Continental Philosophy Review 37: 520, 2004.

C
2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Where is the phenomenology of attention that Husserl intended
to perform? A transcendental pragmatic-oriented description
of attention
1
NATALIE DEPRAZ
Philosophy, College International de Philosophie, University of Sorbonne (Paris IV), Paris,
France (e-mail: frj@jussieu.fr)
Abstract. For the most part, attention occurs as a theme adjacent to much more topical and
innovatingly operating acts: rst, the intentional act, which represents a destitution of the
abstract opposition between subject and object and which paves the way for a detailed analysis
of our perceptive horizontal subjective life; second, the reductive act, specied in a psycho-
phenomenological sense as a reective conversion of the way I am looking at things; third,
the genetic method understood as a genealogy of logic based on our experiential affective pre-
discursive world-life. In this respect, here are some of the leading questions of my investigation:
What are the differences and the proximities between these methods and attentional activity?
Why is the latter not put to the fore as a method? To what extent is this secondary part played
by attention linked to the constitution of phenomenology as opposed to psychology (for which
attention is a central theme), and what does it mean for the impossibility of phenomenology to
freeing itself completely from psychology?
1. Introduction
At the very end of Section 92 of Ideas I, the title of which is The Noetic
and Noematic Aspects of Attentional Changes, Husserl claims the necessity
of performing a systematic phenomenology of attention.
2
I quote the
last sentence of the paragraph, which is written at the very end of a rst
analysis of these attentional modications: So much by way of a general
characterization of the noetic-neomatic themes which must be treated with
systematic thoroughness in the phenomenology of attention (Ideas I, p. 226).
Now, such an explicit claim appears to be quite unique in Husserls work,
even though the attentional experience quietly accompanies and softly
permeates most analysis of perception, analyses that form the basis of
each phenomenological description. Our leading question therefore is the
following: Where is the phenomenology of attention that Husserl intended to
perform and, more precisely, as it seems to be both central and hidden, how
is it possible to lay it out?
When one examines Husserls analyses more closely, we note that the
theme of attention is spread widely throughout his writings, namely in the
6 NATALIE DEPRAZ
Lectures on the Theory of Meaning (1908),
3
in the rst volume of Ideas
(1913), in the second volume of First Philosophy (1923), in the Analyses
Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis (19181926) and also in Experience
and judgment (1939), or again in a whole set of early manuscripts from1904
1905 planned by Th. Vongehr & R. Guiliani (from the Husserl-Archive in
Freiburg) as a volume edition in the series of the Husserliana under the title
Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit [Perception and Attetion]. However, the
attentional experience is never consideredbyHusserl himself ina detailedway,
neither as a central phenomenological theme, nor a fortiori as an independent
and appropriate method that would be able to provide an accurate investigation
of our internal psychic life as subjects. Attention remains in the background
or at least is only secondarily linked to other main phenomenological analyses
(static analyses of perception and genetic analyses of affection), and in any
case never reaches the dignity of the reduction as a method.
Most of the time, attention occurs as an adjacent theme to the much more
topical and innovatively operating acts: in the rst place the intentional act,
which represents a destitution of the abstract opposition between subject and
object and which paves the way for a detailed analysis of our perceptual hor-
izontal subjective life; in the second place the reductive act, specied in a
psycho-phenomenological sense as a reective conversion of the way I am
looking at things; third, the gentic method understood as a genealogy of logic
based on our experiential affective pre-discursive world-life. In that respect,
some of the leading questions of my investigation will be: What are the differ-
ences and the proximities between these methods and the attentional activity?
Why is the latter not put to the fore as a method? To what extent is this sec-
ondary role played by attention linked to the constitution of phenomenology as
opposed to psychology, for which attention is a central theme, and what does
this say about the impossibility for phenomenology freeing itself completely
frompsychology? At the endof that same Section92mentionedabove, we nd
a footnote in which Husserl acknowledges that attention is a central theme of
the psychology of my time but where he also considers that the psychological
approach remains sensualistic, that is, in other, more modern terms, natu-
ralistic. Therefore, it does not take into account howimportant intentionality,
reduction and constitution are, that is, it does not acknowledge the central part
played by the conscious acts of the subject in its specic way of turning to
things. According to Husserl, the psychological point of view therefore is
unable to produce anything other than an empirical analysis, that is, it cannot
reach the eidetic stage and a fortiori the transcendental one. Lipps and Pf ander
are the only ones to whom Husserl does justice, insofar as they succeeded ac-
cording to him in elaborating the relationship between attention and object-
consciousness.
PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 7
Insofar as attention remains a lateral theme of the phenomenological anal-
ysis, another method seems to be required in order to investigate more closely
the a-thematic operation and functional performance of such an experience in
Husserls texts. In short, our question is this: What are the gestures, the con-
crete cognitive operations, the precise rules and the practical performances
through which attention may come to the fore as a theme endowed with a
phenomenological dignity? In order to be able to let such proceedings at work
show up, we need not to pay too much attention (precisely!); we need not
focus exclusively on the central methodic acts that are placed at the core of
the whole phenomenological methodology: intentionality in the rst instance,
but also, of course, the reduction, and third, constitution both as static and ge-
netic. In fact, attention may be a real opportunity to achieve such a different
methodic reading of Husserls approach. Furthermore, what we aimto showis
the following: The attentional activity of the subject is the concrete embodied
way through which these well-known methodic acts appear to me as a subject.
In other words, attention is another name, far more concrete, of the real praxis
of intentionality, the reduction and genetic constitution.
Methodologically, this hypothesis involves at least a change of hermeneutic
paradigm, and at the very most the questioning of the hermeneutic method
as an internal conceptual analysis. Such a conversion of the method relies
on the idea that a psycho-phenomenological description, which takes our
rst-person intuitive experience as a unique rst criterion, and then the work
of categorization as a sheer second support that always nds its point of
reference in the validity of the subjective experience, is a more appropriate
way to do phenomenology and not only to think of it about. Now, such a view
of phenomenology was promoted very early (1950) by Paul Ricur in his
attempt at a phenomenological psychology of the involuntary act.
4
By trying
to nd a medium way between the empirical psychological analysis and the
Husserlian eidetic level, Ricurs La philosophie de la volont e is a remarkable
attempt at a pure (non-hermeneutical) description of a phenomenon. So we
would like to present our work modestly as another attempt in the same vein,
an attempt that tries such a phenomenological description, again focused this
time on attentional experience, even though Ricur did it only once and then
abandoned the project while turning to a hermeneutic phenomenology.
Just two critical remarks before embarking on the descriptive analysis.
First, unlike Ricur who dismisses the transcendental level of our experi-
ence as subjects while engaging in his psycho-phenomenological analysis of
involuntary actions (which includes dealing with effort, emotions, habits, un-
conscious states, life), we would like to show that the descriptive doing in
general, and descriptions involving the lived body and affection in particu-
lar, does not exclude at all a transcendental approach. In this respect, Ricur
8 NATALIE DEPRAZ
remains caught in a too narrow view of transcendentality, one that owes too
much to the Kantian heritage. We claim on the contrary what we call a tran-
scendental empiricism as a theoretical background.
5
Second, while stressing
the operative and performative side of the descriptive method, we want to
study the attentional experience from the point of view of its praxis and not of
its theory, therefore suggesting the relevance of pragmatismas a philosophical
background, more in the sense of J. Dewey in his Human Nature and Conduct
6
than in Peirces or in Rortys perspectives. We hope to show concretely as we
progress how much these two comments are relevant and legitimate.
7
In the framework of this confrontation between attentional activity with in-
tentionality, I will proceed in three main steps: (1) I will showthe ambivalence
of Husserls way of relegating attention to a sheer intentional modication
among others; (2) I will unfold in more detail two main concrete gestures
through which attention appears in a lateral way both as an intuitive act and as
a signitive act; (3) I will lay out the hypothesis that attention may be in fact a
generic modulator of every intentional act; this may contribute to explaining
the initial ambivalence I pointed out initially.
2. Considering attention as a sheer intentional modication among
others: The primacy of intentionality against attentionality
In order to provide a rst understanding of Husserls ambivalence with regard
to the attentional theme, the genealogy of the theme of attention in Husserls
work is quite revealing. As early as September 1898, manuscripts dealing with
the study of attention are to be found (A VI 8I/27a and K I 64/Ia), but they
are presented as Exkursus ins Psychologische.
8
In his Hauptst ucke einer
Ph anomenologie der Erkenntnistheorie (19041905), the theme of attention
corresponds to the second part, after a rst part that deals with perception, and
two other parts concerning time and imagination. In 1906, Husserl records
in his personal diary: On the rst rung we encounter the problem of a phe-
nomenology of perception, of phantasy, of time, of things. In relation to this,
I have also attempted a phenomenology of attention. . . .This would demand,
further, a systematic exposition of a phenomenology of meaning. Further, a
theory of judgment. . . .
9
In the same vein, Husserls main thematic contention about attention is the
following: attention is nothing else than a fundamental kind of intentional
modication. Such a claimis developed in a footnote at the end of the Section
92 of Ideas I
10
within the larger framework of the third Section of the work,
where the intentional (noetic-noematic) structure of the pure consciousness
is actually promoted as its main methodic structure. More precisely, within
PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 9
the third chapter dealing specically with noema, the attentional changes
correspond to a second extension of the notion, after a rst perceptual one
(Sections 8991) and a third more complex prectical one (Sections 9396).
So just a look at the organization of the argument shows how much attention
is only one possible extended application of the intentional structure squeezed
in among others (e.g., perceptual, practical).
Let us focus on the Section 92 and notice in the rst place the paradoxical
turn of the sentence, which is straightforwardly revealing for Husserls am-
bivalence with regard to attention: (1) attention is nothing else than (nichts
anderes ist als) a kind of intentional modication; (2) attention is a funda-
mental kind (Grundart) of intentional modication. Husserls contention is
therefore double-sided: First, attention must of course be analyzed within the
intentional structure. Outside of this it has no relevance. Second, it is promised
to play a prominent role within such a framework, as it is a fundamental kind
of intentional modication. Another indication of such an ambivalence can be
read in the following sentence found at the beginning of the paragraph after
a few introductory sentences: In this context it is a question of . . . changes
which . . . do not alter the correlative noematic productions but, nevertheless,
exhibit alterations of the whole mental process with respect to both its noetic
and noematic sides.
11
We can observe here quite a subtle way of showing
how attention partially affects and alters [wandelt ab] the lived experiential
intentionality of consciousness without radically transforming [ver andern] it.
In short, the whole development is indicative of a dependence of attention
on the general intentional methodology. Again, at the end of the paragraph,
Husserl explains: . . . [We] stand here at the rst and radical beginning of
the theory of attention . . . the rest of the study must be achieved within the
framework of intentionality and be dealt with not as an empirical study, but
rst of all as an eidetic one.
12
So Husserl excludes here any other possibility
to broach the theme of attention: It is necessarily an intentional act and, as
such, it has an eidetic dimension. At once Husserl makes here two decisions,
which amount for him to the same one but could well have been separated in
other contexts: (1) Attention is subjected to intentionlity; (2) Intentionality is
necessarily an eidetic intentionality. Such a twofold contention is intended to
create a clear separation between phenomenology and psychology. (1) Atten-
tion is not a mental activity by which some sensations and psychic states get
intensied due to more or less strong imprints on my consciousness of sen-
sory inputs of stimuli. J. Locke and then the Abbot Condillac rst d escribed
it as a plus de conscience or a conscience diff erentielle, namely, in his
Essai sur lorigine des connaissances humaines (1746).
13
On the contrary, it
is a lived act of my consciousness that is directed towards specic objects.
(2) Attention is not a contingent and factual conscious act that is all the same
10 NATALIE DEPRAZ
caused by my being existentially impressed and materially affected by various
events; it is an act of my consciousness, the structure of which is essential,
that is, independent of any empirical datum. According to Husserl, both con-
tentions are intrinsically linked, even though they address two different kinds
of psychology: The rst one is a sensualistic and atomistic one, mostly in
the vein of the British empiricism; the second one is an intentional natural
or naturalistic psychology, which could be represented by people like Lipps,
Pf ander or even J. Daubert.
14
In this respect Husserl shares Descartes and
Malebranches rationalist conception of attention as being the fundamental
condition of our freedom as knowing subjects.
Even if we keep as a rst step the idea of the primacy of eidetic intentionality
as a general background in order to analyze attentional activities, we need to
try to understand the specicity of the so-called attentional changes or modes
Husserl is insisting on within such a larger phenomenological background.
Indeed, even though the free act of attention has no relevance outside of an
eidetic intentionality, it corresponds to (I quote the beginning of the paragraph)
a species of remarkable changes in consciousness . . . which cut across all
other species of intentional events and thus make up a quite general structure
of consciousness having its own peculiar dimension.
15
As we noticed it is
already thanks to at least two ambivalent formulations, according to Husserl
himself, that intentionality seems to be a necessary but not sufcient criterion
to describe our attentional activity, such that it indeed needs to be broached
rst through more concrete gestures (i.e., through its praxis), second by laying
bare its transcendental functionality.
3. Attention as the embodied praxis of intentionality
Lookingcloser at Husserls descriptions helps us tocome tothe conclusionthat
the theme of attention is more present under other terms than the expected one,
Aufmerksamkeit, or that the latter needs to be re-anchored in its native concrete
lato sensu signitive meaning. Both investigations concur in attempting to show
the peculiar concrete esh of attentionality beyond its general intentional
structural scaffolding.
A. The attentional act as the intuitive double-sided gesture of turning one-
self [sich zuwenden] and becoming salient [sich abheben]
Right at the beginning of the Section 92, after having said that the atten-
tional modication refers to a sui generis structure of consciousness, Husserl
mentions two gestures as being our specic correlated way of speaking of the
PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 11
attentional activity: We spoke metaphorically of the pure Egos mental re-
gard or the ray of its regard, of its advertings toward and turning away from.
The relevant phenomena stood out unitarliy for us with perfect clarity and
distinctness.
16
What is striking here is the imagery in which Husserl uses for
his description, namely, as if he were reporting the language of others and not
really accounting himself for an experience he would actually see in that way.
Truly, such visual and potentially tactile metaphors of looking and lighting
and of relief or salience as well as the kinetic metaphor of the gaze turning
towards and turning away are at work in the research of some famous psy-
chologists who already began to show their interest for the study of attention
during the second half of the 19th century; I mean W. James and W. Wundt.
Both authors describe the process of becoming attentive as a light or clarity
increasing and as a transfer of perceptions and thoughts from the periphery
to the center of consciousness, the latter being analogized with the centra-
tion of the eye looking and turning itself.
17
In addition, although this kind
of presentation of attention will be ostracized by behaviorism as a regres-
sive mentalist introspectionism, the psychologist Binet and the philosopher
Bergson (Mati` ere et m emoire) in France, but also the phenomenologists A.
Gurwitsch in his investigation into the eld of consciousness and A. Sch utz in
Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1932),
18
will all concur in using such
concrete ways of describing our attentional activity. Again, in contemporary
cognitive psychology, many studies rely on the two-sided eld of conscious-
ness called center/periphery to promote (this time more clearly) third-person
experiments of attentional activity.
19
Again, Husserls approach is ambivalent: on the one hand, he cognizes
the frequency of such a way of apprehending attention. A bit later in the
paragraph, he will come back again to the visual image of lighting and of
zones of obscurity to characterize attention and its decreasing as inattention:
Attention is usually compared to a spot of light. The object of attention,
in the specic sense, lies in the cone of more or less bright light; but it
can also move into the penumbra and into the completely dark region.
On the other hand, he indicates how much such a presentation remains
insufcient but is necessary as a basis of description: Though the metaphor
is far from adequate to differentiate all the modes which can be xed
phenomenologically, it is still illustrative insofar as it indicates alterations in
what appears, as what appears. These changes in its illumination do not alter
what appears which respect to its own sense-composition; but brightness and
obscurity modify its mode of appearance: they are to be found and described
when we direct our regard to the noematic object.
20
All the same, the whole phenomenological topical analysis of my percep-
tual and remembering activity, which is developed for example in chapter II
12 NATALIE DEPRAZ
of the third section of Ideas I, entitled The general structures of pure
consciousness, but also in First Philosophy II, in the third and fourth Sections,
is guided by such a double concrete gesture of turning oneself towards/away
and letting objects become salient. However, attention is never mentioned as
being the act of the consciousness that underlies the whole. Why? It seems
to be that Husserl invented or promoted other concepts that are more in the
spirit of the phenomenology he intended to defend, namely, horizontal in-
tentionality, reexive reduction and genetic constitution. Attention therefore
occurs only indirectly under other less unexpected terms but more concrete
gestures: Zuwendung and Abwendung, which refer to the bodily kinetic ges-
ture of turning towards/away; Umkehrung des Blickes, which corresponds to
the visual action of directing ones gaze from one spatial place to another;
Abhebung, which has to do with the way an object becomes salient and there-
fore affects me among other objects only perceived with it or simply not
perceived at all. Such embodied and precise gestures suggest that the atten-
tional activity permeates and nourishes as an everyday praxis every one of my
intentional perceptual, remembering or imaginative acts of consciousness. Let
us notice besides that these embodied kinetic, visual and affecting gestures
also provide concrete exemplary leading-clues in order to re-anchor the reduc-
tive and the genetic constitutive activity of the subject that shows how much
the concretization of intentionality is narrowly linked to that of reduction and
that of constitution.
But, not only is attention present at the core of my main intentional intuitive
acts. It is also underlying the concrete signitive activity of the subject of taking
note of [merken], noticing [bemerken] and remarking [aufmerken].
B. The attentional act as the gradual gesture of noticing [bemerken,
aufmerken, mitmerken, unbemerken]: The signitive scope of attention
In paragraph 92 of Ideas I again, the process of noticing is directly linked to
the previous double correlative gesture of the subjects turning ones gaze (to-
ward/away) and of the objects becoming salient. These words have a common
root merk- and are used as a way to graduate such processes of becoming at-
tentive. However, such a gradual description had not been provided yet by the
previous analysis, neither in terms of lighting, nor with the gestures of turn-
ing or becoming salient as they underscored above all the sudden salient
presence of the object lighted by the eye and the kinetic move of the subject.
Now, the whole perceptual eld is structured along different modes of becom-
ing noticeable, of noticeability, or of slowly becoming unnoticeable and it is
therefore also approached thanks to the temporal processes of actualization
and dis-actualization: . . . [I]n one of the compared cases, one moment of
PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 13
the object is favored and, in another case, another; or of the fact that one
and the same moment is paid attention to primarily at one time and only
secondarily at another time, or just barely noticed still, if not indeed com-
pletely unnoticed though still appearing. Those are indeed different modes
belonging specically to attention as such. Among them the group of action-
ality modes are separated from the non-actionality mode, from what we call
complete inattention, the mode which is, so to speak, dead consciousness of
something.
21
Now, such a gradual temporal perceiving process of modes of noticing had
already been extended and, more precisely, applied by Husserl to its signitive
and verbal dimension. As early as 1908, in the Lectures on the Theory of Mean-
ing, within the framework of the central distinction between the consciousness
of meaning [Bedeutungsbewutsein] and the verbal consciousness [Wortlaut-
bewutsein], Husserl comes back to the different usual (so he says) functions
of attention, primary noticing [prim ares Bemerken] and thematic intend-
ing [thematisches Meinen] (Hua, 1822). The general framework is the same
as the one of 1913 already, that is, intentionality. Husserls idea is to show the
intricacy of my being attentive to the words and to the meaning of the words:
Consciousness of meaning is intertwined with verbal consciousness.
22
In
order to do so, he unfolds in quite an illuminating way the different strata of
noticing the meaning instead of the word in its materiality or vice versa, and
the different experiences we have of a double attention with a stronger em-
phasis on the one side or the other: primary noticing, secondary noticing,
remarking, adjuct intending [nebenbei Meinen], thematic intending.
Husserl presents his analysis of the interweaving of word-consciousness
and meaning-consciousness as an applied extension of the perceptual inten-
tional model. My question however is this: To what extent is the whole analysis
not also permeated by a fundamental lato sensu signitive experience, insofar
as, along with a bodily anchored one, as we already shown, the vocabulary
used to describe the multifarious folds of the attentional modes of conscious-
ness is a signitive vocabulary of marks and indications?
As a provisory conclusion: Attention as an intentional act of consciousness
needs to be reanchored in its bodily postures (kinetic, visual and affective) and
in its noticing qua signitive scope (indicative, both verbal and meaningful)
in order to delineate more precisely the experiential praxis which provides it
with its phenomenal impulse. By laying out these two bodily and signitive
gestures of attention, we do not want to say that Husserl claimed explicitly
such practical anchorages, but that his descriptions are full of such concrete
indications, which need to be unfolded and uncovered as such. Hence we aim
at de-centering the reading from the claim of a de jure thematic intentional
model reigningover eachact of consciousness tothe hypothesis of anoperative
14 NATALIE DEPRAZ
attentionality modulating de facto the different activities of our consciousness.
So we have to keep in mind the concrete bodily and signitive gestures at
work in attention that give it its esh, if we want to argue in more detail
our hypothesis about attentionality. The latter does not amount to denying
the relevance of intentionality, but only to relativize its primacy as a global
model of consciousness because of its presentation as a too formal and general
scaffolded structure of consciousness.
4. Considering attention as a concretely embodied modulator
23
inherent in every intentional act: The empiricist-transcendental
genetic primacy of attentionality as opposed to intentionality
To modulate means to vary, to be inected, to adapt to particular cases
or contexts of meaning. In addition, the word modulation has a context of ref-
erence in music, meaning the changes of stress, emphasis, intensity, pitch of a
sound as it is emitted. Along this understanding of the process of modulating,
our hypothesis is that attentionality is a dimension of the acts of conscious-
ness whose originality is to show the character of changing present in all the
intentional acts of consciousness, that is, provides them with a constitutive
variability of their own way of appearing and discloses such dynamics of
inner variable alteration as being inherent in each act. Whereas intentionality
is a formal model of the structure of consciousness, whose openness lies in a
linear directedness towards the object, attentionality as modulation furnishes
every act of our consciousness with a material uctuating density due to its
inner variations and its concrete changeability.
At the beginning of the paragraph 92, which appears to be quite a mine
of information with respect to attention, Husserl puts to the fore the changes
[Wandlungen] of attention. As a matter of fact, he broaches the theme of
attention through its changes. Thus attention winds up being dened as an
intentional act by means of its changes. Its originality lies in the fact that it
is combined [es kreuzt sich] with all other kinds of intentional phenomena
without disappearing at all in them, or that it is mingled [vermengt] with
them without ever being given (or able to be given) in isolation or separated
from them. It belongs intrinsically to the intentional phenomenal structure of
the acts of my consciousness and provides them with its constitutive touch
of variability. In a similar sense, attention (through the image of the eye-
beam) is presented as going through, as penetrating the different strata of
consciousness, be they perceptual, remembering, imaginative etc. It is a sort
of transversal qua vertical activity of my consciousness, perpendicular to the
horizontal linearity of intentional directedness, since it gives us an access to
PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 15
the mobile depth of our consciousness as being a weave of vibrating variations.
Attention therefore seems not to be linked to any specic intentional acts in
particular, be they perceptual, remembering or imagining, but it is associated
to all as an unessential but unavoidable modulator of each of them.
How is it then possible to determine more concretely the transcendental
operative functionality of attention inherent in each intentional act? Let us
say rst that such a functionality of attention is a direct expression of the
general background we contend: transcendental empiricism. Indeed, there
is a transcendentality of the function of attention because it corresponds to a
constitutive dimension of each of the intentional acts: as such it is unavoidable.
But there is also a constitutive material empirical character to the givenness of
attention because it appears to be the very concrete variability and experiential
alteration of my consciousness.
In other words, as we already said, it is the esh of the intentional scaf-
folding, or, to use J. Derridas perspective, it is the parergon as opposed to
the ergon, the margin with regard to the text, the signier in relation to
the signied,
24
or again, to refer to the musical paradigm, the harmonics
related to the fundamental note. We could also say that attentionality fullls
exactly the function of the example in Husserlian phenomenology, being at
the same time a contingent (unessential in that sense, beliebig as Husserl
says in his Phenomenological Psychology
25
leading-clue of intentionality and,
once disclosed, an intrinsic structuring of each act.
26
As we know how much
exemplarity in Husserl is linked to his conception of eidetics, attentionality
contributes by giving a more material and dynamic account of the process
of eidetic variation: The inner variability which constitutes attentionality as
a dynamic multilayered component of consciousness has to be kept with its
empirical richness to reach the eidos of an act, so that we have to do with a
materialized eidetics, which retains in it as constitutive elements the empirical
attentional variations of the act.
In that respect, it is interesting to look closer at C. Stumpfs Tonpsy-
chologie.
27
We know that Brentano, who was Husserls teacher in
Vienna, recommended him to Stumpf, who was teaching in Halle. During
the fall 1886, three years after Stumpf published his work on the psychology
of sound, Husserl went to prepare his Habilitation under his direction. He
also intended to increase his knowledge in psychology and was impressed
by Stumpfs way of dealing with the relationship between perception and
imagination in his lectures from the semester 18861887 (Ms. F I 8/8a). We
also know that Stumpf 1894 encouraged Husserl to read James Principles
of Psychology (1890). As early as 1893 however, Husserl lays out a rst
criticism of Stumpfs analysis of attention, which can easily be extended to
James own analysis.
28
In the Manuscript K I 63, we read that both analysis
16 NATALIE DEPRAZ
are pre-phenomenological. Now, in his Tonpsychologie (1883),
29
Stumpf
describes attention as being awakened by an interest and narrowly linked to
pleasure [Lust] and feelings [Gef uhle]. The activity of noticing procedes from
a pleasure and unnoticed objects are effects of displeasure [Unlust]. It is what
Stumpf (but we could also hear James here) calls a pleasure one has to no-
tice or a Lust am Bemerken. In addition, the whole analysis of attention is
led by the paradigm of listening to musical sounds. As attention is motivated
by pleasure/displeasure, it follows the rhythm of a focused tension [Span-
nung] and an open relaxing [L osung] and corresponds to a specic intensity
of feeling, involving as a counterpart a resistance [Widerstand] and obstacles
[Hemmungen] coming fromthe subject, which refer to processes of distraction
or inattention.
Husserls criticismstarts exactly here: attention is not a pleasure one has to
notice [eine Lust am Bemerken]. Pleasure/displeasure or feelings in general
are not at the core of attention/inattention, and Husserl will replace the Stump-
an energetic and bodily tension/relax model by the intention/fulllment
model, that is, formal intentionality, and refuses thereby what he interprets as
a content-oriented description of attention in order to promote an act-oriented
description.
30
Instead of strengthening the opposition between Husserl and Stumpf, that
is, between intentionality and attentionality, as if they were exclusive alterna-
tives, our own contention is that it is far more interesting to keep the intentional
basis of analysis of attention and to include therein the fruitful developments
Stumpf has been able to provide in his analysis. As we already said, inten-
tionality would remain the scaffolding of each act of consciousness, whereas
attentionality brings in its esh.
Stumpfs analysis brings to the core the idea of interest as feeling: At-
tention is interest, and interest is a feeling [Aufmerksamkeit ist Interesse
und Interesse ist ein Gef uhl].
31
The whole development stresses the grada-
tion of modes of attention in the light of concrete examples drawn from the
phenomenon of sleeping and its correlates, that is, awaking, half-sleep, day-
dreaming, or from the phenomenon of tiredness and its degrees in laziness,
concentration, training, etc. What Stumpf wants to underline here is the pro-
cess of intensifying (what he calls Steigerung, Verst arkung) which is proper
to the becoming attentive and, conversely, the counter-process of becoming
inattentive through the decreasing or lowering of intensity. Moreover, he an-
alyzes the different forms of attention (involuntary, reexive, compelled) and
its multifarious effects. Like James, who develops quite a similar analysis of
the felt degrees of attention, of its forms and effects, he contends that the phe-
nomenon of attention can be measured and in a parallel manner analyzed at
a neuro-psychological level, relying on Fechners psycho-physical analysis,
PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 17
while James is more akin to Wundts experiments. Now, Husserl in later ge-
netic works, and above all in his Analyses Concerning Passive and Active
Synthesis (from 19181926)
32
will give a central importance to the gradual
emergence of attention, to the becoming attentive and to the different modes,
forms and effects of attentionality. He will obviously take into account in a far
more accurate way what has been gained from empiricism and psychology in
order to analyze attention in relation to its affective genesis.
33
Never will he
however include the necessity of doing justice as such to psycho- and neuro-
logical experiments as James and Stumpf did, in order not to explain attention
one-sidedly, but even to give more meaning to the complexity of the pheno-
menon.
34
Now, the recent studies in neuroscience show clearly how much attention
is a complex act that integrates a great amount of competences of the subject,
that is, perception, memory, imagination. On the basis of an early psycho-
logical analysis of attention understood as a mental effort and an ability to
select,
35
attention has been more and more considered as a basic mechanismof
consciousness
36
and, today, the neuro-scientic studies have been able to iden-
tify three different attentional networks thanks to electric registering or more
specically thanks to IRM(Functional Cerebral Imaging): either the attention
of a subject is oriented toward a sensory stimulation, or attention is activated
by the work of the memory, or attention corresponds to a maintained state of
vigilance. Such results show that the sub-personal mechanisms of attention
refer to a specic complex of unconscious cognitive processes that can neither
be localized in a few neurons nor put into action the whole of the brain. In the
same vein, P. Buser in his recent book Cerveau de soi, cerveau delautre,
37
shows very well how the attentional activity is situated at the crossroads of
many other cognitive activities: perception, memory, action, etc. In addition,
he underlines that attention is not a monolithic activity but involves what he
calls attentional states anddoes not belongonlytoour clear consciousness,
but has to do with unconscious processes related to pre-attentional activities.
In short, he insists on the genesis and the transitions inherent in the attentional
dynamics.
From a phenomenological point of view, these neuro-scientic and cogni-
tive psychologist thrusts are quite valuable, since (1) they conrm the idea
that the description of attention needs to be anchored in the study of its ge-
netic emergence, that is, of its graduality, its different modes and states, its
multifarious effects; (2) they indicate that the hypothesis of attention as a tran-
scendental (both functional and material) modulator of the intentional acts of
my consciousness is a strong hypothesis, insofar as attentional sub-personal
processes also seem to be transversal to many other cognitive activities of the
brain.
18 NATALIE DEPRAZ
5. Conclusion
As early as 1936, Minkowski in his book Vers une cosmologie
38
made two
quite relevant observations: (1) attention contains quite essentially in itself
inattention: it is an illusion to try to focus ones attention. It is the death
of attention. Referring to James, he then spoke of tres ns mouvements
oscillatoires de distraction, so as to suggest that distraction is the better
way to broach the theme of attention rather than attention itself. This remark
is quite in agreement with Husserls initial description of the changes of
attention, and its constitutive variability, but also goes one step further, since
it brings to the fore distraction and modes of inattention as a more relevant
access to a phenomenology of attention; (2) attention is a phenomenon that
exists in addition, i.e., that has to be added [qui se surajoute] to the other
perceptual and thought-phenomena and species them. It has to be studied,
not in relation with its object, but with regard to other connected phenomena.
Such a comment echoes quite nely our hypothesis of modulation and
concurs with the global functionality of attention neuroscientists pointed out
recently. He also had another comment about attention: Attention as function
has been much studied by psychologists, how to remain attentive, what is the
organ of attention; attention as phenomenon is embedded in the intentional
correlation: noetically, how to turn toward/away; noematically, how an object
becomes salient for me. This last observation should be a good indication
for us to keep in mind the necessity to braid together (without exclusion)
the Husserlian phenomenological approach (here intentional, eidetic and
transcendental, both reductive and constitutive), the cognitive psychological
approach (practical, empirical genetic) and the neuro-scientic one, which
provides us with parallel thrusts in terms of sub-personal processes.
Notes
1. The following inquiry presupposes a rst step (and chapter) which focuses on the reduction
as a concrete practical method: it was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies,
Special Issue entitled The View from Within: First-Person Approaches to the Study of
Consciousness, eds. F. Varela & J. Shear 6/2-3 (1999). We present here a further step
(and second chapter): Intentionality and Attentionality, was presented at SPEP, 2000,
in the framework of a workshop co-organized with Anthony Steinbock; a second one,
Husserls Phenomenology of the Micro-genesis of Attention in the Light of C. Stumpfs
and W. James Accounts on Attention, was presented at Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale in April, 2001, at a Conference on attention organized by N. Depraz and A.
Steinbock and corresponds to a third chapter of a forthcoming book.
2. See Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomeno-
logical Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983);
hereafter, Ideas I.
PHENOMENOLOGY OF ATTENTION 19
3. Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen uber Bedeutungslehre Sommersemester 1908, ed. Ursula
Panzer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986); hereafter, Vorlesungen.
4. P. Ricur, La philosophie de la volont e, t. 1: Le volontaire et 1involontaire (Paris: Aubier,
1950; r e ed. 1988).
5. See N. Depraz, Lucidit e du corps: De lempirisme transcendantal en pho enomo enologie
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).
6. J. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1922).
7. See on this matter, N. Depraz, F. J. Varela, and P. Vermersch, On Becoming Aware. An
Experiential Pragmatics (Amsterdam: Benjamins Press, 2003).
8. See K. Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und lebensweg Edmund Husserls (Den Haag:
M. Nijhoff, 1977), 55; herafter, Husserl-Chronik.
9. See K. Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 99: Da stehen in erster Stelle die Probleme einer
Ph anomenologie der Wahrnehmung, der Phantasie, der Zeit, des Dinges. In Zusammen-
hang damit habe ich auch Versuche gemacht uber eine Ph anomenologie der Aufmerk-
samkeit . . . Weiter bed urfte es einer systematischen Ausf uhrung einer Ph anomenologie
der Bedeutungen. Weiter eine Urteilstheorie . . .
10. Ideas I, Section 92, 221226, here, 225.
11. Ideas I, Section 92, 223.
12. Ideas I, Section 92, 223.
13. Entre plusieurs perceptions dont nous avons en m eme temps conscience, il nous arrive
souvent davoir plus conscience des unsque des autres, ou d etre plus vivement averti
de leur existence. Plus m eme la conscience de quelques unes augmente, plus celle des
autres diminue . . . .cette op eration par laquelle notre conscience, par rapport ` a certaines
perceptions, augmente si vivement quelles paraissent les seules dont nous ayons pris
connaissance, je lappelle attention. Ainsi etre attentif,cest avoir plus conscience des
perceptions quelle fait natre, que de celles que dautres produisent, en agissant comme
elle sur nos sens; et lattention a et e dautant plus grande, quon se souvient moins de
cesderni` eres, Essai sur lorigine des connaissances humaines, (Euvres philosophiques
de Condillac (Paris: P. U. F., Corpus g en eral des philosophes fran cais, Auteurs modernes,
Tome XXXIII, 1947), Vol. I, First Part, Section 5, 1011.
14. See, e.g., K. Schuhmann and B. Smith, Against Idealism: Johannes Daubert vs. Husserls
Ideas I, Review of Metaphysics 39 (1985): 763793, and T. Lipps, Grundtatsachen des
Seelenlebens (Bonn: M. Cohen, 1883).
15. Section 92, 222; translation modied.
16. Section 92, 189.
17. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press
1890/1981); W. Wundt, Grundri der Psychologie (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1896).
18. A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964);
A. Sch utz, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna: Springer, 1932), p. 13.
19. B. Mangan, Taking Phenomenology Seriously: The Fringe and Its Implication for
Cognitive Research, Consc. Cognition 2 (1993): 89108.
20. Ideas I, Section 92, 224; translation modied.
21. Husserl, Ideas I, Section 92, 224.
22. Husserl, Hua 26, 22: Mit dem Wortlautbewutsein ist verochten das Bedeutungsbe-
wutein.
23. The expression of modulation is used quite often in cognitive psychology but also in neuro-
biology to characterize the attentional activity. On this matter, see J. Lecas, Lattention
20 NATALIE DEPRAZ
visuelle: de la conscience aux neurosciences (Bruxelles: Mardaga, 1992), 10: lattention
nest jamais seulement en cause et na probablement gu` ere de sens en dehors de la modu-
lation quelle exerce sur dautres activit es; and J.D. Cohen, K. Dunbar, J.F. McClelland,
Quesaisje? (1999): 4: A linverse des autres grandes fonctions psychologiques telles que
la perception, la m emoire, limagination, lattention na pas de produit sp ecique. En fait
elle participe ` a toutes les activit es mentales, dont elle module le fonctionnement.
24. See J. Derrida, La v erit e en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978); Marges de la philosophie
(Paris: Minuit, 1972); La voix et le ph enom` ene (Paris: PUF, 1967/1998).
25. Edmund Husserl, Ph anomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925,
ed. W. Biemel (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1968).
26. Regarding the function of examples, see C. Lobo, Le ph enom enologue et ses exemples.
Etude sur le r ole de lexemple dans la constitution de la m ethode et louverture du champ
de la ph enom enologie husserlienne (Paris: Kim e, 2000).
27. C. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie (R. Hirzel: Leipzig, 1883), Bd. 1., Section 4: Aufmerksamkeit;

Ubung; Erm udung, 6787. See also Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen (Berlin:
K onigli Akademie der Wissenschaften).
28. W. James, Principles of Psychology, volume 1, chapter 11, 402458.
29. A similar analysis is to befound as early as 1873 in

Uber den Ursprung der Zeit und
Raumvorstellung.
30. Hua XXVII, Section 4.
31. Stumpf, p. 68. See also as a parallel step concerning evidence as feeling the article by
G. Heffernan, A Study in the Sedimented Origins of Evidence: Husserl and His Con-
temporaries in a Collective Essay in the Phenomenology and Psychology of Epistemic
Justication, Husserl Studies 16/2 (1999): 83181.
32. Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Tran-
scendental Logic, trans. Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
2001).
33. See also Analyses, esp. Part 3 of the Main Texts Section 49 and 50, which deal with the
relationship between activity and passivity and with the attentional modality at work in
our affect-consciousness [Gem utsbewutsein].
34. See as we said the chapter 3 of a forthcoming book about the phenomenology of attention,
dealing with attention and affection in the genetic Husserlian perspective.
35. U. Neisser, Cognitive Psychology (New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1967).
36. M. I. Posner, Attention: The Mechanisms of Consciousness, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA)
91 (1994): 73987403.
37. P. Buser, Cerveau de soi, cerveau de lautre (Paris: O. Jacob, 1998), ch. VIII, attention
et pr e-attention, 147168.
38. E. Minkowski, Vers une cosmologie (Paris: Aubier, 1936), chapter 7, Lattention,
p. 8896.