J.N.

MOHANTY
University of Oklahoma

CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXISTENCE: REMARKS ON THE

RELATION BETWEEN HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER*

In the philosophical dialog that ensued, within the phenomenological school,

upon the appearance of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, the crucial issues centered
around the opposition between the concepts of 'consdousness' and 'exist-
ence'. One of these issues concerned priority or transcendentality. If in the
jargon of the school, the transcendental is the constituting and the mundane
is the constituted---and in this both the Husserlians and the Heideggerians
seemed to agree--what divided the school was the question : is the true
transcendental a universal pure subjectivity understood as consciousness,
or an entity with a mode of being other than the mode of being of all that
is a positive matter of fact (thing or tool) ? In a letter to Husserl, dated
October 22, 1927, Heidegger expresses his agreement with Husserl that
the transcendental constitution of the world, as understood by Husserl,
cannot be clarified by taking recourse to a being of exactly the same mode
of being as that of entities belonging to the world. However, he adds,
that does not imply that the locus of the transcendental is not a being at
all. On the contrary, the problem precisely is, for Heidegger, "What is
the mode of being of that entity in which the 'world' constitutes itself ?"
It is well known that this entity is none other than man, whose mode of
being i.e. Dasein is such that 'transcendental constitution' is a central
possibility of its factual existence. This concrete human being, Heidegger
continues, is such that and this the Wundersame--that its existential struc-
ture makes possible the transcendental constitution of all positivity. He
concludes by emphasising that the question about the mode of being of
the constituting cannot be set aside. The constituting, the transcendental, is
not nothing, therefore it is something, although not in the sense of the
positive entities. *
Contrast with this what would be Husserl's position. "As humans present
in the world, spiritually as well as bodily, we are for 'us'; we are the appear-

* E a r l i e r drafts of this pa~per w e r e r e a d at the State U n i v e r s i t y of N e w York at Stony

B r o o k a n d t h e U n i v e r s i t y of O k l a h o m a .

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 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXISTENCE
ances of a very complex intentional life, 'our' life, in which this thing that
is on-hand is constituted 'for us' apperceptively along with all its meaning
contents. ''~ "The on-hand apperceived I and we presupposes an (apper-
ceiving) I and we, fo'r which it is on-hand, but which is not itself, in the
same sense, on-hand. We have direct access to this transcendental sub-
jectivity through a transcendental experience. ''3
To Husserl's text "If I perfor this (i.e. the 'epoche' - JNM) for myself,
then I am not any longer a human ego, although I do not loose anything
of the peculiar contents of my pure (i.e. the purely psychological) soul",
Heidegger adds the following comment :
"or, perhaps, exactly such, in his most authentic, 'wonderful' existence-
possibility." "Why not ? Is not this performance a possibility of man, even
when this man is never merely on-hand . . ."~

The specific issue that seems to emerge from this exchange may be formu-
lated thus: Is transcendental subjectivity a modality, an existential possi-
bility for man whose original mode of being is Dasein ? Or, is 'being
human', and therefore 'being in the world' a modality of transcendental
subjectivity, a mode in which transcendental subjectivity 'apperceives' itself?
This specific issue is closely connected with a more general issue. Since
Heidegger's Sein und Zeit it has become a philosophical commonplace to
say something like this. The idea of consciousness and its intentionality is
closely connected with the distinction between subject and object; the latter
is inseparable from the notion of subjectivity as formulated in western
metaphysics since Descartes. The idea of subjectivity, on its part, hangs
together with a still earlier development in western thinking on Being--
the idea of Being as presence with its exclusive emphasis on one of the
modes of time i.e. time as presence. Subjectivity or consciousness is then
understood as pure self-presence, to which all objects are presented. This
historically developed nexus of concepts represents a phase in man's com-
prehension of Being or rather of Being's historicity itself. With the destruc-
tion of the optimistic faith in consciousness's absolute self-presence and
coincidence with itself through historical forces that include Hegel, Marx
and Freud amongst o.thers--the concepts of consciousness, intentionality and
subjectivity, all need to be overcome: thay all presuppose, as their foun-
dation, for their even limited validity, the mode of being called Dasein,
with its ecstatic being-in-the-world understood as temporality, in the corn-
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 J.N. MOHANTY
plex structure of which being-towards-death stands out as the primordial
meaning-constituing phenomenon. Of such a mode of being, understood
in accoMance with the Daseinsanalytik of Sdn und Zeit, 'consciousness' and
'subjectivity' indicate existential possibilities, historical categories of com-
prehension of Being. Reflection, including transcendental reflection, is
grounded in Dasein's existential structure rather than in an idealised con-
sciousness in general or transcendental ego.
In our effort to comprehend the issue, it is perhaps useful to bear in
mind that the issue is not about, whether realism or idealism is the true
philosophical standpoint. The issue is not, whether consciousness is prior
to existence or existence is prior to consciousness--if the words 'conscious-
ness' and 'existence' are understood in their usual philosophical senses.
There are obvious senses in which consciousness does presuppose existence.
The emergence of consciousness on the world scene presupposes various
other modes of existence such as inorganic and organic matter. Conscious-
ness characterises, when it does emerge, a domain of existence--namely, the
human. Furthermore, as characterising a domain of existence, consciousness
itself has a certain mode of existing. States or acts of consciousness exist
in time, if not in space, and constitute a temporal continuum which is the
mental life of an existing person who on his part occupies a place in
the world space and a segment of world time. At the same time, and
speaking on the same level of discourse, there is a sense in which con-
sciousness has a certain priority: consciousness alone provides access to
existence. ~ There is still another point of view from which the existence
independence of consciousness may be shown : consciousness may be directed
towards an existent as well as a non-existent object, it may be of real,
imaginary or absurd objects, so that the intentionality of consciousness is
not exhausted by fulfilled presence and transcends the limitations imposed
by the world.
For the present however we are understanding by 'existence', not the
mode of being of any and every entity in the world, but that specific mode
of being which characterises humans and which, under the title 'Dasein',
has been subjected to structural analysis in Sein und Ze#. And by 'con-
sciousness' we do not mean the real mental life of a real human being
,constituting a stratum of the world and presupposing other such strata, but
the pure, transcendentally 'reduced' consciousness with its reality-status and
the reality-status of its object both placed under brackets, but certainly with

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 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXISTENCE
its noetic-noematic structure and its meaning-giving function unimpaired,
and also along with its immanent temporality constituting both its own life
as a flux and as a unity. Given these suitable transformations of the key
concepts, we find the issue transposed to a very different level of discourse,
where the differences need to be captured afresh.
Thus many of the objections and counter-objections loose their grounds.
There is a well known objection that the point of view of consciousness
entails idealism i.e. the presence of the world within consciousness, and
also solipsism insofar as real contact with the other is, by the very nature
of ~hings, excluded. By implication, it is claimed that existence, understood
as ecstatic being-in-the-world and being-with-others undercuts all philosoph-
ical moves towards idealism and solipsism, as also philosophical efforts to
prove realism i.e. the existence of the world and others outside of the
thinking subject. As Heidegger writes :

Zu beweisen ist niche, dass und wie eine 'Aussenwelt' vorhanden ist, sondern
aufzuweisen ist, warum das Dasein als In-der-Welt-sein die Tendenz hat,
die 'Aussenwelt' zun~ichst 'erkenntnistheoretisch' in Nichtigkeit zu begraben,
um sie dann erst zu beweisen. Der Grund dafiir liegt im Verfallen des
Daseins und der darin motivierten Verlegung des prim~iren Seinsverst~ind-
nissen auf das Sein als Vorhandenheit. 6

Thus, for Heidegger, the realism-idealism issue is grounded in the point of

view of consciousness and the latter in a certain inauthentic understanding
of Being as presence, of the world as object and consciousness as the subject
for which it is the object. However, this is hardly an acceptable judgment;
what sustains and nourishes the realism-idealism issue is not the point of
view of consciousness but the philosophical thesis that consciousness is
representative. A truely and radically worked out intentionality thesis with
regard to consciousness no more sustains and no less undercuts the realism-
idealism dispute than does an existential Daseinsanalytik. If consciousness
has no interiority wherein things could be as representations or ideas, if
the whole being of consciousness consists in being directed towards an
other, the very point at issue, namely, does the world exist outside of
consciousness or inside it, cannot any longer be formulated. Aron Gurwitsch
therefore seems to me to be right when he writes :

The insight that in our perceptual life we are directly and immediately at
the things and at the world, far from being due to the subsequent emergence
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 J.N, MOHANTY
of existentialist philosophy, must be seen as a consequence following from
Husserl's theory of intentionality of consciousness, especially perceptual
consciousnessd

The intentionality of consciousness is wider than its objectivating function,

all consciousness is not presentational. To associate with the idea of con-
sciousness the epistemological concepts of subject and object is a mistake.
What objectivates is a certain type of acts of consciousness. One only
needs to recall the important Husserlian thoughts that not all intentionalities
are act intentionalities, that both the ego as subject and the world as object
are constituted unities of sense, and therefore that the epistemological sub-
ject-object distinction is a higher order constituted structure. There can he
.a monism of consciousness as much as there is a monism of existence.
The ecstacy of consciousness with its temporal horizon and its being towards
the world is nothing other than its intentionality which expels all contents
from consciousness and makes it open towards the world. Thus between
.existence-philosophy and consdousness-philosophy there is an isomorphism
in structure.
May not one retort: is not consciousness, by its very conception, an
absolute self-presence, pure transparence, coincidence with itself, and there-
fore always self-consciousness ? Is not the point of view of consciousness
.sufficiently refuted by the phenomena of self-deception, error with regard
to one's own state of consdousness and one's motives, and psycho-analytic
theories and techniques ? Can we, after Hegel's 'cunning of reason', Marx's
'dass interest' and 'ideology' and Freud's psycho-analysis ever again seek
*o restore the concept of consciousness to its former dignity ? Does not
'existence' fare better, prove more promising, in all these respects ? But
.one has also to bear in mind that if consciousness cannot be a pure
transparency, absolute coincidence with itself, existence also cannot be pure
.opacity and total self-alienation. What is ruled out by the intellectual
achievements of the nineteenth century is such total transparency and self-
~coinddence, whether of consciousness or of existence. If in the heart of
consciousness there is the unconscious or rather the subconscious, so also in
the heart of existing there is non-existing, the tendency to be a mere thing.
Both the conceptions capture all the facts at our disposal, the isomorphism
asserks itself over again.
With the alleged 'metaphysics of presence' which is taken to be an
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 CONSCIOUSNESS _AND EXISTENCE
implicate of the consciousness theories, one often contrasts the hermeneutical
approach of the existence theories with their 'metaphysics of absence'. As
though the essence Of consciousness is to present, that of existence is to
interpret. The conLrast is mis-leading. That consciousness 'gives meaning'
and interprets has been a part of the philosophies of consciousness since
the clays of German idealism. That consciousness both intuits and interprets
is at the center of Hegelian thought. If what is decisive is temporality
with its integral horizon as contrasted with an exclusive concentration on
the present (which is but one modality of time), one has to recall that
the foundation of such a conception of temporality was laid first by Husserl
within the framework of a philosophy of consciousness. In fact, the con-
sciousness philosophies have sought to absorb into their framework the
nineteenth century discoveries such as 'class interest' and the 'unconscious.'
These latter arose from the high point of German idealism in Hegelian
thought, and there was no reason why a philosophy of consciousness as such
could not absorb them into itself.
By emphasising the structural isomorphism between consciousness philos-
ophy and existence philosophy, I have sought to draw attention t o the
often forgotten situation that 'the facts of the matter' in both are the
same. First, both have to recognise that philosophical reflection existential
or phenomenological--is an activity which is undertaken by a human being
in a historical situation. It has also to be recognised that as a reflective
endeavour, philosophy is not coincident with living or existing in any of
the more philosophical or even non-philosophical senses of those words.
Within the horizon limited on the one hand by pre-reflective 'existing'
and, on the other, by reflective thought, both the philosophies have their
moving space. Just as the reflective philosopher engaged in the act of
reflection does not cease to exist, so also the pre-reflective human, existing
ecstatically, is nonethdess conscious of himself and his world--even if such
consciousness is not always an uninterruptedly objectivating and presenta-
tional consciousness. All his intentionalities are not acts, not to speak of
being cognitive acts. There are intentionalities that constitute his inner time
consciousness, there are the horizon intentionalities that constitute for him
his world. Both philosophies have to recognise and in fact do recognise
that the pre-reflective human, as well as the reflective philosopher, fi,zds
a world that is there for him, that he does not begin history (though he
can relive its essential structure within himself) but rather takes up histor-

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ically achieved structures and historically sedimented meanings. If the con-
sciousness-oriented philosopher has to recognise--and in fact, does recog-
nise that consciousness is not all translucency, that it can conceal from
itself its own mode of operation, that there are such things as self-
forgetfulness, self-deception, bad faith, the existence philosopher should--
and in fact, does--recognise that existing is not an opaque mode of being,
that its ecstatic being outside of itself is not a blind pull towards an other,
but that in all its essential modalifies existing is a sort of self-relatedness
and so is also an awareness of existing. If therefore the philosopher of
consciousness shuns the word 'existence', that is partly due to the fact that
he wants to purify consciousness, which is for him the constituting principle,
from all contamination with the constituted. 'Existence' suggests to him an
opacity the like of which he would not want to locate within the structure
of consciousness, even if he would deny absolute transparency to conscious-
ness. If the 'existence' philosopher suspects the language of 'consciousness',
that is partly because he does not want to reduce existence to the awareness
of existing, the existing human to an epistemological subject, being-in-the-
world to presentation-of-the-world, ecstatic temporality to sheer presence,
pre-reflecfive being to reflective thought about it. As I have already argued,
these suspicions are understandable, but not justified. To be able to throw
some more light on the issues involved, let me transpose them to another
dimension.

I propose to do that asking two questions which arise from within the
consciousness philosophies and establish points of contact with existence
philosophy. The first concerns the status of the body, the second concerns
the problem of the life-world. There is an obvious sense in which the
transcendental ego would seem to be incorporeal and raised above the
concrete life-world. It would seem to be so in so far as the transcendental
ego is a reflectively discovered unity of a reflectively laid bare field of
experience i.e. the field of transcendental experience. Part of the reason why
it seems to be so plausible that the transcendental ego with its field of
transcendental experience must be derivative and dependent is that the
philosopher who assumes the stance of reflection nevertheless continues to
be a corporeal being, belonging to, interested in, and emotionally and
actively relating to his life-world. It is within this body-life-world framework
that reflection, as a special sort of human activity, sets in and has its place.
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 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXISTENCE
Corporeality and life-world appear to present, from two sides, the limits
of the transcendental field of experience : these are also the limits which
any consciousness-oriented philosophy must accept, Only an existence philos-
ophy, so it appears, can appropriate these limits into its own structure.
This criticism, one has to concede, holds good against the sort of tran-
scendental philosophy that obtained up until Husserl. Whether it is a valid
criticism against the Husserlian variety of transcendental philosophy is the
crucial question. I will argue that it is not. Prior to Husserl, there were two
concepts of the transcendental (leaving out of consideration the medieval-
scholastic use of 'transcendental' with which the Kantian use is not entirely
unconnected) : the transcendental as the logical presupposition of the possi-
bility of objective experience and scientific knowledge; and the transcen-
dental as speculative thought, reflective spirit which, as the concrete uni-
versal, is form and matter, identity and difference in one. Now the 'tran-
scendental' of Husserl is in some respects Kantian, in others Hegelian, but
in its fundamental motivation radically different from both.
Transcendental consciousness, in Husserlian phenomenology, is not--as
is well known--a logical principle posited by regressive philosophical
thinking in order to account for the possibility of objective experience. The
specificalIy Kantian problem does not arise for Husserl for various reasons
into all of which I need not go on this occasion. But one of them would
seem to be, that Husserl does not accept the Humean conception of the
given which Kant almost unquestioningly accepts. With his very un-kantian
conception of eidetic and categorial intuitions and his full-blown con-
ception of intentionality, the problem of 'constitution' which he, in very
general terms, shares with Kant, receives a very different treatment. Even
if in the first volume of the Ideas the noema is held to be constituted by
the sensegiving noesis 'animating' the hyletic data, the hylo-morphic con-
ception is yet very different from Kant's. On this doctrine, later either
abandoned or considerably modified, the hylo-morphic scheme applies to
the constitution of the noema, while the constitution of the object through
the congruence (Deckung) of a series of noemata is of a very different
kind. Also let us recall the role of horizon intentionalities in constituting
the world, the constitution of inner time consciousness, the constitution of
the higher order objectivities, and the passive constitution of the pre-given
perceptual world--all these point to a constituting consciousness whose
role is not delimited by a set of a priori forms. The distinction between

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 J.N. MOHANTY
a priori and empirical is obliterated (recall Husserl's talk of 'transcendental
experience' and 'transcendental fact 's ) which brings this conception nearer
to Hegelian 'spirit', but only in this regard. The Kantian transcendental
consciousness is form-giving, the Husserlian is meaning-constituting, and
the conceptions 'form' and 'meaning' are so very different. The Kantian
transcendental is the logical condition of the possibility of synthetic a priori
true judgments, in other words condition of the possibility of validity. The
Husserlian transcendental consciousness is that field of experience in which
all meanings come to be constituted, it is the condition of the possibility
of meaning, not of truth. While the Kantian transcendental consciousness,
at the level of intuition, is the source of spafio-temporal ordering, the
Husserlian transcendental consciousness, in its perceptual moment, includes
both sensuousness and corporeality, it is the sensuous perception of a this-
there as well as bodily consciousness of a kinaesthefic sort. In other words,
in so far as it is perceptual, transcendental consciousness, according to
Husserl, is bodily. The body, my own, in so far as it is an object, is
constituted in what I can call body-feeling or bodily subjectivity. That the
body is not a lump of matter but is a mode of being in the world, that
bodily behavior is not mere matter in motion obeying the laws of the
physical sciences, but is characterised by intentional directedness and that
bodily intentionality is also meaning-giving and so participates in the con-
stitution of the world, are well recognised by existential phenomenologists
such as Merlean-Ponty. What I am wanting to emphasize here is that all
these phenomena concern the lived body rather than the observed body,
and that in so far as bodily intentionality is constituting, it finds its place
within the total field of transcendental subjectivity. Thus the Husserlian
transcendental consciousness is not merely reflective and intellectual, it
rather comprehends within itself, as a basic stratum, pre-reflective perceptual
consciousness including the lived body as a system of intentionalities. It
should also comprehend the perceptions, interests and actions that con-
stitute the life-world, in fact both 'being embodied' and 'life-world', as
noematic structures of meaning, find their rightful place within the structure
of the appropriate nexus of intentionalities belonging to transcendental con-
sciousness.
What I am trying to bring to focus is, negatively speaking, that a certain
picture of transcendentality, handed down by the metaphysical tradition and
associated with the image of a two-world theory in which one world con-
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 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXISTENCE
tains the truth of the other, is misleading in so far as the peculiarly
phenomenological theory of the transcendental is concerned. Positively
speaking, what I am trying to emphasise is that transcendental consciousness
is the empirical consciousness as freed from its naivity, from its un-
recognised ontological commitments, from its anonymous self-interpreta-
tions. Thus conceived, transcendental consciousness would comprehend the
entire range of human experience but only as purified from its naivity.
Corporeality and life-worldliness (if I may construe such an expression)
are not excluded from its life, they rather find their proper place within
its total structure. As a consequence, the new concept of transcendental
subjectivity spans the gap between reflective consciousness and pre-reflective
life. It is not the non-temporal principle of validity, but a region of
experience. It is neither the concrete subjectivity of existential phenome-
nology, nor the abstract subjectivity of the Marburg neo-Kantians. It con-
stitutes both the idealities of thought and the concrete life-world. It com-
prehends both the spontaneity of reflecion and the 'habitualities' of pre-
reflective life. Both activity and passivity belong to its life?
I will then venture to assert the following : Bodily subjectivity is, in an
important sense, prior to 'mental' consciousness. I do not intend this to be
understood as equivalent to the familiar theoretical statement that mental
states are products of bodily states. What I mean is that phenomenologically
the mental acts come to evident givenness only after reflection distinguishes
them from a prior undifferentiated body consciousness. I also want to say
that the first suggestion of consciousness's autonomy is to be found in the
felt body's standing out as not being an item in the world of objects around
itself and as being rather the 'zero-point' which provides their ordering.
But while asserting this priority of bodily subjectivity, I want also to
assert that all these levels, along with their structural relationships, are
comprehended within the total life of transcendental consciousness.
I would also say the same of life-world of any level. 1~ It is a constituted
noematic structure, and therefore refers back to the intentio~alities that
constitute it. Transcendental subjectivity is not only the life of the anony-
mous intentionalities that constitute the life-world, but also reflection upon
its own a priori functioning.

It is in the context of such a conception of transcendental subjectivity that,

it becomes plausible to maintain that 'humanity' and 'existence', along with

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 J.N. MOHANTY
their modalities, are 'self-interpretations' of transcendental consciousness. I
have argued elsewhere= why lifeworld cannot constitute transcendental
consciousness: it can serve as the spring board for reflective thought, it
provides the Sinnesfundament for the idealised meanings of scientific thin-
king, but it cannot itself sustain that reflective glance before which it tends
to dissipate. It cannot comprehend within its structure its own ofl~erness i.e.
reflection. Transcendental consciousness, as we understand it from Husserl-
Jan phenomenology, precisely does this. It contains within itself life-world
as a constituted noema, the pre-reflective anonymous intentionalities which
constitute this noema, as well as reflective thought which uncovers them.
If all meanings are constituted, so also are the meanings (or predicates)
'human' and 'existing'. 'I am a human' certainly represents my inter-
pretation of myself in terms of meanings that are results of historically
sedimented layers of meanings. As we, one after another, recognise such
predicates as interpretations, we also begin to see the plausibility of the
thesis that these are not self-interpretations of a human, but 'being human'
is itself a constituted meaning and so a self-interpretation of whatever
provided the field or horizon for such history. This precisely is transcen-
dental subjectivity. I would have to concede that 'transcendental subjectivity'
itself is one such complex meaning which has come to constitute itself
in history.

I have argued for the plausibility of the Husserlian thesis, as against the
Heideggerean, by focusing on the greater comprehensiveness and power of
the concept of 'transcendental consciousness' as compared with the concept
of 'Dasdn.' But I have not demonstrated the validity of that Husserlian
thesis, for to do so would mean carrying out, even in the most meager
outline, the project of constitution analysis. I do not wish to deny that in
an important sense transcendental epoche is a possibility for an existing
human. But saying this is compatible with what I have argued for : namely,
that the concepts 'human' and 'existing' have their constitutions within the
field of transcendental consciousness, and I do not find any viciousness in
this seeming circularity.

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 CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXISTENCE

NOTES

z Edmund Husserl, Phiinomenologische Psychologie (edited by Waiter Biemei), Husserliana,

Bd. IX, The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, pp. 601-2.
lbid, p. 292.
3 1bid, p. 292.
lbid., p. 275.
5 This is a point which has been emphasised by Aron Gurwitsch in his various essays.
6 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Seventh Edition, Tfibingen : Max Nimeyer 1953, p. 206.
7 Aron Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory o] Science, Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1974, p. 243.
o~ Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie, Erster Teil (edited by Rudolf Boehm), Husserliana,
Bd. VII, The H a g u e : Martinus Nijhoff, 1956, p. 258.
t3 Compare my "Consciousness and Life-world" in : Social Research, 42, 1975, pp. 147-166.
10 I have argued for the thesis that there are in fact many levels of life-world in " ' L i f e -
worId' and 'A priori' in Husserl's Later Thought", Analecta Husserliana, III, 1974, pp.
46-65.
J1 See "Consciousness and Life-world".

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