Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
DOI 10.1007/s10743-007-9020-4
Daniel J. Dwyer
Received: 15 July 2006 / Accepted: 4 December 2006 / Published online: 20 March 2007
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
D. J. Dwyer (&)
Philosophy Department, Xavier University,
3800 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45207, USA
e-mail: dwyerd@xavier.edu
123
84 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
Introduction
1
See, for example, Hua XI, pp. 336ff. and Hua XVII, Appendix II.
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 85
There are at least three related presuppositions upon which the first edition of
the sixth Logical Investigation relied. First, it was assumed that there is pos-
sible an adequate external perception of an object that is necessarily valid and
about which there can be no doubt.2 This view was corrected, however, when
Husserl worked out the synthetic theory of evidence, according to which any
particular presentation of an object is connected to future presentations that
could in principle invalidate it. Second, Husserl treated perception as a static
process in which the object is given all at once. He thus relied on the possi-
bility of a tranquil perceiving in which the object of external perception is
given in one blow, as soon as ones regard (Blick) falls upon the object (Hua
XIX/2, p. 676/788; see also 251/452). Intentionality was understood, then, in
the Logical Investigations as essentially not involving a flow stretching from
the past and directed towards the future. Although Husserl recognized the
possibility that perception is accompanied by expectations directed toward the
immediate future, he insisted upon the equally possible situation of a static
adequate givenness: Interpretation, however, constitutes what we call
appearance, whether veridical or not, and whether it remains faithfully and
adequately in the frame of the immediately given, or anticipates future per-
ception in going beyond it. (Hua XIX/2, p. 762/850, italics added)3 The third
presupposition is the one on which the previous two depend. It is the pre-
supposition that all consciousness is an active attention towards objects that
takes place in an undifferentiated present. As Husserl began to work out his
theory of time-consciousness just after the first edition of the Investigations, he
developed a theme that would introduce a fundamental modification in his
theory of intentionality, namely, that the present moment reaches out beyond
itself, that it is surrounded by a temporal horizon of past and future. The
presence of the perceptual now-moment is thus suffused with temporal
absence. Intentionality itself has modes that are absent in that they are
potentially active or operative. In this section I will examine how Husserl
appropriated a psychological theory of attention and invested it with a new,
transcendental meaning. It will be argued that the intentional theory of
attention is motivated by the appreciation of the horizonal nature of the
related phenomena of objects, intentions, and, most primordially, time itself.
In a footnote in Ideas I, Husserl claims that the beginning of a genuinely
intentional, eidetic analysis of the phenomenon of attention was first
attempted in several particular sections of the Logical Investigations.
2
See Hua XIX/2, pp. 769770/866867, where adequate perception is described as indubitable.
See also Hua XIX, p. 692f./801f.
3
Hua XIX/2, p. 762/860, cited after the first edition, modified Findlay translation, italics added.
At Hua XIX/2, p. 574/701, Husserl isolates the possibility of a tranquil perceiving that does not
rely on any future-oriented expectations. See also Natorps influential critique of the sixth
Investigation: We go beyond this account in that [we claim] only that such fulfillment takes
place not merely all at once but rather gradually from step to step; of course absolute fulfillment,
on the other hand, never takes place and can never arise. (Natorp, 1912, p. 287).
123
86 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
4
The relevant sections in the Logical Investigations are 22 in the second Investigation and 19 in
the fifth Investigation.
5
See also Ms. A VI 26, p. 149b.
6
The Husserlian link between attention and interest is clearly influenced by Carl Stumpfs
treatment of attention and interest under the category of feelings that can either be voluntary or
involuntary; see Schuhmann (1996, p. 120).
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 87
ones interest (Hua XII, pp. 195n. and 26).7 Here we see an anticipation of
Husserls intentional doctrine of the animating apprehension that takes up
sense data in a certain way and thus constitutes them as objects for
consciousness. That interest is seen as a unifying and connecting psychic force
anticipates the notion of an attentive intentionality that is through and
through synthetic. The interest in objects that constitutes a collective
connection is, however, one of many higher logical and mathematical interests
that are possible (Hua XII, pp. 258, 278).
Closely associated with both attention and interest is the concept of ori-
entation or turning-toward (Zuwendung). Even before 1901 Husserl refers to
a non-psychological, proto-intentional meaning of the term in the realm of
phantasy. When one imagines a lion, one is turned towards it, directed upon it
in a way that means (meinen) it.8 The directedness of mind (Gerichtetsein)
toward an object is a mode of act that cuts across all kinds of acts, be they
perception, memory or imagination (Hua X, p. 289/300). It is of course pos-
sible to pay exclusive attention to the contents of ones consciousness and
consider them precisely as such. This is tantamount to making objects out of
ones contents of consciousness, a perpetual reflective possibility in philosophy
or psychology. To make objective the contents of ones consciousness is to
engage in what Husserl calls at the time of the first edition of the Investigations
internal perception. To understand external perception along the lines of
internal perception, however, is a characteristic error of modern epistemology.
Husserl warns against the conflation of the mere presence of a content in
consciousness (Erlebtsein) with an intentional object; only a certain active
absorption in an object can qualify as attention (Hua XIX/1, p. 423/58485).9
As we will see shortly, this attentive internal perception of the experienced
(erlebt) dimension of consciousness will for Husserl disclose the temporal
structure of all attentive acts.
Husserl does not make explicit the identification of attention with inten-
tionality until the second edition of the Logical Investigations.10 Prior to this,
Husserl had contrasted attention (Aufmerken) with a concept that was related
to it in the psychological literature of the day: observation or noticing
(Bemerken). Husserl borrowed this distinction between attending and noticing
from Carl Stumpf and Anton Marty in an early text from around 1893 on the
topic of intuition. There Husserl gives to the term intuition a narrower and a
wider meaning. The narrow meaning of intuition corresponds to the notion in
7
For attention as a concentration of interest, see Hua XII, 26.
8
[D]ie meinende Zuwendung; Hua X, p. 161/165. This text is dated sometime between 1893
and 1901. See also Hua X, p. 170/175: the opposition of meaning (Meinen) in the specific sense
and non-meaning (Nichtmeinen) (the question whether the former is identical with attention).
9
See also Hua XIV, p. 45: The word lived experience (Erlebnis) expresses thereby precisely this
being lived-through (Erlebtsein), namely a having aware (Bewussthaben) in inner consciousness,
through which it is pregiven for the I at all times.
10
Ultimately [the concept of attention] extends as far as the concept: Consciousness of some-
thing; Hua XIX, p. 168/384, second edition only. See also the addition in the second edition: ein
Bewutsein, das von [einem Gegenstand] ist at Hua XIX, p. 170/385.
123
88 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
the Investigations of a tranquil perception that delivers its object in one blow;
it is the immanent and primary content of a momentary representing, or
better, noticing. The wider meaning of intuition corresponds to the notion of
a fluid, continuous perception: the content of a unitary continuing noticing
(der Inhalt eines einheitlichen andauernden Bemerkens) (Hua X, p. 141/145).
Only in the case of a continuous, enduring perception is there a transition
(Ubergang) of attention from one part of the sensuous content to another.
In order to explain in more detail the sense of the continuous transition of
perceptual focus in a fluid perception, Husserl distinguishes between noticing
and attention. Noticing is characterized as representing in the strict sense of
the word: the simple surveying of a content, the being-turned-towards-it-
simply (Hua X, p. 146/150). Noticing implies the concept of a field within
which ones attention can be directed at any one moment. Later in the Logical
Investigations, noticing is similarly referred to as a straightforward ... way in
which contents, otherwise lost in the undivided flow of consciousness, achieve
separate consciousness, in which they are emphasized or discovered by us
(Hua XIX/1, p. 169/385). Attention, by contrast, has a function that is
described variously as emphasizing, pointing-out, or fixing an object within the
sphere of noticing.11 Attention shines light as it were on a particular aspect of
the content that is in the range of consciousness at any one time.12 Attention is
a mental regard (geistiger Blick) that is accompanied by a striving to bring
the particular object or feature to full view: Paying attention is a kind of
being-anxious (Gespanntsein) about the content, to which there clings a cer-
tain intention that strives after satisfaction (Hua X, p. 146/150). Husserl
emphasizes that when he describes a striving that seeks its own satisfaction he
is not speaking in a psychological manner that would treat the striving as an
aspect of psychophysical causality.13 He means rather the directed mode in
which an act is carried out (Hua XIX/1, p. 425/586).14
It is now possible to see that when Husserl refers in the Logical Investi-
gations to the need for a unitary concept of attention under which acts of
intuition and thought are both to be subsumed, he is relying upon the simi-
larity between two phenomena he has already described: (1) the thoughtful
interest that constitutes categorial objects like aggregates, as analyzed in
11
Auszeichnen: Hua X, p. 147/151, Hua XIX/1, p. 423/584, Hua III/1, p. 189/200; pointieren:
Hua X, p. 147/151, Hua XIX/1, p. 169/385; fixieren: Hua X, p. 147/151.
12
Attention is then seen as an illuminating and indicative function; Hua XIX/1, p. 169/385.
Different moments or parts of an object stand in the light and are the objects of attention; Hua
X, p. 130/133. In the Philosophie der Arithmetik, it is the direction of interest that determines
which characteristics of an object or multitude of objects are illuminated (aufleuchten); (Hua XII,
p. 213) The thing that stands in the center, in the focal point of attention, is as it were lit up by an
inner light. (Hua XXV, p. 92).
13
About the mental point of regard Husserl says: But that is an unpsychological way of
speaking; Hua X, p. 145/149. See also Hua X, p. 146/150.
14
See also Ms. F I 37, 28b: The normal concept of interest ... signifies a peculiar way of exe-
cuting an act, by which something is made aware in it in the preeminent manner of a theme. The
thematic interest is specifed later by Husserl as the wider concept of interest; see Experience and
Judgment (henceforth EJ), 20.
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 89
Philosophie der Arithmetik, and (2) the perceptual attention that accounts for
the phenomenon of transition of concentration between different aspects of
content in a continuous external perception, as described in the early text
from 1893. The link between interest and attention is based upon a shared
striving tendency directed toward bringing objects to givenness. In Experience
and Judgment, Husserl specifies a narrower concept of interest as [a] moment
of the striving which belongs to the essence of normal perception. ... [A]
feeling goes hand in hand with this striving, indeed a positive feeling. ... Thus
the feeling which belongs to interest has an entirely peculiar direction.15
Interest is thus a striving to come ever closer to the object, to take pos-
session of its self ever more completely.16 Husserl describes attending to an
object or an objects feature as accompanied by a certain intention or a felt
striving towards the elucidation (Verdeutlichung) of the unseen sides or
aspects of that object.
Before the regard shifts from one part of the intuition to another and
modifies it in the described way, we observesupposing the process
ensues slowly enoughthat, of the indirectly seen parts of the total
content, one is rendered prominent (is noticed); and then we sense a
striving, which we do not hesitate to characterize as a striving after
distinctness. The indirectly seen object appears to us burdened with a
certain deficiency, which only seems to be removed when the inevitable
redirection of ones regard and the process of becoming distinct given
with it ensue. (Hua X, pp. 145146/149)
Here, as elsewhere, Husserl does not maintain a strict difference between
bemerken and aufmerken. An attentional striving in perception always tends
toward its own satisfaction (Befriedigung) by bringing the unseen sides or
aspects of a spatial object into view. This is the possibility of transforming
what is only incidentally observed into what is primarily attended to, i.e., into
clarity (Deutlichkeit). The early Husserl claims that there is a sensation of this
transition (Ubergangsempfindung). The intention that attaches itself to the
attention is characterized as a lack which presses towards elimination(Hua
X, p. 148/152). Nevertheless, the text from around 1893 betrays its phenom-
enological navete by asserting that what is directly attended to are the
Inhaltsbestandteile of consciousness. Objective unity, on the other hand, is
constituted only by a judgment, but never through intuition alone (Hua X,
pp. 15051/15455). It is in the transition of attention to the different features
of the object that the synthetic unity of the object as substrate is constituted.17
15
EJ, 91/85.
16
Ibid., 92/86.
17
Each change of attention signifies a continuity of intentions; and, on the other side, there is
implicit in this continuity a unity, a constituted unity capable of being grasped: the unity of the
same thing that presents itself solely in different changes of attention and of which, at any given
time, different moments or parts stand in the light and are the objects of attention. (Hua X,
p. 130/133).
123
90 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 91
123
92 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 93
123
94 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 95
In other words, Husserl has not yet shown in the first edition of the Logical
Investigations how the field of perception is a field of meaning to which
consciousness is genuinely responsive within the limits set not merely by sense
impressions but also by its own past responsiveness.
Only in the second edition of the Investigations does Husserl assign a
phenomenological meaning to a theory of the reactualization of perceptual
dispositions, a theory conceived originally by methods appropriate to psy-
chology and natural science (Hua XIX/1, p. 396/565).29 This is due to the fact
that in the period following the first edition of the Investigations Husserl
worked out a theory of consciousness in terms of two modes, actual and
inactual. Through his investigations of the temporal horizon of the present,
Husserl was able to provide phenomenological justification for a theory of the
actualization of dispositions that are operative in present perception. These
dispositions are not simply behavioral, instinctual relations; they are rather to
be understood as a temporally differentiated responsiveness to meaning in the
perceptual field.
123
96 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
ray is not itself an object of attention. It enriches but does not alter the stream
to be considered; it rather fixes it and makes it objective.) (Hua X, p. 116/
121). What is disclosed in the reflective act is the temporal structure of the
lived-through quality (Erlebtsein) of the act, and not the objective time units
that in fact elapsed during the contingent act of perception. The reason why
the reflective attention can grasp a structure to the perception qua lived-
experience (Erlebnis) and not qua contingent matter of fact is precisely be-
cause for Husserl, we do not simply perceive things, we experience or live
through (erleben) the perception. An evidential consciousness, for example, is
not one in which the subject simply has the object given to him; it is one in
which the subject is aware of having the object given to him.30 The temporal
structure of any act is in principle analyzable independently of the objective
phases of duration of any object, for objective time presupposes the immanent
time of acts by which we are aware of objects.
Let us consider Husserls analysis in terms of a straightforward act of
perception. What is fixed by the reflective ray of attention is the now-moment
of a particular perception. This now, however, has its own before and after,
which are not the same as the before and after of objective time (Hua X,
p. 290/301).31 There is no such thing as an absolutely individual sensation or
perception; each now-moment of perception stretches back to the immedi-
ately expired phases and stretches forth to the immediately future phases.
Every perception has therefore a double halo of retentional and proten-
tional phases (Hua X, p. 105/111). Retained content is always slipping back
into the past. Retentions account for the fact that the present is always born
from the past, a determinate present from a determinate past, of course (Hua
X, p. 106/111). Protentions, on the other hand, are the phases of the inten-
tional act that are immediately ahead and about to be fulfilled. They account
for the fact that perception is always oriented temporally to future phases of
experience in a continuous way: Each new tone then fulfills this forwards-
directed intention. We have determinate expectations in these cases. But we
are not and we cannot be entirely without apprehension directed forwards.
The temporal fringe also has a future (Hua X, p. 167/172).
Husserl argues that every perception refers back to an infinite nexus of
perception that lies potentially within the perception itself. Every single
intention is linked to a complex of determinate or indeterminate intentions, a
complex that leads further and, in being realized, is fulfilled in further per-
ceptions (Hua X, pp. 105110). Husserl uses a spatial analogy here. A spatial
object is always found in the foreground against a certain background; we
30
See Hua X, pp. 12627/130 and 291/301; see also Hua XIV, p. 45. Aristotles descriptions of
self-awareness are relevant here; see De Anima, Book 3, chapter 2, and Nicomachean Ethics,
1170a3035.
31
Of course, the reflective act of attention is a noticing of a second level; as such, it itself has a
now point: When reflection on the observingan observing of the observingtakes place, this
observing of the second degree is also a now and has its position in a temporal nexus, in the
temporal field; and all of these temporal fields are necessarily related to one another; Hua X,
p. 321/333334.
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 97
never see simply a coffee cup, we see the coffee cup relative to the background
of the desk, or next to the mouse, or in front of the book, etc. As Husserl puts it,
Foreground is nothing without background. The appearing side is nothing
without the nonappearing side (Hua X, p. 304/316). The background against
which the coffee cup stands out is an environment that is co-given along with
the cup due to environmental co-intendings (Umgebungsintentionen). Here, as
elsewhere, an example drawn from the sphere of external perception serves as
a model for the analysis of the temporal structure of all modes of intentionality:
The intentions aimed at the surroundings involve a halo of intentions for the
experiences themselves (Hua X, p. 310/321322). The temporal present of any
conscious experience at all has as its environmental background the retentional
and protentional phases streaming away in both directions from it.
The temporal structure of conscious experiences is itself constituted by a
layer of conscious life that is located so to speak below any level of attention,
either straightforward or reflective. Thus, according to Husserls descriptions,
retentions, primal impressions, and protentions are intentional without being
attentional. Retention is an intentionality, even though it is not an objectifying
act, like an act of recollection; retention is not a looking-back that makes the
elapsed phases into an object (Hua X, p. 118/122). Similarly, the primal
impression is not an apprehending act: Just as the retentional phase is con-
scious of the preceding phase without making it into an object, so too the
primal datum is already intendedspecifically, in the original form of the
nowwithout its being something objective (Hua X, p. 119/123). These
phases do not set up objects for consciousness; they are rather the temporal
modes in which anything that becomes constituted as objective necessarily
appears.32 Therefore, the modes of immanent time are not themselves tem-
poral. (Hua X, p. 334/346) The non-attentional intentionality is described as a
wakeful consciousness:
The waking consciousness, the waking life, is a living-towards, a living
that goes from the now towards the new now. I am not merely and not
primarily thinking of attention here; it would rather seem to me that,
independently of attention (in the narrower and in the wider sense), an
original attention proceeds from now to now, combining with the
sometimes undetermined and sometimes more or less determined
experiential intentions deriving from the past. These intentions, to be
sure, predelineate the lines of the combination. But the regard from the
now towards the new now, this transition, is something original that first
paves the way for future experiential intentions. I said that this belongs
to the essence of perception; I would do better to say that it belongs to
the essence of impression. (Hua X, pp. 1067/112)
32
See especially Hua X, 333/345: Is it inherently absurd to regard the flow of time as an objective
movement? Certainly! On the other hand, memory is surely something that itself has its now, and
the same now as a tone, for example. No. There lurks the fundamental mistake. The flow of the
modes of consciousness is not a process; the consciousness of the now is not itself now. The
retention that exists together with the consciousness of the now is not now, is not simultaneous
with the now, and it would make no sense to say that it is.
123
98 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 99
In a letter to Paul Natorp in 1918, Husserl reported that he had ten years
ago begun to overcome the static Platonism in his phenomenology and had set
himself the problematic of transcendental genesis.33 Clearly, Husserl is
referring to the lectures in which he examined the genesis of time as a
constant, passive and fully universal genesis. (Hua I, p. 114/81) The lectures
on time do not, however, in their abstract nature address the problem of how
the content of consciousness is itself affected by temporality:
Mere form is, of course, an abstraction, and thus the intentional analysis
of time consciousness and its achievement is from the beginning an
abstractive one. It includes, it is interested in, only the necessary tem-
poral form of all individual objects and object pluralities, or correlatively
the form of the manifold that constitutes the temporal. . . . But the
analysis of time does not tell us what gives unity of content to any object,
[nor does it tell us] what constitutes the differences of content between
one object and another. This is because the analysis of time abstracts
precisely from the content. Thus, it also gives no representation of the
necessary synthetic structures of the streaming present and of the stream
of unity of the present modes that concern in some way the particularity
of the content (Hua XII, p. 128).34
The formal analysis of the constitution of immanent time does not yet address
how the content of consciousness, i.e., the noematic sense correlated to
intentional acts, is itself affected by temporality. Such a project is begun only
after the lectures on internal time-consciousness and indeed relies on insights
made in those lectures.
33
Letter from 29.VI.1918, in Hua Dok 5, pp. 13538, especially p. 137.
34
Husserl stresses repeatedly in Experience and Judgment that time-consciousness is mere form
and not content; see EJ, pp. 76/73, 207/177, and 191/16465. On this point see also Bernet, Kern
and Marbach (1993, pp. 19899).
35
But the narrower and brighter the Blickpunkt is, the larger the darkness is in which the
remaining Blickfeld is found. (Wundt 1874, 718).
36
For an account of James influence on Husserls notion of horizon, see Stevens and Richard
(1974, pp. 3235 and 5357).
123
100 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
itself not attended to, Husserl speaks of a secondary and even tertiary ori-
entation towards the background. The example Husserl uses is that of looking
at a particular member of a plurality in the context of the other members of
the same plurality. One may be primarily oriented toward the particular
member and secondarily oriented toward the other members in that plurality.
There is furthermore the possibility of a tertiary orientation to the background
that is the fringe to all members of the plurality (Hua X, p. 147/151).37 If one
considers that these orientations are all simultaneously possible, and, fur-
thermore, if one preserves the univocity of the concept of orientation, then it
seems as if one would have to speak of an orientation that is inactual. This
Husserl does not do, however, in the early text from 1893. This is precisely
because he understood attention and noticing then as if they were two dif-
ferent things, not as two modes of the same thing. What Husserl begins to do
in the period after the Investigations, however, is to develop a theory of two
modes of the same attention, actual and inactual; thereafter, he consistently
replaces the distinction between attention and noticing with the distinction
between attention and consciousness.38 It is only in the second edition of the
Investigations that the notion of a secondary orientation of attention makes its
reappearance in Husserls thought.39 This is, as we will now show, due to the
developments in Husserls philosophy first reported in Ideas I.
In 27 and 35 of the Ideas I, Husserl develops a Wundtian theme along
phenomenological lines. He considers the example of letting ones perceptual
attention wander around a room filled with objects. The room is analogous to
the field of perception; ones mental gaze enjoys the freedom to seize upon
any object within this room. Every seizing-upon (Erfassen) is a setting-in-
relief (Herausfassen) of the object over and against what is only secondarily
attended to, i.e., the background of the object. The secondary orientation to
the background is indeed a genuinely intentional consciousness of that which
is co-intended in the primary orientation to the object. (Hua III/1, p. 71/70)
Just as the object itself is arranged in an objective spatial framework in a
certain order, so too a primary, explicit consciousness is situated as it were
within a halo of implicit co-intentionalities.40
37
The Philosophie der Arithmetik refers to an unanalyzed, intuitive background against which
operates the interest that constitutes the unity of a sum: As the interest turns itself towards a
thing merely in virtue of a certain character, the aggregate (Gesamtinbegriff) lights up at once the
objects of this category that have still remained unnoticed in the intuitive backgroundinsofar as
these objects stand out only sharply enoughin order to be able to constitute an easily noticeable
unity of a sum. And according as the interest turns itself towards this or that concept of category, it
accentuates this or that unity of sum from the unanalyzed background. (Hua XII, p. 213, italics
added).
38
Note the repeated substitution of Bewutsein for Bemerken in the second edition of the
Investigations at Hua XIX/1, pp. 16869.
39
See the further specification of attention into incidental or primary orientation (nebenbei oder
primar zugewendet) only in the second edition at Hua XIX/2, p. 423. See the same distinction
added only in the second edition at Hua XIX/1, p. 425 (primar oder sekundar zugewendet).
40
See Bernet et al. (1993, pp. 9596).
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 101
123
102 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
former acts of attention have passed into a state of potentiality that can always
in principle be re-actualized.
Let us now return to Husserls analogy of the field of perception and the
halo of consciousness. As the perceptual attention wanders from one object to
another, as it fixes its glance upon the first object and then passes over to a
second, it continuously transforms what was only partial and imperfect into an
ever clearer intuition: What is now perceived and what is more or less clearly
co-present and determinate (or at least somewhat determinate), are pene-
trated and surrounded by an obscurely intended to horizon of indeterminate
actuality (Hua III/1, p. 57/52). Two significant points are made here. (1)
Whenever an object of actual perception appears, it always appears as at least
in some way determinate (mindestens einigermaen Bestimmte), though
always incompletely indeterminate.41 This point was also made in the
Investigations: the determinacy of any particular perception depends upon
ones prior experience with the same object or a similar object. What is new in
the Ideas I is (2) the claim that every perceptual attention is necessarily
surrounded by a misty and never fully determinable horizon (Hua III/1,
p. 57/52). As a supplementary note makes clear, the image of a cloudy or misty
horizon signifies the infinity of inactual modes of consciousness that are
synthetically connectable with any one particular actual consciousness and
therefore partially constitutive of it.42
In sum, neither the perceptual object nor the perceptual horizon can ever
be adequately given or fully determinate: Perceptual absence pervades per-
ceptual presence. The idea of an absolute, i.e., absolutely determinate and
immediately given, presence is countersensical because
the stream of conscious experiences can never consist of just actuali-
ties.... [T]he continuously unbroken chain of cogitations is continually
surrounded by a medium of inactuality which is always ready to change
into the mode of actuality, just as, conversely actuality is always ready to
change into inactuality. (Hua III/1, p. 73/7273)
Absolute or adequate determinacy in experience is as impossible as absolute
indeterminacy. Just as intentional life in general is a constant interplay be-
tween empty and filled intentions, so too is perceptual life a constant interplay
between determinacy and determinability.43 If the expression determinate
sense is redundant, then literal non-senseutter lack of any determinate
senseis a perceptual impossibility. Even in the most insignificant act of
external perception we are, in the words of Merleau-Ponty, condemned to
meaning.44
Starting with Ideas I, intentional life in general and perceptual conscious-
ness in particular are described almost exclusively as a stream or a flow:
41
Husserls note in copy D; see Kersten translation, p. 52.
42
Husserls note in copy D; see Kersten translation, p. 52n.
43
See James Hart (1996, p. 128).
44
Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. xix).
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 103
45
See the marginal note in Copy A; Kersten translation, p. 72n. Husserl later acknowledged the
fundamental modification in the theory of intentionality introduced by the concept of horizon:
In the Logische Untersuchungen I still lacked the theory of horizon-intentionality, the all-
determining role of which was first brought out in the Ideen (Hua XVII, p. 207n./199n.)
46
The notions of perceptual stream and an alert intentionality are of course derived meanings
from the originary flow of the living present, i.e., absolute time-consciousness.
47
Alertness is first characterized by the fact that the I is continually in activity, continually
responds to affections, turns itself toward the affecting thing, concerns itself with it; Ms. D 14,
transcribed p. 17. See also p. 18: The widest concept of attention includes the alertness-affection
[die Wachaffektion].
48
See also Hua IV, p. 223/234.
49
See Hua III/1, p. 213/224 and Hua XXV, p. 92. At EJ, p. 83/79, Zuwendung is equated with
Wachheit.
123
104 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
Seebohm formulates the objection in the following way: How does one go
from a philosophy of consciousness of direct phenomenological description to
a level that partially or fully has the character of the unconscious? This
appears to be a contradictio in adjecto.50 Unconsciousness is, however, not
seen as a lack of consciousness but rather as potential consciousness, either
past or possible. Husserl notes that the concept of an unconsciousness is meant
as an ideal limit case, an idea in the Kantian sense.51 Phenomenological access
to the potential is only had indirectly through an analysis of that which con-
ditions active constitution. The analysis of a passive level of consciousness is
justified if it is necessary to explain that pregiven sense which always functions
as a base for further determinations. Thus, the horizonal structure of con-
sciousness explains the temporal continuity of sense-constituting structures.52
Merleau-Ponty notes in this regard Husserls thematization of a passively
operative intentionality: In Husserls language, beneath the intentionality of
the act..., we must recognize an operative intentionality, which makes the
former possible.53 The arousal (erregen) of apperceptive dispositions as
treated in the Investigations is later developed by Husserl as the intentional
awakening (wecken) of preconstituted sense within the context of an active
intention: Awakening is possible because the constituted sense in the
background consciousness, in the unliving form that is called the uncon-
sciousness, is really implied (Hua XI, p. 179). It is because the awakening is a
phenomenon, a lived experiencean awareness of not being currently
responsible for a preconstituted sense that suddenly reappearsthat
phenomenology extends its descriptive domain to include forms of passive
preconstitution. As Husserl later makes clear in Formal and Transcendental
Logic, the critique of logical reason would have been incomplete without
uncovering these hidden intentional implications of active constitution (Hua
XVII, p. 60 and 66).
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 105
merely on the sign but on the intention or act that confers meaning on the
sign. That is to say, a word is not a word until someone takes it as a word. It is
precisely this taking a word as a word or using a word as a word that
Husserl examines under the name of expression. Husserl thus focuses our
attention on the intentional dynamism behind the phenomenon of meaning,
which is often naively conceived as involving a strict word-object dichotomy.
Husserl delimits the sphere of speech and communication as that of
meaningful signs or expressions. Expressions are signs by means of which a
speaker intends to communicate her thoughts. Meaningful signs are what they
are by virtue of a meaning-bestowing act, an intention of the speaker to mean
something in a communicative way. Expressions for Husserl are ultimately
sense-informed (sinnbelebte) expressions (Hua XIX/1, p. 45/281). What is
expressed by the expression is not the meaning of the word, but the sense of
the fulfilling act that intends the object referred to in a fully intuitive way. The
intention to express, or the meaning-bestowing act, means its object, and this
object is the same as the object of (possible) perception or imagination.
Meaning, then, for Husserl, consists in the peculiar sense-giving act-
character that can invest a sensible sound or mark with expressive capacity
(Hua XIX/1, p. 72/303). The act of understanding thus lends to the sign a
meaning and a relation to objects. This attitude toward the sign must be
contrasted with an attitude of merely considering the sensuous character of
the sign, as when we mutter the word over and over and focus merely on its
verbal quality; in this case, no longer does our meaning-bestowing act shine
through the expression (Hua XIX/1, p. 71/302). Signs are essentially inert
and lifeless; they borrow their very life from the intentional act-character.55
In Ideas I, all acts of consciousness are considered constitutive of sense
(Sinn), and all sense can be studied as the noematic correlate to the acts. Sense
is defined very precisely by Husserl as ideal content, which corresponds to
what in the Logical Investigations was called matter or content (Materie).56
Ideal content is noematic content, or that which can be intended in different
ways and which nevertheless remains the same. This noematic content is none
other than the noematic correlate revealed by phenomenological reflection:
In every case the noematic correlate, which is called sense here (in a
very extended signification) is to be taken precisely as it inheres
55
Derrida describes this lending of life to the sign as the intentional animation that transforms
the body of the word into flesh, makes of the Korper a Leib, a geistige Leiblichkeit (Derrida,
1973, p. 16).
56
We recall the familiar talk to the effect that the same content may now be the content of a
mere presentation, now of a judgement, now of a question, now of a doubt, a wish, etc., etc. A man
who frames the presentation There are intelligent beings on Mars frames the same presentation
as the man who asserts There are intelligent beings on Mars, and the same as the man who asks
Are there intelligent beings on Mars?, or the man who wishes If only there are intelligent beings
on Mars!, etc., etc. ... plainly the intentional objectivity of the various acts is the same. One and
the same state of affairs is presented in the presentation, put as valid in the judgement, wished for
in the wish, asked about in the question (Hua XIX/1, p. 426/58687). Husserl adds that he once
considered defining meaning as matter: One might therefore be temptedI myself hesitated long
on this pointto define meaning as this very matter. (Ibid., p. 617/737).
123
106 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
57
Apperception is our surplus, which is found in the lived experience itself, in its descriptive
content as opposed to the raw existence of sensation; Hua XIX/1, p. 399/567. See also Ms. A VII
22, p. 16b, which refers to the co-intending of the sensuous, namely the sides that have become
invisible as ein Ubersinnliches or ein Ubersensuelles in experience. We recall here that the
perceptual notion of apperceptive surplus is distinguished from the categorial notion of surplus
discussed in the sixth Logical Investigation, 40, and in Taminiaux and Jacques (1990).
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 107
123
108 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
exclamations are not simply names, but can be elliptical for expressions that
aim to express a state of affairs:
I look at an animal and am asked: What do you see? I answer: A
rabbit.I see a landscape; suddenly a rabbit runs past. I exclaim A
rabbit! Both things, both the report and the exclamation, are expres-
sions of perception and of visual experience.... But since [the exclama-
tion] is the description of a perception, it can also be called the
expression of thoughtIf you are looking at the object, you need not
think of it; but if you are having the visual experience expressed by the
exclamation, you are also thinking of what you see.61
This notion of thinking is analogous to that intentionality which in Husserl is
constitutive of noematic sense. To say that the thinking puts a certain slant on
our experience of the rabbit is also to imply that the thinking gives a sense to
the object-as-experienced-by-me at a certain time. Were the same rabbit to
reappear out of the woods on the next day, it would do so as the rabbit-
experienced-by-me-as-darting-across-the-landscape-yesterday. The latter for-
mulation is a clumsy way of reporting what is perhaps expressed more vividly
in the exclamation A rabbit! What is expressed thereby is not the linguistic
form, nor even words, but rather the intuitive experience of the speedy rabbit
as it struck me in a new, curious, or funny way. The example is helpful in that
it dramatizes that element of sense-constitution which is involved even in the
most ordinary perception. The example is misleading, however, in its reliance
upon a notion of a perception of a rabbit that is not in principle accompanied
by a thinking, i.e., a sense-constituting process. To see anything as a rabbit
is already to be thinking about its quality of being a rabbit and not, say, a
duck. Thinking is itself not a judgment, but a structured way of perceiving an
articulated presence in the world. The Wittgensteinian notion of thinking is
really the Husserlian awareness of sense, a sense which is always being
reconstituted in a determinately indeterminate way in experience. As Husserl
puts it, the subjective activity which has been realized remains attached to
the object qua intentional.62
61
Wittgenstein (1958, p. 197e).
62
EJ, p. 137/122.
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 109
63
On Husserls concept of teleology as the determination of the present by the future and the
transcendence of the now by the not-now, see Mensch and Richard (1996, pp. 8283 and 9798).
Here Mensch also argues that perception is not a matter of some kind of connection between an
object and a mysterious third realm of sense that referentially bridges the gap between subjective
meaning and the object. Perception should be analyzed rather as a matter of consciousness and the
determinable, intelligible senses with which it deals.
64
Thus Brentano failed to see the teleological function of consciousness for the synthetic
achievement of truth on the part of reason (Hua IX, p. 36). Bernet argues that instead of an
ontological meaning, Husserls notion of perceptual synthesis implies an ethical demand of
absolute responsibility; see Bernet (1979, pp. 119132). See also Hua V, p. 153.
65
Ms. A VI 30, p. 123b: On teleology in Husserl see Strasser and Stephen (1989, pp. 217235). See
also Bernet (1978, pp. 251269). On the expression Teleologie der Erfahrung see De Almeida
(1972, pp. 220ff). On the concept of teleology in the late Husserl, see English (1998).
66
On the notion of habitualities as accounting for continued validity, see Bergman and Hoffmann
(1984, pp. 281305).
123
110 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
67
See Carr (1974, p. 75). The sense that had once accrued to the old sandlot baseball field or the
old hometown grammar school in our childhood is not immune to revision when we revisit those
sites as adults, much as we might like to continue to dwell in nostalgia.
68
Bernet et al. (1993, pp. 116130).
69
Herbart (1968, vol. 2, p. 201).
70
The example is borrowed from Lanei Rodemeyer.
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 111
bed at a hotel. In the latter case, one often undergoes a bit of momentary loss
of ones bearings as one looks around at the odd furniture, the curiously large
mirror, the unsettling angle at which the morning sun streams across the room.
To re-establish the sense of where one is it is often necessary to recall to
oneself, to live through again in a reproductive memory, the events of the
previous night: driving on the highway, experiencing the sights and sounds of
the new city, having dinner with an old friend, checking into the hotel. Only
then is ones orientation to the new surroundings re-established as one
becomes aware of the synthetic connection between last nights activity and
this mornings situation. When one wakes up at home, however, it is not
normally the case that one needs to re-establish a sense of orientation; it is
passively there for one on a preconstituted basis. At home, there is normally
no need to recall the events of yesterday or of last week in order to be able to
stumble in the dark to the kitchen and almost blindly reach for the coffee
machine to turn it on; one is already oriented due to the retentional structure
of experience. But even this active remembering is possible only on the basis
of the associative awakening which has already taken place; the awakening
itself is an event which always occurs passively.71
There is an interesting question to pose at this point: How many nights does
one have to spend at a hotel before a reproductive memory is no longer
necessary to re-establish sense? While answers may vary from individual to
individual, it does seem possible to construct a general answer to the question.
For example, it would probably take less time to re-establish ones general
orientation for someone who is used to sleeping overnight in hotels, for
example, a traveling businessperson or a jet-setting world tourist. Such a
person generally knows how hotels look in the morning upon awakening,
from the cheapest budget hotel to the most luxurious hotel. The seasoned
travelers habitual awareness of certain parameters to hotel disorientation
conditions the less extreme nature of her re-orientation process on any par-
ticular occasion. Starting in Ideas II, the phenomenon of Weckung is treated in
the context of transcendental phenomenology as a kind of non-causal stimulus
that brings the past to bear on the present in a way that is not necessarily
active or reproductive. It is to this analysis that I now turn.
In Ideas II, Husserl discusses the psychophysical causal stimuli that are
correlated to physiological receptors in what he calls the sensory soul.
Association is the general name for the mechanical lawfulness that governs
the habitual and instinctive ways in which the sensory soul reacts to certain
external stimuli. The sensory stimuli condition the very appearance of sense
impressions: The real process outside acts causally on me as a reality: the
falling of the hammer disturbs the air, the disturbances stimulate my organs of
hearing, etc., with the consequence that there is produced in me, as real Ego,
the noise (Hua IV, p. 233/245). Along similar lines, Husserl begins to develop
71
The example conforms to the point made at EJ, p. 210/179. This passive awakening is described
by Husserl as something that comes to mind retentionally (retentionaler Einfall) in Hua XVII,
Appendix II, 3a; see also Lohmar (1998, p. 251).
123
112 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
72
See Merleau-Pontys use of the Husserlian notion of motivation in his criticism of empiricist
association psychology in Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. 4850).
73
Ms. A VI 25, p. 12a: We can call the after-effect of an earlier consciousness on a later
consciousness a motivation relation.
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 113
123
114 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 115
76
Hua IV, pp. 22728/239; see also Hua XI, 386.
77
But even the position-takings themselves are subject to inductive rules: with each position-
taking, there develop tendencies to take up the same position under similar circumstances, etc.
(Hua IV, 280/293).
123
116 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
between two perceptions based on the same sensible given: that apprehension
is determined which with the unity of the entire actual perception merges
into a comprehensive total perception and contributes to the force of the
mutually founding belief intentions (Hua XXIII, p. 48). The weight of
experience is always a weight of intentions; indeed it is the concept that
expresses the pre-history of intentions.78
To every apperception, then, there belongs the inductive force of
experience: Perception thus intends more that what it itself authentically
gives, and this co-intended More, as constantly and necessarily
co-determining the perceptual sense, is called here apperceived. . . . In
fact, this co-intending characterizes the original induction that belongs to
perception.79
Induction is primordially not a logically inferring process . . . but rather
a process of predelineation or cross-referenceinductionthat
belongs to the domain of experience itself and the certitude about being
that is acquired from experience.80
The apperceptive surplus that is characteristic of every perceptual intention
functions therefore in an anticipatory way that is itself conditioned by expe-
rience. The core meaning of genetic phenomenology is apparent at this very
point: An intention and its correlative content are what they are due to their
particular history. We see here that Husserl has now given an intentional
explanation to what was treated merely as a feeling in the Logical Investi-
gations, as in the following statement: If I see an incomplete pattern, e.g. in
this carpet partially covered over by furniture. . . , we feel as if the lines and
coloured shapes go on in the sense of what we see. (Hua XIX/2, p. 573/700)
We can now confirm that the sense spoken of here consists of those
empty rays of apprehension, those supplementary intentions, which serve
as the guiding lines for confirmation. It is a sense that belongs to the
noematic sense of the object precisely because of the experience one has
had with objects like rugs, furniture, and things covering other things.
The dynamic synthesis of fulfillment of an empty intention presupposes the
object being given exactly as it was meant in an empty intention; only then can
there be a correspondence of sense. What can ever be meant in an empty
intention is conditioned by what one expects to find. What one expects to find
is itself conditioned by what one has found to be the case in the past. There is
here a dialectic between past experience and future expectation, whereby
each mutually conditions the other. Where the accumulated and anticipated
sense of past and future intentions merge is of course in the dynamic present
of perception.
78
See Lohmar (1998, pp. 223224).
79
Ms. B I 10 I, 14, cited by Aguirre (1970, p. 152n. 24).
80
Ms. A VII 11, 107, cited by Holenstein (1972, p. 35).
123
Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118 117
References
123
118 Husserl Stud (2007) 23:83118
123