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phenomenology

Definition:
Phenomenology (Phänomenologie), 27-39 (§ 7), 39, 47, 51 n. 11, 63-64, 89, 115-116, 116 n. 1, 131, 139-140, 147, 159, 180, 184-185, 207, 208 n. 16, 218 n. 34, 219, 249 n. 6, 265, 272 n. 8, 357, 375, 436. See also Hermeneutics; Husserl; ontology; pre-phenomenological (BT)


The first thing we must do is to come to an understanding of the theme of this lecture course and the way in which it is to be approached. We shall do this by clarifying its subtitle, “Prolegomena to the PHENOMENOLOGY of History and Nature.” Taken strictly, the expression refers to that which must be stated and stipulated in advance. In this case, it is a matter of what must be put forward in the beginning in order to be able to do a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature. We learn what the prolegomena are from what a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature is supposed to be. GA20EN §1

The separation comes first from the sciences, which reduce history and nature to the level of domains of objects. But the PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature promises to disclose reality precisely as it shows itself before scientific inquiry, as the reality which is already given to it. Here it is not a matter of a PHENOMENOLOGY of the sciences of history and nature, or even of a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature as objects of these sciences, but of a phenomenological disclosure of the original kind of being and constitution of both. In this way, the basis for a philosophy of these sciences is first created, serving 1) to provide the foundation for their genesis from pretheoretical experience, 2) to exhibit the kind of access they have to the pregiven reality, and 3) to specify the kind of concept formation which accrues to such research. Because reality—nature as well as history—can be reached only by leaping over the sciences to some extent, this prescientific—actually philosophical—disclosure of them becomes what I call a productive logic, an anticipatory disclosure and conceptual penetration of potential domains of objects for the sciences. Unlike traditional philosophy of science, which proceeds after the fact of an accidental, historically given science in order to investigate its structure, such a logic leaps ahead into the primary field of subject matter of a potential science and first makes available the basic structure of the possible object of the science by disclosing the constitution of the being of that field. This is the procedure of the original logic put forward by Plato and Aristotle, of course only within very narrow limits. Since then, the idea of logic lapsed into obscurity and was no longer understood. Hence PHENOMENOLOGY has the task of making the domain of the subject matter comprehensible before its scientific treatment and, on this basis, the latter as well. GA20EN §1

We can demonstrate this succinctly and concretely by way of the following series of particular sciences, chosen here to suit our purpose. Characteristic is the crisis in contemporary mathematics, which is emphatically characterized as a crisis of foundations. In the dispute between formalism and intuitionism, the question is whether the fundaments of the mathematical sciences are based upon formal propositions that are simply assumed and that constitute a system of axioms from which all the other propositions can be deduced. This is Hilbert’s position. The opposing direction, essentially influenced by PHENOMENOLOGY, asks whether or not in the end what is primarily given is the specific structure of the objects themselves (in geometry the continuum which precedes scientific inquiry, for example, in integral and differential analysis). This is the doctrine of Brouwer and Weyl. Thus, what is prima facie the most firmly established science manifests the tendency toward a transposition of the entire science onto new and more original foundations. GA20EN §1

We have come to an initial understanding of this task simply by way of the sciences of these two domains. But such an extrinsic understanding is not the true entry to the thematic object. We wish to exhibit history and nature so that we may regard them before scientific elaboration, so that we may see both realities in their reality. This means that we wish to arrive at a horizon from which history and nature can be originally contrasted. This horizon must itself be a field of constituents against which history and nature stand out in relief. Laying out this field is the task of the “prolegomena to a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature.” We shall approach this task of laying out the actual constituents which underlie history and nature, and from which they acquire their being, by way of a history of the concept of time. GA20EN §2

Chapter Two: The fundamental discoveries of PHENOMENOLOGY, its principle, and the clarification of its name. GA20EN §3

At first, he was concerned with what was traditionally called the logic of mathematics. For Husserl, this meant not only the theory of mathematical thought and knowledge. The first theme of his reflections was the analysis of the structure of the objects of mathematics—number. A work on the concept of number written under Stumpf, Brentano’s very first student, in Halle at the end of the eighties qualified Husserl as an academic lecturer. This work, understood as an actual investigation of the matters at issue, became possible upon the basis provided by Brentano’s descriptive psychology. But soon Husserl’s questioning extended into matters of principle and his investigations advanced to the fundamental concepts of thinking as such and of objects in general. It grew into the problem of a scientific logic in close conjunction with reflection upon the methodological ways and means for the correct exploration of the objects of logic. This meant a more radical conception of what was already advanced in Brentano’s descriptive psychology, as well as a basic critique of the contemporary confusion of psychological-genetic inquiry with logical inquiry. This work on the fundamental objects of logic occupied Husserl for more than twelve years. The initial results of this effort form the content of the work which appeared in two volumes in 1900–1901 under the title Logical Investigations. This work marks the initial breakthrough of phenomenological research. It has become the basic book of PHENOMENOLOGY. The personal history of its origin is a story of continual despair, and does not belong here. GA20EN §4

This misunderstanding is due to some extent to the self-interpretation which Husserl himself gives in the introduction to this volume: “PHENOMENOLOGY is descriptive psychology.” This self-interpretation of his own work is quite incongruous with what is elaborated in it. In other words, when he wrote the introduction to these investigations, Husserl was not in a position to survey properly what he had actually presented in this volume. Two years later, he himself corrected this mistaken interpretation in the journal Archiv für systematische Philosophie (1903). GA20EN §4

These “Logical Investigations,” as fundamental as they are, do not bring us any in-depth knowledge for the mastery of emotional needs and the like. Rather, they deal with very special and arid problems: with object, concept, truth, proposition, fact, law. The subtitle of the positive second volume is “Investigations into the PHENOMENOLOGY and Theory of Knowledge.” It includes six extensive special investigations whose connection is not immediately clear: I. “Expression and Meaning”; II. “The Ideal Unity of Species and the More Recent Theories of Abstraction”; III. “On the Doctrine of Wholes and Parts”; IV. “The Distinction between Independent and Dependent Meanings and the Idea of Pure Grammar”; V. “On Intentional Experiences and their ‘Contents’”; VI. “Elements of a Phenomenological Elucidation of Knowledge.” These are unusual themes for a logic and theory of knowledge. The choice of the subtitle, “Theory of Knowledge,” came about solely in deference to the tradition. The Introduction states that, strictly speaking, theory of knowledge is not a theory at all but a “reflection which comes to an evident understanding of what thinking and knowing as such are in their generically pure essence.” Calling it a theory is still a covert form of naturalism, for which any theory is a deductive system whose goal is to explain given facts. Husserl expressly rejects this customary sense of a theory of knowledge. GA20EN §4

We shall detail these discoveries and then supplement this account with an elucidation of the principle of phenomenological research. On this basis we shall try to interpret the name given to this research and thus define ‘PHENOMENOLOGY.’ GA20EN §4

We want to consider intentionality first, precisely because contemporary philosophy then and even now actually finds this phenomenon offensive, because intentionality is precisely what prevents an immediate and unprejudiced reception of what PHENOMENOLOGY wants to do. Intentionality was already alluded to in our account of how Brentano sought to classify the totality of psychic phenomena in strict accord with it. Brentano discerned in intentionality the structure which constitutes the true nature of a psychic phenomenon. Intentionality thus became for him the criterion for the distinction of psychic from physical phenomena. But at the same time this structure is the criterion and principle of a natural division among psychic phenomena themselves, inasmuch as it is already found in the essence which appears in these phenomena. Brentano expressly emphasizes that he is only taking up what Aristotle and the Scholastics were already acquainted with. It was through Brentano that Husserl learned to see intentionality. GA20EN §5

But by what right do we then still speak of the discovery of intentionality by PHENOMENOLOGY? Because there is a difference between the rough and ready acquaintance with a structure and the understanding of its inherent sense and its implications, from which we derive the possibilities and horizons of an investigation directed toward it in a sure way. From a rough acquaintance and an application aimed at classification to a fundamental understanding and thematic elaboration is a very long road calling for novel considerations and radical transpositions. On this point Husserl writes: “Nevertheless, from an initial apprehension of a distinction in consciousness to its correct, phenomenologically pure determination and concrete appreciation there is a mighty step—and it is just this step, crucial for a consistent and fruitful PHENOMENOLOGY, which was not taken.” GA20EN §5

In the popular philosophical literature, PHENOMENOLOGY tends to be characterized in the following manner: Husserl took over the concept of intentionality from Brentano; as is well known, intentionality goes back to Scholasticism; it is notoriously obscure, metaphysical, and dogmatic. Consequently, the concept of intentionality is scientifically useless and PHENOMENOLOGY, which employs it, is fraught with metaphysical presuppositions and therefore not at all based upon immediate data. Thus, in “The Method of Philosophy and the Immediate,” H. Rickert writes: GA20EN §5

This article contains a fundamental polemic against PHENOMENOLOGY. Elsewhere also, and right in the Introduction to the new edition of Brentano’s Psychology by O. Kraus, it is stated that Husserl had simply taken over Brentano’s concept of intentionality. For the Marburg School as well, intentionality remained the real stumbling block, obstructing its access to PHENOMENOLOGY. GA20EN §5

We expressly reject such opinions, not in order to preserve Husserl’s originality against Brentano, but to guard against having the most elementary considerations and steps necessary for the understanding of PHENOMENOLOGY thwarted in advance by such characterizations. GA20EN §5

We will try to show that intentionality is a structure of lived experiences as such and not a coordination relative to other realities, something added to the experiences taken as psychic states. It should first be noted that this attempt to make intentionality clear, to see it and in so doing to apprehend what it is, cannot hope to succeed in a single move. We must free ourselves from the prejudice that, because PHENOMENOLOGY calls upon us to apprehend the matters themselves, these matters must be apprehended all at once, without any preparation. Rather, the movement toward the matters themselves is a long and involved process which, before anything else, has to remove the prejudices which obscure them. GA20EN §5

Since Descartes, everyone knows and every critical philosophy maintains that I actually only apprehend ‘contents of consciousness.’ Accordingly, the application of the concept of intentionality to the comportment of perception, for example, already implies a double presupposition. First, there is the metaphysical presupposition that the psychic comes out of itself toward something physical. With Descartes, as everyone knows, this became a forbidden presupposition. Second, there is in intentionality the presupposition that a real object always corresponds to a psychic process. The facts of deceptive perception and hallucination speak against this. This is what Rickert maintains and many others, when they say that the concept of intentionality harbors latent metaphysical dogmas. And yet, with this interpretation of perception as hallucination and deceptive perception, do we really have intentionality in our sights? Are we talking about what PHENOMENOLOGY means by this term? In no way! So little, in fact, that use of the interpretation just given as a basis for a discussion of intentionality would hopelessly block access to what the term really means phenomenologically. Let us therefore clear the air by going through the interpretation once again and regarding it more pointedly. For its ostensible triviality is not at all comprehensible without further effort. But first, the base triviality of spurious but common epistemological questions must be laid to rest. GA20EN §5

What makes us blind to intentionality is the presumption that what we have here is a theory of the relation between physical and psychic, whereas what is really exhibited is simply a structure of the psychic itself. Whether that toward which representing directs itself is a real material thing or merely something fancied, whether acknowledging acknowledges a value or whether judging directs itself toward something else which is not real, the first thing to see is this directing-itself-toward as such. The structure of comportments, we might say, is to be made secure without any epistemological dogma. It is only when we have rightly seen this that we can, by means of it, come to a sharper formulation and perhaps a critique of intentionality as it has been interpreted up to now. We shall learn that in fact even in PHENOMENOLOGY there are still unclarified assumptions associated with intentionality which admittedly make it truly difficult for a philosophy so burdened with dogmas as Neo-Kantianism to see plainly what has been exhibited here. As long as we think in dogmas and directions, we first tend to assume something along the same lines. And we hold to what we assume all the more so as the phenomena are not in fact exhaustively brought out into the open. GA20EN §5

What we have learned about intentionality so far is, to put it formally, empty. But one thing is already clear: before anything else, its structural coherence must be envisaged freely, without the background presence of any realistic or idealistic theories of consciousness. We must learn to see the data as such and to see that relations between comportments, between lived experiences, are themselves not complexions of things but in turn are of an intentional character. We must thus come to see that all the relations of life are intrinsically defined by this structure. In the process we shall see that there are persistent difficulties here which cannot be easily dispelled. But in order to see this, we must first take a look at intentionality itself. From this point on we can also fix our terminology in order to come to understand an expression which is often used in PHENOMENOLOGY and is just as often misunderstood, namely, the concept of act. The comportments of life are also called acts: perception, judgment, love, hate. . . . What does act mean here? Not activity, process, or some kind of power. No, act simply means intentional relation. Acts refer to those lived experiences which have the character of intentionality. We must adhere to this concept of act and not confuse it with others. GA20EN §5

As fundamental as intentionality is, it also seems empty at first glance. We are simply saying that representing is the representing of something, judging is judging about something, and the like. It is hard to see just how a science is to be made possible from such structures. This science is evidently at its end before it has really begun. In fact, it seems as if this phenomenological statement of intentionality is merely a tautology. Thus Wundt early on observed that all phenomenological knowledge can be reduced to the proposition A = A. We will try to see whether there is not very much to say and whether in the end most of it has not yet even been said. By holding to this first discovery of PHENOMENOLOGY that intentionality is a structure of lived experiences and not just a supplementary relation, we already have an initial instruction on how we must proceed in order to see this structure and constitution. GA20EN §5

The perceived in itself is both. And still the question arises whether this description eliciting what is given in the perceived thing itself already gives us what PHENOMENOLOGY strictly means by the perceived. When we consider that these two thing-structures—environmental thing and natural thing—apply to one and the same chair, one obvious difficulty already arises: how are we to understand the relationship of these two structures of a thing? We shall arrive at a more precise knowledge of this later in other contexts. At the moment, I only maintain that when I say in ordinary language and not upon reflection and theoretical study of the chair, “The chair is hard,” my aim is not to state the degree of resistance and density of this thing as material thing. I simply want to say, “The chair is uncomfortable.” Already here we can see that specific structures belonging to a natural thing and which as such can be regarded separately—hardness, weight—present themselves first of all in well-defined environmental characteristics. Hardness, material resistance, is itself present in the feature of discomfort and even only present in this way, and not just inferred from it or derived through it. The perceived gives itself in itself and not by virtue of points of view, say, which are brought to the thing. It is the specific environmental thing, even when it remains concealed from many. GA20EN §5

But we have still not arrived at what we have called the perceived in the strict sense. The perceived in the strict sense for PHENOMENOLOGY is not the perceived entity in itself but the perceived entity insofar as it is perceived, as it shows itself in concrete perception. The perceived in the strict sense is the perceived as such or, more precisely expressed, the perceivedness, of this chair for example, the way and manner, the structure in which the chair is perceived. The way and manner of how this chair is perceived is to be distinguished from the structure of how it is represented. The expression the perceived as such now refers [not to the perceived entity in itself but] to this entity in the way and manner of its being-perceived. With this we have, as a start, only suggested a completely new structure, a structure to which I cannot now attribute all those determinations which I have thus far attributed to the chair. GA20EN §5

I can now envisage the Weidenhauser bridge; I place myself before it, as it were. Thus the bridge is itself given. I intend the bridge itself and not an image of it, no fantasy, but it itself. And yet it is not bodily given to me. It would be bodily given if I go down the hill and place myself before the bridge itself. This means that what is itself given need not be bodily given, while conversely anything which is bodily given is itself given. Bodily presence is a superlative mode of the self-givenness of an entity. This self-givenness becomes clearer still by setting it off from another possible mode of representing, which in PHENOMENOLOGY is understood as empty intending. GA20EN §5

Another type of representing in the broadest sense is the perception of a picture. If we analyze a perception of a picture, we see clearly how what is perceived in the consciousness of a picture has a totally different structure from what is perceived in simple perception or what is represented in simple envisaging. I can look at a picture postcard of the Weidenhauser bridge. Here we have a new type of representing. What is now bodily given is the postcard itself. This card itself is a thing, an object, just as much as the bridge or a tree or the like. But it is not a simple thing like the bridge. As we have said, it is a picture-thing. In perceiving it, I see through it what is pictured, the bridge. In perceiving a picture, I do not thematically apprehend the picture-thing. Rather, when I see a picture postcard, I see—in the natural attitude—what is pictured on it, the bridge, [which is now seen as] what is pictured on the card. In this case, the bridge is not emptily presumed or merely envisaged or originarily perceived, but apprehended in this characteristic layered structure of the portrayal of something. The bridge itself is now the represented in the sense of being represented by way of being depicted through something. This apprehension of a picture, the apprehension of something as something pictured through a picture-thing, has a structure totally different from that of a direct perception. This must be brought home quite forcefully because of the efforts once made, and once again being made today, to take the apprehension of a picture as the paradigm by means of which, it is believed, any perception of any object can be illuminated. In the consciousness of a picture, there is the picture-thing and the pictured. The picture-thing can be a concrete thing—the blackboard on the wall—but the picture-thing is not merely a thing like a natural thing or another environmental thing. For it shows something, what is pictured itself. In simple perception, by contrast, in the simple apprehension of an object, nothing like a consciousness of a picture can be found. It goes against all the plain and simple findings about the simple apprehension of an object to interpret them as if I first perceive a picture in my consciousness when I see that house there, as if a picture-thing were first given and thereupon apprehended as picturing that house out there. There would thus be a subjective picture within and that which is pictured outside, transcendent. Nothing of the sort is to be found. Rather, in the simple sense of perception I see the house itself. Even aside from the fact that this transposition of the consciousness of a picture, which is constituted in a totally different way, onto the simple apprehension of an object explains nothing and leads to untenable theories, we must keep in mind the real reason for rejecting this transposition: it does not correspond to the simple phenomenological findings. There is also the following difficulty, which we shall only mention without exploring. If knowledge in general is an apprehension of an object-picture as an immanent picture of a transcendent thing outside, how then is the transcendent object itself to be apprehended? If every apprehension of an object is a consciousness of a picture, then for the immanent picture I once again need a picture-thing which depicts the immanent picture for me etc. etc. This is a secondary factor which argues against this theory. But the main thing is this: not only is there nothing of the pictorial and picturing in the course of simple apprehension; there is in particular nothing like a consciousness of a picture in the very act of apprehending an object. It is not because we fall into an infinite regress, and so explain nothing, that the infrastructure of the consciousness of a picture for the apprehension of an object is to be rejected. It is not because we arrive at no genuine and tenable theory with this infrastructure. It is rather because this is already contrary to every phenomenological finding. It is a theory without PHENOMENOLOGY. Hence perceiving must be considered totally distinct from the consciousness of a picture. Consciousness of a picture is possible at all first only as perceiving, but only in such a way that the picture-thing is actually apprehended beginning with what is pictured on it. GA20EN §5

These structural continuities and levels of fulfillment, demonstration, and verification are relatively easy to see in the field of intuitive representation. But they are to be found without exception in all acts, for example, in the domain of pure theoretical comportment, determination, and speech. Without the possibility here of following the structures of every pertinent intention to its intended as such, the scientific elaboration of a genuine PHENOMENOLOGY (drawn from the phenomena themselves) of concept formation—the genesis of the concept from raw meaning—cannot even be considered. But without this foundation every logic remains a matter for dilettantes or a construction. GA20EN §5

Intentio in PHENOMENOLOGY is also understood as the act of presuming [Vermeinen]. There is a connection between presuming and presumed, or noesis and noema. Noeîn means to perceive [vernehmen] or come to awareness, to apprehend simply, the perceiving itself and the perceived in the way it is perceived. I refer to these terms because they involve not only a terminology but also a particular interpretation of directing-itself-toward. Every directing-itself-toward (fear, hope, love) has the feature of directing-itself-toward which Husserl calls noesis. Inasmuch as noeîn is taken from the sphere of theoretical knowing, any exposition of the practical sphere here is drawn from the theoretical. For our purposes this terminology is not dangerous, since we are using it to make it clear that intentionality is fully determined only when it is seen as this belonging together of intentio and intentum. By way of summary let us therefore say: just as intentionality is not a subsequent coordination of at first unintentional lived experiences and objects but is rather a structure, so inherent in the basic constitution of the structure in each of its manifestations must always be found its own intentional toward-which, the intentum. This provisional exposition of the basic constitution of intentionality as a reciprocal belonging-together of intentio and intentum is not the last word, but only an initial indication and exhibition of a thematic field for consideration. GA20EN §5

How is this analysis of intentionality different from Brentano’s? In intentionality Brentano saw the intentio, noesis, and the diversity of its modes, but not the noema, the intentum. He remained uncertain in his analysis of what he called “intentional object.” The four meanings of the object of perception—the perceived—already indicate that the sense of ‘something’ in the representation of something is not transparently obvious. Brentano wavers in two directions. On the one hand, he takes the “intentional object” to be the entity itself in its being. Then again it is taken as the how of its being-apprehended unseparated from the entity. Brentano never clearly brings out and highlights the how of being-intended. In short, he never brings into relief intentionality as such, as a structural totality. But this further implies that intentionality, defined as a character of a certain entity, is at one with the entity; intentionality is identified with the psychic. Brentano also left undiscussed just what intentionality is to be the structure of, since his theory of the psychic assumed its traditional sense of the immanently perceptible, the immanently conscious along the lines of Descartes’s theory. The character of the psychic itself was left undetermined, so that that of which intentionality is the structure was not brought out in the original manner demanded by intentionality. This is a phase which PHENOMENOLOGY has not yet overcome. Even today intentionality is taken simply as a structure of consciousness or of acts, of the person, in which these two realities of which intentionality is supposed to be the structure are again assumed in a traditional way. PHENOMENOLOGYHusserl along with Scheler—tries to get beyond the psychic restriction and psychic character of intentionality in two very different directions. Husserl conceives intentionality as the universal structure of reason (where reason is not understood as the psychic but as differentiated from the psychic). Scheler conceives intentionality as the structure of the spirit or the person, again differentiated from the psychic. But we shall see that what is meant by reason, spirit, anima does not overcome the approach operative in these theories. I point this out because we shall see how PHENOMENOLOGY, with this analysis of intentionality, calls for a more radical internal development. To refute phenomenological intentionality, one cannot simply criticize Brentano! One thus loses touch with the issue from the very beginning. GA20EN §5

It is not intentionality as such that is metaphysically dogmatic but what is built under its structure, or is left at this level because of a traditional tendency not to question that of which it is presumably the structure, and what this sense of structure itself means. Yet the methodological rule for the initial apprehension of intentionality is really not to be concerned with interpretations but only to keep strictly to that which shows itself, regardless of how meager it may be. Only in this way will it be possible to see, in intentionality itself and through it directly into the heart of the matter, that of which it is the structure and how it is that structure. Intentionality is not an ultimate explanation of the psychic but an initial approach toward overcoming the uncritical application of traditionally defined realities such as the psychic, consciousness, continuity of lived experience, reason. But if such a task is implicit in this basic concept of PHENOMENOLOGY, then “intentionality” is the very last word to be used as a phenomenological slogan. Quite the contrary, it identifies that whose disclosure would allow PHENOMENOLOGY to find itself in its possibilities. It must therefore be flatly stated that what the belonging of the intentum to the intentio implies is obscure. How the being-intended of an entity is related to that entity remains puzzling. It is even questionable whether one may question in this way at all. But we cannot inquire into these puzzles as long as we cover up their puzzling character with theories for and against intentionality. Our understanding of intentionality is therefore not advanced by our speculations about it. We shall advance only by following intentionality in its concretion. An occasion for this is to be found in our effort to clarify the second discovery of PHENOMENOLOGY, the discovery of categorial intuition. GA20EN §5

What calls for clarification under this heading could be discovered only after the exposition of intentionality as a structure. The term ‘intuition’ corresponds in its meaning to what above was already defined as ‘seeing’ in the broad sense of that word. Intuition means: simple apprehension of what is itself bodily found just as it shows itself. First, this concept carries no prejudice as to whether sense perception is the sole and most original form of intuiting or whether there are further possibilities of intuition regarding other fields and constituents. Second, nothing should be read into its meaning other than what the phenomenological use of the term specifies: simply apprehending the bodily given as it shows itself. Intuition in the phenomenological sense implies no special capacity, no exceptional way of transposing oneself into otherwise closed domains and depths of the world, not even the kind of intuition employed by Bergson. It is therefore a cheap characterization of PHENOMENOLOGY to suggest that it is somehow connected with modern intuitionism. It simply has nothing to do with it. GA20EN §6

These two concepts of truth and the corresponding two concepts of being were established in the initial elaboration of PHENOMENOLOGY and have persisted in further developments. This is important to keep in mind since we shall later raise the fundamental question of the sense of being and thus come to face the question of whether the concept of being can really be originally drawn in this context of being-true and the corresponding being-real, and whether truth is primarily a phenomenon which is to be originally conceived in the context of assertions or, in the broader sense, of objectifying acts. GA20EN §6

The term “truth” is originally and properly attributed to intentionality, but this is done on the basis of its being composed of both the intentio and the intentum. Traditionally, it is attributed in particular to acts of assertion, that is, relational acts of predication. But we need only to recall our explication of evidence to see that even non-relational acts, that is, single-rayed monothetic acts of simple apprehension, likewise can be subject to demonstration, that is, can be true or false. PHENOMENOLOGY thus breaks with the restriction of the concept of truth to relational acts, to judgments. The truth of relational acts is only one particular kind of truth for the objectifying acts of knowing in general. Without being explicitly conscious of it, PHENOMENOLOGY returns to the broad concept of truth whereby the Greeks (Aristotle) could call true even perception as such and the simple perception of something. Since it does not become conscious of this return, it cannot even get in touch with the original sense of the Greek concept of truth. But because of this connection it succeeds for the first time in bringing an understandable sense to the Scholastic definition of truth, which by way of a detour goes back to the Greeks, and in rescuing it from the confusing misreading which instituted the fateful introduction of the concept of image into the interpretation of knowledge. GA20EN §6

We said that color can be seen, but being-colored cannot. Color is something sensory and real. Being, however, is nothing of the sort, for it is not sensory or real. While the real is regarded as the objective, as a structure and moment of the object, the non-sensory is equated with the mental in the subject, the immanent. The real is given from the side of the object, the rest is thought into it by the subject. But the subject is given in inner perception. Will I find ‘being,’ ‘unity,’ ‘plurality,’ ‘and,’ ‘or’ in inner perception? The origin of these non-sensory moments lies in immanent perception, in the reflection upon consciousness. This is the argument of British empiricism since Locke. This argumentation has its roots in Descartes, and it is in principle still present in Kant and German idealism, though with essential modification. Today we are in a position to move against idealism precisely on this front only because PHENOMENOLOGY has demonstrated that the non-sensory and ideal cannot without further ado be identified with the immanent, conscious, subjective. This is not only negatively stated but positively shown; and this constitutes the true sense of the discovery of categorial intuition, which we now want to bring out more precisely. GA20EN §6

Two groups of such categorial, founded acts shall be considered in order to bring out the essential elements of categorial intuition: 1) acts of synthesis, 2) acts of universal intuition, or better, acts of intuition of the universal, or in more rigorous terminology, acts of ideation. This consideration of acts of ideation at the same time gives us the transition to the third discovery of PHENOMENOLOGY we shall discuss, the characterization of the apriori. We shall consider categorial acts from three points of view: 1) in regard to their founded character; 2) in regard to their character as giving acts; in short, they are intuitions, they give objectivity; 3) in regard to the way and manner in which the objectivity of simple acts are given with them. GA20EN §6

Acts of ideation indeed rest upon individual intuition but do not directly intend what is intuited in it as such. Ideation constitutes a new objectivity: generality. Now, intuitions which exclude not only everything individual but also everything sensory from their objective content are pure categorial intuitions, in contrast to those which still include sensory components, categorially mixed intuitions. In contrast to these two groups—pure and mixed categorial intuitions—there is sense intuition, sense abstraction, the abstractive seeing of a pure sensory idea. Ideation in the field of the sensory yields objects such as color in general, house in general; in the field of inner sense, it yields judgment in general, wish in general and the like. Mixed categorial ideations yield ideas like coloration in the sense of being-colored, where ‘being’ constitutes the specifically non-sensory categorial moment. The axiom of parallels, every geometric proposition, is certainly categorial but is still defined by sensuousness, by spatiality in general. Examples of pure categorial concepts are unity, plurality, relation. Pure logic, as pure mathesis universalis (Leibniz), does not contain a single sensory concept. Pure categorial, mixed, and sensory abstraction make it clear that the concept of sensuousness is a very broad one. One must therefore be very careful about proceeding in the usual way, to impute a sensualism to PHENOMENOLOGY and to think thereby that it is solely a matter of sense data. GA20EN §6

[3.] This objectivity which gives itself in such acts of categorial intuition is itself the objective manner in which reality itself can become more truly objective. The exhibition of categorial structure serves to broaden the idea of objectivity such that this objectivity can itself be exhibited in its content in the investigation of the corresponding intuition. In other words, the phenomenological research which breaks through to objectivity arrives at the form of research sought by ancient ontology. There is no ontology alongside a PHENOMENOLOGY. Rather, scientific ontology is nothing but PHENOMENOLOGY. GA20EN §6

The elaboration of the sense of the apriori is the third discovery which we owe to the beginnings of PHENOMENOLOGY. This discovery may be characterized more briefly 1) because despite some essential insights into PHENOMENOLOGY the apriori itself is still not made very clear, 2) because it is still by and large intertwined with traditional lines of inquiry, and 3) above all because the clarification of its sense really presupposes the understanding of what we are seeking: time. GA20EN §7

The scientific motives for the discovery and development of the apriori, which already begin with Plato,—How was it first conceived? What were the limits within which it could be conceived?—cannot be depicted or clarified now. Our only questions will be: What was understood by this term? How does PHENOMENOLOGY now understand it? GA20EN §7

The apriori in Kant’s sense is a feature of the subjective sphere. This coupling of the apriori with the subjectivity became especially pertinacious through Kant, who joined the question of the apriori with his specific epistemological inquiry and asked, in reference to a particular apriori comportment, that of synthetic apriori judgments, whether and how they have transcendent validity. Against this, PHENOMENOLOGY has shown that the apriori is not limited to the subjectivity, indeed that in the first instance it has primarily nothing at all to do with subjectivity. The characterization of ideation as a categorial intuition has made it clear that something like the highlighting of ideas occurs both in the field of the ideal, hence of the categories, and in the field of the real. There are sensory ideas, ideas whose structure comes from the subject matter’s content (color, materiality, spatiality), a structure which is already there in every real individuation and so is apriori in relation to the here and now of a particular coloration of a thing. All of geometry as such is proof of the existence of a material apriori. In the ideal as in the real, once we accept this separation, there is in reference to its objectivity something ideal which can be brought out, something in the being of the ideal and in the being of the real which is apriori, structurally earlier. This already suggests that the apriori phenomenologically understood is not a title for comportment but a title for being. The apriori is not only nothing immanent, belonging primarily to the sphere of the subject, it is also nothing transcendent, specifically bound up with reality. GA20EN §7

Thus the first thing demonstrated by PHENOMENOLOGY is the universal scope of the apriori. The second is the specific indifference of the apriori to subjectivity. The third is included in the first two: the way of access to the apriori. Inasmuch as the apriori is grounded in its particular domains of subject matter and of being, it is in itself demonstrable in a simple intuition. It is not inferred indirectly, surmised from some symptoms in the real, hypothetically reckoned, as one infers, from the presence of certain disturbances in the movement of a body, the presence of other bodies which are not seen at all. It is absurd to transpose this approach, which makes sense in the realm of the physical, to philosophy too and to assume a stratification of bodies and the like. The apriori can in itself be apprehended much more directly. GA20EN §7

This leads to a fourth specification of the apriori. The ‘earlier’ is not a feature in the ordered sequence of knowing, but it is also not a feature in the sequential order of entities, more precisely in the sequential order of the emergence of an entity from an entity. Instead, the apriori is a feature of the structural sequence in the being of entities, in the ontological structure of being. Taken formally, the apriori prejudges nothing at all in regard to whether this earlier refers to a knowing or a being-known or some other kind of comportment to something, or whether it refers to an entity or to being, not even whether it means being in the traditional form of the Greek concept of being transmitted to us. This cannot be drawn from the sense of the apriori. Toward the end of the course, it will become clear that the discovery of the apriori is really connected or actually identical with the discovery of the concept of being in Parmenides or in Plato. In view of the prevalence of this particular concept of being, the apriori even within PHENOMENOLOGY still stands in this traditional horizon, so that there is some warrant for speaking of Platonism within PHENOMENOLOGY itself. GA20EN §7

When we take these three discoveries—intentionality, categorial intuition, and the apriori—together as they are connected among themselves and ultimately grounded in the first, in the discovery of intentionality, we arrive at the goal which has been guiding us and gain an understanding of PHENOMENOLOGY as a research endeavor. In the first chapter, we described the breakthrough of PHENOMENOLOGY and its prehistory. In this second chapter, we have now delineated its decisive discoveries. We must now complete this account by inquiring into the sense of the phenomenological principle and then using this as a basis to make clear to ourselves what the self-characterization of this research under the rubric of ‘PHENOMENOLOGY’ means. Accordingly, on the basis of our account of the three discoveries, we shall now discuss the principle of PHENOMENOLOGY. GA20EN §7

What instructions does PHENOMENOLOGY give on the demand to lay open the field? It is easily seen that the determination and demarcation of the field of subject matter of phenomenological research is involved in the idea of philosophy. But we shall now not pursue the path of determining this field from the idea of philosophy. We shall instead examine how the breakthrough of PHENOMENOLOGY and its discoveries have laid open a field of research within contemporary philosophy. So we now ask, while the substance of the three discoveries is fresh in our minds, which matters are taken up here, or, which matters does this research tend to take up? This will enable us to specify the first sense of the phenomenological maxim (the demand to do demonstrative work), that is, to ascertain the mode of treatment appropriate to these matters by reading it from the concretion of its principle. We are making no deduction from the idea of PHENOMENOLOGY but are reading the principle from its concretion in the research work. The concretion is characterized by the discoveries, and now it is only a question of the extent to which they supply content to the formal sense of the research principle: What field of subject matter, what regard toward it and what mode of dealing with it are intended? The clarification of the phenomenological principle according to field and mode of treatment then permits the legitimacy of the designation ‘PHENOMENOLOGY’ to emerge of its own accord and to set itself off from misinterpretations. GA20EN §8

[Let us proceed to the first question: Toward what matters does PHENOMENOLOGY tend?] The initial phenomenological investigations were investigations in logic and the theory of knowledge. They were inspired by the goal of a scientific logic and epistemology. The question here is: Do the three discoveries—the elaboration of intentionality, of the categorial and the way of access to it, and of the apriori—give us the ground on which the matters of logic can be located and demonstrated? GA20EN §8

The characterization of the apriori as well as the specification of categorial intuition have already shown that this mode of treatment is a simple originary apprehension and not a kind of experimental substructing in which I construct hypotheses in the field of the categorial. Instead, the full content of the apriori of intentionality can be apprehended in simple commensuration with the matter itself. Such a directly seeing apprehension and accentuation is traditionally called description. PHENOMENOLOGY’s mode of treatment is descriptive. To be more exact, description is an accentuating articulation of what is in itself intuited. Accentuating articulation is analysis. The description is analytical. This serves to specify the mode of treatment of phenomenological research, although once again only in a formal way. GA20EN §8

It is easy to see, or better, we constantly overlook and so fail to see that the general term ‘description’ still says nothing at all about the specific structure of phenomenological research. The character of description is first specified by the content of the matter to be described, so that description can be fundamentally different in different cases. One should keep in mind that this characterization of the way of treating objects in PHENOMENOLOGY as description first of all refers only to direct self-apprehension of the thematic and not to indirect hypothesizing and experimenting. The term ‘description’ at first implies nothing more. The clarification of the content of the phenomenological maxim on the basis of its initial factual concretion in the breakthrough to PHENOMENOLOGY consequently leads to the following definition of such research: PHENOMENOLOGY is the analytic description of intentionality in its apriori. GA20EN §8

If the sense of this research is explained by defining it in retrospect from the past situation of philosophy, that is, if we hear in the term intentionality what this new research combines, namely, intentionality and the psychic, then PHENOMENOLOGY is description of the psychic, ‘descriptive psychology.’ If in addition we assume the traditional problem-horizons and their division into fixed disciplines (logic, ethics, aesthetics . . .), then this descriptive psychology deals with all comportments, the logically cognitive, ethical, artistically creative, appreciative, social, religious comportments, in short, the comportments which are defined in terms of their laws and norms in the corresponding disciplines of logic, ethics, aesthetics, sociology, philosophy of religion. From this standpoint we come to regard the descriptive discipline of PHENOMENOLOGY as a propaedeutic science for the traditional philosophical disciplines, where the problems come up for discussion. PHENOMENOLOGY does not yet discuss problems, it only has to take up the matters of fact, and is excluded from the actual judicial hearing of the problems. It also has no desire to be admitted to this trial. GA20EN §8

But now let us consider whether this interpretation does not put this research endeavor and the originality of its principle right back into the position which it has abandoned and which PHENOMENOLOGY is designed to overcome. This conception of PHENOMENOLOGY and its interpretation is like wanting to interpret modern physics from astrology or chemistry from alchemy instead of the other way around, where astrology is taken as a stage preceding physics and overcome by it. In other words, the definition of PHENOMENOLOGY which we have obtained by clarifying its principle is to be understood from its task, from the positive possibility which it implies, from what guides its efforts and not from what is said about it. GA20EN §8

We have explained the principle of phenomenological research first by highlighting the major achievements contained in its actual efforts and by trying to view these in a unified way. We have thus determined that intentionality gives us the proper field of subject matter, the apriori gives us the regard under which the structures of intentionality are considered, and categorial intuition as the originary way of apprehending these structures represents the mode of treatment, the method of this research. This serves to bring the task of philosophy since Plato once again to its true ground, inasmuch as it now gives us the possibility to do research into the categories. As long as PHENOMENOLOGY understands itself, it will adhere to this course of investigation against any sort of prophetism within philosophy and against any inclination to provide guidelines for life. Philosophical research is and remains atheism, which is why philosophy can allow itself ‘the arrogance of thinking.’ Not only will it allow itself as much; this arrogance is the inner necessity of philosophy and its true strength. Precisely in this atheism, philosophy becomes what a great man once called the “joyful science.” GA20EN §8

We shall now try to make clear to ourselves what the name ‘PHENOMENOLOGY’ actually means in relation to the subject matter just identified. We shall develop this clarification in three steps: a) The clarification of the original sense of the component parts of the name; b) The definition of the unified meaning thus obtained for the composite word and comparison of this actual meaning of the name with what it names, with the research so characterized; c) We will briefly discuss several misunderstandings of PHENOMENOLOGY which are connected with the external and aberrant interpretation of the name. GA20EN §9

The name ‘PHENOMENOLOGY’ has two components, ‘phenomenon’ and ‘-logy.’ The latter phrase is familiar from such usages as theology, biology, physiology, sociology, and is commonly translated as ‘science of’: theology, science of God; biology, science of life, of organic nature; sociology, science of the community. Accordingly, PHENOMENOLOGY is the science of phenomena. ‘Logy,’ science of, varies in its character according to the thematic matter, which is logically and formally undefined. In our case, it is defined by what phenomenon stands for. So, to begin with, the first part of the name must be clarified [in order to see what this particular —logy stands for]. GA20EN §9

By way of summary, the following must be made clear: There are two basic meanings of ‘phenomenon’; first the manifest, that which shows itself, and second that which presents itself as something manifest but which only gives itself [out] in this way—semblance. For the most part, we are not at all familiar with the original meaning of phenomenon and dispense with the task of making clear to ourselves what it does mean. We simply call something a ‘phenomenon’ which here has been identified as ‘appearance’ and analyzed as such. When PHENOMENOLOGY is criticized, the critic simply takes the concept of ‘appearance,’ which is convenient for his purposes [but has nothing to do with PHENOMENOLOGY], and uses this word to criticize a research endeavor oriented to the matters themselves. This should suffice for the clarification of the first component part of the term ‘PHENOMENOLOGY.’ GA20EN §9

Let us now put together these two separately clarified parts of the name “PHENOMENOLOGY.” What unified meaning results from this, and to what extent is this unity of meaning, as the name for the kind of research we have described above, a fitting expression of this research? The surprise is that logos understood as apophainesthai has an intrinsic and material relation to phainomenon. PHENOMENOLOGY is legein ta phainomena = apophainesthai ta phainomena—letting the manifest in itself be seen from itself. In the same vein, the maxim of phenomenological research—back to the matters themselves—is basically nothing other than a rendition of the name of PHENOMENOLOGY. But this means that PHENOMENOLOGY is essentially distinct from the other names for sciences—theology, biology, etc.—in that it says nothing about the material content of the thematic object of this science, but speaks really only—and this emphatically—of the how, the way in which something is and has to be thematic in this research! PHENOMENOLOGY is accordingly a ‘methodological’ term, inasmuch as it is only used to designate the mode of experience, apprehension, and determination of that which is thematized in philosophy. GA20EN §9

The objects of philosophical research have the character of the phenomenon. In brief, such research deals with phenomena and only with phenomena. PHENOMENOLOGY in its original and initial meaning, which is captured in the expressionPHENOMENOLOGY’, signifies a way of encountering something. It is in fact the outstanding way: showing itself in itself. The expression PHENOMENOLOGY names the way something has to be there through and for legein, for conceptual exposition and interpretation. As our preceding discussion has shown, PHENOMENOLOGY deals with intentionality in its apriori. The structures of intentionality in its apriori are the phenomena. In other words, the structures of intentionality in its apriori circumscribe the objects which are to be made present in themselves in this research and explicated in this presence. The term ‘phenomenon’ however says nothing about the being of the objects under study, but refers only to the way they are encountered. The phenomenal is accordingly everything which becomes visible in this kind of encounter and belongs in this structural context of intentionality. We therefore speak of ‘phenomenal structures’ as of what is seen, specified and examined in this kind of research. Phenomenological signifies everything that belongs to such a way of exhibiting phenomena and phenomenal structures, everything that becomes thematic in this kind of research. The unphenomenological would be everything that does not satisfy this kind of research, its conceptuality and its methods of demonstration. GA20EN §9

PHENOMENOLOGY as the science of the apriori phenomena of intentionality thus never has anything to do with appearances and even less with mere appearances. It is phenomenologically absurd to speak of the phenomenon as if it were something behind which there would be something else of which it would be a phenomenon in the sense of the appearance which represents and expresses [this something else]. A phenomenon is nothing behind which there would be something else. More accurately stated, one cannot ask for something behind the phenomenon at all, since what the phenomenon gives is precisely that something in itself. Admittedly, what can in itself be exhibited and is to be exhibited can nonetheless be covered up. What is in itself visible and in its very sense is accessible only as a phenomenon does not necessarily need to be so already in fact. What a phenomenon is as a possibility is not directly given as a phenomenon but must first be given. As research work, PHENOMENOLOGY is precisely the work of laying open and letting be seen, understood as the methodologically directed dismantling of concealments. GA20EN §9

Concealment itself, whether it is taken in the sense of the undiscovered pure and simple or of burying or disguise, has in turn a twofold sense. There are accidental concealments and there are necessary ones, given in the very being of their manner of discovery and its possibilities. Every phenomenological proposition, though drawn from original sources, is subject to the possibility of concealment when it is communicated as an assertion. Transmitted in an empty and predisposed way of understanding it, it loses its roots in its native soil and becomes a free-floating naming. This possibility of petrification of what it has drawn out and demonstrated in an original way is implied in the concrete labor of PHENOMENOLOGY itself. Concealment may at times also proceed from it because PHENOMENOLOGY carries this radical principle within itself. The possibility of radical discovery at the same time brings with it the corresponding danger that PHENOMENOLOGY may become hardened in its own results. GA20EN §9

The reason why genuinely phenomenological work is difficult is that it must be especially critical of itself in a positive way. The sort of encounter involved in the mode of phenomenon must first of all be wrested from the objects of phenomenological research. This means that the characteristic mode of apprehending phenomena—originarily apprehending interpreting—implies not one iota of an immediate apprehension in the sense in which it can be said that PHENOMENOLOGY is a straightforward seeing which requires absolutely no methodological preparation. Precisely the opposite is the case, which is also why the expressness of the maxim is so essential. Because the phenomenon must first be won, scrutinizing the point of departure for access to the phenomenon and clearing the passage through the concealments already demand a high degree of methodological preparation so that we may be guided and determined by what the phenomenal givenness of intentionality in each instance implies. The demand for an ultimate direct givenness of the phenomena carries no implication of the comfort of an immediate beholding. There can be no disclosure or deduction of essence from essence, apriori from apriori, one from the other. Rather, each and every one of these must come to demonstrative vision. Accordingly, the way to go in each instance begins with the individual phenomenal correlations and varies according to the degree to which the apriori has been uncovered and the tradition has buried it, as well as the kind of obfuscation involved. Since every structure must ultimately be exhibited in itself, PHENOMENOLOGY’s way of research at first assumes the character or the aspect of what is called a picture-book PHENOMENOLOGY. It gives greater prominence to the exhibition of individual structures which are perhaps very useful for a systematic philosophy, even though the exhibition can only be provisional. As a result, there is a tendency to give philosophical sanction to the prominent displays of particular phenomenological considerations by finding a place for them in some sort of dialectic or the like. Against this tendency, it must be stated that at first nothing at all is to be made of the interconnections of the structures of intentionality. Rather, the interconnection of the apriori is always determined only from the subject matter which is to be explored in its phenomenal structure. Furthermore, at first we need not concern ourselves with these considerations, since they will always remain fruitless as long as the concrete aspect of phenomena is not clear. GA20EN §9

I now want to deal only very briefly with a few typical misunderstandings of PHENOMENOLOGY, since they are still generally prevalent in philosophy, and since there are only a few who make the effort to elucidate the authentic sense of PHENOMENOLOGY from its concrete work. A typical example, and indeed the best example of what one can get away with today in this regard, is an article by Rickert in the journal Logos. GA20EN §9

Rickert here wants to show that PHENOMENOLOGY is not and cannot be a philosophy of the immediate and, by way of contrast, makes some suggestions on how a philosophy of the immediate would look. The characteristic attitude is already evident here: there must be a philosophy of the immediate and everything must be organized in accord with it. “To begin with, at least a mediation is needed in order to define the concepts of appearance and PHENOMENOLOGY in such a way that they will be useful for a philosophy of the immediate.” In opposition to this, it must first be stated generally that PHENOMENOLOGY does not wish to be either a philosophy of intuition or a philosophy of the immediate. It does not want to be a philosophy at all in this sense, but wants the subject matters themselves. GA20EN §9

Rickert’s critique is based on his understanding of the word “appearance.” He states that the word “appearance” has, in its sense as appearance of something, the orientation toward something which is not appearance, which is therefore not immediately given. And since appearance is always appearance of something which is behind it, the immediate cannot be apprehended, so that we are always dealing with something already mediated. PHENOMENOLOGY is accordingly unsuited to be the basic science of philosophy. It is apparent first that the concept of appearance, phenomenon, is merely taken up without any attempt to see what phenomenon originally means and in PHENOMENOLOGY truly means. Instead, the traditional concept of appearance, an empty verbal concept, is taken as a basis for criticizing the concrete labor of a research effort. It is unnecessary to go any further into this article, since nothing of relevance to our topic would be dredged up by such a critique and since it is in fact no great feat to criticize such an objection. It has to be mentioned, however, since Rickert in this essay gives voice to what is otherwise typical in philosophy and in its attitude toward PHENOMENOLOGY. I stress this not to save PHENOMENOLOGY but to make clear how such an interpretation not only deforms the sense of the phenomenological endeavor but above all loses the instinct for sticking to the topic in philosophizing. GA20EN §9

We now come to the third chapter of our introductory considerations of the sense and the task of phenomenological research. The account of the term PHENOMENOLOGY based upon the clarification of its principle and its three main discoveries has accomplished the task, set in the second chapter, of clarifying the sense of phenomenological research. In the first chapter, our topic was the origin and breakthrough of phenomenological research, and in the second it was the fundamental discoveries of PHENOMENOLOGY, its principle and the clarification of its name. In this third chapter, we shall now briefly trace the early development of phenomenological research and examine the necessity of reflecting anew upon its field of objects, out of itself according to its own principle. GA20EN §9

This reflection will be directed toward the original, that is, phenomenologically basic, determination of the thematic field, namely, the fundamental determination of intentionality and of what is already given with it. In the light of this new task of securing the thematic field originally, as it is prefigured in the phenomenon of intentionality, the account of the cultivation and development of phenomenological research will also shift its ground. We shall examine the growing elaboration of the thematic field, its determination, and the outlining of the working horizons as they emerge from this determination of the field. In point of fact, we shall pursue this theme in the double orientation of the work of the two leading researchers in PHENOMENOLOGY today, Husserl and Scheler. GA20EN §9

After the appearance of Logical Investigations, Husserl’s work was at first concentrated upon the extension of the PHENOMENOLOGY of perception in the broadest sense, not only sense perception but perception in the sense of originary apprehension in the different domains of objects. These investigations were concluded just a year ago, after almost 25 years, but have not been published. In addition, in connection with his new teaching duties at Göttingen, Husserl’s work was oriented toward the systematic extension of logic, toward a PHENOMENOLOGY of objectifying knowledge, with special emphasis on the PHENOMENOLOGY of judgment. Despite a series of ever new approaches, this logic is also incomplete. At the same time, work was concentrated on the PHENOMENOLOGY of practical comportment, in a confrontation with Kant’s practical philosophy. This period (1913–1914) also included the first attempts toward what is called an apriori axiomatic of values, which Scheler later took up and carried further. GA20EN §10

Then the influence of Dilthey made itself felt, manifesting his inner kinship with the tendencies of PHENOMENOLOGY. This led to a transposition of Husserl’s orientation in the philosophy of science, taken in the broadest sense, from one-sided work on problems relating to the natural sciences to a broader reflection on the specific objectivity of the human sciences. A final essential direction channeling these efforts came from the confrontation with the Marburg School, above all with Natorp’s Introduction to Psychology. The confrontation with this psychology was naturally nothing other than the dispute over the direction of the question of the structure of consciousness, of the region in which the totality of comportments, and so all the states of intentionality, are ordered. This period in the development of PHENOMENOLOGY thus saw its work being drawn into the horizon of contemporary philosophy, a tendency which has not remained without influence upon the subsequent inquiries of PHENOMENOLOGY. GA20EN §10

The first published statement by Husserl was an essay in Logos, “Philosophy as Strict Science.” The essay has a programmatic character, but it is not a program that precedes the work. It emerged from the work, against the background of a labor of ten years. This treatise evoked almost universal opposition among philosophers, while within PHENOMENOLOGY it served to unite the slowly rising generation of younger researchers in a common and secure endeavor. This closing of ranks within phenomenological research led in 1913 to the founding of its own organ, the Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. The first volume appeared in 1913 and six more volumes have appeared since, the last in 1923. The first two volumes contain treatises by the editors: Husserl, Scheler, Reinach, Pfänder, and Geiger. The later volumes present in part further works by Pfänder and Geiger, as well as student works of varying quality. GA20EN §10

In its first volume, the Yearbook published the treatise by Husserl entitled Ideas toward a Pure PHENOMENOLOGY and Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. The second book was written immediately after the first and brought to a conclusion, but so far has not appeared. GA20EN §10

In the second volume, already in part in the first, the second work of fundamental importance appeared, namely Max Scheler’s Formalism in Ethics and the Material Ethics of Value. It contains large sections of fundamental phenomenological considerations which go beyond the special domain of ethics. Also to be noted are the collected essays of Max Scheler, in particular the treatise On the Idols of Self-Knowledge as well as Toward the PHENOMENOLOGY and Theory of Sympathy. These collected essays appeared a few years ago in a second edition, though basically in a poorer version. GA20EN §10

These problems of Husserl and Scheler just enumerated serve to define the actual development of PHENOMENOLOGY and the more detailed explication of the problem of demarcating and founding the thematic field of PHENOMENOLOGY. Accordingly, the analysis of the later basic studies will have to keep to these two spheres of problems. Within this concrete development of the phenomenological endeavor, the working horizons were at first also fixed by the purely traditional disciplines of logic, ethics, aesthetics, sociology, and philosophy of law. The horizons of inquiry remained the same as in traditional philosophy. In addition, on the basis of the orientation to the phenomenon of intentionality, which is phenomenologically distinguished into intentio, intentum, and the correlation between the two, there arose three directions of work which always reciprocally require one another: PHENOMENOLOGY of the act, PHENOMENOLOGY of the subject matter, and the correlation between the two. The same separation is found in Husserl in the terms noesis, the specific structure of directing-itself-toward, and noema, the subject matter insofar as it is intended in the intention. For Husserl there is no special correlation, since it is given with noema and noesis and included in them. GA20EN §10

Our question is: How is the fundamental and explicit elaboration of the thematic field of PHENOMENOLOGY carried out by Husserl? GA20EN §10

PHENOMENOLOGY was characterized as the analytic description of intentionality in its apriori. Can intentionality in its apriori be singled out as an independent region, as the possible field of a science? GA20EN §10

It is easy to see that the crucial consideration is the first, that of securing and specifying the field from which we start. For it is from this field that the field we seek is to be derived and demarcated. The difference of such a fundamental reflection from the procedure followed in the breakthrough phase is plain. In the initial phase of PHENOMENOLOGY, the discussion and description of intentionality still operated wholly within the framework outlined by the disciplines of psychology and logic and their particular questions. Now, however, the discussion no longer deals with these old questions and traditional tasks but is concerned with the reflection, secured in the matters themselves, upon the connection between the phenomenological field to be derived and the field from which we start. In other words, it is concerned with the concrete individuation of intentionality, of comportments and of lived experiences. It is now a matter of defining the field in which the comportments first become accessible. GA20EN §10

The question therefore is: How do comportments in which the structure of intentionality is to be read become accessible? How is something like intentionality, the structure of lived experience, lived experience itself, first given? “First given” here means given for a so-called natural attitude. In what way, as what are lived experiences, comportments, the various modes of the consciousness of something, found in the natural attitude? What is to be seen and traced is how the ‘new scientific domain’ of PHENOMENOLOGY arises from what is given in the natural attitude. Hence the aim is to discover a new scientific domain. This new region is called the region of pure lived experiences, of pure consciousness with its pure correlates, the region of the pure ego. This region is a new domain of objects and—as Husserl puts it—a region of being which is in principle special, the specifically phenomenological region. Husserl himself characterizes the manner of proceeding in this way: GA20EN §10

Our question will be: Does this elaboration of the thematic field of PHENOMENOLOGY, the field of intentionality, raise the question of the being of this region, of the being of consciousness? What does being really mean here when it is said that the sphere of consciousness is a sphere and region of absolute being? What does absolute being mean here? What does being mean when we speak of the being of the transcendent world, of the reality of things? Is there somewhere in the dimension of this fundamental deliberation, in which the elaboration of the field of PHENOMENOLOGY is decided, in turn a clarification of the regard from which the separation of the two spheres of being is considered, namely, the sense of being, to which there is constant reference? Does PHENOMENOLOGY anywhere really arrive at the methodological ground enabling us to raise this question of the sense of being, which must precede any phenomenological deliberation and is implicit in it? GA20EN §11

We shall establish the basis for the critical consideration of the field of objects proper to PHENOMENOLOGY by investigating whether the being of the intentional as such is explored within the following three horizons of consideration: [1.] What is the basis upon which this field of objects is secured? [2.] What is the way of securing this thematic field? [3.] What are the determinations of this newly found field of objects, of what is called pure consciousness? We shall start with the latter horizon, the determination of the being of the region ‘consciousness.’ As the basic field of intentionality, is the region of pure consciousness determined in its being, and how? GA20EN §11

Consciousness in this sense of the absolute means the priority of subjectivity over every objectivity. This third determination—absolute being—once again does not determine the entity itself in its being but rather sets the region of consciousness within the order of constitution and assigns to it in this order a formal role of being earlier than anything objective. This determination and conception of consciousness is likewise the place where idealism and idealistic inquiry, more precisely idealism in the form of neo-Kantianism, enter into PHENOMENOLOGY. Thus this determination of being is also not an original one. GA20EN §11

Husserl’s primary question is simply not concerned with the character of the being of consciousness. Rather, he is guided by the following concern: How can consciousness become the possible object of an absolute science? The primary concern which guides him is the idea of an absolute science. This idea, that consciousness is to be the region of an absolute science, is not simply invented; it is the idea which has occupied modern philosophy ever since Descartes. The elaboration of pure consciousness as the thematic field of PHENOMENOLOGY is not derived phenomenologically by going back to the matters themselves but by going back to a traditional idea of philosophy. Thus none of the characters which emerge as determinations of the being of lived experiences is an original character. We cannot go into more detail here into the motivation for this entire line of inquiry and into its way of posing problems. To begin with, it is enough for us to see that the four characters of being which are given for consciousness are not derived from consciousness itself. GA20EN §11

The critical question which emerged in the first detailed and systematic treatment by Husserl is the question of the being of that which is put forth as the theme of PHENOMENOLOGY. Why we place the question of being in the foreground as the critical question, by what warrant we even approach the position of PHENOMENOLOGY with this question, will become clear later. At first, we are presupposing that there must be an inquiry into this being. We are asking whether this question is asked in PHENOMENOLOGY itself. GA20EN §12

If we recall the determinations which Husserl himself gives to pure consciousness as the phenomenological region, it becomes apparent that these four determinations—being as immanent being, being as absolute being in the sense of absolute givenness, being as absolute being in the sense of constituting being over against everything transcendent, and being as pure being over against every individuation—are not drawn from the entity itself but are attributed to it insofar as this consciousness as pure consciousness is placed in certain perspectives. If consciousness is regarded as apprehended, then it can be said to be immanent. If it is regarded with respect to the manner of its givenness, it can be said to be absolutely given. With regard to its role as constituting being, as that in which every reality manifests itself, it is absolute being in the sense of nulla re indiget ad existendum. Regarded in its essence, its what, it is ideal being, which means that it posits no real individuation in the content of its structure. If these determinations are not originary determinations of being, then on the positive side it must be said that they only determine the region as region but not the being of consciousness itself, of intentional comportments as such; they are concerned solely with the being of the region consciousness, the being of the field within which consciousness can be considered. This consideration is in fact possible. To make this clear with an example, the mathematician can circumscribe the mathematical field, the entire realm of that which is the object of mathematical consideration and inquiry. He can provide a certain definition of the object of mathematics without ever necessarily posing the question of the mode of being of mathematical objects. Precisely in the same way, it can at first be granted with some justification that here the region of PHENOMENOLOGY can simply be circumscribed by these four aspects without thereby necessarily inquiring into the being of that which belongs in this region. Perhaps the being of consciousness should not be inquired into at all. In any case, the final critical position cannot be based upon this initial critical consideration. Moreover, what must be asked and studied more closely in the whole of this elaboration of consciousness is whether being is explored within it, whether perhaps en route to the reduction, to the securing and bringing into relief of this region called consciousness, the question of being is after all raised, whether perhaps right on the way which leads from what is given in the natural attitude to what the reduction offers, the question of being is after all under consideration. GA20EN §12

Likewise, in the consideration and elaboration of pure consciousness, merely the what-content is brought to the fore, without any inquiry into the being of the acts in the sense of their existence. Not only is this question not raised in the reductions, the transcendental as well as the eidetic; it gets lost precisely through them. From the what I never experience anything about the sense and the manner of the that—at any rate, only that an entity of this what-content (extensio, for example) can have a certain manner of being. What this manner of being is, is not thereby made clear. Merely looking at the what-content means seeing the what as apprehended, given, constituted. The critical discussion of the reductions in terms of what they do to pose the question of being turns out to be negative, so much so that it shows that the determinations of being discussed in § 11 cannot be genuine. But above all, this conception of ideation as disregard of real individuation lives in the belief that the what of any entity is to be defined by disregarding its existence. But if there were an entity whose what is precisely to be and nothing but to be, then this ideative regard of such an entity would be the most fundamental of misunderstandings. It will become apparent that this misunderstanding is prevalent in PHENOMENOLOGY, and dominates it in turn because of the dominance of the tradition. GA20EN §12

This then is the result of our deliberations: in elaborating intentionality as the thematic field of PHENOMENOLOGY, the question of the being of the intentional is left undiscussed. It is not raised in the field thus secured, pure consciousness; indeed, it is flatly rejected as nonsensical. In the course of securing this field, in the reduction, it is expressly deferred. And where the determinations of being are brought into play, as in the starting position of the reduction, it is likewise not originally raised. Instead, the being of acts is in advance theoretically and dogmatically defined by the sense of being which is taken from the reality of nature. The question of being itself is left undiscussed. GA20EN §12

The first thing to be said is that this exposition of the thematic field of PHENOMENOLOGY, of pure consciousness, itself aims precisely at drawing a distinction among entities, fixing the fundamental distinction among entities, and this basically involves an answer to the question of being. Husserl says: GA20EN §13

It is not merely that the basic distinction in entities is to be found with the securing of pure consciousness, but that the reduction itself has no other task than to fix and to demonstrate this fundamental distinction of being. But now we note something remarkable: here it is being claimed that the most radical distinction of being is drawn without actually inquiring into the being of the entities that enter into the distinction. This, moreover, involves a discussion of being, a distinguishing of extant regions; in other words, it is maintained that a distinction is made in regard to being. If we press further and ask what being means here, in regard to which absolute being is distinguished from reality, we search in vain for an answer and still more for an explicit articulation of the very question. In drawing this fundamental distinction of being, not once is a question raised regarding the kind of being which the distinguished members have, or the kind of being which consciousness has, and more basically, regarding what it is which directs the entire process of making this distinction of being, in short, what the sense of being is. From this it becomes clear that the question of being is not an optional and merely possible question, but the most urgent question inherent in the very sense of PHENOMENOLOGY itself—urgent in a still more radical sense in relation to the intentional than we have so far discussed. GA20EN §13

But how is it possible that a form of research whose principle is ‘to the matters themselves’ leaves the fundamental consideration of its most proper matter unsettled? Is phenomenological research in fact so unphenomenological that it excludes its most proper domain from the phenomenological question? Before we conclude the critique and proceed to the positive reflection, we are obliged to bring out all the approaches we can find here which nevertheless do point in the direction of determining the being of the intentional out of itself. Does not PHENOMENOLOGY still expressly raise the question of the being of the intentional as such after all, and does it not do so over and above the ‘naturalistic attitude’ first discussed? Does not this question come up of necessity as soon as PHENOMENOLOGY sets itself off from psychology? GA20EN §13

We have seen the course of such a demarcation, which did not understand the question that we designated as essentially epistemological or drawn from the theory of reason, even though this road led directly to fundamental determinations of being. Such a demarcation of PHENOMENOLOGY from psychology was already necessary in its initial breakthrough, inasmuch as PHENOMENOLOGY was elaborated from a particular psychology, the Brentanean, if we can call it that. This demarcation must obviously deal with the being of acts. This demarcation, to the extent that it is clearly focused upon acts as such, will not drift in the direction of what we have called the naturalistic attitude, in which the acts are not defined as such, but instead are treated as appendages of a material thing. That PHENOMENOLOGY nonetheless overcomes naturalism in a certain sense becomes manifest when we take a closer look at its initial breakthrough. GA20EN §13

In its initial stage, in its breakthrough, PHENOMENOLOGY understood itself immediately as a struggle against naturalism, but against naturalism in the particular form of psychologism, specifically psychologism in the particular field of logic. GA20EN §13

There was a tendency in logic to take the laws of thought as laws of the psychic processes of thought, of the psychic occurrence of thought. In opposition to this misunderstanding, Husserl, like Brentano, showed that the laws of thought are not the laws of the psychic course of thinking but laws of what is thought; that one must distinguish between the psychic process of judgment, the act in the broadest sense, and what is judged in these acts. Distinction is made between the real intake of the acts, the judging as such, and the ideal, the content of the judgment. This distinction between real performance and ideal content provides the basis for the fundamental rejection of psychologism. To the extent that PHENOMENOLOGY works in this direction in logic against psychologism or naturalism, it was from the beginning safeguarded from the naturalistic misunderstanding. However, it must be noted that in this demarcation in the phenomenon of judgment—judged content as ideal being or valid being on the one hand and real being or the act of judgment on the other—the distinction between the real and the ideal being of judgment is indeed confronted, but that precisely the reality of this real aspect of acts is left undetermined. The being of the judgment, its being an act, that is, the being of the intentional, is left unquestioned, so that there is always the possibility of conceiving this reality in terms of psychic processes of nature. The discovery, or better the rediscovery of the ideal exerted a fascination, cast a spell, as it were, while on the other side, the acts and processes were relegated to psychology. The elaboration of the pure field here simply led once again to norms, as we saw, without raising the central question. GA20EN §13

It has already been pointed out that Dilthey brought with him an original understanding of PHENOMENOLOGY, and that he himself influenced it in the direction of the question which concerns us. Dilthey’s scientific work sought to secure that way of regarding man which, contrary to scientific psychology, does not take him for its object as a thing of nature, explaining and construing him by means of other universal laws of ‘events,’ but instead understands him as a living person actively involved in history and describes and analyzes him in this understanding. Here we find a recognizable trend toward a new psychology, a personalistic one. I have already pointed out that, after the appearance of Logical Investigations (1900–1901), as Husserl sought to develop his position further, Dilthey exerted a special influence upon him precisely in the direction of arriving at a new psychology. But in the horizon of our question there is also the attempt to determine the being of acts themselves strictly out of themselves, and to get away from the purely naturalistic objectifying regard of the acts and of the psychic. In view of the actual theme of PHENOMENOLOGY, this means that we need a reflection on the definition of the starting position in the further development of PHENOMENOLOGY, namely, the definition of the being of consciousness with regard to the way it is given in the natural attitude. This primary kind of experience, which provides the basis for every further characterization of consciousness, turns out to be a theoretical kind of experience and not a genuinely natural one, in which what is experienced could give itself in its original sense. Instead, the manner in which what is experienced gives itself here is defined by the feature of an objectivity for a theoretical consideration of nature, and nothing else. It thus follows that the starting point for the elaboration of pure consciousness is a theoretical one. At first, naturally, this in itself would not be an objection or a misfortune, but surely it is afterwards, when, on the basis of the pure consciousness derived from this theoretical basis, it is claimed that the entire field of comportments may also be determined, especially the practical. In the further course of development of PHENOMENOLOGY, of course, the influence of the new tendency we have mentioned comes into play, seeking to go beyond the specifically naturalistic attitude and to bring a personalistic attitude into its own. GA20EN §13

Dilthey was the first to understand the aims of PHENOMENOLOGY. Already in the eighteen-sixties, his work was directed toward an elaboration of a new psychology. Put very generally, this was to be a science of man which apprehends man primarily as he exists as a person, as a person acting in history. With this idea of man in mind, he sought to determine this same entity scientifically. In this aim he came into conflict with the reigning psychology, which was naturalistic in the extreme, patterned after natural science. In a narrower sense, it was even a psychology of the senses. Against this explanatory psychology, which explains by means of hypotheses, Dilthey wanted to establish a descriptive psychology. Against this constructive psychology he wanted an analytical one. The efforts toward such a psychology, which still exists in name only, come to an initial denouement in two treatises, “Ideas on a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology” and “Contributions to the Study of Individuality.” After the appearance of Logical Investigations (1900–1901) Dilthey took up this problem of a genuine personal psychology anew. The first results after his acquaintance with PHENOMENOLOGY are recorded in a remarkable fragment, “Studies Toward the Founding of the Human Sciences,” and once again in a work of grand design in his old age, “The Construction of the Historical World in the Human Sciences.” Of importance is what Dilthey set forth in his “Ideas” in Chapter 7, “On the Structure of Psychic Life,” basic theses which are taken up by Husserl and Scheler and analyzed more pointedly in a phenomenological fashion: that the person in his particular selfness finds himself over against a world upon which he acts and which reacts upon him; that in every aspect of being the person, the total person, reacts, not simply in willing, feeling, and reflecting, but all together always at the same time; that the life-context of the person is in every situation one of development. In the analysis and detailed elaboration, these theses are expounded with the crude and primitive means of the old traditional psychology. But the essential point here is not so much the conceptual penetration as the sheer disclosure of new horizons for the question of the being of acts and, in the broadest sense, the being of man. GA20EN §13

This preliminary work toward a personalistic psychology was taken up by Husserl and worked into the further development of PHENOMENOLOGY. The initial results of these reflections appear in his published work in the already mentioned “Logos-Essay” of 1910, entitled “Philosophy as Rigorous Science.” GA20EN §13

In the ensuing years (1914–1915) Husserl embarked upon the path toward personalistic psychology even more energetically and at the same time worked along the lines set by the first part of the just published Ideas toward a Pure PHENOMENOLOGY. This initial elaboration of portions of a personalistic psychology has, to be sure, never been published, but has enjoyed a far-reaching literary life in the writings of Husserl’s students. Since this initial elaboration of 1914 Husserl has, on more than one occasion, set to work on a new version of a personalistic psychology. In fact, since his tenure at Freiburg, since 1916, this took the form of a lecture course entitled “Nature and Spirit,” which he repeated on several occasions. His lecture course for this semester demonstrates how important this approach to this problem has now become for him; concentrated solely upon a PHENOMENOLOGY of mind and spirit, it is entitled “Phenomenological Psychology.” It is characteristic of Husserl that his questioning is still fully in flux, so that we must in the final analysis be cautious in our critique. I am not sufficiently conversant with the contents of the present stance of his investigations. But let me say that Husserl is aware of my objections from my lecture courses in Freiburg as well as here in Marburg and from personal conversations, and is essentially making allowances for them, so that my critique today no longer applies in its full trenchancy. But it is not really a matter of criticism for the sake of criticizing but criticism for the sake of laying open the issues and bringing understanding. It almost goes without saying that even today I still regard myself as a learner in relation to Husserl. GA20EN §13

The critical reflection shows that even phenomenological research stands under the contraints of an old tradition, especially when it comes to the most primordial determination of the theme most proper to it, intentionality. Contrary to its most proper principle, therefore, PHENOMENOLOGY defines its most proper thematic matter not out of the matters themselves but instead out of a traditional prejudgment of it, albeit one which has become quite self-evident. The very sense of this prejudgment serves to deny the original leap to the entity which is thematically intended. In the basic task of determining its ownmost field, therefore, PHENOMENOLOGY is unphenomenological!—that is to say, purportedly phenomenological! But it is all this in a sense which is even more fundamental. Not only is the being of the intentional, hence the being of a particular entity, left undetermined, but categorially primal separations in the entity (consciousness and reality) are presented without clarifying or even questioning the guiding regard, that according to which they are distinguished, which is precisely being in its sense. GA20EN §13

Our critical reflection on PHENOMENOLOGY has clarified in what horizon of being intentionality, its theme, has been placed. It has shown that this determination of the thematic field does not draw that field from a prior and original explication of the being of the intentional; and that the task of drawing the fundamental distinctions of being does not take up the basic task which precedes it, that of raising the question of the sense of being as such. Together with these insights, it became evident that these two questions, that of being as such and that of the character of the being of the intentional, must be raised in the light of the principle most proper to PHENOMENOLOGY. At the very least, it became evident that the development of the phenomenological theme can proceed in a counter-phenomenological direction. This insight does not serve to drive PHENOMENOLOGY outside of itself but really first brings PHENOMENOLOGY right back to itself, to its ownmost and purest possibility. GA20EN §14

The greatness of the discovery of PHENOMENOLOGY lies not in factually obtained results, which can be evaluated and criticized and in these days have certainly evoked a veritable transformation in questioning and working, but rather in this: it is the discovery of the very possibility of doing research in philosophy. But a possibility is rightly understood in its most proper sense only when it continues to be taken as a possibility and preserved as a possibility. Preserving it as a possibility does not mean, however, to fix a chance state of research and inquiry as ultimately real and to allow it to harden; it rather means to keep open the tendency toward the matters themselves and to liberate this tendency from the persistently pressing, latently operative and spurious bonds [of the tradition]. This is just what is meant by the motto “Back to the matters themselves”: to let them revert to themselves. GA20EN §14

Phenomenological questioning in its innermost tendency itself leads to the question of the being of the intentional and before anything else to the question of the sense of being as such. PHENOMENOLOGY radicalized in its ownmost possibility is nothing but the questioning of Plato and Aristotle brought back to life: the repetition, the retaking of the beginning of our scientific philosophy. GA20EN §14

But does this not once again relinquish all the critical caution necessary when one is dealing with the tradition? Is the question of being, just because of its venerable antiquity going all the way back to Parmenides, in the end not also a prejudice of the tradition? Why do we make an exception here? Should we ask about being only because the Greeks asked? Is the question of being to be put so that PHENOMENOLOGY may be more radically defined, thus only so that there may be a PHENOMENOLOGY? Neither of these reasons can be the basis for our inquiry. Are there still presuppositions, specifically presuppositions which allow us to recover the ground for the question of being simply from the question itself? The sole ground of possibility for the question of being as such is Dasein itself insofar as it is possible, in its discoveredness in possibilities. GA20EN §14

All of this would in fact be dogmatic and contrary to the phenomenological principle of working and questioning out of the matters themselves, if PHENOMENOLOGY itself included one or more theses which already contained a statement about particular domains of subject matter or about the priority of certain concepts. But we have noted that PHENOMENOLOGY is first of all a pure methodological concept which only specifies the how of the research. The aspiration to carry it through to completion is nothing other than setting out to do the most radical research in philosophy. But inasmuch as PHENOMENOLOGY is also defined by its theme (intentionality), it still includes a prior decision on just what, among the manifold of entities, its theme really is. Why this should be precisely intentionality is not definitively demonstrated. We have only an account of the fact that the basic theme in the breakthrough and development of PHENOMENOLOGY is intentionality. Our critical investigation has specifically led us beyond this theme. GA20EN §14

This process of having recourse and seeking a connection to traditional philosophies has also been the way the conception of PHENOMENOLOGY is defined for the broader scientific public. The two main directions of PHENOMENOLOGY, established by Husserl and by Scheler, were regarded directly in terms of the degree to which they established a connection with already extant philosophies, while the truly positive tendencies and the positive work itself were far less appreciated and understood. The matters discovered were not understood phenomenologically but were taken for granted. The new horizons for researching such matters were explained instead from what was traditionally known and so assimilated by modification. But this process of having recourse and seeking a connection to the tradition includes the assumption of particular interrogative contexts and particular concepts which certainly in turn are then clarified relatively along phenomenological lines and conceived more or less rigorously. However, we not only want to understand that such a contact with the tradition brings prejudices with it. We also want to establish a genuine contact with the tradition. For the opposite way would be just as fantastic, represented in the opinion that a philosophy can be built in mid-air, just as there have often been philosophers who believed that one can begin with nothing. Thus, the contact with the tradition, the return to history, can have a double sense. On the one hand, it can be purely a matter of traditionalism, in which what is assumed is itself not subjected to criticism. On the other hand, however, the return can also be performed so that it goes back prior to the questions which were posed in history, and the questions raised by the past are once again originally appropriated. This possibility of assuming history can then also show that the assumption of the question of the sense of being is not merely an external repetition of the question which the Greeks already raised. If this formulation of the question of being is a genuine one, then the repetition must rather bring us to understand that the Greek formulation of the question was conditioned and provisional and, what is more, had to be so. GA20EN §14

The critical reflection revealed the phenomenologically fundamental question of being as such without also bringing out the ground of this question. But this ground, and with it the presupposition of the question, can be made clear only after the question is first raised. Pronouncing and uttering the interrogative sentence does not yet raise the question itself. After the manner of the statements of idle chatter, there are also questions which are merely asserted. The critical reflection at this point showed us that phenomenological questioning can begin in the most obvious of matters. But this “matter of course” means that the phenomena are not really exposed to the light of day, that the ways to the matters are not without further ado ready-made, and that there is the constant danger of being misled and forced off the trail. This in general is precisely what constitutes the sense of PHENOMENOLOGY as expository research. GA20EN §14

Just as the phenomena cannot be given without effort—it is rather incumbent upon research to arrive at the phenomena—so likewise is the concept of PHENOMENOLOGY not something which can be definitively determined in a single stroke. Our critical reflection has led us to question whether the thematic field of PHENOMENOLOGY is adequately determined. But this at the same time suggests that the scientific way of handling the theme is modified in its sense in accordance with the more radical conception of the thematic field. The critical reflection likewise gives us reason to doubt the previously given definition of PHENOMENOLOGY as ‘analytic description of intentionality in its apriori.’ Perhaps the phenomenologically original definition of intentionality and in particular the fundamental conception of its being entail a modification of the method of ‘analytic description in the apriori.’ In the end, there is also a modification of the customary division in PHENOMENOLOGY of the different groups of investigations into the phenomenologies of act, subject matter, and relation. Intentionality is indeed the doublet of intentio and intentum. In these two directions, one distinguished the elaboration of the intentio, the act, of the intentum, that to which the act is directed, and finally the elaboration of the relation between these two. A more refined conception of the entity having the character of the intentional will permit us to see and so supersede the threefold basis of this distinction. The closer determination of being will further lead to a more refined conception of the sense of the apriori. Heretofore, the apriori was specified as that which is always already there, that is, it was characterized on the basis of a particular concept of being, the Greek concept. GA20EN §14

The more radical conception of being as such will bring a modification of the concept of the apriori, but this will be accompanied by a modification of our way of apprehending the apriori as well, of ideation. As before in PHENOMENOLOGY corresponding to its apriori, which was not truly understood but conceived in conjunction with the Greek concept of being, so likewise is ideation, in its corresponding logic, conceived as a logic of the experience of this sort of being, a logic which is then apprehension of the general, generalization. The more precise determination of the thematic field will later pave the way for a more suitable conception of the mode of apprehension, which up to now was seen only as description, a descriptive account of the simply apprehended subject matter itself. This tells us nothing about the sense of its apprehension. Something can be made of that sense only when the matter itself is clearly specified in the sense of its being. It will thus become apparent that description has the character of interpretation, since that which is the theme of the description becomes accessible in a specific kind of interpretation, expository interpretation. GA20EN §14

If we proceed in this way, it might seem that what we have thus far considered and gone through is unrelated to what follows, so that we could have spared ourselves this passage through PHENOMENOLOGY in the form of an immanent critique, especially since it was expressly emphasized that the question of the being of entities can in principle be put to any entity. We do not need the specific entity of intentionality in order to awaken the question of the being of entities. Why this circumstantial and complicated consideration, and possibly a consideration of that which in a way is antiquated? What was the point of the consideration if we are assuming no propositions from PHENOMENOLOGY but, in the spirit of PHENOMENOLOGY, once again have to demonstrate any proposition which may possibly be taken up? GA20EN §14

The actual elaboration of the articulation of the question is accordingly a PHENOMENOLOGY of Dasein; but it already finds the answer and finds it purely as a research answer, because the elaboration of this articulation concerns the entity which has within itself a distinctive relationship of being. Dasein is here not only ontically decisive but also ontologically so for us as phenomenologists. GA20EN §17

We have oriented the question of in-being in particular toward the relation of knowing because this mode of being of Dasein traditionally has priority in the philosophical determination of the relation of the ego (the subject) to the world; and yet this mode of being is still not originally conceived but instead remains the source of all sorts of confusion as a result of this indeterminacy in regard to its being. The so-called epistemological positions of idealism and realism and their varieties and mixtures are all possible only on the basis of a lack of clarity of the phenomenon of in-being, about which they formulate theories without having exposed it in advance. Idealism and realism both let the relationship of being between subject and object first emerge. Indeed, in idealism this leads to the assertion (in quite distinct ways, depending on whether it is logical or psychological idealism) that it is the subject which first of all creates the relation of being to the object. Realism, which goes along with the same absurdity, in contrary fashion says that it is the object which through causal relations first effects the relations of being to the subject. In opposition to these basically equivalent positions, there is a third position which presupposes the relationship of being between subject and object from the start, for example, that of Avenarius: between subject and object there is what is called a ‘principal coordination,’ and subject and object must from the start be regarded as standing in a relationship of being. But this relationship is in its mode of being left undefined, as is the mode of being implied in subject and object. A position which wants to stand on this side of idealism and realism because it does not let the relationship first emerge, but which at the same time stands on the far side of idealism and realism because it tries to preserve and yet sublate both positions in their own rights, which they really do not have, is a position whose sense is always oriented to this theory. What has been said in our present consideration about knowing as a mode of being of in-being and suggested as a task of a PHENOMENOLOGY of knowing stands neither on this side nor on the far side of idealism and realism, nor is it either one of the two positions. Instead it stands wholly outside of an orientation to them and their ways of formulating questions. GA20EN §20

It is in this way that one first tries even today in PHENOMENOLOGY to define the environmental thing in its being. Yet this definition is in its approach not essentially different from that of Descartes. Here too, a thing is approached as an object of observation and perception, and perception is then, as it is typically put, complemented by value judgment. As we shall see, the authentic environmental being of the thing is passed over here just as it is in Descartes’s extreme formulation of res corporea as res extensa. This characterization of the worldly thing as a value-laden thing of nature is all the more fateful as it gives the impression that it is in fact a genuine and original characterization, where there is in fact in the background the full structure and the constitution of a thing of nature, a thing with properties, qualities, some of which are qualities of value, predicates of value. The thing remains naturalized; we do not come across the entity as an environing world, nor is the worldhood of this world brought into focus or for that matter explicated. Such concrete questions are not even asked because this determination arises from a characteristic exemplary approach to the world which prompts us to assume in the first instance that a thing is as it is present in an isolated perception of it. But when we make some fundamental inquiries into this kind of determination of the world, we see clearly, especially from Descartes, that the being of the world is always characterized relative to particular kinds of experience and capacities of apprehension—sensation, imagination, intellect—which have themselves arisen in the context of a particular characterization of man, namely, in the context of the familiar anthropological definition homo animal rationale. A particular biological and anthropological interpretation favors certain potential kinds of apprehension of the world and these decide on what is accessible in the world in its being and thus on how the being of the world is itself determined. GA20EN §22

It thus becomes clear that the references are precisely the involvements [Wobei] in which the concernful occupation dwells; it does not dwell among isolated things of the environing world and certainly not among thematically or theoretically perceived objects. Rather things constantly step back into the referential totality or, more properly stated, in the immediacy of everyday occupation they never even first step out of it. That they do not step out of the referential totality, which itself is encountered primarily in the form of familiarity: this phenomenon characterizes the obviousness and unobtrusiveness of the reality of the environing world. Things recede into relations, they do not obtrude themselves, in order thus to be there for concern. These primary phenomena of encounter: reference, referential totality, the closed character of the referential context, familiarity of the referential whole, things not stepping out of referential relations, are of course seen only if the original phenomenological direction of vision is assumed and above all seen to its conclusion, which means letting the world be encountered in concern. This phenomenon is really passed over when the world is from the start approached as given for observation or, as is by and large the case even in PHENOMENOLOGY, when the world is approached just as it shows itself in an isolated, so-called sense perception of a thing, and this isolated free-floating perception of a thing is now interrogated on the specific kind of givenness belonging to its object. There is here a basic deception for PHENOMENOLOGY which is peculiarly frequent and persistent. It consists in having the theme determined by the way it is phenomenologically investigated. For inasmuch as phenomenological investigation is itself theoretical, the investigator is easily motivated to make a specifically theoretical comportment to the world his theme. Thus a specifically theoretical apprehension of the thing is put forward as an exemplary mode of being-in-the-world, instead of phenomenologically placing oneself directly in the current and the continuity of access of the everyday preoccupation with things, which is inconspicuous enough, and phenomenally recording what is encountered in it. It is precisely this inconspicuousness of comportment and of its corresponding way of having the world which must be secured in order to see in it the specific presence of the world. GA20EN §23

When we say that the basic structure of worldhood, the being of the entity which we call world, lies in meaningfulness, this amounts to saying that the structure as we have characterized it thus far, the references and the referential contexts, are basically correlations of meaning, meaningful contexts. In what follows, we shall treat only what is most necessary for the characterization of these phenomena, specifically to the extent that it contributes to the elucidation of meaningfulness. PHENOMENOLOGY in particular has time and again sensed the urgency of bringing that complex of phenomena which is usually summarized under the heading of ‘signs’ once and for all definitively out into the open. But these have remained only approaches. Husserl does some things in the second volume of the Logical Investigations, where the first investigation deals with signs in connection with demarcation of the phenomenon of verbal meaning from the universal phenomenon (as he says) of signs. Moreover, the universal scope of phenomena such as signs and symbols readily gives rise to using them as a clue for interpreting the totality of entities, the world as a whole. No less a figure than Leibniz sought in his characteristica universalis systematization of the totality of entities by way of an orientation to the phenomenon of the sign. Recently, Spengler, following Lamprecht’s procedure, has applied the idea of symbol to the history of philosophy and metaphysics in general, without providing a properly scientific clarification of the group of phenomena named by it. Most recently, in his work Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer has tried to explain the various domains of life (language, knowledge, religion, myth) by viewing them basically as phenomena of the expression of spirit. He has likewise sought to broaden the critique of reason presented by Kant into a critique of culture. Here too the phenomenon of expression, of symbol in the broadest sense, is taken as a clue for explaining all the phenomena of spirit and of entities in general. The universal applicability of formal clues such as ‘Gestalt,’ ‘sign,’ ‘symbol’ thus easily obscures the originality or non-originality of the interpretation thus achieved. What can be a suitable approach for aesthetic phenomena can have exactly the opposite effect in elucidating and interpreting other phenomena. What comes to light here is in fact a peculiar context which generally determines the human [i.e., spiritual] sciences in their development. In relation to such attempts, which are basically always violent, the object, the spiritual, which is at issue here, offers less resistance than in the field of natural science, where nature immediately takes its revenge on a wrongheaded approach. Because of our specific non-relationship to the spiritual, such objects and phenomena are more readily subject to misinterpretation, since the misinterpretation realizes itself as a spiritual product. It is understandable and applicable as a spiritual product and so can itself take the place of the subject matter to be understood, so that for a long time certain sciences of the spiritual could stand in a presumed relationship to it. This peculiar non-relationship is connected with the fact that this world of objects then seems to be easily understood and defined by anyone and by arbitrary means, and that in the field of these objects there is a peculiar lack of need for a suitable conceptuality, without which the natural sciences, for example, simply could not advance. Obviously, just such attempts at interpretation under the guidance of such universal phenomena from which all and sundry can be made—for ultimately each and every thing can be interpreted as a sign—pose a great danger for the development of the human sciences. GA20EN §23

If we have truly seen this, then we have gained an insight which is methodologically of great significance for the theory of meaning as such. It means that we are in a position to put an end to the usual wrongheaded approaches to the analysis of meanings, which are in part still common even in PHENOMENOLOGY. We would thus no longer pose the question, in starting from a verbal sound: How can a word have meaning, and how can a word mean something? This question is contrived, totally uprooted from the phenomenal composition of speaking and language. On the other hand, it is clear that linguistic meanings and generally meaning-contextures, structures, conceptuality, the entire context of problems with which logic in the strict sense would have to deal, can be understood only in reference to an actual fundamental analysis of Dasein itself, which has meanings in the primary sense. GA20EN §23

In addition, this phenomenon of resistance is inadequate because it is basically oriented only to the correlation of acts, just as it was in Dilthey. Scheler is thus also forced, as a basis for this old proposal of a subject which has acts, to draw again upon the distinction of in mente and extra mentem. Notwithstanding, here, quite independently from another quarter within PHENOMENOLOGY comes the insistence that reality can never be understood in terms of the mere knowledge of something, that above all an epistemology cannot be oriented toward judgments or the like. All this is worth noting, and Scheler emphasized particularly the latter quite forcefully when he said that today still three-fourths of all epistemologies are of the wrongheaded opinion that the primary aspect from which the object of knowledge, the entity in itself, can be apprehended is the judgment. GA20EN §24

I have presented these determinations of the basic structures of homogeneous world-space, which is regarded as the basis for nature, because they are simpler than those which would have to be given relative to contemporary physics and mathematics. But it should be noted that the simplicity of these determinations does not mean that they are already categorially transparent. For those who are somewhat more thoroughly conversant with mathematical things, I refer to an investigation carried out within the purview of PHENOMENOLOGY by Oskar Becker. Here, to be sure, the essential question of the genesis of the specifically mathematical space of nature from environmental space is not developed, although it stands in the background for the author. He begins immediately with the problem of space as it is approached in mathematics, specifically in modern geometry, but still provides detailed perspectives for the individual stages within geometry itself. To begin with, there is the pure morphological description of geometric shapes, which involves no measurement whatsoever. It is the kind of description which is also employed in botany when it describes the different shapes of leaves. This sort of work fixes well-defined morphological concepts which have their own exactness and cannot be mathematized. The second stage is that of analysis situs [topology], the analysis (geometry) of position, and the third stage is the truly metrical stage, the only one to which the term geometry in the strict sense applies. GA20EN §25

The various definitions of the ‘essence of language’ which have hitherto been devised: as ‘symbol,’ as ‘expression of knowledge,’ as ‘manifestation of lived experiences,’ as ‘communication,’ or as a ‘shaping’ of one’s own life, all of these definitions in each case always allude to only one phenomenal character in language itself and one-sidedly take it as a basis for an essential definition. Of course, little would be gained if the various and now familiar definitions of language were now collected and uniformly merged in some way, as long as we do not lay out in advance the structural totality in which language itself must be founded in its being, and which makes it understandable as a possibility of Dasein’s being. The sense of a scientific logic is the elaboration of this apriori structure of discourse in Dasein, the elaboration of the possibilities and kinds of interpretation, of the stages and forms of conceptuality developed in it. Such a scientific logic is nothing but a PHENOMENOLOGY of discourse, of logos. What otherwise circulates under the name ‘logic’ is a confused mixture of the analysis of thinking and knowing, theory of meaning, psychology of concept formation, theory of science or even ontology. It is only from the horizon of this idea of ‘logic’ that its history and with it the course taken by philosophical research itself become understandable. GA20EN §28

Now that we have brought the various structures of Dasein into a certain correlation with the basic phenomenon of care, this stage in our consideration serves to provide us with the basis upon which we could critically repeat what we have heard about intentionality in our introductory considerations. It could be shown from the phenomenon of care as the basic structure of Dasein that what PHENOMENOLOGY took to be intentionality and how it took it is fragmentary, a phenomenon regarded merely from the outside. But what is meant by intentionality—the bare and isolated directing-itself-towards—must still be set back into the unified basic structure of being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in. This alone is the authentic phenomenon which corresponds to what inauthentically and only in an isolated direction is meant by intentionality. I refer to this here only in passing in order to mark the place from which a fundamental critique of phenomenological inquiry finds its start. GA20EN §31

Submitted on 20.09.2023 17:32
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