Intentio is a Scholastic expression which means directing itself toward. Brentano speaks of the intentional inexistence of the object. Each lived experience directs itself toward something in a way which varies according to the distinctive character of the experience. To represent something after the manner of representing is a different self-directing than to judge something after the manner of judging. Brentano expressly emphasizes that Aristotle already made this point of view the basis for his treatment of psychic phenomena, and that the Scholastics took over this phenomenon of INTENTIONALITY. GA20EN §4
Of the decisive discoveries, we intend to discuss three: 1) INTENTIONALITY, 2) categorial intuition, and 3) the original sense of the apriori. These considerations are indispensable in their content as well as in the way it is considered. Only in this way can ’time’ be brought into view phenomenologically. Only in this way is the possibility given for an orderly procedure in the analysis of time as it shows itself. GA20EN §4
We want to consider INTENTIONALITY first, precisely because contemporary philosophy then and even now actually finds this phenomenon offensive, because INTENTIONALITY is precisely what prevents an immediate and unprejudiced reception of what phenomenology wants to do. INTENTIONALITY was already alluded to in our account of how Brentano sought to classify the totality of psychic phenomena in strict accord with it. Brentano discerned in INTENTIONALITY the structure which constitutes the true nature of a psychic phenomenon. INTENTIONALITY thus became for him the criterion for the distinction of psychic from physical phenomena. But at the same time this structure is the criterion and principle of a natural division among psychic phenomena themselves, inasmuch as it is already found in the essence which appears in these phenomena. Brentano expressly emphasizes that he is only taking up what Aristotle and the Scholastics were already acquainted with. It was through Brentano that Husserl learned to see INTENTIONALITY. GA20EN §5
But by what right do we then still speak of the discovery of INTENTIONALITY by phenomenology? Because there is a difference between the rough and ready acquaintance with a structure and the understanding of its inherent sense and its implications, from which we derive the possibilities and horizons of an investigation directed toward it in a sure way. From a rough acquaintance and an application aimed at classification to a fundamental understanding and thematic elaboration is a very long road calling for novel considerations and radical transpositions. On this point Husserl writes: “Nevertheless, from an initial apprehension of a distinction in consciousness to its correct, phenomenologically pure determination and concrete appreciation there is a mighty step—and it is just this step, crucial for a consistent and fruitful phenomenology, which was not taken.” GA20EN §5
In the popular philosophical literature, phenomenology tends to be characterized in the following manner: Husserl took over the concept of INTENTIONALITY from Brentano; as is well known, INTENTIONALITY goes back to Scholasticism; it is notoriously obscure, metaphysical, and dogmatic. Consequently, the concept of INTENTIONALITY is scientifically useless and phenomenology, which employs it, is fraught with metaphysical presuppositions and therefore not at all based upon immediate data. Thus, in “The Method of Philosophy and the Immediate,” H. Rickert writes: GA20EN §5
Especially where the concept of ‘INTENTIONALITY,’ Scholastic in origin but mediated by Brentano, plays a role, there the concept of the immediate still seems to be left largely unclarified and the train of thought of most phenomenologists seems steeped in traditional metaphysical dogmas, which make it impossible for its adherents to see impartially what is before their very eyes. GA20EN §5
This article contains a fundamental polemic against phenomenology. Elsewhere also, and right in the Introduction to the new edition of Brentano’s Psychology by O. Kraus, it is stated that Husserl had simply taken over Brentano’s concept of INTENTIONALITY. For the Marburg School as well, INTENTIONALITY remained the real stumbling block, obstructing its access to phenomenology. GA20EN §5
We will try to show that INTENTIONALITY is a structure of lived experiences as such and not a coordination relative to other realities, something added to the experiences taken as psychic states. It should first be noted that this attempt to make INTENTIONALITY clear, to see it and in so doing to apprehend what it is, cannot hope to succeed in a single move. We must free ourselves from the prejudice that, because phenomenology calls upon us to apprehend the matters themselves, these matters must be apprehended all at once, without any preparation. Rather, the movement toward the matters themselves is a long and involved process which, before anything else, has to remove the prejudices which obscure them. GA20EN §5
A crude interpretation tends to depict the perception of the chair in this way: a specific psychic event occurs within me; to this psychic occurrence ‘inside,’ ‘in consciousness,’ there corresponds a physically real thing ‘outside.’ A coordination thus arises between the reality of consciousness (the subject) and a reality outside of consciousness (the object). The psychic event enters into a relationship with something else, outside of it. But in itself it is not necessary for this relationship to occur, since this perception can be an illusion, a hallucination. It is a psychological fact that psychic processes occur in which something is perceived—presumably—which does not even exist. It is possible for my psychic process to be beset by a hallucination such that I now perceive an automobile being driven through the room over your heads. In this case, no real object corresponds to the psychic process in the subject. Here we have a perceiving without the occurrence of a relationship to something outside of it. Or consider the case of a deceptive perception: I am walking in a dark forest and see a man coming toward me; but upon closer inspection it turns out to be a tree. Here also the object supposedly perceived in this deceptive perception is absent. In view of these indisputable facts which show that the real object can in fact be missing in perception, it can not be said that every perception is the perception of something. In other words, INTENTIONALITY, directing itself toward something, is not a necessary mark of every perception. And even if some physical object should correspond to every psychic event which I call a perception, it would still be a dogmatic assertion; for it is by no means established that I ever get to a reality beyond my consciousness. GA20EN §5
Since Descartes, everyone knows and every critical philosophy maintains that I actually only apprehend ‘contents of consciousness.’ Accordingly, the application of the concept of INTENTIONALITY to the comportment of perception, for example, already implies a double presupposition. First, there is the metaphysical presupposition that the psychic comes out of itself toward something physical. With Descartes, as everyone knows, this became a forbidden presupposition. Second, there is in INTENTIONALITY the presupposition that a real object always corresponds to a psychic process. The facts of deceptive perception and hallucination speak against this. This is what Rickert maintains and many others, when they say that the concept of INTENTIONALITY harbors latent metaphysical dogmas. And yet, with this interpretation of perception as hallucination and deceptive perception, do we really have INTENTIONALITY in our sights? Are we talking about what phenomenology means by this term? In no way! So little, in fact, that use of the interpretation just given as a basis for a discussion of INTENTIONALITY would hopelessly block access to what the term really means phenomenologically. Let us therefore clear the air by going through the interpretation once again and regarding it more pointedly. For its ostensible triviality is not at all comprehensible without further effort. But first, the base triviality of spurious but common epistemological questions must be laid to rest. GA20EN §5
It is not the case that a perception first becomes intentional by having something physical enter into relation with the psychic, and that it would no longer be intentional if this reality did not exist. It is rather the case that perception, correct or deceptive, is in itself intentional. INTENTIONALITY is not a property which would accrue to perception and belongs to it in certain instances. As perception, it is intrinsically intentional, regardless of whether the perceived is in reality on hand or not. Indeed, it is really only because perception as such is a directing-itself-toward something, because INTENTIONALITY constitutes the very structure of comportment itself, that there can be anything like deceptive perception and hallucination. GA20EN §5
When all epistemological assumptions are set aside, it becomes clear that comportment itself—as yet quite apart from the question of its correctness or incorrectness—is in its very structure a directing-itself-toward. It is not the case that at first only a psychic process occurs as a nonintentional state (complex of sensations, memory relations, mental image and thought processes through which an image is evoked, where one then asks whether something corresponds to it) and subsequently becomes intentional in certain instances. Rather, the very being of comporting is a directing-itself-toward. INTENTIONALITY is not a relationship to the non-experiential added to experiences, occasionally present along with them. Rather, the lived experiences themselves are as such intentional. This is our first specification, perhaps still quite empty, but already important enough to provide the footing for holding metaphysical prejudices at bay. GA20EN §5
In the reception of INTENTIONALITY as well as in the way in which Brentano was interpreted and developed, everyone saw not so much the exposition of this composition of the structure of lived experience as what they suspected in Brentano: metaphysical dogmas. The decisive thing about Husserl was that he did not look to the dogmas and presuppositions, so far as these were there, but to the phenomenon itself, that perceiving is a directing-itself-toward. But now this structure cannot be disregarded in the other forms of comportment as well. Rickert makes this the basis of his argument and disputes seeing such a thing in these comportments. He reserves INTENTIONALITY for the comportment relating to judgment but drops it for representing. He says representing is not knowing. He comes to this because he is trapped in dogmas, in this case the dogma that my representing involves no transcendence, that it does not get out to the object. Descartes in fact said that representing (perceptio) remains in the consciousness. And Rickert thinks that the transcendence of judging, whose object he specifies as a value, is less puzzling than the transcendence which is in representing, understood as getting out to a real thing. He comes to this view because he thinks that in judgment something is acknowledged which has the character of value and so does not exist in reality. He identifies it with the mental which consciousness itself is, and thinks that value is something immanent. When I acknowledge a value, I do not go outside of consciousness. GA20EN §5
The essential point for us is not to prove that Rickert is involved in contradictions, that he now uses the phenomenological concept of representing and now a mythical one from psychology. The point is rather that he lays claim to INTENTIONALITY in his own starting point to the extent that it fits his theory but casts it aside when it contravenes his theory that representing is not knowing. What is characteristic is that, in spite of all the sagacity, the most primitive of requirements is nevertheless missing: admission of the matters of fact as they are given. The thinking thus becomes groundless. The constraint of the facts cannot in one case be heeded and in others not; heeded when they fit into a preconceived theory and not heeded when they explode it. A typical example of this kind of thinking is Rickert’s theory of knowledge and of judgment as it takes its starting point from Brentano. We shall review it in order to see how judgments depend upon the apprehension of the matters themselves. GA20EN §5
Rickert takes from Brentano the definition of judgment as acknowledging. We can trace the exact place where he makes use of INTENTIONALITY as exhibited by Brentano and at the same time shuts his eyes to it and falls into theory construction. Let us briefly recall the theory which he bases upon Brentano’s account of judgment. GA20EN §5
Acknowledging is not imposed upon representations; representing is itself directing-itself-toward. Representing as such gives the potential about-which of judging, and the affirmation in judging is founded in representing. There is an intentional connection between representing and judging. If Rickert had seen the INTENTIONALITY of representing, he would not have fallen into the mythology of the connection between judgment and representation, as though judgment comes as an ‘aside.’ The relations between intentionalities are themselves intentional. GA20EN §5
Hence Rickert arrived at this theory not from a study of the matters themselves but by an unfounded deduction fraught with dogmatic judgments. The last vestige of the composition of this matter is solely what Rickert took from Brentano. But even here it is questionable whether it is brought to bear upon the full composition of judgment. “When we characterize judgment as a comportment which is not like representation, this does not mean that, with Brentano, we see in it another kind of relation of consciousness to its objects than the kind involved in representation. This claim is for us far too full of presuppositions.” Here Rickert rejects INTENTIONALITY, in Brentano’s sense, as a criterion distinguishing the comportments of representation and judgment. What does he put in its place? How does he define and ground the distinction? GA20EN §5
One would have to be blind not to see that this is word for word the position of Brentano, who wanted nothing other than to subdivide the genus of psychic processes according to the mode of our comportment, whether we contemplate them impassively or take an active interest in them. Rickert first takes his theory from a basis which is exposed by Brentano’s description but does not see that he lays claim to INTENTIONALITY as the foundation of his theory of judgment and knowledge. The proof for this is that while he lays claim to this descriptive distinction Rickert at the same time employs a concept of representation which runs counter to that which he uses as a basis for securing the definition of judgment, here impassive directing-itself-toward—accordingly representing as the manner of representing—and there representation as the represented, where the represented is in fact the content of consciousness. Wherever Rickert refutes the idealism of representation and wants to prove that knowing is not representing, he does not restrict himself to the direct and simple sense of representing but bases himself upon a mythical concept. Rickert says that as long as the representations are only represented, they come and go. Representing is now not direct representational comportment; the representations now get represented. “A knowing that represents needs a reality independent of the knowing subject because with representations we are capable of apprehending something independent of the knowing subject only by their being images or signs of a reality.” In such a concept of representation it can of course be shown that representing is not a knowing if the directing-itself-toward can tend only toward signs. GA20EN §5
What makes us blind to INTENTIONALITY is the presumption that what we have here is a theory of the relation between physical and psychic, whereas what is really exhibited is simply a structure of the psychic itself. Whether that toward which representing directs itself is a real material thing or merely something fancied, whether acknowledging acknowledges a value or whether judging directs itself toward something else which is not real, the first thing to see is this directing-itself-toward as such. The structure of comportments, we might say, is to be made secure without any epistemological dogma. It is only when we have rightly seen this that we can, by means of it, come to a sharper formulation and perhaps a critique of INTENTIONALITY as it has been interpreted up to now. We shall learn that in fact even in phenomenology there are still unclarified assumptions associated with INTENTIONALITY which admittedly make it truly difficult for a philosophy so burdened with dogmas as Neo-Kantianism to see plainly what has been exhibited here. As long as we think in dogmas and directions, we first tend to assume something along the same lines. And we hold to what we assume all the more so as the phenomena are not in fact exhaustively brought out into the open. GA20EN §5
What we have learned about INTENTIONALITY so far is, to put it formally, empty. But one thing is already clear: before anything else, its structural coherence must be envisaged freely, without the background presence of any realistic or idealistic theories of consciousness. We must learn to see the data as such and to see that relations between comportments, between lived experiences, are themselves not complexions of things but in turn are of an intentional character. We must thus come to see that all the relations of life are intrinsically defined by this structure. In the process we shall see that there are persistent difficulties here which cannot be easily dispelled. But in order to see this, we must first take a look at INTENTIONALITY itself. From this point on we can also fix our terminology in order to come to understand an expression which is often used in phenomenology and is just as often misunderstood, namely, the concept of act. The comportments of life are also called acts: perception, judgment, love, hate. . . . What does act mean here? Not activity, process, or some kind of power. No, act simply means intentional relation. Acts refer to those lived experiences which have the character of INTENTIONALITY. We must adhere to this concept of act and not confuse it with others. GA20EN §5
As fundamental as INTENTIONALITY is, it also seems empty at first glance. We are simply saying that representing is the representing of something, judging is judging about something, and the like. It is hard to see just how a science is to be made possible from such structures. This science is evidently at its end before it has really begun. In fact, it seems as if this phenomenological statement of INTENTIONALITY is merely a tautology. Thus Wundt early on observed that all phenomenological knowledge can be reduced to the proposition A = A. We will try to see whether there is not very much to say and whether in the end most of it has not yet even been said. By holding to this first discovery of phenomenology that INTENTIONALITY is a structure of lived experiences and not just a supplementary relation, we already have an initial instruction on how we must proceed in order to see this structure and constitution. GA20EN §5
In maintaining that INTENTIONALITY is the structure found in comportments, we have in any case avoided the danger of lapsing into construction and into a theory which goes beyond what is before us. But at the same time the necessity of this structure, in order to be equally impartial in our pursuit of it, is decided within it. We shall now try to shed some light upon the basic structure of INTENTIONALITY. The preliminary designation of directing-itself-toward is only an initial moment in this structure, far removed from its full constitution as well as wholly formal and empty. GA20EN §5
In order to clarify the basic constitution of INTENTIONALITY, let us turn once again to the exemplary case of naturally perceiving a thing. By INTENTIONALITY we do not mean an objective relation which occasionally and subsequently takes place between a physical thing and a psychic process, but the structure of a comportment as comporting to, directing itself toward. With this, we are not just characterizing this one particular perception (of the chair) here and now, but the perceived as such. If we are after the basic constitution of INTENTIONALITY, the best way to do it is to go after it itself—directing-itself-toward. Let us now focus not on the directing-itself but on the toward-which. We will not look at the perceiving but at the perceived, and in fact at the perceived of this perception. What is this? GA20EN §5
The being-perceived of the chair is not something which belongs to the chair as chair, for a stone or house or tree or the like can also be perceived. Being-perceived and the structure of perceivedness consequently belong to perceiving as such, i.e., to INTENTIONALITY. Accordingly, we can distinguish along the following lines: the entity itself: the environmental thing, the natural thing, or the thingness; and the entity in the manner of its being intended: its being-perceived, being-represented, being-judged, being-loved, being-hated, being-thought in the broadest sense. In the first three cases we have to do with the entity in itself, in the latter with its being-intended, the perceivedness of the entity. GA20EN §5
We thus have an inherent affinity between the way something is intended, the intentio, and the intentum, whereby intentum, the intended, is to be understood in the sense just developed, not the perceived as an entity, but the entity in the how of its being-perceived, the intentum in the how of its being-intended. Only with the how of the being-intended belonging to every intentio as such does the basic constitution of INTENTIONALITY come into view at all, even though only provisionally. GA20EN §5
Intentio in phenomenology is also understood as the act of presuming (Vermeinen). There is a connection between presuming and presumed, or noesis and noema. Noeîn means to perceive (vernehmen) or come to awareness, to apprehend simply, the perceiving itself and the perceived in the way it is perceived. I refer to these terms because they involve not only a terminology but also a particular interpretation of directing-itself-toward. Every directing-itself-toward (fear, hope, love) has the feature of directing-itself-toward which Husserl calls noesis. Inasmuch as noeîn is taken from the sphere of theoretical knowing, any exposition of the practical sphere here is drawn from the theoretical. For our purposes this terminology is not dangerous, since we are using it to make it clear that INTENTIONALITY is fully determined only when it is seen as this belonging together of intentio and intentum. By way of summary let us therefore say: just as INTENTIONALITY is not a subsequent coordination of at first unintentional lived experiences and objects but is rather a structure, so inherent in the basic constitution of the structure in each of its manifestations must always be found its own intentional toward-which, the intentum. This provisional exposition of the basic constitution of INTENTIONALITY as a reciprocal belonging-together of intentio and intentum is not the last word, but only an initial indication and exhibition of a thematic field for consideration. GA20EN §5
How is this analysis of INTENTIONALITY different from Brentano’s? In INTENTIONALITY Brentano saw the intentio, noesis, and the diversity of its modes, but not the noema, the intentum. He remained uncertain in his analysis of what he called “intentional object.” The four meanings of the object of perception—the perceived—already indicate that the sense of ‘something’ in the representation of something is not transparently obvious. Brentano wavers in two directions. On the one hand, he takes the “intentional object” to be the entity itself in its being. Then again it is taken as the how of its being-apprehended unseparated from the entity. Brentano never clearly brings out and highlights the how of being-intended. In short, he never brings into relief INTENTIONALITY as such, as a structural totality. But this further implies that INTENTIONALITY, defined as a character of a certain entity, is at one with the entity; INTENTIONALITY is identified with the psychic. Brentano also left undiscussed just what INTENTIONALITY is to be the structure of, since his theory of the psychic assumed its traditional sense of the immanently perceptible, the immanently conscious along the lines of Descartes’s theory. The character of the psychic itself was left undetermined, so that that of which INTENTIONALITY is the structure was not brought out in the original manner demanded by INTENTIONALITY. This is a phase which phenomenology has not yet overcome. Even today INTENTIONALITY is taken simply as a structure of consciousness or of acts, of the person, in which these two realities of which INTENTIONALITY is supposed to be the structure are again assumed in a traditional way. Phenomenology—Husserl along with Scheler—tries to get beyond the psychic restriction and psychic character of INTENTIONALITY in two very different directions. Husserl conceives INTENTIONALITY as the universal structure of reason (where reason is not understood as the psychic but as differentiated from the psychic). Scheler conceives INTENTIONALITY as the structure of the spirit or the person, again differentiated from the psychic. But we shall see that what is meant by reason, spirit, anima does not overcome the approach operative in these theories. I point this out because we shall see how phenomenology, with this analysis of INTENTIONALITY, calls for a more radical internal development. To refute phenomenological INTENTIONALITY, one cannot simply criticize Brentano! One thus loses touch with the issue from the very beginning. GA20EN §5
It is not INTENTIONALITY as such that is metaphysically dogmatic but what is built under its structure, or is left at this level because of a traditional tendency not to question that of which it is presumably the structure, and what this sense of structure itself means. Yet the methodological rule for the initial apprehension of INTENTIONALITY is really not to be concerned with interpretations but only to keep strictly to that which shows itself, regardless of how meager it may be. Only in this way will it be possible to see, in INTENTIONALITY itself and through it directly into the heart of the matter, that of which it is the structure and how it is that structure. INTENTIONALITY is not an ultimate explanation of the psychic but an initial approach toward overcoming the uncritical application of traditionally defined realities such as the psychic, consciousness, continuity of lived experience, reason. But if such a task is implicit in this basic concept of phenomenology, then “INTENTIONALITY” is the very last word to be used as a phenomenological slogan. Quite the contrary, it identifies that whose disclosure would allow phenomenology to find itself in its possibilities. It must therefore be flatly stated that what the belonging of the intentum to the intentio implies is obscure. How the being-intended of an entity is related to that entity remains puzzling. It is even questionable whether one may question in this way at all. But we cannot inquire into these puzzles as long as we cover up their puzzling character with theories for and against INTENTIONALITY. Our understanding of INTENTIONALITY is therefore not advanced by our speculations about it. We shall advance only by following INTENTIONALITY in its concretion. An occasion for this is to be found in our effort to clarify the second discovery of phenomenology, the discovery of categorial intuition. GA20EN §5
What calls for clarification under this heading could be discovered only after the exposition of INTENTIONALITY as a structure. The term ‘intuition’ corresponds in its meaning to what above was already defined as ‘seeing’ in the broad sense of that word. Intuition means: simple apprehension of what is itself bodily found just as it shows itself. First, this concept carries no prejudice as to whether sense perception is the sole and most original form of intuiting or whether there are further possibilities of intuition regarding other fields and constituents. Second, nothing should be read into its meaning other than what the phenomenological use of the term specifies: simply apprehending the bodily given as it shows itself. Intuition in the phenomenological sense implies no special capacity, no exceptional way of transposing oneself into otherwise closed domains and depths of the world, not even the kind of intuition employed by Bergson. It is therefore a cheap characterization of phenomenology to suggest that it is somehow connected with modern intuitionism. It simply has nothing to do with it. GA20EN §6
The discovery of categorial intuition is the demonstration, first, that there is a simple apprehension of the categorial, such constituents in entities which in traditional fashion are designated as categories and were seen in crude form quite early (in Greek philosophy, especially by Plato and Aristotle). Second, it is above all the demonstration that this apprehension is invested in the most everyday of perceptions and in every experience. This only clarifies the meaning of the term. What matters is to exhibit this kind of intuition itself, to bring it to givenness as INTENTIONALITY, and to make clear what is intuited in it and how. GA20EN §6
The interrelation of these modes of representations is a functional interrelation which is always prefigured in their INTENTIONALITY. Empty intending, envisaging, sense perception are not simply coordinated as species in a genus, as when I say that apples, pears, peaches, and plums are fruits. Rather, these modes stand to one another in functional relation, and the fulfillment itself is of an intentional character. Fulfillment means having the entity present in its intuitive content so that what is at first only emptily presumed in it demonstrates itself as grounded in the matters. Perception, or what it gives, points out, de-monstrates. The empty intention is demonstrated in the state of affairs given in intuition; the originary perception gives the demonstration. GA20EN §6
But if we see that the acts of identifying apprehension are defined by INTENTIONALITY, then we do not resort to the mythological account of evidence as psychic feeling or psychic datum, as though a pressure were first exerted and then it dawns on one that the truth is indeed there. GA20EN §6
It is further customary to regard evidence as an addition to a specific class of lived experiences, that of judgments. This restriction along with the concept of evidence as a possible addition to (psychic) processes do not correspond to the findings. It is readily seen that evidence in general is comprehensible only if we regard the INTENTIONALITY in it (now understood as identifying apprehension). But this at the same time yields a fundamental insight of great significance. Since the act of evidence connotes an identifying vision that selects a state of affairs from the originarily intuited matter, evidence is in its sense always of a sort and rigor which varies according to the ontological character (Seinscharakter) of the field of subject matter, the intentional structure of the kind of apprehensive access, and the possibility of fulfillment grounded therein. We therefore speak of the regionality of evidence. All evidence is in its sense geared to a corresponding region of subject matter. It is absurd to want to transpose one possibility of evidence, for example, the mathematical, into other kinds of apprehension. The same holds for the idea of rigor of theoretical demonstration, which in its sense is built upon the concept of evidence peculiar to each type: philosophical, theological, physical. With all this regionality, on the other hand, the universality of evidence must again be stressed. Evidence is a universal function, first, of all acts which give their objects, and then, of all acts (evidence of willing and wishing, of loving and hoping). It is not restricted to assertions, predications, judgments. In this universality it at the same time varies according to the region of subject matter and the kind of access to it. GA20EN §6
The demonstration of the presumed in the intuited is identification, an act which is phenomenologically specified in terms of INTENTIONALITY, directing-itself-toward. This means that every act has its intentional correlate, perception the perceived, and identification the identified, here the being-identical of presumed and intuited as the intentional correlate of the act of identification. Truth can be designated in a threefold way. The first concept of truth is this being-identical of presumed and intuited. Being-true is then equivalent to this being-identical, the subsistence of this identity. We obtain this first concept of truth by referring to the correlate of the act of identification: subsistence of the identity of presumed and intuited. Here it should be noted that in the living act of concrete perceiving and in the demonstration of what is presumed, this perceiving lives in the apprehension of the matter as such, in the performance of the act. In the coming into coincidence of the presumed with the intuited, I am solely and primarily directed toward the subject matter itself, and yet—this is the peculiarity of this structural correlation—evidence is experienced in this apprehension of the intuited matter itself. The correlation is peculiar in that something is experienced but not apprehended. So it is really only in apprehending the object as such, which amounts to not apprehending the identity, that this identity is experienced. This act of bringing into coincidence is in touch with the subject matter; it is precisely through this particular INTENTIONALITY of being-in-touch-with-the-subject-matter (Bei-der-Sache-sein) that this INTENTIONALITY, itself unthematic in its performance, is immediately and transparently experienced as true. This is the phenomenological sense of saying that in evident perception I do not thematically study the truth of this perception itself, but rather live in the truth. Being-true is experienced as a distinctive relation, a comportmental relation (Verhalt) between presumed and intuited specifically in the sense of identity. We call this distinctive relation the truth-relation; being-true consists precisely in this relation. Truth in this sense is seen with respect to the correlate of the act of identification that is, by way of INTENTIONALITY with reference to the intentum. GA20EN §6
Correlatively, we can obtain a second concept of truth commensurate to the intentio, not to the content of the act but to the act itself. What is now thematic is not the being-identical of what is intended in presuming and intuiting but the act-structure of evidence itself as this coincident identification. Formulated differently, under consideration now is the idea of the structural relationship of the acts of presuming and intuiting, the structure of the INTENTIONALITY of evidence itself, adaequatio understood as adaequare. Truth is now taken as a character of knowledge, as an act, which means as INTENTIONALITY. GA20EN §6
The term “truth” is originally and properly attributed to INTENTIONALITY, but this is done on the basis of its being composed of both the intentio and the intentum. Traditionally, it is attributed in particular to acts of assertion, that is, relational acts of predication. But we need only to recall our explication of evidence to see that even non-relational acts, that is, single-rayed monothetic acts of simple apprehension, likewise can be subject to demonstration, that is, can be true or false. Phenomenology thus breaks with the restriction of the concept of truth to relational acts, to judgments. The truth of relational acts is only one particular kind of truth for the objectifying acts of knowing in general. Without being explicitly conscious of it, phenomenology returns to the broad concept of truth whereby the Greeks (Aristotle) could call true even perception as such and the simple perception of something. Since it does not become conscious of this return, it cannot even get in touch with the original sense of the Greek concept of truth. But because of this connection it succeeds for the first time in bringing an understandable sense to the Scholastic definition of truth, which by way of a detour goes back to the Greeks, and in rescuing it from the confusing misreading which instituted the fateful introduction of the concept of image into the interpretation of knowledge. GA20EN §6
Because the ‘is,’ ‘being,’ ‘unity,’ ‘thisness’ and the like refer to the non-sensory, and the non-sensory is not real, not objective, hence is something subjective, we must look to the subject, to consciousness. But when we consider the consciousness, then, as long as its INTENTIONALITY is not taken into account—and this was the typical way of considering it before—, what we find are acts of consciousness understood as psychic processes. If I study the consciousness, I always find only judging, wishing, representing, perceiving, remembering, in short, immanent psychic events or, to put it in Kant’s terms, that which becomes present to me through the inner sense. Phenomenological consistency dictates that even those concepts which are demonstrated through the inner sense are basically sensory concepts accessible through the inner sense. When I examine the immanence of consciousness, I always find only the sensory and objective, which I must take as an “immanently real” (reelles) component of the psychic process, but I never find anything like ‘being,’ ‘this,’ ‘and.’ Husserl therefore says: It is not in the reflection upon judgments nor even upon fulfillments of judgments but rather in these fulfillments themselves that we find the true source of the concepts ‘state of affairs’ and ‘being’ (in the copulative sense). It is not in these acts as objects but in the objects of these acts that we find the abstractive basis for the realization of the concepts in question. The category “being,’ ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘this,’ ‘one,’ ‘several,’ ‘then’ are nothing like consciousness, but are correlates of certain acts. GA20EN §6
From this fundamental and crucial rectification of an old prejudice, which interprets and identifies ‘non-sensory’ or ‘unreal’ with immanent and subjective, we at the same time see that the overcoming of this prejudice is at once linked to the discovery of INTENTIONALITY. We do not know what we are doing when we opt for the correct conception of the categorial and at the same time think we can dismiss INTENTIONALITY as a mythical concept. The two are one and the same. GA20EN §6
We showed that the simple perception, that is, the sense perception of a thing, does not bring about the fulfillment of all the intentions of the assertion. While perception in its INTENTIONALITY has already been roughly characterized, the feature of the ‘simple’ has been left undefined. But supplying the missing definition of this feature must at the same time permit its difference from the other kind of acts, so-called categorial acts, to emerge. GA20EN §6
What constitutes the feature of simplicity in perception? Clarification of this element of simplicity will also lead to the clarification of the sense of the founding and being founded of categorial acts. With the clarification of the founded act, we are concurrently placed in the position of understanding the objectivity both of simple perception and of founded acts as a unified objectivity. It permits us to see how even simple perception, which is usually called sense perception, is already intrinsically pervaded by categorial intuition. The INTENTIONALITY of perceptual apprehension is in fact simple and straightforward, but this in itself does not rule out a high degree of complexity in its act-structure. GA20EN §6
We have already established a number of things about simple perception. For one thing, it implies that its object is bodily given and persists in this state as the same object. In the course of various adumbrations which show themselves in a sequence of perceptions, I see the object as identically the same. I can go through such a sequence of perceptions of one and the same thing, for example, by going around the object. How can the continuity of this sequence be specified? The sequence is no mere demonstration of temporally contiguous acts which are subsequently drawn together and so made into a perception. Rather, it can be phenomenologically established that every single phase of perception in the whole of the continuous sequence is in itself a full perception of the thing. In every moment the whole thing is bodily itself and is this itself as the same. This means that the continuum of the perceptual sequence is not instituted supplementally by a supervening synthesis, but that what is perceived in this sequence is there at one level of act. In short, the perceptual continuity is a single perception, merely extended, one might say. It “presents its object in a straightforward and immediate way.” We call this feature, whereby the perceptual phases are carried out at one level of act and every phase of the perceptual sequence is a full perception, the simplicity or single-level character of perception. Simplicity means the absence of multi-level acts, which institute their unity only subsequently. This feature of the “simple” therefore refers to a way of apprehending and that means a feature of INTENTIONALITY. As a way of apprehending, such a feature does not rule out the highest degree of complexity in the structure of this perception (as we have already said). Simplicity of perception also does not mean simplicity of the act-structure as such. Conversely, the multi-level character of categorial acts does not exclude the simplicity of these acts. GA20EN §6
In simple apprehension the totality of the object is explicitly given through the bodily sameness of the thing. The parts, moments, portions of what is at first simply perceived, by contrast, are there implicitly, unsilhouetted—but still given so that they can be made explicit. This simple perception, or what it gives—the entity itself in the present—can of course on its part now become the basis for acts which are built upon it in its specific INTENTIONALITY as correlate of its objectivity, and so claim it as the foundation for the construction of new objectivities. GA20EN §6
In the foregoing, these new kinds of objects were merely indicated, presumed in the act of presuming the full assertion. This initial indication included a preliminary suggestion of a mode of intuition giving such objects. Now it is a matter of seeing the connection of this new objectivity with that of the real objects, the objectivity of the basic level, in other words, of seeing the structural and constructional relationships of the intentions themselves. From what has been said about the basic constitution of INTENTIONALITY, the two objectivities cannot be separated. When we now speak of connections between acts, like those at the ground level and those built upon it (simple and founded acts), we are not thereby directing our attention to psychic events and their coupling in the manner of temporal succession. Rather, connections between acts are constructional relationships and modifications of INTENTIONALITY, that is, structures of the particular directedness toward the objects appropriate to each type. As acts, they always have their possible entity which they themselves intend, and they have it in a specific how of givenness. What gives itself as objective in the multilevel acts can never become accessible in the simple acts at the ground level. This means that categorial acts make the objectivity upon which they build—the simply given—accessible in a new kind of object. This new way of making the simply given object accessible is also called the act of expression. GA20EN §6
Quite generally, the following can be said of the relationships of the founded acts to the simple founding acts: The founded acts, the categorial acts, are indeed directed toward the objectivities co-posited in them from the simple acts, the founding acts, but in a manner which does not coincide with the INTENTIONALITY of the simply giving act, as if the founded categorial act were only a formalized repetition of the simply giving act. This implies that the founded acts disclose the simply given objects anew, such that these objects come to explicit apprehension precisely in what they are. GA20EN §6
One sees in the antithesis of the two kinds of intuition a recurrence of the old contrast of sense and understanding. If one adds to this the conceptual pair of form and matter, the issue may be laid out in the following fashion: Sensuousness is characterized as receptivity and understanding as spontaneity (Kant), the sensory as matter and the categorial as form. Accordingly, the spontaneity of understanding becomes the formative principle of a receptive matter, and in one stroke we have the old mythology of an intellect which glues and rigs together the world’s matter with its own forms. Whether it is metaphysical or epistemological as in Rickert, the mythology is the same. Categorial intuition is subject to this misunderstanding only as long as the basic structure of intuiting and of all comportments—INTENTIONALITY—is not seen or is suppressed. The categorial ‘forms’ are not constructs of acts but objects which manifest themselves in these acts. They are not something made by the subject and even less something added to the real objects, such that the real entity is itself modified by this forming. Rather, they actually present the entity more truly in its ‘being-in-itself.’ GA20EN §6
Categorial intuition as intentional comportment was deliberately given only second place in the series of discoveries. With regard to our understanding of the first discovery, categorial intuition is just a concretion of the basic constitution of INTENTIONALITY announced there. As categorial intuition is possible only on the basis of the phenomenon of INTENTIONALITY having been seen before it, so the third discovery to be discussed now is intelligible only on the basis of the second and accordingly on the basis of the first. It is first in this way that the sequence of discoveries accounts for itself, and the first manifests its fundamental significance step by step. GA20EN §6
The threefold exposition of the apriori—1) its universal scope and its indifference to subjectivity, 2) the way of access to it (simple apprehension, originary intuition), and 3) preparation for the specification of the structure of the apriori as a feature of the being of entities and not a feature of entities themselves—revealed the original sense of the apriori to us. It is of essential significance that this exposition depends in part on the clearer formulation of ideation, that is, on the discovery of the genuine sense of INTENTIONALITY. GA20EN §7
When we take these three discoveries—INTENTIONALITY, categorial intuition, and the apriori—together as they are connected among themselves and ultimately grounded in the first, in the discovery of INTENTIONALITY, we arrive at the goal which has been guiding us and gain an understanding of phenomenology as a research endeavor. In the first chapter, we described the breakthrough of phenomenology and its prehistory. In this second chapter, we have now delineated its decisive discoveries. We must now complete this account by inquiring into the sense of the phenomenological principle and then using this as a basis to make clear to ourselves what the self-characterization of this research under the rubric of ‘phenomenology’ means. Accordingly, on the basis of our account of the three discoveries, we shall now discuss the principle of phenomenology. GA20EN §7
(Let us proceed to the first question: Toward what matters does phenomenology tend?) The initial phenomenological investigations were investigations in logic and the theory of knowledge. They were inspired by the goal of a scientific logic and epistemology. The question here is: Do the three discoveries—the elaboration of INTENTIONALITY, of the categorial and the way of access to it, and of the apriori—give us the ground on which the matters of logic can be located and demonstrated? GA20EN §8
INTENTIONALITY now is nothing other than the basic field in which these objects are found. (As intentio and intentum, it is) the totality of comportments and the totality of entities in their being. Now the question is: In the two directions of intentio and intentum, where the given is either the comportment or the entity in regard to its being, what is it that is structural, what is already there in the given as a structural composition, what is to be found in it as that which constitutes its being? The field of matters for phenomenological research is accordingly INTENTIONALITY in its apriori, understood in the two directions of intentio and intentum. But this implies that the so-called logical comportments of thinking or objective theoretical knowing represent only a particular and narrow sphere within the domain of INTENTIONALITY, and that the range of functions assigned to logic in no way exhausts the full sweep of INTENTIONALITY. GA20EN §8
We have thus specified the field of subject matter and the regard taken toward it—INTENTIONALITY and apriori. The second question is, what mode of treatment corresponds to this field? GA20EN §8
The characterization of the apriori as well as the specification of categorial intuition have already shown that this mode of treatment is a simple originary apprehension and not a kind of experimental substructing in which I construct hypotheses in the field of the categorial. Instead, the full content of the apriori of INTENTIONALITY can be apprehended in simple commensuration with the matter itself. Such a directly seeing apprehension and accentuation is traditionally called description. Phenomenology’s mode of treatment is descriptive. To be more exact, description is an accentuating articulation of what is in itself intuited. Accentuating articulation is analysis. The description is analytical. This serves to specify the mode of treatment of phenomenological research, although once again only in a formal way. GA20EN §8
It is easy to see, or better, we constantly overlook and so fail to see that the general term ‘description’ still says nothing at all about the specific structure of phenomenological research. The character of description is first specified by the content of the matter to be described, so that description can be fundamentally different in different cases. One should keep in mind that this characterization of the way of treating objects in phenomenology as description first of all refers only to direct self-apprehension of the thematic and not to indirect hypothesizing and experimenting. The term ‘description’ at first implies nothing more. The clarification of the content of the phenomenological maxim on the basis of its initial factual concretion in the breakthrough to phenomenology consequently leads to the following definition of such research: Phenomenology is the analytic description of INTENTIONALITY in its apriori. GA20EN §8
If the sense of this research is explained by defining it in retrospect from the past situation of philosophy, that is, if we hear in the term INTENTIONALITY what this new research combines, namely, INTENTIONALITY and the psychic, then phenomenology is description of the psychic, ‘descriptive psychology.’ If in addition we assume the traditional problem-horizons and their division into fixed disciplines (logic, ethics, aesthetics . . .), then this descriptive psychology deals with all comportments, the logically cognitive, ethical, artistically creative, appreciative, social, religious comportments, in short, the comportments which are defined in terms of their laws and norms in the corresponding disciplines of logic, ethics, aesthetics, sociology, philosophy of religion. From this standpoint we come to regard the descriptive discipline of phenomenology as a propaedeutic science for the traditional philosophical disciplines, where the problems come up for discussion. Phenomenology does not yet discuss problems, it only has to take up the matters of fact, and is excluded from the actual judicial hearing of the problems. It also has no desire to be admitted to this trial. GA20EN §8
This understanding and even the realization of this phenomenological task does not bring us to a happy ending but instead to a meager though liberating beginning. If the formal indication defining this research as analytic description of INTENTIONALITY in its apriori is secured expressly, phenomenologically, that is, in the direction of the material content of what it poses for scientific treatment, then this provides a hint of a more radical form of this research; it comes strictly from the research itself, in the direction of its ownmost maxim “to the matters themselves,” and that in turn only puts us on the path of further effort. GA20EN §8
We have explained the principle of phenomenological research first by highlighting the major achievements contained in its actual efforts and by trying to view these in a unified way. We have thus determined that INTENTIONALITY gives us the proper field of subject matter, the apriori gives us the regard under which the structures of INTENTIONALITY are considered, and categorial intuition as the originary way of apprehending these structures represents the mode of treatment, the method of this research. This serves to bring the task of philosophy since Plato once again to its true ground, inasmuch as it now gives us the possibility to do research into the categories. As long as phenomenology understands itself, it will adhere to this course of investigation against any sort of prophetism within philosophy and against any inclination to provide guidelines for life. Philosophical research is and remains atheism, which is why philosophy can allow itself ‘the arrogance of thinking.’ Not only will it allow itself as much; this arrogance is the inner necessity of philosophy and its true strength. Precisely in this atheism, philosophy becomes what a great man once called the “joyful science.” GA20EN §8
The objects of philosophical research have the character of the phenomenon. In brief, such research deals with phenomena and only with phenomena. Phenomenology in its original and initial meaning, which is captured in the expression ‘phenomenology’, signifies a way of encountering something. It is in fact the outstanding way: showing itself in itself. The expression phenomenology names the way something has to be there through and for legein, for conceptual exposition and interpretation. As our preceding discussion has shown, phenomenology deals with INTENTIONALITY in its apriori. The structures of INTENTIONALITY in its apriori are the phenomena. In other words, the structures of INTENTIONALITY in its apriori circumscribe the objects which are to be made present in themselves in this research and explicated in this presence. The term ‘phenomenon’ however says nothing about the being of the objects under study, but refers only to the way they are encountered. The phenomenal is accordingly everything which becomes visible in this kind of encounter and belongs in this structural context of INTENTIONALITY. We therefore speak of ‘phenomenal structures’ as of what is seen, specified and examined in this kind of research. Phenomenological signifies everything that belongs to such a way of exhibiting phenomena and phenomenal structures, everything that becomes thematic in this kind of research. The unphenomenological would be everything that does not satisfy this kind of research, its conceptuality and its methods of demonstration. GA20EN §9
Phenomenology as the science of the apriori phenomena of INTENTIONALITY thus never has anything to do with appearances and even less with mere appearances. It is phenomenologically absurd to speak of the phenomenon as if it were something behind which there would be something else of which it would be a phenomenon in the sense of the appearance which represents and expresses (this something else). A phenomenon is nothing behind which there would be something else. More accurately stated, one cannot ask for something behind the phenomenon at all, since what the phenomenon gives is precisely that something in itself. Admittedly, what can in itself be exhibited and is to be exhibited can nonetheless be covered up. What is in itself visible and in its very sense is accessible only as a phenomenon does not necessarily need to be so already in fact. What a phenomenon is as a possibility is not directly given as a phenomenon but must first be given. As research work, phenomenology is precisely the work of laying open and letting be seen, understood as the methodologically directed dismantling of concealments. GA20EN §9
The reason why genuinely phenomenological work is difficult is that it must be especially critical of itself in a positive way. The sort of encounter involved in the mode of phenomenon must first of all be wrested from the objects of phenomenological research. This means that the characteristic mode of apprehending phenomena—originarily apprehending interpreting—implies not one iota of an immediate apprehension in the sense in which it can be said that phenomenology is a straightforward seeing which requires absolutely no methodological preparation. Precisely the opposite is the case, which is also why the expressness of the maxim is so essential. Because the phenomenon must first be won, scrutinizing the point of departure for access to the phenomenon and clearing the passage through the concealments already demand a high degree of methodological preparation so that we may be guided and determined by what the phenomenal givenness of INTENTIONALITY in each instance implies. The demand for an ultimate direct givenness of the phenomena carries no implication of the comfort of an immediate beholding. There can be no disclosure or deduction of essence from essence, apriori from apriori, one from the other. Rather, each and every one of these must come to demonstrative vision. Accordingly, the way to go in each instance begins with the individual phenomenal correlations and varies according to the degree to which the apriori has been uncovered and the tradition has buried it, as well as the kind of obfuscation involved. Since every structure must ultimately be exhibited in itself, phenomenology’s way of research at first assumes the character or the aspect of what is called a picture-book phenomenology. It gives greater prominence to the exhibition of individual structures which are perhaps very useful for a systematic philosophy, even though the exhibition can only be provisional. As a result, there is a tendency to give philosophical sanction to the prominent displays of particular phenomenological considerations by finding a place for them in some sort of dialectic or the like. Against this tendency, it must be stated that at first nothing at all is to be made of the interconnections of the structures of INTENTIONALITY. Rather, the interconnection of the apriori is always determined only from the subject matter which is to be explored in its phenomenal structure. Furthermore, at first we need not concern ourselves with these considerations, since they will always remain fruitless as long as the concrete aspect of phenomena is not clear. GA20EN §9
This reflection will be directed toward the original, that is, phenomenologically basic, determination of the thematic field, namely, the fundamental determination of INTENTIONALITY and of what is already given with it. In the light of this new task of securing the thematic field originally, as it is prefigured in the phenomenon of INTENTIONALITY, the account of the cultivation and development of phenomenological research will also shift its ground. We shall examine the growing elaboration of the thematic field, its determination, and the outlining of the working horizons as they emerge from this determination of the field. In point of fact, we shall pursue this theme in the double orientation of the work of the two leading researchers in phenomenology today, Husserl and Scheler. GA20EN §9
In its initial breakthrough, the phenomenological endeavor concentrated on determining the basic phenomena by which the objects of logic and epistemology are given. In short, it concentrated on the intentional comportments which are essentially theoretical in character, in particular on cognitive comportments which are specifically scientific. Of course, these considerations already included aspects of the description of other comportments which are specifically emotional, especially in connection with the question of how acts as such can be expressed in concepts. The thematic goal of the first investigations was to lay open a particular portion of the field. The primary aim of the initial attempt was not to mark off and bring out the whole field itself in a basic way, even though considerations of this sort are not lacking. Moreover, INTENTIONALITY, the character of objectifying acts, was naturally expounded in the two main directions of intentio and intentum, but these two essential structural moments of the basic constitution of INTENTIONALITY were as such not yet brought to full clarity. GA20EN §10
All of this—the concrete expansion of the field, the fundamental reflection upon its regional character and its demarcation from other regions, the elaboration of the basic directions in which INTENTIONALITY could be explored—took place in the decade following the appearance of Logical Investigations, between 1901 and 1911. Along with the increasingly richer and clearer disclosure of the phenomenal field came the development of the method and its phenomenological theory. This development and the literary output associated with it can only be outlined very briefly, in order to give a brief answer to the questions which I am constantly asked about what is called the phenomenological literature, which does not actually exist. GA20EN §10
Then the influence of Dilthey made itself felt, manifesting his inner kinship with the tendencies of phenomenology. This led to a transposition of Husserl’s orientation in the philosophy of science, taken in the broadest sense, from one-sided work on problems relating to the natural sciences to a broader reflection on the specific objectivity of the human sciences. A final essential direction channeling these efforts came from the confrontation with the Marburg School, above all with Natorp’s Introduction to Psychology. The confrontation with this psychology was naturally nothing other than the dispute over the direction of the question of the structure of consciousness, of the region in which the totality of comportments, and so all the states of INTENTIONALITY, are ordered. This period in the development of phenomenology thus saw its work being drawn into the horizon of contemporary philosophy, a tendency which has not remained without influence upon the subsequent inquiries of phenomenology. GA20EN §10
These problems