Abstract
We have so far avoided any reference to the being of the ideal. But without a discussion of this point, the considerations of our last chapter lack a certain measure of intelligibility. We shall accordingly focus on two issues and then relate the results of our inquiry to our previous discussion. The issues before us are, first, Husserl’s argument for positing the ideal as a distinct region of being and, second, his discussion of the nature of the ideal considered as it is in itself. A grounded discussion of these issues requires a necessary propaedeutic. A mention must be made of Husserl’s doctrine of sense and reference. The doctrine is crucial for understanding the way in which the ideal can be considered to describe a region of being.
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Notes to Chapter V: ‘Subjective Accomplishment: Intentionality as Ontological Transcendence’
This concept is extensively developed in the 1st edition, then largely omitted in the second. Accordingly, most of our references are to the 1st or Halle edition.
This position is the reverse of the 2nd edition’s. The latter asserts that causal relations (as expressed in natural laws) do not pertain to the a priori of nature. In other words, they express only contingent truths, not truths grounded in the essence of an enduring entity. See LU,Tüb. ed., II/1, 290; F., p. 468.
Cf. LU,Tüb. ed., II/1, 16; F., pp. 259–60. The 2nd edition frequently substitutes reelen for the 1st edition’s actuellen.
See also LU,Tüb. ed., II/1, 75; F., p. 310. It is to be noted that the sentence in the 2nd edition that follows the passage quoted in our text is not in the 1st edition. The abstraction from the question of the reality of the perceived object pertains to the later doctrine of the phenomenological epoché.
The 2nd edition substitutes Sein for Dasein. See LU,Tüb. ed., II/1, 382; F., p. 565. See also LU,Halle ed., II, 707.
What this means is that the subject-object relation is the relation of the subject to the sense of the object. The epistemological transcendence of the object is not by virtue of the object’s real being, but by virtue of its ideal sense. This, we may observe, does not mean that the subject has a relation to one type of being through another, i.e., to a real being through the “ideal being” of its sense. As Husserl’s whole doctrine of sense and reference is designed to show, sense qua sense is other than being; it is itself (or pretends to be) what being manifests when it is epistemologically present.
I am indebted to Professor Morrison in Toronto for the above formulation.
This inconsistency results in the 1st edition’s rather curious treatment of the subject or ego. To consider it as an object is to consider it as a “founded” unity involving both formal and causal dependencies of content. Under this conception, the ego is a “bundle” of shifting acts and experiences. The fact that an ego has a relation to an object is explained by saying that “chrw(133) intentional experiences also belong to the complex of experienceschrw(133)” (LU,Halle ed., II, 342). As Husserl admits, this conception of the ego as a “bundle” does not tally with the evidence of “natural reflection.” In the latter, what appears is “chrw(133) not the individual act but the ego as a single point of relationshipchrw(133)” The ego appears to relate to its object by proceeding “through” its act experiences. One is thus led “chrw(133) to posit the ego as the essential point of unity, one which in every act is everywhere identical” (Ibid.,Il, 355). If one accepts this, then the ego, as we quoted Natorp, “cannot be a content,” for it remains the same throughout the shifting contents of act experiences. Husserl’s rather surprising response to this is to inpugn the authority of natural reflection. When we perform an act of inner perception, “chrw(133) the original act [which is the object of the new act] is no longer simply there, we no longer live in it, but rather attend it and judge it.” What this means is that “chrw(133) an essential descriptive change has occurred” (Ibid., II, 357). Husserl’s point on this and the preceding page seems to be that the notion of the ego as an unchanging center of relations does not correspond to a reality, but is rather an inevitable result of the objectifying interpretation that is inherent in perception. This doctrine, it is to be noted, ill accords with Husserl’s statements that perception, even in the case of reflection on the ego, is a source of adequate evidence. See, e.g., Ibid., II, 335. In summing this situation up, we can say that faced with the evidence that the ego is not an object, Husserl chooses to ignore this in favor of his ontological equation of being and object.
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Mensch, J.R. (1981). The Being of the Ideal. In: The Question of Being in Husserl’s Logical Investigations . Phaenomenologica, vol 81. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3446-2_5
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