FOREWORD

The central theme of the following essay is that there are no such things as “sensations” or “impressions” in the traditional sense of modern epistemology. The assumption that there are such I call the “theory of sensation.” Since the proof of non-existence is notoriously difficult, I offer instead an exposé partly historical, partly analytical. I attempt to show how the theory originated with Descartes, how at its inception it acquired two accessory theories, how in league with these it issued in an exciting new problem of knowledge and existence, how for this problem and its solutions the sensation theory prescribed the terms and conditions thus fixing the framework and ground rules for all who would philosophize in the “modern” vein, and how finally it persisted as a speculative tradition upwards of three centuries to the Transcendental Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.

The essay culminates in an examination of Husserl’s Phenomenology with its doctrine of transcendental constitution. In examining this doctrine I focus chiefly on its main support, the famous “reduction” or epoché, the suspending of existence. This suspension turns out to be a withholding of a mere “sense” of existing, which consciousness confers on objects of sense insofar as they are made (“constituted ⁵’) of impressions. That the direct objects of sense are but complexes of impressions is of course a characteristic tenet of the sensation theory. The upshot is that this theory, silently and uncritically presupposed, underlies the whole of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, rendering it to this extent unphenomenological, as it also rendered uncritical the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

My mode of analysis is not that of current linguistic analysis. This latter has a devastating antiseptic power which might well have served my purpose. But it is quite foreign to the tradition I am examining, and I would prefer to criticize this tradition from within rather than from without. Hence I have chosen a mode of analysis more akin to its own native habits of thought. If I claim a right, even a responsibility, to proceed in this old-fashioned way, it is because I was reared in this tradition and am reluctant to turn upon it weapons of alien origin.

In adopting this procedure I am quite prepared to be found on occasion to ride roughshod over niceties and nuances of meaning which my friends in linguistic analysis will find objectionable. A further excuse is my synoptic aim, which has impelled me to draw boldly with a few broad strokes rather than minutely with a profusion of fine lines. This boldness has brought brevity, but it has also exposed me to the danger of being “positive ¹’—it was The New Yorker, I think, which once defined “being positive” as “being wrong at the top of one’s voice.”

If I have been thus “positive,” perhaps others more knowledgeable than I will be moved to rise in defense of the doctrines I here assail. I think first of all of Dorion Cairns, to whom I owe so much of what I know of Phenomenology, and of others like Quentin Lauer and Maurice Natanson. They, if anybody, could resolve the difficulties I encounter and thus render Phenomenology and American philosophy in general, not to mention myself, a notable service.

If there is anything original in this essay I am not aware of it. Novelty is not my concern. My concern is rather with the tradition of which I am a child even while trying also to be its critic. I am so steeped in this tradition that my thoughts seem to be its thoughts; each seems to echo a voice that has already spoken. My sense of obligation, accordingly, is so vast as to defy enumeration.

Only in a few instances can I acknowledge specific indebtedness. I have already mentioned Dorion Cairns. I must also mention two friends and colleagues, Raziei Abelson and Chauncey Downes, who read the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions. There are also Winifred and Leonard Carpenter, without whose gracious generosity this book would not have come to pass. There is yet another whose aid and encouragement were indispensable. How, in the midst of her many wifely and motherly duties, she managed to find the time to read and query, and reread and encourage, all with limitless patience, I shall never know. To these last three, especially to the memory of the first, I dedicate this volume, mindful that it is but the token of a gratitude that defies expression.

Now in medias res!

H. M. C.

University College
New York University