The origins of the phenomenology of pain: Brentano,

Stumpf and Husserl

Saulius Geniusas
Published online: 6 February 2014
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract The following investigation aims to determine the historical origins of the
phenomenology of pain. According to my central thesis, these origins can be traced back
to an enthralling discussion between Husserl and two of his most important teachers,
Brentano andStumpf. Accordingto my reconstructionof this discussion, while Brentano
defended the viewthat all feelings, including pain, are intentional experiences, andwhile
Stumpf argued that pain is a non-intentional feeling-sensation, Husserl of the Logical
Investigations provides compellingresources toresolve thepolemic betweenhis teachers
by showing howpain can be conceived as a pre-intentional experience. According to my
argument, this largely forgotten discussion is of signicance not only because it enriches
our understanding of pain, but alsobecause it modies the phenomenological conception
of consciousness. Thus inthe concludingsection, I showwhytheHusserlianresolutionof
the controversy between Brentano and Stumpf is of importance for our understanding of
the central phenomenological themeintentionality.
Keywords Phenomenology Descriptive psychology Pain Feeling-
sensations Emotions
Although in classical phenomenological literature, the phenomenon of pain never
played more than a marginal role, one can trace its emergence back to the founding
text in the phenomenological movementEdmund Husserls Logical Investiga-
tions.
1
15 of the Fifth Investigation presents the rst explicit analysis of pain in
S. Geniusas (&)
Department of Philosophy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: geniusas@cuhk.edu.hk
1
See Husserl (1984); for the English translation, see Husserl (2000). In what follows, I will quote this
text following the established custom in phenomenological literature: Hua XIX/1 ? page number for the
German edition. References to the English translation will be provided separately.
1 3
Cont Philos Rev (2014) 47:117
DOI 10.1007/s11007-014-9283-3
phenomenological literature as a whole. However, our understanding of the
historical origins of the phenomenology of pain will remain decient for as long as
we ignore the larger context that underlies Husserls analysisfor as long as we
think of this section independently from an enthralling controversy between two of
Husserls teachers, Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. This dispute, taken along with
Husserls early attempt to resolve it, marks the origins of the phenomenology of
pain.
Is pain a sensation or an emotion? This was the central question, which Brentano
and Stumpf struggled with in their reections on pain and to which they offered
signicantly different answers. Indeed, the controversy over this issue marks one of
the very few uncompromising disagreements between the two thinkers. According
to Stumpfs own admission, while his whole philosophy was based on the impulses
derived from Brentano, when it came to such sensations as pain, he had to defend
his views against misunderstandings,
2
which include Brentanos critique. Both
Brentano and Stumpf tried and both failed to convince each other of the conceptual
superiority of their respective views.
3
By situating Husserls early analysis of pain
alongside Stumpfs and Brentanos investigations, not only can one obtain a more
rened understanding of the origins of the phenomenology of pain, but also, and no
less importantly, one can raise a question which to this day remains unexplored: Is
descriptive psychology of any signicance in the context of contemporary pain
research?
1 Descriptive psychology and pain research
A return to Brentanos, Stumpfs and Husserls investigations of pain is by no
means driven merely by historical interests. What is at stake is not only a forgotten
chapter in the relatively recent history of ideas but an operative and unclaried
presupposition that underlies contemporary pain research. The presupposition in
question concerns our conceptual understanding of what pain is. The central
contribution that descriptive psychology can make to pain research lies in its
capacity to address this tacit presupposition explicitly.
Any phenomenon that constitutes a theme in descriptive psychology is to be
understood as a detour that one takes so as to obtain a better understanding of the
structures of consciousness. In this regard, pain is no exception. If it stands out from
other analyzed themes, it is only because pain constitutes a vital test to verify the
legitimacy of numerous other hypotheses and propositions regarding the nature of
consciousness. What must consciousness be like if it is to experience pain? This is
the central issue that underlies the analyses of pain in descriptive psychology. And
even though this question seems unrelated to the general set of issues addressed in
pain research, I would suggest that it is of utmost importance for our understanding
of pain. My following remarks are meant to substantiate this view.
2
See Stumpf (1924).
3
Brentantos critique of Stumpf can be found in Brentano (1907, pp. 119125). For Stumpfs response,
see Stumpf (1917, pp. 4100).
2 S. Geniusas
1 3
Descriptive psychology
4
is best understood in opposition to genetic psychology.
While genetic psychology explains experiences on the basis of their physiological
origins, descriptive psychology claries phenomena by showing how they give
themselves in experience, still before they are subjected to genetic explanations.
Arguably, not only genetic psychology, but all genetic analyses without
exception, are in need of a descriptive foundation. Without a descriptive grounding,
genetic explanations could only rely on uncritically accepted conceptions of
phenomena under scrutiny. No matter where these conceptions derive from
particular areas of research or the everyday useinsofar as they are unclaried, it
remains questionable whether genetic analyses could carry out their research
successfully.
Thus the methodological orientation that underlies Brentanos, Stumpfs and
Husserls analyses of pain suggests that before one explains the physiological,
psychological or social origins of pain, one need to have a sense of what pain is.
The task of descriptive psychology in the context of pain research is thereby
delineated: descriptive psychology is meant to clarify the preliminary concept of
pain, which is meant to guide different types of genetic inquiries.
As my subsequent remarks will make clear, Brentanos, Stumpfs and early
Husserls analyses of pain are signicant not because they have once and for all
xed the descriptive essence of pain. Rather, their reections are preliminary and
they are to be credited for having opened a new methodological framework to
address pain-experiencea framework that enables us to obtain critical distance
from the dominant conceptual models as well as from the common-sense conception
of pain, and which simultaneously urges us to account for the central presupposition
that underlies pain research.
5
2 Brentanos and Stumpfs analyses of pain
Why pain? Or rather, what is it that motivates Brentano, Stumpf and Husserl to
address the phenomenon of pain alongside other, seemingly unrelated problems,
which constitute more important issues in their respective works? The answer lies in
the challenge that the phenomenon of pain poses to the general characterization of
consciousness as intentional. For the one experiencing pain, pain is undeniable; and
just as undeniable seems to be the fact that the experience of pain is non-referential:
it appears to be a sensory experience, without any reference to intentional
4
Brentanos conception of descriptive psychology is articulated especially clearly in Brentano (1982);
for the English translation, see Brentano (1995). Husserls commitment to descriptive psychology is
especially strongly pronounced in the introduction to the rst edition of the Logical Investigations (Hua
XIX/1 24; for the English translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 262). Although Stumpfs contributions to
descriptive psychology are scattered throughout numerous works, the following reference deserves
special emphasis (Stumpf 1906, pp. 340).
5
This methodological orientation remained intact throughout subsequent reections on pain in classical
phenomenology, which we nd in the works of Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, F.J.J.
Buytendijk, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Henry, among others. This very same orientation remains at the
core of the more recent phenomenological analyses of pain, as exemplied by the works of by Drew
Leder, Christian Gruny, Arne Johan Vetlesen, Agust n Serrano de Haro, and Dermot Moran.
The origins of the phenomenology of pain 3
1 3
objectivity.
6
Moreover, insofar as it is non-referential, pain seems to constitute an
exception to the characterization of consciousness as intentional.
What sense is one then to make of pain alongside the intentionality of
consciousness? This is the issue that underlies Brentanos and Stumpfs reections
on pain. While Stumpf defended the view that pain is a non-intentional experience,
which one can call a feeling-sensation (Gefuhlsempndung), Brentano argued that
the experience of pain is intentional, and on two counts: pain is an emotion, which is
intentionally directed at the act of sensing, which in its own turn is intentionally
directed at the sensed content. We thus have two signicantly different answers to
what I have identied above as the fundamental question that underlies the analyses
of pain in descriptive psychology. For Stumpf, only a consciousness that can block
the intentional movement outwards and return to immanence can experience pain.
By contrast, for Brentano, if consciousness is to experience pain, it must be capable
of twofold intentionalityof both sensing the sensed contents as well as
emotionally relating to the acts of sensing. Since this controversy is hardly well
known, my subsequent reections will have an expository character, although
obviously, my goal is not reducible to a mere expose.
1. In Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie, Brentano presented ve central points
of divergence between his and Stumpfs approaches to such phenomena as pain and
pleasure. The rst of these differences is fundamental: [For] Stumpf, sensuous pleasure
and sensuous pain, just as colors, tones, taste, etc., are sense-qualities. For me, they are
affects, emotions.
7
This central point of contention is representative of a larger
paradigm shift that takes place in pain research at the turn of the twentieth century. As
Melzack and Casey have suggested in their inuential study of what they labeled as a
newconceptual model of pain, while in the nineteenth century pain was predominantly
conceived as the opposite of pleasure, in the beginning of the twentieth century pain
grewto be identied as a sensation.
8
We nowsee that this shift in orientation did not take
place only in physiology, but also in psychology and philosophy.
Why would Brentano identify pain as an emotion? In Brentanos view, to claim
that pain is a sensation would amount to a suggestion that the experience of pain is
something like seeing colors or hearing tones. Yet such a view goes against the
evidence of experience. While experience ascribes colors and tones to intentional
objects, it attributes pain to the experiencing subject. Thus while colors and tones
are given through external perception, pain belongs to internal perception.
Moreover, while external perception is open to doubt, internal perception is
indubitable. Thus on the one hand, I can certainly be mistaken when I identify this
particular sound as my neighbor locking his door or when I claim that the sea is
crystal blue; on the other hand, if I have a migraine, it is meaningless to ask whether
or not I am in pain: the answer is self-evident.
6
See in this regard Scarry (1985, pp. 35, 161162).
7
Brentano (1907, p. 121).
8
Melzack and Casey (1964, p. 423).
4 S. Geniusas
1 3
In Stumpfs view, the argument I have just presented is an instance of a false
dichotomy.
9
To be sure, the experience of pain is signicantly different from the
seeing of colors or the hearing of tones. Nonetheless, there are important features
that pain shares with these sensations. For instance, just as we ascribe colors and
tones to objects of experience, so also we ascribe pain to an object of sorts, viz., to
our own bodies. Could it not be so that the experience of pain, taken along with
some other kinds of experiences, constitutes a separate class of sensations? Stumpf
answers this question afrmatively: for him, the experience of pain falls in the class
of sensations, which he labels as feeling-sensations.
This characterization suggests that pain is a sensation, which is intrinsically
marked by affection. It suggests that the experience of pain has both an affective and
a sensuous element and that both these elements are equiprimordial. There is no
pain that I cannot sense just as there is no pain that is not painful: such are the two
sides of one and the same coin. It sufces to get rid of one of these dimensions to
transform pain into something other than it is. For instance, if the experience in
question has an affective dimension, which we in common language identify as
painfulness, but if the pain in question cannot be sensed (that is, located in the
body), we are not living through pain, but rather through an emotion. Emotions,
however, differ from pain in that they lack bodily localizability. Thus it would be
meaningless to claim that depression lies in my tooth or anxiety in my head; by
contrast, we always locate pain within our own bodies. On the other hand, if the
experience in question has the sensuous dimension but lacks the peculiar affective
quality we identify as painfulness, then we might very well be experiencing an
itch or a tickle; yet clearly, we are not experiencing pain.
2. The second central difference that Brentano had drawn between his and
Stumpfs accounts thereby also becomes understandable. As Brentano formulates it,
Stumpf does not see anything in common between sensuous pleasure (Lust) and
spiritual satisfaction (Wohlgefallen), sensuous pain and spiritual dissatisfaction
(Missfallen). For me their common character does not raise any doubts.
10
As we
just saw, for Stumpf, sensuous pain is essentially different from spiritual pain in that
while the former has a sensuous element, the latter does not. By contrast, for
Brentano, who conceives of pain in abstraction from sensuality, no radical
distinction is to be drawn between physical pain and spiritual suffering. Thus in one
passage, Brentano goes as far as to suggest that a person tormented by the pangs of
conscience or the shrieking mother who has been robbed of her child both
experience pain.
3. To put the matter in a different way, while Stumpf views pain as a physical
phenomenon, Brentano conceives of it as a psychical phenomenon. And such,
indeed, is the third fundamental difference that Brentano has introduced between his
and Stumpfs accounts. As Brentano sees it, for Stumpf pain carries no greater
evidence than colors or tones. By contrast, for Brentano pleasure and pain are given
9
Stumpfs U

ber Gefuhlsempndungen (1907) is the earliest presentation of Stumpfs position

regarding sense-feelings in print. What is curious about this work is the very fact that here Brentanos
name is not mentioned even once. Stumpfs silence is quite telling: it intimates that his standpoint with
regard to such experiences as pain is an implicit critique of Brentanos position.
10
Brentano (1907, p. 121).
The origins of the phenomenology of pain 5
1 3
through the evidence of internal perception. And thus, Brentano writes: [For]
Stumpf pleasure and pain are physical, for mepsychical phenomena.
11
Stumpfs response to this critique is scattered over different works. First, we nd
a partial response in Apologie der Gefuhlsempndungena text from 1917, in
which Stumpf provides his brief responses to Brentanos criticisms. Here Stumpf
notes that he will not test whether the indicated consequences follow from his
analysis, since such an inquiry would require one to leave the grounds of descriptive
psychology and enter the domain of the theory of knowledge.
12
What exactly does
Stumpf have in mind?
One can extract an answer from Stumpfs U

ber Gefuhlsempndungan
earlier work against which Brentano had launched his critique. Here Stumpf asks,
why would anyone claim that pain is not a sensation? In his answer, Stumpf
identied three possible reasons: (1) the experiential kinship between pain and
suffering, (2) the ascription of feelings to the subject of experience and of sensations
to objects of experience, and (3) the spatial localization of sensations and the lack of
spatial localization of feelings. Stumpf proceeds to argue that none of these reasons
are convincing.
13
For our purposes, Stumpfs response to the second objection is of importance.
Stumpf suggests that a cursory glance at the theory of knowledge will sufce to
convince us that sensations are not objective at all.
14
Even everyday speech supports
such a view. Ask any person what the sentence sugar is sweet means and s/he will
answer, sugar tastes sweet. The situation is no different when it comes to pain.
15
Does this mean that for Stumpf, just as for Brentano, the experience of pain is
given through internal perception? Does this also mean that Brentanos character-
ization of Stumpfs position is incorrect, at least insofar as Brentano suggests that
Stumpf reduces the givenness of pain to its givenness through external perception?
No clear answer to this question is to be found in Stumpfs writings. Despite him
being steeped in Brentanos program, Stumpf never takes a clear stance on this
issue.
The absence of a clear response is quite telling, for it highlights a deep-rooted
ambiguity in Stumpfs reections on pain. Paradoxically, in the context of Stumpfs
analyses of feeling-sensations, the notion of sensations remains ambiguous and
underdeveloped. So as to indicate the ambiguity in question, a brief look at Edward
Titcheners Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feelings and Attention will
prove helpful. In these lectures, delivered in 1908, Titchener argued that in
psychology and in psychophysics, the notion of sensations has been understood in
two fundamentally different ways. In psychology, sensations are conceived as the
most basic psychic data, while in psychophysics, sensations are conceived as the
11
Brentano (1907, p. 122).
12
See Stumpf (1917, p. 9).
13
Stumpf (1917, pp. 67).
14
Thus Stumpfs earlier reference to the theory of knowledge in Apologie der Gefuhlsempndungen
is to be understood as a suggestion that sensations are no more objective than feeling-sensations.
15
See Stumpf (1907, p. 9).
6 S. Geniusas
1 3
physical correlates of the most basic experiences.
16
In Titcheners view, the failure
to distinguish between psychophysics and psychology proper has led to much
confused argument.
17
Arguably, Stumpfs analysis of feeling-sensations is a good illustration of a
conation of these two distinct meanings of sensations. On the one hand, insofar as
Stumpfs characterization of pain as a feeling-sensation accounts for pains
localizability in our bodies, we are dealing with a psychophysical notion of
sensations. On the other hand, insofar as we abstract from this objective reference,
we face what Titchener has identied as a psychological notion of sensations.
Stumpf does not distinguish between these two different conceptions and thus, he
simultaneously suggests that pain is localized in our bodies and that the real subject
of pain is consciousness, and not the body.
The controversy between Brentano and Stumpf thereby highlights a vital ambiguity
that lies at the heart of pain-experience. If one begins ones analysis by emphasizing
pains indubitability and incorrigibility, one is led to the realization that pain is given
through internal perception and thus, it cannot be a sensation. By contrast, if one agrees
that pain is localizable within our bodies, then pain cannot be given to consciousness
through internal perception; and if it is not given through internal perception, then it is
not given indubitably. One is thereby torn between two intuitions that one harbors with
regard to painpains indubitability and pains bodily localizability.
Let us take a look at how Brentano and Stumpf address this issue. Brentanos
solution is built upon the insight that Descartes had presented in his Principles: the
experience of pain is clear, although it is not distinct. Insofar as it is clear, the
experience of pain is indubitable. Yet insofar as it is not distinct, consciousness
confounds it with sensations in different parts of the body. Take a toothache as an
example: on the one hand, insofar as pain is clear, it is meaningless to doubt whether
or not I am in pain; the answer is inscribed in experience. On the other hand, the
pain in question lacks distinctness, and thus it is by no means uncommon to
misidentify pains location.
Brentano does not merely reiterate Descartes argument. In Brentanos view, we
misidentify our pains not because we confuse one sensation with another, but
because we confuse what is physical with what is psychical. Thus serious deception
occurs concerning objects of internal perception, while obviously internal percep-
tion itself, as far as it extends, contains no deception.
18
Put otherwise, Brentano
embraces pains indubitability while rejecting its sensuality. For Brentano, in its
core, pain is not sensuous. Rather, pain is emotive, or affective, through and
through.
16
The sensation of psychology is any sense-process that cannot be further analysed by introspection:
every one of the forty thousand lights and colours that we can see, every one of the eleven thousand tones
that we can hear, is a psychological sensation. The sensations of psychophysics, on the other hand, are the
sense-correlates of the elementary excitatory processes posited by a theory of vision or audition or what
not (Titchener 1973, p. 7).
17
Titchener (1973, p. 8).
18
See Brentano (1929); for the English translation, see Brentano (1981).
The origins of the phenomenology of pain 7
1 3
Stumpf reverses Brentanos solution: he embraces pains sensuousness, while
refusing to commit to its indubitability.
19
Arguably, such a position derives from the
realization that while an explicit rejection of pains indubitability would contradict
the evidence of experience, its unambiguous approval would demand that one ignore
pains bodily localizability, and thus lead to a corroboration of Brentanos view.
4. As mentioned above, for Stumpf, there is no pain that is not painful. This claim
already entails an argument against a position that would consider sensations as
painless and feelings as functional relations that ascribe painfulness to sensations.
For Stumpf, the immediacy of pain-experience must nd a correspondence in its
conceptual simplicity, and thus, the structural complexity that characterizes such an
account fails to do justice to the experience of pain. Take an experience of a
migraine, try to extract everything affective from it, and ask yourself, what remains?
According to Stumpf, if you have extracted painfulness from a migraine, you are left
with nothing at all. To suggest that in this instance a sensation can be separated from
affection contradicts the evidence of experience. And so, Stumpf insists that feeling-
sensations are not to be thought of as feelings of sensations, or feelings directed at
sensations; rather, they are sensations through and through, feeling-sensations.
The fourth point of contention between Stumpf and Brentano hinges upon this
very issue. Brentano does not nd the just-mentioned argument convincing. For
Brentano, the structure of pain is by no means simple; it is in fact threefold. So as to
account for the experience of pain, one needs to draw a distinction between the
sensed content, the sensing act directed at the content in question, and the emotional
relation of love or hate directed at the sensing act. Sensuous pleasure is an
experience of satisfaction, while sensuous pain is dissatisfaction, and both
satisfaction and dissatisfaction are directed at the acts of sensing. To return to the
sweetness of sugar: sugar is sweet means sugar tastes sweet. The experiential
basis that underlies the possibility of the latter state of affairs derives from the fact
that there is an emotion of satisfaction directed at the tasting of the sugar; this is
what makes the pleasure associated with the sweetness of sugar possible. Similarly,
in the case of a migraine, one is to draw a distinction between (1) the primary object,
i.e., the physical quality that characterizes the visible and touchable part of my head,
and (2) the secondary object, i.e., the sensing of this quality; (3) to this distinction,
one also needs to add as a third element the emotion of dissatisfaction directed at the
sensing of the quality in question.
20
Thus in contrast to Stumpf, Brentano insists that
19
This should not be taken to mean that Stumpf explicitly denies pains indubitability. Rather,
Brentanos provocations notwithstanding, Stumpf refuses to take a stance with regard to it. This is an
issue I will return to below.
20
Similarly, in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano suggests that the structure of pain-
experience is analogous to the structure of acoustic experience. It is only by equivocation that we identify
particular sounds as pleasant or unpleasant. Reection on experience makes clear that it is not sounds
themselves (which are physical phenomena), but the hearing of sounds (which are mental phenomena)
that can obtain emotional characteristics. Analogously, it is not the physical condition of our bodies, but
rather the sensing of this condition, that can be experienced as painful or pleasant. While the physical
condition is the primary object, the sensing of this condition is the secondary object of pain-experience,
and it is to this secondary object that the emotion of love or hate is directed. See Brentano (1874,
pp. 101131, esp. pp. 104111); for the English translation, see Brentano (1973, pp. 5977, esp.
pp. 6165).
8 S. Geniusas
1 3
pain without painfulness is one of the many ingredients that belong to the
experience of pain. To return to the migraine: pain without painfulness can be
conceived as a throbbing sensation in ones temples, or the pressure in ones
forehead; and in the absence of the sensing of such a content, there would be no
terminus ad quem at which the emotion of love or hate could be directed. Precisely
because the sensation of pain can be given in the absence of emotions, besides
hating ones pain, one can also love it. Such a possibility is warranted by the
conceptual separation of sensations from emotions, or more precisely, by the
threefold structure of pain-experience.
21
5. Let us note the fth and nal difference between Brentano and Stumpf. For
Stumpf, sensuous pleasure and sensuous displeasure cannot be conceived as
components of musical experience, while Brentano sees no reason to exclude their
intimate unity.
22
Thus for Brentano, tears running down Swanns face while he
listens to Sonate de Vinteuil would be an expression of not only psychological, but
physical pain. More precisely, for Brentano physical pain can accompany the
experience of listening to music as a sensuous overow (sinnliche Retundanz),
i.e., as an emotional effect experienced at the sensuous level. By contrast, for
Stumpf, the experience of pain remains cut off from musical experience: while the
former is sensuous, the latter is emotive. Since this point of contention directly
follows from the rst fundamental difference I have noted above (for Brentano pain
is an emotion, while for Stumpf it is a sensation), in the present context there is no
need to enter into a separate analysis of this issue.
3 Husserls analysis of pain in the Logical Investigations
It is only to be expected that the origins of the phenomenology of pain would be
identied with Husserls Logical Investigations. After all, in 15 of the Fifth
Investigation we nd the rst analysis of pain that identies itself as phenomeno-
logical. Nonetheless, Husserls early analysis of pain does not strive to articulate an
unprecedented philosophical approach to pain but to resolve the controversy that I
have addressed in the last section. Thus according to my thesis, it is this
controversy, taken along with Husserls attempt to resolve it, that constitutes the
origins of the phenomenology of pain.
My claim easily meets a seemingly decisive objection. How can Husserls
Logical Investigations (1900/01) offer an answer to a controversy that did not
appear in print until 1907? Yet this objection is not as compelling as it might seem,
for in classical phenomenology, published works almost always reiterate ideas that
21
Stumpf, admittedly, has the resources to respond to Brentanos view. To be sure, one can love ones
pain just as one can hate it. Yet in Stumpfs view, this act of love or hate is something added onto a full-
edged experience of pain: pain is painful before we hate it or love it.
22
Brentano (1907, p. 122).
The origins of the phenomenology of pain 9
1 3
the authors had been debating and defending in their lectures and private
conversations many years earlier.
23
The numerous references to Brentano scattered
over 15 of the Fifth Investigation make clear that Brentano is Husserls constant
partner in dialogue. And even though not a single reference to Stumpf is to be found
in this section, the position Husserl ends up endorsing comes very close to the one
that Stumpf had defended in his analysis of feeling-sensations.
3.1 Stumpfs legacy in Husserls reections on pain
In fact, there are good reasons to interpret Husserls early analysis of pain as a
further development of Stumpfs standpoint. Stumpf had aimed to situate his
positions between two extremesthe Jamesian view, which reduces all emotions to
sensations,
24
and the Brentanian view, which suggests that all feelings, including
pleasure and pain, are emotions, and not sensations. By contrast to both James and
Brentano, Stumpf draws a distinction between emotions, conceived as intentional
experiences, and feeling-sensations, which lack this property.
In this regard, Husserl directly follows Stumpf. On the one hand, he suggests that
there is a group of essentially intentional feelings. Taking over Brentanos
terminology, Husserl calls such feelings feeling-acts. For instance, pleasure
without anything pleasant is unthinkable; the specic essence of pleasure
demands a relation to something pleasing.
25
On the other hand, Husserl also
suggests that there is another group of feelings that lacks intentionality. Taking over
not only Stumpfs distinction but Stumpfs terminology as well, Husserl labels such
feelings feeling-sensations. And just as for Stumpf, so also for Husserl, pain
constitutes the chief example of such feelings: [The] sensible pain of a burn can
certainly not be classed beside a conviction, a surmise, a volition etc. etc., but beside
sensory contents like rough or smooth, red or blue etc.
26
Thus Husserls central thesis in 15 of the Fifth Logical Investigation echoes
Stumpfs position: the notion of feelings is equivocal. Some feelings are intrinsically
intentional, while other feelings lack this property. This fundamental distinction
lends itself to a twofold clarication.
1. One could distinguish between intentional and non-intentional feelings on the
basis of ascription. When we describe the landscape as beautiful, or the weather as
gloomy, we ascribe feeling-qualities to the objects of experience. By contrast, in the
case of such feeling-sensations as pain, we ascribe feelings not to objects, but to the
subject of experience. In the rst case, we are dealing with intentional feelings, in
the second case, with non-intentional feelings.
23
As Denis Fisette has persuasively shown in his Love and Hate: Brentano and Stumpf on Emotions
and Sense Feelings, Stumpf had introduced the distinction between emotions and feeling-sensations as
early as 1899. In a lengthy letter dated 18 August 1899, Brentano acknowledges receipt of Stumpfs
paper and reproaches him for departing from the original doctrine. Brentano blames Stumpf for
ignoring his own doctrine regarding affects (Fisette Fisette 2009a, b, p. 119).
24
See James (1980, pp. 442486).
25
Hua XIX/1 404; for the English translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 571).
26
Hua XIX/1 406; for the English translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 572).
10 S. Geniusas
1 3
2. The distinction in question is also structural. On the one hand, intentional
feelings are founded experiences. When a politician is delighted about the election
results, his joy, which is itself an intentional experience, is founded upon a more
basic intentional presentatione.g., the hearing of the news that he has won the
elections. On the other hand, non-intentional feelings are not founded upon more
basic intentional presentations. Feelings such as pain are to be conceived as the
immediate givenness of sensory content in the absence of more basic sensory acts.
Thus in the debate between Stumpf and Brentano, Husserl seems to take Stumpfs
side. Such is the view defended both by Denis Fisette
27
and Agust n Serrano de
Haro
28
in their notable contributions. Nonetheless, in what follows, I would like to
defend an alternative interpretation. Arguably, Husserls goal in the Logical
Investigations is not merely that of reiterating Stumpfs standpoint, but rather that
of resolving the conict between the two of his most important teachers. Husserls
resolution does not lie in the suggestion that pain is nothing more than a feeling-
sensation, as Stumpf had put it, and as Max Scheler was later to repeat.
29
Rather,
much like Jean-Paul Sartre was to argue more than half a century later in LE

tre et le
Neant,
30
Husserl contends that not only the notion of feelings, but the notion of pain is
equivocal as well: it can be conceived both as a feeling-sensation and as an intentional
experience. My subsequent remarks are meant to substantiate this view.
3.2 The equivocation of pain
An analogy drawn between pain and tactile sensations can explain how pain can be
conceived as both a non-intentional feeling-sensation and an intentional experience.
When I wake up in the middle of the night in a pitch-dark hotel room and when my
hands search for the light switch, I grasp a number of unfamiliar objects. Insofar as I
refrain from asking what objects my hands have just touched, I experience purely
tactile sensations. However, I can also interpret these tactile sensations as
manifestations of particular objects. For example, I can recognize the object my
hand has just touched as a glass of water that I left on the bedside table before
falling asleep. In this manner, the tactile sensations function as presentative contents
of particular acts of consciousness. Due to such acts of taking up, I transform
pure sensations into intentional experiences.
Arguably, just as tactile sensations, so pain-sensations as well can be transformed
into intentional objects of experience. On the one hand, insofar as I do not objectify
my pain, I experience it as a pure sensation. The pain-in-my-eyes, of which Sartre
speaks in LE

tre et le Neant and which he locates at the pre-reective level of

experience, illustrates such a non-intentional experience of pain. On the other hand,
27
See especially Fisette (2010).
28
As Agust n Serrano suggests, concerning pain or pleasure we certainly deal with a conscious
experience, but it is a non-intentional one, a state of mind in which nothing at all is primarily grasped or
represented, in which by itself there is no objective term towards which a conscious intention is
directed. In conclusion, pain is not an intentional object grasped or apprehended, nor is it either an act
of grasping and feeling; it is only sensation and affective (Serrano 2011, p. 388).
29
See Scheler (2004); for the English translation, see Scheler (1973).
30
See Sartre (1968); for the English translation, see Sartre (1956).
The origins of the phenomenology of pain 11
1 3
pain can be also apperceived, or taken up, within an intentional interpretation.
31
I
can thus conceive my pain as located within my body and as caused by particular
objects in the surrounding world.
Husserl touches on this equivocation in the Appendix that accompanies the
Logical Investigations. Here Husserl asks, is a toothache experienced with adequate
or inadequate evidence? The evidence that accompanies the toothache is adequate,
but only insofar as the pain in question is understood as a non-intentional feeling-
sensation. By contrast, the evidence in question is inadequate insofar as we
apperceive the pain as located within a particular tooth, since we can all-too-easily
misidentify the tooth that causes us pain. So as to distinguish between these two
notions of pain, Husserl writes: The perceived object is not the pain as
experienced, but the pain in a transcendent reference as connected with the
tooth.
32
This distinction between pain-as-experienced and pain-as-a-transcendent-
reference is Husserls most direct admission that to a certain degree, both
Brentanos and Stumpfs views on pain are justied: pain can indeed be conceived
as both a non-intentional and intentional phenomenon.
Thus the notion of pain is equivocal. However, a closer look reveals that the
equivocation of pain differs from the equivocation that surrounds other feelings. Let
me illustrate this point by comparing the equivocation that pertains to desire on the
one hand and to pain on the other hand.
3.3 Pain and desire
On the one hand, desire does not always require a reference to the desired object.
When we are moved by drives, instincts, and needs, we live through what Husserl
calls desire-sensations (Begehrungsempndungen), which lack intentional refer-
ence. On the other hand, our desires can be moved not only by obscure drives and
instincts, but also by more or less clearly given objects of experience. Thus desire
can be conceived both as an intentional and a non-intentional experience. Between
these two notions of desire, we might have to allow, not a relation of generic
community but one of mere equivocation.
33
Thus both pain and desire turn out to be equivocal: both can be conceived as non-
intentional and intentional experiences. And yetand this is the point that needs to
be emphasizedthe equivocation in question is signicantly different. While the
intentionality of desire is founded upon objectifying presentations, the intentionality
of pain is founded upon non-objectifying pain-sensations. For this reason, while the
two notions of desire are unrelated to each other, the two notions of pain retain a
close bond between them. We are in need of a further clarication.
31
In Husserls words, our sensations here receive an objective interpretation or taking-up. They
themselves are not acts, but acts are constituted through them, wherever, that is, intentional characters like
a perceptual interpretation lay hold of them, and as it were animate them. In just this manner it seems that
a burning, piercing, boring pain, fused as it is from the start with certain tactual sensations, must itself
count as a sensation. It functions at least as other sensations do, in providing a foothold for empirical,
objective interpretations (Hua XIX/1 406; for the English translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 573).
32
Hua XIX/2 770-771; for the English translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 866).
33
Hua XIX/1 410; for the English translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 575).
12 S. Geniusas
1 3
Our everyday notion of desire is equivocal in that this notion is homonymous: desire
conceived as a sensation is one phenomenon, while desire apprehended as an intentional
experience is an essentially different phenomenon. By contrast, the everyday notion of
pain is equivocal, yet not homonymous, for the equivocation in question derives not from
twodistinct phenomenathat aregivenone andthesame name, but rather fromtwodistinct
strata that compose the full-edged pain-experience. According to the perspective that
Husserl defends in the Fifth Logical Investigation, while pain conceived as a feeling-
sensation is a simple experience, pain taken up in an objectifying interpretation is a
complex experience. According to Husserl, when pain is conceived as a complex
phenomenon, it turns out to be a stratied phenomenon that entails both sensory and
intentional layers of sense. When it comes to such experiences as pain, while the sensory
stratum is the founding one, the intentional stratum is founded upon the sensory one.
Thus in contrast to Stumpf, for whom pains sensuousness signaled its non-
intentional nature, for Husserl, pains sensuousness forms pains pre-intentional
character. Precisely because pain is pre-intentional, it can undergo an objective
interpretation, due to which we can locate a particular pain in our bodies, conceived
as intentional objects of experience. The intentionality of pain is founded upon
pains pre-intentional givenness.
3.4 The evidence of pain
Recall the ambiguity that pertains to Stumpfs notion of sensations. This notion
simultaneously can be understood in what Titchener has identied as the psychological
and psychophysical sense. Arguably, the distinction Husserl draws between simple and
complex experiences provides us with the needed resource to clarify this equivocation.
Insofar as feeling-sensations are conceived as simple experiences, they stand for what
Titchener identies as the psychological notion of sensationsthe most basic psychic
data that cannot be broken down into more basic elements. By contrast, once feeling-
sensations are taken up within an objectifying interpretation, they are transformed into
psychophysical sensationsinto intentional correlates of experiences that we canlocate
in our bodies. Thus just as complex experiences are founded in simple experiences, so
psychophysical sensations are founded in psychological sensations.
With the distinction between these two different notions of sensations in mind,
we can return to Brentanos critical point to which Stumpf never provided a clear
response. As Brentano has it, if pain is not an emotion but a feeling-sensation, then
we lose grounds to qualify the experience of pain as indubitable. And yet, such a
claim plainly contradicts the evidence of experience.
Arguably, Husserls further development of Stumpfs conception of pain as a
feeling-sensation provides the basis to answer this objection. As we just saw, insofar
as we conceive of pain as a feeling-sensation, we conceive of it as a sensation in a
psychological, and not psychophysical sense. But if so, then Brentanos objection
turns out to be an instance of misplaced criticism: not being a psychophysical
sensation, pain is not a physical phenomenon given through external perception.
Are we then to say that for Husserl, just as for Brentano, pain is a psychical
phenomenon that is given through internal perception? Husserl, just as Stumpf, cannot
accept this thesis since it would corroborate the view that pain is an emotion (i.e., a
The origins of the phenomenology of pain 13
1 3
psychic act) and not a feeling-sensation. But if pain is not given either through internal
or external perception, then how are we to account for its indubitable givenness?
With this question, we arrive at the realization that the problematic of pain,
despite its marginal role in Husserls early reections, provides one of the strongest
motivations to replace the Brentanian distinction between internal and external
perception with the distinction between adequate and inadequate evidence. We are
in need of such a substitution because the Brentanian distinction between internal
and external perception is simply not broad enough to address such experiences as
pain. Husserls notion of adequate evidence is broader than Brentanos notion of
internal perception in that it embraces not only the acts of consciousness, but also
sense-contents, including such feeling-sensations as pain.
3.5 Between Stumpf and Brentano
Let us ask again, how exactly does Husserl resolve the controversy between Stumpf
and Brentano? He does this on the basis of the realization that the intentionality of
feelings can be understood in two different ways: besides being founded on
presentations, it can also be founded on feeling-sensations. Arguably, not only
Brentano, but Stumpf as well has overlooked the second possibility. And precisely
because they overlooked it, they found themselves in a seemingly irresolvable
controversy. Husserls proposed solution to this dilemma derives from the
realization that pain-sensations can function as presentative contents and thus can
give rise to pain as an intentional object of experience.
More precisely, Husserls insight into pains stratication rests on the basis of
two distinctions. On the one hand, there is the clearly visible distinction between
intentional and non-intentional feelings. On the other hand, there is the less clearly
visible distinction between simple and complex experiences. Pain is not an
intentional experience, insofar as intentionality is conceived in accordance with the
Brentanian model, which suggests that all intentional feelings are founded on
presentations. In this regard, Husserls opposition to Brentano cannot raise any
doubts.
34
Yet in contrast to Stumpf, this does not mean that pain is to be
characterized as an essentially non-intentional experience. To be sure, when pain is
conceived as a simple experience, it is nothing more that a pure feeling-sensation.
However, pain can be also conceived as a complex experiencean intentional
object, founded upon pain-sensations.
Thus arguably, the central distinction between intentional and non-intentional
feelings in 15 of the Fifth Logical Investigation is not to be understood as a
suggestion that alongside essentially intentional feelings there is a group of
essentially non-intentional feelings. Rather, these non-intentional feelings, under-
stood as feeling-sensations, can be taken-up in an objectifying interpretation and
thereby transformed into components of intentional consciousness. Thus there are
two essentially different types of feelings: essentially intentional feelings, which are
34
As Husserl himself puts it in a footnote, Naturally I reject Brentanos doctrine that presentative acts,
in the term of acts of feeling-sensations, underlie acts of feeling (Hua XIX/1 408; for the English
translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 574).
14 S. Geniusas
1 3
founded upon presentations, as well as non-intentional feelings, which are not
founded on other presentations, yet which can found complex feeling-presentations.
Husserls conception of pain as primarily a feeling-sensation, which can also
become a complex intentional feeling, is to be understood as a critique that is
simultaneously directed at Brentanos and Stumpfs views, a critique, moreover,
which provides a viable resolution to a dispute that might have seemed irresoluble.
4 Final remarks
In place of a conclusion, I would like to draw attention to an important implication
that follows from the foregoing analysis. After spelling it out, I will bring my
analysis to its end by highlighting a no less signicant shortcoming that lies at the
heart of the analyses of pain in descriptive psychology. The recognition of this
shortcoming played just as important a role in subsequent phenomenology of pain as
the debate I have addressed above.
1. As I have indicated in my introductory remarks, descriptive psychology
addresses a wide range of phenomena and conceives of them as necessary detours
that one takes so as to obtain a more precise conception of consciousness. Let us
ask, of what signicance is the foregoing analysis of pain for our understanding of
this central phenomenological theme? Arguably, the signicance could hardly be
any greater. Husserls resolution of the conict between Stumpf and Brentano
culminates in the realization that the Brentanian concept of intentionality is
insufcient to give a full account of intentional consciousness. More precisely,
Husserls analysis of pain gives rise to the realization that one needs to draw a
distinction between two distinct models of intentionality. Brentano notwithstanding,
the mere recognition that feelings are intentional does not mean that all feelings are
founded in intentional presentations. The experience of pain, once interpreted as an
intentional experience, lacks such a founding objectifying basis, yet pain can be
conceived as an intentional experience due to the fact that pure pain-sensations can
perform the function of intentional presentations. One thus needs to distinguish
between two different models of feeling-intentionality: the Brentanian model, which
suggests that emotions are founded in objectifying presentations, and the model that
is exemplied by Husserls analysis of paina model which shows that not all
feelings are founded experiences, that feeling-sensations can perform the founding
function for intentional acts. Husserls claim that feelings are equivocal is to be
understood as a suggestion that neither model is sufcient to give an exhaustive
account of the intentionality of diverse feelings. While the Brentanian model
accounts for the intentionality of founded feelings, the alternative model accounts
for the intentionality of those feeling-acts that are founded in feeling-sensations.
Thus, according to the perspective I am here defending, although there is a
distinction to be drawn between essentially intentional experiences and essentially
non-intentional experiences, this distinction does not mean that all intentional
experiences are essentially intentional. While the feelings of beauty or sublimity are
essentially intentional, the experience of pain provides us with an example of a pre-
intentional feeling-sensation that can be taken up in an objectifying interpretation.
The origins of the phenomenology of pain 15
1 3
Due to such a duality that characterizes complex experience, sensations of pleasure
an pain may continue, though the act characters built upon them may lapse.
35
Thus
essentially intentional experiences are to be distinguished not only from non-
intentional sensations, but also from what Husserl calls complex intentional
experiences, composed both of feeling-sensations and feeling-acts that are built
upon them.
2. This highly signicant implication should not overshadow a no-less signicant
shortcoming that lies at the heart of the analyses of pain in descriptive psychology.
As one traces the historical origins of the phenomenology of pain, one is taken
aback by the awkward fact that Brentano, Stumpf and the early Husserl have so little
to say about the body.
36
There are, I believe, two main reasons that explain this
strange circumstance.
First of all, as they aim to offer a descriptive analysis of pain, Brentano, Stumpf
and the early Husserl distance themselves from all genetic analyses, and especially
from physiological investigations. All three assume that to take the body into
account means to enter the domain of physiology and thus to trespass the
methodological limits of descriptive psychology. Secondly, all three authors are
puzzled by pains non-referentiality and indubitability: when I am in pain, I cannot
doubt that I am in pain, nor can I discover the intentional object of my pain-
experience. Yet arguably, only consciousness, and not the body, can be given as
non-referential and indubitable. Thus it seems that the only way to justify pains
non-referentiality and indubitability is to acknowledge that the real subject of pain is
consciousness and not the body.
Although these two reasons clarify, they do not justify the exclusion of the body
from the analyses of pain in descriptive psychology. As the subsequent phenom-
enological analyses of pain were to reveal, the real subject of pain is neither the
disembodied consciousness, nor the physiological body, but precisely the lived-
body, the embodied subjectivity.
37
Needless to say, within the present context, a
detailed analysis of the lived-body cannot be carried through. Sufce it to note that
the phenomenological discovery of the lived-body is one of the most signicant
contributions that a philosophical inquiry, based on the method of descriptive
psychology, can offer to pain-research.
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Hua XIX/1 409; for the English translation, see Husserl (2000, p. 574).
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See especially Husserl (1952); for the English translation, see Husserl (1989).
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