Abstract
Husserl often discusses the thetic component of consciousness, the features of consciousness that distinguish different kinds of acts, for example acts of perceiving, acts of remembering, acts of imagining, etc. In particular, Husserl was interested in the difference between acts where we experience things as real and acts in which what we experience has a different status, for example, is experienced as merely imagined or dreamt1.
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References
In the Crisis Husserl emphasizes the importance of this topic: “The first breakthrough of this universal a priori of correlation between experienced object and manners of givenness (which occurred during work on my Logical Investigations around 1898) affected me so deeply that my whole subsequent life-work has been dominated by the task of systematically elaborating on this a priori of correlation.” Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie and phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana,1II.1,305.8–15 = p. 274 of the original edition = p. 317 of Carr’s translation.
In the Ideas Husserl writes: “In the Logische Untersuchungen they [the posited moments] were (under the title `quality’) taken into the concept of sense (of significational essence) and therefore in this unity the two components, `matter’ (sense, in the present conception) and quality, were distinguished. [Here Husserl refers in a footnote to Logische Untersuchungen,V, §§ 20–21, Findlay’s English translation, pp. 586–593.] But it seems more suitable to define the term `sense’ as merely that `matter’ and then to designate the unity of sense and thetic character as `positum’ [Satz].” Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie and phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana,I1L1,305.8–15 = p. 274 of the original edition = p. 317 of Kersten’s translation, which 1 have slightly amended.
A discussion of the determinable X may be found in my article “Bolzano, Frege and Husserl on Reference and Object,” in Juliet Floyd and Sanford Shieh (eds.), Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, pp. 67–80.
To answer these questions I shall look for the ultimate source which feeds the general positing of the world effected by me in the natural attitude, the source which, therefore, makes it possible that I consciously find a factually existing world of physical things confronting me and that I can ascribe to myself in this world and am able to assign myself a place there. Obviously, this ultimate source is sensuous experience. For our purposes, however, it will be sufficient if we consider sensuous perception….’
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana, II1.1,80.33–81.1 = p. 70 of the original edition = p. 82 of Kersten’s translation.
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Ch. XXI, Vol. 2. Page 930 of the Harvard edition, 1983.
The general positing… does not consist of a particular act,perchance an articulated judgment about existence. It is, after all, something that lasts continuously throughout the whole duration of the attitude, i.e., throughout natural waking life.… in short, everything which is, before any thinking, an object of experiential consciousness… bears… the characteristic “there,” “on hand; “ and it is essentially possible to base on this characteristic an explicit (predicative) judgment of existence agreeing with it. If we state such a judgment, we nevertheless know that in it we have only made thematic and conceived as a predicate what already was somehow inherent, as unthematic, unthought, unpredicated, in the original experiencing or, correlatively, in the experienced, as the characteristic of something “on hand.” I
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana, III.1,62.1–17 = p. 53 of the original edition = p. 57–58 of Kersten’s translation.
Michael Polanyi (1958) and a wealth of later studies, by Rolf, Wetterstein, and numerous others.
Thus alone can that ultimate understanding of the world be attained, behind which, since it is ultimate, there is nothing more that can be sensefully inquired for, nothing more to understand 2.
The existence of the world is, according to Husserl, indubitable. He writes: the lifeworld, for us who wakingly live in it, is always there, existing in advance for us, the “ground” of all praxis, whether theoretical or extratheoretical. The world is pregiven to us, the waking, always somehow practically interested subjects, not occasionally but always and necessarily as the universal field of all actual and possible praxis, as horizon. To live is always to live-in-certainty-of-the-world.
For more on this, see my article “Husserl on evidence and justification” (F011esdal, 1988).
Formale und transzendentale Logik, § 96b, Husserliana XV11,249.18–20 = Cairn’s translation, p. 242.
Krisis, § 37, Husserliana VI, 145.24–32 = Carr’s translation, p.142.
Phenomenological idealism does not deny the factual [wirklich] existence of the real [real] world (and in the first instance nature) as if it deemed it an illusion… Its only task and accomplishment is to clarify the sense [Sinn] of this world, just that sense in which we all regard it as really existing and as really valid. That the world exists… is quite indubitable. Another matter is to understand this indubitability which is the basis for life and science and clarify the basis for its claim’.
Letter quoted in Iso Kern (1964, p. 276, n.).
Husserl, Preface to the Gibson’s translation of Ideas, Allen Unwin, London, 1931. Here from the German version in Husserliana, V,152.32–153.5, my translation.
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana,I11.1,60.16–18 and 24–26, and 61.15–18 = p. 52 of the original edition = p. 55–57 of Kersten’s translation.
See my “The Lebenswelt in Husserl” (Ft llesdal, 1990).
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana,II1.1,60.16–18 and 24–26, and 61.15–18 = p. 234 of the original edition = p. 270 of Kersten’s translation, slightly amended.
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Husserliana,1I1.1,267.5–10 = p. 239–240 of the original edition = p. 277 of Kersten’s translation, slightly amended.
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Føllesdal, D. (2003). The Thetic Role of Consciousness. In: Husserl’s Logical Investigations Reconsidered. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 48. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0207-2_2
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