Abstract
At some point of his career, Husserl started adopting a new terminology to refer to what were previously known as “intentional acts” or “intentional living experiences.” He now speaks about “intentional practices” in general. Every unfolding of consciousness’ intentional possibilities may now be understood as some kind of “Praxis.” Even the intentionality characterizing simple perceptual consciousness is now seen as a practice, a perceptual practice (Wahrnehmungspraxis). The intentionality of the acts of predicative thematization is now seen as another kind of practice (Handeln). The special acts of consciousness by means of which we do theoretical and scientific work are also collectively called “theoretical praxis” (theoretische Praxis). The question is: what does this mean and what does this change signify? It is only recently that some sporadic interest in this aspect of Husserlian scholarship has begun to arise.
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Notes
- 1.
See Hua XVII, 437–446, and esp. 445.
- 2.
See Hua XVII, §63.
- 3.
See Hua VI, 113. In the Crisis, we read that, in the lifeworld, our whole life unfolds and develops in terms of praxis (Crisis, 50–51/51). The beginning of this turn, which to my knowledge never resulted in definite and systematic teaching, has not yet been accurately traced. It seems, however, to have taken place circa the early 1920s. See also §4.10.1 of the present chapter.
- 4.
- 5.
With this, I do not yet mean to take sides on the issue of, e.g., whether Husserl’s Phenomenology can be read as a chapter of cognitive science, as quite a few phenomenologists want to argue (Dreyfus 1982; Petitot et al. 1999). Even though what will be said here may suffice as an indication for my views on the matter, a lot more must of course be added, in order to make this indication more substantial and persuasive. See also §4.11 and notes 11, 19 below.
- 6.
On the way theoretical intentionality works in terms of praxis, see Theodorou 2010b. Meanwhile, I have also presented the first findings of how the reading offered here could be applied to the phenomenological understanding of the emotions as intentional acts, and as intentional experiences of values. See Theodorou 2012a; 2014a, b.
- 7.
In its everyday usage, the German term generally has the meaning “mit großer Energie versuchen etwas zu ereichen” or “sich in Richtung auf ein Ziel bewegen und sich dabei von nichts ablenken lassen” or even “fleißig lernen” in the sense of büffeln (see, e.g., the online The Free Dictionary). Analogously, the English term has the general meaning “the aspect of mental processes or behaviour directed toward action or change and including impulse, desire, volition, and striving” or “the aspect of mental life having to do with purposive behaviour, including desiring, resolving, and striving” (ibid.). In philosophy, the German term is used with the meaning “selbsttätige, eigeninitiative Bewegung auf ein Ziel hin” or “menschliches Bemühen,” characterized by “die Momente der Spontaneität, Aktivität (energeia) und Finalität,” whereas to it the “wesentlichen rein menschlichen Merkmale der Reflexion und der Reflexivität” characteristically belong (see the UTB Online-Wörterbuch Philosophie). Husserl uses the term under discussion many times in the LI with the precise meanings cited here, see, e.g., “Streben nach Erkenntnis,” (Prolegomena, 31) translated by Findlay as “efforts after knowledge”) and “Ziel möglichen Strebens” (LU II.1, 102), translated by Findlay as “end of possible endeavour”). This meaning is also accordingly modified in its composite forms of Anstreben, Bestreben, etc. The same holds for Husserl’s implicit understanding of the term in the immediate context of the two passages cited here. In §4.3 below, more will be said concerning this issue. Later, in §4.10.1, we will re-examine the situation regarding the meaning of the almost occult term (Streben).
- 8.
Note that in the English translation, this “or practical [oder praktisches]” (of the original) is missing. I also remind the reader, at this point, that “reell” contents in Husserl can be all the kinds of sensory materials, e.g., tone sensations, patches of colours, visual gestalts, e.g., whole sides of three-dimensional things or adumbrations (Abschattungen) of them, etc., as contained or lived-through within the stream of living experiences. All these contents are “psychically contained” in our living experiences, they have a “psychic reality”; they are not real as, e.g., a marble in a box, but just reell; they enjoy a ‘lighter’ status of reality. For more on this pattern of Husserl’s thought, and for my reading of it, see below §§4.6–4.9.
- 9.
See LI, 563/379, 617/453.
- 10.
I will use this conventional terminology up to §4.6; then, for reasons that will have been explained, I will change it.
- 11.
- 12.
Husserl cites Natorp’s phrase that consciousness only appears as a doing: “weil Bewußstsein oft oder immer von Streben begleitet ist” (LU II.1, 379 n. 1). Findlay’s translation of the German “Streben” as “conation” (“because consciousness is often or always accompanied by conation”) may be taken as reflecting such an understanding. The term Streben originates from the Proto-Germanic strīdō (“combat, strife”) as transferred into the Old High German strīt (“quarrel”) and strītan (“to fight”), whereas conation originates from the Latin conari (“to try”) or conor (“to endeavor”). This translation allows for the connection between striving and a deliberate planning that may stem from an authority-like, egoic intelligence. That is, it may indeed make us think that talk of intentional acts means that consciousness or intentionality is the result of a deliberating and intelligent willing (conatus), which at first plans independently in veiled isolation and, then, at a secondary phase, takes action by setting us in bodily motion or action, etc. It is interesting, of course, that in the LI Husserl admits such an understanding of theoretical intentionality (in terms of a Streben), but still refuses (in the first edition of that work) to acknowledge a ‘transcendental’ I of a sort. (See also the third point following immediately in the main text.) However, for still further perplexities regarding the meaning of “Streben,” see also §4.10.1.
- 13.
Of course, here, “passive” is understood in the proper phenomenological sense, i.e., not as a mere receiving of representations on the tain of a mirror-like mind, but in accordance with the meaning of intentional constitution. The latter will be further explained in the subsequent sections.
- 14.
For further vindication of all three senses of act and activity rejected by Husserl with regard to perception, see also, e.g., Ideas II, 23/21, 21/19.
- 15.
- 16.
“In der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung erscheint uns das ‘äußere’ Ding in Einem Schlage, sowie unser Blick darauf fällt. …” See also LI, §47 as a whole, but also, e.g., PP, 133/174; EJ, 252/301. This latter articulation of the sixth LI in particular did not escape the attention of Heidegger. See his way of putting it in PHTC, 60 f. Later on, in §4.7, we will return to this topic with a renewed interest.
- 17.
See also note 23 and §4.7 below.
- 18.
This section is a totally new addition to the original manuscript published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
I must make clear that I do not agree with the Heideggerian claim that, in Husserl, perception is (at least in its basics) a theoretical (interest-guided, predicative, scientific) affair. For a detailed consideration of this standard Heideggerian reading of Husserl’s Phenomenology, see Chap. 5. The results of the present chapter, as well as those of Chaps. 5, will then be used for a more global treatment of the issue regarding primordial givenness in Husserl and Heidegger (Chap. 6).
- 22.
See the references in the three previous notes.
- 23.
One may possibly object that imagination, e.g. of an elf, is praxial because it relates to a bodily activity that is set or could be set in motion seeking—even in vain—relevant fulfilling contents. It could also be claimed that perhaps imagination, like a perceptual glance, is not connected with actual bodily activity, but it could be shown that both relate to remembered or potential bodily activity connected with the accumulation of fulfilling contents. In §§4.7, 4.8, and 4.9 below, I will show that neither actual nor potential bodily activity is the reason that led Husserl to consider all intentionality in terms of praxis.
- 24.
In the sense of the fore-meaning (Vormeinung), of a plan or projection (Entwurf), that anticipates the secondary actual setting of ourselves at the realization of this or that work; see Hua VIII, 206–207 (the present translations from that work are mine).
- 25.
- 26.
This talk of imagination should not, however, be taken to mean that intentional praxis as such is restricted to the mere having of the ‘inner image’ by which imagination may happen to merely accompany consciousness. If this were the case, then intersubjective communication (agreement or disagreement) on matters related to just planned actions would be difficult and accidental if not totally impossible. This idea is included in Husserl’s own criticism of traditional representationalism. Husserl places the crucial weight not so much on the side of the (subjective) image given in imagination, with the evidence pertaining to this act, but on the side of the sense (or meaning) and its function in the overall intention. (For example, see Hua VIII, 205ff and especially 206.) These remarks should suffice here to assure the reader that Husserl had always escaped the pitfalls of semantic psychologism. For additional explications regarding the meaning of this connection between imagination (but also between all intentional acts) and sense, see §§4.7, 4.8, and 4.9 below; see also Chap. 2, §§2.2, 2.3, and 2.4.
- 27.
Sokolowski (1964) bases a good deal of his understanding of Husserlian intentionality and of intentional constitution on an over-emphasised focus on this use of “intentionality.” If the so-called “partial intentions” of retention and protention around the current living present of internal time consciousness are to be considered as baring genuine intentionality, then their immediate lived-through reell contents (hyle) should also be regarded as ‘transcendently referring.’ Such a development would, of course, result in the collapse of the specifically anti-Brentanian and anti-representational potential of Husserl’s phenomenological intentionality. This also relates to the notorious problem regarding the validity and scope of Husserl’s fundamental content-apprehension, matter-form, or content-interpretation schema of intentionality. We will return to this in Chap. 10, n. 12.
- 28.
- 29.
In the Brentanian conception of intentionality, consciousness is directed or refers either directly to a content of this last kind or, in his thought after 1905, it is conjectured—in a confused way—to correspond or refer, in some mysterious and in fact non-testable way, to a real transcendent thing via such a content. Brentano seems to have remained ambivalent with regard to the question of whether the genuine object of our consciousness is the immanent content or an inaccessible realistic transcendent something ‘corresponding’ to this content. On the meaning of Husserl’s critique of Brentano’s intentionality, see e.g., De Boer 1978, 45ff; and Vassiliou 2013.
- 30.
Such an understanding, by the way, seems to be the basis of the assimilation of intentionality in Anglo-American circles, informed by the basically Brentanian Chisholm, e.g., Wilfred Sellars, Fodor, etc. Unfortunately, the same can be said about the circles acquainted with intentionality under the influence of phenomenologists like Føllesdal and Dreyfus, especially when they interpret or present Husserl’s intentionality. The understanding under discussion can also be found in, e.g., Searle.
- 31.
Note that this last use of “narrow” that is going to be used here is not the same as Husserl’s use in the citation from LI, referred to in §4.2.
- 32.
This, of course, does not amount to a defect of perception. Such an ideal givenness is impossible in perception—even for God, as Husserl famously puts it, e.g., in his Ideas I (§43). We may speak here of a ‘situational’-relative completeness of fulfilment. No omni-intuitional givenness of a perceptual thing is possible. It is because Derrida thought the contrary, in his Speech and Phenomena that, feeling betrayed by Husserl’s deconstructed textual evidence, he cried out: ‘there is no perception!’ This reading of Husserl’s Phenomenology and of the phenomenology of perception (but also of the phenomenology of meaning and expression) may have made phenomenologists more self-aware in their philosophy. No Husserlian and no phenomenologist, though, really balk at such acute but off-the-point criticisms.
- 33.
Although this terminology pertains to the transcendental-phenomenological point of view and its synthetic constitutive analyses of the Ideas I and beyond, the general spirit of this treatment applies mutatis mutandis also to the phenomenological-psychological point of view and the eidetic constitutive analyses of the LI. Of course, via this phrase (and what will be said in the next section), we are referred back to the serious and rather complicated issues of the meaning of the phenomenological reduction(s) and of the relation between sense and noema in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Let this issue be considered settled here, with the analyses contained in Chaps. 2 and 3 of this book. With regard to the specific connection between sense and noema and, more particularly, between noetic sense and fulfilled noema, see also below, and Chap. 5.
- 34.
“[T]he sense is not a concrete entity [or being (Wesen)] in the total composition of the noema, but a sort of abstract form [Form] inherent in the noema.” (Ideas I, 316/273). To be sure, this description concerns the specifically noematic sense. For our present purposes, we will consider that, in perception, the noetic and the noematic senses are one and the same thing. This explains the peculiar character of the perceptual correlation (perceptual noesis and perceptual noema).
- 35.
See also §4.6 above.
- 36.
See also FTL §§3–4; Ideas I, 295/286.
- 37.
See Ideas I, 118/111, 344/333, 343/332, 357/347, 358/346; Ideas II, 91/86, 29/33. See also Hua XI, 5.
- 38.
On this, see Hua X, 116–7; PP, 137–8/179.
- 39.
See also Ideas I, 357–8/346–7, 348/337; Ideas II, 29/33, 38/35, 91/86.
- 40.
All of these are famously developed in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, essentially Book 6, and especially 1139b18–20, and 1140a27–b34, and are a subject of fundamental importance for Heidegger’s Phenomenology, in his lecture course on Plato’s Sophist. I first suggested this fertilization of Husserl’s praxial understanding of intentionality with Aristotle’s basic elements of praxis in Theodorou 2006, Chap. 1. To my knowledge, the only relevant hint toward such a possible connection between Husserl’s mature understanding of intentionality and Aristotle’s thematics of energeia is Hart (although he speaks there rather of entelecheia) (see his 1995, 150–1). On an additional element of the fundamental importance that Heidegger attributes to these Aristotelian thematics, see also §4.10.1 below here, and Chap. 8, §8.8.1.
- 41.
On the extremely important, but downplayed—especially by Heidegger, who really presupposes them—four senses of “truth” in Husserl’s LI, and especially on the most important of them, the sense of truth as being (or being as truth), see LI 6, §§38–39. This Husserlian notion of truth will preoccupy us again in Chap. 7, §7.7.
- 42.
- 43.
See Ideas I, 161/149, 165/153–4. There is also the estimation that his understanding of the monad is sometimes free from such determinism. “In […] die Leibnizsche Welt […] der prästabilierten Harmonie, […] findet Husserl keinerlei Spur eines Determinismus oder Dogmatismus.” (Cristin 1990, 164).
- 44.
Thus, I fully comply with Strasser’s critically reserved stance toward Husserl’s hyper-idealist reading of history’s meaning and course (Strasser 1979, and especially 329–30).
- 45.
I say this regardless of what relevant restrictions and exclusions transcendental reduction might impose here. Of course, I refer to the problem regarding the transcendental theory of constitution poses in our understanding of the source of the reell contents. For more on this, the reader should wait until Chap. 10, Sect. 10.4.
- 46.
This section was not contained in the manuscript of this chapter as published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
- 47.
In his Faust, we come across these three ideas. Proteus to the homunculus: “Nur strebe nicht nach höheren Orden, / Denn bist du erst ein Mensch geworden, / Dann ist es völlig aus mit dir.” (8330–3). The Emperor, however, has already remarked: “Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt.” (317). The latter makes Angel’s later assurance all the more important for our understanding of the culture that Goethe nourished: “Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,/Den können wir erlösen.” (11936–7).
- 48.
- 49.
Husserl’s Fichte lectures from 1917 (and 1918) represent something of a landmark in his turn to a publicly confessed and admitted admiration for and trust in German Idealism’s fundamental guidelines and potential.
- 50.
By no means can the issue regarding the thematic of intentionality and Streben be considered as exhausted and closed on the basis of what I present in this subsection. A fuller development must, however, be postponed until another occasion, when intentionality will be investigated in the context of emotive-valuing and willing phenomena. Until then, a further glimpse is offered in Theodorou 2012a, 2014b.
- 51.
- 52.
We will have the opportunity to deal with this point about ‘objectivity’ at length in Chaps. 8, 9, and 10. To be sure, Heidegger discovers that beyond the intra-worldly time (Zeitlichkeit), in the context of which a finite human motility unfolds its intentional possibilities, he was in need of a still greater time-scale: that which pertains to the motility of Being as such (Temporalität). It is problematic, however, whether he could phenomenologize this latter time dimension (see here Chaps. 9 and 10).
- 53.
His well-known talk about hearing Being’s call, of conscience, or even of guilt and remorse, line up with his reversal of Augustine’s theology and ethics in the guise of his ontology of human existence in a cosmos happening according to Being’s own λόγος (whatever this might mean—see Chaps. 9 and 10). Through this talk, however, Heidegger actually loses sight of humans as intentionally experiencing a world already populated by beings that foundingly antecede the existential projection of various life-plans; beings that are substantial in commensurance to the human sensory, bodily-kinesthetic, and perceptual, intentional synthesizing capacities. We will say more about this in Chap. 6.
- 54.
- 55.
Husserl is notorious for his ultimate failure to develop a fully intentional phenomenological theory of ethico-political praxis in the lifeworld. His analyses regarding emotive intentionality and motivation for action didn’t flourish in the way his analyses regarding perception and judgment flourished. For Husserl’s failure in the field of the phenomenology of emotive intentionality and of value experience, see Theodorou 2012a.
- 56.
On this feature of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s perspectives on time, see also Chap. 8, §8.8.3.
- 57.
An interesting set of papers on this subject has appeared during the last 15 years or so, by philosophers like H. Dreyfus, R. McIntyre, B. Preston, D. Münch, J. Mensch, and others. These works concern the issue of whether Husserlian intentional consciousness is representational and/or computational, i.e., cognitivistic. In an early and still unpublished presentation at the N.T.U.A., sometime around 1999 (the year that Petitot et al. 1999 appeared), I examined some of these pro-naturalization theses. I argued that no merely electromechanical system can realize intentional syntheses and, thus, intentionality. Only living organisms can develop such functions (and the teleological-striving character of intentionality corroborates this). Today, having since studied Scheler’s later phenomenological philosophical anthropology, Jonas’ thoughts on life, and some of Varela’s and Thompson’s views on the matter, I find no reason to modify this view.
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Theodorou, P. (2015). Perception and ‘Action’: On the Praxial Structure of Intentional Consciousness. In: Husserl and Heidegger on Reduction, Primordiality, and the Categorial. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 83. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16622-3_4
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