1. The General Argument

The three occasions on which Husserl sets forth his general argument for the internality of outer objects are 1) his own special preface to the English edition of the Ideas, 2) the article “Phenomenology,” which he wrote for the Encyclopoedia Britannica, and 3) the first of the five Cartesian Meditations. Since the three versions do not differ in any material respect, there is no need to examine each in detail. The Britannica article is the most forceful statement of the argument. It is this version, therefore, that I shall chiefly consider. Unless otherwise stated all quotations in this section will be from the Britannica article.

The argument begins, in each instance, with the natural attitude of common sense. In this attitude the world exists for us as a reality independent of our experience of it and inclusive of us all. This natural attitude is quite satisfactory for the ordinary purposes of “life and science”; but it is unsatisfactory for philosophical reflection. It is unsatisfactory because philosophical reflection finds itself “impelled beyond the positive realism of life and science” by an “insight,” provided by the natural standpoint itself, that the world, naively taken for independently real, cannot really be independent of consciousness at all. For the moment we let this “independent” world “make its ‘appearance’ in consciousness as ‘the’ world, it is thenceforth related to the subjective; and all its existence, and the manner of it, assumes a new dimension” (my italics). It is on this “new dimension” that philosophical reflection now focuses. What it discovers is that on being made the object of consciousness the world becomes “related to consciousness” and acquires thereby a “‘being for us’. . . which can only gain its significance ‘subjectively’”

By virtue of being “related to consciousness” the being of the experienced world reveals itself as “being for us,” a “being for consciousness,” a relative, not an independent, being. Into this relative being the naive independence of the empirical world dissolves under the analytic scrutiny of phenomenological reflection; this independence is now seen to be a merely putative independence, a quality imputed to the world, i.e., the world is “posited” by the consciousness which makes the world its object. “Making,” therewith, ceases to be a metaphor and acquires a literal meaning: consciousness in originally intending the world literally makes or “constitutes” the world as its own intentional product and contains it as an integral part of itself. To this extent the world is “internal” to consciousness, and “we may call the world ‘internal’because it is related to consciousness” (my italics), and because, too, this “relativity to consciousness is not only an actual quality of our world, but from eidetic necessity, the quality of every conceivable world” (my italics), i.e., every conceivable world must be a possible object of consciousness, must be necessarily re!ated to consciousness.

The whole burden of this argument lies plainly in the repeated statement that the world is “related to consciousness,” in the sense of being an object of consciousness, a fact which can hardly be debated. But it can be debated whether this relation is what Husserl obviously takes it to be, namely, real to both world and consciousness. This is by no means so evident as to be beyond question. It is surprising that an inquirer so acute as Husserl should overlook this point entirely, should not once consider even the possibility that the intentional relation may be external to its object and that consciousness may thus contain its object only intentionally, not really. As though unaware of this possibility Husserl simply takes it for granted that the intentional relation is real to its object and concludes without further ado that consciousness must really contain the world. The rest then follows, as we now well know.

Such is the “insight” which, according to the general argument, impels beyond the natural attitude to the transcendental standpoint. From the natural standpoint, of course, it is not an insight, but an oversight, a mistake of momentous consequence. The cause of the mistake, 1 strongly suspect, is Husserl’s unquestioning adherence to the theory of sensation and the monadic view of consciousness—perhaps, too, his uncritical acceptance of the Hegelian doctrine, then widely held, that all relations are internal.

2. The Special Arguments

The general argument dealt not so much with a single species of awareness as with the intentionality of outer experience in general. The special argument, as its name would indicate, deals with a single species of intentional consciousness, namely, sense perception. Since it is more specific, it is naturally more detailed and technical. This argument evolved in Husserl’s mind in the course of the Logical Investigations and emerged fully developed in the Ideas, where as the celebrated transcendental “reduction,” it received its most authoritative and incisive formulation. In examining the argument I shall quote from the Ideas, unless otherwise indicated, as translated into English by Boyce Gibson, albeit with frequent emendations of my own wherever a more accurate and literal rendering seems to require it. 1 shall use the pagination of the 1931 edition, published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Since Husserl was rather lavish in his use of italics, 1 shall indicate explicitly only those italics which are mine; where no such explicit indication is given the reader is to assume that the italics are Husserl’s.

The special argument—that consciousness must really contain its objects—is twofold; it has two parts relatively independent of each other, yet intimately connected. The first part is set forth in the First Chapter of the Second Section of the Ideas (pp. 101-111, paragraphs 27 through 32). The second part is set forth in the succeeding chapter, the Second Chapter of the Second Section (pp. 112-146, paragraphs 33 through 46). Both parts set out from the natural attitude but deal with different features thereof. The first part dwells on the “general thesis” which the natural standpoint is said to involve. The second part focuses on the way in which outer objects are “given” to consciousness. Briefly, the first part argues from “thesis” or “positing,” the second from “givenness”; and both conclude that what we regard as “outer” must really be “internal” to consciousness. I shall examine first the argument from thesis and then the argument from givenness.

A. THE ARGUMENT FROM THESIS

Up to this point I have made no mention of “thesis” or “positing” or of their connection with “constitution.” The connection with constitution is close. According to the theory of constitution outer objects are fashioned out of sensations. But even when thus fully fashioned or constituted they still lack one vital compotent, namely, “existence.” Now existence, as Kant insisted, is not a “real predicate,” i.e., not an actual constituent of a thing, hence not a product of synthesis or constitution, but a result of “positing” or “thesis.” Thesis is thus something over and beyond the constituting act itself, something that must supervene on the act in order that the product of the act may be rendered an “existing” thing, an “independent” object “out there” in the external world. Until it has this “sense” of existing independently out there, the merely constituted object is not the object we encounter in the natural attitude. The doctrine of constitution, therefore, requires to be supplemented by the doctrine of thesis—a requirement which Husserl was the first to emphasize.

But if constitution requires thesis, thesis also requires constitution, since, presumably, it is only something constituted that can be posited. This mutual connection is important; for if we can show that sense perception involves thesis, we can infer at once that it also involves constitution. And, conversely, if it involves constitution, it must also involve thesis. In either event,—and a fortiori in both—the conclusion is inescapable that consciousness must really contain its objects.

Let us take a closer look at “thesis” and “positing” and their equivalence. These two words are derived from equivalent Greek and Latin verbs, both of which mean to put, place, or set. “Thesis” is transliterated from the Greek θϵ́σ4S, (from τίθημι.); “positing” is taken almost as directly from the Latin positio (from pono). Since τίθημι and pono have the same meaning, it is etymologically correct to equate thesis and positing.

To English ears, however, this equation has an unfamiliar ring. Thesis, as we customarily use it, does not directly suggest positing; and positing, infrequently used at best, does not directly suggest thesis. Positing came to us from the medieval schoolmen, chiefly, I believe, from their logical writings. In the modus ponens, or modus ponendo ponens, for example, one spoke—in the corresponding Latin, of course—of “positing” the antecedent of a hypothetical proposition and hence of being forced to “posit” the consequent, whence the ponens in the title. In contemporary English we would say “affirm” or “assert” rather than “posit”; and we would not speak of the “thesis” of antecedent or consequent. Positing and thesis have come to mean something so different for us that we can recover their sameness only by an effort.

In German usage, on the other hand, this sameness or equivalence has been preserved. Both Thesis and Position—all German nouns are capitalized—retain the active sense of placing, putting, setting as a purely mental act, an act of thought or understanding, like the positing of the antecedent. Note that the German Position is the equivalent of the English “positing,” not of the English “position” and is to be translated accordingly. To Thesis and Position, both of foreign extraction, German philosophers added three other equivalents of strictly German origin: Setzen, Setzung, and not infrequently Satz. These five terms are virtual synonyms. They all express the one central notion of putting or placing as an activity of consciousness; more especially, in German philosophical usage, the activity or act of positing existence.

This philosophical usage goes back at least to Kant, to his famous dictum that “existence is not a real predicate” but “only the positing of a thing” (bloss die Position eines Dinges, K.d.r.v., В 626, A 598. Cf. also в 287 п.). What Kant here means by Position, “positing,” is clear enough. It is plainly equated in the context with Setzung, which signifies that empirical existence is something “posited” by consciousness, the result of a “thesis.” Fichte makes capital of this notion in his Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (cf. especially Erster Teil, 3). He makes positing (Setzung, Setzen) the principal “activity of the ego” (Handlung des Ich). In characterizing this Handlung, however, Fichte prefers Thesis to Position, for he finds that the Setzen which the ego performs advances in three phases: “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis.” He may have got this triad from Kant’s obiter dictum about the way the three categories are related in each of the four groups. It became, in any event, the famous triad of Hegel’s dialectic, surely one of the most distinctive products of German philosophical thought.

Little wonder that “thesis” and “positing” (Position) are a bit disconcerting to English readers. Not only are they unfamiliar; their credentials are suspect; and the metaphysical load they bear is highly preemptive: all empirical existence, they declare, is “only a positing” performed by consciousness!

Manifestly we are dealing here with another one of those “fundamental assumptions,” another philosophic predilection like the theory of sensation. Unlike the sensation theory, however, this “thesis” predilection is restricted in the main to the German idealistic tradition. Its genealogy, nonetheless, goes back to the theory of sensation and ideas from which, as we have observed, constitution, thesis, and finally monadism ensue. Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology is perhaps the most complete and striking phase of this development. In it we witness, as Father Lauer put it, the final “triumph of subjectivity,” the consummation of the subjectivizing process which began with Descartes.

And so in the very terms he takes as primitive—”thesis” and “positing”—Husserl has quietly and unobtrusively affirmed at the outset what his argument ostensibly would prove as a consequent. For if empirical existence is extruded by positing, then assuredly what we naively call “outer” must in sooth be internal to consciousness, i.e., consciousness must really contain its objects. I have no doubt that to Husserl this positing seemed to be pretheoretically evident, self-evident. But is it not the same dubious self-evidence that attaches to sensations, the self-evidence of a predilection, Let us now turn to Husserľs argument from thesis.

The argument from thesis begins in the natural attitude with “a piece of pure description prior to all ‘theory’” (p. 105); namely, the essence of the natural standpoint is “the general thesis (die Generalthesis) by virtue of which the world is everpresent to me as the aU-encompassing reality embracing all existence” (p. 107). The evidence for this statement is immediate and direct; we need only turn our reflective gaze on the “essence” of the natural attitude. Thus prior to all theory, prior to all inference, hypothesis, argument, it is pretheoretically evident, self-evident to the natural standpoint itself, that the living core of this standpoint is a “general thesis.”

In itself this general thesis “does not consist in an act proper (ein eigener Act), in an articulated judgment about existence” (p. 107). It is rather “something persistently enduring (etwas . . . dauernd Bestehendes)՝՝ throughout the course of our waking lives, giving to all that we perceive “the character of being ‘there,’ ‘present,’ and capable at all times of rising to the level of articulate speech.” Thus even though it is not an “act proper,” still “we can treat this potential and unexpressed thesis exactly as we can the thesis of an explicit judgment” (ibid.), namely, we can “suspend” it.

The argument now turns on an alleged similarity between judgment and perception, intellect and sense. Both are said to involve thesis, a thesis which in both instances can be “suspended.” Presumably, the instance of judgment is the more evident, or familiar, and hence is to be taken as the touchstone for the less evident instance of perception. It may be well here to recall another “similarity” between judgment and perception which we previously examined and found wanting. Let us keep this previous instance in mind as we examine the present “simi1 arity.”

Judgmental thesis is most easily discerned in the phenomenon of “suspending judgment.” When we suspend a judgment we lay aside for the time being our acceptance or rejection of it, and simply “entertain” it as a mere statement or proposition, usually for the purpose of clarifying or explicating its meaning, setting forth its antecedents and consequences, etc., all with an air of complete detachment. Having examined the proposition in this withdrawn manner we may then lift the suspension and once again declare our assent or dissent. Or, as sometimes happens, we may be left in doubt by the examination and be moved to defer our commitment pending the receipt of further evidence. In this event we do not lift the suspension, but continue it, this time, however, with the hope of lifting it eventually and thus removing a state of indecision.

This element of belief or commitment, actually holding to be true or false, probable or impossible, etc., is the element of thesis in judging which Husserl has in mind. It is plainly not an act proper, like the act of framing (or constituting) a proposition. And yet it is just as plainly a performance of some sort, a performance vital to judgment and, indeed, to the conduct of life. We might say that it makes the judgment a judgment, so that without the thesis, or with the thesis suspended, the judgment is no longer a judgment, but a proposition. It will be convenient here to distinguish the two on this basis: a judgment is a proposition plus thesis; a proposition is a judgment minus thesis.

Obviously the thesis adds nothing material to the proposition; and its suspension subtracts nothing material from the judgment. Materially, judgment and proposition are not merely the same, they are literally identical. What suspending the thesis does to judgment, therefore, is simply to render it inoperative in a state of suspended animation, so to speak, set it in “brackets,” as Husserl puts it, or “out of gear” (ausgeschaltet).

Now it is Husserľs contention that as we can suspend any judgment thesis, so in “exactly” the same way can we suspend the general thesis of the natural attitude, the thesis that “posits existence,” the empirical existence of the world. “We put out of action the general thesis which belongs to the essence of the natural attitude, we place in brackets all that it includes in respect of existence (in ontischer Hinsicht), i.e., the whole natural world which is continually ‘there for US,” ‘present,’ and will ever remain there as ‘reality’ for consciousness even though we choose to bracket it” (p. 110).

“If I do this, as I am fully free to do, I do not then deny this ‘world’ as though I were a sophist; I do not doubt its existence as though I were a sceptic; rather I exercise ‘phenomenological’ ίποχή which completely bars me from using any judgment (Urteil) [sic] concerning spatio-temporal existence” (p. 110).

I added a “sic” toward the close of this quotation to call attention to the word “judgment.” The phenomenological suspension of the general thesis “completely bars me from using any judgment concerning spatio-temporal existence” (my italics). All judgments which assert or deny or imply such existence are debarred. Does the phenomenological suspension do anything more than outlaw these existential judgments? Is it anything more than a judgmental suspension?

This question is decisive, for if there is no such thing as the general thesis, if it is a groundless assumption, then Husserľs reduction can only be judgmental. It could affect only the judgment, “the world exists,” not the actual existence of the world. In this event, Husserľs reduction would be much the same as Descartes’s “methodical doubt” of the world’s existence. It is in effect, however, Husserľs contention that this is precisely where he goes beyond Descartes, that whereas Descartes was content with suspending merely the judgment, “the world exists,” he (Husserl) was intent on suspending also the actual existence of the world, thus adding to Descartes’s judgmental suspension a sweeping experiential or perceptual suspension.

Manifestly, this “radical” addition is possible only on the assumption of the “general thesis,” an assumption which never occurred to Descartes. It was not until Kant that the notion of thesis came to the fore. In this respect Husserl’s attitude toward Descartes was a bit anachronistic. It was not, however, uncharitable; for Husserl felt that the genius of Descartes was so “original” that he might well have discerned a feature so “self-evident” and decisive. All of which is to say, of course, that for Husserl the general thesis is obvious beyond question and that the reduction is a literal suspending of existence, as well as a suspending of existential judgments, that is, an experiential as well as a judgmental suspension.

Being literally a suspending of the “general thesis,” the phenomenological reduction should affect the objects of the natural attitude much as the judgmental suspension affects judgments. As the suspended judgment is no longer a judgment but a proposition, so the suspended natural object should be no longer a natural object but something different—different not in its content, for by analogy this should remain exactly the same, but different in its existence, namely, with its existence suspended or “neutralized.” The difference might be put this way: the reduced “natural object” is no longer “natural” but simply an “object”—yet still an “object of perception” or “perceptual object.”

We have, then, the “perceived natural object” and the mere “perceptual object” to which the former reduces. Since both objects involve perception, one might naturally suppose that both are perceived. But not so. What we actually perceive is solely the “perceived natural object.” We do not perceive the “perceptual object”; we grasp it only by “transcendental reflection,” a kind of reflection which comes into play only after suspending the general thesis, not before, i.e., not in the natural attitude. What we thus grasp is no longer natural, existent, real, but just that which is posited as natural, existent, real. This is to say that the perceptual object is the “content” of the perception, the perceptual presentation or Vorstellung, which on being posited becomes the “perceived natural object.”

As Vorstellung the “perceptual object’’ is the analogue of the proposition. The perceptual object stands to the perceived natural object as the proposition stands to its corresponding judgment; as the proposition is that which is constituted in judgment and then posited, so the perceptual object is that which is constituted in perception and then posited. We may say accordingly that the perceived natural object reduces to a Vorstellung.

This Vorstellung, of course, is Husserl’s revised version of the traditional “idea.” But Husserl, you will recall, modified the traditional view so as to accommodate intentionality with its two performances, constitution and thesis. This entailed the distinction between intending act and intended product, or, which is the same thing, between “idea” as awareness and “idea” as object. The term “Vorstellung,” which is usually rendered “presentation” in English but which is also the German word for the traditional “idea,” does not clearly connote this distinction; rather it tends to obscure it. To fix the distinction terminologically, Husserl introduces from the Greek the word-pair “поета” (plural: “noemata”) and “noesis” (plural: “noeses”). Noema, replacing Vorstellung, is the intentionally constituted product or “sense” of an act, its “intentional object.” Noesis is the intending, the “intentional act” itself. Noeses are “immanent” in the stream of consciousness; noemata are “transcendent” of the stream. Together they make up the two grand dimensions of consciousness. Henceforth the central theme of Transcendental Phenomenology is that of noesis and поета and their intentional correlation. Thus instead of saying that the perceived natural object reduces to a Vorstellung, we shall say that it reduces to а поета.

At this point the analogy between judgment and perception becomes strained. Noemata no longer stand to perceived natural objects as propositions to judgments. Noemata, unlike proppositions, are not observable from the natural standpoint; they cannot be perceived. Neither can they be grasped by natural reflection or introspection. Both these operations are carried on in the natural attitude. Because they are not observable from the natural standpoint, noemata can only be thought in the natural attitude as hypothetical analogues of propositions. But now—so we are assured—these same “theoretical” entities become, by the reduction, “pretheoretical” objects of intuition, immediate data of “transcendental reflection.” This means that the reduction is a twofold accomplishment; 1) it reduces perceived objects to unperceivable noemata, and 2) it transforms reflection, increasing its purview by a vast domain of objects, noemata, of which reflection in its natural capacity is utterly oblivious. On both these counts the analogy between perception and judgment, поета and proposition, breaks down. Judgment and proposition are both accessible to natural reflection, and the transition from one to the other entails no transposition of standpoints.

Accordingly, let us abandon this analogy as a key to understanding the reduction, and turn instead to an example in which the reduction is actually carried out. Husserl gives such an example in paragraphs 88 and 89 of the Ideas.

Let us assume, he there suggests, that we are in a garden looking at a blossoming apple tree. “In the natural standpoint the apple tree is for us an existing thing in the transcendent reality of space, and the perception . . . is a psychical state belonging to us as real people.” Now in this kind of situation it may happen that the perception is a “mere hallucination,” that the perceived apple tree before us does not really exist. In this event, the “real relation, which was previously meant (gemeint) as really obtaining, is now disturbed. The perception alone remains; there is nothing real out there to which it relates” (p. 259).

“Let us now pass over to the phenomenological standpoint. . . . Together with the whole physical and psychical world the real obtaining of the real relation between perception and perceived is suspended; and yet a relation between perception and perceived is obviously left over, a relation which comes to essential givenness . . . as it fits into the transcendental stream of consciousness I Erlebnisstrom*].” This latter relation is the intentional relation, now completely divested of any “reality” or “existence,” and now seen in its “purity” to obtain whether the perception be genuine or haUucinatory or illusory or deceptive in any other way. For it is now “evident” that all these modes of awareness, “in the role they play in the natural standpoint, suecumb to the phenomenological suspension”; their differences fall away as unessential in the face of the reduction; i.e., they are all of the same kind: constituting modes of awareness. Hence for “perception,” as for hallucination, there is “no question whether anything corresponds to it in ‘the’ reality. This posited (thetische) reality is judgmentally (urteilsmässig) simply not there for us. And yet everything remains, so to speak, as of old. Even the transcendentally reduced perceptual experience (Wahrnehmungserlebnis) is the perception of ‘this blossoming apple tree, in this garden, etc.’ . . . The tree has suffered not the slightest alteration in any of its components, qualities, characters . . .” (pp. 259־ 260).

In the reduced perception the tree is thus retained intact, but only as “the perceived as such,” as “поета.” As such it remains in every detail identically the same. In its “existence,” however, it is completely other. “The tree plain and simple, the thing in nature, is utterly different from the perceived tree as such, which as perceptual sense belongs to the perception, and that inseparably. The tree plain and simple can burn away, be resolved into its chemica! elements, and so forth. But the sense—the sense of this perception, something that necessarily belongs to its essence—cannot burn away; it has no chemical elements, no forces, no real properties”; it is a mere “intentional object” or поета (pp. 260-261).

The difficulty is with the two objects, the two trees, the natural or real tree and the “intentional” tree, the one an object of perception, the other an object of transcendental reflection. In a way the two objects are not two but one. For they are identical in every given detail. And yet, in their “existence” they are as different as can be. The one is out there, capable of bearing fruit, of being cut down and burned, and so on. The other lacks completely these “real,” but insensible, properties or potencies; it can do nothing, and can be nothing other than what it is, namely, an intentionally constituted поета or “sense” internal to the perceiving consciousness.

Manifestly the reduction here involves something more than mere existence. For although we may not have altered a single given sensible quality, we have obviously removed all its insensible properties, the inherent powers or dispositions which make up its “essence” as a tree. Suspending existence would thus seem to entail suspending essence as well. Conversely, positing existence would seem to entail positing essence. Even from the transcendental standpoint this is difficult. For it would imply that thesis is not the simple positing of existence, but the constituting of a real essence and infusing it somehow into an already constituted поета, a process which Husserl does not even contemplate.

The nature of such a process we can only conjecture. Noemata are sensible, whereas essences are not. The tree as поета is constituted out of given sensations—”hyletic data,” Husserl calls them. The essence of the tree, assuming it to be constituted, must be constituted out of materials insensible in character. We know not what these materials are or how they give rise to essences. Nor do we know how essences are lodged inside noemata and the whole posited as existing out there. All we know is that some such process must take place, if Husserľs theory of reduction is correct; i.e., if noemata are by thesis to become natural objects.

What we learn from the example of the tree is that the positing and suspending of existence is also the positing and suspending of essence; also, that the tree and its поета, the unreduced and the reduced tree, are “identical” in only a very superficial—literally superficial—sense, like the identity of an object with its reflected image, or of a person with his photograph. Of reflection in its two capacities, natural and transcendental, the example of the tree adds nothing to our understanding. Instead, it has added to our perplexity as we contemplate the duality of objects and capacities which result from the reduction—all, of course, considered from the natural standpoint.

I repeat now a former question. Is there actually such a thing as transcendental reflection with noemata as its actual objects? I can discover no such thing, although I once thought I could. But if I can no longer discover it, I can still think it as a consequence flowing from the theory of sensation and ideas and the companion doctrines of constitution and thesis. On this highly theoretical basis alone can 1 make intelligible Husserl’s notion of noemata as objects of a special kind of intuition.

This is to say that the reduction is a theory, an intricate argument, not a piece of phenomenological analysis. It is also to say that the reduction is wholly judgmental, not perceptual or experiential. To assume as Husserl does that perception and experience are “thetic,” is to draw once again a false analogy between intellect and sense, like the previous analogy which held that the perceptual synthesis in experience is productive or constitutive like the intellectual synthesis in judgment. The two analogies go closely together and both rest solidly on the theory of sensation and ideas.

Such then is the argument from thesis, or reduction, the first part of the special argument by which Husserl attempts to show that the outer objects of experience must be internal to consciousness. As an argument, of course, it is fallacious if only because it assumes from the outset what it would prove. Let us now turn to the second part of the special argument which is set forth in the succeeding chapter of the Ideas.

B. THE ARGUMENT FROM GIVENNESS

The argument from givenness is quite independent of the argument from thesis and makes no use of the reduction. Beginning once again with what is “given us in the natural attitude (uns in der natürlichen Einstellung gegeben)” (p. 112)—the Lebenswelt as he later calls it—Husserl seizes on a second insight which, like the first insight, is supplied by this attitude yet impels beyond it. This second insight emerges from the following reflections.

Outer objects according to the natural attitude are “real,” “existent,” “independent.” Each of these transcendent objects possesses a “being in itself”; whereas an immanent object (an act or sensation) possesses only a “being in consciousness.” But for all this “being in itself” a transcendent object “is never such as to be out of relation to consciousness and its Ego” (p. 148); more specifically, it “must needs be experienceable, and not merely by an Ego conjured into being as an empty logical possibility, but by an actual Ego” (p. 150); for “experienceability, never betokens an empty logical possibility, but one that has its motive in the system of experience” (p. 148).

Husserl begins here by invoking the general argument: transcendent objects must be “related to consciousness.” But he proceeds at once to specify: to be related to consciousness is to be “experienceable”; and to be experienceable is to be such as to be “givable” (p. 149). Givenness thus pertains “essentially” to the very being of a transcendent object as experienceable.

Now the mode of givenness characteristic of all sense perception is by way of “perspectives,” “adumbrations,” or sensuous “appearances,” from “points of view,” angles of vision, at this or that distance, etc., each actual standpoint together with its actual perspectives being, as it were, the momentary focal point of actuality in a limitless “horizon” of possible standpoints, each with its own possible perspectives. Each of these possible standpoints—they are manifestly infinite in number—may in turn be actualized, but only one at a time and each time as a fresh center of actuality within this “shifting but everpresent horizon” (p. 149) or “field of perception” (p. 101).

Perceivability or experienceability thus involves 1) givenness in the manner of endlessly varying perspectives of a thing as its appearances, and 2) the perceptual field as the one limitless horizon in which alone all appearances, possible as well as actual, occur—remembering that it is only actual perspectives which are actually given at any one time. In short, to be transcendent means to be perspectively given (or “givable”) within the one field of perception or experience.

This is clear enough. But the picture changes abruptly. The transcendent object with its manifold of actual and possible perspectives or appearances, all occurring in the one field of experience, turns out to be not an objective, but a subjective state of affairs. Actually the change is not abrupt at all; it only seemed abrupt to us. For whereas we had naively taken appearances and perspectives to be relative in an empirically real situation, we suddenly realize that Husserl has been taking them all along to be subjective sensations internal to consciousness. We learn this on being told that the activity of perceiving a transcendent object is a process of “synthesizing” appearancemanifolds into the unity of a single apprehension, into the one awareness of an identical thing appearing in manifold ways. This “synthesis,” obviously subjective, is exercised on a subjective content and issues in a subjective product. Thus, the transcendent object, naively taken to be external to consciousness, must really be internal.

What Husserl has done here is obvious enough by now. He has subjectivized the sense qualities of things, their sensory appearances or perspectives, as the theory of sensation requires. Since these given data are all subjective, the thing thus given must also be subjective, or internal to consciousness. Such, in brief, is the argument from givenness—•but only in its opening phase. A second phase follows at once as a kind of corollary.

This corollary has to do with the difference between the outer objects of perception on the one hand and the inner data of introspection—Erlebnisse and their immanent contents—on the other hand. This difference is first revealed by the contrast between their modes of givenness, between a givenness which requires perspectives and a givenness which precludes perspectives. Because inner processes (Erlebnisse) cannot appear perspectively, they are by nature “something which in perception is given as ‘absolute’” (p. 139). They are “given as ‘absolute’” because they are given not through an endless sequence of actual and possible perspectives requiring a synthesis which can never be “complete” (vollkommen), but simply, directly, “completely,” apodictically. Sense objects, on the other hand, can only appear through an inexhaustible infinitude of (actual and possible) perspectives. Patently no outer thing can ever be “completely given”; our perception of it can never be “complete,” hence the thing can never be given as “absolute.”

What Husserl is saying here will boil down eventually to a pair of statements with which we are already familiar: 1) inner perception is apodictic whereas outer perception is problematic, and 2) inner objects are necessary whereas outer objects are contingent. In the process of arriving at these statements Husserl leads his reader through a terminological haze where “absolute” and “complete” double elusively for “necessary” and “apodictic,” and where “existence” becomes a function of “givenness.”

On penetrating this haze we discern an intelligible, if unacceptable, argument. The argument begins with the assertion of a “correlation between thing and thing-perception” which is such that “the sense of thing (der Sinn von Ding) gets determined through what is given in thing-perception (and what else could determine this sense?)” (p. 138). This “correlation” is intelligible of course only on the assumption of constitution—an assumption as yet unwarranted, but nonetheless quietly invoked. For, manifestly, if the thing is intentionally constituted in thing-perception, then thing-perception determines the thing or sense of thing. By virtue of this “correlation,” taken now as an “insight,” Husserl infers immediate!y 1) the necessity of inner objects from the apodictic quality of inner experience, and 2) the contingency of outer objects from the problematic quality of outer experience.

In a previous chapter I argued that this inferring of existencequality from experience-quality is simply not valid, that we cannot, for example, infer the necessity of inner existence from the apodictic quality of inner experience. But let us continue with Husserl’s argument.

It belongs “to the essence of the thing-world that no perception . . . gives us anything absolute . . . ; and with this hangs essentially together that every . . . experience leaves open the possibility that what is given . . . does not exist. It is an essentially valid law that the existence of a thing is never demanded as necessary by virtue of its givenness, but in a certain way is always contingent” (or “accidental,” zufällig, p. 144).

To the natural attitude this paragraph is not acceptable. Perception may not “give anything absolute,” but this does not “leave open the possibility that what is given [perceived] does not exist.” For if only the existent can be perceived (given); then what does not exist cannot be perceived, cannot “really” be given; it can only be a delusion or hallucination. From this it follows analytically that the existence of a perceived thing is always “demanded” as “necessary to its givenness in experienee,” though not as “necessary in itself,” for in itself the perceived is only contingent, exists only contingently.

What Husserl has done here, as I remarked shortly before, is to derive the doctrine of contingent and necessary existence from the doctrine of apodictic and assertorie perception. This is possible only on the assumption of constitution and the “correlation” between thing and thing-perception which it entails. Granted this assumption, then the nature of thing-existence is indeed determined by the nature of thing-perception—at least in the case of outer things. But lacking this assumption, as it was lacking with Descartes, there is no such “correlation” and no possibility of deriving existence from awareness.

Husserl’s argument draws to a surprising climax. “In every way, then, it is clear [sic] that everything which is there in the world of things is on grounds of principle only a presumptive reality (nur präsumptive Wirklichkeit)՛, that I myself, on the contrary, for whom it is there . . . I myself or my actual experiencings am absolute reality, given through a positing (Setzung) that is unconditioned and simply inevitable. The thesis of my pure Ego and its personal life, which is necessary and plainly indubitable, thus stands opposed to the thesis of the world which is contingent. Every bodily (leibhaftig) given thing can also not be՝, no bodily given experiencing (Erlebnis) can also not be: that is the essential law which defines this necessity and that contingency” (p. 145).

If positing is imputing existence to something constituted, 1 do not see how I could posit myself and my actua! experiencings, since these include my constitutings and positings of external things. “The thesis of my pure Ego and its personal life” thus sounds very much like a thesis of the general thesis, a positing of positing. Nor do I understand how an “absolute reality” can be “given through a positing that is unconditioned and simply inevitable.” A reality or existence that is posited would seem for that very reason to be “presumptive,” contingent. And a positing that is in itself unconditioned and inevitable is something quite new and baffling. These obscurities arise in the main from the melange of “absolute,” “necessary/’ “apodictic,” “contingent,” etc., in which Husserl, unlike Descartes, has confused two very distinct and relatively independent doctrines, the one about existence, the other about evidence—a confusion resulting from Husserl’s alleged “correlation” between thing and thing-perception with its tacit assumption of constitution and thesis.

Summarizing: since outer things can be given only perspectively, they cannot be given “adequately” as “absolute” or “necessary,” but only as “contingent,” i.e., contingent on consciousness, on its operations of constitution and thesis. On the other hand, since inner acts of consciousness cannot be given perspectively, they can be given “adequately” as “absolute” or “necessary.” The former is but a corollary to the unstated premise that since the perspectives, through which outer things are given, must be subjective (because relative), the things themselves thus given must also be subjective, or internal to consciousness. The latter follows from the erroneous correlation of existence with evidence.

In reflecting on this argument it is well to remember that we are supposedly “meditating” in the natural attitude on the “motives” that impel beyond it, on the pretheoretical “insights” which lead to the transcendental transposition. Since these motives and insights are supplied by the natural standpoint, we are still on this side of the transposition, this side of the reduction, still working our way toward the new point of view. If we find the going exceedingly rough, it is not only because of the difficulties already encountered. It is also because of further difficulties which arise in the following chapter. The argument from givenness, as I have just sketched it, is but the basis of a more elaborate discussion in which Husserl attempts to consolidate his idealistic position that consciousness is a realm of absolute, necessary being, and, by contrast, natural reality is a realm of contingent, relative being derived from consciousness and internal to it.* This is plain!y a discussion of the highest importance for transcendental phenomenology. It harbors further difficulties, of which I shall mention four.

The first of these difficulties is that Husserl seems to hold that there are primary as well as secondary sensations. Now secondary sensations 1 find difficult enough to imagine; but 1 cannot say that they are strictly unintelligible. Impressions of color, sound, smoothness I can envisage with Descartes and the tradition. But impressions—primary impressions—of shape, position, motion, number, and the like I simply cannot envisage. I find them quite unintelligible. With Descartes primary qualities were objective; only secondary qualities were subjective, hence reducible to sensations. Initially there was no thought of primary sensations; sensations, it went without saying, were all secondary. No one, I believe, ever maintained overtly that there are primary as well as secondary sensations. This was done only covertly, as I remarked in Chapter IV. Husserl never speaks of sensations as primary or secondary, although he frequently speaks of primary and secondary qualities. It is only covertly that he holds to primary as well as secondary sensations. This he does in his emphatic insistence that perceived sense qualities are in every instance to be distinguished sharply from their corresponding unperceived sensations or appearances.

“Like the perceived thing generally, so all its parts, sides, and components, be they primary or secondary qualities, are also necessarily transcendent of the perception, and on the same grounds everywhere. The color of the thing seen is in principle not a real [reel] component of the consciousness of color: it [the color] appears, but while appearing the appearance can and must be continually changing, as experience shows. The same color appears ‘in’ continuous manifolds of color-perspectives. Similarly for every other sense quality and likewise for every spatial shape! One and the same shape . . . appears continuously ever again ‘in another way,’ in ever differing shape-perspectives” (pp. 130-131).

Notice that Husserl, like Berkeley, finds primary and secondary qualities occurring inseparably together and enjoying the same status. Unlike Berkeley, however, he distinguishes sharply between perceived sense quality and unperceived sensation, or quality-perspective. This distinction looks very much like the distinction between transcendent thing and its поета. But Husserl does not speak here of reducing transcendent qualities to immanent sensations as their noemata. Reduction to noemata was the theme of the previous chapter. The theme of the present chapter is givenness, which he is attempting to treat quite independently of the former. He finds that he does not have to invoke the reduction and so refrains from all mention of noemata. Accordingly, instead of object and поета, he speaks of “quality” and its “perspectives.” “The perspective [Abschattung] though called by the same name is in principle not of the same genus as what is perspected [Abgeschattetes ]. A perspective is a subjective occurrence (Erlebnis). But Erlebnis is possible only as Erlebnis, not as something spatial. What is perspected, however, is in principle possible only as something spatial (it is indeed in essence spatial) but not possible as Erlebnis. In particular it is also nonsense to take the shape-perspective (e.g., that of a triangle) for something spatial and capable of being in space, and whoever does this is confusing it with the perspected, i.e., appearing shape” (p. 132).

The last remark that a shape-perspective is not itself something spatial is surprising. If the perspective of a triangle, for instance, is not another triangle or a straight line, i.e., something manifestly spatial, then I do not know what it could be—save possibly a primary sensation or impression! Husserl seems to have been carried away at this point by the force of his contention that we must distinguish “in principle” between the transcendent color, say, and the immanent color-perspective (the sensation) and in exactly the same way between a transcendent shape and the immanent shape-perspective. Now if the color-perspective is a subjective sensation, is not also the shapeperspective a subjective sensation? Are there not, in other words, primary sensations or impressions just as there are secondary sensations or impressions?

The implication is unmistakable. To every perceived quality of an object, both primary and secondary, there correspond in the perceiving subject immanent sensory contents which are “the perspectives of color, shape, and so forth. They are counted among the ‘sensory data’ [Empfindungsdaten], data . . . which combine into concrete unities of experience; which, further . . . within the concrete unity of perception are animated [beseelt] through ‘apprehensions’ [Auffassungen] and in this animation [Beseelung] exercise the ‘presenting [darstellende] function’ or in unison with it make up what we call the ‘appearing of color, shape, and so forth” (pp. 131-132).

Notice the repeated pairing here of color and shape, the one a secondary, the other a primary quality, with the plain implication that there are corresponding secondary and primary sensations—which, indeed, is quite necessary if all perceived qualities are to have their immanent perspectives or appearances in the perceiving act.

Notice, too, that the immanent sensuous appearances of the transcendent qualities are not themselves sensations, but “contain” sensations. For sensations “in themselves contain nothing of intentionality,” (p. 247) and hence cannot serve as perspectives or appearances of anything; they are but raw nonintentional materials, “hyletic data.” As such, however, they can “enter into intentional functions”; they can be “animated through apprehension [Auffassung],” and in this sense intentionalized. Only when thus “animated” or intentionalized do they become appearances of color, shape, smoothness, etc., i.e., perspectives in the proper sense. A manifold of these immanent (sensuous) perspectives is then synthesized in a single “unity of apprehension,” and we perceive a transcendent color or shape or smoothness. Finally, by a further synthesis we combine transcendent color, shape, and smoothness into the unity of a perceived transcendent object.

It is interesting to note here how casually Husserl treats of the initial processing of sensations. In Chapter V, I argued that this initial processing entails transformation and projection through which the raw sensations acquire, among other things, “extensity”—a splendid euphemism for “rendering spatial what must be in principle nonspatial”! To all of this Husserl pays only the slightest heed, as though it did not need, or merit, investigation. He simply condenses it into the curious metaphor of “animation”; raw nonintentional sensations are “animated through apprehension” and are thus made to “enter into intentional functions.” I find this quite incomprehensible; although I must confess that I find it no more mystifying than transformation and projection—and extensity! So much, then, for the first difficulty.

The second difficulty has to do with Husserľs notion of “thing” (Ding). He uses this term throughout the present chapter in a way that is quite baffling to the reader. Initially Ding plainly signifies “object” as distinct from its “qualities,” primary and secondary, as in the passages just quoted. But as the chapter progresses Ding comes gradually to signify both “object and quality”—or perhaps “object-with-its-qualities”—in a manner which completely glosses over the important distinction between object and quality and the relation between them. With the disappearance of this distinction confusion ensues.

Taking as basic the distinction between object and quality, the order of constitution, as we just noted, would be distinctly threefold: 1) hyletic data, primary and secondary sensations, are converted by “animation” into immanent perspectives; 2) a manifold of immanent perspectives, potentially infinite in number, is perceived by synthesis as a single transcendent quality (a color or shape); and 3) a manifold of transcendent qualities presumably finite in number, is perceived by a further synthesis as a transcendent object (the colored and shaped thing). This threefold schema would appear to be clear enough. But it is not. It harbors a number of equivocations.

Notice first the two senses of “transcendence,” the one referring to the transcendence of the object, and the other to the transcendence of its qualities, these being presumably two distinct orders of transcendence. Corresponding to these two senses and orders of transcendence we should naturally expect two equally distinct orders of synthesis, the one giving us qualities and the other the (qualified) object. Manifestly these two senses of “synthesis” and “transcendence” must be clearly distinguished if ambiguity is to be avoided. Similarly with “appearance” and “appearance manifold”; they too are equivocal. In one of its senses “appearance” refers to immanent perspective as appearance of a transcendent quality; in another it refers to a transcendent quality as appearance of a transcendent object. Since “appearance” and “appearance manifold” refer on the one hand to something immanent and on the other to something transcendent, their equivocation calls for extra caution. And the more so when we reflect that whereas an appearance manifold of immanent perspectives is potentially infinite, an appearance manifold of transcendent qualities would seem to be strictly finite.

Although the schema of constitution rests on the distinction between object and quality, the schema tends to fade away as this distinction vanishes in the notion of Ding. Under the darkening aegis of Ding the two orders of transcendence and synthesis merge indistinguishably into one. The important relation between object and quality is lost to view. We cannot tell whether or not qualities are appearances of objects, indices perhaps of their essences, as I suggested in the instance of the apple tree. Nor can we tell whether or not the qualities of things are finite in number. We do know that the immanent appearance manifolds of given qualities are potentially infinite. But beyond this we are quite uncertain; the above equivocations have become ambiguities.

Most striking of all, perhaps, is the circumstance that although Husserl distinguishes repeatedly the transcendent object from its transcendent qualities,* yet he never once, to my knowledge, characterizes the object or its constitution in terms of its qualities or of its relations to its qualities. The only terms he uses are those of “appearance,” “perspective,” “adumbration,” terms which apply directly only to qualities. I repeat: it is only qualities that can literally appear. Immanent appearance manifolds, consisting of animated hyletic data, are perspectives of qualities, not of objects. Now it may well be argued that since qualities are qualities of objects, perspectives of qualities must also be perspectives of objects. But argument here is out of place, phenomenological analysis and clarification are called for. AU Husserl has shown is that qualities, not objects, appear in immanent perspectives. How objects also appear we are not told; although it would seem to be through their sensible qualities. But this is no longer a question for Husserl. Object and quality have been swallowed up in the notion of Ding. Thus he simply assures us that the transcendent Ding—object or quality or both?—is nothing but an “identity of appearance-modes through adumbration [Identisches von Erscheinungsweisen durch Abschattung]՝՝ (p. 139), hence that the being of the transcendent Ding is, “according to its sense [Sin«], a mere intentional being,” a being “which consciousness in its experiencings posits [setzt], which in principle is intuitable and determinable as an identity of . . . appearance manifolds—but over and above this nothing at all” (p. 153).

The denouement of this doctrine of Ding as an “identity of appearance manifolds” occurs in Husserl’s contention that the transcendent thing must be an “Idea,”—not an “idea” in the traditional sense, but an “Idea” (with a capital “I”) in the sense of Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic. Whether an “appearance manifold” be a manifold of immanent perspectives or of transcendent qualities, it includes in every instance more than any actually given set of appearances here and now. It comprehends not only present but also past and future appearances, not only actual but also possible appearances, infinitely numerous in the case of immanent perspectives, finitely numerous (presumably) in the case of transcendent qualities. In both cases—although perhaps only or chiefly in the first—the manifold cannot “in principle” ever be completely or “adequately” given. With respeet to its givenness it must always remain incomplete, “inadequate.” Consequently, the “identity” of that which is thus given—the thing as identity of appearance manifolds—must be only an ideal limit which, in the order of givenness, experience can approach but never attain. It must be, in a word, a Kantian “Idea” (p. 240) which it would be absurd to take as “real.”*

My third difficulty is that this notion of Ding as Idea appears to be sharply at odds with the doctrine of the reduction. Remember, this notion together with all that leads up to it is available to the natural standpoint, pretheoreticálly evident to natural reflection. Prior to the reduction we can discover that what we unreflectively take to be “real” is actually “ideal.” There was no hint of this when we considered the blossoming apple tree standing before us in the fullness of its perceptual presence, no intimation that over and beyond its perceptual presence the tree was in fact an ideal identity of appearance manifolds. Taking the tree simply as it presented itself, just as it was actually given, we suspended its existence and reduced it to a “perceived as such,” to а поета, identical in every given detail with the tree as natural object. Now, however, we learn that the tree was not the “reality” we took it to be, but an “ideality” of which we were quite unaware. All this, mind you, in the natural attitude!

Manifestly there is something wrong. If the tree is an Idea, and known to be such, then it cannot possibly be posited as real, existing, natural; for these are precisely the predicates which a Kantian Idea precludes in principle. Even assuming it to have been posited—per impossible—it cannot possibly be reduced to a “perceived as such” identical in every given detail with the unreduced original. For the unreduced original, the Idea, not only exceeds the momentarily given details, it also differs from these latter in kind: it is intelligible and abiding whereas the given details are sensuous and fleeting. Moreover, as Idea it would seem to be in its unreduced form already a kind of поета or Vorstellung, thus rendering the reduction superfluous as well as impossible.

On the other hand, if we take the tree as real, unmindful of its ideality, then its reduction is at least conceivable, also its previous positing, as we saw in the section on the reduction. But then we are faced with the question of the relation between the tree as intelligible Idea and as sensible reality, since it seems to be both for Husserl. This relation, as I make it out, would appear to be that of container to contained: the intelligible Idea somehow contains the real as a shifting sensuous “core” of actuality, a manifold momentarily given, the tree just as it is perceived here and now. This would make the Idea a limit which experience can only approximate; but it would also make it an ideal totality which somehow contains its successive “cores” as integral parts of itself. This is exceedingly difficult to grasp. For it is not at all clear how an Idea, any more than a class, can thus literally contain its members. One class can literally contain another, at least in the fashion of class-inclusion. But a class cannot in the same sense contain its members; the class-inclusion relation is simply different in kind from the classmembership relation. We can only conclude that the relation between the tree as Idea and as real cannot be that of container to contained. What else it might be Husserl does not even intimate.

Thus if the tree is real—hence reducible—it is hard to see how it can also be an Idea. If it be an Idea, it is hard to see how it can be reduced—or posited. In either event, Husserľs doctrine of Ding as Idea, as ideal identity of appearance manifolds, is unclear both in itself and in its relation to the reduction.

Also difficult to square with the reduction is Husserľs notion of the “field” or “horizon” of perception. In the natural attitude this field or horizon is the space of the world. As empirical it presumably exists in some sense and hence can be reduced—to а поета? If to а поета, is this поета intentionally constituted in a corresponding noesis? And if constituted, out of what is it wrought? If it does not reduce to а поета, then what precisely is it, and what is its relation to intentional consciousness with its noesis-noema complex?

Husserl does not raise or answer these questions. He seems to have concealed them from himself by an artful choice of terms. Rarely, if ever, does he speak of the “empirical space of the world”; he speaks rather of the “field” or “horizon of perception,” thereby insinuating that this field or horizon is as subjective as perception itself. Thus he simp!y adduces the field as self-evident, which it is, and as self-evidently subjective, which it is not. It is subjective for Husserl solely because its inhabitants, the sensible qualities of things, have been declared subjective by the theory of sensation. This is my fourth and final difficulty.

If I have been tediously long in stating these difficulties, it is chiefly because I have found it exceedingly hard to disentangle the profusion and confusion of themes and arguments which make up this involved chapter on givenness. The upshot of these difficulties is, of course, that the arguments of this chapter are untenable. Granting that external objects can be given only perspectively, it does not follow that these perspectives are subjective and hence that outer objects must be subjectively constituted as identities of appearance manifolds. Granting, too, that inner acts preclude spatial perspectives and can be given apodictically, whereas outer objects requiring perspectives cannot be given apodictically, it does not follow that acts are given as “necessary” and consciousness as “absolute reality,” whereas objects are given as “contingent” on a positing by consciousness. I cannot grant that there are primary as well as secondary sensations, or that “animation” is anything more than a dubious metaphor. Nor can I grant that object and quality are to be merged indistinguishably in Ding, or that Ding must be somehow both intelligible Idea and sensible reality, both irreducible and reducible. FinaUy, I cannot grant that the empirical space of the world is but a subjective “horizon” of perception.

It is time now to review the special argument as a whole and the “insights” which supply its premises. The special argument, you will recall, is special in that it treats of a specific mode of intentional consciousness, namely, outer or sense perception; whereas the general argument treats only of intentional consciousness in general. The aim of the special argument, like that of the general, is to show that external objects must be internal to consciousness, hence must be subjectively constituted and posited. The “insights” that lead to this conclusion are principally these. One, the “essence” of the natural standpoint is a “general thesis” whereby external things are said to exist. Two, external things must be given perspectively, whence they must be constituted as identities of appearance manifolds. The first insight I denied outright; the second I granted but denied the conclusion. A third insight, a kind of corollary of number two, is that inner acts can be given apodictically, hence consciousness exists necessarily. This “insight,” too, I granted but denied the conclusion. Finally there is the “insight” of the general argument, that the world on becoming “related” to consciousness becomes thereby internal to consciousness-—because the intentional relation is internal to its object. This insight I denied altogether. The upshot of all this is that the natural standpoint supplies no insights or motives which impel beyond it; the transcendental standpoint is a theoretical fiction.

As we survey these arguments it becomes increasingly evident that Husserl’s “insights” have all been refracted through one primordial “insight,” the theory of sensation. Husserl never speaks of the theory of sensation as such and never recognizes it even obliquely as the primary source of the whole transcendental outlook. It is for him not a theory. Sensations, sense impressions, sense data, are for him not theoretical assumptions, but pretheoretical certainties which it never occurs to him to question. Since he does not question them, he offers no phenomenological exposition which would clarify, let alone justify, their assumption. Although he mentions them frequently from the third of the Logical Investigations on, it is in a single paragraph of the Ideas, paragraph 85, that he treats of them explicitly. Let us close this section on Husserl with a brief look at this paragraph on “hyletic data.”

C. HYLETIC DATA

In the general domain of intentional consciousness there is a radical distinction to be drawn between two kinds of experiencings (Erlebnisse): 1) those that are “sensual which in themselves contain nothing of intentionality,” and 2) those “that bear the specific quality of intentionality” (p. 247). The first stands to the second as “matter” or “stuff” to “form,” as “sensual νλτ¡” to “intentional μορφή.” Husserl does not here deeide whether or not sensual contents are invariably subject to “animating apprehensions” I beseelende Auffassungen], and thus invariably enter into “intentional functions,” nor whether or not intentionality requires in every instance a sensory foundation. He simply remarks that the whole domain of intentional consciousness is dominated by this “remarkable duality and unity of sensual νλη and intentional μορφή” (ibid.).

This duality and unity is especially conspicuous in the region of sense perception or external experience. Here the terms “sensory” or “sensuous” are used in a narrower and proper sense to “signify the phenomenological residuum of what in normal outer perception is mediated through the ‘senses’” (p. 248), namely such “‘sensory contents’ as color-data, touch-data, sound-data, and the like,* which we shall no longer confuse with the appearing phases of things, their color-quality, roughness, etc.,” qualities which “by means of these data ‘present’ themselves in our experiencings” (p. 246). We as phenomenologists are spared this “confusion” of sense data with sense qualities by our recognition of intentionality. We can now see—as our predecessors could not see, for lack of intentionality—that the nonintentional sense data, sensations, impressions must first be intentional ized, i.e., “animated through apprehensions,” before they can become intentional appearances or perspectives of things (more precisely, of the transcendent sense qualities of things). Thus it is clear to us how these raw, nonintentional sense data “offer themselves as the materials [Stoffe] for intentional formations or sense-bestowings of different levels” and how they are “to be found as components in more comprehensive concrete experiencings [Erlebnisse] which as wholes are intentional, and indeed so that over these sensory components lies, as it were, an ‘animating,’sense-bestowing stratum . . . , a stratum through which, out of the sensory that in itself contains nothing of intentionality, the concrete intentional experience [Erlebnis] comes to pass” (p. 247; cf. also pp. 283f.).

In introducing the term “hyletic data” Husserl makes it clear that this term is of wider extension than the term “sense data.” “Hyletic data” embraces the sensory in general, including besides the traditional sensations such sensory impressions as those of pleasure, pain, tickling, kinesthetic sensations, and the like, also such sensory occurrences as impulses, feelings, and emotions in the sphere of will. Sense data (sensations) are thus a sub-genus of hyletic data, that sub-genus which refers only to the “phenomenological residuum of that which is mediated through the ‘senses’ in normal outer perception. Subsequent to the reduction an essential affinity between the relevant ‘sensory’ data of the external intuitions reveals itself, and there corresponds to it a unique generic essence, a fundamental concept of phenomenology” (p. 248). Obviously, this “unique genus” embraces only what have here been called from the outset “sensations,” the sensations proper to the theory of sensation. It does not refer in any way to other genera of sensory data such as those that occur in feeling and will. We must remember therefore that although all sense data are hyletic data, not all hyletic data are sense data.

In correlating sensory νλη and intentional μορφή Husserl is in effect making the hyletic a counterpart of the intentional, the two being the primary components of consciousness as Erlebnis. It would seem inevitable, therefore, that a science of hyletics should accompany and complement՜ the science of intentionality. “Naturally pure hyletics falls under the phenomenology of transcendental consciousness. It has, moreover, the character of a self-contained discipline, and has as such its own value; however, from the functional standpoint it derives its significance from the fact that it offers possible interweavings I Einschläge] with the intentional fabric, possible materials \Stoffe] for intentional formations. Not only as regards difficulty, but also as regards the relative rank of the problems from the standpoint of the idea of absolute knowledge, it stands clearly below noetic and functional phenomenology” (pp. 253-254). Important though it may be, “pure hyletics” is yet only secondary to the main theme of transcendental phenomenology. Only to the extent that hyletic data are involved in the noesis-noema complex is their mention unavoidable. In the writings of Husserl there is no further development of a science or discipline of “hyletics.”

Such a science of “hyletics” would undertake, among other things, a comprehensive inventory of sense data and thus come to grips with the problem of primary and secondary sensations. As it is, we have no such inventory and no dealing with the problem. We have only clues. In this section, where something more might well be expected, we have but two listings, both typically brief. In the first, as quoted above, Husserl mentions only three—color data, touch data, and sound data—all of them secondary sensations. A few paragraphs later he charges Brentano with failing to distinguish, in his notion of “physical phenomena,” between “sense data” and that which “appears” in these data, “the color of a thing, the shape of a thing, and the like” (p. 250). The context clearly suggests that corresponding to shape there is a shape-sensation, as to color a color-sensation, which on being animated becomes an immanent shape-perspective, as the colorsensation becomes an immanent color-perspective. This is as far as the evidence goes; but here as elsewhere it points unfailingly to an unexpressed belief in primary as well as secondary sensations.

Another problem for a science of “hyletics” would be the cause or source of sensations. Are they but brute facts of inexplicable origin, irrational surds in an otherwise rational system of intentionality? Or are they, too, in the last analysis, intentional products? Also, what actually takes place when sensations are “animated” by intentionality? Will we find, behind this metaphor of “animation,” the remarkable processes of transformation and projection which I discussed in Chapter V? Still another problem would be that of the relation between sensations and the other genera of hyletic data. Are these other genera also animated? If so, how? If not, why not? And so on.

If Husserl was aware of these difficulties, it was only in passing. He was content to mention the mere possibility of a science of hyletics. He was content with this because the issues of this science are trivial in comparison with those of “intentional phenomenology.” He was content for another and more compelling reason: hyletics would deal with a matter which has long been settled and established by the traditional theory of sensation.

This is all that we are told about sense data. In substance it is but a repetition of what Husserl has been saying ever since the third of the Logical Investigations, if not before. Without doubt or question he simply assumes sensations and, with them, also constitution, thesis, synthesis, and all the other items “sedimented” in this great thought and language complex. In appropriating this traditional complex, to be sure, Husserl made one great innovation; he intentionalized consciousness. With this he wrought a vast change in the complex as a whole and introduced a host of refinements in its details, all as a consequence of making intentionality the primary agency of constitution and thesis.

And so, in Husserl’s doctrine of “hyletic data” the theory of sensation has found what may be its last refuge. Here, as in other lurking places, it provided the central “insight” from which the others follow in train. Or, if not an insight, then the initial impulse which set in flight a speculative theory, whose soaring trajectory we have been following in this essay. Its principal stages are those of sensations, ideas, constitution, thesis, and monadism—with Husserl, a monadism as absolute as any in the history of thought. One item alone is not at home in this trajectory: intentionality. It was the absence of intentio, as much as anything else, which allowed Descartes originally to launch his theory of sensation and ideas. Its later introduction is, historically speaking, an afterthought. In making intentionality the sustaining thrust of the sensation theory Husserl gave to the theory a new impetus. But he gave intentionality a wrenching blow; he capped its open end, clamped it securely between noesis and поета, and made of it at once a prisoner and a prop of monadism.

This is to say that in joining intentio to the sensation theory Husserl injured only intentio. He has shown us thereby that intentio must be liberated from the theory of sensation, that it must be treated in its own right as a genuine “phenomenon,” a phenomenon worth “saving.” With the insight that the intentional relation is not internal at both ends, but external at the object end, a fresh start can be made toward a phenomenology of perception and experience that shall be truly free of theoretical predilections—free, at least, of the amazing theory of sensation and the monadism which it entails.

*Erfahrung is “experience”; Erlebnis is the “subjective act of experiencing,” an occurrence in the stream of consciousness.

*The title of the chapter is “Consciousness and Natural Reality.”

*In addition to the passages already quoted see p. 161, where Husserl speaks of “the thing that appears to sense, which has the sensory properties of shape, color, smell and taste. . . .” This is all repeated at length in pp. 364 through 366.

*Notice that “like the thing [Ding] every quality . . . is an Idea” (pp. 414-415). Does this suggest that the qualities are not potentially infinite in number?

*Notice that this list contains only secondary “data” or impressions, no primary data or impressions.