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This article introduces some of the central aspects of the phenomenological method
and also concrete phenomenological analyses of some of the topics that have greatly
exercised phenomenologists.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Phenomenological Method
a. Phenomena
b. Phenomenological Reduction
c. Eidetic Reduction
d. Heidegger on Method
3. Intentionality
a. Brentano and Intentional Inexistence
b. Husserl's Account in Logical Investigations
c. Husserl's Account in Ideas I
d. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty on Intentionality
4. Phenomenology of Perception
a. Nave Realism, Indirect Realism and Phenomenalism
b. Husserl's Account: Intentionality and Hyle
c. Husserl's Account: Internal and External Horizons
d. Husserl and Phenomenalism
e. Sartre Against Sensation
5. Phenomenology and the Self
a. Hume and the Unity of Consciousness
b. Kant and the Transcendental I
c. Husserl and the Transcendental Ego
d. Sartre and the Transcendent Ego
6. Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness
a. The Specious Present
b. Primal Impression, Retention and Protention
c. Absolute Consciousness
7. Conclusion
8. References and Further Reading
1. Introduction
The work often considered to constitute the birth of phenomenology is Husserl's
Logical Investigations (Husserl 2001). It contains Husserl's celebrated attack on
psychologism, the view that logic can be reduced to psychology; an account of
phenomenology as the descriptive study of the structural features of the varieties of
experience; and a number of concrete phenomenological analyses, including those of
meaning, part-whole relations and intentionality.
Logical Investigations seemed to pursue its agenda against a backdrop of
metaphysical realism. In Ideas I (Husserl 1982), however, Husserl presented
phenomenology as a form of transcendental idealism. This apparent move was
greeted with hostility from some early admirers of Logical Investigations, such as
Adolph Reinach. However, Husserl later claimed that he had always intended to be a
transcendental idealist. In Ideas I Husserl offered a more nuanced account of the
intentionality of consciousness, of the distinction between fact and essence and of the
phenomenological as opposed to the natural attitude.
Although he published relatively little in his lifetime, Husserl was a prolific writer
leaving a large number of manuscripts. Alongside Heidegger's interpretation of
phenomenology, this unpublished work had a decisive influence on the development
of French existentialist phenomenology. Taking its lead from Heidegger's account of
authentic existence, Sartre's Being and Nothingness (Sartre 1969) developed a
phenomenological account of consciousness, freedom and concrete human relations
that perhaps defines the term "existentialism." Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of
Perception (Merleau-Ponty 1962) is distinctive both in the central role it accords to
the body and in the attention paid to the relations between phenomenology and
empirical psychology.
a. Phenomena
Phenomenology is, as the word suggests, the science of phenomena. But this just
raises the questions: "What are phenomena?" and "In what sense is phenomenology a
science?".
In answering the first question, it is useful to briefly turn to Kant. Kant endorsed
"transcendental idealism," distinguishing between phenomena (things as they appear)
and noumena (things as they are in themselves), claiming that we can only know
about the former (Kant 1929, A30/B45). On one reading of Kant, appearances are in
the mind, mental states of subjects. On another reading, appearances are things as
they appear, worldly objects considered in a certain way.
b. Phenomenological Reduction
In ordinary waking experience we take it for granted that the world around us exists
independently of both us and our consciousness of it. This might be put by saying that
we share an implicit belief in the independent existence of the world, and that this
belief permeates and informs our everyday experience. Husserl refers to this positing
of the world and entities within it as things which transcend our experience of them as
"the natural attitude" (Husserl 1982, sec. 30). In The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserl
introduces what he there refers to as "the epistemological reduction," according to
which we are asked to supply this positing of a transcendent world with "an index of
indifference" (Husserl 1999, 30). In Ideas I, this becomes the "phenomenological
epoch," according to which, "We put out of action the general positing which
belongs to the essence of the natural attitude; we parenthesize everything which that
positing encompasses with respect to being" (Husserl 1982, sec. 32). This means that
all judgements that posit the independent existence of the world or worldly entities,
and all judgements that presuppose such judgements, are to be bracketed and no use
is to be made of them in the course of engaging in phenomenological analysis.
Importantly, Husserl claims that all of the empirical sciences posit the independent
existence of the world, and so the claims of the sciences must be "put out of play" with
no use being made of them by the phenomenologist.
This epoch is the most important part of the phenomenological reduction, the
purpose of which is to open us up to the world of phenomena, how it is that the world
and the entities within it are given. The reduction, then, is that which reveals to us the
primary subject matter of phenomenologythe world as given and the givenness of
the world; both objects and acts of consciousness.
There are a number of motivations for the view that phenomenology must operate
within the confines of the phenomenological reduction. One is epistemological
modesty. The subject matter of phenomenology is not held hostage to skepticism
about the reality of the "external" world. Another is that the reduction allows the
phenomenologist to offer a phenomenological analysis of the natural attitude itself.
This is especially important if, as Husserl claims, the natural attitude is one of the
presuppositions of scientific enquiry. Finally, there is the question of the purity of
phenomenological description. It is possible that the implicit belief in the independent
existence of the world will affect what we are likely to accept as an accurate
description of the ways in which worldly things are given in experience. We may find
ourselves describing things as "we know they must be" rather than how they are
actually given.
c. Eidetic Reduction
The results of phenomenology are not intended to be a collection of particular facts
about consciousness, but are rather supposed to be facts about the essential natures of
phenomena and their modes of givenness. Phenomenologists do not merely aspire to
offer accounts of what their own experiences of, say, material objects are like, but
rather accounts of the essential features of material object perception as such. But
how is this aspiration to be realized given that the method of phenomenology is
descriptive, consisting in the careful description of experience? Doesn't this,
necessarily, limit phenomenological results to facts about particular indviduals'
experience, excluding the possibility of phenomenologically grounded general facts
about experience as such?
The Husserlian answer to this difficulty is that the phenomenologist must perform a
second reduction called "eidetic" reduction (because it involves a kind of vivid,
imagistic intuition). The purpose of the eidetic reduction in Husserl's writings is to
bracket any considerations concerning the contingent and accidental, and concentrate
on (intuit) the essential natures or essences of the objects and acts of consciousness
(Husserl 1982, sec. 2). This intuition of essences proceeds via what Husserl calls "free
variation in imagination." We imagine variations on an object and ask, "What holds
up amid such free variations of an original [] as the invariant, the necessary,
universal form, the essential form, without which something of that kind [] would be
altogether inconceivable?" (Husserl 1977, sec. 9a). We will eventually come up against
something that cannot be varied without destroying that object as an instance of its
kind. The implicit claim here is that if it is inconceivable that an object of kind K might
lack feature F, then F is a part of the essence of K.
d. Heidegger on Method
It is widely accepted that few of the most significant post-Husserlian
phenomenologists accepted Husserl's prescribed methodology in full. Although there
are numerous important differences between the later phenomenologists, the
influence of Heidegger runs deep.
It is commonly held that Heidegger reject's the epoch: "Heidegger came to the
conclusion that any bracketing of the factual world in phenomenology must be a
crucial mistake" (Frede 2006, 56). What Heidegger says in his early work, however, is
that, for him, the phenomenological reduction has a different sense than it does for
Husserl:
Heidegger's relation to the eidetic reduction is complex. The purpose of the eidetic
reduction in Husserl's writings is to bracket any considerations concerning the
contingent and accidental, and concentrate on (intuit) the essential natures of the
objects and acts of consciousness. Heidegger's concentration on the meaning of the
Being of entities appears similar in aim. However, insofar as the Being of entities
relies on the notion of essence, Heidegger's project calls it into question. The idea that
there are different "ways of being" looks as though it does not abide by the traditional
distinction between existence and essence. So, on Heidegger's account, what it takes
for something to have being is different for different sorts of thing.
3. Intentionality
How is it that subjective mental processes (perceptions, thoughts, etc.) are able to
reach beyond the subject and open us up to an objective world of both worldly entities
and meanings? This question is one that occupied Husserl perhaps more than any
other, and his account of the intentionality of consciousness is central to his
attempted answer.
Intentionality is, say many, the way that subjects are "in touch with" the world. Two
points of terminology are worth noting. First, in contemporary non-phenomenological
debates, "intentional" and its cognates is often used interchangeably with
"representational" and its cognates. Second, although they are related, "intentionality"
(with a "t") is not to be confused with "intensionality" (with an "s"). The former refers
to aboutness (which is the current topic), the latter refers to failure of truth-
preservation after substitution of co-referring terms.
4. Phenomenology of Perception
Perceptual experience is one of the perennial topics of phenomenological research.
Husserl devotes a great deal of attention to perception, and his views have been very
influential. We will concentrate, as does Husserl, on the visual perception of three
dimensional spatial objects. To understand Husserl's view, some background will be
helpful.
The conclusion of this argument is incompatible with nave realism. Once nave
realism is rejected, and it is accepted that perception is a relation, not to an ordinary
worldly object, but to a private mental object, something must be said about the
relation between these two types of object. An indirect realist view holds that there
really are both kinds of object. Worldly objects both cause and are represented by
sense data. However, this has often been thought to lead to a troubling skepticism
regarding ordinary physical objects: one could be experiencing exactly the same sense
data, even if there were no ordinary physical objects causing one to experience them.
That is, as far as one's perceptual experience goes, one could be undergoing one
prolonged hallucination. So, for all one knows, there are no ordinary physical objects.
Husserl often uses the term "anticipation" to describe the way in which the merely co-
presented is present in perceptual experience. As he says, "there belongs to every
external perception its reference from the 'genuinely perceived' sides of the object of
perception to the sides 'also meant'not yet perceived, but only anticipated and, at
first, with a non-intuitional emptiness... the perception has horizons made up of other
possibilities of perception, as perceptions that we could have, if we actively directed
the course of perception otherwise" (Husserl 1960, sec. 19). In these terms, only the
front aspect of an object is "genuinely perceived." Its other features (rear aspect and
insides) are also visually present, but by way of being anticipated. This anticipation
consists, in part, in expectations of how the object will appear in subsequent
experiences. These anticipations count as genuinely perceptual, but they lack the
"intuitional fullness" of the fully presented. The non-intuitional emptiness of the
merely co-given can be brought into intuitional fullness precisely by making the
previously co-given rear aspect fully present, say, by moving around the object.
Perceptual anticipations have an "if...then..." structure, that is, a perceptual
experience of an object is partly constituted by expectations of how it would look were
one to see it from another vantage point.
Husserl's intentional account of perception does not postulate sense data, so he is not
a phenomenalist of the first sort. However, there is some reason to believe that he may
be a phenomenalist of the second sort. Concerning unperceived objects, Husserl
writes:
That the unperceived physical thing "is there" means rather that, from my actually
present perceptions, with the actually appearing background field, possible and,
moreover, continuously-harmoniously motivated perception-sequences, with ever
new fields of physical things (as unheeded backgrounds) lead to those
concatenations of perceptions in which the physical thing in question would make
its appearance and become seized upon.
(Husserl 1982, sec. 46)
A test case for Sartre's view concerning the emptiness of consciousness is that of
bodily sensation (for example, pain). A long tradition has held that bodily sensations,
such as pain, are non-intentional, purely subjective qualities (Jackson 1977, chap. 3).
Sartre is committed to rejecting this view. However, the most obvious thing with
which to replace it is the view according to which bodily sensations are perceptions of
the body as painful, or ticklish, etc. On such a perceptual view, pains are experienced
as located properties of an objectone's body. However, Sartre also rejects the idea
that when one is aware of one's body as subject (and being aware of something as
having pains is a good candidate for this), one is not aware of it as an object (Sartre
1969, 327). Thus, Sartre is committed to rejecting the perceptual view of bodily
sensations.
My eyes are hurting but I should finish reading a philosophical work this evening
how is the pain given as pain in the eyes? Is there not here an intentional reference
to a transcendent object, to my body precisely in so far as it exists outside in the
world? [...] [P]ain is totally void of intentionality. Pain is precisely the eyes in so
far as consciousness "exists them". It is the-eyes-as-pain or vision-as-pain; it is
not distinguished from my way of apprehending transcendent words.
(Sartre 1969, 356)
Bodily sensations are not given to unreflective consciousness as located in the body.
They are indicated by the way objects appear. Having a pain in the eyes amounts to
the fact that, when reading, "It is with more difficulty that the words are detached
from the undifferentiated ground" (Sartre 1969, 356). What we might intuitively think
of as an awareness of a pain in a particular part of the body is nothing more than an
awareness of the world as presenting some characteristic difficulty. A pain in the eyes
becomes an experience of the words one is reading becoming indistinct, a pain in the
foot might become an experience of one's shoes as uncomfortable.
There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately
conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance
in existence. For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I
always stumble on some particular perception or other, or heat or cold, light or
shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time
without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
(Hume 1978, 251-2)
Hume claims that reflection does not reveal a continuously existing self. Rather, all
that reflection reveals is a constantly changing stream of mental states. In Humean
terms, there is no impression of self and, as a consequence of his empiricism, the idea
that we have of ourselves is rendered problematic. The concept self is not one which
can be uncritically appealed to.
However, as Hume recognized, this appears to leave him with a problem, a problem to
which he could not see the answer: "...all my hopes vanish when I come to explain the
principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness"
(Hume 1978, 635-6). This problem concerns the unity of consciousness. In fact there
are at least two problems of conscious unity.
The first problem concerns the synchronic unity of consciousness and the distinction
between subjects of experience. Consider four simultaneous experiences: e1, e2, e3
and e4. What makes it the case that, say, e1 and e2 are experiences had by one subject,
A, while e3 and e4 are experiences had by another subject, B? One simple answer is
that there is a relation that we could call ownership such that A bears ownership to
both e1 and e2, and B bears ownership to both e3 and e4. However if, with Hume, we
find the idea of the self problematic, we are bound to find the idea of ownership
problematic. For what but the self could it be that owns the various experiences?
The second problem concerns diachronic unity. Consider four successive conscious
experiences, e1, e2, e3 and e4, putatively had by one subject, A. What makes it the
case that there is just one subject successively enjoying these experiences? That is,
what makes the difference between a temporally extended stream of conscious
experience and merely a succession of experiences lacking any experienced unity? An
answer to this must provide a relation that somehow accounts for the experienced
unity of conscious experience through time.
So, what is it for two experiences, e1 and e2, to belong to the same continuous stream
of consciousness? One thought is that e1 and e2 must be united, or synthesised, by the
self. On this view, the self must be aware of both e1 and e2 and must bring them
together in one broader experience that encompasses them. If this is right then,
without the self to unify my various experiences, there would be no continuous stream
of conscious experience, just one experience after another lacking experiential unity.
But our experience is evidently not like this. If the unity of consciousness requires the
unifying power of the self, then Hume's denial of self-awareness, and any consequent
doubts concerning the legitimacy of the idea of the self, are deeply problematic.
The thought that these representations given in intuition all together belong to me
means, accordingly, the same as that I unite them in a self-consciousness, or at
least can unite them thereinfor otherwise I would have as multicoloured, diverse
a self as I have representations of which I am conscious.
(Kant 1929, sec. B143)
Thus, Kant requires that the notion of the self as unifier of experience be legitimate.
Nevertheless, he denies that reflection reveals this self to direct intuition:
The reason that Kant can allow the self as a legitimate concept despite the lack of an
intuitive awareness of the self is that he does not accept the empiricism that drove
Hume's account. On the Kantian view, it is legitimate to appeal to an I that unifies
experience since such a thing is precisely a condition of the possibility of experience.
Without such a unifying self, experience would not be possible, therefore the concept
is legitimate. The I, on this account, is transcendentalit is brought into the account
as a condition of the possibility of experience (this move is one of the distinctive
features of Kantian transcendental philosophy).
However, Husserl departs from Kant, and before him Hume, in claiming that this self
is experienced in direct intuition. He claims that, "I exist for myself and am constantly
given to myself, by experiential evidence, as 'I myself.' This is true of the
transcendental ego and, correspondingly, of the psychologically pure ego; it is true,
moreover, with respect to any sense of the word ego." (Husserl 1960, sec. 33).
On Kant's view, the I is purely formal, playing a role in structuring experience but not
itself given in experience. On Husserl's view, the I plays this structuring role, but is
also given in inner experience. The ego appears but not as (part of) a mental process.
It's presence is continual and unchanging. Husserl says that it is, "a transcendency
within immanency" (Husserl 1982, sec. 57). It is immanent in that it is on the subject
side of experience; It is transcendent in that it is not an experience (or part of one).
What Husserl has in mind here is somewhat unclear, but one might liken it to the way
that the object as a whole is given through an aspectexcept that the ego is at "the
other end" of intentional experience.
Here Sartre appears to be siding with Hume and Kant on the question of the
givenness of the self with respect to everyday, pre-reflective consciousness. However,
Sartre departs from the Humean view, in that he allows that the ego is given in
reflective consciousness:
...the I never appears except on the occasion of a reflexive act. In this case, the
complex structure of consciousness is as follows: there is an unreflected act of
reflection, without an I, which is directed on a reflected consciousness. The latter
becomes the object of the reflecting consciousness without ceasing to affirm its
own object (a chair, a mathematical truth, etc.). At the same time, a new object
appears which is the occasion of an affirmation by reflective consciousnessThis
transcendent object of the reflective act is the I.
(Sartre 1960, 53)
On this view, the self can appear to consciousness, but it is paradoxically experienced
as something outside of, transcendent to, consciousness. Hence the transcendence of
the ego, Sartre's title.
6. Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness
Various questions have occupied phenomenologists concerning time-
consciousnesshow our conscious lives take place over time. What exactly does this
amount to? This question can be seen as asking for more detail concerning the
synthesising activity of the self with respect to the diachronic unity of consciousness.
Related to this, temporal objects (such as melodies or events) have temporal parts or
phases. How is it that the temporal parts of a melody are experienced as parts of one
and the same thing? How is it that we have an experience of succession, rather than
simply a succession of experiences? This seems an especially hard question to answer
if we endorse the claim that we can only be experientially aware of the present instant.
For if, at time t1 we enjoy experience e1 of object (or event) o1, and at t2 we enjoy
experience e2 of object (or event) o2, then it seems that we are always experientially
confined to the present. An account is needed of how is it that our experience appears
to stream through time.
The specious present is present in the sense that the phases of the temporal object are
experienced as present. The specious present is specious in that those phases of the
temporal object that occur at times other than the present instant are not really
present. But this would seem to have the bizarre consequence that we experience the
successive phases of a temporal object as simultaneous. That is, a moving object is
simultaneously experienced as being at more than one place. It goes without saying
that this is not phenomenologically accurate.
Also, given that our experience at each instant would span a duration longer than that
instant, it seems that we would experience everything more than once. In a sequence
of notes c, d, e we would experience c at the time at which c occurs, and then again at
the time at which d occurs. But, of course, we only experience each note once.
c. Absolute Consciousness
Not only does the present experience include a retention of past worldly events, it also
includes a retention of the past experiences of those past events. The same can be said
with regard to protention. The fact that past and future experiences are retained and
protended respectively, points towards this question: What accounts for the fact that
mental acts themselves are experienced as enduring, or as having temporal parts? Do
we need to postulate a second level of conscious acts (call it "consciousness*") that
explains the experienced temporality of immanent objects? But this suggestion looks
as though it would involve us in an infinite regress, since the temporality of the stream
of experiences constituting consciousness* would need to be accounted for.
Husserl's proposed solution to this puzzle involves his late notion of "absolute
constituting consciousness." The temporality of experiences is constituted by a
consciousness that is not itself temporal. He writes: "Subjective time becomes
constituted in the absolute timeless consciousness, which is not an object" (Husserl
1991, 117). Further, "The flow of modes of consciousness is not a process; the
consciousness of the now is not itself nowtherefore sensationand likewise
retention, recollection, perception, etc. are nontemporal; that is to say, nothing in
immanent time." (Husserl 1991, 345-6).
7. Conclusion
Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology stands in complex relations to a
number of different philosophical traditions, most notably British empiricism,
Kantian and post-Kantian transcendental philosophy, and French existentialism. One
of the most important philosophical movements of the Twentieth Century,
phenomenology has been influential, not only on so-called "Continental" philosophy
(Embree 2003), but also on so-called "analytic" philosophy (Smith and Thomasson
2005). There continues to be a great deal of interest in the history of phenomenology
and in the topics discussed by Twentieth Century phenomenologists, topics such as
intentionality, perception, the self and time-consciousness.
Author Information
Joel Smith
Email: joel.smith@manchester.ac.uk
University of Manchester
United Kingdom