Philosophy 324

Introduction to the Phenomenology

of
Edmund Husserl

Written by HW Rossouw and AA van Niekerk ©

(Translated by HL Fouché and AA van Niekerk)

January 2006
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 The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl

1. PHENOMENOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHY

The concept “phenomenology” refers to a way of doing philosophy. To be more

specific: phenomenology is a method of philosophical analysis that cannot easily be
typified under a common denominator. It doesn’t really represent a unifying
standpoint of a consolidated research program. The phenomenological philosophy is a
way of thinking that is characterised by individual and historical variety. There are,
for instance, enormous differences that differentiate the pure phenomenology of
Husserl from the hermeneutical phenomenology of Heidegger and from the
phenomenology of the perceptive body-subject of Merleau-Ponty.

The main question in Husserl’s phenomenology was how the Greek inspired ideal of
absolute certain knowledge can be realised in the daily work of the European (i.e.
Western) scientist. To realise this ideal, Husserl criticised the way the empirical
sciences of facts monopolised the practice and evaluation of the human attainment of
knowledge in modern Western culture. He especially criticised the way positivist
philosophy justified this monopolisation since the nineteenth century. According to
Husserl, the problem emerges from a curtailed concept of experience that constituted
the monopolising trend. He offered an impressive argument for a broadened concept
of experience that encompasses the (positivistic accent of the) idea of immediate
perceptive impressions and also the idea of eidetic intuitions. From this standpoint he
claimed for phenomenology the status of a philosophical science of essences that
served as the grounding of the knowledge that is attained in the empirical sciences.

Martin Heidegger was Husserl’s best-known student and the most original
philosopher of all of them. According to him the phenomenological way of thinking
served quite a different purpose. He used the phenomenological method to rehabilitate
philosophical ontology as discipline from its negative evaluation since the 19th
century. Heidegger’s critique was therefore not aimed at the pratice of regarding
positivist sciences as the only legitimate instances of knowledge (as was Husserl’s
critique). He rather criticised the metaphysical thinking of the Western intellectual
history and strategy of culture that was grounded in this mentality of thinking.
Heidegger’s phenomenology was a strategy for the renewal of ontology – a strategy
that could free ontology from the grip of metaphysics. While Husserl’s starting point
was the human mind (consciousness) as the primal characteristic of the transcendental
ego, Heidegger’s starting point was the concrete life problem of seeking a meaningful
existence in this world. In his quest to answer the ontological question (the question
of reality), Heidegger sought the essence of reality not in a timeless order behind
phenomena, but rather in the occurrence of temporary appearances (phenomena). For
phenomenological ontology the temporary appearances was at the same time the birth
of meaning for existing humans. Heidegger’s thinking could therefore be typified as
the first “existential phenomenology”.

For Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenology was the type of reflection through which
we gain access to the original dimension of human experience, i.e. the original

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occurrence or appearance when reality becomes meaningful and accessible. The task
of the phenomenologist is the effort to be present at the original confluence of the
experiencing subject and experienced world. This confluence was for Merleau-Ponty
the event where reality at first obtains face or meaning for us. In scientific reflection
this meaningful confluence or meeting is the focus of critical examination, but at the
same time it is the presupposition for the possibility of any scientific approach.
Merleau-Ponty called this original meeting the unreflective living experience and the
world that is experienced, the life-world [“Lebenswelt”]. We are initiated in reality as
it originally appears to us through unreflective experience on a first, primordial or pre-
conscious level.

The question is how does this happen? How does this primordial encounter where we
get to know the original meaning of reality, occur? The answer to this question
provided to Merleau-Ponty the object of his phenomenological analysis. His answer
was quite different from those of Husserl and Heidegger. According to Merleau-Ponty
we know reality in its most original appearance not as the sediment of a conscious act
of knowing of the thinking subject (cogito) as Husserl claimed. The primary meaning
of reality is also not the sediment of man’s practical dealings with phenomena that
announce themselves as “ready to hand” for the realisation of practical tasks and
projects, as Heidegger asserted. Merleau-Ponty rather saw perception as our
primordial initiation into all meaning. By perception he meant perception that is
conditioned by the body. Perception is the basic function of the body-subject by
which we get to know the world in which we live in its most original dimension or at
its most original level. For this reason Merleau-Ponty’s analysis focused on
perception. He was critical of the empiricists and idealists whose views on the
essence, structure and prerequisites of perception were inadequate. He was also
critical of his predecessors like Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre: because of their
depreciation of the relevance of the human body (and thus perception) in the knowing
process, they didn’t do justice to the preconscious dimension of our human orientation
in the world.

The concept of phenomenology thus has clearly different meanings for different
philosophers. It would lead to a wrong conception of phenomenological philosophy
when those differences are not taken seriously. On the other hand the differences do
not cancel the common inspiration that is active in the phenomenological movement,
keeps it within strict contours and provides a foundational unity. The following
exposition will concentrate on this common inspiration as far as possible.

2. REACTIVATING FORGOTTEN KNOWLEDGE

Phenomenology, as a form of reflection, could best be characterised as

“remembering” or “recollection”. Phenomenology is “reactivating forgotten
knowledge” through which the philosopher mediates the recovery of real or
“authentic” humanity.

Therefore the point of departure for phenomenology is that there is a dimension of our
human experience that is always already passed over [or skipped] or forgotten in our
daily thinking and search for knowledge. In the phenomenological thinking this
“forgetfulness” is not at all an innocent matter. The forgetfulness is, rather, for
Husserl, directly related to the European crisis of culture that endangers the humanity

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of the human species in our time. The philosophical act of remembering is therefore
more than a mere critical refreshment of memory. Phenomenology is, in line with its
fundamental intention, the recapturing and sensitising of an awareness of a dimension
of existence where humans can acknowledge or re-acknowledge their freedom.

The forgotten sphere of human experience which is the focus of phenomenology can
be called the sphere of lived, pre-predicative meanings. These are the meanings of
experience when we initially become aware of anything, i.e. before this “original”
experience is purposefully objectified and conceptually described. The sphere of lived
meaning is for phenomenology the original dimension of experience – i.e. our original
encounter with and initiation into reality. The word “origin” is here not used in a
chronological sense, but as a structural designation. In the structural dimension of our
experience the sphere of lived meaning logically precedes all other forms or levels or
dimensions of experience. Lived meaning can also be seen as the transcendental
sphere of our experience. The sphere of lived meaning is the prerequisite for the
possibility of all human experience. This prerequisite is not transcendent in the sense
that it is outside our experience, and therefore only reachable by a speculative
transcending of our experience into a metaphysical sphere. It rather is immanent to
our experience as the fundamental form of experience that is presupposed by all other
forms of experience. The task of phenomenology – in Husserl’s words – is to
excavate this fundamental form of experience “archaeologically”.

How does it happen that we always skip or forget the original dimension of our
experience in the every day knowledge process? Phenomenology attributes this to –
what Husserl called – the natural cognitive or thinking attitude. This is the thinking
attitude that constitutes [or reigns in] our every day quest for knowledge. In this
attitude our thinking is captivated and orientated to phenomena as if they are realities
entirely “outside” our sphere of consciousness. This attitude supposes that the
objective existence of phenomena, as well as their objective meaning, is already given
and thus independent of the human spirit. For phenomenology it is important to
realise that the natural thinking attitude presupposes the meaningfulness of the
phenomena of experience as self-evident and already given entities. This is an
uncritical supposition that closes all access to our fundamental experience or to the
transcendental original dimension of our experience where we encounter meanings as
they originally present themselves.

Phenomenology attributes the fact that the transcendental sphere of our lived meaning
disappeared in the historical development of Western thought and endeavour for
knowledge, to the cognitive authority and monopoly of the empirical [or “positive”]
sciences which were gradually attained in the European culture. The current-day
natural sciences became the model of positive science. The natural sciences cultivated
the natural thinking attitude and disciplined it methodically to make it more effective.
The spectacular successes of the natural sciences lead a general orientation to reality
which in fact tends to absolutize the natural thinking attitude as the only true way.
Phenomenologists normally call this thinking attitude objectivism or scientism.

With the terms “objectivism” and “scientism” is meant an unreflective and uncritical
standpoint according to which the world-view that is constituted by scientific
conceptualisation on the basis of the empirical knowledge of facts, is a true
representation or reflection of the real world as it exists in itself. This scientifically

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mediated world is already outside and independent of our knowing consciousness.
And this world is actually seen as the exclusive expression of legitimate knowledge
and insight. From this view the immediate, lived and pre-scientific experience is
degraded as a subjective contamination of the real world, and therefore rejected as an
unreliable basis for knowledge and understanding.

According to phenomenologists this objectivism or scientism created such a drastic

curtailment of human thinking and experience, that it inevitably confused the life
orientation of the European people and plunged them into a crisis. Husserl identified
this crisis as one of irrationalism where the ideal of a complete rational explication
and illumination of our experience becomes disillusioned. Heidegger described it as
the crisis of nihilism where Western thought lost its metaphysical grip on a timeless,
meaning-creating ground. No matter how this crisis is typified in different terms,
phenomenology continually reduces it to the forgetfulness that is endemic to the
natural knowing process that developed in Western thought. It is a forgetfulness that
caused the human thinking and quest for knowledge to be captivated in its entirety by
the mundane sphere of objective facts and that left the sphere of transcendental
knowledge unexplored.

To rectify this forgetfulness, phenomenology suggests an act of remembering that is a

counter-natural reflection and that necessarily requires a special effort. Husserl called
this philosophical reflection “reduction”. A significant part of his own philosophical
reflection was devoted to specify more exactly what the different steps of reduction as
method [or way of thinking] entails. Other phenomenologists did not necessarily
follow him in this enterprise. What Husserl generally had in mind with the different
reductions, is, however, an essential element of phenomenology, namely the
mediation of transcendental consciousness.

There can be no phenomenological knowledge if it is not based on the deliberate and

conscious reversal of the focus of our attention. This reversal is the reduction or
reorientation of our focus, away from the fixation on and preoccupation with the
objective world of facts, to our immediate experience of subjective lived meaning. No
matter what different terms phenomenologists use to describe this reversal of focus,
the presupposition remains that we must and can suspend or neutralise the influence
of well articulated terms, concepts and explanatory theories about experiential facts.
The aim of this is to bring our thinking, as unprejudiced as possible, into the sphere
where we originally become conscious of reality, where we experience reality
immediately on a pre-predicative level. In this sense the prophetic slogan of
phenomenology is: “Back to the things themselves!”

With the “things themselves” is not meant an object in itself or behind the
phenomenon as we become conscious of it. The “thing itself” is rather the
phenomenon in its phenomenality – i.e. the thing as it de facto appears to the
experiencing subject, i.e. in its appearance as some or other “meaning”. [Note that
there can only be the possibility of “meaning” when the presence (activity?) of some
subject for whom the meaning exists or is constituted, is presupposed.] For this reason
the “thing itself” – i.e. the object of phenomenological analysis and description – is
not looked at in contrast to or without any reference to human subjectivity. The access
that reduction as an act of remembering provides is the access to the transcendental
sphere or subjective experience of meaning. For all phenomenologists the reflection

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of reduction boils down to the recovering or restoration of human subjectivity in its
undisputed priority in the human knowledge process.

Phenomenological reduction makes phenomenological knowledge possible. Such

phenomenological knowledge is transcendental knowledge which is attained by
conceptual clarification of phenomena. With phenomena are meant the meaningful
entities of our original and lived experience in their immediate evidence for the
experiencing consciousness. In Phenomenology the phenomena are not subjective
contaminations of the objective reality which lies behind the (e.g. for Plato) unreal
appearances. In the phenomena of our original and lived experience we encounter the
fundamental and irreducible access to reality. The validity of all knowledge and
conceptions is grounded in the evidences of our subjective lived experience. The
phenomenological endeavour for knowledge is to bring to the fore these evidences by
analysis and description. In this way phenomenology intends to give our knowledge
of objective facts their final and definitive grounding behind which nothing more can
be established.

3. THE PRINCIPLE OF EVIDENCE

What is meant by “evidence”? It could be explained best by paying attention to

Husserl’s exposition of the concept. Husserl found the leading principle for the
development of a unique scientific methodology for philosophy in the principle of
evidence – he called it the “principle of principles”. Evidence or compelling
obviousness is the mode of experience in which and by which all assertions
[propositions] about something is validated or legitimated as expressions of
knowledge. When we experience an utterance as not evident, we do not recognise it as
valid or legitimated knowledge. [Note that the term “evidence” is here employed in
the sense in which it is used in the sentence: “It is evident that Einstein was an
intelligent man”, and not in the sense of “What evidence is there for the idea that there
is life in other parts of the universe?”] Evidence is according to Husserl the
legitimating source of knowledge on all levels; it is the test of whether an utterance is
valid knowledge. Whenever we make an assertion with the claim that it conveys
knowledge, we appeal implicitly to the experience of evidence as the basis of its
validity.

What does the principle of evidence as legitimating source of knowledge entail?

Evidence is, according to Husserl, the immediate “seeing” or intuition
[contemplation] of a given thing in its given-ness or living presence for the knowing
consciousness. It is the coming to awareness [consciousness] of the knowledgeable as
it is there, as it is present, unmediated by any form of symbolic representation. For the
immediate seeing that is a characteristic of such a coming to consciousness, Husserl
uses the term “intuition”. And for the entity in its immediate and revealed self-
presentation [“Selbstgebung”] for the intuition, he uses the term “phenomenon”.
Evidence is the intuition of a phenomenon. An assertion finds the fulfilment of its
intention, and thereby the legitimation of its cognitive validity, the moment when the
intended content [i.e. the subject matter to which the content of the assertion refers] is
immediately seen [intuited] as a phenomenon.

If the legitimating source of knowledge is evidence, it then means that valid

knowledge can only be attained from that which is given in experience in the same

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way; or from that which can be brought to such self given-ness, that it can be seen
immediately. This principle also accounts for the legitimation of philosophical
knowledge if such a thing is possible. But that means that philosophical knowledge
cannot exist in the form of a metaphysical science, when the latter is seen as
knowledge of entities [a reality] that are outside the borders of the experienceable and
are thus not accessible to immediate intuition. Metaphysical assertions that are
attained speculatively are instances of “bloss Vermeintes”, of hollow, unfulfilled and
unfulfillable intentions.

In his rejection of the possibility of philosophy as a metaphysical science, Husserl

linked up with the empiricist tradition in philosophy. At the same time he offered
sharp criticism of the traditional empiricism which he called “fake empiricism“.
Against the “fake empiricism”, Husserl pleaded for a “radical empiricism”.

Husserl’s criticism of the traditional empiricism concerns the negative prejudice that
this philosophy presupposes. The negative prejudice comes to the fore in empiricism’s
view of experience as exclusively sense experience. Traditional empiricism also
espouses the principle of immediate experience as the final legitimation of
knowledge. But here “givenness to experience” is limited to “being present for” or
“registering in/on” the senses. What is given to the senses, are particular and
contingent [temporal and spatially determined] facts or states of affairs. Empiricism is
looking for immediate, foundational evidences of any valid knowing process in the
perceptive intuitions of particular and factual entities. Only those intuitions can be the
basic assertions for a valid system of knowledge. They attain this in the form of
factual assertions of particular states of affairs. All assertions of knowledge that entail
generalisations [e.g. “metals expand when heated” rather than “iron expands when
heated”] receive their validity from mediately attained evidences. [It is on the basis of
our knowledge of the behaviour of iron, gold, etc. when heated, that we can make the
generalisation: “metals expand when heated”.]

Evidences that legitimate contingent, factual utterances are not apodictic evidences,
but assertorical evidences. Assertorical evidences can be doubted, while apodictic
evidences exclude the possibility of any doubt. If the original, fundamental evidences
of all valid knowledge are assertorical, the mediated evidences of that knowing
process would also be assertorical. The implication of this is that indubitable, absolute
certain knowledge utterances would be impossible. Traditional empiricism therefore
leads to scepticism about the possibility of absolute and certain knowledge of what is
given in experience.

As already said, Husserl couldn’t accept this consequence because it would mean
resignation of the original idea and ideal of science. However he stuck to the principle
of evidence of immediate experience as the legitimating source of knowledge. He had
the conviction that we can still strive for the Greek rationalist ideal of rational
completely accountable and therefore absolutely certain knowledge of our experience
without getting trapped in metaphysical speculation that is extraneous to experience.
This ideal is, according to Husserl, reconcilable with the empiricist principle,
provided that this principle works in a radical way by eliminating the negative
prejudice that conditions the fake empiricism that modernity produced.

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The untenability of these prejudices is obvious when we analyse a meaningful sense
perception and the knowledge-claims that are justified by it. In other words: Husserl
acknowledged that all reliable scientific knowledge is (and must be) based on
experience. He objected however to empiricism’s curtailed concept of experience and
endeavoured to broaden the notion of “evident experience”.

Suppose I make the statement: “The table is brown”. It is a meaningful

conceptualisation of a direct sensory perception which is legitimated by the
perception as a statement of knowledge. It is however clear that the intentional
content of the statement is not completely fulfilled by that which is actually here and
now [and thus factually] given to my sensual apparatus on its own. What I see in one
sense-perceptive action [i.e. the actual content of my sensory intuition], is only a
certain side or profile [“Abschattung”] of the object that is intended by the word
“table”. By changing my spatial position, I can in effect see different sides or profiles
of the object, but I can never, in one act of sense-perception, see all the sides of the
object simultaneously in order to synthesise the different sides as part of the same
identical object. Nevertheless, my statement did not only articulate or cover only the
contents of the profile of the table that I sensed; it was, in fact a statement about the
table as whole, even if that whole can, in principle, never be registered on my senses
in toto. When I say “the table is brown”, I articulate the totality of something that I
can, in principle, never fully observe in totality. Thus concerning the actual content of
my sensual intuition, my statement “the table is brown” in fact conveys a surplus of
intention, i.e. I “intended” more with the statement than that which I actually observed
There are more intentional elements in my statement that are not fulfilled by the
actual content of the sense perception. The sense contents on the basis of which the
statement was made is, on its own, therefore always inadequate to legitimise the
cognitive validity of a knowledge claim as a whole. The surplus of intention refers to
the general concept of table. This “general concept of table” is in fact an entity which
consists of a synthesis of the actual sensual intuition with other potential sensual
intuitions in order to identify the actual perceived profile as the object table. The
general concept of table represents an ideal meaning in which the essential
characteristics [thus the essence or what-ness] of a specific kind of object are
collected. The surplus of intention concerning the content of the sensual intuition is
only fulfilled, and my statement consequently only fully legitimised in its cognitive
validity, if this ideal meaning itself is evident for my experience, i.e. immediately
given in my experience in such a way that it can be seen in an intuition.

According to Husserl one can go even further and say that the immediate given-ness
of the being or essence of an object in its particular, temporal-spatial appearance to
sense perception is the pre-requisite for the possibility of sensual perception as
meaningful sensual perception. Without this pre-requisite the sensual perception
would not be identifiable and also not expressed understandably. The implication of
this is that the immediate given-ness of the being of an object is logically more
original than its particular appearance to the senses, because the former conditioned
the latter and not the other way round.

In this way, Husserl gave, inter alia, the concept of intuition [i.e. immediate
perceptive given-ness] a broader application as was the case in the traditional
empiricism. He accepted [what he called] the eidetic intuition [from “eidos” –
essence] and by that the immediate perceptive given-ness of being-ness or essences.

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The intuition of essences is for Husserl the original, fundamental evidence of all valid
knowledge. Not the particular, spacio-temporal determined facts as traditional
empiricism thought, but the general, ideal essences are the original phenomena of our
experience. It is the intuition of this original phenomena that is presupposed by all the
empirical, factual sciences, but is not [and could not be] thematised because of the
disposition of these sciences. The investigation of essences as the original phenomena
of our experience is the task of philosophy as distinctive, universal and foundational
science. Husserl thought that only a philosophy that is looking for the roots
[“radices”] of our experience in order to account rationally for our experiential
knowledge from that point could be typified as radical empiricism. Husserl called the
expressive, methodical, rigorous, accountable exploring of the original phenomena of
our experience that is not thematised in the factual sciences, phenomenology.
Philosophy is phenomenological science.

According to Husserl, only phenomenological knowledge, i.e. knowledge of essences,

is able to produce absolute certainty and thus to achieve the ideal of science. Absolute
certain, indubitable knowledge assertions are accounted and legitimised by apodictical
evidences. Essences provide apodictical intuitions. An essence is an ideal entity that is
independent from temporal and spatial and thus contingent determinations. An
essence is necessarily what it is, and cannot be different from what it is. The intuition
of an essence excludes the possibility that what is seen, could ever or anywhere be
different from what it is. Knowledge that is legitimised by such an intuition is
indubitable knowledge.

If philosophy wants to fulfil its task as universal foundational science, it should find
the essences or beings in their apodictically self-given-ness and express the
corresponding intuitions in knowledge assertions. To do this, philosophy has to
develop a method by which one can attain access to the original dimension of our
experience, i.e. the dimension of first intuitions and original phenomena. This
dimension is presupposed as the transcendental prerequisite by the factual sciences,
but is at the same time skipped or passed over. Husserl called this method or way of
thinking the method of reduction.

4. THE METHOD OF REDUCTION

Husserl used the term reduction in the original sense of leading back or reducing
[“reducere”]. With reduction as a manner of reflection he means the reducing of our
experience to its original dimension or to the roots of experience. This is the area or
dimension of the original and fundamental evidences from where the legitimation of
all experiential knowledge can rationally be accounted for. One can also say that it is
the reduction of our experience to its transcendental basis in which the necessary pre-
requisites are given for the possibility of all valid and meaningful experiential
knowledge. The method of reduction is a search for transcendental knowledge in
order to fulfil the task of philosophy as universal foundational science.

The transcendental knowledge which the method of reduction pursues, is supposed to

be knowledge of the original phenomena of our experience. The original phenomena
of our experience are essences. Essences are the ideal meanings that are determined
by the logical structure [i.e. the understandability or intelligibility] of our experience.
In so far as the method of reduction is the manner of reflection that leads to the

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expressive revelation of essences, it entails first and foremost a counter-natural
reflection or thinking attitude. Husserl called this thinking attitude counter-natural
because it requires a disposition that apparently directly opposes the orientation of the
natural experiential attitude.

With the natural experiential attitude Husserl means the focus on or orientation of the
experiencing consciousness to a reality “outside” or transcendent to consciousness.
The natural attitude focuses on real existing entities of which the meaning is supposed
to be obvious. The method of reduction conveys the counter-natural reflection where
that which is presupposed by the natural attitude, but is not thematised and which thus
remains hidden or concealed, is consciously thematised. To thematise the possibility
of the obvious meaning that beings have in the natural experience, is to seek, in a
motion that retreats or moves backwards in its questioning, the essences in their
immediate self given-ness for experience. The “backward questioning” requires a
reversal of attitude or focus, a reversal where the focus shifts from the real existence
of beings to the essences of beings.

To reduce the phenomena of our natural experiential attitude [i.e. beings in their real
existence on their own, outside consciousness] to the original phenomena of our
transcendental experience [i.e. essences that determine the meaning of beings]
requires the reduction of our experience to the area of apodictical evidences that can
be the foundation of indubitable assertions of knowledge. The reason for this is that
only essences [ideal meanings] can be absolutely given in apodictical intuitions. The
method of reduction is therefore aiming at indubitable and absolute certain knowledge
to fulfil the task of philosophy as universal foundational science.

In so far as the method of reduction aims at the expressive revealing of essences in

their absolute, apodictical self given-ness, the counter-natural reflection which is
implicated by this method, is a reflection of a critical purging or filtration of our
experience. It is a critical purging of all elements in our experience that make it
possible to doubt at all. What is open for critical questioning or doubting, is precisely
that which is temporally and spatially determined and which are thus contingent (not
necessary) references to factual existence in our experience. The critical purging in
concreto means the elimination of every reference to contingent factuality in our
experience.

In conclusion we should mention in this preliminary description of the method of

reduction that this method is focussed on our experience in its totality and unity, and
not only on a specific province or sector of our experience. Its aim is knowledge of
the essence of all subject areas of the positive sciences. Its techniques are formed by
the reduction of all phenomena of natural experience to pure phenomena of
transcendental experience. Only in this way could it be a method for the execution of
the task of philosophy as universal foundational science.

What the method of reduction conveyed in particular, can be stated in what follows.
The first step in reduction, as a way of thinking, is a closer consideration of the most
universal characteristic of our natural experience in totality and unity.

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4.1 The Generalthesis of the natural experience attitude

In the natural attitude we experience a continuously expanding totality of evidences

with which a growing totality of knowledge assertions, which are grounded by these
evidences, correspond. According to Husserl there is however in all natural
experience only one universal basic evidence latently present. Husserl called the
knowledge statement that is legitimated by this, the Generalthesis [“General Thesis”]
of the natural experiential attitude. This general thesis is not necessarily consciously
and explicitly formulated. But when one tries to formulate it, it entails the following:

I am continually conscious of a real world of temporal-spatial qualified

beings that exist outside my being conscious of them, a world to which I as
real existing entity belong together with others and of which the temporal and
spatial boundaries cannot be determined. I am immediately conscious of the
fact that the totality of real existing beings is not only those that are here and
now immediately present to my conscious experience. I am able to shift my
temporal as well as my spatial position to experience (up to now) unfamiliar
entities. The possibilities to expand my experience by shifting my point of
orientation is in principle unlimited and endless.

The Generalthesis of the natural experiential attitude does not exclude the possibility
that I may doubt the contentual components of the natural world - for instance,
whether the entities that I observe, in fact exist or are only illusions, hallucinations or
fictions of the imagination. It is precisely the task of the positive factual sciences to
endeavour such complete, reliable and exact possible knowledge of what belongs to
the world of the natural experiential attitude. The general presupposition of the natural
experiential attitude, namely that there is such a world of real existing entities
transcendent to human consciousness, is not changed by any partial doubt or critical
research of a sector of the real existing world. Even the most critical control of our
experience with the assistance of scientific methods and techniques presupposes the
unproblematic, allegedly self-evident insight that our experience always refers to a
spacio-temporally qualified world of real existing beings.

4.2 The phenomenological epoche

Once we have determined the general thesis or presupposition of the natural

experiential attitude, we can ask the question whether this general thesis can be
legitimated by an apodictical evidence and thus qualified as a philosophical assertion
of knowledge.

Does the world which transcends our consciousness and that is presupposed in the
general thesis of the natural attitude really given to us in a manner that is absolutely
indubitable? The answer, for Husserl (and in this he follows Descartes) is an emphatic
no. Even though I may be convinced of the given-ness of the world, it is still possible
to think the opposite. The evidence of the real existing world of beings outside
consciousness does not convey the intuition that it is impossible for this world to be
different. If this is the case, we are not dealing with an apodictical evidence. This
means that the Generalthesis of the natural experiential attitude is philosophically
useless because it does not provide us with a final and indisputable grip in our
endeavour to attain absolute knowledge.

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To complete the phenomenological reduction and with it the change of focus or
orientation point, Husserl suggets that we “de-activate” the Generalthesis with its
claim on validity. This “de-activation” is to be achieved in a reflection that he calls
epoche. Epoche means the suspension or withholding of the process of making
assertions or propositions. In the epoche I restrain myself from making or accepting
the proposition that is formulated by the Generalthesis; I bracket it
[“Einklammerung”] in the sense that I leave it for what it may be worth, but do not
accept the validity thereof in my philosophical thinking about experience. The epoche
means that I assume an attitude that implies that I no longer believe in a real existing
world which is the basis of the natural experiential attitude.

The epoche does not mean that I deny the contents of the Generalthesis, i.e. that I
deny that a real existing world is given. Such a denial would be just as dubious as the
confirmation of it. It also doesn’t mean that I doubt the real existence of the natural
world in a sceptical way. Such a position would still mean that I have a specific view
about the content of the Generalthesis. That would carry the risk that I am still
captured within the natural attitude. The epoche only entails that I take leave of the
Generalthesis, i.e. that I remain completely non-committal as to is validity; I do not
acknowledge or deny the validity of the general thesis and refrain from positively
asserting any proposition about the existence of the world, whether it is real or not.
The world still appears to me as always; I only disregard the claim of this world to
“real existence”, outside of or transcendent to consciousness, because it is not
apodictically evident and thus indubitable.

In spite of a certain kinship with Descartes’ methodical doubting, Husserl’s epoche is

quite different. The aim of Descartes’ doubting of the real existence of the outside
world is to prove with certainty what he previously doubted in order to put an end to
all doubting. Descartes’ bracketing of the outside world at first, and the analysis
which follows that bracketing, have the explicit purpose of, eventually, removing the
brackets. According to Husserl, Descartes doesn’t succeed in overcoming the natural
experiential attitude. The project of Husserl’s epoche is different: he wants to
eliminate doubt by refraining from any proposition about the elements of experience
that can possibly be doubted. The epoche is the pre-requisite for the
phenomenological thinking attitude and can only be sustained if the epoche is upheld.
Once the epoche is implemented, it cannot be revoked – the brackets cannot be
removed.

With the suspension of the Generalthesis I also cancel – according to Husserl – all
propositions [statements] of knowledge of the natural experience attitude which are
dependent on this foundational statement for their own validity. It includes all every
day statements about real existing entities, as well as all propositions that are made in
the positive factual sciences. The epoche means the purging of all possible referents to
real existence outside of our consciousness.

The epoche is the negative aspect of the reductive reflection. It creates the pre-
requisite for the disclosure of the access to the transcendental dimension of our
experience that Husserl seeks, where the possibility of doubt is excluded and where
the terrain for actual philosophical research is provided.

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4.3 The ego cogito mea cogitata

The positive aspect of reductive reflection is the coming to consciousness of the

residue or the remaining sediment of the epoche. In other words, the positive aspect of
reductive reflection is the analysis of what remains in our consciousness once the
epoche has been executed and completed. When every reference to the real existence
of the world is eliminated from our consciousness, the experiencing consciousness
becomes conscious of itself in its absolute and undeniable given-ness to itself. The
residue of the epoche is a sphere of being that Husserl called the pure and
transcendental consciousness. This pure consciousness is the prerequisite for the
possibility of all natural perceptions. Husserl called this pure consciousness with its
immanent apparatus of conscious, meaningful experiences the ego cogito mea
cogitata (literally: “I think my thoughts”).

When I have eliminated every reference to real existence from my experience of the
natural world, because these references can be doubted, there is still something left.
What is left, is a stream of conscious and meaningful experiences [cogitationes].
Within this stream of conscious experiences I am conscious of a world of perceived
beings – however, no longer as an existing world “outside” my being conscious of
them, but as a totality of meanings immanent or inherent to consciousness. Every
“cogitatio” is a “cogito cogitatum” – an “I think a thought” or “I am conscious of
meaning”. The cogitationes or conscious experiencing of meaning are given or are
known in an absolutely indubitable way to consciousness. I can think that a certain
perceived being does not really exist. I can, however, not think that I don’t think the
meaning of the being for me [i.e. the meaning as I understand it]. Whenever I try to
think that I don’t think the meaning of the being, I am thinking it and by doing that I
am confirming what I want to deny. A cogitatio [- ego cogito meum cogitatum – “I
am conscious of a meaning that something has for me] is thus in principle indubitable.
A cogitatio is for the knowing consciousness apodictically and absolutely given,
independent of whether that which is thought, really exists outside consciousness or
not.

In order to get a better picture of Husserl’s intentions, it is helpful to compare his

view on the residue of the epoche with the similar ideas of Descartes. Descartes’
methodological doubting made it possible for him to discover an apodictical and
indubitable intuition which he made the starting point of his philosophy. He
formulated this intuition in his famous statement: ego cogito ergo sum. However,
Husserl raises a fundamental criticism of Descartes’ conception of the apodictical
evidence of the ego cogito, as well as of the way he developed this evidence
philosophically.

According to Descartes the ego cogito [i.e. the doubting consciousness which
becomes reflexively conscious of itself as an undoubting given entity] is a matter of
pure self attentionality – i.e. in the process of reflexively becoming aware of itself ,
the doubting consciousness is only concentrating on itself, or has only eyes for itself.
The certainty which Descartes discovered in the ego cogito is a certainty which is
only referred to as the consciousness as self-consciousness. It is precisely for this
reason that Descartes thought of the doubting and thinking consciousness as some
kind of substance, a res cogitans – i.e. an entirely non-corporeal, non-materialistic
spirit or soul with the attribute of thinking.

14
As opposed to this, Husserl claims that the certainty of the ego cogito is not only
based on a punctual thinking act as such without any content, but also on the content
of or object on which the thinking act is focussed, i.e. the cogitatum. The apodictical
evidence which is made possible by Husserl’s epoche, is the evidence of a stream of
cogitationes [conscious experiences of meaning]. To state it differently: the
consciousness that became reflexively aware of itself in it’s apodictically given-ness,
is always a consciousness of meaning that refers to something which is not
consciousness itself. An absolutely pure consciousness, in the sense of a
consciousness that is only conscious of itself, is an illusion according to Husserl. The
consciousness which becomes reflexively aware of itself in its own indubitableness is
always referential. Consciousness is always referentially aimed [focussed] at or
related to something else which is not consciousness, but which is represented within
consciousness. The certainty which Descartes discovered in the ego cogito, had
actually [according to Husserl] referred to the act of consciousness [the direction] as
well as to the content of consciousness [the meaning that correlated with the
direction]. The apodictical intuition which is made possible by the epoche, should
therefore be formulated as the intuition of the ego cogito mea cogitata.

Husserl secondly states that what Descartes at first gained with his discovery of the
ego cogito as sphere of apodictical certainty, he in turn lost by his notion of the ego
[i.e. the subject of thinking actions] as a real existing being [ergo sum]. To put it in
Husserl’s terminology: Descartes didn’t execute the counter-natural reflection of the
epoche or critical purification consistently. According to Husserl, Descartes confused
the apodictical evidence of the ego cogito with the assertive evidence of a real
existing and therefore contingent thinking “I”. The moment Descartes introduced the
“ergo sum”, he fell back into the natural thinking attitude. Descartes’ fault was that he
didn’t bracket the real existing world entirely. He still wanted to save something of
the real existing world and he did it in his axioma of the “ergo sum”. On the basis of
the grip he meant to thus attain, he regains, by rational argumentation, certainty of the
“real existence” of the entities whose real status he earlier doubted. The real existence
of the thinking “I” is however just as contingent, and thus dubitable, as any other form
of real existence.

Husserl, on the other hand, also applies the epoche to the presupposition of the real
existence of the ego of the ego cogito itself. He refrains from the proposition
articulates the belief in the alleged real existence of the thinking subject in a time-and-
space conditioned world. The absolute certainty that he found reflexively on the basis
of the epoche, also refers to a consciousness which is totally purged from any
reference to a real and thus contingent existence, even concerning its subject of
unifying ego.

The residue of Husserl’s epoche is thus a pure consciousness as a stream of pure

experiences of meaning that is unified [bound together into a unity or “monad”] by a
pure ego. Husserl uses the term “pure” as synonym for “transcendental”. The pure
consciousness is the transcendental consciousness, because it is the necessary [that
which is not possible to eliminate] pre-requisite for the possibility of all forms of
consciousness and experience. The ego or subject of this consciousness is also called
the transcendental ego or subject, which is differentiated from the natural and
psychological experiential “I”.

15
In conclusion, it should be said that Husserl’s ego cogito mea cogitata is not like
Descartes’ ego cogito ergo sum the expression of an axiomatic starting point from
which several evident statements can be deducted. It is rather the designation of an
apodictically given sphere of being to which we acquire access through the epoche.
This sphere of being is the starting point that provides a field of research where
absolute certain philosophical knowledge can be obtained. However, to exploit this
field of research that the phenomenological reduction - epoche and becoming aware
of the residue of the epoche – opened, a further reduction is necessary.

4.4 Eidetic reduction

The transcendental-phenomenological reduction has given us access to a sphere of

absolute self-given-ness, i.e. the area of the pure and transcendental consciousness as
stream of pure experiences of meaning. Absolute self-given-ness is however not yet
absolute knowledge; becoming aware of absolute entities is not yet science thereof
whatsoever. We come to scientific knowledge of the individual and singular
experiences of meaning [cogitationes] only by deducing from these experiences their
general and necessarily essence or eidos. This activity of deducing is called by
Husserl eidetic reduction.

Eidetic reduction entails the elimination of all contingent, not necessary aspects of a
specific experience of meaning in order to see the general and always operative or
necessary essence or eidos of it. This essence or eidos is – according to Husserl –
always given directly in the experience of meaning and can therefore immediately be
seen. Contingent experiences of meaning are variable and can always be different
from what they are at the moment. This variability or “possibility to be different” has
boundaries, namely the boundaries that are set by the necessary essence of such an
experience. The essence [or eidos] is that which makes a specific experience of
meaning what it is, and without which it cannot be this specific experience of
meaning. The aim of the eidetic reduction is to trace this essence [or eidos] and to
make it accessible for access to something’s “essence”. [Wesenschau]

5. INTENTIONALITY

Concerning Husserl’s view of the residue of the phenomenological epoche, we have

seen that he criticised Descartes’ view on the structure of the ego cogito as sphere of
apodictical evidences. The certainty we have found with the reflexive coming-aware-
of-the-residue of the epoche, concerns - according to Husserl - not only the punctual
and contentless thinking act as such, but also the content on which the act is focussed.
The ego cogito is always an ego cogito meum cogitatum. In other words:
consciousness that is given to itself in an absolute and indubitable way is always
consciousness of that which is not consciousness. Husserl uses the term intentionality
to designate this essential structure of pure consciousness.

The thesis of intentionality is a central part of the phenomenological vision of the

original dimension of our experience and therefore of the fundamental basis of all
knowledge. For this reason it is also an essential pre-requisite of the
phenomenological way of thinking itself. In the later existential phenomenology the

16
concept of existence developed and deepened to an independent anthropological
perspective.

That the knowing consciousness of humans has the basic form of intentionality,
implies a rejection of idealistic as well as realistic theories of knowledge. In the
epistemological debate both these poles rest on the Cartesian inspired concept of the
knowing consciousness as an in-itself resting and by-itself existing substantial sphere
of pure inwardness. In the idealistic theory of knowledge consciousness is seen as a
reservoir of apriori meanings which are projected onto the screen of experience in the
knowing act in order to create the actual contents of our knowledge. The realistic
(empirical) theory of knowledge, on the other hand, sees consciousness as a camera or
tabula rasa that registers in a passive way all perceptively mediated stimuli which are
coming from outside as impressions. These impressions provide conceptual meaning
thanks to the association processes by which meaning is attached to experiences.

In contradistinction to this substantialist view of consciousness, the thesis of

intentionality promotes the idea that the knowing consciousness can only be
understood as the coming to awareness of that which is not consciousness. The
knowing consciousness is structurally always something that “approaches” something
else, of “referring to something” or of being “intentionally focussed on something”
that is not itself consciousness. The original coming to awareness of an entity as either
this or that entity [i.e. in a definite meaning] entails a unity of mutual implication
between the act of referring or intention [noesis] and the reference or intended entity
[noema] that correlates with it. Without acts of intention there are no phenomena or
meaningful experiential data. Without evidence or self-given-ness with which
intended entities present themselves, intentional acts would find no actual fulfilling.
In such a case there would also be no phenomena. To understand the last statement
properly, a close-up exploration of Husserl’s concept of intentionality is necessary.

When we have eliminated the world that is transcendent to our consciousness and also
its claim to legitimate being [i.e. when we have eliminated the reference to real
existence that is prevalent in our natural experience], the consciousness which we
become aware of by reflection, is not “pure consciousness”. It remains a
consciousness of the world of beings. The being of these beings is however no longer
the being of real existing entities, but the being of meanings that belong immanently
to consciousness itself – i.e. meanings which as meanings [“Bedeutung” = be-teken-
is] refer to entities that are not consciousness itself. Pure consciousness is in its
apodictic given-ness to itself always a consciousness of meaning [references]. Pure
consciousness is thus always a referring consciousness, an intentional focus on that
which is not consciousness. It means that pure consciousness is not only present by
itself or only attentive to itself in a substantial self-enclosedness. The structure of pure
consciousness is not self-attentionality, but rather intentionality – i.e. an intentional
focus on what is not consciousness. There is therefore no consciousness without an
intended entity on which consciousness is focussed. In every conscious experience of
meaning we are always confronted by an intentional focus [Einstellung] on the one
hand and an intended entity as the theme of the intentional act on the other hand.
Intentional act and intended entity form a unity of mutual implication. It follows that
we cannot isolate these two poles in the establishment of meaning in order to
investigate them separately on their own.

17
The subjective side of an experiencing of meaning, i.e. the intentional focus as act of
becoming aware, is called noesis by Husserl. The objective side of a conscious
experience of meaning i.e. the intended entity as the theme of the intentional act, is
called noema. Noesis and noema are in an inseperable (cor-)relation with each other.
The one presupposes and implicates the other. In this dual unity of noesis and noema
meaning is constituted. Meaning is the way in which an entity is given to the knowing
consciousness or appears to consciousness as something, thanks to the fact that
consciousness lets it appear as such because of a specific intentional act. In its
intentional structure the transcendental consciousness is meaning constituting action.
The creation or constitution of meaning is an achievement of pure consciousness as
functioning intentionality.

When it is mentioned that meaning is constituted, it doesn’t mean that an “an sich”
meaningless entity [being] is “spirited” with meaning by the intentional functioning
consciousness in order to make a meaningful experience possible. “Meaning” doesn’t
belong to a self-enclosed substantial consciousness which projects its “internal”
images on the screen of experience. It is precisely this traditional idealistic view
which Husserl is trying to reject with his description of the structure of consciousness
as intentional. As functional intentionality, consciousness is not an in itself resting
reservoir of apriori meanings and therefore also focussed on entities transcendent [or
outside] consciousness that could be understood in terms of these apriori meanings.
Essentially consciousness is as consciousness focussed on what is not consciousness.
Consciousness is intentional being with or presence at. Only in this intentional “being
with” are entities disclosed and thus understandable as meaningful entities. It means
however, on the other hand, that meaning does not belong merely to a brute reality
“an sich”, i.e. to a reality where consciousness is not intentionally present. The
disclosedness or intelligibility of an entity as a meaningful entity, is always
relationally involved in the intentional functioning consciousness. Only in this
unbreakable correlation between noesis [intentional act, meaning giving focus] and
noema [intended entity, designated object] does meaning originate.

REMARK

In the dual unity of noesis and noema we have, in a certain sense, the opposite of
Kant’s distinction between the formal and material aspects of our knowledge. In
Kant’s view the subjective side or noetical aspect of our knowledge has rigid,
constant and apriori forms [perceptive forms and mental categories] which function
as static and universal operative structures of theoretical reason in all rational
knowledge. The variable aspect of our knowledge is – according to this view – only
given in that which is perceivable, i.e. in data of our perceptions that have their origin
in the unknowable “Ding an sich” [Thing in itself].

With Husserl however the noetical aspect of our experience and knowledge has a
dynamic and always changing structure. The noetical is not situated in categories or
perceptive forms that remain stable and constant, but in the continuously changing
intentional acts or attitudes of consciousness which on their part collaborate with the
correlative noemata. Transcendental consciousness is not a static composition of a
formal “moulding frame”, but it is the dynamic activity of an always changing focus
or attitude. The noetical aspect of our knowledge cannot be explained in an apriori
manner by pointing at fixed forms; it should rather continuously and creatively be
brought to language in relation to each phenomenon in its correlation with the noema
involved.

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 Kant’s fixation of the noetical aspect of our experience in several fixed categories and
perceptive forms is in fact an unjustified restriction of our objective experience to the
experience of the natural sciences. The meaning of entities in the natural sciences are
hereby proclaimed as the only objective meaning which an entity can have, i.e. as the
only meaning which is free from subjective arbitrariness, and which thus has
objective status. The way of experiencing in the natural sciences is however only one
modification of our intentional life; it is only one possible “Einstellung” [attitude] in
the midst of a multitude of possible attitudes of the intentional functioning
consciousness. The meaning of an entity from the viewpoint of natural sciences is
consequently only one of many possible meanings or nuances of meaning which an
object may have for a knowing consciousness. The chemical meaning of water as it is
expressed in the formula H2O, is e.g. only one possible nuance of meaning that water
as experienced entity may have for us. It is a meaning that corresponds with a specific
intentional focus, namely a chemical questioning. There are other meanings of water
which correspond with other intentional foci, e.g. that of a thirsty traveller in the
desert, an angler, a drowning person, a fire fighter, an artist or a minister at the
baptismal font. In every perspective the entity water is meant in a different way and
therefore attains another nuance of meaning. In terms of Husserl’s view, it is
impermissible to proclaim one meaning or nuance of meaning as the only objective
and legitimate meaning. Such a proclamation is on the one hand an under-evaluation
of the abundance of our intentional life, on the other hand a disregard of the fact that
all meaning of experiences is constituted by the intentional functioning
consciousness.

The idea could emerge that the phenomenologist, after the reduction to the stream of
pure meaning-experiencing, could experience a series of phenomena and see the
essence of every one separately as an isolated entity “an sich” and make a
phenomenological description of each. It is not so simple. The phenomenological
analysis and description is very complicated. Apart from the fact that the cogitationes
should be analysed in terms of their noetical and noematical aspects, Husserl also
identified another structure of the functioning intentionality. This is the horizon
structure of our conscious experience.

The thesis of intentionality boils down to the fact that every phenomenon originally
appears to us as a specific meaning, and is therefore understandable, because we let it
appear like that to us by our active and selective attitude of our subjective
consciousness. The intentional thesis is therefore closely connected to the idea of the
constitution of meaning and the idea of the perspectivist determination of this
constitution of meaning. The knowing consciousness does not create meaningful
entities. Meaningful entities are however built by a complex of intentional acts. Such
intentional acts are selective. They always happen from a definite “attitude” or
“orientation point” which creates a definite perspective. It implies that the intentional
building of meaning happens within a confined surrounding which phenomenology
defines with the term “horizon”. In the following paragraph, we explore this central
concept of phenomenology, with special reference to Husserl who introduced the
concept.

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6. THE HORIZON STRUCTURE OF EXPERIENCE

When the field of the pure experience of meaning is reduced, it is clear – according to
Husserl – that an entity never appears on its own, it never appears as an isolated
individuum on its own. Every given noema which is intended in a conscious
experience and is experienced as meaningful, always presents itself as a figure within
a horizon. The term horizon [from the Greek “horidzomai” = to surround, to enclose,
to limit] as the designation of an essential structure of our original experience, simply
postulates that all our conscious experiences always happen within a confined field of
experience. This confined field forms the background that influences every conscious
theme of our experiences.

The horizon structure designates, firstly - considered from the noematical side- that
intended entities are originally never experienced in isolation. Intended entities are
always embedded in a complex, though coherent field of more entities which are
implicitly co-intended in a specific intentional act. The intended entity in a specific
experience of meaning always refers to other entities and forms a coherent and
referential order. This network of mutual references is an essential pre-requisite for
the fulfilment of the specific meaning of the intended entity. In other words, it is only
in its reference to other implicitly intended entities that a specific intended entity
receives its peculiar and articulated meaning in our experience. Thus, the reference to
other entities intrinsically belongs to the meaning structure of a meaningful entity and
is not constituted secondarily or afterwards through a process of argumentation and/or
association.

Noetically seen, it means that an intentional focus or attitude also reveals a complex
structure in the sense that it surpasses the specific entity or noema on which it focuses.
The intentional focus always implicitly intends entities other than the specific noema
at hand. Every intentional act therefore immediately implies other possibilities or
potential intentional acts by which the implicitly intended entities could have been
explicitly intended. By the immediate implication of reference to other possible
intended acts, every intentional focus organises a coherent referential order around
itself, a horizon within which the explicit intended entities of our experience appear.

Secondly, the term horizon designates that our experience is never all-embracing or
all-inclusive. Our experience always happens within the limited framework of a
specific and enclosed field of experience. Our experience always is perspectively
determined; it always occurs within a limited framework that corresponds with a
specific focus from a definite point of view. The limited framing which structurally
belongs to all experience, is not static and unchanging. Precisely this is the
enclosedness of a horizon. A horizon is the peculiar boundary which is always
expanding without disappearing. We can reach out to the boundary, but we can never
arrive at it or transcend it, simply because it is a consistently retreating border or limit.
The boundaries of our field of experience are shifting all the time in proportion to the
expansion of our current, always changing perspective. We can never abolish our
confinement within boundaries as such. We experience entities as meaningful only
within the confinement and limiting frame of a horizon.

According to Husserl we should differentiate the horizon structure of our experience

further into an external and internal horizon. What has been said up till now about the

20
structure of the horizon is mainly applicable to the external horizon of an intended
entity. Every meaningful entity in our experience appears within an external horizon
of also implicitly intended entities. We call it an external horizon because the
intentional act which explicitly intended a particular entity, implies several other
potential intentional acts which are not identical to it, but external to it.

The internal horizon, on the other hand, is connected to the fact that every intentional
act on its own is a synthesis of [or it is built up by] several internal partial-acts which
implicate one another and constitute in this way an internal horizon. Every partial-act
corresponds with or intends a specific aspect or “Abschattung” [profile, perspective]
of the noematical entity that is meant by the total intentional act as a unity. Every
aspect that is intended by a particular partial-act is always already embedded within a
coherent order or horizon of also implicitly intended aspects which in turn implicitly
refer to other potential intentional acts. All aspects of a meaningful experienced entity
are never simultaneously given in our experience. I always experience an entity in
consecutive profiles or aspects. All partial acts of a particular intentional act are never
actually fulfilled in one instant experience. However, every partial act refers
implicitly to all other possible or potential partial acts with which they are identical
within the same intentional focus. In the same way every aspect of an intended entity,
as it correlates with a particular partial act of an intended focus, refers to all other also
intended aspects. It is precisely for this reason that I experience in each aspect that is
explicitly intended in one actualised partial act, the total entity in its meaningfulness
for me. As I experience more and more new aspects consciously by the explicit
fulfillment of partial acts, the intended entity attains a deeper and richer meaning for
me.

The horizon structure of experience therefore means that the noematical correlate of
an intentional act is the nodal point of a network of internal and external references.
The meaning of an entity is always constituted within an external and internal
horizon. To clarify meaning phenomenologically and to see its essence, thus requires
clarification of the external and internal horizons within which such meaning is
constituted. All potential external intentional acts as well as all potential internal
partial acts which are implicated by the meaning constituting intentional act should
consciously and explicitly be actualised. The conscious actualisation of all potential
implicated acts and partial acts search for the complete fulfilment of everything that
was implicitly intended in the consciously and horizon-like experience of meaning.
The actualisation of potential acts and partial acts is called intentional analysis by
Husserl. Intentional analysis is in fact the reflection whereby the transcendental
consciousness brings its own achievement to light in a clear description. This
achievement is the building or the constitution of meaning which is presupposed by
natural experience, but at the same time concealed by it. Intentional analysis is the
explicit and conscious analysis of the constitution of meaning. Husserl realised that
this is an endless and tiresome task, but he thought it is nevertheless feasible in
principle. Because of this he saw pure consciousness or the ego cogito as the original
dimension of all meaningful experiences.

The horizon of our experience is not a particular content or entity of our experiences
alongside other contents or entities which as such corresponds with specific
intentional acts. It rather is the transcendental pre-requisite for the meaningful

21
experience of entities “überhaupt” [at all]. Thus, horizon is a structural moment in our
experience which makes meaningful experience of entities possible.

The horizon structure demonstrates on the one hand the finiteness of our human
experience. Our experience is always already confined to boundaries. This limitedness
is in principle insurmountable. On the other hand it is precisely this confining, but
always expanding and evading horizon which gives mobility and expansive power to
our experience. The confining horizon is simultaneously an inviting horizon; it
demonstrates the possibilities for moving further, for transcending that which is
already experienced to that which is not yet experienced and lies “behind” the
boundaries of the present horizon.

7. THE TRANSCENDENTAL EGO AS WORLD EXPERIENCING LIFE

We have already seen that every experience of meaning is horizon-like, i.e. the
intention of the intentional focus in a consciously experiencing of meaning is only
fulfilled within a network of external and internal references. Every reference
immediately implicates other potential intended acts which possibly could be realised
within new horizons of experience. The question is whether there is an ultimate limit
to the referential coherence of possible intentional acts and the possible horizons of
experiences which correspond with it. To ask it differently: Is there an all-embracing
horizon or totality for our experience within which all possible horizons of experience
hang together and which corresponds with the transcendental ego as referential point
of all possible intentional acts?

The answer to this question is the phenomenon of “world”. We have seen that the
fundamental proposition of natural experience is the expression of faith in a real
existing world as the temporal and spatial whole of real existing entities. The
phenomenological reduction eliminated this fundamental proposition/assumption.
The residue that remained was the ego cogito mea cogitata – i.e. the stream of
conscious experiencing of meaning of which I am absolute certain to be my
experiences. When we investigate [explore] these experiences of meaning, it is quite
obvious that the reference to a real existing world is eliminated. However, that world
didn’t disappear all together. The world re-appears in a new way in the sphere of
transcendental experience, namely as the pre-requisite for the fulfilment of every
possible intentional act in the experience of meaning. The character of worldliness or
mundaneness always and already belongs to every meaning that we could possibly
bring to consciousness in transcendental experience. All meaning is mundane or
worldly meaning. The world doesn’t appear in transcendental experience as a
particular entity, but as an essential characteristic of all meaningful entities. All
entities of our transcendental experience always implicate the world. The world is a
constitutive element in the occurrences of intentionality. Fundamentally it has to
connect in one way or another with the total intentional activity which is the
transcendental ego.

If the world does not appear horizon-like as a particular entity to the transcendental
ego, this fundamental connection or coherent relation could not be part of the
correlation of noesis-noema. The only other possibility is that the connection could be
interpreted as the correlation of perspective-horizon. The world appears in the
transcendental experience as horizon. While all pure entities of transcendental

22
experience always implicate worldliness, we have to conclude that in the occurrence
of intentionality the world connects with the transcendental ego as the all-embracing
and final horizon.

“World” is the expression for the whole network of references which are implicated in
every possible intentional act. The world, phenomenologically seen, is not the total
external sum of all meaningful entities, but the final and all-embracing boundary
within which all the intentional foci of the transcendental ego occur. World is the last
or final boundary between that which is meaningful or meaningless to me.

As all-embracing horizon of our experience, the world – phenomenologically seen - is

not a neutral and stagnant system of relations or coherent referential order. World
rather always implicates a perspectivical centre around which experience evolves.
This perspectivical centre is the transcendental ego as functioning intentionality.
World is always my world. World and transcendental ego implicate each other in a
unity of mutual or reciprocal implication and belonging. This unity of reciprocal
implication is the fundamental structure of the original experience behind which our
questioning can’t reach. If the world always already is my world, then we should also
say that the transcendental ego is always world experience. The world announces
itself in every possible experience of meaning where an intentional act is fulfilled.

It belongs to the essential structure of the transcendental ego that it always already is
world-experience. “World” designates – according to Husserl – an “I can”, an ability
of the experiencing ego. By that he doesn’t mean that the ego’s experience of the
world is a characteristic of an in itself resting and by itself abiding “I”, in the same
sense as e.g. the ability to touch is a particular characteristic of humans. The ability to
world experiencing is not a mere potentiality which could sporadically and
incidentally be actualised. The ability to world experiencing rather is in a certain
sense the transcendental ego itself. The transcendental ego always is world
experiencing and all possible intentional foci always happen on the basis or within the
framework of this fundamental world experiencing. When the concept world is
qualified as the expression of an “I can”, Husserl only wanted to say the world is not
an isolated and on its own standing reality “an sich” that is separated by a gap from
the experiencing “I”, a gulf which should be overcome by experience. World is rather
the unabolishable horizon that is glued to the intentional functioning consciousness in
al its modifications. All concrete experiences occur on the basis of a fundamental
familiarity of the “I” within its world.

For this reason Husserl called the transcendental ego world experiencing life. In its
deepest foundation human subjectivity as intentionality is world experiencing life.
With the concept “life” Husserl demonstrated that the world experiencing of the
transcendental ego is not a resting state of a static and bi-polar relation, but rather a
dynamic and developing state; a state that is always evolving in an ongoing, lively
mobility. His world as final horizon is always glued to the transcendental ego, but the
horizon is not a static and unmovable boundary. By consciously actualising the
always increasing potential intentional acts, which are implicated by the world as final
network of references, the experience of the world of the transcendental ego unfolds
in a dynamic and ongoing mobility.

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Husserl interpreted the world thus in its original given-ness as the all-embracing
horizon of which the transcendental ego is the perspectival centre around which all
intentional occurrences of the transcendental ego find their fulfilment. Originally the
world is always my world, i.e. the world of the transcendental ego as world
experiencing life. The phenomenological reduction brings our original experience to
consciousness as occurrence of the meaning-constitution which occurs within the
intimate mutual involvement with each other of the transcendental ego and its world.

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