Logos and Eidos: The Concept in Phenomenology 9783110877663, 9789027915429

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LOGOS AND EIDOS

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA

edenda curai

C. H. V A N S C H O O N E V E L D INDIANA

UNIVERSITY

SERIES M I N O R 93

1970

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

LOGOS AND EIDOS THE CONCEPT IN PHENOMENOLOGY

by RONALD BRUZINA UNIVERSITY OF K E N T U C K Y

1970

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1970 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 70-129299

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction List of Abbreviations

9 13

I. Phenomenology: Beginnings A. Background of a Philosopher B. Beginnings and First Critical Rethinking . . . . C. The Achieving of Phenomenology 1. Logical Investigations: Prolegomena to a Pure Logic 2. Logical Investigations II and Its Sequels : Into the Phenomenology of Consciousness

29

II. Phenomenology: Basic Plan A. Presuppositionlessness B. Intuition of Essence C. The Phenomenological Program Itself D. Techniques in Application: The Program Performed 1. The Eidetic Reduction 2. The Phenomenological Reduction E. Basic Phenomenological Findings 1. Intentionality 2. Constitution in Phenomenological Subjectivity

35 35 39 44 45 46 48 57 57 60

III. Phenomenology: Perception and World A. The Structure of Perceptual Experience

15 15 18 20 20

66 68

6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Horizons 2. The World 3. Typicality 4. Active and Passive Genesis : Strata of Constitution B. The Life-World C. Divergent Paths?

68 71 73 75 78 82

IV. The Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty . . . A. Maurice Merleau-Ponty B. Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perceptual Consciousness 1. The Phenomenological Reduction: General Character 2. Specifics of Merleau-Ponty's Reduction: The Basic Phenomenon 3. The Locus of the Phenomenon of Meaning-inGenesis: Existence C. The Phenomenon of Expression: From Ambiguity of Sense to Committed Articulation

85 85

V. From the Static to the Genetic in the Phenomenology of Husserl A. Husserl and Language: Logical Investigations . . . B. Husserl and Language : Studies on Time and History 1. Time and the Phenomenon of Consciousness . 2. Consciousness as Temporal and Language . . . a. Phenomenological Time b. Teleology c. Phenomenological History d. Language as Essential to the Constitution of Meanings C. Point of Contact VI. The Concept in Phenomenology A. Consequences of Expression 1. Sensible Meanings and Categorial Forms . . .

89 89 92 99 105

116 116 126 126 129 130 130 132 133 137 139 139 139

TABLE OF CONTENTS

B.

C. D. E.

2. The Thematic Object of an Act of Expression . . 2. The Result of Expression: Generalizability . . . 4. A Note on Categorial Forms 5. Summation Levels of Constitution and Orders of Generality. . 1. Generalization and Formalization 2. Ideation and Idealization The Phenomenological Meaning of 'Concept': Step 1 Essence, Eidos, Idea The Phenomenological Meaning of'Concept': Step 2 1. Significative Intention in Genetic Phenomenology 2. Application to 'Concept' 3. Merleau-Ponty and the 'Conceptual'

7

140 141 144 145 146 146 147 150 154 155 155 163 164

Conclusion

171

Bibliography

174

Index

182

INTRODUCTION

Edmund Husserl was called a Platonist, and Maurice MerleauPonty an existentialist, both in the extreme senses, and both in gross misunderstanding. Nevertheless, "between Platonism and Existentialism" could be useful as a title indicating both the extremes to be avoided and the opposing insights that have to be harmonized. "The concept" at first sight may not seem to be a very promising topic in which to attempt such a harmonization. The conceptual is almost synonymous with the abstract, the ideal, the suppositional. But at the same time, it is according to the conceptions one has that one sees, acts, and verifies. The conceptual is the realm of logic and of reason, but the conceptual is also the plane on which human consciousness humanly assumes the significance of a world and of actions in it. The study that follows sketches out a phenomenology of the concept through the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty precisely in an attempt to delineate the elements that would make possible a setting of the concept at the point of complementarity for an idealist phenomenology and an existential phenomenology. Complementarity, perhaps, but there also where opposition can exist: phenomenology as idealistic, phenomenology as existential. That aspect of conflict is, however, one of the many things not deeply examined, for in the end it is the possibility of a balance within a common framework that is aimed at. Consequently, a large part of the study is given to outlining the main elements of Husserlian phenomenology, for MerleauPonty drew much of his philosophical apparatus from Husserl,

10

INTRODUCTION

even though in doing so he adapted it to his own insights and needs. Moreover, as with others whose thought was influenced and formed through contact with Husserlian phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty adopted and adapted phenomenological notions as achieved, rather than as needing preliminary justification and presentation all over again. As a result, in the study here Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology operates more as a supplement than as a complement — except that the dimension "supplementarily" supplied is so radically fundamental even on precisely Husserlian terms, that it becomes in fact a complement of primary weight. And the arena in which this primary value is established turns out to be that of the phenomenon of language. Language, then, is reached as at once the matrix and the agency for reaching conceptuality. The present work, however, is hardly a complete treatment. Many absolutely essential factors are only mentioned if even that. For example, there is almost nothing here of a phenomenology of intersubjectivity, yet this is integral to an understanding of language. Again, the Husserlian treatment of evidence and ideality in the constitution of science and the scientific project is not taken up. Yet this is one of the principal aims of Husserl's whole effort, namely, to articulate the grounds and the conditions of science as theoretical knowledge.1 But even the matters explicitly taken up are in reality only sketched, rather than profoundly examined or critically justified. Nevertheless, it is hoped that, outline as it is, the work will be useful both in phenomenological studies as an arguable programmatic, and for those unfamiliar with the immense domain of phenomenology as an introduction, one that opens up a perspective complementary to the one they may be following with regard to the same issues of the concept and language. The present work is a revised version of a study originally presented as a doctoral thesis. My acknowledgments are due to Professor Frederick Crosson of the University of Notre Dame for 1

Thus, for example, the program of LU, PSW, FTL, and EU. Cf. Scherer, La phénoménologie des "Recherches logiques", Bachelard, La logique de Husserl.

INTRODUCTION

11

his assistance and guidance during the course of its preparation in that form. In addition, I wish to thank the University of Kentucky Research Foundation for the grant offered towards the publication of the book. A final remark, regarding mechanics, is that in all cases of emphasis in quotations, except in one or two instances explicitly noted, the emphasis is that of the cited author himself, although occasionally the author's emphasis has been omitted as irrelevant outside the full context in which the text is originally placed.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

For convenience in the references, the titles of works of Husserl and MerleauPonty used most frequently are abbreviated to the designations which follow. For details, see the Bibliography at the end and the specification made in the footnote mention of the work indicated below in parentheses after the title. For other works, an author's last name alone is usually given, together with the title sometimes shortened to the most important words. Again, for details see the Bibliography. Husserl Proh = Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, 1st edition (p. 20, n. 17) LU\I1 = Logische Untersuchungen, 1st edition (p. 20, n. 17) Prob = Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, revised edition: 2nd, 3rd, and 4th (p. 31, n. 45) LUzll = Logische Untersuchungen, revised edition: 2nd, 3rd, and 4th (p. 31, n. 45) ZB = Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (p. 33, n. 50) PSW = "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft" (p. 31, n. 44) PSWf = The same, French translation and commentary by Lauer (p. 31, n. 44) PSWe = The same, English translation by Lauer (p. 31, n. 44) ID = Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (p. 30, n. 42) IDf = The same, French translation and commentary by Ricoeur (p. 30, n. 42) FTL = Formale und Transzendentale Logik (p. 32, n. 46) CM = Cartesianische Meditationen (p. 32, n. 47) CMf = The same, French translation by Peiffer and Levinas (p. 32, n. 47) CMe = The same, English translation by Cairns (p. 32, n. 47) NW = "Nachwort" (p. 52, n. 49) NWe = The same, English translation by Boyce Gibson (p. 52, n. 49) EU = Erfahrung und Urteil (p. 33, n. 52) K = Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (p. 32, n. 49)

14 UG UGf

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS = "Ursprung der Geometrie" (p. 71, n. 17) = The same, French translation and introduction by Derrida (p. 129, n. 43)

Merleau-Ponty SC PP S SP

= = = =

La structure de comportement (p. 87, n. 11) Phénoménologie de la perception (p. 85, n. 2) Signes (p. 88, n. 12) "Les sciences de l'homme et la phénoménologie" (p. 168, n. 87)

I PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

A. BACKGROUND OF A PHILOSOPHER

Edmund Husserl is perhaps the consummate example in our times of the power of reflective reason. We can, furthermore, find no one who better illustrates the first principle for the relevance and validity of theoretical reflection, namely, that a decision to reason carefully and rigorously be motivated precisely by an intense, personally felt concern for the vital issues of the age in which one lives. This is the context, therefore, within which alone one should consider the qualities of distance and detachment in a thinker; and again, Husserl's possession of these qualities is legendary.1 Finally, and most remarkably, it was in the midst of circumstances of the most trying sort, Nationalist-Socialist Germany in the 1930's, that Husserl produced perhaps his richest work, again, out of a passionately made decision to reason dispassionately in the face of error. 2 It is true, though, that this dedication to reasoned consideration was inculcated in Husserl's philosophic effort during the first 1

Cf. Jean Héring, "Malvine Husserl", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 11:610-611: by the same author. "La phénoménologie d'Edmund Husserl il y a trente ans: Souvenirs et réflexions d'un étudiant de 1909", Reuve internationale de philosophie, 2:366-373; Roman Ingarden, "Edith Stein on Her Activity as an Assistant of Edmund Husserl", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 23:155ff. Cf. also the tributes to Husserl by W.E. Hocking, Wilhelm Schapp, Jean Héring, Helmut Plessner, Fritz Kaufmann, and Karl Lôwith, in Edmund Husserl, 1859-1959 (La Haye, 1959). 2 A brief good account of Husserl's life that includes this period is given in Kelkel and Scherer, Husserl (Paris, 1964).

16

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

period of his intellectual development, in late 19th century Germany and Austria. The conflict, political upheaval, and personal tragedy he would later confront in the First World War and its aftermath would put that dedication to a severe test,3 but Husserl had already reached intellectual maturity by that time, and the foundations were too solidly laid. As with a number of the western world's philosophical geniuses, Husserl was first trained in mathematics before turning to philosophy. He had gone to Berlin at the age of nineteen to study under the renowned mathematician Karl Weierstrass, staying there for three years, from 1878 to 1881, and even serving as an assistant to him a year or so later. Husserl, however, decided to complete work for his doctorate at the University of Vienna, and received the degree there in 1883, with a thesis on the calculus of variations. Prior to his move to Vienna, Husserl's introduction to philosophy consisted in some lectures by the famous Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in 1876-1878, the first university Husserl attended. At that time Husserl had not been inclined to either philosophy or psychology, and Wundt failed to win his interest. However, while in Berlin he had become somewhat attracted to the philosophy of mathematics through another then well-known mathematician, Leopold Kronecker, and soon after, still in Berlin, the lectures of Friedrich Paulsen had strengthened this new philosophical bent. Yet it was another man who drew Husserl's reflective nature finally and dominantly in the direction of philosophy, Franz Brentano. During his final mathematical studies in Vienna in 1881-1882, Husserl went to hear this celebrated ex-priest "out of mere curiosity to hear for once the man about whom everyone in Vienna was talking so much". 4 But such was the power of Brentano's personality and teaching depth, that before long Husserl was completely won over. As he himself recounts: "It was from his lectures that 3

To give but two examples: Husserl's youngest son was killed in the First World War, and under the Nazi regime in the 1930's he and his family were humiliated and harrassed because they were of Jewish extraction. 4 Quoted by Osborn, Edmund Husserl (Cambridge, 1949), p. 16.

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

17

I first derived the conviction that gave me the courage to choose philosophy as my life's vocation, that is, that philosophy is a sphere of serious work, that it can also be treated in the spirit of the most exact science, and consequently that it should be so treated." 5 This conviction having taken root, Husserl finished out his mathematical work, served for a time as assistant under Weierstrass in Berlin, and returned to Vienna to spend the years from 1884 to 1886 studying with Brentano in the closest contact. By his interest in logic and exactness of method in approaching a wide range of philosophical problems, Brentano provided an easy path for Husserl to move from the familiar area of mathematics to the more comprehensive problems of philosophy,6 and, indeed, Husserl's own studies and publications followed this same order. It remains to be mentioned that despite Brentano's book, Psychology from an Empirical Point of View,1 published in 1874,

for which he was best known, his interest had been occupied by psychology for only a few years, and that was mainly before Husserl knew him. 8 Apart from Brentano's doctrine of intentionally, of major importance for Husserl's own thinking, Husserl's acquaintance with psychology came largely from studies with Carl Stumpf in Halle, to whom Brentano advised him to go for further work. (Stumpf was as well a former student of Brentano's.)9 During the year of study at Halle with Stumpf, 1886-1887, Husserl prepared his inaugural dissertation, delivering it in July of 1887. With that first lecture at Halle, Husserl's teaching career began, to continue uninterrupted successively at Halle (1887-1901), at Gottingen (1901-1916), and at Freiburg-in-Breisgau (1916-1929), until his retirement in 1929. The first decades of Husserl's university carrer were dominated by two currents, one of optimism in science as an all-efficient positivism, the other of remarkable progress in mathematics. At 5

Ibid., pp. 16-17. Cf. Osborn, op. tit.. Chapter 2. 7 Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig, 1874). 8 Osbom, op. tit., pp. 27, 29-30. • On Stumpf, cf. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement (The Hague, 1965), I, pp. 54-69. 8

18

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

the same time, the old Kantian double problem of the validity of natural laws on the one hand, and of the ground of logic and mathematics on the other, returned seeking a new solution. Neo-kantianism was one effort to cope with it, while another was the life philosophy of Dilthey. It was in a third direction, however, that Husserl found his intellectual sympathies to lie, namely, in the psychological study as pursued by Brentano. 10 Psychology in the latter half of the 19th century shared the scientific optimism of the age, and empirical studies of psychic life were pursued with full confidence that factual certitude was as attainable here as in other fields of investigation. Brentano shared this enthusiasm and certainty, but he reached back to an older tradition, the Aristotelian, for his basic inspiration, namely, that psychic life is characterized by an intentional relationship to its objects. But in Husserl's hands, this notion became transformed from an element of interior psychic fact to a structure of pure subjectivity.

B. BEGINNINGS A N D FIRST CRITICAL RETHINKING

Husserl's interest in psychological studies, however, was based on a PHILOSOPHICAL problem, namely, how to account for the absoluteness, certitude, and universality of mathematics and logic, given the fact that it is the factual and individual human mind that thinks and develops those sciences. This was the concern of Husserl's first major work, Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891),11 into which, with appropriate rearrangement, he incorporated his inaugural dissertation of 1887, "On the Concept of Number, Psychological Analyses". However, in attempting to account 10

On the movements and major figures of Husserl's time, cf. Tatarkiewicz, "Réflexions chronologiques sur l'époque où a vécu Husserl", Husserl (Paris, 1959), pp. 16-26. 11 Philosophie der Arithmetik: Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen (Halle, 1891), Vol. I. This was supposed to be the first of a two-part work, but because Husserl's thought soon after underwent serious modification, the second part was never completed.

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

19

genetically for the basic mathematical concept of number, Husserl employed an approach and a terminology that was at best ambiguous. He seemed to seek in the factual psychic processes of grasping a concrete multiplicity the origin of the concept itself, allowing thereby the implication that number results from the way the human mind happens to work. Yet in seeming inconsistency with this psychologistic tendency, Husserl later in the work recognizes the special independent status of the mathematical concept as such.12 Fortunately for Husserl, an able critic soon published a devastating analysis of the psychologistic elements of this kind of position, first in more general terms, and shortly after directed specifically at Husserl. Gottlob Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic had appeared in 1884, and Husserl was familiar with the work. 13 In 1893 Frege published his Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic, taking pains in that work to point out what 'law' means in logic and mathematics, as distinct from 'law' in empirical science, such as psychology was aiming to be. Then in 1894 Frege wrote a review of Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic,14 analyzing in detail its arguments and pointing out their weakness and indefensibility. So effective were Frege's criticisms that Husserl had no choice but to agree with them. But he was not satisfied to let the matter stand. The irrefutable principle that formal concepts were distinct and independent from phychological data did nothing to explain how there was nevertheless knowledge of those concepts in psychological acts. That question remained, but Husserl had to 12

On Husserl's analyses in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, cf. Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution (The Hague, 1964), pp. 6-36. Also, Biemel, "Les phases décisives dans le développement de la philosophie de Husserl", in Husserl (Paris, 1959), pp. 32ff. 13 In this Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl had, in fact, repeatedly criticized Frege's views on the relations of psychology and logic. Cf. Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology (Cambridge, 1943), pp. 36-43. Husserl later explicity retracted his disagreement with Frege's antipsychologism. Proh, p. 169, note 1. 14 Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, 103: 313-332 (1894). Extracts have been translated by Geach and Black, Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (Oxford, 1960), pp. 79-85.

20

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

find a new way of approaching it. With the Logical Investigations of 1900-1901, Husserl produced the first elaboration of that new way, which he named phenomenology. C. THE ACHIEVING OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Husserl's struggle with psychologism cannot be considered an incident in the early history of phenomenology, nor is it correct to think of his interest in logic as the preoccupation of a preliminary stage. Later developments in the phenomenological current beyond Husserl, in particular in existential forms, lead one to forget the fundamental importance Husserl defended for the principles hammered out in the first period of phenomenological investigation. More than twenty-five years after the appearance of the Logical Investigations, Husserl warns about psychologism again, in a book that takes up once more an elaboration of phenomenology from within a study of the world of formal logic, the Formal and Transcendental Logic.15 To understand the reason for this recurrence of a rigorous anti-psychologism and an abiding appreciation of formal science is to understand the radical breakthrough that Husserl saw phenomenology to be.16 1. Logical Investigations: Prolegomena to a Pure Logic Husserl began his own critique and repudiation of psychologism first in lecture form in the summer and fall of 1896 in Halle. Then in 1900 he published this same material as the Prolegomena to Pure Logic, the first volume of the Logical Investigations.17 At the time of the appearance of the Prolegomena, Husserl wrote 15

FTL, Pt. II, ch. 1; also no. 99. Ricoeur speaks of Husserl's efforts against logical psychologism, his 'logicism', as the "permanent guard-rail of transcendental idealism", which is the form Husserl's mature phenomenology takes: IDf, p. xxxiii. 17 Logische Untersuchungen, 1st edition, Erster Theil: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (Halle, 1900); Zweiter Theil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (Halle, 1901). (Citation, first edition: Part I - Prolx; Part II - LUiII.) 16

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

21

a descriptive notice in one of the then current quarterlies outlining its content and purpose. In this notice Husserl speaks of the Prolegomena as aiming, from a detailed critique of psychologistic logic, "to prepare the way for a new conception and treatment of logic", one that "leads to the delimitation of a theoretical science, independent of all psychology and factual science", i.e., a conception of logic as 'pure logic'. Husserl goes on to explain: Pure logic is the scientific system of ideal laws and theories which are grounded purely in the sense of the ideal categories of meaning, i.e., in the fundamental concepts which are the common estate of all sciences, because they determine in a most general manner that which makes sciences in an objective sense to be sciences at all, namely, unity of theory. In this sense, pure logic is the science of the ideal "conditions of the possibility" of science in general, or of the ideal constituents of the idea of theory. A sufficient clarification of pure logic, hence a clarification of its essential concepts and theories, of its relation to all other sciences and of the way in which it regulates them, requires very far-reaching phenomenological (i.e., purely descriptive, not genetic-psychological) and epistemological investigations. One can say that this task of an epistemological elucidation of logic coincides in the main with the critical elucidation of thinking and knowing in general, hence with epistemology itself. In the second part there then follow single phenomenological and epistemological investigations, which seek to solve the main problems of an elucidation of logic and logical thinking. 18 Complementarily to this notice, Husserl gave in the preface to the Logical Investigations and in the introduction to V o l u m e II, 1 9 more explicit explanation of h o w the positive task o f the work was generated by his logical and mathematical studies. These statements highlight the major elements of Husserl's entry upon the road of phenomenology. Husserl's first interest, he notes, had been " a philosophical 18

"Selbstanzeige", Vierteljahrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophic, 24:51 If (Leipzig, 1900). Quoted in Farber, Foundation (Cambridge, 1943). (Husserl himself refers to this notice, Proh, p. xiii.) 19 Proh, pp. v-viii; LUiII, pp. 3-22.

22

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

clarification of pure mathematics",20 as, for example, in his Philosophy of Arithmetic. This comprised two things: the question of the origin of mathematical concepts, and the question of the nature of the formal pattern or ensemble in which those concepts function, i.e., mathematical theory and method as a system. When Husserl turned to this second question, he found himself obliged to generalize beyond mathematics itself, to the problem of "the general theory of formal deductive systems",21 rather than remaining within one kind of formal system, mathematics. Here he came to realize that the structure of mathematics as a formal system and calculus was independent of quantitative considerations. At this point, Husserl could no longer be directly concerned with mathematics as mathematics, but with the formal elements and structures of deductive science as such, with those necessary conditions possessed by any discipline that qualified as formally scientific. The task of establishing this is what Husserl sees as the prime function of pure logic. The actual developing of a pure logic of formal categories, laws, and theoretical systems, however, was not what Husserl is going to pursue. He does envision such a program and does sketch a plan for it,22 but the question still remains regarding how that enterprise as such originates. That is, upon realizing the formal character of pure logical theory, Husserl also sees that, beyond the proclamation and defense of its absolute objectivity against psychologism, it had to have its foundations disclosed. That was to be the task of the second volume of the Logical Investigations: 20

"Die logische Untersuchungen, deren Veröffentlichung ich mit diesen Prolegomena beginne, sind aus unabweisbaren Problemen erwachsen, die den Fortgang meiner langjährigen Bemühungen um eine philosophische Klärung der reinen Mathematik immer wieder gehemmt und schließlich unterbrochen haben." Proli, p. v. 21 "...die logische Durchforschung der formalen Arithmetik und Mannigfaltigkeitslehre...nöthigte mich zu Erwägungen von sehr allgemeiner Art, welche sich über die engere mathematische Sphäre erhoben und einer allgemeinen Theorie der formalen deductiven Systeme zustrebten". Ibid. 22 Proh, ch. 2, "Die Idee der reinen Logik", esp. nos. 67-70. Cf. also FTL, chs. 1-3, pp. 42-92, where the program is presented in more detail.

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

23

Investigations for the Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge.23 Nothing could be plainer than Husserl's realization that psychological analysis as he knew it and had once practiced it was simply insufficient to found the objectivity of formal theory, and the Prolegomena was to be his settling of the matter. Although eight of its eleven chapters deal directly with criticizing psychologism — showing, for example, how its arguments entail logical absurdity and relativism 24 — the aim is just as much to establish positively what kind of status logic MUST and DOES have, what the fundamental characteristics of logic are that distinguish it as irreducible to and fundamentally different from an inductive ensemble of empirical psychological data and empirical psychological laws. Husserl thus aims to provide a correct conception of the nature of logic against the misunderstanding of it embodied, for example, in the writings of John Stuart Mill, Theodor Lipps, and Christian Sigwart, three major figures in the philosophy of logic in the late 19th century explicitly criticized in the Prolegomena. Husserl's reasoning in this first volume of the Logical Investigations is quite detailed, but the central point he is making is clearly this: One has got to distinguish between (1) individual psychological acts, and (2) the meanings dealt with in those acts, meanings that retain an identity despite the circumstances and varying characteristics of those individual acts. For example, in mathematics, one distinguishes between Jones' or Smith's acts of counting and the number-species themselves, 1, 2, 3.... Any such number, though always found in a concrete act of counting or calculating, is not "a part or aspect of psychic experience" (Teil oder Seits des psychischen Erlebnisses), not a "thing in the world" (ein Reales), but rather it is "the ideal species, that... is one absolutely, whatever be the acts in which it comes to be an object, that hence does not in any way partake in the individual singleness of real things with 23

Cf. note 17 above. Proh, no. 37: "Es ist nun klar, daß in diesem prägnanten Sinne jede Theorie logische widersinnig ist, welche die logischen Principien aus irgend welchen Thatsachen ableitet." (p. 123.) No. 38 entitled: "Der Psychologismus in allen seinen Formen ein Relativismus". 24

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PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

their temporality and transitoriness".25 So that mathematical propositions dealing with number as such are not speaking about a kind of mundane entity (Husserl: ein Reales), nor about patterns or sequences of actual, individual psychic acts of figuring. "Rather they deal simply with number and number-entailments, in abstract purity and ideality. The propositions of arithmetica universalis — we could also say, of arithmetic nomology — are laws founded purely on the ideal essence of the genus: number." 26 Now, by reason of the "natural kinship between pure logical and pure arithmetical doctrine", 27 this distinction is applicable to logic in exactly the same way. Terms in logic such as concept,28 judgment, reasoning, demonstration, theory, necessity, truth, etc., are not names of classes of psychic experiences or dispositional patterns. On the contrary, these concepts as they enter into logical laws have no empirical extension at all. They are rather genuine ideal formalities, purely and simply. Part of the difficulty in achieving an understanding of pure logic, as Husserl notes,29 is the fact that these same terms that he is attempting to clarify as purely ideal possess an equivocal nature. On the one hand, they can be and are used to signify the actual psychic elements that occur in and as acts of conceiving, judging, etc.; and on the other, they mean the general concepts of ideal elements and forms in pure logic. These latter do occur, it is true, in actual psychic experiences of thinking, but their own proper significance is not that of psychic phenomena, of psychic fact. So that the laws based on the meaning 25

"...die ideale Species, die...schlechtin Eine ist, in welchen Acten sie auch gegenständlich werden mag, und die somit ohne jeden Antheil ist an der individuellen Einzelheit des Realen mit seiner Zeitlichkeit und Vergänglichkeit". Proh, p. 171. The slightly different reading of the second edition is helpful: "...ohne jeden Anteil ist an der Zufälligkeit der Akte mit ihrer Zeitlichkeit und Vergänglichkeit". Proh, p. 171. 26 "Sie handeln vielmehr von Zahlen und Zahlverknüpfungen schlechthin in abstracter Reinheit und Idealität. Die Sätze der Arithmetica universalis — der arithmetischen Nomologie, wie wir auch sagen könnten — sind die Gesetze, welche rein im idealen Wesen des Genus Anzahl gründen," Proh, P- 172. 27 "...die natürliche Verwandtschaft zwischen rein logischen und arithmetischen Doktrinen...". Ibid., p. 168. 28 Cf. below, Chapter VI, p. 152, note 45. 29 Proh, pp. 172-173.

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

25

of these concepts as logical idealities are not empirical but ideal and universal 'a priori'. . . . I understand by purely logical laws all ideal laws based purely on the meaning (on the "essence", "content") of the concepts: truth, proposition, object, property, relation, entailment, law, fact, etc. To speak generally they are founded purely on the meaning of the concepts that form the common estate of all the sciences because they represent the categories of building blocks out of which science as such is constituted in accordance with their concept.30 This fundamental epistemological distinction between the REAL and the IDEAL31 is the main factor in establishing the objectivity of

logic and its properly pure theoretical character, as distinct from any regulative function logic may come to have in regard to actual processes of thinking, as empirical directives.32 This is all, of course, exclusively in the formal realm. Yet Husserl is going to argue that meanings and relationships of a MATERIAL kind must possess as well an ideality and independence

from the empirical and contingent as to their general identifiable significance. The alternative would be a psychologism in the order of material sense — i.e., general ideas would be merely the result of certain factual processes of abstraction and would not possess any validity or meaningfulness in themselves, the result being a 30

"Ich verstehe...unter rein logischen Gesetzen alle die Idealgesetze, welche rein im Sinne (im 'Wesen', 'Inhalt') der Begriffe Wahrheit, Satz, Gegenstand, Beschaffenheit, Beziehung, Verknüpfung, Gesetz, Thatsache, u.s.w. gründen. Allgemeiner gesprochen, sie gründen rein im Sinne der Begriffe, welche zum Erbgut aller Wissenschaft gehören, weil sie die Kategorien von Bausteinen darstellen, aus welchen die Wissenschaft als solche, ihrem Begriffe nach, constituiert ist." Ibid. p. 122. (Cf. the citation on p. 21 above.) 31 "Endlich und schließlich hängt die letzte Klärung auch in diesem Streite zunächst von der richtigen Erkenntnis des fundamentalsten erkenntnistheoretischen Unterschiedes, nämlich zwischen Realem und Idealem ab...", Ibid. p. 188. 32 One of the issues of the Prolegomena is to determine whether logic is primarily and essentially a normative science, i.e., a system of rules and methods for specifically human processes of thinking, or a theoretical science, i.e., a system of ideal forms, relations, and general formal meanings with no regulating direct reference to acts of thinking or empirical matters, except by explicit transposition. Cf. Proh, chs. 1 and 2; ch. 8, nos. 41-43, and ch. 11.

26

PHENOMENOLOGY : BEGINNINGS

thorough relativism. 33 One should, however, not think that in opposing psychologism and empiricist theories of abstraction, Husserl is arguing for the other extreme, a so-called Platonic realism. 34 Husserl is not attempting a determination of an ontological status for logical or mathematical 'essences' or meanings. To propose some entitative character for an ideality is utterly to misunderstand ideality. To argue AGAINST the reduction of idealities to the realm of factual occurrences such as psychic constituents and processes, that is, to argue for the specific epistemological status of a meaning-unity as such (either formal or material) is NOT to argue FOR a special realm of reality. Ideality is not at all some superior reality. It is no kind of reality at all. It is a matter here of the same sort of difference as that between a sentence imagined or uttered by some actual thinker or speaker, and the proposition (or sense) that the actual or imagined utterance expresses. In all logic, it is very much a question of judgements. But here also there is an equivocation. In the psychological part of logical technique, we speak of judgments as beliefs, thus as some determinately formed conscious experience. In its purely logical part it is no longer a question of that. Judgment here means the same thing as proposition and that unders t o o d n o t as a g r a m m a t i c a l b u t a n ideal unity of

signification,35

For Husserl to defend the objectivity and 'ideality' of logic is not to suggest some kind of other-wordly existence. It is rather to 33

This is the specific topic of the Second Investigation (LU%, Untersuchung 2 : Die ideale Einheit der Species und die neueren Abstraktionstheorien.) 34 Husserl is frequently charged with 'Platonism', with attempting to treat essences like Platonic, other-world realities. Husserl's reply to this kind of charge can be seen in LUz, II-l, p. 101 ; II-2, Ch. 2, nos. 7ff.; ID, nos. 2-4, and 22. Cf. also Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, I, p. 96, note 1, giving a text from a letter of Husserl's to Brentano. Ricoeui 's remark is apropos : "L'objectivité de ces structures n'implique aucune existence des essences dans un Cosmos des Idées; la notion d'essence n'implique qu'un invariant qui résiste aux variations empiriques et imaginatives...". IDf, p. xxxiii. 35 "In aller Logik ist gar viel die Rede von Urtheilen; aber auch hier besteht Aequivocation. In den psychologischen Partien der logischen Kunstlehre spricht man von Urtheilen als Fürwahrhaltungen, man spricht also von bestimmt gearteten Bewußtseinerlebnissen. In den rein-logischen Partien ist davon weiter keine Rede. Urtheil heißt hier soviel wie Satz, und zwar verstanden nicht als eine grammatische, sondern als eine ideale Bedeutungseinheit." Proh, p. 175.

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

27

note relative to the empirical data of any concrete mind the independence and constancy possessed by logical elements and forms as to their intrinsic significance and function, the same kind of unconditioned validity and independence defended for mathematics by Frege. 36 Granted, however, that the formal meanings of mathematics and logic cannot be considered this or that kind of entity, one is then faced with the problem of dealing with the fact that these 'idealities' only make their appearance as concrete individual presentations in concrete individual acts, that they arise within consciousness although their significance is independent of the factic circumstances of the event of their first or subsequent appearance. Husserl's efforts in the Prolegomena exclude once and for all any attempt to account for this ideal objective significance reductively in terms of concrete psychic processes and constituents, but this only prepares the ground for returning to the original question. The fact that all thinking and knowing deals with objects or with states of affairs, whose unity, relative to the multiplicity of acts of thoughts, real or possible, is precisely a "unity in the multiplicity" and has therefore an ideal character; the fact also that in all thinking there is inherent a thought-form that is subject to ideal laws that circumscribe the objectivity or ideality of knowledge in general — these facts, I say, keep raising the following questions: how does the "in itself" of objectivity get represented and so therefore become again in a certain sense subjective? what does it mean that the object is "in itself" and "given" in knowledge? how can the ideality of what is general (as concept or as law) enter into the flow of real psychic experiences and become the knowledge-property of the thinking subject? what does the adequatio rei et intellect us of knowing mean in the different cases according to which the knowing 36

E.g., Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic, tr. J. L. Austin (New York, 1950), Nos. 20-25, "Is number a property of external things"; nos. 26-27, "Is number something subjective"; nos. 55-61, "Every individual number is a self-subsistent object". "It is in this way that I understand objective to mean what is independent of our sensation, intuition, and imagination, and of all construction of mental pictures out of memories of earlier sensations, but not what is independent of reason; for to undertake to say what things are like independent of the reason, would be as much as to judge wi thout judging, or to wash the fur without wetting it." P. 36e.

28

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grasp has to do with something individual, something general, a fact or a law etc.. The task of clarifying ideas in logic, such as concept and object, truth and proposition, fact and law, etc., leads inevitably to these 37 same questions

This text from the first edition Introduction of Volume II of Logical Investigations calls for a program of complete examination of consciousness. But in the context of the Prolegomena, Volume I of the same Logical Investigations, that program is already in full possession of certain principles. Husserl's defense of knowledge as grasping of a meaning in its universal import necessitates the IDEALITY of that known meaning, contrary to what psychologism would hold. Ideality, however, is a persistence of self-identity beyond concrete individual moments of psychic life, not as indicating a special ontological constitution, but simply as a descriptive status. At the same time, this kind of 'unity in multiplicity' can be itself an object of thematic interest precisely as a constant universal meaning. As such, it presents itself differently than a concrete individual perceptually encountered. Lastly, universal meaning can be either a specific significance itself, i.e., a general essence, or a form of ordering of such significances, i.e., a universal logical or mathematical law. Now, when the question how general significance, either material or formal, arises and is dealt with in the life of consciousness, is 37

"Die Thatsache nämlich, daß alles Denken und Erkennen auf Gegenstände, bezw. Sachverhalte geht, deren Einheit relativ zu der Mannigfaltigkeit wirklicher oder möglicher Denkacte eben 'Einheit in der Mannigfaltigkeit', also idealen Charakters ist; die weitere Thatsache, daß allem Denken eine Denkform innewohnt, die unter idealen Gesetzen steht, und zwar unter Gesetzen, welche die Objectivität oder Idealität der Erkenntnis überhaupt umschreiben — diese Thatsachen, sage ich, regen immer von Neuem die Fragen auf: wie denn das 'an sich' der Objectivität zur Vorstellung kommen, also gewissermaßen doch wieder subjectiv werden mag; was das heißt, der Gegenstand sei 'an sich' und in der Erkenntnis 'gegeben'; wie die Idealität des Allgemeinen als Begriff oder Gesetz in den Fluß der realen psychischen Erlebnisse eingehen und zum Erkenntnisbesitz des Denkenden werden kann; wie die erkennende adaequatio rei ac intellectus in den verschiedenen Fallen bedeute, je nachdem das erkennende 'Erfassen' eine Individuelles oder Allgemeines, eine Thatsache oder ein Gesetz betreffe u.s.w.... Die Aufgabe der Klärung von logischen Ideen, wie Begriff und Gegenstand, Wahreit und Satz, Thatsache und Gesetz u.s.w. führt unvermeidlich auf eben diesselben Fragen...." LUilI, p. 9.

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

29

posed once more now after the critical elimination of psychologism, an absolutely crucial condition is as well imposed: Just as general meanings possess an autonomy and a priori status with regard to psychic processes and elements because of their ideality, so one must search for a way of approaching conscious experience — which among other things has idealities as themes of interest — that is prior to and autonomous from the schemas and presuppositions of empirical psychology. The phenomenon of consciousness is not adequately and RADICALLY treated within the confines of a program of empirical psychology, particularly on the late 19th century model. Only in another way could one come to an understanding of the place of ideality in consciousness — an essential place, not a mere subsidiary one — namely, as a theme known by a knowing act, without danger of distorting or reducing that ideality. But at the same time, consciousness itself would only then come to be revealed in its own proper status, that is to say, as PURE INTENTIONAL SUBJECTIVITY, rather than as simply psychological process. 2. Logical Investigations II and Its Sequels: Into the Phenomenology of Consciousness Husserl worked on his new study of consciousness, PHENOMENOLOGY,38 for the rest of his life, from Logical Investigations until his death in April of 1938. Out of the enormous mass that resulted from forty years of writing out his thoughts, 39 Husserl published 38

The terms 'phenomenology', and 'phenomenological' — not original with Husserl by any means — introduced in his Logical Investigations, in the introduction to the second part, are used freely throughout. In the first edition of 1900-1901, the meaning Husserl was giving it was somewhat obscured by his manner of explaining it as 'descriptive psychology' (LU\Il, Einleitung no. 6, Zusätze 3, pp. 17f.). The consequent misunderstanding was very difficult to overcome, despite a revision of the passage in the second and subsequent editions. (C/. Hussetl's complaint in PSW, p. 318, (PSWe, pp. 115-116); and in ID, p. 2.) 39 H.L. Van Breda notes that after 1900 Husserl was unable to think without writing, sometimes working from seven to ten hours a day at his desk {CM, Preface, p. x). Even in the last years of his life he would put in several hours of writing daily. (Cf. Schutz, ed., "Notizen zur Raumkonstitution" (Husserl), Phil, and Phen. Research, 1:21; Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement,

30

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

comparatively little, but each publication was of fundamental significance. Before drawing together themes and elements from those works, and from posthumously edited material, in a summary of basic notions and findings, a few words should be given to the several contexts and avenues of approach these works represent. 40 Already in the Logical Investigations two of these show, namely, reflection on logic and reflection on psychic life, in particular, perception, although here the latter is confronted in the context of the problem of ideality. Yet the field of investigation in phenomenology allows equally effective entry through perceptual consciousness in the context of belief in the natural world. 4 1 This was the entry that characterized Ideas,42 I, p. 155). At Husserl's death in 1938, some 45,000 pages of stenographic manuscript, some 10,000 pages of transcribed copies, diaries, and letters, and a personal library comprised the philosopher's intellectual legacy. In the political situation of the period, the risk of possible seizure and destruction led Mrs. Malvine Husserl to accept the offer of a transfer of the entire Nachlaß to Louvain through the intermediary of H.L. Van Breda, who had come to Freiburg on a research visit shortly after Husserl died. Thus it was that the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie at Louvain came to constitute the HusserlArchives. From the work begun then and carried on since, the publication of material from these texts, as well as critical editions of works published already during Husserl's lifetime, is under way in the series Husserliana, Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Werke (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), under the general editorship of Van Breda. The series so far contains eleven volumes. (Cf. Van Breda, Preface, in the first volume of the series, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, pp. v-xii; Van Breda, "Le sauvetage de l'héritage husserlien et la fondation des Archives-Husserl", Husserl et la pensée moderne (The Hague, 1959), pp. 1-42; Van Breda, "The Husserl Archives in Louvain", Phil. andPhen. Research, 8:487-491 ; Van Breda, "Maurice MerleauPonty et les Archives-Husserl à Louvain", Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 67:410-430.) 40 Eugen Fink, Husserl's personal research assistant during his last years (1930-1938), mentions that Husserl often spoke of four such paths: logic, psychology, the Lebenswelt, and the Cartesian Cogito (Husserl, 3e Colloque Phil, de Royaumont, Paris, 1959, p. 65). 41 Cf. below, Ch. II, pp. 49ff. 42 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel ( = Husserliana, III) (The Hague, 1950). Ideen, as this work is usually abbreviated, appeared originally in the first volume of the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (Halle, 1913), an annual founded by Husserl and continued until a twelfth volume in 1930. Ideen was published separately in an unchanged second (1922) and third (1928) edition.

PHENOMENOLOGY : BEGINNINGS

31

This book, appearing in 1913, was the product o f an intense critical reassessment that followed the Logical Investigations,43 for Husserl saw that first work as insufficient and still too preliminary. But with Ideas, phenomenology achieved a solid grounding of itself. N o t much earlier, in 1911, Husserl wrote the programmatic essay, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science", outlining the plan and scope of phenomenology and manifesting the new realizations he was reaching. 4 4 Lastly, in the year 1913, along with Ideas, Husserl prepared a second edition of the Logical Investigations, revising it in many places to bring it up to the level of maturity achieved in Ideas, while attempting to keep in it its preliminary and introductory value. 4 5 Originally, as the preface to the second edition of his Logical Investigations mentions (Proh, p. ix), Husserl's plan was for Ideen to have three parts, only the first of which appeared during his life, as the work presently spoken of. For this reason, it is often referred to as Ideen I. The second and third parts, or what corresponds to them, have been published as Husserliana Vols. IV and V, thus Ideen II and Ideen III. On Husserl's plan for Ideen I, II, and III, cf. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, I, pp. 125ff. (Citations from Ideen will always be assumed to be from Ideen I unless explicitly noted otherwise; abbreviation - ID. Pagination will always be the numbering of the original 1913 text, repeated in the editions of 1922 and 1928, and retained in the margin of the Husserliana edition. Occasionally there will be references to the excellent translation and commentary of Ideen I by Ricoeur, Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie, Paris, 1950 - IDf. Again pagination will be that of the 1913 text, indicated in the margin of the French text.) 43 On Husserl's labors during these years, cf. Biemel's preface to Husserl's Die Idee der Phänomenologie, (= Husserliana, II) (The Hague, 1958), pp. vii-xi. 44 "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft", Logos, 1:289-341 (1911). In his French translation of this essay, Quentin Lauer gives a minutely attentive commentary showing the implications of its contents as a summative sketch of Husserl's position and intentions : La philosophie comme science rigoureuse (Paris, 1955). Lauer also has an English translation, which, together with another short work of Husserl's appears, in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (New York, 1965). (Citations: to the original text — PSW; to the French translation and commentary — PSWf; to the English translation — PSWe.) 45 Cf. Husserl's Preface to the second edition. In the revision for the second edition, Husserl divided the work into three parts: Band I: Prolegomena zur Reinen Logik (Halle, 1913); Band II: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, Teil I: Untersuchungen 1-5 (Halle, 1913); Teil II, Untersuchung 6 (Halle, 1921). Various delays prevented the last part from appearing until the later date. Thereafter, in the third and fourth editions (1922

32

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

As phenomenology developed, different approaches were taken, complementing each other, while the initial entry, through logic, was continually reconfirmed. Thus in the 1920's Husserl undertook a renewed presentation of his original line of entry, the result being the Formal and Transcendental Logic, published in 1929. 46 But in the same year Husserl delivered a set of lectures in Paris that explicitated a third avenue into phenomenology, namely, through a kind of apodictic Cartesian reflection on self. Elaborated a little more fully, these lectures appeared in a French translation under the title Cartesian Meditations,47 This completes the list of books in phenomenology published during Husserl's lifetime. A few other writings appeared in various ways, most importantly an article summarizing phenomenology for the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica,48 and part of a series of lectures delivered in Prague in 1936 entitled "The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology". 49 This last work, only partially published before and 1928) the only change was in the addition of some footnotes in the 5th Investigation regarding the 'ego' of consciousness. (Citations here will be to the third edition, in the following form: Proh; LUtfl-l; LU2II-2. The particular investigation containing the passage referred to will be indicated a a number in parentheses, e.g., LU2II-I (3). 46 Formale und Transzendentale Logik, originally published in Husserl's Jahrbuch, Vol. X (Halle, 1929), and separately the same year. The pagination is identical. (Citation: FTL). 47 Méditations Cartésiennes, tr. G. Peiffer and E. Lévinas (Paris, 1931). A German edition first appeared as Vol. I of the Husserliana series : Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser (The Hague, 1950). (Citation: in the French text — CMf; in the German edition — CM. Occasionally texts will be quoted in the English translation by Dorion Cairns: Cartesian Meditations, The Hague, 1960 — CMe.) 48 "Phenomenology", Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed. (London, 1927), Vol. XVII, pp. 699-702. This article is reprinted in Chisholm's Realism and the Background of Phenomenology (Glencoe, 1960). Of this English translation, Spiegelberg notes (The Phenomenological Movement, II, p. 742, note 1 to p. 164) that it can be considered "at best a telescoped paraphrase", when compared to the original German text now published in Vol. I X of the Husserliana series, Phänomenologische Psychologie (The Hague, 1962), pp. 237-301. 49 The texts of Parts I and II appeared in the opening number of the journal Philosophia, 1:77-176 (Belgrade, 1936). Part III, containing the most important

PHENOMENOLOGY: BEGINNINGS

33

Husserl's death, introduced a fourth approach, namely, through analysis of a primordial 'life-world' (Lebenswelt) which undergirds theoretic and technical interpretation and manipulation of reality. It is most remarkable that the studies that develop this approach, the most widely borrowed and emphasized in phenomenological developments after Husserl, were the work of a man over seventy years of age, keeping on in a milieu of disregard, hostility, and rejection. Two other books should be mentioned, studies Husserl asked one or another of his assistants to prepare for publication. Introductory Lectures on the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, published in 1928,50 but originally a series of lectures from the years 1904-1910, was a monograph on an element that lies at the heart of the four approaches just indicated, the import of which will be spoken of later. (Ch. V, pp. 126 if). Edith Stein, Husserl's first personal research assistant, elaborated the original texts into more complete form about 1918. They were then set aside and lay untouched for the next nine years. In 1927 Husserl entrusted their publication to Martin Heidegger, and the complete work finally appeared in Volume IX of Husserl's Yearbook.51 Experience and Judgment, similarly, was the result of the editing work of Ludwig Landgrebe, to whom Husserl in 1928 entrusted the preparation of a series of manuscripts on logic and its sources.52 This was in effect sections, and twice as long as the first two parts combined, was also to have been published, and Husserl was working steadily on a finished version. But with the onset of his final illness in August of 1937, it was set aside and left unpublished. These writings are now all published in complete form in Vol. VI of the Husserliana series, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague, 1954). (Citation: K) 50 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins, appeared originally in Vol. IX of Husserl's Jahrbuch, 1928, pp. 367-496. It was printed separately in Halle in 1938, and is now published in Husserliana X. 51 On the preparing and editing of the text, cf. Ingarden, "Edith Stein and Her Activity as an Assistant of Edmund Husserl", Phil, and Phen. Research, 23:157-158. 62 Erfahrung und Urteil (Prague, 1939). A second and third unchanged edition have been printed in Hamburg, 1948 and 1964. On the origin of the text, cf. Landgrebe's preface, pp. v-xii. Landgrebe was Husserl's personal research assistant from 1923 to 1930. (Citation - EU.)

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a return to Husserl's initial entry into phenomenology within the context now of his understanding of the 'life-world'. It was finally completed and published in 1939, the year after Husserl's death. It goes without saying that during the four decades of intense reflection that was Husserl's developing of phenomenology, there were hesitancies, internal tensions, and incompatibilites, as well as, on the positive side, the synthetic recapitulations that advanced phenomenology to new insights and self-possession. Yet beyond the fluidity, the ambiguity, and the task of continual critical rethinking, which the literature on Husserlian phenomenology points out and discusses as it ought, a central structure of elements and movements governs phenomenological debate. A clear exposition of this minimum is the most one can provide here, and that is the task of the next two chapters.

II PHENOMENOLOGY: BASIC PLAN

"For me what the Logical Investigations worked was a breakthrough, and so they were not an end but a beginning."1 The labor thus begun, carried on through the writings just briefly named, shifted ground several times in order to gain a new and more effective purchase on the idea Husserl was following so vigorously. But several constants appear and reappear in these differing contexts. Two of these provide keynote themes for beginning a comprehensive glance at Husserlian phenomenology, namely, the ideal of 'presuppositionlessness' (Voraussetzungslosigkeit)2 and the doctrine of 'intuition of essence' (Wesensschau, Wesensanschauung, Wesenserschauung) .3

A.

PRESUPPOSITIONLESSNESS

In undertaking phenomenology, Husserl is dealing with a topic — knowledge and consciousness — in which it is all too easy to 1

"Die 'Logische Untersuchungen' waren für mich ein Werk des Durchbruchs, und somit nicht ein Ende, sondern ein Anfang." Froh, p. viii. 2 XC/2//-I, p. 19. 3 Although one could distinguish nuances proper to each of these various terms for the same thing (e.g., — erschauung as implying the EFFORT involved in the clarification of meaning under clarification), Husserl uses them more or less interchangeably. They occur throughout his writings. ID gives one of the most detailed treatments of essence-intuition, nos. 3-8. Cf. Spiegelberg's few remarks on the differences in the meaning of these German words all of which are represented by 'intuition* in English: The Phenomenological Movement, I, pp. 117, 119.

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have adopted a point of view which may be utterly inappropriate — a category-mistake one perhaps could call it, after Gilbert Ryle. 4 For Husserl, psychologism and empiricism do exactly that, with their error consisting in not having taken a clear look at the phenomena they were supposed to account for, and, instead, allowing a presupposed view of reality to determine their manner of interpreting what was studied. Accordingly, Husserl intends to set aside all positions and viewpoints deriving from or embodied in natural science, or psychology, or metaphysics, or anything else. 5 All such viewpoints are themselves generated in consciousness. Consciousness as such, then, must be studied in a neutrality antecedent to such already accepted or projected positions. In other words, an investigation into knowledge and consciousness that intends to be rigorously self-responsible, to be taken as a serious attempt at scientia, must adhere to the principle of the absence of presuppositions. 6 N o interpretative schema must be allowed to operate that goes in any way beyond what scrupulous attention shows to be experientially given. One's investigation must before all else be one of PURE DESCRIPTION. By this kind of return "to things themselves" (zu den Sachen selbst!)1 Husserl sees the strict exclusion of any assertions that cannot be fully accounted for phenomenologically, 8 i.e., by a careful, descriptively proceeding attention to nothing but the phenomena in question. 'Pure description' of the 'phenomena', return to what gives itself in a presuppositionless attention to experience, becomes much clearer as Husserl's program elaborates itself, and we shall see shortly the deepening of this introductory notion. At the same 4

Cf. The Concept of Mind (New York, 1960), pp. 16-23. LU2II-l, p. 22. 6 "Eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung, die ernstlichen Anspruch auf Wissenschaftlichkeit erhebt, muß, wie man schon oft betont hat, dem Prinzip der Voraussetzungslosigkeit genügen." LUzII-1, p. 19. 7 LU2II-I, p. 6; ID, no. 19. On the meaning of the expression, cf. Spiegelberg, The then. Movement, I, pp. 121-122, and Bachelard, La logique de Husserl (Paris, 1957), p. 29. 8 "Das Prinzip kann aber unseres Erachtens nicht mehr besagen wollen als den strengen Ausschluß aller Aussagen, die nicht phänomenologisch voll und ganz realisiert werden können." LU^H-X, p. 19. 5

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37

time there are some things that Husserl is obliged to presuppose, namely, those things which constitute the very project of rational study and its commencement: the validity of memory, the capability of reason to see what is evident, the theoretical attitude. 9 For Husserl one cannot deny these things without rejecting the possibility of knowing and understanding, yet the MANNER of their operation remains a primary matter for his phenomenological investigation. Furthermore, one has got to use some kind of conceptual schema in order to get under way, even if a constant danger results either that the concepts thus made use of will be taken as rigid and definitive rather than provisional and fluid, or that they will be interpreted in terms of an implied metaphysic that necessarily will be associated with any set of concepts by reason of its philosophical past. 10 Phenomenology, therefore, must continually return upon its previous stages in order to achieve the clarification of concepts and the neutrality of presuppositionlessness that those earlier stages may have left too implicit or programmatic. 11 This does not show in the way matters may be treated in summaries like the present one, but as Husserl himself points out, the phenomenological attitude, its articulation and its authentic application were won gradually in the actual process of self-development in concrete investigation. Phenomenology did not spring up fully displayed at the very instant of beginning. In this connection, Husserl was particularly concerned about 9

Cf. Farber, "Concerning 'Freedom from Presuppositions'", Phil, and Phen. Research, 8:367-368; "The Ideal of a Presuppositionless Philosophy", in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. M. Farber (Cambridge, 1940), pp. 44-64. 10 In his recent La voix et le phénomène (Paris, 1967), J. Derrida argues that the very way Husserl understands the exigencies of a rational project, in terms of a beginning (in particular, the absolute rights of ideality), and in terms of the criterion of evidence (namely, presence in self-identity), already place the whole effort of phenomenology inside a metaphysics, or rather inside THE metaphysical cast of western philosophy. Consequently, rather than lay aside presuppositions or interpretative schémas, the phenomenological project both imposes them and grows out of them. The criticism is basically Heideggerian. Cf. O. Poggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Pfullingen, 1963), pp. 67-80. 11 Cf. Husserl's own discussion of this question in LUi,ll-\, p. 17 (No. 6, Appendix 2); ID nos. 63-75; pp. 170-171.

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one specific objectionable presupposition, namely, a naturalism that saw as the only possible ontological category that of being-ofnature, meaning physical nature as structured by space, time, and causal laws. According to this position, everything that possessed being had to pertain to physical nature, everything that possessed objectivity had to have a place within physical nature or in relation to it according to the categories of the world of nature. 12 This was the point of view that Husserl saw behind psychologism, and so vigorously opposed, for example, in the essay "Philosophy as Rigorous Science". A present-day proponent of the position has given expression to it in exactly the sense in which Husserl understood it: Suffice it to say that... "naturalism" means a philosophical position, empirical in method, that regards everything that exists or occurs to be conditioned in its existence or occurrence by causal factors within one all-encompassing system of nature, however "spiritual" or purposeful or rational s o m e of these things and events may in their functions and values prove to b e . 1 3

The presuppositions, the standpoint, methods, and categories implied in this position are mainly what Husserl wanted to neutralize preparatory to his reflective description of consciousness. This manner of thinking and what it leads to, both as an explicit theoretical position, and, more commonly, as a kind of inclination or predisposition, Husserl calls "the most ingrained habits of all, continually growing more reinforced from the very beginning of our psychic development. From them there comes the almost ineradicable tendency to fall back again and again from the phenomenological to the plain objective thought-posture..." 14 12

PSW, pp. 294ff. (PSWe, pp. 79ff.); ID, Section I, Ch. 2, "The False Interpretations of Naturalism (Naturalistische Mißdeutungen)" (pp. 33-48). Cf. Lévinas, La théorie de l'intuition (Paris, 1930), pp. 20-38. 13 Sterling P. Lamprecht, "Naturalism and Religion", in Naturalism and the Human Spirit, ed. Y. H. Krikorian (New York, 1945), p. 18. 14 "...den allerfestesten, von Anbeginn unserer psychischen Entwicklung sich immerfort steigernden Gewohnheiten.... Daher die fast unausrottbare Neigung, immer wieder von der phänomenologischen Denkhaltung in die schlichtobjektive zurückzufallen...." LU2II-I, p. 10.

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Elsewhere, this habitual frame of mind is referred to under the title it comes to be known by in phenomenological literature, 'the natural attitude' (natürliche Einstellung),15 especially in Ideas, where it is precisely the 'bogey' to be overcome by the 'phenomenological reduction'. 16

B.

INTUITION OF ESSENCE

The first result of Husserl's effort to eliminate the type of presupposition just indicated is the insistence, against any naturalist or empiricist bias, that one recognize (1) the descriptively valid status of general meanings (essences, universals) as themselves genuine 'objects' of consideration, and (2), correlatively, a mode of consciousness that directs itself precisely to this kind of thematic material, i.e., what Husserl calls 'intuition of essence'. 17 It should hardly need to be mentioned again that Husserl's 'essence' is not a 'Platonic' subsistent form. Yet the expression 'intuition of essence' is open to exactly the misunderstanding of being some kind of 'mystical vision' by which the 'purified spirit' is in transporting contact with a realm of absolute ideas. Husserl is an avowed opponent of this kind of notion. Rather, Husserl is arguing that the achievement of knowledge is simply the accomplishing of a clear and firm grasp of some general meaning in whatever is under consideration. This accomplishment can take place in a variety of orders, one of which is the logical. Beyond this there are the more important realms of material sense, especially in the perceptual order. In sum, grasp of meaning is essential knowledge, knowledge of essence, inasmuch as that meaning is grasped, analyzed, explicated, clarified, etc., and given some kind of 15

LUzII-l, p. 7. Elsewhere (p. 11) in the same work the phenomenological point of view is called 'counter-natural' (widernatürlich), i.e., counter to the natural attitude. 16 ID, Section II, Ch. 1: "The Thesis of the Natural Attitude and the Disconnection of It" (Die Thesis der natürlicher Einstellung und ihre Ausschaltung.)-, also p. 170, and nos. 71-75. 17 ID, nos. 18ff.

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determination, on a GENERAL level.18 One could say simply that methodical clarificatory thought is 'intuition of essence', and not be contrary to Husserl's intentions. Yet Husserl uses the term 'intuition', misleading as it can be, for good reason, namely, to emphasize the fact that there is operative here a proper and distinct mode of consciousness with analogical similarity to perceptual acts of regard, of 'intuition'. There are two things, now, in terms of which a comparison of 'essence-intuition' and 'perceptual intuition' can be made: the act itself, and the object to which it is directed, about which it is concerned. Despite differences — and Husserl points them out — there is one fundamental correspondence, a 'radical community' (radikale GemeinsamkeitJ 1 9 between them: each has a specific type of genuine object, which is genuinely given as an object to a specific act of attending grasp. "The essence (eidos) is a new kind of object. Just as the given of an individual or empirical intuition is an individual object, so the given of essence-intuition is a pure essence".20 There is a true object and there is a true grasp of it in each case, the object is attained ITSELF, 'in person', so to speak, or, as Husserl puts i t , in its "bodily" self', an expression that must obviously be taken as completely neutral with regard to any considerations of existence. Another way that Husserl puts it is that both perceptual and essential intuition 'give' their objects 'at first hand'. 21 The difference is, of course, that the first kind of intuition 'gives' an individual concrete sensible object, the second 18

Cf. above, p. 26, note 34. Spiegelberg quotes a letter of Hufserl's protesting to Brentano a olatonizing interpretation of his phenomenology: "I must add that all mystic-metaphysical exploitation of 'Ideas', ideal possibilities, etc., is completely foreign to me." The Phen. Movement, I, p. 96, note 1. 19 / A P. 11. 20 "Das Wesen (Eidos) ist ein neuartiger Gegenstand. So wie das Gegebene der individuellen oder erfahrenden Anschauung ein individueller Gegenstand ist, so das Gegebene der Wesensanschauung ein reines Wesen." ID, p. 11. It is important to realize that the term 'object' (Gegenstand) is here used in a more comprehensive sense than that of just a 'thing' (Ding), i.e., an entity in the world of nature. 'Object' means here "what is confronted in cognitive grasp". Cf. below, pp. 60-61. 21 "...eine originär gebende Anschauung, das Wesen in seiner 'leibhaften' Selbstheit erfassend=, ID, p. 11.

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kind 'gives' a general meaning, as the object of attentive grasp. The validity of the analogy, then, does not lie in the VISUAL aspect of the word 'intuition', but in the character of genuine givenness for an object as a genuine object that is implied in the notion of visual grasp. A s a result, Husserl can assert the 'principle of principles' applicable to either kind of 'intuition', but especially the second: Every type of first-hand intuiting forms a legitimate source of knowledge whatever presents itself to us by "intuition" at first hand, in its authentic reality, as it were, is to be accepted simply for the thing as which it presents itself, yet merely within the limits within which it presents itself. 22 Again, this is nothing other than Husserl's language for characterizing a purely descriptive method whose ultimate aim is clarification of structure, of meaning, on a general level. 2 3 But there is a further relation, a further connection, between the two types of 'intuition', one not conveyed by the analogy just spoken of. Beyond a similarity, Husserl finds the GROUND for intuition of essence in intuition of the individual. To begin with, "essence" designated what in the proper most being of an individual is met with as its What. Each such What can, however, be "put into idea". Empirical or individual intuition can be converted into essence-intuition (ideation)... What is intuitively attained is then the corresponding pure essence or eidos... 2 4 22

"Am Prinzip aller Prinziepen: daß jede originär gebende Anschauung eine Rechtsquelle der Erkenntnis sei, daß alles, was sich uns in der 'Intuition' originär, (sozusagen in leibhafte Wirklichkeit) darbietet, einfach hinzunehmen sei, als was es sich gibt, aber auch nur in der Schranken, in denen es sich da gibt..." ID, pp. 43-44. The translation is taken from Spiegelberg, The Phen. Movement, I, p. 128. 23 "'Intuition' is nothing but a generic name for all modes of givenness. Thought being one such mode may be said to be intuitive. What Husserl calls 'Wesensschau' is not a mystical vision of essence, but is nothing but thought purified." J. N. Mohanty, "Individual Fact and Essence in Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology", Phil, and Phen. Research, 20:222. 24 "Zunächst bezeichnete 'Wesen' das in selbsteigenen Sein eines Individuum als sein fVas Vorfindliche. Jedes solches Was kann aber 'in Idee gesetzt' werden. Erfahrende oder individuelle Anschauung kann in Wesensschauung (Ideation) umgewandelt werden. ... Das Erschaute ist dann das entsprechende reine Wesen oder Eidos...." ID, p. 10 (no. 3).

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More will be said on this point in later chapters. It is sufficient at the moment to remark that Husserl 'founds' (his own terminology) essence-intuition upon intuition of the individual. It is a distinguishing property of essence-intuition that an individual intuition, namely, a clear-sighted appearing on the part of an individual, lies at its base as a principle factor... so that consequently no essenceintuition is possible without the free possibility of directing one's regard to a "corresponding" individual and of forming a consciousness of an example...25 An individual, then, is not a mere utter singularity, a pure 'this' or 'that'. It possesses a 'what', a set of essential predicates that determine its identity. 26 As aname forthis characteristic general structure any object possesses, Husserl elects to use as neutral a word as possible, or one that he could most easily neutralize in regard to ontological or epistemological connotations: the German Wesen, or equally often and more technically in Husserlian vocabulary, Eidos, a direct borrowing from Greek. 27 Husserl is insisting, then, that the general, invariant, or relatively invariant, structure (meaning) of an object, its 'eidos', can be itself matter for investigation owing to the simple fact that objects ARE grasped in some kind of generality, in their 'What', whenever they come to be understood and known with any sureness in spontaneous learning. 28 Con25 "Gewiß liegt es in der Eigenart der Wesensanschauung, daß ein Hauptstück individueller Anschauung, nämlich ein Erscheinen, ein Sichtigsein von Individuellen ihr zugrunde liegt...; gewiß ist, daß infolge davon keine Wesensanschauung möglich ist ohne die freie Möglichkeit der Blickwendung auf ein 'entsprechendes' Individuelle und der Bildung eines exemplarischen Bewußtseins." ID, p. 12. One should notice in the very next clause of the paragraph from which this text is taken that Husserl says that, equally, an intuition of an INDIVIDUAL is not possible without the accompanying possibility of carrying out a clarifying determination of its essential structure of meaning, i.e., of progressing toward intuition of its essence. 26 "Ein individueller Gegenstand ist nicht bloß überhaupt ein individueller, ein Dies da! ein einmaliger, er hat als 'in sich selbst'' so und so beschaffener seine Eigenart seinen Bestand an wesentlichen Prädikabilien, die ihm zukommen müssen (als 'Seiendem, wie er in sich selbst ist')...". ID, p. 9 (no. 2). 27 ID, p. 6. Cf. below, Ch. VI, p. 154. 28 "In Wahrheit sehen alle und sozusagen immerfort 'Ideen', 'Wesen'..." ID, p. 41 (no. 22). Cf. also LlhII-\, p. 187. Intuition for Husserl "is not conceived in the mind of the phenomenologist as simply an irrational leap beyond

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43

sequently, deliberate 'eidetic' clarification, the methodical attempt at the fullest possible evidentness for the 'eidos', the essential general meaning, is the whole aim of phenomenology — the whole aim actually of rational philosophy as such. NOTE

In all this it is most important to be aware of two related warnings both of which Husserl has explicity brought to our attention, namely, that schemas of interpretation must be set aside in a purely presuppositionless description, and that, at the same time, some kind of rational terminology must be used in that description. In the concrete, this means that here (as throughout) description of 'my experiences', of the 'processes' of perception or of intuition, must in no way be understood as discriminating between entities ('me' as against 'something else') that I see in front of me, or of identifying a psychic or psycho-physiological occurrence (my vision of a colored shape) as going on in some entity ('me'). This would be to put a metaphysical value on the description, whereas Husserl insists that it be PURE of any such attributed value. Secondly, Husserl's terms are those provided by the idealistic tradition going back to Kant. Here again, these terms must be read only for their PRACTICAL DESCRIPTIVE advantage, in giving us a schema for discriminating significant details in the phenomena considered. Husserl's counsel on the need for retrospective purification and clarification applies here: the implicit INTERPRETATIVE potential, as against a descriptive usefulness, of some set of terms must be neutralized in the course of phenomenological investigation. And this retooling of concepts in phenomenology as Husserl develops it must be recognized if the central insights are to be appreciated in their essential thrust.

the data of experience. Rather it is intended as a rational penetration into the data of experience...". Lauer, Phenomenology: Its Genesis and Prospect (New York, 1965), p. 62.

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C.

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PROGRAM ITSELF

A few paragraphs ago, phenomenology was spoken of as having for its aim the clarification of essential structures, or, in Husserlian terms, EIDETIC elucidation. But Husserl is not only interested in conducting specific investigations in eidetic science, he wants to show the GROUNDS for such a project. Furthermore, just how one goes about such a thing in practice — METHOD — is dependent upon this same understanding of the principles of eidetic knowledge, namely, the nature of eidetic consciousness. This is no more than the program of the Logical Investigations, that is, a presuppositionless descriptive clarification of the essential structure of consciousness as capable of having essential structures as its objects; or, in other words, an eidetic clarification of consciousness in all its forms, including its summit activity, grasp of eidetic structures — essence-intuition. Every investigation in knowledge-theory must be carried out upon a purely phenomenological base. The "theoria" to which it aspires is nothing other than the reflective grasp and reaching of an understanding in evidentness regarding what the act of thinking and knowing in general is, i.e., according to its generic pure essence; what the modifications and forms are to which its essence is bound; what is implied with regard to these structures by such ideas as validity, justification, unmediated and mediated evidence and their opposites..., etc. If this reflection on the meaning of knowledge is to yield not simply an opinion but, as is rigorously demanded here, a knowing insight, it must be carried out as a pure essence-intuition on the exemplar base of given experiences of thought and knowledge.29 29

"Jede erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung muß sich auf rein phänomenologischem Grunde vollziehen. Die 'Theorie', die in ihr angestrebt wird, ist ja nichts anderes als Besinnung und evidente Verständigung darüber, was Denken und Erkennen überhaupt ist, nämlich nach seinem gattungsmäßigen reinen Wesen; welches die Artungen und Formen sind, an die es wesensmäßig gebunden ist; welche immanenten Strukturen seiner gegenständlichen Beziehung zugehören; was in Hinsicht auf solche Strukturen z.B. die Ideen Geltung, Rechtfertigung, unmittelbare und mittelbare Evidenz und ihre Gegenstücke besagen;... Soll diese Besinnung auf den Sinn der Erkenntnis kein bloßes Meinen ergeben, sondern, wie es hier strenge Forderung ist, einsichtiges Wissen, so muß sie sich als reine Wesensintuition auf dem exemplarischen

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45

To express this objective more succinctly, we can make use of two terms in the special sense they acquire in Husserl's phenomenology: Besinnung, and Erlebnis. The process of making evident, of clarifying and making genuinely self-present, so to say, this Husserl calls Besinnung, which might be translated 'cognitive realization', or, simply, 'realization'. 30 Husserl paraphrases it as an "original explicitation of meaning, understood as radical in manner". 31 This effort to achieve cognitive realization is directed, now, toward one's own experiencing of various acts and modes of consciousness, exactly in the very experiencing of them, in the very 'living' (erleben) of them. So that one can speak of consciousness as the topic under consideration, precisely as 'lived consciousness', or Erlebnis — 'experience-in-the-living-of-it'.32 Putting the two notions together, we can speak of phenomenology as, essentially, Besinnung der Erlebnis, cognitive realization of (what) lived consciousness (is) — within the framework, of course, of Husserl's methodological requirements, namely, the technique for achieving presuppositionless, purely descriptive clarification. D.

TECHNIQUES IN APPLICATION: THE PROGRAM PERFORMED

Before turning to the particulars of the phenomenological program, one important qualification regarding Husserl's Wesensschau or essence-intuition must be made. It corresponds perfectly to what has already been noted regarding the progressive effort that characterized the development of phenomenology. On the plane now of intrinsic positive principles, Husserl's radical cognitive Grunde gegebener Denk- und Erkenntniserlebnisse vollziehen." LUzII-l, p. 19. The passage quoted here in the 3rd edition differs considerably from its first edition form. 30 The French rendering is helpful: "prise de conscience", "prendre conscience". Cf. Bachelard, La logique de Husserl, p. 27ff. 31 "Besinnung, können wir auch sagen, ist radikel verstandene ursprüngliche Sinnesauslegung, die Sinn im Modus unklarer Meinung in Sinn im Modus der KlarheitsfUlle oder Wesensmöglichkeit überführt und zunächst überzuführen strebt." FTL, p. 8. 32 Cf. Husserl's remarks on the meaning of Erlebnis for him and the character of reflection turned toward it, LUzlI-l (5), no. 3 (pp. 351-352); ID, nos. 77-78.

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clarification — intuition of essence — is not some kind of immediate achievement, a simultaneous, total, intellectual vision beyond a perceptual world coming in some kind of mystical instant. For Husserl, the concept of intuition does not mean simple contact. It designates the ideal term of a process in which objects are brought to the point at which they stand as fully given as is possible.33 The steps and factors that make intuition in phenomenology — as indeed phenomenologically intuition as such is — a dynamic effort rather than a static vision, will be introduced later in various places. At present it is a matter of precautionary mention, for we are at the stage where a more static schematic of phenomenological notions is needed first. 1. The Eidetic Reduction As we have been seeing, the objective in phenomenology as Husserl begins it is the clarification of necessary eidetic (essential) structures. From this a number of things result. In the first place, the individual which forms the starting point for eidetic search is attended to not as an individual, but precisely as an instance of, as a base for the discernment of, the structure.34 Although perceptual intuiting of a real individual holds a privileged advantage, 35 it is nevertheless not by simply staring at some individual, however real, that insight into essence comes. The key operation is what Husserl calls 'free imaginative variation' (Freie Variation in PhantasieJ,38 or 'ideation'. 37 By freely but systematically varying 33

"Pour Husserl, le concept d'intuition ne désigne pas le simple contact avec la réalité donné dans l'expérience; il ne signifie pas non plus une sorte de pénétration mystique dans un monde d'essences inaccessibles à une pensée qui ne serait que rationnelle. Il désigne le terme idéal d'un processus dans lequel les objets sont 'amenés à l'être-donné' et ce processus est la méthode phénoménologique avec la série de techniques qui la charactérisent." Lauer, PSWf, p. 44. (Parallel passage: Lauer, PSWe, p. 62) 34 ID, pp. 12-13 (nos. 3-4). 35 ID, no. 70. 36 Ibid. Also FTL, pp. 218-220. Husserl's most complete treatment is found in EU, no. 87. A good account is provided in Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Louvain, 1964), pp. 189-197. 37 ID, p. 13 (no. 4); p. 12, Husserl's note 2.

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in imagination the characteristics of the object-meaning in question, certain necessary elements will become evident, owing to the fact that some variations cannot be pursued without radically changing that object-meaning. Certain structures of meaning will define limits for free variation in order for that object-meaning to retain its identity (within the order of generality in question), and consequently will constitute the eidos being sought. In this fashion the essence of the object will become evident. 3 8 The eidos, the pure essence, can be intuitively exemplified in empirically given instances, in those of perception, remembering, etc., but quite as well also in just plain imaginatively provided examples. This is why in order to lay hold of an essence in itself and at first hand, we can begin from corresponding empirical intuitings and equally as well from nonempirical, non-existence-grasping — more — "just plain fictive" intuitings.39 38

There is a multiplicity here in the notion of 'essence', i.e., a general structure of meaning. It can for, example, mean (1) empirical general 'essences' such as dog or tree (empirical universals), or it can mean (2) pure 'a priori' general 'essences' such as a material thing, animal, sound (pure eidetic universals). The first are open to further specification by the course of experience and indeed do not seem to be able to be fixed in any final way. They remain in the nature of open typicalities. The second, on the other hand, seem to determine unbreachable limits within which empirical types and singularities vary. Now, Husserl definitely means 'ideation' to be valid for the clarification of essences of the second kind; indeed, one of the first tasks of a progressing phenomenological program is what Husserl calls material regional ontology, the clarification of the supreme material genera of phenomena, according to the various levels of generality hierarchically ordered (ID, nos. 2, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16). But the precise application of purely imaginative variation to the first kind of universal, the empirical type, is not clear, nor are the relations between the two kinds defined. The problem is left unexamined here. Cf. Schutz, "Type and Eidos in Husserl's Late Phenomenology", Phil, and Phen. Research, 20:147-165; Merleau-Ponty, SP, throughout; Jan Patocka, "La doctrine husserlienne de l'intuition eidétique et ses critiques récents", Revue internationale de philosophie, 71-72:17-33. 39 "Das Eidos, das reine Wesen, kann sich intuitiv in Erfahrungsgegebenheiten, in solchen der Wahrnehmung, Erinnerung u.s.w., exemplifizieren, ebensogut aber auch in bloßen Phantasiegegebenheiten. Demgemäß können wir, ein Wesen selbst und originär zu erfassen von entsprechenden erfahrenden Anschauungen ausgehen, ebensowohl aber auch von nicht-erfahrenden, nichtdaseiner fassenden, vielmehr'bloß einbildenden' Anschauungen." ID, p. 12 (no. 4).

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It is consequently not a matter at all of individual empirical fact, nor of any assertion about fact as such. It is a matter rather of necessary general meaning. More importantly, any position regarding the existence of the objects in question is necessarily beside the point, i.e., outside the objective of clarifying essential meanings, necessary eidetic structures. It follows that a determination regarding essence, an intuitive grasp of essence, does not imply the least position regarding any individual existence whatsoever. Pure essence-truths do not comprise the least assertion concerning facts. 40 Husserl speaks of this operation as a 'reduction' (Reduktion), a reduction from particularity and individuality, from any kind of empirical condition, including existence, to that of pure essencegenerality (Wesensallgemeinheit). Quite naturally it is named the 'eidetic reduction' (eidetische Reduktion), the reduction-toeidos.41 It forms the step that prepares for an understanding of the full phenomenological arena: the field of pure phenomena. 2.

The Phenomenological Reduction

The next and decisive step — worked out in the years between the first edition of Logical Investigations and Ideas — follows closely upon the eidetic reduction. As we have seen, Husserl's concern for the status of 'objectivity' proper to eide (essences) of any sort (formal or material) leads quickly to the necessity of GROUNDING that status, of accounting for it by exposing its origin. Eidetic meaning arises within consciousness; eide are objects for consciousness, and that is the only way they 'are' at all. It must accordingly be within consciousness that the origins of this kind of 'object' can be uncovered; or, to put it another way, it is in the realm of our experience of attending to meaning that one can 40

"Damit hängt wesentlich zusammen, Setzung und zunächst anschauende Erfassung von Wesen impliziert nicht das mindeste von von Setzung irgendeines individuellen Daseins; reine Wesenswahrheiten enthalten nicht die mindeste Behauptung über Tatsachen..." ID, p. 13. 41 ID, p. 4.

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find the operations that lead to the setting up of GENERAL meanings as specific thematic material for consideration and grasp. The task that accordingly sets itself is the following (in Husserl's terms once again) : (1) One must bring essence-intuition itself to a full intuitive grasp of itself, answering the question: what is the essential structure of essence-intuition, how do essences come to be objects (or 'objectivities', des vis-à-vis

de la conscience,

Gegenständlich-

keiten).'1'1 In non-Husserlian terms : one must make clear what it means to clarify general meanings as thematic material. (2) This first project immediately leads to the larger one of which it forms one area, the larger task being, namely, the attempt to achieve clear understanding (Husserl: essential intuitive grasp) of consciousness as a whole, in all its various modalities and operations. Let us pose the question in more precise terms, again in Husserl's manner: How can consciousness be brought to a givenness in its very own proper self — in its 'bodily' self, so to say — with the structural articulation necessary to it made fully evident, both in its most general character simply as consciousness, and in any of its modes or acts? Exactly here, now, Husserl's phenomenology begins at its central stage. In the first place — analogously to the conditioning of the eidetic reduction — one must disregard any factors that are either contingent and non-essential, or detrimental to the achieving of genuine and pure givenness. For Husserl, this means overcoming the propensity to approach consciousness within the framework of a spontaneous naturalistic mental stance, the 'natural attitude'. 43 As it operates spontaneously, this 'natural attitude' may be 42

Ricoeur occasionally translates Gegenständlichkeit as vis-à-vis de la conscience. (IDf,\ p. 176). There are, furthermore, important differences between Husserl's use of 'Gegenstand' and 'Objekt'. Cf. ID, no. 37, and Ricoeur, IDf, note 1 to p. 66. On Husserl's choice of Gegenständlichkeit and its sense, cf. LUzlIA, p. 38, note 1 (cf. below, p. 49, note 70); also, Bachelard, p. 18, note 3, in her translation of FTL, Logique formelle et logique transcendentale (Paris, 1957). 43 Cf. above, pp. 38-39.

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characterized in the following way: 44 In my ordinary experience, I find myself dealing with a whole assemblage of 'things' (objects in a narrow sense), all perceptible in various orders of sensibility (visual, tactile, etc.), surrounding me and including me as one of themselves, in a total aggregate I call the world of nature. They are all there around me, and I am among them, in contact with some and capable of contact with any, but only in a serial and variable way, i.e., at different times, at different places, and with various differences in the way they look at different times and in different situations. Nevertheless, the place and 'thereness' of any of them is independent of its contact with me, and the assemblage as a whole is all there 'in itself'. Within this universe of natural objects (in the narrower sense) there are interlaced peculiarly human items — cultural products, things possessing specifically humanly imposed significances, like tools and chairs — artifacts in general. Finally there are other conscious beings like myself, dotted about within the aggregate and possessing each his place of purchase upon his own particular surroundings, a portion of the whole. Now, this entire complex is endowed with the value of simply 'being there'. In all my actions within the complex, I live in a frame of mind that is the simple acceptance of the validity of this existential 'color' (value, index) of 'just being there'. I do not have to think about it; I live in it; it is something that COULD be posited as a thesis by an act of reflective expression, but which obtains implicitly before any such explicit position is taken. It is in this kind of attitude — whether thematized as an explicit thesis or not — that physical science quite appropriately and fruitfully proceeds, i.e., with the point of view that the inner 'objective' workings of the universe are all there awaiting discovery by an 'objective' observer.45 But this is not yet all. When philosophical reflection applies itself, the neatness of the picture begins to be disturbed. Disconcertingly, inquiry finds itself having to make compatible with 44

ID, Section I (nos. 27-62) is entirely taken up with this matter of the natural attitude and the overcoming of it in beginning phenomenology proper. 45 ID, nos. 27, 29, 30.

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this natural world other 'realms', those of the psychic, the axiological, and the formal/ideal: the three 'worlds' of mental phenomena, of values, and of ideal objects ('objects' here in the broader sense, such as those dealt with in logic and mathematics, or eide, essences, of any sort, with any kind of 'objective ideality'). And these 'worlds' cannot be said to 'be there' in the same sense that the natural world 'is there'. Indeed, as distinct from my spontaneous acceptance that things in the natural world 'are there' even when I do not at all attend to them, I recognize that the world of the ideal and of value cannot be said to 'be there' at all except when my attention is turned upon them, i.e., this kind of world is only 'there-for-me', 'there-for-a-subject', even though its truth and validity be independent of the individuality of the subject. Further, even while my attention is upon some 'object' (in a broad sense) of this kind of world, the natural world is present to me as thoroughly unaffected and undiminished in my acceptance of it. Even while doing mathematics, for example, I still realize I am sitting in a chair, in a room, in this city, etc. So that the worlds of the ideal and of the axiological and the worlds of the natural are distinct and unmixed, while the latter seem to be the permanent and truly 'objective', i.e., 'out there' and the same for everybody absolutely. 46 Finally, we recognize that it is by the 'mediation' of the world of mental phenomena, of the psychic (in a most imprecise sense) that any association or disassociation between the natural world and the worlds of the ideal and axiological can take place or be considered. That is, ideas and values have relevance to the universe of things and people only via the attention of minds. Moreover, it is upon the world of consciousness that these other worlds (other than the natural) depend in some way in order to 'be there'. So that the basic 'set' of worlds is that of the pair: 'region of nature' and 'region of consciousness'. Everything else depends upon this pair. Now, how do we deal with THESE two and how are THEY related? There are several first alternatives. A full-fledged naturalism 44

ID, no. 28.

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would reduce the first, the world of consciousness, to the second, the world of natural things, by insisting that it is either a subregion of it, part of it, or a world altogether conditioned upon the second in its existence and occurrences.47 If this is rejected, one might hold for the two 'worlds' being altogether distinct and autonomous, existing 'side by side' and acting upon each other. The difficulties of this position have been well exhibited in philosophy from the time of Descartes on. Or, also, one might simply accept the natural world structure and system as the only basis for scientific explanation and try to establish some laws for consciousness phenomena from there, merely as a matter of practical necessity, not implying any reductionist metaphysical position.48 For Husserl, attempts at solutions of this kind are deficient all for exactly the same basic reason: they take an approach that depends upon and grows out of 'the natural attitude', viz., the implicit (or explicit) assertion of an 'objective' universe of things as the basic fact, the unobjectionable presupposition, while never having examined the implied or expressed thesis of the natural attitude as to ITS GROUNDS. The result has been that, undeniable as this attitude may be, its exact nature and scope is left indeterminate and unclarified, and the foundations of its validity undisclosed. If, then, this is taken as the presupposed basis for study and reflection, Husserl insists that the phenomenon of CONSCIOUSNESS will not be allowed to appear in its authentic self, but only under the aspect it would have in the natural attitude, in an implicit naturalist bias.49 47

PSW, pp. 294-297; PSWe, pp. 79-84. Cf. above p. 38 for a naturalist's own definition. 48 On positions such as these, Cf. Gurwitsch, Field of Cons., pp. 157-19, especially 157-163 and 168-173. 49 Husserl, "Nachwort", Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Book III (Ideen III) ( = Husserliana, V) (The Hague, 1952), pp. 152-153. (Citation: NW) This comment on his own progress in phenomenology originally appeared in Vol. XI of Husserl's Jahrbuch, 1930, and also slighthly abridged, as the "Author's Preface to the English Edition" in the English translation of Ideen I by W. R. Boyce Gibson, under the title: Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (London, 1931), pp. 11-30. (References; NWE) The present reference is to pp. 20-22.

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Husserl proposes, then, that we disallow any notion based upon the natural attitude to influence our view of consciousness in its operation, that we suspend the frame of mind in which we hold for a world existing 'there' all around 'outside' us, and somehow influencing the world 'here' 'inside' us — and that we NOW try to consider our conscious experience as it would present itself. This means that we would precisely no longer think of consciousness as an 'inside' and a perceptual object, for example, a chair, as 'outside', 'out there' in the universe. Rather, consciousness is now a pure FIELD of experience-in-the-living (lived experience, Erlebnis), in which various objects are found as appearings-inthe-field. Any object is now considered as neither an 'it' or 'thing' over against and OUTSIDE me, nor a 'thing' here WITHIN a 'me', but as, precisely, a PHENOMENON (