Abstract
Also called positional characteristics, thetic qualities in noemata first of all are “doxic,” which is to say that they relate to believing, doubting, asserting, denying, positing as probable or likely, etc. Correlatively, the object is held to exist in one or another way, “existence” taken in a wide signification whereby “2 ;+ ;2 ;= ;4” can be said to exist since it is believed in. Valuing analogously posits axiologically and there is goodness that can be predicated. Willing with the practical characters of ends and means is also analogous and positing of these three kinds can be certain or probable as well as positive and negative, etc. Such things can be discerned in transcendental reflection. Furthermore, there is a difference between what is factual or real and what is the object of phantasy, which is furthermore different from picture-consciousness.
Cairns writes in the top margin in black pen: “Collated with MS, July 30, 1952.”—L.E.
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- 1.
Cf. pp. 33ff.
- 2.
We are talking here not of the meaning or proposition “2 + 2 = 4,” but of that which makes the proposition true, that to which it “corresponds,” the state of affairs in the realm of essences.
- 3.
We shall analyze this later, Chap. 6.
- 4.
Chapters 13, 14, and 15.
- 5.
Another way of putting it: in the first case I “do not know my own mind” about the dish, in the second case I know my mind about it and am sure that my liking is dubitative.
- 6.
The examples have been supplied by the author on his own responsibility.
- 7.
Such “pointing beyond” itself on the part of a noematic element is, we have seen, characteristic also of the noematic object-as-intended. Just as the modal thesis is not, but “points to,” the primitive thetic quality, e.g., to proto-doxa, so the limited object is not, but “points to,” its background. These phenomena of “self-transcendence” bear an analogy to the intentional characteristics of consciousness. (cf. Chap. 2). The present moment of consciousness is not the past and future but is essentially something that “points to” past and future. Transcendental consciousness is not the world, but it essentially points to the world. The concept “intentionality” may be impoverished, derived of its specific reference to consciousness, and widened to include these non-conscious examples of self-transcendence. Then one might distinguish two kinds of intentionality; noetic and noematic, and speak, e.g., of the derived thetic quality as “intending the primitive form—whereby obviously, one would not mean that “likely being” was conscious of “being.” Generally, when we speak of “intentionality” we shall mean noetic awareness-intentionality, actual or inactual. Whenever our subject is noematic intentionality we shall say so.
- 8.
There is a question mark in the left margin of the “A” version at this point. In the “B” version Cairns writes in the left margin with an arrow pointing between paragraphs: “<Space>.”—L.E.
- 9.
- 10.
Pp. loc. cit. [Also—(88a) written in the right margin here, which refers to the inserted MS 017675.—L.E.]
- 11.
This paragraph has been inserted here as indicated by Cairns in the “B” version. It is a handwritten page numbered 018186 in the Cairns nachlass.—L.E.
- 12.
There is a question mark in the left margin at this point in the “A” version.—L.E.
- 13.
There is a question mark over the word “conceiving.”—L.E.
- 14.
- 15.
Chapters 7 and 23.
- 16.
The “A” version says “constitutive ego.”—L.E.
- 17.
Hallucination may be considered as a real deed, whereby we “realize” a phantasy object-sense, posit it perceptively as real, but unfortunately sacrifice the validity of the perception.
- 18.
See Chap. 1.
- 19.
“Nonparticipant” is added in the “B” version; both “A” and “B” agree on changing “observer” to “onlooker.”—L.E.
- 20.
Pp. 7ff.
- 21.
See Chap. 10.
- 22.
There is a question mark in the left margin at this point.—L.E.
- 23.
See Chap. 21.
- 24.
See above, pp. 33ff.
- 25.
- 26.
There is a marginal note in the left margin here: “Collated to here with original MS, July 11, 1941.”—L.E.
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Cairns, D., Embree, L. (2013). Thetic Quality. In: Embree, L. (eds) The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Phaenomenologica, vol 207. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5043-2_4
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