phenomenology

Phenomenology (Phänomenologie), 27-39 (§ 7), 39, 47, 51 n. 11, 63-64, 89, 115-116, 116 n. 1, 131, 139-140, 147, 159, 180, 184-185, 207, 208 n. 16, 218 n. 34, 219, 249 n. 6, 265, 272 n. 8, 357, 375, 436. See also Hermeneutics; Husserl; ontology; pre-phenomenological (BT)

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The first thing we must do is to come to an understanding of the theme of this lecture course and the way in which it is to be approached. We shall do this by clarifying its subtitle, “Prolegomena to the PHENOMENOLOGY of History and Nature.” Taken strictly, the expression refers to that which must be stated and stipulated in advance. In this case, it is a matter of what must be put forward in the beginning in order to be able to do a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature. We learn what the prolegomena are from what a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature is supposed to be. GA20EN §1

The separation comes first from the sciences, which reduce history and nature to the level of domains of objects. But the PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature promises to disclose reality precisely as it shows itself before scientific inquiry, as the reality which is already given to it. Here it is not a matter of a PHENOMENOLOGY of the sciences of history and nature, or even of a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature as objects of these sciences, but of a phenomenological disclosure of the original kind of being and constitution of both. In this way, the basis for a philosophy of these sciences is first created, serving 1) to provide the foundation for their genesis from pretheoretical experience, 2) to exhibit the kind of access they have to the pregiven reality, and 3) to specify the kind of concept formation which accrues to such research. Because reality—nature as well as history—can be reached only by leaping over the sciences to some extent, this prescientific—actually philosophical—disclosure of them becomes what I call a productive logic, an anticipatory disclosure and conceptual penetration of potential domains of objects for the sciences. Unlike traditional philosophy of science, which proceeds after the fact of an accidental, historically given science in order to investigate its structure, such a logic leaps ahead into the primary field of subject matter of a potential science and first makes available the basic structure of the possible object of the science by disclosing the constitution of the being of that field. This is the procedure of the original logic put forward by Plato and Aristotle, of course only within very narrow limits. Since then, the idea of logic lapsed into obscurity and was no longer understood. Hence PHENOMENOLOGY has the task of making the domain of the subject matter comprehensible before its scientific treatment and, on this basis, the latter as well. GA20EN §1

We can demonstrate this succinctly and concretely by way of the following series of particular sciences, chosen here to suit our purpose. Characteristic is the crisis in contemporary mathematics, which is emphatically characterized as a crisis of foundations. In the dispute between formalism and intuitionism, the question is whether the fundaments of the mathematical sciences are based upon formal propositions that are simply assumed and that constitute a system of axioms from which all the other propositions can be deduced. This is Hilbert’s position. The opposing direction, essentially influenced by PHENOMENOLOGY, asks whether or not in the end what is primarily given is the specific structure of the objects themselves (in geometry the continuum which precedes scientific inquiry, for example, in integral and differential analysis). This is the doctrine of Brouwer and Weyl. Thus, what is prima facie the most firmly established science manifests the tendency toward a transposition of the entire science onto new and more original foundations. GA20EN §1

We have come to an initial understanding of this task simply by way of the sciences of these two domains. But such an extrinsic understanding is not the true entry to the thematic object. We wish to exhibit history and nature so that we may regard them before scientific elaboration, so that we may see both realities in their reality. This means that we wish to arrive at a horizon from which history and nature can be originally contrasted. This horizon must itself be a field of constituents against which history and nature stand out in relief. Laying out this field is the task of the “prolegomena to a PHENOMENOLOGY of history and nature.” We shall approach this task of laying out the actual constituents which underlie history and nature, and from which they acquire their being, by way of a history of the concept of time. GA20EN §2

Chapter Two: The fundamental discoveries of PHENOMENOLOGY, its principle, and the clarification of its name. GA20EN §3

At first, he was concerned with what was traditionally called the logic of mathematics. For Husserl, this meant not only the theory of mathematical thought and knowledge. The first theme of his reflections was the analysis of the structure of the objects of mathematics—number. A work on the concept of number written under Stumpf, Brentano’s very first student, in Halle at the end of the eighties qualified Husserl as an academic lecturer. This work, understood as an actual investigation of the matters at issue, became possible upon the basis provided by Brentano’s descriptive psychology. But soon Husserl’s questioning extended into matters of principle and his investigations advanced to the fundamental concepts of thinking as such and of objects in general. It grew into the problem of a scientific logic in close conjunction with reflection upon the methodological ways and means for the correct exploration of the objects of logic. This meant a more radical conception of what was already advanced in Brentano’s descriptive psychology, as well as a basic critique of the contemporary confusion of psychological-genetic inquiry with logical inquiry. This work on the fundamental objects of logic occupied Husserl for more than twelve years. The initial results of this effort form the content of the work which appeared in two volumes in 1900–1901 under the title Logical Investigations. This work marks the initial breakthrough of phenomenological research. It has become the basic book of PHENOMENOLOGY. The personal history of its origin is a story of continual despair, and does not belong here. GA20EN §4

This misunderstanding is due to some extent to the self-interpretation which Husserl himself gives in the introduction to this volume: “PHENOMENOLOGY is descriptive psychology.” This self-interpretation of his own work is quite incongruous with what is elaborated in it. In other words, when he wrote the introduction to these investigations, Husserl was not in a position to survey properly what he had actually presented in this volume. Two years later, he himself corrected this mistaken interpretation in the journal Archiv für systematische Philosophie (1903). GA20EN §4

These “Logical Investigations,” as fundamental as they are, do not bring us any in-depth knowledge for the mastery of emotional needs and the like. Rather, they deal with very special and arid problems: with object, concept, truth, proposition, fact, law. The subtitle of the positive second volume is “Investigations into the PHENOMENOLOGY and Theory of Knowledge.” It includes six extensive special investigations whose connection is not immediately clear: I. “Expression and Meaning”; II. “The Ideal Unity of Species and the More Recent Theories of Abstraction”; III. “On the Doctrine of Wholes and Parts”; IV. “The Distinction between Independent and Dependent Meanings and the Idea of Pure Grammar”; V. “On Intentional Experiences and their ‘Contents’”; VI. “Elements of a Phenomenological Elucidation of Knowledge.” These are unusual themes for a logic and theory of knowledge. The choice of the subtitle, “Theory of Knowledge,” came about solely in deference to the tradition. The Introduction states that, strictly speaking, theory of knowledge is not a theory at all but a “reflection which comes to an evident understanding of what thinking and knowing as such are in their generically pure essence.” Calling it a theory is still a covert form of naturalism, for which any theory is a deductive system whose goal is to explain given facts. Husserl expressly rejects this customary sense of a theory of knowledge. GA20EN §4

We shall detail these discoveries and then supplement this account with an elucidation of the principle of phenomenological research. On this basis we shall try to interpret the name given to this research and thus define ‘PHENOMENOLOGY.’ 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

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 expressly reject such opinions, not in order to preserve Husserl’s originality against Brentano, but to guard against having the most elementary considerations and steps necessary for the understanding of PHENOMENOLOGY thwarted in advance by such characterizations. 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

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

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

The perceived in itself is both. And still the question arises whether this description eliciting what is given in the perceived thing itself already gives us what PHENOMENOLOGY strictly means by the perceived. When we consider that these two thing-structures—environmental thing and natural thing—apply to one and the same chair, one obvious difficulty already arises: how are we to understand the relationship of these two structures of a thing? We shall arrive at a more precise knowledge of this later in other contexts. At the moment, I only maintain that when I say in ordinary language and not upon reflection and theoretical study of the chair, “The chair is hard,” my aim is not to state the degree of resistance and density of this thing as material thing. I simply want to say, “The chair is uncomfortable.” Already here we can see that specific structures belonging to a natural thing and which as such can be regarded separately—hardness, weight—present themselves first of all in well-defined environmental characteristics. Hardness, material resistance, is itself present in the feature of discomfort and even only present in this way, and not just inferred from it or derived through it. The perceived gives itself in itself and not by virtue of points of view, say, which are brought to the thing. It is the specific environmental thing, even when it remains concealed from many. GA20EN §5

But we have still not arrived at what we have called the perceived in the strict sense. The perceived in the strict sense for PHENOMENOLOGY is not the perceived entity in itself but the perceived entity insofar as it is perceived, as it shows itself in concrete perception. The perceived in the strict sense is the perceived as such or, more precisely expressed, the perceivedness, of this chair for example, the way and manner, the structure in which the chair is perceived. The way and manner of how this chair is perceived is to be distinguished from the structure of how it is represented. The expression the perceived as such now refers [not to the perceived entity in itself but] to this entity in the way and manner of its being-perceived. With this we have, as a start, only suggested a completely new structure, a structure to which I cannot now attribute all those determinations which I have thus far attributed to the chair. GA20EN §5

I can now envisage the Weidenhauser bridge; I place myself before it, as it were. Thus the bridge is itself given. I intend the bridge itself and not an image of it, no fantasy, but it itself. And yet it is not bodily given to me. It would be bodily given if I go down the hill and place myself before the bridge itself. This means that what is itself given need not be bodily given, while conversely anything which is bodily given is itself given. Bodily presence is a superlative mode of the self-givenness of an entity. This self-givenness becomes clearer still by setting it off from another possible mode of representing, which in PHENOMENOLOGY is understood as empty intending. GA20EN §5

Another type of representing in the broadest sense is the perception of a picture. If we analyze a perception of a picture, we see clearly how what is perceived in the consciousness of a picture has a totally different structure from what is perceived in simple perception or what is represented in simple envisaging. I can look at a picture postcard of the Weidenhauser bridge. Here we have a new type of representing. What is now bodily given is the postcard itself. This card itself is a thing, an object, just as much as the bridge or a tree or the like. But it is not a simple thing like the bridge. As we have said, it is a picture-thing. In perceiving it, I see through it what is pictured, the bridge. In perceiving a picture, I do not thematically apprehend the picture-thing. Rather, when I see a picture postcard, I see—in the natural attitude—what is pictured on it, the bridge, [which is now seen as] what is pictured on the card. In this case, the bridge is not emptily presumed or merely envisaged or originarily perceived, but apprehended in this characteristic layered structure of the portrayal of something. The bridge itself is now the represented in the sense of being represented by way of being depicted through something. This apprehension of a picture, the apprehension of something as something pictured through a picture-thing, has a structure totally different from that of a direct perception. This must be brought home quite forcefully because of the efforts once made, and once again being made today, to take the apprehension of a picture as the paradigm by means of which, it is believed, any perception of any object can be illuminated. In the consciousness of a picture, there is the picture-thing and the pictured. The picture-thing can be a concrete thing—the blackboard on the wall—but the picture-thing is not merely a thing like a natural thing or another environmental thing. For it shows something, what is pictured itself. In simple perception, by contrast, in the simple apprehension of an object, nothing like a consciousness of a picture can be found. It goes against all the plain and simple findings about the simple apprehension of an object to interpret them as if I first perceive a picture in my consciousness when I see that house there, as if a picture-thing were first given and thereupon apprehended as picturing that house out there. There would thus be a subjective picture within and that which is pictured outside, transcendent. Nothing of the sort is to be found. Rather, in the simple sense of perception I see the house itself. Even aside from the fact that this transposition of the consciousness of a picture, which is constituted in a totally different way, onto the simple apprehension of an object explains nothing and leads to untenable theories, we must keep in mind the real reason for rejecting this transposition: it does not correspond to the simple phenomenological findings. There is also the following difficulty, which we shall only mention without exploring. If knowledge in general is an apprehension of an object-picture as an immanent picture of a transcendent thing outside, how then is the transcendent object itself to be apprehended? If every apprehension of an object is a consciousness of a picture, then for the immanent picture I once again need a picture-thing which depicts the immanent picture for me etc. etc. This is a secondary factor which argues against this theory. But the main thing is this: not only is there nothing of the pictorial and picturing in the course of simple apprehension; there is in particular nothing like a consciousness of a picture in the very act of apprehending an object. It is not because we fall into an infinite regress, and so explain nothing, that the infrastructure of the consciousness of a picture for the apprehension of an object is to be rejected. It is not because we arrive at no genuine and tenable theory with this infrastructure. It is rather because this is already contrary to every phenomenological finding. It is a theory without PHENOMENOLOGY. Hence perceiving must be considered totally distinct from the consciousness of a picture. Consciousness of a picture is possible at all first only as perceiving, but only in such a way that the picture-thing is actually apprehended beginning with what is pictured on it. GA20EN §5

These structural continuities and levels of fulfillment, demonstration, and verification are relatively easy to see in the field of intuitive representation. But they are to be found without exception in all acts, for example, in the domain of pure theoretical comportment, determination, and speech. Without the possibility here of following the structures of every pertinent intention to its intended as such, the scientific elaboration of a genuine PHENOMENOLOGY (drawn from the phenomena themselves) of concept formation—the genesis of the concept from raw meaning—cannot even be considered. But without this foundation every logic remains a matter for dilettantes or a construction. 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

These two concepts of truth and the corresponding two concepts of being were established in the initial elaboration of PHENOMENOLOGY and have persisted in further developments. This is important to keep in mind since we shall later raise the fundamental question of the sense of being and thus come to face the question of whether the concept of being can really be originally drawn in this context of being-true and the corresponding being-real, and whether truth is primarily a phenomenon which is to be originally conceived in the context of assertions or, in the broader sense, of objectifying acts. 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

We said that color can be seen, but being-colored cannot. Color is something sensory and real. Being, however, is nothing of the sort, for it is not sensory or real. While the real is regarded as the objective, as a structure and moment of the object, the non-sensory is equated with the mental in the subject, the immanent. The real is given from the side of the object, the rest is thought into it by the subject. But the subject is given in inner perception. Will I find ‘being,’ ‘unity,’ ‘plurality,’ ‘and,’ ‘or’ in inner perception? The origin of these non-sensory moments lies in immanent perception, in the reflection upon consciousness. This is the argument of British empiricism since Locke. This argumentation has its roots in Descartes, and it is in principle still present in Kant and German idealism, though with essential modification. Today we are in a position to move against idealism precisely on this front only because PHENOMENOLOGY has demonstrated that the non-sensory and ideal cannot without further ado be identified with the immanent, conscious, subjective. This is not only negatively stated but positively shown; and this constitutes the true sense of the discovery of categorial intuition, which we now want to bring out more precisely. GA20EN §6

Two groups of such categorial, founded acts shall be considered in order to bring out the essential elements of categorial intuition: 1) acts of synthesis, 2) acts of universal intuition, or better, acts of intuition of the universal, or in more rigorous terminology, acts of ideation. This consideration of acts of ideation at the same time gives us the transition to the third discovery of PHENOMENOLOGY we shall discuss, the characterization of the apriori. We shall consider categorial acts from three points of view: 1) in regard to their founded character; 2) in regard to their character as giving acts; in short, they are intuitions, they give objectivity; 3) in regard to the way and manner in which the objectivity of simple acts are given with them. GA20EN §6

Acts of ideation indeed rest upon individual intuition but do not directly intend what is intuited in it as such. Ideation constitutes a new objectivity: generality. Now, intuitions which exclude not only everything individual but also everything sensory from their objective content are pure categorial intuitions, in contrast to those which still include sensory components, categorially mixed intuitions. In contrast to these two groups—pure and mixed categorial intuitions—there is sense intuition, sense abstraction, the abstractive seeing of a pure sensory idea. Ideation in the field of the sensory yields objects such as color in general, house in general; in the field of inner sense, it yields judgment in general, wish in general and the like. Mixed categorial ideations yield ideas like coloration in the sense of being-colored, where ‘being’ constitutes the specifically non-sensory categorial moment. The axiom of parallels, every geometric proposition, is certainly categorial but is still defined by sensuousness, by spatiality in general. Examples of pure categorial concepts are unity, plurality, relation. Pure logic, as pure mathesis universalis (Leibniz), does not contain a single sensory concept. Pure categorial, mixed, and sensory abstraction make it clear that the concept of sensuousness is a very broad one. One must therefore be very careful about proceeding in the usual way, to impute a sensualism to PHENOMENOLOGY and to think thereby that it is solely a matter of sense data. GA20EN §6

[3.] This objectivity which gives itself in such acts of categorial intuition is itself the objective manner in which reality itself can become more truly objective. The exhibition of categorial structure serves to broaden the idea of objectivity such that this objectivity can itself be exhibited in its content in the investigation of the corresponding intuition. In other words, the phenomenological research which breaks through to objectivity arrives at the form of research sought by ancient ontology. There is no ontology alongside a PHENOMENOLOGY. Rather, scientific ontology is nothing but PHENOMENOLOGY. GA20EN §6

The elaboration of the sense of the apriori is the third discovery which we owe to the beginnings of PHENOMENOLOGY. This discovery may be characterized more briefly 1) because despite some essential insights into PHENOMENOLOGY the apriori itself is still not made very clear, 2) because it is still by and large intertwined with traditional lines of inquiry, and 3) above all because the clarification of its sense really presupposes the understanding of what we are seeking: time. GA20EN §7

The scientific motives for the discovery and development of the apriori, which already begin with Plato,—How was it first conceived? What were the limits within which it could be conceived?—cannot be depicted or clarified now. Our only questions will be: What was understood by this term? How does PHENOMENOLOGY now understand it? GA20EN §7

The apriori in Kant’s sense is a feature of the subjective sphere. This coupling of the apriori with the subjectivity became especially pertinacious through Kant, who joined the question of the apriori with his specific epistemological inquiry and asked, in reference to a particular apriori comportment, that of synthetic apriori judgments, whether and how they have transcendent validity. Against this, PHENOMENOLOGY has shown that the apriori is not limited to the subjectivity, indeed that in the first instance it has primarily nothing at all to do with subjectivity. The characterization of ideation as a categorial intuition has made it clear that something like the highlighting of ideas occurs both in the field of the ideal, hence of the categories, and in the field of the real. There are sensory ideas, ideas whose structure comes from the subject matter’s content (color, materiality, spatiality), a structure which is already there in every real individuation and so is apriori in relation to the here and now of a particular coloration of a thing. All of geometry as such is proof of the existence of a material apriori. In the ideal as in the real, once we accept this separation, there is in reference to its objectivity something ideal which can be brought out, something in the being of the ideal and in the being of the real which is apriori, structurally earlier. This already suggests that the apriori phenomenologically understood is not a title for comportment but a title for being. The apriori is not only nothing immanent, belonging primarily to the sphere of the subject, it is also nothing transcendent, specifically bound up with reality. GA20EN §7

Thus the first thing demonstrated by PHENOMENOLOGY is the universal scope of the apriori. The second is the specific indifference of the apriori to subjectivity. The third is included in the first two: the way of access to the apriori. Inasmuch as the apriori is grounded in its particular domains of subject matter and of being, it is in itself demonstrable in a simple intuition. It is not inferred indirectly, surmised from some symptoms in the real, hypothetically reckoned, as one infers, from the presence of certain disturbances in the movement of a body, the presence of other bodies which are not seen at all. It is absurd to transpose this approach, which makes sense in the realm of the physical, to philosophy too and to assume a stratification of bodies and the like. The apriori can in itself be apprehended much more directly. GA20EN §7

This leads to a fourth specification of the apriori. The ‘earlier’ is not a feature in the ordered sequence of knowing, but it is also not a feature in the sequential order of entities, more precisely in the sequential order of the emergence of an entity from an entity. Instead, the apriori is a feature of the structural sequence in the being of entities, in the ontological structure of being. Taken formally, the apriori prejudges nothing at all in regard to whether this earlier refers to a knowing or a being-known or some other kind of comportment to something, or whether it refers to an entity or to being, not even whether it means being in the traditional form of the Greek concept of being transmitted to us. This cannot be drawn from the sense of the apriori. Toward the end of the course, it will become clear that the discovery of the apriori is really connected or actually identical with the discovery of the concept of being in Parmenides or in Plato. In view of the prevalence of this particular concept of being, the apriori even within PHENOMENOLOGY still stands in this traditional horizon, so that there is some warrant for speaking of Platonism within PHENOMENOLOGY itself. 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

What instructions does PHENOMENOLOGY give on the demand to lay open the field? It is easily seen that the determination and demarcation of the field of subject matter of phenomenological research is involved in the idea of philosophy. But we shall now not pursue the path of determining this field from the idea of philosophy. We shall instead examine how the breakthrough of PHENOMENOLOGY and its discoveries have laid open a field of research within contemporary philosophy. So we now ask, while the substance of the three discoveries is fresh in our minds, which matters are taken up here, or, which matters does this research tend to take up? This will enable us to specify the first sense of the phenomenological maxim (the demand to do demonstrative work), that is, to ascertain the mode of treatment appropriate to these matters by reading it from the concretion of its principle. We are making no deduction from the idea of PHENOMENOLOGY but are reading the principle from its concretion in the research work. The concretion is characterized by the discoveries, and now it is only a question of the extent to which they supply content to the formal sense of the research principle: What field of subject matter, what regard toward it and what mode of dealing with it are intended? The clarification of the phenomenological principle according to field and mode of treatment then permits the legitimacy of the designation ‘PHENOMENOLOGY’ to emerge of its own accord and to set itself off from misinterpretations. GA20EN §8

[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

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

But now let us consider whether this interpretation does not put this research endeavor and the originality of its principle right back into the position which it has abandoned and which PHENOMENOLOGY is designed to overcome. This conception of PHENOMENOLOGY and its interpretation is like wanting to interpret modern physics from astrology or chemistry from alchemy instead of the other way around, where astrology is taken as a stage preceding physics and overcome by it. In other words, the definition of PHENOMENOLOGY which we have obtained by clarifying its principle is to be understood from its task, from the positive possibility which it implies, from what guides its efforts and not from what is said about it. 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

We shall now try to make clear to ourselves what the name ‘PHENOMENOLOGY’ actually means in relation to the subject matter just identified. We shall develop this clarification in three steps: a) The clarification of the original sense of the component parts of the name; b) The definition of the unified meaning thus obtained for the composite word and comparison of this actual meaning of the name with what it names, with the research so characterized; c) We will briefly discuss several misunderstandings of PHENOMENOLOGY which are connected with the external and aberrant interpretation of the name. GA20EN §9

The name ‘PHENOMENOLOGY’ has two components, ‘phenomenon’ and ‘-logy.’ The latter phrase is familiar from such usages as theology, biology, physiology, sociology, and is commonly translated as ‘science of’: theology, science of God; biology, science of life, of organic nature; sociology, science of the community. Accordingly, PHENOMENOLOGY is the science of phenomena. ‘Logy,’ science of, varies in its character according to the thematic matter, which is logically and formally undefined. In our case, it is defined by what phenomenon stands for. So, to begin with, the first part of the name must be clarified [in order to see what this particular —logy stands for]. GA20EN §9

By way of summary, the following must be made clear: There are two basic meanings of ‘phenomenon’; first the manifest, that which shows itself, and second that which presents itself as something manifest but which only gives itself [out] in this way—semblance. For the most part, we are not at all familiar with the original meaning of phenomenon and dispense with the task of making clear to ourselves what it does mean. We simply call something a ‘phenomenon’ which here has been identified as ‘appearance’ and analyzed as such. When PHENOMENOLOGY is criticized, the critic simply takes the concept of ‘appearance,’ which is convenient for his purposes [but has nothing to do with PHENOMENOLOGY], and uses this word to criticize a research endeavor oriented to the matters themselves. This should suffice for the clarification of the first component part of the term ‘PHENOMENOLOGY.’ GA20EN §9

Let us now put together these two separately clarified parts of the name “PHENOMENOLOGY.” What unified meaning results from this, and to what extent is this unity of meaning, as the name for the kind of research we have described above, a fitting expression of this research? The surprise is that logos understood as apophainesthai has an intrinsic and material relation to phainomenon. PHENOMENOLOGY is legein ta phainomena = apophainesthai ta phainomena—letting the manifest in itself be seen from itself. In the same vein, the maxim of phenomenological research—back to the matters themselves—is basically nothing other than a rendition of the name of PHENOMENOLOGY. But this means that PHENOMENOLOGY is essentially distinct from the other names for sciences—theology, biology, etc.—in that it says nothing about the material content of the thematic object of this science, but speaks really only—and this emphatically—of the how, the way in which something is and has to be thematic in this research! PHENOMENOLOGY is accordingly a ‘methodological’ term, inasmuch as it is only used to designate the mode of experience, apprehension, and determination of that which is thematized in philosophy. GA20EN §9

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

Concealment itself, whether it is taken in the sense of the undiscovered pure and simple or of burying or disguise, has in turn a twofold sense. There are accidental concealments and there are necessary ones, given in the very being of their manner of discovery and its possibilities. Every phenomenological proposition, though drawn from original sources, is subject to the possibility of concealment when it is communicated as an assertion. Transmitted in an empty and predisposed way of understanding it, it loses its roots in its native soil and becomes a free-floating naming. This possibility of petrification of what it has drawn out and demonstrated in an original way is implied in the concrete labor of PHENOMENOLOGY itself. Concealment may at times also proceed from it because PHENOMENOLOGY carries this radical principle within itself. The possibility of radical discovery at the same time brings with it the corresponding danger that PHENOMENOLOGY may become hardened in its own results. 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

I now want to deal only very briefly with a few typical misunderstandings of PHENOMENOLOGY, since they are still generally prevalent in philosophy, and since there are only a few who make the effort to elucidate the authentic sense of PHENOMENOLOGY from its concrete work. A typical example, and indeed the best example of what one can get away with today in this regard, is an article by Rickert in the journal Logos. GA20EN §9

Rickert here wants to show that PHENOMENOLOGY is not and cannot be a philosophy of the immediate and, by way of contrast, makes some suggestions on how a philosophy of the immediate would look. The characteristic attitude is already evident here: there must be a philosophy of the immediate and everything must be organized in accord with it. “To begin with, at least a mediation is needed in order to define the concepts of appearance and PHENOMENOLOGY in such a way that they will be useful for a philosophy of the immediate.” In opposition to this, it must first be stated generally that PHENOMENOLOGY does not wish to be either a philosophy of intuition or a philosophy of the immediate. It does not want to be a philosophy at all in this sense, but wants the subject matters themselves. GA20EN §9

Rickert’s critique is based on his understanding of the word “appearance.” He states that the word “appearance” has, in its sense as appearance of something, the orientation toward something which is not appearance, which is therefore not immediately given. And since appearance is always appearance of something which is behind it, the immediate cannot be apprehended, so that we are always dealing with something already mediated. PHENOMENOLOGY is accordingly unsuited to be the basic science of philosophy. It is apparent first that the concept of appearance, phenomenon, is merely taken up without any attempt to see what phenomenon originally means and in PHENOMENOLOGY truly means. Instead, the traditional concept of appearance, an empty verbal concept, is taken as a basis for criticizing the concrete labor of a research effort. It is unnecessary to go any further into this article, since nothing of relevance to our topic would be dredged up by such a critique and since it is in fact no great feat to criticize such an objection. It has to be mentioned, however, since Rickert in this essay gives voice to what is otherwise typical in philosophy and in its attitude toward PHENOMENOLOGY. I stress this not to save PHENOMENOLOGY but to make clear how such an interpretation not only deforms the sense of the phenomenological endeavor but above all loses the instinct for sticking to the topic in philosophizing. GA20EN §9

We now come to the third chapter of our introductory considerations of the sense and the task of phenomenological research. The account of the term PHENOMENOLOGY based upon the clarification of its principle and its three main discoveries has accomplished the task, set in the second chapter, of clarifying the sense of phenomenological research. In the first chapter, our topic was the origin and breakthrough of phenomenological research, and in the sec