Abstract
In this chapter, we wish to discuss the basic orientation and methodological commitments of Conrad-Martius. It was characteristic of the Munich and Göttingen Circles to spend little time or space on methodological and hermeneutical considerations.
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- 1.
At the beginning of the second volume of Logical Investigations one finds the famous statement: “Wir wollen auf ‘die Sachen selbst’ zurückgehen” (Husserl 1984a, p. 10).
- 2.
Avé-Lallemant’s unpublished Habilitationsschrift, Phänomenologie und Realität (Avé-Lallemant 1971) discusses her method at length. The dissertations of Conrad-Martius’ other students, Franz Georg Schmücker (1926–2018) and Wolfgang Behler (1927–2007) also detail her method and relationship to the phenomenological movement. See Schmücker’s Phänomenologie als Methode der Wesenserkenntnis (Schmücker 1956) and Behler’s Realität und Ek-sistenz (Behler 1956). In a letter to Herbert Spiegelberg from 1954, Conrad-Martius mentions two additional doctoral students: Lange, writing on “Die Augustinische Zeit,” and Schäfer, who was writing on “Theaterphänomenologie” in the Husserlian sense (Ana 387 E.II Briefe von H. Conrad-Martius 12.VIII. 1954). As a student of Pfänder, Spiegelberg’s own writings, such as Alexander Pfänders Phänomenologie (Spiegelberg 1963), are important for understanding the Munich and Göttingen Circles. Finally, for a brief discussion that stays close to the Munich and Göttingen Circles and early Husserl, see Richard Schmitt’s “Phenomenology” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Schmitt 1967).
- 3.
Hereafter referred to as Ideas I.
- 4.
Husserl 1976, p. 45.
- 5.
- 6.
This work was originally intended to be an expansion of the Preisschrift. Pages 345–396 are a reworking of the 1912 text. However, this plan was changed, and the work continued, not according to the five divisions of the earlier work, but only in connection with its general themes, now treated from a new standpoint (see Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 396). I owe this illumination of the text to Avé-Lallemant. From here on we shall refer to this work as Erscheinungslehre.
- 7.
Conrad-Martius 1916, pp. 407–408 The term “shut down” here refers to an earlier analysis where Conrad-Martius attempted to give a kind or legitimacy to the pure or “typical” sense-datum experience where the person in absolute distancelessness from the given and in an attitude of passive relaxation immediately experiences the sense-data alone. Here the I is “loosened” from the world, i.e., “shut-down” and completely turned within. See Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 404. For the mature formulation of spirit’s being-in-the-world, see the following chapter.
- 8.
See Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 398.
- 9.
We could compare this with William James’ concept of the “fringe” (cf. James 1958, p. 71).
- 10.
We are drawing upon a synthesis of the earlier more elaborate discussions that are found in Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 315–334.
- 11.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 318. Husserl compares the having of the backside of a thing (e.g., a cabinet) with the mediate intentionality (which he calls a kind of “appresentation”) of another person in the original perception of the body. The act is a making-present-along-with [Mitgegenwärtigmachen] (Husserl 1973a, p. 139). In another place he notes that the other side—as well as the other ego—is meant-along-with [mitgemeint] (Husserl 1973a, p. 85).
- 12.
Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 236.
- 13.
On the other hand, Conrad-Martius’ critique of Merleau-Ponty would center on his reduction of the realm of essences to an existential attempt to deal with facticity. Surely the truth and import of his phenomenology (essence-analysis) of perception is more than that. Relevant texts showing Merleau-Ponty’s attitude towards “Wesensschau” are in Merleau-Ponty 1945, pp. ix–xi, 235–237, 452–454.
- 14.
Conrad-Martius often used the term “phenomenological experiment” to designate a free imaginative variation of the thing to be studied in order to grasp its properties. Thus, as we shall see, it is related to the “eidetic reduction” and “ideation.” In the immediate context, the “experiment” is to imagine what it is like to be completely shutdown, e.g., completely passive, sunken in ourselves, half-awake, with our eyes open, but merely gaping.
- 15.
Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 408ff; 1965, pp. 320–321. Cf. Heidegger 1963, p. 148ff. Conrad-Martius makes reference here to Jaspers 1946, p. 143. We shall have repeated occasion to note how the natural sciences have a kind of spiritual blindness which shuts out the full appearance of nature. The theme of idea-blindness is prevalent in phenomenological literature. Husserl wrote: “Idea-blindness is a kind of blindness of the soul: one becomes, through prejudices, incapable of bringing into the field of judgment what he has in the field of intuition” (Husserl 1976, p. 48). This is a crucial distinction. If idea-blindness within the realm of essence intuition was a general cultural possibility it is hard to see how phenomenology would have a case. Thus, phenomenology must hold that its analyses are potentially public and generally accessible. It must make the claim that those who non-pathologically hold explicit positions which work against the manifested essential realities experience “in the field of intuition” these essences in an implicit, unthematic way. Essence intuition will be discussed in the following section.
- 16.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 319. This whole discussion finds illuminating parallels (and, of course, differences) in William James’ placing of the “thickness of experience” (James 1958, pp. 250–251, 261, 280) against a “vicious intellectualism,” and Alfred North Whitehead’s exposure of “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” through the distinctions of “causal efficacy” and “presentational immediacy” (Whitehead 1978, pp. 198–204).
- 17.
- 18.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 333.
- 19.
Conrad-Martius 1923, p. 196.
- 20.
Eddington 1929, pp. ix–xvii.
- 21.
Conrad-Martius 1923.
- 22.
Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 409.
- 23.
The sensibly appearing for Conrad-Martius refers properly to the regions of seeing and hearing. The other sense regions are analyzed by her, but this would take us too far afield.
- 24.
In the Erscheinungslehre as well as in the Realontologie there are lengthy studies of the imagined or dreamed objects [Vorstellungen] over against the perceived. It is an especially important weapon for the attack on the neo-Humeanism which still defended, in essence, Hume’s distinction between ideas and impressions.
- 25.
There is an important sense in which, however, the sensible things lie in wait for our attending to them. They are not illuminated until our “attending ray” illuminates them. This we shall discuss later in the context of Conrad-Martius’ phenomenology of light. Here the emphasis is that the sensible appearing, in contrast to the imagined fictum, announces itself from out of itself, whereas the latter is totally rooted in my attending to it.
- 26.
Although Conrad-Martius speaks in this connection of an autonomy of existence, it is always in the context of an eidetic analysis and is not a confrontation with the critical question. As we shall see, the eidetic reduction as well as her own version of the transcendental reduction is always presupposed in her discussions of the structures or that which shows itself as real. See Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 413ff and our later discussion of the reduction in the present chapter.
- 27.
Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 414.
- 28.
Conrad-Martius 1916, pp. 415–417. The notion of “bodiliness” as used here will be discussed in a later chapter when we consider “substance.” In Husserlian terms, one is no longer in the attitude of as-if it were so.
- 29.
Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 418ff. To work out fully the mode of givenness of the sensibly appearing one would have to compare the kinds of relationships tactile feelings, smells, tastes and the properly “sensibly appearing” (i.e., to our vision and hearing) have to the field of perception. Furthermore, one would have to consider the various levels of intimacy each of these have with respect to the I. The important distinguishing note of the felt-tactile datum, that it, as such, is not objective expression, but rather is bound to the perceiver’s sense of touch, would also have to be treated. See Conrad-Martius 1916, pp. 426–461.
- 30.
Though in both color and sound there is an othering which abides affixed to its source they can be essentially distinguished in the manner of announcing. See the following discussion.
- 31.
Conrad-Martius 1916, pp. 472–473.
- 32.
Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 476. The rainbow presents an important exception in the realm of vision in that it has pure “spectral color”; pure color manifestation (quale color) is the “specific substance” of the appearing “object”—which is only a color appearance.
- 33.
See Conrad-Martius 1923, pp. 286–289. It is clear that Conrad-Martius is considering only the region of natural things in this discussion. If the region were works of music rather than the sound quality of things, important distinctions would have to be made.
- 34.
Merleau-Ponty 1945, pp. 368–369. As Merleau-Ponty suggests in a footnote, Conrad-Martius’ analyses in the Realontologie are a contribution to the phenomenology of religion.
- 35.
These particular questions, e.g., of heat and flames, are discussed only in the Realontologie but the thesis is present in all of Conrad-Martius’ writings.
- 36.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 299.
- 37.
The argument runs as follows: Empirical laws, e.g., of the natural sciences, are known only through induction from individual facts. But induction grounds not the validity of the law, but only the more or less probable character of this validity; what is clearly justified is the probability and not the law. But nothing is more evident than that the purely logical laws are a priori valid—and not through induction but through an apodictic evidence do they obtain their justification. Cf. Husserl 1975, pp. 73–74.
- 38.
Stein 1960, p. 63.
- 39.
Husserl 1976, p. 6.
- 40.
Conrad-Martius 1957, p. 59.
- 41.
The Munich and Göttingen Circles, as we shall see, were not comfortable with Husserl’s transcendental reduction and the bracketing of existence that it entailed. In Phänomenologie und Realität, Avé-Lallemant has uncovered an interesting historical discussion that parallels Conrad-Martius’ 1959 distinction between epoché and reduction, and which was warmly greeted by Pfänder. The discussion is found in Theodor Celms’ Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls (Celms 1928). In this work, Celms makes the point that the epoché is justified only insofar as it remains this side of the idealism-realism question. The (transcendental) reduction, on the other hand, goes against this epoché because it entails a judgement about real being, even though it be a negative one. Real being is now referred only to consciousness.
- 42.
See her Foreword to Reinach’s Marburg lecture Was ist Phaenomenologie? (Reinach 1951, p. 6). Reinach was for Conrad-Martius the paradigm phenomenologist. Husserl esteemed him greatly but complained that Reinach had lodged himself in the realist interpretation of phenomenology that can be read out of the first edition of the Logical Investigations and misled the Göttingen Husserl students from the path of authentic phenomenology, i.e., transcendental phenomenology. For an account of this see Avé-Lallemant 1971.
- 43.
Husserl 1987, p. 56.
- 44.
Husserl 1976, p. 13.
- 45.
Husserl 1976, p. 51. Although we have today good reason to hold that this “intuitive acquaintance with F-ness” is bound to the ability to use the word F, for early phenomenology the intuitive grasp of the What-ness was more than this mere ability. We shall return to this consideration soon. Conrad-Martius never treated at length the difficulties of these basic theses. Similarly, there is in her writings no treatment of evidence and the filling of intentionality. As we noted, the Munich and Göttingen Circles felt they were freed to do essence-analysis on the basis of Husserl’s Logical Investigations.
- 46.
The “anamnesis” theme occurs in Conrad-Martius’ writings whenever she discusses intellect as the pre-grasp of objective-logos. See Conrad-Martius 1965. This is not a vicious circularity or crude anamnesis because it is a movement from potential meaning to actual meaning. See also her commentary on Plato in Conrad-Martius 1954, pp. 113–114. In the present context, the familiarity derives from experience; we do not know the matter explicitly, but we do know it “practically” or implicitly.
- 47.
Reinach 1951, p. 25.
- 48.
- 49.
See Reinach 1921, p. vii. See also our later discussion of the kosmos noetos.
- 50.
Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 351.
- 51.
The activity of making visible the essence of the phenomenon in its showing of itself is a way of recovering the primordial movement of the entire cosmos. As we shall see, for Conrad-Martius, the entire cosmos is envisaged as an ecstatic othering of itself from out of its own constituting ground. The cosmos is physis and phenomenology retrieves this basic motion. Thus, for Conrad-Martius one might say that phenomenology is reflexive cosmology.
- 52.
Conrad-Martius 1916, p. 353.
- 53.
See Hering 1921, pp. 497–503. Conrad-Martius considered this essay one of the most fundamental studies of the phenomenological movement. She considered it a presupposition for her own realontological study of essence, idea, eidos, and the kosmos noétos. See Conrad-Martius 1957, p. 48. We shall pursue Hering’s distinctions in subsequent sections of this chapter. There we shall attempt to clarify the relationship between essence and “universal ideas.”
- 54.
See Schmitt 1967, pp. 141–144. It is curious that Schmitt considers the eidetic reduction to be the phenomenological reduction. Although this represents the interests of early phenomenology it is also clear that Husserl’s later phenomenological reduction is quite different from the eidetic reduction.
- 55.
We can here note that Conrad-Martius’ frequent use of a “phenomenological experiment” is just another aspect of ideation.
- 56.
See Husserl 1976, p. 346, as well as §§142–144.
- 57.
Husserl 1976, p. 148. It is important to note that in ideation the fictional as-if is not fictitiously as-if-it-were-essential.
- 58.
See Reinach 1951, p. 53 and Husserl 1984b, p. 722. A distinction seems in order here. The fantasy is free to “walk around” in the spaces of possibility, both past and future, and thus is not bound to the actually perceived or particular memories. But the “legal space” of various essences is available for the phenomenologist only through actual perceptions and the memory of them. “In some sense” this is perhaps true for all essences, even e.g., mathematical objects. But this is an old question which we cannot pursue here.
- 59.
Husserl 1976, pp. 36–37.
- 60.
- 61.
Husserl has well expressed the initial situation of the language philosopher and the phenomenologist: “What is initially given is surrounded with a fringe of indeterminate particularities which have a way of bringing one closer to the thing through the results of the imaginative attempt to bring the object to givenness. We are initially in darkness, but then the object enters the realm of givenness and finally it comes forth encircled luminously with perfect givenness. […] It is as if (in the single average case) the most general, the genus (color as such, sound as such) were fully given but not yet the difference. That is offensive talk but I do not know how to avoid it” (Husserl 1976, p. 145).
- 62.
Reinach 1951, p. 12.
- 63.
Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 408–409.
- 64.
- 65.
- 66.
Hering 1921, p. 503.
- 67.
Hering 1921, pp. 502–503.
- 68.
Plessner 1959, pp. 34–35 makes an interesting point in this connection. He believes that an important motivation for Husserl’s specification of the field of phenomenological research to the realm of pure consciousness was to protect phenomenology from a capricious, euphoric examination of just any theme (i.e., Bilderbuchphänomenologie). In order that phenomenology not be burdened with the reproach that it has not yet investigated the essence of dirt, Husserl sought to turn phenomenological research to a radical, comprehending region.
- 69.
The notion of a “state of affairs” will be discussed in the next chapter.
- 70.
Hering 1921, p. 499.
- 71.
Hering 1921, p. 496.
- 72.
Hering 1921, pp. 504–505, 530–531. Note that ideas, properly speaking, are the mind’s objectification or ideation of an object. They are not timeless and immutable as such. They cease to exist when someone ceases to objectify or ideate. The same cannot be said of the eide, however, which we shall soon study.
- 73.
Hering feels that in Metaphysics Z, Ch. 1, Aristotle made the decisive distinction between the poion and the ti, from the being-so to the so itself. In the immediately following pages we hope to present an accurate transcription of Hering’s argument, the substance of which is found in Hering 1921, pp. 505–511.
- 74.
Hering 1921, pp. 506–507.
- 75.
Cf. our earlier distinction between the case of when the object is warm and when the object is a man.
- 76.
Hering 1921, p. 508.
- 77.
This we take to be the sense of the above claim that the whatness is the phenomenal basis for talk about being-what, etc.
- 78.
Essence has its phenomenal basis in the ineluctable presence of whatever object as…. Whatness has its distinctive meaning for Hering in answer to the question: What makes up or founds the what of this object. It has its phenomenal basis in the consideration that we cannot think of the object’s essential meaning without its whatness. The basic point seems to be that essence must be constituted in something (Morphé) other than itself. Why this is so is not clear to me, but it is important for Hering’s discussion of the eidé.
- 79.
Hering 1921, pp. 510–511.
- 80.
Conrad-Martius 1957, p. 60.
- 81.
Hering 1921, p. 510.
- 82.
Hering’s essay is deserving of a more thorough study than we can give it here. The most problematic move begins in the question: What constitutes (macht…aus) the what of an individual which we call a horse? What is the sense of ausmachen here? How does it make up or constitute the essence? Is this causal language? If so, what kind? One wants to ask whether this question arises out of eidetic interests, i.e., a Wesensschau context. How can “horseness” be an answer in the same sense (which sense seems legitimate to us) as the essence of essence-core is the answer to the question, what constitutes the unique properties of this object? Throughout the essay Hering does not want to offend the feeling for the ordinary language usage. That is, it is often a phenomenological criterion. When does it cease to be a criterion for his analyses? Certainly, horseness is not familiar to most ears. And in as much as this consideration of the whatness is crucial for the theme of the eidé we must here express our hesitation about the whole project or theme of the kosmos noétos. These issues are also interesting in connection with Husserl’s notion of “eidetic singularities” (Husserl 1976, pp. 33–107) and his later discussions of the unique uniqueness of what “I” refers to (see, for example, Husserl 2002, pp. 261–262). Cf. also Ch. V: Ontology and Meontology of I-ness, of my Who One Is, Book 1 (Hart 2009, pp. 269–344). For a contrast with Conrad-Martius, see my “The Dignity of the Individual in the Polis and Kosmos” (Hart 2008b).
- 83.
Hering 1921, p. 528.
- 84.
Peter’s not being able to laugh does not necessarily imply that Peter is no longer a person. The basic capacities can be hindered. In this case their realization is not in evidence, but the being can still have the capacity, still be a human person. See Conrad-Martius 1957, pp. 50–51. This was not only a metaphysical question for Conrad-Martius. She devoted a book to the ethical and ideological questions surrounding the utopias of a pure race of men. See Conrad-Martius 1955.
- 85.
See Conrad-Martius 1957, pp. 49–56.
- 86.
This reference to a spatial-temporal structure could be likewise said of a “universal idea” as “man”; here, the indefiniteness is merely more conspicuous. See below.
- 87.
Hering does not explicitly draw this conclusion but it seems to be the only possible one to his discussion. See Hering 1921, p. 530.
- 88.
We have seen another example of this in the case of Peter, who is not able to laugh, who is nevertheless a realization of the eidos “man” and whose essential idea is of a being who can laugh.
- 89.
Hering 1921, pp. 530–531. Note that even though there can be no concrete realization of the universal idea because of the indefiniteness, there is nevertheless an indefinite reference to the concrete spatial-temporal-individuation. This is not the case with the eidos, as we have seen.
- 90.
Here, again, we must confess that this is puzzling to us. How does a more universal category make the existence of something understandable? We must here also suggest that the discussion seems to move in a realm of causes or intelligible relations which are not adequately accounted for.
- 91.
Hering 1921, p. 531.
- 92.
This is not developed in Hering’s text, but one can think quite readily of the distinction between the a priori structures in the essence of Napoleon, promising, etc., on the one hand, and artefacts as ink blotters, ash trays, earrings, etc. on the other.
- 93.
- 94.
Hering 1921, p. 517.
- 95.
Hering 1921, pp. 517–518.
- 96.
Hering 1921, p. 518.
- 97.
Hering 1921, p. 518.
- 98.
Hering 1921, p. 524.
- 99.
See Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 335–356, 403–420.
- 100.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 338. We have in English the spatial expression for knowing, in particular, for recollecting, a name or a face: “I cannot place him,” or “I cannot place his face.” The image is of ourselves in possession of a tableau of acquaintances upon which each has his place, and each is known only in so far as he is in his place. Already in the early Husserl we find this geographical or topological theme of meaning in terms of regions, areas, horizons, promised lands, etc.
- 101.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 411. See also Conrad-Martius 1957, pp. 79–86. The conclusion (here in the next paragraph) which asserts that Conrad-Martius employs (efficient) causality as the primary explanatory move is wrong. Clearly, she uses a sense of objective meaning-relations in terms of founded and founding. Constitution of meaning is what needs to be focused on, both in terms of ontological issues of extension, the logic of predication, and founding moments in the constitution of an object, as well in terms of mind’s agency of manifestation, and how it transcendentally informs these discussions and how it analogously relates to the ontological senses of constitution. Robert Sokolowski’s Presence and Absence (Sokolowski 1978), offers important suggestions for Conrad-Martius’ aspiration to integrate ontological and transcendental phenomenology and metaphysics. See Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 393–402. Georg Siegmund’s critical remarks on Conrad-Martius (Siegmund 1947) also raise the issue of the causality of Ideas I in relation to her basic theme of “entelechy” (see below), which is a topic of fundamental importance also for Siegmund. This dissertation unfortunately overlooked Siegmund’s discussions (which themselves ignore Hering’s analyses).
- 102.
See Waldenfels 1975. Waldenfels’ remarks are directed especially at the early Scheler (of the Formalismus). A rounded view of Scheler would have to consider his writings on the sociology of knowledge and his critique of pragmatism.
- 103.
See Conrad-Martius 1957, p. 85.
- 104.
Conrad-Martius 1957, p. 87.
- 105.
See Husserl 1973a, pp. 61–63.
- 106.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 349. On the other hand, one can begin from the standpoint of the reality-cosmos and inquire how it relates to the “existing” essence-cosmos. The kosmos noétos has not only its essence but its being—its own kind of being. For Conrad-Martius the kosmos noétos is a Seinssinnkosmos. There is an immanent ontological moment and a very real sense of being in the world of ideal meanings. This we shall consider at the beginning of the next chapter. We shall see that in this consideration we do not proceed from the kosmos noétos and order the reality-cosmos within it. Rather, here the reality-cosmos serves as the paradigm for establishing the analogy of being which comprises the kosmos noétos. Here it is a matter of studying the inner ontological moment of the ideal regions from the standpoint of the reality region. See Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 359, and Conrad-Martius 1957, pp. 15–88. Again, we shall see all of these points at the beginning of the next chapter. See also Hart 2008b, pp. 36–41, and Hart 2008a.
- 107.
Cf. Hering 1925, p. 53.
- 108.
Husserl 1976, pp. 120–121.
- 109.
- 110.
Husserl 1976, p. 104. Immanence here has reference to the manner of givenness. Here it is apodictic evidence that is meant. For a clearer account of Husserl’s use of the immanent-transcendence expressions, see Husserl 1958, p. 35. As we have mentioned, the transcendental reduction is bound up with Husserl’s (life-long) pursuit of philosophy as a strict science with a fundamentum inconcussum. For Conrad-Martius philosophy (both what she understood as ontology and metaphysics) was not founded in a notion of apodicticity but in the carefulness and coherence of the various essence analyses. Husserl confessed to Ingarden that he was alienated by Conrad-Martius’ “neue Schrift” (presumably her Metaphysische Gespräche (Conrad-Martius 1921)) and says that she was never really [eigentlich] his student and had rejected the spirit of philosophy as a strict science. In the same letter, Pfänder, Geiger, and Stein do not come out very well, and in later letters it is clear that Scheler is not really a phenomenologist and that Ingarden himself is not following the right path. See Husserl 1968, pp. 23–24. Cf. Avé-Lallemant 1971 for a thorough discussion of the attitudes of Husserl towards his students and the students towards the Master.
- 111.
This is the focus of her unpublished essay “Über Ontologie.” See also Conrad-Martius 1963, pp. 19–22.
- 112.
Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 396–397. In her Introduction to Reinach’s Gesammelte Schriften, she cites a text of Reinach’s as an essential phenomenological position: “States of affairs cannot be present to us other than as acts of knowledge, and on the other hand only states of affairs can be known” (Reinach 1921, x). As clear as this statement is about the legitimacy of the theme of constitution, Conrad-Martius herself never undertook any analyses of it as such.
- 113.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 397. This dissertation neglected a study of Conrad-Martius’ late claim for the harmony or symmetry of a transcendental egoic logos of spirit as the light or elemental pre-grasp of the being-kosmos noetos and its noematic manifestness in the world.
- 114.
See Husserl 1976, p. 209.
- 115.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 397. The analysis of the real’s self-presentation will occupy us in the next chapter. When Husserl considers reality in an almost thematic way, he, in fact, does occasionally use expressions which, as phenomenological statements, support Conrad-Martius’ own analyses. For example, he speaks of reality as having a supporting ground level; and only the pure consciousness has a “standing in-itself-ness.” See, e.g., Husserl 1976, §50. In Ideas II (Husserl 1952b), a copy of which can be found in Conrad-Martius’ extant library, Husserl relates “Realität” to “Substantialität and Kausalität.” But the notions here have little connection with Conrad-Martius’ understanding of substance because substance here refers to the identity of something in terms of its “real properties, actualizing itself in regulated manifolds of circumstances in regulated dependence on the presence of appropriate conditions” (Husserl 1952b, p. 44). Later, in Husserl 1952b, pp. 125–136 and Husserl 1952a, pp. 4–5, the notion of reality is again identified with “substantial reality” but understood again as a thing identical in its properties and relations. The theme indirectly appears in the contention that that which has not temporal place is to be characterized as “non-reality” [Irrealität]. For this, see Held 1966, pp. 49–57. It is clear that in the scant discussions of “reality” Husserl’s transcendental reduction is operative and, from Conrad-Martius’ viewpoint, the descriptions are in fact not of reality but only of the surface of real beings in terms of their identity and interrelatedness. The theme of the density and substantiality of the real is missing. For more “realontological” common ground for Husserl and Conrad-Martius, see the Translators’ Introduction to Husserl’s The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1910–1911), Husserl 2006, pp. xxii–xxiv.
- 116.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 398.
- 117.
This discussion is found in the unpublished manuscript “Über Ontologie,” which Hering discovered after reading Conrad-Martius’ 1959 clarification of her relationship to Husserl. The manuscript was without date and name, but Avé-Lallemant has brought forth convincing evidence to show that the author can only be Conrad-Martius and the date most probably 1916. Conrad-Martius often forgot what she had written and would approach an old theme with great gusto as if it was a completely new idea. She would be as surprised at her friends and colleagues when they would show her that she had worked the “new” idea out a long time ago in another context. Both Gisela Kaldenbeck and Avé-Lallemant have called this to my attention.
- 118.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 398. I have taken this discussion of the three senses of the phenomenological attitude that appears in the 1916 “Über Ontologie” from Avé-Lallemant’s discussion in his Habilitationsschrift.
- 119.
- 120.
See, e.g., Conrad-Martius 1963, p. 21. She thus held that the pre-Kantian philosophies were guilty of a naiveté. The critical philosophies disclosed transcendental elements in our knowing but only essence-analysis could bring them to givenness. We have seen that the ideation of the eidé is a “transcendental” activity. We shall see important senses in which our experience of space and time is transcendental.
- 121.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 401. Conrad-Martius’ Christian rationalism has many ties with Aquinas’ theory of lumen naturale. See her essays in the second part of Conrad-Martius 1965, where the themes of God-Logos, light-Logos, essence-Logos, intellect-Logos, and speech-Logos are woven together and played off against one another.
- 122.
For these distinctions, see Conrad-Martius 1963, pp. 80–88. We shall return to this consideration in the next section when we discuss speculation.
- 123.
See, e.g., Husserl 1976, pp. 254–255, 261–262, 1973a, p. 84. See also when Husserl writes in the 1950 Biemel edition of Ideas I, which incorporates Husserl’s handwritten additions and amendments to the text: “In dieser absoluten Sphäre lebendiger, immanenter Gegenwart hat Widerstreit, Schein, Anderssein keinen Raum” (Husserl 1950, p. 108). In the original text, reproduced in the Schumann edition of Ideas I, Husserl writes: “In der absoluten Sphäre hat Widerstreit, Schein, Anderssein, keinen Raum” (Husserl 1976, p. 86). See also Klaus Held’s discussion of the “C Manuscripts” and the “living present” (Held 1966, pp. 94–122).
- 124.
See André 1931, pp. 8–41, 161–189.
- 125.
See, e.g., Husserl 1976, pp. 57, 71–72, 91–92, 111–115, 145, 246–247, and Beilage XI.
- 126.
Distinctions are very important here. The ultimate constituting dimension of transcendental phenomenology is not essentially potential although pre-actual and trans-worldly. Similarly, the unthematic halo or potential explications surrounding an object is made up of actual but not-yet-seen perspectives; they are not essentially potential as are the essence-entelechies.
- 127.
We shall review these antinomies, as seen by Conrad-Martius, in the coming chapters. Perhaps the best statement by Husserl of the antinomies that necessitate his transcendental turn are to be found in Husserl 1962.
- 128.
Cf. Husserl’s discussion of ideation in Husserl 1964, pp. 410–433.
- 129.
- 130.
At this stage these statements are mere assertions. Their full sense in the light of Conrad-Martius’ thought will be seen in the following chapters.
- 131.
For the basic phenomenological statement of this theme, see Husserl 1962, especially Part II. Conrad-Martius’ own horizon-analyses are scattered throughout her works on the philosophy of nature. We shall often have occasion to refer to her basic points in this matter.
- 132.
I am indebted here to Schmücker 1956, pp. 11–29, who submits the experiment to a lengthy essence-analysis.
- 133.
This is, perhaps, a bit of a caricature, but it does bring out the basic reason why cosmology and the philosophy of nature as qualitative and phenomenological undertakings are in ill-repute. Whitehead marvellously characterizes the origins of this view, which runs from Galileo through Descartes, Newton, and Locke, and then concludes: “It has held its own as the guiding principle of scientific studies ever since. It is still reigning. Every university in the world organizes itself in accordance with it. No alternative system or organizing the pursuit of scientific truth has been suggested. It is not only reigning, but it is without a rival. And yet—it is quite unbelievable. This conception of the universe is surely framed in terms of high abstractions, and the paradox only arises because we have mistaken our abstraction for concrete realities” (Whitehead 1953, p. 69).
- 134.
Here is one of the innumerable places where the confrontation between the philosophy of language and phenomenology can occur. For the one “speculation” is no phenomenon or essence in itself, but it is only a word with a history, and the meaning of the word is its use in the historical-cultural context—there is no other meaning realm. For the other there is the essence “speculation,” whatever it might be now called, and language analysis and essence-intuition can bring that essence to light. For Conrad-Martius’ discussion of speculation, see Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 358–359.
- 135.
Recall here that metaphysics for Conrad-Martius is positing the non-given to account adequately for the actual given.
- 136.
The etymological reason is that speculare corresponds to the Greek skepelos, the place where one scouts or spies: the post, mountain-top, etc. Skope is surveillance.
- 137.
Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 367–368.
- 138.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 359.
- 139.
See Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 360. For Conrad-Martius the issue is that of the Phaedo (98a–99d): “Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing, and the condition without which it could not be a cause!”
- 140.
We shall see Conrad-Martius’ case for these assertions in more detail later. For a general statement making similar assertions about the inadequacy of mechanistic interpretations, see Grene 1974, pp. 180–188.
- 141.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 361.
- 142.
See the next chapter. The same kind of discussion could occur for the themes of life, light, color, energy, matter, etc.
- 143.
- 144.
Conrad-Martius’ assertion of the permanent validity of certain insights of contemporary science is never argued. Thus, as it stands, it necessarily appears both naive and doctrinaire. Indeed, in the wake of the well-known thesis of Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1962), Conrad-Martius’ view of the history of science must seem peculiar. Kuhn’s thesis is that the history of science is a matter of revolutionary paradigms which are comparable to different worlds with respect to their predecessors. Thus, the objectivity (and therefore validity) of any scientific theory is called radically into question for “each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria it dictates for itself” (Kuhn 1962, pp. 108–109). But some philosophers of science have reacted to Kuhn’s thesis with arguments which move more in the direction of Conrad-Martius’ assertion about the objectivity and validity of scientific positions. For example, Israel Scheffler argues with respect to Kuhn’s book: “If competing paradigms are indeed based in different worlds, and address themselves to different problems with the help or different standards, in what sense can they be said to be in competition? How is it that there is any rivalry between them? To declare them in competition is, after all, to place them within some common framework, to view them within shared perspective supplying, in principle at least, comparative and evaluative considerations applicable to both” (Scheffler 1967, p. 82). Scheffler’s book is probably as close as any contemporary philosopher of science would come to Conrad-Martius’ position on the history or science. He agrees with Peirce that the “scientific convergence of belief is to be interpreted as a progressive revelation of reality” (Scheffler 1967, p. 73), which corresponds with Conrad-Martius’ view on the history or essence analyses in the history or the philosophy of nature. Because he rejects the coherence theory of truth with respect to scientific positions he would agree with Conrad-Martius that, in intention, ‘“the wave corpuscular equation, for example, must be realistically interpreted. Only the real can found the real” (Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 366).
- 145.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 348.
- 146.
We do not intend to give “immediate” here an ultimate epistemological sense. Here it refers to the way one experiences nature: it is first experienced non-mathematically as a world with bodies, colors, sounds, motion, etc., before it is experienced in the mathematical formulae or the Wilson Chamber.
- 147.
Conrad-Martius never developed this Pascalian (and Schelerian) theme but held it to be true. See Conrad-Martius 1960, pp. 75–76.
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Hart, J.G., Parker, R.K.B. (2020). The Method of the Realontology. In: Parker, R.K.B. (eds) Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Ontological Phenomenology. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44842-4_2
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