The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973): Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective (Phaenomenologica)

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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ARON GURWITSCH (1901–1973)

Volume I. Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective

PHAENOMENOLOGICA SERIES FOUNDED BY H.L. VAN BREDA AND PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE HUSSERL-ARCHIVES

192 ARON GURWITSCH

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ARON GURWITSCH (1901–1973) Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective Editorial Board: Director: U. Melle (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) Members: R. Bernet (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) R. Breeur (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) S. IJsseling (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) H. Leonardy (Centre d’études phénoménologiques, Louvain-la-Neuve) D. Lories (CEP/ISP/Collège Désiré Mercier, Louvain-la-Neuve) J. Taminiaux (Centre d’études phénoménologiques, Louvain-la-Neuve) R. Visker (Catholic University Leuven, Leuven) Advisory Board: R. Bernasconi (The Pennsylvania State University), D. Carr (Emory University, Atlanta), E.S. Casey (State University of New York at Stony Brook), R. Cobb-Stevens (Boston College), J.F. Courtine (Archives-Husserl, Paris), F. Dastur (Université de Paris XX), K. Düsing (Husserl-Archiv, Köln), J. Hart (Indiana University, Bloomington), K. Held (Bergische Universität Wuppertal), K.E. Kaehler (Husserl-Archiv, Köln), D. Lohmar (Husserl-Archiv, Köln), W.R. McKenna (Miami University, Oxford, USA), J.N. Mohanty (Temple University, Philadelphia), E.W. Orth (Universität Trier), C. Sini (Università degli Studi di Milano), R. Sokolowski (Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.), B. Waldenfels (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum) For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6409

ARON GURWITSCH

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ARON GURWITSCH (1901–1973) Gurwitsch Edition Committee: Lester Embree, Fred Kersten, Alexandre Métraux, and Richard M. Zaner Volume I

Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective Translated and edited by Jorge Garc´ıa-Gómez

123

Editor Jorge Garc´ıa-Gómez Long Island University Southampton College 239 Montauk Highway Southamtpon NY 11968 USA

ISSN 0079-1350 ISBN 978-90-481-2830-3 e-ISBN 978-90-481-2831-0 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2831-0 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009930498 c Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ix

TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

1

§ I. § II. § III. § IV.

The Empiricist Conception of Consciousness Consciousness and Identity The Phenomenological Reduction The Sequential Order of the Perceptual Constitution of Objects

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF ARON GURWITSCH § I. § II. § III. § IV.

Studies in Germany Career in France Half of Life in U.S.A. Final Assessment

2 6 23 32

41 41 45 48 51

AN OUTLINE OF CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

57

CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

61

§ I. § II. § III. § IV. § V.

The Philosophy of Consciousness as “First Philosophy” The Dependence of Consciousness on Objective Entities Consciousness as Human Reality Critique and Consequences The Antinomy Found in the Idea of a Universal Psychology Conceived as Transcendental Philosophy

CHAPTER II. THE NATURAL ATTITUDE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION § I. § II. § III. § IV.

The Surrounding World Orientation in the Surrounding World The Human Sciences The Physical Sciences

v

61 67 69 74 79

83 83 88 92 93

vi

CONTENTS § V. § VI.

The General Thesis of the Natural Attitude The Phenomenological Reduction

CHAPTER III. THE CONCEPTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS § I. § II. § III. § IV. § V. § VI. § VII. § VIII. § IX.

The Empiricist Conception of Consciousness A Critique of the Empiricist Conception The Consciousness of Identity The Noema The Noetico-Noematic Correlation Intentionality Cogito and Copresence The Thematic Field Marginal Consciousness

CHAPTER IV. THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERCEPTUAL NOEMA § I. § II. § III. § IV. § V. § VI.

The Multiplicity of Noemata and the Thing’s Identity The Theory of the Central Noematic Point Implications Perception According to Pradines A Critique of Pradines’s Theory The Associationist Account of the Formation of Implications § VII. The Formation of Implications in Gestalt Theory and in Jean Piaget’s Functional Psychology § VIII. Implications and Memory § IX. Potentialities § X. Methodological Remarks

98 100

107 107 113 124 130 144 150 159 164 175

185 185 191 205 212 222 236 245 261 274 281

ESSAYS ESSAY I. SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY § I. § II. § III. § IV. § V. § VI.

The Equivalent of Consciousness The Object as Transcendental Clue The General Structures of Evidence Objects and Consciousness The Phenomenological Reduction Conclusion

ESSAY II. THEME AND ATTITUDE

307 308 311 315 320 326 328

331

CONTENTS

vii

ESSAY III. HUSSERL’S THEORY OF THE INTENTIONALITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN H ISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

351

Historical Roots of Husserl’s Problems Outlines of the Theory of Intentionality Conclusion

352 367 380

§ I. § II. § III.

ESSAY IV. TOWARDS A THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY

383

ESSAY V. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION: PERCEPTUAL IMPLICATIONS

399

§ I. § II. § III.

The Classical Theory Some Gestalt Structures Sedimentation and Genetic Phenomenology

399 402 406

ESSAY VI. THE PERCEPTUAL WORLD AND THE RATIONALIZED UNIVERSE

411

CRITICAL REVIEWS REVIEW I. Gaston Berger, LE COGITO DANS LA ´ PHILOSOPHIE DE HUSSERL (Paris: Aubier/ Editions Montaigne, 1941), 159 pp. REVIEW II. Gaston Berger, “Husserl et Hume,” REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE PHILOSOPHIE, Vol. I (1939), pp. 342–353. REVIEW III. Gaston Berger, RECHERCHES SUR LES CONDITIONS DE LA CONNAISSANCE. ESSAI D’UNE ´ THEORETIQUE PURE (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1941), 193 pp. REVIEW IV. Marvin Farber, THE FOUNDATION OF PHENOMENOLOGY: EDMUND HUSSERL AND THE QUEST FOR A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHY (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943; 2nd. ed. (New York: Paine-Whitman Publishers, 1962), XI and 585 pp. REVIEW V. James Street Fulton, “The Cartesianism of Phenomenology,” THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW, Vol. XLIX (1940), pp. 285–308.

441

449

453

463

471

viii

CONTENTS

REVIEW VI. Jean Hering, “La phénoménologie d’Edmund Husserl il y a trente ans. Souvenirs et réflexions d’un e´ tudiant de 1909.” REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE PHILOSOPHIE, Vol. I, No. 2 (1939), pp. 366–373.

481

REVIEW VII. “Preface” to Quentin Lauer, THE TRIUMPH OF SUBJECTIVITY (New York: Fordham University Press, 1958), pp. v–viii.

483

REVIEW VIII. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ´ ´ ENOLOGIE DE LA PERCEPTION (Paris: PHENOM Librairie Gallimard, 1945), xvi and 531 pp.

487

REVIEW IX. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION, trans. C. Smith (New York: The Humanities Press, 1962), pp. xxii and 466.

491

REVIEW X. Maurice Pradines, PHILOSOPHIE DE LA ´ EMENTAIRE ´ SENSATION. II. LA SENSIBILITE´ EL . ´ LES SENS DE LA DEFENSE. Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Strasbourg, Fascicule 66 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1934), 381 pp. ´ DE NECESSIT ´ E´ REVIEW XI. Yves Simon, E´TUDES SUR L’IDEE

497

´ SCIENTIFIQUE ET EN PHILOSOPHIE DANS LA PENSEE

´ (Montréal: Editions de l’Arbre, 1944).

501

WORKS CITED IN THIS VOLUME

507

INDEX OF NAMES

517

INDEX OF TOPICS

519

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CM —Husserl, Edmund. Cartesianische Meditationen. HUA 1(Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns.) FC —Gurwitsch, Aron. The Field of Consciousness: Theme, Thematic Field, and Margin. FTL —Husserl, Edmund. Formale und transzendentale Logik. HUA 17. English translation: Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969). Ideen, I —Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch, HUA 3. (Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Trans. F. Kersten.) Krisis —Husserl, Edmund. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. HUA 6. (The Crisis of European Sciences. Trans. David Carr.) LU —Husserl, Edmund. Logische Untersuchungen. HUA 18, 19/1 and 19/2. (Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay.) Meditationes —Descartes, Renée. Meditationes de prima philosophia. (Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. E. Haldane.) SPP —Gurwitsch, Aron. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Treatise —Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature.

ix


The present volume is rich in essential phenomenological descriptions1 and insightful historico-critical analyses,2 some of which cannot be fully appreciated, however, except by close examination on the part of the reader. Accordingly, such a task ought to be left to the consideration and judgment of the latter, save where such discussions are directly relevant to the topics I will be dwelling upon. I prefer, then, to approach the matters and questions contained here otherwise, namely, archeologically. In this I follow José Huertas-Jourda, the editor of the corresponding3 French volume, in his felicitous terminological choice,4 although I adopt it here for my purposes in an etymological sense, i.e., as signifying a return to principles or origins.5 This, after all, is consistent not only with the spirit and practice of phenomenology, as acknowledged by Aron Gurwitsch often enough, but as well with what he has actually said, to wit: it is a question of 1

Cf., e.g., infra, in An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 4, pp. 185 ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this book as Outline.) This essay will be devoted to the study of selected parts of the contents of this volume, although, when necessary, use will be made here of other works by various authors, including Gurwitsch. 2 Cf., e.g., ibid., Chapter 3, pp. 107 ff. and infra, in “Husserl’s Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness in Historical Perspective,” pp. 351 ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this essay as “Husserl’s Theory.”) In these notes, once a piece contained in this volume has been referred to, Gurwitsch’s name shall be omitted. 3 I use the word “corresponding” simply to indicate that most of the contents of the French edition (Esquisse de la phénoménologie constitutive, ed. J. Huertas-Jourda [Paris: J. Vrin, 2002]) are found in the present volume, which however exceeds the former, as it contains many essays and studies not found in it. (Henceforth I shall refer to the French edition of this work as Esquisse.) 4 Cf. J. Huertas-Jourda, “Préface de l’éditeur,” ibid., p. 7. 5 For an excellent and comprehensive presentation of Aron Gurwitsch’s philosophical development, cf. Lester Embree, “Introduction,” Esquisse, pp. 15–52.

1 A. Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973), Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective, c Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2831-0 1,


The present volume is rich in essential phenomenological descriptions1 and insightful historico-critical analyses,2 some of which cannot be fully appreciated, however, except by close examination on the part of the reader. Accordingly, such a task ought to be left to the consideration and judgment of the latter, save where such discussions are directly relevant to the topics I will be dwelling upon. I prefer, then, to approach the matters and questions contained here otherwise, namely, archeologically. In this I follow José Huertas-Jourda, the editor of the corresponding3 French volume, in his felicitous terminological choice,4 although I adopt it here for my purposes in an etymological sense, i.e., as signifying a return to principles or origins.5 This, after all, is consistent not only with the spirit and practice of phenomenology, as acknowledged by Aron Gurwitsch often enough, but as well with what he has actually said, to wit: it is a question of 1

Cf., e.g., infra, in An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 4, pp. 185 ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this book as Outline.) This essay will be devoted to the study of selected parts of the contents of this volume, although, when necessary, use will be made here of other works by various authors, including Gurwitsch. 2 Cf., e.g., ibid., Chapter 3, pp. 107 ff. and infra, in “Husserl’s Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness in Historical Perspective,” pp. 351 ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this essay as “Husserl’s Theory.”) In these notes, once a piece contained in this volume has been referred to, Gurwitsch’s name shall be omitted. 3 I use the word “corresponding” simply to indicate that most of the contents of the French edition (Esquisse de la phénoménologie constitutive, ed. J. Huertas-Jourda [Paris: J. Vrin, 2002]) are found in the present volume, which however exceeds the former, as it contains many essays and studies not found in it. (Henceforth I shall refer to the French edition of this work as Esquisse.) 4 Cf. J. Huertas-Jourda, “Préface de l’éditeur,” ibid., p. 7. 5 For an excellent and comprehensive presentation of Aron Gurwitsch’s philosophical development, cf. Lester Embree, “Introduction,” Esquisse, pp. 15–52.


2

translator and editor’s introduction

the principle of phenomenological idealism, according to which everything that exists and everything that is valid exists and is valid due to certain acts and groups of acts, and it cannot derive its radical clarification and its ultimate justification except from an analysis of conscious life in which it presents itself in its existence and in its validity.6

The analysis in question should begin with the object taken as the product of the acts of consciousness to which the object is relative and “disclose, step by step and layer by layer, . . . [its] phenomenological constitution . . . for consciousness,”7 understood as an act. In other words, in such a reflective regression, the “object, taken as the point of departure, serves as one’s transcendental clue,”8 the said object-analysis deserving the title “transcendental,” for it “bears on the necessary conditions for the nature, unity, and existence of the object.”9

§I. The Empiricist Conception of Consciousness Gurwitsch is fundamentally concerned with conscious experience. In order to bring about its examination, he starts by identifying the basic conception of consciousness found in modern philosophy, focusing primarily as he does on the empiricist tradition thereof. For the 6

Aron Gurwitsch, “The Perceptual World and the Rationalized Universe,” infra, p. 411 ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this essay as “World and Universe.”) Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Preface” to Quentin Lauer, The Triumph of Subjectivity, infra, pp. 483 ff. and Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, ed. P. Janssen, in Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), XVIII. (Henceforth I shall refer to this work as FTL. Unless otherwise indicated, I shall employ this edition of Husserl’s works throughout.) 7 A. Gurwitsch, “Some Fundamental Principles of Constitutive Phenomenology,” infra, p. 307 ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this essay as “Principles.”) 8 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, in op. cit., III-1 (1976), § 15 a, p. 313. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982], p. 359. (Henceforth I shall refer to this work as Ideen, I ). Cartesianische Meditationen in Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, in op. cit., I (1963), § 21 (Henceforth I shall refer to this work as CM.) 9 “Principles,” p. 314.


3

latter, consciousness is reducible to its acts, the “existence of which is . . . identical with . . . their being experienced.”10 This thesis implies that a “real thing,” to the extent that an act of consciousness consists in grasping it, “cannot exist except in a consciousness perceiving it.”11 Accordingly, a “real thing is reduced to a combination of sensory data”12 in perceptual consciousness,13 and, therefore, our effort to conceive of bodies is reducible, in Berkeley’s own words, to “contemplating our own ideas.”14 In this regard, Hume’s position is certainly no different from Berkeley’s, a fact that establishes an essential nexus of continuity with which the empiricist tradition, at least substantially, can be identified.15 To put it bluntly, the “empiricist school sees in consciousness a mere field of real facts,”16 for each act therein, reducible as it is to its occurrence, is but a self-contained event, i.e., a fact marked by self-awareness and temporality which, therefore, is nothing outside its presence in and for consciousness.17 Now then, this thesis is inconsistent with the commonsense view18 about the real objects grasped, which are to be taken, Outline, Chapter 3, § 1, p. 108. Cf. George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, § 78, in The Works of George Berkeley, ed. A. C. Fraser (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1901), I, p. 301 and A. Gurwitsch, “Towards a Theory of Intentionality,” infra, p. 384. (Henceforth I shall refer to this essay as “Towards a Theory.”) 11 Outline, p. 108. Cf. G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 3, p. 258. 12 Outline, p. 108. 13 Ibid., p. 109. 14 G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 23, p. 270. 15 Cf. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1967), Bk. I, Pt. ii, § 6, p. 67; see also p. 218. (Henceforth I shall refer to rhis work as Treatise.) Ernst Mach’s position is essentially identical to Hume’s, for, as Gurwitsch concludes his analysis of it, the “objects of sense-perception (that is to say, the real things of the objective world) are composed and consist of the real data of consciousness.” (Outline, p. 112.) 16 Ibid, p. 124. 17 Cf. ibid. Vide “Problems,” p. 310: “Each of these particular acts, insofar as it is a lived fact, occupies its own place in the chronological order of subjective, immanent, or phenomenal time, i.e., in time as it is felt and lived through by the conscious subject.” Cf. “Towards a Theory,” p. 385 and E. Husserl, Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstsein (1893–1917), ed. R. Boehm, in op. cit., X (1966). 18 Cf. Outline, p. 128. 10

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in terms of that view, as transcending—as unities endowed with (relative) permanence—the acts by which they are grasped.19 In consequence, the object grasped would be taken, paradoxically, as contained . . . in the act by means of which one becomes conscious of it 20 ; therefore, to become aware of an object would amount . . . to finding it really existing in consciousness.21 Now, if this is so, one would have to say that empiricism does not allow “for the identity of the object which one may become conscious of by a multiplicity of acts.”22 Thus an apparent inconsistency exists between commonsense experience and belief, on the one hand, and empiricism, on the other. And if this were not enough to discredit the latter, it would suffice, to accomplish that, to remark that our memorial experience, which is based at least on the identity of the thing remembered and the thing presently experienced, would have to be declared impossible on similar grounds.23 Ultimately, on such an account, consciousness would be reduced to a sequence of disconnected moments of luminosity, a realm which, being bereft in principle of memory, “would die and be born again continually.”24 Now then, this is equivalent to saying, if I understand Gurwitsch correctly, that there is an essential-descriptive failure in presenting the nature of an act of consciousness as a merely self-aware, temporal occurrence in 19

Cf. ibid., pp. 125–126. Ibid., p. 125. 21 G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 23, p. 270. 22 Outline, p. 126. 23 Cf. ibid., p. 135. 24 Henri Bergson, “Introduction a` la métaphysique,” La pensée et le mouvant, in Oeuvres, ed. A. Robinet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), p. 1398 [184]. English translation: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. T. E. Hulme (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co./The Library of Liberal Arts, 1955), p. 26. Paradoxically, Bergson draws this conclusion from a premise which contradicts both our commonsense experience and Gurwitsch’s thesis, the premise in question being that a “consciousness which could experience two identical moments would be a consciousness without memory.” (Ibid.) Gurwitsch’s position, however, does not amount to saying that, in principle, there could be two identical moments in consciousness, but only to asserting that there may be a dimension of identity to two different acts of consciousness. Viewed in this light, Bergson may be regarded, despite his protestations to the contrary, as a late holder of the empiricist theory of conscious experience. 20


5

which something is grasped.25 What remains obscure about it is the sort of relationship existing between the conscious act of grasping and what is being grasped thereby, especially if that relationship (called intentionality) is understood erroneously,26 as Brentano for one did,27 as one real trait among others, for “[n]o real quality of an act can ever be more than a subjective fact.”28 If that were the case, however, not only would the intentive relationship to the grasped but also what is being grasped would suffer, of necessity, the fate of all subjective facts, insofar as they are temporal in character, namely, that of appearing at one point and then disappearing forever.29 If it is true that “each object, whatever its nature . . ., becomes accessible to us by means of certain acts of consciousness which we are experiencing or can experience,”30 and, further, if “[a]n object would be a mere nothing were it not for the experience through which it”31 presents itself, then it would follow that, in an account of conscious experience, we would have 25

Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 388–389: “In fact, if ideas (in the sense of Locke) or perceptions (in Hume’s parlance) are the only objects which are directly and immediately given, and if, furthermore, these ideas or perceptions are involved in an incessant flux and variation, it is utterly unintelligible that the consciousness of identical items, and, in the case of explication, the consciousness of the identity of those items, could arise.” 26 Outline, p. 150. 27 Cf. Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, ed. O. Kraus, 2nd. ed. (Leipzig: Duncker & Humbolt, 1924–1925), I, Bk. II, Chapter 1, § 5. English translation: Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. L. C. McAlister et al. (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), p. 88.: “the intentional or mental in-existence of an object . . ., reference to a content, direction toward an object . . . or immanent objectivity.” See “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 374 and Outline, pp. 150–151 and 147. 28 Ibid, p. 150. Cf. ibid., pp. 120 and 154, “Towards a Theory,” p. 395, and “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 369. 29 Cf. “Towards a Theory,” p. 119–120. 30 “Principles,” p. 380. Now, the reverse is true as well, for “no account of temporality and especially of the duration of an act of consciousness is possible without reference to the noema involved.” Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 373 and A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness” and “William James’s Theory of the ‘Transitive’ Parts of the Stream of Consciousness,” in his Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology Aron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973), Vol. II. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009. pp. 151–154 and 341–349, respectively. (Henceforth I shall refer to this work as SPP.) 31 “Principles,” p. 308. Cf. p. 309.

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to give its due not only to the subjective but also to the objective, as two intrinsically different but necessarily interconnected dimensions of such an experience. Now, “in order to conceive of the object as the correlate of [the pertinent acts of consciousness,] one need not however reduce it”32 to such acts; in fact, since an object is not a real ingredient of the said acts, one cannot in principle do so, inasmuch as it “goes beyond and transcends each and every one”33 of them, but neither can it be identified with the totality of acts of consciousness relating to it, given that it is “one, identical, and identifiable,”34 precisely the opposite of what is true about any and all acts of consciousness.35 §II. Consciousness and Identity Gurwitsch seems to have demonstrated the insufficiency of the modernclassical theory of experience, as we have just seen, by means of his examination of empiricism36 and, particularly, of his critique of David Hume’s analysis of consciousness.37 And he has been able to do so by showing that an essential dimension of the latter has either been eliminated or left out of account, such a dimension being no other than that of the identity of real objects and of the qualities thereof.38 The identity in question is a factor to be reckoned with inasmuch as “one is conscious of the thing [or quality thereof ] as being identically the same.”39 This “consciousness of 32

Ibid., p. 310. Ibid. 34 Ibid. Cf. “Towards a Theory,” p. 385 and E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 76 and CM, §§ 17–18. 35 Cf. “Principles,” p. 310 and “Towards a Theory,” pp. 385 and 387. Vide D. Hume, Treatise, pp. 194 and 253. 36 Outline, Chapter 3, §§ 1–2, pp. 107 ff. Cf. p. 125–126: “The fundamental thesis governing . . . empiricism is the following: to become aware of an object means nothing else than to find it really existing in consciousness. That being the case, there is no longer any room for the identity of the object which one may become conscious of by a multiplicity of acts.” Vide G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 23, p. 270. 37 Cf. Outline, pp. 114–115 and “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” SPP, pp. 139 ff. 38 Outline, pp. 116–117. 39 Ibid., p. 115. 33


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the identity” of a real thing, or of its qualities,40 is an “experienced fact,” not something logically assumed for the sake of, or in need of proof41 in, the development of a theory of consciousness. Rather, the “consciousness of identity has the character of immediacy”42 ; in other words, “we simply and implicitly accept the objects as identical; we take their identity for granted and avail ourselves of it in proceeding upon its unformulated acceptance.”43 This means that it “is not always expressly grasped,”44 even though one can grasp it explicitly and is free to do so at any point by an act of reflection,45 in which the “object” or, for that matter, the quality exhibited by it, “would reveal itself . . . as the same object” or quality “that had been, or is, or will be apprehended.”46 Therefore, one would have to say, with Gurwitsch, that the “consciousness of the identity of the object” or quality “is, in this implicit form, a constitutive element of every perception, as well as of any other act in which one becomes conscious” of something.47 40

Cf. ibid., p. 116. Cf. ibid., p. 126: “the identity of the object is never, on principle, discovered in . . . the sense” of an objective fact one is, or may become, conscious of. “This means that the said identity is not derived from reasonings or conclusions.” 42 Ibid. 43 “Towards a Theory,” p. 386. 44 Outline, p. 126. 45 Cf. ibid. and “Towards a Theory,” p. 386. For the essential non-distortive character of reflection, cf. Outline, pp. 120, 127, and 289. See also ibid., pp. 284 and 289 f. 46 Outline, p. 127. 47 Ibid. In fact, the “subject would [otherwise] not know anything but the perpetual stream of the experienced.” (ibid., p. 129), if indeed one would be able even to grasp this, I would add, since there would be, on this account, no memory at all on the basis of which to constitute the one stream of consciousness belonging to anyone. (Cf. supra, n. 17). As Gurwitsch points out, “for the passage of time to be experienced, it is necessary for a succession of ‘perceptions’ to be presented to consciousness” (ibid., p. 114), since a perception is definite (i.e., this particular perception) not only by virtue of its occurrence at a particular time, but as well because of what is being perceived thereby. (Cf. “Towards a Theory,” p. 393.) If consciousness were reducible to a mere stream or to the passage of sheer temporal phases, “even if there was ‘a real succession in the objects,’ the subject would not notice time” (ibid.), assuming of course that under such conditions the concept of subject had any sense or content. (Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 374; vide A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” III and “William James’s 41

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Accordingly, the “consciousness of identity thus reveals itself to be the source that [implicitly] provides sustenance for the function of objectivation, the unavoidable condition of objectivity itself,”48 whether the object before consciousness exists or not.49 It must be stressed, however, that the role played by such consciousness is not that of a datum operative, even if only implicitly, in every other datum of which we are conscious,50 in the manner, say, in which substance is operative in every one of its modifications, as was the case, for example, in Descartes’ theory of consciousness as res cogitans.51 Gurwitsch proposes instead a relational theory of consciousness,52 the cornerstone of which is the “fact that the same object or quality thereof presents itself as identical through multiple acts,”53 be they perceptual in character or otherwise.54 Now, in order to clarify this consciousness of identity, let us move back and develop a fuller characterization of intentionality, i.e., the relationship between the act of conscious grasping and that which is grasped thereby. An act of consciousness, to say it again, is by nature temporally indexed, “nailed as it is to immanent, subjective time and occupying a place in this temporal order,” in consequence, it “cannot recur, no more than one of the diverse phases making up immanent phenomenal time Theory of the ‘Transitive’ Parts of the Stream of consciousness,” ii, in SPP, pp. 151–154 and 341–349, respectively.) 48 Outline, p. 128. 49 Cf. ibid., and also p. 118 for the consideration of the fact that even a fictive item of presentation (namely, the god Jupiter) is irreducible to the acts in which it is presented, and is thus irreal and yet objective. 50 Ibid., p. 205. 51 Cf. René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, ii, in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, new ed. (Paris: J. Vrin), IX-1 (1964), p. 27, ll. 7–17. 52 Outline, p. 205. For the opposite view, so far as the object grasped is concerned and as found in Husserl’s theory of the central noematic point cf. ibid., Chapter 4, § 2, a view that involves a notion reminiscent of Locke’s concept of substance. See ibid., p. 197 and John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Chapter 23, §§ 1 and 6, ed. J. W. Yolton (London: Dent/Everyman’s Library, 1967), I, pp. 244–248. 53 “Towards a Theory,” p. 390. Cf. Outline, p. 118. 54 Cf. ibid., pp. 136–137 and 193 and “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 373. The relevant idea here is Husserl’s concept of “noematic nucleus” as the stratum common to various manners of presentation of the same object. (Ibid.; cf. E. Husserl, Ideen,I, § 91.)


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can.”55 But, if this is so, and, further, if consciousness were to be reduced to a stream of psychical events,56 as the empiricists intended, then the following question would arise: how can implicit or explicit consciousness of identical objects or qualities, or of the identity of objects or qualities, ever be conveyed by Ideas if taken, [as in empiricism, as purely subjective occurrences,] if the latter . . . merely succeed one another, without any of them recurring? 57

Obviously, the answer is that identity can be conveyed only if the acts in question are more than mere events in consciousness, that is to say, only if they contain a reference to what may be provisionally called their “content.”58 Let me attempt to reformulate this point by availing myself of the terminology introduced by Husserl in his Ideen, I.59 What one finds here is a relationship between an act of consciousness or noesis and a sense or noema, two totally heterogeneous dimensions or planes of being which are, however, necessarily bound to one another, and, so much so, that neither can exist without the other.60 The relationship in question is one between an “act of meaning apprehension and the meaning apprehended.”61 Generalizing, one must say that “to every act of 55

Outline, p. 113. “Towards a Theory,” p. 393. 57 Ibid., p. 386. Cf. J. Locke, op. cit., Bk. IV, Chapter 4, § 3 (II, p. 167). 58 Cf. “Towards a Theory,” p. 391. This term, as well as that of “immanent object,” both employed by Brentano, are objectionable, because they suggest that both the act and its counterpart are on the same (i.e., temporal) plane (cf. Outline, p. 119) and, therefore, equally subject to perishing. (Cf. supra, n. 27.) But, as Gurwitsch points out, the “very close and intimate relationship existing between the object and the multiplicity of acts corresponding thereto is certainly not that of part to whole, of content to container.” (Outline, p. 131.) 59 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, Pt. III, Chapter 3, pp. 179 ff. 60 Cf. Outline, pp. 144–145. 61 “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 369. In this formula, “meaning” is taken broadly, to include the sense of “symbol” as only one particular case thereof. Or equivalently stated, in Husserl’s own words: the difference in question is that existing between the “object which is intended” and the “object as it is intended.” Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II, i, Inv. v, Chapter 2, § 20, in op. cit., XIX/1 (1984), ed. U. Panzer, pp. 425ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this work as LU.) Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” pp. 370 and 373 and Outline, pp. 121, 123, and 125. 56

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consciousness—also denoted as noesis—corresponds a noema, namely, an object as intended and presenting itself under a certain aspect.”62 The said formula involves not only a difference but an essential contrast as well, namely, that between the acts of consciousness (which are temporal) and the noemata (which, as ideal, are a-temporal).63 The phrase “intentionality of consciousness” thus primarily designates the correspondence in question,64 a relationship experienced in every domain thereof, for [n]ot only are there noemata in the perceptual life. In an act of memory, of expectation, of judgment, of volition, etc., an object offers itself to the subject experiencing one or another of his acts, and that object presents itself to the subject in a certain mode of appearing, from such and such an angle, under such and such an aspect, from such and such a side, etc.65

Accordingly, the noeses and their respective noemata are not only related but correlated, since they are characterized not only as opposite in character (real and ideal, or temporal and a-temporal, respectively), but they cannot exist without each other. Moreover, intentionality, as the relationship in question is called, is not symmetrical, for the “same noema can correspond—and in fact corresponds—to a whole multiplicity of noeses.”66 Now then, the “consciousness of identity,” i.e., the grasping 62

“Towards a Theory,” p. 393–394. Cf. Outline, pp. 132 and 280. To use Gurwitsch’s own examples, one can speak of the object “house” and the object as intended “the house seen from the front,” and of the object “Shakespeare” and the object as intended “Shakespeare as the author of Hamlet.” (Ibid.) 63 “Towards a Theory,” pp. 394. The ideality of noemata involves, as well, their aspatiality (cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 371) and their a-causal character. Cf. “Towards a Theory,” p. 393–394. 64 Cf. ibid. and E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 91 and 94–96. 65 Outline, p. 133. In respect of the phenomenon of consciousness, words such as “relationship,” “correspondence,” and the like may prove misleading. They are not meant to refer to a nexus in which the terms, external to each other, just exhibit opposite characteristics; rather, they are intended to signify a dual unity consisting of opposite and mutually dependent (noetic and noematic) polarities, and not a mere parallelism thereof. 66 Outline, p. 148. See also pp. 149–150. and “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 374. This is the case, for example, when an object appears under the same guise at different times or when it is first anticipated, then perceived, then remembered, etc. in the same terms.


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of something identical by means of events that arise and perish like all others, is precisely at the root of Husserl’s conception of experience. And it was just by developing such a conception that he broke “with the entire tradition of modern philosophy and psychology,”67 since, in his view, “[c]onsciousness is no longer considered as a simple and unique stratum,” i.e., one that would consist of events or temporal entities, but a “correlation phenomenon.”68 A noema need not be, and often enough is not, given in isolation. If this is the case, one should be able to identify in its structure something that would permit it to be connected with other noemata “belonging to the same group.”69 In Gurwitsch’s opinion, this phenomenon should not be interpreted, however, as Husserl for one did, namely, as if it pointed, within the makeup of the noema, to a “material noematic element,”70 the existence of which would ensure, “as identical,”71 that it “would be related to other noemata belonging to the same group.”72 Instead, he proposes to abide descriptively by what actually appears or is given to consciousness. He seeks thereby to “bring out the complete noematic sense”73 by taking “into account facts that, in the noema, [only] implicitly play a role in a specific sense.”74 Of course, “implicitly” here does not mean “by way of logical implication,” but just “being present operatively” and capable of elicitation by means of a process of reflection, which can be carried out either noetically or noematically.75 By such a reflective analysis, one would 67

Outline, p. 149. Ibid. 69 Outline, p. 190. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. This is the basis of Husserl’s substantialist account of the object which Gurwitsch seeks to replace by a relational one. Husserl’s account is the theory of the central noematic point. Cf. supra, nn. 52 and 54; see also Outline, pp. 191 ff. and E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 131, pp. 270 ff. 73 Outline, p. 286. 74 Ibid. Emphasis added. 75 Cf. ibid. As Gurwitsch will point out later (cf. ibid., p. 291), by engaging in such a reflection, one does not broaden one’s knowledge of the object but only renders explicit what one already knows implicitly about it. To broaden one’s knowledge, say, of a perceptual object, “one must set the perceptual life in motion.” (Ibid.) 68

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discover—for example, in one’s perception of a building from the front— not only a “building presenting itself from its front side” but, as well and by the same token, one “perceivable from other sides.”76 In other words, the building would present itself not just from its front, but that very presentation would contain references to its appearance from other sides, such references having therefore to be “considered as noematic components and constituents.”77 Let me attempt to clarify the concept of “reference” or “implication” as a noematic constituent. To keep to Gurwitsch’s own example (namely, that of the perception of a building from the front), one would have to say that the given perception is not exhausted in the disclosure of the appearance of the building from that side, since it would also contain references to the other sides or to aspects of the building different from that under which the object, i.e., the building, presently offers itself, to modes of presentation and appearing that are actualizable, though not actualized, at the moment under consideration.78

These references are not to be construed as if they were memories or images of past or future experiences, respectively, of the same building, for, although these may arise, they need not do so and are not required for the presentation of the building as it actually appears in the given perception, and as opposed to its display in a photograph.79 To put it bluntly in Gurwitsch’s own words, it is the same “noematic system as a whole that presents itself from the vantage point of one of its members,”80 or on the occasion of each perception of the building. Such noematic implications, as immediately or intuitively given, constitute what Husserl had called “inner horizon,” a concept Gurwitsch would accept if only it did not obscure the problems of organization he would be concerned with.81 In other words, 76

A. Gurwitsch, “The Phenomenology of Perception: Perceptual Implications,” see infra, p. 401. (Henceforth I shall refer to this essay as “Phenomenology of Perception.”) 77 Ibid. 78 Outline, p. 206. Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 19, pp. 81 ff. 79 “Phenomenology of Perception,” p. 401. Cf. p. 404 and Outline, pp. 265–267 and 274. 80 Ibid. 81 Cf. “Phenomenology of Perception,” § III.


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so that the perceived may play the role, for the perceiving subject, of a house or building offering itself from a certain side, the side must be perceived as being integrated with the remaining sides.82

By contrast with a straightforward presentation of the front of the building, the other sides would appear “by way of indication and implication”83 only. Every perception is thus incomplete when considered, so to speak, abstractly; to do justice to it, however, one need not add anything thereto that is not—although only implicitly—already contained in it; on the contrary, “one must just take into account a surplus that every perception contains beyond that which is seen therein . . ., a surplus that consists in nothing but the references in question, which the perceived-assuch implicates.”84 These references are given intuitively or immediately as actual components of what is straightforwardly offered in the perception. In other words, “[t]here is nothing conceptual about this knowledge and neither does it result from reasonings or conclusions.”85 To summarize the results of this noematic reflection, one may avail oneself of the concept of Gestalt,86 as defined by Max Wertheimer and as employed by Gurwitsch, namely, a unitary whole of varying degrees of richness of detail, which, by virtue of its intrinsic articulation and structure, possesses coherence and consolidation and, 82

Outline, p. 206, Emphasis added. Ibid. 84 Ibid., p. 207. (Emphasis added.) Cf. ibid., p. 132 for the expression, “perceived-as-such,” after Jean-Paul Sartre’s translation of Husserl’s phrase, “dieses Baumwahrgenommene als solches,” namely, “this perceived tree as perceived.” Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 89, p. 184 (trans., p. 216) and Jean-Paul Sartre, L’imagination, 5th. ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953), p. 154. English translation: Imagination, trans. F. Williams (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1963), p. 140. 85 Outline, p. 207. For the role of the perceptual references or implications in Maurice Pradines, cf. the latter’s La philosophie de la sensation (Paris: Les BellesLettres), I (1928) and II (1934), which is discussed in Outline, pp. 213, 217 and 219 “Review of M. Pradine’s Philosophie de la Sensation, II,” infra, pp. 497 ff., respectively. 86 Cf. M. Wertheimer, “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, I. Prinzipielle Bemerkungen,” Psychologische Forschung, I (1921), p. 52. 83

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thus, detaches itself as an organized and closed unit from the surrounding field.87

If a noema is then defined as a Gestalt, i.e., as “an ideal and a-temporal unity,”88 it “follows that the implications and references contained in a noema should count among the factors contributing, in a sufficiently decisive manner, to the constitution of the structures (Gestalten),”89 i.e., the noemata.90 Now, in keeping with this concept, Gurwitsch argues that the references or implications contained in a given perceptual noema “are not to any noemata whatever, but only to those which meet a certain condition,”91 namely, that of “accordance, congruity, and conformance among all the noemata concerned.”92 In other words, the perceptual whole in constitution which the noemata in question form is a Gestalt-contexture, i.e., a totality in which every constituent “is endowed with a functional significance for that contexture.”93 Therefore, A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, Pt. II, § 6a (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), Part Two, § 6a. (Henceforth I shall refer to this book as FC.) 88 Outline, p. 289. 89 Ibid., p. 212. Or to put it differently, the concept of sedimentation, as opposed to that of restructuring or reorganization, cannot account for all forms of acquisition due to experience, as is suggested here in Gurwitsch’s account of perception by his underscoring the role of implication or reference therein. Cf. “Phenomenology of Perception,” pp. 406 f. and 408 and FC, Part II, § 3. In this connection, an important caveat is mentioned by Gurwitsch when he says that the reflective phenomenological analysis of the unity of the perceptual noema, upon disclosing implications or references as its constituents, “is not [however] open to the criticism that the Gestalt theoreticians have formulated in respect of the traditional psychological analysis” (Outline, p. 255), for the implications or references in question are not at all like the ultimate elements into which the latter would break down any complex unity (cf. ibid. and Kurt Koffka, “Introspection and the Method of Psychology,” The British Journal of Psychology, XV [1925]). 90 As Gurwitsch points out, “[i]n the case of the unreflective [natural, everyday] attitude, all the . . . facts [implicated in a perceptual noema] are, in a sort of syncretic unity, confused with one another, as well as with that which is given in straightforward vision. It is thus that they contribute to the formation of the Gestalt unity which the perceptual sense is. They do not make up this unity by adding themselves to one another; on the contrary, they are contained in that unity, as the parts of a Gestalt are in general contained therein.” (Outline, p. 289; cf. ibid., pp. 172 f.) 91 “Phenomenology of Perception,” p. 401. 92 Ibid. 93 A. Gurwitsch, FC, Part II, § 6a. 87


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the functional significance of each such constituent (i.e., every implication contained implicitly in a perceptual noema) would “derive . . . from the total structure,”94 just as “each constituent would contribute towards this total structure and organization.”95 Accordingly, Gurwitsch interprets the “perceptual noema, considered in a static analysis,”96 organizationally or structurally, that is to say, “as a Gestalt-contexture whose constituents are what is given in direct sense-experience, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, other perceptual noemata merely referred to.”97 In light of this, Gurwitsch contends that the noematic equivalent of consciousness of the real, perceptual thing is the “system [which would, as the same,] successively unfold . . . itself from the vantage point of its several members,”98 subject as it is to the condition of harmonious continuation, or of congruence among the noematic components thereof.99 However, this thesis, which is, according to J. N. Mohanty, both central to Gurwitch’s theoretical position and most controversial in character, reduces the real object to a “system of appearances”100 or “coherent noemata.”101 Let us then stay for a moment with the concept of a perceptual thing, or thing given in perception, as a noematic system.102 In Mohanty’s opinion, for example, the view that the “object is nothing but the systematically organized concatenation of noemata corresponding to those very acts forming the ‘equivalent of consciousness’ with regard to the object”103 is tantamount to the denial of the thesis there is any substantial component to the object.104 According to Gurwitsch, then, what one finds in perception is a “whole multiplicity of noemata that can be, 94

Ibid. Ibid. Cf. “Phenomenology of Perception,” § II. 96 Ibid., p. 404. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., p. 405. 99 Ibid. 100 J. N. Mohanty, “The Unity of Aron Gurwitsch’s Philosophy,” Social Research, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Winter, 1994), p. 949. 101 Ibid. 102 “Theme and Attitude,” p. 346. 103 A. N. Mohanty, loc. cit., p. 942. 104 Ibid., p. 949. 95

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and in fact is, placed in relation to the same objective thing.”105 At first glance, this contention may be taken to involve, as indeed it does, a distinction between the noemata and the objective thing, but only when the noemata are regarded singly. In other words, the contention in question is to be understood in the sense that the “objective thing” as a whole would not at all transcend consciousness, for, as Gurwitsch himself stresses, “in every particular perception, the thing offers itself just under a certain aspect,”106 a formula wherein a noema—or any partial group of noemata corresponding to the thing (i.e., the objective thing)—is understood to be the thing offered “under a certain aspect.”107 Accordingly, the objective thing would not transcend the equivalent of consciousness thereof, when consciousness is regarded as a noetico-noematic correlation.108 In this light, it is difficult to accept, except nominally, Gurwitsch’s distinction between the “objective object” (presumably the thing in the real, perceptual world) and the “noematic object” (i.e., the intra-conscious or noematic totality or system corresponding to the real, perceptual thing).109 Nonetheless, Gurwitsch insists on the said distinction by clarifying it on the basis of the opposition between a “real objective thing . . . as an identical unity”110 and a “multiplicity consisting not only of acts, but also of noemata,”111 i.e., the noetico-noematic equivalent of consciousness of the real objective thing. At best, the latter can play—in the phenomenological analyses being conducted—the role of a guiding thread, for, under the phenomenological reduction which is the port of entry to such analyses,112 one cannot appeal to an “objective thing considered not only as laying claim to existence but taken quite simply as existent.”113 In this view, the real, objective thing must be reduced, as in fact it is by 105

Outline, p. 132. Ibid. Emphasis added. 107 Ibid. Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 378. 108 Cf. supra, pp. 8 ff. 109 Cf. Outline, p. 134. Cf. E. Husserl, LU, II, Inv. v, §§ 17, 20, and 21 and Ideen, I, § 94. 110 Outline, p. 189. Cf. “Review of Gaston Berger’s Le cogito dans la philosophie de Husserl,” infra, pp. 441 ff. 111 Outline, p. 189. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 207 ff. 112 Cf. infra, pp. 22 ff. 113 Outline, p. 189. (Cf. ibid., Chapter 2, § 6.) The real, objective thing is also referred to as the “object in itself, the objective thing.” (Ibid., pp. 186 and 190.) 106


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Gurwitsch, to being just the “objective correlate of the experiences relative to it.”114 This is why it is difficult to comprehend what Gurwitsch has to say in this connection, namely, that, “[w]hen one lives an authentic experiential act”115 (say, perception, in the case of a real objective thing), the “object in question is not given only as the objective correlate of thought, as cogitatum; rather, it is apprehended in its true being as veritably existing,”116 an assertion that is unquestionably true. No doubt, this phenomenological thesis, as Gurwitsch has demonstrated, serves finally to overcome the empiricist conception of consciousness, according to which the “only direct and immediate objects of the mind are its own mental states,”117 but such a feat is achieved at a great cost, namely, the reduction of reality to objectivity, or the domain of meaning lato sensu.118 To put it otherwise, since intelligibility is the only concern of phenomenology,119 the phenomenological analysis of perception carried out Ibid., p. 189–190. (Cf. ibid., pp. 227–228 and Chapter 1, § 1; vide E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 43). It seems to me that here lies, as a latent presence, the workings of a modified transcendental Idea of thinghood in its regulative or non-constitutive use, provided, of course, that the component of infinity is eliminated therefrom. Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 409/B 436 ff. and A 70/B p. 5 ff. Or to put it in Gurwitsch’s own words: “For phenomenology the real plays the role of an objective [in the sense of telos], rather than that of an object; it is the term to be attained, not the point of departure” (Outline, pp. 228). 115 “Principles,” p. 318. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 42 and 44–45. 116 “Principles,” p. 318. 117 “Towards a Theory,” p. 397. Cf. Outline, p. 135 and “Principles,” p. 311. 118 Cf. “Towards a Theory,” p. 395. This reduction to meaning certainly does not signify that the noetico-noematic equivalent of consciousness of a real, objective or perceptual thing is to be taken as a “representative of the thing perceived, or [as] an intermediary of some sort between the perceiving subject and the thing perceived” (ibid., p. 397, and yet—it seems to me—it does not correspond exactly with the thing perceived. 119 Cf. Outline, pp. 139: “the problem of the passage from the noema to the object . . . comes down to that of putting back the particular noema into a group or system of noemata.” The root of this view could be found in the possible confusion between the ideas of unity, identity, and independence. Cf. ibid., p. 201 and “Problems,” pp. 313. See also ibid., pp. 308 ff. and Jorge Garc´ıa-Gómez, “Descartes and Ortega on the Fate of Indubitable Knowledge,” Analecta Husserliana, LXXXVIII (2005), pp. 258–259. Vide José Ortega y Gasset, “Prólogo para alemanes,” in Obras Completas (Madrid: Revista de Occidente/Alianza Editorial, 1983), VIII, p. 48. English translation: “Preface for Germans,” in Phenomenology and Art, trans. Ph. W. Silver (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), p. 62, and Xavier Zubiri, Sobre la esencia (Madrid: Sociedad de 114

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by Gurwitsch would be, in a most essential respect, incomplete, failing as it does to account for the reality of the real perceptual thing. In my opinion, it leads not to the characterization of things as real but to things as transparent to one’s mental gaze, even if the said analysis is always taken to be in the works (or perhaps because it is just always so), since the equivalent of consciousness120 thus obtained does not include the moment of opacity with which perceptual things, to begin with and ultimately, meet one’s regard, as well as the moment of independence which most intimately integrates all aspects of a perceptual thing in its inerradicable condition of in-itselfness,121 facts that Gurwitsch cannot deny and insightfully has certainly acknowledged more than once in his analyses.122 Noematically speaking, the analysis of perception, which Gurwitsch carried out in terms of implications, is adequate enough, and yet it would remain incomplete were it not for the fact that it is matched by him, in keeping with phenomenological principle and practice,123 with a parallel noetic reflection. As he said, the “facts a noema contains in implicated form are indeterminate,”124 and include a “more or less perfect degree of determination”125 as to style. In other words, the present perceptual experience inchoatedly points to further experiences, the role of which would be to select among the noematic possibilities contained in the given noema in order to actualize them.126 Such future perceptions will serve to confirm or invalidate the presumptions and anticipations that the subject conceives of by laying out the references to well-defined facts that the noema implicates.127 Estudios y Publicaciones, 1963), ii, Chapter 3, pp. 23 ff. English translation: On Essence, trans. A. R. Caponigri (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1980), pp. 57 ff. 120 Cf. “Review of Gaston Berger’s Le cogito dans la philosophie de Husserl,” infra, pp. 441 ff. 121 Cf. Jorge Garc´ıa-Gómez, “Perceptual Consciousness, Materiality, and Idealism,” Analecta Husserliana, XXXIV (1991), pp. 229–356. 122 Cf., e.g., A. Gurwitsch, “Theme and Attitude,” infra, p. 343 and Outline, pp. 98 and § IV. Vide E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 49. 123 Cf. Outline, p. 286 and A. Gurwitsch, FC, Part IV, Chapters 2 and 3. Vide E. Husserl, Ideen,I, p. 205. 124 Outline, p. 208 125 Ibid. 126 Cf. ibid. 127 Ibid. Cf. p. 209 for the connection with the concept of habitus.


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This is possible at all because the noetic references in question are “intentional modifications which have, quite universally, the intrinsic property of pointing back to something unmodified,”128 to wit: the eventual straightforward presentations of what is, at the moment, only being referred to, i.e., what Gurwitsch calls “implications.” Here it is not a question of mere possibility but of what Gurwitsch calls “potentialities” of perception,129 inasmuch as the intrinsic property of the reference “makes it possible, for the subject of consciousness, starting from the nonoriginary . . . manner of givenness, [i.e., the reference], to strive toward the originary . . . one.”130 Clearly, then, Gurwitsch is not advancing a logical point but presenting a matter of conscious experience, one based on a “‘dynamism’ of the perceptual life”131 which, so to speak, inclines the subject to engage in further experiences, by means of which the (noetic) references to the (noematic) implications, concerning the perceptual object, can be validated or not.132 It is “because of the implications that, for the consciousness itself of the perceiving subject, every particular perception transcends itself in itself, thus making itself known as belonging to a whole noetic system,”133 i.e., of perception. Herein lies, it seems to me, the origin or arkhé of the said dynamism, for, although both the actualized and the inchoate noematic components of the percept “participate in the temporal form of the present,”134 they nonetheless essentially refer to future acts of perception by which to confirm or invalidate the presently given references. It is as if the present moment of the perceptual life not only contained the germ of the future but was inclined as well to give birth to it in a specific way. This permits Gurwitsch to reinterpret the noematic possibilities being referred to in a present perception as 128

E. Husserl, FTL, a, p. 276. See Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), p. 314. Cf. ibid., p. 277 (trans. p. 315). 129 Outline, Chapter 4, § 9, pp. 274 ff. 130 E. Husserl, FTL, p. 276 (trans., p. 314). 131 Outline, p. 294. 132 As Gurwitsch points out in passing, “[i]n the phenomenon of implication, it is a question . . . of effects and influences the past has for the present, whence it seems to follow that these phenomena are a matter for memory.” (Ibid., p. 237). In other words, the possibilities implicated in past perceptual experiences, if verified in the present one, permit one to remember the object as the same. Cf. ibid., Chapter 4, § 9, pp. 260 ff. 133 Ibid., p. 282. Cf. ibid., pp. 234–236. 134 Ibid., p. 273.

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potentialities of the perceptual life.135 Gurwitsch thus passes from a static analysis of perception to a genetic one, in which the implications are seen as “betraying, as it were, the history of the object as it has become for the subject.”136 He does so while expressing his agreement with Husserl’s view to the effect that potentiality indicates a fundamental trait of intentionality,137 namely, the consciousness a subject has of being able to “act”138 otherwise than he is presently acting. As suggested by Husserl’s assertion just quoted, this feature of consciousness is thoroughly universal,139 and thus it can be140 illustrated in the case of perception. In the latter, a halo of potential (that is to say, not actual but actualizable) perceptions opens up with every particular perception, the actualization of which perceptions the latter calls for to some extent.141 Accordingly, there is both a moment of necessity (i.e., so far as the givenness of the said halo is concerned) and a moment of freedom (inasmuch as the would-be actualization of the components of the halo just amounts to an inclination on the part of the subject, as is suggested by Gurwitsch’s final qualification of “to some extent”). Or expressed in Gurwitsch’s own formulation: Throughout it is a question of a capacity to do, of a possibility, that is to say, of the consciousness of a possibility, therefore, of a freedom rather than an exercise thereof, which, as the exercise of any freedom, can be checked for this or that reason.142

No doubt this is true, and yet it is inadequate, for, though the capacity to do may be there on such grounds, as indeed it is, and the freedom in question may nonetheless be “checked for this or that reason,” which may be contingent or not, it is not at all clear, in terms of Gurwitsch’s Cf. ibid., Chapter 4, § 9, pp. 274 ff. and 279. Ibid., p. 294. Cf. ibid., pp. 296–297 and supra, n. 89 for the pertinent reservation concerning acquisition by experience. Vide E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 277 f. For a further development of the noetic and noematic analyses of perception, cf. A. Gurwitsch, FC, Pt. IV, Chapters 2 and 3. 137 E. Husserl, CM, § 19, p. 83 (trans., p. 44). 138 Outline, p. 275. 139 Cf. E. Husserl, CM, p. 82. 140 In his Outline, Gurwitsch is careful to point out, often enough, that sense-perception is studied therein not necessarily for its own sake, but primarily for its paradigmatic value. (Cf., e.g., p. 107). 141 Ibid., p. 276. 142 Ibid. 135 136


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account, what the subjective motive has to be which would constitute the sufficient condition for that non-automatic triggering of the said exercise of freedom to take effect.143 At this juncture, we are able, it seems to me, to give a precise formulation of the primary nature of consciousness qua intentional. First of all, as Gurwitsch puts it, the “relation to the ‘object-given-as-such’ (that is to say, to the noema) is essential and necessary to the noesis.”144 For this to be the case, it must be that the noema, as we have seen, “does not merge 143

For the relevant distinction between para algo (for the sake of or in-order-to) and por algo (because of ) as determinants of life qua doing or performance, cf. José Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es conocimiento?, in Obras de José Ortega y Gasset, ed. P. Garagorri (Madrid: Revista de Occidente en Alianza Editorial, 1984), Part I, “Sixth Day” (1929–1930) and Part III, “Sixth Lecture” (1930). English translation: What is Knowledge?, trans. and ed. J. Garc´ıa-Gómez (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 60 and 227 (n. 40) and pp. 124 and 235 (n. 39), respectively. For a similar distinction between the Um-zu-Motiv (in-order-to motive) and the Weil-Motiv (because motive), cf. Alfred Schutz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, 2nd. ed. (Vienna: Springer Verlag, 1960; 1st. ed., 1932), §§ 17 (p. 95) and 18 (p. 100) English translation: The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh et al. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), pp. 88 and 91; cf. “Choosing among Projects of Action,” iii, in his Collected Papers (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff ), I (1962, ed. M. Natanson), pp. 69 ff. and his Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), Chapter 2, § E, pp. 45 ff. Vide my papers, “Nexus, Unity, Ground. Reflections on the Foundation of Schutz’s Theory of Relevance, Man and World, XV [1982], No. 3, pp. 227–245 and “Of Bearings in the Lifeworld,” Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Washington, D. C.: The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1983), pp. 169–193. For the noematic version of motivation, cf. A. Gurwitsch, FC, Pt. VI, §§ 3 and 4 and passim. One may refer here to the principle of reciprocity of perspectives, which is closely connected with these questions. Gurwitsch only touches on these matters in passing (cf. “World and Universe,” pp. 419 ff.) and “Review of Gaston Berger’s Recherches sur les conditions de la connaissance,” infra, p. 459, but they are nonetheless of great importance. Cf. Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immediates de la conscience, Chapter 3, in Oeuvres, pp. 121 ff.; E. Husserl, CM, § 53; J. Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente, in op. cit., VII, vi, pp. 154 ff. (Man and People, trans. W. R. Trask (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1957), pp. 112 ff., and my paper, “Interpretación mundanal e identidad propia. Cr´ıtica del experimento mental de Bergson y de Schütz en torno a la naturaleza y los l´ımites de la conciencia,” Revista de Filosof´ıa (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), 3a. e´poca, Vol. III (1990), No. 4, pp. 111–141. 144 Outline, p. 145. Cf. ibid., Chapter 3, n. 116.

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with . . . [the noesis] and is not a part or element thereof.”145 Now, this is consistent with the point made earlier146 to the effect that what we are dealing with here is a correlation of heterogeneous but reciprocally necessary terms.147 In other words, “[a]s the sense of an act, the noema is in need of an act . . . of which it could be the sense,”148 just as much as the noesis is in need of the noema, and precisely because—and not in spite—of their heterogeneity.149 Accordingly, the correlation in question can only be characterized, as Gurwitsch for one does, as “one of correspondence or parallelism.”150 Therefore, the view that consciousness is intentional may now be expressed by saying that it consists in being a “noetico-noematic correlation.”151 This understanding of consciousness, which is characteristic of phenomenology, allows one to say that, in the latter, the Cartesian dualism between the res cogitans and the res extensa has been overcome,152 inasmuch as the “objective reference of the mental states [needs not] . . . to be explained and accounted for subsequently,”153 being as it is a primordial, immediate dimension of the cogito. “Because of the intentionality of consciousness,” taken as a parallelism or correspondence, “we are in direct contact with the world, we are ‘at’ the world, ‘at’ the things encountered in that world,”154 a position arrived at the price of reducing things to systems of appearances or noemata,155 which is, 145

Ibid., p. 144. Cf. supra, pp. 10–11. 147 Outline, pp. 144–145. 148 Ibid., p. 144. Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” pp. 373–374. 149 Cf. ibid, p. 378. 150 Outline, p. 145. 151 “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 341. Cf. ibid., p. 342, A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” SPP, pp. 139 ff. 152 Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 375. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid., p. 377. 155 Cf. supra, p. 13 and n. 100. Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 378: “the thing perceived also proves to have noematic status. As a noematic system, it is a noema itself, but a noema of a higher order, so to speak.” Gurwitsch is thus entirely right, for the phenomenological theory of consciousness succeeds in overcoming the Cartesian dualism between the res cogitans and the res extensa, and yet it does so at the price of absorbing reality into consciousness, although, to be sure, no longer by reducing it to subjectivity in the way 146


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in my opinion, the metaphysical thesis at the basis of phenomenological idealism. §III. The Phenomenological Reduction According to Gurwitsch, the prior considerations and findings are legitimated only in terms of the performance of the phenomenological reduction, inasmuch as they pertain to constitutive phenomenology.156 In fact, one cannot guarantee access to them save under the regimen of the phenomenological reduction. And this is so because the phenomena in question “do not present themselves except implicitly,”157 requiring as they do, in order to become explicit, a “special reflection.”158 But, for this to occur, the mind must adopt a novel attitude, which is precisely the opposite of the natural attitude159 by which one spontaneously abides in ordinary life and in the practice of the various sciences, wherein one is directly concerned with objects and events taken as existent.160 The “very radicalism of the modification”161 undergone by the mind in freely162 adopting the phenomenological attitude affects the existential character of the objects of consciousness, but not in the sense that the mind would thereby cast doubt on it, as was the case with Descartes’ application of the universal methodic doubt to it.163 The positing involved in the performances of the mind while it lives in the natural attitude “remains what it is,” but we, so to speak, “put it out of action,” we “exclude it,” we “parenthesize it” . . ., we make “no use” of it.164 Thus, after characteristic of empiricism, but to the necessary counterpart thereof, i.e., to sense or meaning lato sensu. 156 Outline, p. 99. 157 Ibid., pp. 99–100. 158 Ibid. 159 Cf. ibid., pp. 100f. 160 “Existent” is understood here broadly to include both its everyday sense (as when one says “the chair I’m sitting on exists” on the grounds of my sense-experience thereof ) and its abstract meaning (as in the case of the proposition, “number 3 exists,” i.e., is “valid” in terms of certain basic definitions and axioms). 161 Outline, p. 100. 162 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 31. 163 Ibid., § 31, p. 53. 164 Ibid., p. 55 (trans., 59). Cf. ibid., § 32 and Outline, p. 100.

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carrying out the phenomenological reduction, and as long as the resulting phenomenological attitude is maintained, “[e]very object continues to be that veritable, hypothetical, possible, problematic, or apparent reality it was prior to the phenomenological reduction.”165 In other words, the conviction in which the mind lives as long as it operates spontaneously, taking its objects as existent in the way proper to the region of being to which they belong, “is no longer effective . . ., it does not play the role of a living conviction, but only that of an experienced conviction.”166 Correspondingly, the object or event it grasps would merely play the role of a “fact appearing before consciousness,”167 of a phenomenon,168 in the phenomenological considerations resulting after the performance of the phenomenological reduction and the adoption of the correlative phenomenological attitude (which is never to be abandoned in such considerations).169 All objects, whatever their sort,170 are thus reduced to the status of phenomena or noemata,171 and, as such, they cannot be doubted, for their condition—and the phenomenological description thereof—is that of what they appear to be for the subject’s consciousness. There is only one exception to the scope and hold of the phenomenological reduction, namely, the “acts of consciousness qua experienced facts,”172 but not when regarded as symptoms, expressions, or the like, of a human reality, or even of a purely psychical reality.173 Consciousness, after the reduction has been performed, is taken, then, not as a mundane reality but as a reduced or pure realm,174 that is to say, “it is viewed under the sole aspect of the appearing and constituting of objects before itself.”175 165

Ibid. Ibid., p. 101. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid. 169 Ibid., p. 101. 170 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 56–60 and CM, § 17. 171 Cf. Outline, p. 138, “Review of Gaston Berger’s Le cogito dans la philosophie de Husserl,” infra pp. 441 ff. and E. Husserl’s Ideen, I, §§ 90 and 97 and CM, pp. 72–73. 172 Outline, p. 102. 173 Ibid. 174 Cf. ibid., p. 129. 175 Ibid., p. 104. 166


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Nonetheless, consciousness, as a noetico-noematic correlation, is not affected by the reduction, since “[e]verything that has been experienced about . . . [that] duality keeps its value in the phenomenological domain.”176 And yet there is a subtle shift in emphasis, for, despite the fact that the said duality is maintained, the act (or noetic dimension of the correlation) is given primacy. Gurwitsch himself hints at this when he points out that the “simply given object” is the “ready-made product of processes of consciousness which, however, remain hidden and veiled in both ‘natural’ and everyday scientific life.”177 In effect, “special efforts”178 are required to bring them out, i.e., for one to become explicitly conscious of them or to make them exist for the subject’s consciousness. Otherwise, the latter would remain limited to its normal directedness to, and awareness of, objects and events. The full account of whatever is being experienced, or the equivalent of consciousness of any object, can only be worked out through the continuous mediation of that unique act of reflection which the phenomenological reduction is, for consciousness has to turn in on itself in order to gain access to the operative but concealed “acts and concatenations of acts”179 which “should be experienced (or be capable of being experienced) . . . to ensure that the objective correlate of this totality of acts of consciousness may be no other than the object in question.”180 In this “regressive reflection,”181 of which the phenomenological reduction renders one capable, the “object, taken as the point of departure, serves as one’s transcendental clue in an investigation that can also claim to be transcendental,”182 seeking as it would to identify the “necessary conditions for the nature, unity, and existence of the object.”183 In other words, “[t]ranscendental subjectivity is what is disclosed by the phenomenological reduction.”184 Those conditions would be spelled out in the equivalent of consciousness of the object, which is 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184

Ibid., p. 138. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Cf. “Principles,” p. 104–105 and Outline, p. 66. “Principles,” p. 314. Ibid. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 150, p. 313 and CM, § 21. “Principles,” p. 314. Cf. Outline, p. 64. “Review of Gaston Berger’s Le cogito dans la philosophie de Husserl, p. 443.

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a noetico-noematic system, no doubt, but one that is, nonetheless, noetically accentuated,185 for, as Gurwitsch says, the “acts of consciousness are relative only to themselves.”186 Accordingly, objects are regarded as being ultimately dependent on consciousness,187 and, correlatively, consciousness is seen as “depend[ing] . . . on no region of objective being.”188 And yet this dual contention does not signify at all what it would have meant in empiricism, as Gurwitsch’s critique thereof has shown,189 since the noematic system that a perceptual object is claimed to be exceeds not only every noesis related to it, but also the system they form, for the noematic system in question exhibits, unlike the noetic system corresponding thereto, an ideal, a-temporal character. One may perhaps explain this in terms of an unredeemed Cartesian element in phenomenology, that is to say, by the role the noetic, as the domain of the indubitable, plays therein. As Gurwitsch himself points out, the fundamental consideration deriving from the Cartesian discovery makes one suspect in consciousness a region of being prior to every other being, because it appears as the source out of which every manner of being originates, and therefore as a domain of being primordial and absolute, in the sense that nulla res indiget ad existendum.190

As one can see, still very much operative here is Descartes’ concern about establishing the really real as the residue left by the universal appli185

Cf. ibid, p. 441 and Outline, p. 64. This accentuation of the noetic element in the system of phenomena or appearances is operative and unredeemed, in spite of the undeniable “essential reference of acts of consciousness to objective entities of any kind, hence also to mundane, i.e., spatio-temporal objects.” (“Husserl’s Theory,” p. 376.) 186 “Principles,” p. 325. It seems to me that the only way not to annul or cancel the noetico-noematic correlation as the formula giving expression to the nature of consciousness is to interpret the claimed self-relativity of the acts of consciousness in a restricted sense, i.e., as synonymous with accentuation. 187 Ibid., p. 327. Cf. E. Husserl, “Nachwort zu meinen ‘Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie,”’ Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, XI (1930), p. 562. 188 “Principles,” p. 322. Cf. ibid., pp. 324–326 and E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 99 ff. and pp. 192 ff. 189 Outline, Chapter 3, § 2, pp. 113 ff. and supra, pp. 2 ff. 190 Outline, p. 68. Cf. R. Descartes, Principia philosophiae, i.ii, in Oeuvres de Descartes, VIII-1 (1964), p. 24 [19], 21–23.


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cation of the methodic doubt, despite Husserl’s pointed distinctions concerning the reduction.191 As opposed to the dubitability of objective being, phenomenology finds—in concurrence with Descartes—that the “being of consciousness . . . is set apart by the indubitability which . . . [the latter] had already noted in the cogitationes,”192 a contention interpreted by Gurwitsch himself when he argues immediately as follows: “Whenever we reflectively turn to an act actually lived, we apprehend an absolute being devoid of the need and the possibility of being confirmed or invalidated at all, an absolute being which cannot not exist.”193 It is clear, then, that the ultimate ground sought after in classical-modern philosophy continues to be alive in phenomenology, namely, the domain of consciousness. This is true on condition that, when all is said and done,194 such a realm is not regarded as one which merely consists of acts of consciousness, but as the nexus formed in each case by the noeses and their corresponding noemata, although, within such a nexus, to be sure, the stress would still be placed, as in Descartes, on the cogitationes, which would endow the objects disclosed by them with being, sense, and unity.195 As we know, in empiricism, objects are reduced to the status of perishable existences, but, by contrast, in phenomenology, where they are taken in the sense just identified, “consciousness shows itself to be a self-enclosed domain of being which nothing can penetrate and from which nothing can escape, a domain which is first in itself and prior to any other region of being.”196 Gurwitsch’s account of the nature and role of the phenomenological reduction is adequate enough; nonetheless, it fails—and not just because of its brevity and condensed character—to do sufficient justice to it, for, it seems to me, he neglects to consider one important respect, except 191

Cf. supra, pp. 23 f. “Principles,” p. 324 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 46 and FTL, p. 222. 193 “Principles,” p. 324. 194 And this is so despite the essential difference obtaining between the procedures followed in classical-modern philosophy and phenomenology to gain access to such a ground, namely, the universal methodic doubt and the phenomenological reduction, respectively. Cf. infra, n. 32 and Outline, Chapter 2, § 6. 195 Cf. “Principles,” p. 323. 196 Ibid., p. 328. Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 375 and E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 83 and § 55, pp. 106–107. 192

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indirectly, namely, its possibility. Let me explain. To be sure, he clearly identifies the crucial problem that serves as the motive leading to the performance of the reduction. Whether one is talking of an ordinary human being who is trying to explain his experience of objects in terms of the resources available to him in everyday life, or of a scientist who is systematically attempting to do the same thing by employing the means at his disposal in the practice of his scientific discipline, one would have to say that the person involved in such a task would have to depart from consciousness, be it as a psychical or as a socio-historical reality, as the case may be.197 But this is tantamount to plac[ing] . . . the individual in question in the region of the world and to contrast it therein with realities which are not different otherwise, within this region, than any reality whatsoever that may be contrasted with any other reality whatsoever.198

Historically and logically speaking, this gives rise, at once, to a particular project and to an insurmountable difficulty in carrying it out, which would render it incoherent. The project in question—the project of classical-modern philosophy—involves the attempt to explain a human being’s experience of the world by “relating the constitution [of the latter] . . . to his consciousness,”199 since this is the only medium of access to objects at his disposal.200 But, in such an endeavor, “consciousness itself— the prime reality . . .—reveals itself . . . as a mundane reality,”201 and this is precisely where the said project comes to grief. The reason for this is that classical-modern philosophy took the form of a “universal psychology,”202 grounded as it was in the thesis of “transcendental psychologism,”203 as Husserl called it, a thesis that essentially contains a “contradictory element.”204 This element resides in the fact that the said project requires 197

Outline, p. 230 Cf. “Review of Gaston Berger’s Recherches sur les conditions de la connaissance,” pp. 453 ff. 198 Outline, p. 75. Cf. ibid., p. 80. 199 Ibid. 200 Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 353. 201 Outline, p. 81. 202 Ibid, p. 79. 203 “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 356. Cf. E. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, ed. W. Biemel, in op. cit., IX (1962), pp. 287 ff. and 328 ff. Vide also his CM, § 10. 204 Outline, p. 75.


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that consciousness play two incompatible roles, for, on the one hand, it would have to serve as the transcendental origin205 of everything that is or can be experienced, and, on the other, it is to be regarded as a constituted realm, as any other reality would be. Briefly stated, the said project would consist in “posing . . . transcendental problems on the basis of a mundane reality.”206 Now, if that is the case, then classical-modern philosophy would involve a petitio principii amounting to “call[ing] upon and presuppos[ing] . . ., in the very sense of the question it raises, that which should only follow from the transcendental inquiry.”207 In light of this, Husserl proposed—and Gurwitsch concurred—that the concept of consciousness be deprived of its mundane character by means of the performance of the phenomenological reduction.208 Accordingly, the phenomenological investigations, to be conducted under the newly established regimen of the reduction, would be thoroughly transcendental, seeking as they would the “conditions of the possibility of objects, . . . conditions located only in [reduced] consciousness,”209 and thus they would “avoid . . . the vicious circle consisting in raising transcendental questions about the constitution of the world on the basis of a part of the same world.”210 Gurwitsch’s point would be well taken, if consciousness as a noeticonoematic correlation were immediately accessible to itself, but this is not the case, as I have suggested. To make such a discovery, one is in need of performing the act of reflection which the reduction is. But, as Husserl pointed out, “[w]ith regard to any positing we can freely exercise this peculiar”211 epoch¯e. Here the key word is “freely,”212 since one is not bound to make that discovery; for that to happen, there must be motives in operation which would explain not only that we can do so, but that one does so as well. Even if one grants the validity of such motives, one 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212

Cf. ibid. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., p. 74. Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” p. 356–357. Outline, p. 81. Ibid., p. 105. “Principles,” p. 327. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 31, p. 55 (trans., p. 59). Emphasis added. Cf. ibid., § 32, p. 56.

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cannot claim that what one would discover by acting on them (namely, reduced consciousness) is an originary dimension of being. But how may a non-originary or derivative outcome constitute the unshakeable ground sought after by modern philosophy in general and by Husserl in particular? Perhaps the implicit reason responsible for—and motivating— the performance of the reduction is, again, the underlying presence of the Cartesian concern with indubitability.213 Now, of course, the residue left would no longer be the cogito qua cogitatio (as was the case with the application of Descartes’ method of universal doubt), but, rather, the cogito taken in its complexity as the “relation cogito-cogitatum-quacogitatum,”214 a domain of infinite wealth that the correlational duality of noeses and noemata encompasses. Nevertheless, the preoccupation seems to have remained the same, in phenomenology, as in Descartes (although it carries one much further), for, as Husserl himself remarked, “we just start from” the “sphere of absolutely indubitable being.”215 But what if the “return to something indubitable” were the return to something antecedent to any act of consciousness, including that of the reduction, albeit “not in the sense of something resisting doubt or subsisting after doubt but in the sense of a presence precluding doubt,”216 inasmuch as it is always being presupposed by any act of consciousness. Possibly this is what José Ortega y Gasset had in mind when he referred to the act of living, conceived as the “opposite of an act of Bewusstsein, because living, to begin with, consists in the reciprocal, actional duality 213

Cf. “Husserl’s Theory,” pp. 352–353. A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” in SPP, pp. 154 f. Cf. E. Husserl, CM, §§ 14 (p. 71) and 15 (p. 74). 215 E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 31, pp. 53–54 (trans., p. 58). 216 Paul Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. P. A. Schlipp et al. (La Salle: Illinois: Open Court/ The Library of Living Philosophers, XVII, 1984), p. 477. What is in question here is not the pursuit of “prethetic, pre-thematic, pre-explicit consciousness,” as Gurwitsch, for example, claimed Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s was (cf. “Review of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception,” infra, pp. 487 ff.), for any such quest would be a matter of consciousness, even if not taken “as fully transparent, as thoroughly explicit and thematizing” (ibid., pp. 487 f.). Nor is it, for that matter, that of the constitution of the most elementary form of objectivity, say, that given expression by Gurwitsch in his concept of functional object. (Cf. infra, pp. 33 ff.) 214


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which my encounter with myself as engaged with things is,”217 since an act of Bewusstsein or reduced consciousness “severs itself from its object, whether the object in question is itself or something else.”218 My life qua activity219 “presupposes that an act [of living, say, my seeing this book] is for itself and yet, at the same time, that this being for me does not signify the same as objectivation, or the consciousness properly so called that the act would have of itself.”220 But this is nothing but one’s spontaneous “possession of a non-objective presence of being which would be, according to Ortega’s trenchant formula,”221 of a “straightforwardly entitative kind.”222 The matter or question at hand, then, is that of the ongoing operative presence of life to itself. This would be, no doubt, a manner of (self-)reflection, and yet one that would be sui generis, insofar as it “originarily constitutes”223 reality itself and “is thus no mere possibility of thought, as reflection or self-consciousness—requiring as it does an act of explicit constitution—was for idealism; rather, it is both an actuality and a necessary constituent at the most radical of levels,”224 that is to say, “something inseparable from the real [i.e., my life as the act of living], an indefeasible dimension of it, one that does not come to be superadded to it by my cogitatio,”225 i.e., by the act of reflection that the reduction is.226 217

J. Garc´ıa-Gómez, “Descartes and Ortega on the Fate of Indubitable Knowledge,” loc. cit., p. 274, n. 158. 218 José Ortega y Gasset, “Problemas,” § 4, in ¿Qué es conocimiento?, pp. 13–14 (trans., p. 33). 219 “Activity” (or “performance”) is understood here not as “act” but as “doing,” i.e., as the spontaneous engagement with things in everydayness. Cf.¿Qué es conocimiento?, Parts II and III. 220 Ibid., § 9, p. 18 (trans., p. 37). 221 J. Garc´ıa-Gómez, “Descartes and Ortega on the Fate of Indubitable Knowledge,” p. 260. Cf. ibid., pp. 255 ff. 222 J. Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es conocimiento?, § 9, p. 19 (trans., p. 38). 223 Ibid., p. 20 (trans., p. 36). 224 J. Garc´ıa-Gómez, “Descartes and Ortega on the Fate of Indubitable Knowledge,” p. 260. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es conocimiento?, p. 19 (trans., p. 37). By contrast, vide I. Kant’s notion of the “I think” in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 131–132. 225 J. Ortega y Gasset, “Problemas,” § 9, in ¿Qué es conocimiento?, p. 20 (trans., p. 38). 226 This has nothing to do with the question of whether or not reflection is undistortive. Cf. supra, p. 1 and n. 45. Vide also Outline, pp. 205, 211, 284, 288, 290, 293, 297 and 309.

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§IV. The Sequential Order of the Perceptual Constitution of Objects One of the most interesting and productive aspects of Gurwitsch’s phenomenological account of perceptual consciousness is what he calls “acquisition by experience.” In order to deal with it, he establishes a series of qualitatively different stages in the constitution of the perceptual object. First of all, he speaks of the objects which, for the subject of the experience, make up the surrounding world when one is living in it in terms of a practical, as opposed to a “contemplative,” attitude. In light of such an attitude, the objects do not appear to be “characterized by . . . those determinations which . . . must always be designated as objective, in the sense that they belong to the object taken in itself and independently of any relation to a situation in which it can be utilized.”227 In other words, the “nature” of such objects “is determined by the ‘functional values’ they take on, whether in typical situations or in a particular one.”228 That is the reason why Gurwitsch chooses to call them “functional objects (Funktionellegegenstände).”229 As opposed to an objective 227

Ibid., p. 84. (Emphasis added.) Physical dimensions, shape, color, weight, etc. would be examples of such determinations. (Ibid.) Accordingly, as Gurwitsch points out elsewhere, things do not appear, when one lives in terms of the practical attitude, as substrates of such determinations, but as “useful for such and such purposes, as capable of being handled in such and such a way, as capable of serving such and such ends, as fashioned in a certain manner from such and such materials, as intended for such and such practices, etc.” (“Theme and Attitude,” p. 342. Cf. Outline, p. 341.) 228 Ibid. 229 Ibid. Cf. “Theme and Attitude,” p. 342 and Wolfgang Köhler, “Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden I,” Abhandlungen der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phys.-math. Klasse (Berlin: 1917), pp. 29–32. Vide also Adhémar Gelb, “Remarques générales sur l’utilisation des données pathologiques pour la psychologie et la philosophie du langage” and Kurt Goldstein, “L’analyse de l’aphasie et l’étude de l’essence du langage,” as summarized in the Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, 1933 (Nos. 1–4), apud Outline, Chapter 2, pp. 84. Cf. “Theme et attitude,” p. 342 where Gurwitsch indicates that the term “functional object” has the same meaning as Heidegger’s Zeug (equipment). See M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Part I, iii, §§ 15 and 74, in Gesamtausgabe, II (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), pp. 68 ff., 91 ff. and 99–100. English translation: Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie et al. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 96 ff. and 103–195.


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determination, a functional value “is not a permanent property of the object taken in itself, a property that would be inherent in the object as such,”230 but a qualification thereof exhibited by it “only in . . . [a given situation] or at least in relation to it.”231 As a consequence, a functional object appears as it does in light of the “subject’s understanding” of the situation in which he finds himself, and, therefore, it “can be for one person different from what it is for another.”232 This, however, is insufficient to establish that the subject’s attitude is “purely subjective,”233 inasmuch as such references, helping to determine as they do his situation, “constitute the horizon in relation to which . . . it appears.”234 The said references thus create a context by virtue of which the given situation “presents itself ”235 as a “particularity within a unitary universe.”236 Accordingly, it may be said that the knowledge attendant on life in the surrounding world and directing it is just the apprehension of the functional objects in their places within a given situation, the discovery of the general and particular structures of the situation, and the progressive adaptation to these structures.237

The reciprocal references among the functional objects in a given situation would thus “form the structure of the situation.”238 Therefore, one should expect that, as the situation becomes increasingly familiar and the “handling of functional objects becomes a stabilized and automatic 230

Outline, p. 85. Ibid. 232 Ibid., p. 86. Cf. p. 87 for the nexus in terms of which the subject’s practical situation points to facts lying outside it, such as the ends he seeks to attain through it and his motivation to do so. 233 Ibid., p. 87. 234 Ibid. This is ultimately the reason why a domain consisting of functional objects cannot be the subject of study of the physical but of the human sciences. Cf. ibid., pp. 90 and § III. 235 Ibid., p. 87. 236 E. Husserl, CM, p. 75 (trans., pp. 36–37). As Gurwitsch points out, this means that it is “through such references that the world is indicated to the subject at every moment of his life.” (Outline, p. 88.) 237 Ibid., p. 91. 238 Ibid. 231

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habit,”239 this “special and specific character would fade . . . out, in the sense that the perception of the situation and of the effects that the subject’s activity brings about therein would yield to the ‘proprioception’ of this activity itself.”240 Gurwitsch distinguishes between two types of structural connection or Gestaltverbindung. On the one hand, there is the connection “relative to the inner organization of the theme,”241 in which “no detail is independent of another”242 ; on the other hand, there is the connection which 239

Ibid. “The Gestalt theoreticians,” remarks Gurwitsch, “have shown that, for the formation of a habit to be possible, no matter how automatic it may become at the end of the learning process, perception must be re-worked and re-organized.” Ibid., p. 91. Cf. Paul Guillaume, La formation des habitudes (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1936), Chapter 3. Consistent with this view, one must say that a reflective or explicative analysis of an already constituted object of use will only succeed in making explicit the implicit implications contained in such an object (i.e., the references to the practical situation in which the object is perceived), but will not be able to reach the original formation of the object (cf. Outline, p. 299). The implications in question contribute to the constitution of the object “such as it plays a role in the eyes of the perceiving subject” (ibid., p. 263), but “betray nothing about the origin of the object,” (ibid.), since the “original formation” of such objects “is accomplished not by superposition,” as Husserl claimed, “but by an abrupt reorganization” (ibid.), as seen by Piaget and the Gestalt theoreticians. As an incidental point, let me refer the reader to an odd remark in which Gurwitsch seems to speak of objects more fundamental than the objects of use, inasmuch as such “types of objects . . . precede the functional objects endowed with the sense of instruments.” (Outline, p. 254). As he asserts, it is clear that they are not reiform things (ibid.), and possibly they are pre-objects of use, i.e., functional objects not yet stabilized as instruments, since they “would be relative to the schemata of action found at a more primitive level than that at which the instruments appear” and “are constituted in serving as nourishment for this or that function.” (Ibid. Cf. also ibid., pp. 208–210 and FC, Part Two, § 3 b.) 240 Outline., p. 91. 241 Ibid., p. 173. 242 Ibid. Cf. p. 143. Accordingly, one must say that the theme is characterized by its consistency and “its capacity for being transferred from one thematic field to another.” (Ibid., p. 172. Cf. “Theme and Attitude,” pp. 342–343. For the distinction between theme and thematic field, cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 27 and A. Gurwitsch, Outline, Chapter 3, §§ 8 and 9 and pp. 166 f., 169–172, 175, and 177–178; FC, Pt. I, Chapter 2, § 4, pp. 55–56 and Pt. V; and Marginal Consciousness, Aron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973), Vol. II. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009.


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exists “between the theme and the thematic field,”243 in terms of which a functional object (or object of use) is determined by its field, namely, the practical situation in which the subject lives.244 In other words, an object of use is a function of the role it plays in a practical situation,245 this being a particular case of a “most general fact, namely, that the thematic field lends the theme its perspective and brings it to light.”246 In view of this, it must be stressed that the “object of use . . . has not derived the functional values determining its being from just any thematic field, but from a specific one which constitutes, so to speak, its natural surrounding, and which, for the same object, may vary from one subject to another.”247 As opposed to the structural connection intimately binding together the components of a theme, the one existing between a functional object and the practical situation that is its thematic field is much looser, a fact that allows this kind of object to “be separated from the surroundings in which it is found . . . and . . . be carried into other surroundings without its identity being affected thereby, even insofar as it is an object of such and such a functional value.”248 In consequence, an object of use “enjoys . . . a certain independence with regard to its surroundings and to the situation in which it is employed or perceived.”249 This does not mean, however, that, as the “same” object of use is transferred from one practical situation to another and thus becomes a “different” object of use, there would be, so to speak, a factor common to all the varieties of the “same” object of use which would permit such a transfer, a sort of substrate other than the functional values it would variously and successively assume as their bearer.250 243

Outline, p. 172. Ibid., p. 173. 245 Ibid. 246 Ibid. 247 Ibid., p. 174. Cf. pp. 208–210 and FC, Pt. I, Chapter 2, § 3, 248 ff. Vide also Jean Piaget, La naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfant (Neuchâtel-Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1936). 248 “Theme and attitude,” p. 343. 249 Ibid. Cf. Outline, p. 174:“The relative independence of the object of use with respect even to its natural surrounding is ultimately at the basis of the mutual understanding among diverse subjects.” 250 Cf. ibid., p. 344. 244

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The next stage is that of the constitution of the “reiform thing.” The latter would result from performing a mental operation on the functional object, an operation consisting in “cut[ting] off the relations and likewise suppress[ing] . . . the references from which an object draws . . . its sense of being a functional object.”251 The outcome of this process, i.e., the reiform thing, would thus be an object “characterized solely and exclusively by perceptible and qualitative determinations.”252 On this subject, Gurwitsch disagrees with Husserl253 in that the latter conceives of the “formation of objects in the course of experience . . . as being accomplished [by sedimentation or] by superposing different strata on one another,”254 one stratum among them being regarded “as fundamental and basic.”255 In light of this, Husserl described the functional objects as superior or of a higher order, based upon, as they would have been, the “sense-perceptible thing qua reiform thing,”256 precisely the reverse of what Gurwitsch contends. According to the latter, Husserl’s position follows from generalizing the theory he established for the “constitution of an object of value.”257 Such a theory would account for the constitution of an object of that sort in terms of an active genesis,258 which, in itself, is a process that “necessarily presupposes, as the lowest level, a passivity that gives something beforehand.”259 But while this is a valid thesis about the constitution of the objects of value,260 it is not so in the case of the constitution of reiform things, which is 251

Outline, p. 93. Ibid. See also pp. 93 and 254. The reiform thing, points out Gurwitsch, is the thing as Descartes understands it in his “analysis and critique of perception” and what “Locke sought to construct from his simple elements of ‘sensation.”’ (Ibid.; cf. supra, p. xl and n. 227.) Vide René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, in op. cit., pp. 30–31 and John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Chapters 12 (§ 6) and 23 (§§ 6 and 14). 253 Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 38, pp. 112–113. 254 Outline, p. 295. 255 Ibid. 256 Ibid. Cf. also pp. 83–86, 174–175, and 257–258. Vide E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 152 and CM, p. 112. 257 Outline, p. 296. 258 Cf. ibid. 259 E. Husserl, CM, p. 112 (trans., p. 78). 260 Cf. Outline, p. 254 f. 252


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based, in Gurwitsch’s view, on a reorganization of the functional object brought about by an abstractive procedure already described.261 To put it bluntly, Gurwitsch abandons here Husserl’s theory of the superposition of strata by advancing the “priority of the functional object over the reiform thing,”262 while maintaining, on the one hand, the emergence of the various functional objects by means of the reorganization of the objects of experience and, on the other, the reflective irretrievability of their origins. Ultimately, this passage from the sphere of functional objects to that of reiform things involves or requires a change of attitude on the part of the subject of experience. From living according to a practical attitude, in which he would be “in the presence of an object concerning which it is possible to maintain that it can, insofar as it is the same, be presented in various perspectives and take on the most different functional values,”263 he would proceed to adopt another attitude, contemplative in character and of a higher order than the practical one, which “permits . . . him to become aware of the reiform thing.”264 The latter would thereby be established as an invariant which, as opposed to the various presentations of a thing in perception, would “not at all contain the objects possessed of functional values, by the variation of which objects it is constituted.”265 In fact, any “such object would implicate . . . a reference to the corresponding reiform thing,”266 at least as a possibility, and not the other way around. Accordingly, a reiform thing would owe “its being to nothing but itself, no perspective and no sense of being are conferred on it by the situation in which it is grasped.”267 261

Ibid., pp. 300–301 Here Gurwitsch goes as far as saying that the origination of an object of use is an act of creation. Cf. pp. 301–303. 262 Ibid., p. 245. Cf. “Theme and Attitude,” p. 342. 263 Ibid., p. 345. 264 Ibid. 265 Ibid., p. 346. 266 Ibid. 267 Ibid. Obviously, then, not only is a reiform thing essentially different from a functional object, but it is, as well, other than a perceptual object which, consisting as it does of a systematic concatenation of noemata, is “present in each one of them, to the extent that each noema implicates a reference to the said concatenation of which it itself is a part.” (Ibid., p. 346.) Cf. FC, Part Two, § 3b, Part Four, Chapter Two, § 3, and Part Five, § 9b.

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The final stage in the sequence of object constitution consists in passing from the reiform thing to the material body, the area proper to the physical sciences. Here the transformation undergone by the object is even more drastic than any one that had taken place before, for it does not amount to a mere change in practical attitude within a context of action and resulting in a corresponding reorganization of the object (as in the constitution of the various functional objects or objects of use), or to the adoption of a contemplative attitude paired with an abstractive process (as in the constitution of reiform things). We are now faced with the practice of the physical sciences, in which the material body268 is constituted on the basis of the reiform thing. By contrast with the latter, the material body is no longer “located in a space”269 that is “visual and tactile in character and . . . familiar to us as our field of action”270 ; rather, it is placed in “mathematical space, which admits of no determinations except those which follow from the axioms of geometry.”271 As Gurwitsch puts it, the “material body of physics . . . transcends, in every respect, the reiform thing,”272 and not just, “as Locke had believed . . . the so-called secondary qualities of the thing,”273 as opposed to the “perceptible qualities”274 thereof. The result is the “mathematized (or, at least, the mathematizable) Nature,”275 as the “given Nature”276 (i.e., the domain of reiform things)277 “undergoes the transformation of idealization which places it in relation to mathematical objects.”278 This 268

Such a body is the one “defined by such concepts as atoms, ions, electrons, energy, and so on, entities which involve only characterizations by means of mathematical expressions.” (Outline, p. 94; cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 40). 269 Outline, p. 94. 270 Ibid. 271 Ibid. 272 Ibid. 273 Ibid. Cf. J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. II, Chapter 8, §§ 15–23, in op. cit., I, pp. 106–110. 274 Outline, p. 94. 275 Ibid., p. 97. 276 Ibid. 277 Cf. ibid., p. 97. 278 Ibid., p. 97. (Emphasis added.) Cf. E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, 2nd. ed., ed. W. Biemel, in op. cit., VI (1954).


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transformation involves a reference to a “thematic field consisting of categorial notions,”279 a field discontinuous with the “ordinary situations of our active and perceptual life.”280 Accordingly, a reiform thing, being established as theme in the midst of such a field, “has neither a role to play nor a function to perform”281 in it. But herein lies precisely the reason for the most radical break occurring in the transition from the “given Nature” (or point of departure for the last phase in the process of object constitution) to the “mathematized or mathematizable Nature” (as the wouldbe product of idealization), namely, that the thematic field in terms of which the former is idealized consists of “categorial notions, of . . . things, therefore, which are different in kind from those that appear in its light.”282 In concluding, let me take this opportunity to add a few general remarks about the contents of this volume. First of all, you will find here several texts (principally, among them, the book entitled An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology) which were composed originally in French, and which will be identified as such. In the present translation, the reader will note the presence of a number of clarifications, additions, references, and cross-references, both in the text and in the notes; they all are clearly identified by being placed in brackets which, unless otherwise indicated, signify that they are of my own making. Secondly, you can also find here other texts originally published or composed in English, and they will be identified as such. With respect to them, I have limited my editorial work to a few lexical, grammatical, and other minor changes (including the updating or the addition of bibliographical references) which will also be placed in brackets, again both in the text and the notes. Finally, the translation of the French texts into English has been thoroughly reviewed by my wife, Dr. Sara F. Garc´ıa-Gómez, whose care, critical precision, and devotion in carrying out that task I would like not only to acknowledge 279

“Theme and Attitude,” p. 347. Ibid. 281 Ibid. 282 Ibid., p. 348. (Emphasis added.) The thematic field in question, consisting as it does of categorial notions, is on “a plane in all aspects foreign to that of the surrounding world” (Outline, p. 90), something one cannot say of the practical situation (as the thematic field of the objects of use) or of the percptual field (in the case of perceptual objects and reiform things). Cf. “World and Universe,” pp. 411 ff. 280

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but also to express my gratitude for; I am sure that the quality of the endproduct is much higher because of her unselfish efforts. I wish to join her in dedicating this volume to the memory of its author, Aron Gurwitsch, our teacher and friend. Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Long Island University

Jorge Garc´ıa-Gómez

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF ARON GURWITSCH

In the field of science, only he who is devoted solely to the work at hand has “personality.” —Max Weber, “Wissenschaft als Beruf ”

§I. Studies in Germany Aron Gurwitsch was born January 17, 1901, in Vilna, Lithuania, then a part of Imperial Russia. The Jews of Lithuania were long known for their austere rationalism, and, with the exception of his father, Gurwitsch is descended from rabbinical scholars on both sides. Meyer Gurwitsch exported timber from Russia to Germany before the Great War and westernized himself by reading deeply in English, French, and German literature. After his fortune was destroyed by the war and the Russian Revolution, Gurwitsch’s father came to America. When Aron Gurwitsch was six years old, his family had moved to Danzig, a German peninsula into Poland. As a Russian citizen residing in Germany, Gurwitsch was classified as an enemy alien during World War I, a classification he was to receive twice again in his life. While in Danzig he attended the classical Gymnasium for twelve years, studying Greek, Latin, French, English, mathematics, and history. Looking back upon entering the University of Berlin in 1919, Gurwitsch today speaks of having found his liberation there and dates the development of his life in its own right from that time. But at first this process of liberation seems to have led to anarchy. He was attracted to everything and attended the maximum number of classes possible, eight a day. Then he came to the attention of Carl Stumpf. Through an error on the part of Stumpf ’s assistant, the young first-year foreign student was admitted to an advanced seminar on Hume. He kept silent for six weeks. Then he asked how Hume could know that an idea was fainter than the corresponding impression unless the impression was preserved 41 A. Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973), Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective, c Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2831-0 2,

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biographical sketch of a. gurwitsch and l. embree

or reactivated for the comparison. Stumpf remarked that this was indeed a genuine problem and thereafter took a special interest in Gurwitsch. Under Stumpf ’s advisement, Gurwitsch thoroughly prepared himself in mathematics under Karatheodory, Schur, Schmidt, and Rademacher and in theoretical physics under Max Planck and others. He studied philosophy under Riehl, Erdmann, Dessoir, Hofman, and, of course, Stumpf, from whom he also had his psychology.Yet the impact of Stumpf on Gurwitsch was more that of a teacher’s guidance than of a thinker’s influence; Gurwitsch has always had great theoretical differences with Stumpf. After he had been at Berlin for two years, Gurwitsch was sent by Stumpf to Freiburg, where Husserl was teaching. Due to bureaucratic error (he was still a stateless alien), Gurwitsch was allowed to reside in Freiburg but was allowed to study only in Heidelberg. Therefore, he audited seminars and lectures by Husserl. Personal relations did not develop between the two men until 1928; but as to the influence of Husserl, which began in 1922, we have this from the Introduction to Gurwitsch’s Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology: When the author made his first acquaintance with Husserl’s philosophy about forty years ago, he was overwhelmed by the spirit of uncompromising integrity and radical philosophical responsibility, by the total devotedness which made the man disappear behind his work. Soon the young beginner came to realize the fruitfulness both of what Husserl had actually accomplished and of what he had initiated, the promise of further fruitful work. . . . It was the style of Husserl’s philosophizing, painstaking analytical work on concrete problems and phenomena rather than the opening up of large vistas, that made the young student take the decision to devote his life and work to the continuation and expansion of Husserl’s phenomenology—in a word, to remain a disciple forever, faithful to Husserl’s spirit and general orientation, but at the same time prepared to depart from particular theories if compelled to do so by the nature of the problems and the logic of the theoretical situation.

After Gurwitsch had been in Freiburg for a year, Stumpf suggested that he take his growing interest in the problem of abstraction to Frankfurt, where he might study cases in which abstraction seemed absent from behavior. Kurt Goldstein and Adhémar Gelb were there, working with veterans at a special institute set up by the Prussian government for the investigation of the psychological aftereffects of brain injury. Gurwitsch went there and came to be on a close personal basis with both men and participated in conducting the research behind Goldstein’s Der Aufbau des


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Organismus and other works involving abstraction and language. Reflection on the work of Gelb and Goldstein permeates Gurwitsch’s writings. Gurwitsch’s interest in and familiarity with Gestalttheorie began during his study under Gelb. During one of Gelb’s lectures, it occurred to Gurwitsch that the abandonment of the “constancy hypothesis” amounted to an incipient and partial phenomenological reduction. This he explained to me recently in the following fashion in a letter: ¨ In an article of 1913, “Uber unbermerkte Empfindungen und Urteilstäuschungen,” Koehler showed that modern psychology, particularly in the nineteenth century, proceeds on the taken-for-granted and hardly ever explicitly formulated assumption that sense data, as the ultimate elements of conscious life, depend exclusively and exhaustively on local stimulation; when a sense organ is stimulated in the same way, the same sensation is bound to arise. Koehler called this assumption the “constancy hypothesis.” In it the logicohistorical continuity of modern physics and modern psychology is apparent: the latter relies upon the former and avails itself of its results. Of equal if not greater theoretical importance is the dualistic theory of perception that the constancy hypothesis entails. When the phenomenal state of affairs differs from what was expected by virtue of the constancy hypothesis, as happens in most cases, particularly outside of laboratory situations, such a deviation was explained in terms of a “higher” supervenient factor, which factor was variously specified, depending on which school of psychology was involved. Thus, the “true” phenomenal state of affairs, perfectly corresponding to the stimulus, is “somehow” distorted. The constancy hypothesis can never be falsified experimentally, since every observed difference between what is observed and what ought to be observed is explained away by resorting to the aforementioned “higher” factors. If the constancy hypothesis is dismissed, no distinction can be made between “genuine” contributions of the senses and what is, in the percept, due to supervenient factors. In other words, there is no further basis for a dualistic theory of perception. Even more important, the dismissal of the constancy hypothesis makes possible and even necessitates a strictly descriptive orientation. Thus a psychological theory which does not proceed on the basis of the constancy hypothesis presents a certain affinity or kinship with Husserl’s phenomenology, whose first fundamental methodological device is the phenomenological reduction. Thereby it becomes legitimate to use the descriptive results of Gestalttheorie within a phenomenological context.

Gurwitsch has thus read the descriptive content of Gestalt psychology as noematic phenomenology of perception, the phenomenal state of affairs being identified with the noema of perception, the perceived object just and precisely as perceived, or the perceptum qua perceptum, as he likes to say. On Gurwitsch’s view, Husserl did not fully recognize the problems of the internal organization of the noema. To approach Gurwitsch’s

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“constitutive phenomenology,” one must begin with his critique of the theories of sense data and of sense-bestowing acts and then proceed to his reconception of the intentionality of consciousness as a noetico-noematic correlation. The product of Gurwitsch’s years at Frankfurt was his dissertation, now available in English as “Phenomenology of Thematics and the Pure Ego: Studies of the Relation between Gestalt Theory and Phenomenology.” The Husserlian texts available to him in preparing it were the Philosophie der Arithmetik, the Logische Untersuchungen, and the Ideen. He steeped himself in these works without aid. In addition, there was nobody at Frankfurt with whom he could discuss his topic, much less have supervise his work. Most of the people there thought he would never finish. Of course he did, after four and a half years. The professor ordinarius at Frankfurt, Cornelius, had very little sympathy for Gestalt theory and none at all for Husserlian phenomenology. Though Gurwitsch knew him well, Cornelius could not be expected to accept the dissertation. A search then had to be undertaken. Gelb was of no service because, as a psychologist, he belonged to the faculty of the natural sciences. Goldstein could not be of any help either, for he was a professor of neurology and belonged to the faculty of medicine. Hence Gelb referred Gurwitsch to Wertheimer in Berlin, who in turn sent him to Max Scheler, who had just accepted a chair in Frankfurt. Gurwitsch had met him earlier. Scheler read the work and was willing to accept it, but six weeks later he died. Then Heinemann, who taught in Frankfurt but was not ordinarius, referred Gurwitsch to Moritz Geiger in Göttingen, who accepted the dissertation. Three weeks after he arrived in Göttingen, Gurwitsch passed his orals. His degree was granted summa cum laude on August 1, 1928. He had spent nine years at four universities, written on an unusual topic without direction, and had had his thesis accepted twice. It was published in the organ of the Gestalt school, Psychologische Forschung, in 1929. Husserl read the essay and told Gurwitsch: “Since you have seen so well this far, you will come to see further” (i.e., come around more fully to Husserl’s position!). On another occasion, after discussing the investigations of Lévy-Bruhl and of Gelb and Goldstein with Husserl for eight hours, Gurwitsch was told: “Well, perhaps you see further than I do because you stand on my shoulders.” (Gurwitsch admits that he was never


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able to convince Husserl that the doctrine of hyletic data contains the unexamined assumption of the constancy hypothesis.) When Gurwitsch reviewed Husserl’s “Nachwort zu meinen Ideen . . .” in 1932, Husserl sent him a postcard: “. . . about the only review based upon real understanding of any of my writings (since the Logische Untersuchungen).” But the greatest compliment from Husserl came at the end of another long discussion: “There are philosophers aplenty; someone must do the dirty work—that is me and you.” Gurwitsch was Geiger’s personal assistant at Göttingen for a semester, and then, through the aid of Husserl as well as Geiger, he became a research fellow of the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art, and Public Education. He married at this time and moved with his wife, Alice, to Berlin. In about three and a half years a book entitled Die mitmenschlichen Begegnungen in der Milieuwelt was sufficiently advanced to be submitted as a Habilitationsschrift to the faculty of philosophy at Berlin University. The theme was significant since every German intellectual of the time was familiar with Max Weber’s work. Both Koehler and A. Vierkandt, a sociologist and social philosopher, were pleased with the writing. But it became a political casualty. On January 30, 1933, National Socialism came to power in Germany. Gurwitsch had become a German citizen in 1930; but, since he was a Jew, his committee, as he puts it, “exploded” and the Nazi minister canceled his recently renewed fellowship. Gurwitsch had read Mein Kampf and had been searching for an academic existence outside Germany during the preceding year; but since nobody of influence that he knew believed his pessimistic prognosis, he had gotten nowhere. On the day of the boycott of Jewish shops and offices (April 1, 1933), Gurwitsch and his wife left Berlin—without visas—for Paris. Lehrjahre gave way to Wanderjahre in a special sense.

§II. Career in France The intellectual world of France was different from that of Germany. A few French students had been to Germany before and after the Great War, but there was nothing at all like the exchange of thought that can be seen today. When Husserl lectured at the Sorbonne in 1929, it was

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the first public appearance of a German philosopher there since the war. Although men like Berger, Cavaillès, Minkowski, Mounier, Levinas, and Sartre were emerging, phenomenology was still somewhat alien. Some interest was beginning to appear where Gestalt theory was concerned, for Paul Guillaume had been reviewing most of the articles in Psychologische Forschung in Année psychologique. Except among a few young men, such as Raymond Aron, there was little interest in Max Weber. Nevertheless, the ground was ready for phenomenology and kindred thought. There was the Cartesian tradition, to which Husserl attempted to relate himself in the Paris lectures. Lévy-Bruhl’s ethnological work and Gurwitsch’s bringing of it to Husserl’s attention have been mentioned. There was also French Neo-Kantianism (Brunschvicg et al.) and a non-positivistic philosophy of science. Finally, Bergson’s thought—historical precondition for the existentialisms yet to come—was very much alive. Gurwitsch was acquainted with but two people when he arrived in Paris: Alexandre Koyré and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. He had spoken French since he was a child and through his father had acquired a deep respect for French culture. A number of refugee scientists were allowed to find an existence on the academic fringes during this period.1 Soon after arriving, Gurwitsch began lecturing at L’Institut d’Histoire des Sciences (Sorbonne), first on Gestalt theory, later on the work of Gelb and Goldstein, and finally on constitutive phenomenology. An article on the place of psychology in the system of the sciences was commissioned and appeared in 1934. In short, Gurwitsch became a member of the French intellectual community, a membership certified after the fact when he was asked to speak before the Société française de philosophie in 1959. Over all, Aron Gurwitsch came to himself in France between 1933 and 1940 and today looks back on his Paris years as among the happiest and most productive of his life. 1

The following sentences from the Preface of The Field of Consciousness are more significant than most such statements: “I wish to acknowledge my obligation to some organizations for their help during a most difficult period of my life. While I was living in France, the Comité pour les savants e´trangers (founded and presided over by Sylvain Levy), the Comité d’accueil et d’organisation de travail pour les savants e´trangers résidents en France (whose president was Paul Langevin), and the Caisse nationale de la recherche scientifique made it possible for me to continue my studies, parts of which resulted in the present book.”


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Because of his need to find a place in French science quickly, Gurwitsch abandoned his work on the basic categories of sociology as requiring too much time to complete and translate. But there was another reason. In 1932, during his last visit to Freiburg, Gurwitsch was telling Husserl about his Habilitationsschrift, which was nearly completed at the time. Husserl took out a copy of Alfred Schutz’s Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt: Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie, which had just appeared, and said: “Do you know this man? Quite interesting. He is a bank executive by day and a phenomenologist by night!” Gurwitsch ordered the book and planned to write a lengthy review of it for the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, a review which was not written because after 1933 a Jewish author could not get a manuscript accepted in Germany, even by a learned periodical. In reading the book, however, Gurwitsch found that, while the approach and themes were different from his own in some respects, Schutz had in principle said almost all that needed to be said from the phenomenological position. One evening at the home of Gabriel Marcel in Paris, Maurice MerleauPonty and Aron Gurwitsch were introduced. Merleau-Ponty asked Gurwitsch if he were related to the author of the Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich, and Gurwitsch acknowledged his work. Merleau-Ponty remarked that he had been quite influenced by it, and he began attending Gurwitsch’s lectures and saw him frequently.2 Gurwitsch was invited to Merleau-Ponty’s home. Merleau-Ponty read some of Gurwitsch’s articles prior to publication, including the published version of Gurwitsch’s lectures on Gestalt psychology. Gurwitsch conveyed unpublished observations on Goldstein’s famous patient Schneider to Merleau-Ponty. The translation of Husserl’s phrase “das Wahrgenommene als solches” as “le perçu comme tel” passed through Merleau-Ponty to Sartre. Although Sartre did not meet Gurwitsch until after World War II, he knew about him through Merleau-Ponty. The first article on Sartre in English was published by Gurwitsch in Volume I of Philosophy and Phenomenological 2

Father Van Breda has told me that Merleau-Ponty, when he visited the ArchivesHusserl in April, 1939, informed him at length about Gurwitsch’s 1937 lectures in Paris on phenomenology. Alexandre Métraux informs me that some of Merleau-Ponty’s notes on these lectures have survived.

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Research; I do not know whether Sartre was aware of an earlier-published “nonegological conception of consciousness.” While in Paris, Gurwitsch continued his study of Piaget, begun in 1928, with the trilogy on the development of intelligence, world construction, and play in the infant. He wrote on Goldstein, on Gestalt theory, and on the psychology of language. But an unfinished project from this time is particularly interesting. Needing money, Gurwitsch accepted the suggestion that he compose an introductory exposition of phenomenology of perhaps one hundred pages for Actualités scientifiques et industrielles, a series of expository works edited by Jean Cavaillès. After two pages were written, however, he realized how much it was against his nature merely to summarize. So another book, based on his lectures at the Sorbonne, began to take form, Esquisse de la phénoménologie constitutive. In 1939, since he was again an enemy alien, having been classified as a stateless person of German origin since 1935, Gurwitsch’s work on this book was subsidized by the French state. But this book also became a political casualty. Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch finally met in Paris in 1937 and quickly became close friends. On Gurwitsch’s side, the relationship went back intellectually to 1932. As a friendship it was to continue for more than twenty years. According to the men’s wives, the discussions were endless. A considerable correspondence exists. They read each other’s work prior to publication. Gradually an image of their converging interests emerged: They were “making the tunnel,” one digging from the social and the other from the perceptual side of the mountain. However, Schutz openly expected Gurwitsch to be disappointed if the bores did not meet precisely! This is not to say that there were no unresolved differences between them; Schutz, for instance, rejects the “argument of SartreGurwitsch against the egological theory.” Nevertheless, to fully understand either man’s work, one should familiarize oneself with that of the other. §III. Half of Life in U.S.A. Schutz had gone to the United States in July, 1939. He was there instrumental in Gurwitsch’s becoming a visiting lecturer at Johns Hopkins. Gurwitsch arrived in 1940 and found himself for the third time an enemy


49

alien, although this time only in the most technical sense. He was naturalized in 1946. In contrast to the situation in France, there was a genuine possibility for an academic career in America. Gurwitsch was thirty-nine when he arrived. Unfortunately, however, the intellectual situation he entered was not in other respects as receptive as the one in France. During the war and for some time afterward, it was difficult for anyone to find a position in philosophy. Moreover, Goldstein and some important Gestaltists had long since arrived and were vigorously representing themselves. More crucially, phenomenology had been introduced already by other men and was struggling for survival.3 As late as 1958, Gurwitsch himself wrote in a Preface written for an English translation of Q. Lauer’s Phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris, 1955): “It still remains true that phenomenology plays no role in contemporary American philosophy. . . . American philosophy is overwhelmingly dominated by several varieties of what is called ‘analytical philosophy.”’ Gurwitsch taught physics and mathematics for several years and changed schools several times: Today he refers back to his first two decades in the United States as “climbing the mountain of cotton.” The steps up that mountain might be considered:

1940–1942 1942–1943 1943–1946 1946–1947

1947–1948 1948–1951 1951–1959 1958–1959 3

Lecturer in Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University Grant from the American Philosophical Society Instructor in Physics, Harvard University Grants from the American Philosophical Society and from the American Council for Emigrés in the Professions (directed by Else Staudinger) Lecturer in Mathematics, Wheaton College Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Brandeis University Associate Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis University Fulbright Professor of Philosophy, University of Cologne

The early fate of phenomenology in America is reviewed by Dorion Cairns in his article “Phenomenology” in A History of Philosophical Systems, ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York, 1950), p. 353.

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1959–1971

Professor of Philosophy, The Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, The New School for Social Research

Although the situation in the United States was not particularly receptive, Gurwitsch continued his research in the directions he had taken in Germany and France. Naturally he participated actively in the International Phenomenological Society and in the new journal, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.4 While at Harvard he continued his study of the early William James, to whom Stumpf had called his attention two decades before, turning up two minor James manuscripts in the Harvard Library and writing two articles on James. Today, of course, there is much interest in the James of the Principles of Psychology, who is being read, as he was then by Gurwitsch, as a phenomenological psychologist.5 Gurwitsch also began to write his systematic work while at Harvard. This book, into which much of the unfinished Esquisse de la phénoménologie constitutive was incorporated, was written in English but was first published in the French translation of Michel Butor, now a prominent novelist, as Théorie du champ de la conscience (Paris, 1957). It bears the dedication: “A` ma femme, la compagne de ma vie, et a` Alfred Schutz, le camarade de mes pensées.” During the revisions of this treatise, Schutz came to call Gurwitsch “Penelopus.” The resultant composition is, in my opinion, a model of scientific exposition. Spiegelberg judged it “the most substantial original work produced by a European phenomenologist in the United States.”6 The English edition appeared in 1964 as The Field of Consciousness. Then eighteen essays from forty years of work were published in 1966 as Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Another volume, Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, is in preparation. Leibnizs Panlogismus has been completed and is due to appear in 1972. Another book, tentatively entitled Logic and Reality, is projected. In 4

On the origins and intents of these institutions, cf. Marvin Farber, “Descriptive Philosophy and the Nature of Human Existence,” in Philosophic Thought in France and the United States, ed. Marvin Farber (Albany, 1950), pp. 422–424. 5 James Edie has recently devoted a thorough critical review to this new reading of James in “William James and Phenomenology,” Review of Metaphysics, XXIII, No. 3 (1970), 481–526. 6 The Phenomenological Movement (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), II, 630.


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short, the seeds germinated in Berlin and cultivated in Paris have unquestionably borne fruit in New York. The last dozen years of teaching at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City have been the happiest. Originally the University in Exile and a haven for emigré scholars, some of whom remained while others went on to other schools, this institution has been unique. Its original faculty and orientation stemmed from pre-Nazi Europe. Alfred Schutz joined the Graduate Faculty in 1943 and became professor of philosophy and sociology .He had the idea of making the philosophy department a center for phenomenology. Dorion Cairns had been added to the department by 1956, and plans were well advanced to add a chair in 1960 for Gurwitsch. Then Schutz died suddenly, and Gurwitsch was called to replace him as professor of philosophy. The last part of Alfred Schutz’s idea was realized in 1969 when the Husserl Archive at the New School was established in his memory. Gurwitsch is the chairman of the board of directors. The Graduate Faculty would seem, then, the natural place for Aron Gurwitsch.7 As for the philosophical movement to which Gurwitsch belongs, it is perhaps too soon to offer a firm judgment about its native growth in the United States. Nevertheless, there are many indications that an American current, specifically different from the French and German currents of that movement, is appearing. Should such an event come to pass, Aron Gurwitsch will have to be seen for his unswerving and unrelenting effort to have been centrally instrumental in its production. §IV. Final Assessment Although I cannot claim a detached attitude with regard to my teacher, let me close this sketch with some less factual remarks about the man and thinker I have come to know and admire during the past decade. And, to 7

The trustees of the New School have formed the category of “distinguished service professor” so that Aron Gurwitsch can continue to teach on the Graduate Faculty beyond the mandatory retirement age of seventy. Concerning the origin of the New School and the original intentions that led to establishing it and the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science see the autobiography of Alvin Johnson, Pioneer’s Progress (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960), esp. Chapters 27 and 31.

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begin with, it seems to me that Gurwitsch is best observed in his natural habitat, the university. Not long ago he was expressing concern to a colleague that politicized students might destroy the university. His colleague remarked that he must have led a rather normal life to hold such an opinion. “Yes,” Gurwitsch said, “sometimes stateless and impoverished—that is a normal life.” I think that one thing that must be recognized is that through all his dislocations and struggles Gurwitsch has always had his home community in the university. He seems to regard it as an international society which is organized in terms of mutual obligation and thus humane and valuable. Moreover, he tends to see his colleagues as siblings, and several can testify to the paternal care and concern he shows students who become adopted. Consequently, he has a personal concern that the university milieu and its function—the expansion and communication of theoretical insight—not be destroyed, either by popular preoccupations with “useful” knowledge or by dogmatic ideologies of any sort.8 It is clear to me from knowing him that what he has studied and investigated is what was of theoretical interest to him. Despite signif8

Gurwitsch’s position on the significance for life of philosophy and of the philosophical ethos was expressed years ago in a review (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, I [1940], 515): “There is no doubt that philosophers have to be concerned with historical conditions, all the more as the very importance of these conditions consists of more than providing materials for discussions on ‘existential philosophy.’ Perhaps these situations would not have turned out as they did, had not so much time and energy been wasted in ‘existential interpretations’ of concrete human situations, but had rather been concentrated upon the examination of these conditions with minds of impartial intellectual probity to disclose their structures, to obtain, that is to say, insight and rational knowledge about them. Action might then have been guided by knowledge. Philosophy is concerned with human welfare and has to promote it. It cannot do so except by contributing knowledge and by criticizing knowledge already acquired. In other words, philosophy has to become knowledge in the sense of epist¯em¯e, not satisfied so long as it has to carry along implications and presuppositions not yet cleared up, seeking to expand itself to all fields of being. This task, perhaps, is an infinite one; at any rate it does require the cooperation of generations. But for the sake of the supreme practical interests of mankind—if not for theoretical needs—this task must be tackled. We may be sure that the more we proceed in its realization, the more reasonable life will become, the more it will become human life. Hence, I think, we ought to persist on the path opened by Husserl, regardless of the higher or lower esteem we will enjoy as philosophic personalities because we are mere disciples.”


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icant reconstructions, Gurwitsch’s problematics is basically the same as Husserl’s: the descriptive investigation of constitutive consciousness and its perceptual and intellectual correlates as a means to the grounding of the human and natural sciences, as well as logic and mathematics. In working on this problematics, he has shown little respect for disciplinary frontiers, taking his data wherever he could find them, something which has led to his demonstrating many convergencies in contemporary thinking. He is sometimes called a psychologist in Europe, but labels make no difference to him. A source of his thinking, second only to phenomenology, is, of course, Gestalt theory. Within phenomenology and in contrast with Schutz, for example, he classifies himself as a “noematic phenomenologist.” In this sense, his central problem for nearly fifty years has been organization in consciousness. Even his new book on Leibniz will reflect this. As a teacher in the classroom, Gurwitsch’s stock of scholarly knowledge at hand is enormous. I recall, for instance, a historical catalogue I once heard him give of the interpretations of Kant. His facts and arguments in lectures always reflect his orientation; after a while, one can see a thoroughgoing interconnectedness in all that he teaches and writes. His lectures are delivered firmly and are unusually well prepared, rich with examples, and elaborated with an astonishing coherence. He uses no notes, but he does occasionally take out a book in order to quote from the text rather than from memory or to sight-translate Plato, Leibniz, Kant, Husserl, etc. In both his lectures and his writings he uses the fewest possible technical terms, trying, I believe, to make his hearers and readers enter into the theoretical context and “see” the things discussed through the words rather than let the words be themes in their own right. He seems to fear words becoming catch phrases and degenerating into slogans. Nevertheless, his speech has many images that are fresh to English-accustomed ears, and he has an accent that must be heard to be appreciated. Yet to me the most remarkable thing about his expression is the way that he seems to form his thoughts as thoughts and then attempt to fit them into the clothes of language. This quality of his expression is intelligible from his life, to be sure, but it also points to what I think is the central quality of his existence: his scientific vocation.

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Some men who, like Gurwitsch, have been immersed in a series of cultures firmly accept various relativisms. But Gurwitsch often fondly quotes another refugee, Xenophanes of Colophon, to the contrary effect: The Ethiopians imagine their gods as black with snub noses. The Thracians imagine their gods as blue-eyed and red-haired. The Egyptians imagine their gods as lightcomplexioned with black hair. If oxen or lions had gods and could paint them, their gods would be like oxen and lions. But the divine is one and has no countenance and no color.

That is the earliest expression of the ideal goal of epist¯em¯e. That goal is still being pursued by Aron Gurwitsch.9

9

This text was based on interviews with the subject. Lester Embree

AN OUTLINE OF CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

This volume contains the modified and enlarged text of the lectures that the author had the honor of delivering in 1937 at the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques of the University of Paris. He has devoted a considerable portion of the book to expound the motives driving philosophical thought—with a force he believes himself justified in taking as one endowed with logical necessity—in the direction impressed upon it by Husserl. The author has done this to ensure that the book has the character of an introduction, which, as such, should always be as well, and perhaps above all, an outline. It seems that to introduce a philosophical work consists in making manifest the motives and problems from which it derives its life, rather than in providing a summary of the solutions proposed therein; further, it means to recapture ideas at their point of origin and as they are being born, in order somehow to remake and recreate the work, instead of regarding it as a domain more or less literary in character, as an impartial observer would. This is also the case with investigations having a bearing on the history of science or of philosophy, as is true, with greater reason, where one is dealing with a living philosophical movement of thought which—as we maintain in agreement with Husserl—is only at the beginning of its development. For this reason our exposition has been confined to certain phenomenological theories presented in broad outline, instead of overwhelming the reader by accumulating Bethia S. Currie’s fine translation of part of the author’s Introduction and of Chapters 1 and 2 of this book appeared under the title “An Introduction to Constitutive Phenomenology” in A. Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestrern University Press, 1974), pp. 153–189. Although carried out independently, the present translation of the entire book has taken her work into account.


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author’s introduction

analyses upon analyses, while claiming, in so doing, to exhaust Husserl’s work. We have tried, in a sense, to let phenomenology arise before the reader’s eyes, rather than confront him with doctrines altogether finished and, as it were, fallen from heaven. The unavoidable consequence of this manner of proceeding has been to pass over in silence many phenomenological theories which are no less interesting and important than those that have been tackled here. Thus we have not examined the theory of evidence, or the corresponding theoretical accounts of veritable existence. Concerning such matters, one may refer to the article, “Quelques principes fondamentaux de la phénoménologie constitutive,” which the author has published in Recherches philosophiques, V (1937)1 and in which additional information can be found. The author is far from being oblivious to the arbitrariness of his choice, but any other would have been equally arbitrary. If a selection has been imposed on us, it is no other than that resulting from the external framework that the volume should not exceed. One must not therefore regard this book as a summary of Husserlian phenomenology, and not even as a commentary on Husserl’s works. Its only ambition is to awaken an interest in phenomenology on the reader’s part, to suggest that he engage in certain studies on his own, and to be of some utility to him in them. Although the author has made an effort to abide by Husserl’s thought, without seeking—on his own initiative— to further the problems beyond the state in which the master has left them, he has not hesitated however to call upon certain ideas advocated, above all, in the most recent developments in psychology, ideas which are related to Husserlian views or which may be rendered fruitful for phenomenology, to the extent that such a reference seems to be an aid to our understanding. The author feels a need to acknowledge his deep gratitude to all those to whose hospitality and generosity he owes, materially and morally, the possibility of continuing his studies. Among them, the author wishes to mention the “Comité de Savants,” founded and presided by the late Syl1

Note of the Editor of the French edition: The journal ceased publication before the article appeared. The author corrected the proofs, which were found among his papers. [The article has been translated as “Some Fundamental Principles of Constitutive Phenomenology” and is included in this volume. Cf. infra, pp. 307 ff.]

author’s introduction

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vain Lévi; the “Comité d’Accueil des Savants Etrangères”; and the “Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques” and M. A. Rey, its director. The reader owes a debt to Monique Lipmann for the linguistic correctness of the French text.2 Let me here express my thanks to her.

2

[The original French text of the book, as edited by Prof. José Huertas-Jourda and with an Introduction by Prof. Lester Embree, has been published, together with other studies, under the title of Esquisse de la phénoménologie constitutive (Paris: J. Vrin, 2002), 418 pp. All of Prof. Huertas-Jourda’s editorial corrections and other changes to the French original have been accepted and incorporated without comment into the translation, except occasionally as will be specified.]

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

§I. The Philosophy of Consciousness as “First Philosophy” The essential characteristic of modern philosophy, as opposed to ancient and medieval philosophy, consists in no longer focusing upon being and objects in the human soul, but in placing the consciousness of objective being in the foreground of one’s interest and in regarding consciousness as a particular domain. The discovery of consciousness was one of Descartes’ notable achievements, and thereafter consciousness became the principal theme of philosophy. Descartes did not restrict the cogito ergo sum to being an axiomatic point of departure for a series of deductions, i.e., to the role of an initial premise. At the end of the second of his Meditations, as he summarized the analysis and critique of perception he had just completed, Descartes concluded that every act by means of which one gains knowledge of an external body makes one know consciousness itself “not only with much more truth and certainty, but also with much more distinctness and clearness.”1 One cannot relate to any extramental object without thereby relating to oneself, that is to say, to one’s mind. As an act by means of which one is conscious of an object is experienced, an act in which the object presents itself and is eventually given as existent, the act of consciousness itself is simultaneously grasped, with added force, as a conscious reality. All mental acts and processes which suggest, rightly or wrongly, one’s admission of an external thing as existent serve to reinforce the existence 1

René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, ii, in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, new ed. (Paris: J. Vrin), VII (1964a), p. 33 (25), ll. 4–6 (30). (Henceforth this work will be cited as Meditationes): “non tantùm multo verius, multo certius, sed etiam multo distinctius evidentiusque.” Cf. Méditations in ibid., IX-1 (1964c), p. 26 (33/31); Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane et al. (New York: Dover, 1955 [1931]), I, p. 156.


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of the mind itself. Consciousness thus appears as a domain of being contraposed, so to speak, to its objects. Whatever the object with which the mind is occupied, and whatever the manner in which one becomes conscious of it, one is necessarily referred back to the acts in and by means of which one does so; one finds oneself, time and again, in the presence of consciousness, the only domain which resists the universal doubt. The cogito ergo sum must therefore be understood as the expression of the discovery of a domain of primordial being in itself, prior to any other, and alone possessed of indubitable and, in this sense, absolute existence. The privilege attributed by Descartes to consciousness persists throughout modern philosophy, above all in the classical English school inaugurated by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and it is carried over into nineteenth-century empiricism. In effect, the thinkers belonging to that school were the first to make fruitful use of Descartes’ great discovery by subjecting consciousness to a systematic investigation.2 Here we are 2

The reason why this task was passed on from the Cartesians to the empiricists is the mathematical “prejudice,” if one may dare call it that, in which the former were steeped. N. Malebranche, for instance, while maintaining that we know “more distinctly the existence of our soul than the existence of our body and of the bodies around us” (De la recherche de la vérité, Bk. iii, Part ii, Chapter vii, § 4 in Oeuvres Complètes, ed. G. Rodis-Lewis [Paris: J. Vrin, 1962], I, p. 451 [119]), does not however admit that there is “a knowledge of the nature of our soul as perfect as that of the nature of bodies.” (ibid.) “The Idea that we have of extension is sufficient to make us acquainted with all the possible properties of extension.” (Ibid., §3, p. 450 [117].) Each particular modification of extension, each figure, each movement can and should be conceived of as a variation of the fundamental Idea of extension, as a specific case of an ideal generality, a case encompassed, according to definite laws, under that Idea which guarantees it its possibility as well as its necessity. But it is an altogether different matter with the soul, which is nothing but what Husserl calls a ‘definite’ Mannigfaltigkeit [“a ‘definite’ manifold”] (in Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, 3rd. ed., ed. K. Schuhmann, in Gesammelte Werke, III-1, Husserliana [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976], p. 135; Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. F. Kersten [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982]; henceforth all references to this work will be cited as Ideen, I, and the pagination given will be that of the original edition, which appears in the margins of both the edition used here and the English translation; the second set of page numbers are those of the translation, because we do not have an Idea of the soul, but know its modifications only “by the inner feeling we have of ourselves” (N. Malebranche, op. cit., §4, p. 451 [119]) or by way of

the problem of the philosophy of consciousness

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not going to examine the historical reasons—reasons that are numerous, to boot—which have determined such a new philosophical orientation. What we want to do is to underscore a manner of consideration, in terms of which the privilege assigned to consciousness finds itself decisively and definitively justified. This consideration, which has given philosophical momentum to empiricism and which must be counted as the most important of the grounds responsible for the genesis of phenomenology, is, strictly speaking, nothing but a thorough generalization of the idea given expression in Descartes’ text cited above. Accordingly, the objects which are found around us and form our surroundings do not exist for us, except by virtue of the acts of consciousness in which they appear to us. Absent the acts by means of which one relates to the objects, these would not exist at all, and one could not speak of them or suspect they exist or are possible. It is in and by means of acts of consciousness that the objects become accessible to us and are exhibited—in terms of their determinations and qualities— before the subject who grasps them; it is thereby that the objects offer themselves just as they are and appear to the said subject. Every discussion of any property belonging to any object cannot be brought to a firm conclusion, except by coming into contact with the object in question by “conscience (consciousness)” (ibid., [118–119]). In such a domain, so privileged as far as its existence is concerned, no means are available to conceive or encompass a totality of possibilities. No one who has never had himself a direct experience of a color, of heat, of pleasure or of pain, etc. “could . . . be made to know those sensations, no matter how many definitions thereof one could muster” (ibid., p. 452 [121]); nor could he “know whether our soul would be capable of them” (ibid., p. 451 [118]). In this matter there is no fundamental Idea which differentiates and unfolds itself as a system of possibilities; there is nothing left for us to do, therefore, but to observe “that which we sense as occurring in us” (ibid.), that is to say, to note the presence of facts as they are produced. Such knowledge by way of experience does not answer to the mathematical ideal by which Malebranche allowed himself to be guided. Despite the thesis he defended, Malebranche must be taken as one of the originators of psychology in the modern style. Ernst Cassirer characterizes him as “der erste wahrhafte Psychologe in der Geschichte der neueren Philosophie” (Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit {2nd. rev. ed.} [Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1911], I, p. 554: “the first veritable psychologist in the history of modern philosophy.”) We will later return to consider the general orientation according to which Malebranche has taken on the nascent discipline of psychology.

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means of a conscious act of the object in which the latter presents itself in terms of its genuine nature. Even when it is believed that one is incapable of discovering the genuine nature of an object except in the truths of science, and one substitutes—as is done in physics—the physical and “objective” body one constructs for the perceptual thing, the said body would nonetheless be derived only from constructive acts of consciousness, that is to say, from a specific activity of the mind, an activity that would confer on the object all its characteristic determinations.3 It is the acts of consciousness which, after all, provide us with certitude about the existence of this or that object. In effect, that an object exists means either that someone has an actual experience of it, or that, once certain conditions are met, one may expect to experience acts of consciousness in which the object in question will present itself. To be sure, one can be mistaken about an object and its existence. Something one had taken as existent may reveal itself to be so only in appearance. But, even then, acts of consciousness would be responsible for the correction of the error. Acts which in some sense are more perfect than the prior ones would invalidate and supplant them. In any case, it is only consciousness which may bring about a modification in what it had provided. The existence of a world is due to consciousness alone, and it is only by virtue of consciousness that the world in question presents itself such as it is. If one is after a philosophical understanding of the world and the objects of which it consists, one must then turn to consciousness. A philosophical understanding is a radical understanding in which one is not resigned to accepting any reality whatever as simply given, as coming from without, but it is such that, in it, one seeks to grasp the origin and disclose the sense of being of the reality in question. Now then, the source and origin of things, of their reality and of their sense of being, cannot be sought anywhere but in consciousness, anywhere but in the acts by virtue of which things appear, and in which they are formed, constituted, and presented as existent. One must refer back to the acts in which their specific sense of existence is conferred on things in order to examine and scrutinize them. To understand things philosophically amounts, 3

We shall return to this point. Cf. infra, Chapter 2, § III.


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therefore, to the task of establishing their modes of appearance and of bringing out their formation, constitution, and genesis for consciousness. It is thus that Hume, for example, set himself to analyze the perceptions and other acts by means of which the perceptible world arises, in order to determine what a material thing and the perceptible world in general are. Or, again, consider the many theoretical accounts of the genesis of the representation of space which have been developed among the members of the empiricist school. They have sought to render manifest what space is, to disclose the very sense of spatiality, by determining the elements of which that representation is composed and by clearing up its progressive formation. The perceptible world as it is sensed and known in everyday life can be subjected to scientific determinations. Accordingly, notions would be formed, judgments made, theories elaborated, and all of them would certainly be just creations of the mind, springing as they would from the spontaneity of thought. The universe of numbers, mathematical data, every manner of relation, etc. originate nowhere but in the acts of consciousness by means of which they are conceived and constructed. To say it again: For a philosophical understanding of such formations of thought one is referred back to consciousness, as the source out of which they are drawn. The sense of such creations of thought, the particular existence pertaining to them or, better yet, their specific mode of being cannot be brought out except by going back to their origination in consciousness, by catching red-handed, so to speak, the mental processes by means of which they are constituted. Thus, in the philosophical analysis of the nature of numbers, one is led to the acts of counting in which numbers are created. For this reason the empiricists have paid very close attention to abstraction. The psychological theories of abstraction set up by them were destined, according to their authors’ intent, to cast a final and definitive light on the nature of general notions, elements so essential to theoretical knowledge. This is likewise true of belief,4 a phenomenon to which, in the eyes of the empiricists, one is to reduce the truth of theories and the belief in the existence of extramental objects, as one is to do with the certainty of all beliefs in general. 4

Note of the Editor of the French Edition: In English in the text.

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The entire world, objects of every sort (together with their determinations and characteristics), and all concepts, relations, and other creations of thought should therefore be considered to be correlates of acts of consciousness. They are the result of either particular acts or a collection or group of acts, when it proves necessary for a plurality of diverse acts to cooperate in the constitution of an object, whatever relationship may exist, moreover, among those objects and whatever the specific character of the group they make up may be. Transcendental problems are those concerning the conditions of the possibility, unity, objectivity, existence, and sense of being of objects, as well as those pertaining to the conditions of the possibility of the truth and validity of everything being presented as true and valid. Such problems cannot be tackled and no effort to further them can be made, except by means of an analytical study of the acts of consciousness of which the objects, notions, truths, etc., are the corresponding correlates. In effect, one cannot seek to identify such conditions of possibility anywhere but in conscious life itself. A consideration of this sort gives rise to the idea of first philosophy qua transcendental. In first philosophy, a move consisting in withdrawing into the acts of consciousness of objects would replace the straightforward directedness of the mental gaze toward the objects themselves, a directedness which constitutes the normal attitude in everyday life, as well as in the sciences. It would appear that transcendental philosophy should necessarily adopt the form of a universal psychology. It matters little that such a fundamental consideration should have been expressly formulated under one guise or another, or that philosophers—above all the empiricists—should unwittingly have been, to some degree or other, inspired thereby. In any case, there is justification to see, in that way of reasoning, an interpretation, if not of the words of the philosophers, at least of their actions. In fact, empiricism took this route, which guaranteed it major philosophical significance, to the point that one cannot refrain from admiring the philosophical radicalism of those thinkers, a manner of radicalism consisting as it did in having conceived of such a program of work, even when one feels obliged to reject all the particular doctrines defended by the members of the empiricist school (and Husserlian phenomenology does not find itself in readiness to retain almost any one of them).


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But once one starts to bring about or elaborate a universal psychology, placed in the service of a transcendental philosophy or itself conceived as if it were such, one becomes aware of an a priori difficulty, insurmountable to the point that the entire fundamental consideration just developed would be imperiled. Let us now proceed to expound the difficulty in question in its most general form. §II. The Dependence of Consciousness on Objective Entities Consciousness seems incapable of existing except in human or animal form; at least one does not know of it in any other form. One encounters it linked to a nervous system and, hence, placed in relation to the external world. Such a relation is tantamount to dependence. To explain perception, for example, one must take into consideration, along with some purely psychological factors, the present state in which the nervous system is found, on the one hand, and, on the other, the effects external stimuli have on that system as they act on it. Accordingly, the perceptual data would appear as reactions to physical, objective facts on the part of consciousness, reactions conditioned by a plurality of variables, among which it is impossible however to separate the physiological conditions from the physical facts. Thus consciousness can and should even be considered a reality, at least to a good extent, one of a specific sort indeed, but nonetheless forming part of the totality of realities existing in the world. It is one reality among others, realities which exert their influence on it and to which it reacts. Hence, the study of consciousness would take the form of research about such interdependence and interaction. In effect, in the psychophysical branch of psychology one would endeavor to establish the relationships between the changes occurring in the external stimuli and those which take place in the corresponding perceptual data. In general, one would seek to give an account of the consequences resulting from the relationship of the particular domain of consciousness to the physical facts. So far as principles are concerned, such an investigation of consciousness from the standpoint of its dependence on objective facts has already been carried out by Locke. The soul, which he compared to a white paper, is located in the midst of a universe conceived by him in accordance with ideas derived from the physics of his time. Physical facts and

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events produce effects in the sense organs, in virtue of which effects the simple ideas of “sensation” are inscribed on the “white paper.”5 It was by means of these ideas, joined by Locke to those of “reflection,” that he sought to explain the origin of the notions that the human mind has at its disposal, as well as the origin of the qualitative aspect under which physical reality presents itself. His intention was to reveal the formation and constitution, for consciousness, of knowledge and its objects. But all his analyses and constructions were based on the assumption that there is a real physical universe, the existence of which was accepted from the outset and was not subjected to any examination. Consciousness, however, does not depend on the physical universe alone. Man lives in a society and during a certain historical period thereof. By virtue of the investigations carried out by sociologists, everyone these days is aware of the constraining force exerted by what is called “social fact” in Durkheim’s school. Whatever the role assigned to a “social fact” and to an individual’s initiative, whether personal thought is regarded as the mere stamp or the simple manifestation of the social facts or as a reaction thereto deriving from one’s personal depths, a study of consciousness would seem to require taking into account the concrete historical and social situation in which the individual finds himself placed. One must therefore bring into play the social factors constituting the framework within which human life unfolds, factors whose action on the individual determines the contents of his consciousness. One would arrive at the same result, whether one takes into consideration the physical or the human universe. The fundamental consideration deriving from the Cartesian discovery makes one suspect in consciousness a region of being prior to every other being, because it appears as the source out of which every manner of existence originates, and therefore as a domain of being primordial and absolute, in the sense that nulla res indiget ad existendum.6 Consciousness would reveal itself, however, J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. ii, Chapter 1, §§ 2–3 and Chapter 8 [correcting No. 7, as found in the French edition], §§12–13, ed. J. W. Yolton (London: Dent/Everyman’s Library, 1967), I, pp. 77–78 and 105–106. 6 [Cf. R. Descartes, Principia philosophiae, i.li, in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964b), VIII-1, p. 24 [19], 21–23: “Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quàm rem quae ita existit, et nullâ aliâ re indigeat ad existendum.” 5


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when regarded more closely, as dependent on realities external to itself and conditioned by them. It would seem that consciousness is not a closed domain of being lying outside the world, an Archimedean region of being, so to speak; on the contrary, it would be so much a part of the world that, in studying consciousness, one would be inevitably referred back to the mundane realities on which it is found to depend. §III. Consciousness as Human Reality If need be, one may consider consciousness under the sole aspect of its immanence, by confining oneself strictly and exclusively to psychical interiority. In such a consideration, one would avoid resorting to realities external to consciousness; one would limit oneself to describing, analyzing, and classifying the facts in themselves which are encountered in consciousness, abandoning altogether any attempt to explain those facts. In his third Meditation, Descartes, by means of his proof of the existence of God, took a first step in this direction. Obviously, it is not our purpose here to discuss such a proof, or to interpret Descartes’ philosophy from a historical standpoint. We will cite those texts only as examples of the manner of regarding consciousness that we want to examine; in fact, such texts are particularly striking and instructive instances thereof. Descartes’ examination, which was the first analysis of consciousness in modern philosophy, has not failed to exert an influence—to a greater or lesser extent—on later philosophers, so that, however large the differences between them may have been in terms of the particular content of their doctrines, Descartes’ leading idea has been adopted by thinkers who were quite removed from the notions proper to him, an exposition of which is about to be presented. Having discovered the domain of cogitationes (a term understood so broadly7 that it can be taken as synonymous with that of “facts of consciousness”), Descartes proceeded to review the contents thereof. Thus, Principles of Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 239: “By substance we can understand nothing else than a thing which so exists that it needs no other thing in order to exist.”] 7 R. Descartes, Meditationes, iii, in op. cit., VII, p. 34 (27–28); Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 27 (34); The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 157. Cf. Principia

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among other data of consciousness, he found the feeling that a human being has of his own insufficiency upon conceiving himself as limited, finite, imperfect, incomplete, and dependent. At the same time, he noticed, in human consciousness, the presence of the idea of God, an Entity in whom all perfections are united8 and are encountered in actuality and in fact,9 perfections which a human being feels himself to lack but to which he does not cease to aspire. Those two facts assured Descartes that he was progressing in his meditations. By making use of notions inherited from Scholastic philosophy, Descartes sought, by means of a causal argument, to derive, from the said facts, the existence and veracity of God, and, on that basis, the veritable existence of extension. The cogito ergo sum therefore appears to perform two functions for Descartes. Beside the texts in which it figures as the expression of Descartes’ discovery of consciousness as a specific domain of being, there are others in which it serves as the point of departure for a deductive reasoning aimed at demonstrating the existence of the external world. Now, how could the cogito ergo sum have assumed that second function for Descartes? The feeling a human being has of the lack of perfection in his nature was not regarded by Descartes only as a mere experienced act, as one fact of consciousness among others. This is not the case, say, with perception. When one perceives this or that thing, the universal doubt does not permit one to take the thing in question as really existing, as having any reality apart from its pure presence before consciousness. According to the attitude corresponding to the universal doubt, all that can and even should be maintained, with final and unshakeable evidence, is that an act of perception is being experienced and that a given perceptual object is being presented to consciousness. So as to be capable of being admitted as the absolute and indubitable data they in fact are as experienced acts of consciousness, the acts of perception, as well as those of the imagination, should therefore undergo the reductive modification entailed by the uniphilosophiae, i.ix in op. cit., VIII-1, pp. 7–8; Principes, in ibid., IX-2, pp. 28–29; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 222. 8 R. Descartes, Meditationes, in op. cit., VII, p. 45; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, pp. 35–36; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 165. 9 Ibid., in op. cit., VII, p. 45; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 37; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 166.


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versal doubt. Now then, that is not the case with the feeling in question, namely, that of human frailty. Here no reality outside the sphere of psychical interiority is brought into play. Consequently, the universal doubt does not apply in this case. In experiencing the feeling of human insufficiency, one does more than note the mere presence of an experienced act in consciousness; one grasps human reality. In accordance with the use Descartes made of it in the context of his third Meditation, he saw in such frailty not only a mere phenomenon presenting itself to consciousness, for, in feeling ourselves to be imperfect and incomplete, we realize we are so in reality. It is not just that such a fact is being offered to consciousness; in presenting itself, this fact discloses something of what we are, insofar as our being is defined by the humanity of our soul. The fact in question therefore permits us to grasp an essential characteristic of the human being. It discloses one of the conditions to which human reality is subject, and it puts us thereby in direct contact with this reality itself, which, to say it again, lies entirely within the province of psychical immanence. The same applies to the presence of the idea of God in human consciousness. The sphere of psychical interiority is not transcended here either, since it is just a question of taking note of that idea in consciousness. Accordingly, Descartes called upon the act by means of which the said idea is grasped—just as he did in the case of the feeling of human insufficiency—not on account of its being one fact experienced among others, but because the presence of the idea of God in consciousness gives expression to human reality by other means, thus revealing the second major condition to which its constitution is subject. It is in this sense that Descartes understood the innate character of the idea of God: [o]ne certainly ought not to find it strange that God, in creating me, placed this idea within me to be like the mark of the workman imprinted on his work; and it is likewise not essential that the mark shall be something different from the work itself. Far from the sole fact that God created me it is most probable that in some way he has placed his image and similitude upon me, and that I perceive this similitude (in which the idea of God is contained) by means of the faculty by which I perceive myself . . . . And the whole strength of the argument which here I have made use of to prove the existence of God consists in this, that I recognize that it is not possible that my nature should be

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what it is, and indeed that I should have in myself the idea of a God, if God did not veritably exist.10

What led Descartes to conclude to the real existence of God is this incompatibility that he believed he had to conceive as existing between the two noted conditions to which human reality is subject. The difference between perceivings, imaginings, etc., on the one hand, and, on the other, both the feeling a human being has of his insufficiency and the presence of the idea of God, is, however, actually less significant in Descartes’ thought than we have just presented it to be. It is a simplification of which we have availed ourselves in order to facilitate the interpretation of what he understood by “consciousness.” To be sure, the acts of perception, of the imagination, etc., should undergo the modification demanded by the universal doubt. Now then, once that modification is produced, all such acts should be considered absolute data of consciousness, the existence of which cannot be called into question and over which the universal doubt consequently has no longer any hold. There is no essential, a priori difference between acts, however heterogeneous they may be, to the extent that they are taken into consideration in no other way than as experienced facts of consciousness: “If ideas are only taken as certain modes of thought, recognize amongst them no difference or inequality, and all appear to proceed from me in the same manner.”11 This remark establishes not only the equality of the acts qua indubitably certain facts of consciousness, but also makes apparent the rela10

R. Descartes, Meditationes, iii, in op. cit., VII, pp. 51–52: “non mirum est Deum, me creando, ideam illam mihi indidisse, ut effet tanquam nota artificis operi suo impressa; nec etiam opus est ut nota illa sit aliqua res ab opere ipso diversa. Sed ex hoc uno quòd Deus me creavit, valde credibile est me quammodo ad imaginem & similitudem ejus factum esse, illamque similitudinem, in quâ Dei idea continetur, a me percipi per eandem facultatem, per quam ego ipse a me percipior . . . . Totaque vis argumenti in eo est, quòd agnoscam fieri non posse ut existam talis naturae qualis sum, nempe ideam Dei in me habens, nisi revera Deus etiam existeret.” Cf. Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 41; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, pp. 170–171. 11 R. Descartes, Meditationes, in op. cit., VII, p. 40 [34], ll. 7–10: “quatenus ideae istae cogitandi quidam modi tantùm sunt, non agnosco ullam inter ipsas inaequalitatem, & omnes a me eodem modo procedere videntur.” Cf. Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 31; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, pp. 161–162.


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tion of the acts to the psychical reality of the soul, a relation in which Descartes did not fail to place them. It is only because he considered the acts of consciousness in terms of that relation that he could study ideas such as those of substance, duration, number, and so on, insofar as they may be produced by the human soul itself and as measured, so to speak, by the capacity of the latter qua human.12 Thus all acts of consciousness somehow appear to be symptoms of the human psychical reality to which they bear witness; they are permeated with that reality and are conceived—to put it in Cartesian terms—as modifications of the soul with the sense of modi or accidentia of a substantia. Therefore, the domain of cogitationes, or consciousness, is nothing other, for Descartes, than the human soul, the real human individual considered as a purely spiritual being, as a “thinking thing . . . [for] it is only this portion of myself which is precisely in question at present,”13 since one must abstract from the body, which obviously falls under the universal doubt. Descartes gives expression to this understanding of consciousness by establishing the terms “thinking thing,” “mind,” “spirit,” “intellect,” and “reason” as synonymous.14 Consciousness is the human psychical reality, just as, conversely, the latter consists only in thinking, that is to say, in experiencing acts of consciousness.15 It is only thus that the problem concerning that which lies“outside myself,” a problem central to the third and subsequent Meditations, acquires sense; that Descartes was able to raise the problem of the origin 12

Cf. ibid., in op.cit., VII, pp. 42–45; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, pp. 34–35; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, pp. 164–165. 13 Ibid., in op. cit., VII, p. 49 [45], ll. 15–17: “res cogitans . . . de eâ tantùm meˆı parte praecise nunc . . . [ago] quae est res cogitans.” Cf. Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 39; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 169. 14 Ibid., ii, in op.cit., VII, p. 27 [19], l. 14: “res cogitans, id est, mens, sive animus, sive intellectus, sive ratio;” Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 21 [41]; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 152. 15 Cf., e.g., “Responsio authoris ad primas objectiones” to Meditationes, in op. cit., VII, p. 107 [115], ll. 13–14: “nihil in me, cujus nullo modo sim conscius, esse posse;” Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 85; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, II, p. 13: “there is nothing in me of which I am not in some way conscious.”

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and preservation of the self16 ; and that the Cartesians were able to ponder the question of whether the “soul is always thinking,” a question they believed they should answer affirmatively, since, in conformity with the principles of Cartesian philosophy, it is thought (that is to say, the actual presence of experienced acts) which constitutes the essential and specific nature of a human being.17 Descartes therefore conceived of consciousness as a reality: it is one of the two created substances of which, according to him, the world consists. Consciousness was viewed in the same light by Malebranche who, in his Recherche de la vérité, examined the various kinds of act—perceptions, imaginations, natural inclinations, and passions—in an attempt to bring out the potential for error which the acts belonging to each of these sorts contain. A human being is in danger of falling into such errors, corrupt as he is because of original sin.18 Here, too, is consciousness regarded in the light of the two major facts constituting the two conditions to which human reality as such is subject, namely, the Fall and the relation to the Divinity in which the human soul finds itself placed, a relation by virtue of which, through acts of pure mind and the “vision by means of Ideas,” a way of access to the truth opens up. §IV. Critique and Consequences Descartes’ universal doubt concerns the existence of the external world and the certainty of both geometry and arithmetic.19 But, since it finds no application to the sphere of psychical interiority, a part of the world is allowed to subsist, namely, the human soul. Thus one of the two created substances is saved. Starting from this substance, Descartes sought to win back extension, the remaining created substance, by the roundabout recourse to the infinite substance. 16

Cf. Meditationes, iii, in op. cit., VII, pp. 48–51; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, pp. 38–40; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, pp. 168–170. 17 Cf. ibid., in op. cit., VII, p. 78; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 190. 18 Cf. N. Malebranche, “Préface,” in op. cit., pp. 11ff. 19 Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, i, in op. cit., VII, p. 21; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, pp. 16–17; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, pp. 147–148.


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Husserl’s critique addresses this point.20 The discovery of the cogito ergo sum permits us to raise transcendental problems in the sense indicated above.21 If, however, following Descartes’ example, one sees consciousness as a “thinking thing” or “mind” or “spirit,” then one would relate the transcendental problems to the reality of the soul; accordingly, the human psychical interiority would be the area in which such problems are posed. Now, because of its very definition, this sphere is conceived of as relative to another region which is external to it. To consider consciousness as the psychical reality of the human individual is, at the same time, to place the individual in question in the region of the world and to contrast it therein with realities which are not different otherwise, within this region, than any reality whatsoever that may be contrasted with any other reality whatsoever. One would therefore reach the sphere of human psychical immanence only by making a division within the world taken as a whole, an operation which at once presupposes the world, and that means, in the end, that afterwards what remains of the world is placed in relation to the sphere thus secured and disengaged. Consequently, the area in which transcendental problems are formulated, and in which their resolution is attempted, would be gained only by virtue of the role the world presupposed as existent plays in the delimitation itself of the area in question. Accordingly, the very posing of a transcendental problem would find itself burdened by a contradictory element, by a petitio principii (begging the question), since posing transcendental problems on the basis of a mundane reality, such as psychical interiority or the human soul, means to call upon and presuppose, in the very sense of the question, that which should only follow from the transcendental inquiry. As is clear, this critique has to do with the altogether general understanding of consciousness qua human psychical reality, rather than with the doctrinal content of Descartes’ particular conception of human nature. One could replace this Christian conception, which is even more 20

Cf. Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen in Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, 2nd. ed., ed. S. Strasser in Gesammelte Werke, I, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), i, §10, p. 63 and iv, §41, p. 115; Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), pp. 22 and 83. (Henceforth all references to this work will be cited as CM. In the future, any second set of page numbers are those of the translation.) 21 Cf. supra, pp. 61 ff.

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accentuated in Malebranche, with any other whatsoever; one could, for example, substitute for it Scheler’s notion, according to which a duality is noted at the heart of the essential nature of man, a duality in which a pure and disinterested but impotent spirituality faces vital but blind and obscure forces and impulses, factors the cooperation of which gives rise to individual human actions, as well as to collective and historical ones.22 Whatever specific conception of human nature and reality is adopted, by the fact alone of choosing, as the point of departure of philosophy, an anthropological given, which, as such, cannot be defined except in relation to the entire world and within the region of the world, one would arrive at the paradox consisting in referring transcendental problems about the constitution of the world to a part or portion of the same world. The target of the Husserlian critique is, therefore, the anthropological orientation given by Descartes to the consideration of consciousness, an orientation which, in one form or another, reappeared among later thinkers. It was only to illustrate this altogether general anthropological orientation that we examined Descartes’ doctrine in the prior section. Even if one begins, as Descartes did, by adopting a strictly descriptive standpoint and studying the data of consciousness themselves, without seeking to explain them by means of extramental facts, an anthropological orientation would contain anyway, at least in embryonic form, a motive exceeding the standpoint adopted initially and, in the end, making one abandon it. The sphere of human psychical interiority is not and cannot be reached, as has been pointed out, except by introducing a separation carried out within the totality of the realities of which the world consists. In descriptively and analytically examining a sphere so delimited, one must therefore expect to arrive, sooner or later, at a point in which it would no longer be possible to observe the lines of demarcation. One cannot eventually fail to notice the position in which consciousness finds itself in respect of the physiological, and even the physical, facts. From then on, it would become imperative to restore the originary unity which had been torn asunder and to put consciousness qua psychical interiority 22

Cf. Max Scheler, Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Der Neue-Geist Verlag, 1926), pp. 6–7 and 31–32 [and Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (Bern: A. Francke, 1928); Man’s Place In Nature, trans. H. Meyerhoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), ii and iii.]


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back into the totality of mundane facts as one reality among others. As indicated in Section II above, this way of considering consciousness is thus taken up again in what gives rise to psychophysics. It is within this order of ideas that psychology may possess a tendency to transform itself into biology, or at least to take itself as a branch thereof. The data of consciousness can be placed in relation to the totality of the facts constituting life. Experienced states can be regarded as vital manifestations, as one aspect of living reality, while the physiological facts would form another. Any preference given to one aspect over the other would seem, therefore, to be arbitrary and unjustifiable. That, for example, is the opinion of K. Goldstein,23 who believes that one must abandon the idea that physiological and psychical facts constitute two regions independent and separate by nature. He goes even as far as to denounce the problem of psychophysical interdependence and interaction as wrongly posed. What are usually designated as the “physical” and the “psychical,” respectively, are not given realities, but the result of an abstractive separation which, as such, does not fail to modify living reality. Therefore, the terms “physical” and “psychical” must be very judiciously employed by taking them only as mere auxiliary means of description. All observed data, from whatever region they seem to arise, being, moreover, governed by the same laws without exception, should be referred back to the main biological fact, which is organismic life. A living organism is an organized whole, whose every “part,” region, sector, etc., is found to be in a reciprocal relation of functional dependence to every other. Whether “physical” or “psychical,” every phenomenon which is observed in an organism should be considered as deriving from a reaction of the entire organism. In other words, one must see in it a local or particular symptom of a supervening global modification of the whole 23

Cf. K. Goldstein, Der Aufbau des Organismus (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1934), pp. 198–202; The Organism (New York: Zone Books, 1995). [Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Le fonctionnement de l’organisme d’après K. Goldstein,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, XXXVI (1939), pp. 107–138 and “La science biologique d’après ´ K. Goldstein,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, CXXIX (1940), pp. 126– 151), translated as “Goldstein’s Conception of Biological Science,” in Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology Aron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973), Vol. II. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009., pp. 77–98. Henceforth this work will be cited as SPP.]

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organism, a modification which is expressed at this point or particular sector by the phenomenon in question. At the center of such a global reaction of the organism, there can be a physical or a psychical fact; this is the reason why it is as necessary to explain physical facts by psychical data, as it is, conversely, to understand the latter by the former. Goldstein certainly recognizes the characteristic nature of the “physical” and of the “psychical,” but he believes that the significance and value of each, whether for a certain organism, generally speaking, or for a particular reaction thereof, can only be evaluated in the light of the specific structure of the organism and in respect of its global behavior in a given situation. A biological consideration must start not from an arbitrary and fictitious separation of the “physical” from the “psychical,” but from that close and intimate union in which they are found within the living organism. We are, obviously, a long way from trying to call into question the legitimacy of that point of view in the psychological, physiological, or biological order. All we want to do here is to develop the consequences that an understanding of consciousness qua human reality entails for the idea itself of a transcendental philosophy. In the following section, the antinomy springing from an anthropological orientation will be brought out. Such an orientation brings one inevitably to the introduction of factors external to consciousness into the investigation of the latter. The anthropological orientation of Descartes led him, in his sixth Meditation, after having won back extension, the other created substance, to the problem of the union of mind and body and to that of the action of the body on the soul.24 In that inquiry, certain facts of consciousness (such as the qualitative data of perception, pain or pleasure, appetites, and so on), turn out to arise, though they are facts of consciousness, not from the mind as such, but from the union in which the mind finds itself with the body. Being like signals transmitted by the body to the mind, such facts are intended to inform consciousness about the needs, the necessities of the body, and about the dangers threatening it, rather than about the truth of external things. These ideas were taken up and developed by Male24

Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, in op. cit., VII, pp. 81–89; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, pp. 64–71; The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, pp. 192–198.


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branche, who also depreciated perceptions, imaginations, etc., in favor of acts of pure mind. In the explanation he gave of these facts of consciousness (which, according to him, afford us no expectation of the truth), Malebranche referred to the human being’s tendency to the preservation of his life, that is to say, of his bodily existence, and regarded such data of consciousness as reactions of the mind and the body conjoined with external physical facts. These facts are conceived as they are revealed to the pure mind, that is to say, as determined by physics, the constructions of which pass not only for the scientific truth, but for the reality of the world as well.25 Thus, in his psychological explanations which quite often exhibited a very marked naturalistic character, Malebranche chose the objective reality of the world as the foundation from which to depart and sought, on that basis, to account for subjective appearances and natural illusions. Although he rejected, as we have pointed out,26 the very idea of a scientific psychology, he somehow initiated an orientation in psychology in which, by the way in which things are viewed and problems formulated, it gets to be interpreted as an extension of physics. Ernst Mach was the first to contest this orientation, which had been taken up and developed in consequence during the nineteenth century. Contemporary psychology tends, with the Gestalt school, to abandon it.27 §V. The Antinomy Found in the Idea of a Universal Psychology Conceived as Transcendental Philosophy Let us take a closer look at what has been set out here thus far. The transcendental principle, the realization of which can only take—in the eyes of the empiricist thinkers—the form of a universal psychology, suggests that we turn to consciousness in order to disclose—by the psychological analysis of its acts—the constitution and formation of objects of every 25

Concerning this distinction, cf. supra, p. 62. Cf. supra, p. 60 and n. 2. 27 The major lines of this evolution have been traced in our article, “Quelques aspects et quelques développements de la psychologie de la Forme,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, XXXIII (1936), pp. 413–470. Translated as “Some Aspects and Developments of Gestalt Psychology,” in SPP, pp. 1–62. 26

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sort, to bring out the sense of being of the latter, and to clarify the origin and cause of the truth and evidence of anything that presents itself with a claim to validity of any kind. Yet, in studying consciousness, one cannot fail to note its dependence on mundane realities. It makes no difference whether these realities are external realities, i.e., the objective world from which, according to Goldstein,28 the living organism, by some kind of selection, develops the only environment suitable for its existence; or whether it is a question of the organism itself and of what makes up its essence, or of social and historical realities; or whether it is a question of human realities located entirely within psychical interiority (a case which is of particular importance in our context.) All these realities, even those the nature of which may be conceived as psychical and spiritual as one would like, are nonetheless as mundane as any material reality whatever. Each of these realities—say, a human reality—is endowed with an existence, with a sense of being of its own. Consequently, if it is to play its part for us, it has to present itself in certain acts of consciousness. It is only by virtue of these acts, and by virtue of the intrinsic unity established among them, that the said human reality is constituted for what it is and acquires the consistency by which its own specific objectivity is assured. About this and any mundane reality whatsoever, a transcendental problem can and should therefore be posed, so that one may find oneself led back again to the examination of consciousness. Philosophical thought finds itself, therefore, engaged in perpetual oscillation. Faced with an alternative, it is forced to accept one of two contradictory terms, but the acceptance of one inevitably entails the acceptance of the other. The idea implicit in the discovery of the cogito ergo sum, an idea which seemed to impose itself with the conclusive evidence of a radical philosophy conceived as a universal psychology, is jeopardized from the outset. It is not as if the developments that idea has undergone thus far were incomplete or the methods employed lacked perfection. It is that the idea itself, as such, contains a contradictory element which calls its very possibility into question. 28

K. Goldstein, Der Aufbau des Organismus, pp. 58, 78 and 79.


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Escape from this antinomy is a question of life and death for philosophical radicalism. One cannot contemplate the abandonment of the transcendental principle. No opposition (like genuine vs. deceptive experience; being vs. appearance; evident vs. blind, purely verbal thought; necessity vs. absurdity, etc.), as well as no term (such as veritable existence, necessary existence, possibility, probability, etc.), draws or can draw its sense from any source other than the acts of consciousness and the groupings thereof. And it is by virtue of acts of consciousness that the world as a whole exists, and so do the many domains of being of which it consists (e.g., material things, animate beings, human beings, social institutions, works of art, the universe of numbers, general notions, the system of relations, etc.) All of these objects are the percepts of our acts of perception, the thoughts of our acts of thinking, the understood of our acts of understanding, the created of our acts of creation, etc. Not only does a man in fact live in the world, but at the same time he conceives himself to be situated in the world as a reality among others: he becomes conscious and sees himself, by means of an inescapable reasoning, under the obligation of relating the constitution of the world to his consciousness. Moreover, it seems that this consciousness can be taken into consideration only as a human, individual consciousness, bound to the physical organization of a being that exists in the most diverse relations of dependence to the realities that surround it. On this account, consciousness itself—the prime reality, it is true, special and privileged in one respect or another—reveals itself, all the same, as a mundane reality. From this fact arises the antinomy into which transcendental philosophy, conceived as a universal psychology, falls, and inevitably, at its very inception. There is no hope of emerging from this antinomy unless one succeeds in breaking away from a concept of consciousness which results in the posing of transcendental problems on the basis of a mundane reality. One must therefore seek to develop a notion of consciousness which does not take it any longer to be a human reality or an expression or symptom of that reality, whatever the relation one wishes to place it in. Such a concept of consciousness, in which the existence of the world and of mundane realities is no longer implied or presupposed, is provided and has been established by Husserl with his theory of the phenomenological reduction. This theory permits the dissolution of the antinomy which, until then,

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had been hanging over the philosophy of consciousness, as well as the resolution of the profound contradiction which had compromised the very idea of such a philosophy. It is with the phenomenological reduction that one steps across the threshold of phenomenology. Now, since the phenomenological reduction can be characterized, at least initially, only in a negative fashion, as the most radical modification possible of the natural attitude, one must first proceed to present the meaning of the latter.

CHAPTER II

THE NATURAL ATTITUDE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION

§I. The Surrounding World At every waking moment of one’s life, one finds oneself—and this is but a purely objective fact—in the world, which one takes as really existing. Wakefulness consists in nothing else than in being conscious of the surrounding world, as well as of oneself as located in this region of the world, a region delimited in a more or less indefinite manner and constituting the environment of the subject in question. In this environment, the subject is presented with a great diversity of objects belonging to different sorts. In respect of these objects, one does not always comport oneself as a mere spectator. On the contrary, a purely contemplative comportment, far from being permanent, is a specific attitude in which no subject can continuously persevere, not even if he is someone for whom it has become a habitual disposition, as it is with the scientist. In everyday life, which is the usual and—in this sense—the normal case, the subject finds himself in a concrete situation within the surrounding world, a situation in which he acts and which poses to him problems of a practical nature that he seeks to solve. Such a situation is one which consists of objects employed by the subject, or on which his activity has a bearing. These objects appear to him in light of their function in the given situation and under the aspect of the role they play therein. A hammer, for example, presents itself as suitable for this or that employment in a situation of this or that nature. It is defined in terms of the use it can be put to. But it is not a mere reiform thing possessed of a certain length, width, and depth, of a given shape and quite definite shade of color, of a given weight, etc. All of these determinations, which one undoubtedly perceives and notes, do not play a role in the practical attitude, except insofar as they point to the object’s utility and suitability for the purpose 83 A. Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973), Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective, c Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2831-0 5,

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of being employed for this or that end. The objects which make up the surrounding world, and with which one has to deal in everyday life and the practical affairs thereof, are not in the first place characterized by those determinations which, in order to be qualitative and perceptible, must always be designated as objective, in the sense that they belong to the object taken in itself and independently of any relation to a situation in which it can be utilized. The familiar objects of the surrounding world are not defined by what they are, but by what they are in the service of, by what one can do with them. Now, a new object previously unknown does not become familiar to us by dint of frequent observation. One becomes acquainted with it not so much as one notes its objective determinations (in the sense indicated), but as one discovers the use it can be put to, and the manner in which one must handle it—in the proper or figurative acceptation of the word—in that employment of it, that is to say, when one comes to relate it to the situation for which it is intended and understands the function it is meant to perform therein. The nature of the objects that make up the surrounding world is determined by the “functional values” they take on, whether in typical situations or in a particular one. These values are derived from the total situation and from its structure as a whole. This is why here they shall be referred to as objects of use or, better yet, as functional objects.1 On the 1

Cf. W. Köhler, “Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropo¨ıden I,” Abhandlungen der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phys.-math. Klasse (Berlin: 1917), pp. 29–32; The Mentality of the Apes, 2nd. rev. ed., trans. E. Winter (New York: Vintage Books, 1959). Besides Köhler’s observations concerning the behavior of the higher apes, we are referring, in this rather quick discussion of functional objects, to those made by A. Gelb and K. Goldstein about aphasic difficulties. [Vide A. Gelb, “Remarques générales sur l’utilisation des données pathologiques pour la psychologie et la philosophie du langage” and “L’analyse de l’aphasie et l’étude de l’essence du langage,” respectively.] Vide the summaries of their views which they have published in the Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique (1933), Nos. 1–4. They see in those difficulties a regression toward a less abstract, less rational, more immediate and concrete behavior, which is therefore, in this sense, more primitive (cf. loc. cit., p. 408). Such primitiveness, however, must not be assimilated to that which, according to L. Lévy-Bruhl, is characteristic of the mentality of lower societies (cf. ibid., pp. 424–429); [see the latter’s La mentalité primitive (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1922); Primitive Mentality, trans. L. A. Clare et al. (London and New York: George Allen & Unwin, 1923).] The authors, moreover, underscore

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basis of the fact that, in a given situation, a quite definite role is attributed to the functional objects (a role which they can play only in this or that location within the situation), it follows that their nature is conferred on them by the relations they bear to the other functional objects, in conjunction with which the situation in question is constituted. The functional values of the diverse objects playing a role in such a situation are determined therefore in relation to one another; all of those values reciprocally support and ground each other. Hence, a functional value is not a permanent property of the object taken in itself, a property that would be inherent in the object as such. Due to the function which, within a practical situation, is assigned to an object, its functional value would pertain to it only insofar as it plays a role in the corresponding situation. It is only in the latter, or at least in relation to it, that the functional object would become and be such as it is. One need not believe, however, that the structure of the sort in question would depend solely on the objects present therein, and that the subject’s attitude would count for nothing. On the contrary, an essential element among all those contributing to the formation of that structure is the atheoretical, even non-conceptual, understanding that the subject has of the situation in which he finds himself placed, as we shall see in the following section. Such a situation should not be regarded as being anything but what the subject living therein takes it to be; it is nothing except what it means for that subject. Its structure is therefore relative to the subject’s behavior and dependent on his understanding. Consequently, the objects the difference between the behavior of aphasiacs and that of children (cf. ibid., p. 474, note), on the one hand, and the practical attitude of normal subjects, on the other (cf. ibid., pp. 413–417). Nevertheless, it seems to us that the investigations into the primitive mentality, the mentality of children, into that of aphasiacs and the behavior of higher animals have brought to light a certain peculiarity of structure which is common to these mentalities and is realized in each one of them in a specific way. We believe that this peculiarity is found also in the normal subject’s practical attitude, in which it takes a special form. Since here it is possible only to allude to it, we must limit ourselves to pointing to the task of studying the peculiarity in question and, correlatively, to defining the notion of object that would correspond to the said structure, wherein one would be justified in characterizing the object as primitive. That task calls for a comparative study in which one would have to avoid, of course, any ill-considered assimilations and analogies.

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playing a role in that situation are determined by the functions they have in it, because the subject, in his understanding of the situation (an understanding constitutive of the structure thereof ), assigns quite definite roles to those objects in accordance with the said understanding. In the final analysis, the objects owe, therefore, their placement (and, in conjunction with it, their entire being qua functional objects) to the subject’s understanding. For this reason, a functional object can be for one person different from what it is for another. The object is nonetheless identically the same when one leaves aside the use it is put to in a practical situation and considers it, objectively speaking, as it is in itself, to wit, insofar as it is a mere reiform thing. Thus, an electric lamp presents itself, to the one using it, under the aspect of the services it renders him, while the electrician who installs or repairs it regards it under the aspect relevant to his trade. Or take another example: an article of merchandise appears to the maker who sells it in light of the process of making it, of the profit he derives from it for his firm, and so on, but the customer who purchases it sees it in relation to the use he will put it to and the needs it is capable of satisfying. Now, these two people can understand one another because they meet in a shared situation, i.e., the marketplace, at the center of which one finds the article of merchandise in question. In this situation, each of the two people plays his proper role, and the two roles involved reciprocally determine each other. This is so, as well, because the orientation in the shared situation comes in as a factor in their attitudes toward the different situations within the shared situation. From this point of view, the identity of the functional object as such can be maintained, although it is considered by each person according to a different perspective. But it is not necessary to call on the different ways in which various people consider things, in order to note the modifications undergone by the objects in virtue of the changes taking place in their functional values. There are plenty of cases in which one does not succeed in going through a practical situation or in solving the problem raised therein, except by dint of conferring on an object a function different from the one in which it had appeared until then in that situation, or by introducing in the latter a foreign object to have it play a role.2 2

Cf. the examples drawn from the behavior of animals in W. Köhler, loc. cit., pp. 81–85 ¨ and those drawn from human activity, as given by M. Wertheimer, Uber Schlussprozesse


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In all these cases, the object, by assuming functional values it had not previously possessed, undergoes a transformation in the eyes of the one handling it. Being in a practical situation and making use of the functional objects which play a role therein, one can become engrossed in that activity, but never to the point that one completely loses sight or becomes oblivious, so to speak, of the existence of the world about the current situation. In writing, for example, or in doing anything whatever, one retains a certain awareness of the place in which one finds oneself located. One is possessed of a more or less vague knowledge of being in this room of this house which is on this street of this city, etc.; that something is occurring outside, without one’s knowing what (or, at least, without having to). One has a similar vague and approximate knowledge of the time of day, and of what has gone before the present situation, as well as of what is about to occur. In the case of this entirely particular knowledge into which we will later have to go deeper,3 it is certainly not a question of memories, anticipations, representations, images, etc. being quite simply superadded by association to the perceptions and other acts in which the subject relates to the present situation. By its own nature, the latter would refer one to the facts lying outside itself. The work one is busy with is presented in the light of the ends one wishes to attain thereby, under the aspect of the reasons which have led one to undertake it; in carrying it out, one gets one’s bearings in terms of the situations one anticipates and seeks to bring about or prevent. Each current situation is integrated into the chronological order of the subject’s life, occupies a certain rank therein, and so on. All these facts, to be sure, arise from the subject’s attitude, and yet that will not suffice to denounce them as being “purely subjective.” The subject’s attitude is not immaterial to the situation in which a subject is living, as has just been pointed out. At least, it colors the situation to some degree. The references in question constitute the horizon in which the current situation appears; they ensure its relatedness to the rest of the im produktiven Denken (Berlin-Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1920). Productive Thinking, ed. and trans., S. E. Asch (New York: Harper, 1920 [1945]). 3 Cf. infra, Chapter 3.

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world; and, by means of them, a context is created by virtue of which each particular situation presents itself as a “particularity within a unitary universe”4 and assumes the character of a mundane situation. It is through such references that the existence of the world is indicated to the subject at every moment of his life. Thus, in the eyes of a living subject, every activity, which obviously can have a bearing only on a particular situation, unfolds within the framework of the world that is always present to him, though not as something superadded to the particular situation, but as something encompassing it in its totality. That to which the subject living in a current situation finds himself referred can be more or less indeterminate. Indeed, the horizon in question is always indeterminate in the sense that its boundaries are not precise and circumscribed, but fade away into indefiniteness.5 One never possesses a perfectly clear consciousness of all there is in the world, any more than of all there is in one’s entire past either. What is presented in the horizon is, at most, a part of that which actually surrounds—and is found to be objectively related to—the current situation. The said horizon is encircled by a sort of “haze” which, here or there, would penetrate the horizon itself, rendering it more or less nebulous. Besides, the more one is immersed in one’s present situation, the more does the nebulousness increase, and the more the details one is referred to lose their definition and merge with one another in the haze, until one arrives at the limiting case in which nothing of the world would be given beyond its general or, better yet, generic form and style. But however indeterminate the contours of the horizon may be, it cannot, as such, be absent in a particular situation, inasmuch as no situation of this sort presents itself as isolated or, so to speak, as cut off from the rest of the world. §II. Orientation in the Surrounding World Life in the surrounding world and the handling of functional objects found therein are guided by a comprehension, one of the distinctive 4 5

E. Husserl, CM, p. 75, ll. 10–11 (36–37). Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 27.


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characters of which is its having nothing to do with a theoretical or even a conceptual understanding. One can determine one’s bearings in social life, respond to the demands it poses, and avail oneself of every kind of possibility society puts at the disposal of its members, without the benefit of any understanding of the social mechanisms at work, the laws of their functioning, or the reasons which have led to setting up such mechanisms rather than others.6 Thus, everybody makes use of money, without having to form a notion of the way money—i.e., the “metallic disks” and “printed notes”— acquires those properties which render it capable of playing the role of universal medium of exchange, nor is one in need either of having anatomical or physiological knowledge in order to walk. Likewise, to operate a machine, it is not necessary to know either the physical laws governing its functioning or, with greater reason, those according to which it has been built. It will suffice to be oriented toward certain points of reference—for instance, to raise or lower a lever after a certain order is given or when certain facts occur. These points of reference serve as signals for a subject living in an actional situation, and they prepare him for events which are to happen and encourage him to adequate reactions on his part. However superficial it may look when compared with a scientific undertaking, being so oriented toward points of reference—points of reference one could be tempted to characterize as external—is nonetheless the only useful behavior for someone not concerned with having at his disposal a theoretical account of the situation in which he finds himself, but with acting therein and responding—in time and appropriately—to changes announced by certain precursory signs. To be sure, a practical orientation is inferior to a scientific understanding, especially to a physicomathematical understanding, with respect to rationality, precision, exactitude, etc., but all these incontestable advantages of physico-mathematical knowledge do not render it capable of providing solutions to problems like those which arise in the surrounding world. Physical theories furnish us with a preeminent understanding of the world that one cannot admire enough, but what they do not supply one ¨ Cf. Max Weber, “Uber einige Kategorien der verstehende Soziologie,” Logos, IV (1913), pp. 293–294.

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with is precisely the knowledge one is in need of in actional situations, while a practical orientation makes it possible for one to deal with them successfully.7 This is not due to a defect in the physical sciences that a subsequent evolution could remedy. The functional object is—and must be—ignored by the physical sciences, because they cannot be constituted until after the functional aspect to which the surrounding world owes its being as such has been undone, and because the objects that those sciences construct are entirely different, so far as their structure and their sense of being are concerned, from the functional objects.8 But once the functional aspect of the surrounding world is undone, it cannot be reconstructed. The physico-mathematical intellect is not in the position of getting at the functional object. This is so not for accidental reasons, but because the physico-mathematical intellect is deployed on a plane in all respects foreign to that of the surrounding world, which is why it cannot be substituted for the practical orientation. Therefore, instead of comparing it with the mathematical understanding and depreciating it in favor of the latter, one must recognize the cognitive value it possesses for living in the surrounding world. Obviously, this is a relative value because such knowledge is strictly confined to the plane of the surrounding world, and yet, no matter how relative it may be, it is nonetheless a value. One’s life and behavior in the surrounding world most often takes the form of an automatic habit. One must not believe, however, that this automatism, which is the rule of all practical conduct or know-how, would be, at its inception, nothing but a blind mechanism. The Gestalt theoreticians have shown that, for the formation of a habit to be possible, no matter how automatic it may become at the end of the learning process, perception must be re-worked and re-organized.9 By virtue of 7

Cf. E. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik (Halle, 1929); ed. P. Janssen, in Gesammelte Werke, XVII, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 245– 246; Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960). Henceforth this work will be cited as FTL; the page numbers given are those appearing in the margins, which correspond to those of the original edition. In the future, any second set of pages numbers are those of the translation. 8 We will address this subject in § 4 of this chapter. 9 Cf. especially P. Guillaume, La formation des habitudes (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1936), Chapter 3.


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this reorganization, an object playing a role in a given situation, when considered from a phenomenal or psychological standpoint (i.e., in the eyes of the living subject), would no longer be the same as it was at the beginning of the formation of the habit; at the end of the learning process, it will have found a quite definite place in the situation in question. This reworking of perception is just the attribution of a functional value to an object which either had none or had a different one; it depends therefore on the discovery of the role that that object should play in the situation, as has been noted concerning the knowledge one would acquire of an object unknown until a given moment.10 These transformations undergone by the objects express the structuring of the actional situation itself which, in those processes, would assume its definite form, under which it will present itself subsequently to the living being. It is in this sense that the attitude, the disposition, the understanding, and other factors, ordinarily taken to be purely subjective, contribute to the constitution of an actional situation. It is in and through the practical orientation that such a situation assumes its specific functional aspect and becomes such as it is for the subject placed therein. The knowledge attendant on life in the surrounding world and directing it is just the apprehension of the functional objects in their places within a given situation, the discovery of the general and particular structures of the situation, and the progressive adaptation to these structures. This knowledge consists simply in following the reciprocal references which exist among the functional objects in such a situation. These references form the structure of the situation, assure its context, and lend it its particular aspect. Besides, the more familiar a situation becomes and the more the handling of functional objects becomes a stabilized and automatic habit, the more this special and specific character fades out, in the sense that the perception of the situation and of the effects that the subject’s activity brings about therein would yield to the “proprioception” of this activity itself, that is, the kinesthetic sensibility would progressively supplant perception properly so called.11 10 11

Cf. ibid., p. 23. Cf. P. Guillaume, op. cit., pp. 121–124.

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§III. The Human Sciences Let us now consider the contemplative attitude, which cannot be assumed permanently, or with respect to the entire surrounding world, but only with regard to one or another domain of the surrounding world, no matter how such a domain may be delimited. This domain is then chosen as the object of scientific study. By adopting the contemplative attitude, it is possible to do justice to the functional aspect which specifically belongs to the surrounding world as such. When the case is that of a past epoch, the task is likewise to reconstruct the surrounding world as it was in the past, that is to say, the surrounding world as it took shape for those who lived during that epoch. In this orientation of scientific thought, one would seek to establish the mechanisms at work in the environment in question and to determine the laws on which the functioning of these mechanisms depends; one would study the formation of social institutions and their transformations within the course of history; and one would determine the conditions of their origination, expansion, decadence, etc. It is thus that the historical, archeological, philological, economic, sociological, and other similar sciences are constituted. These moral or human sciences have it in common that, in them, objects, even when it is a question of things, are not viewed in terms of their physical and chemical determinations, not even in terms of their purely qualitative and perceptible properties, but rather in terms of their objective determinations, in the sense indicated.12 In these sciences, objects are taken into consideration according to the places they occupy in an environment and the functions assigned to them therein. They are taken not as they are in themselves but in view of the form they assume for those who put them to living use: in the human sciences, the objects remain functional objects. Thus, for example, iron is considered by an economist not as a material body characterized by such and such physico-chemical properties, but as something possessed of economic value and significance in an economic system. If the physico-chemical properties enter into the economist’s considerations, it would be only in the most indirect of fashions, i.e., insofar 12

Cf. supra, pp. 83–84.


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as they serve as the basis of technical possibilities which, in turn, would take on an economic value. The said properties can therefore play a role only to the extent that, at most, something relating to the economy is made known in them. It is in this sense that it must be maintained that iron is not the same object for the economist as it is for the physicist. Or take another example: for the linguistic sciences, a sound of a human language is not a pure auditory datum produced by the superposition of such and such wave motions of the air, something about which it would only be a question of establishing the physiological conditions of emission. Contemporary linguistics—above all, the phonological school which strives to clear a way for that trend13 —considers the sound in terms of the place assigned to it in the phonological system of a given language, studying it from the point of view of its contribution to the differentiation between the significations of verbal units (i.e., words and phrases). The sound is therefore regarded not so much under the aspect of its effective realization as it is under that of the intention and imagination of the speaking subjects when they utter it. It is considered in terms of the role it plays in the linguistic consciousness of a community.

§IV. The Physical Sciences Science, however, is not concerned with the specific aspect of the surrounding world. If by means of a purely mental operation one cuts off the relations and likewise suppresses the references from which an object draws its character and its sense of being as a functional object, what remains is the reiform thing, which is characterized solely and exclusively by perceptible and qualitative determinations, such as length, width, depth, color, shape, weight, hardness, etc. It is the thing understood in this sense for which the analysis and critique of perception that were 13

Cf. Prince N. Troubetzkoy, “La phonologie actuelle,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, 1933, Nos. 1–4. Vide also J. Vendryès, “Sur les tâches de la linguistique statique,” ibid. We have analyzed these two articles in “I. Psychologie du langage,” Revue ´ philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, Vol. 120, 1935, pp. 427–432.

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developed by Descartes14 have a bearing, and it is that which Locke sought to construct from his simple elements of “sensation.”15 But the physical sciences do not stop at the thing. In these sciences, one replaces the thing (with its perceptible qualities) by the physical material body defined by such concepts as atoms, ions, electrons, energy, and so on, entities which involve only characterizations by means of mathematical expressions.16 This material body is located in a space which, as well, is not the visual and tactile space which is familiar to us as our field of action. The space of which it is a question in the physical sciences is mathematical space, which admits of no determinations except those which follow from the axioms of geometry. In constructing the universe of physics, one does not therefore separate—as Locke had believed17 —the so-called secondary qualities of the thing from its perceptible spatial qualities, and retain only the latter, which would be taken for the veritable physical reality of the thing. The material body of physics, on the contrary, transcends, in every respect, the reiform thing, none of the perceptible determinations of which enters, as such, into the constructions of physics. With the universe as constructed by physics, one is before the scientific truth of the world. But the constructions of physics should not be taken for images in which, to a greater or lesser degree of approximation, the genuine reality of the world would be reproduced, an underlying and concealed reality which our psychophysical organization, by inevitably leading us into natural illusions, would veil from us and make appear to us only under the specious form of the perceptible world.18 The procedure followed in the physical explanation of qualitative data is quite different from that of the insertion, among the observed facts, of other facts which are also susceptible of observation, but which have not yet been observed—as, for example, certain perturbations in the motions of the planets have been 14

R. Descartes, Meditationes, in op. cit., VII, pp. 30–31; Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, pp. 23–25. 15 J. Locke, op. cit., Bk. II, Chapter 12, § 6 and Chapter 23, §§ 6 and 14. Vol. I, pp. 131– 132, 217–218, and 253. 16 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 40. 17 Cf. J. Locke, op. cit., Bk. II, Chapter 8, §§ 15–23. Vol. I, pp. 106–110. 18 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 52.


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explained by assuming the existence of a planet unknown until that point, but which one later succeeds in observing. So far as principles are concerned, this method is the same as the one employed by an archeologist who, on the basis of some excavated ruins and literary accounts, conceives of the architectural plan of an ancient building, a hypothesis that may be confirmed by documents found later. All facts—observed, calculated, and assumed—would be on the same plane, which is never overstepped at any stage of the reasoning. In his explanation of qualitative facts, the physicist, on the contrary, places himself on the plane of the perceptible world and continues to be guided by it, since his goal is to predict the events produced in reiform things, the perceptible and qualitative determinations of which serve him as occasions for the verification of his theories. But he goes beyond that plane by translating the data into physical terms. This translation consists in making a material body located on the specifically physical plane correspond to the reiform thing, such a material body being one to which certain physico-mathematical determinations pertain only to the extent that the reiform thing exhibits the corresponding qualitative properties. Thus a thing appears as an X bearing physical determinations which are not accessible except in and through the qualitative properties of the thing. The entities of physics, therefore, can be constructed only if the qualitative determinations are given beforehand. The perceptible world underlies the constitution of the physical universe as the ground and support thereof. In this respect, the universe of physics should be taken as being superior or higher to the world.19 However, one need not understand the superiority in question in accordance with a realistic interpretation of physics, as if the physicist, by some happy instinct, successfully penetrated behind the natural appearances of na¨ıve life and grasped some “in itself,” i.e., the things such as they really are. By this interpretation, the entities of physics would be taken 19

The region of being A is superior to or higher than the region of being B, if the constitution or construction of B is a prerequisite for that of A. There you have the formal definition of “superiority,” which can assume various forms. Later (cf. infra, Chapter 3, § 2, pp. 113 ff. and § 5, pp. 159–164) we will bring out several types of superiority, which are different from the one treated of here.

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as things to which a sensibility not subject to the conditions of human psychophysical organization could gain direct and immediate perceptual access, while a human being would be confined to forming only indirect and symbolic representations of these veritably real things. As the objective correlate of perceptual life, a thing would be endowed with a sense of being determined, therefore, only in relation to that life.20 But the construction of physical entities, however well-founded it may be on the appearance of the perceptible world, cannot be carried out without the intervention of acts of categorial thought, especially of physico-mathematical reason, which constitutes a distinctive form thereof. Moreover, the creations of categorial thought (not even at the lowest level thereof ) cannot—we shall return to this point21 —be transformed into perceptible data; they should on no account be considered as capable of lending themselves to pure perception or as susceptible of being grasped by acts other than those of categorial thought. To confer on the entities of physics the sense of being of reiform things—an unavoidable consequence of substituting these entities as “absolute realities” for the perceptible world—would be to falsify the sense of existence of the physical universe, no matter what definition, moreover, may be given of that sense. The realistic thesis takes the fact that “Nature is in itself mathematical” as a matter of course; in so doing, the veritable problem which the physical sciences pose for philosophy is set aside, since, if a philosophical problem is raised by these sciences, it is by reason not of their results but of their very existence.22 The “given Nature”—the transformation of functional objects into reiform things, presupposed as already accomplished—not only contains qualitative facts but, above all, does not admit of exact determinations. Even the spatial and temporal formations are vague and fluctuating; they Cf. infra, Chapter 4, § 3, pp. 71 ff., [corrected from the French edition.] Cf. . [Incorrect cross-reference given.] 22 Cf. E. Husserl, “Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie,” § 9, Philosophia, I (1936) in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, 2nd ed., ed. W. Biemel, in Gesammelte Werke, VI, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 20 ff.; The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 23 ff. 20 21


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allow no determinations except of a type that involves some latitude for variation. This given Nature is related to the universe of ideal mathematical objects, is considered in the light of these objects, and is conceived of as realizing the mathematical relations which the physicist seeks to determine with increasing approximation. This transition from the “given Nature” to a mathematized Nature is hidden from the realistic thesis, because, in terms of the realistic thesis, the mathematized (or, at least, the mathematizable) Nature is at once substituted for the “given Nature.” However, it is in that transition that lies the philosophical problem of the physical sciences. In becoming the object of physics, the “given Nature” undergoes the transformation of idealization which places it in relation to mathematical objects. This transformation is carried out through acts of consciousness, in processes and operations of which mathematizable Nature, as well as mathematized Nature, (i.e., the universe of physics23 ) are revealed as their products or, better yet, as their objective correlates. The existence of the physical sciences does not therefore imperil the principle advanced earlier,24 according to which every object and region of being should be conceived of in relation to the acts of consciousness in which they are constituted and of which they are the objective correlates. One must, on the contrary, refer to these acts, to the operations of consciousness, to the motive setting these operations in motion; one must render clear and explicit the presuppositions which, in the historical formation of the physical sciences, played an implicit role and went unnoticed as presuppositions, because, for the most part, they were transmitted by the tradition of geometrical thought. It is only by dint of effecting such mediations that it becomes possible to bring out the sense of the universe of physics qua objective correlate of the acts in which it is constructed, which is an objective correlate of a superior order, because it is conceived of and developed on the basis of that other objective correlate of consciousness, which is the perceptible world. Only thus can one grasp the origin and specific nature of the evidence proper to the physical sciences. 23 24

[Presumably added by the editor of the French edition.] Cf. supra, Chapter 1.

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§V. The General Thesis of the Natural Attitude The summary presentation of attitudes which has just been made is fragmentary in the twofold sense that it calls for completion25 and for greater depth.26 However, such is not our task here. Seeking to clear a way toward constitutive phenomenology, the access to which is not possible except by means of the phenomenological reduction, we are more interested in what these attitudes have in common than in the differences among them. In each of these attitudes, no matter how different they may be from one another, the objects on which one is focused, whichever be the region of being to which they pertain, exhibit an existential character.27 Thus, in a given environment, the functional objects as well as the social formations—whether one adopts the active attitude of ordinary life or the contemplative attitude of the human sciences—offer themselves as being there. In elaborating the universe of physics, not only does one presuppose the existence of things which serve as the basis for that construction, but a specific manner of existence is conferred on the universe itself, on the entities of which it consists. It is the same with pure mathematics: mathematical objects (e.g., numbers, functions, equations, geometrical formations, etc.) present themselves as given. In the mathematical attitude, they are taken into consideration as existent, whatever be the sense in which their existence is conceived. It must be added that the system of mathematical conclusions, which is drawn with increasing complication from axioms, presents itself as valid. But validity too is an existential character; it is the particular form that the general and entirely formal notion of existence assumes in the domain of thought. The specific sense of existence is differentiated according to the regions of being; it varies, therefore, from one region to another among those we have taken into account, as well as among those we have not been able to consider. Yet there can be no region in which the objects it encompasses would offer themselves without bearing that existential character which can be expressed by the phrase “simply being there.” 25

Thus, for example, the artistic attitude could not be examined here. We wish only to emphasize the importance of penetrating more deeply the structure of the functional object, a notion which, in our opinion, should be fundamental in the philosophy of the human sciences. 27 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 30. 26


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The existence of an object, of course, can become doubtful in a particular case. Yet being doubtful or problematic, just as being possible, probable, and so on, are also existential characters which must be conceived of as variations of the fundamental existential character that existence pure and simple is.28 What is most important is that it is only a particular object the existence of which becomes problematic or doubtful. However, an object such as this presents itself in a more or less comprehensive context, in conjunction with other objects that retain their existential character. And, above all, the region of being itself to which these objects belong is not affected at all by an alteration of the existential character occurring in a particular object. This is true as long as the subject does not engage in philosophizing but acts in a na¨ıve manner, in one or another attitude, in the region of being in question. The attribution of an existential character to objects— and, correlatively, the belief in the existence of these objects—is therefore a most general fact about any object and any region of being whatever, although the sense of existence may not always be the same. This fact does not constitute, then, a privilege that is distinctive of an attitude (say, that of everyday life), as opposed to any other, such as the scientific attitude; rather, it dominates and supports all particular attitudes. The general existential thesis is present in every mental activity, no matter which attitude is adopted therein.29 This thesis is, therefore, a sort of common denominator of all those attitudes. It is because of the presence of the general existential thesis in each of them that all the attitudes in question are grouped under the common rubric, the “natural attitude.” But the general existential thesis is not posited explicitly. The subject living in the natural attitude accepts this thesis and avails himself of it, but does not become expressly aware of it, or at least can dispense with doing so. While intervening in the constitution of the natural attitude and being effective in it, the thesis in question does or may do so implicitly. It is not noted as such; it is hidden and, so to speak, “forgotten.” By means of this thesis, we are placed before one of the phenomena which, in normal, ordinary life, do not present themselves except Cf. ibid., § 104. Cf. E. Fink, “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, XI (1930), pp. 248–249.

28 29

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implicitly. These phenomena make an essential contribution to the constitution of the sense of some data but do not become available, without further ado, to a mental gaze turned directly toward them; on the contrary, such data can be grasped and rendered explicit only by a special reflection. As we shall see later, one of the principal methods of phenomenology consists in making explicit these implicit phenomena, not all of which, moreover, are of the same type. §VI. The Phenomenological Reduction The phenomenological reduction makes the general existential thesis undergo a radical modification. Since this alteration concerns the thesis itself and as such, it is not then a question of replacing one of the particular attitudes mentioned above by another. By the same token, the new attitude resulting from the phenomenological reduction should on no account be regarded as one attitude among others. Because of the very radicalism of the modification which gives rise to the new attitude, the latter stands in contrast to all natural attitudes as such. In the phenomenological reduction, the existential character attaching to objects is not doubted. That would have no other effect than substituting another character for a given existential character, but there is no plausible motive to doubt the existence of all objects and regions of being. Yet there is no motive either to deny the existential belief in general, a negation which is a characteristic and a tenet of skeptical philosophy. The modification undergone by the general existential thesis in the phenomenological reduction consists in exercising a certain abstention in respect of the thesis, in not carrying out the act of existential belief, without producing, in accordance with that, the disappearance or setting aside of that belief.30 The belief in question is suspended; correlatively, the existential character is bracketed; it is inhibited, but inhibition is not suppression. The objects in themselves are not modified at all by the phenomenological reduction; they remain, in every respect, such as they are known in the various natural attitudes. All their determinations, properties, qualities, structures, 30

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 31 and 32 and CM, § 8.


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and so on are safeguarded. Even the existential character with which an object presents itself is left untouched, and, especially, no other existential character is substituted for it, nor is it, with greater reason, cancelled. Every object continues to be that veritable, hypothetical, possible, problematic, or apparent reality it was prior to the phenomenological reduction. Yet the latter puts the existential character out of play or action; one no longer avails oneself of it. Therefore, in the phenomenological attitude, an object that continues to offer itself to consciousness as existent is taken into consideration not simply as existent, not as such and such reality, but as presenting itself as existent, as laying claim to existence. In the natural attitude, the subject holds the conviction that he finds himself in the midst of the real world and is confronted by other regions of being, the objects of which are also possessed of existence in one form or another. This conviction is not shaken; in adopting the phenomenological attitude, the subject persists in holding it. But the conviction in question is no longer effective, in the sense that it does not play the role of a living conviction, but only that of an experienced conviction. Consequently, in phenomenological meditations, no statement is admitted as a premise which expresses such a conviction or one of its possible variations, or which takes on, therefore, an existential character. Likewise, a logical or a mathematical theorem in no way loses its character of validity by the phenomenological reduction; it continues to present itself as derived from certain axioms and as occupying a given place in a system of conclusions. But the theorem in question is not employed as a contention in phenomenological considerations, and it does not serve as a ground thereof, since it is not resorted to therein. It enters into and plays a role in them only as a fact appearing before consciousness, as a datum altogether and exactly the same as it was in the natural attitude, although, under the governance of the phenomenological reduction, no use is made of its validity. The phenomenological reduction, therefore, is less concerned with the objects themselves, or with the subject’s convictions about them, than with the way in which these objects and convictions enter into phenomenology, with the position taken by the phenomenologist with respect to them. Because their existential character has been put out of play and value, the objects—all objects—are transformed into phenomenal objects, even while continuing to subsist as they are; and, at the

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same time, the regions to which these objects belong become phenomenal regions of being. This modification concerns, above all, the existential character possessed by the objects, a character that is transformed into a phenomenal datum, while remaining integrally safeguarded between the brackets within which it has been enclosed. It is only as a phenomenal fact, as an experienced datum, that an existential character (and, also, consequently, the statement giving expression to it) can play a role in phenomenology. There you have the reason why the investigations are called phenomenological which this modified attitude gives us entry into, an attitude that, once assumed, shall not be abandoned. Because of the modification it contributes to the general existential thesis, the phenomenological reduction is universal in scope. It bears on all objects, no matter to which region of being they may belong,31 with the sole exception of the acts of consciousness qua experienced facts. The phenomenological reduction has no hold over these acts, for the same reason that the universal doubt of Descartes did not apply to them. But these acts escape the phenomenological reduction solely and exclusively as experienced facts and phenomenal data, not at all as symptoms, expressions, or the like, of a human reality, or even of a purely psychical reality.32 Every reality of this kind is subject to the phenomenological reduction.33 The subject conceives of himself as a human being, an individual, a social being, a historical entity, and so on, and he continues to do so in the phenomenological attitude. He remains the real and empirical concrete self he was and continues to be such, with the whole range of determinations which are his. But this human reality, with all its elements and components, cannot intervene—in the phenomenological meditations— Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 56–60. The Cartesian origin of the phenomenological reduction is evident. But, while in Descartes it is a question of a universal negation of a sort—the objects are presumed to be nonexistent and illusory, and the convictions are taken as if they were false— the reduction in Husserl is just an abstention, a “bracketing.” On the other hand, the accounts given in Chapter 1 above are sufficient to justify, we believe, the modification brought about by Husserl in the Cartesian doubt by endowing it with a purer and more radical form. [Presumably, the sentence between the dashes above is a clarification by the editor of the French edition.] 33 Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 11. 31 32


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as a point of departure and as a datum possessed of an effective existential character, just as the judgments giving expression to that reality are not admitted therein as premises, reasons, etc., no more, for that matter, than any other mundane reality whatever. The human concrete self becomes a phenomenon too. It can play a role in phenomenology only as a fact appearing before consciousness and presenting itself to it by virtue of acts relating thereto, acts through which it is grasped in conjunction with its essential characteristics. It is in this sense that Husserl speaks of a “splitting of the Ego” :34 “universally, the phenomenologically meditating Ego can become the “non-participant onlooker” at himself.”35 Obviously, one need not take this formula literally.36 It expresses metaphorically the distinction to be made between the real concrete self qua constituted objective correlate and the consciousness to which this self presents itself. Consciousness may be viewed in two ways: either, as is done in the biological and psychological sciences, in its relation to mundane realities, as pertaining to a concrete human self, therefore as imbued with human reality; or as a pure field of experienced acts relating to objects, acts by which the real concrete self—among other objects—is also grasped, and in which it is constituted. But it is only as such that consciousness has the absolute character which was assigned to it by Descartes, and which is reinforced by the phenomenological reduction.37 Every anthropological element should therefore be kept strictly out of phenomenological considerations. The phenomenological reduction—this is one of its reasons for being—throws a gulf impossible to cross between phenomenology and every sort of philosophical anthropology.38 Ibid., § 15, p. 73, l. 30 (35). Ibid., p. 75, ll. 23–25 (37). 36 Cf. ibid., ll. 27–29: “as an Ego in the natural attitude, I am likewise and at all times a transcendental Ego, but . . . I know about this only by executing [the] phenomenological reduction.” 37 Concerning this absolute character of consciousness, cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 44, 46, 49, and 54. 38 Obviously, this remark is not directed at anthropology qua positive science, from which, on the contrary, when it is a question of comparative psychology, phenomenology can derive great profit, as is the case with all work in psychology [understood as a positive science]. Even here we have not hesitated to avail ourselves of some of its results. 34 35

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At the same time, the difference between phenomenology and psychology becomes apparent, inasmuch as, in the latter, consciousness is taken for a reality among others and is studied in terms of its dependence on facts lying outside of consciousness. The subject matter of these two disciplines is obviously the same, since consciousness is just one domain. This is why phenomenology and psychology are quite intimately connected, and why the results of psychology—especially those descriptive in character—can acquire great importance for phenomenology. Inversely, psychology can draw very great profit from phenomenology by taking into account its results, methods, and the manner in which problems are formulated therein. But this special relationship between phenomenology and psychology (which is the only science to which phenomenology is connected in so intimate a fashion) should not gloss over the difference of principle between the respective standpoints from which the two disciplines consider consciousness, which is their common area of inquiry. Once the phenomenological reduction is carried out, what is retained is the reduced consciousness, that is to say, consciousness viewed under the sole aspect of the appearing and constituting of objects before itself. It is only as such that consciousness will be called upon henceforth. Those objects—the phenomenal objects—acquire a teleological function in phenomenological investigations.39 They play the role of termini ad quos or terms toward which phenomenological inquiries should be directed; they serve as leading threads guiding such analyses. The simply given object is conceived of as the ready-made product of processes of consciousness which, however, remain hidden and veiled in both “natural” everyday and scientific life. These processes can be brought into the open only by means of special efforts. Starting from the object, one asks oneself what acts and concatenations of acts should be experienced (or be capable of being experienced), and what processes and operations should occur to ensure that the objective correlate of But one must try to avoid the antinomic situation discussed in §§ 4 and 5 of the prior chapter, a situation in which one would inevitably fall when philosophical and transcendental problems are formulated on an area about which the same problems should be raised. 39 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 86 and CM, § 21.


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this totality of acts of consciousness may be no other than the object in question. Once the particular acts have been brought out, it becomes a matter of examining the groups they form and the syntheses and forms of unity established among the particular acts on account of which they are related to a given object. Thus it becomes possible to follow the formation and progressive constitution of the object until one re-encounters it as it is known in the natural attitude.40 These investigations are therefore justly described as transcendental, because in them it is a question of the conditions of the possibility of objects, and these conditions can be located only in consciousness and nowhere else. But the phenomenological reduction permits us to pose transcendental problems on a basis in which one is no longer to fear that philosophical thought might fall into the antinomic situation already mentioned,41 a situation from which only the reduction can protect it. The reflections found at the opening of this book42 have led us to consider each object as the correlate of certain acts of consciousness. This principle should now be clarified: any object whatsoever, so far as its objectivity, specific structure, existence, and sense of being are concerned, is relative to reduced consciousness, not to consciousness considered as human psychical reality, not, therefore, as encompassed by the totality of the world. This same principle gives rise to the idea of the philosophy of consciousness as first philosophy, which will consequently assume the form not of a (universal) psychology but of a universal phenomenology.43 Reduced consciousness is defined as the field of experienced acts which refer to objects. The latter, though transformed into phenomenal objects, remain such as they were, except for the modification that their existential character undergoes. Therefore, the duality between acts and their objects 40

The much too incomplete accounts which, in the description of the natural attitude, have been given of the structure of certain types of objects, indicate, therefore, certain directions in which the constitutive investigations of phenomenology should be pursued. The limited framework of this volume will not permit us, however, to get into these special problems. 41 Cf. supra, Chapter 1, §§ IV and V. 42 Cf. supra, Chapter 1 § I. 43 Cf. supra, Chapter 1, § V.

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enters into the very definition of reduced consciousness, inasmuch as the phenomenological reduction does not make the objects disappear or to be set aside. The question to be posed is then as follows: in reduced consciousness, what is the nature of the relationship between acts and their objects? The first task to be carried out on a strictly phenomenological ground is, therefore, the elaboration of a conception of consciousness.

CHAPTER III

THE CONCEPTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

§I. The Empiricist Conception of Consciousness In order to define the nature of consciousness, let us begin with an exposition and an examination of the general conception thereof elaborated and defended by the empiricist school. The thinkers belonging to this school see in consciousness a sort of stage in which data like sensations, imaginations, volitions, emotions, etc., appear and disappear. These data, which are considered to be the simplest elements of consciousness, coexist with and follow one another; they call upon and evoke each other according to the laws of association. Consciousness, then, is nothing else than a series of events occurring and taking place, a series regulated by empirical laws which one succeeds in establishing by means of induction. The presence of those data involves the consciousness of the objects of these laws, objects conceived by the empiricists as consisting of the same data. We speak here preferably of [sense]-perceptible objects, calling upon [sense]-perception as a paradigmatic example in order to make a presentation of views which, in the eyes of the authors defending them, are not restricted to this particular domain of consciousness but aspire to universal significance and value. A [sense]-perceptible object—say, a piece of lead1 —is defined by Locke as a “combination . . . of simple ideas . . . [such as those of ] a certain dull whitish color . . . and certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, . . . fusibility,”2 and the like. These ideas join each other and, at the same time, are united with that of substance which, though confused and even unknown, is, among all the ideas, the first and main one, because it endows the combination of simple ideas with coherence. This idea of substance was attacked by 1 2

Cf. J. Locke, op. cit., Bk. II, Chapter 12, § 6 (I, p. 132). Ibid. I, pp. 131–132. Cf. also Chapter 23, §§ 6 and 14. [I, pp. 247 and 253f.]


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Berkeley,3 as well as by Hume,4 a fact that did not prevent them, however, from retaining the central thesis of Locke’s theory.5 Both are in agreement that an objective thing is not, and cannot be, anything but the combination of certain sense-perceptible qualities. As Berkeley said: “[t]hus, for example, a certain color, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing signified by the name apple.”6 Likewise, one finds in Hume that “our ideas of bodies are nothing but collections form’d by the mind of the ideas of several distinct sensible qualities, of which objects are compos’d, and which we find to have a constant union with each other.”7 Now then, one such sense-perceptible quality obviously seems incapable of being anything but a sensation; insofar as it is that, it cannot exist anywhere but in the consciousness perceiving it, its existence being identical with its being experienced.8 Hence, it follows that a real thing is reduced to a combination of sensory data,9 and, further, that it cannot exist anywhere except in a consciousness perceiving it.10 It is true that George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, §§ 16 and 17. The Works of George Berkeley, ed. A. C. Fraser (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1901), I, pp. 266–267. 4 David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, in The Philosophical Works of David Hume, ed. T. H. Green et al. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1874), I. Henceforth this edition of the work will be cited as Treatise (Green). A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 15–17. 5 Concerning Hume, cf. T. H. Green’s remarks in his “General Introduction,” The Philosophical Works of David Hume, I, p. 177, that “[h]is account of the idea of substance is simply Locke’s, as Locke’s would become upon the elimination of the notion that there is a real ‘something’ in which the collection of ideas subsist[s], and from which they result.” 6 G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 1, p. 258. 7 D. Hume, Treatise (Green), I, pp. 505–506. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, Bk. I, Pt. iv, § 3, p. 219. 8 G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 78, p. 301: “Qualities . . . are nothing else but sensations or ideas, which exist only in a mind perceiving them.” 9 Ibid., § 99, pp. 312–313: “all sensible qualities are alike sensations, and alike real; . . . the objects of sense are nothing but those sensations, combined, blended, or . . . concreted together.” 10 Ibid., § 3, p. 258: “the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the Sense, however blended or combined together (that is, whatever objects they comprise), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them.” 3

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Berkeley succeeded in avoiding the consequences entailed by this point of view, by appealing to an Eternal Spirit in which things would exist, even when they are not being perceived by any created spirit,11 an Eternal Spirit who imprints on human sensibility the ideas which real things consist of.12 Although this relates to the theory of perception rather than to the metaphysics that may be superposed thereupon, let us nonetheless underscore the fact that, according to Berkeley, a thing perceived exists, therefore, in the perceiving consciousness, and that the thing in question consists in being a real complex fact belonging to this consciousness.13 In effect, as Berkeley contended, “[w]hen we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas.”14 Now Berkeley had been able to avoid the problem of the continuity of the existence of sense-perceptible things,15 but, to Hume, who did not know of the recourse to the Eternal Spirit, the said problem was posed in all its seriousness. According to him, “nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas”; hence, “tis impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of anything specifically different from ideas and impressions.”16 In Hume, one finds also that objective things are reduced to combinations of real data of consciousness17 ; and he admitted no other existence except that of what he called “perceptions” in consciousness.18 Ibid., §§ 6 and 48, pp. 260–261 and 283–284. Ibid., §§ 33 and 148–149, pp. 274 and 342. 13 Ibid., § 94, p. 310: “the sun, moon, and stars, and every other object of the senses, are only so many sensations in their minds, which have no other existence but barely being perceived.” 14 Ibid., § 23, p. 270; cf. the corresponding passage in D. Hume, Treatise (Green), [I; the page number is missing, as indicated in the French edition of this book]: “we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear’d in that narrow compass.” 15 Cf. G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 48, p. 284. 16 D. Hume, Treatise (Green), in op. cit., I, p. 371; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, Bk. I, Pt. ii, § 6, p. 67. 17 Cf. ibid. (Green), in op. cit., I, p. 504; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 218: “tis impossible for us distinctly to conceive . . . objects to be in their nature any thing but exactly the same with perceptions.” 18 Ibid. (Green), Bk. I, Pt. ii, § 6, in op. cit., I; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 67. 11 12

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Hume did not take this definition of things for a philosophical and explanatory theory; he claimed thereby to give faithful expression to the opinion of the common run of people. The latter do not admit the distinction established by some philosophers between the objects and the data of the senses; quite the contrary, for “[t]hose very sensations, which enter by the eye or ear, are with them the true objects, nor can they readily conceive that this pen or paper, which is immediately perceiv’d, represents another, which is different from, but resembling it.”19 However, the common run of people, while identifying the object with the sensory data, make no supposition that they are faced with something identical when they experience a multiplicity of perceptions of the same thing, perceptions that are given to them as different. The contradiction between the supposed identity and the many appearings of sensory data (which are different from each other) leads to the hypothesis or, more exactly, to the fiction of continuous existence.20 The supposition of identity, as well as that of the continuity of existence, not only contradict the testimony of the senses, but neither do they derive from reason: strictly speaking, they are both false.21 Therefore, it is not a question of finding a justification for them, but of establishing the way by which the imagination makes us come to them, and of explaining this “propensity to feign” to which they are due. The problem of identity will be dealt by us later.22 Let us confine ourselves here to laying down the terms in which Hume should present the hypothesis or fiction of continuous existence, without pursuing the explicative analysis thereof. Since things are nothing but what Hume called perceptions, it follows that “this very perception or object is suppos’d to have a continu’d uninterrupted being.”23 It is, in effect, to this end that he directed his explanation: the supposition of the continued existence of the real data of consciousness, even when they are not being presented to the latter. 19

Ibid. (Green), in op. cit., I, p. 491; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 202. Cf. ibid. (Green), in op. cit., I, pp. 493–494. 21 Cf. ibid. (Green), in op. cit., pp. 497–498 and 483. 22 Cf. infra, § III. 23 D. Hume, Treatise (Green), in op. cit., I, pp. 495–496; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 207. It is the same, moreover, so far as identity is concerned. Cf. ibid. (Green), p. 493; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 205: “The very image, which is present to the senses, is with us the real body; and ‘tis to these interrupted images we ascribe a perfect identity. ’ ” 20


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That this supposition is nothing but a fruit of the imagination did not seem to him to imply anything contradictory. It is this supposition which, according to him, constitutes the opinion of the common run of people. A more recent form of the empiricist conception of consciousness, one that is still current, belongs to Mach, to whom we owe the doctrine of letzte Elemente (ultimate elements) which, in their totality, make up the entire world.24 These elements, namely, the colors, sounds, heat, pressure, motion, spatial impressions, temporal data, etc., are not, according to the author, simply juxtaposed to one another. They form one single coherent mass, but the degree of coherence among those elements is not the same throughout.25 This coherence bears witness to the “functional relations” (Funktionalbeziehungen) existing between the elements, relations in virtue of which a modification taking place in one of the elements does not fail to be accompanied by effects that affect a certain number of other elements. One may avail oneself of these effects in order to measure the coherence among the elements in question. Thus, Mach, defending himself against criticisms that were directed at him, maintained that, in his opinion, the world is not the sum total of sensations, but the totality of functional relations obtaining among them. In the final analysis, the entire world should be considered just one single complex of relations. To characterize those elements, Mach expressed himself in terms which, in contemporary parlance, designate sensory data, and he did not hesitate to describe them as such.26 However, those elements, taken in themselves, are neither of the physical nor of the psychological order. They become members of one or the other according to the standpoint from which they are being studied, to wit: according to the functional relations in terms of which they are being considered.27 Thus, a color, for example, when it is examined in view of its dependence on the light source, other colors, heat, spatial intervals, etc., is a physical object; the 24

Cf. E. Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum Psychischen, 9th. ed. (Jena: G. Fischer, 1922), pp. 17–18 and 24–25. 25 Cf. ibid., pp. 12–14. 26 Cf. ibid., pp. 13–14. 27 Cf. ibid., pp. 300–301.

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same color should be taken for a sensation and, therefore, as pertaining to the psychological order, if it is regarded in terms of its conditioning relationship with the state of the retina and with the processes occurring therein. Whether some or other of those functional relations is taken into consideration, the color itself does not undergo, accordingly, any alteration.28 That which separates the physical and would-be objective region from the psychological and would-be subjective region is only the difference existing between the directions along which scientific research bearing on the ultimate elements may be engaged in. But no heterogeneity in the materials of which the two regions would be composed would serve as the basis for establishing a boundary between them. In Mach’s opinion, these materials are, on the contrary, absolutely the same, to the point that, instead of regarding them either as physical or psychological, it would be more accurate to characterize them as being both, at once and on the same grounds. The author also admits no difference of principle or of a fundamental sort between the physical and psychological orders, or between the sensory data and the sense-perceptible thing, or, finally, between the self and the world.29 According to Mach, such delimitations would stem only from purely practical reasons and ends which, in scientific research, one is not obliged at all to respect.30 Since research in physics—as Mach never tires of underscoring—has a bearing only on sensory facts, one is then quite justified in maintaining that, in this author’s conception, the objects of sense-perception (that is to say, the real things of the objective world) are composed and consist of the real data of consciousness. These things are, in effect, but functional relations obtaining among elements which, considered from another standpoint, would reveal themselves as sensory data of consciousness. Hence, it follows that the object of physics is exactly the same as that of psychology, the two sciences in question differing from one another only by the respective points of view that they adopt in respect of the ultimate, homogeneous elements. 28 29 30

Cf. ibid., pp. 34–36. Cf. ibid., p. 11. Cf. ibid., pp. 18 and 25.


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§II. A Critique of the Empiricist Conception It is untenable to hold the empiricist definition of the perceived thing as the totality—whatever be its nature—of sensory data really existing in consciousness. The perception of any thing means that a certain number of data of the sort called upon by Mach is, in effect, present in consciousness. If one closes one’s eyes, the visual data, for example, would disappear, to reappear only once one reopens one’s eyes. And yet it would be quite inaccurate and even erroneous to speak of the reappearance of visual and, in general, of sensory data.31 A thing being perceived now is, without any doubt, identically the same, in every respect, as that which one had perceived but had ceased to observe for a few moments. But such is not the case with the sensory data, or real facts of consciousness, which contribute to form—whatever be, moreover, the role attributed to them in this formation—the act of perception, this real, psychical event of perceptual life which is produced at this or that moment of phenomenal time, that is to say, of experienced time. As is indicated by the expressions the “prior perception” and the “subsequent perception” of the same thing, these acts are quite different from each other. Therefore, the sensory data experienced at the time of a perception are not identical with those that are present at the time of another. These sensory data—since the perceptual act (in one fashion or another) is composed of them—share the fate of that act which, nailed as it is to immanent, subjective time and occupying a place in this temporal order, cannot, on principle, recur, no more than one of the diverse phases making up immanent, phenomenal time can. To put it otherwise, the totality of the conscious life, as it flows, does not repeat itself or ever return. It is in respect of their temporality and their facticity that the experienced acts, as well as all the components thereof (including the sensory data),32 should be described as real facts of consciousness (reality, so far as consciousness is concerned, being defined only by this Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 41. For the moment, we are not calling into question that particular thesis of the empiricist theory of perception, according to which the perceptual act consists of sensations, taken as the “elements” thereof. We will briefly return to this point below. [No crossreference is given.]

31 32

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phenomenal facticity and temporality). This problem had already been raised by Hume,33 who called on the similarity between the interrupted perceptions of the “same thing.” In virtue of this perfect similarity which exists in nearly every respect, the mind moves with great ease from one perception to another, hardly noticing the transition. It is thus placed in the same disposition as, or in a quite similar disposition to, that in which it finds itself when it regards an identical object, that is to say, when it experiences an uninterrupted perception. If therefore, at the time of experiencing a multiplicity of interrupted perceptions which are different from each other, the subject believes himself to be confronted by the same thing, the reason is that his imagination makes him consider the many perceptions as identical, by confusing the relation of similarity with that of identity. Yet, for this confusion to be possible, both of the terms being confused must be given to consciousness. In effect, according to Hume, the mind arrives at the notion of identity when it regards an object for a while, without interrupting its act of perception or taking note of any change therein. It is necessary for the temporal factor to play a role in the definition of identity, since, as Hume justifiedly remarked,34 to judge that an object is self-identical would be devoid of sense, unless one means thereby that the object existing at such a moment is the same as that which exists at another. Now, for the passage of time to be experienced, it is necessary for a succession of “perceptions” to be presented to consciousness; otherwise, even if there was “a real succession in the objects,” the subject would not notice time.35 Hence, as Green has well underscored,36 the same problem that Hume himself raised in regard to interrupted perceptions would be posed concerning the so-called permanent perception. In both cases, there is only a succession of real facts of consciousness; in neither37 is there anything identical. It is not possible to avoid this difficulty by defining the permanence of a perception in terms of its coexistence, 33

Cf. D. Hume, Treatise (Green), in op. cit., I, pp. 491–493; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, pp. 203–205. 34 Cf. ibid. (Green), in op. cit., I, pp. 489–490; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 201. 35 Cf. ibid. (Green), in op. cit, I, p. 342. 36 Cf. T. H. Green, “General Introduction,” § 305, ibid. (Green), in op. cit., I. 37 [Reading “un cas” for “un pas,” as found in the French edition of this book, p. 101, l. 7, from below.]


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at the beginning, with such and such secondary perceptions and, at the end, with others, as if the passage of time became noticeable by means of a change occurring only in the concomitant perceptions. A permanent perception is such that it endures through a certain amount of time. Now, the duration of an act involves modifications of the act itself, duration being nothing but the succession of diverse temporal phases, i.e., the passage of the enduring act through those different phases.38 This criticism makes Hume’s entire explanatory analysis crumble. Since if his principles allow him no expectation of identity in the case of the so-called permanent perception, one must recognize with Green39 that, in Hume’s theory, one of the two terms, namely, similarity and identity, must be lacking and remain inaccessible. The confusion between these terms was called upon by him in order to explain identity in the case of interrupted perceptions. The sensory data change and vary, when the subject, instead of interrupting his observation, walks around the thing perceived, takes it in hand and turns it about, moves from one point of observation to another, moves away, for example, from the thing or approaches it, etc.40 Accordingly, the thing perceived would appear now from one side, now from another, now under one aspect, now under another; it would present itself now from close at hand, now from a distance. But despite all these fluctuations in the sensory data, one is conscious of the thing as being identically the same and assuming, by turns, those diverse modes of appearance.41 The consciousness of identity is a constitutive character of perception. This wavering of the sensory data was well known to Mach,42 who also invoked it, but with the idea in mind of weakening the belief in the identity of the thing perceived. In his opinion, this belief depends on 38

One sees, then, that it is not even possible to define the duration of the “same” act, if one takes into consideration only the successions of the real facts of consciousness, and if one does not appeal to something identical, which obviously should be located somewhere else than where the successions are taking place. 39 Cf. T. H. Green, loc. cit., in op. cit., pp. 255–256 and 258. 40 Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 17, pp. 77–78 (39–40). 41 Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2nd. ed. (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1913), II, i, pp. 382–383. Henceforth this work will be cited as LU ; in the future, any second set of page numbers are those of the translation. 42 E. Mach, op. cit., pp. 7–8.

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the fact that the number of the changing sensory data is, in each particular case, of little significance in relation to those which remain relatively constant.43 Mach referred, above all, to those changes produced, on a permanent basis, in the object itself, without being oblivious to others which are of a passing character and depend on conditions in which an object is perceived, rather than signal a modification of this object itself. Let us take into consideration the latter facts. The color of a thing, for example, offers itself to us under aspects that vary with the lighting conditions: this color now appears clear, now it appears dark; it is now seen under a bright light, now in twilight, etc. But every time one is conscious of being in the presence of the same thing exhibiting the same color, and this consciousness of identity is an experienced fact. The color pertaining to a thing as its objective quality assumes, in turn, diverse modes of appearing, the succession of which betrays, however, no modification in the object itself. The objective color presents itself—and it cannot present itself otherwise—in terms of a multiplicity of sensory data, of aspects, or, as Husserl puts it, of Abschattungen (adumbrations). But, under each one of the aspects it adopts, the color, insofar as it is a quality attributed to a thing, is perceived as being identically the same as the one which had previously assumed another aspect and which, subsequently, would appear still under a third aspect, different from the two prior ones, etc. All these varied aspects are then considered only as so many possible modes, according to which the same objective quality can present itself. On the other hand, even when, in the course of an observation, some “sensory data” remain invariant, it is a question, with them, of an aspect under which the thing, or one of its qualities, presents itself, of one of the aspects under which it can appear, while being given as identically the same. And it will present itself under a different aspect as soon as the circumstances—in the broadest sense of the word—under which it is observed are modified, whether the changes resulting there from are a matter of a physical, a physiological, or a purely psychological order. One then gains nothing by having recourse to the relatively permanent qualities of the object in order to explain, as Mach did, the origin of one’s 43

Cf. ibid., p. 2; see also D. Hume, Treatise (Green), in op. cit., I, pp. 484–485.


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consciousness of their identity, or by contrasting those qualities with those that are more or less wavering in character. In effect, concerning each quality of the object, however constant such a quality may be, the same problem would be posed once again (i.e., the problem posed concerning the object as a whole): “we find the feature in question as a unity belonging to a passing flow of ‘multiplicities.’ ”44 One must then establish a separation between the sensory data, the aspects—the wavering and fluctuating multiplicities—and the sensible or, better yet, the sense-perceptible qualities of things, unities which are as self-identical and stable as the things themselves.45 This is so even though this distinction is ignored in everyday language, wherein the word “red,” for example, serves to designate both the chromatic shade of an object and, also and at the same time, a “sensory datum,” therefore, a real datum of consciousness. This separation is so strict and final that no variation in standpoint can transform a “sensory datum” of consciousness into a sense-perceptible quality of a thing, or vice versa. Also, one will not agree, with Mach, that research in physics would be about sensory data, and one will discover, in the confusion indicated, the reason that has led this author to his interpretation of physics. The latter, as we have pointed out,46 relies on, and orients itself toward, the facts that fall within the scope of sensibility, and its constructions are based on those facts and are incapable of being elaborated except by taking them as their point of departure. However, if facts of the sensible order are found at the basis of physics, they are not the “sensory data” of consciousness but the sense-perceptible qualities of things. Husserl’s criticism of the empiricist theories of perception is not directed at the single problem of the real existence of things and the so-called “dogmatic idealism,” by contrast with most of the criticisms addressed especially to Berkeley’s philosophy, including among them, for 44

E. Husserl, CM, p. 78 (40). Cf. E. Husserl, LU, Vol. II, Inv. v, § 2. Logische Untersuchungen, 2nd. ed. with additions, ed. U. Panzer, in Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XIX/1, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), II, Pt. 1, pp. 356ff.; Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), II, pp. 536ff.; Ideen, I, p. 75 (87–88), and, likewise, “Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenshaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie,” loc. cit., p. 104, n. 46 Cf. supra, Chapter 2, § IV. 45

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example, Kant’s own.47 The problem placed by Husserl in the foreground is that of the objectivity of things, that is to say, of their identity by contrast with the multiplicity of experienced acts in which one becomes conscious of those things, acts that are different from each other not only numerically (that is to say, by virtue of their placement in phenomenal time), but as well by their content. For this reason, Husserl’s criticism reveals itself to be the most far-reaching and radical among those which we have emphasized thus far concerning the theories of perception in question. In order to generalize the ideas that we are in the process of developing, let us quickly take into consideration the acts of the imagination. When one imagines say the god Jupiter, one traditionally assigns to him a “mental existence” in the consciousness of the subject imagining it, i.e., to a god who, because he does not exist, would be an “immanent object.”48 Now, if one carries out a descriptive analysis of this act of the imagination, one notes the presence in consciousness of a certain number of data—as real facts of consciousness—in the composition of this act, and perhaps also that of certain other data which, without being necessary to the makeup of an act of the imagination, nonetheless accompany it. But what can never be discovered as a real fact of consciousness, however far one wishes to carry on with the analysis, is the god Jupiter himself, to whom such character is attributed and of whom such fables are related. The subject is free to return to this mythological personage, precisely as the same, as often as he wishes, and he would do that by experiencing different acts of the imagination, acts that may be separated from one another by no matter what temporal interval. Even though he is nonexistent in the real world, the god Jupiter—who is one and identical by contrast with the many acts relating to it—does not exist in the psychical region either; he does not form part of the conscious life as the stream of experience. 47

Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 274–279 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1956), pp. 272 ff.; Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. K. Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), pp. 243 ff. 48 Cf. E. Husserl, LU, II, Inv. v, § 11 in op. cit., ed. U. Panzer, ii-1, pp. 384 ff.; trans., II, pp. 556 ff. and Ideen, I, § 23. Also see infra [page number missing, as indicated by the editor of the French edition of this work].


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This mythological personage exists neither in consciousness nor outside consciousness; he exists nowhere, but this is no obstacle to his being the identical object or theme of a whole multiplicity of acts which, in turn, are, as is the case with all the components thereof, real facts of consciousness. It is the same, therefore, in matters of the imagination as it is in matters of perception. Despite the differences existing among perception, memory, expectation, imagination, and so on, all these types of acts and, in general, all acts of consciousness have in common a particularity, to which the existence or nonexistence of the object is altogether indifferent: none of these acts is confused with the object of which one becomes aware thereby. For this reason, the expression “creation of the imagination,” which one habitually applies to the god Jupiter, is ambiguous: sometimes this expression designates the object imagined, the product created by the imagination, a product which, while corresponding to the act of the imagination, does not however really form part of it; but sometimes it indicates the act of creating, of constituting in the imagination the event of psychical life that this act of imaginatively becoming conscious is. Consequently, Husserl proposes the substitution of the term “intentional object”49 for that of “immanent object,” in order to avoid a terminology capable of suggesting that the object imagined would be a part of the act of the imagination. The ambiguity just denounced, moreover, is not fortuitous. By means of it, one would indicate the relation which the acts of the imagination bear to their objects. Now, so far as principles are concerned, this relation is the same as that obtaining between the multiplicity of perceptions and the thing perceived, and it entails the same problems. No matter what object is involved, neither the object as a whole nor any of its elements, moments, attributes, qualities, properties, etc., can be taken for a real fact of consciousness.50 The object, or “unity belonging to . . . [a multiplicity of ] modes of consciousness,”51 is nothing short of indifferent or foreign to the multiplicity of experienced states, a multiplicity with which it is 49 50 51

Concerning intentionality, cf. infra, §§ IV–V of this chapter. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 42, p. 76 (89–90) and CM, § 18, pp. 79–80 (41–42). E. Husserl, CM, § 17, p. 79 (41).

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contrasted, since the object cannot appear and present itself except in and by means of a multiplicity of experienced acts, which are so many ways of becoming conscious of it. But this very close and intimate relationship between the object and the multiplicity of acts corresponding thereto is certainly not that of part to whole, of content to container. It is not a question of a relation that would be established between facts located on the same plane. By remaining identically the same while the acts by means of which it is apprehended change, waver, and succeed one another (even at times in a discontinuous fashion), the object, whether perceived, remembered, imagined, etc., cannot be confused with any of those acts, or with their totality. Just to speak of perception, the being of the thing that is perceived but not experienced (vécue) is of an order altogether different from that of the being of acts that are experienced but not perceived.52 “Die Welt . . . ist nimmermehr Erlebnis des Denkenden. Erlebnis ist das die Welt-Meinen, die Welt selbst ist der intendierte Gegenstand.”53 That an experienced act is not perceived or, better yet, that it is not grasped, means that, in the straightforward attitude (namely, when, by the act he experiences, the subject is directed toward an object), the act in question is not the theme of mental concern that the object itself is. Thus, in perception, the theme or object is the thing perceived, not the perceptual act. Cf. E. Husserl, LU (Halle: 1913), II, Inv. v, § 14, p. 385; cf. also pp. 75–76. [Gurwitsch avails himself here of the distinction between perçu(e) or perçu(e)s (= perceived) and vécu(e) or vécu(e)s (= experienced), which may be quite clear in French but not so much in English. This difficulty could be removed by employing “lived,” the literal translation of the latter term, but the result would be awkward, except occasionally, as can be judged where it (and its related forms) have also been used here and there in the present translation. The point made by him is that one can have (perceptual) consciousness of something other than consciousness, while one would only have, by contrast, an awareness of, or live, the act of (perceptual) consciousness. This seems to correspond to the distinction between Erfahrung and Erlebnis, respectively. As he points out in the following paragraph, the difference is based on the fact that “an experienced act is not perceived, or, better yet, . . . it is not grasped . . . the act in question is not the theme of mental concern that the object itself is” for the perception.] 53 E. Husserl, LU (Halle: 1913), II, Inv. v, § 14, pp. 386–387. Husserliana, XIX-1, p. 401; trans., II, p. 568: “The world . . . never is a thinker’s experience. To refer to the world may be an experience, but the world itself is the object intended.” 52


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However, every act can become a theme for consciousness in the modified attitude of reflection, in which a new act comes to take the prior act for an object. This diverting of the mental gaze from the original object to turn it in on the act itself brings about an alteration in the latter. By virtue of its being transformed from an experienced state into an object grasped, the act loses somehow its “na¨ıveté” and “spontaneity.”54 Still reflection may get in the way of the free unfolding of the act grasped thereby. For example, in feeling joy about an act of theoretical thought one has freely and spontaneously performed, and in grasping, by an act of reflection, either the joy or the act of thought, the latter, accordingly, would find itself, as it were, checked and inhibited, a fact that would not fail to alter the joy as well.55 However, whether or not the act grasped in the reflective attitude undergoes such a modification (which one could describe as “material”), the major character of the alteration contributed by reflection as such to the act with which it is concerned is this: it constitutes an objectivation of the act in question. Suppose some perception (say, that of a house) is presently being experienced. While it is being experienced, this perception can be grasped by an act of reflection. Then this reflective act the object of which is the perception presently experienced has itself a perceptual character, to wit: that of an inner or immanent perception.56 If one averts one’s eyes from the house, the perceptual act ceases to be experienced, but the reflective act the object of which is this perception which has now disappeared may not disappear at the same time. The perceptual act, even though it has become inactual, continues to be present before, but not in, consciousness. Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 15, pp. 72–73 (33–34). Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 77. 56 By “inner” or “immanent perception,” Husserl (cf. LU, II, Inv. v, § 5) understands every reflective act the object of which is an act presently experienced. Concerning the example mentioned in the text, one must say that reflection is an immanent perception not by reason of the perceptual character of the perception of the house, but by reason of its actuality. There can be immanent perceptions of acts (of remembering, of expecting, of imagining, of willing, of valuing, etc.) which, as they are being experienced, are reflectively grasped. 54 55

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Obviously, it is no longer in the mode of an immanent perception, but in that of immediate memory or retention.57 As a result of the fact that the grasped act has gone from being actual to being inactual, a “parallel” modification is produced in the act of reflection. To be precise, let us say that a reflective act of retention is substituted for a reflective act of internal perception. In retention, the perception which has become inactual is given as just having been actually experienced, and it is given as being actually the same as the one which has just been experienced. Later, this past perception of the house may be recalled, which is not the same thing as recalling the perceived house.58 One can take a position with regard to it, etc., always being conscious of its identity. Reflective objectivation does not confer on the act grasped— it is pointless to insist on this—the sense of being a thing; it leaves it with that of being a fact of consciousness; but it contrasts it—as an object, as an identical unity—with the multiplicity of acts of grasping. Reflection does not bring the past act back to life, which is a manifest impossibility; its task consists in rendering it present to consciousness— under whatever manner of presentation it may be (immanent perception, retention, memory, and so on)—in observing it, in making it explicit, etc. Therefore, here, no more than in outer perception, or the perception of sensible things, the object of an act—i.e., the act grasped—is not identified with the act of grasping, not even when the being before the consciousness of the act grasped is one and the same as its being in consciousness, that is to say, when the act grasped and the grasping act, by coexisting simultaneously, or by succeeding each other immediately, form one single complex real fact of consciousness, which is a privilege of immanent perception and, if need be, of retention, or the mode of immediate memory.59 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 78; see also his “Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins,” §§ 8–9 and 11–12, Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, IX (1928). Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), ed. R. Boehm in Gesammelte Werke, X, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), A, pp. 24ff.; On The Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), ed. R. Bernet, trans. J. B. Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), iv, pp. 27ff. 58 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 148 (178). 59 Cf. ibid., pp. 68–69 (78–80). 57


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The reflective attitude, although it is artificial in a way, is quite often adopted in everyday life, as is the case when one states, “I see a house,” “I remember such an event,” “I think that . . .,” “I’m convinced that . . .,” “I doubt that . . .,” etc. Moreover, reflection is the only way in which it is possible to have express and explicit knowledge about conscious life at one’s disposal. For this reason, it is the necessary condition of every phenomenological, as well as psychological, study. In the critique wherein we denounced the confusion perpetrated by empiricism between the object of an act and this act itself, we abstained from bringing up for discussion a special thesis defended by every empiricist school. It is the matter of the sensory data in which, according to the psychological and philosophical tradition, one must see the simplest and most elementary facts of consciousness, data which, by being juxtaposed and combined, make up the perceptual acts, as well as the objects perceived. The existence of these so-called elementary facts, i.e., the sensations, is likewise known to Husserl. Sensations and similar elementary facts belong, according to him, to an inferior layer of consciousness, a layer on which interpretive and sense-bestowing acts are superposed.60 In these acts which animate the sensations and form them into perceptions, Husserl sees the specific character of intentionality.61 Contemporary psychology, with Gestalt theory, tends, more and more, to abandon this atomistic view of consciousness and substitutes the notion of Gestalt for that of sensation. The latter is an elementary and simple datum because of its isolation, [while the former is] considered therein to be an organized unity consisting of coherent and mutually dependent details, which are impossible to isolate without contributing an occasionally quite profound modification—by the sole fact of isolation—to the isolated part, as well as to the whole from which it is extracted.62 This progress in psychological thought is not devoid of very great importance Cf. E. Husserl, LU, II, Inv. v, § 14 and Ideen, I, § 85. Here we will not follow the evolution of the idea of intentionality in Husserl’s thought. In §§ 4–6 of this chapter, we will present the theory of intentionality in what we take to be its most developed form, in which it is free from excessively traditional elements. 62 Cf. P. Guillaume, La psychologie de la forme (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1937), pp. 19–22. The Gestalt theoreticians do not content themselves at all with presenting this notion defined, in general and abstractly, by M. Wertheimer (“Untersuchungen zur Lehre von 60 61

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for phenomenology; the phenomenological theories, just as the psychological ones, should conform to it. So far as perception is concerned, for example, one will be able no longer to maintain the distinction, admitted by Husserl, between an inferior layer of matters unformed and higher acts called to impart form thereto.63 But the contrast we are seeking to elaborate here between the one, identical object, on the one hand, and the multiplicity of acts relating to it, on the other, is not at all affected by this change in psychological theory. The fact that a thing should appear under the same aspect in a multiplicity of acts and, further, the fact that an identical thing should present itself as identical under a plurality of aspects different from one another, as well as the problems these facts give rise to, remain the same, whether one conceives of the aspects in question as composed of sensory elements that are independent of each other, or whether they are characterized by means of the concept of Gestalt. Later we will bring out another, more intimate relationship between Gestalt theory and phenomenology. §III. The Consciousness of Identity The empiricist school sees in consciousness a mere field of real facts. The latter, however different they may be in many respects from one another, have this in common: all are events produced in consciousness, they are modifications occurring in it. Their being amounts to being experienced, that is to say, to appearing and disappearing; outside their presence in der Gestalt, I. Prinzipielle Bemerkungen,” Psychologische Forschung, I (1922). Very fruitful applications of it have been made in every domain of the mental life, as well as in that of physiology, in virtue of the principle of “isomorphism” (cf. P. Guillaume, op. cit., pp. 23–25); besides Guillaume’s book, cf. the overall presentations by Wolfgang Köhler in Gestalt Psychology (New York: 1929; Liveright Publishing Co., 1947) and K. Koffka in Principles of Gestalt Psychology (London/New York: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner/Harcourt Brace, 1936 [1935].) Below (cf. p. 106), we shall briefly return to the notion of form (Gestalt). 63 Cf. our work, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” Chapter 3, § 16, Psychologische Forschung, XII (1929); “Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Pure Ego: Studies in the Relation between Gestalt Theory and Phenomenology,” SPP, pp. 193–318.


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consciousness, they are nothing. It is in terms of the logic of such a conception that Hume saw in “perceptions” only “internal and perishing existences,”64 and that he dealt with all of them on a perfectly equal footing, whether they be “primary” or “secondary qualities,” or even affective states, such as pleasures and pains.65 At the time when these facts are present, the object one becomes conscious of is considered by the empiricists as composed of the same real data as those of which the very act of consciousness consists. Being assimilated at every point into the acts and their components, the object, as well, can only be taken, according to the empiricist conception, for a real fact of consciousness, that is to say, for a really experienced, though complex fact. It is therefore conceived of as really existing in consciousness, of which it would actually form part, just as a particular act forms part of the stream of the experienced and lies within the totality of that stream. The object is contained—in the proper acceptation of the term—in the act by means of which one becomes conscious of it. In consequence, the appearing of an object before consciousness not only coincides with, and is no different from, the presence of certain real data in consciousness, but it comes to merge entirely with the said presence. Accordingly, there can be, strictly speaking, no problem regarding the relationship between the experienced acts and the object that presents itself, because the terms between which such a relationship could exist are altogether indistinguishable. This conception of the acts of consciousness and of the object to which these acts are related is not limited to perception, which, in the given context, served us as an illustrative example. The empiricists applied this conception to all the acts of consciousness, to those of the imagination as well as to those involved in abstraction, and so on. No matter what act or what object it is a question of, the empiricists located the object, qua real fact, in consciousness; they identified it with the acts thereof. The fundamental thesis governing this whole conception is the following: to become aware of an object means nothing else than to find 64

D. Hume, Treatise (Green), in op. cit., I, p. 483; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 194. Cf. ibid., in op. cit., I, pp. 480 and 482–483; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, pp. 190 and 192–193.

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it really existing in consciousness.66 That being the case, there is no longer any room for the identity of the object which one may become conscious of by a multiplicity of acts. In effect, the object (which, as a real fact, is located in consciousness) should inevitably share, at every point, the fate of the real data of consciousness, whether the object is defined as the sum of such data or as a functional relationship among them or in any other fashion. It is impossible for it not to appear and disappear with them. The said identity of the object is not, obviously, a purely objective fact. One must not classify it among those facts that exist independently of one’s actually becoming conscious of them, as, for example, when one casts one’s glance in a certain direction and can thus perceive a thing which until then was not perceived, and which the subject had not thought about and which had not previously presented itself to consciousness in any form. The perception of such a thing would therefore have, as it were, the value of a discovery or a rediscovery. The identity of the object is never, on principle, discovered in that sense. This means that the said identity is not derived from reasonings or conclusions. The consciousness of that identity has the character of immediacy, and it is qua immediate that it is present to every act, no matter the object to which it may be directed. But that identity is present to the act in a quite special fashion. It is not always expressly grasped; the subject is not constantly aware of it, as if, when any object becomes the theme of one’s mental concern, the identity of this object were, so to speak, a secondary theme that would be a permanent concomitant of the main one. However, at every turn of his conscious life, the subject is free to grasp, expressly and explicitly, the identity of the object in question. The subject would do so by turning in on the acts in which he becomes aware of the fact that the object he is presently conscious of is the same as the one that he had previously apprehended, whether he can temporally locate that prior act or recalls it simply as past (and, thus, devoid of a precise temporal localization). In this reflective attitude, the subject would also notice the possibility of returning to the same object with which he is presently occupied, by Cf. G. Berkeley, op. cit., § 23, p. 270: “bodies . . . are apprehended by, or exist in, . . . [the mind].”

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as many subsequent acts as he pleases, acts in which he would become conscious of it again. The object would reveal itself, then, in one’s turning in on one’s acts, as the same object that had been, is, and will be apprehended. One must nevertheless rightly emphasize that reflection here creates nothing new, just as it does not when one turns in on the temporal character of an act grasped not as if it arose when apprehended, but as having already lasted, before having been grasped, for some time (which, despite its having been experienced, has not however been expressly apprehended).67 What one’s turning in on one’s acts accomplishes is just the disengagement—and the rendering thematic—of the identity of an object which, in the normal case (that is to say, for as long as the mental gaze is directed to the object itself ), is not given explicitly. The consciousness of this identity is inherent in every act in which one becomes conscious of something, but it is present therein virtually and in a veiled fashion, i.e., as implicitly understood, in a way comparable to that of the existential character.68 Yet the consciousness of this identity, obviously, is not touched at all by the phenomenological reduction. The consciousness of the identity of the object is, in this implicit form, a constitutive element of every perception, as well as of any other act in which one becomes conscious of something. It serves to support and back up one’s entire conscious life, and no explanatory theory could erase it. The goal of every such theory should be to get at the consciousness of identity as it really plays a role in conscious life. In the first place, such a theory would be obliged to take into account the difference and the contrast between identity and multiplicity, that is to say, it would have to allow these opposite but correlative terms to subsist in mutual confrontation. This goal is missing in Hume’s theory, in which identity is explained as an unrecognized similarity. Hume himself acknowledged the impossibility of sacrificing one term to the other, as well as of linking them and, at the same time, allowing them to subsist.69 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 146 (176); see also § 45. Cf. supra, Chapter 2. 69 Cf. D. Hume, Treatise (Green), in op. cit., I, pp. 501–505; ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, pp. 209–218. 67 68

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Hence, the scant satisfaction which his theory produces, a fact that the author himself did not conceal. Even if one sets aside the criticism given expression above70 concerning Hume’s theory, and if one accepted all the principles and premises it calls upon, one cannot fail to note that that theory came to a result quite different from the one it should have reached. Once every concession is made, what Hume’s theory explains is the coming-into-being of a belief in the identity of “perceptions” experienced as distinct; a belief in the existence of sensory data, even when they do not present themselves any longer to consciousness; therefore, a belief in the survival of the real facts of consciousness when these data have disappeared.71 It goes without saying that such absurdities do not fit at all with the sense of the identity which, at every turn, plays a role in the subject’s conscious life. If Hume’s theory is untenable, it is less so because identity appears therein as a “fiction” and is imputed to the imagination, than it is because one cannot thereby get back to the opinion of the common run of people about identity; rather, one would end up being led to an interpretation of that opinion which is altogether foreign to it. That notwithstanding, these days Pradines72 has once again attempted to reduce identity to similarity or, better yet, to supplant the former by the latter. We will return to this theory below.73 One must therefore respect, as a primordial fact, this consciousness of identity which alone permits one to perceive the same thing under different aspects or, again, to perceive the same aspect on different occasions. It alone permits one to remember something that was perceived in the past and to remember it as such, to take up again a process of observation or reflection one has interrupted, to avail oneself of a theorem that one has demonstrated and which therefore is presented as the last term of a chain of conclusions, or as the point of departure for subsequent reasonings. It is only by calling upon this consciousness of identity that it is possible to hold various pieces of knowledge concurrently about the same object, to ascertain the certainty of a proposition that formerly appeared to be 70 71 72 73

Cf. supra, p. 129. Cf. supra, pp. 130 ff. for the summary we have provided of Hume’s theory. Cf. M. Pradines, Philosophie de la sensation (Paris: Les Belles-Lettres, 1928), I, p. 258. Cf. infra, Chapter 4.


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only probable or possible, to abandon a presumption one recognizes as erroneous, etc. Without this consciousness of their identity, the objects would not have this stability and this capacity of being recognized and taken up again with which they play a role for the subject. Strictly speaking, there would be no objects, but only momentary phantoms, which would be extinguished as soon as they appear, always new and unexpected, but never identifiable with each other; there would be nothing constant, permanent, repeatable. The subject would not know anything but the perpetual stream of the experienced, this wandering and flowing life of consciousness in which a phase would continuously succeed another, never to return. This would be so, whether conscious life is conceived, as it was by ancient empiricism, as a sequence of rigid facts independent of each other, or whether one insists, with James74 and Bergson75 (justifiedly one may add), on the continuity of the stream, the interpenetration of the experienced states, and the fusion and intrinsic organization thereof. The consciousness of identity thus reveals itself to be the source that provides sustenance for the function of objectivation, the unavoidable condition of objectivity itself. By the latter one must understand nothing else than the oneness of the object, as opposed to the multiplicity of acts relating to it, leaving out any question concerning the existence or the reality of the object. In this identity, one must see the most important and fundamental fact of consciousness, to the extent that it is in the nature of the latter to find itself before objects and that, in effect, it finds itself before them. These may equally be functional objects, reform things (or the qualities thereof ), works of art, social institutions, numbers, geometrical figures, judgments, theorems, chains of conclusions, theories, axiomatic systems, sets (in the mathematical sense of the term), and so on. In effect, in all these examples, what presents itself to consciousness is contrasted, as one and identical, to a multiplicity of acts, whether actually Cf. William James, The Principles of Psychology, Chapter ix, §§ 2–3 (London: 1908 [New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1890/Dover, 1950]), I, pp. 229–248. Moreover, James acknowledges the incapacity of introspective psychology in dealing with the problem of identity (cf. ibid., I, 480). Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “William James’s Theory of the ‘Transitive Parts’ of the Stream of Consciousness,” in SPP, pp. 335–370. 75 Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immediates de la conscience, Chapter 2, in Oeuvres, ed. A. Robinet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.) 74

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experienced or virtual. An accurate conception of consciousness, if it does not adopt that as its point of departure, cannot dispense at all, in any case, with taking into account the one paradoxical and possibly enigmatic fact among all, namely, on the one hand, that a consciousness which, considered in its facticity, is nothing but a continuous stream of the experienced, is nonetheless cognizant of permanent, stable, identifiable, and thus objective76 regions of being and objects; on the other hand, that it is related to them qua identical by means of acts which may not only be separated from each other by any temporal interval whatever, but which, even when they endure uninterruptedly, are also subject, by virtue of their duration, to changes and unceasing temporal transformations, as they go through the diverse phases of temporality, among which one may just note the initial, intermediary, and final ones. There you have the fact serving as the basis of the conception of consciousness elaborated by Husserl, to which we now turn. §IV. The Noema The critique of Mach’s theory to which we have given expression places at our disposal almost all the elements necessary to sketch out the three major lines constituting this new conception of consciousness. In taking up once more the study of perception, which serves us here as a paradigmatic example, let us bring back to mind the trichotomy effected77 in the perceptual act, namely, the act, the aspect under which, in this act, the thing is presented, and this thing itself. The latter, offering itself as it does in a multiplicity of acts, should therefore not be identified with any of its particular modes of presentation. Let us try to render precise the appearing of a thing under a certain aspect. Looking out through the window, one perceives a tree. This tree presents itself from this side, in a given orientation with regard to the perceiving subject; it is seen from this or that point of observation, as Cf. T. H. Green, “General Introduction,” in D. Hume, op. cit., I, § 176, pp. 196–197 for the question he raises in regard to the “idealism” of Hume, Berkeley, and Locke: “How can feelings, as ‘particular in time’ or (which is the same) in ‘perpetual flux,’ constitute or represent a world of permanent relations?” 77 Cf. supra, p. 118. 76


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close or distant; it appears with greater or lesser clarity or, again, indistinctly (when, for example, it is foggy); it is perceived in full daylight or in twilight; it presents itself in the light or in the dark, etc. The observer’s attention can be directed not so much to the tree as a whole as to its top or a detail thereof, so that certain parts, qualities, determinations, etc., of the tree which has thus appeared are placed in the foreground and are favored in detriment of others. The tree is perceived as being in the garden, in front of the wall separating the garden from the street, next to a wing of the house that appears at the same time; it offers itself in perception, therefore, as standing out against a background or, which means the same thing, as inserted in its surroundings. In perceiving it, the subject adopts one attitude or another. When, for example, the tree evokes memories from youth, it presents itself as evidence of one’s past childhood. Thus it bears some or other sentimental values; it appears as beautiful, pretty, useful, agreeable, etc. Finally, let us remark that this description—in which one must abide strictly by the phenomena and be scrupulously careful not to mix any foreign knowledge with the phenomena themselves78 —should not be limited to the data alone which are directly and immediately accessible to sight. Here one must likewise take into consideration facts which, without being seen, play nonetheless a role in perception. The tree presents itself from one of its sides to the subject observing it. However, what this subject perceives is a tree appearing under a certain aspect, but this is neither the outline nor the diagram of a tree. This aspect under which the tree is offering itself contains, then, a reference to those sides that are not being seen, which, in a particular perception, may be more or less determinate or altogether indeterminate, but which are present in the perception, in the sense that, absent the reference to them, the phenomena (to wit: the tree being offered from this side) would no longer be such as it is in fact.79 78

In what follows, we shall return to the purely and exclusively descriptive orientation— as well as to the reasons requiring it—which one must give to this account. [“Account” has been substituted for “description”]. 79 For the moment, let us limit ourselves to a provisional allusion to the phenomenon of reference, to which, because of its fundamental importance for perception, we are going to devote a more thorough study. Cf. infra, Chapter 4, § . . . [the exact cross-reference is missing, as indicated by the editor of the French edition of this work].

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Every element which, on whatever grounds, plays a role in perception (or, when one generalizes as one must,80 in any act of consciousness whatever) must be honored in a description of the sort we have just outlined in broad strokes. What has been described here is neither the thing pure and simple, the objective thing, nor—as one will see in what follows81 — the perceptual act. What we have sought to elaborate is what Husserl calls the noema of perception.82 In the example cited, the tree itself, such as it is in reality, has not been in question; it is a matter only of the noematic tree, this “tree-perceived-as-such,” [“arbre-perçu-comme-tel”] to borrow Sartre’s translation of Husserl’s expression, dieses Baumwahrgenommene als solches.83 By the expression “noema of a perception” one must then understand the thing such—and only and exclusively such—as it appears in perception, as it presents itself to the perceiving subject, as it plays a role in this particular act of the perceptual life. And this is what we are engaged in studying. Obviously, the noema can vary as the perceptions do, say, when the subject approaches, or moves away from, the thing under observation, when— having regarded it from one side—he proceeds to do so from a different one, when he effects a change in attitude, etc. Thus, it is a whole multiplicity of noemata that can be, and in fact is, placed in relation to the same objective thing, a relation that will constitute the main theme of the following chapter. But, in every particular perception, the thing offers itself under a certain aspect. The noema of a perception is the thing as it presents itself under this or that aspect and in this or that quite determinate fashion, but, let us reiterate it, it is the thing only such as it appears in effect in that concrete perception. The prior description was meant to provide an illustration for this formal definition of the noema; however incomplete that description may be, it will indicate the direction along which one must seek after the 80

Cf. supra, p.125. [Cross-reference missing, as indicated by the editor of the French edition of this work.] 82 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 88. 83 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’imagination (Paris: 1936, 5th ed., Presses Universitaires de France, 1953), p. 154; Imagination, trans. F. Williams (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1963), p. 140. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 89, p. 184, employing dieses in the text, as in the original, instead of das; trans., p. 216: “this perceived tree as perceived.” 81


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noema itself and the characters pertaining thereto. The noema of a perception may be equally described as the “sense” of that perception, insofar as the perception under consideration owes to it not only its being a perception of that object, but as well its being such and such a perception of the object in question. Not only are there noemata in the perceptual life. In an act of memory, of expectation, of judgment, of volition, etc., an object offers itself to the subject experiencing one or another of his acts, and that object presents itself to the subject in a certain mode of appearing, from such and such an angle, under such and such an aspect, from such and such a side, etc.84 Thus one can and should allow for the noemata of memory, expectation, judgment, volition, etc., by defining the noema in general as the object such, and only such, as it plays a role in a particular act in which one becomes conscious of something, an act that can vary according to the case. Concerning thought, James,85 in a way, had already in view what Husserl designates by “noema.” In raising the question as to what object—in a psychological sense—is present to the mind of the one who utters the sentence, “Columbus discovered America in 1492,” James86 underscored the fact that the object is “neither Columbus, nor America, nor its discovery.”87 As he said, “[t]he object of every thought . . . is neither more nor less than all that the thought thinks, exactly as the thought thinks it.”88 The separation advocated by James between the object that the thought is about and the object of thought89 does not coincide perfectly with the distinction between the objective object and the noematic object, for there are still—in the domain of thought and, above all, in that of judgment—very detailed distinctions to be made which we cannot tackle here,90 but prepares it. Cf. E. Husserl, ibid., §§ 91 and 94–96. Cf. W. James, op. cit., I, pp. 275–276. 86 Ibid., p. 275. 87 Ibid., p. 276. In the example, as James specified, the object of my thought is “nothing short of the entire sentence, ‘Columbus-discovered-America-in-1492.’ ” (Ibid., p. 275.) Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “William James’s Theory of the ‘Transitive Parts’ of the Stream of Consciousness,” vi; in SPP, pp. 335–370. 88 W. James, op. cit., p. 276. 89 Cf. ibid., pp. 275–276. 90 Cf. E. Husserl, LU, II, Inv. v, §§ 17, 20, and 21, and Ideen, I, § 94. 84 85

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In perception, one must give prominence to the fact that the noema is not identical either with the objective thing as a whole or with any of the real parts thereof, as if the diverse aspects under which the same thing presents itself were only real, though possibly artificial, parts into which the thing would have been mentally broken up by perception. The objective tree, including all its parts (which are also objective), occupies a certain place in space. It presents itself at its location; it appears in given surroundings. This location, then, forms part of the noema of perception and assumes the character of “location-perceived-as-such.” Accordingly, the complete noema of the perception in question should be described as “tree-perceived-as-such-placed-in-this-location-perceived-as-such.” Consequently, it would be altogether absurd to spatialize the noema itself, that is to say, to try to find a location for a “location-perceivedas-such,” to place therefore in space an aspect under which space itself and all spatial relations present themselves. The latter, to the extent that they are given in perception, appear in the perceptual noema, as when, for example, the tree appears placed in front of the wall, to the right of a wing of the house, etc. Thus, a noema can contain and—in the case of the perceptual noema91 —is necessarily to contain spatial relations, among a plurality of noematic objects. And, further, those spatial relations should also be understood in a noematic sense, i.e., as “spatial-relationsperceived-as-such.” But the noema itself is not spatially related to the objective thing (assigning to the aspect under which a thing presents itself the same place as that of the thing itself is to return to the absurdity just denounced) or to the act—which is aspatial by nature—or to another noema. Two noemata, whether concerning the same thing or not, can bear many a relation to each other, but those relations, whatever their nature, are not spatial in character at all. And this is so because the noema is, by its very nature, aspatial. A space-represented-as-such occupies no spatial location in relation to another space-represented-as-such. It is no doubt possible to form an idea of the spatial relation between two spaces. One does so by means of a third representation to which a noema encompassing both spaces would correspond. This would bring us to the case, already mentioned, of the noematic spatial relations among 91

As we shall see. Cf. infra, p. 161.


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a plurality of noematic objects. But this global noema would not be spatially related at all to one or the other noemata cited previously, no more than the latter would be so related to each other. Furthermore, the objective tree may burn up and be decomposed into its elements, all of its parts being, as a result, destroyed together with it. But the noema, the sense of such a definite perception, cannot burn up or undergo any of the physico-chemical transformations of which real things are susceptible.92 Obviously, one cannot have, any longer, perceptions of the tree that was destroyed. However, it was the objective thing that underwent the transformation of combustion, not the noematic object, namely, the “tree appearing from that side, being lightly stirred by the wind, offering itself during a pleasant day, etc.” Thus, after the destruction of the objective tree, it is still possible to remember it and render it present, in memory, under the same aspect, from the same angle, the same orientation, etc., as in the prior perception. Accordingly, the tree-remembered-as-such coincides with the tree-perceived-as-such. This coincidence signifies more than a relation to the same objective thing; it implies that the noema of the past perception is identical with that of the present memory, except only for the mode of appearing which, in one case, is that of perceptual presence and, in the other, that of memorial representation. To be sure, it is not possible to revive a past perception in order to have it confronted with the present memory, which is the only means of knowing something about the past. Now then, the very fact that the act of remembering is experienced as such, i.e., as a memory of such a specific past perception, implies that the perceptual noema survives the destruction of the objective thing. Freeing ourselves from the special conditions of our chosen example, we can say that, in every case, the act of remembering implies that the perceptual noema is identical with the memorial noema, though, strictly speaking, it is a question of the identity of the noematic core on both sides, since the modes of appearing are different.93 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 89. Unable to enter here into the thorough study of the structure of the noema, we are obliged to give up the presentation of the distinction established by Husserl between the noematic core and the thetic characteristics. Concerning the modes of appearing,

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Memorial consciousness has in view the same thing as that which has been perceived, and it has it in view as having been perceived. Without this identity, the very possibility of remembering would not exist for consciousness, insofar as remembering is an act by which what has been perceived is remembered and appears, as a memory, under the same aspect as that under which it was perceived. These remarks demonstrate, moreover, that the noema can no longer pass for a part, element, or anything like it, of the act qua real fact of consciousness. In effect, if the noema really pertained to the act, if it were contained in it as a real part, it would be impossible for the central core of the noema, as identical, to be shared in common by a past perception and a memory presently experienced. The same outcome would equally result from the criticism directed at Mach’s theory, a criticism wherein it was stressed94 that, if, during the process of observing a thing, one were to close and reopen one’s eyes on several occasions, one would experience a plurality of acts in which not only would the same thing be perceived, but it would be presented, still, from the same side, under the same aspect, according to the same orientation, and so on. Finally, the noema is not affected either by the succession of the diverse temporal phases through which the act qua real fact of consciousness passes because of its very duration. In effect, it is the same thing (and offering itself under the same aspect), the same thing-perceived-assuch, then, which is always present before consciousness, perceptual or otherwise. Hence, for all those reasons, the noema proves to be neither a physical nor psychical fact. It has nothing to do with spatial and with temporal determinations, whether it is a matter of physical or phenomenal time. Now, these determinations are the only distinctive marks of physical, as well as of psychical, reality. Still one must underscore the fact that, even when the object to which the noema is related does not pertain to reality, but is ideal in character, or is, as is usually said, a creation of the mind (such as a number, a geometrical figure, a relation, etc.), the noema (say, a geometrical figure such as the thinking subject has it in view) is not confused with the object itself, with the objective object, so to speak. cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 99 and, in reference to the doxic and thetic characteristics, cf. ibid., §§ 102–103. 94 Cf. supra, pp. 115–117.


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Thus, in the case of the noema, one is faced with an irreal, ideal entity, pertaining to an altogether special region that one must clearly distinguish from various regions of ideal objects.95 The specific region of noemata is that of sense or signification. In this context, we have allowed ourselves to be directed toward the noema by the problem of the identity of the object offering itself to consciousness in different acts. This problem, before which the empiricist conception of consciousness comes to grief, is posed only in the strictly phenomenological domain. In effect, up to this point, the phenomenological reduction has not intervened in our presentations. The posing of the problem in question does not depend on motifs which would suggest the phenomenological orientation to philosophical thought. This problem arises for every consideration of consciousness, and, therefore, it does equally for psychology, in which consciousness is viewed as one reality among others, is put back in the midst of mundane realities, and is studied in terms of its relations of interdependence to those realities. Consequently, the notion of the noema should not be taken for an exclusive possession of phenomenology. Its admission is also imperative in psychology, which should recognize in it one of its fundamental notions.96 However, this notion is disclosed in all its fruitfulness only if one places it in relation to the phenomenological reduction, from which one can derive the methodological norms for the exploration of the noema. The phenomenological reduction leads from consciousness— conceived as a psychical, and therefore as a mundane, reality—to 95

Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, p. 138. The problem of ideal objects, in the sense of the “amplified Platonic sphere” as Husserl puts it (ibid., p. 152 (170)), counts as one among those which here we are obliged to leave out of consideration. 96 In the introduction of the notion of the noema lies the major reform which phenomenology entails for psychology. Cf. E. Husserl, “Nachwort zu meinen Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie,” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, XI (1930), pp. 565–568. [Cf. E. Husserl, “Author’s Preface to the English Edition,” in his Ideas. General Introduction to Phenomenology (Ideen, I ), trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967), pp. 25ff. and A. Gurwitsch, “Rezension: Edmund Husserl’s Nachwort zu meiner Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (I),” Deutsche Literaturzeitung, February 28, 1932 (translated as “Critical Study of Husserl’s Nachwort,” in SPP, pp. 119–128).

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pure consciousness, that is to say, to consciousness viewed only as the stage—so to speak—for the appearing and constituting of objects.97 What this reduction allows to subsist are not only the experienced acts qua real facts of consciousness, but, as well, the objects which, by these acts, present themselves to consciousness. These objects are safeguarded such as they are, except for the fact that their existential character is placed within brackets. From then on, these objects should not be taken any longer for realities, but only for phenomenal objects. Now then, the phenomenal objects cannot be taken into account except insofar as they veritably and actually offer themselves to consciousness, i.e., to the extent that the subject has them in view when he experiences this or that particular act of perception, recall, judgment, thought, etc. Therefore, no phenomenal object whatever is admitted—in the phenomenological attitude—except insofar as it appears in a concrete particular act, that is to say, as presenting itself from such and such side, under such and such aspect, in such and such mode of appearing. In other words, and to avail ourselves of the terminology introduced here, we can say that, in virtue of the phenomenological reduction, the objects, while subsisting, are transformed into noemata.98 The tree one perceives in the garden is not taken any longer for that objective reality for which it is taken in the natural attitude. But this change in attitude is no impediment for the tree to continue to offer itself as involving the claim to being this objective reality. It is no impediment for the tree to present itself— which is what interests us here the most—under a certain aspect, referring us at the same time to other aspects.99 But neither is it an impediment for it to be retained, once one’s eyes are closed, in immediate memory, and for it to appear therein under the same aspect as that under which it was just given in perception, and under which it will be given again after one’s eyes are reopened. The phenomenological reduction does not then suppress at all the duality consisting of the phenomenal object presenting itself, on the one hand, and the experienced act by means of which it presents itself, on the other. Everything that has been experienced about this duality keeps its value in the phenomenological domain. 97 98 99

Cf. supra, Chapter 2, § 6. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 90 and 97 and CM, pp. 72–73 (34–35). Cf. supra, p. 132.


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At the same time, one sees that the objects undergoing the phenomenological reduction (which applies to all objects, without exception) reappear at the phenomenological level and do so in noematic form. There you have the most profound sense in which the preservation of objects in the phenomenological reduction should be understood. Thus Husserl100 has been able to maintain that all real and ideal regions of being, in connection with which the phenomenological reduction is carried out, find themselves represented, at the phenomenological level, by groups and contexts of noemata. In the next chapter, we will see that, in effect, the problem of the passage from the noema to the object—a problem posed with the discovery of the noema—comes down to that of putting back the particular noema into a group or system of noemata. Since the objects are incapable of playing a role in the phenomenological domain except as phenomenal objects, no place is left for an objective reality pure and simple, that is to say, for a reality that has not undergone the phenomenological reduction. In consequence, it is no longer lawful, in the phenomenological order, to have recourse to a reality that has not been placed within brackets, in order to supplant it—by availing oneself of it so as to measure it—by a given phenomenon of consciousness. Because of the phenomenological reduction, a strictly descriptive orientation becomes imperative in the study of the noema, whence every interpretation and every explanation going beyond the given should be set aside.101 In such a study, each character of the noema under examination should be taken just as it offers itself to direct, immediate observation; on the other hand, nothing should be imputed to the noema which, in a strictly descriptive observation, is not seen to belong to it. According to this analysis, no indirect knowledge, that is to say, no knowledge which has not been drawn from the noema itself, should be allowed to intervene.102 This methodological principle refers above all to theoretical knowledge (for example, physical and chemical knowledge), which therefore should play no role in the phenomenological study of perception. We have also been able to characterize103 the noematic object 100 101 102 103

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 278–279 (321–322). Cf. E. Husserl, CM, pp. 73–74 (35–36). Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 184 and 188 (217 and 221). Cf. supra, p. 132.

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as the bearer of different values (such as beautiful or pretty), and as placed in a certain surrounding (whether the latter is given in perception or is represented, remembered, etc.), without caring about psychological and physiological explanations one could give of those characters. In those explanations, it is customary to make a distinction between the genuine sensory data and what the latter evoke in the subject, by way of association or in any other manner whatever. Thus, those characters, or some among them, which are attributed to factors that are non-perceptual in themselves but would mingle nonetheless with perception, would be taken as secondary or incidental, because they are considered as added to the veritable sensory data or, more exactly, as projected upon them. As phenomenologists, we do not have to be concerned with the objections which, from a psychological point of view, can be raised—and in fact have been raised—by Gestalt theoreticians with regard to those explanations. It will suffice to remark that, in these explanations, the data of consciousness are placed in relation to nerve excitations in the receptor organs and, therefore, equally in relation to stimuli that are external to the constitution of the nervous system in general and, lastly, to the present state of this system conditioned and modified by its past. Such explanations rest on the separation between objective facts and subjective data, a separation that phenomenology cannot presuppose straightaway, but which is, for it, a goal to be attained, let alone the connection with bodily vital facts (objective realities as well), in terms of which consciousness is viewed. For the same reason, in our rather quick analysis of memory,104 we did not speak of memory’s conditioning by a prior perception, or of the traces left by the latter, facts which obviously are unquestionable. We limited ourselves to saying that, in a memorial act, an object presents itself in a non-original mode of appearing, and that it presents itself as having offered itself and as being capable of offering itself modo originali. In so doing, then, we abided by the descriptive sense of the memorial noema and brought out the consciousness of identity it envelops. The phenomenological reduction acquires, then, the very important function—important for psychology too—of supplying the definition of 104

Cf. supra, pp. 135–136.


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the “psychological object,” that is to say, of the object such as the subject has it in view, in contrast with the objective object, the object in itself.105 To be sure, the problem of identity alone is already sufficient to place every consideration of consciousness before the noematic region. However, it is the phenomenological reduction, or a methodological procedure similar to it, which permits rendering the notion of the noema precise and allows us to take advantage of the discovery expressed thereby, to penetrate the nature of the facts grouped under that heading, and to assign to those facts the place that is suitable for them. Gestalt theory has as its disposal such a methodological procedure with the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis.106 This hypothesis— which, in psychology prior to Gestalt theory, was at the basis of every explanation—presupposes the distinction between the sheer elementary sensory data and that which factors higher than mere sensibility would make of those sensory data. It consists in establishing a strict and rigorous correspondence between the sensory data and the external stimuli, in conceiving or, rather, in construing those data as a function, solely and exclusively, of the stimuli. To abandon the constancy hypothesis means no longer to orient the study of perception on the basis of the consideration of stimuli; it means, at least, to choose no longer this consideration as the point of departure of psychological research. In this regard, there is a certain equivalence between the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis and the phenomenological reduction.107 On both sides, similar methodological procedures entail a strictly descriptive orientation in research. In their studies on perception, the Gestalt theoreticians take what offers itself just 105

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 184 (216). ¨ W. Köhler has brought the constancy hypothesis up for discussion in his “Uber unbemerkte Empfindungen und Urteilstäuschungen,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie, LXVI (1913). Concerning this hypothesis and its abandonment in Gestalt theory, cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, Chapter 3 and K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology, pp. 80–88; see also our study, “Quelques aspects et quelques developpements de la psychologie de la forme,” loc. cit., pp. 413–415 and 420–431 in SPP, pp. 1–62. 107 We have tried to bring out this equivalence in our work, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” loc. cit, pp. 295–298 in SPP, pp. 213–214. 106

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as it presents itself, without caring about what—given such a constellation of stimuli—should appear, but is more or less distorted and deformed by the so-called higher factors. Now then, having in view and analyzing something perceived-as-such (i.e., not going beyond the object such as the perceiving subject regards it) means taking a noema into account. The descriptive analyses in which every consideration of facts outside consciousness is expressly excluded concern themselves with noemata; likewise, the notions constructed on the basis of those descriptive analyses—in the first place, the notion of Gestalt itself—have to do with noematic facts. Gestalt theory, on its descriptive side, shows itself to be, then, an investigation carried out at the noematic level. This is why it is possible to further certain phenomenological problems with the assistance of that theory. Thus, for example, there is a number of details that appear in the noema, the tree-perceived-as-such, namely, the trunk, the branches, the leaves, chromatic facts, spatial forms, etc. It is self-evident that all these details qua elements of a noema should also be understood in the noematic sense. Hence, the question would arise concerning the determination of the manner in which those noematic details coexist. One can show108 that the totality constituted by those details has,109 because of their coexistence, the nature of a global whole, in the sense given to the term in Gestalt theory, i.e., that the connection existing among them is a Gestaltverbindung, a Gestalt or structural nexus, as Wertheimer has defined it.110 The intrinsic structure of the noema or, more exactly, of the central noematic core—which may be common, in an identical sense, to a perception, a memory, or even an expectation111 —should be described in terms of Gestalt theory. On the other hand, if the descriptive researches of Gestalt theory are about noemata, the problem of the passage from the noema to the object arises for Gestalt theory, and it does so by reason 108

We have attempted to do so in Chapter one of the work mentioned in the prior note. [Reading a (has), instead of avec (with), as the French text has it.] 110 Cf. M. Wertheimer, “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, I,” in loc. cit., p. 52; cf. P. Guillaume, La psychologie de la forme, Chapter 3, § 4, for a summary presentation of this internal organization. We have given above a succinct definition of the notion of Gestalt (see supra, pp. 134–135). 111 Cf. supra, p. 135. For a precise definition of this central core, cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 91 and 130. 109


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of its descriptive orientation itself, since we are conscious of the identical object presenting itself under a plurality of aspects.112 The affinity that the equivalence of the phenomenological reduction and the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis creates between Husserlian phenomenology and Gestalt theory assures the latter’s establishment within phenomenology, and confers on its views philosophical interest and value. That affinity makes the constitutive problems of phenomenology arise also before Gestalt theory. It is precisely the profound philosophical ambition inspiring Gestalt theory—as its creators know—which urges it on and makes it impart a radical and truly philosophical form to the problems it raises. But here one must leave in abeyance the question of whether constitutive problems can be solved by means of the notion of Gestalt alone. To prevent any misunderstanding, let us underscore that only the descriptive analyses originating in the Gestalt school can be of use in phenomenology, but not the physiological explanations given in that school, explanations which the latter, as it pursues its psychological researches, is quite justified in developing, by holding fast, in consequence, to the natural attitude.113 This remark permits us to reduce to its just proportions the equivalence of the phenomenological reduction and the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis. To tell the truth, the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis is a fragmentary and incomplete phenomenological reduction; in effect, in Gestalt theory, human realities, including among them our psychophysical organization, are resorted to. It is by such means that one equally has recourse to the real objects, to the existence of an objective world. As a positive science, Gestalt theory is not obliged to go any further. 112

For the elaboration of this problem for Gestalt theory, cf. our article, “Quelques aspects et quelques développements de la psychologie de la forme,” loc. cit., pp. 460–461; translated in SPP, pp. 53 f. 113 Even in those explanations the descriptive orientation prevails, as one can judge by the methodological principle established by Koffka. Cf. “Psychologie,” iii.5, in M. Dessoir, ed. Lehrbuch der Philosophie (Berlin: Ullstein, 1925), II. According to this principle, the functional notions which do not serve to express the immediate and phenomenal observations, but to explain them (including among those notions the ideas one forms about the physiological processes) should be conceived of on the model of descriptive notions.

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The phenomenological reduction becomes imperative, in the radical and universal form given to it by Husserl, only when one poses problems philosophically. One must insist on this difference, but one must at the same time underscore that the phenomenological reduction, even in the narrow form it takes in the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis, permits us, by virtue of the descriptive orientation it entails, to raise truly philosophical problems and to contribute to their furtherance, not to mention the advances one owes to Gestalt theory in matters of pure psychology. §V. The Noetico-Noematic Correlation We have insisted much on the distinction, nay, the separation, to be established between noema and act. However, this distinction should not conceal the relation the noema bears to the act, even though the noema does not merge with it and is not a part or element thereof. This relation already points to the characterization of the noema as the sense of an act of perception, of memory, of expectation, of thought, of judgment, etc. The relation to an act is necessary to the noema defined as the perceivedas-such or, more generally, as the given-as-such. As the sense of an act, the noema is in need of an act to which it could be incorporated, of which it could be the sense. In effect, having been defined as the object such as the subject has it in view, the noema cannot be, except in relation to the fact that the subject has the object in view, that is to say, in relation to an act in which the object in question appears and presents itself under a certain aspect. The esse (being) of the noema cannot therefore consist in anything but in its percipi (being perceived), although this should not be understood in Berkeley’s sense, because the percipere (perceiving) does not contain the esse qua real ingredient.114 Far from having nothing to do with the act, the noema, on the contrary, is linked to it. It is in its nature to point to a fact outside itself, a fact that pertains to quite a different order, and to be in need of it so as to be capable of being. 114

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 206 (241). See G. Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, i. 3, in op. cit., I, p. 259.


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Moreover, the act, or noesis, as Husserl further calls it,115 is not just a psychical event which, at such and such a moment of phenomenal time, is produced in consciousness (to which amount its facticity and its reality qua real fact of consciousness). To the extent that experiencing an act is to become conscious of an object in one mode of appearing or another—e.g., in perception, memory, etc.—and to have in view the object which appears under a certain light, the relation to the “object-given-as-such” (that is say, to the noema) is essential and necessary to the noesis.116 Noema and noesis, then, reciprocally refer to each other; one cannot be without the other. They form an indissoluble unity which is that of a concrete phenomenon of consciousness. But in that unity one must distinguish between a noetic and a noematic side. Given the distinctions established, it follows that the unity constituted by the noema and the noesis cannot be endowed with the nature of a whole articulated with homogeneous parts or consisting of such parts. Since the terms coming into such a unity pertain to altogether different regions, the relationship between the noema and the noesis can be only one of correspondence or parallelism. The noetico-noematic parallelism manifests itself not only in the fact that an act cannot be described as the event in which one becomes conscious of such and such an object, rather than another,117 except in relation to its noema, but also in that every character, quality, mode, etc., of an act is reflected in a corresponding noematic character. Thus, to the perceptual character of the act corresponds the actual presence, a character the object bears just as it offers itself to perceptual consciousness. The mode of memory is expressed by the character “past” or “having been Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 15, pp. 74–75 (36). Concerning the definition of this term in Ideen, I, p. 174 (trans., pp. 205–206), cf. supra, p. 133 for our remarks. 116 Here we are not about to raise the question of whether all facts of consciousness exhibit the particularity of offering an object, or whether, besides those possessing this privilege, there are not others in which it is lacking, such as feeling and affective dispositions (e.g., anguish, depression, excitement, joy, etc.) One would then take the latter for general states, rather than for acts, defining these by their objectivating function. Be that as it may, in the present context, as in this entire book, it is only a matter of acts in the sense just specified. 117 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 204 (238–239). 115

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present,” with which the noematic object appears; that of expectation, by the character “going to be present,” etc.118 In a different order of noematic and noetic characters, one finds that the noematic character “being there” or “being real” corresponds to simple certainty, or the belief that is normally contained, as a real component, in a perception and also in a sure memory.119 The certainty of memory (insofar as it is a fact experienced by the subject who remembers an object) consists, noematically speaking, in this: that the object remembered offers itself as “having been truly present,” as “really existent,” even though it is not currently present. If an act is experienced in the modes of presumption, conjecture, questionability, or doubt, then the corresponding noematic object would bear, respectively, the character “possible,” “probable,” “problematic,” or “doubtful.” A sure proposition and a doubtful one may not differ from one another in terms of their objective content, to the extent that the same proposition, which previously had been simply accepted, can become doubtful. Should this happen, the proposition would be given with a measure of instability, as wavering somewhat, in a way, moreover, not unlike that of a perception concerning which the perceiving subject wonders whether or not he is the victim of an illusion. A doubtful proposition or perception may become stabilized; then, the noematic character “certainly true” or “certainly real” would be substituted for “doubtful.” That character does not correspond to a simple certainty, but to an affirmed certainty, that is to say, one which results from overcoming a doubt.120 It was in terms of the noetico-noematic parallelism that, in our presentation of the general thesis of the natural attitude, we were able equally to speak of an existential character inherent in the objects or of the belief—present in every mental activity—in the existence of objects, and that, likewise, the phenomenological reduction can be characterized either as holding the belief in question in abeyance or as inhibiting the existential character.121 118 119 120 121

Cf. ibid., p. 209 (244). Cf. ibid., § 103. Cf. ibid., § 106. Cf. supra, Chapter 2, §§ V and VI.


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Consider one more example of the noetico-noematic parallelism. In the act of appreciation, a value is conferred on an object. However, it would not be accurate to say that some properties of the object, by presenting themselves in perception, for instance, would trigger off the act of appreciation, which would be experienced simultaneously with the perceptual act but would remain a purely subjective fact, that is to say, one devoid of any influence over the noematic object. The latter, on the contrary, presents itself as endowed with a value character; this noematic character is inherent in the object such as the subject appreciating it has it in view. What is given in the act of appreciation is an “object of value,” by contrast with the pure object such as it is offered in a simple perception, whether, moreover, it is a matter of a reiform thing or of a functional object. But the object of value is based upon the pure object, in the sense that an object should be present for a value to be capable of being attributed to it. Noetically speaking, the act of appreciation cannot be carried out unless, either beforehand or at the same time, a perceptual act is experienced. The noematic correlate of this perceptual act—the pure object— serves to support the noematic character of value which, overlaying the pure object, transforms it into an object of value. Furthermore, an object that has been appreciated in the past may be simply perceived, without a value being still conferred on it. One sees thereby that a pure object is independent of the object of value, while the latter calls upon the pure object as its foundation and is in need thereof to be constituted.122 With the object of value, it is a question, then, of an object of superior or higher order, in the sense formally defined above.123 However, though an object of value not only presupposes the pure object but also implies and contains it, such is not the case with the material body which, while being constructed from and on the basis of a reiform thing, does not include any of its perceptible determinations. Not only, then, does Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 95. Husserl distinguishes between the werter Gegenstand (valuable object, ibid., p. 198, 232), the pure object bearing a value, and the Wertgegenstand (value object, ibid.), the object endowed with value in which the pure object, by virtue of the fact that it bears a value, is constituted. These analyses of the relations of foundation should not, moreover, be understood in a pyschological sense, as if the founding act should temporally precede the act founded on it; these analyses have a bearing only on the structural organization of the noemata and the noeses in question. 123 Cf. supra, Chapter 2, n. 19. 122

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a noematic character correspond to the act of appreciation itself (which is normally considered as merely “subjective”), but also, by virtue of that noematic character, the subject passes from a simple object to an object of a superior or higher order. We must confine ourselves to these few, all-too-quickly analyzed examples. We cannot reproduce the analyses in which Husserl has paid heed, concerning the most diverse phenomena, to the noetico-noematic parallelism by examining increasingly complicated structures, of which some have their foundation in others.124 These analyses fully confirm the thesis proposed earlier, namely: kein noetisches Moment ohne ein ihm spezifisch zugehöriges noematisches Moment.125 Yet one must not believe that the noematic characters are due to reflection.126 Of course, one grasps them reflectively by turning in on the noemata, while, by turning in on the noeses, one grasps the corresponding noetic characters. The latter are different from the noematic characters, to the extent that a valid negation is different from nonexistence, notions which, though equivalent, are not identical. Reflection, here as elsewhere,127 creates nothing new. Its function consists only in bringing out that which, in the ordinary life of consciousness, is not expressly grasped but is nonetheless given therein, and of which, in that life, one constantly avails oneself. Thus, for example, the subject, in experiencing an act of pure memory, orients himself very well toward the object being remembered, an object which, though not currently present, appears to him as really existent, without the subject having to render explicit this noematic character by his turning in on the noema. The noetico-noematic correlation dominates the entire conscious life; one can characterize the noema as the correlate of the noesis, and this serves to give expression to the intimate relationship between them. Now then, this correlation is of such a nature that, even though to every noesis pertains a noema and vice versa, the same noema can correspond—and in fact corresponds—to a whole multiplicity of noeses. The definition of 124

The entire Chapter 4 of Part 3 of Ideen, I is devoted to those studies. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 93, p. 193 (226): “no noetic moment without a noematic moment specifically belonging to it.” 126 Cf. ibid., § 108. 127 Cf. supra, pp. 126–127. 125


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the noema as an irreal and ideal unity (which is not at all contained, as a real element, in an act)128 involves the particular nature of the noeticonoematic correlation, which has been constantly called upon by us when it was a question of an identical object presenting itself, in the same light, in a plurality of acts. It is thus, and only thus, that this consciousness of identity becomes possible and comprehensible, a manner of consciousness that the empiricist theories, and especially Mach’s, are not in a position to take into account.129 But it is not a matter of explaining this identity, that is to say, of reducing it to simpler facts. On the contrary, it is by means of it, regarded as a primordial and irreducible fact, that the new conception of consciousness is developed. By developing such a conception, Husserl breaks with the entire tradition of modern philosophy and psychology, in which consciousness is taken for a sort of stage whereupon events occur and real facts appear and disappear. Consciousness is no longer considered as a simple and unique stratum. One must see in it a correlational phenomenon. What constitutes the substance and essential nature of consciousness is the not-one-toone noetico-noematic correlation and the opposition of a multiplicity of noeses to an identical noema. In this understanding of consciousness, as a correlational phenomenon, one can account for the temporality and the facticity of consciousness, and, at the same time, for the fact that—by means of the acts of this perpetual stream of the experienced, wherein there is nothing but continuous transformation and change—one can become conscious of permanent, stable objects offering themselves as identical. If the objectivity of objects is defined by their identity,130 one can then say that temporality and identity are the two major facts the opposition of which constitutes consciousness. These two major facts separate the phenomenological investigations oriented in respect of the subjective side of consciousness from those others which have a bearing, above all, on the problems concerning the appearing and the constitution of objects.131 128

Cf. supra, p. 137. Cf. supra, § III. 130 Cf. supra, 129. 131 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 161 (191–192). The subjective character of the acts of consciousness, which consists, in our opinion, in their temporality and their facticity, 129

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§VI. Intentionality It is this noetico-noematic correlation which one should keep in view when speaking of the intentionality of consciousness. In the philosophical literature published in German prior to phenomenology, and even in that which was contemporaneous with Husserl’s works, it is quite often a question—whether or not the term “intentionality” is employed—of the particular property consisting in relating to an object that (all or only some) acts of consciousness would possess. Thus, it is emphasized that a perception is a perception of the thing perceived, that in a representation an object is represented, that in an act of willing there is a thing willed, etc. Intentionality is therefore defined as the relationship to an object in which the act of consciousness necessarily finds itself. In very general terms, one can characterize an intentional act132 as the consciousness of something. This formula, which was employed by Husserl too,133 is perfectly correct, and there is nothing to object to it, provided that it be understood in the sense of the noetico-noematic correlation. However, there is good reason to point to a fundamental error, committed quite often, which not only compromises the understanding of the innovation Husserl has introduced in the conception of consciousness, but which also involves every study of the problems in question in an impasse. This error consists in making intentionality out to be one more trait of the acts of consciousness, a quality among others, a character, a tinge, in short, a real and palpable attribute that would belong either to all the facts of consciousness or to a particular class among them. It would be like intensity (which, in the eyes of some psychologists, constitutes an attribute of all sensory data), or like spatiality (which, according to nativism, is one of the sensory data, whether visual, tactile, or both). is placed by Husserl in relation to the “pure ego.” This question will not be tackled in this book; we have made a presentation of our point of view concerning the “pure ego” in our work, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” loc. cit., especially in pp. 317–320 and Chapter 4, § 4; in SPP, pp. 238–239 and 307–317. 132 Any allusion to “intention” in the volitional sense should be strictly excluded from the signification of the word “intentionality” and its derivatives. 133 Cf., e.g., E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 36 and 84, and CM, p. 72 (33).


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Considered thus as an attribute of the acts, nay, as, in a way, the most essential attribute thereof, intentionality would serve, as it were, as the bridgeway from the inner domain of consciousness to the extramental objects; it would be called upon to ensure the relationship and communication between that inner domain and the things found outside. It is said134 that everything that exists and is valid for any subject exists and is valid by virtue of acts that the subject experiences; it is thus, and only thus, that the subject arrives at his beliefs, certainties, and even evidences. If all that takes place in consciousness is more than a heap of merely subjective facts, more than a series of psychical events that matter only to the subject whose experienced states and modifications they are, if all of it can have a claim to objective significance, it is because of this special property of the acts which intentionality is. The latter renders the acts capable— without making them abandon the inner domain of consciousness—of attaining to the things found outside that inner domain. But such a theory of intentionality, when regarded more closely, is nothing but a verbal solution given to an artificial problem. One may ask by means of what attribute immanent in consciousness, by virtue of what real property belonging thereto, can an act of consciousness, riveted as it is by nature to the psychical inner domain, succeed in passing beyond the boundaries of that sphere in order to be concerned with an object external to it? No real quality of an act can ever be more than a subjective fact and, in consequence, can in any fashion confer on that act the capacity to reach an external sphere. Even the idea of an external sphere—whether it is a question of spatio-temporal things or of ideal objects, such as numbers, geometric facts, etc., that is to say, the ideas of facts that are not real data of consciousness—would not exist for a consciousness and could not be conceived by it, if, in that consciousness, only really experienced data, as well as the real components thereof, were admitted. To call upon intentionality, while considering it a real property of consciousness in order to explain by means of it the absolute impossibility consisting in having the acts go beyond the sphere of psychical interiority, is to take intentionality as a truly magical force. Philosophical realism (to wit: the opposition between consciousness and the objective thing, both of which are given—in terms of that 134

Cf. E. Husserl, ibid., § 40.

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opposition—as located in the same region, namely, that of mundane reality) is the reason, or at least one of the principal reasons, why such a theory could have been established. Given that mundane reality would be split into a so-called inner domain of consciousness and a domain external thereto, the task would then arise of reconnecting the two domains. But, in reestablishing this connection, one should take into account the fact that a human being who lives in the world, who finds himself surrounded by objects belonging to it, who undergoes influences exerted by those objects and reacts to those influences, at the same time relates himself to those objects, becomes conscious of them, incurs experiences of them, and constructs pieces of scientific knowledge about them. That connection to be established between consciousness and the universe (or, rather, the objective universes) should be of such a nature that it would be guaranteed exclusively by the intrinsic characters immanent in the facts of consciousness. It is thus that the problem is posed to every consideration of consciousness in which one starts from exterior stimuli and conceives of the facts of sense experience as a function of those stimuli, whatever be, moreover, the idea one forms of that functional connection. It is not sufficient to interpret the data of consciousness as effects conditioned and brought about by the stimuli and to explain the mechanism leading from the causes to the effects. Even if one admits any explanation whatever of this mechanism, an enigmatic fact would remain: that the data of consciousness—in the eyes of the subject who, in experiencing them, undergoes all the effects of the stimulation—are related to their “causes,” that is to say, that the subject, by means of those data, becomes conscious of the objective world.135 In those acts in which one becomes conscious, the objects present themselves as identical and identifiable, while those acts themselves change from one to another and involve nothing permanent or repeatable. One is therefore brought back to the task which has just been denounced as unworkable, namely, that of rendering identity and externality intelligible only on the basis of real facts of consciousness. 135

This problem has been brought out by M. Pradines (cf. op. cit., I, p. 255). Moreover, the same problem reappears in Pradines’s felicitous distinction between “reaction to the place” and “representation of the place.” (Cf. ibid., Bk. II, Pt. I, Chapter 2, §§ ii.ii and iii.iii.)


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This difficulty makes apparent, once again, the great importance of the phenomenological reduction. Too many authors, even those among them who are phenomenologists, fail to remark the enormous importance of it; it is thus that they have been able to believe themselves justified in dispensing with the phenomenological reduction, which, in reality, responds to a philosophical necessity of extreme urgency. Not only does the phenomenological reduction make the philosophy of consciousness come out of the antinomic situation in which this philosophy finds itself under the threat of losing its way,136 but it also opens up the way of access to the noema and facilitates the complete understanding thereof137 ; it thus prepares a satisfactory and coherent theory of intentionality. To this end, it is absolutely necessary to drop every realistic presupposition consisting in viewing consciousness and objective things, prior to philosophical reflection and analysis, as two mundane realities. That is why we began our presentation of the Husserlian conception of consciousness with a critique of the conception thereof defended by empiricism and, particularly, by Mach. In effect, Mach did not adopt a realistic standpoint, not any more than Hume did, whose views he went back to and systematically developed. It is in Hume that Husserl believes he can detect, in a way, the first phenomenologist.138 According to Husserl, Hume employed the phenomenological reduction in a rudimentary or, more accurately, germinal form, without, certainly, grasping it expressly as a philosophical method and without explicitly becoming aware of its principles. He was the first seriously to put into effect Descartes’ suggestions to conceive of consciousness as a pure field of perceptions, impressions, and ideas, without integrating this field as a mundane reality into the totality of those realities. By means of the analysis of the data of consciousness conceived of in this fashion, Hume sought to bring out the sense of being of objective things and the genuine sense of the categories valid for them (for example, causality). One must seek after the consequences and developments of the empiricist conception of consciousness, be it in the form they take 136 137 138

Cf. supra, Chapter 1, § V. Cf. supra, pp. 138 ff. Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, pp. 226–227 (255–257).

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in Mach or in that given to them by Bergson,139 and to press on with them until a problem—insoluble in terms of the empiricist conception of consciousness—arises, namely, that of the identity of the object as opposed to the multiplicity of acts relating to it. This identity, in which Husserl sees the chief fact of consciousness, has been chosen by him as keystone, if one can say so, of the theory of intentionality he has established. The notion of intentionality has been introduced in contemporary philosophy by F. Brentano who took up again certain views of Aristotle’s and the Scholastics.140 Brentano sought to identify distinctive marks capable of differentiating what he called “psychical phenomena” (e.g., every act of perceiving, remembering, judging, thinking, doubting, etc., as well as the 139

The framework of this book does not permit us to discuss Bergson’s doctrine. A critique of the latter, undertaken from the point of view of phenomenology, should join forces with that which Pradines gives expression to about it. To be sure, Pradines does not stress the problem of identity, and the notion of intentionality, though he mentions it in passing (cf. op. cit., I, p. 252), is foreign to him, at least in the sense in which Husserl employs it. However, Pradines emphasizes (cf. ibid., I, pp. 22–24) that the conception of consciousness defended by Bergson, as well as by James, is only a form of empiricism or radicalized impressionism: “[u]ndefiled consciousness may no longer be like dust consisting of hard and discrete grains; its fluidity is but that of the smoke that would be produced by their being crushed.” That leads us back to maintaining— justifiedly, it seems to us—that, in James’s and Bergson’s conception, consciousness is not any closer to the object than it was in the case of classical empiricism. [Cf. Henri Bergson, “Introduction a` la métaphysique,” La pensée et le mouvant, in Oeuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), pp. 1397 (183), 1402 (189), and 1417 (208); “An Introduction to Metaphysics,” trans. T. E. Hulme (Indianapolis: The Library of Liberal Arts/The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1955), pp. 25, 30, and 47; A. Gurwitsch, “William James’s Theory of the ‘Transitive Parts’ of the Stream of Consciousness,” SPP, pp. 357 f. 140 [See F. Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. L. L. McAlister, trans., A. C. Rancurello et al. (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), Bk. II, i, § 5, pp. 88–89, n. See next note for details on the edition in German. Cf., e.g., Aristotle, De anima, iii.5, 430 a 14 and 8, 431 b 1, trans. J. A. Smith, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, rev. Oxford ed., ed. J. Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press/Bollingen Series LXXI-2, 1984), I, pp. 684 and 686; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia., q. 14, a. 1, Responsio, Latin/English, Blackfriars ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill and London: Eyre & Spottiswoode), IV (1964), p. 7; and H. D. Gardeil, O.P., Introduction to the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. J. A. Otto (St. Louis: B. Herder Co., 1956), III, pp. 101–102.]


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emotional acts, for instance, joy, sadness, etc.) from “physical phenomena” (e.g., a color, a shape perceived by sight, a chord heard, heat, and an odor sensed, etc.).141 Among the distinctive characteristics of “psychical phenomena,” Brentano cited the intentionale (auch mentale) Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes, die Beziehung auf einem Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein Objekt, . . . die immanente Gegenständlichkeit.142 This distinctive mark of the “psychical phenomena” is, according to him, the most important of all.143 Obviously, the object contained in the “psychical phenomenon” is not the real object, but an immanent object, which, however, is really present in consciousness.144 But, then, the immanent object, riveted as it is to the act, should disappear with it; it cannot be common to two different acts. Consequently, the problem of the identity of the object would come to be posed again; 141

F. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, ed. O. Kraus, 2nd. ed. (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1924–1925), I, pp. 11–112 (trans., pp. 77–80). Obliged as we are by the limits of this book to confine ourselves to bringing up only the difference between Brentano and Husserl concerning the theory of intentionality, we should give up showing in its true light, even if insufficiently, the great importance of Brentano’s work in paving the way for phenomenology. So far as the distinction between “psychical” and “physical phenomena” is concerned, we should likewise confine ourselves to indicating how significant it would be to follow the developments and filiations of this ¨ doctrine as found in Alexius Meinong’s Gegenstandstheorie. [Object Theory; cf. his “Uber die Gegenstandstheorie,” in Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie, ed. A. Meinong (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1904), pp. 1–50]; in C. Stumpf ’s Funktionspsychologie [Function Psychology; cf. “Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen,” Abhandlungen der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Kl., 4;] and in Husserl’s phenomenology. It is by studying that development—and the discussions it gave rise to—that one would succeed in bringing out the legitimate sense in which it is necessary to be cognizant of a difference, in consciousness, between facts of an inferior or lower order and those of a superior or higher order. This is likewise true, moreover, in respect of other distinctions advocated by Brentano. 142 F. Brentano, op. cit., I, Bk. II, Chapter 1, § 5 (trans., p. 88): [“the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, . . . reference to a content, direction toward an object . . ., or immanent objectivity.” The term “inexistence” is not to be understood as if it meant “nonexistence,” but as signifying “existence-in” the mind, and thus as opposed to existence simpliciter or extra mentem. (Cf. ibid., trans., p. 88, n.)] 143 Cf. ibid., I, p. 137 (trans., p. 89). 144 Cf. ibid., II, pp. 8–9.

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now, even though the terms in which this problem is posed in Brentano’s conception are not the same as those in which one must raise it vis-àvis the empiricist conception,145 it does not admit of a solution in one conception any more than in the other. Concerning this problem, one must insist on the separation between the noesis and the noema and that Husserl substitutes the noema for Brentano’s immanent object, that is to say, the object—real or transcendent, since he knows of no other—which presents itself in a certain light, i.e., under the aspect in which it offers itself to the subject in a concrete act. It is in this substitution that lies the most essential difference between Husserl and Brentano, and also between Husserl and other thinkers inspired by Brentano. This substitution marks the progress achieved by Husserl in the theory of intentionality, as well as in the conception of consciousness in general. Moreover, in admitting an immanent object, one would have (in perception, for example) two objects, and the immanent object would serve as image, sign, symbol, etc., of the real object. To say nothing of the confusion that this interpretation involves between perceptual consciousness and the consciousness of images, signs, symbols, etc.,146 let us remark only that this relationship between the immanent object and the real object should be noted for what it appears to consciousness. To do this is possible only by means of a second act that would compare the immanent object of the original act with the real object. But that comparison would require that the real object be accessible to the second act, which in Brentano’s theory would not be possible except by means of a second immanent object, in such a way that, strictly speaking, the comparison would bear only on the immanent object of the original act and that of the second one. But these two objects would find themselves related to the same object, the noting of which relation would inevitably entail, therefore, an infinite regress.147 Finally, immediate observation and descriptive analysis know of no immanent object contained in the act as a real part (unlike the transcendent object), neither in perception nor in any other act whatever, a point which, in the case of the acts of the imagination, has already 145 146 147

Cf. supra, pp. 129–130. We shall later return to this point. [No cross-reference is given.] Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 186 (219).


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been made.148 According to Oskar Kraus, who has re-edited Brentano’s works and prepared the publication of his posthumous writings, the latter abandoned, in the course of the subsequent evolution of his thought, the doctrine of the mental existence of the immanent objects.149 However, what Brentano did not abandon is the interpretation of intentionality as a real property of “psychical phenomena.” Kraus himself has just confirmed this by maintaining that,150 according to Brentano, every difference between acts of consciousness should be understood as a variation of psychical reality along different directions, whether it is a matter of the substitution of one mode of becoming conscious for another (say, a volition for a simple representation) or of the passage from an object to another (any question concerning the existence or nonexistence of those objects being set aside in the analysis of the acts.) Brentano therefore persevered in his interpretation of consciousness as a region consisting only of one stratum. In spite of the progress he achieved with respect to empiricism with his introduction of the notion of intentionality, consciousness is for him, as for the empiricists, only a sequence of facts and events. Now then, if a real attribute of the act is called upon to ensure that the act be directed toward the object, not only does one come up against the problem of identity, but also against the problem—denounced as artificial—of the placement of consciousness in relation to objective things and, in general, to objectivities of all sorts. Husserl did not take up again the theory of intentionality in the form it had assumed in Brentano, and he did not directly continue its development, though he was influenced to a very considerable extent by Brentano and owed him many an inspiration (as Husserl himself was the first to acknowledge). Husserl was not concerned with a real attribute of the acts, unrecognized or much neglected until his time, but with the identity of objects and with the consciousness of this identity. Thus, he succeeded in breaking with the traditional conception of consciousness and in seeing in consciousness a correlational phenomenon. This new understanding of consciousness signifies that every act thereof is related to a sense, that it incorporates 148 149 150

Cf. supra, p. 115. Cf. Chapter 2 of the editor’s [O. Kraus’s] “Introduction” to F. Brentano, op. cit., I. Cf. O. Kraus, loc. cit., in F. Brentano, op. cit., I, p. xxxi.

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a sense, but one must not believe that the act qua experienced fact is an unformed matter that a sense projected from without would inform. Quite the contrary, the act, in itself and by its own nature, is the incorporation of a sense. Its temporality and its facticity, on the one hand, and its relation to a sense, on the other, are the two indissociable and inseparable (though discernible) sides of the same phenomenon. The relationship to the plane of sense and the participation in sense (that is to say, in ideal and irreal facts) make up the essential substance of consciousness which, as such and by its very nature, is oriented in respect of that plane. To experience an act of consciousness is therefore to actualize a sense. It would be to give a much too narrow definition of intentionality, were one to restrict it to the noetico-noematic parallelism. Actually, intentionality points to the opposition of a multiplicity to a unity and the relationship between them. This opposition is one of the most general facts about consciousness; it appears in all of its acts and groups of acts, but it does not assume the same form everywhere. In accordance with the constitution of the objects one is directed at, the forms assumed by this opposition prove to be different from one another in that the facts playing a role in the multiplicity and unities, respectively, vary, and in that, in consequence, the sense of that opposition itself is modified as well. The noetico-noematic parallelism is one of the forms in which the opposition in question appears. It is even a remarkable type of intentionality, since that parallelism forms part of all the higher forms of intentionality, presupposing it and being supported by it. Thus, the noetico-noematic parallelism reveals itself not only as the most elementary but also as the most fundamental type of intentionality, as the infrastructure of all the higher and more complex forms. To bring out all the forms that the opposition between a multiplicity and a unity may take and, correlatively, to establish all the types of intentionality is to do nothing else than phenomenology in its entirety, and to elucidate the constitution of all objects and of all regions of being. But phenomenology is this at its inception, rather than at its conclusion, and the boundaries of this volume impose restrictions on us. Therefore, we will take into consideration—in the next chapter—only one of the higher forms of intentionality, namely, that which comes into play in the constitution of objective things.


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§VII. Cogito and Copresence All acts that have been taken into consideration up to this point have this particularity: that the object offering itself in each one of them not only presents itself to consciousness, but also appears as the theme of the subject’s mental concern. Not only does he live those acts but, what is more, he lives in them. Husserl calls the acts exhibiting that particularity cogitationes, and he defines them by means of an especially intimate relationship to the pure ego.151 The cogitationes emanate, as it were, from the pure ego; when one such act is experienced, a mental regard springs from the pure ego and, while remaining tethered thereto, it directs itself toward the object in question. Thus Husserl sees spontaneous activities of the pure ego in the acts of the form cogito.152 In this book, we leave aside every question concerning the pure ego153 ; therefore, we shall not discuss the description of the cogito. We will adhere to another definition of it given by Husserl.154 According to this definition, actionality (Aktualität) characterizes the experienced states of the form cogito. In such an act, one becomes thematically conscious of the object which, for this reason, finds itself placed at the center of the conscious life. In adopting this definition, it seems advisable to us to describe the actionality of which it is a question here, namely, thematic actionality, since, as we will see below,155 the terms “actionality” and “non-actionality” are also employed in connection with other phenomena and thus acquire other significations. In the analysis of the conscious life, to confine oneself to cogitationes alone is to contract that life by way of abstraction. In effect, if consciousness involved just cogitationes, not only would the subject plunge himself into the theme with which he is occupied at the moment, but he would immerse himself therein to such a degree that his conscious life would be as if focused on that moment. Nothing of the past or of the future of the subject, not even of the duration of the act he is experiencing, could be present to the subject, who would lose himself entirely in his present theme and would be reduced to an instantaneous life. Thus, the stream of 151 152 153 154 155

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 57 and 80. Cf. ibid., pp. 192 and 253 (225–226 and 291). Cf. supra, n. 131. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 50–51 and 63 (53–54 and 71–72) and § 37. Cf. infra, pp. 164.

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the experienced would present itself as a sequence of quasi-punctual states distinct from one another. Strictly speaking, there would be no longer a stream of the experienced.156 Passing from a theme to a different one, the subject, as he plunges into the subsequent theme, could not have any knowledge, in any form whatever, of the prior theme. Moreover, the object which, in an act of the form cogito, appears as theme would be, in the eyes of the subject, as if it were isolated from the rest of the world. The subject could not have in view anything but his theme and nothing else; that is to say, the theme could not be related at all to facts outside itself, or present itself in a perspective with which it would be endowed by those facts. For example, as the subject attentively looks at the book located on the table, the latter and the other objects placed on it (which, without playing the role of themes, appear nonetheless to him) should be annihilated in the eyes of the subject, if he experienced only a cogitatio. The theme is an articulated and closed (fragmenté) whole, in the sense given to it by the Gestalt theoreticians157 ; yet, however differentiated and rich in details it may be, what is being offered can only be a sector of the world, but even this term would be inadequate, to the extent that it refers us to the whole from which the part in question has been separated. Just as the conscious life in its entirety would be spent in the actually experienced cogitatio, so would the subject lose sight of the rest of the world. Yet the conscious life is not, in reality, like that, as one can appreciate it by means of the example of perception. The thing upon which perceptual attention is directed never offers itself in isolation; it always presents itself as placed in an environment, as standing out against a background.158 For instance, a sheet of paper one is regarding attentively appears in a perceptual field with it at its center. This perceptual field consists of the table upon which the sheet of paper is placed and the books, pencils, inkwells, etc., assembled around it. All these objects, of which one does not have a thematic consciousness, are also being perceived: they are copresent with the theme. But one must not believe that the subject is in the presence of a 156

[Cf. H. Bergson, “Introduction a` la métaphysique,” in op. cit., p. 1398 (183–184); trans., p. 26.] 157 Cf. supra, pp. 134 (see also pp. 142–143). 158 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 35.


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plurality of noemata. The noema defined as the object-perceived-as-such is, in our case, the sheet-of-paper-perceived-as-placed-in-such-and-suchsurroundings. It is, then, a matter of only one single noema, which is possessed of a quite determinate internal structure, a perceptual field organized with reference to a center, to which corresponds an act of the form cogito. Thus the affirmation made above159 is justified, that spatial relations should play a part in every perceptual noema. Compared with this noematic structure, one can characterize the cogitative perception as an “exception” (in the etymological sense of the word)160 of the theme from its copresent background. It seems of interest to note here a particularity of the vision of hemianoptic patients. If as a result of cerebral lesions, one half of the retina ceases to function, a functional (or non-anatomical) fovea is created that is different from an anatomical one, the latter being placed, under these conditions, on the fringe of the healthy part of the retina. The functional fovea is located within the healthy half of the retina, this location varying, however, with the circumstances of vision.161 The consequence thereof is that the object perceived162 attentively—i.e., the perceptual theme, in our terminology—is placed by the hemianoptic patient, as well as by the normal human being, at the center of the perceptual field. Moreover, the eyes of the hemianoptic patient change their position in relation to the external world, so that, when the patient sets his sights on the object, he seems to regard it from the side, this direction becoming 159

Cf. supra, p. 134. [From the Latin noun exceptio and verb excipere, and thus from ex- (from or out of ) and capere (to take or heave), i.e., to retire or withdraw; hence, etymologically speaking, “exception” means that which is taken out or lifted up, that which stands out. Cf. excepte, in Albert Duzat et al., Nouveau dictionnaire étymologique et historique (Paris: Larousse, 1969), p. 286, left col. and Paul Robert, Dictionnaire alphabétique & analogique de la langue française (Paris: Société du Nouveau Littré, 1977), p. 723, left col.; see “except1 ,” in C. T. Onions et al., eds., The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 334, left col. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 62 (70–71) and A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pt. V, § 3. 161 Cf. W. Fuchs’s detailed and thorough study of this phenomenon, namely, “Untersuchungen u¨ ber das Sehen der Hemianopiker und Hemiamblyopiker. I. Verlagerungserscheinungen,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie, LXXXIV (1920). 162 [Reading perçu (perceived) for est perçu (is perceived).] 160

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for him the frontal one. According to Goldstein,163 all these reorganizations and displacements stem from the fact that only such an organization of the visual field guarantees a plain and clear vision. One sees, by means of this example borrowed from psychopathology, that the results of phenomenology keep their value for the psychological and physiological studies in which one perseveres in the natural attitude. Copresence, obviously, is not restricted to the perceptual life. In remembering a past event, it is never the case that that event alone offers itself. Just as some of the circumstances under which it is produced are present, so are some other events likewise present in memory with greater or lesser clarity and plainness, events which, without being internally related to the event in question, were simply contemporaneous with it. Here too, then, an entire, more or less articulated and closed (fragmenté) field, endowed with more or less distinct structures, appears organized with respect to its center, which is the theme of the memory. Still it is true that the subject, immersed in his memories though he may be, does not completely lose consciousness of his current situation, but keeps to a certain orientation with regard to it. This orientation may be most generic, vague, and confused, but it is never absent. The objects surrounding the subject living in his memories continue to present themselves as perceived,164 whether noticed or not. The subject has a possibly very indeterminate and ill-defined knowledge of the circumstances under which he finds himself, of what he just did, of what he is about to do, and so on. The result of the provisional analysis of these two examples is that an act of the form cogito is never experienced by itself; consequently, the stream of the experienced is not composed solely of actional (actuels)165 acts. Every such act is, on the contrary, placed, as it were, in the midst of non-actional (inactuels) acts, the objective correlates of which are copresent with the one corresponding to the cogitative act. Given that, in 163

Cf. K. Goldstein, Der Aufbau des Organismus, pp. 32–38. [Reading perçus for perception.] 165 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 63–64 (71–73). Cf. ibid., p. 63 (72): “the stream of mental processes can never consist of just actionalities.” [After “two examples,” Gurwitsch adds the following parenthetical remark: “in what follows, we will increase the number of examples, as well as go deeper into them.”] 164


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the absence of the phenomenon of copresence, there could not be a consciousness of continuity and context or a stream of the experienced or a world being presented, one must see in that phenomenon not only a fact, but definitely a necessity. The acts—or the components of the act (to which components the copresent data would correspond), if one prefers not to speak of a plurality of acts that keep in view a single noema—are genuine intentional facts. This means that the copresent data possess the character of objectivity. In effect, since the same noema can correspond to a multiplicity of acts, not only can the noematic core reappear as the theme on several occasions, but also can the noematic elements making up the background—some or all of them—present themselves in each of those acts. One such similar noematic element offers itself as identically the same as the one that offered itself previously, being only copresent each time. For example, in experiencing a perceptual act, it is still possible to avert one’s mental regard from the object to which it had been directed until then, and to choose, as a new theme, an object that originally presented itself in the background.166 Then, in the second act, the noematic object would appear as being exactly the same as the one that was already given by the previous act, but that, in this act, had taken up the form of copresence, while, now, it constitutes the theme of one’s mental concern. In relation to this possible passage, the copresent facts can be characterized as potential themes; noetically speaking, the non-actionality of the corresponding acts can be described as potentiality: these acts can be transformed into thematic consciousness.167 The passage from the potential to the actual form of a datum is obviously attended always by a passage, in the opposite sense, that would affect another datum. Thus, for instance, in constructing or reconstructing a somewhat complicated mathematical demonstration, one passes from a premise to the next. Now, when the latter has become the theme of thought, the preceding premise is not held back 166

In actualizing this possibility, one passes from one act to another and, correlatively, from one noema to another. This passage is not, however, just any passage, but a motivated one, a fact indicating the special connections between the noemata of the two acts. The nature of the motivated passages and of the corresponding internoematic connections constitute a sufficiently important problem in phenomenology, which we have here to limit ourselves to pointing out. 167 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 35, as well as pp. 169–170 (200–201).

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from consciousness; it is not forgotten; on the contrary, it is retained; it has become copresent with the current theme.168 The term “retention” serves to convey, above all, a temporal character: the survival, in immediate memory, of a datum which thus appears as being no longer, but as having just been, present. However, in the example adduced, the term “retention” does not just convey this temporal character, therefore a special form of copresence. In effect, by dint of being retained in immediate memory, a datum is contemporaneous with that which, at the moment of phenomenal time in question, is present to consciousness as a theme. In the example given, the term “retention” also gives expression—as we are about to see—to a privileged form of copresence. Since the noematic object itself appears sometimes as a theme, sometimes as a copresent fact,169 the distinction between actionality and non-actionality introduces a new dimension of variations that can be produced in the acts relating to the same object. This distinction makes a very general structure of intentionality come to light: the thematic actionality and non-actionality are two alternative forms for every act of consciousness, so that it must assume one or the other. §VIII. The Thematic Field In order to go deeper into the phenomena of copresence, let us take up again some ideas found in our work, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich.” There we sought to render certain views of Gestalt theory fruitful for the phenomenological analysis of the facts in question, and we 168

Cf. ibid., p. 236 and, particularly, pp. 253–254 (272–274 and 291–293). Traditionally, this modification has been attributed to attention. One should however stress that it is only in particular cases that a change in so-called attention has as its sole effect that the character of theme be conferred on, or be taken away from, a noematic object. In other cases, ordinarily considered equally as produced by a change in attention, the noematic core is so profoundly altered that it is no longer possible to speak of one and the same object as found sometimes at the center, sometimes in the background. Here we cannot go into the problems of attention, all of which boil down, it seems to us, to that of thematic consciousness; permit us, then, to refer, concerning this matter, to our work, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” loc. cit., Chapter 3 in SPP, pp. 241 ff.

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thus tried to make this analysis advance beyond the state in which Husserl had left it, while remaining indebted to him not only for a number of suggestions but, principally, for the direction in which we attempted to make the investigations progress. Among the facts that are copresent with a theme, one must establish a distinction, the presentation of which will be better served by means of some examples. When one reflects, as one is walking down the street, on some scientific theorem or other, the theorem, constituting as it does the theme with which one’s thought is concerned, never presents itself alone, but appears against a background. This background can be comprised of premises from which the theorem in question derives, or of the consequences following from it, or the subject may think over the theorem in question by taking into consideration its possible applications. Or, again, the theorem would present itself as occupying a certain place in a more encompassing theoretical context for which it has a well-defined signification. The reasons in virtue of which one can defend this theoretical context, that is to say, the specific manner of conceiving the facts on which the theorem in question has a bearing, can be indicated in the background, as much as the objections that could be expressed concerning it, and so on. These and similar data are noticeably different from those other facts that are also copresent, such as the memory—coming to the subject who continues to be immersed in the theme—that he had already reflected on the theorem in question which, in the past, was presented against the same or a different background. In continuing his stroll, the subject, however engrossed he may be in his reflections, does not lose sight of the objective of his walk; he sees the street, the houses lined along it, the human beings passing by; he hears the noise made by the cars, etc., without paying heed to it. He feels, as well, the passing of phenomenal time: he is immediately cognizant, though only globally and vaguely, that his reflections have lingered already for quite a long time; he anticipates their impending interruption, and so on. The facts of the second group have no other connection with the theme than being simultaneous with it. It is altogether immaterial to the theme, such as it is present to consciousness, whether or not the subject had been previously occupied with it, provided that, by virtue of his remembering that he was previously occupied with the theme, facts having to do with

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the latter (but over which the subject has not yet thought) do not come to enrich the theme itself or the background against which it is being offered. If such an enrichment is produced, the facts responsible for that would obviously come from this group of copresent facts. And this enrichment would be due to the appearing before consciousness of facts which the subject, in his present engagement with the theme, has not yet brought into play, although they may have been present at the time of a previous reflection on the same theme, rather than to a mere recollection of that previous reflection. In effect, it is of no importance at all to the theme or its background, modified as they would be owing to that enrichment, once both are constituted and stabilized, that the subject may remember—at the same time that he is concerned with the theme in question—that he had previously reflected on it or considered it such as it presents itself now. All the more reason to say that it is of no consequence, to a “scientific-theoremthought-as-such,” that the perceptions experienced by the subject, when he thinks it over, be these rather than those, or that the subject may reflect on it for a long time, or that he may interrupt his reflections soon, etc. All these facts are only concomitants of the theme; they are just copresent with it, that is to say, experienced at the same time, though placed, so to speak, on the fringes of the activity of thought. By contrast with these marginal, copresent facts, with which we will meet again in the next section, those that were referred to first serve to determine the manner in which the theme offers itself. That a scientific theorem may appear as a result of such and such premises or as the point of departure for such and such subsequent conclusions, that it may present itself in light of this theoretical context rather than another, or, again, as open to being questioned for such and such reasons or to being defended because of such and such other reasons, etc.—there you have what serves to define the orientation of thought, the disposition or attitude in which the subject views the theme, what the German psychologists call Einstellung. These copresent data constitute not only a horizon of simultaneity surrounding the theme, but are internally and qualitatively related to it as well. Such data determine the direction of thought, or, more exactly, they create an environment for thought. Thus, the theme appears in light of the copresent facts belonging to this category, and it owes them the


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perspective in which it presents itself. The totality of copresent facts (which, in each case, have this significance for the appearing of the theme) form the thematic field wherein the theme is placed. The thematic field is nothing but the noematic correlate of the disposition, attitude, or Einstellung, notions by which one refers, as is proper, to the psychical (that is, to say, the noetic) facts. Here we have another example of the precision and universality of the concept of the noetico-noematic parallelism. To the extent that it is impossible to take into consideration, in some fashion or other, any theme, except according to a certain orientation or Einstellung, one must say that a theme can be given only as placed in a thematic field wherein it is located at the center. This serves to convey the emerging of the theme from the thematic field, as well as the organization of the latter with respect to the theme, since what ensures that a copresent fact occupies its place in the thematic field is only the contribution of this fact to the formation of the perspective of the theme. The placement of the theme in a thematic field, as separate from the purely marginal copresent facts, is a most general structure observed on every plane of mental activity. Above170 we had the occasion of pointing out that if, in a mathematical reflection, one passes from a proposition to the next, the former is retained in immediate memory and becomes copresent with the latter. When this proposition has become the theme of thought, we have likewise indicated that it assumes a privileged form of copresence. Now, this privileged form is nothing else than the situation in which the proposition in question finds itself in the thematic field, in relation to the one that has become thematic: the latter would appear, in effect, as following from the former, or as leading—in conjunction with it—to a subsequent proposition that would be a conclusion deriving from the two, and so on. If, moreover, while engrossed in the same reflection, one hears a noise without being diverted from the reflection, that noise would be only a concomitant of the latter, being perceived simultaneously with it. When the noise has ceased, it is still retained in immediate memory, until it is forgotten. But, no matter how it is given, the noise never comes to form part of the thematic field; it remains a purely copresent fact and is a concern for marginal consciousness. 170

Cf. supra, p. 163.

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Similar observations are to be made about perception. Edgar Rubin was the first to subject the theme and the thematic field to a systematic examination on the visual plane, and he has done so under the rubric of Figur (figure) and Grund (ground). Rubin171 gives, in all, the characteristics of the “figure” by contrast with the “ground”: the figure is formed, while the ground is not; the contour appears as the boundary of the figure, not of the ground, which, on the contrary, seems to continue underneath the figure; the figure exhibits the character of a thing (Dingcharakter), while the ground has, in a way, the nature of a material, of a medium (Stoffcharakter); the figure imposes itself on consciousness more than the ground—the figure plays therein a preponderant role from a functional standpoint and contains more sedimentary experiences than the ground. All, or nearly all, of these characters can be generalized and applied, mutatis mutandis, to data other than the visual, or even than the perceptual ones.172 Rubin’s analytical studies are about the special form assumed by the relationship of the theme to the thematic field on the visual plane. The author indicates, as well, the difference which, in our terminology, is expressed by the terms thematic field and marginal facts: in looking at a picture drawn on paper, one does not view, as if it belonged to the background, the chimney that one perceives through the window at the same time one is looking at the picture.173 However, it is only in a certain attitude, as one perceives things simply as located where one encounters them, that the thematic field is formed by this part of the perceptible field next to the thing taken as a theme. Thus, for instance, when one looks at the Palace of the Louvre while being interested only in the architectural form of this monument, the Carrousel Court, the Tuileries Garden, the neighboring streets, in short, the urban layout in which the monument is placed, form the thematic field. But if the Palace of the Louvre were to appear in historical perspective, say, that of the history of its construction, as the stage where such and such events of the history of France took place, the historical facts in 171

Cf. E. Rubin, Visuell wahrgenommene Figuren; Studien in psychologischer Analyse (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, 1921), Pt. I, §§ 5, 6, and 9. 172 This generalization has been made by the Gestalt school. 173 Cf. E. Rubin, op. cit., p. 50.


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question would constitute the thematic field, while the parts of its surroundings, which are and continue to be perceived, would come within the scope of marginal consciousness. Not all the facts belonging to the thematic field present themselves with total clarity and perfect definition. Only those among them which are found, so to speak, closest to the theme are given in that manner, whereas others merge and fuse with one another into a vague global phenomenon. The thematic field never appears endowed with perfect closure (fragmentation) and articulation, that is to say, as a context of facts set off distinctly and plainly from each other. It always contains some indeterminateness and a sort of indefiniteness that surrounds its elements, erases the contours thereof, and thus renders them undefined and indistinct. That indefiniteness may spread more or less over the thematic field, until, in extreme cases, it fills it up in its entirety. The same thing, then, is true, and with all the more reason, in less extreme cases. The indefiniteness is never absolute to the point that every difference among extremely vague and indeterminate thematic fields would be abolished. No matter how indistinct and indeterminate a thematic field may be, it never fails to bear a specific character, a distinctive and most global coloring by which a given orientation of thought is distinguished from another. The environment in which a theme is found and the perspective in which it presents itself can be as vague and indeterminate as one wishes, but at least its most generic and global character will be given in a more or less vague and undefined fashion. Thus, one can view a scientific theorem in terms of consequences entailed thereby, even though none of them may present themselves clearly. Then, so to speak, all the stages that thought would attain, if it moved in a certain direction, would be immersed, as it were, in a mist. Yet this very direction would be announced to consciousness as different from the one that would be indicated, in an indistinct fashion as well, if the theorem were to be offered as following from premises, none of which would likewise be given distinctly. No matter, then, how vague the environment or background of a thought may be, the subject would never cease to have a vague, undefined, approximate consciousness of the orientation of the said thought. The thematic field should be taken and described as it in effect offers itself, in all its indetermination and imprecision, with its haziness and

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the vagueness proper to its elements. A purely and strictly descriptive orientation in research becomes imperative here, as well as everywhere in matters phenomenological. Therefore, one will not count, among the elements making up the phenomenal background that surrounds a thing perceived and chosen as the theme of the perception, all the facts which are “objectively” found close to the thing in question, and which, by means of scientific exploration, one could note or even discover about it.174 It is a question only of those facts which, in a concrete situation, actually appear to the perceiving subject, and which furthermore—since they are more than simply marginal facts—contribute to the formation of the background over against which the perceptual theme stands out, while remaining connected thereto by virtue of that very fact. Generally speaking, in the phenomenological study of the thematic field, just as, moreover, in that of marginal facts, it is a matter not of that which could be copresent, but only of that which, in a concrete case, really is. The method in the phenomenological analysis of copresent facts is, then, that of observation in reflection, i.e., that of turning in on the experienced phenomena such as they offer themselves, with their vague and fading contours, with all their indeterminateness, in twilight and chiaroscuro. In such a study, it is of the first importance to avoid every modification of the concrete experienced phenomenon. Therefore, one should not, in order to observe it better, focus one’s attention on a copresent datum. The latter would become, for this reason, the theme of a new act, located at the center of a new thematic field, while the prior theme, if the subject does not entirely lose sight of it, would go into a new thematic field, or even become a marginal fact. Besides, one must refrain from posing the question of knowing whether or not a fact that does not appear on its own initiative is copresent with the given theme. When, for example, the subject has in view a scientific theorem that presents itself in light of its premises, and he wonders whether or not one or another of the conclusions to be derived from the theorem would perhaps be equally copresent, the orientation of thought and the perspective of the theme are altered by that question. 174

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 62 (69–71).


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In effect, as soon as the question, even the thought—however fleeting it may be—concerning eventual conclusions intervenes, the theorem that until then had offered itself as the terminus of a sequence of reasonings would appear either as the basis of those conclusions or as an intermediary between those propositions preceding and those following it. The premises, as well as the conclusions, can be given with a greater or lesser degree of indetermination, up to the point in which just a horizon would open up and the entire special content of the eventual conclusions— conclusions present only in that fashion—would remain in indefinite obscurity. Be that as it may, just by posing such a question, one would bring about a more or less noticeable change in the experienced phenomenon; in other words, another phenomenon would be substituted for that which one had wished to study. Since the thematic field constitutes the environment in which the theme finds itself placed and accords it the aspect under which it presents itself, the connection between them is not therefore an Undverbindung (an and-connection), in the sense defined by Wertheimer.175 The theme is not wholly indifferent to changes occurring in the thematic field. These changes make it appear in a different light, in another perspective; they modify the attitude in which the theme is grasped, the orientation of thought related to it. But they have to do only with the perspective of the theme; they do not concern the theme in itself, even though they constitute, no doubt, a most essential mode of the presentation of the said perspective. The theme remains constant with respect to those changes. In effect, while keeping a scientific theorem in view, it is possible, for example, to go from an attitude to another, to consider it, alternatively, in light of its premises or in that of conclusions to be drawn from it, while the theorem is being given—during all that time and through those modifications—as the same, and in conjunction with the consciousness of its identity. The theme, though linked to the thematic field from which it borrows its perspective, is not, however, bound to it; it is not based on it. Quite the contrary, it enjoys a certain independence with respect to the thematic field, and, even when one’s attitude has not changed, the theme 175

Cf. M. Wertheimer, “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, I,” loc. cit., pp. 48–50. [Reading Undverbindung for Underverbindung. See infra, p. 188].

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offers itself as susceptible of being detached from such a thematic field and of being translated to another. The theme’s consistency stems from its internal Gestalt organization. Wertheimer176 has spoken of shapes which, while contained—as geometric parts—in more inclusive shapes, do not, however, appear as phenomenal parts thereof, because they are completely swallowed up by the latter. If one considers those part-shapes in isolation, their components (and, especially, their contours) would establish relationships with each other and, accordingly, ascribe one another functions altogether different from those which the same features—the same from the objective and geometric point of view—would assume inside the more inclusive shapes. The isolation of a part and the extraction of a detail imply, therefore, the dissociation of the original shape and the formation of new shapes, and thus a profound and radical alteration of the data. Such coherence among the components of a shape requires that, at the same time that they show the closest affinity with each other, they separate themselves plainly and distinctly from every fact not found among them, that is to say, from every fact that does not form part of the organization of the shape. Hence, we note here the independence of the shape and, in general, of the theme with respect to the thematic field, a manner of independence discovered by Rubin177 and found to be markedly unlike the structure of the theme. In the latter, in effect, no detail is independent of another, all details therein backing up and supporting one another and existing only by reciprocally conditioning each other. The consistency of the theme, which is rendered manifest by its phenomenal invariability with respect to the diverse perspectives in which it can appear, is likewise at the basis of the possibility, mentioned above,178 that the same datum may appear sometimes as a theme, sometimes as a copresent fact (as an element of the thematic field or as a marginal fact). The comparison of the structure of the theme with the relationship between the theme and the thematic field leads us to distinguish between 176

Cf. M. Wertheimer, “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, II,” Psychologische Forschung, IV (1923), §§ 34, 40, and 41; see also W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, Chapter 6. 177 Cf. E. Rubin, op. cit., p. 70. 178 Cf. supra, pp. 142–143.


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two types of Gestaltverbindung. The first one is relative to the inner organization of the theme. It is in this sense that the work begun by Wertheimer is oriented; the point at which these investigations join phenomenology has been indicated above.179 The second type of Gestaltverbindung has to do with the connection between the theme and the thematic field; thus Rubin’s analyses are also relocated in the context of phenomenology. The objects of use, as we have explained,180 are defined by that in the service of which they are placed, by the employment to which they lend themselves. The being of these objects is determined by the functional values they assume in a practical situation, and they assume those values with respect to other objects of use which, in conjunction with them, play a role in a situation of action. Such a practical situation, in which the subject lives, is a thematic field that is relative to the object which the subject is handling and on which his activity has a bearing. Thus, the specific structure of the objects of use seems to reduce itself to the relationship between the theme and the thematic field: the determination of an object of use by the overall practical situation, that is to say, by the role this object plays therein, seems to be a particular case of a most general fact, namely, that the thematic field lends the theme its perspective and brings it to light. Now, in effect, the consistency of the theme and its independence with respect to the thematic field are encountered here too. When, for example, a craftsman perceives, on a shelf, a tool the practical employment of which he knows, the said tool is not absorbed by its present surroundings; it is not fused with it, but, on the contrary, it continues to offer itself in terms of the perspective of the use to which the perceiving subject is in the habit of putting it, that is to say, in the light of a situation of action which, at the moment the perception takes place, is not being actualized. And so it is, even if the subject perceives the tool according to an attitude in which he does not think about its employment, and in which his thought is not oriented to the work situation for which the tool is intended. This example shows, to begin with, the consistency of the theme and its capacity for being transferred from one thematic field to another; it provides us, as well, with a confirmation of the thesis 179 180

Cf. supra, p. 143. Cf. supra, Chapter 2, § I.

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maintained above,181 that the perceptible surroundings of a perceived object may not coincide with its thematic field. This example serves also to bring to the fore a fairly important fact: the tool appears undoubtedly in light of the current attitude according to which it is being perceived, but it nonetheless preserves the functional values it derives from a different situation which, in this perception, is not given, or which, at least, does not appear therein as part of the thematic field. The object of use, then, has not derived the functional values determining its being from any thematic field, but from a specific one which constitutes, so to speak, its natural surrounding, and which, for the same object, may vary from one subject to another. With an object of this type, one is in the presence of a privileged case—rather than in that of a special one—of the relationship between theme and thematic field. While keeping its relative independence, the object of use is linked to its natural surrounding in such a particular fashion that, wherever it may be located and in whatever attitude it may be considered, it is always imbued with the role it plays in such a surrounding. Phenomenological inquiries into the constitution of an object of use call, therefore, for the analysis of its thematic field and, especially, of the distinct thematic field thereof, and for bringing out into the open the factors and processes by means of which its natural surrounding is formed. Moreover, the passage from the object of use to the reform thing requires the loosening of the bonds between the object of use and its natural surrounding, to the point of completely severing their relations and totally obliterating the functional values of the said object, so that, when all is said and done, the result would be the object as the bearer of objective,182 perceptible qualities. It is therefore well-founded to suspect that, for a consciousness, the more the objects are linked to their natural surroundings, the less consciousness will know of things, and, in consequence and with greater justification, the less the universe of physics will be accessible to it. The relative independence of the object of use with respect even to its natural surroundings is ultimately at the basis of the mutual understanding among diverse subjects, whether one of them succeeds in being in the other’s shoes and in adopting his way of looking at things, or 181 182

Cf. supra, pp. 167–168. Cf. supra, Chapter 2, p. 84 for the sense of “objective.”


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whether the subjects come to meet one another in a situation common to them all. In the latter case, the object would appear to them in light of their common situation, a fact that would thus render possible their mutual understanding. The object would however preserve, for each one of the subjects, the functional values that are essential to and characteristic of it, values that may sometimes differ from one subject to the next. §IX. Marginal Consciousness Marginal facts, as has been explained,183 contribute nothing either to the formation of the theme itself or to that of the perspective in which the latter appears. Changes occurring in those facts—say, the succession of some perceptions by others among those which are attendant on the thinking of a scientific theorem—entail no modification of the theoremthought-about-as-such, or of the orientation or of the attitude in which it is grasped. The connection that exists between those facts, on the one hand, and between the theme and the thematic field, on the other, is an Undverbindung, for it is the distinctive mark of a sum that the alteration contributed to one or another of its terms has to do only with those terms on which it has a direct bearing, while the others remain such as they are. The “objective” side of the acts, that is to say, the “what” of the datum—understood in a sufficiently broad sense—is therefore completely unaffected by the marginal facts which, on the other hand, are of major importance to the “subjective” side of the phenomena of consciousness. Given the identity of the noema,184 the question should arise as to what the diversity of those acts consists in for consciousness, that is to say, how the acts in question stand out, as many, for consciousness. This question is posed all the more since it is only from a noematic standpoint that an act can be characterized, to wit: as that in which one becomes conscious of the object as offering itself under a well-defined aspect, from such and such a side, as grasped in a certain attitude, etc. 183

Cf. supra, pp. 167 ff. [The following parenthetical remark appears in the text at this point:] “And the identity not only of the theme but, as well, of the thematic field, and even that of the mode of appearing (e.g., perception, memory, thought, etc.), by contrast with the multiplicity of acts to which it [the theme] corresponds.”

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So, for example, in perceiving any object, a memory may be produced on the fringes of the perceptual activity, to the effect that this object has already been perceived and that it had formerly appeared under the same aspect, from the same side, in the same perspective as it does now. It is only this possibility of being remembered as a marginal fact that constitutes, from a phenomenological point of view, the temporal precedence of an act with respect to the one during which the prior one is remembered.185 Still it is possible, when a past act is thus remembered, that those data that had been attendant thereupon as marginal facts may be remembered likewise, that is to say, that the subject may remember, to boot, the circumstances under which he has perceived the same object that he is perceiving now, has reflected on the scientific theorem towards which he now turns, etc. These concomitant marginal facts of a past act may be remembered with a greater or lesser degree of vagueness, even to the point that the subject may remember only the prior act, but without his placing it back precisely in the chronological order of the conscious life. That which prevents, then, the same acts that correspond to the same noema from becoming identified with each other, that which distinguishes them for consciousness and serves as the basis of their phenomenal diversity, is the possibility that every act may be remembered, as a marginal fact, at the time of an act subsequent to it; in general, it is the difference separating the marginal facts concomitant with an act from those which are copresent with another. In effect, absent this difference, on both sides, between marginal facts, two perceptions (and, generally, any two acts corresponding to the same noema) would no longer be discernible, and they would constitute, numerically and individually, one single act.186 It is therefore by virtue of the marginal facts, which are not essential187 from the noematic standpoint, that, despite the identity of the noema, there is no principium iden185

Cf. H. Bergson, “Introduction a` la métaphysique,” p. 5, in Revue de métaphysique et de morale, XI (1903) in op. cit., p. 1397 (182). 186 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 167 (188). 187 Cf. ibid. Husserl speaks of an “ ‘ausserwesentliches’ Bestimmungsstück” (“ ‘extraessential’ determinational part”).


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titatis indiscernibilium188 for the acts of consciousness. These reflections would supply afterwards the foundation for the reasoning by means of which we have sought to undermine the empiricist conception of consciousness, i.e., by contrasting the identity of the thing perceived with the multiplicity of perceptual acts.189 In effect, by distinguishing between the “prior” and “subsequent perceptions” of the same thing, by stressing the fact that every act is tied to the place it occupies in phenomenal time, we have availed ourselves of the facts falling within marginal consciousness, without expressly calling upon them. One of the major functions, among others, attributed to the marginal facts is that of ensuring that the acts of consciousness occupy a place in phenomenal time. Such placement is made manifest, above all, by the phenomenon of duration. When an act is experienced, those that have preceded it are not completely obliterated; they are retained in immediate memory and survive, in that fashion, as they recede into the past. Since these retained acts are located on the fringes of the present conscious activity, the past slips, so to speak, into the present.190 Thus, the subject, no matter how wrapped up he may be in the theme to which he is directed at the moment, preserves a more or less undifferentiated and indeterminate global memory of his past, at least of his immediate past. In this respect, there is no difference whether the subject remembers by means of his immediate memory, or whether his present theme 188

[For the “principle of the identity of indiscernibles,” cf., e.g., Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, ii, 23, 1–2 and ii, 27, 3, in Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed. C. J. Gerhardt (Berlin: 1882; reissued/Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1978), V, pp. 201–202 and 214 (New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd. ed., trans. A. G. Langley (Chicago: The Open Court, 1916), pp. 226 and 239); and A. Gurwitsch, Leibniz. Philosophie des Panlogismus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974), pp. 94ff., 239, 290, 296, 316, and 373.] 189 Cf. supra, p. 110. 190 This slipping of the past into the present has been brought out well by James (cf. op. cit., I, pp. 240–241). However, the example adduced by him—a thunder-clap breaking the silence, as a phenomenal and psychical object, is different from the same thunderclap which, objectively speaking, serves to continue a series of such claps—is capable of illustrating the structuring into theme and thematic field, rather than of making it form part of the class of marginal facts. Cf. P. Guillaume, La psychologie de la forme, p. 59.

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presents itself, to him as being the same as the one with which he was just concerned with. What is essential to the phenomenon of duration is that no present moment is isolated, but, rather, that the past is always indicated therein, whatever the contents of the past and their degree of vagueness and obscurity may be. The same is true about the future toward which the subject, in a way, constantly tends, by anticipating either the continuation or the interruption or a modification of his present activity, or by turning to any events that are indicated with more or less complete vagueness. Thus, each moment experienced with the temporal characteristic of being present is experienced as situated between a horizon open toward the future and that of the past which vanishes into the indeterminate and the indefinite. The phenomenal present is not, moreover, entirely occupied by acts of the form cogito. The subject, whatever be the object with which he is concerned, can never refrain from experiencing perceptions by which the surrounding world, in which he is placed, announces itself to him. This is so to the extent that no mental activity can ever fail to be accompanied, as James has pointed out,191 by some awareness—however inattentive—of one’s own body and its postural conditions. These data, both proprioceptive and exteroceptive, which are vague, global, and confused, bear no relation either to the theme or to the thematic field, except for that of simultaneity. It is by changes taking place in those data that, from another point of view, duration is experienced and felt, when, for example, a certain fact is retained as having just been present, by contrast with one which, different from the former, is now present, while the theme and the thematic field remain invariant throughout. The totality of purely concomitant and copresent marginal facts192 makes up the temporal horizon around the act in which the subject lives, a horizon involving differentiations according to the temporal characters of being simultaneous, past, and future, while the cogitative act appears as the center of reference. This act establishes, therefore, temporal rela191

Cf. W. James, op. cit., I, pp. 241–242. It is well-founded to describe as copresent even a fact that is given as having just been present, because one’s awareness of it is relative thereto; retention as such is a datum present to, and simultaneous with, the act corresponding to the theme.

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tionships with a number of experienced facts that do not assume the privileged form cogito, just as it would with those which no longer do, but which had assumed it when the subject lived in them. It is by means of these relationships that every act reveals itself as belonging to a more encompassing context of facts of consciousness, and that the continuity of this context becomes manifest. The temporal horizon, just as the cogitative act to which it is linked, is found in perpetual motion: at every turn, that which bears the character of being present transforms itself by taking up that of “having just been present,” at the same time that what is given as past moves back and withdraws farther and farther from the present, the culmination of the conscious life.193 These constantly felt and experienced transformations are nothing but the passing of phenomenal time, such passing being designated by the term “stream of the experienced.” We should content ourselves with these few indications, which seem to us, however, to be sufficient to show that the inquiries into phenomenal time, the stream of the experienced, the unity194 and continuity thereof, and, finally, into the phenomenological ego should be directed to the domain of marginal facts. The copresent data, as well as all acts of consciousness, have a noetic and a noematic side. If, because of the former, the data in question ensure the coherence between an act of the form cogito (of which they are concomitants) and the totality of the stream of the experienced, it is by the noematic or “objective” side that the subject is placed, at every turn of his conscious life, in the presence of the external world. We have explained above195 that the subject—whatever his mental activity may be, and whatever the degree of his absorption therein—is always in possession of an Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 81 and 82. According to Brentano (cf. op. cit., I, pp. 229–232), the unity of consciousness consists in this: that all psychical phenomena that are simultaneously produced form one single reality of which they are parts. Among these component phenomena, there are connections that differ according to their degree of closeness. It seems to us that these connections differ from one another not only because of a greater or lesser degree of closeness, but also by reason of their belonging to fundamentally different types, results, above all, from the distinction established between the marginal facts and those of which the thematic field consists. The differences separating such connections are, then, of a qualitative nature. 195 Cf. supra, Chapter 2. 193 194

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inarticulate, indefinite, vague awareness of the fact that he finds himself in the surrounding world, and keeps a certain approximate and global orientation therein, at least so far as its generic style is concerned. That the subject constantly feels placed in a world is a phenomenon deriving from the facts of copresence and, above all, from the perceptions found among the latter. By reason of the function of objectivation that they possess as intentional acts, these perceptions make such or such objects appear and thus indicate to the subject the existence of things lying outside his or field of activity. However, the awareness in question, though based in a way on these perceptual data and finding its support therein, is not limited to them. The situation in which the subject lives refers to things and situations external to his present activity, in the sense that they do not form part of his thematic field, or, again, they may be remembered or represented in a more or less abrupt and fortuitous manner. Non-perceptual facts have even a certain ascendancy over perceptual data in announcing the existence of an environing world. Thus, the subject, no matter how immersed he may be in some mental activity (say, in reflecting on a scientific theorem), not only is aware of things located in his perceptual field (i.e., those that he sees, hears, etc.) without paying attention to them, but he has, as well, a more or less vague cognizance of what is found behind his back, of what is occurring in a certain area around him, etc. This ascendancy of non-perceptual marginal facts explains the approximate character of that cognizance, the imprecision and vagueness with which the world is present to consciousness at every turn. It is by means of the very data falling within marginal consciousness that a twofold continuity is indicated, namely, that of the stream of the experienced and that of the natural surrounding world. It is well-founded to see in this a further confirmation, from a new standpoint, of the doctrine according to which the essential nature of consciousness consists in the noetico-noematic parallelism. It is a question of continuity and context, in the strict sense of the terms, when the thematic field is a practical situation in the surrounding world. Each similar situation presents itself as mundane, that is to say, as inserted in an encompassing totality, and it does so by means of the references to objects and to situations other than the said situation and


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as contained therein. The world, which does not cease to appear at every turn of the conscious life, constitutes the more or less indeterminate and vague horizon of the present situation. That indetermination and obscurity is susceptible of clarification: the imprecise and vague references can be rendered clear and explicit. There is the possibility of establishing a relationship, by a change of attitude and of the direction of one’s mental regard, between the present situation and any sector of the surrounding world. It is in terms of those possibilities that the (at least) potential context existing between all parts of the world is given expression. It is not so however when the subject focuses on an ideal region, say, that of arithmetic.196 In this case too—we have emphasized it enough—the surrounding world continues to be offered to the subject. But the arithmetical region, or the part thereof constituting the thematic field of the thinking subject, does not contain any reference to the facts pertaining to the surrounding world, nor does it insert itself in the latter as a part thereof; in fact, it occupies no place in it. The surrounding world, though it appears as a background for arithmetical thought, does not constitute a horizon of the arithmetical region. These two regions are not internally related at all, except for the fact that the subject, in focusing on one, feels himself, at the same time, in the presence of the other and as placed therein. Moreover, the arithmetical region presents itself to the subject only when he is directed to it, and expressly takes it into consideration, in short, when he adopts an arithmetical attitude, while the surrounding world appears to the subject at every turn of his conscious life during the state of wakefulness, no matter what his mental activity and the direction of his thought may be. However, the arithmetical region is not given on any account when, for example, the subject lives quite simply in a situation of action in the surrounding world, reflects on his life by evoking his past, when he immerses himself in music he is hearing, etc. Even though it does not form a horizon of the surrounding world, or of the stream of the experienced, or of another ideal domain, the arithmetical region is neither a permanent concomitant of one’s conscious life. By contrast with the appearing of the surrounding world, that of the 196

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 51 (54).

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arithmetical region does not constitute a general background in that life. The arithmetical region is used here only as a paradigmatic example: what is true about it is likewise true of the universe of physics, of the various artistic regions, etc.—in a word, of every region that does not become integrated into the natural surrounding world. The latter enjoys a privilege in relation to every such region, a privilege consisting in being permanently present, whether as thematic field (or horizon thereof ), or as mere and copresent background. Some suggestions can be drawn from these observations in respect of the ideal regions which are separate, in the sense already explained, from that of the surrounding world: their autonomy will be reflected in the nature of the acts by means of which they are constituted. These acts are specifically different from those that intervene in the constitution of the surrounding world, and reveal themselves to be irreducible to the latter acts, namely, to perceptions and their derivatives (e.g., memories, imaginations, intuitive representations, and the like). Such is the thesis defended by Husserl197 in his critique of the empiricist theories of abstraction. Since the surrounding world is being given at every turn of the conscious life independently of any special attitude of the subject, its constitution will be characterized by spontaneity, in the sense that no contribution on the subject’s part is required for it. On the other hand, the fact that the ideal regions present themselves only when the subject focuses on them seems to indicate that their constitution should be considered as a creation, an elaboration, a construction. Whereas the constitution of the surrounding world is in the nature of a passive experience,198 that of the ideal regions demands a certain activity on the subject’s part.199 This activity, of which the ideal objects appear to be the products, cannot, however, be carried out in a vacuum. It is in need of materials upon which it would be exercised and which can be supplied to it only by passive experience. 197

Cf. E. Husserl, LU, II, Inv. 2 in Vol. II, Pt. I, ed. U. Panzer, pp. 113 ff; Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay, I, pp. 339 ff. 198 [Cf. E. Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (1918–1926), ed. M. Fleischer, in Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XI, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966). Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, trans. A. J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).] 199 Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 38.


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The elaboration of the ideal regions gives rise to objects that are new and autonomous with regard to those of the surrounding world; it is effected by specific acts, and yet it is possible only on the basis of the surrounding world. This comes down to considering the ideal regions as of a superior or higher order, in the sense indicated above.200 The surrounding world plays, therefore, the role of basis from which to proceed for the elaboration of the ideal regions, a role which already its permanent appearing before consciousness suggests that one is to attribute to it. These suggestions cannot be pursued here any further, the existence of ideal objects being one of the problems of phenomenology which we have to give up tackling in this book.

200

Cf. supra, Chapter 2, pp. 97 and 95 and n. 19.

CHAPTER IV

THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERCEPTUAL NOEMA

§I. The Multiplicity of Noemata and the Thing’s Identity In the analyses presented thus far, perception played no role except that of a paradigmatic example, since the objective of those analyses was to bring out the fundamental structure of consciousness. The essential nature of the latter has been seen in the opposition and correlation between a multiplicity and something identical. The most elementary, as well as the most fundamental, form of this opposition, which the noetico-noematic parallelism is, has been delved into, without however our having failed to appeal to other forms. It is thus that we have alluded to the fact that the same thing may present itself under the same aspect, sometimes in perception, sometimes in recollection, sometimes in expectation, sometimes in representation, etc.1 We called upon the identity of a proposition appearing now as certain, now as problematic or doubtful, now as certainly true.2 Finally, we mentioned the forms of opposition in question, forms that involve the modifications of thematic consciousness (i.e., the same noematic object may be given sometimes as a theme, sometimes situated in the thematic field, sometimes within the scope of marginal consciousness).3 As we tackle the phenomenological constitution of the objective thing (i.e., the object of use as well as the reiform thing), perception will change its standing of mere example to that of a subject of study. Note by the editor of the French edition of this book: The typescript erroneously assigns number 5 to this chapter, a mistake herein corrected by us. This is the last chapter of the portion of this book as we have it. It comes therefore after Chapter 3, which is numbered correctly. 1 2 3

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 133. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 98–99. Cf. supra, p. 112.


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Here it will be a question of making the new form assumed by the opposition existing between a multiplicity and an identical unity stand out, that is to say, of bringing out a new type of intentionality. The analyses to follow will not exhaust the problem. In connection therewith, as well as with other problems, we are obliged to confine ourselves to presenting phenomenological theory in very broad outlines. The critique formulated with regard to Mach’s ideas has led us to distinguish the following elements from one another: first, a perceptual act, which is a really experienced psychical fact; second, the aspect under which, in that act, an object appears to consciousness, i.e., an object such as the subject has it in view on perceiving it; and, last, the object in itself, the objective thing.4 Up to this point, our analyses have been only about the relationship between the first two terms of this trichotomy, that is to say, about a perceptual act (or multiplicity of acts) and the objectperceived-as-such. It was by contrasting the latter with the former that we arrived at the notion of the noema.5 Now, we had assumed—and it was necessary to do so in order to bring out the notion of the noema—not only that the same objective thing is perceived in every one of the many acts, but also that therein it is a question of the same noematic object, of the same object-perceived-as-such. We took into consideration only a multiplicity of acts to which the same noematic object would correspond. Those studies were therefore fitted into an artificial framework, because in them it was only a question of just one of the possibilities involved in the perceptual life. But one must at this point give up this abstractive restriction and render the phenomenological analyses free from too narrow a framework. In effect, in one’s concrete perceptual life the same thing does not always present itself from the same side, under the same aspect, in the same orientation. The perceiving subject is not forced to remain immobile while facing a thing and to regard it from a fixed point of observation, but neither does the subject always return to the same point of observation when he comes to perceive the thing again, after having ceased to do so for a time. In perceiving a house, for example, the subject is free to 4 5

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 111 and 112. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, § IV.

the structure of the perceptual noema

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displace himself from one point of observation to another, to approach the house or to distance himself from it, to move to the right or the left, etc. The house is, then, perceived at close quarters on one occasion, from a medium distance on another, or from a considerable distance on still another. A more or less peripheral observation can be substituted for one which had been made from a relatively central standpoint.6 The subject can also walk about the house, experiencing then a series of perceptions by which the house would offer itself under varying aspects that would succeed one another. Now it would no longer be the same noema that would correspond to this multiplicity of perceptual acts; on the contrary, an entire multiplicity of noemata would do so, so that, in the ideal case, each perceptual act belonging to that series would have its own noematic object. Although the passage from one perceptual noema to another may be effected continuously and experienced accordingly, there would be, among the multiplicity of noemata successively actualized, two or several having nothing in common with each other. 6

In psychology, these facts give rise to the problems of constancy—constancy of shape, of size, and of color. It was traditional to explain these constancies in terms of the interpretation with which, by virtue of acquired knowledge, the sensory data would be furnished, every such datum having been conceived strictly and exclusively as a function of the local stimulation. The Gestalt theoreticians rejected this explanation (cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, Chapter 3; K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology, pp. 84–98). According to them, the constancies in question belong to non-mediate sense-experience, which does not require being corrected by acquired knowledge, or by any factors superior to or higher than sensibility, such constancies being dependent, however, on the fact that the perceived object is placed in a whole perceptual field. This brings to light, from a different point of view (cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 160), the great importance that the existence of the perceptual field, a special case of background, has for vision. Were we to adopt these Gestalt-theoretical views, not only would the problem we are in the process of elaborating remain as is, but, as a result, it could also be posed on the basis of those views themselves. In effect, if the object preserves its shape in offering itself in an orientation that is sometimes normal, some times abnormal, and if—within certain limits—it preserves its size in presenting itself from varying distances, etc. (cf. K. Koffka, op. cit., Chapter 6), then it would always be a question of the same object, which, as identical, would appear under different aspects, and thus the problem of the identity in question would have to be raised.

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That is the case when, for example, the subject began by regarding a house from one side and then sees it from a side at a right angle with respect thereto, or again from the opposite side, etc. None of the components making up the aspect under which the house had been offering itself previously would play a role any longer in the aspect under which it would appear at this point. Now, these many noemata are given as diverse and different aspects under which the same thing would present itself; it is to the latter, as the “theme,” that all the perceptions belonging to the series in question would relate. It is through the variations and modifications in the aspects that the same house appears and is perceived, in the entire series, attended with the consciousness of its identity.7 This consciousness of identity does not accompany, as an incidental fact, the perceptual life; on the contrary, it is inherent in the series of perceptions and is a constitutive element thereof. That consciousness of identity is not due to reasonings or conclusions; it is given immediately, though in the implicit fashion brought out above.8 Moreover, it is of no importance whether, as we have just assumed, the perceptions succeed one another immediately and without interruption, or whether the subject, having perceived the house from one of its sides, ceases to do so to resume observing it after a while and looks at it, on that occasion, from another side. In the latter case as well, the subject is conscious of finding himself before a house that is the same as the one which he perceived previously, and which presented itself first from a side different from that in which it offers itself now. The rule governing perceptual life is a combination of these two possibilities: after having experienced a continuous series of perceptions, one may turn away from the thing under observation, later to return to it, whether to experience the series of the “same” perceptions, that is to say, those in which the thing would offer itself under the same aspects as those which played a role in the first observation, or whether to complement the latter, by experiencing perceptions in which the same thing would present itself under new and different aspects, possibly even unknown and unsuspected until that moment. Thus we are again faced with the opposition between something identical and a multiplicity, that is to say, with a phenomenon that comes 7 8

Cf. E. Husserl, CM, p. 78 (39–40). Cf. supra, Chapter 3, § III.


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within the scope of the intentionality of consciousness. The type of intentionality of which it is now a question is superior to or of a higher order than the noetico-noematic parallelism,9 in that the multiplicity here is comprised of acts different from one another not only because of their placements in phenomenal time. And this is so not only because of the characteristics connected to the noematic content corresponding to them (i.e., the modes of presentation and the doxic characteristics),10 or, again, because of the place held by the said noematic content in thematic consciousness,11 but, moreover, since here the acts in question are different, also and above all, because of their noematic contents themselves. A real, objective thing, in effect, is opposed, as an identical unity, to a multiplicity consisting not only of acts, but also of noemata.12 The phenomenological reduction does not allow one to call upon the existence of an objective thing, that is to say, to appeal, in the phenomenological analyses, to an objective thing considered not only as laying a claim to existence, but taken quite simply as existent.13 In phenomenology, one should not take a preexisting, objective thing as one’s point of departure, or make a thing so conceived intervene in any fashion whatever. On the contrary, one must bring out the unity of the real thing, its objectivity and the sense of its existence, by taking, as one’s point of departure, only the noetico-noematic characteristics inherent in the acts of becoming conscious of the said thing, and by relying only on the support of those characteristics. In the phenomenological analyses, the real, objective thing cannot play a role except as the thread that would guide the analyses which are to be conducted in such a fashion that the thing, such as it is known in the natural attitude, ultimately reveals itself to be the objective correlate 9

This superiority is nonetheless altogether relative to the noetico-noematic parallelism. As we will have an occasion to see in what follows, a criterion for discriminating the superior or higher types of intentionality will be indicated by us, the form in which the latter comes into play in the constitution of the sense-perceptible thing having to be considered as fundamental. 10 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 129. 11 To tell the truth, the latter cases already go beyond the mere noetico-noematic parallelism. 12 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 207–208 (242–243). 13 Cf. supra, Chapter 2, § VI.

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of the experiences relative to it, and such that the manner is clarified in which the elements constitutive of that thing correspond (and should correspond) to certain structures of those experiences. It is thus that one must pose the problem concerning the third term of the trichotomy mentioned above,14 as well as that of the relationship between the perceptual act and the thing perceived. The formula one hears so often to the effect that perception is a perception of something, and that it is in the nature of perception to be related to an object, is actually the statement of a problem, rather than its solution. We are then brought back to examine the structure intrinsic to the series of perceptions one experiences when one walks around a thing and perceives it under continuously varying aspects, when one sees it now from one side, now from another. Let us first remark that, in the case of that series, it is not a question of a simple succession of acts. The acts that belong to such a series are immediately experienced as forming, in a way, a unity, as making up a coherent group. It is of no consequence at all to this group character whether or not the acts succeed one another at once and continuously. In effect, two perceptions—in which the same thing presents itself (albeit under different aspects)—find themselves placed in a relation to each other that would make them appear as belonging to the same group, even when those perceptions are separated by a certain temporal interval, during which the subject is not aware, in any fashion, of the thing in question. But neither of them would be so related to an act experienced during the said interval, although, so far as the temporal nexuses are concerned, one could say that one perception would be closer to such an act than to the other perception. It follows then that the group character in question is inferred neither from the phenomenal reality nor from the phenomenal temporality of the acts. The group formed by the acts should not, therefore, be considered as a real fact of consciousness, as a global phenomenon that the particular acts would make up due to their temporal contiguity.15 Even 14

[Namely, the “object in itself, the objective thing.”] We have here, by reason of the framework prescribed for this volume, to renounce performing the analysis of these real, global phenomena of consciousness which are formed solely by virtue of the temporal relationships among the acts.

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if the perceptual acts relative to the same thing succeeded one another immediately, thus forming a group at the same time that they are based on a complex, real fact, the group character, to the extent that it is coexistent with the form of the global phenomenon, would not be identical with this form, no more than the latter would be the basis of the group character. This character should then be conceived of as the noetic correlate of a noematic structure. In effect, if some perceptual acts form a coherent group, it would not be by reason of the temporal order in which they are experienced but in relation to that which presents itself in them. One could conjecture that the group character is not foreign to the awareness one has, when one experiences such a series of perceptions, of being faced with the identical thing, although the latter may not always appear under the same aspect. In consequence, we are going to approach the study of the group character from a noematic point of view.

§II. The Theory of the Central Noematic Point If the said character is the noetic correlate of a noematic fact, then the group of acts would correspond to a group of noemata, so that the group in question could not be constituted except in virtue of the relationships among the noemata of which it consists. Hence the following problem arises: what element in the structure of the noema places it in relation to the other noemata? How is one to understand that the act corresponding thereto is experienced as belonging to a coherent group? To resolve this problem, Husserl has established two theories. The critical analysis of one (namely, of the theory of the central noematic point) will lead us to the other, which is a theory of implications. Within the structure of a concrete noema, that is to say, of an object such and exactly as the subject has it in view, one must distinguish—as we have indicated16 —between the core and the characteristics. Let us set aside the latter in order to take into consideration the core or, as 16

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, § IV.

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Husserl also calls it, the noematic sense.17 This may be defined as the “what” of a concrete given. In describing it, one would employ terms like “object,” “state of affairs” (Sachverhalt), “thing,” “figure,” “colored,” “hard,” “rough,” etc., but one would avoid terms like “given in perception,” “remembered,” etc., since these terms do not indicate what is given, but the manner in which it is given, the mode in which what is given presents itself to consciousness.18 Moreover, one must make value predicates form part of such a description, when the thing perceived offers itself as pretty, beautiful, etc. Even vagueness will play a role in that noematic analysis. As we have already pointed out,19 and will go more deeply into in the next section, facts that do not fall within the scope of straightforward vision, and which may be more or less determinate, contribute, in this sense, to the formation of the “perceived-as-such.” The latter is such owing to its referring to those facts that the perceiving subject has in view when, for example, he perceives a house as seen from its façade, and not the design of the façade of a house. In an analysis wherein it is a question of bringing out that which is given such as it is actually given, no fact should be disregarded which belongs to it, serves to determine it, and makes it be such as it plays a role in a concrete act of consciousness. That which is described in such an analysis is not the full and concrete noema, but only the “what” contained therein, its material content,20 so to speak, the noematic object in a narrow sense. In effect, this noematic object may be given sometimes in perception, sometimes in recollection, sometimes in expectation, sometimes in imagination, etc. Now, the analysis of all those noemata, if one orients it toward their material content, will lead to the same result. The The distinction maintained by Husserl (cf. Ideen, I, § 132) between the full and concrete core, on the one hand, and the noematic sense, on the other, may be disregarded in this presentation. 18 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 130, pp. 269–270 (312). 19 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 127–128. 20 With respect to the matter of an act or, more exactly, of a noema, cf. E. Husserl, LU, ed. U. Panzer, Husserliana, XIX/2, Vol. II-1, Inv. v, Chapter 2, § 20, pp. 425 ff.; trans., II, pp.586 ff. Likewise, see E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 267–268 and 271 (309–310 and 317), where the modified terminology gives expression to the evolution that Husserl’s views have undergone. 17


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noematic sense, defined in this fashion, designates a fundamental stratum in the structure of the noema, one that is identically the same for a perception, a recollection, a certainty, a question, a doubt, etc. In analyzing a perceptual noema in this manner, one brings out a set of attributes, qualities, properties, and determinations with which the object such as it plays a role in perception presents itself to consciousness. These attributes, qualities, etc., in which one must obviously see only elements of the noema, make up the noematic sense. However, those attributes are given as attributes of a substrate. That which plays a role in such a substrate is the element most intrinsic to the structure of the noematic sense, a “central point of unity”21 described by Husserl as the pure X.22 This means that the noematic center is not determined in itself, in the sense that it does not rank among the attributes defining the noematic “what,” but is susceptible of determinations it holds as attributes: it is the bestimmbare Subjekt seiner möglichen Prädikate.23 Within the structure of the noematic sense, one must then distinguish a central noematic point from the attributes adhering thereto. But a distinction is obviously not a separation. The noematic center and the attributes cannot exist without each other; they reciprocally call on one another. Neither center nor attributes can be absent from a concrete noema. In effect, there can be no noema that fails to contain a “what” and, therefore, attributes defining this “what.” These attributes, in turn, present themselves as attributes of “something”; they are polarized toward the central noematic point that serves to support them and lends them coherence. Husserl insists on the special nature of this coherence, which is not established among the attributes by the sole fact of their coexistence and which, consequently, should not be confused with the unity of a complex of attributes. Here it is not a question of a unity24 of the attributes by reason of an intrinsic balance among them, but of one by virtue of the relation “Der zentrale Einheitspunkt.” Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 131, p. 270 (313). [Gurwitsch employs here the term “unification” rather than “unité.”] 22 Ibid., p. 271. 23 Ibid.: the “determinable subject of its possible predicates”. 24 Cf. supra, n. 22. [Again Gurwitsch employs the term “unification” rather than “unité.”] 21

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they bear to a noematic fact situated outside them; it is a question of a unity25 due to a noematic element which, itself, does not rank among the noematic matters to be unified. One can then speak of a coherence created and backed up by what lies outside. It is in this sense that Husserl contrasts the attributes—as discernible though not as separable—with the X, which he describes as the ultimate substratum of the attributes, as the support and bearer thereof, as their “central point of connection” (Verknüpfungspunkt)26 ; lastly, he characterizes the attributes as the attributes of a central noematic point. The polarization of the noematic attributes toward a center is meant to account for the relationship of the noema to the object. What is given expression by the noetico-noematic parallelism is the correspondence between an act experienced and a sense, the fact that to experience an act of consciousness is to actualize a sense. Now, in actualizing a sense, the subject focuses on an object that appears in that sense or through it. When, for example, a perceptual act is experienced, an “object-perceivedas-such” presents itself, that is to say, an object offers itself under a certain aspect. However, that on which the subject is focused, and which constitutes the theme of his perceptual act, is not the object that presents itself under a certain aspect, but the object in itself, the object tout court, which now offers itself under such and such an aspect, which previously had presented itself under another aspect, which is presently being perceived in a more or less confused fashion, but which may be perceived through clear vision, etc. Thus, one can maintain that the subject, while he is in the presence of an “object-perceived-as-such,” does not perceive the noematic object, but the object in itself, the objective object. Yet he cannot perceive the object unless it presents itself under a certain aspect, for no object can be grasped except through the sense corresponding to the act of apprehension. One sees, then, that the relation of an act to its object is not the same thing as the actualization of a sense, but that the relation in question is a component of that actualization.27 That which corresponds to the act is the noema in its concrete fullness; the object, on the contrary, to 25 26 27

Cf. supra, nn. 22 and 25. [Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 270 (313).] Cf. ibid., pp. 268–269 (310–311).


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the extent that it is indicated in and through the noema, is not identical with it.28 Now, the relation of an act to its object, a relation that is a noetic fact, should correspond—by virtue of the general noetico-noematic parallelism—to a noematic fact. Or more exactly: it should correspond to a structure in the noema of the act by which the subject focuses on the object in question. According to Husserl, this structure consists in the polarization of the noematic content toward the central point, i.e., the inherence of the attributes in the bearer thereof. The central point, since it is determinable without being determined because of itself, is not linked to such and such noematic attributes rather than to others. In consequence, it can be identically the same in relation to a multiplicity of noemata. One becomes aware of this by actualizing one such multiplicity, by experiencing therefore a multiplicity of perceptions relating to the same object, whether those perceptions follow one another in a continuous fashion or are separated from each other.29 The object, then, presents itself under various aspects and from different sides; those indeterminations that were given to a certain phase of the perceptual life are clarified; unchanged thus far, the object begins to undergo modifications—its beauty increases, its usefulness diminishes, etc. The noemata actualized in the course of such a series of perceptions differ from one another, and they do so precisely because of their noematic sense. Now, all the noematic cores are polarized toward the same center; all of them have in common the same central noematic point. It is by experiencing one such series of perceptions (which involves a progressive enrichment of the X in terms of its determinations) that the distinction between the pure, identical X and its variable and changeable attributes becomes particularly clear. That which, in the structure of a noema, ensures that the latter would be related to other noemata belonging to the same group is, therefore, a material noematic element which, as identical, is contained in each one of those noemata. The relationship among these noemata simply consists in this: that they all cling to an identical noematic element corresponding to the consciousness one has of the identity of the object, when one experiences a series of perceptions in which the object presents itself under successively 28 29

For the difference between noema and object, cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 132. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 271–272 (313–314).

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varying aspects. Correlatively speaking, if these perceptions form a group, it is because the relationship to the same noematic center is included in the actualization of the perceptual sense. The structure of the noema, even that of a particular noema, should then be described as follows: inside it one finds the X, the central point of inherences, the noematic object qua invariant in relation to the different aspects under which it presents itself, and even in respect of the real modifications it undergoes: dieser noematische ‘Gegenstand schlechthin’ 30 which, by the determinations it derives from the noematic sense, becomes the object such as it appears in a concrete act, i.e., the Gegenstand im Wie seiner Bestimmtheiten.31 Finally, the characteristics show the modes of appearing and of presentation of the object. Thus, Husserl maintains that every noema possesses a content because of which, and “by means of ” which, it is related to an object,32 and is related thereto on account of its centralization. 30

Ibid., p. 272 (314): “this noematic ‘object simpliciter.’ ” Ibid.: the “object in the How of its determinations.” Therefore, there are, on the noematic plane, two notions of object to be distinguished from each other. 32 Cf. ibid., pp. 267–269 (309–311). The distinction between “content” and “object” was familiar to Brentano’s school, in which the content and the object of an act (above all of a representation) were spoken about. But Brentano’s followers took the content for an element inherent in the act, therefore for a real part thereof. (Cf., for exam¨ ple, Alexius Meinong, “Uber Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, XXI (1899), pp. 187–188; concerning Brentano’s own position, cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 154–157). Husserl transposes this distinction to the noematic plane, or, more exactly, he divides it into two: on the one hand, one can distinguish between the content and the object of the act, but the content is nothing but the noema, to the extent, at least, in which one understands by “content” what makes an act be that in which one becomes aware of such and such an object, rather than of another (cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 142, for the substitution of the noema for Brentano’s immanent object); on the other hand, the same distinction can be made concerning the noema, in which case it would coincide with that which one makes between the invariant object and the object such as it appears, that is to say, the content of the noema would be the noematic sense, and its object the center toward which that sense would be polarized. Obviously, the object of the noema, i.e., the invariant object to which the noema is related, or with which it is coupled, is identical with the object of the act, this. [Note by the editor of the French edition of this book: This note, incomplete as it is, breaks off at the bottom of the page with the last line, which is not taken up again further down in the typescript of the book.] 31


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According to Husserl, the theory of the central noematic point is the answer to two problems. One is that of the coherence among the facts that make up the noematic sense. In this respect, the theory in question reminds one, in a way, of Locke’s analysis33 of the idea of substance: a confused and obscure idea of a well-nigh unknown something serving as the support for those simple ideas or qualities which, together, make up the sense-perceptible things. One is led to form this idea of substance because, while one notes the coexistence of a multiplicity of such ideas, one does not see how they could subsist by themselves or in the absence of one another. By means of the idea of substance, one would therefore provide them with a substratum, and one would thus lend to them a coherence which, otherwise, would not be assured, or which would, at least, be unintelligible. This coherence appears under an altogether different light, if one calls upon views stemming from Gestalt theory, and one must appeal to this theory precisely in respect of that which concerns the structure of that stratum of the noema which the noematic sense is.34 The latter is, as conceived in Gestalt theory, a closed and balanced unity endowed with an internal organization and articulation. Its components (that is to say, the facts which, as a whole and because of their coexistence, constitute the object such as it appears in a concrete case) are bound with each other; they mutually hold together, and each of them exists only at the place and in the function they reciprocally assign each other as a result of forming a Gestalt (structure). If there is coherence among noematic attributes, it is because they play no role except as elements of a whole in the nature of a Gestalt, and because their entire being, insofar as they are phenomenal and noematic facts, is exhausted in the contribution they make in forming one such whole. However, this coherence, contrary to the thesis maintained by Husserl,35 is not ensured by a substratum common to all the noematic attributes; it is not the result of relations that each one of those attributes would bear to such a substratum. Gestalt theory explains the coherence Cf. J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter 23, §§ 1–6, ed. J. W. Yolton, Vol. I, pp. 244–248. 34 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 142–143. 35 Cf. supra, p. 115. 33

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among the parts of a Gestalt without resorting to a special arrangement.36 To render an account of the coherence among the facts forming part of a noematic sense, one need not appeal to an entity outside those facts, an entity in which the latter would inhere. The data of which a Gestalt consists are, therein, nothing but what they are in a concrete case; they undergo profound modifications when they are taken out of the organized totality they form, that is to say, when they are isolated from one another. Therefore, the coherence among those data is a condition for their very existence. Neither is there a need for the coherence of the noematic attributes to be created, because it becomes established along with their coexistence alone, which always signifies the formation of an organized, structured, and balanced totality. In this sense, the notion of coherence, for which we are indebted to Gestalt theory, may be described as immediate and intrinsic. This type of unity, one that is not added to the facts among which it exists but is the result of their mere coexistence (a unity that goes even as far as to be identical with the latter) is not unknown to Husserl. Under the heading of quasi-qualitative factors (quasi-qualitative Momente) or figural factors (figurale Momente), he describes37 certain characters (e.g., the unity, group, or similarity characters) which are observed on collective wholes consisting of objects, such as, for example, the configurations that objects spread out in the visual field form and the overall chromatic impression left by these objects if they are of different colors (an impression varying not only with the hues of the objects but also as a function of the configuration they form). Other examples of figural factors are a heap of apples, a row of trees, a flock of birds, an assembly.38 Such a collective whole presents itself immediately, as a group characterized by unity, in perception itself. Its appearing and formation do not fall under categorial thought at all, wherein one must perceive the 36

Cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, Chapter 4 in reference to the topic of a special arrangement meant to guarantee order and coherence. 37 Cf. E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik (Halle-Saale: C. E. M. Pfeffer, 1891), I, pp. 225–236. Philosophie der Arithmetik mit ergänzenden Texten (1890–1901), ed. L. Eley, in Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), XII, Part II, Chapter 11, pp. 203–210. Philosophy of Arithmetic, trans. D. Willard (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), pp. 215–222. 38 Cf. ibid., ed. L. Eley, p. 203 (trans., p. 216).


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elements of a group one after the other in order to constitute it and, then, gather them all by an explicit conjunctive act. Now, this obviously is not the case with the collective wholes taken into consideration here.39 A figural factor is also in possession of a character of sensory and perceptual immediacy: it does not result from any mental activity beyond the perceptual; on the contrary, the objects making up a collective whole of the sort of which it is a question here present themselves with that character and as bearers thereof. The “figural factor” belongs, as immediate and perceptual hue, to such a collective whole. Among the objects of which it consists, there exists a coherence that, being also immediate and perceptual, results from this very fact, and thus from the mere coexistence of the objects in perception; the said objects do not therefore borrow their coherence from a center situated outside them. It is from a unity of this sort that Husserl distinguishes the one prevailing among the noematic attributes. He insists on this distinction because of the dependence of the “figural factor” on the objects which, as elements, are components of the group endowed with it. Although the “figural factor” is that which, at first blush, is apparent, in reality it is, as the analysis shows, conditioned by the elements and also by relations of all kinds existing among them; it varies as a function of the former just as of the latter.40 In the case of this factor, it is a question of a new perceptual quality superadded to those playing a role as elements, which, by virtue of their coexistence alone, serve then as the basis for a sensory quality of the second degree, so to speak.41 If one maintains that there is—so far as the noematic attributes are concerned of which the perceptual sense consists—a sensory, immediate unity based only upon the coexistence of those attributes (whether or not this unity is accompanied, moreover, by the appearing of a new quality), then that unity would depend on the facts among which it is 39

Cf. ibid., pp. 219–224, ed. L. Eley, pp. 199–201 (211–213). For the difference between the groups, the unities, and all sorts of categorial forms and those of which it is a question in the text, cf. also LU, II, Inv. 3, Chapter 2, § 23 and Inv. 6, Chapter 6, § 51 and Chapter 8, § 61. Cf. ed. U. Panzer, pp. 288 ff., 688 ff., and 714 ff., respectively; trans., II, pp. 480 ff., 798 ff., and 819 ff., respectively. 40 Cf. E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik, pp. 228–234, ed. L. Eley, pp. 204–209 (216–221). 41 Cf. ibid., p. 225, ed. L. Eley, p. 204 (216).

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established. In this conception, the problem of the coherence among the components of a noema corresponding to a current perception would be properly solved. But what would remain unexplained is the phenomenon of the coherence among those attributes and those which are the components of the noemata corresponding to other perceptions, [that is to say,] therefore, the problem of the relation among the many noemata relative to the same object, i.e., in the final analysis, the problem of the identity of the object by contrast with the many noemata, as well as that of the relation each noema happens to bear to the object. That is the other problem to which Husserl wanted to provide a solution. In order to be able to respond to the two problems by means of the same theory, Husserl proposes the central noematic point and takes it for something neutral with regard to the attributes that cling to it. He assumes it to be capable, then, of admitting attributes offered in various perceptions, so that the unity and coherence among all these attributes would be independent of those appearing in a concrete perception. It is thus that the second problem intervenes in the solution to the problem of the coherence among the facts of which a particular perceptual sense consists, a solution of which one could say that it is compromised. However, Husserl could proceed in this fashion because he limits his study to the consideration of totalities the elements of which are separated from one another; he expressly excludes the relation of the qualities of a thing to the thing itself.42 This limitation is a consequence of the very problem Husserl was faced with, a problem that led him to the discovery of the “figural factors,” namely, the question of determining how a collective whole can be recognized as such just at a glance, and without performing all the acts that would be required for the constitution of a categorial whole. The criterion for this recognition is the “figural factor,” the existence of which is linked to the fact that the elements in question separate themselves from one another, as well as from the background against which they make their appearance. Otherwise these elements would fuse with each other, and, instead of serving as the basis for the “figural factor” as the quality of the second degree it is, they would 42

Cf. ibid., pp. 217–218, ed. L. Eley, pp. 195–196 (207–208).


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melt into an ordinary, continuous quality, as is the case with the points of a continuous line.43 Moreover, it is only among separate elements (which are independent of one another because of their nature) that a unity can be established due to a new quality they are the basis of. For, if some data were not independent of each other, if some of them could not exist without the others (as it happens, for example, in the case of the inseparability of color and extension, or, again, in that of the pitch and the intensity of a musical key), then there would be no need for the production of a founded quality of the second degree for the special purpose of endowing the data with unity.44 This independence of some elements in respect of others, among those serving as the foundation of a “figural factor,” persists even when those elements are grouped together. They do not undergo any modification on account of the fact that, because of their coexistence, they serve as the foundation of a “figural factor”; each one of them is, within the group, such as it would be if it were viewed in isolation.45 Now, if the elements remain such as they are, whether or not a immediate, perceptual unity is established among them, can one then admit other types of unity side by side with this one? Thus Husserl has been able to maintain, concerning the noematic attributes, the existence of a unity stemming from a center outside the matters to be unified, and this is a transposition, to the noematic plane, of the relationship between the qualities of a thing and the thing itself. Husserl’s “figural factors” and, above all, von Ehrenfels’s “Gestalt qualities”46 have played an important role for the evolution of Gestalt theory.47 Other theoreticians took up again and generalized von Ehrenfels’s and 43

Cf. ibid., pp. 231–233, ed. L. Eley, pp. 207–209 (219–222). Cf. E. Husserl, LU, II, Inv. 3, Chapter 1, § 4, p. 22; cf. ed. U. Panzer, II-1, p. 237; trans., II, p. 442. 45 Cf. E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik, pp. 225 and 231, ed. L. Eley, pp. 203 and 207 (215–216 and 219). 46 ¨ [Cf. Christian von Ehrenfels, “Uber ‘Gestalt-qualitäten,’ ” Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, XIV (1890), pp. 252ff.] 47 We have attempted to follow this evolution in our article, “Quelques aspects et quelques développements de la psychologie de la forme,” loc. cit., pp. 415–430 in SPP, pp. 1–23. 44

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Husserl’s problem. The “Gestalt qualities” do not refer to isolated sensory data corresponding to local stimulations. On the contrary, they present themselves only on totalities of data constituted as closed and coherent unities, but, on other hand, they are the distinguishing mark of those totalities, to the extent that, in this case, it is a question of totalities given in perception itself, not of those formed by categorial thought. Now, the segregation of those closed and coherent unities, as the things such as we perceive them, is a problem of importance among those posed by Gestalt theory.48 However, although it stems from the notion of “Gestalt quality” or that of “figural factor,” the concept of Gestalt differs significantly from them.49 The Gestalt theoreticians do not admit of elements independent of each other that would be the same, within the group they make up, as they would be taken in isolation. A Gestalt is not conceived, either, as a new sensory or quasi-sensory element that would be added to the ordinary elements. Just as the facts making up a Gestalt totality are taken only for components of a Gestalt, and are defined exclusively by the functions they fulfill therein, so is a structure (Gestalt) nothing other than the separated [fragmenté], articulated, and structured totality of the facts of which it consists: there is nothing to search after behind their balanced coexistence. It follows that the coherence among those facts depends on their nature, that is to say, on the role that each one of them plays in the formation of the Gestalt; it depends, therefore, on the matters it is about, on the well-determined structure that their totality possesses in a concrete case. If, as it seems to us to be the case, the noematic sense should be considered a Gestalt, then one must draw all the consequences entailed by this dependence. One should therefore respond to the problem of the relationship between the noema and the object, and to that of the relations among the many noemata concerning the same object, by means of a theory other than that of the central noematic point. The problem 48

Cf. M. Wertheimer, “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, II,” loc. cit.; W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, Chapters 5 and 6; K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology, Chapter 4; and P. Guillaume, La psychologie de la forme, Chapter 3, § 2. 49 Concerning this difference, see pp. 415–430 of our article cited above (cf. n. 48). See SPP, pp. 4–9.


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remains as Husserl posed it.50 If, in experiencing an act, the subject directs himself toward an object, then this fact possesses a particularly noematic status. The noema corresponding to an act is related to the object, and it is related thereto due to the sense immanent in it, or, better yet, because it is nothing other than a sense. This relation of the noema to the object should be given expression in the structure of the noema, since otherwise it could not exist for consciousness. That structure, which is involved here, does not however amount to the fact that, within the object such as it offers itself (i.e., within the object making its appearance under a certain aspect), another noematic object would lie, one that would be, in a way, independent of the aspect under which the object presents itself, one therefore that would be invariant in relation to the changes occurring in its current presentation. Accordingly, the different aspects under which the same object may appear, and in fact appears, would be like disguises that the noematic center would in turn don, disguises that would be necessary to it, in the sense that it could not be grasped except in one disguise or another. In this interpretation, the directedness of the perceiving subject toward the object tout court, toward the objective object, which is included in the actualization of the noema corresponding to the perceptual act, is conceived of as a part element of that actualization. It is nothing else than the actualization of a special, distinct component of the noema. When one perceives an object that presents itself under such and such an aspect, this object is given as being identically the same as the one that had presented itself previously under another aspect, as an object which, under certain conditions, would appear from such and such a side, in such and such an orientation, and about which such and such acts of becoming conscious are possible, etc. This consciousness of the identity of the object cannot be accounted for by calling upon a material noematic element common to all the noemata in question. Becoming conscious of an object (which, as identical, appears under different aspects, in diverse orientations, etc.) does not signify the same thing as becoming conscious of an identical material element contained in all the different presentations. In effect, that which the perceiving object has in view when an object offers itself to him, under a certain aspect, is 50

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 266 (308).

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not such a material element common to the current and other aspects, nor is it anything concealed behind the many presentations. Therefore, in order to respond to our consciousness of the identity of the object, let us try to have the substantialist conception, from which the theory of the central noematic point draws its inspiration, replaced by a relational one. We are going to resume the examination of the structure of the noema, in order to bring into the open the references to different noemata that a given noema contains as constitutive elements, references due to which it enters into definite relationships with them, so that the noema in question appears as forming a group together with those other noemata. In his theory of the central noematic point, Husserl begins by tackling the relationship of the noema to the object, and, by responding to this problem by means of the thesis of the polarization of the noematic sense toward a center that he makes out to be an X, he comes to the conception summarized above concerning the internoematic relationships.51 We are going, on the contrary, to analyze first the internoematic relationships and the nature of the group formed by the noemata in virtue of these relationships, and, on that basis, we will try to clarify the identity of the object and the sense of this identity. Although we have been led to abandon the theory of the central noematic point, we do not believe that we are moving away from Husserl’s doctrine. Not only is that theory not the sole one established by him, but he also defends it exclusively in the paragraphs of the Ideen we have referred to. In later works, he makes no further mention of it. Even in the conclusion of the presentation he makes of the theory in question, he writes as follows: Durch den zum Sinngehörigen Sinnesträger (als leere X) und die im Wesen der Sinne gründende Möglichkeit einstimmiger Verbindung zu Sinneseinheiten . . . hat nicht nur jeder Sinn seinen “Gegenstand” . . ., eben sofern sie in Sinneseinheiten einzuordnen sind, in welchen die bestimmbaren X der geeinigten Sinne miteinander und mit dem X des Gesamtsinnes der jeweiligen Sinneseinheit zur Deckung kommen.52 51

Cf. supra, pp. 112–113. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 272–273 (315): “Through the sense-bearer (as empty X) belonging to the sense and through the possibility of harmonious combination to make sense-unities . . . —a possibility grounded in the essence of the sense—not only does each sense have its ‘object’ . . ., just as far as they are to be members of sense-unities in which

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If the central noematic point appears in this passage, it does so, strictly speaking, as an indication of the consciousness one has of the identity of the object, a phenomenon which, together with the noematic center, thus seems to be stated, rather than accounted for. On the other hand, in the passage cited, Husserl is referring to his conception of the syntheses effected in the perceptual life and in the conscious life in general, of the identification brought about by syntheses, of the contexts of acts and noemata. These conceptions were developed by Husserl for the first time in his Ideen, and considered in depth in his Formale und transzendentale Logik and in his Cartesianische Meditationen. It is toward them that we will let ourselves be guided, trying to come into contact with them. §III. Implications The noema corresponding to a perception has been defined as the object such as it plays a role for the perceiving subject.53 It is, therefore, the object given in a certain mode of appearing and presentation, offering itself from such and such a side, under a certain aspect, in such and such orientation, etc. This “object-perceived-as-such” is not, however, exhausted by the facts which, in a concrete perceptual act, are given to straightforward, immediate vision. If, for example, one looks at a house that offers itself from one of its sides, it is this one side that is being seen, while the other, opposite sides are not. The latter, nonetheless, play a role in the perceived-as-such, and they are present therein in a way, to the extent that what the subject perceives and has in view is a house appearing from a certain side, therefore, in a unilateral manner. In this phenomenon, it is not a question of express memories of the sides presently not being seen, nor of more or the determinable X of the united senses become coincident with one another and with the X of the total sense of the particular unity of sense.” See also p. 271: “Mehrere Aktnoemata haben hier u¨ berall verschiedene Kerne, jedoch so, dass sie sich trotzdem zur Identifikationseinheit zusammenschliessen, zu einer Einheit, in der das “Etwas,” das Bestimmbare, das in jedem Kerne liegt, als identisches bewusst ist.” Trans., p. 314: “several act-noemata have here, throughout, different cores, yet in such a manner that, in spite of this, they are joined together to make a unity of identity, to make a unity in which the ‘something,’ the determinable which inheres in each core, is intended to as an identical ‘something.’ ” 53 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 131.

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less intuitive or more or less vague images that the subject would fashion of those sides, images and memories that the current perception would awaken as concomitant facts. Such an evocation may well be produced: in perceiving a house that appears to him under a certain aspect, the subject may remember various aspects under which the house—insofar as it is the same, therefore as given together with the consciousness of its identity—has previously appeared to him in actual perception; he may remember the sides of the house that are presently not being seen; he may fashion an idea or an image of that aspect under which the house would present itself, were it to be observed under conditions in which the subject has not yet had the occasion of looking at it, of the mode of presentation in which it would offer itself from a point of view in which the observer has not yet placed himself, when, say, he would perceive the house from an airplane. These memories and images constitute the form displayed by a phenomenon which, however, may not take up this form; it may not therefore exist in a form not displayed but which, in one way or another, is an essential and constitutive element in the structure of the perceptual sense. The object such as it appears in a concrete perception, and such as the perceiving subject has it in view, contains references to sides which, in the perception in question, are not given in “immediate vision,” to aspects different from that under which the object offers itself, to modes of presentation and appearing that are actualizable, though not actualized, at the moment under consideration.54 Thus when, from the top of a mountain, one perceives people, houses, cars, etc., that appear quite small and, especially, very distant, this aspect under which they offer themselves contains a reference to that under which those objects would present themselves, were the subject to perceive them at a “normal” distance, say, while he is in the street and among them. Absent such references, what the subject would perceive from the top of the mountain would not have, for him, the perceptual sense of veritable things, but only that of ghostly phenomena. Similarly, so that the perceived may play the role, for the perceiving subject, of a house offering itself from a certain side, the side seen must be perceived as being integrated with the remaining sides. 54

Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 19, pp. 81ff. (44 ff.)


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Facts unseen should therefore be present in the perceived, and they should complement, therein, those given in straightforward vision. Now, facts that are not visible cannot be present in the perceived except by way of indication and implication, that is to say, by means of references, contained in the perceived, to those facts. No perception is then complete in terms of that which, therein, is given as really seen; it contains, and— as we will see below55 —it should contain more than what is given in straightforward and immediate vision. In order to disclose the complete perceptual sense and bring out all the elements that are essential thereto and contribute to its formation, one must take into account a surplus that every perception contains beyond that which is seen therein. This surplus consists in nothing but the references in question, which the “perceivedas-such” implicates, the latter being incapable, in their absence, of being such as the perceiving subject has it in view. These references are not the exclusive possession of the perceptions of things that the subject is cognizant of due to his past experiences, so that, upon remembering them, he can, with a greater or lesser degree of ease, lay out that which his present perception implicates. Even if an observer perceives a house for the first time in his life, references and implications of the sort just mentioned would not be missing in his perception. To be sure, in that case, the sides of the house that are not seen by the observer are, to him, indeterminate in character. But this lack of determination is not absolute. At most, it would be a question of the complete absence of determination so far as the details pertaining to the other sides are concerned, i.e., their colors, shapes, architectural arrangements, etc. While oblivious to those details, the observer “knows,” however, that those sides exist and will be in harmony with the one he is seeing. There is nothing conceptual about this knowledge, and neither does it result from reasonings or conclusions; it is an element immanent in perception itself. The references to indeterminate facts implicated by the “perceived-as-such” are given expression in it. To render this knowledge explicit is, then, nothing else than to render explicit the noematic sense that corresponds to the perception in question, to wit: the perceptual sense, “unknown house presenting itself from such and such a side.” If, in experiencing such an act, the subject endeavors to clarify the implicated 55

Cf. infra, pp. 212–213.

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references, he would be led, by dint of laying them out, to take possibilities into consideration. He would imagine the aspects under which the house could offer itself; for example, when it is perceived from a vantage point other than the one in which the subject happens to be placed, he would conceive of dispositions that the unseen sides could have, on condition that he would continue and extend further what he is in fact seeing of the architectural arrangement of the house, etc. In the case of these possibilities, it is not a question of “formal” and “empty” ones, that is to say, for example, of contradictions of the sort appealed to by Hume56 in order to show that one is not prevented in the least from imagining the course of natural things otherwise than it is in reality, a conceivable idea which, however, suggests nothing in particular. Here, on the contrary, the possibilities are founded and motivated not by what is seen, as if it were possible to isolate it, but by the perceived such as it offers itself to the subject and plays a role for him; they are predelineated and pre-sketched in the noematic object the subject has in view, in the object such as it is in the eyes of the subject who experiences the perception in question. In conceiving these possibilities, the subject would render explicit, to himself, the noematic sense and the indeterminations that the perceptual sense contains by way of implication. Such indeterminations, moreover, play a role, likewise, in the perceptual noemata relating to well-known objects; there is hardly a perception which, among the references it implicates, does not contain some more or less indeterminate facts. This indeterminateness is of a special nature. It can be most complete when, for example, in the house-perceived-assuch, only the presence in general of the sides other than the façade is just indicated, and everything else about them is cast in the shadows. However, no matter how incomplete it may be, that indeterminateness always possesses a determinate structure.57 In themselves, the facts a noema contains in implicated form are indeterminate (or may be so). However, that which is given with a more or less perfect degree of determination is the style, so to speak, of those facts, 56

Cf. D. Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1875), II, pp. 23 and 31. 57 E. Husserl, CM, § 19, p. 83 (45).


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their general (or, better yet, generic) nature, a certain framework in which they are inserted. By means of subsequent experiences, a selection among the said possibilities will be effected; these perceptions would still have to confirm or invalidate the presumptions and anticipations that the subject conceives of by laying out the references to well-defined facts that the noema implicates. Even the framework that was just spoken about may be upset by the progression of experience. In that case, the perception will afterward show itself to be illusory: the object will prove not to be such as the subject had taken it. In the following chapter,58 we will again deal with this “dynamism” of the perceptual life; for the moment, we limit ourselves to studying it from a, so to speak, “static” point of view, that is say, to analyzing and rendering explicit the particular perceptual sense such as it is in itself, and to bringing out the references it implicates as its constitutive elements. One must not, in effect, see, in these implications, incidental or secondary facts. The role they play for the formation and constitution of the perceptual sense can, on the contrary, be so significant that what is straightforwardly seen would appear in the light of the implicated facts. The importance of the implications stands out in the following example. In a region one is hardly familiar with, or not at all, one notices, on the horizon, something that seems to be a cloud. Suddenly, the “cloudperceived-as-such” undergoes a phenomenal transformation before the eyes of the observer, and it becomes a mountain range presenting itself as very distant.59 In psychology, it is traditional to appeal to the constancy hypothesis in order to explain such a phenomenon.60 The sensory data are considered therein as constant, because the external stimuli provoking them do not change; the transformation of the “cloud” into “mountains” can therefore only stem from an alteration that takes place in the interpretation of the sensory data. These are conceived as a kind of sign that the subject, in the course of his life, will learn to interpret. He could err 58

[This chapter is not extant.] Obviously, it is a question only of that by reason of which what appears on the horizon is given in the perception, not of that which is “in reality.” 60 [For the notion of the constancy hypothesis, cf. A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, pt. I, ch. 2, § 4, pt. II, § 1, pt. II, § 2.] 59

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in the resulting interpretation, and could, among other things, correct or perfect it. Husserl himself, although he rejects assimilating perception to the act of understanding signs (taken in the sense of indications),61 is not too far removed from this way of looking at things. By reason of the dualistic conception of perception he advocates, he attributes the transformation in question to a change taking place only in the [. . .]62 in the hyletic data themselves; in effect, a relationship to an objective unity is not predelineated in a univocal fashion.63 The two noematic objects are completely In his Ideen, I, §§ 43 and 52, pp. 78 ff. and 97 ff. (92 ff. and 117 ff.), Husserl opposes the realist thesis, according to which perception would not be capable of reaching the veritable thing, and in conformity with which the thing perceived would not be the real thing, but only a sign thereof, the real thing being such as it is conceived in, and constructed by, the physical sciences. Now, for an entity to play the role of sign of another, it is necessary for the latter, above and beyond being pointed to, to be accessible by means of an act in which one would become straightforwardly conscious of it, so that, thereby, it would be given and grasped in itself. This, however, is not the case with the perceptual life, in which there is no entity being pointed to by it, i.e., the thing perceived, which could, moreover, present itself modo originali in an act other than that of perception. The thing perceived is no intermediary entity inserted between the perceptual act and the real thing; it should not be taken for a representative, a substitute, a symbol, a sign, etc. of the real thing. On the contrary, the thing perceived is the real thing itself which, in perception, though it appears under a certain aspect, from a certain side, in short, in a unilateral fashion, nonetheless presents itself in itself and in person. (For the interpretation of the physical sciences advocated by Husserl, cf. supra, Chapter 2, § 4.) This acknowledgment of perception as the only way of access to real things is, obviously, not incompatible with the dualist conception mentioned above (cf. Chapter 3, pp. 127), which Husserl maintained concerning the intrinsic structure of perception. It is the hyletic data that Husserl sees as a kind of sign. Now, one must note that, according to him, the term “sign” is equivocal: this term may be understood in the sense of an indication or, again, in that of a thing—as, for example, the spoken or written words—which has a meaning, or, more exactly, to which a meaning is ascribed by specific acts. (In this connection, cf. LU, II, Inv. 1, §§ 2–10.) It is to signs taken in the latter sense that Husserl compares the hyletic data that play a role in perception, albeit without failing to underscore some differences that exist between the understanding of words and the animation of the hyletic data by the acts informing them. (Cf. LU, II, Inv. 1, § 28.) 62 [A word is missing in the typescript, as indicated by the editor of the French edition of this book.] 63 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 206 (242). 61


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different from one another. Now, since the noema is the correlate of the perceptual act (composed of the hyletic data and the acts that animate them), the constancy (in a case like the one just cited) of hyletic data (of chromatic data, for example) should be expressed in the noemata. That which, on the noematic side, corresponds to the chromatic data is the color with which the “object-perceived-as-such” offers itself; it is, therefore, the noematic color qua objective quality,64 which should be considered as a mode of appearing (Abschattung or adumbration) of the real color.65 Every change in the hyletic data conveys an alteration taking place in the object that the subject has in view; it conveys it at least in the mode of presentation of the object. So far as the example in question is concerned, the logic of this dualistic conception involves maintaining, by reason of the constancy of the hyletic data, the sameness, for example, of the color pertaining to the “cloud-perceived-as-such” and that of the mountains such as it appears, although, due to the difference in the [. . .],66 this common element becomes integrated into encompassing noematic unities that are profoundly different from one another. This sameness may well subsist.67 It does not serve, however, to justify the conclusion that constant hyletic data would survive the transformation of the perceived, as if these data were informed in such and such a fashion on one occasion and otherwise on another. Without admitting the Husserlian dualism between morphé or form and húlé or matter,68 we hold on, in the example adduced (despite any resemblance that may be noticed afterwards among any details whatever pertaining to the noematic objects), to the fundamental difference between them and, above all, to the felt and experienced transformation of one into the other. Since “cloud” is transformed into “range of mountains,” the latter implicates references to facts which are not seen and which, under the conditions of the example, are altogether 64

[Cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 117.] Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 97, pp. 202–203 (237). 66 Cf. supra, n. 63. 67 Assuming the sameness in question, we set aside the various modalities of the appearing of colors, described by David Katz, Der Aufbau der Farbwelt (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1930), § 2, modalities which may be at work in an example like ours. 68 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 123. [The Greek words, which are transliterated and translated here, were supplied by the editor of the French edition of this book.] 65

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indeterminate, except that they would fit into the generic form “mountains.” However, it is in relation to these implicated and indicated facts that what is given in vision properly so called is structured, and it is, due to these facts, that the perceived appears as being very distant mountains endowed with ill-defined contours. In the cloud-perceived-as-such, instead of those facts, references to other facts are implicated which made the perceived such as it offers itself. Accordingly, by reason of the difference between the facts implicated, that which, in the two perceptions, is given straightforwardly to vision is not the same thing on both sides. It is therefore well-founded to maintain that the radical transformation of the perceived, of the perceptual noema in its entirety, stems from an alteration taking place in the implicated facts. Given that the noema has been defined as a Gestalt, it follows that the implications and references should count among the factors contributing, in a sufficiently decisive manner, to the constitution of the structures (Gestalten). §IV. Perception According to Pradines The phenomenon of implication plays a role—though, as we will see, in a quite limited form—in the theory of perception established by Pradines. From a biological and evolutionary point of view, perceptual consciousness should not be considered either as originary or as elemental. On the contrary, it is preceded and conditioned by a reactive life, by affective and intensive states which, such as the feeling of resistance, are experienced at the time of close contact with things, or when the action of a stimulus endowed with a particularly strong intensity is exerted on an organism, as, for example, in the case of being dazzled by lightning or startled by a peal of thunder, etc. These passive and impressional states, having the character of immediacy, and being felt by the living being as its own because, in them, its existence appears to it as called into question, are called “passions” by Pradines.69 He is eager to distinguish them from the “emotive and motor reactions” provoked by sensations, which thus presuppose a constituted 69

Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., I, Book I, Chapter 7; ii.


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sensibility and cannot, consequently, contribute to its constitution.70 The passage from a purely impressional stage of the mental life to a sensory or perceptual one is achieved by a process of sublimation71 or extenuation72 of the passion, in such a way that mental states would become possible from which the passional element is progressively excluded. This gradual fading of the passion dominates the evolution of sensibility and is the law thereof. However, fading and extenuation do not at all signify suppression and disappearance. The process of sublimation is “like a process of decantation which . . . leaves behind a sediment of affectivity and intensity.”73 In perception, no passion is experienced; the subject suffers no affection. But the biological condition of such an inefficacious state (which, in itself, is not possessed of affective effectiveness) is that its connection to the original affectivity is not severed.74 Though it is not present in perception, passion is nonetheless represented and anticipated therein. Pradines thus defines perception as the “representation of an eventual passion, that is to say, of a passion subordinated to the eventuality of a movement,” namely, especially of that movement that is carried out by a living being in approaching, or in distancing itself from, an object, a movement for which the perception serves as a guide.75 Since from a biological standpoint the thing perceived does not play a role, except as an eventual agent, perception reveals itself, therefore, to be the mediation of that agent and of the action that the latter would perform on a living being at the term of a movement.76 If that were present, what would make a living being act by way of passion would be represented to it, in perception, as a phenomenon, that is to say, it would reach the subject without causing an impression in it. 70

Cf. ibid., p. 186. Cf. ibid., pp. 177–178. 72 Cf. ibid., pp. 153 and 157. 73 Ibid., p. 67. 74 Cf. ibid., p. 181. 75 Cf. ibid., p. 69; also see p. 237: perception “gives us [the passion] as phenomenon, and it draws its representational value only from the fact that it is a sort of sublimation and idealization of this very passion.” [The bracketed expression, “the passion” has been supplied by the editor of the French edition of this book.] 76 Cf. ibid., pp. 74–75. 71

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This appearing of the object as a phenomenon has, however, its biological justification in that the said phenomenon would at the same time be the sign of an object, that is to say, the herald and forerunner of an eventual passion.77 Consequently, in the form of a color or sound, objects would appear to us which, if they came into contact with us directly and immediately, would cause an upset in us otherwise than by color or sound.78 These sensory qualities are like disguises which would be donned by the objects insofar as they are agents, or serve as occasions for passional affections. One must understand in this sense the definitions given by Pradines of sensation as sign79 of the thing and of perception as anticipatory or symbolic knowledge. Perception just serves to transmit an agent’s “dispatch” to the living being; it is only a representative of that which is acting, therefore of that which is but is not present at the moment, in the sense of being in intimate communion with the living being, the action of which, in consequence, instead of being performed, just appears.80 These enigmatic perceptual states find their biological justification in the usefulness, to the living being, of having at its disposal pieces of information about things and about their actions, before the latter are endured.81 The senses develop as instruments of action, and they preserve the imprint of their genesis in their functioning. In perception, the object is represented as absent (so far as its action is concerned), but as presented phenomenally. This amounts to saying that it is represented as being at a distance from the subject, but as susceptible of being attained to by a movement, at the term of which, should the object become real, a passional impression would take the place of the representational perception. Since the former, which is the object’s action as endured, is foreshadowed in the latter, it is necessary, then, for space, distance, and movement to be inscribed in the perception. The manner in which they would do so should not, however, be confused with a “reaction Cf. ibid., Book III, Pt. I, § 2. Cf. ibid., p. 71. 79 We will return below to the specific sense with which Pradines employs the term “sign,” in contrast with its traditional acceptation. [No page number is given as reference.] 80 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., Book I, Chapter 7, § 1. 81 Cf. ibid., pp. 51 and 173. 77 78


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to place,” or with the automatic cognizance of place that a performed movement would entail.82 It is not a question of the performance of a movement, not even of the sketching out of such a performance, but of its static representation in sensory qualities like sounds and colors. In order to be represented, the movement should not be given, except in the form of a representation, that is to say, it should lose every motor characteristic.83 Moreover, if space and movement play a role in representational perception (in vision, for example), it is only that, by virtue of countless experiences, a correlation would be established between certain visual data and the memories of certain groping movements, and that the subject would end up learning, in that fashion, how to place that which he sees in a certain direction and at a certain distance.84 Spatial orientation is foreign to locomotion as such; the latter is not only incapable of revealing the former to vision, but, on the contrary, it is in need of being instructed about it. If locomotion is effected as an oriented movement, then it should be guided by vision, or by another sense capable of being cognizant of space. Vision cannot derive the spatial orientation that goes into it from an association of visual data with other data that would be dissimilar and foreign to them. On the contrary, it is necessary for vision—as it would be, moreover, for every outer sense—to contain space and movement by means of its own, that is to say, due to facts that are constitutive of it. These facts are the intensities of the sensations or, more exactly, the variations in intensity that are produced when the living being comes near the object perceived, a movement at the term of which intensity attains its maximum value, and in which a passional impression is substituted for a perceptual representation.85 These variations in intensity are immediately interpreted as spatial values, and it is in this sense that perception is interpretation or intellection. Space can, therefore, be represented only by a series of intensities, which are in inverse proportion to the distances and are thus conceived. It must be carefully noted, however, that the rep82 83 84 85

Cf. ibid., Book II, Pt. I, Chapter 2, §§ ii.ii and iii. Cf. ibid., pp. 137 and 210–211. Cf. ibid., Book II, Pt. II, Chapter 1, § ii. Cf. ibid., Book III, Pt. II, Chapter 2, § ii.

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resentation of space and of movement should not make one suppose that the movement would actually be carried out, and that, therefore, a multiplicity of sensations would be experienced and the series of intensities really run through. The phenomenon in question is the static representation of movement, that is to say, the representation in a single perception. Such a representation is possible only if that perception “envelops consciousness by a regular series of intensive variations.” Such in effect is the case, according to Pradines. Every sensory quality is grasped as a “necessary moment of an ordered series of intensities.” Even in its most basic form, perception is possible only if the subject can move forward somewhat along the “scale of intensities” and compare the present value of a quality with a past value located in a temporal order that ends up in some passion. It is thus necessary for the subject to preserve, at every turn, a memory of the degrees of quality that have vanished, and precisely as vanished.86 Therefore, into each perception go other perceptions in which the same sensory quality is given, perceptions no different from the former, except for the intensities of this quality. Here we find ourselves, in effect, before the phenomenon of implicated references, limited, in Pradines, to the intensities. Every given intensity involves the consciousness of a range of different intensities, and it is within this range that the given intensity is inserted. Being so enveloped is constitutive of the intensity, which, as a quantity, can exist only in an ordered series. If one considers it in isolation and takes it for something particular, it loses every intensive character: in reality, every particular intensity already is, in itself, a “relation of intensities,” that is to say, it is constituted by the references it implicates to an entire more-or-less extended intensive range. In taking up again the discussion of the thesis of British empiricism, according to which the difference between sensation and image consists in a difference in intensity, Pradines adopts the argument made by the opponents of empiricism, to the effect that a sensation is not transformed into an image because of the attenuation of its intensity. But Pradines 86

In the phenomenon in question, Pradines sees the intervention, even the necessary intervention, of memory in the constitution of perception, or, more exactly, of memorial activity in the special form thereof he calls the “recognition of the present.” Below we shall be discussing this thesis. [No page number is given as reference.]


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rejects, at the same time, their other argument, according to which an image does not become a sensation on account of the fact that its intensity happens to increase. That which is erroneous about this argument is the idea of the strengthening of an image or, generally, of a change in the intensity thereof, or the very consideration of the possibility of such a change. The image is not distinguished from perception because of its lesser degree of intensity, but by reason of the invariability of the latter, from which it follows that an image is entirely devoid of intensity. It is because of its variability that sensation is different from an image in all its forms, even those which seem to come the closest to sensation. The variability in question should be inscribed in every perception, even if static and unchanging; it should play a role therein as a fact of which one is conscious. And that is possible only because of the references to other perceptual states that the current perception implicates. According to Pradines, the indispensable condition to be met by perception is that an ordered series of intensities should be encompassed in a perception: “if we are cognizant only of a representational quality but not of its order value, that is to say, of its rank in a series of intensities, we are then not cognizant of its signification, and, consequently, we are not even cognizant of any quality.” Therefore, the author defines perception as an expectation “under the condition of a suitable movement, in or outside us, a condition [subject]87 to the increasing intensity of the object perceived.” Moreover, the anticipation of the movement such as it necessarily plays a role in every perception is only the anticipation of various intensities in the given sensation. One must distinguish the fact of being encompassed from an associative connection between states that are extraneous by nature to each other, states that may well reciprocally evoke one another, but none of which forms part of the makeup of the other. It is this distinction that serves as the foundation of the one between sight and foresight, which is fundamental for Pradines. The space represented due to the interpretation of the series of intensities implicated in a current perception, or the distance at which the object perceived is found, as well as space itself, are 87

[The bracketed word has been supplied by the editor of the French edition of this book.]

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perceived and not just foreseen.88 Perceived space is not an empty space; it is, on the contrary, filled with objects that are the ends and goals of human actions. This space “is but our field of action,”89 and it is in that sense that one may say of it that it is full of human passions.90 This means that a passion is symbolized, anticipated, forecast by every perception of an object situated in space. However, if the “expectation of a passion under the condition of a movement . . . is encompassed by every representation,” then this passion appears not as purely and simply future, but as represented, as present qua phenomenon.91 A passion is, no doubt, situated in the future, but that future is itself seen as a phenomenon; it is not foreseen.92 Thus, the term “expectation” should not be understood in the sense that there would be two separate mental states between which there would be a passage, so that one of them would furnish a warning concerning the other, which, in turn, would follow upon the former.93 A passion is so far from being separate from perception that it is present and immanent therein, although it is so in a sublimated and attenuated form, as the “remote echo” of the “initial jolt.”94 In this form, a passion enters into the constitution of the perception with which it is conjoined; a passion forms part of the perception, and it is contained therein.95 Hence the already mentioned distinction,96 which is maintained by Pradines, between the emotional reactions set off by the perceptions and added thereto, on the one hand, and the passional elements found within perception itself, wherein they play the role of essential and constitutive facts, on the other. Therefore, Pradines’s thesis that sensation is a sign of the thing should not be confused with the traditional thesis, according to which sensory Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., p. 172. Also see Book II, Pt. II, Chapter 1, § i for a critique of the account of visual space in terms of the association of the visual data with the evoked tactile and muscular data. 89 Ibid., p. 96. 90 Cf. ibid., p. 138. 91 Cf. ibid., pp. 217–218. 92 Cf. ibid., p. 173. 93 Cf. ibid., p. 175; also see pp. 234–235 and 237. 94 Ibid., p. 64. 95 Cf. ibid., p. 95. 96 Cf. supra, pp. 212–213. 88


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data become signs of objects by virtue of a regular associative link to them. The data in question would thus provide a warning concerning the said objects, that is to say, they would make one expect them, and this would amount to allowing one to foresee them. The sensory data become signs, which means that they are not so by nature. In consequence, they can exist apart from that role and should even preexist it. This separation between the existence of the sensory data and their function as signs is not admitted by Pradines.97 According to him, a sensory datum does not owe that function to an “accident” (i.e., an empirical or original association); on the contrary, it is “essentially” a sign; it is just a sign; it is penetrated throughout with the role of transmitting a mediation of the object, and it is confined to that role to which it is indissolubly linked, and apart from which it is nothing. Contrary to the views held in traditional psychology, the function of sensibility does not consist, according to Pradines, in furnishing us with sensory qualities (like colors and sounds), but in making us notice the objects that are straightforwardly and immediately grasped in the sensations. Hence, the objects, instead of being indicated as something to be anticipated, are seen and understood in those signs which the sensory data are. Colors and sounds come to us by and through the object of which they are the qualities and to which they are attached, and not the other way around. Accordingly, the question is no longer raised as to how consciousness gains access to the objects98 on the basis of the sensory qualities considered as elementary data. In their pure form, that is to say, as separate from the object and devoid of their representational function, the sensory qualities, such as they play a role in the sciences and in the arts (in acoustics and in music, for example), should not be taken for immediate data of consciousness; one must see in them, on the contrary, products of a supra-sensory activity which are situated at a very advanced stage of evolution.99 The reason for this immediate character of the relationship Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 95 and 103 and Book II, Pt. II, Chapter 4, § 1. Cf. ibid., Book I, Chapter 6, §§ ii and iv. 99 About this topic, cf. ibid., Book I, Chapter 5 and Book III, Pt. II, Chapter 3, § iii. We can only allude here to this idea, the most valuable one among all those owed to Pradines. This idea is called upon to play a fundamental role in a theory that is focused on the constitution of certain classes of entities that are of a superior or higher order than 97 98

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between sensation and object is this: that the object is, for the subject, essentially defined by the state of passion that is produced at the moment of direct and close contact with it, and that it is this passion which, insofar as it is foreshadowed, plays a role in sensation as a constitutive element of it. Now, a passion which, without being currently experienced, plays a role in a perception can be present in it only by way of a reference to it that the perception would implicate (just as is the case with the series of intensities in which a given intensity is inserted). With Pradines’s theory, we [find ourselves,]100 therefore, truly confronted with a theory of implication. Perhaps it is not devoid of interest to compare Husserl’s views with those of Pradines, for both attribute a major role, in the constitution of perception, to facts coming under the rubric of the “intellect.” Every perceptual act is, according to Husserl, composed of hyletic data or sensations, which are animated and informed by interpretive acts bestowing on them a sense, in a way similar, as it were, to that in which a meaning is ascribed to words.101 It is to these conjoined layers that corresponds the object such as it offers itself in perception. If one connects the intellect with what Husserl calls [. . .],102 one will be able to say that, according to him, the intellect takes part and operates in each particular perception. According to Pradines, “sensibility is wholly intellect,” and he goes as far as to invert the “maxim of empiricism” by maintaining that nihil est in sensu quod . . . prius non fuerit in intellectu.103 Sensibility is intellect in that of the sense-perceptible objects, therefore, for a theory of “abstraction” (though one may be led, moreover, to contribute some modifications to the conception of sensory activity that is maintained by Pradines). 100 [The words in brackets have been supplied by the editor of the French edition of this book.] 101 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 116–117 and n. 62 in this chapter. 102 [There is a word missing, as indicated by the editor of the French edition of this book.] 103 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., p. 266. [This maxim, the word order of which has been slightly altered here, would read in English as follows: “Nothing is in the senses which before was not in the intellect,” while the maxim of empiricism, its opposite, would be: “nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu,” which in translation reads as follows: “nothing is in the intellect which before was not in the senses.” Cf. Aristotle, De anima, III, 4, 430 a 1, in op. cit., I, p. 683; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Book II, Chapter 66 (Rome: Forzani, 1894), p. 211, trans. J. F. Anderson (Notre


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the sense that the former owes its formation and evolution in the various species to the efforts and work of the latter. The work of the intellect consists in effecting the progressive dissociation of the impressional from the representational elements contained in the original irritation, so as to ensure that the latter prevail over the former; in creating that scale of intensities of which it was a question; and, finally, in establishing a correlation between intensities and distances, that is to say, in elaborating an interpretation of the former in terms of spatial values.104 Thus, the intellect, in the course of thousands of centuries, has urged the mental life on from a purely impressional stage toward a level whereupon representational states are possible. Once this level is attained and sensibility constituted, the work of the intellect is, in a way, finished, and it is found, so to speak, deposited on, or sedimented in, each representational state. In its root, every perception contains the intellect, because such a state could not have arisen except under the impulse of the latter, which, therefore, is found incorporated into it as an organic element.105 Therefore, Pradines can do without calling upon factors that exceed the purely sensory region (factors by which sensations would be formed into perceptions), on the occasion of the production of every particular perception in beings which, as is the case with humans, are capable of Dame: Universitry of Notre Dame Press, 1956), II, pp. 201–202; also see Chapters 73 and 80; H. D. Gardeil, op. cit., III, pp. 154–157 and 167–168; J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I, Chapter 2, in op. cit., ed. J. W, Yolton, pp. 9ff.; G. W. Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Book II Chapter 1, in op. cit., V, p. 100, trans., p. 111.] 104 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 157 and 238. 105 The scale of intensities in which the current intensity would be inserted is given to us, according to Pradines (cf. ibid., pp. 220–221), through heredity. “That which creates this gamut is the progressive refinement of the senses in relation to the stimulations they receive [. . .] the conscious acquisition of all the information that this refinement makes possible is identical with the natural education of the senses, which is automatically effected in every human being in virtue of a completely organic impulse, and which ends up, for everyone, in the same experience of the universe.” What we learn, in going up and down that gamut, is “but that which we already knew, experience being for us just an occasion to awaken in ourselves an innate science which one could characterize as organic, being the consciousness awakened in the sense-organ of the very law of its constitution.” (Ibid., p. 237). [The ellipsis in brackets has been provided by the editor of the French edition of this book.]

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living on truly perceptual states. In this conception, the views that we have put forward in opposition to the Husserlian dualism by appealing to Gestalt theory are close to Pradines’s theory, except for this difference: in our opinion, that which corresponds to perception conceived of as consisting of a sole layer is the object-perceived-as-such, hence the perceptual noema, while, according to Pradines, that which appears in sensation is the real object considered as an eventual agent. §V. A Critique of Pradines’s Theory Under the consideration of the real object as an agent lies concealed the notion of the noema that one must draw out from Pradines’s theory. Or, more exactly, one must introduce this notion therein, a notion the absence of which—as we are about to show106 —places this theory face to face with an insurmountable difficulty concerning the identity of the object in relation to a group of acts that are distinct from one another, and by means of which the object is perceived. According to Pradines, there is a profound difference separating the sense-perceptible qualities (e.g., colors, heat, etc.) from impressions and affections. The sense-perceptible qualities belong to the thing—the author rightly reproaches “impressional” psychology with taking for “a quality of the soul” or for a “state of the subject” that which, in reality, belongs to the thing itself. They are qualities bound to the object to such a point that they are not designated without being connected with it, as, for example, a rose scent.107 Impressions and affections, on the contrary, belong to the subject feeling them; they are experienced by the subject as his own subjective states, furnishing him with no information except about himself, and none about things.108 This cannot mean, however, that, when the passion is experienced, the object would count for nothing in it, and that it would disappear for consciousness. Just as in perception the passion that is anticipated therein is linked to the object represented, so should the object be linked to the passion, when the latter is currently experienced. Otherwise, there would be no internal connection any longer between the anticipated 106 107 108

Cf. infra, pp. 223. Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 36–37. Cf. ibid., p. 64.


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action and the action undergone, between that which is phenomenologically present and that which is ontologically present. Pradines’s theory would miss its goal, which is the overcoming of psychological atomism, by connecting consciousness to being by means of a link that would exceed all associative means and by providing the subject with objectivity.109 Even the irreversibility of time, ordered as it is from the sense of the phenomenon to being, that is to say, from representation to passion,110 would not be possible. In effect, the experienced passion, given as that which in a prior perception had been anticipated, is not detached from the object. On the contrary, it renders the object present which in it becomes manifest with regard to the subject, the action of the object thus being felt and undergone. It is in this sense that the useful and harmful encounters with things, wherein the passions arise, should be considered as experiences of those things, whatever may be the difference between this sort of experience and that of the representations. Here one must introduce the notion of the noema. The object rendered present by a passion offers itself therein in a certain mode of presentation: the object-felt-as-such, or, more exactly, the object-at-an-action-that-is-undergone-as-such, corresponds to the passion. And this object is given as being identically the same as that which, in the prior perception, appeared under another aspect, an object which was seen therein, instead of being felt, and the action of which was represented and foreshadowed in it, instead of being experienced. Translated into phenomenological terms, Pradines’s theory may be summarized as follows: every perceptual noema implicates a reference to the appearing of the object perceived, under the aspect of the action it performs and of the passional result of this action. Speaking noetically, if perception is the representation of an eventual passion, that means that the perception refers to a potential passional experience of the same object,111 and that the perception is itself constituted by that reference. Carrying this thought to the limit, one would be led to maintain that all perceptions relating to the same object refer to the same 109

[The note is missing in the typescript, as indicated by the editor of the French edition of this book.] 110 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit. 111 Cf. § 9 of this chapter for the sense one must give here to the term “potentiality.”

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potential passion. Correlatively, there is a noema that corresponds to this passional experience, to which all the noemata corresponding to the perceptions in question implicate a reference, which is the same for all those perceptual noemata, however different they may be from one another. One sees then the similarity between the theory one arrives at by relocating Pradines’s ideas within the totality of phenomenology, on the one hand, and the theory of the central noematic point, on the other.112 The former as well as the latter yield a noema polarized toward the one component thereof which plays a constitutive role in the structure of the noema and which, for this reason, should be considered privileged. The consequence of this is that, in both theories, the noemata related to the same object have in common the same privileged component, in reference to which they come together as a group, a component that lends coherence to the latter. It is this privileged component that ensures, for consciousness, the identity of the object perceived in a multiplicity of acts, which are different from one another because of the noemata corresponding to them.113 However, the phenomenological theory that can be established by availing oneself of Pradines’s suggestions involves an advance with respect to the theory of the central noematic point. This advance consists no longer in seeing in the material noematic element the privileged component of the noema, an element that would play the role of substratum or support in the structural organization of the noema, but in substituting a relational conception for it. In effect, to consider the perceptual noema as polarized toward the reference it implicates to a certain other noema is but to defend a relational conception, as is so, correlatively, to define the act of perception by the reference—constitutive for this act—to a distinct experience: the passion. Pradines’s theory is in conformity, no doubt, with a great number of perceptions, especially in respect of the so-called inferior sensibility, such as the senses of taste and smell. It is in conformity with all cases in which 112

Cf. supra, pp. 110. In what follows, one will see that this is, in effect, a consequence of Pradines’s theory, which, however, because he is not cognizant of the notion of the noema, does not yield a complete and sufficiently general solution to the problem of the identity of the object.

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the object perceived appears in light of the satisfaction it provides for a need, or, again, in light of the aversion it provokes. Here, in effect, perception is polarized toward the passion it contains as its constitutive element; perception is, as it were, imbued with the passion it foreshadows as imminent, subject to the condition of a movement of approach, and it may well guide this movement due to its intensity and to the scale of intensities in which the given intensity is inserted.114 In this case, the aspect under which the object perceived offers itself refers to the aspect under which the object would present itself, were the subject to come into close contact with it, to the point that the said aspect is constituted by that reference it implicates. Among the phenomena accounted for in terms of Pradines’s theory, one must as well count, it seems to us, the perception a child has of the flame of a candle, after having already burnt its fingers once. The flame such as it is seen by the child appears to it in relation to a painful tactile experience, and the child’s entire reaction is determined by that affective experience which is not presently being undergone, but which plays a role—in implicated form—in the current perception of it, so that the latter is not as it is except as due to that reference it implicates.115 It is not, however, a question of trying to find examples—which are plentiful—in support of Pradines’s theory. The question is that of determining whether that theory can be established in all its generality. Not all of our perceptions are penetrated with the passional elements they would 114

Cf. supra, pp. 217. We are not sure that Pradines would allow adducing this example in favor of his theory, or whether he would not see in it only a case of the expectation of a passion already experienced (and one that would be associated with the perception), because the child’s reaction in question is acquired by the individual experience seemingly presupposed by the constituted perception. Thus, the passion could be linked to the perception only by association, but would be incapable of forming part of its makeup. If we cite this example, it is only that—as will be seen below in § 7 of this chapter—we cannot admit the distinction between a connection by endosmosis and one by association, at least as Pradines maintains it. Of this distinction (which is, moreover, general in character), the one between the passions constitutive of perception (wherein they are contained), on the one hand, and those set off by the perceptions, on the other (cf. supra, pp. 208–209) is just one particular case. Cf. § 7 of this chapter concerning acquisition through individual experience, in which, in our opinion, it is not a question of an accumulation of data being associated with one another.

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implicate. One would hardly maintain that most things we see (such as trees, mountains, etc.) appear to us under the aspect of an eventual affective contact we would experience when we come up against them. That should be the case if vision truly were an auxiliary to the affective contact, and if the latter were to form part of vision,116 that is to say, if every visual perfection were essentially constituted by a passion it would foreshadow, by implicating a reference to it. To do justice to Pradines’s theory, one must place it back within the totality of views and, above all, the general orientation wherein it originated. Pradines regards perception from the standpoint of the vital interest a being has in obtaining information about the useful and harmful things surrounding it, before it comes into direct contact with those things and undergoes their action.117 Only biological utility justifies, and renders understandable, the prolonged cares and troubles that life has imposed on itself—in its various species and during thousands of centuries—so as to create a sensibility for itself. The latter, therefore, is an “organic and psychological advancement,” rather than a state.118 The author tries to determine the active forces of the mind that are at the root of that genesis, forces which have urged the passion on toward a progressive attenuation and sublimation, and which have ensured that the representational elements, which the initial passion contains only in germinal form, gain an increasing ascendancy over the passional and intensive ones, until a point at which, with vision, representational sensibility would attain its full expansion.119 Now, the genesis of a mental activity is inscribed in the perfected activity; all the labor that was necessary for the formation and development of a function and all the factors that contributed to that development are found sedimented in each performance of the said function. It is thus that the cognizance of distance by sight is, due to the scale of intensities in which a given intensity is inserted, like an “innate and, as it were, organic knowledge, being as it is the consciousness awakened in an 116

Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., p. 95. Cf. ibid., pp. 51, 172, and 230–231. 118 Cf. ibid., p. 265. 119 Cf. ibid., p. 134. In this context, cf. ibid., Book I, Chapter 3 and p. 44 concerning the genetic priority of the reactions to light over those to colors, and cf. ibid., pp. 160–162 for Pradines’s remarks about the genesis of hearing. 117


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organ of the very law of its constitution.”120 Therefore, every perceptual act is thus, in itself and as such, penetrated and imbued with intelligence, because it is only under the impulse originating in the latter that the representational and perceptual function could have been formed.121 Finally, it is thus that, below the perfected quality, “intensities and affections are noticed, the role of which, in some genetic sense in respect of the representational quality, is as if indicated in the very function of the latter.”122 To bring out the essential nature of a mental function in a perfected scale, one must therefore go back to its origins and to the history thereof deposited in it.123 In Pradines, then, phylogenetic considerations prevail over phenomenological analysis, and even over studies of a comparative psychology limited to human beings.124 What he is trying to establish is the genetic order of the mental functions, not the order of their appearing. Now, that which one notes in the child, even in an infant, may be the “fruit directly recovered from a belated evolution in the species.” In this orientation of thought, a living and conscious being is regarded as placed in the real world, surrounded by objects which play for it the role of agents, which, only as agents, are of interest to it. These are the objects that exert their actions on that being, from which it receives impressions, and to which it reacts. To be able to react to them better, to prevent harmful encounters with things, and to seek out those that are useful to life, a representational sensibility has been created in the course of thousands of centuries, a sensibility that is placed in the service of the being’s vital needs and preservation. Human consciousness should therefore be conceived of as one reality among others, one that has been formed, during its evolution, in contact with mundane realities. This structure is, in itself, in its intrinsic makeup, marked by traces of its history. This way of looking at things is perfectly legitimate as long as one studies consciousness as a psychologist, that is to say, as long as one perseveres in the natural attitude. But if, in this attitude, philosophical problems are tackled, one inevitably falls into an antinomian situation, 120

Ibid., p. 237. Cf. supra, pp. 222. 122 M. Pradines, op. cit., p. 271; cf. also ibid., pp. 174–175. 123 Later we will return to this question formulated in different terms. [No page number is given as reference.] 124 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., p. 41. 121

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from which it is not possible to escape except by the phenomenological reduction.125 Pradines’s theory is most instructive in this respect: it shows, in effect, that one cannot conceive of consciousness as human, without presupposing mundane realities qua constituted, and without making this presupposition come into the very definition of consciousness, so that, in every study of consciousness so conceived, one is constantly obliged to call upon the real taken as existing prior to consciousness.126 Phenomenology is far from being uninterested in the real; it seeks, as well, to provide the subject with objectivity. Now, the constitution and the sense of being of the real (whether it is a question of the senseperceptible world or of the entities constructed in the physical sciences, which one must be quite wary of hypostatizing)127 cannot be understood, except if the real is conceived of as the correlate of consciousness, of the acts and the concatenations of acts related to the real, in which it is grasped and due to which it presents itself such as it is.128 For phenomenology the real plays the role of an objective, rather than that of an object; it is the term to be attained, not the point of departure. Therefore, one must stick to a strictly descriptive attitude and refrain, in carrying out the phenomenological analyses, from calling upon any entity, the ultimate sense of which can be disclosed only by those analyses themselves.129 We retain, therefore, the idea of implication which Pradines did not content himself with stating, but to which he has given a concrete realization. However, this realization is partial, it seems to us, because his theory applies solely to perceptions of the type mentioned130 (and viewed, besides, in relation to the scale of intensities to which every 125

Cf. supra, Chapters 1 (§§ IV and V) and 2 (§ VI). Cf., for example, M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 162–163, where the differences between the spatial information provided by sight and that furnished by hearing are explained in terms of the physical differences between the conditions under which light waves are produced and those under which sound waves are. 127 Cf. supra, Chapter 2, § IV. 128 Cf. supra, Chapter 1, § I. 129 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 138–142 concerning the relationship between the phenomenological reduction and the strictly descriptive orientation to be given to the phenomenological analyses. 130 Cf. supra, pp. 223–224. 126


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intensity currently given contains a reference),131 to those perceptions one experiences when one approaches or moves away—in a straight line— from a source of light or sound. According to Pradines, the phenomenon of implication establishes the privilege of the relationship between the perception and the passion represented and foreshadowed by it. No such relationship exists among perceptions. These may well be evocative of one another, but no perception finds its reason to be in the evocation of another.132 If, for example, by touching an object, one evokes a visual image thereof (as it happens almost regularly), the reason is not that the visual aspect of the object had been represented and signified in the tactile experience, as if the latter had encompassed the data of sight, but neither is it that the evocation in question amounted to rendering explicit that which the tactile experience contained by way of implication.133 Actually, in the said evocation it is a question of a “visual polarization”134 of the tactile data, of which, moreover, all the senses are susceptible. Since sight is the sense in which the representational function has reached total perfection, the pieces of information furnished by the other senses gain in representational power if they are raised to the visual plane. The sense of touch does not, therefore, implicate any reference at all—a reference that would be constitutive of that which offers itself—to the aspect under which the object being touched would appear if it were given visually, not any more than that visual aspect would be constituted by a reference it would implicate to the data of tactile sensibility, for as long as it is a question of the representational and non-affective tactile sensibility.135 Visual polarization is only an auxiliary means the better to represent what sight and touch represent in common, namely, the passion that affective contact is. Therefore, no problem is posed for Pradines concerning the correspondence between that which one sees and that which 131

Cf. supra, pp. 217. Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., p. 70. 133 Cf. ibid., pp. 176–177. 134 The meaning of the term “polarization” is not to be confused with that with which we have employed the word. Cf. supra, pp. 224 and § 2 of this chapter. 135 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 163–164 concerning the topic of the difference and relationship between these two tactile sensibilities. 132

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one touches, or concerning that between the visual and the tactile senseperceptible spaces.136 In effect, if every perception, because of its nature, is a representation of the passional experience one would have in undergoing the direct action of the object perceived, then the same passion would be foreshadowed in a perception that is visual as well as tactile, the object perceived playing no role, except that of an eventual agent, that is to say, to the extent that, subject to the condition of the performance of a movement, it would carry out a immediate action. Since the object is linked to the foreshadowed passion, then it is the same identical thing which would be represented by sight and by touch, the same eventual agent which would offer itself sometimes in terms of color, sometimes in terms of solidity. Thus, touch, being closer than sight to the affective contact it symbolizes, but which, for this reason, is endowed with a lesser representational power, may have recourse to ways of greater perfection that belong to the visual sense, so as to raise the meaning—pertaining to it in conjunction with sight—to a higher level of representation. Transposing Pradines’s theory to the phenomenological plane, as we have just done,137 one sees that, in effect, it is the reference to the same passional noema (implicated by all the noemata corresponding to perceptions coming under various senses but relating to the same object) which ensures, for consciousness, the identity of the object, in relation to which all those perceptions are gathered together as a group.138 The theory of visual polarization is a consequence of Pradines’s general theory, which claims that perception is the product of a process of attenuation and sublimation of a passion, and that it is constituted by a reference to the latter which it implicates. We will not insist any more on this thesis which, as we have just stated, is not exclusively drawn from purely descriptive analyses. What is of interest to us now is the nature of the relationship that Pradines sees between different perceptions relating to the same object. If the evocation of a visual image has but the effect of strengthening the signification that belongs, properly speaking, to the sense of touch, the reason is that the data of the latter are sufficient unto themselves, in that they do not refer to other perceptions that 136 137 138

Cf. ibid., pp. 97–99 and 130–131. Cf. supra, pp. 221. Concerning this problem, cf. infra, pp. 250–251.


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would complete and prolong them. In effect, the signification of the sense of touch as well as that of sight is the object qua agent, such as it is experienced in the affective contact. Every perception, since its function consists in foreshadowing that passion qua eventual, is therefore complete in itself, so far as the representation of its object is concerned. By the combination of a multiplicity of perceptions, the information furnished by one among them may very well be enriched, or again it may be raised to a higher representational power. Yet it is not the case that a perception may offer modo originali that which, without being given in that privileged mode in another perception, appears therein just the same, and does so to such a point that it makes a contribution toward the constitution of the perception, such as it is experienced by the perceiving subject. That is, however, what determines whether the relationship between two mental states is that which we call implication. Pradines is therefore led, by his general conception of perception, to admit such a relationship only between a perception and the passion foreshadowed thereby, but to exclude it in connection with a multiplicity of perceptions that relate to the same object. And this is another point about which we cannot agree with Pradines’s opinion. Let us examine the following example. When one hears the noise of a car, one may evoke a more or less schematic and vague visual image of it. In doing so, one renders explicit the perceptual sense of this act of hearing. To hear the noise of a car is not, in effect, to have acoustic data which, in themselves, have nothing to do with the object they indicate, but to which are linked, by association, more or less intuitive images and representations, residue of prior visual perceptions that regularly accompanied those acoustic data, so that the perception of the noise would, in light of analysis, break down into the sensory data properly so called and the interpretation contributed to them due to associated images and representations.139 Hearing the noise is an auditory perception of the car. The noise is heard, not interpreted, as the noise of a car, which offers itself therein in itself, though as susceptible of being seen or touched, of presenting itself at close range or from a distance, of appearing under different aspects, in diverse orientations, from this or another side, etc. All of these 139

Concerning this topic, cf. infra, § 6 of this chapter.

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modes of presentation, which are not being actualized at the moment, are, just the same, enveloped in the auditory experience of the car. It is by their presence in the said experience, in the form of indication and of implication, that it is such as it plays a role for the subject: an auditory experience of the car offering itself under the aspect of the noise it makes. In this respect, moreover, it is completely immaterial whether or not one would, by evocation, render explicit the implicated references.140 Whether or not one comes to make the latter explicit or, more exactly, to experience the perceptions corresponding to the evoked images, it is always the same object that is being represented in all this multiplicity of perceptions: the car now appearing visually is the same as that whose noise one has just heard, as that which one is free to touch, as that which one may approach or move away from, etc. One may well say that, in such a fashion, the object is better represented; even so, that does not signify only that an elevation to a higher representational power is involved. By means of that multiplicity of perceptions, the information one has about the object is enriched, and the latter presents itself under new aspects and from other sides. Further, and this is what is of particular interest to us, the anticipations of tactile, visual, and other experiences to be had of the object, implicated in the auditory experience, are confirmed or invalidated, and the indeterminate references are rendered determinate, etc. This happens when, for example, in the belief that the car whose noise one is hearing is the one being expected, one looks out the window so as to obtain perceptual confirmation or invalidation of that which, in the auditory experience, was only indicated. This enrichment does not signify, then, that perceptions are simply adjoined to each other. By means of the unfolding of these perceptions, that which, in one’s hearing of the noise, is just predelineated and prelaid out is given and appears modo originali, and yet it plays a role in the noise-heard-as-such and constitutes it such as it is perceived, even without being explicit and, with all the more reason, without being actualized. According to Pradines’s so felicitous and fruitful an idea,141 the noises should be considered the primary, and even the natural, data of hearing, 140 141

Cf. supra, p. 207. Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 41–43.


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and they are attached to the object they foreshadow. Now then, this attachment can become manifest to consciousness only by the references, contained in the noise heard, to other experiences to be had—especially to those tactile and visual in character142 —of the object in question. That is how it is possible for a noise to have been constituted as a dispatch representative of an object present therein and playing the role of the “natural sign”143 thereof. It is no different so far as the visual perception of the object is concerned: the car, such as it appears when one is looking at it from the window (thus, from above), implicates a reference to the aspect under which the car offers itself when one perceives it from the street; the car-perceived-as-such refers, when one is looking at it from such and such a side, to the aspects under which it would successively present itself when the perceiving subject walks around it, etc. The result of this analysis is that no particular perception is in itself complete so far as the representation of the object to which it relates is concerned. The latter is offered in itself, no doubt, in every perceptual act; neither this act nor the noema corresponding to it should be taken for an intermediary between the perceptual life and the object perceived. Nevertheless, this object, in order to become present in itself, in a particular perception, appears therein under a certain aspect, from a certain side, in a certain orientation; in short, it offers itself therein in a one-sided manner and in a certain Abschattung (adumbration), and it cannot offer itself otherwise.144 That which, in a particular perception, is given about the object perceived, by sight or—more generally—by a direct and veritable intuition, is immersed in a halo of implications and references to sides of the object perceived which are unseen, to aspects under which it could present itself, to modes of appearing other than the one that is actualized. This halo is not an incidental fact. On the contrary, it is, in connection with and due to the halo, that the “objective sense” of the particular perception in 142

Cf. G. F. Stout, “The Common-sense Conception of a Material Thing,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, I (1901), pp. 2–3. According to Stout, the visual and tactile qualities form a “central core” in the material thing, a core to which other qualities, notably auditory in character, are more or less closely linked. 143 Cf. supra, pp. 218–220. 144 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 42 and 44.

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question becomes such as it is in the eyes of the perceiving subject, and that what is given in a veritable intuition acquires the role it plays in the noematic sense.145 The perceptual noema thus necessarily includes noematic facts which are only indicated and implicated therein, but which nonetheless form part, as essential elements, of its makeup. In the case of these implicated facts (facts, moreover, that may be more or less indeterminate), it is not a question of concealed and ever-inaccessible facts. Quite the contrary, the indeterminations implicated in a perceptual noema are characterized as determinable, i.e., that which plays a role therein, without being seen, is given as visible, etc. This means that every particular perception refers to others that will continue it and complete the contribution that it makes, perceptions in which what appears only by way of implication in the current perception will therefore be given through sight or veritable intuition. Thus, to take up again an example adduced before,146 since the mountains present themselves, at a great distance, as endowed with imprecise contours, and the whole they form as quite indistinct, etc., the given perception refers to subsequent perceptions of mountains that would offer themselves with increasing clarity and determination, such that the contours, shape, and entire disposition of the mountains will be rendered clearer, those perceptions being indicated—in the current one—only in a quite vague and very generic fashion. In these references to other perceptions (which are the noetic correlate of the halo of implications that each perceptual noema necessarily contains) resides the phenomenological character of incompleteness possessed by every particular perception which, in itself, thus exceeds itself. The particular perception, as a result of the very fact of its being in need of completion, presents itself to consciousness as belonging to a whole group or system of perceptions with which it is connected without solution of continuity, perceptions that are all linked together with one another, so that what is given in one of them in a laid-out fashion plays a role, by way of implication, in another. This system of perceptions and, Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 19. To prevent any confusion about the structures presented in the fourth chapter, we avoid availing ourselves here of the term “horizon,” which is employed by Husserl as a synonym of “halo.” 146 Cf. supra, pp. 209–210. 145


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above all, the special coherence proper to it are the basis to infer—as will be underscored below147 —the consciousness of the identity of the object, as opposed to a multiplicity of perceptions that are different from each other in terms of their very noemata. In view of the important and constitutive role played by those references from both a noematic and a noetic standpoint, it is fully justified for one to go beyond the too-narrow limits within which Pradines wants to confine the notion of implication. When, in Section III of this chapter, we introduced the notion of implication, we allowed ourselves to be guided by considerations concerning the part played by an aspect of an object—an aspect not currently being given—in the constitution of the noematic sense that corresponds to a current perception of the same object. There it was a question of references implicated in a visual aspect to other visual aspects. But even this restriction must be given up and the existence of a relationship of implication must be admitted, wherever any facts not given in a veritable intuition form part of the aspect under which an object shows itself in a current perception and contribute to the constitution of this perceptual noema such as it plays a role for the perceiving subject, no matter whether those facts come within the scope of the same or different senses.148 Here one is to agree with Stout’s idea149 that one must equally count, among the facts constituting the “material thing,” such as it is known to “ordinary consciousness,” its “passive and active forces,” that is to say, the changes which, under certain conditions, the thing in question is capable of producing and undergoing. A porcelain cup may present itself in a visual perception as susceptible of being broken; under the aspect under which it then appears, its fragility in effect plays a role. Stout has rightly remarked that this reference to a possible or eventual modification of the cup is implicated in the static perception, which therefore exceeds itself in this fashion, without the perceiving subject abandoning it by undergoing experiences of real changes. In this case, the static perception of an object may implicate an infinity of “passive and active forces” that have never been actualized and will never be. Cf. infra, Chapter 6, § . . . [The reference is incomplete; furthermore, the extant typescript does not include the chapter referred to here.] 148 Cf. infra, pp. 255–256 concerning the implication between visual and tactile facts. 149 Cf. G. F. Stout, loc. cit., pp. 4–5. 147

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However, one must add that none of these “forces” should be taken for something implicated in a static perception of an object, unless the latter, in the concrete case, offers itself, in fact, under the aspect of the modification in question, which, under certain circumstances, it may produce or undergo. Here, as everywhere else in phenomenology, one must give the analyses a purely and strictly descriptive orientation, and one must attribute nothing to a concrete state of consciousness that it does not contain in itself.150 Stout notices implications not only in the phenomena we have just cited. He has gathered, under that heading, quite heterogeneous phenomena, such as the duration of a datum of consciousness (say, that of a toothache) which goes through temporal phases while changing in intensity; the appearing of a coherent theme which, like a crescendo or a diminuendo, can unfold only in time; or, again, the relation existing between a memorial image currently experienced and the past fact remembered thereby.151 Ultimately, the reason for the implications is, according to him, in the unity of the universe, so that the concept of implication would likewise encompass the relations obtaining between the theme and that which is copresent with it (i.e., the thematic field and the facts falling under marginal consciousness).152 One must distinguish well these different phenomena in order to arrive at a precise notion of implication, and to ensure that the latter may occupy the place that is suitable to it. §VI. The Associationist Account of the Formation of Implications It is unquestionable that the implications are acquired through experience. In effect, how could the perception one experiences in looking at a house from one of its sides contain references to the unseen sides thereof, 150

Also cf. supra, pp. 228–229. Cf. G. F. Stout, “Things and Sensations,” § 7, in Proceedings of the British Academy, 1905–1906. 152 Moreover, it is not the unity of the universe which accounts for copresence; on the contrary, it is due to the latter (and, above all, to the privileged role that the surrounding world plays in it) that the objective unity and continuity of the universe are constituted for consciousness. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 182 and infra, p. 176. 151


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and how could the latter be foreshadowed in the current perception of the house with a greater or lesser degree of precision, unless that is due to prior perceptions which the subject has had of the house sides in question, so that these past perceptions would extend into the current perception? Likewise, in order to perceive a noise that one hears as the noise of a car, one must have learned from experience that noises of such a nature are constantly linked to certain visual perceptions in which what we call a “car” would present itself. Even the references that are indeterminate in character would ensue from past experiences. We have learned that things which, looked at from one point of observation, present themselves from a certain side, are endowed with other sides, by means of which they may offer themselves and from which, in fact, they successively offer themselves as the subject walks around them. It is thus that certain structures (Gestalten) or certain schemata of the perceptual life applying to every new perception are established and, due to reiterated experience, become stabilized. In perceiving an object for the first time, the perception in question would fit into the established schemata, and that is the reason why it contains references to the unseen and unknown sides of the object, say, the side in back of the house, references that are completely generic and altogether indeterminate so far as all, or nearly all, the details of those sides are concerned. The subject is oblivious to everything about such a side, except that it exists, that is to say, that it is accessible in subsequent perceptions that would complete the current perception, so that the side in back, however indeterminate it may be, is not so insofar as it is foreshadowed as fitting in with the style of the perceived-as-such that is being currently offered. In the phenomenon of implication, it is a question then of effects and influences the past has for the present, whence it seems to follow that these phenomena are a matter for memory.153 The problem posed here has to do with the manner in which the past extends into the present and intervenes therein, and with how it contributes to the formation of the perceptions such as we know them, perceptions that contain implications. An answer given to this problem is found in the associationist theory. The sensory data at the basis of perception do not offer themselves Cf. infra, § VIII of this chapter, where we will encounter again the question of determining whether this conclusion is warranted, and in what sense it would be so.

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isolatedly, but collected in a group. By reason of the regularity with which certain sensory data accompany each other, they enter, with one another, into nexuses such that, if one of those data becomes present by itself, it evokes images or memories of those with which it has been conjointly offered in a great number of perceptions. In the course of his life, the individual perceives the objects under quite different circumstances, and he undergoes the most varied experiences thereof. That means that new sensory data come to be added to those which already are joined together in a group, and that, in turn, these new data would enter into associative nexuses with those to which they are being added. The stability of these nexuses, which becomes manifest through the rapidity with which one of those data, or a group thereof, awakens the images and the memories of the others, is a function of the frequency of the cases in which all these sensory data have coexisted, whether simultaneously or in immediate succession. For many reasons, the associative nexuses may be weakened or even dissolved, and this would entail an impoverishment of the perceptions. According to the associationist theory, the development of the mental life consists in the progressive strengthening of the associative nexuses, as well as in the increasing multiplication and complication thereof. This theory defines experience as the reiterated presentation of groups of sensory data among which, by reason of the frequency of encounters, the associative nexuses are created and strengthened. The perceptions which developed life is cognizant of are revealed, in the final analysis, as complexes comprised of current sensory data and residues of prior sensations. It is by reason of the stability and firmness of the associative nexuses among the elements which the complex is comprised of that one speaks of references that an aspect (under which an object presents itself in perception) implicates to another aspect, or again, of an interpenetration of the facts playing a role in a concrete perception. The said complex may well seem indissoluble, but in reality it is not. The psychological analysis succeeds in breaking it up and in discovering the elements of which it is formed. The latter, as a result of being conjoined in a group and of making up a complex, acquire only the possibility of reciprocally evoking each other (this being, moreover, what an associative nexus consists in), but, for that reason, they undergo no modification in themselves.


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Finally, it is immaterial, in this order of ideas, whether the transformation of the sensations into perceptions is due to the association itself, or whether it calls for a specific act which would be brought to bear on the sensory data and the evoked and associated residues, and which would inform them. Such is also Pradines’s way of looking at these matters. In making but a limited use of implication, he has transcended associationism only partially. He has really transcended it so far as the localization of the object in perception is concerned: if the object is seen placed at a definite distance, it is because of the interpretation of the series of intensities (into which the currently given intensity is inserted) in terms of spatial values.154 There is a relationship of implication between the said intensity and the gamut in which it is inscribed; this gamut is not linked to the given intensity by association, but by an “intimate endosmosis.”155 This is why there is a seeing, but not a foreseeing, of space, and why perception does not make one entertain the expectation of the passion constituting it, but foreshadows it by symbolizing it.156 Therefore, it is precisely the notion of implication that permits Pradines to establish a nexus between different mental states, a nexus which exceeds all the means at the disposal of associationism, as a state that would go into the constitution of another. However, by limiting the extension of the notion of implication, as we showed in the preceding section, Pradines is led to maintain a difference between the manner in which one perceives the location of a tree and that in which one “perceives” the tree itself,157 because it is one thing to perceive a colored shape that is more or less close at hand, and another to notice empirical significations taken on by a colored shape, that is to say, to “recognize in a perception the exemplification of a concept.” 154

Cf. supra, pp. 218–220. Pradines does not doubt that this nexus comes within the scope of memory: “since various intensities of the same quality cannot be presented simultaneously, it is evident that the experience of this correlation between the intensities and the spaces cannot be given without succession, and that external perception, that is to say, in space, is linked to memory” (op. cit., p. 266). We will return to this question (cf. infra, § 8 of this chapter). 156 Cf. supra, pp. 220–221. 157 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., Book III, Pt. II, Chapter 3, § 1. 155

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The error of empiricism consists in confusing those two things, but it is right in the account it gives of the latter. What makes us perceive “trees,” “chairs,” in short, functional objects as already defined,158 such as we handle them and such as they play a role in practical life, is something conceptual that is attached to perception. Now, the conceptual element does not penetrate perception. It is not included in the latter; it is added thereto and is linked to perception by mere association. In fact, one should not even talk of “acquired perceptions,” for what is acquired is not and cannot be perceived; it is only expected. It is impossible for me to perceive a human being; I do not even perceive a hat or a coat; I perceive a colored shape that is more or less close at hand; I assume it to be a human being, and I do so by experience or, rather, by habit.159 In other words, on the basis of that shape, I expect, by way of association, the impressions corresponding to the habitual character of what I call “human being.” The perception is limited to the interpretation of the distances through the intensities; it is a phenomenon of implication, not of association. The latter, which is at the basis of what Pradines calls “conceptual recognition,” consists in expecting a sequence of states which, while succeeding one another, remain foreign to each other, none being inherent in the other. The passions triggered by those expectations should be distinguished, then, from those foreshadowed by the perception and given thereby as phenomena.160 Pradines is far from concealing the vital interest of the living being in seeing friends, prey, useful or dangerous things, etc., in perceiving, therefore, the objects according to their functional values. That is why the “memory of the qualities in their order of intensity and extension” cannot have been constituted without that of the empirical significations attached to the things perceived. That too is why perception should even have been formed “for the sake of the associations.” No matter whether “perceptual recognition” and “conceptual recognition” may however be connected in fact, one must nonetheless distinguish two groups among the memorial states of perception. Cf. supra, Chapter 2, § I. [Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, ii, in Oeuvres, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, VII, 24–25 (29), ll. 6ff.; trans., I, p.155.] 160 Cf. supra, pp. 209–210. 158 159


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The states belonging to the first group are those ensuring the perception of space. They are indispensable to every perception, human as well as animal; it is to them that this “innate science one can call organic” is due, “being as it is the consciousness, awakened in the organ, of the very law of its constitution.” This science is not acquired; it is independent of individual experience. The germ thereof is transmitted to us by heredity, and its perfection is the fruit of the natural education of the senses.161 Therefore, its progressive perfection ends up, among human beings, in the experience itself of the universe. To the extent to which this experience is merely perceptual, that is to say, insofar as it stands apart from the associative elements, it is universal, objective, and even infallible. A perception that is just quality, intensity, and extension “encompasses nothing conceptual, that is to say, empirical, and, in reality, it is almost entirely mathematical.” This is not the case with the other group of memorial states, which do not make any contribution to the constitution of the perception but are added thereto solely by association. They are added to it as soon as they are acquired by individual experience. However regular, however constant the nexus between these states and perception properly so called may be, it never loses its associative character and cannot rise above the level of a “merely occasional experience.” Therefore, the contribution made by these memorial states does not afford any warrant of objectivity, and it is only probable and remains forever exposed to uncertainty and error. Descartes was wrong in taking a perceptual quality for a conceptual whole, but one must search, with him, for the reality of perception in extension. By means of the dualism between the “perceptual” and the “associative elements,” Pradines clearly attributes priority to the reiform thing over the functional object.162 If the associationist theory were accurate, one should expect the contribution due to the “strictly perceptual elements” to be invariable, 161

Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 220–221. In this respect, Pradines is in agreement with Husserl, according to whom (cf. Ideen, I, p. 315 [361–362]) the res extensa—i.e., the spatial form filled with sense-perceptible qualities—constitutes the fundamental layer in the structure of a thing and is not at the basis of the res materialis and, therefore, with all the more reason, at the basis of the functional object.

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even when the “conceptual recognition” of that contribution changes, when, therefore, the object perceived suddenly reveals itself to be different from the object it just appeared to be a moment before. What influence, in effect, could an alteration in facts, merely added to the perceived and linked thereto by so loose a connection as association, exert on that which is really given in perception, even when the alteration in question is reinforced by the greatest number of repetitions? The stability of the associations could be given expression only by an increased difficulty in changing the conceptual interpretation of the perception. Once this difficulty is overcome, the perceptual data should remain as they are, and a modification could have a bearing only upon the expectations suggested by the perception. However, such is not the case in reality. Above163 we mentioned the transformation, occurring in the perception itself, of a “cloud” into a “mountain range.” What is being produced is not a revision or a correction of the subject’s judgment about what he sees, nor of the interpretation he is trying to give it. On the contrary, it is the perceptual data themselves which undergo a modification. They are regrouped and restructured; they acquire “significations” they did not have, are inserted into the new structure at certain locations, etc., so that one cannot say that any of them survive the transformation unaltered. The latter, moreover, does not depend at all on one’s familiarity with the objects perceived. A human being or a tree is a very familiar object. However, when at sunset one is taking a walk in a forest, it may happen that one thinks one is perceiving a human being sitting in the middle of the forest; but, all of a sudden, what just seemed to be a human being may prove to be the trunk of a tree. Here as well the immediately experienced transformation has a bearing on the perceptual data themselves and as such. It is produced almost despite the perceiving subject and without an effort, on his part, to interpret that which he is seeing with the help of reference points or of any criteria whatever. These facts are quite at variance with the associationist theory. Finally, one fails to see how to account, in this theory, for the alternating appearing of two figures, different from each other, which arise 163

Cf. supra, pp. 209.


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from the same objective drawing.164 This alternation involves a fundamental change in the perceptual data. This is so much so that, when Köhler showed a young physicist, in a camera obscura, a figure of that sort consisting of lines of light, the subject asked Köhler about the technical arrangement by means of which he could—located as he was at a distance of approximately six meters from the drawing being shown— exchange the two alternating figures for one another.165 The subject did not, therefore, have any inkling that the perceptual data had been the same in the two figures. In support of his thesis, Pradines draws on pathological cases, in which perception properly so called survives the weakening and even the breakup of the associations, until, in the most serious cases of psychical blindness and word deafness, the disturbances affect the motor representations which are constitutive of perception, so that the latter is reduced to an impression.166 Below we shall briefly return to a case of psychical blindness; let us at the moment take a quick look at some facts one notices in amnesic aphasia.167 To the extent that they experience difficulties in finding the names of everyday objects, the [brain]-injured have not lost the “conceptual recognition” of these objects. Quite the contrary, the gestures they make and the circumlocutions they employ show that the [brain]-injured know quite well of which objects it is a question, and to which use they are put, when, for example, they call a pencil “for writing,” a flashlight a “lighter-on,” etc. By availing themselves of words that apparently have a very general sense, such as the word “thing,” the [brain]-injured do not 164

Edgar Rubin has studied such figures, examples of which appear in his book Visuell wahrgenommene Figuren (cf. Figs. 2–6, in particular). [See A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, Part Two, § 6b.] 165 Cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, p. 363. 166 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., pp. 232–233 and 236. 167 ¨ Cf. A. Gelb and K. Goldstein, “Uber Farbenanamnesie nebst Bemerkungen u¨ ber das Wesen der amnestischen Aphasie u¨ berhaupt und die Beziehung zwischen Sprache und dem Verhalten zur Umwelt,” Psychologische Forschung, VII (1924); A. Gelb, “Remarques générales sur l’utilization des données pathologiques pour la psychologie et la philosophie du langage,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, 1933, Nos. 1–4; K. Goldstein, “L’ analyse de l’aphasie et l’étude de l’essence du langage,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, 1933, especially pp. 469–491.

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have, however, abstract concepts in mind; the word “thing” means, for them, such and such an object to be handled, or such and such a functional object; further, by means of pantomime and gestures, they imitate the concrete use the object in question is to be put to. Asked to group objects, the [brain]-injured classify them according to color, shape, material, etc., impressed by any concrete and momentary convenient feature that, to them, is “as plain as day.” Or, again, they put together the objects that lend themselves to a common use, for example, a guidebook, a bottle of cream for the skin, and a collection of travel songs, by giving as their explanation that “it’s for an excursion.” However, in this classification, the [brain]-injured scrupulously abide by the concrete particularities of the objects in question and never take those objects as representations or examples of an entire class of objects of this sort. Thus, a [brain]-injured person refused to put together a corkscrew and a bottle into which the corkscrew did not fit very well, on the pretext that the bottle had already been opened. The behavior of the subjects suffering from amnesia about the names of colors is still more instructive. These [brain]-injured people do not know how to name a color shown to them, or to choose, from a pile of color samples, the color identified for them by name. But they are quite capable of choosing, from the pile, the color of a familiar object, say, of strawberries, of a mailbox, of billiard cloth, etc. It is by this detour that the [brain]-injured sometimes come to choose a color identified for them by name. Asked to choose a red sample, the [brain]-injured person repeats to himself the word “red,” until the locution “blood red” occurs to him, and he immediately chooses a sample the color of blood. If in front of these [brain]-injured people one utters, in the presence of a certain color sample, the exact designation of the color, this name would signify nothing to them, in contrast with those who are amnesic about the names of the objects of use, who would rush to say the exact name and would never accept a wrong designation. The [brain]-injured who suffer from amnesia about the names of the colors do not fail, moreover, to employ those names, such as the words “red,” “green,” etc., but they apply them only to very definite shades and refuse to designate other shades by those names. Very often these [brain]-injured people employ expressions like “purplish blue,” “sky blue,” “like blood,” “like cornflowers,” etc.


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These observations provide good confirmation for Pradines’s thesis that the qualities come to us by and through the object, rather than vice versa.168 But they do not provide evidence for his other thesis that the memorial elements on which “conceptual recognition” depends are connected to perception only by association, elements therefore which, while being added to the perception, would remain at bottom foreign to it. If that were so, one should expect that, as a consequence of an illness which—according to the associationist theory—would entail a weakening and even a loss of the associations, the subject affected would experience a certain difficulty in recognizing to what use the objects he perceives could be put. In reality, however, the [brain]-injured, reduced to a more primitive level, namely, to that of action and handling, know only functional objects, every way of access to the reiform thing having been blocked for them. The results and observations about children169 have suggested to us the thesis of the priority of the functional object over the reiform thing, which is a matter for processes higher than the perceptual life. §VII. The Formation of Implications in Gestalt Theory and in Jean Piaget’s Functional Psychology170 Another explanation of the way in which a living being, in the course of its life, makes its acquisitions is due to the Gestalt theoreticians. According to them, the development of the mental life does not consist in accumulating, with increasing complication, residues of sensory data, which are evoked by a current datum and are linked to each other by association, that is to say, as a result of having coexisted or of immediately succeeding one another in a very large number of cases. If a living being (i.e., a child, 168

Cf. supra, pp. 138–139. Cf. K. Koffka, Die Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung (Osterwiek a/Harz: Zickfeldt, 1921), Chapter 5, §§ 7 and 10. Obviously, one must likewise call upon the notion of primitive mentality, such as has been characterized by L. Lévy-Bruhl. However, the phenomenological interpretation of this sort of mentality, and especially of the “law of participation,” leads to very large and complex problems; this interpretation requires studies quite special in character. 170 [Cf. A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, pt. I, ch. 2, § 3a, pt. II, 3b, and pt. IV, § 5.]

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an animal, an adult human being) is confronted with a task to which the said being does not know how to respond straightaway, but after a while succeeds in finding a solution to the task posed, then it would have acquired an action or a performance. The most salient and essential fact about that solution is the reorganization and restructuring of the given situation, the regrouping of the facts of which it is composed. Any object, such as a stick, that a living being had hardly noticed or, again, that was useful to him for whatever purpose—he had just played with it, for example—is, all of a sudden, employed to achieve a goal to attain. Köhler has studied, in the case of chimpanzees, this first employment of a stick, a box, etc.,171 as an instrument, and Duncker has observed it in the case of children.172 Two of those children tried, in vain, to get hold of an interesting object set down beyond the reach of their hands, at the same time that they were playing with a stick, the grasping and the handling of the stick being, however, two separate actions. Suddenly, the latter action was placed in the service of the former; the handling of the stick ceased being a game independent of the desire to take hold of an object far removed, becoming as it did a complement of the grasping it: the toy-stick was transformed into a stick-instrument-to-pull-in, and the child thus attained its goal. In this example, as well as in that of the chimpanzees and, in general, in all cases of this nature, a task is accomplished if a certain object is employed in a quite definite manner. To be so employed, it is necessary for the object, which until then was more or less foreign to the task posed, to acquire a relation to the latter, to form part of the given situation, and to be attributed a certain function. For an object to become an instrument always means that the former would undergo a transformation in perception, that is to say, in the eyes of the subject who is learning to make use of it; it is thus that a stick is recognized as suitable to draw something closer, that a box turns into a stool, that such and such a thing reveals itself to be an obstacle, etc.173 This reorganization of the situation, and especially the transformation of the object employed taking place in the perception itself, is the most important fact in the entire process 171

Cf. W. Köhler, “Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropo¨ıden, [I],” in op. cit., Chapters 2 (§§ 2 and 3) and 6 (§§ 1 and 4). 172 Cf. K. Duncker, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denken (Berlin: J. Springer, 1935), Chapter 5, § 7. 173 Cf. ibid., Chapters 1 (§ 6) and 2 (§ 9, p. 91).


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in question. Köhler’s animals, in the phase immediately preceding success, quite often suspended all activity in order attentively to look around themselves. Moreover, if the object to which it is a question of attributing a certain function already appears in the given situation, albeit with a different function, it is more difficult to transform it into the instrument one needs than in the case when the object, while being present in the situation in question, serves no purpose in it.174 When, after a while, the subject is faced again with the same or a similar task, he succeeds more rapidly in discharging it, be it that, on this occasion, he finds a solution to it straightaway, or that he does so after hesitating less, until a point when, after a sufficient number of “repetitions,” the acquired action becomes altogether automatic, as it happens with us in our handling of the usual functional objects. The improvement in the behavior is due, no doubt, to the fact that the subject, when he was faced for the first time with the said task, came up with a solution for it. In effect, it is the subject’s past that extends itself into his present and exerts its influence on it; it is therefore well-founded to see, in such a learning process, an acquisition by experience. But by experience one must not understand, with the associationists, a repetition, after many an occasion, of the same data, so that, by reason of the said frequency, associative nexuses among those data would be established and reinforced. Since, if the first success resulted from a reorganization and a restructuring of the data, that which—in this encounter with the task in question—will prove effective for subsequent encounters is the end situation, the reorganized situation, and not the initial one, such as it was for the subject before he found the solution. Acquisition by experience is then rightly a matter for memory, because it is the fact of having already solved a problem that would exert, in the future, its influence on the subject’s ways of behaving in relation to the same or similar problems. Now, what is most essential, in this acquisition by experience, is the reorganization of the given situation, the restructuring of the subject’s ways of acting (in the broadest sense of the word), just as is the transformation of the objects such as they play a role for the subject. The reorganization in question is progressive in the case in which the solutions improve from one experience to the next, until a definitive 174

Cf. W. Köhler, loc. cit., pp. 140–141 and K. Duncker, op. cit., Chapter 7.

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structure is formed, namely, the one most adequate to the given situation and to the task posed. And it is only from that moment on that one may speak of a repetition properly so called. It is by these reorganizations and by this formation of structures that one must define experience. What the subject learns by experience is not only how to solve such and such a particular problem, or even how to discharge another task similar to the first in every respect. Köhler’s animals, when they replicated a performance they had acquired, always carried out the same action, but they did not always execute the same movements as those they had effected at the time of their initial success.175 The solution to one of the problems posed by Köhler to his chimpanzees consisted in making a wire extend, in a certain direction, along the length of a grille, and to do so with both hands because of the structure of the grille.176 After one of the animals had succeeded in finding the solution to the problem, Köhler repeated the experiment several days later, but this time the animal had to extend the wire in a direction opposite to that of the first experiment: it found the solution without the least hesitation. The subject does not, therefore, learn by experience how to effect a series of movements, but how to carry out an action, for example, that of employing a stick to draw something closer, to avail itself of a box as a stool, etc. It acquires a certain way of acting, a schema of action which is, because of its own nature, generic in character, that is to say, endowed with a force to encroach and to expand. As soon as Köhler’s animals had acquired such a schema of action, they were impelled to apply it to all sorts of objects, to impose it even on every object that would lend itself, to some extent, to that schema.177 Therefore, those acquisitions are, above all, dynamic and functional. Now, the object that the subject learns how to handle undergoes a recasting in the original acquisition of a way of acting, and it is transformed into that which it appears to be in the framework of the schema of action in question; it assumes a functional value that derives from that schema, and it is this value that characterizes and defines the object such as it exists for the subject who finds himself in the situation of action. 175 176 177

Cf. W. Köhler, loc. cit., pp. 50–51 and 170–172. Cf. ibid., pp. 156–158. Cf. ibid., pp. 27–28 and 39–41.


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By reason of the intrinsic dynamism of a schema of action, that functional value has itself a generalizing tendency: it penetrates, in a way, all sorts of objects which, through certain properties of form and consistency, are favorable to it.178 These objects are assimilated into the acquired schema of action, and they appear to the subject in the sense and light thereof, assuming the corresponding functional value. This conception of acquisition by experience stands quite close to the ideas defended by Piaget, in this connection, in his functional psychology.179 According to this author, the child’s most primitive individual acquisitions are grafted on the inherited reactions, and they derive from the latter due to the fact that these are in play. The hereditary reactions apply themselves to every object within the child’s reach. To the extent to which such an object can be assimilated into the reactions in question, it becomes incorporated with them. But when it does not (at least, when it does not do so without further ado), or, again, when the prevailing circumstances hinder the immediate assimilation of the object, those reactions become adjusted to the given circumstances, they accommodate themselves to the resisting object, and therefore a first individual acquisition takes form, one that the object in question can be assimilated into.180 It is in this fashion that the child acquires its first schemata of action, as well as of perception. All subsequent progress is achieved in the same manner, and it is governed by life’s two great tendencies: by the generalizing assimilation and by the adjustment, to the new circumstances, of the previously constituted schemata, i.e., the differentiation of such schemata as a function of current experience. Complex schemata, stemming, in turn, from simpler schemata, give rise to still more complex schemata by dint of being generalized and differentiated, by dint of being split up so as to regroup themselves in a new fashion, by dint, finally, of accommodating themselves to and being assimilated into one another. Piaget does not fail to bring out the generalizing and assimilating power of those schemata; each one of them possesses a tendency to 178

Cf. ibid., pp. 29–30. Cf. J. Piaget, La naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfant (Neuchâtel-Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1936). 180 Cf. ibid., Chapter 2, § 5. 179

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incorporate the entire universe. The objects undergoing this encroachment are, for this reason, charged with “significations,” with “functional values,” to put it in Köhler’s terminology, which we have adopted here. On account of its being assimilated into a functional schema, such an object serves, so to speak, as the nourishment thereof; it becomes what it appears to be in the framework of the schema in question. It is solely in this form, that is to say, as determined and defined in its being by the schema in which it is incorporated, that an object exists for the child. Thus the child, at a relatively primitive stage of its development, is not interested in the objects in themselves; it is interested in them only to the extent to which, in an altogether literal sense, they serve as nourishment for its functions, that is to say, to the extent that they offer an occasion to exercise one or another of its functions.181 At this stage, the objects are, for the child, nothing else than “something to be looked at,” “something to be sucked on,” “something to be grasped,” etc. Later the child will become interested in the objects in themselves, especially in new objects; it will even try to “understand” them. Now then, it will be able to do so only by attempting to apply to the given object all the schemata at its disposal.182 The object is defined for the child by the use it may be put to, therefore by the schema to which it lends itself. If, through contact with objects and circumstances, a schema becomes differentiated and thus gives rise to a new schema that is better adjusted to reality, then the object which provoked this differentiation, and which enters into the new schema, itself undergoes a transformation: prior to the differentiation, the child was at a loss about what to make of the object; but, once the differentiation is accomplished, it becomes something to “handle in such and such a definite fashion.” The differentiation and the reorganization of the schemata go then, hand in hand, with the restructuring of the objects known by the child and of the entire surrounding world where it lives. Here we do not have to examine the difference between Piaget’s views and those of the Gestalt theoreticians, a difference which, moreover, is 181 182

Cf. ibid., Chapter 2. Cf. ibid., Chapter 4.


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not, it seems to us, as great as Piaget would have it.183 The conception of experience to which the Gestalt theoreticians have addressed their criticisms is quite different from that which Piaget has elaborated. If one considers experience to be defined as the set of progressive and renewed reorganizations, Gestalt theory may well grant this notion a major place in its system. Piaget insists on the continuity of life and of its development, and he brings out the roots that every new behavior, that every structure just acquired, plunges into the individual’s past. According to him, every performance carried out by a subject for the first time cannot be understood, except in light of his individual history. It is true that the Gestalt theoreticians are no less interested in this historical aspect, but this does not mean that they question every influence exerted by previously constituted ways of acting on the behavior adopted by a subject before a new problem.184 In this connection, the disagreement is all the more diminished, since Piaget does not question the creative originality of a solution that a subject brings off for the first time, though he may have been prepared for it owing to his past.185 One point remains, however, about which the divergence between them is real. According to Piaget, what is essential—in development and for every performance—is not the completed structure but the structuring activity, and it is to the latter that he attempts to relate every organization found in the data. The Gestalt theoreticians, on the contrary, insist on the originary segregation (that is to say, prior to all experience) of close unities that stand out against a more or less homogeneous or diffuse background. It is only when those unities first stand out that acquisitions due to experience can penetrate them.186 These acquisitions follow upon the originary organization of the data, and they call for forms and Cf. ibid., “Conclusions,” § 3. Köhler himself (cf. “Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropo¨ıden, I,” in op. cit., pp. 43–45) stresses that the solution to a problem has been facilitated by experiences undergone prior to the posing of the problem, experiences the animals had the occasion to have concerning the object to be employed in that solution. 185 Cf. J. Piaget, op. cit., pp. 350–351. 186 Cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, pp. 150–153 and 208–214. 183 184

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segregated unities to rush at them, no matter what the specific structure of those unities may be. For the child, at the beginning of its development, this structure will be different from that of an adult human being who is about to learn how to handle an instrument unknown to him until then.187 According to a most felicitous formula of Piaget,188 experiences are always “interpreted” experiences. Now, if the segregation of unities clearly standing out against their background does not precede their interpretation, the latter would find no support, and the generalizing and assimilating schemata would be devoid of materials to which they could be applied and with which they could be incorporated.189 This thesis does 187

Concerning the structure of the data in an infant, cf. K. Koffka, Die Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung, Chapter 3, § 13. 188 Cf. J. Piaget, op. cit., p. 143. 189 In support of this thesis, one may cite the difficulties that Köhler’s chimpanzees (cf. “Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropo¨ıden, I,” op. cit., pp. 82–87) had found in availing themselves, as an instrument, of an object the employment of which had been familiar to them for quite a long time, when that object did not stand out against its background with sufficient clarity. Another confirmation of this thesis is furnished by a case of psychical blindness examined by Gelb and Goldstein (cf. “Zur Psychologie des optischen Wahrnehmungs und Erkennungsvorgangs,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, XLI [1918]). By purely visual means, a [brain]-injured person was unable to read, or to recognize sketches, drawings, or usual objects. The visual data left to him were a collection of colored strokes and marks different from each other by their length and thickness, one being to the left of, or below, the other, etc., the whole an inextricable chaos, devoid of arrangement or organization. Yet the [brain]-injured person oriented himself perfectly in his practical life; he recognized the objects presented to him; he even managed to read. He carried all these actions through by the movements he made, in terms of which he followed what was given to him visually, and even by orienting himself by all sorts of non-visual reference points. Contrary to Pradines’s opinion (cf. supra, p. 243), the [brain]-injured person’s sight, despite having become disorganized, was not reduced to an impressional stage (in the sense given to this expression by the author); these memorial states had not disappeared either in the [brain]-injured person, states which, by being added to the perceived properly so called, constitute “conceptual recognition,” according to Pradines (cf. supra, pp. 241–242). If the [brain]-injured person, as long as he was obliged to confine himself to mere sight, was not able to recognize the objects presented to him, it is not that the associative nexuses had been loosened; but because the visual data were not organized for him in the least. The problem of the organization of the perceptual data is not tackled by Pradines. Not being structured in


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not at all imply that one is to attribute priority to the reiform thing over the functional object. These ideas, which are defended in contemporary psychology so far as the acquisition by experience is concerned, permit a deeper understanding of implications. These are traces that have been left in the object by past experiences. Due to the facts to which the current perception of an object refers by implication, this object presents itself, in the perception in question, such as it has been formed by past experience, that is to say, such as it has been constituted for the perceiving subject by the transformations it has undergone in past experiences. Thus, for example, when one looks at a house presenting itself from a certain side, so that the particular perception implicates references to the façade and the sides of the house that are unseen, this is due to the fact that the subject has, in the past, walked around the house, and that the latter has been constituted such as it exists for the subject in those acts in which he has become conscious of it. The past extends into the present, in the sense that one perceives what one sees in light of one’s past experiences.190 It may happen that, concerning the object such as it plays a role in the eyes of the perceiving subject, facts may be essential to the highest degree which, however, are not given, in a concrete perception, in straightforward vision. Then not only would this perception implicate references to those facts, but, as well, it would be any way, the visual data could no longer, in consequence, be grouped together in the senses of the [brain]-injured person’s experience. In Piaget’s terms, the schemata at the disposal of the [brain]-injured person could not assimilate the visual data, because, by reason of the disorganization of these data, those schemata would no longer have anything to which they would apply. Yet those schemata assimilated well the data of other domains, especially those of the kinesthetic one, whence it follows that one must not conclude that those schemata had been weakened, or that acquisitions by experience had occurred. 190 That the past extends into the present means, therefore, that the object perceived appears in the sense of the last reorganization in which it has been constituted. Moreover, it is only in this conception of experience that it is possible to explain that the facts to which a perception implicates references may play a role in this perception without being exhibited (cf. supra, pp. 206–207). According to the associationist theory, these facts could not fail to take up the form of more or less intuitive images and representations, which would be evoked by the sensory data and would be added to them.

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in relation to them that the data offered in straightforward vision would be organized, as we have explained.191 Such is the case also when one perceives an object of use in a situation other than the one in which it is employed and without thinking, at the time, of the work situation for which it is intended. Above192 we saw, in this phenomenon, a special, even a privileged, case of the relation between the theme and the thematic field. Now we can render the nature of this privilege precise. On account of the fact that the object has been employed in a certain situation of action and that it has played a role therein, it has undergone a restructuring such that, whatever the attitude in which it may be perceived, it presents itself imbued with that role. If then an object of use is perceived in light of the role it plays in a certain situation, without the latter being given as a thematic field, it means that the perception in question implicates a reference to that role, and that reference is constitutive of the perception. This phenomenon is, therefore, a matter for thematic consciousness, just as implications are. It is only because the object has been the theme in a certain thematic field that it has been able to reorganize and constitute itself as the functional object that it is for a concrete subject. Moreover, once this reorganization is complete, the functional values that the object has been able to derive only from what we have called its natural surroundings, or distinct thematic field, would form part, as implicated facts, of the constitution of perceptions which are had under the circumstances in question. And it is only because the functional values assume the form of implications that the object, such as it presents itself in a concrete perception, may preserve them, even when the natural surroundings from which it derives such functional values are not given. Therefore, the object may then appear according to the perspective it borrows from a thematic field which, in that perception, is not present as is. By reason of the dependence (so defined) of the functional object on individual experience, such an object can be for a person different from what it is for another. One sees, at the same time, that the passage from the functional object to the reiform thing entails a fundamentally radical transformation of the object. This transformation is comparable to 191 192

Cf. supra, pp. 123–125. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 174.


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the reorganizations undergone by the objects in the course of a child’s development, since that passage is equivalent to suppressing a whole class of implications, namely, those the object derives from its relation to the activity of the individual, implications that are constitutive for the sense of the perceived qua functional object. It follows that the types of objects which, in one’s development, precede the functional objects endowed with the sense of instruments are not reiform things, since all those objects would be relative to the schemata of action found at a more primitive level than that at which the instruments appear.193 All these objects are constituted in serving as nourishment for this or that function; all of them are determined in their being by the schemata in the frameworks which they enter into. With these types of objects, one does not, therefore, leave behind the domain of the functional objects, understood in a sufficiently broad sense. The reiform thing, on the contrary, is constituted by completely severing every relation to a natural surrounding or to a scheme of action. With the reiform thing one is faced with a type of object which, because of the very principles governing its structure, is distinguished from everything one could describe as a functional object. Acquisition by experience is likewise in play in intersensory coordinations (between the visual and tactile senses, for example), coordinations to which are owed the unicity of space, the identity of a thing seen and a thing touched, etc.194 In the associationist theory, these coordinations can be admitted only in the form of correlations. A correlation, if one is to abide by the proper sense of the notion, exists between elements which belong to two distinct classes, but which are related in such a fashion that, according to a definite principle or law, to every element of one class corresponds an element of the other, as is the case with the relations—contemplated in the theory of functions—between two points respectively located on two different planes. 193

Cf. supra, pp. 248. Cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, pp. 231–232: the author leaves in abeyance the question of whether the unicity of the space perceived (the “experienced space” [written in English, in the French edition of this book]) calls for a nativist or an empiricist explanation.

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If this theory were accurate, there could only be visual data, on the one hand, and tactile data, on the other; in particular, there would be visual space side by side with tactile space, so that, according to a principle of correlation, a location in tactile space would correspond to a certain location in visual space, and vice versa. But there could not be a unique perceptual space in which the visual as well as the tactile data would be located, and in which, besides, so would be, at the same time, the data of hearing and of the other senses.195 And yet such a unique perceptual space exists for our consciousness, and one should take its existence into account. Locomotion, as Pradines has rightly underscored,196 can and should be guided by sight: one can move along a line traced by sight for the sake of movement, grasp an object one is looking at so that the act of grasping is performed in the direction of one’s glance, follow with one’s eyes the movement of one’s hand, etc. In the correlation theory, there can be no question about the identity of the direction; there would be a direction of the glance corresponding to the direction of the grasping or of the locomotion, but these two directions would not merge into one, any more than the two spaces to which each one of them is relative. The reality of consciousness, however, is the unicity of the space and the identity of the direction. On the other hand, a principle of correspondence is no more given than are the terms between which a correlation should have to exist. It is not as if a visual object were to present itself side by side with a tactile object, so that a correspondence between them either would be established or would still have to be established. We are conscious of one sole object which may be seen, touched, grasped, etc. The visual experience of the object is obviously not confused with the tactile experience thereof; the object such as it appears to sight, the object-seen-as-such, in short, the visual noema, differs from the tactile noema all right. So far as the 195

B. Russell, who adopts this theory of correlation [cf. Our Knowledge of the External World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1922), p. 80], arrives at the conclusion that the unique perceptual space “is an intellectual construction, not a datum” and “though convenient as a way of speaking, need not to” (ibid., p. 113; [written in English, in the French edition of this book]). 196 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., Book II, Pt. II, Chapter 1, § 2.


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relations between these noemata and those between the acts corresponding thereto are concerned, we cannot, as phenomenologists, call upon an identical object that would preexist every act of becoming conscious of the object and its constitution for consciousness, since it is the existence of the object, and above all its identity, which is here at stake. However, the object seen presents itself as susceptible of being touched, the visual experience itself referring to tactile experiences to be had; noetically speaking, the object such as it offers itself to sight implicates a reference to a more or less definite tactile noema, this reference being constitutive of the perceptual sense of that which is being offered to sight. Conversely, when, with eyes closed, one touches an object, the latter, such as it appears, refers to visual experiences to be had; it foreshadows the experiences one will have when one will have opened one’s eyes, when one will have taken a look in a certain direction which, moreover, is the same as that of the act of grasping, etc. If, finally, one looks at an object at the same time one touches it, the tactile experience contributes, in an originary fashion, what, in the visual experience, is only indicated, as is, conversely, the case of the visual experience with respect to the tactile experience. These two acts not only extend themselves into each other, but also confirm one another, in the sense that, in each, what is given in straightforward perception in one is only implicated in the other. For this reason, the two acts come to a synthesis,197 a more intimate and internal nexus than a correlation according to a principle of correspondence can ever be. It is in those syntheses that the identity of the object is constituted.198 The visual and tactile experiences are so far from being separated from one another, as they should be in the correlation theory, that not only do they become mutually entangled, but they may even be contained in each other by way of implication. The syntheses will be studied by us in Chapter 6, §. [The information given here is incomplete. The editor of the French edition of this book adds that the “anticipated reference is missing in the typescript at our disposal, and the text of this chapter has not come down to us.”] 198 Cf. infra, Chapter 6, §. [The information given here is incomplete; see prior note.] 197

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These facts find an explanation in Piaget’s theory. There is assimilation and accommodation not only between the schemata and the objects to which the former apply, but also among the schemata themselves. This reciprocal assimilation among heterogeneous schemata is conditioned by the generalizing power with which each one of them is endowed. When, for example, a child (in whom sight and hearing are constituted to a certain degree) hears a sound, it looks in the direction from which the latter is coming to him.199 It is not that the child would know that the sound is related to a visible object, but that the auditory datum would call upon the schemata at the child’s disposal, therefore upon both sight and hearing. Each one of these schemata, by reason of its assimilating power, tends to incorporate the new reality, and Piaget goes so far as to maintain that the child attempts to see the sound. If success confirms this search, that is to say, if there is a picture interesting to see there whence the sound heard is coming from, the schemata of sight and hearing become coordinated with one another by reciprocally being assimilated and adjusted to each other. They become reorganized by coming to form part of a new complex schema, which is formed by their coordination. It is to this new schema that is assimilated what is seen and what is heard, the visual and auditory data “becoming identified with one another”; or, more exactly, an object with a new structure is constituted, one that can be and is assimilated to the complex schema: an object to be seen and heard at the same time.200 It is just the same with the coordination between sight and grasping. The coordination goes through several stages, and Piaget has carefully examined it in detail.201 Here too development takes place by way of a progressive coordination of heterogeneous schemata, each one of which becomes increasingly more differentiated. The child tries to follow with its eyes what the hand is doing, and the latter preserves and repeats the movements constituting interesting visual pictures. The visual domain is 199

Cf. J. Piaget, op. cit., pp. 89–95. It is in this manner that one must interpret the constitution of the noise given by the auditory experience of the car, an example we have already analyzed. Cf. supra, pp. 249–251. 201 Cf. J. Piaget, op. cit., Chapter 2, § 4. 200


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therefore assimilated to the hand schemata, as the hand domain, conversely, becomes integrated into the visual schemata.202 It is thus that the child acquires more complex schemata, such as those of “seeing the hand grasping,” “seeing the hand holding,” etc. At the end of this period, the coordination between sight and grasping is complete: everything the child sees it attempts to grasp. On account of the fact that these schemata become coordinated by reciprocal assimilation and accommodation, the objects to which the reorganized schemata are applied undergo profound restructurings. They find themselves at the point in which several assimilating forces intersect; they are simultaneously assimilated to several schemata which, by adjusting themselves to one another, form a new, complex schema. Hence, these objects become charged at once with multiple significations, each being relative to a particular schema. It is thus that an object type is constituted which can be seen, heard, touched, grasped, etc., at the same time, namely, an outline of the solidification and objectivation of the data. One can form a judgment about the scope of these transformations by comparing the visual aspect under which such an object presents itself with the visual pictures found at the beginning of the child’s development.203 The perceptions belonging to a developed life carry the mark of their formation. The objects are perceived according to and with the sense of the ways of perceiving, as well as of acting, which are acquired by experience. What the segregated unities are in the eyes of the perceiving subject depends on those schemata to which they are assimilated. Once the tactile-visual coordination has been perfected, every object seen appears in light of that perceptual schema which, by reason of its assimilating and generalizing tendency, takes hold of it, so to speak: the object seen presents itself as susceptible of being touched, of being grasped, etc. This susceptibility qua given fact of consciousness should play a role in the visual aspect itself under which the object is presented, and it plays a role therein in the form of an implication. In 202

[The editor of the French edition of this book has changed the equivalents of “visual domain” and “hand domain” to “auditory domain.” The sense of the passage does not seem to be consistent with these readings; accordingly, we have not adopted them.] 203 Cf. J. Piaget, op. cit., pp. 71–73.

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these implications, the definitive structuring of the perceptual function becomes manifest; they betray, in the object, its assimilation to one or another of the schemata in question. The intersensory coordinations (e.g., the fact that an object seen appears as tangible) result, then, from a reorganization of the perception and from the corresponding restructuring that the objects undergo because of this reorganization, as well as from the generalizing tendency distinctive of the acquisitions due to experience. Thus, a thing one sees may appear rough: the tactile qualities of its surface are indicated in its visual aspect. Although a genuine act by which to become conscious of these qualities may be possible only by touch, they nonetheless would play a role in the visual aspect and contribute to its formation, so that the said aspect would refer, because of itself, to a tactile aspect, and would itself be constituted by that reference which it implicates. The assimilating tendency of the schemata of perception accounts for another phenomenon already indicated.204 When one perceives an object for the first time, all the details of the unseen sides of the object are indeterminate. However, since the object is perceived in light of an acquired schema, the indeterminate facts to which what is seen of the object refers are given with a “structure of determination,” i.e., as if inserted in a determinate framework, as if possessed of a determinate “style.” This determination of the framework or style stems from the schema to which the object has been assimilated: it corresponds to the generic nature of every schema of this kind, so that what is determined, concerning the facts in question, is their style, which is generic too. Thus, in the object-perceived-as-such, certain possibilities are generated to the exclusion of others, so far as the unknown sides of the object are concerned, possibilities one conceives by rendering the perceptual noematic sense explicit to oneself. These possibilities are held within certain boundaries that correspond to the schemata of assimilation. Moreover, the implications are, in a way, anticipations of perceptions to be had205 ; the indeterminate facts offer themselves, therefore, as determinable. 204

Cf. supra, pp. 208–209. Cf. supra, pp. 193–194. We will render precise the sense of these anticipations in § 9 of this chapter.

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Finally, the same principles should be applied in an account of the perceptions that are polarized toward a passional element.206 When a child has burnt its fingers with the flame of a candle, the flame, which prior to this painful tactile experience, was of appeal, becomes something to be feared and avoided; henceforth it will be perceived in light of that experience.207 Here too acquisition by experience signifies a reorganization in one’s way of perceiving and a restructuring of the object, the permanent results of which assume the form of implications that the future perceptions of the object will contain. §VIII. Implications and Memory In the preceding analyses, we adopted the standpoint of an observer examining the implications by studying the formation thereof in the individual history of a subject. Contemplated from this standpoint, the phenomenon in question rightly seems to fall within the scope of memory. Now, the question is posed as to whether the implications present themselves fully in this fashion to the subject experiencing them, given that what, in a concrete perception, offers itself originarily (by being seen straightforwardly, for example) is, as it were, immersed in a halo of implications and of references, and that the facts appearing in this form in the perception may be of the highest significance for the constitution of the perceptual sense. Is it the case that memories are joined with every perception? Can a subject perceive something without inescapably remembering certain episodes of his past life? By looking at something known, say, a house, the subject to whom this house is being presented under a certain aspect may well elucidate the sense that this perception has for him. Further, in order to lay out this sense, he may go as far as to represent to himself, by way of images, the house sides and façade that are known to him but without presently seeing them, because the perception experienced by him implicates references thereto. Moreover, it may be that the subject, when he elucidates in 206

Cf. supra, pp. 223–224. Cf. K. Koffka, Die Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung, p. 216; concerning similar facts in the case of the chimpanzees, cf. W. Köhler, “Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropo¨ıden, I,” op. cit., pp. 65–66.

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that fashion the sense of the current perception, remembers having perceived before the said house from one or another of the sides that he does not presently see, or, again, that a memory of that sort should abruptly spring up. It matters little, moreover, whether that past perception is remembered together with its precise location in the history of the subject; or whether it is remembered simply as belonging to his past, without the circumstances under which it was produced being remembered at the same time; or, finally, whether those circumstances are remembered with a greater or lesser degree of determination—one would remember, say, having experienced, during a certain period of one’s life, the perception in question, but the memory would not relate to a more precise date. Be that as it may, as long as the subject experiences the perception of the house, and his attention is focused on the latter, such memories, should they spring up, would be, in that perception, merely attendant on one’s life. They would be located at the margin of the perceptual activity, the theme of which is the house, as would be the case with the memory of having already reflected on a scientific theorem in relation to this very theorem, such as it presents itself when it is the theme of a conscious life.208 If the subject focused on one such memory that had just sprung up at the margin of his perceptual activity, not only would he abandon that which until that point had been his theme (at least he would abandon it qua theme), but, besides, he would abandon the “straightforward attitude,” in which his mental regard would be focused on the object itself, in order to adopt a reflective attitude.209 Perceptual acts and other acts also present (though, above all, past) are the theme of this turning in on consciousness. Entire episodes of one’s individual history, all related to the house currently being perceived, are the theme, but no longer would this very house be that which, despite that change in attitude, may well continue to offer itself in perception. These memories, should they arise, would come therefore within the scope of marginal consciousness. But they may well not be produced at all. It is possible to look at something well known and famil208 209

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 164–168. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 120–121.


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iar without, in the least, evoking anything past, as when one is writing, for example, one does not, in general, remember past occasions in which one has practiced that skill, nor would one remember—something which is nearly impossible to do—the learning process by which one has acquired it. The memories in question, then, do not contribute at all to the constitution of the sense of the current perception. In effect, what is essential to this sense is that there are other aspects under which the thing perceived may appear, aspects to which refers the one under which it presents itself at the moment, so that this latter aspect would thus be inserted into a whole series of aspects.210 Correlatively speaking, it is the case that the current perception may be continued and extended by other perceptions that are actualizations of well-defined noemata, but it is not a fact that one or another of those perceptions has been experienced at such and such a moment in time rather than another, or that the said perception has already simply been experienced. If therefore noemata that are different from a given noema form part of it and play a role in its structure in implicated form, they would do so qua actualizable noemata, not as having been actualized before. The perception of a functional object, whether one uses it or perceives it apart from any employment, is imbued with a know-how. Now, know-how is not the same thing as remembering having learned how to do something. The functional-object-perceived-as-such, as has been explained,211 implicates, as a constitutive fact, a reference to the manner of handling it, but it is not that way at all with the memory of the process of having learned how to handle it, or with the memory of an act of handling it carried out prior to the perception in question. We agree with Bergson’s thesis concerning the two memories212 when we maintain that the implications—although their formation is due to past experiences—are not experienced as coming from the past, and that they, therefore, may well play a role in a perception without the latter 210

Cf. infra, pp. 274–275. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 142–143. 212 Cf. H. Bergson, Matière et mémoire. Essai sur la relation du corps a` l’esprit, pp. 75–89; cf. 54th ed., in Oeuvres, pp. 218–229. Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul et al. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday/Anchor Books, 1959), pp. 58–72. 211

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being accompanied by any memory. Here we cannot deal with the entire set of problems and ideas that led Bergson to introduce that distinction, or with the various consequences he drew from it, some of which have proven fruitful. We confine ourselves only to the descriptive feature especially advanced by him about the “reiterative memory (la mémoire qui répète).”213 The latter prolongs the past into the present, to the extent to which the subject—in order to adapt himself to a new situation—may benefit from the past. In this sense, the “reiterative memory” is a memory, but it is so in this sense alone. Due to it, the past is put to use, comes into “play,” is made to contribute, and yet it is not evoked or represented; it is not experienced qua past. The past slips into the present and joins with it to such a point that the subject, while availing himself of it, is, or at least may be, oblivious to everything about its origin. Thus, when one recites a lesson learned by heart, it bears upon it no mark which betrays its origins and classes it in the past; it is part of my present, exactly like my habit of walking or writing; it is lived and “acted,” rather than represented; I might believe it innate, if I did not choose to recall at the same time, as so many representations, the successive readings by means of which I learned it.214

If, therefore, there is in this case a memory properly so called, that is to say, in the sense of the evocation of a past, then that would be so— to give it expression in our terminology—due to concomitant marginal facts which are, however, of so little use for the recitation of the lesson that their absence would not modify it at all. In taking up this feature of the “reiterative memory,” we cannot, however, accept the account thereof given by Bergson. He sees in it a purely motor habit. And, in effect, the example serving him to illustrate the distinction in question (a lesson learned by heart) lends itself well to this interpretation, since the recitation of a lesson learned is very often, and even generally, a purely motor phenomenon. We are not going to discuss here the idea Bergson has formed of the manner in which the motor habits are shaped and developed. More important is the question of knowing whether the “reiterative memory” is, in reality, of a purely 213 214

Ibid., p. 95; cf. op. cit., p. 234. Ibid., p. 85 in op. cit., pp. 226–227; trans., p. 69.


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motor order, whether, therefore, the example adduced is representative not only of a certain class of facts coming under the “reiterative memory,” but of this sort of memory as a whole. Bergson takes it for a motor phenomenon because he links it to the neural substratum. The function of both this cerebral substratum and the spinal chord amounts, according to him, to receiving the movement originating without and to transmitting it to the motor organs, which would thus release a motor reaction. This function therefore consists in transforming one movement into another, whether performed or just sketched out and nascent.215 Thus, the “reiterative memory” reveals itself to be a “bodily memory,” a “habit rather than a memory”216 ; “fixed in the organism,”217 it is “nothing else but the complete set of intelligently constructed mechanisms which ensure the appropriate reply to the various possible demands.”218 Its functioning depends on the integrity of the neural substratum, so that lesions occurring in this substratum would entail difficulties of a motor nature. Further, if the mental activities are compromised in the wake of cerebral lesions, that would be so to the extent that motor factors intervene in those activities, and only from a motor standpoint. This view has as a consequence that Bergson tries to uncover motor factors wherever a current perception is influenced and determined by the subject’s past, without the past being presented as such to consciousness. Thus, one such factor would necessarily intervene in the understanding of speech heard.219 The impressions reaching the ear would be prolonged by nascent articulatory movements by means of which the phrases heard would be pronounced separately. These auditory impressions would be accompanied with a tendency not to repeat the speech heard in full, but to sketch out its salient traits, to lay out a simplified and schematic motor outline thereof, in short, to reproduce the major contours of the articulatory movements made by the person who is speaking. 215 216 217 218 219

Cf. ibid., pp. 14–18 in op. cit., pp. 171–175. [Ibid., p. 168 in op. cit., p. 292; trans., p. 144.] [Ibid., p. 167 in op. cit., p. 292; trans., p. 144.] Ibid. [correction of pp. 164–165; in op. cit., p. 292; trans., p. 144]. Ibid., pp. 113–122 in op. cit., pp. 248–256.

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This internal motor accompaniment, this “motor schema” of speech heard, is not, to be sure, one’s entire understanding, but it supports the latter and renders it possible. Now, in examining our consciousness, we see that, very often, we perfectly understand the words addressed to us without our noticing the least motor tendency, even in a nascent state. One indeed must grant to Bergson that to “follow a calculation is to carry it out again on one’s own,” and that to understand ideas developed in our presence is, as it were, to rethink them. But to rethink the ideas our interlocutor gives expression to by means of his words is something other than being led to repeat those words in a condensed and schematic form. If upon hearing him, we feel a motor tendency arising in us, it is for the purpose of giving him a reply, but certainly not to sketch out an internal outline of his articulatory movements. Here we cannot examine Bergson’s account of the understanding of speech,220 or touch on the fact that words have a sense, that they are bearers of significations and are transparent, so to speak, in respect of those significations.221 Whatever the nature of this fact may be, it is certain that words could not be understood, if they constituted an amorphous mass of sound. For the hearing subject to be able to apprehend the significations through the auditory data, it is necessary that the latter be fashioned, divided (fragmentées), and articulated into coherent unities (i.e., the words, sentences, and the context of sentences), and that they clearly sever themselves from one another. At the basis of understanding speech, there is then the organization of the auditory data. It is precisely the question concerning this organization that is raised by Bergson, and, in order to answer it, he resorts to the notion of the “motor schema.” The latter is meant to break down and articulate the crude sound that reaches the ears of a person who knows the language spoken, as well as those of the person who does not; this schema therefore contributes a measure of organization to the perceptual data which, of themselves, are devoid of it. It is unquestionable that the motor factor holds a particularly important place in the acquisition of a language, to such a point that one cannot come to understand the latter if one has not learned to speak it oneself. 220

Cf. ibid., pp. 128–133 in op. cit., pp. 260–265. Husserl has devoted meticulous studies to this fact in his LU, II, Inv. I, Chapters 1 and 2.

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Limiting oneself to the sensorimotor standpoint in regarding this acquisition, one would say that to acquire a language does not, however, consist only in setting up articulatory mechanisms in coordination with auditory impressions that would nonetheless remain unchanged. The articulatory mechanisms are placed under the control of hearing.222 The latter undergoes, in the course of the acquisition, a reorganization effected under the influence of the motor factor and of its restructuring, so that, when the language has been acquired, the auditory data are no longer what they were prior to the acquisition. At the onset of learning, the subject in fact heard a crude sound. But when he has learned the language, the auditory data, in perception itself, are given as organized, separated (fragmentées), and articulated; they are perceived as assimilated into a hearing schema in the nature of those treated in the previous section. To “conform one’s ear to the elements of a new language” is in reality, contrary to Bergson’s opinion, to “modify the crude sound.” The difference between a person who knows a certain language and another who does not is not reduced to motor tendencies that the same auditory data would set in motion in the former, whereas those motor tendencies would be lacking in the latter. This difference does not amount only to the fact that, for one person, what he hears is linked to significations, while this is not the case with the other; but, as well and above all, to the fact that where one hears an amorphous mass of sound, the other perceives coherent and distinct auditory unities. The perceptual data of one person’s hearing are, therefore, basically different from those of another. Bergson is not cognizant of the intrinsic organization of the perceptual data, an organization which, though resulting from the subject’s past, is no less intrinsic to them. That is why he has to call on a special factor meant to maintain that organization, a factor that would take on that job for each particular case. Thus, the “motor schema” becomes an indispensable condition of understanding. By applying Gestalt-theoretic views to the phenomenon in question, one can see the restructuring of both the motor and auditory functions in the acquisition of a language. Once this restructuring is complete, the 222

The reciprocal coordination of hearing and phonation and their interaction are facts found quite early in the development of the child; they are in place long before the first beginnings of language learning. Cf. J. Piaget, op. cit., pp. 85–89 and 95–96.

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organization of the auditory data is maintained once and for all, and the work is no longer to be done again in every particular case. One may therefore avoid having recourse to a hypothetical psychological entity, the existence of which consciousness is oblivious to. Bergson rightly affirms that to “recognize a common object is mainly to know how to use it . . .. But to know how to use a thing is to sketch out the movements which adapt themselves to it.”223 Movements would have been, by habit, coordinated with perceptions, and “nascent movements . . . would follow perception after the manner of a reflex.”224 Yet one may well recognize an everyday object that is presented, in perception itself, with its functional value, without feeling motor impulsions or tendencies. In the course of learning how to handle an object, the latter would have obviously been restructured under the influence of completed actions, so that, in all subsequent perceptions after the learning process has ended, this object would present itself with the senses corresponding to the handling to which it lends itself. In effect, the experiences one has had of an object settle on it, according to Duncker,225 in the form of qualities; thus, a hammer becomes useful to drive in nails, a bench to rest on, etc. Those qualities have a permanent character, that is to say, one that is independent of the needs of the perceiving subject; they fit over things even when the subject perceives the latter without being on the verge of employing them.226 So far as the difficulties in recognizing everyday objects in psychical blindness are concerned, they seem to us to be due to the disorganization of the perceptual function itself,227 rather than to the disruption of the motor habits or to the weakening of the connections between the latter and the perceptions.228 Finally, Bergson likewise reduces the feeling of déjà vu or familiarity to the “consciousness of a well-regulated motor accompaniment.”229 In 223 224 225 226 227 228 229

H. Bergson, Matière et mémoire, p. 94 in op. cit., p. 239; trans., p. 83. Ibid. Cf. K. Duncker, op. cit., p. 88. Cf. K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology, pp. 392–394. Cf. supra, n. 190 [correcting the French edition of this book]. Cf. H. Bergson, Matière et mémoire, pp. 97–100 in op. cit., pp. 242–245. Ibid., pp. 93–94 in op. cit., p. 239; trans., p. 82.


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this phenomenon, we are tempted to see an ill-placed memory arising at the margin of the perceptual activity, but one the presence or absence of which has no significance for that which is the theme of the perception.230 The rarity of this phenomenon speaks in favor of our thesis. In effect, in everyday life we perceive a number of objects that are most familiar to us, we make use of them, or we know how to avail ourselves of them, without the production of that specific phenomenon taking place. In certain cases, however, it may become imposed with such a force that the subject, diverted from his perceptual theme, focuses on that unlocalized or ill-placed memory, in an attempt to identify its place in his past life. Beside the motor habits one must therefore acknowledge the habits of perception, of understanding, etc. There is, no doubt, a certain kinship among all these habits taken as such, that is to say, insofar as they are ways of reacting, of perceiving, of understanding qua functions of the past. One must perhaps go as far as to maintain that this common factor may be brought out more clearly in the motor area. That would justify, strictly speaking, that one could conceive of the other habits by analogy with the motor ones; but that does not justify at all that one should reduce them to the latter, or that one should suppose the existence of a motor factor at the basis of, or within, every habit. According to Bergson, the distinctive mark of a constructed and consolidated motor mechanism is “the preformation of the movements which follow in the movements which precede, a preformation whereby the part virtually contains the whole.”231 Now, this “preformation” is far from being confined to the motor functions. It is the essential characteristic of what the Gestalt theoreticians call “good, strong structures (Gestalten),” and it plays a role in perceptions in which every “motor accompaniment” is certainly absent (for example, in the complementation—occurring among hemianoptic and hemiamblyopic patients—of certain shapes made available in tachistoscopic vision.)232 Moreover, Guillaume233 likewise underscores the fact 230

Cf. supra [instead of infra], pp. 261–264. H. Bergson, Matière et mémoire, p. 95 in op. cit., p. 240; trans., p. 84. 232 Cf. W. Fuchs, “Untersuchungen u¨ ber das Sehen der Hemianopiker und Hemiamblyopiker II,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie, LXXXVI (1921). 233 Cf. P. Guillaume, La formation des habitudes, pp. 129–131. 231

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that it is not without certain reservations that one can admit a commonality of structure between movement and the perception to which the movement is adjusted. Pradines234 well realizes the difficulties inherent in the interpretation that Bergson gives of the “reiterative memory.” Pradines equally distinguishes between the recognition of the past, which is the “true and complete memory,” and the “recognition of the present,” which he defines in terms of the “ability of the past sensations to prolong themselves, in a way, into the present sensations.” Unlike Bergson, he considers these two memories “as the two superimposed degrees of one and the same nature, the two successive stages of one and the same activity, not as two natures and as two activities.” But one must not believe that the “recognition of the present” presupposes the “recognition of the past” and continues it in an “implicated” or condensed form, as if it were possible to derive the latter from the former by way of analysis or deeper study.235 The “recognition of the present” precedes the “recognition of the past,” the former being independent of the latter. In the olfactory and gustative areas, there is indeed a “recognition of the present” but, according to Pradines, no “recognition of the past.”236 The latter exceeds the capacities of the animal and the infant, even in the cases of sight and of hearing, and yet those beings are nonetheless quite capable of recognizing the present. Finally, an adult human being, who, so far as the visual and auditory data are concerned, as a rule has the capacity to recognize the past, quite often recognizes the present without having that recognition accompanied with a true memory of the past.237 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., Book III, Pt. II, Chapter 1, § ii. The sense of the term “implication” to which Pradines alludes here is about the same as that in which, in Helmholtz’s theory of hearing, the incidental sounds are taken to be implicated in the sound one hears. It is only by means of attention that one can discern, in the latter, the fundamental sound from the incidental ones, and yet the products of the analysis are supposed to be contained, albeit indirectly, in the unanalyzed sound, and they are contained therein even prior to the effort by which attention alone threfore brings out that which is implicated. It is evident that this notion of implication, which is the equivalent of existence in an unnoticed form, is basically different from the one we are advocating in this chapter. 236 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., Book III, Pt. II, Chapter 1, § iii. 237 Here we are confining ourselves to underscoring the distinction between the “recognition of the present” and the “recognition of the past,” without examining Bergson’s 234 235


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Moreover, Pradines does not adopt Bergson’s account of the “reiterative memory,” because, in that account, the “recognition of the present” seems too mechanical and is conceived of as a phenomenon of the order of the motor habits. Therefore, he makes out the “recognition of the present” to be an “absolutely specific fact,” placed “midway between a pure memory and a habit.” The recognition of the present is a memory. Now, this memory exhibits a sufficiently strange and even paradoxical aspect: the living being “remembers, and he distinguishes the memory from the present without placing this memory behind himself . . . the memory is placed therein on the plane of a present nullified in the full sense of the term.” Through his criticism of Bergson’s account, Pradines is brought to misjudge the analogy existing nonetheless between the habits of perception, of understanding, etc. and a motor habit. The reason for this is that he accepts Bergson’s definition of a habit considered in its completed state and not in the process of its formation, while he rejects only the application of that definition to the “recognition of the present.” Thus, he manages to contrast this recognition with a habit, but this contrast does not seems to us well-founded. “If one remembers in a habit, it is without knowing it, while the living being remembers and knows it.” However, the example cited by Pradines—“the fox watching a hare does not take it to be the same as the one it ate yesterday”—comes under a purely motor habit, rather than under the “recognition of the present.” By completing an action to which one is accustomed (say, that of getting dressed, of following a path one takes every day, etc.), one may well remember having completed the same action yesterday, although this memory is a marginal fact and is not at all necessary for the unfolding of the action. Here too the event “is not conceived of as being the same, except because of its nature, but not numerically and temporally speaking.” Moreover, in rereading a text, one understands it better: one anticipates the passages that are to follow and the results the author ends up with; it is in light of these results that the ideas developed appear; each passage one reads takes its place in the context of the whole, and it is appreciated according to its importance for that whole, etc. Now, thesis concerning the “pure memory” or Pradines’s own about the “recognition of the past” and its relation to the “recognition of the present.”

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this detailed grasp does not at all require remembering the first reading, or the intervention of any memory whatever. In the “recognition of the present,” there is no more memory than in a motor habit; from a purely descriptive point of view, none of these phenomena comes under memory, although both of them are due to the survival of past effects. The “recognition of the present” is, according to Pradines, a “form of conscious existence” to which the animals are nearly confined. Now, the characteristic he gives of this form of existence,238 to the extent that it is valid for the “recognition of the present,” equally applies to a motor habit. One must not, with Bergson, reduce the other habits to motor habits, or, with Pradines, contrast the former with the latter. The other habits should all be considered special though coordinated cases of one and the same fundamental fact, to wit: the reorganization that the function has undergone in the past, as this function, when it is brought into action again, is operative in the sense of that reorganization. And the habits are different from each other according to the specific and particular nature of the various domains of activity which the reorganization has to do with. In terms of a Gestalt conception, one therefore comes to solve the problem that gave rise to Bergson’s theory by overcoming the difficulties created by his account, while, at the same time, one can dispense with admitting a third form of memory, as suggested by Pradines. The phenomenological account of implications parts company with the psychological accounts thereof. The implications do not present themselves to consciousness as facts past and recalled; therefore, given the strictly descriptive orientation of phenomenology, they should not— regarded from this standpoint—be characterized as memorial states. In effect, what one perceives, for example, is a hammer qua functional object, but not an object in the form of a “T” and possessed of a certain length and width, the employment of which one remembers. Again, when one perceives a house, which is presented under a certain aspect, it 238

Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., p. 196: “The present is for them, namely, the animals but a semi-darkness that the past fills up with reality as well as with dreams: they react to the present by means of their past. The past is possessed, for them, of more present reality than the present, because there is more action to it: in their case, the present demands, in effect, but the moment of reaction.”


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is the house-perceived-as-such that occupies the present of the conscious life. All the facts playing a role in the unity of the perceptual noematic sense that the house-perceived-as-such is participate in the temporal form of the present, although some of those facts are given modo originali, while others are not given in this privileged manner. That which is given as present is the house one perceives, therefore equally the sides thereof that are not seen but which what one sees of the house refers to. If there is good reason to distinguish, within the unity of the perceptual noema, between the facts given in straightforward vision and those which play a role therein only in implicated form, that does not signify that one may take the appearing facts as present and those offered as past, as if the perceptual noematic sense consisted of facts bearing different temporal characters. All the facts that form part of the unity of the noematic sense are jointly affected by the various temporal modes that the corresponding act passes through by reason of its duration: all together they occupy the present, next they are retained in immediate memory, and, lastly, let go. These temporal modifications affect the noematic sense in its entirety. One must therefore go further than Bergson and maintain that the “reiterative memory” is not a memory in the eyes of the subject experiencing it: if some memory gets mixed up therein, it does so qua marginal fact which is not at all essential for the phenomenon in question. Moreover, it is undeniable that the implications are drawn from the subject’s past. One must therefore go back to one’s history, as Piaget has underscored, in order to understand the formation of the implications. For psychology, then, it becomes imperative to investigate the manner in which the acquisitions by experience are effected and to establish the conditions on which these processes depend, as well as the factors that intervene therein; one must likewise form an idea of the nature of the physiological processes corresponding to those acquisitions.239 The difference between the point of view of phenomenology and that of psychology consists therefore in this: that in phenomenology one considers the perceptual sense such as it is for the subject and in the eyes of the subject actualizing it, while the psychologist is interested in the manner in which it has been able to become such as it is. 239

Concerning this topic, cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, Chapters 8 and 9 and K. Koffka’s most detailed presentation in his Principles of Gestalt Psychology, Chapters 10–13.

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In examining the formation of the implications we have, in fact, gone beyond the phenomenological reduction. It has been our belief, however, that we should advance a conception of that formation so as to reconcile the phenomenological and the psychological evidence. Gestalt theory permits this reconciliation because, in conceiving of the acquisitions by experience as reorganizations of the perceptual function and as restructurings of the perceived objects, it makes the manner understandable in which the past is capable of exerting its influence on the present, without appearing as such to consciousness. Gestalt theory permits us, further, to abandon a dualistic conception of perception, and equally to transcend, therefore, Bergson’s dualism,240 with regard to which Pradines241 has voiced sound criticisms. §IX. Potentialities To the implications considered as noematic facts there corresponds a noetic structure, as is in general the case with every noematic structure, in virtue of the noetico-noematic parallelism. The noetic structure in question here is the reference, contained in a current perception, to other perceptions in which what, in the said perception, appears only in the form of an implication, is offered modo originali (in straightforward vision, hearing, etc.) As has been underscored by us, these references are not memories of having perceived the facts which, in the noema corresponding to the current perception, play a role only as implicated facts; at least, those references should not necessarily take up the form of memories. The perceptions to which the one being currently experienced refers may be described as perceptions to be had, so that the references would appear as anticipations of future perceptual acts. One may well advance this interpretation, when one defines the future as the field of the indeterminate and, in this sense, of freedom. But these perceptions that are to be experienced are not given as imminent, as are the perceptions of the street, of the houses running alongside it, etc., which one expects as 240

Cf. H. Bergson, Matière et mémoire, pp. 20–22, 58–61, 95–97, 102, 110, 162–166, and 180–188 in op. cit., cf. pp. 175–177, 205–207, 234–236, 240, 246–247, 287–291, and 301–308. 241 Cf. M. Pradines, op. cit., Book III, Pt. II, Chapter 3, § 2, i and ii.


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one leaves one’s house; or, again, as it happens when, while listening to a musical piece, one turns toward a certain passage about to be played, etc. But it is not the case that the subject anticipates the perceptions in question, as he does with those that he has decided to carry into effect and to which, because their being carried into effect depends on him, he assigns a specific place in his future. While they are being experienced as future, they are not, however, experienced in the special mode of expectation; their placement in the future remains indeterminate; one may even go as far as saying that their temporal character is neutralized to some extent.242 In effect, what is important for the perceptions to be had, perceptions to which the current one refers, is not that they have been, or that they will in fact be, experienced, but that they could. We are then in agreement with the notion of potentiality which, according to Husserl, indicates a “fundamental trait of intentionality.”243 Potentiality is defined as the consciousness a subject has of being able to “act”— to perceive, remember, think, etc.—in a way other than the one in which he is presently acting in fact. The perceptions that are to be had, and which a subject anticipates in experiencing a current perception, are potential in the sense that they appear to the subject as susceptible of being actualized by him. Thus, for example, if the seen side of an object refers to sides which, though they are unseen, nevertheless play a role in the current perception, it is that, speaking noetically, the subject feels free to carry into effect the seeing of those sides, whether by turning his eyes in a direction other than the one in which they are now turned, or by moving from his point of observation to another, or by walking around the object perceived, etc. The same holds concerning the intersensory implications. In hearing a noise, given as the auditory experience of a car,244 the subject is conscious of being able to effect the visual and tactile experiences of the car, and 242

It is due to this neutralization that—if memories arise of having perceived the facts which, in the current perception, are only predelineated—the said memories would fall within the scope of marginal consciousness for as long as the subject does not adopt the attitude of reflection, that is to say, unless he would turn in on the conscious life itself and, besides, do so from the noetic standpoint of that life. 243 E. Husserl, CM, § 19, p. 83 (44). 244 Cf. supra, pp. 232–233.

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he is even conscious that it is up to him to actualize those potentialities, when, for example, he looks out the window, goes into the street to touch the car, etc. Or, again, when one sees an object, one feels free to extend one’s arm in the same direction as that of one’s glance; one can therefore touch the object seen, grasp it, and effect the sort of genuine experiences of its tactile qualities that already played a role in the visual experience, but which were only indicated therein.245 Here is what corresponds, from a noetic standpoint, to the fact that the object-seen-as-such appears in the very act of seeing, as tangible, and graspable; that the object-touched-as-such presents itself as visible; in short, that a halo of implications plays a role in every perceptual noema.246 A halo of potential (that is to say, not actual but actualizable) perceptions opens up with every particular perception, the actualization of which perceptions the latter calls for to some extent. Potentiality is not confined, according to Husserl, to the perceptual life. “In the corresponding memory,” I am “conscious . . . that, instead of the sides then visible in fact, I could have seen others—naturally, if I had directed my perceptual activity in a suitably different manner.”247 Throughout it is a question of a capacity to do, of a possibility, that is to say, of the consciousness of a possibility, therefore, of a freedom, rather than an exercise thereof, which, as the exercise of any freedom, can be checked for this or that reason. This sense is not the only one in which Husserl employs the term “potentiality.” In his Ideen, he has not yet developed the notion of potentiality that we are trying to advance here. In that work, the term in question is employed with two acceptations. In one, it designates one of the two modalities that every positional consciousness should alternately take, namely, that in which the positionality is “neutralized,” inhibited, bracketed, therefore, that in which it is virtual rather than effected.248 However important this modality of positional consciousness may be for many problems, as well as for a theory of the phenomenological reduction itself, we should refrain from studying it here. 245 246 247 248

Cf. supra, pp. 256–259. Cf. supra, pp. 233–235. E. Husserl, CM, p. 82 (44). Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 109–114.


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In its other acceptation, the term “potentiality” designates the acts that do not possess the privileged form of the cogito,249 that is to say, those in which one becomes conscious of objects that do not present themselves as themes, but as located in the background. It is of no consequence, moreover, whether they belong to the thematic field or fall within the scope of marginal consciousness, a distinction that Husserl did not make. We have also employed the term “potentiality” in connection with these facts, and we have spoken of thematic potentiality or actuality,250 while we have described actuality, in relation to the potentiality of which it is a question here, as explicative. There is, no doubt, a similarity obtaining among the facts collected under those two headings. In the case of thematic potentiality, as well as in that of explicative potentiality, facts present themselves to consciousness in a way which, because of itself, refers to another way in which the same facts can be grasped. The subject feels therefore free, in one case as well as in the other, to go from one way of becoming conscious of the facts in question to another, which is superior, as it were, to the previous one. If the subject exercises this freedom and goes from inactuality to actuality, he acts on a sort of suggestion given to him because the facts in question are being offered to him, prior to becoming actually conscious of them, but as accessible to that act of becoming conscious. This transition is thus possessed of the character of a motivated possibility.251 The similarity between these two classes of facts is a good reaCf. ibid., §§ 35, 83, 92, and 115. Cf. supra, § 1 of this chapter. 251 One is not to confuse a motivated possibility with the one presented above (cf. Chapter 3, pp. 164–169). There it is a question of carrying out a selection from what subsequent perceptions of the same object can contribute, insofar as, through those perceptions, the object in question, by increasing in determination, will truly reveal itself to be such as it appears in the perception experienced at the moment. Here it is not a question of restricting the contribution made by subsequent perceptions, but of the possibility of proceeding from a manner of becoming conscious to another. Yet the facts of which one becomes conscious are the same on either side. (We are presupposing the ideal case in which that transition is accompanied by no modification in the contribution of both acts, by no enrichment, for example, in details, in fullness, etc., although that would always come to pass when one perceives the facts which, in another act, were only indicated. But one must take into consideration the ideal cases and even 249 250

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son for the employment, in one case as well as in the other, of the term “potentiality” defined as the freedom to “act” otherwise than one is doing presently. By experiencing the act that he experiences at the moment, the subject anticipates other acts to be experienced, other perceptions to be had, the actualization of which is up to him. This similarity between an explicative and a thematic possibility should not however make us oblivious of the difference between them, a difference that one must underscore all the more since Husserl did not establish it with sufficient clarity.252 The actualization of explicative potentialities is reduced, in the final analysis, to substituting the mode of genuine and originary appearing for a mode of secondary and derivative appearing. The transition from inactuality to actuality consists, in effect, in becomconstruct them in order to bring out the structures of consciousness and the variations these structures entail.) The distinction between these two motivated possibilities is only conceptual; they in effect converge in each concrete case. A perceived object presents itself under a certain aspect. On account of the very fact that this object seems to be this one rather than another, a selection is predelineated, so far as the contribution of the subsequent perceptions of the same object is concerned, in favor of certain possibilities and to the exclusion of certain others—here is the first motivated possibility. Now, the facts which in that fashion are indicated as possible can be perceived; their mode of appearing, which is that of being offered in the form of an indication, induces one, as it were, to carry the perception thereof into effect—here is the way in which the possibility is motivated. 252 In § 19 of his Cartesianische Meditationen, where he makes a presentation of the sort of potentiality we call explicative, Husserl cites the following examples: “to every perception there always belongs a horizon (halo) of the past, as a potentiality of awakenable recollections; and to every perception there belongs, as a horizon (halo), the continuous intervening intentionality of possible recollections (to be actualized on my own initiative, actively), up to the actual Now of perception” (p. 82; trans., pp. 44–45). Neither of these two examples falls under the definition of explicative potentiality. In the first one, it is either a question of that fact—falling within the scope of marginal consciousness— by virtue of which, at every turn of his conscious life, the subject becomes aware of the continuity of that life (cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 179); or it is a question of memories of having already perceived the same object and even, perhaps, of having perceived it under the same aspect, memories that arise in the margin of the current perception of the object (cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 176–178). The other example is the concern of the reflective attitude, in which the subject focuses on a past event of his life, and, then, other past events spreading out up to the present moment of his conscious life can be offered to the subject by forming a thematic field in relation to the recollected memory.


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ing straightforwardly conscious (i.e., by sight, hearing, touch, etc.) of facts which, despite having played a role in a perception experienced before the actualization in question, were present therein only in the form of indication and implication. That transition thus consists in confirming—by becoming conscious modo originali—that which, in another act, was not offered in that privileged mode.253 An explicative potentiality is a particular case of the presence, before consciousness, of facts given modo non originali, as—when it is a question of sense-perceptible objects—with memory, expectation, and imagination, which are modes of appearing that are secondary and non-originary in relation to perceptual experience. It is not the same with thematic potentiality. When any object whatever is the theme of a perceptual act, other objects present themselves nonetheless in perception, which belong to the thematic field, and to which there correspond the components of the act that are not possessed of the form cogito (that is to say, that of actuality). The actualization is not, therefore, accompanied here by a change in the mode of appearing, no more than inactualization would. The object perceived, when it is no longer the theme, may continue to be perceived; in the wake of its thematic inactualization, it comes to form part of the thematic field constituted in relation to the new theme, or, again, it may even fall under marginal consciousness. When, for example, one remembers a building, the latter is given as placed in a certain surrounding, thus at the center of a thematic field appearing via recollection. One may well actualize, in memory itself, one or another detail about that field, that is to say, take it as one’s theme, without failing, for that, to make the transition from the memory of that detail to the perception thereof. Thematic potentiality and actuality are, therefore, completely independent of the various modes of appearing; each one of these modes is compatible with one of the terms of that alternative as well as with the other. It goes without saying that the actualization of a thematic potentiality consists in making the transition from one theme to another. But if one 253

Below we will encounter again the phenomenon of the confirmation of an act by another. [No page number is given as reference.]

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actualizes an explicative potentiality, not only does one hold on to the theme, but one also confirms the knowledge one has of it, by rendering present to oneself modo originali that which, in the act experienced before the actualization, was given by way of implication, or, again, one broadens or even increases that knowledge when, in the course of the actualization, the anticipations that were more or less indeterminate254 come to be determined. The theme, in every case, remains the same, whatever the difference may be among the noemata corresponding to the various acts by which that actualization is accomplished,255 when, for example, having looked at a house from one of its sides, the subject proceeds to look at it from the opposite side. The explicative potentiality, therefore, gives expression to the subject’s freedom to confirm and to increase the knowledge he has of his theme, while by the thematic potentiality, the subject is free to proceed from one theme to another. But this transition is nothing like an abrupt and arbitrary leap from the given theme to any other whatever; it is, on the contrary, a transition motivated by the totality of what appears to the subject in his being itself occupied with the initial theme. In order to take into account the difference between the explicative and the thematic potentiality, we have distinguished between the terms “horizon” and “halo,”256 reserving the latter for the totality of the implications which are not copresent with the theme, but which play a role in its intrinsic structure. Let us remember, finally, what we have presented above257 concerning the functional object, which, under whatever circumstances it may be perceived, appears in the light of the use to which it is put. Every perception of this sort of object refers, therefore, to perceptions, which are to be effected, of the object in its employment, those perceptions being potential, in the explicative, not in the thematic, sense. 254

Cf. supra, pp. 207–208. For the question of the identity of the theme despite the differences among the noemata, cf. supra, pp. 275–277. 256 Cf. supra, n. 146. 257 Cf. supra, pp. 254–256. 255


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§X. Methodological Remarks We have defined consciousness by its intentional character, that is to say, as a correlation or correspondence between an act and the object such as it appears in that act.258 We have referred by the term “noema” to this object such as—exactly and only such as—it plays a role in the eyes of the subject in a concrete act in which one becomes conscious of something, and we have maintained that it forms part of the domain of sense or signification.259 Thus, we have been able to say that to experience an act of consciousness is to actualize a sense. Having conceived of consciousness in this fashion, one of the tasks that become imperative for us consists in analyzing the sense of the act and in going into its structure, whether, moreover, it is a question of a perceptual sense, or of the one corresponding to an act of thinking, of willing, etc. Here we have focused, above all and almost exclusively, on the perceptual sense, but it is advisable to underscore that similar problems and tasks, which would obviously vary according to the diverse mental activities, are posed concerning every sense, regardless of the class to which it may belong, tasks that would have to be undertaken in an all-inclusive phenomenology. The analysis of the perceptual sense, or perceptual noema, has led us to take into consideration the implications, to which we have devoted this chapter. We have examined them not only under the general definition of being facts which, in order to play a role in the perceptual sense and appear therein even as constituents, do so, however, only in an implicative form (that is to say, without being expressly grasped and apprehended). But there is also something particular about them, for it is a question here of noematic elements that are essential ingredients of the perceptual sense, ingredients that should, for that reason, be taken as perceived on the same grounds as the perceptual sense in its entirety, without however presenting themselves in straightforward vision, hearing, or touch. Yet these implications are not the only ones that must be considered. We mentioned above260 the existential thesis that forms part of every act by which one becomes conscious of an object, without the subject hav258 259 260

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, §§ VI and VII. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, § IV. Cf. supra, Chapter 2, § V.

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ing to reflect at every turn on that thesis, that is to say, without having expressly to posit the existence of the object in question. We also presented the consciousness of identity that is one indispensable condition for the objectivity itself of objects.261 Although this consciousness plays a role in every apprehension of an object and even serves to support the said apprehension, the subject, by focusing on the object itself, may very well fail continuously to notice explicitly the identity thereof; in general, the subject avails himself of the consciousness of identity and allows himself to be guided by it, without expressly coming to realize it. It is of little consequence, moreover, whether it is a question of the identity of the noema, as opposed to the many acts in which the noema is actualized, or, again, of the identity of the object itself in relation to the many aspects under which it appears, therefore, as opposed to the multiplicity of noemata.262 The existential thesis as well as the consciousness of identity are quite consistent with the general definition of the implications, but they obviously do not exhibit the characters proper to the implications that we have just studied in this chapter. If we have reserved so much room for them, it is by reason of their importance for the phenomenological theory of perception. In effect, it is because of the implications that every particular perception reveals itself to be incomplete, insofar as it is an act by which one becomes conscious of its object; it is because of the implications that, for the consciousness itself of the perceiving subject, every particular perception transcends itself in itself, thus making itself known as belonging to a whole system of perceptions.263 The theory of implications prepares the theory of the syntheses occurring in the perceptual life, and, above all, it prepares the phenomenological theory of the constitution of the objective thing in and through those syntheses. These are problems to which the following chapter will be devoted.264 However, whatever may be the significance, in many respects, of these facts, one must see in them special phenomena, and one should Cf. supra, Chapter 3, § III. In Chapter 6, § 3, we will be making a presentation of the link between the identical object and the multiplicity of noemata relative thereto. [Note by the editor of the French edition of this book: The chapter in question is missing from the typescript.] 263 Cf. supra, pp. 234–237. 264 [The chapter referred to is not extant.] 261 262


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admit that the implications playing a role in a noematic sense in general, and in a perceptual sense in particular, are not all of the same sort. It is not surprising to find that, in the study of the noemata, one makes one’s way toward implications, since the knowledge of the noema in its entirety (as possessed by the subject in his ordinary life), as well as of the act that he experiences (and which corresponds to the noema), exhibits, as it were, an implicit character. In everyday life, the subject directs himself toward objects, whatever they may be and whatever the domain of being they may come under, but he does not turn in on his conscious life; he focuses neither on acts nor on noemata. Everyday conscious life is unreflective, in the sense that it is not directed upon itself. In effect, in perceiving, the subject is focused on the real object and not on the noematic object, i.e., on the object such as it presents itself to him in the concrete act; the subject is focused on the object in itself and not on the object-perceived-as-such. Or, again, when a subject performs an act of judgment, his mental regard is directed toward that which the judgment is about: toward the object to be determined, toward the determination that is attributed to the object, etc. But it is not directed toward the judged-as-such, that is to say, toward the state of affairs such as it corresponds to the act of judging and is constituted therein, without however being grasped or objectivated by him265 ; in short, the mental regard is not directed toward what Husserl calls the noema of the judgment. Finally, if the subject carries out an action, or only projects it, what he takes into consideration is the goal he seeks to attain, the means that he is to employ, the manner of applying them, etc., but not the action-projected-as-such in the sense defined above.266 It is the same with every mental activity. To be sure, the subject cannot become engaged in the direction taken up by him in everyday life, and he cannot focus on objects, except by experiencing acts and—in view of the fact that every act of consciousness is a noetico-noematic correspondence—by actualizing noemata. In effect, to be directed toward an object is to experience an act to which a noema would correspond. Acts 265 266

Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, § 42a. Cf. supra, pp. 246.

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and noemata, even when the subject does not expressly notice them, are not, for all that, unknown to him; without paying attention to them, the subject becomes conscious of them in a definite manner. While the act of becoming conscious of the object on which the subject is focused is explicit, the act which this very event of becoming conscious is, and the noema corresponding to it, are not objects to themselves; they are not grasped and apprehended; while they are given, they go, as it were, unnoticed.267 It is in this sense that the subject, while directing himself toward the object and becoming conscious of it, is possessed of an implicit knowledge of the act experienced by him, as well as of the noema of that act. Were it not so, reflection would be the only way in which the subject could know anything about the acts experienced by him. At every turn of his conscious life, the subject is in possession of this knowledge: in perceiving, he knows that he is perceiving; in carrying out an act of judgment, he knows that he is carrying it out, etc. But it does not follow therefrom that the conscious life should be in a state of permanent reflection, that the subject, therefore, would not be able to abandon, at any moment, the reflective attitude.268 This conclusion is not only belied by the facts but, above and beyond that, it also induces an infinite regress: in effect, in order to know that he is perceiving, the perceiving subject would have to experience a reflective 267

One is not to connect this notion of the unnoticed with the one attacked by the Gestalt theoreticians. The latter are opposed to the view that when two observations are made in terms of two different attitudes but are conditioned by the same external stimuli, one of them is supposed, for theoretical reasons, to be contained, as an ¨ unnoticed fact, in the other. (Cf. W. Köhler, “Uber unbemerkte Empfindungen und Urteilsstäuschungen,” loc. cit. and our article, “Quelques aspects et quelques developpements de la psychologie de la forme,” loc. cit., pp. 427–431; cf. SPP, pp. 13 ff.) Here, on the contrary, it is not at all a question of reducing one observation to another. Not only should one refrain in phenomenology, by reason of the phenomenological reduction, from calling upon external stimuli, but one must also scrupulously respect the descriptive aspect of the phenomenal data, as we have pointed out (cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 151–152 and 122–123) and will do so again. The notion of the unnoticed serves only to characterize the modality of the subject, when he experiences an act without turning in on it. 268 [Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,” in SPP, pp. 319 ff.]


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act at the same time that he experiences the perceptual act, the latter being the object of the reflective act. Now, for the reflective act to be known to the subject, it would have in turn to be apprehended by a reflective act of a higher order, an act that would have to be experienced at the same time, and so on, so that, when a subject experiences any act whatsoever, an infinite number of reflective acts, superimposed one upon the other, would have to be experienced at the same time.269 The only means to escape this absurdity and to be in conformity with the facts is to admit that the nature of an act consists in being the explicit consciousness of an object toward which the subject is directed in that act, and in being, at the same time, the implicit consciousness of itself.270 Now, the objects of all kinds the subject focuses on in his everyday life do not exist, and are not such as they are, except due to acts of consciousness and to syntheses that particular acts enter into among themselves, acts in which the objects offer and reveal themselves in their being and with their determinations.271 One can therefore say that those objects result from operations of consciousness which, in everyday life, go unnoticed, and remain veiled and as if concealed. Those objects are the objective correlates of acts and concatenations of acts. In his normal life, however, the subject na¨ıvely confines himself to those objective correlates and takes them as ready-made, without caring about their genesis for consciousness, although he experiences that genesis at every turn of his life in which he is occupied with objects; otherwise, not only could the subject not focus on objects, but also they would not be capable of existing for him. To carry into effect the program of the philosophy of consciousness, that is to say, 269

This argument of Aristotle’s (Cf. De anima, III, 245 b 12–17) was revived by Brentano (cf. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Book II, Chapter 2, § 7). 270 [Emphasis added, beginning with “the implicit consciousness . . .,” for the sake of consistency.] Cf. F. Brentano, ibid, Book II, Chapter 2, § 8 and Vol. II, Appendix II. Husserl tackles the phenomenon in question from the angle of the susceptibility— essential to the experienced acts—of being grasped and apprehended by a reflective act (Cf. Ideen, I, pp. 83–84 and 145), and it is only in this form that he presents it. H. Schmalenbach, in his “Das Sein des Bewusstseins” (Philosophischer Anzeiger, IV, 1930), has devoted a special study to the implicit knowledge that consciousness has of itself, and he has also reviewed the history of the question. [Cf. A. Gurwitsch, Marginal Consciousness.] 271 Cf. supra, Chapter 1, § I.

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to elucidate the existence of objects and the specific sense of their being, one must clarify their genesis for consciousness. One must, consequently, turn in on the acts and the syntheses of acts in and by which the objects are formed and constituted such as they play a role and such as they are. One must truly make the objects stand out insofar as they are the objective correlates of acts and of syntheses of acts relative to them. It is thus that the phenomenologist, whose task it is to carry into effect the philosophy of consciousness, should consider the facts that normally escape one’s attention, namely, acts and noemata. To bring out the complete noematic sense, and particularly the complete perceptual noema, one is also induced, in phenomenology, to take into account facts that, in the noema, implicitly play a role in a specific sense. The attitude adopted by the phenomenologist in his investigations is then that of reflection. The latter would be either noetic or noematic in character,272 depending on whether it is a question particularly of one or the other of the two domains by the correlation of which consciousness is defined. Above we mentioned that an act of consciousness undergoes a certain alteration when it is grasped by a reflective act, and that this alteration stems from the objectivation contributed to the act which, prior to the effecting of that operation, was only experienced and was simply occurring.273 One must not think, however, that reflection distorts the acts grasped thereby, although every finding obtained in the reflective attitude would, strictly speaking, be valid for the apprehended act, but not for the non-objectivated acts; therefore, that it would not have been valid, either, for the act one is presently examining in the reflective attitude, before that act had been taken for an [object].274 This “skepticism concerning reflection” has, as a consequence, that one would take, for creations of that very attitude, the noematic elements one succeeds in establishing by means of the reflective analysis. Although these elements would present themselves in the noema when one renders it explicit, they would be absent from it when it is simply actualized but not objectivated; at least, their existence in it would have to be called into 272

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 205 and CM, pp. 74–75. Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 120–121. 274 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 79. [The word in brackets was added by the editor of the French edition of this book.] 273


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question. We have underscored275 that reflection creates nothing new, but that by it one takes up again the acts such as they had been experienced prior to that change of attitude. By means of reflection, the subject brings out and renders explicit noetic and noematic elements by which, before being directed upon the act he would examine, and by experiencing it in a straightforward and normal attitude, he has let himself be guided, elements he has made use of previously, even without expressly noticing it. Due to its being retained in immediate memory, and to the implicit consciousness every act has of itself, the subject can realize that the act that he grasps does not arise on account of its being objectivated, but that the said act had just been experienced, before the act of reflection had taken it as its object. Living a perception in the normal attitude, one proceeds to reflect on that act which does not, for that reason, lose or acquire its perceptual character. The perception was a perception of such and such an object, and it continues to be that when the subject turns in on the perception; the perceived object was being presented under such and such definite aspect, and it does not cease being so presented. The object-perceivedas-such being, for example, a house offered from such and such a side, the facts implicated in the perceptual noema—facts brought out by the reflective analysis, the references to other aspects under which the house can appear and, correlatively, to other perceptions in which it will be presented under those aspects—are not due to that analysis. This analysis does not do anything but render explicit some elements that played a role in the perceptual sense prior to its objectivation, when the subject was living in an unreflective attitude, to the extent that what he perceived in the normal attitude—and continues to perceive in the reflective attitude—is, say, a house offering itself from such and such a side. Therefore, what is seen, in one case as well as in the other, does not exhaust the perceptual sense. This is the fact that led us to consider the implications,276 or, further, that to an act of thinking or of 275 276

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 127 and 148. Cf. supra, § III of this chapter.

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judging there corresponds, as a noema, the state-of-affairs-thought-of-assuch. The latter is not modified when the subject turns away from the objective things which the thought is about, and to which the noema of this thought is related, so as to take into consideration that very noema. In unreflective thought, the state-of-affairs-thought-of-as-such is posited as certain, or as probable, possible, doubtful, etc.277 In adopting the reflective attitude, the subject neither discovers those characters nor does he attribute them to the noematic object; he only becomes expressly aware of them, but he becomes aware of them as borne by the noematic object before its having been apprehended by reflection, in the sense that the subject, in his unreflective thought, is oriented in respect of those characters. To be sure, the subject can focus on a noema of judgment, not for the purpose of grasping it such as it had just been posited in an unreflective act, but in order to criticize its validity. The subject would then examine the compatibility of the judgment (understood noematically) with other judgments; he would analyze the premises from which it follows, raise the question of whether it truly follows therefrom, consider the consequences it entails, inquire into the reasons that may be adduced for or against its validity, etc. In the course of these reflections, certainty may well be changed into doubt, probability, etc., or, having been subjected to the doubt, it may become a confirmed certainty. These operations of thought, insofar as they are carried out in the attitude of noematic reflection, insofar as they therefore call for one’s turning in on the thought-of-as-such, greatly exceed, however, the means at the disposal of reflection alone. The only function of the latter consists, in effect, in bringing out and rendering explicit the act and the noema, such as they were prior to that change of attitude. The implicit knowledge that every act of consciousness has of itself permits one to check whether the reflective analysis truly embraces the phenomenal data. It is thus, and only thus, that one may notice the alteration contributed by reflection, as well as the limits within which this alteration is to be held. The latter concerns, above all, the mode in which the act is carried out and unfolds; it concerns the mode of actualization of the noema, rather than the noema 277

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, p. 145–146.


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in itself. The noema has been defined as an ideal and a-temporal unity which, as one and the same, can correspond to a multiplicity of acts (say, of perceptual acts), and the basic stratum of which—what Husserl calls the “noematic sense”—may even correspond to acts different from each other, to the extent that a perception, a memory, an expectation (of the same object offering itself under the same aspect, in the same orientation, etc.) are different.278 It goes without saying, therefore, that the noema can remain as is when, having just been simply actualized, it is now objectivated by a reflective act. The facts implicated in a perceptual noema may well play a role therein in an undisplayed form.279 Ordinarily, they in effect assume this form. Those facts not only involve indeterminations, but they also are barely different from each other, or, again, not at all. In the case of the unreflective attitude, all the implicated facts are, in a sort of syncretic mix, confused with one another, as well as with that which is given in straightforward vision. It is thus that they contribute to the formation of the Gestalt unity which the perceptual sense is. They do not make up this unity by adding themselves to one another; on the contrary, they are contained in that unity, as the parts of a Gestalt are in general contained therein.280 A normal consciousness, which does not turn in on itself, confines itself to the perceptual sense and allows itself to be guided by it, insofar as it is a more or less confused global fact. In that attitude, one does not try to enter into the intrinsic structure of the perceptual sense, and one does not really distinguish the implicated facts from those given in an explicit fashion (for example, in straightforward vision). That distinction is effected through a reflective analysis,281 but it may already be developing in an unreflective perception. When one perceives an object, it is possible for an aspect under which the object can appear to shape up more or less clearly, while other aspects would not really come 278

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 136 and 149 and pp. 190–191 of this chapter. Cf. supra, pp. 206. 280 Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 172. 281 Cf. G. F. Stout, “Things and Sensations,” loc. cit., p. 117. Above we made a presentation, with the reservations that seem necessary to us, of Stout’s point of view concerning the implications (cf. supra, pp. 254–260). 279

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out of the syncretic mix. In contrast with these cases, there are others, occurring quite often, in which the implications are based on a global and confused halo devoid of intrinsic articulation or division (fragmentation). The object is perceived together with the consciousness that there still are experiences of it to be had, but those potential experiences would shape up as vague and indeterminate except for their generic style,282 as well as without being marked off from one another. In general, it is to this inarticulate whole of experiences, rather than to definite experiences, that a perception being currently undergone refers. A certain alteration would arise in the noema corresponding to an unreflective perception through the distinction, effected in the reflective attitude, between that which is seen and that which plays a role in a perception only in the form of an implication. One would stop at that whenever it is a question of studying and analyzing a concrete perceptual noema. In that case, one would take into account only those implicated facts to which the perception under examination in fact refers.283 The phenomenal data, the implications in particular, should be taken as they are, in their syncretic state, together with everything vague, indeterminate, indefinite, and indistinct that they may involve. Yet sometimes one is not interested in respecting the phenomenal aspect of a concrete perceptual noema, but in rendering it more explicit than it is in fact. One would come to that by trying to determine the indeterminations, by trying to establish the possibilities—in the sense mentioned above284 —entailed by the generic style of the indeterminations, and even to carry out a selection from among those possibilities. Moreover, one will endeavor to break up and articulate the global and confused halo, and to extract the implicated facts from the syncretic mix on which they are based; and those implications, after one would have marked them off from one another, will in turn be subjected to a process of determination. This operation is one of clarification.285 By applying it to a perceptual noema or, more exactly, by doing so on the basis of the original noema, one would obtain a whole series of perceptual noe282 283 284 285

Cf. supra, pp. 208–210. Cf. supra, pp. 239. Cf. supra, pp. 208–209. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 67–69 (78–80).


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mata. Not only would all these relate to the same object understood as an object in itself, or objective object, but it would also be a question, all the time, of the same noematic object; it would always be the same object which would be perceived and present itself under the same aspect, from the same side, in the same orientation, etc. The difference among the noemata which belong to such a series would consist in this: that the same perceptual sense would be progressively exhibited and articulated. The elements that implicitly play a role in it would be brought out and clarified; thus, what is confused and what is global would give way to increasingly qualified structures. The law of such a series of noemata would be the following: that they would progressively gain in separation (fragmentation), distinctness, and determination. The clarification of a perceptual noema cannot, however, be carried to perfection; it is impossible for a perceptual noema to be rendered completely explicit, to the point in which it would no longer contain anything confused or global. The aspects under which an object perceived may appear are infinite in number; among them are those under which the object in question has never been presented, those, therefore, which are unknown to the perceiving subject. It goes without saying that the object cannot be perceived in relation to those unknown aspects. Moreover, the possibility that a sense-perceptible object should appear under aspects which are infinite in number is a fact that exists for consciousness, and it does so in the form of references—implicated in the currently experienced perception—to potential perceptions, concerning the contribution of which the subject knows nothing, except that it would be in harmony with that made by the current perception. To this awareness that there still are experiences to be had of the perceived object, though indeterminate as to all their details, there corresponds, from a noematic standpoint, a certain confused and global halo that one does not succeed, therefore, in completely undoing, no matter how far one pushes on with the clarification. This operation does not furnish us with a broadened and thorough knowledge of the object in itself. To obtain that one must multiply the acts by which one becomes conscious of the object, perceive it from diverse points of observation and under different aspects, vary the conditions of all sorts in which the object is found, etc.; in short, one must set the perceptual life in motion. However, with the clarification of a per-

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ceptual noema, one would confine oneself to a particular perception and persevere in studying a static phenomenon. What this operation allows one to do is to render explicit, and clarify for oneself, the object-perceivedas-such; it is to become aware of what one has in view when one perceives an object, of the configuration—in the eyes of the perceiving subject—of the object-perceived-as-such. It is of little consequence whether the object in question exists or not, whether it is in reality such as it presents itself to the subject or not.286 By means of clarification, one does not therefore leave the domain of noemata, that is to say, not the domain consisting of objects tout court, but of objects such as they offer themselves to consciousness. In that operation one must see the phenomenological method par excellence, the means to investigate and elucidate noemata. Therefore, it finds an application wherever there are noemata; it applies, then, to all the activities of the conscious life. The phenomenological analysis is thus focused especially on the noemata, and it is practiced in the reflective attitude, because, unless one adopts the latter, the noemata would not lend themselves to a systematic investigation. This investigation indeed possesses the character of an analysis, to the extent that it consists in bringing out the elements that play a role in the unity of a noematic sense. But here it is not a question of an analysis understood as the breaking up of a complex unity into simpler ones, i.e., when all is said and done, into “ultimate elements” independent of one another, and of which the complex unity would be composed. In consequence, the phenomenological analysis is not open to the criticisms that the Gestalt theoreticians have formulated in respect of the traditional psychological analysis.287 According to them, a complex and coherent unity that is articulated into “parts” is something other than the sum formed by elements into which one can artificially break up the unity in question, if by any process one separates them. Such an analysis would then contribute a real modification to the phenomenon on which it takes effect. One would substitute quite different data for the phenomenon one wants to examine; in consequence, one would alter, or at least distort, the phenomenon in question. This crit286

Concerning this topic, cf. infra, p. 294. Cf. K. Koffka, “Introspection and the Method of Psychology,” The British Journal of Psychology, XV(1925).

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icism obviously does not affect the phenomenological analysis, because in it not only is the unity of the noema respected, but also, if some noematic elements are brought out, they would be encountered within the coherent whole the noematic sense is, and would be considered in accordance with the place they hold in that whole and with the role they play for the sake of the structure of that unity. The phenomenological analysis, therefore, may well call on the principles established by the Gestalt theoreticians. Even the alteration undergone by a noema when it is rendered explicit and clarified is of a nature and of a significance other than those of the modification entailed by the traditional psychological analysis. To the implications there would correspond, from a noetic standpoint, the references to potential perceptions that the current perception contains.288 These references are not secondarily superadded to the current perception, ready-made and completely constituted, as if that perception remained as is, and the references in question were eliminated. To the extent that what is being presented to consciousness is a house perceived from such and such a side, it would be essential to the perceptual sense (insofar as it is a house appearing under such an aspect but susceptible of offering itself under other aspects) that the current perception refer to potential perceptions that would render visible that which is not visible at the moment. These references play a constitutive role, therefore, in the current perception. Hence, as soon as the perceptual sense is rendered explicit, the potentialities in question would be disclosed. The intentional analysis which is focused on a perception not as a real fact of consciousness but which considers it in relation to the noema corresponding to it, therefore in relation to that which is offered to consciousness in that perception, goes beyond the particular perception; even if that analysis were to be carried out in respect of a particular perception, the analysis would go beyond it.289 The intentional analysis would not only clarify the relations a particular act bears to other acts, but it would also make known the particular act constituted by those relations. 288 289

Cf. supra, § IX of this chapter. Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 20.

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In light of this analysis, the particular perception would lose its particularization and its singularization; it would be placed back in an entire whole consisting of acts in which a role would be played by an object that is the same as that which presently offers itself under a certain aspect, but in which acts this object would be offered under other aspects, from a different side, in another orientation, etc. However, this placing-back of a particular perception in a more encompassing context of facts of consciousness is carried out—one must underscore it—in the very examination of the particular perception, therefore, prior to considering the dynamism of the perceptual life, to which we shall devote the following chapter.290 Thus, the intentional analysis would lead to the abandonment of psychological atomism,291 and it would do so in the study of particular and static phenomena; or, again, as Husserl puts it, that analysis would deprive the singular states of their “anonymity.” Due to the implications a given object appears such as it plays a role in the eyes of a conscious subject. Now, the object has become that in the course of its history in the subject’s past; the object has been constituted such as it presently is by the transformations it has undergone in the subject’s past, which mark the essential stages of its history. The implications that are acquired by experience likewise derive from the subject’s past. In effect, we defined the implications as an extension of the past into the present, as traces that the transformations have left in the object that underwent them, traces that settled on it in the form of permanent qualities.292 The implications, therefore, betray, as it were, the history of the object such as it has become for the subject. The question then is posed of knowing whether, by rendering the implications explicit, it is possible to reconstruct that history, to establish the stages through which the progressive formation of the object has passed, to determine the transformations that mark those stages as well as the motives that drove to those transformations, in order to return, at the end of the analysis, to the initial stage at the beginning of the history of the object. 290

[This chapter is not extant.] Concerning this topic, cf. supra [not infra, as in the French edition of this book], pp. 292. 292 Cf. supra, pp. 289–290 and 294–295. 291


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Husserl devotes only some remarks to that question and gives an affirmative answer to it: [in] “early infancy,” . . . the field of perception that gives beforehand does not as yet contain anything that, in a mere look, might be explicated as a physical thing. Yet . . . we can, the meditating ego can, penetrate into the intentional constituents of experiential phenomena themselves . . . and thus find intentional references leading back to a “history” and accordingly making these phenomena knowable as formations subsequent to other, essentially antecedent formations.293

This answer presupposes that the formation of objects in the course of experience is conceived of as being accomplished by superimposing different strata on one another, and, when all is said and done, that a stratum is considered as fundamental and basic. In the case of the objects Husserl describes as superior or of a higher order, such as, for example, the objects we designate as functional objects, that primary stratum is, according to him, the sense-perceptible thing qua reiform thing.294 A superior or higher-order object would come from the latter owing to specific acts that confer on it “ ‘spiritual’ or ‘cultural’ characteristics that make it knowable as, for example, a hammer, a table, an aesthetic creation.”295 Consequently, an object of a higher order is the result, according to Husserl, of an active genesis, the distinctive mark of which is that it “necessarily presupposes, as the lowest level, a passivity that gives something beforehand.”296 E. Husserl, CM, § 38, pp. 112–113 (79). The emphasis is ours. [This remark is Gurwitsch’s.] 294 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 152 and CM, p. 112 (79): “in infancy we had to learn to see physical things, and . . . such modes of consciousness of them . . . had to precede all others genetically.” If we come back here to Husserl’s thesis concerning the priority of the reiform thing over the functional object, it is not for the purpose of bringing up again that thesis for discussion, a thesis we cannot adopt. (Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 109–111, and this chapter, pp. 257–259). We only cite it as an example, in order to illustrate the conception Husserl defends concerning the formation of objects of a higher order. 295 [Cf. E. Husserl, ibid., p. 112 (78).] 296 Ibid. 293

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It is the same here as it is for the constitution of an object of value297 : Husserl has generalized the theory he established for this special case— and for which it seems right to us—to cover all cases in which it is a question of perceptible objects belonging to the real world, objects which, however, are not limited to being pure reiform things. To be sure, an object of a higher order cannot be reduced to a reiform thing; the predicates and values of all kinds characterizing that object are not purely subjective reactions provoked by certain “objective” qualities of the reiform thing, but those predicates and values belong to the higher-order object itself.298 That object, though founded by the reiform thing, is of a new type in relation to the latter.299 However, it is a founded object: as such, not only does it presuppose, but it also contains that which founds it, namely, the reiform thing. It may then be defined as a reiform thing on which superior or higher-order strata have been superimposed, strata bestowed by specific acts, just as the reiform thing, owing to these acts, is transformed into an object of a different type. The structure of these strata reflects the history of the formation of the higher-order object. The reiform thing itself that serves as the support for the constitution of the higher-order object is likewise possessed of its history, which is the history of its formation in the perceptual life. In every current perception of an object, some past perceptions relating to the same object are indicated, and they do so in the form of implications. If, therefore, in every perception the perceived exceeds that which is seen, the reason is that some memories of past perceptions are intermingled therewith: that which offers itself modo originali is penetrated with pieces of knowledge of all sorts that the subject derives from his past; what is seen is as imbued with acquisitions which, in his past, the subject has, in part, made by himself and has learned, in part, on the authority of another.300 The 297

Cf. supra, Chapter 3, pp. 147–148. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 50. 299 Ibid., p. 319. These “other . . . formations,” the “references” to which “make . . . these phenomena knowable” as “subsequent formations” (CM, p. 113 (79); cf. Ideen, I, pp. 225–226), “cannot be related to precisely the same constituted object.” CM, p. 113 (79). 300 Cf. E. Fink’s interpretation of Husserl’s thought in his “Das Problem der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, I (1939), 298


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implications are sediments of perceptions and, in general, of past experiences related to the object in question. These implications not only make the object perceived appear such as it plays a role in the eyes of the perceiving subject, but they also make it appear as having become so: they point to the history of the object or, better yet, to its historical formation in the subject’s past. The elements that compose a perceptual act experienced na¨ıvely (that is to say, in the non-reflective attitude) are not isolated from one another. This act is a compact and simplified unity in which the component elements are condensed and congealed.301 To isolate them, it is not even enough to adopt the reflective attitude, that is to say, to move away from the object toward the act. So that the latter may be articulated into its component elements, the noetic reflection must be guided by the noematic reflection. By rendering explicit the implications that play a role in a noema, one obtains the references to past perceptions and acts of becoming conscious of something, of which the implications are sediments. The contributions of those acts of becoming conscious, by adding themselves to each other, have helped to form and constitute the object such as it is in the eyes of the subject. Every intentional unity (that is to say, every object such as it presents itself to consciousness) refers, through the implications constitutive of itself, to its history; in these implications its history is contained in a sedimented form.302 Thus, if the rendering explicit of the implications is not itself a reconstruction of the history of the object, it furnishes us at least with the indications required for that reconstruction. Besides, it is not indispensable that the past acts of becoming conscious be related to the same object, the one that is being perceived now. Every originary act of becoming conscious, such as sense-perception, not only contributes to the constitution of the object appearing in it, but it also creates, according to Husserl,303 a form of apperception outlasting pp. 251–252. [Cf. E. Fink, Studien zur Phänomenologie, 1930–1939 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 204ff.] 301 Cf. ibid., pp. 266–269. [Cf. E. Fink, Studien zur Phänomenologie, 1930–1939, pp. 219ff.] 302 Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, pp. 217 and 221 in op. cit., pp. 252 and 257. 303 Cf. ibid., Appendix II, § 2b and CM, pp. 112–113.

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it, a permanent habitus, so that an object that in the future presents itself under similar circumstances would be apprehended and perceived in conformity with that habitus and endowed with the sense thereof, a habitus that would thus enter into this form of apperception. This habitus, as conceived by Husserl, is possessed of the same assimilative and generalizing tendency as Piaget’s schemata304 and Köhler’s ways of acting.305 Accordingly, it seems right for one to be able to compare that Husserlian notion with the ones advanced by those authors. It is in virtue of these forms of apperception that everything being offered to a subject appears to him at first glance, and therefore prior to having a thorough knowledge of it, as belonging to a certain type or as coming under a certain category. So far as unknown objects perceived by the subject for the first time are concerned, one would have to say that the perceptions thereof implicate references to indeterminate facts; nonetheless, these facts—as we have explained306 —present themselves as being of a certain style and as inserted in a framework which, in turn, is well-defined. This is so because a certain habitus acquired in the past is reactualized and intervenes in the perception of the unknown object.307 Now, the implications that play a role in the unknown-objectperceived-as-such likewise refer one, according to Husserl,308 to a history, which obviously is not that of the formation of this particular object for the subject’s consciousness, but that of the acquisition, in the past, of the habitus in question. The latter, by dint of being reactualized and brought back into play, refers to its original formation. Here too the rendering explicit of the implications takes one back to a history. According to Piaget’s functional psychology and especially according to Gestalt theory, the original formation of new objects is accomplished not by superposition of strata, but by reorganization and restructuring.309 This conception finds support in the critical examination of the method 304 305 306 307 308 309

Cf. supra, pp. 249–251. Cf. supra, pp. 248. Cf. supra, pp. 207–209. Cf. supra, pp. 259–261 for the explication of this fact in terms of Piaget’s theory. Cf. E. Husserl, CM, p. 113. Cf. supra, § VII of this chapter.


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rendering the implications explicit: one must therefore assess what this method provides, by at the same time establishing its limits. When one perceives a functional object outside of its employment, the object nonetheless presents itself as a functional object, and it appears thus by reason of certain implications that form part of every concrete perception of that object in any situation in which the said perception is experienced.310 In rendering those implications explicit, the perceiving subject can come to realize—more clearly than he habitually does in normal life—what role the object he is perceiving plays for him. He can clarify, for himself, the sense of his perception. By proceeding in this manner, the subject can fashion, for himself, representations or images of the employment of the object perceived, of the situation for which this object is meant, of the way one must handle it, of the goals it serves, etc. But this method of rendering the implications explicit is confined to the object constituted and perfected, that is to say, to the one that has already acquired its definitive form. This method does not open a way of access to that acquisition and that formation themselves, or to the structuring that the object has undergone in taking on its functional values, or, either, to the manner in which that process of reorganization is accomplished or to the conditions to which that process is linked. All the more reason for it not to permit one’s return to that which preexisted the definitive transformation of the object. Therefore, no matter how far back one would press the application of the method of rendering explicit and clarifying the implications, and to what degree of clarity and perfection one carries it to, one always remains on this side of the original formation of the object, and one cannot even come near it. This original formation constitutes a limit for the explicative (explicitative) method, in the sense that, through this method, one does not even get to the fact that that formation took place. The reason for this is that, according to their intrinsic sense, the implications betray nothing about the origin of the object, while contributing to its constitution such as it plays a role in the eyes of the perceiving subject. Or, again, due to the implications, an object seen appears as tangible, and an object one touches without seeing it appears as visible. In rendering these implications explicit, the subject becomes aware of the tactile or visual expe310

Cf. supra, pp. 250–254.

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riences which he is having of the object, and which he will have once certain conditions are fulfilled by him. But no more here than in the preceding example does the explicative method bring one back to the original formation of the object, particularly to that assimilation and accommodation of schemata that give rise to an object of a new type, to an object visible and tangible at once. The method of rendering the implications explicit permits the subject, here as everywhere, to clarify—before himself and for himself—the object such as he has it in view. This method, however, goes no further; it does not permit one to establish anything about the genesis of the object, about the way in which it has become such as it is. All the more reason for it not to permit one to return to that which preexisted the type of object both visible and tangible; for example, to those visual pictures devoid of stability and solidity which, according to Piaget, mark the beginnings of the development of vision.311 By this example, one can see, with particular clarity, that the limits imposed on the explicative method stem from the fact that the original formation of objects, and above all of the types of objects, is accomplished not by superposition, but by an abrupt reorganization. In effect, if through the clarification of the visible and tangible object, one gets neither to the visual nor to the tactile object such as they preexisted the reciprocal assimilation and accommodation of the schemata of vision and grasping, the reason is that the visible and tangible object, which has its genesis in that assimilation and accommodation, does not contain them in any way. And it does not contain them because it has not been formed by their superposition, as if that object were a superior, higher-order, or composite entity, into the structure of which those more primitive objects would have entered as they are, each to play therein its role. In explaining the formation of the object both visible and tangible by a union—of whatever nature it may be—that the visual and tactile objects would have established among themselves, one would, moreover, be inescapably brought back to the question concerning the correspondence among those objects. We have already denounced this question as ill-posed.312 In reality, the reciprocal accommodation of the schemata in 311 312

Cf. J. Piaget, op. cit., pp. 71–73. Cf. supra, pp. 259.


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question gives rise to an object of an entirely new type; it should therefore be considered a creation in the full sense of the word, one attended with the disappearance of that which preexisted it. If therefore, from a certain moment of its development, the child begins to know objects that would come under the type “thing,” one must not say that more primitive objects are transformed into objects of the type “thing”; on the contrary, one must maintain, with Koffka,313 that the former give precedence to the latter. Let us conclude by taking a quick look at an example coming under symbolic consciousness, although the latter cannot be tackled in this book. The “+” sign, as seen between numbers, calls, so to speak, for addition, and that sign is perceived in that manner due to an acquired piece of knowledge which therefore is, as it were, located in a certain area of the visual field.314 To ourselves we can render as clear as possible the understanding we have of the meaning of that symbol; we can even come to have an originary consciousness of that meaning, which is what we do by carrying out—intelligently and not just mechanically—the addition of two numbers. But this procedure does not furnish us with any information about the process by which the symbol in question acquired its meaning, or about that event at the basis of that particular procedure— the most important of all for the evolution of humankind—which the awakening of symbolic consciousness in general is. From this analysis it results that the implications—as has been underscored on several occasions—contribute to the constitution of the objectperceived-as-such, as that object has become and plays a role for the perceiving subject, but also that they indicate nothing about the becoming of the object in the course of the subject’s history. Not bearing witness to the past in the eyes of the subject experiencing them, the implications should not be considered as the sedimentary form in which the history of the formation of the object would be deposited upon the object and foreshadowed in it. This notwithstanding, if one adopts the standpoint of an observer studying from without—so to speak—the subject’s development and history, there is no doubt that, in the case of the implications, it is 313 314

Cf. K. Koffka, Der Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung, p. 231. Cf. W. Köhler, Gestalt Psychology, pp. 73 and 88.

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a question of the past being extended into the present.315 Gestalt theory permits us to reconcile these two obvious but contradictory facts. However, if, from a psychological point of view, the implications can be taken for traces which the reorganizations and restructurings have left on the object that underwent them, that should be understood in relation to the final result to which those processes have led. In other words, that should be understood in relation to the definitive form that the object has finally taken up, but not in relation to the initial stage from which those processes started or in relation to any intermediary stage. We also gave expression to some hesitations on our part regarding Pradines’s thesis, according to which (1) the origin and history of a function is inscribed, as it were, in the exercise of that function, even when the latter has reached its perfected form316 ; and, therefore, (2) that a perception is defined as a representation and mediation of a “passion subordinate to the eventuality of a movement” and is exhausted in the function of serving as a sign of objects qua eventual agents,317 because, in development, it was preceded by passional and intensive states and is obtained therefrom by a process of sublimation and decantation. If development is not produced in a continuous fashion but by reorganizations and restructurings, the abruptness of which has been underscored by the Gestalt theoreticians, one must not expect to be able to regain, even in a condensed form, the history of a function in its perfected state. If the explicative analysis of an object, or of a type of objects, such as they play a role for consciousness in whatever scale of its development, does not supply any information about the history of that object, neither would the development of a function or of an activity permit one to draw the least conclusion about the nature of that developed activity, or about that of the objects which, due to the activity in question, exist for consciousness. One must therefore distinguish the problems concerning the historical development of the functions and concerning the genesis of the objects which in the course of that history succeed each other, from those about the sense with which objects present themselves—in certain acts—to 315 316 317

Cf. supra, § VIII of this chapter. Cf. supra, pp. 223–224. Cf. supra, § IV of this chapter.


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consciousness, and with which they play a role for it, a sense of being that the acts in which the objects offer themselves confer on them. The explicative method is meant exclusively for the latter group of problems, whereas genetic problems would call for other methods that are specific to them.318

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[The typescript breaks off at this point. Another copy may have existed which, unfortunately, has disappeared under the circumstances described by Prof. Lester Embree in his “Introduction” to the French edition of this book. This note is by the editor of the latter.]

ESSAYS

ESSAY I

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY

We here undertake a survey of some very general and formal principles of constitutive phenomenology, the phenomenological idealism which Husserl introduced in general terms and in a well-developed form with the Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie of 1913,1 and which thereafter he never ceased to elaborate, deepen, and expand. One should not regard such phenomenological idealism as a “philosophical system” in the usual sense of the term. The principles we shall attempt to present express nothing less than a sort of “profession of personal, philosophical faith.” They only derive their value from the fact that they open up a vast field for research and inspire quite concrete analyses of particular phenomena, a labor of analysis by which those principles become concrete and are confirmed. Thus phenomenology does not present itself as a philosophy which is complete at the outset, which springs in an accomplished form from the mind of its author, and which only translates his personal manner of conceiving the world,2 This essay was originally written in 1937 under the title “Quelques principes fondamentaux de la phénoménologie constitutive” for the journal Recherches philosophiques (Paris). The proofs were read but the journal unfortunately suspended publication before the essay could appear. This is a revised version of the English translation which was carried out by me and was included under the same title in A. Gurwitsch’s Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 190–209. 1

[As before, we shall be referring to this work by Husserl as Ideen, I.] Cf. E. Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” Logos, I, 1910, pp. 291–292. [Now also in Aufsätze und Vorträge, (1911–1921), ed. Th. Nenon et al., Husserliana, XXV (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), pp. 5–7; “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Q. Lauer (New York: Harper & Row/Torchbooks, 1965), p. 76.]

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in the fashion, say, of the speculative systems of the so-called German idealism. Phenomenology can be realized only as a collective effort, i.e., by means of the cooperation and coordinated attempts of generations of investigators. Renouncing all ambition for personal originality, phenomenology aspires instead to the character and value of a positive science; it conforms itself to the conditions of scientific progress. Hence any result obtained thereby is, as it were, provisional, since it serves to stimulate further investigations. These investigations do not completely abandon the achieved results, but seek to deepen them and to place them in a more encompassing context, inevitably leading to modifications and completions. But this is what takes place in any positive science. On this occasion, we cannot enter into the details of such investigations, and even less can we attempt to advance them. We will limit ourselves to outlining the plan to be carried out through them. §I. The Equivalent of Consciousness Each object, whatever its nature—a mere reiform thing, object of use, object of value, work of art, historical fact, social institution, etc.— becomes accessible to us only by means of certain acts of consciousness which we are experiencing or can experience. In these acts, which form a group in relation to the one object to which they all refer, the object presents itself now from one side, now from another, now under one aspect, now under a different one; now we are conscious of it in one way, now in another. Progressively engaging in those experiences [and] coming back to those already undergone in order to connect them with present experiences, we successively grasp the moments, attributes, and properties which pertain to the object and make up the unity of its nature. This unity corresponds to and depends on the harmonious agreement among experiences, and it is in virtue of it that all those partial experiences join to form the global experience of the object in question. An object would be a mere nothing were it not for the experiences through which it displays its nature, presents itself from various sides and under various aspects, constitutes and constructs itself step by step, and discloses the sense of its being, the specific sense of its existence.

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Moreover, if the synthetical unity which encompasses the partial experiences were to fail, then it would no longer be a true object but only the fading shadow thereof.3 Even when the direct apprehension of an object by means of a suitable experience is denied us, be it for technical reasons or because of the structure of our minds, it is by means of certain experiences relative to other objects and especially through reflections based on those experiences that we are entitled to posit the object and to confer a determinate nature on it. Thus every concealed property and every concealed structure of an object indicate the possibility, at least, of experiences to be undergone and of acts of consciousness to be performed, by means of which the said property or structure would be made available, since there is no access to any object except through the acts relating to it and in which its being is disclosed. An object can come to be under consideration only to the extent that it can be apprehended and insofar as it figures in such acts of apprehension. This conception is not affected by subjectivism. One is justified in distinguishing between the subjective appearance and the being-in-itself of an object, or in substituting—as is done in the natural sciences—what is called the “true reality” of an object for an object as it appears to our senses. Thus the said being-in-itself and the said “objective reality” refer us to the acts in which they are constituted, such being the acts into which the experience of the subjective appearance is integrated as a partial and one-sided experience, because it is an experience undergone from a certain point of view, according to a special orientation, etc.—hence, as an experience subject to completion. Again, as is the case in physics, perceptual experience serves as the point of departure for constructive acts by which the physical object is conceived, a construction which is guided by perceptual experience, so that a physical object qua object of a higher order would be fashioned on the basis of the perceptual object, and its elaboration would be oriented in relation to it.4 The existence of any object whatsoever is thus necessarily linked to the possibility of undergoing quite determinate experiences under certain conditions which, perhaps, cannot be fulfilled. It is in acts of 3 4

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 287 ff. Cf. ibid., §§ 40 and 52.

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consciousness that the object unfolds and discloses itself for what it is to the subject who becomes conscious of it. Such are the acts of consciousness which, by dint of conferring on the object its nature, structure, and sense of being, have a constitutive function in relation to it. We may thus regard the object as the correlate of a group of acts corresponding to it,5 or, reciprocally, we can consider that group of acts as the equivalent of consciousness of the object.6 In order to conceive of the object as the correlate of acts, we need not however reduce it to consciousness. Even though in every particular act the object presents itself under one aspect and from one side, what is grasped in any such act is not an aspect, a side, or any part of the object but, rather, the whole object appearing in a determinate way.7 Since this object is the same one which, by means of another act, offers or will offer itself under a different aspect, it goes beyond and transcends each and every one of these particular acts, in the sense that it is not a real ingredient of any act. But the object cannot be identified either with the totality of particular acts which form a group relating to it; the object—by contrast with the multiplicity of such acts and over and against them—is one, identical, and identifiable.8 This is so because the acts which form such a group can and must be regarded under an aspect other than that of their relationship to their object. Each of these particular acts, insofar as it is a lived fact, occupies its own place in the chronological order of subjective, immanent, or phenomenal time, i.e., in time as it is felt and lived through by the conscious subject.9 The relations of agreement which arise among particular acts and the synthetical unity established among them are also produced in phenomenal time. This harmony, which obtains among a multiplicity of acts and on which the unity and, so to speak, the 5

Cf. ibid., p. 302 (347): “Everywhere ‘object’ is the name for eidetic concatenations of consciousness.” 6 Cf. ibid., p. 319. 7 Cf. ibid., p. 286. 8 Cf. ibid., p. 76 and § 97 and CM, §§ 17–18. 9 Husserl has devoted to the temporality of consciousness his Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), also in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, IX (1928), [now in Husserliana, X, ed. K. Boehm (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966). On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, trans. J. Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991).]


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consistency of the object common to all these acts depend, is fashioned out of temporal phases and extents. Now, the object is entirely indifferent to these temporal structures, as well as to the places which the particular acts relating to it occupy in phenomenal time. And, finally, it is indifferent to the duration of these acts, duration being another phenomenon that belongs to immanent temporality. If the object exists through a certain period of time, its duration is of a physical or cosmological order, with which phenomenal duration has nothing to do. Since the object is alien to the phenomenal temporality which defines the psychological facticity of experiences, it is not therefore a real fact of consciousness or even a group of such facts. Because the object is the correlate of consciousness, it is not really immanent therein. This state of affairs—that the object appears before consciousness without being a real part thereof, that the acts which relate to the object do not include it as a real ingredient, that the object is self-identically the same over and against the many acts which relate to it, and that in all these acts the identity of the object is sensed and experienced, etc.—led Husserl to his theory of the intentionality of consciousness, a truly revolutionary innovation which he carried out in the concept of consciousness, and which here we can only point to. §II. The Object as Transcendental Clue The correlation between an object and a certain group of acts opens up a field of research. With regard to every given object, the problem of its equivalent of consciousness arises, i.e., the question of knowing which acts must be experienced, or be capable of being experienced, in order for the object to exist and to be such as it presents itself. Since the object is being displayed in those acts, the contribution which each act makes is predetermined by the fact that the act involves our being conscious—partially, of course—of the object in question. It is necessary for an object that possesses a given nature to present itself by means of some acts rather than others. Despite the differences obtaining among these acts, they must all converge to produce a global consciousness of the object and to constitute the object for what it is. This is why every change ascertained in the contribution made by an act, if it does not have the effect of breaking up the synthetical unity of the global consciousness

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of the object and likewise, therefore, the unity of the object itself, points to a modification of the object, or at least to a variation of the aspect under which it appears, and, in the latter case, it would refer us to a manner of appearance different from that where that change is absent.10 There is thus nothing arbitrary or fortuitous in such acts, except the passage from the potentiality, the pure possibility of being experienced, to the actuality, to the psychological reality, as well as the fact that the passage in question is made at one point in time rather than another. The object with its individual nature thus includes a law regulating the acts in a binding fashion so as to ensure the existence of the object or, in other words, the possibility of a global consciousness thereof. Hence, by experiencing one such act, we are able to anticipate the contributions of future acts and the aspects under which the object will present itself in them.11 Undoubtedly, the object may be known slightly or may be given in an extremely indeterminate way. This would be reflected by an almost complete indecisiveness and imprecision in our anticipations, which are perhaps so vague and indistinct as to lack any particular contents. But even then anticipations would not be altogether absent; in any case, what would be anticipated is, at least, the style of the experiences to be undergone, the form and type of what the future acts will and must needs contribute.12 For instance, when one looks at a reiform thing from the front, one may not know at all how it will present itself from the back. What is certain, however, is that the thing may be seen from that side, that it is possible to undergo further experiences with regard to that side, and that the contribution of those experiences will complete that of our present perception, so that all such acts will join to form a global experience of the thing.13 These more or less explicit and determinate possible anticipations—no matter how indecisive and vague—cannot be missing, as conscious and lived acts, from the perception of a reiform thing, to the extent that it is in the nature of an object of that kind to appear, in any given perception, only under one aspect and from one side. For it to 10 11 12 13

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 203–205. Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 19. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 89–90. Cf. ibid., pp. 80–81.


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be felt as such, this one-sided manner of appearance refers to further acts that would bring the present consciousness to completion.14 Moreover, these anticipations are not at all thoughts that would accidentally accompany the act actually being lived. On the contrary, they are the means of making explicit what the present act contains in a concealed manner. Although we cannot enter into even a superficial exposition of the general characteristics as well as of the typical forms of these implications,15 let us at least stress the fundamental fact which the existence of such implications—among other phenomena of consciousness— indicates.16 The many acts which relate to one and the same object should not be conceived as merely juxtaposed; they are internally related; they form an order, an organization, even a hierarchy.17 By dint of confirming, completing, and continuing one another, all such acts hang together, whether the acts in question are actually lived or are only capable of being lived; in the latter case, then, it is the possibility itself which would actually be lived. Thus the acts form a system that has a well-determined structure of its own and is governed by a principle of unity. This principle, on the one hand, endows the system with coherence and, on the other, guarantees and conditions the unity of the object which corresponds to the system, such unity being nothing but the objective equivalent of this coherence. Beginning with the object, one is thus regressively led toward its equivalent of consciousness. The tasks that arise in terms of such orientation are to analyze the particular acts that belong to the system in question; to render explicit what they imply; to establish the relations that connect them; to penetrate the nature and structure of the system they form; and to determine the elements of the acts on which the unity and existence of the object depend. To tackle these problems is to make an effort Cf. ibid., §§ 42 and 149. Cf. supra, An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 4, § 3 and infra for an implication of a different sort. [No page number is given as reference.] 16 Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “The Phenomenology of Perception: Perceptual Implications,” in An Invitation to Phenomenology, ed. J. M. Edie (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965) and infra, pp. 399 ff. 17 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 314–315. 14 15

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to disengage the conscious life with which the object is correlative and of which it appears somehow as a completed product; it is to disclose, step by step and layer by layer, the phenomenological constitution of the object for consciousness. In these investigations, any particular act is conceived of less for what it is in itself than it is envisaged “from the ‘teleological’ point of view of . . . [its] function . . . of making possible a ‘synthetical unity.’ ”18 In other words, the acts should be viewed in terms of the places they occupy and the roles they play in the system which they form, and according to their contribution to the constitution of the object. In such a regressive reflection, the object, taken as the point of departure, serves as one’s transcendental clue 19 in an investigation that can also claim to be transcendental, for, beginning with the given and existing object, it bears on the necessary conditions for the nature, unity, and existence of the object. Likewise, and particularly, one must raise transcendental questions about the ontological nature of the object, i.e., about its own specific sense of being. Each object calls for acts of a kind that is correlative with the category to which the object belongs. It is such a category that predetermines the sense of the object’s existence, so that an object belonging to a given category can be grasped only by acts of a certain determinate sort: an object category and an act category correspond to one another reciprocally.20 Just as a color can be given only in visual experience, a tone in auditory perception, and as a reiform thing is rendered accessible only in perceptual acts, and as each particular perception cannot exist without necessarily implying a reference to further perceptions, likewise no object of use, work of art, social institution, etc. can be grasped except through specific acts corresponding to them. Phenomenological research is hence confronted with the task of identifying the different kinds of acts, of penetrating their essential structure, and of bringing out their characteristic and distinctive traits, until such explorations yield the result that the correlate of a certain kind of act and, above all, of a certain kind of act-system cannot be anything but an object endowed with a quite determinate sense of being. 18 19 20

Ibid., § 86, p. 177 (208). Cf. ibid., § 150, p. 313 (359). See also CM, § 21. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 36, 296–297, and 309.


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§III. The General Structures of Evidence Among the acts that make up a system qua equivalent of consciousness of an object, we find some that are endowed with a special privilege. Such acts are those marked with the character of evidence; in them an object is not merely apprehended in some fashion or other, but as “an affair, an affair-complex (or state of affairs), a universality, a value, or other objectivity in the final mode: ‘itself there,’ ‘immediately intuited,’ ‘given originaliter.’ ”21 By experiencing such acts, the subject does not view the thing in a more or less empty, symbolic, and indirect way; rather, he finds himself very near the thing itself and grasps it directly with the awareness that he is being confronted with it immediately. Evidence is neither a secondary fact produced under certain conditions to be specified and accompanying certain thoughts nor, even more so, is it a subjective feeling of belief attaching itself to some acts but absent from others.22 One is dealing here with an intrinsic, distinctive feature of some acts and, correlatively speaking, with an especially privileged mode of object presence before consciousness. Evidence is a fundamental form of all conscious life, a form thereof towards which every act tends that has not yet adopted it. Actually, any act that is not an evidence is open to, and in need of, being confirmed and justified by a “parallel” act, which would provide modo originali whatever has been regarded only in a somehow indirect fashion in a non-evident act. To the extent that an act marked by the character of evidence fulfills a symbolic and indirect “intention,”23 an identifying synthesis between them will take place. Such a synthesis gives legitimacy to the claim of the non-evident act to disclose something about the object in question. In the identifying synthesis the object reveals itself as it was foreseen, presumed, predicted, or suspected to be; it presents itself as it was represented.24 The verification which non-evident acts require and which depends on the possibility of such identifying syntheses is therefore the phenomenon E. Husserl, CM, § 24, pp. 92–93 (57). Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, § 59. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 21 and p. 300. 23 The term “intention” must not be understood here in the usual sense of the French or English word. Cf. CM, p. 80 (9). 24 Husserl has devoted extensive and penetrating studies to the fulfillment of an empty intention by evidence. Cf. LU, II. 2, Section I. 21 22

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of evidence. Any philosophical analysis of truth, as well as of all notions grouped under the heading “reason,”25 necessarily leads to this phenomenon. The only source from which all such notions may be drawn is the set of privileged acts by virtue of which the object in question presents itself and “in person.”26 Insofar as all conscious life necessarily directs itself toward reason (be it theoretical, practical, or aesthetic, [i.e.,] whether one is dealing with the truth of assertions, the validity of values, or claims of any kind whatsoever), evidence has a universal and teleological function in conscious life. Reciprocally, it is to the role played by evidence in conscious life that the latter owes its tendency toward reason.27 On the other hand, that non-evident acts are in need of verification is a conscious fact: these acts are lived as endowed with such a need and insofar as they have this need. By virtue of its nature, then, every non-evident act refers us to the evidence that corresponds to it and in some way implies it, without requiring, therefore, that the evident parallel act be contained, as a real element, by the non-evident act. This implication should not be conceived after the fashion in which a particular perception of a reiform thing encompasses further perceptions.28 Non-evident acts, such as those of memory, expectation, or representation, present themselves endowed with the essential and intrinsic characteristic of being modifications of the parallel evident act,29 for they make available, in an “improper” fashion, the same object of which the corresponding evidence is the originary manner of consciousness— in our example, it is perception which has this function with regard to reiform things. They can thus be considered as deriving from such evidence through the mediation of “ideal operations,” and they appear as “ideal operational modifications” of an experience which, for this reason 25

Cf. ibid., Inv. 6, i, Chapter 5 (trans., II, pp. 760 ff.) and Ideen, I, Section IV, Chapter 2. 26 Cf. ibid., p. 36 (36) and FTL, p. 142 (158–159). 27 Cf. ibid., p. 143; see also CM, pp. 93–94 (57–58): evidence “is a possibility—and, more particularly, one that can be the aim of a striving and actualizing intention—in the case of anything meant already or meanable.” 28 Cf. supra. [No page number is given as reference.] 29 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 99.


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as well, should be characterized as originary.30 The non-evident acts imply the parallel evident act in the well-determined fashion in which, generally speaking, a modification implies the originary and unmodified state of that which is modified therein.31 In conformity with this, the non-evident acts do not possess originary legitimacy, for they derive their legitimacy from the parallel acts called on to confirmed them.32 Thus, the evident acts form a separate group within the system of acts that is the equivalent of consciousness in reference to an object of any sort, a group which constitutes somehow the kernel of the whole system. In transcendental phenomenology, which begins with the object and turns toward the corresponding act-system in order to disclose the constitution of the object for consciousness, the evident acts still appear under an aspect different from that which has just been mentioned; they are considered, above all, originary forms of consciousness and authentic experiences. One should not understand the term “experience” in its traditional sense, according to which it is taken as a synonym of perceptual and sensory experience. In the broadened sense given by Husserl to the term, what is essential to experience is the authenticity and the originary character of the privileged form of consciousness33 by virtue of which, through separate acts, the object itself appears “in person” and as existent. Far from being arbitrary and from betraying a merely terminological innovation, this broadening of the meaning of “experience” becomes imperative 30

Ibid., p. 149 (179). Besides this kind of implication, let me point to the relationship obtaining between simple belief and presumption, suspicion, questionability, doubt, etc. These acts are intrinsically characterized as variations of simple belief. Cf. ibid., §§ 103–104. 32 Apart from the special form of ascertainment which we have taken into consideration in the text (i.e., the verification of a mere intention by means of a parallel evidence), Husserl has analyzed two other possible forms of the legitimating process. Cf. ibid., § 141. 33 The originary character of experience should obviously not be taken in a chronological or biographical sense, as if one had in mind the moment in the life of a subject in which he becomes conscious of an object for the first time. It is a question instead of an intrinsic and essential structure of privileged acts which, in principle, can be reiterated at will. 31

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because of the need to give expression, by means of a special technical term, to the most general and fundamental function of all which the acts in question have in conscious life. Accordingly, the traditional sense of experience (i.e., qua sensory experience) is to be regarded as a special case of experience-in-general, namely, as the originary form of the consciousness of reiform things.34 When one lives an authentic experiential act, the object in question is not given only as the objective correlate of thought, as cogitatum; rather, it is apprehended in its true being, as veritably existing. Thus experience has the value of an originary formation and primordial constitution for the consciousness of the object, and the veritable existence of the object—as opposed to a merely presumptive, suspected, or proposed existence—depends on that special structure which distinguishes the privileged acts.35 But evidence, since it has the function of originarily constituting the object, can serve as the foundation of the parallel non-evident acts.36 As the most fundamental fact of conscious life, evidence thus presents itself in a twofold way, either as an instance of verification or as authentic experience (i.e., as the originary consciousness of objects). Regarded from the second standpoint, the phenomenon of evidence is basic to the notion of existence, and any examination of this notion leads to such a phenomenon. There is, therefore, an intimate connection between the notion of truth (and, more generally, of reason) and that of existence, so that veritable existence and the reality that is a particular case thereof are Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 19 and CM, pp. 92–93. Even though one must be careful not to assimilate experience-in-general to perceptual experience, it is quite useful to begin with perception and consider it as a paradigm for experience in the broadened sense. 35 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 296: “Prinzipiell entspricht . . . jedem ‘wahrhaft seienden’ Gegenstand die Idee eines möglichen Bewusstseins, in welchem der Gegenstand selbst originär und dabei volkommen adäquat erfassbar ist. Umgekehrt, wenn diese Möglichkeit gewährt leistet ist, ist eo ipso der Gegenstand wahrhaft seiend.” Trans., p. 341: “Of essential necessity . . ., to every ‘truly existing’ object there corresponds the idea of a possible consciousness in which the object itself is seized upon originarily and therefore in a perfectly adequate way. Conversely, if this possibility is guaranteed, then eo ipso the object truly exists.” 36 Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, p. 142. 34


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the correlates of reason.37 This correlation constitutes one of the great themes of Husserlian phenomenology.38 According to the ontological diversity of objects or the different regions of being to which they belong, evidence becomes differentiated and divided into several diverse kinds that have in common only their general function, i.e., the self-presentation of the object. A certain special structure of evidence thus pertains to every particular region of being. It is that structure which is somehow reflected in the specific ontological sense of the objects coming under the region of being in question.39 The kind of evidence and the ontological category of objects correspond to each other, refer to and condition one another. Given the privileged status of the evident acts with regard to the parallel non-evident acts, it is from the correspondence between the essential structure of a kind of evidence and the specific ontological sense of a region of being that the general correlation between the kind of acts and the category of objects is obtained.40 The non-evident acts can be perfected; moreover, this is likewise true of acts already invested in some way with the privileged character of evidence.41 The perfecting process can be conceived of as an approximation to an ideal which varies according to the region of being. In such a process it is also necessary to abide by the essential structure of the kind of evidence that corresponds to the objects in question. Concerning reiform things, for example, it would be absurd, for this reason, to try to substitute some rational cognition for perceptual experience, on the grounds that apodicticity (i.e., the impossibility of conceiving of the nonexistence of the object) and other perfections are lacking in such a form of experience. 37

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 296 and CM, p. 95 (60): “It is clear that truth or the true actuality of objects is to be obtained only from evidence, and that it is evidence alone by virtue of which an ‘actually’ existing, true, rightly accepted object of whatever form or kind has sense for us—and with all the determinations that for us belong to it under the title of its true nature.” 38 It is treated in Husserl’s Ideen, I, Part IV; see also his CM, iii. 39 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 288 and 296–297 and FTL, pp. 143–145. 40 Cf. supra, pp. 312–314. 41 Cf. Ideen, I, §§ 67–68 and CM, pp. 55–56.

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It is due to those privileged acts called “evidences” that we confer on the object the ontological sense which is its own and with which it appears in our conscious life, and that we grasp the object as veritably existing in the manner of being that is particular to the ontological region to which it belongs.42 No object is or can be anything but what it reveals itself to be in and by means of those acts which constitute originary and authentic forms of consciousness for such an object; so that the object can be considered the objective correlate, in particular, of that separate group of acts that the evident acts form within an act system. Furthermore, if one seeks to have a philosophical understanding of an object, and especially of its sense of being, then one is led to a structural analysis of those experiences in which the object presents itself, for it is from nowhere else that the object may derive its nature, its ontological sense, and everything else which it is for us. And it is because the nature of consciousness allows for such a diversity of kinds of evidence that the different regions of being which we in fact encounter exist for us. §IV. Objects and Consciousness The relationships between objective being and consciousness should not be permitted to conceal the gulf, even the abyss thrown between the two realms. Every object—regardless of the ontological region to which it belongs—becomes accessible to us through phenomena in which it appears as the objective correlate of a system of acts; the object, qua selfidentical unity, stands over and against the multiplicity of all those acts which relate to it, and it is not to be identified either with any of them or with the totality thereof. In every such act, the object presents itself under aspects and in ways which change or could at least change, but it nevertheless appears as being, always, identically the same. As regards consciousness, on the contrary,43 a distinction between phenomena and what is offered in or through phenomena makes no sense whatsoever. The being of an act of consciousness is identical with its Cf. FTL, § 61. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 42 and 44–45 for his contrast between consciousness and objective being.

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being lived, that is, with its appearing. In reference to the same object, it is always possible to live a multiplicity of acts that will complete one another, so that one of those acts would contribute an element of the object which had been missed by a prior act. But this does not apply to the acts of consciousness themselves. When, in order to determine whether or not some property which has not been seen to belong in an act is contained therein, one relives the act in question; it is in fact a new act that one lives, an act related to the same object as the prior act. This act may even resemble the previous one to a degree as high as one wishes, but which is not in the least and in principle identical with it. One is not, therefore, dealing with the reiteration of the former act, something which would be absolutely impossible. Hence, one must refrain from inferring something about an act on the basis of another, from concluding, say, that a quality, because its presence is verified in a later act, had been equally present in the prior one, and that it had not been made available therein through direct and immediate observation, but had nonetheless been present in it as a concealed fact.44 An act of consciousness is such and only such as it presents itself; there are no concealed elements in it, and there is nothing to look for behind it. When the subject reflectively turns toward his conscious life, when he engages in so-called inner perception, he perceives each of the acts he lives as something absolute which does not take up variable forms and aspects, and concerning which the opposition between unity and multiplicity—which is so essential to the apprehension of objects—does not exist at all. Since objects are constituted in conscious life, they depend on it, in the sense that they are in need of those acts which confer their nature, specific being, and veritable existence on them, and of which they are to be regarded as the objective correlates.45 We have already underscored46 that the existence of every object is connected to actual—or at least potential—acts characterized in themselves as experiences of objects, the very consistency of which results from the agreement established among 44

Cf. our article “Quelques aspects et quelques développements de la psychologie de la forme,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, 1936, pp. 437–438. [“Some Aspects and Developments of Gestalt Psychology,” in SPP, pp. 1 ff.] 45 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 47. 46 Cf. supra, p. 337.

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such acts, and that, most generally, the kind of acts and the category of objects reciprocally correspond to one another. Hence, if an abnormal consciousness is unable to perform acts of a certain kind, such defectiveness would be equivalent to the nonexistence—for that consciousness— of the corresponding objects. Finally, consider the objects which would correspond to acts that no possible consciousness could perform. This would mean that the performance of such acts is rendered impossible by the essential nature of consciousness itself. Such objects would be chimeras which not only would be incapable of existing, but of which one could not even conceive the idea. On the other hand, if everything necessary for the appearance of a coherent universe and the theoretical account thereof were to be produced on the side of consciousness, then the idea of the eventual nonexistence of such a universe would be marked by absurdity.47 Consciousness, on the other hand, depends on no region of objective being; it does not, therefore, presuppose, in the case in point, the existence of the universe of reiform things. One can imagine a disintegration of the universe which would allow reiform things to subsist as identical unities standing opposite the many acts relating to them and which would leave untouched the stability they have on the basis of the coherence and agreement among such acts, but which, however, would exclude the possibility of subjecting such things to determinations and explanations after the fashion of those found in the physical sciences.48 One could imagine a still more radical disintegration.49 As experiences unfold, it is possible to conceive of such a superabundance of incompatibilities and contradictions that they would not be reconciled at all, that no self-identical and objective unities would come to be constituted: there would not be anything, except outlines of things which however would not last but dissolve, so that the world would be annihilated. Such an annihilation of the universe of enduring things would not, however, entail the end of consciousness; it would involve a modification therein, be it that the motives suggesting the construction of the physical universe by taking the sense-perceptual world as one’s point of departure were to 47 48 49

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 92. Ibid., p. 88. Ibid., § 49.


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fade, or that the agreement guaranteeing the coherence and stability of sense-perceptible things were not to develop among acts any longer. Yet consciousness would continue to exist; it would have become other than it is in fact, but its existence would not be affected at all either by the disintegration or by the annihilation of the world, since, in truth, the disintegrated or annihilated world in the sense indicated would show itself in turn to be the objective (or, if one prefers, the quasi-objective) correlate of the modified consciousness. Consequently, while the objective world qua constituted is in need of a consciousness, and of a non-fictive consciousness at that, whether actual or actualizable, because the being of the world is only the being it possesses for a consciousness with regard to which objects are constituted, consciousness itself is absolute in the sense that “nulla re indiget ad existendum.”50 The existence of any object depends on consciousness; it depends, above all, on the inherent characteristics of those acts which appear as experiences—in the broadened sense of the term, as defined above51 —of the objects in question. Objective being thus presents itself as somehow secondary, for it is relative to consciousness and therefore depends on something other than itself. Such a dependence is particularly salient in the case of reiform things, the veritable existence of which is connected with the agreement and harmony obtaining among the acts which make up the perceptual life and refer to the real world. Such a manner of existence can thus never be completely established, since it is always possible that the experiences one has had of a thing be belied and contradicted by further experiences, so that the thing, the existence of which one had good reason to accept on the basis of the prior experiences, would dissolve or, at least, show itself to be otherwise than one had been able to believe it to be. Moreover, objective being remains open to possible doubt, even if it were in the form of experiencing the need of going back to an already 50

Cf. René Descartes, Principia philosophiae, i.li, in Oeuvres de Descartes, VIII-1, p. 24[19], 21–23: “Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quàm rem quae ita existit, ut nullâ aliâ re indigeat ad existendum.” Principles of Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, p. 239: “By substance, we can understand nothing else than a thing which so exists that it needs no other thing in order to exist.” 51 Cf. supra, pp. 317–318.

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acquired evidence to reestablish it by means of a new act, also characterized as evident. The being of consciousness, on the contrary, is set apart by the indubitability which Descartes had already noted in the cogitationes.52 Whatever the value of an act’s contribution when considered from the standpoint of reason, one thing cannot be doubted at all, namely, the fact that it has been lived, if indeed it has. Whenever we reflectively turn to an act actually lived, we apprehend an absolute being devoid of the need and the possibility of being confirmed or invalidated at all, an absolute being which cannot not exist. Here one encounters a necessity which, however, does not follow from an a priori law, as is the case, for example, with the application of a geometric theorem to a fact of Nature. What is necessary, in that case, is the existence of certain determinations in the fact in question, or else that of certain relations it bears to other facts, while the existence of the fact itself remains contingent. In the case of consciousness, on the other hand, the bearer of the character of necessity is precisely the existence itself of the lived acts. Nonetheless, J. Héring53 believes that he should reject the Husserlian thesis concerning the necessary existence of consciousness, because such necessity does not follow from an a priori law founded “on the idea of the ‘cogito’ (as in the case of the ideal existence of an essence or in that of the actual existence of God, among the ontologists),” but is obtained from the “particularly favorable situation in which the observer is placed.” It is indeed true that no a priori law, in the sense to which Héring alludes, plays a role in the necessary existence of consciousness, which is a necessity of fact.54 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 46 and FTL, p. 222. ´ Cf. J. Héring, Phénoménologie et philosophie religieuse (Paris: Etudes d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, Faculté de Théologie Protestante de l’Université Strasbourg, No. 15, 1926), p. 85. 54 [In a marginal note to p. 14 of the proofs of this essay, a note which is otherwise very difficult to read, the author provides us with the following reference:] Cf. G. W. Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Bk. iv, Chapter vii, § 7 [in Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: 1882; repr.: Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1978), V, pp. 391–392. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, trans. A. G. Langley (Chicago: Open Court, 1916), p. 469. The presence of an asterisk here, connecting the note to the reference given at the bottom of the page, as well as the content of Leibniz’s passage, appears to justify giving the citation at this point, rather than on p. 347, 52 53


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Consequently, this necessity does not mean that such and such acts of consciousness must needs exist. But, as soon as an act of consciousness is lived in fact, it takes on an absolute character, in the sense just explained. And it is this special absolute character and the specific and altogether unique nature of the necessity of fact in question which are missing in Héring’s criticism,55 an absolute character which, besides, serves to express the relation of the constituting to the constituted that obtains between consciousness and its objects. Moreover, it is the realm of consciousness which alone allows and admits such a necessary manner of existence. Since objects are constituted, they depend on the consciousness which constitutes them. Inasmuch as objects are objective unities and “unities of sense” (Sinneseinheiten), they presuppose the consciousness which endows them with unity and sense. Consciousness, on the contrary, which has a constituting function, and is a “sphere of being of absolute origins”56 and the “source of all reason and unreason, all legitimacy and illegitimacy, all reality and fiction, all value and disvalue, all deed and misdeed, ”57 presupposes, in turn, nothing which would exist apart from it and owes its sense of being to nothing other than itself. The acts of consciousness are relative only to themselves58 : we have again found a sense according to which an absolute character must be attributed to them. n. 1 of the French edition of the essay (as it appears among the appendices in the volume entitled Esquisse de la phénoménologie constitutive), which, in the translation, would have corresponded to the text in infra, 321–322 at the end of the first sentence of the following paragraph beginning with “Since objects are constituted.”] 55 Cf. E. Levinas’s remarks with regard to this objection in his La théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris: J. Vrin, 1930 [1963]), pp. 60–61. This author, however, views Husserl’s phenomenology too much in the light of ideas formulated by M. Heidegger. 56 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 55, pp. 106 and 107 (128 and 129, respectively). 57 Ibid., p. 176 (208). 58 Cf. E. Husserl, “Nachwort zu meinen ‘Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, ’ ” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologischen Forschung, XI (1930), p. 562. [“Author’s Preface to the English Edition,” pp. 12 ff. in E. Husserl, Ideas. General Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967); see A. Gurwitsch, “Critical Study of Husserl’s Nachwort,” in SPP, pp. 119 ff.]

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§V. The Phenomenological Reduction One must, however, bear in mind that consciousness qua transcendental is not consciousness such as it is known only to the na¨ıve reflection of everyday life and to traditional scientific psychology, which conceive of it as connected with a physical and bodily organism (be it animal or human), and as belonging to an ego that has its own life, evolution, and personal tendencies and lives in the midst of one or another social group during a certain historical phase of the development of those communities. In constitutive phenomenology, consciousness is not regarded as a component of the real world, or as being affected either by the effects produced by the real world or the influences deriving therefrom. In a word, consciousness is not taken to be a part of the real world and as one reality among others.59 Consciousness cannot lay a claim to having an absolute character, except to the extent that it is conceived of exclusively as a medium and, so to speak, as the stage in which the constitution of all sorts of objects—including human psychical realities, such as the soul, the mind, the ego, the personality, social being, historical being, etc.—takes place. One arrives at this way of conceiving consciousness by means of the phenomenological reduction. This radical modification of attitude consists in suspending and parenthesizing the existential character of the entire world, as well as that of the objects belonging to no matter which ideal region. Such existential character, of course, is neither denied (as in agnosticism) nor subjected to doubt (as in skepticism); it is merely inhibited, put out of play. The objects undergo, therefore, no modification; their being is not interpreted in any way, not even, for example, after the model of one or another traditional philosophical conception. The only result produced is that the objects and the world become phenomena. The existential characters with which the objects present themselves and continue to present themselves in the phenomenological reduction are put out of action, in the sense that, without their being done away with or altered, they still appear in the phenomenological investigations, although they are not employed as premises for the philosophical meditation being undertaken, but rather as phenomena and themes 59

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 53–54; CM, § 11; and FTL, pp. 222–224.


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to which particular analyses are devoted, which, moreover, count among the most important. Objects of all kinds remain, therefore, such as they are. Nonetheless, within the phenomenological order, no employment of their existence is to be made, so that one would confine oneself strictly to what is noticed in pure, reduced consciousness (for example, the fact that the real world appears to consciousness), and one would utterly refrain from referring—on any basis whatever—to any reality other than consciousness itself. Each reality may be considered only as a phenomenon appearing before consciousness, but should not at all serve as the point of departure or as the support for phenomenological investigations, if it is taken as a veritable reality and not solely as a phenomenon. Among those realities, one must include those called human.60 It seems advisable to insist that consciousness, as a consequence of the performance of the phenomenological reduction, cannot—from a philosophical standpoint—be taken for human consciousness, a conception that would require our calling upon the biological nature of human beings, their social and historical being, and all the facts that constitute their humanity. The phenomenological reduction thus excludes any form of philosophical anthropology or, if one prefers, it bars taking anthropology as the foundation of philosophy. Precisely this result of the phenomenological reduction is one of its justifications. In effect, to conceive of consciousness as human one must place a human being, considered as a real entity, within the context of all the realities which surround him, on which he depends, and on which he acts. But, in doing that, one would presuppose as constituted precisely that which is being constituted. Only the phenomenological reduction allows us to avoid, or come out of, the vicious circle consisting in raising transcendental questions about the constitution of the world on the basis of a part of the same world. 60

We must confine ourselves to these few points concerning the phenomenological reduction, which Husserl has discussed in his Ideen, I, Part II, Chapters 1 and 4, “Nachwort,” and CM, §§ 8, 15, 40, and 41. See also Eugen Fink’s remarks in his “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, IX (1930), § 4; [also to be found in Studien zur Phänomenologie (1930–1939) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 10 ff.] Finally, let me refer to my “Critical Study of Husserl’s Nachwort” [and other essays in SPP, as well as An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 2, § VI, above].

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Considered under the aspect entailed and implied by the phenomenological reduction, consciousness shows itself to be a self-enclosed domain of being which nothing can penetrate and from which nothing can escape, a domain which is first in itself and prior to any other region of being.61 If one compares Husserl’s thesis62 with Descartes’ conception,63 one realizes that transcendental phenomenology may in fact be characterized as “a neo-Cartesianism, even though it is obliged . . . to reject nearly all the well-known doctrinal content of the Cartesian philosophy.”64 Indeed, certain fundamental ideas of Descartes, which until the advent of constitutive phenomenology had not displayed their full force, were [then] taken up again in a radical fashion.65 §VI. Conclusion Constitutive phenomenology is defined as the methodic and systematic exploration of consciousness, considered from the point of view of its objectivating function. Consciousness is not regarded as a totality of real psychical facts and events, but, rather, by taking into account the fact that objects exist for it and before it. It is due to acts of consciousness, and in them, that objects are constituted such as they appear to conscious life. The general theory of intentionality is devoted to this fact, capital and fundamental among those pertaining to consciousness. Phenomenology divides into several branches according to the different regions of objects. Every ontological category calls for a special phe61

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 93. Cf. E. Husserl, CM, p. 58 (18): “But what if the world were, in the end, not at all the absolutely first basis for judgments and a being that is intrinsically prior to the world were the already presupposed basis for the existence of the world?” 63 Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, ii, in Oeuvres de Descartes, VII (1964), p. 33 (26), ll. 32–35, and Méditations, in op. cit., IX-1, p. 26 (31): “toutes les raisons qui servent a` connoistre & concevoir la nature de la cire, ou de quelque autre corps, prouvent beaucoup plus facilement & plus evidemment la nature de mon esprit.” The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane et al., I, p. 157: “all the reasons which contribute to the knowledge of wax, or any other body whatever, are yet better proofs of the nature of my mind.” 64 E. Husserl, CM, p. 43 (1). 65 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 87. 62


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nomenological discipline, the purpose of which is to examine the constitution and formation for consciousness of objects encompassed by such a category. It is only by going back to the origin, for consciousness, of the different kinds of objects that one can expect to disengage their ontological structures and to arrive at a final and definitive philosophical understanding of the essential nature of every kind of object. On that basis, one is able to see in what sense, and with what right, phenomenology can and should aspire to universality. The different regions of being are not merely juxtaposed with one another. There are kinds of objects which are incapable, in virtue of their essential structure, of being constituted, unless, beforehand, other objects—of a sort simpler than they in the given respect—are already constituted, so that objects which are, so to speak, of a higher order would derive from more primitive ones by means of certain mental operations. These relationships of dependence may, according to the case in question, take up many forms, which we have not been able to tackle here. Such relationships give rise to the genetic and developmental phenomenology which is to complete and fulfill the investigations carried out by static phenomenology. All such phenomenological investigations should be undertaken and carried out in the phenomenologically reduced attitude, which alone guarantees their philosophical value and allows them to elude the anthropological paralogisms.

ESSAY II

THEME AND ATTITUDE

In our prior meeting, we endeavored to sketch out the major guidelines according to phenomenological theory, for the constitution of objects (mainly of the type “reiform thing”). The said constitution placed us before a most particular fact, namely, potentiality. The study of this fact could make our investigations advance to a considerable extent, especially in those areas in which there is room for progress. The manner in which the fact in question had presented itself to us at the time when the aforementioned problem was considered can be summarized as follows: when one perceives some thing or other, the theme of one’s concerns offers itself from a certain side and under a definite aspect, and it cannot offer itself otherwise because it is a reiform thing. Now, the fact is that we perceive not only such and such a side of the thing but, as well, that this thing presents itself from this side; indeed, it is the thing in itself and as a whole, and not just one side or just one aspect thereof, which constitutes the theme of our perceptual life. This fact signifies that the perception of the thing one currently experiences implicates a reference to other perceptions, such as the not real but possible ones by which the thing will offer itself as the same under such and such different aspects and from such and such different sides. Since each particular perception implicates a reference of that sort to other potential acts by which one would become conscious of the thing, acts which, as potential, will extend and complete what the said perception contributes, that which presents itself, on the basis of the currently This piece appears as Appendix II to the French edition of the volume containing the original of An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology (pp. 313–330). As Prof. L. Embree points out in his prefatory note to it, this is the second lecture of the second series entitled “Psychologie intentionnaliste” (Intentional Psychology) which A. Gurwitsch delivered at the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences of the University of Paris during the winter of 1934–1935. Prof. Embree has supplied the title and some corrections to the text.


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experienced perception, is an entire context of acts. This context belongs to the perception in question, on account of the fact that it serves to extend the perceptions it implicates as potential ones, just as much as it is completed by them. Therefore, in experiencing one perception alone, an entire context consisting of potential perceptions, as well as of acts of a different nature, becomes accessible. Hence, correlatively speaking, when one becomes conscious of a thing that offers itself from such and such a side and under such and such an aspect as being likewise capable of appearing under other aspects, the identity of the thing thus grasped in relation to the multiplicity of noemata corresponding to the acts playing a role in the given context is due, on the one hand, to the internal agreement and harmony established among those noemata which complete and extend one another, and, on the other, to the fact that, no matter which perception one takes into consideration among those forming part of that context, it is always the same context that is being indicated by that perception, which therefore enjoys no privilege with respect to other perceptions. This is the fact to which the identity of the thing perceived is due as an immediately experienced character, one that is immanent in the perception itself and does not derive from reflections or conclusions of any kind. If one were to actualize the potentialities implicated by one such particular perception (as one does when, for example, one walks around a building and makes the experiences one has of that building follow one upon another), one would not, by experiencing this multiplicity of acts, be diverted at all from one’s theme. On the contrary, the theme would remain the same as it was in the initial observation and, all the while, it would keep being so. In effect, it is the building in question which, by presenting itself from different sides and under varying aspects, always constitutes the theme of the perceptions that succeed one another, as well as the theme of the global and synthetic experience encompassing all the partial perceptions. The unity of that experience derives from the relations of mutual continuation and of agreement and harmony that exist among those partial acts which incorporate each other. Here we are faced, therefore, with the phenomenon of potentiality taken in a most specific sense, which is best defined by the contribution made by the potentialities implicated by the actuality that is, in each case, comprised by the makeup of the act involved in those potentialities.

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Far from being alien or indifferent to the theme, these potentialities are to cooperate with the actuality implicating them, so that the theme may present itself such as it is grasped by, and plays a role for, consciousness. Such is not the theme of the act concerned, except to the extent that the latter points to the potentialities corresponding to it, rather than to others. Now, this fact, like any other pertaining to consciousness, may be given expression in terms both noetic and noematic. The potentiality involved (one which therefore coincides with the actuality so as to constitute the theme of which it is a question in each case), a potentiality one may call pure, is contrasted with a potentiality of a quite different nature, namely, the thematic potentiality that one must conceive of as soon as one comes to the phenomenon of copresence. When we reflect, as we are walking down the street, on some scientific theorem or other, it is that theorem which constitutes the theme of our concern (which is, in this case, an activity of thought). Nevertheless, that theorem is not the only thing present to us; while we are concerned with that theorem, some problems and states of affairs may offer themselves to us which have to do with those to which our theme (i.e., the theorem) is related. The premises from which that theorem follows, or the consequences one can deduce from them, may come to mind. Perhaps we would think of a conception opposed to ours in which the theorem in question is not admitted, but which would explain the given state of affairs otherwise, and we may think1 of arguments that, on the basis of that conception, would be emphasized against ours and of those by means of which we would defend the theorem, etc. All of that may present itself to us without the said theorem ceasing to be, even for the briefest moment, the theme of our thought. All of that may, therefore, be copresent with our theme, but it would not be so (one must insist upon this with the greatest energy possible), except on condition that it be offered in fact to consciousness. This means that, among the facts cited, or among facts of a similar nature, only those should be considered copresent which, in a given case, actually play a role for consciousness, and do so in the particular way defined by copresence. It is justified to reckon, as part of the totality of copresent facts, only those that a phenomenological 1

[This phrase has been added by Prof. José Huertas-Jourda, editor of the volume containing the French original of An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology.]

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description, strictly abiding by the concrete state of affairs, would take note of therein. Moreover, one would have to set aside anything which, without in fact being offered as copresent in a concrete case, could, under certain circumstances, do so, and which, if it did, would contribute, on account of its appearing, a more or less noticeable change in the totality of facts which, prior to the appearing in question, were copresent. It is a question only of that which is actually copresent in a concrete case, and not at all of that which could be so. This is a precaution some authors have believed themselves capable of dispensing with, but which one must observe and not permit oneself to be diverted from, on pain not only of failing to abide by the phenomenological spirit in general (and, in particular, of failing to conceive the notion of copresence one must form in the phenomenological domain), but [on pain],2 above all, of blocking the way to effect any progress that one could still make concerning the said matter, if, availing oneself of Husserl’s indications and suggestions, one attempted further to delve into the phenomena. Hence, a methodological principle follows by which it is absolutely necessary to permit oneself to be guided, namely: to examine that which is copresent with any act as it occurs, and strictly to refrain from raising the question as to whether some fact or other, which one has yet to notice, would also be copresent, as if that fact, having been copresent, had nonetheless gone unnoticed. And this is so because, by raising that question, whatever the reply one provides for it may be (a reply which, however, will be affirmative in most cases), one does not make appear, as one is quite often led to believe, what was copresent but was so, until that moment, as an unnoticed datum. Rather, the truth of the matter is that a new fact would arise which, until that moment, did not exist in any form, not even in that of an unnoticed datum, or that when, on account of just posing the said question, one would produce a more or less pronounced modification—but one which, in any case, would be qualitative in character—in the totality of data previously present together, a situation that would bring about a change in the phenomenon one wishes to study. By the mere fact of posing that question, one would substitute a different phenomenon for the original one. The facts that we have called upon as examples of copresent data determine the attitude in terms of which one becomes concerned with 2

[This phrase has been added by Prof. J. Huertas-Jourda (in ibid )].

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the theme in question. The latter depends, for example, on data of this nature: that we may think of the said theorem in view of such and such premises from which it follows; that we may do so by taking into consideration the consequences it entails; that we may become concerned with it in a polemical attitude, etc. A phenomenological inquiry into what the notion of attitude points to requires that we examine and analyze the phenomenon of copresence in general and, above all, the special form thereof that was just indicated. Before bringing out some of the problems related to the notion of attitude, we must present a form of copresence that is different from the one which alone has been taken into consideration by us up to this point. In reflecting on the theorem that is our theme as we are walking down the street, the indicated facts determining our attitude are not the only ones that present themselves to us in connection with the theme. While we are engrossed in it, we do not lose sight of the purpose of our walk; we also perceive the street, the houses alongside it, and the human beings passing by next to us; we hear, as well, the noise made by the cars, etc. Besides, the memory may come to mind of having already reflected on this theorem we are engrossed in, of having done so according to such and such attitude. We are busy with our theme according to a well-defined attitude, and yet that is no obstacle to our having the intimation of some other attitude as possible, without, of course, our adopting it by abandoning the one assumed until that moment. Finally, as we are busy with that theme, we immediately have the feeling of the passage of time; it is the same theme that engrosses us throughout, the same as the one in which we have just been engrossed as coinciding with the noise we have heard, a noise still being retained in the immediate memory as having just been made, and the same as the one we are going to be busy with when we turn the corner. All these or similar data offer themselves to us while we are engrossed in our theme, without any of them being grasped in the way our theme is, a theme that is not abandoned by us as we experience—in a particular and most special way—the facts copresent therewith. One must stress once more that one should exclusively take for copresent that which, in a concrete case, offers itself in that fashion, and not that which only could do so. All of these facts, as well as those we pointed out before, can be included under the heading of potentialities of consciousness, by contrast with the theme with which they are copresent, and which one would then

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describe as an actuality. Now, the notions of actuality and potentiality are employed here with a sense different from that in which those terms— above all that of potentiality—played a role in the theory concerned with the constitution of the objective thing in respect to the multiplicity of noemata, each one of which implicates—at the time of its being actual— a reference to other noemata that are potential. This difference amounts to two facts. The potential perceptions to which a current perception refers (insofar as they are acts by which one would become conscious of the same thing as that which is being offered by the said perception) are not, strictly speaking, copresent with the perception implicating them. At most, that would be true3 of the respective presumptions qua anticipations of future perceptions, presumptions in which these perceptions would announce themselves as possible. In consequence, the actualization of pure potentialities entails, always and on principle, a change in their mode of presentation. That which, while in potential form, is presented only as presumptive offers itself, when actualized, in the form of an originary presentation. The relation existing between a pure potentiality and the corresponding actuality comes down, therefore, to that linking the non-originary modes of presentation to the originary one; it is a question, then, of the form of presence that belongs, in a given variation, to the content of which that form is a variation. That which the constituting intentionality, as opposed to the internoematic intentionality, contributes as new amounts not so much to the nature of the pure potentiality taken in itself, as it does to the fact that a perception cannot be unless it contains and encompasses anticipations of that which would continue and complement it. In a thematic potentiality, on the contrary, there is no such difference as to the mode of presentation of the theme and of the copresent facts; one deals therein with copresence in the full sense of the word. For example, upon perceiving a building as our theme, we likewise perceive the street on which it is located, the neighboring houses, the human beings passing by next to us, etc., all of which data, though they do not belong to our theme, would nevertheless offer themselves to us in the same originary fashion as the latter. The actualization of the potentialities does not therefore entail a change in the mode of presentation. If, as 3

[The French equivalent of “true” was added on the margin of the typescript by Prof. L. Embree, as indicated by Prof. J. Huertas-Jourda (in ibid ).]

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it happens sometimes, the mode of presentation varies at the same time as the mode of actuality, one is then faced with two variations that are independent of each other, in the nature of each of which lies the power of being effected by itself. On the one hand, a pure potentiality, coming as it does under intentionality, may be given a formulation in both noetic and noematic terms, due to that parallelism by virtue of which to every character belonging to one of the two strata consciousness consists of there corresponds a correlative character as its opposite; but, on the other, the relation existing between the thematic character and that of copresence (which the same noema or, more exactly, the same noematic sense is susceptible of alternatively assuming) is of the same type as that of which another particularization would be the relation between the nonoriginary modes of presentation and the originary one. The character of copresence implicates, therefore, a reference to that of thematic actuality, on account of its being presented as a variation of the latter, just as it happens with the modes of presentation that are derived in relation to the originary mode, or with the characters of existence that are modalized in relation to simple existence and, respectively, to simple certainty. In all these cases, it is a question of a certain originary or fundamental mode being varied or modified in a definite direction. This similarity (and even typical equality) obviously does not lead at all to any confusion of the thematic characters with the modes of presentation, or with the characters of existence, no more than those two kinds of characters are confused with each other. And this is so despite the fact that it is a relation of the same type that respectively links them to the privileged character which, in the variations, is implicated in the particular fashion which constitutes them as variations of something. It follows that attention is, above all and exclusively, a fact coming under intentionality qua thematic intentionality. All the data and all the effects, on the basis of which psychologists have seen at work what they call attention, have their origin and their reason for being in this: that there are facts copresent with a theme, and that there cannot be any act of becoming aware of something that is obviously concerned with a theme without there being copresent data. Attention does not consist in the force, the vivacity, the intensity, or any property similar in nature by which certain data would impose themselves on consciousness at the expense of other data which, as a result of not being endowed with the

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corresponding quality, would be in danger of being suppressed. Neither is one, in the case of attention, in the presence of a specific capacity of consciousness, of a special light that the latter would cast on the data being offered to it, or whatever the metaphor may be one wishes to avail oneself of. Rather, what is being designated by the term are certain structures of thematic intentionality. All the changes traditionally attributed to attention come down to the modifications produced when, by abandoning the theme, one proceeds therefrom to one or another of the copresent facts; moreover, one must distinguish as many types of attentional changes as one can distinguish modifications of thematic consciousness in different directions, modifications that differ from each other qualitatively and phenomenally to the point of constituting very diverse types, the possibility of all of which, as well as the specific character of each, is founded on the nature of copresence and on the possible variations that such a nature entails.4 One sees that the facts that are traditionally gathered under the heading of attention are quite far from being homogeneous, and that, in consequence, the effects attributed to attention do not consist at all in casting a light on what previously lay under the cover of darkness, but rather that those effects vary from one case to the next, in accordance with the possible structures which are being actualized and which copresence entails as potential. The so-called problems of attention break down into a number of questions that must be examined separately. We have alluded to one, namely, the identity of the thing which, at one point, appears as copresent and which, at another, is grasped as a theme. Now, this fact is not one of the most important, or one of the most interesting, among those that count5 in their respective fashion. My intention was to bring up another problem that has less to do with attention than with attitude, and I shall do so after having presented, in general terms, a distinction in the domain of copresent facts, a distinction 4

Since the time at my disposal is limited, I am obliged to renounce considering matters more closely. This is why I may take the liberty of referring to the work I published in 1929 in Volume 12 of the Psychologische Forschung under the title “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” where I attempted to tackle attention as a fact falling under thematic intentionality. Cf. SPP, pp. 304–318. [This passage originally appeared as part of the text.] 5 [This word expresses Prof. L. Embree’s reading of the text, which appears in the margin of the typescript and is indicated by Prof. J. Huertas-Jourda (in op. cit.).]

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we have already taken into account without however expressly formulating it. The copresent facts fall into two classes, such that the characteristic proper to those in one consists in their being objectively and qualitatively related to the corresponding theme, while being so related is a characteristic lacking in those of the other. The attitude in which one is concerned with a theme depends on the facts belonging to the first class: to take up again the example already adduced, one would say, therefore, that the theme now appears as a result to be obtained from such and such premises, now as the point of departure for reflections leading to such and such consequences that would present themselves, on one occasion, as confirmed by such and such reasons or as called into question by such and such other reasons, and, on another occasion, as boiling down to such and such other theses, etc. This is true also of the perceptual domain. According to one of Husserl’s formulations, every perception is the underscoring of the perceived against a background consisting of the facts copresent therewith. One can thus perceive, for example, the Palace of the Louvre as part of a certain urban layout over against which environment it would stand out, or as occupying a definite place in the totality of the city of Paris; one can further perceive it by keeping in mind certain historical events of which it served as the stage, etc. The theme offers itself, therefore, as situated in certain surroundings; it hardly matters whether the facts of which the surroundings are comprised and constituted appear in the same mode of presentation or in another, such difference, if noted, being no obstacle to their being copresent with the theme or to their having to do with it. Whether the theme appears in such and such a thematic field or in another is not indifferent to the manner in which one becomes conscious of it, or to the theme such as it appears before consciousness, the thematic field being but the noematic correlate of the noetic facts encompassed by the term “attitude.” It is in light of the copresent facts belonging to the privileged class and constituting, as a whole, the thematic field that the theme presents itself as the center of that field, which is itself organized and shaped in relation to the theme. The relation existing between the theme and the thematic field wherein it is situated is of a Gestalt nature, in the sense that the field is not simply superadded to the theme while remaining unaffected by itself, and yet one must be wary of confusing this relation with the one, also of a Gestalt nature, which is established among the details forming and

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making up the objective noematic sense which is but the theme itself. Whereas it is a question, in one case, of the intrinsic structure of the theme, it is a question, in the other, of the manner in which the theme coexists with its thematic field, which contributes to it the perspective in which it presents itself. Such a close relationship (the Gestalt nature of which stems from the objective links that are being established between the theme and the field thereof ) does not exist between the thematic field within which the field is situated, on the one hand, and, on the other, the copresent facts belonging to the second class accepted by us. It is of no consequence, to the thought we are engrossed in, whether we are going down one street or another, whether such and such human beings or others pass by near us, etc. Among those facts that are simply superadded to the theme and which are only coincident with it (but in place of which any other facts whatever could appear, without, for that reason, the least modification being produced either in the theme itself or in the perspective under which it offers itself ), one must likewise reckon, for example, the memory arising in us of having already reflected on the theorem with which we are busy, or of having seen, in the company of others on such and such an occasion, the building before which we currently find ourselves. Although it may be a question of the same theme and of the same thematic field, the fact that the theorem has already been the theme of one or another of our acts of becoming conscious of something is completely extraneous to that theorem in itself such as it plays a role in our thought; it does not contribute anything to it from any point of view. If a fact, which is copresent in the same fashion, lets any other occupy its place, the same theme situated in the same thematic field would offer itself and be the same from every point of view admitted in phenomenology, coexisting only in an altogether fortuitous manner with the copresent fact in question, rather than with another. Here we find ourselves before alterations that leave the noemata absolutely intact, no matter from what angle one takes them into consideration. What separates these two classes of copresent facts is the boundary line indicating the distinction to be made between nexuses of a Gestalt nature (i.e., the Gestaltverbindungen, in M. Wertheimer’s sense) and those which are purely somatic in nature (i.e., the Undverbindungen).6 The links of one type begin to be substituted for 6

Cf. supra, An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 3, § VIII, pp. 173–175.

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those of another where the copresent facts cease to be part of the thematic field. Among the phenomena due to the thematic field, I would like to take note only of this one: that things that are purely and exclusively reiform in character, that is to say, objects endowed with such and such qualities and properties which may be described as objective, on account of the fact that they constitute the thing to which they belong such as it is in itself, are not what perception offers us under the ordinary and normal circumstances of our lives. The things we know and avail ourselves of in our everyday lives do not appear to us solely as substrates of visual, tactile, thermal, olfactory, and similar qualities observed in them. Rather, those things present themselves to us as being useful for such and such purposes, as capable of being handled in such and such a way, as capable of serving such and such ends, as fashioned in a certain manner from such and such materials, as intended for such and such practices, etc. They are perceived in the light and perspective of the use one may put them to in the situations in which one employs them, according to the attitudes adopted by the observers. It is the profession practiced by a given subject, his general culture, the social milieu in which he lives that suggest to him a certain general attitude concerning his surrounding world, but so does as well the concrete situation in which he happens to find himself and which he must see through. All of these factors impose on him a certain special attitude adapted to the concrete situation: according to the various attitudes, not only does the same thing present itself to each one of those observers in a particular fashion consonant with the attitude proper to each of them, but, as well, it is not for one of them what it is for another. Thus, for example, the lamp found on my table offers itself to me as an object of use which can be handled in such and such a fashion and of which I avail myself to work at night; for me to be able to employ it for the purpose for which it is meant, I have no need of knowing how it was made or to be acquainted with the mechanism making it function. The same lamp appears in another perspective to the worker who installs or repairs it but who, in order to obtain the effects he desires, only has to follow certain rules he has learned, without, in turn, having any need to be cognizant of the theory developed by the physicists about electrical phenomena. Finally, if a physicist looks at a lamp, he may see it—provided he adopts at that moment the attitude of a physicist and

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does not behave as one of the common run of people—under the aspect of the facts and problems familiar to the science he practices, and in the perspective of the theories about electricity that are standard in physics; yet that knowledge, justifiedly valued by us as the most profound and farreaching one may possess about such matters, would not render superfluous the worker’s knowledge, or enable someone who has that knowledge at his disposal to install or repair a lamp. This shows the difference existing between the physicist’s horizon and the worker’s, neither of which is capable of substituting itself for, or of becoming integrated into, the other. It is in the nature of objects of this type to be defined not by qualities and properties called objective, but by the employment they are put to in concrete situations, which most often are situations of action. In their case, one is not dealing with material, reiform things but, to take up a term coined by W. Köhler, with objects possessed of functional values (Functionellegegenstände), a word that has the same sense as that of the term Zeug used by M. Heidegger.7 These functional values, constituting as they do the nature and essence itself of the objects to which they belong (so that these objects are not only the bearers of those values but exist only insofar as they realize them) are derived by the objects from the global situation in which they are utilized and with respect to which they are perceived. By dint of playing a role in such and such a situation and of carrying out a certain function therein, the objects become what they are used for. The thematic field in which they are situated and the attitude in terms of which they fashion the theme (whether of perception or of practical action) contribute, therefore, to constitute the concrete nature of the latter. To be sure, one is not here in the presence of a connection as close as the one that is established among the moments or elements constituting the phenomenal whole the theme is. Any such moment is absolutely inseparable from the whole; it is what it is only as a component of the configuration, to the constitution of which it makes a contribution in conjunction with other components, and insofar as it [Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Part I, iii, §§ 15 and 74, in Gesamtausgabe, Volume 2 (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), pp. 68 ff. and 91 ff. and 99–100, respectively. Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie et al. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 96 ff. and 103–195, respectively.]

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plays a role within that configuration. Accordingly, the said moment is no longer the same, phenomenologically and noematically speaking, when it is taken, on one occasion, as a component of a Gestalt (and is thus viewed within the Gestalt as a totality) and when, on another occasion, in isolation from the other moments and considered by itself. An object possessed of a functional value, on the contrary, may be separated from the surroundings in which it is found, and it may be carried into other surroundings without its identity being affected thereby, even insofar as it is an object of such and such functional value. My pen is something to write with, and not a black body of such and such length and of a quasi-cylindrical shape. In the case of the pen, this indicates that it is a question of an object of the type in which we are interested: my pen continues to be what it is, whether I am actually availing myself of it for the purposes of writing, whether I carry it in my pocket, whether I place it on the dining table, etc. These transpositions are not therefore equivalent to the cited modifications which are produced, from a phenomenal point of view, in an electric lamp when, having appeared in the horizon of a workman, it comes into that which is proper to the physical sciences. An object possessed of a functional value enjoys therefore a certain independence with regard to its surroundings and to the situation in which it is employed or perceived. The most profound reason for this independence stems from the fact that the object in question is not a noema but a real, veritable object, albeit of an ontological structure different from that of the reiform things, an object constituted—in the fashion described in our prior meeting—by means of a synthetic context encompassing an entire multiplicity of noemata. However, this independence enjoyed by the object of the type in question with regard to the surrounding milieu is no obstacle for it to derive, from the field in which it is situated or the attitude in terms of which it is grasped, the perspective under which it presents itself, a perspective which is not at all intrinsic or adherent, but which confers onto the object its sense of being insofar as it is possessed of a functional value, and which makes it be such as it exists for us. We have maintained that the same thing that offers itself to various observers may present itself in perspectives so different from one another that the said thing is not, for one of the observers, the object possessed of a functional value which it is for another. Let us take up again the

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example employed by Descartes in his analysis of perception,8 namely, that of a piece of wax, so as not to refer to a multiplicity of observers, a choice that would complicate matters for thought. In reproducing the Cartesian ideas, we had pointed out that the wax may be regarded, on one occasion, in light of its utility for this or that purpose of human practical action, and, on another, as something capable of being used to make candles that would be invested with certain religious values. If these ways of availing oneself of the piece of wax are quite different from one another, particularly so far as the types of object are concerned, the subject would accordingly be placed in the presence of diverse objects possessed of functional values that could come to be completely different from one another. However, it would be the same piece of wax of which it is a question in every case; we can become aware of it as being the same, as remaining identical, while it plays a role, on one occasion, in such and such thematic field and, on another, in a different one, while it presents itself now in terms of such and such attitude, now in terms of another. In saying this, one does not mean to maintain that a piece of wax, as an object endowed with such and such functional values, offers itself as capable of being invested with other functional values, while preserving its identity, as if it were possible, in an object of the type in question, to distinguish the functional values from a pure stratum, a sort of substrate which would be the bearer of such values and which, while remaining the same, would be susceptible of taking on another perspective. What one makes manifest, in speaking of the same thing appearing as an object possessed now of such and such functional values, now of other functional values, is not that those two objects, which in consequence one must treat as two, contain something in common. Rather, it is a question of a particular attitude which, on the one hand, is also the one to which a thematic field is correlative, in which the corresponding theme finds itself situated. Moreover, on the other hand, the particular nature of the said attitude consists in making what is grasped therein appear no longer as an object possessed of a functional value existing only in the perspective it takes after its thematic field, but as an object that is something in itself and owing nothing but to itself, an object defined only by facts pertaining 8

Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, p. 33 and Méditations, pp. 25 f., in Oeuvres de Descartes, Volume VII and IX-1, respectively; trans. I, pp. 156 f.

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to it in itself, regardless of the concrete situation in which it plays a role or the thematic field in which it finds itself situated. What is being presented in terms of that particular attitude is, to keep to the Cartesian example, the wax as Descartes describes it, that is to say, a material, reiform thing, which is defined only by its objective qualities and properties, i.e., by facts visual, tactile, thermal, etc. By adopting this attitude, one is, in fact, in the presence of an object concerning which it is possible to maintain that it can, insofar as it is the same, be presented in various perspectives and take on the most different functional values. Now, in order to consider things in this fashion, one must have left the plane of normal, ordinary attitudes for that of purely theoretical contemplation. This attitude, which permits one to become aware of reiform things, is of a higher order than that of those others in terms of which only objects possessed of functional values are rendered accessible, and it enjoys a privilege with regard to these functional values. One must however be wary of misunderstanding the nature of this privilege that would lead us to interpret it as one of primordiality, which is what traditional psychology and philosophy have done. By taking a reiform thing for the simplest and most primitive object, one just became acquainted, in fact, with this type of object alone; one entertained the belief that one should account for the objects possessed of functional values by a sort of projection of subjective values, qualities, and characters onto the reiform thing. Accordingly, the problem of the identity of the reiform thing presented itself vis-à-vis the different objects possessed of functional values that the said thing becomes in terms of the various attitudes. This problem is not posed to us except on condition that it be raised for us on the plane of consciousness on which the reiform thing is available; it is a problem that does not exist for a conception in terms of which one sees, in the object possessed of functional value, a reiform thing to which the subject has contributed something of his own substance. Far from constituting the simplest and most primitive type of object, a reiform thing is rather the result, psychologically speaking, of a long mental development and, phenomenologically speaking, the product of constituting intentionality at its highest level. This type of object results when one makes the attitudes and thematic fields vary, without observing, of course, the limits imposed by the type of attitude that serves as one’s point of departure, while one retains what in all those attitudes plays the role of theme; it

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is what results therefrom as an invariant in relation to those variations, a fact that one can take note of, moreover, only after the event, that is to say, after one has come to be in possession of the type of objects in question. This invariant is not at all something common to that which one makes vary. By means of the variations and in the course thereof, an object is constituted which is of a new type and is endowed with a particular ontological structure. One must underscore, as well, the difference separating this sort of constitution from that of an object, of whatever type, taken as an identical unity in opposition to the multiplicity of noemata related to it. Since the object is nothing else than the correlate of this global and synthetic experience that encompasses an entire multiplicity of perceptions extending and completing one another, it is in its nature to be incapable of presenting itself except now under one aspect, now under another. In view of the fact that it is but the concatenation of all those noemata, the object is therefore present in each one of them, to the extent that each noema implicates a reference to the said concatenation of which it itself is a part. This is why, on the one hand, every perception of a thing presents this thing in its entirety, albeit only one-sidedly, and why, on the other, the thing implicates the totality of the aspects under which it may present itself. A reiform thing, on the contrary, does not at all contain the objects possessed of functional values, by the variation of which objects it is constituted; the fact is that one such object implicates a reference to the corresponding reiform thing. The latter is no less than a concatenation of the perspectives in which it exists, a fact one becomes aware of in terms of certain attitudes. Far from appearing under definite circumstances (a formulation which, as has been stated, should be employed with a modicum of prudence), a reiform thing is to be contrasted with all of them in the most radical of fashions. In a reiform thing, the various perspectives (in which it may exist in accordance with the circumstances) are so scarcely put together that its most essential characteristic is its absolute lack of perspective, if one takes the term in the precise and specific sense in which we employ it here. Because of its ontological structure, a reiform thing is, in the most emphatic of fashions, opposed to the objects possessed of functional values; it owes its being to nothing but itself; no perspective and no sense of being are conferred on it by the situation in which it is grasped; all the qualitative relations to the surrounding world, relations so important for the constitution of the objects possessed of functional

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values, are severed. This constitution of the reiform thing results in the constitution of a real, veritable object on the basis not of a multiplicity of noemata, but rather of an object of a different type; it is a thing that appears in the light of certain categorial notions. In fact, the reiform thing itself is nothing but a specific case or realization of the notion of physical body in general, just as all the qualities and all the properties observed in it are specifications of categorial notions, such as those of three-dimensional extension, weight, color, hardness, etc. In effect, here we are, as was indicated in our first meeting, before the thing such as it presents itself to the physicist when he is about to begin his investigations. One well understands that, for a consciousness to which the categorial plane has become inaccessible, as is the case with the aphasiacs,9 only the object possessed of functional value exists, and, conversely, that a consciousness that is not cognizant of an object of the type “reiform thing,” as is the case with the mind of an infant as well as with that of human beings belonging to societies called inferior (although it is not permissible to assimilate one to the other), does not, at the same time, have access to the categorial domain. Let us take into consideration a reiform thing appearing in the light of categorial notions, of which it is a special case, as its determinations also are. In so doing, we adopt, then, a certain attitude that is the noetic correlate of a thematic field. This field consists of the categorial notions in the light of which the reiform thing in question, which is the theme of the corresponding act, presents itself. To the extent that this thing offers itself as situated in a certain thematic field, it borrows from the latter the perspective in which it appears. Now, it is in the nature of that special attitude—and that is where the cited privilege resides—that it does not confer a special sense of being on the theme of which one becomes conscious thereby, except the one that makes it an object of the type “reiform thing.” The thematic field consisting of categorial notions does not constitute a situation in the same sense as that of the ordinary situations of our active and perceptual life. That which appears as theme in such a field has neither a role to play nor a function to perform therein; it derives no functional value from this 9

Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Gelb-Goldstein’s Concept of ‘Concrete’ and ‘Categorial’ Attitude and the Phenomenology of Ideation,” in SPP, pp. 403–432.

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thematic field. Moreover, a reiform thing depends only on itself and constitutes itself in itself such as it is by dint of being situated in a field that is incapable—because of its own essence—of assigning to that which it contains a perspective of the type to which belong the perspectives in which the objects possessed of functional values exist, and from which they take those values. The reason why the thematic field of the type in question has a special nature, one by virtue of which it does not confer functional values on the corresponding theme and does not determine its specific sense of existence, is that it consists of facts belonging to a domain of being different from that to which the reiform thing belongs, whereas an ordinary situation is constituted by things that form part of the same domain of being as that to which belongs the object that plays a role and functions in that situation. The thematic field with which we are concerned here is constituted by categorial notions, by things, therefore, which are different in kind from those that appear in its light. With these reflections we are placed before the most elevated form of the intentionality of consciousness, a form to which we owe the possibility of handling objects intellectually, so that, on the basis of objects of a certain type and of a certain ontological structure, we get to objects of an altogether different type and ontological structure. However, one must not see facts relatively independent from one another in the different structures of intentionality that I have endeavored to bring out, in the noetico-noematic parallelism, in the formation of contexts of acts of the two types we have distinguished from one another, and, lastly, in that form of intentionality we have tackled today. Moreover, in so doing, one should not neglect the distinction to be made between thematic consciousness and the fact of copresence, a distinction that concerns intentional consciousness in general, no matter what scale of intentionality it may be a question of. One must not see such facts as if those different structures of intentionality were superposed on one another, and as if the intentionality proper to one of those scales could not be brought into play, except after the intentionality proper to one of the preceding scales had completed its work. On the contrary, in the constitution of an object for consciousness, those structures intermingle with, and become linked to, each other, the forms of their cooperation varying according to the objects being constituted of which it is a question. These forms of

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cooperation are accessible to detailed studies, such that a vast field would open up to subsequent investigations. This presentation must be brought to a close by me without my misrepresenting the sudden nature of its ending. There are a great many things that I would have liked to present, that I had even included in the program of this course, but which the limited time at my disposal forces me to pass over in silence. Begging your indulgence, permit me to hope that I may be able, on a future occasion, to return to those matters I have not found the time to treat. Given the incomplete character of this course, I urge you, in warmly expressing my gratitude for the attentiveness with which you have seen fit to follow my presentation, to take it for what I intend it to be, namely, an invitation to work and investigate.

ESSAY III

HUSSERL’S THEORY OF THE INTENTIONALITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Though he was not a historian, either by temperament or by training, Husserl repeatedly and most emphatically insisted upon the continuity of his endeavors with the great tradition of Western philosophy, especially modern philosophy, which began in the seventeenth century. His insistence appears most explicitly in his writings of the twenties and thirties published in the course of the last decade.1 Even as early as 1913, in the first volume of Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, the only volume published during his lifetime, Husserl speaks of his phenomenology as the “secret longing” of the whole of modern philosophy, referring especially to Descartes, Hume, and Kant.2 Finally, it is significant that one of Husserl’s presentations of phenomenological philosophy as a whole, a presentation in a highly concentrated, condensed, and, in comparison with Ideen, I, abbreviated form (notwithstanding the discussion of the problem of intersubjectivity which is not contained in Ideen, I ), bears the title Cartesian Meditations, which is to say meditations carried out in the manner of those of Descartes. The phrase “secret longing” expresses the claim on Husserl’s part to bring fulfillment to the intentions of his predecessors. This in turn implies This article originally appeared in Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. E. N. Lee et al. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 25–57 and as Chapter 9 of A. Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 210–240. 1

Cf. E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24), I, ed. R. Boehm, Husserliana, VII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956) and Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, 2nd. ed., ed. W. Biemel, §§ 15 ff., Husserliana, VI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954). (This work will henceforth be referred to as Krisis.) 2 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 118 (142): “the secret nostalgia of all modern philosophy.”


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that, on the one hand, their intentions were substantially the same as his, but that, on the other hand, they were unable to realize those very intentions and therefore did not reach the level or dimension of transcendental constitutive phenomenology. Thus, in his opening remarks in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl characterizes his phenomenology as “a neo-Cartesianism,” though he rejects nearly the whole doctrinal content of Cartesian philosophy, for the very sake of radicalizing Descartes’ ultimate intentions.3 We therefore find ourselves confronted with a twofold task. In the first place, we must formulate what Husserl considers to be the fundamental intention which guides and dominates the whole of modern philosophy. In the second place, we must raise the question why, prior to Husserl, this intention could not find adequate fulfillment and satisfactory realization. We take our departure from Descartes, to whom Husserl repeatedly refers as having given to modern philosophy its distinctive character and physiognomy by orienting it towards transcendental subjectivism.

§I. Historical Roots of Husserl’s Problems Descartes’ Subjective Orientation and Its Generalization Descartes’ discovery of consciousness, as his sum cogitans may be interpreted, amounts to and may even be said to consist in the disclosure of a double privilege pertaining to consciousness. There is, in the first place, its indubitability in the well-known sense. Whatever else it may be, and is, open to the universal doubt—the existence of consciousness as such and as a whole, of actually experienced particular acts of every description, the existence, finally, of the experiencing and conscious ego itself, to the extent to which it is conceived merely and exclusively as a conscious being (res cogitans)—is not engulfed by the doubt but, on the contrary, withstands such engulfment. Of still greater importance in the present context is the second privilege of consciousness which Descartes indicates at the end of his Second Meditation when he summarizes his famous analysis of the perception 3

Cf. E. Husserl, CM, p. 43 (1).

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of a piece of wax.4 According to his analysis, we become assured of the existence of the piece of wax by the fact that we see it, touch it, hear the sound it emits when struck, etc., and bring further mental faculties into play, especially that faculty which Descartes calls inspection of the mind (mentis inspectio). At the end of the Sixth Meditation,5 Descartes points out that it is the convergence, concordance, and agreement between those mental operations and their yieldings which make us accept the objects thus encountered as really existing, and which differentiate them from figments of the fancy and from dream occurrences. It follows that in becoming convinced of the existence of any extramental objects, like the perceived piece of wax, we are a fortiori assured of the existence of the mental operations in question by means of which we come to accept those extramental objects as real and existing. To express it differently and in a more general manner, so as not to lay the main stress on the problem of existence and reality, Descartes’ analysis of the perception of the piece of wax sets forth and makes explicit the essential reference of objects to consciousness, namely, to those acts of consciousness through which the objects present themselves. Descartes’ analysis discloses consciousness as necessarily involved in whatever objects are encountered and dealt with. It may appear a truism to say that we cannot deal with objects in any manner except actually dealing with them, and that such dealing denotes mental activities and operations of various kinds. However, what appears as a truism expresses a profound and momentous discovery, namely, the insight into the nature of consciousness as the universal medium of access to whatever exists for us and is considered by us as valid. As Husserl interprets Descartes’ discovery of consciousness as to both the indubitability of its existence and its function as a universal medium of access, this discovery implies the principle of a subjectively oriented philosophy. It implies a goal pursued by Descartes himself as well as by the subsequent development of modern philosophy, a goal that is also the goal of Husserl’s own endeavors. All that is required is a universalized expression of the mentioned reference of objects to acts of consciousness 4

Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, p. 33 and Méditations, pp. 25 f., in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, Vols. VII and IX-1, respectively (trans., I, pp. 156 f.) 5 Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, pp. 89 f. and pp. 71 f., in op. cit. (trans., I, pp. 156 f.)

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and conscious life as a whole and the formulation of that reference in sufficiently radical terms. First of all, “object” must be understood in the widest possible sense. It is meant to apply to perceivable things encountered in everyday common experience; to things of cultural value and significance such as utensils, books, musical instruments, and the like; to all real beings both inanimate and animate, e.g., our fellow men with whom we deal in highly diversified social situations, where they play the role of employers, teachers, doctors, partners, collaborators, rivals, and so forth. Taken in this all-inclusive sense, the term “object” may also apply to the constructs of the several sciences, like matter, energy, force, atom, electron, and, furthermore, to ideal entities of every kind and description, like the general notions considered in traditional logic, propositions and systematic concatenations of propositions, relations of all sorts, numbers, geometrical systems. Finally, the term “object” may also denote specific social realities like the opinions and beliefs held in a certain society at a certain period of its historical development, political institutions, legal systems, and so on. Every object—understood in this wide sense—presents itself to us through acts of consciousness as that which it is for us, as that which we take it to be, in the role which it plays and the function assigned to it in our conscious life, with regard to our several activities both practical and theoretical (e.g., artistic). In and through specific acts of consciousness, the object in question displays its qualities, properties, and attributes. It exhibits the components that contribute towards determining its sense; also the sense of its specific objectivity and existence, which obviously is not the same in the case of numbers and other ideal entities as it is in that of perceivable material things. Because of their essential reference—in the sense which has just been sketched—to acts of consciousness, objects may be said to “depend upon” or—as we should prefer to express it—to be relative to consciousness. Hence a problem of a very general nature and of universal significance arises. Given an object of any category whatever, the task is to set forth and to analyze descriptively those acts of consciousness in their systematic interconnectedness and interconcatenation through which the object in question displays and presents itself, acts of consciousness in and through which all its sense-determining components and constituents accrue to the object. Hereby the task of constitutive phenomenology is defined, though in a somewhat sketchy way. It

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rests on the principle that for an object of any class and sort to be what it is and to have whatever existence, objectivity, or validity pertains to it, acts of consciousness of a specific kind, as well as typical organizational forms in which those acts are united and concatenated with one another, are required. Constitutive phenomenology translates into concrete terms the essential reference of objects to conscious life (a reference that Descartes had expressed in a more or less abstract and general way), insofar as it makes every object arise, so to speak, out of the relevant acts and operations as accomplished (geleistet) by them and, in that sense, as their product. Hence Husserl speaks of an “equivalent of consciousness” related to every object,6 and he describes it as the task of constitutive phenomenology to lay bare and to make explicit the correlation which a priori obtains between objects of the different varieties, on the one hand, and systematically organized groups of specific acts and operations of consciousness, on the other.7 For reasons that cannot be discussed in the present context, precedence in the order in which the constitutive problems are to be tackled belongs, according to Husserl, to the real perceptual world, the existents it comprises, and the events taking place in it. Obviously, it is only by means of generalizations and radicalizations going far beyond not only Descartes’ explicit statements but also his actual intentions that the program of constitutive phenomenology can be derived from his discovery of consciousness. As a matter of fact, what Husserl interprets as the central motif of Descartes’ thinking was for Descartes himself rather a means to an end and stood in the service of a different purpose. Descartes’ main intention was the validation of the incipient new science of physics, the justification of a tenet whose boldness we, the heirs to a scientific tradition, can appreciate only with considerable difficulty. This is the tenet that an external, extramental, and extraconscious world exists, but that this world is in reality not as it appears in everyday perceptual experience but as it is conceived of and constructed in mathematical terms in the new science. This explains why neither Descartes himself nor any of the Cartesians proceeded to exploit the momentous discovery of consciousness, whose exploitation did not 6

E. Husserl, Ideen, I, p. 319 (365): “consciousness-equivalent.” Cf. E. Husserl, Krisis, §§ 46 and 48 and Phänomenologische Psychologie, ed. W. Biemel, in Husserliana, IX (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1962), § 3b and e.

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begin until prior to J. Locke’s An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding.8 Having made the preceding remarks for the sake of the accuracy of the historical record, we must insist on the legitimacy of isolating the discovery of consciousness and developing it in its own right. Understood along the general lines of Husserl’s interpretation, though of course not in the sense of his extreme radicalization, the Cartesian philosophy takes on its fundamental significance within the course of the subsequent development of modern philosophy. It can be considered as the first expression historically of what was to become the ultimate intention of the whole of modern philosophy. We already mentioned that in Husserl’s judgment neither Descartes himself nor any of his successors, whom Husserl considers as his own predecessors, has succeeded in adequately realizing the intention in question. Here Husserl points to what he calls “transcendental psychologism” as one of the main reasons for that failure. Succinctly stated, the task is to account for objects of every kind and description—in the first place, the real, perceptual world and whatever it contains—by reference to subjective conscious life. Acts and operations of consciousness are as a matter of course interpreted as mundane events alongside other such events. They pertain to sentient living organisms, e.g., human beings, which obviously are mundane existents occupying determinate places within the spatiotemporal order of the real world. We thus seem to be caught in a circular reasoning insofar as the very terms in which the world is to be accounted for are themselves affected by the sense of mundaneity.9 This situation leads to, motivates, and even necessitates the transcendental reduction as a methodological device whose function is to strip conscious life of the sense of mundaneity. Undoubtedly, the transcendental reduction is of the utmost importance for the foundation and consistent elaboration of constitutive phenomenology. Still, it is not along that line of thought that we shall pursue our discussion. We wish to point out a second and no less important reason for the failure referred to. To do so we raise the question of whether 8

Ed. J. W. Yolton (1967). About the paradox involved in transcendental psychologism, cf. E. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, pp. 287 ff. and 328 ff.; concerning Husserl’s criticism of Descartes in the respect relevant here, cf. CM, § 10 and Krisis, §§ 17 ff.

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the theoretical means at the disposal of Descartes and his successors in the classical tradition of modern philosophy were sufficient for an adequate realization of what, following Husserl, we consider their ultimate intention to be. In other words, we turn to examining the general conception of consciousness as laid down by Descartes and taken over, almost as a matter of course, by his successors. Such an examination will enable us to see in its true proportions the radical and revolutionary innovation which is Husserl’s theory of the intentionality of consciousness. Cartesian Dualism and the Theory of Ideas in the “Representative Version” Reality as a whole is divided by Descartes into two domains. The domain which withstands the universal doubt is the domain of consciousness (cogitatio), while the other domain, that of extension, is at first engulfed by the universal doubt and subsequently reconquered and so to speak reinstated in its right. Throughout, Descartes emphasizes the thoroughgoing heterogeneity of these two domains. To be sure, with respect to both domains Descartes uses the term “substance.” However, the defining attributes of these substances are so utterly different, the two substances have so little in common, that the distinction between them amounts to a profound dualism dividing reality. As, in Descartes’ view, a corporeal thing is nothing but a delimited portion of space and, in this sense, a mode or modification of extendedness, so is a mental state, a cogitatio, nothing but a modification of consciousness or, in more modern parlance, an occurrence in conscious life. Because of the heterogeneity of the two domains, either domain is completely self-contained and self-sufficient, at least with respect to the other domain. Such self-sufficiency justifies denoting both domains as substances within the meaning of the specific Cartesian definition of that notion. On account of its self-containedness and self-sufficiency, the domain of consciousness forms a closed sphere, the sphere of interiority or subjectivity. All mental states, which by definition belong to the mental sphere, are on the same footing, for whatever differences may obtain between them in any other respect, mental states are, all of them, modes of consciousness, subjective occurrences, events taking place in conscious life. This holds also for the particular class of mental states which Descartes singles

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out under the heading of Ideas.10 Hereby are meant such mental states as have a presentifying function, that is to say, make present a man, a chimera, the heavens, an angel, God, to abide by the examples Descartes gives in his Meditations.11 Ideas, by means of which (or, more correctly, by means of some of which—as will presently be explained—contact is established with what pertains to the other domain, that of externality), are, to begin with, subjective occurrences and events, not different from other mental states, e.g., a feeling of pleasure or pain, a desire, a hope, and the like. At this point, we may formulate two tenets that are connected with, and characteristic of, both the theory of Ideas and the interpretation of consciousness as a closed sphere of interiority. In the latter account, the mind is confined to its own states. Only its own experiences, its modes and modifications, are directly and immediately given to the conscious ego. Differently expressed: the only immediate and direct objects of knowledge are our own mental states. It is not Descartes himself who defined Idea as that which is in our mind or thought,12 but—as far as I see—Antoine Arnauld,13 who was the first explicitly to lay down that principle which has become a general and fundamental doctrine accepted in the whole subsequent development of classical modern philosophy. Even thinkers who, like Hume and Kant, considerably depart from Descartes maintain 10

We are writing “Ideas” (with a capital “I”) when that term is to be understood in the general sense as is used by Descartes, and “ideas” (with a small “i”) when we refer to the specific sense that Hume gives to it. 11 Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, p. 37 and Méditations, p. 29, in op. cit. (trans., I, p. 159). 12 Cf. Letter to Mersenne, June 16, 1641: “par le mot Idea, j’entends tout ce qui peut eˆtre en notre pensée.” (in op. cit., III, p. 383). [“I understand by the word Idea everything that can be in our thought.”] 13 ´ Cf. Emile Bréhier, Histoire de la philosophie, II, pp. 219 f. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), II, Chapter 7, § 5, p. 192 and [A. Arnauld, Des vrayes et des fausses idées contre ce qu’enseigne l’auteur de la Recherche de la Vérité, Chapter 6 (1st. ed.; Cologne: Nicholas Schouten 1663; Paris: Arthème Fayard/Corpus des oeuvres de philosophie en langue française, 1986), p. 53]. John Locke says “Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them.” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Chapter I, § 1, in op. cit. ed. J.W. Yolton, Vol. 2, p. 133.

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that, as Hume expresses it, “[n]othing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas,”14 or, as Kant has it, all our representations, whatever their origin and nature, are nothing but modifications of the mind (Gemüt) and therefore belong to inner sense.15 The second doctrine is of a less general philosophical significance, because, in contrast with the first one, it is not essential to the theory of Ideas as such but only to a special version of that theory, the version advocated by Descartes. As we noted, the goal of Descartes is to prove the real existence of the external world, conceived to be of a mathematical, especially geometrical, nature, and to show that certain particularly privileged Ideas correspond to, and are in conformity with, corporeal things. Still, the Ideas in question are subjective occurrences in the sphere of interiority. Furthermore, on the strength of what has just been shown, the mind can never leave that sphere of subjective interiority but remains forever moving within it, so to speak, that is to say, among its own states. If, owing to the privileged Ideas, contact is to be established with extramental corporeal things, the contact can only be a mediated one. The Ideas in question must be considered as intramental representatives of extramental, i.e., extended, objects. Deliberately we avoid the expression “representation,” because the meaning of that term as usually understood in the psychological sense is too narrow. Being representative is meant to denote substituting for, standing in the place of, acting and functioning on behalf of, and, therefore, mediating. The conception of consciousness as the universal medium of access acquires an additional meaning, insofar as the term “medium” comes to be understood with respect to the mediating function that is attributed to certain mental states, i.e., those that are representative. At this point, the question must be raised as to how to account for the representative function by virtue of which certain Ideas play the role of mediators between the conscious ego and extramental corporeal things. The question concerns nothing less than the cognitive significance and objective validity of the Ideas under discussion. We are in possession of some knowledge concerning the extramental world of extension. Such 14

D. Hume, Treatise, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 67; cf. also pp. 197, 206, and 212. Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 98 f. and also A 189 ff./B 234 ff. and A 197/B 242.

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knowledge is acquired by means of privileged Ideas and, more generally, through processes and operations of consciousness which—to repeat and stress it once more—are and remain subjective events occurring in the sphere of interiority. How under those conditions is it to be understood that subjective events within the sphere of interiority can have reference to, and significance for, what on principle lies outside that sphere? How do the role and function of mediators accrue to the Ideas in question? Briefly we recall Descartes’ well-known reasoning. Among the totality of Ideas, he singles out a special class, namely, those which exhibit clearness and distinctness. Whatever formal definition Descartes gives of clearness and distinctness,16 in view of the use he makes of these notions in actual practice, we may say that clear and distinct Ideas are in the first place mathematical, particularly geometrical, Ideas. At least, these alone are relevant within the present context. The special emphasis on geometrical Ideas is in conformity with his goal of vindicating the incipient new science. However, clearness and distinctness—whatever privilege they may bestow upon the Ideas concerned—are not the same as, and do not even imply, the objective reference of those Ideas. Descartes is fully aware of the necessity of establishing a connection between clearness and distinctness, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, objective reference, that is to say, reference to what is extramental. He must establish the principle that whatever is clearly and distinctly perceived is true, i.e., has objective reference and validity. For the establishment of that principle, Descartes, as is well known, resorts to the veracity of God. Divine veracity guarantees the existence of the external world.17 In guaranteeing that principle, divine veracity also guarantees the validity of the mathematical conception of the external world, i.e., its interpretation in purely geometrical terms. Finally, although divine veracity does not guarantee the cognitive value of common perceptual experience, it does confirm its reliability for the practical conduct of our life. This reliability rests on the inner consistency and coherence exhibited by that experience.18 By a Cf. R. Descartes, Principia philosophiae, Part I, §§ 45 f., in op. cit., VIII-1. Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, pp. 78 ff. and Méditations, pp. 62 f., in op. cit. (trans., I, pp. 190 f.). 18 Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes, pp. 88 ff. and Méditations, pp. 70 ff., in op. cit. (trans., I, pp. 198 f.). 16 17

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veritable tour de force, Descartes has cut the Gordian knot, which is to say that, in the representative version of the theory of Ideas, the problem of the objective reference and significance of subjective events and occurrences in the sphere of interiority proves insoluble. Lack of space forbidding, we cannot enter into a detailed analysis of the work of Locke, who also advocates the theory of Ideas in the representative version. A few remarks will have to suffice. Locke sets out to study what may be called the natural history of the human mind and of human knowledge in particular. He carries this study out on the basis of Newtonian physics, which he unquestionably accepts as a point of departure. This acceptance appears most clearly in his concept of the role of primary qualities. On the one hand, they pertain to “ideas of sensation,” which are psychological events, occurrences, within the mind. On the other hand, they are assumed to correspond to, and even to render faithfully, the true state of affairs, that is to say, the state of affairs which in the physics of Newton passes for the true one. Whereas the objective reference of subjective events is seen by Descartes as a genuine problem (though he could find no solution to it except by a tour de force), that reference is for Locke no longer a problem at all, but is taken for granted and underlies the elaboration of his whole theory. One may be tempted to say that divine veracity has been replaced in Locke by the authority of Newton, by the prestige and authority of Newtonian science. This is not merely a bon mot. The difference between Locke and Descartes seems to us to reflect the development of modern physics in the course of the seventeenth century from its incipient phase at the time of Descartes to the systematically developed form it had attained in Locke’s time with the Principia mathematica philosophiae naturalis.19 Needless to add, when the objective reference of certain mental states is taken for granted and assumed as a matter of course, the problem (as we have tried to set forth), which is involved in and besets that reference, is eschewed rather than solved. 19

[Cf. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (London: The Royal Society at Joseph Streater’s, 1st. ed., 1687; 2nd. ed., R. Cotes, 1713; 3rd. ed., 1725); Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, trans. A. Motte, rev. F. Cajori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946).]

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The Non-Representative Version of the Theory of Ideas In the version of the theory of Ideas to which we now turn, objects and Ideas are not opposed to, or even distinguished from, but on the contrary equated with, one another. Hence there can be no question of Ideas functioning as representatives of extramental objects. The non-representative version of the theory of Ideas was first formulated by Berkeley and fully elaborated by Hume. We shall concentrate here on Hume’s theory, the analysis of which will lead to the disclosure of a problem that is of the utmost importance for the subsequent development of our argument. According to Hume, “[a]lmost all mankind, and even philosophers themselves,” unless they are engaged in philosophical speculations, “take their perceptions to be their only objects, and suppose that the very being, which is immediately present to the mind, is the real body or material existence.”20 The terms “object” and “perception” (Idea, in the sense defined above)21 can be interchanged, since both of them denote “what any common man means by a hat, or shoe, or stone, or any other impression, conveyed to him by his senses.”22 The identification of objects and perceptions follows, according to Hume, from the fundamental principle of the general theory of Ideas. In fact, if the only data immediately given to consciousness are its own mental states (in Humean parlance, its impressions and ideas), the consequence is that it is “impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically different from ideas and impressions.”23 All mental states, whether “passions, affections, sensations, pains and pleasures, are originally on the same footing; . . . whatever other differences we may observe among them, they appear, all of them, in their true colours, as impressions or perceptions.”24 This also holds for their temporality or, as Hume puts it, for their being “perishing existences” and appearing as such.25 No perception, once it has passed, can ever recur. A 20 21 22 23 24 25

D. Hume, Treatise, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 206. Cf. supra, n. 10. D. Hume, Treatise, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 202. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., p. 190. Ibid., p. 194.

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new perception may arise, highly similar to, and even perfectly like, the former one. Yet, as a new perception, that is to say, one occupying a different place in the order of time, it cannot be identified with the former perception and must not be mistaken for the recurrent former perception. On the other hand, we are convinced that the object with which we are dealing now is identically the same as that which we encountered on a previous occasion. Considering that objects are nothing but perceptions and that the latter are “perishing existences,” how can the consciousness of the identity of the object arise and how can that consciousness be accounted for? Stating our problem in terms of consciousness, we follow the general direction of Hume, who does not ask whether bodies have in fact “an existence distinct from the mind and perception” (or even a continued existence, i.e., whether they continue to exist when they are not perceived), but rather how we come to believe in their continued and distinct existence.26 To account for the consciousness of the identity of an object, Hume refers to the high degree of resemblance between the perceptions arising on successive occasions, as when, for instance, in observing an object, we alternately open and close our eyes, or when, after an absence of shorter or longer duration, we return to the object in question, e.g., our room.27 Because of that resemblance, the mind passes readily, easily, and smoothly from perception to perception. Its disposition hardly differs from that in which it finds itself when it observes an invariable object for a certain length of time without any interruption. The smoothness of the transition makes us oblivious of, or at least inattentive to, the interruptions that are actually taking place. In this way, there arises the illusion of the identity that the imagination ascribes to the multiple perceptions separated from one another by shorter or longer intervals of time. The consciousness of the identity of the object is due to the imagination mistaking a succession of perceptions for the continuous, uninterrupted presence of an unvarying perception. However, the obliviousness required for the consciousness or illusion of identity cannot 26 27

Ibid., pp. 187 f. Cf. ibid., pp. 202 ff.

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endure indefinitely. As soon as we become aware of being confronted with multiple perceptions which, however similar and even alike, are different from, because they succeed upon, one another, the awareness of the true state of affairs conflicts with the propensity of the imagination to ascribe identity to the multiple perceptions. To reconcile this conflict, the imagination is led to contrive the fiction of the “continued existence” of perceptions. Finally, this conflict and contradiction, according to Hume, give rise to what we have called the representative version of the theory of Ideas, namely, the distinction between objects and perceptions or, as he calls it, the hypothesis of “the double existence of perceptions and objects.”28 Under this hypothesis, identity or continuance is ascribed to the objects and interruptedness and multiplicity to the perceptions which, precisely as representatives of the objects, cannot coincide with them. Our main concern is not with the details of Hume’s theory but rather with the terms in which he formulates the problem of identity. As our sketchy exposition of his theory shows, Hume considers the “notion of the identity of resembling perceptions, and the interruption of their appearance” as “contrary principles,” exclusive of one another.29 Overcoming the conflict and the perplexity it gives rise to requires “sacrificing” one of the two principles to the other. By contriving the fiction of a “continued existence” of perceptions even when they are not actually given, we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely.30 Hume’s formulation of the problem, however, proves to be at variance with the phenomenal state of affairs. Having been absent from our room, we return to it and find the same furniture that we perceived before leaving. To make that identity explicit, far from having to become oblivious of, or even inattentive to, the difference between the occasions on which we perceived the object in question, we must on the contrary make that very difference explicit. Verbally expressing our explicit awareness of the identity of the object, we say that the object with which we are dealing now is the same as that which we encountered on previous occasions and to which, as identically the same, we may, 28 29 30

Ibid., pp. 214 ff. Ibid., p. 206. Cf. ibid., p. 199.

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under certain conditions, return as often as we wish. The consciousness of the identity of the object does not arise in spite of but, on the contrary, in explicit reference to the multiple perceptions of the object. Identity and multiplicity are indeed opposed to one another; however, they are not opposed as contradictory or, in any sense, incompatible terms, but rather as correlative ones, which mutually require and demand each other. Hume’s analysis of the notion of identity leads to the same result. According to Hume, the uninterrupted presence of an invariable perception conveys the idea of unity but not of identity. For the latter to arise, time or duration must be taken into account. “We cannot, in any propriety of speech, say that an object is the same with itself, unless we mean, that the object existent at one time is the same with itself existent at another.”31 Hume’s analysis is inadequate insofar as he ascribes to “a fiction of the imagination” the participation of the unchanging object or perception in the flux of time. When we are actually confronted with an uninterrupted and unvarying perception, e.g., when the same musical note resounds over a certain length of time, we are aware of its duration, which is to say that our auditory experience passes through different temporal phases.32 Since what we experience is an identical note resounding for a certain length of time and not a sequence of notes that are all of equal pitch, intensity, and timbre, we are again confronted with the problem of the identity of the note in opposition and with reference to a multiplicity, in this case not of discrete occasions separated from one another by temporal intervals but of phases that pass continuously into one another, exhibiting various temporal characteristics. The problem that appears in Hume’s theory is of quite universal significance and goes far beyond perceptual experience. Consider one more example. Yesterday we were reading a fairy tale about a mythical person and today we resume our reading, taking the identity of the mythical person for granted without even making it explicit, though we are always free 31

Ibid., pp. 200 f. Cf. Husserl’s detailed analysis of that phenomenon in his Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, §§ 10 ff., in Husserliana, X (trans., pp. 29 ff.) and Erfahrung und Urteil, ed. L. Landgrebe (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1954), § 23. Experience and Judgment. Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, trans. J. S. Churchill et al. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 106 ff.

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to do so.33 On the grounds of Hume’s theory, we are presented with two ideas or, if one prefers, two sets of ideas (one being related to the present reading, the other being the memory of yesterday’s reading.) However similar those ideas may be to one another, it is hard to see how they can yield the consciousness of an identical mythical person. As this example as well as the preceding analysis of Hume’s theory show, the problem concerns the consciousness of the identity of any object whatever, understanding the term “object” in the broad sense in which we initially introduced it.34 The problem is insoluble within the framework of the theory of Ideas, that is to say, on the basis of the principle that its own mental states alone are directly and immediately given to the mind. Its insolubility appears still more clearly if allowance is made for the further development that Hume has given to the theory of Ideas in emphasizing that the mental states (the “perceptions” in his terminology) form merely a one-dimensional temporal order, or, as he expresses it, the “successive perceptions only . . . constitute the mind.”35 How indeed can a mere succession of mental states ever yield the consciousness of the identity of anything? It is possible to show that the problem in question does not find a solution within the context of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason either. Lack of space forbidding, we cannot enter into a detailed analysis to substantiate that assertion; we may be permitted to refer to the discussion we have presented elsewhere.36 For the present purpose we abide by Hume’s theory. By its critical analysis we have prepared the ground for the exposition of Husserl’s theory of the intentionality of consciousness. 33

[Cf. Alfred Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” in Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 207–259; “Symbol, Reality, and Society,” vi, in ibid., pp. 340–347; and “Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality,” in Collected Papers, II, ed. A. Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 135–158.] 34 Cf. supra, pp. 354. 35 D. Hume, Treatise, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, pp. 252 f. [Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “William James’s Theory of the ‘Transitive Parts’ of the Stream of Consciousness,” ii, in SPP, pp. 341–349.] 36 Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “La conception de la conscience chez Kant et chez Husserl,” Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, LIV (1960), pp. 65–96 (“The Kantian and Husserlian Conceptions of Consciousness,” in SPP, pp. 165–192) and “Der Begriff des Bewusstseins bei Kant und Husserl,” Kant-Studien, LV (1964), pp. 410–427.

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§II. Outlines of the Theory of Intentionality In the course of the preceding discussion, two problems have emerged. The first, which arose from the analysis of some of Descartes’ tenets concerns the objective and, we may say, objectively cognitive significance of mental states, i.e., their reference to extramental facts, events, and items of any kind. Perhaps of still greater importance is the second problem, with which the critical examination of Hume’s theory presents us, namely, the problem of the consciousness of any object given as identically the same through a multiplicity of mental states, experiences, acts. Because of its fundamental importance, we shall start by considering the problem of the consciousness of identity, which—we submit—has found a solution in Husserl’s theory of intentionality.37 After that theory has been expounded, at least in its basic outlines, the problem mentioned in the first place will no longer present any considerable difficulties. The notion of intentionality plays a major role in all of Husserl’s writings, with the exception of Philosophie der Arithmetik. Here we can obviously not enter into a study of the development which that notion has undergone along with that of Husserl’s thought in general.38 In view of Professor Chisholm’s contribution, we abstain from presenting Brentano’s conception of intentionality and setting forth its difference from that of Husserl.39 Since we approach the theory of intentionality from a specific point of view, namely, that of the problem of the consciousness of 37

[Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” in SPP, pp. 140–147.] Q. Lauer, in his book, Phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), has followed up on the genesis of the theory of intentionality through four of Husserl’s major works which appeared in his lifetime. 39 Cf. L. Landgrebe, “Husserls Phänomenologie und die Motive zu ihrer Umbildung,” i, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, I (1939), [No. 2; also in Phänomenologie und Metaphysik (Marburg: Marion von Schröder Verlag, 1949), Chapter 3, pp. 56–100 and Der Weg der Phänomenologie. Das Problem einer ursprünglichen Erfahrung, ed. G. Rohrmoser (Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1963), Chapter 1] and H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 2nd. ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), I, i, 7 and iii, C 2 c. [Cf. supra, in An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 3, § 6, pp. 154–157. In the text, the reference to Prof. Roderick M. Chisholm’s contribution is probably to his paper, preceding Gurwitsch’s in the same volume, namely, “Brentano on Descriptive Phenomenology and the Intentional,” Phenomenology and Existentialism, pp. 1–23.] 38

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identity, we shall have to overemphasize certain aspects of that theory or, more correctly, to emphasize them more than Husserl did himself. In doing so, however, we remain faithful to the spirit of Husserl’s theory and its leading intentions. Finally, we shall exclude from our presentation a few doctrines, especially the notion of sense data and the egological conception of consciousness, which play a certain role in Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Not endorsing those doctrines,40 we may abstain from dwelling upon them, because they do not seem to us to be of crucial importance for what we consider most essential to the concept of intentionality. The justification of our departure from Husserl would lead us too far afield to be attempted here. The Notion of the Object as Meant or Intended (The Noema) From the critical examination of Hume’s theory it has become clear that the consciousness of identity cannot be accounted for in terms of the theory of Ideas, that is to say, on the grounds of the traditional modern conception of consciousness. Hence, a totally new and radically different conception is required in which the consciousness of identity no longer appears as an explicandum, but, on the contrary, is made the defining property of the mind, the essential property without which the mind could not be what it is. For that reason it is insufficient, though true and valid as a first approximation, to define intentionality as directedness, saying that in experiencing an act of consciousness we find ourselves directed to something; e.g., in perceiving we are directed to the thing perceived, in remembering we are directed to the event recalled, or in loving or hating to the person loved or hated, and the like. Directedness merely denotes a phenomenal feature of the act, inherent and immanent, a feature that appears and disappears along with the act to which it pertains. If intentionality is thus defined, the question remains unanswered as to how we can become aware of the identity of the “something” to which the multiple acts are directed, considering that each one of those acts possesses 40

Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” Chapter 3, § 16 and Chapter 4, § 4, Psychologische Forschung, XII (1929) (in SPP, pp. 280–286 and 307–317); “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, I (1941) (in SPP, pp. 319–334); and The Field of Consciousness, Part IV, Chapter 2, § 6.

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directedness as a phenomenal feature of its own. Therefore, the theory of intentionality must be based upon the notion of the “something” that we take as identical and whose identity we may disclose and make explicit by the appropriate considerations. As a convenient point of departure, we choose a special phenomenon, namely, the understanding of meaningful verbal expressions, a phenomenon whose analysis forms the subject matter of the first investigation of Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen.41 To lay bare what is involved in the understanding of meaningful expressions, let us contrast our experience in hearing a phrase like “the victor of Austerlitz” or “New York is the biggest city in the U.S.A.” with the experience we have when we hear a noise in the street, a sound like “abracadabra,” or an utterance in a foreign language with which we are not familiar. In the latter cases, we have merely an auditory experience. In the former cases, we also have an auditory experience, but one which supports a specific act of interpretation or apperception by means of which the auditory experience becomes a vehicle of meaning or a symbol. The same holds in the case of reading, except for the immaterial difference that the visual experience of marks on paper takes the place of the auditory experience. The specific acts that bestow the character of a symbol on perceptual experiences may be called acts of meaning apprehension. Like other acts, they, too, are psychological events occurring at certain moments in time. By means of the reasoning we used in the critical discussion of Hume’s theory, we come to establish the distinction between the act of meaning apprehension and the meaning apprehended. We remember that on numerous occasions we uttered or heard the phrases mentioned. Recalling those occasions, we recall them as different from one another because of their different temporal locations. At the same time, we become aware of the fact that what we meant and had in view on those occasions and what we mean now is the same: on all these occasions, there presents itself to, and stands before, our mind “the one who won the battle of Austerlitz” or Napoleon as the victor of Austerlitz, or New York under the aspect of its number of 41

Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2nd. ed. (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1913), II; see also the condensed but faithful rendering by M. Farber in his The Foundation of Phenomenology (Cambridge, Mass.: 1941; 2nd. ed.; New York: Paine-Whitman Publishers, 1962), Chapter 8.

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inhabitants in comparison with the other American cities. Furthermore, we take it for granted that all who listen to our utterance, provided they are familiar with the symbolic system used (in this case, the English language), apprehend the same meaning. Each person experiences his own act of meaning apprehension which he cannot share with anybody else. Yet through all those multiple acts, distributed among any number of persons, and for each person, varying from one occasion to the other in the course of his life, the same meaning is apprehended. If this were not so, no communication, either in the mode of assent or dissent, would be possible. For a proposition to be accepted or rejected, it must first be understood. The identical entity that we call “meaning” may be defined as a certain person, object, event, or state of affairs which presents itself, taken exactly as it presents itself, or as it is intended. Consider the two phrases, “the victor of Austerlitz” and “the initiator of the French code.” Though both meanings refer to the same person, Napoleon, they differ from one another insofar as, in the first case, Napoleon is intended under the aspect of his victory at Austerlitz and, in the second, with regard to his role in the establishment of the French legal code. The difference in question has been expressed by Husserl as that between the “object which is intended” and the “object as it is intended.”42 It is the latter notion which we identify with that of meaning. For a further illustration we mention another of Husserl’s examples.43 In hearing the name “Greenland,” each one of us has a certain thought or representation of that island, that is to say, the island presents itself and is intended in a certain fashion. The same holds for the arctic explorer. Both he and any one of us intend the same object. However, Greenland as intended and meant by some of us with our sketchy, highly vague, and indeterminate representation obviously differs from Greenland as meant by the arctic explorer, who has been to the island and knows it thoroughly. Two multiplicities, each related to an identical entity, must be distinguished from one another. On the one hand, we have the multiplicity of E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2nd. ed.: 1913), II, i, Inv. v, Chapter 2, § 20, pp. 415f. 43 Cf. ibid., II, i, § 21, p. 418. 42

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acts through all of which the same meaning is apprehended; on the other hand, there is the multiplicity of meanings, of “objects as intended,” all referring to one and the same “object which is intended.” For the sake of simplicity, we have confined ourselves to such meanings as refer to real objects, persons, or events. This simplification makes it easy to see that meanings cannot be identified with physical objects and occurrences any more than with psychological events. From the fact that a plurality of meanings can refer to the same object, it follows that none of the meanings coincides with the object. Real events like the battle of Austerlitz take place at a certain moment in time. But it is absurd to assign a temporal place to the meaning of the phrase “the battle of Austerlitz” and to ask whether it precedes, succeeds upon, or is simultaneous with another meaning, though any one of the acts through which the meaning is apprehended occupies a definite place in time. There are no spatial relations between meanings any more than there are causal effects exerted by meanings either upon one another or upon anything else. We are confronted with entities of a special kind—aspatial, atemporal, acausal, hence irreal or ideal—which have a specific nature of their own. Between these entities obtain relations of a particular sort, the like of which is nowhere else encountered. As a simple example, we may mention the relations, studied in logic, that obtain between propositions as a special class of meanings. Our results can easily be generalized. For the sake of brevity, we limit ourselves to perceptual experience. When we perceive a thing, e.g., a house, we do so from the point of observation at which we happen to be placed, so that the house appears under a certain aspect: from one of its sides, the front or the back, as near or far, and the like. It appears, as Husserl expresses it, by way of a one-sided adumbrational presentation.44 Maintaining our point of observation, we may alternately open and close our eyes. We then experience a sequence of acts of perception, all differing from each other by the very fact of their succeeding upon one another. Through all of these presentations not only does the same house appear, but it also appears under the same aspect, in the same orientation, in a word, in the same manner of adumbrational presentation. Again we encounter an identical entity, namely, that which is perceived exactly as 44

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 41 and CM, § 17.

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it is perceived, the “perceived as such” (das Wahrgenommene als solches).45 It stands in the same relation to the acts of perception as does the meaning apprehended to the acts of meaning apprehension. One may generalize the term “meaning,” so as to use it beyond the domain of symbolic expressions, and speak of perceptual meanings. Husserl also denotes the “perceived as such” as “perceptual sense” (Wahrnehmungssinn), because by virtue of it a given perception is not only a perception of a certain thing but also a determinate perception of that thing, that is to say, a perception through which the thing presents itself in this rather than another manner of adumbrational appearance.46 Husserl’s most general term here is that of noema,47 a concept that comprises meanings in the conventional sense as a special class. “Noema” denotes the object as meant and intended in any mode whatsoever and hence includes the mode of perceptual experience. Having distinguished the perceptual noema from the act of perception (the noesis), we have further to distinguish it from the thing perceived. The latter may be seen from different points of view (it may appear under a variety of aspects: from the front, the back, one of the lateral sides, and the like), while the perceptual noema denotes the thing perceived as presenting itself under one of those possible aspects. Again we have to apply the distinction between the “object which is intended” (the thing perceived) and the “object as it is intended” (the perceptual noema, or the thing perceived as it is perceived.) A multiplicity of perceptual noemata are related to the same thing as, in the previous example, a multiplicity of meanings were seen to refer to the same object. Let us consider the difference between the perceptual noema and the thing perceived from a different point of view. The house may be torn down, but none of the pertinent noemata is affected hereby.48 Even after its destruction, the house may still be remembered, and it may be remembered as presenting itself under one or the other of the aspects under which it had previously appeared in perceptual experience. To be sure, the noema is no longer a perceptual one; it is rather a noema of memory. The [Cf. E. Husserl, ibid., § 89, p. 184 and A. Gurwitsch, An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 3, § IV.] 46 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 88. 47 Cf. ibid., Part III, Chapter 3. 48 Cf. ibid., p. 184. 45

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point is that one or even more noemata, their difference notwithstanding, may have a certain stratum in common, a stratum that Husserl denotes as “noematic nucleus.”49 Within the structure of every noema, the distinction must be made between the noematic nucleus and the “noematic characters,” which, incidentally, belong to several dimensions.50 By means of this distinction, it is possible to account for the verification of a nonperceptual experience by a perceptual one. When in actual perceptual experience, a thing proves to be such as it had been assumed, thought, believed, etc., to be, it is that the nucleus of the nonperceptual noema is seen to coincide and even to be identical with that of the perceptual noema, while the noematic characters indicating the mode of givenness or presentation remain different on either side.51 Both the identity of the noematic nucleus and the difference concerning the noematic characters are required for, and essential to, the phenomenon of verification. Consciousness Defined as a Noetico-Noematic Correlation In the center of the new conception stands the notion of the noema, of the object meant and intended, taken exactly and only as it is meant and intended. Every act of consciousness is so essentially related to its noema that it is only with reference to the latter that the act is qualified and characterized as that which it is, e.g., that particular perception of the house as seen from the front, that determinate intending of Napoleon as the victor of Austerlitz and not as the defeated of Waterloo. Traditionally consciousness has been interpreted as a one-dimensional temporal order, a conception whose most consistent elaboration lies in Hume’s theory. To be sure, acts of consciousness are psychological events that take place and endure in time and stand under the laws of temporality, to which Husserl has devoted detailed analyses.52 Though temporality undoubtedly denotes a fundamental aspect of consciousness, that aspect is not the only one. The temporal events called “acts of consciousness” have the peculiarity of being actualizations or apprehensions of meanings, the Cf. ibid., § 91. Cf. ibid., §§ 99 and 192 ff. 51 Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2nd. ed.: 1913), II, Inv. i, Chapter 1, § 14 and Inv. vi, Chapter 1, §§ 8 ff. 52 Cf. supra, n. 32. 49 50

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terms “apprehension” and “meaning” being understood in a very general sense beyond the special case of symbolic expressions. It pertains to the essential nature of the acts of consciousness to be related and to correspond to noemata. Rather than being conceived of as a one-dimensional sequence of events, consciousness must be defined as a noetico-noematic correlation, that is to say, a correlation between items pertaining to two heterogeneous planes: on the one hand, the plane of temporal psychological events and, on the other hand, that of atemporal, irreal, that is to say, ideal entities that are noemata, or meanings understood in the broader sense. Furthermore, it is a many-to-one correlation insofar as an indefinite multiplicity of acts can correspond to the same noema. Correlated terms demand and require each other. To establish the identity of the noema we had to contrast it with, and hence refer it to, a multiplicity of acts. Conversely, it can to be shown (though this is not the place to do it) that no account of the temporality and especially of the duration of an act of consciousness is possible without reference to the noema involved.53 Thus the conception of consciousness as a noetico-noematic correlation brings to light the indissoluble connection between consciousness and meaning (Sinn). It shows consciousness to be essentially characterized by an intrinsic duality, which is to take the place of the Cartesian dualism. To evaluate the historical significance of the innovation, let us consider in which respect it constitutes a break with the tradition. In the first place, the theory of Ideas is relinquished, especially the principle that the mind is confined to its own mental states, which alone are directly and immediately given to it. Undoubtedly, the mind lives exclusively in its mental states, its acts. Each act, however, is correlated to a noema which—as we have stressed—is itself not a mental state, an act of consciousness, a psychological event. Relatedness to essentially nonmental entities is the very nature of mental states. Furthermore, the noema is defined as the “object as it is intended,” i.e., as the object in question appearing in a certain manner of presentation (under a certain aspect, from a certain point of 53

See our detailed analysis in “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” Part III, Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. M. Farber (Cambridge, Mass.: 1941), pp. 65–83 (in SPP, pp. 151–153) and in “William James’s Theory of the ‘Transitive Parts’ of the Stream of Consciousness,” Part II, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, III (1943), pp. 449–477 (in SPP, pp. 341–348).

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view, etc.), an object capable, however (we must now add), of appearing in different manners of presentation. The definition of intentionality as directedness can now be given its legitimate meaning. Experiencing an act of consciousness, we are directed to an object insofar as, in the structure of the noema corresponding to the act, there are inscribed references to further noemata, to different manners of presentation of that object. The objective reference of the mental states is no longer an insoluble problem as with Descartes, nor is it to be explained and accounted for subsequently. On the contrary, it proves essential to the acts of consciousness, not as an additional phenomenal feature of the acts, of course, but rather in the sense of the conception of consciousness as a noetico-noematic correlation. As a consequence, consciousness can no longer be interpreted as a selfsufficient and self-contained domain of interiority. This interpretation follows from the Cartesian dualism, the severance of res cogitans from res extensa to which Descartes was led in endeavoring to lay the foundations of the incipient new science. It must be stressed that Nature in the sense of modern physics is not the same as the world of common, everyday experience. In the latter world, things not only present spatial forms, stand in spatial relations to one another, and change those relations in the course of time, but they also exhibit specific qualities, the so-called secondary qualities, and are endowed with characters which, like those of instrumentality, utility, and cultural value, refer to human purposes and activities.54 Quite generally in the world of common experience, the corporeal in the spatiotemporal sense is intertwined and interwoven with the mental or psychological in all its forms. Nature in the modern scientific sense is the result and product of an artful method applied to the world of common experience. That method consists, among other things,55 in abstracting spatiotemporal extendedness to the disregard of whatever is mental or psychological, relegating the latter to the purely subjective domain. In this way, one arrives at one single coherent and self-contained context encompassing all spatiotemporal things and events. Cf. E. Husserl, Krisis, §§ 66 ff. and Phänomenologische Psychologie, §§ 16 ff. For the sake of simplicity, we omit mentioning the problems concerning mathematical idealization, which are extensively treated by Husserl in Krisis, §§ 8 ff.

54 55

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The success of this abstractive procedure suggests its application in the opposite direction, namely, a counterabstraction of what is “subjective” to the disregard of what pertains to the spatiotemporal, hence, “objective,” domain. However, the attempt at that counterabstraction fails to yield a self-sufficient and self-contained domain of interiority. Turning to and concentrating upon the life of consciousness, one does not discover occurrences that take place in a closed domain and merely succeed upon one another, as Hume’s theory of the mind would have it. Rather one encounters apprehensions of meanings; perceptions of houses, trees, fellow human beings; memories of past and expectations of future events; and the like. Generally speaking, one encounters dealings, in several manners and modes, with mundane things and events of the most diverse description, as well as with nonmundane entities like numbers and geometrical systems, which are not mental states or psychological occurrences any more than they are mundane existents. The very failure of the counterabstraction discloses the essential reference of acts of consciousness to objective entities of any kind, hence also to mundane, i.e., spatiotemporal objects. This failure marks the breakdown of the Cartesian dualisms. Being based on the theory of intentionality, phenomenology must not be identified with, or even too closely assimilated to, the intuitionistic philosophy or introspectionism as advocated by Bergson.56 For consciousness to be grasped and studied in its authentic and aboriginal state, it must first, according to Bergson, undergo a purification from whatever contamination or admixture has accrued to it by way of contact with the objective external world, which is not only a spatial but also a social world. Obviously, such a methodological principle presupposes the Cartesian dualism. What Bergson considers a denaturalization of consciousness appears, in the light of the theory of intentionality, as an expression of its genuine nature. Insistence upon that difference, profound as it is, must not, however, preclude the recognition that many of Bergson’s analyses have phenomenological significance or, to speak with greater prudence, may, by a proper reinterpretation, be given phenomenological significance. 56

Cf. H. Bergson, Essai sur les données immediates de la conscience (Paris: 1904); 24th. ed., in Oeuvres, pp. 1–158.

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Because of the intentionality of consciousness, we are in direct contact with the world. Living our conscious life, we are “at” the world, “at” the things encountered in that world. This should be seen as a consequence of the theory of intentionality, rather than being credited as original with subsequent existentialist philosophies. A glance at the phenomenological theory of perception makes that clear. We recall the definition of the perceptual noema as the thing perceived appearing from a certain side, under a certain aspect, in a certain orientation, briefly, in a one-sided manner of adumbrational presentation. The decisive point is that, notwithstanding the one-sidedness of its appearance, it is the thing itself that presents itself, stands before our mind, and with which we are in contact. Noetically speaking, perceptual consciousness is an originary, albeit incomplete because one-sided, experience of the thing perceived appearing in “bodily presence” (in Leibhaftigkeit). Perceptual consciousness must not be interpreted in terms of profoundly different modes of consciousness, e.g., by means of images, signs, symbols, and the like.57 Accordingly, the perceptual noema must not be mistaken for an Idea in the Cartesian sense, that is to say, the substitute for, or representative of, a reality only mediately accessible. With the phenomenological theory of perception, we submit, the traditional theory of Ideas is definitively overcome. On the Notion of Objectivity There remains the task of defining the relationship between the perceptual noema and the thing perceived. While actually appearing in a determinate manner of adumbrational presentation, the thing is capable of appearing in other manners. It actually so appears in the course of the perceptual process, when, e.g., we walk around the thing and, in general, perceive it under various conditions of different sorts. In the course of that process, the thing is perceived as identically the same, presenting itself from different sides, under varying aspects, in a variety of orientations. The thing cannot be perceived except in one or the other manner of adumbrational presentation. It is nothing besides, or in addition to, the multiplicity of those presentations through all of which it appears in 57

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 43.

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its identity.58 Consequently, the thing perceived proves to be the group or, more precisely put, the systematically organized totality of adumbrational presentations. Both the difference and the relationship between the thing perceived and a particular perceptual noema can now be defined in terms of a noematic system as a whole and one member of that system. This is in agreement with the previous formulation that every particular perception, its incompleteness and one-sidedness notwithstanding, is an originary experience of the thing perceived appearing in bodily presence. In fact, it is the perceptual apprehension of a noematic system as a whole from the vantage point of one of its members. Two questions arise. One concerns the organizational form of the noematic system, the other the manner in which its membership in the noematic system is inscribed in the structure of every particular noema. Both questions can only be mentioned here, but not discussed.59 At present, we must confine ourselves to stressing that the thing perceived also proves to have noematic status. As a noematic system, it is a noema itself, but a noema of higher order, so to speak. Just as the theory of intentionality involves a new conception of consciousness or subjectivity, so, too, it entails a reinterpretation of the notion of objectivity. Traditionally, the objective has been opposed to the subjective as entirely alien to it, so that, for an object to be reached in its genuine and authentic condition, all mental, i.e., subjective, activities and their contributions must be disregarded if not eliminated altogether. In light of the theory of intentionality, this conception of objectivity, which derives from the Cartesian dualism, can no longer be upheld. The objective reference that is essential to acts of consciousness corresponds to a no less essential relationship of objects to acts of consciousness, especially to their noemata. The disclosure of the thing perceived as a noematic system, that is to say, as an intentional correlate,60 is in perfect conformity with the general conception, propounded here, of consciousness as a correlation. Furthermore, several levels of objectivity must be distinguished from one another, in consequence of which the notions of subjectivity and objectivity prove affected by a certain relativity. 58 59 60

Cf. E. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, pp. 152 f., 178 f., 182 f., and 430 ff. Cf. our The Field of Consciousness, Part IV. Cf. E. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, p. 184.

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Every particular meaning or noema as an identical entity can be considered as objective in contrast to the multiple subjective acts that are correlated to it, especially if it is remembered that those acts may be distributed among a plurality of persons. A particular perceptual noema, defined as the thing appearing under a certain aspect, is in turn to be characterized as subjective with respect to the perceived thing itself, of which the former is a one-sided perceptual adumbration, with respect to the noematic system of which the particular noema is a member. The things perceived and perceivable, in their totality, form the perceptual world, the world of pure experience, or, as Husserl calls it, the life-world (Lebenswelt). It is the world such as it is understood, conceived, and interpreted by a certain social group which unquestioningly accepts it as reality. The life-world is an essentially social phenomenon.61 Accordingly, it differs from one social group to the other, and also for a given social group in the course of its historical development. At every phase of this development and for every social group, the respective life-world counts as objective reality. Over against the multiplicity of life-worlds, the question arises of a world common to all social groups. This is an objective world in a second, more profound sense. More precisely, the question concerns a set or system of invariant structures, universal insofar as they are by necessity exhibited by every sociohistorical life-world.62 Of this common world, which perhaps should not be called life-world but rather the world of pure perceptual experience, the diverse life-worlds in the proper sense appear as varieties to be relegated to the status of merely subjective worlds. Finally, there is objectivity in the specific sense of modern science: the objectivity of the scientific or scientifically true and valid universe as constructed on the basis of perceptual experience by means of mental operations and procedures into whose analysis we cannot enter here.63 From the point of 61

The social aspect of the life-world is the persistent central theme in most of A. Schutz’s writings. (Cf. his Collected Papers, I.) See also our article, “The Commonsense World as Social Reality,” Social Research, XXIX (1962), [pp. 50–72; also published as “Introduction” to A. Schutz, Collected Papers, III, ed. I. Schutz (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. xi–xxxi and in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), Chapter 5, pp. 113–132.] 62 Cf. E. Husserl, Krisis, §§ 36 f. and Phänomenologische Psychologie, §§ 7ff. 63 [Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “The Perceptual World and the Rationalized Universe,” infra, pp. 383 ff.; “Perceptual Coherence as the Foundation of the Judgment of Predication,”

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view of the universe of science, the world of perceptual experience appears in turn as subjective. Sketchy and incomplete though these remarks are, they might perhaps suffice to illustrate, if not substantiate, the thesis that what is to be meant by objective must not be conceived as severed from the life of consciousness. Moreover, the ascent to higher levels of objectivity, far from requiring the progressive elimination or, at least, disregard of mental activities and operations, on the contrary involves them in increasing complexity; it involves syntheses of consciousness of ever-widening scope. As an intentional correlate, the object of every kind and level proves to be an accomplishment (Geleistetes) whose clarification, especially the clarification concerning its objectivity and existence, requires that it be referred to the accomplishing (leistende) mental operations. Accounting in this manner for an object of whatever sort is tantamount to disclosing its “equivalent of consciousness.” §III. Conclusion Our discussion has run full circle. By generalizing and radicalizing Descartes’ discovery of consciousness, Husserl was led to conceive the program of constitutive phenomenology, which is to account for objects of all possible kinds in terms of subjective conscious life. A superficial survey of some levels of objectivity might give an idea of the extent of that tremendous task. For the sake of completeness, we recall, in passing, the sense of objectivity which pertains to the ideal orders of being and existence in the Platonic sense or, in Husserl’s parlance, to the eidetic realm. In the theory of intentionality, we found the theoretical instrument both necessary and sufficient for the realization of that task. Herein appears the historical significance of that theory. We could as well have started from the theory of intentionality, conceived as a theory of the mind in a merely psychological setting, regardless of philosophical interests. The radical innovation which that theory in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree, pp. 241–267; “Philosophical Presuppositions of Logic” (in SPP, pp. 393–402), and “Sur une racine perceptive de l’abstraction,” Actes du XX e Congrès Internationale de Philosophie, II (Amsterdam, 1953), pp. 43–47, also as “On a Perceptual Root of Abstraction” (in SPP, pp. 433–438).]

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entails for the conception of the mind and thus for psychological thinking defines its historical significance in a further respect. Consistently developing the theory of intentionality conceived in a psychological orientation, and pursuing it in its ultimate consequences, would have led us to the idea of constitutive phenomenology in a way Husserl has followed himself in the Amsterdam lectures and in the article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.64 The theory of intentionality thus serves both as a motivating force, as far as the conception of the idea of constitutive phenomenology is concerned, and as the theoretical instrument for its realization. In other words, provided proper allowance is made for the transcendental reduction, which could here be mentioned in passing only, the full elaboration of the theory of intentionality proves coextensive and even identical with the philosophy of constitutive phenomenology.

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Husserl’s Phänomenologische Psychologie contains the “Amsterdamer Vorträge,” pp. 302–349 and the definitive German text, as well as two preparatory drafts, of the article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, pp. 237–301.


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INDEX OF NAMES

A Aquinas, Thomas de, 220 Aristotle, 220 Arnauld, Antoine, 384 Aron, Raymond, 46

E Ehrenfels, Christian von, 201 Embree, Lester, 1, 59

B Bauer, E., 504 Becker, Oskar, 420 Berger, Gaston, 16, 21, 432, 441 ff., 449 ff., 453 ff. Bergson, Henri, 4, 21, 46, 129, 154, 160, 263, 264, 265, 268, 271, 376, 496 Berkeley, George, 3, 62, 108, 117, 144, 362, 386 ´ Bréhier, Emile, 358 Brentano, Franz, 5, 9, 154, 156, 157, 179, 196, 395 f Brunschvicg, Léon, 504 C Cairns, Dorion, 49, 51, 411, 495 Cassirer, Ernst, 63, 490, 504 Chisholm, Roderick, M., 367 Cournot, Antoine A., 502 D Descartes, René, 8, 36, 61, 68, 69 ff., 94, 102, 103, 153, 240, 328, 344 f., 351, 352 f., 375, 380, 383, 415, 445, 447, 455, 475, 479 Dilthey, Wilhem, 499 Duncker, Karl, 246, 268 ´ Durkheim, Emile, 68

F Farber, Marvin, 50, 463 ff. Fink, Eugen, 327, 469 Fuchs, Wilhelm, 161, 269 Fulton, James Street, 471 ff. G Garc´ıa-Gomez, José, 17 Geiger, Moritz, 44 Gelb, Adhémar, 32, 42 Goldstein, Kurt, 42, 48, 77, 80, 162, 243, 252 Green, Thomas H., 114 Guillaume, Paul, 34, 46, 123, 202, 269 Gurwitsch, Aron, passim H Hartmann, Nicolai, 499 Heidegger, Martin, 32, 325, 342, 491 Helmholtz, Hermann von, 270 Héring, Jean, 324, 481 ff. Huertas-Jourda, José, 1, 59 Hume, David, 3, 6, 62, 108, 109, 114, 127, 153, 208, 351, 358, 362, 386, 389, 393 f., 396, 449 Husserl, Edmund, passim J James, William, 50, 129, 133, 154, 178, 389

517

518

index of names

K Kant, Immanuel, 17, 118, 351, 358, 366, 447, 451, 467 Katz, David, 211, 499 Koffka, Kurt, 14, 124, 187, 245, 252, 261, 273, 292 Köhler, Wolfgang, 84, 86, 124, 187, 243, 247 f., 251, 273, 284, 298, 301 Koyré, Alexandre, 46 Kraus, Oskar, 157 L Landgrebe, Ludwig, 367, 396 Lauer, Quentin, 390, 483 ff. Leibniz, Gottfried W., 177, 415 Levinas, Emmanuel, 325 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 44, 46, 84 Locke, John, 38, 62, 67, 94, 107, 197, 356, 358, 361, 386 London, Fritz, 504 M Mach, Ernst, 3, 79, 111, 113, 116, 130, 136, 149, 153, 186 Maine de Biran, 499 Malebranche, Nicolas, 62, 74 Marcel, Gabriel, 30, 47 Meinong, Alexius, 155 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 47, 413 ff., 416, 419, 487 ff., 491 ff. ´ Meyerson, Emile, 505 Mohanty, J. N., 15 N Newton, Isaac, 361 O Ortega y Gasset, José, 17, 21, 30

P Piaget, Jean, 34, 245 ff., 249, 251, 258, 298, 300, 408 Planck, Max, 42 Pradines, M., 13, 128, 152, 212 ff., 216, 219, 222, 229, 239, 243, 252, 270, 271, 302, 497 ff. R Ricoeur, Paul, 30 Rubin, Edgar, 168, 172, 243 Russell, Bertrand, 256 S Sartre, Jean-Paul, 13, 47, 132 Scheler, Max, 44, 76, 499 Schröder, Ernst, 465, 503 Schutz, Alfred, 21, 47, 48, 366, 379 Simon, Yves, 501 ff. Sorel, G., 502 Spiegelberg, Herbert, 367 Stout, George F., 233, 235, 236, 289 Stumpf, Carl, 41 T Troubetzkoy, N., 93 V Vendryès, J., 93 W Weber, Max, 45, 501 Wertheimer, Max, 13, 86, 123, 171, 340 Z Zubiri, Xavier, 17

INDEX OF TOPICS

A Abstraction, 42 Acquisition by experience, 32, 247, 253 Adumbration, 116, 211, 391, 399, 405 Algebra, 429, 432 Analysis, 425 f., 455, 459 Analytical philosophy, 49, 485 Appearance, 125, 130, 145, 196, 206, 211, 309, 377, 402, 413 Arithmetic, 181 Associationism, 236 ff., 240, 242, 255 Attention, 337 ff. Attitude, 166, 262, 326, 334, 338

D Description, 76, 142, 272 Distinctness, 131, 360, 433 Doubt, 70, 100, 102, 352, 472 Dualism, 22, 357 ff., 375 f., 384 f., 396 E Ego, 103, 159, 359, 368 Eidetic reduction, 446 f., 447 ff., 481 Empiricism, 4, 63, 66, 107, 153, 216, 240, 414, 467, 471 Equivalent of consciousness, 308 ff., 313, 355 Everyday life, 83, 283, 285, 412, 468 Evidence, 315 ff., 319, 320, 433, 446, 477 Exact, 495 Existence, 23, 98, 100, 146, 282, 318, 323, 337, 353, 451, 456, 474, 488, 489 Expectation, 146, 275 Experience, 238, 317, 446, 455, 489 Explanation, 79

B Behaviorism, 454 Biology, 78, 212, 226 Body, 78, 178, 418 ff., 421, 458, 474, 488 ff. C Cartesianism, 26, 471 ff. Clarification, 181, 290 f., 380, 436, 486 Clue, 314 Cogitatum, see Noema and Noesis Cogito, 30, 70, 159 ff., 179, 441 ff., 444, 455 Coherence, 200 Consciousness, passim Constancy hypothesis, 43, 141 Content, 196, 392 Copresence, 162, 333 f.

F Figural factors, 198, 201 Formalization, 418, 427, 429, 486 Formal sciences, 428 Functional object, 32, 35, 84, 92, 174, 250, 254, 263, 272, 295, 299 Functional value, see Functional object G Genetic phenomenology, 407 ff. Geometry, 360, 418

519

520

index of topics

Gestalt, 13, 339 Gestalt-contexture, 14 ff., 404 Gestalt quality, 202 Gestalt theory, 44, 48, 79, 90, 123, 141, 142, 143, 164, 197, 245 ff., 267, 284, 292, 298, 302, 399, 402 ff., 409 Gestaltverbindung, 34, 142, 173, 340 Givenness, 145, 373 Figure and Ground, 168 H Habit, 90 f., 298 Halo, 20, 233, 276 Here and There, 418, 419 Historicity, 430 Historico-teleological reflection, 442 ff. Horizon, 12, 88, 280, 405 f. Human sciences, 53 ff., 92 f. Hyletic data, 211, 220 I Idea, 72, 107, 357 ff., 359, 361, 362 ff., 374, 383 ff., 385, 389, 449 Idealism, 2, 307, 468 Idealization, 38 f., 431 Ideal objects, 182, 374, 380 Identity, 6 ff., 110, 115, 124 ff., 127, 149, 185 ff., 188, 205, 282, 338, 363, 365, 386, 387 f. Immanent object, 9, 118 f., 156 Implication, 12 ff., 19, 191, 205 ff., 209, 220, 231, 233, 236 f., 254, 257, 261 ff., 270, 272, 274, 275, 282, 294, 299, 301, 399 ff. Inexistence, 155 Intentional analysis, 293 f., 441 ff. Intentionality, 5, 8 ff., 10, 20, 150 ff., 154, 275, 328, 336, 348, 351 ff., 367 ff., 368, 383 ff., 390, 451, 467, 485 Intentional object, 119, 395 Intersubjectivity, 473, 475 Intuitionism, 459

J Judgment, 283, 288 L Language, 48, 93, 369 ff. Lifeworld, see World Logic, 53, 422 ff., 426, 431, 434 ff., 466 Logical positivism, 454 M Manifold theory, 429 ff. Marginal consciousness, 167, 175 ff., 180, 262, 277 Mathematics, 53, 65, 90, 98, 421, 430, 435 ff., 466, 471 Mathematization, 407 Meaning, 9, 370, 374, 444, 449, 466 Merely occasional experiences, 241 Method, 14, 281 ff., 299, 334, 442, 446, 455, 466, 486 Monadology, 461 Morphological type, 417 N National Socialism, 45 Natural attitude, 23, 83 ff., 98 ff., 468 Natural science, see Physics Neo-Kantianism, 46 Noema and Noesis, 9, 21, 22, 130 ff., 133, 136, 144 ff., 148, 156, 185 ff., 191, 205, 208, 223 f., 230, 256, 263, 281, 287, 337, 346, 368 ff., 372 f., 373 ff., 378, 393 f., 400, 402 Noematic phenomenology, 43 Number, 428 O Object, 6, 105, 119, 125, 196, 204, 206, 219, 224, 235, 295, 301, 308, 310, 311 ff., 320 ff., 327, 348, 354, 358, 371, 429, 443, 477, 485 Objectivation, 180, 286

index of topics

521

Objective object, 16 Objective thing, 16, 132, 134, 153, 189 Objectivity, 8, 118, 129, 149, 355, 377 ff. Others, 460 f.

Reiform thing, 36 ff., 83, 96, 185, 241, 255, 295, 296, 308, 312, 319, 322, 331, 341, 345 ff. Remembering, 135 f., 162, 176, 261 ff.

P Passion, 212 f., 218, 222 f., 229 Passive genesis, 445 Perception, passim Phenomenal object, 101, 104, 138, 139 Phenomenological reduction, 23, 27, 29, 81, 100 ff., 139, 153, 274, 276, 326 ff., 327, 356, 443 f., 469, 472 Phenomenology, 1, 57, 98, 105, 158, 293, 307 ff., 314, 317, 326, 328, 354 ff., 407, 446, 451, 463 ff., 469, 481, 483, 490 Philosophical anthropology, 103, 327, 476 Philosophy, 52, 61, 66, 149, 285 f. Physicalism, 454 Physical thing, 38 Physics, 38, 64, 89, 93 ff., 98, 112, 309, 342, 375, 407, 412 f., 472 f., 503 Polarization, 194 ff., 229 Possibility, 208, 278, 290 Potentiality, 20, 163, 274 ff., 276, 332 f., 336 Practical attitude, 32 Presentation, see Givenness Primordial world, 474 Proposition, 185 Psychology, 28, 67, 77, 79 ff., 104, 112, 187, 227, 238, 253, 326, 381, 389, 467, 492

S Sedimentation, 407, 409 Sensation, 108 Sense, 133, 137, 158, 192, 202, 261, 281, 289, 325, 372, 393 f., 425, 432 f., 444 Sign, 214, 219 Signification, 137, 259, 455, 456 Situation, 32, 85 Sociology, 68 Space, 215, 256, 420 Surrounding world, see World Synthesis, 205, 257, 282, 309, 315, 489

R Realism, 151, 414 Reason, 316, 318 Reference, see Implication Reflection, 11, 25, 121, 127 f., 148, 170, 284, 286, 288, 297, 326, 406, 469, 491, 495

T Temporality, 19 ff., 178, 310, 362, 373, 394 Thematic field, 164 ff., 167, 169, 171, 175, 254, 339, 342 Theme, 160, 171, 175, 188, 280, 331, 337, 339 Thinking, 73, 75, 154, 281, 287, 389 Transcendental clue, 25, 311 ff. Transcendental psychologism, 28, 356 U Unity, 313 Universe, 94, 98, 411 ff., 414, 487 Use object, see Functional object V Value, 131, 140, 147, 192, 308, 375 Verification, 315, 318 W World, 64, 66, 88, 91, 120, 180, 181, 322 f., 377, 379, 397, 409, 411 ff., 418, 434 f., 451, 460, 473, 487 f., 492

ESSAY IV

TOWARDS A THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY

Husserl’s definition of consciousness in terms of intentionality marks a revolutionary innovation in the history of modern philosophy. It solves a problem which, on the grounds of the traditional modern conception of consciousness, proved hopelessly enigmatic; to say the least, the problem in question is opened to promising theoretical treatment. Hence, it appears opportune to consider Husserl’s theory of intentionality historically, though, to be sure, the theory of intentionality must ultimately be judged on its own merits. Its validity can only depend upon its satisfactorily accounting for the fundamental structure of consciousness. Still, to present it historically brings forth its full significance in the most striking fashion. To formulate the problem to which Husserl’s theory of intentionality provides an answer, at least an inchoate one, we sketch, to begin with, the general conception of consciousness which dominated modern philosophical thought since its beginning with Descartes. According to that general conception, which may be accurately termed the theory of Ideas,1 the only objects to which the mind or the conscious subject has direct and immediate access are its own mental states. Consciousness is conceived as a self-contained closed domain, a domain of interiority, completely severed from what may be called the domain of externality which, in turn, comprises whatever does not belong to the former domain. It is this separation between the domain of interiority and that of externality, This is the text of a lecture delivered in the Spring Semester of 1966 at Michigan State University in the “Arnold Isenberg Memorial Lecture Series.” It was subsequently published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXX, No. 3 (March, 1970), pp. 354–367. 1

In order to avoid confusion with the specific sense in which Hume uses the term “idea,” we are writing “Idea” (with a capital “I”) to denote the general sense which that term has with Descartes and Locke.


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between the res cogitans and the res extensa, which defines the Cartesian dualism. In the domain of interiority, events and occurrences of diverse nature take place; this domain comprises multifarious contents and data. Notwithstanding the differences among them, all these contents, happenings, events, and occurrences are on a par, insofar as they pertain to the domain of interiority. Hence, their belonging to this domain qualifies them as subjective and defines their status as psychological facts. Among these psychological subjective occurrences are some which have or claim objective reference (that is to say, which refer, or claim to refer, to entities other than mental states), occurrences through which a stone, a house, a triangle, another human being, and the like present themselves. It is the class of such subjective occurrences, as distinguished by the mentioned reference or the referential claim, that have traditionally been denoted as Ideas. It cannot be stressed too emphatically that, on this view, Ideas, notwithstanding their distinctive feature, are and remain subjective occurrences, psychological events, or mental states, to commerce with which the mind or consciousness is forever confined, among which alone, so to speak, the conscious subject moves. At this point, the principle underlying the theory of Ideas can be expressed in the form in which it has repeatedly been stated in the course of modern philosophy: the only direct and immediate objects of our knowledge are our own Ideas.2 2

The first to formulate this principle was, as far as I can see, Antoine Arnauld: “il est très vrai . . . que . . . ce sont nos idées que nous voyons immédiatement, et qui sont l’objet immédiate de notre pensée.” English translation: “it is most true . . . that it is our ideas that we see non-mediately, and that our ideas are the non-mediate object of our ´ Bréhier, Histoire de la philosophie, II, p. 219; [the text cited has thought,” quoted by E. been corrected after collating it with Arnauld’s original wording in his Des vrayes et fausses idées; cf. supra, “Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality in Historical Perspective,” p. [348] and n. 13.] Further formulations of the principle are found in J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, Chapter 1, § 1 (ed. J. N. Yolton, II, p. 133): “Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, has no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them”; D. Hume, Treatise, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 67: “nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas”; I. Kant, Kritk der reinen Vernunft, A, pp. 98 f.: “Unsere Vorstellungen mögen entspringen, woher sie wollen, . . . so gehören sie doch als Modifikationen des Gemüts zum inneren Sinn, und als solche sind alle unsere Erkentnisse zuletzt doch der formalen

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At once the question arises as to how Ideas as subjective occurrences in consciousness can mediate or establish, in any way whatever, contact with, or access to, trans-subjective or nonsubjective entities. How can psychological events ever have, or acquire, significance beyond being subjective mental states? The question can be expressed in a different and more general form. We have, or claim to have, knowledge of objects which pertain to the external world, be it knowledge in the sense of the common experience of perceptual objects in the everyday world, be it scientific knowledge concerning the objects of the external world in their “true” and “real” condition in the specific modern sense. The Cartesian term res extensa refers to objects as understood in the latter sense. In either case, our knowledge is arrived at through subjective processes which are its vehicle and its only one. Again we must ask: how can subjective processes which take place within the domain of interiority have, or even claim, reference to extramental, trans-subjective entities and events which, by definition, fall outside the domain of interiority and, for that reason, are called objective? Not only must the claim under discussion be justified, but its very possibility must, prior to such justification, be accounted for. It must be made intelligible that Ideas and other subjective occurrences and processes can, as they do, pretend to objective reference and cognitive significance. Our intention is not to pursue the discussion of this central problem of modern epistemology arising on the basis of Cartesian dualism in general terms. Rather we propose to concentrate on a special aspect of that problem which seems to us to be its fundamental aspect. Ideas, subjective processes, and occurrences of every kind and description are not only as they are experienced, but their being or existence is completely defined and totally exhausted by their being experienced. An Idea appears, endures for a certain length of time, and disappears. Once it has disappeared, it never can reappear again. To be sure, another Idea, highly similar to it, even perfectly like it, may emerge in its place. Still, the mere fact that one Idea has made its appearance prior to the other shows that we are dealing Bedingung des inneren Sinnes, nämlich der Zeit unterworfen.” Trans. N. K. Smith, p. 131: “Whatever the origin of our representations, . . . they must all, as modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense. All our knowledge is thus finally subject to time, the formal condition of inner sense.”

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with two Ideas, separated from one another by a shorter or longer interval of time; that is to say, we are dealing with different Ideas, whatever relation of similarity or likeness may obtain between them. In short, no Idea, or other mental state, can ever recur in strict identity. On the other hand, the objects to which we have access by means of Ideas present themselves as identical over and against the multiple occasions of our dealing with them. The books we see on the shelves are the same as those we saw yesterday, on numerous previous occasions, and which we expect to see again whenever we enter our room. Normally and as a rule, we do not reflect upon the identity of the objects with which we concern ourselves; we do not disengage their identity or make it explicit. Rather, we simply and implicitly accept the objects as identical; we take their identity for granted and avail ourselves of it in proceeding upon its unformulated acceptance, though we are at every moment free explicitly to formulate and to explicate that identity by an appropriate reflection. At any event, the following question arises: how can implicit or explicit consciousness of identical objects, or of the identity of objects, ever be conveyed by Ideas, if the latter, as just mentioned, merely succeed one another, without any of them ever recurring? If, as Locke maintains, “the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them . . .,”3 how, in the absence of identical Ideas, can the mind come to know the things as identical? It is the historical merit of Hume to have formulated the problem under discussion in the most radical and sharpest terms. Differing from Locke, but in agreement with Berkeley, Hume does not admit the distinction between objects and perceptions, especially impressions within the meaning of his definition of this term. Unlike Locke, he does not presuppose the independent existence of objects as defined by the “primary qualities,” in contradistinction to Ideas (in the Lockean sense) by means of which the mind enters into contact with those objects. According to Hume, [t]hose very sensations, which enter by the eye or ear, are . . . the true objects . . . there is only a single existence, which I shall call indifferently object or perception, . . . understanding by both of them what any common man means by a hat, or shoe, or stone, or any other impression, conveyed to him by his senses.4 3 4

J. Locke, op. cit., Book IV, Chapter 4, § 3, ed. J. N. Yolton, II, p. 167. D. Hume, Treatise, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, p. 202.


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Impressions are involved in the aforementioned incessant temporal flux. They are “internal and perishing existences,”5 which is to say that, once an impression has disappeared, it never recurs again. Now we can formulate our problem. We believe ourselves to be in the presence of identical objects if, while staying in our room, we alternately open and close our eyes, or, if, after having left our room, we return to it, whereas the perceptions or impressions, which are given before or after either interruption, differ from one another, it being “a false opinion that any of our objects, or perceptions, are identically the same after an interruption.”6 To account for the origin of the belief in the identity of objects, Hume resorts to the high degree of similarity between successive perceptions.7 Because of that similarity, the mind, in passing from one perception to the next, finds itself in the same, or nearly the same, disposition in which it was when, without an interruption or variation, it surveyed an object or an enduring perception.8 The belief in the identity of the object is due to the imagination. Hume goes so far as to consider that belief as a fiction which the imagination produces in making us oblivious of the interruptions of the perceptions. Consequently, the imagination can work, and the belief in question can be entertained, as long, but only as long, as our obliviousness lasts. As soon as we remember those interruptions and become aware of the perceptions as being multiple and diverse, the belief under discussion is shaken, and we become perplexed. What is crucial in Hume’s account is not so much the ascription of the belief in the identity of the object to the imagination, or his characterization of this belief as a fiction, or even, finally, the fact that the operation of the imagination is impeded. Rather, we submit, the critique must focus on the very terms in which Hume states his problem and conceives his theory. According to Hume, “the notion of the identity of resembling perceptions, and the interruption of their appearance,”9 are two opposite 5

Ibid., p. 194; cf. also p. 253: “ The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations . . . . The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind.” 6 Ibid., p. 209. 7 For the following, cf. ibid., pp. 201 ff. 8 For the sake of simplicity, we disregard the complicating problems involved in the experience of a perception as enduring in time. 9 D. Hume, op. cit., p. 206.

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and contradictory principles.10 Their conflict cannot be resolved unless one principle is “sacrificed” to the other. As just mentioned, the operation of the imagination consists in making us oblivious of the interruptedness of our multiple perceptions, or, as Hume expresses it himself, “we disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely.”11 To repeat it again, the point at issue is not that the “disguise,” “removal,” and “sacrifice” is infeasible, but rather that the very formulation of the problem proves to be at variance with the phenomenal state of affairs, as can be shown by the simple example previously mentioned. When, while seated in our room, we close and open our eyes, we are free to ascertain that the books we are perceiving now are taken by us to be identically the same as those which we perceived a moment ago (before closing our eyes), a long time ago (before we had left the room), and which we expect to perceive as identically the same whenever, while staying in our room, we look in the appropriate direction. The identity of the object perceived and the multiplicity of the acts of perceiving the object—acts located at different moments of time and, hence, separated from each other by temporal intervals—are so far from being principles contradictory to, and exclusive of, one another, as Hume’s theory has them, that, on the contrary, in becoming explicitly aware of the identity of the object, we, by the same token, also become explicitly aware of the multiplicity and diversity of the acts of perception. The explicit disclosure of the object perceived is not only accompanied by, but even requires the explicit awareness of, the acts of perception as multiple, since the identity of the object perceived cannot be ascertained and rendered explicit except in opposition, therefore with reference, to the multiple occasions of perceiving it as identical. It is not in an arbitrary way or by mere chance that Hume was led to formulate his problem in these terms. The logic of his system motivated, and even necessitated, that formulation. Therefore, the critique derived from confronting his theory with the phenomenal state of affairs does not concern a mere detail of his theory, but its very foundation. Beyond this, it concerns the theory of Ideas itself which Hume has presented in its 10 11

Cf. ibid., pp. 206 f. Ibid., p. 199.


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most consistently developed and elaborated form. In fact, if Ideas (in the sense of Locke) or perceptions (in Hume’s parlance) are the only objects which are directly and immediately given, and if, furthermore, these Ideas or perceptions are involved in an incessant temporal flux and variation, it is utterly unintelligible that the consciousness of identical items and, in the case of explication, the consciousness of the identity of those items can arise. The analysis of Hume’s theory brings to the fore the fundamental phenomenon which must have its place in every theory of consciousness, namely, the fact that, through multiple acts, the same object can, and does, present itself, and that its identity can be disclosed and rendered explicit. The importance of the phenomenon in question was clearly seen by William James who formulated it, under the heading of the “the principle of constancy in the mind’s meanings,” as follows: “[t]he same matters can be thought of in successive portions of the mental stream, and some of these portions can know that they mean the same matters which the previous portions meant.”12 However, it is not sufficient simply to establish that principle, even while recognizing it as “the very keel and backbone of thinking,”13 as “the most important of all the features of our mental structure.”14 James could content himself with proceeding in this way because, writing as a psychologist, he deliberately abstained from entering into any problem concerning the possibility of knowledge. From the point of view of psychology as a positive science, knowledge can, and even must be, admitted and taken for granted as an “ultimate relation” between the “mind knowing” and “the thing known,” two “irreducible” elements between which a “thoroughgoing dualism” and a “preestablished harmony” obtain.15 If, however, the problem of the possibility of knowledge is raised, as it must be within a philosophical context, and even within that of a radicalized psychology, the “principle of constancy in the mind’s meanings” cannot be stated alone, but must be inserted into a general theory of consciousness. In view of the failure of Hume’s endeavors, such an insertion cannot mean reducing the consciousness of identity to 12 13 14 15

W. James, The Principles of Psychology, I, p. 459. Ibid. Ibid., p. 460. Ibid., pp. 216 ff.

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something else, or accounting for it in terms of something else. On the contrary, the fact that the same object presents itself as identical through multiple acts must be made the cornerstone of the theory of consciousness, which is to say that the theory must start from it and throughout remain centered upon it. Finally, the fact in question cannot be simply stated and postulated, as James may be said to have done. Rather it must be disengaged and disclosed through a descriptive analysis of acts of consciousness. With these remarks we have arrived at the threshold of Husserl’s theory of intentionality or, which comes down to the same thing, his phenomenology. Within the limits of the present paper, there can be no question of presenting the theory of intentionality in its entirety, not to speak of all its ramifications.16 We shall not only limit ourselves in the main to perceptual consciousness, but, even within these limits, we must further confine ourselves to emphasizing a certain aspect which, to be sure, seems to us to have paramount importance for both the theory of perceptual consciousness and the theory of intentionality in general. Let us return to our example. Seated in our room and alternately opening and closing our eyes, we see on the shelf a book which we perceive to be the same entity presenting itself on different occasions, i.e., through multiple acts of perception, and we may render its identity explicit. At this point a higher degree of preciseness is called for. As it stands on the shelf, the book “turns its back to us;” we see it from its back; furthermore, we perceive it at eye level; it occupies a central position in our field of vision. If we turn our head, the book is relegated from its central to a rather lateral position, or it might be placed on a higher or lower shelf. By motions on our part, namely, by placing ourselves at different points of observation in our room, the spatial orientation in which we perceive the book is changed. Finally, the book may lie on the table, so that we see it from some other side than its back. We may see and touch it at the same time; we may open it, move it, e.g., lift it so as to perceive it as heavy or light; we may act upon it in many other ways. Throughout, we take 16

The notion of intentionality plays an important role in all of Husserl’s writings. Q. Lauer in his Phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955) has studied the development of the theory of intentionality through four works which appeared in Husserl’s lifetime.


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the book with which we are dealing as one and the same thing presenting itself in various manners. As the analysis of this example shows, every perceivable thing appears as identical through various and diverse acts of perception, such that, as the acts of perception succeed one another, the selfsame thing presents itself under varying aspects, from different sides, in various orientations. Insofar as through any given perception the object appears under a certain aspect rather than a different one, every particular perception is essentially one-sided, or, to express it in Husserl’s terms, through every particular act of perception, the thing perceived presents it self by way of a one-sided adumbration.17 Thus we ascertain an opposition between the perceived thing as an identical unity and the multiple perceptions, which differ from one another on account of the fact that the perceived thing presents itself under various aspects and in varying orientations. More precisely, it is an opposition between the identical thing as susceptible of appearing in multiple adumbrational presentations, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those adumbrational presentations themselves, all differing from one another, in which the thing appears through successive perceptions. The opposition just brought out must be distinguished from that which we emphasized in our critical analysis of Hume’s theory. Suppose the thing perceived to be immobile and suppose, further, that we remain at our point of observation or, after having been absent from some time, that we return to it so as to resume our observing the thing from the same standpoint. We experience multiple perceptions, e.g., a new perception at every reopening of our eyes. Through all of these perceptions, not only does the same thing present itself, but it also appears under the same aspect, from the same side, in the same orientation, and so on. Here the opposition is between the thing as appearing in a particular one-sided adumbrational presentation, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the multiple perceptions through which the thing thus appears, the perceptions being, of course, psychological events which take place at a certain moment of time and differ from one another at least as to the point of time in which each of them occurs. In the case of the opposition mentioned before, i.e., that between the perceived thing as such and the multiple perceptions through which the thing appears in varying manners 17

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 73 ff. and also CM, § 17.

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of adumbrational presentation, the perceptions involved are also psychological events differing from one another as to their places in phenomenal time. In addition to that difference as to temporal location, there is, however, a further difference which concerns what may provisionally be called the “content” of the perceptions, insofar as the thing in question is perceived through them from different sides and in varying perspectives, whereas, in the case of the opposition now under consideration, the perceptions agree in “content,” have the same “content,” and only differ with regard to their places in phenomenal time. By distinguishing the two oppositions, we have two dimensions of problems which arise for the phenomenological theory of perception, as well as for the theory of intentionality in general. Lack of space forbidding, we cannot deal with the problems of both dimensions, but must confine ourselves to those which pertain to the more fundamental of the two dimensions. These are the problems related to the fact that multiple perceptions may, and do, have the same “content.” First of all, the term “content” of a perception, though only provisionally used, requires some specification. By this term we mean the object as perceived, that is to say, the perceived object such as—but only and exactly as—it presents itself through the given perception, or, what amounts to the same, the perceived object as appearing in that particular manner of one-sided adumbrational presentation in which it actually appears through the perception in question. The object as perceived, or the “content” of a perception, must be approached in a strictly descriptive orientation. Nothing must be attributed to, or foisted onto, it which is not actually exhibited through the particular perception under discussion. As a consequence, the object as perceived must not be mistaken for the object per se, the object as it is, i.e., the real material thing. The latter can present itself in various manners of adumbrational appearance, while the term “object-as-perceived” refers to one particular adumbrational presentation to the exclusion of others. The real material thing possesses properties which do not fall under the present perception, though (in the case of a familiar thing) they have displayed themselves through previous perceptions, such that the present perception includes references to them, for the fact that the properties of a thing are being referred to, however, is not the same as their directly appearing in immediate perception. Finally, the material thing may possess unknown properties, that is to say, properties


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which thus far have not been perceived, but which, under appropriate conditions, are accessible to direct perceptual experience.18 On the other hand, the object as perceived, the “content” of a perception, which in our analysis of Hume’s theory proved to be different from the act of perception, must not be construed as a part, component, element, or constituent of the act.19 Were it a part or constituent of the act, it would obviously be involved in the same temporal change and flux as the act as a whole whose part it is20 ; that is to say, the problem of the consciousness of identity, which Hume’s theory proved unable to account for, would recur unsolved. It follows that the term “content” of a perception refers to an entity sui generis which cannot be classified as a psychological event or as a real material thing. Though the object as perceived is no part or constituent of the act of perception, it is most closely and intimately connected with the act. By virtue of its “content,” a perception is not only a perception of a certain thing (e.g., a house rather than a tree), but also that determinate and well specified perception which it actually is, that is to say, a perception through which the house presents itself under this aspect, from this side, and not in a different (though equally possible) manner of adumbrational appearance.21 For that reason, Husserl calls the object as perceived—to be taken exactly as it appears through a given perception—the “perceptual sense” (Wahrnehmungssinn) or perceptual noema,22 a term which henceforth [will] replace that of “content.” The notion of the noema admits of, and requires, generalization beyond the sphere of perceptual consciousness. I remember my friend under the aspect of the opinions he entertained in our conversation yesterday, rather than under the aspect of his professional activity or his family life. Similarly, we can think of Shakespeare as the author of “Hamlet” or of the “Sonnets,” or else as the director of the Globe Theater, and the like. Quite in general, to every act of consciousness—also denoted as noesis—corresponds a noema, namely, an object as intended and presentCf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 89. Cf. supra, A. Gurwitsch, An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 3, § 6. 20 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 41, 88, and 97 and Phänomenologische Psychologie, § 34. 21 Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, Inv. 1, pp. 415 ff.; see also M. Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology, Chapter 12, B, § 9. 22 E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 182 f. 18 19

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ing itself under a certain aspect.23 Again, we encounter the two oppositions mentioned before: on the one hand, the opposition between an identical noema and multiple noeses (as when, on different occasions, we think of Shakespeare as the author of “Hamlet”); on the other hand, the opposition between Shakespeare, the real historical person, who was born in 1563 and died in 1616, and Shakespeare intended one time as the author of “Hamlet,” another time as the author of “King Lear,” still another time as the director of the Globe Theater, and so on.24 Noemata, as we have seen, are neither psychological events nor material things; rather they are identical and identifiable ideal entities, devoid of spatiality and temporality, and, of course, also of causality, which can be shown— as we have done elsewhere25 —to have the same status as meanings. As usually understood, the term “meaning” is related to verbal or, more generally, symbolic expressions. However, the term can be so generalized as to become synonymous with the term “sense” or noema. If it is thus generalized, the term “meaning” denotes an object or state of affairs of any kind, as the object or state of affairs is meant and intended through a certain act of consciousness, perceptual or other, as the object or state of affairs presents itself to, and stands before, the experiencing subject’s mind. Meanings in the narrower and proper sense, equivalent to signification, prove to form a special class of noemata or meanings in the wider sense. The intentionality of consciousness denotes precisely the correspondence between acts as temporal psychological events and noemata as ideal atemporal entities. Hume is undoubtedly right in emphasizing the incessant temporal change and flux in which consciousness is involved. Temporality is an essential law of consciousness, but it is not its only law. The interpretation of acts of consciousness as temporal events, while correct, is incomplete, insofar as these events are essentially correlated with unities of sense and meaning, in a word, noemata. We thus arrive at the conception of consciousness as a correlation between items pertaining to two entirely different planes: on the one hand, the plane of temporal psycho23

Concerning the notions of noesis and noema in the most general sense, cf. ibid., Part III, Chapter 3. 24 Cf. ibid., pp. 207 f. 25 Cf. The Field of Consciousness, Part III, § 5 b.


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logical events; on the other hand, that of ideal, i.e., atemporal, meanings in the wider sense.26 More precisely, it is a many-to-one correlation, because, to an indefinite multiplicity of acts or noeses, there may, and does, correspond an identical noema. Differently expressed, consciousness proves to be indissolubly—for essential reasons—connected with sense and meaning. To every act of consciousness, there corresponds, though it is not included in it as a real part or ingredient, an intentional or noematic correlate, an intentional object defined as the object or state of affairs which is intended, but taken exactly and only as it is intended. Because consciousness is a noetico-noematic correlation, the identity of the noema—as we have seen in our discussion of Hume’s theory—cannot be explicitly disclosed, unless the acts or noeses are at the same time rendered explicit in their temporality. Conversely (as we have shown elsewhere),27 no account of the temporality, especially the duration, of an act of consciousness is possible, except with reference to the corresponding identical atemporal noema. In the case of the duration of an act of consciousness, the atemporality of the noema means that the latter is not affected by the transformation which the act undergoes when it first passes from the phase of the “actual now” into a retentional phase (“having just been an actual now”) and then progressively recedes into a more remote past, [i.e.,] remoteness with respect to the phase which at any given moment has the temporal character of the “actual now.”28 At this stage of the discussion, the advance of Husserl’s theory of intentionality over that of Brentano can be clearly stated. According 26

We first presented the conception of consciousness as a noetico-noematic correlation in our article, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. M. Farber (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1944), pp. 65–83 (in SPP, pp. 139–156.) 27 Cf. ibid., pp. 80 f. (in SPP, pp. 152 ff.) and The Field of Consciousness, pp. pt., § 60 ff. 28 For the phenomenological account of duration, cf. E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, Husserliana, X, §§ 8 ff. (trans., pp. 25 ff.) and Erfahrung und Urteil, § 23. Both A. Schutz in his “William James’ Concept of the Stream of Thought Phenomenologically Interpreted” (Philosophy and Penomenological Research, I (1941) and Collected Papers, III, pp.1–14) and the present writer’s “William James’s Theory of the ‘Transitive Parts’ of the Stream of Consciousness” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, III {1943}, pp. 451 ff. and SPP, pp. 336 ff.) have pointed out the agreement between Husserl and James concerning the phenomenon in question.

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to Brentano, all psychic phenomena, and only psychic phenomena, are characterized by the “intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object.”29 “Inexistence” is here meant to be understood in the Latin sense of inexistentia, “existence within.” Brentano also speaks, though somehow hesitatingly, of a “reference to a content, direction toward an object,” or “immanent objectivity” (immanente Gegenständlichkeit).30 Each psychic phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although . . . not . . . always in the same way. In presentation (Vorstellung) something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love something is loved, in hate something is hated, in desire something is desired, and so on.31

If the “intentional object” is said to be included or contained within the act or psychic phenomenon, that is to say, to form a real part of it, or if the relation or directedness to an object is conceived of as a phenomenal feature of the act, the same problem recurs which arose in our analysis and criticism of Hume’s theory. Any phenomenal feature of an act, as well as any part which is contained or included in the act as one of its constituents, shares the temporal fate of the act as a whole. Landgrebe32 has pointed out that, on the grounds of Brentano’s theory, it is hard to see how the intentional directedness of an act of consciousness can be alike, or equal, that of another act, descriptively different from the first. Likeness and equality require a point of reference with respect to which they obtain. While such a point of reference is lacking in Brentano’s theory, Husserl’s theory provides it with the concept of the noema. Two or more descriptively different acts agree in their intentional directedness if, and only if, the same noema corresponds to all of them. Its conception as a noetico-noematic correlation reveals the intrinsic duality of consciousness. This duality as intrinsic is to take the place of the Cartesian dualism which defines consciousness as a closed and F. Brentano, Psychologie vom emprischen Standpunkt, Book II, Chapter 1, § 5 (trans., p. 88; cf. supra, n. 19.) 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Cf. L. Landgrebe, “Husserls Phänomenologie und die Motive zu ihrer Umbildung,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, I (1939), p. 281. Cf. supra, “Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality in Historical Perspective,” n. 39. 29


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self-contained domain, severed from whatever else there is (in the case of Descartes himself, [from] the external world conceived as mere extendedness.) Let us briefly survey a few consequences which follow from the new conception of consciousness. First of all, the theory of Ideas must be relinquished. Considering that every act of consciousness is essentially and indissolubly connected, because correlated, with a noema, an entity of sense and meaning, it can no longer be maintained that the only direct and immediate objects of the mind are its own states, especially what has been called Ideas, understood as occurrences in the mind and psychological events. On the contrary, our direct and immediate objects are the very things, persons, or states of affairs of diverse descriptions with which we are dealing, and which, through acts of consciousness, appear to us in certain manners of presentation—as they are intended and meant— and also in specific modes of consciousness, like the modes of perception, memory, symbolic representation, and so on. Every act of consciousness being essentially related to something other than itself which, apart from the case of acts of reflection, has a status different from that of a psychological occurrence, it follows that consciousness cannot be considered as a domain of interiority, that is to say, as self-contained and closed. Of particular interest and importance are these consequences as they concern perceptual consciousness. As emphasized before, through an act of perception, the thing perceived appears in a certain manner of adumbrational presentation. Still, it is the thing itself which appears in bodily presence, though it presents itself one-sidedly only. A perceptual noema is not a representative of the thing perceived, or an intermediary of some sort between the perceiving subject and the thing perceived; rather it is the very perceived thing itself as appearing under a certain aspect and from a certain side.33 In other words, by means of perceptual experience, we are in direct contact with, and have immediate access to, the things and the perceptual world at large. We are “at” the world. This result should be seen as deriving from Husserl’s theory of intentionality, rather than being ascribed to subsequent developments of existentialist philosophy. To be sure, there remain the problems concerning the transition from the 33

Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 43.

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particular perceptual noema to the perceived real thing which, through the given perception, appears in a certain manner of adumbrational presentation, and, in thus appearing, also appears as capable of presenting itself from other sides and under different aspects. However, these problems, which are of some complexity, lie outside the scope of the present discussion.

ESSAY V

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION: PERCEPTUAL IMPLICATIONS

My purpose is to advance the phenomenological theory of perception by filling what appears to be a gap in the classical, that is, Husserlian form of the theory. To this end, the classical phenomenological theory of perception will be presented briefly to the extent required to bring out the still unanswered problems. A solution to the problem in terms of Gestalt theory will be proposed. Finally, we shall consider a consequence which the proposed solution has for Husserl’s theory of sedimentation and for his idea of a genetic phenomenology in general. §I. The Classical Theory The fundamental phenomenon which the phenomenological theory of perception must consider first, and take as its point of departure, is that of perceptual adumbration. By this we mean the essential onesidedness of every particular perception of a material thing. For instance, we stand before a building and look at it from a certain point of observation. Accordingly, the perceived building presents itself from one determinate side, say, its front side, and not from a different one; it appears as near, as located straight before us, as seen at street level, and so on. It is its relatedness to a point of observation that gives the particular perception the character of one-sidedness and, in that sense, incompleteness. Such incompleteness, however, is not ascertained from a point of view above or beyond, or, in any sense whatever, outside the perception in question. On the contrary, its incompleteness or one-sidedness denotes an immanent and inherent phenomenal feature of that very perception. For a particular This article was published in An Invitation to Phenomenology, ed. J. M. Edie (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965), pp. 17–29.


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perception to be experienced as incomplete, it must be experienced as in need, or at least as susceptible, of being complemented. In its being experienced as incomplete or one-sided, the given perception refers to further perceptions to be realized from different points of observation, perceptions through which the self-same thing—the building—will appear, but under different aspects, in different orientations, in varying manners of adumbrational presentation. Speaking noetically (that is, in terms of acts rather than noemata), the particular perception is experienced as a phase of a process which, in addition to that perception, comprises further perceptions, namely, those through which the same thing presents itself, although under a variety of aspects. The experienced incompleteness of a particular perception thus proves tantamount to its experienced insertion into one sustained process and its reference to further phases of that process. From the noematic point of view, we must speak of references of the present perceptual appearance or adumbrational presentation (that is, the building offering itself under a certain aspect and in a certain orientation) to further appearances and presentations. Just as the present act of perception is experienced as a phase of a process, so the noema corresponding to that act presents itself as a member of a noematic system. Perceptual experience never exhausts itself in single acts, but can be understood only in terms of processes which, incidentally, are open, i.e., capable of indefinite continuation. It must be stressed that even a static phenomenological analysis— one which does not consider the perceptual process in its unfolding and development, but rather confines itself to the study of a single perception—must discover the process-character of perceptual experience, insofar as its quality as a phase, hence its reference to further phases, belongs among the phenomenal features of every single perception. In all his writings dealing with phenomenological problems of perception (Ideen, I ; Cartesianische Meditationen; Erfahrung und Urteil; and Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie), Husserl almost invariably expresses in noetic terms the process-character of perceptual experience as it is meant here, that is, as ascertainable by a static analysis. To recall only a few of his formulations: through every act of perception more is intended than merely that which is given in direct sense-experience; every act surpasses and overreaches itself in pointing to further acts by which it is to be

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complemented.1 Occasionally, Husserl touches upon the noematic aspect of the phenomenon, as when he writes that the seen side of a thing can appear as its side only because of the unseen sides which are anticipated as determining the sense of that which is seen.2 This last remark shows the importance of treating the noematic aspect in a systematic fashion. While perceiving the building from its front side, let us suppose that all references to the other sides are eliminated altogether. In that case, our experience would no longer be the perception of a building presenting itself from its front side and appearing, in this very presentation, as perceivable from other sides as well. Our perception would be akin to that of a photograph of the building, of a wing of some sort, and the like. By virtue of the references in question, which may be more or less vague and indistinct, the perceptual noema which corresponds to the present perception—the building as appearing in the given manner of adumbrational presentation—is shaped into that which it actually is. Because of their role in determining and shaping the perceptual noema, the references under discussion must be considered as noematic components and constituents. And the task arises of defining the place which they hold within the whole of the noematic structure. Since, furthermore, the references are to the unseen sides of the building, to aspects under which it might, but does not at the moment, present itself, they prove to be implicit noematic components, in contradistinction to the explicit ones comprising whatever is actually given in direct sense-experience. In speaking of perceptual implications, we wish to indicate components and constituents which, though essential to the noematic structure, are not yet unfolded, unraveled, and articulated, and which contribute to that structure in, so to speak, a silent way. We stated before that, due to the references to further noemata, the noema under discussion acquires the sense and the character of a member of a noematic system. This means that those references are not to any noemata whatever, but only to those which meet a certain condition. Cf. E. Husserl, CM §20, pp. 83–84 (46) and Erfahrung und Urteil, pp. 26 ff. Cf. E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, § 8, p. 31: “die gesehene Seite ist nur Seite, sofern sie ungesehene Seiten hat, die als solche sinnbestimmend antizipiert sind.” Trans., p. 35: “the side that is seen is a side only insofar as it has sides which are not seen, which are anticipated and as such determine the sense.”

1 2

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To formulate that condition, let us consider our example again. We perceive the building, say, from its front side, and it appears as a residential building. Let us assume that we are not familiar with the building, neither with its architectural form nor with the arrangement of its interior. Hence, the high degree of vagueness belonging to the references which, as we saw, cannot be absent altogether, as long as what we perceive presents itself as a residential building. Noematically speaking, the aspects under which the building will appear when viewed from different standpoints, both outside and inside, will be indeterminate in nearly all their details. Still, inasmuch as our perception is of a residential building, the noemata referred to must be specified as to style and type, so as to be possible perceptual appearances of a building of that kind. Their indeterminateness notwithstanding, the aspects under which the building will appear, when perceived from varying points of view, must agree both with each other and with the aspect under which it actually offers itself through the present perception. The condition in question can be formulated as that of accordance, congruity, and conformance among all the noemata concerned. More is meant by this than merely absence of contradictions, inconsistencies, and incongruities. The noemata, not perceptually actualized at present but referred to, must continue and complement one another, and thus form a system, coherent in itself, into which the noema corresponding to the present act of perception is also inserted. Quite concretely expressed, the present perceptual appearance of the building refers to possible further appearances which, however indeterminate in every other respect, are specified, insofar as they are in line, and in keeping with, the former appearance, continue and complement it, and are, in turn, complemented and continued by it. It is in this sense that the experience of the membership of the perceptual noema under consideration in the noematic system must be understood. Our task is then to lay bare that feature within the structure of the perceptual noema through which the experienced membership finds its phenomenal expression, and for which the term “references” as used thus far might serve as an abbreviation. §II. Some Gestalt Structures At this point we return to Gestalt theory. To be sure, the utilization of concepts and results due to Gestalt theory for phenomenological purposes


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requires a justification which cannot be given here. Let us mention that in several writings we have attempted to provide such a justification by showing that the abandonment of the constancy hypothesis by Gestalt theory can be interpreted as an incipient phenomenological reduction and that, as a consequence, the descriptive findings and analyses of Gestalt theory acquire noematic significance and relevance.3 Gestalt theory has called attention to certain organizational structures which we have described as Gestalt-contexture, functional significance, and Gestalt-coherence.4 A Gestalt-contexture consists of a plurality of constituents, each one of which is qualified and made to be what it is by its relation to, and significance for, the other constituents. Let us consider a melody, which is probably the simplest example of Gestaltcontexture. Each of its notes has a certain musical function and significance within the melodic contexture; it has its functional significance with regard to the other notes of the melody. When, objectively speaking, an identical note appears in different melodies, it can obviously not have the same functional significance in all of them. The note, because of its being qualified by its functional significance, can by no means preserve its functional identity when it is made to belong to different melodic contextures. Differently expressed, no constituent of a Gestalt-contexture is determined by properties which it has in its own right, which belong to it per se, regardless of the contexture into which it is inserted, i.e., of the other constituents of that very contexture. As each note of the melody has its functional significance with regard to the other notes, and may in this sense be said to derive it from them, so it confers, in turn, their functional significances on the other notes. It is this strict reciprocity between the constituents, in their mutually determining and qualifying each other, that is denoted by the term Gestalt-coherence as descriptive of that specific kind of structural organization. On account of this mutuality, each constituent realizes at its place or locus the Gestalt-contexture to which it belongs. In each of its notes the melody is present as a whole. One may speak of 3

Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” Chapter 1, in Psychologische Forschung, XII (1929) in SPP, pp. 201 ff. and The Field of Consciousness, Part III, § 4. 4 Cf. A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, Part II.

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each constituent containing the whole contexture and, hence, the other constituents. However, we must not understand this manner of speaking in a spatial sense, as though the constituent under consideration were a kind of receptacle in which other constituents are included. On the contrary, we must take this manner of speaking as a metaphor expressing the mutual qualification and indetermination5 of the constituents by one another. As a consequence, none of them can actually be what it is in a given case, unless it functions in a specific manner as a member of a contexture. Finally, if a considerable part of the melody has already been played, so that its general trend is established, a condition is imposed upon its continuation. Though perhaps not determined in an entirely univocal manner, the continuation of the melody must be in conformity with the trend as established thus far. Otherwise, the melody appears as marred; its musical logic is violated. The phenomenon of perceptual implications can easily be accounted for noematically by means of an analysis of the organizational structure of the perceptual noema in Gestalt-theoretical terms. We interpret the perceptual noema, considered in a static analysis, as a Gestalt-contexture whose constituents are what is given in direct sense-experience, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, other perceptual noemata merely referred to, i.e., aspects under which the building may, but does not at the present moment, appear in perceptual experience. That which is given in direct sense-experience is essentially determined, qualified, and made to be what it is by the functional significance which it has with regard to other possible adumbrational presentations of the building. The term “reference” denotes in an abbreviated way this very qualification and determination. We spoke of the particular noema as a member of a noematic system. Now we see that its membership in that system is not an accidental, accessory, or supervenient fact; rather, it is by its membership in the noematic system that the particular noema under discussion is made to be what it is. In this sense, the noematic system can be said to be present or contained in each of its members, all of which owe their individual qualification to their membership in the system. Our interpretation conforms perfectly 5

[In view of what precedes and follows this word, one may understand it as meaning “relative indetermination.”]


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with the phenomenal findings. In perceiving the building from a certain standpoint, we do not perceive a side or aspect of the building, but, on the contrary, we perceive the building itself, and as such, appearing from a certain side and under a certain aspect. In other words, it is the noematic system as a whole that presents itself from the vantage point of one of its members. If we walk around the building to perceive it from different points of view, we are conscious of the identity of the building as appearing in varying manners of adumbrational presentation. The same noematic system successively unfolds itself from the vantage points of its several members. In the case of comparative unfamiliarity with the building, the aspects under which it may, but does not now, present itself, though they contribute toward shaping the perceptual noema in question, are highly and perhaps totally undetermined as to their details and yet delineated as to style and type, insofar as they are subject to the condition of congruity and conformance. This again agrees with what we saw concerning conditions imposed upon the harmonious continuation of a Gestalt-contexture whose general trend is to some extent established. Of course, the determinations of the general trend admits of degrees; accordingly, the conditions imposed upon the continuation may be more or less specified. Perceptual implications pose a problem of perceptual organization, more specifically of the internal organization of the noematic nucleus. For this reason, they lend themselves to treatment in terms of Gestalt theory, which is essentially a theory of organization. Husserl, who has not concerned himself with problems of organization of this kind, treats the phenomenon in question under the heading of “horizon,” or, more correctly, “inner horizon.”6 (In contradistinction to the “inner horizon,” the “outer horizon” comprises, in the case of our example, the street on which our building is located with its trees and other buildings, the people walking in the street, the cars passing by, and the like.) Noetically speaking, the term “horizon” refers to the fact that an act of perception in the narrower sense (i.e., an act through which that which presents itself is given in genuine sense-experience) is surrounded by other acts relating to aspects under which the building is remembered to have appeared, as well as to those under which it is anticipated to appear under certain 6

Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 19 and, especially, Erfahrung und Urteil, § 8.

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conditions, e.g., by placing oneself at the appropriate point of observation. In thus distinguishing several acts, it must be stressed that they do not simply occur together or accompany each other; rather, they pervade, permeate, and most intimately interweave with one another so as to compose one single act, the act of perception in the wider sense. Rather than speaking of different acts, one should distinguish act-components. From the noematic point of view, the appropriateness of the term “inner horizon” appears still more questionable. The term suggests that, in experiencing an act of perception, images of other aspects under which the thing may appear arise along with the aspect given in genuine senseexperience under which it actually appears. Such images may arise in the course of an endeavor to make a perception, and the corresponding noema, explicit. However, the qualification of that which is given in genuine sense-experience by noematic constituents not given in this privileged mode does not depend upon the latter being disengaged and rendered explicit by what may be called a process of noematic reflection. Such qualification is the general law of all perceptual experience, regardless of whether it is subjected to reflective analysis. In every act of perception, noematic components not given in genuine sense-experience are effective in shaping and molding the perceptual noema, though as a rule they are not discriminated from each other. For this very reason, we refer to them as perceptual implications. In several writings we have used the term “inner horizon,” but we now suspect that this term might conceal the character of the problem in question as a problem of organization. §III. Sedimentation and Genetic Phenomenology Notwithstanding a low degree of familiarity, if the perceived building in our example appears as a residential building, this is owing to our having perceived buildings of a certain type in the past, so that the object now encountered presents itself in the light of past experience. In other words, the phenomenon of perceptual implication is closely related to the influence which past experience has upon present perception. The existence of such influence is an undeniable and never denied fact; the only question is how it is to be understood and explained. Thus we are led to what is called in psychology the problem of learning or acquisition


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by experience. For Husserl, the problem arises within the context of genetic phenomenology upon which he insisted especially in his later years. We can do here no more than briefly consider the concept of sedimentation fundamental to Husserl’s theory. By sedimentation, he means that acquisitions made in the course of experience are precipitated upon some phenomenal data considered as basic, so that the resulting structure consists of a certain number of layers superimposed upon one another. According to Husserl’s theory, it is always possible to remove layers, especially the later or higher ones, or in some way or other to undo the process of sedimentation. Upon this possibility depends the phenomenological study of sedimentation, either in general or in a particular case. It is in fact necessary for such a study to consider first the phenomenal stratum accepted as fundamental, and then to pursue the process through which new layers of sense and meaning accrue to it. Let us illustrate Husserl’s notion with an example. For us, living in the twentieth century, the conception of the world is decisively determined by a historical event, namely, the rise and development of modern science.7 To be sure, objects do not present themselves in our perceptual experience as they are described by modern science. We do not perceive electrons, protons, and other scientific constructs. On the other hand, the objects encountered in perceptual experience exhibit chromatic and other qualities as properties which they possess in their own right, and which, in our everyday experience, we do not take for merely subjective data. Still, the world as given in perceptual experience is interpreted by us as accessible to exact determination by means of scientific procedures such as idealization, formalization, and mathematization. Even if we are not professional physicists and have only very scanty ideas about the theories accepted or merely discussed in contemporary science, it is for us, as a consequence of having grown up in the modern world, a matter of course that all things and events lend themselves to scientific explanation. Here we have an indubitable case of sedimentation within the meaning of Husserl’s definition: the process in the course of which the world has acquired the sense of being accessible to scientific interpretation lays itself open to historical study. Our example shows further that sedimentation is 7

Cf. E. Husserl, Krisis, §§ 18 ff. and Erfahrung und Urteil, § 10.

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at the basis of traditionality. The reality and power of tradition appear in the very difficulty one encounters in trying to convince contemporaries that the determinability of the world by the procedures and methods of modern science is not a matter of course which goes without saying, but the result of a historical process sedimented upon the world as given in everyday perceptual experience. On the other hand, the very fact that we can attempt to go back to the world of direct and immediate perceptual experience and to restore this world in its right, and that this has successively, even though partially, been accomplished by Husserl as well as other writers, exemplifies the other aspect of sedimentation, namely, the possibility of undoing it. As this example shows, there are acquisitions to which Husserl’s theory undoubtedly applies. The question is, however, whether all acquisitions due to experience are of the same sort, and whether the notion of sedimentation can account for all of them. In conformity with the program of genetic phenomenology, we do not raise that question with regard to particular perceptual implications, but formulate it in rather general terms. In two books that deserve to be considered as classic, Piaget has studied the gradual growth of “sensori-motor intelligence” in the human infant and, correspondingly, the development of the world of the child.8 In the early phases of its life, the child finds itself in what Piaget calls an egocentric or even “solipsistic” universe, that is, in a universe centered upon its ego, which, however, is not aware of itself. This universe does not contain “objects” in any proper sense, but consists of what Piaget describes as “tableaux” (scenes or pictures) devoid of all solidity, permanency, and substantiality, and which are, so to speak, at the mercy of the activity of the subject. At the end of the second year, the child finds itself confronted with an objectified world whose contents have become autonomous, insofar as they stand to each other in spatial, temporal, and causal relations no longer depending on the activity of the subject. The subject is now becoming aware of himself. However, as a consequence, he loses the 8

Cf. J. Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953) and The Construction of Reality in the Child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955), both translated by Margaret Cook.


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position as the center of his world and comes to conceive of himself as one of its members, i.e., as one object and agent among others. Can the process of this transition, which passes through several phases described by Piaget, be accounted for in terms of sedimentation? Obviously, it cannot be maintained that the objectified world results from the earlier egocentric universes by superposition of layers of sense upon the latter. Nor is it possible by the simple removal of such layers to revert to the egocentric beginnings from the world of everyday common experience, which does not coincide with, but is prepared by, the objectified world constituted at the end of the second year of life. Piaget’s observations and descriptions are of the highest relevance and importance for the idea of genetic phenomenology. Although we cannot dwell here upon his theoretical explanations, we submit that they call for a reinterpretation in terms of Gestalt theory, i.e., fundamentally in terms of the notion of organization.9 The transition from the egocentric universe of the early beginnings to the stabilized and objectified world at the end of the period considered by Piaget takes place by means of thoroughgoing reorganizations and restructurations. Hence, a sequence of worlds, all different from one another as to their typical structure, succeed one another. Acquisition by experience consists in a world of a certain type being superseded by another world of a specifically different type, in contradistinction to the theory of sedimentation, according to which layers of sense are superimposed upon a fundamental structure which, however, as a result, does not undergo a substantial alteration. This is far from denying the fact of sedimentation altogether; it is rather to call attention to acquisition by experience of a totally different kind. The transformations involved in the growth of intelligence and, more generally, in the development of consciousness, which must be allowed for by genetic phenomenology, are of a nature different from the transition from the world of common everyday perceptual experience, taken in its own right and on its own grounds, to the interpretation of the same world as accessible to exact scientific determination. 9

We have given some of our reasons for this contention in The Field of Consciousness, Part I, Chapter 2, § 3.

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In concluding, we recall that, if there is a gap in Husserl’s phenomenological theory of perception, it is because of the lack of a theory of organization. To close this gap, we suggested that we rely upon the results and notions of Gestalt theory. The further development of Husserlian phenomenology will greatly profit from its being complemented by other theoretical trends which have some kinship with it.

ESSAY VI

THE PERCEPTUAL WORLD AND THE RATIONALIZED UNIVERSE

In the final period of his life, Husserl did, more and more, call attention to the perceptual world, such as the latter plays a role in everyday, natural life. That is the world in which we find ourselves, in which we act, react, and work. It is in that world that we encounter our fellow human beings, to whom we are bound by the most diverse relationships. All our desires and hopes, all our apprehensions and fears, all our pleasures and sufferings (in short, all our affective and emotional life) are related to that This study was originally published as “Appendix VI” to the French edition of An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology. Its date of composition being unknown, one may, however, suppose, judging on the basis of its subject matter, that it was, as Prof. L. Embree points out in his prefatory note to the paper, “conceived at the same time” as Gurwitsch’s “Présuppositions philosophiques de la logique,” which appeared in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, LVI (1951), pp. 395–405 (and as “Philosophical Presuppositions of Logic,” in SPP, pp. 393–402), and that it was probably contemporaneous with “Sur une racine perceptive de l’abstraction,” Actes du XIe. Congrès Internationale de Philosophie, II (1953), pp. 43–47 (which was included as “On a Perceptual Root of Abstraction” in SPP, pp. 433–438). Moreover, as Prof. Embree also indicates, “its central theme of investigation is pursued especially” in Gurwitsch’s “Perceptual Coherence as the Foundation of the Judgment of Predication,” published in Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism. Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, ed. F. I. Kersten and R. M. Zaner (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) and reprinted in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree, Chapter 6, pp. 241–267. Finally, to use Prof. Embree’s words, since “[t]his text is about Merleau-Ponty and other authors who have contributed to the development of the Husserlian program of research into the perceptual foundations of logical conceptualization,” one could refer as well to Gurwitsch’s “Quelques aspects and quelques développements de la psychologie de la forme,” Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, XXXIII (1936), pp. 413–470, translated as “Some Aspects and Developments of Gestalt Theory” in SPP, pp. 1–62, where those foundations are discussed at length. For a further consideration of Gurwitsch’s position vis-à-vis Merleau-Ponty, cf. the former’s The Field of Consciousness, especially pp. pt. IV, ch. III, § 5.


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world; all our intellectual activities, both practical and theoretical, also refer to it. In describing and analyzing the perceptual world, one must take it such as it, in actual fact, offers itself to the natural consciousness of everyday life, such as it appears prior to the idealizations entailed by scientific interpretation and explanation. The world is conceived by modern civilized human beings in the perspective of the physical sciences, such as they have been established since the seventeenth century. Even when we happen not to be physicists, or when we are not very familiar with the theories of physics and with the results arrived at by it, we conceive and interpret the world1 in relation to the very existence of physics.2 We conceive of the world as determinable. This means not only that there is the possibility of applying to the world the methods of analysis and explanation that belong to physics. Considered in itself, taken as it actually and really is, the world is determinate; its nature is rational; and its rationality cannot be other than the specific rationality of mathematics and of logic.3 If, therefore, the world is determinable, that means that we succeed in progressively disclosing the true structure of the universe by means of the physical sciences. Now, it is not science which renders the world determinate; it is not science which introduces mathematical rationality into the universe. All that science may do, and in effect does, is to bring out the true and real structure of the world; the latter possesses this structure, and has possessed it, “from time immemorial,” independently of science itself, that is to say, independently of the historical stage which science, at a given moment, has attained in the course of its development. In the experience of everyday life, the world appears under an aspect quite different from that under which it presents itself in the explanatory theories of physics. Contrary to the doctrines advocated by some philosophers of Antiquity who dismissed perception as purely illusory (therefore, as deceptive), modern thought, while insisting on the dif1

[The word “world” was inserted by the editor of the French edition of An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology.] 2 Cf. E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, § 10. 3 [According to the editor of the French edition of An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, the French equivalent of “and of logic” is a handwritten phrase inserted by the author between the lines of the original text.]

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ference separating the world such as it actually and really is from the world such as it offers itself in perception, assigns to perception a highly significant function. This function consists in pointing to, and indicating, the mathematico-physical reality. Although the perceptual data are not mathematico-physical realities, they can, all the same, be translated into the language of mathematics, that is to say, into the language of those particular idealities that play a role in mathematical physics. One of the first steps taken by the incipient science will therefore be to find a principle of correspondence or coordination rendering that translation possible. In the order of ideas which, following Husserl, we endeavor to develop here, the differences between the philosophical interpretations that can be, and which have been, maintained, so far as the links of the perceptual world to the universe constructed by physics are concerned, are of little import. According to the realist interpretation, the universe constructed by science is a universe existing in itself and, therefore, preexisting its construction. It is a universe concealed, so to speak, behind the perceptual appearances, so that the task of science consists in piercing through the appearances, while letting itself be guided by them, so as to grasp the world in its true and real form. Intellectualist idealism does not consider the universe of science as an ontological reality existing in itself, but, on the contrary, relates it to the processes of reason and of scientific consciousness. The universe constructed by science is conceived of as the correlate of constituting reason, and the progressive elaboration of that universe follows, and gives expression to, the gradual blossoming out of scientific reason. Here the perceptual data serve to stimulate reason. Not only do they lend themselves to a rational interpretation, but they even call for one. This implies that the perceptual data are at the outset conceived of in terms of their possible rationalization, therefore in terms of the possibility of that translation of which we just spoke. Merleau-Ponty, who was deeply inspired by tendencies originating in the last phase of Husserlian thought, has shown that there is a kinship greater than one would have believed between the classical theories which have conflicted with each other.4 This kinship is based upon the acceptance, without prior critique or justification, by all modern philo4

Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 49.

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sophical currents, of the idea of a universe exact, determinate in itself, and, in this sense, absolute. In realism and in empiricism, this universe is posited as realized in Nature; thus it appears as the cause of perception. In the final analysis, the latter is due to the fact that certain processes, considered such as they are conceived of in physics, act upon our sense organs and produce stimulations therein. As we just remarked, intellectualism does not uphold an ontological conception of the exact, determinate-in-itself universe of science, but sees in that universe the product of the operations of constituting consciousness. Now, according to Merleau-Ponty, this constituting consciousness, instead of being directly apprehended, is built up in such a way as to make possible the idea of an absolute determinate being . . .. [What happens is that] what exists for us only in intention is presumed to be fully realized somewhere: . . . a system of absolutely true thoughts, capable of coordinating all phenomena, . . . a [géometral which explains] all perspectives, a pure object upon which all subjectivities . . . open.5

In other words, consciousness is defined, at the outset, in view of that which one must account for in terms of consciousness itself. Instead of taking consciousness such as it offers itself in its immediate reality and to analyze it under its experienced aspect, one starts by conceiving it in terms of the function it is to perform, which is that of making the exact and determinate-in-itself universe of science emerge.6 Therefore, the universe of science is not taken, in intellectualism, for the initial cause of consciousness in general, or of perception in particular, but, rather, for 5

Ibid., p. 50. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 40. [The translation has been modified as indicated. “Géometral” is left untranslated on purpose due to Gurwitsch’s dissatisfaction with the published English version thereof. (Cf. infra, pp. 493–494 for Gurwitsch’s objections, in his critical review of the translation of this book, to Smith’s rendering of the term.) Cf. “géometral” in Paul Robert, Dictionnaire alphabétique & analogique de la langue française, ed. A. Rey et al., p. 862, right col.: representation of “an object with its exact relative dimensions, without taking its perspective into account.”] 6 Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., p. 49 (trans., p. 39): “Intellectualism accepts as completely . . . [justified] the idea of . . . [the true] and the idea of being in which the . . . [constitutive] work of consciousness culminates and is . . . [summed up], and its alleged reflection consists in positing as powers of the subject all that is required to arrive at these ideas.” [The translation has been modified as indicated.]


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its final term.7 No more than realism or empiricism does intellectualism subject the idea of a universe exact and determinate in itself to an examination, so far as its origin and justification are concerned. This idea is taken as the terminus ad quem, in relation to which the conception of consciousness is oriented.8 The idea in question is, as it were, inscribed in consciousness as its immanent teleological term. In keeping with that, intellectualism does not consider perception, except as a preparatory or preliminary phase of genuine cognition. It is the same object which is given in perception and which presents itself to rational cognition. However, while the latter is a clear, distinct, and explicit manner of becoming aware of something, in perception the same object offers itself in a vague, obscure, and confused fashion.9 The passage from perception to intellection means, for the object in question, that its real being is brought out at that point, whereas, as perceived, though it was the same object, it did not present itself under its veritable aspect. This passage means, therefore, a transition from an appearance (in which the reality was, so to speak, veiled) to the reality 7

Cf. ibid., pp. 39–40. Cf. ibid., p. 51 (trans., p. 41): “intellectualism leaves consciousness on a footing of familiarity with absolute being, while the [very] idea of a world in itself . . . [subsists] as . . . horizon or as . . . [leading strand of ] analytical reflection.” [The translation has been modified as indicated. The phrase terminus ad quem can be translated as “term toward which.”] 9 Merleau-Ponty claims (cf. ibid., p. 35) to draw his inspiration from the analysis of the piece of wax which Descartes carried out, an analysis that led him to the conclusion that “its perception is neither an act of vision, nor of touch, nor of imagination, and has never been such although it may have appeared formerly to be so, but only an intuition of the mind (une inspection de l’esprit), which may be imperfect and confused as it was formerly, or clear and distinct as it is at present.” [R. Descartes, Méditations, ii, in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, Vol. IX-1, pp. 24–25; trans., I, p. 155.] Moreover, one could cite Leibniz’s thesis according to which perception is only a confused thought. [Cf., e.g., G. W. Leibniz, “Preface” to Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, in Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: 1882; Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1978), V, pp. 46–47; “Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, fondés en raison,” § 4, in op. cit. (Berlin: 1885; Hildesheim: 1996), VI, p. 600; Letter of Leibniz to Arnauld, 9 October 1687, in op. cit. (Berlin: 1879; Hildesheim: 1996), II, xxii, pp. 111 ff.] 8

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itself. In this sense, we were able to say, just a moment ago, that the perceptual data call for their rationalization. The “common” thought of modern civilized human beings, as well as the reflective thought of modern philosophers, is under the sway of what Merleau-Ponty calls the préjugé du monde objectif [the unexamined acceptance of the objective world].10 Or, again, as we gave expression to it, it is under the sway of a conception of the perceptual world in terms of its possible rationalization, that is to say, in light of the exact and determinate-in-itself universe, such as it is constructed by mathematicophysical science. Carrying modern thought to its ultimate consequences, one could say, without exaggerating too much, that modern thought considers the world as being in reality such as it will be disclosed to be in the end, when science will have accomplished its work. Let us illustrate, by means of a few examples, this orientation of the perceptual world toward the ideal universe of science. The objects given in perception exhibit spatial forms, for the description of which one avails oneself of concepts such as “rounded,” “pointed,” “horn-shaped,” “jagged,” “parasol-shaped,” “corymb-shaped,” etc. All these concepts designate qualitative morphological types which are not precisely and exactly delimited, but whose definition is essentially vague and entails imprecision and fluctuation.11 Each of the concepts in question is applied not only to a fixed, typical “norm,” but also to an entire multiplicity of variations or, rather, of varieties, provided that they do not deviate too much from that “norm.” This qualification of “not deviating too much” is also modified by that of a “more or less”; in effect, it is impossible to fix the limits of the zone of application of one such concept exactly. The same is true when one employs concepts like “circular,” “spherical,” “straight,” “plane,” etc. to convey the perceptual aspect of spatial forms. 10

M. Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., pp. 11–15, specifically p. 12; trans., p. 6. [Cf. infra, p. 491 for Gurwitsch’s opinion in his critical review of the English translation: “the prejudice consists in taking for granted and accepting as a matter of course the idea of the objective, exactly determined, at least determinable universe.”] 11 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, § 74 and “Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleintung in die phänomenologische Philosophie,” Parts I and II, in Philosophia (Belgrade), I (1936), pp. 99–100.


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The term “circular,” for example, does not designate a circle in the sense of modern geometry, and neither does it do so in the sense of ancient intuitive geometry prior to algebraization. Rather, what this term indicates is a certain morphological type, a certain perceptual physiognomy that the figure in question may preserve, even when it undergoes not-too-great a deformation. From the point of view of geometry, a deformed circle is no longer a circle. To perceptual consciousness, on the contrary, it continues to present itself as a circle, albeit as a distorted, indecisive, “poor” one.12 On the other hand, as Merleau-Ponty has rightly remarked, the perceived circle, that is to say, the spatial form with a circular physiognomy, does not possess, “in advance and in itself, all the properties which the geometer has been able and will be able to discover in it.”13 Now, the morphological types, vaguely defined as they are and having a zone of application delimited with little precision, are the only ones existing in the perceptual world. We relate them to the “pure” and ideal bodies and figures of mathematics (e.g., the sphere, the circle, the straight line, the plane, and so on, [taken] in the strict geometrical sense), and we consider the former as approximations of the latter. Then, the question arises as to whence come those geometrical idealities, those pure spatial forms that are ideally possible, as to whence comes the very idea of conceiving ideal, limit-forms, which the perceived spatial forms may “draw well nigh” to, without ever attaining to them.14 It is a truism that the ideal forms of geometry are not encountered in the perceptual world. Besides, no operation performed on perceptual spatial forms results in ideal geometrical figures. Should we transform a perceived spatial form as much as we please, whether in fact or in the imagination, we would get to nothing but another spatial form of a morphological type, therefore to something of the same kind as the one we set out from. To arrive at the ideal and “pure” forms of geometry, one must set an altogether specific operation to work, i.e., that of idealization, which Husserl distinguishes from all other 12

Such phenomena show, according to the Gestalt theoreticians, the privileged character of pregnant forms like “straight line,” “circle,” “right angle,” etc., understood, of course, in their non-geometrical, perceptual sense. Cf. our article, “Quelques aspects et quelques développements de la psychologie de la forme,” pp. 451–454 in SPP, pp. 48 ff. 13 M. Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., p. 316 (trans., p. 273). 14 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, pp. 138–139 and Krisis, § 9a.

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logical or categorial activities.15 The problem that we have brought up concerns the very nature of the operation of idealization; it concerns, as well, the manner in which this operation is motivated by the aspect and by the structures of the perceptual world. In considering space itself, instead of particular spatial forms, we find ourselves moving toward similar problems. Let us not talk about the deductive method of geometry, due to which all ideally possible geometrical forms and all the relations obtaining among these ideal possibilities can be constructed on the basis of a limited number of axioms, so that every geometrical truth is implied by them, that is to say, is but a consequence thereof.16 Let us not talk either of the formalization so characteristic of the modern development of geometry. In terms of this formalization, the geometer no longer speaks of “points,” of “straight lines,” of “planes,” etc., but only of entirely indeterminate entities which are defined only by the relations one establishes among them, relations which, as well, are defined, in the final analysis, only by certain altogether formal characteristics. Keeping to geometry in a form in which it has not yet become completely emancipated from the intuition of space, let us insist on the homogeneous and isotropic nature of geometric space. No location is privileged with respect to any other, nor is a spatial direction with respect to any other. A system of coordinates may be laid down no matter where, and it can be oriented no matter how. Let us compare this geometric conception of space with the perceptual aspect under which the real world presents itself, so far as the spatial order it entails is concerned. The perceptual world offers itself oriented and organized in the respects of high and low, of right and left, of in front and behind, and, finally, of near and far. The center of reference of this organizational structure is the perceiving subject’s own body. That point is particularly clear so far as the opposition between near and far is concerned. The current location of the perceiving subject defines an absolute hic (here), so that every location other than the one occupied by the subject’s 15

Cf. E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, pp. 41–42; also see Ideen, I, pp. 138–139. Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I, §§ 69–70 [correcting 79 to 70]; Ideen, I, § 72; and FTL, Part I, Chapter 3.

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own body is characterized as illic (there).17 Only the perceiving subject’s own body is hic; every other body is illic. Taking into account the perceptual world according to right and left, and in front and behind, one must speak, with Merleau-Ponty, of the “laying down of the first coordinates.”18 It is in relation to this absolute hic that the objects actually perceived, as well as those which are perceptible (though perhaps not actually perceived at the moment), in short, that all objects which play, or may play, a role in the perceptual world become differentiated into near and far objects. The terms “near” and “far” should be understood, in this context, with that lack of clear precision and delimitation which, as we said above,19 characterize all concepts directly drawn from immediate perceptual experience. However, the perceiving subject can move himself and does so in fact. We are free to leave the place where we find ourselves at present to go to another location which at the moment is illic, but which, once we have performed the act of locomotion, will become hic. Even if we remain where we are, we can imagine, or endeavor to imagine, the aspect under which the world and things would present themselves to us, if, instead of being where we in fact are, we were to place ourselves somewhere else. In virtue of that mobility on the perceiving subject’s part, the absolute hic is affected by a certain relativity. From being an absolute hic pure and simple, it becomes the absolute hic of the present20 moment, which means a potential illic. Reciprocally, every current illic acquires the sense of a potential hic; under certain conditions, the current hic may even appear as a past hic (when I recall having been at the location in question) or, again, as a future hic (when I am in the process of going there).21 The Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 55, pp. 151–152. M. Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., p. 117 (trans., p. 100): “The word ‘here’ applied to my body does not refer to a determinate position in relation to other positions or to external co-ordinates, but the laying down of the first coordinates, the anchoring of the acting body, in an object, the situation of the body in face of its tasks.” 19 Cf. supra, pp. 406–407. 20 The equivalent of this word was added by the editor of the French edition of An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology. 21 In his analysis of the apprehension of another, Husserl (cf. CM, § 53) calls upon the possibility, due to the perceiving subject’s free mobility, of transforming every illic into a hic, and vice versa. In effect, the other is apprehended as perceiving the world in the 17 18

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way is thus prepared for the conception of homogeneous space. Nonetheless, in actual fact, the perceiving subject’s free mobility justifies only the possibility of laying down a system of coordinates in every place to which the subject can go. The homogeneity of space, in the sense of geometry, implies, on the contrary, the idea that a system of coordinates can be laid down anywhere, regardless of the question as to whether or not the subject can in fact go to the location chosen by him, in an altogether free and arbitrary fashion, as the center of reference. There is, then, a passage to be effected from the idea of “every place accessible to the subject” to that of “any place whatever,” without restriction of any kind.22 Reflecting on his mobility in fact, the perceiving subject may well imagine being endowed with a freedom of motion greater than the one he actually enjoys. In other words, the subject can imagine that, in principle, he can go to any place whatever in space, although technical reasons may prevent the actualization of that complete liberty of motion. The passage in question may be defined as a generalization from “actual accessibility” to “accessibility in principle.” Let us take note that the operation of the imagination of which it is a question here is characteristically different from the operations mentioned above,23 by means of which we arrive at ideal forms in the strict geometric sense on the basis of the morphological spatial types. There, in effect, as we saw, the operation of the imagination, though necessary,24 appeared insufficient, to the extent that the ideal geometric same way as I do, but as perceiving it in a perspective in which I do not perceive it, in which, nonetheless, I would perceive it, if, literally, I were to be in the place of the other, that is to say, “if I should go over there (illic) and be where he is.” Ibid., p. 146 (117). 22 The necessity of effecting this passage seems to have escaped O. Becker’s notice (cf. his “Beiträge zur phänomenologischen Begründung der Geometrie und ihrer physikalischen Anwendungen,” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, VI (1923), pp. 458–459), who, moreover, has rightly noted the relationship between the constitution of homogeneous space and that of intersubjectivity. 23 Cf. supra, pp. 412–413. 24 Husserl has underscored the major and indispensable significance of the imagination and of operations of the imagination, above all that of “free variation,” for the constitution and the conception of “pure general ideas,” that is to say, of ideas in the Platonic sense (mathematical and other); for the establishment of eidetic relations, i.e., relations


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forms which are limit-forms belong to an existence of a kind entirely different from that from which emerge the forms resulting from the imaginary transformation of given morphological spatial forms. Here, on the contrary, it seems to be a question only of a pure imaginary extension of our actual freedom of motion. The laying down of a system of coordinates is bound, it seemed to us, to a perceiving subject, to the placement of that subject’s own body, and, finally, to his motor possibilities. None of that is mentioned either in mathematics or in mathematical physics. The fact is that these disciplines are interested only in the description that may be given of the world by placing oneself at a certain standpoint, that is to say, in relation to a certain reference system; as they are too in the analytic formulation of the laws governing figures defined in terms of relations among spatial elements, and in the analytic expression of the movements of bodies, when these movements are subject to certain laws and, especially, to invariant relations, relations which, because they are valid for every system of coordinates, depend on none. From the point of view of mathematics conceived as a positive science, that is to say, insofar as it is engaged in constructive work, it is perfectly legitimate to confine oneself only to the results of such work and even to the strictly mathematical processes leading thereto. Philosophical reflection on mathematics cannot however be limited to the patent contents, so to speak, of mathematics. On the contrary, it cannot help going beyond the patent contents of mathematics to return to the presuppositions of sense. The essential function of such a reflection consists in bringing out the conditions and the presuppositions from which mathematics draws its sense and in relation to which it can find its ultimate justification. Therefore, the conditions of which it is a question here should be described as specifically philosophical conditions. Now, the distinctive feature of those conditions is that they, while supporting the edifice of mathematics, do not explicitly play a role therein, among the ideas in question; and, finally, for the formulation of eidetic laws, i.e., a priori laws based on the eidetic relations. (Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, Inv. 3, §§ 4–7 and 10–11; Ideen, I, §§ 4 and 70, pp. 310, l. 33 and 311; CM, pp. 104–106; and Erfahrung und Urteil, §§ 87–89. See also our article, “Gelb-Goldstein’s Concept of ‘Concrete’ and ‘Categorial’ Attitude and the Phenomenology of Ideation,” iii, 3, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, X (1949) (in SPP, pp. 426 ff.)

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that is to say, they do not come into it as premises of reasoning. The philosopher’s interest moves, therefore, in a direction different from the mathematician’s. Whereas the philosopher, endeavoring as he is to define, to clarify in a radical way, and, therefore, to delimit as well the sense of mathematics, should focus on the conditions in question in order to disclose them and render them explicit, the mathematician may well pass them over in silence, since, by reason of the positive character of his investigations, only explicitly formulated statements are valid as presuppositions of his reasoning, to wit: either the axioms he posits or the demonstrated theorems serving him as points of departure for his subsequent deductions. The point to which we have come is of general significance, and this justifies our dwelling on it even at the risk of digressing somewhat. Just as mathematics can, so too can logic be constructed and developed in the spirit of pure positivity. In conceiving of logic as a science of the possible forms—i.e., the forms of propositions as well as the forms of objects (such as multiplicities, combinations, permutations, relations of every kind, etc.)—one begins by defining the most elementary forms and also the fundamental operations. Moreover, by the application of the operations to given forms, one obtains new ones. Now, every logical operation is governed by the law of iteration. A form that stems from applying a certain operation to a fundamental form can in turn be subjected to the same operation, as well as to another, so that a higher-order form would be generated therefrom. For example, after having constructed the hypothetical propositions, “p implies q,” or (p → q), and “r implies s,” or (r → s), one may avail oneself of one of those hypothetical propositions as an antecedent and of the other as a consequent in a new and more complex hypothetical proposition, namely, “if p implies q, then r implies s,” or (p → q) → (r → s); or one can construct the disjunctive proposition, “either p implies q or r implies s,” i.e., (p → q) v (r → s). With simple elements, one can construct totalities which, in turn, can be compared with each other, or on the basis of which one can construct a higher-order totality, a totality of totalities. In the latter case, the “elements” of the higher-order totality would be the totalities which had been constructed in the first place. The iterated application of the operations to forms generated by the same operations results in ever-new forms that are developed with increasing complexity. Every operation harbors a


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theorem concerning existence in the mathematical sense. Given the validity, that is to say, the mathematical existence, of the most fundamental form one avails oneself of in the said construction (whether the form be of a proposition or of an object), and, further, given the validity of the operation in question, the application of the latter to the former results in a new form, the validity and mathematical existence of which are guaranteed by the constructive process itself. Thus one conceives of the ideal construction of the infinite totality of possible forms on the basis of the fundamental forms.25 If logic is conceived and developed in this manner, it presents itself as an autonomous constructive science. When Husserl wrote his Logische Untersuchungen, the first volume thereof in particular, he did more than anyone else to ground and to establish the autonomy of logic. Instead of confining himself to logic as developed in the form of a calculus, as the technical logician, so to speak, does, and can legitimately do, the philosopher of logic should ponder on the sense of that constructive process and place it back in the totality of knowledge. He would then find himself brought before the presuppositions of logic, which are not expressly formulated in the elaboration of the technique of the calculus, but which are at the basis of every constructive process and support it. Husserl’s Formale und transzendentale Logik is entirely devoted to bringing out the presuppositions in question. Let us point out some of them. We are certain of being able to return to every proposition qua identically the same as often as we wish. If a mathematical demonstration is completed with the formulation of a certain theorem, the latter can be taken up again, be it in the re-examination of the demonstration or in the continuation of the mathematical reasoning in which the same theorem that had first appeared as a result now serves as point of departure for subsequent deductions. A proposition that had been advanced may be called into question, subjected to a thoroughgoing examination, and reaffirmed with a clear awareness that it is the same one that had been advanced initially, that was next called into question, etc. We have seen that, by the application of logical operations to given propositions, new propositions exhibiting a more complex structure are generated. The proposition “p” is the same 25

Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, § 13.

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which is advanced as an independent proposition and which, when a certain operation is applied to it, comes to form part, as an “element,” of a more complex proposition in which it performs a definite function. It is the same “p” and the same “q” which play the role of antecedent and consequent, respectively, in the hypothetical proposition, (p → q), and which appear, respectively, in the disjunction, (p v q). Everywhere it is a question of the ideal identity of propositions, in correlation with the possibility of taking them up again as often as one wishes insofar as they are identical, and also with the ideal possibility of iterating the logical operations.26 Nowhere is this ideal identity of propositions mentioned among the axioms or among the premises, on the basis of which the constructive procedure of logic departs, and yet the logician constantly avails himself of it and cannot abstain from doing so at all. In effect, the development of a logical system or the elaboration of a technique of calculus obviously would not be possible, in the absence of the presupposition—even if it is only in its tacit form—that a proposition is identically the same whenever the logician returns to it when he considers it, compares it with other propositions, applies operations to it, etc. The identity of that which is given expression by the symbols lies concealed behind the employment of the symbols themselves. Whereas the constructive logician may take the identity of propositions as “something that is obvious and goes without saying” (and in effect does so in his practice of construction), it is the job of the philosopher of logic to render those tacit presuppositions explicit, to thematize them, and to regard them as problematic. The ideal identity of propositions is all the more in need of a thorough clarification because it is employed not only in the thought of the logician on his own, but also in intersubjective communication. When we submit our results to other thinkers and when we examine theirs, in every discussion and collaboration, whether in the sciences or in everyday life, it is admitted (or, better yet, it is tacitly presupposed) that the propositions and systems of propositions of which it is a question are the same for everyone. Just as on the basis of simpler forms one can construct, by means of operations, forms of increasing complexity, so also, in a reverse 26

Cf. ibid., §§ 73–74.


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movement, can one take a form of a certain complexity as one’s point of departure and go back to more elementary forms, from which the given form is drawn by way of construction. Proceeding in this fashion, one retraces the history of the form one chooses as point of departure of one’s regressive movement. Here, obviously, it is not a question of a psychological history; it is not a question of the manner in which the said form actually originates in the course of a temporal process which, under certain conditions and under the influence of diverse factors, takes place in a real consciousness. Let us recall what we said above27 about progressive construction: the validity (that is to say, the mathematical existence) of the form to be constructed derives from that of more elementary forms, as well as from the legitimacy of the operations that come into play. In consequence, every complex form refers, because of its very sense, to more elementary forms, and to operations by means of which it issues from those elementary forms.28 These are contained in the complex form. They do not form part of the patent contents thereof, but are contained therein as implications and sediments. The signification—i.e., the complex form, about which it is a question of carrying out the analysis, by referring to “moments of sense” (Sinnesmomente)29 that pertain to a more elementary and more fundamental scale—accordingly harbors them as presuppositions that are inexplicit and, as it were, “concealed.” For all their tacit effectiveness, these presuppositions do not contribute any the less essentially to constituting the complex form in question. We have just used the term “analysis,” which, however, should not be understood in its usual acceptation, namely, as meaning the breaking-up of a whole into its real parts. The analysis we have in mind here is, on the contrary, an intentional analysis, the function of which consists in bringing out the moments of sense effective as tacit presuppositions, in disclosing the implications in order to render them explicit, and, finally, in placing the sediments back into the process itself of their formation. It follows therefrom that the history of the forms, which is traced back 27 28 29

Cf. supra, pp. 422–423 Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, §§ 85 and 97, pp. 183–185 (206–208). Ibid., p. 184 (207).

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by the method of intentional regression, proves to be a “history of sense” (Sinnesgeschichte),30 just as the genesis of the forms, in the course of the process of their construction, should be understood as “sense-genesis” (Sinnesgenesis). Carrying the regressive analysis to term, one ends up by arriving, so far as the forms of objects are concerned, at the individual objects that have not yet undergone any logical formation, and, for the forms of propositions, at simple categorical propositions of the form “S is P,” propositions in which an “ultimate” predicate, that is to say, one that is not reducible any further, is attributed to an “ultimate” subject, in the same sense of irreducibility, such as “this table is brown.”31 Now, an individual object devoid of any logical formation, an “ultimate” substrate as Husserl calls it, is precisely the object such as it presents itself in perceptual experience prior to all logical operations—in a broad sense—which could be applied to an object (such as collecting, permuting, relating, etc.) Moreover, an “ultimate proposition,” in the sense just defined, relates to an individual object making its appearance in perceptual experience; moreover, that proposition gives expression to this perceptual appearance and should be considered as the most elementary logical operation that could be applied to the data of perceptual experience. All things taken into account, one can say that the regressive analysis ends up in perceptual experience prior to every logical operation, or, as Husserl puts it, in prepredicative experience.32 It is therefore prepredicative perceptual experience one must go back to so as to effect the radical philosophical clarification and validation of logic. At the origin of the latter, and in consequence at the origin of every proposition, whatever its form, one finds the ultimate categorical proposition which serves but to give expression to perceptual experience. The philosophical theory of logic should therefore start from prepredicative experience, should be founded upon a theory of this experience itself, and should interpret—on this very basis—the progressive systematic development of logic by way of constructions and of reiterated operations. The first step the philosophical theory of logic will have to take, in view of the realization of its goal, is to make the “ultimate” categorical 30 31 32

Ibid. (trans., p. 208). Cf. ibid., §§ 82–84. Cf. ibid., § 86.


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proposition emerge from prepredicative experience.33 One of the fundamental presuppositions—perhaps even the most fundamental one of all, and one which, as sediment, is found at the heart of logic, determining the sense thereof by being implicated in it—is prepredicative perceptual experience and, correlatively, the perceptual world such as it appears in that experience. Let us bring out the effectiveness of the presupposition in question. Quite often, the state of advanced formalization attained by logic and mathematics in the Modern Era is interpreted as if, in those sciences, it were a question only of the handling of symbols devoid of all signification. According to this interpretation, the symbols one avails oneself of in the logical and the mathematical calculations in order to designate terms would not refer to any object; the signs indicating an operation, such as “+,” would not have any signification either, and, in particular, they would not signify a veritable operation, such as addition. Only certain entirely formal rules for the handling of symbols would be defined, such symbols being considered, therefore, as tokens of a sort. Thus, for example, “a + b = b + a” would mean that it is always permitted to replace the combination of symbols “a + b” by the combination “b + a.” It is altogether accurate to say that both the logical and the mathematical terms relate to no determinate object and play therefore the role of indeterminate variables. When, on the basis of a concrete proposition, say “this leaf is green,” one proceeds to the form thereof (i.e., “this S is P”), one replaces, in the given proposition, all the terms endowed with a determinate material content by terms of variable signification, and one does it in such a fashion that all material content is set aside, and that, within certain limits, the terms thus formalized are related or, better yet, can be related, to any object whatsoever, no matter what their nature may be.34 33

Such is precisely one of the main themes of Husserl’s posthumous work, Erfahrung und Urteil. 34 Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, §§ 12, 23a, and 87; see also his Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, Inv. 3, § 10 and, above all, §§ 12–14, concerning the limits that the variation in question should not exceed. A reflection on these limits leads to the idea of a philosophical or “purely logical grammar.”

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This is also true of propositions which, so far as the material content of the objects to which they refer is concerned, may be as different from each other as these: “this leaf is green,” “this number is algebraic,” “this melody is sad,” “this reasoning is well founded,” and so on. They all are instances or particular cases of the same propositional form, to wit: “this S is P.” It does not matter which among the propositions mentioned may serve as an illustration of the propositional form of which it is a question, because, on the basis of any of them, one arrives, following the indicated route, at the same form. Analogously, without yet speaking of algebra, one may say that any number (e.g., number “5”) can be related to every group of 5 elements or units, whatever their nature and material content. It is even indifferent whether or not the elements in question are “ultimate” in character, that is to say, individual objects or groupings comprised of such objects; likewise, in the latter case, it is indifferent whether all those groupings consist of the same number of individual objects or whether this number varies from one grouping to the next. The only significant thing is that each grouping count as a unit in the group of 5.35 If the concepts of numbers, both cardinal and ordinal, are formal, it is by reason of that complete indifference with regard to the nature and with regard to the material and qualitative content exhibited by the elements or by the objects to which a definite number can be related. Here the elements or the objects are not considered, except in terms of the single formal respect of “how many” or of the “numerical place of order,” so that, for example, from the point of view of the particularization of number “5,” every group of 5 objects whatever can be substituted for every other group of 5 different objects. In this sense, the concepts at the center of the formal sciences (concepts like “object,” “property,” “respect,” “relation,” “plurality,” “number,” “quantity,” “whole,” “part,” etc.) are described by Husserl as pure varieties of the concept “something in general” (Ableitungsgestalten des Etwas u¨ berhaupt.)36 35

The same reasoning would equally apply to the gathering of any elements in a whole. Cf. supra, pp. 418–420. 36 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, Inv. 3, Chapter 1, § 11, p. 68; trans., p. 77: “certain derivative formations of anything-whatever.”


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In the formation of these concepts, one does not take into account the nature of the objects that play a role only as materials lending themselves to certain operations, as, for example, those of counting, enumerating, comparing, relating, establishing correspondences, etc. Every time the same operation is applied to any objects whatever, the material and qualitative nature of which is left indeterminate, the correlates corresponding to the operation in question could not but have the same form.37 The formalization can be carried further, as is done when one goes from arithmetic to algebra. Algebraic terms have still more indeterminate significations, in that each term of this sort relates indifferently to any number whatever. Algebra therefore entails the formalization of concepts which, in turn, are already the result of a prior formalization. Carrying the formalization process to the limit, one succeeds in conceiving the idea of the Mannigfaltigkeitslehre (theory of manifolds).38 In the latter, not only do the terms perform the function of indeterminate variables by relating to any objects whatever without any regard to the qualitative and material nature thereof, but also the significations of the operation symbols (which, in algebra, signify specified operations like addition, for example) are left completely indeterminate, except for the entirely formal characteristics of the operations, such as those expressed by the associative, commutative, and distributive laws. Now, to maintain that symbols have indeterminate and indefinite significations, in the senses of indetermination and indefiniteness entailed by formalization carried to the limit, is obviously something quite different from considering them as devoid of all signification. Therefore, concerning the light in which, from the point of view of the Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, one must understand the formula, “a + b = b + a,” Husserl proposes replacing the interpretation we cited above39 by the following: “es soll für die (zunächst nur als leere Etwas, als ‘Denkobjekte’ gedachten) Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, § 27a. Concerning the Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I, “Prolegomena,” Chapter 11, § 70, pp. 249 ff, trans., pp. 241 ff and FTL, Part I, Chapter 3. 39 Cf. supra, p. 427. 37 38

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Gegenstände der Mannigfaltigkeit eine gewisse Verbindungsform bestehen mit der Gesetzesform a + b = b + a.”40 It follows that the Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, that is to say, mathematics in its state of completely perfected formalization, nonetheless relates to objects which are, it is true, indeterminate and indefinite in every respect, except that the relations among these objects—indeterminate as well— exhibit certain formal characteristics that are—and only they are—quite definite. This applicability of purely formal and purely analytic mathematics should not be considered accidental or extrinsic to mathematics. On the contrary, its applicability to objects, determinate only so far as the formal characteristics of the relations subsisting among them are concerned, belongs to the proper sense of analytic mathematics. And this is so because of the very nature of the significations of its symbols and, consequently, because of the nature of its theorems.41 To be sure, from a positive standpoint, i.e., from the standpoint of the construction and of the elaboration of mathematics, its possible or virtual application is of no interest. The actual development of mathematics is carried out without the question of the existence of objects to which it can be applied intervening in it, or having to do so.42 For the philosophical interpretation, on the contrary, the virtual relationship of formalized and analytic mathematics to possible objects is of the greatest significance, because the applicability of mathematics betrays, in that, its origin in the experience of a world that cannot be other than the perceptual world. Now, this origination is not just a simple historical fact, and, above all, it is no such thing in the first place. If here it is a question of historicity, it is not that of a factual historicity but of an intentional one. The origin of mathematics in the experience of the world and its development by way of progressive formalizations are inscribed in the sense itself of the mathematical disciplines and serve to define them as sciences concerned with the formal structure of a world, and not only, or even necessarily, of E. Husserl, FTL, § 34, p. 88 (100): “[t]here shall obtain among the objects belonging to the multiplicity (conceived at first as only empty Somethings, as ‘Objects of thinking’) a certain combination-form with the law-form ‘a + b = b + a.’ ” 41 Cf. ibid., § 40. 42 Cf. ibid., pp. 122–125. 40


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the real world, but of a possible world. Because of its “genesis of sense,” analytic mathematics is constituted as the most general science of the form of a world as such. Let us study, at a more elementary level, the role that the experience of the world plays for logic, or, more exactly, for the sense of the principles of logic, of the logic of pure consequence as well as of the logic of truth.43 If one interprets the principle of the excluded middle in subjective terms,44 its formulation is as follows: every proposition, when confronted with the state of affairs to which it is related, is either confirmed or invalidated by it.45 So formulated, the statement of the principle of the excluded middle not only affirms that, for every proposition, the alternative or disjunction comprising confirmation and invalidation is an exclusive one, but it also implies that every proposition can in principle be confronted with a state of affairs. This possibility subsists for every proposition, whether the confrontation has actually been carried out, whether it can be carried out, or, finally, whether reasons of a technical order hinder its being carried out. Setting aside the idealization that this assertion, implicated in the principle of the excluded middle, entails, it is obvious that the possibility in question does not subsist for the type of propositions represented by one like “the sum of the angles of a triangle equals the color red.” It could be pointed out that the cited statement, though correct from a grammatical point of view, is devoid of sense. And it certainly is so. However, it is not devoid of sense from the point of view of a “purely logical grammar,”46 or because it contains a contradiction. 43

The logic of pure consequence raises the problem of the compatibility, or of the compossibility, of propositions in virtue of their form alone, without being concerned at all with the questions of truth or falsity, in the sense of the conformity between a proposition and the state of affairs it is about. To the extent that the compossibility of propositions is one of the conditions of truth, the logic of pure consequence becomes the formal logic of truth as soon as, instead of regarding propositions and systems of propositions only as such, one relates them to states of affairs and poses the question of their conformity with the latter. (Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, §§ 14–15 and 18–20, and Appendix 3.) 44 Cf. E. Husserl, ibid., §§ 8–11 and Part II, Chapter 1 concerning the possibility, and even the necessity, of both subjective and objective two-sided analyses in logic. 45 Cf. E. Husserl, ibid., § 77. 46 Cf. supra, n. 34 for the references concerning a “purely logical grammar.”

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Under a purely and strictly formal aspect (the only one playing a role for the logician engaged in algebraization and formalization), the statement of which it is a question should be considered as an expression of a possible and genuine proposition. If it is devoid of sense and, therefore, impossible, it is because the terms (or, as Husserl says, the material cores playing a role therein) are not related to each other.47 They have nothing to do with one another, because the things to which the terms are related are not found within the harmonious and coherent unity of a possible experience. In consequence, there is no state of affairs (and, in principle, there could be none) with which the proposition in question could be confronted. Therefore, the question of truth, in the sense of conformity with a state of affairs, is not, and could not be, posed. Here, the middle is not excluded, in that the proposition of which it is a question, since it is devoid of sense, is, so to speak, this side of, or beyond, the opposition between the true and the false.48 In other words, the proposition implicated in the principle of the excluded middle, that every proposition can be confronted with the state of affairs it is about, is valid only for propositions the constituents of which are related to one another. Obviously, logic has in view only propositions that meet this condition. However, by reason of the substitution of symbols for material terms, the signification of which symbols remains indeterminate in the sense presented above,49 the import of the condition 47

By that one sees that the opposition between sense and nonsense could not be established absolutely, or once and for all. Husserl (in his Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, Inv. 4 [corrected from 3], § 12. pp. 334–336) makes a distinction between nonsense (Unsinn)—say, “king but or is like” (where the laws of a “purely logical grammar” are broken)—and countersense (Widersinn), which stems from a formal or analytic contradiction (e.g., “this red book is not red”) or from a contradiction in terms, i.e., a material or synthetic countersense (e.g., “this quadrilateral figure is round”). The nonsense of which it is a question in the text stems from the total absence of connection between the terms. As G. Berger has rightly seen (cf. Recherches sur les conditions de la connaissance. Essai d’une théortique pure (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1941), pp. 106–108), the opposition between sense and nonsense repeats itself at the most different levels, and it assumes, at each level, a specific signification corresponding to the level in question. 48 Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, § 90. 49 Cf. supra, pp. 427–430.


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in question may well escape one’s notice, as it in fact has escaped the notice of logicians. One must not think that a proposition like “the sum of the angles of a triangle equals the color red” would be impossible only from the point of view of the logic of truth. It is the same from the point of view of the logic of consequence or of purely analytic logic. The concept of proposition that is the theme of analytic logic is the proposition given with “distinct evidence” (Evidenz der Deutlichkeit.)50 A proposition is given with distinct evidence when it arises, or can arise, from a spontaneous synthetic activity of thought, by which the partial constituent significations are gathered in an articulated unity of signification, which is the signification of the proposition itself as a whole. To express it in a less atomistic idiom, one can say that, by the spontaneous synthetic activity of thought, each of the partial significations is grasped in its place and in terms of its function within the articulated unity of the total signification. Distinct evidence consists in becoming originarily conscious of the proposition. And this means that it is the act of becoming conscious in which the proposition offers itself in itself (Selbstgegebenheit or selfgivenness), “in the flesh.”51 An act of becoming conscious bears, with regard to a proposition, the same relation as the one prevailing between perception and a material thing. Let us add, however, that that which presents itself “in the flesh” in distinct evidence is the proposition as such, not the state of affairs it is about, or the agreement or conformity between the proposition and the state of affairs. Husserl refers to this latter form of evidence as “clear evidence” (Evidenz der Klarheit).52 So far as the proposition serving us here as an example is concerned, it goes without saying that it cannot present itself with distinct evidence. Since distinct evidence is the act of becoming conscious by which the proposition is grasped in its ideal existence, that is to say, in that specific mode of existence properly belonging to significations (of which propositions are a part), it follows that the proposition in question has no ideal existence, i.e., that it does not exist qua signification.53 50 51 52 53

Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, §§ 16–17, pp. 49 f. (56–63). Cf. E. Husserl, CM, § 4, p. 51. Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, § 16 b. See § 16, p. 49 (56). Cf. ibid., § 89.

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Each one of the words appearing in that statement has a signification of its own, but those partial significations are not gathered into an articulated global signification which would be that of the proposition as a whole. When the logic of consequence considers propositions, these are obviously taken as possessed of ideal existence. Despite the formalization of the symbols, it is implicitly and tacitly admitted that the symbols designate terms which are related to each other. With this relation between the terms, we are referred to the experience of a coherent world within which objects of every kind have to do with one another and are connected to each other by the most different relationships, both of agreement and disagreement. Because of the intentional origin of the proposition in the experience of the world, a limit is imposed on the arbitrary and free variability of the terms which can be substituted for the formalized symbols. The history or intentional genesis of the proposition is therefore inscribed in the condition to which the terms that can play a role in a proposition are subject, a condition which is always tacitly admitted as having been met but is never expressly formulated, and which does not even need to be rendered explicit, as long as analytic logic is developed in a constructive fashion and in the spirit of positivity. Since every proposition refers, for its very existence, to a coherent world, the presupposition of a world goes—in an inexplicit and even concealed or hidden fashion—into the logic of pure consequence, although this logic does not consider propositions except as such, and studies them only from the point of view of their strict formal compatibility or incompatibility, without caring at all about questions concerning the conformity between a proposition and the corresponding state of affairs. Taking a closer look at the presuppositions of logic that we have reviewed, one notices immediately that it is not a question of premises which one would have simply forgotten to formulate and which one could establish afterwards. What our very succinct (and perhaps too succinct) analyses bring out is that the entire edifice of logic and mathematics is founded on the experience of a world. The presupposition of a world is not a premise, nor is it an axiom that would hold a quite definite place within a deductive system and entail certain consequences, so that these consequences would no longer be valid, if the axiom of the world were not admitted.


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If logic and mathematics presuppose the world, it is then as the source from which they proceed or as the nourishing soil into which their roots grow, since the entities and the forms constructed and studied by those sciences depend, so far as their very existence is concerned, on their relation to the world. Further, the presupposition of the world appears nowhere in the patent theoretical content of logic, although it supports its entire edifice. It is in the nature of such presuppositions that they are not presuppositions in the technical sense, but conditions of possibility, therefore, presuppositions in the philosophical sense; it is in their nature to be effective throughout and, at the same time, to be capable of going unnoticed. It is precisely because it is effective throughout, and because the existence and the possibility of logic depend on it, that the presupposition of the world does not play a role therein as one premise among others, and that no definite place is assigned to it within the system of logic. If the presupposition of the world is effective throughout, it is so in a concealed way and as an implication contained in each existing and valid form, that is to say, in each form that logic is interested in. Now, the presupposition of the world is not the only, or even the most fundamental, presupposition of the sort to which belong those that we endeavor to formulate here. According to Husserl’s analyses, the world proves itself to be the intentional correlate of acts of consciousness, above all of perceptual acts organized in groups and in systems endowed with quite definite structures.54 It is in this sense that the world appears as relative to the life of consciousness and, above all, to the perceptual life.55 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen, I, §§ 42, 47–51, 55, and 135. One must not see in this statement of transcendental phenomenological idealism a thesis about the world and about its existence, but the formulation of a program of research and concrete investigations. To render an account of the world and of its existence, that is to say, of the sense of its existence, in terms of constituting consciousness (and that is the final goal of phenomenology), one must analyze the particular perceptual acts, as well as the groups and the systems in which the particular acts become linked to one another. One must bring out and determine the structures in virtue of which the perceptual acts and the systems in which these acts organize themselves are originary and primordial ways in which one becomes conscious of the world and of the things contained therein. In order to clarify the sense of the existence of the world, one must return to the very acts in which the world

54 55

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If, then, logic presupposes a world, it also presupposes—likewise in a tacit and implicated form—the constitutive consciousness of which the world is the intentional correlate, and which, accordingly, is presupposed by the world. Logic presupposes consciousness, even in an account of itself. In effect, all the operations by which numbers, totalities, propositions, etc., are formed, and all those by which new, increasingly complex forms are generated on the basis of more elementary forms, all formalizing operations, etc., are processes of thought. Therein consciousness is thus implicated throughout. Numbers, totalities, classes, propositions, etc., in short, all the entities dealt with by logic and mathematics, prove to be intentional correlates, or even products of acts of consciousness and of groups of acts systematically concatenated with one another. Above,56 we showed that every proposition—and this holds equally for a number, a totality, etc.—is an identical ideal object, as opposed to a multiplicity of acts relating to it, that is to say, acts by which the ideal object is grasped qua identically the same. Whether we consider any proposition whatever from a static point of view (that is to say, whether we take it as such), or whether we study it in respect of its intentional history (therefore, from the point of view of its genesis and of its origin in other propositions), we find ourselves referred to specific acts of consciousness which—in view of what we showed, so far as the world being presupposed by logic is concerned—should be placed back in the totality of the conscious life or of transcendental subjectivity. Just as one can derive the ultimate sense of the world only from the analysis of the perceptual life, so must one follow a two-sided orientation and return to logical consciousness and to mathematical consciousness for a radical clarification of the ideal entities that play a role in logic and in mathematics.57 Therefore, the philosophical reflections on logic which have been developed by us may lead—and in fact led Husserl—to and the mundane things present themselves modo originali (originarily) such as they play a role for us in our conscious life. Phenomenological idealism is not, therefore, a matter for proclamation; it is something carried out by continual analytic work. 56 Cf. supra, pp. 424–427. 57 Cf. E. Husserl, FTL, pp. 231–235.


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establish the principle of phenomenological idealism, according to which everything that exists and everything that is valid exists and is valid due to certain acts and groups of acts, and it cannot derive its radical clarification and its ultimate justification except from an analysis of the conscious life in which it presents itself in its existence and in its validity.58

58

Cf. ibid., § 94.

CRITICAL REVIEWS

REVIEW I

GASTON BERGER, LE COGITO DANS LA PHILOSOPHIE DE ´ HUSSERL (PARIS: AUBIER/ EDITIONS MONTAIGNE, 1941), 159 PP.

Applying the method of “historico-teleological” reflection or intentional analysis to the growth of Husserl’s philosophy, Berger disengages predominant motives which, to be sure, are not elaborated and explicitly formulated before the final and definitive phase of Husserl’s evolution (viz., that of transcendental phenomenology) is reached, but which may, and must, be discerned throughout the whole development of Husserl’s thought, though, of course, in a more or less implicit, rather anticipatory and germinal form. The quest of an ultimate and absolute foundation and justification of knowledge, first of logical and mathematical knowledge, later of scientific knowledge at large and even of prescientific experience, has been a persistent occupation of Husserl. From his first beginnings in philosophy, Husserl turned to the realm of subjectivity for his foundation and justification. The problem is to account for the validity of knowledge and the objectivity of the objects of knowledge in terms of acts of consciousness through which the objects are apprehended and knowledge is constituted. It is to this orientation towards both the subjective and objective aspects of experience and knowledge that Farber also calls attention when, in his Foundation of Phenomenology,1 he speaks of the persistence of Husserl’s “dual interest.” To satisfy this interest and adequately to formulate the problems involved, Husserl had to go the long way from his psychological attempts This piece originally appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 7, No. 4 (June 1947), pp. 649–654. 1

Cf. Marvin Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology (Cambridge, Mass.: 1941; 2nd. ed., New York: Paine-Whitman Publishers, 1962). [Cf. infra, pp. 463 ff. for Gurwitsch’s critical review of this book.]


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in Philosophie der Arithmetik2 to the definitive disclosure and final understanding of transcendental subjectivity as the realm in which all foundation and justification is to be sought, an extramundane realm, and not one worldly domain among others. In the perspective of Berger’s “historico-teleological reflection,” the Logische Untersuchungen appears to be a decisive phase of this evolution. Not merely is the idea conceived of a discipline bearing upon consciousness and yet radically different from psychology, and not only are the foundations of this new discipline laid down, but also, and chiefly, the true character of this new discipline is, in some degree, already anticipated. Discussing the subjective conditions of the possibility of a theory in general, Husserl speaks of ideale Bedingungen, die in der Form der Subjektivität u¨ berhaupt und in deren Beziehung zur Erkenntnis wurzeln.3 Referring to this passage, Berger— rightly, I believe—sees in it an anticipatory formulation of what was later to become transcendental subjectivity. In his later writings, Husserl has established the method of “intentional analysis” or of “explicitation of implications” as the phenomenological method par excellence. Every act of consciousness points beyond itself in that what appears through this act, its meaning or signification, is not self-contained (the term meaning or signification taken in the broad and inclusive sense in which it has come to be used in phenomenology.) For a given meaning or signification to be rendered fully intelligible (intelligibility being the only concern of phenomenology), it is necessary that its implications be rendered explicit, i.e., that the other meanings and significations be disclosed which are presupposed by the meaning to be clarified according to its own nature and sense, and that in every concrete case there be brought out the specific nature of the ideal relationship of implication and reference as involved in the case under discussion. Given a certain meaning, it must be shown which other meanings are necessarily required for the former to have the sense it actually has. Berger finds the beginnings of this method as early as in Philosophie der Arithmetik, when 2

E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik (Halle-Saale: C. E. M. Pfeffer, 1891), I. Husserliana, Vol. XII (1970). 3 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2nd. ed. (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1913), Vol. I, p. 111, Husserliana, XVIII (1984), p. 11a (trans., I, p. 316): “ideal conditions whose roots lie in the form of subjectivity as such, and in its relation to knowledge.”

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it is maintained that the concept of number implies that of multiplicity. Again the method is applied in Logische Untersuchungen when the question is raised as to the conditions which make possible the idea of science in the sense of a theoretical context, and, later, when the mutual dependence, upon each other, of universals (like color and extension or tonality and intensity of a musical note) is investigated.4 There is, however, more than the mutual implication in, and reference to, each other of particular universals and particular meanings, though the “atomism” of meanings is overcome, to a certain extent, owing to the relationship in question. In the final analysis, all meanings and significations prove to imply a subject for which they have the sense which is theirs; all “objects,” real as well as ideal, refer to a subjectivity by which they are experienced as that which they offer themselves as, i.e., with their specific sense; the world as a whole, comprising the totality of objects, both real and ideal, implies as its “necessary premise” a subject to which it presents itself as a “unity of sense,” and by which it is experienced as existing, i.e., as endowed with a certain meaning. The method of “explicitation of implications” thus leads us to the threshold of the cogito by revealing the latter as the necessary condition of all meaning and sense. In Berger’s presentation, the continuity of Husserl’s philosophical thought throughout his entire evolution appears most clearly. This continuity is continuity by unity of motivation. Berger dispels the “legend” of the two different philosophies of Husserl, as though Husserl had first advanced a rather realistic philosophy and had later converted himself to idealism. From his very beginnings, Husserl’s problem was to account for objectivity in terms of subjectivity, but it was only gradually that this problem appeared in its full scope and that the subjectivity involved revealed its true nature. Transcendental subjectivity is disclosed by the phenomenological reduction of which Berger gives a very clear and reliable account, pointing out the difficulties involved in this operation and dissipating misunderstandings which are likely to occur when one clings to the explicit formulations instead of using these formulations as indications of direction in order to perform the epoch¯e for oneself. According to Berger, the phenomenological reduction does not so much consist in the translation 4

Cf. ibid., Vol. II, Inv. 3, Chapter 1, § 4. Husserliana, XIX-1 (1984), pp. 234 ff.

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of the object to the subject, as it does in the disclosure of the world as a phenomenon, a cogitatum, as intended and meant. Performing the reduction, one becomes aware that whatever presents itself as existing and valid is a cogitatum, the correlate of cogitationes through which it offers itself as that which it is and with the sense of its existence and validity, thus necessarily referring to the cogito from which it derives its meaning and justification. The phenomenological reduction turns out to be the most radical and thoroughgoing explicitation of the fundamental implication, namely, of the implication of the cogito in whatever exists and may be experienced. When this implication is recognized, the category of the object intended, of the object meant and thought, taken exactly as it is meant and intended, i.e., the category of sense and signification, proves the most fundamental category, more fundamental than those of existence and nonexistence. The concept of sense and meaning plays a predominant role throughout all stages of Husserl’s evolution. However, it is not before the stage of maturity is reached that the concept in question appears in its preeminence and universality. When those problems are tackled as they arise after the phenomenological reduction has been performed and on the grounds of the latter (viz., the problems of constitution), it is not that the problems of sense and meaning prevail in importance over other problems. The point is to realize, over and against naturalistic leanings and prejudices, that there are no other philosophical problems except problems of sense, meaning, and signification. To put it in other words: all philosophical problems must be stated in terms of meaning and sense for these problems to be formulated as genuine philosophical problems. The concepts of existence and nonexistence are no exceptions. It is not that to have a sense is to exist in a certain mode. Quite the contrary, existence itself, and also nonexistence, are certain significations. Consistently orienting itself towards subjectivity, phenomenology reveals itself as a philosophy of sense and meaning. Developing these ideas, Berger discloses what seems to me the deepest motive of Husserl’s thought. By the phenomenological reduction, consciousness or mind is led back to itself and is made to become aware of its proper nature as transcendental subjectivity to which the world appears as a phenomenon, a cogitatum, but which itself does not belong to the world. This is not to be understood to the effect that consciousness forms a closed domain in


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itself, separated from the world. Such a misinterpretation is precluded by the intentionality of consciousness which, by virtue of its very nature, is always directed towards objects intended and meant in one or another mode of intention. At once a problem disappears, i.e., proves artificial, which must arise when consciousness is conceived as a domain besides the domain of objects (e.g., in the manner of Descartes, as a thinking substance opposed to the extended substance.) On the grounds of this conception, the problem of the communication between the two domains or substances cannot fail to arise. This problem presupposes the conception of consciousness as a domain closed in itself in opposition to other domains (that is, after all, as a particular mundane domain.) If consciousness in the sense of transcendental subjectivity does not belong to the world, it is, according to Husserl, because the world is constituted in and by transcendental subjectivity. After the latter has been disclosed by the phenomenological reduction, the next task is to account for the world in terms of transcendental subjectivity, to interpret it as a coherent system, as a “unity of sense” with reference to the mind or cogito. Thus we are confronted with the problems of constitutive phenomenology. Berger insists that all connotations of “production,” “fabrication,” “action,” “construction,” etc. be discarded from Husserl’s concept of constitution. Trying to describe the nature of constituting intentionality, we face the unavoidable difficulty that whatever terms are available have a mundane meaning, whereas constitution is not an event taking place in the world, but designates the relation between the extramundane transcendental subjectivity and the world. Accordingly, whatever terms are used must be understood with an analogical sense. Granting this, we may ask whether constitutive intentionality is of a rather “active” or rather “passive” nature, a question, Berger thinks, to which Husserl has not given a definitive answer. (We may remark that, in his Cartesianische Meditationen, Husserl distinguishes between “active” and “passive genesis,”5 and, in his Erfahrung und Urteil, “spontaneity” and “activity” are still more emphasized, so far as the constitution of objects of certain types is concerned.) When there remain open questions concerning the nature of constituting intentionality or concerning any phenomenological doctrine at large, this means, we agree with Berger, that further analytical research 5

E. Husserl, CM, § 38 (77 ff.).

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is called for. Research in constitutive phenomenology is always of the same type and always follows the same lines of general direction. Given an object of a certain type, the task is to study the acts of consciousness through which the object is experienced. The acts must be analyzed descriptively, and the forms must be examined in which particular acts are integrated with each other into one experiential process which is a total experience of the object in question. Phenomenology aims at a universal and inclusive description and analysis of the possible modes of consciousness and at an ultimate clarification of all possible types of objects as to their sense and the meaning of their existence. To achieve this clarification, the objects must be referred to the acts of consciousness through which they offer themselves in an originary6 and primordial mode of presentation and from which they derive the meaning of their existence. It is only from analytical work pursued along these lines that an advancement and eventual solution of open questions may be expected. By the same token, the distinctive character of phenomenological idealism becomes apparent. This idealism does not maintain a thesis about the world, a thesis to be defended by means of dialectical arguments and to be so formulated and reformulated as to be made unassailable to counterarguments of the same sort. Rather than establishing a thesis about the world, phenomenological idealism tries to elucidate and to clarify ultimately the meaning of the world and of its existence. It is a program of research which is to be carried out by patient analytical work on concrete problems. Within the framework of a review, it is impossible to do full justice to the rich content which Berger presents in so condensed a form. I have concentrated upon Husserl’s orientation towards subjectivity and the meaning of his philosophy of subjectivity, as set forth by Berger with admirable lucidity and penetration. Among the topics treated in this small book, I wish to mention Husserl’s discussion of the concepts of experience and evidence, of the eidetic reduction and the method of variation, of Husserl’s intuitionism and his intuitionistic interpretation of the understanding, of the rationalistic and intellectualistic character of phenomenology, which is a philosophy of intelligence and not of intimacy of feeling, aiming throughout at rationality and comprehension. Finally, 6

“Originary” has been substituted for “original” for the sake of preserving consistency of usage throughout this volume.


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I refer to the discussion of the difficult and important question as to whether the cogito is a fact, though a “transcendental fact,” or whether with transcendental subjectivity we are on an eidetic plane (but “eidetic” understood with an analogical sense.) Faithful to the spirit of transcendental phenomenology rather than to the letter of Husserl’s formulations, Berger penetrates the phenomena and expounds the problems, indicating the difficulties which sometimes arise from the flexibility of Husserl’s terminology and pointing out the open questions which remain to be elucidated. In the final chapter, Berger confronts phenomenology with the philosophies of Descartes and Kant, especially insisting on the divergences between Kant and Husserl. Granting the differences which, as Berger points out, exist between Husserl and the historical Kant, one might ask whether, in the perspective of a “historico-teleological” examination, phenomenology will not appear to bring fulfillment to the intentions of Kant. The appendix contains a bibliography of Husserl’s works, a supplement to the bibliography on phenomenology which J. Patoˇcka published in Revue internationale de philosophie (Vol. I, 1939), and an annotated bibliography of writings in the French language which refer to Husserl’s works. I shall not pass unnoticed that Berger’s fine book appeared during the Nazi occupation, thus bearing further7 testimony—if need there be8 at all of additional evidence—to the moral and intellectual vitality of France.

7 8

“Further” has been substituted for “another.” “Be” has been substituted for “is.”

REVIEW II

GASTON BERGER, “HUSSERL ET HUME,” REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE PHILOSOPHIE, VOL. I (1939), PP. 342–353.

That which has rendered Husserl’s name famous, especially among those persons who have devoted the studies necessary to afford a thorough comprehension of it, is Husserl’s assertion that we possess an immediate knowledge of, and a direct access to, essences. This “intuition of essences,” however, is nothing other than a heading for a theory of abstraction which Husserl opposes to those theories advanced by the empiricist philosophers, and which he has laid down in explicit criticism of these theories, particularly that of Hume. Behind the patent opposition between Husserl and Hume, there is, Berger thinks, a hidden ground of agreement which he attempts to disclose. All elements of our mental life are, for Hume, either impressions or ideas. Insofar as this establishes the fundamental distinction between what in our conscious life is given as primary and originary1 and what appears as secondary and derived, Husserl agrees with Hume. But in Hume’s conception of “ideas,” two kinds of data must be distinguished one from the other. The “ideas” of the first class are those which would better be called “images,” for they refer back to sensory impressions. The “ideas” of the other class, as meanings and significations through which we have general concepts of all kinds in view, are also secondary and derived, for they also refer back to something primary and impressionlike; these “impressions,” however, are not sensory ones and may by no means be reduced to the sensory level. This piece originally appeared in English in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 2, No. 1 (September 1941), pp. 127–129. 1

See n. 6 to the prior review. This change will be observed throughout this entire piece.


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Hume defends an intuitionistic philosophy, since, for him, clearing up the sense of our concepts means going back from the “idea” to the corresponding “impression,” i.e., to the originary experience of the matter in question. This principle is fully adopted by Husserl. Yet by this very endorsing of the ultimate aim of Hume’s philosophical endeavors, Husserl is led to disagree with him in holding sensory experience to be the only kind of authentic experience. We may then say that it is for the sake of the spirit of Hume’s philosophy that Husserl rejects its doctrinal content. The assertion that there is a kind of authentic experience different from perceptual experience gave rise to widespread misinterpretations. Berger insists that there may be no question of a philosophical realism and that, if the “intuition of essences” is held to be an immediate awareness, this immediacy in no way means infallible certainty, as if Husserl, be it only in the period previous to the Ideen, I, had advocated a na¨ıve philosophy, deprived of critical spirit, which, therefore, would be unable to account for the fact of error. What is to be understood by the “intuition of essences” is nothing other than a certain mode of awareness in which what is meant by general concepts is not only meant but presents itself directly and bodily, as, in a perception (in contradistinction to acts of memory and imagination), the perceptible thing appears in an originary manner. Just as what is given in one perception may be rectified or even nullified by what is given in another more complete and more perfect perception related to the same thing, so one “intuition of essence” may be contradicted and corrected by another. There is then no infallibility at all. But just as the possibility of being induced into error does not deprive the perception of its cognitive value with respect to the universe of material things, so the same possibility does not make the “intuition of essences” lose its character as an authentic and originary experience with regard to ideal entities. That the experience of these entities may not be reduced to perceptual and sensory experience does not mean that these entities are absolute realities, independent of transcendental consciousness. On the contrary, the same problem of constitution by transcendental consciousness, which is to be raised with respect to perceptible things, has to be raised also for ideal entities of all kinds. Berger does not give a complete statement of the points at issue between Husserl and Hume, nor does he analyze Husserl’s theories which advance problems that Hume did not satisfactorily solve. He confines

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himself to pointing at some ideas of Hume which, if pursued, lead to transcendental phenomenology. Hume failed in accounting for the existence of the objective world in terms of the subjectivity of consciousness. This philosophical task, however, must be accomplished. It may not be accomplished if, following Kant, Hume’s problem is limited to the mere formal factors in the constitution of the world. The being of the world, not only its form, is to be accounted for. If Husserl succeeded better where Hume, who had fallen into skepticism, failed, he still took up the problem in the radical form stated by Hume. Husserl’s success is due in the main to the improved conception he maintains of subjectivity. In fact, for Hume, mental states are nothing but events, complexes of contents which appear and disappear, whereas Husserl insists upon the intentionality of consciousness: the acts are not self-sufficient; they are intrinsically so constituted that they point beyond themselves to something which is no real part or element of them.2 In such a way, Hume’s philosophy is held by Berger to be a preparatory and cleansing stage through which philosophical thought must pass to come to its maturity and to arrive at transcendental phenomenology. We are tempted to go still further. In Husserl’s work, it seems to me, those very problems are again taken up which have been discussed in the great classical schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which must necessarily arise with the beginning of modern science and philosophy. Different as Husserl’s theories may be from the solutions advanced in that period, not only are the problems substantially alike, but also (and this is most important) the ultimate sense of the aspirations is the same. Phenomenology is, to my mind, the continuation of that great philosophical tradition, and it is in that tradition that it is historically concatenated.

[Cf. supra, An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 3, § I.; “Husserl’s Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness in Historical Perspective,” i, § 3, pp. 351 ff.; and “Toward a Theory of Intentionality,” pp. 383 ff. Also see A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” § i, in SPP, pp. 139 ff.]

2

REVIEW III

GASTON BERGER, RECHERCHES SUR LES CONDITIONS DE LA ´ CONNAISSANCE. ESSAI D’UNE THEORETIQUE PURE (PARIS: PRESSES UNIVERSITAIRES DE FRANCE, 1941), 193PP.

Scrutinizing the conditions of cognizance or cognition (connaissance), Berger has not in view external conditions, i.e., causal factors upon which cognitive processes might depend. To be sure, cognitive processes may be considered as mundane events connected with real existents ([i.e.,] human beings), occurring at certain places and at certain times, and determined by conditions of different kinds, conditions physical, physiological, social, historical, etc. It is then perfectly legitimate to bring out the intramundane dependencies in which cognitive processes are involved. If Berger does not orient his analyses along the mentioned lines, it is because no clarification whatever of cognition is achieved by inquiries into intramundane dependencies, however interesting their results might be in other respects. Intramundane dependencies obtain between contents of cognition and groups of such contents. To state relations of dependency between contents of cognition is, however, by no means the same as to establish a relation of dependency between cognition itself and something else. In the study of intramundane dependencies, cognition is so far from being “explained,” in any conceivable sense, that it is not even taken into consideration or made a topic of investigation. Left out of account, cognition is yet implied and presupposed. When perceptions prove to depend upon physical and physiological conditions, or when certain ideas and beliefs are brought out in their relatedness to social structures, etc., both “physical and physiological conditions” and “social structure” designate systematized groups and aspects of experience which, merely to be referred to, must be presented or, at least, This piece originally appeared in English in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 8, No. 2 (December, 1947), pp. 287–294.


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meant and conceived and, thus, presuppose cognition, viz., acts of consciousness through which they are intended or appear with their proper sense. Again cognition is presupposed in the very elaboration of relations of dependency between the mentioned aspects and other groups of experience called “psychical facts,” since the relations in question are established through acts of thought, i.e., consciousness. Cognition proves tacitly implied and implicitly presupposed in those very terms in which it is to be accounted for. The impossibility of reducing cognition to anything different from itself appears most convincingly from Berger’s pertinent and conclusive criticism of contemporary attempts to eliminate consciousness as “unnecessary.” Behaviorism defines cognition as the purposeful adjustment of an organism to an environment. Apart from other problems besetting the concept of adjustment, adjustment must be ascertained in every given case either by the organism reacting to a certain situation—then this organism’s consciousness is involved—or else by the scientific observer who sees both the situation and the organism’s reaction and judges the latter to be purposeful. Even if the scientist confines his study to the perceptually accessible behavior of organisms, his consciousness at least is necessarily involved, since it is in and through acts of consciousness that the scientist engages his study in the direction he chooses to follow. Essentially the same criticism applies to logical positivism or “physicalism.” Granting, for the sake of the discussion, that logic and mathematics are but tautological formalisms, still the tautological transformations have to be performed, and they can be performed by virtue of the consciousness of the mathematician and logician. Consciousness is again involved in the coordination between protocol-propositions and tautological forms, both at the initial phase when the protocol-proposition is subjected to tautological transformations and at the final phase when the outcome of these transformations is to be verified. Verification implies, indeed, consciousness of agreement between the meaning of a proposition and an observation. That is to say, consciousness is implied throughout the whole process of scientific knowledge. It is also implied in the formulation of protocol-propositions, even if the experiential basis is reduced to the mere reading of recording machines. Still the pointers, graphs, etc. have to be read. Devices so designed as to reduce to a minimum (and, if possible, to exclude altogether) discrepancies between different observers

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do not eliminate the observer as such. They yield the same results to whomever reads them, but “whoever” is not “nobody.” Whatever attempt may be made to deny consciousness proves utterly absurd, since consciousness is implied in, and presupposed by, the very denial. If Descartes was able to establish the cogito as a fundamental indubitable truth, it is, according to Berger who interprets Descartes’ cogito as an expression of a necessary truth rather than of a factual experience, that the cogito finds its justification in the very doubt. In other words, the tentative performance of the doubt proves to imply and to presuppose the cogito as the necessary condition of doubt. Hence whatever statement is made, or assumption or hypothesis advanced, in which consciousness is denied or reduced to something else, is affected by an intrinsic absurdity insofar as, by its content, it sets itself at variance with the necessary conditions of every statement to be made, of every question to be raised, of every hypothesis to be advanced, viz., the act of thought through which the statement is maintained, etc. The question is not whether the presence of consciousness makes any difference in the course of experience; the point is rather that experience, whatever its course, necessarily refers to consciousness, because experience implies its being experienced (épreuve vécue [lived proof ], présence éprouvée [felt presence]); or, as Berger puts it, consciousness gives sense to whatever else there is. Thus the primacy and absoluteness of consciousness are established in that consciousness or cognition proves not only irreducible to anything else, but also implied by whatever is taken into consideration. In fact, whatever may be taken into consideration refers to consciousness in its very being taken into consideration. Obviously, by “conditions of cognition” cannot be meant “relations of dependency,” since cognition has no cause, but rather the intrinsic structure and organization of cognition itself. Cognition being defined as présence significative (significative presence), so that signification and cognition are coextensive, the structure and organization in question are those of significations and of systematic concatenations of significations. To clarify and elucidate any signification, any object or class of objects, or the different aspects of cognition, those ideas must be disengaged and rendered explicit as are implied in the former, i.e., which the former presuppose and require for their intelligibility. This is the method of intentional analysis. Investigations of cognition in which the latter is taken as irreducible and absolute, to be accounted for

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in its own terms and by means of intentional analysis, comprise what Berger calls théorétique pure (pure theoretical doctrine).1 The emphasis is throughout on signification, so much so that numerous classical problems of philosophy which were traditionally stated in ontological terms are reformulated in terms of signification. Théorétique pure does not ask whether this or that is a fact, but, rather, what it means to be a fact. Berger rightly rejects, as devoid of meaning, the question simply stated as to whether the external world exists. For this question, there must be substituted an inquiry into the sense of existence. Being, existence, reality have a certain sense which may, and must be, elucidated. The legitimate problem is what it means to exist, both in general and, more specifically, as an inanimate object, as an animal, as a human being, and so on. In many contemporary philosophical movements, there manifests itself, Berger thinks, the tendency to shift from the ontological point of view to that of meaning and signification, whatever the differences between the various schools as to the theoretical means they use, and also as to the very conception of signification. In opposition to the traditional conception of sensuous qualities as facta bruta, irreducible ultimate facts, Berger maintains that every quality is, so to speak, a crossing of an infinity of significations; it is entirely made up of significations. To see yellow is not merely to be confronted with a self-contained elementary datum; there is rather the evocation of, and the pointing towards, other colors, the reference to the place which yellow holds in the system of colors and, therefore, to the chromatic system as a whole. Similarly, a musical note opposes itself, owing to its musical character, to the confusedness of noises, emerges from silence as its background, appears with the musical value and significance of a signal pre-announcing that which is to follow, etc. The evocations, suggestions, intentions may vary from case to case, but they are never absent. When 1

[According to Berger in the work under review here, this is the name of “a philosophical investigation which would replace . . . what is commonly called ‘theory of knowledge.’ ” (Apud “théorétique” in André Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, ed. Société Française de Philosophie {Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960}, p. 1127, right col. Cf. Paul Robert, Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française, ed. A. Rey et al., p. 1958, left col., where Berger is quoted as saying that this discipline is a study of cognition which “sees . . . it as absolute and renounces ontological considerations.”]


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two persons hear the same symphony, so that one does, and the other does not, perceive its musical structure and articulation, it is not that they are confronted with the same qualities, but interpret them differently. Such an explanation seems plausible only as long as the point of view of phenomenal experience is not distinguished from that of physical and physiological theory. Besides, the study of qualities from the latter point of view does not purport the elimination of all interpretation so as to make the qualities appear in their “pure” state. Rather it is that a specific interpretation is introduced. Direct immediacy does not characterize the apprehension of forms and qualities, but the contact with the shapeless, continuous “existence,” devoid of determination, delimitation, and demarcation. Whatever organization, articulation, definiteness of form, etc. is exhibited by experience is due to significations, intentions, and evocations. To corroborate his conception of qualities as systems of significations, Berger resorts to a study of images, especially those as arise in the hypnagogic state, and refers to the procedures of artists and poets. The suggestions and evocations which form the substance of quality follow certain general directions. Hence the experienced phenomena group themselves in certain orders which, in turn, correspond to typical attitudes and intentions. Along with the progressive systematization of intentions and attitudes, the corresponding orders are established with increasing stability and permanency. Such orders are, e.g., the moral order, the aesthetic order, and, in a different dimension, the domain of physical facts and that of psychical facts. One and the same experience may be related to movements in space, or else it may appear in the perspective of the personal life of the experiencing subject. In the former case, it assumes the significance of a physical, in the latter that of a psychical, fact. Soul and body are not substances or things (choses), but ideal objects, conceptual systems, systems of significations, lines—incidentally, not the only ones—along which experience may be systematized and organized. When it appears as belonging to a certain order, the experience in question presents a claim whose title must be justified. Is a given phenomenon a real fact or a mere appearance? Value, in the sense of validity, proves an essential aspect of cognition. At once reality appears as a value or order of validity. There is, Berger maintains, no immediate apprehension of reality, such apprehension being confined to the shapelessly continuous

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“existence.” Facts are not only noticed, but are established in their reality by means of progressive verification. It is not that the physicist first convinces himself of the reality of molecules and then proceeds to count them. On the contrary, if he comes to accept molecules as real, it is because different methods of counting yield approximately the same result. Reality is a value which is attributed to, or withheld from, certain ideas by reasonable judgment as, in different attitudes, phenomena are judged to be beautiful, actions are judged to be just, etc. The possible orders of validity, which correspond to typical attitudes, are not exhausted by the classical and universally recognized three orders of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Berger mentions the orders of personal time, historical time, social time, etc. Among all values and orders of validity, that of truth, “the very law of cognition,” holds a privileged position, in that this value is implied in any other value. An action may be said to be truly just; with respect to every evaluation, the question may be raised as to whether it is justified, i.e., true. The “transcendental intellectualism” which Berger embraces is much akin to that embraced by Husserl. As a further condition of cognizance, Berger mentions the organization of the world with respect to a center of reference, perspective, and preference. This center of orientation is the body of the cognizant subject, occupying a certain place in space. It is with reference to the body and its “situation” that concepts like that of “proximity,” the “here,” the “now,” etc. acquire their meaning. The orientation of cognition with respect to the body (or, more generally, to the situation of the subject) entails for cognition a certain limitation, imperfection, or “perspective deformation.” Certain possibilities of apprehending the world are preferred to others; in every instance of cognition, a certain mode of perceiving the world is actualized to the exclusion of other modes equally possible. Points of view and preferences play their role and impart partiality, onesidedness, and “subjectivity” to cognition. All the aspects set forth thus far are exhibited by the world as organized by means of evocations, suggestions, significations, and values. Significations necessarily presuppose and require a subject for whom they have the sense which is theirs. “Existence” in its shapeless continuity also refers to a subject who becomes aware of it. Embarking on the problem of the transcendental subject, which he is brought to face, Berger first performs a radical and thoroughgoing reduction. All contents of consciousness are


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found to belong to the mundane realm, including the whole of psychic life: ideas, bodily feelings, emotions, etc. Trying to grasp the transcendental subject, we come to the insight that it has no content, no faculties, no properties, no interiority whatsoever. For this reason, I presume, Berger speaks of the “Je transcendantal” (the transcendental “I”), and not of the “Moi transcendantal” (the transcendental ego). The more we approach the “Je transcendantal,” the more it becomes clear that we cannot reach it. We are engaged in a direction towards a goal which can never be attained. There is an intention towards the “Je transcendantal,” which cannot be fulfilled since we have no intuition of the “Je transcendantal.” On the other hand, the “Je transcendantal” must be posited and asserted as a necessary condition of signification, judgment, and experience. All that may be said concerning the “Je transcendantal” is that its sense and function consist in thinking the world, just as, conversely, the sense of the mundane realm is to offer itself to cognition. Intentional analysis arrives here at the ultimate relation of reciprocal implication: the two terms of this relation—the “Je transcendantal” and the world—mutually referring to and elucidating each other. Of the numerous consequences which derive from Berger’s conception of the “Je transcendantal,” we mention only the following three: (1) The function of the “Je transcendantal” consisting in experiencing the world, the “Je transcendantal” appears as spectator of the world, the latter including the natural subject, i.e., the mundane ego who belongs to, and occupies a situation in, the world. Analyzing the meaning of spectacle and spectator, Berger comes to maintain that the spectator, far from being indifferent and entirely detached, participates, so to speak, as an accomplice, in what he contemplates. Insofar as2 it is permissible to extend, by way of analogy, mundane relationships to the transcendental realm, the relation between the “Je transcendantal” and the natural ego may be defined as participation or incarnation (engagement). The “Je transcendantal” necessarily partakes of the role which the natural ego plays in a given situation. Cognition being the function and the sense of the “Je transcendantal,” 2

[“Insofar as” has been substituted for “To the extent to which” to avoid unnecessary repetition.]

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and cognition necessarily implying participation, to be engaged in the world proves the law of the “Je transcendantal.” (2) The world has the meaning of a public world, the world of all of us, and not [that of ] my world. By its very meaning, the world refers to others as transcendental subjects to whom it offers itself in experience as it does to me. Thus the problem arises as to the communication with, and the comprehension of, other persons. It has been emphasized that the other person cannot be grasped in his [or her] intimacy. This is undoubtedly true as far as the transcendental aspect of the question is concerned. On the grounds of Berger’s conception, I can no more attain my “Je transcendantal” than that of another person. Both of us are on a par with each other as transcendental subjects experiencing the world and equally inaccessible in their purity. (“Nous sommes l’un et l’autre des sujets transcendantaux qui ne sauraient tomber sous le regard puisqu’ils sont eux-mêmes des regards.”)3 Since the ego has no privilege with respect to the tu,4 a real community of persons of equal dignity becomes possible. Berger points out that, in the fifth of his Cartesianische Meditationen, Husserl oscillates between the transcendental point of view and that of monadology, the reason being the attribution of a certain interiority to the “Je transcendantal.” On the grounds of his own concept, Berger believes it is possible to abide consistently by the pure transcendental point of view, whereas, with Husserl, monadology has prevailed in the end. The further question arises as to whether we may speak of transcendental subjects or only of the “Je transcendantal” in the singular. What differentiates a plurality of persons from each other are differences of content, i.e., mundane elements, and not something transcendental, as this realm is conceived by Berger. From this indistinguishableness of my “Je transcendantal” from that of another person, it cannot, however, be concluded that they are one and the same. Multiplicity and unity are mundane concepts which cannot be transferred forthwith to the transcendental realm. 3

[“We both are transcendental subjects who could not be gazed upon, as they themselves are gazes.”] 4 [The matching pair in question consist of “I” or ego and tu, i.e., thou or (singular, familiar) you.]


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(3) As to the mundane aspect of the comprehension of other persons’ minds, the problem is here not that of penetrating into an inaccessible domain, but rather of perceiving the world “through the other person’s eyes,” i.e., of putting oneself in his place and seeing the world, as far as possible, as he sees it in his situation and from his point of view. Berger speaks of perceiving the sadness of one’s friend. To be sure, I am not able to experience my friend’s sadness as he does, since my situation differs from his. Perspective deformation comes into play here as it does in the perception of material things. When two persons look at the same thing, each5 one perceives it in a mode and in a perspective different from that of the other, yet the thing perceived is the same for both. Berger’s theory of the “Je transcendantal,” as well as many other questions which his stimulating book raises, deserve to be discussed at a greater length that can be afforded here. We have had to confine ourselves to those analyses which seem to us most interesting and important, and to the general setting in which these analyses are presented, emphasizing Berger’s consistent orientation towards signification and his insistence upon intentional analysis, a method which throughout his book appears in its fertility.

5

“Each” has been substituted for “either.”

REVIEW IV

MARVIN FARBER, THE FOUNDATION OF PHENOMENOLOGY: EDMUND HUSSERL AND THE QUEST FOR A RIGOROUS SCIENCE OF PHILOSOPHY (CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1943; 2ND. ED. (NEW YORK: PAINE-WHITMAN PUBLISHERS, 1962), XI AND 585 PP.

Professor Farber’s work may well be characterized as a most useful and helpful introduction to phenomenological philosophy. It is, however, an introduction quite unique in character. The reader does not find himself confronted with that well-known type of simplifying, sometimes oversimplifying, presentation by which he is offered formulations of tenets of Husserl’s, and, at the very best, is made acquainted with the results of Husserl’s analytical work. In Farber’s book, it is the analytical work itself that is displayed, and the results are presented within the context of phenomenological research out of which they have grown. Emphasizing, though not confining himself to the logical phase of Husserl’s work, Farber enables his readers to assimilate phenomenological research. Careful study which this book both requires and deserves is rewarded, on the part of the beginner in phenomenology, by an incipient skill to think along phenomenological lines. To achieve this end, Farber has resorted to the procedure of putting himself in the background and permitting Husserl to speak. Though he frequently defines his own position and expresses critical objections against Husserl’s transcendental idealism, in general Farber assumes the role of a most trusty interpreter who, successfully, tries to render Husserl’s ideas in Husserl’s own terms. This attitude deserves all the more credit This piece originally appeared in English in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 6, No. 3 (March, 1946), pp. 439–445.


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and praise as it has almost become a lost virtue in our time, especially in the field of philosophy. The bulk of the book is devoted to the Logische Untersuchungen, Chapters 4 and 5 dealing with the Prolegomena zur reinen Logik,1 and Chapters 8–14 with the six investigations of the second volume.2 What Farber offers in these chapters is a condensed translation which, of course, cannot and is not meant to supersede the study of the original work, but will provide helpful guidance to those students who find themselves beset with linguistic difficulties. After careful examination of Farber’s book and after having used it for my own phenomenological studies over a rather extended period of time, I may safely state that I have not encountered the omission of any significant passage or any incorrect or inadequate rendering. The treatment of the Philosophie der Arithmetik3 in Chapter 2 is much like that of the Logische Untersuchungen, but the presentation of the Philosophie der Arithmetik is still more condensed, the emphasis being placed upon those analyses and theoretical points of view that reappear in a more mature form in Husserl’s later writings. The same holds for Chapters 3, 6, and 7 in which Farber expounds articles and critical surveys of Husserl’s as they either pertain to the period previous to that of the publication of the Logische Untersuchungen or refer to discussions, mostly based on the misunderstandings which were provoked by the Logische Untersuchungen. Chapter 1 deals with the philosophical situation in Germany at the time of Husserl’s youth; it contains discussions of Paul Natorp’s reaction against psychologism and of some particularly significant ideas of Franz Brentano’s, Husserl’s teacher. In the early chapters of his book, Farber expounds a considerable amount of material which I have not seen presented heretofore in any study on Husserl’s work. The importance of this material for the full understanding of Husserl’s beginnings appears just from the fact that the use of the material in question has enabled Farber to offer a complete survey of the starting points from which Husserl’s work has gradually developed. 1

E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I, pp. 1 ff. (in Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana, XVIII, pp. 17 ff.) 2 Ibid., Vol. II (in op. cit., Husserliana, XIX-1 and XIX-2). [All references provided in the footnotes are supplied by the translator.] 3 E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik (in op. cit., Husserliana, XII).

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Of special interest is Farber’s account of Husserl’s criticism of the first volume of Ernst Schröder’s Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Algebra der Logik,4 i.e., the beginning of what later was to become symbolic logic. In Farber’s view, Husserl went too far in his disparagement of mere formal and “technical” devices. On the other hand, Farber points out some sound elements in Husserl’s criticism. Most important of all, there is a distinction to be drawn between logical systems and the system of logic. The elaboration of logical systems no more yields by itself a philosophy of logic than the constructive development of mathematical disciplines is in itself a philosophy of mathematics. In both cases, there is the need of supplementing the constructive work of the logician and the mathematician by an epistemic clarification of the basic concepts and procedures of formal reasoning, if a truly philosophical understanding of formal reasoning is to be achieved. Reduced to its proper proportions, phenomenological criticism does not reject the constructive work of the logical “technician,” any more than that of the mathematical “technician,” but rather opens up a new dimension of investigations from which final light may be thrown upon this constructive work. The investigations of this new, phenomenological dimension are oriented toward “subjectivity” and deal with the modes, contributive activities, procedures, and essential laws of formal thought.5 In the later chapters of his book, Farber offers summaries of some phenomenological developments which Husserl achieved in the decades following upon the publication of the Logische Untersuchungen. Chapter 15 presents in broad outlines Husserl’s mature conception of the philosophy of logic as developed in the Formale und transzendentale Logik.6 Special stress is laid on two points: 1. Husserl’s distinction of different logical levels (the theory of possible logical forms or pure logical grammar, the logic of consistency and compossibility or apophantic analytic, and the logic of truth or the theory of the mere formal conditions of “adequation” 4

Ernst Schröder, Vorlesungen u¨ ber die Algebra der Logik (Leipzig: Teubner), Vol. I (1890) and Vols. II/1 (1891), II/2 (ed. E. Müller, 1905), III/1 (1895), and III/2 (ed. E. Müller, 1905). 5 Cf. supra, A. Gurwitsch, “The Perceptual World and the Rationalized Universe,” supra, pp. 411 ff. 6 E. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik (in Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana, XVII).

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between propositions and things); 2. the dual orientation of logic toward the constitutive and contributive activities and operations of thought, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the results and products of these operations (viz., concepts, propositions, and systematic concatenations of the latter as identical and identifiable unities, in contradistinction to the multiple acts of thought-experience related to these unities.) Referring to Husserl’s posthumously published Erfahrung und Urteil,7 Farber conveys an idea of Husserl’s concept of the origin-analysis of logical forms in “prepredicative” experience.8 Topics of general phenomenological significance such as Husserl’s analysis of the consciousness of time laid down in his Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins,9 his concept of the “natural attitude” and the modification of this attitude by the “phenomenological reduction” (which, rightly in my opinion, Farber takes for a mere methodological expedient), [and] Husserl’s account of “intersubjectivity” given in the Cartesianische Meditationen10 provide the content of Chapter 16. Throughout the gradual growth of phenomenology in Husserl’s development, there is, as Farber brings out, the persistence of Husserl’s dual interest in both the subjective and objective aspects of mathematics and logic, to begin with, and, later, of all experience and knowledge. The concepts, principles, propositions, and systematic theories of mathematics and logic present themselves, on the one hand, as objective, ideal meaning-unities and concatenations of meanings which have universal validity, and, on the other hand, they are embedded in the stream of subjective experience. How can that which is arrived at in and through subjective processes and operations claim objectivity and validity? The problem arises of accounting for the identity, objectivity, and validity of the mentioned meanings and systems of meanings11 in terms of those 7

E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, ed. L. Landgrebe, 1st. ed. (Hamburg: Claasen & Goverts, 1948). 8 Cf. supra, n. 5. 9 E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins in Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana, X. 10 E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen (in op. cit., Husserliana, I). 11 [“The identity, objectivity, and validity of the mentioned meanings and systems of meanings” has been substituted for “the mentioned meanings and systems of meanings as to their identity, objectivity, and validity.”]


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subjective activities and contributions in which the former appear, are constituted, and have their origin. As to the concepts of unity, plurality, and number, Husserl, in the Philosophie der Arithmetik, endeavored to give the account in question in terms of Brentano’s empirical descriptive psychology. The deficiencies and inadequacies of this attempt became apparent rather soon, partly under the helpful influence of Gottlob Frege’s criticism, which it is gratifying to see expounded in Farber’s book. To do full justice to both the objective and subjective orders involved in cognition, Husserl found himself compelled to abandon the “psychologistic” point of view and to elaborate specific methods and techniques proper to phenomenology. In the course of this reorientation, Husserl was also brought to develop a new conception of consciousness as essentially intentional (the term “intentionality” having, with Husserl, a specific sense, quite different from that in which Brentano used the term); one would have liked to see Husserl’s new conception of consciousness receive more emphasis and valuation in Farber’s comments and summaries. The development of phenomenology subsequent to the Logische Untersuchungen may well be characterized as the progressive realization of the program to account for objectivity in terms of subjective processes and operations. On the one hand, the scope of the phenomenological investigations has been enlarged so as to extend to objects and objectivities of all kinds. On the other hand, the proper methods and techniques have been developed and refined; [and] phenomenological analyses have been carried out in different dimensions and at different levels with increasing precision, definiteness, and penetration, the process of both expansion and growth culminating in the aforementioned view of the double orientation of logic. Seen in historical perspective, the Leibnizian tradition (deriving from Plato in the final analysis) and that of classical British empiricism meet in Husserl as they met in Kant, to whose intentions, as Farber shows, phenomenology has brought fulfillment. With both Kant and Husserl, the attempt at reconciling and amalgamating the two mentioned traditions has given rise to “transcendental idealism.” It must be stressed that, with Husserl, phenomenological transcendental idealism means a constructive program for analytical work and research rather than a thesis. The program is that of a far-reaching and all-inclusive investigation of consciousness, both as to its general nature and as to particular classes of

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specific acts (e.g., perception, imagination, reasoning, etc.) with respect to their contributive functions. The acts of consciousness are studied from the point of view of their presentational function, with reference to the objects of different types which are experienced through these acts, and appear and are constituted in them, as, e.g., logical forms arise with increasing complexity in and through the specific activities of the understanding.12 By the performance of the constitutive phenomenological analyses, final philosophical clarification may be achieved as to the different types of objects which play a role in the “natural attitude,” taken as they play a role13 in this natural attitude. It cannot be stressed emphatically enough that it is not the goal of phenomenology to supersede the world of the “natural attitude,” but, on the contrary, to bring about ultimate clarity about the findings and theses of the “natural attitude” (the latter construed broadly enough so as to include both everyday-life experience and the specific experience of the mundane sciences) and to justify those theses within the limits in which the latter stand the test of a radical clarification. The justification is achieved by the very process of clarification. As to the concept of existence, phenomenological transcendental idealism does not oppose a supposedly true philosophical concept to that adopted in the “natural attitude,” but rather tries to bring out the completely clarified and, therefore, entirely justifiable meaning of the latter concept, by retracing it to its origin in those experiences in which the existent in question offers itself in genuine presentation and apprehension in its specific mode of existence. Farber objects to transcendental idealism and insists that a distinction be drawn between “existence” and “meaning of existence.” I cannot conceal that I find it difficult to adopt this distinction. “Existence” seems to me to be equivalent to “meant existence” from the mere fact of its being made a topic of discourse and reflection; if the existent in question is not only meant but really given as such, there are again involved acts of consciousness of a privileged character which, on account of their presentational nature, are endowed with meanings; it is through these acts, and through them only, that the existent is given (that is to say, meant 12

Cf. supra, n. 5. [“Play a role” has been substituted for “figure” for the sake of preserving consistency of usage throughout this volume.]

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in a specific and distinguished mode of meaning) as really existing. The “priority of meaning over being” seems to me established by the necessity of experiencing presentational acts in order to attain to any existent whatsoever. In fairness to Farber, it must be stated that his objections are not directed against any actually performed analytical work of constitutive phenomenology, but rather against certain formulations and interpretations which this analytical work has been given by Fink in an article endorsed by Husserl, to be sure. Farber’s request that the constitutive analytical work be stated in terms methodologically unobjectionable, i.e., purely descriptive and rational throughout, may count on the most eager assent of those to whom phenomenology is more than just one “philosophical vision” besides others, who see in it the attempt at, and the beginnings of, a “rigorous science” of philosophy, intended to provide a radical and thoroughgoing analysis and clarification of experience and, thus, to lay down the fundaments upon which a progressively advancing, truly philosophical theory of knowledge and the sciences may be built. My agreement with Farber is without any reservation as to his protest against the intrusion of elements of ineffability and mysticism and also against the attempt of cutting phenomenology loose from any connection with mundane problems. The phenomenological reduction, for example, ought to be presented, as Fink has done it, as a procedure unknown and unmotivated in the “natural attitude,” by which a “breakthrough” is achieved toward an otherwise “concealed realm.” In truth, the phenomenological reduction is a methodological device to which one must resort in order to meet problems and difficulties that arise in the attempt at a general and universal reflection, difficulties which cannot be met otherwise, but which must be overcome for the universal reflection to be carried through in radical terms. The motivation for the universal reflection and its radicalization originates, in turn, from mundane problems, the foundation problems of science, for instance. Phenomenology can only win if, instead of being detached from the mundane sphere, it is presented and pursued in its motivation by problems which arise in this very sphere. The program of constitutive phenomenology, of a wide and allinclusive analytical and descriptive investigation of consciousness and experience from the point of view of its presentational and objectivating

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function, opens up a vast field of research in which substantial progress may be achieved by cooperative work. It was Husserl himself who, in his “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,”14 spoke of the cooperation of generations of scholars, confirming and correcting each other, achieving results of lasting value, and, on the basis of the results thus obtained, proceeding toward further research. Hereby Husserl has indicated the particular style of phenomenological philosophy which, as he has pointed out himself, is not too different, in principle, from that familiar in the natural sciences. If this “dream” is to be realized, if phenomenology is to survive and advance, it is imperative, after the political events of the last decade, that phenomenology be emancipated from the linguistic cloak in which it has existed thus far. In this regard, Farber has rendered an important service to the phenomenological movement and its future.

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E. Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” (1915), Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1922) in Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana, XXV (1987), pp. 3–62.

REVIEW V

JAMES STREET FULTON, “THE CARTESIANISM OF PHENOMENOLOGY,” THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW, VOL. XLIX (1940), PP. 285–308.

In this excellent paper written with much historical comprehension and philosophical penetration, Dr. Fulton discusses Husserl’s claim that phenomenology may be characterized as a Neo-Cartesianism, although nearly all of the doctrinal content of Cartesianism is rejected, and this because of a radical development given to certain Cartesian themes. Is this “doctrinal content” truly accessory, so that, when it is dismissed, the real and essential principles of Cartesian philosophy become all the more manifest and may be set forth even more explicitly than they are in the form in which Descartes brought them out himself? Or is the “doctrinal content” so closely connected with the general orientation of Descartes’ thought that, when those “Cartesian themes” which Husserl retains and endeavors to develop are considered in the light of Descartes’ supreme philosophical aspirations, they cannot be separated from that “doctrinal content”? Both Descartes and Husserl are striving for an ultimate and absolutely justified knowledge resting upon unassailable and self-evident grounds. This common goal does not have the same meaning to both thinkers, however. To Descartes it meant the validation of the new mathematical science and the foundation of an authentically scientific metaphysics construed on the model of that science. Husserl, as we know, does not adopt this ideal. What separates him from Descartes is not only the nineteenth-century development in mathematics to which Fulton points, but also the whole intervening tradition of empiricism. Ultimate knowledge can only be found in the realm of transcendental subjectivity, the This piece originally appeared in English in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 2, No. 4 (June, 1942), pp. 551–558.


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task of philosophy consisting, with Husserl, in inquiring into this realm and investigating the constitution of all types of objects within this realm. Bearing this in mind, Fulton analyzes what appears to be parallel in Descartes’ and Husserl’s thoughts. The most striking parallelism obtains, of course, between Descartes’ universal doubt and Husserl’s phenomenological reduction. In fact, all characteristics of the universal doubt and of what is revealed by it with unquestionable certainty apply, as well, to the phenomenological reduction and to its residuum. What the universal doubt reveals to exist with absolute certainty is not “an empty point,” serving only as starting point for further conclusions and inferences, but, as Fulton most rightly insists upon, a “field in which we can freely wander.” So Descartes might have been led by his doubt to the realm of transcendental subjectivity. Nevertheless he did not attain this realm, as Husserl himself emphasizes. Is this due to a mere failure? Have we here one of those cases in which a great discoverer did not fully realize the true meaning and significance of what he had just discovered, or are there deeper reasons? Fulton thinks that there are such deeper reasons, which may be uncovered when the universal doubt is considered in connection with Descartes’ ultimate aim. Validating mathematical physics meant to Descartes justifying the mental operations by means of which this science is accomplished. He did this by showing them to be not only one legitimate source of knowledge but the only one, to the exclusion of sense-perception. In other words, this validating meant demonstrating that the external and physical world is truly and really what it is conceived to be by mathematical reason and not what it appears to be to the senses. The philosophical foundation of the new science requires that perception be no longer acknowledged as a cognitive function, as it was in the ancient and medieval tradition. The universal doubt helps to accomplish this purpose. It consists not only in shaking the prejudices in the ordinary sense but also, and mainly, in undermining the natural belief in the existence of the external world as it presents itself in perception. Thus the way is opened towards establishing the new science and justifying it philosophically. But after the new science has been established and even guaranteed, the problem of perception comes up again. The sensible qualities excluded from matter, i.e., the extended substance, must be assigned to some other order of existence. For this problem as well,

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a solution is provided by the universal doubt which, with unchallengeable certainty, reveals the existence of the thinking substance as radically distinct from the extended one. Thus the sensible qualities may find a place within this realm discovered by the universal doubt, the knowledge of this realm turning out to be logically prior to that of the extended substance. Hence one may apply Descartes’ notion of clearness—which, according to Fulton, means directness of presentation—to the sensible qualities, provided only that one confine oneself to ascertaining their givenness to the mind and refrain from drawing any conclusion as to external existence. If, furthermore, we consider that perception is referred by Descartes to the union of mind and body, we see that the consciousness revealed by the doubt as the “field in which we can freely wander” is conceived by him as a mundane realm. It could not be conceived otherwise. To validate mathematical physics, a substantial distinction between mind and matter must be established. It could be, as it was, established by the universal doubt. What Descartes was seeking was not transcendental subjectivity as the field of constitution of objects, but another finite substance besides the extended one, the other half of the real world, so to speak. Considering then the pertinent ideas of Descartes in light of the general orientation of his philosophical thought and in connection with his ultimate aim, we agree with Fulton that Descartes was very far from discovering transcendental subjectivity and that, “had he really discovered transcendental subjectivity, it would have been both astonishing and unwelcome.” This account of Descartes’ concept1 of consciousness is corroborated by a closer examination of his argument concluding from the idea of God as present in the mind to the metaphysical reality of an infinite substance corresponding to that idea. Fulton gives an original and highly interesting interpretation of this argument as set forth in the third Meditation.2 Fulton thinks that new and unexpected light may be cast on this argument from Husserl’s account of “intersubjectivity,” i.e., the objectivity of the world as a “public world,” the “world of everybody.” 1

[“Concept” has been substituted throughout for “notion” for the sake of preserving consistency of usage in this volume.] 2 R. Descartes, Meditationes, pp. 34 ff. and Méditations, pp. 37 ff., in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, Vols. VII and IX-1, respectively.

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According to Husserl, the world cannot have this “existential sense” except with reference to the experience of other selves. Our experience of the intersubjective world presents a certain stratification which prescribes a direction to the phenomenological intentional analyses. The world bracketed by the phenomenological reduction undergoes a second reduction. The latter leaves me with “my primordial world,” i.e., the world for me, the Nature for me, a quasi-world, and a quasi-Nature, of course, in which no sense and no sense-element is allowed to intervene except those which are bestowed upon it from my own experience. Within this quasi-world I meet organic bodies like my own, so that the new task of phenomenology consists in scrutinizing the acts of “appresentation” owing to which other selves like my own are experienced to be connected with those bodies. I may not account for the fact that the world has the “existential sense” of the one objective world until I have clarified the constitution of other selves for my consciousness through certain acts of mine. The objectivity of the world means that it is common to all of us, is our public world, and is the same for me as for other selves. Now, the most important idea in all this is, for Fulton’s purpose, Husserl’s account of intersubjective objectivity in terms of the transcendental ego’s experiences. Exploring the field of my transcendental subjectivity, I find certain acts which confront me with other selves and other acts which confront me with transcendent objects identically the same for me as for the other selves. The correlates of these acts cannot be interpreted as subjective, primordial, immanent, etc., without altering the acts in question and, hence, the intrinsic nature of consciousness, of my transcendental subjectivity itself. No inferential construction is needed to come to the objective public world; any inference from a within to a without (with respect to transcendental subjectivity) would be, according to Husserl, absurd and nonsensical. All that one has to do is to explore the transcendental field, so as to uncover the sense-implications owing to which the objects are shaped into what they are in my natural, i.e., pre-philosophical, life. The only task consists in scrutinizing, by intentional analysis, the acts and operations of my transcendental subjectivity, from which those senses are derived and bestowed upon their correlata. It is then “within” the realm of transcendental subjectivity that we attain the intersubjective world, and it is in abiding in that realm—and only in abiding in it—that we may account for the “existential sense” of that world.


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Has not Descartes carried on his argument along similar lines? What does the exceptional position which the idea of God occupies in my consciousness mean? Surveying my consciousness—as Fulton interprets Descartes’ argument—I ascertain my weakness and my limitedness. In doubting, desiring, striving, etc., I become aware of my being imperfect. Now, my awareness of my imperfection (that is, my awareness of the fact that something is lacking to me) presupposes and implies a certain knowledge about that something which is lacking to me. I cannot feel imperfect unless I have an idea of the perfections of which I am deprived. So in accounting for what I turn out to be in my meditations upon my consciousness, I discover the idea of God as the infinite and most perfect Being. This idea is not on the same footing with other ideas, since I perceive it by the very same act by which the fundamental features of my self are revealed to me. In this sense, “the experience of God is necessary to the experience of the self.” Since I cannot become aware of my self without at the same time conceiving the idea of God, the latter may be said to be “an inescapable ingredient of human experience.”3 On the other hand, the idea of God cannot be considered as imaginary, illusory, and subjective without disregarding the unassailable certainty which the universal doubt reveals to be connected with the awareness of consciousness itself. This is, Fulton thinks, what must be shown to be lying behind the “causal” and the traditional “ontological” arguments as used by Descartes. Here again, then, we attain transcendence without leaving the field of consciousness. It is in the very scrutinizing of this field that consciousness of the self is discovered “to involve and depend upon consciousness of an ultimate reality distinct from the self.” Insofar as this is intended to be an interpretation of Descartes’ argument, I am inclined to endorse it. However, the difference between Descartes’ argument thus interpreted and Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity must be emphasized more than Fulton has done. According to Husserl, the intersubjective world is a highly complex sense-unity in which several senses and even sense-strata are to be distinguished as presupposing and referring to each other. The same is correspondingly true of the conscious acts and operations, acts and operations of transcendental subjectivity in which those senses are constituted and owing to which 3

The italics are mine.

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the sense-complex (the intersubjective world) is achieved. This intersubjective world, however, is considered by Husserl as a correlate of transcendental subjectivity, as derived from its acts and operations in their interrelation and interconnection, whereas Descartes maintains the actual dependence of consciousness upon a reality superior to it. For Husserl all transcendence is relative to transcendental subjectivity, and he tries to clarify its sense, referring to the acts from which it is derived. Descartes, on the contrary, seeks to attain a transcendent reality not related to the realm of cogitationes, although it announces itself in this realm. He in fact endeavors to shift from the level of cogitationes to another level, while Husserl consistently abides by that of pure transcendental consciousness. Descartes could give this turn to his meditations because of his concept of consciousness. To bring the latter4 out more clearly, we have only to analyze a little further Descartes’ argument as interpreted by Fulton. This argument starts from the premise that there are certain conscious acts through which we become aware of our limitedness. These acts, however, are referred to not only insofar as they are experienced acts like others, that is to say, not just insofar as experiencing them we feel finite, limited, weak, and imperfect, but also insofar as experiencing them we become aware of our being all this. In other words, these acts are considered as confronting us with our human condition. Accordingly, the indubitable certainty connected with the realm of consciousness not only concerns the acts in question insofar as they are actually experienced cogitationes, but it also extends to what we are confronted with by these acts. This shows that what Descartes has in view is human nature and reality considered as purely spiritual and as separate from the body. When he is speaking of consciousness, he does so because with him the spiritual nature consists only in thinking. What the universal doubt reveals with unassailable certainty to exist is a mundane substance, created and therefore finite, limited, and imperfect, distinct from the body and yet susceptible to entering into causal connections with it. In this sense, Descartes’ concept of consciousness may be called “anthropological.” He is so far from seeing transcendental subjectivity that, when the material world is “bracketed,” he believes there remains only the human mens, animus, sive intellectus. 4

[“Latter” has been substituted for “letter.”]


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In his search for phenomenological principles that have Cartesian antecedents, Fulton goes beyond the hints given by Husserl himself. By the concept of clearness, which along with that of distinctness occupies a central position in Descartes’ thought, is meant, according to Fulton, “directness of presentation,” distinctness being defined as complete and thoroughgoing clearness. Clearness and distinctness then designate that privileged mode of givenness in which an object is present “in se ipso”;5 they are not subjective feelings (“feelings of certainty”) which would be merely concomitant with certain mental operations. It is well known what development Husserl has given to this idea in his theory of evidence and also in his fundamental distinction between the originary6 mode of presentation in which the object is given im Modus es selbst,7 as bodily present, and the “empty” and merely “signifying” intention in which the object in question is only meant and assumed without being given itself. This distinction of Husserl’s is paralleled with Descartes’ theory of judgment, especially with his discrimination between judgments based on clear and distinct perception and those that do not rest on such a ground. Finally, Descartes’ theory of judgment may be said to underlie the abovementioned parallelism and the seeming identity of the universal doubt and the phenomenological reduction, insofar as the former consists in a withholding of judgment and the latter in a “setting out of action” of the general existential thesis, the belief in which it is permanently carried within the natural attitude. Direct givenness of the object itself is, with both Descartes and Husserl, the intrinsic criterion of truth. The rational positing of an object as real or existent finds its ultimate justification, according to Husserl, in the privileged originary mode of presentation, im Modus es selbst, so that, in the end, true-being turns out to be equivalent to adequately-given-being. Justified certainty of belief, self-evidence, and true being are correlative to each other. Descartes, however, as Fulton points out, is not satisfied with a mere intrinsic criterion of truth. To validate the new science, it 5

[“In itself ”.] [“Originary” has been substituted for “original,” here and throughout this review, for the sake of preserving consistency of usage in this volume.] 7 [“In the mode ‘it itself.’ ”] Cf., e.g., E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, Inv. 6, § 21; Ideen, I, §§ 21, 67, and 145; and CM, § 24. 6

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is not enough, in Descartes’ opinion, to show its intrinsic consistence and coherence; there must also be demonstrated the metaphysical reality of substances corresponding to the clear and distinct ideas of which the new science is made up. So Descartes needs a guarantee for the truth of what is clearly and distinctly perceived; he needs a guarantee that what is conceived to be true on account of its clearness and distinctness does actually correspond to the reality of the world, in contradistinction to the world’s appearance in sense-perception. For this guarantee he resorts to divine veracity. This divergence of views between Descartes and Husserl, in spite of certain principles maintained by both, has also to be traced to the different meaning which the idea of a radical and ultimate foundation has for each thinker. Fulton sees very well that, according to Husserl, sense-perception is authentic evidence for matters of fact and for natural objects and is even the only kind of evidence available for this realm. Nevertheless, he thinks that, because of its being neither adequate nor apodictic, senseperception is regarded by Husserl as being “evidence of the most imperfect type” and “deficient by comparison with the idea of . . . the strict self-evidence to which a resolutely radical philosophy must in the end make its appeal.” In this context, he refers to Husserl’s theory of ideation as irreducible to sense-perception, and this theory seems to him to be parallel to Descartes’ intuition of “simple and immutable natures.” Indeed, such a parallelism may be claimed to exist, especially for Husserl’s theory as set forth in his earlier writings. Nevertheless, a difference must be stressed which is underrated in Fulton’s statement. In interpreting Husserl’s theory of ideation, even in its earlier form, we must allow for the historical circumstances at the beginning of this century,8 namely, for the overwhelming prevalence of empiricist theories of “abstraction.” When Husserl opposed ideation to sense-perception, he dealt with philosophical theories and valuations of perception rather than with perception itself. He never intended to deprive perception of its cognitive value. Hence Fulton’s formulation as to the deficiency of perception goes too far. That perception is inadequate and non-apodictic does not make it “the most imperfect type” of evidence, since, with regard to natural objects, it is not only hopeless but also absurd and nonsensical to seek for another type of 8

[That is, the twentieth century.]


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evidence. Descartes, on the contrary, does deprive perception of its cognitive value. His criticism bears upon perception itself and the “natural” belief in it, not upon a philosophical interpretation of perception and a philosophical belief. Thus Husserl may take perception as a paradigmatic example of evidence in order to bring out the evidential function of direct presentation in general. With regard to categories of objects different from material things, other acts of direct awareness as well possess this function, so that sense-perception really turns out to be a special case of “intuition” in the broadest sense of direct presentation. But, with this theory, Husserl definitely does not stand on Cartesian grounds. By differentiating the idea of evidence, Husserl, contrary to what Fulton suggests, does not fill out a gap left by Descartes. There is no such gap in Descartes’ thought. He would have never admitted different kinds of evidence according to different types of objects, or treat perception, with respect to its evidential function, on the same footing with the intuition of “simple and immutable natures.” When perception is indubitably certain, it is certain not with respect to its objectifying function, for it has no such function, but only insofar as it is an actually experienced mental state. It shares this certainty with all subjective feelings (for example, with pains and pleasures). It is in conformity with this difference between their views that Descartes derives his idea of knowledge from mathematical reasoning and deduction, whereas Husserl, as Fulton remarks, comes to his idea of true science by following and disclosing the teleological tendencies which regulate every endeavor to know. When the differences between Descartes and Husserl are taken into consideration, what becomes of Husserl’s claim that phenomenology is a kind of Neo-Cartesianism? Fulton’s judgment as to Descartes’ concept of self-consciousness and Husserl’s concept of transcendental subjectivity seems to me sound and may be generalized: “Descartes took the sort of preliminary steps that led Husserl to the transcendental problem.” In this consists the historical continuity. Continuity does not mean that phenomenological ideas were always efficient in the past, as though phenomenology were always preformed in all philosophical thinking, without having been set forth with sufficient clearness, precision, and consistency. That phenomenology is in historical continuity with the great philosophical tradition means that, in the historical development, philosophical problems have been advanced to that point where further

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progress may only be expected from specifically phenomenological methods. Herein lies the convincing and conclusive power of Husserl’s leading and fundamental ideas. It is the historical development of the tradition itself that leads to phenomenology. Historical continuity is thus not incompatible with real progress. Notwithstanding the mentioned disagreements, Fulton’s paper seems to me to be a model of how the “prehistory” of phenomenology should be studied.

REVIEW VI

´ ´ JEAN HERING, “LA PHENOM ENOLOGIE D’EDMUND ´ HUSSERL IL Y A TRENTE ANS. SOUVENIRS ET REFLEXIONS ´ D’UN ETUDIANT DE 1909.” REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE PHILOSOPHIE, VOL. I, NO. 2 (1939), PP. 366–373.

Hering tells, in a simple and consequently all the more powerful manner, how profoundly impressed he was by Husserl’s teaching, when, as a young student deeply disappointed by what he had been taught elsewhere, he came to Göttingen. His narrative revives the atmosphere of the philosophical seminar in Göttingen about 1909. The best fellows of a whole generation of students in philosophy were overwhelmed and fascinated by the sincere intellectual probity of Husserl’s teaching and research. They were captivated by his successful attempts to convince them that “personal opinions” are not what counts in philosophy, but that there is a wide field for positive research work and a method which obtains firm and universally valid results. Further, he showed that the traditional endless discussions founded on unclarified concepts had to be dismissed and to be replaced by clearing up the sense of the concepts themselves, in such a way that every result thus obtained might serve as a point of departure for further fruitful researches. Gaining a foothold on solid ground, these students felt released from the narrowness of the positivistic doctrine and from the paralogisms implied in the psychologistic epistemology of the period. What attracted them above all was the idea of eidetics. Material ontology a priori was for them the body of philosophy. However, Husserl, who had just opened up this field of research, did not confine himself to this discovery; he pushed forward. We are at the period during which the first ideas of what was later to become transcendental phenomenology This piece originally appeared in English in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. I, No. 2 (December, 1940), pp. 253–254.


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were ripening in his mind, a development which somewhat surprised his students of that generation and which they had difficulty in following. As a theologian, Hering does not omit to mention the helpful service which phenomenology has rendered, and is yet able to render, to the philosophy of religion, and especially of Protestantism. By means of phenomenological analysis of religious consciousness and its internal structures, the philosophy of religion may escape the alternatives of psychologistic subjectivism and constructive or merely dogmatic objectivism. Hering’s paper is a human document. It shows us the impressive and profound effect produced upon the minds of his students by a man whose whole life was devoted to science and to research, and who could produce such an effect because of the purity of his personality, dominated by such a remarkable ethos.

REVIEW VII

“PREFACE” TO QUENTIN LAUER, THE TRIUMPH OF SUBJECTIVITY (NEW YORK: FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1958), PP. V–VIII.

To an observer of the contemporary intellectual scene, it may appear that the years following the end of the war have witnessed a triumph of phenomenology on an international scale. Certainly, this impression is correct to some extent. Nonetheless,1 much of what passes for “phenomenology” can thus be taken only in a very broad, not to say extremely loose, sense. Some of the writings about Husserl’s phenomenology are too much colored and determined by views current in contemporary philosophical trends which, though they have undoubtedly developed in the wake of Husserl’s phenomenology, cannot however2 be considered as its continuations, that is, as continuations of Husserl’s work along the lines of his general orientation. Needless to say, thus to continue Husserl’s work is not only compatible with, but might even sometimes demand modifications of, particular theories. As far as the situation in the United States is concerned, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that Husserl’s writings are hardly studied at all, and his theories and ideas remain largely unknown. So bypassed, phenomenology is not permitted to exert the invigorating influence it might have upon contemporary American philosophy, which thus deprives itself of the vitalization it might derive from the philosophical substance and radicalism of Husserl’s work. No less deplorable are the misconceptions This piece originally appeared in English in this book, which was re-issued as Phenomenology. Its Genesis and Prospect (New York: Harper Torchbooks/The Academy Library/Harper & Row, 1965). 1

“Nonetheless” has been substituted for “however” in order to avoid unnecessary repetition below. 2 “However” has been substituted for “yet” for lexical reasons.


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current in what may be called philosophical public opinion: the misunderstanding of Husserl’s concept3 of intuition for a kind of mystical insight or illumination; the misinterpretation of his descriptive analyses as a sort of introspectionism; and the like. To be sure, there are some American publications of more or less recent date which do not seem to bear out this pessimistic view. We gratefully acknowledge those encouraging signs, and we may even take them as a promise for the future. Yet, at the present phase, they can hardly be considered as more than exceptional and marginal phenomena. It still remains true that phenomenology plays no role in contemporary American philosophy. Under these circumstances, reliable monographs either on Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole or on certain of its central aspects are highly desirable. It is most gratifying to us to welcome and to introduce Quentin Lauer’s book. Among the American publications just referred to as hopeful and promising symptoms of a serious interest in and genuine understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology, the present book will hold a prominent place. Husserl’s phenomenology is presented by Father Lauer under a genetic perspective. He pursues its gradual unfolding and crystallization through four of Husserl’s major works which appeared during his lifetime: the first in 1900–1901, the last in 1931. For its internal unity and coherence, a presentation which lays bare the growth of phenomenological philosophy requires to be organized around a central theme. For that central theme, Father Lauer has chosen the concept of the intentionality of consciousness. A more fortunate and appropriate choice could hardly have been made. Not only is the theory of intentionality of predominant importance for Husserl’s thought, but one might even go as far as maintaining that a completely developed phenomenological philosophy would coincide with a theory of intentionality consistently elaborated in all its ramifications. By this insistence on the presentational function of acts of consciousness (that is, upon their function of confronting the experiencing subject with objects as meant, intended, and appearing through those acts), Husserl has inaugurated a radical change in the current conceptions con3

Here, as well as elsewhere in this piece, “concept” has been substituted for “notion” in order to preserve consistency of usage in this volume.

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cerning consciousness and the nature of the mind. Husserl foresaw that the theory of intentionality and phenomenological philosophy as a whole implied drastic reforms of psychological thinking. Trends of contemporary psychology and psychopathology on the continent of Europe bear out this prediction, although not all the authors are always aware of the full measure of their indebtedness to Husserl’s concept of intentionality. Philosophically speaking, the theory of the intentionality of consciousness entails a complete renewal and reformulation of the problem of knowledge in its full scope, especially of the problem concerning the relationship between “subject” and “object,” a problem whose discussion in traditional terms has long since ended in a blind alley. Along with a new conception of the nature of the mind, there goes a no less radical revision of the concepts of “object” and “objectivity.” The Triumph of Subjectivity is most timely at the present moment when American philosophy is overwhelmingly dominated by the several varieties of what is called “analytical philosophy.” Nobody will deny that “analytical” philosophy is imbued with the spirit of intellectual responsibility, i.e., insistence upon rigor and exactness. There can be no doubt as to what we might call its “intellectual morality,” as far as its intentions are concerned. However, the question arises as to how such aims can be attained. Does rigor in philosophical matters depend primarily on clarity of expression? Can it be attained by defining, redefining, and repeatedly amending terms, expressions, and formulations? Many discussions in “analytical philosophy” of all varieties are reminiscent of the procedures of lawyers who, with unquestionable competence and great skill, argue their cases, but in so doing remain within a framework which they accept and which does not become questionable to them. To be sure, the very nature of his function fully justifies the lawyer in proceeding as he does. The philosopher, however, cannot afford to operate within a framework which he takes for granted. His very function as a philosopher impels him to become aware of the grounds on which he stands, to make explicit his presuppositions—even if they seem a matter of course—and to pursue these presuppositions to their very roots. Now, the methods of formalization and axiomatization have been most successfully used in some sciences and have yielded most remarkable theoretical results. One can understand the temptation to generalize these methods, to employ them in all fields, including that of philosophy. Relying on their success

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in certain fields, may one not expect from them similarly successful results in all fields? Yet the questions must be raised as to why the methods of formalization have proved so successful in certain fields, and wherein the very nature of their success consists. One is thus led to inquire into the sense and meaning of those methods, into the presuppositions (of perhaps a most complicated nature) which are involved in their elaboration and their use.4 It seems obvious that those problems cannot be approached by means of the very methods whose meaning and foundations are in question. Formalization, axiomatization, or any method or methodological procedure, whether scientific or prescientific, is a mental accomplishment, the outcome of mental operations. Clarification in these matters, therefore, requires a general conception, if not a theory, of consciousness and the mind. As far as the demands of rigor in philosophical matters are concerned, the standards which Husserl has set and to which he has adhered are hardly matched in any other trend of contemporary philosophy. We dare say that in this respect philosophers can learn a great deal from him. First of all, they can learn that philosophical rigor does not consist in the unquestioned and unexamined acceptance of pre-conceived models of rigor, whatever prestige has accrued to those models on account of their successful use in other (viz., non-philosophical) fields. Both the refusal simply to emulate the “Scientific Method” (written with capital letters) and the insistence upon accounting for the theoretical success of certain methods, whenever legitimately used, seem to us an expression of the true and radical scientific spirit in philosophy. Father Lauer’s book conveys an impression of this scientific spirit, in a radical sense, which was alive in Husserl. He has rendered a valuable service to both the cause of phenomenology and American philosophy. May he find his reward in seeing his book stimulate studies of Husserl’s thought at its sources.

4

Cf. supra, “The Perceptual World and the Rationalized Universe,” pp. 411 ff.

REVIEW VIII

´ ´ MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, PHENOM ENOLOGIE DE LA PERCEPTION (PARIS: LIBRAIRIE GALLIMARD, 1945), XVI AND 531 PP.

Perception is considered by Merleau-Ponty as a function by virtue of which the perceiving subject has access to, and communicates with, perceptual things and the perceptual world at large. The latter have to be taken as they offer and disclose themselves in direct perceptual experience, with all their vagueness, indeterminateness, incompleteness, and openness. No reference must be permitted to the ideal of scientific knowledge, i.e., the idea of the universe such as the latter will prove at that final phase when science will have accomplished its work: a universe completely determined in itself, all divergences “somehow” reconciled, all syntheses “somehow” achieved. It is the mentioned idea, the “prejudice of the world” (le préjugé du monde), that, according to Merleau-Ponty, has vitiated the classical approach to perception, both the empiricist and the idealist approach alike. For a phenomenological approach to perception, the “prejudice of the world” must be discarded altogether. Rather than being accepted and adopted as a matter of course, the idea of a scientifically determined universe must be examined as to its origin, justification, and limits of validity. It must be examined with reference to, and in the light of, the perceptual world in its authentic and genuine shape, i.e., that shape in which it presents itself to the perceiving subject in vital intercourse and communication. Thus orienting his studies, Merleau-Ponty follows and develops ideas which Husserl advanced in the last period of his life. It is in fact the last period of Husserl’s which is of paramount importance for Merleau-Ponty’s work. This piece originally appeared in English in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3 (March, 1950), pp. 442–445.


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Vital communication is contrasted with the attitude of the impartial and detached observer. The perceiving subject is no acosmic, neutral, and merely contemplating spectator before whose eyes and mind the world (and whatever it contains, including his own1 ego) is unfolded and unraveled in full transparency. Perceptual consciousness is not thoroughly thematizing, explicit, and articulate; nor do perceptual syntheses consist in the would-be fact that partial phases of the perceptual process are first posited each one by itself and are subsequently coordinated with each other under a principle or law apprehended in full explicitness. Rather than being confronted with the world and adopting the attitude of the scientist, i.e., the attitude of disinterested detachment, the perceiving subject, on the contrary, lives in, and exists within, the world. The perceiving subject is essentially engaged. He finds himself situated within, and projected into, the world. He is at the world (être au monde). Out of the world, there arise appeals and solicitations to the subject. In perceptual situations, the intentions of the perceiving subject are realized, i.e., the perceptual fields are organized and structured with reference to his intentions and projects. Perceptual consciousness is interpreted by MerleauPonty as an orientation in the perceptual world, familiar as to its type and style. Things perceived present themselves from certain standpoints and cannot present themselves differently. They appear in the light of concrete situations; they play a role in, and have significance for, the situation in which the perceiving subject finds himself engaged. In the final analysis, the things perceived and dealt with appear within the horizon of the world as the familiar milieu of existence and of any activity whatsoever. All perceptual consciousness is supported and pervaded by an inexplicit, unformulated, and silent reliance on the familiarity of the world. Thus perception proves that being at the world and with things, a modality of behavior and conduct in situations, is an intercourse with what is encountered in the world. Hereby is sketched a concept of existence to which Merleau-Ponty gives priority over that of consciousness, understanding the latter with the sense of explicit thematization. If the subject is necessarily situated, and if every perception no less necessarily requires a certain standpoint, this is on account of the body. 1

[“Own” has been substituted for “proper.” All references provided in the footnotes are supplied by the translator.]

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Both in the book under review and in his La structure du comportement,2 Merleau-Ponty points out that the phenomenon of the organic body defies the alternative between mechanism and consciousness. Bodily movements, postures, and gestures are not processes of the same nature as physical or chemical processes (processus en troisième personne),3 nor can they be accounted for in terms of representations of movements, postures, and gestures. The life of the organic body yields the prototype of what Merleau-Ponty calls existence: projection into situations, solicitations and responses to solicitations, orientation within a structured and organized field, and realization of intentions. Assuming a certain task, the body polarizes itself with respect to the latter in such a way that the posture and gesture of any bodily organ implies, signifies, and envelops those of other organs, without there being any explicit representation of the total corporal scheme nor, a fortiori, of the place which the several bodily organs hold within that total scheme. All coordination, equivalence, transposition, covariation, or correspondence, etc. here establish themselves without the intervention of a coordinating and organizing agency, and without any reference to an explicitly apprehended principle or law. It is the body just described (viz., the phenomenal body as directly and immediately experienced by the living subject) to which perception refers and upon which it depends, and not the body as an object of science. Merleau-Ponty goes as far as maintaining that the unity of the perceived thing is founded upon the unity of the body. He accounts for intersensorial coordination in that the thing perceived appeals to the body as a whole and polarizes all sense organs. Since the body as a whole forms a synergetic system, the qualities mediated by the several sense organs (i.e., visual, auditory, tactile, and other) imply, symbolize, and modify each other. The varying perspectives under which a perceived object presents itself are not coordinated with reference to an explicitly apprehended principle, but rather coordinate themselves with, and slide into, each other. Perceptual synthesis proves throughout to be a “synthesis of transition,” in Husserl’s sense. The whole of perceptual consciousness is pervaded and dominated by a “real logic” (logique réelle), i.e., a logic 2

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La structure du comportement (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942; 2nd. ed., 1949). 3 “Processes in the third person.”

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immediately experienced and followed, but not formulated and rendered explicit. Throughout this book, Merleau-Ponty insists upon pre-thetic, prethematic, pre-explicit consciousness, and he sets it forth in all phenomena related to perception. In this emphasis, we see one of the most important and—as, we think, the future will show—most consequential achievements of Merleau-Ponty’s book. We cannot, however, endorse the objections (which Merleau-Ponty derives from the mentioned emphasis) against the idea of constitutive phenomenology, since the very idea seems to him to rest upon the conception of consciousness as fully transparent, as thoroughly explicit and thematizing. This point can here but be noted as deserving further discussion. Within the space at our disposal, it is utterly impossible to do justice to a work which, in the opinion of this reviewer, is one of the most important publications of the phenomenological movement. We must confine ourselves sketchingly to indicate the leading idea in whose light Merleau-Ponty has surveyed and philosophically interpreted the work done in the past decades in psychology, both normal and pathological. As a consistently phenomenological synthesis and synopsis of the work done by philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, and psychiatrists, MerleauPonty’s book is almost unique in its kind. As to wideness of scope and broadness of range, the book is reminiscent of Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophie der symbolischen Formen.4 Merleau-Ponty’s book will play a role in all future work of research in both phenomenology and psychology. To that future work we must leave the discussion, clarification, and eventual5 modification of the theoretical explanations and philosophical interpretations which abound in Merleau-Ponty’s book.6 4

Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer Verlag), I (1923), II (1925), and III (1929) [The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, trans. R. Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press), I (1953), II (1955), and III (1957).] See also Vol. IV, Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, ed. J. M. Krois et al. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1995); The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, ed. J. M. Krois et al., trans. J. M. Krois (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 5 [“Eventual” has been substituted for “eventually.”] 6 [For further consideration of Gurwitsch’s position with regard to Merleau-Ponty, cf. supra, “The Perceptual World and the Rationalized Universe,” pp. 413–418 and, also, The Field of Consciousness, Part IV, Chapter 3, § 5.]

REVIEW IX

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION, TRANS. C. SMITH (NEW YORK: THE HUMANITIES PRESS, 1962), PP. XXII AND 466.

Thanks to the present translation of the late M. Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception,1 preceded by those of J.-P. Sartre’s L’être et le néant 2 and M. Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit,3 the three principal documents of existential philosophy are now available in the English language. It would be most desirable to have them supplemented by that of E. Husserl’s Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie4 which, in a certain sense, provides the connecting link between phenomenology in the strict Husserlian sense and the existentialist offspring. As a study of those documents (especially the work under review) shows, existentialism is not—contrary to what is believed in many quarters—a philosophical expression of anxiety and despair. Far from being a philosophy of emotionalism of sorts, it represents a reflection on the conditions of philosophical and, generally, cognitive endeavors. Existentialism denies to the philosopher the right to arrogate to himself the role of a detached observer, placing himself at a point of view beyond or This piece originally appeared in English in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 72 (1962), pp. 417–422. 1

[See prior review, supra, pp. 487 ff. All references provided in the footnotes are supplied by the translator.] 2 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. H. E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956). L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). 3 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie et al. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). [Sein und Zeit. Gesamtausgabe, II, 1977.] 4 Husserliana, VI (1962). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970).


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above the world and surveying it like a spectacle in which he has no part. Cognitive and, especially, philosophical endeavors, existentialism insists, take place in concrete situations and are carried out by human beings5 who find themselves thrown into those situations and who, because of their involvement, are concerned with them. In accordance with that general orientation, Merleau-Ponty rejects the empiricistic and the intellectualistic approach to perception. In the former, perception is considered as the causal result of physiological processes provoked by extra-organismic processes, all the processes and events, as well as the objects from which they emanate, being conceived of as they are interpreted and constructed in physical science. Intellectualistic psychology, on the other hand, sees in perception an incipient science; here the notion of an objective, scientifically determined universe is not considered as a cause producing perception, but rather as a télos immanent in perception and orienting it from within. All traditional approaches, psychological and philosophical alike, are, according to Merleau-Ponty, vitiated by what he calls le préjugé du monde objectif, an expression not very appropriately rendered by “prejudice in favor of an objective world” (p. 6), since the prejudice consists in taking for granted and taking as a matter of course the idea of the objective, exactly determined, or, at least, determinable universe. Over against that idea, Merleau-Ponty insists upon the world of prescientific and preobjective perceptual experience as the world immediately given to us, with which we have direct contact, within which we find ourselves at every moment of our lives, and in which we pursue all our activities. This world, and whatever it includes, presents itself to us in its profoundly human significance, with indeterminations, uncertainties, and ambiguities. Briefly, Merleau-Ponty analyzes what in his mentioned work Husserl had termed the “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt). We are inclined to see the importance of Merleau-Ponty’s work in his developing the Husserlian concept in the direction suggested in his existentialist orientation. Perceptual consciousness is interpreted by Merleau-Ponty as access to the “lifeworld,” and modes of perceptual experience are modes of conduct in that world, modes of dealing with objects, modes of coming to quarters with arising situations. Since our 5

[“Human beings” has been substituted for “men.”]

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access to the world depends upon our having a body, a considerable part of the book is concerned with our embodied existence. Again, the body in question is not the organism in the sense of biological science but, on the contrary, the phenomenal body, the body with which I live, which I experience as mine, which defines my situation within and my point of view upon the world. Merleau-Ponty’s insistence upon the phenomenal body as instrument, agent, and even subject of perception, comprehension, and knowledge makes appear promising and fruitful, we suggest, a comparative study of his ideas and American pragmatism, especially John Dewey’s, stressing both the differences and affinities. Within the limits of a review, it is not possible to do justice to the richness of content and the abundance of ramified analyses of this work, which has deservedly come to be regarded as a classic in contemporary French philosophy. Still less can we enter into a critical discussion which would have to bear upon the very principles of an existentialist and anthropological (in the French and German sense of the word) philosophy and the legitimacy of its claims, rather than concerning itself with matters of detail. We may, therefore, be permitted to refer to the review, likewise rather sketchy, which we published on the occasion of the appearance of the French original,6 and also to the remarks in our book, The Field of Consciousness.7 We have to proceed in this manner also for the reason that the present translation itself calls for some comment. It was certainly a good idea to subdivide Merleau-Ponty’s paragraphs, some of which are really of undue length. It would have been still better if the chapters also had been subdivided and the subdivisions given subtitles under the guidance of the very detailed table of contents of the original. While the original has no index, the one provided in the translation will undoubtedly prove helpful. Unfortunately, however, the translation cannot be called adequate. For the sake of fairness, it is to be recognized that it is no simple task to translate Merleau-Ponty’s very personal and highly complicated style, not to speak of remaining faithful to the literary and artistic qualities of his writing which, in our opinion, do not always enhance conceptual precision. 6

Cf. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 10, No. 3, March, 1950, pp. 442– 445. This review can be found in this volume; see supra, pp. 487–490. 7 Cf. The Field of Consciousness, Part IV, Chapter 3, § 5.

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Still, there are a great many errors that might have been avoided. The following list contains some examples to illustrate the types of mistranslations the reader will encounter. One class of misleading errors seems to be due to simple carelessness, as when, for example, actes originaires is rendered by “originating acts” and—still worse—renvoyer by “identify” (p. 30) or se monter by “show itself ” (p. 99). The frequent use Merleau-Ponty makes of se monter, montage, and so forth should preclude any suspicion of a typographical error. On page 123 we have “psychological explanation” for explication physiologique and, immediately following, “in another way” for d’un autre coté, while “on the other hand” would have been correct. It is hard to see why acquisition de l’habitude consistently becomes “cultivation of habit” (pp. 142 ff.). Within the context of page 151, the translation of libre (meaning detached, self-subsistent) by “arbitrary” just makes no sense. On page 319, sujet d’inhérence is rendered by “inherent subject.” “Decreed development” (p. 336) is certainly anything but arrêts de développement (though, in administrative language, arrêt has indeed the meaning of “decree”). Less obvious, but not less misleading, is the mistake of translating prendre pour donné by “having taken as its datum” (p. 47); here “taken for granted” would be in its place, while, as an equivalent of compter pour elle-même (p. 309), it makes the sentence meaningless. Further mistranslations are of technical phrases and terms in philosophy, as well as other fields. Liaison indifférente a` ses objets becomes unintelligible when rendered as “indiscriminate union with its objects” (p. 32); réaliser l’adéquation du réflechissant au réfléchi is not “equating thinking and thought” (p. 60). There is no reason to translate adéquation by “equivalence” (p. 336) and équivalence by “parity” (p. 150). When Merleau-Ponty writes dominer (überschauen), a possible English equivalent might be “survey,” but certainly not “looking down upon” (p. 136). Psychologie de la forme or théorie de la forme are the French expressions for Gestalt psychology and Gestalt theory respectively, and must not be rendered by “Formalism” (p. 50, note). “Invariant” is a current English mathematical term; why then substitute “constant” for it, especially in the context of page 300? The same holds for a` titre de limite, which is borrowed from the calculus and whose connotation is lost when rendered by “limitations” (p. 39). It is hard to find out that “function of a certain number of mutually variable terms” is to mean loi d’un certain nombre de

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termes covariants. Most misleading is the recurrent translation of géometral by “flat projection”; if one speaks of “flat projection” at all, it belongs among the perspectives which the géometral is to account for, but must not be mistaken for the géometral itself. The translator does not seem to be at home in phenomenology in general or in Merleau-Ponty’s thought in particular. In Husserl’s mentioned work, the term “exact” has a very definite meaning, derived from the exact—that is, mathematical—sciences, which is hardly conveyed by “correct” (p. 31) or by “accurate” (p. 53). Similarly, polarisé is another technical term (as appears from a consultation of D. Cairns’s translation of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations),8 so there is neither a need of nor a reason for the pictorial “magnetically attracted” (p. 322). When MerleauPonty speaks of a sense of the word “to see” au delà de la qualité ou de l’impression, why is au delà not simply rendered by “beyond” rather than “on the far side of ” (p. 35)? On page 301, we read, concerning the perception of a cube, “if we unfold from it all the perceived significance,” which is supposed to be the equivalent of si l’on en développe tout le sens perçu. Who is able to surmise that “a grouping of factors constituting the self coexisting in a world” is to mean une constellation de Moi coexistant dans un monde (pp. 56 f.)? Se connaˆıt should not be rendered by “become fully aware” (p. 49) after, both in the passage in question and throughout his entire book, Merleau-Ponty insists upon the awareness under discussion never being full, that is, fully explicit. A special point must be made of the frequent occurrence of “introspection” when Merleau-Ponty uses réflection. To treat reflection, especially phenomenological reflection, and introspection as synonymous is not just one mistake among others. Rather it is the misunderstanding par excellence, because it gives rise to the impression that phenomenological statements are first-person reports on personal experiences, as though phenomenology were concerned with a domain of interiority. Nothing could be farther from the truth. By its very definition, a domain of interiority is opposed to, and hence presupposes, a domain of externality (Cartesian dualism). In other words, introspectionism assumes, at least tacitly, the “prejudice” of an objective universe. The rejection of Cartesian 8

Cf. E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963).

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dualism is common to all the different varieties of phenomenology and existentialism. Merleau-Ponty himself has devoted several pages (pp. 57 ff.) to underlining the differences between phenomenology and introspectionism, especially of the Bergsonian variety. Phenomenology does not deal with events occurring in a sphere of interiority; on the contrary, it concerns itself with things, objects, and situations as they present themselves, are meant and intended, and are taken in full concreteness with all the components and constituents of sense, signification, and significance which they exhibit as theirs. In a word, phenomenology deals with the world as it is encountered and reveals itself in this encounter. For similar reasons, we should suggest translating présence au monde, a` l’espace, and so forth by employing not “in,” but perhaps by using “at.” It is not a relationship between container and contained that is meant, but rather directedness, projection, access, opening oneself up, and the like. We do not mean to dismiss this translation altogether. It might have its use in providing a first acquaintanceship with Merleau-Ponty’s thought. But the reader must be ready to have his impressions confirmed and, very often, corrected by the French original. For the purposes of neither teaching nor research can this translation alone be relied upon.

REVIEW X

MAURICE PRADINES, PHILOSOPHIE DE LA SENSATION. II. LA ´ EMENTAIRE. ´ ´ SENSIBILITE´ EL LES SENS DE LA DEFENSE. PUBLICATIONS DE LA FACULTE´ DES LETTRES DE L’UNIVERSITE´ DE STRASBOURG, FASCICULE 66 (PARIS: LES BELLES LETTRES, 1934), 381 PP.

Pradines’ book is a series of his studies about the philosophy of sensation. After having posed the most general problems pertaining thereto (e.g., those concerning quality, space, outer perception, perceptual memory), and after having examined—in the prior volume1 —those among the primary senses which he describes as “senses of need” (pleasure, taste, and smell), the author devotes the present volume to the examination of cutaneous sensibility, i.e., to that set of sensory data that constitute the “senses of defense.” Cutaneous sensibility seems to place us in the presence of a discomforting plurality of senses independent of each other, namely, pain, touch, the tactile perception of space, the sense of force, of movement, the thermal sense, etc. Pradines cites as many as a whole dozen of them. When all is said and done, cutaneous sensibility fails to present a unity. One finds oneself faced with a completely anarchical set of sensibilities, which have in common only the fact that they all are localized on the epidermis; beyond that, not one of them has anything to do with the other. This obliges us to search after a principle capable of providing order and subordination in this apparent chaos. One such principle is furnished, according to the author, by the idea of representation, which he takes as the central and most essential character of sensation. In effect, an act of the mind (seeking to divest the This piece originally appeared in French in Recherches philosophiques (Paris), III (1935). 1

[Cf. M. Pradines, Philosophie de la sensation. I (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1928).]


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sensory affections of the character of affectivity and turn them into representations, that is to say, into states that present an external object to consciousness) cooperates in the formation of every sensation. It is in that sense that Pradines believes he has found a “will to representation” at the basis of every form of sensibility. To the extent to which this “will” comes to be realized, the sensation is more perfect and more complete. Moreover, if that tendency toward representation meets—on the part of the specific nature of one or another form of sensibility—with insurmountable obstacles, the result would be the failure of the corresponding form of sensibility; such is the case with the olfactory and the thermal sense. By means of that principle, a grouping and a certain subordination can be established among the cutaneous sensibilities which seem to be anarchical in character. Pain and tickling are excluded from sensibility properly so called, because both remain at the level of affectivity and do not succeed in constituting a veritable representation. In the cases of contact and of light and strong pressure, one must not see three distinct forms of sensibility, but different degrees of intensity of the same sense, “for it is the function which supports the unity of the organ; it is not the raw multiplicity of the organ elements which may permit us to conclude to the multiplicity of functions.” The most important consequence of Pradines’ conception is the restoration of the tactile sense to the privileged position which had been traditionally secured for it. In fact, it is only with the sense of touch that elementary sensibility creates a veritable externality for itself, in view of the fact that the tactile object alone is worthy of the name, because it really confronts the subject. There is then good reason to see, in the tactile sense, the support, as well as the principle of unity, of all cutaneous forms of sensibility. This phase will be superseded by sight and hearing, but these higher senses will not accomplish that except by being supported by the tactile sense, by developing and completing it, by fully carrying out, therefore, an aspiration which is borne by it, and which it itself carries out to a certain extent. Thus, Pradines does not consider sight and hearing as higher than touch; rather, he describes those senses as “higher forms of tactuality.” Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the level of pure

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representation is attained by the tactile sense only in the form that the author refers to as the “most refined and, so to speak, most heroic one.” But even in this form and, with all the more reason, in its less perfect and completed forms, tactile sensibility does not succeed in altogether freeing itself from the affective life. It is true that the said sensibility ends up as representational sensibility, but it does not reach that level except on the basis of needs and passions, a point of departure from which it cannot emancipate itself. Pradines’ position becomes clarified in terms of the criticism he levels at David Katz. According to the latter, one must assign a cognitive2 privilege to the tactile sense, because the data it furnishes entail a immediate impression of reality. Given the relation existing between tactuality and the affective life, that idea harks back to François Pierre Maine de Biran’s conception (taken up again by Wilhelm Dilthey and defended, in our times, by Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann), a conception according to which it is, above all in our actions and in our passions, that the reality of the external world is announced and confirmed. Pradines is far from willing to call into question the existence of a immediate impression of reality residing in the affective facts, or that of the certainty “in the flesh” which is donned by such facts. But it seems to him—and this view is in most felicitous agreement with a tendency that is becoming ever clearer3 in contemporary psychology and philosophy—that the reality of which affectivity is the warrant is an extremely subjective one, consisting as it does of passions and of needs. In order to create an objective world for himself, the subject should form, for himself, the representation of things and externalize them (which means placing them at a distance from himself ), but not seek after a knowledge thereof that would be similar to that 2

The word employed by Gurwitsch is “épistémologique.” Here it has been rendered as “cognitive,” in order to avoid any possible confusion arising from the use of the cognate word in English, a choice that could suggest problems having to do with the “theory of knowledge” or, more specifically, with the philosophy of science. 3 The verb used here is “se frayer,” which means to “clear up.” However, in a handwritten note on the margin, which is recognizably the author’s, the word “jour” is added, as well as being penciled in after the expression “se fraye.” Since “se frayer” does not usually go with “jour,” it is conceivable that the author’s correction amounted to replacing “se fraye” with the expression “se fait jour,” meaning “becomes clear.”

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which he has of his affective subjectivity. Therefore, it is the degree to which the senses—and, among them, touch—succeed in performing this act of placing things at a distance that determines the value of the senses for the constitution of the objective world, which can, in consequence, be understood only as the product of the mind and of the intellect at work in the interior itself of sensibility.

REVIEW XI

´ ´ DE NECESSIT ´ YVES SIMON, ETUDES SUR L’IDEE E´ DANS LA ´ SCIENTIFIQUE ET EN PHILOSOPHIE (MONTREAL: ´ PENSEE ´ EDITIONS DE L’ARBRE, 1944).

On Aristotelian and Thomistic grounds, Simon discusses some problems pertaining to philosophy of science. Since the function of science consists in explaining and since, further, causal accounts are the only really explanatory ones, the concept of causality and determination occupies the center of our discussion. The author expounds the Aristotelian doctrine of the four causes, insisting that the causa finalis be conceived, without any psychistic, animistic, or kindred connotation, as a mere tendency towards producing an effect, rather than not producing it; whereas it depends on the causa formalis, whether this effect is produced or a different one. As to the causa efficiens, it must be a proper cause, i.e., a cause that resembles the effect in that the latter preexists in the former; the effect is “contained” in the proper cause, and, in this sense, there obtains a partial identity between the proper cause and its effect. For an entity to be considered a proper cause, its capacity to produce the effect in question must be but an aspect of the essence of the entity, an aspect inseparable from this very essence. These concepts are held to apply to, and be valid for, positive science, after they have undergone a reinterpretation (refonte), by which all originally ontological concepts are affected when they are applied on a non-ontological plane. Among the examples cited, those pertaining to the descriptive and especially the psychological sciences seem convincing. In this connection, I may mention Max Weber’s concept of Kausaladäquanz as methodologically indispensable for the social and the historical sciences. However, Simon’s use of the concept of resemblance This piece originally appeared in English in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 7, No. 2 (December, 1946), pp. 336–342.


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with so large a sense as to apply to functional dependencies between variables (for instance, to both direct and inverse proportionality) seems to me objectionable. Again we are confronted with the difference between nomological and “concrete” sciences. Explanation, I submit, has not the same meaning for the nomological sciences as it does1 for the historical sciences. The concept of indetermination is defined, with reference to that of determination,2 by the absence of a proper cause. Following Antoine Augustin Cournot, an event is said to be indeterminate or a matter of chance when it does not result from one cause, but from a plurality of causes which are not unified. The event may well be predictable, it may even be necessary, but its necessity is an inevitability; it is a factual or historical, but not an essential, necessity. Simon refuses to define both determination and indetermination in terms of predictability. The interest which attaches to prediction is of a practical rather than of a theoretical nature. Throughout his book, Simon most emphatically, and fortunately, insists on the speculative autonomy of pure science, whose function consists in explaining and not in predicting; if science predicts, it does so because, and to the extent to which, it explains. It is gratifying to report Simon’s critical discussion and examination of the concept of prediction which, on account of the prevailing positivistic tendencies, has come to be almost taken for granted. Referring to a little known work by Georges Sorel, Simon confronts the procedure of the scientist with that of the engineer or constructor. The former is interested in abstract possibilities and relationships rather than in concrete happenings, and, in the laboratory, he endeavors to arrange the matter of his observation in such a way as to approximate it as close as possible to the abstractions which he is considering. The engineer, on the contrary, is primarily interested in the concrete behavior of things and must, therefore, allow for possible interferences of several causal processes with each other3 and also for eventual 1

“As it does” has been substituted for “which it has.” “The concept of indetermination is defined, with reference to that of determination” has been substituted for “With reference to the concept of determination, that of indetermination is defined.” 3 “Several causal processes with each other” has been substituted for “with each other of several causal processes.” 2

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unforeseeable4 disturbances. There is a similar difference between the attitude of the man of action who, without having any psychological knowledge in the scientific sense, is able to foresee the reactions of other persons under certain conditions, and the attitude of the theoretical physicist, both positive and philosophical, who tries to explain mental functions but does not furnish that kind of psychological knowledge which is necessary to the man of action, whose interest in his fellow human beings5 is of a practical nature. The pure theoretical orientation of science does not preclude it from yielding results of eventual practical use; but these results are by-products, and they are most likely to be obtained when they are not sought for. Since the kinetic theory of gases has come to be regarded as the model of physical explanation, the tendency has increasingly developed to interpret the laws of physics as statistical rather than causal laws. Whereas Greek as well as modern science in its classical phase had been dominated by the idea that the experiential or phenomenal order is supported by an intelligible order, whatever the nature of the latter, the statistical interpretation implies the view that the experiential order results from the disorderly, random behavior of microphysical entities. Erwin Schrödinger, to whom Simon refers, believes that the question of whether or not the concept of causality has to be abandoned cannot be decided by physics but rests with philosophy. Analyzing a situation to which probability considerations apply, Simon admits the existence of phases of disorder, phases of concurrence and interference of a non-unified plurality of processes, each of the latter, however, being strictly determined. In the final analysis, the observed order points to, and is supported by, an underlying ontological determination. The phases of disorder are but instrumental in bringing about experiential order; they are, however, not the cause of this order. Simon upholds this position in the phase of the present “indeterministic crisis” in microphysics. If the very fact of observation necessarily disturbs the motion of the observed object, the latter, Simon maintains, is causally determined nonetheless. True, for essential reasons, it is impossible to ascertain both the initial velocity and position of an electron at a certain 4 5

“Unforeseeable” has been substituted for “imprevisible.” “Human beings” has been substituted for “men.”

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moment with sufficient precision, so as to be able to predict its location at a future moment. If thus a certain and precise prediction is impossible, because the very conditions of this prediction cannot be fulfilled for essential and not merely technical reasons, this, according to Simon, only concerns the relation of the observer to his object, but not the things themselves. This argument, as well as Simon’s entire philosophy of Nature, rests on the grounds of philosophical realism. Knowledge in general and scientific knowledge in particular6 are defined as the reproduction of being (réiteration de l’être); the formation of concepts is described as an operation of abstraction and extraction performed on the data of immediate experience. Simon confronts his realistic position with that of neopositivism as exemplified by the school of Vienna, and he conclusively criticizes the chief tenets of this school, i.e., its sensualistic postulate, its theory of meaning, and its interpretation of all logical and mathematical knowledge as tautological. Does, however, the rejection of positivism entail the endorsement of the realistic position? There does not yet exist a phenomenological theory of science. It may be safely assumed that, when elaborated, it will follow lines similar to those along which Ernst Cassirer and Léon Brunschvicg have developed their ideas. Far as these thinkers are from positivism and pragmatism, they do not yet maintain a realistic or ontological interpretation of science; the “reproduction theory” of knowledge has often and emphatically been criticized by Cassirer. In a philosophy of science of Kantian inspiration, the universe of science is considered with reference to the constitutive and constructive activities of scientific reason, the démarches de l’esprit,7 to express it in Brunschvicg’s terminology. In this connection, I wish to call attention to a work by F. London and E. Bauer8 in which the authors, with explicit reference to Husserl and Cassirer, speak of the act of observation and measuring as of an objectivating act through which a new objectivity is constituted. Quantum mechanics, according to these 6

“In particular” has been added, and “specific,” which preceded “scientific lnowledge,” dropped. 7 That is, “processes of the mind.” 8 Cf. F. London and E. Bauer, La théorie de l’observation en mécanique quantique (Paris: Actualités Scientifiques et Industrielles, 775/Hermann & Cie., 1939).

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authors, rejects the na¨ıve realistic idea of objects existing entirely independently of all observation and having their measurable properties, whether the latter are actually measured or not. For the foundation of intersubjective scientific objectivity, na¨ıve realism is by no means required. Simon does not discuss the philosophy of science of the type we have just roughly sketched. However, he advances the idea of analytical investigations of intellectual acts, first in general, and then by means of progressive differentiation, as to the specific forms which scientific intelligence assumes in the different scientific domains. These investigations are to complement historical studies in which, as exemplified by the work of ´ Emile Meyerson, the products of scientific thought are examined in order to disentangle the principles and tendencies which, without having been explicitly formulated, were effective in the elaboration of the mentioned products. Considering the problems by which Husserl was occupied in the last period of his life, phenomenologists will be most gratified by seeing such a program of research advocated in different quarters. It seems to me indeed that phenomenology will derive much stimulation, in particular as far as the elaboration of a philosophy of science is concerned, from an assimilation of the work done, especially in France, by philosophical historians of science. It is on grounds common to all philosophers to whom reason is still a potent agency that Simon finds himself when he protests against what he calls “epistemological monism,” i.e., the readiness to surrender to the “instincts,” or to some other intellectual irresponsibility, whatever issue cannot be decided by observational tests. Finally, I wish to call attention to Simon’s warning against the technocratical utopia of controlling and managing human beings9 by means of psychotechnical methods elaborated on the basis of scientific studies of human behavior. This utopia, which is far from being unrealizable, appears to Simon as a most severe and dangerous threat to human freedom. Events of present history amply confirm this apprehension.

9

“Human beings” has been substituted for “men.”


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INDEX OF NAMES

A Aquinas, Thomas de, 220 Aristotle, 220 Arnauld, Antoine, 384 Aron, Raymond, 46

E Ehrenfels, Christian von, 201 Embree, Lester, 1, 59

B Bauer, E., 504 Becker, Oskar, 420 Berger, Gaston, 16, 21, 432, 441 ff., 449 ff., 453 ff. Bergson, Henri, 4, 21, 46, 129, 154, 160, 263, 264, 265, 268, 271, 376, 496 Berkeley, George, 3, 62, 108, 117, 144, 362, 386 ´ Bréhier, Emile, 358 Brentano, Franz, 5, 9, 154, 156, 157, 179, 196, 395 f Brunschvicg, Léon, 504 C Cairns, Dorion, 49, 51, 411, 495 Cassirer, Ernst, 63, 490, 504 Chisholm, Roderick, M., 367 Cournot, Antoine A., 502 D Descartes, René, 8, 36, 61, 68, 69 ff., 94, 102, 103, 153, 240, 328, 344 f., 351, 352 f., 375, 380, 383, 415, 445, 447, 455, 475, 479 Dilthey, Wilhem, 499 Duncker, Karl, 246, 268 ´ Durkheim, Emile, 68

F Farber, Marvin, 50, 463 ff. Fink, Eugen, 327, 469 Fuchs, Wilhelm, 161, 269 Fulton, James Street, 471 ff. G Garc´ıa-Gomez, José, 17 Geiger, Moritz, 44 Gelb, Adhémar, 32, 42 Goldstein, Kurt, 42, 48, 77, 80, 162, 243, 252 Green, Thomas H., 114 Guillaume, Paul, 34, 46, 123, 202, 269 Gurwitsch, Aron, passim H Hartmann, Nicolai, 499 Heidegger, Martin, 32, 325, 342, 491 Helmholtz, Hermann von, 270 Héring, Jean, 324, 481 ff. Huertas-Jourda, José, 1, 59 Hume, David, 3, 6, 62, 108, 109, 114, 127, 153, 208, 351, 358, 362, 386, 389, 393 f., 396, 449 Husserl, Edmund, passim J James, William, 50, 129, 133, 154, 178, 389

517

518

index of names

K Kant, Immanuel, 17, 118, 351, 358, 366, 447, 451, 467 Katz, David, 211, 499 Koffka, Kurt, 14, 124, 187, 245, 252, 261, 273, 292 Köhler, Wolfgang, 84, 86, 124, 187, 243, 247 f., 251, 273, 284, 298, 301 Koyré, Alexandre, 46 Kraus, Oskar, 157 L Landgrebe, Ludwig, 367, 396 Lauer, Quentin, 390, 483 ff. Leibniz, Gottfried W., 177, 415 Levinas, Emmanuel, 325 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 44, 46, 84 Locke, John, 38, 62, 67, 94, 107, 197, 356, 358, 361, 386 London, Fritz, 504 M Mach, Ernst, 3, 79, 111, 113, 116, 130, 136, 149, 153, 186 Maine de Biran, 499 Malebranche, Nicolas, 62, 74 Marcel, Gabriel, 30, 47 Meinong, Alexius, 155 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 47, 413 ff., 416, 419, 487 ff., 491 ff. ´ Meyerson, Emile, 505 Mohanty, J. N., 15 N Newton, Isaac, 361 O Ortega y Gasset, José, 17, 21, 30

P Piaget, Jean, 34, 245 ff., 249, 251, 258, 298, 300, 408 Planck, Max, 42 Pradines, M., 13, 128, 152, 212 ff., 216, 219, 222, 229, 239, 243, 252, 270, 271, 302, 497 ff. R Ricoeur, Paul, 30 Rubin, Edgar, 168, 172, 243 Russell, Bertrand, 256 S Sartre, Jean-Paul, 13, 47, 132 Scheler, Max, 44, 76, 499 Schröder, Ernst, 465, 503 Schutz, Alfred, 21, 47, 48, 366, 379 Simon, Yves, 501 ff. Sorel, G., 502 Spiegelberg, Herbert, 367 Stout, George F., 233, 235, 236, 289 Stumpf, Carl, 41 T Troubetzkoy, N., 93 V Vendryès, J., 93 W Weber, Max, 45, 501 Wertheimer, Max, 13, 86, 123, 171, 340 Z Zubiri, Xavier, 17

INDEX OF TOPICS

A Abstraction, 42 Acquisition by experience, 32, 247, 253 Adumbration, 116, 211, 391, 399, 405 Algebra, 429, 432 Analysis, 425 f., 455, 459 Analytical philosophy, 49, 485 Appearance, 125, 130, 145, 196, 206, 211, 309, 377, 402, 413 Arithmetic, 181 Associationism, 236 ff., 240, 242, 255 Attention, 337 ff. Attitude, 166, 262, 326, 334, 338

D Description, 76, 142, 272 Distinctness, 131, 360, 433 Doubt, 70, 100, 102, 352, 472 Dualism, 22, 357 ff., 375 f., 384 f., 396 E Ego, 103, 159, 359, 368 Eidetic reduction, 446 f., 447 ff., 481 Empiricism, 4, 63, 66, 107, 153, 216, 240, 414, 467, 471 Equivalent of consciousness, 308 ff., 313, 355 Everyday life, 83, 283, 285, 412, 468 Evidence, 315 ff., 319, 320, 433, 446, 477 Exact, 495 Existence, 23, 98, 100, 146, 282, 318, 323, 337, 353, 451, 456, 474, 488, 489 Expectation, 146, 275 Experience, 238, 317, 446, 455, 489 Explanation, 79

B Behaviorism, 454 Biology, 78, 212, 226 Body, 78, 178, 418 ff., 421, 458, 474, 488 ff. C Cartesianism, 26, 471 ff. Clarification, 181, 290 f., 380, 436, 486 Clue, 314 Cogitatum, see Noema and Noesis Cogito, 30, 70, 159 ff., 179, 441 ff., 444, 455 Coherence, 200 Consciousness, passim Constancy hypothesis, 43, 141 Content, 196, 392 Copresence, 162, 333 f.

F Figural factors, 198, 201 Formalization, 418, 427, 429, 486 Formal sciences, 428 Functional object, 32, 35, 84, 92, 174, 250, 254, 263, 272, 295, 299 Functional value, see Functional object G Genetic phenomenology, 407 ff. Geometry, 360, 418

519

520

index of topics

Gestalt, 13, 339 Gestalt-contexture, 14 ff., 404 Gestalt quality, 202 Gestalt theory, 44, 48, 79, 90, 123, 141, 142, 143, 164, 197, 245 ff., 267, 284, 292, 298, 302, 399, 402 ff., 409 Gestaltverbindung, 34, 142, 173, 340 Givenness, 145, 373 Figure and Ground, 168 H Habit, 90 f., 298 Halo, 20, 233, 276 Here and There, 418, 419 Historicity, 430 Historico-teleological reflection, 442 ff. Horizon, 12, 88, 280, 405 f. Human sciences, 53 ff., 92 f. Hyletic data, 211, 220 I Idea, 72, 107, 357 ff., 359, 361, 362 ff., 374, 383 ff., 385, 389, 449 Idealism, 2, 307, 468 Idealization, 38 f., 431 Ideal objects, 182, 374, 380 Identity, 6 ff., 110, 115, 124 ff., 127, 149, 185 ff., 188, 205, 282, 338, 363, 365, 386, 387 f. Immanent object, 9, 118 f., 156 Implication, 12 ff., 19, 191, 205 ff., 209, 220, 231, 233, 236 f., 254, 257, 261 ff., 270, 272, 274, 275, 282, 294, 299, 301, 399 ff. Inexistence, 155 Intentional analysis, 293 f., 441 ff. Intentionality, 5, 8 ff., 10, 20, 150 ff., 154, 275, 328, 336, 348, 351 ff., 367 ff., 368, 383 ff., 390, 451, 467, 485 Intentional object, 119, 395 Intersubjectivity, 473, 475 Intuitionism, 459

J Judgment, 283, 288 L Language, 48, 93, 369 ff. Lifeworld, see World Logic, 53, 422 ff., 426, 431, 434 ff., 466 Logical positivism, 454 M Manifold theory, 429 ff. Marginal consciousness, 167, 175 ff., 180, 262, 277 Mathematics, 53, 65, 90, 98, 421, 430, 435 ff., 466, 471 Mathematization, 407 Meaning, 9, 370, 374, 444, 449, 466 Merely occasional experiences, 241 Method, 14, 281 ff., 299, 334, 442, 446, 455, 466, 486 Monadology, 461 Morphological type, 417 N National Socialism, 45 Natural attitude, 23, 83 ff., 98 ff., 468 Natural science, see Physics Neo-Kantianism, 46 Noema and Noesis, 9, 21, 22, 130 ff., 133, 136, 144 ff., 148, 156, 185 ff., 191, 205, 208, 223 f., 230, 256, 263, 281, 287, 337, 346, 368 ff., 372 f., 373 ff., 378, 393 f., 400, 402 Noematic phenomenology, 43 Number, 428 O Object, 6, 105, 119, 125, 196, 204, 206, 219, 224, 235, 295, 301, 308, 310, 311 ff., 320 ff., 327, 348, 354, 358, 371, 429, 443, 477, 485 Objectivation, 180, 286

index of topics

521

Objective object, 16 Objective thing, 16, 132, 134, 153, 189 Objectivity, 8, 118, 129, 149, 355, 377 ff. Others, 460 f.

Reiform thing, 36 ff., 83, 96, 185, 241, 255, 295, 296, 308, 312, 319, 322, 331, 341, 345 ff. Remembering, 135 f., 162, 176, 261 ff.

P Passion, 212 f., 218, 222 f., 229 Passive genesis, 445 Perception, passim Phenomenal object, 101, 104, 138, 139 Phenomenological reduction, 23, 27, 29, 81, 100 ff., 139, 153, 274, 276, 326 ff., 327, 356, 443 f., 469, 472 Phenomenology, 1, 57, 98, 105, 158, 293, 307 ff., 314, 317, 326, 328, 354 ff., 407, 446, 451, 463 ff., 469, 481, 483, 490 Philosophical anthropology, 103, 327, 476 Philosophy, 52, 61, 66, 149, 285 f. Physicalism, 454 Physical thing, 38 Physics, 38, 64, 89, 93 ff., 98, 112, 309, 342, 375, 407, 412 f., 472 f., 503 Polarization, 194 ff., 229 Possibility, 208, 278, 290 Potentiality, 20, 163, 274 ff., 276, 332 f., 336 Practical attitude, 32 Presentation, see Givenness Primordial world, 474 Proposition, 185 Psychology, 28, 67, 77, 79 ff., 104, 112, 187, 227, 238, 253, 326, 381, 389, 467, 492

S Sedimentation, 407, 409 Sensation, 108 Sense, 133, 137, 158, 192, 202, 261, 281, 289, 325, 372, 393 f., 425, 432 f., 444 Sign, 214, 219 Signification, 137, 259, 455, 456 Situation, 32, 85 Sociology, 68 Space, 215, 256, 420 Surrounding world, see World Synthesis, 205, 257, 282, 309, 315, 489

R Realism, 151, 414 Reason, 316, 318 Reference, see Implication Reflection, 11, 25, 121, 127 f., 148, 170, 284, 286, 288, 297, 326, 406, 469, 491, 495

T Temporality, 19 ff., 178, 310, 362, 373, 394 Thematic field, 164 ff., 167, 169, 171, 175, 254, 339, 342 Theme, 160, 171, 175, 188, 280, 331, 337, 339 Thinking, 73, 75, 154, 281, 287, 389 Transcendental clue, 25, 311 ff. Transcendental psychologism, 28, 356 U Unity, 313 Universe, 94, 98, 411 ff., 414, 487 Use object, see Functional object V Value, 131, 140, 147, 192, 308, 375 Verification, 315, 318 W World, 64, 66, 88, 91, 120, 180, 181, 322 f., 377, 379, 397, 409, 411 ff., 418, 434 f., 451, 460, 473, 487 f., 492

The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973): Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective (Phaenomenologica)

Collected Works: Volume I: Publications 1929-1936

Collected Works: Volume I: Publications 1929-1936

Phenomenology and Mathematics (Phaenomenologica)

Oeuvres - Collected Works, Volume 2

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's Spanish Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's French Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's Korean Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's German Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe

Collected Works

Collected Works

Collected Works of Poe

Collected Works

Collected Works)

Collected Works)

The Works of William Hogarth, Volume I

Wittgenstein: The Collected Works

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 36 : 1900-1923

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 4: 1898 - April 1901

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 39 : Notebooks on Imperialism

V. I. Lenin: Collected Works-Volume 31: April-December 1920

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 8 : January - July 1905

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 9 : June - November 1905

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 24 : April- June 1917

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 14 : 1908

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 29 : March-August 1919

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 14 : 1908

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 19 : March - December 1913

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 12 : January - June 1907

The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973): Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective (Phaenomenologica)

Collected Works: Volume I: Publications 1929-1936

Collected Works: Volume I: Publications 1929-1936

Phenomenology and Mathematics (Phaenomenologica)

Oeuvres - Collected Works, Volume 2

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's Spanish Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's French Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's Korean Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe, Volume I (Webster's German Thesaurus Edition)

Collected Works of Poe

Collected Works

Collected Works

Collected Works of Poe

Collected Works

Collected Works)

Collected Works)

The Works of William Hogarth, Volume I

Wittgenstein: The Collected Works

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 36 : 1900-1923

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 4: 1898 - April 1901

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 39 : Notebooks on Imperialism

V. I. Lenin: Collected Works-Volume 31: April-December 1920

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 8 : January - July 1905

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 9 : June - November 1905

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 24 : April- June 1917

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 14 : 1908

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 29 : March-August 1919

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 14 : 1908

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 19 : March - December 1913

V. I. Lenin : Collected Works : Volume 12 : January - June 1907

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