The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy 3031341503, 9783031341502

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Contributions to Phenomenology 124

Claudio Majolino

The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy

Contributions to Phenomenology In Cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology Volume 124 Series Editors Nicolas de Warren, Department of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University State College, PA, USA Ted Toadvine, Department of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University State College, PA, USA Editorial Board Lilian Alweiss, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Elizabeth Behnke, Ferndale, WA, USA Rudolf Bernet, Husserl Archive, KU Leuven, Belgium David Carr, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA Chan-Fai Cheung, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong James Dodd, New School University, New York, USA Alfredo Ferrarin, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy Burt Hopkins, University of Lille, Lille, France José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada Kwok-Ying Lau, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong Nam-In Lee, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Dieter Lohmar, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany William R. McKenna, Miami University, Ohio, USA Algis Mickunas, Ohio University, Ohio, USA J. N. Mohanty, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA Dermot Moran, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Junichi Murata, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Thomas Nenon, The University of Memphis, Memphis, USA Gail Soffer, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy Anthony Steinbock, Department of Philosophy Stony Brook, University Stony Brook, New York, USA Shigeru Taguchi, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan Dan Zahavi, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA

Scope The purpose of the series is to serve as a vehicle for the pursuit of phenomenological research across a broad spectrum, including cross-over developments with other fields of inquiry such as the social sciences and cognitive science. Since its establishment in 1987, Contributions to Phenomenology has published more than 100 titles on diverse themes of phenomenological philosophy. In addition to welcoming monographs and collections of papers in established areas of scholarship,the series encourages original work in phenomenology. The breadth and depth of the Series reflects the rich and varied significance of phenomenological thinking for seminal questions of human inquiry as well as the increasingly international reach of phenomenological research. All books to be published in this Series will be fully peer-reviewed before final acceptance. The series is published in cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology.

Claudio Majolino

The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy

Claudio Majolino Department of Philosophy Université de Lille/UMR-CNRS 8163 STL Lille, France

ISSN 0923-9545     ISSN 2215-1915 (electronic) Contributions to Phenomenology ISBN 978-3-031-34149-6    ISBN 978-3-031-34150-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

to Bernard Besnier (1943–2015) in memoriam

Abbreviations of Husserl’s works

The text contains references to the works of Edmund Husserl according to the abbreviations indicated below. The abbreviation “Hua” refers to the edited volumes (I–XLIII) of the Husserliana series (Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke, 1950–2020) issued by Martinus Nijhoff and Springer. Instead, “Hua Mat” and “Hua Dok” designate the sub-series of the Husserliana titled Materialien and Dokumente, while the abbreviation “EU” corresponds to: Husserl, E. (1985). Erfahrung und Urteil. L. Langrebe (ed.). Hamburg: Felix Meiner. The German pagination is sometimes followed by the English pagination, which refers to the corresponding translation. When no English pagination is given, the translation is my own. Lastly, the abbreviation “Ms” indicates the transcriptions of Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts. I am grateful to Prof. Julia Jansen and Dr. Thomas Vongehr, at the Husserl Archives in Leuven for granting permission to quote them.

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Acknowledgements

This book grew in fits and starts over a long period. Chapters 1, 10, and 12 are appearing here for the first time. Earlier versions of the other chapters have already been published, although they have been all revised in the present work. The main claims made in Chapter 2 were originally presented in 2011 at the Husserl Circle at Gonzaga University, Florence, and subsequently discussed at the Second Workshop in Phenomenological Philosophy at Boston University. A first Italian version has been published in 2012 in Carmine Di Martino (ed.), Attualità della fenomenologia (Cosenza: Rubbettino, pp.  95–133). A heavily modified English version appeared in 2014  in the New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (vol. 43, pp. 6–41), followed by a French translation in 2017 in the international journal Phainomenon (vol. 26, pp. 233–79). The text published in this volume is a slightly modified version of the original essay published in English in 2014. Chapter 3 was first a lecture given at the Philosophy seminar at Trinity College Dublin in May 2016 and further developed on four different occasions, namely, at the University of Lisbon in December 2016, at the University of Paris I “La Sorbonne” in 2017, during my invited professorship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2018, and in the course of two lectures at the Husserl Archives of Leuven in 2019. A shorter version was published in 2020 in Phänomenologische Forschungen (vol. 20–21, pp. 85–107). The original text of Chapter 4 was presented in 2013 at Boston College at the International Conference devoted to the centenary of Ideas I. The version published in this volume differs, sometimes substantially, from the one published in Andrea Staiti (ed.), Commentary on Husserl’s ‘Ideas I’ (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015, pp. 35–52). Chapter 5 was presented in 2019 at the International conference Per una storia (e preistoria) dell’ontologia at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and appeared in Hanne Jacobs (ed.), The Husserlian Mind (London: Routledge 2022, pp. 494–508). Chapter 6 is the unmodified version of a talk given at the First Workshop in Phenomenological Philosophy organized at Seattle University in April 2010. It condenses some of the main issues extensively tackled in a longer essay published in ix

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French under the title “La partition du réel. Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience” in Filip Mattens et al. (eds.), Phenomenology, Sciences, Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010, pp.  573–660). Its core ideas were first presented during the four-day conference organized in April 2009 at the Husserl Archives of Leuven on the 150th anniversary of Edmund Husserl’s birth. It appeared in 2016 in Research in Phenomenology (vol. 46, no. 2, pp.  157–183) and was already dedicated to the memory of Bernard Besnier. Chapter 7 grows and expands some ideas presented in 2016 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and developed in an essay published in 2018 in Saulius Geniusas (ed.), Stretching the Limits of Productive Imagination: Studies in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology and Neo-Kantianism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 47–76). A significantly shorter version of Chapter 8 appeared in French under the title “Les ‘essences’ des Recherches logiques” in Revue de métaphysique et de morale (2009, pp.  89–112). The text published in this volume draws from and partially modifies the one published in 2008 in the New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (vol. 8, pp. 17–54). Chapter 9 appeared in Kristian Larsen and Pål Rykkja Gilbert (eds.), Phenomenological Interpretations of Ancient Philosophy (Leyden: Brill 2021, pp. 27–68). Chapter 10, though unpublished, has been widely discussed at the HPhil seminar at the University of Lisbon in 2018 and at the graduate seminar in Ancient philosophy at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 2019. Given the very complex structure of Chapter 11, bits and pieces of its line of thought have been presented on many occasions and in many places over the last eight years. The first overview, however, was publicly discussed in 2016 at the University of Leuven at the international conference Aristotle and Phenomenology: Departures and Returns. It has been published in 2017  in Emiliano Trizio and Daniele De Santis (eds.), Edmund Husserl Between Platonism and Aristotelianism (a special issue of the New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, vol. 15, pp. 164–221). I would like to thank the organizers and the participants of all these events. Colleagues and students at the University of Lille, the research unit UMR-CNRS 8163 STL, and the Summer School for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy at University of Venice “Ca’ Foscari” have been exposed at one time or another to something about every part of the book. I thank them for comments end encouragement. For their kind permission to present these materials again in a new form, I would also like to thank the editors and the publishers of the journals and volumes in which they have been originally published. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers who read the final draft of the manuscript for their valuable advice. I am grateful to Nicolas De Warren and Ted Toadvine for having accepted to publish this book in the series Contributions to Phenomenology. And let me finally thank my few true friends, whom I do not even need to name. They know how much I owe

Acknowledgements

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them. Last but not least, all my gratitude goes to the διόσκουροι of Husserlian phenomenology, Guilherme Riscali the boxer, and Andrea Cimino the horse breaker (Iliad, III, 237). Without their precious help, this book would have never reached its actual shape. Rome, November 2021

Contents

Part I Introduction 1

The Invention of Infinity?

On Some Provisional Questions����������������������������������������������������������������������    3 1 A Wise Advice and Two Attempts����������������������������������������������������    3 2 Options����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    6 3 Sidesteps ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   10 4 Plan and Divisions����������������������������������������������������������������������������   13 Part II Openings 2

Multiplicity, Manifolds and Varieties of Constitution

A Manifesto������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   21 1 A Manifesto?������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   21 2 Constitution and Manifolds��������������������������������������������������������������   24 3 The Limits of Constitution?��������������������������������������������������������������   36 4 Coda��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   45 3

The Reach of Attitudes

On What Matters ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   47 1 A Matter of Attitudes������������������������������������������������������������������������   47 2 Dismissive Attitudes ������������������������������������������������������������������������   48 3 Global Acts and Unities of Saliency ������������������������������������������������   52 4 From Unities of Saliency to Varieties of Attitudes����������������������������   57 5 Lasting Attitudes ������������������������������������������������������������������������������   61 6 The Full Reach of Attitudes��������������������������������������������������������������   66

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Part III Maps 4  Individuum and Region of Being On the Unifying Principle of a “Headless” Ontology ����������������������������������   77 1 Two Accounts of Individuality?��������������������������������������������������������   77 2 From Individual Objects to “Their” Essences����������������������������������   80 3 From Essences to εἴδη����������������������������������������������������������������������   85 4 From εἴδη to Regions������������������������������������������������������������������������   87 5 Headless Ontologies and Transcendental Phenomenology��������������   90 5

Mapping Ontology and Its Boundaries

On a Path����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   93 1 Problems and Maps��������������������������������������������������������������������������   93 2 Enter Aristotle ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   94 3 Meanings of Being����������������������������������������������������������������������������   96 4 First Delimitation: Hodological vs. Metaphysical Ontology������������  100 5 Second Delimitation: A Posteriori vs. A Priori Ontology����������������  103 6 Third Delimitation: A Priori Formal vs. A Priori Metaphysical Ontology��������������������������������������������������������������������  106 7 Out of the Map����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 Part IV Worlds and Unworlds 6

Until the End of the World

On Eidetic Variation and Absolute Being of Consciousness������������������������  113 1 The End of the World?����������������������������������������������������������������������  113 2 The Absolute ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  116 3 Essences��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  118 4 Phantasy and Language��������������������������������������������������������������������  122 5 Worlds ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  125 6 Unworlds������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  129 7 Coda��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  132 7

Within and Beyond Productive Imagination

On How Phantasy Makes Its Way Into Phenomenology������������������������������  135 1 The Empirical Core��������������������������������������������������������������������������  135 2 The Transcendental Turn������������������������������������������������������������������  137 3 The First Way to Phenomenology����������������������������������������������������  141 4 Following the Lead ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  145 5 The Second Way to Phenomenology������������������������������������������������  149 6 On Destructive Imagination and Its Virtues��������������������������������������  154 7 Coda��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  158

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Part V Paths 8

The Vicissitudes of the Improper

On the Way to the Categories ������������������������������������������������������������������������  161 1 Heidegger’s Smile����������������������������������������������������������������������������  161 2 The Manifold Meanings of Being—That is to Say: Two������������������  163 3 From Ontology to Psychology and Back������������������������������������������  167 4 The Manifold Meanings of Number ������������������������������������������������  174 5 Rise and Fall of Proper Representations ������������������������������������������  177 6 The Solution Through the Form: Multiplicity and Variation������������  182 7 A Matter of Forms����������������������������������������������������������������������������  184 8 After Homonymy: Being or Multiplicity?����������������������������������������  191 9

Back to the Meanings Themselves

On Phenomenology and the Stoic Doctrine of the Lekton.��������������������������  195 1 Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  195 2 Sartre and the Reality of Nothingness����������������������������������������������  197 3 Constructing the Noema/Lekton��������������������������������������������������������  199 4 Deleuze and the Stoic Challenge to Plato and Aristotle ������������������  205 5 One Missed Encounter: Husserl on Aristotle’s Ontology and Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas������������������������������������������������������������  206 6 Deleuze and the Stoic Logic of Sense����������������������������������������������  209 7 Another Missed Encounter: Husserl on Propositional Meanings and States of Affairs ��������������������������������������������������������  213 8 Constructing the Noema/Lekton (Again)������������������������������������������  215 9 Husserl’s Two Senses of “Sense”������������������������������������������������������  218 10 Husserl and the Lekton: Between Formal Logic and Formal Ontology ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  220 11 Coda��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  225 Part VI Infinity 10 Plato’s Light and Gorgias’s Shadow On the Manifold “Beginnings” of Philosophy ����������������������������������������������  229 1 Beginnings��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  229 1.1 Introduction: Blind Spots, Missing Footnotes, and Estranged Fathers ������������������������������������������������������  229 1.2 The Manifold Beginnings of Philosophy��������������������������  231 1.3 The First Beginning����������������������������������������������������������  232 1.4 The “Pre-Socratic” Paradise and Its Fall��������������������������  234 1.5 The Rise of the Sophist ����������������������������������������������������  236 1.6 The Second Beginning������������������������������������������������������  238 1.7 The Third Beginning��������������������������������������������������������  240 1.8 The Third Beginning—A Greek Prequel?������������������������  243

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2 On Non-Being��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  245 2.1 Introducing Gorgias����������������������������������������������������������  245 2.2 Figuring Gorgias ��������������������������������������������������������������  247 2.3 Unfolding Gorgias’s Second Argument����������������������������  250 3 A Playful Transcendentalism����������������������������������������������������������  254 3.1 Parmenides and the First Beginning ��������������������������������  254 3.2 Plato and the Second Beginning ��������������������������������������  255 3.3 Protagoras and the Anthropological Variety of Sophistry����������������������������������������������������������������������  257 3.4 The Right Version (I). Enlarging the Correlation: Husserl and the Pseudo-Aristotle��������������������������������������  259 3.5 The Right Version (II). All About Rational Certainty: Husserl and Sextus������������������������������������������������������������  262 3.6 How About Plato? ������������������������������������������������������������  264 3.7 Plato Finally Meets Gorgias—A New θαυμάζειν������������  267 11 The Infinite Academy On How to Be a Platonist with Some (Aristotelian?) Help��������������������������  271 1 A Cliché������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  271 1.1 Cats and Dogs ������������������������������������������������������������������  271 1.2 What This Is Not About����������������������������������������������������  272 2 A Mosaic����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  273 2.1 Plato’s Extended Academy ����������������������������������������������  273 2.2 The Philosophical Attitude������������������������������������������������  275 2.3 The Sophistic Attitude������������������������������������������������������  276 2.4 The Socratic Attitude��������������������������������������������������������  277 2.5 The Platonic Attitude��������������������������������������������������������  278 2.6 The Aristotelian Attitude��������������������������������������������������  281 2.7 The Cartesian Attitude������������������������������������������������������  283 2.8 Building the Academy������������������������������������������������������  286 3 A Bunch of Distortions ������������������������������������������������������������������  287 3.1 Boētheia: The Helpful Attitude ����������������������������������������  287 3.2 Objections ������������������������������������������������������������������������  290 3.3 Distortions������������������������������������������������������������������������  291 3.4 Fruitful Distortions�����������������������������������������������������������  292 3.5 A Middle-Platonist Pattern of Distortion��������������������������  292 3.6 Antiochus��������������������������������������������������������������������������  294 3.7 Atticus ������������������������������������������������������������������������������  296 3.8 Aristocles��������������������������������������������������������������������������  297 3.9 Plutarch ����������������������������������������������������������������������������  297 3.10 Heuristic Disclaimer ��������������������������������������������������������  299 4 A Matter of Principles (I): εἶδος����������������������������������������������������  300 4.1 Building the Heuristic Filter ��������������������������������������������  300 4.2 The Stoic Attitude ������������������������������������������������������������  302 4.3 Stoic Semantics����������������������������������������������������������������  303

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4.4 Aristotelian Metaphysics��������������������������������������������������  304 4.5 Aristotelian Ontology��������������������������������������������������������  305 4.6 Stoic Ontology������������������������������������������������������������������  307 4.7 The Stoic Help������������������������������������������������������������������  309 4.8 The Last Word of Ontology����������������������������������������������  310 4.9 Two Senses of “Principle”������������������������������������������������  312 5 A Matter of Principles (II): ἀρχή����������������������������������������������������  314 5.1 Roots ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  314 5.2 Unity and Multiplicity������������������������������������������������������  315 5.3 Three Senses of “Thing”��������������������������������������������������  317 5.4 The One-Many Constitution of Subjectivity, Proper and Alien ��������������������������������������������������������������  318 5.5 The One-Many Constitution in All Its Generality������������  320 5.6 The One-Many Constitution of the Transcendental Subjectivity Itself��������������������������������������������������������������  322 5.7 Back to Worlds and Non-Worlds��������������������������������������  323 6 Coda������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  324 6.1 The Migration of the One-Many��������������������������������������  324 6.2 Towards the Infinite Academy������������������������������������������  327 6.3 Away from the School of Athens��������������������������������������  328 Part VII Conclusion 12 The Invention of Infinity On a Tentative Answer������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  333 1 Troubles������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  333 2 Dead Ends ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  336 3 Constellations����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  339 4 Scholars������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  344 5 Adumbrations����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  347 6 Apperceptions (I)����������������������������������������������������������������������������  355 7 Apperceptions (II)��������������������������������������������������������������������������  359 8 Platonisms ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  363 9 Motivations ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  367 References ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  377 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  389

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Invention of Infinity? On Some Provisional Questions

This is not what the city is made of, but of relations between the measures of its space and the events of its past. Italo Calvino

1 A Wise Advice and Two Attempts Before being a saint, Thomas Aquinas was a skillful professor and an expert reader. Indeed, according to some (though this is definitely a matter of dispute), he was canonized as a saint precisely because he was a skillful professor and an expert reader—two talents which today, in the age of PowerPoint teaching and scholarship with searchable PDFs, would hardly enable anyone to land a tenured position. Oblivious to all that, Aquinas, in his commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, went on to provide his clueless Parisian students with a lesson in (un)creative writing, teaching them “the three things that should be done in any introduction”: first, to gain the reader’s good will; secondly, to dispose him to learn; thirdly, to win his attention. The first goal one achieves by showing the reader the value of the knowledge in question; the second by explaining the plan and divisions of the treatise; the third by warning him of its difficulties. And all this Aristotle does here. (In De An. I, 1 lectio 1)

Being even more clueless than most students of Aquinas, I first thought it appropriate to stick to the saint’s advice and write the introduction to this volume according to his precepts. The first attempt, however, failed miserably—and here is why. Gain the reader’s good will by showing him the value of the research, Aquinas says. Though extremely clear, this first task soon appeared to me as hard as it could be. In a nutshell, this book deals with Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in its complex relationship to the history of philosophy, and its main thesis is that a better understanding of this complex relationship leads, both, to a rich and fruitful reading of the philosophers of the past and to an original reassessment of Husserl’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_1

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philosophical project as a whole. That being said, why should any contemporary reader consider such an agenda to be philosophically valuable? One might be tempted to say that the problem of the relation between philosophy and the history of philosophy is one of the most fundamental problems of philosophy itself—but this would not be of much help. Having rejected all forms of philosophia perennis and disavowed the very idea of “fundamental philosophical questions,” it is rather unlikely that any contemporary reader interested in phenomenology would lend his or her “good will” to such an outdated undertaking. Perhaps, one might have a better chance by arguing that this book discusses one of the most controversial issues in contemporary research—but that would be a blatant falsehood. The relationship between transcendental phenomenology and the history of philosophy is, in fact, neither a “hot topic” in recent philosophical debates nor an actual “desideratum” of contemporary research. Quite the contrary. When it comes to this very specific topic, Husserl scholars generally exhibit two quite distinct, though by no means conflicting tendencies. (1) The first one is characterized by a widespread distrust, if not brazen contempt, for the history of philosophy as such. If phenomenology famously assumes the duty to return to “the things themselves,” it should also get as far away as possible from “the books themselves.” Consequently, the role of the history of philosophy appears marginal or irrelevant to the very activity of the phenomenologist, whose main task is to provide sound and successful phenomenological “descriptions.” (2) The second tendency is based on the tacit assumption that, given Husserl’s ignorance of the philosophical tradition—due mainly to his heavily scientific-mathematical background and rationalistic stance—, the relationship of transcendental phenomenology to the history of philosophy is either naïve and uncritical or uninteresting. The former tendency is shared in both analytic and continental circles, or at least in those circles where the battle-cry “do phenomenology instead of scholarship!” has still some apeal, whereas the value of history is mostly anecdotic. The latter tendency is more common among hermeneutical and post-modernist readers, for whom the history of philosophy matters a great deal, whereas Husserl’s idea of “philosophy as a rigorous science” does not matter at all. The first group of readers rarely advances sophisticated arguments in support of its main claims, and insists mainly on the “soundness” and “interest” of this or that Husserlian tenet. Readers of the second group justify their position in various ways. Some end up relying on the thesis, inspired by Heidegger, that the history of Western philosophy, to which Husserl fully belongs, is onto-theological all the way through, and only needs to be deconstructed. Others prefer to recall Paul Ricœur’s rejection of Husserl’s “philosophical reduction,” whose impossible and preposterous goal is to bracket all reference to the philosophical tradition. In any case, it is almost certain that readers of both groups would be equally skeptical about the philosophical relevance of any inquiry devoted to Husserl and the history of philosophy. Their “good will” would therefore be extremely difficult to gain in the limited space of an introduction. The second task set by Aquinas—disposing the reader to learn by explaining the plan and the divisions of the treatise—should have been, at least at first glance, easier to accomplish. In addition to the introduction and the conclusion, the present

1  A Wise Advice and Two Attempts

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volume is divided into five uneven parts, each of which presents Husserl’s phenomenology either as an experimental field in which concepts and patterns drawn from the history of philosophy are reenacted, displaced and modified, or as a vantage point to observe some key moments in the history of philosophy from a different angle. The first part lays the groundwork for the entire investigation, presenting the four operative concepts necessary to unfold Husserl’s overall project and make sense of its relation to the history of philosophy: “multiplicity,” “manifold,” “constitution,” and “attitude.” The second part elaborates some details of Husserl’s appropriation of Aristotle with regard to the problem of ontology and the different meanings of “being.” The third part dwells on the particular way in which Husserl relates the concepts of “world” and “phantasy” and explores its originality with respect to Descartes, Wolff, and Kant. The fourth part shows two ways in which Husserl took up and modified Aristotelian and Stoic elements and included them in his own ontology and logic. The fifth part is entirely devoted to Husserl’s very complex reading of Plato and the history of philosophy as a whole. It also explains the reasons why the four concepts introduced in the first part were so relevant. Then again, having been written over a period of almost fifteen years, the chapters in this volume could still give the impression of a mere collection of essays. Granted, alle these studies have something in common. They single out and focus upon certain notions (such as Plato’s “εἶδος;” Aristotle’s “τόδε τι;” the Stoic “λέκτον”), distinctions (such as the Aristotelian-Scholastic division between “being in the sense of truth” and “being in the sense of the categories;” the Platonic pair of principles of the “one” and the “many;” Wolff’s and Kant’s difference between ­“facultas imaginandi” and “facultas fingendi”), conceptual devices (such as the Platonic-Aristotelian “unity πρὸς ἕν;”) and entire philosophical claims (such as Gorgias’ statement that “even if something is, it is unknowable;” Aristotle’s famous “being is said in many ways;” Descartes’s less famous “nulla re indiget ad existendum”) drawn from the philosophical tradition. And they also show how these conceptual clusters have been variously accomodated and revised by Husserl, contributing to the constitution of the technical instrumentarium of his transcendental phenomenology. But no contemporary reader is likely to see in this apparently random list anything more than a set of isolated moments in which Husserl allows himself—explicitly or implicitly—to refer to some ancient, medieval or modern author, possibly indulging in some bookish quotation in Greek or in Latin. What is still missing, and what could turn such a seemingly arbitrary list into a convincing plan, as required by Aquinas’s second rule for a good introduction, is a less extrinsic, more structural guiding thread. A guiding thread that could be recognized through all the various essays that make up this volume, but that can hardly be indicated in its introduction. At this point, having failed to gain the reader’s good will and dispose him or her to learn, the very idea of engaging in the third task, i.e., addressing the difficulties of the research project underlying this book, would have sounded utterly suicidal. After this first failed attempt, I told myself that it would be better to drop Aquinas’ suggestions and write a less demanding, merely factual introduction. But after giving it some thought, it appeared to me that this was still the best way to proceed, at least in my case. One should simply change the order of factors, I thought, and start

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at the end. Aquinas certainly pointed out the order in which the “three things that should be done in every introduction” have to be done. But one could always pretend that he does not and begin this introduction by immediately mentioning the difficulties one faces in dealing with the relationship between Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and the history of philosophy. Indeed, how can one briefly highlight the significance of a seemingly “untimely” study, if not by showing the difficulties it encounters? How can one gesture towards the structural unity of a series of seemingly unrelated essays, if not by showing that the intrinsic difficulties they face are somehow the same? Hence the idea of a second attempt. In the remainder of this introduction, I will thus reverse the order of Aquinas’s three rules and begin precisely with the last one, drawing attention to the complexities involved in Husserl’s approach to the history of philosophy. This reversal should allow me to address, at least preliminarily, some of the main concerns that might be expressed by a number of contemporary reluctant readers; to outline some of the most relevant assumptions that run through the different chapters of this volume; and to indicate some aspects of the structural guiding thread that brings them together under the somehow allusive title of “invention of infinity”. All other unresolved questions concerning to the value and unity of the studies gathered in this volume will be adressed in the Conclusion, which ideally continues the discussion initiated in this Introduction. Let me now begin again, but this time from the end.

2 Options In one of his late manuscripts, Husserl formulates, quite straightforwardly, a question that is as daunting as it is simple: “Why does the philosopher need the history of philosophy?” (Hua VI, p.  495).1 Husserl’s answer, however, far from being straightforward, involves a wide range of technical and extremely intricate concepts, drawn from his mature reflection on transcendental phenomenology and historicity. Philosophy, Husserl says, is the one science whose infinite task is to “outline the logos of the world” (Hua VI, p. 492); whose theme is none other than the “all of the world” (das Weltall) (Hua VI, p. 494); and whose universality must be understood in a twofold sense: as referring both to the “universals of the world” and to “whatever is in the world” (Hua VI, p. 497). But the world, Husserl continues, “is each time the present world” and unfolds in a “streaming present which is the present of its universally streaming world-past and world-future,” i.e., “the being of the world is being in the modality of time” (Das Sein der Welt ist zeitmodales Sein) (Hua VI, p. 494). If this is correct, philosophy cannot be bound only to the present time. Since

 The manuscript, probably written in 1934, has been published by Walter Biemel as Appendix XXV to §73 of the Krisis. The text has not been included in David Carr’s English translation. 1

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the world as it is and as it is known to be in the present is only a “finite section of the world itself,” philosophy too must possess, “in its time and in every time, an open and undetermined horizon of unasked or, at least, still undeveloped questions” (Hua VI, p.  493)—a “horizon of historicity.” Such a horizon is both “infinitely open” to a wide range of possible future developments and retrospectively open to the past. And although, strictly speaking, it is “not infinite,” this backward reference to an open past necessarily includes all the virtual “horizons of infinity” from which the actual present—with its own horizons—has drawn its current concepts, methods, problems, tasks and results, by “dumping” (fallen lassen) other available concepts, methods, problems, tasks and results, because of their withered motivational force (Hua VI, pp. 493–4). So why does the philosopher need the history of philosophy? Husserl’s answer, at least at first sight, is threefold. To begin with, since the philosopher acts in the present, the history of philosophy is needed to renew and strenghten the awareness of the infinite task assigned to him or her. And he or she needs to do so, among other reasons, to prevent philosophy from degenerating into a finite exercise, a socially and institutionally recognized discipline taught in universities and practiced at conferences—a theoretical routine whose evidence is based solely on the style of its technical procedures and whose value depends only on its “practical” results (philosophy is somehow “useful”!) or “emotional” outcomes (philosophy is “interesting” or “inspiring”!) (Hua VI, p. 496). Secondly, philosophy also needs the history of philosophy because it is a science that, by looking into the past, uncovers the “different directions of explication” involved in all the manifold horizons that were previously unexplored (Hua VI, p. 498). Each generation of philosophers or scientists, Husserl says, is “consciously intertwined with the previous ones in a distinctive way” (in besonders bewusstem Konnex), not only by “practicing documented criticism,” “endorsing corrections,” “unveiling one-sided views,” but also by “opening up horizons of problems that must be equally taken into account and that have hitherto been neglected” (mitzurechnender aber vordem unbeachteter Problemhorizonte) or by “unfolding all sorts of indeterminatedness, obscurity, ambiguity” and, as a result, crafting new, “sharper concepts and new working problems” (Hua VI, p. 491). This retrospective operation allows the philosopher to identify the unsuspected resources of concepts, methods or problems that have been “dumped” by the contingent delimitation of the horizons of infinity resulting in the actual philosophy of the present. Last but not least, philosophy needs the history of philosophy to engage with the question of its own future. Since the world “as such” or “as it is in itself” is “given only horizontally,” and since a philosophical science of the world “can only have the cognitive sense of an infinite idea,” the latter cannot but be understood as the quest for something identical in its many subjective aspects and constantly unfolding intentions, partly determined and partly “to be determined,” as the quest for something whose “being can only turn into a cognitive theme through a distinctive methodical process of inductive anticipatory certainties, in connection with a methodical process of recognizing the systematic structure of what is implicated in the horizon (which is precisely what can be induced and proven inductively)” (Hua

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VI, p. 498). The absolute “world-in-itself,” as Husserl puts it, is therefore the infinite idea whose original sense lies in the horizonal-structure of the relative “world-of-­ life” (Lebenswelt) (Hua VI, p.  499). Past philosophers, however, have variously overlooked such “infinitization” (Verunendlichung) of the being of the world. They dogmatically and all too quickly “jumped” (hineinspringen), Husserl says, from the contempt for the many relative-subjective worlds, to the celebration of the one absolute-­objective world (Hua VI, p.  499). As a result, relativists and absolutists were left facing each other, time and again. Philosophy has thus been stuck in the false alternative between the dogmatism of those who consider the science of the world as a finite task, the skepticism of those who deem it an impossible task, and the indifference of working scientists who are convinced that it is an irrelevant or a meaningless task. That is why, as Husserl emphasizes, “philosophy is in danger, i.e., its future is in danger” (Hua VI, p. 509); and the only way to understand the reasons for this threat—to understand the reasons for this seemingly inescapable infinity-­ threatening objective “haste”—is to delve into the history of philosophy itself and investigate not the content of this or that historical concept, method or problem, but their driving motivations. This is what Husserl says in his later texts about the philosophical need for the history of philosophy. Now, what should a contemporary reader make of such a complex and rather demanding account? The options are numerous, and each has its own difficulties, advantages and disadvantages. (1) One could, for example, step outside Husserl’s idiosyncratic narrative and ask whether his threefold answer has any general interest, i.e. whether it is able to tell us anything relevant about what we believe to be the relationship between philosophy and history of philosophy. (2) One could still look at Husserl’s answers from the outside, as it were, turn them into an object of discussion per se, and scrutinize their theoretical consistency and problematic assumptions. (3) But one could also simply want to determine whether Husserl has actually practiced what he preaches, i.e. whether he effectively built his own phenomenology by exploring the “previously unexplored horizons” and the “different directions of explication” of past philosophy. In this, the difficult task would be to identify such “horizons” and see how they were actualy “explored” by Husserl. (4) And one could even want to weigh the outcomes of such “explorations” and determine whether and to what extent they are of any relevance to understanding Husserl’s philosophical project as a whole. (5) One might eventually decide to suspend, both, the significance of Husserl’s narrative and the validity of its grounding assumptions, and still be interested in knowing whether any of his “explorations” could be of interest to a historian of philosophy who is unwilling to buy the whole phenomenological-transcendental package, as it were. ad (1). The degree of difficulty of the first option is close to zero. Turning Husserl’s extremely complex take on the philosophical necessity of the history of philosophy into an opportunity to freely “discuss about”, “reflect upon” or “fertilize” our contemporary understanding of philosophy and its history is a rather comfortable and safe exercise.

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ad (2). The second option, by contrast, is the most difficult. It requires a comprehensive assessment not only of some particular aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology but also, and more importantly, of the whole of his philosophy and its founding principles. As we have seen, Husserl’s three answers rest on a series of extremely demanding claims (that philosophy is the universal science of the all of the world; that its task is infinite; that the horizon-structure of consciousness is correlated to the horizontal-structure of the world; that the world-in-itself is articulated to the idealization of the world-of-life etc.). All these statements belong to the innermost core of the transcendental-phenomenological project as outlined in Husserl’s late manuscripts. Assessing Husserl’s view on the intertwinement between philosophy and its history is thus tantamount as assessing the entirety of his pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. ad (3) and (4). The following options are, at the same time, much more complex than the former and far less daunting than the latter. This time, instead of immediately delving into Husserl’s demanding philosophical choices and their underlying phenomenological principles, one decides to take them at face value and rather focus on the effects of those choices and the consequences of those principles. By choosing this path, there is no need to commit oneself—at least preliminarily and up to a certain point—to the most difficult tenets of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, or to take a stance with respect to the overwhelming presuppositions of his account of philosophy. While tentatively assuming the validity of the latter’s assumptions, one is simply asked to follow Husserl as he experiences the philosophical need for the history of philosophy, to investigate the reasons for and the modalities of such historical-philosophical engagement, to measure the extent to which such confrontation becomes decisive in shaping Husserl’s phenomenology itself, both locally and globally. Additionally, one migh even ask whether the outcomes of Husserl’s reading of past philosophers—along with his conceptual innovations made possible on the basis of such readings—can be appreciated by historians of philosophy who are not ready to endorse his transcendental project. Be that as it may, the difficulties associated with these options are certainly challenging, but they are clearly different from those required by the second option. ad (5). If the above is correct, the last option ends up taking two very different directions. A historian of philosophy who is not phenomenologically informed might be interested only in knowing what Husserl says about this or that philosopher of the past, how he (mis)appropriates certain ancient, medieval or modern concepts, methods, problems etc., and whether his claims or (mis)appropriations are in any way original. In this case, the difficulties would be limited to the possibility of recognizing in Husserl—albeit in a modified form—something that the historian of philosophy already knows. And since this recognition might be hampered by Husserl’s difficult conceptuality, historians of philosophy who follow this first direction—not unlike those contemporary readers who have followed the first option—would simply have to learn that minimum of phenomenology that is necessary to reach their minimal goal. But the history of the twentieth century has also shown exemples of genuine historians of philosophy who followed an

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entirely different direction. Historians of philosophy who were interested in learning not so much what the philosopher Edmund Husserl thought or did with respect to the philosophical tradition, but rather how his transcendental-­ phenomenological account of philosophy—grounded on extremely technical concepts such as “world”, “horizon”, “past”, “consciousness”, “philosophy as infinite task” etc.—could actually help unveil aspects of the history of philosophy that would otherwise have gone completely unnoticed.2 In the latter case, the difficulties involved in following the fifth option would be exactly the same as those involved in the fourth.

3 Sidesteps It is now safe to assume that most reluctant readers, whose objections had sabotaged my first attempt to follow Aquinas’s instructions for a good introduction, would presumably lean toward option (1) or (2). As for the objections coming from the first option, most regrettably, I do not have much to say. If Husserl’s corpus is nothing more than an archive from which one can cherry pick words, phases or general claims and talk about something else—something “present”—this book is indeed of no interest.3 The matter is different for the objections that come from the second option. If many readers are perhaps unwilling to lend their good will to a book devoted to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and the history of philosophy, it is probably because of their more or less well-founded doubts about the very principles of transcendental phenomenology itself and its ability to deal with history in general and the history of philosophy in particular. The different sections of the present study, however, follow precisely options (3)–(4) and (5) and deliberately sidestep the need for delving into a discussion of the principles of Husserl’s transcendental account of the history of philosophy as such. More specifically, from a strictly methodological standpoint, the circumvention proposed in this book consists in replacing at least preliminarily Husserl’s quite daunting question “why does the philosopher need the history of philosophy?”—whose understanding engages, as we have seen, the whole of Husserls philosophical project—with two, less intimidating, though by no means easier questions, namely, 1. “Why, when and how does Husserl need the history of philosophy?”; 2. “Why should any historian of philosophy care about Husserl’s phenomenology?” One of the advantages of this change of strategy is, among others, to remove a ­textual limitation and allow us to engage with a much larger corpus. Rather than  A remarkable example of a historian of ancient philosophy who fits this description is Julius Stenzel, who will be discussed in the concluding chapter of this volume. 3  I will leave it to J. E. H. Smith’s (2016) penetrating critiques to argue against this form of “our society’s radical and unprecedented presentism”. 2

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simply discussing what Husserl said in his later manuscripts about the relationship between philosophy and the history of philosophy, it is more promising to begin by examining what Husserl did over a broader timespan—from the early Philosophy of Arithmetic to the late Krisis—with the history of philosophy, while he was busy developing phenomenology and unfolding his philosophical project. In doing so, one does not have to presuppose the technicality of Husserl’s whole mature phenomenology to question the philosophical role of the history of philosophy for philosophy. Nor it is necessary to dwell, right from the outset, on the exact terms in which the later Husserl thematizes the “philosophical need for the history of philosophy”. One could rather try to see, in vivo, how the history of philosophy played an effective role in shaping Husserl’s distinctive conceptuality and his ambitious phenomenology-based philosophy. As soon as these preliminary sidesteps are taken—replacing Husserl’s daunting question with two more manageable ones, removing the textual limit set by the Krisis and broadening the field of the inquiry—two main structural lines of questioning come to the fore. The first is fully internal to Husserl’s phenomenology and requires a thorough study of his corpus of published and unpublished materials. Its main objective is to single out some “episodes” of Husserl’s philosophical career in which the relationship with the history of philosophy (ancient, medieval and modern) seems to be relevant to discover new aspects of his transcendental project. Accordingly, in the chapters of this book, I will refrain from suggesting any extrinsic comparison between Husserl and this or that philosopher of the past. I will also refrain from making any extrinsic list of passages in which Husserl simply mentions or quotes, say, Plato, Aristotle or Descartes. Instead, the selected “episodes” have been chosen for a specific purpose, namely their relevance for revealing some still neglected and yet significant aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. Each of them tracks a specific moment when Husserl, elaborating the concepts, methods and problems of transcendental phenomenology and becoming increasingly aware of the latter’s intimate resources, confronted the history of philosophy. If anything, the study of these “episodes,” in which Husserl appears through the prism of the history of philosophy, is intended to provide a new image of Husserl’s phenomenology, quite different from the ones currently discussed in the literature. The second line of questioning looks at Husserl’s conceptuality slightly from afar, so as to detect the various ways in which it—willingly or unwillingly, passively or actively—leans on, takes over, readjusts, displaces, modifies, distorts, reinterprets or creatively reshapes concepts, methods and problems already at work in the philosophical tradition. Consequently, I will not indulge in the sterile practice of grading Husserl’s paper, so to speak, and praise myself in correcting his “flawed”, “faulty”, “inaccurate” or “biased” interpretation of such and such a concept or so and so an author of the past. Unlike Brentano, Husserl never provided something like a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle’s De Anima or Metaphysics. Husserl was nothing like Natorp, whose groundbreaking account of Plato is based on a thorough reading of almost every single Platonic dialogue. Husserl was even further removed from Heidegger, who not only relentlessly commented on the major texts

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of the philosophical tradition, from Plato’s Republic to Aristotle’s Metaphysics or Kant’s first Critique, but also developed a very specific reading protocol for “listenting”, as he says, to the “unspoken” voices of these thinkers and unveiling their secret understanding of being. For Husserl, the philosopher is more like an activist than a reader—“I speak as an engaged philosopher” (als beteiligter Philosoph)” (Hua VI, p.  492), he says—, engaged in the same cause as the authors he reads. Thus, it is only to the extent that they are embedded within Husserl’s active philosophical engagement that bits and pieces of Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Metaphysics or Kant’s first Critique will show us all their significance. Only a reader who is not an actively engaged philosopher would be willing to discard, for instance, Plotinus’s most original claims because of the “flawed” or “biased” reading of the Platonic dialogues they promote.4 And, in fact, this is also something that no good historian of philosophy would be willing to do. No historian who were interested, say, in the long-term history of Platonism, could afford neglecting Carneades’s skeptical leanings or Numenius’s overly mystical speculations because of the “inaccurate” image of Plato they foster. For this is exactly what historians of Platonism do: to put it in Husserl’s terms, they include such “distortions” in the “different directions of explication” belonging to the unexplored horizons of Plato’s dialogues. In short, the first line of questioning highlights what Husserl’s confrontations with the history of philosophy did for the development of phenomenology; the second shows how such confrontation actually worked, that is, it studies the operations, borrowings and distortions by means of which the history of philosophy became relevant for Husserl’s phenomenology. Conversely, it also shows how Husserl’s phenomenology might be relevant to historians of philosophy. Following these lines of questioning, the reader of the present volume will thus be called to examin certain phenomenologically relevant “episodes” in the history of philosophy (such as Plato’s account of the correlation between true knowledge and true being; the more generally “Platonic” theory of the principles of unity and multiplicity; the Aristotelian-scholastic way of dealing with the question of the manifold senses of Being; Aristotle’s account of substance as τόδε τι; the Stoic concept of λέκτον and its place between formal theory of meanings and formal ontology; Descartes’s reshaping of Augustin’s inward turn and the cartesian “destruction of the world;” the post-Leibnizian debate between Wolff and Kant on the function of productive imagination; the “proto-transcendentalism” of Gorgias’s treatise On Non-Being). Indeed, it is my contention that all these “episodes” in the broad history of philosophy are also part and parcel of Husserl’s own path leading to the invention of

 Even Brentano, who is literally outraged by Plotinus’s way of thinking does not reject the latter’s variety of Platonism because of its incorrect way of reading or understanding Plato’s dialogues. While in Brentano’s view Neoplatonism belongs to the lowest phase of decay of the history of philosophy, Plato is ranked right at the top of the first ascending phase and Aristotle is the only true heir of Plato. Accordingly, if Plotinus is rejected, it is neither because he is a Platonist, nor because his reading of Plato is “flawed” or “biased”—but rather because he betrayed the way in which Plato and Aristotle conceived the tasks and the methods of the philosophical engagement. See Brentano (1963, pp. 344–352). 4

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transcendental phenomenology as the most fundamental part of philosophy understood as an infinite task. In sum, in this volume, the investigation will be carried out from two angles. Through the first angle I would like to show the extent to which concepts, methods and problems of ancient and modern philosophy emerge and fit into transcendental phenomenology, how the history of philosophy becomes a constitutive element of Husserl’s philosophy. In doing so, I also hope to highlight the full scope and the still undetected novelty of Husserl’s engagement with his philosophical past. Through the second angle, I will try to prove that a better understanding of phenomenology could be extremely relevant for historians of philosophy. Or, at least, for those historians who might be interested in discovering the unexpected ways in which Husserl has actually explored some of the previously “unexplored horizons” of these concepts, methods and problems. Only after having followed this twofold path all the way through, will it be possible to take up the difficulties of Husserl’s late approach to the history of philosophy, which we have methodologically sidestepped in this introduction. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, the two angles should finally converge and allow me to resume the daunting and inescapable question of the “philosophical need for the history of philosophy” that I have preliminarily suspended. Addressing the objections of the most reluctant contemporary readers having followed option (2) will thus be possible only at the end of this study.

4 Plan and Divisions Although each chapter can be read independently, we should now be able to more clearly identify the structural guiding thread that is running through the different parts of this volume. Part II, “Openings,” includes two general chapters, whose role is to introduce the reader to a pair of fundamental and often neglected conceptual clusters. Chapter 2, “Multiplicity, Manifolds and Varieties of Constitution,” presents an overall and—to the best of my knowledge—original view of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological project through the constellation of two “operative” concepts, namely the concepts of “constitution” and “manifold.” The way in which these concepts are mutually related should not only contribute to highlight the meaning and scope of Husserl’s phenomenology, but also enable the reader to critically engage with some of its most widespread interpretations in contemporary literature. The general tone and relatively light technical apparatus of this chapter sets the stage for the whole book. The reader will also begin to become acquainted with the idea, discussed in the concluding parts of this study, that the conceptuality of phenomenology is better understood, as Husserl wanted to, within the broader context of what I call a “counter-­history of Platonism.” Chapter 3, “The reach of attitudes,” sets itself the already more specific task of analyzing Husserl’s strategically crucial though often neglected concept of “attitude.” Insight in the structural features of this concept is necessary, in my view, for at least two reasons. On the one hand, examining the

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structure of Husserl’s “global acts” and their correlates, provides a first illustration of the cluster constitution/manifolds introduced in the previous chapter. On the other hand, it contributes already to the understanding of Husserl’s more general concept of “philosophy,” insofar as the latter is presented as an attitude, contrasted to and articulated with other attitudes (mythical-religious, practical, axiological etc.). In this third chapter, however, our double question—the relevance of the history of philosophy for phenomenology and of phenomenology for the history of philosophy—remains somewhat underdeveloped. Yet, without a clear grasp of Husserl’s concept of attitude in its actual reach, some of the most important aspects of this very question could not become visible. These aspects will then come to the fore in the concluding chapters of this volume. Part III, “Maps,” enters in medias res into the cluster of concepts revolving around Husserl’s “ontology” and tries to give some landmarks to guide the reader through such an extremely complex maze. “Being,” “essence,” “existence,” “individual,” “eidos,” “region,” “metaphysics,” “formal and material ontology”—all these “conceptual words” (Wortbegriffe) are both “drawn” from the philosophical tradition and variously modified, adapted and inserted within distinctive constellations of other “conceptual words.” Without being able to provide a full and systematic account, I nevertheless try to make explicit at least some of these most significant conceptual clusters. In Chap. 4 “Individuum and Region of Being,” I discuss Husserl’s formal ontological concepts of “individual” and “τόδε τι,” the way they are drawn from the central books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, their connections with some relevant episodes of ancient and medieval philosophy (Porphyry, Aquinas, Scotus) and their contribution to the constitution of an “analytically rigorous” concept of “region.” Since, according to this concept, the highest regions “Nature” and “Spirit” cannot be ontologically unified by a higher order super-region, Husserl’s regional ontology cannot but remain “headless.” This negative conclusion, however, is of extreme importance. In fact, insofar as the unity of the “World” cannot be categorial or ontological, it must be established otherwise, transcendentally, on the basis of a constitutive analysis of its layers of constitution. Chapter 5 “Mapping Husserl’s Ontology and its Boundaries,” follows this line of thought and studies Husserl’s use of Aristotle’s Metaphysics—under the guidance of a historically handed down, “false Aristotle,” filtered through Aquinas and Brentano5—to chart the different meanings of “being” and the various ways in which “ontology” can be understood. Agaion, constellations and distortions are highlighted, Platonic contaminations are identified, and a series of tentative maps are drawn. This second attempt also leads to a delimitation of ontology instead of an over-inflation of its role. Together, the two chapers of this second part point towards the “limits” of the ontological territory, to the constitution of those unities of multiplicities of which the two chapters of the second part have outlined the key principles.

 The exact meaning of a surprising expression such as “false Aristotle” or “false Plato” will become manifest in Chap. 12 of this study. 5

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The two chapters included in Part IV, “Worlds and Un-Worlds,” discuss how, through free phantasy and eidetic variation, Husserl is able to explore and test the boundaries of the transcendental unity of the world. They thus move from the concept of “Being” to the concept of “World.” The historical scope of these chapters is that of modernity, more than that of antiquity or medieval philosophy. Chapter 6 “Until the End of the World,” suggests one way to make sense of the rather controversial example of the “destruction of the world” (Weltvernichtung) that appears in Ideas I. This example is introduced by Husserl through a distorted formulation of Descartes’s definition of the (divine) substance in the Principia, whose specific function should become manifest as soon as one understands the constellation of concepts within which it occurs. As for Chapter 7, “Within and Beyond Productive Imagination,” it follows two paths through which the concept of “productive imagination” finds its way into phenomenology, namely Wolff’s empirical psychology and Kant’s transcendentalism. Differences are thus identified between, on the one hand, those varieties of phenomenology (such as Heidegger’s or Ricoeur’s) that follow the Kantian path and relentlessly gear productive imagination to the world (actual or possible) and, on the other hand, Husserl’s phenomenology, which both draws and deviates from Wolff, leading to a concept of free phantasy which is able to explore and provide an intuition of “non-worlds.” The chapters of Part IV also provide an illustration of Husserl’s methodological strategies for distinguishing what Chapter 2 called “sturdy” and “fragile” manifolds. Parts I–III should primarily provide a series of examples illustrating the various ways in which the history of philosophy has actually contributed to the invention of transcendental phenomenology. In doing so, they provide a new framework for Husserl’s overall philosophical project. But they should also help to evaluate on a new basis its meaning and and scope in relation to other varieties of phenomenologically informed accounts of philosophy. Parts V–VI, by contrast, follow an opposite direction and are more focused on showing why a closer look at Husserl’s phenomenology should or could also benefit the research of historians of philosophy. Part V, “Paths,” concentrate on two main examples. Chapter 8, “Husserl and the Vicissitudes of the Improper,” focuses on the way in which the strategy followed by Brentano in his interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics to explain the unity of the manifold meanings of “being” undergoes a series of distortions that end up having a significant impact on Husserl’s concept of categorial intuition. More specifically, it is shown how the heuristic device of the distinction between “proper” and “improper” is transferred, first, from Brentano’s reading of Aristotle to his descriptive psychology, then to Husserl’s psychological way of addressing the origin of numbers, the ontology of mathematical objects and finally the relation between perceptual and categorial intuition in the Logical Investigations. And since successive “migrations” of patterns, from one context to another and from one author to another, are exactly the kind of phenomena that historians of philosophy are eager to trace, this chapter should already provide an interesting case study to begin with. Chapter 9, “Back to the Meanings Themselves (and away from the Noema),” is the first extensive study ever written devoted to the relationship between phenomenology and Stoicism. It begins by comparing the different ways in which Sartre,

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Deleuze and Husserl have framed the phenomenological relevance of the stoic concept of λέκτον. All these attempts are then brought back to the original sources. The outcome of this operation is quite surprising for at last two reasons. First, if one resists the temptation to merge—as variously suggested by Sartre and Deleuze— λέκτον and noema, Husserl’s reading of this crucial concept appears as extremely original and, as far as I know, unique in the twentieth century reception of Stoicism. Secondly, once the Husserlian “appropriation” of the λέκτον is properly understood, it appears that what Husserl scholars have often labeled a “platonist theory of meaning” is actually more Stoic than Platonic. Part VI, “Infinity,” closes the circle. All the previous chapters were devoted to the study of concepts, methods and problems drawn from the history of philosophy and the original ways in which they were taken up in Husserl’s concrete research. The last two chapters now go into the details of what Husserl himself calls his “narrative” or “poetical invention” (Dichtung) of the history of philosophy. In a sense, they are the historical counterparts to the claim, made in Chapter 2 and variously hinted at in the subsequent chapters, that Husserl’s invention of transcendental phenomenology and his overall account of philosophy as an “infinite task” represent a distinctly new and quite unique historical variety of Platonism. Chapter 10, “Plato’s Light and Gorgias’s Shadow,” shows how Husserl is anything but naive about ancient Greek philosophy. It shows, for example, how his reading of Gorgias’s treatise On Non-Being is not only unique in the German speaking literature of the time devoted to ancient Sophistry, but is also an essential piece of his historical genealogy of transcendental phenomenology. In a quite original way, Husserl sees in Gorgias’s “playful” treatise, which denies in the most radical way the very possibility of transcendence, the only possible way in which a Greek thinker could have come to the very idea of transcendental subjectivity. This chapter also presents the first detailed account of Husserl’s rather complex conception of the different “beginnings” of philosophy. Chapter 11, “Infinite Academy,” is the longest contribution to the volume. Although it could have been broken into at least two parts, I thought it appropriate to leave it as it is, in order to emphasize its unitary movement. Its main themes have been variously anticipated in each of the preceding chapters, for which it ultimately provides an overall historical-systematical framework. The chapter begins with the attempt to make sense of Husserl’s explicit view of the relationship between Plato and Aristotle and ends with an account of Husserl’s position in the long-term history of Platonism.6 It also shows how Husserl’s disctinctive conception of “genuine” philosophy as an infinite task and its relation to Plato overlap, even in some of its most charactersitic details, with a parallel view widely held in ancient philo­sophy, especially in the so-called “Middle Platonism”. This fact also highlights the philosophical relevance of Husserl’s concept of “help,” as it is introduced in one of the appendices to the Krisis. A concept that also sheds new light on the articulation between the eidetic and the transcendental sides of his

 When most of these essays were first published, this issue was much alluded to but still largely unexplored. The interested reader can now count on what must be welcomed as the first in-depth study devoted to Husserl’s explicit “Platonism.” See Arnold (2017). 6

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phenomenological-­philosophical project. This chapter also includes some methodological remarks on the concept of “distortion” as it is used all through this book. This leads finally to the Conclusion, which brings me back to the answers I still owe to the most reluctant contemporary readers, namely those who harbor principled doubts about the Husserlian approach to the history of philosophy. In Chapter 12, “The Invention of Infinity,” while trying to spell out the principles of Husserl’s approach, I also provide what I believe to be the first example of the influence played by Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology on some full-fledged historians of Ancient philosophy of his time. Thus, in some sense, this final chapter could also have been the very first. In any case, it should be read in tight connection with the problems discussed in the present introductory chapter, “The Invention of ­Infinity?—” with which it shares the same title except for a question mark—and the general statements made in Chapter 2. If anything, it should offer a compelling explanation, both historical and systematic, of the very specific sense in which Husserl’s elaboration of transcendental phenomenology, his poetical “invention” of the history of philosophy, and his understanding of philosophy as the “infinite” logos of the world, could be seen as shaping the first variety of asymptotic Platonism—painfully aware of being, perhaps, also the last.

Part II

Openings

Chapter 2

Multiplicity, Manifolds and Varieties of Constitution A Manifesto

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others. Groucho Marx

1 A Manifesto? To begin with, I would like to present something like a manifesto of Husserlian phenomenology. Therefore, in this chapter, I would rather not discuss this or that specific point related to Husserl’s phenomenology yet, but rather address some general questions about the particularity of phenomenology as such. More precisely, I would like to begin by suggesting a different way of answering one question that most readers have surely heard many times—adressed sometimes friendly, sometimes mockingly, sometimes aggressively—from students, friends, colleagues, and critics. The dreadful and not-so-inevitable question is the following: “What is phenomenology actually all about?” One objection may arise quite immediately, though, namely “what is actually the point of asking such a question?” Especially in a time when philosophy departments are filled with “phenomenologists,” “post-phenomenologists,” or “anti-­ phenomenologists.” One could also object that, more or less, we all know something about phenomenology. And when it comes to the explicit question “what is phenomenology?” we all seem to have an answer up our sleeves. Besides, it goes without saying that nothing original is likely to be said on the topic—at least, nothing that we did not know already: nothing that Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-­ Ponty did not already thematize and fully explore; nothing that Schlick, Wittgenstein or Ryle have not already weighed, measured, and found wanting; nothing that Foucault, Gadamer or Derrida have not already nailed to its hidden metaphysical presuppositions and overcome. In sum, one might—quite rightfully—object: why on earth should we inflict upon ourselves another rhetorical question about the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_2

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significance of phenomenology? Can we actually do anything else than smuggle some old wine into (not so) new casks and sneak in the umpteenth historical review of some suitable concepts of phenomenology available in the marketplace—while pretending that we are even offering a manifesto? If this were the case, one should simply dismiss the question and remind ourselves that, if any, the actual challenge of our time is “doing phenomenology” not talking about it, let alone providing petty definitions. As a matter of fact, in the past fifty years, phenomenology has mostly preoccupied itself with a twofold task: overcoming Husserl’s metaphysically flawed transcendental phenomenology; and/or making the painstakingly detailed descriptions packed into the 55,000 pages of his Nachlaß useful and—whenever possible—consistent with the mainstream of the post-Heideggerian or post-Wittgensteinian theories of being, mind, and language. The shared presupposition of both tendencies is the assumption that the defining principles of the dominant paradigms—both analytical (analytical ontology and philosophy of language) and continental (hermeneutics, deconstruction)—have to set the agenda of phenomenology and indicate its future directions. The most recent interest of phenomenology in cognitive science confirms rather than disproves such a tendency. Scholars are constantly asked to prove that Husserl’s phenomenology and phenomenology in general are able to deal with the most up-­ to-­date issues of our time, thus establishing its right to survive in the intellectual arena of the twenty-first century, seducing, with their secret charm, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, or, as just mentioned, cognitive science. As for the rest—pre-, proto- or crypto-Heideggerian, quasi-Wittgensteinian or ultra-­ Brentanian, hyper- or anti-rationalist, last representative of the metaphysics of absolute subjectivity or first unconscious coryphaeus of a decentered account of subjectivity—what is interesting in Husserl’s thought amounts to the fact of having somehow foreshadowed (with great sagacity indeed, considering the putative historical, ideological or metaphysical limits of his thought) what others will later see in a more precise and consistent way. Even if this picture of phenomenology is not too far off the mark, I must admit I find it quite unappealing. For I have always liked to think that if Husserl really has something to tell us nowadays it has to be something we do not already know rather than something everybody is talking about. It should make us see—or at least point to—something that neither Heidegger’s nor Wittgenstein’s heirs have actually been able to figure out. In other words, it would not be that bad if one could discover, behind the conventional picture of the momentous forefather of the groundbreaking (and quite outdated) phenomenological movement that we all know, another Husserl, less conventional and more discrete: an “anachronist” and “untimely” thinker—“unzeitgemäss” in a quite Nietzschean sense. However, in order to find out whether this is the case, one should run something like an obstacle course, as it were, eschewing historical monuments and dodging contemporary commonplaces, with the secret hope of, sooner or later, running into some neglected hints that could always lead, in the end, to the preliminary draft of a manifesto. It is precisely for this reason that, in trying to answer the predictable question of what phenomenology actually is, this time I would definitely go for the

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obstacle course and introduce some restrictions from the outset. Indeed, one restriction would be enough: on our way to the putative “meaning” of phenomenology we shall dump everything that may sound familiar, already said and thought, already used to define or characterize the phenomenological project as a whole. If, in the end, we were to realize that we have dumped everything we have found, then the outcome would be sad but clear: there is nothing more to say about phenomenology as a whole; and, as a consequence, although unappealing, the picture of phenomenology sketched above is the only one available. In that case, we could safely turn back to our old habits, pinpoint this or that Husserlian topic and keep on applying the phenomenological reduction to rocket science or body painting or… writing creepy technical papers on eidetic variation, the vicissitudes of the improper, or a Cartesian quote stranded in the pages of Ideas I. So, what is phenomenology actually all about? If addressed at point blank range this question allows for two possible moves. We can either provide a standard definition or begin with identifying a key notion and use it as a guiding thread. As for the first move, the choice is wide: phenomenology is the eidetic science of transcendentally reduced pure consciousness (Husserl); it is ἀποφαίνεσθαι τὰ φαινόμενα—a way to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself (Heidegger); it is the discovery of being as the trans-­ phenomenal relative-absolute (Sartre); it is the study of essences that puts essences back to existence and facticity, allowing for an explicit account of the natürlicher Weltbegriff (Merleau-Ponty); it is the comprehension effected in the bringing to light (Levinas); and so on. The list might be longer, but since we agreed to proceed under restrictions and drop every ready-made answer, we have to cut it short and take our chances with the second move: individuating the key concept, the guiding thread. If we are to accept the classical distinction—suggested by Eugen Fink—between thematic and operative concepts, the next step is to decide whether our key notion has to be chosen from among the former or the latter. If we want pick it up from the list of the thematic concepts, we have a wide choice: phenomenology has to do with intentionality, consciousness, the inescapable correlation between consciousness and world, with lived-experiences, givenness, intuition, and so on. But if we really want to find something new in Husserl’s phenomenology according to the restrictive rule “thou shalt not use any of the standard approaches to phenomenology,” we clearly have to settle for operative concepts. Moreover, if we want to multiply our chances of finding something new under the phenomenological sun, we should try to find not just one operative concept, hastily taken as the fundamental concept of phenomenology (such as Sartre’s “intentionality qua transcendence,” Marion’s “givenness,” Michel Henry’s “life,” etc.) but rather identify a network—even small—of mutually related operative concepts whose relations are usually left unnoticed. The small network I wish to bring to light is composed of two operative concepts—actually, as we will see, it is more complex than that, but for my purposes I will limit myself to the two innermost threads—, both constantly used by Husserl from his early essays on the philosophy of arithmetic until his death. These concepts

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are unevenly emphasized by commentators, and have never really been brought together so that the understanding of one could modify the standard understanding of the other. The first concept I have in mind is widely considered to be one of the most important in Husserl’s phenomenology. It is so important that Heidegger’s definition of it (“letting the entity be seen in its objectivity”) (Heidegger 1979, pp.  71, 97) is nothing but the general definition of phenomenology (“letting that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself”) applied to Husserlian phenomenology (except for two differences: “that which shows itself” becomes the “entity”—instead of Sein—and “the way in which it shows itself from itself” becomes “objectivity”—instead of Abwesenheit). I am talking about the concept of Konstitution, whose current translation is simply “constitution.” The second concept may seem less central for the phenomenological project as a whole, and although it is constantly employed in Husserl’s work, it has been mostly overlooked: it is the concept of Mannigfaltigkeit, that, for reasons that will become apparent later, I will translate sometimes as “multiplicity,” sometimes as “manifold”—but whose equivocity should be constantly kept in mind. The trick now is to show how, in uncovering the deep relation between these two key-concepts, one is able to reconstruct in a non-standard way the structure and the significance of phenomenology as a whole; an operation that, as it should be readily apparent, has, at least for the moment, nothing of the character of an interpretation and everything of an experimentation.

2 Constitution and Manifolds Let us begin with the concept of constitution. Robert Sokolowski once said: “There is no other concept that reflects in itself the totality of [Husserl’s] thought so completely and so well” (1964, p.  223) as the concept of constitution.1 From the Philosophy of Arithmetic to the Crisis, the notion of constitution is declined in a great variety of forms and modalities, from the psychological constitution of the early years, to the later transcendental constitution (both static and genetic). But what does “constitution” mean? One could preliminarily say that constitution is the name given by Husserl both to the performance and to the outcome of a host of syntheses and achievements of conscious life in virtue of which something—be it an immanent lived-experience (such as a sensation or an intentional act), a transcendent thing (such as a table or a house), a person (such as me or my friend Daniele), an imaginary character (such as Emma Bovary or a centaur playing the flute), or an ideality (such as a function of a complex variable or any theorem)— appears and, more precisely, appears as having a certain meaning (Sinn), or, even  “The philosophical value of his theory of constitution is the philosophical value of phenomenology as a whole, and the weakness and difficulty attached to this concept are the weakness and difficulty inherent in phenomenology as a philosophical method.” (Sokolowski 1964, p. 223) 1

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more precisely, as having a determinate form of meaningful identity. Such a meaning is both a Sosein-sinn, and a Sein-sinn, for what is constituted appears not only as “being so-and-so,” but also as “being real” or “irreal”, i.e., to put it quite generally, as having a certain Seinsweise. Lived-experiences, things and cultural objetcts, persons, fictions, idealities, and the like make sense or happen to be meaningful insofar as they are (or are not) and as long as they are (or are not) in a certain way (or another): they can be identified, more or less vaguely, and sometimes even reidentified, with greater or lesser precision, they can be related to each other, but also desired, feared, and so on. The most general non technical and naive name for all the meaningful outcomes of a constitution—as long as the performance of constitution itself is not taken into account yet—is nothing but “object.” Now, after having submitted the naive givenness of the appearing “object” first to the the epochē, then to the thematic conversion of the phenomenological reduction, the point of view changes drastically. While the former device (the epochē) opens up the way backward from the objective being to the subjective appearance, the second (the reduction) follows it through: it diverts the view from the simple experience of something meaningful, to the descriptive analysis of the structural features of such experience, namely the intentional achievements that are responsible for the meaningfulness of such an appearing object; achievements without which such experience would be relatively or totally meaningless. We now shift from the outcome of a constitution to the performance of constitution itself, its structural features, mode of functioning etc. In sum, if it is the case that an “object” (any object whatsoever: lived-experience, thing, person, fiction, ideality, etc.) shows itself as meaningful (as being and being-­ so)2 to a consciousness if and only if the latter accomplishes certain intentional syntheses (be they passive or active), then such “object” is said to be constituted. In a narrow sense, it is constituted by the syntheses themselves, and, in a broader sense, by the consciousness accomplishing the syntheses or realizing itself through such syntheses. Constitutive analysis is, therefore, the description of the structural features of the synthesis that must be accomplished by any consciousness whatever (human, sub-human, angelic, divine, etc.) in order to experience certain correlated appearances as meaningful. Such syntheses are nothing but the reality of the consciousness at stake. All this reveals a first element of our picture: meaningfulness and constitution are correlated and mutually dependent concepts. So far, so good. One may simply recall now that the concept of constitution sketched above should not be conflated with either that of creation, or that of construction. While creation gives rise to the Sein and the Sosein of entities (ex nihilo), constitution refers simply to their Sein- and Soseinsinn (ex alio), that is, to the meaningfulness of that of which is experienced as the appearance. On the other hand, constituted “objects” are not subjective constructions built up—somewhat arbitrarily—from otherwise “formless” materials. They are rather phenomena  I have limited myself here to positional meaningfulness (being, being-so) though the argument clearly extends to all practical and axiological meaningfulness. Some remarks on this aspect of the question can be found in Majolino and Trizio (2014). 2

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whose transcendence is meaningful only for a variety of consciousnesses whose experiences are structured in a determinate way.3 But in order to complete this sketchy presentation of constitution, we still need to flesh out one last element, related this time less to the general features of constitution than to its philosophical motivation. In Husserl’s view, the search for constitution—as it will become clear in the final chapters of this study—often appears to be related with the “Platonic” theme of the ῥιζώματα πάντων: the roots of all things. Husserl is in fact persuaded that constitutive phenomenology brings with itself, literally, an act of radicalization: it goes emphatically for the “roots” of appearance, that is, that out of which everything sprouts and grows (Hua XXV, p. 61).4 But the idea of connecting the transcendental relationship between meaningfulness of experience and synthesis of consciousness, on the one hand, and the quest for the “roots” or the “true beginnings,” on the other, is an extremely treacherous one, and it often leads Husserl to the rash gesture of overlapping the transcendental distinction between what is constituted and the constituting synthesis to the ontological distinction between relative being (πρὸς ἄλλο) and absolute being (καθ’ αὑτό). Such a gesture is unquestionably difficult to countenance and is widely considered to be one of the most problematic tenets of Husserl’s entire phenomenology—for it seems to lead, quite inevitably, from the idea of constitution to the pitfall of transcendental idealism. This pitfall condensed in the somewhat infamous §49 of Ideas I, where the reader, fairly surprised, learns that consciousness is that being which, by essential necessity, “nulla ‘re’ indiget ad existendum” (Hua III/1, p. 104/89)—does not need any “thing” in order to exist. Such an awkward and metaphysically heavy-handed claim can be understood in many different ways5—as many as the arguments mobilized over the years by Husserl in his repeated attempts to justify, in one way or another, its problematic legitimacy. Be that as it may, as far as we are concerned here, this second moment of Husserl’s treatment of constitution, related to its philosophical motivation, is nevertheless extremely valuable for at least two reasons. First, it indicates explicitly that the notion of constitution is not only related to that of meaningfulness, but is also connected, in a way that has yet to be specified, with that radicalization of phenomenology that Husserl identifies with the so-called search for the “roots of appearance.” Therefore, even those who would reject Husserl’s overly idealistic  Let us recall that Husserl further distinguishes between static and genetic constitution, and that “genetic constitution,” by its turn, should not to be conflated with the “passive genesis” of founded higher order objects (see Hua I, §38), which deals again with the first type of objects (types, pure and “impure” essences, generalities, etc.) from the point of view of their sedimented meaning, introducing the idea of layers of sedimentation. So we have at least four levels of constitution: static constitution of ideal objects (noetic-noematic correlations) and of individuals as instantiating such idealities; genetic constitution of individualities (passive synthesss); genetic constitution of higher-order objects (active syntheses) and passive genesis of higher-order objects (sedimented syntheses). 4  For a thorough discussion of this theme see Chaps. 10 and 11 of this volume. 5  See Chap. 6 of this volume. I have also tried to give my understanding of the matter, more extensively, in Majolino (2010). 3

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conclusions, stemming from the overlapping of two relations (“constitution/constituted” and “absolute being/relative being”), should never forget that the theme of constitution and that of ῥιζώματα πάντων go hand in hand. Hence the following question: is there a way to bring together the concept of constitution and the concept of ῥιζώματα πάντων without idealistically identifying, at least preliminarily, consciousness and absolute being (and, correlatively, world and relative being)? And yet, there is also a second reason to insist on the complicity between constitutive analysis and the radicalization of phenomenology—in spite of the cumbersome idealism that Husserl believes he has to defend. We have already mentioned that, in the course of his philosophical itinerary, Husserl does not simply attempt to justify in different ways the idea of an absolute being of consciousness. He also tries to account, by means of the concept of constitution, for the irreducible difference between consciousness and world. Now, interestingly enough, one of these attempts rests on a very peculiar argument; an argument that, even though Husserl will later firmly reject it, is, as far as we are concerned, extremely revealing. This is because the argument in question bridges explicitly, for the first time, the two concepts we are interested in: constitution and Mannigfaltigkeit. The argument appears in several texts, although its canonical formulation can be found in Ideas I. Husserl asks himself: what is the reason why the being of the real world should be considered to be relative, in opposition to the absolute being of consciousness? Since he is not allowed to make use of any metaphysical or ontological assumptions, Husserl is forced to ground his answer not on a purported difference between modes of being but on the phenomenological difference between modes of appearing. The phenomenological description should thus detect a structural heterogeneity in the modes of constitution proper to the experience of the real world, on the one hand, and of consciousness, on the other,—a heterogeneity which is the sole basis for justifying phenomenologically the ontological asymmetry between world and consciousness. In other words, to make his idealistic point, Husserl must be able to claim that consciousness and world are, respectively, absolute and relative because they appear, again respectively, in an absolute and relative way. Now, it is precisely within the context of a phenomenological description of the modes of constitution responsible for the appearing of worldly reality—a reality the being of which Husserl desperately wants to be “relative”—that the two notions of Konstitution and Mannigfaltigkeit appear, for the first time, as intimately related. The argument is the following: concrete individual transcendences of lower order— a wordy expression to indicate the “things” which the natural layer of the real world is ultimately made of—are necessarily given in sense perception, and the eidetic structure of sense perception requires that such things have to appear through adumbrations, so that each and every adumbration anticipates and points to the next in an infinite, and yet intentionally unified, chain of reference (Hinweis). From this eidetic state of affairs Husserl then draws the conclusion that the phenomenological structure of any being whose mode of appearing is constituted through adumbrations must be that of the “unity of a multiplicity” (Einheit einer Mannigfaltigkeit); or, put differently, that objects belonging to the ontological region “thing” are constituted as unities of “continuous multiplicities of appearances and adumbrations”:

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2  Multiplicity, Manifolds and Varieties of Constitution [The] experiential consciousness of the same thing “from every side” [is] a consciousness that continuously and uniformly confirms itself in itself. Such a consciousness has, as an essentially necessary property, a multifaceted system of continuous multiplicities of appearances and profiles, such that in these manifolds all those objective inherent aspects (that appear in the perception with the character of being given in person themselves) profile themselves in determinate continuities. (Hua III/1, p. 85/72, translation modified)

The essence of sense perception thus prescribes that perceptive things structurally appear through series of multiple adumbrations, although what is intentionally given is one and the same thing. That implies a discrepancy, a structural gap, within the mode of givenness of perceptual things, between the multiplicity of adumbrations and the unity of what is only adumbrated through differences or, more precisely, between the multiplicity of presentations (Darstellungen) and the unity of the thing meant (gemeinte). The perceptual thing is therefore constituted as the unity of a multiplicity or, to put it more handily, as a phenomenon having an “EM-structure,” that is, the structure of the “Einheit einer Mannigfaltigkeit.” Now, from this descriptive premise Husserl ends up drawing the conclusion that the internal discrepancy unity/multiplicity proper to the EM-structure is responsible both for the non-adequate and non-apodictic mode of appearing of perceptual “things” and for their non-absolute and therefore relative mode of being. In fact, Husserl argues that because the open-ended series of appearances synthesized in the chain of adumbrations is not sufficient to bestow either the Sein- or the Soseinsinn of the thing, the emergence of such a twofold meaning has to be traced back to some other source. While the multiplicity of appearances is actually presented, the unity of the thing is only meant. As a result, if the thing itself is given (gegeben) only insofar as it is presented (dargestellt) through a multiplicity of appearances related in a nexus of reference (Hinweiszusammenhang), and if the unity of these appearances is only intended (gemeinte), then the thing is given precisely insofar as it is intentionally constituted as the intended unity of a multiplicity of adumbrations. Its mode of being is therefore relative. The argument is clearly unpersuasive. And, as we have already pointed out, Husserl will eventually reject the confusing claim that the relative being of the world follows from the phenomenological discovery of the EM-structure proper to the mode of appearing of perceptual things. However, the discovery itself, the eidetic state of affairs according to which the perceptual thing is constituted as the unity of a Mannigfaltigkeit, is ultimately retained. But what does “Mannigfaltigkeit” mean, after all? The time has come to introduce our second key concept. Since we are dealing with an operative concept, it would be useless to look for explicit definitions or detailed explications of it in Husserl’s texts; it would also be misleading to assume that the same concept is always presupposed—even if unexpressed—behind each and every occurrence of the same term. So, to begin with, let us recall the three main contexts in which Husserl employs the term, and see how they are mutually related. In some very broad contexts, Mannigfaltigkeit is often used by Husserl merely in the non-technical sense of multiplicity (Vielheit), so as to refer to several (“many”) items of some kind simply put together. Already in the Philosophy of Arithmetic,

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however, when Husserl provides a loose list of terms regarded as synonyms (gleichbedeutend) of multiplicity (Vielheit), he mentions “plurality, totality, aggregate, collection, group, etc.” (Mehrheit, Inbegriff, Aggregat, Sammlung, Menge usw.) but not Mannigfaltigkeit (see Hua XII, p. 14). In fact, in other—more technical—contexts, Husserl uses the term in a more precise sense, the best account of which can be found in a definition provided by Cantor and quoted by Husserl himself in one of his early manuscripts. According to Cantor, a manifold (Mannigfaltigkeit): is a multiplicity which can be thought of as one, i.e., as a group of determined elements that can be united into a whole by some law. (Quoted by Husserl in Hua XXI, p. 95)6

According to this second sense, to the notion of a manifold belongs not only the idea of a multiplicity, but also that of a “unity according to a law.” And the fact that the unity is provided “by a law” should not be underestimated, for the simple idea of a somewhat unified multiplicity is clearly not enough to explain what a manifold is. In this sense, not even the unity of the species, which, according to the Second Logical Investigation, is that of “the one in the many” (Eine im Mannigfaltigen) (see §5 of the Second Investigation, Hua XIX/1, pp.  121–3), is, strictly speaking, the “unity of a manifold”, since what “brings together” or “unifies” a multiplicity of, say, similarly red items is not exactly a law, but the constant presence of the same ideal-specific “redness.” By contrast, a “law” unifies a multiplicity, both, structurally and transcendently. In this sense, a “manifold” is indeed “the unity of a multiplicity,” but not in the sense of the actual presence of the same property or species in a multiplicity of similar particular cases. In more Platonic terms, a manifold should rather be understood, as in the Philebus, as the “mixture” of “bounded” and “boundary,” “limit” and “unlimited,” of a principle of unity and a principle of multiplicity. And, strange as it may sound, this is exacly how Cantor understands this concept, in that very passage of the Grundlagen partially quoted by Husserl: By a manifold or a set I understand in general every multiplicity that can be thought as one, i.e., as a group of determined elements that can be united into a whole by some law, and with this I belive I am defining something akin to the Platonic εἶδος or ιδέα, but also that which Plato calls μικτόν in his dialogue Philebus or the Supreme Good. He contrasts this to the ἄπειρον (i.e. the unbounded, undetermined, which I call the improper infinite) as well as to the πέρας, i.e., the boundary; and he explains it as an ordered ‘mixture’ of both. (Cantor 1883, p. 43)

A few years later, more sensitive to the “Platonic” appeal of the ῥιζώματα πάντων, Husserl will draw all the consequences from this Cantorian suggestion.7 For the same reason, if a “manifold” is not a simple “unity of a multiplicity,” it is not a sheer “multiplicity” either (what Cantor calls the “improper infinite”)—or at least not insofar as its elements are structurally united according to a law. But this is not the end of the story. For in the same manuscripts Husserl ends up explicitly  This is clearly not the mature definition of a Cantorian set, which can be found in the Beiträge, written in 1895, but only an early conception. It is, nevertheless, the one explicitly considered by Husserl—and that is what matters here. I will come back to this point in Chap. 8. 7  For a further discussion of this point see Chaps. 8 and 11 of this volume. 6

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praising, on more than one occasion, Riemann’s theory of manifolds over Cantor’s. And this introduces a third sense: By manifold, Cantor means a simple collection of elements that are in some way united. […] However, this conception does not coincide with that of Riemann and as used elsewhere in the theory of geometry, according to which a manifold is a collection not of merely united, but also ordered elements, and on the other hand not merely united, but continuously connected elements. (Hua XXI, pp. 96–7)

What Husserl now retains from Riemann is that a manifold is not only a set of many “elements,” gathered together and “thought as one by a law,” but also, and more importantly, a multiplicity of ordered and continuously connected elements. This later indication is crucial, since, as we have already pointed out in our survey of Husserl’s idealistic argument, the “thing” is constituted precisely as the intentional unity of a “multiple system of continuous multiplicities of appearances and adumbrations” (vielfaltiges System von kontinuierlichen Erscheinungs- und Abschattungsmannigfaltigkeiten). The EM-structure implicated in the constitution of the perceptual thing is, therefore, neither that of a simple multitude (Vielheit), nor that of a set (Inbegriff, Menge) or of a mereological whole (Ganze)—although these could all be considered, from different points of view, as “unities of multiplicities.” It is clear, in fact, that within the non-ontological context of the constitution of the Sein- and Sosein-sinn of a perceptual thing, it would not make much sense to affirm, even in a modified sense, that the thing is constituted as a simple multiplicity of adumbrations (since adumbrations are not simply put together), or as a whole whose parts are adumbrations (since adumbrations are not parts of the thing that appears to perception, but of the whole perceptual appearance of the thing), or as a set of adumbrations (since adumbrations are not discrete and randomly ordered elements). But if we take into account the idea that order and continuous connection could also be considered to be structural features of a manifold, according to the third sense isolated above, Husserl’s claims that a perceptual thing is “fully constituted as a manifold of adumbrations” (völlig konstituiert als einer Mannigfaltigkeit von Abschattungen) (Ms. D 13 I, p. 2) makes perfect sense again. I will not expand for the moment on this crucial idea of “continuous connection,” whose relevance should be apparent later. Before we move forward, however, I would simply recall one last point. The short description of the three senses of Mannigfaltigkeit indicated above is clearly not enough to do full justice to Husserl’s rather complex appropriation of the mathematical notion of manifold. In order to make our account more encompassing, we should have talked of Husserl’s general appreciation of Riemann’s n-dimensional manifolds in geometrical contexts. We should also have mentioned Husserl’s account of the Mannigfaltigkeitslehre within his project of pure logic as a “theory of the forms of theory.” One could, therefore, object that what is missing in this sketchy report is the properly “formal ontological” framework within which Husserl’s notion of manifold is mostly and explicitly conjured.

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The premise of the objection has to be granted. For it is true that Husserl’s explicit use of the notion of manifold belongs to the technical context of his formal ontological researches. “Manifold” is in fact indicated by Husserl as a formal ontological category, along with “object,” “relation,” “state of affairs,” and so on. It is also accurate to maintain that it mostly appears within the boundaries of ontology, theory of science and formal logic, and that the basic concepts of these disciplines have to be suspended by the reduction as soon as the constitutive analysis replaces the naive straightforward attitude. But this fact still does not prove that we are on the wrong track; it simply confirms that in Husserl’s explicit account, the notion of Mannigfaltigkeit lives most of its own philosophical life, as it were, independently from that of constitution. Thus, considered thematically, manifold is indeed, plainly and simply a formal ontological notion in Husserl’s work. But considered operatively, once it factually meets the idea of constitution—a forbidden encounter, so to speak, since it should not have passed the filter of the reduction—the idea of manifold turns into something different. It modifies itself, while modifying, in turn, the idea of constitution. It is precisely this twofold modification, intervening when the talk of Mannigfaltigkeit steps over the boundaries of logic and formal ontology and intervenes in transcendental contexts as related with that of Konstitution, that we should try to identify—with the help of the aforementioned equivocal distinction between Mannigfaltigkeit as sheer multiplicity and Mannigfaltigkeit as manifold. Now, if within the idealistic argument sketched in Ideas I (which partially develops certain indications already present in Thing and Space) only the perceptive thing is said to be constituted as a manifold—that is, as the (intended) unity of a multiplicity (of adumbrations)—, viewed more closely, the presence of an EM-structure can also be found in the constitution of objects belonging to other eidetic regions. And here is the first novelty. As soon as we have learned to identify the connection between Konstitution and Mannigfaltigkeit, a more general pattern comes to the fore, spreading itself in each and every constitutive analysis: a general principle according to which what is constituted as such is constituted as a manifold—not only what is constituted as a “thing.” From now on, varieties of EM-structure can be found not only on the level of the constitution of concrete perceptual individuals (like “things”) but also, mutatis mutandis, on the level of abstract perceptual individuals like “this shade of red,” as it is clearly shown, for instance, in the Seefeld Manuscripts.8 More importantly, an EM-structure can also be found on the founded level of the constitution of general and higher order objects, like meanings and essences. Let us recall, for instance, how in §32 of the First Logical Investigation the ideality of meanings, although sharply contrasted with the “reality of the individual,” is defined as Einheit in der Mannigfaltigkeit (Hua XIX/1, p. 102); in §19 of the Second Logical Investigation, each species (Spezies)—and at the time Husserl regarded the ideality of meaning simply as a particular case of the ideality of species in general—is

 See the Seefelder Manuskripte über Individuation (1907) in Hua X, pp. 237–65.

8

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characterized again as a Einheit der Mannigfaltigkeit. The same holds in §§29 and 39 of the Prolegomena, where colors in general, meanings, concepts, and even truth itself are described as ideal identities that can be intuited over against a dispersed multitude of concrete individual cases (ihrer identischen Einheit gegenüber einer verstreuten Mannigfaltigkeit von konkreten Einzelfällen) (Hua XVIII, p. 39).9 All these examples can be understood as belonging to a more ontological context. But as soon as we turn away from the early Logical Investigations and move to the mature Experience and Judgment, although many things have changed in the meantime, the idea of defining the constitution of idealities and general objects as such in terms of EM-structures not only remains unchanged but is also, again, stated quite explicitly. And it is precisely in §81b of Experience and Judgment that Husserl openly relates the constitution of generalities to the structure of what he now calls— referring to the Aristotelian formula used to summarize the status of the Platonic ideas—ɛʽˋν ἐπὶ πολλῶν: the unity of an a priori generality, an object of a new kind, a “one that does not repeat itself in the like but is given only once in many” (Husserl 1999, p. 392). Of course, the variety of constituted manifolds and the manners in which the multiplicities are unified by the structural laws of the passive and active synthesis are different for ideal generalities and perceptive individuals. And even the relationship between unity and multiplicity takes different forms since we are now dealing with different kinds of objects. In the case of the EM-structure proper to the givenness of the thing, the one is presented (dargestellt) in the many and the many adumbrate (abschatten) the one; in that of general objects, the one is rather exemplified (exemplifiziert) in the many and the many instantiate (instanziert) the one.10 In both cases, however, the formal pattern followed by Husserl in describing their constitution remains the same. Thus, while initially discovered during the analysis of the constitution of perceptual things, the connection between constitution and manifold ultimately appears to be at work also in the constitution of abstract individuals, idealities, and general objects—and this list is far from being exhaustive. Another variety of EM-structure appears in the realm of the so-called immanent objects. In his lectures on time consciousness, immanent “objects” belonging to the inner flow of time are in fact described precisely as “unities of an absolute and not grasped multiplicity” (Hua X, p. 284).11 Again, Husserl relates this new variety of EM-structure to a specific form of constitution, since “it belongs to the essence of this unity as a temporal unity to be ‘constituted’ in the absolute consciousness”

 While the whole thing appears in each adumbration (although always from a different angle), red as such appears in each instance (although always differently exemplified). There cannot be a thing given without adumbration just as there cannot be a species given without instances. However, as already noticed, the relation of instantiation/exemplification is specific to idealities, while the relation of adumbration/ presentation is specific to things. 10  That will bring Husserl, especially in the Bernauer materials, to the distinction between the temporal constitution (Zeitlich) of individual things and the omnitemporal (Allzeitlich) constitution of idealities. See Hua XXXIII, p. 91. 11  “Einheiten einer absoluten nicht erfaßten Mannigfaltigkeit.” 9

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(Hua X, p. 284).12 Moreover, Husserl adds, in order to properly understand the problems involved in the relationship between immanent objects and giving consciousness, “we have to study thoroughly the multiplicities of consciousness and their unity in which the object is ‘constituted’” (Hua X, pp. 284–5).13 Consciousness is in fact always and necessarily a nexus: “We have the original nexus of the primal consciousness of time, and within the latter we have the multiplicity of impressional contents” (Hua XXIII, p. 291).14 Of course, in the case of immanent objects, the relevant variety of EM-structure at work should be neither understood in terms of adumbration/presentation (as for the constitution of the thing) nor in terms of exemplification/instantiation (as for the constitution of general objects). And Husserl, in fact, is at pains in the attempt to discover the constitutive specificity of this new manifold. For the moment, then, let us simply stress this point: it is not only the appearance of concrete and abstract individuals (given in sense perception) or that of general objects (given in ideation) which can be said to be constituted through an EM-structure. In fact, also the appearance of lived-experiences and immanent objects is over and over again described by Husserl as being constituted qua manifolds—where manifold has to be taken at least in the general sense of multiplicity given as one according to a law; if not, more particularly, in the narrower sense of a continuous connection of a multiplicity of ordered elements. Before we move forward, we should also add to our list of manifolds those fictional quasi-individual objects which, intuited in image consciousness or pure phantasy, appear as constituted according to still another variety of EM-structure. And this time we certainly will not be surprised to find Husserl making it clear that, in the specific case of the constitution of quasi-things, “the manifold is different from what it is in the case of the thing pure as simple” (Hua XXIII, p. 587). The same holds for the constitutive features of the experience of the other: the Fremderfahrung. The “appresentational” structure of such experience is described by Husserl in the Cartesian Meditations as the analogical transfer of unity and multiplicity (überschobene Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit) from the living body of the ego to that of alter (Hua I, p.  182). In sum, in all these cases, very different indeed from each other, we discover Husserl progressing in the following way: 1. He begins with different appearing “objects,” correlated to different intentional experiences, naively grasped in intentio recta:

1.1 Perceptual transcendent individuals, i.e., things;

 “Zum Wesen dieser Einheit als zeitlicher Einheit gehört es, daß sie sich im absoluten Bewußtsein ‘konstituiert.’” 13  “Die wesentliche Beziehung des immanenten Objekts auf ein gebendes Bewußtsein fordert hier die Lösung des Problems dieser Gegebenheit, d.h. es müssen genau die Bewußtseinsmannigfaltigkeiten und ihre Einheiten studiert werden in denen sich die Objekt ‘konstituiert.’” 14  “Bewußtsein ist immer Zusammenhang und notwendig Zusammenhang. Wir haben den originären Zusammenhang, den des ursprünglichen Zeitbewußtseins, und in diesem haben wir die Mannigfaltigkeit der impressionalen Inhalte.” 12

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1.2 Perceptual immanent individuals, i.e., lived-experiences; 1.3 Imaginary quasi-individuals, i.e., fictions in the broad sense; 1.4 Ideal general objects, i.e., meanings, species, essences, categories; 1.5 Perceptual transcendent individuals provided of lived-experiences, i.e., other conscious animal beings or persons; 1.6 etc.; 2. he diffracts their “naive being,” so to speak, as if through a prism (the reduction), and discovers as many different multiplicities as there were objects, all constituted according to various EM-structures; 3. he finally relates the uncovered varieties of EM-structures with the requirement of what we may call—according to the terminological stipulation suggested above—a differentiated constitutive phenomenology of manifolds whose ambition is to replace what the naive, traditional, and non-reduced view has always called “ontology.” Now, if the above is true, Heidegger’s notorious claim that in Husserl’s phenomenology “to be” means “to be an object,” and “to be an object” means “to be constituted by a transcendental subjectivity” appears to be not only misleading, but also—to use a term some Heidegger scholars are particularly fond of—concealing. It conceals the fact that, from a phenomenological perspective, in order to be questioned in its meaning (Sinn), “being” has to be diffracted into a multiplicity and constituted as a manifold. That suggests two additional remarks. To begin with, if—in a sense—one can safely claim that for Husserl “to be” means “to be constituted,” this fact does not entail that “to be constituted” should be equated, as the standard view suggests, with “to be constituted by a transcendental subjectivity” or “to be in front of a subject.” For the notion of constitution is manifestly broader than that of transcendental subjectivity.15 Transcendental subjectivity is in fact constituted as well, and in many ways. Not only in the “internal time-consciousness” by the living present, but also—as I failed to mention earlier—in what we may call the “internal space-­ consciousness”: the living body. For according to Ideas II, the living body as well turns out to be constituted by a multiplicity, that is, by a multiplicity of kinestheses (Hua IV, §10). And the kinestheses, as Husserl states in §73 of Thing and Space (Hua XVI, p. 255)—but that is an old idea, first discussed in a manuscript of 1892 (Hua XXI, p. 237)—are Mannigfaltigkeiten, both in the non-technical sense of multiplicities of sensory impressions, and in the technical, mathematical sense of topological n-dimensional spaces: on this occasion, in fact, Husserl describes the two levels of the constitution of the spatial thing precisely as “the linear manifold of approaching and receding” and “the two-fold cyclic manifold of turning” (Die  Of course, recognizing that transcendental subjectivity is itself constituted is not sufficient enough of an argument to conclude that constitution—in the sense of constitution of manifolds—is not constituted by a transcendental subject. In fact, transcendental subjectivity is for Husserl both itself constituted and itself constituting. This dual fact brings to a series of problems that I will not be able to address here. 15

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lineare Annäherungs- und Entfernungsmannigfaltigkeit; die zwiefach zyklische Wendungs-mannigfaltigkeit).16 To put it differently, things, abstract particulars, lived-experiences and living bodies, empirical animal or personal egos (mine and that of other animal beings or persons), quasi-individual fictions, species and genera, as well as cultural and ideal higher-order objects, are all constituted—but qua manifolds and not qua objects-in-­ front-of-a-subject: constituted as Einheiten von Mannigfaltigkeiten. Accordingly, their “meaning” (Sinn) is not so much in the fact that they are what they are insofar as they are in front of a subject, but in the possibility that a consciousness might find them meaningful only if it could be able to provide certain syntheses and make a manifold emerge from a multiplicity (namely, only if such consciousness is, in turn, constituted in a certain way). Fink, in fact, was not far from the mark—or at least closer to the mark than Heidegger—when he characterized constitution in terms of Zusammenstellung. But Fink mistakenly understands Zusammenstellung more as a “construction” or even as a “creation” than as a “nexus” or as a “many-as-one.” Fink was probably too fascinated by the possibility of accomplishing the idealism of Husserl’s phenomenology to insist on the fact that “to be,” in phenomenological terms, means “to be given as a variety of many-as-one.” The second remark is related to Heidegger’s famous understanding of constitution. To some extent, Heidegger was right: constitution is the core concept of the phenomenological project. But he was right for the wrong reason: constitution is not the core concept of phenomenology because phenomenology, in trying to “let what shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself,” finally turns the phenomenon into an object; constitution is at the heart of phenomenology because—according to Heidegger himself—λόγος within the word phenomeno-­logy has to be understood as synthesis, where syn- means, according to Being and Time §7b, “letting something be seen in its togetherness (Beisammen)” (Heidegger 1927, p. 33). Phenomenology then brings to language the togetherness that makes phenomena meaningful.17 The point is not that phenomena exist, but that they hold together. So, if we were to rewrite the famous passage of Being and Time, we should say that the task of phenomenology is to bring to language the togetherness that “lets what shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it is meaningful.” The problem, however, is that Heidegger seems to understand the “Beisammen” in terms of predication and, as a result, the only multiplicity he can deal with is that of the multiple properties, qualities, and aspects of entities. On the contrary, there is one thing that Husserl never defines in terms of EM, and that is the  It has to be stressed that, although Husserl is certainly aware of the difference between the non-­ technical meaning of Mannigfaltigkeit—as “multitude of …”—and the technical meaning of “manifold,” he often takes advantage of the equivocity of the term to bridge the technical and the non-technical meaning. This happens especially in Thing and Space. Again, I will come back to the correlation between the technical and the non-technical sense later. 17  It is precisely for that reason that the eidetic variation, in undoing such “togetherness” while revealing the meaningfulness of a concept, is so crucial for phenomenology as such. 16

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unity of the entity as contrasted to the multiplicity of its properties—which is precisely the most traditional way to deal with multiplicities: within the restricted framework of logic and ontology. The outcome of these remarks so far is the following. Not only is the scope of constitution broader than that of transcendental subjectivity,18 but we now have to add that, additionally, the idea of manifold should be considered as phenomenologically prior to that of being.19 In fact, as soon as we understand that “being” is the name the ontological tradition has given to a certain constituted multiplicity—a name that was crystallized and turned in to a paradigm—, then physical objects and persons, but also nations, cities, groups, and couples can no longer be considered as collections or assemblies of beings, strange entities with an odd ontological status, but as beings in a relevant sense: constituted multiplicities, not that different from any other. Moreover, from Plato to Kant, the history of philosophy is replete with embarrassing philosophical statements to stigmatize the vast family of concepts related to the idea of multiplicity; concepts that, often “asepticized,” as it were, in metaphysics (the manifold meanings of being) and epistemology (the many properties of an entity), have instead always been of paramount importance at the periphery of the empire: in philosophy of mathematics and in political philosophy.20

3 The Limits of Constitution? Two questions, nevertheless, remain unanswered: both these question concern not the connection between constitution and meaningfulness, but that between constitution and the theme of the ῥιζώματα πάντων. The first is related to the idealist argument of Ideas I from which we have started, and runs as follows: granted that the perceptual thing (and correlatively the real world) has a relative being because it appears as the unity-of-a-multiplicity, should we not draw from that premise the conclusion that, according to Husserl, consciousness has an absolute being  Of course, since the expansion of constitution via the thread of multiplicity is not antithetical to the thought that constitution is constitution by a transcendental (inter)subjectivity, and since with the inter-subjective dimension, we get at the veritable sense in which transcendental subjectivity is both itself constituted and itself constituting, we could even say that transcendental inter-­ subjectivity is as broad as constitution. On the other hand, what is phenomenologically relevant in transcendental inter-subjectivity is precisely the fact that we are dealing with a new form of togetherness, irreducible and yet related with others forms of togetherness. 19  More details on this topic can be found in Majolino (2006). See also Chap. 8 and, especially, Chap. 11 of this volume. 20  At this point, it is not difficult to imagine the political and cultural implications of the shift from being to manifold, and from each manifold to its own different variety of constitution. Such a shift is related to the abandonment of the so-called “problem of being” for an investigation focused on the emergence of manifolds out of multiplicities and the possible points of reference for meaningful experiences. 18

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precisely because it does not appear in that way? Or, put differently and in more general terms (also independently from Husserl’s idealistic conclusion about the putative absolute being of consciousness): is it possible for something to appear not as a manifold? Is a fundamentally unconstituted phenomenon, devoid of any variety of EM-structure whatsoever, phenomenologically conceivable? There is no point in denying that such a possibility has been explored by Husserl himself, and not only in some passages of Ideas I, but also in a number of texts now published in Husserliana XXXVI (Transzendentaler Idealismus). In these texts, Husserl openly states that absolute consciousness is precisely the only absolute being and therefore the—transcendental—root (ῥίζωμα) of any further being, precisely because its mode of appearing is not that of a Einheit einer Mannigfaltigkeit. Accordingly, as already mentioned, only relative being would be constituted, while absolute being would not. If this happens to be the case, the possibility of characterizing phenomenology as a whole, in a rather unusual way, as “bringing the constitution of manifolds to language and therefore making sense of beings” would be severely compromised. The second question is related to the purported novelty of such an attempt to take the EM-structure as a guiding thread to understand constitution. In fact, someone (say, a follower of Derrida) may suggest that our supposedly unconventional Husserl is simply playing with quite traditional conceptual oppositions, such as the one and the many, identity and difference, and the like: oppositions belonging to the innermost core of the infamous Western metaphysics of presence. At the end of the day, there is nothing more traditional than the Platonic dialectical opposition between the one and the many, or the mantic obsession for roots and beginnings of all sorts. So would it not be the case that our allegedly new Husserl might look like a quite old Neoplatonist, and that his transcendental-constitutive “beyond being” narrative may end up being nothing but a renewed version of the famous platonic “ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας,” praising the virtues of the One as the Idea of Good? In sum, is the idea of phenomenology we are up to, truly unzeitgemäß—or simply altmodish?21 As for the first question, it is true that in many texts Husserl seems to claim that the flow of consciousness is at the same time constitutive of objectivities—be they transcendent or immanent—and devoid of any EM-structure. And it is important to recall that we have first learned of the intimate connection between constitution and manifold precisely within the argument supposed to justify the distinction between the relative being of the real world and the absolute being of consciousness. One may therefore suspect that absolute consciousness, whose mode of appearing has no EM-structure, is ultimately unconstituted. This idea is somehow formulated in the following text, taken from a 1908 manuscript: Consciousness, being in radical sense, is radical in the proper sense of the word (radikalen, im echten Sinn des Wortes). It is the root (Wurzel) and, according to another image, the source (Quelle) of everything else that otherwise is called or can be called “being.” It is the root: it bears (es trägt) every other individual being, be it immanent or transcendent. If  On the quite particular relationship that holds between Husserl’s phenomenology and the Platonic heritage, see Chaps. 11 and 12 of this volume. 21

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2  Multiplicity, Manifolds and Varieties of Constitution being is individual being, lasting, modifying and not-modifying itself while it lasts—temporal being—then consciousness is not being. Consciousness is the bearer of time (Träger der Zeit), but it is not itself and in itself a temporal being—and yet this does not prevent it from receiving, through “subjectification” (Subjektivierung) (a specific form of objectification), a position within time and therefore being “shaped” (gestaltet) as a lasting, temporal object. However, in itself, it is not temporal, it is not a unity of a multiplicity, it does not refer back to anything else from which it could or should be obtained as a unity. But every other being is precisely unitary and refers back, immediately or mediately, to the absolute flow of consciousness. (Hua XXXVI, p. 70)

In this extraordinary passage, Husserl faces a dilemma. Either “being” is univocal and, in that case, if “being” means “being constituted,” consciousness, strictly speaking, “is not”, since it has no EM-structure; or “being” is equivocal—that is, λέγεται πολλαχῶς—and absolute consciousness “is” (even in the most original and primitive sense), but in that case “being” cannot be equated with “being constituted,” since constitution turns out to characterize only the derivative sense of being, that is, that relative being harboring an EM-structure. However, if this is also the dilemma that Husserl will face all through his life, swinging from one solution to the other, it is worth noticing that a third possibility is left open. Whether, when and where Husserl explicitly takes this third way is matter of dispute. But the fact remains that a phenomenological way out exists: “being” can be univocal and can be safely equated with “being constituted,” provided that one succeeds in subjecting the so-called absolute being of consciousness itself to the prism of the reduction, discovering its own peculiar EM-structure, namely the Einheit einer Mannigfaltigkeit proper to the Absolute Bewußtsein. How is that possible? The outcome is suggested in the very same passage quoted above. If the secret model of the EM-structure were only that of the transcendent perceptual individual, that is, the “thing” (where the multiplicity is made of adumbrations and the unity is that of an intention) then, no doubt, absolute consciousness has no EM-structure. But since we have learned not to conflate the formal structure of the one-as-many (proper to every appearance) with the material structure of any of its varieties, be it the one-through-many-adumbrations (proper to the appearance of a thing), the one-lasting-through-many-temporal-phases (proper to the appearance of a lived-experience), the one-being-instantiated-over-against-manyindividual-­cases (proper to the appearance of ideal objects), it is easy to avoid such an error. In other words, it is only if we restrict our considerations to “Sein als individueller Sein” (where multiplicities are adumbrations of a thing or phases of a lived-experience) and take the EM-structure of individuality as the sole standard that we might be tempted to jump to the conclusion that “Bewußtsein ist kein Sein”—and therefore not constituted. But absolute consciousness has neither the EM-structure of an individual nor that of a quasi-individual, and it certainly does not take the form of the ʽɛˋν ἐπὶ πολλῶν, namely the EM-structure specific to ideal objects founded on individuals. However, this does not mean that absolute consciousness has no EM-structure at all, but rather that it has its own, peculiar and irreducible EM-structure, which is nothing but the structure of the flowing living present: one present “constituted” by the intensive

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multiplicity of impressions, re-tensions, and pro-tensions responsible for the nonobjective appearing of consciousness. As Husserl says in another text, written in 1907, what is required here is a further readjustment of our understanding of the relationship between one and many, as it already happened when we shifted from the constitution of the thing to the constitution of the living experience: “the opposition between unity and multiplicity receives a new sense [einen neuen Sinn bekommt], that will guide us back to a deeper layer of constitutive conscious events” (Hua X, p. 271). It is only after having developed a more fine-grained conception of inner time-­consciousness—which he did not fully have in 1907–8—that Husserl will be able to grasp such “neuen Sinn” in which absolute consciousness can be defined by its own unique form of unity in multiplicity. And this will happen, for instance, in the Bernau materials. The answer to the first question is therefore negative: in phenomenology nothing is unconstituted, not even the so-called absolute consciousness. Nothing appears otherwise as a manifold, extensive or intensive, whatever its Sein or Sosein-sinn might be. At this point, someone might become increasingly worried and ask: if nothing is unconstituted in phenomenology, then what about the irreducible fact of the World? What about the irreducible fact of the Other (with a rigorously capital ‘O’)? But, in my view, these questions probably rest on a misunderstanding that tends to conflate the phenomenological question of the unconstituted with the issue of the absolutely transcendent (the Outside, the World, the Transcendence, the Other, etc.), which as such would be something that subjectivity cannot make sense of (the Difference, the Meaningless, the Primordial Ooze, etc.). Such a conflation is, no doubt, due to the hegemonic role played by what we may call the “Kantian” model of constitution, according to which the a priori forms of sensibility (space and time) and intellect (categories) act upon a multitude of raw materials and bring it to the phenomenal unity of an object. As a consequence, the “real transcendent” is nothing but the “unconstituted,” the passively received; something toward which subjectivity is hopelessly powerless, marking its finitude even before the meaningful experience of objects. But if our hypothesis is correct, this is clearly not the path followed by Husserl. The unconstituted is not the absolutely non-subjective that subjectivity receives “from the outside,” as it were—something out of control, limiting the subject in its factual passivity. As we have seen, the phenomenological unconstituted is rather something whose appearing is supposedly devoid of any EM-structure. So, in strictly phenomenological terms, “unconstituted” means “absolutely simple,” not “absolutely transcendent.” Accordingly, putative “unconstituted” would be something “appearing as structurally simple,” something putatively unconstituted closer to the Aristotelian ἁπλοῦν (Met. Δ, 5, 1015b12) than to the different forms of Transzendenz advocated by neo-­Kantians and Heideggerians of all sorts. Therefore, while the non-phenomenological search for the unconstituted is identical with the search for the absolutely transcendent (and non-subjective), the search for the phenomenological unconstituted would be nothing but the search for the simple, absolute appearing unity. Now, at the beginning, having hastily identified the EM-structure with the phenomenal structure of the transcendent thing, and

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generalized the mode of constitution “content/form of apprehension” to individuality as such, Husserl thought that absolute consciousness, insofar as it resists the form/content scheme, should be regarded as appearing in a simple way, giving credit to the idea of the unconstituted (identified, within the idealistic argument, with absolute being). As soon as he realizes, however, that even absolute consciousness has its own EM-structure, Husserl has all the means to jettison at the same time the limitation of constitution to worldly objects (=generalization of constitution: everything is constituted), the form/content paradigm (=proliferation of constitutions: there are many varieties of constitution), as well as any search for the ἁπλοῦν, since, nothing, not even absolute consciousness, can be described as “simple,” i.e., as “not being more than one” and, therefore, “excluding multiplicity” (πλεοναχῶς). However, in some sense, there is a legitimate way of talking about the non-­ constituted in constitutive phenomenology, even if it has obviously nothing to do with the absolutely transcendent. In fact, even if we were to accept that there is nothing absolutely unconstituted, one could still refer to the multiplicities constituting a manifold as relatively unconstituted. “Things,” that is, transcendent perceptual individuals, for instance, are given as manifolds constituted by a multiplicity of adumbrations. But things can also appear as examples of general objects like essences or species, and in that case essences and species appear as constituted by a multiplicity of similar things. And within the higher-order constitution of an instantiated essence, the lower-order constitution through adumbrations of the perceptive thing becomes irrelevant, non-meaningful. “Constituted” out of multiplicities of adumbrations, “things” appear as “unconstituted” when they take part in the constitution of essences or species as the multiple supports for the appearing of an ideal object. In such cases, one could say that they are relatively unconstituted, to the extent that they are given not as manifolds themselves, but as elements, or perhaps more precisely, as dimensions of higher-order manifolds; however, as manifolds themselves, they are still constituted insofar as they appear through adumbrations. Adumbrations, in turn, appear as “unconstituted” within the manifold “thing,” but as manifolds themselves they are constituted in the flow of the living present; in turn the living present is “unconstituted” within the manifold lived-experience, but as a manifold itself it is self-constituted as impression/pro-tension/re-tension, and so on. In sum, the error consists in the temptation to hypostasize this relative or horizonal non-constitution, that one should rather call it “sedimented constitution” and conflate it with the purported search for the absolute un-constituted as the absolutely transcendent. As for the second question, the one related to the Platonic flavor of the connection between constitution and manifold, it may be useful to add a couple of grammatical remarks to those that have been already mentioned when we first discussed Husserl’s appropriation of the term “Mannigfaltigkeit.” As we have seen, that German term is somewhat equivocal, for it can be indifferently used to talk about multiplicities (the adumbrations of a thing, the phases of a lived-experience, the similar instances of an essence, etc.) and the latter’s appearing as manifolds (the adumbrations of a thing, the phases of a lived-experience, the similar instances of an

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essence, etc.). We have also pointed out that Husserl often oscillates between a technical and a non-technical use of term. But the grammar of “Mannigfaltigkeit” seems to suggest another rather interesting distinction; a distinction that could be useful in order to shed some light on the relations between these equivocal senses. As the English word “manifold,” the German “Mannigfaltigkeit” can ordinarily be employed to form sentences where it occurs as a barely nominalized adjective, sentences having the form: “Es gibt eine Mannigfaltigkeit von …”: “There is a multitude of x,” “There are many y,” “There are plenty of z,” and so on. Such sentences structurally imply the correlation and the opposition between many and one. One multitude is a multitude-of. It is that grammatical form which accommodates the quite old philosophical debate that nourishes Platonisms of all ages where the many are thought of in relation to the one. But this is not the most important feature of Husserl’s Mannigfaltigkeiten; rather, it is the fact that Husserl—following Cantor, but especially Riemann—also constructed sentences where Mannigfaltigkeit occurs as a full-fledged name: quite unusual sentences like “x is a Mannigfaltigkeit” or “a Mannigfaltigkteit like y.” We have already recalled how Husserl has explicitly stated that space is constituted as a cyclic manifold (zyklische Mannigfaltigkeit), time as a two-dimensional infinitely extended orthoïd (i.e., linear) manifold (orthöide Mannigfaltigkeit), and so on. In this second case, one does not oppose the one and the many but a manifold to other manifolds; in our jargon, one opposes an EM-structure to other varieties of EM-structures. The main point here is not to question the way in which the many are one, but the way in which many-as-one appear as differentiated, disjointed, related, articulated, interconnected, continuously transformable or not transformable the one into another. The task of constitution is therefore twofold: discovering and differentiating manifolds; accounting for the givenness of the one-as-many and, at the same time, for the many ways in which the different many-as-one behave, and in which they can be therefore variously related to each other in their heterogeneity. What lies beyond being, once ontology is reduced and naive objects are described in their constitution, is not the One of the Platonic or Neoplatonic ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας, but rather multiple manifolds. In fact, to take advantage once again of the equivocity of the term Mannigfaltigkeit, we could say that the double task of phenomenology becomes, on the one hand, to show how a multiplicity is constituted as a manifold, and, on the other, how to recognize multiplicities of manifolds. It is precisely to this extent that the Platonic opposition of the one and the many, and its transcendent fascination for the One is, so to speak, phenomenologically reframed. For it leaves place to the twofold—completely different—issue of the becoming manifold of a multiplicity and of the many ways of becoming manifolds. And since we have seen that each manifold is only relatively unconstituted, more than in presence of an ontology—or post-ontology—of the one above the many, we are rather in front of the vanishing lines of manifolds/multiplicities. We can now try to address the second question. In bridging the two meanings of Mannigfaltigkeit—the non-technical (multiplicity-of) and the technical (manifold)—Husserl’s constitutive analysis, bringing together two quite different issues, drastically contaminates the traditional problem of the one-and-the-many: the issue

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of the togetherness proper to the appearance and that of the varieties of togetherness out of which the field of appearance is constituted. As far as I can tell, this move cannot be traced back so straightforwardly to Plato’s dialogues, nor be equated with any known form of “Platonism”—not if the friends of Plato remain committed to the idea of a transcendent, simple and unstructured One, eventually equated with the idea of the Good.22 At best, it allows us to rethink, retrospectively and in a different way, a sort of counter-history of Platonism where it would not be relevant any more to oppose the one to the many, but only a Mannigfaltigkeit to another, that is, a multiplicity to a manifold and a manifold to various other manifolds. If we turn back to the first question, concerning the issue of the unconstituted, it should not be hard to see now how beyond “manifolds of adumbration” (=things), “manifolds of foundation” (=ideal objects), and the like, one can recognize the living present of inner time and the living body of inner space as peculiar forms of what we may call “manifolds of modification.” The varieties of these EM-structures are, again, quite different from each other, although mutually related. In that sense, nothing that is given is unconstituted, and inner time consciousness insofar as it is given in its own way makes no exception since, according to the lesson of retentionality, absolute consciousness is self-constituting, in the sense in which it is itself both constituted and constituting. But what happens, then, to the difference between consciousness and worldly reality that Husserl was intensively searching for? If it is clear that the proliferation of the connection between constitution and manifold fosters the idea that nothing is unconstituted, it is also clear that the eidetic distinction between consciousness and worldly reality cannot be justified on the basis of the opposition between a constituted relative being and an unconstituted absolute being, i.e., between something appearing as Einheit einer Mannigfaltigkeit and something appearing as Einheit ohne Mannigfaltigkeit. However, granted that the traditional metaphysical understanding of such distinction should be abandoned, one can also ask whether redefining phenomenology in terms of a universal constitution/variation excludes a renewed perspective on the question. In fact, the ontological distinction between consciousness and world now appears as nothing but the ontologized version, so to speak, of the eidetic difference between hetero-constituted manifolds (of adumbration or foundation) and self-constituted manifolds (of modification: the living present of the pre-given time and the living body of the pre-given space). The articulation of these

 I have received the interesting suggestion to consider this Husserlian account in consultation with Proclus, especially in relation with §138 of the Elements of Theology. In that section Proclus restates what Plato had already introduced in the Philebus and Cantor will later recognize as the ancestor of his idea of Mannigfaltigkeit: being is a unified multiplicity insofar as it is made of limit and infinity. The conclusion of the passage is, roughly, that to be is to be many-as-one. But as the equivocity of Husserl’s Mannigfaltigkeit points out, this cannot be the main point. The main point is rather that manifolds are constituted as differentiated the one from the other. This is what I have stressed in contrasting the traditional opposition between One/Many to the twofold relation multiplicity/manifold on the one hand and manifold/other manifold on the other. I am still not sure, however, whether something in Proclus approximates this point. 22

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manifolds therefore assumes the status of the problem that is constitutive of transcendental phenomenology itself. Now, if we were to capture the deep difference between hetero-constituted and self-constituted manifolds, we should probably recall that such a difference is not factual but eidetic. And, from a methodological viewpoint, the way Husserl proceeds when it comes to bringing eidetic differences to the fore—i.e., through variation—proves crucial. In fact, every manifold, every “one” made out of “many” according to a law, can be in principle unmade in free phantasy by deliberately transgressing these laws, as the analysis of the famous example of the annihilation of the world presented in Ideas I, §49 clearly shows. The outcome of such an attempt, however, is not always the same. Accordingly, if we had to recast the results of our previous discussion of the heterogeneous responses to variation within the present framework of a constitutive phenomenology of manifolds, we should draw the following conclusion. The differentiated work of variation shows that we have to distinguish between manifolds whose “Vernichtung” is imaginable—in different ways, according to their different structural EM-features—and those of which such a destruction can only be said but not imagined. We may call the former “fragile manifolds” and the latter “sturdy manifolds.”23 Hetero-constituted manifolds are structurally fragile: once undone they can always give rise to manifolds of another kind. Let us take the example of a perceived object and let us break the rules of its EM-structure: imagine it now devoid of any external horizon, closed, that is, not open to any further profiles and yet intuitively given. If we are able to do so, our initial example of perceptive object has changed into an example of a purely imaginative object: it has disappeared as an object of perception (manifold of adumbrations) and become an object of pure phantasy (manifold of discrete “shots,” multiplicity of views unified in a rather different way). In other words, examples of fragile manifolds, once submitted to free variation, disappear as manifolds of a certain variety (things) and are transformed in or replaced by examples of manifolds of a different variety (imaginary quasi-­ individuals). The same holds for founded general objects like, say, meanings. An uttered linguistic expression whose meaning, though variation, is imagined as neither public nor repeatable would become a manifold of a different kind: a sound made of pitch, loudness, and quality. The same holds for immanent lived-experiences. A lived-experience devoid of certain synthesis or structural characters is simply another lived-experience. Fragile manifolds have boundaries, boundaries that can be crossed by continuous variations. By contrast, “sturdy manifolds,” once unmade, disappear: they are unimaginable otherwise as self-constituted. The multiplicities out of which they appear as one are virtual and intensive, so intertwined that they cannot even be imaginatively conceived the one without the other. This is precisely the case of inner-time

 On Husserl’s account of the “annihilation of the world” and the power of imagination to destroy manifolds, see Chaps. 6 and 7 of this volume, respectively. 23

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(pre-tension/re-tension/primal impression as constituting the living flow) and innerspace (the kinesthesis as constituting the living body). Can one make sense of the experience of a living body that is not constituted by its own kinesthesis as another variety of manifold? Or imagine a living present not constituted by impressions, pro-tensions and re-tensions? While we can make sense of an ego whose life is not temporal-finite (gods, angels, mythical creatures or fictional entities born out of some Lovecraft novels could do the trick), nothing could make sense of a timeless conscious life or a retention stripped away from its chain of modifications. A retension without primal impression would not appear as another kind of manifold, it would simply be inconceivable and unimaginable at all: nothing that could possibly appear or be meaningful. At this point, if we wanted to say that with the “sturdy manifolds” we have reached something like the ῥιζώματα πάντων of which Husserl was so fond, we would probably be wrong—but not entirely. Sturdy manifolds are radical only in a very precise sense: by understanding their self-constitution, it is as if we were going all the way down to the roots of that meaningfulness from which we have started. The Sinn that the concept of constitution was meant to account for survives the destruction of a fragile manifold, as free phantasy transfers us from one manifold to another manifold, although a manifold of different variety. It can also get temporarily lost when, breaking the laws of their unity, continuous imaginary variations dissolve the manifold into its constitutive multiplicities, and bring to appearance what Husserl in Thing and Space called a “Gewühl” of sensations, which is less than a world but more than nothing (Hua XVI, p.  288). But Sinn cannot survive the attempt—which will necessarily fail—of the de-constitution of a sturdy manifold. A conscious life without living present or a impression/pro-tension/re-tension, is not just something unimaginable or unexperiencable—it is plainly and simply meaningless. More precisely, “retention without primal impression” is something that can only be said—a catchy expression for philosophers in search of inspiration: and, as such, if ever meaningful, it is meaningful only as expression, as something sayable. Obviously, the distinction between hetero-constituted and self-constituted manifolds does not overlap with that between consciousness and real world suggested by Husserl. But that is a minor loss. It nevertheless allows for a radically different way of understanding that distinction’s meaning and scope. Husserl’s notion of constitution should in fact be understood as gesturing toward a very peculiar formulation of the theory of forms according to which what is constituted are not just objects but varieties of manifolds.24 Among these we can distinguish hetero-constituted “fragile” manifolds, namely contingent unities-of-multiplicities of which one can imagine the annihilation and the consequent relative loss of meaning through variation. And from a more general point of view, I would suggest that the importance of constitution should be linked to the idea of the structural contingency of every kind

 And I have to confess that I am not sure whether the question of who or what brings about the constitution still has any meaning as a problem for phenomenology. 24

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of unity whose essence is revealed by means of the peculiar ways in which its loss can be imagined. Physical objects, institutions, political groups but also minds, living persons, and theories are therefore less constructions than constituted manifolds in this very precise sense. As for the self-constituted “sturdy” manifolds, they are contingent as well, but their contingency lies at the borders of meaningfulness itself. Both cases however show how variation, far from being the name of a simple methodological technicality, completes constitution. Or, in other words: truly comprehended, constitution should be understood in terms of manifolds and their variations. As for the rest, it is not difficult to see how equating sturdy manifolds and the roots of appearing is a rather fascinating and, at the same time, odd claim. What is especially odd is in particular the idea that self-constituted manifolds, which one might be tempted to take as substitutes for the ill-famed fundamentum inconcussum, are far from being “unshaken.” Nothing is solid enough to be immune to the conflicts imagined by the variation. Not even the ῥιζώματα πάντων. The only difference is between that which ends its meaningful appearance in turning into something else, and that which simply disappears; between the passage from one Sinn to another, and pure and simple Sinnlosigkeit.

4 Coda By way of conclusion, we could ask ourselves: has our obstacle course actually led to a sufficiently unzeitgemäß picture of phenomenology? It is hard to tell. Obviously, each reader must judge for himself or herself. Let me simply restate that, as far as I am concerned, I do not think I have “interpreted” Husserl but rather have taken him quite seriously. Concepts, as Husserl puts it, are involved in linguistically expressed judgements, namely statements; statements that, in turn, provide anticipations for possible intuitions. Once intuitively fulfilled, statements make us see what they are about precisely as it is conceivable according to the relevant concepts involved. To see what concepts only promise to make you see—that is the τέλος of fulfillment. But while such a Husserlian idea is usually brought within the heuristic framework of a theory of knowledge, I take it as an indication of the, as it were, in-­actual “calling” of philosophy as such. Phenomenology tells us that inventing philosophical concepts is never a mere “theoretical” exercise. Each new concept brings not only a new conception but also the chance of seeing things otherwise. In fact, the task of phenomenology, as constantly practiced by Husserl, was not to provide a better and more insightful understanding of the world, of subjectivity, of time, perception, and the like, but to fabricate new concepts—counter-natural and para-doxical, in the sense of something that goes beyond common and philosophical opinion, or even against what is usually believed or held—concepts which, in their categorially expressed forms, make us see the world, subjectivity, time, perception, and the like, otherwise. Within the phenomenological framework, new concepts are not just new concepts, they are also, so to speak, promises of new, different and ultimately granted intuitions. And

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it is precisely this conceptual inventiveness fostered by Husserl, the sensibility to variations, joined with what we may call the potential of the concept of “constituted manifold” to modify our ordinary accounts of phenomenology, that, in my view, might justify the somewhat awkward idea behind this “manifesto”. What now remains to be seen is how this systematic “manifesto” can also have any bearing on the understanding of Husserl’s complex relationship with the ­concepts borrowed from the history of philosophy. But before we can answer this question, after articulating multiplicity and constitution, we still need to introduce another central concept of Husserl’s phenomenology, that is, the concept of attitude.

Chapter 3

The Reach of Attitudes On What Matters

Mais la connaissance est la seule des dimensions du vif que je peux t’enseigner en une nuit. Je t’abreuve de concepts parce que ces concepts t’aideront à mieux lire les phénomènes et à mieux éprouver; parce que savoir ce que peut un vif t’épargnera des contresens fatals. Alain Damasio Never opened myself this way | Life is ours, we live it our way | All these words, I don’t just say | And nothing else matters. Metallica

1 A Matter of Attitudes One of the most puzzling facts about Husserl is that, up to a certain point, questions such as “what is phenomenology?,” “what is the difference between philosophy, religion and myth?,” “how do we draw a line between nature and culture?,” and many other more, can all be answered thanks to the same concept, namely the concept of “attitude” (Einstellung). It would be hard to say exactly when this concept begins proliferating in Husserl’s works. Yet one thing strikes as certain: as soon as 1910, “attitudes” are already all over the place. In Ideas I one famously finds the “natural” attitude as opposed to the “unnatural” attitude of the “phenomenologist;” the overall project of Ideas II revolves around the contrast and articulation between the “naturalistic” and the “personalistic” attitude; in Ideas II and First Philosophy, Husserl insists on the differences and various connections of “theoretical,” “practical,” and “axiological” attitudes; and, finally, in the Vienna Lecture, he approaches the history of European sciences in general and of philosophy in particular by articulating the “philosophical” and the “mythical-religious” attitude; not to mention the whole host of “reflexive,” “eidetic,” “aesthetic,” “critical,” “phantasy” attitudes etc., scattered all over

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_3

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Husserl’s published and unpublished texts. What is an “attitude”, then, and why does this concept have such a rich variety of applications? In the previous chapter, we characterized Husserl’s phenomenology, so to speak, from a structural point of view, through a manifesto-like general presentation of its constitutive concepts of “manifold,” “multiplicity” and “constitution.” Through a more traditional corpus-based study devoted to the rather strategic concept of “attitude”, this chapter aims at providing a complementary dynamic viewpoint on phenomenology as a whole. It also opens the space for the more properly historical investigations on ontology, logic, metaphysics and philosophy carried out in the remaining chapters.

2 Dismissive Attitudes Now, strange as it may sound, even though Husserl’s phenomenology heavily relies, on such a key concept, the question of its actual meaning and scope still remains largely unanswered. Apart from a handful of handbook entries, a couple of articles and a fairly confusing short book, scholars have devoted little to no attention to this concept. This fact is even more surprising if we keep in mind that Husserl seems to be the first author having turned the originally psychological notion of attitude into a full-fledged philosophical concept. And if apparently no philosopher before Husserl had employed this concept, it is also fair to say that no philosopher after Husserl has done the same. One seems thus to face a quite paradoxical situation: Husserl ‘invents’ a new philosophical concept; he grants it an extremely differentiated and strategic role in his phenomenology; and yet, no major phenomenologist after Husserl will follow his lead. No scholar has devoted a comprehensive study to it so far. Why? I would like to begin by expanding first on what might be called the failed posterity of Husserl’s concept of attitude. In his essay Phänomenologie und Erkenntnistheorie, Max Scheler claims that “phenomenology” is not the name of a science but rather the name of “an attitude of the spiritual gaze” (eine Einstellung des geistigen Schauens) (Scheler 1913–14, p.  380). However, this quite general claim is pretty much everything Scheler has to say on the topic. And apart from the occasional spots in which the word “attitude” is briefly mentioned in some of his works (Scheler 1928, p. 207), the concept itself appears to be vague and expendable. As for Heidegger, it is certainly true that his early lectures, such as the Basic Problems of Phenomenology, or the Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time, do take into consideration the notion of “attitude.” Yet, Heidegger refers to this concept always within the framework of his explicit assessment—sometimes positive (1992, pp.  23–4), sometimes critical (1979, §12, esp. pp.  155–7)—of Husserl’s phenomenology. In other words, when the early Heidegger talks of “attitudes,” he always refers to Husserl’s conceptuality. On the other hand, in the passages in which the late Heidegger plays with the word-family revolving around the root “stellen” (e.g., “Her-stellen,” “Ver-stellen,” “Ge-stell,” etc.), he consistently

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stays away from and almost deliberately neglects the lexical resources of the term “Ein-stellung.” The situation is quite different in Being and Nothingness, where Sartre does not shy away from massively employing the talk of “attitudes” in various different, creative and interconnected ways. According to Sartre, bad faith is in fact an “attitude” (Sartre 1943, pp. 47ff); it is a “negative” attitude indeed, as opposed to the “interrogative” attitude (pp. 4–5, 7, 11, 28). More precisely, bad faith is an attitude of “negation toward oneself” (Sartre 1943, pp. 47–8) and, as such, is contrasted to “good faith” as one of the “two immediate attitudes which we can take in the face of our being” (p. 70). On the other hand, shame and arrogance are, for Sartre, the only “authentic attitudes towards the Other” (Sartre 1943, p.  290); accordingly, love, language, and masochism appear as varieties of the “first attitude” in which concrete relations with the Others can be carried out (pp. 366ff). By contrast, indifference, desire, hate, and sadism are particularizations of the “second attitude” (Sartre 1943, pp. 379ff); likewise, emotions, imagination (p. 391), and even sexuality (pp. 406–7, 614) are described as different kinds of “attitudes,” not unlike charity, tolerance (p. 409) or failure (p. 459). What is more, all these cases are not simply listed and juxtaposed without any explicit criterion. Quite surprisingly, Sartre’s attitudes are extremely well organized into “original” (Sartre 1943, p. 408) and “derivative,” (p. 406) “toward oneself” (p. 47) and “toward the others” (p. 361), “affirmative” and “negative” (p. 171), etc. The richness of Sartre’s “attitudes” appears as undisputable—and would certainly deserve a closer study. Yet, as far as we are concerned, this is hardly enough to connect his concept to Husserl’s. What does Sartre mean exactly by “attitudes”? For Sartre, attitudes are sometimes equated to “behaviors” or “conducts” (Sartre 1943, pp. 406–7), sometimes to “projects” (p. 407), sometimes they are treated as “tendencies” (p. 563); on other occasions, Sartre maintains, quite mysteriously, that all human attitudes have the same “ideal meaning” (p. 626). And there are also reasons to believe that—at least in Being and Nothingness—Sartre often lumps together Husserl’s talk of attitude and Heidegger’s talk of moods (Stimmungen) and existentials of the Dasein under the common heading “modes of apprehension of nothingness” (modes d’appréhension du néant): There exist on the other hand numerous attitudes of ‘human reality’ which imply a ‘comprehension’ of nothingness: hate, prohibitions, regret, etc. For Dasein there is even a permanent possibility of finding oneself ‘face to face’ with nothingness and discovering it as a phenomenon: this possibility is anguish. (Sartre 1943, p. 17)

One might therefore ask whether Sartre’s account of attitude is actually a development, even a critical one, of Husserl’s notion, or rather the effect of a mere exercise of rewording. An exercise meant to adapt certain technical concepts of Heidegger’s Being and Time to the plan of delivering a vast array of paradigmatic figures having all the same “ideal meaning,” namely, concrete expressions of human existence as a form of active nothingness. In doing so, by merging “attitudes” and “existentials,” Sartre is, as usual, at the same time quite original and quite unfaithful to both Husserl and Heidegger.

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This brings us to Merleau-Ponty. Having read the materials of Ideas II, the early Merleau-Ponty could not avoid talking of “attitudes” in his Phenomenology of Perception. One might therefore expect a certain substantial novelty, even if critical, in his appropriation of Husserl’s conceptuality. But a closer look shows that this is clearly not the case. To begin with, Merleau-Ponty never explains, neither implicitly nor explicitly, what an attitude actually is. The only exception is a very ambiguous passage where he describes a concretely grasped triangle as “the formula of an attitude, a certain modality of my hold on the world, a structure in short” (la formule d’une attitude, une certaine modalité de ma prise sur le monde, une structure) (Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 449). But that is all. Moreover, Merleau-Ponty sometimes employs the term in a loose Husserlian way, without ever claiming any originality, as when he talks of the “natural” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, pp. vii, xv, 42, 45–6, 59, 73, 144, 263, 327, 328, 442), the “transcendental” (pp.  59, 69), the “emotional” and “practical,” (p. 64) or the “reflexive” attitudes (pp. 72, 230, 335). But such allusive talk is never actively endorsed and could barely justify the idea of an original Merleau-Pontyan appropriation of the concept of attitude. Finally, most of the time Merleau-Ponty either speaks of attitudes in an extremely vague and weak sense (Merleau-Ponty 1945, pp. 27, 122, 153, 161, 183, 204, 214, 263, 265) or, when he introduces new and non-Husserlian technical distinctions, he explicitly borrows them from the empirical field of the Gestalt psychology, not of phenomenology. The notion of “analytical attitude,” for instance, widely discussed by Merleau-Ponty, comes from Koffka and Gelb (Merleau-Ponty 1945, pp. 12, 19, 31, 276), not from Husserl. The same holds for the opposition between “categorial and concrete attitudes,” which refers to the study of Gelb and Goldstein, Zeigen und Greifen (Merleau-Ponty 1945, pp. 131, 139, 144, 135, 233, 262). It is also worth mentioning that the only occurrence of the German word “Einstellung” in the whole book is referred not to Husserl but precisely to Goldstein (Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 223). Needless to say, all these uses plainly and simply disappear in Merleau-­ Ponty’s later works. It is not necessary to add further examples and dwell on Levinas, Derrida or Marion to see that a deflationary tendency, which downplays the specific phenomenological relevance of attitudes, has prevailed in post-Husserlian continental phenomenology. In some sense, Heidegger has won (again) over Husserl. “Attitude” is still today considered to be an important and yet local technical concept of Husserl’s phenomenology. Sartre’s extremely structured attempt to put attitudes at the heart of his phenomenological ontology was quickly forgotten. And one might even suspect that this happened precisely because Sartre’s talk of “attitudes,” at the end of the day, appeared to be entirely dispensable—why should one talk of “attitudes” instead of “conducts,” “projects,” “tendencies,” “moods,” or “existentials”? As for Merleau-­ Ponty’s occasional combination of Husserlian phenomenology with experimental or Gestalt psychology, it has clearly proved to be insufficient for an expansion of the reach of such a new born philosophical concept, freshly emancipated from its psychological milieu.1  Two noteworthy exceptions to this trend have to be mentioned. The first is Herbert Leyendecker’s Zur Phänomenologie der Täuschungen. In this book, the author seems to rely on a Husserl-inspired 1

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Today, still in the track of Heidegger, and pointing to the problem of the theoretical shortcomings of Husserl’s phenomenology, the concept of attitude generally turns out to be philosophically appealing for mostly two reasons: attitudes are studied either to confirm Husserl’s (in)famous theoretical over-commitment, or to defend Husserl from Heidegger’s critique, showing that Husserlian phenomenology, all things considered, is not that bad because it is perfectly able to account for the most practical and affective aspects of human life. Yet, in both cases, it is not considered necessary either to define attitudes in general, or to correctly articulate attitudes in a consistent way in order to demonstrate the wide philosophical reach of the concept. The only booklet devoted to the topic ever published does not even bother trying to provide a general definition and merely alludes to the “Janus-headed concept of attitude” (janusköpfigen Begriff der Einstellung) (Fischer 1985, p. 2). As for the vast majority of Husserl scholars, they mostly draw from the Vienna Lecture, and “define” an attitude metaphorically as a “fixed style” (Drummond 2008, p. 41), as a “style of life,” an “approach towards the world” (Moran and Cohen 2012, p. 46), or

concept of attitude though developed in a somehow original way (Leyendecker 1913, pp. 45–74). Though he does not provide any strict definition of this concept, in his study on the phenomenology of perception and illusions, Leyendecker singles out a series of attitudes, such as “considering in view of testing,” “scanning,” “investigating,” “looking,” “ordering,” “searching for,” “working with,” “counting,” “collecting,” and the like (Leyendecker, p. 47). He also shows how attitudes select certain aspects of a perceived thing and discard others (Leyendecker, pp. 47–50), bringing out what he calls a phenomenon of “acceptance” (Akzeptes) (p. 53). Finally, he also goes as far as to sketch some general forms of what he calls the “fundamental attitudes” (Grundeinstellungen) (Leyendecker, p.  66). Leyendecker’s contribution, however, despite its appeal, has been utterly uninfluential in the phenomenological tradition. The second noteworthy exception is Karl Jasper’s Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (1919). Worldviews, Jaspers says, have to be studied from both sides, that of the subject and that of the object. Seen from the subjective side (vom Subjekt her) world-views appear as “attitudes” (Einstellungen), seen from the objective side (vom Objekt her) as “world pictures” (Weltbilder) (Jaspers 1919, p.  38). According to this stipulation, Jaspers devotes the first chapter of his magnus opus to the ordered classification of three main groups of “attitudes,” namely the “objective” (gegenständliche) (Jaspers 1919, pp.  40–78), the “self-­ reflective” (selbstreflektierte) (pp. 78–103) and the “enthusiastic” (enthusiastische) (pp. 103–121). These main attitudes are further divided into the partially overlapping sub-categories of “active” (active), “contemplative” (contemplative) and “mystical” (mystische), and correlated to their corresponding “world pictures”. The objectual Einstellung, for instance, is the subjective counterpart of the sensible-spatial Weltbild, the self-reflective one corresponds to the psychological Weltbild, the contemplative and rational Einstellung is correlated to the philosophical-metaphysical Weltbild, etc. (Jaspers 1919, p. 38). Jaspers also goes as far as to provide a tentative definition of “attitudes,” understood as “general modes of behavior (generelle Verhaltungsweisen) that could be studied objectively, at least to some extent, as transcendental forms,” as “directions of the subject using a certain gridwork of transcendental forms (Richtungens des Subjekts, die ein bestimmtes Gitterwerk der transzendentlen Formen). The leap from attitudes to world pictures is the leap from the subject to the object, from the subjective mode of behavior to the objective expression, from subjective creation to the one which is impressed from the outside, from the mere possibility to the actual spread in the objectual expanse” (Jaspers 1919, p. 39). As we shall see shortly, Husserl’s “attitudes” could hardly be characterized as “modes of behaviour functioning as transcendental forms” or simply as “directions of the subject”.

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as a “metaphor to bring to the fore something that does not lie on the everyday surface of things […] [but] forms a whole of a certain style: a mode of access to the sense of being-in-relation in general” (Dodd 1998, p. 61). On the other hand, those who try to avoid such “metaphorical” accounts, still appear to be at pains to define precisely what an attitude is. For example, in his very thorough studies, Andrea Staiti defines an attitude, at various points, as a “qualitative characteristic of an act” (qualitative Eigenart eines Aktes) (Staiti 2009, p.  221), as a “disposition” (Disposition) (p. 221), as the “quality of a subjective perspective” (Qualität einer subjektiven Betrachtungsweise) (Staiti and Kessler 2010, p. 78), or as a “subjective receptivity” (subjective Empfänflichkeit) (p. 78), before conceding, later, when he provides a useful comparison with the Neo-Kantian concept of “Standpoint,” that Husserl’s concept of attitude is “used in a somewhat non-technical way that makes it hard to pin down” (Staiti 2014, p. 98). In what follows, I would like to suggest a quite different path. I will try not only to provide a non-metaphorical and strictly technical definition of Husserl’s concept of attitude, but also to flesh out an explicit set of criteria that help make sense of its manifold uses.

3 Global Acts and Unities of Saliency Strange as it might seem, the path I have in mind begins with the Logical Investigations—a book in which the word “attitude” never appears. More precisely, I would like to begin with the opening sections of the 5th Investigation, in which Husserl openly recognizes his debt to Brentano: Whether we think Brentano’s classification of “mental” phenomena successful, and whether we think it basically significant for the whole treatment of psychology, as Brentano claims it is, does not matter here. Only one point has importance for us: that there are essential, specific differences of intentional relation or intention (the generic descriptive character of “acts”). […] Most, if not all, acts are complex experiences; very often involving intentions which are themselves multiple. (Hua XIX/1, p.  380–1/96, translation modified, emphasis added)

What we gather from this text is the following. According to Husserl, Brentano has rightly recognized (1) the idea that there are multiple varieties (mehrfältige) and mutually irreducible modes of intentional reference; and (2) the fact that they are all variously intertwined in complex lived-experiences (Komplexe), structurally constituted as unities-of-multiplicities (Einheiten von Mannigfaltigkeiten) of other lived-­ experiences. All these manifold lived-experiences, Husserl continues, are found to be constantly “fused together” (verschmolzen) and variously “interwoven” (verwoben) within the unified stream of an empirical ego: what is essentially given in a consciousness are the relevant acts of perceiving, judging etc., with their variable sense-material, their interpretative content, their positional characters etc. […] This merely means that certain contents help to constitute a unity of consciousness, .

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This is a whole, in reality made up of manifold parts, each of which may be said to be ‘lived through.’ (Hua XIX/1, p. 361–2/84–5, translation modified)

In addition, as Husserl also emphatically puts it in 1894, in one of his earliest texts: Each current global consciousness is a unity in which everything is connected with everything else (das jeweilige Gesamtbewusstsein ist eine Einheit, in der alles mit allem in Verbindung steht). However, there are important differences in the modes of the connection (Weise der Verbindung). (Hua XXII, p. 92)

Thus, developing Brentano’s insight, a descriptive phenomenology should certainly differentiate the various elementary forms of lived-experiences and act characters (perception, imagination, memory, etc.). But it should also uncover the modes of connection by means of which manifold lived-experiences, which are connected within the stream of an empirical ego to a virtually infinite manifold of other lived-­ experiences, can really (reell) turn into the unity (Einheit) of one single whole lived-­ experience. This focus on the intentional reference of complex unities-of-multiplicities of lived-experiences—i.e., acts and non-acts that are not only “fused together” (verschmolzen), or merely “connected” (verbunden), but also “brought together into unity” (Vereinigt zur Einheit)—is marked by the introduction of a new emphatic term, whose relevance is often neglected in the literature, namely the term “global act” (Gesamtakt). Not every unitary experience of connected acts is for that reason one interconnected act (zusammengesetzter Akt), just as every combination of machines is not one complex interconnected machine. Our comparison illuminates our further requirements. A complex machine is one machine compounded out of machines, but so compounded, that it has a global performance (Gesamtleistung) into which the performances of the partial machines flow, and the like is in the case in regard to compounded acts. Each partial act has its particular intentional reference, each its unitary object, and its way of referring to it. These manifold part-acts are, however, summed up in one global act (Gesamtakt), whose global achievement lies in the unity of its intentional reference. (Hua XIX/1, p. 417/115, translation modified) There are therefore manifold ways in which acts may be combined into global acts (Gesamtakten). The briefest consideration makes plain that there are different ways in which acts are concretely interwoven (Verwerbung) into other acts, or founded upon (Fundierung) underlying acts, : the systematic investigation of such ways, even in descriptive, psychological fashion, is as yet hardly in its beginning. (Hua XIX/1, p. 418/116, translation modified)

Husserl’s analogy with the interconnected machine is extremely important. It is meant to show that a global act is not a “combination” (Kombination) of acts but something new. It is the complex unity of one concrete episode of conscious life, accomplishing one “global performance” (Gesamtleistung) and referring to one transcendent correlate. Additionally, this passage shows that Husserl is aware that the “systematic investigation” of the intentionality proper to a global act is something new. Examples of global acts, Husserl continues, are, for instance, all kinds of non-­ objectifying acts. Acts of joy (Freude) are global acts insofar as they are founded on lower-order acts (e.g., acts of perception), so as to form one whole concrete act.

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Accordingly, the perceived thing immediately appears as equipped with delightful predicates. Founded non-objectifying and founding objectifying acts merge in a global act brought together in what Husserl calls a “unity of foundation” (Einheit der Fundierung). But Husserl also identifies another variety of global acts—a variety that, as we will see shortly, is the prototype of what he will later call “attitude.” The mode of connection called “unity of foundation” (Einheit der Fundierung) is, as a matter of fact, not the only way to bring together a global act. For there is also a second relevant mode of connection, namely what Husserl calls “Einheit der Bedeutsamkeit” (something I would like to translate not as “unity of significance,” but as “unity of saliency,” in order to avoid any confusion with Heidegger’s terminology). Unlike the “unity of foundation” (say: perception/joy)—in which multiple acts stand in a “founding/founded” (fundierende/fundierte) relationship—a “unity of saliency” brings together a multiplicity of partial acts in relationships of “domination and subordination” (herrschender/dienender Akt). In other words, while unities of foundation emerge because certain acts require founding on other acts in order to exist, unities of saliency occur when certain acts “stand out as more salient” (bedeutsam) and “exert a greater activity” (Aktivität) on the others. What is at stake in this latter case is not the possibility of their existence, but the emergence of their relevance. To describe this second non-ontological distinctive mode of connection or intertwinement, Husserl introduces a new terminological nuance and an example. The terminological nuance is captured by the difference between: (a) “to live-through an act” (einen Akt erleben) and (b) “to live within an act” (in einem Akt leben). To live-through an act or to have the lived-experience of an act (einen Akt erleben) signifies that the act at stake is “really” (reell) immanent to the overall stream of consciousness of an empirical ego, that is, it is connected in manifold ways to an actual or possible manifold of interconnected and interpenetrating lived-experiences (acts and non-acts), each of which is equally “really” immanent to the very same stream. By contrast, an empirical ego “lives within an act” (in einem Akt lebt), precisely when some of the manifold acts that are lived-through establish a “difference of saliency” (Unterschied der Bedeutsamkeit): they claim a “privilege” (Bervozugung) or play a “dominant” (herrschende) role vis-à-vis the others acts of the manifold. In this sense, although all acts are equally lived-through, some acts turn out to be lived “principally” (vorzugsweise). To describe the event of this “primacy,” Husserl says that “prominent” acts “act” upon the others, exert “a greater activity” (eine grösste Aktivität) on the manifold—an “activity” compelling enough to bring the manifold itself into the new unity of one single global act, and to lead the joint intentional reference to the unity of one single and yet complex correlate: Generally the greatest activity (die grösste Aktivität) will be displayed by the act-character which comprehends and subsumes all partial acts in its unity […]. In this act, we live, as it were, principally (In diesem Akte leben wir vorzugsweise); in the subordinate acts only in

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proportion to the saliency (Bedeutsamkeit) of their achievements for the global act and its intention. But plainly to talk of such differences of saliency is just to use other words to cover the preferential (Bevorzugung) living in question, which some acts enjoy and others do not. (Hua XIX/1, p. 419/116, translation modified)

Husserl illustrates his case with an example of verbal communication, where multiple acts are “lived through” but only some of them appear to be “dominant”: Let us now consider our example. It concerns the unity of the acts in which an expression, , is constituted, with the quite different act constitutive of its meaning; an essentially different connection, we may note, to that of the last-­ mentioned acts with the acts in which they have an immediate or a more remote intuitive fulfilment. Not only is the mode of connection here essentially different, but also the activity with which certain acts are performed. The expression is indeed perceived, but our interest does not live in this perception; we attend, when not distracted, to the signified rather than the signs. Dominant activity resides in the sense giving acts. The intuitive acts which perhaps accompany, and are interwoven into the total act’s unity lending it evidence, or illustrating it, or otherwise functioning in it, absorb our dominant interest in varying degree. They may be prominent (vorwalten), as in the perceptual judgement, or the analogously constituted picture-judgement, where our one wish is to express the perception or imagination in which we live, and likewise in the completely evident judgement of necessary law. They may increasingly recede and come to seem quite subsidiary (nebensächlich), as in cases of imperfect or wholly unsuitable illustration of some dominant thought. They may then be a vanishing phantasm, to which practically no interest attaches. (Hua XIX/1, p. 419–20/116–7, emphasis added; see also p. 45–6/193–4)

Husserl is quite clear: the concrete experience of verbal communication is more than a simple mereological unity of lived-experiences: it has its specific mode of connection and rests on the activity (Aktivität) of some acts over the others. In fact, the receiver is not just performing a host of acts (perceptual, categorial, imaginative, etc.), but he or she is also “principally” living-through within certain acts that are stronger and more effective than the others, that act upon the others bringing them together within the unity of one global act, i.e., the act of understanding the speaker’s utterance. As a result, the receiver is not merely in presence of a founded object, but he or she also has a focus, something salient (bedeutsam) to aim at. In the Fifth Logical Investigation Husserl has no name yet for that global act brought together into a unity of saliency. However, it is my contention that the idea of such a unity of saliency is precisely the palimpsest upon which Husserl will later write the story of attitudes. If this is correct, then we should focus on the three distinctive features that will later turn into the defining characters of attitudes as such. (1) A unity of saliency does not simply intentionally refer to something (Etwas) but, thanks to the difference of saliency among acts, it rather refers specifically to something that matters (etwas Bedeutsames). “Dominant” acts do not determine what is intentionally experienced or how it is experienced; they rather establish the intentional reference towards what matters in experience. They refer to a saliency. This point could be clarified by stressing the distinction between the global acts brought together in a unity of foundation and those brought together in a unity of saliency. One should have noticed, indeed, that what is dominant in a global act of

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saliency should not be conflated with what is fundamental from an ontological point of view. In Husserl’s example of verbal communication, the perceptual acts are mereologically fundamental, qualitatively irreducible, practically unavoidable, and nevertheless functionally auxiliary. They are “fundamental” (wesentlich, grundlegend, fundierend) but—at least on that occasion—not “dominant” (herrschend) or “salient” (bedeutsam). Without such grounding acts there would be no global act of communication at all. And yet, such acts enjoy no privilege within the concrete conscious lived-experience, since they have no say about what actually matters in the concrete episode of conscious lived-experience just described. Thus, unlike fundamental acts, “dominant” acts are not meant to provide an intentional object. Their function is to highlight a focal theme, not a ground for existence. They are not ­concerned with the ontological form of objectivity but with the phenomenological relevance of significance. (2) Unities of saliency are structurally bound to contingency. Being unenduring and transient, relations of domination/subordination among acts are necessarily changing. Accordingly, while ontological unities of foundation are a priori and indefeasible, the dominance of an act over the others within a unity of saliency is a priori defeasible. In Husserl’s example, it is an a priori law that the receiver is ultimately able to grasp the speaker’s meaning-giving acts only as founded on a perceptual or quasi-perceptual basis; on the other hand, what matters now (the meaning-giving acts) could eventually lose its significance, and what was simply playing an auxiliary role earlier (the perceptual acts) can turn into the focus of an increasing interest (as when, at one point, the listener is more focused on the Italian accent of the speaker than to her communicative intentions). Unlike unities of foundations, ontologically ‘hard as stones,’ as it were, unities of saliency are phenomenologically fragile. (3) Unities of saliency are better described with the dynamic language of force and activity. Conscious life exerts a force on itself, some lived-experiences “effecting a greater activity,” “overpowering” the others, imposing to a manifold of livedexperiences the focal unity of a theme. Now, this dynamic feature of the global act—something Findlay translates with “energy” (ἐνέργεια)—is more like a functional arrangement, a sort of forced agreement of conscious life with itself providing a constant unbalance. All lived-experiences are equally lived through, and yet the ego constantly endures the “intensity” of certain experiences that are—if you allow me the expression—“more energetic” than others. One might even be tempted to say that conscious life, in its ultimate concreteness, is nothing but the relentless imbalance leading from one point of intensity to the next, turning itself from one saliency to another. But more about this later. Therefore, three features characterize that streaming compound Husserl calls “unity of saliency”: (1) reference to what matters; (2) structural contingency; and (3) constant dynamic imbalance. In a nutshell, manifold lived-experiences are contingently brought together into global acts because some acts exert their force on the others so as to provide not an intentional reference, but a functional center of gravity. Then, conscious life, in all its concreteness, ends up referring, always and

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inevitably, not just to something transcendent, but also to a transcendence marked by an index of saliency: it refers to a transcendence that stands out and that matters. Let us call these three features “the a priori laws of saliency.”

4 From Unities of Saliency to Varieties of Attitudes These laws of saliency, spelled out in the Logical Investigations, will later be summoned to define Husserl’s concept of attitude. After the Logical Investigations, Husserl’s texts progressively quit the talk of “unity of saliency,” drop the reference to the merely empirical ego and—quite noticeably—at the very same time, start introducing an increasing number of “attitudes.” Each attitude is now explicitly described as a global act bringing together manifold lived-experiences that are functionally arranged into relationships of “domination/subordination” and establishing the joint reference to something that matters. Now, in a broad sense, Husserl suggests that there are as many attitudes as there are act-characters, that is, acts that could eventually play a dominant role over others acts, being lived-through “principally,” and contingently giving rise to more or less fleeting unities of saliency. This explains Husserl’s recurrent and quite liberal talk of “judging attitude,” “reflexive attitude,” “phantasy attitude,” “eidetic attitude,” and the like. For instance, we can certainly perform an act of phantasy in which something “hovers” (vorschwebt) in front of us. However, this does not entail that what is phantasized actually matters for us, that the relevant act of phantasy is actually playing a dominant function by unifying the whole of our present conscious life, that we are “taken away” (weggenommen) by a phantasized object turned into a saliency. By contrast, when this very same act of phantasy becomes dominant, we are no longer just “living through” an act of phantasy, we are “living within” phantasy—or, as Husserl puts it, we are in the “attitude of phantasy” (Phantasieeinstellung) (Hua XXIII, p. 559). But Husserl also uses the concept of attitude in a narrower sense. Accordingly, the word “attitude” does not simply name any unity of saliency, but only refers to the most general configurations of conscious life brought together into unities of saliency. This second, narrower, meaning is far more important since it rests on a different criterion for the classification of acts. Here, acts are grouped according to neither their act-character (perceptual, categorial, volitional, etc.) nor their act-quality (objectifying/non-objectifying) or cognitive function (empty/­ intuitive). Acts are instead brought together precisely according to their general power to “act” upon other acts, to exert a “dominant unifying function,” and to establish not just fleeting, occasional themes but general paradigmatic ones. The famous “theoretical,” “practical,” and “axiological” attitudes are attitudes precisely in this second, narrow sense. The scope of these more general attitudes is established on the basis of what Husserl will later call the three “spheres” of acts, i.e., acts exerting a general dominant tendency within any complexion of acts whatsoever. In other words, given any

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global act brought together into a unity of saliency, the partial acts playing a dominant function (no matter if perceptual, emotional, volitional; objectifying, non-­ objectifying; intuitive, empty, etc.) will necessarily belong to one of the following “spheres” (Husserl VIII, p. 98–99/302): (a) the sphere of the doxa (δόξα): acts by means of which one takes a positional stance—categorial or not—with respect to the “being” or “being-thus” (Sein, Sosein) of what one has intentionally referred to; (b) the sphere of the will (Wille): practically oriented acts aiming at the realization of goals (Verwirklichung); (c) and the sphere of emotions (Gemüt): acts of love and hate, hope and despair etc. achieving all sorts of affective evaluations. Thus, δόξα, Wille and Gemüt are neither faculties nor classes of acts, neither are they names of act-characters or labels for global acts in general. They are “spheres” in the same sense in which one talks of spheres of influence: the highest genera of dominant arrangements of conscious life occurring within any concrete global act of saliency. They are the archetypical “directions of interest” (Interessenrichtungen), the most general functions of saliency, and the most universal activities that conscious life can exert on itself as to refer not to this or that contingent focal correlate, but to what matters—in one way or another. And what is it that always matters? What are the greatest saliencies towards which conscious life is contingently and yet constantly in a state of intentional dynamic imbalance? Husserl’s answer is: being to be congitively posited, values to be emotionally assessed, goals to be practically realized; in other words, what is, what is valuable, what is worth striving for. Nothing else matters. As a result, when acts belonging to the sphere of the doxa are actually dominant, bringing the whole of concrete conscious life (emotional and practical) into a unity of saliency in which being matters, then one lives-in what Husserl calls the “theoretical attitude.” When acts belonging to the sphere of the will dominate, what matters are the goals to be pursued and reached, and one lives-in the “practical attitude” (although still performing emotional and theoretical acts). Finally, when acts belonging to the sphere of feelings subordinate both knowledge and action to their dominant activity, what matters is precisely what is emotionally valuable, and one lives-in the “axiological attitude.” To put it in, again, a slightly different way, that is, highlighting the unity of saliency that an attitude establishes in the whole of conscious life, one could also say the following: when “being” matters the whole of one’s conscious life, no matter its complexity, is engaged in a theoretical attitude (=Th.A), dominated by the positional force of of the δόξα or, in some more complex categorial cases, the ἐπιστήμη (see Hua VI, p. 332/285); when “values” matter this very same conscious life shifts into a new configuration, that of the axiological attitude (=Ax.A), unified by the dominant force of the ὄρεξις; finally, when “goals” matter, the practical attitude (=Pr.A) takes in, and the whole conscious life, with its multiplicities of multiplicities of acts, is driven by the leading force of the πρᾶξις.

4  From Unities of Saliency to Varieties of Attitudes

Th.A

Pr.

Pr.A

Ax.

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Ax.A

Th.

Ax.

Th.

Pr.

δόξα

πρᾶξισ

ὄρεξισ

At this point, there can be as many specific varieties of theoretical attitudes as there are positional acts (perception, categorial acts, etc.), as many axiological attitudes as there are emotions (aesthetical, moral feelings, etc.), and as many practical attitudes as there are goal-oriented actions. Now, as Husserl nicely puts it in his lecture course on First Philosophy, in each “pulse” (Puls) of our conscious life, whenever a global act is accomplished, we always and necessarily perform acts belonging to each of these spheres variously intertwined in dominant/auxiliary relations. Whenever and as long as certain acts belonging to one sphere happen to play their dominant and yet transient role upon the others, we live in these acts, that is, we are in the respective attitude: But are not constantly and in every pulse of egoic life acts of all spheres interwoven with one another, so that the I in general is “awake,” egoically acting in specific manners? What sense can it have to say […] that we are at one time in the theoretical attitude, at another time in the feeling-valuing one, and then again in a practical attitude directed objectively at realizations? How is it possible that in the manifold of acts of an egoic act-tendency (ichlichen Aktzuges) the unity of an intellective action (Aktion)—be it a merely experiencing or theorizing action—comes to the fore and takes on such a unity that we speak of one act (und gewinnt eine derartige Einheit, dass wir von einem […] Akte […] sprechen)—albeit a synthetic one act— of an experiencing or a proving or a pure intellective act? As a global act it embraces perhaps a multitude of intellective partial acts […]. (Hua VIII, p. 99–100/302–303, translation modified)

This passage shows, in the most explicit way possible, that the whole terminology employed in the Fifth Logical Investigation to describe the unities of saliency is now redeployed and massively mobilized to define the concept of attitude. There is the explicit talk of unities of multiplicities of different acts and their “levels of complication” (Komplikationsstufen); there is the explicit reference to global acts; there is also the language of activity (Aktion) insofar as certain acts “act” upon the others; and there is also, quite literally, a reference to Husserl’s early discussion with Brentano. If in conscious life, Husserl says, “everything is connected with everything else,” certain acts are lived through “as related but not as brought together into the unity of a global act,” while others are brought together thanks to relations of domination (Hua VIII, p. 101/304, translation modified). The scanty example of verbal communication used in the Fifth Logical Investigation to illustrate the global act unified in a unity of saliency is now replaced by a more fine-grained array of examples, each meant to clarify some particular aspects of the unity of global acts that Husserl now equivocally calls “attitude”:

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3  The Reach of Attitudes For instance, whoever models in clay must have the latter before himself perceptually; in addition, he has to be conscious of the figure to be realized—even if obscurely—in the mode of an end-idea (Zielidee), so to speak, of a mere δύναμις, and he is conscious of each intermediary formation (Zwischengestaltung) as a more or less accomplished or unaccomplished approximation to what is finally to be realized. This obviously implies a constant process of evaluations (beständige Wertungen); all intermediary stages of the realizing activity are valued in their own way. What I strive to achieve as a goal has to have a value for me. So, as a naïve subject of such practical act, I am thus at once the subject of manifold act intentions, merging as partial acts within the unity of a total act. Among these partial acts, acts having a subordinate function (dienender Funktion) distinguish themselves from those exerting a dominant action (herrschende Aktion). (Hua VIII, p. 100/303–4, translation modified) And yet in another manner acts can stand in a side action (Nebenaktion) or also in a main action (Hauptaktion), and this concerns acts which are connected, but are not unified within the unity of a single global act. Thus I may be, as a botanist, delighted by the beauty of a flower, but this delight is not the main action, when I am in the attitude of getting to know it in observation and determining it in classification. Once I am finished with [observing and determining], then, in turn, instead of the theoretical attitude, now the aesthetical joy, which went alongside, may become the main action; and hence I am now in the aesthetic attitude, in that of the heart, instead of in the theoretical attitude, that of the understanding. (Hua VIII, p. 101/304, translation modified) Another example of such a switch is that between the aesthetic contemplation of a work of art and the theoretical attitude of the art historian. Here we would not say that both acts function as parts of a global act. (Hua VIII, p. 101/304, translation modified)

Let us pause on the first example. Husserl’s artist wants to sculpt, for instance, some pottery, and acts in a certain way on the clay. He is living in the practical attitude, trying to realize something, and this is what matters the most now (according to the first law of saliency). However, although the “dominant action” is clearly practical, intellectual-doxic and evaluative acts are also necessarily performed, although in a subordinate role. Perceptual and cognitive acts of the δόξα are also present, since the artist touches and sees the material, senses its texture, judges the hardness of the clay, tests its resistance to the thumb, etc. These perceptual and cognitive acts posit something: it is/is not so. Thanks to their contribution the clay shows itself as being such and such (malleable, bulky, hard here, soft there, able to be smoothened at this point, irregular at that point, etc.). However, such knowledge is only for the sake of sculpting the pottery, i.e., it is subordinated to the teleological structure of the overall practical activity: for each information about the being and being-so of the clay is processed in view of the performance of further goal-directed actions. Moreover, the artist performs an “ongoing evaluative process,” since each intermediary stage of the pottery is assessed as “good” or “bad,” “nice” or “ugly,” “to be improved” or “right as it is” in consideration of the expected outcome. Such axiological acts do not posit that the clay “is or is not so,” they rather assert that it is “as it should or should not be.” And yet, the artist could also perform the very same acts, with the very same goal, but “live them” otherwise, as it were. He can be captivated by the mere property of the clay—fine grained, dull grey, having a certain particular plasticity—not because of what the clay is “good-for” (pottery), but simply for what it is. Now, in

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the blink of an eye (according to the second law of saliency) what matters is no longer the pottery to realize, but the sheer perceptible properties of the clay: “the dominant interest is thus an interest referring to the being and the mode of being” (Hua VIII, p. 103/306, translation modified). What used to matter (the realization) now does not matter anymore. New forces have emerged in his concrete conscious life (according to the third law of saliency), the imbalance moves forward, and what used to be subordinate has now come to the fore as a new occasional saliency. This is precisely what the second and the third example are meant to stress: the shift of attitudes, i.e., the passage from one global act to another (illustrating the second and the third law of saliency). Indeed, Husserl’s new distinction (Nebenaktion/Hauptaktion), which is introduced in the examples of the botanist and the art historian, is not another way to phrase the previous distinction (herrschende Aktion/dienende Funktion) spelled out in the example of the artist. In this latter case the dominant/subordinate relation of force is precisely what establishes the unity of a global act; in the second, the “main action” and “side action,” as Husserl clearly puts it, are “not unified within the unity of a single global act” (Hua VIII, p. 101/304, translation modified). As it is readily apparent, an attitude is not and cannot be simply an act. On the contrary, the discovery of the structural and yet dynamic features of global acts (i.e., concrete unities of conscious life arranged according to the three laws of saliency) is what makes the very concept of act problematic, due to its abstractness: “We see, even what we normally call an act, becomes questionable (fraglich)” (Hua VIII, p. 100/303).

5 Lasting Attitudes Let us now address one last structural feature of Husserl’s attitudes. As we have seen, an attitude is, so to speak, one of the many ways to be one of conscious life, that of a multiplicity of lived experiences turned into a manifold thanks to the unity of a law (in our case the triple law of saliency) and structurally characterized by the reference to something that matters: being to know, values to feel, goals to strive for. We have also seen that the whole conscious life unified in such a way is always entirely engaged in each end every attitude. Accordingly, just as there is a great deal of knowledge and emotions in the practical attitude of the artist molding clay, there are also emotions and purposeful actions in the dominantly theoretical life of a botanist, or cognitive acts and purposeful actions in the axiological-aesthetical attitude of an amateur star gazer. But attitudes do not simply have “a momentary actual theme” (ein momentan aktuelles Thema), a fleeting saliency around which a particular episode of one’s conscious life could eventually revolve, before turning to something else. Attitudes, Husserl says, can also have “habitual themes” (habituelle Themen), manifest “enduring interests” (bleibende Interesse) remaining in a “spiritual possession’” (geistigen Besitz) (Hua VIII, p. 102–3/306).

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3  The Reach of Attitudes The same must be said, of course, for the talk of theme (Thema), which, while common in the theoretical sphere, can easily be expanded. What we are ‘directed at,’ ‘focused to’ (eingestellt) in a special manner is our theme, and it belongs, perhaps, to an infinitely encompassing sphere that is co-viewed, on which we are co-focused habitually (habituell miteingestellt)—as our thematic universe (als unser thematisches Universum). (Hua VIII, p. 100/303, translation modified)

The idea of an infinitely encompassing thematic sphere, a persisting and intersubjectively structured unity of saliency whose “non-actual” correlate is the horizon of saliencies proper to an open thematic universe, is absolutely crucial for Husserl’s account of phenomenology and philosophy in general.2 By introducing the genetic notion of habituality and enlarging the notions of theme and structural saliencies into a thematic open-ended universe Husserl can now distinguish the following cases: 1. Passing attitudes. One can individually and momentarily live “within” certain particular acts, that is, one can unify a particular moment of one’s individual life thanks to the reference to an occasional particular thematic focus (as in the constant imbalance leading from the attitude of phantasy to that of perception, to that of reflection, etc.); 2. Lasting attitudes. One can also individually and constantly live “within” one of the three particular spheres of acts (as in the constant imbalance leading from the theoretical to the practical or to the affective-axiological attitude); 3. Ever-lasting or “universal” attitudes. One can finally live “within” acts or spheres of acts, having not only an actual theme (clay modeling right now, describing a flower later, etc.) but also a whole habitualized and co-posited (habituell miteingestellt) thematic universe (like realizing a work of art out of clay, providing a scientific classification of flowers). Sculpture/art and botany/ science are examples of such thematic universes, which are correlated to a collective and intersubjectively enduring network of actual saliencies, each with its own non-actual specific horizon. This point is of the outmost importance. As soon as the concept of attitude meets the concepts of horizon and habituality, Husserl is finally able to develop the conceptuality with which he can describe the thematic universe belonging to all kinds of cultural formations (Kulturgebilde), which also include philosophy and, ultimately, phenomenology. The clearest example is that of sciences, understood as “intersubjectively institutionalized theoretical enterprises,” whose thematic universe includes the categorially habitualized attitude of the mathematician, the reflexively habitualized attitude of the psychologist, but also the abstractive habitualized theoreticalnaturalistic attitude of the natural scientist or the theoretical-­personalistic attitude of the historian, the art critic, the sociologist, etc. All these universally habitualized attitudes are, as Husserl puts it, “artificial” (künstliche), that is, they are acquired, transmitted, handed over, established thanks to the exercise of certain cognitive operations, and supported by a complex network of practical activities. In all these cases “what matters” matters because a

 See Chaps. 11 and 12 of this volume.

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community wants to make it count, time and again: with practice, education, transmission, authority and even force. We keep on doing clay modeling or classifying flowers because we, as members of a certain culture, intersubjectively value certain particular attitudes and therefore build “artificial” supports to turn their outcomes into a “spiritual possession.” Accordingly, these attitudes (just as the religious-mythical and the scientific-­ philosophical ones spelled out in the Vienna Lecture) do not simply establish the focus of one single moment of conscious life, or of one’s individual ego. They also set the acts that will intermittently and yet constantly dominate the whole life of all the members of a given community: the life of the mathematician, of the scientist, of the philosopher, and, if we step outside the theoretical attitude and move to the practical-axiological attitude, the life of the man or woman of faith, of the politician, of the activist, of the artist. These attitudes can only be carried out within certain cultural institutions called “sciences,” “religions,” “states,” “political parties,” etc. They are attitudes that, as Husserl puts in in his manuscripts on intersubjectivity, belong to the “common mind” (Gemeingeist), grounded on acts of communication (Hua XIV, pp. 192–204). But there is more. As we have seen, there are (1) particular fleeting and limited attitudes (phantasy, reflexive, judging etc.), (2) general and yet constant attitudes only focused on actual themes (practical, theoretical, axiological), and (3) universal, artificial-institutional and open-ended attitudes, each with its own thematic universe (scientific, religious-mythical, artistic, mathematical, etc.). Now, according to Husserl, one can also live a life dominated by a fourth kind of attitude. This fourth kind of attitude is a rather peculiar universal attitude indeed, since its correlate is an infinitely open-ended thematic universe that, unlike the others, is not “artificial.” It is an attitude in which something matters “naturally,” as it were, a universal “unthematic theme” to which one is habitually devoted and that persistently imposes its relevance without the support of any institutional or methodological trick. This saliency is not culturally instigated, it is not learned from others, and can be neither taught at school nor forgotten or imposed by authority, violence or persuasion. An attitude whose transcendent correlate matters simply because its correlative experience, although swinging back and forth from an attitude to another (theoretical, practical, axiological; scientific-philosophical, mythical-religious; etc.), keeps on confirming its promise of consistency. The structural contingency of this saliency—and, as we have seen, all saliencies are contingent—is not protected by the force of a Gemeingeist, but rather stems from the dynamic functioning of conscious life itself, which is constantly dominated by acts that relentlessly contribute to highlight its relevance. This is a focus that imposes itself on any empirical ego simply because the imbalance of the spheres, despite their constant shifts and continuous displacements, ends up in a dynamic equilibrium, time and again. It is the “natural attitude” (natürliche Einstellung), i.e., the attitude “whose correlate is the world” (deren Korrelat die Welt ist) (Hua III/1, p. 106/91, translation modified). So what does Husserl mean here by saying that the world is the correlate of the natural attitude? Certainly not that the world is a sort of ontological region, nor the

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total sum of everything that is. If it has to be the correlate of an attitude—and attitudes, as we have shown, are unities of saliency—then the answer has to be the following: the world is what stands out and matters the most, at least as long as life self-consistently runs through from an attitude to another catching up, as it were, all the time, as long as the “interconnected machine” of the Fifth Logical Investigation does not break up. If this is correct, then the natural attitude should rather be dubbed as a global attitude (Gesamteinstellung). Accordingly, its correlate, namely the actual world (die wirkliche Welt), turns out to be nothing but the most universally shared, non-­ institutionalized, and open-ended of all saliencies, which is neither the set of all sets, nor the region of all regions, but the saliency of all saliencies. There is no paradox here since, strictly speaking, what matters the most when the patterns of life appear as empirically self-consistent is nothing but the actual existence of the world. Be it the world we perceive, we talk about, we remember, we act upon, we strive within, the world in which we do science or clay modeling, we refashion in literary fiction or strive to change in political action… all these cognitive, practical and axiological attitudes can be brought together and carried out, time and again, precisely as long as the actual world matters. In other words, there is actually a world, whose existence is constantly confirmed, subjectively and intersubjectively, by the coherence and consistency of experience itself: a world to know, to change and to desire— and this matters. It matters a lot. The more we live (know, act, desire) and successfully connect actions to actions, actions to knowledge, feelings to knowledge, our own actions to the feelings of others, etc., in manifold ways, the more the world turns out to be relevant; the more we are interested in this or that aspect of the world itself by acting, assessing, knowing, etc., the more we “naturally” habitualize this universal “global attitude.” When this happens, as Husserl puts it, I discover myself as immediately (ohne weiteres) belonging to the “one world” that is constantly available (beständig Vorhanden), already there (vorfindlich), always there (immer da), existing (daseiend), indubitable (“No doubt or rejection of any giveneness of the natural world alters anything in the general thesis of the natural attitude”) (Hua III/1, p. 61/52, translation modified), together with all sorts of things, animals, persons, etc., determined by material features (hard, soft, colored; running, angry, thoughtful), practical features (useful, expensive, cheap; professor, student, friend, foe, etc.) or axiological values (nice, beautiful; good, bad; right, wrong; amazing, boring). This is precisely the unmodalized global theme out of which one can single out any modalized local theme, habitualized or not. Every moment in waking consciousness, I find myself in this manner and, without ever being able to change the fact, I find myself in relation to the one and the same world, though it is constantly changing in respect to its make-up, contentwise. It is continuously “on hand” for me, and I am myself a member of it. This world is not thereby for me as a mere world of things (Sachenwelt); instead, with the same immediacy, it is there as a world of values, a world of goods, a practical world. Without further ado, I find the things before me outfitted with the make-ups of things but just as much with valuable characteristics; I find them to be beautiful and ugly, pleasing and displeasing, agreeable and disagreeable, and the like. (Hua III/1, p. 58/50–1)

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The natural attitude is thus an attitude in the strictest and most fundamental sense. It certainly complies with the first law of saliency: the actually existing world, given to me as an empirical ego, is precisely what matters the most (even when we do mathematics or logic). It also complies with the third law of saliency: as long and one lives and experiences consistently one is “dominated” by acts interested in knowing the world, acting in the world, assessing in the world. And it is “natural” because it does not need any artificial tool or particular method to be carried out. Continue to perceive, act, desire, think, believe, doubt, etc., concordantly and harmoniously, and you will posit the existence of the world. A position without which one could not even be able to know, to value or to act. In this sense, it is also somehow “theoretical,” as Husserl sometimes says, but not because we have a primitively cognitive stance toward the world, or because theory is more fundamental than praxis. The natural attitude is theoretical because it is positional: because whenever one consistently perceives, thinks, acts or desires, the δὸξα is always involved—the fact that the world exists is always embedded in all particular practical, theoretical or axiological attitudes. Indeed, doxic acts of perception, judgment, assessment, etc., which are directed toward the objects of our actual experiences and their horizon, are for the most part dominant vis-à-vis the neutralized moments of experience (where, on the contrary, such belief is suspended). Then again, even the most universal open-ended, habitualized, and non-artificial thematic unshakable attitude, i.e., the “natural attitude,” has to comply with the second law of saliency: attitudes are not meant to last. The Vienna Lecture will explain that the “philosophical attitude” begins precisely when this fundamentally unshakable saliency of the world is no longer taken for granted. As a result,—and despite the fact that the complex machine of subjective and intersubjective experience, institutionalized or not, works all too well—the saliency of the world finally turns into an object of wonder (θαυμάζειν). And this happens in that portion of the western world called Greece, the place of birth of philosophy and European science altogether (Hua VI, p. 285/332). It is precisely this fact—the structural contingency of all saliencies, even the strongest and most natural—that leaves the space open for the most artificial of all philosophical, theoretical, institutionalized attitudes, i.e., Husserl’s phenome­ nological-­transcendental attitude. An attitude in which “what matters” are nothing but phenomena in their making. The specific aspects of this attitude would be discussed in the last sections of this volume.3 However, if the above is correct, it should be safe to conclude by saying that the so-called “phenomenological attitude” could hardly be understood in its distinctive meaning without having properly measured the full—non-metaphorical and quite technical—reach of Husserl’s attitudes.

 See Chaps. 10, 11 and 12.

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6 The Full Reach of Attitudes How should the “phenomenological attitude” be understood then? The following network of nested attitudes should finally allow us to answer to this question. (α)  The saliency of all saliencies, what matters the most, is nothing but the existing world, as a whole or in each of its parts, the world as a fact and a world of facts, some of which are actually and directly experienced by me and strike as relevant to me from a theoretical, practical or axiological standpoint. The natural attitude, of which such world is the thematic correlate, is therefore the “default attitude,” as it were, from which every factual conscious life always and necessarily begins and ends (see Hua III/1, 52–53/56–57). Thus, as long as one factual human being knows, loves and acts, he or she eo ipso lives, knows, loves and acts in the natural attitude. “All other attitudes,” Husserl says, “are related back (zurückbezogen) to this natural attitude as [its] changes” (Umstellungen) (Hua VI, p. 327/281, translation modified). One widespread confusion should be avoided though. In a handwritten note to Ideas I, after having introduced the “theoretical” concept of natural attitude, illustrated by the example of the empirical sciences of facts ultimately grounded on perception, Husserl writes quite explicitly: “and the natural practical attitude?” (und die natürliche praktische Einstellung?) (Hua III/1, p. 462).4 The question is indeed of paramount importance, since it clearly points out that every attitude—theoretical, practical and axiological—has its “natural” point of balance, its default position, as we have called it. In this sense, although it is correct to say that there is one “natural” attitude—that which has the existing world as its saliency—one should not forget that each sphere of saliency has its “natural attitude.” In the theoretical attitude he world “naturally” matters for in its factual being and being-so (i.e. as a correlate of human knowledge), in the theoretical attitude for its factual purposefulness (i.e. as a correlate of human actions), and in the axiological attitude for its factual worth (i.e. as a correlate of human emotions). Let us rephrase our previous sentence, then. As long as one factual human being knows, loves and acts, he or she eo ipso lives, knows, loves and acts in the natural attitude or, more precisely, between natural attitudes: practical, axiological, theoretical. (β)  Such “naturally salient” existing world—factual, purposeful and worth— also manifests itself, at least in the first place, in the factual existence of persons, communities, cultural and practical objects, values, goals, means and ends etc. The existence of some relevant objects of use (tables, books), social relations (friends, foes; servants, masters; strangers, relatives), institutions (state, church), conventions (praise and blame; acts of politeness or aggression), norms (marriage, property) and the like, is indeed what makes it relevant in the first place (Hua III/1, p. 50/53). Such  The quote appears in the Textkritische Anmerkungen to the 1950 edition of Husserliana III/1 edited by Walter Biemel but has been removed from the 1976 edition edited by Karl Schuhmann. It is a Randbemerkung to the 1922 second edition of Ideas I. 4

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surrounding world (Umwelt), Husserl says, is “the world that is perceived by the person” (Hua IV, p. 185/195). Accordingly, if considered from the standpoint of the distinctive type of subjectivity to which such world appears as a saliency, the “natural” attitude (theoretical, practical, axiological) can also be characterized as a personalistic attitude. It is indeed the personal subject who “naturally” knows, pursues practical goals and evaluates with respect to the world. Moreover, the personalistic attitude is also “the attitude we are always in when we live with one another,” and “consider things surroundings as our surroundings” (Hua IV, p. 183/192).5 It is, as Husserl adds, “an entirely natural and not artificial attitude, which would have to be achieved and preserved only by special means (Hua IV, p. 183/192).” The world as a fact and the world of facts is, thus, at least in the first place, a— factual, purposeful and worthy—cultural and social surrounding world, experienced, acted upon and assessed not only by one-self but also by a community of other-selves.6 (γ)  But the existing world also matters insofar as it includes the factual existence of my-self, Husserl says. Of my own acts of knowledge, desire and will, my whole personal and social life, whose relevance could also turn into a theme. As a result, though the default orientation of the natural/personalistic attitude is straightforward, a second orientation is always possible, a reflexive attitude, which turns the very factual life—personal and psychological—of the experiencing subject into a full-fledged theme. Such possibility is ultimately grounded in one of the universal structures of consciousness itself, i.e. reflexivity (Hua III/1, p. 147–151/177–181). To be sure, my worldly conscious life as it appears in a reflexive attitude, is also, just as every other worldly object, first and foremost a (practically-axiologically) valuable fact, having both a social and a cultural relevance. But the possible shift from a naive straightforward attitude (naiv-geradehin)—directed towards worldly outer facts—to a reflexive critical attitude (kritische Einstellung)—focused on conscious life itself as a worldly fact—could also be carried out as part of a theoretical attitude. And this is precisely the change of attitude that, according to Husserl, will bring humanity to the discovery of empirical psychology and, through a series of further sophistications, ethics, theory of knowledge and even logic (see for instance Hua XVII, p. 126–127/121–124). One should not forget, however, that, in the “natural” attitude the personal self that is theoretically, practically and axiologically relevant in the reflexive attitude is still part of the world of facts.

 This point is neatly identified in Staiti (2009).  “Personal life means living communalized as ‘I’ and ‘we’ within a community-horizon, and this in communities of various simple or stratified forms such as family, nation, supranational community. The word life here does not have a physiological sense; it signifies purposeful life accomplishing spiritual products” (Hua VI, p. 314/270). 5 6

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(δ) This first triplet—“natural”, “personalistic”, “straightforward/reflexive”— shows at once, the mobility of Husserl’s talk about attitudes and the pattern followed by his terminological choices. But the triplet also identifies the cluster of features needed to pinpoint what I have called the “default attitude” of a factual conscious life, which has basically two possible “orientations,” i.e. straightforward or reflexive (as in γ), but only one single “thematic focus”. When Husserl wants to remind us that the salient focus of each and every factual conscious life is unique and unconditionally relevant—i.e. that the existence of the factual world matters not because of certain acquired knowledge, cultural education, historical background or methodic training, but simply because of the factual existence of conscious life itself to which such world is given—he calls this default attitude simply “natural” (as in α). By contrast, when he wants to stress its diverse and conditional manifestations—dwelling into its prima facie multiple varieties, highlighting the spiritual character of each and every surrounding world, with its different embedded network of social and cultural values, goals etc.—Husserl prefers to use the “personalistic” language (as in β). In the first case, he insists on the “origin” or the “stance” of the attitude (natural not artificial; innate not acquired etc.), in the second, on its distinctive subjective “unity” (personal not just psychological or purely egoic; communicational not just intersubjective; spiritual not just “human” in a naturalistic sense, etc.) and the variety of its correlates (a multiplicity of spiritual surrounding worlds not one single “objective” world immediately self-evident as such). The concepts of “natural” and “personalistic” attitude, however, are not interchangeable, and should not be considered as synonyms. In fact, as we will see shortly, not every personalistic attitude is carried out within the natural attitude (the personalistic attitude can also be resumed after the ἐποχή) (see below μ); and the natural attitude also includes “artificial” and non-personalistic attitudes (as it is the case for the naturalistic attitude) (see below θ). But before addressing this question, we still need to identify other, quite crucial, clusters of features. (ε)  The default attitude that we have been trying to pinpoint has not only one “origin” or “stance” (natural), one “unity” (personal) and two “orientations” (straightforward/reflexive). It also has a certain “scope,” as suggested by the double formula: “the world as a fact and the world of facts.” A factual conscious life might indeed either focus on a series of partial “worldly” themes, or on the totality of the “world” as such. When the scope is “narrow” or “partial”, so to speak, what matters is nothing but this or that particular and materially determined factual object, collection of objects, property, state of affairs, relation, etc. together with its practicalaxiological determinations: a specific person, a relevant community, a salient event, an important situation, a noteworthy feature of some material item showing itself as useful or useless, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, nice or ugly etc. In all these cases, as already pointed out, though the dominant driving force mostly rests on the acts of the ὄρεξις and the πρᾶξις, one always find, in the background, operating in a subordinate form, acts of the δόξα, that might always come to the fore. Most of the

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time, it could indeed be relevant to know something about the objective properties of, say, a tree, because it is “useful” to turn it into a shelter or build a table out of it. Yet from time to time—as in the case of curiosity—the being of certain “worldly” items may become relevant “as such,” providing already some contingent examples of theoretical attitudes. One might, for instance, be willing to know something about the objective properties of a tree, a shelter or a table, just for the sake of knowing it, out of curiosity, precisely (Hua VI, p. 332/285). The second law of saliency thus also applies at this very basic level, and the practical-­axiological interest in one particular worldly thing, leaves its place to a theoretical one (be it mediately coordinated to another practical-axiological attitude, or autonomous). In all these cases, however, the natural attitude has always, as a thematic focus, one narrow “part” of the world, one distinctive and limited “worldly” item, be it individual or collective, abstract or concrete. It is only when the scope of the “natural” attitude is not limited to any “worldly” fact, no matter how extended or encompassing, but reaches out to the “whole world” as a fact, that the saliency of all saliencies properly turns into what Husserl calls the “all of the world” (Weltall). Practical-axiological questions such as “what is the purpose of x?” or “what is x good for?,” theoretical questions such as “how does x work?” or “what is x?,” where x stands for any “worldly fact,” could leave their place to more encompassing questions like “what is the purpose of the world?” or “how does the world work?” or “what is the world?.” Strictly speaking, however, this change from “partial” to “total” should not be considered as a full-fledged change of attitude, i.e. as an application of the second law of saliency. Indeed, what matters in both cases, is still the same: the existing world. What has changed then is not the saliency as such, but the width of the saliency. (ζ)  Husserl has no specific name for the difference of scope between attitudes (theoretical, practical-axiological) focused on the “hows and whys” of partial worldly facts, and their total counterparts, focused on the “how and the why” of the world as a whole. He has however a very distinctive way to distinguish within the attitudes focused on the whole of the world in its widest scope (as in ε), the practical-­ axiological attitude and the purely theoretical one. The former is called “mythicalreligious attitude,” the latter “scientific-philosophical attitude.” In the mythical-religious attitude, the world as a whole becomes “practically thematic,” Husserl says, and the mythical-religious narratives, together with their rich cognitive contents, fulfill the paramount function of “serving man in his human purposes so that he may order his worldly life in the happiest possible way and shield it from disease, from every sort of evil fate, from disaster and death” (Hua VI, p. 330/284). In the scientific-philosophical attitude, by contrast, knowing the existing world in its being and being-so (as a whole or in one of its constitutive regions) “as it actually is,” matters as such, not because of its practical relevance for our life. In this sense,

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particular sciences are ­“ramifications” (Verzweigungen) of philosophy, according to a movement that goes from the saliency of the whole to that of its parts.7 Another significant aspect of this distinction has to do with the personalistic unity of conscious life, for which the “whole of the world” is shown as the saliency of all saliencies. Once habitualized, the mythical-religious and the scientific-­ philosophical attitude are in fact carried out not by mere individuals, but by members of a community which belong to a distinctive cultural form of humanity: worshippers, priests, scientists or philosophers.8 One single saliency can indeed unify one conscious life in its directedness towards a relevant theme either for a moment (transitionally: I am curious about this flower now; I ask myself “why does the world exist?”), or from time to time (recurrently: I am sometime curious about flowers; I occasionally ask myself “why does the world exist?”), or even from a whole lifetime (lastingly: I collect flowers; I read all my life books on the existence of the world). But as soon as it takes the cultural form of a religious practice (I worship this flower or flowers in general; I explain the existence of the world as the creation of a personal god, or as the outcome of the struggle between two impersonal principles) or a scientific research (I am a botanist; I am a philosopher or a cosmologist), the individual life determined by such practical-axiological and theoretical attitudes “runs its course,” Husserl says, with a persisting and habitually fixed “style” as a norm (Hua VI, p. 326/280).9 (η)  “Philosophical-scientific attitude” is therefore the name of a distinctive form of theoretical attitude (focused on the “being” and “being-so” of the whole of the existing world in its ultimate and unconditional principles) whose correlative saliency has the widest scope possible (hence it is different from any “local” manifestation of the natural attitude) and follows all given orientations (it is both straightforward and reflexive); carried out by a spiritual community of individuals the conscious life of which is unified through a trans-generational network of interpersonal communication (which is necessarily transmitted in a literary form) (see Hua VI, p. 365–86/353–378). Such attitude clearly opens the space for a set of “infinite tasks” that otherwise would have always been limited by the e­ xistence of some practical interest, narrow scope, unilateral orientation or finite community.

 Since the universality of the world is not that of a genus, awareness of the saliency of all saliencies is not achieved by adding piecemeal salient experiences, carried out in the theoretical attitude. It is only when the world as a whole has become salient, through a kind of theoretical “leap,” that the regions of the world also become salient as regions. The correct movement, then, according to Husserl, goes from philosophy (as the universal science of the whole of the world) to the particular sciences, not vice-versa. 8  The importance of this latter point will become manifest in Chap. 11 of this volume. 9  This is the famous passage where Husserl talks of attitudes metaphorically in terms of “style”. It should be clear, however, that this is not a general attempt to define the concept of attitude, but, more specifically, the description of the latter’s normative import on one singular life within the collective life of a community. A description that Husserl needs to provide, in the Vienna Lecture, in order to explain how the “universal interest towards the world” unifies in a rather distinctive way the singular lives of all the members of the community of philosophers and scientists through time. On this point, see, again, the developments in Chaps. 10 and 11 of this volume. 7

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(θ)  When addressed within the philosophical-scientific attitude, the theoretical relevance of the existing world as a whole can be either investigated by remaining within the “natural” personalistic attitude or carried out in an “artificial” way. In the previous case, the scientist aims at knowing about the being and being-so of the factual world precisely insofar as the latter is indeed a cultural, social and broadly spiritual factual world. One then has what Husserl calls the Geisteswissenschaften, which are these ramifications (verzweigungen) of philosophy that still unfold in the “natural” personalistic attitude. More precisely, qua “philosophical,” their dominant attitude is theoretical, but qua “personalistic” their theme is dominantly practical-axiological. But there is also another scientific attitude that is embedded within the “natural” attitude in the sense (α), since it still takes the existing world as its saliency, but is not “natural” in the sense (β), since it “abstracts” from the existing world all its practical-axiological features and limits itself to the relevance of its material-­ objective and causal underpinnings (Hua IV, 193/183–4). This is what Husserl calls the “naturalistic” attitude, an “artificial,” “abstract” and “self-forgetful” configuration of one’s conscious life that can only take place within a conscious life that is already determined by the theoretical norms of the community of scientists. The naturalistic attitude of the Naturwissenschaftler and the personalistic attitude of the Geisteswissenschaftler, however, are not on a par, since the former is always and necessarily derived from the latter because of its “abstractness” (Hua IV, 181–5/190–4). The naturalistic attitude is therefore the name for a specific configuration of conscious life “naturally” turned towards the whole of the world as the saliency of all saliencies: it is dominantly theoretical (not practical-axiological), straightforwardly oriented (not reflexive), wide in its scope (not partial) but abstract in its focus (not concrete)—since it only envisions the Weltall as Natur. (ι)  Since all unities of saliency are subject to the second and third law of saliency, any attitude in its “natural” configuration can in principle be destabilized if the “balance of power” within its components change. And since the common feature of all “natural” theoretical, practical and axiological attitudes is the shared reference to the saliency of the existing factual world, each of these “natural” stances can be undermined as soon as the whole of a conscious life brings out new global acts that are no longer dominated (momentarily, lastingly or ever-lastingly) by any existential positing (of beings, goals and values). This happens, for instance, when acts of phantasy become dominant and exert a unifying force over other acts. “To every position,” Husserl says, “there corresponds a phantasy position, a position-­as-­if” (Hua XXIII, p. 589/707; see also 591/709). Accordingly, to every “empirical attitude” (Erfahrungseinstellung, Einstellung der Erfahrung) in which positional acts of belief characterized by an empirical position (Erfahrungssetzung) are dominant, corresponds a “phantasy attitude” (Phantasieeinstellung) within which such position is neutralized (Hua XXIII, p.  513/614–5). In the “natural” (theoretical, practical or axiological) attitude one can look at a certain landscape, its houses, villages and people, as something actually existing, as part of the factual world. But if acts of phantasy become dominant, “the reality changes into reality-as-if for us, changes into ‘play’,” Husserl says, “the objects turn into aesthetic semblance: into

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mere—though perceptual—phantasy objects”. The factual landscape now strikes us insofar as it appears as a “painted landscape”. We have thus shifted from the “natural” empirical attitude into a “non-natural” phantasy attitude.” And when the acts of phantasy are part of a Gesamtakt of foundation which includes, as founded acts, some axiological acts of pleasure, the dominant cluster (phantasy + pleasure) goes by the name of “aesthetical attitude” (ästhetische Einstellung) (Hua XXIII, p. 514/615). What is “essential for the aesthetic attitude,” however, “is not phantasy, but the focusing on what interests me aesthetically, the objectivity in its how” (Hua XXIII, p. 591/710), the object as it is present in the how of its presentedness (im Wie der Derstelltheit), without interest in its existence itself and in its quasi-existence (Hua XIII, p. 586/704).10 (κ) This finally brings us to the “phenomenological” attitude. I will not discuss at length the fascinating question of the proximity between “aesthetical” and “phenomenological” attitudes, as it is stressed by Husserl himself in a arch-­ famous letter to Hoffmanstahl.11 Let me simply use this topic as a foil to remind that, according to Husserl, there is indeed an analogy between the attitude of the artist and that of the phenomenologist. In both cases, the world reveals itself as a “phenomenon”, i.e. “indifferently with respect to its existence” (Hua Dok III/7, pp. 134–5). As suggested by this analogy, the two attitudes appear as transformations (Umstellungen) of the same “natural” (theoretical, practical, axiological) attitude. A transformation due to the fact that the dominant acts at the top of the new Gesamtakte are equally characterized, ex negativo, by a similar, though not identical, inhibition (Hemmung) of all existential positing (Hua XXIII, p. 513/614; on the difference between the two inhibitions, see Hua III/1 p. 222–227/257–264). The differences between the two transformations, however, are numerous. To begin with, in the aesthetical attitude the dominant act-­cluster that unifies the whole of conscious life is axiological (pleasure + phantasy), while in the phenomenological one “it is fully”. Accordingly, if in both cases the world as a whole matters in its appearance only, for the phenomenologist such appearance matters with respect to the ultimate determination of the being and being-so of the existing world as a whole. Moreover, the phenomenological attitude is not only a distinctive configuration of the theoretical attitude, it is also, and more specifically, a configuration of the scientific-philosophical attitude. This has several paramount consequences. (λ)  On the one hand, if, in principle, anybody could see a landscape as-if it were a painting or see the whole world as-if it were a theatre, to live-in such seeing and turn its correlative saliency into a pictorial or a poetical theme, only a member of the philosophical-scientific community, in search of the ultimate principles of the world as a whole, could see the relevance of “bracketing” the existence of the world and

 Something still different is what Husserl calls the “fictional attitude” (die Einstellung einer Fiktion), i.e. the attitude I am-in when I try to explore a phantasy landscape in a harmonious way, as if I were trying to grasp or discover some of its cognitive features. In this case the act of phantasy is part of a Gesamtakt which includes acts of the δόξα. See the example of the depicted centaur-­ landscape, one of Husserl’s favourites (Hua XXIII, p. 586/704). 11  On this point, see Huemer (2003). 10

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delving into its phenomenon. Only a philosopher—and a “genuine philosopher12—” could have his or her life unified in such way. Yet on the other hand, with respect to their orientation, sciences could be carried out either in a genuinely philosophical way, that is according to what Husserl calls a critical attitude, or non-philosophically, that is unfolding within a dogmatic attitude (Hua III/1, p. 46–47/46–47). In the latter case, they are “turned towards things, unconcerned with epistemological or sceptical problems,” in the former, they “pursue the sceptical problems of the possibility of knowledge which are directly resolved into the universality of principles” (Hua III/1, p.  47/47–8). The phenomenological attitude only makes sense for a scientific life carried out in the critical-philosophical attitude. (μ)  Additionally, though the aesthetical and the phenomenological attitude are transformations of the “natural” one (natürliche), in the sense we have explained above, only the latter is qualified by Husserl as “artificial”, “non-natural” and even as “counter natural” (Hua IV, p. 180/189–90). The phenomenological attitude is indeed “artificial” (künstliche) because it is not spontaneous, as it could only be reached through a complex set of methodical devices (the ἐποχή, the reduction etc.). Such devices are, in turn, mere technical means whose ultimate end is nothing but the understanding of the whole of the existing world in its first principles and taking seriously the sceptical problems (as in λ). But the phenomenological attitude is also “non-natural” (nicht natural)—not because it brackets the factuality of the empirical, but because it undermines the “forgetfulness of the self” (Selbstvergessenheit) characteristic of the naturalistic attitude and rejects its “abstract” reductionist approach (Hua IV, p. 55/60). As Husserl explains, “what is experienced” in the phenomenological attitude, even when the latter has the natural world as its scope, “it is not nature in the sense of the natural sciences” (Hua IV, p.  180/189). Finally, the phenomenological attitude is “counter-­natural” (Widerspiel der Natur) insofar as it is ultimately directed “towards pure consciousness, towards this residuum of the various reductions” (Hua IV, p. 180/189). (ν)  In sum, for the sake of bringing to knowledge the being and being-so of the whole of the existing world (spiritual and natural) in its ultimate principles and facing the epistemological problems raised by the sceptic, the philosopher—i.e. the member of a transnational and transgenerational interpersonal community, whose conscious life is subject to a rational-theoretical norm—manufactures a series of methodical devices to suspend—somehow like the artist—the existence of that very same factual world that, in the end, is what matters most. It is only within a configuration of conscious life unified in such way that something like the “phenomenological” attitude could eventually arise, and even become relevant.

12

 See below Chap. 11 of this volume.

Part III

Maps

Chapter 4

Individuum and Region of Being On the Unifying Principle of a “Headless” Ontology

He rushed forward and seized it in his arms, when, to his horror, the head slipped off and rolled on the floor, the body assumed a recumbent posture, and he found himself clasping a white dimity bed-curtain, with a sweeping-brush, a kitchen cleaver, and a hollow turnip lying at his feet! Unable to understand this curious transformation, he clutched the placard with feverish haste, and there, in the grey morning light, he read these fearful words:—YE OTIS GHOSTE |Ye Onlie True and Originale Spook, | Beware of Ye Imitationes. | All others are counterfeite. Oscar Wilde

1 Two Accounts of Individuality? The sign above Plato’s Academy allegedly read: “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter herein.” The sign put above the entrance of Husserl’s “pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy” reads instead: “Fact and Essence—or: let no one ignorant of formal ontology enter herein.” The legend of Plato’s sign doesn’t relate whether anyone was actually prevented from joining his school, let alone understanding his philosophy; but we do know for sure that Husserl’s warning worked all too well—for a whole host of readers, in the last century, have definitively given up joining the club of the “descriptive scientists of transcendentally reduced pure Erlebnisse”1 because of the abstruse ontological subtleties gathered in this opening chapter. As for the others, both friends and foes of Ideas I have mostly moved into transcendental phenomenology from a backward entrance, as it were. Most analytically inclined philosophers have found in Fact and Essence something  As is well known, Husserl defines phenomenology in §75 of Ideas I as the “descriptive eidetic doctrine of transcendentally pure lived-experiences in the phenomenological attitude” (Hua III/1, p. 156/134, translation modified).

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_4

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like Husserl’s answer to Quine’s question “What is there?” and started drawing long lists of Husserl’s purported “categories” of entities2; as for many of the continental bent, they couldn’t find any answer to Heidegger’s question of Being, and concluded that Husserl surreptitiously equates being with being an object.3 In both cases, Husserl’s sign has been either misunderstood or ignored. Since the content of the first sixteen paragraphs of Ideas I is indeed extremely dense and technical, I would like to proceed as follows. While trying to spell out its main tenets as precisely as possible, I will end up claiming that, buried in the mass of formal ontological distinctions, this chapter lays out what is probably one of the most important concepts of Husserl’s phenomenology, i.e., the concept of Individuum. A concept whose proper understanding may shed some new light on the actual intertwinement between Husserl’s transcendental project, its formal ontological prolegomena, and their metaphysical import. At least at first sight Husserl does not seem to use consistently the term “Individuum,” for two different—although clearly not unrelated—accounts of individuality can be singled out in his work. 1. In very general terms Husserl often characterizes, quite unsurprisingly, an individual as something having: [...] an actual identity with itself and difference from any other, an actual individual that is in itself and has its own difference with respect to everything else, even to something (a priori always possible) entirely similar to it. (Hua XXXIII, p. 330)

This first use of the term echoes almost literally Aquinas’s quite traditional definition of individuality: “Individuum non est divisum in se, et a quolibet ente divisum.”4 And, as we learn in the Second Logical Investigation, it applies to both concrete independent objects (like physical bodies or Erlebnisse) and abstract non-independent object-moments (like sounds and colors, or act-quality and act-matter).5

 See for instance David W. Smith’s repeated attempts to draw a Husserlian list of categories of entities in Smith (2010). 3  The most explicit version of Heidegger’s claim can be found in the Zähringen seminar. See Heidegger, 2003, pp. 64–84. More on this point can be found in Chap. 8 of this volume. 4  See also Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, I q. 29 a. 4 co.: “Individuum autem est quod est in se indistinctum, ab aliis vero distinctum”. Varieties of such definition can be found in Suarez (“Individuum est indivisum a se et divisum a quolibet”) as well as in many scholastic texts. On Suarez see On Individuation (1982). More generally, on the topic of individuation in medieval philosophy see Gracia (1984). 5  In Husserl’s examples, objects denoted by proper names such as “Hans” or “Berlin” (Hua XIX/2, p. 555), definite descriptions like “the greatest German statesman” (XIX/1, p. 91, 108) and indexical expressions having the form “this x” (XIX/2, pp. 554–5) are dubbed as “individual objects” (individuelle Gegenstände). But this also holds whenever the argument of x is a non-independent abstractum like this (individual) lived-experience” (Hua XIX/1, p. 105) or that (individual) red moment (Hua XIX/1, pp. 106, 113). Husserl deals extensively with abstract particulars, especially in the first chapter (Die allgemeinen Gegenstände und das Allgemeinheitsbewußtsein) of the Second Logical Investigation (pp. 108–21/239–47). 2

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2. But in Ideas I there is also another, more complex and less usual, account of individuality—a formal ontological one: An essence that is dependent is called an abstractum; an essence that is absolutely independent is called a concretum. A “this-here” whose material essence is a concretum is called an individuum. (Hua III/1, p. 35/30; translation modified)

Contrary to the first, informal use, this second definition seems clearly to imply that, somehow, only concreta are, strictly speaking, individuals—disavowing de jure Husserl’s de facto talk of “abstract individuals” (see also Hua XLI, p. 106). But why should Husserl want “abstract individuals” not to be “individuals” in a formal ontological sense? How are these two accounts of individuality actually articulated? Besides, one should hasten to add that in the formal ontological definition of “individuum,” the terms “concrete” and “abstract” do not refer to objects in general but to “essences” and more precisely to “material essences.” Thus, in order to understand properly the second account, we have to know first (1) what an essence is, (2) what a material essence is, and (3) what it means for a material essence to be concrete or abstract. And there is more, for a new term appears here: the “this-here” (Dies-da)—a term that, following Husserl’s informal talk of individuality in the Logical Investigations, could have been taken, naively, as a synonym of “individual.” In Ideas I the naïve concept of individuality seems instead to split into two different concepts: Individuum and Dies-da (the latter being somehow more general than the former, for it enters into its definition); and a Dies-da is what Husserl also calls— explicitly using an Aristotelian term of which we will have to measure all the importance—a “τόδε τι” (Hua III/1, p. 34). But what is a τόδε τι then and how are Individuum and τόδε τι exactly related? Before we try to respond to these questions a few remarks about their relevance are in order. The importance of such notions should not be underestimated for at least two reasons. (1) After having introduced the formal-ontological definition of Individuum, Husserl claims that of all object categories, that of individuality is somehow unique: the Individuum is the primitive object (Urgegenstand) required from a purely logical point of view, the logically absolute, to which all logical “modifications” refer back (zurückweisen). (Hua III/1, p. 35/30; translation modified)

Now, Husserl never employs the word Urgegenstand for the most general notion of his formal ontology, i.e., the Etwas überhaupt—he saves it for the Individuum. Understanding the concept of “individual” is thus identifying what Husserl takes to be as the Urgegenstand, not the most general but the most fundamental of logic and ontology. (2) As for the second reason, it has to be stressed that, without a precise account of the Urgegenständlichkeit of the individual, there is little chance to understand properly Husserl’s notion of “ontological region”—a concept too often conflated with that of higher material genus or summum genus. In fact, as Husserl clearly states in §15, the notion of region can be “rigorously analytically” defined only by understanding the individual as “a τόδε τι whose material essence is a concretum.” As Husserl puts it:

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4  Individuum and Region of Being With the concepts ‘individuum’ and ‘concretum’, the scientific-theoretical, fundamental concept of a region is also defined in a rigorously ‘analytic’ manner. Region is nothing other than the entire, supreme generic unity belonging to a concretum, i.e., the essentially united connection of the supreme genera that pertain to the lowest differences within the concretum. The eidetic scope of the region encompasses the ideal totality proper to the concretely unified complexes of differences characterizing these genera; the individual scope encompasses the ideal totality of possible individuals of such concrete essences. (Hua III/1, p. 36/31; translation modified)

We will have to come back to this quote later. As for now, let us simply state—in a provocative way—that according to this passage, those who talk of Husserl’s “ontological regions” without having spelled out what an “Individuum” is—at least in “rigorously ‘analytic’ terms” – do not actually know what they are talking about. A few remarks, now, on the structure of Form and Essence. As already pointed out, the formal-ontological definition of individuality appears only late in the chapter, after Husserl has previously explained what a material essence (§§10, 12, 13), a τόδε τι (§§11, 14) and a concretum (§15) are. And one could even suspect that the whole chain of formal-ontological distinctions introduced in the previous paragraphs is displayed only to set the stage for the final “rigorous” definition of “region” by means of the concept of “individual” (§16). But if the rigorous definition of “region” in terms of Individuum is the terminus a quo of the whole chapter, the terminus ad quem, introduced at very beginning of Ideas I, is precisely that of “individual object.” Already in §2, for instance, we learn that: An individual object is not merely in general an individual one, a This here! a “once and only” object. Fashioned as such and such “in its very self,” it has its own kind of being, its complement of essential predicables that must pertain to it (as “the entity as it is in itself”), so that other, secondary, relative determinations can pertain to it. (Hua III/1, pp. 12-3/11)

And a few lines before: Individual being of any kind is, said very generally, “contingent.” It is so but it could have been otherwise. (Hua III/1, p. 12/10; translation modified)

Thus, it seems that in Fact and Essence Husserl proceeds from a broad talk about “individual objects” and “individual being” (which are ontologically contingent: zufällig) to the strict formal-ontological concept of Individuum (which, on the contrary, will turn out to be the true Urgegenstand and will play, at the very end of the chapter, an ontologically fundamental role to define what a “region” is). It is precisely this track that I suggest following now.

2 From Individual Objects to “Their” Essences What in the first paragraphs of Fact and Essence Husserl calls “individual object” appears, broadly speaking, as the correlate of any empirical intuition, be it perceptual or abstractive (Hua III/1, p. 15/13): perceiving a thing or a sound, an Erlebnis or one of its moments, is eo ipso perceiving an individual thing or an individual sound, or an individual Erlebnis, etc. And this broad use of the term is consistent

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with both the general Aquinas-like definition of individuality and the doctrine of the Second Logical Investigation. But Husserl also adds a further element: perceiving an individual thing or an individual sound is always and necessarily perceiving something that is both a unique Dies-da—literally: a “one and only” or a “onetimer” (ein einmaliger) (Hua III/1, p. 12/11; translation modified) —, and a bearer of “predicables”: a So-und-so beschaffen. One might wonder whether by employing the very specific term of “predicables” (Prädikabilien) Husserl hints to the difference between praedicabilia—i.e., the list of four κατηγορούμενα detailed in the Topics (101 b 17–25: proprium, genus, accident, definition), later expanded and modified in Porphyry’s Isagoge—and praedicamenta—i.e., the κατηγορίαι, spelled out in the Categories (and referring to predicates of things, not to predicates of predicates), but I will leave the question open for the moment. As for now, let us simply insist on the following point: according to this preliminary characterization, an individual object is a this-here fashioned in such-and-such a way, i.e., having a specific constitution (Eigenart) and a stock (Bestand) of predicates or ‘predicables’. Now, what is interesting in this preliminary distinction is that the categorial concepts used by Husserl to name this two “internal moments” (innere Momente) of any individual object (the dies-da and the so-und­so) are precisely the two concepts later required to define analytically the Individuum: i.e. “τόδε τι” and “Wesen.” Both “τόδε τι” and “Wesen” are also names of formal ontological categories, namely of “essences of essences” (Wesen des Wesens) (see Hua III/2, p.  578). As for the τόδε τι, Husserl defines it as a “pure syntactically formless individual singularity” (eine syntaktisch formlose individuelle Einzelheit) (Hua III/1, p. 33/28; translation modified), whereas an essence is precisely the “conceptual content” (begriffliche Inhalt) (Hua XLI, p. 149) determining a singular individual as being an individual of a very specific kind (Eigenart). If this may still sound a bit confusing, there is a very instructive passage in the Bernauer Manuscritps where Husserl expands on the notion of τόδε τι and explicitly refers back to Ideas I: Each entity has its essence and existence, for which it is customary also to say: Being-thus and being-there [...]. The essence, the What of the substrate is, on the one hand, a concrete and a specific essence, what is “repeatable” and repeated in different individuals with different substrates and possible singularizations of this specific essence; on the other hand, it is the τόδε τι. The τόδε τι is what singularizes individually the specific, i.e., the lower and not further differentiable species, the principium individuationis. (Hua XXXIII, pp. 299–300)

This can be illustrated as shown in Fig. 4.1.

Fig. 4.1  Being and τόδε τι

Essenz (Was-sein) Seiend

spezifische Wesen τόδε τι

Existenz (Da-sein)

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Three points need to be stressed. 1. With such an uncanny mishmash of terms (Greek, Latin, German) Husserl ultimately attempts to distinguish a broad notion of essence (named “Essenz,” “Was sein” or “So-sein”), to which also belongs the τόδε τι (what singularizes the lowest species), from a narrower notion (called “spezifische Wesen”) limited to the “predicables” that an individual object can have in common with any other individual of the relevant kind. What is interesting, thus, is that according to the first broad notion, if we were to spell out the Essenz of any individual object whatsoever—such as it is intuitively given in the various forms of originally giving acts—we should say that it includes both its particularity (Eigenart, spezifische Wesen) and its singularity (τόδε τι). An individual object is therefore nothing but the substrate of an ultimately singularized essence (Hua III/1, p.  34/29). And, accordingly, an empirical ­individual object is an actually existing (daseiend) ultimately singularized essence (Hua III/1, p. 33/28). As in the best Scotist tradition, the principium individuationis belongs to the Form.6 2. This bring us to the Aristotelian term τόδε τι. The term appears mainly in Met. Z, 4 (1030a19), when Aristotle refers to that feature of the οὐσία that is irreducible to the τί ἐστι. While the demonstrative pronoun τόδε has certainly a deictic function (like the Dies in Husserl’s Dies-da) and may also formally be used to denote the subject of all possible predication (see Z, 1, 1028a15), in the complete formula τόδε τι the deictic τόδε occurs as determined by the τι, namely as “something.” This gets somehow lost in the English translation, for τόδε τι does not mean “this-here” but precisely “this-something.” William of Moerbeke was well aware of this, since he translates τόδε τι precisely with hoc aliquid, “this-here that is a something.” As in Aristotle, where the τι determines the extension of the τόδε, in the Latin translation also used by Aquinas it is not the hoc that determines the aliquid but vice-versa. So for Aristotle τόδε τι is neither an indeterminate this, nor something merely determined by its deictic-­bound spatial location (a this-here) but onedeterminate-this: a substrate that is not just substrate, but of which one can also say what it is and how it is determined (ὑποκείμενον [...] ὡρισμένον, Z, 1, 1028a26-7). Husserl’s unexpected use of the τόδε τι is consistent with Aristotle’s Met. Z. But Ideas I adds a further argument, an example to illustrate how a world of, say, “essence-less” Dies-da, of merely deictic τόδε, as it were, would look like. A world whose objects would have only the categorial form of a bare singularity without any material determination would not be a world of individual objects as the one exemplified in our current experience. A “world” of “undetermined singularities” would be an unworld (Unwelt) as the one described (although already with the vocabulary of constitution) by the example of the Weltvernichtung spelled out in §49:

 This point is already suggested in Mohanty (1997), pp. 7, 39. On Scotus’s account of individuation see Ordinatio II, d. 3, p. 1, qq. 5–6, n. 188. See also Park (1988) and Park (1990). 6

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It may be the case thereby that rough formations of unity would still come to be constituted to some extent – fleeting stopovers for intuitions that would be mere analogues of intuitions of a thing, since such analogues are entirely incapable of constituting sustained “realities,” enduring unities that “exist in themselves, whether they are perceived or not.” (Hua III/1, pp. 103–4/88)

So what makes an individual object out of a τόδε τι is precisely what makes one able to identify it and re-identify it as being the same individual and not an-other or even to conflate it with another, under certain circumstances, to be wrong about it, to correct our opinions etc.—namely the fact that the empty form of the τι is materially fulfilled by a non-further-determinable form of predicables. Thus, it is only as long as being-­something is being-something-of-some-kind that there can be a world, stable enough to have the ultimately singularized “behavior” of its individual denizens be captured by the laws of a science. 3. But the text of the Bernauer Manuscripts also points out that the Dies-da (= τόδε τι) should not be conflated with the Da-sein (=existence) of the individual object, which does not belong to its Essenz. Of course, neither the τόδε τι nor the existence are predicates; however, while the existence does not determine what an individual is, the τόδε τι is precisely the name for the bearer of such an ultimate determination. The τόδε τι is what singularizes the infima species: it is not a further predicate but the non-predicative part of the essence of an individual object. An individual object is ultimately nothing but a this-here fully determined by the sumtotal of all and only its predicable features (Gesamtinbegriff der Prädikabilien). For example, a this-here that has this-shade-of-red-here, this roundish-shape-here, but also these quantitative properties such as this mass-­here, this momentum-here etc., and a whole host and causal of ultimately determinate features is a physical individual—something that, in principle, could be given in sense perception. Or a thishere that has this-pitch-here and this-height here, and this-­ duration-­ here and this-loudness here, and this timbre-here is a physical individual too—although abstract, something that could be given in abstractive sense perception. Now, not all the internal moments of an individual object’s Wesensbestand have the same degree of generality. In Husserl’s (Porphyrian like) hierarchy of essences we have, right at the top, the highest genera (oberste Gattungen; summa genera) and, down at the bottom, the “lowest differences,” (niederste Differenzen; infima species) also called “eidetic singularities,” species that cannot be further specified but only carried by a τόδε τι: In this sense, in the purely logical domain of meanings, “meaning in general” is the highest genus, while each determinate form of proposition, each determinate form of a proposition-­ member is an eidetic singularity; proposition in general is a mediating genus. So, too, number in general is a highest genus. Two, three, and so forth are its lowest differences or eidetic singularities. Examples of highest genera in the material sphere include the thing in general, sensory quality, spatial shape, experience [Erlebnis] in general; the essential components that belong to determinate things, determinate sensory qualities, spatial shapes, experiences [Erlebnisse] as such are eidetic singularities and thereby material singularities. (Hua III/1, p. 30/26; translation modified)

This is illustrated in Fig. 4.2.

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Fig. 4.2 Tόδε τι and higher genera

One understands now why Husserl says that individual objects are τόδε τι having a Wesensbestand or a Was. In a way, each individual object is the singularization (Vereinzelung) of a lowest material difference (eidetische Singularität) or, to put it in slightly different terms, each individual object has its “own kind” (Eigenart) (Hua III/1, p. 12/11; translation modified)—its hacceitas, as it were. But since “the eidetically singular implies [impliziert] all the universalities lying above it, universalities that, for their part, hierarchically ‘lie in one another’ in step-by-step fashion, the higher always in the lower” (Hua III/1, p. 31/26; translation modified), it can also exemplify essences of higher order. A τόδε τι is the ultimate exemplification of an eidetic singularity, but it is also an example of the upper genera and species of which the eidetic singularity is the ultimate difference. This-particular-shade-ofred-here is “ruby red,” but it is also an example among others of “red in general,” “color,” and an ultimate exemplification of “sensible quality.” It seems thus that Husserl’s first, general, Aquinas-like, definition of individuality (“actual identity with itself and difference from any other”) fits nicely with the characterization of what we have learned to call “individual objects,” both concrete like a physical body (Ding) or a mental act (Erlebnis), and abstract like a sound (or a color) or an act quality. For it is precisely to the extent that an individual object is, as it were, a “τόδε τι with an Eigenart” that it can be “identical with itself and different from any other.”

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3 From Essences to εἴδη Now that we know what the categorial non-syntactic structure (or Essenz) of all individual objects is (τόδε τι + Wesen), we are in a better position to understand what Husserl means by εἶδος and avoid the usual conflation between εἶδος and Wesen.7 In fact what Husserl calls “essence” is “at first” (zunächst) only the “What” (Was) of an individual object, the singularized essence which includes the Dies-da and the So-und-so of these categorially formed objects empirically given in sense perception or in any of the relevant forms of originally giving intuitive acts having individuals as correlates. In Husserl’s words: ‘Essence’ at first designated what is to be found in the being that is proper to an individual itself as its what. (Hua III/1, p. 13/11; translation modified)

Such preliminary (zunächst) concept of “essence,” that we have learned to call Wesensbestand or Eigenart or So-und-so Beschaffenheit etc., is not the εἶδος. When we perceive this or that object we always perceive a fully determinate “this” and, as a moment of the whole individual object as such, we also find as “already there” (als Vorfindliche) the stock of predicates determining its So-sein—or at least some of them. This concrete individual body is red and roundish, has a certain weight, etc.; this abstract individual sound has its pitch, height and duration etc. And we perceive all these properties as long and insofar as we perceive the individual itself, for these are nothing but its “internal moments” (innere Momente). Now “essence” as a determination of a previously existing and empirically encountered individual object, differs from εἶδος because an εἶδος is not the essence-of-this-or-that-­individualobject but a full-fledged “brand new object” (ein neuartiger Gegenstand) (Hua III/1, p. 14/12 translation modified). In a nutshell: the essence-of an (individual) object is called “Was” (or sometimes Was-sein; or sometimes “Wesen” with scare quotes); the essence-as an object per se, is called εἶδος (or “reine Wesen”). Again, three remarks are now necessary. 1. In order to switch from the simple intuition of the “essence”-qua-Was (embedded into an individual object) to the intuition of to the pure-essence-qua-εἶδος Husserl requires a further noetic step: the “in-Idee-setzen of the Was,” i.e., the “ideation” (Ideation) or essential seeing proper (Wesenserschauung, Wesenschauung, Wesensanschauung): Each such ‘what,’ however, can be ‘put into an idea.’ Empirical or individual intuition can be transformed into an instance of seeing the essence (ideation)—a possibility that is itself to be understood, not as empirical, but as an essential possibility. What is intuited is then the corresponding pure essence or εἶδος, whether it be the highest category or a particularization of the latter, down to the full concretion. (Hua III/1, p. 13/11; translation modified)

 To my knowledge, the first scholar to have consistently warned against this conflation is Rochus Sowa. See Sowa (2007a, b). 7

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Properly speaking, then, “being a highest genus,” “being a genus,” “being a species” or “being an eidetic singularity” are properties of εἴδη, second order “predicables” (and praedicabilia in the most proper sense), belonging to pure essences; whereas “being a spatial shape,” “being a polygon,” “being a triangle” and “being an equilateral triangle” are first-order predicables belonging to the Wesensbestand of individual objects. When one judges that “this is ruby red,” the judgment refers to an individual object, namely a τόδε τι determined as being-ruby-red. This is what Husserl calls the subsumption (Subsumption) of an individual object under its essence (Hua III/1, p. 32/28). “Subsumption” is the judgmental counterpart of the intuitive act of perception. But judging that “ruby red is a color” is already a case of generalization (Generalizierung), just as “colors are visual qualities” or “visual qualities are sensible qualities.” Generalization is not a relation between individuals and essences, but between essences of different degree. Husserl calls such relation “subordination (Subordination) of an essence under its higher species or a genus” (Hua III/1, p. 32/28; translation modified). And “subordination” is the judgmental counterpart of the intuitive act of ideation. 2. But εἴδη as pure essences differ from essences as empirical determinations of individual objects also for another reason. For ideation, although originally giving and intuitive, is nevertheless a founded act: It is certainly part of the distinctiveness of the intuition of an essence that a major part of the intuition of something individual (i.e., the appearance or visibility of something individual) underlies it [i.e., the intuition of essence], although, to be sure, neither an apprehension of what is individual nor, by any means, a positing of [it] as an actuality. What is certain is that, as a consequence of this, one cannot have an intuition of an essence without being able to shift one's focus freely toward a ‘corresponding’ individual and forming a consciousness of an example—just as, conversely, one cannot have an intuition of something individual without freely being able to carry out an ideation and focus in it on the corresponding essence that is exemplified in what is individually visible. (Hua III/1, p. 15/13; translation modified)

Just as each essence singularized into an individual object can be seen as “posited into idea,” each εἶδος can in turn be seen as exemplified (exemplifiziert) into an individual object. So if the upward movement, from individual object to εἶδος is called ideation (Ideation), the reciprocal downward movement from εἶδος to individual object is named exemplification (Exemplifizierung). However, the apparent symmetry suggested by the terms upward/downward is dispelled as soon as Husserl adds that although usually ideated from actual individual objects, εἴδη can be exemplified by merely possible or fantasized individuals. And a fantasized individual object is not an individual object in the sense defined above, but a quasi-individual, for, by definition, it is never fully determined by its predicates (some of them being structurally left undetermined) (see for instance Hua XXIII, p. 302): The εἶδος, the pure essence, can be intuitively exemplified in empirical givenness, as in perception, memory, and so forth, but also in mere phantasy givenness just as well. (Hua III/1, p. 16/14; translation modified)

In other words, an εἶδος is a “pure essence” for at least two reasons: (a) because it is distinguished from the singularized “essence” of the Was; and (b) because it does not posit the existence of any actual individual, for pure essences can be eventually exemplified in both actual-perceptive individual and possible-fantasized

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quasi-­individual objects: εἴδη are “pure” in the first sense insofar as they hold as objects per se (and not as “mixed,” as it were, with other object-moments within the Was of an individual object); but in the second sense, the talk of “pureness” has a very different meaning: εἴδη are pure because they are a priori. They are not essences-of this or that individual object, but of all possible objects whose relevant predicates happen to be contingently (zufällig) exemplified also in this or that individual object. In that sense, if natural laws are true of “states of affairs posited as real insofar as they bring together individual realities,” this does not hold for eidetic laws (Hua III/1, p. 19/17; see also §§7–8).

4 From εἴδη to Regions After having spelled out what an individual object is (Sect. 1), what “its” essence (Sect. 2) and what “an” εἶδος is (Sect. 3)—one last element is needed to understand Husserl’s thesis that the “individual” is the Urgegenstand, as well as the “rigorous” definition of region that it unfolds—i.e., the distinction concrete/abstract as applied not to objects in general (as in the Third Logical Investigation) but, more specifically, to εἴδη. According to §15, if εἴδη are dependent (or independent)—and thus abstract (or concrete) in the most “genuine” (pregnant) sense—it is because they “necessarily” refer back to (or fail to refer back to) one another (notwendig zurückweisen; aufeinander gewiesen). To put it differently, two εἴδη are abstract (or concrete) if and only if they “are unthinkable without” (or fail to be unthinkable without) one another (Hua III/1, p. 34/28). Husserl’s examples are very sparse but sufficiently clear. A sensible quality, say “color,” is abstract because all its lower differences refer back to eidetic singularities belonging to the εἶδος “extension;” and the same holds for the εἶδος “substrate” that is necessarily related to the εἶδος “form,” etc. (Hua III/1, pp.  35–6/30–1). Thus formal categorial essences in general—object in general, property, state of affairs, number, order, manifold, unity, identity, equality, part/ whole, genus/species etc. (Hua III/1 pp. 32–3/278)—are abstract by definition, for they are all materially “empty” and need to be complemented; hence, they “necessarily refer back to” or are “unthinkable without” other essences. And the same holds stricto sensu for all highest genera, genera and species as such. By contrast, an essence is concrete if and only if it is fully determined and does not necessarily refer (hinweisen) to any other essence. As a result, a concretum is quite obviously an eidetic singularity, since species and genera (expressions that in the usual way exclude the lowest differences) are in principle dependent. The eidetic singularities accordingly break down into abstract and concrete. (Hua III/1, p. 35/30)

Ruby-red is an abstract eidetic singularity and “this-ruby-red” is a fully determined τόδε τι whose material essence is nevertheless abstract, because it is “unthinkable without” or “necessarily refers to” a τόδε τι whose material essence belongs to the genus “spatial form.” On the other hand, “this-stone,” fully provided with all the determinations of its Was (= eidetic singularity) is a τόδε τι whose material essence

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is a concretum, for its stock of predicables (Bestand an Prädikabilien) does not need to be complemented by anything else. In a sense, this-stone in its full concretion could be the only kind of in the world; and if there actually happen to be other things beyond stones, this is a fact, not a matter of necessity—while the actual existence of this-ruby-red calls for at least the existence of another kind of being, an extended surface like this-triangular(ish)shape. It is precisely in this very specific sense that for Husserl this-stone is an Individuum, not this ruby-red. The consequences of this distinction are crucial for both Husserl’s conception of ontology and his whole phenomenological project. 1. To begin with, it implies that εἴδη are related to each other in at least two ways. Vertically, as subordinated in the hierarchical order highest genus/genus/­ species/eidetic singularity, and somehow horizonally, as united to form other εἴδη belonging to different highest genera. The relationship between the εἶδος “red” and the εἶδος “green” is simply an eidetic fact: “red” and “green” are disjointed (disjunkt) species subordinated to the genus “color” and the highest genus “visual quality.” As for the relationship between “red” and “color,” or “color” and “visual quality,” it is an eidetic necessity. But the relationship between “color” and “shape” is an eidetic necessity of a different kind: “color” and “shape” are not subordinated to a common genus, they unite to form another εἶδος, heterogeneous from both “sensible qualities” and “spatial shapes.” In Husserl’s words an abstract pure essence is an essence that “together with another, establishes the unity of one essence” (ein Wesen [daß] mit einem anderen Einheit eines Wesens begründet) (Hua III/1, p. 34/29). Being-one as part of a genus and being-one as part of another samelevel although heterogeneous essence are not the same thing. Examples of concrete genera are “real thing,” “visual phantom” (appearing visual shape sensibly filled out), “experience” (Erlebnis), and the like. By contrast, “spatial shape,” “visual quality,” and the like are examples of abstract genera. (Hua III/1, p. 36/31; translation modified)

Spatial figure and visual qualities are higher genera, but they are also abstract in the sense that, because of the mutual reference of their eidetic singularities, their eidetic singularities unite into new εἴδη belonging to the highest genus “visual phantasm (appearing visual shape sensibly filled out) (visuelles Phantom (sinnlich erfüllt erscheinende visuelle Gestalt))” (Hua III/1, p. 36/31). But as Husserl rightly points out “visual phantasm” is not a super-genus of which ruby-red would be a lower species, and this-ruby-red its singularization. “Visual phantasm” is an entirely different higher genus: a concrete higher genus, established by the unity of two heterogeneous highest genera, two essences brought to unity, neither of them being a “visual phantasm” all alone—only both together. “Vertically,” εἴδη are joined to each other either because they belong to a genus, in which case they now are “horizonally” united because their eidetic singularities are either individuals (visual phantasms, things, Erlebnisse), or abstract parts of individuals (spatial figure, visual quality, etc.).

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2. But there is more. Beyond the “unity of the highest genus” (=generic unity”) and the “unity of abstract εἴδη into new concrete εἴδη” (= what we might call “mereologic unity” in the strict sense), Husserl needs a third kind of unity: the unity that brings together both abstract and concrete highest genera belonging to the same “region.” The unity of being. And the time has finally come to discuss the concluding, “rigorous,” definition of region that closes Fact and Essence. Region is nothing other than the entire, supreme generic unity belonging to a concretum, i.e., the essentially united connection of the supreme genera that pertain to the lowest differences within the concretum. The eidetic scope of the region encompasses the ideal totality proper to the concretely unified complexes of differences characterizing these genera; the individual scope encompasses the ideal totality of possible individuals of such concrete essences. (Hua III/1, p. 36/31, translation modified)

So a region is not a highest genus. A region is not a genus itself, but a unity of highest genera: the “entire, supreme generic unity belonging to a concretum;” the “essentially united connection of the supreme genera that pertain to the lowest differences within the concretum” (Hua III/1, p. 36/31). What brings together essences like red and green is the subordination to the same higher genus: visual quality; what brings together essences like colors and shapes is their mutual reference as part of a concretum: the visual phantasm. But what—if anything—brings together, abstracta like colors and shapes, and concreta like causally inert visual phantasms, real things and eventually Erlebnisse into one single “ontological region,” into one region of being? Certainly not the fact that they are objects, for object is a formal-categorial concept, absolutely empty—and, as we have seen, absolutely abstract; thus incapable of forming a region. Husserl’s response is striking: what unites a region of being is precisely the recourse to the Urgegenständlichkeit of one individual (τόδε τι whose material essence is a concretum). Sometimes confusing, Husserl could not be more explicit on this point: If we transport ourselves into any eidetic science at all, for example, into the ontology of nature, then we find ourselves (this is, indeed, what is normal) not oriented toward essences as objects but instead toward objects of the essences that in our example are classified under the region of nature. We observe thereby, however, that “object” is a title for many different yet interrelated formations, for example, “thing,” “property,” “relation,” “state of affairs,” “set,” “order,” and so forth. These are obviously not equivalent to one another but instead refer back (zurückweisen) respectively to one kind of object that has, so to speak, the ­prerogative of being the primordial kind of object, with respect to which all other [objects] present themselves to a certain extent merely as variants. In our example, the thing itself (over against the property of a thing, relation to a thing, and so forth) naturally has this prerogative. (Hua III/1, p. 25/22; emphases added)

Being becomes a region, many highest genera unite into one “wesenseinheitliche Verknüpfung,” thanks to the back-reference of a distinctive manifold of εἴδη (=“essences as objects and not essences of objects,” Husserl also says) to a paradigmatic individual, taken as Urgegenstand. Individuals are Urgegenstände: this is the stuff of which ontologies are made—the physicalistic ontology of Quine (whose individual Urgegenstand is the physical Ding), as well as the fundamental ontology

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of Heidegger (where the Dasein takes the leading role). Husserl is not merely proposing an ontology here—he is showing how ontologies are made. As for “Nature,” it becomes an “ontological region,” i.e., its denizens are “together in being,” because they are either things, or properties of things, or they are somehow related to things—i.e., they refer back (zurückweisen) to “things” as Urgegenstände.

5 Headless Ontologies and Transcendental Phenomenology It is not clear whether the individuum whose material essence is a concretum of the kind “visual phantasm” could be used as the Urgegenstand to form a whole region of being—so that Erlebnisse, Dinge and Phantome would end up being three heterogeneous ontological regions. But I will leave the question aside. To conclude, I would simply like to point out that the term Husserl uses to establish the non-generic and non-mereological unity of the region on the basis of the back-reference to a paradigmatic individual, should sound familiar for us. We have already encountered it in the context of Husserl’s analysis of the non-independency of abstracta. But in this new context Husserl uses the term more loosely. The term now captures also that kind of unity of being that Aristotle’s Γ2 (and Brentano in his dissertation) calls “πρὸς ἕν,” i.e., unity related to a single focal meaning or “in relation to one.” The unity of Husserl’s regions, the unity out of which he will ultimately build his ontology, is therefore a unity πρὸς ἕν.8 And, as far as we are concerned, with Husserl’s explicit use of the term ontology, nothing, really nothing, seems to suggest that “being” is “being an object;” by contrast, everything—starting from Husserl’s appropriation of the Aristotelian τόδε τι—clearly indicates that, ultimately (namely limiting oneself to the formal categories of the substrate, and abstracting from all syntactic cores) “to be” is to-be-an-individual or to-be-the-­ abstract-part-of-anindividual, or to-be-related-with-an-individual. For Individual is precisely the Urgegenstand out of which Being becomes a region—be it the region “thing,” the region “consciousness” or, eventually, the region “phantasm.” Thus, when Heidegger claims in the History of the Concept of Time that Husserl does not say anything about the meaning of “to be,” he is utterly wrong. As wrong as all those analytic interpreters looking for Husserl’s catalogue of what there is. But there is also one last point I would like to stress, and it concerns Husserl’s talk of Ur-regionen: world and consciousness. If “region” has to be taken rigorously, the same holds for Ur-region. New forms of unity are needed to bring together the ontology of nature, the ontology of psychophysical creatures like animals, and the ontology of culture or Geist spelled out in Ideas II into one single Ur-region called “world.” The point is that such new unity cannot be reached ontologically: it

 See Brentano (1862, pp. 144–148). On Husserl and Brentano with reference to Aristotle and the role of the πρὸς ἕν, see also Chap. 8 of this volume. 8

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is neither generic, nor mereological, nor made out of the unique reference to an individual Urgegenstand. So Husserl will have to finally exit ontology—an ontology that remains ultimately and necessarily “headless,” having neither highest genera nor πρὸς ἕν unity with respect to one specific meaning of Being—and conclude that the unity of the region world is not ontological, but transcendental.9 It should be readily apparent, at the very least, that if one wants to enter into Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology from the backyard, as it were—avoiding the main entrance of Fact and Essence—one should not be surprised then to find oneself, at one point, into a totally different place: a backyard belonging to an entirely different school.

 The shift from the ontological unity to the transcendental one has been discussed already in Chap. 2 and will be addressed again in Chap. 11 of this volume. Further indications on both the unity of Husserl’s ontology and its limits are to be found in Chap. 5. 9

Chapter 5

Mapping Ontology and Its Boundaries On a Path

I have always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you have been, where you are, and where you are going. In a sense, it is three tenses in one. Peter Greenaway

1 Problems and Maps Myles Burnyeat’s famous book, A Map of Metaphysics Zeta, begins with the following reminder: because of its high philosophical stakes and extreme textual complexity, Aristotle’s “Metaphysics Zeta has been aptly described as the Mount Everest of ancient philosophy” (2001, p. 1). Zeta’s stakes are indeed philosophically high, for the book “deals with central issues of metaphysics, which Aristotle calls ‘first philosophy’,” and appears to have one single and yet crucial “ontological purpose.” As for its textual complexity, Zeta is so hard that “many are deterred by its difficulty. For others the difficulty is a challenge they cannot resist.” Hence the need for a map. A map, Burnyeat says, “designed to help all parties to find their way;” conceived “for travelers to use in their own explorations of the text” (p. 3). I would have loved to say that—mutatis mutandis—phenomenology has its own Mount Everest too. A book, an article or a book chapter the mapping of which would provide a decisive insight into Husserl’s central issues of metaphysics, that is, first philosophy, that is, ontology. The claim, however, would have been too good to be true—if not blatantly false. And this for at least four different reasons. The first reason is that Husserl’s putative “ontological” Mount Everest would have been not a single mountain, but a whole mountain range, scattered all over a wide corpus: from the early Prolegomena (1900), through the Third and Fourth Logical Investigations (1901), the opening section of Ideas I (1913), up to Formal and Transcendental logic (1929) and beyond. Moreover, though all variously

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_5

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discuss “ontology,” none of these texts appears to have one single purpose. Secondly, unlike Burnyeat, the cartographer of Husserl’s ontological territory should also account for the fact that “metaphysics,” “first philosophy” and “ontology” are often if not always presented by Husserl as quite different undertakings. As for the third reason, one might have noticed that, in Husserl’s corpus, the word “ontology” constantly occurs as qualified in some way or another. Husserl constantly speaks of ontology as “a priori” or “a posteriori,” “absolute” or “relative,” “formal” or “material,” “categorial” or “regional”—but he rarely speaks simply of “ontology.” Then how are these “ontologies” mutually related? Is there a sense of “Being” that, somehow, brings together such a vast array of “ontological” disciplines? Finally: even if we were to succeed in providing a unified account of Husserl’s variously qualified concepts of “ontology,” and come up with a clear explanation of their relations to “metaphysics” and “first philosophy,” one would still have to explain the relationship between phenomenology and ontology. In Ideas III, for instance, Husserl (Hua V, p. 129) clearly states that “ontology is not phenomenology;” but doesn’t he also speak of the “inclusion of the ontologies in phenomenology”? (Hua V, p. 77). And in what sense does he speak of that? For all these reasons, the investigation carried out in this chapter, must proceed carefully, advancing step-by-step in its task of charting the whole mountain-range of Husserl’s ontology. As a first incursion into this rough terrain, I will begin, therefore, by mapping one limited part of the territory. More precisely, I will try to climb two relatively small peaks, which nevertheless have the non-negligible advantage of making easier the passage to the more challenging ones. The texts I have in mind are: the introduction of Husserl’s 1898/99 lectures Theory of Knowledge and Main Issues in Metaphysics and the third section of the 1906/07 lectures Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge. The reason to start mapping these twin peaks, as it were, is the following: in the first text, Husserl openly discusses Aristotle’s Metaphysics and, quite unsurprisingly, distinguishes “different meanings” of the “term being” (Hua Mat III, p.  247). However, he does not say anything about ontology and its divisions. In the second text, by contrast, Husserl provides “various delimitations” (verschiedene Begrenzungen) of the “general concept of ontology” (Hua XXIV, p. 99/97; translation modified)—but he doesn’t say anything about “being” and its meanings. Without being able to be exhaustive, I will thus try to show to what extent the first distinction leads to the second. As I will argue, Husserl’s way to present Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the different meanings of being literally shows the path along which Husserl himself will eventually trace the inner and outer borders of ontology.

2 Enter Aristotle In the 1923/24 lectures on First Philosophy, Husserl famously states that the very expression “first philosophy” has to be freed from its original, Aristotelian sense (Hua VII, pp.  3–4/3–4), and kept only in the “literal” or “lexical” sense of a

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“discipline preceding [...] all other philosophical disciplines, grounding them both methodologically and theoretically” (p. 5/5; translation modified). In these lectures, however, Husserl does not pause on what “first philosophy” means in its original Aristotelian sense. By contrast, the issue is explicitly addressed in the 1906–7 lectures: What is metaphysics and metaphysical ontology? [...] Aristotle defined First Philosophy as the science of Being as such. While, as he said, all other sciences cut out some partial domain of being for themselves and work on it for its own sake, First Philosophy investigates what universally pertains to Being as such. If we keep in mind that under the heading of “Being,” it is being in the sense of what is real that is being aimed at here, then we already have a definition, albeit provisional, of the concept of metaphysical ontology. Today, we shall understand metaphysics itself differently, and more broadly. (Hua XXIV, pp. 95–6/93)

Husserl’s sketch manifestly rests on a loose paraphrase of Met. E, 1 (1026a29) and Γ, 1 (1003a21–26). Aristotle’s “first philosophy”: (a) is the “science of being as such” and is therefore an “ontology;” (b) is a specific variety of ontology, dubbed as “metaphysical ontology;” (c) is also distinguished from and opposed to other sciences of being, which are not concerned with “being as such;” (d) understands “being as such” as “being in the sense of reality;” Though referring to Aristotle, each of these points already provides some useful clues to pinpoint Husserl’s own position. One could, for instance, preliminarily assume that, –– –– –– ––

Ad (a): not every “first philosophy” is to be understood as ontology; Ad (b): not every “ontology” is metaphysical; Ad (c): not every “ontology” investigates being a such; Ad (d): not every “ontology” understands “being as such” in the sense of “being real.”

Point (a) gestures already towards Husserl’s claim, mentioned above, according to which the term “first philosophy” should be emptied of its historical content, since Aristotle’s ontological metaphysics cannot be the true “discipline of the beginnings” (Hua VII, p. 6/6). But following this path would lead us to a different problem that we should better leave aside for now.1 Points (b), (c) and (d), by contrast, are far more relevant for our present purpose. In fact, though Husserl will reject the Aristotelian variety of “first philosophy,” Aristotle’s account of “metaphysical ontology” is not rejected as such. It is rather presented as a “provisional” account, to be understood “differently and more broadly.” Then again, considering that the 1906/07 lectures remain silent about this Aristotelian starting point, one could reasonably wonder: has Husserl ever been explicit on this topic?

 This point will be further discussed in Chap. 10 of this volume.

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3 Meanings of Being This brings us to the 1898/99 lectures.2 In these very early introductory courses, Husserl mentions Aristotle’s Metaphysics quite extensively and spells out its content in four different contexts. In the first context—by implicitly referring to Met. E, 1 (106a16–23; see also: Λ, 7, 1072b14; Λ, 8, 1074a38)—Husserl reminds us that Aristotle also defined metaphysics as theology, i.e., as the most sublime among sciences, the one which dominated all others and which, by teaching how to grasp and understand the divine, made its disciples [i.e., the particular sciences] partakers of the divine. (Hua Mat III, p. 230)

This first account, however, is not developed any further. In the second context—drawing from the definition of “wisdom” in Met. A, 1 (981a28; see also A, 2, 982a5-6 and b2-4)—Husserl defines Aristotle’s metaphysics as the science of the first causes and principles. At the same time, he explicitly merges this first definition with the famous passage of Met. Γ, 1 (1003a21-26) in which, as we have seen, Aristotle explains first philosophy as the science of being as such, as opposed to particular sciences of being: the discipline from which all other disciplines depend and in which they are all grounded, the science of the first principles and grounds (ἀρχαί, αἰτίαι) of every being in general. All other scientific disciplines, Aristotle thinks, have to do with particular domains of being, they are ἐπιστήμαι ἐν μέρει λεγόμεναι. Each of them cuts a piece out of ‘that what is’ and studies what belongs to it in particular. In addition to them, a new scientific discipline is now required, having being as such as its object of study, and, accordingly, studying what belongs to ‘that what is’ in general.’ (Hua Mat III, pp. 233–4)

While Husserl neglects the relation between metaphysics qua theology (science of the divine) and metaphysics qua archeology (science of the first principles), he openly articulates metaphysics qua archeology and qua ontology (science of being as such). Aristotle’s first philosophy, Husserl says, investigates the first principles and causes of being as such (as in E, 1, 1025b3). In the third context, Husserl turns to the meaning of “being as such,” and alludes to the arch-famous passage of the Metaphysics where Aristotle states that “being is said in many ways” (Z, 1, 1028a10). But what is meant by being? The confusion of closely related concepts, mutually connected by equivocation, has got in the way of the research, here just as anywhere. Already Aristotle realized that the concept of being is not unitary (einer); he has attempted to single out ­different meanings of the term being. Being in the sense of truth is something different than being in the sense of reality. That 2 × 2 is 4, this being is obviously not being in the same sense as the being of a thing (Ding). But is real being always the being of a thing? One also speaks of the being of an attribute and of the being of relations. Does this being presuppose the being of things? Is everything that has a property a thing? Is everything that stands in some relation a thing? But numbers, too, have determinations and stand in relations, and a number is certainly nothing real. Then again, what is that—a thing? It is a certain unity of determinations, a substance (Substanz), bearer of multiple accidents. (Hua Mat III, pp. 247)  Trizio (2017) is the only study I know of that has called attention to this rather important early text.

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In the Metaphysics, Aristotle had indeed, quite famously, distinguished four senses of “being” (Ε, 2, 1026a33; Γ, 2, 1003a33): –– –– –– ––

accidental being (ʼὸν κατὰ συμβεβηκός), being as act and potency (ʼὸν δυνάμαι καὶ ἐνεργεία), being as being true (ʼὸν ὡς ἀληθές), and being according to the figures of the categories (τὸ ʼὸν κατὰ τὰ σχήματα τῶν κατηγοριῶν).

In his brief summary, however, Husserl entirely disregards the first two senses and collapses the whole fourfold distinction into the sheer opposition between: –– “being in the sense of truth” (Sein im Sinne der Wahrheit) and –– “being in the sense of reality” (Sein im Sinne der Realität). Assuming that Aristotle’s “being as being true” corresponds to Husserl’s “being in the sense of truth,” one might expect that “being in the sense of reality” corresponds in turn to Aristotle’s “being according to the figures of the categories.” Yet why should one equate “being of the categories” and “being in the sense of reality”? Husserl’s answer is that Aristotle’s categories are all related to the fundamental category of “substance” (as in Met. Z, 3, 1029a23; An. Post. I, 22, 83a25) and that the latter, instead of being extended to all sort of “ideal objects, concepts or conceptual objects” (Hua Mat III, p.  234), ultimately applies exclusively to “things” (Dinge): whatever is, is either a thing, or the attribute of a thing, or a relation among things, or a qualitative, quantitative, spatial or temporal determination of a thing, etc. (Hua Mat III, p. 247). The word “thing,” in turn, broadly refers to all the perceivable core-denizens of that “world” or “nature,” the being of which is “tacitly and wholly uncritically assumed” (angenommen) and “self-evidently presupposed” (vorausgesetzt) not only by pre-scientific consciousness but also by all empirical science (Ηua Matt III, pp. 246–7). As a result, “being according to the figures of the categories” is nothing but that being to which Aristotle’s categories apply, i.e., the “real being,” the individual “substance” and whatever—essentially or accidentally—pertains to it. It is the being of “what really is” (das real Seiende), of manifold “things,” sometimes similar, sometimes different, having certain features, standing in certain mutual relations, causally interacting with each other, coming to be and passing away, moving in space and changing in time, etc.3 This latter point is of the outmost importance (see Sect. 4). “Pre-scientific consciousness,” Husserl says, rests precisely on the assumption that there is “one world.” A world we experience, which we know something about,

 Scholars have sometimes called this aspect of Aristotle’s metaphysics—revolving around the priority of the substance—“ousiology.” Though Husserl does not use the term, his “being in the sense of reality,” as “ultimately referring to things,” namely to “substances” as bearers of manifold qualities and features, corresponds exactly to such definition. Crubellier and Pellegrin (2002, pp. 327–8), for instance, confirm that, in the Metaphysics, one can find four characterizations of “first philosophy”: as archeology (books A and B), as ontology (book Γ), as ousiology (books Z and H) and as theology (book Λ.) This is the pattern followed by Husserl as well. 3

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sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly and inductively; within which we are constantly engaged in our practical activities, etc. (Hua Mat III, p. 246)—the actual, real world. This very same world is also what the empirical sciences intend to investigate, each in its own, particular way. Each particular science is in fact busy in “cutting out” some part of “reality” and trying to reach some lasting knowledge about it. Accordingly, empirical sciences describe, classify, experiment, and formulate hypotheses about reality in order to clarify and predict the behavior of “certain groups of phenomena” (Hua Mat III, p. 247), guided by the tendency to increase our “orientation” in and “practical control” of the world (Hua Mat III, p. 245). But this very same world is also the theme of Aristotle’s “first philosophy” (Hua Mat III, p. 234). If the first principles of being as such are nothing but the first principles of being in the sense of reality, then Aristotle’s categories (substance, quality, quantity, action, passion, having, posture, when, where, relation; see Cat. 4, 1b25; Top. 1, 9, 103b21) are nothing but the most general concepts by means of which reality qua reality is structured, experienced and cognized. Aristotle’s categories of being are therefore also the “constituents of the representation of the world proper to the empirical sciences” and “common to all empirical sciences” (Hua Mat III, p. 247). Thus, Aristotle’s first philosophy qua metaphysical ontology is not suitably described as the science of the categories. It is rather the science of that which the categories are the fundamental concepts of; that which pre-scientific consciousness constantly struggles with and empirical sciences intend to cognize and predict the behavior of—i.e., reality. Having established that, ultimately, Aristotle’s metaphysical ontology has to do with the question “what is being? i.e., what is reality?,” Husserl’s fourth context now revolves around an entirely different issue: “what is truth?” Thus, the question “what is truth?,” which is so conceptually difficult, already gives rise to a fundamental conflict of views. Obviously, whether and in what sense metaphysical knowledge is possible or not depends on this answer as well. It is for this reason that Aristotle had, quite rightly, preceded his treatment of metaphysics, the first systematic treatment of metaphysics ever, with an investigation in which he ponders this very question and sets himself the task of defending genuine wisdom against the attacks of skeptical tendencies. (Hua Mat III, p. 254)

It is indubitable that, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle deals quite extensively with the question of truth (see for instance Γ, 8, 1012b8; E, 4, 1027b20; Θ, 10, 1051b passim; Δ, 29, 1024b passim). The issue is also discussed within a more psychological context in the third book of De Anima (see III, 8, 432a11; III, 3, 428b passim; III, 6, 430a26). But the explicit reference to Aristotle’s rebuttal of the Sophistic skepsis and the “preliminary” character of such investigation of truth clearly suggest that the corpus Husserl has in mind is the Organon; more specifically, that part of the Organon where Husserl finds Aristotle’s “logic” and “doctrine of method,” i.e., the Analytics (see, for instance, An. Pr. I, 30, 46a18–20; An. Post. I, 1, 71a1–30; I, 2, 71b17–23; I, 3, 72b5–7; and passim). The importance of this detail lies in the fact that, as Husserl puts it, all knowledge is nothing but “knowledge of truth” (Hua Mat III, p. 252). The same holds for scientific knowledge. Whether it was the science of being in general or some particular

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empirical science, scientific knowledge aims at establishing truth “with respect to real being (in Betreff des realen Seins)” (Hua Mat III, p. 253): no science of reality without reality—but also, we must now add: no science of reality without truth about reality. Now, as long as questions about truth (What is truth? What is knowledge of truth? How is one to distinguish between apparent and genuine truth? Is knowledge of truth ultimately possible? etc.) are ignored, it is impossible to make sure that any science of being is actually able to reach what it ultimately aims at. And, consequently, there seems to be no way to respond to the skeptical assaults of Protagoras and the Sophists (Hua Mat III, p. 253). Husserl explicitly admits that at least some of these questions have been addressed by Aristotle in his logical writings. Moreover, Aristotle had also realized that, though essential for every ontological endeavor, questions about truth “come to us right at the threshold of metaphysics” (Hua Mat III, p.  253), i.e., before and independently of the question of Being as reality. The very general question “what is truth?” appears to be quite indifferent with respect to the real. For not all truth is directly related to the real. When we express the truth “two magnitudes which are equal to a third [are also equal to one another]” [Euclid, Elements, Book I, 1st Axiom], this sentence is indifferent to all that is purely and simply real. Whether or not there actually are things that can be determined by measure and number, the mathematical axioms—and the mathematical theorems with them—retain their correctness. (Hua Mat III, pp. 254–5)

Being “in the sense of truth” is, in fact, at the same time “broader” (weiter) than “being in the sense of reality,” and “irrespective” (ohne Rücksicht, indifferent, gleichgültig) “towards existence and non-existence” (Hua Mat III, p. 234). Its logical categories apply and ultimately refer not only to “things” but also to numbers, magnitudes, meanings, concepts and the like. Aristotle’s logic—centered on “being in the sense of truth”—seems therefore to push ontology out of the limits of metaphysics. Let us summarize our path so far. By surveying Husserl’s 1898–9 lectures we have learned the following: (1) Aristotle’s first philosophy—though also somehow leading to a “theology”—is fundamentally the science of the “first causes and principles;” (2) but all sciences search for the principles and the causes, and this holds also for particular or empirical sciences; (3) accordingly, first philosophy is the ­science of the first principles and causes of “being as such,” while (4) empirical ­sciences investigate the principles and causes of some particular sphere of being; (5) in this sense, one could draw already the conclusion that both first philosophy and particular sciences are equally “sciences of being,” i.e., “ontologies.” (6) But “being” has at least two senses: being as “that-which-is-real” and being as “thatwhich-is-true;” (7) hence “ontology” is divided accordingly. (8) Following the sense of “reality,” Aristotle’s first philosophy turns into a universal metaphysical ontology; (9) “metaphysical ontology” thus investigates the most general categories of what-is-real; (10) it provides the fundamental concepts common to all particular empirical ontologies, (11) which, in turn, study this or that aspect of reality as it is encountered in the pre-scientific experience, in order to increase our orientation in the world. (12) Following the sense of “truth,” Aristotle’s logic somehow distances ontology from empirical sciences and reality; (13) such non-metaphysical ontology,

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as it were, investigates the most general categories of what-is-true; (14) it is manifestly broader than/indifferent to what-is-real, (15) precedes metaphysical ontology and (16) is developed independently.

4 First Delimitation: Hodological vs. Metaphysical Ontology We can now move to the 1906/07 lectures and see how Husserl’s take on Aristotle’s account of the different meanings of being functions as a criterion to “map” the different delimitations of the general concept of ontology (Hua XXIV, p. 99/97). The first delimitation, i.e., the first way to circumscribe the domain and the tasks of a science of being, has to do with the distinction—with which we are already familiar—between “empirical sciences” and “metaphysics.” (i) In a certain way every empirical science is a science of what is real (von Realem). It deals with real things, with their real becoming, with their real relations, etc. Each such science is, therefore, in its way, an ontology; (ii) and since each empirical science investigates a special sphere of real Being, the totality of all empirical science, actual or still to be constituted, seems to give access to the sum total of reality and to satisfy all epistemological interests regarding reality in a way commensurate to the state of development of these sciences. (iii) Upon closer examination, however, this is not the case. (p. 96/93; translation modified; romanettes in the text are mine)

In this passage, Husserl makes an unexpected argument: (i) granted that each empirical science is an ontology (of reality), one might think that (ii) the sum-total of empirical sciences (present, past and future) could ultimately disclose the truth of real being as such; (iii) this conclusion, however, would be false. The intelligibility of this argument rests on a twofold assumption. Given that every science is knowledge of the principles, and that metaphysics and empirical sciences are both “sciences of what is real,” their mutual borders can be established along two different lines: 1. through a “part/whole” differentiation; 2. through a “relative/absolute” distinction. Ad 1) Empirical sciences—as stressed by Husserl’s continuous references to Γ 1 (1003a)—are ontologies investigating some “parts” of (real) being, while metaphysical ontology has to do with the whole of (real) being (what pertains to reality only insofar as it is reality). Ad 2) But empirical sciences are also—as we have seen—only refined versions of the pre-scientific human tendency to find an “orientation in empirical reality” (Hua Mat III, pp. 241–2, 244, 251–2) and to formulate “laws by means of which we exactly foresee and predict the course of empirical processes” (Hua XXIV, p. 98/95). One could say, then, that each empirical science is not only an ontology but, more precisely, a “hodological ontology”: a science of being subordinated to the task of finding ways or carving paths within being itself. It is because of their “hodological” nature that empirical sciences are limited with respect to metaphysics—not in

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regard to their extension (the one is more encompassing than the other) but with respect to their very depth (the one goes further than the other). The cognitive task of an empirical science is, indeed, always “relative” to the pragmatic relevance of its discoveries. In other words, hodological ontologies are not meant to carve all the way through into being, but only insofar and as long as the outcome of such carving is significant to orient human consciousness in the world. Accordingly, such ontologies, “uncritically bring with them concepts and presuppositions originating in that prescientific understanding of the world” (Hua XXIV, p. 96/93–4). As a result, since they aim at knowing only up to a certain point, their knowledge is not “definitive knowledge of reality”: This is most blatantly apparent in the fact that, while different natural scientists by no means call into question the theoretical content of the sciences developed, they immediately part ways as soon as they themselves begin to reflect on the definitive interpretation of the truth of its dictates (die endgültige Wahrheitsinterpretation). Therefore, the same science with the same equally recognized stock of theories is yet open to different “interpretations.” Some declare themselves Materialists; others, Idealists; a third party, a Positivist or Psychomonist; while a fourth party discovers ultimately conclusive truth in the Energetistic interpretation of the world. (Hua XXIV, p. 98/95)

Metaphysical ontology, by contrast, is free from “orientation-geared” constraints, and aims at investigating being as such, discovering “last and essential” truths about reality (Hua Mat III, p.  252), “the expressions of definitive Being” (Hua XXIV, p. 98/95)—independently of the practical relevance of what is known. Metaphysics is apt to critically question what empirical sciences must leave unquestioned. Hence, above and beyond the merely relative sciences of Being, there must be a definitive science of Being that alone to satisfy our highest, ultimate interests in Being, that has to investigate what has to be regarded as actually Real in the ultimate, definitive sense (Wirklichkeit im letzten und endgültigen Sinn). This radical science of Being, the science of Being in the absolute sense, is metaphysics. Naturally, it arises through a certain critical investigation of the ultimate meaning and value of the theoretical foundations of the empirical sciences, through elucidating and ultimately securing them. [...] therefore, metaphysics is obviously a science related to the other sciences of reality and already presupposing them. (Hua XXIV, p. 99/96)

Pre-scientific consciousness faces actual reality (Wirklichkeit); hodological ontology tries to explain such reality in terms of its materiality, temporality, spatiality, causality, etc. But what is reality? Is reality ultimately matter? Mind? Force? What, after all, are such things as matter? Time? Space? Causality? etc. These are questions about the “principles” that empirical scientists constantly “take for granted” but are “not worried about” or “do not even notice” (Hua XXIV, pp.  97–98/94). Though fundamentally “unclear and debatable,” such principles are “clear in praxis, in application”—and this is enough (Hua XXIV, p. 99/96). By contrast, if metaphysics has to investigate “what is realiter in the ultimate and absolute sense,” its goal is precisely to clarify the fundamental concepts of reality and provide “the ultimate interpretation of the empirical sciences of reality”: It is, we said, essentially related to the content of these sciences. Through it, it acquires its relationship to the actually present reality, to actual reality as it factually is (Wirklichkeit, wie sie faktisch ist). (Hua XXIV, p. 100/98; translation modified)

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Metaphysical ontology is therefore essentially related, Husserl says, to “hodological ontology” which, in turn, is “essentially related” to the pre-scientific world consciousness. It is thanks to the latter that metaphysics connects to the real, actual, factual world “as it is as such,” and not “as it is with respect to us.” Husserl’s argument could, therefore, be unpacked as follows: –– “Hodological ontologies” deal with being in the sense of being-real but are limited to the cognizance of the “phenomenon” (Phänomenon) of reality (Hua XXIV, p. 97/95), to what is only “presumably” (vermeintlich) “being as such” (Hua XXIV, p. 99/97). Things, relations among things, properties of things, etc., are seen as “appearances (Erscheinungen), behind which true being, the thing-in-­ itself, is supposed to lie” (Hua XXIV, pp. 97–8/95); they are mere “indications (Anzeige) of a Being receding ever farther away the farther we search, and never to be definitively grasped” (Hua XXIV, p. 99/97). –– Metaphysical ontology,” by contrast, also deals with being in the sense of being-­ real, but is a “radical ontology, the science of the ‘ὄντως ὄν’, the ‘true being’ (wahrhafte Sein)” (Hua XXIV, p. 99/97). This first “delimitation” thus looks as follows (Fig. 5.1): SCIENCE OF BEING IN THE SENSE OF BEING-REAL

HODOLOGICAL ONTOLOGY

METAPHYSICAL ONTOLOGY

(sciences of such and such being)

(science of being as such)

— φαινόμενον

— ὄντωσ ὄν

(phenomenon)

(true being)

PRE-SCIENTIFIC

— vermeintliche Sein

— wahrhafte Sein

CONSCIOUSNESS

(presumable being)

(true being)

OF THE ACTUAL WORLD

—

relative Seinswissenschaft

— absolute Seinswissenschaft

(relative science of being)

(absolute science of being)

— vermeintliche Realitätserkenntnis

— radikale Realitätserkenntnis

(presumable knowledge of reality)

(radical knowledge of reality)

— nicht endgültige

— endgültige

Wahrheitsinterpretation

Wahrheitsinterpretation

(non-definitive interpretation of truth)

(definitive interpretation of truth)

— orientierende Erkenntnis

— letzendliche Erkenntnis

(orientational knowledge)

(ultimate knowledge)

— Unkritische

— Kritische

(non-critical)

(critical)

Fig. 5.1  The first delimitation of ontology

In the order of the research, hodological ontology precedes metaphysical ontology, and both are preceded by the pre-scientific consciousness of the actual world— just as, for Aristotle, what is known as “first for us” precedes, methodologically, what is “first in itself” (see An. Post. I, 2, 71b32; An Pr. II, 23, 68b35–7; Met. Z, 3, 1029b3–12; but also Phys. A, 1, 184a16–20 and Top. VI, 4, 141b2–142a12).

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5 Second Delimitation: A Posteriori vs. A Priori Ontology As we have seen (see Sect. 3), the 1898/99 lectures credited Aristotle for having distinguished a second sense of “being” to which, in the 1906/07 lectures, corresponds a further “delimitation of ontology.” “Metaphysical ontology” intends to provide the “ultimate interpretation” of the truth contents of the empirical “sciences of reality” (see Sect. 4). In order to fulfill this ultimate task, however, two sets of “preliminary investigations” (vorbedingender Forschungen) are required (Hua XXIV, p. 100/98). One should first ask: 1. What is the idea of science? (Hua XXIV, p. 99/96) 2. What is the idea of reality? (Hua XXIV, p. 101/98) Husserl’s talk of “idea” (Idee), in this specific context, is crucial. For it marks the shift from the theoretical straightforward interest in “facts”—which drives both metaphysical and hodological ontologies—to the higher-order interest in “essences” which only indirectly concerns actual reality (see for instance Hua III/1, pp. 12–45/7–39). The “essence” or the “idea” of reality, for instance, is the correlate of the constitutive a priori concepts without which not only this-factual-reality-here (investigated by our empirical sciences, etc.) but any reality whatsoever would be impossible and therefore inconceivable qua reality. The Aristotelian distinction between meanings of being now crosses paths with the quite different distinction between a posteriori facts and a priori essences.4 Ad (1). What are the a priori “first principles” of any possible science, given that science is a corpus of truths mutually connected in a certain logical way with respect to a correlative domain of objects? Or, conversely, what are the a priori “first principles” not of real being but of anything which one could eventually have a science of? These questions clearly echo Husserl’s early idea of “pure logic as theory of science,” spelled out already in the Prolegomena (Hua XVIII, pp. 37–43, 230–58). But the connection to Aristotle’s second sense of being explicitly appears only if we turn to Husserl’s later works, such as the 1916 lectures Introduction to Philosophy: What are those concepts and truths which are common to every science? In the Aristotelian Organon there is a text called Categories; it is about these most general concepts. If they were formal concepts and the question of what is common to all sciences was understood in the sense of a formal generality, we would not have anything to add [to what Aristotle actually said]. We would stand in front of the formal guiding-idea of the object in general, the formal ontological fundamental “category” [...] to which are subordinated, as its derivations, concepts such as “property,” “determination,” “relation,” “connection,” “identity,” “difference,” “whole,” “part,” “set,” etc. These are the formal-ontological categories. (Hua Mat IX, pp. 88–9)

If one could free Aristotle’s quest for the “categories of being” from its restriction to the “categories of real being” and spell out the “categories of everything of which

 And Husserl explicitly credits Plato with having “discovered the a priori” and the “world of the ideas” (see Hua Mat IX, pp. 28–65). On the topic, see Chap. 10 of this volume. 4

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something true can be said” (see Sect. 3), then, Husserl says, one would open the gates of ontology not only to “things, processes, and what is otherwise real, but also numbers, contradictions, propositions, concepts, theories, ethical, or aesthetic ideas, in short the multiform variety of ideal objects (ideale Gegenstände), of those objects that cannot meaningfully be said to have a place in spatio-temporal, actual reality” (Hua XXIV, p. 100/97, translation modified). Such an ontology, Husserl concludes, would be formal, because it would spell out the a priori categories pertaining to anything whatsoever having the empty form of the “something in general” (Etwas überhaupt). Aristotle, however, never went so far as to emancipate the categories of being from the sense of being as being-real (Hua XVII, p. 84/70). A full-fledged formal ontology, therefore, could only be developed outside the Aristotelian framework.5 And yet its bond with Aristotle’s second of sense of being (see Sect. 3) is nevertheless manifest—for “being” in the formal ontological sense is uniquely defined with respect to truth. The task of formal ontology is, indeed, to investigate the a priori categories of: (a) that which could be true or false (propositional meanings); (b) that of which something true or false can be asserted (objects). This is the reason why “formal ontology”—developing from logic as the a priori of the “idea of science”—is ontological but not metaphysical. “Being” loses its privileged reference to things and substances, to “that which really is,” and with which empirical subjects are mainly concerned, both in their pre-scientific and scientificempirical orientational struggle with the world. Ontology is now “formal” because it takes “being” only logically, in its “broadest sense” (Seiend im weitesten Sinn), not really, in its “most proper sense” (im eigentlichsten Sinn). Being is here merely the empty form of something of which something true can be said. In the end, we spoke of the metaphysical ontology that relates to real Being. In the discussion of the idea of an a priori theory of science, however, we also encountered an ontology. It deals with Being in general, in the most universal universality, in a universality that ­projects far beyond the metaphysical domain. Being (Seiend) in the broadest sense, in that of theory of science as formal ontology, is each and every thing that can figure as the subject of a statement, each and every thing about which we in truth speak, each and every thing that can in truth be referred to as being (seiend). (Hua XXIV, pp. 99–100/97)

And this empty form of being also has its own “purely logical categories”: Concepts and principles are purely logical if they abstract from all cognitive material and, in virtue of this abstraction, namely in virtue of their fully undetermined universality as concerns material, relate to every possible field of knowledge, to every possible science, namely as concerns its theory content. They, therefore, also relate to the disciplines of the

 The historical milestones of “formal ontology” are rather the Stoics, Vieta, Leibniz and Bolzano (Hua XVII, pp. 63–75). On this topic see Chap. 9 and Chap. 11 of this volume. 5

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mathesis universalis itself differentiated by us, to syllogistics, arithmetic, etc. Concepts like object, characteristic, relation, whole, part, multiplicity, unit, cardinal number, order are of such most universal significance, among them also general and singular. Every scientific field states universal propositions, ascribes universal characteristics to its objects, and refers to ultimate singularities with its propositions. (Hua XXIV, p. 103/100; translation modified)

If we now add this further “delimitation” to our map, we should start seeing what might be called Husserl’s ontological track (Fig. 5.2). Pre-scientific consciousness of the world as it factually is 0 (SCIENCE OF BEING IN THE SENSE OF BEING(SCIENCE OF BEING IN THE SENSE OF BEING-REAL)

TRUE)

A POSTERIORI

A PRIORI Formal Ontology (SCIENCE OF OBJECTS)

Hodological Ontology (SCIENCES

2

OF SUCH AND SUCH

Metaphysical Ontology (SCIENCE OF BEING AS

BEING)

SUCH)

1

3

Fig. 5.2  The second delimitation of ontology

The track leads from Ⓞ, the null point of the pre-scientific consciousness of the factual world, where ontology qua theoretical enterprise is not even an issue; across ①, the empirical investigations of a posteriori (hodological) ontology; through the detour of the preliminary researches carried out in ②, the a priori (formal) ontology; to ③, the final destination of the a posteriori (metaphysical) ontology. Ad (2) But, as pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, the “preliminary” research to the “ultimate interpretation” of real being has two strands. On the one hand, as we have just seen, one finds the research on the a priori of the “idea of science qua science” (Hua XXIV, p.  99/96). It develops and formalizes Aristotle’s second sense of being; follows the way of logic instead of the way of empirical sciences; and therefore disconnects ontology from metaphysics, leading to a formal ontology, which studies the categories of objects in general. On the other hand, there is also the research on the “a priori of the idea of reality” (p. 100/97)—a ­second strand, bringing ontology next to metaphysics again. To be able to adopt such an interpretation [scil. the ultimate interpretation of the truth of empirical sciences], though, various preliminary investigations are needed, and among them, above all, an ascertainment of the truths grounded in the universal essence of real Being as such. The idea of an a priori ontology arises there, not in fact a formal-logical one, but a metaphysical one (Hua XXIV, pp. 100–1/98)

This brings us to our third delimitation of ontology: an ontology that is a priori (just like “formal” ontology), but one that deals with being in the sense of being-real (just like a posteriori “hodological” and “metaphysical” ontologies).

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6 Third Delimitation: A Priori Formal vs. A Priori Metaphysical Ontology In the 1906/07 lectures, this universal science of the essence of reality goes under the name of: –– “a priori metaphysical ontology” (Hua XXIV, p. 100/97). –– “a priori ontology of the real” (Hua XXIV, p. 102/99). Husserl, however, will progressively abandon the first expression and modify the second in various ways. In his later works, he explores different alternatives to capture the defining features of this science of being that is both a priori (as formal ontology) and reality-geared/content-filled (as metaphysical ontology). If we limit ourselves to Ideas I, the most frequently used alternative expressions for this new delimitation of “ontology” are. –– –– –– –– –– –– ––

material eidetic (material-eidetische) (Hua III/1, p. 129); eidetic (eidetische) (p. 25); material (materiale) (pp. 24, 26); content determined (sachhaltige) (p. 356); regional (regionale) (p. 36); synthetic (synthetische) (p. 37); authentic (eigentliche) (p. 26).

Such expressions are not entirely equivalent, of course, insofar as each one stresses a single, particular aspect of the discipline at stake. What is more important, however, is that all these nearly-equivalent expressions found in Ideas I tend to distinguish this new “a priori” ontology of real being from the equally “a priori” ontology of formal being. Still, interestingly enough, by choosing the expression “a priori metaphysical,” the 1906–7 lectures rather insist on a different point: the contrast with the “a posteriori” metaphysical ontology of real being. While a posteriori “metaphysical ontology” interprets the truths (discovered in “hodological ontologies”) about factual real being, a priori “metaphysical ontology,” by contrast, clarifies the concepts and uncovers the truths about the essence of real being; its goal is to “reflect upon everything without which reality in general cannot be conceived” (Hua XXIV, p. 101/98). Wherever it is a question of reality, in life and in all empirical sciences, we apply certain concepts like thing, real property, real relation, state, process, coming into being and passing away, cause and effect, space and time, that seem to belong necessarily to the idea of a reality [...] the basic categories in which what is real as such is to be understood in terms of its essence. (Hua XXIV, p. 101/98; emphasis added)

Now, in order to add this further “delimitation” of ontology to our map, it is not necessary—as in the case of formal ontology—to switch from one Aristotelian sense of being (being-real) to the other (being-true). A priori metaphysics still deals with Aristotle’s first sense, i.e., the being of the categories, restricted to the ultimate reference to the substance. However—and this is the important twist—the bond

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between the categories of being, on the one hand, and actual reality as it factually is, on the other, is now severed. What counts now is not reality per se, but the εἶδος or the “idea” of reality. Accordingly, the “fundamental categories” of reality that “a priori metaphysical ontology” attempts to clarify, could also be—though not exclusively6—illustrated by examples drawn from the actual world structured according to Aristotle’s categories (thing, real property, causality, time, space, etc.). For Husserl, then, Aristotle’s categories of being are too “narrow” (eng) for two different reasons: –– in a logical sense, since they exclude ideal being, that of which something true can be said independently from existence or existence (see Sect. 3 and 5); –– in a real sense, since they only include factual actual reality and do not stretch out to reach the a priori of any possible reality as such. Breaking the first limitation opens to the a priori of “formal ontology;” breaking the second leads to the a priori of “metaphysical ontology” or “material ontology” of reality—focused not on factual actual things but on “things in the broadest sense” (im weitesten Sinne): Individual realness as Being for-itself, or thing in the broadest sense, likewise real property in the broadest sense, real relation, even time, cause, effect, concepts like that, are surely necessary ideas of possible reality and require a study of the analysis of essence and of essential laws. (Hua XXIV, p. 101/98)

Thus, not unlike “formal ontology,” Husserl’s “material” or “a priori metaphysical” ontology is not meant to provide “any knowledge of the actual reality of facts,” for its truths equally “concern the factual, as well as every possible, actual reality” (Hua XXIV, p. 101/98, translation modified). Its function, however, is still to back up or underpin—through a detour across the “world of ideas (Ideenwelt)” (Hua Mat IX, p. 196)—the ultimate challenge of a posteriori metaphysics (Hua XXIV, p. 101/99). One certainly needs “a logical-formal ontology providing an underpinning (Unterbau) for this metaphysics,” since whatever belongs to being in the formal sense also belongs to real being. In this sense “logic in general naturally grounds metaphysics” (Hua XXIV, p. 102/99). But one also needs “a science of what really is as such in the most universal universality” (Hua XXIV, p. 101/99), since whatever belongs to any possible real being also belongs to actual real being: this a priori metaphysics would be the necessary foundation for empirically based metaphysics, which not only seeks to know what lies in the idea of actual reality in general, but seeks to know what is then factually actual, first of all universally as an inquiry into the general, but simply actual determinations (elements, properties, laws) of factual reality, and then to determine what is definitively real in a particular way in the factual sphere of Being to be able to understand definitively what is realiter there. (Hua XXIV, pp. 101–2/99, translation modified)

 This means that the examples could also be drawn from the domain of fictions. Some additional explanations on this topic could be found in Chapters 4 and 7 of this volume. 6

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It is only if one is able to investigate (1) the formal structural truths of any object of science as the correlate of a true statements (a priori formal ontology); and (2) the material (Sachhaltig) structural truths concerning any possible reality (a priori ontology of reality = a priori metaphysical ontology = material ontology, etc.)— that (3) the factual truths of empirical sciences (a posteriori hodological ontology) could finally be freed from their uncritical assumptions and, therefore, (4) be ultimately interpreted as truths about the true being of factual reality as it actually is (a posteriori metaphysical ontology). Thus, ontological metaphysics comes in two forms: as material ontology and as metaphysical ontology proper: the former, we could further say, is a priori, the latter, a posteriori metaphysics. The former is prior to all empirical sciences; the latter comes after all empirical sciences (Hua XXIV, p. 102/99). At this point, by adding one last “delimitation” to it, our map of ontology can finally be completed. Once the “Aristotelian” distinction between meanings of being (being-real and being-true) is combined with the “Platonic” distinction between a posteriori and a priori (fact and essence), one obtains the coordinates to demarcate four different “ontologies”: formal (a priori), material (a priori), hodological (a posteriori), metaphysical (a posteriori) (Fig. 5.3): 0 Pre-scientific consciousness of the world as it factually is

Ontology according to the

Ontology according to the

2nd Meaning of “Being”

1st Meaning of “Being”

(BEING QUA BEING-TRUE)

(BEING QUA BEING-REAL)

2

3

1

4

Formal

Material, Metaphysical

“Hodological”

Metaphysical

(SCIENCE OF OBJECT

(SCIENCE OF MATERIAL

(SCIENCES OF SUCH AND

(SCIENCE OF FACTUAL

CATEGORIES)

ESSENCES)

FACTUAL SUCH BEING)

BEING AS SUCH)

A PRIORI

A POSTERIORI

ESSENCES

FACTS

(Ideenwelt)

(Wirklichkeit)

Fig. 5.3  The third delimitation of ontology

These “sciences of being” are not merely different with respect to their specific objects, they are also ordered with respect to their shared final task. As our reconstruction should have shown, Husserl’s map draws also a dynamic “ontological” track: starting with Ⓞ the pre-scientific world, one moves first to ①, the a posteriori particular sciences, then, through the “detour” of the a priori sciences ②, of the object in general, and ③, of reality in general, one finally reaches ④, the ultimate interpretation of a posteriori metaphysics. But the map also tells us something more. It tells us where ontology comes from (the pre-scientific given world); where ontology actually is (the elaboration of useful but uncritical sciences of this or that

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part of being); where it is going (the elaboration of an ultimately clarified meta­ physics); and which path needs to be followed in order to reach such final destination (the elaboration of a formal and material a priori science of being).

7 Out of the Map To conclude this chapter, let me briefly mention the outer borders of ontology—the paths and the territories we had to leave out of our map. We could have described, for instance, the way in which Husserl understands positively the concept of “first philosophy,” once it is freed from Aristotle’s metaphysical limitations. This is something we have briefly alluded to at the beginning of our discussion but had to leave aside. We might have also continued mapping the area of the “preliminary” investigations leading to a metaphysical ontology, and chart that “discipline of the legitimacy of knowledge” that Husserl also calls “noetics” (Hua XXIV, pp. 116–192/115–189). A whole continent remains also unexplored, joining ontology and “theory of knowledge” or “critique of theoretical reason” (Hua XXIV, pp. 165–6/162–4), opening to an entirely new set of—non-ontological—problems related to the problem of truth. Likewise, we had to disregard the borders and the paths between ontology, ethics and axiology (Hua XXIV, pp. 236–9/232–5). But more than anything else, we had to neglect the relation between “ontology,” in all its manifold senses, and “transcendental phenomenology.” This would have brought us to an “infinite field,” as Husserl puts it, whose exploration, however, could only be carried out off the Aristotelian beaten paths. For, strange as it may sound, the clarification of the concepts of “being” and “givenness” is definitely not the job of ontology—in any of its forms.

Part IV

Worlds and Unworlds

Chapter 6

Until the End of the World On Eidetic Variation and Absolute Being of Consciousness

It’s the end of the world as we know it. | It’s the end of the world as we know it, | and I feel fine. R.E.M.

1 The End of the World? One of the most controversial claims of Husserl’s phenomenology is that consciousness “has” (or “is”) an absolute being, i.e., something that in Ideas I is described by means of a rather famous Cartesian quote: “nulla ‘re’ indiget ad existendum.”1 Consciousness “has” (or “is”) an absolute being insofar as it has no need of any “thing” in order to exist. As far as I can tell, every single phase and—with few exceptions—every single idea of Husserl’s phenomenology has found its own supporters. We have “Austrian” fans of the Logical Investigations, supporters of Husserl’s ultra-passive (and yet quite aggressive) genetic phenomenology, and even awed admirers of the beautiful imprecision of the Lebenswelt. Yet very rare are those who have taken the risk of justifying, let alone defending, this seemingly bizarre and contentious statement: the world has a relative being (it needs something else in order to exist, i.e., consciousness); consciousness has an absolute being (it is, so to say, ontologically self-­ sufficient and therefore does not need “any thing”—nulla re—to exist). This certainly sounds quite counter intuitive—but all forms of idealism are. It also violently defies our basic feelings about the independent existence of the world and the dependent existence of human consciousness—then again philosophical assertions often are unnatural and hard to swallow. Why then, and on what basis are we, precisely as phenomenologists, so inclined to reject Husserl’s claim from the outset?  “The immanent being is, therefore, without doubt absolute being in the sense that, in principle, nulla ‘re’ indiget ad existendum” (Hua III/1, p. 104/89). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_6

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Many reasons come to mind, all revolving around the same point: such a claim has no phenomenological justification whatsoever. In affirming that consciousness has absolute being insofar as “it does not need any thing (else) to exist,” Husserl is quoting from Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy. The trouble is that in the Principles the expression Husserl is so fond of is explicitly employed to define the “substance” and distinguish its absolute being from the relative being of its “modes.”2 Husserl’s Cartesian argument thus appears to be the following. The existence of the modes of a substance is relative, that of the substance itself is absolute; in fact, the “passing away” of a substance, its destruction, would necessarily entail the destruction of its modes, whereas the reverse is not true. The same holds for the pair consciousness/world: the being of the world depends on the being of consciousness, so that the “passing away” of the former would not entail the disappearance of the latter; in fact, consciousness would survive the destruction of the world as a residuum. And this is precisely the uneasy title of Ideas I §49: “Absolute consciousness as the residuum after the annihilation of the world.” It has to be said that the attempt to characterize absolute consciousness as a residuum is almost a ʽάπαξ λεγομένον in Husserl, and plays a very marginal role in his entire philosophical production; in fact, it will soon be explicitly abandoned. But the question still holds: how could one possibly think, that consciousness and world are related like substance and modes? Would consciousness actually survive the destruction of the world—maybe whistling a 1987 song by R.E.M. called “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine”? Again, this is not just hard to believe and philosophically awkward. More than anything else, it is phenomenologically difficult to grant. Heidegger, for instance, has a very clear explanation for this fact. In his early Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time (Heidegger, 1979, pp. 129–58/94–114), he roughly affirms that (a) Husserl is unable to address the question of being and therefore, (b) he operates with an unquestioned understanding of being. (c) Such an understanding comes from the metaphysical tradition to which Husserl belongs, namely the Cartesian one, (d) a tradition for which the substance turns out to be a res, and the res cogitans not only is but also shows itself beyond any doubt to be ontologically independent from the res extensa. Now, (e) notwithstanding the fact that he has failed to address the question of being (and has uncritically inherited its metaphysical pre-comprehension from Descartes’ epistemological recasting of the traditional notion of substance), Husserl still pretends to have discovered the absolute being of consciousness by scrutinizing “the things themselves.” What is more, (f) he thinks he has achieved this goal after having performed with success what he calls the “philosophical epochē.”3 But Husserl’s claims, Heidegger  Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quam rem quae existit, ut nulla alia re indiget ad existendum” (Descartes, 1644, p. 24). 3  “The philosophical ἐποχή that we adopt should, to put it formally, consist in the fact that we completely withhold judgment regarding the doctrinal content of all previous philosophy and carry out all our demonstrations within the framework of withholding such judgment” (Hua III/1, pp. 39–40/33). On this point see Chap. 12 in this volume. 2

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concludes, are clearly preposterous. For Husserl has no phenomenological reason to maintain that consciousness is absolute insofar as its being is independent from the being of the world; the origin of this claim is not phenomenological but clearly metaphysical. Husserl does not discover it “in the things themselves”—he rather inherits it, forgets it, and surreptitiously projects it into the things themselves. After that, he is somehow happily surprised and proud of himself when, having obliterated the world, he hits upon absolute consciousness (maybe whistling an old R.E.M. song). So far, so good. Now, here are the points that I would like to make: (1) Needless to say, the philosophical epochē is well and in no need of being rescued. What seems to be possible, however, is to suggest a different reading of Husserl’s controversial statement. A reading according to which the twofold allegation of the absolute being of consciousness/relative being of the world, can be understood as a full-fledged phenomenological thesis. (2) The meaning and the scope of Husserl’s claim seem to rely entirely on a correct comprehension of the phenomenological method employed to justify the validity of material ontological claims, namely the eidetic method. Accordingly, if one fails to appreciate that dependency, one also probably falls short in understanding the whole argument of the “gedankliche Destruktion der Welt” with all its implications. Therefore, an account of the manner in which eidetic variation functions in Ideas I appears to be necessary in order to acknowledge the phenomenological basis of Husserl’s thesis. (3) It could be then, that with his idea of the “annihilation of the world,” Husserl is neither simply claiming that “the existence of the world stands and falls with the constitutive activities of a transcendental consciousness,” nor that “the existence of the world is contingent because transcendent things are given inadequately through adumbrations.” Those claims are certainly Husserlian, but they might be quite independent from the problem we are interested in. It is, by contrast, my contention that, thanks to the quite regimented use of eidetic variation—in which, as we will see, the semantic boundaries of a pure concept are deliberately brought into relief by the intuitive activity of free phantasy—it is possible to show how, in some sense, there is a necessary and a priori relatedness of the essence of the world to the essence of consciousness that does not hold the other way round. (4) I will finally suggest that most of the commentators so far have somehow conflated the a priori necessary relatedness of the world to consciousness with its relativity. If this is the case, such c­ onflation is clearly an obstacle to the realization that the absolute being of consciousness/relative being of the world thesis ultimately leads to the twin ideas of a “necessarily necessary relation between world and experience of the world” and a “contingently necessary relation between consciousness and world.” The first strikes me as a p­ owerful critique against some mainstream realist ontologies in analytic metaphysics; the second presents a hard-core criticism of some mainstream assumptions of continental hermeneutics.

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2 The Absolute To begin with, the expression “absolute being of consciousness” can be understood in at least three different although not completely unrelated ways: (1) as time consciousness, (2) as individual concretum, and (3) as essential concretum. 1. According to the first meaning, Husserl talks of the “absolute (being of) consciousness” when he turns to describe the deep-constitutive time consciousness, constantly “streaming” throughout the whole life of a concrete ego, co-extensive with it and prior to each reflexive activity. “Time consciousness” (Zeitbewußtsein) does not mean here “consciousness-of-time” (objective genitive)—as if time were the object of consciousness (a consciousness directed towards time). The genitive is rather to be understood as subjective: it is not that time appears to consciousness, it is consciousness that appears to itself as time, as becoming, streaming and flowing (strömend und fliessend). And it is absolute because its flowing is as unconditioned (as long as a consciousness is, it flows) as its self-­appearing (as long as a consciousness flows, it appears). The early Heidegger does not seem to fully recognize how it is that in Husserl’s phenomenology “appearing” has many senses—just like “being” in Aristotle.4 And when, for instance, the “absolute being of consciousness” is understood as the unconditional flowing of a non-thematically self-appearing time-consciousness, whose self-appearance is on a par with its own existence, it is evident that such an idea can be hardly summarized by the general formula “being an object of knowledge” or “being an object” as such. 2. As an individual concretum, the expression “absolute (being of) consciousness” denotes the whole of an individual conscious life with its “abstract” non-­ independent and yet intrinsic (reell) parts—such as noetic acts and hyletic contents—and, eventually their non-independent intentional correlates (although the latter are not “intrinsic” parts of the stream). According to the first meaning, a “consciousness” is said to be “absolute” because of its peculiar mode of existing/appearing (constantly streaming, temporal, non-­thematic, unconditioned, etc.), while, according to this second meaning, “consciousness” is an “absolute being” for strictly mereological reasons. It is a whole that is not itself a non-independent part of a more encompassing whole. A single book, individual, numerically and qualitatively different from any other book on the bookshelf, is a good example of individual concrete thing.5 Socrates would be an individual concrete person, bearer of axiological and spiritual predicates, like “being wise” or “being an Athenian.” But according to Husserl “my” own conscious

 Or, at least, Heidegger does not seem to take advantage of Husserl’s equivocity when he establishes the distinctions between the several meaning of phenomenon spelled out in Being and Time §7a (see Heidegger, 1977, pp. 28–31/27–30). 5  This holds of course only as long as we neglect, for the sake of the argument, that a book has “spiritual” predicates and belongs to the region Geist. According to Husserl, a book counts as a mere “thing” only in the naturalistic attitude. See Hua IV, pp. 173–185/183–194. 4

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life as a whole, numerically and qualitatively different from any other life, as experienced in the way of an “idea in the Kantian sense”6 and horizonally unified with all its immanent moments qua time consciousness, counts as an example of individual concrete consciousness. This time, “to be” does not mean any longer “to appear non-thematically while flowing, etc.,” but “to be a certain kind of whole,” i.e., an independent concrete whole, not a non-independent abstract moment. As a consequence, time no longer intervenes as a mode of consciousness appearing as such but, eventually, as a mereological connective, as a structural feature that “brings together,” as it were, all the events of one conscious life. If, according to this second meaning, a concrete consciousness is certainly comparable to a substance, it is readily apparent that within the mere and simple formal ontological framework of a whole-parts theory it is quite difficult to infer from the absolute being of consciousness the relative being of the world. Such an inference would be like inferring from the existence of a substance qua substance the existence or non-existence of another substance. Here “absolute being” means nothing but “being a whole that is not a non-independent part of a more encompassing whole.” Now, even assuming that this is actually the case for a concrete ego, there would be no major formal ontological difference between concrete things, concrete persons and concrete egos.7 An individual concrete ego is as absolute as an individual concrete thing, person, living body etc. This book is not that book, I as a person am not Socrates, and the concrete lived-experiences I live through constituting “my” stream, are not those of Socrates. In all these trivial cases, we are dealing with individual concreta, all equally absolute insofar as they are not ontologically abstract. Differently put: they are not dependent entities, as opposed to “abstract beings,” like the color of the page in this part of the book, Socrates’ fleshy body or Athenian accent, or the feeling of sadness I might have experienced at this or that moment of “my” conscious life. In this sense, the very formal ontological notion of “substance” loses its metaphysical power to make any “thing” ontologically dependent from the whole of consciousness or vice-versa. For intentional correlates are, by definition, not real parts of a concrete ego. As a result, if the immanent components, noetic and hyletic, out of which they are constituted are certainly non-independent parts of a whole (the stream), and have a “relative being,” transcendent objects are indeed intentionally constituted but not included as “intrinsic” parts of an “absolute” whole. 3. This last point brings us to the third and last meaning. “Absolute (being of) consciousness” can also refer to the highest unity of a region of being, an intensionally closed but extensionally infinite manifold whose determinate elements are actual or possible concrete individuals united into a whole by some common,

 See Hua III/1, pp. 186–7/159–61.  Again, one should not conflate this concrete “ego” (belonging to the region “consciousness”) with a concrete “person” (belonging to the region “spirit”) or a concrete psycho-physiological “soul” (non-independent with regards to its living body within the region “nature”), as Husserl will further clarify in Ideas II. 6 7

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s­ tructural, law. When Husserl talks about the “being of consciousness” in this sense, he refers to the a priori necessary features that an individual has to display in order to be an individual belonging to the extensional domain of the material ontological region “consciousness.” In short, “absolute being” is now the name of a region, not of a mode of existence (time) or an entity (whole). It denotes a domain of entities with their own modes of existence but only insofar as they are bound to the validity of certain a priori laws. According to Husserl, ontological regions of being can be distinguished by means of their correlative constitutive experiences. Objects belonging to the two regions “nature” and “spirit” constitute themselves in acts of “perception” (Wahrnehmung), communication (Kommunikation) and “assessment” (Wertnehmung). They also group themselves in sub-regions. The region “nature” includes each example of “thing” (Ding) and “living body” (Leib); the region “spirit” embraces each “person” (Person), “cultural object” (geistliche Gegenstand) and “social group” (Gemeingeist).8 Next to these regions and sub-regions, altogether determining the boundaries of the “Ur-Region” called “world,” Husserl identifies the region of “consciousness.” Its “objects,” originally constituted in time consciousness (Zeitbewußtsein), once revealed by immanent perception can also be described and sorted into genera (noesis, hylê) and species (perception, imagination, judgment; sensations, sensible desires, etc.). On this point Heidegger is definitely right: Husserl’s aim, as he questions the “absolute being” of consciousness, is scientific. And one of the tasks of phenomenology is to ground material ontological distinctions upon the basis of the a priori structures of their constitutive experiences. In this very specific sense, when Husserl brings together “absolute being of consciousness” and “destruction of the world,” he refers to the necessary features that make every conceivable individual consciousness count as an example of “consciousness” in general. Or, to put it differently, he refers to the putative feature (“being absolute”) proper to any individual entity belonging to the ontological region “consciousness” insofar as it is bound to the validity of certain a priori laws. This, of course, is not the answer to the question of the existence of each individual consciousness (whose answer has to be found in the first sense of “absolute being”), but to the slightly different question of its essential features and their alleged “eidetic laws.”

3 Essences Now, what precisely is an eidetic law, and how is it that its purported validity can be phenomenologically granted? It is at this point that “eidetic variation” enters the picture. There is no doubt that “variation” is an important methodological concept

 “Higher order personalities” (Höhere Ordnung Persönlichkeiten) belong to the sphere of the Gemeingeist. See Hua XIV, pp. 192–203. On the concept of region see Chap. 4 of this volume. 8

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in Husserl’s phenomenology and it is quite uncontroversial that it has to do with “essences” or an “essential seeing” of sorts. However, despite an increasing number of articles devoted to this issue, the actual functioning of such “method” and its precise location within Husserl’s descriptive or transcendental project remain unclear. Additionally, Husserl’s notion of “essential seeing,” with its whole family of relatives like “categorial intuition,” “ideation,” “abstractive ideation” and the like, even now appears to many as too mysterious and unmanageable to be taken seriously. Eventually, Husserl himself will also complicate matters by sometimes employing these terms in a loose way. Not to mention the fact that confusion still reigns with the phenomenological vocabulary of Husserl’s ontology, in which terms like “categories,” “essences,” “pure essences,” “species,” “genera,” “types” and “εἴδη” are often lined up without a real awareness of their different meanings (if any) and mutual relationships.9 But one of the biggest problems connected with the usual talk of “variation” is that interpreters often act as if there were ‘one huge thing called the method of the eidetic variation,’ foreshadowed in the Logical Investigations, introduced in Ideas I and explicitly thematized in Experience and Judgment and Formal and Transcendental Logic. And yet this interpretation seems doubtful. There are reasons to think that the label “eidetic variation” refers to at least two related and yet quite different topics: (1) on one hand, we have the eidetic variation proper, namely a method followed by the phenomenologist to discover and prove the validity of a priori laws. It is allegedly a “scientific method” because phenomenology is supposed to be the descriptive eidetic science of pure consciousness and lead to the formulation of general laws. This specific brand of variation is simply absent in the Logical Investigations, while it clearly corresponds to the one advocated in Ideas I.10 (2) But there is another context in which the notion of variation occurs, i.e., the genetic constitution of higher order pure generalities (what Husserl also calls “εἴδη”) mostly spelled out in Experience and Judgment.11 According to the first sense, “eidetic variation” appears to be a regimented, full-fledged scientific method followed by the phenomenologist in order to discover and fulfill intuitively “eidetic judgments” and formulate eidetic laws. In the second sense, “eidetic variation” is not scientific, and is a “method” only in scare quotes. It is rather a complex set of synthetic acts accomplished by a conscious being in order to constitute that very peculiar kind of general a priori object named “εἶδος” or “pure essence”—“pure” insofar as it does not specifically refer to the factual world, but ranges over a domain of pure possibilities. Although different, these two meanings of “eidetic variation”—that one may call respectively “methodological eidetic variation” and “methodic eidetic variation”— are nevertheless mutually related. In fact, (a) without the methodic side (that allows for the constitution of pure generalities) there could be no “pure concepts,” namely  A notable exception can be found in the systematic attempts of Rochus Sowa, which have greatly contributed to the understanding of Husserl’s key ontological notions. See for instance Sowa (2007a). 10  See Hua III/1, pp. 145–8/124–7. 11  See Husserl (1999, pp. 409–429/339–354). 9

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concepts of pure essences or εἴδη. And (b) without pure concepts, there could be no “eidetic judgments,” namely no judgments attempting to formulate eidetic laws. Finally, (c) without “eidetic judgments” to be fulfilled and made evident, there would be no need for the protocols of a “methodological eidetic variation.”12 As far as we are concerned, the variation involved in the argument of the “destruction of the world” is the “methodological” one. In other words, in Ideas I the variation does not appear to constitute the εἶδος “world,” but to bring to evidence one of its more remarkable eidetic features. Now, as we have already pointed out, in order to figure out the way in which Husserl understands the third way of talking about the “being of consciousness,” we have to adjust our understanding of “being.” Within the methodological context of the variation, “to be” means neither “to appear as a flow” nor “to be an independent whole,” but precisely “to be-necessarily-fashioned-in-acertain-way” (So-sein) according to certain eidetic laws. And the reason for this is that, from a material ontological viewpoint, there is no such thing as a “bare existence”: to exist is, as we have seen, to exist-as—as a book, as a car, as a person, as a living organism etc.13 To be in this sense—which, as we have seen, is not the only one—is to display the a priori features of an individual insofar as it intuitively illustrates a pure concept.14 On a quite general level then, one may say that there can be as many kinds of individuals as there are concepts. Whenever the non-conceptual correlate of an indexical expression is referred to as an example of the kind of object tailored by the concept, one can perform categorial judgments having the form “this is an F”: “this is a book,” “this is a tree,” “this is a feeling,” and the like. Once the judgment is fulfilled, the intentional correlate of the indexical term (namely an individual) is grasped as an example of the kind of being expressed by the conceptual term (an essence).15 While performing ideation, one does not perceive a bare particular but this book, this tree, this feeling, etc. Moreover, first order ideational judgments can also undergo meaning-modifications. They may turn into attributive judgments like “this book is entertaining,” “this tree is tall” or “this feeling is intense.” All these judgments have now the form “this F is P,” where P stands for another conceptual term. Or they can also form predicative higher order judgments like “this book is a novel,” “this tree is a hickory” or “this feeling is (an example of) sadness,” whose  Ultimately, the analysis of the relation between (methodic) constitution of εἴδη and (methodological) intuition of eidetic states of affairs might even help understanding what Heidegger (1979, §7, pp. 99–103/72–75) calls the “third fundamental discovery of phenomenology,” after intentionality and categorial intuition, i.e., “the original sense of the a priori”. 13  This claim is rooted in the Aristotelian correlation between τόδε τι and τὸ τί ἐστι spelled out in Met. Z, 1 (1028a11). See Aubenque (2000, pp. 93–97). See also Chap. 3 of this volume. 14  This has certainly nothing to do with Heidegger’s (1977, 1979) search for the Quis? instead of the Quid? And in this sense, one cannot be disappointed if the answer to Heidegger’s question is nowhere to be found in Ideas I. Besides, Husserl explicitly puts aside all analysis related to what he calls “subjectively-oriented phenomenology,” so that the question of the Quis? should find its right context precisely in the analysis of time consciousness (see Hua III/1, pp. 180–3/155–8). 15  The point is made clear in the first part of the second of the Logical Investigations: see, for instance, Hua XIX, II.1, pp. 113–115/ I, pp. 239–40. 12

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form is “this F is a P.” Since they structurally contain an indexical moment, unlike general judgments like “all Fs are Ps,” these judgments are constantly fulfilled by actual perceptive experiences, giving rise to what Husserl calls an “ideation” or a categorial intuition of empirical facts. As it has been rightly pointed out, in this very specific sense, ideation is quite an ordinary thing.16 Yet ideating judgments and ideations of empirical facts are quite different from eidetic judgments and eidetic intuitions. While in the first case we have, at best, something like the intuition of a generality, in the second we deal with intuitions of a priori necessities. In the opening chapter of Ideas I, Husserl explains that in order to be an empirical individual of a certain kind an item has also to display some identifying features proper to all possible examples, empirical and fictional, of individuals of the kind. Eidetic judgments are thus formally and materially different from ideating judgments. From a material point of view, they embed only “pure concepts,” namely concepts devoid of any reference to the factual state of the world. Accordingly, their correlates—i.e., what Husserl emphatically calls “εἴδη”—can be indifferently exemplified in real as well as in merely imaginary individuals. In fact, the truth of the corresponding judgments applies by definition to all conceivably possible and intuitively exhibitable individuals belonging to the kind. From a formal point of view, eidetic judgments can give rise to “judgments about essences” or “judgments having eidetic validity.” “Judgments about essences” are higher order judgments having mostly the form “F is Φ,” where F is already an essence and Φ is a necessary materially ontological feature of F. “The book (qua cultural object) has axiological properties,” “the tree (qua natural object) has mass, volume, length and shape, color, density etc.” “Feeling (qua lived-experience) is a non-objectifying act and is founded on an objectifying act.” They can also take the negative form “it is a priori impossible for F not to be Φ” etc. In this sense, a book without axiological properties, a tree without mass, volume etc., an intentional feeling not founded on a lower-order objectifying act are, in Husserl’s view, material ontological absurdities. When intuitively fulfilled, eidetic judgments turn into eidetic laws. An eidetic law tells what possible individuals have to be (necessarily) in order to count as intuitive examples of a specific pure essence. I can imagine a flying book or Alice becoming first bigger, then smaller, even though, factually, books do not fly and young girls do not change size in that way. Yet such an act of imagination simply contravenes empirical laws. On the other hand, there is no way to imagine that individuals belonging to a specific region of being contravene the eidetic laws of the pure essence they exemplify. A book has no chance to lose its axiological properties and remain a cultural object. Nor can it turn into a feeling. However, nothing prevents a tree from being processed and turning into a book, or to acquire axiological properties within a given community (like “being a totem”). Feelings can acquire axiological properties, but cannot begin their existence as examples of conscious acts and end it as trees or books—and this is not just factually impossible, but a priori inconceivable: “feeling,” “book” and “tree” are not species of the same

16

 See Sowa (2007a, pp. 5–10).

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ontological region. The same holds for formal essences like “function of a complex variable.” Judgments like “functions of a complex variable have mass and shape,” “are cultural objects” or “are objectifying acts” are absurd, and therefore a priori intuitively impossible to fulfill. Of course, objects belonging to heterogeneous ontological regions or quasi-­ regions, can certainly be related otherwise. A feeling, founded on a categorial act, can have a mathematical function as its object. A mathematical function or a feeling can be referred to by the signs written on a more or less valuable book etc. For each of these cases, it is still possible to discover the necessary conditions of their relations. For instance, the study of the relations between conscious acts and algebraic formulae has its place within the study of higher order categorial intentional acts in the Sixth Logical Investigations. The relation between algebraic formulae and books of mathematics belongs to the study of the a priori of the historical transmission of science described in The Origin of Geometry, etc.

4 Phantasy and Language After having roughly sketched some of the most general features of the eidetic method, let us now turn back to the question of the relation between “being of consciousness” and “being of the world.” As soon as “consciousness” is understood as the name of a “region of being” and not of an entity or an individual, Husserl’s talk of “absolute” in the expression “absolute being of consciousness” appears under a different light. Thus, a new hypothesis comes to the fore: perhaps, the idea is not that consciousness is apodictically evident to immanent perception (= perceiving it is tantamount to being immediately certain of its existence) while the same does not hold for the existence of the world (= always perceived through necessarily inadequate adumbrations). Again, these claims might be relevant in other contexts and certainly play a crucial role in Husserl’s analysis. But the picture changes drastically, if we take “being of consciousness” and “being of the world” as concepts describing the necessary features that any possible consciousness has to have in order to be a consciousness and, conversely, that every possible world has to have in order to be a world. Hence the following questions: 1. Is a world of which one has a priori ruled out (by essential necessity) the possibility of being the correlate of any form of actual consciousness still a world? Would it still count as an example of the pure concept “world”? 2. Is a consciousness of which one has a priori ruled out (by essential necessity) the possibility of being the correlate of any conceivable form of actual world whatsoever still a consciousness? Would it still count as an example of the pure concept “consciousness”? The only chance to try to answer to these questions is to rely on the “methodological” use of the eidetic variation.

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As we have seen, an eidetic judgment stating that “Φ is an eidetic feature of any conceivable F,” is an eidetic law if and only if it is a priori impossible to disprove, i.e., if it is impossible to provide an intuitive object being both F and ¬ Φ. And it is free phantasy that is charged with establishing this. While trying to answer to questions (1) and (2), free phantasy has in fact the right to transgress all empirical laws, but—at least theoretically—does not have the power to contravene any eidetic law. So if it succeeds in providing intuitive examples conflicting with the purported a priori validity of the eidetic judgment under scrutiny, the latter is plainly and simply not an eidetic law. If it fails, there are reasons to believe it is. Now, failures happen only in one of the following cases: (a) when free phantasy makes a proposal, it presents an object that could disprove the judgment, but we reject the proposal. We drop the object, as it were, for it does not actually count as an intuitive example illustrating the pure concept expressed by the term “F.” (b) When we accept the proposal, but at the price of dropping the initial concept. When in front of an intuitive object that could count as an example of what we call “F,” we change the meaning of “F” so that the term no longer has the same meaning and does not express any more the pure concept with which we have started. Let me try to spell this out more explicitly. The kind of object that free phantasy has to provide in order to fulfill the judgment about essence depends heavily on the conceptual meanings involved in the corresponding expressed judgment. Let us assume I want to establish whether it is an a priori law that “sense-perceptions necessarily constitute their objects through adumbrations.” I begin by holding it to be true that this is the case and try to see whether free phantasy is able to provide any intuitive counter-example of something falling under the concept “sense-perception” that is nevertheless devoid of any adumbration. In this case, three options are available. (a) First option: I succeed and find the relevant intuition of an object that can be unambiguously called “sense-perception” but it has no adumbrations. In this case, since I have kept both the univocity of the conceptual term “sense-­ perception” and the intuitiveness of the object, I simply drop the initial hypothesis. I thus conclude: no, it is not an eidetic law that sense-perceptions have adumbrations. (b) Second option: phantasy appears to be unable to provide any intuitive state of affairs in which an actual case of something counting as an example of adumbration-­less sense-perception is given. This time, despite its unrestricted freedom, free phantasy has failed. It has failed to fulfill a judgment containing the univocal conceptual term whose eidetic features are under scrutiny. In this case, we keep the initial hypothesis. We also keep the meaning of the expression “sense-perception” univocal. But we reject all the proposals of free phantasy. We drop all these objects that do not count as intuitive examples of the concept expressed by the unambiguous term “sense-perception.” We thus conclude: it appears to be an eidetic law that sense perceptions have adumbrations.

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(c) But there is a third option, more ambiguous and therefore more interesting. In its free wandering, phantasy sometimes succeeds in providing something that could count as an acceptable example of an object that might fulfill the judgment at stake. It could, if we would use the term “sense-perception” more loosely, less univocally. We were looking for adumbration-less acts of “sense-­ perception” but, for instance, we hit upon examples of adumbration-less acts that to some extent might be equivocally called “sense-perceptions,” although “in a modified sense.” Something that might be called “sense-perceptions” in quotation marks, or metaphorically. Whenever this happens, an interesting oscillation appears. Either we finally end up rejecting the proposal, we drop the object, we keep the terms univocal, and this brings us to option (b); or else, if we make the intuitive object actually count as an example of “sense-perception” in a loose, metaphorical or modified sense, we have to drop the concept used at the beginning as a guiding thread, and operate with an equivocal linguistic expression. This is where operators such as “in some sense,” “to some extent,” “from a certain point of view,” etc., appear to control the occurrence of the semantic modification. Even in this case the eidetic law appears to be confirmed. But not because no proposal of free phantasy is accepted, but rather because certain proposals are accepted (or seem to be acceptable) at the steep price of a change of concept. In such cases, we are dealing with a change witnessed by the presence of a linguistic expression turned equivocal, metaphorical or put into quotation marks. Be as it may, in both cases, (b) and (c), it is the fact that “we say what we cannot imagine” or that “we can imagine what changes the meaning of what we say” that manifests the truth of the eidetic law. On the contrary, as in option (a), if it is possible to provide an intuitive object and at the same time keep language univocal, to display something that we can univocally call “sense-perception” and still show no internal horizon, then the eidetic law under scrutiny is dis-proven.17 As a consequence, the change of meaning of the term expressing the relevant concept (a term undergoing a metaphorization, eventually signaled by the use of quotation marks), is precisely the positive counterpart of the failure of free phantasy to provide any example of the essence referred to by the pure concept. The “methodological” eidetic variation thus requires both free phantasy as well as bound conceptual meanings. The univocal meaning of concepts, so to speak, closes the object domain whose boundaries have to be transgressed by the full force of free phantasy. Between the two, the oscillations of language. The linguistic expression changes meaning, swinging from univocity to equivocity.

 Husserl follows this third option several times, especially when he talks about non-objective forms of intentionality in his account of inner time consciousness. More details on this point can be found in Majolino (2010, pp. 606–621). 17

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5 Worlds It is time now to see how these ideas work in our case. “Is a world that is a priori impossible to correlate with any imaginable form of consciousness still a world?” Will free phantasy succeed in disproving this claim, or will words at some point become unbearably equivocal? Let us examine it. To begin with, Husserl maintains that we actually have but one world, the world of the natural attitude, and that is what we have to start with: I am conscious of a world, endlessly spread out in space, endlessly becoming and having become in time. I am conscious of it, and that means above all that I immediately find it intuitively, I experience it. Through seeing, touching, hearing, and so forth, in the various manners of sensory perception […]. Animals, including humans, are also immediately there for me; I look at them, I see them, I hear them approaching, I grasp them by the hand […]. They, too, are on hand in my field of intuition as actualities, even if I do not pay attention to them. But it is also not necessary that they directly find themselves in my field of perception, and the same holds for any other objects. Without being themselves perceived, indeed, without being intuitively present themselves, actual objects are there for me as determinate, more or less familiar objects, in unison with the objects currently perceived. […] This world is not thereby there for me as a mere world of things; instead, with the same immediacy, it is there as a world of values, a world of goods, a practical world. (Hua III/1, pp. 56–8/48–50)

What we call “world” in the first place, unambiguously and without second thoughts, is precisely this: a world in which a whole lot of things happen; a world in which there are objects, people, emotions and desires; where tools are fabricated, expectations frustrated—and I am part of it as well. This is a world in which we live, make projects, act together and undergo experiences from a first-person perspective. It is a world in which certain events happen randomly, others with some regularity, others inevitably. Such a world is, Husserl says, given in the “personalistic attitude,” for it entails not only theoretical but also axiological and practical features. It is at least perceptive. It is not exclusively perceptive, and it is certainly not merely perceptive. On the contrary, it is primarily and fundamentally encountered as cultural, historical, practical, etc.,— but it is at least, at a minimum, also perceptive. Whatever the practical meaning may be of the material objects that I see and that I use, I apprehend certain non-independent material layers of cultural and practical objects as perceptual unities, and more precisely as harmonizing perceptual unities of aspects related to the point-zero represented by the spatial localization of my living body as well as to the other pointszeroes of other living bodies. So, worldly things appear as mutually related “complex systems of harmonizing syntheses” of perceptions (Wahrnemungen) and evaluations (Wertnehmungen) that transcend my own experience as well as the experience of all empirical concrete egos and that yet somehow fit together. Properties “fit” within things, things “fit” with other things, which are mutually related, etc. The same holds, mutatis mutandis, for the non-­perceptual aspects of the world, which are related by motivational connections rather than by causal ones.18  Nota bene: this is neither a definition of the term “world” nor a descriptive account of its essential or conceptual features. It is only an indisputable example of what certainly counts as a world—our world. The world of the natural attitude fixes the meaning of the term “world” and establishes its semantic boundaries. 18

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If there is something that would certainly count as an example to illustrate the pure conceptual meaning of the term “world,” this is undisputedly the surrounding world of the natural attitude. Any phantasy variation, any further fictional example has to provide something that must be called “world” in the very same sense in which we use this word to refer to this actual world. Husserl’s world of the natural attitude is not very different from the one described by Virginia Woolf in the following passage of Mrs. Dalloway: Clarissa guessed; Clarissa knew of course; she had seen something white, magical, circular, in the footman’s hand, a disc inscribed with a name—the Queen’s, the Prince of Wales’, the Prime Minister’s?—which by force of its own luster, burnt its way through (Clarissa saw the car diminishing, disappearing), to blaze among candelabras, glittering stars, breasts stiff with oak leaves, Hugh Whitbread and all his colleagues, the gentlemen of England, that night in Buckingham Palace. And Clarissa, too, gave a party. She stiffened a little; so she would stand at the top of her stairs. (Woolf, 1925, p. 20)

Between Husserl’s world of the natural attitude and Clarissa Dalloway’s, it is safe to say that there is no remarkable alteration. There are objects with both theoretical (white, circular) and practical-axiological features (magical), social roles (queens, prime ministers, princes), persons (Hugh Whitbread) I-personal subjects as well (Clarissa herself). And even sense-perceptions follow the same pattern as in the actual world (saying that a car is “diminishing and disappearing” is to describe the sense-perceptual givenness of a transcendent object as it appears with respect to the point-zero of a living body). Thus, the fiction has provided no significant variation. So far, our factual world and Clarissa’s fictional world could both soundly occur as examples to illustrate what the conceptual term “world” means. And in both cases, the meaning of “world” remains unchanged. If we ask what do these examples share, beyond a certain familiarity we have with their denizens (cars, people etc.), one of the possible answers is that, quite trivially, in both cases one can be surprised within the world, but not by the world. The relative regularity of the world with its empirical laws—of both things and values— appears in fact as an essential condition of its “worldliness.” The idea of a form of non-human consciousness, whose “world” would not be personalistic, does not seem to be as absurd as the claim that its “world” would be completely and hopelessly devoid of any empirical unity. In Husserl’s view, the world that free phantasy has to take as a departure point is not just a heap of things and persons, it is something that is also unescapably experienced as a whole; something whose existence is constantly confirmed by the coherence and harmony of its various aspects, both causal and motivational, subjective and intersubjective. I am actually looking at the blue cover of a book, quite sure that it is my familiar copy of Ideas I; then I turn it around and discover that it is rather a copy of another book, say, Mrs. Dalloway. When I judge that “I thought it was a copy of Ideas I, while actually now I know that it was a copy of Mrs. Dalloway,” my concordant use of the past and the present tense (I “thought it was” a copy of. .. now I “know” that. . .) is meaningful under the assumption that the world has not changed in the meantime. Its existence as a world depends on the persistent consistency, constantly confirmed, of the empirical laws, more or less rigid, to which its various denizens are bound. This is what Husserl will

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later call a “style.” I would not say ‘it was a copy of Ideas I that turned into a copy of Mrs. Dalloway’—even if no a priori law would have prevented that. I might eventually believe, under very specific circumstances, that someone has switched them. But if I have never lost sight of the book, even this option would be quickly dismissed. The book has not turned, no one has switched it, not in this world, with these objects, and their customary behaviors. It is precisely because the characters and the objects pictured by Virginia Woolf are bound to this very same empirical style of the world from which we have started that the term “world” seems to apply so easily to this case.19 And the variation that took place here has not provided any significant change to that style. But how about a rather unstable and unpredictable world, a world whose empirical laws are not just different but less rigid? Not just a world with different things, or different laws, but a world in which, on a general basis, empirical laws are “looser,” and in which things might drastically change for no reason. A world in which, as Hume suggested, the laws of nature happen to be capricious and erratic, where other empirical types of perceptions would be possible—perceptions of different objects, within different experiences, requiring different concepts, and providing different ideations and categorial intuitions—and a world where these perceptions are bound to slightly irregular empirical rules. A world like the one described by Roquentin in Sartre’s Nausea: It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he’ll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he’ll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, moving itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurs of blood. Or a mother might look at her child’s cheek and ask him: “What’s that—a pimple?” and see the flesh puff off a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He’d like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with its own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names—stone-eye, great three-cornered arm, toe-­ crutch, spider-jaw. (Sartre, 1938, pp. 223–4/159)

Would this still count as an example of “world”? Or would the meaning of the term “world” be somehow different, equivocal or analogical, when employed to describe our factual world, Clarissa Dalloway’s world, and this new formation? There are certainly different objects here, unfamiliar objects we do not find in the starting example. But this is hardly a reason not to call it “a world.” For we still have objects to be perceived and evaluated, individual entities provided with causal or motivational properties that one can intuit in acts of ideation or fulfilled judgments like “this is a spider-jaw” or “toe-crutches are disgusting.” Of course, from a  Although, strictly speaking, in his studies on phantasy consciousness Husserl rules out the very idea of a “fictional world.” 19

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material ontological point of view, things are certainly more complicated. In fact, some of these putative entities seem to be manifestly absurd. “Stone-eyes,” for instance, would be bearers of intentional acts (seeing) but not living bodies (stones). Or would they? Would they be “things,” “animals,” “persons” or something entirely different? It seems that their existence should be ruled out because of material a priori reasons. Still, why, despite this fact, could one nevertheless be tempted to describe Roquentin’s frightening vision as a “world”? If this does not count as a world, as far as we are concerned, it is not because of the existence of this or that strange entity, but because of the fuzziness of the empirical laws to which a world including such unexpected entities as denizens is bound. The empirical laws of Sartre’s fictional world appear in fact to be quite unstable: “it can happen any time,” he says. If such changes can happen any time, Roquentin’s world appears to be far less regular than the one with which we have started. This is a world with probably different forms of science, or even a world without a science in the strong sense of the term. It is a world where the only form of general knowledge rests on provisional rules that are valid only as long as things do not change again. However, if during these intermediary periods in which things “do not change,” we still had something stable enough to be experienced, subjectively and intersubjectively, then Sartre’s creation could still be accepted as the example of “a world.” But this would be the case only as long as the unity of its individual core, perceptive and eventually evaluative, was preserved. To count as a world, Sartre’s fiction would have to maintain some minimal consistency and unity, so as to grant theoretical, axiological and practical features to its denizens. It is not an a priori law that, in order to be a world, a world has to be rational. Its natural laws do not need to be as regular as ours are. And for Husserl there is no reason why a world of which no scientific account is possible should not count as a world. Not just as a “world” intended metaphorically or with quotation marks. But simply as a world. A world in which “three-cornered arms” can be feared, or used as means for an end, or even adored as totems, would definitely be a “world.” It would certainly be a world where “new names” for things, actions and feelings have to be found. But this would be the case precisely because there will still be some things, actions and feelings to be named. Let us assume then that the hard-scientific rationality governing the empirical layer of our factual world is nothing but a contingent feature of it. Then, once we put aside the a priori impossibility of non-­ entities like stone-eyes, the empirical irrationality of a world in which things suddenly turn into other things does not seem to be strong enough to make us drop the concept of world—provided that things stay the same and act somehow consistently at least for a little while. Insofar as this latter condition is met, Sartre’s fictional world appears merely as another world: it is an uncanny, relatively unpredictable world, with some ontologically doubtful denizens, but a world, nevertheless.

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6 Unworlds But what happens if that condition is not met? What about a “world” in which aleatory transformations were even more accelerated and capricious? A “world” of volatile intermediary things—not just of altered objects but of randomly unstable and erratic objects, like the one described in the final chapters of Greg Egan’s novel Quarantine, where everything constantly turns into something else and endlessly falls apart: The streets seethe with transformation. Some people’s features are shifting, flowing smoothly or jumping between alternatives; walking in a daze, they seem oblivious, and I touch my own face, wondering if the same thing is happening to me. Vegetation is sprouting everywhere—patches of wheat, sugar cane, bamboo; stretches of wild-looking tropical undergrowth. Some stalls are simply crumbling into fine dust; others are mutating into exotic architectural pastiche—and the walls of one have turned to flesh, blood visibly pulsing through veins as thick as my arm. I stare up at the skyscrapers, most of them surreally intact—but even as I wonder at this, the fractal cladding on one tower starts drifting down like confetti. (Egan, 1992, pp. 240–1)

Strange as it may sound, this is precisely the weird Heraclitean landscape described by Husserl in §49 of Ideas I, the section devoted to the “destruction of the world.” And, just like in Egan’s fiction, Husserl maintains that what destroys the world is nothing but the conflictual inconsistency of its empirical style: no empirical laws at all, no morphological regularities either, objects that irregularly collapse into their presenting adumbrations, sensible and emotional; relations between objects that do not hold; nothing that could be named or judged anymore; nothing to act upon or assess: Rather it is quite conceivable that experience does not reduce to an illusion through conflicting evidence merely in one individual instance. So, too, it is quite conceivable that not every illusion gives notice of a deeper truth (as is the case de facto) and that not every conflict is, in its setting, precisely what is required by more comprehensive connections to preserve the coherence of the whole. It is conceivable that experience is teeming with irresolvable conflicts, conflicts that are irresolvable not only for us but in themselves; that experience in a fit of obstinacy shows itself all at once to be opposed to the presumption that it coherently sustains its positing of things. In sum, it is conceivable that the connectedness of experience loses the fixed, regulated order of profiles, construals, appearances—that there is no longer a world. (Hua III/1, p. 103/88)

This is what an “unworld” (Unwelt) looks like. Husserl’s idea is highly seductive: “the actual world”—he writes—“is only one specific case among a multitude of possible worlds and unworlds (möglicher Welten und Unwelten)” (Hua III/1, p. 100/86, translation modified). It is a special case since its factual backbone is made of individual unities that are bound to empirical laws enduring enough to let them posit objects to perceive and assess, stable enough to exemplify concepts, use names, formulate judgments, collectively or individually act, etc.—even to be eventually treated in a scientific way. It is a world that keeps the promise of the continuous existence of things “which exist in themselves, whether or not they are perceived.” However, even if such a high degree of

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endurance characteristic of our world is far from being a necessary feature of all fictionally conceivable “worlds,” a certain degree of empirical endurance seems to be a priori required by any product of free phantasy in order to count as a world. The world of Husserl’s narrative proper to the natural attitude is definitely a world, for it fixes the initial content of the word “world.” That of Clarissa Dalloway is a world as well; and mutatis mutandis that of Sartre’s Nausea too (at least in part). Its empirical style is unsteady, but at least there is still something like an empirical style. This is the reason why one can legitimately ask whether it could actually count as “a world” or not (it does not really matter if we finally decide that this is not the case). The same does not hold for the landscape pictured by Greg Egan and pushed forward by Husserl’s “unworld.” One fictional variation too many and we end up fantasizing a random chaos of sounds, colors, various affections and impressions with aleatory object-like configurations, conflicting perceptual or assessment unfriendly adumbrations, deflagrating and vanishing. This is all we have left after the end of the world: “crude unity-formations,” “transient supports for intuitions which were mere analogues of intuitions of physical things, because quite incapable of constituting conservable ‘realities’ or enduring unities which exist in themselves, whether or not they are perceived.” This is the “end of the world” we were chasing from the very beginning. Such an imaginary experience of a fickle chaotic kaleidoscope—close to what Husserl in his 1904–5 lectures on phantasy and image consciousness also describes in terms of “Dunkle Phantasien”20—can usually function as a simple aesthetic distraction. But in our case, its erratic vision appears precisely on our way to the fulfillment of a categorial judgment allegedly expressing an eidetic law about the “being of the world.” One can imaginatively destroy the world only insofar as one builds, by unrestricted phantasy variation, a series of examples that goes from the familiar world-style of the natural attitude, to the chaotic maelstrom of Husserl’s unworld, following the meaning of the term “world” as a guiding thread. If we thus pretend to see in the aleatory popping-out of less-than-objects described by Husserl something like an “unworld,” it is precisely because it is from the most uncontroversial and undisputed example of world that we have started our variation—the world as we experience it. This is the end of the world as we know it. As a result, an a priori necessarily unempirical world would not count as a world, not even within quotation marks. A world whose lack of factual laws, physical or spiritual, causal or motivational, would prevent a priori any conceivable form of experience, any perception or assessment (“Wahrnehmen” and “Wertnehmen”), is plainly and simply not a world. Differently put, if a “world” loses its lowest form of empirical unity—if it becomes impossible to relate mutually the kind of things or values of which it is made—it loses its “worldliness.” Such a loss can only be fantasized at the end of a methodological process in which, in search of the fulfillment of an eidetic judgment, the free exercise of phantasy, following the guiding thread of a conceptual name, brings us in front of a set of flickering “obscure fantasies” and

20

 See Hua XXIII, p. 88/95.

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elicits the question: does this still count as a world? At the end of this variation process, by keeping steady the name “world” and by fictionally modifying its purported examples, as soon as we end up imagining less than empirical individuals but more than nothing we have at the same time provided a “fictional destruction” (gedankliche Destruktion) of the world (III/1, p.  100/85) and imagined an “Unwelt.” Something intuitive that cannot instantiate any “thing.” This is something that one does not really want to call a “world,” not even in a heavily metaphorical and analogical way. While the contingency of the empirical laws of a world like Sartre’s still allows for the possibility of other kinds of thing-unities as correlates of, say, perceptive synthetic activities or practical-axiological assessments (great three-cornered arm, toe-crutch, spider-jaw, etc.)—such a variation is not radical enough. Concepts are different, things are different—but there are still concepts to be expressed in judgments and essences to be (provisionally) instantiated in individuals, causal properties, things to love and hate, things to do, goals to achieve: the world is safe. However, below a certain threshold, when no enduring thing-unities and therefore no individual supports for sorts, species and genera, natural or spiritual, are available, we lose at once the world and its empirical style. For whatever we may exhibit as an intuitive example of the concept of world has finally to provide a certain amount of empirical unity, some endurance in the stability of things and their mutual relations. As soon as that minimal unity is lost, the world as we know it is gone. If the above is correct, it certainly seems that the a priori of a world, namely its empirical (more or less rational) style, is tantamount to the a priori of a world that can be possibly experienced by some conceivable form of consciousness. Here the reference is not to our consciousness, which is only one of the manifold imaginable variations that still keeps the word “consciousness” unequivocally meaningful. Thus, it is in this very precise sense that one can consistently affirm that “the being of the world” entails a necessary relatedness to “the being of a consciousness.” In fact, the variation has shown that no world entirely devoid of any empirical style whatsoever, even minimalistic and science-unfriendly, would count as a world, not even a world considered metaphorically or within quotation marks. But when all world is gone, is all consciousness gone as well? Or is something like a possible consciousness whose synthetic activities are correlative to the factual configuration of an “unworld” still imaginable? In order to establish if a consciousness where certain lived-experiences correlative to the positing of a world were a priori excluded would still count as a full-fledged example of consciousness—no metaphors, no quotation marks—the same “methodological” protocol employed so far has to apply. And it goes without saying that, starting with the natural attitude, our consciousness is directed towards a world of things, values, actions, persons, institutions etc. It is directed to a world unified, articulated and stuffed with locally conflicting but globally harmonious objects of different sorts perhaps even a world in which science is possible. Thus, it might be tempting to claim that this worlddirectedness, characteristic of the natural attitude, is also an essential feature of any correlative intentional consciousness as such. But then again, Husserl is quite clear on this point: there is no reason to make this claim. Let us imagine a conscious being

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that is necessarily constrained to experience nothing but a flickering Unwelt. Would this be less conscious than a conscious being experiencing a more or less stable Welt? In both cases, as we have seen in the first definition of absolute consciousness, what a consciousness cannot fail to do in order to be a consciousness is precisely to stick to its mode of existence and constantly appear to itself as time-consciousness. In this sense, the chaotic kaleidoscope of Greg Egan’s fiction or Husserl’s “crudeunity formations,” less than individuals and more than nothing, would be enough. Surely we, as human subjects, are conscious beings who are intentionally bound to the world; but this is a fact, and there is no necessity for it. It is not an essential feature of any conceivable and intuitively exhibitable conscious being to be a consciousness directed toward a world. Object-directedness is not necessarily worlddirectedness. This brings us to the second conclusion: the being of consciousness is such that it does not need any “thing” in order to be a consciousness: nulla “re” indiget ad existendum. An Unwelt would be sufficient to let it live and stream.

7 Coda In conclusion, and although I will not be able to expand on any of them before the final chapters of this volume, I wish to call attention to a certain number of consequences related to my proposal to relate “destruction of the world” and “eidetic variation.” (1) I will begin by suggesting the importance of dismissing the Cartesian comparison substance/consciousness and destruction of the world/argument of the cogito. If I am not mistaken, it is not the metaphysical authority of Descartes but that of the methodologically regulated eidetic variation that is supposed to support Husserl’s claim. (2) I think it would be a good idea to provide a better account of the equivocity of Husserl’s operational concepts, especially when it comes to terms like “being” and “appearing;” and I would suggest doing this independently of Heidegger’s authority. One might discover, for instance, that “being as stream,” “being as whole” and “being as εἶδος” turn out to be quite different things, whose connections within Husserl’s own ontological vocabulary are still to be fully explored. It is only after having actually worked out the ways in which Husserl actually uses these terms that we can draw some conclusions about his “understanding” of being and appearance, and its relation with the Cartesian tradition. Besides, I have to admit that I am not quite sure whether Husserl’s manifold uses of “being” really have to be traced back to one meaning, be it univocal (as in the Scotist tradition) or analogical (as in the Thomistic tradition) or even, as Heidegger might have suggested, equivocal πρὸς ʽɛ̀ν (as in Aristotle’s Met. Γ, 2, 1003a33–34).21 (3) The thesis of a world that is necessarily consciousness-related (that is, the thesis according to which being of the world is relative), intended as an eidetic claim, seems to challenge the possibility of a “bare” ontology, and dismiss those attempts in current

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 On this point see Chap. 5 of this volume.

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analytical metaphysics to talk about “the world” as the sum-total or the mere catalogue of “what is out there.” Instead, Husserl seems to suggest that the concept of world cannot be consistently employed without addressing the issue of the appropriate level of empirical unity (or “rationality” or “style”) proper to any arrangement of objects, things and values to count as “worldly.” Nothing could be more removed from the meaning of the term “world” as we know it than the idea of a catalogue. (4) This latter remark is related to the idea that the correlation consciousness-­ world is not an eidetic law. Let us assume that Husserl is right in maintaining that the directedness towards mere “crude-unity formations” would be a sufficient form of transcendence to sustain the stream of inner-time-consciousness. Then, if this is correct, the unavoidable world-directedness of our specific kind of consciousness, as well as the empirical consistency and rationality of our world, appear to be nothing more than necessarily contingent facts. It is the case that human conscious being is world-directed. It is not the case that every imaginable conscious being must do the same. Thanks to the contribution of the joint venture between bounded concepts, unbounded phantasy and equivocal words, we can (a) live within an empirically consistent and rational world, (b) gain the insightful proof of the contingent status of that inescapable consistency, and (c) provide at the same time a criticism and a foundation for the hermeneutical claim of the essential “togetherness” (Zusammengehörigkeit) of consciousness and world. For consciousness is neither a synonym of human being nor the metaphysical name for “Dasein.” So, yes, consciousness is eidetically correlated to the appearance of something but no, the exercise of variation tells us something even more eerie: this appearing something is not necessarily the transcendence of the world, let alone the transcendent of a world like ours. An unworld would be enough. And this is precisely the reason why, at the end of the day, Husserl’s absolute consciousness could have actually been able to whistle R.E.M.’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine”—it could, that is, if only it had lips with which to whistle.

Chapter 7

Within and Beyond Productive Imagination On How Phantasy Makes Its Way Into Phenomenology

One lies more than necessary | for lack of fantasy: | even truth is invented. Antonio Machado

The main question addressed in the present chapter is the following: in what sense can it be said that there is something like a distinctively phenomenological turn in the concept of “productive imagination” (henceforth, PI)? Or, differently put, what is—if any—the truly original contribution of phenomenology to the history of this concept? I will begin with some historical remarks (Sects. 1 and 2), so as to show how PI finds its way into phenomenology—or, at least, into a certain kind of phenomenology that, for lack of a better word, I would label as “hermeneutical” (Sects. 3 and 4).1 I will then turn to Husserl, so as to examine a somehow alternative view (Sects. 5 and 6). This should show the extent to which Husserl’s phenomenology ends up assessing the originality of productive imagination in way that appears to be quite different from its “hermeneutical” counterpart (Sect. 7).

1 The Empirical Core Christian Wolff’s Psychologia empirica operates with the following set of definitions: The faculty to produce perceptions of absent sensible things is called faculty of imaging or imagination. [...] The faculty to produce, by division or composition of phantasms, the phantasm of a thing never perceived by the senses is called faculty of feigning. (Wolff, 1732, pp. 54, 97)  The reasons of this label are explained in Majolino and Djian (2018).

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_7

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Wolff uses the notion of “production” to define both the “facultas imaginandi” and the “facultas fingendi.” By contrast, the opposition between “production” and “reproduction” stricto sensu is meant to distinguish imagination and fiction, on the one hand, from memory on the other—defined as “the faculty to recognize the reproduced ideas (and, consequently, the things represented by them)” (Wolff, 1732, p. 123). Thanks to memory, a “phantasm,” produced by imagination, is recognized as the reproduction of a previous perception. Accordingly, it is only from the standpoint of memory that Wolff’s faculty to “produce perceptions of absent things” (res absentes) can equally be defined, as in Baumgarten (Baumgarten, 1779, p. 198), as the faculty to provide “perceptions of things that were formerly present” (perceptiones rerum, quae olim praesentes fuerunt). Wolff’s definitions thus set apart the notion of “productivity”—used to define imagination and fiction—from the strictly “reproductive” nature of memory in its different forms, be it “sensible” (where reproduced ideas are recognized only “confusedly”) or “intellectual” (where reproduced ideas are recognized “distinctly”) (Wolff, 1734, p. 233). More specifically, in Wolff’s account of the “powers of the soul,” only imagination and fiction are explicitly defined as “productive.”2 Now, since pro-ducere literally means “to bring forward,” imaginatio is the power to “bring forward” a cluster of sensations without any external stimulus or bodily affection (Wolff, 1732, pp. 22–3). As for fictio, what it “brings forward” is a divisio without destruction and a compositio without construction. This explains why both faculties are equally “productive”: “imagination” produces phantasms (i.e., ideas of sensible objects that are not actually caused by the affection of sense organs) (Wolff, 1734, p. 55) and “fiction,” quite literally, performs experiments on phantasms. The experimental-productive faculty of feigning carries out compositions and divisions of phantasms in a way that is characterized by Wolff as “arbitrary” (pro arbitrio), that is, submitted to the sole law of association (Wolff, 1732, p. 98). As a result, in arbitrarily making and unmaking phantasms, new ideas of sensible things are finally crafted. And it is precisely in this way that one can succeed in “feigning an entity never seen before” (Wolff, 1732, p. 98). But there is more. When the arbitrary divisio/compositio phantasmatum is totally unrestricted and follows only the unpredictable rule of whatever comes to mind by association, what obtains is the phantasm of an ens fictum, something that “repels existence” (existentia repugnant) and only appears to be (although is not and cannot be) an actual or a possible entity. An ens fictum, combining phantasms of ontologically incompatible features, can only be seen “at distance,” as it were, and would literally “fall apart” once measured against the principles of ontology (Wolff, 1732, pp. 95–6). Mermaids and angels, for instance, are examples of “fictional entities,” fashioned by the sole “force to invent” (Kraft zu erdichten). They are, as Wolff puts it, “empty imageries” (Wolff, 1720, pp. 134–5). Yet the power of feigning can also bring forward “things never seen before” that nevertheless might or could have  Sensation is the facultas percipiendi (Wolff, 1732, p. 38); imagination and fiction are facultates producendi (pp. 54, 97); memory is the facultas recognoscendi idea reproductas (p. 123); attention is a facultas efficiendi (p. 241); intellect and acumen are facultates distinguendi (p. 197, 241); and, finally, reason is the facultas intuendi seu perspiciendi, that is, more precisely, “the faculty to intuit and examine the connection among universal truths” (p. 372). 2

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existed—provided that the law of association is limited by the principles of contradiction and sufficient reason (Wolff, 1720, p. 136; Wolff, 1732, p. 103). Now, random fictions of impossible and “existence unfriendly” entities and well-­ ordered fictions of “existence friendly” possible entities, despite their different attitudes toward existence, have another common defining feature: they are both “brought forward” to appear as “one” (unum) (Wolff, 1732, p.  94). To put it in Baumgarten’s terms, the only general “rule of fiction” (facultas fingendi regula) is to bring many phantasms—be them mutually compatible or incompatible, existence friendly or unfriendly—into the appearance of “one total unity”: Since a combination is a representation of many as one (repraesentatio plurum, ut unius), and is thus actualized by the faculty of perceiving the identities of things, the faculty of feigning is actualized by the power of the soul to represent the universe (facultas fingendi per vim animae rapraesentativam, universi actuator). This is the rule of the faculty of feigning: parts of phantasms are perceived as one total unity. Hence the perceptions that have arisen are called FICTIONS (figments), and those which are false are called CHIMERAS, or empty phantasms. (Baumgarten, 1779, pp. 211–2)

The faculty of feigning rests entirely on and is actualized by the very power of the soul responsible for the “representation of the universe as a whole,” that is, the power to “represent the many as one.” In a nutshell, in Wolff’s account (1) both imagination and fiction produce “perceptions” in absentia of sensible things; (2) as memory will retrospectively show, the unity of the phantasm brought forward by the power of imagination is secretly ruled by the unity of a previously perceived sensible thing, and therefore refers back to the latter’s actual existence; (3) by contrast, the power of fiction brings forward an arbitrarily assembled multiplicity (of phantasms) whose unity could but does not have to comply with the constraints of any actually existing thing or with the general principles of ontology ruling over any possible being; (4) if this happens, and the centrifugal force of association is bound by the centripetal laws of ontology, we have fictions of “possible entities;” (5) if this does not happen—and multiplicities appear as unities despite the fact that they “repel existence”—we have empty “chimaeras;” and (6) in both cases, a possible lion (never seen before) and an impossible chimaera (never to be seen), would nevertheless appear as one, notwithstanding their radically different ontological status. This is the “only rule of fiction”: let the many be perceived as one beyond existence (factual, possible) and nonexistence.

2 The Transcendental Turn It will not be necessary to dwell into the incredible amount of details, tensions, and—be them apparent or substantial—inconsistencies of Kant’s account of imagination.3 As far as we are concerned, it suffices to remind what follows. If compared to Wolff’s, Kant’s famous definition of imagination, at least at first sight, does not seem to be particularly original:  For an instructive overview of such tensions and inconsistencies, see Ferrarin (2009, pp. 7–14).

3

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Imagination is the faculty for representing an object even without its presence in intuition. (Kant, 1904, p. 151; 1917, p. 167)

Yet unlike Wolff’s, such general definition (a) does not rest on the notion of “production,” and (b) replaces the idea of “producing perceptions of sensible absent things” (producendi perceptiones rerum sensibilium absentium) with that of “intuiting even without the presence of the object” (Vermögen der Anschauung auch ohne die Gegenwart des Gegenstandes) (Kant, 1904: 153). One side effect of this apparently slight change is that Wolff’s relatively sharp boundaries between imagination (productive) and memory (reproductive or, at least, reproduction-recognizing) seem now to be blurred. In fact, one way of intuiting something absent is precisely the intuition of what is absent now but was present in the past (Kant, 1917, pp. 182–85) (another is the intuition of what is absent now and will be present in the future; Kant, 1917, pp. 185–89). As a result, if we take as a guiding clue Kant’s set of empirical distinctions sketched in the Anthropology (Kant, 1917, §15, §28, §§34–35), we end up with the following alternative diagram: The difference between “reproduction” and “production” is now displaced within the broader concept of imagination itself, as to disentangle two distinctive forms of intuition without the presence of the object. And if we compare Figs. 7.1 and 7.2, Wolff’s facultas producendi clearly appears to be more general and to include the facultas imaginandi, while Kant presents the facultas imaginandi as the genus concept, of which the feature of being “productive” plays the role of the differentia specifica.

Fig. 7.1  Productive imagination according to Wolff facultas sentiendi (...in the presence of the object) Sinnlichkeit (faculty of intuitive presentations...)

facultas imaginandi (...without the presence of the object)

sensus internus sensus externus productive reproductive

memoria praevisio

Fig. 7.2  Productive imagination according to Kant I

But how can the once generic concept of “production” now work as a differentia? Part of the answer can be found in another famous passage of the Anthropology:

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The power of imagination (facultas imaginandi), as a faculty of intuition without the presence of the object, is either productive, that is, a faculty of the original exhibition of the object (exhibitio originaria), which thus precedes experience; or reproductive, a faculty of the derivative exhibition of the object (exhibitio derivativa), which brings back to the mind an empirical intuition that it had previously. Pure intuitions of space and time belong to the productive faculty; all others presuppose empirical intuition, which, if they are combined with concepts of the object and so are empirical cognition, are called experience. (Kant, 1917, p. 167)

“Productive imagination”qua “imagination” (genus) is the power to intuit something absent in general; qua “productive” (differentia), it is the power to intuit something radically absent, because nonempirical. Granted, in some sense, space and time are always “present” in the intuition of the objects as their transcendental conditions, but they are not present as objects of empirical intuition. This explains the change occurring in Wolff’s definition, for intuitions of space and time cannot be suitably described as perceptiones rerum sensibilium absentium, since, although “absent” and related to sensibility, neither space nor time are “sensible things.” PI is thus a “pure” intuition, that is, an intuition “in which there is nothing that belongs to sensation” (Kant, 1904, p. 34; 1911, p. 20). But there is more. If we put away the empirical standpoint of the Anthropology and turn to the first Critique, the difference between “productive” and “reproductive” imagination intersects with a second equally significant distinction, namely, that between an “empirical” and a “transcendental” synthesis of imagination. Despite the difficult issue of a “reproductive” and yet “transcendental” synthesis of imagination (Kant, 1911, p.  102), Kant’s texts constantly insists on the general opposition between “a reproductive imagination, which is then also merely empirical” (Kant, 1911, p. 121) and an a priori “productive synthesis of the imagination” playing a transcendental role (Kant, 1911, p. 117): Only the productive synthesis of the imagination can take place a priori; for the reproductive synthesis rests on conditions of experience. The principle of the necessary unity of the pure (productive) synthesis of the imagination prior to apperception is thus the ground of the possibility of all cognition, especially that of experience. (Kant, 1911, p. 117) The imagination is therefore also a faculty of an a priori synthesis, on account of which we give it the name of productive imagination, and, insofar as its aim in regard to all the manifold of appearance is nothing further than the necessary unity in their synthesis, this can be called the transcendental function of the imagination. (Kant, 1911, p.  123, translation slightly modified). Now insofar as the imagination is spontaneity, I also occasionally call it the productive imagination, and thereby distinguish it from reproductive imagination, whose synthesis is subject solely to empirical laws, namely those of association, and therefore contributes nothing to the explanation of the possibility of cognition a priori, and on that account belongs not in transcendental philosophy but in psychology. (Kant, 1904, p. 152)

PI is therefore a priori and “spontaneous;” it “grounds” or “explains” the possibility of cognition a priori; it accounts for the necessary unity of the synthesis; it belongs not to psychology but to transcendental philosophy—and nothing similar appears in Wolff’s empirical account. As a result, PI is not simply different from and on a par with its “reproductive” counterpart, like two equal species of one common genus, it is also more original and, quite literally, more fundamental. Whenever “reproductive” imagination is at work, following the empirical laws of association, PI has already performed its transcendental synthetic function.

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In this sense, Kant’s PI as discussed in the Critique is not empirical—it is experience constitutive; it does not “bring forward” any absent phantasm or fictional entity—it provides the necessary synthesis of phenomena as such (and eventually operates as the a priori principle of all knowledge) (Kant, 1904, p.  103; 1911, p. 78); it is not an inferior faculty of the soul distinguished and indirectly derived from perception—it operates already within perception itself (Kant, 1911, p. 120). Kant’s productive-transcendental and experience constitutive power of synthesis and Wolff’s productive-empirical and arbitrarily experimental power of feigning entities never seen before, beyond existence and nonexistence are thus two very different and quite incomparable concepts. By contrast, what can soundly be compared with Wolff’s distinctions are some of Kant’s empirical remarks in the Anthropology, where PI, understood as “belonging to sensibility according to its different forms” (Kant, 1917, p. 174), is said to be “inventive” (dichtend): The power of imagination (in other words) is either inventive (productive) or merely recollective (reproductive). (Kant, 1917, p. 167)

Before the actual realization of a material piece, the artist’s imagination is engaged in the activity of “figuring” (Bildung), that is, producing sensibly filled spatial forms intuited in absentia (what Kant also calls imagination plastica) (Kant, 1911, p. 174). However, such “inventive power” is governed by the unrestricted will of the artist (durch Willkür regiert) and does not occur “wildly” and “unwillingly” (unwillkürlich), as in a dream. Artistic invention is not random “phantasy” (Phantasie), Kant says, but “composition” and “fabrication” (Composition, Erfindung) and often follows the very rules of experience (Kant, 1911, p. 175). But when willful PI literally goes wild and turns “vicious,” its inventions can be either “unbridled” (züghellos) or “ruleless” (regellos): The former inventions could still find their place in a possible world (the world of fable); but ruleless inventions have no place in any world at all, because they are self-contradictory. (Kant, 1911, p. 181)

In all these empirical cases, PI can still be soundly described as the intuition of an absent object that is more radical than the mere absence of the past or the future—an object that, at least somehow, eschews experience. Chimaeras and space/time are both impossible to experience—but not for the same reason. If from a transcendental-­ constitutive and a priori viewpoint, pure PI exhibits something that is “absent” because it cannot in principle be experienced at all (for it transcendentally grounds and makes experience possible); empirical-artistic invention exhibits something that is “absent” in quite a different sense—something that, just like in Wolff, in fact is not/has not been/will not be experienced, or that could not be possibly experienced. And this holds not only for the composition of imaginary figures that still resemble natural entities, but also for the free, arbitrary, and yet voluntary activity of figuring “images that cannot be found in experience” (Kant, 1917, p. 175) or as in the case of “perverted” compositions of utterly impossible objects (Kant, 1917, p. 181) (Fig. 7.3).

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Fig. 7.3  Productive imagination according to Kant II

Kant’s position with respect to Wolff can thus be characterized according to the following fourfold shift: (1) the explicit dislocation of the reproductive/productive distinction from the external opposition between memory and imagination to an internal split within imagination itself, (2) its intersection with the distinction empirical/transcendental, (3) the asymmetry between productive-transcendental and reproductive-empirical imagination, with the former being fundamental and experience constitutive, and (4) the parallel established between (i) the pure intuition of the radical and constitutive absence of something fundamental that is not an entity, and (ii) the empirical intuition of artistic invention figuring an entity that is not (actually or possibly).

3 The First Way to Phenomenology It is my contention that this fourfold shift (dislocation, intersection, asymmetry, and parallel) is responsible both for the invention of a strict concept of PI (as distinguished from that of an arbitrary experimenting and inventive phantasy) and for its impact on a certain strand of phenomenology. Now, it is probably unnecessary to recall that the label “phenomenology” is often used in a quite broad sense. Applied to a very large spectrum of authors (as different as Ingarden, Derrida, Reinach, Trần Đức Thảo, etc.), it seems to refer more to a composite array of loosely related themes and concepts than to a homogeneous “movement” or “methodology.” Given such a diversity, it would be safe to assume that not every actual or putative “phenomenologist” having discussed or even just mentioned PI had to be committed to Kant’s putative fourfold shift. It could be soundly maintained, however, that by (1) overlapping Kant’s fourfold shift with the idea of “ontological difference” and “ontological truth” and (2) understanding Being as the “phenomenon” in its most eminent sense (Heidegger, 1927, p. 31/35), Heidegger has paved the way for a very particular, and rather influential, “phenomenological approach” to PI.

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In the Kantbuch, Heidegger reminds us of Kant’s famous definition of imagination as the power to intuit something that is not present. He then hastens to add that, “first of all” (zunächst) “intuition” means “empirical intuition of beings” (des Seienden), concluding that imagination in general can be suitably characterized by its “peculiar unboundedness to beings (Nichtgebundenheit an das Seiende)” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 128/135). Kant’s imagination thus appears as the only power of the soul capable to provide a “view” (Anblick, Aussehen) of something that— even in its less original forms—“does not show itself as a being” or as “actually on-hand” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 128/135). This holds, of course, “first of all,” for the empirical noninventive (reproductive) imagination of a previously-but-no-longer-present object, but also, and more importantly, for the empirical inventive (productive) imagination “of a possible object, which under certain conditions may also be realizable, that is, capable of being made present” (Heidegger, 1991, p.  130/137). But more than anything else, Heidegger continues, this power to intuit something that is absent, not on-hand, and not a being also eminently holds for the “more original (ursprünglicher)” and “fundamental” account of pure imagination in the first Critique—an account in which, as we have seen, imagination is “pure,” a priori, “transcendental,” and does not form images of absent (real past, real future; possible) beings, but “makes possible the essence of transcendence” as such (Heidegger, 1991, p. 134/141), that is, unfolds the constitutive absence from and within which any transcendent being is experienced and known. The imagination forms in advance, and before all experience of beings, the aspect of the horizon of objectivity as such. This formation of the view in the pure form of time not only precedes this or that experience of beings but is also prior to any such possible experience. In offering a pure view in this way, the imagination is in no case and in no wise dependent on the presence of a being. (Heidegger, 1991, p. 131/139) The productive imagination with which anthropology is concerned has to do only with the formation of the views of objects considered as empirically possible or impossible. On the other hand, in the Critique, the pure productive imagination is never concerned with the imaginative formation of objects but with the pure view of objectivity in general. […] Insofar as it forms transcendence, this imagination is rightly termed transcendental. In general, anthropology does not raise the question of transcendence. Nevertheless, the vain effort on the part of anthropology to interpret the imagination in a more original way shows that in the empirical interpretation of the faculties of the soul, which interpretation, by the way, can never be purely empirical, there is always a reference to transcendental structures. But these structures can neither be firmly established in anthropology nor derived from it through mere assumptions. But what is the nature of that mode of knowledge which effects the disclosure of transcendence (Enthüllung der Transzendenz), i.e., which reveals the pure synthesis and thereby completes the explication of the imagination? (Heidegger, 1991, p. 132/140)

As we can see, Heidegger recasts Kant’s “fourfold shift” within the broader framework of the question of Being and the openness of its horizon (Heidegger, 1991, p. 127/134). The internal distinction reproductive/productive imagination is intersected with the asymmetric difference empirical/transcendental (Heidegger, 1991, pp.  127–32/133–41); and the “foundational” role of transcendentally pure

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“productive” and truly spontaneous imagination is reinterpreted as the “ground of the intrinsic possibility of the ontological synthesis,” establishing the essential unity of transcendence as a whole, being the “root” of other faculties, and granting the preliminary openness of the horizon of objectivity previous to any experience of beings (Heidegger, 1991, p. 134/141). Obviously, since Being is not a being, it does not come as a surprise that imagination (presented from the outset as “unbounded to beings”) shows a certain solidarity with the main issue of ontology, namely, Being qua being—especially if it is suitably freed from any further ontic commitment and understood as “pure,” “productive,” and truly creative, that is, “‘creative’ only on the ontological level and never on the ontic” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 124/128). As a result, understood in its derived, empirical, and “preliminary” sense—which includes artistic invention—productive imagination is simply the view of possible or impossible entities; despite its dedication to absence, it is still ontic. By contrast, taken in its original, transcendental, and fundamental sense, PI fulfills the ontological task of having transcendence “as a theme” and, ultimately, “disclosing transcendence (Enthüllung der Transzendenz)” (Heidegger, 1991, p. 133/140). Now, whereas ontic productive imagination is always false—in the strict cognitive sense of the “agreement to the object” (Heidegger, 1991, p.  118/122; Kant, 1904, p. 196; 1911, p. 157)—ontological productive imagination is always true. But it is “true” in the sense of an ursprüngliche Wahrheit: Ontological knowledge “figures” transcendence, and this figure is nothing other than the holding open of the horizon within which the Being of beings can be viewed in advance. Provided that truth means: the unconcealment of …, then transcendence is original truth. But truth itself must be understood both as dis-closure of Being and overtness of the entity. If ontological knowledge discloses the horizon, its truth lies in letting beings be encountered within this horizon. (Heidegger, 1991, pp. 123–24/128)

The λόγος of “productive imagination” is ontologically true beyond (and before) any ontic criteria of truth and falseness. It “reveals,” “discloses,” “uncovers,” “opens,” and “lets open” what Heidegger calls the “horizon” within which “the Being of beings can be viewed in advance.” It is “true” in the strict “phenomenological” sense spelled out in Sein und Zeit §7: “it lets what is seen to be seen as something unconcealed” (Heidegger, 1927, p. 29/33). Thanks to this move, Heidegger literally invents the first “hermeneutical-phenomenological” concept of PI. More precisely, when (1) the radical (not relative) absence, originally (not derivatively) figured by pure transcendental (not empirical) power of imagination, meets (2) the idea of an ontological (not ontic) truth, a priori (not a posteriori), revealing, disclosing, and uncovering (not being in agreement with) the horizon of Being (not beings)—“productive imagination” is finally ready to turn into a “phenomenological” concept. And it counts as “phenomenological” for one simple reason. As Heidegger explicitly puts it, “phenomenology” does not actually deal with the “vulgar concept of phenomenon” but with the “phenomenological concept of phenomenon.” “Vulgar” (vulgäre) phenomena are simply encountered in the world; they “show themselves” initially and for the most part as worldly beings. By contrast, a

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“phenomenological” phenomenon is “something that is concealed (verborgen), in contrast to what initially and for the most part does show itself” (Heidegger, 1927, p. 31/35). Interestingly enough, Sein und Zeit illustrates the two concepts of “phenomenon” by means of Kantian examples: If by the self-showing we understand those beings that are accessible, for example in Kant’s sense of empirical intuition, the formal concept of phenomenon can be used legitimately. In this usage phenomenon has the meaning of the vulgar concept of phenomenon. But this vulgar one is not the phenomenological concept of phenomenon. In the horizon of the Kantian problem what is understood phenomenologically by the term phenomenon (disregarding other differences) can be illustrated when we say that what already shows itself in appearances prior to and always accompanying what we vulgarly understand as phenomena, though unthematically, can be brought thematically to self-showing. What thus shows itself in itself (“the forms of intuition”) are the phenomena of phenomenology. For, clearly, space and time must be able to show themselves in this way. They must be able to become phenomena. (Heidegger, 1927, p. 28/31)

For Heidegger, pure intuitions of space and time—that, as we have shown, Kant relates to PI—are clear examples of phenomenological phenomena, for they show themselves as initially concealed and “essentially belong to what initially and for the most part shows itself in such a way that it constitutes its meaning and ground” (Heidegger, 1927, p.  31/35). By contrast, Kant’s objects of empirical intuition, showing themselves from the outset, are examples of “vulgar” phenomena. The bond between PI and “phenomenology” is finally tightened: what is originally exhibited by the former becomes precisely the theme of the latter, that is, a “phenomenological phenomenon.” All painstaking empirical-psychological distinctions established by Wolff or Baumgarten, still operating in the background of Kant’s Anthropology, are now plainly and simply out of the “phenomenological” picture. No further diagrams, articulating faculties, or powers of the soul will be found in any phenomenological treatment of productive imagination. Recast and rephrased as “empirical,” “ontic,” or “derived”—bound to a concept of truth as agreement with the object—any attempt to articulate what shows itself as mundane, only refers to “vulgar phenomena.” And, taken in this sense, even inventive imagination, no matter if productive, turns out to be merely a matter of empirical psychology or anthropology, not of phenomenology. On the other hand, absorbed by the centripetal force of a phenomenology whose sole task is to account for “phenomenological phenomena” and ultimately to the “phenomenological phenomenon” par excellence, that is, Being; assigned to an original concept of truth as “unconcealment;” taken in its “pure” and “original” sense—imagination can now play a deep ontological role. As soon as (1) Kant’s objects of pure intuition, space and time, (2) are interpreted from the standpoint of the question of Being, and (3) Being is phenomenologically recast as the “phenomenological phenomenon,” showing itself qua concealed in a “distinctive” and “exceptional” sense (in einem ausgezeichneten, ausnehmende Sinne), then (4) PI— intended as the power to exhibit and reveal something that is not a being (not a

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mundane entity, not an empirical object of intuition, not something present in any sense and hence nothing that shows itself as a vulgar phenomenon) but a radical absence constitutive of but irreducible to beings—can finally turn into a core concept of phenomenology.

4 Following the Lead If I am not mistaken, any variation on Heidegger’s original theme—the theme, that is, of (1) bringing together Kant’s fourfold shift with the ontological difference and (2) endowing transcendental imagination with the power to be “originally” true in a non-ontic sense (“revealing” or “disclosing” a radical, unprecedented and yet constitutive and pervasive lack of presence)—should count as a variety of a distinctively “hermeneutical-phenomenological” account of PI. Both an example and an original development of Heidegger’s “phenomenological” transformation of PI can be found in Paul Ricœur’s studies on imagination.4 Ricœur’s studies deserve to be mentioned for at least three reasons. (1) They entirely revolve around the distinction reproductive/productive imagination; (2) by confronting the history of Western philosophy as a whole, they show with great precision what happens to such a distinction once seen from a phenomenological angle; and (3) they tackle the difference productive/reproductive imagination not as a mere distinction between two faculties, but as a way to “problematize” and “make teeter” (problematiser, faire vaciller) our understanding of words such as “reality, world, and truth” (Ricœur, 1975, pp. 279/261, 288/270). According to Ricœur, the traditional philosophical understanding of imagination has mainly been focused on “reproductive” imagination. From Plato to Wittgenstein, Western philosophy is held captive of the treacherous “original/copy paradigm,” that is, the assumption according to which imagination is essentially the present reproduction of something that is absent (Ricœur, 1973–1974, pp. 3–6). Intended in this rather broad sense, any “reproductive” account of imagination follows the same path: (1) it starts with the idea of an original presence (the model) turned into an absence; (2) such an original missing presence is illustrated or replicated by the debased and yet actual presence of something (the copy) that resembles, more or less faithfully, the original; and (3) the absent origin turned into a model—and whose originality is both presupposed and lost, referred to and deflected, represented and distorted—is therefore the only way to measure the truth of imagination (for it is the model that is always presented-as-absent by the analogical surrogate of the image). On the basis of this general set of assumptions, imagination is traditionally described as (1) the power to “represent” or reconvey in absentia something like an

 I would like to thank George Taylor for helping me finding the original transcripts of Ricoeur’s lectures. For an instructive overall view of Ricoeur’s lectures on imagination, see Taylor (2006). 4

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original presence; (2) qua psychological faculty, it is something “intermediary,” for its truth claims have to be assessed with respect to the truth claims of cognitively stronger powers correlated to the original presence itself (like perception or understanding); and (3) it is a “deceptive” power, for it gives the impression to be in front of something that “seems” to be present but is not. As a result, an “image” can only be true insofar as it accurately “reproduces”—resembles, is in agreement with, corresponds to, and so forth—the (absent) original; and yet the more it is “true,” the more it is “deceptive.” Needless to say, according to this general paradigm, a “fiction” is nothing but a “false image.” Thus, measured against the ideal of truth-adequacy, imagination structurally lacks truth. (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 3) The backlash on the phenomenology of image […] is the following: within the spectrum of contradictory descriptive features, it is the function of deception and illusion that is privileged. Imagination is essentially a misleading power. (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 4)

Now, this overall quite dismissive appraisal of imagination (reproductive, derived, ancillary, illusory, etc.) is not something fortuitous. According to Ricœur, this traditional view has deep ontological reasons, for it rests entirely on the secret commitment of the Western philosophical tradition to a “metaphysics of the full presence.” At the end of the day, it is a philosophy of the fullness of Being that rules out any originary character to something that is a function of absence. (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 4)

On the other hand, if PI is intended as the driving force acting behind the production of metaphors in general and political, scientific, or poetical fictions in particular (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 4; Ricœur, 1975; Ricœur, 1981), then it becomes not “duplicative” but “creative.” Understood within the iconic paradigm of the metaphysics of presence, its fictional outcomes are necessarily false and deceptive. Consequently, in order to restore the very idea of a “true” fiction, one has to take the concept of “truth” in an entirely new and different sense—a sense that has nothing to do with adequacy, correspondence, or agreement. It is noteworthy that, at this point, Ricœur emphatically presents Kant as having literally inaugurated a new era, rejecting altogether “the ontological primacy of presence, the epistemic primacy of perception, the phenomenological primacy of representation, and the critical primacy of illusion” (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 9). Kant, Ricœur says, made “pure” imagination qua original production prior to imagination as a derivative form of reproduction (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 10) and focused on the transcendental power to synthesize and schematize (Ricœur, 1973–1974, pp. 9–10). But how is Ricœur’s distinctive reading of PI related to Heidegger? Certainly not in the sense that he is “inspired” by, repeats, or refers to Heidegger’s particular way of interpreting Kant in the Kantbuch. It rather depends, more fundamentally, on the characteristic and unique gesture of assigning to PI a form of “ontological truth” (as opposed to a merely “ontic truth”qua agreement with the facts). This more substantial point of agreement is especially noticeable in Ricœur’s critical assessment of the limits of Kant’s otherwise momentous “breakthrough” (Ricœur, 1973–1974, pp.  6, 24–30). In Ricœur’s view, Kant’s PI is in fact still

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phenomenologically inadequate because of its lack of truth. It has no “mundane or cosmic dimension” (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p.  13); it does not “disclose any new dimension of the real” (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 11). As a result, it prevents the possibility of endowing imagination with some revealing power (pouvoir révélant) with respect to some experience of the world. Imagination does not “reveal” anything (ne ‘révèle’ rien). (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 11)

The real issue, lurking behind Ricœur phenomenological-hermeneutical appraisal of PI—as stated also in The Rule of Metaphor—is that of “the truth of the imaginary,” of its “ontological power” (Ricœur, 1975, p.  61/48). Once freed from the constraints (ontological, epistemological, psychological, and critical) of the metaphysics of the full presence, PI finally appears not as the mere ontic-factual power to fabricate from scratch some (false) images of the actual state of the world, but as the ontological-fundamental power to “reveal” or “unconceal” something “true” of the world—something that is structurally and vitally concealed. PI shows itself as the power in which “creation and revelation coincide (créer et révéler coincident)” (Ricœur, 1975, p. 310/291). The original move of Ricœur with respect to Heidegger’s Kantbuch is to endow the “inventive” aspect of what Kant considered to be empirical PI with the ontological power to “project and reveal a world” proper to transcendental PI (Ricœur, 1975, p. 120/108). And it is precisely in this sense—that is, insofar as it has the “revealing” power to “liberate an ontological potency, the power to say Being” (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 72)—that productive imagination in general and poetical fictions in particular can finally be said to be “true”: true in a more original, ontological—not derived, ontic—sense (Ricœur, 1983). “Fictions” are certainly ontically false, for no actual entity or state of the world (past, present, or future) is the “original” of which they are “copies” or “reproductions;” and yet, they can be ontologically true. By suspending the ontic reference to the actual world, they gain the power to “open new dimensions” (Ricœur, 1973–1974, pp. 7–8) and “unconceal” (désoccultation) that layer of reality that phenomenology calls pre-objective and that, according to Heidegger, constitutes the horizon of all the manners we can inhabit the world” (Ricœur, 1981, p.  10). And, as Ricœur openly admits, The Heideggerian tone of these remarks is undeniable; the opposition between truth-as-­ manifestation and truth-as-agreement, familiar to us since the exposition in Sein und Zeit, is easily recognized here. (Ricœur, 1975, p. 388/430) We reach, although from a different path, the Kantian concept of Darstellung, i.e., the power of imagination to “present” the ideas of reason. Yet there is an immense difference: what is so “presented” are not ideas but manners of being-in-the-world. Shouldn’t imagination be that by means of which I “figure,” “schematize,” “present” manners to inhabit the world? It is in such way that it “gives more” (Kant) to conceive; for there would be more in the being-in-the-world and its existential virtualities, in its potencies to inhabit, than in our discourses. (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 8) If there is something in Heidegger gesturing toward this, it is the affinity between the Ereignis of the logos and the Ereignis of the physis. The discourse happens (advient) and says what it undiscloses. (Ricœur, 1973–1974, p. 72)

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Ricœur’s example neatly illustrates—with great originality indeed—the first “hermeneutical” way in which PI turns into a full-fledged phenomenological concept. (1) The schematizing power of pure transcendental productive imagination to “present” the ideas of reason is now recast in terms of modes of being-in-the-world; (2) it is paralleled with artistic invention, suitably reformulated in non-subjective terms as the creative force of poetical fiction (rooted in the logos, not in the soul or in the human psyche); and (3) it is also subordinated to the distinction between ontic (adequacy, agreement, etc.) and ontological truth (unconcealment, revelation). Accordingly, PI now appears to be the power to bring forward (4) something original, unprecedented, and “experience constitutive” (now “manner of being-in-the-­ world unfolding”); (5) it is still more fundamental (“ontological”) than mere reproductive (now “ontic” or “onto-theological”) imagination; and (6) it still plays a somehow transcendental role (although, again, such a role is no longer understood as subjective but as logos-related). (7) Finally, all these “transcendental” features are ascribed by Ricœur to the once merely “empirical” inventive-poetical variety of PI, that is, to the artistic power to freely shape and reshape something given in manifold alternative ways, despite any actual or possible “ontic” constraint. (8) However, what is now shaped and reshaped is not a complex phantasm, an object, or an entity, but “reality” as a whole, the “world” as it actually is, our actual “manner-of-being in the world.” And such a form of making and unmaking is, again, (9) assigned to the ontological-original concept of truth. Although expressed with different jargons and elaborated in different frameworks, Cassirer’s theory of “symbolic forms” or Nelson Goodman’s idea of “world making” certainly show some striking similarities with Ricœur’s account of PI. Yet what singles out Ricœur’s “phenomenological” treatment from its non-­ phenomenological siblings is precisely its reliance on Heidegger’s idea of “phenomenology,” built upon the contrast between Being as retreat and Truth as disclosure versus Being as presence and Truth as adequacy; for the crucial point, made explicit by Ricœur, is the phenomenological connection between imagination and truth. If truth is understood as adequacy, according to the original/copy model, then only certain cases of reproductive imagination can be said to be true, namely those in which the image actually resembles that to which it is supposed to resemble (true but misleading). Correlatively, PI, presenting something that is itself “original” (and not something pointing at an “original” of which it is the image), is never true (although still misleading). It can be inspiring, thought-provoking, and even heuristically useful—but not true. By contrast, if one leaves truth as adequacy behind and understands it in a more “original” way, as Heidegger suggested, that is, as “ἀλήθεια,” “dis-closure,” and so forth, the whole picture appears to be completely reversed. “Productive imagination” now (1) has something to do with truth (and is no longer regarded as essentially false); (2) its relation to truth is even more fundamental than truth in the sense of adæquatio; and (3) its power is no longer limited to the “psychological” (individual or collective) instigation or establishment of feelings, opinions, and so forth,

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but is now extended to the “hermeneutical” reshaping of reality as such. It is not just a “way of world making,” as Goodman would have said, but a way to have “the truth of Being” revealed. If this is correct, Ricœur’s endorsement of the traditional talk opposing “productive” and “reproductive” imagination is not even binding, for it could suitably be replaced by the language of the ontological difference: a difference between an ontological imagination (Being-revealing, transcendentally world-shaping), as it were, and an ontic imagination (entity-referring and world-picturing). And despite a whole host of undeniable similarities, both local and global, one cannot find anything not even remotely similar in either Cassirer or Goodman.

5 The Second Way to Phenomenology If we now turn to Husserl, the picture of PI appears as entirely different—and not only because we find no trace here of any distinction between “ontic” and “ontological” truth. To begin with, we must keep in mind that Husserl’s texts connect the language of “productivity” with that of “imagination” in two remarkably different contexts. The first context is explicitly dubbed as “psychological” and singles out one of the many ways in which the word “phantasy” is usually employed in ordinary language (Hua XXIII, pp.  1–7/1–5). What “psychology” calls “productive phantasy” (produktive Phantasie) is, in fact, a concept “coming from the ordinary life”— a concept of which phenomenology has to provide a careful descriptive account and an eidetic clarification (Hua XXIII, p. 1/1). Properly described, what is ordinarily called “productive phantasy” is more suitably dubbed as “arbitrarily formative phantasy” (willkürlich gestaltende Phantasie) (Hua XXIII, p. 3/3). The second context is explicitly called “transcendental” and openly refers to Kant (Hua XI, pp. 275–76/410, 392/486). In this specific sense, “productive imagination” (produktive Einbildungskraft) is not an “ordinary” concept to be descriptively clarified. It is a full-fledged technical-philosophical concept, to be discussed and questioned as for its phenomenological soundness; and once recast in strictly phenomenological terms, Kant’s “profound, but obscure doctrine of the synthesis of productive imagination,” Husserl claims, disappears and turns out to be “nothing other than what we call passive constitution” (Hua XI, p. 275/410). Thus, Husserl separates the treatment of the empirical-psychological phenomenon of the “arbitrarily formative phantasy” from the transcendental problem of the synthesis—the latter being more general and fundamental than the former. And one might have noticed that he also terminologically disconnects what is ordinarily called “productive phantasy” (Phantasie) from what Kant specifically calls “productive imagination” (Einbildungskraft), so as to distinguish two quite different issues that should not be conflated. Husserl thus already separates what Kant’s fourfold shift brought under one common heading.

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More precisely, within Husserl’s account, Kant’s pure PI (with its remarkable power to synthesize the manifold, determine the form of sensibility a priori in accordance with the unity of apperception, schematize the categories, etc.) has literally nothing to do with what is ordinarily called “productive phantasy.” The latter is a structurally “vague” first-order concept, coming from ordinary life, and used to refer to some specific lived-experiences; the former is a second-order “technical” concept, elaborated within a theoretical-philosophical framework so as to indicate the “universal theme which is alluded to under the obscure Kantian rubric of ‘synthesis’” (Hua XI, p. 392/486). Thus, productive imagination as the “imaging force” to synthesize a priori (Kant, 1904, p. 103; 1911, p. 78) and productive phantasy as the ordinary name for a particular “formative” kind of lived-experience, as the one exemplified—paradigmatically, although not exclusively—in artistic experience, have to be sharply separated. This separation, however, is not meant to reintroduce the distinction between transcendental and empirical imagination. For, as already pointed out, in Husserl’s view, the transcendental function of synthesis is not a matter of “imagination” at all. The role Kant ascribed to the synthesis of “imagination” has in fact to be played by the concept of “passive constitution”: Kant was not in the position to recognize the essence of passive production as intentional constitution. (Hua XI, p. 276/410)

Accordingly, “passive association” has now an increasingly important and constitutive role—more crucial than that of PI itself. Taken in its broadest sense, association is “one of the most important of all and completely universal functioning shapes of passive genesis” (Hua XI, p. 76/119), “a primordial phenomenon and form of order within passive synthesis” (Hua XI, p. 117/162), and the most general form of “universal unification of the life of an ego” (Hua XI, p. 405/505). All experience and knowledge, as such, ultimately rest on the constitutive passive synthesis of association, not on the purely spontaneous and a priori activity of pure transcendental PI. Interestingly enough, Husserl does not see this dismissal of transcendental PI as a departure from Kant. Unfortunately, we will not be able to address this issue in detail here. It suffices to remind, however, that by explictly praising Kant’s “brilliant doctrine of the transcendental necessity of association” (Hua XI, pp. 118–19/163–64), Husserl considers passive association—not PI—as the power to operate the most fundamental “transcendental synthesis [...] necessary for the genesis of a subjectivity” (Hua XI, p. 123/171). This brings us back to the first “psychological” context. What does Husserl mean by “productive phantasy” (henceforth: PPh)? As all “ordinary terms,” the word “phantasy” is, according to Husserl, “vague and ambiguous” (Hua XXIII, p.  1/1); it harbors several meanings that should be disentangled. One of these meanings is the following: At least, a narrower and, to be sure, very common concept of phantasy, which psychology has taken up under the title of productive phantasy, stands in close relation to this sphere. Productive phantasy is arbitrarily formative phantasy; it is precisely phantasy in this sense that the artist particularly has to use. However, one must distinguish two further concepts here, one wider and one narrower, depending on whether or not one understands the arbitrariness of the forming (Willkürlichkeit des Gestaltens) in the sense of free poetically

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inventing (feigning) (freien Erdichtens (Fingierens)). Certainly, the historian also uses productive phantasy, phantasy that gives form arbitrarily. But he does not invent. By means of form-giving phantasy on the basis of secured data, he seeks to outline an overall intuition of personalities, destinies, eras—an intuition of actual realities, not of imaginations. (Hua XXIII, pp. 3/3)5

Although Husserl will not follow this narrow-use equating phantasy as such with productive phantasy, the core intuition of the “popular concept” (populäre Begriff) expressed by this narrow “ordinary talk” (gewöhnliche Rede) appears to be correct. What phenomenology must do is to suitably describe the eidetic features of this specific form of “phantasy consciousness” that is both “formative” (gestaltend) and “arbitrary” (willkürlich). Just as any other form of phantasy consciousness, PPh is an objectifying act whose object is intuitively “brought to appearance” as “hovering in front of us” (vorschwebend) in a non-perceptual or quasi-perceptual way and in a positionally neutralized mode. What is distinctive, however, is that its correlate has the two following additional features: 1. It appears not just as a complex object but as a “configuration” or a “unitary formation” (Gestaltung, einheitliche Gestaltung) (Hua XXIII, p. 547/660). The notion of Gestaltung employed here by Husserl has two noticeable traits. On the one hand, Gestalt indicates a structured unity whose constitutive multiplicity is apprehended as variable, but whose mutual relations are somehow maintained. On the other, the suffix -ung indicates that the unity obtained is the result of a process, by means of which what was not factually or necessarily connected now happens to appear as brought together. Hence a “phantasy formation” (Phantasiegestaltung) is nothing but the appearing provisional configuration of a necessarily varying intuitive manifold. 2. The configuration brought to appearance is also “arbitrary” (willkürliche Gestaltung, willkürliche Sinngestaltung) (Hua XXIII, pp. 547–48/660–61). The relations bringing together the various and varying elements of the manifold in a contingent unity are in fact not necessarily determined by any constraints, be it ontological or experiential (p. 258/314). In perception, for instance, one should expect the temporal intentions to be restricted by some a priori necessities so as to unfold the appearance of one and the same actual object—in PPh, they don’t. A “phantasy enduring unity” qua arbitrary formation has exactly the features it displays, as many features as it displays, and for as long as it displays them (Hua XXIII, p. 283/342). Now, traits (1) and (2), defining PPh, are indifferent with respect to the well-known drastic changes undergone by Husserl’s overall treatment of “phantasy presentations.” Whether phantasy is thought of as an image consciousness without a physical basis (as in Husserl’s early account) or as a quasi-perception (as in Husserl’s mature account), its “productivity” is always and consistently understood by means of the concepts of “formation/configuration of sense” and “arbitrariness.”  The articulation of poetical invention and history in relation to the problem of the history of philosophy is discussed in Chap. 12 of this volume. 5

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One should further observe that all these traits manifestly reenact the empirical features of Wolff’s account of “fictions” and Kant’s account of “invention” (their being “compositions/decompositions,” arranged “pro arbitrio,” appearing as unities, not bound to the factual/possible constraints of ontology, unconcerned by the principles of contradiction and sufficient reason, etc.). We say “reenact” and not simply “repeat”—for Husserl removes such features from their “empirical-psychological” context and recasts them within the general framework of a phenomenological-­ eidetic inquiry. Thus, by adding the adjective “productive” to the word “phantasy,” the ordinary language of psychology signals what in phenomenological terms should rather be described as an eidetic change in the rules of appearance in general: what is “hovering in front of us”—in a neutralized, quasi-perceptual way and so forth—are manifold appearances that shouldn’t have been together, do not have to be together, and will eventually fall apart; and yet, they nevertheless appear as one, mutually related in one intuition, for no reason except the fact that they so appear. Not unlike Baumgarten, Husserl’s “rule of PPh” is nothing but the a priori rule of appearance as such. Now, although Husserl’s own technical terminology is far from being fixed on this specific point, some texts as the one just quoted clearly draw a line between “arbitrary” (willkürlich) and “free” (frei) “formative phantasy.” Moreover, while Husserl often affirms that, “phenomenologically” speaking, all correlates or “primary objects” of phantasy have to be dubbed as “figments” (Fikta) (Hua XXIII, pp. 67–68/72–73), he also recognizes the legitimacy of “ordinarily” distinguishing between a fictional and a nonfictional form of “productive phantasy.” In fact, as we have seen, he explicitly points out that, according to the “popular concept,” the historian, no less than the artist, brings “arbitrary formations” to intuitive appearance—and yet only the artist is somehow “free” and produces “fictions.” The historian does not merely “recollect” the past, he or she “reconstructs” it. “Understanding” history is not a matter of memory but of bound PPh (Hua VIII, p. 234). Accordingly, what binds the PPh of the historian is precisely the will to understand the reality of the past so that all arbitrary variations of the “formation” occur within such a restricted scope. The historian (a) operates within the “theoretical attitude,” is bound to “truth” and “being,” and looks for a “cognitive” intuition; (b) tries to draw an “overall coherent view” (zusammenhängende Anschauung) of facts, events, and so forth; the overall view is meant to present facts (c) appearing as they actually are (or were); and it does so (d) out of secured data (Hua VIII, pp. 101, 279–82). The “theme” of the historian is the actual world as it was, and phantasy formations are means by which this theme is brought to intuitive appearance. Husserl calls them “historical pictures (geschichtliche Gebilde)” (Hua VIII, p. 280). Historical pictures are “formed” in a way that is arbitrary but not completely free, since they have to be not in contrast but in harmony with everything else we know or might eventually know about the actual world. If a “phantasy object” in general is literally impossible as a “unity of coexistence” with what is present (Hua XXIII, p. 68/73), “historical pictures” represent the paradoxical case of a “phantasy object” that is nowhere to be found in the actual world but still has to “match” with our factual knowledge of the actual world; it is something that is not in the actual

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past and nevertheless makes sense of the actual past. Differently put, a “historical picture” is a full-fledged cognitive arrangement based on productive phantasy in order to provide a “fitting” and therefore “overall coherent” intuition of (past) actual realities (Hua XXIII, p. 3/3). Thus, if all objects of phantasy should be called “figments,” then the bound arbitrary phantasy formations called “historical pictures” are nothing but “centripetal figments” or “harmonizing figments,” that is, “figments” that, despite their conflicting status with the actual state of the world (present-past), aim at providing an overall “unity of concordance” (Einheit der Einstimmung) with it. They are contrasted with the “centrifugal figments” brought to appearance by the artist. “Fictional figments,” as it were, escalate the “unity of conflict” (Einheit der Widerstreit) characterizing every figment as such. The artist’s “free arbitrary formations,” have in fact a different structure: (a) they occur within the “esthetical attitude” (Hua VIII, p. 101)—an attitude that is affective and not cognitive, refers not to “being” but “values,” and looks for an “axiological intuition” (axiologische Anschauung) (Hua IV, p. 9/10); (b) they try to draw a “non-overall-coherent-view” of something (c) that is just as it appears, (d) out of anything whatsoever (beliebig). Thus “feigning,” intended in this narrow sense as “poetic invention” (erdichten), is a form of arbitrary formation that is “free” at least in three very different senses. First, it is “free” with respect to truth and knowledge. Not because poetical fictions are structurally false, but because free arbitrary formations—as all objects of axiological constitution and aesthetical attitude—have to be “felt” (not known, not assumed to be, etc.) as holding together. Such a feeling (Gefühl) is not a merely subjective psychological event. It is rather a constitutive-intentional performance. It is, quite literally, a way to “make sense” of what is brought to appearance by bringing it to appearance. What unites the various and varying bits and pieces of the arbitrary formation is nothing but the feeling of their unity. Despite its constitutive variations and contingent configuration, the arbitrarily formed manifold now appears as “one” only because it is felt as “one” (not because it is actually known to be, could be, or might be or has been “one”). Hence, asking for the “truth” or the “cognitive content” of poetic fictions is tantamount as missing or downplaying the intentional role of the “affective synthesis” (Gefühlssynthesis) (Hua XXIII, p. 461/550) responsible for the constitution of free phantasy “poetic” formations. Poetical fictions are free from any cognitive constraint and commitment to truth, and nevertheless they are not unrelated with the latter. They are neither “false” because their appearance does not cognitively “fit” with our knowledge of the actual world (as in the case of the historical pictures), nor “true” in any ontological-original or transcendental sense. They are simply beyond truth and falsity. They do “fit” with our knowledge of the actual world—but affectively, not cognitively; they hold together—thanks to the sole feeling of their together-ness, the same feeling involved in the mundane constitution of values. Free artistic PPh is thus better described as intuitive-affective: it does not intentionally and intuitively exhibit what is known to be (or could be, or might be, or has been, etc.), but what is affectively valuable. It is, as Husserl puts it, a Wertnehmen (Hua IV, p.  8/10). Those very same feelings constantly and intersubjectively

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constituting the value of mundane objects, experiences, and so forth, are now mobilized to bring together an arbitrary formation despite its unstable “hovering,” its unpredictable contingency and variability, and its manifest conflict with these very same mundane objects, experiences, and so forth. Secondly, it is “free” with respect to Being, for what is affectively valuable in poetical fictions is their simple Appearance (Erscheinen). Again, free arbitrary formations do not need to “fit” with what is real or possibly real, for they appear precisely as being in conflict with the former and, sometimes, even with the latter. On the contrary, as every other correlate of phantasy consciousness, free arbitrary formations are also characterized by multiple forms of “conflict” (Hua XXIII, pp. 152–153/180). But poetical fictions do more than this; and they are not to be conflated with the “mere playful” (rein spielerisch) activity of daydreaming either. Thus, in some sense, “free,” “random,” and “freely arising,” phantasies or “absolutely free phantasies” are not PPh in the inventive-poetic sense (Hua XXIII, pp. 6/6, 236/288). For only in the latter case freedom with respect to truth and being is supplemented by the affective value of appearance. This is precisely the reason why, as Husserl puts it, “the phantasy attitude itself belongs to the aesthetic” (Hua XXIII, p. 514/615). If we contrast this view to Ricœur’s, PPh does not refer to the world in a biased or metaphorical way, breaking the reference to actual beings as to reveal the overflowing retreat of Being. It rather exhibits, in an unbiased and straightforward way, the affective consistency of Appearance. Thirdly and finally, poetical fictions are “free” with respect to the World as well. And I would like to conclude on this point.

6 On Destructive Imagination and Its Virtues In the section devoted to Ricœur, we have asked the following question: what does PI actually produce once understood phenomenologically? Not phantasms, non-­ causally induced perceptions to be further decomposed and recomposed, and not even syntheses, schemes, or symbols. PI “produces a world of its own which enlarges our world;” it “creates nonexistent worlds” whose broken reference to the actual existing world “discloses new dimensions of being” (see: Geniusas, 2016, p. 114). Thus, according to Ricœur, the talk of “producing” a non-existing world “enlarging our world” ultimately boils down to the idea that delivering alternative “descriptions”—or, even better “versions”—of the factual world may transform the way in which we refer to, perceive, and feel about the factual world itself and could therefore modify the way we experience, desire, act, and so forth, within the latter. Accordingly, “producing” a different non-existing world means transcending the actually existing one and revealing its ontological ground (Grund), that is, its “ungrounded” (Ab-gründige) contingency and inner possibilities. In sum, once bound to the ontological difference, what PI can certainly do is to transcend actual entities

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and facts so as to reveal their ontological contingency by producing alternative “fictional” worlds—both different from and similar to the factual world in which actual entities and existing facts are located. Now, Ricœur’s PI can certainly put the actual world at some distance and even perform a kind of critical epochē—but what it is not supposed to do is to sever the bond with the world as such. It is meant to reveal the contingency of this actual state of the world here and now, by suspending its position of existence, but it should not and cannot make known the contingency of the world itself qua world. In sum, Ricœur’s PI (and more generally, any phenomenological-hermeneutical account of productive imagination) can transcend entities, reveal Being, have original truth claims, constitute reality, enlarge the factual world, and so forth, but should not destitute the primacy of the world as such; it can transgress the boundaries of the world as it actually is; invent inexistent persons, things, situations, and events; but not transgress the world itself. Having an ontologically “unveiling” role and not a merely ontic “referential” task, hermeneutically conceived PI can be at best “other-­ worldly”—as Goodman would have put it—but never “unworldly.” The concept of “Unworld” (Unwelt) I have just alluded to is by contrast Husserlian. As we can read in Ideas I, §47, the actual world—he says—[is] a specific case of manifold possible worlds and unworlds, that for their part are nothing other than correlates of essentially possible variations of the idea of “experiencing consciousness” with more or less ordered experiential connections (Hua III/1, p. 100/86)

The claim is quite unusual: the actual world is only a special case of a multitude of worlds (so far, so good)—and un-worlds! What is an “unworld” then?6 As Husserl puts it, taken within the natural attitude, the “actual world”—the only one we are constantly aware of—might look might look as in this passage of Ideas I that we have discussed already in the previous chapter: I am conscious of a world, endlessly spread out in space, endlessly becoming and having become in time. I am conscious of it, and that means above all that I immediately find it intuitively, I experience it. Through seeing, touching, hearing, and so forth, in the various manners of sensory perception […]. Animals, including humans, are also immediately there for me; I look at them, I see them, I hear them approaching, I grasp them by the hand […]. They, too, are on hand in my field of intuition as actualities, even if I do not pay attention to them. But it is also not necessary that they directly find themselves in my field of perception, and the same holds for any other objects. Without being themselves perceived, indeed, without being intuitively present themselves, actual objects are there for me as determinate, more or less familiar objects, in unison with the objects currently perceived. […] This world is not thereby there for me as a mere world of things; instead, with the same immediacy, it is there as a world of values, a world of goods, a practical world. (Hua III/1, pp. 56–8/48–50)

Now, whatever is presented, pictured, and referred to as something like this—something being or pretending to be the inexhaustible correlate of mutually related and “complex systems of harmonizing syntheses” of intersubjectively granted  On this point, see Chap. 6. And for the analysis of the syntheses of experiences below, see the framework developed in Chap. 2. 6

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“perceptions” and “evaluations,” transcending my own experience as well as the experience of any empirical concrete subjects, and yet fitting together—deserves to be posited or quasi-posited as “worldly.” More precisely, the appearance of an actual world rests at least on what might be called the “six syntheses of experience,” variously spelled out in Husserl’s corpus, starting from Thing and Space (Hua XVI): (1) the synthesis of fulfillment, thanks to which pro-tensional adumbrations are filled by novel impressions (the perceptual object unfolds itself temporally); (2) the synthesis of concordance, thanks to which adumbrations hold together in the unity of one object, unfolding itself temporally; (3) the synthesis of identification, thanks to which the object is experienced as the same, only variously perceived; (4) the synthesis between perceptions, thanks to which one can perceive one object, then another object, previously pregiven in its external horizon, than move back to the previous one in one single coherent and temporally self-displaying experience; (5) the synthesis of memory, thanks to which what is actually experienced can be recollected as having been actually experienced; and (6) the synthesis of imagination, where what is factually experienced can be counterfactually conceived as being otherwise as it is or even as not being at all. Mutatis mutandis, all these features can be generalized to the experience of the spiritual world. Thus, whatever is referred to or appears (a) through an experience in which manifold adumbrations (sensible or affective) consistently “hold together” into one and the same posited object, and (b) manifold objects consistently hold together in their mutual and perceivable (causal or motivational) relations into one and the same posited empirical environment, (c) an experience that, in turn, consistently “holds together” with other past and eventually future experiences of a progressively unfolding posited “empirical world” that can be counterfactually be imagined otherwise—whatever appears in this way, with such a “style,” can be safely posited as actually existing “in the world.” Even the imaginary worlds may count as “possible worlds” with reference to this core sense. And, in fact, let us recall, once again and in greater detail, how Husserl describes an unworld: Rather it is quite conceivable that experience does not reduce to an illusion through conflicting evidence merely in one individual instance. So, too, it is quite conceivable that not every illusion gives notice of a deeper truth (as is the case de facto) and that not every conflict is, in its setting, precisely what is required by more comprehensive connections to preserve the coherence of the whole. It is conceivable that experience is teeming with irresolvable ­conflicts, conflicts that are irresolvable not only for us but in themselves; that experience in a fit of obstinacy shows itself all at once to be opposed to the presumption that it coherently sustains its positing of things. In sum, it is conceivable that the connectedness of experience loses the fixed, regulated order of profiles, construals, appearances—that there is no longer a world. (Hua III/1, p. 103/88)

Instead of harmonic and mutually consistent unities of experience, there are ongoing conflictual “concatenations of experiences,” whose correlates dissolve into mere Appearances without Being, that is, without being either actually or possibly or even quasi-posited:

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fleeting stopovers for intuitions that would be mere analogues of intuitions of a thing, since such analogues are entirely incapable of constituting sustained “realities,” enduring unities that “exist in themselves, whether they are perceived or not.” (Hua III/1, pp. 103–4/88)

An “unworld,” Husserl says, appears as a manifold of “crude unity formations” (rohe Einheitsbildungen) suggesting intuitions of things that cannot hold, objects that do not endure, for some or all of the six synthesis fail to be achieved. What “un-­makes” a world, as it were, is thus the conflictual inconsistency of its empirical style, bringing us back and forth from Seztung to Schein. An Erfahrungszusammenhang whose correlate displays, quite paradoxically, no empirical regularities at all: objects that irregularly collapse into their presenting adumbrations, sensible and emotional; relations between objects that do not hold; nothing that could be named or judged anymore; nothing to act upon or assess; nothing to compare and contrast with the actual world either. It is hard not to think here of Kant’s famous example of the “red cinnabar”—an example Husserl had probably in mind while discussing Kant’s “brilliant idea” of a “transcendental necessity of association” (Hua XI, pp. 118–19/163–64). If cinnabar were now red, now black, now light now heavy, if a human being were now changed into this animal shape, now into that one, if on the longest day the land were covered now with fruits, now with ice and snow, then my empirical imagination would never even get the opportunity to think of heavy cinnabar on the occasion of the representation of the color red; or if a certain word were attributed now to this thing, now to that, or if one and the same thing were sometimes called this, sometimes that, without the governance of a certain rule to which the appearances are already subjected in themselves, then no empirical synthesis of reproduction could take place. (Kant, 1911, pp. 100–1)

This is precisely the momentous power of unrestricted free arbitrary formative phantasy: the power to show what happens when the fundamental synthesis of association is undone. The power to intuit an unworld. Husserl’s free PPh is even more “exorbitant” than Wolff’s or Kant’s “ruleless” inventive PI gone wild, for it is precisely the power to “undo” the fundamental syntheses upon which the style of the world ultimately rests. And that is because the “rules to which the appearances are already subjected in themselves”—and upon which the very possibility of the syntheses of reproduction relies—are, according to Husserl, contingent as well. Unlike in Kant, here they are not a priori, but a posteriori; they are confirmed by the passive and “habitualized” repetition of the six syntheses of experience (Hua XVI, pp. 285 ff.). This brings us to the last point. There is indeed a specific form of intuitive act that, unlike any other, has precisely the power to bring forward intuitively one of the manifold conceivable unworlds that might be given to an intentional consciousness for which the empirical style of a world—contingent according to its a priori eidetic laws—falls apart. The intuition of a conceivable unworld, of a universal “Schein,” can only be provided thanks to a very specific intuitive act: an act of “free arbitrary formative phantasy,” not unlike the one ordinarily carried on by the artist.

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7 Coda The difference between the two original ways in which PI is tackled within phenomenology is definitely striking. Is PI free to “produce” imaginary objects, never perceived, experienced, or known before? New non-existing, fictional, quasi-worlds—disclosing Being and revealing the inner possibilities of the world itself? Or is it “free” in Husserl’s third strong sense? A sense in which, again, Wolff’s idea of an exhorbitans phantasy and Kant’s idea of a regellos invention somehow reach their paroxysm. For in Husserl’s framework, “freedom” is precisely intended as freedom to undo the constitutive synthesis of world-experience, to transgress the empirical style of a world so as to deliver, intuitively, what happens after the end of the world. The empirical, free PPh has the power to reverse the work of the transcendental syntheses of experience (what replaces Kant’s transcendental PI) and show what would happen if the latter were not at work. “Crude unity formations” might appear as adumbrations of objects—if they could only be stabilized as such, hold together: unstable transcendences, as it were—more than merely subjective impressions and phantasms, and less than worldly objects (things or values). Husserl’s free PPh, free to transgress the style of appearing of a world, can thus be as free as “world destructive” (Weltvernichtend). It is not just a matter of figuring mermaids or angels, worlds with ivory towers or spaceships. PPh is rather the only chance to bring to intuitive appearance, hovering in front of us, the eidetic possibility of the end of the world. Husserl does not follow Kant’s fourfold shift but neither does he contaminate it with the ontological difference: (1) he does not follow the distinction between productive and reproductive imagination, (2) he does not dwell on the asymmetric “fundamental” difference between pure transcendental and empirical imagination, (3) he rejects the former and takes over, by means of a phenomenology of “passive synthesis,” the problem of the syntheses fostered by it, and (4) he reformulates the latter in terms of “arbitrary formative phantasy.” Thus, the measure of the true power of “free arbitrary formative phantasy” or “poetic” or “inventive” productive imagination should not be found in the fact of “producing” fictional or possible worlds, nor simply in contributing to the constitution of the actual world. Husserl’s view does not charge art with the power to be “true” in a more fundamental sense than ordinary truth, ontic and bound to “vulgar” phenomena. Thus, the originality of Husserl’s picture is rather in the fact that free phantasy’s “fictional figments” mobilize emotions to constitute the contingent and variable unity of arbitrary formations, stating the affective consistency and intrinsic value of appearance as such, and have the power to test and provide the intuitive evidence of the boundaries of world experience as such by originally exhibiting unworlds. While the “hermeneutical” way of employing PI, inaugurated by Heidegger, has already seduced many authors, the “destructive” way of Husserl is still widely unexplored.

Part V

Paths

Chapter 8

The Vicissitudes of the Improper On the Way to the Categories

Mr. Lehrer: No “improper relationship”—define what you mean by that. The President: Well, I think you know what it means. Bill Clinton’s Interview (January 21, 1998)

1 Heidegger’s Smile In the 1973 Zähringen Seminar, Jean Beaufret asked Martin Heidegger the following question: “To what extent can it be said that there is no question of Being in Husserl?” (Heidegger, 1986, p.  110/64). After having first reviewed the internal evolution of the question of being from the interrogation of the sense of Being in Being and Time to the theme of the truth of Being that marked the so-called Kehre, Heidegger replies: “in the strict sense, there is no question of Being in Husserl.” Yet, Heidegger continues: “Husserl touches upon or struggles with the question of Being in chapter six of the Sixth Logical Investigation, with the notion of ‘categorial intuition’” (Heidegger, 1986, p. 111/65). This notion of categorial intuition remains, in any case, well entrenched in metaphysical thinking to the extent that “in order to arrive at categorial intuition, Husserl begins with sensuous intuition” (Heidegger, 1986, p. 111/65). Toward the end of the second session of this seminar, Heidegger, in recalling his writing My Way to Phenomenology, returns to this question by connecting Husserl with Brentano, and especially to the Brentano of the 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. According to Beaufret’s session notes, Heidegger adds: Now, my own point of departure […] was the same Franz Brentano—but not this work of 1874; it was far rather in On the Manifold Meanings of Being in Aristotle (1862, Freiburg) that Heidegger learned to read philosophy. A strange and significant commonality exists between Husserl and Heidegger, who both took their first steps with the same philosopher, but not with the same book. My Brentano, Heidegger says with a smile, is the Brentano of Aristotle! (Heidegger, 1986, pp. 123–4/72)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_8

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Reading both of these passages together, the following conclusion seems apparent: the passage through Brentano the interpreter of Aristotle allowed Heidegger, finally, to broach the question of Being, whereas Husserl, who learned how to think philosophically from Brentano the psychologist, could only remain at the antechamber of thinking of Being. Because Husserl failed to address the Aristotelian question of the manifold meanings of being, he could only dimly perceive—that is, as Heidegger puts it, “touch on”—the question of Being; at most, he could put into motion a “breakthrough,” but never fully grasp its significance and scope. It would be easy, however, to show that Heidegger conveniently simplifies the situation in attributing Husserl’s philosophical awakening to his reading of Brentano’s Psychology. Stated more accurately, Husserl’s Brentano is less the Brentano of his 1874 work, which Husserl studied unsystematically, as the Brentano he knew from his lectures on the reform of logic held in Vienna during winter semester 1884–1885.1 Indeed, it is worth recalling that even if Husserl always acknowledged the role played by Brentano in his philosophical formation, he never really mentions the Psychology as a source-book. For example, after thirty-five years, Husserl still evokes, in a manuscript from his Freiburg years, Brentano’s lectures in practical philosophy, but he does not say a word there about the Psychology.2 By contrast, one need only glance through the Philosophy of Arithmetic or look through the manuscripts and early texts from his Halle years to find more illuminating testimonies to his actual debt to Brentano: in courses entitled “On Elementary Logic and its Necessary Reform,” he [Brentano] dealt in a detailed manner, and by way of always novel and creative forms, with the descriptive psychology of the continuum (special attention was given to Bolzano’s Paradoxes of the Infinite), the distinction between intuitive and non-intuitive, clear and unclear, distinct and confused, proper and improper, concrete and abstract presentations. (Hua Dok I, p. 14)

We can find this very same list of key concepts in the short text Recollections of Franz Brentano of 1919,3 where Husserl draws an even clearer picture of his Brentanian apprenticeship: [In the winter semester 1884–85] he also treated the distinctions of ‘intuitive and unintuitive’, ‘clear and unclear’, ‘distinct and indistinct’, ‘proper and improper’ presentations, and in the following summer [1885] he attempted a radical investigation of all descriptive moments that lie behind the traditional distinctions of judgment and are exhibitable in the immanent essence of judgment itself. Immediately afterwards he was intensively occupied (and as a theme in a special course of lectures [winter semester 1885–86]) with descriptive problems of imagination, and especially with the relation of phantasy presentation and perceptual presentation. These lectures were especially inspiring, for they showed the prob For a more accurate reconstruction see the first chapter of Rollinger (1999).  F I 28/2b: “[…] in the Vienna university lectures on practical philosophy, which I still recall after 35 years with great thankfulness.” Husserl attended Brentano’s lectures on practical philosophy twice, in 1884–85 and in 1885–86. 3  As well as in Manuscript A I 3/10a, where Husserl explicitly attributes to their discovery the merit of having allowed him to finally understand the questions on which he reflected since his apprenticeship with Weierstrass in Berlin. Needless to say, those concepts are not to be found in the Psychology. 1 2

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lems in the flow of investigation, while lectures such as those on practical philosophy (or also on logic and metaphysics, of which I could use concise notes), in spite of the critical-­ dialectical exposition, had—in a certain sense—a dogmatic character. That is to say, they made and were supposed to make the impression of firmly obtained truths and definitive theories. (Hua XXV, pp. 307–8/344)

It seems quite clear, then, that what first impressed Husserl were, on the one hand, the very way in which Brentano used to address the philosophical questions, and, on the other, some of the fundamental questions he addressed in his classes—questions that are seldom mentioned in, and indeed entirely absent from, the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. A historian who placed her trust completely in Heidegger’s hints could only be deceived, if not seriously misled. Yet one must nevertheless grant that Heidegger’s view is not entirely without merit. Heidegger is perfectly right about this: for Husserl there is no question of Being. But one must immediately interject: and maybe for a good reason! Indeed, if Husserl neglects the fundamental problem of ontology, as Heidegger understands it, it is not because he ignored the Aristotelian Brentano, but precisely because he rejected him. In other words, it is precisely against Brentano’s Aristotelianism, revised and corrected in light of Scholasticism—and not with it, as would be the case with Heidegger—that Husserl arrives at the phenomenology of the Logical Investigations and at the concept of “categorial intuition.” Such a concept is not an unsuccessful attempt to formulate the fundamental question of Being, it is rather a successful attempt to show that the question of Being is not so fundamental after all. Being as understood by Heidegger’s smile, noted by Jean Beaufret in his notebooks—and not without a grin of complacency—thus indicates a track that one should take seriously, and not leave aside as a mere anecdote. What is at stake is the idea that the nature and possibilities of phenomenology turn on the axis AristotleBrentano-Husserl-Heidegger, and with the additional question: does Husserl really fit in this picture? It is in accepting the Aristotelian Brentano4 that, without a doubt, Heidegger became Heidegger; at the same time, it is precisely in moving away from this very same Aristotelian Brentano that Husserl could invent phenomenology.

2 The Manifold Meanings of Being—That is to Say: Two Brentano’s, 1862 dissertation On the Manifold Meanings of Being in Aristotle is historically located within the context of the interpretations of Aristotle that followed or accompanied August Immanuel Bekker’s critical edition of the Berlin Academy. This new trend of Aristotelian studies was characterized by a great attention to philological exactitude and devotion to securing Aristotle’s genuine legacy after—or during—the ascendancy of the idealist wave in Germany. This defense of  On the complex question of Brentano’s relation to Aristotelianism, see Volpi (1989) and Courtine (1998). The most compelling recent works on the topic are to be found in Antonelli (2001) and Chrudzimski (2004). 4

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Aristotle often took two different paths: the path of the philological reconstrucion of the Aristotelian texts and the one of the philosophical reconstruction of the Aristotelian doctrine. But reconstructing the doctrine meant being able to reply to the critiques formerly addressed to its fundamental assumptions. Among those critiques, Kant’s criticism of Aristotle in the Critique of Pure Reason (A 81/B 107) for failing to deduce his table of categories and thus for allowing himself a “rhapsody” of concepts would play a crucial role. This problem was well known at the time as the problem of the “guiding thread” (Leitfaden). As a result, in spite of their diversity and often opposed views, most of the readings of the Metaphysics and the Categories during the second half of the nineteenth century ended up gravitating around the same question, namely that of the unity of the categorial signification of being.5 While the question of the Leitfaden was originally conceived in order to formulate the problem of the unity (or lack of unity) of the categories, it was progressively expanded to include the problem of the unity of the signification of being in general. The first question—“is there an internal unity to the categories that would permit a deduction or quasi-deduction?”—thus encroaches on the following question: “is there a unitary signification of being? Is there a guiding clue which leads to the unity of being beyond the plurality of ways in which one speaks of ‘to be’?” The thesis of the young Brentano is thus positioned within the context of an expansion of the question about the “guiding thread” of the systematic unity of different categories so as to include the question of the internal unity of different significations of being. Brentano begins with an analysis of the celebrated “τὸ ʼὸν λέγεται πολλαχῶς” (Met. Z 1), “being is said in many ways,” and thus looks to reduce progressively the “πολλαχῶς,” the many, in order to attain the fundamental meaning of being, that around which all other significations would gravitate—and which would prevent being from being an absolutely equivocal concept. The first stage of Brentano’s trajectory—if one follows Aristotle’s own indications in Met. E 2 (1026 a 34)—consists in the reduction of πολλαχῶς to τετραχῶς—the many ways in which being is said are, after all, just four: The multiple distinctions of different meanings of being can all be subordinated to a first distinction of four meanings of this name […] The plurality of these meanings is subordinated to the four-fold distinction of being of accident (ὄν κατὰ συμβεβηκός), being of the true (ὄν ὡς αληθές), being (ὄν) of the categories, and being as potentiality and as act (δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργεία). (Brentano, 1862, pp. 5–6/2–3, translation modified)

It is important to note that Brentano’s discussion introduces a word of revealing significance: “allows subordination to a first distinction.” Brentano grants immediately that he will not be entirely satisfied with such a four-fold distinction. Indeed, once established, this preliminary reduction—from “many” to “four,” from an undetermined manifold to a determinate manifold—allows Brentano to investigate each

 See, for example, Trendelenburg’s 1833 lecture De Aristotelis categoriis, as well as his whole attempt to identify the “guiding thread” with the grammatical categories of classic Greek in Trendelenburg (1846). On this topic, see Majolino (2004). 5

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of the four isolated meanings in order to establish whether or not each actually belongs to the domain of the science of being as such. What is at stake in this reduction is not just the equivocity of a word or a concept (‘being’) but the unity of a field: the very field explored by what Brentano calls the “science of being as such,” namely metaphysics. After having analyzed each of the four fundamental meanings of “being,” Brentano ends up with a new reduction that only the categorial meaning of being resists. Brentano quickly casts off the first meaning (“being as being of the accidental”) from first philosophy due to its lack of ontological autonomy. What the Latins used to call “ens per accidens” has being only in virtue of a being that is foreign to it, and to which it is paired. We are confronted here, as Brentano puts it, with a “being in this first and improper sense” (Brentano, 1862, p. 21/14). The situation is no different with the second meaning (“being as being true” or “ens tamquam verum et falsum”), which is only found in judgments (affirmative or negative) and which therefore lacks any existence outside of the soul (οὐκ ἔξω οὖσάν τινα φύσιν τοῦ ὄντος δηλοῦσιν): The reason for this lies in the operations of the human understanding, which combines and separates, affirms and negates, and not in the highest principles of reality from which metaphysics attempts to gain an understanding of being as being (ὂν ᾗ ὄν). (Brentano, 1862, pp. 38–9/26)

The expression used by Brentano in order to label the terms of this double exclusion is quite peculiar: the “being of the accident” and the “being of the true” are said to be “improper” (uneigentliche) meanings of being. Since accidents and truths are only as long as something else is (namely substances or thoughts), “being pale” or “being true” can be said to be meanings of being as long as they refer, in different ways, to a more fundamental meaning of being upon which they rely precisely because of its meaningfulness; the latter would then be a “proper” meaning (eigentliche Bedeutung). As for “being as actuality and potentiality,” the situation is far more delicate, because unlike “being as being true,” this new meaning unquestionably refers to something “insofar as it has extramental being (ein Sein ausserhalb des Geistes) which is one with it and belongs to it essentially (in eigentlicher Weise)” (Brentano, 1862, p. 40/27). However, after a long series of very detailed textual interpretations, Brentano ends up attaching and subordinating even this latter meaning to the “most important” meaning of being, establishing what he takes as the only true ontological subdivision introduced and recognized by Aristotle: “being according to the figures of categories (τὸ ὄν κατὰ τὰ σχήματα τῶν κατηγοριῶν)” (Brentano, 1862, p. 72/49). During this journey into the landscape of the “manifold meanings of being,” Brentano first of all reduced the undetermined manifold of meanings to four (being as accident, as being true and false, as activity and potentiality, and being as being of the categories), and then led the first three meanings back to the fourth, the categorial meaning. However, this is far from the end of the journey, since the categorial meaning itself “encompasses in turn a great diversity of meanings,” and, therefore,

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the reductive inquiry has to continue. Brentano still owes Kant an answer. The categorial meaning must also be submitted to a further reduction—a reduction that will finally provide, at the same time, the guiding thread that runs across the different categorial meanings and the proper (eigentlich) object of metaphysics as the science of being as such (Brentano, 1862, p. 72/49). The task of the fifth and final chapter of Brentano’s dissertation is thus to reveal the inner unity of categorial being (on which depend the other meanings excluded or reduced by the analyses carried out in the previous chapters), while at the same time respecting Aristotle’s strict prohibition against turning being into a genus (Met. B, 3, 998b 22). In order to achieve this goal, Brentano employs the not-so-­ Aristotelian concept of analogia entis and asserts6: that the use of being (ὄν) for the different categories, even though a homonym, is not a mere accidental likeness of names (ἀπὸ τύχης ὁμώνυμον); rather, that there is among them a unity of analogy; and, finally, that this analogy among them is a twofold one, namely, not only an analogy of proportionality, but also an analogy to the same terminus. (Brentano, 1862, p. 85/58)

Thanks to the unifying function of analogy, Brentano is finally able to give being a consistent unity without turning it into a genus. In this regard, he arrives at that which constitutes the specificity as well as the radicality of his argument, and which one could finally encapsulate with the formulation: “τὸ ὄν λέγεται διαδικῶς”— being is said in two ways. In a manner that recalls a characteristically Neoplatonic gesture (or more precisely the peculiar form of Platonism which is still present in the Scholastic tradition), Brentano argues that being can be said not in many and not even in four but in two ways: a proper, that is, as referring to substance; and an improper, that is, as referring to the dependent being of all other categories that “are also called being with respect to one and the same nature (πρὸ ʽɛ`ν καὶ μίαν τινὰ φύσιν), with respect to the one being of the substance (οὐσία)” (Brentano, 1862, p. 98/66; translation modified).7 All of that which is not substance is therefore in relation with substance, and, as such, is as an accident in a broad sense. And since a strict isomorphism can be found between the structure of predication and the structure of being, different categories are not only different manners of predication; they are also different “manners of existence” (Existenzweisen). That which “exists” exists either as substance or in relation to substance. As a result, one can find within the categorial meaning itself at least as many meanings of “being” as there are modes of being in relation to first substance: Given that being is subdivided into categories that are said in relation to a unity [πρὸς ʽɛ`ν] and that these categories are differentiated from one another according to different manners

 See Aubenque (1989). Brentano’s source for the notion of “analogy” is clearly Aquinas. See Brentano (1862 pp. 181–182/120–121). 7  Brentano goes as far as to recognize the cogency of a Plotinian critique of Aristotle. See Brentano (1862, pp. 143–144/93–94). 6

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of existence (Weisen der Existenz) in first substance, a deduction of the subdivision of categories does not prove to be impossible. (Brentano, 1862, p. 144/94, translation modified)

At this juncture, thanks to the operative distinction between the “proper” and the “improper,” Brentano is finally able to return to the guiding thread of his reductions and follow it through to a veritable deduction of the multiple significations of being, a deduction that proceeds from the most fundamental pair of significations, “substance” and “relation to substance.” Thus Brentano restores metaphysics to its proper object, as a “science of being as such,” that is to say, as the science of what exists in a proper sense and what everything else refers to in order to exist or to be said to exist in an improper way, namely substance. This now completes the domain of our inquiry. Step by step we have ascended from what has been called being in a lesser sense to proper being. Of the four senses into which being is initially divided, being in the figures of the categories was the most distinguished. The course of this chapter has shown that the categories bear the name “being” all with respect to one being, namely, with respect to the being of the first category. It would be more proper to say of every other category that it is of a being than that it is a being. Hence it is substance which has being in the preeminent sense, i.e., which is not only something, but simply is. There are many senses in which something can be first, but substance is among all being the first in every sense, in concept, in cognition, as well as in time. Its being is the terminus to which all stand in analogy. [...] If now metaphysics is the science of being as such, then it is clear that its main object is substance. (Brentano, 1862, p. 219/148)8

3 From Ontology to Psychology and Back If Brentano’s 1862 dissertation on Aristotle finally concludes with what some interpreters call an “ousiology,” (Volpi, 1992) one must also recognize that the entire text is pervaded by a distinction—or, better, by a conceptual device—operating at different levels, which is far more important for our purpose. As we have already noticed, it is to the tandem “proper/improper” that Brentano turns to throughout the text whenever he needs to order untidy manifolds or settle unsettled multiplicities. Such a device has proved its efficacy on at least three occasions: when Brentano, after having reduced the “manifold meanings of being” to four, had to link up the three “improper” meanings (ens per accidens, ens tamquam verum et falsum, ens in potentia/in actu) to the fourth: the only “proper” meaning of being, i.e., the being of categories; when—at a deeper level, inside the categorial meaning itself—he needed to bind the different “improper” modes of being expressed by the many categories to the “proper” mode of being expressed by the category of substance, stressing the

 See also Brentano’s later remarks in Brentano (1986 p. 191): “Plato believed that the concept of being (das Seiende) was univocal in relation to everything that is said of being. As a consequence, Plato posited above his ideas the Idea of being. This is exactly what Aristotle reproached him for, who affirmed that the expression ‘being’ has many meanings. One says that certain beings ‘are’ in a manner that is not at all proper (manches werde ganz uneigentlich seiend genannt).” 8

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distinction between οὐσία and συμβεβηκός9; and, finally, when—on a more general level—he summed up his whole hermeneutical attempt and claimed that the genuine object of metaphysics as a “science of being qua being” is substance, which is being in a “proper” or absolute way and thanks to which anything else “is” in an “improper” or relative way. Hence the following distinction between (1) what really is (substance), that is, “being in a proper way;” (2) what is insofar as it is really related to what really is, i.e., accidents, that is, “being in an improper way;” and (3) what is said to be because it is related in any other way to what really is, i.e., being of accident, of truth, of actuality and potentiality. While both (1) and (2) are “proper meanings of being,” (3) summarizes all the “improper meanings of being.” The decision to establish the line of demarcation of first philosophy between being in the proper sense (real) and being in the improper sense (which is only insofar as it is related to real being), while arranging the different meanings of “being” into “proper” and “improper,” does not end with the 1862 dissertation. On the contrary, this operational habit will follow Brentano in all of his researches, even after the so-called “reist” turn.10 And Brentano will never hesitate to rely on the conceptual device of the proper/improper distinction once he starts having troubles with— mostly, ontological—unsettled multitudes. Because Brentano’s Würzburg lectures are still unpublished, it is hard to say when exactly he employs this device again after the dissertation on Aristotle. But one thing is certain, namely, that in 1874, at the very heart of the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, the pair of the proper/improper is fully operational. Specifically, it is operational in the distinction between “existence in the proper sense” and “existence in an improper (or derived) sense” established by Brentano’s renewed version of the doctrine of esse intentionale. It is well known that Brentano himself does not employ the expression “intentionality” but rather “intentional in-existence” (intentionale In-existenz). Indeed, this expression occurs at two different levels. On a general, epistemological level, “intentional in-existence” is meant to be a criterion for distinguishing mental from physical phenomena: This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves. (Brentano, 1874, p. 125/89)

On the other hand, on a more ontological level, the term “intentional” is first and foremost a predicate of ‘existence’ that indicates a manner of existence (Existenzweisen) proper to that type of beings that do not have a real existence, but

 This “συμβεβηκός” should not be conflated with the “συμβεβηκός” rejected in the first chapter, the ens per accidens, which is opposed not to “οὐσία” but to “ὄν καθ᾽αὑτό.” See Met. Z, 4, 1030b10 as well as An. Post., I, 4, 73b28. 10  See, for instance, Brentano (1968), especially the first chapter of the first section (Vieldeutigkeit des “ist” und Einheit des Begriffes Seiendes) entitled “Das Seiende im eigentlichen und in uneigentlichem Sinne” (pp. 3–11). 9

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whose being is always relative to a real reality, that is to say, to the reality of mental phenomena. More precisely, if we limit ourselves to the text of the Psychology, the notion of intentio indicates less a feature of the acts (the famous intentional “directedness” toward an object) than an ontological feature proper to a certain type of objects, namely those immanent objects or mental contents which “are” something but not “in the proper sense,” that is to say, that exist only as long as the acts “in” which they are hosted exist. If we ask: what can count as intentional for Brentano?, his Psychology leaves no room for doubt: mental phenomena can be said “intentional,” but not in the first place. According to a distinction we should now be familiar with, mental phenomena are said to be intentional because they have—either in the sense of “containing” or in the sense of “being directed to”—an immanent object that exists within themselves insofar as they exist. The reference to Aquinas and the Scholastic is there to confirm such meaning. If, according to the standard history of Brentano’s thought, he develops here a theory of the “intentional reference,”11 a closer look shows that mental reference, at least in the Psychology, is intentional in an improper sense, while in a proper sense what is intentional is precisely the existence of the object which is included in or intended by a mental act. But, on the other hand, if the existence of the immanent object is said to be intentional in a “proper sense” while acts are said to be intentional in an “improper sense” (because they are related to intentionally existing objects), the relationship between the two Existenzweisen of the real and the intentional calls for a different use of the proper/improper device. The key thesis that should be stressed now is not the one that attributes to every mental phenomenon an immanent object, but that which attributes to every mental act an intentional as well as a real existence. Further we found that the intentional in-existence, the reference to something as an object, is a distinguishing characteristic of all mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything similar. We went on to define mental phenomena as the exclusive object of inner perception; they alone are perceived with immediate evidence. Indeed, in the strict sense of the word, they alone are perceived. On this basis we proceeded to define them as the only phenomena which possess real existence in addition to intentional existence. (Brentano, 1874, pp. 136–7/97–8)

Mental phenomena are grasped through inner perception, and inner perception— which, according to Brentano, is the only “proper” form of Wahr-nehmung—is nothing but the evident experiential proof of the real and actual existence of what is perceived. Thanks to the fact that mental phenomena are given in inner perception, we can be sure of their actual existence. They are therefore real (Brentano, 1874, pp. 128–19/91–92). On the other hand, I can represent or judge one of my mental acts, and in that case this act would be nothing but the mental content of a second order mental act of representation or judgment. As a result, the represented or judged mental act appears no longer as having a “real existence” but merely an “intentional” one. In other words, with reference to the Scholastic tradition, the esse intentionale of mental objects is an esse diminutum or, in our terms, an “improper

11

 See, for instance, Oskar Kraus’ introduction to the 1924 edition of Brentano (1874), p. 373.

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being,” while the true being of mental acts is an esse reale, a “proper being” whose actual existence is always secured by the performance of inner perception. These ontological distinctions are confirmed in many key passages from the Psychology, especially in those where Brentano places the notion of intentional in-existence within its historical context.12 At the end of the Psychology we also have a double use of the proper/improper device: (1) the distinction between proper and improper “Bedeutungsweisen” of the term “intentional;” the proper meaning being ontological (intentional in-­existence), the improper epistemological (intentional reference); (2) the distinction between proper and improper “Existenzweisen,” which leads to a very crucial distinction between: (i) mental acts (representing, judging, desiring, etc.), which exist in a real and in an intentional way; (ii) physical phenomena (sounds, colors, etc.), which somehow exist in an intentional way but also have a strong claim to real existence; (iii) every other mental content (general objects, fictions, entia rationis, etc.), which exist in a merely intentional way (Brentano, 1874, pp. 136–140/97–100). Many things have changed indeed from the time of the dissertation on Aristotle. While in 1862 being in a proper sense was identified with the categorial being of the substance, in 1874, thanks to the role played by inner perception, the use of “wirklich” and “real” is employed to describe the being of mental phenomena. However, it seems clear that the twofold distinction characteristic of proper and improper meanings, as well as the distinction of two “manners of existence” distributed (in an asymmetrical fashion) across the field of objective being, still operates in the background of Brentano’s, 1874 psychological distinctions. That is, these distinctions continue to inform the differences between mental phenomena and physical phenomena as well as those between real-actual existence and objectiveintentional existence. Yet, as we have already pointed out, the Psychology is far from being the main source of Husserl’s Brentanian apprenticeship. In the winter semester lecture courses of 1884–1885 in Vienna, Brentano gave—in Husserl’s presence—a new psychological application of the distinction, originally ontological, between the proper and the improper.13 After having argued for the thesis of the fundamental character of representations for mental life, insofar as they are the intentional underpinning of every experience of consciousness, Brentano introduces the distinction between “proper representations” and “improper representations.” With such a move, we have manifestly shifted from the semantic domain of manners of meaning (Bedeutungsweisen),  Cf. the following critique addressed to Philo of Alexandria: “In Philo, likewise, we find the doctrine of mental existence and in-existence. However, since he confuses them with existence in the proper sense (mit Existenz im eigentlichen Sinne), he reaches his contradictory doctrine of logos and Ideas. […] St. Anselm does the same in his famous ontological argument; many people have observed that his consideration of mental existence as true existence is at the basis of his paralogism” (Brentano, 1874, p.125/88). 13  We still lack a critical edition of Brentano’s Vienna lectures on logic. Franziska Mayer-­ Hillebrand’s edition, Brentano, 1982, is unreliable. As far as we are concerned, we will compare the relevant passages from the logic lectures with parallel passages from the lectures on aesthetics published in Brentano (1988). 12

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through the domain of manners of existence (Existenzweisen), to that of manners of representation (Vorstellungsweisen). This latter distinction is of crucial importance. Indeed, from a historical point of view, we have here a veritable point of departure, a key notion recognized as such by the most gifted Brentanian students of Husserl’s generation. The distinction between the proper and the improper applied to representations pervades the writings of almost all Brentanians—from Marty to Twardowski, from Husserl to Meinong, from Kerry to Ehrenfels. At least between 1882 and 1900, each of these, without exception, extensively used, reflected upon, solicited, and elaborated such a distinction (see Majolino, 2002). What is one to understand by the expression “proper representation”? The 1874 Psychology teaches that a representational act has as its function to present something to consciousness as an immanent object. However, one should not think that such content is always actually represented. In the winter semester lecture courses of 1884–1885, Brentano explains that we represent something in a proper manner when this object is itself present to consciousness as an immanent object. By contrast, we represent something in an improper manner when we do not represent it in itself, but “analogically,” that is, in a relative manner, on the basis of its features or of its relations. What is not grasped in itself, in its presence, is experienced in an analogical manner, as that which is in relation with a proper representation. In other words, we always “properly represent” something, i.e., something that is currently the immanent object of our representation. What we represent, however, can be used either to refer to the very transcendent object that is immanently represented, and to refer to it as it is represented, or to refer to something else, something different from the actual representational content, something that is not “properly speaking” represented. One may already notice the novelty constituted by the introduction of a full-fledged transcendent object, which was left aside in the Psychology, but the really interesting point here is not the emphasis on transcendence as such, but the different ways in which on the basis of an immanent (mentally in-existing) object a reference to a transcendent object can be established. Here is a lengthy passage from the Vienna lectures on logic that communicates a clear idea of what Brentano understands by “improper representation:” We represent in an improper (uneigentlich) way that for which we do not have any corresponding representations. In this category, we have, for example, the inadequate manner of representing God through analogies with created beings. We designate that to which such analogies refer by means of the word ‘God.’ But that which God is in himself is concealed from our representation. We do not know, in a proper (eigentlich) manner, that which we call ‘God,’ for we do not know the ultimate meaning of the word ‘God’ […]. In the same manner, we cannot form concepts such as ‘the infinite,’ ‘the unlimited,’ etc., in a proper manner. We can only attain such concepts thanks to analogical formations, in looking to a space that we can apprehend in perception and in multiplying a periodic event such as the alternation of day and night. Things are not so different in the case in which we name objects of which we only apprehend singular characteristics (Merkmale) without being able to represent them as such, on account of their complication. We cannot have a proper ­representation of one million nor of one billion: we employ these names without understanding them completely. (Brentano, 1982, pp. 64–5)

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This characterization of improper representations in Brentano’s lectures on logic converges with the more detailed descriptions we find in his lectures on aesthetics: Such things of which we cannot and, indeed, often would not, even have any exact and corresponding representation are those things of which we only have an improper representation. For example, we have a proper and intuitive representation of the number ‘three,’ but we only have an improper representation of one million. The inadequate manner in which we represent God through an analogy with created things also belongs to the class of improper representations. We designate with the name ‘God’ the target of our analogy, yet God’s own being escapes our representation. Our representation of God is imperfect with respect to its object; and this is all the more so, the more perfect this animating intuition of God is.—In the same way in which a blind person could speak of colors. Again, we cannot construct concepts such as ‘infinite,’ ‘limitless,’ and ‘eternal’ in an adequate manner. We can only arrive at these concepts through the construction of analogies, so that we conceive of a surveyable space as extremely extended or conceive of a periodical event such as the change of day and night as further iterated. But the proper representation is always more valuable than that surrogate formation (Surrogatbildung). (Brentano, 1988, pp. 166–7)

By mixing arguments from Scholasticism with empiricist insights, Brentano now characterizes the distinction between proper and improper as applied to representations in a new and original way. Representing in an improper manner (uneigentlich Vorstellen) is a specific mental activity that provides us with “surrogate representations” (Surrogatvorstellungen) (Brentano, 1988, p. 92) whose task is to represent objects that, properly speaking, cannot be represented. On Brentano’s account, objects cannot be represented for one of the two following reasons: either because they are necessarily unrepresentable, as they cannot be experienced at all (e.g., no finite mind can never ever experience God, infinity or eternity as such), or because they are unrepresentable on contingent grounds, as we lack the capacity to experience them (e.g., a standard human mind cannot count one million items, a person born blind has never seen colors, etc.). However, even in those cases where we lack a “proper representation”—the representation of the objects in themselves—it is still possible to provide an “improper representation” of the missing objects; such objects are not represented in themselves but in relation to properly represented objects. I do see only finite creatures, but through the creatures I see I can give myself an improper—analogical—representation of the infinity of God; I can count only small amounts of things, and yet I can use that proper representation as a basis to represent this manifold named “one million,” which I would never be able to represent properly in normal circumstances because of its complexity. Be it by means of straight analogy (Analogie) or thanks to indirect characterizations (Merkmale), improper representations allow us to represent the unrepresentable. They do not yield their object in itself but merely in a relative way; yet this first epistemological account of improper representations has important linguistic implications, as Brentano forcefully associates it with the question of the “ultimate meaning” of words such as “God,” “Infinite” or “Millions.” Because we do not really represent the objects named by those expressions we cannot have “a full

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understanding of these names” (Brentano, 1982, p. 65).14 According to Brentano’s Vienna lectures, a person born blind cannot “properly” represent colors and therefore cannot “properly” understand statements containing color names. He or she can nevertheless use quite correctly those expressions, compose well-formed sentences and talk about those things that are merely apprehended as objects of discourse, not as objects of experience. The same holds for the expression “one million,” whose meaning is, in the end, nothing but “such a very great number whose name is ‘one million’.”15 If we now pause to consider the novelty of this new application of the proper/ improper tandem, two aspects strike us as essential. On the one hand, the distinction between the “in itself” and the “in relation to something” (πρός τι), that we first met in Brentano’s dissertation as applied to the Seinsweisen of substance and accident, and that we also encountered in the Psychology as applied to the Existenzweisen of the real-actual and the intentional existence, is now used to distinguish and relate two different sorts of mental activities belonging to the fundamental class of representations. Brentano now interestingly operates with two different modes of mental reference, which he articulates on the basis of one single mode of mental presence. In the first case, the representational act refers to a transcendent object whose corresponding immanent object is present in an actual experience (e.g., when I refer to the number three while counting three items, I am having a “proper representation” of the number three). In the second case, I may still have the same immanent object, “properly represented,” but this time it does not appear as itself but as a surrogate or a proxy for another object that could not appear otherwise. That brings us to the opposition between that which is presented “in itself,” absolutely and autonomously given, and that which only possesses a relative and secondary presence—a diminished presence of something that does not or cannot appear “in itself,” but holds a transitive, subordinate and non-autonomous mode of appearing: something that is represented only so far as something else is properly represented. On the other hand, if improper representations are representations of objects that are represented only insofar as other objects are properly represented, the names of such improperly represented objects are not fully understandable, they do not have a “proper” meaning. The person born blind only has a verbal knowledge of colors, in spite of the fact that he or she could perfectly master the grammar of color terms (leaving aside the use of the indexicals). That brings us to the following conclusion: because we do represent properly only a small part of all that we can represent, our language includes a great number of expressions whose intelligibility depends on the functioning of language itself. In this new context, the term ‘proper’ (eigentlich) describes a representational domain marked, on the one hand, by the “absolute” presence of the thing in itself,  At best, as Russell would have put it, in such cases we only have a “knowledge by description.” See Russell (1997). 15  Unfortunately, all the first part of Brentano (1982)  – “On Thoughts and their Expression in Language” – is completely useless since the editor mixes up manuscripts from different periods, conflating the early positions defended in Vienna with the texts expressing Brentano’s later views. 14

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and, on the other hand, by the solidarity between language and experience, in the sense that I say what I properly represent; in contrast, the term “improper” (uneigentlich) applies whenever we deal with the “relative” presence of unrepresentable or unrepresented things, and every time we talk about things we have not really experienced. In line with this, Brentano ends up concluding that, in general terms, “[p]roper presentations are better than improper” (Brentano, 1988, p. 166, see also p. 167; and 1982, p. 64).

4 The Manifold Meanings of Number If the example of God probably said little to Husserl in 1884, there is no doubt that the discussion of the infinite or the reference to numbers were much more familiar. There is no need to recall this at length; at the time, Husserl was a young mathematician who in 1883 had just completed a dissertation on the calculus of variations, and it was mainly with some knowledge of theories of mathematics, which he learned during his apprenticeship in Berlin with Weierstrass and Kroneker, that Husserl confronted Brentano’s Vienna lectures.16 Indeed, Husserl arrived in Vienna with his own theoretical problems inherited from Weierstrass, in particular the foundational question of the arithmetization of higher mathematics, or, in other words, the idea that all the disciplines belonging to the so called arithmetica universalis—including algebra and analysis—should be “arithmetized,” that is, founded solely on the basis of the concept of number in the narrow sense of whole positive numbers.17 Of course, Husserl was not the only Brentanian who had tried to provide a psychological foundation of the concept of number by claiming that such a concept should play a foundational role for general arithmetic. Christan von Ehrenfels and Benno Kerry also made similar attempts (Von Ehrenfels, 1988, pp. 415–53; Kerry, 1881, pp. 433–93). Yet, while these two psychologists applied Brentano’s psychological insights to mathematical concepts (even if the case of Kerry is quite peculiar), Husserl was instead a full-fledged mathematician who brought to his encounter with Brentano’s thought his own problems and recognized in Brentano’s way of dealing with philosophical problems something familiar—something he felt comfortable with. What I am suggesting is that Brentano not only provided Husserl with a set of doctrines and theoretical distinctions, but he also showed him that he was struggling with equivocity. Husserl was trying to order untidy multiplicities sharing the same name and claiming the same indeed status, and Brentano showed to Husserl a “reducibility device” that promised success in this regard, as it seemed consonant at least with a similar distinction that he was already familiar with,  See the most recent and detailed reconstruction of Ierna (2006).  As Husserl writes in a note in the introduction to Philosophy of Arithmetic: “Weierstrass usually opened his epoch-making lectures on the theory of analytic functions with the sentences: ‘Pure arithmetic (or pure analysis) is a science based solely and only upon the concept of number (Zahl). It requires no other presupposition whatsoever, no postulates or premises’.” Hua XII, p. 12/13. 16 17

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namely, Weierstrass’ distinction between symbolic and real numbers.18 Although there are no intrinsic connections between the foundational program of the Weierstrass’ school and the Brentanian researches into metaphysics, psychology and epistemology, Brentano gave Husserl a philosophical mold, a conceptual device, in which he could reformulate his problems and bring them to novel conclusions. The point of departure for Brentano’s philosophical reflection, as we have seen, was the problem of homonymy, as the concept of being is “multiple” (vielfach, mehrfach) but not “equivocal” (äquivok, mehrdutig). This is a problem whose solution—the analogical path from the proper to the improper—informed all of his subsequent philosophical production. “Existence,” “intentionality,” “representation,” and “truth”19 are all multiple but not equivocal concepts. In this light, it might seem less surprising to find, from the first lines of the Introduction to the Philosophy of Arithmetic, the question of the unity of arithmetic quite singularly formulated, almost word for word, in terms of Brentano’s question of homonymy. The concept of number is multiple (Der Begriff der Zahl ist ein vielfacher). This is already indicated by the different words for numbers that show up in the language of ordinary life. (Hua XII, p. 10/11, translation modified)

“Number” can be said in many ways. (1) A first set of ambiguities can be recognized already at the level of what Husserl calls “ordinary life” or “practical life,” where we find distinct word formations for cardinal, ordinal, type numbers, numbers of repetition, multiplicative and fractional numbers. However, such a variety of number-words reveals quite immediately a common root, since terms like zweier, zweierlei, zweifach, zweimal, zweitel are generated through slight grammatical modifications from Zwei, which, accordingly, belongs to the class of the “genuine word for basic numbers” (wahrhafte Grundzahlwörter), that is, the words for cardinal numbers.20 Since grammar shows that words for cardinal numbers are morphologically fundamental, and, therefore, assume a privileged position vis-à-vis the other, derived, number words, Husserl seems to draw a conceptual conclusion: In this way language guides us to the thought that the corresponding concepts also may all stand in an analogous relation of dependence to those of the whole numbers. (Hua XII, p. 10/11)

Yet Husserl is quickly forced to admit that all secondary or conceptually dependent concept formations of numbers are not species of the general concept of “number.” In other words, number is not a genus. However: “Even though they are not logical specifications of the concepts of cardinal numbers, they nonetheless are more restricted formations which presuppose those concepts, in that they link them up in

 This clever suggestion can be found in Ierna (2005), p. 33.  See the conference “Über den Begriff der Wahrheit”(1889), in Brentano (1930, pp. 3–29). 20  To be more precise, Aristotle would not have considered the relationship between, say, “two” and “twice” an example of homonymy, but rather of “paronymy.” See Cat. 1a13–15 and In Aristotelis Categorias commentarium, Simplicius 1907, pp. 1–2. 18 19

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a certain manner with other elementary concepts” (Hua XII, p. 11/12). Needless to say, the case of ordinal numbers will give rise to additional problems, given that cardinal numbers refer to manifolds and ordinal numbers refer to series; however since series are ordered manifolds it is still quite possible to infer a form of dependence of the latter from the former. (2) A second set of ambiguities concerns the theoretical life of arithmetical science. What practical life calls “names of numbers” (Zahlenwörter) are now rather described as “signs of number” (Zahlenzeichen), yet the situation is not that different: i) mathematicians speak of positive and negative, rational and irrational, real and imaginary numbers, as well as quaternions, alternating numbers, ideal numbers and so on; ii) “number” can be hardly considered to be a genus; iii) derived number signs like √-1 or ½ presuppose simple signs like 1, 2, … as constitutive parts; iv) therefore, “within arithmetic too cardinal numbers seem to play the role of basic numbers, provided that the dependency of the signs to that of the concepts is not totally fallacious” (Hua XII, p. 11/12; translation modified). It is hard to say if Husserl really believed in this kind of argument. In the final chapters of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, it is precisely such a “fallacious” assumption that is emphasized; the framework described in this part of the introduction is precisely the one that will be tested and refused at the end of the volume. But it would be even harder not to recognize in such a sketchy and unexpected picture the familiar features of the Brentanian way to the reduction of all presentations according to their status as either proper or improper. And if it is remarkable that the key problem of the Philosophy of Arithmetic is almost staged in the Introduction as an issue of homonymy (the manifold meanings of “number”), it is no less significant that in Chapter XI the first attempt to give a solution to such a problem is due to the distinction between “proper” and “improper” representations of numbers, as credited to Brentano: In his university lectures Franz Brentano always placed the great emphasis upon the distinction between ‘proper’ and ‘improper,’ or ‘symbolic’ representations. To him I owe the deeper understanding of the vast significance of improper representing for our whole psychical life, which, before him, so far as I can tell, no one had fully grasped. (Hua XII, p. 193/205, footnote; translation modified)

One may notice by now that the equivalence between “improper” and “symbolic” is already an original contribution of Husserl’s—a point to which I will return. Yet the interesting point of comparison between Husserl and Brentano on this matter strikes as more general. Brentano has originally employed the device of the proper/ improper in order to respond to the problem of homonymy—the fundamental meaning of “being” beyond its apparent diversity testified by language—as well as to secure the object of metaphysics. The early Husserl i) presents his investigation of the unity of the concept of number as a matter of homonymy—what is the fundamental meaning of “number” beyond the apparent diversity testified by ordinary and technical language?—and ii) claims that reducing such a homonymy will give to arithmetic a stable foundation, therefore iii) he appeals to the proper/improper

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device as applied to presentations in order to reach this goal. But, as we will see, that project fails. If this is true, the outstanding philosophical importance of the Philosophy of Arithmetic is to be found neither in its attempt to provide an experiential foundation for the basic concepts of arithmetic nor in its critique or development of such and such Brentanian theses, and not even as evidence for Husserl’s subsequent departure from psychologism. The Philosophy of Arithmetic is rather the theatre of the irreversible collapse of the analogical path into multiplicities. The transfer of the analogical device “proper/improper” from metaphysics to psychology, from psychology to epistemology, from epistemology to ethics and logic, has always been successful. And, in a way, Brentano suggests that we could do the same for arithmetic, namely, that we could understand numbers in the same manner in which metaphysics understands being; or, more precisely, that one could determine the unity of arithmetic in the same way as the unity of metaphysics. Being can be said in many ways—so Brentano—and yet there is nonetheless a fundamental meaning that provides a unity, and which introduces order into diversity: a unity that is not the unity of a genus. Number can be said in many ways—so Husserl—but always in relation to the unity of a fundamental concept that allows us to understand what we are speaking of when we speak of numbers, even when we deal with rational, real or imaginary numbers that are manifestly not specifications of the conceptual genus “number.” Both are equivocal concepts, yet not entirely. In this manner, by following the folds of language, the multiplicity of meanings is ultimately understood as a relative multiplicity that allows for a progressive reduction to its minimal and fundamental terms: substance in metaphysics, cardinal numbers in arithmetic. Needless to say, the early Husserl never extensively occupied himself with Aristotle’s Metaphysics as a whole and would only read Grote’s 1874 introductive monograph after his meeting of Brentano in 1884.21 Yet, Husserl does learn and apply (or pretend to apply) to the problem of number at least one Aristotelian (or quasi-Aristotelian) stratagem, namely his manner of dealing with equivocal concepts and manifold meanings—a manner of understanding that he had learned not in Brentano’s books but through Brentano’s own practice of philosophy.

5 Rise and Fall of Proper Representations Such a solution, however, was not destined to satisfy Husserl, as will become evident as soon as we recall the key movements of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, whose double task was (1) to analyze the fundamental concepts of arithmetic (multiplicity, unity, number) and (2) to give a logical explanation of its symbolic methods.

 See Husserl’s ex libris on the first page of his copy of George Grote’s Aristotle (Grote 1872) (BQ 164 I). See also Hua-Dok I, p. 12. On the other hand, as we have pointed out, Husserl confronts some selected topics of Aristotle’s Metaphysics in his 1898/99 lectures Theory of Knowledge and Main Issues in Metaphysics. On the topic, see Chap. 4 in this volume. 21

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As to the first task, Husserl’s basic assumption is that concepts are abstractions and abstractions are rooted in concrete phenomena. The concrete phenomenon from which the concept of number is abstracted is a “compound, a manifold of determined objects” (Hua XII, p.  15/16; translation modified). From such a concrete phenomenon we obtain the abstract representation of the mere “togetherness” of undetermined unities whose only common feature is their being together—as obtained on the basis of a reflective act, directed toward the lower level act of the “collective binding.” In this manner, we reach what Husserl calls a “proper representation of a manifold (eigentlich vorgestellte Vielheit)” (Hua XII, p. 15/16), which may be described in mereological terms as a whole whose parts are merely collectively bound together (Hua XII, p. 77/81). Accordingly, the origin of the abstract representations on the basis of which proper concepts of numbers are obtained is a stratified mental activity in which one first grasps a determined manifold of indeterminate unities and then counts the single units belonging to such a compound. That would lead to the proper representation of a “countable manifold,” a manifold of which one can ask: “how many?” (Hua XII, p. 77/81). This first set of analysis deals with concrete phenomena and abstract concepts of manifolds and numbers, but arithmetic is neither about the former nor about the latter. Arithmetic is rather a discipline that explores the relations among numbers in manipulating symbols. The gap between numbers we count with and numbers we calculate with is bridged by Husserl’s account of signs.22 After having properly represented a manifold and formed its concept, the last thing to do is to give it a name, that is, to assign a univocal sign denoting every single occurrence of such a determinate countable manifold. Number signs like 10 or 5 are at once “general names” (allgemeiner Name) and “calculational signs” (Rechenzeichen). They do not refer intensionally to the abstract concepts “ten” or “five,” but to any arbitrary extensional multiplicity, whichever it may be, falling under those concepts (Hua XII, p. 182/192). At the same time, number signs can be used to calculate and to find new numbersigns according to fixed rules. Husserl also maintains that while being employed within the algorithms of a calculus, related and combined with other number-signs, number-signs never cease to refer to number-manifolds. This constant reference or “parallelism” between number-signs belonging to arithmetic and manifolds subsumed by number concepts hides at its core the distinction and the articulation between symbolic and proper representations of numbers. If we agree to define a proper representation of number as the representation of a countable manifold actually grasped in itself by way of collecting and counting, we cannot help but recognize, having analyzed the main thesis of the Vienna lectures, that such a definition is through and through Brentanian. I have a proper representation of a tree when I see a tree; I have a proper representation of a three when I count three items. On the other hand, improper representations of numbers indicate number concepts whose corresponding countable manifolds are impossible to

 See Husserl’s Manuscript Semiotik. Zur Logik der Zeichen (1890), in Hua XII, pp.  340–73. English translation: “The Logic of Signs (Semiotic),” in Husserl (1994, pp. 20–51). 22

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grasp by way of collecting and counting (Brentano mentioned the representation of “one million”). If we define improper numbers as those concepts of number whose origin cannot be traced back to the actual apprehension of countable manifolds, we end up to the following conclusion: such numbers can only be represented through their distinctive names, i.e., through “symbols”—hence the Husserlian equivalence between “improper” and “symbolic”: A symbolic or improper representation is, as the name already indicates, a representation by means of signs. If a content is not directly given to us that which it is, but rather only indirectly through signs which univocally characterize it, then we have a symbolic representation of it instead of a proper one. (Hua XII, p. 193/205; translation modified)

In a way, arithmetical signs are always general names, that is, names of (conceptually determined) manifolds. Though sometimes—though not so often—the name denotes a manifold which may also be given in a proper sense (“5,” “10”). One could presumably say that arithmetical number-signs denote either actually countable or simply possibly countable multiplicities that we, because of our structural finitude, have no chance to count. But since arithmetic is, first of all, a symbolic system in which every single multiplicity—either counted or countable—corresponds to one and only one sign and vice-versa, each possible number as such (Zahl an sich) finds within this system its univocal symbolic correlate. This symbolic correlate is named by Husserl “systematic number formation” (systematische Zahlform) and it is formed by means of “Zuzählung,” i.e., the principle of successive number formation. In the language of modern analysis that can be expressed by saying that each number as such is represented within the arithmetical system of numbers as an “entire, whole-numbered function” of a conventionally chosen “basic number” (Grundzahl) X: a0 + a1 X + a2 X2 + a3 X3 + … (Hua XII, p. 233/246). On this basis, Husserl is entitled to claim: “Thus we may justifiably regard the indirect formations of the system as the symbolic surrogates of the numbers in themselves” (Hua XII, p. 260/275). Each systematic formation is (as Husserl says, almost quoting the Brentanian definition of improper representations as “Surrogatvorstellungen”) counts as a “symbolic surrogate” of a number as such. Arithmetic is entirely constituted by symbolic representations of numbers and yet, though it does not deal with concepts, it is nevertheless conceptually founded. It must be stressed, however, that even if in arithmetic one always handles numbers, so to say, “indirectly”—through their symbolic surrogates—such indirectedness should not be considered to be univocal. Not only numbers as such can be indirectly characterized by systematic number forms (such as “67” or “12”), but, even more indirectly, they can also be characterized by means of number forms expressing relations between numbers (such as “18 + 49” or “5 + 7”). Husserl calls the latter “problematic number forms” (problematische Zahlforms), and they include number forms expressed through direct operations upon systematic number forms (a  +  b  =  c) as well as number forms expressed through systems of equations including inverse operations (a + x = b, x = b−a). Arithmetical operations are thus nothing but methods to reduce problematic numbers to systematic numbers, according to what Husserl defines as the first

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fundamental task of arithmetic, whose more general task is to provide a general theory of operations able to define all number formations possible and establish the laws of their connection (Verknüpfung) and conversion (Umsetzung). But even though algorithmic operations can be carried out without any appeal to proper numbers, Husserl nevertheless writes: “just as the individual symbolic number [i.e., systematic number form] stands in for a definite proper one, so also each symbolic operation of combination [i.e., problematic number form] stands in for a definite (although not actually executable) proper one” (Hua XII, p.  263/278; translation modified). At first sight, Brentano’s model appears to have been applied successfully. Rulegoverned arithmetical operations on signs, disregarding their conceptual basis, generate all kinds of signs formations. But, according to the principle that “every symbolic formation is a symbolic surrogate,” each sign formation produced through calculation should nevertheless be regarded as a number formation: i) symbolic problematic representations of numbers (generated by means of direct or inverse operations) can be reduced to symbolic systematic representations of numbers— according to the logical assumption that arithmetic is a general theory of operations; ii) on the other hand, symbolic systematic representations of numbers (generated by successive number formation) constantly refer to numbers as such, that is, to countable manifolds falling under a number concept—according to the semiotic assumption that symbolic representations are improper or surrogate representations; iii) finally, improper representations of numbers are solely intelligible on the basis of a previous acquaintance with properly represented countable manifolds—according to the psychological or epistemological assumption from which everything has started. In spite of the fact that “numbers are said in many ways,” there is a conceptual bond that ties together the unity of an arithmetical algorithm and the conceptual unity of its domain, a guiding thread that connects symbolic number formations, as generated only by rule-governed operations on signs, to properly formed presentations of numbers. The next step would have been to go further with such an attempt and use the Brentanian device of the proper/improper to support Weierstrass’ ideal of a full-­ fledged arithmetization of higher mathematics. And yet, despite these efforts, numbers are not poured into the Brentanian mold of homonymy without a host of recalcitrant features, as Husserl recognizes in the very same Introduction—presumably written after the main text—in which he announces the second volume of the Philosophy of the Arithmetic: The first part of Volume II is to contain the logical investigation of the arithmetical algorithm—still viewed as an arithmetic of cardinal numbers—and the justification of utilizing in calculation the quasi-numbers originating out of the inverse operations: the negative, imaginary, fractional and irrational numbers. […] It turns out that identically the same algorithm, the same arithmetica universalis, governs a series of conceptual domains that have to be carefully distinguished, and that by no means does a single type of concept— whether that of the cardinal or the ordinal number, or any other—mediate the application of it in every case. (Hua XII, p. 7/7)

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The introduction of inverse operations produces not only, as we have seen, problematic number formations, but also formations of quasi-numbers whose conceptual meanings, if we stick to the above mentioned meaning of number as countable manifold (actually or possibly), are utterly absurd. More generally, the extension of the rules of calculus leads to what is usually called “the expansion of the original domain of numbers (die Erweiterung des ursprünglichen Zeichengebietes)” (Hua XXI, p. 30). This further step, incidentally, proves once again the creative powers of an algorithm that blindly operates with mere signs; but it also shows, at the same time, some embarrassing examples of signs that, while generated according to the rules, do not seem to designate anything (Hua XXI, pp. 29–30), for example, signs that can hardly be seen as surrogates of any countable manifold, actual or possible. But how should we consider these number-signs? If numbers are “general names,” what kind of countable manifold do names such as −5, √−1, 5 or π name? Do 8 they name countable manifolds at all? Are they meaningless, as Hankel seems to suggest, or do they still refer, even in a rather indirect way, to proper representations of number? Are they numbers at all? In a famous letter to Stumpf from February 1890—thus written while the Philosophy of Arithmetic was in the process of being published—Husserl openly admits his own dissatisfaction with regard to the solution for the problem of the unity of arithmetic in its Brentanian version: The view that still directed me in my Habilitation, according to which the concept of cardinal number is formed as the foundation of general arithmetic, revealed itself as false. No amount of skill, no kind of ‘improper representation’ allows for the derivation of negative, rational, and irrational numbers, and of the diverse complex numbers from the concept of cardinal number. […] Since no kind of common concept is to be found at the foundation of these different applications of arithmetic, from which this science could be derived, what constitutes the contents, to what kind of conceptual objects do its propositions refer? Strange question! (Hua XXI, p. 245)

Let us recall Brentano’s lesson: if we can not have a proper representation of numbers above ten, it is due to our finitude. God would have no such a limitation and could ideally have a proper representation of every number that corresponds to each systematic number formation (in that case, arithmetic would be useless). However, to put the matter dramatically, Husserl sees that even God could not have a proper representation of quasi-numbers! The idea of understanding the relation between cardinal numbers and other concepts of numbers generated by the extension of the arithmetical algorithm (through the distinction of the proper and the improper) as well as between that which may be ultimately given in itself and that which is related to the cardinal numbers (whether by way of substitution, construction, derivation, or indirect reference) is recognized as leading to an impasse. One of the lessons to be learned from the impasse of the first volume of the Philosophy of Arithmetic amounts to the recognition that Brentano misled us. One cannot understand the homonymy of number in arithmetic by means of the same device that allowed metaphysics to think the homonymy of being and descriptive empirical psychology to think the unity of mental life.

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6 The Solution Through the Form: Multiplicity and Variation During this same period, Husserl was already engaged in an extended series of unpublished reflections, originally intended for the second volume of the Philosophy of Arithmetic which, as we know now, would never see the light of day. In these manuscripts, Husserl finally attacks the problem of the conceptual domain of general arithmetic from an angle that directly opposes, in different ways, the first volume. The question remains the same: is arithmetic a univocal science, is it equivocal and yet unified (in virtue of a relation to a common term) or is it inescapably equivocal? In his lecture course from the summer of 1895 “On the Latest Investigations into Deductive Logic,” Husserl’s response does not admit any doubt: “In effect, what we call arithmetic is equivoce a science. In reality, 1, + and every fundamental sign of arithmetic only have multiple meanings (vielfache Bedeutung) that correspond to different domains of possible application of the same algorithm” (Hua XXI, pp. 63–4). When it comes to arithmetical signs, the situation is far more complicated than the one rhetorically sketched by Husserl in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Arithmetic by the comparison of the morphological dependencies of number words in ordinary language. What different branches of arithmetica universalis actually share is not the reference to a single conceptual domain, but the presence of an algorithm that includes the partial algorithm of arithmetic in the narrow sense (Hua XXI, p. 35). The signs are the same whereas their meanings are not. Husserl’s proposed solution reverses entirely the basic approach to the problem we had found in the Philosophy of Arithmetic. The arithmetic of numbers and the arithmetic of magnitudes, for example, are finally recognized as mutually irreducible and conceptually independent. Every attempt to ground one on the other is therefore useless. However, though arithmetic is a science that is thoroughly equivocal, its unity can still be found in the structural unity of a set of formal laws that one may recognize in the different conceptual domains. One can expand the arithmetical technique, but not the concept of number (Hua XXI, p. 43). Another way to stress the novelty of Husserl’s approach23 can be found in a text from 1891 known as “On the Concept of the Operation.” How do we actually come to operate meaningfully with quasi-numbers? Certainly not through a simple construction of new number forms that one may trace back to the corresponding concrete manifolds properly apprehended, but thanks to a shift of interest from the operations on such manifolds to their formal properties. Husserl calls such a procedure “conceptual transformation of the given” (begrifflicher Umwandlung des Gegebenen) (Hua XII, p. 428/406). As an example, certain operations on cardinal numbers show some formal properties such as association, commutability, symmetry, distribution and so on. Thanks to the “conceptual transformation” stressed by Husserl, given operations originally belonging to a conceptual domain are now seen as special cases of general “compositional laws” (Verknüpfungsgesetzte) that one 23

 See the profound analyses in Gérard (2002).

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may well find in other conceptual domains. As a result, signs such as ‘+’ or ‘×’ no longer mean “addition” or “multiplication;” rather, they are equivocal signs apt to indicate forms of connection in which the formal laws of association (a + b) = (b + a) or distribution (a × (b + c)) = ((a × b) + (a × c)) hold. On the other hand, the objects of the original conceptual domain (for example, cardinal numbers as numbers of countable manifolds) lose all their privileges as they just represent one of the many possible conceptually determinate objects whose mutual relations are formally structured according to the above-mentioned formal laws. Accordingly, the formal laws expressed in an extended algorithm apply not to conceptually determined numbers, but rather to “formal numbers”: “The concept of a formal number is the mere concept of a something whatsoever (Irgendetwas), the object of which is subject to connections and relations, with laws that can be expressed in the form of given principles” (Hua XXI, p. 66). In other words, what allows us to deal in the same way with cardinal and rational numbers is not the fact that the latter constitute the conceptual source of the former, but rather that in both domains, as heterogeneous as they may be, the validity of certain formal laws is maintained. Their conceptual domains are fully different, their structural laws are not (Hua XXI, p. 66). All objects whose relations and connections are determined according to those formal laws are formally to be regarded as numbers. And while Husserl first defended the idea of a calculus founded on the assumption that symbolic surrogates assure a constant parallelism between number-signs/operations-signs and numbers as such/relations between numbers as such, the signs of the arithmetical algorithm can be now be interpreted in many ways—they have manifold irreducible meanings.24 To some extent, Husserl’s new solution may easily be labeled as “formalist.” Given any algorithm, many particular conceptual domains can be ruled according to the same formal laws. That would be correct. But the importance of such a solution is better measured in light of the philosophical consequences it entails. (1) First of all, it leads to the replacement of the concept of number (Anzahl)— the supreme fundamental concept in arithmetic—with that of “formal number” (Formalzahl), that is, by any object “that is defined by the form of its relations,” and with the even more general concept of “manifold,” understood in the technical sense (Menge, Mannigfaltigkeit) defined by Cantor in his Foundation of a General Theory of Manifolds and developed by Riemann (see Hua XXI, pp. 92–105). As already reminded, the importance of this concept surpasses the restricted framework of arithmetic. It also brings to the fore the idea of “multiplicity as such” in contrast to “a multiplicity of.”25  Husserl, who first follows a solution closer to Hankel’s principle of persistency of formal laws, will later, in Göttingen, endorse a view closer to Hilbert’s, and he will stress the correlation between a system of axioms and its formal objectual domain. 25  On the relationship, still to be fully explored, between Husserl and Cantor, see the remarks of Ortiz-Hill (2000a) and (2000b). On Cantor’s “Platonic” understanding of the concept of Mannigfaltigkeit and Husserl’s non-formal-ontological reinterpretation thereof within the broader framework of constitutive phenomenology, see Chap. 2 of this volume. On the role played by Husserl’s early investigations on the arithmetical algorithm and his full appreciation of the philosophical importance of manifolds, see the correspondence with Hermann Weyl in Hua-Dok III/7, pp. 287–8. 24

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(2) A second consequence follows Husserl’s new solution that touches on the hierarchical status of different arithmetical concepts. The primacy of the concept of multiplicity as such erases any difference between the proper and the improper, between the originary and the derived, as well as between what is conceptually prior and what is not. Priority is not given to the derivation of concepts—the derivation of one concept from another—but to the presence of certain structural features that make different conceptual domains equal occurrences of a same multiplicity. In this manner, any primacy of the originary is lost. With such a radical reversal, Husserl arrives at a twofold renunciation. He renounces the epistemological idea of founding the unity of an arithmetical domain on the concept of cardinal numbers. More fundamentally, he also distances himself from the model of Brentano’s solution and its conceptual distinction between the proper—what is original and fundamental— and the improper—what is relational, derived, secondary—as relations may now produce objects. Moreover, in order to understand the nature of multiplicities, it is not necessary (in fact, it is even misleading) to invoke the originary. Husserl replaces the key notions of “construction,” “derivation” or “reduction” (from Brentano’s legacy) with that of “transformation” (Umwandlung) and ­“variation” (Veränderung)—which clearly anticipate Husserl’s later concept of “variation” (Variation). When an object is transformed into another while certain relations remain unmodified, they both appear as the “same” unity if a multiplicity. (3) A third and final conclusion of even more radical significance, which touches on the Aristotelian nature of the solution of 1891, must be regarded as largely abandoned here. Husserl first thought that a notion is not equivocal as long as it is related to a focal meaning; therefore, a science can be fully legitimated as long as its domain is secured by the unity of a concept. Now, he clearly states that arithmetic is an equivocal science. One should here insist on this oxymoronic expression, “equivocal science.” How can a discipline be scientific and equivocal without being, at least, analogical? The answer to such a question can by no means be obtained with the tools inherited through Brentano from the Aristotelian tradition. Such a science cannot be but formal.

7 A Matter of Forms The disposal of the proper/improper reductive device and its allegiance to fundamental concepts, bound to an origin, is compensated by the discovery of “multiplicities as such” and the finding that relations can generate objects. Yet, if Husserl definitively abandons Brentano’s path already in the lecture course from the summer semester of 1896, this does not prevent him from fully appreciating the solution (as discovered in the context of his investigations on the equivocity of arithmetic), and from subsequently using it when he comes to tackle the very question of the equivocity of being.

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The investigations into algorithmic arithmetic from the 1890s carry different claims, depending on whether they are inflected in an epistemological or metaphysical register. One can draw from Husserl’s analyses the epistemological imperative that the issue of homonymy in arithmetic should not be handled in the same manner as in metaphysics. When exported from being to number, the relation of the proper to the improper, leading to the dependency of the πρός τι on the οὐσία, is without any pertinence. On the contrary, studies of the formal structures of arithmetic (while jettisoning the proper/improper distinction) championed the revenge of the πρός τι over the οὐσία. Yet, at the same time, a second imperative is brought to light, by means of which the epistemological imperative is but a chiasm. This imperative concerns something we can learn about the issue of homonymy in metaphysics from the investigations into the homonymy in arithmetic. The discovery of formal multiplicities largely surpasses the framework of arithmetic and encroaches on the territory of metaphysics. Indeed, once this gateway is opened—bridging metaphysics and mathematics—Brentano would no longer be able to prevent Husserl from crossing it from the other direction. In this regard, Husserl remains loyal to Brentano, as a manner of understanding homonymy can always be turned into a conceptual device. Moreover, in respecting the prohibition of turning being into a genus, the most general concept of a domain open to arithmetization (that of a formal number or, later, of multiplicity) is clearly not a concept that designates the unity of a genus, as Husserl clearly states in a passage of the short text “Formal and Real Arithmetic” (1889–90): The most general in mathematics (Das mathematische Allgemeinere) is not at all a logical genus in the Aristotelian sense that is opposed to the species. The mathematical genus relates to the species as that which is more complex to that which is simpler, as the composed relation to an elementary relation. (Hua XXI, p. 22)

This passage highlights the significance of the notion of “complexity” (Zusammensetzung)—a notion that will play a crucial role in the Logical Investigations, not only in the Prolegomena but also in the Sixth Investigation. With this move, then, we finally arrive at the famous chapter dedicated to categorial intuition, of which Heidegger was so fond. But, as one may already suspect, far from opening on the question of being in an ill-formed manner, this chapter neatly seals off its very possibility. How should we deal with the question of the manifold meanings of being? And in what sense could we or could we not open the question of being? In order to answer to these questions, four preliminary remarks are necessary. (1) On the Issue of Equivocity. One must first recall that the First Logical Investigation has definitively dismissed the idea that a guiding thread for conceptual dependencies could be found at the level of language. Husserl’s analysis of the notion of “sign” shows precisely that language is not a reliable guiding thread if one wants to uncover the structural features that materially determine the inner relations or the “essences” of concrete phenomena. In §1 Husserl distinguishes between “two

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meanings” of the term sign (Zeichen): indication (Anzeichen) and expression (Ausdruck). For that reason, one might think that if “indication” and “expression” are both called “sign,” they should either share some common features (e.g., they both “transcend themselves” or “stand for something else”) or be conceptually grounded, one on the other (an expression is, as Derrida claims, a sign purified of its indicational, i.e., factual, nature).26 But Husserl quickly dismisses such a suggestion. Though they share a common name, and in spite of the fact that they “are often treated as synonyms,” expression and indication are not named that way because they share a common genus. “To mean [i.e., the general feature of an expression] is not a particular way of being a sign in the sense of indicating something” (Hua XIX, p. 30/269). Not only is a sign not a genre, it is not even a univocal name, as “expression” and “indication” are nothing but “two concepts connected with the word ‘sign’” (Hua XIX, p. 31/269). There are not, as it is often claimed, two “kinds” of signs, since expression and indication are structured according to different eidetic features. According to the semantic theory defended in the Logical Investigations, an expression is described as a whole whose non-independent moments are an articulate sound-complex and a mental act whose act matter exemplifies an ideal species (Hua XIX, pp. 37/275, 102–110/327–333), while the “essence of the indication” is in the motivational entailment of one existential judgment from another, so that the belief in the existence of x is experienced (though not at all evidently) as motivating the belief or the assumption that y may or may not exist as well (Hua XIX, pp.  31–32/270). These two different relations bear the same name, at least in German, because they are continually entwined in human communication, but they nonetheless remain distinguished from each other according to their respective essences. “Sign,” Husserl concludes, is thus an equivocal name or, more precisely, a name that bears a “double-meaning (Doppelsinn)” (Hua XIX, p. 30/269). It should be clear that, with this remark, Husserl does not at all presuppose an “unexplored metaphysical assumption of the essence of sign,” as Derrida suggests, for he simply notes that this German word, “Zeichen,” like many other homonyms, is equivocal. The question “what is a sign in general?” that would seek to unify expression and indication under a general concept is as incongruous as the question “what is a bug in general?” that would study the unified structure of everything that we call a “bug” whether insect or a problem in a computer program.27 (2) On the Issue of Being. Husserl strives throughout the Logical Investigations, and already in the crucial §67 of the Prolegomena, to separate “meaning categories” (Bedeutungskategorien) from “pure or formal objective categories” (reinen oder formalen gegenständlichen Kategorien), such as “object, state of affairs, unity, plurality, number, relation, connection, etc.” Such a robust division between the formal domain of meanings and the formal domain of ontology is one of the main achieve See the first section, “Sign and Signs,” of Derrida (1967b).  Of course, expression and indication can however be considered from a formal ontological point of view, just as insects and software bugs, as “something” (Etwas). But that would hardly help Derrida’s cause. 26 27

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ments of Husserl’s phenomenology that will never undergo any revision. In this regard, what Heidegger forgets is that, in §40 of the Sixth Investigation, being belongs to the former domain; and more precisely, it belongs to the set of what are called “syncategorematic expressions:” In our meanings, therefore, parts of very different kinds are to be found, and among these we may here pay special attention to those expressed by formal words such as ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘some’, ‘many’, ‘few’, ‘two’, ‘is’, ‘not’, ‘which’, ‘and’, ‘or’, etc. and further expressed by the substantival and adjectival, singular and plural inflection in our words etc. (Hua XIX, p. 658/774)

If anything, the question of being is less—or at least, not immediately—a question about the substantial meaning of a name (being) or a verb (to be) than a question about the very specific function of the formal word “is,” that is, one among many other synsemantic categories whose task is to contribute formally to the formation of meaningful sense unities. And if a multiplicity has to be defined, as Husserl suggested in his researches from the 1890s, as a “manifold whose elements are unified according to a law,” one may already take the risk of saying that the Husserlian “is” counts as a law, or, better, as the principle of unity for one very specific kind of multiplicity: the meaningful unity “A is B.” Husserl’s other examples include, but are not limited to, logical binary (“and,” “or”) and unary operators (“not”), quantifiers (“some”) etc., and one can also find many grammatical but not logical categories, whose formal function is precisely to fit into or bring about more complex unities. (3) On the Issue of Categories. If “being” has to be regarded as a category, and, more precisely, at least to begin with, as a “meaning category,” three points still need to be stressed. First: all syncategorems are mutually irreducible. “Is” is in fact a “category of signification” much as “and” and “or,” and all categories of signification are primitive and mutually exclusive. While in propositional logic—and in formal logic in general—one can reduce disjunction to conjunction (so that (p ∨ q) ≡ ¬(¬p ∧ ¬q)), in Husserl’s formal theory of meaning the contribution of each syncategorematic expression to the meaningful unity is regarded as unique. Moreover, it should be stressed that what Husserl calls “categorially formed meaning units”—and what should be regarded as sense-­multiplicities—are not limited to predications. “A is B” is a categorially formed meaning unit as well as “A and B” or “the A” or even “not B,” and all these units can be combined to form more complex meaning units. In that sense the meaning-units Husserl has in mind are not propositions or statements but what linguistics usually call “syntagms:” “the cat,” “the nice cat,” “the nice cat that is lying near the window,” “the nice cat that is lying near the window is my daughter’s cat”—all those expressions are equally syntagms. Second: “being” can only function as the formal principle of formation of meaning unities as long as it is conjugated—or presented in a verbally flexed form. This means that “being” always plays its structural role as a unifying principle of a multiplicity—i.e., a meaningful unity—within a meaning-complex, “formed and

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articulated,” as Husserl says. In other words, one can surely form a great deal of meaningful unities with words such as “to be” or “being,” but in such cases, the infinitive or the nominalized verb would simply function as elements of a multiplicity and not as internal principles of their being-connected. Third: it should be noted that such formal words expressing the categorial components of syntagms of different complexity are not meant to have any real correlate. The formal distinction between meaning categories and ontological categories intersects the parallel distinction between different intentional modalities, especially between signitive and perceptive or imaginative intentionality. Syncategorems legitimately belong to the framework of signitive intentionality, that is, to the meaning unities of articulated discourses. And yet, according to the above-mentioned grammatical division established in the Fourth Investigation, not all the parts of articulated discourses have the same function or the same status. On the contrary, Husserl does not shy away from speaking of “the categorial and absolute distinction between the form and the matter of presentation” (Hua XIX, p. 664–5/779).28 There are elements that may be given in intuition (material components) and others that cannot (formal components). What holds of ‘being’ is plainly true of the remaining categorial forms in our statements, whether these bind the constituents of terms together, or bind terms themselves together in the unity of the proposition. The ‘a’ and the ‘the’, the ‘and’ and the ‘or’, the ‘if’ and the ‘then’, the ‘all’ and the ‘none’, the ‘something’ and the ‘nothing’, the forms of quantity and the determinations of number etc.—all these are meaningful propositional elements, but we should look in vain for their objective correlates (if such may be ascribed to them at all) in the sphere of real objects, which are in fact none other than the sphere of objects of possible sense-perception. (Hua XIX, p. 667/781–2)

This passage summarizes quite explicitly all three points: (i) in its conjugated form, “being” is a formal meaning category; (ii) every formal meaning category is in itself nothing metaphysical or susceptible to becoming metaphysical—it has no real correlate29; (iii) if there is something like a categorial intuition, the intuition of “is” is by no means different than that of “and” or “or.” After these preliminary remarks, then, it is now possible to properly address the issue of the so-called “categorial intuition.” What should one understand under the heading of “categorial intuition,” if “being” (conjugated/flexed) belongs to the formal parts of discourse, along with many other formal meaning categories, which are  At the same time, he says, we should not “conflate quite different things such as sensuous or real forms of combination and categorial or ideal ones”. Hua XIX, p. 684/795. 29  In §43 Husserl, in his reply to Kant, Husserl writes: “Being is nothing in the object, no part of it, no moment tenanting it […]. But Being is also nothing attaching to an object” (Hua XIX, p. 665–6/780). Furthermore: “Being is absolutely imperceptible” (Hua XIX, p. 666/781). But the “togetherness” of the items belonging to a counted manifold that Husserl had explored in the Philosophy of Arithmetic is not in the object either, nor attached to objects or perceptible. Husserl has now rejected the idea that formal concepts, because they are not to be found in the objects, should be obtained on reflecting on the acts. But he still keeps on questioning the very nature of their formal appearance. Moreover, no formal meaning category is something in the object or a part of it. 28

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absolutely different from material parts, and do not have any chance of being intentionally given in an intuitive manner? It would be tempting to speak of an improper intuition alongside a proper intuition (namely, the proper intuition of certain nominal parts). It might be quite tempting as well to speak of an intuition in an expanded or analogical sense that would relate to formal parts of discourse as intuition proper is related to its material parts. And everything seems to prove that Heidegger did not resist such a temptation. Yet the way taken by Husserl in his studies of the 1890s requires that we adopt a guarded attitude toward this hasty solution. “Being,” in its conjugated/flexed form as “is,” is a syncategorem binding together the nominal elements of a complex meaning unit—namely, the sense-multiplicity called “predicative statement”—on the merely signitive level; the result of the meaningfulness of the statement is the fact that we understand it. “Being” is at work any time we understand a predicative statement. So whatever this strange thing called “categorial intuition” may be, in order to have it we should (i) form a predicative meaning-complex; (ii) such a complex (as categorially unified) is meaningful and is therefore understandable; (iii) we then turn to intuitive acts and see what is meant in the statement precisely as it is meant; in that case, (iv) we necessarily see more than isolated sensible objects—we rather see, in a non-metaphorical sense, more or less complicated “complexes” (Zusammensetzungen). The complex object corresponding to a predicative statement is, of course, called “a state of affairs.” One must carefully distinguish, along the lines of Husserl’s critique of Locke, between mere intuition and fulfillment. Sensible intuition is only the correlate of the perceptual apprehension of certain nominal matters, whereas on numerous occasions Husserl insists that there is not, and cannot be, a categorial analogon for sensible intuition. Hence, the contested expression of “categorial intuition” indicates not the appearing of a category, but the appearing of the objective correlate of a sense-multiplicity thanks to an overlapping intentional synthesis between a signitive and an intuitive act, which gives rise to a synthesis of identification of their respective contents (Hua XIX, p. 686/796). What appears is, so to speak, the mirrormanifold of a categorially formed meaning unit: in a categorial intuition we do not see a simple category, but a multiplicity. But how are we to understand the relation between sensible intuition and categorial intuition? Husserl speaks in this regard of “Fundierung,” which Heidegger understands immediately as “Analogie.” The categorial intuition is “founded” upon a perceptual intuition, which Heidegger misunderstands as its being “analogous” to the perceptual intuition, namely, to the only “proper” kind of intuition. But the word “foundation,” ever since the lecture courses of the 1890s, when Husserl was struggling with the layered formal systems maintaining some common structural features, has a precise meaning. Husserl thus writes in this connection: The system of signs of arithmetica universalis can be divided into a certain series of levels, which are comparable to a system of concentric circles. The signs 1, 2 = 1 + 1, 3 = 2 + 1, etc., fill the deepest level (the lowest circle), followed by signs for fractions, etc. Signs from the lowest level, and only these, are independent; those of the superior level are formally dependent on the deeper level, and finally on those of the lowest level. At each circle there

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are rules of calculation (formal laws); those of the superior circle are dependent on those of the deepest circle, which they include formally. The rules of calculation are thus formed such that each ‘equation’, whatever the path, that is to say, at whatever level of the circle by which one obtains it, is identically satisfied, with regard to signs and the domain of rules that it actually implies. (Hua XXI, pp. 247–248)

Husserl is clearly speaking of the different layers of an algorithm and, more precisely, of the partial algorithms that compose the general algorithm of the arithmetica universalis. However, the idea of formal dependencies between signs belonging to different levels can be easily connected to the idea, expressed by the very notion of a categorial intuition, of higher order objects appearing as the objective counterparts of meaningful linguistic syntagms constituted thanks to the contribution of formal words within the framework of signitive intentionality. Let us compare this passage, from the famous letter to Stumpf of February 1890, to the following passage in §46 of the Sixth Investigation: Sensuous or real objects can in fact be characterized as objects of the lowest level of possible intuition, categorial or ideal objects as objects of higher levels. […] sensuous objects are present in a perception at a single act-level: they do not need to be constituted in many-­ rayed fashion in acts of higher level, whose objects are set up for them by way of other objects, already constituted in other acts. (Hua XIX, p. 674/787)

Expressed in the image of concentric circles, sensible intuition is represented by the most internal circle, whereas different kinds of categorial intuitions indicate exterior circles, founded on lower levels, and adding new formal determinations. In fact, as Husserl explains in §47, sensible intuition is related to categorial intuition just as a straightforward perceptual act (die schlichte Wahrnehmung) is related to an articulated perceptual act—what he ends up calling a “relational perception” (beziehende Wahrnehmung), that is, the perception not of an object but of the correlate of a categorially formed syntagm: an object that has undergone a “configuration” (Formung). Categorial forms do not modify or “shape” the lower level objects just as the expanded rules of calculus do not change anything in the number domain. Forms do not modify or expand the concept of number; they generate new, more complex objects from older ones. The same holds for the internal circle of perception. In addition, the difference between the two levels is not just a matter of degree. As far as multiplicities are concerned, a difference in degree of complexity is also a difference of formal laws and accordingly of their formal objects. But now, the role once played by the signitive algorithm is played by a grammatically structured performance of signitive intentionality. It is uniquely in this sense that each element of the inferior circle within a categorial intuition, as it is grasped as a member of a “Fundierungsglied” from the view-point of relations of higher order, is the subject of a modification: Its fitting into its categorial context gives it a definite place and role in this context, the role of a relatum, and in particular of a subject- or object-member. These are differences that are phenomenologically evident. (Hua XIX, p. 686/796)

It is precisely the modified appearing undergone by the counterpart of a nominal matter, once it is categorially formed, that phenomenologically announces the

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occurrence of a categorial intuition. The appearing object appears as a relatum, “a term in a relation:” “perception remains perception, the object is given as it was before given, ‘only’ it is ‘put in relation’” (Hua XIX, pp. 686–687/797). As a result, when it comes to “categorial intuition,” what is at issue is not to see being in an intuitive and original manner, in its retreat from beings, but to see more than beings. And this does not broach the question of being, but rather the question of unity and multiplicity.

8 After Homonymy: Being or Multiplicity? Indeed, in order to find the clumsy sketch of the ontological difference in the famous §49 of the Logical Investigations, one would not only need to find something akin to a Husserlian equivalent to the “retreat of being;” one would also have to find in such a retreat a manner of givenness of being. But this is precisely what Husserl ends up foreclosing, in clear and forceful terms, in the final paragraphs of the sixth chapter of the Sixth Investigation. Heidegger’s reconstruction, therefore, does not tell us the whole story. As with other interpreters in his wake, Heidegger knows that “being” is not the only category one can possibly grasp in a categorial intuition. In his early Prolegomena to the Concept of Time, he correctly remembers that “and” and “or” are precisely in the same situation as “is” (Heidegger 1979, pp. 77–80/57–60). Yet despite this acknowledgement, he immediately focuses on the only question with which he is familiar— the question of Being—and thus gives priority to that one category over all others. But, as we have seen, Husserl’s “being” is definitely much more modest. If being appears within a multiplicity, it is not as the correlate of a nominal term, but as the non-independent moment of a “formed object,” that is, a complex whose correlate, on the signitive side, is a syntagm (i.e., a categorially formed matter, a meaning-­ unity). In this sense, the exact term for categorial intuition should instead be “syncategorematic intuition,” given that “is,” “am,” and “are” (ist, bin, sind) are syncategories that occur only as the forming factors of a multiplicity—which is never the case for the nominalized and capitalized expression “Being” (Sein), to say nothing of “Being as such” (Sein überhaupt). Of course, Husserl leaves open the possibility of legitimating this question through nominalization. At the end of the day, once we trace it back to its categorial nature, there would be nothing wrong with the so-called “problem of Being.” Yet if the categorial intuition of being is nothing but one of the many and irreducible forms of syncategorematic intuition, another question seems to impose itself: if there are as many irreducible categorial intuitions as there are syncategories, why should one emphasize being? Why should one privilege the categorial form of the predicative statement? Instead of stressing the specificity of the categorial meaning of “being,” Husserl, in §51, puts being back in its place by investigating thoroughly two new complex object-formations, the “collectiva” (Kollektiva) and the “disjunctiva” (Disjunktiva).

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Collectiva and disjunctiva are complex objects composed of complexes of objects and “the acts in which these are constituted as data are those which furnish a fulfilling intuition for the meaning of the conjunctions ‘and’ and ‘or’” (Hua XIX, p. 688/798). Not surprisingly, Husserl mentions here the analysis formerly presented in the Philosophy of Arithmetic and interestingly stresses the difference between two apprehensions of a manifold: the mere intuition of “figural moments” (the simple perception of heaps, swarms, etc.) and the categorial intuition of a categorially structured manifold—what he calls a konjunktive Wahrnehmung —, the latter being “the per­ ception of a conjunction, in which alone the consciousness of a manifold (Vielheitsbewusstein) is itself actually constituted” (p. 689/799). Despite—or probably thanks to—their categorial differences, Husserl now forcefully restores the dignity of the other syncategories. The complex “A and B” is as fundamental and mysterious as the predicative statement “A is B.” And, in many ways, it is even more important to the extent that it reveals the syncategorial nature of the latter and opens the fundamental problem of the “togetherness,” the ʽɛ`ν ἐπὶ πολλῶν, formerly studied in Husserl’s mathematical researches after the Philosophy of Arithmetic and later developed in his researches on eidetics. Heidegger was probably right that metaphysics has too often been hypnotized by “beings.” However, to denounce this fact and divert attention from beings does not necessarily lead to the question of being. And even if it were to lead to the question of being, such a question would be immediately absorbed within the far broader question of the Formungen, the “shaping forms,” of meaningful experiences to which the question of being properly belongs. There are as many categorial intuitions as there are syntagms, as many syntagms as syncategories, and as many syncategories as forms of multiplicities. Yet because syncategories are mutually irreducible, the word “category” within the expression “categorial intuition” is a term robustly and irremediably equivocal. Husserl’s analysis of “being” as a formal meaning category among others, considered within the intentional framework of the distinction between signitive and intuitive-­fulfilling acts, strongly suggests that the togetherness established by the use of the verb “being” is nothing but one particular case of “togetherness,” one kind of multiplicity among others. We are thus left with no choice: either the question of being loses its privilege or it loses its privilege. In the first case, because being is merely one of the many forms of sense multiplicities that can be categorially established and eventually fulfilled, (as it gives rise to the appearance of certain complexes including perceptions as their parts); in the second case, because the question of multiplicity ends up to be more general than the question of Being itself. Brentano unified the meanings of “being” in grouping them around the science of metaphysics defined as the science of the real as real, the center of which was occupied by οὐσία and by that which can be directly ascribed to it as a real property (or indirectly in an analogical way). Heidegger quite proudly recognizes his indebtedness to Brentano’s dissertation, yet it seems like he cannot help but read Husserl through the lenses of Brentano’s Aristotle and thus attribute to him the idea of the analogy of the categorial with the sensible. Already at the time of the Logical Investigations, however, Husserl had renounced the idea of analogy. The last vestiges of the proper/improper distinction can be verbally found in Chapter VIII of the

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Sixth Investigation, where Husserl distinguishes between “proper and improper thinking” (Hua XIX, pp. 710–733/816–834). But behind these words, soon to disappear, the concepts have already changed: empty signitive acts of thinking are now labeled as “improper” (uneigentliche) while fulfilled signitive acts of thinking are “proper” (eigentliche). It is not hard to recognize that signitive acts are neither dependent on nor derived from fulfilled acts; they are certainly less complex, and their cognitive power is increased as soon as they enter into new synthetic forms with other objectifying acts. On the other hand, it seems hard to say that Husserl merely “touches upon” the question of being or that he reduces being to the being of an object. Husserl quite clearly puts being in its place and in the good company of formal categorial essences, as expressed in syncategorems. In this manner, on the one hand, he explicates the indispensable role of the signitive, of language, and of grammar for phenomenology. On the other hand, he develops Brentano’s intuition, as proposed in his lecture courses in Vienna, regarding the strict solidarity between λόγος and πρός τι, between language and relatedness. Moreover, he also considers the relation of categorially formed meaning units to ‘sensible-objects-put-into-relations” in terms of foundation (Fundierung).30 This could only appear incomprehensible for Heidegger (or, perhaps, it was too promptly comprehensible, at least if it was translated in his own Aristotelian terms). But equally incomprehensible for Heidegger must have been the consideration of all the elements of such a heterogeneously formed class of “formal categories of meaning” (including logical and grammatical entailments, conjunctions, disjunctions, etc.) as possessing the very same philosophical status. If metaphysics is the name for the science of “being qua being,” it is hard not to recognize that we lack names for the categorially independent sciences of “conjunction as conjunction” or of “disjunction as disjunction”—not to mention the equivocal science of “multiplicities as such” (which is far from being simply that of “formal ontology”). Yet, looking to Husserl’s development of his phenomenological enterprise, which becomes increasingly concerned with the problem of constitution (and not just of objects, but also of time, ego, the world, etc.—in a word, the constitution of “unities”), the thought comes to mind that one of the possible names for that broad and equivocal discipline whose task is to show how unities are constituted out of multiplicities, how they hold together and are mutually related, as already suggested, is none other than “transcendental phenomenology.”31

 Such a meaning of foundation should be distinguished from the mereological meaning as expressed in the Third Investigation. On that topic I cannot but agree with Thomas Nenon’s arguments, in Nenon (1997). Let me just add, however, that while the latter comes from Brentano, the former seems to be an original contribution of Husserl. A contribution that one should however compare with Meinong’s notion of “higher order objects” as developed in his Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältniss zur inneren Wahrnehmung, reprinted in Meinong (1968). 31  See Chap. 2 and Chap. 11 in this volume. 30

Chapter 9

Back to the Meanings Themselves On Phenomenology and the Stoic Doctrine of the Lekton

giurano fede queste mie parole | a un evento impossibile, e lo ignorano. Eugenio Montale

1 Introduction In the first edition of Hellenistic Philosophy (1974), A. A. Long complained about the relative lack of interest, in the philosophical community, with respect to Skeptics, Stoics, and Epicureans. But then, in the preface to the second edition, Long gladly acknowledged that, in the course of ten years, the situation had radically changed. Since then, he said, Hellenistic philosophy in general and Stoic philosophy in particular have been widely studied, rediscovered, assessed, appreciated, and finally praised for their theoretical innovations (1985, p. ix). Unfortunately, nothing even remotely similar happened in phenomenology. The malevolent silence and the scattered, spiteful remarks of Brentano or Heidegger1 on the “decadence” of Hellenistic philosophy in general and Stoicism in particular has diverted the attention of “phenomenologists,” almost exclusively, either towards the towering figures of Plato and Aristotle, or towards the enigmatic depth of the pre-Socratics. Husserl’s case is therefore all the more striking. The “acuity (Scharfsinn) of the Stoics” (Hua Mat VI, pp. 53–4) is, to be sure, repeatedly praised in many of his published and unpublished texts: the 1908–9 lectures Old and New Logic (pp. 53–8); the 1916–20 lectures Introduction to Philosophy (Hua Mat IX, p.  87); the 1917  “Stoicism, together with Epicureanism, appears to be praiseworthy, but both systems are to be rejected as unscientific and therefore as manifestations of decay (sind als unwissenschaftlich und daher als Verfallserscheinungen abzulehnen)” (Brentano, 1963, p. 326). “So it is with the philosophy of the Greeks, it came to an end in greatness with Aristotle (ging mit Aristoteles groß zu Ende)” (Heidegger, 1983, p. 12/17). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_9

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lectures Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge (Hua XXV, p. 127); the 1923–4 lectures on First Philosophy (Hua VII, pp. 17, 335); his 1926 report on Heinrich Holtkamp’s dissertation On the Concept of “Intentio” in the Scholastic Philosophy (Hua Dok III/8, p.  191); and finally the 1929 book Formal and Transcendental Logic (Hua XVII, pp. 86–7). In all these texts, Husserl constantly and consistently pays tribute to the Stoic concept of lekton. Surprisingly enough, without referring to any of these materials, Deleuze’s Logic of Sense credits Husserl precisely for having followed the Stoic “path” leading to the discovery of the lekton: incorporeal, ontologically evanescent, a pure event or sense, beyond existence and non-existence—a discovery located in Husserl’s account of “the noema of an act or what is expressed by a proposition” (Deleuze, 1969, p.  117/96; translation modified). Yet Deleuze was not the first to liken the Stoic lekton to Husserl’s noema. Though for different reasons, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre (1943, p. 41/39) had already made a similar claim, comparing the two concepts for their analogous “type of existence.” Because of the speculative nature of Being and Nothingness and Logic of Sense, however, neither Sartre nor Deleuze go so far as to refer to, let alone examine, any specific passage of Husserl’s corpus upon which the parallel could be grounded. Sartre simply lumps together the two concepts and states as a fact their structural similarity. As for Deleuze, he certainly draws some indirect clues from §§87–91 of Ideas I. But in none of these texts does Husserl mention or even allude to the lekton. The case study is therefore quite puzzling. Unlike any other “phenomenologist,” Husserl praises the Stoics and more specifically the Stoic doctrine of the lekton. This fact is acknowledged by both Sartre and Deleuze. However, both Sartre and Deleuze believe that the phenomenological relevance of the lekton is somehow related to Husserl’s notion of noema. And yet Husserl’s discussions of the noema never actually make reference to the lekton, nor do the texts Husserl devotes to the lekton ever mention the noema. Now, if this is the case, why does Husserl extensively refer to and discuss the lekton? What is it exactly that he finds significant in this Stoic concept? And why is it that even authors like Sartre or Deleuze, who were ready to acknowledge the role of the lekton, thought it appropriate to turn towards the noema? These are the questions I would like to address in the present chapter. I will proceed as follows: After having spelled out the context within which Sartre parallels noema and lekton (Sects. 2 and 3), I will turn to Deleuze and show how his reading of the Stoics (Sects. 4 and 5) actually echoes some key tenets of Husserl’s phenomenology (Sects. 6 and 7). Despite his closer reading, however, Deleuze decides—not unlike Sartre—to equate the Stoic lekton specifically with Husserl’s noema (Sect. 8). Having shown the assumptions underlying this decision (Sect. 9), I will finally discuss Husserl’s explicit account of the lekton and its actual significance for the broad project of a formal, apophantic logic correlated to a formal ontology (Sect. 10). I will conclude by showing how this complex path may be of twofold interest: historical and systematic. On the one hand, it could shed some light on an often neglected aspect of the relationship between phenomenology and ancient philosophy, namely, the actual extent of phenomenology’s Stoic lineage. On

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the other hand, it could also help to identify some still unexploited conceptual resources of Husserl’s phenomenology.

2 Sartre and the Reality of Nothingness The first section of Being and Nothingness, devoted to “The Problem of Nothingness,” introduces the idea that non-being is a “new component of the real” (Sartre, 1943, p. 40/36). Thanks to this extreme move, Sartre’s inquiry finally turns to the study of the threefold relation between (1) human being and transcendent being, (2) transcendent being and non-being, and (3) human non-being and transcendent being (Sartre, 1943, p. 40/36). One might object, however, that non-being is by definition nothing real at all. Since transcendent being is “full positivity and does not contain in itself any negation” (Sartre, 1943, p. 40/37), one could also affirm that “it is me who is accountable for the negation in its proper sense.”2 In this way, it would be safe to say that negation is “simply a quality of judgment” and, correlatively, that “nothingness derives its origin from negative judgments; it would be a concept establishing the transcendent unity of all these judgments, a propositional function of the type: ‘X is not’” (Sartre, 1943, p. 40/37). If the objection were correct, Sartre continues, “non-being” would be either nothing at all (an empty word, a fiction), or—if anything—simply another name for the full being of a particular, really existing, mental activity (the negative judgment). Having presented the objection, Sartre promptly rejects it. Although it is certainly me, he says, who unifies and separates concepts providing a “synthesis” which is “a concrete and full event of psychic life,” it is not me who decides which concepts can be unified and which ones can be separated. In other words, though accomplished subjectively, negations are always about reality (Sartre, 1943, p. 41/37). This brings us to a paradoxical consequence. Understood as the outcome of the mental operation of a negative act of judgment, separating two concepts that nevertheless refer to something that is separated in being, [n]egation would be “at the end” (“au bout”) of the act of judgment without, however, being “in” being (“dans” l’être). It is like an unreal encompassed by two full realities neither of which claims it; being-in-itself if questioned about negation, refers to judgment, since being is only what it is—and judgment, a wholly psychic positivity, refers to being since judgment formulates a negation which concerns being and which consequently is transcendent. (Sartre, 1943, p. 41/37)

Hence the following conclusion: it is not even true that “negation” has the merely subjective being of a mental state. One should rather say that it is an “unreality”  Hazel E. Barnes’s English translation of the sentence “la négation proprement dite m’est imputable” as “Negation proper (we are told) is unthinkable” (Sartre, 1943, p.  40/37) is manifestly wrong and should be corrected. 2

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(irréel), stuck in the middle between two realities (one mental, one transcendent): “resulting” from the first, “concerned by” the second—but ultimately “being” neither of the above. Now, is there any philosophical concept apt to capture the paradoxical status of such a “something” that would be more than a mere fiction and less than a robust being? According to Sartre, two concepts at least appear to be up to this task: the Stoic lekton, and Husserl’s noema. Negation, the result of concrete psychic operations, is supported in existence by these very operations and is incapable of existing by itself; it has the existence of a noema-correlate (corrélatif noématique); its esse resides exactly in its percipi. Nothingness, the conceptual unity of negative judgments, cannot have the slightest trace of reality, save that which the Stoics confer on their “lekton” (ne saurait avoir la moindre réalité si ce n’est celle que les Stoïciens conféraient à leur “lekton”). Can we accept this concept? (Sartre, 1943, p. 41/38–9) Is this to say that these non-beings are to be reduced to pure subjectivity? Does this mean to say that we ought to give them the importance and the type of existence (l’importance et le type d’existence) of the Stoic “lekton,” of Husserl’s noema? We think not. (Sartre, 1943, p. 41/39)

At this point, it is not clear whether Sartre intends to reject the general ontological assumption of queer entities like the lekton/noema or simply deny that negation is one of them. What is clear, however, is that the remaining part of the section (Sartre, 1943, pp. 41–81/38–85) is entirely devoted to the task of showing that non-being is definitely not a parasitic unreal “something” trapped between two full-bodied realities. It is rather, as Sartre insists, a genuine “structure of reality” (structure du réel) (Sartre, 1943, p. 41/38). Accordingly, “negation” is not a mere quality of the judgment but—in a more Heideggerian vein—“a disclosure of being (dévoilement d’être) on the basis of which we can make a judgment,” “a relation of being with non-being, on the basis of the original transcendence” (Sartre, 1943, p.  42/39). Having proven this point, Sartre will not need to mention the lekton anymore. As for the noema, it sporadically appears also in other passages of Being and Nothingness (Sartre, 1943, pp. 16–17, 28, 31/10–1, 23, 27)—but always with reference to its “unreal” nature and controversial status. The noema is constantly pictured as a mental object, whose intermediate being is tantamount to its being-represented (esse est percipi): it is neither a mere subjective act nor a fully transcendent correlate. On the basis of this controversial status, Sartre finally draws the following provocative conclusion: by introducing the very idea of a noema, Husserl has literally betrayed the most fundamental discovery of phenomenology, namely, the intentionality of consciousness. Husserl defines consciousness precisely as transcendence […]. This is his essential discovery. But from the moment he makes of the noema an unreal, a correlate of the noesis, a noema whose esse is percipi, he is totally unfaithful to his principle. (Sartre, 1943, p. 28/23)

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3 Constructing the Noema/Lekton We should now have a better view not only of the context within which Sartre ends up likening lekton and noema, (i.e., the status of negation), but also—and more significantly—of the defining features upon which such a parallel ultimately rests. In a nutshell, Sartre’s lekton/noema. (1) is “something” (quelque chose) (Sartre, 1943, p. 35/6); (2) has neither mental being, nor transcendent being (ni … ni) (p. 41/37); (3) is somehow “enclosed” (enserré), related to both mental and transcendent being (p. 41/37); (4) is incapable of existing by itself (incapable d’exister par soi) (p. 41/38); (5) is ontologically subject-dependent (esse est percipi) (p. 41/38–9); (6) has an “unreal” (irréel) (p.  41/37) “type of existence” (type d’existence) (p. 41/39), a “lesser reality” (moindre réalité) (p. 41/39). Let us now pause on these features. As for feature (1), the claim that the lekton is “something,” is granted by the testimonies of Seneca (Lett. 58, 13–15; LS 27 A  =  SVF 2, 232), Alexander (On Arist. Top., 301, 19–25; LS 27 B = SVF 2, 329) and Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math., I, 17; LS 27 C = SVF II, 330). More precisely, Sextus credits the Stoics with having said that “of ‘somethings’ some are bodies, other incorporeals (τῶν γὰρ τινῶν φασὶ τὰ μὲν εἶναι σώματα τὰ δὲ ἀσώματα)” and explicitly lists the lekton among the latter (Adv. Math., X, 218; LS 27 D  =  SVF II, 331, 20–1). To put it in Long and Sedley’s (1987, p. 164) terms, for the Stoics “to be something” is simply “to be a proper subject of thought and discourse.” As for Husserl’s noema, § 87 of Ideas I reminds us, once again, that consciousness is precisely “consciousness of something” (Bewusstsein von etwas). But Husserl also hastens to add that, in the natural attitude, what is actually meant by the expression “of something” is still unclear and needs to be investigated in its essential characters. Such investigation requires a different attitude, namely, the transcendental one (Hua III/1, p.  202/173–4). As a result, “noema” turns out to denote, within the transcendental attitude, that “something” (Etwas) of which consciousness is necessarily consciousness-of (Hua III/1, pp.  202–3/173–4). However, a noema is also, in turn, “something” in a formal-ontological sense. “Something” (Etwas) is, in fact, “a name which is suited to any conceivable content” (Hua XII, p.  80/84). In this sense, everything whatsoever is “something-in-general” (Etwas überhaupt), insofar as it is a “subject of predication” (prädikables Subjekt) (Husserl, 1913, p. 119)—anything that one can talk or make a judgment about (Hua XVII, § 25). In sum, the phrase “the noema is something” has a twofold sense. On the one hand, it means that “noema” is the name of that something towards which consciousness is intentionally directed (once such “directedness” is questioned within the transcendental attitude). On the other hand, it means that the noema is something one can talk or make a judgment about.

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This brings us to the following conclusion. If the Stoic lekton and Husserl’s noema are both “something-in-general” (Etwas überhaupt / ti), it is only in the second, formal-ontological sense (as subjects of thought and discourse). By contrast, the noema is also “something” (Etwas) in the first, transcendental, sense (as the correlate of an intentional act under reduction). As far as I can tell, this sense appears to have no equivalent in the Stoic framework. Features (2) and (3), claiming the “neither/nor” status of the lekta, could be illustrated through a famous passage of Sextus (Adv. Math. VIII, 11–12; LS 33 B = SVF II, 166)—a passage to which we shall repeatedly come back later: There was another controversy among philosophers: [i] some assigned the true and the false to the signification (τῷ σημαινομένῳ), others to the spoken sound (τῇ φωνῇ), and others to the process of thought (τῇ κινήσει τῆς διανοίας). The Stoics defended the first opinion, saying that [ii] three things are linked together, the signification (τὸ σημαινόμενον), the signifier (τὸ σημαῖνον), and the name-bearer (τὸ τυγχάνον). The signifier is a spoken sound, for instance, “Dion;” the signification is precisely the thing that is revealed by the spoken sound and that we apprehend as it subsists in accordance with our thought, whereas it is not understood by barbarians, although they do hear the spoken sound; the name-bearer is the external substrate, for instance, Dion himself. Of these, two are bodies, the spoken sound and the name-bearer, one is incorporeal, the thing signified and expressible (λεκτόν), which is what becomes true or false. (my translation, emphasis added)

Now, it is readily apparent that this passage could support Sartre’s account of the lekton/noema only by undergoing some significant changes. Sextus’s text in fact identifies two triplets: [i] περὶ τῇ φωνῇ / περὶ τῷ σημαινομένῳ / περὶ τῇ κινήσει τῆς διανοίας [ii] τὸ σημαῖνον (=φωνή) / τὸ σημαινόμενον (=λεκτόν) / τὸ τυγχάνον The first triplet opposes three possible candidates for the title role of “truth-bearer”: spoken sounds, significations, and cognitive processes; the second discerns three “things” linked to a linguistic item like the proper name “Dion”: spoken sound, signification, and name-bearer. While “spoken sounds” and “significations” occur in both series, “cognitive processes” occurs only in the first (qua putative truth-­ bearers) and “name-bearers” only in the second (qua linguistic denotations and, perhaps, truth-makers). Now, instead of Sextus’s second triplet (spoken sound— signification  =  lekton—name-bearer) Sartre’s reading rests on a slightly different triplet, mixing up elements from both series: [iii] judgment—negation ≈ lekton—transcendent being. In Sartre’s alternative triplet, however, all reference to language has disappeared: the uttered spoken sound is replaced by the psychological mental act of a (negative) judgment; and the external name-bearer—what the spoken sound names or denotes (the one person actually called “Dion”)—turns into a nameless transcendent being. But there is more: Sextus’s first triplet, which relates to the controversy about the actual substrate of truth and falsity, is nowhere to be found in Sartre’s account. Put differently, Sartre explicitly displaces the (psychological) διανοία, originally

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occurring within the first triplet, within the second triplet. By doing so, the d­ isplaced διανοία replaces the missing (linguistic) φωνή. However, though textually unwarranted, such replacement is ontologically justified. For, according to the Stoics, both cognitive processes and spoken sounds are indeed corporeal entities. They act and can be acted upon (see Diog. Laert., VII, 138). And if one is solely interested in the question of their ontological status—as Sartre is—they are wholly interchangeable. Consequently, both (corporeal) διανοία and φωνή could be indifferently contrasted to the (incorporeal) lekton. It should be noted that, if one removes from the lekton its linguistic dimension and strips away its relation to truth,3 what remains is precisely the idea of some mental content (the negation), which is different from both the act (of judging) and the object (being). This something could therefore be compared to the reduced intentional correlate of an act that Husserl called noema. The comparison, however, could only succeed if Husserl’s noema is, in turn, understood as an intermediary mental object. Now, I will not dwell on the very serious problems related to the idea of interpreting the noema as a mediating intensional abstract entity.4 What needs to be stressed is that, again, Sartre’s reading could find a textual basis in Ideas I—if only by means of certain “re-arrangements.” Husserl claims, for instance, that the noema is neither a real (reell) immanent component of the intentional lived-experience, nor an actual (wirklich) transcendent object (Hua III/1, pp.  202–9/173–80). This claim is illustrated by the famous example of the perceptual noema of a tree. The noema of a perceived tree, Husserl says, is neither to be conflated with the (real) act of perceiving a tree, nor with the (real) actual tree standing in the garden and having certain (real) features (Hua III/1, pp. 205–6/176–7). It should rather be described in a twofold way: either as the “intentional correlate” of the former (once the whole experience (Erlebnis) has undergone the phenomenological reduction); or as the “pure appearance”—das Erscheinende als solches—of the latter (once all position of existence is suspended) (Hua III/1, p. 204/175–6). Now, saying that the noema is neither an act nor a thing does not entail that it is something standing in-between an act and a thing, as Sartre says. In order to read Husserl’s example in this sense, one still needs to add to the idea of a “neither/nor” (ni … ni) that of “mediation” or “being-in-the-middle” (enserré). But not only does Ideas I never present the noema in terms of “mediation” (Vermittlung) or make use of any expression indicating such an intermediary role; it also seems to suggest something entirely different. For, the “real” causal relation between realities (actual perceptual act of a bodily perceiving subject standing in front of an actual tree), grasped in the natural attitude, has to be sharply distinguished from the non-real intentional correlation, grasped in the reduced transcendental attitude, between

 And, as we have seen, following Heidegger, the truth Sartre is interested in is a “truth-disclosure” (dévoilement), not a truth-agreement whose “bearer” could be identified either with spoken sounds or significations or cognitive states. 4  On the topic, see, among others, the convincing arguments spelled out in Drummond (2013). 3

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noesis and the noema.5 Thus the noema is not a mediating entity but the result of a shift of attitude.6 Features (4) and (5), spelling out the existential subject-dependency of the lekton/noema, could be accounted for in the following way. As for the lekton, there is another famous passage of Sextus’s (Adv. Math. VIII, 70; LS 33 C = SVF II 187) that could be interpreted accordingly: “They [sc. the Stoics] say that a lekton is what subsists in accordance with/on the basis of a rational representation (τὸ κατὰ λογικὴν φαντασίαν ὑφιστάμενον), and a rational representation is one in which what is represented (τὸ φαντασθὲν) can be exhibited in language” (my translation, emphases added). It is certainly possible—though not necessary—to read the κατά, not as expressing an “agreement” or an “accordance” between lekta and linguistically expressible rational representations, but rather as a form of ontological dependency of the former with respect to the latter.7 By doing so, the lekta would clearly appear to be subject-dependent entities whose “subsistence” rests on the psychological “existence” of the λογική φαντασία—and ultimately of the διανοία. Such a reading could also be confirmed, even more consistently, by a passage in Diogenes Laertius (VII, 43) where the second part of Zeno’s dialectics, the study of significations, which includes the lekta, is said to be about “the representations [...] and everything that hinges upon them (τῶν φαντασιῶν […] καὶ τῶν ἐκ τούτων ὑφισταμένων).”8 Needless to say, in order to sustain the parallel with the lekton, the same operation would have to be applied to Husserl’s noema, whose essential “correlation” with the noesis would have to be explicitly reinterpreted in terms of ontological dependency (Hua III/1, p. 203/214). In both cases, however, Sartre’s reading of the lekton/noema can only be construed by replacing the distinctive relations expressed in terms of “agreement” or “correlation” (κατὰ λογικὴν φαντασίαν / Korrelation) with the ontological relation of existential dependency. Finally, as for feature (6), the Stoics “introduced a general distinction between existence and subsistence” (Galen, De meth. med., 10, 155, 1–8; LS 27G = SVF II, 322). However, it is hard to imagine any text suggesting that they could have considered subsistence as a form of “diminished reality” or “lesser being.” Quite the contrary, the sources confirm that the Stoic universe (τὸ πᾶν) unambiguously includes existing bodies and subsisting incorporeals, such as the void (Diog. Laert.,

 By contrast, Deleuze clearly sees this point.  On this point see Chap. 3 in this volume. 7  Gourinat (2000, p. 116) understands the “κατά” precisely in this sense, as he translates τὸ κατὰ λογικὴν φαντασίαν ὑφιστάμενον as “what has a reality in a rational representation (ce qui a une réalité dans une représentation rationnelle).” A different position is defended by Alessandrelli (2013, pp. 65–85), who insists—in my view quite convincingly—on the fact that one should read the “κατά” “not in terms of dependency, but of agreement or conformity (accordo o conformità)” (p. 70). Even more interestingly, Alessandrelli proceeds to suggest that such “agreement” should be understood as a form of “correlation” (p. 70). If one follows this suggestion, lekton and noema could be paralleled again, though not for the reasons suggested by Sartre. 8  As manifestly suggested by the ἐκ related to the present participle ὑφισταμένων. On the question of whether lekta depend on logical representations, see Long (1996). 5 6

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VII, 140). Moreover, one of the two parts of Chrysippus’s dialectic has to do explicitly with incorporeal lekta—and Stoic dialectics is a full-fledged science (Diog. Laert., VII, 180). The medieval idea of esse diminutum (lesser or diminished being), echoed in Sartre’s terminology, by contrast, has an entirely different story. It applies to the doctrine of the intelligible species, the so-called mental contents and objects of thought (see Maurer, 1950; Spruit, 1994). In Scotus, for instance, using the expression esse diminutum is tantamount to saying esse representatum (represented being) or esse cognitum (known being) (see Ordinatio, II, dist. 3, p. 2, q. 1). But this has manifestly nothing to do with either mental or real truth-bearers of propositional spoken sounds. And yet, this is precisely what Sartre has in mind by extracting the lekton from its linguistic context, by turning it into an intermediary and ontologically subject-dependent mental object, and by referring to its “lesser reality.” The only Stoic concept that could fit this description would be the concept of ἐννόημα (often translated as “notion”) and not that of lekton. Aetius (IV, 12, 1–5; LS 39 B  =  SVF II, 54) and Diogenes Laertius (VII, 49–51; LS 39 A  =  SVF II 52) famously report that the Stoics distinguished between “representation” (φαντασία) and “represented” (φανταστόν), on the one hand, and “phantasy” (φανταστικόν) and “phantasm” or “imagined figment” (φάντασμα) on the other. Examples of phantasms are centaurs, giants, and all those “things that do not exist,” “whatever falsely formed by thought takes on some image despite lacking substance” (Seneca, Letters, 58, 15; LS 27 A = SVF II 332).9 Now, a lekton (i.e., what is represented by a “non-sensible representation”) (see Diog. Laert. VII, 51) does not exist and yet is something. A φάντασμα (i.e., a figment represented in the imagination) does not exist, either, and, though for entirely different reasons, is also “something”. But an ἐννόημα is even less than that, it is “a phantasy-figment of the intellect (φάντασμα διανοίας), which, though not really something (τι) nor a qualified (ποιόν), is a quasi-something and quasi-qualified (ὡσανεὶ δέ τι ὄν καὶ ὡσανεὶ ποιόν), in the way that the mental trace (ἀνατύπωμα) of a horse arises even though none is present” (Diog. Laert., VII, 61; LS 30 C; translation modified).10 It is a quasi-something that is indeed posited “between” the cognitive subject and the external thing (see Sext. Adv. Math., VII, 167–9); something that appears to be analogous to the medieval “intelligible species” having the esse diminutum of a purely mental being; but also somehow comparable to Husserl’s noema, suitably re-interpreted as a mind-dependent, intermediary mental object.

 Again, Hazel E.  Barnes gratuitous footnote (Sartre, 1943, p.  38) explaining the lekton as “an abstraction or something with purely nominal existence—like space or time” is not only mistaken but also misleading. Neither for Sartre nor for the Stoics are the lekta (or space and time!) flatus vocis. 10  Brunschwig and Pellegrin (2001, II, p. 52) comment that “ἀνατύπωμα” is a rare term that in virtue of its suffix should designate not a physical print in the soul (unlike “τύπωσις”) but “the outcome, the content, or the intentional object of such print, a sort of schema created in the mind” (see also LS II, 128 ad 30 C). They therefore suggest the French translation—that I will not follow—“schéma;” Long-Sedley translate “pattern,” Giovanni Reale “impressione”. 9

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Let us recall what Husserl says about the noema of the tree: “The tree itself can burn up, dissolve into its chemical elements, and so forth. The sense, however,—the sense of this perception, something necessarily inherent to its essence—cannot burn up” (Hua III/1, p.  205/177). Let us then compare what Sextus says about the ἐννοήματα: “External objects are unlike our affections, and the representation is far different from the thing represented—that of a fire, for instance, from the fire, for the latter burns whereas the former is not capable of burning” (Adv. Math., VII, 357). Sextus’s discussion of the ἐννόημα could therefore easily apply to Husserl’s noema. Then again, even assuming that the ἐννόημα could be the Stoic equivalent of the medieval “object of thought” having an esse diminutum, one point needs to be stressed: the lekta (incorporeal; subsisting; significations of spoken sounds; truth-­ bearers) are not ἐννοήματα (neither corporeal nor incorporeal; neither existing nor subsisting; mere objects of thought; close to mere fictions)! And the same holds for Husserl’s noemata. While Husserl is eager to acknowledge the significance of the “scholastic distinction” between “‘mental,’ ‘intentional,’ and ‘immanent’ object on the one hand and actual object on the other,” he explicitly rejects as “false” (falsche) the very terms in which this distinction is framed (Hua III/1, p. 207/178). For there is no such thing as a mental “trace” or “image” or “content”—say of a tree—“inhabiting” (einwohnen) the act itself as its immanent object, fleetingly depending on the act’s existence, and always present to it, “whether the corresponding ‘actual object’ precisely is in actuality or is not, having been meanwhile destroyed, and so forth.” (Hua III/1, p. 208/219). This, Husserl says, is exactly the wrong account of intentional objects that the concept of noema is meant to rid us of (Hua III/1, p. 207/178). Let us now sum up our remarks on Sartre’s lekton/noema couple. Introduced during the discussion of the “reality” of negation, Sartre’s lekton/noema results from a twofold movement. On the one hand, Sartre interprets Husserl’s noema as an “intermediary,” mind-dependent, non-transcendent, mental entity, having a lesser being than actual mental acts and regular transcendent objects. It is something comparable to the medieval intelligible species (or, eventually, the Stoic ἐννόημα). On the other hand, Stoic lekta are stripped of their propositional context, deprived of their role as truth-bearers, and, accordingly, their “accordance” (κατά) with the categorial acts of some linguistically expressible φαντασία λογική is turned into a form of full-­ fledged ontological dependency on subjective acts in general. It is only thanks to these two complementary movements that the deal between the Stoic lekton and the Husserlian noema could be sealed. As a result, just as Husserl’s controversial concept of noema appears to have betrayed the truly phenomenological idea of the intentionality of consciousness, its Stoic twin concept, the lekton, seems to be the most blatant violation of Sartre’s inescapable ontological difference between being for-itself and being in-itself,11 incorporating nothingness into reality itself.

 Sartre’s account of the Stoics is not limited to the lekton/noema. For a more encompassing view on the topic—especially with respect to the question of freedom—see Bénatouïl (2006, p. 362). 11

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4 Deleuze and the Stoic Challenge to Plato and Aristotle Deleuze’s distinctive account of the lekton/noema finds its climax in a question that, without exaggeration, takes the reader aback: “Could [Husserl’s] phenomenology be this rigorous science of surface effects?” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 33/21). The element of surprise of this unexpected query is meticulously prepared in the “Second Series,” where Deleuze summarizes the famous Stoic distinction between bodies and incorporeals.12 Bodies are “physical”: they undergo “actions and passions,” unfold themselves “in the living present,” are “causes in relation to each other and for each other”—in short, they are “things or state of affairs” that exist (Deleuze, 1969, p.  13/4). Incorporeals, by contrast, are “not physical qualities or properties, but rather logical or dialectical attributes”: they are “impassible,” that is, “neither agents nor patients, but results of actions and passions,” “not living present, but infinitives,” not causes but “effects”—in short, they are “events” (événements) of which “we cannot say that they exist, but rather that they subsist or insist (having this minimum of being which is appropriated to that which is not a thing, a non-existing entity)” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 13–4/5; translation modified),13 Such “dualism,” Deleuze concludes, entails a twofold “upheaval in philosophy (bouleversement de la philosophie)” (Deleuze, 1969, p.  16/6): an upheaval with respect to Aristotle, for whom all categories refer to the unity of Being, whose primary sense is, in turn, the being of the Substance, to which every accident is ultimately related, but also with respect to Plato, for whom ideas are substances having a fundamental causal power. In sum, against the Aristotelian priority of Substance and Being, the Stoics put substances and accidents on a par (as bodies) and contrast their Being to the “extra-­ being which constitutes the incorporeal as a non-existing entity” (Deleuze, 1969, p.  16/7). And against Plato’s substantial account of ideas they save causality for bodies only and relegate ideas “to this impassible extra-being which is sterile, inefficacious, and on the surface of things: the ideational or the incorporeal can no longer be anything other than an ‘effect’” (Deleuze, 1969, pp. 16–7/7). As a result, for the Stoics (1) the “highest term is not Being but Something, aliquid, subsuming being and non-being, existence and insistence” (vs. Aristotle) (p. 16/7); and (2) “all possible ideality is stripped of its causal and spiritual efficacy” (vs. Plato). To put it in a nutshell, “the Stoics have discovered surface effects” (Deleuze, 1969, pp. 16–7/7). When, in the “Third Series,” Deleuze will ask whether phenomenology could be the rigorous science of surface effects, this is what he has in mind.  Deleuze’s main source is Emile Bréhier. On the legacy of Bréhier’s work and his discussion with Brochard’s reading of the Stoics, see Bénatouïl (2006, 2017). 13  Mark Lester and Charles Stivale use “inherence” to translate the French word “insistance,” chosen by Deleuze to render the Stoic concept of ὑφιστάμεναι. The choice strikes as misleading: the talk of “inherence” suggests the logical-metaphysical relation of “inesse” (ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ εἶναι) that, according to Aristotle’s Categories, relates the attribute to the substance. Thus—as we will see shortly—properties “inhere” with respect to the substance, events “insist” with respect to propositions and “supervene” with respect to things (Deleuze 1969, p. 37/24) (see Sect. 5). 12

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But there is a twist. From this previous characterization, one might expect that if Husserl is somehow close to the Stoics, then, for him too, the “highest term” is not Being but Something (vs. Aristotle), and/or ideal objects are not higher-order substances but rather ineffective “incorporeals” (vs. Plato). And yet, as we will see shortly (see Sect. 7), this is not going to be Deleuze’s line of analysis.

5 One Missed Encounter: Husserl on Aristotle’s Ontology and Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas Let us begin with Husserl’s appraisal of Aristotle’s ontology. In Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl praises Aristotle for having been “the first to bring out the idea of form which was to determine the fundamental sense of a ‘formal logic.’” He also qualifies the “Aristotelian analytics” as the “historical first scrap of a systematically executed logic, a first commencement of a logic of theoretical formations” (Hua XVII, p. 53/48). By contrast, the contribution of Aristotle’s analytics to the broad project of a “formal apophantics inseparable from formal ontology” and correlated to “formal mathematics” (Hua XVII, p. 81–2/78) is deemed to be extremely limited if not inadequate. Indeed, as Husserl puts it, Aristotelian analytics is still “related to the real world” (Hua XVII, p. 54/49): “Aristotle had a universal ontology of realities only (Realontologie); and this was what he accepted as ‘first philosophy.’ He lacked formal ontology (Ihm felhte die formale Ontologie), and therefore lacked also the cognition that formal ontology is intrinsically prior to the ontology or reality” (Hua XVII, p. 84/70). Husserl could not be clearer: formal ontology is “prior” with respect to Aristotle’s “first philosophy” or “metaphysics.” The latter, in fact, investigates only “what universally pertains to Being as such”—though one should keep in mind that “under the heading of ‘Being’ it is Being in the sense of what is real (das Seiende im Sinn des Realen) that is aimed at” (Hua XXIV, pp. 95–6). As for “formal ontology,” “it is delimited as the sphere of the highest form-concept of object in general (des obersten Formbegriffes Gegenstand-überhaupt) or the sphere of something-in-general, conceived with the emptiest universality (des in leerster Allgemeinheit gedachten Etwas-überhaupt) […] an ontology (the a priori theory of objects), though a formal one, relating to the pure modes of something-in-general” (Hua XVII, p. 82/78). As already anticipated (see Sect. 2), the key concept of Husserl’s “formal ontology” is precisely that of “something-in-general”—a concept literally applying to anything one can judge about, no matter if real or ideal or fictional: numbers and meanings, values and virtues, empirical entities of all sorts (see Hua III/1, pp. 25–8/22–4). In this sense, it would already be perfectly safe to say—following Deleuze’s suggestion—that, unlike Aristotle’s quite limited “real ontology,” focused on the reality of Being and ultimately the being of the substance (Met. Z, 1, 1028b4–7), the very idea of a vast “formal ontology” indicates that Husserl’s

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“highest term”—at least in some sense—is not “Being” (Sein) but “Something” (Etwas).14 And there is more: following this very same line of thought, Husserl would also have met the challenge of Deleuze’s second, somehow anti-Platonic, Stoic “upheaval,” that is, the rejection of ideas as higher-order realities (Realitäten), substances having a causal power (Wirklichkeiten)—by downgrading them and turning them into causally inert incorporeal “somethings.” This claim can already be found in the first edition of the Second Logical Investigation. Ideal objects (ideale Gegenstände), Husserl says, like numbers in mathematics, propositions in pure logic, or even simple “meanings” (Bedeutungen) in ordinary language (Hua XIX, p. 115/341), are indisputably “identical subjects for manifold predications, identical points of reference (Beziehungspunkte) in manifold relations […], just as any other objects that are not meanings [or numbers or propositions], such as horses, stones, mental acts, etc.” (Hua XIX, p. 117/342). One talks and judges about meanings and numbers and propositions in the same way in which one talks about and judges about plants or tables and chairs. This is not to say, however, that such ideal objects are “realities” (Realitäten)— they are neither “factual” realities nor even “hypostatized” ones (Hypostasierte). On the contrary, in dealing with ideal objects one has to avoid carefully two “misunderstandings” (Missdeutungen): First: the metaphysical hypostatization of the universal, the assumption that Species [numbers, propositions, meanings, etc.] really exists externally to thought. Secondly: the psychological hypostatization of the universal, the assumption that they exist in thought. The older nominalism, whether of an extreme or a conceptualistic type, attacked the first misunderstanding, the misunderstanding which underlies Platonic realism. […] We may leave aside, as long disposed of, the misunderstandings of Platonic realism. (Hua XIX, p. 126/350)

It is readily apparent here how Husserl stigmatizes what he calls “Platonic realism” or “Platonic hypostatization of the universal,” which he understands as a wrong position having been already explained away by its (nominalist and conceptualist) critics. Ideal objects have in fact no “real existence” (reale Existenz), neither internal (psychological hypostasis) nor external (Platonic hypostasis). However, as already pointed out, although ideal objects are neither mental nor extra-mental realities, they are still “something.” They are something “identical” (ein Identisches), something one constantly refers to as given in ordinary life and needs to deal with in order to account for the full reach of human knowledge (Hua XIX, p. 117/342).

 Strictly speaking, however, one cannot properly say that Husserl’s “something” is the genus magis principale or genus prius (more primary genus) (Seneca, Letters 58, 13; LS 27 A = SVF II, 332) or, as Deleuze puts it, “the highest term” (le terme suprême). In § 13 of Ideas I, Husserl explicitly denies that Etwas is “the genus with respect to objects of all sorts,” the “the one and only summum genus,” “the genus of all genera” (Hua III/1, p. 26/22–3). On the relation between Being and Something in Husserl’s ontology, see Chap. 5 in this volume; for further remarks on Husserl’s Etwas überhaupt and the Stoic ti, see Chap. 11. 14

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Husserl’s ontologically deflationary conclusion, then, is that “idealism” is not the name of a “metaphysical doctrine.” It is rather the label of a non-deflationary theory of knowledge which recognizes the necessity of extending its scope beyond the limits of actual reality (Wirklichkeit) (Hua XIX, p.  112/338). To be sure, “the excesses of conceptual realism have led people to dispute not merely the reality (Realität), but also the objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit)” of such idealities (Hua XIX, p. 115/340), Husserl says. And yet, denying ideal objects the status of being higher order realities is not tantamount to explaining them away. This point is further developed in the “Draft of a Preface to the Logical Investigations” (Husserl, 1913), when Husserl rejects the charge of having carried out a “Platonic hypostatization” of the universals or “a restauration of Scholastic realism” (Husserl, 1913, p. 118/25). Once again, what Husserl now calls “ideal essentialities” (idealen Wesenheiten) are said not to be “hypostases” (Hypostasen) or theoretical, higher-order entities (Husserl, 1913, p. 118/25). Moreover, they are said to be those objects one makes judgments about “countless times in everyday life (Alltagsleben) and in science” (Husserl, 1913, p. 118/25): whenever one talks about numbers, about the meaning of this or that sentence, about their truth or falsity, about colors or sounds in general, etc. But Husserl now also insists on the following point: it is both commonsensical (to account for ordinary linguistic and cognitive behavior) and epistemologically crucial (to account for the existence of logic as a science) to assume the constant givenness of “something that is an object (ein Gegenständliches) and yet is nothing real (nichts Reales)” (Husserl, 1913, p. 118/25): “Object and subject of predication are equivalent terms. The whole of logic would disappear if the concept of object were not understood in all the width required by such equivalence, if one did not then accept that ‘ideas’ are also objects” (Husserl, 1913, p. 119/26). Once having downsized “ideas”—from metaphysical entities to objects of everyday assessments, concerns, and discourses as well as necessary conditions for a fully theoretical logic—what remains of “Platonism” is not much. In this specific context, if one wants to keep using the label “Platonism,” the latter should be employed to name not a metaphysical doctrine but an intentional attitude, not a set of theories (Theorien) but a series of “indications (Hinweise)” (Husserl, 1913, p. 119/26). Quite surprisingly, Husserl goes so far as to claim that “in a naïve sense, everyone is a ‘Platonist’ (in naiver Weise ist daher jedermann ‘Platoniker’)” (Husserl, 1913, p.  119/26), namely everyone who judges upon idealities such as numbers, meanings, propositions, etc. “without worrying about philosophical, reductionist interpretations (Wegdeutungen);” just as, correlatively, “everyone is a naïve empiricist” when, in a similarly carefree (unbekümmert) way, one simply makes judgments about realities such as “plants, tables, etc.” (Husserl, 1913, p. 119/26). In sum, had he paralleled Husserl and the Stoics with respect to the latter “twofold “upheaval in philosophy” (vs. Aristotle’s ontology; vs. Plato’s doctrine of the ideas), Deleuze would have been right. Formal ontology, revolving around the empty formal concept of “something-in-general” (Etwas überhaupt), is “prior” to Aristotle’s “metaphysics” or “first philosophy,” focused as the latter is on the

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concept of Being in general (Sein überhaupt) qua being of what is real (Realsein). Moreover, metaphysical Platonism as well (ideas as extra-mental realities) is unquestionably rejected. Although anti-psychological reductionism (i.e., ideas as mental realities) is equally mistaken, philosophical attempts to interpret ideas away (wegdeuten) are right in criticizing metaphysical Platonism but wrong in ignoring the indications (Hinweise) of everyday life and science. For there are, quite literally, incorporeal (nicht Wirkliche) ideal objects, constantly referred to—we talk about them, make judgments about them all the time. And, if they are not part of the whole of reality, they certainly belong to the whole of the world (Weltall). Included in the latter are “meanings” (Bedeutungen), that is, the proper objects of theoretical logic as pure apophantics, correlated to formal ontology (see Sect. 5). And yet, as already pointed out, the ideal (non-Platonic) status of “meanings” and the formal (non-­ Aristotelian) status of “ontology” are not the elements around which Deleuze intends to establish a parallel between Husserl and the Stoics.

6 Deleuze and the Stoic Logic of Sense This brings us back to the “Third Series,” where Deleuze asks whether phenomenology could be seen as the rigorous science of surface effects (see Sect. 4). One should stress from the outset that, unlike Sartre, who is not interested in the specifically semantic aspects of the Stoic lekton (see Sect. 2), Deleuze strongly insists on the “essential relation” between incorporeal event-effects and linguistic expressions: “It is the characteristic of events to be expressed or expressible, uttered or utterable, in propositions which are at least possible” (1969, p. 22/12).15 Propositions, however, have manifold “relations” or “dimensions”: they designate external data, things, or states of affairs (Deleuze, 1969, p.  22/12–3); they “manifest” a person’s beliefs and desires about the existence or non-existence of certain things or states of affairs (p. 23/13); and they signify “universal or general concepts” (p. 19/31) and “syntactic relations” relating to “implications of concepts” (p. 24/14). Each relation, Deleuze adds, also has its own linguistic markers: designation operates through indexical expressions and proper names, giving rise to sentences of the form “it is that” or “it is not that” (Deleuze, 1969, p.  22/12); manifestation is expressed by linguistic items called—following Benveniste— “manifesters” (manifestants) (“I,” “you,” “tomorrow”) (p. 23/13); as for signification, the linguistic signifiers expressing relations of entailment between conceptual

 One might notice that Sartre’s lack of interest in the distinctive linguistic nature of the Stoic inquiry is manifested in the fact that he never provides a translation, but only a transliteration, of the Greek word lekton. By contrast, Deleuze, who is genuinely interested in this very aspect, never talks of lekton, but only uses its French translations—the same used since Ogereau and Bréhier: “the expressible,” “what is expressed” (exprimé, exprimable), or “what is uttered or utterable” (énoncé ou énonçable) by a proposition (Deleuze 1969, p. 22/12). 15

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contents (expressed by common names or nominal syntagms such as “man” or “rational animal”) are “implies” and “then” (implique, donc) (p. 24/14). Finally, each dimension has a distinctive “logical value”: designation has “as its element and its criterion the true and the false” (Deleuze, 1969, pp. 23/13); manifestation holds “truthfulness and deception” (p. 24/14); and “signification or demonstration” has “condition of truth, i.e., the aggregate of conditions under which the proposition ‘would be’ true” (p. 25/14), as opposed not to the false or the deceitful but “to the absurd: that which is meaningless or that which may be neither true nor false” (p. 25/15). Now, according to Deleuze, none of these dimensions of the proposition (relation to things, mental acts, or concepts) with their grammatical markers (indicators, manifesters, general names) and logical values (true/false, truthful/deceitful, condition of truth/absurdity) can be considered to be primitive or prior with respect to the others (Deleuze, 1969, p. 23–4/13–4; 25–7/15–6). Designation presupposes manifestation, which presupposes meaning, which presupposes, in turn, designation, in infinitum.16 This is what the “Third Series” calls “the circle of the proposition” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 27/16–17), a circle that can only be broken by adding a fourth dimension, irreducible to the others (p.  28/17), and whose presence—or better: “insistence”—can “only [be] indirectly inferred from the circle of the proposition” itself (p. 27/16–17). This is the dimension of “sense” (sens), that is, the incorporeal, infinitive, ontologically evanescent, effect-event expressed (not designated, not manifested, not signified) by a proposition, and grammatically marked by a verb— what the Stoics called lekton: “something, aliquid, which merges neither with [a] the proposition or with [aa] the terms of the proposition, nor with [b] the object or [bb] the state of affairs which the proposition designates, neither with the [c] ‘lived’ or representation or the mental activity of the person who expresses herself in the proposition, nor [d] with concepts or even [dd] signified essences” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 31/10; letters within square brackets added). Deleuze’s lekton/sense thus displays the following distinctive features: (1) it is “something” (aliquid) (Deleuze, 1969, p. 31/19); (2) it is “non–existent,” both mentally and physically (“we may not even say it exists either in things, or in the mind; it has neither physical nor mental existence”) (p. 32/20); (3) it is “somehow proposition-dependent,” though not reducible to any dimension of the proposition (“it does not exist outside the proposition which expresses it” and yet “it does not merge at all with the proposition, for it has an objective status (objectité) which is quite distinct”) (p.  33/21). More precisely, the lekton/sense is irreducible to: [a] the proposition itself (as a whole, complex, linguistic sign); [aa] the terms of the proposition (indicators, manifesters, general names);

 The reasons for this circularity are spelled out in Williams (2009), pp. 29–51 and Bowden (2011, pp. 26–9). 16

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[b] the particular object, designated by the indicative terms of the proposition; [bb] the state of affairs designated by the whole proposition; [c] the mental life of the speaker, conveyed by the manifestative terms of the proposition; [d] the concepts signified by the general terms occurring in a proposition; [dd] the general objects or “essences” designated by general terms occurring in a proposition. (4) it has a “minimum of being” (“it is this aliquid that is, at once, extra-Being and insistence, [it is] this minimum of being which benefits insistence”) (p. 34/22; translation modified). If we briefly compare this list with the one extracted from Sartre’s texts (see Sect. 2) some crucial elements immediately come to the fore. To begin with, one might see already some shared tenets. For both Sartre and Deleuze, 1. lekta are “something” (= object of discourse / thought); 2. neither mental, nor physical (= incorporeal/unreal); 3. they are somehow ontologically dependent (= subsistence, insistence), so that 4. their ontological status could be described as a “lesser being” (moindre être) (Sartre) or a “minimum of being” (minimum d’être) (Deleuze). Important differences, however, are also quite noticeable right from the outset. The most important are clearly related to features (2) and (3). That lekta are incorporeals is obvious. But having stressed the essential relation between incorporeal events and propositions, Deleuze’s sense is no longer (as Sartre’s) a queer entity, neither mental nor physical. If anything “queer,” it is rather a dimension of the proposition itself, irreducible to indication, manifestation and signification. In this sense, with respect to Sextus’s famous passage discussed above (in Sect. 2; see Adv. Math. VIII, 11–12), Deleuze makes a twofold move. On the one hand, he restores Sextus’ original triplets (putative truth-bearers: περὶ τῷ σημαινομένῳ / περὶ τῇ φωνῇ / περὶ τῇ κινήσει τῆς διανοίας; things that are in the name: τὸ σημαινόμενον / τὸ σημαῖνον / τὸ τυγχάνον) and reinstates the role of the signifier, the missing φωνή, which disappeared from Sartre’s revised triplet (mental reality / lekton / transcendent reality). On the other hand, he squarely and unequivocally understands the φωνή as an uttered/utterable proposition, reintroducing the question of truth and falsity, which was wiped out in Sartre’s reconstruction.17 Thus, we have, again, three bodies (spoken sound, cognitive representation and name-bearer) and one incorporeal (the lekton), arranged in an asymmetric way, so that the relations between spoken sound and the remaining items are now turned into “dimensions” or—one could, perhaps, also say—“functions” of the proposition itself. Again, unlike Sartre, the “neither-nor” structure of the lekton does not appear

 However, in Sextus’s passage what is true/false is the lekton, while in Deleuze it is the proposition itself (the φωνή) in its first, denotational, dimension that is true or false (which is clearly not the dimension of the lekton). 17

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any more as a (queer) “third” realm of being but as a (still queer) “fourth” dimension of the proposition. This latter point, however, seems to be at odds with (4). Doesn’t Deleuze say, after all, that “sense” has a “minimum of being”? Isn’t the lekton, then, an entity with a lesser mode of being? The objection could be easily dismissed by stressing the following points. First, Deleuze expresses himself in such equivocal terms only once, and the context strongly suggests that he is not endorsing this way of talking himself. He rather seems to be using the language that a non-Stoic would use while describing the lekta’s distinctive relation with Being. Secondly, once put back into its context, Deleuze’s claim is part of an argument that is not meant to suggest any parallel between lekton and esse diminutum. What really counts, in this concluding part of the “Second Series,” is not that “expressibles” have a minimal being ­(minimum d’être), but rather, and more significantly, that they are “at the same time extra-being and insistence” (à la fois, extra-être et insistance) (Deleuze, 1969, p. 34/22). This is also the reason why, while Sartre rejects the lekton because of its “queerness,” Deleuze gladly embraces it precisely for the same reason! But for Sartre the lekton is as “queer” as any entity whose “esse est percipi;” by contrast, for Deleuze it is “queer” because it is, as it were, extra esse (it is not a body and, for a Stoic, body (σῶμα) = being (εἶναι)) and yet it “insists” (ὑφιστάναι) on Being—precisely as an incorporeal effect. This point can be further clarified by dwelling on (3). Deleuze’s “sense” is certainly somehow dependent—but, again, not with respect to mental states. And it is certainly not dependent as the existence of an object of thought could depend on the existence of an act of thinking. It is worth noticing, at least in passing, that Deleuze never talks of sense in terms of “dependency.” Sure, incorporeal effects in general are said to “depend” on their bodily causes (dépendent des mélanges des corps comme de leurs causes réelles) (Deleuze, 1969, p.  15/6)—but Deleuze carefully avoids saying that “expressibles” depend on propositions, mental states or things. By contrast, as we have seen, the right way to put it is to say that sense “insists or subsists” with respect to the proposition in which it is expressed, though “it does not merge at all” with it; that it is “attributed” to the designated object, but is not one of its properties (Deleuze, 1969, p. 33/21); that is “realized” in a state of affairs, though “it is not confused with the spatio-temporal realization in a state of affairs” (p. 34/22). Thus, instead of Sartre’s metaphor of a lekton being “stuck” or “enclosed” between two realities, Deleuze prefers the image of a “border” (frontière) between bodies—something “dual” that “subsists in language but happens to things” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 37/24). As a result, the duality is reflected from both sides and in each of the two terms. On the side of the things, there are the physical qualities and real relations which are constitutive of the state of affairs; there are also the ideal logical attributes which are the mark of the incorporeal events. And on the side of the proposition, there are names and adjectives which denote the state of affairs, but also verbs which express events or logical attributes. (Deleuze, 1969, p. 37/24; translation modified)

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States of affairs are therefore more than things or physical qualities. They are things and physical qualities (= bodies, being) arranged in such a way that their ideal logical attributes are now expressed—or expressible—by certain non-syncategorematic parts of propositions (such as tensed verbs). Correlatively, propositions are more than spoken sounds, for they bring to language (express) the logical arrangement of things that happen to be in a certain way. Sense thus has two faces: it lies at the border of propositions [a] and states of affairs [bb].

7 Another Missed Encounter: Husserl on Propositional Meanings and States of Affairs Strange as it might sound, this is exactly what Husserl explains in the Sixth Logical Investigation, while describing the expression of a percept whose fulfillment is embedded in a perceptual “state of affairs” (Sachverhalt) (Hua XIX/2, §§ 4–11): I have just looked out into the garden and now give expression to my percept in the words: “There flies a blackbird!.” What is here the act in which my meaning resides? I think we may say […], that it does not reside in perception, at least not in perception alone. […] We could base different statements on the same percept, and thereby unfold quite different senses (einen ganz anderen Sinn entfalten). I could, e.g., have said: “This is black,” “This is a black bird!;” “There flies that black bird;” “there it soars,” and so on. And conversely the sound of my words and their sense (Sinn) might have remained the same, though my percept varied in a number of ways. (p. 550/680)

The “Stoic” flavor of the example (the event of the flying blackbird) should not be overlooked—but should not be overstated either. It is the whole of Husserl’s analysis that is relevant for our purpose. As Husserl puts it, the perceptual act sees only one body (bird) having certain bodily features (being black, moving its wings, etc.). However, in order to account for the meaning (Bedeutung) of the expression “There flies a blackbird” or the experience manifested by its utterance, the recourse to the mere perceptual act and its perceptual correlate is clearly insufficient. The perceptual act, Husserl says, must in fact be “categorially structured,” that is, it must undergo a “configuration” (Formung) by means of complex, discursive “categorial acts” of judgment. It is only thanks to such “logical configuration” that its perceptual content becomes linguistically expressible (p. 551/681).18 Now, “what is meant” (Meinung) by the categorially-formed perception is expressed here by a grammatically structured statement: “There flies a blackbird!;” “This is black!;” and the like. We have now, next to names such as “black” or “blackbird,” functional markers such as indexicals (“there,” “this”), indefinite articles (“a”), terms standing in a subject (“a blackbird,” “this”) or a predicate (“black”) position, conjugated, tensed verbs (“flies,” “is”), etc.—in short, we have particular

18

 Exactly like the Stoic λογική φαντασία.

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instances of what Husserl calls “meaning categories” (Bedeutungskategorien) (Hua XIX/1, pp. 302/493, 326–7/511). Therefore, as Husserl clearly puts it, because of its logical-grammatical configuration, each expression (“There flies a blackbird” or “This is black”) “unfolds” (entfaltet) a quite different “sense” (Sinn) (Hua XIX/2, p. 550/680). And, though the perceptual body and bodily qualities that are seen (bird, black, wings, etc.) are the same, the sense proper to the two propositional expressions, which are categorially formed in different ways, is manifestly different (again: precisely because of the different categorial configurations involved). But the same holds for their respective corresponding intuitive fulfillment, that is, “the state of affairs (Sachverhalt) or objective correlate of the full judgment” (p. 669/783). The states of affairs correlated to the statements “There flies a blackbird” and “This is black” are different as well. And their difference mirrors the categorial difference of the corresponding expressions. In fact, according to the Logical Investigations, the expressive “signitive acts involve the same intention (Meinung) as the intuitive” (p.  736/839). Thus, the expression “This is black” is intuitively fulfilled not by “something real” (Reales) (p. 669/783), that is, a perceptual, sensuous object (sinnliche Gegenstand) having certain perceptual features, but by a categorial, complex object having the non-­ perceptual features expressed by the syncategorematic parts of the expression (“this,” “is”) (p. 668/783): the this-being-black.19 As a result, the sense unfolded (der entfaltene Sinn) by different statements is at the same time expressed by a different categorially formed meaning (ausgedrückte Bedeutung) and intuitively given, actually or possibly, in a categorially formed state-of-affairs (angeschaute Sachverhalt). Accordingly, the expression also ­manifests (kundgibt) a categorially-formed-act-of-perception and refers to (bezieht [sich] auf) a categorially-formed-arrangement-of-things (see Hua XIX/1, pp. 43–58/284–91). For sure, in the Logical Investigations Husserl does not use, like Deleuze, the metaphor of the “border” to describe this co-variation of propositional meanings and state-of-affairs as functions of the sense of a perceptual statement,20 nor does he refer—at least not here—to the Stoic lekton. But the passages in which Husserl insists—and will constantly insist—on the “double-sidedness” (Doppelseitigkeit) of meaning categories/object categories, formal logic/formal ontology, judgment/ being, are too numerous—scattered all over his corpus, from the Prolegomena to

 Another example: given the (general) statement “Gold is yellow,” in the fulfillment of the corresponding state of affairs, “what shows itself (erscheint) is not only what is meant (das Gemeinte) in the partial meaning gold, nor only what is meant in the partial meaning yellow, but also the gold-is-yellow (Gold-ist-gelb)” (pp. 668/782–3; translation modified). 20  But, as far as I know, the metaphor of the expressible as “a border” between bodies is not Stoic either. 19

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Formal and Transcendental Logic—to be neglected (Hua XIX/1, pp. 307/497; Hua XVII, p. 110/105).21 Moreover, the fact that state of affairs (correlated to expressed propositional meanings) are nothing “real” (Reales) but rather “ideal objects,” “higher order objects” (Gegenstände höherer Ordnung), founded (fundierte) in but irreducible to their real components (Hua XIX/2, p. 684/791), should also be kept in mind. Hence, having (1) rightly stressed the linguistic nature of the lekta/expressibles, (2) insisted on their duality (neither-nor/both propositions and things), and (3) pointed out, on the non-linguistic side of the duality, the “ideal logical attributes” (attributs logiques idéaux) realized in a states of affairs, Deleuze was, unlike Sartre, in the perfect position to relate the Stoic lekton to Husserl’s theory of meanings, propositions, and states of affairs. Then again, this has never been Deleuze’s agenda.

8 Constructing the Noema/Lekton (Again) As we have seen, Deleuze’s claim that “sense” is a fourth dimension of the proposition rests on the assumption that it could not be reduced to any other dimension. That the expressed sense is neither the designated thing nor the manifested mental state is relatively easy to prove. “The last recourse,” however, as Deleuze admits, “seems to be identifying sense with signification” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 29/18). And in fact, “when we define signification as the condition of truth, we give it a characteristic which it shares with sense, and which is already a characteristic of sense” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 28/18). Propositions have a truth-value only if they are meaningful, that is, only if they comply to certain formal conditions of possibility. In order to illustrate this point, Deleuze reports Russell’s claim according to which “whatever is asserted by a significant sentence has a certain kind of possibility” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 29/337). This is what Russell calls “syntactic possibility”: “The moon is made of green cheese” is “syntactically possible” insofar as it is a well formed statement, and therefore can be true or false (Russell, 1940, p. 170). Though factually “truth-less” (= false) it is nevertheless “meaning-ful” or, as Russell puts it, “significant.” By contrast, “nonsensical” statements such as “quadruplicity drinks procrastination” are meaning-less, and therefore neither true nor false (Russell, 1940, pp. 170, 174ff.). And yet, at least in some sense, they still, somehow and quite literally, “make sense;” a sense that lies beyond truth and falsity but also beyond meaningfulness and meaninglessness; a “sense” that, flirting with nonsense, is, according to Deleuze, “something unconditioned, capable of assuring a real genesis of designation and the other dimensions of the proposition” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 30/19).

 Interestingly enough, one of Husserl’s most prominent commentators, Lohmar (2000, p.  94), does not shy away from describing the Doppelseitigkeit of formal logic/formal ontology as “two sides of the same coin.” By doing this he uses the exact same image employed by Deleuze to describe sense as “the border” between propositions and states of affairs. 21

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“Sense” is precisely the unconditioned condition of truth/falsity, truthfulness/ deception, and significance/absurdity. It is “unconditioned” in the trivial sense that it is not submitted to any condition: neither “logical, geometrical, algebraic, physical,” nor “syntactic” (Russell), “topical” (Aristotle), “transcendental” or “moral” (Kant) (Deleuze, 1969, pp. 29–30/18). It is not even, properly speaking, a condition but the source of what Deleuze calls a “real genesis” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 30/18): a “possibility” that “would be defined no longer as the form of conceptual possibility, but rather as ideal matter or ‘stratum’ (matière ou ‘couche’ idéelle), that is to say, no longer as meaning, but rather as sense” (p. 30/19; translation modified). What exactly Deleuze means here by “ideal matter” (as opposed to “conceptual form”) and “real genesis” (as opposed to “ideal condition”) should not bother us. What is important is rather the historical conclusion of this long argument—which finally brings us to Husserl’s noema: Sense is the fourth dimension of the proposition. The Stoics discovered it along with the event: sense, the expressed of the proposition, is an incorporeal, complex, and irreducible entity, at the surface of things, a pure event which insists or subsists in the proposition. The discovery was made a second time in the fourteenth century, in Ockham’s school, by Gregory of Rimini and Nicolas d’Autrecourt. It was made a third time at the end of the nineteenth century, by the great philosopher and logician Meinong. (Deleuze, 1969, p. 30/19) Husserl calls this ultimate dimension “expression,” and he distinguishes it from denotation, manifestation, and demonstration. Sense is that which is expressed. Husserl, no less than Meinong, rediscovered the living sources of the Stoic inspiration. For example, when Husserl reflects on the perceptual noema or the sense of perception, he at once distinguishes it from the physical object, from the psychological or “lived,” from mental representation, and from logical concepts. (Deleuze, 1969, p. 32/20) And is that which [Husserl] calls “appearance” anything more than a surface effect? Between the noemata of the same object, or even different objects, complex ties are developed, analogous to those which the Stoic dialectic established between events. Could phenomenology be this rigorous science of surface effects? (Deleuze, 1969, p. 33/21)

In sum: (1) there is a fourth dimension of propositions; (2) the history of philosophy shows a constant conflict between those “who wish to be satisfied with [aa] words, [b] things, [c] images, and [d] ideas” and those who acknowledge the irreducible character of sense: Aristotelians and Platonists of all sorts against the Stoics; André de Neufchâteau and Pierre d’Ailly against Gregory of Rimini; Brentano and Russell against Meinong (Deleuze, 1969, p. 31/20); (3) Husserl’s account of “sense, that is the expressed (le sens, c’est l’exprimé)” (p. 32/20) is in line with such Stoic insight; (4) the same holds for Husserl’s account of the noema. Hence the question: “is the noema anything more than a pure event?” (p. 33/21). So, after all, “could phenomenology be this rigorous science of surface effects,” that is, of pure senses or incorporeal non-existing and yet subsisting events? (see Sect. 3). Yes, it could—but no, it is not. For, as Deleuze puts it, despite his undisputable Stoic leanings, Husserl ends up betraying the original meaning and scope of the Stoic lekton. The situation is now entirely reversed. Sartre despised the “queerness” of the lekton and, accordingly, criticized the noema for being too lekton-like

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(see Sect. 2). Deleuze, by contrast, loves the ontological evanescence of the lekton and, accordingly, criticizes Husserl’s noema for not being lekton-like enough. Deleuze’s argument is the following. In Ideas I, in the wake of the Stoics, Husserl had “uncovered sense as the noema of an act or as that which a proposition expresses,” finally recovering the “impassibility” of the Stoic “sense” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 117/96). By definition the noema is, in fact, not an act: it is correlated to but not identical with a noesis, and thus, unlike the noesis, it does not exist in the stream of lived-experiences of a subject (as in [c]). Moreover, every noema has a “core,” independent from the thetic modalities of consciousness (engaged with the being and non-being of what is given) and different from the actual properties of the posited object. And the innermost core of this core, its “‘supremely’ and transcendentally ultimate center (un centre “suprêmement” ou transcendentalement ultime),” Deleuze says, “is nothing but the relation between sense itself and the object in its reality” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 117–8/97). The noema is thus, again, different from any actual real object (for example, noematic colors are not real colors) (as in [b]). Now, according to Deleuze, Husserl rightly determines this “innermost” core as an “attribute” of the noema. However, instead of understanding (in a Stoic vein) this attribute itself as an event—as the “event of an event,” so to speak, as the nonsense that lies at the paradoxical innermost core of sense—he turns it into a predicate, growing the incorporeal event into a full-bodied concept (unlike [d]): The attribute is understood as predicate and not as verb, that is, as concept and not as event. (This is why the expression according to Husserl produces a form of the conceptual, and sense is inseparable from a type of generality, although this generality is not confused with that of a species.) Henceforth, the relation between sense and object is the natural result of the relation between noematic predicates—a something = x which is capable of functioning as their support or principle of unification. This thing = x is not at all therefore like a nonsense internal and co-present to sense, or a point zero presupposing nothing of what it necessarily engenders. (Deleuze, 1969, p. 118/97)

The fourth dimension of the proposition is finally reduced to the third. Husserl’s noema is indeed as incorporeal as the Stoic pure event/sense: it is different from mental acts, real objects, and logical concepts. And yet, it is understood in the same way in which general concepts are: according to a subject-predicate structure. The radicalism of the Stoic original inspiration is thus lost. The careful reader might have noticed already the shift justifying Deleuze’s claim: “The opposition between simple [α] formal logic and [β] transcendental logic cuts through the entire theory of sense. Let us consider, for example, Husserl’s Ideas. We recall that Husserl had uncovered sense [ββ] as the noema of an act or [αα] as that which a proposition expresses” (Deleuze, 1969, p. 117/96; emphasis added). As we have seen, it is unquestionably correct to say that, according to Husserl, sense is what is expressed by a proposition (and, eventually, intuited in a state of affairs). It is also undisputable that the expressed meaning is part of [α] formal logic—understood in its “double-sidedness” with respect to formal ontology. But if we grant this, then all the remarks of our previous sections, each clue to Husserl’s putative “Stoicism” (his anti-Aristotelian formal ontology; anti-Platonic

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account of ideas; theory of meanings and states of affairs) (see Sects. 4 and 6), appear to be fully independent from the phenomenological reduction, and are not bound as such to transcendental phenomenology. Differently put: while the concept of noema stands and falls with the phenomenological reduction (see Hua III/1, pp. 200–1/172–3), the same does not hold for the ontology of the Etwas überhaupt, the critique of the Platonic hypostasis of ideas, the ideality of meanings, and the “double-sidedness” judgment-meanings/states of affairs and, more generally, logic/ ontology. Moreover, the “army of the Stoics,” as it were, listed by Deleuze in the “Third Series,” and opposed to the “enemies of the incorporeals” (Ockham, Russell), includes Gregory of Rimini’s complexe significabile and Meinong’s Objektive. Both concepts refer to propositional meanings or objects of expressed judgments and assumptions.22 But none of the above has ever developed a “transcendental logic.” Why shift, then, from [αα] “that which a proposition expresses” (i.e., the actual common point between the Stoics, Gregory, Meinong, and Husserl) to [ββ] “the noema of an act”? Or, conversely, why equate the “noema”—i.e., Husserl’s alleged right way of understanding what the Scholastics had wrongly interpreted as the immanent object of any mental act, whose being is diminished and existence dependent, etc. (see Sect. 2)—and the “expressed of a proposition”—i.e., what is meant by a linguistic expression and fulfilled by a categorially formed state of affairs (see Sect. 6)? Why introduce the issue of transcendental logic—joining Sartre in bringing together noema and lekton—while the distinctive linguistic-propositional context of the discussion, which Deleuze clearly recognized, plainly suggested that one should remain on the level of formal logic and formal ontology? At this point we cannot but speculate. Yet one of the reasons for Deleuze’s shift is probably the fact that, in Husserl’s vocabulary, the word “sense” has two meanings; two meanings that Deleuze does not clearly distinguish. Or—more precisely—two meanings that Deleuze decides not to distinguish, as he openly points out in a rather puzzling and nevertheless strategically crucial footnote of the “Third Series”: “We will neglect here the particular use Husserl makes of “meaning” (signification) in his terminology, either to identify it or to bind it to “sense” (sens) (Deleuze, 1969, p. 32/337; translation modified). And yet, this “particular use” turns out to be decisive.

9 Husserl’s Two Senses of “Sense” On the one hand, from a strictly non-transcendental viewpoint, Deleuze is right in saying that, according to Husserl, “sense is what is expressed” (Deleuze, 1969, p.  32/20). This is explicitly stated in the Logical Investigations, where Husserl

 Deleuze’s claims about the alleged proximity between Gregory and Meinong rest entirely on the reconstruction suggested by Hubert Elie (1939). Elie’s reading, however, has recently been challenged by Farago-Bermon (2006). 22

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distinguishes at least four different items involved in a linguistic expression: the act, the sign, the sense, and the designated object: It is usual to distinguish two things in regard to every expression: 1. The expression physically regarded (the sensible sign, the articulate sign-­complex, the written sign on a paper); 2. A certain sequence of mental states associatively linked with the expression, which turns it into the expression of something. These mental states are generally called the sense (Sinn) or the meaning (Bedeutung) of the expression. […] But we shall see this notion to be mistaken, and that a mere distinction between physical signs and sensegiving experiences is by no means enough, and not at all enough for our logical purposes. The points made here have long been observed in the special case of names. We distinguish, in the case of each name, between what it “shows forth” (kundgibt) (i.e., mental lived-­ experiences) and what it means. And again, between what it means (bedeutet) (the sense (Sinn) or “content” of its nominal representation) and what it names (the object of the representation). We shall need similar distinctions in the case of all expressions. (Hua XIX/1, p. 38/276; translation modified)

In this first (non-transcendental) context, “sense” is defined as “what is ‘aimed at’ by the word, what is meant through this sign (der Sinn als das, worauf es mit dem Worte ‘abgesehen’, was vermittelst dieses Zeichens gemeint ist)” (Hua XIX/1, p.  42/279). Moreover, Husserl also adds that, in this specific context, the word “meaning” (Bedeutung) “is further used by us as synonymous (gleichbedeutend) with ‘sense’ (Sinn)” (Hua XIX/1, p. 58/292). This is the reason why he can safely say that “there is the expression itself and what it expresses as its meaning (as its sense)” (das, was er als seine Bedeutung (als seinen Sinn) ausdrückt), and that both are different from the designated object and the meaning-giving acts “shown forth” (kundgegeben) by uttering the expression (Hua XIX/1, p. 280/43). Given this account of sense = meaning (Sinn = Bedeutung), we now have a set of claims to compare with Sextus’s second triplet in a sound manner, extended to “logical representations”: Stoics φαντασία λογική τὸ σημαῖνον (φωνή) τὸ σημαινόμενον (λεκτόν) τὸ τυγχάνον

Husserl kundgegebene psychische Erlebnisse sinnliche Zeichen (artikulierte Lautkomplexe) was der Zeichen meint (Sinn, Bedeutung) was der Name nennt (Objekt)

As it is readily apparent, here the Sinn/Bedeutung of the name occupies exactly the same place as the Stoic λεκτόν/σημαινόμενον. So far, however, no transcendental “turn” is required—no noema. But there is also a second context and, this time, Sinn and Bedeutung are no longer synonyms. In § 124 of Ideas I, Husserl literally warns the reader that words such as “meaning” or “sense” “originally concerned only the linguistic sphere, that of ‘expressing’” (Hua III/1, p.  285/245). However, after having performed the transcendental reduction, their use needs to be “extended and suitably modified.” It is only after having been readjusted to the new transcendental context that such words

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turn out to be “somehow” (in gewisser Art) applicable to “the whole noetic-­noematic sphere, to all acts, be they now intertwined with expressive acts or not” (Hua III/1, p. 285/245). Now, since in this second—transcendental—context, all reference to linguistic “expressibles,” propositional meanings, etc., is dropped, “for the sake of distinction (Deutlichkeit)” and to avoid confusions, Husserl stipulates the following: We shall prefer the term meaning (Bedeutung) for the old concept [sc. the one related to linguistic expressions], and, in particular, in the complex locution of ‘logical’ or ‘expressive’ meaning. And we shall continue using the word sense in the most all-inclusive range (in der umfassenderen Weite). (Hua III/1, p. 285/245)

Sense is now so broad as to apply to any transcendentally reduced correlate of any intentional act and should be sharply distinguished from meaning, that is, the non-­ reduced object of logic, the expressed of an expression, the correlate of formal ontology, etc. Now, Deleuze has rightly seen that, in some sense, Husserl’s “sense” as “propositional sense”—just as Gregory’s significabile per complexum and Meinong’s Objektive—could be fittingly related to the Stoic lekton. And yet, having deliberately decided “to neglect” Husserl’s warning, he ends up quitting the field of logic and the theory of meaning (with its Doppelseitigkeit) and focusing, just as Sartre did, on the other sense of “sense,” that is, the noematic one. As a result, Deleuze ultimately merges Husserl’s linguistic notion of sense (= meaning) as [αα] “that which a proposition expresses,” with the noematic notion of sense (≠ meaning) as [ββ] “the noema of any act” (be it intertwined with an expressive act or not). That the two senses are related in various and important ways is perfectly acceptable. That their distinction should and could be neglected is far more disputable, especially if one wants to truly assess the Stoic legacy of Husserl’s phenomenology.

10 Husserl and the Lekton: Between Formal Logic and Formal Ontology It is now time to look at Husserl’s explicit discussion of the lekton. This should allow us to confirm the conclusions reached in the previous sections. For, as we will see shortly, while Husserl never relates lekton and noema in general, he constantly talks about Stoic lekta precisely with respect to the first sense of “sense” (= meaning). The first time Husserl mentions the lekton is in the 1908–9 lectures on Old and New Logic. The Stoics are unsurprisingly credited, together with Aristotle, for having invented logic (Hua Mat VI, p. 7). But, unlike Aristotle, whose account of meaning was, in Husserl’s view, still somehow psychological,23 Stoic semantics appears to be far more suitable for the project of formal logic qua science:

 For, according to the famous passage of De Int. 16a, the vocal sounds are symbols of the affections of the soul (παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς). 23

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Since the central concept of formal logic is meaning (Bedeutung) and more specifically that of the proposition (Satzes), and since the name of formal logic has historically always been used for a mixture of doctrines which were in part psychological, in part properly formal-­ ontological, it would perhaps be appropriate to introduce a new name, such as pure logic of meaning or apophantic logic (reine Bedeutungslogik oder auch apophantische Logik). The word ἀποφάνσις might well be interpreted as “proposition.” I must also mention that the acuity of the Stoics has been to recognize the need for distinguishing between psychological meaning-consciousness, logical meaning, and the objectivity to which both refer. (Hua Mat VI, pp. 53–54)

One finds here the distinction, already drawn in the Logical Investigations, between the sign, the intentional act, the meaning, and the object, applied to propositional meanings expressed by linguistic statements (Sätze). Such a distinction is now explicitly attributed to the Stoics. But Husserl goes further: One should not be content with the distinction—which, even if not terminologically, goes back to Aristotle—between νόημα and πράγμα and still distinguish between both and the λεκτόν. The latter literally means “what is said” (das Gesagte) and corresponds precisely to our expression “what is expressed” (es entspricht genau also unserem Ausdruck “das ausgesagte Was”)—and it completely matches our concept of meaning. More generally, the Stoics were the first to have in view a purely formal logic. (Hua Mat VI, pp. 53–4)

This leaves no doubt that—even if in a non-transcendental framework—Husserl is clearly separating noema (the “intentional correlate” of a mental act in general) and lekton (“what is expressed” in a linguistic expression). And it is also safe to say that he is unambiguously identifying the latter with the concept of meaning, that is, with the first sense of “sense” (see Sect. 8). What is even more important, however, is that the Stoic lekta to which Husserl explicitly refers—i.e., the ones which are relevant for formal logic as a full science—are not simply “meanings” in general, or what is expressed in any “expression.” They are rather, quite specifically, what is expressed in particular expressions called “statements” (Aussagen), that is, the truth-bearers whose truth-makers are the corresponding states of affairs (see Sect. 6). Husserl calls them “propositions” (Sätze) (Hua Mat VI, p. 53).24 This point is of the utmost importance. In Husserl’s vocabulary, the word “Satz” is in fact exclusively employed to refer to the propositional meanings (Satzbedeutungen) (Hua Mat VI, p. 32) expressed or expressible by certain declarative statements or utterances (Aussagen eines Satzes) (p. 9). They are not objective judgment-contents in general but objective judgment contents qua linguistically expressed or expressible in language. If this is correct, then, three remarks are in order: (1) Husserl’s interest in the lekta does not seem to have anything to do with the general problem of the noema (the reduced correlate of all noesis);

 Thus, Husserl’s and Deleuze’s talks of “proposition” (Satz/proposition) are not the same. For Husserl a “Satz” is a complete lekton (true or false), for Deleuze, a “proposition” is a linguistic signifier whose sense is a (complete) lekton. 24

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(2) by contrast, it is explicitly related to the particular problem of the status of meanings (Bedeutungen or Sinn in the first sense), that is, “what is said” through a linguistic sign; (3) it is focused on the even more particular problems related to certain lekta that are true or false, that is, the apophantic propositional meanings expressed by declarative sentences (Satzbedeutungen) and corresponding to what the Stoics called ἀξιώματα: A proposition (ἀξίωμά) is a complete expressible which is apophantic (ἀποφαντὸν) in itself. (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism, II. 104) A proposition (ἀξίωμα) is that which is either true or false, or an item complete and apophantic in itself (πρᾶγμα αὐτοτελὲς ἀποφαντὸν ὅσον ἐφ’ἑαυτῷ). (Diog. Laert., VII, 65)

This fact is confirmed by a series of passages from the lectures Logic and Theory of Knowledge (1910–11). Husserl now refers directly to the distinction “that goes back to the Stoa” between “complete” (αὐτοτελής) and “incomplete” (ἐλλιπής) lekta (see Diog. Laert., VII 63; LS 33F = SVF II 181). And Husserl does not simply mention this distinction in passing. He goes so far as to explicitly equate it with his own distinction, introduced in the Fourth Logical Investigation, between “dependent and independent” (selbständige und unselbständige) expressions and meanings (Hua XXX, pp. 93, 436; Hua XIX/1, pp. 314–20/501–13). This very same set of claims appears, time and again, in many other lectures and texts. And against authors such as Prantl (1855) or Zeller (1923), for whom Stoic logic was simply a convoluted and quite useless follow-up to Aristotle’s syllogistics, Husserl always and consistently insists on its true and undisputable novelty. The Stoics, Husserl says, invented and carried out logic to the highest level of a “logic of consequence or consistency (Logik der Konsequenz oder Einstimmigkeit)” (Hua VII, pp. 17–24/18–26). The latter is a full-fledged “propositional logic” (Logik der Sätze) whose degree of refinement remained “unparalleled,” at least until Bolzano (Hua Mat IX, p. 87). And, again, such propositional logic ultimately rests on a crucial innovation: “It [sc. Stoic logic] first distinguished between the cognitive activity with its cognitive phenomena and the logical content of cognition, as well as between the grammatical statement and its logical content (zwischen der grammatischen Aussage und ihrem logischen Gehalt), which it described as lekton” (Hua Mat IX, p. 87). We know from Husserl’s academic correspondence that he was familiar with Hans von Arnim’s edition of the Stoic fragments (Hua Dok III/8, p. 191).25 And, especially in this passage, Husserl shows a great awareness of the distinctions at stake in the way in which the Stoics articulated the logical content of knowledge and the logical content of a statement. In fact, Husserl explicitly writes that the latter— not the former—is called lekton. This is exactly what is suggested in the passage of Sextus (Adv. Math. VIII, 70; LS 33 C = SVF II 187) we have already discussed,

25

 Though the three volumes of SVF are not part of Husserl’s personal library in Leuven.

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where it is said that “a lekton is what subsists in accordance with a rational representation, and a rational representation is one in which what is represented (τὸ φαντασθὲν) can be exhibited in language.” Thus, unlike Sartre, Husserl would not have read the “κατά” as indicating a form of existential dependency, stressing the “queer” ontological status of the lekton. His lekta are, in fact, not “queer” at all. And they are not to be conflated with any “cognitive phenomena” (Erkenntnisphänomene) belonging to and existentially dependent on the “cognitive activity” (Erkenntnistätigkeit) (Hua Mat IX, p. 87). But they should not be conflated either with the “φαντασθέν” of a rational representation—what Husserl calls “logical content of cognition” (logischen Gehalt des Erkennens). For sure, the “subsistence” of the lekton/Bedeutung of a linguistic expression is in “accordance” with the content of a rational representation/cognitive judgment—but such “accordance” is neither identity, nor existential subordination. The whole problem is precisely to understand the exact nature of such “accordance” (κατά)—that is, in Husserl’s terms, to ultimately articulate, not to conflate, the specific noema of a cognitive, propositional, judicative, linguistically expressible noesis, and the linguistically expressed, propositional lekton. But this is an entirely different story. For the problem could only arise if complete propositional lekta and noemata correlated to noetic acts of judgment are not lumped together. This latter point—the articulation of judgment in a noematic sense and propositional meaning—also appears in some other texts where Husserl explicitly refers to the Stoic lekta: The Stoic logic, which further developed the great project of Aristotelian analytics, has the great merit of having for the first time explicitly worked out the necessary idea of a truly rigorous formal logic in a reasonably pure way. It laid the ground for this development through its significant—though disregarded, indeed completely forgotten—doctrine of the lekton. In this doctrine the idea of a proposition, as the judgment judged in the act of judging (judgment in the noematic sense), is succinctly expressed for the first time, and the syllogistic laws are related to its pure forms. (Hua VII, pp. 18–9/19)

In this latter passage, at least at first sight, one might have the impression that the lekton and the noema are somehow identified. But if we bear in mind some of our previous remarks, the impression is likely to be dispelled. First, being focused on formal apophantic logic and its core concept of αξίωμα, Husserl is not identifying lekton and noema in general. He is only establishing a connection between lekta and judgments understood in a noematic sense, that is, objectively (as distinguished from judgments as noetic acts). Secondly, as we know, the presence of the word “proposition” (Satz) always marks Husserl’s reference to linguistic “expressed” or “expressible” contents. Accordingly, the whole argument appears to be set already “in the linguistic sphere” (in der sprachliche Sphere), where judgments in the noematic sense (= as objective) are taken into account not as the mere correlates of their respective noesis (= subjective), but as what is expressed in their corresponding linguistic assertion or statement (Aussage), that is, as the ideal propositional meanings of linguistic items:

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Especially in the linguistic sphere they [sc. the Stoics] grasped the difference between lived-experiences of uttered representation, judgment, inference, etc. belonging to the uttered speech (as linguistic signs) and, on the other hand, the respective concepts, propositional judgments, inferences. The proposition or the judgment as that which is stated and judged (judgment in a noematic sense) is not the act of judgment (judgment in the noetic sense) that takes place with the respective experiential content. The Stoa, therefore, first formed the idea of a “formal logic” as a theory of validity of such lekta. (Hua XXV, pp. 127–8)

Despite the language of noesis and noema this whole analysis is carried out within the straightforward “dogmatic attitude” of formal logic, not within the “phenomenologically reduced” attitude of “transcendental logic.” What is more, in this passage “proposition” (Satz) is not merely equated with “judgment in the noetic sense” (Urteil im noetischen Sinn). The equation holds insofar as we are “in the linguistic sphere” and as long as judging is tantamount to stating—as is readily apparent in Husserl’s distinctive definition of judgment as “that which is stated, i.e., judged” (das Urteil als das ausgesagte, geurteilte Was). Thus, the idea is quite straightforward: against an Aristotle-inspired, psychologistic “noetic” logic, i.e., mind-oriented, the Stoics kick-started a “pure noematic logic” (rein noematischen Logik), i.e., meaning-oriented (Hua XXV, p. 128), that is to say, not logic as the art of how to judge correctly, but logic as the science of “valid” entailments of certain complete lekta called αξιώματα following from other complete lekta of the same kind. One last point needs to be briefly mentioned. As already pointed out, Husserl strongly insists, especially in Formal and Transcendental Logic, on the “double-­ sidedness” (Doppelseitigkeit) of formal logic (understood as “formal apophantics”) and formal mathematics (understood as “formal ontology”). In this specific context, he also indulges once more in praising the virtues of Stoic logic in general and the concept of lekton in particular. And he also insists, again, on the fact that such momentous inventions have long been neglected and historically forgotten (at least until Bolzano) (Hua XVII, p. 87/82). But now Husserl bestows new significance on this fact: This makes it understandable that the very advanced insight already expressed in the Stoic doctrine of the lekton did not win out in antiquity and that, in the modern age, even after the development of a formal mathematics and its enlargment to include the calculus of logic, most logicians were unable to see an internal connexion between the themes of mathematics and the themes of logic. Such a connection could not emerge until the formations dealt with in formal logic were made thematic as parallels to the formations dealt with in formal mathematics, and made so with the same focus in both cases, on that which is both objective and ideal. (pp. 86–7/82–3)

In other words, the full scope of the Stoic account of lekta and their actual contribution to formal logic could only be appreciated if seen from the vantage point of a formal ontology revolving around the concept of something in general. In sum, only a new approach seeing mathematics and logic as both dealing with “something” that is ideal and objective (though not real or substantial)—could yield the

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“double-sidedness” of a pure theory of meaning and a pure theory of objects.26 The logic of the lekta finally meets the formal ontology of the τι, the “something”—thus coming full circle.

11 Coda Despite their conflicting views and complex strategies, Sartre and Deleuze have tried to break the silence and invite the Stoics into the quarters of phenomenology— and, more precisely, of Husserl’s phenomenology. The title of such an unexpected encounter was: the lekton meets the noema. Two “queer” entities, neither mental nor physical, “insisting” or “subsisting” but not “existing”—the stage was set. But, notwithstanding the appearances, the meeting was hard to set up. In the present chapter I have tried to show, first of all, the complexity of the operation carried out by Sartre and Deleuze. At the same time, I have also attempted to unfold the peculiar arrangements thanks to which both authors have tried to connect Husserl’s noema and the Stoic lekton. And yet the path should also have shown that it is precisely because of these arrangements, whose goal was to bring Husserl close to the Stoics, that Sartre and Deleuze ended up pulling them apart: Sartre, by forgetting the propositional nature of the lekta, and conflating them with a noema reduced to an ἐννόημα or an ens diminutum; Deleuze by deliberately deciding to neglect Husserl’s explicit distinction between two senses of “sense” and swinging back and forth from the one (semantic) to the other (transcendental). We have finally concluded by examining, for the first time in the literature, the actual texts in which Husserl himself invites the Stoic lekton—an invitation not to join the transcendentally reduced object-correlate of any intentional act but, more modestly, to meet the only concept of meaning that could turn formal logic into a theoretically full-fledged science and to reconvene with an updated concept of “something” in general. For Husserl, the lekton is nothing “queer”—or, at most, it has the ordinary queerness of all linguistic meanings.

 Dodd (2005, p. 144) is one of the rare Husserl scholars who have briefly mentioned this latter passage of Formal and Transcendental. His comment is the following: “The theme of ‘noema’ is not limited to phenomenology. Husserl himself cites the Stoic doctrine of lekton.” If we are not mistaken, neither in this text nor anywhere else does Husserl explicitly relate noema and lekton. Moreover, the actual goal of this last Husserlian reference to the Stoics is to connect formal logic (rightly understood as a theory of meanings) and formal mathematics (rightly understood as a theory of objects)—i.e., to place within an entirely new context the solidarity, rightly pointed out also by Deleuze, between lekton and τι. 26

Part VI

Infinity

Chapter 10

Plato’s Light and Gorgias’s Shadow On the Manifold “Beginnings” of Philosophy

When the meaningful words | When they cease to function | When there’s nothing to say | When will it start bothering you? The Killing Joke

1 Beginnings 1.1 Introduction: Blind Spots, Missing Footnotes, and Estranged Fathers Despite the increasing number of recent publications on the relationship between Husserl and Plato, the place of Husserl’s philosophy within the long term “multiple history of Platonism” (Chiaradonna, 2017) is still in need of a proper assessment. As a matter of fact, at least two different, though tightly related, tasks must be carefully distinguished. The first task has to do with the reconstruction of Husserl’s reading of Plato’s thought and the fundamental role he plays in the history of philosophy. The second task is to assess the novelty and overall interest of such reading. Accordingly, after having established how Husserl understands Plato, one should still ask if and to what extent that distinctive understanding bears any originality or philosophical relevance. The first task might certainly be of interest to many Husserl scholars; the second represents a full-fledged contribution to the history of Platonism as such. In this chapter I would like to do a bit of both, and begin by exploring what I take to be one of the most original aspects of Husserl’s picture of Plato—an aspect that, if I am not mistaken, has no equivalent in the history of Platonism. The claim that Plato is somehow the “father” of Western philosophy is hardly original. To say that the so-called Western philosophical tradition as a whole is somehow “Platonic” sounds even more commonsensical. Not unlike Nietzsche, Whitehead or Heidegger, Husserl unquestionably states something along these © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_10

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lines, even if for entirely different reasons.1 What strikes already as entirely new, however, is Husserl’s complex narrative and unexpected focus on what might be called the blind spot of Platonism, i.e., Plato’s confrontation—or, more precisely, missed confrontation—with Gorgias’s distinctive form of sophistry. I will thus try to present some of the reasons why, in Husserl’s reconstruction, Gorgias’s arguments on the impossibility of being and knowledge, spelled out in the treatise On Non-Being (Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος), appear as both the unmet challenge of Plato’s path-breaking invention of “genuine philosophy” and the blind spot of the Western philosophical tradition up to Descartes. If this is correct, Husserl adds to Whitehead’s (1929, p.  39) arch-famous—and pretty trite, if not entirely false— catchphrase (“the European philosophical tradition is a series of footnotes to Plato”) the following, fascinating supplement: since Plato never truly faced Gorgias, the European philosophical tradition is also built on a series of missing footnotes, i.e., the footnotes to those dialogues Plato could have written had he met head-on the first version ever formulated of the transcendental problem. In order to state my case, I will proceed as follows. Section 1 is devoted to a thorough reconstruction of Husserl’s account of the history of Ancient and Modern Philosophy; its main goal is to set the stage within which the (missed) confrontation between Plato and Gorgias is meant to take place. Section 2 deals entirely with Gorgias’s treatise and its reception in the German speaking world between the second half of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century; it is aimed to show the context within which and the materials from which Husserl develops his unique reading. Section 3 is finally dedicated, in its entirety, to Husserl’s reading of Gorgias and its relation to Plato. More specifically, I will begin by presenting Husserl’s idea that the history of philosophy has manifold “beginnings” (Sect. 1.2). This includes a 1st Beginning, illustrated by key figures such as Solon and Thales (Sect. 1.3) and leading to the rise of the so-called Pre-Socratic philosophy (Sect. 1.4). After having introduced the critical and paramount role that Husserl attributes to Sophistry (Sect. 1.5), I will dwell on Plato’s response to the sophists and his invention of “genuine philosophy as a science,” which marks the 2nd Beginning (Sect. 1.6). I will also show how Husserl understands the relation between Plato and Descartes’s 3rd Beginning (Sect. 1.7). Having outlined the broad picture and described the position of Gorgias within Husserl’s account of the history of philosophy (Sect. 1.8), I will then discuss Gorgias’s treatise On Non-Being (Sect. 2.1), its reception at Husserl’s time (Sect. 2.2) and point out the most relevant structural and conceptual features of its socalled “second argument” (Sect. 2.3). This will finally allow me to turn back to Husserl’s texts and scrutinize his reading of Gorgias’s treatise (Sects. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5). Finally, I will focus on Husserl’s extremely original take on the relation between Gorgias and Plato (Sect. 3.6) within the history of philosophy. As I will show in the conclusion (Sect. 3.7), Husserl’s Plato appears, quite originally, not

 For a further examination of these reasons, see Chaps. 11 and 12 in this volume.

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only as the natural father of all scientific philosophy but also as the estranged father of transcendental philosophy.

1.2 The Manifold Beginnings of Philosophy While Husserl has always written and taught about the history of philosophy, his increasing interest in Gorgias appears at a rather late stage of his philosophical path, as attested in a letter to Heidegger (11/5/1918): Here in Freiburg, right from the start, I had more to do than I expected—I found my introduction to philosophy, carried out within a history-of-ideas styled development of the ideal of a rigorous science from the methodological conceptions of Plato, insufficiently clear, and had to elaborate this series of lectures anew. (It has to do, among others, with the original motivations of the critique of reason based upon Gorgias’ second argument, then upon Descartes’ field of pure cogitation—in contrast with the ancient developments which operated in a logical-scientific and ontological way even though they gave to modernity the lasting fruit of exact sciences). (Hua Dok III/4, p. 130)

After the scandals following the publication of Ideas I and its transcendental commitment, Husserl’s interest in the history of philosophy takes a new turn. More precisely, between 1916 and 1918, while preparing the historical sections of his lectures called Introduction to Philosophy, Husserl appears to be increasingly unsatisfied with the classic picture according to which Plato’s light simply radiates through the entire philosophical tradition. As a result, he introduces a series of further complications to the conventional portrait of Plato as the “father” of Western philosophy. These complications are especially introduced to explain not only the Greek invention of the idea of philosophy, but also the necessity of its later transcendental turn. A new picture of the history of philosophy thus comes to the fore, a picture within which, next to the inevitable presence of Plato and Descartes, lurks the unexpected figure of Gorgias of Leontini. According to this new picture, the history of Western philosophy has been marked, Husserl says, by manifold beginnings (Anfänge), each circumscribing an “epoch” (Epoche) and illustrated by at least one key figure: –– the 1st Beginning: Solon (638–558 B.C.), Thales (640–548 B.C.); –– the 2nd Beginning: Socrates (470–399 B.C.)-Plato (428–348 B.C.);2 –– the 3rd Beginning : Descartes (1596–1650). As a result, when Husserl states, quite emphatically, that “one can say that it is for the first time with Plato that the pure ideas of genuine knowledge, of genuine theory and science, as well as of genuine philosophy—encompassing them all—entered  Here I will also have to neglect the exact relationship established by Husserl between Plato and Socrates. In addition, I will deliberately leave aside Husserl’s take on the side-effects of Sophistry upon the more practical and ethical aspects of life in order to focus exclusively on the theoretical consequences it had for philosophy. On some of these topics, see De Santis (2019). 2

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into the consciousness of humanity” (Hua VII, p. 13), he clearly refers to the 2nd Beginning. Thus, Plato is not the “father” or the “inventor” (Urheber) of philosophy as such. As a matter of fact, philosophy as such—as we will see shortly—is not something that could be single-handedly begotten or invented. As all cultural activities, which could only be collectively established, philosophy has no fathers or inventors—it only has “beginners” (Anfänger). By contrast, what can be truly single-handedly initiated is a trend, “steering the history of philosophy in an entirely new direction” (Hua VII, pp. 35, 60, 85). What could be begotten is an idea, “displaying” new lines of development within already existing philosophical trends (Hua VII, p. 60). This is precisely what philosophy owes to Plato: “the creation of the idea of a true and genuine science” (Hua XXV, p. 137; see also p. 53), i.e., “the production of a system of a universal and absolutely justified truth” (Hua VII, p. 24). We shall return to this point later (see Sect. 1.6). It suffices to have noticed, for the moment, that Plato’s 2nd Beginning cannot be fully understood outside the line of development that follows the 1st Beginning, whose trend has been deflected by Plato’s new “creation” of ideas.

1.3 The First Beginning The 1st Beginning occurs between the seventh and the sixth century B.C. and is illustrated by Husserl through the joint examples of Solon and Thales. In the 1919/1920 lectures Introduction to Philosophy (Hua Mat IX, p. 6), Husserl explicitly refers to a passage, reported by Herodotus in his Histories, where king Croesus says to Solon the following: we have heard a lot about you because of your wisdom and of your wanderings, how, loving knowledge, you have traveled much of the world for the sake of seeing it (παρ᾽ ἡμέας γὰρ περὶ σέο λόγος ἀπῖκται πολλὸς καὶ σοφίης εʽίνεκεν τῆς σῆς καὶ πλάνης, ὡς φιλοσοφέων γῆν πολλὴν θεωρίης εʽίνεκεν ἐπελήλυθας) (Herodotus, Hist., Book I, XXX, p. 2)

The language employed by Herodotus in this passage shows the intimate connection between something that could be qualified as “loving knowledge,” or, ultimately, “philosophical” (φιλοσοφέων) and its “theoretical” end (θεωρίης εʽίνεκεν). Both locutions relate to an attitude in which what matters is to see and learn with the only goal of seeing and learning. Accordingly, phrases like “for the sake of contemplation” or “purely for the pleasure of intuitive knowledge” and “pure love of wisdom” (Hua Mat IX, pp. 6–7)—often used to describe the theoretical commitment of philosophy—must be understood, first and foremost, in this quite general sense. Solon has not traveled around the world as a diplomat or a businessman, as a spy or a tourist. He did not follow any practical interest or strategic goal: he has wandered to see and learn. More specifically, he has learned because he has wandered in order to see and, conversely, he has wandered only in order to see for the sake of learning. This is what “philosophical” wisdom, in its most general sense, is all about:

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journeying through the world as it is, eyes wide open, in order to learn about the world just as it is, and just to learn about the world as it is. Yet this is clearly not enough. Despite his “philosophical” travels, Solon is not reckoned by Husserl to be among the “men who created philosophy as a new sort of cultural formation upon the theoretical life” (Hua VI, pp. 332–3)—Thales is. Indeed, several points separate Solon from Thales: the scope, the noetic layers, and the theme of their “philosophical” commitment. To begin with, Solon and Thales certainly share the same “purely theoretical impulse” (Hua Mat. IX, p. 9), the same “theoretical ἔρως” (Hua Mat IX, p. 8), i.e., the desire to learn by seeing and seeing to learn. Moreover, they also variously illustrate the truth of Aristotle’s claim— expressed in the opening lines of Met. A, 1 (980a21)—according to which “all men naturally strive towards wisdom”: All men naturally strive towards wisdom (Alle Menschen streben von Natur aus nach dem Wissen). The purely theoretical contemplation, the pure strive towards wisdom holds here as the original endowment of men, as something belonging to the human nature. This is correct in the Aristotelian sense of the ἐντελέχεια, not in the ordinary, real sense. For, in truth, man, just like any animal, is originally filled with practical interests, interests of usefulness, self-promotion and promotion of the community; when the theoretical interest emerged and, firstly, in certain individual exceptional persons, turned into something autonomous and dominant, something new happened, it was the beginning of a new era of humanity. (Hua Mat IX, p. 7; emphases added)

If the emergence of the theoretical impulse must be understood in the sense of Aristotle’s ἐντελέχεια—i.e., as the realization of something that is in potency embedded in human nature itself—then Solon is certainly an “exceptional individual” having contingently actualized such specifically human potentiality. However, unlike Thales, Solon did not turn such actualization into an autonomous and dominant form of life. Put in a nutshell: Solon’s travels are “philosophical”—Thales’s overall life is “philosophical.” The word “philosophy” has therefore three different meanings, each corresponding to the different scopes of the word theorein (θεωρεῖν), understood (1) as the original endowment of all human beings; (2) as the occasional realization of (1); (3) as the habitualized realization of (1). In the first case, philosophy is a potentiality to be realized (ἐντελέχεια); in the second, it is a way of wandering (πλάνη); in the third, it is a full-fledged form of life (βίος).3 The second reason why, unlike Solon, Thales is a philosopher in the “strong” or “strict” sense (im prägnanten Sinne) is a matter of “levels”: Then again, we have to distinguish here two clearly different levels: the wisdom (Weisheit), or, as we should better say, the education (Bildung) acquired, for instance, by the one who travels with the senses wide open and constantly looks around, contemplates, compares etc.

 It is precisely in this very specific sense that philosophy is an “attitude,” as explained in Chap. 3 of this volume. 3

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(immerfort Schauende, Betrachtende, Vergleichende), and the higher level of knowledge that is attained by directing thoughts towards conception and clarification (auf Begreifen und Erklären). It is not Solon, “philosophizing” in the sense of Herodotus’s talk, but Thales, philosophizing in a new sense, that lies at the forefront of the history of philosophy and human science. (Hua Mat. IX, p. 7)

The outcome of Solon’s “philosophical” wandering is wisdom (Weisheit): the wise man is transformed by encountering a vast array of empirical “facts” (Tatsache), by comparing and contrasting customs and laws and people and events of the world as it is. By contrast, Thales’s “philosophical life” is meant to end in “knowledge” (Kenntnis): the philosopher in the “strong” sense is changed on a “higher level” by conceiving and clarifying the principles (Prinzipien) of the world as it is.4 Thus, already in its 1st Beginning, “philosophy in the strong sense” is neither a mere cognitive strive nor a contingently dominant theoretical attitude within someone’s overall life. Once turned into a dominant form of life, it is a theoretical attitude having a distinctively constant theme. Such theme—committing the philosopher to conceptual thinking—is what Husserl variously calls the “universe” (Universum), the “whole of the world” (Weltall), the “whole of being” (All des Seins): something that cannot be learned by empirically wandering “eyes wide open” through the world as it is, but requires a leap into higher noetic powers. The Greeks called it philosophy. Correctly translated, in the original sense, that means nothing other than universal science, science of the whole of the world, of the all-encompassing unity of all that is. (Hua VI, p. 321)

To sum up: in the first case (philosophy in the “broad” sense), one is clearly not changed by philosophy yet, since the latter, in all of its forms, is still a potentiality to be realized—accordingly, there is no actual “education” of the self through the theorein;5 in the second case (philosophy in the “narrow” sense) one is changed by the fact of being acquainted with a wide amount of encounters, as many and diverse as possible—now the “education” of the wise man derives from experience; in the third case (philosophy in the “strict” sense) one is changed by the search for the principles and the noetic interest in the whole—and only in this form the theorein offers a new kind of “education”.

1.4 The “Pre-Socratic” Paradise and Its Fall Thus, the 1st Beginning of philosophy stricto sensu, illustrated by Thales, is characterized by: 4  Again, one recognizes, lurking behind Husserl’s words, Aristotle’s distinction (Met. A 1, 981a24-30) between the men of experience (οἱ ἔμπειροι) who know that (τὸ ὅτι) things are in a certain way, but not why (τὸ διότι), and the actual philosopher whose wisdom aims at the principles and the first causes (σοφία περί τινας ἀρχὰς καὶ αἰτίας ἐστὶν ἐπιστήμη) (Met. A, 1, 982a2-3). 5  From now, instead of talking of “theory” or “theoretical” I will use the transliterated word “theorein” so as to keep in mind its threefold meaning.

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–– one theme, i.e., the ordered whole of the world (κόσμος, Weltall); –– one attitude, i.e., the theoretical, understood as a full-fledged form of life; and –– two layers of noetic endeavor: an “empirical” (a posteriori) and a “conceptual” (a priori) one. Thanks to the former, one observes and compares the diversity of worldly facts; but it is only by means of the latter that the “philosopher” attempts to conceive and clarify the unifying principles underlying such diversity. It is worth noticing that, as Husserl points out, the 1st Beginning is unmistakably a plural event and, as such, it is not “initiated” by Thales, who is only the oldest factually attested example of such inaugural trend. Indeed, from a strictly structural viewpoint, all the so-called “Pre-Socratics” are like Thales: they all take into account the whole of the world, which includes whatever can be experienced, observed and compared in its irreducible diversity; but they also submit such vast array of things and events to some universal laws governed by some a priori principles (ἀρχαί); such principles are, in turn, conceived as objects of clarification not of experience, i.e., as something of which each Pre-Socratic philosopher has a certain “intuition” (Ahnung): The most general thought of a universal order of the world (einer universellen Weltordnung), the thought that the whole of the world as submitted to rules and laws, appeared quite early as an audacious intuition acting deeply in people’s souls—but it was just an intuition. In the Pythagoreans, it took the garb of a mystic of numbers: everything in the world is in its true being number, and the essence of number is order, harmony; in Heraclitus it was the sovereign of Ἀνάγκη, Δίκη, the supreme order of the Λόγος, as harmonizing balance of conflicts, oppositions, tensions and counter-tensions, that constituted the order of the world. (Hua Mat IX, p. 10)

Thus, none of these features which are already characteristic of the Pre-Socratics are really distinctive of or exclusive to Plato’s 2nd Beginning, namely the thematic distinction between the world as it appears and the world as it is in its true being (Erscheinungswelt/wirkliche Welt); the noetic contrast between the scattered opinion (δόξα) and the variously unified science (ἐπιστήμη); the difference between one attitude that is (practically or theoretically) geared to the multiple of things, events, customs that factually are, and another attitude where the transformation of the “philosopher” depends on the discovery of the principles, or at least on the desire to discover them. These are rather structural characteristics of the inaugural direction (Richtung) of philosophy itself, in the sense illustrated by Thales, but also by Pythagoras, Heraclitus and others. In order to fully appreciate the actual change of direction that followed Plato’s 2nd Beginning, one last feature of the 1st Beginning should be spelled out, i.e., what might be called its “holistic limit.” Husserl presents it as follows: These are truly deep insights! But we are still far from the idea that the whole world in its entirety (die ganze Weltall) is ruled by particular and determinate laws, that each specific process, each specific occurrence of becoming is ruled by particular laws which can be exactly formulated and studied scientifically through methodic experiences and methodic forms of thinking. (Hua Mat IX, p. 11; emphasis added)

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Here Husserl points towards two, quite different and yet crucial, “holistic limits,” as it were, intrinsic to the 1st Beginning. The first limit is in the gap between the extreme generality of those unifying principles conceived in order to account for the world as a whole (the Pythagorean ἀριθμός, Heraclitus’s λόγος, etc.) and the extreme variety of particular phenomena that such principles are meant to explain in their specificity. Even assuming that everything in the κόσμος is—in its deepest being—“number” (one/many) or “logos” (balance of tension/counter-tension), i.e., somehow ordered—is this all one could say about it? How about the difference between the one/many or tension/counter-tension of principles governing the order of, say, material things, living beings, human behaviors, political communities, celestial phenomena, logical rules of inference, rhetorical devices, and so on? How are these orders differently ordered? How are they connected to each other? The first holistic limit consists therefore in the inability to account for the particular laws of each particular set of phenomena or occurrence of becoming in their distinctive differences and mutual articulations. The second limit has to do with the epistemic inability to account for the philosophical claims themselves. It is readily manifest, Husserl says, that there is no apparent reason to prefer Pythagoras’s particular “intuitions” or “considerations” about the order of the world over, say, Heraclitus’s or Parmenides’s (Hua Mat IX, p. 11). Each is equally binding in its own way—and to some extent, both Pythagoras’s and Heraclitus’s “intuitions” are somehow “true.” Yet, none of the above “considerations” provides us with the means to justify its claims, nor does it explain the method to be followed to grant the latter’s truthfulness or indicate how to pursue the research and move forward. Moreover, for a disciple of Pythagoras or Heraclitus, there is seemingly no other way to challenge or disprove some particular assertions of the master, except by quitting his School and founding a new one. What unites a community of philosophers following the trend of the 1st Beginning is the sharing of certain “doctrines” (Lehre) and not the shared idea of pursuing the “task” (Aufgabe) of philosophy in a certain open-ended way. The philosophical community of the 1st Beginning is thus still a closed circle, not a truly infinite, ongoing endeavor handed over from a “philosopher” to another, from a generation to another. At least to some extent, this philosophical community cannot but have a finite task: to conceive the order of the world in “one blow” (mit einem Schlag), to expound its limited number of principles, to spell out their essence up to a certain point—and preserve such outcomes (Hua Mat IX, p. 11). And yet, preserving is not the same as continuing.

1.5 The Rise of the Sophist This finally brings us to what Husserl calls the “wonderful phenomenon of sophistry” (das wunderbare Phänomen der Sophistik), introducing the daunting figure of Gorgias.

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This extremely ambitious cosmic science, this “philosophy” that, thanks to very deep and general considerations, thought to be able to conquer theoretically the whole universe in one blow, was finally brought to the downfall, and had its ground cut under the feet. […] The ‘sophists’ moved against the philosophers, guided by men like Protagoras and Gorgias, and with a diabolical joy they played the contradictions within and among the new philosophers one against the other; but they did not simply show the latter’s objective i­ nconsistency, and they didn’t even try to build new and better philosophies. More than anything else, they went as far as to deny the possibility of any philosophy and science and prove with ostensible scientific cogency their impossibility. (Hua Mat IX, pp. 11–2)

This point is of paramount importance and needs to be carefully spelled out. It was precisely its “holistic limit” that brought the philosophical trend of the 1st Beginning to its downfall. More specifically, the rise of a new critical attitude turned that twofold limit into a mortal wound—a wound that Plato will eventually be called to cure. As we will see shortly, this new attitude of the Sophist is neither theoretical nor entirely practical; its theme is not the whole of the world as such but the philosophical enterprise itself, i.e., the attempt to theoretically investigate the whole of the world. Seen from the outside, however, the Sophist is treacherously indistinguishable from the philosopher in the strict sense. One should have noticed already that, in Husserl’s account of the history of Western philosophy, the role of sophistry can hardly be overestimated. However, and quite paradoxically, this goes hand in hand with Husserl’s decision, right from the outset, to sit on Plato’s side and to deny the Sophist the status of philosopher. Interestingly enough, however, saying that Gorgias or Protagoras are “not philosophers” (neither in the broad nor in the narrow sense) is far from being a way to dismiss their tremendous importance. Quite the contrary: it is precisely because they were not committed to the philosophical trend of the 1st Beginning that Sophists could precipitate its crisis and open the space for the 2nd Beginning. Strictly speaking, sophistry is not “philosophy” because: –– it is not moved by the theorein as a potentiality to be realized; –– it is not identical with the freedom from practical deeds allowing Solon to learn by seeing and seeing by learning; –– and, certainly, it does not fit the picture of a theoretical attitude turned into a dominant form of life and having as a theme the whole of the world in its principles. Yet, quite surprisingly, the attitude of the Sophist is not entirely reducible to its opposite either, i.e., the merely pre-theoretical attitude guided by practical interests of usefulness and self-promotion. Not unlike the philosopher in Solon’s sense, the Sophist too ends up disrupting the continuity of the dominant practical attitude that organizes the human activity in means and ends. For the Sophist, however, the disruption of the ordinary life does not rest on what we have called the freedom of theory or “theorein”—leading to the “philosophical” attitude—but on what we could now call the freedom of play or “paidia” (παιδία)—leading to something like a “playful” attitude. On this point, Husserl’s wording is carefully chosen: Sophists “play” (spielen) with concepts and contradictions (Hua Mat IX, p. 11); their arguments have a “playful style” (spielerische Art) (Hua XXV, p. 135); they critically

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engage the inconsistencies of philosophy with a “diabolical joy” (mit diabolischer Freude) (Hua Mat IX, p. 11). Sophistry is therefore the unrestricted freedom of the play turned against the unrestricted freedom of theory. The “playful” is to the Sophist what the “theoretical” is to the Philosopher in the strict sense, i.e., a dominant attitude: a form of life. Yet, what the Sophist plays with are not practical devices or toys, but philosophical concepts, arguments, theories, intuitions, and explanations. The favorite playground of sophistry is nothing but philosophy, in all of its forms. The tremendous power of Husserl’s Sophist lies precisely in the fact that he is not interested in providing new concepts, arguments, theories, intuitions etc. about the whole of the world and its principles. His focus is rather on the philosophical discourse itself and his goal is to play the philosophical game against the philosopher: We are dealing with an anti-philosophy taking the form of a philosophy whose overall theme is that there can be no philosophy; with the initiation of an anti-logic wanting to ground, in a logical way, that there is no valid logic, proving that no proofs have any value, that one can only state that no statement can be objectively meaningful etc. (Hua Mat IX, p. 12)

The philosophical trend of the 1st Beginning, Husserl concludes, could not survive such an uncompromising attack. If—as we have seen (see Sect. 1.4)—philosophy, in the strict sense illustrated by Thales, Pythagoras or Heraclitus, leads to (i) the sheer coexistence and conceptual juxtaposition of extremely general allegations about the unifying principles of the whole of the world, which are (ii) conceptually conquered “in one blow,” i.e., without being able to either (ii.a) specify the diversity and articulation of particular laws governing the becoming of particular phenomena or (ii.b) spell out any methodic commitment or justify themselves—then philosophy in the strict sense is literally impossible. By turning philosophy into a game, therefore, the Sophists ended up proving “philosophically” that the philosophical potentiality cannot be realized in the form of a philosophy in the strict sense. More precisely, once revisited in a playful attitude, the apparently harmless twofold holistic limit of the so called “Pre-Socratics” turns into a harmful paradox: the paradox of a philosophy trying to wrest κόσμος from χάος—world from chaos, order from disorder—in a relatively chaotic and disordered manner; the paradox of a “theorein” struggling to account for the deep unity of the world-order, in a manner that is neither internally nor externally unified or ordered—a manner that could be easily torn apart by the mocking force of a joke. As we will see later, Gorgias’s mockery will turn out to be far more than a simple destructive game.

1.6 The Second Beginning The Sophist’s breakthrough could have had two different outcomes with respect to philosophy: it could have either driven to a profound skepticism about the very possibility of philosophy in the “strict” or “strong” sense; or it could have forced to the

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latter’s profound renewal. As already pointed out (Sect. 1.3), neither Solon nor Thales or Pythagoras invented philosophy. They only realized, in various ways— sometimes occasionally and empirically; sometimes dominantly and conceptually—the potentiality of the theorein as directed towards the world as a whole. Plato did far more than this: by wholeheartedly taking up the Sophist’s challenge, he single-handedly initiated “a new trend in philosophy,” inaugurating de facto the 2nd Beginning, i.e., the “beginning of a genuine and radical philosophy (Anfang zu einer echten und radikaler Philosophie)” (Hua VII, p. 8). Through the distorted mirror of the Sophist, Plato has learned to recognize the undistorted picture of a philosophy that could be able to face the threat of its mocking image. A philosophy still understood in the “strict” sense and yet freed from the holistic limits of the 1st Beginning. Its meaning, scope, ambitions, noetic endeavors, methods, themes and proper objects are now explicitly investigated and justified. This is precisely the reason why Plato’s philosophy—as well as all those trends that followed his example—is repeatedly called by Husserl “genuine” and “radical.” It is “genuine” (echte) both with respect to –– the “playful” (spielerische) image of philosophy staged by the Sophist and –– the idea of philosophy that the Pre-Socratics intended (gemeinte) but could not fully realize. And it is “radical” (radikale) in the twofold sense of its method and its true object: –– it is methodologically “deep-rooted” (self-assured); –– it finally has the means to fulfill its ambition of reaching the “roots of everything” (ῥιζώματα πάντων) (the ultimate principles of all that is). As Husserl also puts it, “the science of what is radical (Wissenschaft vom Radikalen) must be radical also in its procedure and in all its aspects” (Hua XXV, p. 61). Now, in keeping with its “genuineness” and “radicalism,” Plato’s 2nd Beginning pushes philosophy in two different directions. Against the first holistic limit, it fosters a renewal of the straightforward whole-of-the-world oriented line of research. The daunting, unarticulated “all of the world” which the Pre-Socratics imagined to be graspable “in one blow” is now understood as the articulated correlation between “being in itself (Sein an sich)” and “truth in itself (Wahr an sich)” (Hua XXV, p. 130; Hua VIII, p. 322). Thanks to Plato, philosophy turns into the universal science of Being in its ultimate principles, namely, a science articulated into particular sciences, each having its own object domain and its own a priori principles, all grounding the empirical truths about the apparently scattered facts of the world, and all mutually related in manifold ways, each of which can be theoretically investigated and conceptually spelled out. Philosophy is now the investigation of what-­ truly-­is (ὄντως ὄν) and the laws according to which being connects to being within being (Hua VI, pp. 10–1). Correlatively, and against the second holistic limit, Plato has also introduced an entirely novel, self-oriented line of research whose focus is, just as in the Sophistic game, philosophy itself. The difference, however, is that, this time, the self-­ examination of philosophy is taken very seriously. As a result, the philosophical attitude now necessarily includes a reflection on the way to do philosophy, a study

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of the principles of how to reach, discover and secure truth itself; a rigorous “doctrine of the method” (Hua VII, pp. 7–8; Hua VIII, p. 313); an inquiry on the way to reach and justify philosophical truth claims, to build up truth on truth and connect truth with truth (Hua XXXV, p. 53). “Sciences,” as Husserl puts it, are the “products of purposive work” (Werkgebilde) and “each science presents us with an endless manifold of spiritual formations called truths”: The truths of a science are not, however, an incoherent heap, just as, correlatively, the activity of the scientist is not an isolated and aimless searching for and creating of truths. Each individual result stands under higher guiding purposive ideas, and ultimately under the highest purposive idea, that of science itself. Just as the rule for formative work is thereby indicated in a preliminary way, so too do all of the individual truths take on a systematic form, that is, a teleological form which is imprinted upon them. Individual truths enter, in fixed orderings, into truth-unities of truths of lower and higher purposive form, binding themselves together, e.g., into conclusions, proofs, and theories. At the highest point, an ideal total unity of theory as such belongs to science as a whole, a universal theory which expands endlessly and develops itself to an ever higher degree with the endless progress of science. (Hua VII, p. 4/4)6

Given these two lines of research (universal ontology; universal methodology, i.e., logic) one is now in a good position to understand exactly what Husserl meant in his letter to Heidegger (cf. Sect. 1.2) when he mentioned the “development of the ideal of a rigorous science from the methodological conceptions of Plato” and its “ancient developments operating in a logical-scientific and ontological way” (Hua Dok III/4, p. 130, emphasis added).

1.7 The Third Beginning Yet, as already anticipated (Sect. 1.2), the trend of Plato’s 2nd Beginning will eventually go through a further change of direction, becoming even “more radical”: a “new beginning” (neue Anfang) takes place in Modernity and, this time, the need for a new trend is not fostered, as it were, from outside—i.e., from the playful and yet literally mortal threat of the Sophist—but from the inside, i.e., from its still insufficient radicalism. This 3rd Beginning, as Husserl puts it, has to do with the “critique of reason” and leads to Descartes’s insight of turning the sphere of subjectivity into a theme (Hua VII, pp. 60–2) and looking for the “roots of everything that is” within the immanence of such sphere. Husserl emphatically summarizes the whole idea that articulates the second and the third beginnings as follows: If today I were asked to look back upon the entire history of European philosophy and say, on the basis of the convictions that I have come to hold over the course of decades, which philosophers shine brightest of all, I would name two […]. First, I would mention Plato […]. The creation of the idea of true and genuine science, or of philosophy—which for a

 On the topic see Chap. 10 in this volume, as well as De Santis (2020).

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long time meant precisely the same thing—as well as the discovery of the problem of method, lead back to this thinker, and as a perfect creation to Plato. Secondly, I would name Descartes. His Meditationes de prima philosophia represent a completely new beginning in the history of philosophy in their attempt to discover, with a radicalism unheard of up to then, the absolutely necessary beginning of philosophy, while deriving this beginning from absolute and entirely pure self-knowledge. From these noteworthy “Meditations on First Philosophy” stems the tendency, found throughout the whole modern period, of recasting all philosophy as transcendental philosophy. This tendency indicates a basic character not only of modern philosophy, however, but also, as can no longer be doubted, of all scientific philosophy as such, now and for all time. (Hua VII, pp. 7–8/7–8)7

Before we spell out in some detail the key tenets of Descartes’s 3rd Beginning, two points must be noted. One might have noticed that, in Husserl’s account, Solon and Thales play a somewhat ambiguous role. They are both actual historical figures and (non-arbitrary) examples of possible realizations of philosophy in the “broad” sense. They equally illustrate two different ways in which such potentiality has been (historically) and therefore could be (ideally) actualized. Now, the same ambiguity holds—mutatis mutandis—for Plato and Descartes, who also illustrate different ways in which philosophy in the “strict” sense has been (historically) and therefore could be (ideally) carried out. Thus, in Husserl’s picture, Plato and Descartes are not merely factual stars “shining brightest of all,” each related to a specific epoch of the factual history of philosophy. They also illustrate two “tendencies” (Tendenzen), indicating the “basic characters” (Grundcharaktere) of “all scientific philosophy as such.” Let us call them, to be brief, the Platonic-Tendency and the Cartesian-Tendency. As already shown (Sect. 1.6) the first tendency (illustrated by Plato) has to do with the necessity for philosophy to grant the truthfulness of its claims about being in the most binding way possible, in an infinite movement of discovery of “being in itself” and justification of “truth in itself.” As for the second tendency (the one illustrated by Descartes), it leads to the necessity of “recasting all philosophy as transcendental philosophy” (Hua VII, p. 8), i.e., to the acknowledgment of the founding and unescapable role of subjectivity to which “being in itself” is given and truthfully known. Now, to each tendency there is also an opposed counter-tendency. The “Platonic” one is set against any holistic tendency, against all those trends which indulge in arbitrary philosophical intuitions, deep and massive conceptual allegations—perhaps true, but incapable to be brought into unity with other truths or to account for their own truthfulness—easy targets for the Sophist’s play. This contrast of trends leads to the opposition between the scientific and the non-scientific philosophical attitude. By contrast, the “Cartesian” tendency counters the trend of what Husserl calls the “dogmatic limits” of objectivism in its two main forms:

 In this passage Husserl also mentions a third figure, namely Socrates. As already indicated, we will not be able to discuss this issue here. Some additional remarks can be found below in Sect. 1.8 of this chapter and in Chap. 11 of this volume. 7

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–– “the presupposition, in epistemological investigations, of an objective world and psychophysical causalities”; –– “the soul-blindness to the peculiar essence of consciousness,” turning subjectivity into a worldly fact among others (Hua VII, p. 112). Thus, the holistic limit stands to the 2nd Beginning in the same relation as the dogmatic limit stands to the 3rd. Accordingly, the relevant opposition defining Descartes’s contribution to the history of philosophy is the one between a critical and a dogmatic attitude.8 More specifically, while the “Platonic-tendency” fulfills the trend of the 2nd Beginning by fostering a scientific philosophy focused on ontology and logic (theory of being, and theory of method; doctrine of ideas and dialectics), the “Cartesian tendency” of the 3rd Beginning steers to the direction of a “theory of reason” or a “critique of reason” by making explicit the anonymous performance of conscious life operating in each and every cognitive activity in which truth in itself and being in itself are constituted in their essential correlation: the aim of a theory of reason is to clarify how it is that in the medium (which we cannot get beyond) of subjective acts of meaning of whatever form—experiencing, theorizing, judging, valuing, opining in the practical sphere—something like objective legitimacy emerges in so-called activities of reason; […]. Indeed, the theory of reason arises out of the awareness that all consciousness, all acts of meaning, and hence acts of meaning concerning every type of objectivity, are carried out in the self-contained sphere of the ’cogitating’ Ego, and that all talk of truth and legitimacy draws its sense, in subjectivity itself, from certain particular acts of meaning, acts which ground all insight and which have, depending on the particular type of meaning-act and what is meant in it, their distinct forms of sense. Should there develop the need, in relation to the hiddenness of this cognizing life—which remains, as it were, anonymous during the activity of objective cognizing—to bring this anonymity into the light of day; should enigmas and doubts arise out of these obscurities; and should objective cognition and the objective achievement of reason become topics of investigation for a theory of reason; then such obscurity, and with it the problem of reason itself, affect every act of cognition, every act of objective meaning and grounding, in the same way. (Hua VII, pp. 95–6/98)

Thus, if we look closely, it is safe to say that Descartes is still a Platonist in the sense that he clearly and quite explicitly follows the “scientific” tendency inaugurated by Plato (as opposed to all possible varieties of holistic limits): his philosophy is indeed “genuine” and “radical.” Moreover, it is precisely within such tendency and, more precisely, with respect to the radical aspects of this tendency that Descartes introduces a new “critical-anti-dogmatic” change of direction (i.e., the second form of dogmatic limit).9 Descartes is, as it were, the name of a trend within a trend, that is, a deviation from within the trajectory of the Platonic stream. It is exactly in this sense that Descartes “displays an altogether new line of development compared to the post-Platonic philosophy” and “steers the current of the history of philosophy in an entirely new direction” (Hua VII, p. 60)—a direction  The sense of Husserl’s talk of “attitudes” in this specific context must be understood in the technical sense spelled out above in Chap. 3 of this volume. 9  By contrast, Husserl consistently maintains that Descartes has not been able to address the first form of dogmatic limit. Hence the need for the contribution of transcendental phenomenology. 8

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within which “subjectivity becomes by necessity a fundamental theoretical theme” (Hua VII, p. 62, emphasis added); where the “radicalism” of philosophy is no longer to be found in the “dogmatic logical-ontological” research, but in a “theory and critique of reason” ultimately leading to transcendental philosophy.

1.8 The Third Beginning—A Greek Prequel? As we have tried to show, “Descartes” is both the name of an actual philosopher and the collective name of an overall philosophical tendency. Consequently, from a strictly historical standpoint, it labels that particular way in which the philosophical potentiality (i.e., in general) has been historically-factually realized, in a rigorous manner (i.e., following Plato’s lead), by the man René Descartes, in the seventeenth century, and, from there on, pursued by a host of philosophers such as Hume, Leibniz, Kant and even Husserl himself. But, if this is correct, what we have agreed to call the Cartesian-Tendency—as opposed to its two dogmatic counter-­ tendencies—is not limited to Descartes alone nor to the historical tradition following the 3rd Beginning. Descartes (the man) certainly turned this tendency into the philosophical “direction” (Richtung) of a whole epoch (Modernity). But what “motivates” (motiviert) the Cartesian tendency (i.e., the need for a critique of reason and the necessity to turn the constitutive role of subjectivity into a philosophical theme) is much broader than Descartes himself—no matter how shiny his star might have been. Consistently with this assumption, Husserl does not shy away from identifying, already in Ancient thought, hints of the Cartesian-tendency towards a critical theory of reason, even if that epoch was clearly and exclusively “dominated” by mostly cosmological (1st Beginning) and logical-ontological (2nd Beginning) trends. Socrates, for instance, as guided by the practical motivation of the “know thyself” (γνῶθι σεαυτόν), was the first to recognize the necessity of a universal method of reason, and he recognized the basic sense of this method as—expressed in modern terms—an intuitive and a priori critique of reason. (Hua VII, p. 11/11)

Somehow, the same holds also for his disciple, Plato, whose theory of method (culminating in his dialectics) and ontological correlation between truth and being (culminating in his theory of ideas), could not have been successfully carried out without the awareness of the “basic ideas of a critique of reason” (Grundideen einer Vernunftkritik): Socrates’ lack of theoretical and scientific intentions is after all well known. Yet it may be regarded as certain that in Socrates the germ of ideas basic to a critique of reason can be found, ideas whose theoretical and technological shaping and highly fruitful development are the immortal glory of Plato. (Hua VII, p. 11/11)

It is quite manifest, however, that what Husserl calls here “critique of reason” does not entirely square with the definition we have previously encountered (see Sect. 1.7). It is not the thematic clarification of the way in which “in the medium (which

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we cannot get beyond) of subjective acts of meaning of whatever form—experiencing, theorizing, judging, valuing, opining in the practical sphere—something like objective legitimacy emerges in so-called activities of reason” (Hua VII, p. 95). Thus, Socrates and Plato carry out what might be called an uncritical critique of reason, a dogmatic universal method of reason. It is not that subjectivity falls out of their focus. It is simply that its investigation is carried out within a variety of the theoretical counter-tendency, i.e., “the presupposition in epistemological investigations of an objective world” (Hua VII, p. 112). Hence Husserl’s explicit statement, testifying the “dogmatic limit” of the 2nd Beginning, according to which, despite his radical spirit, Plato failed to “break through to the necessary beginnings and methods” (Anfänge und Methode) since he “took for granted the pre-given world” and “could only reach the level of what we call a dogmatic science […] not genuine science itself” (Hua VII, p. 56/58). We had distinguished above between two senses of dogmatism: (1) the presupposition of the pre-existence of an objective world and (2) the blindness to the peculiar essence of consciousness (Hua VII, p. 112). Being dogmatic in the first sense (there is a world of intelligible forms, objective and transcendent), Plato’s account of science also turns out to be dogmatic in a third sense, i.e., it is – incapable of “being ultimately justified” (Hua VII, p. 56). Accordingly, Plato’s “star” could only enlighten the path of philosophy up to a certain point. Since the full justification of philosophy in the strict sense requires a theory of reason that spells out how transcendent objective truths are correlated to the true being that emerges in subjective acts, then the self-evident pre-existence of the world is a major obstacle to such task. As a result, the Platonic variety of philosophy, not being “radical” enough, is fully “genuine” only in one sense: it might counter the “playful” image of philosophy staged by the Sophist but is still unable to fulfill the promise of a “strong” and “strict” philosophy made by the Pre-Socratics. It is hard not to notice the massive consequences of this allegation. Strictly speaking, no “philosopher” until Descartes—neither in the 1st Beginning nor in the 2nd Beginning—has been “radical” enough. Because no “philosopher” has been able, so far, to dispute the undisputable, i.e., to put into question, for the sake of knowing the principles of the whole of the world, the very fact that there is an objectively existing whole world—be it empirical or ideal: a world whose transcendence is always presupposed by its contingent cognizance and constant “access.” This form of “distrust” is, in Husserl’s view, the very condition to start looking for the “roots of everything” within the immanence of subjectivity and its constitutive anonymous life. No “philosopher” did this, for sure—but, as we have seen, Gorgias was not a philosopher. He was a Sophist, playing a philosophical game (see Sect. 1.5). Indeed, it is precisely in the “lighthearted manner (Leichtfertigkeit)” (Hua XXV, p. 136) in which Gorgias seemed to argue against Being and for the impossibility of knowledge, that the “original motivations of the critique of reason (Urmotive der Vernunftkritik)” (Hua Dok III/4, p.  130) emerge in the Ancient world. And,

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accordingly, it is precisely in such playful arguments that lie not only the true Greek prequel to the Cartesian-tendency, but also what is clearly the blind spot of the Platonic-tendency: The great philosophical sense, that brought Plato to a completely radical doctrine of the method, went lost already with his successors. And this happened all the more easily that (as we will explain later below) he did not grasp the core-points of a transcendental philosophy lying in Gorgias’s skepticism. (Hua XXV, p. 127)

If a “blind spot” is literally a corner within one’s range of vision such that, in principle, one could see, but is actually unable to see it, then Husserl’s Gorgias is exactly Plato’s transcendental blind spot. His critique of reason was there, in the Greek world, under Plato’s range of vision, and yet out of reach, playfully invisible. But what did Gorgias actually say to appear to Husserl as the only Greek having been able to challenge the unchallengeable authority of the natural attitude and provide the first “core-points” (Keimpunkte) from which transcendental philosophy will, one day, eventually grow? In order to answer to this question les us now turn to Gorgias’s lost treatise On Non-Being (Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος).

2 On Non-Being 2.1 Introducing Gorgias By the time Husserl began working on Gorgias, a few years after the publication of Ideas I, fragments of his treatise on non-being were widely known and had been extensively discussed in the literature. During the first decades of the twentieth century, scholars could indeed rely on both of its two historically transmitted versions—probably drawn from a common source—namely the one reported by Sextus Empiricus in Adversus mathematicos (M, 7.65–87), and the one recorded by the anonymous author of a fragment attributed to Aristotle called the De Melisso, Xenophane, Gorgia (MXG, 979a12—980b21). Sextus’s version—bearing the extended title Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἢ Περὶ φύσεως (On Non-Being or On Nature)—was accessible thanks to Bekker’s (1842) and Mutschmann’s (1914) editions of Sexti Empirici Opera. The passages where Sextus summarizes, systematizes and often frames in a skeptical language Gorgias’s arguments on being, knowledge and language were also added to Diels’s collection Doxographi Graeci (1879) and subsequently included in Diels-Kranz’s Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1903). Such passages were also famously discussed, all through the nineteenth century German speaking world, by authors such as Ludwig Kayser (1850, pp. 161–190) and Otto Apelt (1884, pp. 27–33). The version of the Pseudo-Aristotle, though not included within the Diels-Kranz edition of the Pre-Socratics’ fragments and testimonies, was also widely available at Husserl’s time. Edited in a single volume by Heinrich Eduard Foss (1828), it was also included in Bekker’s edition of the Corpus Aristotelicum (1831). Because of its

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distinctive formulation of Gorgias’s arguments, this slightly different version was already considered by some scholars as far more reliable than the one reported by Sextus (see Apelt, 1888a, p. 219). As a result, many prominent classicists, such as Hermann Bonitz (1862), Otto Apelt (1888a, b) and Hermann Diels (1900), brought a great deal of effort in discussing its content and overall significance. When Husserl sent his letter to Heidegger (in 1918), manifesting an increasing interest in Gorgias, the MXG version of the treatise was still under the spotlight, thanks to Heinrich Gomperz’s recently published book Sophistik und Rethorik (1914). In Husserl’s personal library, one finds Bekker’s Aristotelis Opera (signature BA 43/1–5), the third edition (1912) of Diels’s Fragmente (signature BA-357/1–2), as well as the offprint of the review by Paul Wendland (Göttingen gelehrte Anzeigen, 1, 1913, pp. 53–59) of Gomperz’s Sophistik und Rhetorik (signature SA 653). One can safely say, then, that Husserl knew both versions of Gorgias’s treatise and at least some of the technical discussions revolving around their differences. That being said, since his interest was clearly not philological, Husserl’s understanding of Gorgias’s second argument, as we will see shortly, draws and merges elements from the two different sources. And though one might have the impression that, sometimes, Sextus’s version appears to be more in line with some specific aspects of Husserl’s reading, other details fit more neatly with the formulations of the Pseudo-Aristotle. As for its structure, the treatise On Non-Being famously revolves around three claims of which the Pseudo-Aristotle and Sextus provide two different formulations: there is nothing; and if there is, it cannot be known; and even if there is and it is knowable, it cannot be shown to others (Οὐκ εἶναί φησιν οὐδέν. εἰ δ’ἔστιν, ἄγνωστον εἶναι. εἰ δὲ καὶ ἔστι καὶ γνωστόν, ἀλλ’οὐ δηλωτὸν ἄλλοις). (MXG, 979) the first one, nothing is; the second, even if something is, it cannot be apprehended by man; the third, even if can be apprehended, it surely cannot be expressed or explained to another (ʽὲν μέν καί πρῶτον ὅτι οὐδὲν ἔστιν; δεύτερον ὅτι εἰ καὶ ἔστιν, ἀκατάληπτον ἀνθρώπῳ; τρίτον ὅτι εἰ καὶ καταληπτόν, ἀλλὰ τοί γε ἀνέξοιστον καὶ ἀνερμήνευτον τῶι πέλας). (M, 7.65, 4–7)

Each claim is demonstrated thanks to a series of logical arguments, upon which we shall return shortly. While also stressing the importance of the first claim, Husserl’s reading of the treatise is entirely focused on the philosophical relevance of the arguments in support of the second (see Sect. 2.3). What Husserl often calls “Gorgias’s second argument” (Gorgias 2. Argument) (Hua Dok III/4, p. 130) is in fact deliberately singled out and extracted from its overall context. As a matter of fact, Husserl’s main point is not to reconstruct the whole of Gorgias’s line of reasoning, but to spot Plato’s “blind spot,” as it were—i.e., to show the exact point in which Gorgias’s free and playful philosophical exercise leads to what might be considered the very first formulation of the transcendental problem.

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2.2 Figuring Gorgias Before dwelling into the details of Husserl’s reading, some elements about its broader context are still needed. While preparing his lectures on the history of philosophy, Husserl was quite certainly confronted with—or, at least, vaguely familiar with—no less than five main interpretations of Gorgias’s treatise. I will call them the dismissive (D), the nihilistic (N), the phenomenist (P), the skeptical (S) and the burlesque (B) readings. Brentano’s 1867 Lectures on the History of Greek Philosophy picture Gorgias in the most ungenerous way as the typical Sophist manipulator: a morally dubious man whose main goal is to impress the audience so as to make a profit out of it. Accordingly, his fake philosophical arguments against being, knowledge and language should only be reminded in order to be dismissed (D). Gorgias shares with Parmenides the dialectical clothing and some thoughts. But he does not possess his serious tendency [seine ernste Tendenz]. This is even less to be found among the later Sophists, who increasingly indulge into stunning claims [in frappanten Behautpungen], while leaving nothing sacred untouched, and by means of fallacious arguments deceive people and aim at showing their superiority over the others. (Brentano, 1963, p. 152)

Though referring to the Eleatics, Brentano’s Gorgias is utterly uninterested in challenging Parmenides’s monism per se. He is plainly and simply skimming off the top. By contrast, for authors such as Diels or Hegel, suggesting a nihilistic (N) reading of Gorgias’s treatise, the latter’s arguments support a very strong philosophical claim: being is nothing but mere appearance (Diels), the whole of being is nothingness (Hegel). Gorgias is therefore a negative ontologist: The dialectic of Gorgias moves more purely in notion than that found in Protagoras. Since Protagoras asserted the relativity, or the non-implicit nature of all that is, this only exists in relation to another which really is essential to it; and this last, indeed, is consciousness. Gorgias’ demonstration of the non-implicitness of Being is purer, because he takes in itself what passes for real existence without presupposing that other, and thus shows its own essential nullity and separates therefrom the subjective side and Being as it is for the latter. (Hegel, 1833, p. 107) His text On Nature and Non-Being must have been written during this period of doubt or, better, despair, when he threw the double-edged weapons of Zeno and Melissos against the more ancient physics but also against Eleatism itself […] the world of being has vanished into an appearing nothingness (die Welt des Seins sich in nichtigen Schein aufgelöst hat). (Diels, 1884, pp. 359–60)

According to Hegel, the philosophical relevance of Gorgias’s nihilism is in the critique of all forms of “absolute realism,” of all philosophy positing the non-­ independence of the world as it is. Since being is essentially subjective-relative, and what is subjective is ontologically evanescent, being ends up dissolving itself into appearance and vanishing into nothingness (Hegel, 1833, p. 115). As for Diels, he pictures Gorgias’s philosophy as a theoretical nihilism opposed to the theoretical positivism of the Eleatic ontology. Accordingly, Gorgias’s philosophy also has a more constructive side: after having shown that theoretically being is an appearing

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nothingness, “the issue of human mind is to turn this appearance back to being and restore in the praxis what was lost for the theory” (Diels, 1833, p. 360, emphases added). In short, Gorgias’s theoretical nihilism is complemented by a form of practical positivism. A slightly different phenomenist (P) reading is found in number of authors with, say, more Kantian leanings. The main claim now is that Gorgias is not simply “negatively” denying being, but he is also “positively” affirming that there are phenomena. Windelband, for instance, shares with Hegel and Diels the claim that Gorgias is somehow a “nihilist,” and that, at least in some sense, he maintains that “there is no being.” However, at a closer look, Gorgias’s purported “nihilism” boils down to the mere rejection of any extra-phenomenal being lying beyond phenomena. Thus, though “nihilist” with respect to being, Gorgias is literally a “positivist” with respect to appearance: being is not “real” (Wirkliche), only appearing phenomena are (Windelband, 1888, p. 89): For Protagoras, who took perception to be the only source of knowledge, there was, accordingly, no knowledge of being. That he made a step further and denied being as such, considering the objects of perception as the only reality behind which no being should be looked for (Sein überhaupt zu leugnen und die Wahrnehmungsgegenstände für das einzig Wirkliche zu erklären hinter dem man kein Sein zu suchen hatte), such a ‘positivistic’ consequence cannot be found in his writings: ‘nihilism’ (‘there is no being’) will explicitly be delivered to posterity only by Gorgias. (Windelband, 1888, p. 89)

This position is also defended by George Grote, who does not shy away from using a quite explicit Kantian vocabulary: Now, the thesis of Gorgias related to this ultra-phenomenal existence and bore closely upon the arguments of Zeno and Melissus, the Eleatic reasoners of his elder contemporaries. He denied that any such ultra-phenomenal something, or noumenon, existed, or could be known, or could be described. (Grote, 1849–56, VIII, p. 479, see also p. 503)

Advocates of the skeptical (S) reading present Gorgias more as an epistemologist than as a negative ontologist (Hegel, Diels) or a quasi-Kantian phenomenist (Windelband, Grote). Such is clearly the view illustrated by Eduard Zeller: [According to Protagoras] there is no objective truth, but only subjective appearance of truth, no universally valid knowledge but only opinion. The same result is attained by Gorgias from the opposite point of departure. [...] [His] arguments are in part purely sophistical; but at the same time, real difficulties are touched by them [...]: and the whole might well have been regarded at that period as a formidable attempt to establish doubt as to the possibility of knowledge. No other sophist seems to have taken such pains about the complete justification of skepticism. (Zeller, 1892, II, p. 451, see also p. 455) Gorgias blended the Eleatic doctrines with skepticism. (Zeller, 1892, I, p. 639)

Yet the nihilistic, the phenomenist and the skeptical reading all share the same assumption: Gorgias’s treatise is indeed a truly philosophical text, earnestly defending philosophical claims, and seriously attempting to provide sound arguments in support of their truthfulness. The burlesque (B) reading, on the other hand, not unlike the dismissive one, completely rejects such assumption: none of Gorgias’s

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claims is serious. Gorgias is not a philosophical nihilist,—he is just pretending to be one: There is only one thing that one must not do, i.e., taking the subject matter of these paignia seriously. […] The philosophical nihilism of Gorgias hast to be struck from the history of philosophy. His jokey speech about nature have their place in the history of rhetoric (Der philosophische Nihilismus des Gorgias ist aus der Geschichte der Philosophie zu streichen. Seine Scherzrede über die Natur hat ihren Platz in der Geschichte der Rhetorik). (Gomperz, 1914, p. 28, see also p. 35).

Gorgias is not criticizing the Eleatic ontology—he is merely making fun of it: It is nothing more and nothing less than a parody of the Eleatic dialectics (eine Parodie auf die eleatische Dialektik) [...]. So the Eleatic metaphysics is stroke with its own weapons. But Gorgias does not fight this war on behalf of any philosophical system. (Maier, 1913, pp. 223–5)

Gorgias is not providing an epistemological defense of skepticism,—he is simply joking: Even the theory of knowledge that is criticized and strongly caricatured, no matter how significant its content may be for us today, should not conceal the fact that everything is a pure farce (eine reine Farce). The Eleatics had outlived themselves, and in the lively Sicily someone laughed at them (lachte man über sie). (Reinhard, 1916, p. 39)

Gorgias’s mainstream interpretations available in Husserl’s time could thus be summarized by the following diagram: Commentators Hegel (1833) Grote (1846–1856) Brentano (1863) Diels (1884) Windelband (1888) Zeller (1892) Gomperz (1914) Maier (1913) Reinhard (1916)

Nature of Gorgias’s treatise Ontological nihilism + critique of absolute realism Kant-like account of Phenomena Manipulation and merely rhetorical exercise Ontological nihilism + Practical positivism Kant-like account of Phenomena + Theoretical positivism Skeptical Epistemology Joke Farce Parody

Philosophical Reading value (N) Yes (P) (D) (N) (P)

Yes No Yes Yes

(S) (B) (B) (B)

Yes No No No

This short catalogue already allows us to make some preliminary observations. Since, as we have seen (see Sect. 1.5), Husserl denies the Sophist the status of philosopher, he clearly shares with (B) and somehow with (D) the idea that Gorgias’s arguments are not serious. However, unlike Brentano, Gomperz, Maier and Reinhard, he also maintains that Gorgias’s game is of the greatest philosophical relevance. Such relevance, however, is neither to be found in Gorgias’s ontological-­ nihilist (N) or anthropological-phenomenist (P) account of being, nor in his

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epistemological-skeptical (S) account of knowledge. It is found, as we have learned, in his transcendental critique of reason (T). Commentator Husserl (1918–1926)

Nature of Gorgias’s treatise Playful critique of reason

Reading (T)

Philosophical value Yes

If this is correct, one has already, under plain sight, one of the greatest elements of novelty of Husserl’s reading.

2.3 Unfolding Gorgias’s Second Argument We can now turn to Gorgias’s “second argument” and provide a brief reminder of its content and structure.10 In this section I will quote it in the two versions of the Pseudo-Aristotle (GMX) and Sextus (M): [10] He proofs showing that there is nothing. he gives For what is represented must be and what-is-not, if it is not, cannot be represented either (δεῖν γὰρ τὰ φρονούμενα εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ ὄν, εἴπερ μὴ ἔστι, μηδὲ φρονεῖσθαι). But if this is so, nothing could be false, he says, not even if one said chariots race in the sea. For all these things would exist. And what is seen and heard would be just because they are all represented (γὰρ τὰ ὁρώμενα καὶ ἀκουόμενα διὰ τοῦτο ἔστιν, ὅτι φρονεῖται ἕκαστα αὐτῶν). [14] But if this were not so, if what we see exists no more because we see it, so what we see exists more than what we think (εἰ δὲ μὴ διὰ τοῦτο, ἀλλ’ὥσπερ οὐδὲν μᾶλλον ὁρῶμεν ἔστιν, οὕτως μᾶλλον ἃ ὁρῶμεν ἢ διανοούμεθα); for just as many would see those things in the former case, so many would think these things in the latter. But it is unclear whether the more they are perceived the truer they are. So that even if things are, to us at least the facts are unknown (ὥστε εἰ καὶ ἔστιν, ἠμῖν γε ἄγνωστ’ἂν εἶναι τὰ πράγματα). (MXG, 980a10-19; tr. Graham, 2010, vol. II, p. 749, translation modified) That even if something is, it is unknowable and unconceivable for man must be pointed out next (Ὅτι δὲ κἂν ἦι τι, τοῦτο ἄγνωστόν τε καὶ ἀνεπινόητόν ἐστιν ἀνθρώπωι, παρακειμένως ὑποδεικτέον). For if the represented things, says Gorgias, are not things that are, what-is is not a represented thing (εἰ γὰρ τὰ φρονούμενα […] οὐκ ἔστιν ὄντα, τὸ ὂν οὐ φρονεῖται). And this is reasonable. For just as, if it is a property of represented things to be white, it would be a property of white things to be represented, so if it is a property of represented things to not be, necessarily it will be a property of things that are, not to be represented things. [78] That is why the consequence: “if the represented things are not things that are, what-is is not a represented thing,” follows validly. The represented things (this point must be taken first) are things that are not, as we shall show; therefore what-is is not a represented thing. , that represented things are not things that are is evident. [79] For if represented things are things that are, whatever thing one represents is, in just the way one represents it, which is bizarre. For even if one represents a man that is flying or a chariot racing in the sea, it does not immediately follow that there is a flying man or there are some

 For an overall discussion of the second argument within the context of the whole treatise see Ioli (2010, pp. 50–60, 66–72, 115–116, 168–169). A more thorough, formal discussion of its specific content, with respect to the problem of intentionality, can be found in Caston (2002, pp. 205–232). 10

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chariots racing in the sea. So represented things are not things that are [ὣστε οὐ τὰ φρονούμενά ἐστιν ὄντα]. [80] In addition to this, if the represented things are things that are, the things that are not will not be represented things (πρὸς τούτοις εἰ τὰ φρονούμενά ἐστιν ὄντα, τὰ μὴ ὄντα οὐ φρονηθήσεται). For contraries have contrary properties, and what-is-not is contrary to what-is. Accordingly, surely if it is a property of what-is to be represented, it will be a property of what-is-not to not be represented. But this is absurd: for Scylla, Chimera, and many such things that are not are represented. Therefore what-is is not a represented thing. [81] Just as things seen are called objects of seeing because they are seen, and objects of hearing are called such because they are heard, and one does not dismiss the objects of hearing because they are not seen (for each should be discerned by its proper sense, not by another), the same holds for the represented things, even if we do not see them with the sight or hear them with the hearing, because they are to be grasped by their proper standard (πρὸς τοῦ εἰκείου λαμβάνεται κριτηρίου). [82] Thus if one represents a chariot race in the sea, even if one does not see this, one ought to believe that the chariot is racing in the sea. But this is absurd; therefore what-is is not represented or apprehended (οὐκ ἄρα τὸ ὂν φρονεῖται καὶ καταλαμβάνεται). (M, 7.77–82, tr. Graham, vol. II, pp. 743–5, translation modified)

Though structurally different, the two texts overlap in some significant points.11 As one might have noticed, a common feature of all interpretations discussed above, is the following: Gorgias’s arguments are—seriously or not—set against the Eleatics. In both versions of the text Gorgias appears indeed to challenge Parmenides’s assumption about the “sameness” of νοεῖν and εἶναι, of “thinking” and “being” or, more precisely, the identity of what is thought and what is (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι) (DK, 28 B3; see also 28 B8, 34). In MXG it is said that “if something is, it cannot be known (ἄγνωστον)”, and in M that “even if something is, it cannot be apprehended by man (ἀκατάληπτον ἀνθρώπῳ).” Additionally, in order to show that “what is thought/known” and “what is” are not the same, both versions use the example of the “chariot race in the sea.” In the version of the Pseudo-Aristotle, however, through an argument that the corrupted manuscript makes impossible to fully reconstruct, it appears that, starting from Parmenides’s assumption, one should draw the conclusion that “there is nothing false.” In fact, if “what is had in mind is” and “what is not is not had in mind,” then the simple fact of having in mind (φρονεῖν, φρονεῖσθαι) a chariot race in the see would make eo ipso the cognitive judgment “there is a chariot race in the see” true. Which is manifestly absurd (MXG, 980a8-14). But according to the  The difference between the two versions has been especially discussed in a famous article by Otto Apelt (1888a) who confirmed Zeller’s account of the higher reliability of the Pseudo-Aristotle. Yet, in the philosophical discussions of Husserl’s time, one of the reasons of the increasing interest raised by the MXG version of Gorgias’s treatise lied in the fact that the latter’s main arguments are presented in a rather straightforward form, without any systematic dilemma-like structure, leading to aporetic conclusions, as in Sextus’s version. As a result, Apelt’s (1888a, pp. 205, 219) assessment according to which the bare presentation of the Pseudo-Aristotle shows even more blatantly the logical weaknesses of Gorgias’s reasoning, disguised by the extremely logical but altogether extrinsic report of Sextus, was widely shared by the commentators. Husserl, on the other hand, has really nothing to say about the logical cogency of Gorgias’s second argument—the main point of interest being not the latter’s logical structure but the theoretical challenge to Platonism as a whole which is voiced through its philosophical content (Sect. 3.4). 11

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Pseudo-Aristotle, the same holds also for “what is seen is” (and “what is not is not seen”) as well as for “what is heard is” (and “what is not is not heard”), since these are also ways of having something in mind. Accordingly, the simple fact of seeing something (such as a color or a colored thing) or hearing something (such as a sound or the noise of a thing), would make eo ipso the corresponding cognitive judgments (“there is a color” and “there is a sound”) true. Finally, since thinking (διανοεῖσθαι) is also a way of having something in mind—enjoying exactly the same cognitive value as the fact of merely fantasizing a battle of chariots in the sea, seeing colors or hearing sounds—then even such conceptual higher form of cognition is not in a better position to tell what is ultimately true and what is not. Hence, if perceiving (αἰσθάνεσθαι) (MXG, 980b14, 15; M., 7.82, 83, 85), having mental images of what is perceived (ἐννοείσθαι) (MXG, 980b3, 5, 9, 19) and thinking (διανοεῖσθαι) (MXG, 980a15,17-­980b19) are all particular varieties of “having in mind” or “representing” (φρονεῖσθαι), each with its own standard—then, there is no way to know as a matter of fact (πρᾶγμα) whether things had in mind or represented are or are not. And since not even intersubjective agreement could solve the problem, the Pseudo-­ Aristotle makes Gorgias conclude that there is no way to know (ἄγνωστον) the actual truth of the facts (πράγματα), that is, whether things that are had in mind or represented actually are or not (MXG, 980a14-19).12 By embedding Parmenides’s assumption within a more convoluted argument, the reconstruction found in Sextus’s version enhances the complexity of Gorgias line of thought and reaches a slightly different conclusion. The target is still the identity of being (εἶναι) and thinking (νοεῖν)—with this latter concept worded, again, by means of the Greek verb φρονεῖν, just as in the MXG. However, in order to prove that even if something is, it is unknowable (ἄγνωστόν) or unconceivable (ἀνεπινόντος), Sextus’s Gorgias follows a twofold strategy. First, he states that (i) if “represented things” or “things had in mind” (τὰ φρονούμεν) are “things that are,” then whatever is represented is also “something that is.” However, (ii) this is manifestly false, since one could easily represent things that are not, like a flying Theaetetus or a chariot race in the see. Now, (iii) if it is absurd to say that whatever  This is how Apelt (1888a, pp.  215–6) summarizes the second argument: “If we assume that something is, it is unknowable (unerkennbar). For if being were knowable and conceivable [erkennbar und denkbar] […] also everything that is thought would be true, just as, on the other hand, non-being could not be thought at all. Then, the most fantastic things would be, as long as you just represent or think them. Their truth would depend entirely upon our representation and our thinking. Even what is seen and what is heard would only borrow its truth from the fact that it is thought? But this is not the case. On the contrary, if what is seen is true, it could be true at most because it is seen, not because it is thought, because it can only obtain its truth through itself. However, even by seeing and hearing the objects are by no means assured of their being and their actual features [ihr Sein und ihre wirkliche Beschaffenheiten], for people see very differently, one like this, the other like that. And what is seen or heard cannot be guaranteed either by acts of representing or thinking [Vorstellen und Denken], i.e., by such activities [Thätigkeiten] that are completely alien to seeing and hearing. If, however, it is not true that whatever is thought has actual being, then, the claim according to which being is representable or knowable falls as well”. Apelt, just as most of the commentators of the time, translates “φρονεῖσθαι,” the passive form of the verb “φρονέω,” with “Vorstellen.” 12

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is represented is, then it is necessarily true to affirm that whatever is represented is not. Hence, (iv) even if something is, it is not represented (M, 7.77-789). This first argument—which clearly rests on a non sequitur—is supplemented by a second one. (v) If all “represented things” are necessarily “things that are,” then it is impossible for all things that are not to be “represented things.” However, (vi) this is also manifestly false, since Scylla and the Chimera are both things that are not and things that are represented. Hence, (vii) whatever is, is not represented (M, 7.80). Needless to say, even this second argument—which includes an example absent from the MXG—is blatantly flawed.13 Finally, in the last part of M, Sextus reports Gorgias’s further argument, which is also to be found in MXG. (viii) Things heard and things seen, but also the things fantasized, like a chariot race in the sea, are all represented things one has in mind. (ix) Each form of representation has its own specific criterion to assess whether the object represented is or is not, since from the fact that sounds are not represented visually one cannot draw the conclusion that there are no sounds. Accordingly, (x) from the fact that one does not represent visually a chariot race in the see, one cannot draw the conclusion that there is none. But, again, (xi) this is manifestly false. Hence (xii) since no representation has the power to disprove the truth claims of the others, there is no way to know for sure whether something is or is not (M, 7-81-82). In sum, starting from the very same anti-Eleatic premise (it is not true that being and thinking are the same) and drawing—at least in part—from the very same materials (the chariot race; the “cognitive sovereignty” of seeing, hearing and representing), the two versions of the argument reported by the Pseudo-Aristotle and by Sextus end up telling slightly different stories, which are logically structured in quite different ways. On the one hand, according to the text of the Pseudo-Aristotle, Gorgias’s main claim, expressed straightforwardly, is that “nothing could be false” (οὐδὲν ἂν εἶναι ψεῦδός) (MXG, 980a11). On the other hand, according to Sextus, thanks to a complex twofold strategy, Gorgias’s conclusion is rather that “being is neither represented nor apprehended” (οὐκ τὸ ὂν φρονεῖται καὶ καταλαμβάνεται) (M, 7.82). In a nutshell, for the Pseudo-Aristotle, the thesis “if something is, it cannot be known” (ἄγνωστον) means that no cognitive claim about what is can be false; for Sextus, the thesis “if something is, it cannot be known (for sure)” (καταληπτόν, ἄγνωστόν, ἀνεπινόητόν) means that every assumption of knowledge as such would entail absurd consequences. We are now ready to turn to Husserl and finally address the following question: on the basis of this twofold and only partially overlapping textual source, how does he manage to find in Gorgias the secret origin of the transcendental problem and the first “playful” formulation of a critique of reason?

 Again, there is no reason here to pause on the paralogisms involved in this argument, for they are irrelevant for Husserl’s reconstruction. For the same reason, in what follows, I will not discuss either the part of Gorgias’s argument related to the equivalence of sensation and thought with respect to truth (MXG, 980a14-19; M. 7.81–82). 13

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3 A Playful Transcendentalism 3.1 Parmenides and the First Beginning To begin with, Husserl openly and repeatedly identifies Parmenides as Gorgias’s explicit critical target (Hua XXV, p. 135). He also unambiguously opposes Gorgias’s second argument to Parmenides’s thesis of the “identity” of thinking and “being.” The way in which Husserl understands this thesis, however, is quite distinctive: Gorgias reacts against the Parmenidean thesis of the “identity” between thinking (νοεῖν) and being, whose sense was manifestly that what is thought in “rational” thinking and what actually is are inseparable correlates, by understanding being in the natural sense as objective being (beyond consciousness): thus thinking is representing (Denken ist Vorstellen) but representing is not what is represented (Vorstellen ist aber nicht Vorgestelltes). Otherwise, even a battle of chariots over the sea, when I represent one, should be. (Hua XXV, p. 135)

In Husserl’s view, Parmenides’s doctrine neither affirms the numerical or logical identity between what is and what is thought (or represented) nor suggests that whatever is represented must be and whatever is not cannot be represented. The gust of his claim is rather that there is indeed a “rational form of knowledge,” called “νοεῖν”, which—unlike opinion (δόξα)—is correlated to “true being” (wahrhaft Seiende) (cf. DK 28 B6). More precisely, while opinion goes together with mere “appearance” (Erscheinung, Phänomen)—i.e., “what seems to be” or “what appears to be” or “what is taken to be”—, by contrast, “what truly is” (das wahre Seiende) (Hua XXV, p.  98) is only grasped in “rational thinking” (das im vernünftigen Denken Gedachte), and vice-versa.14 That thinking “is the same”15 as “being” is thus understood by Husserl as expressing the “necessary correlation” (notwendige Korrelation) between a cognitive act of (rational) thought and its intentional counterpart, i.e., the true being of what is rationally thought.16 This brings us to a second point. According to Husserl, when Parmenides states the sameness of “thinking” and “being,” the Greek word for “being” (εἶναι) has to be understood in its most natural (natürliche) and straightforward sense, i.e., as indicating something that lies beyond and fully transcends consciousness (bewusstseinjenseitiges) (Hua XXV, p. 135). Correlatively, the Greek word for “thinking” (νοεῖν) names the “consciousness that should validly grasp some objects that are alien to it” (eines Bewußtseins, das ihm fremde Gegenständlichkeiten triftig  As Parmenides puts it: “this is the reason why it is said that of being, there is truth; of becoming, there is opinion” (διὸ περὶ τὸ ὂν ἀλήθειαν εἶναί φησι, περὶ δὲ τὸ γινόμενον δόξαν) (DK 28 B1, 28–32, Simpl. Cael. 557, 20). 15  ἐστιν αὐτὸ (DK 28 B3); ταὐτόν δ’ἐστὶ (DK 28 B 8, 34). 16  This reading is probably due to the fact that, in some fragments, Parmenides’s “sameness” of being and thinking is worded in a way that strongly echoes Husserl’s own correlation between noesis and noêma. See for instance DK 28 B8, 34: “ταὐτόν δ’ἐστὶ νοεῖν τε καὶ οὔνεκεν ἐστι νόημα”—which, following Husserl, should be somehow rendered as: “the act of rational thinking (νοεῖν) and that on the account of which there is a thought (νόημα) are as one, i.e., mutually related so that the one is not without the other.” 14

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erfassen soll) (p. 136). Opinion and rational knowledge, despite their differences, are both conscious subjective activities, each of which refers to something that is not merely subjective but clearly transcends subjectivity, and is as it is and not simply as someone takes it to be. According to Parmenides, Husserl would say, only the latter—which is correlated to “what truly is”—is able to reach what is genuinely “transcendent,” “alien,” “lying beyond” consciousness (transzendent, fremd, jeinseitig), while the former is somehow always trapped, as it were, within the subjectivity of consciousness itself. Notwithstanding his further and more specific characterization of being (as one, eternal, unchanging, ungenerated, indivisible, necessary, etc.), Parmenides’s doctrine entirely rests on and leaves unquestioned the “natural” idea that being is transcendent—an idea to which, as we have seen, he adds the belief that there is indeed a distinctive conscious cognitive activity capable of truly transcending consciousness itself and successfully reaching for and being as one with such truly transcendent being. It is precisely by paring these two tenets (the correlation of true being and rational thinking; being in the “natural” sense as transcendence) that Husserl identifies Parmenides as the primary target of Gorgias’s second argument: –– Parmenides: Something is (= is transcendent) and we know it (= as transcending consciousness), because it is necessarily correlated to some form of intentional activity thanks to which it is rationally known (= reached for as true being); –– Gorgias: If something is (= is transcendent), though it might seem to be necessarily correlated to some form of intentional activity thanks to which it is rationally known, it cannot be known (= there is no way for consciousness to transcend itself and reach for true being). The whole picture alludes to the part of Gorgias’s treatise—attested in both MXG and M—where it is said that what is represented (τὰ φρονούμενα, das Vorgestellte) and what is (τὰ ὄντα, das Seiende) are not only sharply distinguished (i.e., not necessarily correlated) but also mutually exclusive, since “what is, is not what is represented” (τὸ ὂν οὐ φρονεῖται) (cf. M., 7.77, 7.79 and 7.82). It is obvious, however, that by challenging Parmenides on these very specific points, Gorgias ends up pulling the rug, as it were, from under philosophy as such. And if Parmenides is the primary target of Gorgias’s “critique,” the actual scope of this critique is way broader.

3.2 Plato and the Second Beginning The crucial theme of the correlation, which Parmenides’s Poem spells out simply as an “intuition” (Ahnung), is clearly elaborated “in one blow,” as it always happens when philosophy is carried out during the 1st Beginning (see Sect. 1.3). Yet such theme is also carried out during the 2nd Beginning as a whole, after Plato “rigorously” elaborates the more scientific “idea” (Idee) of philosophy (see Sect. 1.6).

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Tearing the correlation into pieces, Gorgias is thus challenging nothing less than the philosophical belief that the bond between true knowledge and true being is a fact that is or could be granted once and for all. In other words, Gorgias turns the selfevidence of transcendence into a problem. Again, Husserl’s Gorgias does not truly believe that nothing really exists or that transcendence is a problem. He simply appears to be freely playing with some of the most fundamental presuppositions of philosophy as such—which also happen to be Parmenides’s presuppositions, although they are not limited to his doctrine. Thus, Gorgias is neither seriously criticizing Parmenides’s doctrine (as suggested by the N, P and S readings of the treatise On Non-Being) nor making fun of the Eleatic philosophy (as in the D and B readings). By playfully questioning the unquestionable, Husserl’s Gorgias is plainly and simply putting at risk the possibility of philosophy itself in the “strict” and “strong” sense, threatening the very possibility for knowledge to be truthful to true being, thereby reaching the principles and the ultimate causes of being qua transcendent being. Needless to say, this also ends up including Plato’s own idea of an essential bond between “what truly is” (ὄντως ὄν) and “what is thought in a unified rational manner” (see Sect. 1.6). Moreover, the “natural sense” of being that, as we have seen, characterizes Parmenides’s view also applies to Plato’s Ideas. The latter are, in fact, unambiguously understood as “transcendent”—i.e., exceeding the life of the soul though akin to the soul, different from and going beyond each and every individual act of representation, true opinion or rational thinking; being is already there from the outset and waiting to be apprehended by the right correlative form of knowledge. Thus, the simple fact of assuming the existence of a complex and well-­ structured world of transcendent Ideas and taking for granted their correlation with some specific noetic form of true knowledge is not enough for Plato to eschew the collateral effects of Gorgias’s spirited blows. As pointed out by the Pseudo-Aristotle, the second argument applies not only to perceiving (αἰσθάνεσθαι) (MXG, 980b 14, 15; M., 7.82, 83, 85) and “representing” (φρονεῖσθαι), but also to the highest forms of rational thinking (διανοεῖσθαι) (MXG, 980a 15, 17-980b 19). Thus, all forms of conscious cognitive power share the same epistemic limits, for they are all equally unable to bestow their claim to be correlated with some true “transcendent” being—even if, as we will see later, such transcendent being turns out to be as ontologically “stable” and “rationally structured” as Plato’s array of intelligible forms. Now, by identifying Parmenides only as the primary target of Gorgias’s critique, whose extended target is tantamount as the whole of philosophy in the “strong” sense, Husserl’s reading introduces a second crucial element. Since Parmenides’s doctrine rests on two tenets, the demonstrandum of Gorgias’s argument, as Husserl sees it, cannot be reduced to a merely epistemic claim about the limits of human knowledge (such as: “nothing can be known”). In Husserl’s reconstruction, it is rather presented as the conjunction of a very general metaphysical assumption (“if something is…, i.e., given that being is transcendent”) and its epistemic corollary (“…it cannot be known,” i.e., there is no νοεῖν-like conscious activity which is

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necessarily correlated with Being’s transcendence qua transcendence). Consequently, by singling out the problem of transcendence, Gorgias seems to address to the possibility of rational knowledge a critique that is totally different from those addressed by any other sophistic argument (e.g., the one founded on the dialectical principle that everything can be equally demonstrated and rejected). (Hua XXV, p. 135)

3.3 Protagoras and the Anthropological Variety of Sophistry In order to stress the originality of Gorgias’, Husserl does not shy away from breaking the unity of the “Sophistic front,” as it were, and take him apart from Protagoras and the rest of the Sophists. Protagoras and Gorgias, no matter how close they seem to be from afar, are nevertheless intimately separated by an essential difference. Protagoras directs his attention to the change and flux of perceptual appearances of external things and the dependency of such changing appearances from the perceiving human subjects and their changing mental states. […] But Gorgias goes back to what is the most radical, to consciousness, to the fact that each and every knowledge is a subjective lived-experience (Gorgias aber geht auf das Radikalste zurück, auf das Bewusstsein, darauf, dass alles und jedes Erkennen subjektives Erleben ist). (Hua Mat IX, p. 18) Gorgias is even more radical, thanks to an extremely controversial argumentation that, in my opinion, despite its bad reputation, has from the standpoint of the history of problems an enormous significance. (Hua Mat IX, p. 16)

Husserl’s picture of Protagoras is manifestly drawn from the Theaetetus (152d–e), where Plato displays the “secret” connection between Heraclitean change and Protagorean relativism. As a result, his picture of Protagoras’ variety of sophistry appears to be quite conventional. By contrast, the way Husserl portrays Gorgias is entirely original and appears as way removed from the image gathered from the Gorgias (447c–461b), namely the one of a master of rhetoric incapable of properly defining the object of his art. Thus, instead of taking the lead from Plato’s dialogues, whose main goal was precisely to diminish the importance of the Sophists as a whole, Husserl literally invents his own Gorgias and opposes him both to his putative friend, Protagoras, and to his declared foe, Plato. The difference between Gorgias and Protagoras is phrased in terms of “radicalism,” whereas the word has to be understood in the strict sense that we have pointed out above, i.e., as that very same structural feature that, as we have seen, lies at the core of the 3rd Beginning of philosophy (see Sect. 1.7). Husserl thus distinguishes between two very different forms of Sophistic skepsis. –– Protagoras’s skepticism is anthropological. It aims at proving that external things appear perceptually but, since perceptual appearances are relative to the factual contingency of human beings, in general, and to the mental life of each and every human being, in particular, then the existence of a “truth that is valid in itself” has to be clearly ruled out. This leads to a form of epistemological

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skepticism, i.e., to the idea that every truth claim made by a cognitive subject is relative with respect to this subject’s factual cognitive powers. Whatever truth appears to be evident and valid is evident and valid for the cognitive subject, but not in itself (Hua XXV, p. 136). –– Gorgias’s skepticism is radical. It relates to “a truth concerning ‘objective’, i.e., extra-subjective objects” (eine Wahrheit die ‘objective’, nämlich aussersubjektive Gegenstände, betrifft) (Hua XXV, p. 136). Again, what is doubtful now is not the objectivity of knowledge, but the transcendence of knowledge. The skeptical target is not the fact that objective (non-relative) truths are valid only insofar as they are bound to human subjectivity, but the eidetic possibility for any subjectivity to be possibly bound, in some way, to true being (transcendent). Thus, if Protagoras is certainly skeptical “with respect to truth and being as a correlate of truth” (Hua XXV, p. 135), we now understand why it is only in Gorgias’s second argument that one finds: (1) the “first cores (Keime) of a genuine critique of reason, i.e., of a questioning that is not directed towards truth, or being, or theory, or science in the sense of a theoretical system, but towards rational consciousness itself (auf das Vernunftbewusstsein)” (Hua XXV, p. 135); (2) the first time that transcendence appears as a problem, i.e., that one begins inquiring into “the possibility of a knowledge actually directed towards being (auf Seiendes) in the sense of something objective transcending consciousness” (Hua XXV, p. 135); that “knowledge can never ever go beyond the sphere of consciousness of the cognitive subject (nie und nimmer über die Bewusstseinssphäre des Erkennenden hinaus); that, at best, one can only refer to transcendence in oneself, but never meet it (ein Transzendentes kann sie höchstens in sich meinen, aber nie treffen)” (Hua Mat IX, p. 19); (3) the most radical form of skepsis touching upon “the radical problems of the relation between consciousness and being” (an die radikalen Probleme des Verhältnisses von Bewusstsein und Sein) (Hua Mat IX, p. 18). In sum, by drastically divorcing Protagoras from Gorgias, Husserl is certainly parting ways from the position advocated by the (S) readings of the treatise. But, at the same time, he is also heavily criticizing the more general idea according to which the contrast between the Pre-Socratics and the Sophists boils down to the opposition between an outward-oriented “cosmology” and an inward-oriented “anthropological period,” that is, the contrast between two interests: the one “directed to the physical world” and the other focused on “the human world, the anthropological world” (Hua Mat IX, pp. 19–20). Such reading, Husserl says, is plainly and simply “wrong.” It might, at least in part, fit Protagoras’s Sophistry—but certainly not Gorgias’s, whose “drive,” as we have seen, was “by all means” a matter of “theory of reason” (Hua Mat IX, p. 20).17  The claim that Gorgias’s Sophistry is not a form of anthropological relativism, seems to be, again, at odds with the explicitly anthropological formulation of the problem of skepticism 17

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3.4 The Right Version (I). Enlarging the Correlation: Husserl and the Pseudo-Aristotle But how exactly does Husserl break down Gorgias’s second argument so as to highlight its radical critique of reason—which opposes to both Parmenides’s and Plato’s unquestioned account of the correlation between true knowledge and true being, on the one hand, and Protagoras’s anthropological questioning thereof, on the other? As already noticed, the second argument begins with a concedo: after having ruled out, in the first argument, that anything is (MXG, 979; M. 7.65), Gorgias now appears to be happy to assume that there is something. What he is not ready to concede is, however, that such assumption could possibly be proven, i.e., that the transcendence of being could ever be grasped qua transcendence by any form of intentionality, be it the pre-rational intentionality of opinion or the higher-order rationality of thinking. Parmenides only denied that the empirical δόξα is necessarily correlated to true being—Gorgias extends the rejection to the rational νοεῖν. When it comes to the issue of actually going beyond consciousness, reaching for truly transcendent being, alien to consciousness itself, rational knowledge is not better off than vulgar opinion. Now, Husserl’s Gorgias—and this is an important point for Husserl himself— proves his point thanks to the example of the chariots racing in the sea. Rational knowledge, not unlike perception, imagination and representation in general, is an intentional conscious act and, as such, it is directed towards an object. If one assumes the necessary correlation of thinking and being and takes the word “thinking” in the broad sense of “representing,” then it is safe to say that, whenever one represents a battle of chariots in the sea, there is a battle of chariots in the sea—simply because there is an act of representation referring to a battle of chariots in the sea. Thus, what the intentional act refers to and what truly is appear to be the same. However, according to Gorgias, this is absurd, for the existence of an act thanks to which one has something in mind (φρονεῖσθαι) is clearly not enough to prove that what is had in mind (φρόνημα) is not just had in mind, but actually is (εἶναι)—beyond consciousness and out of the mind. The case of imagination shows in fact that what the act of representation refers to differs from its “transcendent correlate,” i.e., what is represented by the act as being in itself. But, since imagination is just as intentional as sense perception (αἰσθάνεσθαι) (MXG, 980b 14, 15; M., 7.82, 83, 85) and rational thinking (διανοεῖσθαι), Gorgias concludes that even the latter are unable to account for the difference between the “immanence” of what is had in mind and the “transcendence” of what truly is.

p­ resented by Sextus. As we have already noticed, the version of the argument reported in M does not state the impossibility of rational knowledge as such, in any of its possible forms—but only of human knowledge: being is “ἀκατάληπτον ἀνθρώπῳ” (Sect. 2.3). The version of the PseudoAristotle, if not more ambiguous, is certainly more concise, which leaves more space to Husserl’s reading.

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After having briefly summarized what he takes to be the gist of Gorgias’s second argument, Husserl hastens to add the following: Of course, one might blame here again the playful style (die spielerische Art) of the sophist that affects anyway the transmitted forms of the argument. One could also object that it is a bit excessive to lump together under the heading ‘representation’ fictions of phantasy, normal experience proving itself to be trustful in concordant acts and appearances, and rational thinking—but maybe the sense of the argument was precisely to simply deny that all these differences could have the slightest significance when it comes to the proof and determination of any transcendent being whatsoever (Erweis und Bestimmung irgendwelchen transzendenten Seins). No matter how precisely such differences could be established, they would always be differences within subjectivity. (Hua XXV, p. 135)

One should note first that, by referring to the “transmitted forms of the argument” (überlieferten Formen des Arguments), Husserl seems to be clearly aware that the version reported by Sextus differs from the one of the Pseudo-Aristotle. And, although the only explicit example he mentions is the one of the chariot race in the sea—which appears in both versions—by bringing together “fictions of phantasy” (fingierende Phantasieren), “normal experience” (normale Erfahren), and “rational thinking” (vernünftige Denken) Husserl provides strong evidence to presume that the main version of the text he has in mind is the one of the Pseudo-Aristotle.18 This assumption might also be indirectly confirmed by another fact. As we have seen, Sextus presents Gorgias’s thoughts as embedded within a more complex argumentative structure, made of dilemmas and leading to the plain skeptical claim that knowledge is impossible because of assuming its possibility would lead to contradictions. We have already pointed out, however, that the idea of the limits of human knowledge per se is not the main point of Husserl’s interest. We should now add that had Husserl relied on Sextus’s version, it would have been more difficult for him to single out and abstract the example of the chariots and use it to prove one single point, for the latter appears with two different functions at two different steps of the argument, i.e., at step (ii) and (x) (Sect. 2.3). But Husserl does not mention any of the logical conundrums raised by Sextus, nor does he reproduce any of his distinctive claims. On the contrary, Husserl explicitly says that Gorgias’s demonstration is “brief and impressive” (kurz und eindrucksvoll).19  Sextus’s version does not mention the difference between “having in mind” or “representing” (φρονεῖσθαι) and “rationally thinking” (διανοεῖσθαι), which is only mentioned by the Pseudo-­ Aristotle (see: MXG, 980a15, 17-980b 19). 19  As we have seen (Sect. 2.3), in Sextus’s text the example of the chariots appears twice. The first time, as part of the two-parts proof that what is is not thought, the second time as to show that there is no criterion of truth: 18

(1) if what is thought is, then (1.1) everything that is represented is; but this is false, for one can represent something that is not (such as chariots racing in the sea); hence, what is represented is not and therefore: what is is not represented; (1.2) what is not is not represented; but this also is false, for things that are not (such as Scylla and the Chimera) are also represented; therefore: what is is not represented.

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But why should this be important? Because it proves that Husserl’s reading of Gorgias is not the outcome of a hasty retrospective and superficial projection, but the conclusion of a confrontation with the texts. Thus, it is precisely because Husserl relies on Gorgias’s scanty argument as presented by the Pseudo-Aristotle that he feels entitled to supplement it with a further array of additional arguments, which are meant to enhance its critical force and clarify its actual scope. Accordingly, instead of stressing its weaknesses (Brentano) or relying on Sextus’s over-logical and uniquely skeptical systematic reconstruction (Hegel, Zeller), Husserl chooses the most reliable and, at the same time, the most undeveloped (Apelt) version of the argument. And he goes as far as to formulate objections towards it, taking Gorgias’s defense: Now, one would naturally try to answer that it is not true that each representation vouchsafes for the being of what is represented, certainly not a mere representation of phantasy or dreams etc.; for only certain normal representations like normal perception or those specific representations that correctly and rationally ground and grasp the objective being itself are concerned. But to the early Greek philosophy and science, Gorgias would have probably replied: sure, it certainly could be that a perception qua lived-experience is characterized otherwise as phantasy; granted, perception is clearer, more stable and richer, phantasy is obscure, fleeting and evanescent, and it could certainly be the case that the subjective experiences going under the heading ‘representation’ or ‘knowledge of something objective’ have different characters, distinguishing the one from the other; and we are also free to say that this one has the character of rationality (Vernünftigkeit) and that one the character of blindness (Blindheit); yet notwithstanding their differences, they are just subjective characters of lived-experiences, we can actually have knowledge only of the latter. My own lived-experiences, the overflowing perceptual or phantasy images, the lived-­ experiences of thinking etc. are only directly given to myself. When I experience them, I can focus on them, distinguish them, compare them; but they are in themselves something entirely subjective. Could I possibly succeed in going beyond them and convince myself correctly that these should count as faithful representations of an external and supposedly existing reality (angeblich seienden Wirklichkeit)? (Hua Mat IX, p. 17, emphasis added)

In Husserl’s terms, the enhanced and extended form of Gorgias’s second argument is now the following. (a) Whenever one “fantasizes” (Phantasieren) of a battle

(2) There is no criterion of truth: seeing cannot judge whether there are sounds (only hearing can), hearing cannot judge whether there are colors (only seeing can); accordingly, neither seeing nor hearing can judge whether there is a chariot race in the sea (only representation can); but this is absurd; therefore: what is, is not represented. Husserl’s use of the example does not fit any of the above. It does not fit (1.1), for Husserl’s take is not that Gorgias is trying to prove the logical impossibility of knowledge; and it does not fit (2) either, because the question of the criterion of truth is entirely absent from Husserl’s reconstruction. One should also add that commentators have almost immediately pointed out the logical inconsistency of Sextus’s argument, as well as the fact that he imposes on Gorgias’s argument a systematic structure quite alien to the latter’s thought. This twofold fact was already detected by Apelt (1888a) and only timidly put in question by Reinhard (1916, pp. 36–9). The critical assessment of Sextus’s testimony by many prominent philologists might have played a role in Husserl’s reluctance to rely on it. As far as I am concerned, I have come to the conclusion that if Husserl mostly ignores Sextus’s complex version, it is not because he finds its arguments inconclusive, but rather because none of them leads to the problem of transcendence.

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of chariots in the sea, the act of merely having in mind a battle of chariots hovering in front of us (entschweben) is, but this certainly does not mean that its transcendent correlate is. (b) The same holds for perceptual experience (Erfahren), i.e., the unified and concordant synthesis of partial acts (such as seeing and hearing) together with their hyletic contents (such as heard-sounds or seen-colors): if perceptual acts and adumbrations certainly are while they are experienced and performed, then what grants for the fact that their transcendent correlate truly is? And (c) the same holds, again, if we turn to higher order acts of rational thinking (vernünftige Denken), for the distinction between thinking, perceiving and fantasizing is a distinction internal to conscious lived-experiences themselves. The sequence “Phantasieren”, “Erfahren”, “Denken” draws the cognitive map of noetic endeavors: no matter if positional or non-positional, categorial or non-categorial, empty or fulfilled, etc. Thus, instead of being flawed, Gorgias’s idea of taking the limit case of imagination as the starting point to challenge knowledge’s correlation to being as such is, according to Husserl, both extremely powerful and wholly legitimate. As long as one has not explained how conscious experiences are able to confront transcendence qua transcendence, how the self-transcendence of consciousness meets the transcendence of being, Gorgias is right to claim that no higher order cognitive power appears to be able to solve what Husserl, already in the Idea of Phenomenology, called the “enigma of natural knowledge, i.e., transcendence” (Das Rätsel der natürlichen Erkenntnis: die Transzendenz) (Hua II, p. 34/26, translation modified; see also Hua XXV, p. 191). Then again, how could immanent lived-experiences or immanent characters of lived-­ experiences—even if called characters of ‘rationality’ […]—signify something beyond the immanent sphere and do this correctly? If the cognitive subjectivity is always and necessarily by itself, knowledge turns out to be the name of a simple sequence of subjective appearances, of theoretical formations subjectively produced. And yet, a transcendent objectivity (provided that there is one) should be in itself (Eine transzendente Objektivität aber (gesetzt, dass eine solche wäre) soll an sich sein). Why should Being care about our knowledge? What directs our knowledge towards being? How can such directedness be known, in principle? (Was kümmert sich das Sein um unser Erkennen, was richtet unser Erkennen nach dem Sein, wie kann prinzipiell so ein sich-Richten erkannt werden). (pp. 135–6)

There is no reason why Being should comply to intentional striving of consciousness towards being—this is Gorgias’s ultimate statement.

3.5 The Right Version (II). All About Rational Certainty: Husserl and Sextus So far, we have mostly insisted on the fact that Husserl’s reading of Gorgias likely relies on the Pseudo-Aristotle’s version of Gorgias’s second argument. However, once we get deeper in the understanding of Husserl’s specific account of the critique of reason, one new aspect comes into view and appears to be drawn from—or at least compatible with—Sextus’s version.

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Sure, my thoughts have sometimes the specific character of insightfulness, of the enlightening evidence, of rationality. But why does it have to be the case that, as long as my thoughts have this extremely valuable but still subjective character of a lived-experience, what is objectively thought by them turns out to be actually existing? Why should a being or a non-­ being care about the overwhelming character of evidence of some of my subjective lived-­ experiences?” (Hua Mat IX, p. 18)

Husserl’s discussion of the second argument as a proto-critique of reason is phrased with the language of “evidence” and “certainty.” The problem of transcendence, in fact, revolves not only on the mere fact that there is (or there might be) something beyond consciousness that is (or could be) grasped by consciousness itself as it is (i.e., as transcendent to consciousness), but also to its “undisputable being” (Unzweifelhaften Sein). While someone is imagining a race of chariots in the sea, there is no doubt that he or she is imagining a battle of chariots in the sea. What is far from being indisputable, instead, is that there is a race of chariots in the sea. On the other hand, when someone hears people talking about an incoming chariot race, he or she goes to the stadium and expects to see a chariot race, sees the chariots racing, bets on the winner and eventually gains money from that, the belief that there is a race is rationally evident and quite “insightful” (Einsichtig). The same would hold for any abstract rational form of knowledge, including the insightfulness of extremely rigorous mathematical demonstrations. And yet “insightfulness” is still nothing but a feature of our subjective experiencing, the “living proof” that true being has been met. Then again, why should true being care of the rational insightfulness of experiencing? How could one know for sure, without any doubt, that the proof is actually able to prove its point? Until one does not have a story to tell about why or how the rational certainty stemming from a conscious lived-experience is entitled to be a reliable witness of the event of transcendence, Gorgias’s argument, Husserl says, is still standing. And, as we know, in order to hear this story, the history of philosophy will have to wait until the 3rd Beginning (see Sect. 1.7). Is there any passage we know of Gorgias’s argument that could support such Husserlian reading? If one sticks to MXG, the introduction by Husserl of the epistemic element of certainty and evidence does not seem to have any textual basis. However, though in an entirely different context, M offers already a better grip. Unlike the Pseudo-Aristotle, who simply qualifies the problematic encounter with true being as unknowable, “ἄγνωστον,” Sextus phrases Gorgias’s claim about the “lack of knowledge of what is” precisely with the Stoic-Skeptical term “ἀκατάληπτον,” which could be rendered as what cannot be apprehended for sure (M, 7.65, 6).20 Thus, the fact of having included Gorgias among those who have denied “the criterion” (τὸ κριτήριον) (M. 7.65, 2), allows Husserl to build a bridge between Gorgias’s “playful” critique of reason and the “serious” critique kickstarted by Descartes.

20

 This point was already made and widely discussed by Guido Calogero (1932, p. 191).

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Even if consciousness may represent, have opinions about, know evidently or not evidently, something outside consciousness, such referring-to-something-external is simply an explicit character of the ego-consciousness itself, which can never actually succeed in providing us with a transcendent in-itself. All differences of the cognitive value that the cognitive subjects make with regard to his cognitive experiences under the titles ‘normal perception,’ ‘illusion,’ ‘dream,’ ‘confused thinking,’ ‘insightful reasoning’ etc. are derived from subjective characters of the lived-experiences. But why would a being objective in itself need to care about our subjective differences and evaluations within our sphere of consciousness? (Hua Mat IX, p. 18)

One might easily recognize in this passage—almost identical with one of the almost identical with one of the passages we quoted above—, where Husserl talks of Gorgias, the increasing presence of a Cartesian language. The Stoic problem of the indisputable “κατάληψις,” rejected by Sextus, and projected back on Gorgias, is now rescued by Descartes’ account of evidence. This brings us to Husserl’s last formulation of the second argument: even if Being is, since it is “naturally” understood as transcendent, its necessary correlation with any form of conscious activity whatsoever (be it dream, imagination, perception, rational knowledge, etc.) is impossible to be proven—even if it is self-evident that consciousness refers to something transcendent—for each proof is still an immanent proof and fails to reach transcendence qua transcendence… unless one begins questioning consciousness itself and the very nature of intentionality and, in search of the principles and causes of everything that is, one turns the correlation itself into a theme.

3.6 How About Plato? As we have shown, in Husserl’s picture of the history of philosophy, the contribution of Plato is literally immense and remains unmatched. Plato’s response to the Sophists restores the dignity of philosophy as a whole form of life and invents the very “idea” of rigorous science that will turn into the leitmotiv of the European spiritual culture. Even Descartes’s 3rd Beginning will be nothing but a “change of direction” or a new “tendency” within the great movement initiated by Plato’s 2nd Beginning—not to mention phenomenology itself, which Husserl will always and consistently picture as a further development of the 3rd Beginning. But now we are also in a better position to understand why Husserl’s picture of Gorgias somehow shades Plato’s light right from the outset. It suffices to replace the race of chariots in the sea with Plato’s intelligible forms to realize that the force of Gorgias’s second argument is unchanged, for both the problem of the “natural sense of Being” qua transcendence and the correlation between νοῦς and ἰδέα/οὐσία21 are still unquestioned: again, an “enigma” (Rätsel) that is not even recognized as such. Now, it is for us quite surprising, and yet fully understandable considering the spiritual situation, that Plato never actually confronted the problem brought to the fore by Gorgias (at

21

 Which, as is well known, derives from oὖσα as the feminine present participle of εἶναι.

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least if the historical tradition is not mistaken) of the possibility of the knowledge of a being transcending knowledge; that he did not actually consider the problem of knowing how a consciousness in general—insofar as it, in each act of knowledge, always remains by itself and simply moves forward from consciousness to consciousness—could finally know something transcending such consciousness; all this couldn’t turn for Plato into a point-­ source of science. In other words, in Plato, the question of true actual knowledge (ἐπιστήμη vs. simple δόξα) has been certainly explored, many times—let me remind us here of the Theaetetus—and it actually is a fundamental question; but Plato did nοt go beyond the formal determinations, the ones that are important from a logical-methodological standpoint. (Hua Mat IX, p. 30)

Plato’s dialectics was perfectly able to defeat Protagoras’s anthropological variety of sophistry, as extensively proven in the Theaetetus (Hua Mat IX, p. 30, 67). Moreover, as Husserl will equally point out, Aristotle’s syllogistics, which developed from the dialectical method, definitively overcame the Sophistic challenge and established a rigorous logic of consequence later developed by the Stoics (Hua VII, pp. 17–31).22 However, Gorgias’s unmet challenge remained unchallenged; to show that there is a way to secure knowledge and restore the objectivity of truth, on the one hand, and to explain if and to what extent such truth necessarily correlates to being (given the transcendence of being), on the other, are two entirely different matters. Protagoras’s anthropological critique of knowledge ultimately leads to a form of anthropological psychologism whose relativistic outcomes are manifest. Such psychologism has been jointly and unambiguously disputed by old and new varieties of Platonism—which also include Aristotle’s variety of Platonism23—in the name of the strongly assumed evidence of a transcendent reality (Realität, Wirklichkeit), no matter if made of separated or non-separated intelligible forms. By contrast, Gorgias’s radical and yet playful “critique” of knowledge, once taken seriously, paves the way to all forms of idealism. By recurring to the insightful principles to which truth and falsity as such are subordinated […] the logic born out of Plato’s dialectics could fight skepticism with respect to the possibility of this first objectivity of truth, and restore the trust in the love of wisdom, aiming at the foundation of science. But against the objections generated by the enigmatic essence of consciousness against the possibility of a knowledge of objective truth—of a consciousness that should rightly grasp objects that are alien to it—it was powerless (machtlos). Every attempt to strive towards an immanent positivism, and each form of immanent metaphysical ‘idealism’ have to be traced back to the motives that, in a playful manner, sought to be expressed in Gorgias argument. (Hua XXV, pp. 136–7)

One cannot help but notice here how Husserl’s reading is both cautious and original. Because of Gorgias’s playful non-philosophical stance, the second argument appears to be, at the same time, as powerful as it is ambiguous. Being aware of the existence of various readings of the treatise On Non-Being, Husserl is ready to acknowledge that Windelband’s and Grote’s “immanent” readings might also be somehow justified. He is equally happy to admit that all forms of “phenomenism” and “idealism” could and should be regarded as ways to take seriously into account 22 23

 As discussed in Chaps. 9 and 11 of this volume.  See Chaps. 5 and 11 in this volume.

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the outcome of Gorgias’s unserious play. But, in Husserl’s view, there is still a story to be told about the right way of pursuing such an idealistic agenda, i.e., a way which is still compatible with and goes all the way through the fundamental insights of Plato’s 2nd Beginning. For Berkeley and Hume’s psychological idealism, positivistic phenomenism, and post-kantian metaphysical idealisms—though all following in different ways Gorgias’s lead—still have not been able to succeed in addressing the problem raised by the second argument of the treatise On Non-Being. As famously put by Natorp (1903), Plato’s doctrine of the ideas was the first and most elemental form of “idealism.” Now, such claim has to be complemented through a parallel story about the relation between such “Platonic” idealism and the different forms of “Modern” idealism. In Husserl’s view, Plato might certainly be considered, at least to some extent, the first and more consequent “idealist”—if by “idealism” one understands, as in the Logical Investigations, the necessity to consider ideal objects as “given” and therefore correlate them with a specific form of grasping, called “ideation” or “ideating abstraction.” But in order to flesh out the relation between such “eidetic” idealism and the “transcendental” idealism—and therefore historically locate transcendental phenomenology as a whole—one has to put Plato in front of its blind spot. Something that Natorp, Grote or Windelband never did. It is indeed an indisputable fact—which has been widely pointed out, even recently, in the literature24—that Plato has always been silent about Gorgias’s treatise. Husserl manifestly acknowledges this fact and is willing to embed it within his historical account of philosophy. However, instead of explaining Plato’s silence with either biographical or doctrinary reasons, related to his relation to Parmenides’s authority—he provides an entirely different explanation. The only way in which a Greek could question the transcendence of being from within the self-evidence of the world—suggesting that nothing is (=there is no transcendence) and that even if it were it could not be known (=there is no way to prove that the self-transcendence of consciousness meets the transcendence of being)— was in a playful manner. Gorgias, as we have seen, was literally playing with philosophy. And it could not have been otherwise. By living outside the form of life dominated by the theorein and turning the unrestricted freedom of the play against the unrestricted freedom of theory (see Sect. 1.5), only a non-philosopher, only a Sophist could discover the lead bringing the search for the principles and the causes of the Weltall from the “natural” meaning of being to the transcendental field of consciousness. Thus, neither skepticism (Zeller) nor sheer nihilism (Hegel, Diels) or Kantianism ante litteram (Grote, Windelband), Gorgias’s claim was not meant to be taken seriously—and it has not been taken seriously, not even by Plato. But, since it was more than a mere joke or a parody of Eleatic philosophy (Gomperz, Maier, Reinhard), the true scope of Gorgias’s experimental play went unnoticed. As a result, Plato’s failure to meet Gorgias’s challenge was nothing but the success of the “natural attitude”

24

 For instance, the question has been recently discussed, quite extensively, in Ioli (2007).

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over philosophy. And as long as a heir of Plato did not recapture, within the field of a life of “theorein,” what the irreverent freedom of Gorgias’s “paidia” has brought to light, the search for the first principles and causes of the world could only lead from one transcendence to another, without even realizing that transcendence itself is the greatest problem.

3.7 Plato Finally Meets Gorgias—A New θαυμάζειν Because of its explicit reference to the ego cogito, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology has been often—and quite unsurprisingly—pictured as a form of Cartesianism. And though the story is far more complex, the overwhelming importance of the Cartesian Meditations has massively contributed to this widespread image.25 Additionally, Husserl has also been labeled as a Platonist, mostly because of its commitment to the eidetic method and the search of a priori laws whose validity is not bound to the factual existence of contingent individuals. But, as far as I can tell, scholars have never thought of Husserl’s phenomenology in the way Husserl explicitly presents it in his lectures on the history of philosophy from 1916 on, namely as the most rigorous attempt to turn Gorgias’s play On Non-Being into a serious, full-fledged philosophical enterprise compatible with Plato’s “idea” of scientific philosophy. Two opposite movements are needed in order to give momentum to Plato’s “idea” of philosophy and, at the same time, welcome and accommodate Gorgias’s radical “critique” of reason. The first movement, that we have almost exclusively stressed to far, goes from Gorgias to Plato: one has to problematize what Plato still takes for granted, i.e., the indissoluble pair νοεῖν/εἶναι. As Husserl nicely puts it, we need a second “θαυμάζειν”—a second “wonder” not directed towards the whole of the world, as the first one, but headed for the correlation itself between conscious subjectivity and transcendent being. Of course, I am not claiming that any sophist has already looked so far and taken himself and his argument so seriously at all, as seriously as we have done here in careful considerations. And with good reason. It can be the same for us whether the sophist took the argument seriously or only played a frivolous game with it. What is and remains of the outmost significance is that the motive of a problem of unparalleled scope enters into the sphere of the philosophical thought; and, at the same time, it does us here the most desired service of setting in motion our thoughts—the thoughts of a beginner (Anfängerdenken)—and awakening in our souls that θαυμάζειν, that amazement, that thoughtful wonder which, according to Plato is the source of philosophy. The most natural fact of the world, the act of representing and knowing, suddenly becomes the most amazing, the how of its performance turns into an enigma (Die selbstverständlichste Tatsache der Welt, das Vorstellen, das Erkennen, wird auf einmal zur erstaunlichsten, das Wie ihrer Leistung wird zum Rätsel). (Hua Mat IX, p. 19)

25

 On the topic, see Majolino (2003) and Mehl (2020).

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However, there is also a second movement, which goes from Plato to Gorgias: the correlation, which sparkles this second θαυμάζειν and which seems at first to be a fact (Tatsache), should rather be tackled otherwise, i.e., as an essence. Accordingly, the subjectivity at stake—the one which is correlated to Being and turns into a new theme of wonder—is neither psychological-individual nor anthropological-specific: Let me say it again, a problematic perspective and a divorce between the pure subject of knowledge and the human subject opens up here, which goes far beyond the real opinion of Gorgias and once more is a stimulus for the philosophical θαυμάζειν. (Hua Mat IX, p. 19)

We know from Sextus’s version of the second argument that being “cannot be apprehended for sure by man” (ἀκατάληπτον ἀνθρώπῳ) (see Sects. 2.3, 3.3 and 3.4). Platonizing Gorgias would mean dropping the “ἀνθρώπῳ”—and turning this claim into an uncompromisingly a priori statement about the correlation between a pure subject of knowledge (no matter if human, sub-human, post-human, animal, angelic, divine, actual or fictional) and its transcendent counterpart. Such twofold move distinguishes “immanentists” and Neo-Kantians of all sorts from transcendental phenomenology, historically separates two quite different and rather distinctive forms of “idealism” (the one somehow postulating idealities; the other questioning the transcendent status of being) and, at the same time, actively operates to arrange their meeting, on the basis of the second θαυμάζειν. Having unfolded the sense content of the paradoxical and, as always, playfully intended arguments of Gorgias has brought to light an extremely peculiar divorce, i.e., the divorce between the purely immanent flow of the ego-experiences, subjective perceptions, memories, fantasies, thoughts etc. and the world represented, thought and putatively known in these lived-experiences. And if we were to bore more deeply into these matters, it could be that the fundamental idea of the historically so much later developed idealism of consciousness germinates right here (könnte hier schon der Grundgedanke des historisch so viel späteren Bewusstseinsidealismus aufkeimen): the one that, instead of denying an objective world, seeks to show that the sense of objectivity must be legitimately interpreted as a rule of immanent phenomena, in which, as in the beginning of Greek philosophy or science, subjectivity arranges itself according to the measure of reason. (Hua Mat IX, pp.  18–9, emphasis added)

Husserl’s conclusion is thus quite startling, and neatly summarizes one last aspect related to the originality of his reading. Instead of turning, plainly and simply, Plato into an idealist icon ante litteram, one should lucidly acknowledge the ambiguity of the concept of idealism. An ambiguity that we have been trying to capture through the metaphor of a blind spot. In fact, as Husserl will constantly contend still in the Cartesian Meditations (Hua I, pp. 63–4/23–5), even Descartes has not been able to entirely free himself from the spell of the “natural” sense of being which already affected Parmenides and Plato himself.26 Hence the need, expressed in Husserl’s letter to Heidegger, to go back to the 2nd Beginning, so as to  One should not forget Husserl’s judgment on Descartes’s “failure [Verfehlen] to make the transcendental turn” because of its residual Scholasticism (Hua I, p. 64/24). Hence, the fact that “he stands on the threshold of the greatest of all discoveries in a certain manner, has already made it 26

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understand the reasons of the missed encounter between Plato himself and the first author that has ever been able—for fun—to literally up-set not only Parmenides’s doctrine but the deep-­routed reliance of philosophy itself to the natural attitude. Only by doing so, one is likely to see foreshadowed the very distinctive variety of idealism characteristic of transcendental constitutive phenomenology. Moreover, it is also by embedding the unrestricted play of Gorgias’s paidia—which does not shy away from turning upside down even the most unyielding building blocks of our relation to the world—within a life truly guided by the most rigorous form of theorein, that the discovery of subjectivity will not fade into an apology of relativism. After all, this is what—historically speaking—transcendental phenomenology is all about: the ultimate, desperate, attempt to salvage Plato’s idea of a radical scientific philosophy and Gorgias’s game bringing to the second θαυμάζειν. Both have to be equally saved from their successful offspring. The offspring of Plato has to be kept from turning obsolete because of the very success of those sciences—captive of the natural attitude and bringing the transcendence of intelligible forms into nature—that Plato himself had contributed to invent. A “success” which will finally lead to the ambiguous crisis of European sciences and of philosophy as such. The offspring of Gorgias needs to be rescued from the increasing sophist-like style of a philosophy proudly at odds with sciences. A philosophy in which “there are so many philosophers and almost equally many philosophies” (so viele Philosophen und fast eben so viele Philosophien) in a time when there are uncountable “philosophical congresses” where “philosophers meet but, unfortunately, not philosophies” (Hua I, p. 47/5). And yet, if one is no longer able to distinguish the awe in front of a flabbergasting paradoxical claim from the wonder with respect to that which calls to be philosophically understood—together with Plato’s light one has also lost the playful effects of Gorgias’s shadow.

yet he does not grasp its proper sense, the sense namely of transcendental subjectivity, and so he does not pass through the gateway that leads into genuine transcendental philosophy.”

Chapter 11

The Infinite Academy On How to Be a Platonist with Some (Aristotelian?) Help

All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it. Woody Allen

1 A Cliché 1.1 Cats and Dogs “Do you own a dog or a cat? If your answer was a dog, you’re an Aristotelian. […] If your answer was a cat, you score one as a Platonist.” It is in such playful terms that American popular historian Arthur Herman has once introduced a “test” to frame what he calls the Plato vs. Aristotle “Personality Divide” (Herman, 2013b). Let aside its humorous style, the test was also meant to reveal the existence of a deeper and less playful “Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization” (Herman, 2013a). A struggle opposing Platonists and Aristotelians of all sorts, on the most fundamental issues of human life. Needless to say, one might—and should—frown upon such oversimplifications.1 But laughing at the cat/dog test and dismissing Herman’s sweeping statements on the Western soul would be barking at the wrong tree. For the very idea of an overall

 In case you are curious, these are the reasons of Herman’s intriguing assessment: “Aristotle believed human beings were naturally social animals; so are dogs. He also describes friendship in his Ethics this way: ‘Those who desire the good of their friends for the friends’ sake are most truly friends.’ Certainly no animal meets that standard more than the dog, Man’s Best Friend. The relationship between cats and their owners, as we all know, is spiritual and intuitive. And while dog owners will argue that their relationship with Rex and Rover is spiritual too, every cat owner knows that the Egyptians worshiped the cat 500  years ago because its aloof personality embodies the enigma of the Divine—something every Platonist is automatically drawn to” (Herman, 2013b). 1

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conflict opposing Plato and Aristotle on almost everything is quite an old cliché, deep entrenched in the history of modern culture. Not that Antiquity was not aware of the various disagreements between the two authors. Yet from Raphael’s arch-­ famous School of Athens—where Plato’s finger upwards is contrasted to Aristotle’s steady hand, keeping “ideas” at human range—to Samuel T.  Coleridge’s alleged claim that “every person is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian,” modernity has often pictured the Plato-Aristotle relation in terms of broad, conflicting alternatives. Name it: the ideal vs. the real, the a priori vs. the empirical, the divine vs. the human, the religious/poetic vs. the scientific approach etc. And, strange as it might seem, this confrontational view holds not only for Italian painters, English poets, and American pop historians, but also for trained philosophers from all over the world. Even today, both in and outside the continent—although mostly in analytic philosophy—a good number of scholars still indulge with more or less sophisticated versions of Raphael-like pictures.

1.2 What This Is Not About This also happens in Husserl studies. There are, broadly speaking, two opposed ways of questioning the relation between Husserl, on the one hand, and Plato and Aristotle, on the other. There is the local approach, comparing and contrasting Husserl with his illustrious predecessors on specific concepts or selected topics (say, categories, abstraction, perception, phantasy, time, intentionality, etc.); and there is the global one—far more ambitious—qualifying Husserl’s overall phenomenology, ontology or methodology, alternatively, as “Aristotelian” or “Platonic.” Both approaches might certainly be rewarding and yet each of them has its flaws. For stressing Husserl’s local or global “Aristotelianism” or “Platonism” is often an indirect way for praising or blaming his views, on a local or on a global basis. So, to begin with, I would like to make clear what the present chapter is not about. It is definitively not the attempt to show if and to what extent “Husserl’s phenomenology” or “Husserl’s theory of xyz” are—for better or worse, openly or secretly, “in a weak” or “in a strong sense” etc.—“kind-of-Aristotelian” rather than “kind-of-Platonic,” or vice-versa. As long as the two labels are used as empty shells to rephrase some general paradigmatic oppositions and smuggle surreptitious assessments, Husserl’s alleged “Aristotelianism” (local or global) will appear just as bogus—or convincing—as his supposed “Platonism.” As it turns out, Husserl did not have either dogs or cats. There are at least two reasons for rejecting this controversial approach. The first reason is related to Husserl’s explicit view of the relation between Plato and Aristotle. The second reason has to do with the actual position of Husserl’s transcendental

Things gets even more embarrassing in Herman (2013a) where the divide often takes the form of a cheap contest between good guys (Aristotelians) and bad guys (Platonists).

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phenomenology within the long-term and quite complex history of Platonism and its relationship with Aristotelianism. In what follows, I will explore these two paths according to a very specific strategy.2 I will first indicate how Husserl actually pictures the role of Plato and Aristotle within a narrative of the history of philosophy culminating with his own project of transcendental phenomenology. In order to do so, I will mostly rely on Husserl’s texts from the early 1920s on (Sect. 2). After that, I will try to show how Husserl’s distinctive narrative significantly overlaps, even in some of its most specific details, with a parallel view widely held in ancient philosophy, especially in Middle Platonism: a view according to which Plato and Aristotle are of a piece and share the same philosophical agenda (Sect. 3). This will finally bring us back to Husserl’s texts. At this point, I will try to establish if and to what extent other distinctive Middle Platonic views that do not seem to enter into Husserl’s explicit narrative could nevertheless be used to shed some new light on his eidetic (Sect. 4) and transcendental (Sect. 5) phenomenology. And this should lead to some conclusive remarks (Sect. 6).

2 A Mosaic 2.1 Plato’s Extended Academy A cursory look at the texts is already enough to state the obvious: Husserl’s take on Plato and Aristotle hardly squares with the arch-famous cliché of the School of Athens. Husserl never stages the “proud metaphysical systems of Plato and Aristotle” as opposing each other, not even in his early lectures (see Hua Mat III, p. 230). On the contrary, the two authors are constantly and consistently associated as parts of the same conception of philosophy.3 As a result, if one had to change the iconic background of the discussion and forget the School of Athens, Husserl’s view would  This strategy, called “heuristic filter,” has been already applied to study the relation between the cluster Meinen/Bedeuten in descriptive phenomenology (Brentano, Husserl, Marty, Bühler) and its medieval counterpart intentio/significatio (see Majolino & Cesalli, 2014). It has also been used, in a slightly different form, to establish the relation to Aristotle of contemporary theories of intentionality, both analytic and continental (Majolino, 2016). 3  This fact is far from being surprising. In his Lectures on the History of Greek Philosophy, Brentano (1963) too puts Plato together with Aristotle—both deeply influenced by Socrates (Brentano, 1963, pp. 163–4)—at the top of the first “mounting period” (aufsteigende Periode) of Greek philosophy (pp. 31–2). According to Brentano’s “theory of the four phases,” the mounting period is characterized by the presence of two distinctive features: (1) “a lively and pure theoretical interest” (ein lebendiges und reines theoretisches Interesse) and (2) “a method (…) essentially consistent with the nature of things” (eine wesentliche naturgemässe…Methode) (pp. 20–1). This first period is followed by three phases of “decadence” (Verfall): the first, marked by the priority of practical concerns over theoretical interests and marked by the Stoics and the Epicureans (Brentano, 1963, pp. 312–26); the second is “the epoch of the prevailing skepsis” (p. 21), dominated by the New Academy and Pyrrhonean skepticism (pp. 327–31); and the third, characterized by the raise of mysticism and the search for “immediate intuitive forces,” culminating with Neoplatonism 2

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appear to be more in line with another, quite remarkable picture, i.e., the picture of Plato’s Academy shown in a famous mosaic, discovered in Torre Annunziata in 1897, and currently displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples:

Extensively commented by Konrad Gaiser (1980) and more recently by Marwan Rashed (2012), the mosaic shows Aristotle (on the far right) together with (counterclockwise) Xenocrates, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Plato, Speusippus and Heraclides Ponticus. All together, they form a community of philosophers, astronomers and scientists discussing, pursuing and developing, both jointly and in different directions, Plato’s seminal insights. The cautious reader of Husserl’s lectures of the 1920s on first philosophy (Hua VII, pp. 36–50) and intersubjectivity (Hua XIV, p. 183), and even the occasional reader of the Krisis (Hua VI, pp. 9–12) or the Vienna Lecture (Hua VI, pp. 322–6) would easily recognize in this picture a rather familiar Husserlian leitmotiv. Philosophy, Husserl repeatedly says, is the rigorous rational activity of an ongoing trans-national and trans-generational “form of community” (Gemeinschaftsform) following Plato’s footsteps (Hua VI, p. 326). Nota bene: not Plato’s theory of the intelligible forms, the anamnesis or any of Plato’s positive doctrines—but the “Platonic idea of philosophy,” the “Platonic drives” (die Platonischen Impulse) that will eventually shape the very notion of “European science” (Hua VII, pp. 15–17). (pp. 338–54). Husserl’s narrative, as we will see, although having some points in common with Brentano’s, is extremely different, especially when it comes to the role of skepticism (see Sect. 2.3).

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So, let us start here: according to a very explicit Husserlian view, becoming increasingly relevant by the beginning of the 1920s, in some sense, philosophy as such is Platonic. But in what sense?

2.2 The Philosophical Attitude In Husserl’s late lectures and talks, philosophy in general is trivially pictured as having a factual birthplace (Greece) and a factual birthdate (between the seventh and the sixth century B.C.) (Hua VI, p. 321). What is less trivial, however, is Husserl’s account of what might be called its intentional genesis. Philosophy is, in fact, says Husserl, born out of “a new sort of attitude of individuals toward the surrounding world” (eine neuartige Einstellung einzelner zur Umwelt) (Hua VI, p. 321).4 This new attitude, Husserl continues, fosters “the breakthrough of a totally new form of cultural formation rapidly growing into a systematically self-enclosed cultural formation” (Hua VI, p. 321): The Greeks called it philosophy (Philosophie). Correctly translated, in the original sense, that means nothing other than universal science, science of the whole of the world (Weltall), of the all-encompassing unity of all that is. Soon the interest in the whole, and thus the question of the all-encompassing becoming and being in becoming, begins to particularize itself according to the general forms and regions of being, and thus philosophy, the one science, branches out into many particular sciences. (Hua VI, p. 321)

Three key tenets thus set the stage for the advent of philosophy as such: (Phil.1) a preliminary individual change of attitude, raising a theoretical interest toward the all-encompassing unity of all that is; in order to be called “philosophical” such an interest toward the whole has to be “theoretical,” not “practical;” (Phil.2) the collective transformation of such an individual change into a stable ongoing cultural formation, which is pursued by an instituted community and not by a single person;5 (Phil.3) the movement of particularization of such cultural formation into distinct “sciences,” i.e., theoretical disciplines corresponding to the different regions in  This concept of attitude has been thoroughly discussed in Chap. 3 of this volume.  According to Husserl, while the collective transformation of a theoretical “line of vision” (Blickrichtung) directed toward the “all-encompassing unity of all that is” brings to the birth of philosophy, the corresponding institutionalization of a universal “practical” attitude leads to the constitution of myths and religions. Unlike the philosophical attitude, “the mythical-religious attitude exists when the world as a totality becomes thematic, but in a practical way” (Mythisch-­ religiöse Einstellung besteht nun darin, dass die Welt als Totalität thematisch, und zwar praktisch thematisch wird) (Hua VI, p. 330). The diversion from practical interests as a defining feature of philosophy is famously put forward by Aristotle in Met. A, 2 (982b11-28 and 983a11-23), to which Husserl implicitly refers in Hua VI, pp. 331–2 (see also Hua VIII, p. 96). 4 5

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which “all that is” is articulated. Each of these sciences is pursued by its own “community of researchers” and yet all such communities proceed under the common heading of “the unique science” (die Eine Wissenschaft). Thus philosophy qua “cultural formation” (geistige Gebilde) has the Weltall as theme of a theoretical (not practical), collective (not merely individual) and internally differentiated (not merely holistic) attitude—an attitude already nested within another, more general one, i.e., the natural attitude. In order to become the focus of an explicit overall theoretical interest, the “world”—the “true” (warhaft), “actual” (wirklich) and “real” (real) unity of everything that is, the “sum-total of objects of possible experience and experiential knowledge, of objects that can be known in correct theoretical thinking, on the basis of what is actually [aktueller] perceived” (Hua III/1, p. 11/10, translation modified; emphasis added)—this world has already to be assumed as existing, posited in its being (see also pp. 10–1/9–10). There is an overall world made in such and such a way. This amazing fact turns into a rather peculiar theme (Thema) that triggers the philosophical wonder (θαυμάζειν) and promotes the constitution of a form of community entirely devoted to its investigation (Hua VI, pp. 331–2).

2.3 The Sophistic Attitude As we have seen in Chap. 10, this extremely general account of philosophy should not be conflated with another, narrower one that Husserl calls “genuine philosophy” (echte Philosophie) and whose initiator is Plato. For instance, Thales is one of those “men who create philosophy as a new sort of cultural formation upon the theoretical life” (Hua VI, pp. 332–3). The same holds for Democritus, or Parmenides, whose famous saying “τὸ γάρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι” turned into the leading principle of an entire School asserting the “identity” of “being” (Sein) and “thinking” (Denken) (Hua XXV, p. 135). But these were just philosophers in the narrow sense of (Phil.1-3). At a certain point, Husserl continues, a rupture occurs, a phase of problematization. The Sophists’s radically skeptical approach ends up shaking the naïve confidence of early philosophers with respect to the all of being, truth and knowledge (Hua XXV, p. 135); and it provokes the rise of a new form of philosophy (Hua VII, pp. 8, 311ff). Protagoras’ account of sensibility defies the idea of an epistemic access to truth: his account of dialectics ruins the trust in rational truth. In fact, “everything can be proved or disproved, i.e., for every proposition one can find theoretical reasons to prove it and, at the same time, other equally powerful reasons to disprove it” (Hua XXXV, p. 269; see also Hua XXV, p. 135). As for Gorgias, an author upon which we have discussed at length in the previous chapter, his “genial paradoxes” bring the sophistic challenge as far as to attack at once the possibility of true knowledge (Hua XXV, pp. 135–137) and the very existence of an external “Weltall” (Hua XXXV, pp. 268, 640, 644). The world of the natural attitude is no longer self-granted. In Husserl’s account, Gorgias is presented as the anti-­Parmenides. If Parmenides

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maintains that “being” and “thinking” are one and the same, then, Gorgias replies, since “thinking” is subjective, “being” must be subjective as well (Hua XXV, pp. 135–6).6 The “skeptical” attack of the Sophists is thus twofold. On the one hand, they challenge the possibility of an objectively valid truth (Protagoras). On the other hand, and more radically, they question the actual existence of a transcendent being, of “external objectivities,” in principle accessible to knowledge (Gorgias) (Hua XXV, p. 137). Unlike Brentano’s (1963, p. 140) historical picture, where skeptics and sophists represent the “decadent” tendency (Tendenz) of philosophy, Husserl’s view is far from being dismissive (see Hua VI, p.  8; Hua VII, pp.  58–59).7 On the contrary, Husserl’s assessment is that the “radical significance” (radikale Bedeutung) of sophistry for the history of philosophy, as we will see shortly (Sect. 2.7), can hardly be overestimated. As Husserl emphatically puts it, referring again to Gorgias’s discovery of the “enigmatic essence” of consciousness and knowledge with respect to the transcendence of being (Hua XXV, p. 137): “if this is the actual meaning of the Sophist, then he is the discoverer of the critical-­rational problem of the possibility of transcendent knowledge” (p. 136). At any rate, by destroying the idea of a “philosophy naively directed toward the external world,” the advent of sophistry has a double outcome (Hua VII, p. 8): (Soph.1) positively: by stating the “problem of transcendence” (Hua XXV, p. 137) it opens the way to the transcendental problem of knowledge (Hua XXV, p. 137; Hua VII, pp. 58–59); (Soph.2) negatively: by weakening the “self-confidence” (Selbstvertrauen) in the objectivity of truth, it produces a twofold distress: (Soph.2.1) theoretical: “philosophy loses the sense it was aiming at” (Zielsinn) (Hua VII, p. 8); (Soph.2.2) practical: “the whole of practical life is deprived of its normative goals” (Hua VII, pp. 8–9).

2.4 The Socratic Attitude It is precisely at this point that the “double star” (Doppelstern) Socrates-Plato enters the scene (Hua VII, p. 8; Hua XXXV, p. 52). Taking seriously the Sophistic challenge (Hua VII, p. 16), Socrates and Plato now consider the transcendence of being, the objectivity of truth and the possibility of knowledge as problems, and not only as themes of a general theoretical attitude (Hua VI, p. 16; Hua XXV, p. 6): they have to be secured, not merely assumed. Socrates, the “practical reformer” (Hua VII,

 As for Husserl’s take on Gorgias’s so-called “second argument” see Chap. 10 of this volume.  It has to be said, though, that Husserl’s reading of the relation between Gorgias and Parmenides has some striking similarities with Brentano’s (1963, pp. 150–2). 6 7

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p. 9; Hua XXV, p. 6; Hua XXXV, p. 52), takes the inward path, as it were, and looking inside himself confronts the Sophists’ practical challenge, spelled out in (Soph.2.2). He thus submits the whole of ethical life to a “radical critique” (Hua VII, p. 12). Socrates’ insights are the following: (Soc.1) he inaugurates a philosophy based on critical “self-reflection” (Selbstbesinnung) and on the Delphic principle “know thyself!” (Hua VII, p. 9; Hua XXXV, p. 52); (Soc.2) he addresses the fundamental contradiction between “unclear opinion and evidence” (unklare Meinung und Evidenz), on which practical life ultimately rests (Hua VII, pp. 11, 32);8 (Soc.3) he understands that “the fundamental meaning” (Grundsinn) of method is to be a “clarifying self-reflection accomplished in the apodictic evidence” (Hua VII, p. 11)9; (Soc.4) he implicitly discovers the “intuition of essences” (Wesensintuition) (for what results from self-reflection is not limited to the contingently reflecting subject but has a general and exemplary value) (Hua VII, p. 10). This finally brings us to Plato. While Socrates applies his insights (self-­reflection, evidence, method, intuition of essences) to reform the practical-axiological life of individual agents (contra Soph.2.2), Plato uses the same weapons to fight the theoretical distress and to restore the sense of philosophy as a whole (contra Soph.2.1) (Hua XXV, pp. 52–3). According to Husserl, what we owe to Plato is “the creation of the idea of a true and genuine science,” the “beginning of a genuine and radical philosophy (Anfang zu einer echten und radikaler Philosophie)” (Hua VIII, p. 8; Hua XXV, p. 137; Hua XXXV, pp. 53–4).

2.5 The Platonic Attitude If the Presocratics took for granted, and the Sophists variously criticized the triad being-truth-knowledge (Hua XXV, p. 135), Plato’s approach is somehow metacritical (Hua VII, p. 16). Accordingly, his way to “genuine philosophy”—applying to (Phil.1-3) the Socratic insights (Soc.1-4)—is described by Husserl as revolving around five additional and tightly interrelated tenets: (Plat.1) the refutation of the sophist’s arguments against the objectivity of knowledge by the identification of ideal laws (Hua XXXV, p. 53);  All these traits can variously be found in Brentano (1963, pp. 158–64). According to Brentano, Socrates’s “hegemony of the insight (Herrschaft der Einsicht) has become the fundament of the Platonic doctrine” (pp. 163–4). 9  See: “Die sokratische Erkenntnismethode ist eine Methode vollkommener Klärung” (Hua VII, p. 9). 8

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(Plat.2) the invention of the question of method as a way to make sure that philosophy actually has the cognitive means to realize its ambitions (Hua VII, p. 13); (Plat.3) the critical focus on the unity of the ὄντως ὄν, which is intended as the totality of what is and can be truly known (Hua VII, p. 13; Hua VI, pp. 11, 27; Hua XXV, pp. 125–6); (Plat.4) the idea of articulating a first and a “second” philosophy, i.e., the recognition of “a scientific discipline of the beginnings” a “doctrine of the principles” whose fundamental task is to investigate not the whole of factual being, but the “principles” of all that is and can be known, that is, the principles out of which all single sciences of empirical but rationally unified facts (“second philosophies”) spring and upon which they are ultimately grounded (Hua VII, pp. 13–4); (Plat.5) the task of a rational reform of individual and collective “active life” (handelndes Leben) in all its aspects: theoretical, practical and axiological (Hua VII, p. 16). As is readily apparent, Plato’s “novel idea of philosophy” (Hua VII, p.  13) is more than a culturally institutionalized and internally articulated theoretical attitude turned toward the world as a whole (see supra Phil.1-3) (Hua XVII, pp. 5–8); it is also, and more importantly, the first “formal preliminary drawing” (p. 3), the “living germ” (p. 13) of a form of wisdom that is opposed to but takes very seriously the skeptical tendencies of sophistry and, accordingly, reflects about and justifies its own methods and conditions of possibility, looking for certainty and evidence. A form of wisdom that is also critically based on the correlation of the whole of truth and the whole of being—a correlation that is not simply assumed to be so but rationally established. A form of wisdom that fosters a rational reform of the whole of human life (personal and collective) and does so by identifying the non-factual first principles whose unitary foundational power vouchsafes the existence of the world and its true knowledge. Accordingly, “[o]ne can say that it is for the first time with Plato that the pure ideas of genuine knowledge, genuine theory and science, as well as of genuine philosophy—encompassing them all—entered into the consciousness of humanity” (Hua VII, p. 13). It is specifically in this sense that Plato stands as “the father of all genuine and rigorous science (aller echten und strengen Wissenschaft)” (Hua XXV, p.  53). Husserl’s Plato provides philosophy with a second birth. As a result, all philosophies taking up the five tenets spelled out above as (Plat.1-5) deserve to be ultimately regarded as “Platonic.” Somehow in the same way in which—mutatis mutandis—all sciences after Galileo ought to be called “Galilean.” But more on this later. As for the moment, let us simply stress what follows: if one agrees to consider “philosophy” as the “cultural formation” (see Sect. 2.2) revolving around a particular change of attitude, then “Platonism” turns out to be the name of a habitualized new change of attitude occurring within the originally philosophical attitude itself. A new variety of “universal attitude” triggered by the confrontation with the devastating force of the sophistical skepsis (Fig. 11.1).

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Universal (the world as a whole) Natural Attitude (implicitly theoretical)

Philosophical (theoretical) Mythical-religious (practicalaxiological) Theoretical

Particular (something that is-in-the-world)

naive-straightforward Thales & the naturalists critical-skeptical Gorgias & the Sophists critical-genuine: Plato & Co.

Practical Axiological

Fig. 11.1  The philosophical attitude

If this is correct, one should thus distinguish between two, often overlapping although quite different, understandings of the term “Platonic” (Platonisch) in Husserl’s writings. On the one hand, we find the reference to Plato’s “doctrines” or “doctrinal content” (Lehre, Lehrgehalt); on the other hand, the indication of Plato’s “way” or “idea” (Weg, Idee). All passages of Husserl’s works explicitly mentioning or simply alluding to the dialectical method (Hua XXV, p.  126), the doctrine of intuitive ideal forms (p. 123), the participation (Hua VI, p. 20), the anamnesis (Hua VI, p. 370) or the idea of the Good (Hua XXV, p. 278), variously belong to the former; they refer to the specific way in which Plato himself has fulfilled the Platonic ideal.10 As for the rest, the term “Platonic” can also be used as the emphatic name for a “drive” (Impulse), an “intention” (Meinung) to be fulfilled, a “teleological idea” (Zweckidee) to be followed, and not for a set of doctrines to be claimed or preserved. It is precisely in this sense that, though sometimes eager to call himself a “Platonist” (see Sect. 6.2), Husserl nevertheless explicitly rejects the slogan “zurück zu Platon!” (Hua XXV, p. 206; Hua VII, p. 335). In order for one to be a “Platonist” in this second sense, there is absolutely no need to postulate the existence of separate intelligible forms, a doctrine of the participation or any putative “Platonic” dogma.

 This certainly includes the critical discussion of “ideas qua objects” (Ideen als Gegenstände) and the endorsement of Lotze’s or Bolzano’s perspective on ideal being, most clearly discussed under the head “Platonism” in the Entwurf einer Vorrede (Husserl, 1913, pp. 119–20, 125–33, 323–8). But, more importantly, the distinction between Platonic doctrine and Platonic drive can also shed new light on Husserl’s account of Galilean physics in the Krisis. When Husserl talks of the “migration of the Platonic forms into nature” he explicitly refers to the particular doctrine of the μέθεξις: “For Platonism reality had a more or less accomplished Metexis with ideality” (Hua VI, p. 20) while Galilean physics conceives nature itself as a mathematical manifold for which the relation of “participation” does not hold. Galileo is thus an offspring of Plato in the broad sense but not in the narrow sense. This point will be further discussed in Chap. 12 of this volume. 10

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2.6 The Aristotelian Attitude It is precisely within the framework of this Platonic “second birth of philosophy” that Husserl’s take on the relationship between Plato and Aristotle must be located.11 As already pointed out (see Sect. 2.1), Husserl never feels the need to oppose Aristotle to Plato in any meaningful way. Moreover, even when he employs the straightforward “Platonic” talk of ideal objects “such as numbers, propositions, pure genera and species, etc.,” he does so by “utterly disregarding the conflict opposing Platonism and Aristotelianism” (Husserl, 1913, p. 131). Thus, just as in the mosaic of Pompeii, Husserl’s narrative consistently pictures Aristotle as one remarkable character of Plato’s Academy—a character taking the path of “genuine philosophy” and pursuing his master’s agenda with other means. Husserl’s view of Aristotle thus follows a very precise pattern. On a quite general level, both Plato and Aristotle are equally credited for having recognized the fundamental role of the philosophical θαυμάζειν, intended, at first, as a form of interest toward the whole of being turned into a theoretical “attitude” (eingestellt) and stabilized into a collective “habit” (habituell geworden) (Hua VI, pp. 331–2). Following Socrates, they both take “human being” (der Mensch) and its place in the world as the “grand theme” of their research (Hua VI, p. 341). But, as we know, these are extremely general points of agreement (see Sect. 2.2).12 What is more significant, instead, is the list of Aristotle’s achievements literally presented by Husserl as “realizations” (Verwirklichungen) or “implementations” (Weiterentwicklungen) or “developments” (Fortführungen) of Plato’s idea (Idee) of philosophy. The new philosophy born out of Plato’s dialectics, logic, general metaphysics (Aristotle’s First Philosophy), mathematics, the sciences of nature and spirit in their various disciplines (such as physics, biology, psychology, ethics and politics)—all of these disciplines were only incomplete realizations of the Platonic idea of philosophy. (Hua VII, p. 17/18, translation modified) After Plato and (in a fruitful continuation of his work) Aristotle had outlined and broken through to the general idea of a rational science, all minds were captivated by the task of implementing such idea in ever new rational sciences—a task that would set the agenda for all further developments. (Hua VII, p. 52/54, translation modified)

More specifically, Aristotle: (Ari.1) takes up the Sophistic challenge to the objectivity of knowledge by pursuing the project of a “Platonic foundation of logic” (platonische Begründung der Logik) and systematically developing Plato’s dialectics into a regimented logic of consequence (Hua VII, p. 17; Hua XVII, pp. 12, 53, 76, 418);

 This “second birth” and its complex relation with the sophistic attitude has been thoroughly studied in Chap. 10 of this volume. 12  Unless one wants to see already in Plato’s and Aristotle’s awareness of the founding role of the θαυμάζειν the application of a “self-reflective” approach. Husserl’s texts, however, are not so explicit on this point. 11

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(Ari.2) extends Plato’s idea of science to the field of subjectivity and creates “the first outline of a universal science of subjectivity” (Hua VII, pp. 52–3); (Ari.3) does so in connection with the problem of practical and ethical agency (Hua VII, p. 51);13 (Ari.4) develops a “universal doctrine of being” (allgemeine Seinslehre) that is articulated into different although intimately unified fields (Hua VII, p. 183); (Ari.5) echoes, in his original conception of metaphysics as “πρώτη φιλοσοφία,” the originally Platonic “theoretical intent” (theoretische Absicht) of a doctrine of the first principles (Hua VII, p. 5). Aristotle is thus presented as fighting Plato’s philosophical fight on all its fronts: logic (with his analytics), ethics (with his critique of hedonism and theory of values), ontology (with the establishment of a science of subjectivity related with all other particular sciences of being) and first philosophy (with his general metaphysics). This holds true even if, just as in the mosaic of Pompeii, Aristotle ends up turning his back to Plato and disagreeing on some relevant points of the latter’s doctrine. A further point to be stressed is that Husserl’s narrative repeatedly associates Aristotle’s name to Euclid’s in order to show how the Platonic ideal has been differently realized in the Greek world. Husserl calls Euclid “a known Platonist” and “the first classical author having systematized pure mathematics” (Hua VII, p. 34). On the one hand, he is the first one having developed a “material ontology” on the basis of “Plato’s doctrine of the ideas” (Hua XXV, p. 132). In this sense, Euclid’s geometry, dealing with tridimensional space and spatial figures in general—i.e., with the “ideal form of all physical objects in general”—is clearly a “Platonist” discipline in the most doctrinal sense of the term (Hua XXV, p. 132). On the other hand, Husserl adds an additional element to the story. “Inspired by Eudoxus,” Euclid has also delivered the “first accomplished project of a purely rational science according to the ideal of the Platonic school” (Hua VII, p. 34). Euclid’s Elements are therefore “Platonic” in a twofold sense: as for their geometrical content, they belong to material-ontology and deal with “idealities” as discovered by Plato’s theory of forms; as for their systematic deductive form, they are a model of rigorously connected truths and propositions, gesturing toward the disciplines of the mathesis. Now, “the Analytics founded by Aristotle, a direct student of Plato, […] formed the basis of a rational discipline in the same sense” as Euclid’s Elements (Hua VII, p.  35). Hence the two works, which provide the first formal outlines of the twin formal disciplines of formal apophantics and formal mathematics, are often presented by Husserl side by side, illustrating the very first, still incomplete and yet quite “powerful” (gewaltige), attempts to realize Plato’s ideal of science (Hua VII,  Sophistical skepsis in the field of knowledge and truth has its ethical parallel in hedonism. In fact, Husserl defines “hedonism” as “the form of skepticism grounded in the essence of the ethical domain” (die am Wesen des ethischen Gebiets selbst begründete Gestalt des Skepticismus) (Hua XXXVII, p. 78). He subsequently refers to Aristotle’s critique of Eudoxus’ arguments in Eth. Nic. X, 1172b (Hua XXXVII, pp.  66, 78–9; see also Hua VI, p.  51). On the topic, see Majolino & Trizio (2014). 13

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p. 52; see also Hua XVII, 1–2 and passim). At the same time, Euclid and Aristotle have also pursued Plato’s agenda in the material field: the former with his geometry (following Plato’s doctrine of the ideas), and the latter with his psychology (rejecting Plato’s doctrine of the ideas). Whether Euclid was actually a Platonist, as traditionally claimed by Proclus, is certainly a matter of dispute.14 What is hardly disputable, however, are precisely the general points relating Aristotle with the Platonic “ideal”: Aristotle develops Plato’s dialectics in new ways (An. Pr. I, 4, 46a and 5, 57a; Met. B, 1, 995b); he stresses the importance of considerations regarding the correct method and aims of philosophical inquiry and treats them as being part of this inquiry itself (Eth. Nic. 1095a30-b; cf. Resp. 511a3-c2 and Phd. 101c9-102a1); he criticizes sophistry (Ref. Soph. I, 164a20-30); he inaugurates a science of the soul (De An. I, 1, 402a1-15); and he is concerned with the problem of the unity of science (Met. B, 2-3, 996a18-998a19; Met. Γ, 1, 1003a21-6) within which he articulates a first and a second philosophy (Met. E, 1, 1025b1-32). Insofar as these facts meet the general criteria (Plat.1-5) to define a broadly construed concept of Platonism, it is fair to say that, for Husserl, Aristotle is definitely following a “Platonic” drive. As a result, all the critiques he might have eventually addressed to this or that otherwise crucial point of the Platonic doctrine (be it the rebuttal of separate intelligible forms or the criticism of Plato’s epistemology) are, at least from Husserl’s standpoint, hardly enough to sever the Aristotelian plant from Plato’s philosophical roots.15

2.7 The Cartesian Attitude Now, just as in the mosaic of Pompeii, Husserl’s Aristotle argues with Plato, against Plato, but always as a member of Plato’s Academy, belonging to the circle of “genuine philosophers” sharing the same idea of science. And yet, as already anticipated (see Sect. 2.1), there is more to this story. One might have noticed, in fact, that the mosaic represents Plato himself as just one member of his own Academy. Pictured as the third man from the left, Plato is neither put right in the middle, nor is he in a higher position with respect to his fellow discussants. Likewise, having learned to distinguish between “doctrine” (Lehre) and “ideal” (Idee, Impuls),16 we are now in

 On the topic, see the extensive introduction in Acerbi (2007), especially pp. 16ff.  We have already suggested that, in some sense—mutatis mutandis—one might be tempted to say that Husserl’s “Plato” stands to the idea of “genuine philosophy” as the “Galileo” of the Krisis stands to the idea of “modern science.” These latter remarks however show that, although somehow correct, the parallel would not go very far. Many reasons could be suggested, but one seems to be quite compelling: Husserl never suggests that Plato was a “concealing Genius” (verdeckendes Genius) (Hua VI, p.  53). Accordingly, there is nothing to “uncover” or “unconceal”. Instead, Plato’s project ought to be “realized” or “radicalized”. 16  In the Krisis, Husserl makes a similar distinction for the second leading character of his narrative, Descartes. He distinguishes between Cartesian “motives” and Cartesian “themes”. This distinction is discussed in Majolino (2008, pp. 174–84) and more spelled out in Chap. 10 of this volume. 14 15

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a good position to see to what extent even Husserl’s Plato is somehow a Platonist, just as Aristotle. Primus inter pares, Husserl’s Plato is the first of a long list of what might be called asymptotic Platonists, i.e., actual approximations to the idea of a genuine philosophy whose first factual instantiation is to be found in Plato’s own dialogues. Consequently, even Plato’s specific way of fulfilling the Platonic project has its flaws and calls for completion. For instance, For instance, as we have seen in the previous chapter, Husserl believed that Plato did not properly recognize the first—positive—contribution of sophistry (Soph.1): The great philosophical sense that brought Plato to a completely radical doctrine of the method, went lost already with his successors. And this happened all the more easily that (as we will explain later below) he did not grasp the core-points of a transcendental philosophy lying in Gorgias’s skepticism. (Hua XXV, p. 127)

Furthermore, not unlike Aristotle, Plato remains on the verge of the genuine philosophical science he wanted to achieve: However much Plato was at pains to ground a logic in this radical spirit, he did not break through to the necessary beginnings and methods (Anfängen und Methoden), and Aristotle already fell into the quite natural tendency of taking for granted a pre-given world (selbstverständlichkeit einer vorgegebenen Welt), thereby relinquishing every radical grounding of knowledge. Thus it happened that ancient science, despite all its ambition to be philosophy—i.e., to be a science indeed ultimately justified and completely satisfying —, despite its admirable achievements, could only reach the level of what we call dogmatic science and what we take to be merely a preliminary level of a genuine philosophical science, not this genuine science itself. (Hua VII, p. 56/58, translation modified)

As we have seen already, Husserl repeatedly insists on this point: Plato’s dialectics could eventually restore the trust in the objectivity of knowledge (a truth valid in itself), but it was literally “powerless” (machtlos) when confronted with the “problem of transcendence” (Hua XXV, p. 137). Hence, since the Sophist’s transcendental problem (see Soph.1) is unresolved, the silent weight of the natural attitude on the overall philosophical attitude remains unnoticed. This is the main reason why Plato’s first realization of the Platonic ideal remains wanting. This is also why Plato himself turns out to be, quite paradoxically, the first “failed Platonist.” At any rate, since philosophy is a structurally collective and institutionalized endeavor (see Phil.2), this cannot be the end of the story. For other “asymptotic Platonists” will eventually step in, starting with Aristotle and his quite remarkable accomplishments in logic, metaphysics and ontology, cutting across the different regions of being and even exploring “the mental life as a scientific theme” (Hua VII, p. 52). In Husserl’s view, however, even Aristotle’s second asymptotic Platonism is defective and needs to be strengthened and further radicalized. The reason is the same: Aristotle is still unable to really face what Husserl now emphatically calls “the immortality of skepticism” (Unsterblichkeit der Skeptizismus), the “fundamental significance” (grundsätzliche Bedeutung) of the Skepsis (Hua VII, pp. 58–63). One should show the “truth” (Wahrheitsgehalt, Wahrheitssinn) of Gorgias’s skepticism, not stigmatize it; one should face the transcendental challenge, not avoid it— it is only in this way that Plato’s ideal could finally have a chance to prevail (Hua VII, p. 58).

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Finally, it is Descartes who will eventually pick up the philosophical torch and will reactivate the originally Platonic, and then Aristotelian, drive (Hua VII, pp. 7–8; see also Hua XXV, pp. 138–9). Descartes thinks not only with Plato and against Plato, but also—and for the first time—with Gorgias and against Gorgias. This point, which is often neglected, deserves to be strongly emphasized.17 Why does Husserl actually praise Descartes? Neither for the doctrine of method, nor for having stressed the difference between evident and non-evident knowledge. All these insights are extremely general and, as pointed out above (see Sect. 2.6), belong to the Platonic heritage as such. Descartes is rather credited for having identified the “absolutely necessary beginning of philosophy” that Plato and Aristotle were looking for (respectively in the doctrine of the intelligible forms and in that of the substance) with the “knowledge of oneself” (Selbsterkenntnis, Selbstbesinnung) (Hua VII, p. 8). The evident principles of a first philosophy, which are needed to ground truth, knowledge and being, only appear to self-reflection. It does not come as a surprise then if the last words of the Cartesian Meditations (Hua I, p.  183) report not only a slightly modified version of Augustin’s maxim “noli foras ire, in teipsum redi; in interiore homine habitat veritas” (see De vera religione, I, pp. 39, 72) but also—and more importantly—its Greek matrix, i.e., the Socratic principle “γνῶθι σαυτόν”: “know thyself”! (see above Soc.1). This is the principle that Plato’s Charmides (164d-165b) presented as an injunction (σωφρόνει) inscribed on the temple of Delphi and that Husserl takes as an indication of the right path to be taken by a transcendental genuine philosophy. With transcendental phenomenology, Husserl says, “The Delphic saying γνῶθι σαυτόν has acquired a new meaning (eine neue Bedeutung)” (Hua I, pp. 39, 183). Let me insist on this step: the whole point of transcendental phenomenology as a “new Cartesianism” (Hua I, p. 3), is to provide the γνῶθι σαυτόν with a new meaning. At this point, Husserl’s prima facie trivial idea of a Socrates qua ethical reformer, as opposed to Plato’s more theoretically-oriented intents, becomes extremely original. As we have seen, Socrates’s insights revolving around the principle “know thyself!” were meant to face only the practical distress provoked by the second Sophistic challenge (Soph.2.2) (see Sect. 2.4). After that, they are generalized by Plato (Plat.1-5) and applied to the theoretical distress (Soph.2.1) (see Sect. 2.5). What Husserl suggests now is that the full force of the eidetic (Soc.4) evidence (Soc.3) generated by the γνῶθι σαυτόν (Soc.1) should be methodically (Soc.2) mobilized to take up the first sophistic challenge (Soph.1), i.e., the one denying the very existence of the world and following the transcendental lead. For it is true that Aristotle inaugurates the science of subjectivity. But that subjectivity with which Aristotle’s psychology deals is still a piece of natural philosophy, that is, a factual psycho-physical animated being (see Hua VII, pp. 53–5). Ultimately, if Descartes’s Platonism is also a failed one, it is because he takes the ego as a “fragment of the world” (Endchen der Welt), just as in the Aristotelian-Scholastic psychology of the mens sive animus sive intellectus (Hua I, p. 63; Hua XXV, p. 167). The subject of

17

 This has been done in Chap. 10 of this volume.

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the Socratic “γνῶθι σαυτόν,” by contrast, is not a piece of anthropology, psychology or natural science. This is what Descartes’ Meditations ultimately understood, although in a rather confused (Hua VII, pp.  61–3) and distorted way (Hua VII, pp. 65–6; Hua I, pp. 63–4). So, strange as it might seem, the modern turn to subjectivity operated by Descartes and prepared for by Augustine (Hua VI, p. 61; Hua I, pp. 39, 183) is not seen by Husserl as a departure from, but as the “radicalization” (radikalizierung) of an originally Socratic-Platonic gesture. Its “radicalism” consists precisely in the fact of opposing to the “enigmatic” subjectivity of the Sophists the subjectivity of the Socratic γνῶθι σαυτόν—out-of-the world and yet capable of ensuring the transcendence of knowledge, truth, and being. This is the reason why Descartes is not a “founder” (Begründer) but a “pioneer” (Bahnbrecher) (Hua XXV, p.  166): the eidetic science of what evidently appears after having followed the injunction “γνῶθι σαυτόν” in its relationship with the project of a first philosophy still needs to be established.

2.8 Building the Academy If the above is correct, the seven characters in the middle of the mosaic of Pompeii, seen through Husserl’s lenses, hardly appear as a closed set. Plato’s actual Academy was only the factual-historical core-community of “scientific researchers of a science” (Hua XIV, p. 213) that is factually-historically gathered around “the father of all genuine science” (Hua VII, p. 12). But, as we have seen, such a community is meant to be extended; or, at least, it will be necessarily extended as long as the truth of sophistry is not recognized by philosophers, becoming part of genuine philosophy itself. As we know (see Sect. 2.7), Husserl is adamant in declaring that the Platonic idea of philosophy has not been “fulfilled” (erfüllt) by “any historically transmitted philosophical system” (Hua VII, p. 5), not even by Plato’s own system. The Platonic idea of philosophy is rather an “infinite task” (unendliche Aufgabe) (Hua VI, p.  324) continuously calling for completion. Socrates, Plato, Euclid, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, but also the Stoics (Hua VII, pp. 17–30) and Leibniz (pp.  182–99) will all eventually step into the family picture of the philosophia perennis (p.  6). In Husserl’s view, taken all together, they draw the ongoing and always incomplete mosaic of an infinite Academy. Not unexpectedly, at the far bottom of the picture, a place is left for Husserl’s own transcendental phenomenology itself. The last, “still incomplete approximation” (noch unvolkommene Approximation) (Hua VII, p.  6) to the Platonic asymptote.18 The last frontline of

 In this essay I do not distinguish—as I should—between “Academic,” “Platonic” and “Platonist” (see, for instance, Bonazzi, 2003) since, as we will see shortly, Husserl’s framework consists precisely in blurring the boundaries between the three terms. 18

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what Husserl emphatically pictures as the confrontation between the “unendlichkeit” of the Plato’s Academy and the “unsterblichkeit” of Gorgias’s sophistry.

3 A Bunch of Distortions 3.1 Boētheia: The Helpful Attitude Let us pause for a moment now and put Husserl’s narrative at some distance. Husserl is obviously not alone in defending a philosophical view bringing Plato and Aristotle under a common heading within the grand narrative of the Western philosophical tradition. For instance, let us remind ourselves of the quite disparaging words of Bertrand Russell stigmatizing the secret complicity between Aristotle and his master: Aristotle’s Metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily. When one tries to understand him, one thinks part of the time that he is expressing the ordinary views of a person innocent of philosophy, and the rest of the time that he is setting forth Platonism with a new vocabulary. (Russell, 1946, p. 150)

We could also think of Derrida’s (1967a, pp.  11–2) broad construal of the “phono-logocentric metaphysics of presence,” lumping together not only Plato and Aristotle but also the whole of the so-called Western philosophical tradition (including Heidegger and even the early Levinas). Now, in these cases, what unites Aristotle and Plato is either a set of explicitly professed theories (Russell) or an unspoken tacit presupposition (Derrida). It is not, like in Husserl, the idea of a shared “attitude” that is turned into a deliberately assumed “task” whose repetition is justified by the persistence of a certain theoretical and practical distress. The fact is that Russell and Derrida are satisfied with their own historical places and look at the pair Plato-Aristotle somehow from the outside. They believe to see what the latter could not see; they assume they are aware of something which neither Plato nor Aristotle were aware of. They have reached a peak (historical and theoretical) where the common ground on which both the Lyceum and the Academy are supposedly built appears at clear distance. In short, they are above and beyond the authors they are talking about. By contrast, Husserl openly locates himself within the very tradition he is willing to describe. Being himself part of the “infinite Academy,” part of a past that has not passed yet, he sees his own activity not as a way of understanding what Plato and Aristotle did not or could not understand—be it accidentally or essentially—but as the latest attempt to do what they were also trying to do, although by different means. Husserl sees himself as one of the characters of the mosaic. Accordingly, his overall reconstructive narrative is neither supposed to criticize the Greek ancestors of Western Philosophy from a Modern point of view, nor is it meant to endorse the more or less nostalgic view according to which the Greeks “got” something that we,

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Moderns, have sadly lost. In Husserl’s view, contemporary philosophy is still struggling with the same issues that have prompted the historical beginning of philosophy itself. It is still fighting against the skeptical tendencies of sophistry and is still tormented by the same distress that other asymptotic Platonists like Descartes had to face some centuries later (see Hua I, pp. 46–7). If there is a philosophia perennis, there is also an angustia perennis. Sure, if one looks at Husserl’s narrative with a certain detachment, it is not hard to recognize something of the famous saying “nanos gigantum humeris insidentes” acting behind his account of the history of philosophy, something quite trivial indeed. But the idea that the unresolved conflict with skeptical sophistry still haunts the philosopher of the twentieth century, just as it haunted Descartes in the sixteenth and all “philosophical beginners” from the fifth century B.C. on, gives an entirely different flavor to this Medieval phrase. Because philosophy so far has failed to fully recognize the truth of sophistry, sophistry still carries the power to undermine the truth of philosophy and to restate the problem of transcendence; because the philosopher has failed to master the sophist from within, the sophist has ultimately mastered the philosopher. As a result, philosophy has variously turned into a practical-­axiological attitude toward the Weltall disguised in theoretical clothes. A sort of “secular religion” or “logical mythology,” where there are “so many philosophers and almost equally many philosophies” (Hua I, p. 46); where sciences, whose defining concepts remain unclarified, dismiss their “philosophical” status and turn into mere “theoretical technologies”19; and where the choice of a philosophical theory over another sometimes seems to be a mere matter of taste. Hence Husserl’s saddened and scornful remark in the Introduction to the Cartesian Meditations: Instead of a unitary living philosophy, we have a philosophical literature growing beyond all bounds and almost without coherence. Instead of a serious discussion among conflicting theories that, in their very conflict, demonstrate the intimacy with which they belong together, the commonness of their underlying convictions, and an unswerving belief in a true philosophy, we have a pseudo-reporting and a pseudo-criticizing, a mere semblance of genuine philosophizing with and for one another. […] To be sure, we still have philosophical congresses. The philosophers meet but, unfortunately, not the philosophies. The philosophies lack the unity of a mental space in which they might exist for and act on one another. It may be that, within each of the many different ‘schools’ or ‘lines of thought,’ the situation is somewhat better. Still, with the existence of these in isolation, the total philosophical present is essentially as we have described it. In this unhappy present, is not our situation similar to the one encountered by Descartes in his youth? (Hua I, pp. 46–7)

If Husserl appears to be critical with respect to the “philosophy” of his own time, it is precisely because he thinks that what Plato and Aristotle could not achieve, what they have transmitted to the infinite Academy as a valuable project, is now wrongly deemed unachievable. What motivated the genuinely critical stance of philosophy—i.e., the confrontation with the Sophist and the interest into the

 This point is extremely well taken and understood within the general framework of Husserl’s Krisis in Trizio (2016). 19

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Weltall—is no longer felt as a driving and compelling force for thinking and acting. The existence of the world is taken for granted, and the existence of truth has become indifferent. The Sophist has won over the genuine Philosopher because no one feels the need to take its challenge seriously anymore. The philosophia perennis has become outdated, because the angustia perennis has been numbed. This diagnosis widely explains why Husserl’s relation to asymptotic Platonists like Plato, Aristotle or Descartes is not the relation that a commentator, an advocate or an opponent would have with respect to the specific doctrines of these authors. Husserl barely quotes any text and his allusions to Plato’s, Aristotle’s or Descartes’s actual doctrines are always vague and generally elusive; he does not extract from the Aristotelian-Platonic corpus any particular “argument” to discuss or test; he does not uncover any hidden “presupposition” to expose or de-construct; he does not want to go “back” (zurück) to the Ancient Greeks or to the Cartesian origin of Modernity (Hua XXV, p. 206). What we have instead is the explicit endorsement of an overall project, of a way of conceiving philosophy as well as the employment of the most promising conceptual tools developed in the philosophical tradition, freely mixed up, readjusted and allegedly improved, in order to fulfill the proper task of this project. It is, therefore, not a matter of interpreting an author or a text, but of contributing to a cause. Husserl confronts the history of philosophy not as a hermeneut, but as an activist. In this sense, Husserl’s anti-hermeneutical approach is akin to what historians of Ancient Philosophy have studied under the name of “βοήθεια”, “true help.” The term is probably introduced by Aristotle to refer—perhaps mockingly—to those Academics (Speusippus, Xenocrates) who tried to “rescue” Plato’s cosmological picture of the Timæus from its contradictions (De Cælo I, 10 297b32-280a2). More generally, it is used to describe different authors having approached Plato’s doctrines with the idea of “lending a helping hand,” as it were, and bolstering the gist of his philosophy by any means. This would happen in two different ways: (Boēth.1) one could help Plato by explicitly “correcting” his doctrine on some controversial points—as did Speusippus with his rejection of the intelligible forms (see Met. Z, 2; A, 6; M, 8–9); (Boēth.2) or one could also tacitly introduce new elements, often taken from the conceptual toolkits of rival schools (mostly the Stoics), if not from Aristotle’s “system” itself, considered from the outset as consistent with Plato’s—as it will happen in later forms of Platonism (see Sect. 3.3). Obviously, the procedure generates varieties of more or less overtly assumed philosophical contaminations. But this was deemed to be acceptable since the βοήθεια was not supposed to provide a mere apology nor to preserve a binding form of orthodoxy. It was rather a way to introduce—explicitly or implicitly—a pragmatically acceptable degree of heterodoxy useful to restate and reinforce the overall validity of the original claims defended. Mutatis mutandis, this is exactly what Husserl does: he both corrects and contaminates Plato for Plato’s sake. The only difference, however, as we have seen—and this is a crucial difference —, is that his βοήθεια is not intended to lend a hand to Plato’s doctrines themselves, but to that

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Platonism of which Plato’s doctrines were merely the first factual example. Husserl, then, quite literally, tries to “help out;” he sees himself as giving his specific, hopefully decisive, contribution to the still valuable cause of the infinite Academy—just as Aristotle, Descartes and many others had done before him.

3.2 Objections Despite this charming idea of a “helpful” Husserl, one might suspect the overall narrative sketched above to be afflicted by fairly modern prejudices. In fact, even if we leave aside for the moment the transcendental issue and the question of the unsurpassable weight of the natural attitude (both related to the more technical core of Husserl’s thought), there are certainly quite compelling reasons to contest Husserl’s idea of an infinite Academy. To begin with, one might be tempted to ask whether the very idea of a somehow “systematic Plato,” fundamentally compatible with Aristotle, the Stoics, Descartes, Leibniz etc. is anything more than a plain and simple myth: a myth made of a quite recent and patently Modern fabric. Besides, was the “true” Plato really a systematic thinker? As is well known, Plato delivered his thoughts in the fragmentary form of dialogues. Such dialogues are sometimes aporetic and sometimes lead to quite conflicting views. Moreover, even the picture of a systematic Aristotle is far from being uncontroversial. If one follows Aubenque’s (1962) famous reading of the Metaphysics, for instance, Aristotle appears not as “the master of those who know,” but also as the hesitant and open-ended “travel companion of those who search.” Aristotle looks for a science that does not and cannot exist, but which can only be sought: the science of being qua being. Finally, one could also recall that major and incompatible disagreements oppose many of the authors happily lumped together by Husserl. One might in fact have serious reservations, for instance, about the actual possibility of making Aristotle’s term logic and his ontology of the substance compatible with a Stoic propositional logic and their ontology of the something in general. Even more generally, one could also cast some serious doubts on the actual extent to which, notwithstanding their manifest differences, both Aristotle and the Stoics should be seen as pursuing the same “Platonic” agenda—and if one adds Descartes or Leibniz to the picture, things become even more byzantine. In sum, for all these reasons, it may sound fairly reasonable—at least prima facie—to brand Husserl’s picture of the history of philosophy, with its improbable eclectic syncretism, as the vagary of “the last of modern rationalists” (Granel, 1976). Husserl seems to be unaware of the complexity of the history of philosophy and is therefore victim of its unspoken commitments and unshakable prejudices. And yet it is precisely the complexity of the history of philosophy that, at least in part, may come to the rescue of Husserl’s picture.

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3.3 Distortions Allow me now a short digression. In one of his most luminous studies, Richard Sorabji (1991) has once examined the historical development of the concept of intentionality from Aristotle to Brentano. As is well known, Brentano had repeatedly claimed that his account of intentional in-existence was somehow “Aristotelian” and maintained that Aristotle’s doctrine of the αἴσθησις as presented in De An. II, 12 supports a very similar idea, if not the exact same view (Brentano, 1874, pp. 115–6; 1975, pp. 119–20). Brentano’s claim is that a concept (here “intentional in-existence”) deserves to be called “Aristotelian” if it is faithful to some of Aristotle’s original insights, i.e., if one of its versions can be explicitly found, with some degree of approximation, in Aristotle’s texts. Following this lead, some prominent scholars have confirmed Brentano’s account and found a Brentano-like theory of intentionality in Aristotle.20 Sorabji’s study, however, put this whole picture literally upside-down. In the course of a very detailed historical survey, he pointed out—somehow paradoxically—that if Brentano’s “intentional inexistence” does indeed deserve to be called “Aristotelian,” it is precisely because nothing similar can be found in Aristotle’s own account of the αἴσθησις. As a matter of fact, it was only after a centuries-long series of “revisions,” “transformations,” and “distortions” of Aristotle’s originally physiological theory of perceptual visual process that his account of the αἴσθησις could finally turn into something sufficiently differentiated and dematerialized to foster Brentano’s interpretation in terms of intentional in-existence. This series of revisions made by various waves of commentators (some of them having Neoplatonic or Stoic inclinations) deeply modified the original Aristotelian account of sense-perception, finally changing it into something completely different from Aristotle’s original view. Thus, Brentano’s concept of intentionality should not be labeled as “Aristotelian” because of its putative elaboration from, or agreement with, Aristotle’s theory of mind. Rather, to put it in Sorabji’s terms, Brentano’s concept should be labeled as “Aristotelian” because it was the “culmination of a series of distortions” whose starting point and basic materials are actually to be found in Aristotle: we have seen that the reinterpretation of Aristotle was […] the work of commentators, whether Christian, pagan, or Muslim. It was the commentators who made possible Brentano’s interpretation and who lent authority to his important new proposal for the philosophy of mind. Brentano’s interpretation should not be taken at face value, but seen for what it is, the culmination of a series of distortions. The moral is that in the history of philosophy the distortions of commentators can be more fruitful than fidelity. (Sorabji, 1991, p. 248)

One could push this claim even further and add that—at least sometimes— “distortions” as such, not only those made by commentators, can be “more fruitful than fidelity.” This brings us immediately back to Husserl, who is certainly quite 20

 I have discussed the complexity of the issue in Majolino (2016).

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unfaithful to his authors and whose picture surely introduces a set of distortions, which in turn are layered on previous distortions that could finally be traced back to Plato’s or Aristotle’s texts. Thus, instead of blaming Husserl for not being faithful to his sources, a more interesting exercise would be to reconstruct the chain of distortions leading to his historical narrative. More precisely, what should be the focus of our attention now is the “fruitfulness” of Husserl’s specific distortion. Or, to put it in a slightly different way: one should try to identify whether Husserl’s account proves to be conceptually productive and what this productivity amounts to.

3.4 Fruitful Distortions But what is the word “fruitful” supposed to mean? How do we decide whether a distortion is fruitful or not? Sorabji’s answer is not explicit on this point—nor did it have to be. A tentative answer to this question could be drawn, however, from a very different source. Following Max Black’s distinction between “emphasis and resonance” in his classification of metaphors, one could tentatively state that in order to be “fruitful” (as opposed to “sterile” or “trivial”), a philosophical distortion has to be both highly “emphatic” and extremely “resonant” (Black, 1979, pp.  25–7). A metaphor, Black says, is “emphatic” if it allows “no variation upon or substitute for the words used” (Black, 1979, p. 26) and it is “resonant” insofar as it “supports a high degree of implicative elaboration” (p. 27). On the contrary, trivial metaphors are, on the one hand, “expendable, optional, decorative or ornamental” (as for their emphasis) and, on the other, “poorly implicative” (as for their resonance). Mutatis mutandis, I would like to maintain that something similar holds for philosophically relevant conceptual distortions. Some of them—as Herman’s (2013a, b) Plato vs. Aristotle personality divide leading to the cat vs. dog dilemma (see Sect. 1.1)—are certainly trivial (i.e., emphatically dispensable, for many other quite interchangeable concepts could have done the very same job); and quite unproductive (i.e., poorly resonant, for they do not ask to be carried out and developed in any significant way, but simply accepted and re-­ stated in similar forms). Other distortions, as in Sorabji’s (1991) reconstruction of the Aristotelian genesis of the concept of “intentional in-existence,” are not expendable, implicatively rich and, in that very precise sense, they can now be safely labeled as “fruitful” in a very specific sense. The new question is then the following: is Husserl’s distortion a “fruitful” one?

3.5 A Middle-Platonist Pattern of Distortion If I have chosen the mosaic of Pompeii as a heuristic guide to Husserl’s infinite Academy, it is not merely for ornamental reasons. The picture could also be of a certain help precisely to assess the great “emphasis” and extreme “resonance” of

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Husserl’s specific distortion, whose complexity would have likely remained unnoticed, if not for the clues of our mosaic. Realized at the beginning of the first century AD from a Greek original of the Hellenistic period (Gaiser, 1980, pp. 8–12), the mosaic of Pompeii appears in a time when discussions about Plato’s true legacy and its “symphony” (συμφωνία) or “harmony” (ἁρμονία) with Aristotle’s doctrines were at their height. That Aristotle may count as “Plato’s most authentic disciple” (γνησιώτατος τῶν Πλάτωνος μαθητῶν) (see Diog. Laert., V, 1, 6) was a quite widespread view in Antiquity.21 By contrast, what is far more distinctive is the view that some of Aristotle’s concepts, blended with various Stoic insights, could be tacitly or explicitly attributed to Plato himself in order to recover the genuine spirit of Platonism from its skeptical deformations. This view would eventually spread out at about the same time the mosaic was created, when we find that oftentimes neglected strand of the ancient philosophical tradition known as “Middle Platonism.” Since its introduction by Karl Prächter, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the label “Middle Platonism” has been extensively discussed and variously criticized (see Brittain, 2008, pp. 527–38). The vagueness of the term suggests already that it is neither the name of a school nor that of a full-fledged and homogeneous philosophical movement, harboring a set of relatively consistent doctrines. “Middle Platonism” is rather a historiographical stratagem to put under a common heading various authors having claimed to be “Platonists” between the end of the Hellenistic Academy and the beginning of Neoplatonism.22 Chronologically squeezed between the anti-systematic skeptical outcomes of the New Academy and the highly sophisticated system of Plotinus, so-called “Middle Platonists” wrote in a time when—as Bonazzi (2015, p.  73) beautifully puts it—Platonism was moving (not unlike Husserl himself) “toward the s­ystem” (verso il sistema) without actually having one. Fascinated by the strong systematic consistency of the rival Stoic school and, at the same time, adamant about “helping” Plato’s doctrines by all means, a whole

 As reported by Simplicius (In Phys. 242, 28-9) the early peripatetic Eudemus of Rhodes already considered Aristotle’s philosophy as an expansion of Plato’s teachings. The view of a “Platonic” Aristotle has been recently defended by Gerson (2005). 22  It is, very broadly, “the Platonism between Antiochus and Plotinus” (Opsomer, 1998, p.  13). Often overlooked and mostly studied only as a step toward “Neoplatonism,” the Middle Platonic “tradition” has been somehow rediscovered in the last 40 years. On the topic see Dillon (1977, 1993), Opsomer (1998), Tarrant (2000), Boys-Stones (2001), Karamanolis (2006). For a recent overview see Bonazzi (2015, pp.  73–109). Needless to say, the acknowledgment of Middle Platonism (let alone of the actual and quite complex long-term history of Platonism) for the history of phenomenology is next to zero. While—mainly thanks to Derrida (1972, p.  77) and Ricœur (2004, p.  203)—Neoplatonism in general, and Plotinus in particular, have been variously and vaguely associated with the post-Heideggerian deconstructive project (see also Aubenque, 2009, pp. 33–66), the host of names forming the scattered universe of Middle Platonism has been plainly and simply ignored in phenomenology. I will briefly come back to the issue of Neoplatonism in the last part of this chapter. 21

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host of authors writing roughly between 80  B.C. and A.D. 220, have pushed the βοήθεια (see Sect. 3.1) to a remarkable degree of complexity. It will be my contention that, at least in some of its most peculiar moments, “Middle Platonism” understands Plato’s heritage and his “symphony” with Aristotle through a certain “pattern of distortions” that could soundly and compellingly be paralleled with the general tenets (Plat.1-5) used by Husserl in his lectures to define the Platonic ideal. Identifying a “Middle Platonist” patent theme of distortions, of which Husserl’s narrative of the infinite Academy could be a distinctive variation, strikes me as a quite promising move. A move that—without turning Husserl into a “Middle Platonist” or vice-versa—could help detecting some unsuspected aspects of his transcendental phenomenological contribution to genuine philosophy, i.e., aspects that are not sufficiently emphasized in Husserl’s explicit account of the history of philosophy. This, at least, will be my bargain.

3.6 Antiochus So let us start with the obvious. As succinctly reminded by Karamanolis, The majority of Platonists in this era shared the view that Aristotle’s philosophy, when understood in the right spirit, is essentially compatible with Plato’s doctrine, as they interpreted it. Platonists actually maintained that the core of Aristotle’s philosophy both supports and complements Plato’s philosophy, and this, they argued, was not accidental. (Karamanolis, 2006, p. 3)23

Antiochus of Ascalon (about 130-68 BC),24 for instance, is reported to have claimed a strong continuity between Aristotle and Plato (Cicero, Acad. 1. 17-8; De fin. 5. 7). Their philosophically consistent “systems,” so he argues, have in fact set the agenda for Peripatetic and Academic scholars alike (Acad. 2. 15). According to Varro’s report, who in Cicero’s Academics speaks on Antiochus behalf, the latter believed that “there was no difference between the Peripatetics and the Old Academy” (nihil enim inter Peripateticos et illam veterem Academiam differebat) (Acad. 1. 17). He would have also maintained that, although called by different names, the two schools “agree about the matters in question” (rebus congruentes) and have “a common source” (idem fons) (Acad. 1. 17). The fundamental a­ ssumption of Antiochus was, of course, that Plato did have a system (Acad. 2. 27-9). This belief was nourished by the fact that the rival Stoic school, very prominent at the time, was

 See also Karamanolis (2006, pp.  331–6). To this brief reminder, one could immediately add Sorabji’s (1990, p. 5) following remark: “Not for the only time in the history of philosophy […], a perfectly crazy position (harmony) proved philosophically fruitful. To establish the harmony of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers had to think up new ideas, and the result was an amalgam different from either of the two original philosophies.” 24  On Antiochus, see Dillon (1977, pp. 52–105); Barnes (1989, pp. 51–96); and Karamanolis (2006, pp. 44–84). 23

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indeed a system of doctrines (δόγματα), built on a tight intertwinement of logic, physics/metaphysics and, most importantly, ethics.25 Antiochus also maintained that, as a rational enterprise—fundamentally theoretical, but ultimately aiming at the establishment of a virtuous “art of living” (De fin. 3.4, 5. 16)—philosophy had to bolster a steady knowledge of “what is there” and, on that basis, promote the attainment of a “good life”: The knowledge of virtue provides the highest evidence for the fact that we can grasp and understand many things. On this sole basis rests, we claim, science—that we do not take to be the mere comprehension of things, but a comprehension that is stable and immutable— and wisdom, the art of living that finds steadiness in itself (Maxime vero virtutum cognitio confirmat percipi et comprehendi multa posse. In quibus solis inesse etiam scientiam dicimus, quam nos non comprehensionem modo rerum sed eam stabilem quoque et immutabilem esse censemus, itemque sapientiam artem vivendi, quae ipsa ex sese habeat constantiam). (Cicero, Acad. 2. 23)

Following this path, he therefore criticizes the skeptical tendencies of the New Academy, and he does so from what he takes to be the “genuine” (verum) standpoint of Plato’s creeds. Philosophy is a science (scientia) whose task is not just the pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of a truth that is certain (rata); it is a science dealing not just with things, but with things that are immutable (immutabiles): “It cannot be doubted: none of the principles of the wise man can be false, and not being false is not enough; they have to be stable, fixed, certain (stabile fixum ratum), unshakable by any reasoning” (Acad. 2. 27). This is a standpoint that, again, Antiochus assumes to be shared by Platonists, Peripatetics and Stoics (Acad. 2. 11-18). Because of this putative “Grand Alliance,” he feels entitled to introduce strong Stoic elements in what should be a Platonic theory of knowledge (see Dillon, 1977, pp. 63–9). At any rate, once the principles (decreta) of genuine philosophy are established, any skeptical contravention counts as a “crime” (scelum) against the “law of truth” (lex veri) (Acad. 2. 27). And if we add that Antiochus’s cosmology also identifies a pair of first principles (principia), ποιότης and ὕλη, which are described by a mixture of Platonic allusions to the Timæus couched in a Stoic jargon (Acad. 2. 27 ff.), we find already—mutatis mutandis—a first variety of all five key tenets of genuine “Platonic” philosophy (Plat.1-5) that are identified by Husserl (see Sect. 2.3).26

 These are precisely the Stoic terms in which Antiochus describes Plato’s alleged heritage: “There was a tripartite distinction of philosophy inherited from Plato: the first part was about life and morals, the second about nature and the things that are hidden, the third about arguing and what is true or false” (Fuit ergo iam accepta a Platone philosophandi ratio triplex, una de vita et moribus, altea de natura et rebus occultis, tertia de disserendo et quid verum quid falsum) (Acad. 1. 19). 26  Although some information can be gathered about Antiochus’s cosmology, Cicero does not say anything about his metaphysics. Nor is there any evidence of an Antiochian distinction between a first and a second philosophy. Dillon (1977, p. 81), however, suspects that this absence might have to do more with Cicero’s selective interests than with Antiochus’s lack of concern about broadly metaphysical issues. 25

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3.7 Atticus A slightly different case is that of the more aggressive “Middle Platonist” called Atticus (c. 175 AD).27 Unlike Antiochus, Atticus rejects the idea of a strong continuity between Plato and Aristotle. On the contrary, in the short treatise Against Those Who Please Themselves In Interpreting the Doctrine of Plato Through That of Aristotle, he massively denies all possible “harmony” between the two authors. Atticus confirms however Antiochus’s ground-idea, according to which Plato was the first to bring philosophy to the level of a “complete unity” (ὁλόκληρος) (fr. 1. 19–23, 34). Plato, he claims, is the one who, more than anybody else, has “brought to unity all the parts of philosophy (συναγείρας εἰς ἓν πάντα τὰ τῆς φιλοσοφίας μέρη) that, before him, were scattered” (fr. 1. 20-3). Atticus’s explicit reference is to the theoretical enterprise of the Pre-Socratics. Not having brought philosophy to the unity of a “system,” Pre-Socratic thinkers are philosophers in a very different sense: they work on this or that subject matter but have no vision of the whole (fr. 1. 24–32). By contrast, “the Platonic is at home everywhere, whether he deals with nature, ethics or dialectics” (πάντων ἕφαμεν μετεῖναι τῶι Πλατωνικῶι καὶ φυσιολογοῦντι καὶ περὶ ἠθῶν λέγοντι καὶ διαλεγομένωι) (fr. 1, 37-9). Then again, if Aristotle should not be used to read Plato, it is precisely because Aristotle is not a philosopher in a genuine sense. He is more like a Pre-Socratic scientist: he merely observes and records what is experienced (fr. 5. 13-5; 6. 34-4). Finally, just as Antiochus, Atticus attributes to Plato a Stoic tripartite distinction of philosophy (fr. 1. 8-11; 2, 1-5). He openly refers to a doctrine of the first transcendent principles (fr. 1. 14-6) and ends up identifying, in a quite confusing way, three interrelated ἀρχαί (Matter, the Demiurge, and the Ideas) providing an account later scornfully criticized by Porphyry (see Procl, In Tim., 1, 391 6ff.). In sum, although rejecting the “harmonizing” view, Atticus’s polemic treatise shares the same Platonic tenets of Antiochus: there is a coherent and methodologically structured Platonic system, dealing with the whole of what is there; within such system, ontology, logic and theory of knowledge appear to be mutually consistent and intimately articulated; such a system ultimately serves the purpose of a better ethical life; and it finally rests on a doctrine of the first principles.28

 On Atticus, see Dillon (1977, pp. 247–58); Tarrant (2000, pp. 65–7); and Karamanolis (2006, pp. 150–90). 28  To be fair, Atticus’s treatise makes no explicit reference to the critique of skepticism or sophistry. But this latter point can be safely taken for granted, because of the general Middle Platonic rebuttal of the skepticism of the Hellenistic Academy. As for Plutarch’s relative exception, see Sect. 3.9. 27

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3.8 Aristocles If we cross the line and move to the Peripatetic side, a similar and even more explicit account can be found in Aristocles of Messene (c. 1st century AD).29 Aristocles believed that Aristotle and Plato shared the very same principles of a “genuine way of doing philosophy” (ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφεῖν) (fr. 7, 9, 3). Not unlike his Middle Platonic counterparts (Antiochus and Atticus), he credits Plato for having pursued, more than anyone else, an authentic and complete system of philosophy (Ἐφιλοσόφησε δὲ Πλάτων εἰ καί τις ἄλλος τῶν πώποτε γνησίως καὶ περὶ τελείος) (fr. 1, 1, 1-2).30 A system rooted in the priority of the whole (παντός) over its parts (fr. 1, 7, 1-7) and in which both “senses and reason (αἰσθήσις καὶ τὸν λόγον) are employed to obtain the knowledge of things” (fr. 7, 9, 3-5). If this is the way of “genuine philosophy” (ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφεῖν), whoever loses it should not be called a philosopher at all, “for it takes away the very principle of philosophy (ἀναίροῦσάν γε δὴ τὰς τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν ἀρχάς)” (fr. 4, 30, 3-4). Not unexpectedly, those who have lost their way and are responsible for the destruction (ἀναίρεσις) of philosophy’s true principles are the Sceptics (fr. 4), the Cyrenaics (fr. 5), the Sophists (fr. 6) and the Epicureans (fr. 8). As for the Stoics, once their materialistic commitment is put aside, their doctrine of the principles—one active and one passive—perfectly squares with Plato’s principles of beings (τῶν ὄντων), i.e., “matter and god” (ὕλην καὶ θεόν) (fr. 3, 1). Again, all the themes of which Husserl’s (Plat.1-5) are late variations can also be heard in Aristocles’s fragments.

3.9 Plutarch But, as far as we are concerned, the most interesting case is certainly that of Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 50–120 AD).31 Plutarch surely shares, although in different forms, most—if not all—of the key tenets discussed so far. Not only does he tacitly absorb Stoic logical concepts into a Platonic system but he also openly maintains that Aristotelian and Stoic logic originate—if are not already entirely in place—in Plato (An. Proc. 1023e; Adv. Col. 1115d ff). This fact, however, does not prevent him from harshly criticizing the Stoic epistemology (De Com. not. 1082e), metaphysics (De Com. not. 1073d-1074d) and ethics (De virt. morali, 441c and passim), whenever they openly “contradict” (ἀντιλέγοντες) Plato’s views. The same holds for his approach to Aristotle’s views (Adv. Col. 115c). Now, these forms of appraisal can also be found, in more or less refined ways, in other Middle Platonists. But Plutarch is important also for two additional reasons.  On Aristocles of Messene, see Chiesara (2001, pp. xiv–xlii).  Chiesara (2001) repeatedly insists on this point see pp. 61–2 and passim. 31  On Plutarch’s extremely rich philosophy see Dillon (1977, pp.  184–230), Opsomer (1998, pp. 127–212), and Karamanolis (2006, pp. 85–126). 29 30

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Firstly, Plutarch is one of the rare “Middle Platonists” who refrains from stigmatizing the skeptical tendencies of the New Academy. Interestingly enough, he recognizes the value of what we have called “the truth of skepticism;” and he does so by defending the thesis of the unity of Plato’s Academy. He therefore maintains that Academic skepticism should not be regarded as a falsification of Plato’s genuine philosophy but as something that, rightfully understood, has its full place within the latter (Adv. Col. 1121f-1122e).32 Secondly, and even more importantly, Plutarch openly recurs to the Pythagorean language to describe the first principles in terms of “one” and “many.” Of the supreme principles (τῶν ἀνωτάτων ἀρχῶν)—I mean the one and the indefinite dyad—the second, being the element underlying all formlessness and disarrangement (ἡ μὲν ἀμορφίας πάσης στοιχεῖον οὖσα καὶ ἀταξίας), has been called limitlessness (ἀπειρία); but the nature of the one limits and arrests (ὁρίζουσα καὶ καταλαμβάνουσα) what is empty and irrational and indeterminate (τὸ κενὸν καὶ ἂλογον καὶ ἀόριστον) in limitlessness, gives it shape, and renders it in some way tolerant and receptive of definition. (Def. Or., 428f, 1-5)

Plutarch’s latter move is, again, far from being isolated. Identifying varieties of the one/many first principles (with or without a higher Principle raising above both) was in fact a quite common and very distinctive features of Middle Platonism. This was especially the case for the so-called “Platonizing Pythagoreans”: authors that— from Eudorus of Alexandria (late first century B.C.) to Numenius of Apamea (150–200 A.D.)33—used to handle first principles by drawing from Plato’s alleged Unwritten Teachings, which were regarded as substantially identical with Pythagoras’s numerological doctrines. This tendency is especially clear in Eudorus, who expounds the following “Pythagorean/Platonic” view: According to the highest account, one has to affirm that the Pythagoreans maintain that the principle of all things is the one [τὸ ἓν ἀρχὴν τῶν πάντων]; yet, according to a second account, two are the principles of the generated things, the one and the nature opposed to it (δύο ἀρχὰς τῶν ἀποτελουμένων εἶναι, τό τε ἓν καὶ τὴν ἐναντίαν τούτῳ φύσιν). (fr. 3, 3-5)

Eudorus’s text is extremely explicit: it is clearly a matter of dispute whether the “one” alone is the highest principle or whether it needs to share its privilege with its opposite, “the many.” What is undisputed, however, is the fact that these Pythagorean notions can be somehow legitimately conveyed within a genuinely Platonic conceptual framework. Of the two rival options, Eudorus will ultimately choose the first; he

 On the topic see Opsomer (1998, pp. 127–62). Challenging the widespread opposition between a skeptical Hellenistic Academy and a dogmatic Middle Platonism, the author also shows how Plutarch belongs to an “important current in Middle Platonism” in which the systematic and metaphysical interpretation of the whole of Platonic philosophy is not necessarily at odds with the spirit of the New Academy (p. 14). 33  On Eudorus, see Dillon (1977, pp. 115–35); Tarrant (2000, pp. 72–4) and Bonazzi (2005). On Numenius, see the classical Dillon (1977, pp.  361–78); Karamanolis (2006, pp.  127–49) and Guthrie (2008), who interestingly addresses the issue of the “compatibility” between Pythagoreanism and Aristotle (pp.  132–6). Numenius’s incredibly complex doctrine of the first principles, distinguishing between three (or two!) Gods, ranked in terms of fatherhood and layered on the one/dyad distinction is discussed by Proclus (In Tim. 1 303, 27f). 32

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will thus introduce a highest “One” above the lower-order twin principles of the monad and the dyad (see Simplicius, In Phys. 5, 181, 7-30). Plutarch will rather take the second path and stick to the idea of two equal-level and evenly original opposing principles. By doing this, his doctrine of the principles meets that of Speusippus and Xenocrates, i.e., the head of the Old Academy after Plato’s death and “the second founder of Platonism” (Dillon, 1977, p.  22). As reported by Aristotle, Speusippus admitted, next to the ἓν, a second irreducible principle, the πλῆθος (Met. N, 4, 1091b30-2 = fr. 35a Lang). As for Iamblichus (Comm. Math. IV, 15, 5-18), he describes Speusippus’s account in the following terms: one must postulate two first and highest principles (δυό τὰς πρωτίστας καὶ ἀνωτάτω ὑποθετέον ἀρχάς): the one (that should not even be called being, because of its simplicity (διὰ τὸ ἁπλοῦν εἶναι) and because of its position as principle of everything that is (διὰ τὸ ἀρχήν μὲν ὑπάρχειν τῶν ὄντων)—it being granted that a principle is in no way like those things of which it is the principle); and another principle, that of the many, which is able of itself to initiate division, and which, if we were able to describe its nature most suitably, we would like to compare to a completely fluid and flexible matter (ἢν καὶ διαίρεσιν οἷόν τ’εἶναι καθ’αὑτὸ παρέχεσθαι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὑργᾷ τινι παντάπασι καὶ εὐπλαδεῖ ὕλῃ προσηκόντως εἰς δύναμιν παραδεικνύντες, ἀποφαίνοιμεν ἂν ὁμοίαν εἶναι).

The one and the many are thus “potencies” (δυνάμεις)34 or “seeds” (σπέρματα) of everything that is (see Aristotle, Met. Λ, 7, 1072b30ff; Ps. Alex. Aphr. In. Met. 699, 28 ff.). They are not “being” but that from which everything is generated and comes to being. And, interestingly enough, the second principle, often identified with matter, is called by Xenocrates the “everflowing” (ἀέναον) or, literally, what is perpetually non-one (ἀ-ἕν) (DK fr. 28H).

3.10 Heuristic Disclaimer Whether Plato actually had a set of Pythagoras-like “unwritten doctrines”—as indicated by Aristotle (Met. A 6, 987a29 ff), restated by Simplicius (In Phys. 151 6ff) and strenuously defended by the Tübingen school (see Gaiser, 1963)—should not bother us here.35 Nor do we really need to spell out in detail Plato’s alleged doctrine of the Monad and the Indefinite Dyad, out of which everything would be derived, from mathematical entities through ideas down to sensible things (cf. Met. Z, 2,

 See Ioannes Philop. In Arist. Metaph. “principia enim semper imperfect, potentia cum sint”(fr. 34d Lang; see also the edition of Speusippus’s fragments by Isnardi-Parente (1980), p. 90). 35  To be fair, I sympathize rather with the opposite camp. Even if one were to accept the existence of such doctrines, this would not necessarily lead to the massively speculative picture of Plato fostered by Gaiser & Co. On the topic see Fronterotta (1993), Besnier (1996) and especially Brisson (2000, pp. 15–110) 34

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1028b18-24; M, 8, 1083a20-35).36 And it won’t even be necessary to dwell into the otherwise important differences between Speusippus’s and Xenocrates’s account of the principles and their relation to the ideas. As far as we are concerned here, what really matters is the following: (a) drawing from Aristotle’s testimony and the work of Plato’s successors (Speusippus, but mostly Xenocrates), and (b) within the strongly systematic framework of an overall defense of Plato’s doctrine, (c) “Middle Platonists”—like Eudorus, Plutarch and many others—although in different ways and various forms, did explicitly consider the one and the many as the “first principles” of everything that is. Principles that, in turn, should not be understood in terms of being, but rather as “potencies,” “seeds” or even “roots.” We will have to come back to this point later on (see Sect. 5).

4 A Matter of Principles (I): εἶδος 4.1 Building the Heuristic Filter It does not seem necessary to provide further examples of what we have called the patent “theme” or “pattern of distortions” of which Husserl’s narrative appears to be a variation.37 The previous section should have sufficiently shown that—without being strictly identical in their content or occurring each time altogether, and taking very different and sometimes contrasting forms—varieties of all the general tenets singled out by Husserl to define the Platonic way to “genuine philosophy” (see Sect. 2.5) are massively present in the debates of Middle Platonism. But the previous section should also have revealed some distinctive themes that we did not find explicitly stated in Husserl’s narrative. Reading Husserl through a Middle Platonic heuristic filter38 has now a twofold effect: it gives historical depth to some of

 An interesting attempt has recently been made to directly connect, through a very particular reading of Jacob Klein (1934, 1985), Husserl’s phenomenology with Plato’s alleged unwritten doctrines (see Hopkins, 2010, 2011). I have already discussed this approach (see Majolino, 2012). As will be readily apparent from the present study, however, I have some doubts about the legitimacy—let alone the necessity—of using, at face value, arithmological considerations to frame Husserl’s overall view. Moreover, as already pointed out, I also have reasons to believe that no straightforward opposition Plato vs. Aristotle could do the job of clarifying Husserl’s overall position within the complex history of the Platonic tradition. Hopkins’s work has nevertheless the undisputable merit of having recognized the importance of situating Husserl within the broader framework of Plato’s heritage. 37  Again, we will leave aside here the complex question of the actual extent of such distortions, i.e., how much “philosophical justice” is done to Plato and Aristotle by taking them seriously. As far as we are concerned here, we should simply assume that these are distortions (and they may not be), without further dwelling upon their degree of “faithfulness” (see Sects. 3.3, 3.4, 5.6 and 5.7). 38  That is, taking Middle Platonism neither as a mere “parallel,” nor as an “ancestor,” an “influence” or an “anticipation” but as a “metaphor” for transcendental phenomenology—in the specific sense spelled out above on the basis of Max Black’s analysis of metaphor (see Sect. 3.4). 36

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Husserl’s claims we were already familiar with, and calls attention to some additional claims we totally ignored. More specifically, we have: (i) the idea of one “genuine philosophy” (ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφεῖν), (ii) inaugurated by Plato, (iii) dealing with the whole of everything that is in its innermost union and inner articulations, (iv) looking for the first principles of everything that is (matter/quality; matter/ god; matter/demiurge/ideas; god/ideas(numbers)/matter; one/many; one/ monad-dyad, etc.), (v) having a strong systematic unity, both methodological and ontological, (vi) striving to attain a rational, firm, fixed and stable (rata, fixa, stabile) true knowledge, (vii) pursued by “Plato’s most authentic disciple” (γνησιώτατος τῶν Πλάτωνος μαθητῶν), i.e., Aristotle; (viii) and yet fundamentally compatible if not identical with the Stoic view of philosophy; (ix) somehow compatible also with some Pythagorean insights as for the doctrine of the first principles; (x) rejecting all forms of skeptical “destruction” (ἀναίρεσις) of philosophy; (xi) and nevertheless leaving open the possibility to vindicate the truth of skepticism; (xii) finally culminating in a reform of the whole of ethical and practical life. Having parsed Husserl’s lectures (see Sect. 2), we are already familiar with points (i–iii), (v–vii) and (x–xii). But two points now appear to be partly or entirely new. Firstly, what is in part new is point (viii), i.e., the massive and pervasive presence of a Stoic framework in the overall Middle Platonic discussion about Plato’s heritage. We have seen that the Stoic contribution to the Platonic project takes mainly two forms. Superficially, it seems to be limited to the introduction of logical sophistications and syllogistic technicalities that could already be found—more or less explicitly—in Plato’s dialogues. On a deeper level, however, Stoic conceptualities deeply and covertly shape the very way in which Middle Platonists conceive philosophy itself as a system, according to Plato’s ideal of unity.39 One cannot but wonder, then: could it be that Husserl has a similar account of the importance of Stoicism? Are there reasons to believe that Husserl’s Stoics are more than skillful logicians? Secondly, we already knew that, according to Husserl, genuine philosophy fulfills Plato’s mission by being grounded on a “first philosophy.” We also knew that this “first philosophy” should not be understood in Aristotle’s limited sense as the science of being qua being, but more literally (see Hua VII, p. 3), as an “archeology” (Archäologie) (Hua VIII, p.  40), “a science of the first sources” (Urquellenwissenschaft) (p. 4), a “doctrine of the principles” (Prinzipienlehre), a

39

 On the topic see the studies gathered in Bonazzi & Helmig (2007).

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“science of true beginnings” (Wissenschaft von der währen Anfängen), etc. (see Sect. 2.4). Now, what is that supposed to mean? While reconstructing Husserl’s view, we have been deliberately silent about the nature of such “first principles” (erste Prinzipien) or “beginnings” (Anfänge). We know, of course, that these principles will eventually bring Husserl to transcendental subjectivity, that is, something that is not a “fragment” (Endchen) of the world but its “source of validity.” But now we have learned that those Middle Platonist doctrines of the principles, sharing a great deal of defining tenets with Husserl’s idea of genuine philosophy, mostly operate with two, variously articulated, opposing ἀρχαί: the one and the many. Hence the following question: is this fact relevant to understand Husserl’s views? Are there reasons to believe that something like a distinctively “phenomenological-transcendental” variety of one/many principles is at work in Husserl’s “archeology”? One might already think of the fact that, as already pointed out, the “many” principle is also described by Speusippus as the “everflowing” (ἀέναον); just as Husserl’s temporally enfolding self-constituting transcendental life (immer strömende, dahinströmende, fließende etc.) (see Hua I, p. 99). But is this extrinsic similarity all we have? By dwelling on these two points—the role of the Stoics and that of the one/ many principles—we should be able to go beyond the idea, discussed so far, of a pattern of shared distortions, and to move to the next step, namely that of identifying Husserl’s peculiar and unshared distortion, as it were: that one singular distortion constituting the most distinctive contribution of his transcendental phenomenology to the infinite Academy.

4.2 The Stoic Attitude If we look back to the twelve points listed above, there is certainly no room for Husserl’s idea of a teleological or asymptotical Platonism. Nothing could be further from the sensibility of a Middle Platonist than the difference between Plato’s specific doctrine and Plato’s philosophical ideal (with the former being a first, imperfect realization of the latter). Yet, if we compare their accounts with Husserl’s, we will find further defining elements in common, starting from the idea of a “grand alliance,” tacitly assumed or explicitly endorsed, between Aristotle and the Stoics. The presence of Stoic themes in Husserl’s phenomenology is another extremely important issue that is barely noticed, if not entirely neglected, in the literature.40 As already reminded (see Sect. 2.8), Husserl repeatedly credits the Stoics for having pushed forward Aristotle’s logical project. Not unlike Plutarch, he apparently considers the logic of both Aristotle and the Stoics as a somehow more systematic version of Plato’s dialectics (Hua VII, pp. 17–30 and verbatim p. 42). So, at first glance, 40

 This point has been widely discussed in Chap. 9 of this volume.

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this is the most distinctive “helping hand” which, according to Husserl’s lectures, Chrysippus and his offspring have “lent” to the infinite Academy. First glances are often deceiving, though, and especially so in this case. To begin with, one could be surprised to find Husserl describe, in some of his texts, the “ideal of the philosopher” to the Stoic tripartite distinction of a “systematically achieved logic, ethics and metaphysics” (Hua V, pp. 159–60), not unlike Antiochus, Plutarch or any regular Middle Platonist (see Sect. 3.2). Moreover, looking closer into Husserl’s manuscripts on formal sciences, it appears that the disciplines of the mathesis universalis—i.e., formal apophantics and formal ontology—can all be seen as Stoic contributions to Plato’s cause.

4.3 Stoic Semantics Husserl is quite clear on this last point. On the side of formal apophantics, the Stoics have not only pushed forward Aristotle’s syllogistic, turning it into a rational system (Systematik) (Hua VII, p.  24); they have also, and far more importantly, identified the right theory of meaning (Bedeutungslehre) needed to prevent logic from being a mere psychological theory of the correct judgment and to bring it closer to ontology. In other words, Husserl’s overall theory of “ideal meanings,” often dubbed as “Platonic,” results instead from an explicit appropriation of the Stoic doctrine of the λέκτον. Husserl’s alleged “semantic Platonism,” therefore, is in fact a semantic Stoicism. A more complex, but equally revealing claim can be found in §26 of Formal and Transcendental Logic. Husserl begins by blaming Aristotle’s “first philosophy” for being only a “general ontology of the real” (allgemeine Realontologie) and for having missed the very concept of “formal ontology”: Aristotle only had a universal ontology of the real; and this is what he accepted as ‘first philosophy’. He lacked formal ontology, and therefore also lacked the cognition that formal ontology is intrinsically prior to the ontology of realities. (Hua XVII, p. 84/70)

This claim is extremely important and should not be conflated with another one, equally relevant, and certainly related, but not identical: namely, Husserl’s critique of Aristotle’s “metaphysics” as first philosophy, on the grounds that “ontology of the real” and “metaphysics” should not be taken as synonyms.41

 On Husserl’s critique of Aristotle’s notion of metaphysics and on his engagement with the different senses of ontology, see Chap. 5 of this volume; on formal ontology and its Stoic—rather than Aristotelian—heritage, see Chap. 9. 41

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4.4 Aristotelian Metaphysics Husserl has variously defined “metaphysics” as the science of the “ultimate facts” (Fakta) (Hua III/1, p. 7), of “being” (Seinswissenschaft, Wissenschaft von Seienden) or of “factual being” (tatsächliche Sein) (Hua VII, p. 186).42 The metaphysician, as Husserl sometimes puts it, is a “Dies-da-setzer,” positing the existence of actual individuals and the factual whole “within which” such individuals happen to exist (Hua III/2, p. 565). As a result, metaphysics is tightly related with all particular “sciences of facts” (Tatsachenwissenschaften). Empirical psychology is the science of the general laws of factually existing mental facts; physics formulates the general laws of factually existing physical facts; history of historical facts etc. (see Hua III/1, pp. 11–13). Accordingly, metaphysics addresses the most general and fundamental questions common to all these sciences and concerning the whole of whatever factually exists (Hua XVIII, pp. 25–6). Now, according to Brentano’s teaching, Aristotle identifies “metaphysics” with the science of being qua being and with “first philosophy,” which is intended as the most general of all sciences: In Met. Γ, 1, 1003a21 [Aristotle] says: ‘there is one science which considers being as being and the attributes which it has as such. This science differs from all particular sciences’. It is general science, the so-called first philosophy, which has being as being as its proper subject (Met. E, 1, 1026a29; K, 4, 1061b19 and K, 7, 1064b6). The first philosopher (De an. I, 1, 403b16), or the philosopher as such, considers being as being, and not any of its parts (Met. K, 3, 1060b31; 1061b4-10). Thus, as he himself says (Met. Z, 1, 1028b2), Aristotle researches and investigates in the books of the Metaphysics always only one question, namely, what is being? [was ist das Seiende?]. (Brentano, 1862, p. 2)

Husserl follows Brentano on this point. However, if “metaphysics” deals with being qua being, and more precisely with being qua factual being, then Aristotle’s metaphysics—not unlike any metaphysics—cannot be “first philosophy,” for at least two parallel reasons. The first reason is that, as already pointed out, being “dogmatic” in character and positing existence as a starting point, Aristotle’s metaphysics ignores the transcendental problem of knowledge and neglects the first challenge of the Sophist (Hua VII, p. 56). The second is precisely that it equates “being” with “factual being” (tatsachliche Sein) or “real actuality” (reale Wirklichkeit). This second fact prevents metaphysics from truly being the most universal of all sciences and providing a satisfactory foundation for all sciences qua sciences.43 In §5 of the Prolegomena, at the very beginning of his phenomenological journey, Husserl illustrates the “domain of metaphysics” (Reich der Metaphysik) (Hua

 Metaphysics is also defined as the “universal doctrine of being” (Universale Seinslehre) (Hua VII, p. 186); as the “Science of being in an absolute and ultimate sense” (im absoluten und letzten Sinn) or “in its absolute reality” (in seiner absoluten Wirklichkeit) (Hua II, pp. 23, 32; see also Hua VII, p. 190); of “being in general” (Seiende in allgemeinen) (Hua VII, p. 184); of the “highest fundaments of being” (der obersten Seinsgrunden) (Hua VII, p. 72) etc. The philosopher’s task, intended as a “metaphysician in the proper sense,” is therefore to “deal with being” (über Seiende) and elaborate a “theory for being” (Theorie für Seiendes) (Hua XVII, p. 238). 43  These aspects of Aristotelian metaphysics have been studied in Chaps. 3 and 4 of this volume. 42

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XVIII, p. 26), presupposed by all sciences of “actual reality,” with questions such as: is there is an actually existing external world, infinitely extended in space and time? Does this space have the mathematical character of a tridimensional Euclidian manifold? Does actual time have the mathematical character of an orthoid unidimensional manifold? Is everything existing submitted to the law of causality? (Hua XVIII, p.  26) All these issues, Husserl continues, “entirely belong to the field [Rahmen] of Aristotle’s first philosophy (in den Rahmen der Ersten Philosophie des Aristoteles)” (Hua XVIII, p. 26). Now, Aristotle’s metaphysics/first philosophy could at best provide a foundation (Grundlegung) for sciences dealing with “factual events” (faktische Ereignisse) (Hua XIX/1, p.  27), i.e., with the “explicative sciences of reality” (erklärende Realwissenschaften). The trouble is, Husserl continues, that there are also a priori sciences, dealing with objects that are “independent from real being and non-being and are thought as mere bearers of ideal determinations (bloße Träger rein idealer Bestimmungen gedacht sind)” (Hua XVIII, p. 27). Aristotle’s metaphysics is thus unable to secure the “theoretical unity” (theoretische Einheit) of sciences qua sciences: some of them are empirical, others a priori, some deal with factually existing objects, others with mere bearers of ideal determinations (Hua XVIII, p. 25); and only a general “theory of science” (Wissenschaftslehre) could do the job of providing such a theoretical unity (p. 26). One could find varieties of this very same argument, formulated in the Prolegomena, scattered all over Husserl’s texts. The idea remains the same: Aristotle’s account of metaphysics qua first philosophy cannot but be rejected.

4.5 Aristotelian Ontology But Husserl’s later claim, the one formulated in Formal and Transcendental logic (see Sect. 4.3) and according to which Aristotle’s first philosophy was only an “ontology of the real,” not a “formal ontology,” has a completely different meaning. Unlike “metaphysics,” “ontology” does not deal with “facts” (Tatsachen) but with “essences” (Wesen) (see Hua III/1, pp.  20–3); its theoretical target is not “das Seiende” qua existing but qua “εἶδος” (pp. 6, 8–9); it is not meant to discover the factual laws of what is there, contingently and posited as existing (in part or as a whole), but the eidetic laws of whatever is necessarily possible, no matter if factually posited or not (pp. 15ff); finally, it does not provide what Husserl alternatively calls the “principles” (Prinzipien), the “foundations” (Grundlage) or the “presuppositions” (Voraussetzungen) of factual sciences insofar as they are factual (this would be the job of “metaphysics”) (Hua XVIII, pp. 25–7), but insofar as they are sciences and, more specifically, insofar as they are sciences whose objects belong to certain material regions mutually unified and having borders that can be traced a priori. The material a priori laws determining the specific (besondere) content of the object domain investigated by particular sciences are, as already discussed, eidetic

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without being formal (Hua III/1, p. 14). The same holds for the laws under which every possibly existing individual of a certain kind must necessarily fall (including the factually existing individuals of the actual world, investigated by factual empirical sciences) in order to be such-and-such (Sosein). And one of the names Husserl also uses to lump together all the “ontological” disciplines that are eidetic but not formal is precisely—although not unequivocally—“real ontology” (reale Ontologie): [There is] (1) The connection of propositions (der Zusammenhang der Sätze), incorporated into the explicative theories in a very particular way. Pure grammar and formal mathesis refer to propositions in general. (2) The connection of objectivity (der Zusammenhang der Gegenständlichkeit) about which the propositions assert something being true. More precisely, this connection is different for each science, it is the scientific domain scientifically explored. Formal ontology (corresponding as equivalent to the formal mathesis) and real ontology refer to the objectivities considered in their generality of principle (auf die Gegenständlichkeit in prinzipieller Allgemeinheit). (Hua XXIV, p. 167; see also p. 158)

“Ontology of what is real” is thus an alternative way to talk about “material” or “regional” ontology.44 Husserl’s argument should now become clearer. In the Prolegomena, Aristotle’s first philosophy was put into question because of its metaphysical bond to “being” and more precisely to “factual being” (tatsächlich); by contrast, in Formal and Transcendental Logic, Aristotle’s first philosophy is found wanting because it limits the scope of ontology to “being” intended as “material being” (sachhaltig). In other words, Husserl is not saying (as in the Prolegomena) that Aristotle’s “metaphysics” cannot be first philosophy because of (1) its limited foundational scope, uncovering the presuppositions

(1.1) of factual sciences only; (1.2) of factual sciences qua factual (not qua sciences);

(2) its needing to be preceded by a theory of knowledge/theory of science, which would secure the correlation between knowledge and being (see also Hua Mat III, pp. 223–5). Husserl is now rather affirming that Aristotle’s “ontology”, even if turned into an apriori discipline, does not cover the entire field of what he calls here “first philosophy,” since it is only limited to the material/regional/real part of it. In fact, Aristotle’s “Realontologie” only covers that part of being which is not concerned with the disciplines of the formal mathesis (pure grammar, logic of consistency and logic of truth, on the one hand, and formal ontology, on the other). The first objection—the one raised in the Prolegomena—still holds. And Aristotle’s metaphysical questions still have to be delayed, since they cannot be addressed “in the first place.” Even the late Husserl will thus insist that Aristotle’s metaphysics—and metaphysics in general—is not “first” but “last” philosophy (see also Hua I, pp.  181–2). Its problems cannot be rigorously tackled until the  See, again, Chap. 5 above for the different senses of ontology and Chap. 4 for the notion of region of being. 44

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transcendental gauntlet of Gorgias is finally taken up.45 It is only after having provided a transcendental critique of reason (theoretical, practical, and axiological), as well as of non-reason and unreason (Hua XXV, pp. 193, 197 see also Sect. 5.4) that philosophy will finally be able to consider empirical sciences in their innermost metaphysical sense.46 As for the second objection, referring this time not to Aristotle’s “metaphysics” but to his “eidetic ontology” (eidetische Ontologie) (see Hua XXV, p. 132), the idea is not that it should be delayed, but rather that it should be—or should have been— expanded. For “real ontology” (Realontologie, reale Ontologie), i.e., the ambiguous name designating whatever belongs to a “‘region’ of material individual being” (‘Region’ des sachhaltigen individuellen Seins), i.e., Nature, Spirit, things, living bodies, persons, etc., does not tell us the whole story of the a priori “connections of objects” that are needed to genuinely unify the field of philosophy in all its interconnected parts (see Sect. 2.2, Phil.3). Thus, Aristotle could perfectly deal with regional ontologies, which provide the “eidetic” foundations of factual sciences. For example, the empirical sciences of nature, dealing with nature as it factually is, are preceded by a science of nature as such, i.e., by an “eidetic ontology of nature” (Hua XXV, pp. 132–3). And the latter belongs to the broader domain of “real ontology” (Hua XXIV, pp. 158, 167). It is, moreover, in an Aristotelian way, with reference to a core-form of “individual” (Individuum), that regional ontologies as such can be built.47 By contrast, what Aristotle could not do was to follow the path of “formal ontology” and reach the principles proper to the disciplines of the mathesis. The question then is: why is it so?

4.6 Stoic Ontology This brings us back, again, to the Stoics. While listing some of the reasons having prevented Aristotle from making such a step (Hua XVII, p. 71), Husserl restates the claim according to which Aristotelian logic lacks an appropriate semantic theory of meanings as “idealities” (Idealitäten) (pp. 71–72). It is precisely at this point that, following Prantl’s Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, Husserl praises again the great novelty of the Stoic doctrine of the λεκτόν; a doctrine that was far ahead of its times, because it promoted, from the outset, the complicity between formal apophantics and formal ontology. The “great merit of the Stoics” (das große Verdienst

 For a more thorough account of Gorgias’s challenges to philosophy, see Chap. 10 of this volume.  “Whatever is to be called philosophy in the genuine sense [im echten Sinne], next to the critique of reason, must be thoroughly related to it: metaphysics of nature, metaphysics of the whole of spiritual life and, therefore, metaphysics in general understood in the broadest way”. (Hua II, pp. 58–9). See also Chap. 5 in this volume. 47  On the topic, see Chap. 4 of this volume. 45 46

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der Stoa) is, as we know, to have developed for the first time a “pure noematic logic,” i.e., a “formal logic qua doctrine of the validity of (Geltungslehre) of the λεκτά” (Hua XXV, pp. 127–8). Such noematic logic was intertwined (verflechten) with the first steps of a formal theory of the object, the first theories of what is truly being in general (erste Theorien über das wahrhaft Seiende überhaupt), as the correlate of the objective truths that determine it, i.e., of the knowledge that rightfully judges upon it. […] [The Stoics] recognized the essentially noematic character of the Aristotelian analytics. (Hua XXV, p. 127)

We can finally answer our first question (see Sect. 4.1), namely that question of whether, for Husserl, the Stoics were just skillful logicians. The answer is definitely negative; the Stoics not only developed but also modified Aristotle’s logic, turning it from noetic to noematic (Hua XXV, p. 127). And yet Husserl also highlights a second, immensely important, Stoic contribution to the disciplines of the mathesis, a contribution that will remain silent and unacknowledged until Vieta (Hua XVII, pp. 53, 84) and Leibniz (p. 29): the Stoic semantics of the λεκτόν, Husserl says, is of a piece with a formal ontological account of the “empty form of the Etwas überhaupt” (p. 75). A form that, through Leibniz and Bolzano (Hua XVII, pp. 74–5), will later become the center of formal mathematics and the theory of manifolds (pp. 78ff.). At least on this very specific point, Husserl’s suggestion appears to be hardly disputable. Although it is not formal in the specific sense of a correlation between a formal system of axioms and its object-domain, Stoic “ontology” is nevertheless based on a formal-empty “supreme genus,” i.e., “the something” (τι).48 The Stoic “τι” is in fact as general as to include the existence of corporeal beings (τὰ ὄντα) and the non-existence of incorporeals, like the λεκτόν. Literally, everything whatsoever, existing or non-existing, real or ideal, corporeal or incorporeal, is something.49 As Husserl puts it, the unity of the “τι” or “Etwas überhaupt” is neither that of a material genus (like Thing, Animal, Person, etc.), nor is a focal unity (as the non-­ generic unity of Aristotle’s “being qua being” or Husserl’s regions like Nature or Spirit). It is the unity of an “empty form” (Hua III/1, pp. 21–2). Accordingly, both disciplines of the pure mathesis, i.e., the one dealing noematically with the ­“connection of propositions” as ideal meanings (der Zusammenhang der Sätze) and the other dealing with the “connection of objectivity” (der Zusammenhang der Gegenständlichkeit) in their most formal features (XXIV, p. 167), ultimately appear as developments of Stoic intuitions: the λεκτόν and the τι.

 Again, interestingly enough, it has been claimed that the origin of the Stoic notion of the “something in general” can be found in Plato’s Sophist (see Aubenque, 1991, pp.  370–5). Jacques Brunschwig maintains that the “τι” is the “highest genus” of Stoic “ontology” (1994, pp. 92–157; 2003, p. 220). In Husserl’s terms, however, this description would not be adequate, for the Etwas überhaupt is the highest “empty categorial form” and does not count as a genus but, at best, as a quasi-genus. This point has been spelled out above in Chap. 9. 49  Unlike Husserl’s formal ontology, the Stoic ontology of the τι excludes universals and fictions (for an overall view see Brunschwig, 2003). 48

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4.7 The Stoic Help Of course, such developments are not without certain Aristotelian contaminations in the most genuine spirit of the βοήθεια. In fact, in Husserl’s view, all εἴδη, all pure essences, whether formal or material, whether belonging to logic or ontology, are always and necessarily ranked into “genera and species”: Each essence, whether materially filled or empty (sachhaltiges oder leeres) (thus purely logical), is ordered within a series of levels of essences (Stufenreihe von Wesen), within a series of levels of generality and specificity (Stufenreihe der Generalität und Spezialität). (Hua III/1, p. 30/26, translation modified)

Thus, material ontological essences like “thing” (Ding), “lived-experience” (Erlebnis) and the like; formal ontological “categories of objects” (Gegenstandskategorien) like “number” (Zahl), “set” (Menge), “relation” (Relation), “state-of-affairs” (Sachverhalt), “property” (Eigenschaft), “order” (Ordnung) etc. (Hua III/1, pp.  25, 27); and formal logical “meaning categories” (Bedeutungskategorien) such as “Proposition” (Satz) or “Inference” (Schluss) (p.  30)—all essences are necessarily ordered into Porphyrian trees, according to what Husserl also calls “Aristotelian genera and species” (aristotelische Gattungen und Arten) (see Hua Mat I, pp. 130–2; Hua X, pp. 245–7).50 “Lived-experience” (Erlebnis) is a materially filled highest genus; “objectifying act” is a genus; “perception” is one of the latter’s species; “perception of thing” is an eidetic singularity (infima species) (see Hua III/1, pp. 157–8).51 So far, so good. But the same “Aristotelian” structure can also be found within the domain of pure logic: its highest genus, Husserl says, is “meaning” (Bedeutung); “proposition in general” (Satz) is an intermediate genus; and the modus ponens is an eidetic singularity (Hua III/1, p. 30). And Husserl’s favorite example taken from the formal ontological domain is the category “number,” of which particular numbers like “2, 3, 4…n” are the lowest differences (Hua III/1, p. 30; see also Hua Mat I, p. 131). In sum, even essences belonging to the “Stoic” domains of the λεκτόν and the τι, the highest genera “meaning in general” (Bedeutung überhaupt) and “object in general” (Gegenstand überhaupt), are organized into “Aristotelian genera and species” (Hua III/1, pp. 30–1). So, even if Aristotle did not have the concept of “formal ontology,” he nevertheless provides the formal-logical concepts of genus and species, needed to articulate the eidetic contents of formal ontology according to their different degrees of generality. Thus, mixed up with the Aristotelian contribution, the conceptual resources of the Stoics have been both explicitly recognized and actively employed by Husserl to “help” Plato’s cause.52 The Stoics:  Husserl will later reject this terminology, however (see Ms. A III 1/43a, quoted in Hua XLI, p. xxv). 51  This has been illustrated above in Fig. 4.2 of this volume. 52  Other Stoic themes in Husserl’s work, upon which we cannot pause here, are: (1) the holistic view of propositions (Satz); (2) the ontology of states-of-affairs (Sachverhalte); (3) the originally Stoic (!) doctrine of the ἐποχή, as defended by Zeno of Citium (see Couissin, 1929); (4) the doc50

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(Sto.1) developed Aristotle’s analytics as formal apophantics (Hua VII, pp. 17–30), (Sto.2) corrected Aristotle’s noetic semantics with a noematic theory of ideal meanings (Ms. F I 1 and Hua XVII, p. 72) (doctrine of the λεκτόν), (Sto.3) paved the way to the idea of formal ontology grounded on the formal quasi-region of the “something in general” (doctrine of the τι) (Hua XVII, p. 72ff) This can be illustrated with the following diagram, showing the “theoretical unity” (theoretische Einheit) obtained by completing Aristotle’s exclusively material ontological inclinations through the developments of the more formal leanings of Stoic semantics and ontology (Fig. 11.2).

Fig. 11.2  Genuine philosophy: from ontology to metaphysics

4.8 The Last Word of Ontology This finally brings us to our second and last question, related to the one/many issue (see Sect. 4.1). The last diagram illustrates Husserl’s systematic achievements in the field of ontology. More precisely, it shows what might be called Husserl’s universal eidetics, which brings together the a priori disciplines of the mathesis (formal logic and formal ontology) and those of real ontology in a system of εἴδη (organized in

trine of the evaluative indifference (Gemütsbewegung der Gleichgültigkeit) explicitly phrased as ἀδιαφορία in many of Husserl’s texts (for instance in Hua XXV, pp. 107, 196); and (5)—last but not least—the epistemology of the φαντασία καταληπτική, that “cognitive impression that firmly grasps its object and grants for its being and being so” (Diog. Laert, V. 40d), i.e., what Husserl calls “apodiktische Evidenz”. As already suggested (see Sects. 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9) the presence of the latter is extremely important also in several Middle Platonic accounts of knowledge.

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genera and species, empty/filled, mutually founded and articulated in various ways, etc.).53 Such a vast ontological picture is meant to provide the fundamental concepts to ground a priori both the unity and the differences of empirical sciences, dealing “metaphysically” with factual individuations of this or that region of being. In this sense, the diagram also shows how Husserl deals with the third Platonic tenet of a genuine philosophy, ensuring the correlation between being and truth (Plat.3), first formally, then materially. What the diagram is not supposed to show, however, is Husserl’s view about the actual accomplishments of Plato, Aristotle or the Stoics. In other words, it is not a historical tableau. Husserl certainly sees his own “universal eidetics” as a more successful realization of that very same Platonic philosophical project that also Aristotle, the Stoics and many others have tried to realize (see Sects. 2.6 and 2.7). Considering such a commonality of views, he does not see the fact of mixing up Aristotelian and Stoic conceptualities as a form of bare eclecticism. It is rather a way to transform such concepts in order to make them actually do what they were meant to. Despite this fact, Husserl does not see himself as being “inspired” by his predecessors, or as merely following their lead. As repeatedly stated, since ancient, medieval and even modern philosophies had neglected the “transcendental impulse of Sophistry (transzendentale Impuls der Sophistik)” (Hua VII, p. 60) and had avoided the challenge of a transcendental theory of knowledge, they remained “dogmatic” (dogmatische) (p. 183) (see Sect. 2.3). Husserl is rather trying to do what they could have done to achieve their own project, i.e., take up such challenge. As he says, Their fundamental concepts and propositions, their methods and theories were not drawn from the ultimate sources of transcendental subjectivity (aus den letzten Ursprüngen in der transzendentalen Subjektivität geschöpft) and do not receive from them their ultimate sense (letzten Sinn) and truth (letzte Wahrheit). (Hua VII, p. 189, translation modified)

“Dogmatic” approaches could certainly succeed in erecting rigorous systems, coherent methods or ambitious conceptual constructions. But contingent facts remain scattered, even if treated systematically. And scattered events, occurring within “the naïve pre-givenness of the world” (Hua VII, p. 61), will always bear the marks of their factual contingency. Unlike facts, εἴδη are neither unrelated nor mutually related in a merely accidental or contingent way: they are mereologically founded, coordinated, subordinated as genera and species, etc. (Hua III/1, pp. 25–7). While there might be scattered facts, there are no scattered essences, no unrelated a priori laws: εἴδη are always necessarily interconnected in some way. As Husserl repeatedly maintains, the different regions of being (and the quasi-regions of formal meanings and objects) essentially fasten together into the rational unity of the ὄντως ὄν, just as the different particular sciences are part of philosophy in general (Phil.3) (Hua VII, pp. 13–4).

53  On this point see the often overlooked Beilage I to §10 and 13 of Ideas I titled “Wesen des Wesens” (Hua III/1, 383).

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This brings us to the idea that the “systematic unity of the highest a priori principles,” i.e., the object of first philosophy, is prior to, and grants for the “unity of factual reality,” i.e., the object of second philosophy (Hua VII, pp. 13–4). Only first philosophy, Husserl sometimes says, deserves the name of “radical ontology, science of the ὄντως ὄν and not simply of being in the empirical sense” (Hua XXIV, p. 99). The science of “true being,” namely ontology in the a priori sense or “universal eidetics,” looks for the “fundaments and the principles [Fundamenten und Prinzipien] of empirical ontologies” (Hua XXIV, p. 99). And since such principles are mutually and necessarily interrelated (Hua VII, pp. 4–5), things finally come full circle again: the unity of being and truth, grounded in the a priori connection of eidetic principles (Plat.3), vouchsafes for the contingent unity of facts investigated by particular sciences (second philosophies), protects human knowledge and action from skeptical and relativistic tendencies (Plat.1), and finally promotes the idea of a better humanity (Plat.5) (Hua VII, p. 15).

4.9 Two Senses of “Principle” If Husserl believes to have reached the true “theoretical unity” needed to clarify the fundamental concepts (Grundbegriffe), propositions (Grundsätze) and methods (Methoden) of science in a “non-dogmatic way,” it is precisely because the εἴδη pictured in the diagram above are established by being traced back to their transcendental source (Hua VIII, pp. 27–8); they are not naively found “out there,” they are instead transcendentally constituted (p. 29). So Plato’s doctrine of the first principles (Plat.4) finally meets Gorgias’s transcendental impulse (Soph.1): it frees Socrates’s γνῶθι σαυτόν (Soc.1) from its ethical limitations and turns subjectivity, which evidently shows itself in self-reflection (Soc.2 and 4), not into the object of a particular science (Phil.3)—i.e., the empirical and/or eidetic doctrine of the Soul (Ari.2)—but into the object of a universal science called “archeology” (Archäologie): a science that is necessary and that one should truly call “archeology,” systematically investigating that which is ultimately original and resolves in itself every origin of being and truth (jenes Letztursprüngliche und alle Ursprünge des Seins und der Wahrheit in sich Beschliessende systematisch erforschen). (Hua VIII, pp. 29–30/234; translation modified)

The concept of “principle” (Prinzip) should now be understood in a subtler, twofold sense. On the one hand, each particular science has its own “fundamental principles” that determine both its object-domain and its methods. These fundamental principles are nothing but the εἴδη of their corresponding material regions or sub-­ regions as well as the categorial essences proper to science qua science. Thus, the a priori principles of factual physics or metaphysics of nature are the ones that are established by the “ontology of nature,” those of history belong to the “Ontology of the Spirit,” etc. (Hua XXV, pp. 132–3). But “first philosophy” and “universal eidetics”—although often associated—are not synonyms:

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What is needed is a science of the original sources (Urquellenwissenschaft), a first philosophy, a science of transcendental subjectivity. From it, all genuine sciences (echte Wissenschaften) would have to derive the origin of all their fundamental concepts and propositions (Grundbegriffe und Grundsätze) as well as all of the other principles of their methods. (Hua VIII, p. 4/208; translation modified)

If “universal eidetics” is the science of the εἴδη qua principles of whatever is and can be truly known, then “transcendental phenomenology,” intended as first philosophy, deals with principles in a quite different sense. The principles of transcendental phenomenology are also said to be the “origin” (Ursprung) or the “original source” (Urquelle) from which the principles of universal eidetics draw their validity. This nuance is of the outmost importance. One could therefore distinguish between. (Pr.1) principles in the ontological sense (εἴδη), i.e., the a priori principles from which factual sciences draw their fundamental concepts; and (Pr.2) principles in the transcendental sense (or ἀρχαί tout court, with no further determination), i.e., the “origin” from which principles in the ontological sense draw their validity. Hence, we have a twofold move: first, from “facts” (empirical sciences) to “essences” (universal eidetics, ontology), then, from “essences” to “principles” tout court (archeology, transcendental phenomenology). This twofold move is too massive to be neglected. And, considering the shared pattern of distortions identified above (see Sect. 4.1), it is also too reminiscent of another path, followed by many of Plato’s historical heirs—from Speusippus and Xenocrates to Antiochus and Plutarch—to be dismissed as a mere coincidence. A pattern thus appears precisely in this attempt to articulate Plato’s doctrine of the ideas as intelligible forms (εἴδη) and a doctrine of the principles (ἀρχαί). More specifically, Husserl’s distinction:

Tatsache – Wesen – transzendentale Subjektivit ät



strikingly parallels the “Platonic” triplet: ὄντα – εἴδη – ἀρχαί But since we have learned that the most typical way to deal with the ἀρχαί— both in the Old Academy and in Middle Platonism—was in terms of one/many (see Sect. 3.3), we have now strong reasons to ask the following question: is Husserl’s “transcendental subjectivity,” intended as ἀρχή, also conceived in a similar way? Could one soundly affirm that somehow the one and the many are the “originating field (Ursprungsfeld)” (Hua VIII, p.  28) from which the eidetic principles are generated?

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5 A Matter of Principles (II): ἀρχή 5.1 Roots This hypothesis can be confirmed in at least two different ways. The first can be found in a passage of Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (Hua XXV, p. 61) as well as in a typescript written at the time of the Kaizo article (Hua XXVII, p. 123; see pp. 260–1) and some other texts (Hua XXV, p. 202). The “science of true beginnings,” which in the lectures on first philosophy goes by the Aristotelian name “πρώτη φιλοσοφία,” is already named science of the “origins” (Ursprünge) or the “true beginnings” (Wissenschaft von der währen Anfängen). But this time, Husserl also uses an alternative expression. He calls it the science of the “ῥιζώματα πάντων,” i.e., the “roots of everything”: According to its essence, philosophy is rather science of the true beginnings, of the origins, of the ῥιζώματα πάντων. The science of what is radical (Wissenschaft vom Radikalen) has to be radical also in its procedure and in all its aspects. (Hua XXV, p. 61)

The formula is clearly borrowed, directly or indirectly, from one of Empedocles’s fragments: “The four roots of all things hear first [τέσσαρα μὲν πάντων ῥιζώματα πρῶτον ἄκουε]” (DK, B 6.1). Now, Empedocles’s “roots,” as reported, among others, by Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math., 9. 362, 10. 315), are nothing but the four physical elements: fire, earth, wind, and water54: what Aristotle will paradigmatically call the “elements” (στοιχέια). However, as we have previously seen, such Pre-Socratic, physicistic view hardly squares with the status of a Plato-inspired “genuine” philosophy. Moreover, no reader of Plato (Tim. 48b)—or Aristotle for that matter—would have conflated “elements” and “principles.” So either Husserl’s philosophical talk of “roots” is clumsy and misplaced or it has a different source. Needless to say, this second source brings us again to that very same cluster of Platonic distortions discussed above (see Sect. 3.3). The form “ῥίζα” appears in fact already in Plato’s Timæus (81c 6), with reference to geometrical figures.55 Even more importantly, it appears in the famous “Pythagorean oath” where the talk of “ῥιζώματα” is referred to the famous “Tetractys,” the triangular figure made of ten dots obtained by piling up as many dots as the first four integers: “No, by the one who grants our head the tetractys is the root and fount of everlasting nature” (οὐ μὰ τὸν ἁμετέρᾳ κεφαλᾷ παραδόντα τετρακτύν, παγὰν ἀενάου φύσεως ῥιζώματ᾽ἔχουσαν) (DK, 58 B 15). The two versions of the second source—the Pythagorean and the Platonic—will eventually converge in the Old Academy’s doctrine of the “first principles,” where the talks of “roots” (ῥιζώματα), “principles” (ἀρχαί) and “seeds” (σπέρματα) (Met. Λ, 7, 1072b35) finally merge. As already pointed out (see Sects. 3.1, 3.9 and 3.10), for Plato’s successors, the theory of ideas as separate intelligible forms was not

54 55

 See also Aristotle, Met. A, 3, 984a8-11.  Plato talks of the “ῥίζα τῶν τριγώνων” (roots of the triangles) (see also Tim. 53d and ff.).

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necessarily as central as we tend to think. Accordingly, notions such as ἀρχή and εἶδος were carefully distinguished and set apart (see Met. M, 8, 1083a21-4). By contrast, there was no doubt that what went under the name of “principles” or “roots” or “seeds” of everything were precisely varieties of the one (ἓν) and the many (πλῆθος). A centripetal principle of unity, limitation, regularity, etc. and a centrifugal principle of multiplicity: fluid, shapeless, material, limitless, etc. (see Sect. 3.9). Now, the fact that these principles are named by means of botanical images like “root” or “seed” is far from being insignificant. What the talk of “ῥιζώματα” or “σπέρματα” adds to the picture is the idea that, unlike the εἴδη, the principles, quite literally, “look different” from what they are the principles of. Just as the plant does not look like its seeds or roots, the two principles of the one and the many do not look like the entities they generate. In other words, unlike the εἴδη, the ῥιζώματα/ἀρχαί no longer work as models or paradigms, as something with respect to which, to use Husserl’s own terms, a particular individually existing entity is an “example” (Exempel) or an “instance” (Beispiel). The one and the many are neither individual contingent facts submitted to “coming to being and passing away,” nor are they essences, stable in their a priori being. They are rather “potencies” (δυνάμεις) or “sources” (fontes) as in Speusippus (see Sect. 3.10). They are not “being,” neither real nor ideal. The pair one/many can be safely described with the very terms employed by Husserl to portray transcendental subjectivity: it is “what resolves in itself all origins of being and truth (jenes Letztursprüngliche und alle Ursprünge des Seins und der Wahrheit in sich Beschliessende)” (Hua VIII, p.  29). There is no way to tell for sure whether Husserl knew the historical connection between the talk of “roots” and that of the Pythagorean-Platonic principles or not. But even if we assume that this was not a conscious appropriation, one thing strikes as certain: the most distinctive features of the two doctrines show, again, a remarkable proximity.

5.2 Unity and Multiplicity If the occasional reference to the “ῥιζώματα πάντων” is hardly enough to detect a transcendental-phenomenological variety of the Old Academy’s doctrine of principles (revolving around the pair ἓν/πλῆθος), more convincing evidence can be found in Ideas, in the Bernau Manuscripts, in the Cartesian Meditations and in all those texts where the process through which everything that is constituted—in its “being” (Sein), “being-so” (Sosein) and even in its factual existence (Faktum)—is explicitly described by means of the twofold principle “Unity and Multiplicity (Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit)” (Hua I, p. 232). Husserl repeatedly insists on this point: each singular fact, falling under a material εἶδος; every εἶδος, formal or material; all categorial forms, be it ontological or semantic etc.—everything whatsoever, once understood as “phenomenon”

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(Phänomen) and taken as a “transcendental guiding thread” (Hua I, p. 87), appears to be ultimately constituted as the correlative unity of an infinite but not chaotic multiplicity of actual and possible lived-experiences. In short, everything that in the natural attitude is simply there (einfach Da ist) or, thanks to our cognitive activity, enters within the scope of our scientific sight as a theoretical Unity (theoretische Einheit), is given, as soon as we reflect on the experiencing consciousness, in a bewildering Multiplicity of modes of consciousness (gibt sich in der Reflexion auf das erlebende Bewußtsein in einer verwirrenden Mannigfaltigkeit von Bewußtseinsweisen): of affections and actions of the ego, of sensible data and sense bestowing acts of apprehension, of changing aspects, of appearances changing either in their properly intuitive components or as for their components having a vague or an empty—and yet delimited in its sense— indeterminacy; a multiplicity of modes of givenness, in the form of perceptual, memorial or empathic presentifications; or in the sphere of thought, where theoretical themes are sometimes conscious in symbolic thinking sometimes in a more or less intuitively saturated thinking […] etc. We thus bump into a remarkable parallelism according to which whatever in the natural attitude of experience and theory is experienced as one or is consciously known as one proposition, one truth, one proof or one theory, once we turn to and reflect on knowledge is traced back to the Multiplicity—and idealiter to the infinite Multiplicity (unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit)—of conscious life and, enacted within the latter, of particular lived-experiences (Erlebtheiten); i.e., each of these units is traced back to its proper intrinsic infinite multiplicities. (Hua XXV, p. 146)

The claim is quite straightforward. The natural attitude deals with worldly beings (Seiende) of all sorts. More precisely, it constantly—though not exclusively—deals with particular beings of a certain ontological kind: actually existing things, living bodies, persons, etc. Once the natural attitude is suspended, what were “beings” turn into “‘phenomena’ in the sense of phenomenology” (Hua XXV, p. 173). As a result, things, living bodies or persons now reveal themselves as distinctive transcendent unities of a “bewildering” and virtually infinite multiplicity of modes of consciousness (Hua XXV, pp. 146–7). Such modes of consciousness are, in turn, unities of virtually infinite multiplicities of singular lived-experiences, each having its own constitutive multiplicities, etc. If we leave aside this latter point for the moment, Husserl’s main claim seems to be the following: what for the natural attitude was an actual or a possible being inthe-world (Sein in der Welt) (Hua III/1, p. 10), now appears under reduction as a constituted, actually or possibly posited, unity-of-a-­multiplicity.56 This formula appears in too many texts to be neglected: “each object is the unity of a pure multiplicity of consciousness (Jeder Gegenstand ist Einheit von reiner ­ Bewußtseinsmannigfaltigkeit)” (Hua XXV, p. 193). To say that something is a “phenomenon in the sense of phenomenology (‘Phänomen’ im Sinn der Phänomenologie)” or that it is variously constituted as the unity of a multiplicity of lived-experiences is one and the same thing (Hua XXV, p. 173). This phenomenon, Husserl insists, is not itself in-the-world; it is not part of that “Weltall” in which things, living bodies or persons actually or possibly co-exist

 Further elements in support of this reading can be found in Chap. 2 of this volume, where this ordered unity-of-multiplicity has been called “manifold”. 56

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(Hua XXV, p.  152). And it is not even a pure possibility, a denizen of possible worlds, as the objects belonging to the eidetic realms of a priori real ontologies. Phenomena are, in fact—quite literally and in a non-mysterious sense—“out of the world”: they are causally inert; not located in space or time; not motivationally connected with any-thing; unlike images, their appearance is not grounded in any-thing; unlike reflections or phantasms they are not the effect of some-thing on some-thing else; unlike fantasized objects they are not the mere outcomes of a subjective activity; unlike essences they are not obtained through generalization or formalization from particular cases, etc. Rather, it is when we consider worldly entities with respect to their “origin” that everything turns into a phenomenon. As a result, “to be a phenomenon” is neither an essential nor an accidental property of some being. It is rather the way in which what Husserl calls the “roots” of being become manifest, i.e., that with reference to which certain lived-experiences, literally, “make sense” (Sinn), are brought together as the experiences of some transcendent and even sometimes mind-­independent being.

5.3 Three Senses of “Thing” We can better understand the peculiarity of Husserl’s phenomena by considering, for instance, the way the term “thing” assumes a threefold sense: (Thing1) metaphysically, it names any factual denizen of the actual world whose general distinctive features are studied by that particular branch of second philosophy called physics; (Thing2) ontologically, it is the name of a material essence, an εἶδος, determining the a priori features an entity must have in order to be one of its infinite factual or fictional “examples.” Its eidetic properties are fleshed out by that branch of first philosophy called “ontology of material nature” and deliver the a priori principles of things in a metaphysical sense (Thing1); (Thing3) transcendentally, it is the name of a typical phenomenon, i.e., of the specific correlate of a specific way-to-be-one proper to a specific multitude of multilayered lived-experiences. A “rule” (Regel), as Husserl also puts it, to make sense of an infinite and yet non-chaotic variety of Erlebtheiten. It is studied by transcendental phenomenology qua “archeology” and counts as the “origin” of (Thing2) and its factual individuations (Thing1). From a strictly phenomenological standpoint a “thing” is therefore “the synthetic unity of a multiplicity of related modes of appearance (synthetische Einheit einer Mannigfaltigkeit zugehörige Erscheinungsweise)” (Hua I, p.  77); the “unity of a multiplicity of ever-changing modes of appearance, of the latter’s particular perspectives and particular differences in the subjective here and there” (p. 16, see also pp. 18, 134). It is what appears and is ultimately posited when experience unfolds itself in a certain way: not just as the unity of a multiplicity of adumbrations

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(Abschattungen), but also as the unity of a multiplicity of “causal dependencies” (Hua V, p.  30). A thing is in fact constituted as a system of appearances, going beyond the ineffectiveness of the “phantom” (Hua IV, pp. 21ff, 36ff), and including the different layers of the res materialis, the res extensa and the res temporalis (Hua III/1, pp. 347–8). At each of these levels, there are unities of multiplicities which, in turn, are constituted of lower-order unities of multiplicities. The same also holds for each abstract part of a thing, like its singular color or its particular shape, equally constituted qua phenomenon as the “unity of streaming multiplicities (Einheit dahinströmender Mannigfaltigkeiten)” (Hua I, p.  78; see already Hua X, pp. 237–45; Hua IV, p. 43; Hua III/1, pp. 130–1). More specifically, a “thing,” with its constitutive moments, is whatever would appear to any possible consciousness bringing together any virtually infinite multiplicity of actual and possible lived-experiences in that distinctive form of unity called “perceptual experience” or, more simply, “perception” (Wahrnehmung). A form of unity of which the actual “perceptual” synthesis, factually realized by human beings and other conscious animals, are nothing but examples. Again, considered under reduction, the thing-qua-phenomenon (Thing3) is neither a factual entity (Thing1) nor an εἶδος (Thing2). It is rather a “rule for a possible course of appearances (Regel möglicher Abläufe von Erscheinungen)” (Hua XXV, p. 149), a “rule for possible synthesis” (Hua I, pp. 24, 66, 90; Hua IV, p. 40), it is a “reality as unity of a multiplicity of appearances belonging together according to a rule (eine Realität als Einheit einer Mannigfaltigkeit geregelt zusammengehöriger Erscheinungen)” (Hua IV, p. 86). In short, it is a certain way-to-be-one that, once suitably varied in free phantasy and ideated as a pure possibility (Hua XXV, p. 169ff), turns out to be an a priori condition for every conceivable experience of actual, actually possible or possibly possible things. Correlatively, “perception” is no longer a psychological faculty or the name of an otherwise important class of mental states. It is a particular way for conscious life to, literally, make sense, a way to limit the infinite variety of connections between lived-experiences and to turn a “turmoil” (Gewühl) or a “chaos” (Chaos) of Erlebtheiten—both intentional and hyletic—into a meaningful (Sinnvoll) “system of appearances (Erscheinugssystem)” (Hua I, p. 136). In short, phenomenologically speaking, “perception” is the name of an open-ended multiplicity of lived-experiences unified in a certain way according to the constitutive imperatives of the eidetic type “thing” (see Hua IV, pp. 40, 44, 55ff, 61).

5.4 The One-Many Constitution of Subjectivity, Proper and Alien We must now consider the broader significance of our example: Transcendental subjectivity is not a chaos of intentional experiences, it is a unity of synthesis, a multi-layered synthesis (eine Einheit der Synthese, und einer vielstufigen Synthese), in which always new types of objects and singular objects are constituted. Each object however designates a structure of rules for transcendental subjectivity. (Hua I, p. 22)

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Transcendental subjectivity is not a chaos of intentional processes. Moreover, it is not a chaos of types of constitution, each organized in itself by its relation to a kind or a form of intentional objects. In other words: the allness (Allheit) of objects and types of objects conceivable for me—and, transcendentally speaking, conceivable for me as transcendental ego—is no chaos; and, correlatively, the allness of the types of the infinite multiplicities, the types corresponding to types of objects (Gegenstandstypen), is not a chaos either: noetically and noematically those multiplicities always belong together (zusammengehoren), according to their possible synthesis. (Hua I, p. 90)

Not only “perception” but also “transcendental subjectivity” as such must be understood as a “multi-layered unity of synthesis,” rather than as a chaos. More precisely, “transcendental subjectivity” is the name of a very distinctive unity of a multiplicity: the unity of multiplicity of further unities of multiplicities (and so on) of lived-experiences. Thus, just as in the case of “perception,” but on a different level of complexity and synthesis, “transcendental subjectivity” names a way-to-be-­ one (see Hua VIII, p. 90ff).57 An overall system of rules to make sense not only of the appearance of “things” but of a whole world (Weltall): a world in which not only things but also an infinite amount of many other beings co-exist, actually or possibly. In fact, “things” are not the only transcendent unities of variously intertwined and multi-layered lived multiplicities. Husserl has always been clear on this point: “each object as a unity of consciousness (Bewußtseinseinheit) has its multiplicities” and “according to its objective genus (region) [gegenständlichen Gattung (Region)]” it has the “distinctive modes of givenness of that genus” (Hua XXV, p. 146). So parallel patterns of constitution can also be found for “phenomena” belonging to any other ontological region or sub-region. “Other subjects,” for instance, or, more specifically, “alien living bodies” (fremde Leibe) can also be described as phenomena (Hua IV, pp. 202, 81). Their distinctive transcendence can also work as the transcendental guiding-thread establishing the “systems of rules” under which some specific varieties of conscious unities-of-­ multiplicities can possibly and do actually operate. Accordingly, worldly encountered psycho-physical organisms, once put under reduction, ultimately appear as constituted qua “actual beings in a multiplicity of mutable and variable experiences (als wirklich seiende, in wandelbaren, einstimmigen Erfahrungsmannigfaltigkeiten)” (Hua I, p.  123). Of course, the “multiplicities of appearances of the living body (Erscheinugsmannigfaltigkeiten des Leibes)” must be understood in their “singularity (eigentümlichkeit)”, not conflated with the constitutive multiplicities of appearances proper to the constitution of a “thing” (Hua IV, p. 159). More precisely, if the constitutive unity-of-a-multiplicity corresponding to the appearance of a “thing” goes by the name of “perceptual experience,” the complex intentional operation (intentionale Leistung) by means of which alien psycho-physical living bodies are constituted as transcendent unities of multiplicities of analogically transferred firstpersonal embodied lived-experiences (überschobene Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit) is now called “empathy” (Einfühlung) (Hua IV, p.  204; Hua I, p.  134). Husserl

 And this brings us back to the point where we have started, i.e., a new account of transcendental phenomenology as constitution of manifolds; see Chap. 2 in this volume. 57

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variously describes it, although in different contexts, both in §41 of Ideas II (Hua IV, p. 159ff) and in §54 of the Cartesian Meditations (Hua I, p. 147ff). The unity-of-multiplicity constituting the alien body, however, clearly rests on other unities-of-multiplicities. As Husserl puts it, “the unity of living body and spirit (Die Einheit von Leib und Geist) constitutes itself as a higher unity of two real (realer) unities. It necessitates (erfordert) its own constitutive multiplicities” (Hua IV, p. 245). Accordingly, in order to constitute analogically the alien body, the psychological “real ego” (reale Ich) has to already “constitute itself in multiplicities of lived-experiences” (Hua IV, p. 213). This is the case for the constitution of my own empirical embodied ego by means of a “multiplicity of kinesthetic appearances” (Hua XVI, p. 255; Hua IV, pp. 22ff., 159ff.); a unity-of-multiplicity upon which the constitution of the alien body depends, and on the basis of which analogous unities-­ of-­multiplicities are empathically “appresented” (Hua IV, pp. 162–6). In all these cases we just examined—and not unlike the case of the “thing”—the terms “living body” (proper or alien) or “psycho-physical ego” (mine or alien) turn out to be the names not of facts or essences, but of “rules of synthesis,” of typical patterns of constitution, of the many ways-to-be-one of a Nature-experiencing conscious life.

5.5 The One-Many Constitution in All Its Generality The very same pattern also holds for all those objects that are intersubjectively constituted as belonging to the region “Spirit” (Geist), i.e., persons, cultural objects, communities etc. (Hua IV, pp. 201ff). These are new and irreducible beings; seen as new and irreducible “systems of rules;” calling for new and irreducible syntheses; and appearing as new and irreducible unities of multiplicities. This time, it is spiritual objects that are described as transcendent unities whose constitutive infinite multiplicities of actual and possible intersubjective lived-experiences are variously brought together by different forms of what Husserl now calls synthesis of “evaluation” (Wertnehmung) (Hua IV, pp. 10, 186). Accordingly, even social and cultural phenomena—just as “any multiplicity of constitutive phenomena (jeder Mannigfaltigkeit konstituierender Phänomene)”, as Husserl explicitly maintains— are constituted by means of “multiplicities of appearances” (Hua IV, p.  201). Appearances, this time, are brought to unity qua intersubjective objects of a community-­world” (Gemeinschaftswelt) thanks to affective appearances unified by what Husserl sometimes calls the synthesis of “mutual understanding” or “comprehension” (Einverständnisse, Wechselverständnisse, Komprehension) (Hua IV, pp. 201, 206, 308, 324). Obviously, the “Aristotelian” concepts variously belonging to the real-­ontological material regions “Nature” and “Spirit” (such as thing, living body or psycho-­ physical entity, person, community, etc.) (see Sect. 4.2) are not the only ones to be constituted as unities of multiplicities. The same clearly holds for the “Stoic” concepts of formal ontology and logic, i.e., genera, species, meanings, categories, and

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the like. Such “idealities” (Idealitäten) once put under reduction, taken as systems of rules and seen qua “phenomena,” turn out to be nothing but new and irreducible “unities of constitutive multiplicities (Einheiten konstitutiver Mannigfaltigkeiten)”, layered on lower-order constituted unities of multiplicities thanks to certain specific syntheses of consciousness ultimately referring to some Urindividuum (Hua XXXI, p. 15).58 In order to account for the remarkable form of constitution whose transcendent system of rules goes by the name of “ideal objects,” Husserl now has to take advantage of the genetic distinction between the temporality (Zeitlichkeit) proper to the unity of consciousness called “passive syntheses” and the omni-temporality (Allzeitlichkeit) constituted by means of “active syntheses” (Hua XXXI, p. 31). Yet, in both cases, “synthesis” remains the key word for constitution, and what actually constitutes ideal objects is, again, a specific way of being-one of a virtually infinite multiplicity of actual and possible lived-experiences. Each ideality—be it an essence or a meaning—is in fact constituted by a complex system of active syntheses as the “over-temporal unity passing through a temporal multiplicity (Es geht also durch die zeitliche Mannigfaltigkeit eine darin liegende überzeitliche Einheit hindurch)” (Hua XXXI, p.  31). And, in order to account for the multi-layered process bringing higher-order and omni-temporal idealities to appearance, Husserl also introduces the distinction between different levels of constitution of universal essences: the “original constitution” or the “pre-constitution” (ursprüngliche Konstitution, Vorkonstitution) of a lower-order “synthesis of similarities” (Hua XXXI, p.  78), and the higher-order constitution, grounded on the operation of free variation. Interestingly enough, the first lowerorder “unity of generality” (Einheit eines Allgemeinen), the individual singularization of a concrete essence, goes by the formula used by Aristotle in Met. A 9 (990b 7-8, 13) and in the lost treatise De Ideis (Fine, 1993) to describe Plato’s ideas: “ἓν ἐπὶ πολλῶν” (Hua XLI, p. 147ff.; Hua XXXI, p. 79; EU, pp. 391, 414).59 In the case of the second, higher-order unity, the multiplicity out of which the “pure unity of the universal” is ultimately constituted becomes manifest by continuing the given multiplicity in the realm of free possibilities and passing through the consciousness of an open multiplicity of arbitrary possibilities qua arbitrary examples in the form of the ‘etc.’ (Fortgang von der gegebenen Mannigfaltigkeit in das Reich der freien Möglichkeiten und in einem Durchlaufen einer bewusstseinsmäßig offenen Mannigfaltigkeit beliebiger Möglichkeiten als beliebiger Exempel in der Form des ‘usw’). (XXXI, p. 80)

Thus, when it comes to the constitution of pure idealities, it is the “freedom of fictional phantasy (fingierende Phantasie)” that provides the “multiplicity” out of which the transcendent unity of the object is constituted (Hua XXV, p. 169).

 See Chap. 4 in this volume.  This might suggest that Husserl considers Plato’s ideas or, more precisely, the ideas of Plato’s doctrine of the intelligible forms (Lehre) (see above Sect. 2.5) not only as pure essences but also as “concrete essences” (konkrete Wesen), i.e., as what is identical in a multiplicity of individuals that cannot contain any further singularity (see Hua XLI, p. 147 and more generally Txt. 11). One could in fact remember that Aristotle’s formula is employed in the context of a critique of Plato’s doctrine of the ideas. 58 59

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In sum, both the eidetic objects of “Aristotelian” real ontology and those of “Stoic” formal ontology are unequivocally constituted in their transcendence as unities-of-multiplicities (p. 204). But Husserl does not stop here. Since everything whatsoever is constituted and, as a matter of fact, the world—any world—is far from being necessarily rational in its entirety, phenomenology should also extend its transcendental account to the domain of the non-rational and the irrational. Make believes, delusions, blind drives but also random conducts and contradictory values, random or hazardous events, despite their patent lack of reason, all make sense as unfolding series of constitutive Einheiten and Mannigfaltigkeiten. Whoever is originally interested in the theme of the unity and the multiplicity (das Thema Einheit—Mannigfaltigkeit), of the object and its rational consciousness or its possible knowledge, should certainly investigate together with reason also unreason (negative reason) and irrationality (mit der Vernunft die Unvernunft (negative Vernunft) und Nichtvernunft), i.e., the entirety of pure consciousness. (Hua XXV, p. 197, see also p. 193)

5.6 The One-Many Constitution of the Transcendental Subjectivity Itself We can now turn back to the most general idea of all (see Sect. 5.4): transcendental subjectivity as such is a multi-layered unity-of-multiplicity. At this point, one should not be surprised to find Husserl accounting for the self-constitution of the transcendentally reduced ego cogito as an “open infinite multiplicity of concrete and individual experiences (offen unendliche Mannigfaltigkeit von einzelnen konkreten Erlebnissen) brought to unity (zur Einheit) thanks to certain modes of connection (Weisen der Verbindung)” (Hua I, p.  76). More precisely, one should not be surprised to discover that the constitutive unity, without which no transcendental consciousness could be established, is granted by the “universal synthesis of transcendental time” (Hua I, p. 43). Transcendental time is in fact the synthesis of syntheses, the primitive and most fundamental way in which transcendental life is unified (see Hua XI, p. 125). The “original temporal field” (Hua X, p. 31) is precisely what constitutes consciousness as constitutive, and what allows it to follow all further “rules of appearance” of which we are aware due to the existence of transcendent objects of all sorts. And, accordingly, it is because of its constitutive/constituted temporal nature that consciousness can be one in all the manifold different ways described so far. As Husserl tellingly puts it in one of his first manuscripts on time-consciousness (and despite all the flaws of his early account of time): if one considers lived-­ experiences themselves; if one takes them as “individuals” but not as “natural objects” (ein Individuelles aber kein Naturobjekt); if one takes into account the multitude of Erlebtheiten, actually and immanently given within the stream of inner time, then one realizes that the opposition of Unity and Multiplicity receives a new sense (der Gegensatz von Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit einen neuen Sinn bekommt), that will guide us back to a deeper layer of constitutive conscious events. (Hua X, p. 271, Husserl’s emphasis)

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In its real immanence, Husserl continues, every lived-experience, be it intentional like a cogitatio or hyletic like a sensation devoid of any presentative function (Empfindungston, Empfindungsfarbe), “comes to absolute self-givenness (zur absoluten Selbstgegebenheit kommt)” (Hua X, p. 271) only and necessarily as “a unity in the stream of its temporal phases (Einheit im Fluß seiner Zeitphasen)” (p.  272, Husserl’s emphasis). And exactly the same one-many structure will be reverberated at the deepest levels of the self-constituting time and transcendental consciousness as a whole.60 Accordingly, as explicitly phrased in the Cartesian Meditations, if “synthesis is the original form (Urform) of consciousness” (Hua I, p.  77), then “transcendental time is the universal synthesis (Universale Synthesis)” (p. 79ff.): Unity and Multiplicity […]. The synthesis as fundamental fact (Grundtatsache) of the sphere of consciousness, as connection (Verbindung) of consciousness and consciousness in a new consciousness of founded intentionality. The universal unity of conscious life in the ego is a unity of synthesis in which the ego becomes conscious of itself as unity. (Hua I, p. 190)

5.7 Back to Worlds and Non-Worlds There is no need to go into the details of Husserl’s complex conundrum of time-­ consciousness (on the topic, see De Warren, 2009). As for now, what is rather important is to (1) finally come back to our second question (see Sect. 4.1) about the Old Academy’s and Middle Platonic doctrine of principles; and (2) add some concluding remarks about Husserl’s ultimate Platonic distortion and last contribution to the infinite Academy. As for the first point: the previous section should have sufficiently shown that if transcendental consciousness is the origin “of being and truth” (Hua VIII, p. 29), such origin undoubtedly has a one/many structure. “Each single total consciousness,” said Husserl already in one of his early texts, “is a unity in which everything is connected with everything else (Das jeweilige Gesamtbewußtsein ist eine Einheit, in der alles mit allem in Verbindung steht)” (Hua XXII, p. 92). And yet there are many ways to be one (Ein), countless manners in which a lived-experience may be connected (in Verbindung) with various other lived-experiences so as to form a unity. We have learned from Thing and Space (Hua XVI, pp. 258–93) and Ideas I (Hua III/1, p. 103) that some of these connections are utterly unstable and do not support any positing.61 Accordingly, their transcendent outcomes simply destroy themselves because of a “host of irreconcilable conflicts” (Hua III/1, p. 103). A conscious life made of such disjunctive synthesis of irresoluble non-harmonious lived-experiences would have as a correlate what Husserl calls an “unworld” (Hua III/1, p. 100), incapable of confirming itself in its being (see Hua XVI, pp. 287–91); not a world tolerating a local or a contingent amount of irrationality, but the global and inexhaustible 60 61

 This point is extremely well identified in De Warren (2009, p. 250ff).  On the topic, see Chap. 6 of this volume.

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theatre of appearances that no experience has the “force” (Kraft) to confirm in their being (p. 290). But there are also other ways in which a multiple array of conscious events may turn into one whole lived-experience of self-confirming posited transcendent unities of multiplicities. To each of these ways-to-be-one corresponds a typical form, a configuration (Fügung, Gefüge) as it were, whose unfolding is coherent enough to support the position of independent transcendent unities. A conscious life united in such a globally coherent way is definitely able to posit a world (Hua III/1, p. 88); an objective world, upon which something true can be said and judged, the morphological validity of which can be in principle shared by any other conscious lives unifying their experiences according to the same typical form; a world in which errors can be made, corrected or ignored; a world perhaps like ours, in which nomological sciences are possible; a world in which, nevertheless, a huge amount of non-rational or irrational events can take place—precisely because such world is definitely there! And yet, it is precisely because such a conscious life unifies its virtually infinite manifold of lived-experiences according to a certain form that it can be said “to constitute” this world. If this is correct, then not every consciousness is world-­ constitutive as such, and not every world-constituting consciousness constitutes a worlds like ours. It is the specific way in which its many lived-experiences are one that determines the transcendental character of a conscious life. Only some of the many ways to be one of many conscious lives, some of the many manners in which lived-experiences can be brought together, are ultimately able to constitute the phenomenal origin of being and truth and guarantee their possible and actual knowledge. And it is precisely for this reason that transcendental phenomenology appears to Husserl as a way of keeping, in a rigorous way, the promise of the philosophy of the First Beginning, that is, unfolding the logos of our factual actual Weltall.

6 Coda 6.1 The Migration of the One-Many If the above is correct, it appears that “the original form of consciousness” (Urform des Bewusstseins), the “fundamental fact” (Grundtatsache) thanks to which subjectivity becomes transcendental and is finally able to posit a world, is precisely what Husserl unambiguously calls “synthesis” or “unity of a multiplicity” (Hua I, p. 41).62  An interesting contribution to identify the relation between “synthesis and givenness” can be found in De Santis (2015). One should also mention the important exception of Sokolowski (1974, pp. 86–110; 2000, pp. 27–33), who has the merit of being the only interpreter of Husserl—as far as I can tell—that has recognized the significance of what he calls the “formal structure” named “identity in manifolds.” According to Sokolowski: (i) the “formal opposition” between “identity” and “manifolds” is a structural feature of Husserl’s phenomenology (1974, p. 86); (ii) it occurs together with two other “contrarieties” [sic!] (p. 86), i.e., “parts/wholes” (pp. 8–17) and “presence/ 62

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Such “original form” is variously diffracted into the different modes of unity corresponding to the different types of globally rational and locally non-rational and irrational objects of actual or possible experience. This clearly explains why “transcendental consciousness” is not, and cannot be, the name of a being or of a somehow supreme original Entity. Taken in its strictest phenomenological sense, the word simply indicates the fundamental fact (Grundtatsache) that many connected (verbundene) lived-experiences come to be one in a way that, quite literally, “makes sense.” Accordingly, the word “constitution” (Konstitution), used by Husserl to describe what makes transcendental subjectivity the true ἀρχή/ῥίζωμα of the “allness” (Allheit) of actual, actually possible or possibly possible objects and types of objects, is only an abridged form, whose full expression reads “constitutive universal synthesis (universal konstitutive Synthesis)” (Hua I, pp.  90, 134). Being both constituted and constituting, transcendental consciousness can certainly be said to be “out of the world,” but it is definitely not beyond unity and multiplicity. On the contrary, it is constitutive—and transcendental—precisely because of the distinctive manifold ways in which it can be one. In order to be the “originating field (Ursprungsfeld)” (Hua VIII, p. 28) or the “original domain of the radical problem of the transcendence (Das Ursprungsgebiet des radikalen Transzendenzproblem)” (Hua XXV, p. 144), Husserl’s transcendental absence” (pp. 18–56); (iii) the three distinctions are “interrelated” but irreducible to one another (2000, p. 22); (iv) while Aristotle had already worked out the mereological distinction between wholes and parts, and Plato that between identity and manifold, Husserl’s original discovery is bound to the opposition between presence and absence (p. 22). As for point (i), Sokolowki is definitely right and correctly identifies the fact that different layers of “identity of manifolds” are always involved in the constitution of material things (1974, pp. 86–97), categorial and cultural objects (pp. 98–100), the ego and other minds (pp. 101 and 109–10), etc. Points (ii) and (iii), however, appear already to be more problematic, since they lump together formal ontological structures of objects in general, on the one hand, and transcendental a priori conditions of sense-constitution, on the other. In fact, “identity” and “difference,” “genera” and “species,” “parts” and “wholes,” and even “unity” and “plurality” are all formal ontological categories, applicable to everything whatsoever (Hua III/1, pp. 27, 132). By contrast, “unity of synthesis,” “empty/ filled intentions,” “horizon,” “multiplicity-of-appearances” (Erscheinungsmannigfaltigkeit), etc., do not name formal structures of objects in general but laws of sense constitution, ways-to-be-one of transcendental life. Thus, as already pointed out, if one-many are to be called “principles,” it is precisely insofar as they are the constitutive principles of phenomena; or, in a slightly different sense, because they are the transcendental origin of the ontological “principles” (εἴδη) on which the correlation between truth and being is grounded. Accordingly, one/many should not be conflated or put on a par with part/wholes or even identity, difference, manifold etc. intended as formal categories. Moreover, once regarded as principles, they finally include and are not opposed, or contrasted, to the pair empty/filled (which, in turn, is not adequately described by the somehow Ηeideggerian jargon of absence and presence). What, in my view, could have put Sokolowski on the wrong track appears to be expressed in point (iv). Having overdetermined the originality of presence/absence, the author considers the one/many only from the point of view of Plato’s “unity of forms” (2000, p. 22). “Plato and the Neoplatonic thinkers,” Sokolowski says, “as well as the scholastics, explore the idea of the identity within differences, the one in many” (2000, p. 22). Since the one/may issue boils down to the problem of “the one in the many,” i.e., the mode of being of universal forms, Sokolowski does not see that “the one and the many” can also be understood not as categories, but as “principles,” “origins,” “roots,” etc. (see Sects. 4.8 and 4.9).

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life of consciousness has to be already delimited by certain unities of multiplicity. The first one, as already mentioned, is the “universal synthesis of time” (see Sect. 5.5). The unlimited, “everflowing” stream (Ström) or absolute flux (absolute Fluß) of lived-experiences (Hua X, p. 114) is brought to unity thanks to the intentional “form” (Form) of time-consciousness and couched in the primordial one-many structure of the living present and its varieties (p. 366). It is a “Heraclitean stream” (Hua I, pp. 18, 191), as Husserl puts it, constantly flowing within the limits of a temporal stream bed that, as such, does not flow. This is already a first one/many figure, lying at the very heart of subjectivity itself. On the other hand, one cannot but notice that the terms ὕλη/μορφή, which is used by Husserl in Ideas I (Hua III/1, p. 71ff) to distinguish between two different kinds of living experiences, intentional and non-intentional (sensuous), are clearly two of the possible names used in Middle Platonism to rephrase the one/many principles (see Sect. 3.3). Finally, in the reference to the open-ended horizon of potentialities of the cogitations, Husserl also employs the language of “potentialities,” already intentionally pre-traced in some way, both determined and undetermined (see Hua I, pp. 81–3). We find again the very vocabulary used both in the Old Academy and Middle Platonism to describe the Many as a principle of indeterminacy: matter, everflowing, multiplicity, potentiality (ὕλη, ἀέναον, πλῆθος, δύναμις). A principle constantly intertwined with its opposite, providing forms, rules, limitations, unity, actuality, etc. However, contrary to Speusippus or Plutarch,63 the one and the many have now migrated. They are no longer cosmological principles—or, if they could still be named this way, it is in a “completely new sense.” For Husserl’s distinctive distortion has now transformed the many ways in which the many can be one into the principles of phenomena. And it is only insofar as conscious life is variously submitted to their authority that some of its constitutive syntheses can soundly be described as the “origin of truth and being”—beyond being and non-being.

 As far as I can see, unlike Xenocrates or Eudorus, and more like Speusippus and Plutarch, Husserl’s variety of the one/many principle(s) does not include any reference to One ultra-­ transcendent principle above the one and the many. This is also the reason why the scattered universe of Middle Platonism, with its different, undecided configurations, seems to me more suitable as a “heuristic filter” than Plotinus’s amazingly sophisticated and quite consistent Neoplatonism. As far as I can tell, all the points justifying a heuristic proximity between Husserl and Plotinus are common to the broader Middle Platonic tradition. By contrast, the most specific aspects of Plotinus’s philosophy do not seem to have any strong parallel in transcendental phenomenology: there is no ultra-transcendent, perfect, and ungraspable or ineffable One; nor a doctrine of emanation or conversion; no idea that matter is evil etc. It should be noted that Husserl does explicitly talk about Plotinus in a short summary of Enn. V, 4, 1 and VI, 8 (Hua VII, 328–9). But in this very brief synopsis, redacted in 1913, Husserl simply reports some of Plotinus’s most distinctive views without expressing any judgment. The issue should nevertheless be studied in more detail. 63

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6.2 Towards the Infinite Academy This finally brings us back to Husserl’s position within his broad narrative of the infinite Academy. And at this point, Husserl’s mosaic appears as extremely original and certainly fascinating. It is probably needless to remind that Husserl’s account of the history of philosophy is more a philosophical statement than a report of facts and figures. Husserl himself was well aware of this point, since he describes his own historical reflections in the Krisis as a form of “poetical invention (Dichtung der Philosophiegeschichte)” (Hua VI, pp. 512–3, 556). He also candidly admits that his readings of Plato or Aristotle were not moved by “a concern for scientific accuracy,” a concern which, in his view, was “completely excluded for whole epochs” (Hua VI, p. 511). Finally, he acknowledges that his phenomenological discoveries have been guided by and made possible thanks to a “non-historical, false Plato” (“unhistorischen”, unwahren Plato) (Hua VI, p. 5111–512).64 But in the Husserlian sketch of the history of philosophy that we have studied in the present chapter, there is definitely more than meets the eye. Husserl invites in fact the reader to judge Plato and Aristotle—as we have tried to do ourselves (see Sects. 3.3 and 3.4)—more from the standpoint of the “fruitfulness” of their historical distortions than as targets of scientific-historical reconstruction. The two approaches, historical accuracy and philosophical activism, are equally legitimate, but they are not identical at all and correspond to two very different theoretical operations.65 Hence the question is not whether Husserl’s Plato or Aristotle are the true Plato or the true Aristotle. Husserl knows quite well that they might not be. The question is rather if, and to what extent, Husserl’s distinctive variety of eclectic Platonism, i.e., “one of many ‘possible Platonisms,’”66 is “emphatic” and “resonant” in the sense defined above (see Sect. 3.4). Is it worth accepting Husserl’s share of distortions or are we finally left with another variety of the fake cat/dog dilemma (see Sects. 1.1 and 3.4)? Here is the amazing picture, then, that we get once Edmund Husserl, a.k.a. “the philosopher thinking by himself” or “the philosophical self-thinker” (philosophische Selbstdenker), decides—because of the urgency of his time—to continue his philosophical combat by turning his non-historical (unhistorische) Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, etc. into the characters of a historical narrative. Just as Descartes had done before him, Husserl’s “archeological project” answers to Gorgias by turning back to the Socratic γνῶθι σεαυτόν. The Socratic “self,” however,—like the “self” of Augustine—was never an unextended thinking substance: it is a living, acting, willing subject. Descartes had mistakenly posited such subject as if it were

 All these points will be extensively discussed in Chap. 12 of this volume.  One of the most interesting cases of silent conflict between “historical accuracy” and “philosophical activism” is the contemporary discussion of the putative “Aristotelian” origin of the concept of intentionality. On the topic, see Majolino (2016). 66  I borrow this formula from Chiaradonna (2009, p. 20). 64 65

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simply another being; but Husserl will deliberately reject and avoid this Cartesian misstep. The “self” that Husserl picks up from Socrates and Augustine is not a first principle in the sense of an axiom; nor in the sense of a fundamental Being from which the transcendent Weltall and its existence have to be logically and consistently deduced (see Hua I, pp. 63–4). Subjectivity is here the field of transcendental life, whose universal laws of synthesis determine the many-ways-to-be-one necessary to ultimately make sense of the factual whole of the world in which we actually live-in. As a result, Husserl’s mosaic of the infinite Academy, heuristically enriched by our Middle-Platonic detour, would finally look like this: (Infinite 1) Socrates’s way to a non-substantial subjectivity meets, say, Speusippus’s doctrine of the two non-ontological first principles of the one and the many; (Infinite 2) thanks to this Socratic contamination, the one and the many are, so to speak, “de-pythagorized.” The point is no longer to maintain—in any meaningful sense—any naive metaphysical claim like “things are numbers” or “things are generated from numbers;” (Infinite 3)  one should rather respond to the Sophists’ transcendental challenge, (Infinite 4) so as to provide the correlation between being, truth, and knowledge needed to ensure the principles of Aristotelian “real” and Stoic “formal” ontologies (first philosophy); (Infinite 5)

and finally help realizing Plato’s project of a genuine philosophy;

(Infinite 6) all this, leaving to us the daunting task of finally turning to the most fundamental questions of metaphysics (last philosophy), and face the contradictions and the hardship of factual, individual and collective, life.

6.3 Away from the School of Athens Once properly identified, Husserl’s ultimate distortion is now finally open to discussion, and its “fruitfulness” (emphasis, resonance) ready to be carefully assessed. The picture appears already, even at first sight, extremely “emphatic”: its originality is beyond any doubt. None of its elements is in fact dispensable or ornamental, nor does the overall drawing look like any other known portrayal of the philosophical tradition. As for its “resonance,” it still needs to be measured, since the Post-­ Husserlian phenomenological tradition, both analytic and continental, has massively followed entirely different paths. Questioning the reasons for phenomenology’s enduring turn away from Husserl would be the topic for another study. Is it the fascination of a wholesale critique of the Western philosophical tradition qua ontotheological metaphysics of presence? Is it the comfortable stance of doing some

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piecemeal philosophy, without being bothered by any “grand question”? Is it the obsolescence of the concept of reason? Is it one of the (inappropriate) side-­effects of the (more than appropriate) political sense of guilt of post-colonial Europe? Is it the (sometimes appropriate) academic sense of guilt of philosophers, with respect to their colleagues in science departments? Or is it simply the fact that, after the postmodernist hangover, the magic word “realism” seems to have finally made everybody happy again? Again, this is not the right place to discuss the tribulations of contemporary phenomenology and its unresolved relation with Husserl. It suffices to have provided some elements of discussion. There is one last thing worth considering though, especially after having learned about the βοήθεια, and the Middle Platonic fondness for contaminations. As far as we know, Husserl did not have any dogs or cats. Had he had a pet, however, it would have likely been a kind of platypus—a somehow “improved” beaver, part duck, part otter and part something else entirely different. An infinite platypus, indeed. A platypus scuffling around and making a mess of that cliché called: “the phenomenological School of Athens;” a cliché picturing Husserl with his finger upwards, and Heidegger extending the right arm into the air with a straightened hand.

Part VII

Conclusion

Chapter 12

The Invention of Infinity On a Tentative Answer

Between the idea | And the reality | Between the motion | And the Act | Falls the Shadow. T. S. Eliot

1 Troubles In the Introduction to this volume (Part I), we pointed out the difficulties of a research that intends to explore the relationship between philosophy and the history of philosophy guided by Husserl’s problematic account of philosophy itself. Faced with such difficulties, we then decided to “sidestep” Husserl’s daunting question “why does the philosopher need the history of philosophy?” (with its threefold answer and quite demanding conceptuality) and replace it with two more accessible questions. These alternative questions (“when and how did Husserl need the history of philosophy?”; “why should historians of philosophy care about Husserl’s phenomenology?”) did not require any previous assessment of Husserl’s phenomenology or any commitment to its underlying assumptions. They required, instead, the willingness to establish the singularity, the novelty and the fruitfulness of Husserl’s actual engagement with the concepts, methods and problems of the philosophical tradition and its historical development. Thanks to this “circumvention strategy”, so to speak, we have then been able to provide a tentative, Aquinas-like introduction to the investigations carried out in this volume—albeit in reverse.1 We first saw how concepts such as “unity” and “multiplicity”, drawn from the Platonic tradition, structure the project—both eidetic and transcendental—of Husserlian phenomenology, and form the backbone of the idea of “attitude”, which, in turn, is essential for thinking the unity of phenomenology and of philosophy (Part II). We then observed

 See Chap. 1.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2_12

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how, in confronting the conceptuality of the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, Husserl addresses the problem of the unity of ontology, and defines the “analytically rigorous” idea of “ontological region,” which, again, is necessary to think the correlation of the two Ur-regionen, “world” and “consciousness” (Part III). We have also examined how a still unexplored side of modernity—Cartesian, post-­Leibnizian, and Kantian—provides Husserl with the concepts of “variation” and “productive imagination” enabling phenomenology to establish, in trying to overcome them, the eidetic limits of such regions (Part IV). Moving then to the sphere of formal ontology, we paused to consider the way in which Husserl conceives the correlation between the formal categories of “being” and “meaning”, engaging, at once, with Aristotelianism and Platonism, but ultimately choosing the Stoic path of the “something” (τι) and the “expressible sense” (λεκτόν) (Part V). We finally focused, at length, on Husserl’s “poetical invention” of the history of philosophy as the ongoing realization of an “infinite task”, its manifold beginnings (the Presocratic’s new “attitude” towards the “all of the world”, Plato’s institution of the “idea” of genuine philosophy, Descartes’s “radicalization” thereof) and missed opportunities (Gorgias’s ignored transcendental “joke”) (Part VI). It is my hope that, having sidestepped the “daunting question”, all these investigations might have finally shown not only that a better understanding of the history of philosophy contributes to the discovery of neglected aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology, but also that a better understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology contributes to the discovery of neglected aspects of the history of philosophy. Yet in the Introduction, we also hastened to admit, right from the beginning, that the adopted strategy could only work as a temporary move. Sidestepping the “daunting question” and refusing to address the problems of Husserl’s explicit account of the relationship between philosophy and the history of philosophy could have, at best, convinced some reluctant readers to suspend their objections, not to drop them. So, despite the hopefully positive outcomes that could be drawn from the investigations carried out until now, these objections remain. And, on closer inspection, one might even think that they have now been reinforced, and that the circumvention strategy has been somehow counterproductive. Let us assume instead, for the sake of the argument, that the previous chapters have sufficiently dealt with the two substitute questions. Let us also admit that they somehow succeeded in showing how the encounter between Husserl and the philosophical tradition is as relevant (to better understand some significant “episodes” of his phenomenology) as it is fruitful (to understand some significant “episodes” of the history of philosophy). Now, having chosen to separate these outcomes from Husserl’s controversial claims about the nature of philosophy and its entanglement with the history of philosophy, have we not shown that all this relevance and fruitfulness has literally nothing to do with the overall significance of Husserl’s philosophical-phenomenological account? All things considered, a consistently reluctant reader might still argue that the essays gathered in this volume have shown exactly the opposite, namely, that the relevance and fruitfulness of Husserl’s outcomes is, at best, independent of, and, at worst, at odds with the ground tenets of Husserl’s phenomenological conception of the history of philosophy. If our investigations admittedly do away with Husserl’s peculiar

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understanding of the relationship between phenomenology, philosophy and the history of philosophy, what reason is there to believe that the positive results achieved by the former are still compatible, let alone consistent, with the assumptions of the latter? In sum, have we really shown, in any meaningful sense, the relevance and fruitfulness of Husserl’s phenomenological approach to the question? As hard as it might be to admit it, the answer is, at least for the moment, negative. Although all of the essays gathered in this volume have suggested that Husserl’s long-term engagement with the philosophical tradition is harmonious with his late reflection on the “philosophical need for the history of philosophy”, none of them has openly addressed the issue as such. As a result, the suspicion that what passed off as a mere “methodological” move was rather a deliberate step to downplay Husserl’s somewhat questionable approach to the history of philosophy still stands. Such suspicion would, moreover, be confirmed by the fact that, in Ideas I, Husserl had (in)famously introduced the much disputed “philosophical ἐποχή.” The philosophical ἐποχή is, in fact, a rule that (1) prevents the phenomenologist from using “traditional theories of ancient or modern vintage” and, more generally, “philosophical doctrines that have been passed down to us, however universally they are acknowledged”; and (2) requires him or her to “completely withhold judgment regarding the doctrinal content of all previous philosophy” and to “carry out all demonstrations within the framework of withholding such judgment” (Hua III/1, pp. 32–3/33). Now, if Husserl was willing to enforce such a restrictive rule; if he wanted phenomenological truths to be intuitively “posed” and not traditionally “pre-supposed;” if he was blinded by the rationalist “myth of the absence of presuppositions,” then it is not clear how he could possibly praise any form of experimentation with the concepts, methods and problems of the philosophical tradition itself, as the ones variously discussed in this book. And it is even less clear how the history of philosophy could become relevant for the development of phenomenology, if not by acting behind Husserl’s back, as it were, that is, unwillingly and unintentionally playing against the rules of the philosophical ἐποχή. How is it possible, then, to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory claims: that phenomenology must reject the presuppositions of the philosophical tradition and that the philosopher needs the history of philosophy? Unless we openly face this problem, our overall attempt will always seem either inconsistent with the manner in which Husserl explicitly conceived the relationship between phenomenology and the history of philosophy or simply doomed to failure. It is the risk of this failure that we should now address. In this concluding chapter, I will thus resume the discussion with the reluctant reader started in the Introduction and examine the properly phenomenological apparatus that operates behind Husserl’s “daunting question”. This study could therefore only be concluded by showing that Husserl’s late conception of the philosophical engagement with the history of philosophy is consistent with the various examples of experimental praxis with the concepts, methods and problems of the philosophical tradition charted in the different chapters of this book; that it is also consistent with and indeed motivated by the very same principles that guide the philosophical ἐποχή; that one of the most relevant aspects of this

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conception is the idea of a “false but fruitful” distortion of the authors of the past. An idea that is anything but trivial or commonsensical, since it is gained without the conceptual resources of transcendental phenomenology, and, more specifically, without Husserl’s technical concepts of “adumbration” and “apperception.” Facing the “daunting question,” after having sidestepped it, should now provide a different angle to understand why Husserl called himself a “Platonist” and why prominent Plato scholars of the twentieth century took his phenomenology quite seriously. Only at this point it should also become clear how Husserl, in understanding philosophy together with and inseparably from its history, articulated a powerful and original concept of infinity—revealing how philosophy in itself unfolds in an infinitely extended horizon of renewed inventions of itself.

2 Dead Ends A good place to start is the apparent contradiction, which we have just alluded to, between the philosophical ἐποχή that neutralizes the essential relationship with the tradition, and the thesis of the “necessity” for the history of philosophy, which seems to reintroduce it. An easy and very palatable way out of the dilemma might be the following. It could be argued—and it has indeed often been done—that from the “static” positions of Ideas I to the “genetic” and “generative” views expressed in the texts around the Krisis, Husserl’s position with respect to the history of philosophy has changed. And that, accordingly, what was previously excluded by the philosophical ἐποχή is now welcomed. There would thus be a “problematic” and “overly rationalist” Husserl, but there would also be another Husserl, more self-critical and sensitive to the appeal of “history” in general, and the “history of philosophy” in particular.2 Something valuable could certainly be gleaned from the latter, but not so much from the former. Now, wouldn’t this rather simple and fashionable solution be sufficient to rebut the objections of our imaginary reluctant reader? I am afraid not. Widespread as it is, the loophole of disconnecting “early” from “late,” “static” from “genetic,” “essentialist” from “historical” phenomenology— blaming the one while praising the other—is often unsatisfactory.3 And, in our particular case, it clearly encounters two major difficulties.  In order to avoid any confusion, let me point out from the beginning that the later Husserl gives at least three meanings to the expression “history of philosophy”: with respect to (1) the relation between the philosophy of the present and the philosophies of the past, (2) the relation between philosophy itself as a theoretical universal attitude, and the past of philosophy, i.e., the universal practical-axiological attitude of the myth and the “historically already given pre-scientific mythical world” (see Hua VI, p. 491), and (3) the relation between philosophy as infinitely aiming at the world-in-itself and its non-idealized past in the life-world or, as I prefer to call it, in the world-of-­ life. The importance of this point will become apparent later, in the final part of this Chapter. 3  The most analytic-oriented readers praise the “early” Husserl (Austrian, descriptive psychologist, ontologist, logician), whereas the more continental-bent prefer the “late” one (German-quasi-­ 2

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First, it hardly squares with many texts from the so-called “static” period, where Husserl is manifestly aware of the tension between the factual-historical situation of philosophy and its intuitive constraints. For example, in Ideas I, immediately after introducing the philosophical ἐποχή, Husserl hastens to add that, we do not need, for this reason, to avoid (and, indeed, we scarcely can avoid) speaking of philosophy at all, of philosophy as a historical factum, of factual philosophical orientations that have determined humanity’s general scientific convictions in a good sense as well as frequently in a bad sense. (Hua III/1, pp. 33–4/34)

Moreover, Husserl’s numerous lectures devoted to the history of philosophy after the publication of Ideas I unequivocally show that the need to restate the validity of “the principle of all principles” (and therefore not to take for granted any previously admitted “content”—not even the “most universally acknowledged”) is in no way incompatible with a series of solid historical investigations into the past of present philosophy and into the relation between the concepts, methods and problems of the latter and those of the former.4 Therefore, it is certainly correct to note that the later Husserl displays more fine-grained conceptual resources to reflect anew on the articulation between the intuitive constraints of philosophy “in its making,” as it were, and its past developments (both factual and teleological). Such reflection, however, had already been called for in Ideas I, and had long been prepared by a painstaking series of studies devoted to the philosophical tradition.5 The second difficulty is more significant. If one broadens the field of the investigation beyond Ideas I and the philosophical ἐποχή, it turns out that the very same tension between the centripetal force of intuition and the centrifugal force of tradition—between the quest for self-evidence in doing philosophy and the awareness of the historical situation of every philosophical doing—reappears, from time to time, in many of Husserl’s texts and in several different forms. From a merely autobiographical standpoint, it appears, for example, as the inner struggle of a self-styled “phenomenological Platonist,” as Husserl describes himself in one of his letters to Julius Stenzel to which I will come back shortly. The self-portrait appearing in this letter is indeed that of a strange Platonist. On the one hand, Husserl humbly admits that he is utterly incompetent as a philologist and unprepared as a historian; on the other, he impudently claims to have struggled “far too much with Platonic problems” before he had even read Plato’s dialogues (Hua Dok III/6, pp. 427–8). While seeking self-evidence and simply doing philosophy in a rigorous way, Husserl says,

French) and, more generally, tend to downplay his “essentialism” and “static constitutive” analysis and favor the “historical” and “dynamic” aspects of transcendental phenomenology. 4  From 1915 to 1926 Husserl held, on a regular basis, several series of lecture courses devoted to the history of philosophy. The list, drawn from Karl Schuhmann’s Husserl Chronik, can be found in Hanne Jacobs’s introductory essay to Hua Mat IX, pp. x–xi. 5  Let me stress again that, in general, I have serious reservations about the tendency to attribute to the later Husserl some sort of “historical turn” as opposed to the “essentialistic” leanings of his earlier phenomenology. This line of interpretation is followed, for instance, by Dastur (1996). Among those who reject it, see Hopkins (2010).

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at one point, he recognizes that he has been wrestling for years, without even knowing it, with problems that he is now willing to label as “Platonic”. The tension expressed in this short autobiographical note, written in 1916, appears two decades later, readjusted and suitably transformed, in a famous Appendix to the Krisis. It now appears as the inner tension of every “self-thinker” (Selbstdenker), of every philosopher who thinks by himself or herself and, nevertheless, considers himself or herself as part of a collective struggle involving nothing less than the intersubjective community of all humanity (Hua VI, pp. 510–1). But this inner tension is also that of every “beginner” (Anfänger) in philosophy whose quest, Husserl says, has been “motivated by the Platonic philosophy, the Aristotelian philosophy, etc.” These philosophies, however, acted upon the beginner not as they are in themselves—i.e., as they would show themselves “objectively” after a careful “scientific-historical” scrutiny, as pure “matters of facts”—but as they appeared to him or her, as it were Lebensweltlich, i.e., in the various transformed ways in which Plato, Aristotle etc. have been contingently handed down to him or her and exerted a lasting influence on his or her life (Hua VI, p. 511). The self-thinker, Husserl continues, has developed his or her own concepts within this modified historical set of transformations, blindly following, as it were, the driving force of a “historically false” Plato, Aristotle etc. (Hua VI, p. 512). And it is precisely from such a distorted point of view that his or her most important conceptual novelties and philosophical discoveries have been or will eventually be introduced. But when the self-thinker returns to the texts of Plato or Aristotle, after having carried out his or her philosophical activity and made new philosophical discoveries he or she cannot but read such texts through the lenses of those discoveries, i.e., thanks to these very conceptual innovations that he or she has obtained under the guidance of the previous “false” image of Plato and Aristotle (Hua VI, pp. 511–12). Thus, not only has he or she advanced as a philosopher, “guided by and making use of her ‘unhistorical’, false Plato” (unter Leitung, unter Verwertung seines “unhistorischen”, unwahren Plato), but he or she is also now reading Plato’s dialogues anew, while moving towards another “false” Plato. However, as Husserl oddly concludes, “not everything is lost”— something true about Plato remains, despite this continuing path of distortions (Hua VI, p. 512). Now, in all these texts, the tension between the epistemological constraints of transcendental phenomenology and the history of philosophy appears in its most compelling and complex form. The presuppositionless philosopher of Ideas I, who only relies on intuition and yet (“for better or for worse”) philosophizes within a historically determined line of thought; the “phenomenological Platonist” of the autobiographical letter to Stenzel, who willingly places himself within one of these lines of thought, while emphasizing the autonomy of his activity as a working philosopher; and the “self-thinker” of the Appendix to the Krisis, who “unfolds as a philosopher”, both by following his or her own autonomous path (through philosophy, relying only on self-evidence) and by transforming himself or herself into someone new (through the reinjection of his or her new discoveries into the old sources of motivation, moving from one “false” Plato, Aristotle, etc. to

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another)—all three are figures that, while not entirely identical, appear as varieties of the very same structural tension and therefore clarify each other another. There is no doubt that, since Husserl himself is an example of a “philosopher,” a “self-thinker” or “beginner,” when he speaks about these figures, he is also speaking about his own path. Husserl is the one who was motivated by some currently available “false” images of Plato, without even having studied the Platonic dialogues. He is the one who, under such “motivational” guidance, invented new concepts, developed new methods, made new discoveries and formulated new problems—all results whose soundness, truth or validity, however, can only be established under the “methodological” guidance of the principle of self-evidence. He is also the one who has reinserted these new concepts, methods, and problems into his further readings of Plato’s works and, as Husserl says, “apperceived Plato” accordingly. It is still Husserl who forcefully admits that he has modified himself by jumping from one “false Plato” to the next, taking advantage of such self-modifications by further developing new concepts, methods, problems, etc. And finally, it is always Husserl the one who believes—though at times quite hesitantly—that such constant movement is not incompatible with the idea of being somehow faithful to that (constantly ignored but always referred to) “true” Plato, which would only show himself to the rigorous and scientific approach of classicists and historians of philosophy of the likes of Stenzel. If that is the case, then, the later Husserl of the Krisis does not seem to be too different from that of Ideas I, at least not as far as this specific point is concerned. Accordingly, the alleged flaws of the latter may well turn out to be the same flaws of the former. Explaining away the contradiction by relying on the idea of a development in Husserl’s thought will simply not do.

3 Constellations If the way out of a supposed “historical turn” is a dead end, must we then already conclude that Husserl’s transcendental-phenomenological framework should not only be methodologically sidestepped but also philosophically rejected? At least for the moment, the answer is still negative, and here is why. The philosophical ἐποχή, as presented in Ideas I, does not at all imply that the concepts, methods or problems of phenomenology come out of nowhere, but merely that the source from which the phenomenological truths draw their legitimacy is not the fact that they have been previously accepted as valid or even as self-evident. The concepts, methods and problems of phenomenology are indeed historically handed down and they thus carry the weight of, at least, part of the philosophical tradition. But the way in which Husserl actively handles this historical determination—and the way in which he manages to avoid their uncritical acceptance—is not the “philosophical ἐποχή” but what might be called, to borrow an expression from Adorno6, a  See Adorno (1966), pp. 162–166.

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“constellational arrangement.” With respect to their content, the old and perhaps obscure concepts of the tradition should definitely be intuitively, i.e. phenomenologically clarified; but this does not mean that the new clarified concepts of phenomenology have severed their historical bond with their traditional counterparts. Husserl’s often neglected words in the Introduction to Ideas I are quite unambiguous and deserve to be recalled: Since it would be inappropriate to choose artificial expressions that fall completely outside the framework of the historical language of philosophy and, above all, since basic concepts in philosophy cannot be pinned down in definitions by means of fixed concepts capable of being identified each time on the basis of immediately accessible intuitions; since as a rule it is necessary instead to undertake lengthy investigations before those concepts can be clarified in a definitive way and determined, a combination of ways of talking (kombinierte Redeweisen) is often indispensable. These ways of talking group together several (mehrere) expressions of common speech that are used in approximately the same sense, grouping them together while singling out individual expressions terminologically. In philosophy one cannot define as in mathematics; in this respect imitation of the mathematical procedure is invariably not only fruitless but perverse and leads to the most harmful consequences. Moreover, in the course of the reflections elaborating on them, each of the terminological expressions mentioned above should acquire its fixed sense through specific illustrations (Aufweisungen) that are evident in themselves. Meanwhile, detailed critical comparisons with the philosophical traditions in this respect—as in every other—are necessarily foregone if only on account of the scope of this work. (Hua III/1, p. 9/8, translation modified)

By no means are philosophical concepts “always” (jederzeit) or “immediately” (unmittelbar) grounded in “already available” (zugänglich) intuitions, Husserl says. Instead, the meaning of their expressions is “firm” (fest) without being “fixed” (fixiert) (Hua III/1, p. 9/8). Accordingly, the language of phenomenology consists of words whose conceptual meaning is determined more by their multiple—and yet partially determined—specific uses, than by the traditional ways in which certain philosophical expressions have been used in the past, or by one of their lexical fixed meanings bestowed in current philosophical dictionaries. Such specific use, however, cannot but be the modification of an ongoing use, or a deviation from some previous, already established, ones. Thus, as Husserl puts it, since the conceptual determinations of the philosophical language are neither pegged to ready-made intuitions nor derived from unambiguous definitions, they can only emerge from the constellation of a plurality of expressions, mutually limiting each other and pointing altogether toward a sense that becomes increasingly determinate as it is intuitively self-confirmed by a continuous and consistent use of the constellation itself. Husserl’s constellations of expressions are to the phenomenologist what astronomic constellations are to the navigator, namely, guides for orientation. The transformation of the language of the philosophical tradition is, in fact, what literally guides the intuition and makes possible the phenomenological clarification. Each individual expression has indeed its own history, conditions of use, traditional meanings and established functions. Thanks to their specific arrangement, these expressions can be somehow “neutralized”, at least in some aspects of their particular history, conditions of use, traditional meanings and established functions. Given concepts

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are thus embedded in expressions whose meaning is intuitively obscure and cannot be philosophically taken for granted. Accordingly, new phenomenological concepts, clarified or in the process of clarification, must be expressed not by neologisms, mathematical formulas or etymological archaisms, but by tentative constellations of many partially obscure traditional expressions to be intuitively fulfilled. Philosophical concepts are not drawn on the basis of “immediately accessible intuitions” (unmittelbar zugängliche Anschauungen), Husserl says. Their intuitions will come, eventually, at the end of a long process. A process which involves the constellational transformation of their traditional expressions (Hua III/1, p. 9/8). The process described by Husserl in the Introduction to Ideas I, although limited to the case of philosophical concepts, corresponds to the way in which he actually deals with the concepts, methods and problems whose historical “episodes” are studied in the present volume. And in all these cases, as we have seen, the philosophical language of the tradition is constantly modified and put under what might be called an “intuitive stress test.”7 The history of philosophy is indeed the “horizon” from which phenomenology draws its concepts, methods and problems, expressed in a given form. And each of these expressions is somehow “right”, even if “obscure”. This relative obscurity has to be clarified “phenomenologically,” that is, thanks to the backward path leading to the correlation between the unity of what is constituted and the multiplicity of its constitutive syntheses.8 But their relative rightness is preliminarily acknowledged and progressively revealed thanks to the constellation of a plurality of partially overlapping expressions guiding an open series of self-confirming intuitions.9  A further illustration of this “stress test” can be found in Majolino (2010), where the articulation between language, concepts, and intuitions in Husserl’s phenomenology is explicted through the concept of “metaphorization”. 8  This point has been stressed in Chap. 2 and in the final sections of Chap. 11. 9  Specific examples of this strategy can be found in the various chapters of this volume. The strategy is at work already in Husserl’s early works—those between the Philosophy of Arithmetic and the Logical Investigations—where forms of setting and solving problems belonging to the Aristotelian tradition, revised and renewed by Trendelenburg and Brentano, are further rearranged and applied to new sets of problems to which they were, at least originally, utterly alien—as is shown in Chap. 8 of this volume. It also occurs in Husserl’s theory of meaning—spelled out in Chap. 9 —, often wrongly labeled as “Platonic,” which, on a closer look, appeared instead as the result of a new distinctive constellation embedding the Stoic concept of λέκτον. Other illustrations of such productive rearrangements involve Husserl’s ways of deflecting and distorting the sense of Aristotle’s phrase “τὸ ὂν λέγεται πολλαχῶς” and Descartes’s “nulla ‘re’ indiget ad existendum”— examined in Chaps. 5 and 6. Further noteworthy sets of constellations are the ones that include Husserl’s concept of εἶδος. In the Introduction to Ideas I Husserl still admits that expressions such as “a priori” or “a posteriori,” which he had previously employed in the Logical Investigations, should be avoided “as much as possible” not only because of the “confusing obscurities and equivocations clinging to them in general use” but also because of the “notorious philosophical doctrines that, as a bad heritage from the past, are combined with them”. Accordingly, in order to neutralize the effect of such verbal and traditional ambiguities, Husserl uses them “only as equivalent to other terms given along with them […] especially when it makes sense to allow historical parallels to resonate” (Hua III/1, p. 8/7). A different set of problems, Husserl continues, is related to expressions such as “Idea” or “Ideal,” which risk overshadowing some crucial conceptual differ7

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In sum: (1) The rule of the philosophical ἐποχή does not at all exclude the recourse to the concepts, methods and problems belonging to the history of philosophy; (2) the latter are not only welcomed but deemed necessary for philosophy to exist, plainly and simply, and to craft a philosophical language whose fundamental concepts, methods and problems are, as Husserl says, neither always “immediately” given nor “given once and for all;” (3) when it comes to phenomenology, the terms expressing such concepts, methods and problems enter into clusters, plural arrangements, configurations and constellations that redefine their meanings and somehow stabilize them through their self-confirming use, thus always allowing for new consistent intuitions; (4) the philosophical ἐποχή is only the requirement to ground the truth-content of philosophical judgments in the principle of self-­evidence and not in the fact of their blind acknowledgment (even if they have been previously acknowledged as self-evident); (5) this requirement is not limited to “static” phenomenology and is not rejected by the later Husserl in the name of some enhanced awareness of the importance of “history,” but is rather reaffirmed in historical terms and recast within a broader teleological framework.10 So much for the reluctant reader whose doubts rest on the apparent contradictions of the philosophical ἐποχή. Yet the game is by no means over, insofar as this new conceptual framework—clearly emerging in Husserl’s later materials but already at work at the time of Ideas I—has brought to the fore a quite different paradox. The new paradox runs as follows. Let us grant that the “self-thinker” draws his or her concepts, methods, problems, etc. from an already constituted array of ences. Thus, in order to avoid any confusion, Husserl now renounces all this misleading vocabulary, singles out the concept of “Idea in the Kantian sense” and introduces the “terminologically unspoiled name ‘εἶδος’”—which, together with the German word “Wesen,” is now meant to refer to the universal concepts of formal and material essences (Hua III/1, p. 8/7). Then again, the specific sense of the expression “εἶδος” here—which is admittedly chosen because it is still “unspoiled” or “unspent” (unverbraucht), i.e., not conceptually overdetermined in the German-­ speaking discussions of Husserl’s time—depends neither on its etymological-lexical meaning, nor on the history of its past uses, but rather, as we have seen, on the intuition-driving constellations within which it occurs. These constellations include other clusters of mutually arranged expressions, each with its own history, each borrowed from its own philosophical tradition. The first cluster of expressions which, aptly modified, contributes to determining the specific meaning of Husserl’s concept of εἶδος, includes terms such as “free phantasy,” “productive imagination” and “fiction”—a cluster, with its whole Leibnizian-Kantian background, which has been studied in Chap. 7. A second cluster determines the meaning of Husserl’s concept of εἶδος vis-à-vis the Aristotelian concepts expressed by terms such as “individual” and “τόδε τι”, to which Chap. 4 is devoted. 10  “In the explicit and scientifically responsible historical retrospection (Rückbetrachtung), one distinguishes the factuality of past science (of the theories, problems, methods which once were generally valid, insofar as they were valid) and the progress of science, i.e., the level of legitimate scientificity; thus history gives us the teleology of the development of increasingly achieved truth. It is not what comes later as such—only because it is generally valid right now, in its present—that provides the measure of what came earlier; it is rather the later evidence, the one which comes from the critique of the earlier etc., which also implicitly includes the previous evidence as reduced to its relative right and, at the same time, reduced to that which has later become “logically” insightful (“logisch” einsichtig) as incorrect” (Hua VI, p. 491).

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historical clusters; let us also concede that he or she find his or her motivation in the conceptuality of a “false” Plato or a “false” Aristotle. Now, from this all in all quite acceptable set of premises, Husserl draws a rather strange conclusion. He affirms that the more the “self-thinker” follows the authority of self-evidence and betrays, as it were, the factual-historical Plato or Aristotle—by reading their works through the distorting lenses of always new concepts, methods and problems, etc.—the more he or she ends up being somehow faithful to Plato’s or Aristotle’s philosophy. The more Husserl parts ways with the historical-objective Plato and renews the wide range of “false” images of Plato, the more he believes to be, in some strange and still unexplained way, entitled to call himself a “Platonist.” The problems and difficulties of this broader set of paradoxical claims are not less challenging than those related to the philosophical ἐποχή we have just dealt with. Again, by pointing out the articulation between “constellations” or “conceptual clusters”, on the one hand, and “intuitions” on the other, we might have, at best, convinced some readers that at least one part of our project is compatible with the ground assumptions of Husserl’s phenomenology. The part I am alluding to is the one suggesting that a better understanding of the history of philosophy may teach us something relevant and unexpected about transcendental phenomenology as a whole. But other readers may still be, and not without reason, quite skeptical about the other part—i.e., the part praising the relevance of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology from the standpoint of the historian of philosophy. As a matter of fact, when it comes to describing the way in which the “self-thinker” reads Plato, Husserl writes that he understands what he reads on the basis of his own thoughts, he apperceives (apperzipiert) Plato in his own way, on the basis of the ‘perception’ (Perzeption) of his already formed concepts, methods, convictions. Thanks to this apperception he obtains something new, he unfolds himself as a philosopher (sich als Philosoph weiterentwickelnd), and, similarly, by reading and interpreting other philosophical texts, he turns into someone else. (Hua VI, p. 512)

But what exactly is meant by the idea of “apperceiving” Plato “on the basis” of one’s own concepts, methods and convictions? At least at first sight, the meaning of this statement seems quite straightforward. In the best-case scenario, Husserl’s words—written in an almost confessional mood, along with the indulgent picture of the “self-thinker” they come with—appear as gesturing towards some quite general variety of hermeneutical circle (one reads the past through the present). If this is all he is saying, then it is about as trivial as it gets. At worst, these words appear as a rather clumsy effort to justify the ominous practice of legitimizing the retrospection of one’s concepts on the overall mindset of past thinkers (one reads the past in view of the present). In this latter case, Husserl’s statement is less trivial than appalling. In both cases, however, there would be sufficient reason to cast doubt, once again, on the overall soundness, not to mention philosophical interest, of Husserl’s stance. For how could a philosophy fostered by a “modernly” distorted “false Plato” say anything valuable about the “true” Plato? And how could it prove itself fruitful—not to say adequate—to the study of the “objective” history of ancient philosophy? What we have called, in the previous section, a “tension” would ultimately prove to

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be nothing more than a blatant delusion. All in all, the most skeptical among our unconvinced imaginary readers might still be tempted to say, not without a smile, that Husserl, posing as a Platonist, has been too busy with his own problems, to really bother studying, let alone understanding, Plato. If so, why should anyone give credit to his preposterous claim? We are now faced with a new objection, voiced by a new kind of reluctant reader, perhaps the most demanding. Yet, in my view, taking into account the following three arguments, which are increasingly strong, one should likely be able to fade away even this last skeptical smile.

4 Scholars In order to set up the first admittedly weaker argument, I would like to begin by taking up the claim in the aforementioned letter to Julius Stenzel, in which Husserl labels himself a “phenomenological Platonist”. Julius Stenzel was a prominent historian of ancient mathematics, an outstanding classicist, and without question one of the most important Plato scholars of the twentieth century. A student of the philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff and the author of a large number of technical essays devoted to the history of ancient philosophy and science, Stenzel was also a great admirer of Husserl.11 The full extent of his admiration still needs to be carefully assessed and would deserve a study in its own right. It is safe to say, however, that such admiration was sincere and far from superficial. Stenzel sent Husserl copies of most of his books and articles on Greek philosophy, often accompanied by letters stressing, in rather explicit terms, the priceless value of phenomenology for a better understanding of the history of ancient philosophy.12 Most importantly, Stenzel also publicly acknowledged the heuristic relevance of Husserl’s conceptuality in unpacking some of the most difficult notions of ancient philosophy in general and, more specifically, of Plato’s teachings. For example, in his book Plato der Erzieher (1928), Stenzel goes as far as to state the following: I owe to Husserl’s phenomenology the concept of “adumbration” (Abschattung), which has become very important for my understanding of the meaning of the Platonic Idea. It is from here that Plato’s ambivalent stance (zwiespältige Haltung) toward art in general and the arts of speech in particular is to be understood. (Stenzel 1928, p. 327)

 For an overall view of Stenzel’s work, see Allan (1940, pp. vi–xliii). The author briefly refers to his relationship with Husserl on p. ix. See also Günther (2000, pp. 31–3) who, nevertheless, never mentions Husserl. 12  Stenzel sent Husserl a copy of his first significant work, Literarische Form und philosophischer Gehalt des platonischen Dialoges in 1916 and continued mailing him many of his publications up until 1934 (see Hua-Dok III/1, pp.  427 note and 428 note). Husserl’s personal library includes twenty-four of Stenzel’s books and articles, a great number of which he received from the author himself. 11

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As unlikely as it may seem, we have here one of the greatest historians of ancient philosophy praising Husserl for having provided a valuable conceptual tool to understand one of the most technical aspects of Plato’s doctrine. One might wonder, at this point, whether Stenzel simply took some random concept from Husserl’s phenomenology and turned it into a heuristic device for interpreting Plato, or whether he was fully aware of the whole transcendental-phenomenological context to which that concept belonged. Was Stenzel simply “inspired” by a vague understanding of Husserl’s concept of “adumbration”, or was he acquainted with its more technical aspects? The following text, taken from one of Stenzel’s early letters to Husserl, leaves no room for doubt:13 The desire to present you my work on Plato stems from a feeling of gratitude for the essential and fundamental help (Förderung) I have received through the study of your philosophy. Certainly, the initial impression that your philosophy was the purest way to grasp the sense of ancient thinking soon changed into the awareness that nowhere is that ancient, realist-objective thinking more clearly and comprehensively overcome than here, where the entire domain of possible consciousness is subject to philosophical examination, but where the “factuality” that constantly plays into it, is fundamentally switched off (ausgeschaltet) and where the moment emphasized in lived-experience is precisely the one which must necessarily remain obscured in the still unsettled consciousness of the ego (Ichbewusstsein) proper of the Ancients. (letter to Husserl, 28/4/1916, in Hua Dok III/6, p. 427)

The picture is the following: In Plato der Erzieher, Stenzel credits Husserl for having been able to introduce some conceptual clusters of great heuristic power—so powerful that they have allowed him to shed new light on Plato’s most characteristic views. In this letter to Husserl, by contrast, he maintains that Husserlian phenomenology is significant as a whole, in helping to assess the exact extent of the complex relation between Greek philosophy—whose commitment to the natural attitude is total and uncompromised—and modern transcendentalism. Transcendental phenomenology, Stenzel says, is the farthest thing from ancient thought and vice-versa. And yet the distinctive standpoint of the former helps to explain the conceptual space within which the latter took place. And this happens not in spite of the historical and theoretical distance separating Husserl’s phenomenology from ancient Greek philosophy, but precisely because of it. The one is a transformation of the other, revealing something new about it precisely insofar as it transforms it. Accordingly, though clearly aware of the phenomenological framework from which the technical concept of “adumbration” draws its descriptive features and theoretical legitimacy, Stenzel openly stresses its hermeneutical value. Stenzel is silent on how it is possible that some of the most promising conceptual tools for discovering the full meaning and scope of ancient concepts, such as Plato’s εἶδος, come precisely from Husserl’s phenomenology, that is, from this very philosophical framework within which the unbridgeable gap between antiquity and modernity appears in its fullness. He does not say what makes Husserl’s transcendentalism, which is, admittedly, far removed from Greek thought, an extremely  This is the very letter to which Husserl responds by presenting himself as a “phenomenological Platonist”. 13

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valuable framework for discovering the latter’s unique tenets.14 He simply states as a fact that such transcendental framework is indeed valuable. As I anticipated, this first argument is merely factual and does not prove much. Yet it is by no means superfluous. For one is certainly free to reject Husserl’s claims about the “self-thinker” who has always been a Platonist without even knowing it, and who deliberately moves away from and nevertheless remains “somehow” faithful to Plato. And one might even dismiss such claims as merely self-apologetic and superficial narratives, as inconsistent speculations or rationalist vagaries. Such a dismissal, however, would fail to explain the reasons why a leading Plato scholar like Stenzel could defend a view that unexpectedly confirms such an unlikely picture, arguing that relevant aspects of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas become visible through Husserl’s phenomenological concept of adumbration. Similarly, it could hardly explain why an eminent philologist like Costantin Ritter (1923, vol. II, pp. 287–320), in his two-volume monograph on Plato, took the time to discuss very seriously the “Platonic” relevance of Husserl’s phenomenological “eidetics of lived-­ experiences” (Eidetik der Erlebnisse); why the linguist and historian of ancient philosophy Walther Freyman (1930, pp. 89–90) tought it appropriate to employ and extend Husserl’s phenomenological concepts of “ἐποχή” and “bracketing” (Einklammern) in his technical discussion of Karl Reinhart’s interpretation of myth in Plato’s Gorgias; why J.N.  Findlay’s paramount work on Plato’s written and unwritten doctrines qualifies Husserl’s project of studying the “process through which consciousness sets up every item and every nuance in its world and in itself” as “fully eidetic and Platonic” (Findlay 1974, p. 402), and, at the same time, employs the Husserlian concept of “natural attitude” to discuss some technical aspects of Plato’s allegory of the cave (Findlay 1974, p. 189); or why the historically informed psychologist and philosopher of language Karl Bühler inscribed Husserl within the long-term history of the instrumental model of language initiated by Plato in the

 Additionally, one might also wonder why Stenzel thought—at least initially—that Husserl’s phenomenology could have been the “purest way to grasp the sense of Ancient thinking” (am reinster der Sinn antiken Denkens zu erfassen). The change in Stenzel’s views is, at least to some extent, certainly due to Husserl’s so called “transcendental turn” from the phase of the Logical Investigations to that of Ideas I. It must be observed, however, that (1) most of the concepts he takes over from Husserl do not belong exclusively to the first phase, and (2) Stenzel has no intention of condemning Husserl’s transcendentalism and praising the “first” non-transcendental variety of phenomenology against the “second”. In another study, devoted to ancient metaphysics, Stenzel insists on a similar point. As a whole, “modern phenomenology,” he says, “remains historically and thematically bound (historisch und sachlich verbunden) to the ontology of ancient philosophy,” and this is true not only for Husserl but also for Scheler and Heidegger (Stenzel 1934, p.  12). Moreover, Stenzel is adamant in claiming that the “bond” among these three authors, which all belong to the phenomenological tradition, parallels the dialectical passage that occurred in antiquity “from Socrates-Plato to Aristotle” (Stenzel 1931, p. 12). Interestingly enough, in these “parallel dialectics” (parallele Dialektik), Husserl stands to Socrates-Plato as Scheler-Heidegger to Aristotle. Needless to say, in order to understand the full extent of such an analogy of proportion, one should previously appreciate Stenzel’s overall understanding of the Plato-Aristotle relationship—something which clearly goes beyond the scope of the present study. For an overview, see Stenzel (1940, pp. 165–8). 14

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Cratylus and, just as unexpectedly, praised the transcendental phenomenological account of his late “intersubjective monadology” over the still unrefined account of language in the Logical Investigations.15 The list could be longer, but the examples just mentioned should already suffice to overshadow the prima facie likely opinion that Husserl’s narrative of the Selbstdenker was a mere piece of delusional self-­ apology. The concrete history of Platonic studies in the twentieth century strongly suggests, on the contrary, that transcendental phenomenology born out of Husserl’s “false Plato,” somehow produced a series of conceptual clusters whose relevance appeared to many authors, who were genuinely interested in the “true Plato”, as philosophically penetrating and historically fruitful. Somehow, yes—but how? To answer this second question, let me now introduce the second, already stronger argument, which elaborates on Stenzel’s appropriation of Husserl’s phenomenological concept of “adumbration”.

5 Adumbrations In what sense is Husserl’s concept of “adumbration” (Abschattung) relevant to discover, as Stenzel put it, the “meaning of the Platonic Idea” (1928, p. 179)? In the Logical Investigations, Husserl had already introduced the idea that perception “claims to give us the object ‘itself’” although, strictly speaking, “the object is not actually given, it is not given wholly and entirely as that which is in itself” but “only ‘from the front’, only ‘perspectivally foreshortened and foreshadowed,’ etc.” (“perspektivisch verkürzt und abgeschattet,” u. dgl.). Despite this fact, however, Husserl continued to maintain that “the object as it is in itself (wie er an sich ist) […] is not wholly different from the object realized, however imperfectly, in the percept,” for it belongs to the very sense of perception to be the “self-appearance of the object” (Selbsterscheinung des Gegenstandes): Even if, for phenomenological purposes, ordinary perception is composed of countless intentions, some purely perceptual, some merely imaginative, and some even signitive, it yet as a global act grasps the object itself, even if only in the mode of the adumbration (als

 “Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations,” Bühler writes, “appeared in 1900 and 1901. Husserl has not remained static; recently, in 1931, he wrote the Méditations cartésiennes, in which he developed an expanded hypothetical model for the object ‘language’. As I see it, Husserl took this step in response to the demands of the thing in question itself; the pattern Husserl sets forth in the second of the two aforementioned works does not completely match our organon model of language, but it is compatible with the organon model and leads to it; this organon model can also be detected in Plato’s Cratylus” (Bühler 1934, pp. 1–2/2). It must be stressed that Bühler also favorably refers to Formal and Transcendental Logic regarding the importance of the “constitution of a world of monads in Husserl’s newer works” for the renewal of such an instrumental-Platonic model (Bühler 1934, p. vi/xcii). On the long-term history of such model in medieval and Austro-­ German philosophy, see Majolino & Cesalli (2014). 15

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Gesamtakt erfaßt sie den Gegenstand selbst, sei es auch nur in der Weise der Abschattung. (Hua XIX/II.2, p. 589/II, p. 712, translation slightly modified)16

Between the Göttingen lectures on perception, imagination and time-consciousness, and Ideas I, Husserl becomes increasingly aware of the transcendental constitutive nature of phenomenology. Accordingly, the early concept of “adumbration” undergoes a series of significant modifications and refinements. Husserl learns to emphasize the temporal structure of each and every adumbration as well as their mutual joint transformations (Hua II, p. 68; Hua X, pp. 29, 47). He thus extends the scope of this concept far beyond the transcendent perception of concrete things, to include the constitution of (1) abstract sensible properties such as colors—by means of “Farbenabschattungen” (Hua II, p. 92; see also Hua XVI, p. 44); (2) abstract geometrical properties such as squares—which are given thanks to what Husserl calls the “Abschattung des Quadrates” or, more precisely, thanks to a series of squar-ish or square-like deformations, a “continuity of adumbrations that ‘constantly’ overflow the one into the other” (Hua XVI, p. 101, see also p. 93).17 As for immanent perception, even (3) the temporally flowing data of sensation are now said to be constituted by means of “Zeitabschattungen” (Hua X, p. 63); and the same holds for (4) the whole flow of constituting immanent phenomena themselves, whose “absolute being” is constituted as a stream of which each phase stands in a relation of “Abschattungskontinuität” with the others (Hua X, p. 74).18 In all these cases we are constantly confronted to the same idea: things, colors, geometrical forms, sensations, lived-experiences, all that is perceived, that is, all that is given in itself (Selbstgegeben), is necessarily given in itself through a virtually infinite series of constantly distorted, never adequate and always partial appearances, each of which is relative with respect to the others and, at the same time, shows itself as a non-self-­ sufficient “shadow” of that which is in itself (An-sich-seiend).19 It is difficult to say whether Husserl, at the time, ever fully realized the extent to which the word “Abschattung” had already, for nearly a century, been part and parcel of the German vocabulary used to discuss Plato’s doctrine of Ideas and its  The crucial concept of “global act”—italicized and employed by Husserl in this text to define the actual noetic correlate of the perceptual thing in itself—has been widely discussed above in Chap. 3. 17  “In the changing data of color is exposed the objective color, in the changing adumbrations of the form is exposed the objectively one form (In den wechselnden Farbendaten stellt sich die objektive Farbe dar, in den wechselnden Gestaltabschattungen die objektiv eine Gestalt)” (Hua Mat IX, p. 354). 18  Husserl will also develop a more fine-grained account of the specifically “empty” intentions proper to perception itself and correct the claim, made in the Logical Investigation, that the latter are somehow “imaginative” or “signitive,” but this point is irrelevant for our present purpose. 19  In his translation of the Logical Investigations, J.N. Findlay beautifully translates “Abschattung” with “shadowing forth”—which is not surprising given his training as a Plato scholar. The English technical word “adumbration” (like the Italian “adombramento” and unlike the French “esquisse”) is literally impeccable, as it includes the Latin root “ŭmbra.” The reader who is not aware of its etymology, however, could miss the association, made explicit by Findlay, with the image of the “shadowing.” 16

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relationship with the sensible world. The great historian of ancient philosophy Eduard Zeller, for instance, in his The Philosophy of the Greeks in Its Historical Development, commented on the central books of the Republic (VI, 476a and VII, 514a) by saying that it is One and the same Being (Ein und dasselbe Sein) that is intuited purely and entirely in the Idea, and incompletely and in a clouded way (unvollständig und getrübt) in the sensible appearance, the One Idea (die Eine Idee) appears in what is sensible as a plurality, the sensible world is only the adumbration of the Idea (die Abschattung der Idee), only the ­multiform refraction of its rays (die vielseitige Brechung ihrer Strahlen) in the empty and obscure space of the indeterminate. (Zeller 1875, II.1, p. 625)20

Husserl was definitely aware of this use, though, as he incidentally talks of “adumbration” in a passing comparison, drawn the lectures Introduction to the Phenomenology of Knowledge (1909), between the difficulties of the phenomenological attitude and the struggles of the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave: The explanations of the last lectures have, as I have heard, been found very difficult. I will leave no stone unturned to give you full clarity. The extraordinary difficulties which phenomenology offers to the beginner are mainly due to the completely new attitude (auf der völlig neuen Einstellung) presupposed by the consideration of absolute self-givennesses (mit absoluten Selbstgegebenheiten). It takes a particular intellectual training to suspend the natural direction of the view and the natural way of looking at the world (die natürliche Blickrichtung und die natürliche Weltbetracthung), to which nature itself has educated us, so to speak, and instead exercise the phenomenological stance of the view (Blickstellung), not only momentarily, but permanently. We have to learn to see what we are not used to see at all, namely the world of absolute self-givennesses and the laws of essence which belong to them. Who is not reminded here of the famous Platonic allegory of the dark cave in which the natural sensible man (Sinnemensch) is enchained and into which only shadowy adumbrations of the solar world of the ὄντως ὄν, unknown to him, penetrate (nur matte Abschattungen der ihm unbekannten sonnigen Welt des ὄντως ὄν hineindringen). Freed from his fetters and suddenly entering this world of light, he is at first so dazzled that he is unable to distinguish anything, let alone describe and explore it. Everything blurs in a vague blinding mist of light, and his first impression is that the shadows (die Schatten) of the dark cave are the only real objects, but that the sphere of light is a sphere of confused and confusing light. This is what happens to the beginner when he enters the sphere of phenomenological representations, which is unknown to him and which he had not even suspected. But here it is necessary to be patient and not to let go until the intellectual eye has learned to see the new. (Hua Mat VII, p. 166)

Be as it may, given the fairly general claims made in this text, nothing seems to suggest that Husserl’s phenomenological concept of “adumbration” was related to a more or less aware appropriation of its Platonic counterpart. It is quite likely that Husserl didn’t actively borrow the concept directly from Plato’s dialogues, but crafted it in the “constellative way” discussed above, i.e. borrowing the word, putting it together with other words, expanding and variously modifying its meaning while exploring, from the bottom up and in strictly phenomenological terms, the eidetic structure of “perception,” in particular, and—as his transcendental views became more prominent—of “self-givenness,” in general. Moreover, if, at the time 20

 A copy of Zeller’s book is in Husserl’s personal library (signature BQ 5181-5).

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of the Logical Investigations, Husserl considered himself as a “Platonist,” it was more because of his endorsement of Lotze’s account of the a priori validity of ideal truths than because of his adumbrations-based account of perception.21 And, interestingly enough, at this time, although he is eager to maintain that species and essences are “one” and “universal” with respect to the “many” individuals on the basis of which they are intuited, Husserl never says that the latter are “adumbrated” by the former. While thinking he was a Platonist because of his commitment to “ideal objects” like essences, elaborated in the wake of Lotze’s (false?) Plato, Husserl was discovering that “essence” of perception and of self-giving acts, which would give Stenzel the key to reading of Plato’s dialogues.22 It is indeed Stenzel, then, who saw Husserl’s Platonism where Husserl did not even know it could be. Having challenged with technical arguments both Zeller’s Aristotelian-biased view of Plato’s Ideas (as hypostatized concepts or universals) and Natorp’s Kantian-biased view (according to which Ideas are rather laws or a priori principles to explain the sensible world), and wishing to escape the false alternative between (merely technical) philological and (highly speculative) philosophical readings of Plato, Stenzel found Husserl’s expanded notion of “adumbration” illuminating. Why, Stenzel asks, does Plato, in the tenth book of the Republic (598a), criticize “imitative arts” such as painting? Because they are structurally forced to present their object “falsely,” i.e., perspectivally, “in ever new and constantly changing distortions, always depending on the point of view” (je nach dem Standpunkt in immer neuen, stetig wechselnden Verzerrungen) (Stenzel 1928, p. 175). The appearance of the painted bed is the result of a “refined illusion” (raffinierte Täuschung) produced by the artist, who looks at and tries to reproduce the way in which actual beds show themselves to sense perception. By contrast, the actual bed fabricated by the carpenter—whose craftsmanship rests on “looking at” and “reproducing” the essences (Wesenheiten), i.e., the “‘true nature’ of things” (der “wahren Natur” der Dinge)— shows itself in the way in which it will later be reproduced by the artist, except for its infinite becoming, which no painting could reproduce: What we see with our bodily eyes, in every moment, is always only one of the manifold possible views of the thing, and all these possible aspects are necessarily distorted through perspective (perspektivisch verzerrt); things such as tables and beds have, with respect to our eyes, angles that are not square but oblique, circles that are ellipses etc., in short, our senses expose things exactly as the painter sees them, except that the latter singles out and eternalizes one of these ephemeral images from the constantly flowing and shifting chang-

 Husserl constantly refers to Lotze’s “ingenious interpretation of the Platonic theory of ideas,” as “his greatest, his unforgettable achievement” (Hua V, p. 58/50). The relationship between Husserl and Lotze has been widely explored in the literature, though many aspects still deserve closer attention. See for instance Beyer (1996, pp. 131–185); Dewalque (2015); De Santis (2016). 22  In a letter to Natorp (29/06/1918), Husserl refers to his “early” approach to Ideas, under the guidance of Lotze, as “a (perhaps modified) Platonism” (Hua-Dok III/5, p.  137). There were many “false Platos” in Husserl’s trajectory—the story of their sources, transformations, coexistence and succession has yet to be written, and it is only hinted at in the various chapters of the present volume. 21

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ing views of the thing (aus den in unaufhörlichem Fliessen und Wandel sich verändernenden Ansichten der Dinge eines dieser vergänglichen Abbilder herausgreift und verewigt) and he necessarily eternalizes it just as incompletely as it appears according to its sensible side, in the way in which it shows itself to the appearance of the senses (wie die der Sinnenschein zeigt). (Stenzel 1928, p. 176)

In Republic X (598a), according to Stenzel, Plato is not criticizing the art of painting—whose ideal form, its ethos (ἦθος), was not unknown to him. He is rather criticizing a flawed understanding of sense perception (such as the one expressed in the Phædo 96b). An understanding that is incapable of taking into account the difference between an illusion qua illusion, and a full-fledged perceptual experience.23 The conclusion is therefore striking. Thanks to Husserl, one is now able to fully appreciate the reason why Platonism is not primarily concerned with “universals” and why Plato’s commitment to intelligible Forms is not the result of a dismissive attitude toward the sensible world, but the outcome of his structural concern for unity: Now Plato asks himself: how does the soul, with respect to the manifold and ever-changing appearances (Erscheinungen), with respect to that reality “adumbrated” in countless views (in unzähligen Sichten “abgeschatten” Wirklichkeit), […] end up grasping the concrete, round, full reality? How are the manifold, different, contradictory images united into one unitary impression? It is from such reflections, not from a sentimental consideration of the precariousness of earthly matters that Plato’s thought is born. | It is of fundamental importance for the sense of the development of Platonism that the grasping of the determinate, concrete, singular object comes from a spiritual force beyond the sensibility, which lies at the source-point (Quellpunkt) of epistemological considerations, and that the questioning extends only secondarily to the “universal” in our generally accepted sense. The εἶδος refers initially to that totality which is “visible” and yet never “seen” by the eye, which builds itself from such single and always divergent copies by virtue of a higher and stronger vision. For Plato it is manifest that such force, which leads to the totality and the unity of the manifold (die zur Einheit und Ganzheit des Mannigfaltigen) does not manifest itself by itself, “overlapping,” strengthening or accommodating the many. (Stenzel 1928, pp. 176–7)

Once this discovery is made, Platonism appears in its true colors—neither as a realism of universals and hypostasized concepts (Zeller), nor as an a priori epistemology of science or culture (the Marburg school). A “Platonist” would study, as in the Theaetetus, the “true” object of perception “adumbrated” throughout its manifold, necessarily “false” and yet indispensable distorted images, the “unity of the multiplicity” (Einheit des Mannigfaltigen) correlated to “one synthetic act of the soul” (ein synthetischer Akt der Seele) (Stenzel 1928, p. 269). Each adumbration is both “right” and “false”. But also the “true” object of happiness and joy (Freude und Glück, φρόνησις), investigated in the Philebus, is seen (geschaut) only as  Stenzel’s reading of Plato through Husserl literally turns Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on painting and perception in The Eye and the Mind upside-down—or, at least, it opens the space for a renewed discussion of the force and limits of a phenomenology of painting. On the topic see the insightful remarks in de Warren (2013). Moreover, it is noteworthy that the Husserl-inspired framework described by Stenzel in his reading of Plato’s critique of sense perception seems to dismiss already—ante litteram—many presuppositions of our contemporary debate about the conjunctivist/disjunctivist commitment of Husserl’s phenomenology. On this point see Cimino (2021). 23

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“adumbrated” in the vast array of fleeting momentary pleasures, be it the pleasures of the flesh or those of the mind. Such a “concrete whole” (konkrete Ganze), such a “full liveliness” (völle Lebendigkeit) of every transient act of willing, thinking, feeling or knowing, of which every so-called pleasure is “just one ‘adumbration’ (nur eine “Abschattung”)” is strictly analogous to the “concrete, full, round actual reality” truly given to sense perception (Stenzel 1928, p. 263).24 If we leave aside the subtle technicalities by means of which Stenzel reads Plato’s dialogues in support of his view,25 we can now turn back to Husserl and explicitly formulate our second, stronger argument. If (1) Husserl himself is willing to admit that, at least up until Ideas I, his reading of Plato was—to put it mildly—not quite thorough, and his “Platonism” was filtered by his reading of Lotze; if (2) during all these years, he did indeed elaborate one of the most central concepts of transcendental phenomenology, namely that of “adumbration”; if (3) that concept was recognized by an unquestionably thorough reader of Plato like Stenzel as fully “Platonic”—both in the sense that (3.1) is consistent with the “letter” of Plato’s dialogues (and therefore valuable as a heuristic tool) and (3.2) is perfectly in line with the “spirit” of Plato’s overall teaching (which is defined by the non-trivial quest for the principles according to which the many are one and vice-versa);26 then, (4) when Husserl says that he “struggled” (gerungen) already with “Platonic problems” long before he had seriously read Plato, as declared in his letter to Stenzel (Hua Dok. III/6, p. 428), this claim is far from being absurd. To the contrary, Husserl’s claim appears now as a quite accurate way of describing the fact—still problematic, but certainly not delusional—that transcendental phenomenology has grown up, at least at first, through the path of a “Platonism without Plato.” Moreover, after having borrowed the concept of “adumbration” from Husserl and applied it to his reading of Plato, Stenzel returns it to Husserl, as it were. In a 1932 manuscript, now published under the title The Traditional Idea of the Being in  As we will see shortly, although Stenzel is openly talking about Plato, it is hard not to notice that everything he says perfectly applies to Husserl! 25  Although Stenzel explicit reference to Husserl’s concept of “adumbration” remained unnoticed among Plato scholars, the core tenets of his reading have been quite influential. Stenzel’s book Plato the Educator was reprinted in 1961 with an introduction by Konrad Gaiser. French classicist Raymond Weil agreed with Gaiser’s assessment: “The philosophy of unity, that Stenzel put at the heart of the Platonic thinking, provides an explanation which is both historically satisfying and fruitful [féconde] for all those who want to learn something from Plato today” (Weil 1962, pp. 576–7). On the other hand, not having identified the specificity of the Husserlian source, some interpreters have misunderstood Stenzel in a Neo-Kantian way. Glenn R. Morrow, for instance, wrongly attributed to Stenzel the (Natorp-like) thesis that “Ideas are active meanings, or norms, actual in but never completely revealed in actions, and therefore the patterns which these actions copy” (Morrow 1930, p. 86). 26  Stenzel was reluctant to reduce Plato’s teaching to his written doctrines and took quite seriously the testimony of the indirect tradition. This explains why such a proponent of the Tübingen School as Konrad Gaiser prefaced the 1961 reprint of Plato the Educator. Although this is not the right place to discuss the issue of Plato’s so-called “unwritten doctrines”—some additional remarks on the topic appear in Chap. 11 of this volume—one should simply point out that Stenzel’s take on Plato’s oral teachings should not be conflated with the one advocated in Tübingen. 24

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Itself and the Essential Relativity of the Being of the World and All Other Worldly Validities of Being,27 one finds indeed a surprising passage where Husserl, referencing Plato’s seventh book of the Republic and the allegory of the cave, describes the relationship between the sensible experiencing with its manifold empirical appearances (Erfahren mit seinen Erfahrungserscheinungen) and that-which-is-in-itself (An-sich-seiende), namely the Ideas. And this time, he characterized such relationship precisely in terms of “adumbrations” (Abschattungen), as suggested by Stenzel. In this manuscript Husserl rejects, once again, the common view according to which the world of the δόξα is deceptive (trüglich), the truth of everyday life is not “genuine” (menschliche Wahrheit, die im täglichen Leben geltende, ist keine “echte” Wahrheit), the appearing being is not being (kein Seiende), and reality in itself is ineffable, always clouded by the veil of appearance (Schein) (Hua XXXIX, p. 731). The truly wise man, by contrast, just like Socrates in the Phaedo, recognizes in apodictic evidence the Beautiful in the manifold beautiful things and the Good in the manifold human good behaviours. And, not unlike Plato, Husserl’s truly genuine philosopher ends up seeing Being as adumbrated in its manifold appearances, and the one absolute, omnitemporal truth, valid for all conceivable human beings (eine absolute, allzeitliche und für alle erdenklichen Menschen gültige Wahrheit)—i.e. the one of the ἐπιστήμη—as variously adumbrated in the vast realm of opinion (δόξα). Thus, Husserl concludes, shouldn’t this go further and allow us, who have been so far banished into the dark cave of sensibility with its wavering and tarnishing shades, to see what-is-in-itself, namely that of which the latter are sensible adumbrations (das An-sich-Seiende, dessen sinnliche Abschattungen sie sind erschauen lassen)? (Hua XXXIX, pp. 731–2)28

It has to be noted that nothing of the kind was present in Husserl’s previous reading of Plato’s doctrine of the Ideas: neither in the lectures Introduction to Philosophy (1916–1920) nor in the lectures on First Philosophy and their related manuscripts (1920–1925), and not even in the passage of the lectures Introduction to Phenomenology of Knowledge (1909) discussed above, where Husserl talked of “adumbrations” with respect to Plato’s allegory of the cave.29 Since the manuscript was written after the publication of Stenzel’s research, one might even suspect that Husserl’s technical concept followed a series of displacements providing a concrete example of the path of the self-thinker described by Husserl in the Appendix to the Krisis. Husserl described the case of someone “apperceiving” Plato on the basis of previously given concepts that provide a “false” image of Plato, but whose philosophical outcomes turn out to be fruitful and gesture towards new, still “false” and  Hua XXXIX, text nr. 65, pp. 724–33.  This passage, where the concept of adumbration is referred to the central books of the Republic with reference to the δόξα/ἐπιστήμη distinction, parallels the analysis in Stenzel (1928, pp. 269–70). 29  In that passage Husserl was loosely comparing, on the one hand, the “adumbrations” appearing to the prisoners within the cave to the objects of the Blickrichtung of the natural attitude—to be “switched off” (auszuschalten)—and, on the other, the “enlightened” world outside the cave to the correlate of the Blickstellung of the phenomenological attitude (see Hua Mat VII, p. 166). 27 28

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yet somehow “truthful” images. But this is precisely what happens in our specific case. Someone (Stenzel) “apperceives” Plato on the basis of a phenomenological concept (“adumbration”) developed by Husserl under the guidance of “false” Plato (Lotze’s). But now, this novel apperception (Stenzel’s) acts back on Husserl’s further modified perception of Plato and fosters a new reading of Plato’s actual doctrines. In other words, through a long series of detours, expansions and displacements, the concept of “adumbration,” developed when Husserl’s phenomenology was struggling with Platonic problems without having read Plato, is first deflected and transformed by Stenzel to read and unfold Plato’s own Platonism, then returned to phenomenology, ending up in Husserl’s new reading of Plato’s dialogues. Wouldn’t this fact neatly illustrate Husserl’s words in the Appendix when he says he “apperceived” Plato on the basis of the “perception” of his “already formed concepts” and, “by reading and interpreting” Plato’s texts, later discovered “something new” and became “someone else”?30 The answer to this last question, however, at least for the moment, must be ‘yes…and no’. One might remember, in fact, that Husserl’s complete claim revolves around two tenets: (T1) “[the philosopher] apperceives Plato […] on the basis of the ‘perception’ of his already formed concepts” (er apperzepiert Plato […] auf dem Grund der ‘Perzeption’ seiner schon gebildeten Begriffen); (T2) “through such apperception he gains something new” (Durch diese Apperzeption gewinnt er Neues). (Hua VI, p. 511)

Now, the philosophical relevance of these two tenets clearly depends on the phenomenological distinction between “perception” (Perzeption) and “apperception” (Apperzeption). As long as this distinction is not spelled out, and the concept of “apperception” remains unclear, Husserl’s talk of a “false Plato” or a “true Plato” remains dangerously vague and elusive. As a result, the second argument cannot be conclusive. Indeed, one might still suspect that Stenzel’s example is an isolated case, still insufficient to prove the overall philosophical significance of Husserl’s account of the relationship between phenomenology and the history of philosophy in general and Plato’s philosophical heritage in particular. It is precisely for this reason that we should now turn to a third argument. An argument which is neither related to the factual reception of Husserl’s phenomenology by many Plato scholars of his time (Stenzel, Ritter, Findlay, Freyman, Bühler etc.), nor bound to the actual back-and-forth movement of one single concept, no matter how central (“adumbration”). The third allegedly stronger argument must be fully theoretical, and revolve around the conceptual task of unraveling the philosophical consistency and the historical relevance of Husserl’s conceptual cluster “perception/apperception”.  The soundness of the Husserlian description of this Platonic circuit, however (Lotze’s “false” Plato—discovery of the concept of “adumbration”—new reading of Plato—new “false” Plato— synthesis of the two “false” images of Platos—manifestation of the “true” Plato) would hold even without the speculative hypothesis of Stenzel’s backward influence on Husserl. 30

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6 Apperceptions (I) In his dated but certainly not outdated study on the phenomenology of association, Elmar Holenstein (1972, pp.  144–53) has correctly distinguished three different uses of the word “apperception” in Husserl, which he labels “sense institution,” “sense-transfer” and “sense-reference” (Sinnstiftung, Sinnübertragung, Sinnverweisung).31 Below I will draw from Holenstein’s distinction and use it as a foil to shed light on the exact meaning of (T1) and (T2). Sense institution. According to the first use—spelled out in the Logical Investigations (First Investigation, §23; Fifth Investigation, §14; Sixth Investigation, §26; Appendix, §4), and Ideas I (§§41, 85, 97)—Husserl calls “apperceptions” the act-­characters through which sense contents that are actually (reell) immanent to the stream of consciousness receive an “objectifying interpretation” or an “animating apprehension” (objektivierende Deutung, beseelende Auffassung, Apprehension) thanks to which they end up referring to objective properties of transcendent objects.32 Immanent sense-contents (such as the experienced sensation-of-green), are perceived, and, on their basis, thanks to the animating function of objectifying acts, transcendent objective properties (such as, say, the green of a leaf) are aperceived. Needless to say, this is not and cannot be the sense of “apperception” that we are looking for. Sense transfer. A second use—which appears mainly in the context of Husserl’s late genetic transcendental phenomenology (see Hua XXXIX,

 Although not very recent, Holenstein’s comprehensive discussion of Husserl’s concept of apperception (1972, pp. 132–153) is still highly relevant. Another classic work that deals extensively with this topic is Aguirre (1970, pp. 119–74). Much of the then-unpublished material discussed by Holenstein and Aguirre, however, has now been edited, published and organized in a more systematic way (see for instance in Hua XXXIX, Texts Nr. 2, 40–48 and their Appendixes). A thorough study devoted to this concept taking into account the materials published in Hua XXXIX is still a desideratum. Some useful preliminary remarks on the topic can be found in Sowa’s introductory essay (pp. lxxiv–lxxvi). More recent noteworthy contributions are Dwyer (2007, pp. 83–118) and Behnke (2011, pp.  82–8). It is also worth noting that Holenstein’s triplet Sinnstiftung, Sinnübertragung, Sinnverweisung (which roughly corresponds to the triplet present, past, future) is somehow artificial, and does not correspond exactly to any specific distinction drawn by Husserl himself. In the manuscript A VII 12 (1932), whose title is Apperzeption and to which I will refer later, Husserl distinguishes five different meanings of “apperception.” Holenstein reduces, somehow arbitrarily, this number to three for, I assume, systematic reasons, lumping some concepts under the others. Since this is not the right place to discuss the advantages and the disadvantages of Holenstein’s move, I will, in the remainder of the present chapter, stick only to the advantageous parts of his reconstruction. 32  “Apperception is our surplus (Überschuss), which is found in experience itself, in its descriptive content as opposed to the raw existence of sensation (dem rohen Dasein der Empfindung); it is the act-character that as it were ensouls (beseelt), and is in essence such that we perceive this or that object, see this tree etc., hear this ringing, smell this scent of flowers etc. Sensations, and the acts interpreting them or apperceiving them, are equally experienced, but they do not appear as objects: they are not seen, heard or perceived by any sense. Objects on the other hand, appear and are perceived, but they are not experienced” (Hua XIX/1, p. 399/I, 567; see also pp. 586–98/621). 31

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pp. 409–555)—calls “apperception” the analogical transfer of previously accomplished positions to new experiences. The idea is that the past institutions of sense are extended to present or future experiences. Apperception is the constant function whereby what does not emerge from an actually self-­ appropriate experience (selbsteigene Erfahrung) is grasped as if emerging from it (als ob es daher stamen würde). Apperception designates the fundamental law of the expanding formation of experience (Grundgesetz erweiternder Erfahrungsbildung). (Hua XXXIX, p. 502) The title apperception refers to the law according to which a new constitutive experience not only originally institutes its acquisition, that is, grounds habituality for actual and possible repeated experiences, but also institutes an implicit habituality for a whole genus of modified sense of experience, of experiences as if (als ob) they had been originally instituted. (Hua XXXIX, p. 503)

Accordingly, as Husserl puts it, “apperceptive transfers or extensions (apperzeptive Übertragungen oder Erweiterungen)” occur whenever something that is not-yet fully determined as being-such-and-such receives, at some stage of its open-ended determination (at least provisionally), the sense of being-such-and-such borrowed from some other previously constituted object. What triggers the transfer is the apparent (provisional) similarity between the still undetermined object and some of the determinations of the already constituted one.33 This can be illustrated by the example of the perspectival perception of an alley of which one fully perceives (wahrnimmt) the birch of the first trees, but involuntarily extends that sense to the vanishing silhouettes seen from a distance, which are therefore perceived (perzipiert) as silhouettes but apperceived (apperzipiert) as birches.34 More generally, it also happens that, because of their associative link with other groups of already constituted features or objects, many groups of features or objects that are “perceived” as not fully determined are, at the same time, “apperceived” in a typical or already familiar form (Hua I, p.  141; XI, pp.  10, 190, 338; XVII, pp.  317, 320; XXXII, p.  144). The mere “perception” of certain scribbles or sound forms (Klangform), of a massive iron shape, of a circular metallic block or of the texture of a rubber ring, could be enough to “apperceive” a written or a spoken word, a hammer, a wheel or a tie (Hua XXXIX, p. 425). Obviously, in the course of experience and because of its “as if” (als ob) structure—i.e., because of the inner awareness of its analogical nature—this “passive understanding” (passives Verstehen) can be variously checked, confirmed, infirmed, corrected, adjusted, modified, replaced, or continue to appear as entirely  “Apperception, i.e., ‘analogizing’ transfer of the validity of being-such-and-such (Soseinsgeltung) from one A to a similar B, which, in turn, does not yet have the validity of this being-such-and-such (noch nicht in diesem Sosein in Geltung ist)” (Hua XXXIX, p. 450). Holenstein (1972, p. 147) calls it a “passive actualization of an original position on the basis of a relation of similarity”. Behnke (2011, p.  84) calls it “perpetuation of past of object-sense in present and future sense through Urstiftung and Nachwirken”. 34  In order to avoid any confusion, I will translate Wahrnehmung, which includes a full-fledged position of the object, as “full perception,” and Perzeption, which, as a non-independent moment, is not positional yet, simply as “perception.” A “full perception” thus includes both “perceptions” (perceptive moments) and “apperceptions” (apperceptive moments). 33

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provisional. But it could also undergo a thematic modification, become explicit or be variously “reactivated,” so that the originally apprehensive institution of sense is restated (Nachstiftung) and continues to extend its validity over new cases (Hua VI, p. 372). Finally, not only do we apperceive the future through the past, and therefore an already constituted and familiar sense undergoes a “transferring apperception” (übertragende Apperzeption) and is reassigned to something new and not-fully-­ determined, but we also, conversely, apperceive the past through the present. Indeed, what now appears to us in a familiar light can also be “retrospectively transferred” (Rückübetragung) to the past, and motivate the feeling and/or the belief that its validity extends beyond the present itself and has already been effective in the past (Hua XXXIX, p. 503). Is this the meaning that is suggested in (T1) and (T2)? It is more than likely that, by saying that he “apperceives Plato on the basis of his already formed concepts” Husserl is also referring to this universal structural law of passive genesis. Indeed, it would make perfect sense to say that, because of Husserl’s lack of knowledge, Plato’s distinctive concepts appeared to him as some sorts of indeterminate and vague conceptual “silhouettes,” as it were, triggering the “apperceptive” and “analogical” transfer of Husserl’s own familiar concepts. It is also safe to assume that, by using the technical language of “apperception” in this specific sense, Husserl also recognizes that his way of approaching Plato’s texts is not the result of a sloppy or dogmatic reading attitude, but the effect of a fundamental genetic law, i.e. the law governing the constitution of “historicity” (Historizität) (Hua XXXIX, p. 503). Last but not least, Sense transfer could also explain what might be seen as Husserl’s retrospective illusion that the very concepts used to “apperceive” Plato were already in place in Plato himself. A necessary illusion, so to speak, that now appears to be perfectly in line with Husserl’s overall account of history, where the shadow of the past is constantly cast on the future and the shadow of the present is just as constantly cast on the past. Now, although somehow correct, this hypothesis would still not be sufficient to do full justice to Husserl’s tenets set forth in the Appendix to the Krisis. I can think of at least four reasons why it would not: (1) The relationship between perception and apperception understood as the analogical transfer or extension of the “sense” of Husserl’s concepts to Plato’s (because of the former’s partial indetermination and the latter’s familiarity) is too general. Accordingly, it fits the description of any present reader of Plato and sheds no light on the specific manner in which the “self-thinker” reads Plato. Yet this is precisely what Husserl wants to do in the Appendix. He wants to clarify the quite distinctive way in which the philosopher, “engaged” in the activity of doing philosophy in the present, relates to the philosophers of the past who have shaped and steered his or her philosophical action. In other words, Husserl’s main question here is not how any person understands the past from the standpoint of the present, but how the fulfillment of the task of genuine philosophy—philosophy that is autonomous and self-directed—embeds a non-­ trivial relation to its past.

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(2) As we have noted, the “passive understanding” of the apperceptive transfer can also undergo an “active” turn, and be variously thematized, de-sedimented, questioned, criticized, reviewed, corrected, disambiguated etc. (Hua VI, p. 491). It is precisely in this way that the transfer of an already constituted past sense into present or future object constitutions—even if at first passively accepted— may eventually lose its prima facie validity, show itself as a “false” apperception, and end up contributing to the dynamic unfolding of “truth.” This is indeed the very movement of science. Then again, this is not what Husserl is talking about in the Appendix. If this corresponds exactly to the path followed by the factual historian or the philologist, in their quest for the objective and “true” Plato, it hardly corresponds to the path of the “self-thinker” described by Husserl. A path that, to be sure, moves from one “false” Plato to another and yet—oddly enough and for reasons that have yet to be specified—remains somehow “true” or runs parallel to the path from which it is factually departing. (3) Strictly speaking, Husserl does not say that on the basis of the “perception” of Plato’s concepts he “apperceives” such (unfamiliar) concepts in light of his own (more familiar) ones. A closer reading shows that (T1) is phrased in a quite different way: Husserl claims to have “apperceived” Plato’s concepts on the basis of the “perception” of his own concepts. If we now compare this claim with the wide array of examples of “apperceptive transfer” gathered above, the difference is striking. First example: one perceives only the vague shape of a vocal sound, a scribble, an iron mass, a rubber texture or a circular block, but one apperceives them as a spoken or written word, a hammer, a tire or a wheel, on the basis of the previous understanding (Verstehen)—i.e., here: habitualized sense constitution—of words, hammers, tires and wheels. Second example: one perceives only some silhouettes at the far end of the alley, but one apperceives them as elms or birches on the basis of the elms or the birches that are fully perceived nearby (Wahrnehmung). Now, if this were the sense of “apperception” summoned in (T1), we would be forced to say that—mutatis mutandis— Husserl only perceives the silhouette of Plato’s philosophy, at the far end of the past, but apperceives it on the basis of his own philosophy, fully conceived in the present. But it must be acknowledged that (T1) says exactly the opposite: it is Husserl’s own concepts that are said to be perceived—not Plato’s. Consequently, it is Husserl’s concepts that should be regarded as analogous to the vagues silhouettes and indeterminate shapes that still need to be fully determined. As for Plato’s concepts, they are certainly said to be apperceived—but not on the basis of anything like the full perception of the elm tree or the full understanding of already constituted empirical types. In sum, “apperception” understood as Sense transfer includes three terms: the fully perceived (fully determined), the perceived (relatively undetermined), and the apperceived (analogically determined). But in (T1) the first term is entirely lacking, the second refers to Husserl’s concepts, and the third to Plato’s. Hence, “apperception” in (T1) cannot be understood as Sense transfer. (4) (T2) explicitly insists on the “novelty” (Neues) that is generated by the process of “apperception.” If Husserl were simply saying that a quite unfamiliar Plato

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becomes familiar because we project onto his concepts the validity of our own concepts, it would be difficult to find novelty in such a blatant process of appropriation. In such specific case, novelty could only be reached by thematizing, correcting, criticizing and ultimately revising the retrospective passive understanding of the unfamiliar through the familiar—not by distorting it further. But this critical path would lead us, again, to the “scientific” and “objective” way of dealing with the “historical Plato,” moving away from the necessarily preliminary image of a “false Plato” and getting closer to the factual reconstruction of the historically “true” platonic doctrine. Then again, though extremely important, this path is not, as we have seen, the one discussed by Husserl in the Appendix. If one is looking for the “objective” Plato, the image of a “false” Plato is required as a starting point, that is, as a preliminary hypothesis; but, in the long run, if the historian wants to reconstruct the “truly” historical doctrine Plato, distortions have to be removed, not encouraged. The situation of the selfthinker is an entirely different one. For him or her, the philosophical “truth” of Plato appears at the end of a virtuous path of distortions, generating novelty by moving from one “false” Plato to another, etc. If this is correct, the process indicated in (T2) cannot be explained as long as “apperception” is understood as Sense transfer. It is for all these reasons that we must now turn to the third meaning of “apperception” and try to understand (T1) and (T2) accordingly.

7 Apperceptions (II) Sense reference. From the early 1920s until the end of Husserl’s life, “apperception”35 becomes an umbrella term to identify a number of fundamental laws of experience, all closely related to the horizon-structure of consciousness. Although the context is still that of genetic phenomenology, Husserl’s focus has now shifted. The main point of interest is no longer the way in which already constituted senses extend (erweitern) their validity from one object (familiar and determined) to another (less familiar, still undetermined), but rather the modes according to which already constituted senses refer (verweisen) to other senses. How consciousness involves possibly unexplored sense-constitutions and new (less familiar and still to-be-determined) experiences that emerge from the habitualized validity of (familiar and already determined) objects of experience? In line with this new characterization, forms of “apperception” appear at every level of conscious life. The concept of “apperception”, then, “encompasses every self-giving, every intuitive consciousness [der jedes selbstgebende, jedes anschauliche Bewusstsein also umspannt]” (Hua XI, p. 337/625). But it also applies to every  Sometimes employed as a partial synonym for “appresentation” (Appräsentation) (Hua XI, pp. 336–45; Hua XXXIX, pp. 142–3). 35

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“experience,” i.e., to every consciousness whose correlate is being (Erfahrung als Korrelat von Seiendem), no matter whether present (like perception) or non-­present (like memory, expectation etc.) (Ms. A VII 12, p. 53).36 And Husserl goes so far as to say that, in the broadest sense possible, “apperception” is the name for every consciousness as such, insofar as it is a “consciousness that intends beyond itself (beyond its own self) [über sich hinausmeinendes Bewusstsein (über sein Selbst hinaus)]” (Hua XI, p. 337/p. 625, translation slightly modified). In all these cases, the idea is always the same. In intuitions, experiences or conscious life in general there is always and necessarily embedded a core-reference to further intuitions, experiences and intentions. Following this distinctive shift in meaning, Husserl now gives the conceptual pair “apperception/perception” a clearly equivocal status. “Apperception” and “perception” in the unity of one “experience,” which, accordingly, can also be referred to as apperception itself. Thereby experience as correlate of being […]. The title apperception refers to the law of formation of experience in general and, accordingly, to the universal law of constitution of beings of all kinds and levels. Apperception designates, first of all, the way in which an experience implies co-experiences (Miterfahrungen impliziert); or the way in which an experience, with respect to its object of experience regarded as a whole, has the mode of a self-grasping intention (and this is precisely what experience is all about), although, with respect to the content of the object, only one of its parts is actually experienced (nur einem Teil nach wirklich erfahrend), while some other remaining part is not actually experienced and yet is certainly co-intended (Mitgemeint). Such co-intended part is called “apperceived,” in contrast to what is properly perceived as self-experienced (Selbsterfahrene perzipiert). But every experience is apprehensive (Aber jede Erfahrung is apperzipierend). And, because of this, considered in its entirety, experience in itself can also be called apperception (Um dessen willen kann sie auch selbst, im Ganzen betrachtet, als Apperzeption bezeichnet werden). It is only trough apperception that being can originally be given i.e., be something of which one is conscious in the mode of self-givenness, and subsequently also in a mode of non-intuitiveness. (Ms. A VII 12, p. 53, Husserl’s emphasis)

Understood as Sense reference, the term “apperception” has now a twofold sense. On the one hand, it denotes “the whole” (im Ganzen) of a conscious life in which each experience “implies” (impliziert) “co-experiences” (Mit-erfahrungen), each intention “refers to” “co-intentions” (Mit-meinungen), etc. On the other hand, the same term is also employed to indicate only one non-independent part (Teil) of that whole, namely the part that is implied, co-experienced, co-intended etc. Thus, as Husserl says, “apperception” and “perception” all belong to the “unity of one ‘experience’” (in der Einheit einer “Erfahrung”) which, for this reason, can also be called “apperception” (die auch selbst danach als Apperzreption bezeichnet werden kann). In sum, no “experience” could ever emerge if the self-givenness of the object as a whole did not embed the consciousness of its being otherwise than it actually is, precisely because of the way in which it shows itself. Apperception can therefore  Page 34a of the Manuscript A VII 12 (12/2/1932) to which I am referring (page 53 of Marly Biemel’s typescript), has not been included in the materials published in Husserliana XXXIX and is only partially quoted by Holenstein (1972, p. 150). The present quotes are drawn directly from Biemel’s transcription. 36

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be appropriately defined as the law according to which experience as such is formed (das Gesetz der Erfahrungsbildung überhaupt)—both at the “infra-experiential level” (when a partial intention invokes other partial co-intentions) and at the “intra-­ experiential level” (when a whole experience implies other co-experiences). Now, the first, and apparently most compelling, example to illustrate this state of affairs, the one that always and inevitably pops up, is that of the material thing. A dice (or a house) appears in self-presence to sense perception from a particular angle, although it is grasped as having other faces that are momentarily hidden to sight. The perceived faces of the dice point towards the non-perceived ones which, accordingly, are said to be apperceived. Although absolutely correct, this example has unfortunately become very misleading and literally hijacked the attention of Husserl’s readers, concealing the broader scope of the concept of “apperception” that it was meant to illustrate.37 There is no doubt that the perception-apperception structure applies to the sense perception (sinnliche Wahrnehmung) of dices, houses etc. But the back-face/front-face study case—which also appear in the Logical Investigations to illustrate Sense institution—however iconic, hardly explains why Husserl now goes as far as to say that “experience” as such is equivalent to “apperception.” Understood as Sense reference, “apperception” has no longer— as in the Logical Investigations—the mere function of relating “intentional acts” to “non-intentional” sensations or sensuous feelings in terms of “animation,” “interpretation” or “sense bestowal” (Beseelung, Deutung, Sinngebung). In this new context, the role of apperceptions is to account for that genetic power thanks to which, because of its temporal horizon-structure, conscious life it is not only able to “intend-beyond-­itself” (über-sich-hinaus-meinen) but also to direct itself toward transcendent objects and their correlative horizons.38 Once this temporal structure has been introduced, however, Husserl’s genetic phenomenology still has to distinguish and articulate two different “laws of genesis” (Gesetzen der Genesis): the laws according to which “singular events in the stream of lived-experience follow one another (Aufeinanderfolgen)” and the laws governing “the formation of apprehensions (Bildung von Apperzeptionen)” (Hua XI, p.  336/624; translation modified). The genetic laws of succession govern either the ways in which the abstract phases of the stream are immediately brought together and finally emerge (Anschluss) (laws of impression-protension-retention), or the ways in which concrete livedexperiences are mediately merged “in the widest sense of empty intentions fulfilled or unfulfilled processes of pointing-toward or pointing-back” (laws of association, reproduction, expectation) (Hua XI, p. 336/p. 624). The genetic laws of apprehension, by contrast, regulate, more specifically, abstract or concrete lived-experiences in which one is conscious of something that is not given in itself “in virtue of” (vermöge) something that is actually given in itself. As Husserl puts it, within the same  Moreover, its inflated use also increases the chance of conflating “adumbration” and “apprehension”—which, though certainly related, have two entirely different functions in Husserl’s conceptual toolkit. 38  On the relevance of the concept of horizon, which is necessary for the understanding of this third genetic use of “apperception,” see Geniusas (2012) and, more recently, Djian (2021). 37

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stream of consciousness whose phases are “continually connected and follow each other,” apperceptions “transcend” (transzendieren) the immanent contents of the stream itself. Thus, with respect to the immanence of the stream, apperceptions do not “point out” (aufweisen) what is experienced (as in a full perception); nor do they “point toward” (hinweisen) what will or is expected to be experienced (as in anticipation); nor do they “point back” (rückweisen) to what has been experienced (as in recollection). They rather “point beyond” (hinausweisen) the stream itself, i.e., to what could, should, might, would be experienced, on the basis of what actually shows itself in the stream (as in alternative perceptions); to what could have been, should have been, might have been or would have been experienced on the basis of what has shown itself (as in alternative recollections); to what could, should, might or would be experienced on the basis of what will or is expected to show itself (as in alternative anticipations). Apperception thus accounts for every unfulfilled intention of co-existence (Mitdasein hinausweisende Intention), past, present and future, grounded (im Grund) in the filled intention of what exists; for every consciousness of the “elsewhere” or the “otherwise” grounded in the consciousness of what is, was and is expected to be there; for every co-intuition of counterfactual, actually possible or possibly possible states of affairs grounded in the intuition of factual or actual states of affairs. We should now begin to see how Sense reference could turn what is literally a “historically false” Plato into a “virtual but effective Plato”—Plato as it could, should, might, would have been. But before we start dealing with such a complex case, let us take a look at four other simpler examples, which Husserl uses to illustrate “apperception” understood as Sense reference. 1st example: Perceptual consciousness. When I perceive a hexahedron, its hidden face is apperceived “in” the visible face and appears to me as the one that I could see if I were to move around it, or as that which someone else would see if his or her living body were located there and not here.39 2nd example: Sign-consciousness. While having a stroll in the woods, I see the trace of a wild animal, that is, of the animal that I would have seen if I had passed by at the right time, or the one that someone else might actually have seen, if he or she had done the same, etc. 3rd example: Simple consciousness of motivation. I believe that an animal has passed by because I see a track in the ground; I suspect that the hexahedron mentioned in the Passive Synthesis is a cube because I remember that in the Cartesian Meditations Husserl mentions a cube; I draw the conclusion “q” because I judge “p” etc.

 The English translator of Husserl’s Passive Synthesis mistakenly translates the German “Hexaeder” (which is the name of a six faces polyhedron, i.e. a tri-dimensional shape like a cube) with “hexagon” (which is a bi-dimensional six-face polygon) (Hua XI, p.  337 note/625 note). Consequently, Husserl’s entire example becomes completely unintelligible. 39

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4th example: Complex consciousness of motivation. There are also more complicated apperceptions (komplizierter Apperzeptionen) that are repeated in the stream of consciousness according to certain general laws and generate “apperceptions from apperceptions.” I know there are wolves in this forest even if I do not perceive any wolf right now or see any traces of wolves, because I have seen such traces a few times in the past in nearby areas. These previous experiences motivate my present belief that I might, at any moment, come across a trace or specimen of a wolf (all examples are drawn from Hua XI, pp. 338–9/626–7). All these examples of increasing complexity lead to the following conclusion. If every experiential consciousness is indeed both “Meinen” and “Mitmeinen,” and every being to which that consciousness is correlated is equally constituted as both “Dasein” and “Mit-Dasein,” then whenever a conscious experience flows into another, the passive synthesis between the two also includes a synthesis between the apprehended intentions of the former and those of the latter and, correlatively, of the given and the co-given. This synthesis not only provides a “law regulating future possibilities” (Gesetz für künftige Möglichkeiten) or “ideally possible” (ideal mögliche) continuations of the stream of consciousness. It also establishes the law, and this is the most important point for us, that regulates the conditions for the emergence of possible pasts and “ideally possible” continuations of streams of consciousness that have already flowed, together with their virtual correlates. This is what Husserl calls the “potentiality” (Potentialität) of conscious life (Hua XI, p. 337/625).40

8 Platonisms We have now everything we need to go back to (T1) and (T2) and see what happens if we understand the concept of “apprehension” as it appears in these two tenets, in terms of Sense reference. Let us begin by recalling the example of the alley, used by Husserl to illustrate “apprehension” as Sense transfer. One “perceives” some indeterminate objects from a distance, at the end of a series of elms, and “apperceives” them as elms. We have already seen, however, that this example does not match Husserl’s use of the concept of “apprehension” in (T1) and (T2). Now, the four examples used to illustrate “apprehension” in terms of Sense reference seem much more promising:  Husserl is sometimes tempted to drop the distinction between the two laws of the genesis and extend the concept of apperception to the retentional-protentional structure of the living present itself. He also suggests dispensing with the distinction between perception and apperception and calling the perception itself “original apperception” so as to oppose it to all sorts of “modified apperceptions” (see, for instance: Hua XI, pp. 338–9). It would be irrelevant to follow this point further in the limited scope of this concluding chapter, though it is extremely significant in the acknowledgement of the wide array of problems faced by Husserl while trying to fixate this concept. 40

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–– the (transcendent) experience of the hexahedron through the apperception of its hidden faces thanks to the perception of the specific way in which the visible faces show themselves as pointing beyond themselves; –– the (transcendent) experience of the wolf through the apperception of its unseen passage thanks to the perception of a specific state of the ground, a trace which shows itself as pointing beyond itself; –– the (immanent) experience of a passive motivation through the apperception of one’s lived-experience (say, the desire for a) thanks to another lived-experience (say, the desire or the belief or the thought of b) which shows itself as pointing beyond itself; and –– the (immanent) experience of an active motivation like, say a logical conclusion, through the apperception of the evidence of one judgment (the consequence) thanks to the perception of another judgment (the premise), the evidence of which shows itself as pointing beyond itself. If we now follow the same line of thought, we should say that, mutatis mutandis, the “self-thinker” mentioned by Husserl in (T1) and (T2) has (i) the (transcendent) experience of something that is analogous to the hexahedron, the wolf, the passive or active unity of motivation, (ii) through the apperception of something that is analogous to the hidden faces of a hexahedron, the unseen passage of a wolf, or the passive or active motivational “premises” of a complex experience, (iii) thanks to the perception of something that is analogous to the visible face of a hexahedron, a trace, or the active or passive motivational “outcome” of a complex experience—all of which variously show themselves, because of their specific configuration, as pointing beyond themselves. But what is the analogon of (iii), that is, of the perceived visible face of the dice, of the trace, of the motivated outcome etc.? Husserl’s answer is unequivocal: it is the “self-thinker” himself or herself, with his or her own concepts, methods and convictions! What, then, is the analogon of (ii), that is, of the apperceived hidden face of the dice, of the unseen passage of the wolf, of the active or passive motivational premise? Here, too, Husserl’s answer is unmistakable: it is Plato—not Plato “in itself,” but the adumbrated, indicated, motivating Plato, that false-and-yet-notentirely-­false Plato that is referred to by the centrifugal Sense reference of Husserl’s own concepts, methods and convictions. This brings us already to a first, striking conclusion. If we understand “apperception” in terms of Sense reference, it is clearly not Plato who—just like the elm seen from afar at the end of the alley of the past—appears a vague silhouette but is apperceived through Husserl’s own concepts (as in Sense transfer). Rather, it is Husserl (with his own intentions and experiences, with his currently perceived concepts, methods etc.) who adumbrates, indicates or is consciously motivated (actively or passively) by an apperceived, constantly co-intended and variously co-experienced, adumbrated, indicated or (actively or passively) motivating Plato. Thus, if the self-thinker is the analogon of the visible

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face of the dice or of the trace of the passing wolf, it is by perceiving his own concepts that Husserl apperceives Plato, not vice-versa. But a final and even more crucial question remains: what is the analogon of (i), that is, of the whole experienced hexahedron (partly perceived in its visible face, partly apperceived through its hidden faces), of the unseen passage of the wolf (partly perceived in the trace, partly aperceived through the trace), of the full unitary conscious global act of motivation (of which the premise—active or passive—and the outcome are only non-independent parts, partly perceived, partly aperceived)? What is the name of that constituted whole that is partly perceived in Husserl’s concepts and partly aperceived through their “implied” (false) Plato? On this latter point, the position expressed in (T1) and (T2) might seem, at least prima facie, way more ambiguous. But if one places these two tenets back into their context, that is, within the whole line of thought followed in the Appendix to the Krisis, the answer is once again there for all to see. The apperceived whole of which Husserl’s intended and Plato’s co-intended concepts, methods etc. are non-independent parts, is nothing but the history of Platonism.41 And it is precisely through the experience of the Mit-Meinen and Mit-Dasein, which is necessarily implied in every philosophical Meinen and Dasein, that the self-thinker discovers something “new” about himself or herself as a philosopher. His or her “discoveries” were in fact “future possibilities” (künftige Möglichkeiten) of a certain historical past. What, then, is “Platonism?” From a narrow historical-factual point of view, the name could apply to the “objective” content of Plato’s dialogues, as it is factually reconstructed by the careful work of the historian and the philologist. It could also be used, in a still historical-factual but much broader sense, to indicate the thought and practice of all those who de facto claim to have been in some way “inspired” by Plato. By contrast, from a somehow ahistorical-ideal point of view, “platonism” would rather be described as a closed set of doctrines, or a system of axioms, that could be drawn from or appear as compatible with the “objective” content of Plato’s dialogues. But from Husserl’s historical-ideal standpoint, the concept of “Platonism,” which is obtained through to the concept of “apperception” as Sense reference, includes, at the same time, more than the “objective” content of Plato’s dialogues, less than the total sum of their “factual” effects, and all but the “formal” account of their doctrinal principles. In Husserl’s account, the concept of “Platonism” is rather to be understood as an actualized potentiality (Potentialität). And it encompasses all new philosophical concepts, methods and problems whose explication implies a reference to one of the many “future possibilities” implicated in Plato’s teachings (i.e. the reference to “a false Plato”). Possibilities that can always be “read

 Chapters 10 and 11 sought to show the extent to which Husserl is willing to identify the history of Platonism with the history of philosophy. In the present chapter, however, the concept of Platonism is discussed from a slightly different angle. Not as a synonym of “genuine philosophy” as a whole, but as an exemple of factual intertwinement between philosophy in its making (the productive activity of the self-thinker) and philosophical tradition (the “false Plato”). To illustrate the relationship between the self-thinker and the history of philosophy, in the Appendix to the Krisis, Husserl speaks not only of a “false Plato” but also of a “false Aristotle”. 41

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back”, as it were, in Plato’s dialogues, which thus appear in a new light—the same light they helped to shed (Hua VI, p. 511/393). The phenomenological concept of “adumbration,” which emerged from a philosophical reflection guided by Lotze’s “false Plato,” and recognized by Stenzel as a key to reinterpreting Plato himself, is a perfect example of what Husserl means here by “Platonism”. It should now be clear why Husserl could never have claimed that by jumping from one “false” Plato to another, the self-thinker, somehow, magically turns out to be “true” or “faithful” to Plato’s actual doctrines. Husserl’s suggestion is indeed more precise and articulates as follows. Plato’s philosophical work could be addressed in two ways: from the standpoint of the “objective” historian of philosophy or from the standpoint of the self-thinker. In the latter case, the theoretical goal of the self-thinker is to realize the idea of philosophy as he or she knows it. And, in the process, he or she may—implicitly or explicitly—draw on some already existing interpretation of Plato, in order to develop his or her own concepts, methods and problems.42 In the former case, one has the theoretical goal of “reconstructing Plato,” that is, of using the “als ob” resources of phantasy, so to speak, in order to produce historical formations (geschichtliche Gebilde) (Hua XXIII, p. 280) to make things appear as they actually were (Hua VIII, p. 280; Hua XXIII, p. 3/3).43 The work of the historian of philosophy is also based on the use of current philosophical concepts, methods and problems. And since these present concepts, methods and problems are freely assembled and reassembled through the activity of productive phantasy, it is safe to say that this work also generates novelty. But the function of these new configurations is that of contributing to the factual reconstruction of the actual past of this actual present. The modified concepts, methods and problems of this present are thus transformed into hypothetical models to reconstruct the concepts, methods and problems of the past. Historical hypotheses are then tested on the basis of collected data and available sources, corrected, rejected, replaced by new hypotheses etc. The historian of philosophy who looks for the “true” or “objective” historical Plato, certainly needs a series of factual and counter-­ factual “false images” of Plato. But since the latter are only hypothetical models, they must be “crossed out” (durchstreichen) as soon as they appear conflicting with the available data, transmitted documents, secured findings and accepted knowledge of his or her time. The case of the “self-thinker” is completely different and is best described by saying that he or she is “philosophically experimenting with Plato.” In more technical terms, the historian of philosophy provides an imaginative modification

 We have already seen, in Chap. 1, that the situation is different if the philosopher has doubts about the goals of philosophy itself and the means to achieve them. In short, if philosophy is in a state of “crisis.” In this particular case, the self-thinker, Husserl says, literally needs the history of philosophy, and needs it to reactivate the meaningfulness of the very activity of philosophizing itself. But then, at this juncture, what is really needed are not the conceptual resources of a “false Plato”, but the motivating force of a whole “poetical invention”, i.e. a story about the history of philosophy. I will return to this point in a moment. 43  On the relationship between phantasy and history see Chap. 7 of this volume. 42

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(Umbildung) of the present in order to reconstruct the philosophy of the past; the philosopher provides an explication (Explizierung) of the horizons of the present and of its pasts in order to derive the philosophy of the future. The former wants to piece together the past-actual Plato, the latter aims to discover that future-virtual Plato that could only be apperceived as co-existing with the perceived and existing present-actual activity of the working philosopher himself or herself. By identifying and eliminating Plato’s “false images”, the one rigorously reconstructs the factual history of Platonism in its various forms; by exploiting the potentiality of some of these images, the other unfolds some “future possibilities” of Platonism. Thus, with respect to the productive movement of philosophy in its making, the “false” images of Plato are just as fruitful as the “true” images of the “objective” Plato, which are carefully established by the historians of philosophy. They are both on the same footing. Vice-versa, with respect to the reconstructive goals of the historian of philosophy, the apperceptive explications of the philosopher experimenting with Plato are just as fruitful as the imaginative modifications needed to formulate hypotheses on what Plato “actually” said. But, at least to some extent, they are even more fruitful, since they also show to the historian of philosophy what Platonism “can” or “could” be, to put it in Husserl’s technical terms, they show Platonism as a “potentiality”. It is certainly relevant, as we mentioned earlier, that some of Husserl’s experiments with Plato—as Stenzel, Ritter, Freyman, Findlay, Bühler and many others have well understood—have also proved fruitful to those seeking a more historical-­ objective clarification of Plato’s actual conceptuality. But if the above is correct, the ultimate relevance of Husserl’s approach for the historian of philosophy is still elsewhere. It lies in the fact that the phenomenological account of apperception as Sense reference provides a quite robust theoretical framework to understand one of the most fascinating phenomena of the whole history of philosophy, i.e., the plural, non-monotonic and self-generating movement of Platonisms.44

9 Motivations It is now time to put (T1) and (T2) back into their context and highlight one last element. In the Appendix to the Krisis, to which we have already referred in the Introduction to this volume, Husserl begins by stating that “philosophy is in danger”  Husserl has therefore a theoretical framework to address, in a non-trivial way, the complex picture drawn in Chiaradonna (2017, pp. 28–9): “Platonism is not so much constituted by a set of invariant dogmas, repeated for centuries, as by these problems and positions formulated by Plato that the further tradition has selected, received, integrated as well as enriched and transformed, through rational research and argumentation, dialogue and controversy with other lines of thought, developments of philosophy and science. Sometimes the presence of the questions and the theses formulated by Plato are associated with an explicit reminder of the source; sometimes Plato remains in the background and his presence is implicit and occurs through other intermediate sources: but this does not mean at all that it is less important.” 44

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and that its “future is in danger” (Hua VI, p. 509/390). In an age when the prevailing view is that philosophy has to serve the purposes of “the human being in its struggle for existence” (Hua VI, p. 509/390) and the only goal of science is to enhance “the practical control of reality” (Hua V, p. 95/82), there is no room left for the Platonic idea of a “scientific philosophy.” A philosophy defined by the infinite task of making sense of the “all of the world”, of the multiplicity of its finite being as well as of its infinite unity, of facts and reasons, reaching for true knowledge, aiming at a good individual life and striving towards a just political community. All this can only sound like a pretentious daydream, a dream that most people, as Husserl gloomily puts it, consider as “gone” (Hua VI, p. 508/389). Yet Husserl is convinced that this is precisely the thin red line that has brought together many generations of philosophers in the past, despite their different and often rival “systems” and “schools,” whether they were Platonists or Aristotelians, Stoics or Skeptics, followers of Descartes or partisans of Hume, transcendentalists like Kant or empiricists like Brentano. That thin red line, Husserl says, is neither the unity of a concept, nor that of a method or a problem. It can only be, we read, “the consciousness of a necessary task” (Bewusstsein einer notwendigen Aufgabe) (Hua VI, p. 509/391): the theoretical task of getting the whole of the world right, just as it is, in the unity of its multiplicity, as rationally as possible and in the best way possible; and the practical task of living in the world right, as one should, as justly as possible and in the most rational way possible—even if imperfectly, unilaterally and partially (unvollkommenen, einseitigen, partiellen), for there is still success in each of these failures (ein Gelingen in diesem Versagen) (Hua VI, p.  510/391). The grand dream of Plato’s Republic meets the concrete requirements of the Laws.45 If such consciousness has ever driven the activity of philosophy throughout the millennia, “in our time,” Husserl admits, it has become weak and lost its motivating force. And this is ultimately the reason why Husserl concludes that “we must immerse ourselves in historical considerations if we are to be able to understand ourselves as philosophers and understand what philosophy is to become for us” (Hua VI, p.  510/391 modified). One does not need to “immerse oneself” in the history of philosophy to do philosophy, but rather to understand why one is doing philosophy. And for Husserl there is no doubt: it is no longer enough to continue doing philosophy blindly, in the old-fashioned way, as if nothing had happened. One must rather pause and ask about the relationship between, on the one hand, the philosopher engaged in the present and, on the other, the history of philosophy—which was exactly the question from which we started. One has to tell a “poetical invention” (Dicthung) in which “striking through the crust of the externalized ‘historical facts’ of philosophical history” one finds an “inner meaning” (Hua VI, p. 16/18). One has to invent a story within which “infinity” appears as the “hidden teleology” running through the history of philosophy. A guiding thread whose story needs to be told

 The exchange between Husserl and Arnold Metzger on the “phenomenology of revolution” (Phänomenologie der Revolution) should receive more attention than it has received so far. See the studies collected in Metzger (1979). 45

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precisely because it no longer guides anyone. One invents the history of the quest for infinity when this quest is no longer pursued. Now, when we first introduced this “daunting question”, right at the beginning of this concluding chapter, we were not yet ready to distinguish between two different sets of “items,” as it were, that the present philosopher “draws” (“entnimmt”) from the literary documents of the past (Hua VI, p. 511/392, translation modified). When the self-thinker pursues his or her philosophical task and, at a certain point, reads the texts of the philosophical tradition, he or she can certainly “borrow” (nehmen) (1) from Plato the concept of εἶδος and explore it according to its co-intended aspects, which are referred to by his or her own conceptuality; (2) from Socrates the procedure of starting from a few concrete examples sharing the same name and looking for their “what-it-is”;46 (3) from a somehow “Aquinized” Aristotle the distinction between Being in the sense of truth and Being in the sense of reality, in the distorted way suggested by some of her currently employed distinctions; (4) from the Stoics or Descartes the method of the ἐποχὴ, turning it into something else by putting it into a constellation together with some other methods etc. So far, so good. But, now, we also know that, in Husserl’s view, these “borrowings” are not arbitrary moves. They are all motivated by that very same philosophical drive that, according to Husserl, motivated Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Aquinas, the Stoics and Descartes as they developed their concepts, procedures, distinctions, methods, etc. Accordingly, what the self-thinker also draws from the overall work of these authors is precisely a “motivation” or an “impulse.” Each of the previous concepts, differences, procedures and methods could, in fact, be borrowed with or without the “consciousness of the necessity of a task” to which they are bound. One could borrow the former without the latter. Husserl’s self-­thinker borrows both: the means and the ends, the devices and the task. We are now ready to quote, in its entirety, the passage from the Appendix to the Krisis which provides the context to (T1) and (T2). The reader, the philosopher who thinks by himself, is not motivated by care for historical-­ scientific accuracy (and for centuries this was totally excluded); he uncritically takes whatever the tradition delivers to him as a fact, and allows himself to be motivated by what he theoretically understands of “the” Platonic or “the” Aristotelian philosophy etc. (lasst sich von dem, was er theoretisch hineinversteht, von ‘der’ Platonischen, Aristotelischen etc. Philosophie motivieren). The one takes from this set, the other takes from that other set of literary documents available to him or to his time in general; and when, for instance, he gets a decisive impulse (entscheidende Impulse) from Plato, so that he will later count himself among the Platonists, he may have never had the time, the opportunity or the desire— caught up in the urgency of his life’s work—to study all of Plato’s writings or those attributed to Plato, much less the reports or the criticisms of other thinkers that refer to, and indirectly clarify, the Platonic philosophy. (Hua VI, p. 511/393, translation modified)

 “We look rather to that which in the intuitively given is, so to speak, brought out, covered, conceptually meant by the word-concept, and what is not, what the ‘so-called’ therein really is (“so heissende” eigentlich ist) that is to say, which essential moments there are of the intuitively given, for whose sake the fact is precisely ‘called’ in such way. After all, in substance, [this is] the Socratic procedure (das Soktatische Verfahren). (Hua V, p. 100/86, translation modified). 46

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(T1) He reads and understands what he reads on the basis of his own thoughts, he apperceives Plato in his own way, on the basis of the “perception” of his already formed concepts, methods, convictions. (T2) Thanks to this apperception he obtains something new, he unfolds himself as a philosopher, and, similarly, by reading and interpreting other philosophical texts he turns into someone else. Reading Plato after a certain time again, the latter takes a new face, and this new Plato, just as the other authors of which he has a new understanding, motivate him again and again etc. […] What is and what should be the meaning of this for the philosopher thinking by itself? Is his work lost, if he accomplished it by neglecting historical-scientific accuracy, under the guidance and taking advantage of his “unhistorical,” untrue Plato etc.? (Ist seine Arbeit verloren, die er, um wissenschaftliche Geschichtlichkeit umbekümmert, unter Leitung, unter Verwertung seines ‘unhistorischen’, unwahren Plato etc. getan hat?) […] Answering this question has never been as urgent as in our time. (Hua VI, pp. 511–2/394, translation modified)

Part of this passage echoes one of Husserl’s concerns in his letter to Stenzel: The instinct for the understanding of the Platonic motivations which emerge from one’s own standpoint is probably not entirely worthless either (Aber ganz wertlos ist der aus eigener Stellungnahme zu den platonischen Themen hervorbrechende Instinkt der Deutung platonischer Motivationen wohl auch nicht). (letter to Stenzel, Hua Dok III/6, p. 428)

Now, as it is readily apparent, none of these excerpts mentions any specific content of Plato’s or Aristotle’s works, nor refers to any particular Platonic or Aristotelian concept, method or problem. Instead, the key to understanding these texts is Husserl’s constant use of the practical-axiological talk of “impulse,” “motivation,” “guidance,” “worth”.47 What the self-thinker gets from previous self-thinkers is, more than anything else, the sense of a task. A contemporary philosopher like Derrida (1993), for example, can certainly read the Timæus with great accuracy, “borrow” the concept of “χώρα,” aperceive it on the basis of his own perceived concepts and, as a result, unfold some unexpected “potentialities” of Platonism. But, at the same time, by borrowing and reinterpreting Plato’s concept of “χώρα” in the way he does, Derrida also aims at denouncing that very “consciousness of the necessary task of philosophy,” as Husserl says, that gave rise to Plato’s Timæus and led him to the introduction of the χώρα. In this sense, Derrida’s Platonism is anti-­ Platonic. Husserl clearly goes in an entirely different direction. His philosophical self-thinker might live in a state of provisional ignorance with respect to the overall content of Plato’s Timæus; draw only on some of the ideas set forth in some of his dialogues; learn these ideas not “first hand,” as it were, but in a historically transformed and perhaps not entirely accurate form; and even modify these ideas in the course of his or her own philosophical work. And yet, despite all this relative partiality, historical inaccuracy and critical distance, the self-thinker is still “true” to Plato insofar as he or she is consciously motivated by the Platonic idea of

 In the last quote Husserl talks of an “instinct” to understand motivations. Without being able to develop this important point, let me simply recall that Husserl’s concept of instinct can be understood in a quite broad sense, for as Husserl himself explicitly puts it, “reason itself [is] a transformed instinct” (Vernunft selbst [ist] verwandelter Instinkt) (Hua XLII, p. 134). On the topic of instincts, one cannot but refer to Nam-In Lee (1993). Let us also recall what we have previously established: “Every motivation—Husserl writes—is apperception” (Hua XI, p. 337/625). 47

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philosophy (Hua VI, p. 509/391), the infinite task of getting the world right, as far as possible, in the best way possible, so as to live in the world right, individually and collectively, as far as possible, in the best way possible—even if imperfectly, unilaterally and partially, for there is still success in each failure (Hua VI, p. 510/391). Unlike Derrida’s, Husserl’s Platonism is still, stubbornly, Platonic. In both cases we have a philosopher of the present who “explicates the implied horizons of Platonism,” but only in the second case can such explication be described as the pursuit of the Platonic drives by other means. For the self-thinker, Plato’s Timæus or Aristotle’s Categories are not, as Husserl puts it, mere “documents” (Dokumente) or “literary facts” (literarische Tatsache). They are “bearers of meanings” (Träger von Bedeutungen) (Hua VI, p. 511/393). Thus, their relevance lies not in what they are in fact, but in what could possible be made of them in view of the idea of philosophy. It is precisely for this reason that, even if someone ended up proving that the Lovers is a truly Platonic dialogue (which it is not), that the Hippias Minor is spurious (while it is authentic), and that the Timæus is a blatant plagiarism (as a third century rumor would have it)—those who have called such documents, respectively, “spurious,” “authentic” or “non-­ plagiarized” would be wrong. But those who called themselves “Platonists” because of the meaning of those dialogues, changing the “mode of existence of their lives” and their approach to the world according to the platonic idea of philosophy would be utterly unaffected by such discovery. In sum, not all “false” images of Plato are the same. Some are “historical” hypotheses (to be crossed out), others are “philosophical” apperceptions (to be explicated). But even among “untrue” (unwahre) images there are profound differences. Only some of these images are in fact “helpful” to the cause of a philosophy that is losing the sense of its task, while others are either indifferent or even hostile to it. The “untrue” but “helpful” images of Plato are those that not only expound the potentiality of a concept, a method, or a problem, but also, and more importantly, highlight their meaning, i.e. reactivate the “consciousness of the necessity of a task.” Thus, it is only if the self-thinker has pursued the Platonic drives with other means (by “drawing” concepts together with their motivational force, putting them into constellations with other concepts and looking for fulfillments, “exploring” unexplored horizons, transforming himself or herself in the process etc.) that the meaning of the distortions that the “historical Plato” has undergone is not lost. In light of this, the famous passage where Husserl speaks of the “poetic invention” of the history of philosophy48 should now appear in a different way than usual:

 Carr is perfectly right in rendering “Dichtung” with “poetic invention,” not just with “poem” or “poetry”. When Husserl uses this word in the sense of “poem,” he refers to a particular composition of words, i.e., of verbal sounds or written marks of verbal sounds that could be actually recited, read or simply phantasized. But, the term is also used to denote an “individual, ‘objective’ idea” provided with “its temporality” (see Hua XXIII, p. 543/656). Finally, “Dichtung” also means for Husserl simply “poetry” understood as a literary genre, which includes for instance Schiller’s or Goethe’s “work” (Werk) (Hua XXIII, p.  544/657). Carr’s translation rightly draws from the second sense. 48

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What kind of ‘poetic invention’ (Dichtung), what kind of historical interpretation (historische Interpretation) are we dealing with here, which one is suitable and to what extent does it help us (uns helfen); how must we continue it […]? (Hua VI, p. 512/394, translation modified) His historical picture, in part made by himself and in part taken over, his “poetic invention of the history of philosophy” has not and does not remain fixed—and he knows this; and yet every “invention” serves him and can serve him (dient ihm und kann ihm dienen) in understanding himself and his aim, and his own aim in relation to that of others and their “inventions” their aims, and finally what it is that is common to all, which makes up philosophy “as such” as a unitary telos and makes the systems attempts at its fulfillment for us all, for us [who are] at the same time in company with the philosophers of the past (in the various ways we have been able to invent them for ourselves). (Hua VI, p.  513/395, translation modified)

One cannot fail to notice, once again, Husserl’s insistent talk of “help” and “support.”49 Each and every “invented poem” is the bearer of multiple relations of Sense reference with respect to the poems “invented” by others (in Bezug auf das der Anderen) and to previous “poems” invented by the self-thinker himself or herself. Each “invention” refers to other “inventions” and is still in becoming, it is “not fixed,” Husserl says. On the basis of existing documents and consistently with the current state of knowledge, the “objective” historian of philosophy, uses productive imagination to build more and more accurate “images” (Gebilde) of past facts. Once confirmed, these images cannot change, they can only be enriched of some further determinations. Facts are facts, and a science of fact makes a history of philosophy made of facts (cf. Hua VI, p. 16/19). But on the basis of his or her ongoing experience—with its perceived and aperceived concepts, methods, problems, and the motivational force driving their “borrowings,” “constellations,” “distortions” etc.— the self-thinker who needs the history of philosophy—i.e., who sees the motivational force of its philosophical activity fading—uses productive imagination to invent a meaningful past, to expose “poetical inventions” (Dichtungen). The historical and meaningful past of a poetical invention is not an arbitrary construction or a subjective delusion. It is not subreptitiously meaningful because the self-thinker projects an extrinsic set of meanings to make sense of some brute facts. It is meaningful because it includes the self-thinker himself or herself as one of its “future possibilities.” What is the history of philosophy if I am a philosopher? As already pointed out, the “factual” past of an “objective” historical image is closed, and can only be enriched in some of its determinations. But the “meaningful” past of the self-thinker can always change, together with the self-thinker himself or herself. Both are in becoming, Lebensweltlich. And this is precisely the reason why Husserl calls it “poetical invention” and not “reconstruction,” “report,” or “chronicle”. Not unlike the cosmological tale of the Timæus, the history of philosophy of the selfthinker is not a λόγος, a rational and objective discourse about something that is

49

 The philosophical relevance of this talk has been discussed in Chap. 11 of this volume.

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always as it is and does not change. But it is not a mere μῦθος either, an arbitrary narrative. Plato had a name for such image, the most suitable image for something that is always in becoming: εἰκὠς μῦθος (Tim. 29d 2), “likely myth.” Husserl calls it “Dichtung,” “poetical invention”. But just as the likely myth by means of which Timæus tells the “history of the world,” presenting the all of the kosmos as a teleological unity, as unified as possible given its structural imperfection, Husserl’s poetical invention presents the “history of the logos of the world,” which include his own imperfect strivings, as teleologically unified by the idea of infinity. Every philosopher has his or her “poetical invention” of the history of philosophy. If Husserl’s own poetical invention is different, it is because it not only reminds of the task of philosophy, but also restates its infinity. Husserl’s invention of the history of philosophy is thus “helpful” in the many senses that we have tried to make explicit in this concluding chapter and which should now be briefly summarized. Firstly, it helps the philosopher in the pursuit of philosophy. The principle of “intuition” and “evidence” can only work if judgments, which embed concepts and conceptual clusters, and methods, which rule over the connection of judgments or procedures, are theoretically or practically fulfilled. But, as we have seen, conceptual clusters only appear if “drawn” historically and “constellated” experimentally. The poetical invention of the history of philosophy legitimates the historical borrowings and conceptual distortions made by the self-thinker. In fact, all these operations are not arbitrary gestures, for they are ultimately submitted to the teleological authority of intuitive self-givenness itself. Secondly, it helps the philosopher to understand the task of pursuing philosophy. As a philosopher, Husserl says, “I know, of course, what I am striving for under the title of philosophy” and yet “I do not know it” (Hua VI, p. 512/394). The “historical” (das Historische) aspect of philosophy lies precisely in this “obscure knowledge,” i.e., in the “conceptual words”—each with its own horizons—that I have borrowed, readapted, constellated, transformed etc. in view of fulfilling the task of philosophy itself. To put it metaphorically, I, as an “engaged philosopher,” am like the seen face of a hexahedron, like one of the infinite n-faces polygon of philosophy. Accordingly, if my “invented poem” of the history of philosophy is to be called “false”—just as any other “invented poem”—this falsehood must be understood in a very specific sense. And this is exactly the specific sense in which Stenzel’s Plato deems as “false” the “adumbrations” which are frozen by the painter on the canvas. False because they give the impression of being faithful portraits of the ever-­ changing process of distorted reference which only defines the infinite reference to the variously and infinitely adumbrated idea. Thus, each “poem,” if taken as a “true image of the history of philosophy,” cannot but be untrue. If valued as one “ongoing perspectival self-portrait of philosophy,” however, its truthfulness becomes undisputable. Thirdly, it helps the philosopher in motivating the pursuit of philosophy as an infinite task. To pursue philosophy and to understand the task of pursuing philosophy by confronting the history of philosophy is also, for Husserl, an act of resistance

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in an age when a positivistically diminished concept of science is either distrusted in the name of “life,” “existence” or human “finitude,” or is praised in the name of its practical, technical, economical, or political benefits in terms of domination and exploitation. Where only facts count and finite tasks are acknowledged, there is no room left for ideas or infinite tasks (Hua VI, p. 3–5/7–10). But Husserl’s invention is also an act of resistance against the dim and ill-framed alternative between the “plight [Notstand], grown intolerable, of reason,” on the one hand, and all forms of self-satisfied critiques of science on behalf of some more fundamental non-­scientific truths which cannot but be betrayed by the scientific ones, on the other (Hua V, p. 96/83). The following passage does not belong to the materials written around the Krisis but it is part of Ideas III, i.e., a text which, as explained by Schütz (1970, p. 40) “is based upon a manuscript of 1912, drafted at the same time as Ideas I.” Husserl writes: The advances of science have not enriched us in treasures of insight. The world is not in the least more intelligible because of them; it has only become more useful for us […] True statements are not, without something further, intrinsic values, and no more so are methods for the production of such statements […]. Intuitionism, therefore, reacted with complete justification against the one-sided surrender of mankind to the expansion of the sciences as techniques of thought. What matters is to put an end to the plight, grown intolerable, of reason, which amidst all the riches of its theoretical possessions sees its proper aim, world understanding, insight into truth, recede ever farther in the distance. But, of course, Intuitionism must not degenerate into mysticism instead of approaching sober tasks that are forthcoming from the situation described. (Hua V, p. 96/83).50  Some years later, Heidegger will write a letter to Stenzel (31/12/1929) in which he purposely tries to tarnish Husserl’s image in front of his correspondent: “Husserl’s path had already lost its internal direction when, out of philosophical cluelessness (Ratlosigkeit), he joined Neo-Kantianism in 1905. I have always hoped that he would find himself again. […] And now we have this, which in my view, is a pathetic, blind fidgetiness (Zappelei). […] It [scil. the reduction] is philosophically impossible, because it is built and developed according to the analogy of a scientific method. It lacks the always quivering ground of a philosophical problematic, it also lacks—which is one and the same thing—the directional force (Richtkraft) which can only spring from the really essential distress of the present existence (Bedrängnis des heutigen Daseins). Instead of leading to unsettlements (Erschütterungen) and being carried away from them, it solidifies into an absolute technique, which should count as evidence of its alleged “truth.” Today Husserl’s phenomenology is nothing but the “psychology” of the late nineteenth century, apriorized to the point of becoming grotesque, to which is added the superstructure (Überbau) of a moral drawn from the Enlightenment” (quoted in: Günther 2000, p. 18). The fact that Heidegger addresses this bitter criticism in a letter addressed to a man who was, at once, a trained historian of ancient philosophy, a Plato scholar and an admirer of Husserl is quite revealing. Heidegger hastens to lump together Husserl with the Neo-­ Kantians—while Stenzel’s interest in Husserl was precisely motivated by his dissatisfaction with Natorps’ reading of Plato. Heidegger is also eager to belittle Husserl’s account of science to the point of reducing it to a caricature, in a letter to the same person who acknowledged expressis verbis—despite the unbridgeable differences separating modern transcendentalism and ancient conceptuality—how Husserl’s adumbrations of truth in itself meet with Plato’s account of ἐπιστήμη. Heidegger finally sees an “absolute technique” and a blind apology of science precisely in the concepts and methods that Husserl develops to criticize any technical absolutization of science once severed from its philosophical infinity. Perhaps, one should consider the hypothesis of putting, side-by-side, Husserl’s idea of the complex account of adumbrating truth in itself through a changing manifold of mutually referring apparent truths that we have discussed above and 50

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Which brings us to a fourth, tightly related point. The invented poems of the history of philosophy ultimately help the engaged philosopher in helping Plato to continue motivating the pursuit of philosophy. As we have already pointed out, by referring to the “apperceived Plato” in the Appendix to the Krisis, Husserl is not merely alluding to some form of hermeneutical circle, nor is he merely rehearsing the quite trivial claim according to which one understands the philosophers of the past only—or, at least, primarily—through the lenses of the present. When Husserl alludes to the “concepts, methods, problems” on the basis of which he had apperceived and still apperceives Plato, he is presenting himself not merely as a man of the present reading the past, but, specifically, as a working philosopher. Thus, the point to be stressed is not just that such concepts, methods and problems are “present” (say, modern and not ancient) but rather that they are the outcomes of Husserl’s own philosophical work, of phenomenology, which has been in turn motivated by Plato. “Plato” is thus, at once, the name of (1) one example among others of a philosopher of the past, from which any self-thinker could draw concepts, methods, problems and motivations (and, as such, its name also unsurprisingly appears next to the one of Aristotle); (2) the philosopher who has factually exerted an influence on Husserl, whose concepts, methods and problems have been variously transformed but whose motivational force has been always and constantly intuitively confirmed in the exercise of phenomenology itself; (3) the one who invented the concept of “idea” and, correlatively, inaugurated the very ideal of philosophy as infinite task of which Husserl will tell the story. Husserl will invent et tell this such story in the very moment of its fall. Thus, by “helping” philosophy to continue to strive for its infinite task one also, eo ipso, “helps” Plato’s idea of philosophy: to have the factual world increasingly known, as it is, as rationally as possible notwithstanding its apparent factual irrationality; and to strive towards a personal and collective life increasingly just, as it should be, as rational as possible, despite the factual irrationality of many human behaviours, social systems, relations of production, or political institutions. And it doesn’t matter if the idea corresponding to this twofold task is only imperfectly, no matter whether this idea can always be imperfectly, unilaterally and partially adumbrated. For if Plato’s discovery of “ideas” has taught philosophy anything, it is certainly that there is still success in each of such failures. Husserl’s invention of infinity could not be understood otherwise.

Heidegger’s decadence of truth-unconcealment in truth-correspondence and see how they fare when it comes to facing the “distress of present existence.” But as far as we are concerned here, the interesting point is somewhere else. It is rather in the fact that, against a widespread view of this issue, Husserl’s call for the history of philosophy in the Krisis cannot be considered as a response to Heidegger. It is more than that. Is is a further attempt to motivate, again, with the “help” of the history of philosophy, that ideal of philosophy which already at the time of Ideas III and Heidegger’s letter to Stenzel was increasingly fading. Husserl’s last letter to Stenzel (23/3/1934), written in the same years as the Krisis, is, significantly, a letter of distress. Lamenting the growing influence of Heidegger and Scheler, Husserl asserts, again, that his own Platonism is “in truth” far more distant from any “Platonism and ontological apriorism than any philosopher of the past and of our time-­ even incomparably more than Dilthey himself” (Hua-Dok III/6, p. 429).

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Index

A Antiochus, 294 Apelt, O., 245, 246, 251, 252, 261 Aquinas, T., 3–6, 10, 14, 78, 81, 82, 84, 166, 169, 333, 369 Aristocles, 297 Aristotle, 3, 5, 11, 12, 14–16, 82, 90, 94–100, 102–107, 109, 116, 132, 161–168, 170, 177, 192, 195, 205–209, 216, 220–222, 224, 233, 234, 245, 246, 250, 251, 253, 256, 259–263, 265, 271–275, 281–294, 296–311, 314, 321, 325, 327, 338, 341, 343, 346, 365, 369–371, 375 Atticus, 296, 297 Aubenque, P., 120, 166, 290, 293, 308 Augustine, 286, 327, 328 B Baumgarten, A.G., 136, 137, 144, 152 Black, M., 292 Bolzano, B., 104, 162, 222, 224, 280, 308 Brentano, F., 11, 12, 14, 15, 52, 53, 59, 90, 161–177, 179–181, 184, 185, 192, 193, 195, 216, 247, 249, 261, 273, 274, 277, 278, 291, 304, 341, 368 Bühler, K., 273, 346, 347, 354, 367 C Cantor, G., 29, 30, 41, 42, 183

D Deleuze, G., 16, 196, 202, 205–212, 214–218, 220, 221, 225 Derrida, J., 21, 37, 50, 141, 186, 287, 293, 370, 371 Descartes, R., 5, 11, 12, 15, 114, 132, 230, 231, 240–244, 263, 264, 268, 283, 285, 286, 288–290, 327, 334, 341, 368, 369 Diels, H., 245–249, 266 Diogenes Laertius, 202, 203 E Egan, G., 129, 130, 132 Euclid, 99, 282, 283, 286 Eudorus, 298 F Findlay, J.N., 56, 346, 348, 354, 367 Fink, E., 23, 35 Freyman, W., 346, 354, 367 G Gomperz, H., 246 Gorgias, 231 Gregory of Rimini, 216, 218 Grote, G., 177, 248, 249, 265, 266

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Majolino, The Invention of Infinity: Essays on Husserl and the History of Philosophy, Contributions to Phenomenology 124, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34150-2

389

390 H Hegel, G.W.F., 247–249, 261, 266 Heidegger, M., 4, 11, 15, 21–24, 34, 35, 48–51, 54, 78, 90, 114, 116, 118, 120, 132, 141–148, 158, 161–163, 185, 187, 189, 191–193, 195, 229, 231, 240, 246, 268, 287, 329 Heraclitus, 235, 236, 238 Herodotus, 232, 234 Hume, D., 127, 243, 266, 368 I Iamblichus, 299 K Kant, I., 5, 12, 15, 36, 137–147, 149, 150, 152, 157, 158, 164, 166, 188, 216, 243, 368 Klein, J., 300 L Leibniz, G.W., 104, 243, 286, 290, 308 M Maier, H., 249, 266 Marty, A., 171, 273 Meinong, A., 171, 193, 216, 218, 220 Merleau-Ponty, M., 21, 23, 50, 351 Metzger, A., 368 Middle-Platonism, 16, 273, 293, 294, 298, 300, 313, 326 N Natorp, P., 11, 266, 350, 352, 374 Numenius, 298 P Parmenides, 236, 247, 251, 252, 254–256, 259, 266, 268, 269, 276, 277 Plato, 5, 11, 12, 14, 16, 29, 36, 42, 77, 103, 145, 167, 195, 205–209, 229–269, 271–290, 292–302, 308, 309, 311–314, 321, 325, 327, 328, 334, 336–339, 343–354, 357, 358, 362, 364–371, 373–375 Plotinus, 12, 293, 326 Plutarch, 297 Prantl, C., 222, 307 Protagoras, 99, 237, 247, 248, 257–259, 265, 276, 277 Pythagoras, Pythagoreans, 235, 236, 238, 239, 298, 299

Index Q Quine, W.v.O., 78, 89 R Reinhart, K., 346 Ricœur, P., 4, 15, 145–149, 154, 155, 293 Ritter, C., 346, 354, 367 Russell, B., 173, 215, 216, 218, 287 S Sartre, J.-P., 15, 16, 21, 23, 49, 50, 127, 128, 130, 131, 196–204, 209, 211, 212, 215, 216, 218, 220, 223, 225 Scheler, M., 48, 346, 375 Scotus, D., 14, 82, 203 Sextus Empiricus, 199, 222, 245, 314 Simplicius, 293, 299 Socrates, 116, 117, 231, 241, 243, 244, 273, 277, 278, 281, 285, 286, 312, 327, 328, 346, 353, 369 Sophists, 99, 230, 236–241, 244, 247, 249, 257, 258, 264, 266, 276–278, 284, 286, 288, 289, 297, 304, 308, 328 Speusippus, 274, 289, 299, 300, 302, 313, 315, 326 Stenzel, J., 10, 337–339, 344–347, 350–354, 366, 367, 370, 373–375 Stoics, 104, 195–225, 273, 286, 289, 290, 295, 297, 301–311, 368, 369 Stumpf, C., 181, 190 Suarez, F., 78 T Thales, 230–235, 238, 239, 276 Trendelenburg, F.A., 164, 341 V Von Ehrenfels, C., 171, 174 W Wolff, C., 5, 12, 15, 135–141, 144, 152, 157, 158 Woolf, V., 126, 127 X Xenocrates, 274, 289, 299, 300, 313, 326 Z Zeller, E., 222, 248, 249, 251, 261, 266, 349–351