Abstract
As transcendental on-looker attending to the essential demarcations of mental life in the transcendental natural attitude, I have now taken the first step in unbuilding reduction of the fully real, objective world to the primordial quasi-objective world (in the wide sense of the term “primordial”). At the same time, I also indicated the sorts of phenomenological affairs uncovered as peculiar to this “upper story” of oriented constituting.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink, p. 102.
See above, p. 61 for the wide sense of the term, “primordial.”
See Cairns, pp. 45f.
The manuscript is identified as “D 3,” p. 34; cited by Alwin Diemer, Edmund Husserl. Versuch einer systematischen Darstellung seiner Phänomenologie, p. 220, note 99.
Husserl, Ideen II, section 15b, p. 38.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 116.
For the Humean dimension of consciousness at issue here, see Aron Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” Studies, pp. 125ff.
See F. Kersten, “William James and Franz Brentano,” pp. 179f.
Husserl, Ideas, I, sections 85, 97. For a careful analysis of the distinctions mantioned here, see Rudolf Boehm, “Les ambiguités des concepts husserliens d’ ‘immanence’ et de ‘transcendence’,” pp. 482–526. See also Harmon Chapman, Sensations and Phenomenology, Chapters V and VII. Chapman notes, p. 150, that the term, “hyletic data,” has a much wider extension than the term, “sense data:” “‘Hyletic data’ embraces the sensory in general, including besides the traditional sensations such sensory impressions as those of pleasure, pain, tickling, kinaesthetic sensations, and the like, also such sensory occurances as impulses, feelings, and emotions in the sphere of the will.” However, the term also has a narrower signification, according to which hyletic data are sharply distinguished from other such data as listed by Chapman precisely because they can be animatingly construed as adumbrations of appearances of something physical—the same cannot be said, on Husserl’s view, of kinaesthesias, impulses, sensations of pleasure and pain. It is the narrower signification of the term, “hyletic data,” with which I deal here, and I believe that it is the basic one for Husserl. The whole question deserves a much longer study; see, in addition, Herman Asemissen, Strukturanalytische Probleme der Wahrnehmung in der Phänomenologie Husserls, section 4ff.; Karl Schuhman, Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie Zum Weltproblem in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls, pp. 156ff.; Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations. How Words Present Things, sections 49, 50.
Husserl, Ideas, I, p. 173.
Ibid., pp. 65, 172, 205. See also Husserl, “Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins,” sections 8, 42; and “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,” pp. 220ff.
Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, pp. 265ff.; see also Chapman, op. cit., Chapter VII; and Sartre, L’Etre et le néant, pp. 26f.
Gurwitsch, p. 269.
Husserl, Ideen, III, p. 14. (The translation is mine.) See also Ideas, I, section 36, p. 65; section 85, p. 172, where Husserl’s distinction between hyletic data and “strivings” [“Triebe”] is misleading because it tends to confuse, for example, the striving to actualize certain kinaesthetic processes with the processes themselves either actualized or to be actualized. The confusion results from what I believe is the mistaken idea that hyletic data are not only involved in doxic sensuous perceivings but also in non-doxic intentionalities as well, such as lovings, hatings, likings, dislikings, appreciaf’ings, approvings, and so forth. Accordingly, Husserl can speak, e.g., of sensations of pleasantness, of sensations of striving. By eventually setting aside as a logical construct Husserl’s idea of hyletic data, and by following instead the phenomenological procedures under discussion here, such “sensations” turn out to be non-existent. That is to say, there are no discoverable cases of hyletic data construed as adumbrations of “pleasant appearances” in and through which something liked is presented. Of course, to assert that there are no “sensations of pleasure” signifies that pleasure is rather a posited character and not a noematic determination. For a somewhat different translation of Husserl’s 1912 manuscript, see Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences, translated by Ted E. Klein and William E. Pohl, pp. 12f.
Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, p. 165. Mention must be made here of the earlier attempt of Sokolowski to untangle the various expressions of Husserl’s concept of hyletic data in The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution, pp. 51ff., 110ff., 139ff., 210ff. Sokolowski finds a revision of the concept of hyletic data in connection with the development of genetic phenomenology; with that, “sense data and noeses are no longer conceived as two distinct elements; they are now seen to be one immanent reality, one inner flow of consciousness” (p. 211). But this would seem to be Husserl’s view all along according to which the temporal form is the same for hyletic data and noeses; see above, p. 81. To proceed to say that hyletic data are now but one step in genetic constitution (p. 211) would signify, at the very least, that not all noeses and sense data are “one inner flow of consciousness” (hence they are still distinct from other noeses in other steps of genetic constitution). See also Chapman, op. cit., p. 152; Schuhmann, op. cit., pp. 128f., 77ff., and 77, note 3 where the concept of hyletic data is understood as a concept of relation, of the relation of hyle and noesis. The concept of hyletic data is introduced when we ask, not what something transcendent to consiousness is, but instead when we ask how it is constituted; thus Schuh-mann: “Aside from all noetic ‘formation and alteration’--to use Hegel’s phrase--hyle is just an ‘empty place,’ i.e., simply whatever you please. No preformation is derived from it that would only need be repeated, so to speak, by noetic production. Given hyle in and for itself is only the task of positing something or other transcendent. The noetic sense-bestowal effected on it is its determinedness according to independent interpretation” (p. 158). (The translation is mine.) Hyletic data serve, then, to present something transcendent which is real and mundane (pp. 159f.) and as the basis for noetic “interpretation.” It would seem as though Hume and Berkeley had finally joined hands across the Hegelian “empty place.” I am not certain that Schuhmann’s account answers Gurwitsch’s polemical point any better than Sokolowski’s.
See Gurwitsch, op. cit., pp. 114ff., 137ff., 271f.
Husserl, “Vorlesungen,” p. 367.
“Vorlesungen,” section 1, p. 370 (The translation is mine.) cf. English translation, p 44. See also p. 385 for examples of the “temporal content” such as a sound or tone with its “own temporality.” (English translation, pp. 43f.) —The whole issue involved here is complex; in other places in the lectures Husserl is consistent with the concept of hyletic data. Though he may, at times, seem to be unwitting about his concept, in the light of the polemics with respect to which he introduced the concept he was not uncritical. The concept of hyletic data often bothered him, and he seems to have been aware of the fact the account of the constituting of time should confirm or disconfirm what he says about hyletic data; see Ideas, I, pp. 162f.; also Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution, p. 140; Schuhmann, p. 77.
See Ideas, I, section 43; Erfahrung und Urteil, section 19.
: See below, Part II, Introduction, where these accounts will be formulated so as to establish a literary and historical framework for specific investigations of space and time. For general overviews, see Maurice Pradine, Philosophie de la sensation, I, pp. 78ff.; Werner Gent, Die Philosophie des Raumes und der Zeit, II, pp. 206ff.; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Part I, Chapters 1, 2; Part II, Chapter 2; and Heinrich Hofmann, “Untersuchungen über den Empfindungsbegriff,” pp. 37–50. The latter is especially important for the development of the phenomenological “analogue” to nineteenth and twentieth century theories of space perception.
Rudolph Hermann Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, oder Physiologie der Seele, section 30, pp. 358f., 367–368, and section 31, pp. 381f., 386f. (For a definitive statement some twenty years later, see Lotze’s appendix to Carl Stumpf, Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung, pp. 315f.) For a more recent version in this century of Lotze’s theory, modified to be sure, see Stephan Witasek, Grundlinien der Psychologie, pp. 171f., 201f. Hermann von Helmholtz, “Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung,” in Vorträge und Reden, pp. 223ff. Oswald Hering, “Der Raumsinn und die Bewegungen des Auges,” in Hermann’s Handbuch der Physiologie, pp. 343ff. Theodor Lipps, “Die Raumanschauung und die Augenbewegungen,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, III, pp. 124–171. John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, I, pp. 383ff. Alexander Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 183f., 366f.
See John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XIII, sections 2f., 22f.; George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Sections XLIV, CVXf., and A New Theory of Vision, Section XLVI; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, section 11. A significant discussion of these views is found in Harmon Chapman, op. cit., Chapter IV.
David Katz, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, sections 2f., 14f., 46ff.
Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., pp. 318f., 323; English translation, pp. 274ff., 278f.
Mill, op. cit., p. 282.
For this transformation of the Kantian set of problems, see Jules Vuillemin, Physique et Métaphysique Kantiennes, section 35f.
See in this connection, William James, Principles of Psychology, II, pp. 270f.; Stumpf, op. cit., pp. 57f.
For a characteristic expression of this view, see Lotze, op. cit., section 28, pp. 328f., section 31, pp. 378f.; Helmholtz, op. cit., p. 228.
See Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, pp. 52ff., 57ff., for an explanation of the sort of fallacy involved in the introduction of such supervenient factors. By rejecting such factors, we do nothing else than reaffirm the basis for rejecting the theory of hyletic data.
For a critical discussion of this view, see Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, III, Chapter Three.
Husserl, “Die Welt der lebendigen Gegenwart und die Konstitution der ausserleiblishen Umwelt,” pp. 339.; English translation, p. 248, col a.
Husserl, “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,” p. 28 (the translation is mine); “Welt der lebendigen Gegenwart und die Konstitution der ausserleiblichen Umwelt,” pp. 339.; English translation, p. 248.
Husserl, “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,” p. 28. Husserl develops this procedure in a number of “D” manuscripts; see for example, those published as Ding and Raum, pp. 309ff. However, Husserl would not seem to recognize the broad sense of the phrase, “setting kinaesthesia at zero.”
See Ding and Raum, p. 328. What I have been considering corresponds to what Husserl there distinguishes as the “second level” of visual space constitution.
See ibid., pp. 309f., 329f., 371f.
Claesges, Edmund Husserls Theorie der Raumkonstitution, p. 100 (the translation is mine). See also Schuhmann, op. cit., pp. 162ff.
See Gurwitsch, op. cit., pp. 71ff., 87ff.
Cf. Claesges, pp. 86f. To be sure, Claesges, pp. 133ff., does seek to reformulate the notion of hyletic data. In so far, he says, as the constituting of the physical thing is concerned, the hyletic datum is to be regarded as an “aspect Datum” [Aspektdatum]; it is, accordingly, treated noetically-noematically--that is, the datum is the noetic correlate of a sensuous intending to it, hence that on which the perceiving of the physical thing is founded. However, Claesges then goes on to say that the hyletic datum is also a “local Datum” [Stellungsdatum], that is, a datum in the “ideal system of loci pertaining to kinaesthe-sias” endowed with the character of sensation and having a role in the constituting of the organism and, therefore, he states, pertaining to the “noetic side of (kinaesthetic) consciousness” (p. 135)—a version of Husserl similar to that of Sokolowski and Schuhmann mentioned earlier where the hyletic datum is both a “content” transcendent to mental life and a “content” of mental life. But by what means is it decided that the datum is one or the other “content”? Or is the datum both at the same time? For a very similar dilemma in William James’s concept of “radical empiricism,” see F. Kersten, “Franz Brentano and William James,” loc. cit., pp. 186f.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kersten, F. (1989). Further Transcendental Procedures. In: Phenomenological Method: Theory and Practice. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2265-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2265-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7515-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2265-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive