show the ways in which both, the methodology, and the objectivity are constituted and correlated. Husserl correctly points out that mathematics or quantitative procedures are seen not only as methodological, but founding for all theoretical thought. The specific composition of such procedures suggests that no intuitive content is correlated to them. They contain structures and rules which can be formulated without any relation to the intuitive, i.e. qualitative and essential domain of direct awareness. Moreover, any meaning such structures acquire is not dictated by these structures. This is to say, the meaning is a matter of will, but in such a way that the will is not compelled by such structures; they have no causal force. The implications of such non-necessary connections will be seen subsequently.

In order for these procedures and structures to gain validity, the objective world must be constituted in accordance with these procedures. First, the procedures are indifferent with respect to perceptual intuition; they treat all events as if they were essentially homogeneous. Second, the perceptual domain of intuition, directly present to live awareness, is transcended in favor of theoretically-methodologically required homogeneity, i.e. posited in accordance with such requirements. Obviously, the transcendence in this context is minimally double: first, it is the transcendence to consciousness of the qualitative sphere, and second, the transcendence of the posited homogeneous world subtending the qualitative. In this sense, awareness has no access to the second transcendence apart from the theoretical and methodological positing of reality. This is the source of the Husserlian conception of mathematically idealized nature whereby nature becomes a homogeneous mathematical manifold.2 We should not be misled by the concept of homogeneity. The latter might seem to have geometric associations, and hence capable of being given in perceptual intuition; the problem lies in the practice of substituting geometric formations, the translation of the forms into a mathematical set of signs which do not offer any semblance or intuitive comparison to the geometric domain.3

The geometric understanding would still offer a field posited as matter, yet with mathematization of geometry, and if one were to take a next step toward formalization of mathematics, one would be able to regard the geometric as quanta, as numerical points, sums, and divisions, arranged in accordance with formal structures. Irrespective of the levels of quantitative-formal constitution, there is posited only one fundamental-transcendent reality. The problematics of

2 Husser l , Cris is , mathematization 3 Stroeker, formalizat ion

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the constitutive processes both of the theoretical-methodological domain, and the transcendent domain, lead to a particular contradiction which cannot be solved within the parameters of the theoretical-methodological form. The method is proclaimed to be universal, all-inclusive, and thus able to subsume all phenomena objectively. Thus the subject who calculates, formalizes must be either subsumed under the method, or be the condition for the constitution of the method. If the former assumption is accepted, then the method must assume a position of supremacy over the subject, i.e. be objective; yet this very method permits only one kind of reality: homogeneous matter. The method is not ―matter‖ but ―ideality‖ and indeed a necessary ideality. And yet, if the latter is taken for granted, i.e. that the subject too is to be submitted under the method, then the ideality of the method has no place in the subject, since the subject must be contingent and thus cannot be a basis for the methodological mathematical and formal necessities.

In either case, the theoretical-methodological composition is something other than the posited transcendent reality, and the latter is not something given. In fact, the morphologically constituted and directly given world, a world of shapes, pathways, axes for practical activity, multi-leveled interconnections is regarded as complex phenomena that are not identical with the strict homogeneous reality. This non-identity precludes the possibility of deriving the theoretical- methodological formations from the phenomenal-morphological composition of what Husserl called the lived world.4 As a result, the former are neither correlative to the intuited world of morphologically composed things and their interconnections, inclusive of the ―real‖ subject, nor are they abstractable from the posited homogeneous world. On these terms, the transcendent world, the world of theoretical objectivity, is not given and cannot be a source of theoretical-methodological compositions. The morphological world is given, and yet it too is not a source for the understanding of the transcendent world, and neither can account for the theory and method of the modern sciences and the positing of the world of transcendent and perceptually inaccessible homogeneous world. And yet, the theoretical-methodological composition is regarded as given, and indeed with full evidential necessity. What kind of necessity? Purely quantitative and formal formations having their own rules and procedures, where the morphological or the material side is completely contingent and arbitrary. With respect to the rules of the formal domain, the morphological and intuitive side, such as sounds or marks, is arbitrarily selectable and changeable. This is one of the more fundamental and initial designations of the formal as necessary and the material as arbitrary. This suggests that the connection between them is not direct, not immediate or given,

4 Husser l , l i feworld


but must be intended by an entirely different act. While there are many acts which can comprise the connection, a specific act is constitutive of power. Such an act has to be deciphered in its own right. Yet we are concerned in the conjunction between the domains which are radically distinct: the theoretical- methodological and the transcendent. To repeat, the former is regarded as necessary and given, while the latter is regarded as transcendent, contingent and not given. 2. Formal Region

As already noted, the theoretical-methodological, or termed otherwise, the quantitative-formal, are not within the domains of the contingent world, posited as transcendent. It is not found even in the directly intuited morphological composition of the lived world. It is regarded as different from these domains. Not having any other locus for the formal, the thinkers of the modern age invented a container called ―mind‖ in which these quantitative and formal components reside. They belong to the immanence of the subject. The immanence assumes an ambiguous status: it is the container of the theoretical-methodological formal necessities, and yet it is factually contingent substance. This contingency is expressed in Cartesianism in two ways: first, the formal composition, with respect to a posited absolute being, cannot be regarded as necessary. This is to say, the absolute being can will different formal systems; this is an analogical expression of a conception which offers an initial indication as to the arbitrariness of the formal. Second, the formal is seen as capable of continuous analyses; any break in the analyses is a matter of decision. In this sense, the formal domain swings in the ambiguity between necessity and will, rules and choice. The importance of this ―indecision‖ consists precisely in the option to either regard the formal as a priori given or as a construct of the subject. Various expressions are offered at the dawn of the modern age to indicate the shift toward the latter option. The notions of nature as created in accordance with mathematical laws comprise one expression. Coupled with the notion that even the mathematical-formal is decidable by an absolute will, the result is obvious: the stress is on the primacy of construction of the formal systems. They too are chosen, although they cannot be regarded as contingent in the sense of the contingency of the transcendent world. Their emergence requires unique intentions that have to be regarded as capable of formal construction and of arbitrary signification. Moreover, such intentionalities must include the possibility of extending and proliferating formal compositions and divisions at will, and of disregarding the perceptual, intuitive content.

A brief analysis of this disregard will clarify the constructive intentionality, necessary for the understanding of the composition of power in the modern age at the level of signs. To note, while the conception of homogeneity of the

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transcendent reality can be described by geometrical structures, corresponding to the morphological and perceptually intuited world, the shift from the geometrical signification to the mathematical and formal abandons any kind of intuitive correspondence between the shapes of geometry and the morphological compositions of the lived world. Hence, any theory of representative correspondence, copy of the world in the ―mind‖ substance, has to be abandoned. The signitive symbolism of quantitative and formal compositions do not offer any intuitive counterpart in the perceptual world apart from the sounds or marks, selected arbitrarily. But these marks, while part of the morphological world, in no wise resemble the theoretical-methodological composition; they simply provide the arbitrary means for perceptual expression. While there are many complexities in the constitution of the quantitative-formal modes of theoretical-methodological ―thought,‖ in principle this thought does not offer any possibility of correspondence between theoretical- methodological compositions and the perceptual world of shapes and structures.

The operations with signitive symbolism—the perceptual side of the quantitative-formal—offer themselves in a precise order: they must be arranged sequentially and uni-directionally. They must follow a temporal sequence and must be constructed as sequential. The perceptual intuition into the morphological side of such signitive processes offers an awareness of ―progression‖ from a starting point to a finish. The problem of the finish is not to be taken in a finite sense: the formal procedures lend themselves to indefinite progression and articulation; hence what could be regarded as finish is a decision to stop the formal articulation of theoretical-methodological composition. As noted above, the quantitative and formal processes can be continued indefinitely; any cessation in our operations with them, as was already noted at the dawn of the modern age, is a matter of choice.

Phenomenologically speaking, there appears a specific ―lack‖ on the basis of the transformation from the morphological lived world, present to perceptual awareness, to the formal signitive symbolisms, expressed serially by arbitrary selected marks. The intentional direction toward the perceptual world, capturing the morphological constitution of the lived world, can be designated as vertical. The maintenance of the vertical intentionality requires the presence and continuity of the directly intuited morphology; this intuition can be unfolded horizontally, and if need be in horizontal performances composed of grammatically structured marks or sounds. Thus the morphological awareness of a particular object can offer a possibility of eidetic variation to yield a pure geometric figure, whereby the morphological awareness becomes an intuitive exemplification of a corresponding eidetic structure. Each morphological variant has a representing capacity, i.e. it can give an intuitive similarity to the eidetic structure, held by vertical intentionality. Yet the constitution of the


mathematical-formal need no longer signify the object present to vertical intentionality. It becomes free from any morphological moorings and vertical intentionality and can be articulated on the basis of its own formal procedures. This is to say, it can ―progress‖ uni-directionally, i.e. horizontally in a process of either increased formally analytic differentiations or an indefinite repetition of functions.

The specificity of this horizontal process consists of the fact that the criteria of articulation, differentiation, and analyses are intrinsic to the formal discourses. This is quite fitting, since the criteria of the experienced world, the given morphological structures are no longer signified by the formal processes. After all, what the formal process signifies is its own arbitrary selection of means of expression. The formal can be still regarded as ―necessary‖ and the selected expressive ―material‖ as contingent (although with the previously mentioned ambiguity), yet what leads the process is the possibility of increased formalization of propositions, resulting in the concept of formal systems which can be differentiated into formal sub-systems and of splitting up of systems into distinct formal systems. Disregarding the morphological composition of the lived world, this process pretends to subsume under itself all domains of the world not on the basis of any intuitive content but on the basis of formal designations and differentiations.

3. Contingency

The previously indicated problematic of the transcendent world emerges here in a new guise. The excluded morphological lived world yields, in accordance with formal systems, no visible necessity. The posited homogeneous world, transcending all perceptual and intuitive access does not offer any viable view which would make its necessity present. This is to say, it too must be regarded as contingent. Being inaccessible, it must be posited in accordance with the formal definitions and procedures whose necessity would provide a model of explanation not for the perceptual components, but of possible processes designated as material. The contingent is so designated because its necessity comes from another, and in two senses. First, from the formal articulations comprising the theoretical-methodological domain presumed to be correlative to the posited transcendent reality, and second, from a presumed act of an absolute creation (Galileo) such that the theoretical-methodological composition is the very way in which reality is created.5 This is the symbolic support designated to necessitate the functioning of this reality and to guarantee that our theoretical-methodological forms constitute adequate descriptions of reality. Thus the Galilean exclamation of our greatness.6 An analogous symbolic ploy

5 Schabert, absolute creation 6 ibid, Gali l leo, we are great

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was used by Descartes to guarantee the necessity of the objective phenomena. This persistent insistence on securing symbolic assurances for necessity of the processes of the transcendent reality indicates a fundamental realization that left ―to itself‖ such a reality is contingent, unless it acquires its necessity from elsewhere. This is to say that an appeal to an absolute geometrician is not an attempt to placate the ecclesiastics, but a symbolic effort to legitimate the necessity of an otherwise contingently construed reality and the correlative necessity of the presumed objective theory and method.

If we were to exclude such a symbolism, we would be left with a contingent reality whose necessity would come from another and this is to say from the theoretical-methodology. Contingency excludes, at the same time essentiality, i.e. the possibility for a vertical intentionality to maintain something permanent with necessary characteristics, accessible to perception, or in case of induction, essentiality with universal validity in the sphere of ontology. The abolition of essentiality (the Greek notion of essential composition of something real) opens the door to the notion of an access to this reality in terms of possibility. This is to say, since what is cannot be perceived, and since its being posited as transcendent reality does not offer any necessity for its composition, then it can be accessed and dealt with in accordance with theoretical-methodological formal possibilities. This is precisely the juncture at which it becomes ―necessary‖ to regard this transcendent reality in accordance with what it can possibly be. Before continuing this line of constitution, it is advisable to interject the first moment which offers itself through the awarenesses delimited until now. 4. Power

The problematic of power have been discussed from ancient Far East all the

way to modern political thought and even post modern semiotics. The last has admitted that power is not to be located anywhere, although its exercise is everywhere through discourse. Such an admission is well taken, but without a proper grounding in awareness. The task at hand is to indicate what grounds power in awareness and why it cannot be located. To recall the previous discussion and its basic composition: the lived world of morphologically constituted and intuitively accessible events and objects is bracketed under scientific skepsis; the posited transcendent and homogeneous reality is inaccessible to perception. The constitution of the theoretical-methodological formalisms has no intuitive counterpart, i.e. no vertical hold. They can be articulated horizontally in a serial, unilinear progression in accordance with their own intrinsic rules. The homogeneous transcendent reality is contingent and hence open to possibility. As a result, there is no necessary connection between the theoretical-methodological formalisms, or their signitive functions, and the


transcendent reality. The connection is arbitrary. This is to say, it requires a specific intentionality which is not necessitated by any real compulsion or law to connect the formal signitive factors to the posited reality. The arbitrariness appears under various guises: the ―application‖ of theory to ―praxis,‖ the most lyrically stressed intoxication that the purpose of all science is its reshaping of the environment in accordance with human designs, the humanistic efforts to ―humanize‖ nature and the ―human animal,‖ the aims at improving nature, the fascinating pronouncements that if god is dead, then everything is permitted, the exclamations that something is good because we say it is good in accordance with our own prescripts, etc. In principle, the intentional connection between the formally constituted domain and the posited reality has no hold in anything, and it need not respect any prescription and qualitative composition of the lived world. And yet it is a required nexus between the theoretical and the real. After all, the signitive formal compositions do not point to anything that would be intuitively similar to such compositions. Arbitrary selection of formal components for possible correlation to the homogeneous quantified world offers no other option apart from the imposition of the formally constituted methods on the real.

While this might seem obvious, there appears an unnoticed requirement for this correlation: concrete activity. The formal compositions, not having any similarity to anything intuitively present to perception, cannot be correlated to anything perceptual; hence by excluding the perceptual, the correlation requires an active intervention and construction of the posited homogeneous world in accordance with the formal requirements. In this sense, the formal requirements comprise possibilizing arrangements which lead the construction of the real or the real in accordance with formal requirements. This is to say that the ―intention‖ to control the environment under whatever guise is not a power aim of Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Buffon, the capitalists or the Marxists, but the constitution of the possibility of arbitrariness in the connection between theory and reality.

Arbitrariness, as a ground for power, might run counter to the usual notions that only set restrictions comprise power, e.g. discursive practices of a tradition. Indeed, it is possible to extend the argument that the classical conceptions of human nature and essence, and indeed an essence of everything else, submitted nature to power under the guise of limits, restrictions and impositions; yet such restrictions were not external but comprised the very way of being without violation. It could be argued that a continuous or at least somewhat stable framework restricts activities and disallows violations ―without notice.‖ Yet arbitrariness lends itself to an emergence of power without ―reason,‖ or at best from psychological whim, enhanced, prompted, and fed by ―unlimited possibilities‖ of formal and as a result material constructions.

The intentionality emerging here between the theoretical and the ―real‖ swings between two possibilizing structures: the formal possibilities, operating purely with arbitrarily selected signs, reach a point of realization that the formal

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processes are also arbitrarily constructed and hence can be reconstructed at will, purely empty significations without any immediate fulfillment in the perceptual intuition. These formally designed possibilities are also in a position to align the transcendent reality toward intuitive fulfillment by human intervention into the processes of the lived world and, by disregarding the given perceptual morphologies of that world, to shape the presumed underlying homogeneous matter in accord with the formal designs. This shaping comprises the source of both, the labor theory of value and life—the primacy of homo laborans—and technology, inclusive of the appearance of political technocracies which promise to redesign the ―environment‖ and the ―human‖ in line with the theoretical-methodological requirements: a world produced by science. Some scholars in fact suggest that the modern world has two ―intentional‖ histories: one, a completely unstructured world of completely autonomous individuals, and two, a complete redesigning of the world in accordance with the formal designs we ourselves posit. Yet in either case arbitrariness is assumed and the intentionality that swings between the formal and the transcendent is the decisive arbitrator.

This intentionality is not identical with Kantian autonomous will and with Nietzsche's will to power. Its engagement is with possibilizing constituents both at the formal and at the material levels. The possibilizing allows for formal variations and differentiations of processes into systems and sub-systems, until the sub-systems can become ―distinct‖ sciences, carving out their fields and accessing the environment in accordance with their formal requirements. This simply means an increased refinement of ―application‖ and fulfillment of the formal sphere in the material sphere. This is the technological process. As Husserl argues, technologization posits formal operations, with a total disregard or indifference to the meaning and truth of nature in the lived world. Such formalism, coupled with the presumed homogeneous and indifferent reality, results in two structural processes when introduced in the lived world. First, a complete disregard to the concrete meanings and their horizons, including their enactments in the lived world thus leading to increased contingency, and second, formal and technological detachment from the concrete intentionalities which tie the subject to the morphologies of the lived world. These two components constitute the problematic of the relationship between contingency, detachment and nature. Both, the formally designed systems and the transcendent material nature, comprise a detachment from the lived world and allow an arbitrary correlation between them. One can treat everything from a vantage point of detached formalism and regard qualitative and essential distinctions with indifference. As already suggested, the formal indifferent and disconnected constitution lends itself to a horizontal process of increased formalization of all propositions in such a way that there emerge increased formal differentiations of


formal systems. While leading to more complex formal connections, it also includes increased

differentiations. In this sense, the material reality can be increasingly differentiated and constructed along more complex and yet more distinct technical masteries and controls of the material. The increase of formal complexities and differences is coextensive with an increase in the contingency of the material processes, leading to more possible rearrangements of the indifferent material nature. As Jonas suggests, every refined and produced material process offers possibilities for further formal refinements and material rearrangements.7 The lateral differentiation of formal systems and their correlative material structuration provide a basis for disciplinary differentiations, each having its own formal approaches and each capable of possible construction of material fulfillment. While this process maintains its basic principles of formal and material detachments, it ―progresses‖ toward a differentiated inclusion of all events, both ―natural‖ and cultural, and thus constitutes a formally differentiated world where semi-independent spheres call for semi-independent functions and ―work.‖ What is relevant in human life depends and is contingent upon the manner in which the formal constructs divide the human ―material:‖ the human is economic, social, chemical, physiological, psychological, biological, etc. set of differentiated ―behaviors,‖ each semi- independent of the others. It would be redundant to analyze the obvious: the ―power‖ of these differentiations comprises also the separations of social functions and tasks, leading to a society of semi-independent groupings of ―expertise.‖ Yet what each expertise produces within its own sphere has no necessary connection with other spheres. Hence the results of ―research‖ in a specific domain can be picked up by military or by art. For the experts of each domain there is no recourse to any external criterion concerning the intentionalities which would correlate the results as possibilities in another domain.

This is to say, the material, i.e. technically produced forces can be selected at will, arbitrarily by other social domains, such as politics for possible ―application.‖ The lateral differentiation decentralizes responsibility thus increasing the contingency and arbitrariness, and the latter is increasingly unchained from any constraints. Every formal rule, and every material result made to fulfill the formal design, become totally arbitrary, offering possibilizing formal and material combinations without end. Each domain is released from the concrete lived world implications, each an ―expert‖ in its own sphere, need not relate to any other sphere; each can claim that there is no such thing as conclusive evidence precisely because the formal systems and their fulfilled material arrangements are arbitrary designs and carry no necessity; they are, insofar as they make, and with the making they assume ―reality‖ and hence increment power and ―prove‖ their momentary success.

7 Jonas, Fortschrit t ohne M

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It would be redundant to speak of ―needs‖ since the latter are part and parcel of the possibilizing procedures and become at the same time needs and fulfillment. We can make it, therefore we want it, and we wanted, therefore we can make it. What this suggests is that the process of increased contingency and arbitrariness as sources of power comprises a self-referential domain. This means that there are no restrictions for the ―search for truth.‖ After all, such a search has lost any boundary and any distinction between knowledge and object. Even in social understanding, the relationships between the formal and material processes are determined by ―science,‖ i.e. the very self articulation and production. One, thus, cannot find any trans-scientific criteria to check this process. And each domain has no built-in reason to stop the proliferation of its own form of knowledge and praxis. There are no physical reasons to cease making more physical experiments and refinements, no economic reasons to stop the economic ―growth,‖ no biological reasons to stop remolding of the living processes along new combinations, etc. Any limitation would be regarded as an infringement on the autonomy of research. Any science, which would proclaim that it has become complete, would cease to be a science in the context depicted above. 5. Progress

Given the key intentionality which swings without any essential necessitation between the theoretical-methodological and the transcendent homogeneous domains, there emerges the attendant factor which is permanent: progress. It must be without regression, without death, and all formal systems and all transformations of the lived world into calculatively remade world are enhancements, maintenances of this permanent structure. What is peculiar about progress is that it has no ―subject‖ that would progress. Its aim and its subject is itself and thus it is self-referential. Progress is its own destiny. It constitutes its own increasing formal refinements, efficiencies and ―perfectabilities‖ without of course attaining perfection. No attained construction is left without possibilizing and hence improvement. In this sense one could say semiotically, and yet on Husserlian basis, that the signifier and the signified are one.

The question that arises in this kind of progress, and as pointed out, its proliferation of increasing arbitrariness with respect to all phenomena, is the appearance of crisis. What is immediately notable is the disproportion between the sub-system called science and the rest of the culture. The efforts by the theoretically-methodologically designed systems to master the material nature have become exponential. Let us be clear about this: there can be only one domain of progress, and this is the coded and formalized transmission of practices, techniques, or strategies. A culture can increase its mastery and


practical control through the increase of formal differentiations and physical interventions in the environment, yet it cannot increase what the environment as a whole has to offer. There is no ―progress‖ in nature. We cannot increase material resources, but only the efficiency of their uses. Only the latter can progress. And this is precisely the point of crisis: the sciences are entering human life on the basis of this ―use‖ i.e. making humans function in accordance with the very prescripts that are imposed on the presumed physical world. Thus the question: is this a progress for human life, or is this the arbitrary treatment of the human and hence the subsumption of the human under arbitrariness and its opening up of power over the human? Obviously, the use and interference is inherent in the processes of modern science, requiring the intentionality which can connect the formal and the material. The human then is submitted to and subsumed under an arbitrariness which includes his own operations. That is, the human also functions in this modern intentionality and treats, or at least is exposed in principle to treat everything arbitrarily, i.e. violently. Arbitrariness is a ―power‖ which opens an initial experience of violation. But this violation cannot be avoided within the context of modern understanding of theory and method and their ―application.‖

The brief discussion of the emergence of power in the modern tradition resulted in sign systems as all encompassing eidos of power. Other traditions should be deciphered and variations performed in order to discover the complete noetic-noematic correlation constituting power. One notion seems to be warranted in the context of our discussion: it is not the discursive limits which exercise power—after all, Greeks were capable of linguistic ―dance‖ within a well designed form—but an arbitrariness which proclaims a homogeneity of a method and the material world which then can disregard not only the limits of qualitatively understood objects, but also the uniqueness of any individual. Arbitrary violation of limits is what will yield modern power. This now can open our understanding to political rhetoric and its power to make, and a broader grasp of the basis of discursive power.

Husserl‟s Hermeneutic Phenomenology* Harry P. Reeder (University of Texas at Arlington)

1. Introduction

My title is perhaps triply unfortunate: first because Husserl‘s

phenomenology is thoroughly transcendental as well as hermeneutic, 1 although his transcendental phenomenology, and especially his transcendental reduction, are often misunderstood by his critics; second because Husserl‘s ―transcendental phenomenology‖ is usually contrasted with the ―hermeneutic phenomenology‖ of Heidegger and his followers; and third because the important linguistic and interpretational elements in phenomenological method—elements that are sometimes (but only sometimes) missing from his own descriptions of the method, 2 but never missing from his phenomenological praxis—seem to be at odds with his appeals to ―apodictic evidence.‖ The hermeneutic elements are most evident in his many descriptions of phenomenology as a science, with all the resultant linguistic and intersubjective problems, problems addressed by his comments on interpretation and communication of one‘s own and others‘ phenomenological results (phenomenologica l descriptions). The present essay attempts to sketch some of these hermeneutic elements in phenomenological method as described and practiced by Husserl, and to suggest how these elements affect Husserl‘s claims about apodictic evidence and knowledge.

Once the hermeneutic elements of Husserl‘s phenomenological method have been explicated (§2) we will turn to a common critique of Husserl (§3). Because of its clarity, the critique of Husserl by Paul Ricoeur, an outstanding representative of hermeneutic phenomenology,3 will be used to frame the discussion of two critiques by hermeneutic phenomenologists—critiques that continue to be repeated at present. At the center of this critique is what he refers to (1981: 102ff) as Husserl‘s idealism, and the charge that Husserl lacks an account of the role of language in

* I wish to thank Kenneth Wil liford for some insightful and extremely helpful comments on an earl ier draf t of this essay. 1 I have presented this view in various places , e .g . , Reeder (1990 , 2009a, 2010) . 2 See, e .g. , (1982: 174; Hua I II/1: 162) : ― the phenomenological method operates exclusively in acts of ref lect ion.‖ 3 The basic text that I wil l use for this cr it ique is Ricoeur (1981, Chapter 3) . The same text appears in his (2007, Chapter 3) . The quotations in the present essay are taken from the former work.


phenomenological method (both common criticisms of Husserl). In replying to these critiques and opening the way to an interpretation of Husserl‘s phenomenology that undercuts a fairly standard critique of his work by hermeneutic phenomenologists even today, I rely on an interpretation of his work that is shared by, among others, José Huertas-Jourda, Algis Mickunas, Daniel Herrera Restrepo, and myself, according to which his thought displays a remarkable unity of focus from the late 1880‘s to his death in 1938. 4 Instead of seeing Husserl‘s phenomenology as sharply divided into periods (such as a ―realistic period,‖ ―idealistic period,‖ etc.) we see it as a unified but developing and progressing investigatio n of the implications of the intentionality of consciousness for the solution to philosophical and methodological problems that arose from the historical development of philosophy and science from Modern philosophy to positivism. 5 In this growth and development, Husserl‘s published works focus upon different elements of intentional experience and its role in the rigorous science of phenomenology, e.g., the essential objects of logical thought in the Logical Investigations , the constituting transcendental ego in Ideen I , and the intersubjective critique endemic to scientific method in Cartesian Mediations and Crisis . I wish to be clear that I am not suggesting that Husserl‘s thought did not go through changes, but that his basic insights as to the field and m ethod for phenomenological inquiry remained stable, without the sort of large-scale rejections of his earlier views that are famous in philosophers like Russell and Wittgenstein. For example in shifting from static to genetic phenomenology, Husserl‘s focus shifts from the unchanging objects of intentional acts (1970c: I, 109f, 351f.; Hua XVIII: 86f. , Hua XIX/1: 9f.) to the temporal and constitutive elements of these acts at the levels of psychological and transcendental (inner) time (1970b, 1991; Hua VI, X) , and he calls attention to his gradually deepening understanding and practice of phenomenological reduction (1970c: I, 43 –46; Hua XVIII: 8–11; 1970b: 234f, 243; Hua VI: 237, 246). However Husserl never rejects his earlier static descriptions, but suppleme nts them, even continuing to value descriptions from his pre -phenomenological Philosophie der Arithmetik .6 In particular, the appeal to a combination

4 See Huertas- Jourda (1969) , Mickunas (1997) , Herrera Restrepo (1964) , and Reeder (2010) . Cf . also Rizz o Patrón (2002) , pp. 221f . 5 For a brief discussion of this in terms of Husserl ‘s account of the relation between formal and transcendental logic, see Reeder (2009a) . 6 Husserl (2003) . On the continuity between this work and his phenomenological works see Huerta -Jourda, (1969) . The one well -known

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of intuition and to intersubjective elements of the phenomenological method—including language, preunderstanding, interpretation and critique—will be shown to be present from the Logical Investigations to the Crisis . Perhaps the roles in phenomenological method of intuition and critique are nowhere as evident as in Husserl‘s appeals to ―apodictic evidence,‖ because Husserl so modifies this concept as to make it scarcely resemble its traditional sense. Nonetheless many of his critics fail to take into account this radical alteration of sense. Let us, then, address this issue at some length in order to prepare for a brief reply to common ―hermeneutic critiques‖ of Husserl‘s phenomenology.

2. Apodictic Evidence and the Phenomenological Method

Husserl uses this concept in various contexts in the Logical Investigations : in the Prolegomena as he replies to various f orms of sceptical relativism (1970c: I, 153f. , 222; Hua XVIII: 140 –142, 227); in the Third Investigation in discussing the nature of pure law and pure genus (1970c: II, 446; Hua XIX/1: 243); in the Fourth Investigation in discussions of the a priori laws governing ideal meanings (1970c: II, 517; Hua XIX/1: 334) and combinations of meanings (1970c: II, 511; Hua XIX/1: 326); and in the Fifth Investigation in contrasting psychological with phenomenological evidence (1970c: II, 607; Hua XIX/1: 456). Husserl‘s c ritics may perhaps be forgiven when they point to such passages, because in them he is focusing on the relatively (indeed, ideal) stasis of apodictic evidence, and it may sound as if he were claiming that when we experience such evidence it is absolutely c ertain in the traditional sense of ―apodictic evidence,‖ according to which, as in Descartes or Kant, certainty resides in an immediate encounter with a particular mental or psychological presence. I frankly wish that Husserl had given up the term, as his use of it is so modified as to distinguish it radically from its traditional sense, and determining this new sense from his writings scattered over decades requires patient and sympathetic reading. However Husserl tends to remain very conservative in his use of traditional terms (e.g., ego, transcendental, apodictic), although they have led, then and now, to grave misunderstandings of his thought. Husserl‘s terminological conservatism has its origin in his view of phenomenology as a

exception to this unity is Husser l‘s recognit ion of a pure ego in the second edition of the Logical Invest igat ions (1970c: I , 49; Hua XVIII : 15) .


historical development o f philosophy‘s ethical and hermeneutic task of ―humanity struggling to understand itself‖ (1970b: 14; Hua VI: 12); accordingly he tends to use traditional terms (in order to locate his phenomenological discoveries within ongoing philosophical developments) but modifies their sense. He comments frequently on this use of terms taken from ordinary language and from philosophical usage and the modification of their meanings required by insights achieved through phenomenological investigations. 7 Of course, due to his discoveries of new facets of lived experience that had hitherto been undiscovered, Husserl also was forced to introduce new terms, such as protention, retention, noema and noesis.

Part of Husserl‘s motivation for retaining the term ‗apodictic‘ is his desire to reply to scepticism and relativism. In the Logical Investigations Husserl describes the phenomenological method as taking a ―zig-zag‖ path, moving back and forth between ―exemplary individual intuitions of experiences‖ and the intersubjective p rocess of employing insights based in these subjective intuitions as data in an intersubjective ―descriptive fixation of the contemplated essences into pure concepts,‖ through a ―systematic clarification‖ that ―removes conceptual obscurities,‖ a process of clarification that ―must…make use of all the concepts we are trying to clarify.‖ 8 Thus, the appeal to intuition does not exempt the phenomenologist from interpretation (1964:50; Hua II: 62), from the hermeneutic difficulties of establishing concepts in co mmon usage with one ‘s scientific peers, or, as he notes in the Introduction to the 1913 edition of the Logical Investigations , from the dangers of projections in the viewing of these intuitions: ―For more than three decades all of my work has been in the area of immanent, intuitive experience. I have learned, laboring under unprecedented difficulties, to see and to keep projections (Einlegungen) away from that which I see.‖ 9 During phenomenological description there is a zig -zag movement between, on the one hand, a focus upon its de facto epistemological foundation in transcendentally reduced experience (the subjective

7 See, e .g. , 1970c : I , 260f . ; Hua XIX/1: 222f . ; 1982/Hua I II/1: §§3 4, 64, 66; 1970a: 13f . ; Hua I : 54f . ; 1970b/Hua VI: §59. 8 1970c: I , 260f ; Hua XIX/1: 22f . On the relation between words and concepts , see Reeder (2009b) . Gendlin (1982) provides a cogent account of var ious hermeneutic elements in phenomenological descr ipti on, such as word choice and its effect upon the descript ion as an interpretat ion of the de facto l ived encounter with the phenomena. 9 1975: 57, cf . 58; 1939: 335, cf . 336. Husser l also refers to this danger in terms of ―natural pre judices‖ ( natürl iche Vormeinungen ) (1964: 41; Hua II : 51) . This cri t ical process brings to mind Bacon‘s idols.

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conscious presence of individual and eidetic intuitions) and, on the other hand, the interpretation and refinement of insights gleaned from this foundation through the de jure epistemological foundation of the hermeneutic fitt ing of words (and concepts) to those transcendental elements in order to produce an accurate description that is to be shard with one‘s scientific peers: ―In addition to t his difficulty of reaching firm results, capable of being self -evidently reidentified on many occasions, we have the further difficulty of stating results, of communicating them to others.‖10 This description, like any presentation of scientific evidence, i s shared with one‘s scientific colleagues (in lectures and publications), and then is subjected to the processes of intersubjectively critical validation (that is, of interpretation and argumentation). Husserl refers to this process of validation in various contexts, as ―mutual criticism‖ (1970a: 5; Hua I: 47), and ―reciprocal correction‖ (1970b: 163; Hua VI: 166), stressing (1969: 176; Hua XVII: 184) that in scientific disciplines ―evidence of every sort…should be reflectively considered, reshaped, analyzed, purified and improved; and…afterwards it can be, and ought to be, taken as an exemplary pattern, a norm.‖ Just as we are reciprocally corrected by others in everyday life: ―Likewise as a transcendental ego (as living in the absolute attitude [that is, under the reduction]), I find myself as determined from the outside‖ (1969: 276; Hua XVII: 282). Husserl explicates this external determination of the ego by others in transcendental intersubjectivity as follows:

It is obvious that, transcendentally speaki ng, I can be condit ioned by something ―external‖, by something that goes beyond my self -contained ownness, only if i t has the sense , ―someone e lse‖, and, in a thoroughly understandable manner, gains and legitimates in me i ts acceptance as being another tra nscendental ego. S tart ing from here, the possibi l i ty and the sense, not only of a plural ity of co-ex ist ing absolute subjects (―monads‖), but also of subjects who aff ect one another transcendental ly and, in cooperat ive acts, const itute community-products [Gemeinshaft sgebilde ] as their works, becomes clear. 11

Whether as phenomenologists or as everyday humans we are

10 1970c: I , 255; Hua XIX/1: 15. On the not ions of the de facto and de jure foundations of phenomenological c la ims see Huertas -Jourda (1983) . Huertas -Jourda stresses the epistemological nature of these foundations, but they also methodological ly found his regional ontology. 11 1969: 276, my brackets; Hua XVII: 282. Cf. 1982/Hua II I/1 : §145.


corrected by others. Despite the differences between the ―community-product‖ of everyday truths (such as the number of trees in a glade or houses on a block), or of scientific truths (such as the atomic weight of hydrogen or the noesis -noema structure of intentional acts), in both cases the objective ―community -truths‖ rely upon the public critique of claims based in experience, experience that typically becomes public through language and discourse. It is in this sense that each individual, as a transcendental ego, is surrounded by ―co -subjects that present themselves as transcendental in my transcendental life, in the transcendental we-community which is co-presented…[in] transcendental intersubjectivity .‖12 Otherwise stated, whether in the natural attitude or in the reduced, transcendental attitude, each of us as an ego is reciprocally corrected by others (largely through language), testing our de facto individual experiences through critical, de jure discourse (and behavior) with others, through a process of establishing both pre -scientific and scientific evidence. We may therefore see scientific evidence as a more rigorous but parallel version of the critical process of objective validation that is already an important feature of the role of prescientific Lebenswelt, and phenomenological evidence as a form of scientific evidence that requires the further critical process of phenomenological reductio n.

In phenomenological description a ―significant transformation‖ of the sense of terms taken from ordinary language and from the philosophical tradition is made necessary by ―the break with naivete

12 1989: 421; Hua V: 153. A ful l account of the const i tution of transcendental intersubject ivity would take us too far af ield. At base it involves demonstrat ing that in the expl icat ion of the various structures of the transcendental ego is discovered to include other transcendental egos: ―within myself , within the l imits of my transcendental ly reduced pure conscious l ife , I experience the world ( including others)‖ (1970a: 91; Hua I : 123) ; ―there are transcendentally const ituted in me, the transcendental ego, not only other egos but a lso ( as const ituted, in turn, by the transcendental inters ubjectivi ty accruing to me thanks to thanks to the const itution in me of others) an Object ive world common to us a ll‖ (1970a: 84; Hua I : 117) . And this ―transcendental intersubject ivity has an intersubject ive sphere of ownness, in which it const itutes the Objective world‖ (1970a: 107; Hua I : 137) connected in an ―open community of monads , which we designate as transcendenta l intersubjec t ivi ty ‖ (1970a: 130; Hua I : 158) . Thus ―self -examination…as it progresses, i t takes on the form of transcendental intersubject ive se lf -examination, without any essential change in i ts s tyle‖ (1969: 276 ; Hua XVII : 282) . In part, this is explained by the intentional i ty, of consciousness , according to which the tradit ional distinct ion between ―subject ive‖ an ―objective‖ ( includin g the object ivity of others) is seen to be based in a faulty cartesian interpretat ion of the ego: speaking experient ia lly, there is no ego without others.

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brought about by the transcendental -phenomenological reorientation,‖ that is, by the phenomenological reduction, 13 and the resultant methodological confrontation of terminology first with the data of phenomenologically reduced intuition and then with intersubjective interpretation and critique. Husserl describes this first confrontation in several places, e.g.:

We inspect [mental processes —Erlebnisse ] , and while inspecting them we can observe their essence , their consti tution, their intr insic character, and we can make our speech conform in a pure measure to wha t is ―seen‖ in i ts ful l c lar ity. 14

The ―inspection‖ here is not passive but critical and

―vocationally‖ driven by the role that the phenomenologist intends this inspection of Erlebnisse to play in the science of phenomenology (1970b: 136f.; Hua VI: 139 f. ). The data of reduced consciousness are not irrefutable evidence encountered in an instant of subjective experience, but rather irrefutably given experience that is to be used as data for phenomenological description, a description that is intended to resolve, modify, clarify or otherwise aid in dealing with a philosophical problem, in confrontation with scientific peers, through discourse, interpretation and argumentation. These linguistic and hermeneutic elements of Husserl‘s phenomenological method seem to be ignored by many of Husserl‘s critics. 15

Husserl again characterizes the relation between what is here

13 1970b/Hua VI: §59. Cf. 1970c: I , 238; Hua XVIII : 246. 14 1964: 24, my brackets ; Hua II : 31. Cf. 1982 /Hua I II/1: §§84, 85, 124; and 1977: 66f . ; Hua IX: 90. Dauenhauer (1976: 76) notes that ― the quest for apodict ici ty or indubitabil i ty at the predicat ive level is rendered senseful by what is given in passive experience.‖ The ―rendered senseful‖ here refers to the intuit ive evidence upon which the phenomenological descript ion is based. According to the present discussion, Dauenhauer‘s c laim needs clar if ication: (a) here the phrase ―passive experience‖ refers to the de fac to givenness of experience, however this ―passive givenness‖ is achieved through an act ive sc ient if ic pursuit that horizonal ly dr ives the confrontation with this evidence as a part of the ―vocation‖ of phenomenology— to put this in Heideggerian terms, the phenomenologist seeks the ―Being of X‖ (where X is the theme of the phenomenological invest igat ion), yet must ― let the Being of X appear,‖ i .e . not project or otherwise interfere with the l ived evidence; and (b) another layer of the rendering senseful of a phenomenological descript ion takes pl ace in the intersubject ive discussion and cri t ique of the phenomenological descr iption itse lf . 15 See, for instance, Murray (1988: 503, 511) , Magnus (1988: 3) , and Derrida (1973: 9f , 86) .


called de facto experience and de jure critique in science in general in §5 of the Cartesian Meditations:

…the sciences aim at predications that e xpress completely and with evident f i tness what is beheld pre -predicat ively…Owing to the instabi l ity and ambiguity of common language and i ts much too great complacency about completeness of expression, we [phenomenologists] require, even where we use its means of expression, a new legitimation of s ignif ications by orienting them according to accrued insights, and a f ix ing of words as expressing the s ignif ications thus legitimated. 16

The zig-zag between these two foundations as it occurs

specifically in phenomenology is discussed in §13 of Cartesian Meditations: ―the scientific efforts for which we found the collective name, transcendental phenomenology, must proceed in two stages.‖17 The first of these stages refers to the role of intuition, of appeal to the de facto evidence revealed by the transcendental -phenomenological reduction: ―In the f irst stage the realm accessible to transcendental self -experience…must be explored.‖ Even in this first stage, the ―exploration‖ of transcendental self -experience is far from a mere passive encounter with ―absolutely certain‖ data of consciousness; it is active and critical, guided by what philosophical hermeneutics calls preunderstanding .18 In phenomenology the horizonal preunderstanding that methodologically guides the thematic focus of intuition includes problems arising from the history of philosophy (e.g., the problem of psychologism that led to the Logical Investigations , the problem of ―first beginnings‖ that inspired the Cartesian Mediations ), the personal interests of a particular phenomenologist (e.g., Husserl‘s focus upon phenomenology as a ―rigorous science‖ —a focus rejected by many hermeneutic phenomenologists), and the ―vocational‖ interest of professorial life. 19

In the methodological second stage the transcend ental evidence derived from the first step is subjected to de jure intersubjective

16 1970a: 13f . ; Hua I : 54, my brackets . It should be noted here that the natural and social sc iences also require ―a new legitimation of signif icat ions by or ient ing them according to accrued insights…[etc.] ,‖ but that phenomenology has a unique form of legit imation based in the phenomenological reduct ion. 17 1970a/Hua I : §13 . The quotat ions in this and the fol lowing two paragraphs are from pp. 29f (Hua I : 68f . ) , unless otherwise noted. 18 See Ricoeur (1981: 90) . 19 1970b: 136f . ; Hua VI: 139f . Other phenomenologists have their own part icular interests, e .g. , Heidegger‘s focus on Being, Sartre ‘s on the imagination, and Merleau-Ponty‘s on the body.

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critique: ―The second stage of phenomenological research would be precisely the criticism of transcendental experience and then the criticism of all transcendental cognition .‖ Such critique requires language, communication, argumentation and individual and collective interpretation—all elements central to hermeneutic philosophy, but in phenomenology used to critique transcendental experience, resulting in unique problems of i nterpretation and of the meaning of terms. This de jure critique extends (through ―criticism of all transcendental cognition‖) to what Husserl calls the phenomenology of phenomenology.

According to Husserl the intersubjective critique of transcendental experience constitutes ―A science whose peculiar nature is unprecedented.‖ This new form of science is a transcendental critique precisely because its two stages connect the appeal to subjective, transcendental experience with its on -going intersubjective critique in scientific discourse, discourse with both logical and hermeneutic elements (argumentation and interpretation), that follows a zig -zag (two-stage) path between subjective experience and intersubjective critique. The Epilogue to Ideen I warns that neither the intersubjective critique of phenomenology as a rigorous science nor its sense as a ―science built on an ultimate foundation‖ can be understood without the full (two-stage) ―systematic elaboration of the method of questioning back into the ultimate conceivable presuppositions of knowledge‖ that Husserl characterizes as ―‗transcendental subjectivity‘ (an old term given a new sense)‖ (1989: 406; Hua V: 139). The Idea of Phenomenology describes the relation between the self -given apodictic data of consciousness and the hermeneutic component of fitting language to the data in order to produce a phenomenological description:

…the possibil ity of a cri t ique of cognit ion depends on the demonstrat ion of absolute data which are different f rom even the reduced cog itat iones . To view the matter more precise ly, in the subject-predicate judgments which we make concerning them, we have a lready gone beyond them. If we say: this phenomenon of judgment underl ies this or that phenomenon of imaginat ion, this perceptual phenomenon contains this or that aspect, color content, etc. , and even if , just for the sake of argument, we make these assert ions in the most exact conformity with the givenness of the cogitat io , then the logical forms which we employ, and which are reflected in the l inguist ic expressions themselves, a lready go beyond the mere cog itat iones . A ―something more‖ is involved


which does not at al l consist of a mere agglomeration of new cogitat iones , which are joined to those concerning which we made the assertions, nevertheless they are not what const itute the predicational facts which are the objective correlates of the assert ions.

That cognition, which can br ing to absolute sel f -givenness not only part iculars, but also universals, universa l objects, and un iversa l states of a f fa irs , i s more easi ly conceivable, a t least for anyone who can assume the posi tion of pure ―seeing‖ and can hold al l natural pre judices [natürlicher Vormeinungen ] at arm‘s length. This cognition is of decis ive signif icance for the possi bi l i ty of phenomenology. For i ts special character consists in the fact that it is the analysis of essence and the invest igat ion into essence in the area of pure ―seeing‖ thought and absolute sel f -givenness. 20

The ―something more‖ that is added in fitt ing the experience into

propositional form for a phenomenological description does not , however make language ―primary‖ or productive in the description, because the pre-predicative experience supplies the data guiding the description (which involves choosing terms, based upon reflective judgments about the experience):

We must distinguish the judgment in the broadest sense…and evidence in the broadest sense from pre -predicative judgment and from pre-predicative evidence respectively. Predicative includes pre-predicative evidence. …the expression as such has its own comparat ively good or bad way of f it t ing what is meant or i tsel f given… (1970a: 11; Hua I : 52)

This good or bad way of fitting a phenomenological description

to ―the things themselves‖ is the resu lt of analysis and investigation, as noted at the end of the quote above from The Idea of Phenomenology . Thus the hermeneutic interpretational procedure of fitting words to what is being described is active and guided by the preunderstanding of the phenomenological researcher and by the choice of words and sentences, the creation of neologisms and metaphors, etc.

The two-stages of this zig-zag are both included in the full phenomenological method, despite the fact that many discussions of the method—by Husserl and others—tend to focus only on the role of subjective experience and leave unmentioned the many hermeneutic and argumentative elements of the scientific discourse of phenomenology. Nonetheless Husserl also insists on the need for

20 1964: 40f . ; Hua II : 50f . Cf. 1982/Hua II I/1 : §6.

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―mutual study‖ and ―mutual criticism‖ in this science, 21 a science that he characterizes as ―a science of concrete subjectivity, as given in actual and possible transcendental experience,‖ and ―the science of Objective subjectivity‖ (1970a: 30 Hua I: 68); the subjective aspect of this science is the stage of appeal to inner experience, and the objective aspect is that of intersubjective critical discourse.

Because for Husserl phenomenology is a science we can see that even his appeal to apodictic evidence itself methodological ly involves both transcendental elements (conscious de facto presence of experience, with its temporal and vocational horizons) and hermeneutic elements (linguistic and intersubjective critical discourse); this is a far cry from the traditional concept of ―absolute knowledge‖ stemming from Descartes. 22 Partially in response to this erroneous traditional understanding of apodicticity, Husserl explains the interplay between the de jure foundation of phenomenological evidence and its de facto foundation in The Idea of Phenomenology , where he establishes first that ―The method of the critique of cognition is the phenomenological method‖ (1964: 1; Hua II: 3); and then notes that this method begins with de facto founded evidence: ―The cogitationes are the first absolute data.‖ 23 In Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl notes the untenability of the traditional concept of apodictic evidence precisely due to its failure to consider the horizonal features of both temporal mooring and preunderstanding:

The continual obstacle that may have been sensed during this exposition is owing sole ly to the usual , fundamentally wrong, interpretat ion of evidence, an interpretation made possible by the utter lack of a serious phenomenological analysis of the effect ive performance common to a l l evidence. Thus it happens that evidence is usual ly conceived as an absolute apodictici ty, an absolute securi ty against deceptions —an apodictici ty quite incomprehensibly ascribed to a s ingle mental process torn from

21 1970a: 5 , 64 n. 1 ; Hua I : 47. The note on p. 64 of the English translation does not appear in the Husserl iana edit ion. 22 It is interest ing to note here that even the empiricists Locke ( An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I , Chapter II , §19) and Berkeley ( A Treat ise Concerning the Princip les o f Human Knowledge, Introduct ion, §22 –25) seem to hold that intuit ive evidence is inco rrigible , a view rejected by Husserl (1975: 56f . ; 1939: 335f . ) . 23 1964: 1f . ; Hua II : 3f . . Cf . (1982: 126; Hua II I/1: 118) , where Husserl refers to the ―absolute [de facto ] phenomenological datum‖ yie lded by the phenomenological reduct ion.


the concrete, essent ially uni tary, context of subject ive mental l iving. (1969: 156f ; Hua XVII : 165)

The key phrase here is ―torn from the concrete, essentially

unitary, context of subjective mental living.‖ What can this mean in light of the phenomenological method? Here it essential ly implies two distinct things: first, every lived experience occurs in a ―now‖ that must be conceived as ―only an ideal limit, something abstract, which can be nothing by itself‖ (1991: 42; Hua X: 40), with the result that any lived evidence that is to serve as an epistemological foundation for a phenomenological description or argument appears embedded in its horizons, including the living temporal flow of a particular ego with its methodological preunderstanding. In order to isolate, remember and communicate the nature of this lived evidence in the ―vocational time‖ of phenomenology (1970b: 136f; Hua VI: 139f.), one begins from an instance of lived evidence that occurs, as an event, at a certain time and to a certain person. Second, the vocation of phenomenology also includes the relation between the moment of phenomenologically reduced reflection (e.g., ―to me, now‖) and its role in the scientific method of phenomenology: it is essentially intersubjective because, as evidence achieved through analysis and investigation guided by preunderstanding and critique, it is essentially a shared, linguistic, public and objective feature of a science. The same may be said of any scientific evidence, except that only in phenomenology does transcendental intuition play its key role.

This scientific method of intersubjective critique removes Husserl‘s phenomenology from any idealistic interpretation of phenomenological evidence, and requires a radical reinterpretation (if not rejection) of the traditional concept of apod ictic evidence. Thus Husserl affirms that, ―Even an ostensibly apodictic evidence can become disclosed as deception, and in that event, presupposes a similar evidence by which it is ‗shattered‘‖ (1969: 156; Hua XVII: 164). If new evidence may unseat an ear lier ostensibly apodictic evidence can this new evidence itself be apodictic? Can any new evidence be immune from deception and criticism? If one wishes (as I do not) to retain the traditional term ―apodictic evidence‖ some further clarification is necessary. Husserl supplies such a clarification in Ideen I :

Evidence is, in fact , not some sort of consciousness -index attached to a judgment (and usually one speaks of such evidence only in the case of judgment) , cal l ing to us l ike a mystic voice from a better world: Here is the truth; —as though such a voice would

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have something to say to free spir its l ike us and would not have to show i ts t i t le to legitimacy. We no longer need to argue with skeptic ism, nor take into consideration objections of the old type which cannot overcome the theory of evidence which resorts to indices and feeling: whether an evi l genius (the Cartesian f ic tion) or a fa teful change in the factual course of the world could make it happen that just any false judgment would be outfi tted wit h this index, this feeling of inte l lectual necessi ty, of the transcendent oughtness; and the l ike. 24

The reference to the Cartesian fiction of self -evidence is clear

here: phenomenological evidence, not being the evidence of an isolated and worldless ego, must be subjected to intersubjective critique, and thus linguistically formulated to make this critique possible, both elements that Descartes ignored. But perhaps it is not as clear that Husserl has Kant (among others) in mind in his reference to ―a fateful change in the factual course of the world‖ that could alter, e.g., the pure concepts of the understanding, if they were moored in a human consciousness that has not been subjected to phenomenological reduction and on-going critique, resulting in the all-important distinction between Kant‘s idealistic ―construction‖ and Husserl‘s non -idealistic ―constitution‖—the source of Husserl‘s accusation that Kant is ―species relativist,‖ guilty of anthropologism (1970c: I , 138; Hua XVIII: 122).

Landgrebe echoes this critique of the traditional concept of apodictic knowledge in the introduction to Experience and Judgment , when he notes that philosophers of this tradition ―believed that they could measure every other item of cognition against ideal, absolute, apodict ically certain knowledge,‖ while remaining unclear about ―the occasioning of self -evidence‖(1973:18; 1948: 10). Nonetheless Husserl was clear that his rejection of absolute knowledge did not

24 Husser l (1982/Hua I II/1: §145) . The context and content of this quotation justify interpreting his comments on ‗evidence‘ here to be taken as comments on a tradit ion of ‗apodictic evidence. ‘ Carr (1985) traces this notion to Kant, noting how an analysis of the very conc epts surrounding the issue of ― the structure of cognit ion and experience‖ (21) wil l natural ly ― lead in a relat ivist ic direct ion‖ (20) , s ince such analysis wil l ―[render] re lat ivism plausible‖ (21, my brackets) . Our focus here upon de jure foundation indicates how transcendental phenomenology may perform such analyses without being forced into relativism; there is a necessary subject ive foundation in l ived evidence, even though i t needs to be subjected to intersubjective cri t ique. However no sc ient if ic c laim is free from what Felix Kaufmann cal ls the Pr inciple of Permanent Control, according to which scient if ic cla ims are a lways subject to being overturned in l ight of further evidence (1936: 125; 1938: 446, 448) .


result in scepticism or relativism, since there are cases of indubitable knowledge:

In individual cases the f lux of sense -experience , or also of specif ic mental experiences, may very well leave room for doubt : this is not possible in all cases. Where differences are gross, a self -evidence is at tainable which renders al l doubt unjust if iable. 25

Thus we are sometimes warranted to claim that, at least for now,

a claim is immune from criticism, although no claim can be completely and permanently free from deception and correction based on further information, evidence or ana lysis. It is in this context that Husserl (1975: 60; 1939: 338) compares the production of phenomenological descriptions to the exploration of a new territory, in which one relies upon ―active seeing and describing‖ that is in need of intersubjective correction: ―One will then find some smaller or larger errors to correct just as a second explorer, who follows the footprints of his predecessor and sees the same objects, will consider some improvements to be necessary.‖ This was Husserl‘s way of accepting the finite fallibility of humans while rejecting skeptical-relativistic interpretations of this human condition: the affects of long -term critique need not result in the paralysis or death of science (1982/Hua III/1: §79). As Husserl points out (1975: 56f. ; 1939: 335), inner seeing is on a par with outer seeing: neither is transparent or without the risk of interpretive projection or faulty interpretation (here one thinks Bacon‘s Idols), but nonetheless we can and must rely upon this evidence: ―Granted that there are deceptions in phenomenological seeing because of interpretative projections (deutende Einlegung ), but are there any fewer in the case of external seeing? Is the description of no value because there are deceptions in description?‖ Whether such a concept of evidence merits the adjective ―apodictic‖ is another question. With this discussion of phenomenological method in mind, let us now turn to a common form of criticism of Husserl‘s phenomenology by hermeneutic phenomenologists (and others).

3. Ricoeur‘s Critique of Husserl‘s Idealism: the D etour through Signs

In his ―Phenomenology and Hermeneutics‖ Ricoeur characterizes Husserl‘s phenomenology in terms of five theses, that I paraphrase as follows: (a) The ―ultimate justification‖ of phenomenology is of a

25 Husser l (1970c: I , 419; Hua XIX/1: 210) .

HARRY REEDER | 29

different order than that of the sciences (1981: 102); (b) Phenomenology‘s foundation is in intuition: ―to found is to see‖ (1981: 103); (c) Immanence alone is indubitable: ―This is the central thesis of Husserlian idealism‖ (1981: 103); (d) Subjec tivity is (due to c) ―promoted to the rank of the transcendental…not empirical consciousness‖ (1981: 103); (e) ―The awareness which sustains the work of reflection develops its own ethical implications: reflection is thus the immediately self -responsible act‖ (1981: 104).

Because of these criticisms of phenomenology Ricoeur holds that ―phenomenology cannot constitute itself without a hermeneutical presupposition‖ (1981: 101), since ―…we understand ourselves only by the long detour of the signs of humanity d eposited in cultural works‖ (1981: 143). Thus Ricoeur (1977: 105 –14) feels that phenomenology‘s focus upon intuition ignores or does not do justice to the role of language in forming that intuition, preferring to attribute a reflective capacity to language itself,26 and insisting that ―Husserlian idealism…succumbs to the hermeneutical critique‖ (1981: 102). In replying to this critique I will discuss (a) -(d), and leave aside (e), a separate but related issue. In replying to Ricoeur I find it necessary to say what I often say in answer to my students‘ questions: Definitely yes and no! This is because many times I find in Ricoeur‘s criticisms an element of truth or correctness, but also an element of falsehood or misinterpretation. Thus, before responding more negatively I will attempt to be fair to Ricoeur and mention instances in which there is an element of truth in his criticisms.

Ad (a): For Husserl ―justification‖ in phenomenology is certainly of a different order than it is in the sciences. This is the wh ole point of his rejection of naturalism, based in his identification of the need

26 Ricoeur (1977: 304) . I f ind Ricoeur‘s comment less than c lear, as I don‘t see how language can ―ref lect .‖ Likewise , when Heidegger writes things l ike ―In its essence language is neither expression nor an act ivity of man. Language speaks‖ (1971b: 197) , ―la nguage speak[s] itse lf as language‖ or ―We hear language speaking‖ (1971a: 59, 124) it is clear that these are poet ic sta tements not intended to be taken li tera l ly. In such passages Heidegger and Ricoeur express themselves this way in part to resist the ve ry appeal to subjective reflect ion that is so centra l to Husserl ‘s phenomenology; however where methodology is concerned clar ity is preferable to poetic l icense. This does not mean, of course that Heidegger and Ricoeur are not permitted poetic l icense when not addressing methodology. Nonetheless such views as these are often expressed as methodological cr i t iques of the Husser l‘s ―ideal ism‖ or ―Cartesianism‖: in such cases this cri t ique is misguided, according to the arguments of the present essay.


for the transcendental-phenomenological reduction. In Part I of Crisis Husserl describes this need as resulting from the crisis in the sciences caused by the narrow positivis m of ―facts‖ that resulted from philosophical developments stemming from Modern philosophy. However, Husserl also argues in that text and in his discussion of the theory of science in the Prolegomena of Logical Investigations that phenomenology is a fulfil lment of a more traditional ideal of science dating back to ancient Greece. In the Prolegomena he describes science as essentially a coherent system of grounded validations (1970c: I , Prolegomena, §§6, 7, 63; Hua XVIII). This is the sense in which Husserl (1965; Hua XXV) sees phenomenology as a ―rigorous science.‖ According to this view, all science requires ―justification‖ that in part includes a phenomenological account of the nature of de facto l ived evidence (Erlebnis); thus even the natural sciences require a phenomenological step or stage in their self -understanding—the step cut off by positivism‘s decapitation of philosophy. 27 Nonetheless phenomenology shares with any genuine science the de jure foundational role of intersubjective critique, with all i ts hermeneutic features.

Ad (b): To be sure, it is fair to say that for Husserl phenomenology‘s foundation is in intuition, or ―to found is to see,‖ since it is the de facto confrontation with the lived evidence of transcendentally reduced consciousness th at provides the basic ―data‖ for phenomenological description: ―Ultimately, therefore, all genuine, and, in particular, all scientific knowledge, rests on inner evidence: as far as such evidence extends, the concept of knowledge extends also‖ (1970c: I, 61 ; Hua XVIII: 29). But, as we have seen, it is not fair to suggest that this is the sole foundation for phenomenology as a science. Husserl is aware from the start that a science or a scientific philosophy like phenomenology requires careful attention to language; in the introduction to the Volume II of the Logical Investigations he insists that ―linguistic discussions‖ are required as a preparation for pure logic and the pure phenomenology of experience (―judgements stemming from higher intellectual regions, and in particular from the regions of science, could barely arise without verbal expression‖ —1970c: I, 250; Hua XIX/1: 8), and that such discussions must not be merely empirical and grammatical but epistemological, in order to bring the objects of intuition to expression in descriptions of essential concepts 27 1970b: 9 ; Hua VI: 7 . Husser l probably had in mind here the posi tivism of Comte, Mach and Carnap. Of course not al l posi t ivists are a l ike, and some seem immune to this cr it ic ism.

HARRY REEDER | 31

(1970c: I , 249; Hua XIX/1: 6). Having expressed this fundamental requirement Husserl devotes the first four of the six Logical Investigations to central features of language and its role in scientific and philosophical investigation, such as meaning -acts and the problem of universals (Investigations I and II), the conceptual relations of wholes and parts (Investigation III), and the a priori ―deep structure‖ (not in Chomsky‘s sense) of grammar (Investigation IV). With all this attention to language in the founding work of the phenomenological movement, it is indeed odd that many critics and friends alike of Husserl‘s phenomenology still regard him as having paid scant or no serious attention to language and its central role in philosophy.

Another feature of this phase of Ricoeur‘s hermeneutic critique is his rejection of Husserl‘s very empiricism: ―is it not astonishing that in spite of (and thanks to) the critique of empiricism, experience in the strict empirical sense is surpassed only in an ‗experience‘?‖ (1981: 103). One must say two things in response: first, Ricoeur seems to ignore the widened or deepened sense of empirical data that is the source of Husserl critique of traditional empiricism (see Ad (d), below); second, to what else besides experience can philosophers appeal? Here Husserl would apply Kantian - and Berkeleyan-style arguments to the effect that philosophers cannot appeal to anything else, or at least not if they speak with evidence (1970a: 12f.; Hua I: 52–54). This is the point at which Ricoeur and Heidegger seek to make language itself the subject of active verbs, e.g., ―language reflects,‖ ―language speaks.‖ This hardly seems helpful if we are truly speaking of philosophical evidence and argument as distinct from philosophical speculation or musing .28

Ad (c): To say that for Husserl immanence alone is indubitable appears to fit with Husserl‘s discussions of apodicticity in some of the passages from the Logical Investigations mentioned in §2 above. But there and elsewhere Husserl stresses the on -going and historical role of scientific discourse, and, as we have seen, rejects the notion that immanence is ever permanently immune to deception and criticism. In science immanence is a necessa ry but never a sufficient condition of evidence, and is thus not indubitable except as a stage or pole of evidence. Some things do indeed seem, after long critical investigation, to be indubitable and beyond further critique. Nonetheless one must realize t hat it is unwise to assume

28 See note 26, above.


dogmatically that there could be no future discovery or evidence against even seemingly indubitable claims. 29

Ad (d): When Ricoeur claims that for Husserl subjectivity is (due to c) ―promoted to the rank of the transcendental…not empirical consciousness‖ (1981: 103), he is again in a sense correct. Certainly for Husserl the methodological core of phenomenology i s the shift from ordinary or naive consciousness—the consciousness forming the foundation of traditional empiricism, accor ding to which the existence of the world, and of human mental states as part of that world are unproblematic—to transcendentally reduced consciousness. However, for Husserl transcendental phenomenology is a newer and truer form of empiricism (1970b: 249; H ua VI: 252f.), and thus ―we [phenomenologists] are the genuine positivists‖ (1982: 39; Hua III/1: 45), because, unlike traditional forms of empiricism, Husserl (following Brentano) allows the living evidence of consciousness (in all its richness, including the phenomenological explication of the constitution of others in mutually correcting transcendental intersubjectivity) also to serve as empirical evidence—a form of evidence that traditional empiricism had (after Hume) treated as increasingly suspect, until it was wholly rejected by positivism (Comte), psychology (behaviorism, stimulus -response theory) and analytic philosophy (as broadly as in Carnap, Quine, Popper and Wittgenstein, who all wish to shift philosophical focus from experience to language and logic, in the name of avoiding ―the subjective‖). In addition, some layers or strata of scientific discourse open up hermeneutic problems even at the traditional empirical level, including communication, interpretation, language -games, etc.—problems that many analytic philosophers continue simply to ignore because of their refusal to address subjectivity.

4. Conclusion

Our investigation has shown that Husserl‘s phenomenological

method involves both appeals to the immediate de facto experience of transcendentally reduced consciousness, and also to the on -going intersubjective critique of scientific discourse, with the hermeneutic problems of fitting words to the transcendental experience, of communicating one‘s phenomenological descriptions to others, and of the argumentation concerning the adequacy (and indeed sometimes apodicticity, in a new sense of the term) of a 29 Even in the a priori systems of mathematics there are new dis coveries that, as in the case of Gödel ‘s proof, require radical re - thinking of long-standing assumptions.

HARRY REEDER | 33

phenomenological description as an element of scientific evidence. Thus phenomenology is not in need of a ―long detour of signs‖ because its method already includes careful attention to the roles of language, interpretation and critical discourse. Having shown that, from early to late, Husserl‘s phenomenological method includes two strata, stages or levels, one transcendental and one hermeneutic , we may say that according to Husserl himself phenomenology is indeed a transcendental-hermeneutic discipline.

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Heidegger, Martin (1971a) On the Way to Language, tr. Peter D. Hertz, (N.Y.: Harper & Row Publishers).

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Husserl, Edmund (1970b). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology : An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Tr. David Carr. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press). Hua. VI.

Husserl, Edmund (1970c) Logical Investigations , 2 vols. , tr. J. N. Findlay (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Hua. XVIII, XIX/1, XIX/2.

Husserl, Edmund (1973) Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic , rev. & ed. Ludwig Landgrebe, tr. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press). Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik , (Hamburg: Claassen & Goverts, 1948).

Husserl, Edmund (1975) Introduction to the Logical Investigations. Tr. P.J. Bossert and C.H. Peters, ed. Eugen Fink. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff). Originally published as ―Entwurf einer ‗Vorrede‘ zu den Logischen Untersuchungen (1913),‖ Tijdschrift voor Philosophie I (1939), pp. 106 –133; continued under same title in Tijdschrift voor Philosophie I (1939), pp. 319–339.

Husserl, Edmund (1977) Phenomenological Psychology , tr. John Scanlon, (The Hague: Nijhoff), pp. 66 -67. Hua. IX.

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Husserl, Edmund (1991) On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Tr. John Barnett Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers). Hua. X.

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Vargas Guillén, Germán and Reeder, Harry P. (2009) Ser y Sentido: Hacia una fenomenología trascendental -hermenéutica , (Colección Textos de Filosofía), (Bogotá: Editorial San Pablo).

From „We‟ to „I‟ and Back: Still Learning from the New School Three Lester Embree (Florida Atlantic University)

ABSTRACT: After a sketch of the New School phenomenology led

by Dorion Cairns, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz in the 1950s and ‗60s, I follow Cairns and Schutz on how phenomenological reflection begins from intersubjectivity and the first person plural , moves by the egological reduction and other procedures to individual subjectivity and the first person singular, and finally moves from there to intersubjectivity and me mbership in social groups on the transcendental as well as worldly levels.

It makes a great difference in the clarity of the phenomenological analyses when the phenomenologist sees whether he is presupposing transcendental intersubjectivity or presupposing only his own subjectivity in its status as prior to the transcendental intersubjectivity. 1

1. Introduction: Some Historical Context

―The New School Three‖ are Dorion Cairns (1901 -1973), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and Alfred Schutz (1899-1959). They taught phenomenology on the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research during what I call the ―Golden Age.‖ Schutz began teaching ―Methodology of the Social Sciences‖ in philosophy as well as sociology in 1951, C airns started at the school in 1954, and Gurwitsch came from Brandeis to replace the just deceased Schutz in 1959. Cairns retired in 1968, but taught two courses after that. Both he and Gurwitsch died in 1973.

Complementing these three was Werner Marx, who taught the late Heidegger as well as Aristotle and German Idealism and went on to the Husserl -Heidegger chair at Freiburg i. Br. Subsequently, J. N. Mohanty tried valiantly to get the tradition continued and later there were Thomas Seebohm and other visit ing teachers, e.g., David

1 Dorion Cairns in Lester Embree, ―Dorion Cairns and Alfred Schutz on the Egological Reduct ion,‖ in Hisashi Nasu, Lester Embree, George Psathas, and I l ja Srubar, eds. Alfred Schutz and h is Intel l ectual Partners (Konstanz: UVK, 2009) , p.201; hereafter this source wil l be cited textually with merely page numbers.

38 | 41ST ANNUAL HUSSERL CIRCLE MEETING

Carr and Robert Sokolowski, but the program was no longer unique in bringing phenomenology to the USA because it was also being established at Duquesne University, and elsewhere.

While the New School Three had learned their pheno menology directly from Edmund Husserl at Freiburg during the 1920s and ‗30s and organized themselves under Marvin Farber‘s leadership in relation to Phenomenology and Phenomenological Research just before the war, later importers of the orientation also st udied other figures, especially Heidegger, Merleau -Ponty, and Gadamer, in Europe after the war. The 1960s was the time in the USA of founding various book series, journals, and professional societies devoted to phenomenology, the Husserl Circle included. S ome New School students remained in contact with one another over the years after graduation. In philosophy they chiefly included Maurice Natanson, Fred Kersten, Richard Zaner, Lester Embree, Giuseppina Moneta, Jorge García-Gomez, William McKenna, Osborne Wiggins, Gilbert Null, and Robert Jordan and in sociology Thomas Luckmann and Helmut Wagner.

New School phenomenology has typically three features: (1) while phenomenology in Europe after the war shifted its focus to existentialism and hermeneutics, Husse rl‘s central concern with Wissenschaftslehre, i.e. , the theory of science, was continued by the New School Three and some of their students; (2) while most others have considered phenomenology exclusively a philosophical school of thought, Cairns and Gurwitsch followed Schutz with multidisciplinary interests in the social sciences and especially psychology; and (3), while much of the needed scholarship in the forms of translating and commentary has always been done by New Schoolers, what was conspicuously exemplified has been the fundamental task of continuing phenomenological investigation. But today when most soi-disant ‗phenomenology‘ is merely history of a tendency in early 20 th century thought, i.e., an area of scholarship, and what is most needed is ongoing investigation, i.e. , of reflective analysis of encounterings and things -as-encountered. There is now too much philology and not enough phenomenology.

Speaking now of myself, I confess that in research I have contributed chiefly to scholarship on phenomenology through, among other things, currently leading works editions of Cairns, Gurwitsch, and Schutz, but I have also always produced phenomenological investigations and increasingly do so of late under the heading of ‗reflective analysis.‘ 2

2 Anális is ref l exivo . Una primera introducción a la Fenomenológica / Refl ec t ive

LESTER EMBREE | 39

What I wish to tell about in this essay is what I have recently learned from two of the New School Three now practically 40 years after receiving my degree. This learning occurred chiefly while interpreting some letters and manuscripts as well as texts under the heading, ―Dorion Cairns and Alfred Schutz on the Egological Reduction.‖ What I learned pertains to the theory of the cultural sciences and thus to a frame of reference I have from Schutz, who considered his work an extension to the social and cultural scienc es of Husserl‘s science theory. 3 I had read Gurwitsch‘s ―The Common -Sense World as Social Reality—A Discourse on Alfred Schutz‖ 4 just before I began at the school in summer 1962 and had first read Schutz‘s Collected Papers, vol. I5 during the summer of 1963. Having also sat in on a course on Schutz jointly taught by Gurwitsch and Luckmann and then taken one on him by Luckmann, I read the English translation of the Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1932).6 My interest in the theory of the cultural scie nces began at

Analysis. A First Introduct ion to Phenomenology , trans. into Cast il ian by Luis Ramán Rabanaque (Morel ia : Editor ia l J i tanjáfora, 2003, 543 pp.) Original Engl ish as Reflect ive Analysis (Bucharest : Zeta Books, 2006, 196 pp.) ; Лестер Эмбри Рефлексивный анализ . Первоначальное введение в феноменологию, trans. Victor Moltchanov (Moscova: Tr iquadrata , 2005, 223 pp.) ; [ Tsukaeru Gensho-gaku , useful phenomenology] (Tokyo, 2007) ; Analiza ref l eksyjn , (Warsaw, 2007) ;

反思性分析：現象學研究入門 (Taiwan, 2007; a lso from Peking University Press ,

2007) ; Anal iza Refl ex ivă (Cluj Napoca : Casa Cărţ i i de Şt iinţă, 2007) ; Analyse réf lex ive, t rans. Mathieu Trichet, (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2009) and Environment, Technology, Just i f i cat ion. Bucharest: Zeta Books, 200 9, also to be published Casti l ian, Chinese , and Japanese. 3 ―To Husserl ‘s l ist I would l ike to add a social science which, while l imited to the social sphere , is of an eidetic character. The task <of such a socia l sc ience> would be the intentional analysis of those manifold forms of higher - level social acts and social formations which are founded on the —already executed—const itut ion of the a lter ego. This can be achieved in stat ic and genet ic analyses, and such an interpretat ion would accordingly have to de monstrate the aprior istic structures of the social sc iences. — Of necessi ty the preceding expositions are rather incomplete and unfortunately of ten inexact. Nevertheless, they may have conveyed to the reader an idea of the fundamental signif icance of Husse r l ‘s invest igations not only for pure philosophy but also for al l the human sc iences [ Geisteswissenschaft en ] and especial ly for the socia l sc iences.‖ Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. IV (1996) , p. 164. 4 Socia l Research, Vol. XXIX, Spring 1962 and rep rinted as Introduction to Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, ed. I lse Schutz (The Hague: Mart inus Ni jhoff , 1964) . 5 Ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Ni jhoff , 1962) ; hereafter c i ted as ―CP I .‖ 6 Alfred Schutz, Phenomenology of the Socia l World , trans . George Walsh and


the New School.

2. Reductions from Intersubjectivity

A distinction became clear for Cairns on the last day he saw Husserl:

Speaking afterwards with Fink, I observed that I thought that Husser l does not distinguish egologica l from primordi a l reduction as Fink does in his Entwurf [draft] for the Sixth Meditat ion . I saw then from Fink‘s reply that there has been on my part a fa ilure to dist inguish terminological ly : egologica l reduct ion so far as I see, is the reduction of the ful l intersubjec tive world to i ts sta tus as the correlate of my acts, including those in which I intend other selves and their const itut ive act ivi ty. Pr imordia l reduction is an abstractive reduct ion of the egologica l ly reduced world to that part of it which is not the correlate of the consti tut ive act ivity of other-selves-as- intended-in-my-acts. I have previously treated these two reduct ions in a lump and cal led the whole ―egological‖

or ―primordia l‖ indif ferent ly . 7

On this account, Husserl‘s egological reduction is at l east part of what can be said to be Schutz‘s recourse to so -called ‗methodological individualism,‘ which in the first part of his Aufbau he praised in Georg Simmel and Max Weber for introducing into social science and himself practiced thereafter. This con trasts with so-called ‗methodological collectivism‘ of Talcott Parsons, for example, who begins with the group rather than the individual member.

What I had not recognized previously is that prior to adopting the attitude that Schutz recommended, we are i n an attitude that Husserl called ‗intersubjective.‘ This signifies that we are each subjectivities alongside one another and share the world that is for us objective or, better, ‗public‘ together. In yet other words, we are first of all members of a ‗We.‘ One also often hears it put these days that phenomenology relies on the ‗first person perspective,‘ but one should then ask whether this terminology adapted from linguistics needs to be qualified as ‗singular‘ or ‗plural.‘

Both Cairns and Schutz hold that we must start from intersubjectivity or in the first person plural perspective when we begin to reflect. This would originally be in everyday life and thus

Frederick Lehnert (Evanston, ILL: Northwestern University Press , 1967) ; hereafter c ited textual ly as ―PSW.‖ 7 Dorion Cairns, Conversat ions with Husser l and Fink (The Hague: Mart inus Ni jhoff , 1976) , p. 102 .

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the natural practical attitude, but it first holds after transcendental phenomenological epochē , reduction, and purification has been performed, which Cairns emphasizes. Thus, already in his Introduction to Husserl‘s Phenomenology (1934), certainly the first course on phenomenology taught at the New School, Cairns writes as follows in his lecture script:

Through the transcendental reduct ion we become aware of the transcendental sphere as a sphere of intersubject ivi ty. I as transcendental ego intend the world as something which other transcendental egos intend. My transcendental awareness has for me as transcendental ego the sense of being one transcendental ego among others (p . 179, cf . pp. 201, 202, 204) .

For me previously and it seems for many other Husserlians, it

had been taken for granted that one begins in the first person singular and assumes that the individual was a concretum. This ―knee jerk individualism,‖ as I am tempted to call it, seems part of Eurocentrism in contrast with the alleged tendency in East Asian cultures to consider persons as always already members of groups. Perhaps it is presupposed in the so-called ‗Cartesian Way‘ in Husserlian phenomenology as well.

For me this lesson has led to some reconfiguration of my understanding of Schutzian science theory. Before presenting that, however, it needs to be said that Cairns ‘ notes on conversations with Schutz in New York in 1937 report Schutz considered ―the reduction to the primordial sphere and the egological reduction in the Meditations a ‗trick,‘ an illegitimate procedure‖ and that then ―Schutz maintain[ed] that the transcendental reduction is an egological reduction and that therefore there is no second, egological reduction‖ (p.189). Hence Schutz does not offer a conventional interpretation.

In 1941 Schutz then asked Cairns to comment on the section in the manuscript for his essay, ―Scheler‘s Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General Thesis of the Alter Ego‖ published the next year. Due to Cairns ‘ comments, Schutz substitutes ―my own peculiar sphere‖ for ―the primordial or pure egological sphere‖ (p. 195 n. 19), Cairns also objecting that ―primordial‖ and ―egological‖ are not synonyms in Husserl (ibid., n. 20).

Schutz then summarizes Husserl as follows:

Having performed the transcendental reduction and analyzed the const itut ional problems of the consciousness buil t up by the


activi t ies of the transcendental subjectivi ty , [Husser l] singles out within the transcendental f ie ld what he ca lls ―my own pecul iar sphere‖ by e liminat ing the const itut ive activi t ies which are immediate ly or mediately related to the subject ivit[ ies] of Other s. This is done by abstracting from all the ―meanings‖ referr ing to Others and consequently by withdrawing from surrounding Nature its character of intersubject ivity. Nature is then no longer common to us a ll . What remains is strict ly my private world in t he most radical sense . Within this my own peculiar sphere, however, certa in objects emerge which by ―passive synthesis‖ ca lled ―Pairing‖ (accouplement ) or ―coupling‖ are interpreted as analogous to my own body and are therefore apperceived as other people‘s bodies (p. 195) .

Cairns responds to some of Schutz‘s objections. ―First, it is hard

to understand how the abstraction from all meaning referring to Others could be performed in the required radical manner in order to isolate my own particular sphere, si nce it is exactly the non-reference to the Other which constitutes the line of demarcation of the sphere of what is peculiar to my own concrete transcendental ego‖ (p. 197) Cairns responds, ―But Husserl goes on to elaborate the positive characteristics of what is ‗my own‘—a characterization that in no way presupposes the concept of ‗an other.‘ The indirect characterization as ‗non -other‘ is not primary or fundamental but secondary and derivative. I believe that in light of these considerations, Schuetz‘s fi rst ‗difficulty‘ may disappear‖ (p. 197 n. 29).

Schutz has difficulties with transcendental intersubjectivity throughout,8 but does not consider them important for his science theory. This is because, while his friends Cairns and Gurwitsch were interested in the ultimate transcendental grounding of the world and the positive sciences, Schutz repeatedly asserts that constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude, i.e., phenomenological psychology, is sufficient for founding the cultural sciences. This is something like the positivistic position whereby physics is used to found astronomy, chemistry, and biology without the realism presupposed in positivism being justified.

There is, however, an issue in Schutz concerning the relation of subjectivity and intersubjectivity within the natural theoretical attitude that the discussion with Cairns of the egological reduction helps to clarify. Just after the Appended Note of Part I that was

8 Cf. Alfred Schutz, ―The Probl em of Transcendental Intersubject ivity in Husser l‖ (1957) , trans. Frederick Kersten with Aron Gurwitsch and Thomas Luckmann, reprinted in Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers , vol. III , ed. I lse Schutz (The Hague: Mart inus Ni jhoff , 1966) .

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added during the reading of the proofs of his Aufbau , Schutz draws on Bergson as well as Husserl on the phenomenology of inner time in reflectively analyzing the stream of mental life of the solitary ego, i.e., the self totally without any reference to Others. The question then is how he is able to do this. While he only had ac cess to the Méditations cartésiennes (1931) during proofreading, he had previously studied the Formale und transzentale Logik (1929), where there is discussion of egological phenomenology, but he does not characterize his approach in the Aufbau, Part II as egological, much less as involving reduction to the primordial sphere. And after getting into contact with Husserl, Schutz still makes no allusion to his own approach even though he writes such things as the following in his review of the Méditations cartésiennes.

Husser l had a lready developed his method of ―phenomenological reduct ion‖ in his Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Phi losophy. With i ts help Husser l now systematica lly explores— in the f irst four meditat ions —the f ields of transcendental egologica l experience in its dual structure of f ie ld of f lowing experiences of the world and as habituali t ies (p. 181) .

Schutz‘s approach gets clearer when he later writes in his Scheler essay that the transcendental reduction ―has left nothing but the unified stream of my consciousness. This stream is, so to speak, closed; open only for my inner experience and my reflective glance—a monad without a window‖ (p. 197; Cairns countered by suggesting that Husserl‘s monads have windows th rough which one can look out upon the world [ibid., n. 31]). This conception from 1942 of the transcendental reduction suggests that the same conception in the Appended Note of 1932 is not a product of haste.

While Schutz seems to have relied on this ―tra nscendental reduction,‖ it is still not clear how he transitioned from intersubjectivity to the solitary ego. This is the first person singular perspective of methodological individualism in the extreme form that disregards relating to Others. Most interes tingly, it is something he relies on repeatedly in his American period. Thus he later writes of a ―fictitious abstraction‖ by which one can consider ―the isolated stream of consciousness of a single individual, … as if the wide-awake man within the natural attitude can be thought of as separated from his fellow-men‖ (I 2198, cf. I 167), and he also writes repeatedly of ―a supposedly isolated individual.‖ 9 Furthermore, he

9 Alfred Schutz, Reflec t ions on the Problem o f Relevance , ed. Richard M. Zaner


says that ―we proceeded as if the world were my private world and as if we were entitled to disregard the fact that it is from the outset an intersubjective world .. . because we live in it as men among other men, bound to them through common influence and work, understanding others and being understood by them‖ (I 10, cf. I 53, I 306, & RPR 134). The practice of social scientists to speak of ―members‖ rather than ―individuals‖ thus seems appropriate. In short, it did not occur to me until quite recently that the phenomenological reduction that Schutz employed for Part II of his Aufbau was actually by an abstraction of the member from her necessary participation in intersubjectivity. Individuals are abstractions.

3. Return to Intersubjectivity

It is highly general to say that subjectivities are always already inserted in intersubjectivity and even that they are not concreta but abstractions. Regarding intersubjectivity, Schutz describes, however, how Others belong to regions and are members of groups. Thus the major accomplishment of the Aufbau is the distinction of four regions of Others for each self. ‗Consociates‘ share space and time and can be encountered prepredicatively as well as predicatively in face-to-face relationships and interaction. It is in this world of ―directly experienced social reality‖ that data collection in the social sciences through participatory observation can be practiced.

‗Contemporaries‘ in the strict signification share only time and are capable of only indirect unilateral and reciprocal understanding and influencing in prescientific life and rely exclusively on predicative experience and inferential reasoning. Nevertheless, contemporaries make up the subject matters of ethnology, linguistics, political science, sociology, etc.

‗Predecessors‘ can be understood to the extent that there are relevant texts and traces available, but they cannot be influenced. They are the subject matter of the historical sciences, e.g., art history, which interpret such data. Finally, there are Others who are ‗successors,‘ who will live after a self dies, whom she can influence by such things as writing a last will and testament, but whom she cannot understand empirically, but only can feign and conjecture about.

Within such regions, there are many groups of which one may be

(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970) , p. 173, cf . 73. Cf. I 347.

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a member, including those one is born into, such as a family , social class, language, and ethnicity and those one joins or changes, such as a marriage, business partnership, or a political party. Despite Schutz‘s emphasis on social psychology and individual members, he outlines how much can be done in the way of de scribing collectivities, which always involve experiencing Others through ideal types. An example of the most original experiencing of a group is that of card game. One could ignore the group participation to focus on an individual consociate, but one can also say that ―They are playing a game of poker.‖ ―This statement will apply to each individual player only to the extent that the course -of-action type ‗poker game‘ corresponds to a series of conscious experiences in his mind and stands in a subjective me aning-context for him. In this way the action of each player will be ‗oriented‘ to the rules of poker‖ (PSW 186) . Beyond this, there can be ideal types expressed as ―the United States Senate,‖ ―the state,‖ ―the press,‖ ―the nation,‖ ―the people,‖ and ―the working class.‖ And such collectivities can occur in the regions of one‘s contemporaries, predecessors, and successors. Thus the subject matter of the cultural sciences quickly gets complicated when Schutz‘s abstraction of the solitary ego from intersubjectivity is relaxed.

While I have known for decades that Schutz moves out in his

theory of the cultural sciences from how a self unilaterally and reciprocally understands and influences individuals and groups of Others in the four regions of the social wor ld, I have also long pondered how Husserl says late in the Cartesianische Meditationen that, ―In respect of order, the intrinsically first of the philosophical disciplines would be ‗solipsistically‘ reduced ‗egology,‘ the egology of the primordially reduced ego. Then only would come intersubjective phenomenology, which is founded on that discipline.‖ 10 What I have learned from Schutz and Cairns regarding egological phenomenology, namely, that we must start from intersubjectivity and the public world of every day life, which is different from the eventually clarified philosophical disciplines and their order. Even the first attainment of transcendental epochē , reduction, and purification is transcendental intersubjectivity. Differently put, we are together in -the-world prior to any

10 Edmund Husserl , Cartes ian Meditat ions , trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Mart inus Ni jhoff , 1960) , p.155.


reductions to how the world is for -us and then to how it is for -me and even abstractly it is for me without others.

Schutz often cited Husserl‘s ―Nachwort zu meinen ‗Ideen‘‖ on the parallelism between transcendental phenomenology and constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude in order to justify interpreting transcendental descriptions mundanely. Now I ponder whether Schutz‘s worldly descriptions analogously hold transcendentally.

Praxis and Passivity: A Hidden Naturalistic Assumption in Husserl‟s Transcendental Phenomenology Steven Crowell (Rice University)

1. Nature and Spirit

In the 1920s Husserl turned his attention to issues that he would

group under the heading ―Nature and Spirit.‖ With Dilthey in mind, Husserl saw these investigations as contributions to the philosophical grounding of the natural and human sciences. Transcendental phenomenology would clarify the sense and achievement of these sciences, defending their rationality while refusing to grant them foundational status in the form of philosophical naturalism or historicism. These studies are among the richest in Husserl‘s corpus, yet they produced a number of paradoxes—most notably the ―paradox of subjectivity‖: the su bject is a being in the world—one entity among others—but is simultaneously the transcendental origin of that world, an ―absolute‖ to which the world is ―relative.‖

From the perspective of natural science the subject can be made to disappear. As a natural entity subjectivit y appears as psyche , a ―stratum‖ of the ―animate organism‖ which the science of psychology accounts for in terms of ―psychophysical conditionalities‖ and ultimately natural causality. From the perspective of the Geisteswissenschaften, however, the subject is the Person, an entity that expresses itself in significant forms, the understanding of which is precisely the concern of such sciences. Thus the Person cannot be made to disappear. Here, then, the paradox becomes pressing: the Person is an entity in the world but is also that whereby the world has its ontic validity ( Seinsgeltung ). The Person must, therefore, be self-constituting.

But Husserl believed that the Person could not be self -constituting. For one thing, Persons are natural beings; for another, they depend upon traditions. Both nature and tradition belong to what Husserl calls the ―pregiven world,‖ and a transcendental clarification of the ground of the human sciences must therefore be in a position to clarify the world‘s pregivenness. The writin gs collected in Husserliana 39 devoted to this task provide us with new insight into the paradox of subjectivity. 1 In particular, they reveal a

1 Edmund Husser l , Die Lebenswelt : Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitut ion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916 -1937) , Husser liana XXXIX, ed. Rochus Sowa (Dordrecht : Springer, 2008) . Henceforth c ited in the text as Hua 39 .


hidden naturalistic assumption that Husserl never properly identified. Once the naturalistic assumption is ident ified and ―bracketed,‖ I will argue, there is no paradox in holding that the Person is transcendental (―self -constituting‖) subjectivity.

I will focus primarily on a series of texts that tacitly construct an argument against Heidegger‘s approach to transcendental subjectivity, an approach that emphasizes the practical character of the constitution of meaning. For Husserl, meaning -constitution could be approached only through the epochē , and, as he put it in a draft of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica article, under the epochē ―I am no longer human ego.‖ To this Heidegger commented: ―or perhaps precisely such [an ego], in its ownmost ‗miraculous‘ existential possibility‖ (Hua IX, p. 275). Part of what is at stake in this disagreement becomes evident precisely in Husserl‘s rejection of the idea of practical, personalistic self -constitution. The context for this rejection is what Husserl calls the ―paradox of the pregiven world.‖

2. The Paradox of the Pre-Given World

To say that the world is ―pregiven‖ is to say t hat it is experienced as having already been there, in these and those ways, before I take up what is ―given‖ to me to do . That is, the world is not just ―the given,‖ or ―what is,‖ but rather what is presupposed as being in these and those distinct ways in every sort of experience that I, as engaged in this world, have. The phenomenological task is to describe how the pregiven world, or Lebenswelt , shows itself in experience and to analyze its constitution. In carrying out part of this analysis in a text from 1931, Husserl describes an apparent paradox that seems to threaten the central thesis of transcendental phenomenology, namely, that ―there is for us no other world than the one that gains its Seinssinn in us and from out of our own consciousness‖ (Hua 3 9, p. 444). The problem concerns what is to be understood by ―us‖ and ―our own consciousness‖ here. Less colloquially, how must we understand the subject of the pregiven world?

Already from the language that he uses it is quite clear that Husserl has Heidegger in view. Husserl begins with ― Ich in meinem Sein als Ich ,‖ that is, with I who am conscious ―von meinem Dasein als Mensch in der Welt .‖ Under the reduction I am ― Ich der reinen Akte ,‖ but how is such an ego to be described? One straightforward suggestion would be to describe it as Husserl typically describes the Person, namely as a practical ego. If we go that route, then ―Akte vollziehen ist sich beschäftigen mit etwas ,‖ that is ―Handeln im weitesten Sinne‖ (Hua 39, p. 438). Now in the third chapter o f Sein und Zeit

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Heidegger had sought to uncover the ― Weltlichkeit der Welt‖ (Husserl: the ―Seinssinn ‗Welt‘‖) in just these terms. In its ―average everydayness‖ Dasein is, l ike the Person, a practical subject whose actions disclose a normatively structured totality of signification, or ―world.‖ But Husserl held that Heidegger‘s account of the pregiven world remained anthropological, failing to reach the transcendental level. He had many reasons for seeing things this way, but here he tries to support the claim with an argument – namely, that if we model constitution on acting (Handeln ) an infinite regress results.

In its simplest form the argument runs as follows. If the transcendental subject is practical, then constitution of meaning has the character of an action. Now ―[ j]ede Handlung erwirbt Seiendes auf dem Grund von schon Seiendem .‖ But given the thesis o f transcendental constitution—that ―being as such is an achievement [Erwerb]‖—this leads to ―an infinite regress‖ (Hua 39, p. 441). Transcendental constitution thus requires that there be a doing (Tun) that is not an acting:

Das Sein der Welt für uns i st immer schon Sein mit e inem Seinss inn, der durch Handeln konst ituiert i st , und doch muss es, damit Handeln nicht sinnlos ins Unendliche auf Handeln beru hen sol l , e iner Konstitut ion entsprungen se in, d ie noch nicht Handeln war (Hua 39, p. 444) . 2

―How,‖ Husserl asks, ―are we to clear up this paradox?‖ In constructing this argument against Heidegger , then, Husserl simultaneously reveals his own reasons for holding that the Person cannot be the transcendental subject.

Acting involves two aspects, each of which yields a regress. First, to act is to ―busy oneself with something‖ (sich beschäftigen mit etwas)—for instance, Husserl mentions a ―hammer‖ (Hua 39, p. 438). When I use a hammer, according to Husserl, it holds ( gilt) for me in one or another ontic modality (it is real) and it holds as something (a hammer). Not every busying oneself with something is an action, however. The pencil I gnaw upon as I drive t he nail is not part of any action. Having to do with something is acting only if a second aspect is present: I must be trying to do something with it, ― Ich habe damit etwas vor .‖ As Husserl defines it, ―Vorhaben‖ means ―vor dem wirklichen Haben auf ein Haben, das aber nicht schon wirkliches Haben

2 I t is interest ing to note the echoes of Fichte‘s Tathandlung here – but whereas Fichte emphasized the pract ica l reason s ide of things (as we wil l do here) , Husser l emphasizes the associat ionist ic psychology.


ist, gerichtet sein‖ (Hua 39, p. 439). Trying (Streben, Wollen ) thus involves something ―had‖ in advance; I must have something definite in mind: to make a birdhouse , to draft environmental protection legislation . With the completion of the action, the ―having in advance‖ becomes ―having itself‖ (Selbsthabe): the birdhouse is there, the bill is put to a vote. Action thus yields a ―lasting achievement‖ (bleibender Erwerb ). This lasting achievement can then become the basis for further action: I can busy myself with the birdhouse under the Vorhabe of trying to make an environmentally friendly garden, which latter can in turn become a lasting achievement in Selbsthabe, and so on.

This notion of a lasting achievement is the crux of Husserl‘s argument that taking action to be the model for transcendental constitution involves an infinite regress. Both in that with which it busies itself and in what it is trying to do , action presupposes an already constituted lasting achievement. Yet Husserl conceives action so broadly that it covers the entire sphere of the Personal world: not only is ―making‖ or fabricating a case of acting; so too are perceiving, discoursing, and other forms of cognitive opinion -formation. Indeed, all ontic meaning , all ―being‖ (Seiendes) is, for Husserl, a lasting achievement of acting.

Perception, for instance—―einfachste wahrnehmende Betrachtung‖—is a kind of action (Hua 39, p. 440). Whether it occurs within a more encompassing action (as when, in making the birdhouse, I move to get a better look at a nail that I notice might be bent), or is done for its own sake (as when I am curious to know what the insides of my computer monitor look like), ―perceptual consideration‖ is a kind of trying , ―ein ‗handelndes‘ Vorhaben , . . . ein Hinstreben zu dem Seiendem ‗selbst,‘ es in seiner wahrnemungsmäßigen Selbstheit zu verwirklichen ‖ (Hua 39, p. 440). When perceptual consideration is complete, a lasting achievement has been established within the flux of my conscious life, an opinion to which I can return (Hua 39, p. 441). I now know that the nail is bent, I ―have‖ it . But such Selbsthabe is possible only because I had it in my Vorhabe – that is, my Kenntnis of this nail presupposes the Bekanntheit of nails as such. Perception is thus caught up in the regress of action: perceiving is not simply opening one‘s eyes; it is cognition as recognition. Seeing is always trying to see (better). The perceptually pregiven world is thus always a lasting achievement of action. B ut if perceptual meaning only arises on the basis of previously established meaning, what accounts for this prior meaning?

A regress also appears if we consider that with which acting busies itself. In order to make a birdhouse I busy myself with a

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hammer; but this hammer has itself been made, and in that process the maker busied herself with wood and metal. These, in turn, are lasting achievements of certain processes of production, and so on. Now it might appear that this regress could be stopped at somet hing that was not itself the lasting achievement of an action—mere ―matter,‖ let us say—but from the phenomenological point of view this won‘t work. What action busies itself with is never just something ; it is something in particular , something with a specific meaning or sense. Invoking matter will not suffice, since the regress concerns the immanent meaning-structure of the act itself, not the countless things that a third-person investigation could ascertain as being causally involved in acting. I cannot ―busy myself‖ with mere matter. Were there such a thing it would do me no good in building my birdhouse. To do that I need hammers , which must be constituted as such; and to make hammers I need wood and metal.

Nor is it enough that there merely be such things; to use them I must be able to recognize them as wood, metal, and hammers. And as in the case of perception, such recognition is possible only if I have prior familiarity with things of that type . When I act, a ―framework of general-typical familiarites‖ is always pregiven, and without it I could grasp no particular thing as anyt hing in particular. My acting—my fabricating, perceiving, and cognizing—adds to this framework by establishing lasting achievements of meaning. But this seems to lead to an in finite regress. As Husserl puts it: ―Dass immer Neues zu gestalten ist in infinitum macht hier nicht die Schwierigkeit, sondern dass das Neue immer schon Altbekanntes voraussetzt, also schon früher Erworbenes‖ (Hua 39, p. 444).

This issue, then, is this: I f the Person is transcendental subjectivity, meaning is constituted through action—through perceiving, fabricating, and cognizing —within an Umwelt of pregiven meaning, which in turn derives from previous perceiving, fabricating, and cognizing. From the per sonalistic perspective this is not a problem: the pregiven world is always already a world where meaning has been established. But if the transcendental subject is supposed to be the genetic ground of meaning, then the infinite regress in acting seems to suggest that the Person cannot be the transcendental subject. The question for phenomenology thus becomes:

<Wie kann> e ine ursprüngliche Erwerbung verständlich und a lso notwendig e ingesehen werden, in der ―Sache‖ und ―Vorhaben‖ nicht welt l ich schon sind, s ondern rein aus Quellen der Subjekt ivität erst


werden – a ls ―Urst i ftung der Welt l ichkeit ‖? (Hua 39, 445) .

For Husserl, the regress argument shows that transcendental

constitution cannot be understood on the model of praxis – not because practical constitution presupposes a pregiven perceptual world (the perceived world is constituted practically), but because praxis cannot be self -constituting. Being is constituted, yet always on the basis of being; meaning and normativity are possible only where there is already meaning and normativity. If that is so, then this whole pregiven world seems to point back to ― Vor-Seiendes und ein Tun, das Seiendes bekannt macht voraus ‖ (Hua 39, p. 444-5). If we are not simply to posit some ―first‖ meaning, in other words, but are to retain the thesis that all meaning is constituted, then within genetic phenomenology terms like Erwerben , Sache , and Vorhaben ―must change their meaning fundamentally.‖

Das Erwerben verweist immer noch auf ein Tun, aber ein wollend -absehendes Tun, ein Tun gewöhnl ichen Sinnes (das Vorhaben, Zwecke, vor-gestel lte und vor-gesetzte Ziele , eben gewol lte , verwirkl icht) kann es nicht sein. Sein Material kann also nicht e ine Sache sein, e ine Sache , die schon ist , wenn das Sein se lbst schon den Sinn des Erw orbenen haben, erst durch ursprüngl iche Erwerbung den Sinn ―se iend‖ gewinnen sol l (Hua 39, p. 445) .

However, this appeal to ―pre -being,‖ and to a transcendental

subject who ―does,‖ but does not ―act,‖ should give us pause. For it seems to land us in the terrain of a psychology of consciousness that is not fully open to phenomenological reflection. Before going down this road, then, we should recall that within the personalistic attitude the regress poses no problem. Meaning is constituted on the basis of revisions of prior meaning; norms (and with them the intentional implications that yield the Seinssinn of things) hold and are revised through our commitment to them as Persons engaged practically in the world. But if the infinite regress is not a problem from within the personalistic attitude, then what is it, exactly, that makes the concept of transcendental subjectivity appear paradoxical? In the following section I shall argue that the problem lies in a hidden naturalistic assumption that informs Husserl ‘s reflections on the relation between the Person and consciousness .

3. Diagnosing the Appearance of Paradox

In the personalistic attitude the pregiven world is a world of meaning . Phenomenological reflection shows such meaning to be

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constituted by ―apperceptions‖—that is, what I busy myself with points beyond itself by way of intentional implications that prescribe which possible further experiences will cohere with my current and former experiences and which will not. Apperception is thus indicative of a system within first-person experience itself, one that is possible only because such experience is normatively ordered. What distinguishes transcendental phenomenology from other philosophical approaches is not that it recognizes the normative ordering of experience but that it shows how such order is grounded in subjectivity . In a text from 1916, Husserl spells this out: ― Das Ich aller gegenständlichen Apperzeptionen verschiedener Stufenlagen ist von vornherein ein Vermögens-Ich, ein Subjekt des ‗Ich kann‘ .‖ More particularly, ― jeder Grundart von Apperzeptionen entspricht einen eigenen Schicht im Vermögens-Ich‖ (Hua 39, p. 422 -23). To experience a hammer as a hammer, for instance, is to apperceive a complicated system of intentional implications normative ly grounded in what a hammer is supposed to be, and I can apperceive such a system only if I myself am able to do something—namely, try to use the hammer appropriately. I must be able to conform my behavior to a set of norms that distinguish that behavior from mere random movement and from other things I might be doing.

To try to use a hammer appropriately—that is, to exercise my Vermögens-Ich as a carpenter— is not simply to wield it in the appropriate way; rather, it is to act in light of the norms of carpentry. I must understand myself in their terms. Such understanding, in turn, is not a matter of reflecting on myself; it must already inform pre-reflective practical engagement. How is this to be described phenomenologically?

It is of great consequence that Husserl holds that such self -understanding is itself a kind of apperception:

Wir müssen scheiden das Ich als Subjekt al ler Affekt ionen, Akt ionen, in al l en apperzip ierenden Vollzügen etc . und das Ich, das se lbst zum apperz ipiert en Objekt wird für das d abei wirk l ich tät ige, wirk l ich vorstel lende Subjekt (wirk l iches I ch) . . . . [S]o konst i tuiert s ich in ursprünglicher Apperzeption das I ch in seinen verschiedenen Aktionen, in se inem Apperzeption von Objekten, ob i ch auf das Ich re f l ekt i erend achten oder nich t (Hua 39, p. 422) .

But this is puzzling. If the normative force of apperceptions

depend on the ―stratum of the Vermögens-Ich‖ to which they belong— i.e. , on my ability to act in light of the norms that define my comportment precisely as an ability , something at which I can


either succeed or fail— how can the pre-reflective understanding of myself that this entails be a matter of ―apperceiving‖ myself as something? Either I can understand myself as a carpenter in the very act of being one (thus amounting to a sort of personalistic self-constitution that dispenses with the detour through apperceptions); or there must be another capacity of the Subject (another structure of the Vermögens-Ich) operating according to norms that allow for the generation of an empirical apperception of myself as a carpenter. In that case, the Person would be ―relative‖ to the transcendental Subject. But then we would need an account of the capacity that enables the Subject to generate apperceptions of the relevant sort.

Before looking at how Husserl proposes to discharge the latter requirement, we should recall that the thought that there must be a pre-personal level of constitution is not motivated by experience but by an argument , and though arguments are fair game in phenomenology they must be used with caution, since they may include phenomenologically inadmissable assumptions. Indeed, just such an assumption infuses Husserl‘s thinking on this point. The argument seems to compel a distinction between the Person and the transcendental Subject only because Husserl does not reflect on the personalistic attitude in a purely phenomenological way. Rather, he brings to that reflection the background assumption that personalistic self-experience rests upon the supposedly ―more primordial‖ experience of myself as an animal , as an entity in the natural world, in relation to which the Person is an apperceptive modification. The ―naturalism‖ of this assumption shows up in Husserl‘s claim that the subject of the personalistic attitude is a ―human being‖ (Mensch), for he believes that he is phenomenologically entitled to the idea that the sense, ―human being,‖ carries with it a reference to natural kinds – not merely in some culturally relative sense in which the Umwelt contains various familiar ―types‖ of creature, but in the strict sense of scientific naturalism . It is this tacit importation of a third-person point of view into the phenomenology of the human being that makes the assumption pernicious, for it makes it seem as though the sub-personal processes characteristic of ―consciousness‖ conceived as a natural function could somehow be ―reconstructed‖ in genetic phenomenology as constitutive abilit ies of transcendental subjectivity.

In a text from 1929, for instance, Husserl holds that ―hum an being‖ names a ―regional unity‖ (Hua 39, p. 289). This would pose no problem for the claim that the Person is transcendental subjectivity if we could say that the Person apperceptively

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constitutes the human being, but here the Person is supposed to be an aspect of this constituted unity. This is shown in the way Husserl describes the death of the human being. ―Every [real thing] has its way of being destroyed [zerstört werden ],‖ a way that is predelineated by its ontological region (Hua 39, p. 288). Dest ruction of the Person is ―spiritual death;‖ destruction of an animal is ―death of the organism.‖ The ―death of the human being,‖ in turn, is ―organic and spiritual death in one‖ (Hua 39, p. 287). Thus, while it is possible that the Person could suffer ―spi ritual death‖ without the death of any organism, it is not possible for the organism that constitutes the human being to die without there ensuing the spiritual death of the Person. This shows that Husserl is committed both to the idea that the Person is i nseparable from the human being and to the idea that being human involves, as a founding stratum, an ―animate organism‖ (Animalität ; Hua 39, p. 344 etc). To explain the apperceptive constitution of the Person, then, Husserl must turn to the ―sub-human, to the sub-personal in human existence‖ (Hua 39, p. 391), since the subjectivity that accomplishes such constitution must be of the sort that persons share with other animate organisms.

What is the nature of sub-personal subjectivity? According to Husserl, what links animal subjectivity with Personal (or ―spiritual‖) subjectivity is embodiment . In a text from 1926 he writes: ―To every living body [Leib], including that of the animal, belongs an ego-centering and a universal structural form that circumscribes everything psychical, thanks to which the one and identical ego of this living body lives in a multifarious ego -life,‖ a life that has ―the character of . . . ego-centered intentionality (consciousness of)‖ (Hua 39, p. 274). ―Living‖ subjectivity in this sens e ―is in a primitive [erster] sense personal ego‖ (Hua 39, p. 274). For instance, Husserl holds that animal subjectivity constitutes species-relative Umwelten , including analogues of those structures that characterize the human Lebenswelt : tradition, nature, sociality, and so on. He also holds that these operations of animal subjectivity—―from instinctual sources‖—provide the human being with the ―basis [Untergrund ] for a life of will, for the development of will -subjects, i .e., Persons, and for the development of personalistic communities of will‖ (Hua 39, p. 390). Though Husserl reminds us that in regard to animal sociality ―there can be no talk of .. . genuine willing and acting,‖ he nevertheless holds that this ―living instinctivity and sociality‖ serves ―continually as the underlying basis‖ for personalistic


achievements, ―insofar as those born into animality must first emerge into being Persons‖ (Hua 39, p. 391). Thus, on the assumption that Person and animal subjectivity are linked through the embodiment of the living, Husserl can address the paradox of the pregiven world by first constructing animal subjectivity as an impoverished version of the acting subject and then holding it to be foundational for the Person.

This solution may seem obvious. Who co uld deny that infants are not persons at the outset; that they must be socialized into the practices and institutions that will become, for them, ―second nature‖; that animals are social creatures, act purposively, and so on? The only question is whether a ny of this is relevant from the point of view of transcendental constitution . If one limits one‘s genetic considerations to the emergence of the Person from animal subjectivity one may be tempted to think that it is, but this is not the whole story about the sub-personal subjectivity that Husserl‘s response to the infinite regress requires. To hold that the Person cannot be the transcendental subject is to commit oneself not merely to the relatively benign thesis that human subjectivity has analogues in the animal world; rather, it is to commit oneself to the thesis that pure consciousness is sufficient to constitute a world. How so?

The subjectivity that constitutes itsel f as a tiger—subject as ―animate organism‖—differs from the one that constitutes itself as a human animal only in its particulars. For the sake of simplicity we can say that, on the basis of different bodily abilit ies, the one constitutes ―what it is like to be a tiger‖ while the other constitutes ―what it is like to be a human animal‖ (Hua 39, pp. 429-32). According to Husserl, however, ―animate organism‖ is itsel f an apperceptive sense and thus a contingent form that the Subject can take. For this reason there must be a further level of sub-personal subjectivity—a ―sub-animal‖ level, so to speak— whose normatively structured abilities (Vermögens-Ich) would be responsible for originating its self-apperception as animate organism. To apperceive itself as Leib , for instance, sub-personal subjectivity must exercise the ability to distinguish bet ween one set of Empfindungen as ―kinaestheses‖ and another as object -sensations in such a way that a normative order of ―psychophysical conditionalities‖ obtains between them. 3 But the subjectivity that can apperceive itself contingently as Leib must possess an essential structure not dependent on Leib . Such a subjectivity is, according to Husserl, the altogether pre-intentional temporality of consciousness, a standing -

3 Husser l , Ideas I I : ― . . . i t becomes Body [Leib] . . .‖

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streaming ―living present‖ of Urimpressionen with their retentional and protentional modifications, primal noticings, passive associations, and so on. At this level alone , according to Husserl, do we reach an ―ability‖ that is genuinely self -constituting (thus putting an end to the regress), one that yields the necessary ―pre -being:‖ a ―doing‖ (Tun) that is not ―a willing -planning doing, [not a] doing in the usual sense‖ (Hua 39, p. 445).

Having reached this point in a text from 1933, however, Husserl pulls up short: ―Primal affection in primal passivity, the fields of sensation with their primal contrasts in primal temporalizing —Is this really more than an abstraction and reconstruction?‖ Such things, Husserl continues, ―I have never experienced.‖ Yet he claims that in ―asking back [nachfragend] into the structure of meaning-giving, the constitution of ontic meaning,‖ in ―following up [hineinfragend ] intentional implications‖ of what is currently experienced, and in ―reconstructing what is implicit,‖ the wakeful, world-possessing phenomenolgizing ego must encounter the terrain of what he here ca lls ―inactive constitution,‖ a standing ―core‖ of ―the pre-egological‖ which is ―ultimately presupposed in all egological achievements‖ (Hua 39, pp. 432 -3). In other words: yes, this is an ―abstraction and reconstruction,‖ but it is justified as necessary . How? Since we have no experience of such things, it must be on the basis of arguments such as the infinite regress characteristic of Personalistic constitution. But do such arguments really authorize these conclusions, which in part involve genuine descriptions, but in part do not?

I do not believe so, but even if they motivate something l ike such conclusions—i.e., even if they suggest that Personalistic constitution rests upon conditions that it does not constitute—this does not mean that these are constitutive conditions. So-called ―primal passivity‖ may contribute no more to the transcendental -normative constitution of meaning than does brain functioning as a third-person natural process. Such ―facticity‖ is a black box as far as phenomenology is concerned, and if that is so, then in identifying the regress in personalistic constitution one also identifies the limits of the phenomenological doctrine of constitution itself.

This may appear to limit phenomenology in a very crippling way, but it does not. Indeed, by its means one achieves one of H usserl‘s most cherished goals—namely, a clear demarcation between transcendental philosophy and empirical science that allows for their mutual interaction—but without the paradox of subjectivity.


The key is to bracket the naturalistic assumption that seduces Husserl into thinking that appeal to non (or pre -) intentional consciousness provides a way out of the infinite regress. While the intentional implications of what is experienced do point back to various processes of consciousness, they do not point back to constitutive processes in the Geltungs-theoretical sense. It is a naturalistic prejudice to hold that just because the Person is conscious, its constitutive achievements are transcendentally grounded in what it shares with animals. Or, to put it another way, it is a naturalistic prejudice to think that as constituting the Person is a stratum of the third-person natural kind, ―human being.‖ Considered as a natural kind, the human being is indeed constituted, but this does not mean that constitution itself rests upon the sub-personal processes of consciousness. In fact, the supposedly founding level is founded upon the Person—my ―nature,‖ my instinctual life, is constituted as pregiven in the way I take it up—answer responsibly for it—as a Person. In the following section I will conclude by developing this point a bit more fully.

4. Nature Without the Naturalistic Assumption

The problem with Husserl‘s genetic appeal to sub -personal constitutive processes becomes most pressing at the point where a constitutive difference between animate organism and the rest of reality requires a subjectivity in which the body ( Leib) is not yet constituted. But if we abandon the naturalistic assumption that the Person is founded on the human being conceived as a natural kind, then the body need not be seen as constituted at all. As transcendental subjectivity it is constituting through and through, and it belongs neither to nature as the object of natural science nor to nature as a dimension of the Person‘s Umwelt .

A series of texts penned between 1921 and 1937 on the ―apodicticity of the world‖ suggests what is at stake here. In them, Husserl considers whether the apodicticity of the Cartesian cogito includes the ―world,‖ where ―world‖ is understood in the phenomenological sense: a horizonal meaning -structure that includes all real being (and so ―nature‖) within it . Starting with the Person, Husserl runs through a series of thought experiments that lead him to conclude that the world has ―practical apodicticity‖ (Hua 39, p. ). For an ego conscious of a world, ―it is simply not possible to represent the world as non-existent, though it is possible to do so for every particular being in it (with the exception of its own being as human subject)‖ (Hua 39, p. 256). The latter caveat

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includes the body : I cannot represent my body as not existing without thereby losing the ―essentially human form‖ of my ―conscious life as a Person‖ (Hua 39, 248). 4 But, Husserl asks, if one moves from the personalistic to the transcendental point of view, is it ―apriori necessary that I am a human being, that my pure ego in its conscious life take such a form .. .?‖ (Hua 39, p. 249). Husserl is aware of the complexity of the question. For one thing, he sees that the notion of ―possibility‖ at stake in generating these thought experiments may we l l be tied to ―a ‗human ego‘‖—that is, to the ―fact‖ of an embodied, worldly subject (Hua 39, p. 226). Recallin g one such thought experiment—the ―annihilation of the world‖ from Ideas I, in which the realm of pure immanence is said to survive the dissolution of the constituted world into ―a swarm of sense dat a‖ (Hua 39, p. 227)— Husserl wonders whether his ―original conception of the immanent sphere, with immanent data that, through the passive achievement of association, ultimately become ‗apprehendings‘,‖ might be nothing more than ―a leftover from the old psychology and its sensualistic empiricism.‖ But in the end he retains it, and with it the idea of an ―associative constitution‖ of the body itself (Hua 39, p. 229). Apparently, it is not the Vermögens-Ich of the embodied Person, but the ego-centering of consciousness , that is essential for constitution. The ―nature‖ that belongs to the world—and so also the body that belongs to that nature— is a constituted achievement.

However, if we bracket the naturalistic assumption that the Person is founded on the human being considered as a natural kind, then the concept of Leib becomes systematically ambiguous. On the one hand, Leib is that which incorporates, as it wer e, the Person‘s ability to try— its skills and habitualities; its ―I can‖ – which opens up the practically normative space of ―possibility‖ necessary for the constitution of meaning. Let us call this ―living body.‖ On t he other hand, Leib is the ―animate organism,‖ the body that belongs to constituted nature as Umwelt . Let us call this ―lived body.‖ Recognizing this ambiguity has implications for our understanding of consciousness , for while it is still possible to conce ive consciousness as a stratum of the lived body—for instance, one can distinguish between the lived body and the Körper by appeal to the presence or absence of psyche—it is no longer possible to distinguish between constituting consciousness and the l iving body. Thus it is no

4 The ―mensch lich-see l i sche Wesensgestalt‖ of my ―personalen Bewusstseinsleben .‖


longer possible to work back from the personalistic experience of practical constitution to a supposedly deeper level of primal passivity and association, from which the living body itself could be apperceptively constituted. Without the naturalistic assumption, the only transcendental question is how such sub -personal processes are constituted within the personalistic attitude as sub-personal, passive, and so on.

Now if we ask how the sub-personal processes of consciousness show up in the personalistic attitude, the easiest place to begin is with their status as objects of natural scientific investigation. Whether in psychoanalysis, neuro -science, or some other branch of natural science, sub-personal processes are constituted as objec ts by means of evolving epistemic practices and ―third -person‖ theories. Here nature is a region governed by causal law, a region that does not strictly speaking ―appear‖ because its constitution presupposes a process of idealization that leaves the percep tual Umwelt behind. Thus ―bridging principles‖ are required to link nature in this sense to the objects of ordinary experience. As phenomenologists we may critically reflect on the experiences from which scientific concepts are drawn, and we may work back and forth between empirical investigations and phenomenological reflection to refine such concepts and develop bridging principles. But without the naturalistic assumption we will not be able to hold that what such investigations uncover are constitutive conditions, conditions of possibility for intentionality as the consciousness of valid unities of meaning .

But the nature that is the object of natural science can be approached phenomenologically only through the ordinary personalistic, intuitive or perceptual, experience of a pregiven Umwelt , which may include a distinct concept of ―nature‖ as a region within it that contrasts with regions that are not nature—e.g., ―culture‖ or ―artifice.‖ How to characterize this distinction rigorously is notoriously diff icult. In a text from 1928 Husserl tries to mark it by distinguishing between what is ―immediately‖ and what is only ―mediately‖ given: ―The universe of objects that are given as immediately experienceable by me (immediately demonstrable in original intuit ion) and must be so given is nature‖ (Hua 39, p. 30). But it is not clear that an ontological region can be picked out in these terms.

Like Aristotle, Husserl wants to circumscribe a region of things that are pregiven in the sense of not arising through praxis, and it is tempting to define nature as that which can be perceptually given without any apperceptions that refer to cultural production. But

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there seem to be no such things. Because perception itself is the Urpraxis whose Vorhabe aims to ―have‖ the ―thing itself,‖ one might be tempted to say that natural things are those that I can successfully ―have‖ through sensible intuition alone . I can perceive a tattoo, for instance, but if I try to ―have‖ the ―tattoo itself‖ merely by looking at it from a variety of perspectives I will fail , since tattoos are constituted in part by the symbolic practices of particular cultures. In contrast, I might believe that I can successfully ―have‖ a tree itself merely by carrying out an (infinitely long) chain of perceptual acts. But unless we move to the level of a naturalistic third -person theory, what counts as a tree—and so, whether this thing here actually can be had in perception alone— can vary significantly from culture to culture.

However these relations sort themselves out, one thing is clear: as part of the pregiven Umwelt nature is always normatively constituted within an horizon of valid meaning; it never presents itself as something ―pre -egological‖ or as the product of some associative synthesis. It is consti tuted as pre-given in what I do: The woods I walk through were there ―long before I was born;‖ I must ―find‖ the perfect wave, and in order to surf it successfully I must ―conform myself to it ;‖ the wood I am trying to lay down as a floor is ―warped.‖ In a similar way, my own pregiven ―nature‖ (if we are to use this term for the sub-personal primal passivity of embodied consciousness) is constituted as pregiven in my urge ―for ice -cream,‖ my striving ―for a better world,‖ my fear ―of stepping on a crack,‖ my commitment ―to curbing my enthusiasm for irony,‖ and the like. Constituted as my pregiven nature, sub-personal processes, associations, drives, urges, bodily conditions, and the like are experienced as what I undergo; but what I undergo is always there meaningfully, in light of the stand I take toward it.

What is the relation of the Person to nature in this sense? For Husserl, the connection is found in the body as Leib . According to Husserl, the Leib appears both as a privileged center of the Umwelt—as ―organ‖ of my subjectivity—and as one animate organism among others (though a ―remarkably poorly constituted‖ one). Here we again encounter the systematic ambiguity in this concept. In the first instance the Leib is the living body; in the second, the lived body. What is ―remarkably poorly constituted‖ is not my living body but my lived body, which I can later describe as an ―animate organism.‖ The living body does not appear as a thing in the world at all . Because he does not take note of the ambiguity, Hus serl thinks


that the appearance of the Leib as organ of my will provides the basis for an ―apperceptive transfer‖ thanks to which I recognize other animate organisms, thus constituting myself contingently as part of nature. But if we suspend the naturalist ic assumption and clearly disambiguate these notions, the living body cannot be the basis for grasping the lived body.

To grasp myself as lived body, as one animate organism among others, requires a constituted space in which norms of the real, and its regions, are already there . Another way to put this is that the sense, ―animate organism,‖ will always be concretely expressed in terms of the loose ―types‖ that emerge from historically and culturally contingent personalistic practices. The Person constitute s the ―human being‖ as a specific denizen of ―nature‖ in this sense, and so I can treat my ―body‖ as such a par t of nature—both as Körper and as lived body. More particularly, the Person constitutes something like an ―us‖ in contrast to other beings, but s uch grouping need not map onto conspecificity in the naturalistic sense: ―us‖ might include our totem animals, pets, or whatever. But in whatever way ―body‖ and ―consciousness‖ show up in nature, they do not show up as constituting. The idea that the l ived body is part of nature—and that it is therefore constituted and relative—is not wrong; but this does not entail that the Person is constituted by some sub-personal form of consciousness. Thus, as Husserl rightly insisted (though for the wrong reasons), the paradox of a subjectivity that is part of the world but also constitutes the world need not threaten us, since the subjectivity that constitutes the world is not in the world at all; it is being -in-the-world.

The Question of Naturalizing Phenomenology James Mensch (St. Francis Xavier University)

One of the most remarkable developments of the past decade has been the attempt to marry phenomenology to cognitive science. Perhaps nothing else has so revitalized phenomenology, making it a topic of interest in the wider philosophical and scientific communities. 1 The reasoning behind this initiative is relatively straightforward. Cognitive science studies artificial and brain -based intelligence. But before we can speak of artificial intelligence, we must have some knowledge of natural intelligence, that is, understand our own cognitive functioning. Similarly, to understand how the brain functions, we need to grasp the cognitive processes that such functioning realizes. This, however, is precisely what phenomenology provides. It studies the cognitive acts through which we apprehend the world, observes the constitutive build-up of such acts, and attends to the temporal constitution at work in the genesis of every act, every intentional relation we have to the world. Its results, which have been accumulating since the beginning of the last century, thus, offer cognitive science a trove of information for its projects.

As obvious as this conclusion appears, it is not immune to some fundamental objections. The chief of these is that phenomenology does not concern itself with the real, psychological subject, but rather with the ―transcendental‖ subject. By virtue of the reduction that reveals it , this subject, as Husserl writes, ―loses that which gives it the value of something real in the naively experienced, pre-given world; it loses its sense of being a soul of an animal organism which exists in a pre-given, spatial-temporal nature." 2 As such, the 1 Representat ive works in this area include Varela, F. , Thompson, E. , & Rosch, E. , The embodied mind: Cognit ive sc ience and human exper ience . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press , 1991; Varela, F. , ―Neurophenomen ology: A methodological remedy to the hard problem,‖ Journal o f Consciousness Studies , 3(4) , 1996, 330–350; Varela, F. , ―The nat uralization of phenomenology as the transcendence of nature . Searching for generative mutual constra ints,‖ Alter , 5(4) , 1997, 355–381; Gallagher, S . , ―Mutual enl ightenment: Recent ph enomenology in cognit ive sc ience,‖ Journal of Consciousness Studies , 4 , 1997, 195 –214; Peti tot , J . , Varlea, F. J . , Pachoud, B. , & Roy, J . M., Natural iz ing phenomeno logy , S tanford: S tanford University Press, 1999; Gal lagher, S . , ―Phenomenology and experimental design,‖ Journal o f Consc iousness Studies , 10(9–10) , 2003 , 85 –99; Lutz , A. , & Thompson, E. , ―Neurophenomenology: Integrating subject ive experience and brain dynamics in the neuroscience of conscio usness ,‖ Journal o f Consciou sness Studies , 10(9–10) , 2003, 31–52; and Gallagher, S . , & Zahavi, D. , The phenomenological mind. London: Routledge, 2008. 2 "Nachwort, " Ideen zu e iner reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen


transcendental subject no longer has its sense of being cau sally determined by this spatial -temporal nature. Given this, how can such a subject serve as a paradigm for understanding either artificial or organic, brain-based intelligence? As part of the world, the latter are causally determined structures, but t he transcendental subject, as Husserl asserts, has to be ―considered as absolute in itself and as existing for itself 'before' all worldly being‖ (ibid., p. 146). If this is true, then the attempt to marry phenomenology with cognitive science is bound to come to grief on the opposition of different accounts of consciousness: the non -causal, transcendental paradigm put forward by phenomenology as opposed to the causal one assumed by cognitive science. Any attempt to employ phenomenology in cognitive science must, then, reinterpret its results in terms of the causal account assumed by the latter. In its attempt to use transcendental consciousness as a paradigm for understanding artificial or brain -based intelligence, cognitive science must transform it into a part of nature. This naturalization of consciousness is, in fact, a denaturing of it . It is a transformation that makes us lose sight of what is essential to consciousness.

In what follows, I shall analyze this objection in terms of the conception of subjectivity the objection presupposes. By employing a different conception, I will then show how it can be met. My aim will be to explain how we can use the insights of phenomenology without denaturing the consciousness it studies. 3 1. Naturalizing Phenomenology and Transcendental Subjectivity

Mathematics plays a crucial role in the attempt to naturalize

phenomenology. The procedure begins with the phenomenological description of the performances of consciousness. An analysis of the invariant structures of these performances is followed by the development of a mathematical model for such constructions. Expressing this in mathematical algorithms, the cognitive scientist employs the latter in a naturalistic account of consciousness. 4 For a

Philosophie, Drit tes Buch, ed. M. Biemel (The Hague: Ma rtinus Ni jhoff , 1971) , p. 145. 3 Here, let me acknowledge Mark W. Brown‘s Ph.D. thesis, ―Naturaliz ing Phenomenology: An Essay on the Phenomenological Limits of Naturaliz ing Phenomenology,‖ Mu rdoch Universi ty, Murdoch Austral ia , 20 08, from which I have drawn some of the form ulations of this objection. My expression of them is my own as is my attempt to meet them. 4 For a detai led discussion of this procedure, see David Marr, Vision (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982, pp. 25ff an d Terence Horgan and John Tienson, Connect ionism and the Philosophy of Psychology (Cambridge Mass. : MIT Press ,

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simple example of this procedure, we can turn to the process of retention or short -term memory. According to Husserl, this memory is built up of a chain of retent ions of retentions of…some original content. 5 Thus, first there is an impressional consciousness, then this is retained, then this retention is itself retained, and so on for upwards of a minute or so. We can mathematically model this process by using parentheses to express retention. The use of parentheses surrounding parentheses would then express the retention of a retention. Thus a simple model of the retentional process would be given by the series, i, (i) , ((i)) . . . , each later member being taken as a retention of the earlier. A computational algorithm can be written for this model. 6 A corresponding algorithm can also be written for the process by which we retain

1996) , pp. 24-45. 5 In Husserl ‘s words, the retention of the original content ―changes into retention of retent ion and does so co nt inuously.‖ The result is that ―a f ixed continuum of retention ar ises in such a way that each la ter point is a retent ion for every ear l ier point‖ ( Zur Phänomenolog ie des inneren Zeitbewusstse ins (1893 -1917) , ed. Rudolf Boehm, [The Hague: Mart inus Ni jhoff , 1966] p. 29 ) . 6 The funct ion is : (Defun Retent ion (X Impression) (cond ((= X 0) Impression) (T (Retent ion ( - X 1) ( l ist Impression)))) . ―Defun‖ means def ine the funct ion. ―Retention‖ is the name of the funct ion. Its var iables are ―X‖ and ―Impression.‖ ― X‖ stands for the number of retentions the impression is to u ndergo. ―Impression‖ stands for the impression to be retained. The second line states a condition for the computat ion. If X is equal to 0 , i .e . , i f the number of rete nt ions required is zero, the function returns the impression and the computation ceases . Otherwise, i t proceeds to the third l ine. The ―T‖ tel ls it to perform the computat ion which fol lows to the r ight of i t . First , 1 is subtracted from X -- i .e . , the number of required rete nt ions is reduced by one through the instruction ―( - X 1) .‖ Then, the impression to be r eta ined is surrounded by parentheses through the instruction ―(l is t Impression) .‖ Final ly , the original function is cal led again through the instruct ion ―(Retent ion ( - X 1) ( l ist Impression))) .‖ The variables of this funct ion, however, have been transformed through the f irst two operat ions just specif ied . For example, if ―X‖ was originally given the value 3, the f irst operation reduces i t to 2 . I f ―Impression‖ was given t he value i , the second operation gives it the value ( i) . Thus, the cal l to the original funct ion, ―Retent ion‖, is a ca ll for i t to carry out i ts computat ion on a set of values arr ived at through the results of its previous computat ion. This iterat ive process continues with 2 being reduced to 1 and then to 0 and ( i) being transformed to ( ( i) ) and then to ((( i) ) ) . When X is 0 , then the se cond l ine tel ls it to stop and return the value that ― Impression‖ now has - - that is , ( ( ( i) ) ) . Thus, (Retent ion 3 ‗ i ) yie lds (( ( i) ) ) . This signif ies that ―i ,‖ the impression, has sunk back to a retention of a retention of a retent ion of ―i .‖


successive contents in the order we experience them. Feeding into it the successive contents, A B C D E, it would express their order through sets of increasing parentheses: (E (D ( C (B (A))))). 7 Now, to employ this model in a naturalistic account of consciousness would be to use these increasing parentheses as temporal tags for the successive contents. In terms of artificial intelligence, this would involve first accumulating the data provided by the machine‘s transponders into defined temporal phrases before its processing. As for brain-based intelligence, one would use this model to investigate the sequences of neuronal firing. Generally, whatever the model, the focus would be on the implementation of a given task: in this case, the task of responding to the world‘s temporal givenness.

The most general objection to this procedure of naturalizing phenomenology is that it is actually a denaturing of it. To employ phenomenology in cognitive science is to miss its special focus. While the natural sciences, including cognitive science, aim at the understanding and manipulation of the external world, phenomenology‘s focus is on the subjective performances that generate the natural sciences. It is not interested in contributing to their results, but rather in understanding how these results are achieved. Its focus, in other words, is critical rather than practical. It examines the evidence that a science has for its basic positions and shows how the basic sense structures that characterize the science relate to such evidence. Its critical function is that of limiting a science‘s claims to the sense structures that its evidence supports.

The ready reply to this objection is that on e may grant it without prejudicing the use of phenomenology. No matter what the focus of phenomenology, its results stand on their own. As genuine insights 7 The funct ion‘s arguments are: ―phrase‖ —e.g. , A B C D E—a given ― initia l element‖—e.g. , A—and ―X‖ which s ignif ies the number of ret entions. The funct ion is: (defun phrase-retent ion (phrase init ial -element X) (cond ((equal nil (cdr phrase)) (Retent ion ( - X 1) init ial -element)) (T ( phrase-retent ion (cdr phrase) (cons (cadr phrase) ( l is t ini t ial -element)) ( - X 1) )))) . Here , (phrase-retention ‗(A B C D E) ‗(A) 10) yie lds ((((( (E (D (C (B (A))))))))) ) . Of the 10 retentions, f ive are used to retain the phrase and result in (E (D (C (B (A))))) . F ive more occasion the s inking down of the phrase as a whole f ive further degrees of pastness. The third l ine of the algorithm calls up the init ial funct ion ―phrase -retention‖ which means that the function processes the results of its previous operat ion. Within this r eprocessing there is also a cal l to the funct ion ―Retention,‖ give n in note 1, which also reprocesses the results of i ts previous operat ion.

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into our cognitive processes, their validity does not depend upon the particular aims of phenomeno logy, but only on the accuracy of its accounts. This holds, in particular, for its descriptions of the subjective performances that characterize consciousness as such. Such performances are carried out by the same subjectivity that the cognitive and neurological sciences study, namely, our embodied subjectivity. Thus, given that their subject matter is the same , the results of phenomenology can be used by cognitive science.

This, of course, is precisely what the objection will not allow. Following Husserl‘s lead, it asserts that what phenomenology studies is not part of the world. It does not investigate the empirical subject, but rather the non-worldly, transcendental subject. As prior to the world, this subject cannot be described in worldly terms. To deny this is to deny the point of Husserl‘s epochē . This epochē is what first allows us to do phenomenology. We perform it when we suspend our belief in the natural world. Such a suspension is not a denial, but rather an attempt to examine with unprejudiced eyes the evidence we have for it. This means that we cannot avail ourselves of any thesis that presupposes the existence of this world and this includes all the theses of natural science. 8 Rather than employing these, phenomenology‘s focus is on the evidence we have for them. In pursuing such evidence, phenomenology discovers the transcendental subject, the subject that constitutes the sense of the world from such evidence. We thus have the aforementioned distinction between the transcendental a nd the empirical subject. The empirical subject presupposes the world, the transcendental subject does not. Descriptions of the former employ causal terms, those of the latter avoid them since their use presupposes the causal intertwining of consciousnes s and the world and, hence, the thesis of the natural world. Given this, we cannot explain the transcendental subject by referring to our embodied empirical subject. In fact, the explanatory relation is the reverse. Phenomenology reveals the empirical s ubject as a sense structure constituted by the transcendental subject from the evidence available to it. 2. The Functional View of Consciousness

8 As Roman Ingarten observes, the logical point of the epochē is to avoid the fallacy of the petit io princ ipi i , i .e . , of assuming as part of the evidence for a thesis something that presupposes this thesis. To do so is to "beg a principle" and assume what one was trying to prove ( On the Mot ives which led Husser l to Transcendenta l Ideal i sm , trans. A. Ha nnibalsson [The Hague: Martinus Ni jhoff , 1975] , p. 12) .


What exactly is the sense of subjectivity presupposed by this

objection? Are we to think of the subject as a nonworldly agent, that is, as something ontologically prior to and, hence, independent of the world? Is its agency somehow responsible for the world? There are certainly passages in Husserl that would lead us in this direction. Husserl, in the Cartesian Meditations asserts that ―transcendental subjectivity … constitutes both sense and being. ‖9 He writes that the project of phenomenology is to make ―every being itself, be it real or ideal,…understandable as a constituted product (Gebilde) of transcendental subjectivity.‖10 As for the world, it is described in the Crisis as ―a world whose being is being from subjective performances, and this with such evidence that another world is not thinkable at all.‖11 Taken literally, such remarks would position transcendental subjectivity as a God-like agent, one that created the world from nothing. This, of course, is not Husserl‘s position. Far from being independent of the world, it is dependent in its functioning on externally provided data. Such data he asser ts, ―are nothing produced by consciousness. They are… that which has come into being alien to consciousness, that which has been received, as opposed to what has been produced through consciousness‘s own spontaneity.‖ This means that ―consciousness is noth ing without impression.‖ 12 Externally provided impressions are the source of all its contents. As for the subject or ego of consciousness, it is, apart from such impressions, ―an empty form,‖ one that is individualized through the contents provided by the impressions. 13

Given this, how are we to think of the subject? How can it be responsible for the sense and the being of the world and yet be simply a form for an inflowing content. To answer this, we have to first qualify the assertions of the Cartesian Mediations and take them as referring to sense and being for us . What is at issue is not being itself, but rather our action of positing being from the evidence it provides us. We do this by making sense out of a given material.

9 Cartes ianische Meditat ionen , ed. S . Strasser [The Hague: Martinus N i jhoff , 1963] , p. 118. 10 Ib id. 11 Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und d ie t ranszendenta le Phänomenolog ie , ed . W. Biemel (The Hague: Mart inus N i jhoff , 1962) , p. 100. 12 Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893 -1917) , ed. c it . , p. 100) . 13 ―One can say that the ego of the cogito is complete ly devoid of a mater ial , specif ic essence, comparable, indeed, with another ego, but comparable only as an empty form that is ‗ individual ized‘ through th e stream: this, in the sense of i ts uniqueness‖ (Ms. E III 2 , 1921, p. 18) .

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This making (or constitut ing) sense is a many layered process. Essentially, it is a matter of identifying a sense as one -in-many and positing this unity as a common referent for an originally apprehended multiplicity, be this a multiplicity of impressions, perceptions, perceptual objects, or states of affairs composed of these. As for consciousness itself, it is not a thing but a function. It is not a particular entity either wit hin the world or prior to it, but rather this synthetic, interpretive function of identifying unities in multiplicities. It is as such a function that we can take it as an empty form ―informing‖ or shaping the material it receives. The view of phenomenology that results from this insight is given by Husserl when he asks, ―is not consciousness function . ..?‖ He cont inues, ―What is necessary?...We have to examine [intentional] experiences as functions….We have to ask ourselves: What is ‗accomplished‘ in them? What kind of sense is present in them, what kind of sense is progressively forming itself in them?.. .How do functions synthetically, teleologically unite into the unity of a function, etc.?‖ 14 As this passage makes clear, to take consciousness as a ―function‖ is not to place it behind or beyond the world as if it were some creative agent. It is rather to define it in terms of those performances that allow it to form and progressively unite senses into greater and greater wholes—greater and greater unities in multiplicities. The intentional experience considered as such a function is that of taking our experiences as experiences of some common referent, a referent that stands as a unity for their multiplicity. 3. Applicability and Validity

In asserting that consciousness is a function, we preclude an

objection that can be brought against the attempt to capture it mathematically. This is that consciousness, taken as a concrete entity, is not itself mathematical. The experiences that compose it are not mathematical idealities, but rather the concrete qualitative contents—the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and textures—of our daily lives. This point is undeniable. But equally certain is the fact 14 The extended quote is: ― . . . i st n icht Bewußtsein Funkt ion , . . . ? Was ist a lso notwendig? Es sind intentionale Erlebnisse, Erlebnisse a ls Funktionen, als re lat iv geschlossene Funkt ionen betrachten, s ie betrachtend nach leben, neu durchleben, Akte vollziehen und s ie wiederholend nac hvolziehen und sich dabei befragen, was dar in ‗ge lei st et ‘ wird, was für Sinne darin l i egt und sich fortgestal tet , was man dabei tut und was dardurch für Sinneslei stung gele i stet wird im Übergang zu den umfassenden Zusammenhängen in der Einheit des Lebens , wie Funkt ionen mit Funkt ionen sich zur Einheit einer Funkt ion sy nthet isch t e leogisch e inigen, usw ‖ (Ms. A VI 31, p. 19a) .


that we can describe a function in mathematical terms without asserting that what performs this function is itself mathematical. To assert this would be to ontologize the description, making it the ―true being‖ or reality of the thing described. This is the error that the Crisis denounces in its account of modern science. Post -Galilean science takes its equations as expressing the reality of the world. At bottom, its error is the simple one of substituting the description for the thing described. Just as the law of gravitation is not the gravitating bodies whose relations it describes, so a mathematical relation is not itself the things it relates. This p oint, however, does not hold with regard to functions. Such functions are not things but rather formal relations and processes. As such, their reality can be caught mathematically. To call consciousness a function is to assert that what is essential to it are not the concrete qualitative contents of the experiences composing it, but rather its performances with regard to such material.

Because our consciousness is embodied, it does experience the world through its senses. Its contents are those of the t astes, touches, smells, sights and textures provided by our five senses. What is its relation to consciousness defined as a function? The answer can be found in a distinction Husserl makes between conditions of validity (Geltung) and those of applicabili ty (Anwendugn).15 As Husserl observes in the Logical Investigations , the two involve very different laws. The formal laws of arithmetic, for example, give us the conditions under which additions are valid. Calculations which violate them are invalid. Quit e different laws are at work when we make these laws applicable to adding machines. A mechanical adding machine uses the laws of the gear and lever, a modern calculator uses those of electronics. Yet both instantiate the same mathematical laws. A similar argument can be made with regard to our consciousness understood as a function. Such a consciousness represents a set of performances. For example, we apprehend objects by identifying perspectival patterns of appearing and assigning them referents. Doing so, we interpret the perceptions of a given pattern as perceptions of a given object —for

15 Husser l makes this distinct ion with regard to the logical laws. For such laws to be applicable to us, we have to be able to keep propositional meanings stable . Children, b efore the ―age of reason,‖ cannot do this. I f we fa il to dist inguish the val idity from the applicabi l ity of th is law, we would have to cal l the law of noncontradict ion inval id whenever, through age, i l lness or infirmity, we could not fulf i l l the condition of holding meanings stable. See Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Band , ed. Ursula Panzer in Edmund Husserl , Gesammelte Schri ft en (Hamburg: Fel ix Meiner Verlag 1992) , II , 107 -108.

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example, a box that we turn in our hands, viewing it first from one side and then from another. Given that this is actually how we see objects, this process must be one that is instantiated in our embodied being, that is, in our embodied, empirical subjectivity . The laws of applicability for such interpretive functions are thus biological ones—those having to do with our brains. These, however, are not the laws of consciousness as a function. They do not apply to the transcendental subjectivity that is defined by such functions. It is, nonetheless, quite helpful to understand the functioning of transcendental subjectivity in attempting to find out how our brains work. The formal laws of its functioning can serve as clues to the biological basis of our interpretive activity. Now, only if we equate the two sorts of laws, could we be accused of ignoring the special nature of transcendental consciousness. Given that such a consciousness is not a thing, but a func tion, this would be to commit the same kind of fallacy as equating the laws of arithmetic with those of, say, a mechanical adding machine. The relation of our embodied, empirical subjectivity to transcenden tal subjectivity is the same as that between this adding machine and the laws that specify the validity of its operations. Our empirical subjectivity embodies the transcendental by instantiating through its own organic processes the functions that charact erize the transcendental.

4. Transcendental Consciousness and Natural Science

The distinction I have drawn between transcendental and

empirical subjectivity allows us to meet another variant of the objection I have been considering. It is based on Gal i leo‘s separation of the primary from the secondary qualities of matter. The primary are its quantifiable aspects such as its measurable distances, speeds, wavelengths, weights and so on. The secondary are its qualitative aspects, i .e. , the tastes, sound s, colors and so on that our five senses reveal. Natural science, following Galileo, takes causality as pertaining to the quantifiable aspects of the material world. This means that before we can causally describe the world, we must first reduce its secondary qualities to its primary. Sound has to be understood as the frequency of the pressure waves reaching our ear, color to the wavelengths of light, and so forth. It is only in terms of such measurable qualities that we can mathematically formulate causal relations. The advantage we gain from this is not just greater precision. It is also the ability to make objectively verifiable (third person) claims based on objectively


measureable data. The same cannot be said of the secondary qualities of matter . Each of us can experience them only through his own senses. Not directly quantifiable, they can claim only a subjective (first person) validity. Natural science gets beyond this by reducing the secondary to the primary. Concretely, this means explaining the sensuously appearing world in terms of its underlying physical processes. Given this, natural science stands unalterably opposed to phenomenology since phenomenology, by definition, studies appearances while science explains them away by reducing them to physical processes. The causality science employs presupposes this reduction, so do its mathematical descriptions. The implication here is that we conflate irreconcilable paradigms when we mathematize phenomenological descriptions and employ them in causal accounts of consciousness. The cognitive science that attempts this forgets that the causality employed by modern science is not a formalization of subjective experience, but rather a reduction of it to non-subjective processes.

As in the earlier versions of this same objection, what is presupposed here is consciousness as a worldly reality rather than a function. The contents of our embodied consciousness are the tastes, touches, smells, sights and textures provided by our bodily senses. To reduce the secondary qualities presented by such contents to primary ones is to take them as the effects of the world on our embodied consciousness. The point is to relate them to the physical features of the world that produce these effects. The objection thus treats consciousness as a natural entity causally related to other natural entities, these being the objects affecting our bodily senses. Now, although such contents are understood in terms of such effects, they themselves are not explained away or reduced to them. The contents themselves do not suffer reduction, but only their claims to directly represent the features of the external world.16 What is reduced are the references of these contents. As Descartes formulates it, the attempt here is to move from variations in the secondary contents, for example those of a change in color, to the ―corresponding variations‖ in the material world. 17 Now, when we turn from our embodied, empirical consciousness to

16 Were the contents themselves to undergo a reduct ion, sc ience would lose i ts observat ional (empirical) basis. 17 In Descartes‘ words, ―from the fact that I perceive different kinds of colors, odors, tastes, sounds, heat, hardness and so on, I very readily conclude that in the objects from which these var ious sense perceptions proceed there are some corresponding variat ions‖ ( Meditat ions on First Philosophy , VI, trans. L. LaFleur [New York: Macmillan, 1990] , p. 77) .

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transcendental consciousness taken as a funct ion, what is at issue is not the physical reference of these individual contents, but rather those synthetic, constitutive performances that place these contents in intentional relations. As I said above, such performances, rather than the particular contents composing it, are the defining elements of transcendental consciousness. What cognitive science attempts to draw from phenomenology is an account of such performances. Its first concern is with the performances as such, independent of their field of application.

It is, in fact, in terms of Husserl‘s distinction between conditions of validity and those of applicability that we overcome the objection that the causality modern science employs presupposes the reduction of appearances to physical processe s. Strictly speaking, the notion of causality has nothing to do with this reduction. As Hume and Kant showed, it is simply a formal relation, one involving necessity in the sequence of appearances. To say that ―A causes B‖ is simply to assert that the experience of A is necessarily followed by the experience of B. One may either give such necessity a psychological force as Hume did or affirm it as an a priori category as Kant chose to do. In either case, however, the concept per se is silent on the relat ion of primary to secondary qualities. It only concerns conditions for validly drawing causal relations. Its strictly formal character does not mean that we cannot use it to guide us in discovering the causal relations of physical processes. Such relations, insofar as they involve necessary sequences, can be taken as applications of this formal law. These applications, as concerning physical processes, do concern the primary qualities of matter. This, however, does not mean that the concept of causalit y inherently involves the reduction of subjective experience to physical processes. Rather, since it concerns the sequence of experiences, it is open to phenomenological explication. As such, it forms part of the resources that phenomenology can offer co gnitive science. To employ these resources does not involve any denaturing of the consciousness that phenomenology studies. Rather, it clarifies the transcendental nature of such consciousness, allowing us to focus on it as a function rather than a thing .

Überschau and The Givenness of Life in Husserl‟s Phenomenology Andrea Staiti (Boston College)

One of the seminal insights of modern thought is that to be a subject means to be capable of, and even called to, self -determination. On this point, Husserl is notoriously consistent with the German ―transcendental‖ tradition, particularly with Kant and Fichte. However, as a phenomenologist, he is not primarily concerned with a theory of self -determination (a point on which Kant, Fichte and other figures in th e transcendental tradition would significantly disagree) but rather with the experiential conditions for possibility of self -determination. Provided that being a subject does mean being called to self -determination, how is such a thing possible? Although this question had been tackled already by the previous thinkers, it assumes for Husserl a quite distinctive meaning. Kant, in answering this question, introduces his postulates of practical reasoning, and Fichte appeals to the necessity of a free resolution of the will. Husserl, on the other hand, wishing that his answer be consistent with his phenomenological method, requires a reference to experience and conscious acts. The question must be restated in these terms: How is the experience of myself structure d so that self-determination is possible and even necessary?

In this paper I will argue that Husserl, in attempting to answer this question, progressively focuses on a peculiar kind of act that he terms Überschau , thereby borrowing a word from ordinary Ger man and giving a technical meaning to it. A possible English translation of Überschau could be ―panoramic view‖ or ―comprehensive view‖ but, given the technicality of the term, I prefer to leave it untranslated for most of this paper. Überschau is the kind of act in which we experience our personal life as a whole and, correlatively, the world as the constant horizon of this whole. In other words, Überschau is a correlative apprehension of totality. Husserl sometimes employs the term Überschau in contexts other than the problem of life and the world. For example, when he refers to the overarching act that embraces all examples of a certain region of being while we run through them in the performance of an eidetic variation, he occasionally speaks of Überschau . Although also in this case he is describing a certain form of apprehension of totality, and so a full account of Überschau should include a treatment of eidetic variation, in this paper I will exclusively focus on Überschau as the originary mode of access to that peculiar kind of totality that our life is. Moreover, whereas the talk of Überschau with respect to the

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performance of eidetic variation, does not identify a particular kind of act—and therefore doesn‘t have a technical meaning — it is meant to denominate a peculiar and robust kind of intentionality when it refers to the issue of life.

I will proceed as follows: First, I will try to elucidate the systematic venue of Überschau in a phenomenological account of self-determination. Second, I will consider some passages where Husserl speaks of Überschau and attempt to reconstruct its phenomenological structure. Third, I will articulate a sharp distinction between Überschau and modes of presentification (Vergegenwärtigung ) and between Überschau and reflection. At times, Husserl seems to endorse a reflective account of Überschau but I find this characterization problematic. Finally, I will suggest a possible alternative account of Überschau as a special actualization of self -awareness.

1.

The first important thing to notice in order to understand the import of Husserl‘s discovery of Überschau is the obvious fact that when we talk about self-determination (Selbstbestimmung) we are specifically talking about a special case of determination (Bestimmung). From a phenomenological point of view, the ―determination‖ of something as something —say of an apple as red—is a quite sophisticated and multi -faceted kind of accomplishment that is better studied when we explicitly bring it to expression in a judgment. When we judge that ―this apple is red‖ we ascribe a certain property to a certain substrate: the apple. 1 This substrate, however, must be previously given in experience as a suitable candidate for the ascription of more or less abiding properties such as redness. In this sense, determination refers back phenomenologically to givenness: the substrate must be given in the first place, i.e., it must be the thematic unity of an explicit intentional consciousness in order for me to determine it in any further way. 2 The givenness of a substrate in experience, however,

1 In Husser l‘s terms: ―Every judgment ( if i t is a s imple one) has i ts own ‗object -about-which‘ and this is thereby a ‗substrate‘ for i ts ‗determinat ions‘‖ [ Jedes Urtei l hat (wenn es ein einfaches i st) se inen ‗Gegenstand -worüber‘ , und dieser is t dar in ‗Substrat ‘ für seine ‗Best immungen ‘ ] . Hua XV, 520. 2 ―In the se lf -givenness the substrate is given prior to its determination and the determinat ions <are given> only if […] the substrate is given in advance‖ [ In der Selbstgegebenh eit is t das Substrat f rüher gegeben a ls d ie Best immungen, und d ie Bestimmungen nur, wenn […] das Substrat vorher gegeben i st ] . Hua XV, 524.


refers back to what Husserl calls pre -givenness: If I can explicitly turn toward a certain substrate and thus have it ―given‖ as ready for further determination, this is because that substrate was ―alread y there‖ in my experience as a unity. This pre -given unity, for the Husserl of the Lectures on Passive Synthesis , is the result of a complicated dynamic of temporal and associative synthesis that takes place passively between the rudimentary elements of sensibility. Pre-givenness is thus the general title for that dimension of passive constitution that makes givenness (as explicit, thematic grasp) possible in the first place.

Now, if we apply the threefold pattern of phenomenological explication ―pre -givenness/givenness/determination(s)‖ to the issue of life and self -determination, the following situation can be noticed: Whereas some progress has been made in the investigation of both the ―pre -given‖ dimension of life—and here I have in mind various insightful studies dedicated to self -awareness and the self-manifestation of the absolute stream of time -consciousness3—and the structure of concrete self -determination—developed by Husserl in his lectures on ethics and in his articles on renewal 4—l ittle or nothing has been accomplished to investigate the ―middle term‖ of the series, i.e., the givenness of life in a genuinely phenomenological fashion. To put it differently: Granted that I am constantly self -aware and that I do perform acts of self -determination, how do I move from a general sense of myself as enduring self -awareness to the experience of my life as a given, shapeable whole, so that acts of self-determination become open practical possibilit ies (and even imperatives) in the first place? It is in tryin g to answer this fascinating question that Husserl discovers Überschau as a peculiar mode of totality-consciousness.

2.

Husserl‘s descriptions of Überschau focus around two tightly interrelated issues he starts grappling with in the 1920s: The possibility of a universal epochē (explored chiefly in the second part of the lecture course on Erste Philosophie) and the structure of ethical life (a topic he covers extensively in the articles written for the Japanese journal Kaizo). The two issues are interrelated because in both cases Husserl is facing the same question: How can an accomplishment carried out in a single, temporally identifiable act

3 See at least Zahavi 1999; Fasching 2009; DeWarren 2009 . 4 See at least Welton 1991; Orth 1993; S te inbock 1994; Sta it i 2010.

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extend beyond that particular act and become a permanent disposition? How could what is brought about in a single act become determinant for life in its entirety? And just what is that —life in its entirety? As for ethical life, an apprehension of life in its entirety is manifestly what is somehow presupposed when we make life-embracing decisions such as choosing our professional career or getting married. No matter what happens with such a decision in the future—eventually its motivational force can diminish and even fade out completely—in the moment in which I seriously make the decision ―I want to marry this woman‖ or ―I want to become a doctor,‖ I am determining my life as a whole and committing it to that particular person or to health care. Acts of this kind constitute for Husserl the essence of ethical life, which is not about seeking fulfillment in just a momentary activity but about t rying to secure genuine satisfaction for life in general. 5 But how can a momentary activity extend to life in general and determine it?

The same issue resurfaces in the Erste Philosophie lecture where Husserl tries to determine how the psychological epochē carried out on single acts of consciousness can be extended to a universal epochē , thereby transforming intentional psychology into transcendental phenomenology. 6 Also in this case, the question is: how can the suspension of being carried out in a single act be generalized into a suspension of worldly being overall? An indefinite iteration of single -act-related epochēs will not do, because

5 ―Fulfi l lment does not arise from single […] sat isfact ions. On the contrary, i t is grounded in the certainty of the highest degree of durable satisfaction in one‘s whole l ife in general‖ [ Zufriedenheit entspringt nicht aus einzelnen […] Befr i ed igungen, sondern sie gründet in der Gewissheit größtmögl icher s tandhalt ender Befr iedigung im Gesamtleben überhaupt . ] Hua XXVII, p. 31. Furthermore: ―[The human being] does not posi t for himself only singular goals and then – in case of fai lure – tr ies to a t tain new singular goals . Rather he posits for himself ‗ l i fe -goals‘ and envisages a ‗methodology‘ for his pract ica l existence . This methodology rests upon a panoramic view on l ife so far in its successes and failures, on sat isfact ion and dissat isfaction so far. [ In other words] , i t rests upon self -reflect ion, crit ique, universal resolution of the wil l . In this way [ the human being] produces a method of l ife and correlat ively a re lation to the surround world defined by a str iving in order to give to the surr ounding world a more favorable form.‖ [―[ Der Mensch ] stel lt s ich nicht nur Einzelziel e und versucht be i Missl ingen neue Einzelz ie l e . Er st el lt sich „Lebensz iele― und entwirft eine „Methodik― handelnden Daseins, beruhend auf e iner Überschau über b isher iges Leben in Gel ingen und Miss l ingen, über bisher ige Zufr iedenheit und Unzufriedenheit etc . <beruhend> auf Selbstbes innung, Kri t ik , universalem Willensentschluss. So st el lt er e ine Lebensmethode her und korrelat iv e in Verhalt en zur Umwelt im Streben, ihr günst igere Form zu geben .‖ (Hua XXXIX, p . 156) .] 6 On this issue see Drummond 1975 as well as my entry ― Cartesianischer Weg/Psycholog ischer Weg/Lebenswelt l icher Weg ‖ in Gander 2010 .


this would leave unaffected the horizons of worldly validity implicitly surrounding any given act, thus failing to ach ieve genuine universality. Either a really universal, all -encompassing epochē has to be deemed impossible, or subjective life must be somehow given as a totality—and not just as indefinite iteration of momentary experience—in a specific form of intentional ity, thereby offering itself to the universal bracketing of phenomenological epochē .

It is in this context that Husserl develops a more detailed description of Überschau , whereas he refers to it only cursorily when he deals with the problems of ethics. Aft er giving a presentation of the horizon-like structure of consciousness and highlighting that the horizonal validity of the world represents a difficulty for the method of epochē carried out on single intentional acts, Husserl remarks that: ―On the other hand, however, there is a radical means to disconnect at once all validities that are entailed in the streaming life as constituting. This means is given to us precisely through our above considerations about the constant horizon -consciousness which accompanies every present phase of life and can be penetrated at any time from our thematically grasping regard.‖ 7 The horizonal structure of consciousness thus turns out to be a resource rather than a menace to transcendental -phenomenological radicalism: Husserl points out that we actually can dominate the whole, doubly-infinite manifold of horizonal validities because they are a priori entailed in our constituting l ife and we do have a panoramic, all-embracing view on our life (Überschau ). In order to provide a phenomenological description of Überschau , Husserl starts by developing it out of other act -classes having subjectivity rather than objects as their theme: First , we have simple reflections, directed towards already accomplished acts. I perceive a house an d subsequently I shift my attention and thematize this perception -of-a-house. Acts of simple reflection, Husserl argues, are not exclusively theoretical: there are ―also reflective evaluations and volitions,‖8 for example, when I look back and ask myself w hether the dismissive answer I gave to my student in class was really the right thing to do. But the thematic grasp of subjectivity is not limited to that. We can manifestly thematize ―entire stretches of life,‖9 past and future included, and, for example, we can decide to devote the upcoming summer to rest or we can bitterly acknowledge that we wasted our last month trying to pursue a project that 7 . . . Hua VIII , p. 153f . 8 . . . Hua VIII , p. 154. 9 [ganze Lebensstrecken ] , ib id.

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proved unfeasible. It is important to notice, already in this case, that casting a panoramic view on our past month does not amount to reawakening all or some of the acts that we performed and not even to compiling a sort of chart of last month‘s highlights. 10 We can do that too, but this is not the point when we speak about our past month as a whole . The point is rather that we possess and ―dominate‖ it as a whole and are able to determine and assess it as such. The wholeness of single stretches of life, however, does not embrace the full breadth of my subjectivity: a single stretch of life is always located either in the past, or in the future, sometimes reaching up to or including the present moment. In any case, the wholeness of a stretch of life is but a finite wholeness. This kind of experience, however, can be further extended: ―Finally, I can also cast a panoramic, universal view on my entire life and make decisions regarding my whole life, similar to what I can do that for finite stretches of life. Thus, I can carry out a universal critique of my life up to the present moment and at the same time be determinate to shape my entire future life: be it from the point of view of a universal value that I accept as valid without questioning it (such as power, success, and the like) or be it in the above sense of ethical self-reflection, self -critique and self -regulation. If we follow this second sense and, so to speak, we look for its ideal -form, we get to a peculiar reflective form of self -regulation connected to a universal panoramic view on life (universale Überschau des Lebens ) .‖11 The simultaneous grasp of past and future is the peculiar trait of Überschau that distinguishes it from any other form of thematization of subjectivity. In the next section I will expand on this and distinguish Überschau sharply from any form of presentification (recollection or expectation) and from reflection intended as a retrospective look on conscious acts.

3.

The function of Überschau , as presented thus far, is making our

life graspable as a whole and thereby making it available for self -determination. In so doing, Überschau makes something (my life) present which strictly speaking is not present. At least, it is not present in the manner of perceptual objects or of the particular thought I am entertaining in this given moment. However, Überschau must be first of all distinguished from any form of presentification. 10 The same goes, with the apt modif ications, for the panoramic view on the upcoming summer. 11 Hua VIII , 154 . My I tal ics.


There are two interconnected reasons to this: a temporal and an egological one.

If we consider temporality it is quite obvious that, first of all , Überschau cannot be a form of imaginative presentification. Imagination is non-positional consciousness: it lacks completely any reference to a ―real‖ temporal context (Zeitzusammenhang) for the perceptual, practical or evaluative situations it represents. For this reason, if Überschau were a form of imagination, it wouldn‘t be a ble to offer a grasp of my real l ife as unfolding in real and not merely fantasized time. It would offer just imagined life.

On the contrary, the other two basic forms of presentification —viz. recollection and expectation—could at first glance seem to be good candidates for the explanation of the kind of consciousness Überschau is. Couldn‘t Überschau be a mixed kind of consciousness combining together series of recollections and expectations into a whole? Husserl is very careful here excluding this option a nd emphasizing how both recollections and expectations are reproductive modes of consciousness while Überschau is not.12 When we want to thematize our life as a whole, fill ing -in with illustrative-intuitive content some past or future stretches of time (by means of a presentifying reproduction) is not only irrelevant, but also disturbing, for it distracts our attention from the wholeness we want to grasp and redirects it to some particular. Moreover —and this is what is really crucial about the distinctive te mporal character of Überschau—Überschau is a simultaneous grasp of the past and the future from the vantage point of the present .13 A recollection, in order to be a recollection, needs to reproduce illustratively its content as unfolded in the past. Likewise an expectation, in order to be an

12 ―If now we reflect upon what kind of accomplishment the universa l panoramic view is, provided that we are certainly already famil ia r with i t in other contexts , is i t clear that here we actually do not have a rea l act of seeing. [The panoramic view] is not a rea l reproduction of the past l ife in a continuity of explici t intuitive recollect ions, as if I had to rel ive my past once again and step by step. And even less can the panoramic view be an expl ic it i l lustration of the probabil it ies and possibil i t ies of my future l ife .‖ [― Überlegen wir nun zunächst , was d ie uns j edenfa l l s sonsther vertraute universale Überschau über unser Leben für eine Leistung is t , so is t es klar, daß es sich hierbe i nicht ernst l ich um eine Schau handelt , nicht um eine wirk liche Reproduktion des vergangenen Lebens in e iner Kont inuität exp liz it er anschaul icher Wiederer innerungen, a ls ob ich meine Vergangenheit Zug um Zug gleichsam noch e inmal durch leben müßte , und erst recht nicht kann es sich handeln um e ine exp lizit e Ausmalung der Vermut lichke it en und Möglichkeit en meines zukünft igen Lebens .‖ (Hua VIII , p. 155) .] 13 A discussion of the not ion of ― l iving present‖ wo uld be appropriate here but this would require too long a digression from the main l ine of inquiry of this paper .

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expectation, needs to reproduce illustratively its content as unfolding in the future. This belongs to the essence of, respectively, recollection and expectation and clarifies why a mixture of recollection of expectation is utterly inconceivable, or better, unexperienceable. The intentional content of Überschau , instead, which is life itself, is grasped as ‗being located‘ simultaneously both in the past and the future. This is why, as Husserl points out: ―The representing and grasping-as-being through Überschau manifestly has the character of an anticipating and vague grasp from afar and this is necessarily so.‖ 14 Either one-sided temporal determinacy (recollection or expectation) or temporal indifference (pure imagination): these are the only two options in order for an act of presentification to admit of illustrative content. By withholding both options, Überschau withholds at the same time any kind of illustrative content. My life as a whole can be fully grasped as such but not articulated within an illustrative act. Every intuitive illustration—what Husserl calls ―Veranschaulichung‖—must be temporally qualified as either past or future or as time -indifferent. But life as a totality is neither, because it embraces the enti rety of the temporal determinations of both objects and acts. 15

As concerns the aforementioned egological issue, one essential feature of presentifications (both pure imagination and recollection/expectation) is what Husserl calls ―doubling‖ or ―splitting‖ of the ego. The act of presentification entails an ego other than the present one. Both egos, however, are grasped as ―the same‖ through the work of a synthesis of identification. However, when I cast a panoramic view on my life and thereby grasp it as a w hole there is manifestly no ego implied other than my present one grasping this flux of life as his own and as a shapeable totality. From this point of view, one could argue that Überschau is closer to simple perception, at least in egological terms, than to presentification.

This last remark is helpful to articulate another important distinction, before I proceed with a brief conclusion: we have to distinguish sharply between Überschau and reflection as a second-

14 [―Das überschauende Vorstel len und Als -se iend-erfassen hat o f f enbar den Charakter eines antizip ierenden und vagen Erfassens von Fernen, und hat ihn notwendig .‖ (Hua VIII , p. 155)] 15 More on this point can be found in the so -called C-manuscr ipts where Husser l speaks of l ife in the following terms: ―My l ife is an unbroken unity of originarily f lowing temporal izat ion in which al l the manifold t emporal izat ions are enta iled‖ [―Mein Leben i st e ine ungebrochene Einheit der urströmenden Zeit igung, in der al l e mannig fal t igen Zeit igungen geborgen sind .‖ (Mat . VIII , p. 3) . ]


grade act. Reflection, as is quite obvious, is an act that regards another act. Moreover (and consequently), reflection is an act in which subjectivity rather than objectivity is thematic. Now, although it is self -explanatory that Überschau has subjectivity as a theme (and to that extent Husserl is right to classify it among the forms of reflective consciousness), it seems that it cannot be a second-grade act. A second-grade act reflection has a retrospective character. Therefore, some sort of act must be straightforwardly accomplished first , in order for subjectivity to return reflectively on it. But what kind of first -grade act could be accomplished that has Überschau merely as its second-grade act? To be sure, Überschau ranges over a manifold of past and future acts that are the ―first -hand‖ material of life. But this panoramic ―ranging over‖ is manifestly not a second-grade review of the already accomplished or future acts because its intentional object is not these acts but my life as a whole.

Let me briefly expound the solution suggested in Erste Philosophie in order to then criticize it . Husserl points out, as I stated as the outset, that Überschau is always a correlative kind of consciousness. By casting a panoramic view on our life we can‘t help but realize that this life has always already be en and will be a ―life -in-the-world‖—that is to say, a life in which a tacit position of the world has been unceasingly carried out: ―Casting a panoramic view on my life means thus at the same time and correlatively casting a panoramic view on the world […].‖16 This realization is crucial for Husserl‘s problem of articulating a universal epochē : since life embraces constantly the entire horizon of the world, it is possible to bracket the world‘s validity at once because we dispose of this life as a whole in the present. In this context Husserl suggests that the Überschau on life is a second-grade reflection carried out on the previously accomplished consciousness-of-the-world[Weltbewusstsein ]. He even suggests a strong affinity between what he terms ―single reflection and universal reflection‖ 17 and suggests that in the same way in which the straightforward perception of a single object comes first and reflection can only follow simple perception, ―so the simple panoramic gaze directed towards my surrounding world is what comes first and is then followed by a reflection upon my life which posited the world.‖ 18 In

16 ―Mein Leben überschauen, he ißt a lso in e ins damit und in korre lat iver Wendung: die Welt überschauen […].‖ (Hua VIII , 157.) 17 ―Zwischen Einzelre f l ex ion und universaler Ref l exion ‖ ( ibid .) 18 ―Und ebenso ist der schlicht überschauende Bl ick auf meine Umwelt das erst e, und ihm folgt dann d ie Refl exion auf mein Leben, das das welt setzend e war .‖ ( ib id.)

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other words: We are at first tacitly aware of the world in its entirety and then realize by means of a panoramic, ―backward,‖ reflection that our intent ional life (as the positing factor) constantly embraces its entire scope. In this way, we become aware of our life as a whole.

This solution, however, is somewhat puzzling to me. I am inclined to think that it is, on the contrary, by means of the grasp of our life as a whole that we may become conscious of the world as a whole. Following Husserl‘s solution on this point seems to imply that what gives unity to my life, what literally ―holds it together‖ as a whole, is the ceaseless positing of the world tha t it carries out. I am more inclined to think that the very fact that the world can appear to us as a totality is conditioned by the fact that we can grasp our life as a totality: take, for example, the notion of ―surrounding‖ world (Umwelt) evoked by Husserl in the previous quote. The unity of my surrounding world as the terminus ad quem of all my actions and the terminus a quo of all my conscious objects seems to derive its unity from the reference to my life rather than the other way around. It is because I can grasp my life as a whole that the world becomes manifest as a totality that is correlated to this life. Otherwise, why couldn‘t we have just an endless and pervasive series of singular positions of being that were merely juxtaposed against each other, rather than a world? Given the heterogeneous character of the objects of our experience and the fact that they are all more or less independent of one another, it is all the more enigmatic that we can experience them as pertaining to an encompassing whole—the world. It seems to be more convincing to ground this unity in the life that posits and experiences the world, rather than arguing that this life only gains its unity within a reflective act upon our consciousness of the world. 19 4. Brief conclusion

If Überschau is not understood as a reflective modification of

world-consciousness, how can we then account for its phenomenological origin? My proposal on this point will be tentative: I think that we can understand Überschau as a peculiar form of actualization of self -awareness. Let me briefly explain what

19 Interest ingly, Husserl seems to revise his posi t ion in some of his la ter manuscripts on the problem of the l ife -world (Hua XXXIX) and emphasize how we can have a genuine experience of the world only as the correlate of the total experience of our l ife . I can only mention this here, for the sake of brevity, but I will def ini te ly expand on this point in a more developed version of this paper .


I mean. I already mentioned in the first point of this paper that every

explicit grasp and further determination of an object presupposes its pre-givennes. The same goes for life. If we can carry out an Überschau on our life as a whole, this is because our life is pre-constituted as such. How is this pre-constitution structured? One of the merits of Husserl‘s approach is that it offers a strong account of this point: the pre-constitution of life as a whole is to be understood in terms of the self -manifestation of the absolute flow of t ime -consciousness. This self -manifestation constitutes what we commonly refer to as ―self -awareness.‖ Self -awareness is a pervasive phenomenon that can be found at all lev els of our subjective life. The origin of self -awareness can be traced in the peculiar structure or retentional consciousness, whereby consciousness does not only retain just -past phases of the object but at the same time retains itself as correlated to th ese phases. Retention is a form of double -consciousness. The pervasive sense of mineness inherent in our experience is constituted precisely as a result of this double-consciousness that constantly preserves itself as itself thanks to retention. A number o f insightful studies on this point showed convincingly that retentional consciousness qua pre-thematic self-awareness must be considered the condition of possibility of both act -intentionality and act -related reflection. Thanks to the constant work of rete ntion, we are able to thematize objects and return on our acts in reflection. But is this all? I would like to suggest that Überschau might be considered as a further way of ―capitalizing on‖ self -awareness distinct from act -related reflection. Tacit self-awareness is activated and capitalized on every time we perform an act of reflection pertaining to a single intentional object or state of affairs. What comes to manifestation is an object or a complex of objects correlated to a temporally qualified cross-section of our intentional life. But since self -awareness is pervasive, it is also perfectly plausible that it can be enacted in a way that is not related to a single cross -section of intentional life but, exploiting this pervasiveness, brings the whole of this intentional life to manifestation. In this case, the tacit self -manifestation of the stream of time-consciousness that accompanies every intentional act (self -awareness) is transformed into an explicit grasp of my intentional life in its entirety, as constituted within this stream and phenomenologically prior to every other object or act. The appearance of life as whole is, as I said at the outset, the condition of possibility of all further accomplishments that constitute ethical life and are known a s acts of self-determination. A

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more extensive study of the passage from mere self -awareness to Überschau would be required in order to determine where exactly the motivational sources for self -determination lie. Husserl suggests in different places that a full understanding of this point is crucial to understand the difference between human and animal life. Moreover, it would be fascinating to spell out the metaphysical -anthropological consequences of this view and show how the notion of Überschau can offer a radical alternative to the Augustinian -Heideggerian position that understands human life primarily in terms of scatteredness (Augustine) and Ruinanz (Heidegger). For both Augustine and Heidegger, the unity of life has to be actively restored in the first place by turning the mind towards God (Augustine) or by the anticipation of death (Heidegger). For Husserl, this unity is an originary feature of life itself that can be appropriated at any time by means of Überschau . Bibliography De Warren, N. (2009). Husserl and the Promise of Time: Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drummond, J. (1975). Husserl on the Ways to the Performance of the Reduction. Man and World 8, p. 47 -69. Fasching, W. (2009). The Mineness of Experience. Continental Philosophy Review 42, p. 131-148. Gander, H.-H. (2010). Husserl-Lexikon. Darmstadt: WBG. Orth, E.-W. (1993). Interkulturalität und Inter -Intentionalität. Zu Husserls Ethos der Erneuerung in seinen japanischen Kaizo- Artikeln. Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 47, p. 333 - 351. Staiti, A. (2010). Different Worlds and Tendency to Concordance: Some Remarks for a New Look at Husserl‘s Phenomenology of Culture. Forthcoming in The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy X. Steinbock, A. (1994). The Project of Ethical Renewal and Critique: Edmund Husserl's Early Phenomenology of Culture. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 32/4, p. 449 -464. Welton, D. (1991). Husserl and the Japanese. Review of Metaphy sics 44, p. 575-606. Zahavi, D. (1999). Self -Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

The Husserlian Project of Formal Logic and Individuation Carlos Lobo (Caen)

In a letter from the 10 th April of 1918, Husserl tells Hermann Weyl how he is delighted to see that their respective researches converge in ―a similar direction‖: the ―great and vast perspective‖ [i] of ―a mathesis universalis philosophically founded‖, [ii] ―in relation to a new formal metaphysics (the a priori and universal theory of individuation),‖ at which he has been working for years .1 Hence the rare profile of the book he is projecting to write : a ―philosophical book for mathematician‖ as well as a ―mat hematical book for philosopher,‖ trying to clear the way from a ―formal (systematic) logic to a formal logic of individuation.‖ This is no marginal or secondary project, since the phenomenological exploration of the manifold dimensions of inner time itself should take place in that perspective, as a part of the leading and fundamental task of solving the ―huge problem of individuation, of constitution of individual (hence ‗factual‘) being in general.‖

Because I am at the moment taken up and inevitably absorbed by the elaborat ion of a great book, I have not already and properly studied yours [ Space Time Matter ] . But I have read and understood enough of i t to say that i t is a pioneering work which marks a turning point in the foundation of mathematics. I t will mean, a t least for me , a great encouragement, for sure. But one can wonder whether (…) mathematic ians wil l be disposed to fol low you. I see all that you write in a great and vast perspect ive , that of a mathes is universal i s philosophical ly founded, and this, in turn, in relation to a new formal metaphysics ( the a pr ior i and universal theory of individuation), at which I have been working for years and wil l be working on. So a big thank you. I am firmly expect ing — and not s imply wishing — that your projects wil l reach maturity and be f ruitful.

These declarations, despite their many ambiguities, are

nonetheless sufficient to justi fy the two following statements : (1) there is a project by Husserl of a new formal logic; (2)this project is intimately connected with the problem of

individuation. The remaining ambiguities stem essentially from the multiplicity

of new or renewed formal disciplines mentioned here : ―mathesis universalis ,‖ ―new formal metaphysics,‖ ― a priori and universal theory of individuation,‖ etc. Are we dealing with [i] a manifold of 1 While consult ing Husser l -Chronik (ed. K. Schuhmann) as wel l as the end of the let ter , we learn tha t this book had individuation as centra l theme.

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distinct formal disciplines or [ii] with a manifold of different names for one and the same formal discipline, or, else, [iii]with a manifold of different aspects or states of a same discipline? And are all the items of those manifolds formal or equally formal and, if the one or the other, in what sense? Another ambiguity concerns the part phenomenology is supposed to play in that project. If its main goal is to provide formal disciplines with sound philosophical foundations, does this imply minor or major transformations in formal logic? And if so, what do the se transformations consist in? Although, luckily we won't have to address today all those questions, I would like to state, and this is my third assertion:

(3) that the renewal of formal logic requires a kind of foundation which modifies deeply the traditional division of labor between logician, mathematician and philosopher .2 This means that, after the transcendental turn, Husserl 's logical investigations instead of being a mere critique of formal logical performances, evolved into a program of a new formal logic , a renewal in which transcendantal logic plays an active role. Or to put it in other words, the logical investigations have evolved from critical readings of logical works (1883) into a project of systematic and radical critique of logical reason (1929), a critique, which unlike Kant's, is a strongly revisionist one.

Among the many lines of interpretation which can be drawn from the ambiguities just mentioned, I would like to articulate these three statements (1)-(3) in the following way:

[i] there is indeed an Husserlian project of reform of formal logic in its broadest and all encompassing sense ;

[ii] this reform requires transcendental phenomenology as its kingpin;

[iii] this reform consists essentially in correcting a fail ing or in filling a lack which hinders the whole set of formal disciplines to be fully constituted and to contribute, as they should, to a continuous critical and adequate reflection on sciences in th eir progress, sensitive to the methodological essence of scientifically constructed truths, as well as to the essential openness of these constructions. This failing lies in a naive formal metaphysics of individuation and, correlatively, in a naive theory of individual reference (of naming).

According to this general hypothesis, we are entitled to talk of the existence of two formal ontologies , two logical grammars, two logics of consequence, two logics of truth, etc. Or rather of two states 2 In order to take the ful l measure of the change involved in it , compare Formal and Transcendental Log ic , note (a) to § 35, p. [89] (Niemeyer) , and Prolegomena , § 71.


of these formal disciplines. Since the beginning Husserl did resent the need for a clarification of the inner logic of mathematics and sciences, but it is only later that he became aware of this lack. And the main aftershock of the Logical Investigations will have consisted in a deep modification of the architectonic of the so -called pure logic , a modification motivated by the awareness of the insufficiencies affecting its implicit and naive theory of individuation.3

In order to give support to this hypothesis, I shall focus on two rather small texts, but large enough in scope to provide a full overview of the problem I am dealing with at present.

The first one, from 1926, figures as Beilage VII in Husserliana 's edition of Formal and Transcendental Logic , and deals explicitly with the project of reform of formal logic. Its title is : ―To be used for a critique of formal logic and its reform into a fully universal ontology .‖ The core of this reform consists in the justification of the transition from the formal ontology of individuality as individual whatever to a formal ontology of individuality as individual within the frame of its type .

The second one, from 1936, belongs to the appendices to the book Husserl projected as his ―discours de la méthode ,‖ and which we know as the Crisis . This text offers so to speak a ―model‖ as well as a touchstone for the change in formal ontology advocated ten years before. In fact, Husserl tackles the essent ial issues of quantum mechanics: status of physical individual, meaning of probab ility function y , logical and etiological signification of the uncertainty principle, etc. , and in that epistemological context, he traces more clearly than ever the lines for a renewal of formal disciplines, and particularly for a new theory of individuat ion.4 I will just mention briefly this second point, and those who will be interested in examining Husserl 's reform from the point of view of physics can refer to the full text given in the proceedings.

1. Individuality Whatever and Typical Individuality: Two Versions of Formal Ontology

3 Cf . Ideas, I , §§ 13-14. 4 For want of taking into account the deep methodological character of Husser l 's cr it ique of logica l reason, even the best - informed commentators were not able to see that , among the posi tions struggling in the philosophical batt lef ie ld around quantum physics and i ts appropriate ontology, transcendental phenomenology did not step on the s ide of ontologica l conservat ism (cf . M. Bitbol, Mécanique quant ique , Une introduct ion philosophique , Flammarion, 1996, pp. 287 sq.) .

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The first text aims at motivating the project of reconstructing the

whole set of formal disciplines and it indicates the main trends for a renewal of formal ontology. Among the reproaches Husserl addresses to logic: its thoughtlessness as regards the fundamental operation of ―logical idealization,‖ which represents its central condition of possibility, and, correlatively, ―the given upon which this idealization is carried on,‖ and consequently the obscurity involving it.

A. An Enlargement of the Naive Formal Ontology is Necessary Because of this thoughtlessness the effective formal ontology of

logic remained naive up to now. From an axiomatic point of view, naivite means that apparently trivial presuppositions about fundamental logical concepts exert a double negative effect of limitation and of inhibition upon its theoretical performances , hence upon the critical reflect ion which should not only follow but should also stimulate these performances. As a first consequence , formal logic did not manage until now to coincide with its very essence, and, correlatively, this is a second consequence, the field of formal ontology has been arbitrarily and excessively restricted.

The most manifest symptom of the misunderstanding of logic about its essence lies in the ―lack of clarity‖ of its realizations and, hence, in obscurities and confusions Husserl has been tracking down since his first articles on Ernst Schröder 5 and Alexander Voigt 6 concerning, for instance, the differences between calculus and logic,7 algorithm and language,8 sets and varieties 9 or between different concepts of content and form, or of individual names ,10 etc. Hence, it would be a mistake to think that the layers of formal disciplines belonging to apophantic lato sensu would describe fully constituted disciplines. Formal logic as it actually is does not coincide with any of the formal discip lines it is supposed to

5 Recension on Schröder's Lessons on log ica l alge bra , p. 264, Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen , 1891 no 7, pp. 243-278 6 ―Elementary Logic‖ o f A. Voigt and my papers on the logic o f log ica l calculus , Vierter jahrsschrift für wissenschaft l iche Philosophie, 17, 1893, pp. 111 -120. 7 op. c it . p.246. 8 ib id. p.258. 9 ib id. p.264. 10 ib id. p.251. ― In the concept of proper name, maybe under the influence of Jevons, two concepts which should be separated are mixed up: the general concept of individual name and the part icular concept of proper name in i ts usual sense, i .e . the name of individual without ‗co -designation‘ .‖


embrace: pure logical grammar, logic of consequence, logic of truth. Taken in its strict and ideal sense, formal logic is an ―analytic of propositions and meanings [which] leaves necessarily a side the ontological dimension,‖ but consequently also ―the concept of truth and of true being‖ are disregarded (p. 415 ). This restriction of course does not represent a failing by itself, and Husserl does not pretend either that it should be avoided ; for, as the ―conditions of true being of an object in general,‖ which are the main themes of ―the analytic of formal ontology,‖ are rooted in the analytic of meaning and consequence, the latter must necessarily precede the former. Of course, the sphere of meaning and proposition considered as objects are themselves a kind of ―formal region,‖ belonging as such to mathesis universalis . But the reverse holds as well, since ―the universe of sense, in a certain way, encom passes the universe of objects,‖ ―in so far as precisely every object has an objective meaning and since, obviously, the a priori of meaning is of major importance for the knowledge of the objective a priori‖ (ibid).

If the analytical sphere can indeed be set out in three disciplines, the necessity to take into account the ontological orientation complicates this distribution, for in each formal sub -sphere the logician should draw out the purely formal elemen ts capable of founding this objective orientation, without exceeding the limits of analyticity. Hence, for instance, the exact extent and limits of logic of sense, i .e. of purely logical grammar have been misunderstood. Although on this track, logicians fi nally managed to discern within the forms of judgment distinct moments of form such as substantivity and adjectivity (as predicate and subject), this exploration finally was stopped, on account of a restrictive and superficial conception of the terms, or i n other words, on the account of an insensitiveness to the non syntactical formal dimension proper to the terms themselves : that of core-forms . The origin of this is to be found in an unjustified presupposition regarding the nature and content of the funda mental ontological concept, that of the something whatever .

The presupposit ion of analytical logic concerning the terms and f inal ly their ult imate cores i s that they are held as identical and different without questioning about any true essent ia l identit y or difference, henceforth without questioning the quid one is supposed to establ ish in i ts identity or difference —now this is already a quest ion of truth. The intent ions are not just if ied, demonstrated, e lucidated. Although they are standing there disclosed in a more or less great clari ty, the quid i tse lf , the possible and the true are not questioned ; one does not pay attention to them. (p. 431)

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The resulting formal ontology, irrespective of its methodological

intention, introduces a restriction in the understanding of its fundamental concept of something or object whatever .11 From the start, the something whatever is understood following the things at hand in the environment. Having under the eye, the ―example of the world and eventually of ideally exist ing worlds,‖ ―the former ontology (formal logic as well as mathematics)‖ has adopted as formal categories those corresponding to the sphere of naive mundane experience. Among these categories we find the fundamental one, that of individual, which has never been criticized and has been adopted, unchanged, in first order logic as in set theory.

B. The Enlargement of Ontological Concepts through A doption of Modalities At this stage, phenomenology intervenes on the ground of formal

logic with two critical operations. The first critical operation consists in a reductive procedure through

which phenomenology exhumes the founding formal ontological concept carrying on the full weight of the restrictions just mentioned—that of individual whatever, of mathematical individual— in order to subject it to the second critical operation , that of enlargement . But these two operations seem problematic. Don't the final substrata belong to an empirical, inductive or ―synthetic logic‖? Isn't it natural and legitimate to proc eed as ordinary formal ontology does, by restricting its theme to the substratum whatever, to the variable matter of terms as a support for any kind of iterations and modifications? And Husserl himself seems hesitating. ―So, ‖ Husserl goes on,

I can' t say anything in the f rame of formal analyt ic about individuali ty , except about what belongs in i t to the formal, about the ―ult imate substratum of meaning‖ and about that which is implied in i t as analyt ica l consequence, which is somethi ng total ly empty.—The ult imate substratum alway s enta i ls something temporal.—Maybe. But analyt ica lly, we must ignore i t , because this is no formal , analytical ly reduct ive determinat ion of a something-ultimate-substratum.—Nevertheless, this is implied in the possibil ity of any o bject in general, of any ultimate substratum-object . 12

11 Cf . §§ 23 a) , 24 and 35 a) and the note (a) to this last one, in F. T. L. 12 ― Ich kann a lso von Individual ität in der formalen Analyt ic nichts aussagen, es se i


If classical formal ontology keeps silent (as in set theory or in

formal semantics) about such determinations (as temporal determinations), that does not mean that it has renounced every theory of individual, for it has since the beginning adopted one. With Leibniz's principle of identity of the indiscernible, modern formal ontology did try to correct and overcome the insufficiencies of the competing theory of individuation, that of individuation through location in absolute time and space. But this principle has become a lock that the reductive procedure aims at opening in order to set a new formal ontology capable of assuming the role of a formal first metaphysics .

In order to justify this reform, it is necessary to consider the other operation that underpins the first (that of reduction to the ultimate substrata) or at least is coordinated with it : that of enlargement by tracing logical activity back to the moving manifold of intentions and intuitions bearing it. Arrived at that point, one meets the requirement of transcendental phenomenology. Its task is that of a critique of logical reason, which aims at exhuming a kind of possibility which must be qualified as transcendental in so far as it enables the critique both to clarify and modify the grounds for the ―axioms‖ o f formal disciplines. It must be able, as Husserl insists, to inscribe the formal sphere in a larger formal ontological a priori , of which naive formal ontology represents a superficial and abstract stratum.13 For that, the judgment must be situated in the general frame of the correlation of the judging subject and the being upo n which the judgment is oriented. More generally, what is required is ―another theory of method, more profound t han that offered by the analytic,‖ a method sensible in particular to the modes of the

denn, was zu dem Formalen ‗ l etztes Me inungssubstrat ‘ gehört und was in der analyt ischen Konsequenz davon l i egt , was e in völl ig Leeres i st . Das l etzte Substrat <hat> immer Zeit l ichke it im Sinn entha lten. Das mag se in : Aber analyt isch i st das nicht e inzusehen, denn das l i egt nicht in der formal en, analyt isch reduktiven Best immung e ines l etz ten Substrat -Etwas. Aber es l i egt in der Möglichke it e ines Gegenstandes überhaupt und eines l etzten Substrat -Gegenstandes.‖ op. c it . p. 427. ( ib id.) [Dashes in the English translat ion are mine ] . 13 This amounts to consider ing the formal sphere as a ―region,‖ the ―region‖ of categories meanings and essences. Cf. Ideas I , § 17, a lready considered the task of an ―analyt ic‖ in a quasi Kantian sense to trace the general dist inctions between and within the regions, and from that point of view, formal ontology appeared itse lf ― in the same series as the regional ( the str ic t ly ‗mater ial , ‘ ‗synthetic‘ ontologies)‖, i ts ―regional concept ‗object‘ determining the formal ( ‗analyt ic ‘) categories .‖ (p. 70 of W. R. Boyce Gibson translation, Col l ier Macmill ian Publishers) .

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something involved in the diverse subjective modes .14 The analytic in its actual state provides us only with ―a fragment of the method of the practice of the knower and knowing which is much richer,‖ and neglects in particular the modal and axiological dimensions of the activity of knowledge as well as their passive counterparts. Now, analytic should be the formal study of scientific production as such, i.e. of a ―rational praxis of knowledge.‖ The enlargement entails the import of doxic modalities inside the analytic of judgment and, correlatively, the import of ontic modalities, and of probabilities as one of them, inside ontology.

The task of exploring this modal manifo ld falls on phenomenology and not on formal logic. But the latter needs an enlargement in order to overcome the obscurity of its fundamental concepts, especially that of possibility , which is restricted to pure analytical possibility, i.e. to justifiable o r justified, demonstrable or demonstrated being. The elucidation of this concept, so vital for a logic of truth, depends on the acceptance of the full scope of modalities as constitutive of logical matter .15

The first act of a radical formal ontology consi sts in taking into account true being of every kind (following every species of subjective activity in every attitude, practi cal and theoretical). Despite its privilege, true being in the sense of ultimate self -evidence has no meaning apart from the dynami c of modifications leading to it. Husserl insists on this point in many instances. The transition from a logic of consistance (which is something less than consequence, restricted to the pure analytical possible) to a true logic of truth entails a deep modification of formal ontology, such that its corresponding ontology becomes an ―authentic ‗ontology‘,‖ ―a formal science of possible individual being.‖ The possible here at stake is not anymore the pure possible of analytics, for, instead of the something whatever supporting the poorer conditions of true being in general, we get now the ―something possible in its possible modalities‖ (pp. 427 -428).

14 Among the modes referred to, as we learn in a c loser reading of § 23 a) of Formal and Transcendenta l Log ic , are above all those proceeding from modal modificat ions, understood as operat ions exerted not only o n the judgment but on the syntactical mater ial , hence as const itut ing the logica l matter of the judgment. 15 We recognize here the phenomenological task of quest ioning ―in its full scope, the reign of a prior i necessi ties without which a true being could n ot exist for the knowing subject , the modes of knowledge and the modes inseparable from them of empty, bl ind, obscure intent ion; […] without which true being would be an empty concept deprived of any properly comprehensible s ignif ication, of any sc ient if ic al ly usable signif icat ion.‖


C. Formal Eidetic—a Morphology The most delicate point, apparently for Husserl too, lies in the

ambiguity of the concept of morphology involved in this new formal ontology.

The enlargement indicated before seems in fact to jumble the well-known delimitation between analytic and synthetic. Husserl denies it. It is still a question of formal ontology, except that the logical ―matter‖ is from now on understood in its full extension, ―and not only in the way of a mathematical variable.‖ This means that the recasting of formal ontology goes with a promotion of a new concept of form.16 Next to, or rather below the usua l concept of form, the ―new concept of the formal‖ is significant in as much as it ―applies at present to something possible in its possible modalities.‖17

This holds also for the upper forms, for the genera embracing all lower forms. Beside or below the s tandard categorial predicative productions, there is another form which ―mea ns rather a supreme generality,‖ ―stemming from the set of supreme generalities, in which every substratum, and so every possibl e objectivity must be 16 One wil l remember that in the Ideas , Husserl dist inguished the individual as ―ultimate syntact ica l ly formless substratum‖ (§12) (as tode- t i or ―pure syntactica l ly formless individual unit‖) (§14) from the individual as ―ultima te formless essence,‖ as ‖formless substant ive ( sachhalt ige ) essence ,‖ and insists on the fact that there is between them an essentia l predicat ive connect ion, s ince ―every ‗ this - there ‘ has i ts essent ia l substantive quali ty possessing the character of a formless substant ive essence‖ ( ibid . ) , or in other words, since it is subsumed in a specif ic sense under the ult imate substant ive essence , or in f ima species . This dist inction is pushed further by taking into account the dist inction between dependent and indep endent objects, or which is the same, between abstract and concrete (§15) . We arr ived at an absolute this -there the immediate substant ive essence of which is a concretum, and represents an ind ividual in the narrower sense. As soon as we inscribe [ i] eidet ic general izat ion in the realm of pure logic , and consider it as a kind of logical ―modif ication‖ ( Abwandlung ) and [ i i] conversely, formalizat ion as a way of abstracting from every essence, and region of essences, the pure empty form common to a ll (§10) , th e individual taken in i ts last sense does not fa ll anymore outside the f ie ld of pure logic, and correspondingly, of formal ontology, but appears ―on purely logical grounds‖ as the ―logical absolute to which al l logical modificat ions refer us back‖ (§15) . 17 op. c it . p.427-428: ―Bedeutsam ist der neue Begri f f des Formalen und, wenn man wil l , noch des Analyt ischen, der a lso nicht mehr das Analyt ische der l eeren Konsequenz betr i f f t . Das Formale betri f f t jetzt mögliches Etwas in seinen möglichen Modal itäten. Wi r st ehen j etzt von vornherein in der Sphäre des ‗Evidenten, ‘ sich durch Selbstgebung er fül lenden Substratsatzes und präd ikat iven Satzs und in der Sphäre von Doxa überhaupt a ls s ich erfül l ender bewährender Doxa —und ihren Korrelaten .‖

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situated.‖ While taking into account those forms, we do not at all step into material ontology, since, remarks Husserl, it is still only question of the ―quid of possible objectivities, and not of accessible genera or supreme genera.‖ These generalities are ―prescribed by the formal generality something in general and the ultimate substrate something in general .‖

The possibility and justification of such a splitting of the concept of form (and consequently of all formal concepts) results from the operations described previously : (1) reduction of the formal to its ultimate formal matter, i .e. to the fundamental category of individual and (2) incorporation of modalities into this logical matter.

The new formal ontology exceeds the opposition between modern and ancient logic. Ancient logic recognized the individual as fundamental category, and, especially in its Aristotelian form, dealt extensively with modalities, but it never admitted them as substantive (sachhaltige ), i.e. as blended into the individual, and giving it its finishing touch. Modern logic inherited these limitations, and the question remains opened as to whether it has overcome them since the time of Husserl. According to Gian Carlo Rota, it was still in an impasse in 1975, and the only radical reform of logic since Aristotle is due to Husserl himself .18 And he encouraged us to develop the program set before us or rather to dig it out from the material Husserl left us.

From that material, we learn which the tasks of this new logi c in its connection to ontology:

It is absolutely necessary to get a full presentation of the inter -implicat ion and of the systematic order of phenomenological and ontologica l matters. [ i] Ontologica l logic as mathes is universa li s says nothing about the categorial -being of individual ity, but rather of the object in genera l as substrate for predicat ions ; i t is the formal science of objects in general , of true being in general or, i f you l ike, of determinat ing truth in general. [ i i] Ontology of individual being, formal ontology in the more specif ic sens e of the term, formal and f irst ‗metaphysics, ‘ must develop the a pr iori of individuali ty . Of course, a ll that which is mathemat ica l ho lds also for the ind ividual , and mathemat ical categories hold themselves for the scope (Umfang) o f the categories o f ind i viduali ty . But these categories , categories of the object and of modificat ions of the object , are modif ied in a peculiar way while applying in part icular to individual ity. Hence for the concepts of essence, genus, species, whole, part , etc . ‗Developing ‘ these concepts and

18 Husser l and the Reforme of Logic, in Discrete Thoughts , Mark Kac, Gian-Carlo Rota , Jacob T. Schwartz, Birkhä user, Boston, Basel, Berl in, p. 173.


developing the whole ontology into the form of individuation as such (hence individuation of genera l i t ies into individual ‗things, ‘ into s ingular it ies) following a pr iori and formal legali t ies of essence: such is the task . Belong to i t , the theory of t ime, s t i l l in a formal universali ty, i .e . even if we distinguish between time and its matter ( the f i l l ing real content of t ime) , the matter is introduced in a pure formal way (as a category of formal metaphysics) , while we keep ‗variable‘ all concrete rea l part icularization. Aristotel ian categories (af ter a small purif icat ion) become themselves c ategories of the individual ity (op. c it . p. 424-425) [Emphasis mine] .

If we take this program seriously, our first task should be now to

endeavor to understand what would be the profile of a formal logic in which every formal concept would be purified and developed in the form of individuality.

2. Elements in Classical Physics and in Quantum P hysics

Since this new formal ontology reveals its intentio n to espouse

the methodological essence of scientific activity, and to supply epistemological reflect ion with adequate tools to decipher the provisional behavior of judging activity in science and, correlatively, the modular identity of scientific objects, including ultimate individuals, it would be of interest to try to instantiate the new fundamental categories with physical objects, by filling out these forms. This kind of instantiation is prescribed by the very status of the formal as such .19 For example, the transition from the concept of space to that of Euclidean multiplicity is obtained through formalization,20 and the former illustrates the latter, as any material essence illustrates the form abstracted from it. But that means at the same time that the forms can and must be inscribed in the same series as material essences. In another sense, Riemann's manifold is a mathematical theory among many other, and can be built up as a formal system of axioms.

This is no arbitrary complication. Instead, with t hat example as well as with that of quantum physics we obtain a touchstone for the consistency and a yardstick for the scope of Husserl's reform of logic. For, exactly as he pointed out the limits and insufficiencies of

19 Husserl a lready stated in the Ideas I that, for example, ―every def ini te inference, i t may be one that is serving the interests of physics, is the instancing of a def ini te pure -logical form of inference , every def ini te proposition of physics the instancing of a proposit ional form, and so forth‖ ( Ideas I , §13) . 20 Cf . Ideas I , §13 , and FTL , §53.

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formal apophantic and ontology, Husserl indicates, here too, the limits and presuppositions of classical physics. And in fact, the mathematics proper to classical physics suffers from the same limitations as classical formal ontology.

A. The Limits of Classical Physics What is the epistemological profile of classical physics? Nature is defined as a close universum of bodies in themselves,

defined in their ultimate individuality by their absolute location in absolute space and time, i.e. by their position in relation to an arbitrary coordinate system. All subjective variations are dependent on this structure. Bodies are posited in themselves on account of this variability (relativity) of the positions of possible observation and measure . For every arbitrary coordinate system and so, for ever y spatio-temporal location and extension, is postulated the fact that ―it is possible to determine completely the numerical calculus of sizes.‖21 Such completeness is purely axiomatic, and implies, from an ontological point of view, that every physical prop erty attribuable to a physical individual element is deducible down to its ultimate determination.

Physical individuality is submitted to the requirements of this completeness in the calculability of movements. The determinist postulate reduces itself to that of the consistency of the calculus of the relations between physical individuals, according to which these are mediately or immediately determinable in themselves. Hence the main features of physical individual : atomic (―real indivisible elements‖), geometric (―spatio -temporally located‖), numerable (―numerical individuation‖) and measurable 22 (equivalently as continuous or discrete).

Classical physics is atomistic in a logical sense. From an algebraic point of view, that means that it has a classical group

21 Kris is , Appendix IV. 22 Here intervenes the unreal istic supposit ion that ―each subset of phase -space‖ should be identif ied with ―an experimental‖ proposition and conversely. This is ―unrealist ic‖: ―for example, how absurd i t would be to ca ll an ‗experimental proposition,‘ the assertion that the angular momentum ( in radians per second) of the earth around the sun was at a particular instant a rational number.‖ For this reason, ― it seems best to assume that [such a dynamic system] is the Lebesgue-measurable subsets of a phase-space which corresponds to experimental propositions‖ (G. Birkhoff and J . von Neumann, The logic of quantum mechanics (1936) , The Neumann Compendium , ed. F. Brody and T. Vamos, World Scientif ic , 1995, pp. 107) . Nevertheless, the logic of experimental proposit ions in c lassical physics has the structure of a Boolean algebra (p. 108) .


structure, in which physical proporties are defined as classes of equivalence of experimental propositions .23 The individual of classical physics has the same form as the individual whatever of classical formal ontology, posited in its identity accord ing the principle of identity of the indiscernible.

B. New Physics Require a New Formal Ontology The recent experiences at the core of quantum mechanics

represent for Husserl a radical challenge for formal ontology, i .e. for mathematics, and not, as usually seen, for causality.

Concerning causality, quantum mechanics reveals one of the restrictions of classical formal ontology. No individual is temporally and spatially determinable in a one-to-one relation. Spatio-temporal individuation is necessarily incomplete (indefinite). Physical individuals are never completely deducible, but deducible only in a ―certain range of play‖ (Spielraum ). This notion, Husserl adopted from von Kries in the Prolegomena , is decisive in this text, and as announced in Formal and transcendental Logic , it expresses a deep displacement of the distinction between nomological (deductive) sciences and ontological (descriptive) sciences.

This absence of one-to-one spatio-temporal determination does not imply any kind of indeterminism . The nomological and etiological character of physics is necessarily preserved. But it is modified in order to take into account a new formal ontological dimension, by incorporation of which alone individual cease s to be indifferent individual, to become ―free‖ and concrete individual within the frame of a certain type. Physical individual is never fully determinined, but only ―determinable in a certain range as regard its causal behavior.‖ With the formalism of quantum physics, physical etiology becomes more flexible and more akin to the ordinary sense of explanation in descriptive sciences, where the behavior of an individual is explained on account of and within the frame of a given type (of behavior, of circumstance, etc.)

The behavior of ult imate s ingulari ties is subjected to part icular causal it ies in such a way that they obey a certa in grouping following a certa ine mathe matica lly characterisable type. (pp.337-

23 Although Neumann and Birkhoff strive to determine the fundamental difference between c lassica l logic and quantum logic as theories concerning the structure of sets of experimental propositions, they can' t escape natural intrusions into the ontological ground. The postulate (S3) of logical equivalence between experimental proposit ions can be interpreted as posit ing a ―physica l qual ity.‖

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388)

The computing and measure apply to the behavior of the group

and according to types never to the ―individual singularities of the group.‖ All predicable of such individual singularities is affected by the same indetermination. The theory keeps its deductive character and its requirement of nomological completeness, but it is no more through and through deductive, as this was the case for classical theories. For those who are lead by the sole requirement of axiomatic, completeness postulates a priori absolutely determinable individual singularities (interchangeable physical points). On the other hand, nomological completeness does not require a one-to-one and absolute deducibility of individual, but only of types. As regard the behavior (change, movement) of ultimate singularities, it is computable only with a ―certain probability,‖ ―according to a certain type to which they belong, a type which pre -traces a certain range of play and nothing more.‖

The interpretation of this indetermination in terms of interruption of (or rupture with) causality proceeds from an erroneous and naive understanding of probabilities. If logic must allow ontological modalities to step in the realm of formal ontology, interpreting probabilities objectively as setting the existence of chance is a symmetrical misinterpretation to that of idealistic determinism (Laplace's or Maxwell's). Husserl says unequivocally that if we take into account the very meaning of the con cept of causality, it is absurd to posit causally indetermined events. The postulate of causality is an a priori of nature. From a formal point of view, nature is equivalent to the positing of a general mutual dependance of every event to every other. This law is a transcendental mathematical principle , or, which amounts to the same, a formal ontological principle stating purely that every empirical proposition about nature is an approximation of nature mathematically grasped. New physics preserves causality in this sense, ―only causality means now that the se elements are legally bound by complex-types, or else, that a priori connections and disconnections of a complex according to an unconditionally universal type happen inside nature, so that what happens to the singular element, to the most singular one, is never arbitrary (beliebig),‖ ―is never calculable in its individuality, but only according to its complex, in the context of its complexes.‖

Thus we dismiss also the ad hoc hypothesis by which classical physics allowed itself to fill the ontological void that no real observation could fulfill, and to consider the margin of


approximation, of average measure, only as indicating non already realized observations.24 This hypothesis sustained the idealization and guaranteed, in set theoretical terms, the inclusion principle or, analogically, in logical terms, the principle of strict implication . In formal ontological terms, that meant that any indeterminacy was only the mark of an ignorance of the knower and observer, but no intrinsic indetermination. Probabilities could only be taken as a subjective expression. But what does that mean if now probabilities are objectively taken, and if it excludes any suspension of the a priori law of causality, i .e. any position in nature of any objective probability, of any objective contingency ? Husserl answers :

Probabi li ty as well as certa inty, one - to-one correspondence, calculabi l ity etc . are subjective expressions referring back to us, presuming, calculat ing subjects. In the hypothet ica l nature in itse lf there is no room for any probabi li ty or supposition, but only for the law of groups which becomes for the physic ist , the range of play for the probabi li t ies and possibil it ies of the event.

It would be misleading to consider the modalities in which things

(events) are given, as mere ob jects. The object (event) in-its-modes-of-givenness (including modalities such as certa inty, probability, possibility, etc.) must not be projected upon the background of classical space-time. But to noetic (doxic) modalities correspond nomeatic modalities. What about ontological modalities? From the perspective of Husserl reform of logic, re al pure existence is itself an ontological mode, i.e. the limit of a modal function. Every being whatever is to be considered ―according to the ma nifold of its modal dimensions.‖ If the ultimate element is posited in its identity as an x , the ultimate individual predicates defining its individual form entail that this x is identical to itself only modulo a certain frame

24 Cf. Neumann and Birkhoff . ―Now before a phase -space can become imbued with real ity, i ts e lements and subsets must be correlated in some way with ‗experimental propositions‘ (which are subsets of different observation -spaces) . Moreover, this must be so done that set - theoret ical inclusion (which is the analogue of logical implicat ion) is preserved. —There is an obvious way to do this in dynamical systems of the c lassica l type. One can measure posi t ion and its f irst t ime-derivative velocity —and hence momentum—explic it ly , and so establ ish a one-one correspondence whic h preserves inclusion between subsets of phase-space and subsets of a suitable observat ion -space . In the cases of the kinetic theory of gases and of electromagnetic waves no such s imple procedure is possible, but i t was imagined for a long t ime that ‗demon s‘ of small enough size could by tracing the motion of each part ic le, or by a dynamometer and infinitesimal point-charges and magnets, measure quanti t ies corresponding to every coordinate of the phase -space involved‖ (op. c i t . p. 105) .

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fixing the limites of its variability (of its indetermination). This frame is the type or eidos.

The incorporation into formal ontology of a new layer of form means in physics that ultimate elements and events must be conceived in ―a typical individual way,‖ i.e. that ―every event, every change in elements (…) are determined in their being by the individual typique of groups to which they be long and in which, stemming from groups of individual types, they must immediately be subjected.‖

A certain dose of empirical intuitions of bodily world is, so to speak, introduced into the theoretical frame of physics. As the individuals in perception, individuals in new physics are identifiable only according to their types : ―they are identical through the modification of their matter, in as much as they preserve their individual type.‖ But all this still belongs to the enlarged sphere of mathesis universalis. Quantum laws marks ―the beginning of a knowledge of the typically individual kind which remains nonetheless mathematical.‖ Mathematics have only penetrated farther into the noetico -noematic structures, and more particularly in the formal structures of observation—correcting and modifying the excessive idealizations of classical physics (from Galileo to Laplace). The mathematics substitutes to the atoms of classical physics (i.e. translates it) into ―typical individual units which, in the in-itself of nature, precede the being of their ultimate elements and co-determine the being and the being-so of the latter.‖

The very methodological essence of idealization is taken into account by the new mathematics. Empirical approximation is objectified. Every step of approximation in a series has its dignity : ―everything, ultimate elements as well as totalities, must be taken into account in an typical -individual way‖ and ―idealization as well as mathematization are nothing but a method, which henceforth does not overcome, as meant to do the old classical attitude, the relativities of intuition, but maintains itself in relativity and is justified precisely as long as it remains in relativi ties through always new levels.‖

Last but not least, quantification (measurement) presupposes for itself a new nomological form for nature and a new formal ontology. Quantification means that the method as conquered a new ontological legality, that of the ―being in a concretion,‖ ―built up starting from the ultimate concretions (the individual typical wholes ).‖

If Husserl 's reform did not lead into any axiomatic presentation, it is nevertheless remarkable that it has given way to an


interpretation of the logic of the new physics which in many instances meets von Neumann and Birkhoff's heuristic considerations on the logic of quantum mechanics : sketch of a modified (non boolean) algebra of propositions substituting to the distributive identity25 of the logic of classical physics, a modular identity ,26 or in syntactical terms, substi tuting to the logical system of strict implication , a logic of probabilities .27 In other aspects, the concept of typical individuality puts into play a concept of groups which is akin to the Weylian concept of aggregate of individuals , as it has been worked out in contemporary logical essays, such as the quasi-set theory of Krause and Da Costa (who take explicitly) their inspiration from Weyl.28 Whatever the successes and failings of this attempts may be, they satisfy obviously to the requirements Weyl puts forward for every logic pretending to give a serious account of the methodological truth of any scientific theory : to be at the same time inherent to its symbolism and to remain opened in its topmost layer ―to the light of meaning, of simple and honest trut h, as revealed in evidence and experience,‖ for ―pure symbolism is never closed in itself ; ultimately the mind's seeing eye must come in it‖. 29

25 op. ci t . p. 110-111 . Distr ibutive identi ty sat isf ies L6. a ⋃ (b ⋂ c) = (a ⋃ b) ⋂ (a ⋃

c) et a ⋂ (b ⋃ c) = (a ⋂b) ⋃ (a ⋂ c) . 26 op. ci t . p.111-112. Modular identi ty sat isf ies stric t ly L5. If a ⊂ c , then a ⋃ (b ⋂

c) = (a ⋃ b) ⋂ c . 27 op. c it . p.124-126. ―Probabil ity logics cannot be reduced to str ic t logics , but const itutes an essent ially wider system than the lat ter, and statements of the form P (a , b) = q (0 < q <1) are perfect ly new and sui generis aspects of physical real ity.‖ 28 Da Costa and Krause, On Quasi -Set Theory, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Log ic , Volume 33 , Number 3, Summer 1992, p. 403: ―In order to provide a motivation, we note only that in some domains of knowledge, such as quantum mechanics, chemistry, b iology, or genetics (c f . Weyl [12] , App. B) , i t is necessary to consider collect ions of enti t ies that are capable of being in certa in states, but such that it is impossible to say what elements belong to each part icular sta te. Only the quantity of e lements in each state may be known. Weyl ca lled such collections e f f ect ive aggregates of individuals ( [12] , p. 239) . The idea is that i t is not possible to dist inguish among the elements that belong to the same state of an effect ive aggregate. It is important to note that such aggregates cannot be considered sets in the usual sense (ZFU, say) , since in a set the elements are always dist inguishable.‖ —H. Weyl, Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science , Pr inceton University Press, NY, 1963, Appendix B. 29 H. Weyl, The Ghost of modali t ies, Gesammelte Abhandlungen , vol. I II , Springer, 1968, p. 706.

Husserl‟s Notion of Leib and the Primary/Secondary Properties Distinction Emiliano Trizio (Husserl Archive Paris/Poincaré Archive Nancy)

I think that tastes, odours, colours, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the objects in which we locate them are concerned, and that they reside only in consciousness. If l iving creatures were removed [ r imosso l ‘anima l e] , all these qual it ies would be wiped out and annihi lated. Phi losophy is written in this grand book the universe,[…] I t is writ ten in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles ,

circ les, and other geometr ic f igures… 1

1. The Specificity of the Constitutive Analyses Developed in Ideas II

I begin by repeating once more these ever -quoted Galilean claims for they will serve us as a guide to reconstruct how Husserl‘s philosophy provides a phenomenological foundation to the primary/secondary properties distinction. Husserl has dealt with the problem of the relation between the world as it is given in perception and the world as it is described by modern mathematical physics mainly in three occasions: in Ideas I (most of all §§ 40, 52), in Ideas II (especially chapter 3), and, famously, in the Crisis (§ 18). A fundamental thesis, however, underlies all of Husserl‘s writings about the subject, a thesis that is of crucial importance for the very idea of phenomenology as transcendenta l idealism and that can be spelled out in the following way: the constitution of the world by and within transcendental subjectivity cannot be considered achieved at the level of the objective correlates of ordinary perception and of the judgments directly founded on it. The bottom level of natural objectivity, that is, ideally, nature as it is itself , can be constituted only by resorting to the objectifying power of a different kind of intentional activities, namely the purely intellectual acts of idealization charac terizing modern mathematized physics. In this sense, far from being a criticism of the Galilean revolution, Husserl‘s phenomenology of material nature should be read as an attempt to interpret it in the correct way and to unveil its underlying rationality.

1 G. Gal ile i , I l Saggiatore , 7 , Ed. Naz. , vol. VI , pp. 347-348.


The intellectual/idealizing acts replace the transcendent units constituted in perception, i.e. the things and processes of ordinary experience, with the entities postulated by theoretical physics, which are situated in a fully geometrical space and time , and whose properties are physico-mathematical only and hence, in principle, inaccessible to intuition. A ―perceptual constitution‖ has thus to give way to a purely ―intellectual/theoretical constitution.‖

Husserl‘s view, already in Ideas I , amounts to two theses that can be seen, respectively, as the phenomenological Ersatz of Galileo‘s first and second quotation:

1) Pars destruens or subectivization of sensuous qualities : transcendence is gained at the level of ordinary things of perception, but the perce ivable and hence secondary properties of the latter are not to be reckoned as the objectively true ones.

2) Pars construens or objectivation of nature : the thing as

determined by physics is obtained by replacing all perceivable subjective properties with ideally true physico-mathematical ones (the primary properties), and yet it is the very same thing, which is perceived. In other words, as Husserl says, the perceivable thing offers only the empty X, which will become the substrate of objective physical properties.2

2 As a matter of fact , in Ideas I Husserl does not develop a detai led account of this intel lectual const itut ion of physica l istic ob ject ivity. His analysis of the problem is to be found in the so ca l led Considerat ion Fundamenta l to Phenomenology and is intended as just a necessary step in the attempt to show the possibi l ity of transcendental reduct ion and to e lucidate the sense of transcendental consciousness as the absolute in which a l l ob ject ivit ies are const ituted. In a nutshell , Husser l‘s results in this respect can be summarized as fol lows: what has come to be a common interpretat ion of the relation between perception and mater ia l nature , prevents the recognit ion of the absolute character of consciousness. According to this account, what is directly perceived is reduced to an immanent content of subject ivity (akin to Locke‘s ideas) causal ly determined by the external world, which remains hidden from us in principle . Physics would thus be an at tempt to descr ibe in an indirect and symbolic way the hidden cause of perception, to gain an indirect knowledge of what l ies outside the immanent content of human mind and causally affects i t . But in this way, Husser l argues, consciousness becomes the f inal l ink of a causal process, and, given that causal ity concerns the re lation among mundane real it ies only, consciousness is re if ied, becomes a part of the total ity of rea l being, and i ts absolute character is thereby missed.

EMILIANO TRIZIO | 105

I have recalled these results of Ideas I because I believe that they underlie all of Husserl‘s subsequent analyses of the problem, including the one carried out in the Crisis .3 Nevertheless only in Ideas II does Husserl sketch the entire stepwise constitution of material nature from simple perception to physical objectivity. In this paper, I will briefly outline Husserl‘s phenomenological foundation of Galileo‘s two famous claims, and I will insist on the specific role that the Leib plays in it. 2. Phantoms and Things

In Ideas II Husserl introduces a first fundamental distinction between material nature , (―the lowest and first sense‖ 4 of nature) and animal nature (―nature in a second, broadened sense‖ 5).6 Due to the founded character of the soul on corporality, the first step in the constitution of nature is the constitution of merely material things, which at least up to a point can be carried out with no reference to animal nature. The essence of thing is characterized thanks to an eidetic analysis of the acts in which a thing is given to us and of the noemata correlated to these acts .7 Moreover, this first stage of constitution is carried out with respect to a ―solipsistic subject ,‖ that is before taking into account the interplay of differen t constituting subjects and thereby the formation of an intersubjective world. First of all , things are, according to their essence, spatially and temporally extended. Perceivable properties such as the visual

3 In contrast with the interpretations propose d by Roman Ingarden ( in Husser ls Betrachtungen zur Konstitut ion des Physikal i schen Dinges . Archives de Phi losophie, 1964 , XXVII ( II I -IV): pp. 356-407) and, more recently , by Bernhard Rang ( in Husser ls Phänomenolog ie der materie l l en Natur , Frankfurt am Main: Vittor io Klostermann, 1990) , according to which there is a sharp discontinuity in the way these Husserl ian texts treat the problem. 4 Ideas I I , p. 30. All quotations from Ideas I I are taken from the English edition Kluwer 1989. 5 Ib id. 6 This parti t ion is based on an empir ica l account of the frontier between l iving and non- living matter as somebody accustomed to contemporary discussion about the frontier between physics and biology would expect, but on the opposit ion between simple materia l things and un ity of a mater ial substrate and a soul, which is in turn grounded on an essentia l difference between their modes of givenness. This theme is further developed in Ideas I I I § 7 (1980 the Hague Mart inus Ni jhoff publishers) , where Husser l introduces within l iving nature the further dist inct ion between Leib and Psyche intended as different ontologica l regions. A detai led discussion of the possible contrast between Ideas I I and Ideas I I I on this point l ies outside the scope of this paper. 7 Ideas I I , p. 38.


and tactile ones necessarily fill a certain ex tension and also a certain time stretch. The thing is as a unity in a manifold of actual and possible perceptions that are constantly synthesized in the internal temporal flux of living experiences, at least as long as no failure in the concordance of experiences surfaces. However, even the essential attribute of the extensio is far from being sufficient to characterize the essence of the thing as an extended material reality , insofar as it does not allow us to tell apart a real thing from what Husserl calls a phantom, that is a purely spatial configuration of sensuous properties (perhaps pertaining even to different senses and coherently synthesized). The question is, therefore: what is the eidetic trait that must be added to a phantom in order to obtain a thing as material-real?8 And, correlatively, what is the difference between the apprehension of phantom and the apprehension of a thing? To be sure, according to its essence, a material thing can move and change, although it could remain as a matter of fac t motionless and unchanged. However, this is equally true for a phantom: also a phantom can undergo a change of color or shape or modify its position relatively to the perceiver. Husserl‘s answer requires the introduction of the notion of sensuous schema , which he defines as ―this groundwork, this corporeal (‗spatial‘ ) shape along with the filling which extends over it .‖9 At each moment, the givenness of a thing requires that a spatial extension, that is a sensuous schema be given. In other words the sensuo us schema is the most fundamental and necessary level of the givenness of a thing. If we perceive a thing at rest and unchanged (which is the situation normally referred to by Husserl‘s examples of thing perception), what comes to originary givenness is bu t the schema. Materiality, in this case, is certainly co -apprehended, but not fulfilled by the act of perception. Adopting the standpoint of genetic phenomenology, Husserl clarifies this point by adding that had the subject never experienced the materialit y of things, then, the intuitive givenness of a sensuous schema could not motivate the positing of a thing at all .10 Now, this apprehension can find its intuitive motivation only if the thing is considered in relation to the surrounding circumstances. It is not by focusing on an ideally isolated thing that we can tell it apart from a phantom, for what we need to consider is the evolution of the different sensuous schemata in their functional dependence from a given class of circumstances. A material property of a thing comes to givenness only as an 8 Ib id. p. 40. 9 Ib id. 10 Ibid. p. 44.


invariant element in a series of modifications caused by circumstances that are themselves originarily given. A certain chromatic aspect, for instance, belongs at each instant to a sensuous schema. But when the aspect of an object changes as a consequence of a variation of the conditions of illumination, we still attribute to the object one single ―objective‖ color that simply appears different according to different optical circumstances. In the same way, a spring has the real property of elasticity, which manifests itself only under a series of modifications of its shape in a certain regulated order determined by causal circumstances. The eidetic trait that differentiates a thing from a phantom is, therefore, its b eing causally interconnected with the surrounding environment, which amounts in turn to a regulated modification of the sensuous schemata pertaining to it. Husserl can thus conclude, ― reality (or what here is the same, substantiality) and causality belong together inseparably . Real properties are eo ipso causal ones.‖11 3. The Thing and the Leib : from the Thing Given in Perception to the ―Empty X‖

So far the constitution of material nature has been accomplished not only with respect to a solipsistic subje ct, but also in a sort of self-forgetfulness of the actual role of subjectivity. A change of attitude is now required for the constitutional analysis to be further pursued. In particular, we can no longer ignore the role played by the Leib in perceptive li fe. To be precise, there are two fundamentally different levels at which the Leib is involved.12 The first level had been already analyzed by Husserl in the course Ding und Raum (1907) and is based on the constant correlation between

11 Ibid . p. 48. Let us stress two major trai ts of this consti tutional analysis. 1) The ent ire process so far described whereby a thing, in the fullness of its real/causal properties , comes to givenness takes place ent irel y at the level of perception: both the c ircumstances and the causal it ies involved appear a t the level of perception ( Ibid. pp. 46 -47) . 2) I t is necessary to dist inguish between a) the sensuous schema (whether changing or unchanging) pertaining to one sense ; b) the ful l sensuous schema of a th ing , which Husserl also ca lls (rather dangerously) sense-thing ( Ibid . p. 82) ; c) the real/causa l thing (which actual ly is st i l l apprehended in perception) with its rea l/causal propert ies. At each new level we encounter a givenness as a unity appearing in a manifold of e lements belonging to the lower level. 12 For a detai led analysis of Husserl ‘s not ion of the Leib in Ideas I I see E. Behnke ―Edmund Husserl ‘s Contr ibution to Phenomenology of the Body in Ideas I I‖ in Issues in Husser l ‘ s Ideas I I , ed by T. Nenon and L. Embree, Dordrecht 1996, pp.135-160. The article, however, does not focus on the role played by the Leib in the establishment of the primary/secondary propert ies distinct ion.


perceptive adumbrations on the one hand and systems of kinesthetic data motivating them on the other .13 Through a complex and multi -layered process both the hyletic data and the kinesthetic data are localized in the Leib ,14 which is co-constituted along with the perceived things as a transcendent unit necessarily accompanying all perceptions. In virtue of this localization, the Body15 becomes a system of organs of sensation that I can freely move, thus motivating different perceptual processes. At this first level, there appears already a fundamental relativity of my perceptive environment to my own Body, notably at the spatial level, insofar as each actually perceived or potentially perceivable object necessarily has a position relatively to my Body, which thus acquires the role of bearer of the zero-point of orientation. Every object occupies a ―there‖ with respect to absolute ―here‖ of my Body.

The constitution of the momentary states of sense -things is termed by Husserl ―the most original psychophysical conditionality,‖16 for it implies a dependence of the givenness of the thing from ordinary states of the sense organs (opening th e eyes, moving the hands, etc.) Further, this conditionality ―becomes the psychophysical conditionality between, on the one side, my Body and its causal interweavings in extra-Bodily nature, and, on the other side, the subjective courses of sensation, courses of changing aspects, etc.‖ 17 Husserl adopts the term ―conditionality‖ precisely to mark the essential difference between a causal relation among realit ies, and a relation involving real/objective elements on the one hand, irreal/subjective element of the other .18 The Body is thus at

13 In the real - immanent content of a perceptual Erlebnis there reside not only the hyletic data of sensat ion that are apprehended by the noeses in such a way that they adumbrate the direct ly perceivable propert ies of what manifests i tse lf , in the f irst place, as a transcendent sensuous schema, but a lso a kind of data that are not apprehended as exposing anything transcendent and that s imply govern regulated f lows of subsequent adumbrat ions. 14 Ideas I I , §§ 36-38 . The localizat ion and touch sensat ions, for instance , is more primordia l and direct than the localization of visual of acoustic sensat ions. And those localizations are in turn different from the one of kinesthet ic data. 15 Body with a capitol B translates Leib. 16 Ideas I I , p. 70. 17 Ib id. p. 71. 18 Ibid . p. 69.The difference between natural causal ity and psychophysica l condit ional ity is more clearly exposed by Husser l in a note published as the second supplement to the English translat ion of Ideas I I . The note bears the ti t le ―Psychophysical causali ty and causal nexus of things.‖ Husser l expl ains, ―the physical thing is what it is , i .e . , has real propert ies , only in re lat ion to the causal nexus of physical nature‖ ( Ideas I I , p. 355) . If we consider instead that any object whatsoever can have an effect on the experiencing subject by being


once a real/causal thing embedded in the causal nexus of nature and the bearer of a special relation with psychic life. Each sensation process has a purely physical/causal side interwoven with a psychophysical conditionality connecting together a natural causal chain with a subjective event.

As we shall see, taking into account the role of the embodied subject in perception is the starting point of the next step of the constitution of material nature, because now the perceived thing bears a number of actual relations with the perceiver‘s Body. In the third chapter of Ideas II Husserl puts forward of number of examples showing that the appearing material thing (which Husserl, reviving an Aristotelian term, call Aestheta) depend on the functioning of the Body, intended as a psychophysical complex endowed also with real/causal properties. Husserl mentions, for instance, the fact tha t a blister on a finger alters its tactual sensibility, that wearing blue spectacles changes the chromatic aspects of the environme nt, and that the intake of a drug, like santonin, modifies color perception .19

used as a ―st imulus -Object‖ (Ibid.) , we realize that, in this way, no further inner real/causal property of the object is produced. An example may i l lustrate this fact . A magnet reveals one of i ts real properties by at tract ing and by being attracted by metall ic bodies, that is , by objects that belong entirely to nature. But the fact that a magnet can ―condit ion‖ the emergence of tact i le sensations by being in contact with the Body does not contribute a t al l the consti tut ion of the inner real/causal properties of the magnet, even if the tact i le sensat ions contribute to the consti tution of the sensuous scheme of the magnet. Of course , if a magnet hit my Body, the way in which the contact takes place and the subsequent react ion of the magnet will indeed contr ibute t o the consti tut ion of the rigidity of the magnet as one of i ts rea l/causal propert ies ; but this is , once more, a causali ty taking place ent ire ly within the natural world. Conversely, psychical causes cannot intervene in the causal natural processes. Husser l ‘ s conclusion is that ― the thing and whole of nature are sealed off‖ (Ibid. ) 19 It is important not to miss the methodological sta tus of the appeal to these well-known facts about perception. One might suspect that Husserl is here relapsing into the natura l a tt itude, by accepting the val idity of transcendent, and specif ica lly, empirica l s tates of affa irs , that the transcendental reduct ion should have bracketed from the outset. I t this were the case, the theory of const itut ion of mater ial nature would be gro unded on empir ical matters of facts, and this would be s imply absurd, given that the a im of transcendental phenomenology is to given an account of the e idetic structure of the way in which on object ivi ty of whatever kind must be able to appear to transcend ental subjectivi ty , for this objectivi ty to be there a t a ll . In short, const itut ional analyses a lways require both transcendental and e idetic reductions. Now, although Husserl does seem here to indulge in considerations of a somewhat empir ica l character, h is analyses are indeed intended as compatible with a subsequent r igorous application of the phenomenological method. In part icular: 1) the si tuations descr ibed in the examples just mentioned need to be considered as noematic correlates of certain acts of p erception, imaginat ion


These events produce deviations from normal per ception that amount to a new level of psychophysical conditionality. The appearance of the Aestheta is conditioned by changes in the state of the Body in a way that differs from the normal conditional dependence of appearances from the Bodily movements, fo r in this case the very qualities that appear in the Aestheta are modified. Changes in the Body condition changes in the Aestheta . However, as long as we are aware that these apparent changes are connected to real/causal modifications of the Body (as in th e case of the intake of santonin), we do not apprehend them as actual modifications of the surrounding world, but only as perceptual anomalies. What is noteworthy is that the perceptual anomalies, insofar as they are recognized as such, do not contribute a t all to the constitution of the things.20 The resulting changes are considered as semblances of the ―true things‖, which are constituted in the orthoaesthetic condition.

We thus come to understand that the constitution of nature is made possible by the existence of a normal or ―orthoaesthetic‖ psychophysical conditionality in virtue of which, first of all , the sensuous schemata are constituted harmoniously. It is only because there is a normal state of perception that a coherent world can appear and that deviant occurrences such as the previously mentioned ones can arise. Husserl‘s analysis of the interplay of normal and abnormal psychophysical conditions varies depending on whether a solipsistic subject or a subject as a member of a community is taken into consideration. But the essential point remains the same, i.e. it is possible to gain knowledge of the fact that the way the external world appears to us is relative to the psychophysical structure of the Body. Even the normality shared by an entire community of subjects in mutual understanding appears as a result of the contingent features of their Corporality. The result is that there is a second, more fundamental sense, in which the things as they are given in perception are relative to the Body, for they are

and memory, and of the categorial act ivi ties buil t thereupon. Therefore, they can be grasped by noematic reflection carried out in the transcendental att itude. 2) The existence of a dependence of the Aestheta from the Body must be seen an e idet ic necessity, even if this or that part icular instance of dependence is an empir ica l matter of fact . Hence, whereas the fact that a santonin modif ies our perception is not an e idetic necessity, the interdependence between the physical s tate of t he Body and the content of perception is indeed, for Husserl , an e idet ic necessity. That means that i t is impossible to conceive of a subject consti tuting the world who does not const itute a long with i t a Body as an organ of perception partaking in the causal nexuses of the real world. 20 Ideas I I , p. 78.


correlates of the perceptual experiences of a subject or community of subjects endowed with a contingent psychophysical conditionality. The truth of the judgments grounded in perception is thus, according to its essence, subjective -relative. Here we have reached the endpoint of the perceptual constitution of material nature. The constitutive resources of perception are unable to pursue the process of objectivation precisely because there is no concordant unit posited by perception in a multiplicity of different Aestheta relative to perceiving subjects that have different psychophysical structures. This is true also at the level of discordant perceptions arising from anomalies affecting one single subject. To resort to Locke‘s old example, if for one han d the water is cold while for the other it is warm, these two sensations are not apprehended as aspects of one synthetic unit manifesting in them.

Although it might be suspected that the result thus obtained could lead us into a sort of skepticism about th e possibility of objectively determining the ―external world,‖ it is precisely at the level of the system of relativities just outlined that is possible to find the rational motivations for a different mode of constitution: the purely intellectual one. The phenomenological strategy, here, is the same as always, namely trying to work out what is presupposed when a system of relativities is posited/constituted as an actually obtaining one. As I have already stressed, the crucial point is the difference between normal perceptual life and perceptual anomalies. A subject who had no orthoaesthetic perceptual life at all, a subject for whom the properties of the surrounding things as well as those of its own Body, even the real/causal ones, changed in a chaotic way throughout its perceptual life, would have no rational grounds to assert even the relativity of the world of perception to the psychophysical structure of its own Body. This is why perceptual normality plays an essential role. In normal experience the coh erent succession of perceptual Erlebnisse posit as real existing synthetic units both the thing perceived and the perceiver‘s Body .21 Only once this two-fold positing or co-positing is effected does it become possible to observe the existence of anomalies, which are acknowledged as such on the grounds of what is given in normal conditions, and which, for this reason, cannot modify the positing accomplished in the latter. The effect of anomalies is, rather, to highlight that the very same thing that appears to me in normal perceptual life can appear differently to me if a change occurs in my psychophysical structure, or equivalently that other subjects could

21 The la tter being, of course, a posit of a completely different kind.


apprehend this very same thing throughout their perceptual life in a way which would correspond to an a nomalous mode of experience for me, and vice versa.22 In short, the relativity of the thing to the Body, the fact that it can exhibit itself differently to different contingent perceptual ―normalities‖ rationally motivates the intellectual positioning of the thing as an identical something that is differently ―declined‖ depending on the perceiver‘s factual constitution. We observe here an ascent to a new level of rationality and constitution. First the rationality of perception that, as originary presenting act, posits in the context of harmonious normal perception the ―Aesthetic thing‖ as existing, then, an intellectual constitutional activity works out from what is given in perception the idea of an identical something that the thing is beyond any perceptual relativity. The second step, which marks the switch from perceptual to intellectual constitution, amounts to the replacement of the thing with an empty X, referred to already in the § 40 of Ideas I . Of course, for the moment, we know nothing of this identical something that we are rationally compelled to posit . However, Husserl can here resort to a general principle of formal logic, according to which any ―identical something‖ must be determined by a stock of properties that belong to it:

If the thing is (and concordance in the posi ting of the being within the nexus of experience is an or iginal ground or reason for the assertion, ―I t is‖) , then it must be determinable in a way which determines what is non-relat ive from among the re lat ivi ties and, on the other hand, determines i t out of that which contains all grounds of r ight , out of the data of experience, thus out of sensuous re lat ivit ies. Of course, experience does not exclude the possibi l i ty that is be annulled by future experience or even that the real not be at al l , though it had been given in a concordant way. But now there are rightful grounds for posi t ing being and consequently for the possibil ity and necessi ty of posit ing the goal of logico-mathematica l determinat ion. 23

Here the necessity of logical-mathematical determination is introduced rather abruptly, and it will be necessary to say more about it .24 For the moment however, a decisive step towards the

22 Of course it might happen that the very existence of a thing I have experience of is acknowledged to be an i l lusion on the grounds of exchange with other subjects who would persuade me that I suffer of severe perceptual dysfunct ions. But even in that case, communication would be made possible only by a certa in core of shared objective posi ting. 23 Ideas I I , p. 81. 24 This has been noted also by Paul Ricoeur (see Analyses and problèmes dans


transcendental foundation of the scientific knowledge of nature has been made. By including in the constitutional analysis of material nature also the reference to living nature, specifically to the Leib , we have acknowledged that the acts of perception in which nature is constituted are affected by a relativity involving the perceived things on the one hand, and the Leib on the other, and that in order to overcome this relativity we have to divest the thing of its sensible qualities and replace it with an empty X whose properties will have to be determined. At this level, Galileo‘s first statement is thus reformulated in the language of phenomenology and transcendentally founded: sensible properties cannot belong to the things as they are in themselves; they simply appear to be in the thing to the embodied (animal) subject, without which ( rimosso l‘animale) they would disappear too. 4. Filling the ―Empty X‖

The last step in the constitution of material nature consists in the positive characterization of the so -called empty X in order to constitute the fully objective physicalistic thing , that is, ideally, the thing as it is in itself, as it must be determined in principle by any rational subject. It is thus necessary to decide along which lines this constitution, that is no longer perceptual in character, can take place. Clearly, if this constitution is to be possible at all, the relativity of the Aestheta to the perceiving subject cannot imply that the perceived thing is a mere illusion, nor that experience does not provide us with the elements necessary in order to progress in its intellectual determination. That the perceived thing is not a mere illusion has already been established, for the reality of the empty X exhibits itself in perception. But how can we predicatively ―fill‖ the empty X on the basis of what is ultimately given to us? The way modern science answers this question is, of course, that the empty X must be determined solely through primary properties , that is, through causal properties that are essentially geometrical in character. This is precisely the sense of Galileo‘s second quo tation. Again, transcendental phenomenology must be able to provide rigorous foundations to this fundamental presupposition of modern science, which was stated by Galileo, Descartes and Locke in ways that would not be satisfactory at all for Husserl, and t hat, on contrary, have motivated in his eyes nothing less that the crisis of

Idées I I de Husserl in A l‘école de la phenomenology , Paris: Vrin 1985, p. 106.) However, in this paper, I attempt to show that Husser l‘s text conta ins many elements enabling the reader to f i l l this gap .


European culture. Chapter three of Ideas II indeed contains an analysis of the

constitution of primary qualities, which anticipates most of the essential traits of the analysis of the Galilean mathematization of nature developed in the long § 9 of the Crisis . Husserl ‘s indications can be best spelled out by considering the constitution of the physicalistic thing at the intersubjective level, although in Ideas II he insists that also the ―solitary‖ subject could, in principle, achieve it. The starting point is to acknowledge that there is a distinction to be made, already at the level of the eidetic traits of the perceived thing, between the spatio -temporal element and the specifical ly sensible one.25 A thing, as it is perceived, is always ―something spatio-temporal from the first, having form and duration and also having a position in space and time.‖26 These determinations are not be identified with their idealized geometrical counter parts precisely because, insofar as they are perceivable, they cannot be thought without sensible fillings like colors and tactile qualities (this being of course due to a well -known material a priori of perception). From this point of view, as I have already anticipated, all perceivable traits must be replaced when constituting the physicalistic thing. Nevertheless, according to Husserl, the spatio -temporal character of perceived objects, and specifically the spatial one, must be granted a privileged status. Indeed, this was already implicit in the previous discussion about the positing of the empty X. Let us see why.

To each subject there corresponds a space orientated with respect to its own Body; but a community of subjects constitute an objective space in which each ―here‖ and ―there‖ are interchangeable, in such a way that an object does not only have a position with respect to an individual subject‘s Body, but also an objective position in a single, shared space which is no longer oriented. This space is a single unified system of locations in which both the Bodies and the things have their definite place . Interestingly enough, although this ―common objective‖ space is not yet the idealized space of geometry, according to Husserl, it is already somethi ng that is grasped only by the intellect, and not through mere perception:

In this way is solved the problem of the ―form of intuition‖ and of spatia l intuit ion. I t is not a matter of the senses , al though in another respect i t is . The primary intuit ive sp ace is sensuously given though this is not yet space itse lf . Object ive space is not sensuous , a lthough it is st i l l intuited on a higher level , and i t

25 As Husser l says already in Ideas I , § 40 . 26 Ideas I I , p. 88.


comes to givenness by means of an identif ication within a change of orientation, but exclusively one the s ubject i tsel f carr ies out freely. Oriented space (and a long with i t , eo ispo Object ive space) and a ll appearing spatia l forms already admits of idealization; they are to be grasped in geometrical purity and determined

―exact ly .‖ 27

The objective but not yet idealized space is the link between what is given to us in perception and the idealized language of physics. The fact that ―objective space is not sensuous‖ implies that it cannot be treated on an equal footing either with the sensuous oriented space or with the qualitative eidetic traits of the Aestheta . It is not perceived with the eyes as colors are, for it comes to givenness only via the constitution of a system of location invariant with respect to changes of orientation, i.e. with respect to real or imagined movements of the Body whereby the subject is able to take up different points of view on the same things, thus making the ―here‖ and the ―there‖ interchangeable. This is indeed Husserl‘s way to clarify the notion of space as a necessary form of all possible objects of experience. The subjective -relative character of sensuous properties depended precisely on their dependence on the contingent Bodily constitution of the subject. We may, for instance, imagine a subject who sees colors in a completely different way, or who is even completely blind to colors. But insofar as a subject can be said to share our world, to be in our world, its senses must be able to locate its own Body as well as our Bodies, and make a sense of the ―here‖ and the ―there.‖ Hence, they must be able to constitute space as the single objective system of locations of all things, and, along with it, time and motion.28 Therefore, in contrast with the sensuous qualities of perceivable things, the existence of the objective space in which these things are situated is not relative to the contingent structure of the Body: objective space is, so to speak, every-Body‘s space .

In this way, we come to realize that the empty X, the identical something , was posited from the start in this object ive space, along with the imagined differently embodied subjects to whom the empty X appears endowed with different secondary qualities. Moreover, we understand why geometrical space, which is the idealization of objective/intersubjective space should be the ―language of nature,‖ and why all physicalistic properties have t o be, in a sense, ―geometrical.‖ Indeed mechanical properties, which exhibit

27 Ibid. I tal ics added. 28 Ibid. p. 91.


themselves in the regulated series of changes of positions and deformations of things inherit the objectivity o f this spatial form and admit of what Husserl will call in the Crisis a direct mathematization. Real -causal properties, such as colors or heat, which are not immediately understandable in terms of space, time and movement, have to be indirectly mathematize d by causally explaining them via the effects of light rays or heat radiations, which are thought as real physical phenomena occurring in objective space. In some sense, between the real/causal property of the elasticity of a spring and the real/causal pro perty of objective colors, which were at first introduced at the same level of objectivity, there is a difference that grants the former a privileged objective status with respect to latter. The privilege of mechanical properties is grounded on their being rooted in a space witch is a necessary form for all possible natural things and processes that can be objects of experience by any possible subjects .29

5. Conclusion

Although, in contrast with the Crisis , Ideas II contains no detailed analysis of two necessary ingredients of the development of physical science, that is measurement and idealization, it develops a rich account of the role of the Body in the constitution of physicalistic objectivity, which can be read as a phenomenological foundation of Gali leo‘s distinction between primary and secondary properties. We have seen that the first stage of the constitution of material nature abstracts from the role of the Body, that is, from animal nature. Subsequently, material and animal nature must be considered together as thing and Body . It is within nature intended in this broad sense that the relativity of perceivable properties arises. The Body on the one hand makes possible the constitution of the objective space of nature in which both thi ngs and Bodies are situated and, on the other, is responsible for the fundamental subjective-relative character of perception. With the establishment of the distinction between primary and secondary properties, the constitution of material nature enters its final stage. Consequently, there appears yet another level of identity in manifolds of

29 Which does not amount to saying that all physica listic propert ies must be mechanical in the technical sense of the word. Light waves are an electromagnetic phenomenon and, s ince Maxwell , do not belong in mechanics at all . However they consist in a ―geometr ization of l ight‖ essent ial ly akin to mechanical processes, in that only quanti ta tive propert ies occurr ing in space and time are reta ined.


appearances. The physicalistic thing is not relative to the perceiver‘s Body and is an identical element exhibiting itself in the different Aestheta appearing to subjects endowed wit h different psychophysical structures.30 According to Husserl, nature is thus fully objectified, for mathematical idealities are the same for all possible subjects 31 and are free from any relativity to the Body .32

30 See Ideas I I I p. 54: ―Physics e l iminates the relat ion to the ‗ normal organizat ion . ‘ It says: normali ty is something accidental completely relative, and accordingly that Objectivi ty which is const i tuted out of such agreement is not any less a relative and accidenta l one.‖ 31 In this sense, the object ivity of nature ult imately rests on the object ivity of mathematical ideal it ies, which Husserl had establ ished since the Prolegomena . 32 And yet objective nature is s t i l l a be ing rela t ive to pure consc iousness ; however , this is a re lat ivi ty of a completely different kind, which far from excluding object ivity is essentia l ly t ied to i t .

The Lebenswelt : Subjectivity and Objectivity in Husserl and Patočka Lubica Učník (Murdoch University)

Abstract: In his translation of Edmund Husserl‘s Cartesian Meditations ,

Dorion Cairns points out that Husserl‘s use of the words Gegenstand and Objekt have different meanings, whereas David Carr questions this opposition. However, in this paper, I propose to discuss precisely this distinction and its relevance to our thinking about the world. Nevertheless, to limit my discussion, I will leave aside a discussion of the meanings of Gegenstand and Objekt and concentrate only on the meaning of the word ‗objective‘ in connection to the meanings of the terms ‗subject/subjectivity/subjective‘. My concern is with the meaning of ‗objectivity‘ that is largely understood as scientific objectivity based on fac ts, and ‗subjectivity‘ when reduced to crude versions of solipsism. Husserl‘s concern with science turned into technology, forgetting its own ground, is relevant even more today than it was in his time. Science became not one domain among many others but i s now supposedly the only arbiter of objectivity. Even worse, psychology is now so powerful that to question its methodology amounts to heresy. The point is to remember that theories, rules and methodologies are constituted by us humans, that science is a human endeavor. The scientific world of objective facts is not the objective world through which we understand the Lebenswelt , but sciences have their starting point in the Lebenswelt and, as Patočka would say, the human lived experience cannot be converted into an object that we can observe and describe as rocks or the lava on the moon .

Demonstrating experience const itutes an experientia l meaning, not the entity [věc ] i tself [ the table, for instance] . Th e structure of our inner l ife—that is the demonstrat ion . For every type of object ivity [předmětnost ] there must exist rules of demonstrat ion, a mode according to which this objectivity [předmětnost ] enters into our experience. For instance, objects [předměty ] of one type are the necessary presupposit ion of access to objects [předměty ] of another type; we cannot have access to numbers without having experience of things [věc í] f irst . That is no random sequence but a necessary one, fol lowing from the nature of the matter [z podstaty věc i] . 1

1 Patočka, 1996, 90, i ta l ics in original , stress added. From now on referred to as BCLW . ―Vykazování zkušenost i j e zkušenostní smysl , nikol i věc sama. Struktury

LUBICA UČNÍK | 119

Translating Edmund Husserl‘s Cartesian Meditations , Dorion

Cairns notes that ―Husserl frequently uses the words Gegenstand and Objekt to express importantly different senses.‖ In order to keep this difference in his translation, Cairns draws a distinction between them by spelling the word object ―with a small letter when it represents Gegenstand and with a capital when it represents Objekt . All this applies, mutatis mutandis , in the case of any word derived from Gegenstand or Objekt .‖2 By contrast, translating Husserl‘s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy , David Carr questions this opposition and writes that ―[t]here is no difference in meaning between Objekt and Gegenstand as Husserl uses these terms and hence no reason for following Dorion Cairns…in trying to distinguish them in translation.‖ 3 In a certain sense, Carr is right, if we take into account Husserl‘s epistemological project. Husserl pays attention to the constitution of an object—any object— in our perception in order to secure knowledge of it.

However, in this paper, I propose to discuss precisely this distinction. Nevertheless, to limit my discussion, I will leave aside a discussion of the meanings of Gegenstand and Objekt and concentrate only on the meaning of the word ‗objective‘ in connection to the meanings of the terms ‗subject/subjectivity/subjective.‘ To make clear the framework of this paper, I would like to start with Husserl‘s claim that the crisis of European spirit is a naive rationalism that is based on the ―naivite‖ of naturalism taken as objectivism 4 that he defines as the ―psychophysical world -view‖ that takes the psychic and physical as two domains that can influence each other through causality. 5 Husserl‘s project from the beginning is to question this ―dualistic view of the world, in which nature and spirit are to count as realities in a similar sense,…one…built on the

našeho vnitřního života —to j e vykazování. Pro každý druh předmětnost i musí existovat prav idlo toh oto vykazování , způsob, jak ta to předmětnost vystupuje v naší zkušenost i . Např. předměty j ednoho druhu jsou nutným předpokladem pro to , abychom měli přístup k předmětům jiného druhu; nelze mít přístup k č ís lům, aniž dříve mám zkušenost o věcech. To není ná hodi lá souvislost , nýbrž nutná, plynoucí z podstaty věc i‖ (Patočka, 1995b, 65, i ta l ics in or iginal ) NB. The Czech equivalent of the English word ‗object ‘ are: objekt , věc , předmět ; the Czech words for ‗ob jective‘ are objekt ivní , předmětový , věcný . 2 Cairns , 1973, 3 , t ranslator‘s note 2 . 3 Carr, 1970 , 22, translator‘s note 1 . 4 Husser l , 1970 [1935] , 292 . 5 Ib id. 294 .


other causally.‖ 6 What I would like to do is to ask even more naive questions about the meaning of subjective and objective that might, perhaps, illuminate further what is at stake today. This opposition is complicated not only because of the various meanings of objective, but also because of the different meanings of subjective.

Ernst Cassirer, discussing what empirical knowledge amounts to, suggests:

We…call ob jective those elements of experience, which persist through al l change in the here and now, and on which rests the unchangeable character of experience; while we ascribe to the sphere of subjectivi ty all that belongs to this change i tself , and that only expresses a determinat ion of the particular, unique here and now. The result …[is that] the dist inct ion between the subjective and the object ive , …has merely re lat ive s ignif icance.

In this sense, ‗objective elements of experience‘ are defined by

the unity in multiplicity, to use Husserl‘s terminology. We see one unceasing entity through different aspects by experiencing it as something singular that persists through those different aspects. Those elements that are not consistent through time are subjective and we simply discard them. However, as Cassirer also notes, a ―content‖ of experience is always relative to the elements of experience. When a thing appears to be permanent, a further appearance of something else can change our experience and the original can ―no longer hold as a true and perfect expression of objectivity, but as a mere partial expression of being.‖ The point is that there is not ―a fixed line of division, separating two eterna lly sundered fields of reality.‖ As we advance, we deal with ―a moving limit, which constantly shifts in the progress of knowledge.‖ Hence, to use the division between subjective and objective, between ―an inner and an outer world‖ is misleading ―because it obscur es this fundamental relation.‖ Subjective and objective are not autonomous for they depend upon each other. We forget that ―instead of a living, reciprocal relation realized along with advancing knowledge,‖ we create ―a fixed and absolutely closed division of things.‖7

As Cassirer sums up, ―our concern with this transition into the subjective is not with a change in the substance of things, but merely with a change in the critical evaluation of cognitions‖ because ―a judgment, that previously seemed to hold

6 Ib id. 297 . 7 Cassirer, 1923, 273 -4, i ta lics in or iginal .


unconditionally, is now limited to a certain sphere of condition.‖ 8 In other words, our experience of things has nothing to do with the ‗substance of things,‘ with their being or not being, but is relative to our knowledge.

For Cassirer, the problem is ne ither ‗objectivity‘ nor ‗subjectivity‘ but the way we have ‗carved the world of experience up‘ into physical and psychic, into objective and subjective, by taking those meanings as standing for something unproblematic, given and frozen in time. For Cassirer, ‗true and per fect expression of objectivity,‘ the thing that we can be certain of as being in the world and that it is the object we are seeing depends on ‗the critical evaluation of cognitions.‘ In other words, ontology depends on epistemology. Cassirer‘s reading of the distinction is helpful to start thinking about what we mean when we use these terms. In a different context, Cassirer notes that ―objectification‖ is ―always a constructive process. The physical world—the world of constant things and qualities—is no mere bundle of sense data‖ but is constructed in thought, and is based on ―acts of theoretical objectification, objectification by conc epts and scientific constructs.‖ 9

Cassirer already uses the word ‗objectivity‘ in two different senses. One meaning is objectivity in a sense of the world of objects—the Lebenswelt , the world we experience—and the other is objectivity of thinking, in other words, our judgment about the objects. It is our thoughts that produce knowledge; ‗acts of theoretical objectification‘ produce scientific constructs. Those two senses of objectivity are not reducible to each other. As Erwin Schrödinger notes, ―I do not think that…many physicists—certainly not experimentalists—are ready to endorse the statement that ‗light waves do not really exist , they are only waves of knowledge‘.‖ 10 Waves of knowledge are objective in the sense of the objectivity of human thought that builds scientific knowledge. We can never be sure if they are really in the world. They are relative ‗to a certain sphere of condition,‘ in other words, our knowledge. Waves of knowledge are not facts that one can find in the world. They are not mind independent phenomena but they are our description of what we take to be their status as far as our knowledge is c oncerned. In science, epistemology is primary.

Patočka reminds us that ―the word objectivity‖ is ―multivalent.‖ He also traces the historical conflation of two epistemological senses 8 Ib id. 274 . 9 Cassirer, 1992 [1944] , 160 . 10 Free quotat ion from Jeans: Schrödinger, 2000 [1956] , 1065 .


of objectivity, or, perhaps, the bifurcation of the second meaning of objective. With a positivist turn in sciences, the self -constituting thought is superseded by the ―facts‖ as the ground of objectivity. As Husserl writes, the problem with underst anding ―objectivism‖ as ―facts,‖ overlooks that it cannot be based on facts beca use ―facts are…already meant as truths rather than mere opinion.‖ 11 Patočka suggests that ―self -constitution through objectivity and objectivity as a fact are two different things which, in the nineteenth century, entered into a nonsensical and paradoxical idiosyncratic union.‖ 12 However, the question is in what sense Pato čka uses the word ‗objectivity‘ here. I suggest that it is ‗objectivity‘ in the first sense, that is, the world of objects, the Lebenswelt , from which two other senses are derived. Although ontology precedes epistemology, it is epistemology that Patočka discusses. In other words, there are three different senses of objectivity and not two. Self -constitution is a constitution of an object in thought, i.e. , how do I know the object through ‗objectivity‘ as an ontological category (objects in the world); objectivity as a fact is a reduction, or, rather, forgetting of our human participation in the constitution of an object whereby one takes the object as a fact beyond which one does not have to go, objectivity becomes a matter of factuality. 13

The problem starts with the Cartesian split of the world into two substances, res cogitans and res extensa . In order to confront the skepticism of his time, René Descartes‘ search for clarity and perspicuity of knowledge leads him to posit the ground of this certitude in the indubitability of our thinking, res cogitans . As Husserl and Patočka point out, in the ‗I,‘ Descartes ‗discloses‘ the personal. Yet despite his stumbling upon th e personal dimension of the ‗I, ‘ he obscures this discovery by shifting his attention to res extensa , which could be accounted for by mathematics. As Pato čka notes, the Cartesian cogito is quaternio terminorum . It is the personal ‗I think‘ as well as the ―permanent [ trvalá] substance with all the attributes belonging to it,‖ res cogitans , the impersonal ground of certainty.14 On the one hand, only a thought that is clear and distinct (clare et distincte) can certify the being of a thing (res extensa). On the other, Descartes‘ new ―ontological conception‖—derived from Galileo and Newton—is no longer nature as we experience it in our

11 Husser l , 1970 [1935] , p. 296 . 12 Patočka, 1996, 72 , t ranslation modified . ―Sebevytváření skrze objekt iv itu a objekt iv ita jako faktum jsou dvě rozdí lné věci , kt eré však vešl i v 19. stolet í v prot ismyslnou a paradoxní personální unii ‖ (Patočka, 1995b, 55 ) . 13 This is a lso Husser l‘s concern t hroughout his work. 14 Patočka, 1980, 2 .3 .14 .


everyday living, but nature constructed in thought, where clare et distincte ideas are certified by mathematics. Calculation is based on principles that are impossible to verify by human experience, leading to an indirect mathematization of nature. The contemplation of nature is replaced by a construction of mathematized structures that become knowable objects; 15 epistemology grounds ontology.

On this model, res extensa becomes a knowable ‗object‘ based on the clear and distinct ideas of res cogitans ; yet a thinking thing cannot be converted into a geometrical manifold. This is the outcome of the unacknowledged equivocation between the two senses of cogito . Our thinking might be certain for each of us but it is impossible to ‗compare‘ with the thought of others; one‘s thinking cannot be taken as identical to the thinking of someone else. The ego becomes the ground of knowledge, but this ‗gro und‘ cannot be our personal ‗I .‘ The personal ‗I‘ vanishes from the Cartesian project supplanted by the thinking thing, separated from the world in which we live. Correlatively, the world of our living is reduced to the impersonal substrate defined as res extensa . Matter alone can be expressed through ―extensio , cogitatio , and so forth.‖ 16 Only matter can be thought identically by everyone because only an object—res extensa—can be converted hypothetically into its numerical indices. The question of correlation between two separate substances is resolved by ―the principle of psychophysical parallelism.‖ Only on this model, can ―mental events [be] added a s a correlate, an epiphenomenon‖ because thinking becomes impersonal ‗thinking thing‘—res cogitans separated from matter—res extensa . Matter is privileged as the only knowable substance accounted for by the thinking thing. Certainty of knowledge is based o n the privileged forms supplied by mathematics because it can be reckoned with. 17 Knowledge is assured, skepticism is confronted and overcome, but the personal is lost.

Personal knowing becomes subjective, while impersonal knowledge—certified by mathematical thinking—becomes objective knowledge. Yet, objective in this sense is bifurcated further. This problem is precipitated by the Kantian endeavor to ―ground the objectivity of human knowing in the autonomy of our mind.‖ 18 Although Kant acknowledges the ―problem of autonomy and finitude,‖ his awareness of our finitude, according to Patočka, is lost in subsequent thinking. Hegel is not satisfied with the

15 Patočka, 2002, 471 . 16 Patočka, 1995b, 26 . See also Patočka, 1996, 30 . 17 Patočka, 1996, 30 . 18 Ib id. , 71 .


incompleteness of the Kantian project, a project that is aware of human limitations; in contrast with Kant Hegel posits a new model whereby ―autonomy‖ and ―human freedom as an activity‖ become ―unlimited, absolute, [and] backed by infinity.‖ The Hegelian ―absolute spirit is the ultimate source‖ of everything. 19 After the collapse of this model, Patočka speaks of the positivistic reaction to Hegelian metaphysics. He points out that it was not an entirely new way of thinking because it was partially already present in ―pre -Kantian empiricism and rationalism.‖ For positivists, objectivity becomes simply factual. ―It is facts that count in science, whatever is observed, is—and we do not inquire any further.‖ Facts become undisputable constituents of nature that ―can only be observed and described.‖20 As I already discussed, Patočka notes polyvalent senses of ‗objectivity‘ that are not compatible. To extend his observation, we can say that if we take ‗objectivity‘ as expressing the world of objects (the Lebenswelt), then objectivity as the self -constituting thought is the second sense of the objective, and ‗objectivity‘ as facts that we observe in the world from the ‗disinterested‘ point of view becomes objectivity in the third sense that forgets its grounding in the second sense of objectivity, the sense that Schrödinger is talking about: it is only our waves of knowledge that we think we observe when we read the instruments. 21

Hence, in the first sense, the objective world (the world of objects, the Lebenswelt) is dressed up in the garb of ideas, 22 as Husserl observes, using scientific objectivity in the second sense in order to construct it, so we can observe and describe it , using the

19 Ib id. 20 Ib id. , 72 . 21 Hence, we have three senses of objectivi ty. In the f irst sense, i t is the world of objects that exist outside of us, thinking beings, the objective world in which we l ive; in the second sense, i t is the mathematica l ly self -certif ied thought that constructs the object ive world of sc ience that we cannot experience. As Schrödinger a lso observed, ― th is type is not only pract ica lly inaccessible, but not even thinkable,‖ or, rather , ―we can, of course, think it , but however we think i t , i t is wrong; not perhaps quite as meaningless as a ‗ tr iangular circle, ‘ but much more so than a ‗winged lion ‘‖ (Schrödinger, 2000 [1956] , 1056, i tal ics in original) . Likewise, Alexandre Koyré notes: ―The Gal i lean concept of motion (as wel l as that of space) seems to us so ‗natural ‘ that we even bel ieve we have derived it from experience and observat ion, though, obviously, nobody has ever encountered an inertia motion for the simple reason that such a motion is utter ly and absolutely impossible‖ ( Koyré, 1968, 3 ) . F inal ly, we have object ive in the third sense, i t is the world of facts that we can observe and descri be in a supposedly unbiased manner. 22 Husser l , 1970b, §9h, 51 -2. See a lso Husserl , 1973, §10, 44 -5.


term objectivity in the third sense. Ontology is reduced to epistemology that ends up becoming technē , ―the art of a precise calculation of nature.‖ The problem is not, as Husserl suggests, with science as technē , the problem is that we have forgotten our human complicity in the structure of knowledge, ―cloaking the primordially given world, subjective and unprecise, in an ideational garb which transposes it into a precise universe of truths for all and so makes it calculable.‖ 23 As Husserl notes, the objective world existing independently of us (the first sense) is not ―the substrate of truths in themselves‖ 24 (objective in the second and third sense). Through scientific objectivity in the second sense, it is hypothesized as a domain of ‗facts‘ in the third sense, as nature in itself. 25 It can be posited otherwise. Those three senses of objectivity are not interchangeable.

For Patočka, to know is to pass a judgment on our experience according to certain criteria. Yet, ‗criteria‘ can be thought of in different ways. They could be scientific criteria that delimit what is the knowable world according to the latest scientific theori es, or, they could also be thought (with Husserl) as the typification that we experience in the Lebenswelt , the world of our living. To experience something is, for Husserl, the ―apperceiving of the object as object‖ according to ―the primary universal typ ification—precisely the typification of the object as experiential object, perceptual object, and the typification of the unities as a configuration of objects.‖ 26 Hence to reduce knowledge to scientific knowledge only is to overlook that this knowledge pro ceeds from the Lebenswelt ; our typical, everyday engagement with the world.

Patočka reminds us also that it is important to distinguish between two senses of subjectivity. 27 On the one hand, we are talking about subjectivity of experiencing as opposed to so mething we experience; in this sense, we are talking about the structure of subjective experience. It is the Cartesian structure, Ego – Cogito – Cogitatum : personal moment – subjective process (průběh) –

23 Patočka, 1989 [1973] , 329 . 24 Husser l , 1969, §104, 277 . 25 ―Object i f icat ion i s a matter of method , founded upon prescienti f ic data of experience. Mathematical method ‗constructs, ‘ out of intuit ive representation, ideal ob jects and teaches how to deal with them operatively and systematica l ly. It does not produce things out of other things in the manner of handwork; i t produces ideas. Ideas arise through a pecu l iar sort of mental accomplishment: idealization‖ ( Husser l , 1970a, 348, i ta lics in or iginal ) . 26 Husser l , 1981 [1931] , 246 . 27 Patočka, 1995a, 185 .


object/thing (předmět).28 On the other hand, my exper ience is subjective if I experience a thing from my perspective that is available to me only. Yet my perspective is not a cogitatum, it belongs on the side of experience, on the side of sensation. It is situational experience that is available to me, or to a particular society. In this sense, scientific objectification aims to eliminate this type of subjectivity. It wants to capture beings as they are, without our point of view, without human perspectival understanding. 29

The issue here is the equivocation o f the terms; it is the confusion between different senses of the commonly employed terms subjective and objective . For example, ‗objective‘ can mean the world of objects or things existing independently of the way in which we experience them; or, objective can be taken as the method of natural science, devoid of any subjective remnants, where two senses of objective are conflated (objectivity as self -constitution and objectivity as factuality).

The use of ‗subjective‘ is similar. No human experience is atomistic, comprised of subjective impressions of sensations that we then collate together. For Husserl, no human experience is subjective in this sense. 30 Patočka notes that ―something like the atomistic data is a mere construction‖ 31 that does not take our experience into account. If experience were really only mine or yours, ―whose head can phenomenology use to come to life‖ and present its theses? 32

We can speak of subjective in the sense of ‗talking about‘: the subject of our discussion. In this sense, it is the structure of human experience as opposed to the structure of objects and things that we encounter in the world. In this sense, subjective structures of experience are objective, so to speak. These are the structures of experience of everybody; the subjective structure of human experience is not reducible to one particular point of view. On the

28 Patočka, 1995b, 20 . 29 ―1) subjekt ivnost prožívání prot i prož ívanému ; 2) subjekt ivnost toho, co se prožívá, pokud je to př ístupné j enom prožívaj íc ímu (kupř. perspekt iva, kt erou mám na věci ; perspekt iva není sama prož itkem, je to persp ekt iva věc í , patří na stranu prož ívaného, a ne na st ranu prož itku) . Tedy danost přirozeného světa j e subjekt ivní ve druhém smyslu. Co j e původně dáno, j e dáno v s ituac i , přístupné buď mně nebo urči tému spo lečenství . Úlohou objekt ivace, vědy, kt erá chce zac hyt it j soucno , jak samo o sobě jest , bez oh ledu na nás , kteř í prož íváme a poznáváme, je vyločit všechno subjekt ivní (ve druhém smyslu) a přej ít k t akové charakterist ice j soucna , kde se to subjekt ivní nevyskytuje nebo j en v minimálním měří tku‖ (Patočka, 1995a , 185) . 30 Patočka, 1993, 17 . 31 Ib id. , 19 . 32 Ibid.


other hand, the use of the term subjective as we use it in our everyday life, and in opposition to the standpoint of a disinterested observer, means that our personal experience is relative to our particular situation. This meaning of subjective is in opposition to the use of objective in scientific usage; in other words, our experience is subjective in a sense that it is shaped by our subjective personal history, unique to each of us. But this uniqueness does not mean that it is atomistic in the sense that nobody else can see the same things, understand our experience. We live in the common world, Lebenswelt . Our subjective experience is explicable in terms of the subjective in the first sense: the structures of subjective experience. Finally, there is a prevalent, even if incomprehensible in terms of our lived experience, third understanding of subjective. That is, our experience is subjective to each of us in a se nse of ‗the brain in a vat‘, to use Hilary Putnam‘s expression. 33 What I see, you cannot see, what I experience, you cannot experience. My experience is reduced to my mental states only. I am an atom among other atoms in the world. Yet, if we reduce subject ive to this third sense only, if our thinking is subjective in this sense only, if it is ―a physics of thinking,‖ 34 individual to each of us, how can we think formally; that is, how can we think something that is, in a way, independent of our own subjective , atomistic, way of thinking?

Psychology might serve as an example. Psychology investigates the structures of human mental processes. Yet, as a science, it cannot be about the changeable nature of a singular human mental life. It must be first and foremost based on the system of formal rules that psychologists use to understand those structures. Using these formal rules, psychologists order and systematize human finite, individual, subject ive experience into a standardized objective manifold that is impossible to find in any human being. By using the natural science as its starting point, psychology tries to straddle between the Scylla of ‗subjective‘ in the sense of being singular and Charybdis in the sense of being scientifically objective in both senses: the self-constituting and factual. This struggle is simply an outcome of the unacknowledged starting point: human mental lives are impossible to reduce to the unchangeable impersonal substrate that would become a measurable res extensa by turning human changeable experience into ‗ the substrate of truths in themselves‘ (objective in the second and third sense).

My concern is with the meaning of ‗objectivity‘ that is largely

33 Putnam, 1982 . 34 Lipps, 1880, 530 ff . ; c i ted in Husserl , 2001, §19, 42 .


understood as scientific objectivity based on facts, and ‗subjectivity‘ when reduced to crude versions of solipsism. Husserl‘s concern with science turned into technology, forgetting its own ground, is relevant even more today than it was in his time. Science became not one domain among many others but is now supposedly the only arbiter of objectivity. Even worse, psychology is now so powerful that to question its methodology amounts to heresy.

The point is to remember that theories, rules and methodologies are constituted by us humans, that science is a human endeavour. 35 The scientific world of objective facts is not the objective world through which we understand the Lebenswelt , but it is, as Husserl already argued, the other way around. Sciences have their starting point in the Lebenswelt and, as Patočka would say, the human lived experience cannot be converted into an object that we can observe and describe as rocks or the lava on the moon.

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Husserl, Edmund. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic.

35 See Husser l , 1970 [1935] , 272 -3.


Trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Ed. Ludwig Landgrebe. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1973.

Husserl, Edmund. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.

Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations. Trans. J. N. Findlay. Ed. Dermot Moran. International Library of Philosophy. Vol. 1 of the German Editions: Prolegomena to Pure Logic; Investigation I, Volume II of the German Editions: Expression and Meaning; Investigation II, Volume II of the German Editions: The Ideal Unity of the Species and Modern Theories of Abstraction. Vol. 1. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

Husserl, Edmund. ―The World of the Living Present and the Constitution of the Surrounding World External to the Organism.‖ Trans. Frederick A. Elliston and Lenore Langsdorf. Shorter Works. Eds. Peter McCormick and Frederick Elliston. Brighton; Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press; The Harvester Press, 1981 [1931], 238-50.

Koyré, Alexandre. ―Galileo and the Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth Century.‖ Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1968, 1-15.

Lipps, Theodor. ―Die Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie.‖ Philos. Monatshefte. Vol. xvi. 1880.

Patočka, Jan. ―2.3. Fenomenologie Vlastního Těla.‖ Přirozený Svět a Pohyb Lidské Existence. Tématický Sborník. Vol. II. Prague: Samizdat, 1980, 1-20.

Patočka, Jan. Body, Community, Language, World. Ed. James Dodd. Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1996.

Patočka, Jan. ―The Dangers of Technicization in Science according to E. Husserl and the Essence of Technology as Danger according to M. Heidegger.‖ Trans. Erazim Kohák. Jan Patočka. Philosophy and Selected Writings. Ed. Erazim Kohák. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 [1973], 327-39.

Patočka, Jan. ―Evropa Pramenem Dějin...‖ Péče o Duši: Soubor Statí a Přednášek o Postavení Člověka ve Světě a v Dějinách. Eds. Ivan Chvatík and Pavel Kouba. Sebrané Spisy Jana Patočky. Svazek 3. Vol. III. Praha: Oikoymenh, 2002, 463-75.

Patočka, Jan. ―Problém Přirozeného Světa.‖ Tělo, Společenství, Jazyk, Svět. Ed. Jiří Polívka. Praha: ISE, Oikoymenh, Edice Oikúmené, ve spolupráci s Archivem Jana Patočky, 1995a, 129-202.

Patočka, Jan. Tělo, Společenství, Jazyk, Svět. Ed. Jiří Polívka. Praha: ISE, Oikoymenh, Edice Oikúmené, ve spolupráci s Archivem Jana Patočky, 1995b.

Patočka, Jan. Úvod do Fenomenologické Filosofie. Eds. Jiří Polívka and Ivan Chvatík. Praha: ISE, Oikoymenh, Edice Oikúmené, ve spolupráci s Archivem Jana Patočky, 1993.


Putnam, Hilary. ―Brains in a Vat.‖ Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 1-21.

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Husserl‟s Notion of the Primal Ego in Light of the Hermeneutical Critique Saulius Geniusas (James Madison University)

Abstract : This following analysis a ims to show how the hermeneutica l cr it ique of

Husser l ‘ s phenomenology provides an impetus to disclose the philosophical signif icance of the histor ic i ty o f t ranscendental subject ivity . The paper is divided into seven sect ions. Section 1 si tuates Gadamer‘s cr it ique of Husserl ‘s not ion of the pr imal ego in the context of the hermeneutica l cr it iques of Husserl ‘s phenomenology. In Section 2, I turn to the ―funct ional reading‖ of the primal ego and argue that this reading part ly answers Gadamer‘s objection. According to the funct ional interpretat ion, there are man y primal egos to be found in Husser l‘s phenomenology, each of which is determined differently within a concrete context of analysis. The subsequent three sect ions i l lustrate this point by providing an account of the pr imal ego in the Crisis (Sect ion 3) , in the C-Manuscr ipts (Section 4) and in the Bernau Manuscr ipts (Section 5) . In the sixth section, I provide a response to the hermeneutica l cr it ique by emphasizing the historical dimension inscr ibed in the problematic of the pr imal ego. I argue that the primal ego of the Cris is presupposes the pr imal ego of the C-Manuscr ipts and that in the Bernau Manuscripts Husserl provides an even more rudimentary account of the pr imal ego than in the C-Manuscr ipts . In the seventh and last section I suggest that the hermen eutical cr it ique invites one to supplement the funct ional reading of the pr imal ego with an interpretat ion that highl ights subjectivi ty‘s transcendental historici ty. Here I argue that that primal ego is not to be thought of as an ent ity, but rather as a no tion that indicates a part icular level of transcendental subject ivi ty‘s consti tutive accomplishments. But if so, then neither the hermeneutica l cri t ique nor the funct ional interpretat ion exhausts the s ignif icance of Husser l‘s notion of the primal ego. Accordingly, the primal ego is a not ion, which is f irst and foremost designed to indicate the histor ici ty of transcendental subject ivity.

1. The Primal Ego in the Context of the Hermeneutical Critiques of Phenomenology

As Paul Ricoeur has remarked, the histo ry of phenomenology is the history of Husserlian heresies. 1 This claim, besides highlighting the generally ambivalent relation of post -Husserlian phenomenology to its origins in Husserl‘s program, also characterizes the hermeneutical approach to phenomenol ogy. When Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur call for the ―hermeneutical turn in phenomenology,‖ they assert the need to continue the phenomenological legacy, yet with a notable qualification: to remain

1 ―Si bien que la phénoménologie au sens large est la somme de l ‘oeuvre husser l i enne et des hérésies i ssues de Husser l‖ Ricoeur, A l‘école de la phénoménolog ie (Par is: Vrin, 1987, p. 9) .


true to the spirit of phenomenology, one needs to libera te oneself from the letter of Husserl‘s writings.

What is this ―spirit‖ of phenomenology that hermeneutics aims to preserve? This question has received a number of different answers: this ―spirit‖ is sometimes identified with categorial intuition (Heidegger), sometimes with the life -world (Gadamer), yet other times with phenomenology‘s general effort to restore to phenomena their quota of strangeness (Ricoeur). As far as the ―letter‖ of Husserl‘s phenomenology is concerned, here the hermeneutical approach is much more univocal. Ever since Heidegger‘s reading of Husserl,2 the hermeneutical critique of phenomenology has been directed at one and the same target: Husserl‘s notion of subjectivity. 3

In the context of the hermeneutical critiques of Husserl‘s phenomenology, Husserl‘s notion of the primal ego occupies a prominent place. This is understandable: we find the notion of the primal ego in those pages in the Crisis , which complete the path to the reduction through the life -world problematic. As seen from the hermeneutical perspective, Husserl‘s discovery of the life -world signals the recognition of the intersubjective, historical, and linguistic nature of subjectivity. Yet Husserl‘s subsequent discovery of the primal ego seems to reduce sociality, linguisti cality, historicity, and worldhood to phenomena of secondary importance. What is more, the discovery of the primal ego seems to assert the primacy of a non-linguistic, pre-social, in short, a ―worldless‖ subjectivity. Thus in Truth and Method , Gadamer interprets the notion of the primal ego in terms of Husserl‘s unyielding resistance to the ―hermeneutical turn in phenomenology.‖ This notion bespeaks Husserl‘s commitment to an illegitimate conception of subjectivity that precedes its being-among-others and its being-in-the-world—and to this conception Husserl continued to cling to the end of his days. 4

2 See especial ly §13 of Heidegger ‘s History of the Concept of Time. Prolegomena (Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1985) . 3 The reason seems to be straightforward: between th e transcendental pr imacy of subjectivi ty and the factic i ty of Dasein one must choose; one cannot have it both ways. 4 The concept of the pr imal ego seems to be so foreign to hermeneutics that in fact , Gadamer never comes close to spel ling out his cr it ique. Needless to say, just because the reasons are missing, one cannot set this cr it ique safely aside. On the contrary: Gadamer does not provide any reasons because for him, as for hermeneutics as a whole, i t is only obvious that Husser l‘s notion of the pr imal ego is a distorted conception of subject ivi ty. Everything seems only sel f -evident: this notion can only be understood in accordance with that model of

SAULIUS GENIUSAS | 133

Yet is the notion of the primal ego as illegitimate as Gadamer takes it to be? There are good reasons to be doubtful.

2. The Hermeneutical Critique and the Functional Interpretation

The hermeneutical critique appears dubious as soon as one takes

into account that the Crisis is not the only text in which the notion of the primal ego is to be found. Husserl also utilizes this notion in the Bernau Manuscripts as well as in the C-Manuscripts . What is more, the notion of the primal ego changes its precise meaning in these texts. With this in mind, Dieter Lohmar has recently argued against the Kantian readings of the primal ego, which would identify the primal ego w ith Husserl‘s ―discovery‖ of the unity of apperception. 5 As Lohmar has it , the primal ego is ―not a hypostasized or fixed ego and it cannot be regarded as something like the Kantian ‗I think.‘ The precise meaning of each primal ego can only be determined in the concrete context of research in respect to different levels of constitution‖ (Lohmar, 17).

For the ―functional reading,‖ the primal ego is always an ego in relation to a particular level of constitution. This means that the concept of the primal ego does not foreclose, but rather opens the possibility to take a next step in the regressive inquiry that will deepen and enrich the phenomenological analysis. To put this in paradoxical terms, it is always possible to uncover a more rudimentary primal ego behind a particular figure of the primal ego that emerges within a particular framework. But if so, then it makes little sense to interpret the primal ego as the ultimate objective presence that underlies Husserl‘s phenomenology. It seems that the hermeneutical critique does not to hold.

Nonetheless, one could argue that the functionalizing of the primal ego only seems to invalidate the hermeneutical critique, while in fact it only corroborates it. Two responses could be made on hermeneutics‘ behalf. (1) One could ask: what does it really mean that the concept of the primal ego changes its meaning in different contexts? And one could answer: this fact indicates nothing less

being which Heidegger has termed Vorhandenheit . 5 See Dieter Lohmar, ―Eine Geschichte des Ich bei Husse rl . Mit Bemerkungen zum Ur- Ich in Husserls späten Zeitmanuskripten,‖ in Das Selbst und sein Anderes . Festschri ft für Klaus Erich Kaeh ler . Ed. by Markus Pfei fer and Smail Rapic (Münschen: Verlag Karl Alber Freiburg) p. 162 -181. An English translat ion is a lso avai lable, a lthough has not been published: ―A History of the Ego in Husserl ian phenomenology. The ‗Arch -ego‘ in Husser l‘s Late Manuscripts On Time and the Crisis .‖ Hereafter al l quotations refer to the author‘s English translat ion.


than Husserl‘s failure to discover the primal ego. One could further argue that this failure is by no means accidental: for how could Husserl succeed in discovering the primal ego, when it fact, no such ego is to be found? (2) One could also ask: does the mere fact that in Husserl we find a plurality of primal egos necessitate one to interpret this concept in a functional way? After all, these primal egos are still egos, which means that they must stand in some relation to each other. But once the relation between different primal egos is brought to light, does one not have to privilege one particular figure of the primal egos over others? And if so, then is one not left with the realization that, for lack of a better term, the ―ultimate primal ego,‖ as far as it is ultimate, must be conceived in terms of Vorhandenheit?

The functional reading does not have the resources needed to answer these objections. 6 In what follows, I would like to show that the hermeneutical critique, once reformulated in the above -mentioned way, calls for an interpretation of the primal ego that highlights the historicity of transcendental subjectivity. With this in mind, let me briefly turn to three contexts in which Husserl has employed the notion of the primal ego: the Crisis , the C-Manuscripts , and the Bernau Manuscripts .

3. Husserl‘s Notion of the Primal Ego in t he Crisis

As Husserl remarks on several occasions in the Crisis , the path to

the reduction through the life -world problematic leads to paradoxical enigmas. The notion of the primal ego emerges out of one such paradox, viz., the paradox of subjectivity ( Crisis , §53).

This paradox is twofold. On the first level, it is a paradox of intersubjectivity; on a deeper level, it is a paradox of subjectivity, taken it its ―unique solitude.‖ Regarding the first level: On the one hand, Husserl maintains that the world is the constitutive accomplishment of intersubjectivity. Yet on the other hand, intersubjectivity seems to be nothing other than a particular part of the world. But if so, then a part of the world seems to swallow up the whole world, and itself too. ―What an absurdity!‖ (Crisis , 180) Regarding the deeper level: On the one hand, transcendental intersubjectivity itself is a constitutive accomplishment of

6 The functional reading leaves one with a plural i ty of the pr imal egos without clar ifying how they relate to each other. As Lohmar puts i t , ― the pr imal ego does not refer to one s ingle ent ity….the not ion of the primal ego does not denote one single kind of ego‖ (Lohmar, 16) .


subjectivity; yet on the other hand, what is subjectivity if not a member of the intersubjective community? Again, what an absurdity!

Just as the paradox of subjectivity emerges in a twofold form, so the resolution Husserl offers is also twofold. At the first level, Husserl‘s resolution lies in the realization that each and every ―I‖ is both a mundane and a transcendental subjectivity. So as to resolve the paradox at the second level, Husserl further deepens the distinction between transcendental and mundane intersubjectivity with the insight that transcendental intersubjectivity is itself a constitutive accomplishment of that subjectivity which, in the ―unique sort of philosophical solitude,‖ constitutes in itself another as Other.7

Thus the second resolution of the paradox brings to light a threefold manifestation of subjectivity. First, the ego can be conceived as a mundane ego—as a member of humanity. Secondly, the ego can also be conceived as a transcendental ego —as a member of the transcendental intersubjectivity. Thirdly, the ego can also be conceived as a primal ego—as the constitutive origin of transcendental intersubjectivity. The emergence of the primal ego in the Crisis overcomes a particular transcendental naivite, viz. , that naivite which overlooks the constituted nature of transcendental intersubjectivity.

Husserl‘s concrete analysis of the primal ego in the Crisis is lamentably brief. 8 Yet arguably, Husserl‘s detailed account is missing because the problematic that falls under the heading of the primal ego has already been treated quite extensively elsewhere, most notably, in the Fifth Cartesian M editation. 9

7 Put otherwise, as far as I identify myself as a transcendental subject ivity, I already conceive myself as an ego among other egos. For this reason, I st i l l lack the insight into the const itut ive or igins of intersubject ivi ty. Hence the need to supplement the init ia l dist inction between the mundane and the transcendental ego with a further distinction between the transcendental ego and the pr imary subjectivi ty . 8 As Husserl has i t , the primal ego is to be ca lled ―I‖ only by equivocation, even though it is a necessary equivocat ion. This means that on the one hand, the primal ego is not an ―I‖ insofar as an ―I‖ is an ego among other egos, be they mundane or transcendental . Yet on the other hand, the pr imal ego is an ―I‖ insofar as i t is the phenomenological residuum that remains after the performance of the pr imordial reduct ion. Thus on the one hand, the pr imal ego is unique in that it is indecl inable ( Crisis , 185) ; yet on the other hand, ―every human being who carr ied out the epochē could certa inly recognize his ult imate ‗ I ‘‖ (Crisis , 186) . 9 As Husser l puts it in the Cris is , the emergence of the primal ―I‖ shows ―how the always s ingular ―I ,‖ in the original const itut ing l ife proceeding within i t ,


Husserl‘s description of how the primal ―I‖ solves the paradox of subjectivity in broad strokes reiterates the line of argument that we find in greater detail in the last Cartesian Meditation. One ca n therefore say that the ―epochē within epochē‖ that we find in the Crisis is a transition from a general transcendental epochē to the primordial reduction .

4. Husserl‘s Notion of the Primal Ego in the C-Manuscripts

Is one then to say that the primal I, conceived as the residue of

the primordial reduction, is the ultimate I that we find in Husserl‘s phenomenology? The manner in which the notion of the primal ego emerges in the C-Manuscripts invites one to answer this question in the negative.

As we saw, the primal ego in the Crisis is conceived as the phenomenological residuum left unaffected by the performance of the primordial reduction. This reduction, as Husserl remarks in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, is the reduction to the living present (CM, 133), conceived as the sphere of ownness that t ranscendentally underlies the intersubjective levels of world -constitution. In the C-Manuscripts , one of Husserl‘s central goals is to clarify time -constitution on the basis of the primordial reduction, i.e., on the level of the living present. These manus cripts lead to the realization that the primordial reduction, as the reduction to the living present, is still not free from transcendental naivite. Precisely because the reduction to the living present does not problematize the given relation between the ego on the one hand, and the primordial world on the other hand, this reduction cannot be conceived as the ultimate one, and it calls for another ―epochē within epochē.‖

When in a manuscript from 1931, published as Text Nr. 20 in Hua XXXIV, Husserl once again introduces the notion of the primal ego. Not only is this notion significantly different from the one that we find in the Crisis . In a sense, the primal ego of the C-Manuscripts emerges after the primal ego of the Crisis is put in parentheses.

At first glance, it seems that in the living present a phenomenologist can find everything that phenomenology has to

const itutes a f irst sphere of objects, the ―primordia l‖ sphere ; how it then, start ing from this, in a motivated fashion, performs a const itut ive accomplishment through which an intent ional modif icat ion of i tse lf and its primordia li ty achieves ontic val idity under the t it le of ―a lien -perception,‖ perception of others, of another ―I‖ who is for himself an ―I‖ as I am ( Crisis , 185) .


bring to light. 10 Yet is the living present, assumed as the primal event (Urgeschehen ) of transcendental subjectivity, to be conceived as a temporal process? Initially it seems that this question is to be answered affirmatively. Yet Husserl‘s analysis leads to the realization that the specific temporality of the living present is an accomplishment of subjectivity. And thus, one is invite d to perform a new ―epochē within the epochē‖: ―the naively won transcendental I must be again subjected to a transcendental reduction‖ (Hua XXXIV, 300). 11 This new reduction is meant to bracket those undisclosed apperceptions, which the reduction to the living present has naively presupposed without clarifying them.

If that transcendental subjectivity, which already stands in relation to the world, is a constitutive formation, then it must be possible to place it within brackets. Where does this new reduction lead us? It leads us to the transcendental primal ego and its transcendental primal life (Hua XXXIV, 300). This transcendental primal ego is conceived as the ultimate source from within which every concrete transcendental ego obtains its transcendental temporality, ordered according to the strict temporal order of the modalities of the present, past, and future.

Thus the reduction to the new primal ego that follows the reduction to the living present highlights the distinction between two fundamentally different notions of the ego. At the level of the living present, the ego is inseparable from its acts, possibilit ies, and acquired habitualities; it is an ego that has already constituted the primordial world. Once the living present is itself subjected t o an epochē , the ego, as the primal ego, is conceived as the primal ground of temporalization, i.e., as the ego of the all -temporalizing life.

As Husserl puts it in the C-Manuscripts , ―in a certain sense one can say: while all time originates out of temporalization , all temporalization originates out of the primal temporalization‖ (Hua XXXIV, 300). 12 The first primal ego—that of the Crisis— leads back from ―all time‖ to temporalization, conceived as the genetic source that underlies the intersubjective constitution of the world. The second primal ego—that of the C-Manuscripts— leads back to primal

10 ― In der l ebendigen Gegenwart dahinströmend und in ihrem urphänomenalen Wandel mit den dar in auf tret enden Wiederer innerungen, Identi f izi erungen, Unterscheidungen l iegt al les…‖ (Hua XXXIV, 2 98) . 11 ―Das naiv gewonnene t ranszendenta le Ich muss se lbst wieder e iner transzendenta len Reduktion unterworfen werden ‖ (Hua XXXIV, 300) . 12 ― In gewisser Weise kann man sagen : Alle Zeit entspringt aus Zeitigung, und al l e Zeit igung entspringt aus einer Urzeit igung‖ (Hua XXXIV, 300) .


temporalization that genetically precedes what Husserl calls the ―primordial domain,‖ discovered through the primordial reduction. Thus paradoxically, the C-Manuscripts provide an account of the primal ego that is ―more basic‖ than the primal ego of the Crisis .

5. Husserl‘s Notion of the Primal Ego in the Bernau Manuscripts

Is the notion of the primal ego that we find in the C-Manuscripts

the most rudimentary notion of the ego that we find in Husserl‘s phenomenology? This question needs to be answered in the negative.

From a historical point of view, Text Nr. 15 of the Bernau Manuscripts marks the emergence of the notion of the primal ego in Husserl‘s phenomenology as a whole. This text was written in 1918, thus more than one decade before the composition of the C-Manuscripts and almost two decades earlier than the Crisis . From a genetic point of view, Bernau Manuscripts thematize the primal ego at more primordial levels of constitution than the C-Manuscripts and the Crisis . Thus just as in the Crisis , so in the C-Manuscripts too, Husserl‘s choice of the term ―the primal I‖ is not to be understood as the discovery of the most original figure of the ego in phenomenology.

In Texts Nr. 14 and 15 of the Bernau Manuscripts , Husserl hypothesizes the possibility of a reduction that would lead to pre -egoic dimensions of experience. At first glance, the reduction to original sensuality seems to accomplish this goal. The ego is from the start identified as the correlate of instincts, affections, and acts. The reduction to original sensuality abstracts from all these dimensions of experience, and thus it is only to be expected that it will discover a pre-egoic level of experience. Husserl is thereby led to draw a distinction between three different levels of experience: (1) the pre-egoic level of pure passivity, (2) the (already egoic) level of affections and reactions, and finally, (3) the level of attentiveness (Aufmerksamkeit), the level of the intellectus agens (Hua XXXIII, 276).

Here the reduction to the pre -egoic original sensuality is conceived as the reduction to immanent temporality. Yet Husserl‘s analysis leads to the realization that original sensuality is not pre -egoic at all. At f irst glance, after the performance of this reduction, it appears that we have now everything subjective. Yet a closer look reveals that ―in a certain sense we do, and yet we don‘t. What we have is what is temporal; yet not everything subjective is temporal ‖


(Hua XXXIII, 277).13 What is not temporal is precisely I myself, conceived as the identical center, the identical pole, correlated with the whole stream of experiences. Much like in the Crisis Husserl was led to claim that the primal ego is called ―I‖ onl y by equivocation, so here also he claims that this rudimentary ―I‖ should not be called ―I,‖ that, in fact, it should not be called at all and should remain nameless.14

This means that the reduction to the original sensuality is still not free from a certain transcendental naiveté, and for this reason, it must be coupled with the reduction to the original time -constituting consciousness. The second reduction is called for by the realization that inwardness , which is supposed to be the phenomenological residuum, is in fact an ambiguous notion. On the one hand, inwardness can stand for the immanent contents of experience; on the other hand, this notion can also mean the constituting consciousness within which these contents are given (Hua XXXIII, 281).

This ambiguity generates two significantly different notions of the ego. On the one hand, as far as inwardness stands for the immanent contents of consciousness, the ego is what is constituted in the stream of consciousness along with the constitution of particular objects of consciousness. The ego is an actual and potential object of consciousness. In this regard, the ego is temporal. On the other hand, as far as the ego is conceived as the ego of the time-constituting consciousness, the ego reveals itself as al l-temporal.15 This all -temporal ego, conceived as the correlate of t ime-constituting consciousness, Husserl calls the primal ego. 16

13 ―Scheinbar ‗haben‘ wir damit a l l es Subjekt ive —und in gewisser Weise ‗haben‘ wir es—und doch wieder nicht ; denn was wir haben, i st eben Seiendes, Zeit l i ches, und nicht a l l es Subjekt ive is t Zei t l i ches ‖ (Hua XXXIII , 277) . 14 ―Das Ich so l l te eigentl ich nicht das Ich he ißen, und überhaupt nicht heißen, da es dann schon gegenständl ich geworden ist . Es i st Namenlose über al l em Fassbaren, das über al lem nicht Stehende, nicht Schwebende, nicht Se iende, sondern ‗Fungierende, ‘ als fassend, a l s werdend usw .‖ (Hua XXXIII , 277 -8) . 15 I t is diff icult to ignore the structural s imilarit ies between this pr imal ego and the pure ego of which Husser l had spoken in Ideen I (Hua II I , §57) . Yet there is an important difference: while in Ideen I , the pure ego is conceived as the necessary correlate of intentional acts, in the Bernau Manuscr ipts , the primal ego is conceived as the correlate of pre - intent ional sensual pr imal - impressions (sensuell e Urimpress ionen ) . 16 Husser l himself provides a rather vivid examp le to i l lustrate this point . Consider realiz ing that your feet are cold. How does this experience unfold on the three levels of experience Husser l had distinguished in Text Nr. 14 ( to which I have referred ear lier)? For this experience to emerge at the hig hest level ( that of the intel lectus agens ) , I would have to turn to this experience as a


How exactly does the ―primal ego‖ of the Bernau Manuscripts differ from the ―primal ego‖ in the other two texts? Let me once again return to the passage from the C-Manuscripts to which I have already referred above: while all time originates out of temporalization , all temporalization originates out of the primal temporalization‖ (Hua XXXIV, 300). This passage allows one to draw a threefold distinction between the three figures of the primal ego I have discussed above. (1) In the Crisis , Husserl identifies the primal ego with the level of temporalization; this ego is primal in relation to ―all t ime‖—that level, within which transcendental intersubjectivity is constituted. (2) In the C-Manuscripts , Husserl identifies the primal ego with the level of primal temporalization; in this regard, the ego is more rudimentary than the domain discovered by the primordial reduction. (3) The Bernau Manuscripts mark the discovery of the primal ego as the correlate of primal temporalization. As such, this notion of the primal ego is more basic than the other two figures of the primal ego that we find in Husserl‘s later works.

6. A Response to the Hermeneutical Critique of the Primal Ego

Let me now turn back to the hermeneutical critique of Husserl‘s

notion of the primal ego. As far as the exact formulation of this criticism in Truth and Method is concerned, clearly, this critique is an instance of misplaced criticism. The very fact that there are ―more basic‖ primal egos than the one Husserl addresses in the Crisis means that Husserl‘s ―discovery‖ of the primal ego in the Crisis cannot be conceived as the most rudimentary determination of transcendental subjectivity. Moreover, if there are further -reaching accounts of the ego than the one we find in the Crisis , then clearly, this account cannot be conceived in terms of what Heidegger calls Vorhandenheit .

Nonetheless, the fact that Husserl‘s analys is of the primal ego is much richer than Gadamer takes it to be does not by itself mean that the hermeneutical critique does not hold. This fact only calls

theme of my consciousness. At the lower level, that of affections, I would be affected and irri tated by the coldness of my feet while being thematica l ly preoccupied with other themes (for instance , while reading a captivat ing novel, I could press my feet closer to the heater) . Yet just as affect ion precedes attention, so the sensuous tendencies precede affect ion. Thus at the lowest level, that of original sensuali ty , I would sti l l in a pecul iar sense experience the growing power of affection which has not yet turned into affection.


hermeneutics to abandon the exact formulation, not the critique itself. Thus I have suggested earlie r that there are two ways in which hermeneutics can respond to the ―functional interpretation.‖ (1) One could interpret Husserl‘s uncertainty regarding which figure of the ego is to be identified as the primal ego as phenomenology‘s inevitable failure to f ind the primal ego itself. (2) Moreover, Husserl‘s identification of numerous figures of the ego as the primal ego does not foreclose the question regarding which of the primal egos is the most fundamental one; and once a certain figure is identified as the fundamental one, the hermeneutical critique could be redirected to it .

Regarding the first point: Could one not interpret the plurality of the primal egos as phenomenology‘s failure to discover the primal ego itself? According to such a view, Husserl‘s a nalysis of the primal ego inevitably leads to the subsequent discovery of a more rudimentary primal ego, precisely because no primal ego is to be found. Yet clearly, such a view is indefensible: the ―history‖ of the primal ego in Husserl‘s phenomenology is not to be conceived in terms of a progressive deepening of this notion; on the contrary, the primal ego of Husserl‘s last and unfinished Crisis is not as far-reaching as the primal ego in his earlier C-Manuscripts ; moreover, the primal ego of the C-Manuscripts is not as rudimentary as that of the even earlier Bernau Manuscripts . This means that when Husserl addresses the primal ego in the 1930s, he does not intend this notion to be understood in the manner in which hermeneutics understands it. It therefore makes litt le sense to accuse phenomenology for its apparent failure to discover the ―ultimate‖ primal ego when such a discovery was never phenomenology‘s intention.

Regarding the second point: If the primal ego of the Bernau Manuscripts is more fundamental than the primal ego that we find in the C-Manuscripts and the Crisis , then could one not redirect the critique formulated in Truth and Method to the Bernau Manuscripts? Should the primal ego of these manuscripts, identified as the most fundamental figure of the primal ego, not be conceived in terms of Vorhandenheit?

In this regard, it is hard to overestimate the significance of Husserl‘s remarks in the Crisis that precede his analysis of the primal ego. As Husserl has it, ―by carrying out the epochē the phenomenologist by no means straightaway commands a horizon of obviously possible new projects‖ (Crisis , 180). Phenomenology begins by excluding ―any underlying ground‖ and thus ―must create a new ground for itself through its own powers‖ ( Crisis , 181). And yet, sooner or later, the phenomenologist is bound to find out that


the created ground is still shot through with naiveties of various sorts; sooner or later, the phenomenologist is bound to give up the acquired ground and create new ones. The overcoming of the naiveté of the natural attitude leads to transcendental naiveties. Husserl goes as far as to suggest that the fate of phenomenology is ―to become involved again and again in paradoxes, which arise out of uninvestigated and unnoticed horizons‖ ( ibid . )

If such is indeed the fate of phenomenology, then it becomes understandable why the primal ego of the Crisis does not exclude the possibility that phenomenology could have already discovered more basic figures of the primal ego—those we find in the C-Manuscripts and in the Bernau Manuscripts . Moreover, if ―a phenomenologist does not straightaway command the horizon of all possible projects,‖ then one can never know in advance where exactly new transcendental naiveties are to be found. The notion of the primal ego is not meant to foreclose the possibility of a renewed inquiry into the transcendental origins of subjectivity‘s life; on the contrary, it is meant to overcome a particular transcendental naivete and thereby open the possibility of new regressive inquiries. Put bluntly, one can never know if a particular figure of the primal ego is the ultimate one. The fate of phenomenology, conceived as the discovery and overcoming of ever -new transcendental naiveties, calls for renewed inquiries into the transce ndental origins of world-constitution. It is thus only to be expected that there are other, even more rudimentary figures of the primal ego to be found alongside the one Husserl had thematized in the Bernau Manuscripts .

7. The Functional Interpretation an d the Historicity of Transcendental Subjectivity

Just as the functional interpretation of the primal ego provokes

hermeneutics to reformulate its critique, so this reformulated critique calls for a modification of the functional reading. To be more precise, the hermeneutical critique calls one to supplement the functional reading with an interpretation that highlights subjectivity‘s transcendental historicity.

As we saw, in the wake of the functional reading of the primal ego, one can reformulate the herme neutical critique by raising the question regarding how the different primal egos relate to each other. The functional reading lacks the resources needed to answer this question in a promising way. To be sure, the functional reading is within its rights when it insists that Husserl‘s analyses of the primal ego in the Bernau Manuscripts , C-Manuscripts , and the Crisis


do not refer one single primal ego . Yet the mere fact that the notion ―primal ego‖ changes its meaning in these diverse contexts does not warrant the conclusion that these three figures of the primal ego do not refer to ―one single kind of ego.‖ The three figures of the primal ego differ from each other in that they thematize transcendental subjectivity at three different levels of its constituti ve accomplishments . To ignore this would mean to ignore much of the philosophical significance that falls under the problematic of the primal ego in Husserl‘s phenomenology. It would mean to ignore Husserl‘s unique contribution to the philosophical themati zations of subjectivity.

To put this differently: Husserl‘s analyses of the primal ego do not refer to one single entity called ―primal ego,‖ yet not because there are three such entities. Rather, the primal ego is not an entity at all . A particular figure of the primal ego refers to a particular level of constitution, which initially remains hidden from phenomenology due to a particular transcendental naivete . Moreover, the fact that Husserl speaks of different primal egos means that there are many levels of constitution, which remain af fected by transcendental naivete. Even more: by reminding us that there very well might be other primal egos to be found—even more rudimentary ones than the ones he himself has uncovered—Husserl invites one to pursue further a regressive inquiry into transcendental subjectivity.

In this way, the multi -level problematic of the primal ego brings to light the historicity of transcendental subjectivity. We face here a unique transcendental historicity —a historicity composed of numerous constitutive levels, where each particular level is built on a previous accomplishment. It is highly intriguing that for Husserl, such a transcendental historicity does not have a clearly defined starting point, just as it does not have a clearly d efined endpoint. This means that, the hermeneutical critique notwithstanding, Husserlian subjectivity is not ―a hook from which the world dangles.‖ It rather is this ―endless‖ historicity itself.

Reduction to Evidence and Its Liberating Function: Husserl‟s Discovery of Reduction Reconsidered Shigeru Taguchi (Yamagata University)

What is fundamental is to apprehend the sense of absolute givenness, the absolute c lar ity of being given … Husser l , Hua II , 9/66

Introduction The aim of this paper is to show how Husserl ‘s conception of

phenomenological reduction makes it possible to liberate our philosophical thinking from its natural understanding of ―immanence‖ and ―transcendence,‖ and how fundamentally the theory of evidence contributes to this change of perspective.

In the ordinary sense of the word, ―reduction‖ has such implications as ― lessening,‖ ―cutting,‖ or ―limiting.‖ Although these connotations play a certain role in Husserl ‘s theory of reduction, they have led to the common misunderstanding that Hus serl‘s reduction means a sort of ―retreat‖ or ―withdrawal‖ into a subjective, individual, and psychological consciousness, and based on cutting off the ―outer world‖ as well as other people ‘s consciousness. However, it can be said that phenomenologists are now capable of removing such misinterpretations quite successfully. John Drummond makes persuasively clear that the phenomenological attitude cannot be identified with a first -person, introspective perspective (Drummond 2007). Andrea Staiti also showed in his essay on the ―Einstellungslehre‖ that the phenomenological attitude is fundamentally different from the first -person perspective within the natural, human self -apprehension (Staiti 2009, 231-32). John Brough convincingly argues by clarifying Husserl‘s argumentations in The Idea of Phenomenology that consciousness is not a ―bag‖ or ―container‖ that cannot go beyond itself (Brough 2008). 1

In the following I will make an attempt similar to that of Brough‘s, yet from a different perspective. In the lectur es published under the tit le The Idea of Phenomenology, it is well documented how Husserl became explicitly aware of the liberating function of the phenomenological reduction. 2 In my interpretation, it is a

1 As for the cr it ic ism of the ―capsule conception‖ ( Kapsel-Vorste l lung ) of consciousness, see also Taguchi 2006, 12. 2 I traced this process in the second chapter of my book more c losely (Taguchi 2006, 23-49) .

SHIGERU TAGUCHI | 145

radicalization of his ―critique of evidence‖ (Evidenzkritik) that leads Husserl to the full development of his theory of reduction. This interpretation makes it possible to understand why the phenomenological reduction is not a sort of ―retreat‖ or ―withdrawal,‖ but a method of liberating one ‘s thinking. In what follows, I will demonstrate my proposed interpretation on the basis of the description developed in The Idea of Phenomenology (1907) and the relevant texts written during the same period (1902-1913). These famous ―Five Lectures‖ document Husserl ‘s struggle for a clear understanding of his own phenomenology; for this reason, they lack an easily comprehensible, systematic structure. It thus becomes necessary to reconstitute Husserl‘s train of thought through these lectures. In my view, the short text in which Husserl himself attempted such a self -interpretation and reconstruction 3 is still not sufficient. I will thus make clear that his examination of ―evidence‖ can shed light on the perplexing presentation of these lectures.

1. What is Given? Immanence and Transcendence

The Five Lectures Husserl gave in the spring of 1907 are

motivated by the ―riddle of knowledge‖ or the question: ―How is objective knowledge possible?‖ In the natural attitude , we take it for granted that objects of our knowledge ar e ―given‖ to us. Philosophical questioning, however, severely shakes this natural confidence. ―How can knowledge go beyond itself and reach its objects reliably? What appears to natural thinking as the matter -of-fact givenness of known objects within knowl edge becomes a riddle‖ (Hua II, 20/17).

In the face of such a ―riddle ,‖ Husserl radicalizes an interrogation regarding ―what is (really) given?‖ This can be interpreted as a straightforward expression of his evidence-theoretical motivation to secure a truly reliable starting point for philosophical thinking.

At the first stage, a clue is provided by the conceptual pair immanence and transcendence . What is to be transcendent can be typically exemplified by ―physical things‖ in the ―outer world.‖ Closer examination reveals , however, that such things—transcendent things—cannot be free from skepticism. This is showed by the ―Cartesian doubt‖ which is based on a type of the ―argument from illusion‖ : every perception cannot fundamentally exclude the possibility that it may prove to be an illusion. Therefore, it cannot

3 ―The train of thought in the lectures‖ (Hua I I , 3 -14/61-70) .


be considered to be absolutely reliable. Such a methodological doubt shows that the transcendent object cannot be a starting point of a critical philosophical thinking. In opposition to the ―transcendent,‖ what is ― immanent ,‖ understood as ―cogitatio ,‖ can bear the test of critical skepticism. ―For in making the judgment that everything is doubtful it cannot be doubted that I am making this judgment ‖ (Hua II, 30/23). Even if the object of my mental a ct proved to be an illusion, it is undeniable that I am perceiving, judging, imagining, etc. At least, I cannot think that I am not performing these acts while performing them.

This classical argument, however, is used by Husserl for an intrinsically different purpose than that of Descartes. At the beginning, Husserl himself was not aware of the significance of his reinterpretation of the Cartesian consideration, which I will now explicate in the next section.

2. Radicalized Thinking of Evidence

In the Second Lecture, Husserl makes a short, relatively modest

comment on the Cartesian procedure that he just introduced. ―Descartes made use of this consideration for other purposes; but with the appropriate modifications , we can use it here as well‖ (Hua II, 30/24). Husserl does not intend to secure the thinking ego as such a substance on the basis of which he can build a logically deduced system of theory. 4 Rather, he concentrates on the reason why the cogitatio can be regarded as absolutely given .

Husserl first calls attention to the intuitive givenness of experience, especially that of perception. He finds an ―absolute ground‖ in it: ―[…] the perception, as long as it lasts, is and remains an absolute entity, a ‗this-here, ‘ that is what it is in itself, something that I can refer to as a final criterion in determining what being and being-given might mean, and here must mean, at least for the manner of being and givenness exemplified by the ‗this-here.‘ And this holds for all specific forms of thought, no ma tter how they are given‖ (Hua II , 31/24-25).5

The manner of givenness which is signified by ―‗this-here,‘ that is

4 Cf. Hua Mat I II , 89, 90 -91. ―Ungle ich Cartesius suchen wir nicht nach den absolut sicheren Fundamenten, auf denen wir na ch abso lut s icheren Prinzipien das Gesamtgebäude mensch l ichen Wissens aufbauen könnten […]― (Hua Mat III , 90) . The same type of cr it ic ism can be found in many of Husser l‘s writ ings. See especial ly §10 of the Cartesian Meditat ions (Hua I , 63-64) . 5 With ―f inal cr i ter ion‖ Husserl implies ―evidence,‖ which is f irst mentioned in the recapitulation in the middle of the second lectures (Hua II , 33/26).


what it is in itself,‖ is characterized by ―immanence‖ : ―[…] because of such immanence , this form of knowledge is free of that enigmatic character which is the source of all skeptical predicaments ‖ (Hua II , 33/26). However, in the meantime, ―immanence‖ has already acquired a different meaning from that originally suggested at the first stage of the lectures. Husserl now becomes aware of this ambiguity and draws a clear distinction between the immanence as ―real [reelle] containment‖ in the experience of knowing and ―an entirely different kind of immanence, namely, absolute and clear givenness, self -givenness in the absolute sense‖ (Hua II, 35/27). It is obvious that such a characterization of givenness can be expressed by the term evidence in Husserl ‘s terminology. In fact, he paraphrases ―self-givenness‖ as follows: ―This givenness, which excludes any meaningful doubt, consists of an immediate a ct of seeing and apprehending the meant objectivity itself as it is. It constitutes the precise concept of evidence, understood as immediate evidence‖ (Hua II , 35/27-28).

We can reconstitute this train of thought in the following way: Why can we consider ―real [reelle] immanence‖ as ―being given‖? — Because it is ―clear and distinct ,‖ i .e., ―evident.‖ Thus, it is the ―evidence‖ that gives the reason why immanence can be conceived as ―being absolutely given.‖

In this way, Husserl radically transposes h is foothold of thinking. The natural, naive distinction between immanence and transcendence cannot be a reliable basis of phenomenological thinking. It cannot be a starting point to think that only that which is really [reell] contained in the psychologica l consciousness is indubitable, that which transcends it is dubitable. Rather, the only criterion of phenomenological givenness is ―whether something is evident or not.‖ It is not the distinction between immanence and transcendence that makes it possible to distinguish evidence from non-evidence. Conversely, it is evidence that enables us to define what is immanent and what is transcendent in phenomenological sense.6

This fundamental insight into the methodological peculiarity of phenomenological thinking is fully expressed in the Third Lecture,

6 This is the insight which, de facto , Husser l has already gained in the Appendix of Logical Invest igat ions (―Ex ternal and Internal Perception: Physical and Psychical Phenomena‖). The Idea of Phenomenology enables Husser l to break through to a new level of understanding of his own phenomenology on the basis of that insight . Cf. Hua XIX/2, 751 -775/ 852-869 . The funda mental signif icance of this Appendix for a phenomenological turn of Husser l‘s thinking is e laborated by Nicolas de Warren (2003) .


where Husserl retrospectively refers to the Cartesian doubt and the two senses of immanence :

Descartes asked, as you will recal l , af ter he had establ ished the evidence of the cog itat io […] : What i s i t that assure s me of this bas ic givenness? The answer: clear and dist inct perception [ c lara et dist incta perceptio ] . We can la tch onto this point. I need not mention the fact that we have a lready grasped the matter in a purer and deeper way than Descartes did, and that we have thus grasped and understood evidence, c lear and distinct perception, in a purer sense. With Descartes we can now take the addit ional step (mutatis mutandis ) : whatever is given through c lear and dist inct perception, as it is in any s ingular cog itat io , we are enti t led to accept . (Hua II , 49/37)

In short, we can accept whatever is given with evidence . This newly

discovered principle of phenomenology, which apparently becomes echoed in the ―principle of all principles‖ of Ideas I ,7 continues to determine the character of Husserl ‘s phenomenology until the latest period of its development. 8 In what follows, I will show how the strict observance of the principle of evidence, against naive expectations, opens our eyes to the whole range of phenomenological givenness.

3. Essences are also Given

The next question is: What does the new principle bring about in

phenomenology? The Cartesian doubt led Husserl to the evidence of cogitatio . However, a philosophical science cannot begin with such fleeting cogitationes (or ―an eternal Heraclitean stream of phenomena‖) from which we can grasp nothing other than individual facts of experiencing , nothing other than ―this here!‖ As Husserl asks: ―What statements can I make about it?‖ (Hua II, 47/36). Therefore, it is necessary to find other types of self -givenness. ―In any case, it is il luminating to note that the possibility of a critique of knowledge depends on the indication of forms of

7 ―[…] the principles of all pr inciples: that every originary presentive intuition is a legit imizing source of cognit ion, tha t everything or iginar i ly (so to speak, in i ts ‗personal‘ actual ity) offered to us in ‗ intuit ion‘ is to be accepted s imply as what it is presented as being, but a lso only within the l imits in which it is presented there.‖ (Hua III/1, 51/44) 8 Cf. Husser l‘s remark in the Cartesian Meditat ions: ―Natural ly everything depends on str ict ly preserving the absolute ‗unpre judicedness‘ of the descript ion and thereby satisfying the pr inciple of pure evidence, which we laid down in advance‖ (Hua I , 74/36) .


absolute givenness other than the reduced cogitationes‖ (Hua II, 50/38). Husserl then indicates that not only particulars, but also ―universals, universal objects, and universal states of affairs ‖ can be brought to absolute givenness (Hua II, 51/39). This indication is elaborated in the next, Fourth Lecture.

As Husserl writes: ― [C]an universality, can general essences [ …] actually achieve the same kind of self -givenness that a cogitatio does?‖ (Hua II, 55/41) . This is a crucial question, for universality apparently transcends acts of knowing; it cannot be found in the real (reell) stream of consciousness as its real (reell) component. The self-givenness of such a transcendent object is something incomprehensible insofar as we conceive that only the real ( reell) immanence of consciousness assures self -givenness. However, we now have the new principle of phenomenology that is discovered in the Third Lecture: Whatever is given through clear and distinct perception, i .e., evidence, we are entitled to accept . According to this principle, we can reasonably accept universality if it is self -given.9

Not only can the real (reell) experience of cogitatio satisfy the critical criterion of evidence; but also the givenness of universality can be clear and distinct, or evident, insofar as a universal object is given in the intuitive consciousness. If a universal object is only meant as universal, it is incomprehensible or meaningless to say that it is not what it is. Let us take an example; Husserl speaks of intuiting the ―essence of red .‖ Insofar as ―essence‖ is concerned, it is nonsense to say: ―‗Red ‘ can be something different from what we understand by ‗red ‘‖ ; because ―red‖ in specie is exactly what we mean by ―red.‖ If we, for example, paraphrase the sentence as: ―It is possible that the red we know is not the true red ,‖ then what is meant is not the essence of red, but a red specified in a certain way. The essence of red is a simple moment of consciousness without which all consciousness and verbal expressions of red are meaningless; in other words, a type of primitive givenness which enables us concerning various objects to say: ―I see a red‖ or ―It is red.‖10 Insofar as such primitive givenness is meant, it is impossible

9 To discuss the theory of essence on the basis of the re levant argumentat ions in the Logica l Invest igat ions is beyond the scope of this br ief paper . I will mention only what is necessary for my purpose, based on the descr iption in the fourth lecture of The Idea of Phenomenology. 10 ―Essence‖ is not a metaphysica l ent ity, but a sort of extremely simple and ―obvious‖ givenness , whose ―obviousness‖ makes it diff icult to grasp in reflect ion. Husser l indicates such ―obviousness‖ in Philosophie a ls st renge Wissenschaft : ―Der Bann des urwüchsigen Natura li smus besteht auch dar in, daß er es uns al l en so schwer macht , ‗Wesen, ‘ ‗ Ideen‘ zu sehen oder vielmehr, da wir si e ja doch sozusagen beständig sehen, s ie in ihrer Eigenart ge lt en zu lassen, statt si e


to think that ―red as red‖ is not what it is given to us. ―Thus it is senseless to question and to doubt what the essence of red is, or what the sense of red is, provided that, while one is seeing red and grasping it in terms of its specific kind, one means by the word ‗red‘ exactly what is grasped and seen‖ (Hua II , 57/42-43).

It must be noted that the ― intuitive consciousness‖ of the essence of red does not imply that we can have an ―image‖ of the very essence itself. To have the essence of red as intuitive givenness, we need not to be imagining or picturing the essence of red next to a red thing. Rather, ―intuition‖ here corresponds to ―adequateness.‖ If what is meant is fulfilled as it is exactly meant and does not contain any empty intention which can be further fulfilled, we can then appropriately refer to the ―intuition‖ as ―adequateness.‖11 And it is exactly such a kind of ―evidence‖ that requires us to accept universality in its phenomenological givenness. ―Universal objectivities and states of affairs come to self-givenness for us, and they are in the same sense [as cogitatio] unquestionably given, in the strongest sense adequately self-given‖ (Hua II, 60/45).

After having proved that universality can be evidently self -given, it follows that it can be counted as phenomenological immanence. ―Thus this givenness is a purely immanent givenness, not immanent in the false sense, namely, existing in the sphere of individual consciousness‖ (Hua II , 57/42). Universal objects which are initially considered as ―transcendent‖ are now integrated into the sphere of phenomenological ―immanence‖ so that such objects can be phenomenologically analyzed on the basis of evidence.

Through this consideration, we can confirm again that the appeal to evidence functions as a principle: Not the real ( reell) immanence, but evidence assures us phenomenological givenness. This point is now more clearly noticed by Husserl himself : ―One must get especially clear on the fact that the absolute phenomenon, the reduced cogitatio, does not count as an absolute givenness because it is a particular, but rather because it displays itself in pure seeing after the phenomenological reduction as something that is absolutely self-given. But in pure seeing we can discover that universality is no

widers innig zu natural is i ere n. Wesensschauung birgt nicht mehr Schwierigke iten oder ‗mystische‘ Geheimnisse a ls Wahrnehmung ‖ (Hua XXV, 32) ; cf . Hua XXV, 36 ; XX/1, 282. 11 Cf . Hua XXV, 32f . Incidental ly, i t is not necessary for the validity of essence to be adequately intuited. Husser l accepts the ―essence - intuit ion‖ in a broader sense than the adequate one (cf . Hua I II/1, 15) . See also the distinction between ―empir ica l universal‖ and ―pure essence‖ or ―eidos‖ by Sokolowski (1974, 58 -62) .


less such an absolute givenness‖ (Hua II, 56/42).

4. Extension of the Given through Intentionality Based on the principle of evidence, Husserl further extends the

sphere of phenomenological givenness. As already announced at the beginning of the Fourth Lecture, phenomenological ― immanence‖ also includes that which is intentionally given . ―[…] here we will not only be concerned with what is really [reell] immanent, but also with what is immanent in the intentional sense‖ (Hua II , 55/41). This insight is fully developed in the Fifth Lecture. Finally, at this stage, the phenomenological ―immanence‖ covers the whole sphere of the given in whatever sense.

At the first stage, phenomenological reduction was applied to the objective transcendence. As Husserl notes in the Second Lecture, ―all transcendence that comes into play here must be excluded, must be supplied with the index of indif ference, of epistemological nullity‖ (Hua II, 39/30). 12 However, Husserl now asks in the Fifth Lecture whether transcendent objects are also ―phenomenologically given‖ in a peculiar sense: ―In the perception of an external thing, say the house standing before us, it is precisely the thing that is perceived. This house is a transcendence, and forfeits its existence after the phenomenological reduction. What is then actually given is the appearing of the house, this cogitatio , emerging in the stream of consciousness and eventually flowing away. In this house -phenomenon we find a red-phenomenon, an extension-phenomenon, etc. And these are given with evidence. But is it not also evident that a house appears in the house -phenomenon, thus giving us a reason to call it a house-perception?‖ (Hua II, 72/53).

If we separated the house from the house -phenomenon, we could not call it ―house-phenomenon‖ anymore, since, in this case, it would be an intrinsically different phenomenon. The phenomenon contains that moment on account of which it is called ―house-phenomenon‖ ; and furthermore, what is appearing in this phenomenon is not the house in general, but a particular house. So , this phenomenon has particular moments and characteristics without which it cannot be the phenomenon of the very house that is standing in front of me, a brick building, with a slate roof, etc. Such characteristics are descriptive moments in the phenomenon, which means that they are intuitively given. 12 At this stage, phenomenological reduction is called ―epistemological reduct ion‖ (Hua II , 39/30, 43/33) . The term ―phenomenological reduction‖ f irst appears in the third lecture (Hua II , 44/34).


The same applies to objects of imagination and s ymbolic thinking. In imagining, St. George is an appearing, transcendent object , but ―manifests itself within the appearances as a ‗givenness ‘‖ (Hua II , 72/53). As for the symbolic thinking of ―counter-sensical‖ objects (for example: ―round rectangle‖) are also given as it is thought in this thinking. We think exactly that object which is round and rectangular at the same time. Here ―an intentional object is nevertheless obviously there‖ (ibid.)

In this way, every intentional object can be counted as phenomenological givenness, insofar as it cannot arbitrarily be separated from the phenomenon that gives the object as the very object which is given in the phenomenon. In regard to this phenomenon, not only the intentional act as cogitatio but also the intentional object can have phenomenological givenness, because they are the decisive moments of that phenomenon in which they are inseparably related. That is to say, various modes of intentionality can also be regarded as self -given. What is indicated in the Third Lecture can now be understood in more detail: ―The relating-itself-to-something-transcendent, to refer to it in one way or another, is an inner characteristic of the phenomenon ‖ (Hua II, 46/35). On the basis of this ― inner characteristic of phenomenon,‖ it is possible to exhibit ―the different modes of genuine givenness, and, in this regard, the constitution of the different modes of objectivity and their relation to each other ‖ (Hua II, 74/54). In such an investigation of ―genuine givenness,‖ an object and its appearing cannot be separated; they must be examined in correlation; and ―the essential correlation between appearing and that which appears‖ (Hua II, 14/69) is not an external relation like that between a sack and a thing in it, but another expression of ―constitution‖ , i .e., the phenomenon in which ―the object constitutes itself‖ (Hua II, 74-75/55). This everywhere ongoing occurrence is also lived as an experience, and can thus be phenomenologically analyzed.

Thus, all types of givenness—―whether it manifests itself in connection with something merely represented or truly existing, real or ideal, possible or impossible ‖ (Hua II, 74/54)—fall into the sphere of phenomenological givenness. At the beginning, the phenomenological reduction had to ―exclude all that is posited as transcendent‖ (Hua II, 5/63). At the final stage of lectures, all that was excluded comes back to the sphere of phenomenological givenness; what is more, it is enriched with an intrinsically deeper understanding. This outcome of the phenomenological reduction is fully expressed in the lecture Einführung in die Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis (1909):


Vermöge der Intentionalität der cogitatio oder des ‗Bewusstseins‗ […] umspannt die Phänomenologie, die wir auch als Wissenschaft vom reinen Bewusstsein bezeichnen könnten, in gewisser Weise all das, was sie so sorgfältig ausgeschaltet hat; sie umspannt alle Erkenntnisse, alle Wissenschaften und in gegenständlicher Hinsicht alle Gegenständlichkeiten, auch die gesamte Natur. Die Wirklichkeit der Natur, die Wirklichkeit von Himmel und Erde, von Menschen und Tieren, von eigenem Ich und fremdem Ich schaltet sie freil ich aus, aber sozusagen ihre Seele, ihrem Sinn behält sie zurück . (Hua Mat VII, 64)

In this passage, we can glimpse the mature expressions of the

phenomenological reduction of later years, in which a kind of ―regaining by abandoning‖ is stressed: ―I must lose the world by epochē , in order to regain it by a universal self -examination‖ (Hua I, 183/157). 13

5. Conclusion

According to Husserl ‘s considerations in the Five Lectures,

nothing is left as givenness that cannot be treated in the sphere of ―phenomenological immanence .‖ In this sense, ―phenomenological immanence‖ does not stand opposed to a particular region of givenness or subject-matters, but to a certain kind of attitude or way of seeing ; that is to say, the ―transcendence‖ vis-à-vis the ―phenomenological immanence‖ would consist in naively positing such objects as we naturally believe to have without sufficient reason, i.e. , without evidence. Therefore, the ―reduction‖ to the phenomenological ―immanence‖—though this term ― immanence‖ seems not appropriate anymore—does not mean a ―withdrawal‖ into the real consciousness conceived as a ―bag‖ or ―capsule.‖ Instead, the ―reduction‖ expresses a movement in which the thinking that is imprisoned by its groundless beliefs breaks its limit and becomes open to every conceivable type of givenness as it manifests itself, namely, to the ―things themselves.‖14

Thus, the phenomenological reduction proves to have a liberating function which is based on the theory of evidence. The radicalization of the appeal to evidence makes it possible for

13 Cf. Hua VIII , 166: ―[…] a ll es pre isgeben heißt , a l les gewinnen. ‖ 14 In this sense, i t is s triking that Ja mes Dodd character izes the reduct ion as ―phenomenalization‖ (Dodd 2004, 188ff . )


phenomenological thinking to free itself from the naively presupposed division between the real [reelle], psychological immanence and that which transcends it, so that all conceivable kinds of givenness can be phenomenologically analyzed. The Idea of Phenomenology clearly shows that there is nothing esoteric about the operation of the phenomenological reduction; rather, it is grounded on the evidence-theoretical change of perspective which, once it has gained greater clarity in the Five Lectures, continues to determine Husserl ‘s thought. I will finish by quoting a passage from the Fourth of the Five Lectures, which can serve as ―evidence‖ for my conclusion:

Accordingly, the phenomenological reduct ion does not s ignify the l imitation of the invest igat ion to the sphere of rea l [ reel len ] immanence, to the sphere of what is rea l ly [ ree l l] contained in the absolute ‗this ‘ of the cogitat io , and it does not a t a ll s ignify the l imitation to the sphere of the cogitat io , but rather the l imitation to the sphere of pure sel f -givenness , to the sphere of what is not merely talked about and referred to; but a lso not to the sphere of what is perceived, but rather to what is given in exact ly the same sense in which i t is meant—and se lf-given in the str ic test sense—in such a way that nothing that is meant fails to be given. In a word, i t is a l imitat ion to the sphere of pure ev idence‖ (Hua II , 60-61/45).

Bibliography

Brough, John (2008): Consciousness is not a Bag: Immanence,

Transcendence, and Constitution in The Idea of Phenomenology . In Husserl-Studies 24, 177-191.

De Warren, Nicolas (2003): The Rediscovery of Immanence: Remarks on the Appendix to the Logical Investigations . In Husserl‘s Logical Investigations , Daniel O. Dahlstrom (ed.), Dordrecht : Kluwer, 2003, 147-166.

Dodd, James (2004): Crisis and Reflection. An Essay on Husserl‘s Crisis of the European Sciences , Dordrecht: Kluwer (Phaenomenologica 174).

Drummond, John J. (2007): Phenomenology: Neither auto- nor hetero- be. In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6, 57-74.

Husserl, Edmund (1950): Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge , Husserliana I . Hrsg. v. S. Strasser. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. English translation: Cartesian Meditations. Trans. D. Cairns. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999 (= Hua I) [Page references [German]/[English]]

Husserl, Edmund (1973): Die Idee der Pha¨nomenologie. Husserliana


II. Hrsg. v. W. Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. English translation: The idea of phenomenology . Edmund Husserl: Collected Works, Vol. VIII. Trans. L. Hardy. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990. (= Hua II)

Husserl, Edmund (1976): Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. 1. Halbband. Neu hrsg. v. K. Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. Trans. F. Kersten. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983. (= Hua III/1)

Husserl, Edmund (1956): Erste Philosophie 1923/24. Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion. Hrsg. v. R. Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. (= Hua VIII)

Husserl, Edmund (1984): Logische Untersuchungen . Zweiter Band: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. II. Teil . Hrsg. v. U. Panzer, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. English translation: Logical Investigations. Trans. J . N. Findlay. 2 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. (= Hua XIX/2)

Husserl, Edmund (2002): Logische Untersuchungen. Ergänzungsband. Erster Teil. Entwürfe zur Umarbeitung der VI. Untersuchung und zur Vorrede für die Neuauflage der Logischen

Untersuchungen（Sommer 1913） . Hrsg. U. Melle. Dordrecht:

Kluwer. (= Hua XX/1) Husserl, Edmund (1987): Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921). Hrsg. v.

Th. Nenon; H. R. Sepp. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. (= Hua XXV)

Husserl, Edmund (2001): Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie . Vorlesung 1902/03. Hrsg. v. E. Schuhmann. Dordrecht: Kluwer. (= Hua Mat III)

Husserl, Edmund (2005): Einführung in die Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis. Vorlesung 1909. Hrsg. v. E. Schuhmann. Dordrecht: Springer. (= Hua Mat VII)

Sokolowski, Robert (1974): Husserlian Meditations , Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Staiti, Andrea (2009): Systematische Überlegungen zu Husserls Einstellungslehre. In Husserl Studies 25, 219–233.

Taguchi, Shigeru (2006): Das Problem des ‗Ur -Ich‘ bei Edmund Husserl. Die Frage nach der selbstverständlichen ‗Nähe‘ des Selbst. Dordrecht : Springer (Phaenomenologica 178) .

Phantasie and Husserl‟s Phenomenological Inquiry Smaranda Aldea (Emory University) Abstract: The paper cla ims that the imagination makes possible Husserl i an phenomenological inquiry. In order to uncover this relation between the imaginat ion and phenomenology in its complexity I focus f irst on Husser l‘s analysis of Phantasie ( imaginat ion) as intent ional act in lecture courses he gave throughout his career in order to br ing forth its structures and aspects, most important of which being freedom, possibi l i ty , neutral i ty, and thinking the otherwise. Next, I focus on how these aspects along with Husser l‘s references to the imagination in his programmatic works re veal the import of the imaginat ion in context of phenomenological inquiry.

[…] if anyone loves a paradox, he can real ly say, and say with str ic t t ruth if he wil l allow for the ambiguity, that the element which makes up the l i fe of phenomenology as of a l l e idet ica l sc iences i s ‗ f i ct ion , ‘ that f ict ion is the source whence the knowledge of ‗eternal truths‘ draws its sustenance.‖ ( Ideas I , 184)

The goal of this paper is to show that there is an intimate relation

between the imagination (Phantasie)1 and Husserlian phenomenological inquiry—more precisely, the paper seeks to unravel the extent to which Phantasie opens up the very possibility of this method or way of inquiry. In order to reach this goal I will focus on Husserl‘s phenomenological analysis of Phantasie as intentional act in his lecture courses spanning from the 1900s to the 1920s. This discussion aims at uncovering the structure of the imagination as act in order to bring forth its unique aspects. Exploring these aspects will prove crucial in seeing why and how the imagination is essential to Husserl‘s phenomenological project. I will also focus on Husserl‘s sporadic references to the imagination in relation to the phenomenological method in his mature

1 Husserl employs the term Phantas ie to refer to imaginat ion as act . This is an interesting word choice that differs from the typical term used in a philosophical context —Einbi ldung or Einbi ldungskraft . The motivation behind this choice is his interest in moving away from traditional epistemological projects ( l ike the Kantian and Neo -Kantian ones) . Another, perhaps more implic i t and subtle reason for this choice is the insight into the fact that consciousness and its acts are not epistemic functions or faculties, but rather dynamic intertwining dimensions or modes of consciousness. Last but not least , i t is a lso tr iggered by Husser l‘s moving away from image and sense data theory and i ts representat ional implicat ions —he cri t ic izes the empiricists for c la iming that there are images (as contents proper) ‗ in‘ consciousness. The term Ein-bi ldung i s etymologically and philosophically closer to the representational approach.

SMARANDA ALDEA | 157

programmatic works. 2 They are relevant to the present project along with the insights into the structure and aspects of the imagination as act; together, they should enable an answer to our question: What is the relation between the imagination ( Phantasie) and Husserlian phenomenological inquiry?

1. Phantasie and Imagining Consciousness

Husserl‘s main discussions of the imagination ( Phantasie) occur in lecture courses he gave between the mid -1900s and mid-1920s.3 What makes these lecture courses unique (and also, at times, hard to follow) is the dynam ic of Husserl‘s thought on the subject. He relentlessly seeks to reveal the constitution of imagination as act apart from any psychological or philosophical biases. Thus he experiments with different ways of accessing its structures without imposing anything ‗foreign‘ on it. I will be looking at two such methods that represent examples of both confusing and successful approaches.

Husserl first attempts to explore Phantasie in terms of physical imaging consciousness 4—this method, though effective in illuminating the ways in which the two are differently structured acts, leads Husserl at times to unwarranted moves such as importing some of the aspects of physical imaging into what he considers ‗imagination proper‘ or ‗immanent Phantasie .‘ The main challenge here is to avoid thinking the structure of Phantasie in terms of mental images somehow ‗in‘ consciousness. Sartre refers to this error in his Imaginary as the ‗illusion of immanence.‘ Husserl‘s phenomenological instincts keep him from falling into this trap , but he occasionally relapses and uses what I would refer to as ‗ Bild-terminology‘ in analyzing immanent Phantasie . Even though he does not think there are mental images ‗in‘ consciousness, nevertheless, the language and concepts that he employs make the matter confusing.

2 I wil l mainly look at Ideas I , Cartensian Meditat ions , and the Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology . 3 Cf. , Hua XXIII (Phantasie, B ildbewusstse in , Erinnerung 1898 -1925 , Martinus Ni jhoff , The Hague, 1980) ; Husser l also discusses the imaginat i on in similar terms in his On the Phenomenology of the Consc iousness o f Internal Time (1893 -1917) (Hua X ) and in his Logical Invest igat ions ( Hua XIX)—these are most l ikely the texts Sartre was famil iar with during the period when his interest in a phenomenology of the imaginat ion was most prominent (mid to late 1930s) . 4 I dist inguish between ‗physica l imaging consciousness‘ and ‗imagining consciousness‘—the la tter refers to what Husserl cal ls ‗ immanent‘ Phantasie or ‗Phantasie proper, ‘ which does not occ ur in the context of perceiving pictures.


He eventually successfully distances himself from this way of describing Phantasie and settles for another, better approach—he focuses on the differences and similarities between Phantasie as presentification 5 (Vergegenwärtigung) and perception as presentation (Gegenwärtigung ). This juxtaposition is far more fruitful in so far as the two acts are radically distinct and one is less in danger of superimposing some of their sub-structures. Distinguishing them in detail is what proves most helpful in offering insights with respect to the structure of Phantasie . Because I consider this method more successful I will primarily rely on it in my discussion of imagination.

Perception is the basic intentional act that not only gives access to the world as real and actual, but also gathers content that, once modified, functions at the level of other intentional acts. Perception offers an intuition of objects as present , or as Husserl refers to this— in propria persona . For this reason, perception is a form of presentation (Gegenwärtigung). Phantasie is also an intentional act, but it functions in a radically different way than perception—it does not give access to the world as real and actual, i .e., as present. Phantasie makes present that which is non-present . We shall see in the course of this essay what this ‗non -presence‘ refers to. For now, it is important to note that Phantasie has a fundamentally different kind of object and moreover it gives this object in a radically different way than perception as presentation does. Unlike perception, Phantasie is a form of presentification (Vergegenwärtigung). Memory and expectation are also presentifying acts, but there is one significant difference between them and Phantasie . The latter‘s object is given as non-present; however, this non-presence is not directly rooted in reality, it is (as Husserl stresses) an irreal non-presence . The objects of memory and expectation are also given as non-present, but they are directly linked to reality—memory is memory of objects once given as real, and expectation is of objects that are anticipated to be given as real. Phantasie appears to be our sole link to irreality—we have a consciousness of irreality only through imagining 6 consciousness.

Establishing the uniqueness of imagining consciousness is central to this project—we will come back to it in our elucidation of what Husserl means by the irreality of the imagined object. It is

5 I f ind ‗presentif icat ion‘ to be a better translation of Vergegenwärt igung than ‗representation‘— the latter being employed as a translat ion of both Repräsentat ion and Vorstel lung , which are terms Husserl regular ly uses. 6 I use Phantas ie , imaginat ion, imagining, and phantasy interchangeably in this paper . I dist inguish these terms from ‗imaging‘.


worth stressing that despite the differences between Phantasie and perception, they are not completely divorced. Modification implies a relation between them. 7 This is crucial in seeing how reality and irreality are connected, and most importantly, where phenomenological inquiry is to be located in terms of the reality-irreality relation, (keeping in mind the presentation-presentification juxtaposition I would like to turn to Husserl‘s description of physical imaging 8 and to the insights he gained with respect to how it is to be distinguished from Phantasie .)

* [Physical imaging and immanent imagining are both forms of consciousness that give access to a non -present object. They also share the irreality of this non-present object. This being said, they have fundamentally different structures.

The objectifying process of physical imaging involves three main dimensions: 1) the actual physical thing (picture or photograph), 2) the depicting image (the image: scene of the countryside), and 3) what is meant or intended as such, or the depicted object proper (scene of the countryside). Husserl refers t o the second as image-object and the third as image-sujet . The image-object points beyond itself to the intended object proper ( image-sujet); the former therefore does not stand for itself but solely offers passage for consciousness toward its meant object . But here lies an interesting ambiguity that will eventually help Husserl differentiate physical imaging and Phantasie .

Despite the fact that consciousness of non -presence characterizes physical imaging—the scene is not there, given in person—perception is still at work in it. The physical thing (painting in its physical dimensions) and the depicting scene are given through external perception and sense intuition. Contemplating a painting in a museum also involves a consciousness of the wall on which the painting is displayed, of the room in which the painting finds itself, etc. The intending of the image-sujet occurs therefore within the spatio-temporal field or world of perception. This intending or consciousness of the non-presence and irreality of the depicted scene is not itself given through perception—an alien space and

7 I will soon turn to modificat ion in the case of Phantas ie ; nevertheless the fact that modificat ion implies a re lat ion between perception and Phantas ie is worth emphasizing. 8 Cf . , Hua XXIII , Lecture No.1 (1904/05), chapters 2 -4 * Due to t ime constra ints I wil l leave out and br ief ly summarize the secti on between square brackets (pp. 159-162) . However, I decided to include this section of the text for those in the audience who wil l have access to a printed/electronic version of it .


temporality are therefore opened at the heart of the real world of perception. Experiencing the painted scene is located so to speak at once within and without the space of reality. O ne‘s consciousness of the irreality of the scene on the background of the consciousness of reality is what makes the aesthetic experience possible. There is a tension located at the very edges of the painting‘s frame—the limit where two worlds (one real, the other irreal) almost come in touch with each other.

The person contemplating the painting will not actively attend to the image-object; the latter will be used as mere unnoticeable stepping stone. But the possibility of directing one‘s attention toward the image-object is always there. 9 What is so striking about the status of the image-object is that it is given through perception but it is a structural element of imaging consciousness. Because of this Husserl discusses it as being given in ‗quasi -perception.‘ Noticing this ambiguity shows why there is still a physical dimension at work in physical imaging (hence the name), and more importantly, it will show why this physical dimension is lacking in the case of Phantasie .

The phenomenologist can focus o n the image-object because it can be apprehended on its own. Husserl identifies two levels of apprehension (Auffassung ) in the case of physical imaging: first, the apprehension of the image-object as that which points beyond itself, and second, the apprehension of the image-sujet through the image-object. Because of this double apprehension a rich phenomenological description of the image -object is possible. 10

Husserl attempts to describe Phantasie following the model of physical imaging. But unlike physica l imaging, Phantasie does not involve interacting with a physical image— it is immanent, i.e., not occurring in relation to the reality given through perception. Thinking about it in terms of physical imaging could therefore be potentially misleading and Husserl is well aware of this. He engages in this comparison nonetheless hoping that he would stay clear of any structural superimposition. What such a comparative attempt

9 The art school student would probably want to focus on the image -object . Husser l also focuses on the image -object in his phenomenological analysis. 10 This structure of apprehension is a lso typical of symboliz ing and signifying consciousness. The f irst apprehension is that of the symbol or the word, the second, that of what is meant by the symbol or the word. But there is a difference between these two lat ter cases of presenti f icat ion and physical imaging since i ts image-object does not function as analogon the way symbols and words do. There is no resemblance (necessari ly) between the analogon and that which i t points to , whereas there is necessari ly a resemblance between the image-object and the sujet of physical imaging.


implies is seeking the equivalent of the image -object of physical imaging in the structural context of Phantasie . But Husserl eventually realizes that he cannot push this equivalence. The key to understanding why this is not the case has to do with the nature of Phantasie apprehension—unlike the case of physical imaging, there is only one apprehension in Phantasie . What this suggests is either that there is no mental image in Phantasie , or that if there is such an image, it is not separately apprehensible in phenomenological analysis—it could only be described as being given at once with the imagined object in its appearance. At first, Husserl does not explicitly choose one option over the other—one sees him painstakingly struggling to elucidate the structure of Phantasie apart from physical imaging while sporadically employing the language of mental images. Eventually he lets go of this and changes his descriptive approach; what helps him do this is another comparative project: the comparative analysis of perception and Phantasie (i.e., of presentation and presentification). Before focusing o n this analysis we should stress some of Husserl‘s findings with respect to the structure of Phantasie as distinct from physical imaging.

The appearance (Erscheinung ) of the imagined object and the imagined object itself are the same in the case of Phantasie .11 The two cannot be set apart because there is only one apprehension in the entire intending process. Phantasma , or the modified content of Phantasie , is not to be paralleled with the image-object of physical imaging because of the latter‘s ambiguity (i .e. , being perceived yet pointing toward the non-present). Phantasma as content of immanent imagining is not given through sense intuition. 12 Rather than having a threefold objectifying structure the way physical imaging does, Phantasie has, like perception, a twofold structure. Just as sensation (Empfindung) is the content of perception giving the object as present, so Phantasma is the content of immanent imagining pointing to a non-present object. Nevertheless the content of either perception or imagination is not separable from the appearance and intuition of the intended object. One question comes to the fore: if there is no mental image in Phantasie , does that imply a loss of a sense of spatiality that is still functioning at the level of physical imaging through the physical thing and the image -object? It is evident from Husserl‘s description of the appearance of imagined objects, which itself relies on spatial metaphors, that a sense of spatiality (and of temporality for that matter) is not lost— it is 11 Cf . , Hua XXIII , Lecture No.9 (1909) . 12 There is therefore no separate (possible) intuit ion of a mental image because there is only one apprehension in the ent ire Phantas ie complex.


simply modified in so far as it is not given through sense intuition. 13 The appearance of imagined objects is itself given ‗from a certain perspective,‘ ‗at a certain distance,‘ ‗in a certain spatial context,‘ and has its own temporality.]

The analysis Husserl engages in by juxtaposing perception as presentation and Phantasie as presentification 14 provides many insights. We have already seen that the former‘s object is given as present or in person , while the object of the imagination is given as non-present , absent , or elsewhere . This sharp difference stresses the fact that one should not confuse the two by placing them on a continuum varying in degree only (pace Hume). The difference between them is not one of degree, but of kind, and this difference comes about through what Husserl refers to as modification. An example why one must think of presentation and presentification as being different modes of intentionality is the fact that under a ‗difference of degree‘ scenario an act of judgment (presentation) and imagining an act of judgment (presentification) could not be distinguished. The imagined judgment is a modification of the actual judgment, i .e., it is given as irreal or as mere possibility rather than actuality. 15

Presentation gives access to the ‗real‘ and the ‗actual.‘ It primarily involves the present temporal dimension and it offers a sense of spatial coherence and order made available through the simple apprehension of the act of perception. Judging or any other doxic act functions in strict cooperation with perception—their focus too is primarily on the real and the actual .16 Any act as consciousness of the real is a form of realizing or positional consciousness—i.e., their object is given and posited as real and actual. But as we have seen, acts do not solely function in the context of realizing -positional consciousness; they can also occur within the context of imagination and imagining or neutral consciousness. The nature of acts changes

13 Husserl also discusses the spat ial i ty, temporal ity, fulf i l lment, and unity of imaginat ion in his 1905 On the Phenomenology of the Consc iousness of Internal Time (Hua X) and in his 1907 Thing and Space lectures (Hua XVI) . 14 Hua XXIII , Chapters 5 -9 of lecture No.1 (1904/05). 15 Here we a lso see that Husserl ‘s analysis challenges the tradit ional epistemological view of thinking about perception, imagination, understanding in terms of facult ies or funct ions of faculties. Through phenomenological analysis it becomes evident that these intent ional acts are fundamentally intertwined and cannot be neatly categorized on their own and stric tly in their ‗ functioning. ‘ The above -mentioned example suggests the possibi l i ty of ‗ thought in the imagining mode or at t itude. ‘ 16 Judgment can a lso intend ideal object ivi t ies , such as mathematica l ob jects. We must therefore distinguish between real, irreal , and ideal objects.


in imagining consciousness – their object is no longer given as real, actual, and present, rather it is now a non -present, irreal object. The existence or non-existence of the object is not posited. This observation that Husserl makes is crucial in seeing how thought and imagination cooperate and to what extent it can be said that the imagination makes possible an other kind of thought.

Presentification grasps its object as irreal , non-actual , absent , other , and even as nothing in so far as its lack of presence can imply non -being. We should distinguish between irreal objects and non-real objects—the former are given non-positionally in so far as there is no belief in their existence or non-existence. The latter are given in a context of positionality—their givenness involves the belief in their lack of existence or being.17 An irreal object is not accessible within the realm of perception—the imagination alone can give access to it. We saw earlier what the difference between imagination, memory, and expectation was. It seems therefore that the imagination is the only way of accessing the irreal. Phantasie lets the irreal appear, and along with it, an entire field of vision or horizon that is completely separate from the real and actual world of perception. (This is not the case with physical imaging, because it involv es perception and it opens the world of imaging at the very core of the real world; there is a different dynamic at work between these two fields of vision. They could potentially come into conflict since they find themselves in such close proximity. There is no equivalent ambiguity in the case of Phantasie .) The world of the imagined object stands ‗aloof‘— it is a different horizon. This space is independent of the real in so far as it opens up apart from it; but it nevertheless remains related to it through modification. The content (Phantasma) and apprehension of Phantasie are modifications of the content and apprehension of perception. The imagination does not therefore abide by the same rules that govern the world of presentation, and in this sense it is free and independent. But modification does not

17 A (tentative) more nuanced approach to this ambiguity would be to dist inguish between the imagined obje ct which i s intended and the imagined objet as it i s intended. The object as it is intended may be given non-posit ionally as irrea l (a possible object that may or may not exist , e .g. , my idea of an ideal umbrel la) , posit ional ly as real ( the Eiffel Tower while I am away from it) , or posit ionally as non-rea l (a centaur) . However, immanent imagining is fundamentally non-positional, as Husser l repeatedly stresses — the object which is intended does not imply a sense of posi tionali ty — i t is an irreal ob ject . Husser l himself seems to suggest this approach in his Thing and Space : Lectures of 1907 , t rans. by Richard Rojcewicz, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1997, Sect ion I , §9 (cf . , Hua XVI ( Ding und Raum Vorlesungen 1907 , Mart inus Ni jhoff , Den Haag, 1973, pp.2 3-25)) .


preclude the possibility of some rules being carried over from the realm of presentation into that of presentification—the imagined judgment can be valid, and the thinking involved in unfolding it can be clear despite the fact that belief in the actuality and reality of the judgment has been suspended. Thinking in the horizon of imagination has its order and unity. Imagination does not have to be a completely lawless fluid play lacking focus and coherence. Imagining an irreal object can also be consistent and stable. This characteristic of the imagination as independent from the real yet bound by it secures its relevance to the real. In other words, it can be at once free from the real and related to it. This ambiguity (i .e. , its opening of a relation between the real and the irreal) reveals how the imagination can point to new possibilit ies that are not completely divorced from reality. I now turn to the main aspects of imagination given its structure and constitution. These aspects will reveal the ways in which the imagination is crucial to the Husserlian phenomenological method.

Imagination, as intentional act, involves a particular kind of consciousness. The main dimensions of the imagination are therefore manifested in the ways in which the imagining ego is conscious of its intended object. Since the imagined object was characterized as non-present , irreal , non-actual , or nothingness , consciousness as a whole relates differently to it— it is, in the context of Phantasie , consciousness of non-presence . The object is given as non-present, but the fact that it is given—the very apprehension and intuition of it—is present and real (reell). This is another way in which imagination is between reality and irreality. As conscious intentional act imagining is not nothing—it simply points toward that which is not present or in other words, it points toward something possible rather than actual .

Thus, imagining consciousness is linked to possibility since imagination is that through which conceiving the otherwise as a distancing from the real and the actual becomes feasible. As we have seen, consciousness of non-presence is consciousness of irreality. In this sense, it is a consciousness that frees itself from the real and thus surpasses its boundaries. Imagination entails freedom from the present and the actual, from that which is given as familiar or granted as that which is the case . Freedom and the possibility of conceiving the otherwise are the primary dimensions of the imagination in its relation to phenomenological inquiry. Imagining consciousness as consciousness of the otherwise has pointed us in the direction of understanding the imagination in terms of freedom and possibility.


In order to fully explore the ways in which freedom and possibility constitute the very axis of phenomenology I first turn to Husserl‘s discussion of phantasy modification and its relation to neutrality . Once it becomes clear what Husserl means by neutrality modification in the context of his phenomenological method we will be ready to approach the overarching relation t his paper seeks to illuminate—the relation between imagination and Husserlian phenomenological inquiry.

2. Phantasy Modification and its Phenomenological I mport

Phantasy modification involves a radical transformation. This transformation occurs at several different levels but it is the shift from presentation to presentification, from an object being given as present to it being given ‗as if‘ it were present .18

First and foremost, modification is a transformation in term s of content and apprehension—sensation (the content of perception) and perceptive apprehension give access to reality and actuality. In Phantasie , the sensation and apprehension of perception are reproductively modified and gain this ‗as if‘ (gleichsam ) character— Phantasma (the content of Phantasie) and imaginative apprehension give access to the object ‗as if it were present.‘ 19 Husserl uses ‗reproductively‘ here to point to the fact that phantasy modificati on reworks the content and apprehension of perception such that its content and its apprehension are not brought forth ex nihilo . The result is that while everything in the context of perception occurs in actuality (wirklich), the context of Phantasie is marked by this ‗as if‘ character (gleichsam). Phantasy modification is not the sole type of modification— Husserl also explores retentional and memory modification20—but it is the only one that leads to a shift from 18 We have a lready seen this ‗as if ‘ ( i .e . , gle ichsam) character of imagined objects when we discussed the ambiguous nature of immanent imaginat ion — the act of imagining is actual and therefore ‗present , ‘ i t is actually experienced and it follows the eidet ic laws of consciousness as a whole ; but the imagined object is non-actual and non-present—it is given ‗as if i t were present. ‘ One has a consciousness of its absence and non -being. 19 Cf. , Hua XXIII , Lecture No.8 (1909) . 20 Memory and retentional mod if ications a lso involve consciousness of a non -present object , but their transformation is a temporal not an ontological one. They sti l l occur at the level of actual i ty, the sole difference being that what is brought to the fore in remembering has the char acter of ‗once given as real ‘ (and in retention as ‗ just given as real ‘) and now presentif ied ‗as if i t were present. ‘ There is therefore a coherent sense of temporal order in memory and retentional modif ication— the temporal sequence is more or less preser ved and most important ly, i t is l inked to the present — i ts terminus point . There is no


reality to irreality because it implies no t only non-presence (object ‗as if it were present‘) but also irreality (object ‗as if it were real‘). 21

Furthermore, phantasy modification involves a transformation of all doxic acts occurring at the level of presentation (i.e., actuality and reality).22 One can imagine that one recollects, believes, hopes, expects, judges, and so forth but in the context of imagining consciousness all of these acts occur under the aegis of possibility rather then that of actuality and certainty. 23 The object of these doxic acts is given ‗as if‘ it were judged, hoped for, etc. Its irreality and nothingness (Nichtigkeit) are acknowledged, and although judging in the imagining mode is not actual judging, it nevertheless, as modified cognitive act, maintains its structure and coh erence.24 What changes is that the doxic modality of the act in the imagining attitude and the ontic modality of its object are neutralized. The imagined object as irreal is thus relocated from the context of actuality to that of possibility.

The phantasy modification of doxic acts implies a shift from actuality to possibility ;25 it therefore places the acts in a context of freedom26 from the real and the actual. Imaginative expectation, for example, can engage in an infinite modulation of free possibilities and it can do so for two main reasons: phantasy modification places

direct connection between the temporal sequence of Phantas ie and the actual ly experienced present . For this reason, the temporal ity of the imagined object and of i ts world is complete ly independent of the temporal f low of consciousness of actual ity — including that of the ego conscious of its imagining. Once more, the ‗as if i t were real‘ character comes to the fore and marks both the t ime and space of the imagined horizon. The imagined object behaves ‗as if ‘ i t were in t ime and space (cf . , Hua XXIII , Lecture No.13 (1910) ; cf . , a lso Husser l‘s 1905 lecture On the Phenomenology o f Internal Time -Consciousness, trans. by Barnett Brough, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht , 1991 , Sect ion II , §§ 17 -19, and Hua X, Zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstse ins 1893 -1917 , Mart inus Ni jhoff , Den Haag, 1966, pp.40 -47) . 21 Also, there is modali ty modificat ion within the context of posi t ionali ty — the shif t from the naïve belief in the ce rtain existence of the object , which pertains to perception and is labeled by Husser l as protodoxa , to the modified doxic modali t ies of posi t ional acts such as doubting, questioning, or negat ing. This modificat ion (Abwandlung or Wandlung ) is discussed in more deta il in Husserl ‘s later lecture courses such as those focused on active and passive synthesis (c f . , Hua XI and Hua XXXI) and those collected by Landgrebe in Erfahrung und Urte i l (some of its sections overlapping with passages from Hua XI) . 22 Cf . , Hua XXIII , Lecture No.13 (1910) . 23 Cf . , Edmund Husser l , Cartesian Meditat ions , trans. Dorion Cairns, Kluwer Academic, The Netherlands, 1999, pp.70, 84 . 24 Cf. , Hua XXIII , Lecture No.10 (1909) , pp.282 -283. 25 Cf . , Ideas I , pp.268-270. 26 Cf . , Hua XXIII , Lectures Nos.10 (1909) and 19 (1922/23).


the act on a more general level (i.e., it uproots it from any real and particular context) and it gives it a sense of indeterminacy once certainty and the search for it are left behind in favor of possibility. The same holds for the other doxic acts occurring in the imaginative attitude.

So far we have seen how phantasy modification occurs at the levels of non-presence , irreality , possibility , and freedom . Another dimension— neutrality—reveals why Husserl refers to phantasy modification as neutral. Phantasy modification involves a bracketing of belief 27 in the actuality and existence of the intended object. Once the ego suspends belief in the existence or non -existence of the imagined object it finds itself in a doxically neutral position with respect to it. In fact Husserl considers the imaginative ego to be a non-positional ego since it, unlike the realizing-positional ego, is free from having to hold any beliefs with respect to the ontic modality of its objects. Neutrality consists therefore in the ego‘s experiencing of the imagined object ‗as if it were real or existent‘—but no decision needs to be made with respect to its ontological status.28 The imagining ego remains non-positional, neutral, and therefore it can maintain its object as hypothetical and uncertain. The realizing ego of presentation on the other hand engages in doxic acts while constant ly seeking to reach certainty—be it epistemic or ontological. In the imagining mode the eg o ceases to focus on certainty and can freely engage the uncertain without seeking to surpass it.29

Phantasy modification as neutrality modification brings to the fore several aspects of the imagining ego: it is non -positional and free to engage in a potentially infinite variation of possibilit ies. It does so at a general level since it is not bound by any particular context.30 The generality of free variation is therefore a form of disinterested 31 moving away from the individual and the singular.

27 Cf . , Ideas I , p.273 . 28 Cf . , Ideas I , pp.282-293. 29 Cf . , Hua XXIII , Lecture No.20 (1921/24). 30 Cf . , Edmund Husserl , The Crisis o f European Sc iences and Transcendenta l Phenomenology , trans. David Carr, Northwestern UP, Evan ston, 1970, pp.376 -377, and Cartes ian Meditat ions , pp.84-85. 31 I would like here to quickly emphasize the dis interestedness of the imagining ego since it too is necessary for any open -ended hypothetical endeavors —since the non-posit ional ego does not seek to resolve uncerta inty, i t does not have a set goal ( the way the real izing ego engaging in doxic acts does) ; therefore i ts freedom l ies not only in its possibi l i ty to engage in a variation of possibi l i t ies , but also in the fact that it can freely choose to distance i tself from seeking certa inty— i t is not bound by the rules of realiz ing doxic acts .


Without neutrality modification there would be no abstraction in the context of objective eidetic sciences, no hypothetical thought in the context of the positive sciences, and no reductions (phenomenological and eidetic) or epochē in the context of phenomenology as subjective eidetic science. 32 What this suggests is that any theoretical thought, be it scientific or philosophical is reliant, to some extent, upon neutrality modification.

Neutrality modification is different from abs traction, hypothetical thought, and the reductions; each of these modes of thought is rooted in a different facet of neutrality modification. In the case of the phenomenological reduction, the bracketing of belief in the object‘s ontological status is cent ral; in the case of the eidetic reduction, indeterminacy as the distancing from the individual and the singular plays the central role. Both non -positionality and indeterminacy are facets or aspects of neutrality modification. We see therefore that neutral ity modification is a broader concept than any of the reductions. This reminds us why we stated the importance of the uniqueness of imagination— it alone, as presentifying act and non-positional consciousness, can trigger the shift from the real to irreal and irreality lies at very core of universalizing thought.

Although the irreal and the ideal are distinct—Husserl describes the irreal as the path to the ideal because of its non-positionality with respect to the ontological status of the object, i.e. , its existence, and because of indeterminacy. The irreal is non-positional with respect to the existence of the object and makes no reference to the essence of the object (be it subjective or objective). The ideal , on the other hand, is non-positional with respect to the existence of the object and

32 The reductions must be dist inguished from abstract ion , the la tter being a type of formalization and general izat ion typical of ob ject ive eidet ic sc iences such as mathematics. Abstract ion necessari ly implies a movement away from anything subjective— i t a ims at objective ideals, while the reduct ions ult imately a im at the essentia l s tructures of consciousness and the phenomenological ego, which are subjective ideali t i es. During the formative per iod of Husser l ‘s phenomenology— f rom 1900/01 until 1913 Husserl shif ts from cla iming that abstraction is the method in phenomenology (1900 -approx.1905) , to recognizing the signif icance of the phenomenological reduction but equat ing it with abstraction (approx.1905 -1909) , to f inal ly seeing that abstraction and the phenomenological and eidet ic reductions are radical ly different given their aiming at two distinct types of ideals —objective and subject ive . What is worth mentioning here is the fact that the imagination, given its neutral ity and indeterminacy, plays a crucia l role in both abstraction and the reductions. I t is also interesting that Husserl ‘s f irst mentioning of the phenomenological reduct ion in the summer of 1905 (cf . , Seefelder Manuskripte in Hua X) follows his f irst and main lectures on Phantas ie given in the winter of 1904/1905.


positional with respect to its essence . The positionality of acts intending ideals is therefore different than the positionality of perception and of acts occurring in the perceptive mode of consciousness, which refers to the existence and not the essence of the object (i.e., the objects of perception are intended and intuited as real and actual).

These newly revealed dimensions of imagining consciousness point to a radically different attitude. In the imagining -presentifying attitude, the ego has a freedom and possibilit ies that are not available to it in the realizing, presenting attitude. It can freely run through series of variations of possibilities, it thinks without belief in the ontological status of its object , it leaves behind the individual as real and actual. New insights can therefore be gained in this attitude and I would suggest that it is this very attitude that opens up the possibility of phenomenological inquiry as Husserl conceives it . Without the possibility of distancing oneself from the real and engaging in a thinking of that which is radically other , the phenomenologist would not be able to access and engage the phenomenological attitude. This is why in Ideas I Husserl stresses at t imes the important role of Phantasie . Let us now turn to a more in-depth discussion of freedom and possibility as aspects of Phantasie and their impact on phenomenological inquiry.

3. Imagination and Husserl‘s Phenomenological Method

We have already seen the extent to which imagining consciousness as consciousness of non-being, nothingness, and the otherwise is essential to thinking freedom and possibility. Neutrality modification has shown us the extent to which the two are bound to the imagining attitude. We have yet to understand what role freedom and possibility play in the context of phenomenology. Let us begin with possibility.

The first dimension of possibility that impacts the phenomenological method is the bracketing of belief with respect to the ontological status (actuality or inactuality, existence or non -existence) of the object. This is the level of the phenomenological reduction , which gives access to a new kind of object , i.e., to phenomena .33

The second dimension of possibility is that of the shift, thr ough modification, from sense intuition (of singular objects qua physical

33 Cf. , Edmund Husserl , Ideas I , trans. Boyce Gibson, Col lier -Macmillan, London, 1972, p.140; c f . , a lso Crisis , p.152.


things) to categorial intuition (of essences and structures). Phenomenological analysis is eidetic thought that aims at grasping the essential structures of consciousness; but graspi ng these ideal subjective structures involves a movement away from the contingent and the singular, given through sense intuition. The goal of phenomenology is to move beyond sense intuition and find a way of accessing the essential or the structural. 34 Since everything contingent could be otherwise , the way to break free from it is to attempt to conceive this otherwise: ―Now when we stated that every fact could be ‗essentially‘ other than it is, we were already expressing thereby that it belongs to the mean ing of everything contingent that it should have essential being and therewith an Eidos to be apprehended in all its purity; and this Eidos comes under essential truths of varying degrees of universality.‖ 35 Through this modification in attitude the object loses its singularity and relativity and is now thought at a more general level. The eidetic core, i.e., the ideal structures of intentional acts and their objects, is therefore accessible through neutrality modification. This is the level of the eidetic reduction , which focuses on the structures of phenomena as a new kind of object . Through the free variation of imagining consciousness the gradual shift from sense intuition to categorial intuition is made possible. This shift is not an abrupt rupture between the real and the ideal—possibility can be real, irreal, and ideal. Irreal possibility is conceived by Husserl as spanning between actuality along with its real possibility on the one hand and universality and ideal possibility on the other. 36 The movement here is from real possibility toward ideal possibility through the irreal possibility of Phantasie . It is a movement away from positionality focused on existence toward pos itionality focused on essence—but this shift can only be facilitated by the non -positionality regarding existence that marks the imagination. Irreal possibility is nothing other than the very freedom of the imagination to move away from the real— it is its neutrality and

34 Cf. , Cartesian Meditat i ons , pp.70-71. 35 Ideas I , p.47. 36 Cf . , Ideas I , p.50. In his Logical Invest igat ions Husserl discusses possibi l i ty as being fundamentally ideal —this discussion is in the context of descr ibing and accessing object ive ideals such as logical principles or mat hematica l ob jects. Real possibil i ty is governed by this ideal possibil ity. Gradually, between 1900/01 and 1913 Husser l comes to expl ic it ly locate ideal possibil i ty a lso in the context of the subject ive ideal structures of consciousness. Here as wel l rea l possibi l i ty stands for the instantiation of ideal possibi l i ty . Irreal possibi l i ty —possibi l i ty in the context of the imagination —seems to offer the bridge or path from grasping real possibi l i ty to seeing i ts ideal core.


non-positionality. It is also important to note the fact that evid ence as the accessing of the ideal is not immediate—that it involves the gradual work of modification through variation; the ideal is therefore graspable by toiling through the irreal.

Reaching categorial intuition of the structures of intentional acts and their objects is grounded in the neutrality modification of imagination. What the latter offers is the possibility of an other way of thinking— it brings about new insights through new ways of seeing. Phantasie opens the path toward ‗essential vision‘ and ‗essential apprehension.‘ 37 As Husserl emphasizes in his Ideas I , essential intuition is a form of phantasy intuition. 38 The possibility of categorial intuition is the result of the ‗work‘ of free imaginative variation as neutrality modification. 39 Because neutrality modification does not involve a reification of contingent facts or givens into ‗mental images of facts,‘ the move away from contingency only leads to higher levels of universality. 40 This is why imagination, as that which gives the irreal , offers the path toward the study and thinking of ideal possibility—a method used in geometry also. 41 The geometer‘s thinking of ideal possibilit ies is free: ―[…] in fancy he has perfect freedom in the arbitrary recasting of the figures he has imagined, in running over continuous series of possible shapes, in the production therefore of infinite new creations […]‖ 42 Freedom of research lies in the infinite variation of free possibilit ies. 43 Since ideal possibility brought forth through phantasy modification is free po ssibility, we should clarify the nature of this freedom and the role it has to play in Husserl‘s phenomenological method.

The first thing to note about the freedom of Phantasie is that it is fundamentally a freedom from the actuality and reality of the no w . As irreal, it is a freedom from finite contingent contexts and as such it is inextricably linked to possibility as ideal. Yet it is important to keep in mind that this freedom is a bound freedom— i.e. , it is not the free play of an imaginative ego lacking self-consciousness. Such an ego would be ‗lost‘ in the imagined world not taking it ‗as if‘ it were real but actually believing in its reality. Such can be liminal cases of psychological disorders or perhaps children who create their own

37 Cf . , Ideas I , pp.53 , 74 -75. 38 Ideas I , p.54. 39 Cf . , Ideas I , p.48. 40 Cf. , Ideas I , p.82. 41 Cf . , Ideas I , p.55. 42 Ideas I , p.183. 43 Cf . , Ideas I , p.183 .


imaginary worlds. Not even aesthetic experience is possible without consciousness of irreality, and the latter is a consciousness that only a self-reflective imagining ego can have.

The freedom of Phantasie is first bound by the fact that it is rooted in the modification of the content and apprehension of perception. As such, its content (Phantasma) and its apprehension retain a certain level of regularity and coherence from the previous level of presentation. Presentation and presentification are therefore related and not separated by neutrality modification. Secondly, the modified doxic intentional acts and their contents are not completely arbitrary in their functioning in the imaginative attitude. As we have seen in the case of imagining a judgment, the latter could very well maintain its structure and unity despite the fact that it is experienced by the imagining ego. The very functioning of the imagining ego is bound, to a certain extent, by the laws and rules that govern the realizing ego. There is therefore a connec tion between the real and the ideal , between the actual and the possible, that phantasy modification as irreal itself guarantees; thus any hypothetical (scientific), abstract (objective eidetic), and phenomeno-logical (subjective eidetic) thought of essenc es remains relevant to the real, the contingent, and the actual.

Phenomenology as a way of thinking happens in the imagining attitude. We begin to see that phenomenological inquiry is grounded in and moved by the imagination: ―Hence, if anyone loves a paradox, he can really say, and say with strict truth if he will allow for the ambiguity, that the element which makes up the life of phenomenology as of all eidetical sciences is ‗fiction ,‘ that fiction is the source whence the knowledge of ‗eternal truths ‘ draws its sustenance.‖ 44

We have seen the extent to which the imagination makes possible the phenomenological method as Husserl conceives it. The phenomenological method is thus intricately (and intimately) connected to the movement of Phantasie . This movement from the real to the irreal and from the irreal toward the ideal reveals a horizon of inquiry stretched open through the very relation established between actuality and possibility. Phenomenology as philosophy is free to engage in a thinking of possibi lities, of that which is otherwise, without having to resolve their status—it is free to let otherness remain otherness while engaging in a relation with it.

This I would claim is the utmost freedom of phenomenology as

44 Ideas I , p.184 (Husser l ‘s ita l ics and quotes) .


philosophical questioning and attitude. This freedom is bound to manifest itself in terms of possibilities governed by the very movement of imagination. Through this bound freedom phenomenological thought transcends the actual and the everyday but it nevertheless remains related to it. The sp ace of Phantasie as irreal is stretched open between the real and the ideal ; we could say that this is the very horizon within which phenomenological inquiry itself unfolds in so many irreal paths as different ways of transcending the real toward the ideal while never fully leaving the real behind.

What must be shown in particular and above a ll is that through the epochē a new way of experiencing, of thinking, of theoriz ing, is opened to the phi losopher; here, s i tuated above his own natural world, he loses nothing at a ll of the spir itual acquisi t ions of his world-l ife or those of the whole histor ica l communal l i fe ; he simply forbids himself —as a phi losopher, in the uniqueness of his direct ion of interest — to continue the whole natural performance of is world-l ife , that he forbids himself to ask quest ions which rest upon the ground of the world at hand, quest ions of being, quest ions of value, practical questions, questions about being and non-being, about being valuable, being useful, being beautiful , being good, e tc. Al l natural interests are out of play. 45

45 Crisis , p.152.

Back to Space Lilian Alweiss (Trinity College, Dublin)

Abstract: There is a general consensus in the l iterature that Husserl ‘s phenomenology prior it ize place over space . While the tradit ion of modern ph i losophy and sc ience holds that place merely ‗ takes up space‘ insofar as any representat ion of spat ial rela tions or posi t ions can only be determined with in one absolute and infinite space , the c la im is that phenomenology reveals the opposite : by taking our l ived body (namely the place where we always f ind ourselves in) as our start ing point phenomenology, shows that our understanding of space is posterior to , if not even derived from our understanding of place . Against this reading this paper shows 1) that an appeal to embodiment does not question the pr iori ty of space and 2) that Husser l‘s a im is not to quest ion our sc ientif ic conception of space but to show that there is a conceptual continuity between intuitive and geometr ica l conceptions of space which h as been severed by the

modern outlook .

There is a general trend in phenomenology to prioritize place over space. While the tradition of modern philosophy and science holds that place merely ‗takes up space‘ insofar as any representation of spatial relations or positions can only be determined within one absolute and infinite space, the claim now is that phenomenology reveals the opposite: place is primary and absolute. It is not, as Newton or Kant hold, that we cannot think of bodies without space, but that we cannot think of existing things without place. 1

In many ways Edward Casey‘s work: Getting Back into Place represents such a trend. He believes that ― in the past three centuries in the West—the period of ‗modernity‘—place has come to be not only neglected but actively suppressed. Owing to the triumph of the natural and social sciences in this same period, any serious talk of place has been regarded as regressive or trivial .‖2 Drawing on

1 Casey, for example, ci tes the pre -Socratic phi losopher Archytas who main tained (as reported by Simplic ius) : that place ―is the f irst of al l things, since al l existing things are e i ther in place or not without place‖ (Casey (1996) : 47 n.2) . Casey maintains: ―The power of the Archytian Axiom cannot be underestimated, to begin w ith in the ancient Greek world. Plato is cryptical ly quoting i t in Timaeus when he writes that ‗anything that is must be in some place and occupy some room, and… what is not somewhere in earth or heaven is nothing‘‖ (Timaeus 52B in Cornford 1995) . Similarl y Aristot le inscribes the axiom at the opening of his treatment of place in his Physics , Book IV when, referr ing to Hesiod, he says that ―he thinks as most people do that everything is somewhere and in place‖ ( Physics , 208b 32 -33) . 2 Casey (1993) : x iv . Hus ser l a lready observed in Logical Invest igat ions that in

LILIAN ALWEISS | 175

Edmund Husserl, Casey calls this our ‗natural attitude‘: ―One belief endemic to the natural attitude,‖ he says , ―concerns how places relate to what is commonly called ‗space‘. Once it is assumed (after Newton and Kant) that space is absolute and infinite as well as empty and a priori in status, places become the mere ap portionings of space, its compartmentalizations. Indeed, that places are the determinations of an already existing monolith of Space has become an article of scientific faith‖ (Casey, 1996: 14). Casey attempts to reverse this trend by deepening our underst anding of how a sense of place plays a central role in our lives. For the purpose of this paper I am less concerned with Casey‘s achievements and more with the manner in which he attempts to retrieve a sense of place by appeal ing to what he calls Husserl‘s ―argument against authority‖ (Casey (1996): 16). I shall examine whether Casey is justified in the claim that Husserl‘s phenomenology shows ― that the very idea of space is posterior to place, perhaps even derived from it‖ (Casey (1996): 16).

In Casey‘s lights we find our way back to ‗place‘ by returning to the place where we always already find ourselves, namely, our lived body. Husserl‘s account of kinaesthesia and embodiment is thereby central to his point of departure. Husserl argues convincingly that we live with a sense of place. While objects necessarily constitute themselves as standing opposed to me, as ‗over there‘ I can only experience myself as being here in a particular place. However much I move around the world, I always ex perience myself as being ‗here.‘ I cannot be anywhere else but here . Husserl thereby seems to suggest that we cannot think of existing things without place. Everything that ‗ is‘ or ‗can be‘ can only be experienced as being opposed to me, i .e . , as over ‗there.‘ Indeed, Husserl emphasises that objects necessarily have bodily-based dimensionality. They present themselves as perspectival, they appear from a particular angle and as oriented around my embodied perspective: As Husserl says: ―all

order to perceive an object f rom a part icular angle we need to recognize that it is one of many possible angles of one and the same unitary object . I can only refer to a particular shade of red if , at the same t ime, I am aware that it is a part icular instant iat ion of the idea of red, in the same way as I can only recognize the spine of a book if I see i t as a perspect ive of a unitary object ( the book as such) . The unitary object is transcendent to al l my acts . I t is consti tuted as soon as I recognize my point -of-view as a point-of-view, namely, if I recognize that it is one among many, indeed, an inf ini te number of possible points of view. This is possible only when I detect an identi ty across var ious acts. A s ingle act is insufficient. As Husser l puts it , i t is only through a ―synthesis of recol lect ion,‖ namely, by comparing different perspect ives that a unitary object manifests itse lf . Cf . Alweiss (2009) .


spatial being necessarily appears in such a way that it appears either nearer or farther, above or below, right or left…The lived body then has…the unique distinction of bearing in itself the zero point (Nullpunkt) of all these orientations‖ (cf. Hua IV 158/1989: 166). The lived body is always here, and it is precisely because it is always here that spatial objects can constitute themselves as over there.

Casey is not mistaken in his claim that through Husserl we can regain a profound understanding of place. Husserl is not concerned with an empirical sense of place. The point is not that I am necessarily ‗somewhere‘ but that I can only experience myself as occupying a particular place because I already have an absolute sense of place. This absolute sense of place or ―hereness‖ allows me to recognise that I can take up or inhabit different places. Knowing that perspectives change requires an awareness of something permanent—or unchanging—I can only experience myself as moving around the world and taking up different places, when I am able to contrast the individual positions which I hold at each instance with an absolute one. My concrete and particular sense of place or hereness is relative to an absolute or unitary sense of place that does not change even when I move around the world. My sense of being here is both particular and universal. It is particular insofar as I am aware that my sense of hereness is constantly changing; it is universal insofar as I have a sense of hereness which does not change. While places may indeed be particular, place itself, the concept of place is absolute.

This would underline Casey‘s point. Phenomenology provides an argument ‗against authority,‘ which seems confirmed in Husserl‘s later writings, when he refers to this absolute sense of place as the earth that does not move. After all , it led him to ask the ‗heretic‘ question: if we experience the world as stable should we not say, contrary to Galileo, the world does not move? 3 Casey, who regards his position as both pre-modern and post-modern (Casey (1996): 19) clearly seems to veer toward such conclusions when he says that place is primary and absolute. What has priority is our lived sense of place over against the abstract mathematical conception of space. This may well be Casey‘s position, but does it reflect Huss erl‘s? Does Husserl‘s phenomenology question the primacy of space? Or does it not at least prove, as others suggest, that phenomenology is limited in scope because it can only account for our common sense, or pre-scientific understanding of the world and cannot say

3 Cf . Husser l , (1981) : 230.


anything about such questions as ―whether some bodies (such as the Earth) are absolutely at rest or in motion, or whether space is absolute, or whether it exists at all?‖4 The aim of this paper is to question such readings. Contrary to Casey, I s hould like to show that an appeal to embodiment does not suggest that place is prior to, and more fundamental than space, rather the contrary is true: an appeal to embodiment can explain why space is necessarily absolute.5 Further, I should like to argue that Husserl‘s aim is to show that phenomenology is not limited in scope. To the contrary, it can explain how we move from a pre-scientific to a scientific understanding of the world; the scientific conception of space thereby remains a central theme for ph enomenology.

1. The Fate of Place

Casey, when referring to Husserl, presents him as an anti -modern

thinker who questions the Newtonian -Kantian assumption that space is ―absolute and infinite as well as empty and a priori in status‖ (Casey (1996: 14). Yet , as I shall seek to show, Husserl is not the ‗heretic‘ Casey likens him to be. Rather Husserl fits squarely within the Kantian modern tradition. Furthe rmore, I believe Casey fails to realize that if embodiment is central to our analysis of space, then the relational view of space advocated by Casey can simply no longer be upheld. We can glean this insight from Kant‘s 1768 paper ―Concerning the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Directions in Space,‘ 6 in which he shows that the (Leibnizian)

4 Roberto Casat i , for example, bel ieves that ―quest ions about whether some bodies (such as the Earth) are absolutely at rest or in motion, whether space is absolute, or whether it exists at al l , may be beyond the l imits of phenomenology‖ (Casati (1999) : ―Formal Structures i n the Phenomenology of Motion‖ in Natural i sing Phenomenology 372) . 5 Indeed I bel ieve we should be careful when using the term place. Once we treat place as ―something general, perhaps even universal‖ (Casey (1996) : 19) , i t is diff icult to see how i t can b e distinguished from an absolute conception of space. The danger consists, as Casey himself acknowledges, ― in making place or i ts components, into a new plane of perfect ion, a new tabula rasa, in which al l that matters in human experience comes to be writt en. Spat iocentrism…would then give way to an equal ly spurious topocentrism‖ (Casey (1996) : 41) . The aim cannot be s imply to reverse the order of pr ior ity, rather the aim would have to be to emphasize i ts particular ity. Therefore we should treat Casey with caution when he says: that place should be conceived as a kind of pre -object ive and universal being in which all being can be found or when he refers to the Hebrew word ‗makom ‘ ( ‗place‘) which is a name for God (Casey (1993) : 17) . 6 In D Walford & R Meerb ote eds: ―The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Theoretical Phi losophy, 1755 -1770‖ Cambridge: Cambridge


relational view of space cannot account for the notion of orientation and direction, so central to Casey‘s account of embodiment.

What is striking about Kant‘s paper is that in many ways it pre -empts Husserl‘s position by giving credence to the significance of embodiment for our understanding of space. It shows that spatial relations cannot be understood only in terms of their relative position to each other, but necessarily specify a direction by reference to my lived body. Take the following passage from Kant‘s text as an example:

[…] the most precise map of the heavens, if i t d id not, in addition to specifying the posi t ions of the stars relative to each other, a lso specify the direct ion by reference to the posi tion of the chart rela tive to my hands, would not en able me, no matter how precisely I had it in mind, to infer from a known direction, for example, the north, on which side of the horizon I ought to expect the sun to r ise. The same thing holds of geographical and, indeed, our most ordinary knowledge of the posit ion of places. Such knowledge would be of no use to us unless we could also or ientate the things thus ordered, along with the ent ire system of their reciprocal posit ions, by referring them to the sides of our

body (AK 2: 379) . 7

Like Husserl, Kant argues that directions in space such as farness, nearness, right and left can only be understood with respect to my (lived) body. We cannot merely treat bodies as extended things located at a given position in space because there is something unique about the living body: it has a sense of place in accordance to which objects constitute themselves.

Casey is familiar with this text and believes that in many ways it reflects Husserl‘s position, a position he is trying to promote. He praises Kant for giving significance to the notion of place and showing that ―the body is essentially, and not contingently, involved in matters of emplacement‖ (11). He believes that while this text

University Press 1992 : 377 -416. [Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume ] . 7 Wenn ich auch noch so gut die Ordnung der Abte i lungen des Horizonts weiss, so kann ich doch die Gegenden danach nur best immen, in dem ich mir bewusst bin, nach welcher Hand d iese Ordnung fort laufe, und d ie al l ergenaueste Himmelskarte, wenn ausser der Lage der Sterne untereinander nicht noch d ie Ste l lung des Abrisses gegen meine Hände die Gegend determiniert würde , so genau wie ich si e auch in Gedanken hätte, würde mich doch nicht in den Stand setzen, aus e iner bekannten Gegend, z . E. Norden, zu wissen, auf welcher Seit e des Horizonts ich den S onnnenaufgang zu suchen hätte. Ebenso ist es mit der geographischen, ja mit unserer gemeinsten Kenntnis der Lage der Örter bewandt, d ie uns zu nichts hi l ft , wenn wir die so georndete Dinge und das ganze System der wechselseit igen Lagen nicht durch die Bez iehung auf die Se iten unseres Körpers nach den Gegenden st e l l en können (Kant Weischedel Band 2 : 996) .


affirms precisely his own and Husserl‘s position, alas , Kant soon rejected it in favor of his absolutist conception of space. Kant, says Casey, quickly forgot what he had discovered ―and it is what Husserl…rediscovered a century and a half later‖ (Casey (1996): 22).

Here Casey clearly misreads Kant ( just as he mis interprets Husserl, as I shall go on to show). He fails to realize that the above citation shows the exact opposite. According to Kant, it does not prove that place is fundamental but, in his lights, it provides a clear proof that ―absolute space, independently of the existence o f all matter and as itself the ultimate foundation of the possibility of the compound character of matter, has a reality of its own ‖ (AK 2: 378). 8 In a word, it is meant to prove that space cannot be relative but is necessarily absolute. The reference to maps shows that to account for spatial facts we need not only to specify the relative distances between material bodies but, moreover, their orientation. And contrary to Casey, Kant believes that the phenomena of direction and orientation cannot be understood relationally. Kant quite explicitly states that direction does not refer:

to places in the space—for that would be the same thing as regarding the posi tion of the parts to the thing in que stion in an external re lation—but rather to universal space as a unity (AK 2 : 378) . 9 The ground of the complete determinat ion of a corporeal form does not depend simply on the re lat ion and posit ion of its parts to each other; i t also depends on the reference of that physical form to universal absolute space, as it i s conceived by geometers (AK 2 : 381 emphasis added). 10

Casey thereby fails to see Kant‘s argument, namely, that the

problem of orientation questions a relationist view of space. 11

8 Es se i ein evidenter Beweis zu f inden , ―dass der absolute Raum unabhängig von dem Dasein al ler Mater ie und selbst als der Grund der Möglichkeit ihrer Zusammensetzung e ine eigene Real itä t habe‖ (Kant Weischedel Band 2: 994 ) . 9 [Bei al l em ausgedehnten i st die Lage seiner Teil e gegen einander aus ihm se lbst hinreichend zu erkennen ] , d ie Gegend aber, wohin d iese Ordnung der Tei l e gerichtet ist , beziehet sich auf den Raum ausser demselben und zwar nicht auf dessen Örter, weil d ieses nichts anderes sein würde, a ls d ie Lage ebenderse lben Tei l e in einem äusseren Verhältnis , sondern auf den a l lgemeinen Raum als se ine Einheit (Kant Weischedel Band 2 : 993 -4) . 10 Wir wol len a lso dartun, dass der vo ll ständige Best immungsgrund einer körperl ichen Gesta lt nicht l edig lich auf dem Verhältnis und Lage se iner Tei l e gegen e inander beruhe, sondern noch überdem auf e ine Beziehung gegen den a l lgemeinen absoluten Raum, so wie ihn sich die Messkünstler denken (Kant Weischedel Bd 2: 997 -8) . 11 Kant has part icularly Leibniz‘s analys is situs in mind which states that we can analyze spat ia l equali t ies in terms of congruence. Leibniz understands this in


Somebody adhering to a relationist view of space thinks: ― If two figures drawn on a plane surface are equal and similar, then they will coincide with each other.‖ However, Kant holds that the whole point about corporeal bodies such as my left and my right hand is that they cannot be understood in terms of congruence:

They can be exact ly equal and similar, and yet st i l l be so different in themselves that the l imits of the one cannot a ls o be the l imits of the other…the most common and c learest example is furnished by the l imbs of the human body… the right hand is s imilar and equal to the left hand. And if one looked at one of them on i ts own, examining the proport ions and the posi tions of i ts parts to each other, and scrutinis ing the magnitude of the whole, then a complete descript ion of the one must apply in a ll respects to the other as wel l…(AK2: 381) 12

A left and a right hand are formally identical with respect to their

internal relations. They can have the same shape, extension and texture. However, there remains an inner difference ( innerer Unterschied) that cannot be measured in terms of relation and positions of their parts to each other. 13 Despite their similarity, they cannot be superimposed on one another and made identical to one another (i .e. , they are not congruent). They would only be congruent if we could turn them inside out like a glove which, at least in three dimensional space, is not possible. 14 As a result, hands constitute a primordial form of spatiality which exceeds a purely relational arrangement . Incongruent counterparts such as a left and a right hand point to facts about directionality and orientation that go beyond facts regarding relative distances. What holds for incongruent counterparts such as a hand, sna il or screws equally holds for ―spherical triangles from two opposite hemispheres‖ (AK2: 403). Hence geometry employs principles that go beyond a relational conception of space.

terms of equal ity or magnitude and similari ty of form (Cf. Leibniz 1969, 251) . 12 Sie können völl ig g leich, j edoch an sich se lbst so verschieden se in, dass d ie Grenzen der einen nicht zugle ich die Grenzen der andern se in können….Das gemeinste und kläreste Beisp ie l haben wir an den Gliederma ssen des menschl ichen Körpers…die rechte Hand ist der l inken ähnlich und gleich, und wenn man bloss auf eine derselben al l e in s i eht , auf d ie Proport ion und Lage der Tei l e untereinander und auf die Grösse des Ganzen, so muss eine vol lständige Beschre ibung d er e inen in a l l en Stücken auch von der anderen gelt en (Kant Weischedel Bd 2: 998) . 13 ―the surface which encloses the one cannot possibly enclose the other‖ (AK 2: 382) . [nämlich der, dass d ie Oberf läche, die den e inen besch li esst , den andern unmögl ich e insch li essen könne (Kant Weischedel 2 : 999] . 14 Cf . on the nature of incongruent counterparts in four dimensional space, see van Cleve (1991) : 203 -34.


By appealing to our embodiment, Kant arrives at a conclusion that is diametrically opposed to that of Casey. The lived body does not give significance to our understanding of place, rat her it provides a cogent proof that space must be absolute. 15 The term absolute here only intimates that spatial relations cannot be understood in relational terms alone (i .e. , it is far from proving a Newtonian concept of space). At first sight this conclu sion may seem a bit fraught. Indeed, Kant appears to defend the opposite view when he says that ―the ultimate ground, on the basis of which we form our concept of directions in space, derives from the relation of these intersecting planes to our bodies‖ (A K 2: 378/9).16 Yet Kant goes on to say that while ―phenomenologically‖ we do make sense of directionality and orientation with respect to our lived body, we can nonetheless find real differences in the constitution of our bodies ―which are grounded solely in relation to absolute and original space‖ (AK 2: 283) [absoluten und ursprünglichen Raum (Kant, Weischedel 2: 1000]. 17 I.e., a left hand is not only left because it is on the left side of my body (in the same way as my heart is on the left side), rather there is something about the left hand that makes it intrinsically left in orientation independently of relations to other bodies. 15 Kant would clearly quest ion James Dodd‘s view that: ―object ive space the coordinate system of geometry, sho uld not be confused with perspect ive ….Geometry, when i t r ids space of the sense of the distance between subject and object , also rids space of the sense of this ‗or iented‘ character‖ (Dodd: (1997) : 47) . 16 da wir al les, was ausser uns i st , durch die Sinne n nur inso ferne kennen, a ls es in Bez iehung auf uns se lbst st ehet , so i st ke in Wunder, dass wir von dem Verhältnis dieser Durchnitts f lächen zu unserem Körper den ersten Grund hernehmen, den Begri f f des Raumes zu erzeugen (Kant Weischedel 2 : 995) . In a recent art ic le Woelert , for example, defends such a (mistaken) view when he argues: ―Kant c laims precisely that the three -dimensions which are essentia l for the construction of geometrical space alone do not al low us the possibil ity of distinguishing between regions as such (that is , oriented and directed spaces)‖ (Woelert (2007) : 143) and ―the human body as a whole has to be regarded as an enti ty which does not merge into a homogenous extension of geometrica l spaces‖ (Woelert (2007) : 144) . 17 The ful l quote reads: ―Our considerations, therefore , make i t c lear that differences, and true differences a t that, can be found in the const itut ion of bodies; these differences re late exclusively to abso lute and original space, for i t is in virtue of absolute and or igin al space that the relation of physical things to each other is possible (AK 2: 383) Es ist h ieraus klar , dass nicht d ie Best immungen des Raumes Folgen von den Lagen der Tei le der Materie gegeneinander, sondern d iese Folgen von jenen sind, und dass a lso in der Beschaff enheit der Körper Untersch iede angetrof f en werden können und zwar wahre Untersch iede , die sich l ediglich auf den abso luten und ursprünglichen Raum beziehen, weil nur durch ihn das Verhältnis körperl icher Dinge mögl ich i st (Kant Weischedel 2 100 0) .


To prove his point he proposes a thought experiment. Imagine a solitary hand in the universe. A solitary hand, so Kant claims, is not ‗completely indeterminate‘ (Cf. AK II, 383) [ gaenzlich unbestimmt], i.e. , it would not fit either side of the human body but it would still remain either a right or a left hand. It is precisely this thought experiment that leads Kant to conclude tha t the essential property of leftness or rightness that pertains to a hand is not due to, or relative to my bodily standpoint. That a hand is left does not depend on how it is related to other material objects, notably asymmetrical bodies like our human bod ies but ―these differences relate exclusively to absolute and original space‖ (AKII, 283). The point is thus not, as Casey maintains, that the lived body is ‗the pivot around which the three dimensions of spatial extension arrange themselves and from which they ultimately proceed‘,18 rather we can only make sense of the phenomenon of orientation and directionality if we assume an absolute and original space.19

Kant‘s essay points to something important. First, embodiment is central to our conception of space. This is a thesis that Casey would endorse. Second, an appeal to embodiment does not question the priority of space, rather it leads us to realise that space must be absolute and original precisely because facts about directionality and orientation go beyond facts about relative distances. An insight that either Casey does not see or chooses to overlook.

Casey not only fails to see that the ―discovery‖ of the lived body, or more precisely, of incongruent counterparts, leads Kant to argue that space must be absolute but, furthermore, that this discovery is pivotal to his later critical position. He did not ―quickly forget‖ what he discovered, rather the discovery led him to refine his notion of space by arriving at the conclusion that space must be a form of intuition and transcendentally ideal. In his Inaugural Dissertation (1770) he argues that space must be an intuition and not a concept since the phenomenon of incongruent counterparts can not be explained ―conceptually,‖ but can only be apprehended by a certain pure intuition‖ (Kant (1992b); AK II: 403). In The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , in turn, he says that the left right distinction provides a good proof for the claim that space is not a property of a thing in itself, but is a subjectiv e form of our sensible intuition of things (Cf. Kant (1985): 23; AK IV: 483 -84). To

18 Casey (1999) : 208. 19 This c la im is true even if we al low for the possibi l i ty that space may be four dimensional . Cf . James Van Cleve (1991) : ―Right and Lef t and the Fourth Dimension‖ (203 -234) and ―Introduction to the Arguments of 1770 and 1783‖ (15-26) .


this extent an appeal to our lived body is crucial to Kant‘s claim that space is a form of intuition and that it is ideal and does not pertain to an autonomous reality.

2. Back to Space

However, although Casey‘s depiction of Kant is inaccurate, the aim of this paper is not so much to vindicate Kant, but to show how Husserl in many ways advances his position. This is not to say that Husserl would endorse Kant‘s conception of space. As we know, Husserl rejects Kant‘s two -world (phenomenon/noumenon) distinction and therefore necessarily the view that sensuous material needs to be formed by our intuition. What is given, according to Husserl, is necessarily already spatial in f orm and no form needs to be superimposed by us (Husserl (1956) [ Erste Philosophie I] : 358). Contrary to Kant, he holds that ―space is the necessary form of physical entities [Dinglichkeit] not the form of experience, not even ‗sensuous‘ experiences‖ (Husserl (1973) [Ding und Raum]: 42-3). Indeed it is questionable whether Husserl would argue that an appeal to embodiment vindicates the claim that space is absolute or an infinite given magnitude. In fact I believe that Husserl, like Casey, would probably argue that an appeal to embodiment in many ways relativizes space. At least when he does discuss geometrical space, he only considers geometrical objects in terms of their congruence. 20 Nonetheless Husserl does not toe Casey‘s line. He believes that even though we necessarily need to begin with our lived understanding of space which is necessarily indexically or ostensively structured in accordance to our practices, this should not lead us to regard space as derived from place, nor should it lead us to question whether the scientific conception of space lies within the scope of phenomenological investigation. To the contrary, from very early on, he tries to make sense of David Hilbert‘s approach to geometry which states that axioms of geometry are not sentences stating fundamental facts about spatial intuition but logical forms devoid of intuitive content. 21 He thus faces the question head on: if axioms of geometry ―cannot be intuited, but only thought‖ (Hua XXI 271), how can phenomenology make sense of an axiomatic conception of geometry when our starting point is necessarily our lived and intuitive conception of

20 At least in his early writ ings, the notes taken for his Raumbuch Hua XXVI, when he discusses the process of ideal izat ion he only considers congruence and defines it as ―Unabhängigkeit der Gebilde vom Ort ‖ (Hua XXI: 291) . 21 Jagnow (2006) : 67.


space? Husserl raises this point not in order to question our scientific conception of space but to explain how it is possible to move from an intuitive, extra-scientific understanding of space which we all—laymen, children and scientists alike—share, to a scientific conception of space. Or, to put it otherwise, how we are to understand the relation between our subjective lived experience of space which is necessarily relative and imprecise and the objective conception of space which disregards our subjective point of view .22 The task is thus to show how we can account for the relation between our scientific and our extra -scientific conception of space.

Husserl draws on geometry to illustrate what is at issue: Like all modern science, geometry is grounded in the practical and perceptual processes that take place in the life world. We begin with an intuitive conception of space which is relative and imprecise (Husserl calls it morphological). When we are concerned with measurement 23 for example, ―the ‗exact‘‖ [measurement] is determined by the particular end in view, for which there can also be irrelevant differences which do not count‖ (C 311). The aim is to construct a round table, to provide a link between two points or to make sure that the frame is bigger than the picture to be framed. In these instances we are not looking for a perfect circle, l ine or square. Only when we are no longer simply guided by pract ical interests but wish to perfec t our skills, for example, the ―capacity to make the straight s traighter and the flat flatter‖ (C 25) do we come to aim at ideal limits. 24 What is of interest then is no longer the particular line or shape of a particular ob ject but the ―apodictically general content [which remains] invariant throughout all conceivable variations of the spatio-temporal field of shapes‖ (C 377). Our attention focuses on the perfect circle or line which can never be realised or constructed however much we succeed in perfecting our skills. What emerges is an ―infinitely perfectible‖ measuring process, one that generates an ideal limit or a limes toward which we move, which itself however can never be made present.25 This shift in interest can be observed, for example, in land surveying (Feldmesskunst ). Land surveying has turned into a

22 On the re lat ion between the subjective and the object ive see Alweiss (2009) . 23 ―Measuring belongs to every culture, varying only according to stages from primit ive to higher perfect ions‖ (C: 376) . 24 ―Out of the praxis of perfecting, or freely pressing toward th e horizon of conceivable perfecting ‗again and again, ‘ l imit shapes emerge toward which the part icular ser ies of perfect ings tend, as toward invariant and never at tainable poles‖ (C: 26) . 25 On the process of idealization see Jagnow (2006) and Held (2003) .


mathematical technique. The surveyor constantly strives to improve her techniques and seeks to establish the rules which allow her to interpret whether the measurement approximates to the idealised constructions in geometry.

Husserl describes the manner in which our intuitive and scientific conceptions of space are interlaced. He shows how we come to move from intuitive to geometrical space and how the geometrical conception of space, in turn, has transformed our practices. However, it is important to note that although Husserl shows how both conceptions of space are interlaced, a task that he regards of utmost importance for any meaningful understanding of geometry and our practices, he does not claim that this proves that geometrical knowledge is derived from intuitive space. To the contrary, as we have said above, he insists that geometrical space is a logical construct not derived from experience. Take the following passage from his early notes on space (Raumbuch) as an example:

Intuit ion and the empirical conception of space contain points of departure and leading motives for the geometric formation of concepts. Yet, the abstract ob jects belonging to the concepts and the at tr ibutes of these concepts are not to be obtained simply through ‗abstract ion‘ ( in the present common sense of a ttentively emphasizing s ingular features) from intuit ions. The concepts are not embedded in intuit ion l ike the seen shape in the seen ‗plane. ‘ The tr iangle as an intuited abstract concept is not a geometrica l f igure . The triangle serves the geometer as pure symbol whose characteristic type possesses dispositional connect ion in the geometer‘s mind with the correlat ing pure concept and its ideal , merely ‗thought , ‘ object . 26

Husserl clearly shows that geometrical objects ― are not embedded

in intuition ,‖ they refer to logical forms that can only be thought. Take the construction of a line as an example: However small the distance between two points, a distance remains which can be filled by another point and so ad infinitum (cf Hua XXII 287 -9). The actual

26 ―Die Anschauung und die empir isch -räumliche Auffassung enthält die Ausgangspunke und lei tende Motive für die geometrische Begri f f sbi ldung, aber d ie den Begri f f en zugehörigen abstrakten Gegenstände und deren Attr ibute sind nicht einfach durch ‗Abstrakt ion ‘ ( in dem üblichen Sinn aufmerksamer Pointierung von Einzelzügen) aus den Anschauungen zu gewinnen, si e l i egen in diesen nicht eingebet tet wie die gesehene Gestalt der gesehenen ‗Fläche‘ . Das Dreieck der angeschauten Abstrakt ion i st keine geometr ische Figu r, es dient dem Geometer als blosses Symbol, dessen character ist i scher Typus in seinem Geist dispos it ionell e Verknüpfung besi tzt mit dem zugeh örigen reinen Begri f f und se inem idealen bloss ‗gedachten‘ Gegenstand‘ ‖ (Hua XXI: 237) . Translation taken from Jag now (2006) : 81 n.19.


process can never be completed: we can always add further points. Although the process is infinite, one can nonetheless stipulate an ideal l imit as the product of such infinite division and add them to a line. This then allows us to hold fast to the idea that points have no extension and that a line is continuous. However, to do so we need to depart from the actual object that can be perceived since the focus is on an entirely new object, one that can only be thought but never perceived.

The process of idealization explains the move from an extra -scientific to a scientific conception of space. This should not be read as an argument against authority. It does not lead Husserl to conclude that local knowledge not only precedes but even makes geometrical knowledge possible. Nowhere does he claim that space is posterior to, or derived from place (Casey (1996): 16). Casey believes that because Husserl shows how knowledge arises out of experience, phenomenology reverses the order and shows that knowledge is derived from experience (Casey (1996): 16). Yet he fails to realize that in many ways Husserl adheres to, rather than d eparts from Kant‘s dictum that ―though all our knowledge begins with experience it does not follow that it all arises out of experience‖ (CPR B1). Even though all knowledge begins with experience, we can divorce ourselves from experience and conduct an a priori and transcendental inquiry.27 We can arrive at geometrical truths that cannot be demonstrated by actual measurements and are not relative to our subjective point of view. 28

To this extent Husserl falls squarely within the Kantian modern tradition. Indeed, there are passages in w hich Kant, like Husserl, suggests in passing that mathematical concepts have meaning only if they are constructed in concreto first . To arrive at mathematical propositions such as 7+5=12, for example, he observes that ―we have to go outside these concepts, and call in the aid of intuition which corresponds to one of them , our five fingers for instance‖ (B15).29

27 As Husserl says in EU: ―Von jeder konkreten Wirk lichkeit und jedem an ih r wirk lich erfahrenen und erfahrbaren Einzelzuge steht der Weg in das Reich idealer oder reiner Möglichkei t und damit in das Reich des apriorischen Denkens of f en ‖ (Husser l (1985) : Sec 90 , 428) . Cf . Bernet (2003) . 28 ―Geometry does not exist as something personal within the personal sphere of consciousness; i t is the existence of what is ob ject ively there for ‗everyone‘ ( for actual and possible geometers, or those who understand geometry) . Indeed, it has, from i ts primal establishment, an existence which is pecul iarly supertemporal and which—of this we are certain — is accessible to all men, f i rst of a ll to the actual and possible mathematicians of a ll peoples, all ag es; and this is true of a ll i ts particular forms‖ (C: 356) . 29 ―man muss über diese Begri f f e h inausgehen, indem man die Anschauung zu Hulfe


Elsewhere Kant says: ―The concept of magnitude seeks its support and sensible meaning in number, and this in turn in the fingers, in the beads of the abacus, or in strokes and points which can be placed before the eyes‖ (B 299).30 Yet Kant‘s aim is to show that the ―concept itself is always a priori in origin, and so likewise are the synthetic principles or formulas derived from such concepts‖ (ibid.) The a priori is thereby treated as a given. Unlike Husserl, Kant does not seek to show what motivates us to move from the empirical to the transcendental. It is precisely this move that Husserl attempts to provide.

3. Making Space for Place

Husserl deepens the Kantian project by questioning its historical

origins. He does not wish to affirm an argument against authority, as Casey assumes. Rather he is concerned about what he calls our scientific naturalistic outlook which Kant represents. The problem is that our mathematical characterisation of things is a result of a process of idealisation, yet we have come to believe that mathematical science represents or mirrors the life world. As Husserl puts it:

[ it ] dresses it up as ‗ob jectively actual and true‘ nature. I t is through the garb of ideas that we take for t rue be ing what is actual ly method which is designed for the purpose of progressively improving, in infini tum , through ‗sc ientif ic predictions, ‘ those rough predict ions which are the only ones origi nally possible within the sphere of what is actually experienced and experienceable in the l ife world (C: 51 -2) .

We believe that the natural sciences capture the true nature of

things and fail to realise that reality is not reducible to mathematical equations. Modern science makes us believe that we can understand material things only in terms of their extension and geometrical shape. All other aspects such as texture, color, heat, taste or sound have been reduced to what Locke has fitt ingly called ‗secondary qualities . ‘ This means that all non-scientific ways of describing the world of things is regarded as a merely subjective

nimmt, d ie einem von beiden korrespondiert , etwa seine fünf Finger oder (wie Segner in se iner Arithmet ik) fünf Punkt e, und so nach und nach d ie E inhei ten der in der Anschauung gegebenen Fünf zu dem Bergi f f e der Sieben h inzutut .‖ 30 Der Begrif f der Grösse sucht in eben der Wissenschaft se ine Haltung und Sinn in der Zahl, d iese aber an den Fingern, den Kora ll en des Rechenb rett s, oder den Strichen und Punkten, d ie vor Augen gestel lt werden .


arrangement of our ideas. It describes the way we happen to carve up the world but does not tell us anything about the world of things. Against this Husserl wishes to show that our judgments are not merely relative and subjective but that there is a conceptual continuity between intuitive and geometrical conceptions of space which has been severed by the modern outlook.

Husserl regards this as a task of utmost importance as he believes that the natural sciences have been one-sided and biased in their outlook. Their only concern is with the establishment of absolute and necessary truths, which they believe to be irrelative, i.e. true fo r everyone. This leads them to ignore the intuitive space of the life world , namely, the way in which objects ‗first‘ constitute themselves relative to our first person perspective. In a word, they treat the world as if it exists independently of any human accomplishment. Husserl believes such a position to be both untenable and dangerous.31 By ignoring the life world, the danger is that mathematical sciences turn into purely formal inquiries that have no relevance beyond the pure theory of deductive scienc e.32

To overcome this impasse, Husserl says we need to do ― justice to the very subjectivity which accomplishes science‖ (C 295). Our subjective point of view should not fade into insignificance with the discovery of objectivity, rather it ought to be foster ed to make sense of experience. As long as we ignore original intentions that have led to the formation of the various mathematical sciences, we regard scientific research as an autonomous and infinite activity for which we take no responsibility. We passively allow the natural sciences to control and shape our life world. This is why Husserl believes nothing is more urgent than to turn the life world itself into a theme. We need a ―science of the life world .‖ We must study what life interests have led us to adopt the theoretical attitude in the first place and why we have turned our attention to certain tasks and not to others.

In the same way as we are able to arrive at scientific truths through the process of idealization, Husserl believes that we need t o find out the norms that inform our intentional life. According to Husserl, there are two ways to respond to the modern crisis, either by turning against reason and the rationalist spirit that has given rise to the natural sciences, which he believes will lead to

31 Cf . Alweiss (2007) . 32 The question how we are meant to understand the continuity between both is beyond the scope of this paper . However, Rene Jagnow provides an excellent discussion of this in Jagnow (2006) . Indeed, it is his art ic le that has drawn my attention to Husserl ‘s 1890 notes on space in Hua XXI.


barbarism, or by rekindling the spirit and infinite goals of reason that have given rise to our theoretical attitude. This would allow for a new humanism because we would be fostering the practical ideals that originally guided mankind in the life world.33 By gaining an understanding of how to arrive at a geometrical conception of space from our first person point of view, we can establish the extent to which modern science has lived up to its primordial intentions that have given rise to the scient ific attitude in the first place.

Nowhere does Husserl question our capacity to reason or the process of idealisation. What concerns him is what makes us humans distinct (C 388) and Casey ignores precisely what makes us distinct, namely, our capacity to transcend our sense of place, the possibility to see myself and the world around me from a third person perspective.34 When Casey urges us to return to a sense of place, he only takes one aspect of Husserl‘s phenomenology seriously, the fact that we have a sense of place. However, he fails to acknowledge that Husserl is not only worried about natural science ignoring its genesis but he is equally concerned that we simply regard ourselves as formed and determined by the life world and fail to ask about (Rückfragen) its origins. In order for a transcendental inquiry to take place, we need to be able to free ourselves from our contingent world -view which has been passed down to us and ask how we ourselves have arrived at the position in which we find ourselves today. Only with a phenomenological ―science of a life world‖ can the modern naturalistic outlook be questioned.

Casey, like many contemporary phenomenologists, disregards precisely those aspects which make us truly human. Embodiment, Husserl repeatedly argues, is something we share with other animals. ―Men and animals are spatially localized, and even what is psychic about them, at least in virtue of its essential foundedness in what is bodily , partakes of the spatial order‖ (Ideas II : 36). A dog experiences the world as orientated around his lived body. A dog has a sense of above, below, inside and outside. However, what he is unable to do, but we can do, is abstract from his situatedness. 35 33 ―Vienna Lectures‖ in C: 299. 34 Husser l bel ieves that I only recognize myself as a unitary self (ego pole) , i f I can present myself in various modes, i .e . as s it t ing in the room and asking myself what I shal l be l ike in ten years t ime, namely when I am both the imagining and the imagined ego. I t is then that I experience myself as a se lf that remains identica l across al l these acts of imagining and presentif ication. 35 An animal lacks the possibi l i ty of imagination, which a llows us humans to transcend the place in which we f ind ourselves: ― Man kann hier fragen, haben die Tiere … anschauliche Phantas ievorste l lungen im selben Sinne wie wir ?‖ (183) ; ―Beim


What marks us out as human beings is that meaning is not reducible to the habitus and the institutional practices in which we find ourselves involved. We can regard ourselves as responsible for our activity by seizing upon possibilit ies which pertain to the life world. Rather than advocating an anti -modern position, Husserl remains Kant‘s true heir by emphasiz ing that we are responsible active subjects and not , as Casey would have it, ―ineluctably place bound‖ (Casey (1996): 19). Abbreviations:

C: Husserl (1970) CPR: Kant (1933) EU: Husserl (1985) Ak: Kant (1902-) Ideas II: Husserl (1989)

Bibliography: Alweiss L (2009) ‗Between Internalism and Externalism: Husserl‘s

Account of Intentionality‘ in Inquiry Vol. 52 No.1 (53-78) ---------------- (2007) ‗Leaving Metaphysics to Itself‘ in

International Journal of Philosophical Studies . Vol 15, No 3: 349-365

Bernet R (2003) ‗Desiring to Know through Intuition‘ in Husserl Studies 19: (154-66).

Casati (1999) ‗Formal Structures in the Phenomenology of Motion‘ in Naturalising Phenomenology eds by Jean Petitot, Francisco Varela, Bernard Pachoud, Jean-Michel Roy. Chapter 12.

Casey E (1993) Getting Back into Place: A Phenomenological Study (Studies in Continental Thought). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

---------------- (1999) The Fate of Place; A Philosophical History . Berkeley: University of California Press

---------------- (1996): ‗How to get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time‘ in Senses of Place eds. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso, Santa Fé, New Mexico: School of American Research Press: 13-52.

Menschen vo llzieht sich eben eine ständige Umwandlung der passiven Intent ionalität in e ine Aktiv ität aus Vermögen der Wiederholung‖ (1933 184) Cited by Marbach (1974) : 334.


Dodd, J (1997): Idealism and Corporeity; An Essay on the Problem of the Body in Husserl‘s Phenomenology . Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Jagnow, R (2006): "Edmund Husserl on the Applicability of Formal Geometry," in Intuition and the Axiomatic Method , eds. Emily Carson and Renate Huber. Dordrecht: Springer: 67 -85

Held, K (2003): ‗Krise der Gegenwart und Anfang der Philosophie. Zum Verhältnis von Husserl und Heidegger‘ in Festschrift für Walter Biemel , ed. by Madalina Diaconu, (special edition of Studia Phænomenologica Humanitas Publishing House: 131 -145.

Held, K: Ideen zur Phänomenologie der Zeit 2. Eigentliche Zeit bei Husserl und Heidegger

Husserl (1956): Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Erste Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte Husserliana VII ed by R. Boehm.

---------------- (1960): Cartesian Meditations - An Introduction to Phenomenology , Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

---------------- (1970): The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press

---------------- (1973) Ding und Raum (Vorlesungen 1907), ed. Ulrich Claesges, Husserliana XVI. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

---------------- (1981) 'Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature' trans. by Fred Kersten: in Husserl; Shorter Works , eds. McCormick, P. et al., Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press : 222-233.Husserl (1983):

---------------- (1983) Studien zur Arithmetik und Geometrie. Texte aus dem Nachlaß. Zweiter Teil: Philospohischer Versuch über den Raum (1886-1901). Husserliana XXI ed I Strohmeyer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1983.

---------------- (1985) Erfahrung und Urteil; Untersuchung zur Genealogie der Logic ed by Ludwig Landgrebe. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.

---------------- (1989) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy; Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution , Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers .

Kant I (1902-) Kants Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königliche Preußische (later Deutsche) Akadmie der Wissenchaften. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter [Akademieausgabe].


---------------- (1933) Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smit h. London: Macmillan Press.

---------------- (1992a) ‗Concerning the ultimate ground of the differentiation of directions in space‘ (365 -72) in D. Walford and R Meerbote, eds,: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [AK II: 375 -383] .

---------------- (1992b) ‗On the form and principles of the sensible and the intelligible world [Inaugural Dissertation]‘ (377 -416) in D. Walford and R Meerbote, eds,: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant Theoretical Philosophy, 1755 -1770 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [AK II: 385 -419]

---------------- (1985): ‗Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science ‘ trans by James Ellington in Philosophy of Material Nature Hacket Publishing Company. Book II.

---------------- (1996): Immanuel Kant‘s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics ed. Beryl Logan London: Routledge.

---------------- Akademieausgabe Leibniz (1969) ‗Studies in a geometry of situation‘ in L E

Lowemaker ed: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters . Second ed. Reidel Dordrecht: 249 -53

Marbach E (1974): Das Problem des Ich in der Phänomenologie Husserls Den Haag. Martinus Nijhoff.

Van Cleve, J and Frederick R E eds (1991): The Philosophy of Right and Left . Dordrecht:

Kluwer Academic Publishers. Woelert, P (2007) ‗Kant's hands, spatial orientation, and the

Copernican turn‘ in Continental Philosophy Review , Vol 40, No 2: 139-150

Husserl‟s Phenomenological Idealism and the Problem of Realism Maxime Doyan (McGill University)

1. Transcendental Phenomenology is an Idealism

Despite the countless disputes Husserl‘s commitment to idealism has provoked, it is an undisputable fact that Husserl himself ascribes to the doctrine of idealism a central r ole in the general framework of phenomenological philosophy. In the Afterword to Ideas I (written in 1930), Husserl contends that ―transcendental -phenomenological idealism is not a particular philosophical t hesis, one theory among others,‖ but rather ―transcendental phenomenology as concrete science‖ (V, 152). As it is well known, it is in the Cartesian Meditations (in 1931) that Husserl publicly acknowledged for the first time the idealistic orientation of transcendental phenomenology. And it was not a tim id statement. The doctrine of phenomenological idealism expressed in that text brings together in systematic fashion the strongest tenets of transcendental phenomenology, such that it leads Husserl to present it in the final analysis as ―the only possible sense-interpretation‖ of ―what is actually or possibly for us‖ (CM 87; I, 119). Phenomenology is said to entail ―eo ipso ‗transcendental idealism‘‖ (CM 86; I, 118). 1

This late public acknowledgment was nevertheless nothing but a self-conscious interpretat ion of what has rightly been recognized as such (and heavily criticized by his Munich and Göttingen followers) in the second part Ideas I , where Husserl demonstrates how every object must necessarily be understood in correlation to constituting subjectivity. Thanks to the 36 th volume of Husserl‘s collected works, we now know that Husserl‘s position concerning phenomenological idealism goes even further back. Essentially, it had already been established and labelled as such in Husserl‘s research manuscripts from 1908 on. The validity of some of the proofs for transcendental idealism that Husserl provided in these texts will be our main concern today.

2. Idealism and Realism

1 He adds : ―The proof of this ideal ism is therefore phenomenology i tse lf . Only someone who misunderstands e ither the deepest sense of intentional method, or that of transcendental reduct ion, or perhaps both, can at tempt to separate phenomenology from transcendental ideal ism‖ (CM 86; I , 119) .


Stated broadly, the question I aim to address today concerns the

relationship between idealism and realism. For it is far from being obvious—at least intuitively—that an idealistic framework can do justice to the richness and concreteness of lived experience. Indeed, we may wonder how a theory that seems to restrict its field of research to subjective mental states can be entitle d to possess objective purport— that is to say, as directed, and so answerable, to the one and only world we share with others. Husserl‘s position on this issue is very clear: Husserl always insists that phenomenological idealism and empirical realism ought not to be seen as mutually exclusive, quite to the contrary. In the Cartesian Meditations , Husserl goes even as far as to consider idealism to be the only consistent theoretical framework capable of supporting a nd even proving the transcendence of the empirical world through a systematic analysis of constituting intentionality (cf. I, 34). Husserl has perhaps never expressed his view on the matter more acutely than in the well -known letter of 1934 to the abbot Ém ile Baudin, in which he affirms that ―No ordinary ‗realist‘ has ever been so realistic and so concrete as I, the phenomenological ‗idealist‘ ‖ (Briefwechsel , Dok. III/7, 16).

It is in this same spirit and for the very same reason that Husserl maintained in his 1923/24 Freiburg Lecture on First Philosophy that phenomenology is ―the first, strict scientific form of idealism‖ (VIII, 181; cf. V, 152). Indeed, according to Husserl, phenomenology has the edge over the other traditional forms of idealism (at least in part) because it does not renounce the realism of the natural attitude. Phenomenological idealism ―contains natural realism entirely within itself‖ (IX, 254). Of course, what Husserl means by that is that the ―sense‖ of natural realism is itself consti tuted in intentional ways and can, as such, only be understood in relation to the transcendental ego as the ultimate source of all justification and validation. Against this background, it is clear that Husserl does not in the least doubt that the transcendent world exists (cf. V,152). The transcendental research includes ―the world itself, with all its true being‖ (VIII, 432) . What Husserl rejects is a certain objectivistic interpretation of the world, which considers its existence as mind -independent.

3. An Idealism of Sense

It is by practicing the epochē and phenomenological reduction that we come to realize that reality depends on subjectivity and that

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idealism must be true. The bracketing of the natural attitude allows one to turn inward towards the subjective acts in which the world is experienced in the natural attitude. The world now appears as a world for us , i .e. only insofar as it is experienced. Before we recognize the natural attitude as an attitude, the ego seems a priori cut-off from the external world. But after the suspension of the epistemic claims informing the natural attitude, a universal sphere of givenness opens itself, on the basis of which transcendental philosophy can execute itself as a ―universal idealism‖ (V, 152). The phenomeno logical reduction is ―the route‖ that leads ―into transcendental idealism‖ (VIII, 181).

The goal of the epochē and reduction is of course not to replace the worldly objects with mental representations, or else to ‗reduce‘ being to being-given and the world to a mere phenomenon. After the reduction, we continue to be concerned with the real, empirical objects we find out in the world, but the difference is that we no longer consider them naively, but rather as they are given in experience, that is, as corre lates of experience. The reduction is what allows to switch from one kind of description to another. The difference between the real, intended object and the object as it is given in the transcendental attitude is, as Sokolowski and Drummond rightly and repeatedly emphasized, a structural difference internal to the noematic structure of consciousness. It is not an ontological distinction between different entities (say between the intentional object and the real, empirical object which is intended), but rather a difference in the way one and the same object is considered.

One of the great advantages of this inte rpretation is that it allows to make sense of Husserl‘s acknowledgment of the possibility of a transcendent reality, while at the same time underst anding his strong commitment to idealism. The key here is to realize that Husserl‘s phenomenological idealism is an idealism of sense, not an ontological or a metaphysical idealism. The fundamental thesis of Husserl‘s phenomenological idealism is namely th at it is the significance, not the existence of the world that is mind -dependent. There are structures of our experience that are responsible for the objects to appear to us in such and such a significant way and according to Husserl, a consistent account of reality will find these structures as its necessary correlate. And if we are entitled to call this idealism an idealism of sense, it is because it is rooted in the noematic structure outlined above, where the difference between the noema and its object is a difference of sense, not an ontological one.

The idea that phenomenological idealism is an idealism of sense


finds support at different places throughout Husserl‘s corpus, but it is most clearly expressed in §55 of Ideas I , where Husserl explains that ―[r]eality and world are names here precisely for certain valid unities of sense , unities of ‗sense‘ related to certain concatenations of absolute, of pure consciousness which, by virtue of their essence , bestow sense and demonstrate sense -validity precisely thus and not otherwise‖ (Ideas I , 129; III/1, 120) . According to Husserl, if we are to avoid any dogmatic assertion concerning the ontological status of reality, it has to be understood as a system of validity and meaning standing in relation to subjectivity. Reality needs the experiential and—this seems inevitable—the conceptual perspectives of a transcendental subject to manifest and articulate itself as reality.2

4. The Primacy of Subjectivity over Reality

We thus arrive at the crux of the matter , since this view implies the recognition of the transcendental primacy of subjectivity over reality (something, it bears noting, Husserl makes no secret of). 3 Indeed, in Husserl‘s phenomenology all sense issues from transcendental subjectivity. The whole ‗being and sense‘ of the world is construed as an accomplishment or achievement (Erkenntnisleistung) of the ego (cf. VII, 248). Not only all knowledge, but, more broadly, all experience of being is grounded in constituting, meaning-bestowing subjectivity from where it manifests itself. In this precise sense, being is relative to the experiencing subject. As Husserl wrote in a manuscript dating from 1908, it belongs to being‘s essence to be experienced: ―To the essence of all being belongs a relation to consciousness‖ (XXXVI, 32).4

In this correlational structure, the experiencing subject is the ‗absolute ‘ pole as that to which all being is relative and dependent upon. ―If consciousness did not exist, not only would knowledge not be possible, but also nature itself would lose all its basis, its root, its archē , and thereby would be a nothingness‖ (B IV 6, 92b) . In other words, over and above transcendental subjectivity, there is, he says, ―nothing‖ (C 17 V 2, 88), or maybe I should add, nothing we could make sense of. These two passages come from still unpublished manuscripts, but the readily available works provide

2 ―Even God is for me what he is, in consequence of my ow n productivi ty of consciousness‖ (FTL §99, p. 251; XVII 258) . 3 Cf. Hua VIII 215 and Hua XXXVI 19. 4 On the same passage, we can a lso read: ― I t belongs to the essence of being to be-able- to-be-given‖ (XXXVI, 32) .

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all kinds of other ‗proof -texts‘ which the very large majority of you must be familiar with. The basic idea here is that the transcendental ego is for Husserl the ultimate source of justification an d validation of the ontological status of reality, because being needs to be experienced in order to reveal itself and thus have meaning. Inasmuch as the transcendental ego stands in such an experiencing relation to the world, it ―bestows ontological valid ity on the being of the world‖ (V, 149). This is the sense in which Husserl considered his phenomenology to be a novel form of idealism. 5. The Concerns of the Realists

What I would like to do now is consider a set of objections that have been formulated against the idealist thesis from the realist point of view. What the realists find most unacceptable in Husserl‘s phenomenological idealism is the reduction of being to sense and, with it, the more or less explicit primacy Husserl grants to the possible over the effective. The realists argue on their part for the contrary position and affirm the ontological priority of the effective over the possible (or of reality over constituting consciousness). There is, they maintain, an unbridgeable gap between reali ty and the synthetic power of consciousness and it is the former that determines the latter, not the other way around. This argument has been formulated in very diverse ways both inside and outside the phenomenological tradition. For explanatory purposes, I‘ll sketch out in rough strokes two forms this objection can take before considering Husserl‘s response to such charges.

A. Jean-François Lavigne In his rich and penetrating book Husserl et la naissance de la

phénoménologie , which bears on the genesis of Husserl‘s phenomenological idealism, J. -F. Lavigne draws our attention on the lecture course of the winter semester of 1902/03 on Erkenntnistheorie ,5 for he sees Husserl‘s idealistic framework already in place.6 In Lavigne‘s view, the major advance of t his lecture course consists in the restriction of the phenomenological analysis to the inner content of the lived experience. This ‗reduct ion‘ amounts to a kind of epochē in which the relation to the outside world and the empirical ego is bracketed. As Lavigne repeatedly points out 5 E. Husser l , Allgemeine Erkenntnistheor ie. Vorlesung 1902/03. Hrsg. von El isabeth Schuhmann. 2001, xvi i i + 260 pp. 6 See, above a ll , the chap. 4 of Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie .


throughout his book, this restriction is problematic, for it leaves one only with the actual immanent lived experience as evidently given in phenomenological reflection. 7 Although phenomenology is still called descriptive psychology in 1902/03, Lavigne terms it on this basis ―immanentist phenomenology.‖

Lavigne argues further—and this is what interests me here—that this ‗‗immanentist‘‘ reduction poses in an essential way the ontological fundament of the full -blown transcendental philosophy of 1906 onward. Indeed, the immanentist reduction would be but a consequence of an implicit pre -reduction that forms, according to him, the core of Husserl‘s idealistic stance up until Ideen I and beyond: the ‗‗reduction of being to sense.‘‘ 8 For lack of time, I will not dig into the details of Lavigne‘s very long and complex exposition here. For our present concerns, it suffices to note that Lavigne describes Husserl‘s phenomenological idealism as an idealism of sense as well, but he does so for wholly different reasons than I do. For Lavigne, Husserl‘s idealism is an idealism of sense because the immanentist motives informing Husserl‘s phenomenology reduces being to sense . Against this background, it becomes clear why Lavigne believes Husserlian phenomenology to be incapable of solving ‗‗the enigma of transcendence.‖ And this is all due to one crucial mistake, ―his fundamental implicit postulate according to which being is only of sense.‖ 9

Earlier in this paper, I have tried to explain why this critique, however relevant it may be with regard to the 1902/03 lecture -course, misses the point about Ideas I . I have argued that the structural difference informing the noema allows Husserl‘s idealism to be an idealism of sense that is at the same time o ntologically committed. We‘ll come back to this issue later on in the paper.

B. Thomas Nagel

Another argument against idealism comes from Thomas Nagel,

who argues that being is in excess . For Nagel, realism must be true,

7 ―The foundation of the Husserl ian epistemological thesis is that being i tse l f does not transcend the l ived experience in any essentia l respect; and consequently, that i t lets i tself be dissolved complete ly in the e lement of the intentional activi ty .‖ J . -F. Lavigne, Husser l et la na issance de la phénoménologie , p. 339. 8 J . -F. Lavigne, Husser l et la na issance de la phénoménologie , p. 333 . The re levant passage here is §55 of Ideas I that we quoted above and where Husser l af f irms in a nutshel l that ―[r]eali ty and world are names [ . . . ] for certa in valid unit ies o f sense.‖ 9 J . -F. Lavigne, Husserl et la na issance de la phénoménologie , p. 75.

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because being is always in excess in relation to the kind of beings that we are:

[What] there is and what we, in vir tue of our nature, can think about , are different things, and the la tter may be smaller than the former. […] There are some things that we cannot now conceive but may yet come to understand; and there are probably st i l l others that we lack the capacity to conceive not merely because we are a t too ear ly a stage of historical development , but because of the kind of beings that we are. 10

Nagel is not claiming that some of the things we positively find inconceivable might be true (unicorns or square circles, for instances). He is concerned with aspects of reality that are ―negatively inconceivable to us in the sense that we have and can have no conception of them.‖11 Nagel insists that there may be aspects of reality which we cannot form any conception of. And this isn‘t due to contingent features of the environment or of our historical development, but it has to do with essential features of who we are. We, as human beings, have a distinctive nature which makes us capable of grasping certain features of reality. But at the same time, it might also be the case that we are simply incapable of thinking certain other aspects of reality. In short, Nagel‘s charge is that the world is very likely not completely in reach of our concepts. Whereas the idealists try to cut reality down, so that it fits our concepts, the realists affirm positively the transcendence of reality, a transcendence that manifests itself in the discrepancy between o ur conception of how things are and how things actually are.

6. Husserl‘s Response to these Charges

Husserl‘s response to these charges consists in stressing that it can only make sense to speak of reality‘s transcendence from our perspective . Of course, reality cannot be reduced to my experience of it. Not only is my perspective always essentially limited, but what I take to be the case can always turn out to be wrong. However, affirming this difference does not amount to conceive reality as independent of or inaccessible to my perspective in any absolute sense. On the contrary, Husserl believes that it only makes sense to speak of transcendence insofar as reality is transcendent for us.

If the classical skeptical charge voiced by Nagel, according to which things might well be different than we think they are, is only 10 Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere , Oxford: Oxford Universi ty Press , 91 -2. 11 Ib id. , p. 92.


meaningful from our point of view and does not, as such, straightforwardly prove realism, it can, however, support Husserl‘s thesis for phenomenological idealism, which claims that every su ch hypothesis can only be meaningful from the point of view of an actual ‗I .‘ I take this claim to be the crux of Husserl‘s ‗proof‘ for phenomenological idealism as he worked it out between 1908 and 1920. For lack of time, I won‘t go into the details of th is proof here. Instead, I shall sketch out very generally the principle of the argument and the consequences it entails for the problem I‘m dealing with here. In the end, it might well turn out that, contrary to what has been suggested earlier, Husserl‘s i dealism can indeed make sense of reality.

There are, indeed, at least two set of reasons that speak for this conclusion: the first has to do with Husserl‘s account of subjectivity, and the second with Husserl‘s description of the normative character of experience. I ‘ll conclude by discussing them in turn.

A. The Experiencing Subject The basic principle of Husserl‘s idealism is such that every

factual existing thing demands the coexisten ce of an experiencing subject: ―every thing lies a priori in the environment of an actual I‘ (XXXVI, 114). By that Husserl means that even if it is not currently being experienced, every real object is at least in principle experiencable by an I and lies as such in its horizon. 12 This is one of the possible responses to Nage l‘s charge. And the same holds for real possibil ities , that is, for possible empirical objects of actual experience. Really possible empirical entities require correlation with an actual existing subject (XXXVI, 113ff.). As such, they are clearly different than the merely ideal possibilities of logic or mathematics. For an ideal entity to exist, it simply has to be logically (or ideally) possible (cf. XXXVI, 140). To such entities there

12 At last years‘ conference in Leuven on the occasion of the 150 t h anniversary of Edmund Husserl 's b ir th , Ulr ich Melle‘s explanat ions were to the point when he cla imed that rea l objects ― sind ‗an s ich‘ in dem Sinn, dass ihnen das Erfahrensein außerwesent l ich i st , dass si e s ind oder mindestens sein können, auch wenn [… ] niemand sie er fährt‖ (Hua XXXVI, S . 191 ) . Da sie aber pr inzip ie l l Gegenständ e möglicher Erfahrungen sind, haben sie immer e inen Bezug auf e ine mögliche Subjekt iv ität (Hua I II , S . 100ff . ) . Jede ―Gegenständlichke it [ . . . ] ist , was si e i st , ob erkannt wird oder nicht ‖, aber i st ―doch a ls Gegenständlichkeit mögl icher Erkenntnis [ . .] prinzipie l l erkennbar, auch wenn sie fakt i sch nie erkannt worden ist und erkennbar sein wird‖ (Hua II , S . 25; vgl. Hua XXXII, S . 63) . Quotes are from a st i l l unpublished version of Prof . Melle ‘s Vortrag enti t led ―Husserls Beweis für den transzendentalen Ideal ismus‖.

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is correlated only a possible subject. However, ―a merely logically possible subject is no substrate for real possibilities‖ such as those pointed at by the realists (XXXVI, 139). The world of real being, if it is to be meaningful at all , must be correlated to an actual subject. His basic thought on this is generalized in the following passage: ―Thus it is said that a world could exist even if an ‗I‘ apprehending it did not exist. But this is nonsense. For the truth that ‗a world can exist‘ is nothing without principal justifiability. This justifiability presupposes, however, an actual ‗I‘ that is related to this world in a thetic way‖ (XXXVI, 119) .13

From this vantage point, it seems that the idealistic primacy of subjectivity in the intentional relation between self and world, far from going hand in hand with the alleged prio rity of the possible over the effective, entails, on the contrary, a primacy of the effective, insofar as every factual existing thing as well as every real possibility presuppose the existence an actual, embodied ‗I‘ (cf. XXXVI, 132).

B. The Presumptive Character of Experience Important for our concern is to realize that Husserl‘s account of

subjectivity doesn‘t prevent his idealism from being an idealism of sense. Husserl is well aware that the only consequent idealism is an idealism of sense , since every-thing is always given immediately with meaning. But the reasons why Husserl conceives his idealism as an idealism of sense have nothing to do with a restriction of the field of phenomenological research to the immanent content of experience. Husserl stresses only that what is experienced is always in one way or another given with a specific validity (Geltung). Everything I experience is experienced as something meaningful, even if I cannot reduce what I experience to its meaning for me . This difference is absolutely crucial, for it is supposed to show that Husserl‘s idealistic position is compatible with the realistic point of view.

This compatibility is best seen when one bears in mind that experience is always only presumptive: my experience can alway s disclose unforeseen aspects. 14 Our encounter with the world is full

13 The original reads as follow: ― Also, sagt man, eine Welt könnte exist i eren, ohne dass ein si e er fassendes Ich ex ist i erte , so i st das nonsens. Denn d ie Wahrheit ‚Es kann eine Welt exist i eren‘ ist nichts oh ne prinz ipie l l e Begründbarke it . Diese Begründbarke it aber setzt e in aktuell es Ich voraus, das thet i sch auf diese Welt bezogen ist‖ (XXXVI, 119) . 14 I have learned a great deal from S. Luft on this. See ― From Being to Givenness


of surprises: objects showing themselves differently than we anticipated, people behaving differently than we expected, things turning out different than we imagined. The sense of my expe rience can even turn out to be total non-sense: I may be certain that the building I see every day when I stroll around the university Campus is an old Gothic Church, until one day I discover that—due to budget cuts—the Church has been sold and that what I see is just a cardboard copy of the old facade. According to Husserl‘s idealism, such a discovery can only happen through some new experience that automatically and immediately bestows new permutations of meaning. With every new experience, some new meani ng arises. The intentional structure of consciousness is always unfolding and expanding such that we never escape the realm of meaning.

At first glance, this story seems to support the realistic point of view, inasmuch as the intentional structure of sens e anticipation can always be invalidated by experience. This is certainly true, but there is nothing in there that is incompatible with Husserl‘s phenomenological idealism. Since the meaning -bestowing structure of experience will always continue even if it can be momentarily disturbed by some unforeseen events, any meaningful account of being will always be achieved through a certain apprehension of the sense of being. Therein lies the fundamental insight of Husserl‘s phenomenological idealism. Fundamentally, idealism refers not so much to the intentional structure of sense anticipation as to the fact that the intelligibility of the real (be it actual or possible) can only be grasped by recourse to the intentional structure of conscious experience and the sense it bestows upon reality. It is upon this basis alone that any ―meaning of being‖ can be clarified, even if it cannot be reduced to it.

7. Conclusion

In short, if our access to being is always given, even if only in a

limited way, through the sense of being, idealism must be construed as an idealism of sense, not a metaphysical or ontological idealism. But this is only to return to being more forcefully and affirm the truth of ontology. The phenomenological account of experience as meaning -bestowing describes a process that leads back to transcendent reality as that which consciousness is directed at and answerable to . I must admit that I am not sure I understand why this normative

and Back: Some Remarks on the Meaning of Transcendental Idealism in Kant

and Husserl‖ in International Journal o f Phi losophica l Studies , 1466-4542, Volume 15, Issue 3, 2007 , pp. 367 – 394 .

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structure doesn‘t suffice to allay the worries of the realists. This is , to be sure, what I‘d like to discuss with you now.

Jan Patočka‟s “Care for the Soul” in the “Nihilistic” World Ivan Chvatík (Center for Theoretical Studies, Prague)

―History proper‖ is, for Patočka, the history of human

understanding of the world and of the human situation in the world, insofar as it represents life above the level of simple self -consuming sustenance. As early as the 1930s, Patočka characterizes this movement toward a higher level of life than that of mere animals as an upswing . Prior to this historical upswing, mankind was nearly completely absorbed by providing for sustenance. Even the most primitive people exceed however, in some way, this biological level. The initial transcending can be summed up under the headings of ―rite‖ and ―myth.‖ Patočka connects this mode of transcendence with the pre-historical period. History proper begins only when man explicitly realizes that rising above the mere biological level may be what it means to be human.

History up to the present day comprises, according to Patočka, two major periods. The dividing line is the birth of Christianity. Each of the two great periods is defined by an epoch -making upheaval, or ―conversion,‖ a change in humans‘ understanding of themselves and the world. To rescue us from today‘s nihilistic decline, Patočka suggests nothing less than a new ―gigantic conversion,‖ ―an unheard -of metanoein‖1 that would thus be the third in the line of conversions.

The first conversion can be defined as the passage from pre -historical life in myth to the life of a free human being confronted with the whole of what-is, and called on to prove himself with no support in the traditional, mythical understanding of the world inherited from the past. This passage is a gradual process.

In sacred rites, humans fall prey to an orgiastic exaltation that swallows them up entirely in a demonic way, but at the same time raises them rudimentarily above the level of providing for sheer survival.2 Patočka shows the ambiguity of this orgiastic sacrality. It is an upswing inasmuch as it raises above the level of mer e sustenance, but also a decline, inasmuch as it falls prey to demonic ecstasy.3 Because of this ambiguity, one cannot view the opposition of the sacred and the profane as equivalent to Heidegger‘s opposition between authentic existence and the inauthentic

1 Jan Patočka , Heret ica l Essays in the Philosophy of History , ed. J . Dodd, trans. E. Kohák (Chica go and La Sal le: Open Court) , p. 75. 2 Ibid. , pp. 98-99 . 3 Ibid. , pp. 100-102 .

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decadence of ―the ordinary day in which we can lose ourselves among the things that preoccupy us.‖ 4 Heidegger does not seem to have taken into account this orgiastic -sexual side of human life. Yet precisely this aspect is essential to the structure of the human mode of Being. According to Patočka, history begins when and where the ambiguity of this sphere is first thematized.

All of this means that the orgiastic dimension cannot be overpowered, but must be related to responsibility by grafting onto responsible life .5 Man progressively succeeds in disciplining it through interiorization. In epic and dramatic poetry, in the Olympic games, etc., the orgy is symbolically displayed to the spectator who can thus experience it in his innermost self, in his soul. I t is a sacred theōria through which orgiastic rupture with the everyday is cleansed of demonic destructiveness.

Man then begins asking explicit questions which thematize the problematicity of the human condition. Sacred orgiasm functions as the disciplined moving force of this development. Interiorization progressively gives birth to a new, disciplined man who becomes aware of his individuality, of his freedom. This process is the emergence of the individual soul. Theōria is now extended to encompass the entire universe. Philosophy and politics come into existence, history begins—―as the realization that life hitherto had been a life in decadence and that…there are possibilit ies of living differently‖ 6 than in toil and orgy. This new possibility is the free life in the city-state—the Greek polis.

On leaving myth behind, man is profoundly shaken, put into a position hitherto reserved for the gods, while at the same time realizing that he is not equal to this task. Pre -Socratic philosophers seek to gain anew a solid foothold , no longer on mythical ground, but on the present basis of their own insight. This foundation can be nothing elusive or inconspicuously changing, but must, on the contrary, be perfectly stable, eternal, divine.

Philosophical attempts to secure such a foun dation repeatedly fail. The sophists discover the power of discourse, capable of relativizing anything firm, upholding tyrannical views which lead the polis to its ruin. Socrates too mercilessly analyzes, in a manner similar to that of sophists, everything that had till then been taken for granted, viewed as certain, unchanging and clear. He does not do so, however, in order to relativize it, but rather to show, through dialogue with his fellow citizens, where they are contradicting 4 Ib id. , p. 99. 5 Ib id. 6 Ibid. , p . 102.


themselves in their views on the good conduct of life. Socrates shames those he confutes, but gives no advice. Faithful to his ―non -knowing,‖ he endeavors to lead their soul to tell for itself good from evil. Socrates thus develops a technique of dialogue as serious philosophical reflection known as dialectic—a rigorous technique of assessing the value of human opinions and ideas. These dialogues with his fellow citizens are what he calls ―care for the soul.‖

For Plato and his t ime, Socrates seems not to be enough. He asks the right question, but does not give a positive answer. The question of where to find a firm ground on which to base human reasoning is answered by Plato who reinforces Socrates‘ dialectic as a means of rising above the deceitful world of appearances and politic s to the divine world of unchanging, constant, eternal Forms. The care for the soul now acquires a new meaning. The task of the soul becomes to acquire knowledge of the constant, rational and divine structure of the universe, represented by the consistent system of the Forms, in order to become itself consistent and non-contradictory. Only thus will the soul be able to attain a vision of the Good that is above the Forms. The journey in search of the Good undertaken by Plato‘s care for the soul leads ultimat ely to the immortality of the soul, ―different from the immortality of the mysteries. For the first time in history it is individual immortality, individual because inner, inseparably bound up with its own achievement.‖ 7

The result of the first conversion is thus an individual, free and responsible soul, which chooses its destiny and remains in its heart the bearer of a disciplined sacred orgiasm as an inherent part of itself. Yet, despite its inner life, this soul retains a trait of exteriority: the Platonic philosopher relates to the divine impersonal Good as he would to an external object.

The falsity of the Platonic relation to the Good is revealed by Christianity. The Platonic lover of wisdom assumes erroneously —i.e., ―believes‖ merely—that he is in direct rational contact with his metaphysical mainstay. St. Paul labels Greek philosophy ―foolishness.‖ 8

Christianity is more realistic. It maintains that the divine Good is transcendent and cannot be mastered through human knowledge. Instead of the philosophers‘ chimerical belief, Christianity offers a faith that is not grounded in reason alone. Christianity transforms the impersonal absolute Good into a personal God who is infinitely Beneficent.9 To give faith to this ―good message‖ is to undergo a 7 Ibid. , p . 105. 8 1 Corinthians 1: 20: ―hath not God made fool ish the wisdom of this world?‖ 9 Cf . Jan Patočka , op. c i t . , pp. 106-107.

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―second‖ conversion. Before the infinite Beneficence of God, all men are always already

guilty because they can never, in their finitude, perceive all the circumstances and consequences of their acts. God omniscient sees man in the inmost depth of his being. Man, conscious of being at all times seen ―from within,‖ learns to see himself in a God‘s eye view and becomes far more interiorized than in Platonism. The intimate relation of the always sinning to the infinitely Beneficent gives birth to a new figure of the human individuality. The human soul has now a hidden, secret interiority. Following God‘s view, it sees how it is in itself, per se . In relation to the personal God, the human being becomes a person . The transformation of God into a person and the transformation of man into a person is one and the same transformation.

The problem of overcoming the everyday and the orgiastic — i.e., the task of history proper, taken over by Christianity from Greek Antiquity—remains however unsolved. 10 The new-born person with his deepened individuality is gradually contaminated by individualism, bent solely on playing an important role in society. 11 Reprobate Platonic rationalism remains active, leading to the triumphal march of modern natural science, since nature, in Christianity, has no place in the eschatology of salvation. Nature is given to man to care for and rule over. There is no longer anything divine in nature. It can, therefore, become an object of rational, i.e., mathematical, reconstruction. Henceforth, the sole meanin g of nature is to serve human needs. Denied any further significance, the reality of nature is thus ultimately meaningless.

Ironically, the success of natural science leads to the endeavor to build a similarly successful rational theology. The contradicto riness of this attempt to acquire more geometrico an exact knowledge of God himself is unveiled by Immanuel Kant. Shortly afterwards, Friedrich Nietzsche denounces Christianity as nihilistic. Traditional Christian sacrality no longer fulfills its task of d isciplining the orgiastic, 12 no longer channels and gives meaning to the aspiration to rise above the everyday. Modern technicized society, submitting nature to the more and more profligate maintenance of life, falls prey to boredom, while orgiastic energy finds an outlet in wars, genocides and political witch-hunts.13 There is nothing left of the original upward impulse of the second conversion.

10 Ibid. , p . 110. 11 Cf. ibid. , p. 115. 12 Ibid. , p . 113. 13 Ib id. , pp. 112-113.


In his private lectures and seminars, as well as in his essays from

the 1970s, Patočka raises the question of wha t can be done here. First of all he undertakes an in -depth reflection on Heidegger‘s notion of Gestell. Patočka largely agrees with Heidegger‘s analysis of Gestell as the presently reigning mode of Being, but not with his suggestion as concerns the means o f seeing this era to its end. He does not want to merely ―prepare readiness‖ 14 and wait for salvation from the realm of art. He interprets the domination of Gestell as a conflict within Being: after the collapse of metaphysics, positive science has succeeded in so far-reachingly uncovering what-is that this discovery has completely covered up, concealed what makes it possible, i .e. , man‘s understanding of Being. The human mode of Being is thus mutilated in its very essence. Gestell allows for no understanding of a difference of ranks in Being. There is no longer anything divine in the world; everything, including man, has the same ontological status as a source of power that can be accumulated and used for further accumulation of power. Yet there are signs that the rule of Gestell is not absolute.

One of these signs, according to Patočka, is the fact that we still speak of ―sacrifice.‖ The understanding of a difference of ranks in Being remains present in this concept, though inappropriate in the era of Gestell . In mythical sacrifice, man addressed the divine as a higher rank of Being. Those who lay down their life for their family or the community of which they are members also experience a difference of rank. Such traditional examples of sacrifice, where one existent is offered up and exchanged for another, are however merely ―preliminary.‖ Authentic sacrifice is where one offers up one‘s own life purely as a means of opposing Gestell in its tendency to level everything down to the sustaining of life for life, in order to make it clear that man is fully human only when he rises ab ove this level. Authentic sacrifice opposes the self -evidence of Gestell and insists on its problematicity. Not a sacrifice for any existent, it is, in this sense, sacrificing for nothing. It boils down to simply persevering in the specifically human mode of Being: to live in upswing, to accomplish understanding of Being while opposing violation by Gestell , means more than merely to preserve one‘s existence. Authentic sacrifice works as an example. Showing what it means to be fully human, it is in this sense a sacrifice for appearing

14 Mart in Heidegger , ―Nur noch e in Gott kann uns ret ten ,‖ in Der Spiegel , no. 23, 1976, p. 209. See English transl. by W. Richardson: ―Only a God Can Save Us,‖ in T. Sheehan (ed.) , Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker (Chicago: Precedent Press , 1981) , pp. 45 -67 .

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as such and, hence, for everything and everybody. Patočka‘s idea of authentic sacrifice may appear to be Christian

in inspiration, but Patočka parallels the Christic sacrifice to the death of Socrates. 15 Both sacrificed their lives in order to make apparent that humanity is fully human only in overcoming bondage to life, in proving capable of living above the level of mere sustenance.

At the end of the sixth ―heretical essay,‖ after the nightmarish description of the twentieth century as war, Patočka states explicitly that ―the means by which this state [i .e., war in the form of Force‘s planning for peace] can be overcome is the solidarity of the shaken .‖16 In the context of the foregoing analysis of front -line experiences, concentration camps, and persecution of dissidents, it might seem that Patočka‘s ―shaken‖ are but the lucky few who have survived these various trials and tribulations. I suspect that would be a serious mistake. The shock due to these boundary experiences is merely an extremely acute symptom of another shock which has hit the majority of mankind and been going on for many decades already (having in fact begun more than two hundred years ago) —the shock due to the death of God and the collapse of metaphysics. These two losses are equivalent to the loss of absolute meaning —the dreaded Nietzschean nihil is here. Absolute values, absolute meaning, hope of absolute truth, be it in infinity, hope of absolute justice in the Christian paradise —all of this has vanished with the smoke from the conflagrations lit by the wars of the twentieth century.

With this epochal shock, our situation resembles that of Ancient Greece at the time of the first conversion, and everything indicates that Patočka indeed means to draw this parallel. A similar shock also foreshadowed the birth of Christianity. Christianity is again at issue today, although in an opposite sense. Whereas in the second conversion faith was acquired, here faith is being lost.

The starting-point is thus an epochal shock whi ch Patočka views as leading ultimately to disengagement from the reign of Gestell . This disengagement, to which he ascribes the significance of an epochal turn in the understanding of Being, has been heralded by

15 Cf. Jan Patočka , ―‗Přirozený svět ‘ v meditaci svého autora po třia třiceti letech,‖ in Přirozený svět jako f i losof ický problém , ed. I . Chvat ík and P. Kouba (Praha: Československý spisovatel , 1992) , pp. 249-250. See also French translat ion: ―Méditat ion sur Le monde naturel comme problème phi losophique ,‖ in Le monde nature l et le mouvement de l ‘ exist ence humaine , ed . and trans. E. Abrams (Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Publishers , 1988) , pp. 122-123. 16 Jan Patočka , Heret ica l Essays , p. 134.


authentic sacrifices. It is a turn accomplished , a conversion undergone by ―persons of spirit,‖ i .e., precisely those who are capable of such a sacrifice, ―those who are capable of understanding what life and death are all about, and so what history is about.‖ 17

What, then, is at stake in history, today and in the future? What should the upward move aim at? In a situation where all is void of meaning, it will have to be ―a reaching for meaning.‖ 18 Of course, the relative meaning of providing for survival (life for life), dictated by the Force of the Gestell , has not been lost. But, as Wilhelm Weischedel argues, without an absolute, total meaning, all relative meaning is, in last resort, meaningless. 19 Patočka takes Weischedel‘s analysis seriously and says: Yes, ―man cannot produce the meaning of the whole.‖20 But neither can man truly act without this meaning of the whole. There is an aporia here, a strange deadlock. 21 Let us try however to conceive an aporia of this sort as fundamentally characteristic of the human way of Being. We have seen that this aporia emerges as highly topical precisely in the above -mentioned epochal conversions. It was twice side -tracked by postulating an absolute, transcendent instance. This should not be attempted a third time.

Patočka suggests here that historical man is this aporia. We must understand that this aporia does not mean absurdity, an absolute negation of meaning, but merely problematicity. History is history when man knows about this problematicity and responds to i t. To live above the level of mere life for life means just this. And that is why Patočka says: Those who understand what history is all about should be ―capable of the discipline and self -denial demanded by the stance of unanchoredness in which alone a me aningfulness both absolute and accessible to humans, because problematic, can be realized.‖22 We must expose ourselves to problematicity, ask questions and attempt to answer them: build hypotheses of meaning and act as if this hypothetical meaning were real .

This brings us back to Socrates and his care for the soul. To quest for meaning while at the same time knowing it to be questionable, realizing that any super -temporal, absolute meaning once and for all is utter nonsense—that is precisely what Socrates was doing,

17 Ib id. 18 Ib id. , p. 75. 19 Ib id. , pp. 75-76. 20 Jan Patočka, ―Mají dě jiny nějaký smysl?‖ ( lecture transcript, 1975) , in Sebrané spisy , sv . 3 , Péče o duši I I I (Praha: O IKOYMENH , 2002) , p. 348 . 21 Ibid. , pp. 343-345 . 22 Jan Patočka , Heret ica l Essays , p. 76.

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dialoguing with his fellow citizens and dispelling their illusions as to the value of their naive and dogmatic beliefs. We understand now why Patočka needed to construct a Socrates distinct from Plato, despite the fact that the substance of our k nowledge of Socrates all comes from Plato‘s dialogues. He needed a Socrates who had not yet succumbed to the urge to find or invent an absolute foundation.

What does it mean that the persons of spirit who are today ―at the peak of technoscience‖ are driven to ―take responsibility for meaninglessness‖?23 How are we to understand ―taking responsibility for meaninglessness‖ if not as admitting guilt in the loss of meaning and pledging ourselves to ascertain what should be done to change this situation, so as n ot to repeat the same mistakes. That is precisely what Socrates brings his partners in debate to understand. It is a matter of mobilizing all the powers of the mind in order to search, in a serious and disciplined debate of the soul with itself, or better, with others, for what good can be done in a given situation. This quest for the good in a given situation is precisely Socrates‘ care for the soul. It presupposes no metaphysical contact with the absolute Good. It is a reaching meant to rise above the level of mere sustenance. In this sense, the meaning discovered by the Socratic dialectic is absolute. It is not a relativistic ―all is allowed.‖ And it does not matter that this meaning may, in a new situation, turn out to be false and lead to decline. One h as simply to try and try again.

To be sure, this hermeneutical structure of responsible human decision-making is something we already know from Christianity. There it had the form of sin, forgiveness and repentance. It is familiar to Heidegger too, in Being and Time , under the heading of Wiederholung , ―repetition.‖

And let us not forget the ―self -denial‖24 mentioned by Patočka in relation to the third conversion. To understand this, we must recall what we have already seen concerning the primordial demonic, orgiastic drive, disciplined and preserved throughout the two previous conversions. This is still to be maintained in the third conversion, in the disciplined form of ―self -denial,‖ as a motor or hormone pushing mankind to reach upwards.

So long as humans are open in such a way, respecting others and working with them in solidarity in the hermeneutic circle of sense -bestowing in which things appear (Patočka would say with Heidegger: so long as humans ―let all that is be as and how it is, not

23 Ib id. 24 Ib id.


distorting it, not denying it its own Being and its own nature‖), 25 all is not ―allowed‖ to them, free as they may be. Their essential post -metaphysical freedom, acquired through the shock of the loss of God, is precisely what brings them to decide for solidarity with those who have undergone a similar shock and, thus, to maintain life above the level of mere sustenance and, again and again, to find meaning for it. They maintain life in an upward surge which makes it possible for it to have authentic history. One example o f such a solidarity of the shaken, and consequently of historical action, will surely be, in the future also, the maintenance of an open space for social freedom where people like Socrates and Patočka will not be made to die for political reasons.

In the hermeneutical quest and constitution of meaning, absolute meaning is not necessary for acts to be meaningful. It is fully made up for by the blundering, fumbling, groping solidarity of the shaken.

25 Ib id. , p. 98.

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