Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY
IN COOPERATION WITH
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY
Volume 25
Editor:
Editorial Board:
Elizabeth A. Behnke
David Carr, Emory University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
J. Claude Evans, Washington University
Jose Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University
Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitiit, Mainz
Elisabeth Stroker, Philosophisches Seminarium der Universitiit Koln
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
Scope
edited by
J. CLAUDE EVANS
Washington Dniversity, St Louis, MO, D.S.A.
and
ROBERT S. STUFFLEBEAM
Washington Dniversity, St Louis, MO, D.S.A.
AU Rights Reserved
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover lst edition 1997
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
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Table of Contents
Introduction
J. Claude Evans .............................................................. Vll
Index 275
Introduction
J. Claude Evans
Washington University
4. pp. 88-89.
5. p. 93.
Part I
Maurice Natanson
Yale University
whole of that book and mastering its arguments, but even students
would be more apt at the time the volume was published to carry it
about than to study its contents. Talk of "existentialism" did not
appeal to either Gurwitsch or Schutz, and though they could see
how certain connections between existentialism and phenomenology
could be established, they stayed largely aloof from existentialism. It
was not so much a question of a poor relation as a contaminated
relation, one with questionable motives, hasty philosophical
procedures, and I think it important to say in the light of Sartre's
subsequent development, dubious social and political attitudes.
Sartre, whatever else he was, was deeply anti-bourgeois. In a
discussion I had with Schutz regarding Sartre, Schutz said in strong
tones, "I am a bourgeois," but Sartre's level of discourse did not
impress him. It is my belief that Gurwitsch held much the same
VIew.
The concept or problem of "access" appeared again and again in
Gurwitsch's discussions of phenomenological problems. What
might be termed the "moment" of access to consciousness is basic to
all descriptions and analyses of perceptual reality. It is
consciousness which must be appealed to finally as the source of all
interpretation of whatever presents itself to human beings in the
course of their experience. And it is the phenomenology of
consciousness, the disclosure of intentional structure, which alone at
its deepest level can provide not only a description of phenomena
but an analysis of "access" itself. Let us leave aside Sartre as well as
the more general conception of existentialism and ask a very
different sort of question. What "access" could be at work in the
Akedah, the story of Abraham and Isaac and the near sacrifice of the
son by his father? This question and in tum our discussion may
seem totally out of place in the present inquiry, but my purpose is to
move from Sartre to Kierkegaard in the hope that a fresh figure may
provide a more neutral point of reference in speculating on what
Gurwitsch might have said about the relevance of phenomenology to
existentialism rather than to a thorny problem in scripture. In
pursuing my theme I must ask a small indulgence from my audience:
their appreciation of the fact that I am unqualified to discuss the
12 MAURICE NATANSON
Is it the case that the only way into the Abraham-Isaac dialectic is
by way of paradox? This time not the Kierkegaardian formulation of
the paradox offaith but the method of paradox itself; the ponderable
formulation of the imponderable. I have just used the language of
dialectic, but it is obvious that Kierkegaard's reader is well aware of
the absence of Hegel in this discussion. "By way of paradox," then,
must mean without mediation. The paradox which is mediated
ceases to be a paradox. Faith is the method of paradox, and that
means that method is not conceptual intervention but a "having"
which resembles grace more that it does any devout striving.
Abraham had faith; he did not negotiate an acquisition. But if
Gurwitsch did not comment on the Akedah, I am convinced that he
would have had more phenomenological patience with Kierkegaard
generally-Husserl certainly did-than he had with the Sartre of
Being and Nothingness. In any case, Husserl had his own
paradoxes: the three discussed by Eugen Fink and the one examined
by Gurwitsch. In his essay, "The Last Work of Edmund Husserl,"
Gurwitsch writes:
Fred Kersten
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
21
J. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 21-30.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
22 FRED KERSTEN
the inner workings of his gradual transformation of basic ideas in
Husserl concerning attention, the ego, and the internal organization
of the noema.
I mention those reflections not because of what they said but
instead because of what they have left unsaid: the underlying setting
within which Gurwitsch's philosophy was launched, on which its
basic tenor and its basic directions were established, and which set
its agenda for the future. To be sure, a reflection or the Philosophy
of Aron Gurwitsch is not ipso facto an introduction to his
Philosophy.3 Certainly it would be pretentious to suppose that a
reflection on the underlying setting can be accomplished in a brief
lecture. But it is not pretentious to try in the space of a few minutes
to acquire at least a nodding acquaintance with that setting. To that
end I have divided this reflection into two parts, the first of which I
shall call "Then," and the second, "Now."
I. Then
6. Kristeller, p. 339.
7. Kristeller, p. 346f.
26 FRED KERSfEN
Gurwitsch sought to understand his contemporaries. Thus, for
example, his interest in William James was not so much an appeal to
readers in a new country as it was to regard James as part of the
same intellectual fabric as Brentano or von Ehrenfels or Stumpf or
even Husserl. On the assumption of the solidarity of the
international scholarly community as well as the assumption that
learning and scholarship are sciences of meaning and the antique
meaning of reason, the task is not just to understand ideas as
expressed by others, but more importantly to "relive" them as
though they were one's second nature. One's contemporaries are by
no means just footnotes to one's own thoughts and ideas.
To understand ideas and make them second nature as essential to
learning, as integral elements in the "life of learning," is equally the
basis for the development of new problems and directions of
research in the light of Gurwitsch's interests, specifically in Gestalt
psychology and phenomenology as well as in fundamental forms of
sociality. But also in the spirit of the solidarity of the international
scholarly community no claim is made that such ideas are exhausted
in reliving them, making them one's own second nature; there is
always the implication that the development of new problems is not
the only formulation, that others are always possible. The task of
scholarship and learning is always an unfinished one, an "infinite
task," to use the formula of neo-Kantians.
Another way of expressing the same thought is that the
development of ideas that have become second nature is the
springboard for the "Now" that belongs to the "Philosophy of Aron
Gurwitsch. "
II. Now
Henry E. Allison
University of California, San Diego
33
J. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 33-53.
© 1997 All Rights Reserved.
34 HENRy E. AUlSON
3. Kants Theorie des Verstandes, Beilage III, "The Leibniz in Kant," pp. 165-
6.
4. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, Book II, chap. i, D2 (p.
111). The now standard English translation by Peter Remnant and Jonathan
Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) uses the pagination of volume 5
the edition of C. I. Gerhardt, which Gurwitsch likewise cites.
36 HENRy E. AUlSON
these ideas reflect the very structure of the intellect. Thus, in
opposition to the Lockean metaphor of the tabula rasa, Leibniz
offers that of a veined block of marble with a determinate structure
of its own, which predisposes it to be shaped one way rather than
another. 5 Since at the monadologicallevel, all ideas or contents of
the mind must be "innate" for Leibniz (monads have no windows),
this serves to distinguish a subset of ideas, which have a special
epistemological function and a privileged status, from the remaining
ideas, which, in Lockean terms, are based on experience. Leibniz
does not provide an exhaustive inventory of these ideas; but he does
note that they include "Being, Unity, Substance, Duration, Change,
Action, Perception, Pleasure, and hosts of other objects of our
intellectual ideas. "6 This is indeed a mixed bag, which includes
some that are recognizable ancestors of Kantian categories, others
that Kant will assign to sensibility, and still others that, from a
Kantian point of view, play no discernible epistemic role at all.
Leaving all that aside, however, the key point is that they are
supposed to account for the possibility of a priori knowledge,
which, since it involves necessity, cannot be based on experience.
In fact, as is suggested by Leibniz's metaphor of the veined marble
and as Gurwitsch emphasizes, these ideas could be said to structure
or condition experience in the sense that they determine what
materials are able to gain access to the mind.? Correlatively, sense
experience, rather than being the source of all knowledge, as it is for
Lockean empiricism, serves merely as an occasion for the grasp of
the necessary truths which reflect the structure of the mind.
Apperception is the means by which the mind gains access to
these truths. Although Leibniz's views on apperception is a complex
topic and there is some doubt that he in fact held a consistent
position, Gurwitsch focuses exclusively on that strand of Leibniz's
position according to which apperception, identified with self-
consciousness or reflection, is the distinctive capacity of rational
beings or monads that enables them to make cognitive use of the
innate structure of the mind. 8 Thus, whereas the brutes, having only
perception and a "sentiment animal, " which includes sensible images
and memory, must make do with a surrogate or "shadow" of
thought involving association based on past experience rather than
genuine comprehension, rational beings, with an apperceptive
capacity, are able to grasp necessary connections and thereby
acquire genuine knowledge. Accordingly, as Gurwitsch
emphasizes, in Leibniz we have an assertion of the inseparability of
rationality and the capacity for self-consciousness, which is
precisely the thesis developed by Kant in his doctrine of
transcendental apperception.
Gurwitsch also points out, however, that it is merely the
capacity for self-consciousness that characterizes rational beings
such as ourselves, since this capacity is not, indeed, could not, be
actualized at every moment. 9 Moreover, this is one of the many
points at which Leibp.iz's multi-faceted theory of petites perceptions
comes into play. Very roughly, Leibniz holds that, even apart from
explicit reflection, the innate ideas, which determine the structure of
our intellect, function in a virtual or implicit manner to guide our
judgment. In so doing, they operate in the manner of petites
perceptions. 10 Accordingly, this theory explains how ideas might be
in the mind, and even be cognitively effective, without being
explicitly grasped as such. And this, of course, is an essential
feature of Leibniz's response to Locke's critique of innate ideas.
Clearly, each of these features has its Kantian counterpart,
which, as noted, Gurwitsch seeks to explain as the result of the
direct influence of Leibniz. Thus, Leibniz's innate ideas become the
Kantian pure concepts or categories, which reflect the very structure
of the understanding. Similarly, Leibniz's apperception becomes
Kant's transcendental apperception, which in the second edition of
11. Kants Theorie des Verstandes, chapter 5 (pp. 49-63) is devoted to Kant's
appropriation of Leibniz's theory of ·petites perceptions.·
12. See Leibniz Philosophie des Pan/ogismus, p. 190; Kants Theorie des
Verstandes, pp. 103-106.
13. Kants Theorie des Verstandes, p. 107.
GURWITSCH'S INfERffiEfATION OF KANr 39
Moreover, Gurwitsch traces this radical transformation directly
to the influence of David Hume, whom he treats as standing in an
interesting and complex dialectical relationship to both Leibniz and
Kant. On the one hand, Leibniz's account of the mind operating at
the level of "sentiment animal," with its contents governed by
psychological laws of association rather than rational principles, and
the contrast between this and the rational mind governed by its
innate principles, both anticipates and provides a critique of
Hume. 14 On the other hand, by means of his analysis of the causal
relation, Hume demonstrated, at least in Kant's eyes, the
untenability of the Leibnizian notion of inner connection, of the
implicit analyticity of all truth. I 5 Thus, Kant, as Gurwitsch reads
him, accepted part of Hume's position, namely, his perceptual
atomism or theory of discrete sense data, and endeavored to
reestablish unity and connection on a new basis. The basis is, of
course, Kant's conception of transcendental apperception.
Although in its broad outlines this account is reminiscent of the
standard picture of Kant as a thinker who was awakened by Hume
from his "dogmatic [Leibnizian] slumbers," its sharp focus on the
nature of the understanding and its rich and detailed discussions of
the precise ways in which Kant transformed the Leibnizian view of
the mind sketched in the New Essays make it both deeply
illuminating and highlyoriginal. Certainly, my own reading of Kant
has been profoundly influenced by my exposure to Gurwitsch's
analyses in his Kant seminar and lectures on the history of modern
philosophy.
II
22. Kants Theorie des Verstandes, p. 19. See also, pp. 35f, 51f, 79-81.
23.For Gurwitsch's discussions of this letter see Leibniz Philosophie des
Panlogismus, p. 129; Kants Theorie des Verstandes, p. 79 and Beilage III, 167-70.
24. Kants gesammelte Schriften, II, p. 52.
GURWITSa-rS INfffiFRETATION OF KANr 43
III
26. Kants Theorie des Verstandes, pp. 21-22. See also p. 31, where he
criticizes Cassirer's purely logical reading of the conception of ·consciousness in
general,· which is the Prolegomena's surrogate for apperception, on the grounds
that it fails to deal with the question of the root and origin of the
(transcendentally) logical conditions expressed in the idea of consciousness in
general.
27. Kants Theorie des Verstandes, pp. 21-22.
46 HENRy E. AWSON
IV
43. Kants Theorie des Verstandes, pp. 123-32. See also, "The Kantian and
Husserlian Conceptions of Consciousness," esp. pp. 155-59.
44. I attempted to deal with the latter issue some years ago in "The Critique
oj Pure Reason as Transcendental Phenomenology," Volume 5 of Selected Studies
in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, R. Zaner & D. Ihde (Eds.) (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1974, pp. 136-55). Among recent commentators, the
role of intentionality in Kant's thought has been emphasized by Richard Aquila.
See his Representational Mind: A Study oj Kant's Theory oj Knowledge
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983) and Matter in Mind: A Study oj
Kant's Transcendental Deduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
GURWITSCHS INfERPREfATION OF KANr 51
merely the passive recipient of these data, and it is precisely in this
that Kant's achievement consists. Nevertheless, it remains an
achievement that is fatally flawed by its erroneous starting point.
For, given this starting point, Kant was forced to identify the
representations or sensible data of the mind with the properties or
states of things. 45 And from this standpoint, there is no possibility
of affirming the numerical identity of objects perceived at different
times or points of view by a single subject, not to mention by
different subjects. 46
Since the phenomenalistic reading of Kant remains well
entrenched in the literature and has so much apparent textual
evidence in its favor, Gurwitsch can hardly be condemned for
adhering to it. Indeed, the fact that it was expressly affirmed both by
Husserl, his philosophical hero, and Paton, his favorite Kant
commentator and a usually reliable guide, must have made it
virtually irresistible to him. Nevertheless, I believe it to be
profoundly mistaken. In fact, it is precisely at this point that my
understanding of Kant differs most sharply from that of my teacher.
In order to clarify this difference, let us return for a moment to
Gurwitsch's account of objectification in terms of "ratification" or
"legitimation." As already indicated, the crucial point here is that
what is supposedly ratified is a pregiven spatio-temporal order of
representations (actually only a temporal order). Limiting ourselves
to the question of objective succession and, therefore, causality,
this, in effect, means that an objective succession of the states A-B
constituting an event is identified with an appropriately ratified
(conceptualized) subjective successions of perceptions a-b. In other
words, it is the subjective order, the order of apprehension, that is
47. For the full version of this analysis see Kant's Transcendental Idealism,
pp.217-28.
GURWITSCH'S INfERPREfATION OF KANr 53
perhaps I should be grateful that he did not~ for if he had, much of
my own work might have become redundant.
4
intellectuals take for granted that almost no one apart from Dorion Cairns and
Martin Heidegger would notice? The point. if it exist at all. is so intertwined with
all that follows in this essay and is so pervasively overlooked that, as an
introduction to the essay the following exemplary passage should be studied,
keeping in mind that every constituent of a redl thing, including everyone of its
constituent forms , would be an ideal in the Kantian sense and would not be
anything eidetic at all:
Just as the thing is an ideal [Idee] so is each of the attributes belonging
to its essential content and, above all. each of its constituent "forms,"
and this is so from [its] regional universe right down to the lowest order
unity to which it belongs. More precisely: In its idea/being [Wesen] the
thing is given as res temporalis ... res extensa . . . res materialis . . .
unity of causal relations . . . . Even in respect of its specifically real
components what we meet with are ideas [not eide whether formal or
material]. All components of the thing ideal [Dingidee] are themselves
ideals, each involves the "and so forth" of "endless" possibilities. (pp.
347-348)
PHENOMENALISM, IDEAllSM ANDGURWITsCH'S ACCOUNT OF 1HE SENSORY NOEMA 57
thing. liS Husserl, Gurwitsch says, regarded the unity of the object
as if it were a sort of idee fixe which must accompany all
representations of the self-same thing. Having misrepresented
Husserl's doctrine in this way, Gurwitsch proceeds to criticize this
way of recognizing the indeterminacy of the noematic object. This
way of conceiving the matter, he writes, deprives the perceptual
noema of the individuality it would have if it were unitary by Gestalt
coherence. 6 On Husserl's view of the perceptual noema, it is said,
the indeterminateness of the noematic object's horizons of meaning
implies that they are "empty" in the sense that they are general ideas
and so are deficient in individuality, as if the horizonally intended
determinations were not there. What Husserl says in the passage
referred t07 seems, however, quite the opposite: "This empty
horizon is not a nothing. On the contrary, Husserl goes on to
II
Gilbert T. Null
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
65
J. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 65-128.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
66 GILBERT T. NUlL
(with Husserl) that the referent object S is part of the state of affairs
serving as the warrant of the judgment of predication.
However, Gurwitsch knew that a whole cannot be contained in
any of its proper parts in the usual sense of the part relation. His
alternative to Husserl's analysis of explication as mereological
summation implies a denial that the whole object S is contained
within the state of affairs in the traditional way that something is part
of a mereological sum. Gurwitsch was claiming that in the state of
affairs p thematized as an ont%gically independent part of S, S is
neither a proper nor an improper part ofp, but is some other kind of
partofp·
The difference between the two positions involves a
disagreement over the meaning of the term 'part'. Gurwitsch denies
that the state of affairs which provides originary evidence (i.e. the
warrant) for the sentence 'This S has p' is a mereological sum. This
denial puts him at odds with the traditional conception of part
accepted by Husserl, and according to which every whole is a
mereological sum (e.g. of itself and any of its parts). For Husserl,
the referent S is part of the state of affairs which is the warrant for
predication in the way any whole is part of a mereological sum. For
Gurwitsch however, the state of affairs is not a mereological sum;
the referent S is part of the state of affairs in the way a unitary whole
is "part of each of its G-dependent proper parts".
The thesis that all ontologically independent wholes are unitary,
and the thesis that unitary wholes are somehow contained (but
neither as proper nor improper parts) within their proper parts are
both implicated in this departure of Gurwitsch from Husserl's
conception of the part relation. A non-traditional theory of the part
relation congenial to Gurwitsch's alternative use of the term 'part' is
introduced in Section 5 infra.
The theory of Section 5 is intended to provide a context for a
future formulation of the first thesis. The second thesis will be
abandoned in its literal form [Section 7.1 infra], but retained in
spirit; it will be formally consistent to say [Section 6.2 infra] that the
identity of an individual depends on whether or not it is part of a
unitary whole. Last, Gurwitsch's rejection of Husserl's reliance on
CONDmONAL IDmmY AND IRREGUlAR PARI'S 79
4. The Problem of Identity for Situated and Singled out Parts which
are G-dependent but Ontologically Independent
1. While Kit Fine has suggested a way in which this form of dependence can
be considered as Husserl's ontological dependence [5 & 27: 296-300], the question
remains whether this form of dependence, which seems to be a case of G-
dependence, should be considered a case of ontological dependence.
86 GILBERT T. NUI.L
5.102 If a whole has proper parts and all its proper parts are
proper parts of a second whole, then it is part of the
second whole:
VxVy<{3z (z<x) & Vz[(z<x) - (z<y)]} - (x9»
5.103 If one whole is not part of a second whole, then the first
has a proper part disjoint from the second:
VxVy{-(x9) - 3z[(z<x) & -Ozy]}
Y b a y Y b a y
x d x d c x c x
y b a y y b a y
x z x z z x z x
( 1) (2) (3) (4)
b c
a d
Under the indicated interpretation, 5.204 means that there are two
non-identical items x and y such that:
(a) If x is not on the bottom of M then everything below x in
M is below y in M, and if x is on the bottom of M, then
x=y, AND;
(b) If Yis not on the bottom of M then everything below y in
M is below x in M, and if y is on the bottom of M, then
y=x.
This condition is satisfied in the above model by the same two
assignments which satisfied the negation of 5.106; given either of
those assignments of IXI and Iyl, neither is on the bottom of M and
everything below one is below the other, so that they are non-
identical but nevertheless parts of each other. Hence 4.04 is
independent of the part-whole system, which is thereby shown to be
non-extensional.
The independence of 5.106 is attributable to the fact that 4.04 is
a consequence of the conjunction of 5.106, the weak
supplementation principle (A2), the transitivity of I~I (T22), and the
assumption that x has a proper part. 5.106 is independent of any
non-extensional system of mereology in which some wholes have
94 GILBERT T. NUlL
Proof: Assume x<y. Then for some z, z<y and -Ozx (TS). z9'
(T3) and -(zsx) (A2).
Proof: Assume x<y. Then there is some z<y such that -Ozx
(TS). For a reductio proof, assume y<x. Then z<x (AI),
so zsx (T3) and Ozx (A2), contradicting the reductio
assumption.
Proof: Since x=x, (x=x) v (x<x), and since x~x (Tl), so X<=X
(D4).
3z(z<x)]
Proof: Assume x«y. Then x~y and -(x=y) and -(x<y) (D3).
Since x~, -3z(z<x) -+ [(x<y) v (x=y)] (DI). Since
neither (x=y) nor (x<y), 3z(z<x).
Theorem 22. Parts of parts are parts of the whole [The part
relation is transitive]: VxVyVz{[(x~) & (y~z)] - (x~z)}
Theorem 23. Proper parts of irregular parts are proper parts of the
whole: VxVyVz{[(x<y) & (y«z)] - (x<z)}
Theorem 24. Proper parts of irregular parts are not irregular parts
of the whole: VxVyVz{[(x<y) & (y«z)] - -(x«z)}
Proof: Assume x<y and y<=z. Then y<z or y=z (D4). If y<z
then x<z (AI), and if y=z then x<z (S.I.).
Theorem 26. Proper parts of parts are proper parts of the whole:
VxVyVz{[(x<y) & (y~z)] -+ (x<z)}
Proof: Assume x<y and y~z. Since y has a proper part x, every
proper part of y is a proper part of z (Dl), so x<z.
Proof: Assume x<=y and y«z. Then x=y or s<y (D4). If x=y
then x«z (S.I.), so x~z (D3). y~z (D3), so if x<y then
x<z (T26), so x~z (T3).
Theorem 28. Regular parts of regular parts are regular parts of the
whole [The regular part relation is transitive]: VxVyVz{[(x<=y) &
(y<=z)] -+ (x<=z)}
Proof: Assume x<=y and y<=z. Then x<y or x=y, and y<z or
y=z (D4). If x<y then either x<z (S.I.) or x<z (AI), so
X<=Z (04). If x=y, then either x<z or X=Z (S.I.), and in
ei ther case x<=Z (D4).
Theorem 30. Irregular parts of proper parts are parts of the whole:
VxVyVz{[(x<<y) & (y<z)] -+ (x~z)}
Theorem 32. Irregular parts of regular parts are parts of the whole:
VxVyVz{[(x«y) & (y<=z)] -+ (x~z)}
Proof: Assume x<y and for reductio, assume y«x. Then y~x
(D3). 3z[(z<y) & -(z~x)] (T6), so -(z<x) (T3). But
since y~x and z<y, z<x (D!), which is a contradiction.
Hence -(y«x).
102 GILBERT T. NUlL
Proof: Assume x:9', y<z, and -(x<z). Then x~z (T29), and
3u[(u<z) & -Ouy] (TS). Then -(u:9') (T2), so -(u~x)
(T22), so -(u<x) (A2). Thus -(x=z) (S.L), so x«z
(D3).
Theorem 38. Wholes which are parts of each other share all parts:
VxVy{[(x~y) & (y~x)] - Vz[(z~x) ++ (Z:9')]}
Proof: Assume x:9' and y~x. Since x:9', for any z~x, z:9', and
since y~x, any z:9' is part of x (T22).
Theorem 39. Wholes are parts of each other just in case they share
all parts: VxVy{[(x:9') & (y~x)] ++ Vz[(z~x) ++ (z:9')]}
Theorem 41. [Cf 4.13]: Identical wholes are parts of each other:
'v'x'v'y{(x=y) -+ [(xg) & (y~x)]}
Proof: If x=y then x and y share all parts (T40), and so are parts
of each other (T39).
Proof: If x=y then x and y share all parts (T40), and hence all
proper parts (T3).
Theorem 43. Wholes which are irregular parts of each other share
all proper parts: 'v'x'v'y{[(x«y) & (y«x)] -+ 'v'z[(z<x) ++ (z<y)]}
Theorem 44. Wholes with proper parts which are irregular parts
of each other share all parts: 'v'x'v'y<[3z(z<x) & 3z(z<y)] -+
([(x«y) & (y«x)] -+ 'v'z[(z~x) ++ (zg)]»
Proof: (T44).
104 GILBERT T. NUlL
Proof: If x=y, then x and yare parts of each other (T41), and so
are coextensive (05).
Proof: Assume Cxy. Then x:5,y and y~x (05), so Cyx (05).
Proof: Assume Cxy and Cyz. Then x:5,y, y~x, y~z, and Z:5,y
(05). Since x:5,y and y~z, x~z (T22), and since z:5,y and
y~x, z~x (T22). Thus Cxz (05).
106 GILBERT T. NUlL
Proof: Assume x<y and Cxz. Then z<x (DS), so z<y (T22).
Proof: If Cxy then x:sy and y$.x (DS), so x and y share all parts
(T39).
Proof: If x and y share all parts they share each other as parts
(Tl), and so Cxy (DS).
Theorem 56. Wholes are coextensive just in case they share all
parts: VxVy{Cxy ++ Vz[(z$.x) ++ (z$.y)]}
Proof: Since proper parts are parts (T3), the theorem follows by
(T54).
Proof: If Cxy then x and y share all proper parts (TS7) whether
they are identical or not.
CONDmONAL IDENJTIY AND IRREGULAR PARfS 107
Theorem 59. If two wholes are either identical or share all proper
parts if one has a proper part, then they are coextensive:
't/x't/y<((x=y) v {3z[(z<x) v (z<y)] -+ 't/z[(z<x) ++ (z<y)]}) -+
Cxy>
Theorem 60. Two wholes are coextensive just in case they are
either identical, or they share all proper parts if one has a proper
part: 't/x't/y<Cxy ++ «x=y) v {3z[(z<x) v (z<y)] -+ 't/z[(z<x) ++
(z<y)]}»
Theorem 61. Wholes which are irregular parts of each other are
non-identical coextensive wholes, neither of which is a proper part
of the other: 't/x't/y<[(x«y) & (y«x)] -+ ([-(x=y) & Cxy] &
[-(x<y) & -(y<x)]»
Theorem 63. Wholes which are irregular parts of each other are
coextensive and share all parts: 'v'x'v'y<[(x«y) & (y«x)] - {Cxy
& 'v'z[(zs:x) - (zs:y)]»
Proof: Assume Cxy and & (x=y). Assume x<y. Then there is
some u<y such that -Oux (A2). Hence -(us:x) (T2). But
us:y (T3), so us:x (T22), a contradiction. Hence -(x<y).
By the same argument, -(y<x), so x«y and y«x (D3).
Theorem 65. Wholes which are irregular parts of each other are
non-identical coextensive wholes: 'v'x'v'y{[(x«y) & (y«x)] -
[Cxy & -(x=y)]}
Proof: Assume x«y and y«x. Then xs:y and ys:x and -(x=y)
(D3), and so Cxy (D5).
Theorem 66. Wholes are irregular parts of each other just in case
they are non-identical coextensive wholes: 'v'x'v'y{[Cxy & -(x=y)]
- [(x«y) & (y«x)]}
Proof: Assume x=y. Then for any z, if z<=x then z<=y (S.L),
and if z<=y then z<=x (S.L), so RCxy (D6).
Theorem 70. Two wholes are identical just in case they are
regularly coextensive: \fx\fy[(x=y) - RCxy]
2. See for example Eberle's discussion of individrntion [3: 2, 5, 25-7, 36, 37,
38-9,48-9, 55, 73, 76-7, 82-3, 89-90, 97, 149, lSI, 168-70, 178].
112 GILBERT T. NUlL
ROxy]
Proof: Assume x=y. Then x<=y (D4), and since x=x, X<=X
(D4), so ROxy (D4).
Proof: Assume x:sy, y<z, and -(x<z). Then x«y (T36) and
x«z (T37), so IOyz (DS).
4.07 is that the situated and the singled-out part are irregular parts of
one another (T64).
Since the situated and the singled-out parts co-exist at exactly the
same point in space and time, the reason for accepting the non-
extensionalistprincipleof individuation is clear. 5.31101 is implied
by the fact that the situated and singled-out part occupy the same
point in space and time, and are coextensive but not identical, i.e.
not regularly coextensive. This solution impacts our understanding
of both (a) the thematic transformation of Singling out and its
inverse, Synthesizing, and (b) the relation of the individual a' which
is perceived to the state of affairs of that individual being a G-
dependent part of its unitary whole x.
5. The contemplated extension involves the theses that at most one member
of any class of non-identical coextensive wholes is ontologically independent,
and that no ontologically independent whole is G-dependent. This involves
5.31101 of Section 5.311 supra; all non-identical, coextensive wholes are
considered the same spatio-temporal individual. Since ontologically independent
wholes would be irregular parts of proper parts of unitary wholes (See 175-177),
the independence of 5.205 from Al and A2 is crucial to this idea. Models of the
Stephen type (in which 5.205 is false) are interesting in this context.
CONDmONAL IDENITJY AND IRREGULAR PARTS 127
Bibliography
P. Sven AIYidson
College of Mount St. Joseph
given as the theme, not the total range for which it has relevance. 8
The theme may "look" different in virtue of the specific modification
of the thematic field. The example of how different the appearance
of a seven-foot tall basketball player in uniform is when given in the
context of a sports arena versus a supermarket aisle is enough to
show us that the thematic field has an effect on the theme. However,
the "theme itself as self-enclosed and delimited in not thereby
affected," nothing in it is changed no matter the context into which it
is inserted. 9 In other words, it is still a seven-foot tall uniformed
basketball player that is presented as thematic.
As was noted earlier, features of the field of consciousness are
correlated with features of the consciousness of field. For example,
the thematic field (which pertains to the field of consciousness) is
the correlate to attitude (which pertains to the consciousness of
field). For Gurwitsch, a change in attitude is a change in thematic
field, and a change in thematic field is a change in attitude. He
writes,
11. There may be some vanatlOn within this very general structure for
presentations of different types of aesthetic objects.
RElEVANCE AND AESfHETIC PERCEPTION 137
12. M. Beardsley uses terms like "unfettered" and "freed" in his description of
aesthetic experience. See his "What is an Aesthetic Quality," in The Aesthetic
Point oj View (Ithaca and London, 1982, p. 100). Also, H. Osborne [" Aesthetic
Perception," British Journal oj Aesthetics, 18,4, (1978, p. 307)] uses terms like
"expansion of awareness" and "peak experiences" in describing aesthetic
perception.
138 P. SVIN ARVIDSON
surprising at first but it is not new. Over 2300 years ago Plato
realized that beauty or fineness (kalon) and desire (eros) were
inseparable.
Since Edward Bullough's seminal article claiming that aesthetic
attitude involves a certain "psychical distance" on the part of the
subject, a number of 20th century writers have made claims
attempting to explain what is distinctive about the aesthetic
attitude. 13 Still, there is little agreement over its nature and status.
This paper offers an orientation on this issue based on the relevance
of the aesthetic object, which if properly understood, is general or
unspecified. Putting an object "out of gear" or "being distanced"
with respect to it or having "disinterested attention" towards the
object, all refer to the necessity of a general relevance in the
experience as it has been described here. This generality of the
relevance also explains why not just any persistently rapid
enlargement will involve an aesthetic experience. For example, the
rapid enlargement of the thematic field that may occur in the
experience of sudden disaster most likely involves a particulm
significance or relevance of some sort, for instance the loss of one's
home, and also is unlikely to be accompanied by some dimension of
freedom or openness toward the object presented.
The momentariness of aesthetic experience should also be able to
be described in terms of the field of consciousness. To be sure, a
long-lasting and relatively uninterrupted aesthetic experience appears
to be an unusual case although not impossible. At some point the
field enlargements become intermittent or slowed. It is possible that
a concert, a painting, or a sunset could strike one as aesthetic one
moment and not aesthetic the next. The difference is evident in the
structure of the field of consciousness. For example, during one
particular part of a play one might say if interviewed, "my mind is
soaring with delight" at the play. During another part, one might
say, "this play has its high points [its aesthetic moments], but now
is boring." The play that was presented as aesthetic is now presented
as nonaesthetic (or at least as having-been-aesthetic-but-now-
boring). In the first case, the playas aesthetic object reveals itself as
thematic within a relevancy that undergoes persistently rapid
enlargement as the play unfolds. But now the new theme presented
is the playas monotonous. Monotonous here is described in terms
of little or no enlargement of the thematic field with respect to the
theme.
It is clear that this description of the presentation of an aesthetic
object is broadly inclusive. Any initially occurring presentation in
which the thematic field rapidly becomes enlarged as the theme
emerges, and persists in its rapid enlargement, and in which the
attendant attitude is one of freedom, openness or boundlessness in
the presence of the object, is to be considered an aesthetic
experience. Therefore, the flower in nature as well as the painting of
the flower both may be aesthetic if each involves this field
organization and the attendant attitude. 14 Artists are frequently
concerned with the limits of that which is perceived as art, that is,
with a work's relevancy or iffeievancy.15 And this is as it should
be. The limits of the field of consciousness are the playground of
14. In discussing Dickie's views, Shultz's asks if one can seriously consider
something such as an act of kindness an aesthetic object. According to what has
been said here, even the perception of an act of kindness is to be considered
aesthetic if this field organization and the attendant attitude hold for that
perception. See Shultz (loc. cit., p. 438). The present study agrees more with
Binkley (loc. cit., p. 268), when he states that "aesthetic experience is not an
experience unique to art. "
15. Witness the controversy over Marcel Duchamp's "readymades." According
to the present account, Duchamp's Fountain (a urinal placed on display) may be an
art object, but it is not necessarily so. A good orientation to Duchamp's affect on
art criticism is 1. Brough's, "Who's Afraid of M. Duchamp?" in Philosophy and
Art, Studies in Philosophy and the History oj Philosophy, Vol. 23, D. o.
Dahlstrom (Ed.) (pp. 119-142).
140 P. SVFN ARVIDSON
Lester Embree
Rorida Atlantic University
Introduction
141
J. C. Evans arui R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 141-171.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
142 LESTER EMBREE
forms and provides the subject matters of what are best called 'the
cultural sciences'.
Gurwitsch says little explicitly about valuing and objects as
valued, but there are remarks, such as those about "worlds of
imagination as exemplified by any epic, poem, play, or novel" and
"universes of artistic creation like the universe of music,"1 from
which one might begin to construct a Gurwitschean aesthetics if not
a general theory of value. He does, however, offer substantial
descriptions of practica1life throughout his career. 2 In other words,
he emphasizes how cultural life, cultural objects, and indeed cultural
worlds are practical. He does not assert that life is originally
practical and that predominantly evaluational and predominantly
cognitive types are derivative, but this also does not appear contrary
to the spirit of his position.
The present essay continues the discussion of Gurwitsch's
account of specifically practical and generically cultural life. This
account will be clarified with a fictional example: Suppose a college
student is out hiking somewhere in the Western United States,
comes upon a cave recently opened by a landslide, looks in and sees
mummies, blankets, baskets, and other paraphernalia preserved
there since the cave was sealed, presumably by an earlier landslide,
and hurries to report his discovery to his anthropology professor,
taking one artifact with him to show her. This is a stick of wood less
than a meter long with a small protuberance at one end. When she
sees it and hears his tale, she knows immediately that this will be a
famous site. They hurry back in her truck, and on the way she
explains that what he has shown her is an 'atlatl', something that has
been obsolete in that area for at least 7,000 years. Since he does not
know what an atlatl is, she explains how the protuberance is hooked
into a socket at one end of a light spear called a dart, held at the other
end, and used to apply the strength of the throwing ann to accelerate
the dart more than happens with a merely hand thrown spear, thus
increasing range and impact on game, which then included now
extinct giant bison and even elephant. Atlatls are also called spear
throwers (see Figure 1).
5. Gurwitscb's Note: See Heidegger, Being and Time, John Macquarrie &
Edward Robinson (Trans.) (London: SCM Press, 1962), §15, about "Zeug," in
contradistinction to "Ding," and "Zuhandenheit" as distinguished from
"Vorhandenheit." On entirely different grounds, the connection between perception
and action has been emphasized by Bergson in Matter and Memory, chap. 1,
Nancy Margaret Paul & W. Scott Palmer (Trans.) (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1911). [On other occasions Gurwitsch traces the notion of use or functional object
back to Wolfgang Kohler's "IntelligenzprUfungen an Anthropoiden" (1917), from
which he took the expression "Funktionsobjekt: ([see note 6] PTS, p. 171, n.
23).]
6. Aron Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory oj Science, Lester Embree
(Ed.) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974, p. 143, cf. 92).
Hereafter this source will be cited as 'PTS'. That the cultural world and the lifeworld
are the same, at least for Gurwitsch, cf. Aron Gurwitsch, Studies in
Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1966, p. 418f). Hereafter this source will be cited as 'SPP'.
146 LESTER EMBREE
7. Regarding the social dimension. cf. (1) Aron Gurwitsch. Human Encounters
in the Social World, Alexandre Metraux (Ed.) and Fred Kersten (Trans.) (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press. 1979). hereafter cited as 'HESW'; and (2) the Editor's
Introduction to Aron Gurwitsch. Marginal Consciousness. Lester Embree (Ed.)
(Athens. OH: Ohio University Press. 1985). which will hereafter be cited as 'Me'.
A GURWITsa-IEAN MODEL FOR EXPLAINING CULTURE ... 147
The first domain is the theme, that which engrosses the mind
of the experiencing subject, or as it is often expressed,
which stands in the 'focus of his attention'. Second is the
thematic field, defined as the totality of those data,
co-present with the theme, which are experienced as
materially relevant or pertinent to the theme and form the
background or horizon out of which the theme emerges as
the center. The third includes data which, though co-present
with, have no relevancy to, the theme and comprise in their
totality what we propose to call the margin. (Fe, p. 4)
Themes and thematic fields can, secondly, be ideal rather than real:
Thus, whether or not the theme and thematic field are cultural, the
cultural world is always in the background.
Thirdl y, the emphasis in the above passage and indeed often in
Gurwitsch's oeuvre can be said to be psychological in the
signification of focused on the individual rather than the group.
However, as has already been seen and will be seen again presently,
the cultural world is intersubjectively constituted. He even offers an
account of how individual life-histories are integrated, which
concludes as follows. "On the basis of the one, unique objective
A GURWITSGlEAN MODEL roR EXPLAINING CULTURE ... 151
time, in which the life-histories of all persons take place, all the
spatial surroundings of those life-histories are unified into one
all-encompassing order of existence, namely, the one real, objective,
spatio-temporal world, the life-world of all human beings
communicating with each other either directly or indirectly" (FC, p.
387, emphasis altered).
Fourthly, the expression 'the cultural world' must not be taken
to signify that there is but one such world. Rather, this and various
other expressions, need to be comprehended as eidetic, i.e.,
expressing universal concepts, which is to say concepts about the
eidos of any cultural world whatever.
Fifthly, it is to be expected that there be particular cultural
worlds in Gurwitsch's account and also species of cultural worlds.
Concerning particulars,
There are thus various particular civilizations that come under the
species of cultural world called 'civilization', which Gurwitsch
unfortunately does not define. Nevertheless, since the Paleoindian
hunter-gatherers of the Western United States 7,000 years ago did
not by any definition have a civilization, their world would belong to
a different species of cultural world than our own does. Another
passage covers the possibility of encountering widely different
cultural worlds, which our anthropology student has begun to do.
The shared subject matter that is the cultural world can then be
approached in different disciplinary perspectives. Going again
beyond the letter but probably not beyond Gurwitsch's spirit, it may
be asserted that in the cultural-psychological sciences the typical
individual of this or that sort is thematized, while in what might be
called 'communal science' there is thematization of group or
collective life ranging from two people out to the whole of a society,
such 'communal science' subdividing, firstly, into the synchronic or
social sciences and the diachronic or historical sciences and,
secondly, both species further dividing according to the sort of
interaction and relationship emphasized, e.g., structural and also
historical linguistics, economics and economic history, ethnology
and archaeology, etc. 9
While there are a number of additional points not included,10
enough has been expressed above to support the claim that there is a
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989, p. 233). Hereafter this source will
be referred to as ·PE.· The same poi nt is made at SPP, p. 403.
A GURWITSGIEAN MOlE.... FOR ExH..AINING CULTURE ... 155
(The gloss 'cultural' has been added here to reinforce that cultural
rather than naturalistic objects are intended to in the perceiving in
question.)
The first sentence in this passage inel udes a naturalistic
description of the properties of an object while the second one
expresses a cultural explanation of an object in relation to a purpose.
A naturalistic explanation could be added that mentioned makers and
the shaping and combining of the metal and wooden parts of the
T-shaped object. A cultural description can be derived from the
second sentence, which expresses a cultural explanation of the
teleological subspecies. Actually, Gurwitsch does this when he
continues the above passage with "In other words, the object
perceived presents itself with the specific sense of its
instrumentality" (Idem.). In yet other words, one can characterize
the hammer as having a function or use and even go on to assert
that, in contrast with something that is a purpose, this is an extrinsic
rather than an intrinsic use, a means use rather than an end use.
Whether this extrinsic use is positive or negative would depend on
whether the hammer is used to create or destroy, which can be
determined by considering the modality of the volitional or praxic
stratum in the using of it, which can be distinguished from the
willing of the positive or negative purpose. 12 Thus the willing of the
means is considered apart from the willing of the end just as the
means is separated from the end. Cultural description is thus
possible even though artificial. (See Figure 2.)
Objects Account
Naturalistic empty
Etc.
15. Fe. p. 92. This position is more elaborately presented in SPP, p. 23f.
160 LESTER EMBREE
16. For more elaborate uses of representational awareness than that cited in
n.4 above, cf. Lester Embree, "Phenomenology of a Change in Archaeological
Observation," in Metaarchaeology, Lester Embree (Ed.) (Boston Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht: K1uwer Academic Publishers, 1992). "An
Excavation of Archaeological Cognition or How to Hunt Mammoth," in The
Question oj Hermeneutics, Timothy J. Stapleton (Ed.) (Dordrecht: K1uwer Academic
Publishers, 1994) and "Representation and Historical Science," in Phenomenology
East and West: Essays in Honor oj J. N. Mohanty, D. P. Chattopadhyaya and
Frank Kirkland (Eds.) (Dordrecht: K1uwer Academic Publishers, 1993).
A GURWITSCHEAN MODEL RJR EXPLAINING CULTURE ... 161
20. In lectures from hi s Paris period, Gurwitsch discusses how the piece of
wax analyzed in Descartes's second meditation is already devoid of the uses it has
in the market place, in religions ceremonies, or in sealing letters.
A GURWITsa-IEAN MODEL FOR EXPLAINING CULTURE ... 169
David Carr
Emory University
175
J. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.). To Work at the Foundations, 175-191.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
176 DAVID CARR
1. See Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology oj the Social World, G. Walsh & F.
Lehnert (Trans.s) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967, p. 97); also
Collected Papers 1/; Studies in Social Reality, A. Broderson (Ed.) (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1964, p. 25).
ON THE I:M<FERENCE BEfWEENTRANsCENDENTAL AND EMPIRICAL SUBJECTIVTIY 1n
had to be attacked at all costs. 2 While they both spoke of Kant and
Husserl, everyone knows that French existential phenomenology-
Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur-was their real target. But the latter
had already rejected the transcendental/empirical-subject distinction.
Why should this distinction be such an important target for Foucault
and Derrida if it was already dead?
More recently, J. Habermas traces all the ills of modem thought
to the dominance of what he calls "BewuBtseinsphilosophie," which
includes as a strong component the distinction between
transcendental and empirical consciousness. 3 Why should
Habermas think it so important to attack this notion when it has long
since been given up by phenomenology, praxis philosophy, and just
about everyone else? Obviously Habermas, Foucault and Derrida
believe that the transcendental/empirical split survives covertly,
insidiously, even in theories that supposedly reject it. (Habermas
indeed says explicitly that it survives in Heidegger, and implies the
same for Derrida~4 and they would doubtless claim that it survives
covertly in Habermas.)
Then there is another odd bit of evidence: the reaffirmation of the
distinction between transcendental and empirical subjectivity, or
something very close to it, by the analytic philosopher Thomas
Nagel in his recent book The View From Nowhere. 5
All of this leads me to suspect that we ought to say of this
distinction what Alasdair Macintyre said recently about relativism
and skepticism, namely that it is "one of those doctrines that have by
now been refuted a number of times too often. Nothing is perhaps a
surer sign that a doctrine embodies some not-to-be-neglected truth
II
which at this stage I merge with all other I's or with God. If that
were so, as Merleau-Ponty pointed out, 11 there would have been no
problem of intersubjectivity for Husserl, no worry about solipsism,
no need to work out the notion of the community of monads. But
we know that these were problems for him, indeed deeply troubling
problems.
For Husserl, then, the distinction between transcendental and
empirical subjectivity arises in the context of self-reflection. But of
course it is not just any form of self-reflection that gives rise to this
distinction. We reflect all the time, in the natural course of things,
without needing or using the distinction between myself as
transcendental and myself as empirical. In fact the distinction arises
only in the context of a very sophisticated kind of reflection which is
nothing other than the phenomenological method itself: epoche,
reduction and the rest. Throughout his career, Husserl's utterances
on the distinction between transcendental and empirical subjectivity
occur in the course of presenting and perfecting his method.
Consider, for example, the much quoted footnote on this topic in
the second (1913) edition of the LogicalInvestigations. In the first
edition (1901) he had declared that, search as he might, he was
"quite unable to find" what the Kantians called the "Pure ego." But
then in the 1913 footnote we are told that subsequent researches had
turned it up after al1. 12 If we did not know the context we might
imagine Husserl as a David Hume, rummaging diligently among his
experiences, looking for one called MYSELF, coming up empty-
handed, then looking harder and harder until-eureka! There it is,
perhaps lying hidden behind some bulky perception, but now
exposed to view. What really happened, of course, is that in 1901
Husserl had no fully worked-out phenomenological method,
whereas in 1913 he did-in fact, in 1913 that method was his chief
preoccupation. It was not a matter of looking harder but of looking
14. Carr, D., "Kant, Hugserl and the Non-Empirical Ego," Journal oj
Philosophy Vol. 74, 11, 1977.
ON THE DFFERENCE BETWFENTRANSCENDENTAL AND EMPIRICAL SUBJECI1VITY 183
must admit also that they are causally as well as intentionally related
to my experience. That is just the way of real existence in the real
world. But if I "bracket" their existence, transforming it into the
sense of existence which I as transcendental subjectivity bestow
upon them, then I am freed of that requirement. Indeed under the
reduction that requirement makes no sense. The events of my mental
life are not dependent on things really happening in the world, and
there is no sense in which they are explained by those events. If
anything the dependence goes the other way. If those things (events
in the world) "exist," that means that they have certain kinds of
meaning; and in order to have meaning they must have meaning/or
somebody, for me as the locus, source, or bestower of meaning. Of
course, this dependence is not causal. I as transcendental
subjectivity do not explain their being or happening, for being is not
at issue here; but I and my acts, my experiences, do account for their
having the sense of being, for counting as real (or, for that matter,
as unreal). The phenomenological reduction rules the question of the
being of the world out of order, and replaces. it with the question of
meaning. I as transcendental subjectivity emerge as a necessary
implication of the reduction; and thus emerges also the possibility of
distinguishing myself in this sense from me, the empirical subject
which exists among the objects of my world. This me, together with
everything else in the world, now stands over against me as
transcendental subject. The empirical me is located somewhere in
space, time, and objective history. This location is one of those
meanings of which the transcendental I is aware. But the latter is not
itself so located. This is why Nagel calls it "the view from
nowhere."
It may he objected that this way of rendering Husserl's
distinction between the two subjectivities is grossly oversimplified.
Reducing them to strictly intentional vs. strictly causal relations may
miss some important subtleties. For one thing, Husserl speaks more
frequently of human subjectivity (das menschliche Ich or ich, dieser
Mensch) than of empirical subjectivity, and in Ideas II he makes the
important distinction between the natural and the naturalistic
184 DAVID CARR
III
IV
We might let the matter rest there, were it not for two predictable
objections, each of which deserves to he taken seriously.
The first objection is this: phenomenology, with its reduction
and its consequent distinction between transcendental and empirical
subjectivity, is all very interesting; but how important is it if it
cannot answer the really burning questions of philosophy, questions
like "what is man?" Kant at least recognized that these questions
were the whole point of the exercise, and so did not try to banish
them. On the view sketched here, phenomenology may seem in the
end no better than certain much maligned "ordinary language"
analysis, playing a lot of interesting games, but contributing in the
end absolutely nothing to philosophy as traditionally conceived.
This is a difficult objection, to which I can propose only a
couple of weak replies. First, remember that Kant too, though he
devoted a lot of attention to questions like "what is man?", did not
really propose philosophical or theoretical answers to them. The best
we can expect are certain kinds of practical responses. (Nagel, too,
is not very optimistic about coming up with philosophical answers.
He just seems to think we ought to keep seeking them with
Sisyphean determination.) Second, we can ask whether anyone else
has offered a viable proposal for answering these philosophical
questions in a theoretical way. Phenomenology may come off no
worse than other philosophical proposals currently available.
The second objection requires a lengthier discussion, and I can
do no more than state it here. It turns on the distinction between
metaphysics and method, with which I tried to defend Husserl's
transcendental/empirical-subject distinction against its detractors.
Everyone knows that Husserl tried to overcome metaphysics by
inventing a purely methodical philosophy. (He was not the first.)
Derrida certainly knew this when he asked: "Do not
phenomenological necessity, the rigor and subtlety of Husserl's
ON TIIE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRANSCENDENTAL AND EMPIRICAL SUBJECI1VI1Y 191
James M. Edie
Northwestern University
* A first version of this paper was read at the International Aron Gurwitsch
Memorial Symposium at the New School in New York on November 8, 1991.
193
J. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 193-227.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
194 JAMES M. EOIE
questions for us now.! Well, we know not only that we are not at
the center of the universe, but also that we literally don't know
where we are except that we are a part of a middling, relatively
unimportant, gradually diminishing solar system which will in time
exhaust its energy and may well be headed for extinction. We have
been thrown into a state of being for which we cannot account,
without our advice having been asked, which is unfathomable, and
which as a whole, and in each of its parts, including ourselves, may
be doomed, as in ancient Greek poetry, to a tragic end. I t is there,
dumb, unwieldy, silent, utterly indifferent to human consciousness
and human purposes. There is too much of it; it is the Sartrean
"absurd. "
But that was not the only displacement, the only decentering.
This physical decentering was followed by a biological decentering
which can be conveniently dated with the publication of Darwin's
Origin of Species in 1859, the birthday of "contemporary"
philosophy as opposed to "modern" philosophy.2 Homo sapiens
was not created whole and entire in some primeval Garden of Eden
but is the result, at the present moment, of an extremely long,
hazardous, chancy, almost fortuitous evolution that about fifteen
million years ago on this planet brought about the existence of truly
living creatures. Of the perhaps four original kingdoms,
characterized by having "a well-organized nucleus and
genres of various types would look like. Again, the subject is still
too difficult, but at least the question can be posed, whereas some
sixty or seventy years ago it could barely have arisen at the level of
conscious awareness. Similarly in structural anthropology,
sociology and other disciplines there has been considerable advance
in showing how humans operate according to quite strict rules of
behavior without having any conscious awareness of such rules or
any ability to bring them to the level of fully aware, reflective
consciousness capable of stating them in language. "The subject"
(the ego) has been displaced or decentered even in its own
experience of itself and its own behavior.
So much for the scientific decentering of the egological center of
traditional philosophy. However, e contra, let us not forget the
teaching of Hegel, as paraphrased from his Phenomenology of
Mind: If it is true that man is not at the physical center of the
universe, he is still at the metaphysical center because he produces
its science. All of the sciences which men have laboriously
developed through ages of time are all human sciences in the sense
that they are at the service of man to explain as best he can to himself
his own present experience, whether in terms of past geological
ages, his own evolution, the physiological and psychological
mechanisms of his own living organism, or the laws of his own use
of language and therefore of thought. We have no awareness of the
circulatory system of our blood stream; Aristotle thought the brain
was an organ for cooling the blood; we waited until Harvey to learn
the truth. But Aristotle could write brilliantly about the perceptual
organization of experience on the basis of a false physiology. We
likewise have no conscious awareness of our neurological
structures; many even speak as if the brain "knows" things, whereas
the fact is that the minds of men have for a very long time been
interested in how the brain works, what it does and how it does it,
and we have begun to elaborate natural sciences in greater and
greater profusion to study the brain. But in all this the brain, as a
physiological part of the system, has not the slightest interest in or
ability to study the mind.
ON CONFRONTING SPECIES-SPECIAC SKEPTICISM ... 199
And as our common ancestor, Socrates, taught us, philosophy is
the study of the mind (nous) the source of conceptual knowledge
(logoi), not the study of synapses, neurons or complex tissues.
it does not explain. If we can agree that with the various levels of
organismic development into more and more complex beings new
properties emerge at each stage which were not clearly present in the
combining elements or parts of the prior, less developed,
organisms, then we will eventually reach the stage at which higher
intelligence capable of discovering the eidetic, logical laws which
govern true thought and language-using consciousness emerge
(because this has already happened). But we do not thereby explain
the nature of such laws of thought even though we admit that more
primitive creatures could not have envisaged them.
When Husserl undertook at the beginning of the Twentieth
century to refute what he called "psychologism" in his Prolegomena
to Pure Logic, he began by saying that the complete skepticism (of
the kind Aristotle ascribed to Heraclitus and Cratylus, or that
professed by Protagaros, Pyhrro or Sextus Empiricus) was hardly
to be found asserted by anybody anymore. He did not even tarry
over the probabilistic skepticism of the kind espoused by the New
Academy against which Saint Augustine wrote his first dialogue,
Against the Academics. What concerned him was the species-
specific skepticism of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth
century thinkers such as Mill, Bain, Wundt, Sigwart, Erdmann and
Lipps (on the historical background of British Empiricism in general
from Ockham to Hume).5 We will take this up immediately, but the
starting-point is to ask whether the rules of thought and of reason
are essentially dependent on the emergence of this human species,
homo sapiens, on this planet in these determinate historical
circumstances or whether the norms of logic are essentially
independent of historical, evolutionary circumstances even though
they can come into play only in actual, historical acts of thinking
performed by individual thinking beings.
By the last decade of the Twentieth century we are in a situation
in which the many sociological accounts of knowledge, whether
based on Heidegger, the Frankfort School, or Derrida, or Rorty, or
some combination thereof, or of other provenance, have for some
time proclaimed not only the decentering of the subject (of
experience) but the "death" of the subject, the "evanescence"6 of the
subject, the "disappearance" of the subject, and the like. This leads
us to the metaphysics of Structuralism with which we are quite
familiar and which goes far beyond the structuralist methodology
which is, in itself, quite innocuous, and, indeed, an inescapable
component of any conceptual analysis, of any scientific theory
whatsoever.
Let us attempt to pose this question in its contemporary historical
perspective. At the beginning of this century philosophers like
William James and Edmund Husser! attempted to refute skeptical,
relativistic psychologism so as to establish logical thinking and the
rules of reasoning on a basis independent of any mentalistic
introspectionism or any biological or social causes not derivable
from the investigation of meaning as such; now we see, in spite of
the triumphs of formal logic in this century, a return at present to an
ever more sophisticated form of psychologism in which the
7. Strictly speaking, Denida has written only two truly philosophical books,
with sustained argument, namely: Edmund Husserl's Origin oj Geometry: An
Introduction, J. P. Leavey, Jf. (Trans.) (Stony Brook: Nicholas Hays, 1978) and
Speech and Phenomena, D. B. Allison (Trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1973). There are a few passages in De la grammatologie and
perhaps also in Glas, which might also qualify as philosophical discourse in the
usual sense.
8. 1. M. Edie, "Husserl vs. Derrida," Human Studies, 1990: 103-118.
ON CONFRONTING SPECIES-SPECIAC SKEPTICISM ... 203
for working out a way of seeing the search for objective knowledge
.... as [but] one human project among others" through his famous
theory of Lichtungen 11 (the ways we must think Being in its
relations to beings). [Rorty may even think, as Quentin Skinner has
asserted, that these three philosophers have brought philosophy to
an end l2 -aclaim which, in a completely different context, used to
be made on behalf of Hegel].
But we have to be more careful. What have Rorty (and Derrida,
if we may associate him in this enterprise) actually tried to do? Both
of them, in the company of quite a number of continental and
analytical philosophers, try to undermine "transcendental
philosophy. "13 In fact both of them, but especially Rorty who is the
more "historicist" of the two, considers the critique of transcendental
thought common to both these traditions to be the one concern
which runs through and unifies the whole of contemporary
philosophy at the present time. Transcendental philosophy is defined
as the search for an ultimate foundation of knowledge which will
"block skepticism" by discovering "an overaching permanent neutral
matrix" for all inquiry, past and future;14 it would, indeed, provide a
mentioned, his name is nearly always coupled with his partner "transcendentalist"
Russell, as William James is elsewhere coupled with Nietzsche. We don't know
exactly what Russell might say about this coupling but we do know that James
considered half of everything Nietzsche wrote to be "the sick shriekings of a
dying rat" (Varieties oj Religions Experience (New York: Mentor Books, 1958, p.
47). From a historical perspective, one could transpose and invert the famous
statement of Erasmus (as well as of Pi co de la Mirandola) in his De Transitu
Hellinismi ad Christianismum concerning Aristotle and his Christian interpreters,
"Without Thomas, Aristotle would have been silent," Sine Thoma, mutus esset
Aristotles, into: "Without Husserl, there would have been no Heidegger."
11. Rorty, 1979, p. 360f.
12. In "The End of Philosophy?" The New York Review oj Books, March 19,
1981: 46.
13. In bringing Derrida into the discussion, it is important to refer the reader
to the recent work of J. C. Evans, Strategies oj Deconstruction, Derrida and the
Myth oj the Voice (University of Minnesota Press, 1991). This is certainly the
best, most magisterial and insightful book on Derrida from a philosophical point
of view up to now. Evans spends almost as much time and space following
Derrida's arguments one by one as Husserl did on his psychologistic skeptics in
the Logical Investigations.
14. Rorty, 1979, p. 266.
ON CONFRONTING SPECIES-SPECIAC SKEPTICISM ... 205
refutation of any JX)ssible future skepticism. The destruction (which
is at the same time the deconstruction) of transcendental philosophy
is accomplished by showing that the historical origin of our
conception of foundational knowledge (from Descartes, Locke and
Kant) has come under attack from within (as well as from without)
by an increasingly radical questioning of its inner, hidden
presupJX)sitions that always involve the privileging of some form of
representational consciousness over any other.
When philosophy is relieved of all its "foundations" what
remains is a literary and communicating culture as a conversation
rather than as a structure erected on unchanging foundations, an
edifying genuine conversation that does not degenerate into
inquiry. 15
Though Derrida's position is harder to define and much more
slippery than Rorty's, it comes to much the same thing. The
conversation which we call "speech" is really a form of writing;
experience is a text, and if n'y a pas de hors-texte. Since all of
meaningful language is nothing other than a free play of signifiers,
there can be no necessary starting JX)int; understanding itself is
always a misunderstanding; there has never been any perception.1 6
Though Derrida is considerably more colorful than Rorty
[logocentrism becomes phallocentrism; within the chain of
supplements it is difficult to separate writing from onanism, etc.]! 7
15. Rorty, 1979, p. 372. Note the word "degenerate." I submit that Rorty's
Philosophy and the Mirror OJ Nature should never be read without the corrective
essay written by J. N. Mohanty, "Rorty, Phenomenology and Transcendental
Philosophy," Journal oj the British Society jor Phenomenology, 1983/Jan.: 91-
98.
16. Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, D. B. Allison (Trans.)
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973, p. 103).
17. J. Derrida, OJ Grammatology, Gayatri Spivak (Trans.) (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1974, p. 165f). See also J. R. Searle, "The Word Turned Upside
Down," New York Review oj Books, Oct. 27, 1983: 74f). There is however no
doubt that we need to be sensitive to the perennial attraction and force of the non-
foundationalist, "conversationalist" theory of truth which has cropped up
throughout the history of philosophy, as Professor Richard Bernstein reminded me
in discussing this paper. Whether it is Protagoras, Phyrro and Sextus Empiricus
after Plato and Aristotle, Peter Damien after Augustine, Ockham after Aquinas, the
British empiricists after Cartesian rationalism, Marx, Spencer and Mill after Kant
and Hegel, or Heidegger, Derrida and Rorty after Husser! and Frege, every time a
206 JAMES M. EDIE
22. Mohanty. 1983/Jan .. 97. Mohanty here makes reference to ApeJ and
Habermas.
210 JAMES M. EDIE
postulate of reason and science. There is, for instance, the factual
existence of the new science of exobiology which studies
extraterrestrial life, a very strange "science" in fact since it cannot
even demonstrate that its subject matter exists!23 Though we are
now quite certain that no other planets capable of sustaining life exist
in our solar system, they may exist elsewhere in the galaxy and, if
we extend our horizons to include more distant galaxies, and
extrapolate what has happened on our planet, there may even be
hundreds of millions of planets capable of supporting life and, for
all we know, intelligent life. We do not know if these extraterrestrial
life-forms or even intellect-forms would be sufficiently like our own
to be able to be recognized by us as either living or as intelligent,
and, given the distances to be traversed and the absolute character of
the speed of light-at least given the present state of our
technology-communication of some kind could only be possible
over periods of millions of years. The prospect certainly looks
bleak, but it is not only science-fiction that leads us to investigate the
possibility.
We have but one instance24 before us of the evolution of
intelligent life, namely that on earth. But, if it could happen once,
namely here, it could, in principle, happen elsewhere. De esse ad
posse valet illatio. 25 The hypothesis that there could be, that there
may be, intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe will not be
discarded by humans for the more resigned, anesthetic, stoical,
passive outlook expressed in the opposite hypothesis, namely that
since the probability of ever discovering or coming to know
anything at all about such beings is all but zero we might as well
give up our practical assumptions and spend our resources more
wisely.26
This fact illustrates an important characteristic of human
intelligence: what James would call the "livelier hypothesis," the
more courageous option, the one that gives us something to "press"
against, to strive towards, that requires us to go beyond the evident,
that hypothesis will have the greatest power to stimulate our
intellectual and practical abilities. And how would we communicate
with other species of intelligent life? Would they, like the Greeks,
have discovered the laws of logic and scientific inquiry? Who
knows? In attempting to communicate we can only rely on the
instruments of our own logical thought.
The ancients, like Aristotle, and the medievals, the Arab and
Jewish thinkers no less than the Latins, had no doubt that there was
other intelligent life in the universe, though of a non-bodily nature,
namely the movers of the spheres, the "separated intelligences," the
myriad of angels, each unique in its species, but possessed of
intellect and will comparable to ours, though of a much higher
potency, with whom limited communication was possible. Well, we
have long abandoned this particular folklore in science, but we have
not thereby lost at least the teleological hope that there may be
intelligent species other than ourselves. 27 This is the practical
scientific challenge to species-specific skepticism.
25. It is a cliche of Scholastic logic that from the fact that something is the
case it is valid to infer that it is possi ble for it to be, whereas one can never infer
from the mere conceptual possibility of something to its actual existence. De esse
al posse valet illatio; de posse al esse non valet illatio.
26. Mayr, 1988, p. 73.
27. The best treatment of the "teleological" elements in Husserl's thought is
by Andre de Muralt, The Idea oj Phenomenology, Husserlian Exemplarism, G. L.
Breckon (Trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974). For Husserl
212 JAMES M. EDIE
But we do not even have to go to the question of other species who
possibly share intelligence similar to our own. It is certainly a
practical as well as a theoretical postulate of all anthropological
science within our own species of homo sapiens, just on this planet,
that however diverse and, on the surface level, "incomprehensible"
other cultures we may encounter may be, at the limit, it is always
possible for us, ourselves, just as humans, to put ourselves in their
place, to experience the world from their perspective, and, at least
ideally, to be able to communicate with them. How else could one
write "scientific" studies of the Australian aborigines, the Trobiand
Islanders, the Indian tribes of the Amazon valley in Brazil, or the
multifarious tribes of New Guinea and even North America? We
describe their languages, we describe their social structures, we in
fact communicate with them and they with us, and each can come to
see the common world of experience through the eyes of the
the concrete, existing thing is a "factual example" of its idea or essence, while the
idea is the "ideal exemplar" of its object. The factual enables us to define the idea,
but only the idea enables us to comprehend the factual object. Suppose a given
science in its actual, imperfect, historical state. Its "essential" character requires a
continual tendency 'towards greater and greater precision, comprehensiveness and
certitude. In its actual state any given science is essentially relative to a state of
greater perfection which awaits it in the future; science is always in an
intermediate, developing state between a less perfect and a more perfect state. The
completely realized and perfected state of a science is an ideal goal (tel os or idea);
it is, in fact, an "open" or "infinite" idea. The real, factual state of development of
any given science gives its meaning to the "idea" of that science, and of science
in general, but at the same time the "ideal" of science alone make it possible to
understand the "real" as an intermediate stage in the realization of the idea. This is
the universal principle of the mutual exemplarity of the real and the ideal
throughout the whole of Husserlian phenomenology. See also: J. M. Edie, Edmund
Husserl's Phenomenology: A Critical Commentary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1987, pp. 143-144), and S. Strasser, "Das Gottesproblem in der
Spatphilosophie Edmund Husserls," Philosophisches lahrbuch, 67 Jahrgang: 130-
142), in which Strasser argues that the idea of God is, for Husserl, the final
absolute reality which is both a theoretical "idea" and a practical "telos" working
itself out in the innate drive of mankind to come to absolute and final knowledge.
He concludes that Husserl's exemplarism is based on a teleological conception, a
"Gottesbegriff," both immanent within and transcendent to human striving. But it
would certainly be prudent to stop short of making Husser! sound like Whitehead
or Teilhard de Chardin. Nevertheless, if there is a personal, intelligent God, he is
bound by the laws of logic no less than we are.
ON CONFRONTING SPECIES-SPECIAC SKEPfIOSM ... 213
A. The Eidetic
28. Anthropologists like Benjamin Whorff once claimed that languages like
those of the Hopi Indians would enable them, with their relativistic verbs for time
and place, to understand the relativity theory of Einstein better than we can in
English, forgetting that the language of relativity theory is not any natural
language but the language of mathematics which is the same in all places and at
all times. One of Heidegger's disciples, Johannes Lohmann ("M. Heidegger's
Ontological Difference and Language," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, On Heidegger
and Language (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, pp. 303-363) once
argued that "the logic and grammar" of Chinese is essentially different from "the
logic and grammar" of the Indo-European languages. But this is easily refuted by
the fact that, native speakers of French have had no trouble at all teaching
Chinese seminarians (in a seminary in Chentu Province prior to 1949) the logic
of Aristotle in Chinese (see my reply to Lohmann in the same volume, pp. 220-
228). It is true that formal logic proceeds in a binary, either-or-manner. It is the
only "language," for instance, our computers can "understand" or follow. Various
cultures divide up the world differently on the surface level of their ordinary
speech. For the Orientals there are the four passing sights, the three vows, the
eightfold path, the four noble truths, the six elements of true religion, the
seventeen great goings forth, etc., whereas for the Medieval Western Latins there
were the twelve degrees of true humility, the seven deadly sins, the nine choirs of
angels, the ten commandments, etc., but I strongly suspect that as the Japanese
and the Chinese, no less than the Western Europeans, become more reliant on
computers, they will drop any resistance they may residually have to "either-or"
logic, including the logic and grammatical studies of Aristotle and Leibniz. There
are some four thousand natural languages still spoken on earth but there is only
one "pure logical grammar."
214 JA~M. EDIE
In this Husserl was very Greek and had learned the lesson of
Socrates, as taught in the Phaedo, very well: it is the peculiar task of
the philosopher to distinguish and separate out in experience
conceptual aprioris. It is for this reason that philosophers can know
that no physicist, no physiologist, no historian, no sociologist, or
any other scientist can violate a single law of formal logic without
his statements and arguments becoming subject to incoherence,
contradiction and error. No other branch of investigation studies
logic or the philosophy of logic as such, nor does it need to. It is, in
fact, not easy to violate a law of formal logic because we almost
always think according to these stringent and universal conditions of
thought without bringing them at each instance to the level of fully
conscious, reflexive awareness. In fact the Egyptians, the
Babylonians, the Cro-Magnons all thought according to the laws of
formal logic long before the early Greek thinkers began to make
them the subject of a special investigation and brought them to light
as the necessary basis of all theorein.
philosophiae non sit aliqua pars (P. Van Stenberghen, The Philosophical
Movement in the Thirteenth Century (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1955, p. 26f).
The reason for this was that all the "lower" sciences like agronomy and
architecture were "subordinate sciences" which took their first principles from
"higher sciences," just as music and optics take their first principles from the
"higher science" of mathematics and, ultimately, all sciences derive their first
principles of demonstration from the "first science" which is metaphysics. In this
sense, as Question I of the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas shows us, even
theology is a "subordinated" science which is argumentative and demonstrative
based ultimately on the higher scientia Dei et beatorum. It would be interesting to
examine the historical relationship of the individual sciences (Etienne Gilson has
done some of this in his The Unity oj Philosophical Experience (New York:
Scribner's, 1950). In antiquity and the Middle Ages medical specialists like Galen
and Avicenna felt it necessary, in order to write treatises on Medicine or Healing,
to deal first with logic, epistemology and metaphysics in order to properly order
their researches and guarantee their validity; as we know Galen even invented a
new form of syllogism. In the days of Newton physics was not only still a part of
philosophy but also of natural theology. It is as if the various non-philosophical
sciences and disciplines were all originally conceived as parts of philosophy
until, having progressed to a sufficient stage of maturity to develop their own
distinctive methodologies, were able to be prosecuted by scientists who no longer
studied philosophy or the problems of logic ex projesso.
216 JAMES M. EDIE
It is not necessary here to repeat in any great detail how all this
involves Husserl in the refutation of psychologism. Against the
species-specific "psychologism" of his contemporaries who held
that logical laws, the rules of thought, were nothing other than the
natural laws governing psychological processes in human minds,
who made out logic to be "the physics" of thought, Husserl argued
that since psychology is a natural science, its laws can never be
exact or apodictic, never apriori or evident to insight, but must
always be vague generalizations based on statistical probabilities. 3o
The mistake of the "psychologists" of his time was to confuse the
contents ofjudgments with acts ofjudging. Acts of judging are real,
datable events, real occurrences which have causes and effects in the
living, thinking organism; but the contents of judgments are ideal
entities, concepts. We must not confuse the ideal with the real. No
real event, no act of consciousness is ever repeatable or identically
the same (idem numero actus) as any other; but the same content can
occur again and again, at different times, in different
consciousnesses, under different conditions. 31 Whenever a truth is
30. It would not due to go into or follow the detail that Husserl himself goes
into in the Prolegomena. An excellent summary is given for those who want a
shortcut in M. Farber, The Foundation oj Phenomenology (New York: Paine-
Whitman, 1962), to whose very illuminating insights I have been indebted ever
since I began teaching phenomenology. See especially, in the present connection,
pp. 112-124.
31. I have several times, in articles finally all reassembled together in
William James and Phenomenology (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1987), tried to explain the sense in which Husserl was indebted to James in his
refutation of psychologism, but not all my readers seem to grasp the central point
(as in the review of this book by W. J. Earle, Canadian Philosophical Reviews,
1988: 260-265). Earle is willing to agree (263) that James rejected the atomism
and associationism of Locke and Hurne in their theories of perception, but he does
not concede that this amounts to the same kind of phenomenological reduction
that was operated by the Gestalt psychologists and others and which I (and
others), following Gurwitsch, have tried to explain in detail. But the main point is
not merely James' rejection of "mind-stuff" theory but his recognition of the
proper nature of "the object of thought" (what Husserl called the noema ) and its
central importance for mental life. There is no sameness, no repeatability in the
real world, and therefore not in the flow of acts and states of consciousness which
are subject to the law of irreversible temporal sequence in which the experiencing
subject is at each instant of time not only in a new position but in a new and
different state of preparation, expectation, accumulation of past experience, etc.,
ON CONFRONTING SPECIES-SPECIAC SKEPfIOSM ... 217
than at any other instant in time. What can be "got again" and held before the
mind in different acts of consciousness, at different times, and by other
experiencers as well, is "the object of thought." the "meaning" [W. James, The
PrinCiples oj Psychology, Vol. I (New York: Holt, 1890, pp. 460-462), and Vol.
II, pp. 641-644; see also Chs. I and II of William James and Phenomenology].
This is the true basis for James' and Husserl's refutation of psychologism. For
instance when an ideal truth, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, is first
established, it is seen to be true that the geometrical relationships on which it is
based had been true all along even though the final truth itself had never been
explicitly brought to the level of thinking-consciousness before, had never been
stated in language. But, once stated, the same math can be thought again and
again by millions of other subjects through centuries of time, it can be fitted into
new contexts that Pythagoras could never have foreseen (such as non-Euclidean
geometries) but it never turns out to have been simply false (though certain
presuppositions which had been latent had to be brought out) and certainly not
unthinkable again and again by the same and other consciousnesses. In short, the
content of an act of consciousness (James' "object of thought") is never
identifiable with mental acts themselves which are, necessarily and always part of
the real flow of history, the Heraclitean flux.
218 JAMES M. EDIE
32. It is, I trust, clear that Husserl was not the first or the only philosopher
in history to see himself obliged to refute species-specific skepticism. Saint
Augustine also, at the beginning of his philosophical life, felt himself "blocked"
by skepticism or "probabilism" and devoted his first philosophical dialogue to the
problem in Against the Academics. He is appalled by the "levity of these
Greeklings" (the skeptics) who deny the possibility of being able to assent to
anything at all with certainty, who can believe (in probabilities) but never know.
On the basis of the logical principle of disjunction he produces a plethora of
apriori arguments, which make no appeal to future experience, but which can be
known to be indubitably true simply by understanding the meanings of the terms
involved, such as that there is either one world or more than one world. And then
ON CONFRONTING SPECIES-SPECIAC SKEPfIOSM ... 219
he asks them whether or not they exist and that they seem to perceive the world.
When they answer that they seem to exist and perceive the world, he answers that:
what seems to you to exist "I call that appearance the world." And he continues:
"If you are asleep, does the world which you now see exist? .. that three times
three makes nine, and that this is the squaring of rational numbers, would be true
even though the whole human race were snoring!" (Saint Augustine, Against the
Academics, 1. O'Meara (Trans.) (Ancient Christian Writers, New York: Newman,
1951, pp. 124-126). In his later, more mature, dialogue on free will, he uses
similar arguments to establish the basis for a "Christian philosophy,"
philosophia Christiana, which would establish the "believed" truths about the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul with the certitude of
"knowledge." He first establishes that there are norms or rules of thought such
that we must think according to them even without thinking about them, since
they rule our minds in a coercive, objective and "immutable" way. Our minds are
mutable; the truth is not. "I will show you something," he says, "more sublime
than our minds and reason. Behold, it is truth!" He even goes on to state,
rhapsodically, that "this truth itself is our God" (basing himself on the words of
the Lord: "r am the truth"), but we need not follow him into his religious
conclusions to appreciate hi s line of argument (Saint Augustine, The Problem oj
Free Choice, Dom Mark Pontifex (Trans.) (Ancient Christian Writers, New York:
Newman, 1955, pp. 114-117); see also John A. Mourant, Introduction to the
Philosophy oj Saint Augustine (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964, p.
101). This concern for the formal and material aprioris that govern experience in
Augustine is no doubt the reason Husserl felt somehow disposed in his favor, as
his quotation from Augustine's De Vera Religione at the conclusion of Cartesian
Meditations attests.
220 JAMES M. EDIE
B. The Transcendental
33. There are other historical philosophers who made analyses that remind us
of Husserl. One was the Arab philosopher A vicenna who distinguished three
possible "states" of meanings, namely meanings in themselves, simply
entertained by the mind as such (in se), and then meanings as known by the mind
in acts of consciousness (in intellectu ), and finally meanings as real things that
instantiate meanings in the real world and to which ideal meanings can be taken
to refer (in re). This tripartite distinction between meanings, acts of thinking, and
acts of reference had a profound influence as we know on the Latin Scholastics
like Aquinas, an especially John Duns Scotus, in their theories of knowledge.
Husserl does not, quite naturally, mention A vicenna, but he does mention Leibniz
in the Prolegomena, and recognizes the distinction he made between "truths of
fact" and "truths of reason" as serving as a possible basis for the same argument
he is making against skepticism.
ON CONFRONTING SPECIES-SPECIFlC SKEPTlaSM ... 221
color, nor the idea of color be deduced from the notion of surface. 34
But there is a much more important example to be found in
human experience and the several phenomenologies it inspires:
namely, there is no intrinsic reason deducible from the essence of
consciousness that it should perceive, imagine, remember, think, be
affected by emotions, and otherwise exercise just the ways of
"having objects" that it does. Phenomenology is necessarily a
descriptive science while remaining at the same time an eidetic
science. There is no reason why consciousness should perceive,
but, given the fact of a perceiving consciousness, we can (through
the method of free variation) discover the laws of any possible
perceiving consciousness and come to see that these apriori
structures "found" other structures of imagining, remembering, and
even thinking, without the higher structures ever being "reducible"
to the founding stratum of perception, but nevertheless being always
"founded" on it in such wise that the "founded" eidetic laws of
thinking can be seen to be prefigured in the prepredicative structures
IV. Conclusion
Jose Huertas-Jourda
Centre for Advanced Research in Phenomenology
Wilfrid Laurier University
229
J. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 229-240.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
230 JOSE HUERfAS-JOURDA
I shall not comment upon this at this time but tum rather to my next
example, this one more recent and dating from 1977: (this is
admittedly a polemical text written by Prof. Jacques Derrida in reply
to a "reply" by John Searle in which his own interpretation of a
work of J. L. Austin's was attacked,2 T2:
For [the benefit of] those who might have forgotten it, this is
what one could hear [as] an interminable echo to the
peremptory evaluations of the first paragraph: '''what is
wrong with these arguments . .. ? (p. 199) ... Derrida has
a distressing penchant for saying things that are obviously
false (p. 203) . ... {H]e has misunderstood Austin in several
crucial ways {crucial ways this time after "crucial points"]
and the internal weaknesses in his arguments are closely tied
to these misunderstandings. In this section therefore I will
very briefly summarize his critique and then simply list the
major misunderstandings and mistakes (p. 203). . ..
Derrida's Austin is unrecognizable. He bears almost[!] no
relation to the original (p. 204) . ... Related to the first
misunderstanding . .. is a misunderstanding . . .(p. 205) ...
what is more than simply a misreading . .. (p. 206).
mine, that all emphases are Prof. Derrida's and that I have placed in italics all
original English quotations retained by Prof. Derrida.
3. Derrida, 1977, p. 13; my translation. Cf. the previous note concerning the
manner in which I have respected the appearance of the original with respect to
what was quoted in English in that text.
232 JOSE HUERfAS-JOURDA
show, and that I may now proceed to the texts that caused me such
delighted surprise, T3:
§4. I believe that I have presented all the textual evidence I need
as background for asking the questions which seem to me to impose
themselves here, namely: (a) To whom are these discourses
addressed?, and (b) For whom. or what do their authors take that
addressee? It seems to me only fair to try to answer both these
questions largely on the basis of the text quoted, although some
further supporting citations may prove helpful. It seems obvious that
the French proverb, "the tone makes the song," applies here. T2 is
frankly acrimonious and the tone of both parties rather brings to
mind the equally proverbial altercations among fish-vendors at the
old Paris Central Market of Les Halles, than the debates of
philosophers. In a different vein T 1 is equally surprising: by its tone
subjectivises the thing. It does not let beings be, but makes them
valuable as the object of its action.
(pp. 292-293)
To WHOM IT MAY CONc:IRN 235
Husserl, which would have resulted only in encumbering the
reader. One has preferred to attempt to make in some way
phenomenology be born in front of the eyes of the reader,
rather putting him in front of doctrines exposed as ready-
made, and which would be as if fallen from the sky.7
Bernhard Waldenfels
Ruhr-Universitat Bochum
241
J. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 241-260.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
242 BERNHARD WALDENFELS
1. In a letter from May 24th, 1955, Aron Gurwitsch wrote to Alfred Schutz:
"Science in the modern style is anything but obvious. but rather is a problems,
not something which is to be either worshipped or rejected, but rather to be
understood" [Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of Alfred SchuLZ and Aron
Gurwitsch 1939-1959. R. Grathoff (Ed), J. C. Evans (Trans.) (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, p. 241)]. Concerning the wider horizon of my
reflections, see my "Wider eine reine EIkenntniss und Wissenschaftstheorie," in
Phiinomenologie Wid Marxismus, 4, (1979); and my "Phiinomenologie unter
eidetischen, transzendentalen und strukturalen Gesichtspunkten" in Herzog!
Graumann (1991). The conception of order I refer to is explained in my book
OrtinWig im Zwielicht (1987).
2. The term comes into use in the second half of the 18th century, as when
Turgot speaks of the fonctionnaires publics.
BEYOND FOUNDATIONAUSM AND FUNcrroNAusM 243
3. Thu; Aron Gwwitsch (1972, p. 17ff) stresses that what Husserl calls life-
world is always apprehended and interpreted in a certain way as our cultural world
250 BERNHARD W ALDE'IFELS
Robert S. Stufflebeam
Washington University
261
1. C. Evans and R. W. Stufflebeam (eds.), To Work at the Foundations, 261-273.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
262 ROBERT S. STum.EBEAM
1873
Stumpf, K. Uber den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung
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1890
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1928
Hussed, E. Logische Untersuchungen. 2nd ed. Vols. I-II (Halle: Max
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1929
Gurwitsch, A. "Phanomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich."
Psychologische Forschung 12, 1929. ["The Phenomenology of
Thematics and of the Pure Ego," in Studies in Phenomenology
and Psychology. F. Kersten (Trans.) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 1%6, pp. 175-286).]
1932
Gurwitsch, A. "Critical Study of Edmund Hussed, 'Nachwort zu
meinen Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und
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Psychology.]
1934
Gurwitsch, A. "La place de la psychologie dans l'ensemble des
sciences." Revue de synthese 8, 1934: 169-185. [See Gurwitsch
(1966) Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology.]
1936
Gurwitsch, A. "Quelques aspects et quelques developpements de la
psychologie de la forme." Journal de psychologie normale et
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1938
Bachelard, G. La/ormation de ['espirit scientifique (Paris: J. Vrin).
BIBUOORAPHY 263
1941
Gurwitsch, A. "A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness."
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[See Gurwitsch (1966) Studies in Phenomenology and
Psychology.]
1943
Gurwitsch, A. "William James' Theory of the 'Transitive Parts' of the
Stream of Consciousness." Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 3, 1943: 449-477. [See Gurwitsch (1966) Studies in
Phenomenology and Psychology.]
1945
Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenologie de la perception (Paris:
Gallimard). [Phenomenology of Perception. C. Smith (Trans.)
(New York: Humanities Press, 1962).]
1951
Gurwitsch, A. "Presuppositions philosophiques de la logique." Revue
de metaphysique et de morale 56, 1951: 395-405. [See Gurwitsch
(1966) Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology.]
1953
Gurwitsch, A. "Sur une racine perceptive de l'abstraction." Actes du
XIe Congres International de Philosophie 2, 1953: 43-47. [See
Gurwitsch (1966) Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology.]
1955
"The Phenomenological and Psychological Approach to
Consciousness." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15,
1955. [See Gurwitsch (1966) Studies in Phenomenology and
Psychology. ]
1957
Gurwitsch, A. Theorie du champ de la conscience (Bruges/Paris:
DescIee de Brouwer). [See Gurwitsch (1964) The Field of
Consciousness. ]
Sartre, J. P. The Transcendence of the Ego. F. Williams & R.
Kirkpatrick (frans.s) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Co.).
Sauvage, M. Parmenide, Ou La Sagesse Impossible (Paris: P. D.
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264 ROBERT S. STUFFLEBEAM
1959
Cohen, M. "Appearance and the Aesthetic Attitude." Journal of
Philosophy 56, 1959: 915-925.
1960
Gurwitsch, A. "La conception de la Conscience chez Kant et chez
Husserl." Bulletin de la Societe franraise de Philosoph ie, Seance
du 25 Avril 1959 54, 1960: 65-96. [See Gurwitsch (1966) Studies
in Phenomenology and Psychology.]
Husserl, E. Cartesian Meditations. D. Cairns (Trans.) (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff).
1961
Gurwitsch, A. "The Problem of Existence in Constitutive
Phenomenology." Journal of Philosophy 58, 1961: 625-632. [See
Gurwitsch (1966) Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology.]
1962
Farber, M. The Foundation of Phenomenology (New York: Paine-
Whitman).
Gurwitsch, A. "The Commonsense World as Social Reality." Social
Research 29, 1962: 50-72.
Heidegger, M. Plato's Doctrine of Truth, in Philosophy in the
Twentieth Century: An Anthology. Vol. III. 1. Barlow (Trans.). W.
Barrett & H.D. Aiken (Eds.) (New York: Random House).
Merleau-Ponty, M. "Un inedit de M. Merleau-Ponty." Revue de
Metaphysique et de Morale 67, 1962: 401-409.
1963
Gurwitsch, A. "On the Conceptual Consciousness," in The Modeling of
Mind. K. M. Sayre & F. 1. Crosson (Eds.) (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press).
Huertas-lourda, 1. The Existentialism of Mi!!,uel de Unamuno
(Gainesville, FL: University of Rorida Press).
1964
Dickie, G. "The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude." American
Philosophical Quarterly 1, 1, 1964: 56-65.
BIBUOGRAPHY 265
Gurwitsch, A. The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne
University Press).
Merleau-Ponty, M. The Primacy Of Perception and Other Essays. 1.M.
Edie (Ed.) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
Merleau-Ponty, M. Le visible et l'invisible (Paris: Gallimard). [The
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Schlitz, A. Collected Papers: Studies in Social Theory. Vol. 2. A.
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Simpson, G. G. This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist (New
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1965
Gurwitsch, A. "The Phenomenology of Perception: Perceptual
Implications, II in An Invitation to Phenomenology. 1. Edie (Ed.)
(Chicago: Quadrangle).
1966
Fink, E. Studien zur Phiinomenologie 1930-1939 (Den Haag:
Martinus Nijhoff).
Foucault, M. Les mots et les choses: Une archeologie des sciences
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Gurwitsch, A. II An Apparent Paradox in the Leibnizianism." Social
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Gurwitsch. A. "The Commonsense World as Social Reality: A
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Gurwitsch, A. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press). Included are Gurwitsch's
works here listed under '1929', '1932', '1934', '1936', '1941', '1943',
'1951', '1953', '1955', '1960', and '1961', as well as the following
essays: "Contribution to the Phenomenological Theory of
Perception," "Gelb-Goldstein's Concept of 'Concrete' and
'Categorical' Attitude and the Phenomenology of Ideation," "The
Kantian and Husserlian Conceptions of Consciousness," "The Last
Work of Edmund Husserl," "On the Conceptual Consciousness,"
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Thought."
Gurwitsch, A. "Edmund Husserl's Conception of Phenomenological
Psychology." Review of Metaphysics 19, 1966: 689-727.
266 ROBERT S. STUFFLEBEAM
1967
Gurwitsch, A. "Galilean Physics in the Light of Husserl's
Phenomenology," in Galileo, Man of Science. E. McMullin (Ed.)
(New York: Basic Books, pp. 388-401).
Schlitz, A. The Phenomenology of the Social World. G. Walsh & F.
Lehnert (Trans.s) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J. H., & Jackson, D. D. Pragmatics of Human
Communication: A Study in Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes
(New York: Norton).
1968
Gurwitsch, A. "Social Science and Natural Science," in Economic
Means and Social Ends. R. L. Heilbroner (Ed.) (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, pp. 37-55).
Husserl, E. Phanomenologische Psycho logie, Husserliana IX (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff).
1969
Husserl, E. Formal and Transcendental Logic. D. Cairns (Trans.) (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff).
1970
Eberle, R. Nominalist Systems (New York: Humanities Press).
Evans, J. C. "Phenomenological Deconstruction: Husserl's Method of
'Abbau'." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 21,
January 1970: 14-25.
Gurwitsch, A. "Problems of the Life-World," in Phenomenology and
Social Reality: Essays in Memory of Alfred Schutz. M. Natanson
(Ed.) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 35-61).
Gurwitsch, A. "Towards a Theory of Intentionality." Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 30, 1970: 345-367.
Husserl, E. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phe-
nomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy.
D. Carr (Trans.) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
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Savage (Trans.) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
BIBUOORAPHY 267
1972
Embree, L. "Biographical Sketch of Aron Gurwitsch," in Life-world
and Consciousness: Essays for Aron Gurwitsch. L. Embree (Ed.)
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
Embree, L. (Ed.). Life-world and Consciousness: Essays for Aron
Gurwitsch (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press).
Gurwitsch, A. "Substantiality and Perceptual Coherence: Remarks on
H. B. Veatch: 'Two Logics'." Research in Phenomenology 2,1972:
29-46.
1973
Derrida, J. Of Grammatology. G. Spivak (Trans.) (The Johns Hopkins
University Press).
Derrida, 1. Speech and Phenomena. D. B. Allison (Trans.) (Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press).
Foucault, M. The Order of Things (New York: Vintage Books).
Gurwitsch, A. "Hussert's Theory of the Intentionality of Consciousness
in Historical Perspective," and "Perceptual Coherence as the
Foundation of the Judgement of Predication," in Phenomenology:
Continuation and Criticism, Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns.
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1974
Allison. H. A. "The Critique of Pure Reason as Transcendental
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Gurwitsch, A. Leibniz Philosophie des Panlogismus (Berlin: Walter de
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Gurwitsch, A. "On Thematization." Research in Phenomenology 4,
1974: 35-49.
Gurwitsch, A. Phenomenology and the Theory of Science. L. Embree
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Press).
Null, G. "Husserl's Experience and Judgment." Man and World 7,2,
1974: 182-92.
268 ROBERT S. STUFFLEBEAM
1975
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Research in Phenomenology 5, 1975: 19-28.
Kockelmans, J. J. "Gurwitsch's Phenomenological Theory of Natural
Science." Research in Phenomenology 5, 1975: 29-35.
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1976
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1977
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1978
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Index
Abraham 10-11. 16 functionalism 215-216, 218
access vii, 10, 12, 16
aesthetic(s) ix, 4, 115-123, 126 Galileo, (Galilean) 134, 172
Akedah viii, 10-11 Gestalt vii, 4, 7, 23, 26, 52-53, 59,
apperception 32-36, 38-45, 53 61-63, 102, 117, 119, 134, 140,
atlatl, spear-thrower 125, 144-146 142-143
attention 58, 60, 62, 116-117, 119, G-dependent 63-66,68-75, 103-106,
128 108-110
Auden, W. ix, 17
Augustine II, 193, 194 Habermas, J. 157
Austin, J. 204 Hegel, G. 11, 171, 175, 179
Heidegger, M. viii, x, 19,50-51, 54,
Baudrillard, J. 225 56, 157, 177, 179-180, 204,
Brentano, F. 23, 26, 74 207, 211, 217
Bullough, E. 121 'how' 219-220
Hume, D. 26, 36, 39, 46, 55, 116,
Cassirer, E. 38, 41, 42 160
causality 47, 161, 163 hyle 58, 64, 69
constancy hypothesis vii, 7, 25
culture, cultural ix, 25, 69, 125-151 idealism, ideal viii, 25, 49-50, 57,
125
Darwin, C. 173 identity 54-55, 59, 61, 70-73, 75,
deconstruction 172, 179 89-91, 93-98, 100-102, 104-
Derrida, J. x, xi, 156-157, 178, 181- 105
182, 204 intentionality, intentional, intentive
Descartes, R. 46, 171, 181, 197, 6, 8, 19, 32, 45, 46, 57-58, 69,
216, 223 163, 167
275
276 INDEX
paradox 11-12, 15
petites perceptions 32-35
predication 66-68, 109
psychologism x, 8, 37, 177
rationality 220
reduction 6, 11-15, 51, 58, 161-162,
167
relevance, relevancy 117-118, 120-
122
Ricoeur, P. 156, 179
Rorty, R. 178, 180-183
17. T.J. Stapleton (ed.): The Question of Hermeneutics. Essays in Honor of Joseph
J. Kockelmans. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2911-2; Pb 0-7923-2964-3
18. L. Embree, E. Behnke, D. Carr, J.e. Evans, J. Huertas-Jourda, J,J. Kockel-
mans, W.R. McKenna, A. Mickunas, J.N. Mohanty, T.M. Seebohm and R.M.
Zaner (eds.): Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. (forthcoming)
ISBN 0-7923-2956-2
19. S.G. Crowell (ed.): The Prism of the Self Philosophical Essays in Honor of
Maurice Natanson. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3546-5
20. W.R. McKenna and J.e. Evans (eds.): Derrida and Phenomenology. 1995
ISBN 0-7923-3730-1
21. S.B. Mallin: Art Line Thought. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-377 4-3
22. R.D. Ellis: Eros in a Narcissistic Culture. An Analysis Anchored in the Life-
World. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3982-7
23. J.J. Drummond and J.G. Hart (eds.): The Truthful and The Good. Essays in
Honor of Robert Sokolowski. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4134-1
24. T. Nenon and L. Embree (eds.): Issues in Husserts Ideas II. 1996
ISBN 0-7923-4216-X
25. J.C. Evans and R.S. Stufflebeam (eds.): To Work at the Foundations. Essays in
Memory of Aron Gurwitsch. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4317-4