Abstract
We turn now to Husserl’s theory of intentionality. We see this theory as differing fundamentally from theories that take what we have called the “object-approach” to intentionality. To articulate this difference in a clear and convincing way is one of our most important tasks. Our interpretation of Husserl’s theory of intentionality, our understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology in general, and our own treatment of some of the problems of intentionality in later chapters are all predicated on a proper appreciation of this difference.
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Notes
Izchak Miller has treated these matters quite clearly in his dissertation, ‘The Phenomenology of Perception: Husserl’s Account of Our Temporal Awareness’, UCLA, 1979, pp. 38–73.
Kasimir Twardowski, On the Content and Object of Presentations, trans, by Reinhardt Grossmann (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1977); first published in German as Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen ( Wien, 1894 ). Parenthetic page references in this section are to the English translation.
Husserl’s review, ‘Besprechung von K. Twardowski…’, is reprinted in Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910), ed. by Bernhard Rang, Husserliana, XXII ( Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1979 ), pp. 349–56.
Frege’s review appeared in Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 103 (1894), 313–32. Excerpts are translated in Geach and Black (Note 44, Ch. II above), pp. 79–85; the quoted phrase is on p. 79. For a translation of the complete review, see Gottlob Frege, ‘Review of Dr. E. Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic’, trans, by E. W. Kluge,Mind 81 (1972), 321–37.
Frege, ‘On Sense and Reference’ (Note 44, Ch. II above), pp. 57, 59. (Cf. Chapter II, Section 3.2, above.) For more on the philosophical and historical relations between Husserl and Frege, see: Dagfinn Føllesdal, Husserl und Frege (I Kommisjon Hos H. Aschehong & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo, 1958); Føllesdal, ‘An Introduction to Phenomenogy for Analytic Philosophers’, in Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia, ed. by Raymond E. Olson and Anthony M. Paul (The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1972), pp. 417–29; J. N. Mohanty, ‘Husserl and Frege: A New Look at their Relationship’, Research in Phenomenology 4 (1974), 51–62, reprinted in Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science, ed. by Hubert L. Dreyfus (The MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, 1982); and Mohanty, ‘Frege-Husserl Correspondence’, trans, with notes, Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (1974), 83–96. Also see Chapter IV, Part 2, below.
Bernard Bolzano, Theory of Science, ed. and trans, by Rolf George (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), esp. pp. 61–62; first published in German as Wissenschaftslehre (Salzbach, 1837).
This is not to say that the subject of an experience is completely unaware of the experience as he undergoes it. “Every lived experience is ‘sensed’, is immanently ‘perceived’…although naturally it is not posited or meant (‘to perceive’ here does not mean intentionally to be directed toward and to apprehend)”, Husserl says (Time, App. XII, p. 175; cf. §39 and App. VIII). See Miller (Note 1 above), pp. 162–76. Also cf. Sartre’s discussion of what he calls the “non-positional”, or “non-thetic”, or “pre- reflective”, consciousness of being conscious that accompanies every act: Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans, by Hazel E. Barnes (Philosophical Library, New York, 1956), pp. 1-lvi; and Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, trans, by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (Noonday Press, New York, 1957), pp. 32–49. Further, according to Husserl (but not Sartre), the ego is similarly aware of itself in an act as the act’s subject, without explicitly reflecting: see Ideas, §80; CM, §31; cf. Miller (Note 1 above), pp. 66–68.
Cited by Føllesdal in Dagfinn Føllesdal, ‘Husserl’s Notion of Noema’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969), 684, reprinted in Dreyfus (Note 10 above).
Guido Küng cites a lecture of Husserl’s on “Bedeutungslehre” from the summer semester of 1908 and also the manuscript ‘Noema und Sinn’, as well as a later letter to Roman Ingarden that comments on the change: see Guido Kiing, ‘Husserl on Pictures and Intentional Objects’, Review of Metaphysics 26 (1973), 676, Note 11. Cf. J. N. Mohanty, ‘On Husserl’s Theory of Meaning’, Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (1974), 229–33.
Husserl’s basic analysis of perception is explained clearly in Dagfinn Føllesdal, ‘Phenomenology’, in Handbook of Perception, Vol. I, ed. by Edward C. Carterette and Morton P. Friedman ( Academic Press, Inc., New York, 1974 ), pp. 377–86.
Richard E. Aquila, in an otherwise illuminating paper contrasting Husserl’s theory of meaning and intention in the Investigations with that in Ideas, takes this criticism as decisive in favor of the Investigations theory: see his ‘Husserl and Frege on Meaning’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 12 (1974), 377–83.
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© 1984 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Smith, D.W., McIntyre, R. (1984). Fundamentals of Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality. In: Husserl and Intentionality. Synthese Library, vol 154. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9383-5_3
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