Husserls Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives (Contributions To Phenomenology, 55)

, HUSSERL S LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN THE NEW CENTURY: WESTERN AND CHINESE PERSPECTIVES

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY IN COOPERATION WITH THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY

Volume 55

Editor: John J. Drummond, Fordham University

Editorial Board:

Elizabeth A. Behnke, Ferndale, WA, USA David Carr, Emory University Stephen Galt Crowell, Rice University Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University Burt Hopkins, Seattle University José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University William R. McKenna, Miami University Algis Mickunas, Ohio University J. N. Mohanty, Temple University Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz Gail Soffer, Rome, Italy Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University

Scope The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy through creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in culture generally, offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that call for creative responses. Although the work of several generations of thinkers has provided phenomenology with many results with which to approach these challenges, a truly successful response to them will require building on this work with new analyses and methodological innovations.

HUSSERL’S LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN THE NEW CENTURY: WESTERN AND CHINESE PERSPECTIVES

edited by

KWOK-YING LAU The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China

and

JOHN J. DRUMMOND Fordham University, Bronx, U.S.A.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4020-5757-1 (HB) ISBN 978-1-4020-5758-8 (e-book)

Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com

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Contents ______________________________ Preface 1. History and Substance of Husserl’s Logical Investigations Kah Kyung CHO 2. Youding SHEN: The First Phenomenologist in China JIN Xiping 3. Husserl’s Attack on Psychologism and its Cultural Implications David CARR 4. Between Saying and Showing: Reflections on Husserl’s Theory of Occasional Expressions Bernhard WALDENFELS 5. Pure Logical Grammar: Identity Amidst Linguistic Differences John J. DRUMMOND 6. The Problem of the Phenomenology of Feeling in Husserl and Scheler NI Liangkang 7. Intentionality and Religiosity: Religion from a Phenomenological Viewpoint KWAN Tze-wan 8. Desiring to Know through Intuition Rudolf BERNET 9. Authentic Thinking and Phenomenological Method Steven Galt CROWELL 10. The Problem of Being in Logical Investigations DING Yun 11. Foucault and Husserl’s Logical Investigations: the U nsuspected French Connection LAU Kwok-ying

vii 1 21 33 43

53 67

83

105 119 135 153

Notes on Contributors

169

Index of Names

173

Preface ______________________________ Why another volume of essays devoted to Husserl’s Logical Investigations after several collections of a similar nature have been published in the recent years? First of all, this publication is of considerable historico-cultural significance: most of the papers derive from an international conference held in Beijing in October 2001 to mark the centenary of the foundational work of the phenomenological movement. 1 This conference was the first of its kind in which phenomenologists from the West—Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, USA—joined hands with specialists from Korea, mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to discuss the heritage of Husserl. Whereas all Western contributors to the present volume—Rudolf Bernet, David Carr, Steven Crowell, John Drummond, Bernhard Waldenfels, and Kah-Kyung Cho who is of Korean origin but has had a long and successful career in USA—are scholars who possess indubitable authority in phenomenology, their Chinese counterparts are much less well-known in the Western academic arena. Yet the latter’s contributions are of the utmost interest. From them readers will learn of the early reception of Husserl’s Logical Investigations in China through the work of Youding SHEN, one of the most distinguished Chinese logicians of the twentieth century (JIN Xiping’s paper). The readers will also understand in what way Husserl’s doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness in the Logical Investigations paved the way for Scheler’s phenomenology of feeling (NI Liangkang’s contribution), for a novel phenomenological explication of religious experience (KWAN Tze-wan’s article), as well as for the little known young Foucault’s tentative formulation of a paradoxical phenomenology of the dream (LAU Kwok-ying’s paper). Last but not least, readers will also discover how a young Chinese scholar undertakes a thorough reassessment of the problem of being in Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the light of Heideggerian ontology (DING Yun’s paper). With these joint perspectives—Western and Chinese—we hope that this volume will demonstrate the surprisingly rich and inexhaustible life that Husserl’s Logical Investigations continues to enjoy in the new century. We would like to thank the director of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and the editor of the series “Contributions to Phenomenology.” Without their constant support this project would not have materialized. LAU Kwok-ying 1 The full title of the conference was “International Conference On Phenomenology: Phenomenology and Chinese Culture, and The Centenary of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations,” October 13-16, 2001, Beijing, China, co-organized by the Institute of Foreign Philosophy, Peking University, and the Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, co-sponsored by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, USA, and the Hong Kong Society for Phenomenology.

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1 ______________________________ History and Substance of Husserl’s Logical Investigations Kah Kyung CHO University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, USA

When the Logical Investigations was published a little over a hundred years ago, it was heralded as the work that set the agenda of Husserl’s phenomenology with its methodological “breakthrough.” In the eyes of many uninitiated readers, however, it was not immediately clear what exactly the nature of this breakthrough was. Already the division of this work into two volumes with three different parts was a somewhat confusing arrangement. While the first volume had the clear-cut title of Prolegomena to Pure Logic, the second volume was divided in two separate “subvolumes” which were named Part I and Part II of the Investigations on Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge. Oddly, this full title was printed only on the head page of Part I. Thus readers found, not without a certain sense of asymmetry,1 that Part II of the second volume was bearing its own separate title: Elements of a Phenomenological Elucidation of Knowledge. If these three titles did not imply any underlying contradictions, they were certainly not designed to facilitate the understanding of the continuity between the volumes. Much less did they suggest a clue as to the central, unifying theme of the entire work. It is the peculiarity of the Logical Investigations that so many diverse impulses and fruitful insights could spring forth from its study as though Husserl’s stated aim in this work had been anything but laying a solid and unshakeable methodological foundation. Yet in truth the fine distinctions and rich insights found in the Logical Investigations were not the result of freely shifting foci or pluralistic methods applied to varying fields of objects. Quite to the contrary, it is safe to say that one unique and consistent method opened up a new way of looking at the wealth in consciously experiencing the world that otherwise would have remained largely hidden. 1

The English edition which appeared in two volumes avoided this confusion by not adhering to the two-volume, three-part format of the original German edition. Cf. Logical Investigations (quoted hereafter as LI.), trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). See also its reprint edition (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2000).

1

K.-Y. Lau and J.J. Drummond (eds.), Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives, 1–20. © 2007 Springer.

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It is, of course, the “final cause” of the following deliberations to clarify the substance of Husserl’s groundbreaking methodological advance. But in order to reach that goal, we will for the most part let ourselves be guided by what we may call the hindsight of a century-old global reception of the Logical Investigations. This means that the question of substance will be taken up more toward the end, when an adequate comprehension of the historical background is achieved. This is no simple recounting of this history. What is at stake is grasping the essential “connection of meaning” (Sinnzusammenhang) of a series of historical events. It would be anachronistic to say that the jury is still out and the final verdict is pending. For without doubt the Logical Investigations is one of the most closely scrutinized philosophical texts of our time. Its place in the history of 20th century philosophy and possibly beyond should be considered secure. And yet if the question is raised whether Husserl’s work was understood in the intervening years the way it was expected to be understood, one will have to point to the proverbial truism that thoughts take on their own life once printed on paper. As it stands, the Logical Investigations is a high profile case of philosophical literature that has been read very differently in the English-speaking world than in places like Freiburg or Prague. We owe part of the explanation for such difference to the hindsight that the Englishspeaking world continued judging Husserl by the Logical Investigations even after he had in a sense “outgrown” it. Typically, Anglo-American readers preferred to see in Husserl the logician with a flair for linguistic and syntactic analysis, and an anti-metaphysical bent. Even when his focus shifted to “life-world” and “history,” they made little or no effort to search for an essential connection between Husserl’s earlier and later works. Many in Anglo-American philosophy would have no qualms if their only choice were to keep the Logical Investigations and forget the rest of Husserl’s writings. The other, even larger part of the explanation may be sought in the real or perceived tension running through Husserl’s philosophy as a whole. Husserl himself called it the “paradox” (Crisis §53) of the “founding” and the “founded” relationship between the transcendental and empirical Ego, and between man as subject for the world and man as only a part, indeed a partial object within the world. We might add one more such tension that exists between the “normative power” of the factual and the “unitybestowing power” (einheitsstiftende Kraft) of the universal reason. All such difficulties were taken by critics more or less as liabilities in Husserl’s phenomenology that stem from the “idealistic” or metaphysical turn he took in his middle period. His otherwise salutary and scientific reasoning, so clearly demonstrated earlier in his logical analyses, critics say, fell victim to an aggrandized constructivism. As a result, the originally well-defined method of pure description of conscious experience was overextended to

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“constitute” the whole of Being. This is the gist of criticism 2 by Marvin Farber who refused to follow Husserl beyond the stages of his logical studies. If the Logical Investigations was the watershed for two largely unequal interpretations of Husserl—one by the English-speaking world, and the other, more or less, by the rest of the world, —then it was Farber who, like hardly anyone else, stood at that cross section, and he has become an instrument of history and its witness at the same time. In our hindsight, furthermore, Husserl’s attempt to justify the place of his philosophy within the objective history of philosophy coincided with his increasing recognition of the historicity of human existence. No philosophical work, certainly not the Logical Investigations, can surge into the air of its own accord and claim its place outside of history. It has its roots in the life of an existing philosopher, and its essential content cannot be separated from the concrete existence of the philosopher within a historical world. The last large treatise of Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and the Transcendental Phenomenology, says the following: Thus reflection is required in every sense to right ourselves. The historical reflection we have in mind here concerns our existence (Existenz) as philosophers and correlatively, the existence of philosophy, which, for its part, is through our philosophical existence.3 Notice how Husserl links reflection to “righting ourselves.” It is obvious that he is reproachful of philosophers who refuse to engage in historical reflections. What have they neglected or forfeited by this refusal? According to Husserl, it is the “well-grounded common opinion” (communis opinio) of “the most advanced sciences” that they can forgo historical reflections because they have effectively organized the science as an enterprise that is carried out “in the present (Gegenwart).” They, and those philosophers who take their cues for “rigorous science” from them, are content that the total body of knowledge acquired by today’s science is systematically thought through and thoroughly “tested logically.” Should difficulties arise, these are “overcome in logical thinking” so that as knowledge executed in the present, science does not need to “revive the history of science.” 2

Marvin Farber’s criticism of Husserl was directed mainly to his “subjective” method. “From subjectivity only subjectivity can be derived…subjectivity is an artifice, a device of method for descriptive analysis. (We) require a group of methodological devices and procedures to meet the many types of problems.… To restrict our philosophical method to subjectivism would be an error of one-sidedness as well as overextension.” M. Farber, Phenomenology and Existence: Toward a Philosophy within Nature (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 234. 3 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), Appendix IX, 392. German edition, Husserliana VI, Beilage XXVIII, 510.

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However, Husserl’s quite different usage of the words “revival” and “history” must be noted. For him, what is to be revived is not an antiquarian interest in facts and deeds of the bygone days. Nor should “history” be taken in its objective or natural sense. It actually means “origin” or “source,” specifically “source of evidence.” Normally, the “logically first principles” are accepted without question as “self-evident,” but Husserl scorned the deceptive front of such authority, including the authority of mathematical science that rests on deduction from principles which are unquestioned, behind which, however, one could easily detect a “horse leg.” 4 Only the directly intuitable, pre-logical evidence that is prior to theoretical constructions retains the genuine “birth right” of being truly the first principle. All other propositions must appeal to this authority for substantiation. We look at the Logical Investigations as an integral part of the systematic development of Husserl’s philosophy. As an integral part, its relationship to the whole of Husserl’s writings can be understood according to the model of hermeneutic circularity. If The Prolegomena to Pure Logic or its serial parts contain unclear or insufficiently developed ideas, these can be clarified and their missing links supplemented by going back to the reading of Husserl’s later publications that allow a broader overview. And we can reverse the direction to better understand the meaning of the larger connections by recourse to parts that already have well defined, stable meaning. As we have glimpsed above, it is the Crisis, more than Ideas (1913) or Cartesian Meditations (Paris 1931) that offered important insights into certain ideas germinating in the Logical Investigations. Most conspicuous among such early prefigurations is the methodical principle that the philosophical grounding of logic and mathematics must begin with the analysis of the experience that lies before all logical thinking. This insight was to be fully fleshed out in Experience and Judgment (1939) and formulated specifically in the Crisis as the primacy of the lifeworldly evidence over the logico-mathematical evidence. Therefore, to isolate the Investigations from the rest of his writings and give it the status of a self-enclosed universe, however rewarding it may be to read it as such, would seem a rather flawed approach in that it fails to shed light on the inchoate, rich suggestiveness of the Investigations itself. For there has to be a light cast from the side, from other works, that can effectively enhance some of the tentatively carved profiles of the Investigations. Later, we shall listen to what Husserl had to say in the Crisis retrospectively about the “breakthrough” taking shape in the Logical Investigations.

4 The English translation of Crisis did not include Appendix XXV where the word Pferdefuß, hoof or leg of the horse, occurs. Its colloquial meaning is “sham” or “gimmick.” Cf. German edition, Husserliana VI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), 496.

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But it must be admitted that such integrated understanding of the Logical Investigations was rendered extremely difficult by the historical circumstances. When we say a work begins its separate existence from the moment it leaves its author, we do not stipulate that this is so only in peaceful times. Such normalcy within the academia is taken for granted. But the two World Wars disrupted the flow and exchange of thought of mankind in an unprecedented scale. With the exception of those who had to go into exile, few philosophers with such an unblemished, even honorable record as a German citizen, had to endure as much ignominy as Husserl. He and his work were condemned to non-existence under the relapsed barbarism that consumed Germany and soon spread to all of Europe. To be sure, the original edition of the Logical Investigations had been published more than thirty years before the National Socialism came to power. But by 1939, the year World War II broke out, only the Russian (1909) and the Spanish (1929) translation had seen the light of day. Actually, the Spanish translation was the only one published during the lull between two world wars. Even after the end of the war in 1945, the next translation in one of the world’s major languages, the French, was not completed until 1959. And it was still ten years later that the Italian and Japanese translations (both 1968) followed. The most pivotal translation of all, English, did not arrive until 1970, exactly seventy years after the first German edition. The long interval in which Husserl was incommunicado is significant and may tell something about the need for a healing time in the war-ravaged cultural climate of Europe. However, beneath this surface level stagnation, varied and lively international and personal activities were unfolding. It is a grim irony that the National Socialist policy that had systematically banned phenomenology inside Germany helped it to develop into a thriving multinational and global movement. Manuscripts and personnel were smuggled out of Germany to neutral countries often under dramatic circumstances. To former students of Husserl living overseas in a relative isolation, it was a welcome synergetic event to be joined by many newly exiled or displaced European scholars. And one particular such connection was about to touch the heart and soul of the issue of the English version of the Logical Investigations. It is a must-tell story affecting Husserl’s reception in the English-speaking world. In mid-1930s, toward the end of his life, Husserl was quite certain that Germany and Europe as a whole no longer held any promise for the future of his philosophy. Fortunately, Prague turned out in many ways to be the alternative haven when his activities in Freiburg were severely restricted under the anti-Semitic policy of the German government. Alone for having safeguarded his guest lectures and eventual publication of his important manuscripts such as Experience and Judgment and The Crisis of European Sciences, the significance of Prague as the German University town away from Germany could hardly be exaggerated. Husserl could get some consolation not only from the fact that there was already a center for

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phenomenology in Prague, but also from the news that his dedicated followers in France and Spain have begun their cooperative work. Moreover, he knew that a number of his former Japanese students had laid early cornerstones upon which to build phenomenology eventually as one of the most widely accepted and productive Western philosophies 5 in modern Japan. But it was to the English-speaking world, especially the United States, that Husserl turned directly for help in an attempt to ensure his legacy. First such contact began with a rather personal note as Husserl and his wife Malvine were deeply concerned about the future of their son Gerhart, a law professor in Kiel recently suspended from his position. They decided to contact Marvin Farber in Buffalo who had studied earlier (1923–24) in Freiburg and had occasionally corresponded with Husserl. 6 Mrs. Malvine Husserl wrote to Farber on February 17, 1936, beseeching him to help find an academic position in America for Gerhart. Husserl himself sent his own letter the following day, in which he introduced his son as a scholar who had already achieved a “considerable reputation” through his researches that provided a “phenomenological grounding to jurisprudence.” In a subsequent letter to Farber on August 9, Malvine thanked him heartily for his “kind considerations” for her son. Through Farber’s good offices, Gerhart Husserl was eventually placed in a college in Pennsylvania. Husserl himself on August 18 sent a two-page, minutely hand-written letter to Farber from his Black Forest retreat in Lenzkirch. It began with his words of sincere appreciation for what Farber and other “prominent intellectual personalities in the USA” had done for his son. This gave him “a great joy in the middle of the pathetic situation in which all we nationally ostracized people find ourselves.” But this letter also contained a “report” on the progress he has made in his phenomenological researches. “Since the time you were my student in Freiburg,” wrote Husserl, “I have made great strides in the systematic perfection of phenomenology and in the fundamental reflective clarification of the method of transcendental reduction.” No doubt with reference to the state of the “pure logic” of the Logical Investigations, 5 Phenomenology had from its beginning a unique appeal to Asian students. Though Husserl was introduced to Japan quite early in the 20th century, Heidegger dominated for several decades, until, in what may be called a “symmetrical development,” both the Heideggerian and Husserlian phenomenology became the staple diet in contemporary philosophy seminars in Japan and Korea. Demographically, Japan boasts the largest contingent of academically engaged phenomenologists, next only to the U.S. and Canada combined. For an index, Genshôgaku Nenpô, The Annual Review of the Phenomenological Association of Japan, has upward of 450 regular subscribing members. The quality of the journal invites comparison with any other such major publications. 6 All letters between Husserl and Farber quoted or referred to here are documented and annotated in Kah Kyung CHO, “Phenomenology as Cooperative Task: Husserl-Farber Correspondence during 1936–37,” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. L. Supplement (Fall 1990): 27–43.

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Husserl saw his phenomenology today “in its mature form,” and characterized this difference as analogous to what “Leibniz’s differential calculus was in comparison to today’s infinitesimal analysis.” Then, after mentioning that Dorion Cairns had already finished translating major parts of the Cartesian Meditations and the Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl broached the subject of another, more serious translation: …In the eyes of the world, I am still the author of the Logical Investigations, and this book is, especially to the Anglo-American audience, the necessary foundation for understanding the new problems and ways of thinking of phenomenology.… Wouldn’t you rather be willing to undertake the translation of this work, of course, first its Prolegomena? In September, my former assistant Dr. Landgrebe (Dozent at the University of Prague), whom I have authorized to secure my manuscripts in archives, will be coming to Freiburg, in order to translate and prepare them for publication. I shall discuss with him whether an appropriate, smaller manuscript should be readied for English translation, if you so desire.7 Before concluding his letter, Husserl urged Farber to get in touch with Cairns who studied at Freiburg in 1924–26 and 1931–32, stressing that phenomenology is a “cooperative affair, a bond that binds us together sub specie aeterni.” At this stage, Farber seemed to be taking almost every word of Husserl to heart. He established contact with Cairns within a few months, according to Husserl’s letter of thanks to him dated November 20. Shortly after Husserl’s death two years later (1938), Farber organized, together with Cairns and over a dozen “founding members,” the International Phenomenological Society. At its first meeting in New York on December 26, 1939, Farber and Cairns were elected president and vicepresident respectively. This was a gathering of stellar international scholars whose names are worth quoting here: Aron Gurwitsch, Charles Hartschorne, W.E. Hocking, Gerhart Husserl, L.O. Kattsoff, Felix Kaufmann, Jacob Klein, Helmuth Kuhn, V.J. McGill, Alfred Schütz, Herbert Spiegelberg, Hermann Weyl, and John Wild. After this event, Farber wasted little time in taking further initiative and, in 1940, inaugurated the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Husserl had hoped before his death that Farber would, in cooperation with Dorion Cairns, carry out the large task of translating the Logical Investigations. But mindful of the voluminous and complex nature of its content, he would settle, for the time being, only on the translation of the Prolegomena. Husserl must have felt instinctively that Farber in the early 1940s was probably the only philosopher in America with the overall resources, coupled with a personally compelling sense of obligation to 7

Ibid.

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Husserl, to fulfill this mission. His organizational talent and energy exhibited in inaugurating the phenomenological society and its journal as well as in publishing a memorial volume for Husserl after his death, hardly need a special mention. With good reason, perhaps, Husserl did not dare burden Cairns, a more mild-spoken and willing disciple who already was deeply involved in various translations, with this additional workload. Thus, had Farber so set his mind at all cost, the rendition of Husserl’s magnum opus in English would have secured its chronological place in the mid-1940s, or somewhere before 1950 at the latest. It would have obviated the colossal effort of J.N. Findlay a quarter of a century later. Notwithstanding Husserl’s encouraging words of send-off that phenomenology is a “cooperative” task (symphilosophein), and that those cooperating colleagues should think sub specie aeternitatis, Farber’s strongwilled personality put his own purpose and his own agenda before anything else. His idea of phenomenological cooperation was gratifying to Husserl only during their initial phase of personal friendship, and Farber did not necessarily share Husserl’s “aspect of eternity” either. At no point did Farber try to hide the right of due criticism from his motive of studying Husserl. In the beginning, Husserl fascinated him with his finesse in logicomathematical analysis and descriptive rigor in the study of conscious experience. On the other hand, the overextension of this descriptive method,8 and the absence of any hint at socially and materially beneficial praxis in Husserl’s transcendental idealism were the main reasons for Farber’s growing disenchantment with his former teacher. Farber operated with a sense of urgency of an emancipated apostle, who now had to bring his own message to the world. It was called “naturalism,” in conscious opposition to Husserl’s critique of the “natural attitude.” But, of course, he had to first attend to his gentlemanly agreement with Husserl. When the Foundation of Phenomenology came out in 1943, Farber declared in its Preface9 that, in this volume, “the main content of his (Husserl’s) most famous work…is included, in essential fulfillment of the promise made to Husserl to render that work in English.” However, as the title made it obvious, the Foundation was by no stretch of imagination a translation of the Logical Investigations. Nor was the translation of Prolegomena, as suggested by Husserl, either wholly or in part, included in it. It was a compromise in the form of an extensive commentary to Husserl’s phenomenology from the early period of the Philosophy of Arithmetic up to the Ideas, with paraphrased passages from the Logical Investigations occupying the largest space in between. Within the selective scope in which Farber wished to bring Husserl’s seminal ideas to bear upon logical and epistemological studies, his 8

Cf. the text quoted in note 2 above. The Foundation of Phenomenology, 3rd ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1967), v. 9

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Foundation certainly filled a large gap that existed during the early period of Husserl reception in America. But a commentary, however exhaustive, cannot be a substitute for the complete original text. This is all the more so when Husserl’s work has been known for its “immensely rich content” (Findlay). For those who had more than a passing interest in Husserl and strove for a firsthand knowledge of him, this dependence on a commentary was at best a mixed blessing. It may have given them a shortcut access to the issues, but most likely the subtleties of Husserl’s handiwork, which consisted in a finely differentiating step-by-step analysis leading up to the heart of the matter, were blurred. It is likely that Farber had also knowingly imposed quarantine on what he often perceived to be an excessively otiose rigmarole that should have been trimmed. In his own mind, there was no alternative to a clearer paraphrasing of selected passages, eliminating much of the drearily technical jargon. In addition, the rejection of his proposed English translation of the Investigations by the Harvard University Press made it painfully clear to him that the philosophical climate in America wasn’t quite ripe. Actually it seemed to Farber that time would never be right for this sort of tireless reflection prying into the inner recess of subjectivity. Thus Farber’s decision not to risk the translation of the Investigations should be appraised with a much broader awareness of the historical background. Similarly, one needs to know more about the role of the personality and the philosophical persuasions of the man who was the party to the shaping of the Husserl-Farber understanding. One historically undeniable fact we have to be clear about is that the year 1970, the year of the birth of the Logical Investigations in English by the hands of Findlay, did not necessarily mark anything like an “official” start of Husserl studies in the United States. There was a delay, technically speaking, only in the publication of a translation, while the content of the original book itself has been circulating among interested scholars long since. The late delivery of the English version of the Investigations had, generally speaking, as little significance as the opposite case of the surprisingly early Russian translation in 1909. For phenomenology in the former Soviet Union had no follow-up development thereafter because man like Semen L. Frank (1877–1950), a Russian Jew and one of the few philosophers who knew Husserl’s work, had to go into exile in 1922 and was permanently expelled from his country in 1938. By contrast, phenomenological research in America had its own momentum independently of the availability of an English translation of the Investigations. Former students of Husserl and new immigrant scholars simply carried on based upon their pre-existing acquaintance with the Investigations in whatever forms. Under the overarching dynamics of the international phenomenological movement, which propelled one event after another onto the stage, the protracted debut of the English edition of the Investigations was nearly irrelevant. Among such events were the establishment of the International Phenomenological Society and the inauguration of the journal Philosophy

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and Phenomenological Research, all bearing the signature of Marvin Farber. By 1943, when Farber’s selective commentary was published, it only added a wrinkle of its own to the already quite discriminating reception of Husserl by America’s scholarly community. The other, more personal reason that led Farber to forgo a complete translation of the Investigations was a kind of domestic pendant to the larger, international development of phenomenology. In the process of coming to terms with the reality in America, Farber knew he had to make some adjustment to his relationship with phenomenology. He was certainly a major global player as far as the organizational activities were concerned. With the launching of the journal, a distinguished group of scholars, from both America and overseas, were invited to serve on the editorial and advisory board. The journal also served as a vital professional outlet for numerous refugee scholars from Europe. Then there was something almost nobody remembers today, namely, the humanitarian help10 Farber extended to friends and colleagues in the impoverished post-war Europe, in the name of the International Phenomenological Society. But once the dust has settled and Farber had to squarely face the everyday business, the editing of the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research soon became a hot issue between him and several editorial board members. 11 Herbert Spiegelberg, Helmut Kuhn and Gerhart Husserl were among the more vocal critics who expected the journal to continue the spirit and tradition of the old Jahrbuch that Edmund Husserl founded. Farber’s declaration of the editorial policy of the journal was initially identical with the stated aim of his new organization, the International Phenomenological Society:12 “to further the undertaking, development, and application of phenomenological inquiry as inaugurated by Edmund Husserl.” Then with the passage of time, as the practical necessity to accommodate to diverse interests of both contributing authors and readers got the upper hand, Farber appealed to the spirit of America’s foremost pragmatist philosopher: In actual practice, the publication (of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research) is characterized by the spirit of William James. A modus vivendi in the United States could hardly have been secured otherwise. The opposition to ‘schools’ in the traditional sense, and a spirit of readiness to offer ideas and findings for their further independent use 10

Soon after 1945, Farber organized CARE, a relief-package program for his colleagues in the war-stricken parts of Europe. Ludwig Landgrebe and Eugen Fink were among those to whom Farber remembered sending a package. 11 Cf. Helmut Wagner, “Marvin Farber’s Contribution to the Phenomenological Movement: An International Perspective,” in Philosophy and Science in Phenomenological Perspective, ed. Kah Kyung CHO (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 209–236. 12 Farber, Phenomenology and Existence, 18.

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by scholars in all fields and traditions, are indeed typical both of Husserl and James.… But it is the freer and easier manner of James in his practical relations with others—students and scholars—which is meant here, and which is more suitable for a publication than the stern and, in effect, isolationist policy of the Jahrbuch, which could not hope to get general hearing in our time.13 This is a very frank admission of conformism to America’s real situation which is only thinly clothed in philosophical argument. The reference to certain traits common to Husserl and James was nothing new, but it was usually centered on the similarity of their views about the nature of consciousness, including the aspect of what Husserl called “horizons.” By his own admission, Husserl was stimulated by the notion of “fringes” which William James used as essential features of the make-up of our consciousness. 14 Husserl on his part developed this notion to an allencompassing transcendental concept of “world-horizon” which functions, so to speak, on the back of everyday consciousness. But Farber bypassed such theoretical resemblances and tried to extract from them a “moral” support. He appealed to their spirit of openness to different views in order to justify his disengagement from the phenomenology-centered editorial policy. Farber knew very well that it was Husserl’s “absorbing plans for work” that kept him from listening to diverse opinions. But later he would realize that Husserl’s excessive preoccupation with his own work and the subjective, praxis-alienated character of his phenomenology are of one and the same origin. For all practical purposes, Farber felt no urgency to neatly separate “openness” from “tolerance.” A charitable interpretation would read “openness” in the sense of being receptive to all that is worthy of emulation. Lacking in such charity, one would brand “tolerance” easily as a compromising attitude, as “permissiveness” toward less than praiseworthy ideas and conducts. Farber concluded that Husserl’s phenomenology was too rigid and subjective, while he promoted his “critical naturalism” as open to all pluralistic views. The same conclusion was used to wean his journal gradually from the confining influence of phenomenology. On the other hand, the backstage story, if any, of the Foundation of Phenomenology should not have been as seedy as in the case of the journal. The journal had been exposed to the watchful eyes of Husserl loyalists for a long time. By contrast, the Foundation was not a co-authored or co-edited volume. Farber had no reason to be self-conscious about its being criticized for whatever ideological reasons. All he actually did was dutifully paraphrase Husserl’s main ideas. But what strikes readers today, again in hindsight, is the flatly 13

Ibid., 19. Cf. Herbert Spiegelberg, Phenomenological Movement, Third Revised & Enlarged Edition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 146, 159 (Notes No. 96). 14

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low-key matter-of-factness and reservation with which Farber annotated Husserl’s “most important work.” Farber never raised his voice to a pitch resonating Husserl’s enthusiasm for the “breakthrough.” True, a commentary must ideally keep to its own track and guard itself against any judgmental remark that is ajar with the verbal meaning of the text. Farber could stay in bounds much easier because of his conviction that phenomenology had no other function than to be purely descriptive. But all this was in such a stark contrast to the ebullient eulogy to Husserl with which Findlay opened his Translator’s Introduction to the Investigations. Findlay’s exuberance was almost deafening, but it was never hollow. He stated his motives for devoting himself to the task of complete English translation in these words: It is because I have found the writings of Husserl so superlatively valuable, and so deeply stimulating even when I rejected their detail, and because I so deeply regretted his inadequate accessibility in English.… It is important not because it can now count as a valuable contribution to the logical syntax of our language, but because it uses its investigations of logic to illuminate much more fundamental topics: the nature of meaning, the ontology which meaningful discourse presupposes, and, infinitely most important, the nature of those conscious acts in virtue of which alone there is a world for us and any fellows with whom we can communicate.15 Faced with this inspired and inspiring lavish praise, we are again reminded of the proverb that a work can have its own life after leaving its author. It is a course with twists and turns that the Logical Investigations has taken. The promise of an English translation made to Husserl by a young American scholar in 1936 was to have been only partially fulfilled in 1943. With this the matter has come, apparently, to a closure, as the public opinion in America also seemed to put the seal of approval on the Foundation of Phenomenology. But there was to be a second lease of life as far as this particular instance of Husserl’s legacy in the English-speaking world was concerned. Thirty four years later, an elderly Englishman, unbeknownst to Husserl, fully made the old promise good. Findlay’s Introduction hits the nail on the head as regards the question of the essence of Husserl’s methodological “breakthrough.” Among the “fundamental topics” Husserl illuminated in the Investigations—it should be underscored—was “the nature of those conscious acts in virtue of which alone there is a world for us and any fellows with whom we can communicate.” In Husserl’s language, it is the meaning-constituting acts of consciousness which let an object, or, for that matter, ultimately the “world” itself, emerge before us. Object correlated to intentional act is not a physical 15

J.N.Findlay, translator’s introduction to LI, 2 ff.

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reality or an aspect of it, but has the ontologically distinct status of meaning, of ideality. The strategic point where the genesis of meaning takes place is neither subject, nor object, but their interface. The analysis conducted at the interface, so called “intentional analysis,” is a peculiar double-pronged procedure that looks at both subject and object at the same time. But as Husserl knew it, it had its earlier models, in ancient Greece and in modern Europe. Since Husserl was not a thinker who would lay out a blueprint of his thought in advance, we did not get a clear description of the nature of his new methodological concept or of any other similarly important questions on the spot. Clear definitions of his numerous technical terms were rarely provided beforehand. They came to surface often modified, after a slowmaturing, actual work processes. Thus nearly thirty-five years have passed before Husserl could retrospectively enlighten us about the significance of the method that lay at the heart of his Logical Investigations. In a chapter of his Crisis treatise (§48)16 that begins with the headline, “Anything that is— whatever its meaning and whatever region it belongs—is an index of a subjective system of correlation,” Husserl wrote: The correlation between world (the world of which we always speak) and its subjective manners of givenness never evoked philosophical wonder (that is, prior to the first breakthrough of “transcendental phenomenology” in the Logical Investigations), in spite of the fact that it had made itself felt even in pre-Socratic philosophy and among the Sophists—though here only as a motive for skeptical argumentation. This correlation never aroused a philosophical interest in its own which could have made it the object of appropriate scientific attitude.… But as soon as we begin to examine carefully the how of the appearance of a thing in its actual and possible alteration and to pay consistent attention to the correlation (my emphasis) it involves between appearance and that which appears as such, …we are forced to recognize a fixed typology with ever widening ramifications.… Everything thus stands in correlation with its own manners of givenness. Correlation is the key word on which Husserl’s “transcendental phenomenological” method hinges. It is now clear that the “breakthrough” so frequently mentioned by him has to do with the philosophical awakening to the methodological significance of “how the world is given” rather than what the world is. Of course, when Husserl says that something is given, he presupposes the primacy of consciousness to which or for which anything can be given at all. It is the cardinal sense of intentionality that anything and everything has to be present over against (présence à) consciousness in order to be meaningfully talked about. Such consciousness is never an empty 16

Husserl, Crisis, 165 f. Husserl began his work on Crisis around 1934.

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receptacle in which the datum is passively deposited. Even in what appears to be a passive state of consciousness, Husserl’s phenomenological analysis discerns various act phases of intentionality in terms of perceiving, remembering, anticipating, imagining, hoping, wishing, willing, judging, etc. A mail box does not present itself as a perceived object unless there is the perceiving act of consciousness, just as the same mail box cannot present itself to the consciousness as a remembered object unless in correlation to the act of remembering. The difference between the two meanings of the same object is predicated upon the two different act phases of the consciousness. This is the reason why Husserl could say pointedly that “change in the meanings is really change in the act of meaning.”17 Of the identical object Napoleon, to give another example, I can say he is “the victor of Jena,” and in the same breath state that he is also “the vanquished at Waterloo.” In this case, the two judgments leave the “thing” (object) unaffected, only the “state of affairs” of the thing are differentiated. It illustrates categorial distinctions that go beyond the limits of language, and defies the rules of the conventional ontology. Conventional ontologies construe “being” in a uniformly objective sense, as a thing among things lying “out there,” independently of our conscious awareness of them. Dealing with such uniformly quantified entities tends to discourage unnecessary categorial distinctions. What Husserl did was in fact a “multiplication of entities” or splitting a hair, if someone is tempted to name it so. But in spite of the counsel of conventional wisdom against it, he did this, because we are rewarded by a much richer manifestation of phenomena. But to say that such enrichment could occur “in virtue of the intentional act,” is not the same as making a causal statement. It is simply to confirm the correlation that exists between the shift in the act of judging on the one hand and the two different states of affairs discernable among the object, on the other. Characteristic of conventional ontologies is that they are invariably governed by the rule of “economy” of thinking. Husserl’s approach, as Spiegelberg put it, 18 was a “conscious challenge to the reductionism of Occam’s razor.” It is not so much an “omnivorous desire for variety,” as the “reverence for phenomena” that motivated Husserl’s almost infinitesimal analysis of conscious experience. In a similar vein, J. N. Findlay compared the richness of categorial distinctions exhibited in the Logical Investigations to that found only in Aristotle or, among the moderns, Alexis Meinong. “In Husserl,” Findlay said, “there is “none of the misplaced economy” which may be “suitable in natural science,” but which, if carried over to the realm of philosophy, would encourage one “to massacre some valuable concepts, or to warp the expression of some well-understood principles, in order to 17

LI, I, 322. H. Spiegelberg, Phenomenological Movement, 3rd, enlarged ed. (The Hague 1982), 715. 18

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satisfy the exigencies of a cheese-paring behest not to multiply entities.”19 However, Husserl’s contribution to the logical syntax of language was rather an incidental byproduct of a much larger concern. The beginning of the descriptive analysis credited with such an enrichment of experience goes back to the fundamental ontological question of meaning. During the period he was engrossed in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl shared the uncritical assumption of psychologism that the ground of the world was pre-given. Soon the Prolegomena to Pure Logic marked a decisive turn toward grounding all experience on the new principle of transcendental subjectivism. In its purely meaning-conferring function, transcendental subjectivity is said to be independent of, or prior to, the world. This means that transcendental subjectivity has as its correlate no longer the “mundane” world, which Husserl suspended by “transcendental reduction,” but the realm of pure idealities. This “artificial” realm is carved out, as it were, at the “interface” of subject and object, and its “residents” are judgments consisting of unities of ideal meanings. “Pure logic” deals exclusively with the judgments of this sort. For instance, the number 7 is such an ideality, totally independent of whether it “exists” in somebody’s mind (representation) or not. But while the proposition 5 + 2 = 7 is true as a judgment within the realm of pure ideality, the big question Husserl had to ask was about how this meaning emerges, i.e., how this meaning relates itself to objects. In other words, Husserl was now asking the question of the mode of givenness of the ontological status of ideality itself. Husserl developed this unique method of observing the correlated aspects of act and the act object, or the “experiencing consciousness” and the “experienced content,” systematically in the fifth investigation of the Logical Investigations. Under the title “intentional analysis,” it opened a vast field of phenomenological inquiry, clarifying the intricate nature of meaning and the structure of intentional acts without metaphysical or epistemological presuppositions. Of course meanings in their ordinary occurrence are not themselves objects or things meant. They only help us to mean objects in order to decide as what or in what capacity we mean them. But this approach enables us to make another important distinction, one that obtains between the meaning merely intended and the meaning fully carried out. When I say “it rains,” I may be expressing only an “empty” intention which remains “unfulfilled” until I actually look out and perceive raindrops coming down. It is through my direct intuition, the basic model of which is visual perception (Anschauung) that the “intended” or “anticipated” meaning of the expression is fully carried out. Besides striving for outward expression and thus seeking the fulfillment of meaning through perceptual experience, there is yet another distinctive feature of intentionality which Husserl exhibited as the referring function. “Each expression not merely says something, but says it of something: it not 19

LI, I, translator’s introduction, 5.

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only has a meaning, but refers to certain objects.”20 Hitherto, most theories of meaning were imbued with behavioristic categories and began with a prejudice against the mental or inner sphere of consciousness. They discredited the mental and closed off the inner domain for not meeting the criteria of public verifiability. Hence all talk about intentional acts and their unity in a central, meaning-conferring subjectivity was an anathema to them. However, failure to look at both sides of intentional correlation, all too common among philosophical positions which Husserl labeled “naturalism,” can result in many different forms of “abridgement” of reality. Accepting the objectivity only in its reified state, i.e., without being able to trace its origin to the meaning-constituting performance (Leistung) of consciousness, is one most common form of such abridgement. Substituting “sophistry of models” for concrete phenomenological exhibition, as practiced in certain language game theories, is another. Philosophy of language also talks about “referring,” but only as a logical feature in sentences with such verbs as “believe,” “think” or “hope.” This linguistically modified version of intentionality may have avoided the charges of mentalism, but it has also obscured the object-referring functions by reducing the intentional act to the linguistic act. For Husserl, of course, all linguistic acts must be treated as a subset of intentional acts, and not the other way around. Hence a more substantially motivated defense of intentionality may be required to resolve the tensions that have surfaced in the wake of the contact between phenomenology and linguistic philosophy. For the time being, though, the question remains whether those who disavow the mental are not actually forfeiting the more important thing they are supposed to be guarding, namely, the language as a meaningful, living experience. Language in its meaningful use is more than a correct naming and communicating within the rule-bound circuit of language game. A computer or word machine can perform such functions just as well as a human speaker. Beyond this verbally precise, but in essence mechanical performance, there has to be the process of human understanding—of the situation that is spread over time and space. This spatio-temporal horizon is the world in which we live, and for which Husserl introduced the uniquely resonant term “life-world.” The mental acts are precisely the link “in virtue of which alone our words point beyond themselves to things in the world.” Intentional correlation is neither a causal connection between thought and object, nor a subset of the traditional category of “relation,” as contradistinguished from the category of “substance.” Husserl’s phenomenology was viewed in the beginning by some as a “third” approach, as an attempt to steer a middle course to avoid the insoluble standoff between idealism and realism, or subjectivism and objectivism. His theory of act-object correlation may have seemed especially to fit into this non-committal, neutral standpoint. The truth of the matter, though, is that Husserl’s is an admittedly most 20

LI, I, 287.

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radical form of “subjectivism.” The transcendental subjectivity is a mode of thinking which hovers watchfully over both the subject and object and registers the exchange between the two poles. It is a higher court, to which the subject in our ordinary sense, the “mundane” subjectivity, is subordinated. To put it paradoxically, it is the function of transcendental subjectivity to go against itself, insofar as the mundane subjectivity, which is only its “lower gear mode,” is trapped in false subjectivations. These are of psychologistic origin, but Husserl would also frequently use the epithet “natural” or “naturalistic.” The radicalism in this context means therefore the thoroughness in the methodical freeing of the system of correlation from such naturalistic misconceptions. There is a precious vignette, a gem of a story told by Konrad Lorenz21 which illustrates the correlative pattern of thinking in admirable simplicity. One day, he tells us, he hugged his grandchild and felt the child’s cheek unusually hot. Momentarily the thought of fever crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed it. For it could not be that the child was sick, because he knew at the same time that he was coming from the wintry garden outside and had very cold hands. “Therefore my perception of temperature was skewed.” Lorenz called this story “my old paradigm of an objectivation process,” which has two intimately close and inseparable components. One is the “process of knowing” and the other is the “object to be known.” This is said simply enough, but to have something as an object for me is no guarantee that I can know it objectively. It is only when I reflect upon myself and become aware of the positively or negatively impinging factor of my subjective condition on the object that I can correctly “objectify” what is given outside of myself. Such is the lesson the scientist Lorenz could give us phenomenologists, of all things, about the essence of correlative thinking. For good measure, he added a moralizing thought: “to understand subjective phenomena and their own law-like dynamics is not only indispensable in our effort to grasp the external world as objectively as possible. It is also essential for the understanding of human being as a knowing subject.” In spite of often effective illustrations like this, the significance of subjectivity in general and of the correlational thinking in particular has been a notoriously unappreciated part of Husserl’s message. Little wonder that Husserl sought to prop up a little family tree to hint at the affinity of his views with those of some well-known historical figures. Interestingly, he named Socrates and Sophists among them, though it is questionable whether Husserl could ever have successfully mustered the support from the rank of ancient philosophers. Of course idealisms of all varieties, including the Berkeleyan dogmatic idealism, always insisted on the prerogative of subjective principles. Even British Empiricism, to which Husserl frequently referred as having anticipated the phenomenological insight, can be credited 21

88 f.

Konrad Lorenz, Der Abbau des Menschlichen (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1983),

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with the discovery of the correlational structure of our experience. For the empiricist theory of knowledge since Locke recognized perception as the sole source of knowledge, or sole access to reality. This means, translated into Husserl’s language, none other than the intentional correlation obtaining between subject and object. But after the roll call, Husserl would invariably dismiss all of those on the list for having fallen short of a true methodological breakthrough. What is it then that makes Husserl’s restatement of basically the same discovery so radically different? Reviewing the widely misunderstood sense of his subjective principle, Husserl points out that it is “naïve to stop at the subject-object correlation conceived in the anthropological, mundane manner and to misinterpret what was shown phenomenologically in my first writings as belonging to this correlation.”22 He further backtracks to the early stages of his research to clarify how his “subjective” principle had encountered misunderstanding. At the time when the Logical Investigations was in the making, the most widespread form of “naturalism” Husserl had to confront was “psychologism”. It was a theory subscribed to by philosophers such as Mill, Lange and Sigwart who took psychology as the foundational science upon which entire fields of philosophy—logic, ethics, esthetics and epistemology—depended. Their belief that all logical concepts and propositions are at bottom psychological constructs was further buttressed by the laboratory psychology of Wilhelm Wundt. According to Wundt, if there is something that can be called laws that govern our thought, such laws can only be established empirically through observation, experiment and induction. When we judge, for instance, 3 + 2 = 5, we conceive of objects so judged as being merely objects of presentation, in which they are all alike, and we also conceive of them as being held together in the mind of someone, although it does not matter in whose. Both in substance and name, Husserl’s Prolegomena to Pure Logic was a refutation of this brand of psychologism that traces the origin of concepts and logical laws to empirical psychology. Thus when the Logical Investigations first reached the public, it was received not so much on the strength of Husserl’s own presentation of “pure logic” as on the effectiveness of his refutation of what stood opposite to such logic, namely, psychologism. In other words, his successful refutation of the prevailing psychologism had, for some time, the effect of overshadowing Husserl’s own, more important messages. Besides causing difficulty for the proper understanding of his message on the new method, it gave the erroneous impression that Husserl was opposed to the science of psychology as a whole. But not to be forgotten, in the first place, was the fact of Husserl’s own commitment to psychologism during the period of Philosophy of Arithmetic. What troubled him most at that time was the ontological status of number. He approached this question initially from a psychological point of view, in 22

Crisis, §72, 262.

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the belief that number has its origin in our real psychic life. In fact, such reference to psychic acts was considered to be indispensable during Husserl’s time. But stimulated by Frege’s criticism, Husserl opened his eyes to recognize the ideality of number whose meaning is true independently of psychic connections. He recalls that “the first breakthrough of this universal a priori of correlation between experienced object and manners of givenness” occurred around 1898 while he was working on his Logical Investigations. His forceful polemic in Prolegomena against the psychologistic misconceptions regarding the true nature of ideal entities in logic and mathematics may tell something of his eagerness to redress his own earlier shortsightedness. In the second place, however, Husserl’s basic philosophical instinct prevented him from renouncing psychologism altogether. Before long he made the unique choice of keeping the “dual mode” of description, i.e., doubling in psychological and logical analysis. This meant that even an ideal entity like number still had to be questioned and justified with regard to its mode of “givenness.” What emerged in response to this question was none other than the theory of intentional act. Just as perception involves the two sides of being the “perceived object” and the “perceiving act,” so also is number a “collected unit” (collectivium) on the one hand, and the act of collecting (collection) on the other. Without the latter, number would be an abstraction, with its mode of givenness remaining as vague as the derivation of Plato’s Ideas. Thus Husserl continued to maintain the closest possible linkage to the science of psychology, once it has been cleansed of its “naturalistic” prejudices. Transcendental phenomenology and transcendental psychology were no longer two separate disciplines. The anthropological, mundane variety of correlation, Husserl warned, should not be confused with the transcendental-phenomenological sort. But why was this warning necessary? Is it not true that people are not likely to suffer any such confusion simply because they know only one type of correlation, namely, what Husserl just labeled as anthropological and mundane? Indeed, as Husserl saw it, this was the extent to which people were lulled into denying the existence of the problem. Surely Husserl’s warning was meant also for advanced students and fellow phenomenologists alike, some of whom have followed him very closely, though not beyond the “paradox.” Husserl had to realize that this denial mode was spread not only among the relative newcomers to phenomenology. Not only philosophers of different schools, but many fellow phenomenologists have parted company with him on the issue of his obsessive radicalization of the method of reduction. Despite the claim for rigorous scientific grounding of all knowledge, there is what we may call Husserl’s own unexplained paradox. It may be the old question about the beginning of philosophy, which, however, Husserl did not precisely ground in philosophy. It was more like a “leap” into philosophy from some other origin. And yet he was known to disavow metaphysics, and swear to the life world as the “universal ground” for the

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genesis of all real and possible meanings. We direct the following question to Husserl:23 If the life-world, the real world in which both philosophers and non philosophers have their basis of living, is also the only basis out of which not merely the higher order science, but the highest wisdom of philosophy emerges, how is it that Husserl was motivated to perform epoche, and put this world out of commission, so as to newly ground its meaning? Where is the origin of his freedom to sever himself from this all-inclusive source of evidence? Where is the origin of insight for another, holier and healthier world, as distinct from this crisis-ridden, mundane world? Could he have possibly drawn the lesson from a source other than this one precious planet? When most other philosophers could not perform this leap into Reason, he had the faith to risk this leap. For, after all, Reason was the only thing in which he believed. Husserl was convinced that the powerful spell of natural attitude that takes everything as self-evident had to be broken in order to see the paradox of the subject-object correlation under a new light. The paradox, to quote this time in Husserl’s own words, consists in the fact “that man (or mankind in his communal life) is subjectivity for the world and at the same time is supposed to be in it in an objective and worldly manner.”24 The word “for the world” means, we should know this by now, standing over against it in the mode of “disengagement” from it, thus signaling we are actually going against it, not accepting it at its face value. He was also convinced that this was not a real paradox, but could be resolved by shifting our stance, like changing the gear in our driving. In sum, the single most difficult issue on which even some stalwart supporters of Husserl have failed him was his quest of the absolute origin in philosophy through recourse to transcendental reduction. Mercifully, the Logical Investigations did not have yet to pin anybody down to this hot spot. Little wonder that people, especially the more analytically minded, felt more comfortable with the earlier Husserl.

23

The question is our own formulation. Werner Marx raised a similar question, but it was not in the specific context of the problem of correlation as we developed it here. See W. Marx, “Vernunft und Lebenswet,” in Hermeneutik und Dialektik, ed. R. Bubner, K. Kramer, R. Wiehl (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1970), 224 ff. 24 Crisis, 262, my emphasis.

2 ______________________________ Youding SHEN: The First Phenomenologist in China JIN Xiping Peking University, PR China

Youding SHEN (沈有鼎) (1908–1989) was a well-known philosopher in modern China and an expert in mathematical logic. He studied philosophy in Tsinghua University and then at Harvard University in the USA. From 1931 to 1934 he visited and conducted research in Freiburg and Heidelberg in Germany. Never in his whole life did Shen claim to be a phenomenologist. Instead, he is now widely recognized as an important philosopher in the spirit of analytic philosophy. His article “Demarcation of Truth”, together with some classical articles in the field of analytical philosophy, has been reprinted in the book Analytic Philosophy: Retrospection and Reflection, which was recently published in China.1 It is not incorrect to say that Shen is not regarded as phenomenologist. He did not attempt to approach the inner structure of consciousness descriptively. He did not ask such questions as “is thinking intuitive or not? If yes, how does thinking work intuitively? And what is the relationship between intuitive thinking and intuitive (sensitive) perception?” He did not ask questions about the ontological basis of the unity of intentional acts of consciousness and intentional objects and sensitive objects of the outer world. Ninety per cent of his work is about mathematical logic and the interpretation of traditional Chinese works of logic. When he used the Husserlian model of epistemology in his research he rarely mentioned Husserl’s name. What he wanted to do was to take the useful results of Husserl’s logical investigations and clarify ideas of logical grammar in a believable or trustful manner. But it is nevertheless incorrect to completely ignore the influence of Husserl’s logical investigations on Shen’s theory of logical grammar, especially of the linguistic expressions. The first introduction of Husserlian phenomenology into China was Rengeng YANG

1

陳波 (Bo CHEN), ed., 《分析哲學——回顧與反省》(Analytic Philosophy: Retrospection and Reflection) (Chengdu: Sichuan Education Publishing House, 2001), 311–322.

21

K.-Y. Lau and J.J. Drummond (eds.), Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives, 21–32. © 2007 Springer.

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(楊人梗)’s article of 1929.2 But in China, Shen was the first to use the results of Husserl’s Logical Investigations in his own logical investigations. The aim of this paper is to show the influence of Husserl’s works, in particular his Logical Investigations, on Shen’s analysis of linguistic expressions. First, I make some brief remarks on the historical influence of Husserl on Shen. Second, I want to look into his first independent investigation of linguistic expressions before he studied Husserl’s works, in order to show how far he got into how to resolve the problem, and what prevented him from reaching the level at which Husserl already had arrived in Logical Investigations. Finally, I will briefly examine Shen’s mature views on linguistic expressions after he had indeed studied Husserl’s work on logic.

I The fact that Shen had intensively studied Husserl’s works on logic, has, quite unfortunately, been generally ignored in China. The only exception may be the American mathematical logician, Hao WANG (王浩), who was a former student and friend of Shen. There is still no document to indicate which book(s) of Husserl Shen had really studied. But from the content of Shen’s own work it seems evident that he must have studied Logical Investigations in some detail, and probably Husserl’s later works on logic as well. In any case, it is very clear that Shen’s positions on the philosophy of logic explicitly manifested the heavy influence of Husserl. But, from the very beginning, the leading tendency running through his research was logical realism, although he did not want to admit this in the last phase of his life. It is not clear whether Shen had studied Husserl’s logical work directly under the guidance of Husserl himself. Insofar as Shen’s relationship with Husserl is concerned, the only thing we know from the documents is that he did really visit Husserl during his stay in Freiburg. The nature of the relationship is hard to spell out, but it is at least true that Shen had interviewed Husserl. For example, in his letter to Hao WANG, dated 11 August 1987, Shen wrote about Husserl’s remarks on the literature of phenomenology at that time: “As I was in Germany, Husserl told me that only his own works were well qualified to count as phenomenology; other studies on so-called phenomenology are simply useless. But on one point,” continued Shen, “Husserl was correct: we should tell the ‘beginner’ that he must read Husserl’s own work first and ignore all other works of phenomenology.”3 2

楊 人 梗 (Rengeng YANG),〈現 象 學 概 論 〉(“Introduction to Phenomenology”), 《民鐸》 (The People’s Alarm Bell) Vol. 10, No. 1 (1929); reprinted in 《中國現代哲學史資料彙編續集（第二册）》(Collection of sources of modern Chinese philosophy, Vol. II), (Shenyang: Department of Philosophy at Liaoning University, 1984), 133–137. 3

沈有鼎 (Youding SHEN), 《沈有鼎文集》 (Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers) (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1992), 539.

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After he returned to China in 1934, Shen became a professor of philosophy at Tsinghua University, and held seminars on Husserl and Wittgenstein, in addition to David Hilbert-Bernays’ The Foundations of Mathematics (Grundlagen der Mathematik). However, we do not exactly know which books of Husserl were studied in these seminars.4 The first result of Shen’s research was “On Expression”, which was originally written in English during his stay in the USA in 1931, and was published in Chinese in the Chinese journal Philosophical Review (哲學評論) in 1935, after he returned to China.5 In the following years, several articles on the same topic appeared: “On the Demarcation of Truth” (〈真理的分野〉， 1940), “On Language, Thought, and Meaning” (〈語言、思想與意義——意指 分析的第一章〉，1943), and “On the Classification of Meaning” (〈意義的分 類——意指分析的第二章〉，1944).6 From these articles we can see that as a logician and mathematician, Shen had almost the same philosophical concerns and interests as did Husserl. As far as I know, Youding Shen was the first person in China to try to use Husserl’s standpoint on logic to understand and interpret Russell’s logical theory and Wittgenstein’s critical reflections on natural and artificial language, and to determine the very nature of linguistic expressions on the basis of the cognitive aspect of their use. He was obviously unsatisfied with both Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s treatment of linguistic expressions. For example, he gave little credence to the Wittgensteinian dogma that a name is not a complete expression, and thus that “it is impossible for words to occur in two different ways, alone and in a proposition”.7 Neither did he think that Russell was correct in viewing a proof as a series of assertions having certain properties. Furthermore, Shen asked: “What does this serial character consist of?”8 Is it temporal or not? This critical examination of Wittgenstein’s and Russell’s theory of linguistic expressions paved the way for Shen’s own studies of linguistic expressions. The field that Shen studied heavily overlapped the field that Husserl himself had already trodden through. However, before arriving in Freiburg Shen did not know the results Husserl had reached in Logical Investigations. In 1935, when the article “On Expression” was published, he stated in the remarks accompanying the article, “This article was written in 1931, before I 4

Ibid., 511. In his preface to the publication of Shen’s correspondences with him, Hao WANG wrote, “In 1942 I already attended two seminars by Mr Youding SHEN: one was about Wittgenstein, the other about Husserl.” 5 Youding SHEN, “On Expression,” Philosophical Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1935). 6 All are reprinted in Youding’s Collected Papers, 1–19, 111–126, 150–175. 7 L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §2.0122, quoted by Youding SHEN in Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 10. Whether his interpretation of Wittgenstein is the correct understanding is doubtful, because the terms “name” and “object” in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus have special meanings differing from those of everyday use. 8 SHEN, Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 13.

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became acquainted with Husserl’s works on logic. It represents my first attempt at a formal and structural understanding of the nature of mathematical symbolism, and language in general. Although I found afterwards that some of my results had been anticipated by Husserl, I do not deem it superfluous to now have my article printed as it was written.”9

II In 1940 he retrospectively talked about the two main goals he sought to realize in his first independent attempt, as shown in “On Expression.” In the first place, purely logical expressions, concepts, and propositions, Shen insisted, assert nothing about reality; nor do they make any presuppositions about reality. In the second place, in the field of non-logical concepts and propositions, the distinction between metaphysical, scientific, and historical concepts lies in whether or not they are “purely theoretical.”10 Youding SHEN did not follow the Russellian approach to language analysis then popular in China11 of first analyzing a sentence in terms of subject and predicate (or proper name, adjective, and verb), and then trying to reduce the subject and predicate into rigorous logical terms. Rather, like Husserl, he regarded all language phenomena as expressions, and tried to classify them into several types in the light of phenomenal12 characters, using his own terms such as “occurrence,” “genuine” and “apparent” occurrence, “ligament” and “insulable,” “effectual” and “ineffectual,” and “communicative” and “self-expressive” expressions. At first he distinguished expressions from marks (signs), holding that an expression has a general shape and a meaning, and that an expression does give a mark (a sign) a meaning. Here, the act of consciousness is outside his field of view. He did not, as Husserl had done in Logical Investigations, distinguish the indicating function of a mark from the signifying function (Bedeuten) of an expression. With the distinction between the apparent and genuine occurrences of an expression, it seems that Shen was able to notice the difference between the physico-psychic side of a significant expression and its mental side. He illustrated this point with the following example: in practicing Chinese calligraphy with a brush, one writes many expressions without actually “using” them. “The marks written are thus only apparent occurrences of the expressions concerned.”13

9

Ibid., 15. Ibid., 111. 11 In 1920, Bertrand Russell spent one year teaching philosophy in Chinese universities. Since then, his method of logical analysis has had a huge influence on Chinese philosophical circles. 12 Here it can also be called “phenomenological” in the sense in which this term had been used in thermodynamics. 13 SHEN, Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 9. 10

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Next, Shen went on to divide the expressions into ligament (he later used the term “partial”, “fragmental”, or “incomplete”) and insulable (in his later terminology, “independent” or “complete”) expressions. He then divided the insulable expressions into communicative and self-expressive ones. According to Shen, communicative expressions are those that are actually used in speech. In talking about self-expressive expressions, Youding SHEN intended to articulate something like the ideal unity of the contents of expression, but he lacked proper concepts at the time to express this idea. He simply had to explain his still vague idea in the following way: “A real judgment is self-expressive,” “It is self-expressive if it states a problem to be thought about and investigated, as a soliloquial precursor to judgment,” and “Self-expressive expressions have to do with discovery and originality.”14 But we must wonder what exactly he meant by “to do with discovery and originality,” and “as a soliloquial precursor to judgment”. It seems that he was saying that the contents of discovery and originality are independent of the speaking acts of doers. That is to say, self-expressive expressions, in his view, seem to signify contents that are objective or ideal. However, unlike Husserl, he did not substantively distinguish between expressions that assume the ideality of a statement and those that are its realization. In this article his thought was still fluctuating between the function of expressions of intimating (Kundgeben) and their function of signifying (Bedeuten). On the other hand, he wrote that “a name is self-expressive or communicative according as it expresses a (soliloquial) contemplation or gives a presentation,” “communicative expressions have to do with education and propagation; self-expressive expressions have to do with discovery and originality,” and “an imperative expression is communicative if it expresses a command; it is self-expressive if it expresses a determination of resolution on the part of doer.” In the article just mentioned, he drew the purpose into his consideration of expressions. He said, the purposes for “which the expression can be used through an insulated occurrence of it” completely determine the meaning of an insulable expression. He further noticed that, although the meaning of an insulable expression is determined by the purpose, it is not to be identified with the purpose itself. The reason for this is that purpose is psychic, at best metaphysical, but still extra-logical, while meaning is purely logical. An effectual occurrence of a complete expression embodies and fulfils the purpose. Here, it seems to me that he had touched upon the distinction between the function of intimating and signifying. Shen also tried to distinguish the meaning of an expression from a proposition. He thought that proposition is the identity in the meaning of expressions. In order to insist on the ideality, or ideal unity with Husserl’s term, of the meaning, he went on to point out that complete meaning does not always 14

Ibid., 8–9

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really have to have some expression, since such expression may remain a mere possibility. “For example, it is conceivable that a certain transfinite number will never have expressions invented for the sake of mentioning them (singly), although there is the possibility that some such expressions will be invented. Moreover, it is not even necessary that an expression (that has been invented) should have any actual occurrence at all.”15 But here, he could not articulate his idea clearly. After studying Husserl’s work on logic, he made three corrections of the article in the form of appended remarks: 1) The characterization of an expression as a general shape involves a confusion between expression and orthographic form. 2) This article confounds an actualization of an expression with an individualization (occurrence) of it (e.g., the multiple occurrences of an expression in one book and the same occurrences in different copies of the same book). 3) The view, held by some logicians, that a proof is itself one complex assertion requires special refutation. In the following ten years Shen worked on the topic so as to improve on his original views on expressions. In this regard, two important articles are “On the Demarcation of Truth” (1940) and “On Language, Thought, and Meaning” (1943), both of which were written under the influence of Husserl’s work on logic. However, the first article is much more analytically than phenomenologically oriented, and this is probably why it was reprinted in Analytic Philosophy: Retrospection and Reflection. Before discussing the second article, I first need to say something about the first article.

III In order to defend philosophically his idea that purely logical concepts and propositions are independent of reality, in “On the Demarcation of Truth” Shen tried to divide concepts and propositions into eight classes. This classification is illustrated in the following table, which is found at the end of his article. In what follows I will try to add some remarks on Shen’s classification table according his own interpretation of the classification.

15

Ibid., 7.

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This classification is quite problematic, and here I shall not discuss all of the problems involved in any detail. It is enough for my purpose to point out his main ideas in such a classification. In class I, it is clear that purely logical concepts and propositions assert nothing about reality, because they are formal and tautological, and thus lack content. In class II, categorical concepts are all the pure concepts save purely logical ones. They do not contain any empirical content, and thus they are a priori concepts. Categorical propositions are propositions such as “the tele of all things are Good”.16 However, Shen was not very clear about what philosophical or metaphysical concepts and propositions are. He simply claimed that concepts and propositions concerning the problem of universality are, in general, philosophical.17 He treated classes I – VI as philosophical. Furthermore, he emphasized that there is a borderline between the philosophical and the scientific, which should not be overstepped.

16

Ibid., 122.Youding SHEN called this proposition analytic, but I doubt such a

claim.

17

Ibid., 123.

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In demonstrating the soundness of his classification, Shen simply identified truth with true propositions.18 He divided truth into two types: truth in a narrow sense and truth in a broad sense. According to Shen, only those propositions that are necessarily and universally valid are true in the narrow sense.19 But all true propositions, including propositions about facts, for example, “there is a cat on the earth,” are truths in a broad sense. In this article, Shen’s use of technical terms was much clearer than before. He divided such terms into groups. The first group includes the terms “word” (or “noun”), “presentation,”20 “concept,” and “object.” The second group includes “sentence, “judgment,” “proposition,” and “truth.” In Shen’s view, the content or meaning of a presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen) is a concept, and the content or meaning of a judgment is a proposition. Presentations and judgments, when achieved respectively by means of words and sentences, are concrete and individual occurrences. Both concepts and propositions are general, (in Husserl’s word, ideal). In order to emphasize the independence of concepts, he introduced the Aristotelian term “essence” into his theory. In his view, there are two kinds of concepts: historical and general. The content of a general concept is the essence. In the case of a historical concept, there are some individual elements that can only be the indirect content of presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen), but can never directly be the content of presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen). “Confucius”, for example, is a historical concept, while “horse” is a general concept. “Not only IS there an essence of horse, but there must necessarily be an essence of horse.”21 In my opinion, insofar as logical and mathematical concepts and propositions are concerned, the claim that they are necessary and general truths seems plausible if issues concerning paradoxes in the elementary study of mathematic logic are ignored. But for general concepts and propositions in natural science, the claim does not seem to me to be true. Such a metaphysical claim is neither evident nor demonstrated here in his article. Shen’s leading concern was with concepts and propositions. Concepts and propositions are neither identified with presentations (“begrifflliches Vorstellen”) and judgments, nor with objects and states of affairs.22 In this respect, Shen said:

18

Ibid., 125. Of course, Martin Heidegger would not agree with him! His example for that truth is universal gravitation. I wonder if this is a correct example. The propositions in mathematics would be more suitable examples of such a truth. 20 Here, he used the German word “begrifflliches Vorstellen” in order to make clear the sense of the corresponding Chinese word. 21 SHEN, Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 113. 22 Shen had used the term “truth”, but this usage of truth is much more similar to the Heideggerian usage of truth than the Husserlian. 19

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The word ‘redness’ presents (or signifies, in my view) the redness, and it indicates the presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen) of which the object is redness, but its meaning is neither redness nor the presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen) of redness, but the general content of such a presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen) of redness, namely, the concept of ‘redness.’23 Here, redness has three meanings: the redness that the word presents, redness in the sense of the “presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen) of redness”, and redness as such or redness as a concept against the redness of an object (the objective state of affairs). Evidently, he here used the distinction Husserl makes in the first of the Logical Investigations between the intending act of consciousness and intended content of consciousness. However, by reflecting on the differences between thinking and content, he had failed to notice the Husserlian distinction between the intending act of consciousness, the intended content of consciousness, and its intuitive fulfillment. Therefore, he had difficulty in making clear the differences among redness as the content of presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen), redness as object of presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen), and the general content of presentation (begriffliches Vorstellen). Nonetheless, such phenomenological24 terms used by Husserl were introduced three years later in the article “On Language, Thought, and Meaning” (1943).

IV Eight years after his first attempt and with the help of the Husserlian theory of expressions, Shen noticed that an error had occurred in his early work: his characterization of an expression as a general shape involved a confusion between expression and orthographic form. Now, when he attempted to think anew about the structure of linguistic expression, the first thing he had to do was to clarify that difference between expression and orthographic form. He introduced the new terms “expression” (辭) and “body of expression” (辭身), by which he meant the psycho-physical support of an expression. In explaining, Shen, with a totally Husserlian formulation, said: Whenever we hear someone utter a word or a sentence, we are hearing a series of sounds. But we do not treat the utterance as a series of sounds. Instead we endow it with a meaning. For us, the series of sounds is not 23

SHEN, Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 113. In his article “Pure Logical Grammar: Identity Amidst Linguistic Differences,” (Cf. infra., 55–68) John J. Drummond points out that the theory of expression in the first of Husserl’s Logical Investigations is not phenomenological but phanological. In this respect Shen’s theory of expression in this article can also be called only a phanological reflection on expression and meaning. 24

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only a series of sounds but also a ‘body of expressions’. In effect, we not merely endow the series of sounds with the meaning we ascribe to it, but we also give the same meaning to any series of sounds that is the same as the particular one.25 For instance, if Frank and John utter the “same” series of sounds, we ascribe the same meaning to the sounds, and they are two bodies of the same expression. The possibility of combining an expression (辭) with a suitable physical form is, in Shen’s terminology, the shape of an expression (辭模). All effective bodies of expression act in real speech as manifestations of thought. On this point, Shen introduced Husserl’s terms to clarify thought: thought as act, which is for him only the psychic state of affairs; and thought as what Husserl called noesis26 (意念，in Chinese the characters mean “the thinking of” in consciousness). Noesis (意念) emerges with the act of thinking, but it does not disappear when the act of thinking stops. Rather, noesis (意念) survives the act of thinking and “stays in our heart, and we can call it back again if necessary. Moreover, other people can also learn it from you. Your can transfer it to other people. In this way, they become public property. …Every noesis has a causal relationship with other noeses.”27 Therefore, Shen called noesis in this sense “general vein noesis (通脈意 念)”. But this “general vein noesis (通脈意念)” is not identical with the noesis of an act of thinking: The former is only something potential, and it consists of a unity, much like a general mechanism on, but beyond, our psycho-physical mechanism. Shen called this mechanism the convention of noeses (意念習), which he viewed as nets of meaning from other respects. Just as in Husserl, here noesis is also the content or direct objectivity of thinking. Our act of thinking, Shen said, “sees” noesis as its object, namely its intentional or intended object (意指對象). But if it is possible, it can be a representation of an object in the real world. With this Husserlian idea of epistemology in mind, Shen once again tried to give a clear account of the different relationships between thinking and object. He compared four sentences:

25

SHEN, Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 127. Youding SHEN did not use this word since Youding SHEN did not at all acknowledge his indebt to Husserl when he was composing the article we are discussing. However, in my view, what Youding SHEN meant by the Chinese character “意念” is quite close what Husserl meant by “noesis”, and thus I still use “noesis” to translate Youding SHEN’s “意念”. 27 SHEN, Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 130. 26

SHEN: THE FIRST PHENOMENOLOGIST IN CHINA I. Frank thinks of the Monkey King.

Comparison with

Noesis (Intention) (self)

.is actuality

exists… Self

Intentional object

exists

II. Bettina thinks of the Monkey king, too. is an inward state of affairs

is not actuality

is an inward state of affairs

intended (noema) exists is actuality Intending things

Object self

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not identical not identical

is not an inward state of affairs identical

does not exist does not exist

III. Frank thinks of Gerhard Schröder. Comparison with IV. Bettina thinks of Gerhard Schröder, too. Noesis (Intention) (self)

exists…. 28

Self Intentional object

Object self

exists

is actuality

is an inward state of affairs

not identical

is not actuality

is an inward state of affairs

not identical

Intended (noema) exists is actuality is not an inward state of affairs

identical

Intending things exists is actuality

is not an inward state of affairs

identical

exists is actuality

is not an inward state of affairs

identical

It seems to me that he used the Husserlian model of epistemology to argue against the logical positivism prevailing in China at that time. He intended to show why non-scientific expressions, although distinct from scientific expressions, are nonetheless meaningful. The first two sentences have no object in question, but still have meaning by virtue of their intentional object. They are not scientific only because the speaker does not intend to look for, nor there is anything in the world for them to correspond to, and thus they are empty. Furthermore, he also used this model to resolve the problem of ambiguity occurring in actual speech when an expression is used by two different persons, or by the same person but in different situations. In such cases, the intentional object as an inward state of consciousness is not identical, but as intended content, as one of the “general vein noeses (通脈意念)”, it is identical, or at least partially identical. At the end of this article, Shen tried to use this model to reinterpret more exactly the distinction Frege made between Sinn and Bedeutung. In Shen’s view, “the meaning of an expression is the possible manifestation of intentional content through its possibly effective expression-body”.29 If we have two intentional objects, we can now compare them in accordance with the object self, that is, what Youding SHEN called “general vein noeses (通 脈意念)”. For example, if Frank thinks of “the sum of 2+5” and Bettina also thinks of “the sum of 2+5”, the two expressions have various intentional object selves in the minds of Frank and Bettina. This is because the meaning of the two expressions are two different things, but they have but the same intended thing, “general vein noeses (通脈意念)”, namely the sum of 2+5, and the same object self, namely “7”. Therefore, it may be said that the two 28

What the noema self as an inward state of affairs means, is not clear. For him, it is still short of fulfilling the intentional object. 29 SHEN, Youding SHEN’s Collected Papers, 145.

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expressions have an identical meaning, but that “the sum of 2+5” is twice actualized or realized.

V After 1949, Shen, like all philosophers who did not leave mainland China, stopped his philosophical research and concentrated on “non-dangerous” historical research, and on abstract algebra and mathematical logic. Only after the Cultural Revolution, did he begin to talk about philosophy, especially Husserl and phenomenology, in his private correspondence with his friend Hao Wang. In all of his publications he mentioned Husserl’s name just once (in 1935). But in his correspondence (33 pieces in total) from 1972 to 1981, he mentioned Husserl more than 20 times! In 1976, Youding SHEN held that “Husserl’s Logical Investigations is still the best model for philosophizing in the German language”.30 He interpreted Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as the “unification of vijňaptimātrin ( 唯 識 論 的 ) subjective idealism, and Platonic objective idealism”, and thought that such unification “could possibly be unique”.31 “If we talk about thought, it concerns six different problems: subject, sense, behavior, content, attitude, and object. Content can refer to the content of thought, but can also refer to the content of reality or actuality. Here the content of thought is, in a broad sense, just Husserl’s Bedeutung. Content of actuality can refer to the content of thought which is ‘restricted’ in the act of thinking, but it can also refer to entities that are products of an act of thinking of the so-called ‘mind’. Husserl accepted only the former, and rejected the latter.”32 Philosophically, Shen was not in agreement with Husserl’s philosophy. He said that the thought in his article showed his agreement with the “Prinzipiele Koordination” between the subjective and objective worlds, just like Richard Avenarius, (1843–96). It seems to me that this interpretation of Husserl’s philosophy is not correct. Husserl, like Avenarius, was not opposed to the “Prinzipial Koordination” between the subjective and objective worlds. I just happened to discover Shen’s unnoticed work on phenomenology a short time before I was preparing the paper entitled, “Phenomenology as Bridge between Asia and the West”. After I found it, I was very excited, and at once changed the topic of my paper. But in the process of composing this paper, I have noticed that much more time and effort needs to be paid to Shen’s work than I have given it. Therefore, I have to stop here, and must content myself with recommending to you the work of the first philosopher in China who applied Husserl’s ideas to his research.

30 31 32

Ibid., 557. Ibid., 555. Ibid., 552.

3 ______________________________ Husserl’s Attack on Psychologism and its Cultural Implications David CARR Emory University, USA

In this paper I want to offer an interpretation of the significance and implications of Husserl’s attack on psychologism in the Logical Investigations. In order to do this, I want to devote some discussion to the relation between volume I of that work, the “Prolegomena to Pure Logic,” and the Investigations proper, which begin in volume II. Much has been said about the relation between these two parts of Husserl’s work, and much remains still in dispute. When we think of the attack on psychologism, we think of the Prolegomena, volume I, while the investigations of volume II are seen retrospectively as the origin of what later became the phenomenological method. My principle contention here will be that the Investigations of volume II continue and strengthen the attack on psychologism, rather than undermining, weakening, or even contradicting it, as some have claimed. If I am correct, the attack on psychologism is much broader than what is accomplished in the Prolegomena, and plays a crucial role in the development of phenomenology. Once I have worked out this broader sense of the attack on psychologism, I will turn to what I consider its cultural implications. Let us now recall the basic structure of the Logical Investigations. In volume I, the “Prolegomena to Pure Logic,” Husserl launches a series of attacks on psychologism, as a philosophical theory of the foundations of logic, and introduces the idea of pure logic as theory of science. This is briefly explicated as a “theory of possible theories” and a theory of the “manifolds” or domains of possible objects to which these theories apply. When the “Investigations” proper are introduced in volume II, the reader might expect the “pure logic,” which has been introduced, actually to get under way. As we know, this does not happen. Instead, pure logic is to be subjected to “epistemological criticism and clarification” through “phenomenological investigations.”1 The overall title of the second volume is “Investigations on the phenomenology and theory of knowledge.” 1

My references, cited as LI, are to the English translation. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J.N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), 248.

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But what are phenomenological investigations, and how do they relate to the theory of knowledge? Husserl has introduced a term with a history, to be sure, but he does not identify it with any of its historical antecedents. He seems to know what it means, and in the following pages he gives us several indications of what he has in mind. But these indications do not hang together in a systematic way, and appear more as a series of hints. Compared with his later intensive concern with the systematic presentation of the phenomenological method, this is quite remarkable. Husserl later claims that phenomenology made its “breakthrough” in the Logical Investigations. But here it is almost as if he had almost unwittingly stumbled on the method, practiced it with considerable success in this work, and only later realized its immense significance for philosophy. Only then, in the ensuing years, did he turn his attention to its refinement and systematic presentation as a philosophical method. What Husserl does say, in this early work, about phenomenological investigations, can be summarized in the following way. First, phenomenology in general, he tells us, takes “experiences” [Erlebnisse] as its focus: the phenomenology of the Logical Investigations will focus on a subclass of experiences: those of thinking and judging.2 Not judgments or meanings, then, will be his focus, but experiences. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this move. With this Husserl has signaled something important and distinctive for his approach throughout: to clarify something philosophically is to relate it to direct, lived experience. Even logic, which Husserl insists is concerned like mathematics with ideal or abstract entities, relations and truths, must be dealt with in this way. This is, one could say, the empiricist in Husserl: trace everything, no matter how abstract, back to experience. But this raises an obvious question which occurred to his readers right away: is this not a return to psychologism? According to Husserl, the phenomenological investigations he proposes are situated in a “neutral” realm between empirical psychology and pure logic. 3 They must be presuppositionless, which means that they refuse the underlying ontological commitments of both empirical psychology and logic. And Husserl makes clear that they belong to the theory of knowledge, not to metaphysics.4 In fact the phenomenological theory of knowledge is not even a theory in the usual sense of the word, certainly not in the sense of “theory” developed by Husserl himself in the Prolegomena. It is not a deductive or explanatory theory. Instead, its aim is to shed light on or clarify (aufklären) and understand the knowing process.5 In the first edition, as is well known, Husserl even calls phenomenology “descriptive psychology”; later he felt that it was wrong to 2 3 4 5

Ibid., 249. Ibid. Ibid., 265. Ibid.

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call it psychology at all, but continued to emphasize its descriptive, as opposed to explanatory character.6 This emphasis on the descriptive, non-explanatory character of phenomenological investigations is the first indication to us of how they can be compatible with Husserl’s attack on psychologism. To trace everything—e.g., even logical entities and relations—back to experience (zuruckführen) might seem to be precisely the psychologistic program. But to trace something back to experience in Husserl’s sense is not to explain it through experience or reduce it to experience, as empiricists often have done. In fact, one of the main points of “clarifying,” Husserl tells us, is to inhibit our “by no means chance inclination to slip unwittingly from an objective to a psychological attitude” and mix up two related but distinct subject matters.7 In this sense phenomenology, far from being psychologistic, will continue and consolidate the attack on psychologism. As the Investigations proper get under way, Husserl picks up on the idea that he quotes from Mill at the beginning: we must begin with the study of language, since it is in linguistic form that “the objects which pure logic seeks to examine”8 are given. Cognition and theoretical activity issue in expressions and judgments, and these take the form of utterances in language. He begins by distinguishing the “meaningful” expressions of language from mere signs: the latter have a simple conventional or causal relation to what they indicate, but no meaning as such.9 Expressions have meaning. But what does it mean for an expression to have meaning? The linguistic expression by itself is merely an acoustical phenomenon (in speech) or a spatial configuration (in the case of writing). It acquires meaning thanks to a “sense-giving act” on the part of a conscious user of the language.10 This is the central “experience” to which logic must be traced. With this, we might say, Husserl has arrived at his philosophical destination, or destiny. His route from logic to the experience in which it is given has taken him to language and from there to the conscious acts which are the source of its meaning. He does not tarry, then, over the phenomenon of language as such—a big mistake, from the point of view of much later 20th century philosophy—but turns instead to the notion of consciousness: it is consciousness which will be the central focus of his attentions for the rest of his life. In particular, it is consciousness in the sense of intentional experience or act which is the focus of Husserl’s attention, beginning in Investigation V. This is the sense which is relevant to his preoccupation with logic, and with knowledge in general. But before he gets to the discussion of intentionality he

6 7 8 9 10

See LI, 262. Ibid., 253. Ibid., 250. Ibid., 269. Ibid., 280.

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deals with consciousness in more general terms, and has some important things to say about the term “experience” (Erlebnis) as he is using it. An experience is a subjective or conscious episode we live through: experiencing is “living through” something in this sense. Husserl wants to distinguish the awareness that belongs to this “living through” from any kind of awareness of objects. For the latter he uses the term Erfahrung. This is also Kant’s term, and Husserl uses it in exactly the same sense: Erfahrung is the experience of objects in the world. In perception, for example, which is a species of Erfahrung, I perceive some object—e.g., a tree in the garden—but I “experience” or “live through” (ich erlebe) the perception itself. I do not “live through” the tree, and unless I explicitly reflect, I do not perceive my perception.11 This distinction, and Husserl’s terminological choice, are very important for the discussion of intentional experiences, but not all experiences (Erlebnisse) are intentional. Certain kinds of sensations or feelings (aches and pains, for example), for example, are related to no object: I just have them. But they are experiences in the sense that I live through them.12 Finally Husserl turns his attention to consciousness considered as that class of experiences called “intentional,” which he also terms “acts.” Here Husserl draws on his teacher Franz Brentano, who used the concept of intentionality in order to distinguish between “psychic phenomena” and “physical phenomena.” “Every mental phenomenon,” writes Brentano, “is characterized by what the medieval schoolmen called intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and by what we…call the relation to a content, the direction to an object…or an immanent objectivity.” 13 In perception something is perceived, in imagination something is imagined, in a statement something stated, in love something loved, in desire something desired, etc. Husserl’s purpose in introducing intentionality is not the same as Brentano’s, and in fact he disagrees with Brentano on this point. As we have already noted, not all experiences are intentional, as is proved by certain kinds of feelings and sensations.14 Yet as experiences they are clearly psychic or mental, indeed even conscious. Intentionality belongs only to a certain class of experiences. But this is a crucial class, not only for the clarification of logic, but for our idea of what counts as a conscious being. A being “merely having contents inside it such as the experiences of sense, but unable to interpret these objectively…incapable, therefore, of referring to objects” would not be a mental or conscious being, says Husserl.15

11

Ibid.,540. See also LI section 14, 567. 13 Ibid., 554. Husserl quotes from Brentano’s Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt I, (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1911), 115. 14 LI, 556. 15 Ibid., 553. 12

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Beyond this, though, what interests Husserl is how this referring takes place, and how it does so in different ways. What exactly is the nature of this “relation to a content,” “direction to an object,” which is essential to this class of experiences? Husserl devotes considerable attention to answering this question. And it could be said that from his answers, all of phenomenology ultimately flows. Husserl begins his approach to what the intentional “relation” is by saying what he thinks it is not. We might be tempted to consider it a “real relation,” i.e. a relation obtaining between two real things. My different ways of being conscious of some object, e.g. thinking of, imagining, or seeing my friend Chan Fai, might be construed as types of relation that obtain between Chan Fai and me, like the relations of being taller than, or being next to. Or again, as in the tradition, as a causal relation. But the conscious acts have the feature of “taking” Chan Fai as something, namely as my friend. Unlike the other relations, this one relates to Chan Fai only under a certain description. As Husserl says, we must distinguish between the object which is intended and the object as it is intended.16 Chan Fai is undoubtedly many other things, but it is as my friend that I am thinking of him. Another person may not even be my friend at all (he may be a “false friend”), but it is still true that I am thinking of him and even seeing him as such. Furthermore, I can think of and imagine things that don’t exist at all, like the god Jupiter, or even “see” things that don’t exist, like the water which seems to shimmer on the road ahead on a hot day. Yet each of these experiences is still somehow, and importantly, “related to a content,” “directed to an object.” Here a “real relation” is clearly not to be found. These considerations might lead us to construe intentionality as another kind of “real” relation: not between me or my consciousness and something outside, but between two things in consciousness. This is behind the use of the word “content,” of course. The god Jupiter and the mirage do not exist outside consciousness; as we often say, they’re just “in the mind.” But Husserl immediately points out that this cannot be meant literally: the intentional experience of thinking of the god Jupiter “may be dismembered as one chooses in descriptive analysis, but the god Jupiter will naturally not be found in it.”17 This mythical entity does not exist anywhere, even in the mind. But there may be another approach, which applies also to objects that really do exist. Where the object does exist, e.g. my friend Chan Fai, we have rejected the idea of a real relation to Chan Fai himself, and noted furthermore that we always refer to him under some description, just as we see him from some point of view. Perhaps what the mind relates to is not Chan Fai himself but an image, picture or representation of him. Likewise we may have in our minds not mythical gods, but images of them.

16 17

Ibid., 578. Ibid., 558f.

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Husserl rejects this approach as wrongheaded, devoting several pages to it.18 But it probably deserves more. What he does not note is that this is the standard approach to knowledge in early modern philosophy, the “way of ideas” articulated by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding when he wrote that the term “idea” is used “to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks.” The heart of this conception, which actually goes back at least to Descartes, is that what the mind relates to is not things but images of them, and the images are both caused by and similar to the things they depict. This conception is notoriously fraught with all kinds of difficulties: the skeptic (Hume) will point that we can never compare images with the things they supposedly portray; the idealist (Berkeley) will ask how mental entities can resemble or be caused by non-mental entities; and finally there’s the danger of infinite regress: is the awareness of the mental image to be explained in turn by recourse to an image of it? And so on. The distinctively phenomenological character of Husserl’s approach to this problem is revealed in his response to what he calls this “box-withinbox”19 approach to mental contents. His critique of it differs significantly from these idealist, skeptical and logical objections. He thinks it is simply descriptively incorrect, a simple confusion of two experiences we are quite familiar with, i.e. being aware of something and being aware of an image of that thing. There are “not two things present in experience, we do not experience the object and beside it the intentional experience directed upon it….only one thing is present, the intentional experience, whose essential descriptive character is the intention in question.” 20 The object, whether existent or non-existent, is not part of the “descriptive real make-up” of the experience.21 The latter is just the intention itself, and the object is intended by it. In the case of sense perception, sensations may be part of the experience, but they should not be confused with the object: “I do not see colour-sensations but coloured things, I do not hear tone sensations but the singer’s song, etc., etc.”22 These remarks reveal the manner in which the theory of consciousness as intentional actually continues and broadens the attack on psychologism. Husserl opposes the general empiricist tendency to collapse into subjective idealism or skepticism by reducing objectivity of any sort—whether in logical thinking or perception—to contents of the mind, or to confuse the two. It is necessary to distinguish the intentional experience, as directed toward some object, from the object to which it is directed. Put broadly, it is the nature of consciousness as intentionality to point beyond itself or transcend itself. Seen in this way, phenomenology makes its appearance as a kind of realism. Its aim is to clarify the nature of certain kinds of experiences, and the first thing 18 Ibid., 593ff. Husserl had already attacked a version of this theory in Investigation I, section 23. His most extensive account is in Ideas I, section 43. 19 LI, 557. 20 Ibid., 558. 21 Ibid., 559. 22 Ibid.

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it must do is exclude from them their objects. Indeed, at this stage “phenomenological description” was meant to focus exclusively on the subjective side.23 Its focus was just the Erlebnisse, and its purpose was to distinguish their different kinds and describe their essential structures. This Husserl called their “phenomenological content.” Their “intentional content,” i.e. their objects, even as intended, was to be excluded.24 This was the conception of “phenomenological investigations” which emerged from the Logical Investigations, and which Husserl applied to various topics (e.g. perception of things in space, time-consciousness) in the ensuing years. His main concern was to distinguish it from psychology by insisting that its approach was not empirical but “eidetic.” That is, it was not just that its aim was to describe rather than explain; what it described was not mere facts but “essences,” the essential structures of experiences. This is the guiding conception behind the 1910 essay “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” which marks the first published expression of Husserl’s new conviction that phenomenology is destined for more than a modest role as a method for epistemology. Here we see Husserl spelling out for himself some larger, cultural implications of his attack on psychologism. In working out the idea of philosophy’s aspirations to rigorous science, and its repeated failure to realize these aspirations, he describes as a dominant threat what he calls “historicism” or Weltanschauungsphilosophie. In the “Prolegomena” he had already recognized that psychologism in logic could take the form of “anthropologism.” This is the view that logic is founded not on the individual psyche but on the mental structures of the species. This is, of course, a view which is quite popular among philosophers of our time. Today’s advocates of anthropologism will speak of the “hard-wiring” of the brain as a result of the evolution of the species in coping with its environment. The increased sophistication provided by concepts derived from artificial intelligence and from evolution theory do not make this view any less incoherent than it was when Husserl attacked it. It still presupposes, for its very articulation, the very thing that it denies, i.e. the universal structures and consequent normative values of logic. But the “historicism” and Weltanschauungsphilosophie that Husserl attacks in “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” are of a different order. These views also seek to found logic and other ideal structures on a collective rather than an individual subjectivity, but the collective subjectivity in this case is not the species as a whole but social and historical entities like cultures, Volks- and Zeitgeister, world-views, and the like. Thus we come up with the ideas of cultural or historical relativism. Another version of this, which has become part of the “linguistic turn” of 20th century philosophy, is linguistic relativism. Thus logical structures and patterns of thought, and the norms that 23 24

See LI, 576n. Ibid., 576n.

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come with them, are thought to have a validity which extends no farther than the culture, people, historical period or language (or some combination of these) that expresses and appeals to them. Like anthropologism, these views have the advantage over psychologism that they can explain why logical and rational structures are shared among individuals, since individuals always belong to the larger group, whether culture or species. But they have the disadvantage that they cannot account for how or whether different cultures, historical periods, etc. can share logical rules, mathematical truths, and the like. Anthrpologism at least has an answer to this, whether or not it is satisfactory. If it is really true that mathematical, logical and other truths hold across cultures, this counts as a refutation of any sort of relativism that is tied to cultural forms. But if this is the cultural implication of the attack on psychologism found in the “Prolegomena,” what of the broader sense of that attack that we have attributed to the Logical Investigations proper, especially the fifth? Here the sense of psychologism was that of the skeptical and idealist tendency to reduce or collapse the world of perception, perceptual judgment, and empirical knowledge, to the experience we have of it. Husserl’s response is to insist, as we have seen, that consciousness is directed to objects distinct from itself. The logical or Platonic realism of the “Prolegomena” becomes the perceptual or empirical realism of the Investigations proper. Consciousness is not a self-sufficient or self-enclosed container, conversant only with its own contents, but is in essence an outwardly directed relation, an opening onto the world. The connection between logical and empirical realism lies in the concept of meaning that Husserl developes. The very meanings that can, under some conditions, become the objects of logical reflection, also make possible an access to the objectivity of the empirical world. The cultural implication of this aspect of Husserl’s work lies in this notion of openness. The perceptual world is one whose objects can be identified and re-identified in my own mental life, and this identity-through-multiplicity can be intersubjective as well. As Husserl articulated it later, openness to the objective world is at the same time openness to the community of others, and the world is a shared world. The introduction of the word “world” here alerts us to the fact that there is a countercurrent in Husserl’s phenomenology which, according to some commentators, seems to accommodate itself to various forms of relativism. If objectivity is distinct from subjectivity, it nevertheless cannot be understood without reference to subjectivity. It depends as we have seen on the concept of meaning, and meaning is always meaning for someone. This is why the objects around us make up a world, not just a universe, why we must think of spatial and temporal horizons rather than objective space and time. The idea of perspective, so important to Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, easily generalizes itself to take on a much broader metaphorical sense. Precisely because the concept of “world,” one of phenomenology’s major contributions to 20th century philosophy, can and should in some cases be used in the plural,

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phenomenology seems to relinquish its initial realism in favor of a form of social idealism and even cultural relativism. This interpretation is of course compatible with the simplistic idea that Husserl began as a realist but converted to idealism in his later work. But I see Husserl articulating a single message throughout his work: all experience and knowledge is intentional, transcending itself toward objects, the world, and others, but it is also subject-related, emanating from individual and social perspectives. Husserl has arguments against psychologism, but what I have called his realism is not the conclusion of an argument but the outcome of a phenomenological description. Husserl is no metaphysical realist, nor is he a metaphysical idealist. From the rigorously first-person point of view, each of us lives, in a very limited sense, in his own individual world, but the very sense of this world is that it intersects with others and makes social and cultural worlds possible. But these social and cultural worlds are no more isolated from each other than are we as individuals. In my view there is no philosophical argument for a world beyond my own, no definitive defeat even for solipsism. The problem of skepticism and solipsism is not that they are false but that they conflict with the sense of our ordinary experience. These views are countered by the experience of others and the practice of interaction and communication with them. The best evidence I can think of for the openness to each other of cultural and linguistic worlds, and thus for the cultural implications of Husserl’s attack on psychologism and ultimately cultural relativism, is the present conference itself and the event which it celebrates, the opening of the Phenomenology Center at Peking University. Why should, and how can, a group of Chinese intellectuals and scholars take an interest in an Austrian-Jewish philosopher, writing a hundred years ago in another language? What are the chances that we, coming from different cultures and conversing in neither Chinese nor German, can really understand Husserl and each other? No doubt it is difficult, and there are certainly no guarantees, no conclusive arguments that it is even possible. But it seems to be happening. Could Husserl, with his powers of eidetic variation, have imagined this conference? Yes, I think he could have, and maybe such a thought, if he had it, would have consoled him in his later years, when he seemed to be abandoned by all but a handful of admirers. If he had known, he would have been elated. But I don’t think he would have been surprised.

4 ______________________________ Between Saying and Showing: Reflections on Husserl’s Theory of Occasional Expressions Bernhard WALDENFELS University of Bochum, Germany

I At first sight the so-called occasional expressions play only a marginal role within the framework of the First Logical Investigation.1 The author’s main interest points in another direction. Husserl tries to clarify the status of ideal, objective and fixed meaning which does not change from case to case as the occasional meaning does. Nevertheless he discusses a set of indexical expressions including personal pronouns, demonstratives, spatio-temporal indices and every sort of self-referential speech. He has a lot to say about this before coming to the conclusion that “ideally speaking, each subjective expression is replaceable by an objective expression” (90/321). Obviously, Husserl’s attempt to protect the specific character of meaning against the danger of psychologism is based on distinctions like ideal versus factual, permanent versus changing, solid or bounded versus fluent and objective versus subjective. All these schemes are encumbered with metaphysical burdens, and they need clarification themselves. Now it is well known that Husserl does not hesitate to criticize his own tour de force, his Gewaltstreich. As early as in the preface to the second edition of the Logical Investigations he concedes that every empirical predication includes some occasional meaning, and in his Crisis (Hua VI, §33) he makes it clear that even the practice of science does not dispense with occasional statements which belong to the equipment of practical everyday life. It may be argued that Husserl’s self-criticism is not sufficient and that more has to be done in order to deconstruct these fundamental ideas. There are three prominent objections arising from different directions to mention. 1

See §§ 26–29. In the following text I shall quote from Niemeyer, Logische Untersuchungen (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1980) followed by the English translation by J. N. Findlay as Logical Investigations, Vol.II/1 (London: Routledge and Paul, 1970); page numbers refer to this work without further specification.

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First, it could be claimed that Husserl’s theory of meaning has to be reembedded into the field of practice, on the lines of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Thus meaning (Bedeutung) would be tied up with significance (Bedeutsamkeit) which for its part depends on our being in the world. Secondly, one may stress that every sort of meaning is at least partly constituted by linguistic rules and habits which cannot be reduced to the sense-giving acts of a primary ego. Consequently, it is only within communication that this ego would play a certain role. Such arguments bring us directly into the whirlpool of analytical philosophy. Thirdly, one may join Derrida’s attempt to deconstruct the vivid presence of the ego’s voice. One could continue along these lines, or on the contrary, one might defend Husserl by drawing upon the secret weapon of his posthumously published writings. But I prefer another path. I shall discuss some special aspects of Husserl’s early theory which, when compared with the principal thrust of these early analyses, look like alien elements, but which are nevertheless worth being discussed for their own sake.

II It is interesting to see that Husserl collects different kinds of expression under the common heading of fluctuating (schwankende) expressions. This label covers incomplete, vague as well as occasional expressions. In addition Husserl mentions the difference between the usual meaning of a word and its concrete meaning, determined by application of general patterns. Certainly, those different aspects are closely interconnected by what Karl Bühler calls the “sympractical field” of the linguistic sign which allows for a sort of “empractical speech” (Sprachtheorie, §10). In Bühler’s view expressions are not vague or elliptical per se, because it depends on the practical context whether a certain utterance is clear or vague, complete or incomplete. The Austrian author takes examples from the everyday life in Vienna. If somebody in a coffee-house orders “black,” the waiter knows that this person is asking for a coffee and not for a piece of coal. If we go further in this direction we discover that the meaning of our words is determined by their contexts and that the rules of language are specified by their application. As important as this may be, we should not neglect other aspects which are just as important. Husserl does not ignore the fact that we already live together with others in a common world. He calls this the naturalcommunicative attitude. But he refrains from taking for granted what those who preach the linguistic or pragmatic turn simply presuppose. It seems to me that Husserl is completely right when he refuses to identify the question of occasionality or indexicality with the quite different question of how exact or how concrete the meaning of a word or sentence may be. But to call occasional expressions subjective leads us astray. What happens “from case to case” may be called, following Bühler and other linguists, linguistic

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events (Sprechereignisse). These events point in three directions: they refer to things, they address the listener, they intimate the speaker’s own intentions. When I speak of linguistic events, I do not mean that something is merely the case (daβ etwas der Fall ist), rather I mean that something occurs or happens (daβ etwas vorfällt oder geschieht). In what follows I shall develop this idea in detail. Starting from the relation between saying and showing, I shall try to overcome the false alternative between remaining inside language or starting outside it. Apart from the fact that by now caricatures of linguistically oriented philosophy have dissipated, a real phenomenology of language should be able to open other perspectives beyond intuitionism and lingualism. But this presupposes that we consider the language as being at work instead of reducing it to given rule-systems or linguistic habits.

III The most obvious feature of occasional sentences consists in the fact that they never mean what they say without pointing at the situation in which the speech takes place. Let us look at some examples. If somebody asks you: “Please, give me a cup of water,” the request would be completely ineffectual as long as it leaves open who needs water and to whom it is addressed. Or take the case of a promise. You cannot transform it into an unbounded, context-free sentence like: “It is promised that something will be done to-morrow.” Such a promise would resemble the “smile without the cat” in Alice in Wonderland. We could specify the request saying, “Please, give me this glass,” or simply: “Give me the glass,” provided that there is no other at hand. Such sentences are only understandable for the listener if he or she takes part in the speaker’s situation. The same holds true for the use of “here,” “now” or “soon.” The indicator “here” will remain void if somebody uses it on the telephone and the partner does not know where the call is coming from. If I read the indicator “next week” in a letter it will be of no help for me as long as the writer’s “now” remains unspecified. All this is well-known. But the question is how what is meant and said is connected with what is shown or shows itself. We have to ask how our intentional acts are rooted in the origin of the deictic field (Zeigfeld) which Karl Bühler calls the “here-now-I system.” The intertwinement of lexis and deixis raises problems which I can only touch. Husserl himself explains this connection in its own way. For him the expression “orients actual meaning to the occasion, the speaker and the situation” (81/315). The listener needs clues (Anhaltspunkte) to guide him or her to the actual meaning. In general there is an indicative function (anzeigende Funktion) which we ascribe to occasional words and sentences (83/316). But what does this mean? This peculiar kind of indication must not be confused with the index or indication presented at the beginning of the first logical investigation. The word ‘I’ is

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not associated with the speaker like smoke with fire.2 On the one hand, what indicates are words, i.e. meaningful signs. The indicating function is interwoven with the expressing function. On the other hand, the speaker is not some empirical element; the speaker participates in the constitution of sense by words. Consequently, our acts of meaning are not only fulfilled by what is intuitively given or seen in the broader sense, they are supported by it. They find their footing (Anhalt) in our experience. The transit-point (Umschlagstelle3) between saying and seeing is our body. Bühler describes the deictic process as follows: the human being “senses his or her body...and employs it to point” (da er “seinen Körper verspürt und zeigend einsetzt,” Sprachtheorie, 129). We can conclude that our meaningful speech is realized in terms of corporeal speaking. Our speaking does not merely take place within space and time; rather speech has its own space and time. The use of occasional expressions crosses the borderline between saying and showing in both directions. If it is justified to assume not only that there are essentially occasional expressions but that our speaking is more or less occasional in itself, we arrive at a sort of chiasm between speech and experience. I shall return to this crucial point in my last section.

IV There are other aspects of Husserl’s theory which attract our attention. We have to consider the fact that, irrespective of their occasional use, words like ‘I’ or ‘here’ are meaningful signs and not mere arabesques (82/315). So we can define ‘I’ as “whatever speaker is designating himself,” and we can explain “here” as “the place where the speaker is located.” But somebody who utters the sentence, “I ask you to come here” does not intend to tell you the general meaning of these words; he simply uses them to get you to do something in his situation. Husserl tries to resolve the riddle of this duplicity by splitting the meaning into an indicating and an indicated meaning (83/316). He makes use of this distinction in order to explain perceptual predications such as “A blackbird takes wing.” Obviously the term “a blackbird” remains meaningful even when it appears in a crossword puzzle without being specified as “this blackbird.” 4 Nevertheless we have to ask again what “indication” means in this peculiar context. Here associations between empirical data are out of the question because the meaning which constitutes something as something cannot be itself taken as something. Rather, this kind of splitting must be understood as a process which separates our meaningful thinking and speaking from itself. And because we 2 Concerning the complexity of indication (Anzeige), see Donn Welton, The Origins of Meaning (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), 33–44. 3 See Hua IV, 286. 4 See L.I., inv. VI, §§4–5.

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have good reasons to assume that all speech whatsoever refers, at least in an indirect way, to a time and place of speaking, we may conclude that such a splitting affects speaking as such. Roman Jakobson actually draws this conclusion. In his essay “Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb” (first published in 1957), referring explicitly to Husserl and Bühler, Jakobson distinguishes between the two levels of the reported process (énoncé) and the reporting process (énonciation), and he assumes that both are mediated by so-called shifters. Other linguists like Emile Benveniste or Oswald Ducrot took up this distinction which corresponds mutatis mutandis to the distinction between speech acts and their propositional content. I have repeatedly used these linguistic tools myself in order to elaborate a responsive phenomenology of language.5 In Husserl’s view an essentially occasional character has to be ascribed to every self-referential expression, i.e., to every expression by which the speaker expresses something concerning him- or herself or something to be understood in relation to him- or herself (85/318). I propose to make a certain correction to his assumption. Self-referential expressions do not refer immediately to the speaker, but rather to speaking itself. Speaking arises as a speech event (Sprechereignis) before being ascribed to somebody as his or her speech act (Sprechakt). Otherwise we would presuppose a person preceding language, dominating or creating it. I do not want to discuss this presumption here. But if it is rejected, we will have to accept the view that saying as such refers to itself or that saying is a sort of self-saying. In German I would say that Sagen also means Sichsagen, just as we say that somebody sich freut (enjoys himself) or sich bewegt (moves). The reflexivity of these verbs, which is the equivalent to the medium voice of Greek, does not mean that speech has in itself its “immediate object” (83/316) or that it speaks about itself. This kind of propositional selfreference would lead straight on to the famous paradox of the Cretian liar, and consequently it would be overcome by the distinction between object language and meta-language introduced by Alfred Tarski. At this point, we should pose the counter-question as to whether such a purely methodological prohibition would be strong enough to prevent one’s own speaking from referring to itself. Saying is neither a pure event that we encounter within the world like the singing of a bird or the rumbling of thunder, nor is it something said or spoken about; rather it implies its own splitting into saying and what is the said. In other words, saying is co-indicated by what is said. Husserl misses this point when he distinguishes between two sorts of meaning, an indicating and an indicated one. It is the very event of saying which is co-indicated. 5

I refer especially to B. Waldenfels, Antwortregister (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1994), Part II, chaps. 2, 3 and 10, and to Vielstimmigkeit der Rede (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999), chap. 3. Many references to linguistics are to be found there.

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This co-indication is expressed by adverbs like “hereby” or hiermit. “I hereby declare…”—the adverb refers to what is done by words. Thus, our speaking is displaced in relation to itself. This kind of inner splitting befalls every “instance of discourse.” 6 It affects in particular the “I” of the addressing and the “thou” of the addressed person as well as the “here” and the “now” determining the place and time of speech. Let us consider some examples: “I promise you that I shall give you back the key to-morrow,” or “I regret that I did not warn you earlier.” There is an “I” who is speaking and a “you” spoken to, and both are mentioned in what is being said. This more or less implicit self-reference can be explicated by avowals and appeals. Even these manners of speaking should not be confused with mere information about our inner life and with effects on the other’s behavior.7 The splitting of time does not mean that there are two temporal events following each other. The promise does not occur earlier than the fulfillment; the avowal does not occur later than what is confessed, because the promise and avowal inaugurate a time-field within which things may be expected or remembered. Such speech events belong to that Husserl calls the “zero-point of orientation” and what Bühler calls the “origo” of the deictic field. Therefore the difference between the time of speaking and the time spoken about constitutes a genuine time lag. Similarly we have to do with a genuine sort of dis-placement. If we refer to a geographical map the standpoint at which we orientate ourselves does not coincide with the corresponding mark on the map. We do not live within the calendar and we do not remain within mapped space although everything in our life has its temporal and spatial indices. This original duplicity, inherent in our bodily existence, precedes any ‘vulgarization’ of time and space. Cartography and chronology belong to our cultural equipment just as speaking and writing do. Rimbaud’s famous dictum I is another (Je est un autre) may be generalized and transformed into saying is altering. This insight has farreaching consequences. Let me mention Jacques Lacan’s redefinition of discourse as “discourse of the Other” and the fissure in the subject demonstrated with explicit reference to Jakobson. Further we should think of Emmanuel Levinas’s distinction between saying (dire) and what is said (dit) which plays a central role in his ethics of the Other. Our saying does not only address the Other, as every conception of dialogue takes for granted, our saying is provoked by the Other, by the Other’s voice. In a certain sense this saying is not ours. What I like to call responsive phenomenology implies not only that saying is split into what is said and the saying itself but also that saying always exceeds what has been said. If this difference is forgotten, speaking speech is reduced to spoken speech, parole parlante to parole 6 Cf. E. Benveniste, “La nature des pronoms,” in Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 7 More about this in Antwortregister, Part III, chaps. 6 and 7.

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parlée, as Merleau-Ponty put it. In other words, the creativity and responsivity of speech would yield to a pure ordinary language. But we do not need only a philosophy of ordinary language, largely elaborated by analytical philosophers; we also need well a philosophy of extra-ordinary language, which may be nourished by poetry and by the wisdom of children and foreign peoples. But this requirement also affects the practice of phenomenological speech, the logos of the phenomena.

V At the beginning of his Logical Investigations Husserl stresses that the phenomenological analyses of meaning do not at all coincide with linguistic analyses. Grammatical analysis is a heuristic for the phenomenologist, but this is only the first step and must be reinforced by an analysis oriented towards the “things themselves.” Hence, phenomenology can neither be identified with a linguistic phenomenology, propagated by Austin, 8 nor is it satisfied by a mere phenomenology of language. As Husserl declares in his introduction to the Logical Investigations, language only anticipates in an imperfect manner what has to be elaborated thoroughly, and viewed as a cultural object language finds its place within a regional phenomenology. As we know, in the course of his thinking Husserl departed from a merely instrumental conception of language. This shift was motivated by his increasing interest in topics like intersubjectivity, bodily expression and scriptural tradition. But let me put aside these questions9 and restrict myself to the language of phenomenology itself. Usage already becomes problematic in the introduction to the Logical Investigations where Husserl emphasizes the necessity of proceeding on a sort of zigzag course (17), and in the Crisis he insists that a radical form of phenomenology which departs from the ground of the life-world needs a new language (cf. Hua VI, §59).The Bodenlosigkeit (groundlessness) of the phenomenological endeavor is accompanied by a certain Sprachlosigikeit (speechlessness). This situation should be taken into account when Husserl declares in his Cartesian Meditations (Hua I, 77): “The beginning is the pure and, so to speak, still silent experience that now has to be brought to a pure expression (Aussprache) of its own sense.” In German, when something is brought up we say it is “brought to language” (etwas wird zur Sprache gebracht) or when something comes up that it “comes to language” (etwas kommt zur Sprache). Merleau-Ponty, who often quotes Husserl’s programmatic statement, calls the passage from experience to language the 8

See Herbert Spiegelberg, The Context of the Phenomenological Movement (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), chap. 5. 9 The role of language in Husserl’s phenomenology is extensively discussed by Tanja Eden in Lebenswelt und Sprache. Eine Studie zu Husserl, Quine und Wittgenstein (Munich: W. Fink, 1999).

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paradox of expression. He describes this paradox or miracle as follows: “speaking and writing amounts to translating an experience which becomes a text only through the word it awakens.”10 This approach repudiates two extremes. The so-called things themselves are neither outside language as something which has not yet been said, nor are they inside language as something which in a certain sense has already been said. On the contrary, speaking and writing display their creative power by crossing the threshold separating what is said from what is not said. If something is not pre-given, then this is the very process of saying something as something, which may be compared with Wittgenstein’s seeing as. Nevertheless, what is said or seen as something are the things themselves and not some constructs or representing contents. We move and stand both inside and outside language at once because language precedes and exceeds itself. Returning to occasional expressions and statements, we realize that even they contain traces of a creative speaking. We must certainly distinguish between more productive or creative and more reproductive or repetitive speech events. But even speech act theorists who focus on the recurrent features of linguistic and pragmatic rules are ready to concede that the elementary reference to something does not consist in a merely static correlation, and that the elementary predication does not consist in the mere application of rules. Thus, John Searle writes: “To predicate an expression ‘P’ of an object R is to raise the question of the truth of the predicate expression of the object referred to.”11 Moreover, posing the question “Is our president corrupt?” questions the honesty of this official without actually denying it. Simple questions are not as simple as they look; they may “wake sleeping dogs.” Socrates was condemned by his fellow citizens although he did nothing more than to question their pretensions to knowledge and their convictions. Let us consider some other examples. The speech act, “Country X hereby declares war on country Y,” changes the world by separating enemies from allies and neutrals. Such a speech act changes those who speak, those in whose name they speak, and those to whom they speak. There is something like a zero hour in politics—the morning of September 11 may have been one—and in our personal life we encounter similar turning-points. From time to time we arrive at a point where the occasional here and now turns into an initial event which Husserl and Heidegger call Stiftung (institution). Ultimately, the saying on which we have focused is more than a sort of pure saying. It is first related (1) to what is seen or experienced while we speak; (2) to itself in terms of splitting and duplication; and (3) to what is not said or what is in a certain way unsayable, preceding and exceeding our speech. But at this point a further question arises with which I shall finish: 10

See my essay “Das Paradox des Ausdrucks,” in Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995), chap. 7. 11 J. Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 124.

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How can we speak of the unsayable without dissipating the shadows of silence which belong to the things themselves? Let us recall Wittgenstein’s statements about the limits of language where language takes leave of itself: “What can be shown cannot be said,”12 but also “[philosophy] will signify what cannot be said by presenting clearly what can be said.”13 What we need, and what Wittgenstein’s enigmatic sentences suggest, seems to be an indirect way of speaking: to show by saying and to say while showing. Thus, Heidegger postulates a logos which lets us see (a Sehenlassen), 14 and Merleau-Ponty continues: philosophy “makes visible by words” (elle fait voir par des mots).15 Indirect access to the things themselves goes hand in hand with side-glances and with an oblique mode of speech which remains open for occasions which come and go. Let me conclude my reflections on occasional expressions by quoting from Goethe, who revered the occasion as the goddess Gelegenheit. We read in his West-Östlicher Divan: “Not occasion makes thieves, it is itself the greatest thief,” and in his own words: “Nicht Gelegenheit macht Diebe, Sie ist selbst der größte Dieb.”

12

L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 4.1212, in Werke (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1960). 13 Ibid., 4.115. 14 Cf. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1953), 32. 15 Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 319.

5 ______________________________ Pure Logical Grammar: Identity Amidst Linguistic Differences John J. DRUMMOND Fordham University, USA

I In a well-known but, in my view, fundamentally flawed article, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel identifies two failures in Husserl’s attempt to formulate a theory of pure logical grammar: 1) Husserl misled himself into thinking that one can develop a theory of grammar by studying the realm of meanings,1 and 2) Husserl failed to realize that the traditional parts of speech to which he appealed in his formulations of the principles of a pure logical grammar were not useful syntactical categories beyond a rough approximation.2 Bar-Hillel claims that the domain of pure grammar should remain exclusively within the study of language. However, because the comparative study of empirical languages and their grammars cannot reveal the elements of a pure grammar, the only way to arrive at a “common ideal grammatical framework of all empirical languages” is to begin with “the very definition of language” and to determine what follows analytically from that definition. 3 And while it follows analytically from the definition of language that all languages contain words and sentences, it does not, according to Bar-Hillel, follow analytically that all languages contain “nouns, or negation-signs, or modal expressions.”4 Bar-Hillel admits that we might think justified a question about how “the” plural is expressed in Latin, English, German, Italian, or Chinese. But he thinks it is clearly illegitimate to ask a similar question with regard to how “the” ablative is expressed.5 However, this is to flail a straw man. For Husserl number, while a grammatical category, is also and more fundamentally an 1

Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, “Husserl’s Conception of a Purely Logical Grammar,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 17 (1956–1957), as reprinted in Readings on Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, ed. J. N. Mohanty (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 132. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 134. 4 Ibid., 134–135. 5 Ibid., 134.

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ontological category. Hence, Husserl would reply, he too thinks it makes perfect sense to ask of all languages how they express our understanding of basic ontological categories, while it does not make sense to ask that all of them express this understanding by means of the same case-structure, the same empirical grammar. And this, contra Bar-Hillel’s straw man, is all that Husserl in fact asks. In speaking of the semantic formations that arise from the application of the operational laws of compounding and of their further modifications, he says, They hold prime place over against their empirical-grammatical expressions, and resemble an absolutely fixed ideal framework, more or less perfectly revealed in empirical disguises. One must have this in mind in order to be able to ask significantly: How does German, Latin, Chinese, etc., express “the” existential proposition, “the” categorical proposition, “the” antecedent of a hypothetical, “the” plural, “the” modalities of possibility and probability, “the” negative, etc.? It is no matter of indifference whether the grammarian is content with a pre-scientific personal opinion on meaning-forms, or with notions empirically contaminated by historical, e.g., by Latin grammar, or whether he keeps his eyes on a scientifically fixed, theoretically coherent system of pure meaning-forms, i.e., on our own form-theory of meanings.6 There is no reference here to empirical, grammatical categories of any single language or language-group, no reference to case-structure or to parts of speech. Indeed, Husserl is quite clear that we must not rely on historically given, empirical conceptions of grammar in fashioning a pure grammar. Husserl’s question is posed in terms of purely logical categories, and this coheres with his insistence that pure logical grammar is not the study of the grammar of words, sentences, or languages, but the grammar—the rules of combination—of meanings.7 Pure logical grammar is to be understood as the first level of a pure logic of meanings rather than as a part of the study of language as such, of linguistics.8 Moreover, as revealed in the case of the plural, pure logical categories are grounded in the categories of formal ontology. This should not surprise us 6

Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984), 347–348; Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 526. 7 Ibid., 302–303 (493). 8 Cf. ibid., 349 (527), cf. also Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 53–58; Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 48–53.

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if we consider Husserl’s notion of pure logical grammar from the broader perspective of his transcendental philosophy and, in particular, in the light of his mature theories of intentionality and meaning as found in works such as Ideas I 9 and Formal and Transcendental Logic. Insofar as transcendental philosophy is concerned to describe the essential features of transcendental subjectivity’s disclosure of a world significant for us, transcendental philosophy necessarily reflects on the interrelations among thought, meaning, language, and being. This means, however, that any attempt to consider pure grammar by focusing exclusively on language or linguistic entities must be misguided, and Bar-Hillel’s identification of formal grammar with the analytic consequences of the definition of language must be rejected.10

II Husserl introduces the notion of pure, logical grammar in the fourth of his Logical Investigations. Positioned between the first investigation, on one side, and the fifth and sixth investigations, on the other, pure grammar is central in the move from the analysis of linguistic expressions to that of judgments. Equally interesting, however, is what I shall call pure grammar’s “metaphorical” position, for standing between the opening and closing investigations the theory of pure logical grammar also stands between Husserl’s earlier and more mature theories of meaning. It so stands because by the time we read the fifth and sixth investigations, we already know that the theory of meaning in the first investigation requires correction. As Husserl himself points out in the foreword to the second edition of the Investigations concerning the analyses of meaning in the first investigation, “The noetic concept of meaning is one-sidedly stressed, although in many important places the noematic concept is primarily involved.”11

9

Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuhmann, Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976); Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983). 10 For criticisms of Bar-Hillel’s approach, cf., e.g., James M. Edie, “Husserl’s Conception of ‘The Grammatical’ and Contemporary Linguistics,” in Life-World and Consciousness, ed. Lester E. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), reprinted in Mohanty, ed., Readings on Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, 137–161; and Robert Hanna, “The Relation of Form and Stuff in Husserl’s Grammar of Pure Logic,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 44 (1984): 323–342. 11 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein, Husserliana XVIII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 13–14; Logical Investigations, trans. J.N. Findlay, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 48.

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No such noematic concept of meaning would have been available to Husserl before 1907. Only on the basis of the formulation of his notion of the phenomenological reduction in The Idea of Phenomenology 12 and its subsequent development, especially in Ideas I, 13 would Husserl have had the conceptual resources necessary to identify a noematic concept of meaning distinct from the act-oriented concept of meaning we find in the first investigation. Hence, it is only in 1908 that we first see Husserl attempt to clarify the ambiguity in the Investigations’ concept of meaning (Bedeutung). 14 He now explicitly formulates a distinction—already foreshadowed, as he tell us, in the fifth and sixth investigations of the first edition 15 —between the phanological and phenomenological concepts of meaning. Husserl begins his discussion of this distinction with the familiar ideas that an expression says something and that what is said is to be distinguished from the object to which the expression refers. But this, he continues, does not imply that we shall find the meaning (Bedeutung), the ‘what’ that is said, in the act.16 The meaning is the identity, the ideal unity of what is said, in multiple acts of speaking (Sprechens) and meaning (Bedeutens). The meaning (Bedeutung), in other words, is a specific unity that individuates itself in the act of meaning (Bedeuten) in the same way that the species “red” individuates itself in the particular red of a particular object. The acts of meaning (Bedeutenen) present the object in a determinate manner, and these presentations—singular, psychic individualities—have certain moments in common that, when grasped as a universal, are the meaning as such.17 So far, as Husserl himself recognizes,18 we have in what Husserl here calls the “phanological concept” of meaning a doctrine very much like that of the first edition of the Investigations. But Husserl introduces another concept of meaning that is tied to the intentional object rather than to a species of moments really contained in acts. On the side of the intentional correlate, he says, we can point to the how of the object’s being grasped, the how of its being determined.19 To this “how” corresponds another sense of meaning. We can point, in other words, to “how” the object is meant. What is meant is the object in a determinate manner of givenness. The meaning on this view is the intended object

12

Cf. Edmund Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana II (2nd ed., The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973); The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). 13 Cf. Husserl, Ideen I, 56ff. (51ff.). 14 Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre, Sommersemester 1908, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XXVI (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 30–38. 15 Ibid., 6. 16 Ibid., 31. 17 Ibid., 32. 18 Ibid., 35. 19 Ibid., 36.

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precisely as meant, 20 and Husserl calls this conception of meaning the “phenomenological concept” of meaning. This view from 1908 is, I think, only an intermediate position. It is noteworthy that the phanological concept of meaning virtually disappears from Husserl’s later discussions of meaning. Instead Husserl concentrates his attention on developing the phenomenological or “noematic” theory of meaning, and in order to explicate this theory in greater detail, I turn to Husserl’s discussion of the noema in Ideas I. Husserl distinguishes three moments in the full noema: the thetic characteristic (the noematic correlate of the act-quality), the noematic sense (the assimilation into the intentional contents of what Husserl in the Investigations called “act-matter”), and the determinable X (i.e., the “innermost moment” of the noema).21 Husserl uses the image of a core to distinguish the noematic sense from the full noema. To get to the core, however, we have to work through the outer covering and disclose the core lying within. In a similar manner, Husserl now identifies what we might think of as the core of the core, an innermost moment which we disclose by working through the core (the noematic sense) to uncover within it the determinable “X,” i.e., the identical through a multiplicity of acts presenting the same object. Hence, Husserl can characterize the noematic sense both as that in which we find the identical object itself and that through which the act intends an object. More briefly, he can characterize the noema both as intended object qua intended and as sense. The noematic sense, inclusive of the determinable X, is what Husserl in 1908 referred to when he spoke of the phenomenological concept of meaning. With this new doctrine of meaning goes a new account of expression, for which we look to §124 of Ideas I where Husserl speaks of the interweaving of expressive act-strata with other acts. He claims that anything intentionally presented and, therefore, anything meant in the noematic sense, is expressible. Any “meant as meant,” he says, can be transformed into the meaning of an expression. The “meant as meant,” i.e., the logical content of a presentation, its noematic sense, is transformed into the determination of a sensuous sign. The noematic sense is, as it were, extracted from the full noema and attached to a linguistic expression. The expression thereby refers to the same object experienced in the underlying presentation and refers to it in the same determinate manner as the underlying experience. The intended objectivity precisely as intended is disclosed by both the underlying act and the expression precisely because the underlying act’s noematic sense has been made into the meaning of the expression. The expressive act, therefore, does not “give” or “confer” meaning in the manner that Husserl suggested in the Logical Investigations, i.e., by attaching an ideal meaning-species to a sensible carrier and thereby referring the 20 21

Ibid., 36–37. Cf. Ideen I, 206, 299–304 (217–18, 311–16).

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linguistic entity to an object. Instead, the expressive sign is now conceived as taking over and expressing the sense (Sinn) and reference constituted in the underlying experience; the expressive act is an act-stratum grounded in and laid over the underlying act. While not constitutive of meaning as such, of the “meant as meant,” the expressive act does add a new level of objectivity to the meaning. In becoming attached to the linguistic expression the expressible noematic sense becomes not only the meaning of the expression but a public and enduring presentation. The presentation of the object is preserved and made public in the expression. The intended object as intended has been named, and its being named with a publicly available and enduring linguistic expression preserves for everyone who understands the language the object’s significance precisely as constituted in the act underlying the expressive act. The noematic sense of the underlying act provides the rule for the expression’s meaningfulness, but, once constituted, the expressive meaning provides a rule for anyone bringing the objectivity to presence by means of that expression (even in the absence of the object). To give a rule to an expression points in the direction of grammar, to the grammatically well-formulated expression that faithfully expresses a sense and thereby presents an object in a determinate way.

III To understand better how the noematic sense gives the grammatical rule to the expression, let us deepen our consideration of the inner structure of the noematic sense. Within the noematic sense, we have said, we find the determinable X, which “makes up the necessary central point of the core and functions as ‘bearer’ for noematic peculiarities specifically belonging to the core, that is to say, the noematically modified properties of the ‘meant as meant.’” 22 Husserl makes the same distinction between the identical objectivity (the determinable X) and its “properties” in different language when he says shortly thereafter: Each consciousness has its What and each means “its” objective (Gegenstandliches); it is evident that we must, fundamentally speaking, be able in each consciousness to accomplish a noematic description of this [objective] “exactly as it is meant”; we acquire by explication and conceptual grasping a closed set of formal or material, materially determined or materially “undetermined” (“emptily” meant) “predicates,” and these in their modified meaning determine the content of the object-core of the noema under discussion.23

22 23

Husserl, Ideen I, 299 (311). Ibid., 301 (312–13, translation modified).

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The “predicates,” of course, as Husserl immediately points out, must be “predicates of ‘something.’”24 Hence, we can say that the determinable X as the “bearer” of “properties” is the “subject” of “predicates.” Husserl, in other words, has used both “ontological” terms (“bearer” and “properties”) and “logical” terms (“subject” and “predicates”) to describe the inner structure of the noematic sense. This comes as no surprise since the noema is both the intended object itself just as intended and a sense, i.e., the significance the object has for us in the experience in question wherein the object is meant in a determinate manner. Both the ontological language and the logical language suggest that there is a certain kind of articulation present in the noematic sense, i.e., that a certain kind of categoriality belongs to it. As Husserl says in developing the phenomenological concept of meaning in the 1908 lectures, “One often speaks of the intentional object as such or the meant object as such. And this ‘as such’…aims at the how of categorial grasping, the how of being determined, of being meant in general.”25 Husserl uses as examples the two definite descriptions “the victor at Jena” and “the vanquished at Waterloo.” In grasping these expressions we are directed toward an objective something, precisely the victor at Jena or the vanquished at Waterloo. If we are directed to them successively, then we are directed to objects that both are and are not the same. For in each expression The object pure and simple is not the theme. It never and nowhere comes into view. A theme comes into view, first this one and then that. But manifold themes can stand in a relation to one another such that we say that it is the same, the same person perhaps, that is meant, that is meant once thus and another time so, that is grasped conceptually. Meaning is this standing in view, this object grasped or thought in this or that “manner” as such. We should not be led astray by this expression, as if first the object stood in view and then there came to it a “manner,” as if the object was related to an act of thinking. Rather it simply stands in view precisely in the way we are aware of it: the victor at Jena.26 This points toward a more precise formulation of the distinction between the object pure and simple and the object as intended. Husserl now speaks of the distinction between the identical objectivity itself (the object pure and simple) and the categorially different modes in which it is meant. 27 The phenomenological conception of meaning understands meaning, in other words, always as categorially formed. “All predicative acts,” Husserl tells us,

24 25 26 27

Ibid., 301 (313). Husserl, Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre, 35–36. Ibid., 36–37. Cf. ibid., 45.

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“are categorial.” 28 But, he immediately adds, “categorial acts can also be non-predicative.”29 In the context of the Investigations, this is a puzzling view, for there categorial acts involved acts of thinking, of judging, of collecting, and the like. If the “as”-structure of perception—the fact that I always perceive an object in a determinate manner or under a certain aspect—were to indicate that perception is categorial, it would seem that perceptual sense would assume the form of propositional sense. Given the articulation of the noematic sense of perception into the determinable X and its “predicates,” this suggests the view that perceptual sense has the propositional form “This (the formal X) is p.”30 If this were what Husserl meant in saying that there are non-predicative, categorial acts, he would be inconsistent, for this view collapses the distinction between perception and judgment, between non-predicative and predicative categoriality—the very distinction to which he has just referred. The idea of a non-predicative categoriality reveals something important about the pure grammar of propositional forms. More specifically, it reveals something important about the notion of “formal” proper to a pure logical grammar. In the Investigations, Husserl claims that the a priori laws governing the possible combinations of meanings attach not to what is singular or particular in the meanings to be combined, but to the kinds under which the meanings to be combined fall. These a priori laws, in other words, apply to what Husserl there calls “semantic categories.” 31 Ordinarily, of course, we think of grammar in syntactical terms rather than semantic ones. But Husserl makes an important claim here, for he insists that the syntactical is never found apart from the semantical, that the formal is never found apart from the material, that there is a stuff on which syntax does its work.

IV It is therefore a propitious time to return to the notion of the “formal,” for we can now note that Bar-Hillel’s notion of the “formal” is deficient in three respects. First, Bar-Hillel conceives of the formal as something that could be isolated in the manner of what Husserl in the third investigation calls an independent part or “piece.”32 But Husserl’s conception of the formal must be understood after the manner of a non-independent part or “moment.” Husserl undoubtedly recognizes that it is possible to think of a moment as if it were a piece, as when I think of a species apart from the similar objects that have 28

Ibid., 59. Ibid. 30 Cf. the view of David Woodruff Smith and Ronald McIntyre, Husserl and Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1982), 192ff. 31 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen II/1, 326 (511). 32 Cf. ibid., 231–234 (437–440); for the language of “pieces” and “moments,” cf. ibid., 272 (467). 29

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given rise to the idea of the species or when I think of the ideal figure apart from the ordered manifold of shapes approaching the ideal limit-figure itself. To think of these ideal realities as independent is to be “forgetful” of their origins and to misconceive them in a fundamental way. It is yet one more example of what Whitehead calls the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.”33 Similarly, to think of the “formal” apart from the “material” it informs is to misconceive the formal. In the case of pure logical grammar, a formal syntax informs a semantic material or, as Husserl puts it, a “syntactical form” informs a “syntactical stuff.”34 We can see clearly now how misguided is Bar-Hillel’s criticism of Husserl for “detouring” through the realm of meaning. It is simply impossible to isolate the formal such that a pure logical grammar could be developed apart from any accounting for the relation between the syntactical and the semantical. From this it follows, second, that what Bar-Hillel takes to be the aim of a pure logical grammar cannot in fact be the aim of such an enterprise. Since Bar-Hillel understands the notion of a pure formal grammar exclusively in relation to the analytic consequences of the definition of language rather than in relation to the semantic stuffs formed by grammar and expressed in natural languages, he thinks, following the lead of his philosophical hero Carnap, that the task of a pure logical grammar is to formulate a pure logical syntax that 1) can serve as the pure form of any natural, object-language, and 2) is a language in its own right, an “ideal metalanguage” that avoids the ambiguities and imprecisions of natural languages and that exhausts the logical characteristics of language proper.35 Husserl, on the other hand, is not concerned to formulate an ideal metalanguage; he is concerned throughout with natural languages or, better, with natural language in general and the ideal structures within natural languages.36 His concern is to identify formal, grammatical structures that combine meanings into significant wholes and, more specifically, into judgments. Pure logical grammar, therefore, does not exhaust the nature of logic. It is anticipatory of other levels of logic,37 laying the foundation for the discussions of consistency and truth, of non-contradictoriness and evidence that we find in the higher levels of logic.38 Third, failing to recognize the correlativity of the syntactical and the semantical, Bar-Hillel also fails to recognize that the notions of “form” and “material” must be relativized in a radical way. Unities of form and material exist at different levels such that what is the unity of form and material at 33

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967), 51. 34 Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 299, 301 (294, 296–97). 35 Cf. Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), 1–2. 36 Cf. Edie, 139 n. 5. 37 Cf. Hanna, 323. 38 Cf. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, §§14–15.

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one level is not yet formed material at another. What is at one level the well-formed proposition “The daffodils are in bloom,” can be a stuff at another level, e.g., as nominalized in the proposition “That the daffodils are in bloom is a harbinger of spring.”39 Conjunctive, disjunctive, and hypothetical or conditional propositions have two fully formed propositions as their material. In their simplest versions, these compound propositions have as their material two simple categorical propositions—whether universal, particular, or singular. Hence, Husserl claims, we can work our way down through the levels at which we find the unity of syntactical forms and syntactical stuff until we come to absolutely fundamental forms for which a pure, syntactically unformed syntactical stuff serves as material.40

V This point occasions a closer look at simple, categorical propositions. All predications are articulated, i.e., each is characterized by a caesura that is at once a breaking and a joining, much like the joint of a finger. In the simplest predicative form S is p, we distinguish two, essentially connected moments: “S” and “is p.” The division is between the logical substrate, that about which something is said, and the predicate, that which is said about the subject.41 Each articulated part of the predication has a relation to something objective. But not every word in the proposition has such a relation. For example, in the predicative expression “The rose is red,” the words “rose” and “red” have in themselves a relation to something objective, whereas the words “the” and “is” do not. In the context of the well-formed expression, however, both the article and the copula take on a relation to something objective by virtue of the function they perform in the part of the predication in which they are included (i.e., the subject or the predicate) and, by extension, the function they perform in the predication as a whole. 42 The “the” in our example indicates that “rose” refers to an individual rose, not roses in general and not some particular kind of rose. The copula “is” both expresses a joining of the referents of the two terms “rose” and “red” in a synthesis of predicative identification and posits the rose’s (actually) being red (although these two functions can be separated as they are, for example, in the transition to a modally modified judgment).43 The moments of the predication that contain in themselves a relatedness to something objective Husserl calls “stuff-moments.” The moments of a predication that obtain their relatedness to something objective only in relation to stuff-moments, Husserl calls “moments of pure form.” In the case 39 40 41 42 43

Ibid., 301–302 (297–98). Ibid., 302 (298). Ibid., 299 (294). Ibid., 301 (296–97). Ibid., 305 (302).

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of the simple proposition “The rose is red,” the stuff-moments “rose” and “red” do not themselves have predicational or propositional form. They are pure syntactical stuffs; they are without syntax. The pure stuffs, such as “rose” and “red,” are abstracted from syntactical forms, i.e., from any particular syntactic role within a predication. If, however, we compare the pure stuff “rose” with the other pure stuffs “paper” and “person,” we find that something universal comes to the fore. Any stuff of this sort is ready to be taken up into a proposition as, say, a subject. In the same way, if we compare the pure stuffs “red,” “heavy,” “healthy,” “similar,” or “greater,” we again find something universal coming to the fore. Any stuff of this sort is ready to be taken up into a proposition as, say, a predicate adjective. These pure stuffs, then, while not syntactically formed, are not indifferent to syntax. It is not merely the case that they can be syntactically formed. The more important point is that they are not indifferent to syntax with respect to the places they can take within the whole. So, “rose” can appear, for example, as the subject of a predication (“The rose is red”), as a predicate nominative (“That’s a rose”), as the object of an action (“She picked the rose”), or as the object of a preposition (“The petals of that rose are so delicate”). But “red” 44 cannot so appear; “red” can appear instead as a determining adjective in a definite description or as a predicate adjective in a proposition. Husserl claims, therefore, that even these syntactical stuffs have a certain forming, although of a quite different sort. They are non-syntactic forms “of an entirely new style.”45 They are forms that do not belong to the syntax of the predication itself, although they do belong to the stuffs syntactically formed in the predication. Within the pure stuff, therefore, we must distinguish what Husserl calls the “core-stuff” from the “core-form.” The core-stuffs are the ultimate stuffs, and the core-forms are the ultimate forms. Husserl has thus isolated a restricted group of utterly novel, non-syntactical forms, and all the ultimate syntactical stuffs, i.e., the core stuffs, are grouped according to the “novel categories of pure grammar: substantivity and adjectivity—the latter being divided into the category of propertiness and the category of relationality (Adjectivität als Eigenschaftlichkeit und als Relationalität).”46 The pre-predicative, pre-propositional definite description “the red rose” gains its meaning from an underlying significative act, the perception of a red rose. Within the “meant as meant” or noematic sense we distinguish the determinable X—the “bearer of properties” and the “subject of predicates”—from its “properties” and “predicates.” The perceptual sense, in other words, is already structured in a certain manner. One way to view 44

I use “red” in this example as naming the color-attribute of an individual object as opposed to naming the species “red” for which the term “redness” could be substituted in a way that it cannot for the name of the particular attribute. 45 Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 309 (308). 46 Ibid., 310 (308); translation modified.

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this structure is to say that in perception there is a hermeneutic “as.” In seeing the rose, I see an individual thing over there as a rose or as a red rose, and I identify it as such, remembering, of course, that I do not first see an undetermined object and then grasp its “manner” of givenness or first see a rose and then grasp its givenness as red. There is, in other words, already within the noematic sense the differentiation that makes possible the substantival and adjectival forming of a stuff such that I can express these perceptual senses in the names “the rose” and “the red rose.”47 The non-syntactical and, therefore, pre-propositional and pre-predicative categoriality of the meaning-intentions underlying nominal expressions belongs to the significative intentions themselves rather than to the linguistic entities expressive of these meanings. The fact that pure grammatical categoriality is rooted in the things of experience allows us to understand how such categoriality can underlie linguistic differences.

VI That the categoriality of substantivity and adjectivity is present in the meaning-intentions underlying nominal expressions indicates the manner in which perception tends toward judgment but is not yet judgment. From the perspective of syntactical categoriality, the non-syntactical categoriality belonging to the presentations underlying nominal expressions is an unarticulated, anticipatory categoriality. The perceived and named objects are ready to be taken up into the judgment. The core-stuff formed by substantivity is ready to be taken up, for example and most importantly, as the subject of such a judgment, the object about which I judge. Similarly, the core-stuff formed by adjectivity is ready to be taken up as a determining adjective in the nominal expression that is the subject of the proposition or as a predicate adjective or relative. But the syntactical categoriality of the meaning-intentions underlying nominal expressions is not yet fixed. The non-syntactical categoriality remains open, but not indifferent, to various syntactical determinations that fix or determine the role of the syntactical stuffs in the proposition within a single language and across languages. Any empirical language, therefore, must have rules that transform this deep and pure grammatical structure of things as given, i.e., of the significances that things have for us, into the surface structures of the natural language. Our analyses of the structure of the noematic sense show that any

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I have not here considered proper names. They present a difficult and special case. In a sense proper names might be thought a single term that unifies a set of definite descriptions. So, for example, hearing the name “Napoleon,” I do not simply intend Napoleon in some undetermined way; I intend him as “victor at Jena” or “vanquished at Waterloo” or both (and, possibly, in many other ways, as, e.g., short, imperious, and so forth). The proper name masks the categoriality belonging to these “improper” names but does not annul it.

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empirical language must have, first, rules for definite descriptions with their determining adjectivity, rules that allow for the expression of our achievement of synthetic acts of the identification of objects. Any empirical language must have rules, second, for predication, rules that allow for the articulated expression of the unarticulated categoriality of the significative intentions expressed in names and definite descriptions. Such rules will transform the meant substantivity into the subject of the declarative sentence expressing a predicative judgment and the meant adjectivity into the predicate of that sentence. I am unable to explore what such a set of transformational rules would look like for any single language much less for many languages. But I do want to emphasize that for Husserl the categories of pure logical grammar are rooted in the things present to consciousness. They are not purely formal, as Bar-Hillel would have it; instead they are forms that are intimately tied to the semantic stuffs they inform. Moreover, they are not innate principles of mind, along the lines of Cartesian innate ideas or Kantian forms or hard-wiring in the brain, that are imposed upon a formless material. All these views would be other versions of the kind of difficulty we find in Bar-Hillel; they fail to account for the ways in which the forms of language are internally connected to the semantic material they inform. In concluding, I wish to contextualize these ideas about pure logical grammar with three brief remarks. First, our engagement with core-forms and core-stuffs is always already clothed in a particular natural language. The core-forms are present to me, in other words, from the beginning in their ontological, logical, and grammatical clothing. A particular substantivity, for example, is nameable, but it is nameable for us only in the language or languages we speak. Second, our engagement with these core-forms and core-stuffs is always intersubjective. Whether as children or as adults, our grasp of the things is always aided by others who name the objects for us and who articulate their understandings of things. We can see here the anticipatory character both of perception (understood broadly enough that the “attributes” presented might also be affective, evaluative, or practical in character) and of pure logical grammar. Both are aimed at the articulated understanding of things; both are aimed toward evidence and the logic of truth (again, broadly conceived). In the pursuit of the truth of things, we jointly disclose the significance of things. What we might call the “linguisticality” of things, i.e., their having both expressible content and expressible formal structures, indicates that not all intelligibility arises from intersubjectivity and language. But neither does it arise wholly from the things. We must disclose it and in doing so, we introduce nuances and shadings of various kinds, nuances and shadings that are correlative to our interests, attitudes, backgrounds, and traditions. More important, this fact of introducing nuance and shading helps to understand in a less formal and less abstract manner the complications of pure logical grammar that arise at higher levels. That particular attributes are

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picked out for attention depends in part on our intention, e.g., the interest that is at work in our encounter with the object. That different subjects might have different interests leads to multiple presentations and multiple articulations of the object. The presence of this multiplicity underlies, I am claiming, some of the complications of grammar. So, for example, you might say to me that so-and-so’s study of Husserl’s theory of the noema is helpful, to which I might reply “That so-and-so’s study of Husserl’s theory of the noema is helpful is doubtful.” My nominalization of your judgment arises in the context of an intersubjective articulation and search for the truthfulness in things. The same is true when we consider the formation of compound propositions, especially disjunctions and conditionals. In considering some state of affairs, for example, you and I might arrive at different judgments, neither one of which is evident enough to compel our joint agreement. Nevertheless, we both live in the conviction of the judgment “S is p or S is q.” Or, if we are jointly articulating the consequences of a certain belief, one of us might say to the other, “Well, if you believe that p, it would also follow that q.” Even conjunction arises in such contexts, for in natural speech, we seldom encounter pure conjunctions. Typically, they are introduced not by “and,” but by words such as “but,” “moreover,” “however,” and “furthermore,” words that indicate that the conjunction is introducing contrastive or supplementary considerations. Third, and finally, different sorts of nuancing and shading of meaning become embedded as features of traditional beliefs in different linguistic cultures, i.e., as features of particular languages, thereby accounting—at least in part—for the differences in the surface grammars of different languages. This is what makes translation between languages often difficult. However, Husserl’s theory of pure logical grammar reveals to us that the logical forms expressed in the grammatical structures of a language have their deep roots in the things of experience themselves. Not all intelligibility comes from intersubjectivity and language; intelligibility is rooted in the presentations of things as such, in the core-forms of substantivity and adjectivity. This is what makes translation, even if difficult and inexact, possible. These remarks reveal, I believe, the importance of tying the formal to the material. Husserl’s conception of the formal and of pure logical grammar is such that we can see the formal at work, not in a purely abstract metalanguage, but in the everyday workings of multiple natural languages. It is no small part of Husserl’s genius that he was able to see the formal structures of things in ways that are so faithful to our lived experience, including our gathering from all over the world in Beijing for a conference whose language is English and whose purpose is to discuss the work of a philosopher who wrote in German.

6 ______________________________ The Problem of the Phenomenology of Feeling in Husserl and Scheler NI Liangkang Zhongshan University, PR China

Of the Logical Investigations and inside the phenomenological circle, the most attention is paid to the fifth investigation. Perhaps logicians, linguists, symbolic philosophers, and analytical philosophers will insist on their own ideas about the former four investigations in the first and second voLUmes of Logical Investigations, but in their own circle phenomenologists will only argue in favor of the fifth or sixth investigation.1 For Husserl himself, “the most important investigation from a phenomenological point of view” is not the fifth investigation but the sixth.2 However, as he noted, “The inquiry back from the various objectivities into the subjective experience and the active formations of a subject, which is conscious of such objectivities,”3 (that is, the actions of phenomenology) manifests itself most obviously in the fifth investigation. According to Husserl, “in it cardinal problems of phenomenology (in particular those of the phenomenological doctrine of judgment) were tackled.” 4 The fifth 1

Of course, persons outside the circle of phenomenology frequently lay particular stress on the last two investigations; for example, J. N. Findlay, the English translator of Logical Investigations, said, “it may also claim, particularly in its last two studies, ...to have reached an Aristotelian level of many-sided profundity, and to have sketched the basic grammar of conscious experience in a manner never before or since surpassed, or even equaled” (Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970], 2). 2 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (hereafter LU I), ed. E. Holenstein, Husserliana XVIII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 15. 3 Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. W. Biemel, Husserliana IX (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), 28–29. This was Husserl’s conclusion when he reviewed LU in 1925. The full text of the related passage is as follows, “The inquiry back from the various objectivities into the subjective experience and the active formations of a subject, which is conscious of such objectivities, was prescribed from the beginning by certain dominant intentions, which certainly (I had not yet then reached reflective clarity) did not manifest themselves in the form of clear thoughts and requests.” 4 Cf. LU I, 14–15.

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investigation thus became the original introduction to phenomenology. The understanding of the phenomenology of consciousness often returns to this investigation. It signifies the origin and secret of Husserl’s phenomenology to a great degree. From the pure logic in Prolegomena to the phenomenology of intentional experience in the fifth investigation, the itinerary of thought of the whole LU goes along the notion of “asking in retrospect” from noema to noesis. This direction of thought and itinerary, which makes the work “a systematically bound chain of investigations,”5 runs through all of these investigations. The “systematic liaison” between the fourth and fifth investigations manifests itself as a founding relationship. More precisely, the passage from the fourth investigation to the fifth is in fact a return from the higher founding level of noema to the deeper level of noesis. It only signifies that if there is no return to the founding formation, the formation founded will be impossible to be given in itself. The founding links are also called the “origin” in the founding relations. But the concept “origin” here should not be considered as the genetic “origin” in genetic phenomenology, for Husserl still concentrated on “the pure descriptive psychological analysis,” and it seems that he was not eager to give “regard…to genetic connections.”6 In Chapter 1, Part 1 of my book《現象學及其效應：胡塞爾與當代德 國 哲 學 》 (Phenomenology and its Effects: Husserl and Contemporary German Philosophy, Beijing, 1994), the discussion is fundamentally looked upon as an introduction to the fifth investigation. A whole section is devoted to this subject (Section 3) and to the subject of exemplificative reconstruction (Section 4) in Husserl’s analysis of intentionality in the fifth investigation. Therefore, the discussion on these subjects will not be repeated. A descriptive analysis of non-objectifying acts and, first of all, of acts of intentional feeling are our critical concerns.

1.

From Intentional Experience to Intentional Feeling

“Intentionality,” which is used to indicate the most general essence of consciousness, is a core concept of phenomenology. It is due to this point that the title of the fifth investigation is “On Intentional Experience and its ‘Contents’”; and its second chapter is even entitled “Consciousness as Intentional Experience,” i.e., consciousness is intentional experience. As to the most fundamental proposition of the phenomenology of consciousness, Husserl admitted at the beginning his close relationship with his teacher

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LU I, 11. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (hereafter LU II/1), ed. U. Panzer, Husserliana XIX/1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 411. 6

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Franz Brentano, who himself traced the tradition of the problem ‘intentionality’ back to medieval philosophy. The kernel of this tradition lies in regarding the most fundamental character of the “psychological phenomenon” of intention as “intentional.” Brentano said that, “every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the mediaeval schoolmen called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and by what we, not without ambiguity, call the relation to a content, the direction to an object (by which a reality is not to be understood) or an immanent objectivity. Each mental phenomenon contains something as object in itself, though not all in the same manner.”7 Here, Brentano first defined “intentionality” as a relation with an object and as an orientation towards an object, then defined it as a possession of objects in different ways. From Husserl’s own explanation of the word “intentional,” we can also determine that he inherited Brentano’s ideas: “The qualifying adjective ‘intentional’ names the essence common to the class of experiences we wish to make off, the peculiarity of intending, of referring to what is objective, in a presentative or other analogous fashion.”8 But compared with Brentano’s definition, Husserl’s illumination seems to be quite vague, for the relationship with an object has not been further determined and Brentano’s other definitions, such as orientation relations and possession ones, have not been clearly adopted by Husserl. The reason for this is that Husserl has here approached but not entered the field of constitutive phenomenology. In other words, consciousness is always the consciousness about something. Does this basic principle of phenomenology ever signify that consciousness always aims at an object or that consciousness always constitutes an object? To this question, Husserl did not yet give any explicit key. However, like the founding relations of presentation, judgment, and emotion in Brentano, the founding relations between various consciousnesses in LU still constitutes the major theme of Husserl’s phenomenology. In the phenomenological description of this founding relationship, what Husserl first of all considered doing was to differentiate between presentation and judgment. In his differentiation, he has broken away from Brentano’s definition of his system of concepts. For Husserl, presentation is objectifying a thing, for example, watching a “desk”; judgment is objectifying a state-of-a thing, for example, conscious that “The desk is moved.” From the viewpoint of linguistics, the former belongs to a word, and the latter to a sentence. In Husserl’s theoretical system of phenomenology, both still belong to the genus of an objectifying act. In the terms used in LU, these kinds of acts can intentionally constitute objects and the actions and states of things. What follows is an attempt to distinguish between objectifying acts and non-objectifying acts. Husserl thinks that an objectifying act is the foundation 7

F. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, I:115, as quoted by Husserl in LU II/1, 380. 8 Cf. LU II/1, 392.

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of a non-objectifying act. The so-called non-objectifying act signifies such an act that itself does not possess the mark of being object-constituting but nevertheless aims at an object. Generally speaking, an objectifying act is equal to a cognitive act, and “non-objectifying act” mostly refers to an emotional act and a willing act. We still cannot say that all cognitive acts are intentional and that none of the emotional acts and the willing acts is intentional, for emotional acts and willing acts are not objectifying acts, but acts aiming at objects. In a phenomenological sense, the phrase “Consciousness is always that of something,” does not mean that consciousness always constitutes an object, but that consciousness always contains an object. For example, liking something does not signify constituting it, but at least signifies containing and possessing it intentionally, or this kind of liking will be groundless. We can distinguish the broad sense and the narrow sense of the concept “intentional” or “intention” in Husserl. If we define “intentional” as “object-constituting,” the emotional acts and the willing acts will be “non-intentional”; but if we define “intentional” as “object-orientating,” the emotional acts and the willing acts will be “intentional.” What is reflected in the former case is the concept of “intentionality” or “intention” in the narrow sense, and what is dealt with in the latter sense is the concept of “intentionality” or “intention” in the broad sense. We can then directly enter the problems of “intentional experience” and “non-intentional experience” of which Husserl has spoken in the fifth investigation. When Husserl discussed “intentional experience” and “non-intentional experience” in Chapter 2, he obviously used the word “intentional” in the narrow sense, because all experiences should be intentional in the broad sense. If we do not consider the category “intentional experience” for the present, “non-intentional experience” must be related to emotional acts and willing acts, which are also the “feeling” (Gefühl) or “act of feeling” (Gefühlsakt) discussed here by Husserl. To recapitulate: Objectifying acts are intentional acts in the strict sense. They constitute objects and states-of-things. Accordingly they can be divided into two kinds of acts: presentation and judgment, which Husserl called intuition and judgment. Non-objectifying acts are intentional acts in the broad sense; they contain objects but do not constitute them. It is due to this point that they must be based on acts that can constitute objects, i.e., the objectifying acts.

2.

The Problem of Intentionality of Acts of Feeling

Brentano also offered a further classification of “psychological phenomena,” that is, as the determination of the founding relations between “presentation,” “judgment,” and “emotions.” Husserl said that, “Brentano’s

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attempted classification of mental phenomena into presentations, judgments and emotions (‘phenomena of love and hate’) is plainly based upon this ‘manner of reference’, of which three basically different kinds are distinguished (each admitting of many further specifications).”9 This is in fact where Husserl’s thought, which distinguishes objectifying acts (presentation and judgment) and non-objectifying acts, originated from, and this is of course also the source of thought for “feeling phenomenology,” put forward by another phenomenologist M. Scheler. We will come back to this later. Generally speaking, it is obvious that presentation and judgment have intentionality. Presentation is always the objectification of something and judgment is always the judgment of some state-of-things. Both of them are objectifying. But the situation becomes more complicated with regard to feeling acts. For the present, this kind of complication is not a Heiderggerian complication, such as “anxiety” (Angst) without object and the “care” (Sorge) without objectivity, and so forth. Husserl did not tackle these “fundamental emotions” in LU. The most examples he gave here are as follows, “pleased by a melody,” “displeased at a shrill blast,” etc. They have their own objects, that is, a certain kind of music and a certain whistle here. “Intentional feeling” signifies such feeling acts or emotional acts aimed at objects. In Section 15a, Husserl discussed the question of whether or not intentional feeling exists. At first sight, what we discussed here seems to be a question about the definition of terms, but a deeper study will demonstrate that this question is related to the basic problems of philosophy. A person who recognizes the intentionality of feeling will think that feeling has also an object, for example, the liking for something, the dislike of somebody, etc. Therefore, “human experiences commonly classed as ‘feeling’ have an undeniable, real relation to something objective.”10 But “those who question the intentionality of feeling say: Feelings are mere states, not acts or intentions. Where they relate to objects, they owe their relation to a complication with presentations.”11 The real difference between the two ideas does not lie in the question of whether a feeling act contains an object, but in the question of how a feeling act contains an object. If a feeling act must be aimed at an object—as Husserl said in an example, “pleasure without anything pleasant is unthinkable,”12— 9

Ibid., 380. Ibid., 402. 11 Ibid. 12 “And it is unthinkable,” Husserl continued to say, “not because we are here dealing with correlative expressions, as when we say, e.g., that a cause without an effect, or a father without a child, is unthinkable: but because the specific essence of pleasure demands a relation to something pleasing.” Therefore, there is “no desire whose specific character can do without something desired, no agreement or approval without something agreed on or approved etc. etc.” Ibid., 404. 10

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and the feeling act itself has not possessed the capacity of constitution (this word was not used by Husserl in LU), the object aimed at in the feeling act can only be given by some other acts, namely, by the objectifying act (such as the presentation) that can constitute objects. In this sense, objectifying acts can go without non-objectifying acts. The process does not work in reverse. Therefore, non-objectifying acts are based on objectifying acts. Accordingly, a feeling only contains the objects constituted by the objectifying acts and in this sense it is intentional; but it cannot constitute objects itself, and in this sense it is non-intentional. This is the basic idea held by Brentano. As Husserl pointed out, “Brentano who defends the intentionality of feelings, also maintains without inconsistency that feelings, like all acts that are not themselves presentations, have presentations as their foundations.” 13 But Brentano’s analysis of intention still leads to the question: Are there two intentions in the feeling act or just one intention? Husserl thought that, “Brentano thinks we have here two intentions built on one another: the underlying, founding intention gives us the presented object, the founded intention the felt object. The former is separable from the latter, the latter inseparable from the former, His opponents think there is only one intention here, the presenting one.”14 Until then, Husserl had not deviated from Brentano’s position. He thought, “If we subject the situation to a careful phenomenological review, Brentano’s conception seems definitely to be preferred.”15 Of course, what is expressed here in language still seems a little disordered, for the following two explanations can be justified here: On the one hand, there is only one object in a feeling act; but there are two intentions in it, namely the two intentions aiming at the same object. They are the intention of presentation and that of feeling.16 On the other hand, there are two objects in a feeling act: the object presented and the object felt. Take a harsh whistle for an example: Hearing this harsh whistle is a presentation of this sound, that is, the sound as an object is constituted; and the antipathy to this harsh whistle is the feeling directed to the sound. Now the question to be answered is: Is this feeling a feeling of “whistle” or that of “harsh”? Perhaps this is only a question of terminology, i.e., an extrinsic and non-essential question. Can we say that a feeling act feels the felt intentional object and that a presentative act presents the presented intentional object? No matter what we call the things coming forth here—two kinds of intentions (a feeling intention and a presentative intention) or two kinds of objects (an object felt and an object presented)—the intentions are related to an identical thing (a harsh sound). 13 Ibid., 402. Brentano’s two ideas quoted here by Husserl come respectively from: Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, vol. 1, 116f and 107f. 14 Ibid., 403. 15 Ibid. 16 Husserl has offered a basis for what he has said, “Pleasure or distaste direct themselves to the presented object, and could not exist without such a direction.” Ibid.

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But it seems that the question is not so simple, and it will become more and more complicated with the deepening of the analysis. Even if we put aside such a suspicion: when we hear the sound and feel its harshness, does that belong to two kinds of acts or to one composite act? Is this related to two objects or to one composite object? We are still confronted with this kind of difficulty: What on earth is the relationship between the two parts or the two elements? The attitude of Brentano and Husserl—at least that of Husserl in the LU phase—does not seem to be clear enough on this question. Husserl admitted, “These are all intentions, genuine acts in our sense. They all ‘owe’ their intentional relation to certain underlying presentations. But it is part of what we mean by such ‘owing’ that they themselves really now have what they owe to something else.”17 That is to say, the relations between them are implicative of each other. But it seems that his further analysis has encountered difficulties. He only pointed out that the feeling act does not proceed in such an order; that is, the feeling act at first has a presentative object, then this presentative object results in a feeling act. The feeling act does not proceed on the basis of the law of causation; it is not caused by extrinsic things in reality. What this act requires is only the presentative object as an intentional object, and so on. He took aesthetic feeling as an example, “Pleasantness or pleasure do not belong as effect to this landscape considered as a physical reality, but only to it as appearing in this or that manner, perhaps as thus and thus judged of or as reminding us of this or that, in the conscious act here in question: it is as such that the landscape ‘demands’, ‘arouses’ such feelings.”18 The “requires” and “awakens” here are put into quotation marks. This explains that in his analysis of intention in the LU phase, Husserl had not yet found a suitable instrument to analyse non-objectifying acts, which are more complicated than objectifying acts. It is due to this that when we encounter Scheler’s question of value feeling, we will think that Husserl’s analysis of non-objectifying acts seems to be somewhat insufficient. This insufficiency will even damage the founding relations between objectifying acts and non-objectifying acts. In any case, feeling is “intentional,” not only in the broad sense but also in the narrow sense. That is to say, the non-objectifying act also refers to an object, only in a sense different from that of the objectifying act. But does any non-intentional feeling exist? This is another question Husserl faced in the fifth investigation.

3.

The Problem of Non-intentionality of Acts of Feeling

It does not seem very strange that all feeling acts should be intentional, for all conscious acts are intentional. This is a fundamental principle of Husserl’s phenomenology. But could it be that a non-intentional feeling 17 18

Ibid., 404. Ibid., 405.

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really does not exist? If we really find a non-intentional feeling, we can demonstrate the non-universality of Husserl’s principle of intentionality at the same time. Before we answer this question, we will make a classified research of the act “feeling.” What is first of all considered is the sensible feeling, which comprises liking, comfort, enjoyment, pain, etc. Compared with the feelings of love, hate, mercy, and abomination that we mentioned above, they belong to a totally different genus. Perhaps with the help of Husserl’s terms we can generalize them and include them into two broader categories: pain-feeling (sensible pain) and enjoyment-feeling (sensible enjoyment). Or perhaps, with the help of Scheler’s terms, we can regard them as activities corresponding to sensible values (comfort-discomfort). This class of acts of consciousness is very close to sensation (Empfindung); therefore, we often mention them and sensation in the same breath. For example, when the feeling of pain is related to touch, the feeling of a burning hand contains a pain-feeling and a touch-feeling. Take another example, when we hear a voice that is pleasing to the ear, feelings of hearing and enjoyment are frequently integrated indivisibly. What status, then, does sensation have in Husserl’s analysis of consciousness? Is it that it can be regarded as a non-intentional act of consciousness or an act of feeling? So-called “sensation,” for Husserl, is basically synonymous to “datum” or “hyle.” The connotation he gives to “sensation” does not deviate from the traditional concept of sensation; for example, it does not deviate from the concept of “sensation” used by Brentano or from the notion of “sensation” as understood by English empiricists. Husserl defined “sensation” in the normal and narrow sense as “the intuitively presentative contents of outer perception.”19 In this way, any of the senses, whether of touch, taste, smell, hearing, or sight, is indeed non-intentional. Husserl himself never denied that sensible feeling is non-intentional in nature. But Husserl did not think that sensation is an independent act of consciousness, instead, he regarded sensation as the real contents of an independent act of consciousness.20 “Sensation” in this sense is synonymous with “sensible hyle” (or “hyle” for short) and “sensible content.”21 That is to say, sensation and the objects felt are two different expressions for the same 19 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (hereafter LU II/2), ed. U. Panzer, Husserliana XIX/2 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 610. 20 The following explanation of “sensation” comes from the entry “Empfindung” in this writer’s book, A General Interpretation of Husserl’s Concepts of Phenomenology. For more detailed discussions about this concept, please refer to the entries “Empfindung,” “Datum,” “Hyle,” etc. in this book. 21 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Errinerung 1898–1925, ed. E. Marbach, Husserliana XXIII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), 309: “So versteht sich, warum ich in den Logischen Untersuchungen Empfinden und Empfindungsinhalt identifizieren konnte.”

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thing; this signifies the primitive status of consciousness, in which there is no split between subject and object.22 The sensible hyle constitutes the real content of consciousness. This means that there exist non-intentional components and elements, but that a complete and independent act of non-intentional consciousness is impossible. With regard to this, “sensation” itself is not a complete act of consciousness; it is only determined contents owned by certain acts of consciousness.23 Therefore, the essential difference between “sensation” as content and “perception” (Wahrnehmung) lies in the fact that the former can only be experienced whereas the latter can be reflected upon.24 Moreover, although objects are constituted on the basis of “sensation” through “apperception” (or “apprehension”), “sensation” itself is not an object, it only provides the object with materials.”25 This is the essential difference between a “sensation” and an object. Precisely in these two levels of sense mentioned above, Husserl stressed that, “sensations cannot themselves count as appearance, whether in the sense of acts or of apparent objects.”26 This understanding of sensation is identical with Brentano’s ideas. It is obvious that, here, Husserl was influenced by Brentano. This can be seen from his discussion, as follows, “Brentano has already pointed to the ambiguity here dealt with, in discussing the intentionality of feelings. He draws a distinction in sense if not in words, between sensations of pain and pleasure (feeling-sensations, Gefühlsempfindungen) and pain and pleasure in the sense of feelings. The contents of the former – or, as I should simply say, the former – are in this terminology ‘physical’, while the latter are ‘psychical phenomena’, and they belong therefore to essentially different genera. This notion I regard as quite correct, but only doubt whether the meaning of the word ‘feeling’ does not lean predominantly towards ‘feeling-sensation’, and whether the many acts we call ‘feelings’ do not owe their name to the feeling-sensations with which they are essentially inter woven. One must of course not mix up questions of suitable terminology with questions regarding the factual correctness of Brentano’s distinction.”27 From this we can see that Husserl basically accepted the distinctions made by Brentano, but he did not adopt the terms used by Brentano. That is to say, both Husserl and Brentano thought that “sensation” and “feeling” were not the same and that they do not belong to an identical genus of 22

Cf. H. U. Asemissen, Strukturanalytische Probleme der Wahrnehmung in der Phänomenologie Husserls (Cologne: Kölner Universitätsverlag, 1957), 29ff. 23 Cf. Husserliana XXIII, 83. 24 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. K. Schuhmann, Husserliana III/1 (new ed., The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), §45. 25 LU II/2., 764f. 26 Cf. ibid. 27 LU II/1, 407–408.

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acts. The “sensation” is not an independent act of consciousness but a part of an independent act of consciousness. In Husserl’s words, sensations are “at best presentative contents of objects of intentions, but not themselves intentions.”28 On the contrary, “feeling” is a non-independent act. The term “non-independent” signifies that the feeling act cannot stand alone; it is possible only in a composite act, which refers to a compounding of a feeling act with one or more presentative acts (or objectifying acts). Strictly speaking, the feeling act can only emerge in its compound with a presentative act and an objectifying act. In this way, if we say that all acts are intentional, this means in fact that the feeling act must be intentional because it must merge with an intentional act. Of course, the “merging together” here is only a summarization in principle. We can often see in effective happenings that the feeling act still exists but that the presentative acts on which the feeling act is based has completely disappeared. This is also correct conversely. Husserl gave an example, “Sensations of pleasure and pain may continue, though the act-character built upon them may lapse. When the facts which provoke pleasure sink into the background, are no longer apperceived as emotionally colored, and perhaps cease to be intentional objects at all, the pleasurable excitement may linger on for a while: it may itself be felt as agreeable. Instead of representing a pleasant property of the object, it is referred merely to the feeling-subjects, or is itself presented and pleases.”29 We can give some more detailed examples: For example, even if a relative passed away long ago and no longer appears in front of us, we still feel sad, a feeling we often call “sadness without a name.” Another example, the melancholy, dreariness, and sentiment that are without a name, or excitement and delight for no reason, are so far from the things or events that had “activated” them that we do not know and even cannot know their origins, and so forth. But in principle, Husserl thought that these feelings must be founded on the related things or events that had ‘activated’ them. In this sense, Husserl could say, “Each act has its own appropriate, intentional, objective reference: this is as true of complex as of simple acts. Whether the composition of an act out of partial acts may be, if it is an act at all, it must have a single objective correlate, to which we say it is ‘directed’, in the full, primary sense of the word.”30 In this way, we have answered the question in the beginning of this section: feeling acts are also intentional, that is, they also refer to objects, even if they refer to objects that are not originally constituted by themselves.

28 29 30

Ibid., 407.. Ibid., 409. Ibid., 415.

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Another Kind of Analysis of Act of Feeling

Such an interpretation of the founding relations between acts of consciousness has not been recognized or agreed upon by every member of the phenomenological movement. Not only in Scheler’s but also in Heidegger’s phenomenological understanding, non-objectifying acts are not founded any more on their relations with cognitive acts or objectifying acts. But here we only pay attention to the Scheler’s analysis. In Brentano’s and Husserl’s intentional analysis of feeling acts mentioned above, we quoted a passage by Husserl, “Brentano thinks we have here two intentions built on one another: the underlying, founding intention gives us the presented object, the founded intention the felt object. The former is separable from the latter, the latter inseparable from the former, His opponents think there is only one intention here, the presenting one.”31 Husserl seemed to prefer “Brentano’s conception definitely.”32 Of course, the following analysis indicates that the word “intention” would only be valuable after a strict definition. In a strict sense, feeling acts contain double signifying relations with noema, referring to the presented object (for example, to the scenery seen or imagined) and to the object felt (to the satisfying scenery). But only one noema (scenery) is contained in the feeling act. The satisfying scenery must be based on the noema intuited (perceived or imagined), for feeling acts cannot constitute their own noema. They must be with the help of the noema constituted by intuitive acts. But the conditions and the questions have somewhat changed in Scheler. In Scheler’s intentional analysis, feeling acts have their own noema. This noema is not the various real objects and conceptual objects constituted by the intuitive acts of objectivation, but the various values: “Values of the Person and Values of Things” (Personwerte und Dingwerte), “Values of Oneself and Values of the Other” (Eigenwerte und Fremdwerte), “Values of Acts, Values of Functions, and Values of Reactions” (Aktwerte, Funktionswerte, Reaktionswerte), “Values of Basic Moral Tenor, Values of Deeds, and Values of Success” (Gesinnungswerte, Handlungswerte, Erfolgswerte), “Values of Intention and Values of Feeling-States” (Intentionswerte und Zustandswerte), “Values Terms of Relations, Values of Forms of Relations, Values of Relations” (Fundamentwerte, Formwerte und Beziehungswerte), “Individual Values and Collective Values” (Individualwerte und Kollektivwerte), and “Self-Values and Consecutive Values” (Selbstwerte und Konsekutivwerte). The intentional relation between feeling and value understood by Scheler is clearly announced in the following propositions: feeling here “is not externally brought together with an object, whether immediately or through a representation (which can be related to a feeling either 31 32

Ibid., 403. Ibid.

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mechanically and fortuitously or by mere thinking). On the contrary, feeling originally intends its own kind of objects, namely, capable of ‘fulfillment’ and ‘non-fulfillment’.33 He explained with an annotation, “For this reason all ‘feeling of’ is in principle ‘understandable’.” We must pay special attention to the sentence stressed by Scheler: “Feeling originally intends its own kind of objects”! This means that what the feeling acts rely on, according to Scheler, is not the object provided by the presentative act, but the object proper to itself, or we can say, it is the object originally constituted by itself, namely value. That is to say, feeling has its own object and presentation also has its own object. In this way the essential founding relation between feeling and presentation, which is valid in Husserl, does not exist any more in Scheler. Precisely because of this, Scheler’s analysis of feeling acts is totally different from the relative descriptions given by Husserl. If we considered that the book Formalism was written sixteen years after the publication of LU, we can even believe that Scheler’s discussions are precisely pertinent to the analysis of the founding relationship between objectifying acts and non-objectifying acts by Husserl, and that these discussions are deliberate. Therefore, it is not strange that Scheler talked about “intentional feeling” (intentionales Fühlen) here. The intention here is not only intention in the sense of “aiming to,” but also intention in the sense of “constitution,” namely the so-called “original emotive intentionality.”34 Before giving a further explanation of this concept, we are still required to investigate Scheler’s differentiation of the whole “feeling.” He took advantage of the characteristics of German to distinguish “feeling” in general as “feeling acts” (Fühlen) and “feeling contents” or “the felt” (Gefühl). For him, “feeling acts” are intentional and “feeling contents” are aimed at. If “feeling acts” are put aside, Scheler has at least made a triple distinction in terms of “feeling content” and “the felt”: first, “the feeling of feelings in the sense of feeling-states and their modes, e.g., suffering, enjoying”; second, “the feeling of objective emotional characteristics of the atmosphere (restfulness of a river, serenity of the skies, sadness of a landscape), in which there are emotionally qualitative characteristics that can also be given as qualities of feeling, but never as ‘feelings’, i.e., as experienced in relatedness to an ego”; third, “the feeling of values, e.g., agreeable, beautiful, good. It is here that feeling gains a cognitive function in addition to its intentional nature, whereas it does not do so in the first two cases.”35 According to what Scheler has said, feeling acts do not always function as constituting of an object. In the three kinds of feeling contents listed by 33 M. Scheler, Formalism in the Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. M. S. Frings and R. L. Funk (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 258. 34 Ibid., 256. 35 Ibid., 257.

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him, we can say that the feeling of value or constitution of objects is a feeling act related to “objective” feeling contents, namely the third feeling content mentioned above, for in Scheler’s eyes values and the ranking between values are objective. Besides that, there are still feeling acts that are related to the “subjective” feeling contents (Gefühlszustände, i.e., the first feeling contents mentioned above) and the feeling contents of “unification of subject and object” (Stimmungen, i.e., the second feeling contents mentioned above), although Scheler himself has not given such a definition. The “intentional feeling acts” in the strict sense are the feeling acts related to the third feeling. This can be supported by Scheler’s texts, “Let us call these feelings that receive values the class of intentional function of feeling. It is not necessary for these functions to be connected with the objective sphere through the mediation of so-called objectifying acts of representation, judgment, etc. Such meditation is necessary only for feeling-states, not for genuine intentional feeling, the world of objects ‘comes to the fore’ by itself, but only in terms of its value-aspect. The frequent lack of pictorial objects in intentional feeling shows that feeling is originally an ‘objectifying act’ that does not require the mediation of representation.”36 We now begin to face the question: What kind of relationship exists between feeling acts and between feeling acts and the other acts? Concretely speaking, what kind of founding relationship appears here?

5.

Another Kind of Understanding of the Founding Relations

It is very obvious up to now that “feeling” to Scheler had a much broader sense than to Husserl. It even contains in itself the acts of presentation and judgment, i.e., the “cognitive functions” in Scheler’s terms; for example, the judgment and differentiation of truth and falsehood, etc. To a certain degree, this is determined by the noema of “feeling acts.” In Formalism Scheler repeatedly resorts to Pascal’s expressions such as “The heart has its reasons” (Le cæur a ses raisons), “order of heart” (Ordre du cæur) or “logic of heart” (Logique du cæur). It should be noted that, in Scheler’s eyes, the “reason” mentioned here is not reason in the intellectual sense or the reason of causes, but the “reason” of “order” and “logic”; to be precise, it is “order, law” (Ordnung, Gesetz).37 The saying, “The heart has its reasons” also means that between the feeling acts there exist founding relations and founding orders conforming to law. If we talk about the essential founding relations or the founding relations conforming to law here, at least for Scheler, three aspects of possible founding relations must be considered. They are as follows from a broader sense to narrower sense: 1) the possible founding relations between feeling acts and non-feeling acts in the totality of conscious acts; 2) the possible 36 37

Ibid., 259. Ibid., 253.

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founding relations between intentional feeling acts and non-intentional feeling acts in the totality of feeling acts; 3) the possible founding relations between various intentional feeling acts. Let us consider these three aspects of the founding relations one by one from back to front, namely from the bottom to the top. First of all, let us look at the founding relations between different intentional feeling acts. For Scheler, the various distinct values lie in an objective and hierarchical system: from sensible value (comfort-discomfort) to life value (nobleness-vulgarity) and from there to spiritual value (good-evil, beautiful-ugly, truth-falsehood), up to the value of the holy and the value of the worldly. The embodiment of this founding relationship in the hierarchical values lies in the partition of four levels: sensible feeling, life feeling, psychic feeling, and spiritual feeling. The relationship between the feeling of values and the values felt corresponds to that between noesis and noema in Husserl. Scheler himself said, “This feeling therefore has the same relation to its value-correlate as ‘representing’ has to its ‘object’, namely an intentional relation.”38 What can be basically determined here is that in the feeling genus of intentional feeling acts the founding relations between corresponding value noema, which has determined the founding relations between various intentional feeling acts, for “the foundational relations between acts and the heights of values.”39 What follows is the founding relations between intentional feeling acts and non-intentional feeling acts in all of the feeling acts. The socalled “intentional” acts signified to Scheler, “only those experiences that can mean an object and in whose execution an objective content can appear.” Therefore, he was justified in saying that intentional feeling acts are precisely objectifying acts. He called the intentional feeling acts in this sense “emotional experience,” “which, in a strict sense, constitute value-feeling.” This kind of “emotional experience” or “value feeling” is essentially different from the first kind of feeling acts he listed, namely “status feeling,” for “status feeling” is mediated by objectifying acts, while “value feeling” is a direct grasp of value. In other words, the former is “feel ‘about something’,” but the latter is “immediately feel something, i.e., a specific value-quality.”40 In this spectrum and only in this spectrum Scheler can declare, “Our point of departure is the ultimate principle of phenomenology.” This principle means for him, “that there is an interconnection between the essence of an object and the essence of intentional experiencing. This essential interconnection can be grasped in any random case of such experience.... Value must be able to appear in a feeling-consciousness.”41

38 39 40 41

Ibid., 258. Ibid., 222. Ibid., 259. Ibid., 265.

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But the discussions above have made clear that the universally valuable founding relationship between feeling acts and presentative acts recognized by Husserl is only valuable for a certain kind of feeling act here in Scheler: Only the feeling acts of status are founded on presentative acts, precisely speaking, objectifying acts. Although Scheler has not definitely expressed the idea that intentional feeling acts (value feeling acts) have a founding position and function compared with the other feeling acts, this conclusion can almost be inferred from his discussions. Besides this, he still especially stressed, “that units of feeling and units of values play a guiding and fundamental role in the world views expressed in these languages.”42 This has come down to the question of the final founding relationship between feeling acts and non-feeling acts. Although Scheler gave feeling acts a very broad definition, he also recognized many other fundamental types of consciousness, such as “kinds of conscious activities (e.g., the knowing, willing, feeling, loving, and hating kinds),”43 and so forth. Of course, Scheler is not very strict in the demarcation of concepts. From the above, we can see traces of the overlapping of similar concepts: he juxtaposed conscious acts of love and hate with feeling acts, but he later thought that they belong to feeling acts: “Loving and hating constitute the highest level of our intentional emotive life.” 44 Likewise, the recognizant conscious acts listed here are included in intentional feeling acts to a certain degree because the judgment and differentiation of good and evil also belong to value feeling acts. Therefore, when Scheler said, “All experience of good and evil presupposes in this sense the comprehension of the essence of what is good and evil,”45 what he referred to is definitely not cognitive acts in a traditional sense, but the acts of value feeling and value grasping, which are equal to such cognitive conscious acts as “moral evidence” (or “essential intuition”). He even also regarded the favoring of higher values and the disfavoring of lower values not as acts of will but as acts of cognition.46 So for Scheler, the relationship of the founding and the founded between cognitive acts and emotional acts, presentative acts and feeling acts, objectifying acts and non-objectifying acts had almost lost their significance. These concepts put forward by Scheler are not completely opposed to each other as are those by Husserl. Although, in his discussions, Scheler often showed some differentiations in this respect, this only means that he was still influenced by the dichotomy or the trichotomy of cognitive acts, emotional acts, and willing acts put forward by Kant, Brentano, and Husserl. Still, we can see clearly his inclination to rebel against and subvert such a founding order. 42 43 44 45 46

Ibid., 259. Ibid., 383. Ibid., 260. Ibid., 45. Cf. ibid., 25.

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According to what we have said above, the “phenomenology of feeling” has undergone a radical transformation from Husserl’s LU to Scheler’s Formalism. This transformation has been carried out within phenomenology; that is, whether in Husserl or in Scheler, feeling phenomenology is still phenomenology; it is still opposite to metaphysical presupposition. Scheler once said clearly, “Moreover, we do not accept an absolute ontologism, i.e., the theory that there can be objects which are, according to their nature, beyond comprehension by any consciousness. Any assertion of the existence of a class of objects requires, on the basis of this essential interconnection, a description of the kind of experience involved.” 47 But as the founding significance of feeling acts conferred by Husserl and Scheler are different, they have taken a radically different position in the totality of phenomenological intentional analysis. The positional variation of feeling acts has further resulted in the positional variation of theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy in the phenomenological systems of Husserl and Scheler. (Translated by Xianghong FANG)

47

Ibid., 265.

7 ______________________________ Intentionality and Religiosity: Religion from a Phenomenological Viewpoint* KWAN Tze-wan The Chinese University of Hong Kong Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.1 —David Hume

1.

Introduction: Religion as a Phenomenon

When we talk about religion, we are referring to it mainly on two utterly different levels. The first is faith, and the second reason. On the level of faith, religion is a form of life, as, for instance, the prayers in one’s heart and the religious services one attends. On the level of reason, religion in the first sense (be it one’s own or that of others) becomes the object of one’s reflection. Compared with faith, reflections are always sceptical. Such reflective efforts can occur secretly in the bottom of one’s soul, or be debated in public. Of the two levels, the first is of course the more fundamental, for without the first level of religion, the second level will be pointless. These two ways of dealing with the religious, though problematically differentiable, are in real life so intertwined that they in fact can hardly be separated. Yet, unfortunately, people often try to draw a clear distinction between them. This attempt at division is made by two major camps: The first camp is represented by those ardent believers who think that true believers have to reject reason for the benefit of faith; the other camp is represented by supposedly enlightened non-believers, who think that reason should triumph over faith, which they regard as nothing but superstition. To my understanding, both camps are seriously mistaken. First of all, I very much doubt if faith can really rule out reason. In fact, the more pious and serious one is about one’s faith, the more likely will one raise doubts about it. Faith and reason are integral to each other, so that it remains an eternal challenge for all believers to settle the tension between them. In this regard, Buddha, Tertullian, Augustine, and others have set good examples for us. They finally managed to keep up their faith not because they 1 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 272.

83 K.-Y. Lau and J.J. Drummond (eds.), Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives, 83–103. © 2007 Springer.

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simply uprooted and rejected reason, but because they managed to live through it and transformed it, and in so doing they also transformed their faith. Attempts to bluntly expel reason in the name of faith are like sweeping the dirt under the carpet, being nothing but self-deception. Such attempts will only lead to further perplexity regarding one’s faith or cause a person to close up himself or herself. Second, I also wonder whether reason needs to or can afford to rule out faith. Many people, scientists and philosophers in particular, taking a positivistic stance, might too easily dismiss all religions as superstition. They might not consider that human reason itself does have limits of its own. Now if we reflect upon the problem of human existence or the human condition, we see that man’s will is always greater than his understanding.2 Unless we are prepared to ignore all appeals of the human mind that lie outside of positivistic reason, there will always be room for some kind of faith. Furthermore, the appeal for faith in the broadest sense is not a privilege of religious believers alone. We can believe in humanity and human dignity, for example, which is not positivistically demonstrable. Therefore, a blunt exclusion of faith in the broad sense will only limit our horizons and impoverish our existence. When today I am going to write about religion, I had better make a confession about my basic standpoint. Since childhood I have had various opportunities to get in touch with religion. For some years, I even attended a primary school founded by Christians. Among my closest relatives and friends are either keen Buddhists or Christians. Some years ago, when I was in the midst of the greatest affliction in my life, I once developed an inmost longing for the religious. But, overall and after all, I have kept to my choice of being a “non-believer.” Therefore, in the following pages, I cannot pretend to speak of religion from a “religious” point of view. What I can rely on is “mere reason,” which hopefully is not reason in a positivistic sense. Although a self-chosen non-believer, I have over the years maintained a great interest in the problem of religion. The main reason for this concern lies in my acknowledgement of religion as a social reality that we cannot get away from, but must deal with in one way or another. Out of the many thinkers, I must confess that it is Hans Küng who has exerted the greatest influence on me. Although I do not share his religious confession, I do agree with nearly all of his basic views concerning religion as a problem and as a social phenomenon. In the following, I summarize these points, which constitute at the same time my point of departure for subsequent reflections on this topic.

2

This has been underlined by Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, and many other philosophers. Cf. Descartes, “That the will is more extended than the understanding, and that our errors proceed from this cause,” in The Principles of Philosophy, Part I, Pr. XXXV, The Philosophical Works of Descartes, vol. 1, trans. Haldane and Ross (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 233.

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Küng on the Four Positions and the Two Criteria

On March 29, 1987, Küng delivered in the Union Church of Hong Kong a lecture on religion. The lecture was so captivating that it still counts as one of the best lectures I have ever heard. Later on, in the list of suggested readings of an old teacher of mine3, I discovered that Küng’s lecture had in fact been delivered earlier at the University of Cape Town, and had been published a year before I heard it.4 The title of Küng’s lecture and paper is by itself an overwhelming one. It raises the question “What is the True Religion?” with the subtitle “Toward an Ecumenical Criteriology.” Can the problem of “religious truth” really be talked about? Küng pointed out right at the beginning of his paper that no other question has caused so many wars and atrocities in this world than the blind zeal surrounding the question of religious truth. Now raising this question again, we can tell how careful the author has to be. It is in this respect that the subtitle of the paper is of significance. “Ecumenical Criteriology” is therefore the attempt to build up some commensurable standards so that the works of different churches or different religions can be compared and criticized to answer the main question: What is the True Religion? Küng’s approach was to first criticize four major positions on religion before embarking upon two criteria of his own. In the following we will go over these points one by one: 1) The first position Küng criticized is atheism, which is the view that “no religion is true, or that all religions are equally untrue.” Küng pointed out that atheism is no doubt a challenge to every religion. But he immediately added that, if believers were to be blamed for being unable to prove the existence of God as an ultimate reality, so this same burden, this same difficulty, namely a counter-proof of divine non-existence, would fall on the shoulders of the atheists. From the Kantian point of view, given the limits of human reason, attempts to prove or disprove the existence of God are only two ways of committing the same mistake. 2) The second position Küng criticized can be called exclusivistic absolutism. This “orthodox” thinking maintains that “only a single religion is true, or that all other religions are untrue.” Küng pointed out that the millennia-old Catholic doctrine that “outside of the church there is no salvation” (extra ecclesiam 3

I am referring to Dr Philip Shen, the former chairman of the Department of Religion and the former Dean of the Arts Faculty of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 4 See Hans Küng, “What is the True Religion? Toward an Ecumenical Criteriology,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa (September 1986): 4–23.

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3)

4)

nulla salus) is a most unambiguous expression of this kind of exclusivity, although, Küng said, since the Vatican II Council this traditional dogma has to some extent been lifted. Nonetheless, exclusivity remains one of the most destructive forces governing religions around the globe. The third position Küng criticized can be called extreme or crippling relativism. This position supposes that “every religion is true, or that all religions are equally true.” This seemingly tolerant attitude is a most widely accepted view. Have we not often enough heard people saying “all religions direct people toward the good”? Have we not seen governments adopting the policy of “religious pluralism”? Notwithstanding the great appeal of this position, Küng warned us that this position, if driven to the extreme of “arbitrary pluralism” or to the principle of “anything goes,” will turn out to be extremely dangerous. Küng reminded us that, “Whoever maintains that in principle all religions are equally true specifically excludes from the religious area any capability of error, and from humanity any moral fallibility.” Küng hinted that, if we “indifferentially” bestow truth upon all possible self-claimed religions, without referring to what they actually have done, things will at last run out of control. This is precisely why this position is named “crippling.” In the face of the global acknowledgement of religious freedom, Küng’s critique of this position very easily appears too conservative and even retrogressive. But I think that Küng’s worry is not an unfounded one, and indeed urgently needs to be considered. We see everywhere that more and more radical actions are now being carried out in the name of religion, leading to the taking of thousands of lives, the trampling of moral norms, the spread of diseases, the breaking up of families, and so forth. Such atrocities might take place within cults, in civil wars, or as a result of global terrorism, whether for the sake of a nation’s pride, the desire to achieve paradise, or due to holy war. Such danger leads us to the inevitable reckoning that: as long as religious freedom is duly and adequately provided, and as long as religious activities are treated with the greatest tolerance, all human societies need to have certain basic norms to distinguish between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable regarding religious practices, otherwise, society will be running the risk of falling into a “crippling” anarchy. To my understanding, this third position is the most crucial of the four, as it pinpoints why an “ecumenical criteriology” is necessary. The fourth position that came to Küng’s mind is that of “conquering inclusivism,” which opines that “one religion is the

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true one, or that all religions participate in the truth of the one religion.” This position is not a very common one, for it is usually confined to academia or within the intellectual tradition. To explicate his point, Küng named the Indian religions as well as his colleague Karl Rahner as examples. Küng argued that this apparently liberal and generous position is the result of over-confidence in the universal truth of one’s own religion, along with a simultaneous disregard of the idiosyncrasies of the others. This attitude, practically speaking, “degrades” other religions to a lower and more primitive stage of one’s own religion, which represents a super system. This “conquering through embrace,” said Küng, in fact does injustice to other religions and is most unfavourable for inter-religious discourses. After discussing the four fundamental positions on religion, Küng proceeded to prepare to set up his “ecumenical criteria.” He put forth a number of basic considerations, which I think are highly relevant to religious discourses of all kinds. They are thus implicitly presupposed in the subsequent discussions in this paper. For the sake of space, I will only itemize them as follows: - No religion can monopolize truth. - All religions can become a true religion, or can become a false religion. The borders between “truth” and “untruth” run through each of our religions. - No one has the right to bestow truth on the ground of arbitrary pluralism. - Confession of the truth indicates the courage to sift out untruth and speak about it. - The humanum (the truly human, human dignity and fundamental values) should be made a general ethical criterion. - As regards religious truth, praxis counts more than theory.

Having elaborated on the above principles, Küng finally returned to his cardinal question, “What is the True Religion?” He formulated his answer unambiguously into two lapidary “ecumenical criteria,” one positively and the other negatively posed: - “Positive Criterion: Insofar as a religion serves humanness, insofar as in its credal and moral doctrines, its rites and institutions, it fosters human beings in their human identity, meaningfulness and value, and helps them gain a meaningful and fruitful existence, it is a true and good religion. - “Negative Criterion: Insofar as a religion spreads inhumanness, insofar as in its credal and moral doctrines, its rites and institutions, it hinders human beings in their human identity, meaningfulness and value, and thus helps them fail to gain a meaningful and fruitful existence, it is a false and bad religion.”

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3.

Phenomenology and Religious Discourses

It is true that religion is basically a matter of faith, but faith in religion is seldom pure, but mingled with reason. This is what we have made clear at the outset. As is obvious, most religions of the world are bound up with some degree of exclusivism. If different religions stick steadfastly to their own faith and objects of worship, there is little chance that the adherents of the various religions will live peacefully in mutual tolerance. It is at this point that reason should again be commissioned to play a part in cross-religious discourses. But is “reason” really in a position to resolve religious conflicts? The answer to this subtle question depends on what we mean by “reason.” When talking about reason, one most popular opinion is to interpret it as positivistic understanding. If this is so, then the chances of reason being used to resolve religious conflicts are not promising; in fact the situation could even worsen. The reason for this is that while positivism cannot help us judge which God is the true one, it can indeed lead to the “conclusion” that (positivistically speaking) the objects of worship of various religions could not simultaneously be real.5 Instead of resolving conflicts, the suspicion and mistrust thus created could lead to further tension. Therefore, to put an end to antagonism and hostility between religions, what we need is reason that is non-positivistic. In the following we will show that, in this regard, phenomenology is a much better alternative. It is true that the application of phenomenological analysis to religion is not a popular topic. But it was Husserl himself who declared that phenomenology does have an “important bearing on theology,” although only an “indirect” one.6 The fitness of phenomenology for handling problems of religion and religious conflicts lie in the fact that it allows us to suspend disputes concerning the existence of “God” through an epoché, in order to address directly questions concerning how the meaning of God is constituted. In regard to this, I find Peirce’s definition of phenomenon (which he also called phaneron) particularly instructive: “Phaneroscopy is the description of the phaneron; and by the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any

5

We can borrow Carnap’s attack on metaphysical systems to arrive at the above conclusion. See Rudolf Carnap, “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language (1932),” in Logical Positivism, ed. A. J. Ayer (1978), 60–81. See also Carnap, “The Rejection of Metaphysics,” Philosophy and Logical Syntax (New York: AMS Press, 1979). 6 See Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch (Ideen I), §51, last paragraph (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), 122.

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way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not.” 7 Husserl’s concept of Epoché is derived from the Greek word έπέχω which means literally “I hold back.” Applied to theology, it amounts to the suspension of epistemological or ontological judgments concerning God’s existence, while admitting that human reason can neither positively prove nor negatively disprove it, which are only two sides of the same mistake. It is only in this bracketing (Einklammerung) that the above mistakes can be avoided and that the meaning of religion for man can be deliberated. From a phenomenological point of view, the meaning of religion cannot be derived by a mere semantic analysis of the term religion alone, but has to be expounded by analysing the very religious activities involved. Phenomenology has to show how man can give meaning to these very activities. In phenomenological terms, this has to do with the “dispensing of meaning” (Sinngebung) or with the “constitution” of meaning in religious activities.

4.

God as Intentional Object

In the doctrine of Husserl, the problem of the constitution of meaning is closely related to the problem of intentionality. Having put all untenable judgments and issues into brackets, the problem of intentionality unfolds by focusing on man’s conscious activities, on the one hand, and the world of meaning constituted by these activities, on the other. In this regard, Husserl revived the medieval distinction between intentio and intentum as the two poles of intentionality. While the former refers to the intentional act, the latter refers to the intentional content, especially in the sense of the intentional object. Basically speaking, phenomenology does not encourage assigning to these two poles a separate ontological status of their own, but treats them as involved in a correlative unity, which is then analysed as the act and object of the same intentional experience. Alternatively, Husserl derived from the Greek word νούς (mind) the correlative twin-concepts of noesis and noema, with the same theoretical intent. For Husserl, “consciousness” (Bewußtsein) always implied “being conscious of…” (Bewußt-sein von…). Similarly, the phenomenological concept of intentionality always implies a “directed-ness at” (Gerichtet-sein auf) something. Naturally, this “something” might have a “real” object as its referent, but this is not mandatory. The importance of this must be clear in Peirce’s view as quoted above. By making allowance for both real and presumed objects, the phenomenological discourse on intentionality turns out to be particularly suitable for the handling of highly debatable topics like 7

Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 284. See also “The Principles of Phenomenology,” in Philosophical Writings of Peirce (New York: Dover, 1972), 74.

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religion. And Husserl himself worked on this topic to some extent.8 Besides the problem of religion, literature is another domain to which the theory of intentionality can be tactfully applied.9 Although religion and literature are completely different topics, they are both capable of becoming “objects” of phenomenological analysis. This very scenario is itself a point of great theoretical interest. For it shows us how, by way of an analysis of intentionality, the problem of religion, on the one hand, and that of literature, on the other, can explain one another, and how in these two disciplines meaning can come about. The idea of God as an intentional object was already implied in Kant and Feuerbach. For Feuerbach, the idea of God is a product of the mental projection of man’s own unfulfilled anticipation for divinity. Religion is thus a process of mental fiction, self-delusion, and self-estrangement. In comparison to Feuerbach’s strongly critical view, Kant’s treatment of religion seems to be much more sophisticated. Notwithstanding his critique of theology from the theoretical standpoint in the first critique), Kant had no intention whatsoever of rejecting talk about God or dismissing religion positivistically as “meaningless.” In contrast, Kant made allowance for religion by depicting God as a regulative idea or as a postulate. In so doing, Kant reassured us that religion and the concept of God do have a certain role to play in practical life, and thus are rich in “meaning.” Following this line of thought, the phenomenological treatment of religion and of talk about God is basically in line with the approach taken by Kant. It should be noted that, although Kant’s attitude toward religion is a sympathetic one, the rigidity of his theoretical philosophy did not allow him to recognize God as an “object.” For Husserl, “intentional object” could be understood in a broader or narrower sense. As one sort of intentional content, intentional object is always related to an intentional act. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl explained that an intentional object can mean either “the object as it is intended” or the “object, which is intended.”10 In the former, the emphasis is on the content of the “intention,” while in the latter it is on the referent “object.” Such fine differentiation in the meaning of an intentional object clearly shows that, unlike Kant, Husserl was not bound by a rigidly cognitive 8

As to this question, see Stephen Strasser, “Das Gottesproblem in der Spätphilosophie Edmund Husserls,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 67 (1959): 130–142; and Louis Dupré, “Husserl’s Thought on God and Faith,” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29 (1968): 201–215. One remarkable treatise I came across recently is Lee-Chun Lo, Das Gottesproblem in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (a dissertation submitted to the University of Wuppertal, Germany, in 2001 under the supervision of Klaus Held.) 9 See Roman Ingarden, Das literarische Kunstwerk. Halle a. d. S., 1931. 10 See Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, V, §17 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), 400; for English translation see Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge, 1970), 578. Please note that the square bracket and the comma in it are inserted by the present author, but in Findlay’s translation, this was expressed with the word “period” put between parentheses.

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notion of objectivity. Furthermore, Husserl often distinguished between the “real” in the sense of reell and the real (or wirklich). While the former often refers to actually perceived contents of our life experience, the latter refers to things with objective reality. In the Ideen I, Husserl explained: “In experience the intention is given with its intentional object, which as such belongs inseparably to it, thus lives really (reell) within it. What the experience intends, presents, etc., is and remains with it, whether the corresponding ‘real object’ (wirkliche Objekt) exists in reality or not, or has been annihilated in the interval, and so forth.”11 With such flexibility in concept and tolerance in theory when dealing with the intentional object, it is completely understandable why phenomenological discourses are particularly suitable for handling religious phenomena. Finally, we must note that the phenomenological description of God as an intentional object does not and should not imply that “God” is to be reduced, as suggested by Feuerbach, to a mental fiction invented by man. For Husserl, there was no need to even make a real distinction between the intentional or immanent object on the one hand and the actual, transcendent or external object on the other, for the reason that these two conceptually different kinds of object are from man’s standpoint “numerically” identical. For Husserl, even an external object presents to us and means for us an intentional object. And all this while, it remains what it is. Therefore, it is completely understandable that Husserl could afford to say in the Logical Investigations, “If I represent God to myself, or an angel, or an intelligible thing-in-itself, or a physical thing, or a round square etc., I mean the transcendent object named in each case, in other words my intentional object; it makes no difference whether this object exists or is imaginary or absurd.”12 Just as the various “reductions” in phenomenology do not imply reductionism, the conception of “intentional object” does not intend to dissolve the existence of God. The sole purpose of “reducing” traditional talk about God to intentionality is just a holding back or bracketing of the issue, so that believers of various religions can be allowed to bring up what have actually come to their minds, including their beliefs and disbeliefs, their yearnings and doubts, and so forth. Therefore, calling God an intentional object does not require the believer in God to compromise God’s “objective reality” in any sense. God remains for us as well as for Husserl what it actually is. From a theoretical point of view, what phenomenology has to clarify is that all of these religious intentions are matters of “intension” only, not of “extension.” This is exactly what we finite human beings can do or are entitled to do at the most. By rendering an intensional statement an extensional one, we would have transgressed the limits of human reason, and whatever judgment we make would not be a justifiable one.

11 12

Husserl, Logical Investigations, V, §16, 576; Ideen I, §90, 224. Husserl, Logical Investigations, V, §16, 596.

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5.

Religion as Intentional Linkage

The concept of “religion” is supposed to have come from the Latin word religio, the etymology of which is highly controversial.13 Disregarding the more far-fetched understanding of religio by Macrosius as relinquo, the two most important interpretations of the term have to be considered. First, as suggested by Cicero and later by Zwingli, religio is derived from relegere, which means to gather together, re-gather, re-read, re-consider, to hold back scruples, which on the whole relates more to ethical deliberations than to theology. Second, as maintained by Lactantius and Saint Augustine, religio is derived from religere (or ligare), which means to fasten, to tie, to bind back, or to re-attach. This second interpretation, while being a Christian one, exclusively uses the word theologically to refer to man’s relation to God. Of these two meanings, the second one, as pointed out by Derrida, 14 was considered by the Indogermanic linguist Benveniste to be historically fictitious. Ironically, it is this second meaning that has in fact dominated for millennia the world’s understanding of the term. Therefore, in our following reflections, we will start with this second meaning of religion as linkage, and will return to the possible “reunion” of the two meanings only at a later stage. When understood as a linkage, religion involves always two poles to be linked, namely God and man. But as soon as we embark upon talk about God, we immediately encounter the epistemological impasse of the impossibility of proving the existence of the divine. If this is the case, how can we go on with our presumably phenomenological reflections on religion? To solve this puzzle, we can distinguish between two kinds of “linkage”: “real linkage” on the one hand and “intentional linkage” on the other. Here, we should avoid the metaphysically overloaded understanding of the term “real” as “ultimate reality.” Res in Latin refers simply to “things.” Therefore, “real linkage” just means the linkage between two things. When a linkage is to be labelled “real,” the condition is that the two poles involved should both be “things.” Consider that I have just bought an ethernet cable to be able to hook up my notebook computer to my UNIX server; or consider the channel tunnel connecting England and France. But such a modest condition is precisely what religion as a linkage cannot fulfil. For God is not a thing, which can be verified. How then can we make sense of religion as a linkage? From a phenomenological point of view, I suggest that we can call religion an “intentional linkage.” An intentional linkage is established as long as the 13

For the etymology of the word religio, I am relying mainly on three sources: 1. Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, Web-edition provided by Perseus Project. 2. Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1985), 261f. 3. Jacques Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: the Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” in Religion, ed. Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 1–78. 14 See Derrida, ibid., 37.

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following conditions are met: 1) Of the two poles, there is an “act pole” which must be a thing, not an inanimate thing, but an agent capable of performing intentional acts; and 2) the other pole is not a thing, but the intentional object of the intentional act-pole. As to the concrete interpretation of religion as intentional linkage, the following guiding principle will govern: Depending on how God is being conceived or intended, the believers of a confession tend to maintain a certain kind of relation peculiar to the God so intended. Applying this principle to Christianity and to the Greek religion, we can make the following comparative observations. Christianity: Although not without exception, the Christian notion of God is covered with a host of positive attributes, such as uniqueness (monotheism), omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc., and in addition to these, justice and righteousness. With such an intention in mind, there is a natural tendency for Christians to maintain with God a relationship of humility and total submissiveness. Greek religion: In sharp contrast to Christianity, the ancient Greeks believed in a genealogy of gods or deities (polytheism). For the Greeks, gods were powerful but not omnipotent for they were at least subject to mutual competition and to restrictions. Another interesting point is that the Greeks had a rather negative image of the gods as far as conduct was concerned, the classical testimony being Xenophanes, who told us that “Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealing and adulteries and deceiving of another.” 15 As for the god-man relationship, one crucial point is the notion of the “jealousy of the gods” (Götterneid) or the readiness of the gods to prevent man from living in peace and satisfaction. 16 In face of such a species of gods, the Greeks developed very complicated attitudes ranging from fear and submission to aversion and hatred. Besides being objects of worship, the Greek gods often turned out to be objects of man’s struggles, a scenario well testified to by the tradition of tragic poetry. For this reason, many scholars have referred to the god-man relationship of Greek antiquity as irreligion rather than religion.17 Obviously, the above remarks on Christianity and Greek religion point merely to general tendencies, which do not preclude ambiguities and controversies. In Christianity, it is precisely the intention to conceive God as the principle of justice that arouses endless queries concerning God’s role in the presence and spread of evil. As a consequence, Christianity was burdened by the problem of theodicy for two millennia. As for the Greeks, despite the 15

Xenophanes Fragments 11, 12. See Diels-Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Band 1, 18. Auflage (Zürich-Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1989), 135–6; Kathleen Freeman, trans., Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 22. 16 See Jacob Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, Band II (Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag [dtv], 1982), 97. 17 John Burnet and Ernst Bloch, inter alia, have made such remarks.

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overall negative image of the gods, the god-man relationship was not necessarily antagonistic, but did fluctuate a lot, as does the relationship between suppressors and the suppressed among humankind. But precisely because of this very god-picture, the Greeks were immune from that kind of anguish that has afflicted Christians. As Nietzsche clearly pointed out, “Theodicy was never a Hellenistic problem.”18 Taking all such ambiguities and controversies into account, we see that the understanding of religion as intentional linkage is still of great didactic value, as it explains how the world of meaning of the various religions is constituted and what problems they are doomed to face. In this connection, I find a remark made by Schiller most instructive: “I consider it as a right of the poet to treat different religions as a collective totality for the imagination. In this totality, everything that has a character of its own or has its own manner of sensible expression will find its place. Under the cover of all religions lies religion itself as the idea of the divine; and the poet must be allowed to speak out in whatever form he finds most comfortable and most appropriate.”19 This understanding of religion as intentional linkage exempts us from the burden of proving the existence of God, for from the logical point of view, intentionality and intentional linkage have to do with conceptual intension rather than objective extension. There are many advantages connected with such an approach. First, while no judgment concerning objective extension is made, the effect of alienation or dissension between religions sown by positivistic reason is rendered pointless. Second, and more significantly, it does not alter or affect what is objectively the case, and is for this reason not a real challenge to the supposedly theological realm. Third, this interpretation does justice to different religions by allowing what is being intended by each religion to come to the foreground and to speak for itself. Fourth, and most importantly, it renders a cross-religious dialogue at least theoretically possible. As explained above, the idea of “intentional object” only “brackets” out but does not negate the existence of God. Nor does it downgrade God from the object of worship to a mere “image.” This is one point that Husserl made very clearly in his Logical Investigations. 20 By the same token, the characterization of religion as intentional linkage does not rule out its chances of being a real linkage. The sole purpose of distinguishing between intentional and real linkages is to show that, for human reason, only the former and not the latter can be talked about. Besides being epistemologically 18

See Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die Dionysische Weltanschauung” from the Basle nachgelassene Schriften (1870–1873), Sämtliche Werke, Band 1 (Berlin: dtv/de Gruyter, 1980), 560. 19 See Friedrich Schiller, “Über den Gebrauch des Chors in der Tragödie,” in Vom Pathetischen und Erhabenen. Ausgewählte Schriften zur Dramentheorie, ed. Klaus L. Berghahn (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), 113–114. Translated by the author from German into English. 20 Husserl, Logical Investigations, 593f.

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untenable, the understanding of religion as real linkage is also unfavorable for interreligious dialogue. The modest understanding of religion as intentional linkage puts, so to speak, various religions on a bottom line, where communication can at least seem to be possible. By suspending judgment on the existence of the divine, the idea of intentional linkage reveals religion to be the earnest aspiration of humankind. It is from this bottom line that understanding, sympathy, and mutual respect can be engendered.

6.

Religiosity as Pure Intention or Intentional Essence

It is a common opinion that religion is of interest only to believers and that religious disputes should be settled between believers only. This is a view that I do not agree with. The reasons for my disagreement are threefold. First, as was previously pointed out, religion is a social reality. Although we may ourselves choose not to believe in any religion, we still cannot guarantee that we will be able to stay away from religious matters. As far as friendship, courtship, kinship, profession, and politics are concerned, religion can all of a sudden become a matter of concern for us. Second, religious disputes can arise not only between believers of different religions, but also between believers and non-believers. When Hans Küng criticized the four basic positions on religion, the fact that he made “atheism” the first issue to be reflected upon was not accidental. Third, people who have no explicit relationship with any religion might yet, from time to time, share the religious feelings of others and become spiritually inspired. For example, two “non-believers” might at times achieve a high level of spiritual communication over quasi-religious themes such as attending a funeral service, visiting a medieval church, listening to a Bach piece played on the organ, or meditating over a Buddhist text or Zen koan. With all this in mind, we cannot help but feel that if the relevance of religion is not confined to believers alone, then the source of meaning of the religious must be rooted in a layer of soil deeper than explicit religious activities such as church-going, prayers, and religious ceremonies. Over the years, I become increasingly convinced that if we are to take religion as a form of life, then we should arrive at the insight that the most important thing about religion is not doctrines or creeds, but religious feeling or religiosity itself, which is common to all humankind. The word religiosity is derived from the Latin word religiositas, which is a further abstraction from the term religion. Literally speaking, it refers to the “reverence for God (the gods).”21 It is true that in most cases religiosity as a feeling for the divine is directed towards some definite religious objects. But for non-believers, who enjoy religiosity without being bound to any definite object of worship, religiosity as “reverence” can only be a still further abstraction from “religiosity” in the 21

See Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary (Web edition).

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casual sense. It must not be bound by doctrines and creed, but can only be a “pure” reverence, a “purity of the heart,” a “pure intention” for the divine “we know not what.” This seemingly ethereal and non-object-oriented religiosity can also be seen in the Chinese tradition. In Confucianism, this can best be represented through the notion of jing, which normally is translated as “reverence” or “respect.” In the Analects, Confucius was reported to have abstained from talking about “prodigies, force, disorder and gods.”22 But he also taught the doctrine of “sacrifice to the gods as if the gods were present.” 23 This exercising of reverence with an “as-if” attitude is obviously not directed toward a definite object of worship, but is done mainly for the sake of reverence itself. In Confucianism, we are expected to cultivate this attitude of reverence to embrace our whole conscious experience.24 If religiosity is conceivable without a definite object of worship, will it become void of content? This is a very difficult question, and my answer to it is a negative one. To establish this point, we borrow the views of Husserl and Derrida, respectively: I) Husserl: intentional essence In the fifth of his Logical Investigations Husserl embarks upon the problem of intentional content. Here, Husserl distinguishes between three concepts of intentional content, namely the “intentional object of the (intentional) act, its intentional material (as opposed to its intentional quality) and lastly its intentional essence.”25 In the first case intentional content is focused on the intentional object itself; in the second case the material of the object has to be related to an intentional attitude that Husserl calls “quality,” like presenting, judging, hoping, and so forth. But the third kind of intentional content, namely intentional essence, is not focused on the object itself or its matter, but on the so-called “union” of the matter with the quality, which means in fact their very juxtaposition or correlation. Intentional essence in this sense is in fact the frame through which something can be intended, or how certain matter is qualified. It prescribes the analogical proportionality between the matter and quality of the intentional act, but not the two elements in their separation. This third kind of content captures not the object of perception, but so to speak the 22 See The Analects, trans. D.C. Lau (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1979), VII-21, 61. 23 The Analects, III-12, 23. 24 When asked what a gentleman is, Confucius said in The Analects, “He cultivates himself and thereby achieves reverence” (XIV-42, 147). When asked about benevolence, Confucius taught among many things the maxim of “when serving in an official capacity be reverent” (XIII-19, 127). When asked about action, Confucius taught “in deed single minded and reverent” (XV-6, 149). 25 Husserl, Logical Investigations, V, §16, 578.

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“essence” of the intentional act itself. For Husserl, intentional essence as the third kind of intentional content does not prescribe which object is to be intended, but guides very loosely in what sense certain objects will be interpreted. In a word, “the intentional essence does not exhaust the act phenomenologically.”26 In more concrete terms, Husserl also clarified that the essence of an optative intention, like a wish, “may in one person be fully expressed, in another unexpressed, in one person it may bring to full intuitive clarity […] in another it may be more or less ‘notional’ etc..” Applied to the problem of religion, we can argue that religiosity is precisely the essence of religion. As an intentional linkage, man as homo religiosus reverentially seeks the divine, although this search may be explicit and full-blown, or only implicit and “notional.” If this argument is correct, we can claim not only that believers in different confessions can share the same sentiment of reverence although their objects and their acts are utterly different, but also that even non-believers can benefit from such a feeling as long as, with the same humility and reverence, they in some way make allowance for their own finitude over and against “something” divine. In a word, religiosity is not only essential to all religions; it can be experienced even without belief in any explicit religion. II) Derrida: messianicity and chora Our rather subtle reflection via Husserl can be elucidated through Derrida as well. In a treatise on religion, Derrida focused on two “words”: the “messianic” and “chora.”27 For Derrida, messianicity and messianism were different. While messianism refers to the Judaeo-Christian belief in the coming of the Messiah, messianicity symbolizes merely the making allowance for the existence of the divine or “the opening to the future or to the coming of the other as the advent of justice.”28 While messianism is a concrete doctrinal belief, messianicity is an “abstract” notion of belief. As Derrida said, “This abstract messianicity belongs from the very beginning to the experience of faith, of believing,”29 but being so abstract, it is “faith without dogma”30 and it “follows no determinate revelation.” Parallel to our view that it is not unthinkable to have religiosity without religion, Derrida advocated the idea of “messianicity without messianism.”31 Then, in the Platonic notion of chora, Derrida discovered a conceptual device that brings to light the link as well as the distance between the Judaeo-Christian and the Greek-pagan approaches to “religion.” Chora is, so to speak, a “place holder” 26 27 28 29 30 31

Husserl, Logical Investigations, V, §21, 591. Derrida, Religion, 17ff. Ibid. Ibid., 18. Ibid. Ibid., 17.

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that allows the pagans to resist committing to any historical faith. As the name of a place, however, it also makes allowances for any new decision.32 For this reason, Derrida found it necessary to clarify that “faith has not always been and will not always be identifiable with religion, nor, another point, with theology.”33 He even invented the term “theiology, [as] distinct both from theology and religion.” 34 Drawing on Benveniste’s linguistic analysis, Derrida maintained that the word religio has two root meanings, one traceable back to the pagan Cicero and the other invented by the Christians. While so far these two root meanings are considered to be irreconcilable, Derrida now proposed that the two meanings should meet and join forces in explicating the problem of religion. Instead of just taking these two competing root meanings as a linguistic-etymological triviality, Derrida saw in this an “ellipse of double foci,” which constitute a “modern (geo-theologico-political) problematic.”35 Here, the two foci of the ellipse refer precisely to the Christians and the pagans, or transposed to a broader context, to believers and non-believers. Talking about the “return of the religious” in the broader sense, Derrida found the morpheme “re” of the term religio (it may be interpreted as re-legere or re-ligare or re-spondeo) of particular importance in playing the role of a reunion.

7.

Religiosity as the Baseline for Intra-, Inter-, and Extra-Religious Discourses

In the above we have shown that religiosity as the essence of the intentional act of religion can be possible without a definite object of worship, and that religiosity thus considered is not void of content. As to what this content might be, we can explore this a little further by referring to Scheler. It is well known that Scheler’s phenomenology puts a great deal of emphasis on emotion. He criticized the traditional division between reason and sensibility as “completely inadequate” to account for “the structure of the spiritual.” Scheler held the view that intentionality can take the form of “intentional feeling.” As a type of intentionality, intentional feeling is also directed at something. It has its own kind of objectivity, namely values. It is through the directedness at values that the acts of intentional feeling become

32

Ibid., 20–21. This difficult and dialectical use of the concept of chora has received much resonance in Gadamer, who in the same meeting spoke of the topic as follows: “I too can begin to grasp the idea that the chora, as that which provides place and space, does not in the least determine what occupies that space. In this way, the concept of chora can be applied unproblematically to the Neo-Platonic concept of the One and of the divine.” See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Dialogues in Capri,” in Religion, ibid., 210. 33 Ibid., 8. 34 Ibid., 76. 35 Ibid., 37–38.

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meaningful.36 This position of Scheler reminds us of Küng’s naming of humanum as the general ethical criterion. In the following we will try to go one step further to show that, with or without a definite object of worship, religiosity can be extremely rich in meaning. In order to provide my students with some hints for concrete reflection, I tried a few years ago to itemize a number of maxims I considered related to the general notion of religiosity. * *

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One should exhibit a sense of humility or a deep sense of the finitude of man, and should not use one’s own will as the measure of everything. One should leave room for the divine and the sacred, even only notionally as a limiting concept for the human and the mundane, and be prepared to show one’s reverence for what deserves one’s admiration. Have reverence or respect for human existence, which has worth and dignity in spite of its finitude. Have an aversion for what brings suffering to humankind. One should constantly look beyond the material principle and be prepared to seek what is spiritual. Have general good will for the realization of peace and happiness on earth. Have a sense of reverence and love for one’s own life and the lives of others. In the most extreme of cases, consider sacrificing oneself in favour of others.

This seemingly random listing does have an internal structure. Generally speaking, the first two items, which are marked with an asterisk, are the most fundamental maxims, of which the rest are corollaries of a sort. The first maxim is one of humility or humbleness. It requires us “mortals” to set a limit to our own actions and advises us against lightly overexerting our own will to the extent that such extravagance of personality will lead to unrest of the self and afflictions to others. The second maxim can also be called a maxim of reverence, which advises us to make allowance for the divine as “what we are not” (a limiting concept in a Kantian sense)37 but whom we should look up to as a “model” for our spiritual perfection.38 The first and the second maxims have to be taken together as a “union” in Husserl’s sense. For, together, they constitute precisely the essence of

36

See Max Scheler, Der Formalism in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (Bern-München: Francke Verlag, 1980), 261–263. 37 In explaining the idea of noumenon, Kant distinguished between a positive and a negative use of the term and concluded that from man’s vantage point it is the negative use that is the only legitimate one. “The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility….” See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A225/B310–311. 38 For the notion of God as a “model,” see Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper, 1960), 58–61.

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religiosity, namely, as the interplay or correlation of the humility of the self, on the one hand, and reverence for the divine, on the other; or to use two nice German words, of Demut and Ehrfurcht. This analogical proportionality (or union) of humility and reverence is “intentional linkage” in its purest form. It can take the shape of this or that religion, but this is not necessary. It applies to believers as well as to non-believers and, for this reason, is the bottom line upon which the whole phenomenon of religion can rest and make sense. With regard to the other “contents” of religiosity, the rest of the list allows for revisions or additions. The important thing is to ensure that this list of values is not monopolized by one group of believers, but shared by humankind as a whole. These contents sound so truistic that, at times, I find them too pedantic myself. But every time I go over them carefully, I once again discover that they represent what I truly believe as pertinent to the values of being human. While preparing this paper, I went over Küng’s article once again and discovered a passage on religiosity, the importance of which I overlooked in my earlier reading of it. In the middle of his article, Küng cited the declaration of the World Conference of the Religions for Peace held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1970. The declaration enumerates a list of religious values, which is in many ways similar to the list above. I find myself deeply inspired by the universal appeal of those values at issue. I reassure myself that humankind’s hope for a better future is always unquenchable as long as such an appeal remains a universal one. In the following let me cite the 1970 declaration in its entirety. “As we were together in the concern for the overriding subject of peace, we discovered that the things which unite us are more important than the things which divide us. We found that in common we possessed: “A conviction of the fundamental unity of the equality and dignity of all human beings; “A feeling for the inviolability of the individual and his conscience; “A feeling for the value of the human community; “A recognition that might does not make right, that human power is not sufficient unto itself and is not absolute; “The belief that love, compassion, selflessness and the power of the spirit and of inner sincerity ultimately have greater strength than hate, enmity and self-interest; “A feeling of obligation to stand on the side of the poor and oppressed against the rich and the oppressor; “Deep hope that ultimately good will be victorious.”39

In a lecture delivered in 1987, Küng advised religious believers to avoid approaching each other with doctrinal standpoints of their own. For in this way, divergences and conflicts will appear before any real communication is 39

See Hans Küng, op. cit., 15.

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made possible. The true path to communication is to discover in the idea of the humanum a set of values, which can act as a common denominator for all religions. Other than religiosity in its purity, where else shall we start from? Given the importance of religion for humankind, we see gulfs lying between sectors of a religion, between different religions, and between believers and non-believers. These gulfs are day-to-day threats to humanity. What else other than religiosity, which is based on humility and reverence, can we rely on if these gulfs are to be bridged rather than widened? In the years after 1987, Küng’s increasing involvement in ecumenism and cross-religious dialogue (cf. his program of Welt-Ethos) is but a natural development of this whole concern.

8.

Conclusion

The relation between philosophy and religion is often regarded as the subjective seesaw between reason and faith. From a historical point of view, reason and faith are often represented as two utterly different capacities of human intelligence, which are so different in their principles and objectives that they are to some extent incommensurable. But in real life situations, faith and reason habitually infringe on each other’s domain so that the relation between them becomes further complicated if not deadlocked. However, the above reflections on religiosity should have taught us a good lesson. We should have learned that in discourses related to religion, especially in intra-, inter-, and extra-religious contexts, reason and faith alone are far from enough to mitigate conflicts. Besides reason and faith, what we need is the introduction of the factor of emotion or sentiments. Since antiquity, humankind has performed a great deal of evil in the name of religion. Looking around at the world today, humankind still does not seem to have learned any lessons from our miserable past. The English novelist Jonathan Swift once said: “We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”40 In face of this remark, should we not feel ashamed of ourselves? In his treatise The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach maintained that emotion is in fact the key to religion.41 In point of fact, what we have in this paper been referring to as religiosity belongs, in the last analysis, to the domain of human emotion or sentiment. For if religiosity can be established even in the absence of any rational grounds or any definite object of worship, what else can it be except wishful emotion? To ease the tension between reason and faith is not an easy task. By the introduction or “inclusion” of religiosity or religious sentiments we do not 40 Jonathan Swift (1711), Miscellaneous and Autobiographical Pieces, Fragments and Marginalia (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1962). 41 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper, 1957).

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mean the advocacy (for heaven’s sake) of plain emotivism. For we all know that emotion alone does not bring order, and perhaps brings even greater confusion than existed before. By “inclusion” we mean literally the “inclusion” of emotion into the former pact of faith and reason. Furthermore, we should bear in mind that with regard to human emotions or sentiments, we can differentiate good from bad ones. 42 What are to be introduced are precisely not “emotive” elements but lofty sentiments such as compassion, forgiveness, respect, humility, and so forth. What we should strive for is a rethinking of how reason, faith, and emotion can work together in mutual support and under mutual restrictions. In this new context, reason, faith, and emotion should all have a positive role to play. Of these three faculties, we note that, insofar as humankind has to face a world full of complexity, reason at large is the one faculty that we have to make use of as much as possible. But as human reason is not without limits, the pretension of reason to be able to solve all problems turns out very often to be the most terrible curse human reason can cast upon itself. When human reason reaches its limits but forges still further without itself realizing the situation, it turns into crooked reason, which signalizes the advent of a process of self-torture and the torture of others. Do we not see that all religious wars have “reasons” behind them? As for faith, we know that it might have arisen before the advent of human reason (in primitive tribes, etc.) or after it. Whatever the situation, the intrusion of reason into faith is as natural as one thought reflecting upon another. The conflict of faith with reason is therefore unavoidable, and the claim to have faith free from reason is nothing but self-deception. As we have noted earlier, true faith does not simply unplug or reject reason, but lives through reason by asserting itself inwardly in the face of reason, which in any case has its own limits. This is why we can talk about a “leap of faith,” which is the hallmark of religious wisdom. But if such a leap is carried out on a “massive” scale by the masses, who fall short of the supposed wisdom, the situation could get out of control. To prevent faith from getting too dangerously self-assertive in an outward manner, we need some mechanism to balance it. And, in such cases, reason is still important, but it alone, as we have shown in this paper, is seldom sufficient to soften the stiffness of blind faith. It is at this point that religiosity and all the related lofty sentiments should be included and can be of help. Reason, faith, and emotion, as well as other faculties of the human mind, are in fact not fixed entities having fixed and stereotyped functions. They are, so to speak, only elements of the human mind, which are always in the making. With the gaining of experience, man is blessed with the possibility of self-education, self-enrichment, and self-transformation. When we grow older, 42

Kant, for example, differentiated between higher and lower faculties of desire (oberes- und unteres Begehrungsvermögen). See Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, KGS, Band V, 22–25.

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all of these elements could change, for better or worse. It is our task to allow these elements to enter into a sensible pact of mutual support and guidance. Just as matured faith can become more tolerant and matured emotion more subtle, human reason itself can also become more “sensible.” Pascal maintained that “the heart has its reason that reason does not know.”43 This observation is indeed rich in insight, but is definitely not the whole truth. Human reason starts with sense certainty and is basically positivistic and analytical, which is something very natural. But after having gone through various stages of life’s way, and having come across other intellectual elements such as emotion and faith, human reason could evolve into something much more spiritual.44 In this regard, the dialectical experience as explicated in Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes is definitely still a source of wisdom.

43 Pascal, Pensées, §277. (Paris: Garnier, 1964), 146. “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas. “ Pensées (1660), translated by W. F. Trotter. 44 Refer to Helmuth Plessner’s notion of Geistigkeit. For a discussion of Plessner on this topic, see Tze-wan Kwan, “On Tragic Sense: Emotional A Priori and the Tragic Nature of Philosophy” (in Chinese), in Infinite Horizons: Professor Lao Sze-kwang as Scholar and Thinker (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003), 177–217.

* This paper was written originally in Chinese on the occasion of the conference in celebration of the seventieth birthday of Professor Philip Shen (1931–2004). The paper was published in a revised version in the proceedings of the conference as well as in Phenomenology in China: The Centennial of Edmund Husserl’s Longical Investigations, a special issue of The Phenomenological and Philosophical Research in China (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishers, 2003), 29–60. Furthermore, an Italian translation of this paper appeared still earlier in 2002 under a slightly different title. See Tze-wan Kwan, “Intentionalità e religiosità. Un punto di vista non confessionale sulla religione,” translated from English into Italian by Elisabetta Barone. In Filosofia e Teologia, Rivista Quadrimestrale, Anno XVI, Nr.2 (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2002), 330–352.

8 ______________________________ Desiring to Know through Intuition Rudolf BERNET Husserl Archives, Leuven, Belgium

In the words of Husserl himself, the Logical Investigations were the “breakthrough” to phenomenology. Without a doubt, the overcoming of psychologism, which is to say its refutation as well as the non-contradictory realization of its legitimate motivations, opened the way to an as yet unprecedented phenomenology. Despite the astonishing number of phenomena considered in the Investigations, and despite the concern to do justice to the diversity of their modes of givenness, one can say that all these “phenomena,” as they are understood by this new phenomenology, are finally bound to one single venture. This venture, which the Investigations set in action, is characterised notably by its great distrust vis-à-vis every metaphysical position and by a corresponding resolve to respect the multidimensionality of phenomena. For the phenomenology of the Investigations, the phenomenon ultimately stands out on a horizon originally interweaving different dimensions. Interwoven there are the dimensions of lived experience, the givenness of the things-themselves, and the mediation of their relation by linguistic significations. Despite their entanglement, these different points of view on the phenomenon are irreducible to one another. The fundamental error of psychologism was not therefore to have brought logical idealities into relation with subjective experiences but to have reduced them to psychological facts. 1 The opposite reduction of every judgment or reasoning to its logical content thus hardly fares any better. The breakthrough of phenomenology must be just as much an overcoming of logicism as of psychologism. For the Investigations, the phenomenon as it is conceived by phenomenology can be made to reside neither in consciousness nor in the world of empirical or ideal states of affairs nor in the meanings and expressions of language. Yet if this is so, it is nevertheless necessary that the interweaving between these different dimensions, from which the phenomenon proceeds, be able to appear in its own right. While making 1

Cf. R. Bernet, “Verschiedene Begriffe der Logik und ihr Bezug auf die Subjektivität,” in Phänomenologische Studien (F. Meiner, Hamburg, 2001), 153–66.

105 K.-Y. Lau and J.J. Drummond (eds.), Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives, 105–118. © 2007 Springer.

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intentional consciousness into the setting of this manifestation, the Investigations do not for all that go on to reduce this original interweaving to only one of its components. One should thus make the distinction between, on the one hand, a consciousness which is inseparable from the thing and from the meanings which guide its apprehension, and, on the other hand, a properly phenomenological consciousness which welcomes the appearance of the intertwining between the different dimensions of the ordinary phenomenon. This distinction between two sorts of intentional consciousness, and thus between two sorts of phenomenon, constitutes the veritable breakthrough which makes phenomenology into something other than a mere descriptive psychology. This breakthrough is only truly accomplished in the sixth investigation,2 to which we will devote the greater part of our analyses. The sixth investigation, therefore, does not just complete the analysis of intentional acts in the fifth investigation by way of a consideration of intuitive acts, and more particularly, of sensible and categorial perceptions. In fact, its “Phenomenological Elucidation of Knowledge” examines the intentional act straight away from the perspective of its interweaving with the things-themselves and with names or concepts. By treating the relation between sensibility and the understanding, between the subjective and objective conditions of knowledge, and between the theory of meaning and formal and material ontologies, the sixth investigation does not only take up the different lines examined separately in the preceding investigations. It also faces up to the major problems of traditional philosophy. This brings it, quite naturally, to reflect upon the properly phenomenological character of its own approach to these problems. In this way, the sixth investigation initiates, prior to the introduction of the doctrine of the transcendental reduction, the meditation on a “phenomenology of phenomenology” that will be pursued throughout Husserl’s work. Treating the interweaving between consciousness, things, and language in light of intentional consciousness, the phenomenology of knowledge thus finds itself confronted with the double function of consciousness: as subjective aiming at an object and as the horizon for the appearance of the interweaving between subject, object and meaning. The appearance of this interweaving being precisely what Husserl calls “truth,” we will be brought to question the nature of this consciousness which is the setting for the event of truth. Since an intuitive consciousness of the thing-itself does not yet constitute, by itself, a consciousness of truth, we will have to clarify the nature of this second consciousness which gives a truth value to an intuition. For Husserl, this second consciousness is called “synthetic consciousness of the intuitive fulfilment of an intention.” We will try to show that the desire—for truth rather than sight—plays a prevalent role 2 E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (2 vols., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 665–851.

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here. The distinction between the desire for a thing and the desire for truth will also permit us to show how much an interpretation of the Husserlian phenomenology of knowledge in terms of an “intuitionism” or a “metaphysics of presence” fails to recognise the “dynamic” nature of consciousness, as well as the diverse forms of absence it encounters along its course. We will undertake a deeper reflection on what consciousness of truth or the experience of “evidence” owes to certain ontological, logical, and linguistic factors which do not themselves fall within the compass of this individual consciousness. Such a reflection will subsequently bring us to contest the view according to which the sixth investigation would be an exemplary celebration of the “myth of interiority.”

1. The Synthesis of Fulfilment In the sixth investigation, key concepts such as knowledge, evidence and truth acquire their essential significance from the performance of an intuitive fulfilment of an intention. The formal structure of this process is extremely simple: it is a matter of a synthesis of identification between two intentional acts which differ in their mode of intuitive presentation of the same object. The synthetic act which unifies these two elementary acts benefits from the fact that the (at least partial) identity of their intentional “matter” goes hand in hand with a difference as to their intuitive fullness (Fülle). The one act, in which the intuitive presentation of the object is the richer of the two, shares its richness by fulfilling a corresponding lack in the poorer act. Despite all appearances, it is not a question of a simple system of communicating vessels, because the act poor in intuition receives its richness at the hands of the synthetic act, and not directly from the act better provided with intuition. The sharing of richness only leads to knowledge on condition that it be registered and measured by a third. Therefore, knowledge for Husserl never boils down to the mere richness of an intuition of an object. The most evident example of one such act of knowledge is a speech act whose assertion finds its justification in the perceptual givenness of the asserted state of affairs. Feigning, for purely pedagogical reasons, as if the act of naming constituted the very model of an act of knowledge, the first chapter of the sixth investigation gives special attention, above all, to the example of the encounter between the name or the word, and the thing. Rather than occurring through a simple association by way of contiguity or linguistic convention, there is an act of knowledge whenever one recognizes this seen thing as being a house, for example. This operation, which Husserl calls a “classification” (§6) of the intuitive object, corresponds fairly precisely to what Kant had called “Rekognition im Begriff” in the first edition of the “Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding” (A 103). But for Husserl, the inverse operation, in which a name is brought into direct relation with the intuitive presence of an object, is equally a source of

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knowledge. It is in no ways inferior to the knowledge arrived at by the first operation. We will come back to these two types of knowledge and to the difference between the modes of desire from which they result. At the outset, to understand better what they have in common, we first have to insist on the fact that knowledge does not spring up from an external encounter between a word and a thing. Knowledge rather arises from the synthetic unity between the signitive act which names and the intuitive act which perceives the same thing.3 Therefore, knowledge is indeed an act and not the simple intuitive possession of an object. This act is a particular one in that it does not simply aim at an object but at the identity of an object already referred to by other acts. We have to insist, secondly, on the fact that, for Husserl, this model of knowledge through synthesis of fulfilment equally applies to both simple and founded acts, to nominal and categorial representations, and to names and judgments. In either recognising an empirical object as being an inkpot or justifying the truth of the assertion, “The inkpot is on the table,” by a categorial intuition of this state of affairs, one accomplishes the same act of synthesis. This “static” presentation of fulfilment is immediately followed by a “dynamic” presentation (§8). By this Husserl means a diachronic presentation of the synthesis of fulfilment whereby a first experience of the signitive intention would be followed by a corresponding act of intuition. This would then lead to a “transitional experience” creating the unity or the “mutual belongingness of the two acts” (694). However, one can also understand this “dynamic” in the Freudian sense of the term, by pointing out that the intuitive fulfilment of an intention is the accomplishment of a desire. A desire inherent to the signifying intention is in fact what pushes the intention to search for a corresponding intuition which would satisfy its lack.4 In its union with the intuition, this desire in the intention is brought to rest in a “satisfaction” (§§8, 13) towards which it “aspired” with all its being. But what then is this strange desire which would be satisfied by a simple intuition? We know that the sixth investigation pays close attention to the distinction between objectivating acts and acts of desire as well as to their respective modes of linguistic expression. The synthesis of fulfilment concerns objectivating acts exclusively. By consequence, the desire for knowledge which animates it is a peculiar one. We say “peculiar,” because it is preoccupied with “an approach to a goal of knowledge” (§13, 709). What 3

“Not word and inkpot, therefore, but the act-experiences (…), in which they make their appearance, are here brought into relation…” (§6, 688). 4 Signitive intentions are characterised by their “lacking” (ein Manko) (§21, 728), as they are “in themselves ‘empty’ and ‘are in need of fulness’” (728). The significative intention is a “meaning intention wholly unsatisfied” (§8, 695). This is why “an intention aims at its object, is as it were desirous of it” (§20, 726), in order to find, “like a goal seeking intention, (…) its fulfilment in the act which renders the matter intuitive” (§8, 694).

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is at stake here is thus less the possession of an object than the advent of truth. What’s more, this truth is sought after for itself, that is, for its intrinsic value and not for the enjoyment knowledge of it could provide. Therefore, one should not jump to the conclusion that since, for Husserl, the desire in the signifying intention carries it toward an intuition, the desire to know is a desire to see. In addition, the desire for truth animating the significative intention does not originate in a wish. Rather, an “assertion” (Setzung) (§38) lies at its source. The satisfaction which the significative intention draws from the intuitive givenness of the object is not therefore due to the simple pleasure of contemplating the object which it had emptily posited. It is due, on the contrary, to the fact that this contemplation confirms its previous positing. The thing, in being given itself, proves the statement right. Should one conclude that if the desire to know is not a desire to see, it is indeed a desire to be right? But then, what is it, precisely, that can prove the significative intention to be right? We have seen that the synthesis of fulfilment lends itself to a double reading: in terms of a confirmation of an assertion by the things-themselves, and in terms of a conceptual recognition of things. In the first case, the desire to know is associated with an assertion, which is felt to be vulnerable or with a speaker who is aware that he is capable of talking about everything without being able to comprehend any of it. Rather than being sure of its act and wanting to be right, the statement thus desires to put itself to the test with the thing-itself of which it speaks. It falls to the thing and its intuitive, or more precisely, perceptual givenness to prove the pretensions of the assertion either right or wrong. It is clear that these are pretensions to speak the truth, and that an assertion which would make the thing the judge of its truth has already adopted a critical attitude toward itself. If the desire to know were a simple enterprise of conquering or taking power, it could be perfectly contented with an imagined thing. Were this the case, the imagined thing would be a perfect “illustration” of what the desire aims at (§38), which means it would not have to call on the thing-itself. The satisfaction of the desire to know cannot therefore be compared to those desires which, according to the Freudian doctrine, are satisfied in the dream by means of simple hallucinations. In actuality, the critical attitude in the significative intention, vis-à-vis its own pretensions to the truth, goes together with an openness to the alterity and the autonomy, that is to say, the transcendence of the thing. We will see a brilliant illustration of this when approaching the case of a synthesis of fulfilment which has the form of a “disappointment.” But for now, how can this respect, for what the thing appears to be in itself, still constitute the object of a desire? There can be no doubt about our answer: respect for the thing goes hand in hand with a desire for vigilance, or more precisely, for responsibility vis-à-vis one’s own speaking. The end of this desire for intuitive fulfilment is therefore a full speech which not only draws ever closer to the thing itself but which also,

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above all, submits itself to the law of the thing. In this way, the desire for rectitude of judgment steps aside before the desire for the correct comprehension of the thing in what it is in itself. The privilege of the thing is confirmed in the second version of the synthesis of fulfilment. This is where knowledge results from inserting the intuitive givenness of the thing into a conceptual framework. Here, the desire to know takes the form of the question “What is it?” which is evoked by the impromptu presence of the thing. When Husserl speaks of the recognition of a thing by a name or a concept, it is more a matter of a reflecting judgment than a determining one. First and foremost, there is the thing which appears in itself and by itself and which requires that it be understood in its specificity. The specific lack in which the desire to know is enrooted is thus, in this case, a conceptual poverty which faces up to the richness of the manifestation of the thing. This is why recognizing this thing as being a house means, by Husserl’s own admission, at best a respite but not the end of the desire to know.5 Except in cases where the thing amounts to a logical relation between simple formal categories, the desire to know has no end. Not only because the thing can always be understood in still other fashions, but also because, inversely, the thing—while justifying my assertion—rekindles my uncertainty of having spoken about it in a sufficient manner. When making the things-themselves into the ultimate end of a knowledge which has the form of desire, one cannot forego elevating them not only to the status of a norm but also to the status of an ideal. (Ideal is here to be taken as an ideal of the desire for truth, and not of a “pure desire” in the Lacanian sense. Such an interpretation would view this idealization of the things-themselves as an artifice for insuring the everlasting continuity of desire. Yet this view would surely constitute a perversion of the ethical intentions of Husserl’s thought.) Have we as yet been faithful enough to Husserl, in having made the intuitive fulfilment of a signifying intention into an expression of an infinite desire, which worships the transcendence of the thing? When we speak of knowing, for Husserl as for Kant, is it not a matter of determining, identifying, judging the things? Have we paid enough attention to the fact that the fulfilment is also a matter of synthesis and of synthesis of identification? Let’s begin with the identification! It goes without saying that there cannot be a synthesis of unification, and a fortiori, a synthesis of fulfilment, without the act fulfilling and the act fulfilled being related to the same object. Furthermore, they must agree, at least to a large extent, on the nature of the object. If the opposite were true, one would witness a total “explosion” of the object from which there would be nothing to be gained for knowledge.

5

§37.

Cf. the distinction between a “perfect” fulfilment and a “last” fulfilment in

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But can the thing not come to light as being different from what one had said about it? Can’t the concept only partially fit the thing? Husserl has no difficulties in admitting this. He calls such an experience a “disappointment.” Yet he immediately adds that this experience has much to teach us (as, moreover, the German word “Ent-täuschung” nicely suggests) (§§11–12). By appearing differently than foreseen, or by resisting a particular determination, the thing forces us to double back on our prior knowledge, review our conceptual framework, and introduce differences and distinctions. Disappointment is therefore a fundamental experience because—far from keeping it in denial—it opens knowledge up to what is new. Throughout his analysis of this synthesis which gathers divergences together, Husserl does justice to the decisive roles played by “conflict” (Widerstreit) and negativity in knowledge, while of course refusing to attribute them to the work of the concept alone (§33). When it appears differently, the thing does not only prove wrong the alleged truth of the assertion and the suppositions on which it would be based. The thing appearing differently also gives rise to a truer saying. Though he insists on the fact that the recognition of difference takes place on the basis of a unity, Husserl does not for all that reduce difference to identity. To the contrary, he would show us that all difference issues from the changing relations and the incessant play between one’s saying and the thing-itself, where one’s saying discovers the thing and where the manifestation of the thing sets one’s saying off on a different route. We are thus prepared to understand better the nature of the “synthesis” which Husserl places at the centre of the event of fulfilment. We already said that the fulfilment is neither the transferral of the richness of intuition from one act to another, nor the simple contemplation of the thing. Instead, it is the verification or the falsification of an assertion. It is the response to the demand for comprehension emanating from the thing-itself. In registering the truth of the statement, the synthetic consciousness of fulfilment adds nothing to that statement. Moreover, it does not pretend to replace the thingitself on which the truth-value of the statement depends. What the synthesis of fulfilment reveals is nothing other than the beingtrue. As is shown by the different concepts of truth (too) quickly sketched in §39, this being-true can be formulated in different manners but it can never be reduced to a simple real predicate of an act or a thing. The synthesis of fulfilment is the accomplishment of the desire to know, which finally aims at neither the word nor the thing but at the being-true which arises from their encounter. Our having seen this permits us to state in positive terms, at last, what constitutes the specificity of this desire to know. Being neither a desire to be right over and against the thing, nor a desire to subjugate the thing to the concept, the desire to know is a desire which, in the encounter between the concept and the thing, is satisfied in the event of their truth.

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For Husserl, consciousness is incontestably the bearer of this desire and is the space for the advent of truth. Here we have arrived at a crossroads: does the primacy of consciousness in the advent of truth mean that Husserl remains imprisoned in what we have called “the myth of interiority”? And is the decisive position given to intuition, in the conception of fulfilment, proof that Husserl capitulates to a “metaphysics of presence”?

2. The Reproach of Intuitionism Among the criticisms levelled at the Husserlian conception of intuitive fulfilment, the most common one is without a doubt that of having made the whole theory of knowledge depend on perception—whether it be sensible or categorial. We can respond to this by saying that the sixth investigation is by no means insensitive to a progress of knowledge that would be realized exclusively at the level of significative intentions, that is to say, without calling on any intuition whatsoever. One such progress would consist in a refinement, or more precisely, in a more distinct articulation, in a “clearness” accruing to the (conceptual) significations, by means of which a statement would—emptily—present its object (§17, 722). One can also recall that despite Husserl’s pains to differentiate between the intuitive characters of perception and imagination and to distinguish their epistemological value, he is far from making dogmatic use of this distinction. It is true that for an empirical object, the difference between its perceived and its simply imagined existence is fundamental. However, the very same empirical object suffices to serve as a point of departure for grasping an ideal law concerning its a priori possibility, such that this difference between perception and imagination loses all its cognitive value (§52). Without getting into the discussion surrounding the Husserlian conception of language at this moment, we can also point out, in response to one of his best-known critics, that the distinction between the sign as “index” and as “expression” owes nothing to the intuitive givenness of the signified. Rather, it owes everything to the significative intention. It is hardly plausible, however, that these few observations would suffice to settle all the uneasiness which the alleged “intuitionism” of Husserl has incited. Is it not in fact startling to see Husserl apply his conception of the synthesis of fulfilment to acts of sensible perception? It is undeniable that some perceptions of the same sensible object are better than others and that a perception can be enriched during the course of its duration. Nonetheless, in actual fact, this does not at all prove that such an enduring unity of perception is obtained by a synthesis of fulfilment which would indeed assure one not only of a better knowledge of the thing but also of the truth of the perception. Only at the expense of fairly implausible contortions does Husserl manage to save his thesis concerning the structural identity of fulfilments of sensuous and categorial acts. Here we can think of the

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attribution of signitive intentions to perception, the emphasis on a perceptual synthesis realizing the identity of the object without apprehending it as such, and the supposed desire for an adequate perception of the thing, etc. We know, however, that Husserl was quick to realise the intellectualistic prejudice in his first analysis of sensible perception, and that he devoted himself to remedying it—for example, in the texts from the revision of the sixth investigation. Additionally, already in the text of the first edition, a sympathetic reader will find valuable clues regarding the nature of what Husserl still awkwardly calls a “signifying” partial intention lodged within a sensible perception. For example, one can in fact only delight in the great precision with which Husserl does justice to the transcendence of the sensible thing. This transcendence of the sensible thing forces consciousness always to “mean beyond itself” in a unique blend of definiteness (“definite intentions”) and indefiniteness (“lacking in complete objective definiteness”) (§10). To put this more subtly, a cautious reader will end up understanding that the intellectualisation of sensible perception by Husserl is the involuntary effect of an opposite position, namely one which is fundamentally anti-intellectualistic. This anti-intellectualistic act of faith is especially expressed in the rejection of every “idea of a pure intellect” (§60, 818). Therefore, because he wanted to show all too well—against Kant, for example—that every act of thought is founded upon a simple act of sensibility, Husserl ended up granting too much to sensible perception. There is in fact no need to make sensible perception into an act of knowledge of the true. Regardless of that, one can still show that not only the categorial articulation of an empirical relationship (§48), but more generally the logical articulation of the relationship between simple variables (§§48, 62), and even the intuitive formation of sensible and categorial concepts (§§58, 60) are all essentially bound to sensible intuition. To come back to Husserl’s so-called “metaphysics of presence,” one has to face up to the fact that every synthesis of intuitive fulfilment— whether it be sensible or categorial—is made up of an incessant play of presence and absence and that every presence stands out on a ground of absence. If full presence is univocal, absence is, to the contrary, multifold and irreducible. Accordingly, corresponding to the absence as lack of presence in the signifying intention, there is in most cases a new absence in the fulfilling intention—that of an exhaustive givenness or simply of a sufficiently clear givenness of the thing. This is manifestly the case in sensible perception: not only because no fulfilling intention can reveal the whole thing and all of the thing but also because, with the emergence of new appearances of the thing, the former appearances melt away and vanish. Therefore, because presence is always shaped from within by absence, there are, as Husserl never stops reiterating, different kinds and different degrees of presence, different magnitudes of intuitive richness, and different values of intuitive evidence already in sensible perception.

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The same holds true for thought, with regard to which one could believe that since it is only occupied with things that are thought, it would never run into any resistance or withdrawal on the part of the things. It is true that the synthetic categorial acts which apply a categorial form to sensible objects are still held in check in their intuitive impetus by the material density of those objects. But in the case where it is a question of a categorial intuition of a pure categorial object, what could still obstruct an immediate categorial intuition? Husserl replies that such an intuition—for instance, the intuition of the “concept (53)4” (§ 18, 723)—is, to the contrary, “mediate” because it requires a whole series of acts of fulfilment built upon one another. Far from being an immediate grasp of its object through a kind of inspectio mentis, this categorial intuition is thus a process containing many stages (§§18, 20–21, 60). The fact, then, that we do not understand this concept right away is not because we are not good enough mathematicians. Rather, it is because the concept itself is complex and requires a series of operations of thought in order for all its meaning to be laid bare. This is the case even when each of the stages is perfectly intuitive. Moreover, even a very simple pure categorial object, such as the number “2,” does not lend itself to an immediate intuition. Yet if there cannot be an immediate categorial intuition of either an empirical state of affairs or a pure categorial concept (simple or complex), then what about a synthesis of fulfilment which would have the form, not of a mediate presentation, but of a presentation of a presentation (§19)? Doesn’t my saying get immediately fulfilled by the intuitive consciousness I have of saying something? Isn’t my act of desiring able to find an apodictic evidence in my consciousness of desiring? It is remarkable that Husserl— instead of joyfully exploiting this Cartesian vein—speaks of “inauthentic” (uneigentlich) fulfilment in this connection (§20). This fulfilment is inauthentic precisely in that it loses sight of the thing of which one speaks or which one desires. Save the surrender of any interest in the original thing and the turning of intentional consciousness into the exclusive object of the desire to know, this fulfilment of one intention by another does not provide any new “Fülle.” That is to say, it does not advance knowledge of the thing. When I say, that I have said, that the weather is always nice on my wife’s birthday, the fact of always having said that does not suffice to assure me of the fact that what I say is true. Severing intentional consciousness from its object and falling back on a saying which is no longer bound to the manifestation of the thing is a process which Husserl qualifies, with good reason, as being “inauthentic.” Hence, this most probable case of a fulfilment by an immediate intuition would already be the symptom of a perversion of the desire to know.

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3. The Reproach of Subjectivism However, even if knowledge is not realised under the form of an immediate and total intuition of the thing to be known, does not knowledge remain a matter of intuitive fulfilment? By consequence, is it not then a matter of an act which is realised in secret in the consciousness of the knowing subject? Stated differently: if evidence is the sole criterion we have at our disposal in order to decide on the truth of a statement, and if evidence is an act of intuitive fulfilment which unifies two other intentional acts, then aren’t both the being-true of an assertion and the validity of a state of affairs reduced to being psychical facts? Doesn’t the phenomenological theory of knowledge, after having triumphed over a primitive form of psychologism, give in to the “myth of interiority” in contenting itself with the description of mental states? Need one stress that these acts or so-called “mental states” are always related—directly or indirectly—to empirical things, to states of affairs, concepts, and propositions, none of which have anything mental about them? In compellingly summarising the doctrine of the “Prolegomena,”6 the last chapters of the sixth investigation (§§64–65) remind us not only that evidence is not open to psychological explanation but also that the beingtrue of the object and the evidence we possibly can have of it are one and the same thing. Every attempt to explain one by the other—by saying that something is true because we have evidence at our disposal or that we have this evidence at our disposal because the thing is true in itself—is on this account explicitly condemned. This already holds true for the simple perception of a sensible thing. Perceiving the thing means encountering the manifestation of the thing, and in this givenness of itself, the thing addresses itself to consciousness. No need, therefore, to erase the contribution of consciousness in order to refute the reproach of subjectivism addressed to the Logical Investigations. There is not even a need to insist on the fact that this consciousness is always already turned towards what it is not. It suffices to recall that the “equivalence” between evidence and truth (Prolegomena, §50), between consciousness and its object, is not only a formal equivalence between two ways of saying the same thing. It is also the expression of a relation of reciprocity or of an original intertwining between consciousness and things. One can find a beautiful illustration of this interweaving or this dialogue between the intention and the thing in what Husserl says about the conditions of possibility of the “performance” (Vollzug) of a categorial intuition (§62; also §30). Every categorial act essentially consists in apprehending a thing in a particular mode, or more precisely, in view of a

6 E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (2 vols., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 51–247.

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form determined by thought. The intuitive performance of this operation is only possible provided it is in agreement with the thing. The “category” of thought must “fit” the thing and the thing must be able to let one know that this is the case. The “freedom” of (“authentic”) intuitive thought is therefore severely restrained, and this limitation of the power of thought is imposed on it from the outside. Stated differently, the possibility of the performance of an act of categorial intuition depends on conditions which it cannot give to itself. Among these “objective” conditions of a “subjective” act of thought, one should include not only the appearing of the individual thing, but much more still the general laws which Husserl calls the “analytic” and “synthetic” laws of authentic thought. By this Husserl means, on the one hand, the laws of formal logic which govern the consistency of the forms of thought and their complications, and on the other hand, the laws of material ontology to which the object of thought is answerable. Even if intuition and, more generally, knowledge are acts of an individual consciousness for Husserl, the possibility of these acts nevertheless depends on conditions which do not fall within the province of this consciousness. For Husserl, there is neither any intuition nor any knowledge for which the actual performance in the secrecy of a singular consciousness would be the sole justification and the sole foundation. That is to say, an external observer, familiar with the thingitself and concerned with respecting logical and ontological laws, is perfectly in a position to verify the truth of somebody else’s pretended act of knowledge. This is so even though this act of knowledge remains, in its “private” execution, inaccessible to him. Here one finds one of the most fundamental principles of the phenomenology of knowledge developed in the Investigations. Namely, that knowledge is necessarily carried out in the first person and yet that this person never holds, by herself, all the keys to her knowledge. A third person can thus know—not the knowledge of the first person, but the same object as her. One has to bear in mind, however, that this reasoning only holds true on condition that the third person be able to become aware of the knowledge of the first person and realise it for himself. Only signs and, more generally, language can allow for this. Therefore, language—that is, what Husserl calls the expressive layer of thought—is what mediates the relationship between the knowledge of the first and third person. This mediation—which is in reality a communication—is only plausible and convincing on condition that the linguistic expression does not get added from the outside to a knowledge which would comply with one’s inner experience. This is precisely the position of the Investigations. We have in fact seen that from its most primitive forms onwards, knowledge gives rise to an encounter of the word with the thing. Just as with the perception of the thing, this encounter or synthesis of fulfilment is receptive to linguistic expression. Concerning the expression of a perception (or the appearance of a sensible thing), the external witness has only to turn

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towards the object of the perception in order to be certain of the wellfoundedness of the statement of the perception. Even though this is not always possible for him de facto, nonetheless, it is never denied to him de jure. Does the same remain true for the expression of the performance of a synthesis of intuitive fulfilment? Or should one rather think that the event of fulfilment is expressed under a form such as: “It is evident to me that…”? It goes without saying that the third person never has access to the first person’s experience of evidence, even when the latter correctly expresses his experience. Does this then mean that the third person is incapable of judging the evidence and thus the truth of the knowledge of the first person? Certainly not! One must, in truth, pay attention to the fact that for Husserl every statement is supposed to be the expression of evidence—except when the speaker explicitly says that this is not the case, for example, by prefacing his statement with “It seems to me that…,” “I doubt that…,” etc. No need at all, therefore, to say explicitly “It is evident to me that…” so that the third person will, under normal conditions, take it that the speaker is speaking with full knowledge of the facts or the thing. For Husserl, therefore, there is no essential difference between the expression of a synthesis of fulfilment and the expression of an empirical perception. It follows that the verification of the evidence of the first person by a third person takes place in exactly the same manner in both cases. When checking the being-true of a statement of perception, I am not interested in the speaker’s act of perceiving but in what he perceives. Not by perceiving his perception but only by perceiving myself what he speaks of perceiving can I prove him either right or wrong. The same goes for the expression of an act of authentic thought (and now we understand better why Husserl doesn’t hesitate to call such an act a “categorial perception” [Wahr-nehmen]). How else could one verify the truth-value of the thought of a speaker except by thinking about the same state of affairs oneself? One must therefore surmise that linguistic expression has a double power of expressing the knowledge of the first person and of inviting a third person to perform the same act of knowledge in his own right. Language thus not only permits the dialogue between consciousness and the thing. It also allows for the dialogue between different consciousnesses which are desirous of a better knowledge of the same thing. Husserl’s position thus being made clear, it is anything but a celebration of a “myth of interiority.” One cannot even say that Husserl seriously underestimated the difficulties of the linguistic expression of an experience or that he neglected the contributions of language to basic experiences such as perception of the sensible. We know that in the Investigations the problematic cases of “occasional expressions” or the expression of nonobjectifying acts, such as desire, are objects of an attentive examination. Yet it is also true that Husserl refuses to make experience and knowledge into matters of language alone. Even though knowledge and the desire to know

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always refer to a mediation between consciousness and the thing, and even though it is undeniable that language plays the primary role in this play of mediation, language does not create that which it helps to bring together. Just as perception does not create the appearance of the thing-itself, just as the thing does not create consciousness, so too is language not prior to the encounter between the thing and consciousness. All of the Logical Investigations are but a unique and tireless effort to think about the original interweaving between the thing, consciousness, and language, as well as their specific contributions to the advent of truth. (Translated from the French by Basil Vassilicos)

9 ______________________________ Authentic Thinking and Phenomenological Method Steven Galt CROWELL Rice University, USA

1. Introduction At no time since its “breakthrough” in Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen (1900–01) has phenomenology been absent from the world’s philosophical stage, but today there are remarkable signs of the continuing vitality of this philosophical approach. It thus seems appropriate to ask just what it is that makes phenomenology a distinctive way of philosophizing. And with its centenary year recently behind us, it is also appropriate that this question be posed to the Logical Investigations, a work that Robert Sokolowski has described as “literally a new beginning” since what Husserl started here “cannot be considered as continuing a tradition that had taken shape before him.” 1 Just what was the breakthrough that occurred in the Logical Investigations, and what claim does it have on us today? These questions matter not only because they are important for Husserl scholarship, but because they are much disputed now, and upon their answers depend our expectations of what phenomenological philosophy can accomplish, and what, if anything, lies beyond its scope. For if there is renewed interest in phenomenology today, this has brought with it—or is it the consequence of?—a tendency to inflate the very concept of phenomenology. Today the borders between phenomenological philosophy, metaphysical speculation, and neo-Kantian construction show signs of collapsing. One reason for this is clear enough: the ascetic, anti-metaphysical “positivism” of Husserl’s early writing belongs to a cultural and philosophical milieu that is no longer our own, and if its residue cannot be excised from the phenomenological program, that program will be felt by some to be too restrictive. Yet Dominique Janicaud seems to speak well when he says that “[p]henomenology is not all philosophy. It has nothing to win...by an overestimation of its possibilities.” 2 Must a renewal of phenomenology involve its overestimation? 1

Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2000), 211. 2 Dominique Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie Française (Paris: Editions de L’éclat, 1991), 21; “The Theological Turn of French

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The overestimation to which Janicaud refers frequently justifies itself by rejecting a principle of phenomenological method that the Logical Investigations deemed essential—the principle of intuitive givenness or Evidenz. If, following Martin Heidegger, we identify three elements of the “breakthrough” to phenomenology made in the Logical Investigations—intentionality, categorial intuition, and the a priori3—it is the theory of categorial intuition that forms the basis of the breakthrough, since the concept of intuition that gets worked out there made it possible for Husserl to give a distinctly phenomenological sense to the Brentanian notion of intentionality and the Kantian notion of the a priori. Only by insisting on the epistemological primacy of intuition in just the way he did was Husserl able to develop a non-psychological approach to intentionality and a non-constructivist concept of the a priori. And yet it is just this commitment to intuition that has seemed too restrictive to many phenomenologists. On the one hand, there are thinkers like Jean-Luc Marion and Emmanuel Levinas who abandon the principle in favor of what might be called “speculation”—invoking “revelation” as a kind of givenness not reducible to intuition. On the other hand, there are thinkers like Eugen Fink who abandon the principle in favor of construction—arguing that intuition provides only the starting point for a phenomenology that can construct “Ideas” of what cannot be given with Evidenz. The question to be posed to any such proposal is whether phenomenology can transcend intuition while still remaining phenomenology. The present essay will begin to address this question, first by clarifying what Husserl’s concept of intuition actually entails and then by showing that while both speculative and constructive phenomenology fail as phenomenology, at least some aspects of their agendas can be fulfilled without abandoning the principle of intuitive givenness.

2. Intuition and Authentic Thinking The heart of the matter is found in the chapter of the Logical Investigations entitled “The A priori Laws of Authentic and Inauthentic Thinking,” in which Husserl, writing in the heyday of neo-Kantianism, claims that his theory of categorial intuition has defined “the much used, but little clarified, relation between thinking and intuiting.”4 At first it seems odd to

Phenomenology,” in Phenomenology and the Theological Turn, ed. and trans. Bernard Prusak (New York: Fordham University, 2000), 34. Henceforth cited as TT, with French, followed by English, pagination. 3 Martin Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, ed. Petra Jaeger, Gesamtausgabe 20 (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1979), 34; History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 27. 4 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Zweiter Teil, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984), 730; Logical

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identify a philosophical breakthrough with a theory of intuition, since philosophy’s strength is usually taken to lie in thinking, the logos, the power that reason exercises over intuition. Certainly, philosophers such as Hermann Cohen and Heinrich Rickert would follow Kant’s dictum that intuitions alone are “blind,” a night in which all cows are black, a mythical “given” —to use Wilfred Sellars’s term—that has no authority in the “space of reasons.” To hold thought accountable to intuition is to ask the sun to reflect the moon. And yet Husserl’s breakthrough to phenomenology lies precisely in his recognition that both neo-Kantianism and its empiricist opponent operate with an unclarified view of thought and intuition—specifically, a view that holds them to be distinct kinds, distinct “faculties.” For Husserl the genuine contrast is not between thought and intuition, but between signification and intuition (LI, 732/833)—that is, between empty or “merely symbolic” intentions and intentions that are fulfilled in the way appropriate to them—and this allows him to determine the concept of thinking in a wholly new way. This he does in the chapter on authentic thinking, whose bold thesis is that thinking is itself a kind of intuiting, categorial intuiting. As Husserl puts it, “authentic acts of thinking…lie in…the intuitions of states of affairs, and all intuitions which function as possible parts of such states of affairs” (LI, 722/825). To assess the implications of this for phenomenological method, let us look more closely at the concept of intuition that facilitates Husserl’s move beyond the Kantian dichotomy. The a priori laws of authentic thinking occupy the role in Husserl’s Logical Investigations that transcendental logic occupies in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: they express the conditions which “no knowledge can contradict…without at once losing all content, that is, all relation to any object.”5 In Husserl’s terms, a “pure” logic deals with the a priori laws of “meaning,” that is, “all possible matters and all possible categorial forms.” But since, as he argues, the “realm of meaning is much wider than the realm of intuition,” not every such categorial formation can attain “reality” (LI, 721/824). The laws of authentic thinking, then, are the “laws…of categorial intuitions”—that is, of those categorial forms to which “a unitary correlate of fulfillment can correspond” (LI, 721/824). Like Kant’s transcendental logic, Husserl’s laws of authentic thinking are a “logic of truth,” delimiting those categorial combinations that are possible cognitions. Unlike Kant, however, Husserl neither sets out a restricted set of categories nor determines possible cognitions in terms of a presupposed faculty of sensuous intuition. Thus, where Kant can claim an a priori content for his transcendental logic, Husserl’s laws of authentic thinking have no such content. Rather, he admits that “what Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (2 vols., London: Routledge, 1970), 832. Henceforth cited in the text as LI with German and English pagination, respectively. 5 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften 3, ed. Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1904/11),

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categorial formations are in fact permitted by given materials of perception or imagination” cannot be determined by the laws in advance (LI, 719/823).6 At best one can say that given the reality of a certain categorial formation, certain other ones are logically possible and impossible. But why do Husserl’s laws not reduce to mere empiricism, then? What is it in Husserl’s theory that serves the critical function that, in Kant’s theory, is served by the a priori intuitions of space and time? Husserl’s answer turns on rejecting Kant’s dualism between thinking and intuiting altogether: authentic thinking is defined not as a thinking accompanied by confirming intuition, but as that very intuition itself. Husserl notes that though acts of “categorial union and formation” are not “necessarily” given by the material upon which they are founded—since what is given in straightforward fashion allows for multiple categorial articulations—this “freedom…still has its law-governed limits.” These limits are exposed precisely in the attempt to “carry out [vollziehen]” the categorial acts in question. This Vollzug is what gives “reality” to the categorial act; it is categorial “intuition.” But it is also nothing other than (authentic) thinking itself. As Husserl puts it, we “can no doubt ‘think’ any relation between any set of terms…think them, that is, in the sense of merely meaning them. But we cannot really carry out ‘foundings’ on every foundation: we cannot see sensuous stuff in any categorial form we like” (LI, 771/821). Husserl thus replaces Kant’s dualism with a three-fold distinction. There is, first, a concept of thinking that is equivalent to mere signification, according to which we can combine any term with any other, subject only to syntactic rules of meaning. Thus I can say (or “think” in this sense): “The camera is part of the lens.” This, however, is not properly called “thinking” at all, since it is the mere indication of a categorial act. Thus, second, there is thinking in the pregnant sense, namely the attempt to carry out a categorial “founding” on some given “foundation.” Such thinking is not mere signification but a concrete attempt to grasp some given material (in this case the perceived camera) in light of some specific categorial form (here, part–whole). This leads, thirdly, to a concept of authentic thinking, which, as categorial intuition, is the successful carrying out of the categorial act—as when I succeed in “seeing” that “the lens is part of the camera.” That this is not a grammatical truth should be obvious; just as it should be obvious that I cannot authentically think that the musical note, middle C, is purple—that is, I cannot carry out a categorial synthesis of identification on this material. It is the notion of categorial intuition as carrying out (Vollzug), then, that allows Husserl to get beyond Kant’s dilemma: Kant failed to extend “the concepts of perception and intuition over the categorial realm” because he A63/B87; English translation: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1968), 100. 6 This is why there can be nothing in Husserl that corresponds to the chapter of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason entitled “The Analytic of Principles.”

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failed to grasp “the deep difference between intuition and signification” (LI, 732/833)—that is, between authentic thinking and signification. Instead, he worked with a concept of thinking that was equivalent to signification, and thus could not see how categorial acts could of themselves be intuitive. For this reason Kant had no choice but to treat sensuous intuition as normative for cognition, with the psychologistic consequences Husserl seizes upon. For Husserl, in contrast, intuition continues to play its cognitively critical or normative role with respect to signification, but it does so precisely as thinking, thus not as something foreign to the space of reasons. There is no gap between thinking and intuiting and hence no anxiety that thinking, restricted to what can be intuited, might fall short of truth. The implications of Husserl’s move here are quite far-reaching. For it is not merely that intuition insures that thinking can attain at least some truth. Rather, the very idea of a truth-functional discourse is tied to the laws of authentic thinking. As Husserl puts it, “categorial intuitions…impart to statements…the logical values of truth and falsehood.” In the absence of possible categorial intuition, one cannot assign to a statement any relation to truth, since it is on the “laws” of authentic thinking that “the normative regulation of purely signitive, or admixedly signitive, thought depends” (LI, 720/823). Hence, to suppose that there could be a kind of thinking that would both escape the restrictions of intuitive givenness and remain truth-functional—a supposition made both by speculative and constructivist phenomenologists—is to suppose that symbols have a life of their own. And yet proponents of a post-intuitionistic phenomenology might well object that categorial intuition is called “intuition” only by equivocation; thus that authentic thinking and the norm of truth is not tied to “intuition” in any interesting sense of the word. In what sense, then, is it true that for Husserl all that is “given” is “intuitively given”? Husserl introduces the notion of categorial intuition by contrasting it with sense intuition, arguing that “in the mere form of a judgment”—for instance, “S is P”—”only certain antecedently specifiable parts…can have something which corresponds to them in intuition”—namely “S,” “P”—”while to other parts”—namely “is”—”nothing intuitive possibly can correspond” (LI, 663/778). One might then suppose that Husserl limits intuition in the strict sense to the sensuously given, while leading phenomenology beyond that to the categorial—and so beyond intuition. One might also point out that Husserl says only that the “state of affairs” constituted in the categorial act expressed in the “is” must be “given to us…by way of an act which gives it, an analogue of common sensuous intuition” (LI, 670/784)— which, precisely as an analogue, need not really be an intuition. Thus, even when Husserl states explicitly that the “essential homogeneity of the function of fulfillment…obliges us to give the name ‘perception’ to each fulfilling act of confirmatory self-presentation, to each fulfilling act whatever the name of an ‘intuition,’ and to its intentional correlate the name of ‘object’” (LI, 671/785), one might insist that this, being a mere analogy, should carry no weight in defining phenomenological method.

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Husserl has already anticipated this objection, however. Even before he speaks of an “analogy” between sensuous and categorial fulfillments, he maintains a more nuanced view about the way in which terms like “intuition” and “perception” operate, noting that “Perception and object are concepts that cohere most intimately together, which mutually assign sense to one another, and which widen or narrow this sense conjointly” (LI, 666/781). Thus while Husserl’s introduction of categorial intuition “made use of a certain mutually delimited, natural, but also very narrow concept of perception (or of object)”—namely, that of sense perception—this does not mean that some literal meaning of intuition has been analogized to other kinds of fulfillments in a perhaps illegitimate way. Rather, Husserl simply takes seriously an obvious feature of our everyday talk: “I see what you mean,” “I finally got insight into the matter,” “I perceive a discrepancy between your statement and your behavior.” In such cases of what Donn Welton has called “natural meaning,” there “is not a clean difference between literal and metaphorical meaning.” 7 The relevant difference between sense perception and other perception/object correlations is not between literal intuitive givenness and merely analogically intuitive givenness, but between “straightforward” or direct, and categorially structured, perception (LI, 679/791). Thus there can be no talk of an object without a corresponding notion of perception or intuition; an in principle imperceptible object is not thinkable, since to be an object at all is to be perceptible in some modality or other, whether directly or synthetically. If this is so, then to tie phenomenological method to intuition is not to tie it to a restricted domain of objects—the intuitively given ones, as opposed to the “unapparent”—but to open it responsibly, as authentic thinking, to anything that can be an object of thought at all. Here, however, a more serious objection arises, one that will force us to consider some views that hold phenomenology’s intuitionism to be phenomenologically unsupportable. For it may be that the notions of perception and object mutually define one another, but phenomenological investigation itself uncovers phenomena—for instance, the alter ego, temporality, and the world—that cannot be taken to be objects at all. And if they do not have the structure of an object, there may be no reason to think that they are intuitively given or perceived. If phenomenology uncovers such phenomena, then it has already transcended its own supposed intuitionism.8 On this objection, authentic thinking (categorial intuition) is not 7 Donn Welton, The Other Husserl (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University, 2000), 386. Henceforth cited as OH with page reference. 8 In Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch, Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. 1 (1913), 11; Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983), 10, Husserl offers another definition of “object” as “any subject of possible true predications,” and on that definition, of course, all horizonal phenomena would count as objects. Whether this means that they must therefore be intuitable—as is implied by

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necessary for phenomenology, and this would explain why Husserl drops both the notion of categorial intuition and authentic thinking after the Logical Investigations. 9 To answer this objection, it is necessary to show that the structure of authentic thinking is indeed at work in uncovering these horizonal phenomena. This task will be approached in two steps. First, some of the arguments put forth by those who propose to abandon Husserl’s principle of intuition in favor of speculation will be criticized (3). Then a proper and an improper sense of phenomenological “construction” will be distinguished so as to show that the former retains precisely the structure of categorial intuition or authentic thinking (4).

3. Speculative Phenomenology? Calling into question the centrality of intuition for phenomenological method has brought phenomenology into contact with a strain of thought to which, at the time of the Logical Investigations, Husserl was manifestly hostile: speculation. This is evident in the work of those whom Dominique Janicaud associates with a ‘theological turn’ in French phenomenology—for instance, in the writings of Jean-Luc Marion. Now Marion’s thought, which develops Heidegger’s late suggestion of a “phenomenology of the unapparent” into a post-metaphysical approach to God without Being, is a fecund provocation that is not to be dismissed in a sentence. However, as Janicaud remarks, “we are not forced to take or leave any œuvre as a whole,” but have the “right, and even the duty,” to question and test its individual steps (TT, 40/51). Thus we shall restrict ourselves to a critical examination of that point in the Logical Investigations where Marion claims to find already a break with the principle of intuition that, he believes, leads from a “reduction to the intuitively given” to a reduction of intuition itself.10 Marion begins by asking whether “the characteristic of givenness [is] equivalent to the characteristic of presence through intuition” (RG, 14/6) and concludes by asserting the “unconditional primacy of the givenness of the phenomenon,” of which “intuitive givenness” is only a particular “illustration” (53/32). What authorizes this split between givenness and intuition, such that phenomenology is defined essentially in terms of the former and only the Logical Investigations’ conception of the correlation of object and perception—or whether Husserl would be willing to abandon the correlation thesis under pressure from this “logical” concept of object is an interesting question that cannot be explored here. 9 LI, 535/662–63: “It does not affect what I have said to add that, after twenty years of further work, I should not write at many points as I then wrote, and that I do not approve of much that I then wrote, e.g., the doctrine of categorial representation.” 10 Jean-Luc Marion, Réduction et donation: Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989), 49; Reduction and Givenness, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1998), 30. Henceforth cited as RG with French, followed by English, page reference.

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incidentally in terms of the latter? Is there any authorization in Husserl’s text for thinking givenness without intuition? It does not appear so. Marion’s whole argument turns on the claim that signification is a kind of givenness without intuition, and this argument seems to be based on an equivocation. To establish what he calls the “intuitive extraterritoriality of signification” (38/22), Marion follows Derrida in noting that for Husserl signification is supposedly “valid without the confirmation of an intuition” (35/20), that there is a kind of “autonomy of signification” with respect to intuition. But what exactly is meant by “valid” here? Certainly, Husserl claims that signification operates without fulfilling intuition—that is, that there can be empty intentions—but in what sense can we speak of “autonomy” from intuition? It is not as though the act of signification, empty though it may be, eluded intuition and presence in some absolute sense, since phenomenological reflection is able to grasp such acts in their intuitive presence. To say that signification can be “valid” without a confirming intuition—that is, can be empty—is not yet to say that it is “extraterritorial” with respect to intuition. Nevertheless, Marion takes Husserl’s remark about the “deep difference between intuition and signification” to mean that “signification…is defined as the other of intuition” and therefore is somehow “before intuition” (39/23). Just here, however, we find a crucial equivocation. First, it is true that signification is defined as the “other” of intuition in the sense that terms can be combined without fulfilling intuition—indeed, without any possible fulfillment. But in contrast to Husserl, who ties signification back to authentic thinking or intuitively fulfilled categorial acts, Marion understands “purely symbolic” thought—for instance, in mathematics—as a “capacity to think significations that remain irreducible to any intuition” (40/24). This is, to say the least, an astounding position to attribute to Husserl, who from first to last sought to show how purely symbolic thinking—especially the “technology” of mathematical symbolism—was not irreducible to intuition. Leaving this point aside, however, Marion’s argument for the independence of signification from intuition is based, secondly, on the following equivocation. Claiming, correctly, that for Husserl “every expression…has a signification, whether or not it has an intuitive fulfillment,” Marion concludes that Husserl rejects the view that “signification becomes ‘true’ only by finding its foundation in intuition” (43/26). But here we must note that if by “true” is meant “valid” (Gelten, holding), this conclusion does not follow. We saw clearly how for Husserl it is the possibility of intuitive fulfillment, authentic thinking, that “imparts” to signification a relation to truth or falsity.11 On the other hand, if by “true” is meant only that a Bedeutung is present even in the absence of fulfilling intuition, it is only by equivocation that one could claim, as Marion does, that signification is “given 11

Though there is no room to make the argument here, consideration of the role played by the “telos of truth” in Husserl’s genetic phenomenology would show that were there no “relation to fulfilling intuition” there would be no signification at all.

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evidently” in a mode that is itself non-intuitive, a “mode of presence [that is] deployed sui generis when signification, by itself and itself alone, presents itself” (47/28). For though the signifying act be empty of fulfilling intuition, its correlate, the Bedeutung, is no more something whose presence would escape the functional concept of intuition Husserl outlines (LI, 671/785) than is categoriality itself. Signification is itself given intuitively if it is given at all: it is given intuitively to that phenomenological reflection that thematizes signification itself “in person” rather than merely signifying (talking about) it. There is nothing to suggest that this “in person” is somehow autonomous from intuition in Husserl’s functional sense, and therefore nothing in the phenomenon of signification, as Husserl presents it, that would challenge the correlation between intuition and givenness. On this slender basis, however, Marion feels entitled to argue that when Husserl invokes the fundamental “correlation between the appearing and that which appears as such” in the Crisis, this constitutes a “belated recognition” that “appearing” was never properly tied to intuition but rather counts “first as the givenness of what thus appears.” Givenness is then taken to be independent of intuition since it is “the appearing”—and not intuition— that “gives that which appears” (RG, 52/32). But if nothing in the Logical Investigations allows us to argue that givenness (“appearing”) can be separated from intuition—that is, if there is no leibhafte Gegebenheit that would not be intuitive presence (56/34)—then the claim that what matters to phenomenology is givenness, and that phenomenological method can extend itself to supposedly non-intuitive givens without becoming groundless speculation, has no basis. Without claiming to do justice to the depth of Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenology of radical alterity, it is possible to locate in it, too, a point at which authentic phenomenological thinking moves “with aplomb”—that is, with mere affirmation—into speculation.12 Levinas’s thought proceeds, with a double movement, first from an ontological phenomenology that remains intuitive to an ethical phenomenology that challenges the primacy of intuition in the experience of the “face” of the Other; and then, secondly, to an affirmation of the infinity and even divinity of this face. While Levinas’s first move seems phenomenologically justified, similar phenomenological authorization is lacking for his second move. When Levinas writes that “[i]t is our relations with men…that give to theological concepts the sole signification they admit of,” 13 he utters the precise point at which phenomenology, bounded by the intuitive givenness of our “relations with men,” wanders forth into speculation, that is, into a theological stance that is 12

On this “aplomb,” see Janicaud, TT 14/25. Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini: essai sur l’extériorité (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), 51; Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 1969), 79. Henceforth cited as TI with French, followed by English, pagination. 13

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neither necessarily nor sufficiently motivated by phenomenology. And it may well be that if the a priori laws of authentic thinking circumscribe the field of what can have the “logical values of truth and falsehood,” statements of the sort Levinas (and Marion) propound may not be assessable in terms of truth or falsity—though they may respond to other normative principles. But what makes Levinas’s first move—in which the principle of intuition is already challenged in the name of the experience of the “face” of the Other—phenomenologically compelling? If this is not already an instance of speculation it must be possible to reconstruct Levinas’s insight in such a way that the principle of intuition, or authentic thinking, is preserved. This can be achieved by distinguishing between an improper and a proper concept of phenomenological “construction,” a task to which the final section of the present essay is devoted.

4. Phenomenological Constructions, Proper and Improper In stating why his investigation “owes everything to the phenomenological method,” Levinas identifies the very spot at which the motive for a constructive phenomenology becomes apparent. Reflecting on intentional acts, phenomenology discovered them “to be implanted in horizons unsuspected by [these acts],” horizons that “endow them with a meaning.” “What does it matter,” Levinas continues, “if in the Husserlian phenomenology taken literally these unsuspected horizons are in their turn interpreted as thoughts aiming at objects! What counts is the idea of the overflowing of objectifying thought by a forgotten experience from which it lives” (TI, 16–17/28). The question is whether, in order to get at these “unsuspected horizons,” phenomenology must give up its principle of intuitive givenness. Can horizonality be thought authentically in the sense of the Logical Investigations? One answer is provided by the “constructive phenomenology” that Eugen Fink proposed in his Sixth Cartesian Meditation.14 Starting with the intuitive givenness of the “living present,” a regressive phenomenology unfolds all the horizonal intentional implications that “become accessible through the phenomenological reduction” (SCM, 64/57). These unfoldings remain intuitively given (in a sense to be explored below), but at a certain point regressive analysis encounters “horizons” that refer “to something that precisely by its transcendental mode of being is in principle deprived of givenness” (62/56). For this reason, Fink argues, “the theorizing directed

14 Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil I: Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre, ed. Hans Ebeling, Jann Holl, and Guy van Kerckhoven, Husserliana Dokumente II/1 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988); English translation: Sixth Cartesian Meditation, trans. Ronald Bruzina (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University, 1995). Henceforth cited as SCM with German and English page references, respectively.

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to them”—namely, constructive phenomenology—”is not an ‘intuitive having-given,’ is not ‘intuitive.’” For instance, regressive analysis moves back along the temporally sedimented constitutions of a single ego, uncovering the horizons that give meaning to its current intentionalities. With the phenomena of “birth and death,” however, it reaches a “limit” or horizon that, though it contributes “sense,” cannot be “exhibited in an immediate way in the being-context of ongoing world constitution.” Thus, if we are “to gain any understanding at all,” writes Fink, “we have to ‘construct’” (70/62). Fink’s constructive phenomenology is thus motivated largely—if not exclusively (70–71/63)—by questions of wholeness or totalities that, precisely as totalities, elude the grasp of intuitive reflection. However, there lurks in this concern for totality what Kant calls a “transcendental illusion,” and if this is so, then the rationale for a non-intuitive constructive phenomenology is not compelling.15 Recalling that for Husserl it is not possible to carry out a given categorial synthesis on just any material whatsoever, it is evident that precisely the sort of material Fink focuses on—world, temporal stream, history, as horizons of the transcendental field itself—cannot be authentically thought in the category of part–whole. Just as they are not properly objects, neither can they be totalized; in the attempt to do so one encounters antinomies. It is thus extremely problematic to say, as Robert Sokolowski does, that phenomenology takes “a view that is appropriate to the whole” and to argue that “mind and being are moments to each other,” since it is not clear that the category of part—whole applies to notions like “mind” and “world” at all.16 Interestingly, Donn Welton raises this objection against Husserl himself as he tries to show how Husserl’s thinking about the world-horizon was held captive to a “Cartesian way” of posing phenomenological problems. In response, Welton argues for a version of constructive phenomenology that, unlike Fink’s, does not relinquish the principle of intuition but proposes only to recognize the “mediating role of argument in establishing transcendental structures” (OH, 289). A look at what Welton means by the “mediating role of argument” can help us both to appreciate the continuing relevance of Husserl’s concept of authentic thinking and to distinguish between what can responsibly be said to belong to those horizons to which Levinas referred and what remains groundless speculation.

15 For further discussion of Fink’s position, see my Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 2001), Chap. 13: “Gnostic Phenomenology: Eugen Fink and the Critique of Transcendental Reason.” This essay may also be found in The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy I (2001): 257–77. 16 Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 209 and 25.

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According to Welton, phenomenological constructions are needed to get at horizonal phenomena such as the lifeworld. Do such constructions transcend the principle of intuition? Welton sometimes suggests as much, saying that “the horizon is not itself an appearance but is always ‘pregiven,’” and that “the world does not appear” (332). But such statements are directed only against a very restricted notion of intuition—namely, Husserl’s “Cartesian strategy of directly intuiting consciousness” (270), according to which “appearances” are objects for epistemic intentionality. To treat the world as “appearing” in this sense is to treat it exclusively as an object for consciousness and thus to miss its horizonal character. On Welton’s view, because Husserl linked his “notion of intuition” to a “Cartesian notion of evidence” with its claim to transparency, adequacy, and immediacy, he had no choice but to treat the world as an object for consciousness (338, 287). But once the restrictions of the Cartesian notion of evidence are abandoned, nothing stands in the way of recognizing that the world-horizon appears as the “correlate of experience or intuition.” One must simply avoid characterizing it in categorial terms that inappropriately “totalize” it (344–45). What then is the specific relation between construction and intuition in the phenomenological method that grasps the world-horizon as such? Welton argues that Husserl turns to construction when he recognizes the impossibility of defining the transcendental field through “directly intuiting” consciousness. Given the temporal structure of consciousness, the demand for adequate intuitive evidence seems to reduce phenomenology to the “sterile ‘I am’” (280). At the very least phenomenology must incorporate recollection and so become, “in a minimal sense, historical reflection” (281–83). It might seem, then, that phenomenology must renounce the principle of basing its claims solely upon intuitive evidence, thereby placing its trust in empty significations. But here Welton invokes the “mediating role” of “transcendental arguments” in uncovering elements of the horizon that condition intentionality, the experience of meaningful objects (294). And although he does not note the connection, Welton’s account of transcendental arguments retrieves precisely Husserl’s doctrine of authentic thinking. First, there is something quite elusive about this idea of a transcendental “argument.” As Welton admits, it is not really an argument in the sense of a deduction (294). Further, if he correctly describes Husserl’s genetic or constructive practice as a “methodologically induced reflective analysis that opens up the transcendental as a field to direct intuition and then uses eidetic variation to regressively discover different sets of transcendental conditions” (287), it seems that transcendental arguments require little beyond the staples of phenomenological method. Apparently, the mediating role of argument functions in the process of eidetic variation itself. Just what kind of thinking, then, is in play in such arguments? Welton borrows a central feature of his account from Charles Taylor, who suggests that transcendental arguments lay out a “chain of indispensability claims” that “articulate a certain insight we have into our experience”

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(294–95). Taylor, for instance, finds such an argument at work in Merleau-Ponty, who shows that given the phenomenologically discernable features of our sense perception, a “field of this structure can only be experienced by an embodied agent”; hence, our sense of ourselves as embodied agents “is not a contingent fact we might discover empirically” but is “constitutive of our experience.” 17 This differs from a Kantian transcendental deduction because, in working back to the transcendental condition (embodied subjectivity), I do not work back to something that, though itself incapable of being experienced (like the “unity of apperception”), is posited as necessary for the experience I do have. Rather, I recover something that in a certain sense I have always already known. This condition has the character of a horizon: although my embodiment is not an intentional object, it is horizonally experienced, pre-given, and thus intuited along with my direct perception of objects. And only because it can be recovered, made intuitively explicit, as having been experienced, does it count as a phenomenologically established feature of transcendental subjectivity. By contrast, the claim that a “body made up of carbon molecules” is indispensable to such perceptual intentionality would not count as a phenomenologically warranted claim. Although it is perhaps true, it is not something that can be established by a transcendental “argument” or phenomenological construction in the relevant sense. What makes the difference here? It is precisely the demand that transcendental arguments must articulate an insight that we have into our experience—that is, that the conditions be tied to intuitive evidence of the actual features of my experience. In this sense, the notion of a “condition” is relative to the level at which one starts (just as “material” for categorial formation is relative: it can already be categorially formed). For instance, if one starts with a phenomenology of perceptual experience, embodied agency may emerge as the implicit horizonal condition. But one could also begin with our sense of ourselves as embodied agents and find that its condition is a certain implicit character of world or time. The crucial point is that at every step the indispensability claim must be cashed in on the basis of “an insight I have into my own experience.” The argument just brings to light what is intuited—or given—precisely there. Thus a constructive phenomenology does not move from the intuited (part) to the unintuitable (whole), as Fink suggested, but from the explicitly intuited to its implicitly intuited horizonal condition. And though such a move can be put in the form of an argument, it is clear that eidetic variation does all the work.18

17

Charles Taylor, “Transcendental Arguments,” in Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1995), 24–25. 18 For one thing, the argument is circular. For another, if one relies on such arguments alone, one can generate naturalistic, non-phenomenological conditions, such as the “necessity” of carbon molecules.

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But if this is what constructive phenomenology amounts to, then it is not a break with Husserl’s doctrine of authentic thinking so much as its essential elaboration. For authentic thinking is just the actual carrying out of those categorial syntheses that are allowed on the basis of a certain material. The fact that in this case the material is the transcendental-phenomenological field itself does not mean that such thinking has changed its stripes. Actually carrying out these categorial elaborations just is the intuiting of the structures that condition this field—not a construction of, or inference to, what does not appear. In this respect, constructive phenomenology is no different than any other phenomenology. All authentic thinking is beholden to its material, whether it is directed at a particular state of affairs or at one that is mediated by transcendental “arguments,” that is, by eidetic variations that yield insight into necessary conditions. Indeed, only authentic thinking in the sense of categorial intuition can show that the categories appropriate to objects (e.g., part–whole) are not necessarily appropriate to horizons—precisely by trying and failing to carry out such categorial syntheses on that material. At no point, then, does constructive phenomenology provide a rationale for abandoning the field of intuitive, first-person evidence. The importance of this may be illustrated, in conclusion, by returning to Levinas’s claim that one of the horizons of object-intentionality is the face of the Other. The whole of Totality and Infinity can be read as a transcendental argument designed to show that not only do the way things show up in our practical and theoretical dealings with them depend on intersubjectivity, as Husserl already knew, but that this very intersubjectivity is phenomenologically constituted by a response to an ethical claim (the face of the Other as the phenomenon of obligation). If this is truly a phenomenological result, it should be possible to show that this indispensability claim articulates an insight we have into our own experience. This I do by actually carrying out the thought of its conditioning; that is, by showing, through eidetic variation, that the sort of intersubjective world I inhabit is unthinkable without my always already having acknowledged the Other’s ethical claim on me. Thus, if Levinas asserts that the face of the Other is not an “appearance,” that it “transcends intuition,” and so on,19 this can be understood to mean that it is not an intentional object. But in thinking it authentically—in carrying out the categorial syntheses that link it, as condition, with what it conditions—I do in fact intuit the face, in Husserl’s sense. By contrast, the further claim that this face (ethical obligation) is a “trace of the Divine” as the “absolutely unapparent” or “infinite,” cannot be accepted as phenomenological. It is speculative (mere signification). Even a world bereft of God is thinkable only in terms of a face that makes an ethical claim on me, and just here lies the difference. I can eidetically vary divinity out of the face in a way that I cannot vary its ethical claim—just as I can vary carbon molecules out of embodiment in a way that I cannot vary its agency. This does not mean 19

See, e.g., Levinas, TI, 21-2/50–51.

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that Levinas’s theological turn makes no sense, any more than it means that the chemistry of carbon molecules makes no sense. But if phenomenology understands itself, it will be no more at home with the one than with the other. Its contribution lies in tethering philosophy to authentic thinking, thereby allowing it to serve a deeply important critical role. And nothing in either chemistry or theology provides a convincing rationale for it to abandon that role.

10 ______________________________ The Problem of Being in Logical Investigations DING Yun Fudan University, PR China

The problem of being is the central problem of western philosophy. To a large extent, this is related to the copula in western language. The esoteric meaning of philosophy would be hardly accessible to any scholar from a Chinese cultural background, unless he intends to investigate the strange linguistic phenomena leading to such an important philosophical problem. On the other hand, it is due to the phenomenological movement that began with Logical Investigations that attention was again paid to this problem in the twentieth century. Being a phenomenologist from a Chinese cultural background, I think it is proper to examine the problem of being in Logical Investigations. Indeed, as is well known, the close connection between the problem of being and the phenomenological movement began with Martin Heidegger, who expressed the connection with these words: “Only as phenomenology is ontology possible.”1 Whatever great differences there are between Heidegger and Husserl, the phenomenological career of the former had its beginning when he read Logical Investigations. Undoubtedly, there is something in this great work that aroused him to think about the problem of being. In fact, it cannot be denied that Husserl had his own interpretations of the problem of being. What Heidegger regarded as inaccessible and unsolved is the so-called authentic one. Therefore, our questions are: What kind of problem of being arises in Logical Investigations? How can it be solved using Husserl’s own ideas? Why does this solution in the end miss the authentic problem of being?

1. How is the Problem of Being Advanced and Resolved in Logical Investigations? Phenomenology understands itself as a rigorous science advocating the return to the thing itself. According to Heidegger, the thing (Sache) in Husserl’s phenomenology is not being (Sein) but consciousness 1

Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979), 35.

135 K.-Y. Lau and J.J. Drummond (eds.), Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives, 135–151. © 2007 Springer.

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(Bewusstsein).2 As a result, Husserl did not examine the problem as a main theme in the whole text, whereas it could be referred to in a certain context which belongs to a whole theory of consciousness. That is to say, the problem of being is subordinate to the one of consciousness. Nevertheless, the latter problem necessarily leads to the former.

1.1 From the problem of consciousness to the problem of being It should be noticed that the context in which the problem of being arises in Logical Investigation is that wherein the intention is to “epistemologically clarify logical ideas, concepts and laws.”3 How does this work on logical epistemology refer to the problem of ontology? Why is this problem discussed nowhere but in the sixth investigation? The first task of logical epistemology is to clarify logical consciousness or logical living-experience (Erlebnis), which in turn is developed on the ground of a theory of consciousness in general. What the fifth and sixth investigation contain is a whole theory of consciousness in general and no less than a whole theory of logical consciousness. In the fifth investigation, consciousness is described as intentional living-experience, while the fundamental problem of logical expression is determined as the essential relationship between meaning-intention (meaning) and meaning-fulfillment (truth). The principal contribution is the characterization of the intentional essence of consciousness, especially of the semantic essence; i.e., the intentional essence of logical consciousness. However, “the intentional essence does not exhaust the act phenomenologically.”4 In other words, the phenomenological connection between consciousness and object is not outside the nature of consciousness, or the Gegebenheit of the object itself, for consciousness cannot be reduced to intentional essence. One of the most determinative aspects in that phenomenological relationship other than intentional essence is the liveliness or the fulfillment of the Gegebenheit of the object itself, which can be called reality (Wirklichkeit) from the point of view of consciousness. As far as logical consciousness is concerned, the reality is the same conception as the truth (Wahrheit) of the logical proposition. Truth is nothing other than the complete fulfillment of the intention,5 and the fulfillment of meaning-intention becomes the main concern of the Logical Investigations. Husserl purposely limited Thomas’ definition of truth, the content of which is 2

Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976), 69. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984), 9. 4 Ibid., 433. 5 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/2 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984), 647. 3

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“adaequatio intellectus et rei,” to the field of propositional truth: “the intellectus is in this case the thought-intention, the intention of meaning.”6 It is due to truth as meaning-fulfillment that a logical expression can gain some character of recognition besides that of simple meaning. The fundamental task of the sixth investigation is to phenomenologically describe meaning-fulfillment. As an example of intention-fulfillment, meaningfulfillment is the fulfillment of meaning-intention. Insofar as a logical proposition is a special mode of proposition, logical truth is an example of propositional truth. The truth as meaning-fulfillment is the propositional truth about subject-predicate expression. As Heidegger has pointed out, “From time immemorial, philosophy has associated truth and Being.”7 It is of some necessity that the problem of propositional truth leads to the problem of being. Thus, the following questions arise: How does propositional truth always involve itself with the problem of being? What kind of problem of being does it involve? Before examining the relevant interpretation in Logical Investigations, we should briefly discuss the so-called problem of being.

1.2 The ambivalence of the word “being” and its etymological examination What does the problem of being mean? There are various definitions in the long history of ontology. We understand the problem of being in a broad sense. Any questions about the sense of “being” and its relevant conceptions, such as “essence,” “entity,” “existence” and so forth, can be regarded as belonging to the problem of being, which has developed itself into a genealogy. What is referred here is the conception of “being” in a broad sense. Whether Sein in German, or being in English, or être and étant in French, or einai and ousia in Greek, or esse and ens in Latin, being is a controversial conception, even after Heidegger pointed out the so-called ontological difference. Given the grammatical transformation of the copula, the distinctions among to be, being, and Being cannot be said to be unambiguous even in ordinary language. However, when the ontological problem about, for instance, to on hei on (Being qua Being) is expressed, the original verb to be has to be nominalized as Being. Few philosophers were aware of the philosophical result of the linguistic custom; i.e., the neglected difference between Being itself and being. How can the single word being signify different conceptions? The principle reason is the complicated use of the word. It is commonly agreed that there are three different meanings of the word. The first signifies existence. The second meaning is the copula, which supports the

6 7

Ibid., 647. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 212.

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subject-predicate structure of any proposition. The third denotes identity.8 If identity could be reduced to some kind of subject-predicate proposition, then it should be asserted that the puzzle around the word “being” derives from the original relationship between existence and copula. If the problem of being fundamentally means the question on the sense of being, perhaps we should first transform the question into the questions concerning the meaning of existence, the meaning of copula, and the relationship between existence and copula. A word has its original sense in a sentence. Therefore, the three questions require us to analyze the meaning of S is and S is P, and the interrelation of the two propositional forms. With this preliminary discussion we can go deeper into Husserl’s text.

1.3 The connotations of the concept being in Logical Investigations In a well-known section of the sixth investigation, Husserl, who was clearly aware of the ambivalence of the concept being, made the following important distinction: “The ‘being’ here in question in our first objective sense of truth, is not to be confused with the ‘being’ covered by copula in the affirmative categorial judgment.”9 The concept being in the former sense has been regarded as the synonym of truth and the true.10 In order to discuss the categorial intuition of being as copula, Husserl examined the Kantian dictum of being: “Sein ist offenbar kein reales Prädikat.” Meanwhile, he applied the term of Herbart to name being in the sense of existence as das existenziale Sein or das Sein der absoluten Position.11 Husserl continued to explain the difference between existence and being in his 1906/1907 lecture entitled Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie. According to this lecture, the concept of existence can be 8 This opinion appears to be common sense in any reference book. Cf. the entry for Sein in the Handbuch Philosophischer Grundbegriffe, ed. Hermann Krings et al., Vol. III (Munich: Kosel, 1974), 1288f. According to this work, there are three fundamental senses of Sein that should be attributed to Plato’s Sophist. They are: Identischsetzung, Eigenschaftszuschreibung, and Existenzbehauptung. Actually, we could hardly find such an explicit distinction in the correlative context of Plato. And there are more possible definitions than these three. For instance, Plato has tried to define being as “nothing else than power (dynamis)”; cf. Sophist, 247e. Aristotle has mentioned many more than three definitions; cf. Metaphysics, 1003a ff. Some linguistic work is worthy of our attention; cf. Charles H. Kahn, The Verb “be” in Ancient Greek (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973). 9 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/2, 653. 10 Cf. ibid. 11 Cf. ibid., 665.

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understood in both a narrow and a broad sense. Existence in the narrow sense is applied to denote the real, i.e., the individual in the temporal world,12 while that in the broad sense “is the same as the concept of being in the broad sense.”13 The latter includes irreal mathematical objects, categorial objects, such as the state of affairs and the universal, and the true. By contrast, the concept of being in the narrow sense only signifies absolute objects, not a state of affairs.14 Therefore, the connotations of the concept of being mentioned by Husserl include: 1) copula (k) 2) existence (e). This includes the real existence (e.1) of the real individual within the world and the irreal; i.e., ideal existence (e.2). These connotations are embodied in relevant propositional forms, that is: S is P (k) S is or S exists (e). As far as the concept of existence is concerned, the simple and absolute object (e.1) should be distinguished from the state of affairs (e.2). The latter can be transformed into subsistence (Bestand). Of course, the simple and absolute object concerns not only the real. A more complicated situation appears in e.2. The irreal individual existence includes not only the irreal object in the ideal world, such as the state of affairs or the universal (e.2.1), but also the various objects of modern metaphysics, such as the whole world itself, the self, and God. All of these objects are not “beings-within-the-world” in the Heideggerian sense. Only in the sense of irreal existence can we rightfully state that the Platonic Idea is, that the world is, that I am, and that the God is. According to the ambivalence of the conception of being, the problem of being in Husserl’s work can be divided into the problem related to the meaning of truth and the problem related to the copula. The former belongs to the theory of truth, while the latter belongs to the theory of categorial intuition. All of these determine our task more closely as that of examining Husserl’s explanation of the two concepts of being, as well as pointing out the possible connection between them. 12

Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein, Husserliana XVIII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 191. 13 Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, Vorlesungen 1906/1907, ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana XXIV (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 309. 14 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/2, 655.

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1.4 Being in the sense of original truth The context in which being in the sense of truth is discussed is the theory of truth. In this place, the problem of being is some interpretation of the problem of truth. Husserl gave four concepts of truth in the sixth investigation. The first is a state of affairs correlated to an identifying act; i.e., “the full agreement of what is meant with what is given as such.”15 In other words, it refers to the coincidence of the meaning with the object insofar as consciousness is concerned (w1). The second concerns the idea of the full agreement of what is meant with what is given; i.e., the idea of absolute coincidence (w2). The third is the object given in the manner of the object meant. It “can also be called being, truth, the true, in so far as it is here experienced … as the ideal fullness for an intention, as that which makes an intention true.”16 Indeed it is the so-called thing itself that fully gives itself (w3). Just as truth in sense w3 is characterized from the aspect of intentional correlate, the fourth sense of truth is defined from the aspect of the intention, which concerns rightness of intention, especially propositional intention. Truth in this sense can be called the adequacy of intention to its true object (w4). It can easily be seen that the focus of w1, w2, and w3 is coincidence. If there is any essential difference among the four concepts, it should be between truth in the sense of coincidence and that in the sense of being. In any case, some kind of simplification is required, which we can find in Heidegger’s interpretation of these definitions. What we are concerned about is how Husserl discussed being in the sense of w3, that is, according to the definition above, the fully given object itself. Husserl gave further interpretations in another context: “We have gotten the universal concept of being…the being is truthful being (Wahrhaftsein). Being (Seiend) in the sense of the real, being in the objective time, is being-there (Dasein), is existence (Existenz) in the narrow sense. As far as categorial object, especially the state of affairs, is concerned we prefer the term subsistence (Bestand).”17 That is to say, being in the sense of truth is nothing but existence in the broad sense (e). Therefore, some questions arise. If being in the sense of truth can be determined as existence in the broad sense, does it belong to real existence e.1, or to irreal existence e.2? If it belongs to the latter, is it subordinate to universal e.2.1, or to transcendent existence e.2.2? If it is subordinate to

15 16 17

Ibid., 651–52. Ibid., 652. Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie, 315.

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transcendent existence, which one is Being in the sense of truth? World, ego, or God? The second level of question is on the relationship among these concepts of truth. What kind of relationship is there between truth in the sense of coincidence (w1, w2, w3) and truth in the sense of being? There are no definite answers but some clues to these concrete questions. For example, concerning the latter question Husserl has explained that truth in the sense of being is that which make an intention true (Wahrmachend). Here, it has been suggested that w3 makes w1, w2, and w4 possible. However, a more explicit analysis is lacking, which we could to some extent find in some of Husserl’s later works. Nevertheless, we should take special notice of the prominence of this question in Heidegger’s thought. In Logical Investigations Husserl was concerned about the distinction between being in the sense of truth and copula. Husserl pointed out expressly that the former refers to the total coincidence of intention and the given; being in the sense of truth is that which as correlate makes the agreement possible, while in the latter case, the copula corresponds to the total or partial identity between subject and predicate. According to Husserl, the copula is just a synthetic moment on being in the sense of truth, and it cannot express the fact that the latter is true, while “being in the sense of truth is experienced but not expressed, and never coincides with the being meant and experienced in the ‘is’ of the assertion.”18 We can find a similar standpoint in the Kantian dictum of being, which means that “is” is not a real predicate that expresses what is true or what exists, but just a thought and logical predicate.19 All of this leads us to the theory of categorial intuition.

1.5. Copula and categorial intuition Just as being in the sense of existence belongs to the problem of truth, the problem of copula is dealt with by the theory of categorial intuition. What this theory concerns at first is not the intuition of the Platonic universal, but that of the state of affairs. The fundamental structure of the state of affairs is the subject-predicate structure (S is P). Any state of affairs, which corresponds to attribution and predication, is transcendent for the sensible object. Attribution can be regarded as some transformation of predication. For example, when white paper is mentioned, we actually mean the paper that is white. The connection between sensible object and sensible moment cannot be sensibly perceived. We can see the paper and white, but we cannot see that the paper is white. The paragraph has become famous, in which Husserl pointed out “I can see colour, but not being-coloured.… Being is nothing in the object, no part of it, no moment tenanting it…. But being is 18

Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/2, 653. Cf. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Ausgabe R. Schmidt; F. Meiner), A598/B626f. 19

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also nothing attaching to an object: as it is no real internal features, so also it is no real external feature…”20 “The fulfillment effected by a straight percept obviously does not extend to such forms [which includes being].”21 We should take notice of three points. First, Husserl here regards the copula as an illustration of a categorial form. The conclusion drawn here can be applied to every such form, none of which are real moments found in the field of sensible intuition, while the state of affairs with its categorial form can never be sensibly perceived. Then, the intuition of the state of affairs with categorial form should be distinguished from the thematic apprehension of the form itself. The former is categorial intuition in the broad sense, while the latter belongs to the Ideation on the ground of freely modifiable illustrations.22 In other words, the categorial intuition makes it possible for us to recognize the state of affairs, such as the paper is white or the chair is yellow, but never being or what is. Furthermore, Husserl did not, as Aristotle or Kant did, assert the priority of copula over the other categories, although he preferred it as a good example in Logical Investigations. This preference was due to the crucial role the copula plays in the subject-predicate structure. Indeed, when the copula is apprehended and used, that means a proposition is expressed. On the other hand, when we examine how a proposition is constituted, we should first explain how the consciousness of copula happens. Interpreting Experience and Judgment will expose this point to us. However, the most important task for us in this paper is to question the relationship between being in the sense of truth and being in the sense of copula. According to Husserl, the rightness of the intention of categorial intuition (w4), or the intention of copula is assured by the original being in the sense of truth. In terms of Experience and Judgment, the predicative evidence of is p should have a pre-predicative evidence as its origin. The copula is (k) has its origin in the sphere of existence (e), to which we can testify as we interpret Experience and Judgment.

20

Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/2, 666. Ibid., 660. 22 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1972), 49. 21

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2. The Deeper Solution to the Problem of Being in Logical Investigations 2.1 The defect of ontology in Logical Investigations and the project of Experience and Judgment The fundamental defect of ontology, if we can say so, in Logical Investigations is that Husserl has not given enough explanation to being in the sense of truth. He simply distinguished coincidence from being. But he neither discussed the possible connection between the two concepts, nor described how the latter makes the former true. As a result, he could not answer the most important question thoroughly: how does being in the sense of truth relate to copula? As is well known, the defect was remedied principally by Heidegger. Nevertheless, Husserl discussed the question in a more in-depth manner in his later works, among which the task in Experience and Judgment was the most similar to that in Logical Investigations. The truth can be traced back from the evidence of the object, the evidence of the pre-predicative experience, or the evidence of the life-world 23 to the subjective production from which this world derives,24 so that the origin of predicative truth, propositional truth, or evidence of judgment can be found. This project can be translated into the terminology of Logical Investigations, which means to trace truth in the sense of coincidence back to being in the sense of truth. Since the latter has been explained as existence in the broad sense, the steps of this project are as follows: First, truth in the sense of coincidence should be traced back to the world as a whole and the individual existence in the world. In other words, truth in the sense of coincidence (w1, w2, w4) is to be expressly traced to being that makes it true (w3) or existence in the broad sense. More exactly, the original evidence (Urevidenz) of coincidence is nothing else than the horizon of the world (e.2.2) and the real individual in the world (e.1, e.o). Second, the life-world would be reduced to transcendental subjectivity, of which the former would be exposed as a constitution by a certain method of transcendental reduction. According to the above discussion, the project implies that truth in the sense of being, as the origin of coincidence, includes world and ego, which belong to transcendent irreal existence (e.2.2). Just as the ground of propositional truth is world, the ground of worldly truth is ego. These two steps are ontologically modified in Heidegger’s doctrine of truth. Heidegger tracked predicative truth back to the world, and finally to being-in-the-world of Dasein.25 Any ontological modification would be possible only through 23

Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/2, 670. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, 49. 25 Cf. Martin Heidegger, “Vom Wesen des Grundes,” in Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1978), 123f. 24

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the question of Being. Heidegger essentially sublated Husserl by virtue of questioning the mode of being of world and ego in Husserl’s sense.26 He diagnosed Husserl’s ontological position as that of the entity present at hand (Vorhandensein), which led the latter to understand world and ego as some entity present-at-hand.27 We can find his position in the prefix sub- of the central term substrate that he used.28 Undoubtedly, Husserl seldom questioned the mode of being of world and ego. However, this does not mean that he unquestionably understood both as entities present-at-hand.

2.2 The mode of being of world and individuality Actually, in Experience and Judgment and Crisis, Husserl wrote much to describe the distinction of the consciousness or the experience of the world. And it should not be overlooked that he also meditated the mode of being of ego in Cartesian Meditations. According to Husserlian terminology, the mode of consciousness is closely related to the mode of being. The task of Experience and Judgment is to examine the origin of propositional truth, which is equal to the truth (w1, w2, w4) in the sense of coincidence in Logical Investigations in pre-predicative experience. The pre-predicative experience is the simple experience of the individual, the genealogy of which is to describe genetically how the individual with possible attributes is constituted. The genealogical description indicates that the experience of the individual presupposes the consciousness of horizon as original worldly experience. Original worldly experience is prior to the experience of the individual, which for its part, is prior to the knowledge of the world as whole. There is an explicit phenomenological difference between the world as background and the individual as foreground. “The world is not being (seiend) as a being (ein Seiendes), as an object…. The difference of the mode of being (Seinsweise) between an object and the world itself determines obviously two correlative mode of consciousness [Bewusstseinweise] which is different to the ground.”29 Therefore, Husserl did not neglect the actual meaning of the difference of mode, while he was more interested in the corresponding difference of the mode of consciousness. And in Experience and Judgment, Husserl took more notice 26

Cf. 海德格爾 (Martin Heidegger), 〈致胡塞爾的信〉(“a letter to Husserl”), in 《海德格爾選集》 (Selected Writings of Heidegger), Vol. I, ed. 孫周興 (SUN Zhouxing) (Shanghai: Sanlian Shudian [三聯書店], 1996), 76 and below. 27 Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 69. 28 Cf. ibid., 114f. 29 Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 146.

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of consciousness than of being: “The being (das Sein) of the whole world is self-evident…. It is the presupposition of all judgment. The consciousness of world is consciousness in the modus of certainty of believing.”30 What is different from the mode of being of the world and the mode of being of the individual is substrate-determination. The subject-predicate structure of proposition, which constructs itself around the copula, has its origin in the pre-predicative experience. The subject in a proposition S is P is necessarily constituted as S that is P; i.e., as a subject with a predicate (and is there any subject without a predicate?). 31 The origin of the subject in the pre-predication is the production of substrate-determination. In the pre-predicative experience, “The indeterminate theme S becomes in the development the substrate of the appearing attributions, which constitute themselves as its determination.”32 In other words, substrate is constituted together with determination as substrate with determination. Absorbing the various determinations (p and q), the substrate continuously enriches and maintains its identity. Then it becomes gradually s that is P and Q…and so on. On the other hand, according to Husserl, the world as a whole also has the character of substrate. The world as All remains constant in any validity-transformation (Geltungwandel). 33 It is an absolute substrate to which all determinations attach. In comparison to it the individual is just relative substrate.34 As we can find, the world has a double character, one of horizon and the other of substrate. The mode of being of world as substrate is not essentially different from that of the individual. In this way, the world proves to be a being present-at-hand, the mode of being of which can be characterized by a copula.35 The being in the sense of truth (e2.2) that is obtained with the concept of world is still a being present-at-hand, the mode of being of which is the same as that of being within-the-world. In this sense, Heidegger’s critique is principally right.

3. The Problem of Being in Logical Investigations from Heidegger’s Perspective As far as Logical Investigations itself is concerned, the problem of being does not occupy a central position. It was owing to Heidegger that this work 30

Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, 25. Cf. ibid., 126. 32 Ibid., 126. 33 Husserl, Krisis, 124f. 34 Indeed, Husserl characterized world as Vorhandensein, which led to Heidegger’s reasonable critique. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980), 48; and Krisis, 153. 35 Cf. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, 151f. 31

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gradually entered into the history of ontological investigation. Therefore, it is a fairly important task to examine, even literally, Heidegger’s interpretation of Logical Investigations. Only then, at least to some extent, can the great influence of the work on the phenomenological movement and the integration of phenomenology and ontology achieve their true start. Heidegger’s interpretation can mainly be found in his 1925 Marburg lecture entitled Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time, especially in its preparatory part.36 But the phenomenological investigation of several great problems, the greatest of which is that of the relationship between truth and being, stretches as a clue to Being and Time37 and some later work.38 From the point of view of the phenomenological movement, it could be said, perhaps not without any exaggeration, that Heidegger’s interpretation, as the most important event of the effect-history of Logical Investigations, has become part of it. Because of his special interest in the problem of being, Heidegger interpreted Logical Investigations principally from the dimension of that problem. In the fifth and sixth sections, he read the sixth investigation, where Husserl distinguished copula from existence, in an almost literal manner. According to the latter, the problem of being should be divided into two tasks: one belonging to the doctrine of categorial intuition, the other to the theory of truth. Heidegger, who clearly understood the distinction, did not maintain their separation, 39 so he chose existence, not copula of which Husserl took main notice, as the approach to the authentic problem of being. Actually, it is being in the sense of truth, or rather existence that causes this problem. Similarly, the reason why Husserl could be blamed for missing the authentic problem is that he did not enter the central sphere of ontology through the problem of existence, although he examined it. Heidegger’s deviation from Husserlian phenomenology, which at first appears in the structure of the interpretative section in Prolegomena, can easily be found in his interpretation. If we compare the relevant sections in the sixth Investigation with Heidegger’s interpretation of them, we can find explicit differences between them in method and position on the problem of being. According to Husserl, the problem of existence and of copula belong to different parts; the former is examined in the chapter discussing evidence and truth, while the latter is found in the chapter on sensible and categorial intuition. On the other hand, Heidegger, who compressed both problems into 36 Martin Heidegger, Prolegmena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, GA 20, (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1979). 37 The whole project also includes The Basic Problems of Phenomenology and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. 38 Cf. Heidegger, “Vom Wesen des Wahrheit,” in Wegmarken, 175 and below. 39 “The ambiguity [of being] is not a ‘defect’, but only the expression of the intrinsically manifold structures of the being of a being – and consequently of the overall understanding of being.” Martin Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, GA 24 (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1989), 291.

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one section, examined being in the sense of truth immediately following his examination of copula. From the order of interpretation, we can observe several points of the Heideggerian view. At first, he does not maintain that the doctrines of categorial intuition and of truth should be separated. On the contrary, the latter could be drawn from the former. Second, since categorial intuition could primarily be applied to the copula, Heidegger did mean that the theory of truth should be drawn from that of the copula, which requires him to give different explanations of copulative function. Finally, just because copula is not separated from truth, and the theory of truth belongs to that of categorial intuition, so the greatest result is not the connective, but the truth-claiming function of is in the Husserlian sense. That is to say, Heidegger applied the doctrine of categorial intuition, which Husserl constructed just for copula, to the problem of being in the sense of truth, i.e. the authentic problem of being. So the ultimate intention of Heidegger’s interpretation is to argue for the originality of being in the sense of truth. The essential beginning of Heidegger’s deviation from Husserl is to maintain the inseparability of the two fundamental senses of being.40 If they are separated and then made parallel, it is unnecessary to raise the so-called authentic problem. On the other hand, Heidegger as an interpreter did not intend to work beyond the frame of the theory of categorial intuition, which should be primarily applied to copula. Therefore the crux of his interpretation is the explanation of copula. From Husserl’s perspective, the being referred to in the theory of categorial intuition is not primarily the sense of existential predicate; rather, it is the categorial form that connects sensible moment in S is P and its attributive transformation S that is P.41 In Kantian terminology, what Husserl discussed here is the logical predicate is.42 The sensible moments that the logical predicate connects, for example paper and white, can be perceived sensibly, while the simplest proposition like the paper is white can be 40

Cf. ibid. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/2, 666. 42 When discussing the categorial intuition of being, Husserl elaborated on the Kantian thesis of being, insofar as he did not think that Kant’s original intention could be applied immediately to the discussion. Husserl misread Kant here. By virtue of Herbart’s interpretation, he understood the Kantian dictum as only applicable to the so-called das existenziale Sein or das Sein der absoluten Position. Husserl intended to apply this thesis to das prädikative und attributive Sein, that is to say, to copula. When he extended the meaning of the Kantian dictum, he revised the sense of Kant’s term real (Heidegger has examined this term carefully, cf. Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, GA 24, 37). In Husserl’s opinion, being is not a real predicate, i.e., is not a sensible predicate. If he had not misunderstood Kant, Husserl would have applied that dictum immediately. By Sein Kant did mean a logical predicate, never a real, i.e. existential, one. See also note 47. 41

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grasped merely through categorial intuition. In other words, the “is” that connects sensible moments derives nowhere but from understanding (Verstand). Perhaps this is one of the most famous arguments in the sixth investigation. However, nothing about being in the sense of truth can be found in it. Being in this sense is excluded from the beginning. On the contrary, a similar example in Heidegger’s interpretation means more. When he analyzed a subject-predicate proposition relating to sensible moment (the chair is yellow), Heidegger pointed out the truth-claiming function of the copula: “As far as the state of affairs judged is concerned, I can distinguish two things: yellow-is (Gelbsein); [and] I can stress is (Sein) and then signify that the chair is really (wirklich) yellow, it is truthful (wahrhaft).”43 As shown, he was concerned with the truth-claiming sense of being: “Here Being signifies also the subsistence (Bestand) of truth (Wahrheit) and true state of affairs (Wahrverhalt), and the subsistence of the identity between the meant and the intuited.”44 The emphasis on the truth-claiming function of being in the subject-predicate proposition cannot stem from Heidegger himself. In fact, this function, as one of the senses of einai, had been pointed out by Aristotle.45 On the other hand, it is the contribution of modern philosophy to separate the double meaning of copula,46 and to drive out the truth-claiming function from proposition for the sake of epistemological critique.47 Husserl himself belongs to the modern tradition of philosophy. The point is not that Heidegger reconstructed another tradition of proposition by virtue of the authority of Aristotle, but the intention and consequence of his 43

Heidegger, Prolegmena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, 71. Ibid, 71f. 45 On the truth-claiming sense of being in Aristotle, see also Franz Brentano, Über Aristoteles (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1986), 190f.; and Hermann Schmitz, Die Ideenlehre des Aristoteles, Kommentar zum 7.Buch der Metaphysika (Bonn: Bouvier, 1985), 81, 85. 46 On the tradition of the doctrine of copula, see also Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, GA 24, sections16–18. 47 Kant articulated his thesis as “Sein ist offenbar kein reales Prädikat…” (Kritik der reinen Vernunft A598/B626). The context of it is the critique of the ontological proof of the existence (Dasein) of God. Kant distinguished the logical predicate Sein from the real one Dasein/Existenz. According to Kant, any thinkable concept could be followed by the copula ist. Therefore, it is not wrong to say “Gott ist.” In other words, Sein as a logical predicate does not add any determination to the subject, except a mark of the objective unity of apperception (cf. ibid., B141f.). The ontological proof, which concerns the Dasein or Existenz of God, cannot be justified only by thinking. In our terms, the ontological proof confuses existence and copula, which prove to be the fundamental senses of being. The fundamental project of Kant was to so radically clarify the ambiguity of being that he excluded the sense of existence from that term. Kant’s dictum echoed through the whole analytic tradition, in which quantifier and copula are radically distinguished by the form of symbolic language, although copula is eliminated in function. However, Heidegger, who went against this trend, endeavored to reconstruct the homogeneity of copula and existence. 44

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reconstruction. The distinctive point of the Heideggerian view is that being has the double sense, but not accidentally, which corresponds to the understanding of different modes of being. According to Husserl, the subject of copula is constituted principally as substrate. That is to say, in Heideggerian terminology, the copulative sense of being corresponds to the understanding of being present-at-hand.48 In other words, the subject of a proposition participates to be in the sense of copula49 so as to become being. Subject is determined in the structure of the proposition, which is supported by copula. Therefore, the sense of being as subject can be understood only through copula but not existence. Being in this sense is determined as substrate from the perspective of genetic phenomenology by Husserl, and as entity present at hand from the perspective of ontology by Heidegger. Whatever term we use to name it, being principally means that which remains identified in the transformation of determinations and attributions. As far as the understanding of the mode of being or the ontological position presupposed in Husserlian phenomenology is concerned, this sense of being is given without question. The task of phenomenology is nothing but a transcendental exposition of how being is constituted in consciousness and for consciousness, or rather, for the transcendental ego. According to Heidegger, the philosophical tradition of subjectivity constructed by Descartes presupposes entity present at hand as its fundamental ontological position. The mode of being of the transcendental ego as subject is none other than that of substrate-subject-substance. In brief, what is understood through copula is just the entity present at hand. That which is examined in this dimension is the unoriginal and unauthentic problem of being. However, in the perspective of Heidegger, the “is” in a proposition discloses more ontological information. Considering the sense of a truth-claim, the ontological position of the entity present at hand can be transcended. The right approach to the authentic problem of being is the phenomenology of truth. It was Husserl himself who first, in the sixth investigation, phenomenologically described the living experience of truth, which is followed by the Heideggerian doctrine of truth and being. Besides the revision of the fundamental content of the Husserlian theory of truth, the most crucial modification Heidegger made to the phenomenology of truth was to join it with the problem of copula. The modification led to two results. The first was the reconstruction of the original unity of the problem of being and that of truth. The second was the explanation of is in the proposition by virtue of the phenomenology of truth, not of copula, so as to begin to destroy the tradition of the ontology of the entity present at hand. All of these make 48 On the correspondence of copula and entity present at hand, cf. Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, GA 24, 288. 49 Being is nothing else than that which participates in to be; cf. Plato, Sophist, 247a–f. Therefore, both the subject and any other predicates besides to be can be called being. Which one is primary? That is the problem of the first substance (ousia) in Aristotle.

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up the whole ontological modification of Logical Investigations, the contribution of which to resolve the authentic problem of being is not the problem of being as copula in it, but the problem of truth expressed not very accurately. The Heideggerian approach to phenomenology proceeds from the phenomenology of truth rather than the categorial intuition of being.50 The way to and beyond Being and Time is opened by the problem of truth, which starts from the interpretation of the doctrine of truth in Logical Investigations. In the sixth Investigation, Husserl examined four meanings of the concept of truth, only the third of which immediately relates to the authentic problem of being. This relationship was neglected so much by Husserl that Heidegger was given his opportunity to examine the concept of truth. According to Heidegger, there are not four, but three fundamental meanings of the concept of truth. 1) The identity of the meant and the intuited. “Therefore being-true means being-identified, is the subsistence of this identity.”51 2) The character and structure of identifying the meant and the intuited. 3) The originally intuited being itself in the recognition. “Truth here means as much as Being (Sein) and being-real (Wirklich-sein).”52 There is an intentional correlation between the first and the second concept. The former is the phenomenological description of truth in the sense of coincidence: truth means coincidence itself. The latter is of the action that makes coincidence possible. The former is the intentional correlate of the latter. Heidegger pointed out that only the third concept of truth is original, while the others are derivative. Strictly speaking, that which makes something true (wahrmachend) is nothing but being itself, while recognition could also have the same name in an unauthentic sense.53 The original mentioned here could be understood as two senses. The first is of the history of philosophy. Concepts I and II are different aspects of the correspondence theory of truth, the classical expression of which was articulated by Thomas Aquinas. The last concept stems from the Greek philosophers, especially from Aristotle. The second sense is of phenomenology or rather ontology. As 50

Heidegger has said “From time immemorial, philosophy has associated truth and Being” (Sein und Zeit, 212), although “[the history of the concept of truth] could be presented only on the basis of a history of ontology.” (Ibid., 214) However, nothing prevents us from examining the development of his thinking and its relationship with Husserl in the light of the concept of truth, which is so important that Tugendhat has presented an excellent work on the subject. (Cf. Ernst Tugendhat , Der Wahrheitbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1970].) Tugendhat has not referred to any literature before Sein und Zeit (cf. ibid., 251f). Therefore, he could compare both, but only statically. By contrast, we give a genetic comparison from the Marburger Vorlesung. 51 Heidegger, Prolegmena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, 69. 52 Ibid., 71. 53 Cf. ibid.

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Heidegger had analyzed, truth in the sense of coincidence necessarily leads to truth in the original sense of uncoveredness (Entdecktheit).54 Therefore, it is proper to say that there is an original relationship between Being and Truth. Truth is being or entity, which abides in a certain mode of the understanding of Being. In comparison to the Husserlian analysis of the concepts of truth, the interpretation of Heidegger has some distinctive features which can be summarized as follows: The first is of simplification, which synthesizes the Husserlian concepts I, II, and IV into one. Concept I of Heidegger and that of Husserl are essentially the same concept. It describes the coincidence of the meant (a term of both) and the given (a term of Husserl) or the intuited (a term of Heidegger). The second and fourth concepts of Husserl, which circle around coincidence, are derived from the first concept. So, quite reasonably, Heidegger deleted them in his interpretation. The second is the addition of the action of identification. Although this sense cannot be found in the various concepts of truth discussed by Husserl, it is perhaps not outside the scope of Logical Investigations. In fact, it is not different from the so-called evidence in the strict sense, which means the living experience of truth or the action of identifying.55 Last, but not least, Heidegger stressed the third concept of truth. It should be admitted that there is no essential difference between the literal expressions of both. Truth in this sense is not merely called being (Sein) by Husserl, but even also asserted as prior to being in the sense of copula.56 Perhaps it can be supposed that it was just this elaboration of Husserl that aroused Heidegger to think about the authentic problem of being. Heidegger’s development of this concept of truth could be finished only by his whole route of thinking, of which the interpretation of Logical Investigations is only the first sign. The route sign shows us expressly the deviation from Husserl. At first, Heidegger ended his discussion of the equality or the parallelism of those concepts of truth by emphasizing the absolute originality of truth in the sense of being. What is more important, Husserl’s suggestion of the first sense of being was developed by Heidegger in two respects. With respect to history, he returned to Greek philosophy so as to connect with the Aristotelian problem of being he received from Brentano. With respect to argumentation, he continuously investigated the problem of truth from the ontological presupposition of the correspondence theory of truth, then exposed the difference between the truth uncovered and disclosed and, finally, the difference between ontical (ontisch) truth and ontological truth (ontologisch). By virtue of all these, he successfully prospected a way of truth to the problem of Being. 54 Cf. Sein und Zeit, 214 and below; see also “Vom Wesen des Wahrheit,” in Wegmarken, 175f. 55 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/2, 650f. 56 Cf. ibid., 653f.

11 ______________________________ Foucault and Husserl’s Logical Investigations: the Unsuspected French Connection LAU Kwok-ying The Chinese University of Hong Kong

1. The Curious Fate of the Logical Investigations Husserl’s Logical Investigations has a curious fate in the history of twentieth century Western philosophy. We know that Husserl’s own judgment on this groundbreaking work, published at the very beginning of the century, varied from time to time throughout his years of maturity. The author of the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy thought that the Logical Investigations belongs to the work of the juvenile, i.e. pre-transcendental, period of phenomenology, containing “obscurities,” “ambiguities,” and “isolated observations.”1 However, in some works of the 1920s the founder of contemporary phenomenology expressed a more positive judgment of the contributions of the Logical Investigations, notably in the “Introduction” to his 1925 lecture course on Phenomenological Psychology2 as well as in his “Preparatory considerations” and the whole Part I of Formal and Transcendental Logic.3 Yet in the writings of the period around the time of the publication of The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, the themes elaborated in the Logical Investigations (such as the idea of pure logical grammar, the theory of 1

Cf. Edmund Husserl, “Vorwort zur zweiten Auflage” (1913), Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Band (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1980), viii–ix; “Forward” to the Second Edition (1913), Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 44. 2 “Aufgabe und Bedeutung der Logischer Untersuchungen,” in Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana IX (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 20–46; “Task and significance of the Logical Investigations,” in Edmund Husserl, Phenomenological Psychology, trans. John Scanlon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 14–33. 3 Edmund Husserl, Formale und Transzendentale Logik, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 22–50, 51–154; Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 18–47, 48–148.

153 K.-Y. Lau and J.J. Drummond (eds.), Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives, 153–168. © 2007 Springer.

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meaning, and even the idea of a philosophy without presupposition) have again been left behind in favor of those on life-world and history. At the same time, the method of eidetic analysis has been supplemented by genetic constitution.4 We also know that in the two decades immediately following the Second World War, the works of Husserl were largely, if not totally, eclipsed by those of Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty within the wider phenomenological movement in both Europe and North America due to the immense popularity of existentialism. As a proof, the English translations of Sein und Zeit,5 L’être et le néant,6 and Phénoménologie de la perception,7 the foundational work of each one of the trio above, all appeared (respectively in 1962, 1953, and 1962) earlier than that of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. It was not until 1970 that LI became accessible to English readers. At this date, not only did the first English translation of Husserl’s Ideas I appear in a long time (since 1931),8 those of Cartesian Meditations and Formal and Transcendental Logic were also readily accessible to an English readership (since 1960 and 1969 respectively) thanks to Dorion Cairn’s exemplarily faithful and fluent translations. 9 This is not the place to ask why the first North-American disciple of Husserl did not choose to translate the Logical Investigations. In any case, it is interesting to note that the English translator of LI, J. N. Findlay, turned out to be someone who has not claimed to be a phenomenologist in the orthodox sense of the term. Certainly, Findlay thinks 4 Cf. the discussion of Eugen Fink in the editor’s introduction to the publication of Husserl’s “Entwurf eines Vorworts zur Logischer Untersuchungen,” Tijidschrift voor Philosophie, I (1939): 106–108; in French translation as “Esquisse d’une Préface aux Recherches Logiques (1913),” ‘Avertissement de l’éditeur’, in Edmund Husserl, Articles sur la Logique (1890–1913), trans. Jacques English (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975), 352–355; in English translation as “Eugen Fink’s Editorial Remarks,” in Edmund Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations. A Draft of a Preface to the Logical Investigations (1913), ed. Eugen Fink, trans. Philip J. Bossert and Curtis H. Peters (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 13–15. 5 M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson (New York: SCM Pr.), 1962. 6 J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library), 1953. 7 M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1962. 8 E. Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Macmillan, 1931). 9 A similar situation occurred in France, where the complete French translation of Logische Untersuchungen appeared in 1963 under the title of Recherches logiques (by H. Elie, A. L. Kelkel & R. Scherer, Paris: P.U.F.), long after those of the Cartesianische Meditationen (as Méditations cartésiennes, trans. E. Lévinas & G. Peiffer [Paris: A. Colin, 1931]), the Ideen I (as Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie, trans. Paul Ricoeur [Paris: Gallimard, 1950]), and the Formale und Transzendentale Logik (as Logique formelle et logique transcendantale, trans. Suzanne Bachelard [Paris: P.U.F., 1957]).

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that the Logical Investigations is “a surpassingly good piece of philosophical work,” but he views it as “one that has a permanent interest for Anglo-Saxon philosophers, owing to its close relations, at many points, to traditional British empiricism, and to the analytic concerns which perturbed Russell and Moore.”10 If Findlay has such a high esteem of Husserl as to praise him as “one of the small number of supreme contributors to philosophy, not unworthy of being spoken of in the same breath with Kant and Hegel, or with Plato and Aristotle,” it is not because of the habitual homage paid to Husserl as one who had provided the methodological foundation to the existentialist movement, but rather as one had written the Logical Investigations, a work which “may also claim, particularly in its last two studies, … to have reached an Aristotelian level of many-sided profundity, and to have sketched the basic grammar of conscious experience in a manner never before or since surpassed, or equaled.”11 If we follow such a story line, it seems that for nearly three fourths of the twentieth century, the Logical Investigations has hardly been a favorite among the insiders of the phenomenological movement. The fate of the reception of the Logical Investigations in the Chinese-speaking world (mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) has been strikingly similar. The Chinese translation of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness12 and Heidegger’s Being and Time13 both appeared in 1987, with the work of Sartre preceding that of Heidegger by 9 months (the two books appeared in March and in December, respectively). They conjoined to fuel the “existentialist fever” in mainland China, which had begun in the early 1980s, to its acme.14 Only in the next decade was Husserl’s Ideas I translated into Chinese (1992), 15 and only in the last year of the twentieth century was a complete Chinese translation of the Logical Investigations published.16 10

Husserl, Logical Investigations, 2. Ibid. 12 薩特：《存在與虛無》，陳宣良等譯 (北京：三聯，1987)。 13 海德格爾：《存在與時間》，陳嘉映、王慶節合譯 (北京：三聯，1987)。 For the reception of Heidegger in the Chinese world, cf. Chan-Fai CHEUNG, “The Chinese Reception of Heidegger’s Philosophy,” paper presented to the International Conference on “Translation conceptions of German Classical Philosophy of the XXth Century: Husserl and Heidegger,” organized by the St. Petersburg Association of Scientist and Scholars and the St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy, in June 1998 at St. Petersburg and Moscow. 14 In the other parts of the wider Chinese world, the situation was quite different. In Taiwan, the “existentialist wave” rose up as early as the late 1960s and spread to Hong Kong in the early 1970s. But no important philosophical works of Sartre and Heidegger were translated. 15 胡塞爾：《純粹現象學通論。純粹現象學和現象學哲學的觀念》，第一 卷，李幼蒸譯 (北京：商務印書館，1992)。 16 胡塞爾：《邏輯研究》（二卷），倪梁康譯 (上海：上海譯文出版社， 1994–1999)。Very different from J. N. Findlay, the Chinese translator of Husserl’s 11

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In this context, we can imagine how a popular protagonist of Heidegger’s version of “existentialism” or an unconditional admirer of the author of Sein und Zeit would be astonished to hear the story, retold by the one-time rector of the University of Freiburg himself in the later years of his life, that Husserl’s Logical Investigations played an important role in the formation of his own way of ontological thinking.17 Likewise, an epigone of popularized Derridian deconstructive jargon would be surprised to know that the founder of deconstruction in philosophy has had a very serious close encounter with the Logical Investigations of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena, one of the three books published by Derrida in 1967 that has laid the foundation for the henceforth very influential deconstructive mode of reading and questioning.18 Logical Investigations, Liangkang NI, is a Husserlian in the full sense of the term. For other than being the author of a doctoral dissertation entitled Seinsglaube in der Phänomenologie Husserls, later published in the prestigious “Phaenomenologica” series (Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), he is also the editor of the Chinese edition of the Selected Works of Husserl in two volumes (《 胡塞爾選集》，倪梁康選編 [上海：三聯，1997]), and the author of a Lexicon of Husserl’s Phenomenology in Chinese (倪梁康：《胡塞爾現象學概念通釋》[北京： 三聯，1999]), and of an earlier book on Phenomenology and its Effect: Husserl and Contemporary German Philosophy (倪梁康：《現象學及其效應──胡塞爾與當代德 國哲學》[北京：三聯，1994]). 17 Heidegger described the effect of reading Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the following words: “I remained so fascinated by Husserl’s work that I read in it again and again in the years to follow without gaining sufficient insight into what fascinated me.” “Even after the Ideas was published, I was still captivated by the never-ceasing spell of the Logical Investigations.” “As I myself practiced phenomenological seeing, teaching and learning in Husserl’s proximity after 1919 and at the same time tried out a transformed understanding of Aristotle in a seminar, my interest leaned anew toward the Logical Investigations, above all the sixth investigation in the first edition.” “I worked on the Logical Investigations every week in special seminars with advanced students in addition to my lectures and regular seminars.” Martin Heidegger, “Mein Weg in die Phänomenologie,” in Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1969), 82, 85, 85, 87; “My Way to Phenomenology,” in On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 75, 78, 78, 79. We can compare this with Lévinas’ admiration of Husserl’s Logical Investigations: “I have read the Logical Investigations very closely and I had the impression that I was gaining access not to one more new speculative construction, but to new possibilities of thinking, to a new possibility of passing from an idea to another.” (François Poirié, Emmanuel Lévinas, Qui est vous? (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1987), 73, our translation.) In an earlier work, Lévinas declared that “the first volume of Logical Investigations [is] the most convincing volume of philosophical literature.” (E. Lévinas, En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: Vrin, 3rd ed. 1974), 128, our translation. The author thanks Dan Zahavi for reminding him of the origin of this last reference.) 18 Jean-Luc Marion, in his excellent article “La percée et l’élargissement. Contribution à l’interprétation des Recherches logiques,” (Philosophie, Paris, No. 2 [1984]: p. 69, n. 5), maintained that La voix et le phénomène is “exemplary and determining of the entire later itinerary of J. Derrida” (“exemplaire et déterminant pour tout l’itinéraire ultérieur de J. Derrida, “ our translation).

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In the same vein, vulgarized presenters of Foucault as a structuralist, post-structuralist or postmodernist thinker would gape upon learning that the author of the three volumes of the History of Sexuality had a phenomenological début, and that this also took place precisely by way of a very original reading of Husserl’s Logical Investigations (we shall return to this point later). To the promoters of a certain à la mode presentation of Foucault’s work under the cliché of ‘postmodernist power/knowledge’ thinker (and in spite of Foucault’s energetic rejection of such a label19), the question of the relationship of the author of Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique to phenomenology would not only be unintelligible, but simply unsuspected. But more attentive readers of Foucault would have known, from the interviews he gave or the essays he wrote in his final years, that the author of the History of Sexuality has acknowledged the influence of phenomenology on him during his student years. However, the influence of phenomenology did not occur solely by itself, but in a form combined with Marxism.20 According to Foucault himself, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Toussaint

19

Colin Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) is the title given to a collection of essays and interviews of Foucault translated into English. It has rapidly become one of the most easily accessible and even representative works of Foucault for a certain kind of English reader. However, it is not a book written by Foucault. Foucault has even declared in an interview first published in 1983 that: “when I read—and I know it was being attributed to me—the thesis ‘Knowledge is power’ or ‘Power is knowledge,’ I begin to laugh, since studying their relation is precisely my problem. If they were identical, I would not have to study them and I would be spared a lot of fatigue as a result.” Please see “Structuralisme et post-structuralisme,” in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits, IV (Paris: Gallimard), 454–455; English version “Structuralism and Post-structuralism,” now in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. James D. Faubion (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2000), II: 455. In the same interview, Foucault also rejected the label of “postmodernist” in saying that “While I see clearly that behind what was known as structuralism … I do not understand what kind of problem is common to the people we call ‘postmodern’ or ‘poststructuralist’.” Dits et écrits, IV, 447; Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, II: 448. 20 For example, “Structuralisme et post-structuralisme,” in Foucault, Dits et écrits, IV, 434; Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, II: 436. Cf. “Préface à l’Histoire de la sexualité,” Dits et écrits, IV, 581; “Preface to The History of Sexuality, Volume Two,” now in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2000), I: 202; “Postscript: An Interview with Michel Foucault,” in Michel Foucault, Death and the Labyrinth. The World of Raymond Roussel, trans. C. Ruas (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), 174.

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Desanti 21 were philosophers representative of this line of thought who, during the years 1945–1955 in France, wanted to combine phenomenology with Marxism out of the demand to reconcile a philosophy of subject with a philosophy of history. The first book published by Foucault in 1954, a small treatise entitled Maladie mentale et personalité22, and written at the request of his teacher at the Ecole normale supérieure Louis Althusser,23 is the product of such an influence.24 To Foucault, phenomenology has the great merit of having introduced “the body, sexuality, death and the perceived world to the field of analysis.” 25 It was the rich results given by such concrete phenomenological analyses that impressed the early Foucault, demonstrating that phenomenology could provide a solid methodological basis for the human sciences, in particular for a philosophical anthropology or a philosophy of the subject. On the other hand, the young Foucault was looking for a theory of history from Marxism. It is under the guidance of this double requirement that has animated the early intellectual itinerary of Foucault—the alliance of phenomenology as a methodological guarantee for anthropological studies and the philosophy of subject with a theory of history—that we shall examine the evolution of Foucault’s relation with phenomenology from his Opus 1 up to The Birth of Clinic (published in 1963) and through the History of Madness (first edition published in 1961). Under the constraints of time and space, we can only devote the present article to the very first part of this project, i.e., Foucault’s encounter with phenomenology in his Opus 1. We take as Foucault’s Opus 1 the substantial introduction he wrote, probably in 1953, to the French translation, published in 1954, of Binswanger’s article Traum und Existenz.26 To the surprise of most readers, 21 Jean-Toussaint Desanti (1914–2002), the author of a book entitled Phénoménologie et praxis (Paris: Editions Sociales) first published in 1963 which was a tentative effort to combine phenomenology and Marxism, was to become the director of Derrida’s thesis of Doctorat d’Etat in 1980. 22 Michel Foucault, Maladie mentale et personalité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954). The English version of the work bearing the title of Mental Illness and Psychology (trans. A. Sheridan, [New York: Harper & Row, 1976]; 2nd ed. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987) is a translation of the revised 2nd edition of the French work entitled Maladie mentale et psychologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962) in which the whole second part is replaced by a kind of summary statement of the Histoire de la folie published a year prior. 23 Cf. Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 19. Althusser is commonly known as a structural Marxist. 24 Cf. Frédéric Gros, Michel Foucault (Paris: P.U.F., 1996), 11–14; Hubert Dreyfus, “Forward to the California Edition,” Mental Illness and Psychology, viii. 25 “La vie: l’expérience et la science,” in Foucault, Dits et écrits, IV, 776; trans. “Life: Experience and Science,” in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, II: 477. 26 Michel Foucault, “Introduction,” in Ludwig Binswanger, Le Rêve et l’existence, trans. J. Verdeaux (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1954), 9–128; now as ‘écrit no. 1’ in Dits et écrits, I, 65–119. On the date of writing of this introduction, cf.

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we shall see that in this first published piece of Foucault, what he wanted to draw the reader’s attention to was not Sartre’s L’être et le néant or Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception, but Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen.

3. Husserl’s Logical Investigations and the S ketch of a P henomenology of the D ream in Foucault’s Opus 1 3.1 The context of a phenomenology of the dream Foucault called upon Husserl’s Logical Investigations in his sketch of a phenomenology of the dream. The very term “phenomenology of the dream” (‘phénoménologie du rêve’) was suggested by Foucault himself.27 And it is precisely sketched in the introduction to the French translation of Binswanger’s article Dream and Existence, which first appeared in 1930. It is well-known that Binswanger is one of the earliest psychiatrists to have made positive use of the phenomenological method. One of his best-known contributions is to have developed the method of “Daseinanalyse” from Heidegger’s existential phenomenology. When Foucault chose to introduce to the French reader Binswanger’s article Dream and Existence, it was precisely because Foucault thought that this article showed the theoretical significance of Binswanger’s “Daseinanalyse” in the best way. For Foucault understood the theme of Binswanger’s article as “less dream and existence than existence as it appears to itself and as it can be deciphered in dream: existence in that mode of being in which it announces itself as something meaningful.”28 To Foucault, Binswanger’s approach of Daseinanalyse for the study of dreams had a twofold significance. First, it paves the way for a concrete analysis of the basic structure of human existence through the description and decipherment of oneiric experience in view of its “privileged status” in the daily human life-world. Second, it encompasses “a whole anthropology of the imagination that requires a new definition of the relations between meaning and symbol, between image and expression—in short, a new way of conceiving how meanings are manifested.”29 However, Foucault himself did not explain why and in what way oneiric experience has a “privileged status” for the analysis of the basic structure of human existence in the daily human life-world. Thus, a further explanation on our part seems necessary.

Dits et écrits, I, 18–19, and Forrest Williams, “Translator’s Preface,” in Michel Foucault and Ludwig Binswanger, Dream and Existence, ed. K. Hoeller (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1993), 19. 27 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 76; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 39. 28 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 68; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 33. 29 Ibid.

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Binswanger’s Daseinanalyse was inspired by Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein in Sein und Zeit. When Foucault spoke of the privileged status of dream in the daily human life-world for the revelation of the basic structure of human existence, he must have had in mind the fundamental ontological character of Dasein as affectivity and transcendence, or as facticity and possibility, being the result of the phenomenological description of Dasein undertaken in Sein und Zeit. Let us consider the example of the famous episode of “the three dreams of Descartes.” Descartes’ three dreams occurred in the night of 10 to 11 November 1619, the very evening in which the future author of Discourse on Method and Meditations thought he had found the basis of a new system of mathematics and sciences. The dreams were recorded in detail by the father of philosophical rationalism himself in a piece of writing bearing the strange title of “Olympica.” Except for the beginning of the first sentence, the original text of Olympica has disappeared. Fortunately, it was transmitted by Baillet, the first biographer of Descartes, in a reported form that is believed to have incorporated many passages of the original text.30 A rapid analysis of Descartes’ oneiric experience as recorded in Olympica is enough to show the following: 1) Human consciousness is an affective consciousness or, even better, an affected consciousness,31 as shown in the first two dreams where Descartes himself feels threatened from all kinds of dangers originating from the external world. This shows that the basic structure of human existence is affectivity or facticity. 2) Human consciousness is an existence of possibility and transcendence, as shown in the third dream where Descartes, while remaining in a sleeping state in which he thinks that he is awake, is capable of giving interpretations to the contents of his former dreams and of undertaking philosophical reflection and of giving reason to the argument that the verses of poets can convey, by the force of imagination, truth and wisdom better than the writings of philosophers. 3) Oneiric experience has meaningful contents that express themselves not only through speech but also through objects serving as symbols to convey messages. The deciphering of these symbols is a serious affair that requires the conjoined efforts of reason and imagination.

30 “Olympique,” in Descartes, Oeuvres philosophiques, ed. F. Alquié, T. 1 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1963), 52–63. 31 The author is happy to have found that Jean-Luc Marion, at the beginning of his penetrating article “Les trois songes ou l’éveil du philosophe” (in La passion de la raison. Hommage à Ferdinand Alquié, ed. J.-L. Marion & Jean Deprun [Paris: P.U.F., 1983], 55), used the same expression of ‘conscience affectée.’

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4) Imagination is a human faculty that manifests itself more “purely” and more “clearly” in dreams than in the awakened state of mind. In this sense, the dream serves as phenomenological reduction that bring us back to the phenomenon of imagination by bracketing out the interference from the daily preoccupations of the awakened mind. 5) That is why the study of dreams goes far beyond any “scientific” approach; i.e. any form of psychological positivism, and carries over to a theory of human imagination that in turn comprises the study of the relation of a symbol to its meaning with regard to both the formal aspects (the syntactic side) and the aspects of contents (the semantic side). 6) Specific meaning contents need specific formal structures to express them such that the two aspects of the theory of symbol (forms and contents) are correlated and interdependent. In other words, a theory of imagination requires a theory of expression that can account for the possibility of images to express meaningful contents within a certain syntactic structure. In the eyes of Foucault, Binswanger’s Daseinanalyse of dream has two theoretical sources: Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology of Dasein and Freud’s psychoanalytic study of dream. But paradoxically enough, neither Heidegger nor Freud can provide the elements of a satisfactory theory of expression. It is not difficult to understand why this is so in Heidegger: a theory of expression is directly connected to a theory of body, and the absence of the thematization of the body in Being and Time renders impossible a theory of expression. As for Freud, why there is no theory of expression is not immediately evident. Again, an explicative detour is required. Thus, before asking for help from Husserl’s Logical Investigations, Foucault undertook a critical discussion of the merit and insufficiency of the Freudian psychoanalysis of the dream.

3.2 The merit and flaw of the Freudian psychoanalysis of the dream “With the Interpretation of Dreams, the dream makes its entry into the field of human meanings.”32 It is in these laudatory terms that Foucault began his critical discussion of the merits and flaws of Freudian psychoanalysis with regard to the basic constituents of a phenomenology of the dream. Freud has the merit of reversing the habitual refusal of conferring meaning content to dreams. Contrary to those who traditionally view

32 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 69; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 34.

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dreams as the nonsense of consciousness, Freud recognized that dreams are the hidden meanings of the unconscious, and inaugurated a laborious hermeneutics of dreams to reveal their latent meaning content. But for Foucault, the merits of Freud are limited, as his hermeneutics of Traumdeutung is only one-sided. This is because Foucault thinks that in Freud “the language of the dream is analyzed only in its semantic function. Freudian analysis leaves its morphological and syntactic structure in the dark. The distance between meaning and image is closed, in the analytical interpretation, only by an excess of meaning; the image in its fullness is determined by over-determination. The peculiarly imaginative dimension of the meaningful expression is completely omitted.”33 This is a very severe critique of the founder of psychoanalysis. Again this requires further explication. Foucault took the image of fire in dreams as an example. According to Freudian analysis, the image of fire in dreams has a double function. On the one hand, it fulfils the burning satisfaction of sexual desire; but on the other it fulfils the function of trying by all means to deny this desire and working ceaselessly to extinguish it. This is the famous logic of contradiction in Freud’s hermeneutics of dream works: “The dream is a fulfillment of a desire, but if it is dream and not fulfilled desire, that is precisely because the dream also answers to all the ‘counter desires’ which oppose the desire itself.”34 Hence, the logic of contradictory functions in dreams can be used to explain all kind of dream contents, because any dream content can be attributed a multiplicity of meanings which superimpose themselves one upon another in this very form of contradiction. But then we must ask: why does sexual desire shape itself in dreams precisely in the form of the fire image? What role does the plastic image of fire play in dreams such that it signifies sexual desire and not other meaning contents? To Foucault, Freudian analysis cannot answer this question precisely because the syntactical structure of dream works remained unnoticed and a whole theory of expression was omitted in the Traumdeutung. The absence of syntactical consideration in Freudian analysis brings about the following consequence: the meaning content of a dream cannot be recognized through the structure of the plastic language of dream itself. Thus, the method of oneiric interpretation has to proceed in the manner of an archeologist in search of a lost language: she/he can only look for coincidence in the deciphering of secret codes, and this happens simply because she/he has no knowledge of the grammar of the language being studied. With the perseverance of the analytical effort, results of a high probability value in this modern art of divination can surely be obtained in 33 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 70; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 35. 34 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 69; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 34.

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the long run. However, the uncertainty inherent to this approach can never be overcome. In short, “Freudian analysis retrieves only one meaning among the many possible meanings by the shortcut of divination or the longer route of probability. The expressive act itself is never reconstituted in its necessity.”35 Here is shown the paradoxical situation in which the Freudian approach to the study of images is found: even though all of the effort in an analysis is invested in the hope of exhausting the whole content of the image by revealing the meaning which the image itself may have been hiding, the link between the image and its meaning is never a necessary one; their link is rather necessarily defined as merely possible, eventual, or contingent. At the moment when psychoanalysis aims to confer to itself a scientific status, it is relegated to a game of riddles.

3.3 Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the assistance of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams It was at the moment when Freudian analysis stumbled along the grounds of the syntactic structure of oneiric language that Foucault called upon Husserl’s Logical Investigations to search for the elements of a theory of symbol and sign in order to reincorporate the necessary relation between the oneiric experience and its meaning contents. Although it seems unbelievable, Foucault was trying to look for a theory of plastic expression in Husserl’s “logical” work that appeared in the same year of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (1900) with the view of filling the theoretical void of the latter. Did Foucault succeed in this search? Retrospectively speaking, not entirely. But Foucault found that Husserl’s phenomenological distinction of linguistic meaning and expression and the relation between them in the first investigation, as well as the phenomenological elucidation of the basic structure of intentional acts in the sixth investigation contain valuable elements for a theory of expression and a theory of symbol. Together, they will form the basic elements for a phenomenology of the dream. Let us reformulate more clearly the two basic elements of the phenomenology of the dream. First is a theory of oneiric experience, which confers to the structure of this kind of experience the status of experience in the full sense of the term. In the language of Husserlian phenomenology, the question is: can oneiric experience be understood as an act of consciousness? Does it possess the basic structural form of an act of consciousness? Second, a satisfactory theory of the dream should be able to establish the necessary relation between the oneiric symbols or images and their meaningful contents.

35 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 71; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 36.

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I) The intentional structure of oneiric experience Foucault thought that, in the sixth investigation, Husserl provided the starting point for an explication of the ‘act’ structure of oneiric experience. For Husserl understood “act” simply as intentional experience,36 i.e., an experience establishing the intentional relation of consciousness to the meaning intended or the object meant.37 This seems tautological as it is the essential nature of consciousness to manifest an intentional structure, i.e., necessarily relating to an object meant. The question remains to clarify whether in the different modes of experience that mean the same intentional object, e.g. in perception and in imagination, we have different acts each time, or whether the same sort of act underlies all these different modes of experience. For Husserl, the latter is true: “The acts which are united with the sound of our words are phenomenologically quite different according as these words have a purely symbolic, or an intuitively fulfilled significance, or according as they have a merely imagined or a perceptually realizing basis: we cannot believe that signification is now achieved in this sort of act, and now in that. We shall rather have to conceive that the function of meaning pertains in all cases to one and the same sort of act, a type of act free from the limitations of the perception or the imagination which so often fail us, and which, in all cases where an expression authentically ‘expresses’, merely becomes one with the act expressed.”38 If only one act is at the basis of all different modes of experience, then oneiric experience, as a form of imagination, also shares the same basic structure of an act. Expressed in another way, the oneiric mode of experience, as mode of imagination, is a variation of the perceptive mode of experience upon the basic structural form of an intentional act. As an intentional act, oneiric experience possesses a formal structure, i.e., it aims at an identical ideal meaning content as intentional meaning. Since the status of intentional meaning as an ideal unity of meaning was already established by Husserl in chapters three and four of the first investigation, the status of the meaningful content of oneiric experience as ideal content of a unity of meaning can also be established.

36 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/1, (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1980), 366 ff.; Logical Investigations, 553 ff. 37 Ibid., 375 ff./ 560 ff. 38 Ibid., 15–16/681.

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II) In search of a theory of expressive indication However, in order for a syntactical study of oneiric images to be possible, a theory of expression is necessary to explain how the ideal content of a unity of meaning can be embodied in the concrete forms of symbols. In the language of Husserlian phenomenology, it involves asking, how do the meaningful intentional acts objectify themselves and how can they be embodied as concrete expressive indications in the daily life-world? To Foucault, the actual explication Husserl provided in the sixth investigation in terms of “act of fulfillment” was far from giving a satisfactory solution to the problem. What Husserl did was only to suggest a supplementary act superimposed on the, so to say, basic ideal intentional act. He had not yet succeeded in providing the fundamental phenomenological device capable of explaining the passage from the ideal intentional act of meaning to the mundane expression by way of indicative symbols.39 In order to search for such a theory of expression, Foucault looked into Husserl’s manuscript written in 1914 intending to carry out a “re-elaboration of the sixth investigation.”40 According to Foucault, Husserl proceeded by describing the role played by significative materials, e.g. a word, a symbol or an image, in the act of signification or meaning-conferment. In fact, Husserl found that in the act of signification, there is always a kind of “rebound action” from the significative materials back to the initial intentional act, such that there is always a surplus or something new and unexpected arising from these significative materials that animate a further meaning-intentional act. In other words, the actual objectivation of the intentional-meaning, in order to be concretized, must work through significative materials such as words, symbols, or signs. Yet words, symbols, or signs are already cultural objects in the mundane world; they are never pure nor ideal entities. It is precisely by way of these words or symbols as cultural objects that we can say “I say,” “I mean,” or “I imagine.” In short, I can express myself only by means of these objective significative materials. An act of expression does not accomplish itself in the pure consciousness of a meaning-intentional act, but in the mundane objectivities of significative symbols.41 Thus, there is a reversal of the situation. At the beginning, the meaning-intentional act is thought to be the origin and the centre of the process of signification. But the actualization of the meaning-intention requires the passage from the act of signification to the act of expression, which de-centers the meaning-intentional act. Now it is the mundane expressive indications that assume a more active role, and the meaning-intentional act becomes passive or semi-passive. Again, according 39 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 77; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 40. 40 E. Husserl, Manuscript M, III 2, II 8 a, cited in Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 77, n. 1; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 76, n. 11. 41 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 77–78; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 41.

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to Foucault, Husserl was aware of this reversal of position when in the abovementioned manuscript he wrote: “One thing is certain…. The signified takes part in the accomplishing of the deed. He who speaks engenders not only the word, but the expression in its totality.”42 But such a theory of expression, which involves a theory of objective indication, necessarily goes beyond a phenomenological theory of meaning as it goes beyond the eidetic analysis of consciousness proper to the Husserlian approach. Remaining in the camp of pure consciousness, Husserl did not succeed in founding a satisfactory theory of expression.43 Thus, the phenomenology of the dream is only half done. But to say that the phenomenology of the dream is half done is equivalent to saying that it has half succeeded. For it succeeds in drawing the distinction between a theory of meaning and a theory of expression, which can inform the Freudian analysis of the necessity to distinguish between the semantic aspects and the syntactic aspects of oneiric language. Husserl’s Logical Investigations assisted Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams in the following way: the young Foucault succeeded in drawing the relatively young Husserl, father of the phenomenology of consciousness, into the psychoanalytical adventure of Freud, founder of the scientific study of the unconscious.

4. Remarks in Lieu of Conclusion

42

1)

Foucault’s analysis of the intertwining relation between a theory of meaning and a theory of expression, and the reversal that this analysis brings to the relative positions of the two (with the theory of meaning becoming from an initially active and dominating position to the later passive and subordinate position in relation to the theory of expression), have something amounting to “déjà-vu.” Yes, it is “déjà-vu” in Derrida’s now very familiar deconstruction of Husserl’s distinction between meaning and expressive indication in Speech and Phenomena, itself a groundbreaking work published, as mentioned above, in 1967, i.e., 13 years (!) after Foucault’s Opus 1.

2)

Speaking of the phenomenology of the dream, Foucault elevated the study of the dream to a theoretical level never reached before. But, at the same time, he pushed the concept of phenomenology to its extreme limit: can we still maintain that phenomenology is

E. Husserl, M, III 2, II 8 a, 37; cited in Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 78; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 41. 43 In Ideas I, 124–127, which is more or less contemporary to the manuscript cited above, Husserl has undertaken the treatment of expression, but always at the purely eidetic level. The question of objective indication is always not considered.

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the study of consciousness? Should we regard the dream as a mode of consciousness or should we continue to follow Freud and regard the dream as the meaning of the unconscious? In this case, can we speak of the phenomenology of the unconscious? Is this not a contradiction in terms? Or is it simply the fate of phenomenology itself that it must face the unconscious? For long before Foucault, Husserl himself had been conscious of this question. Husserl had raised the question of the possibility of the “unconscious” givenness of the content of consciousness in the studies grouped around the lectures on The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. 44 In front of this formidable question, Husserl stepped back in order to carry on his phenomenological researches. Immediately after evoking the possibility of the unconscious givenness of a conscious content, Husserl wrote: “It is certainly an absurdity to speak of a content of which we are ‘unconscious’, one of which we are conscious only later. Consciousness is necessarily consciousness in each of its phases.”45 How about Foucault? In the subsequent parts of the introduction to Dream and Existence, Foucault criticized Sartre’s phenomenological theory of imagination and tended towards an exit from phenomenology when he wrote: “the image completely exhausts itself in its contradictory status. On the one hand, it takes the place of imagination and of that movement which refers me back towards the origin of the constituted world; at the same time, it points to this world, constituted in the perceptual mode, as its target. That is why reflection kills the image, as perception also does, whereas the one and the other reinforce and nourish imagination.”46 But several pages later, to the reader’s surprise, Foucault spoke of the necessity “to operate the transcendental reduction of the imaginary,” and that “it is essential that this transcendental reduction of the imaginary ultimately be one and the same thing as the passage from an anthropological analysis of

44

E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana X (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1966), Beilage IX, 119; The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. J. S. Churchill (Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1964), Appendix IX, 162. Rudolf Bernet has drawn our attention to the existence of a group of manuscripts around the problem of unconsciousness in Husserl in his article “Die ungegenwärtige Gegenwart. Anwesenheit und Abwesenheit in Husserls Analyse des Zeitbewusstseins,” Phänomenologische Forschungen 14 (1983): 16–57. 45 Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, 119; The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, 162. 46 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 115; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 71.

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dreams to an ontological analysis of the imagination.” 47 In suggesting that the operation of the transcendental reduction of the imaginary is a necessity, does this mean that Foucault still regarded phenomenology as a methodological guarantee? And if so, how should we understand Foucault’s conception of phenomenology? To what extent it can serve as a methodological guarantee? These are questions that remain to be answered. 3)

A century after its publication, Husserl’s Logical Investigations still contains surprises for us, via a surprising interpretation and appropriation by Foucault, undertaken half a century ago, in view of a phenomenology of the dream. This confirms once again Heidegger’s positioning in Sein und Zeit: “In phenomenology, possibility is higher than actuality.” To be honored are then these two great minds of the twentieth century who, in their youth, both stored for us a happy surprise which, respectively half a century and a whole century later, is still capable of sending us such a juicy message: “Rêver, c’est toujours possible!” (“Dreaming, it’s always possible!”).

47 Foucault, Dits et écrits, I, 117; Foucault and Binswanger, Dream and Existence, 73.

Notes on Contributors ______________________________ Rudolf BERNET is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leuven (Belgium) and Director of the Husserl Archives. He is the editor of E. Husserl’s Collected Works (Husserliana) and of the series Phaenomenologica (Springer). He has prepared critical editions of Husserl’s posthumous writings on time (Meiner: 1985; Kluwer: 2001) and published numerous articles in the fields of phenomenology, psychoanalysis and contemporary philosophy. His books include: An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology (in collaboration with I. Kern and E. Marbach) (Northwestern UP: 1993), La vie du sujet (Presses Universitaires de France: 1994), Conscience et existence (Presses Universitaires de France: 2004). David CARR received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1966 and is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He is the author of Phenomenology and the Problem of History (1974); Time, Narrative, and History (1986); Interpreting Husserl (1987); and The Paradox of Subjectivity (1999). Kah Kyung CHO was educated in Seoul, and received his Ph. D. from the University of Heidelberg. He is Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA, since 1994. His subjects of academic research include Phenomenology, Hermeneutic Philosophy, comparative Philosophy. His Publications include Philosophy of Existence, (1961, 13th ed. 1996), and Bewusstsein und Natursein, Phänomenologischer West-Ost-Diwan, Freiburg 1987 (Japanese trans., 1994). He edited Philosophy and Science in Phenomenological Perspective (1984), co-edited Phänomenologie der Natur (1999), and Phänomenologie in Korea (2001). He has written over eighty articles on Existential Philosophy, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and comparative Philosophy. He is currently General Editor of Orbis Phaenomenologicus (with H. R. Sepp & Y. Nitta) and serves on the Editorial Board of Husserl Studies. Steven Galt CROWELL is Mullen Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the department, and Professor of German Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA. He is the author of Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology (Northwestern University Press, 2001), as well as numerous articles on phenomenological figures and themes. He is the editor of The Prism of the Self: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Maurice Natanson (Kluwer, 1995), and, with Burt Hopkins, he co-edits the New Yearbook for Phenomenology and

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Phenomenological Philosophy. His current work centers on the existential sources of normativity. DING Yun (丁耘) received his Ph.D from Fudan University, Shanghai, in 1991. He is now Assistant Professor of Philosophy Department in Fudan University and Editor of China Scholarship. His major fields of studies include phenomenology and political philosophy. His published articles include “On the Chinese translation of Husserl’s Logical Investigations”, Reading (讀書) (2002), “The difference of the logical epistemology between Frege and Husserl”, Fudan Academic Periodical (1996), “Review of Derrida’s On Grammatology”, China Scholarship (2001), and “A Political Comparison between Philosophy and Theology: an Interpretation of Plato’s Symposium,” Eidos and Polis (思想與社會) (2004). He is the Chinese translator of Heidegger’s The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. John J. DRUMMOND is the Robert Southwell, S.J. Professor of the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, and Chair of the department at Fordham University in New York. He is the author of Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism as well as editor or co-editor of four collections of articles on Husserl or phenomenology. He has published more than sixty papers on phenomenological figures or topics, especially the general theory of intentionality, Husserl’s logical writings, and the emotions and moral intentionality. JIN Xiping (靳希平), born 1949 in the city of Xi-an, Shaanxi Province, China, has studied Philosophy at Peking University in China, and Tübingen University in Germany. Since 1995 he is professor of Philosophy at Peking University. He is currently also director of the Institute of Foreign Philosophy, director of the seminar on Western Philosophy, co-director of Peking Center of the phenomenology, vice-director of Center of the Hellenic Studies and member of Center of the German Studies at Peking University. He is the author of several books in Chinese including Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, John Locke, Aristotle, Non-mainstream German Philosophy in 19th Century, and has previously translated Rüdiger Safransky’s Ein Meister Aus Deutschland, Martin Heidegger und seine Zeit into Chinese. KWAN Tze-wan (關子尹) is professor and former chairman, Department of Philosophy, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also the founding director of both the Research Centre for Humanities Computing and the Archive for Phenomenology & Contemporary Philosophy at the same institution. Kwan received his Dr. phil. degree from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, with the dissertation Die hermeneutische Phänomenologie und das tautologische Denken Heideggers (Bonn: Bouvier, 1982) and has since published a book and some 60 articles or book chapters

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on Kant, Husserl, Hegel, Heidegger, Jakobson, Wilhelm von Humboldt, as well as on various thematic issues in phenomenology, linguistics, and the history of philosophy. He translated (with elaborated annotations) Ernst Cassirer's Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften, a collection of essays by Richard Kroner, and Volume 5 (Kant) of Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy from German/English into Chinese. He also edited in collaboration with others the collected works of CHEN Chung-hwan and LAO Sze-kwang. In regard to humanities computing, Kwan has developed with his team numerous web pages (etexts, lexical tools, dictionaries, thematic databases, etc.), many of which were award-winning and subsidized by competitive grants. A few of these web pages have recorded multi-millions of hit counts to date. Over the years, Kwan has been visiting fellow at Duquesne, ETH (Zürich), Cambridge (Robinson), and FU Berlin. LAU Kwok-ying (劉國英), born and educated in Hong Kong, obtained his Doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Paris I, Pathéon-Sorbonne, in 1993 with a dissertation on Merleau-Ponty. Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Research Centre for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, he is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Phenomenology and the Human Sciences published in Chinese since 2004. Translator of writings of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lévinas and Ricoeur into Chinese, he has edited and co-edited a dozen books and published some 40 articles written in Chinese, English and French on phenomenology, contemporary French philosophy and postmodernism. NI Liangkang (倪 梁康 ) is Professor in Department of Philosophy at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China. His subjects of academic research include Phenomenology, Modern Western Philosophy, Philosophy of Ecology, German Philology and Literature. His publications include Phenomenology and its Effects (1994), Seinsglaube in der Phänomenologie E. Husserls (1999) and Self-consciousness and Reflection (2002). He also translated E. Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen, I–II (in Chinese) (1994–1999); Idee der Phänomenologie (in Chinese) (1986). He is also the editor of The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Chinese Review of Phenomenology und Philosophy, vol. I. (1995) and Selected Papers and Texts by E. Husserl, vol. I–II, Shanghai, 1996. Bernhard WALDENFELS is a Professor of Philosophy at the Ruhr University, Bochum, since 1976. He was co-founder and President of the German Society for Phenomenological Research (1994–1996). He is the editor of a Husserl anthology (Arbeit an den Phänomenen) and the co-editor of Phänomenologie und Marxismus (4 vols., japan. and Engl. trans.), volumes on Gurwitsch and Schutz, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida and of

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the review Philosophische Rundschau. He is also editor and translator of several of Merleau-Ponty's works. His main philosophical writings include Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs (1971, Japan. trans.); Der Spielraum des Verhaltens (1980, Japan. trans.); Phänomenologie in Frankreich (1983); In den Netzen der Lebenswelt (1985, Serbo-Croat. trans.); Ordnung im Zwielicht (1987, Engl. trans. Order in the Twilight, 1996); Der Stachel des Fremden (1990, Slovene and Czech trans.); Einführung in die Phänomenologie (1992, Span., Korean. and Ukrainian trans.); Antwortregister (1994); Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge (1995); Topographie des Fremden (1997, Polish and Ukrainian trans.); Grenzen der Normalisierung (1998); Sinnesschwellen (1999); Vielstimmigkeit der Rede (1999); Leibliches Selbst (2000, Japan. trans.); Verfremdung der Moderne (2001); Bruchlinien der Erfahrung (2002); Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit (2004); Idiome des Denkens (2005).

Index of Names ______________________________ Cicero, 92, 98 Cohen, Hermann, 121 Confucius, 96

Alquié, F., 160n Althusser, Louis, 158 Aquinas, Thomas, 136, 150 Aristotle, 14, 28, 67n, 138n, 142, 148, 149, 150, 155, 156n Asemissen, H. U., 75n Austin, John Langshaw, 49 Avenarius, Richard, 32 Ayer, A. J., 88n

Deprun, Jean, 160n Derrida, Jacques, 44, 92, 96–98, 126, 156, 158n, 166 Desanti, Jean-Toussaint, 158 Descartes, Rene, 4, 7, 38, 49, 65, 84n, 114, 128–130, 144, 149, 154, 160 Diels-Kranz, 93n Dreyfus, Hubert, 158n Drummond, John J., 29n Ducrot, Oswald, 47 Dupré, Louis, 90n

Bachelard, Suzanne, 154n Baillet, Adrien, 160 Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua, 53–55, 60, 61, 65 Barnes, H. E., 154n Barone, Elisabetta, 103n Benveniste, Emile, 47, 48, 92, 98 Berghahn, Klaus L., 94n Berkeley, 17, 38 Bernet, Rudolf, 105n, 167n Biemel, Walter, 56n, 153n Binswanger, Ludwig, 158–159, 162n, 163n, 165n, 166n, 168n Bloch, Ernst, 93n Bossert, Philip J. 154n Brentano, Franz, 36, 69–70, 72–75, 77, 81, 120, 148n, 151 Bruzina, Ronald, 128n Bubner, R., 20n Buddha, 83 Bühler, Karl, 44–48 Burckhardt, Jacob, 93n Burnet, John, 93n

Ebeling, Hans, 128n Eden, Tanja, 49n Edie, James M., 55n, 61n Elie, H., 154n Eliot, George, 101n Embree, Lester E., 55n English, Jacques, 154n Farber, Marvin, 3, 6–12 Faubion, James D., 157n Feuerbach, Ludwig, 90, 91, 101 Findlay, J. N., 1n, 8, 9, 12, 14, 33n,43n, 54n, 55n, 67n, 90n, 106n, 115n, 121n, 153n, 154, 155n Fink, Eugen, 10n, 120, 128, 129, 131, 154n Foucault, Michel, 153–168 Frank, Semen L., 9 Freeman, Kathleen, 93n Frege, Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob, 19, 31 Freud, Sigmund, 108, 109, 161–164, 166, 167 Frings, M. S., 78n Funk, R. L., 78n

Cairns, Dorion, 7, 8, 54n, 153n, 154 Carlson, Thomas A., 125n Carnap, Rudolf, 61, 88n Carr, David, 3n Chen, Bo (陳波), 21n Cheung, Chan-Fai (張燦輝), 155n Cho, Kah Kyung, 6n, 10n Churchill, J. S., 167n

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INDEX OF NAMES

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 98n Gibson, W. R. Boyce, 154n Goethe, 51 Goodwin, D. F., 54 Gordon, Colin, 157n Greene, Theodore M., 99n Gros, Frédéric, 158n Gurwitsch, Aron, 7 Haldane, Elizabeth S., 84n Hanna, Robert, 55n, 61n Hardy, Lee, 56n Hartschorne, Charles, 7 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 103, 155 Heidegger, Martin, 6n, 28n, 44, 50–51, 77, 120, 125, 129n, 135, 136n, 137, 139–143, 145–151, 154, 155, 156n, 159–161, 168 Held, Klaus, 90n Herbart, 138, 147n Hesiod, 93 Hilbert-Bernays, David, 23 Hoeller, K., 159n Holenstein, Elmar, 55n Holl, Jann, 128n Homer, 93 Hudson, Hoyt H., 99n Hume, David, 38, 83, 84n Husserl, Edmund, passim Husserl, Gerhart, 6, 7, 10 Husserl, Malvine, 6 Ingarden, Roman, 90n Jaeger, Petra, 120n Jakobson, Roman, 47, 48 James, William, 10 Janicaud, Dominique, 119, 120, 125, 127n Janssen, Paul, 54n, 153n Kahn, Charles H., 138n Kant, Immanuel, 36, 65, 81, 85, 90, 99, 102n, 107, 110, 113, 119–123, 129, 131, 138, 141, 142, 146n, 147, 148n, 155

Kattsoff, L.O., 7 Kaufmann, Felix, 7 Kelkel, A. L., 154n Kerckhoven, Guy van, 128n Kersten, F., 55n, 124n Kisiel, Theodore, 120n Klein, Jacob, 7 Kramer, K., 20n Krings, Hermann, 138n Kuhn, Helmuth, 7, 10 Küng, Hans, 84–87, 95, 99–101 Kwan, Tze-wan (關子尹), 103n Lacan, Jacques, 48, 110 Lactantius, 92 Landgrebe, Ludwig, 7, 10n Lange, Friedrich Albert, 18 Lao, Sze-kwang (勞思光), 103n Lau, D.C., 96n Levinas, Emmanuel, 48, 120, 127–129, 132, 133, 154n, 156n Lewis, Charlton T., 92n, 95n Lingis, Alphonso, 127n Lo, Lee-Chun, 90n Locke, John, 18, 38 Lorenz, Konrad, 17 Macquarrie, J., 154n Macrosius, 92 Marion, Jean-Luc, 120, 125–128, 156n, 160n Marx, Karl, 157, 158 Marx, Werner, 20n McGill, V.J., 7 McIntyre, Ronald, 60n Meinong, Alexis, 14 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 49, 51, 131, 154, 157, 159 Messiah, 97 Mill, John Stuart, 18, 35 Mohanty, J. N., 53 Moore, 155 Muller, Richard A., 92n Ni, Liangkang (倪梁康), 156n Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 94

INDEX OF NAMES

175

Panzer, Ursula, 54n, 56n, 120n Pascal, 79, 103 Peiffer, G., 154n Peirce, Charles S., 88, 89n Peters, Curtis H., 154n Plato, 19, 32, 40, 97, 138n, 139, 141, 149n, 155 Plessner, Helmuth, 103n Poirié, François, 156n Prusak, Bernard, 120n

Smith, Norman Kemp, 122n Socrates, 13, 17, 50 Sokolowski, Robert, 119, 129 Spiegelberg, Herbert, 7, 10, 11n, 14, 49n Spinoza, Benedictus de, 84n Stambaugh, Joan, 156n Strasser, Stephen, 90n Sun, Zhouxing（孫周興), 144n Swift, Jonathan, 101

Quine, W. V. O., 49n

Tarski, Alfred, 47 Taylor, Charles, 130, 131 Tertullian, 83 Trotter, W. F., 103n Tugendhat, Ernst, 150n

Rabinow, Paul, 157n Rahner, Karl, 87 Rickert, Heinrich, 121 Ricoeur, Paul, 154n Rimbaud, Arthur, 48 Robinson, E., 154n Ross, G. R. T., 84n Ruas, C., 157n Russell, Bertrand, 23, 24, 155 Saint Augustine, 83, 92 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 154, 155, 157, 159, 167 Scanlon, John, 153n Scheler, Max, 67, 71, 73, 74, 77–82, 98, 99n Scherer, R., 154n Schiller, Friedrich, 94 Schmidt, R., 141n Schmitz, Hermann, 148n Schuhmann, Karl, 55n Schütz, Alfred, 7 Searle, John, 50 Sellars, Wilfred, 121 Shen, Philip (沈宣仁), 85n, 103n Shen, Youding (沈有鼎), 21–32 Sheridan, A., 158n Short, Charles, 92n, 95n Sigwart, Christoph von, 18 Smith, C., 154n Smith, David Woodruff, 60n

Vattimo, Gianni, 92n Verdeaux, J., 158n Wagner, Helmut, 10n Waldenfels, Bernhard, 47n Wang, Hao (王浩), 22, 23n, 32 Wang, Qingjie (王慶節), 157n Welton, Donn, 46n, 124, 120, 130 Weyl, Hermann, 7 Whitehead, Alfred North, 61 Wiehl, R., 20n Wild, John, 7 Williams, Forrest, 159n Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 23, 49n, 50–51 Wundt, Wilhelm, 18 Xenophanes, 93 Yang, Rengeng (楊人梗), 21 Zahavi, Dan, 156n Zwingli, 92 李幼蒸, 155n 陳宣良, 155n 陳嘉映, 155n

Contributions to Phenomenology IN COOPERATION WITH

THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY

1.

F. Kersten: Phenomenological Method. Theory and Practice. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0094-7

2.

E. G. Ballard: Philosophy and the Liberal Arts. 1989

3.

H. A. Durfee and D.F.T. Rodier (eds.): Phenomenology and Beyond. The Self and Its Language. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0511-6

4.

J. J. Drummond: Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism. Noema and Object. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0651-1

5.

A. Gurwitsch: Kants Theorie des Verstandes. Herausgegeben von T.M. Seebohm. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0696-1

6.

D. Jervolino: The Cogito and Hermeneutics. The Question of the Subject in Ricœur. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0824-7

7.

B.P. Dauenhauer: Elements of Responsible Politics. 1991

8.

T.M. Seebohm, D. Føllesdal and J.N. Mohanty (eds.): Phenomenology and the Formal Sciences. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1499-9

9.

L. Hardy and L. Embree (eds.): Phenomenology of Natural Science. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1541-3

10.

J.J. Drummond and L. Embree (eds.): The Phenomenology of the Noema. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1980-X

11.

B. C. Hopkins: Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger. The Problem of the Original Method and Phenomenon of Phenomenology. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-2074-3

12.

P. Blosser, E. Shimomiss´e, L. Embree and H. Kojima (eds.): Japanese and Western Phenomenology. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2075-1

13.

F. M. Kirkland and P. D. Chattopadhyaya (eds.): Phenomenology: East and West. Essays in Honor of J. N. Mohanty. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2087-5

14.

E. Marbach: Mental Representation and Consciousness. Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Representation and Reference. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2101-4

15.

J.J. Kockelmans: Ideas for a Hermeneutical Phenomenology of the Natural Sciences. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2364-5

16.

M. Daniel and L. Embree (eds.): Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2792-6

17.

T.J. Stapleton (ed.): The Question of Hermeneutics. Essays in Honor of Joseph J. Kockelmans. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2911-2; Pb 0-7923-2964-3

ISBN 0-7923-0241-9

ISBN 0-7923-1329-1

Contributions to Phenomenology IN COOPERATION WITH

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18.

L. Embree, E. Behnke, D. Carr, J.C. Evans, J. Huertas-Jourda, J.J. Kockelmans, W.R. McKenna, A. Mickunas, J.N. Mohanty, T.M. Seebohm and R.M. Zaner (eds.): Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-2956-2

19.

S.G. Crowell (ed.): The Prism of the Self. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Maurice Natanson. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3546-5

20.

W.R. McKenna and J.C. Evans (eds.): Derrida and Phenomenology. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3730-1

21.

S.B. Mallin: Art Line Thought. 1996

22.

R.D. Ellis: Eros in a Narcissistic Culture. An Analysis Anchored in the Life-World. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3982-7

23.

J.J. Drummond and J.G. Hart (eds.): The Truthful and The Good. Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4134-1

24.

T. Nenon and L. Embree (eds.): Issues in Husserl’s Ideas II. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4216-X

25.

J.C. Evans and R.S. Stufflebeam (eds.): To Work at the Foundations. Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4317-4

26.

B.C. Hopkins (ed.): Husserl in Contemporary Context. Prospects and Projects for Phenomenology. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4469-3

27.

M.C. Baseheart, S.C.N.: Person in the World. Introduction to the Philosophy of Edith Stein. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4490-1

28.

J.G. Hart and L. Embree (eds.): Phenomenology of Values and Valuing. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4491-X

29.

F. Kersten: Galileo and the “Invention” of Opera. A Study in the Phenomenology of Consciousness. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4536-3

30.

E. Str¨oker: Husserlian Foundations of Science. 1997

31.

L. Embree (ed.): Alfred Schutz’s “Sociological Aspect of Literature”. Construction and Complementary Essays. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4847-8

32.

M.C. Srajek: In the Margins of Deconstruction. Jewish Conceptions of Ethics in Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4953-9

33.

N. Rotenstreich: Synthesis and Intentional Objectivity. On Kant and Husserl. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4956-3

34.

D. Zahavi (ed.): Self-awareness, Temporality, and Alterity. Central Topics in Phenomenology. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5065-0

ISBN 0-7923-3774-3

ISBN 0-7923-4743-9

Contributions to Phenomenology IN COOPERATION WITH

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35.

R. Cristin: Heidegger and Leibniz. Reason and the Path. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-5137-1

36.

B.C. Hopkins (ed.): Phenomenology: Japanese and American Perspectives. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5336-6

37.

L. Embree (ed.): Schutzian Social Science. 1999

38.

K. Thompson and L. Embree (eds.): Phenomenology of the Political. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6163-6

39.

O.K. Wiegand, R.J. Dostal, L. Embree, J.J. Kockelmans and J.N. Mohanty (eds.): Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Thomas M. Seebohm. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6290-X

40.

L. Fisher and L. Embree (eds.): Feminist Phenomenology. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6580-1

41.

J.B. Brough and L. Embree (eds.): The Many Faces of Time. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6622-0

42.

G.B. Madison: The Politics of Postmodernity. Essays in Applied Hermeneutics. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6859-2

43.

W. O’Brien and L. Embree (eds.): The Existential Phenomenology of Simone de Beauvoir. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-7064-3

44.

F. Schalow: Heidegger and the Quest for the Sacred. From Thought to the Sanctuary of Faith. 2001 ISBN 1-4020-0036-7

45.

T. Toadvine and L. Embree (eds.): Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0469-9

46.

J.J. Kockelmans: Ideas for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of the Natural Sciences. Vol. 2: On the Importance of Methodical Hermeneutics for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of the Natural Sciences. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0650-0

47.

J.J. Drummond and L. Embree (eds.): Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy. A Handbook. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0770-1

48.

D. Fisette (ed.): Husserl’s Logical Investigations Reconsidered. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-1389-2

49.

D. Zahavi, S. Hein¨amaa and H. Ruin (eds.): Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation. Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-1754-5

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Contributions to Phenomenology IN COOPERATION WITH

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T.M. Seebohm: Hermeneutics. Method and Methodology. 2004 ISBN 1-4020-2617-X

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D. Carr and C.-F. Cheung (eds.): Space, Time, and Culture. 2004 ISBN 1-4020-2823-7

52.

L. Embree (ed.): Gurwitsch’s Relevancy for Cognitive Science. 2004 ISBN 1-4020-2891-1

53.

M. Endress, G. Psathas and H. Nasu (eds.): Explorations of the Life-World. Continuing Dialogues with Alfred Schutz. 2005 ISBN 1-4020-3219-6

54.

P.S. Arvidson: The Sphere of Attention. Context and Margin. 2006 ISBN 1-4020-3571-3 Kwok-Ying Lau and John J. Drummond (eds.): Husserl's Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives. 2007 ISBN 978-1-4020-5757-1

55.

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