Abstract
It is apparent from the course of our investigation so far that the words, “space” and “spaces,” are infected with an ambiguity of almost Pickwickian proportions. Indeed, the ambiguity would seem to be unavoidable for “space” (and “time,” as will be seen in later sections) in one meaning of the word, “space,” can be intended to and posited without intending to and positing existent, real individual physical things. However, in another meaning of the word, “space,” it cannot be intended to and posited without necessarily intending to and positing existent, real individual physical things. And these meanings of “space” have been ascertained by showing that constituting of the spatial aspect of the real, objective world includes constituting of many substrata in primary passivity which are foundations of the perception of the spatial aspect of the real, objective world. Therefore, if we understand by “space” (and “time”) prespatio-temporality, and by “existent, real individual physical things” identical sensa, then we may say that “space” (and “time”) can be intended to and posited without necessarily intending to and positing existent, real individual physical things because there is a clearly distinguishable substratum of space constitution “below” it (“prespace” in the narrower meaning of the term, “prespace”).
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Notes
See above, section 68.
Hedwig Conrad-Martius, “Realontologie,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, VI, section 72f.
Cf. Husserl, Mss. D13 I (1921), p. 15: “<If we discriminate [Abstrahieren] in the entire oculomotoric system all aspect Data, all> ‘stuff of perception,’ <then> we find the order of kinaesthetic sequences and ‘empty’ fields...empty space is constituted in this combination.” (The glosses are by Claesges, who cited this passage, Edmund Husserls Theorie der Raumkonstitution, p. 82. The translation is mine.)
Thus Husserl’s assertion in D 13 I, p. 20 (cited by Claesges, op. cit., p. 82): “Empty space is the potentiality of objects (phantoms).” “Empty ‘space’” is then no longer, as in 1907, when Husserl was arguing against Heinrich Hofmann, a phantasied space that can be filled out with phantoms and physical things.
See above, section 69.
For a general statement of the idea of apperception from Husserl’s middle period, see Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur Passiven Synthesis aus Vorlesungens- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926 pp. 336ff., especially p. 337, note 1.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, pp. 46, 47, 78, 79. For a later account of apperception in primary passivity, especially as it applies to the various elements of oriented constitution, see Husserl, “Die Welt der lebendigen Gegenwart und die Konstitution der Ausserleiblichen Umwelt,” pp. 337f. (English translation by Frederick A. Elliston and Lenore Langsdorf in Husserl: Shorter Works, pp. 247f.); Elmar Holenstein, Phänomenologie der Assoziation, section 26ff. Also see above, section 13.
See above, section 18ff.
Husserl, Ideen, Zweites Buch, section 18b., p. 64.
See Husserl, ibid., section 15ff.; and Ideas, First Book, section 150; Cartesian Meditations, section 61.
See above, pp. 70ff.; also the discussion of Becker’s “transcendental deduction,” pp. 342ff. What Becker says about the prespaces being “parts” of quasi-objective space and objective space would rather seem to apply to phantom and primordial spaces—though, to be sure, now in a quite altered meaning because it is no longer a question of the acquisition at a higher level of another dimension by the homogeneous spatial continuum. The term, “part,” is admittedly not the best term, but will serve for the moment.
See above, pp. 35ff., 39ff., See also F. Kersten, “Can Sartre Count?” pp. 345ff.
For more detailed discussion, see Aron Gurwitsch, “Perceptual Coherence as the Foundation of the Judgement of Predication,” pp. 78ff.; and Giuseppina Moneta, On Identity, A Study in Genetic Phenomenology, pp. 46ff.
See Husserl’s statement from the Prolegomena cited above, note 34 p. 387; see above, pp. 54, 87ff., where the difference between formal and material universals is stated.
See above, pp. 143f. See also Husserl, “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,” pp. 218ff.
David Katz, Die Erscheinungweisen der Farben, pp. 8f.
Ibid., p. 12.
See above, pp. 204ff.
See Wilhelm Schapp, Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung, pp. 86f.
Katz, op. cit., p. 13.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith, p. 311.
Schapp, pp. 78, 96f.
Ibid., p. 97, note 1.
See above, pp. 146f. for the constituting of “resistance” in visual prespace.
Schapp, p. 80.
Ibid., pp. 114, 116. The translation is mine. See also ibid., pp. 86f. for a different case of alteration of what is inherent in the presentation of physical thing.
Husserl, Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,” p. 218. The translation is mine.
Ibid.
Husserl, “Die Welt der lebendigen Gegenwart,” p. 337. English translation p. 247.
See Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, pp. 116f.: “As reflexively related to itself, my animate bodily organism (in my primordial sphere) has the central ‘Here’ as its mode of givenness; every other body, and accordingly the ‘other’s’ body, has the mode ‘There.’ This orientation, ‘There,’ can be freely changed by virtue of my kinaesthesias. Thus, in my primordial sphere, the one spatial ‘Nature’ is constituted throughout the change in orientations, and constituted moreover with an intentional relatedness to my animate organism as functioning perceptually. Now the fact that my bodily organism can be (and is) apprehended as a natural body existing and moveable in space like any other is manifestly connected with the possibility expressed in the words: By free modification of my kinaesthesias, particularly those of locomotion, I can change my position in such a manner that I convert any There into a Here—that is to say, I could occupy any spatial locus with my organism. This implies that, perceiving from there, I should see the same physical things, only in correspondingly different modes of appearance, such as pertain to my being there. It implies, then, that not only the systems of appearance that pertain to my current perceiving ‘from here’ but other quite determinate systems, corresponding to the change of position that puts me ‘there,’ belong constitutively to each physical thing. And the same in the case of every other There.’” The translation is by Dorion Cairns. Cf. also section 17. in addition, see Ideas, First Book, section 53, p. 103, and section 150, p. 315; Ideen, Zweites Buch, section 41a, pp. 158f.
See above, p. 238.
Alfred Schütz, “Husserl and the Social Sciences,” Edmund Husserl, 1859–1959 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959), pp. 95f.
See above, pp. 197ff., 259ff.; also David Katz, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, p. 255. See also the discussion by Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Dritter Teil: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis, p. 151.
See above, pp. 79ff., 108ff.; Katz, section 48, for a review of the various conceptions of the function of touch in perception in the history of philosophy and psychology.
See Katz, section 46, especially the remarks on Gelb and Goldstein and on Wittmann.
See above, pp. 179ff.; Katz, section 46.
Cassirer, p. 151.
Ibid. The translation is mine.
See above, sections 8, 24.
See Erwin Strauss, “The Upright Posture,” Psychiatric Quarterly, XXVI (1952). To be sure, the objectivation of the constituting of “upright posture” as an essentially necessary feature of the Notes (406–410) quasi-objective bodily organism pertains to a higher level of oriented constitution with respect to the phenomenon of expression that Strauss analyzes. At its most constitutively primitive, the upright posture is the secondarily constituted appearance of the full phantom organism “under circumstances.” Although important, it is not possible to examine this feature of constitution of the organism further here.
In contrast to the modes of original presentation of the quasi-objective phantom organism; see above, pp. 201ff.
See above, pp. 36f., 186f.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, section 18, p. 43. (The translation is slightly altered.)
See above, pp. 216ff., 226f.
See above, pp. 30f.
See Cartesian Meditations, section 61, pp. 141ff.
Ibid., p. 117. The emphasis is mine.
See above, pp. 145f.
“Private” or “inward” are words that therefore can only be employed in the second and never in the first person which, in turn, signifies that presupposed is an archontic belief that may be called a “life-conviction” (see F. Kersten, “The Life Concept and Life Conviction,” pp. 115f.) I do not, for example, speak to the piece of paper but rather to you, to what, for me, is not only transcendent to my mental life-processes but which is also presented immediately as private, as inward. On the basis of this assumptive life-conviction I perceive a piece of paper public as much for me as for you, a piece of paper public for us—a publicity that we share, that we have in common. I always address a privacy and never a public something, yet I can only address a privacy in public.
See Rene Toulemont, L’Essence de la Société selon Husserl, pp. 97ff., 311ff.; Aron Gurwitsch, Human Encounters in the Social World, sections 18, 21, 22, 29; and Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Zweiter Teil, pp. 505f.
Cf. Cartesian Meditations, section 35f.
See above, pp. 29ff.
This situation has been examined in much greater detail in F. Kersten, “The Constancy Hypothesis in the Social Sciences,” pp. 560ff.
Ibid.
See ibid., p. 561; and F. Kersten, “Loneliness and Solitude,” Humanitas, X (1974), pp. 305f. If not the first, Kulpe, Die Realisierung (Leipzig: Hirzel Verlag, 1920), II, pp. 191ff., was one of the first to call attention to the phenomenon of incompatibility by showing that the so-called argument by analogy for the “existence of other minds” is fallacious precisely because it smuggles in the fourth premise of compatibility. See also José Ortega y Gasset, El H ombre y la Genie, Chapter 6, pp. 152ff. for important supplementations to the analysis of the phenomenon of incompatibility especially with respect to the equally basic phenomenon of sexuality.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, section 42; the translation is by Dorion Cairns. See above, section 21.
Cf. Cartesian Meditations, section 44; see above, pp. 28f.
Ibid., section 42, p. 90. The translation is by Dorion Cairns.
See above, section 19, pp. 58ff.
See above, pp. 235ff. It should be added here that the expressions, “organism of my mental living,” or “organism of my mental life-processes,” or “physical component of a psychophysical thing,” and similar expressions, are admittedly ambiguous. No “mind-body” dualism is purported, however; the datum is, strictly, “consciousness of my organism,” a set of intendings to somatic states of various sorts.
See F. Kersten, “The Constancy Hypothesis in the Social Sciences,” pp. 561f.
See Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik, pp. 158ff. (English translation, pp. 139ff.); and Alfred Schütz, “The Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Husserl,” pp. 79ff.
Nor need one introduce another deus ex machina, the theory of the “organization of consciousness” such as found in Aron Gurwitsch, “An Apparent Paradox in Leibnizianism,” Social Research, 33 (1966), pp. 47ff.; see also Aron Gurwitsch, Leibniz. Philosophie des Panlogismus, pp. 450ff.
See above, p. 214. This is also the foundation for the (secondarily) constituted “milieu-worlds” of the real, objective world. See below, Chapter Nine.
Husserl, “Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature,” p. 224.
Ibid., p. 225.
Ibid., p. 227.
It is in this context that Husserl introduces a version of the Cartesian problem (above, p. 111): if space defines the real, what then is space--if earth defines motion, what then is earth neither in motion nor at rest? See “Foundational Investigations,” p. 225.
Husserl, p. 226.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 227; see above, pp. 261f.
Although we cannot develop it here, it must be noted that this is equally the intentive foundation for the constituting of “history;” see ibid., p. 230. In any case, it is in this constitutive setting that the distinction between physical thing-body and animate body-organism is fixed and consistent, stable, i.e., “substantive.” See Husserl, Ding und Raum, pp. 343ff.
Husserl, “Foundational Investigations,” pp. 227f.
Ibid., p. 227.
Husserl, “Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins,” section 1. (English translation, pp. 22f.) See above, sections 4, 9, 62.
Husserl, p. 368. The translation is mine. Cf. also ibid., pp. 373f.
Ibid., sections 1, 2. See above, sections 4, 53.
See above, sections 8, 24, 77.
Above, p. 250.
Husserl, sections 34, 36. In this connection, see also the study of Yvonne Picard, “Les temps chez Husserl et chez Heidegger,” Deucalion, I (1946), Part I. (A student of Jean Wahl, Picard was killed in a German concentration camp in 1941.) For a discussion of the polemic that lies behind the beginning of Husserl’s 1905 lectures, see the fragment of Henri Dussort’s Introduction to his translation of the lectures (Leçons pour une Phénoménologie de la Conscience Intime du Temps, pp. 185ff.) and the Introduction by Rudolf Boehm to Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseines (1893–1917), pp. XXXff.
See above, section 25, and the further remarks there on the 1905 lectures.
See above, p. 187; cf. Husserl, “Vorlesungen,” section 35, p. 329; section 39, pp. 436f.; Appendix VI, p. 465 (English translation, pp. 99, 108f., 149ff.) The intending previously protended to and subsequently retrotended to is precisely what is signified by the phrase, “living present.” See also Ideas, First Book, section 81, where Husserl describes the same thing as the stream or flow of mental life-processes as temporally extended and flowing in world-time; the account is somewhat misleading, however, because the non-genuine time of what is transcendent to mental living is not sharply distinguished from the genuine time of mental living itself.
Husserl, “Vorlesungen,” section 10. See also Aron Gurwitsch, “Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Pure Ego,” pp. 274ff.
See Gurwitsch, p. 277.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 43.
Ibid., section 39, p. 81.
See Husserl, Mss. C 3 II, p. 7; cited by Gerd Brand, Welt, Ich und Zeit, p. 75.
Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, section 96, pp. 238f. The translation is by Dorion Cairns, and I have added the emphasis. For what immediately follows, see Ideas, First Book, section 81, and Experience and Judgement, sections 42, a, and 64, c.
Thus Aron Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” p. 137. See above, pp. 187ff. and the discussion of the constituting of the temporal determination, “as-present.”
Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 241. The translation is by Dorion Cairns.
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 147. The translation is by Dorion Cairns.
See Husserl, Nachwort zu meinen “Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie,” p. 562: I find myself “as transcendental Ego-self, concrete in my own transcendental conscious living” and this signifies that transcendental “fellow subjects become legitimated in my <own> transcendental living within a transcendental community of a plurality of <transcendental> subjects [Wirgemeinschaft] which is likewise legitimated <in my own transcendental living>. Transcendental intersubjectivity <in the natural attitude> is accordingly that transcendental intersubjectivity in which the real world, as Objective, as <the real world> for ‘everyone,’ becomes constituted.” The translation is mine, and the glosses express what Husserl says before and after this passage. See also Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 248.
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Kersten, F. (1989). The Transcendental Phenomenological Building-Up of Primordial Quasi-Objective Space. The Transcendental Phenomenological “Deduction” of Time. In: Phenomenological Method: Theory and Practice. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2265-5_8
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