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Perceptual Consciousness, Materiality, and Idealism

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The Turning Points of the New Phenomenological Era

Part of the book series: Analecta Husserliana ((ANHU,volume 34))

Abstract

As Husserl never tired of repeating and clarifying, a systematic yet descriptive approach to experience must pay heed to an intrinsic duality which pertains to consciousness. To express it as Alfred Schutz once formulated it, we would have to say, on the one hand, that we are to note the “relationship between theme and horizon within the field of consciousness at any given moment of inner time,”1 i.e., that which obtains in the particular province of meaning or finite province of reality with which we happen to be concerned for a reasonably protracted period, according to the “degree of tension of consciousness and attention à la vie”2 characteristic of the way of access which is suitable to the province of meaning in question.3 But, on the other hand, we would also and necessarily find “the motives by means of which this structurization has been initiated,”4 namely, the in-order-to and because-motivational systems being worked out and established in the history of consciousness, and precisely as articulated by the events of turning to and away from certain events for consciousness, thus making them “thematic or non-thematic, i.e., horizonal….”5

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Notes

  1. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 5. (Hereinafter, Reflections).

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  2. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 7. Cf. A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 212ff; The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh and F. Lehnert (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), pp. 46ff; Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire, pp. 187–98 in Oeuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), pp. 306ff.

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  3. Cf. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, pp. 7–8.

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  4. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 5.

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  5. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 4. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §§82, 113, and 114 (hereinafter, Ideas I); Experience and Judgment, trans. J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), §§8–10; A. Schutz, “Some Leading Concepts of Phenomenology,” Collected Papers, I, pp. 108f; Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 234–46.

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  6. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966), pp. 124ff and especially pp. 138ff. As Gurwitsch emblematically puts it: “The noetico-noematic correlation is what the term intentionality must signify.” (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966, p. 138). Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §§91ff, and 128.

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  7. Cf. E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), ii. §§14ff.

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  8. Not only for the meaning but also for the analytical usefulness of the concepts of synchronicity and diachronicity, cf. Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, ed. T. de Mauro (Paris: Payot, 1973), I, ch. iii, §1; III, and IV; Oswald Ducrot and Tzvetan Todorov, Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences du langage (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1972), pp. 179ff.

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  9. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 5.

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  10. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 402. Here “relevancy” is taken in a noematic sense.

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  11. For the analysis of the pertinent notion and experience of noematic coherence, cf.  Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 402, pp. 209ff, 215ff, 275ff, 287ff, 346ff, 354ff, 358ff, and 370ff. For the related question concerning the articulation of the formal structure of consciousness into theme, field, and margin (where the latter is not to be taken in Schutz’s sense), cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 402, Part V. (Vide the following note.)

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  12. Cf. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, pp. 6–7.

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  13. The occurrence of error due to abstractionism may perhaps be identified in Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), (pp. 165–67) and in both Gurwitsch (The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 341–43 and 353–54) and Schutz (“On Multiple Realities,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. V, 1945, pp. 549ff, and 567ff, as referred to by Gurwitsch).

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  14. Cf. Julián Marías, Ortega. I. Circunstancia y vocación (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1960), pp. 408–10.

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  15. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 7.

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  16. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 125.

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  17. A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. 250.

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  18. Cf. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd. ed. enlarged (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. iii–iv.

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  19. Cf. A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 245ff. My purpose here is not to examine in any detail the style of living we call theorizing, the finite provinces of meaning we call theories, and the phenomena of passage and retrieval between the world of theory and the world of practice. I only want to suggest that the notion of intersubjective world is wider than that of the Lebenswelt (whether taken sensu stricto or lato) although it is primarily rooted in the latter. For Schutz’s concept of disinterest as the means of overcoming the fundamental anxiety proper to living in everydayness when one makes transit to the world of science, cf. A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 247 and 249 and Reflections, pp. 25–26. Per contra, cf. Karl-Otto Apel, “The Common Presuppositions of Hermeneutics and Ethics: Types of Rationality beyond Science and Technology” in Studies in Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, ed. John Sallis (Atlantic Heights: Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 35ff.

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  20. Cf. A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 226f.

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  21. Cf. A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. 233 n. and p. 245; A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Collected Papers, I, ed. M. Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 105ff; A. Schutz “Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality,” Collected Papers, II, ed. A. Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 135ff; Jean-Paul Sartre, The Emotions, trans. B. Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), pp. 53ff.

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  22. As we push further in this endeavor, we may be catapulted into another world, e.g., the world of science which befits the present practical problem-set for which we can find no satisfactory solution. (Cf. my paper, “The Problematicity of Life: Towards the Orteguian Notion of Universal Spectator” in José Ortega y Gasset, ed. Nora de Marval-McNair; New York: Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 29ff.) In so doing, the traditions of everyday-world constitution open up (albeit by way of a leap, and an uncertain one at that) to the relevant scientific traditions of logon didonai, even if they are thereby constituted for the first time and only rudimentarily.

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  23. Cf. José Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente, chapter 1, in Obras Completas, Centennial Edition (Madrid: Alianza Editorial/Revista de Occidente, 1983), VII, pp. 79ff.

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  24. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 126. The emphasis is mine. Cf. Iris Murdoch, “The Idea of Perfection,” The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp. 25–26 and passim.

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  25. And such otherness will even include that form which paradoxically originates in the privacy of the self with a claim to universality and necessity, i.e., to the status of scientific or philosophical truth. Cf. José Ortega y Gasset, Psychological Investigations, trans. J. García-Gómez (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), Lecture 1.

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  26. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 126.

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  27. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Cf. A. Schutz, “Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” Collected Papers, I, pp. 48–66; Richard Zaner, “A Critique of ‘Tensions in Psychology between the Methods of Behaviorism and Phenomenology,’” Psychological Review LXXV (1964), pp. 318–24; Iris Murdoch, “The Idea of Perfection,” The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 27.

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  28. Cf. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 269ff and 335ff; José y Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es filosofía? in Obras Completas, Centennial Edition, VII, chapter 5 and p. 310.

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  29. Cf. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, pp. 7–8: “[The world of working acts] … is declared to be the paramount reality and made, so to speak, thematic in the research of these philosophers (namely, Bergson and James) — a move which renders all the other provinces surrounding this thematic kernel merely horizonal (and most unclarified as well).”

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  30. Cf. my paper, “Nexus, Unity, Ground. Reflections on the Foundation of Schutz’s Theory of Relevance,” Man and World XV (1982), pp. 227ff.

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  31. Cf. Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. O. Krauss and L. L. McAlister, trans. A. C. Rancurello et al. (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), Book II, Part I, §5, pp. 88ff; E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), II, v, chapter 2; vi, chapters 1–2; Husserl, Ideas I, Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. O. Krauss and L. L. McAlister, trans. A. C. Rancurello et al. (New York: Humanities Press, 1973 §§36, 84, 90–91, 136–37, 140. Given my primordial interest here in the affairs of consciousness as anchored in the Lebenswelt, I will attempt to analyze intentionality (and the important attendant problems of reality and worldly transcendence) in the form they take in perceptual experience, even if this means a simplification, that is to say, one which excludes from examination — and only for the purposes of clarity and brevity of exposition — the significant actional, valuational, and conative dimensions of everyday experience, without in the least suggesting thereby any lack of import for such complementary analyses, not only for a fuller account of everyday everyday experience, but for an adequate one as well. Cf. my paper, “Moral Responsibility and Practice in the Life-World,” Analecta Husserliana XXII (1987), especially pp. 187–97.

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  32. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 5.

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  33. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), p. 12.

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  34. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §§41 and 44.

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  35. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 234–46, Part IV, ch. 1; ch. 2, §7b; ch. 3.

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  36. Cf. William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1950), I, pp. 243ff and 196ff; Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §§79 and 138.

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  37. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 59.

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  38. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 234–46, pp. 287ff.

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  39. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 59.

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  40. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 71. It seems to me that the qualification “absolutely unknown” must be understood, in order to avoid contradiction in what follows, as subject to two restrictions: first of all, it is to be taken materialiter and not formaliter; secondly, it is to be accepted only as referring, for the most part, to ignorance about the proprium of the new.

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  41. Heraclitus, fr. 53. Cf. K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 28; Los presocrâticos, trans, and annotator J. D. Garcia Bacca (Mexico City: Colegio de Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1944), II, nn. 7 c (p. 47) and 22 (p. 52), especially in the mattter concerning “edeixe.”

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  42. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 72.

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  43. Cf. Hermann-J. de Vleeschauwer, L’évolution de la pensée kantienne (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1939), IV, §4.

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  44. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 72.

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  45. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970,p. 131.

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  46. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 132.

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  47. Cf. José Ortega y Gasset, Ideas y Creencias in Obras Completas, V, pp. 383ff.

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  48. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970, p. 65.

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  49. Cf. Henri Bergson, Introduction à la métaphysique, p. 184 in Oeuvres, p. 1398.

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  50. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 5.

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  51. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 175.

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  52. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 170. According to Gurwitsch, the distinction involved here results from generalizing the reasoning that led Husserl to differentiate between a self-identical object and the multiplicity of meanings which do or may refer to it. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 176ff, and especially p. 179; E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), i, §12; per contra, cf. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972).

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  53. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 178. In other words, the perceptual noema of the tree is “not composed of chemical elements, it does not exert any force, nor is it subject to actions of forces.” Hence, the perceptual noema is an ideal entity. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §89.

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  54. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 179–80.

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  55. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 180.

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  56. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 220. Used as background for our subsequent discussion, this text acquires decisive importance. Perhaps it would not be out of place to reduce the view expressed here to its essentials by means of Gurwitsch’s own apothegm: “To be sure, material things are transcendent with respect to consciousness.” (Cf. E. Husserl, Ideas I, §48, p. 108). Let us always bear in mind this fundamental sense of worldly transcendence taken simpliciter and in ongoingly lived immediacy.

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  57. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 220.

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  58. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 221.

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  59. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 222.

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  60. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964,p. 223.

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  61. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964,p. 223, n. 64. Vide the next paragraph for the vicious circle incurred in an inept application of the methodological principles at stake here. In this connection, cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, Die Typen der Weltanschauung und ihre Ausbildung in den metaphysischen Systemen, iii, 1 in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Groethuysen, VIII.

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  62. Cf. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), p. 164.

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  63. Cf. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, n. 64.

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  64. Cf. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, p. 316.

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  65. Cf. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, n. 64.

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  66. Ct. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, pp. 301ff.

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  67. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 341.

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  68. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964,p.342.

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  69. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964,p.342, Cf. A. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research V (1945), pp. 549ff. (as referred to by Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 342).

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  70. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 342.

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  71. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 342. This aporia was apparently a central preoccupation of Gurwitsch since the beginning of his career. What we are dealing with here is nothing but the problem set studied by classical empirical psychology under the heading of attention. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Pure Ego: Studies of the Relation between Gestalt Theory and Phenomenology,” trans. F. Kersten in Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), pp. 218ff. This was Gurwitsch’s doctoral dissertation, which was originally published in Psychologische Forschung XII (1929).

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  72. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 340–44.

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  73. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 401–402.

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  74. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, §§88 (pp. 213–14) and 97 (pp. 236–37).

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  75. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,” Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology, (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966), pp. 287ff; Jean-Paul Sartre, La transcendance de l’ego (Paris: J. Vrin, 1966).

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  76. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,” (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966), pp. 287, n. 36 and pp. 305ff.

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  77. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966, pp. 138ff.

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  78. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,” (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966), pp. 287; The Field of Consciousness, p. 223.

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  79. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Some Fundamental Principles of Constitutive Phenomenology,” trans. J. García-Gómez in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 192.

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  80. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 222.

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  81. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, §142, p. 341.

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  82. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 293.

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  83. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Some Fundamental Principles of Constitutive Phenomenology,” trans. J. Garcia-Gömez in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 203.

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  84. A. Gurwitsch, “Some Fundamental Principles of Constitutive Phenomenology,” in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 204. Cf. R. Descartes, Principia philosophiae, I, li, pp. 18–19, vv. 21ff. in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, rev. ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964), VIII—1, p. 24. This is in fact Descartes’ definition of substance.

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  85. A. Gurwitsch, “Some Fundamental Principles of Constitutive Phenomenology,” in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 205. The author’s prior assumption that consciousness primordially reduces to the noetic sphere is here made manifest in so many words.

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  86. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 222, Part IV, chapter 1.

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  87. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “Some Fundamental Principles of Constitutive Phenomenology,” in Phenomenology and the Theory of Science, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 193.

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  88. Cf. A. Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,” (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966), pp. 124ff.

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  89. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, §47.

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  90. Cf. Werner Marx, “The Life-World and Gurwitsch’s ‘Orders of Existence,’” op. cit., pp. 447 and 454. I will not deal here with the important problem posed by Marx concerning the possibility that the being-for-consciousness be just the aspect of thing hood expressible as “being-an-object,” whether for active or passive consciousness (the form of which is horizonal). Cf. Werner Marx, “The Life-World and Gurwitsch’s ‘Orders of Existence,’”, pp. 454–55 and passim.

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  91. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 222, Part VI, §§2–3.

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  92. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 384Ff and 405.

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  93. Cf. Xavier Zubiri, Sobre la esencia, 2nd. ed. (Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1963), pp. 23ff; Cinco lecciones de filosofía (Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1963), pp. 230f and 238.

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  95. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 384, Part IV, ch. 1, §3 and ch. 3, §3. For the above-mentioned difference between the object’s givenness to perception and to phantasy, which is relevant here, cf. Antonio Rodríguez Huéscar, La innovación metafísica de Ortega. Crítica y superación del idealismo (Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 1982), p. 94.

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  97. Cf. Max Scheler, “The Forms of Knowledge and Culture,” Philosophical Perspectives, trans. O. A. Haac (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 39–41 and nn. 24–25, p. 134; “Idealism and Realism,” Selected Philosophical Essays, trans. D. R. Lachterman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 295ff and 313ff and Part III.

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  98. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 223. Cf. “Husserl in Perspective” in Phenomenology and Existentialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), p. 81.

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  99. Cf. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), pp. 135, 139 (n. 10), and 160–63; E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970),, I, p. 330; Gurwitsch, “On the Intentionality of Consciousness,”  (Evanston: Northwestern Univeristy Press, 1966, p. 138.

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  100. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 298: “Throughout the perceptual process, … the theme of the process is the thing perceived, that is, the theme is a certain noematic system.” Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 211 and 218ff.

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  101. Whether one understands this view noetically (as it seems to be the case in the present analysis of perception) or in terms of the noetico-noematic unity of consciousness. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 326ff.

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  102. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §88, pp. 214–15; cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), n. 64.

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  103. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 300–301; Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §118, pp. 282–84.

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  104. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 300–301, Part III, chapter 5.

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  105. Cf. G. W. Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: 1875–90), II, p. 183. In this context, I have just used “relevance” as a noematic term, i.e., in Gurwitsch’s sense, not in Schutz’s. Cf. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, Part VI, Chapter 5.

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  106. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 403. Gurwitsch points out that Schutz’s formula cannot be accepted if consciousness is understood as psychological, rather than as transcendental subjectivity. But once the transcendental-phenomenological reduction is performed, Gurwitsch ceases to ask questions about the acceptance of the thesis that reality is constituted in terms of the meanings produced by our experiences of the real. A radical analysis of this contention would have to come to terms, however, with the totality of the affairs involved in such a reduction, especially including the question of whether or not there could possibly be any intractable residue left after its performance. This, of course, is not the place even to attempt to do it. Further, I am suggesting that one ought to go beyond Husserl (cf. Ideas I, Sections 42 and 58) and assert that the phenomena of transcendency in immanency (ibid., Section 57, p. 113) should include, when taken in the strong sense of the expression, not only God and the alter ego, but material thinghood as well. Cf. Antonio Millán-Puelles, “La teleología del mundo físico y el nexo Brentano-Husserl”, Revista de Filosofía (Madrid), 2nd series, II, July–Dec., 1979, pp. 121ff.

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  107. Cf. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research V (1945), p. 551 (as quoted by Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 403).

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  108. Cf. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research V (1945), pp. 327–28.

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  109. I will limit myself to asking this question at the level of sense-perception, and, accordingly, I will exclude its consideration at the coordinate levels of conation, willing, and feeling, where the notion of resistance would come into play. To simplify matters, I seek here only to determine what the transcendence of material objects may be as an affair of sense-cognition. No doubt this treatment amounts to abstraction, insofar as it separates the perceptual, the valuative, and the actional. Now, I believe I am entitled to do this, not only because I keep in view the need for the eventual examination of other essential noetic contributions to the constitution of the sense of body qua experienced, but by reason as well of the fact that an analysis of the perceptual strand is sufficient to establish my point concerning the irreducibility of the reality of thinghood to the transparency of the ideal, and that it is an important step towards the overcoming of idealism in general and of the idealist interpretation of the phenomenology of perception in particular. (Cf. Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research V (1945), n. 37.) I grant, of course, that an adequate treatment of bodiliness and materiality has to begin with the concrete nexus or Lebensform of primordial experience (i.e., the moving concretum of perceptual, valuative, conative, and actional dimensions in the object, perhaps with a special emphasis on action.) Cf. Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. M. S. Frings and R. L. Funk (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 56ff, 138ff, and 148ff. In what follows, it would be useful to keep in mind the notion of “performative being”. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Ensayo de estética a manera de prólogo”, in Obras Completas VI, pp. 250ff.

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  110. Whether the process in question involves one, several, or all the phases of the epokhé (i.e., the psychological-phenomenological, the transcendental, or the eidetic). Cf. A. Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, pp. 204–205.

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  111. Cf. José Ortega y Gasset, Guillermo Dilthey y la idea de la vida in Obras Completas, Centennial Edition, VI, p. 190; I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. K. Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961): “I entitled transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori” (B 25; p. 59); “We then assert that the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience….” (B 197; p. 194).

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  112. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 215.

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  114. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 215.

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  115. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 244–45. Gurwitsch formulates the noetic equivalent of the necessary condition of possibility of a perceptual object as follows: “[The unity] …and identity of a material thing, as far as its mere possibility is concerned, depend upon expectancies and anticipations involved in the given phase of the perceptual process and specified as to type, structure, and more or less general pattern, being fulfilled in future phases of the perceptual process as such anticipations have been fulfilled in previous phases.” (Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 215; cf. also pp. 289–90).

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  119. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 216. Cf. p. 288.

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  122. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964); Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p. 102; E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), p. 62.

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  124. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 226–27.

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  125. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 199d.

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  126. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 227. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, §143 and pp. 357ff; E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), p. 62.

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  127. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), §55, p. 129.

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  128. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 224.

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  129. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, pp. 214ff.

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  130. Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophiae, ii and iii.

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  131. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964, p. 225; Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, pp. 102–103 and 331–32; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), pp. 343ff and 395ff.

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  132. Cf. Alfred Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 107. There he says that a symbol, or the symbolic function acquired by an item of experience, is “an enclave in the actual level of reality [i.e., the everyday world of action] resulting from the annihilation of a topically relevant theme of experience originating on another level of reality [i.e., a world other than this world, say, the world of dreams or that of science].” It is obvious that the sense of symbol or symbolic function, as I use it here, does not exactly correspond with Schutz’s own, if for no other reason than that it seeks to express the relationship between my inner world (as to both my stock of knowledge and my motivational history, to use Schutz’s terms) and the everyday world, while Schutz is only giving expression to the relationship between such a world and other possible worlds, so as to be able to set the stage for the constitution of the other-worldly on the basis of the this-worldly. This is a most important and interesting task, but not one which is of immediate concern to me in the present context. And yet Schutz’s sense and use of terms like symbol and symbolic function can be shown to be at the basis of my own, which are just the result of what I believe is a well-founded elaboration and generalization of Schutz’s basic positions in this regard.

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  133. Cf. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 225.

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  134. Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 227.

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  135. For the difficulties involved in the notion of object givenness, cf. the notion of the “pure insubordination of mountain peaks” in R. M. Rilke, “Exposed upon the Summits of the Heart,” Gedichte, 1906–26, as examined in O. F. Bollnow’s commentary in Rilke, 2nd. ed. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1956), ch. 2, §10.

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  136. Cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, Beiträge zur Lösung der Frage vom Ursprung unseres Glaubens an die Realität der Aussenwelt und seinem Recht in Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1968), V, pp. 90ff.

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  137. Cf. Hubert Dreyfus, “The Perceptual Noema: Gurwitsch’s Crucial Contribution,” Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, ed. L. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), pp. 136, 147, 150–51, 153, and 159–60; E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), pp. 728 and 743–44; A. Gurwitsch, “Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Pure Ego: Studies of the Relation between Gestalt Theory and Phenomenology,” trans. F. Kersten in Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), pp. 104 and 341 (respectively); Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), p. 183.

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  1. Long Island University, USA

    Jorge García-Gómez

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    Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

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García-Gómez, J. (1991). Perceptual Consciousness, Materiality, and Idealism. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Turning Points of the New Phenomenological Era. Analecta Husserliana, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3464-4_22

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