Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
ANALECT A HUSSERLIANA
VOLUME XI
Editor:
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
Belmont, Massachusetts
THE GREAT CHAIN OF
BEING
and
ITALIAN
PHENOMENOLOGY
Edited by
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS x~
B. UPSTREAM ENQUIRIES
ANNEX
B. HUSSERLIAN INVESTIGATIONS
RENZO RAGGIUNTI I The Language Problem in Husserl's Phenom-
enology 225
FILIPPO COSTA / The Phenomenology of External Objects according
to Ding und Raum 279
ROSA MIGNOSI / Reawakening and Resistance: A Stoic Source of
the Husserlian Epoch/; 311
FILIPPO L1VERlIANI / The Phenomenology of Religion as a Science
and as a Philosophy 321
ELIO CONST ANTINI / Einflihlung und Intersubjektivitat bei Edith
Stein und bei Hussed 335
Angela Ales Bello and A.-T. Tymieniecka at the heads of the table at one of our Roman
dinners. Among others at the table are Gareth Halett, Henrik Houtakker, and P. Santoro.
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
THE THEME
The present volume contains the work deriving from the initial phase of the
collaboration between The World Phenomenology Institute and Italian
scholars, together with the proceedings of the Annual Convention of the
Centro Italiano de Ricerche Fenomenomenologiche of Rome held February
24-25, 1979, and some additional research. Together with volume IX of the
ANALECTA it assesses our fruitful work in Italy.
In our age, we may say, man is the center of attention. Yet the spirit
of "humanism" is lost. Such a variety of ways have been proposed by the
multifarious cultures clamouring to make themselves heard - ways of inter-
preting what it means "to be human" - that the essential sense of man's
"humanity" which lies at the ·roots of these approaches does not come into
its own. Indeed, it remains completely ignored.
This sense of humanity, or of "what makes man specifically human",
cannot be identified with any particular human faculty, with any peculiar
aspect of his existence, with any singular feature of his life-world. Neither
could their mere sum total yield the necessary insight into what makes up
the meaningfulness of human destiny. Although aiming, as we know, at the
vindication of the "complete man", the phenomenological anthropologies
remained limited to their own j;>iases, due predOminantly to the prevailing
assumptions of the cultures from which they have emerged. On the one hand,
the predominant prestige of positive science has left its "dehumanizing" mark
upon the life-world, the world of the thinker himself. On the other hand, a
concurrent "disillusionment" has corrupted the Western spiritual climate,
calling in question the higher aspirations and ideals of man, ideals which in
previous cultural epochs determined the "humanistic" faith of man, and so
undermined the very foundations of the culture of our times, causing our
view of man to shrink to the bare minimum. This shrinkage expresses itself
in the approach to any object of reflection or inquiry by a certain onesided-
ness, a certain limitation to some self-enclosed segment, which loses its link
to the whole - of which it is in fact an organic part.
ix
x ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
This shrinkage - as is only too well known and too much emphasised -
this shrinkage at the heart of the great majority of variants expressing Westent
culture appears with a striking force when contrasted with the way in which
our central phenomenological issue of man in-the-human-condition is received
by Italian scholars. Until now nurtured by the humanistic culture of the
Renaissance, which saw man fully "human" only when approached in the
entirety of his being and from within the viewpoint of his noblest and highest
aspirations, the Italian scholar has remained ever responsive to this profound
insight into the nature of man, while enriching it continuously through the
scientific and social debate of our times. The philosophies of Croce, Gentile,
Sciacca, which have prevailed in Italy until recently, continued the tradition
through their cultural and historical emphasis. Now that their influence has
faded away, our vast program of the phenomenology-of-man-and-the-human-
condition seems to offer to the Italian philosopher the best opportunity of
making a link between his innermost humanistic tendency and the possibility
of pursuing his own specific interests.
This appears to me to account clearly for the vivid and creative response
found in Italy to the activities and projects of The International Husserl and
Phenomenological Research Society - later expanded into The World Institute
for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning with its two other
International Societies reaching respectively into the field of Phenomenology
and Literature and that of Phenomenology and the Human Sciences. I believe
it explains also the expansion and unique enrichment of our common research
work brought about by the collaboration with our Italian colleagues.
In fact, our collaboration with the Italian scholars had already been in-
itiated by the participation in the second International Congress of our IHPRS
(held in September 1972 in New York), of Professor Mario San cipriano whom
I invited after I had become acquainted with his work on Husser!. But it took
on a larger scope in 1974 in Rome when Professor B. D'Amore entrusted us
with the task of moderating (together with Professor A. Dondeyne of Louvain)
the phenomenology session of the International Congress of Thomas Aquinas,
in the program of which all major contemporary trends were represented. It
was then that I had the opportunity of meeting with several Italian as well as
foreign phenomenological scholars that I had not previously met. This en-
counter became, in fact, not only a germinal point for our work in Italy but
also for its radiation into other spheres of collaboration.
In the first place we then met with the Italian Professors Paolo Valori,
Filipo Liverziani, Rizzacasa, Constantini and the professoressa Ales Bello,
who took the steering-wheel when we together formed The Centro Italiano di
THE THEME xi
* Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 'A page of history: from Osoba i Czyn to The Acting
Person by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla,' in Phenomenology Information Bulletin 3 (October
1979), published by The World Phenomenology Institute, Belmont, Mass., 348 Payson
Rd.
THE THEME xiii
two "Italian" volumes of our series - volume nine, dedicated to The Teleo-
logies in Husserlian Phenomenology, and the present volume - that our
program of inquiry into man-and-the-human-condition has expanded through
a vast spectrum of issues beginning with the physis and reaching the level of
the metaphysics of being, as well as the eschatology of man's destiny.
And now Professor Ales Bello, the director of the Italian Center and the
editor of this volume will describe the life of the Center.
ANGELA ALES BELLO
The present volume took a long time to appear in print. From the moment
the nucleus of its first part, THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING IN PHENOM-
ENOLOGY, had been presented, in March 1976, at the first symposium held
in Italy by The International Husserl and Phenomenological Research Society
in collaboration with the Centro Italiano di Ricerche Fenomenologiche of
Rome, we kept on investigating this surprising topic and it took some time to
explore it further in relation to the classical phenomenological and philosoph-
ical thinkers.
The second part of the volume comprises the major portion of the research
reported to The Third Annual Convention of the Centro held in Viterbo,
February 24-25,1979.
This volume owes more than I could express to Professor Angela Ales
Bello, Director of the Centro Italiano. I am also particularly grateful to her
for having undertaken the editorship of the volume bringing into it also some
of the continuing research work of the Centro.
We are both thankful to Professors Paolo Valori and Peter Henrici for their
sponsorship of our first symposium, which had been held at the Gregorian
University, as well as for their continuing collaboration.
We would also like to express our warmest thanks to Professor Aurelio
Rizzacasa and to Mrs Fausta Rizzacasa for their wonderful work in the local
arrangements for the Viterbo convention.
A.-T. T.
PART I
thought is revised in the attempts to dig deeper and deeper into the origin
of cognition and its condition on both sides: one, the origin and progress of
the cognitive-constitutive flux itself; the other, the order of this progress as
related to the objective to be cognitively established or constituted. Once the
emphasis falls upon the unfolding of the process itself, then it reflects upon
the structural rules and patterns in order to advance and in order to coalesce
toward a life-world of which the unfolding consciousness is the fulcrum and
the center.
Although we may agree with those who believe that the direct ways in
which the problem of existence has been traditionally formulated in philoso-
phy - the idealism/realism dispute - is overcome in the Husserlian perspec-
tive, yet existence as the tantalizing object of philosophical wonder is not
only present throughout the Husserlian reflection but this reflection proceeds
as stimulated by the urge to fmd the right measure, the right proportion and
the proper distribution of roles in the interplay between the order which is
being established (and which articulates the constitutive advance and once
surged makes it proceed) and the genesis of man and his life-world affirming
its presence and establishing man's beingness.
The problem of existence might well be avoided through the bias of
regional ontologies, each of them taking care of its own modality of beingness,
but it is precisely the proportion between the structural complexities and the
respective modalities of beingness which respond to the urge to account for
the puzzling nature of existence in its various modes and the entire order of
beingness that takes its place. The problem of "real existence" might well be
pushed aside with the assumption of the total exfoliation of the human
consciousness within its life-world in the constitutive genesis, and yet the
continuous line which Husserl's effort takes to reach deeper and deeper into
the articulations of the pre-conscious, the "empirical", instinctive, etc. in-
dicates a preoccupation to fmd in this way the proper measure between the
ordering and the establishment in existence of what is being ordered.
In particular, while retracing with Husserl the articulations of the constitu-
tive genesis we cannot fail to obseve the multiplicity of the levels of ordering,
which interlace and found each other, discovered, from the most complex
down to the simplest seen by Husserl, as the originary point of the constitu-
tion. However even at this point the thread of order does not stop. It tends to
encompass all. Beyond the threshold of the originary impression and of its
passage into the most elementary ordering of givenness, the thread of order
continues into the pre-constitutive realms of instincts, impulses, drives, etc. in-
to which his reflection is drawn and, spreading ever further, it is never grasped
8 ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
complex units, realms and domains. Their ties within and among the plenitude
of forms" 5 in the philosophia perennis of Leibniz accounted for their estab-
lishment in beingness, for their existence.
It occurred to me then that the great metaphysical issue of existence and
order, which is the wonderment prompting the phenomenological enterprise,
has taken - albeit in several variations - the implicit form of what Alexander
Pope and Kant after him called "the great chain ofbeing".6
This would mean a recurrence of the classic issue of metaphysics at the
heart of the phenomenological inquiry and it would merit serious attention.
But, as I have mentioned above, it has not been crowned with success. If
phenomenology - the genetic as well as the hermeneutic - seems unable to
ever encompass its own project, it is because the pivot of this very project
remains ignored. What would offer us the key to these labyrinths of the self-
prompting inquiry? Obviously recognition of the reappearance of the great
chain of being within the framework of phenomenological inquiry does not
suffice to assure one of the solution of its grand issue: existence versus order.
To do it justice we have to learn the lesson from the preceding efforts and to
undertake a new project; the phenomenological reconstruction of the human
universe.
Discovering that the often over-absolutised constitutive function of man is
neither his unique nor his primordial function, that not cognition but action
is the main access to existence and, lastly, that the ultimate factor for the
establishment of human beingness is not intentional ordering but the CREA-
TIVE IMAGINATION, we shall find that in full-fledged phenomenological
inquiry, so understood, the great chain of being takes on an entirely new
form.
I am privileged that my friend and collaborator Professor Eugene Kaelin
has cared to present, in what follows, my own philosophical undertaking in
this perspective.
NOTES
of the real wor!d on the one hand, and of human responsibility on the other hand, find
the clue to "what it is ultimately all about." It should, however, be made clear that this
clue is not expressed in any way by Ingarden himself, nor does it seem probable that he
was aware of it. On the contrary he is said to have finally considered his grand design a
failure. For the role of the 'great chain of being' in my interpretation of Ingarden in his
controversies with Husserl, cf. 'Beyond Ingarden's Idealism/Realism controversy with
Husser!' and 'The Contextual Phase of Phenomenology', pp. 335-341, Part III; chapter
3, pp. 371-373, ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA, vol. IV, 1976.
2 Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 'Roman Ingarden ou une nouvelle formulation du
probIeme Idealisme/Realisme,' Les Actes du XI Congres International de Philosophie,
Brussels, 1953.
3 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 'Beyond Ingarden's Idealism/Realism Controversy with
HusserI' and 'The contextual Phase of Phenomenology', op. cit.
4 Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 'Die Phaenomenoiogische Selbstbesinnung I: Der Leib
und die Transzendentalitaet in der gegenwaertigen phaenomenologischen und psychiatri-
schen Forschung' pp. 1-3, ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA, vol. I, 1971.
5 Cf. pp. 335-341, op. cit.
6 Cf. pp. 371-373, op. cit.
EUGENE F. KAELIN
Man, the mediator between the natural and the cultural, finds himself in the
unlucky happenstance dramatized so poignantly by Pascal in the seventeenth
century: on the one hand, a reed blown about by the wind; and on the other,
possessed of a mind capable of understanding his situation between the "two
infinities" of the incomparably great and the infmitesimally small. But a mind
is a fragile thing, and the same imagination that enables us to project other
possible worlds, the same symbol systems that permit our understanding of
the real world and to contemplate a better one, may victimize the symbolizer,
render most alienated the most powerful of imaginations. For this reason, man
is the weakest link in "the great chain of being", one of those "unit ideas", 1
which, according to Arthur O. Lovejoy, permits the development of a disci-
pline that has come to be known as "the History of Ideas."
In explaining his methodology Lovejoy states,
The type of 'idea' with which we shall be concerned ... consists in a single specific
proposition or 'principle' expressly enunciated by the most influential of early European
philosophers, together with some further propositions which are, or have been supposed
to be, its corollaries. 2
The idea entered into the history of philosophy through Plato's distinction
between intelligible and sensible "worlds."
Once one distinguishes ontologically between an independent realm of
immutable, universal Ideas and a dependent realm of changing, particular
11
II
cognitive acts of readers. But in the creation of such fictional worlds, not
every aspect of the represented world nor of the objects in it can be referred
to by the author. Some statements are left unsaid, but are yet implied by
those which are. These implications may be either of an individual or a general
nature.
The fourth stratum, that of "aspects and aspect continua" , which through
the stratum of semantic unities are motivated by the author's sentences, are
held in readiness by the reader to concretize further the imaginary appearance
of the represented states of affairs. Again, not all aspects are referred to
by the author's text; some are left to the free fancy of the reader as his
"concretization" of the text fulfills the intentional being of the literary work.
There are better and worse concretizations of a given text, but that judgment
is based upon an interpretation of the total "polyphonic harmony" of the
interplay between aesthetically valent qualities of the four strata, as con-
cretized by the reader. Both real and ideal objects are cognized without such
spots of indeterminacy.
For Ingarden, the essence of "real" objects contains the following charac-
teristics: (1) every real object is unequivocally and universally (in every
respect) determined; (2) all determinations of real objects jointly constitute
a primary concrete unity [These characteristics are intentionally separated
from the total unity by the perceptual acts of the perceiver; and since the
aspects of the object are possibly infinite, our natural perception of real
objects can cognize them as a unit only inadequately.] ; (3) every real object
is absolutely individual [Thus, if one characteristic of an object is of a general
or eidetic nature, such as "colored", that essence must be individuated in a
particular value and saturation of a particular hue.] Real objects are in-
dividuated by the fusion of individual determinations, Le. by funding into a
total structural quality, but this fusion is autonomous, founded in the being
of the objects themselves. 11
For the phenomenological grounding of these assertions, Ingarden appeals
to "the essence" of transcendent objects, by which he means, I think, that for
a real object to be intended by an act of consciousness [the eidetic meaning
of the transcendence of that object] it must possess these characteristics. 12
The being of transcendent objects, that is their manner of existence, is there-
fore autonomous; it possesses its determination in itself as essentially de-
scribed. If I am permitted such an epithet, this is the basis for Ingarden's
"transcendental realism."
Works of art, on the contrary, lack this mode of being; they are hetero-
nomous since the foundation of their being is to be found in the intentionality
MAN-THE-CREATOR 17
III
by which the pure Ego was thought to constitute the world (or at least
its significance), and which from the point of view of its conclusions was
"monistic" in that all kinds of "objectivities" - ideal, real, or merely inten-
tional - depended upon the constitutive functioning of the "pure" conscious-
ness, the second, Ingardenian, stage can be characterized methodologically
as both eidetically analytical and ontologically pluralistic, admitting only
one real world, but constituted by both "Ideas" - themselves structurally
determined by the relations of ideal qualities or contents that are universal
(the constants of an eidetic analysis) and individual qualities, or "variables"
that "fill out" the universals as if from below - and real, individual things
that are completely determined by the structural properties of the related
ideal qualities. Both these stages suffered from a serious deficiency.
Husserl had difficulties relating the functions of the pure consciousness
with the embodied consciousness of a living human being, since the body is
part of the world that was placed within the brackets of the phenomenological
reduction. Ingarden's analysis, on the other hand, describes a series of possible
worlds, but is unable to make the connection between these possible worlds
and the one real world in which all humans must live. Mme Tymieniecka
wishes to retain the Ingardenian pluralism, but to go beyond its constructi-
vism by devising a "contextual" explanation of "the nature of man and his
condition" within the ongoing processes of both culture and Nature. What
the phenomenologist seeks, according to this program, is those structures of
the human condition that are irreducible to his purely natural basis, but
which yet grow out of his necessary link to "Elemental Nature". 13
If successful, this same analysis, together with the conjectural synthesis
the newer method demands, should indicate the specific creative function of
man as a means by which the human animal succeeds in realizing his or her
own self-projecting.
Although this program is adumbrated in her Why is there Something rather
than Nothing? (1966),14 its ultimate suspassing of Ingarden is perhaps more
easily understandable from her explanation of Ingarden's "solution" of the
problem of the relations between Ideas, immutable and autonomous as in
Plato, and the changing, equally autonomous things of nature. That article
appeared as "Eidos, Idea and Participation", in 1960-1961,15 We should
remember here that Lovejoy traces the idea of the Great Chain of Being to
Plato's distinction between the other-worldly and the this-worldly nature
of changing individuals.
The ancient separation of the intelligible from the sensible worlds posed an
insoluble problem. For Plato, the discrete separation between Idea and thing
MAN-THE-CREATOR 19
was to be. bridged by an absolute similarity between the Idea itself and the
things which exemplified it. But since similarity was of the nature of another
form, the spectre of the 'third man' arose to defeat this Platonic notion of
participation. Aristotle would have the universals existing within things, and
abstracted from them by the active intellect. Individual things that are the
primary substances of Aristotle's metaphysics are qualified by the secondary
substances (genera and species) with respect to which alone they could be
"scientifically" known. The impasse of this solution is apparent in the med-
ieval interpretation of the problem of defming individuals: the essence of
Socrates, we remember, was the defmition of Socrates, if Socrates had a
definition. The mode of definition in Aristotle, through proximate genus
and essential difference, could not be applied to individuals.
The impasse found in the Platonic doctrine of participation or of the
Aristotelian inability to defme individuals could be remedied if the following
conditions were met: (1) that Ideas themselves have an autonomous status,
i.e. not be dependent upon anything else for their being; (2) that the Ideas
be structured, i.e. composed of elements that may be found in the structures
of individual things; (3) that there be a structural sameness in the constitution
of Ideas and things; and (4) that the structures of individual things be amen-
able to change as the elements entering into these structures themselves
undergo change, regulated by a kind of "internal mechanism."
These conditions are met as follows:
First, with respect to the Ideas. The dual characteristics of Ideas, to be
universal and at the same time inherent within the conc;rete things of nature,
indicate their two-fold nature: to be determined as they are internally, and to
possess specific contents that are actualized in the concrete. What makes them
distinct from the ideal objects of mathematics and the purely intentional
objects of fiction is precisely this characteristic: the ontical structures con-
tained within Ideas are there in the mode of a constituting principle for
something other than themselves. Ideas, then, may be distinguished according
to their "matter", their "form", and their "existential modalities", this latter
determined by their manner of inherence in other kinds of being, whether
the autonomous and concrete objects of the natural world (relative to the
world context), an absolute being (as a possibly self-determined existent),
processes and events, or purely intentional objects. All objects of any kind are
describable in terms of the matters found within Ideas.
These "matters", on the other hand, are either "constants", i.e. actually
contained within the ideas as its universal quality, or "variables", i.e. singular
determinations that are "indicated" by these same universals. For example,
20 EUGENE F. KAELIN
a specific hue, chroma and saturation are all indicated by any universal color,
say, red. The variables are really present in the concrete things, such as a red
apple.
The matters contained within an Idea therefore constitute the structural
elements of things we may refer to as "ideal qualities." The connections
between the matters are necessarily determined, either in a pattern of co-
existence with each other or as "indicating" a necessary implication of
instantiation in the concrete. Thus the red of an apple, in its specific deter-
mination, is indicated by the universal red, which is one of the possible ways
for a thing to be colored. As components of Ideas, the matters determine
each other, and how they should be found in concrete objects. An "ideal"
quality, therefore, is the smallest distinct unit of a determined being. Such
qualities are atemporal, motionless, and subsist in the permanent mode of
ideal existence.
What bridges the gap between the universal Idea and the individual concrete
thing is neither a "third man", an image, nor anything reduced to the rela-
tionship of similarity. The variable matters, which are integral parts of the
universal Ideas, by their inherence in concrete individual things constitute
the principle of multiplicity within a single species (itself defined as a unity
of essence within a multiplicity); and the constants guarantee that the multi-
plicity of features are linked to the structure of a single unified being. Thus,
the separation between Ideas and things is not purely existential (indicating
a different mode of existence) but functional, i.e. based upon the way in
which ideal qualities coalesce into the structure of a single being. Ideas merely
constitute the function as "indicating" or "prescribing" the qualities found
within the structural composition of a concrete being.
Enough has been said, perhaps, for anyone to understand in what sense
Ingarden's position is "structuralistic." Yet two issues remain to be explained.
Concrete things undergo change, while Ideas are immutable. Is this difference,
too, purely functional? And how can we know the reality of any concrete
being of nature?
We have already indicated that Ideas are not forms to be filled out with
material contents. That is the distinction, ust,d by both Plato and Aristotle,
that was replaced in the structural analysis indicated above. Hence, to under-
stand the generation and corruption undergone by concrete things, we must
reconsider the possible structural relations between the ideal qualities con-
stituting the matters of the Ideas. The actio and passio which according to
Aristotle were predicable of individual primary substances are thought of as
contained within the inner structure of concrete things, determined by the
MAN-THE-CREATOR 21
Ideas as above. Ideal qualities are merely first order elements of a structural
complex; the relations between these first order elements which determine
the structural unity of the thing produce a distinctive determination. In a
similar way, the aesthetic properties of a visual object are determined by the
patterns of relations between the specific determinations of unit sensible
matters.
For a formal (read "structural") determination of these fust order matters,
one must consider those contents which are "proper to the self-same thing" ,
i.e. the subject of properties and those which are properties of this thing qua
structured. In using the expression, "the constitutive nature of a thing", we
refer to the compactness of its qualities, to the "choice" of the matters that
necessarily inhere within the structure of the thing. As a distinct possibility,
the entire structure of any being is already present in the matters of the Ideas.
The essence (eidos) of a thing is what governs the possibilities of mutability.
Consider; the constitutive nature of some things contain virtualities. Certain
kinds of matters, according to the extent of the requirements of the universal
Ideas, possess the power to remain as they are; others are structured in such
a way as to allow for change. When a constitutive nature demands only some,
but not all the implicates of an Idea, an essence of a real thing is formed.
"Essence" here refers to the "absolutely proper properties" of the being in
question. Yet other implicates of the Idea remain possible, and constitute
the accidents, i.e. those other non-unequivocally determined properties
attributed to the tIring. This is the basis of virtualities as belonging to the
essence of things. The fading of the color red to yellow is one of the virtual
properties of a red thing, yet belongs to the essence. And with any change
of the first order constituent "ideal" qualities found in the structure of a
thing, the second-order structural properties undergo change. Yet what we
call a "thing" is still completely determined by its inherent properties.
Consciousness, in this scheme, is powerless to bestow meaning upon the
objects of nature. This is the gravamen of the argument between Husserlian
transcendental idealism and Ingardenian structural realism.
Mme Tymieniecka has found three "fallacies" in Ingarden's formal-
existential ontology. First, there is the assumption that the noetico-noematic
intentional system of structures and processes is the essential and ultimate
determination of "objectivity." Second, reality is interpreted solely through
the intentionally constituted objective system (the system of meanings
delimiting the possibilities in Ingarden) rather than the internal mechanisms,
each endowed with its own rules of operation (as for example in the Leibnitz-
ian conception of a monad). And third, in consequence of the above, the
22 EUGENE F. KAELIN
criterion of "bodily giveness" that was initially meant to guarantee our access
to the real is limited to the objectifying intuition of things and beings. 16
Yet, she points out, there is at least one system of organic existence that is
"experienced", if not "known" in a pre-reflective human attitude, and that is
the lived-body itself. Thus, if phenomenology is to continue to make headway
and if we are to arrive at an answer to the second question noted above, we
must surpass the earlier attempts at a purely eidetic analysis, and develop a
technique for analyzing the inherent lived structures found in man's necessary
relationship to some contextual world. And what we have to account for in
our search for a method is an explanation of man's position within the Great
Chain of Being, situated tragically between the infinitely great and the in-
fmitesimally small. 17 Man is bound to nature by the subliminal, pre-reflective
tie he must have with Elemental Nature; and we observe that his life project,
whether as an individual or as a member of a community of persons, generates
a telos that is not determined by nature but is governed by the laws of its
own unfolding.
Such was the new program called for in 1976.
As indicated above, Mme Tymieniecka had already sought to expand the
phenomenological method to comprehend both the analysis and synthesis of
our expanding cosmos as early as 1962.18 She refers to the method by which
she has attempted to construct her "contextual phenomenology" variously as
"postulational" or "conjectural inference." The remainder of this section will
be devoted to an explanation of this theoretical gambit.
Both Husserl and Ingarden leave us with nagging questions concerning our
knowledge of the lived human condition. In opposition to the structural
abstractedness of their conception of real being, she proposes a new analysis
of the "real individual." A living, conscious human being is, after all, a
concrete individual. As such the being of this individual carmot be understood
without considering its relationship to the concrete "context" in which its life
span is worked out. This is apparent from the naturalistic standpoint already
at the level of man's biological existence. How is it possible for a human body
describable from one point of view by purely physical determinants suddenly
to take on properties of a higher order? And how do living organic beings
evolve for themselves another order of existence with transcends the biological
in order to achieve a peculiarly significant cultural order of existence? Either
the Great Chain of Being has gaps, precisely at these levels of man's existence,
or man himself ensures the continuity within the Chain. But how is this
possible?
The explanation begins once again with her challenge to the Ingardenian
MAN-THE-CREATOR 23
categories of the real individual seen as an abstract "object." For her, on the
contrary, a human being is a concretum, existing autonomously as a real
individual, even through that existence is derived from biological parents
and constantly wrought out of the invading world process. The individual
autonomous being is therefore "contingent." This contingency takes the form
of existential "transitoriness"; and the analysis of his functional structure
indicates that the concrete individual is lacking in both a "sufficient reason"
and personal finality.
Existentially (materially) derivative, transitory, and lacking in sufficient
reason, a man must work out the significance of his life. To rationalize this
condition, therefore, we must "postulate" the existence of a world order.
Hence we read: "Indeed, the constitutive system of the totality of being
corresponds as a postulational correlate to the conjectural inference which
has its foothold in the intrinsic pattern of the individual." 19 Later she states
more boldly,
Abandoning the spurious quest after a specific type of cognition as means to assess the
actual existence of the merely possible things and beings we would, in this roundabout
way, frod such means in the a priori existential postulate intrinsic to the universal
order of Being; by the same stroke the traditional metaphysics would be once more
vindicated. 20
Where the prior two phenomenological methods begin with the transcenden-
tally pure or ontologically possible, the newer method is to begin with spelling
out what is required for actuality to be what it is.
To outline the process: beginning with the description of a real individual
within the world context, we note that radical (three-fold) contingency
described above. But owing to the "positive clues" of the description we may
postulate, by conjectural inference, the constructive design of the contextual
world, an expanding sequence of types, or levels, of being it is science's
business to interrogate. Should the "infinite project of science" complete its
task, we should be awarded with a complete architectonic of the world order.
The real universe, if it could be so described, would be traced through orders
of causality back to a beginning and would thus necessarily have an end; so
the world order, too, would be contingent. Indeed, it would take two ideas,
that of the real individual and of the constructive world design, to formulate
an adequate notion of the principle of sufficient reason sought by Leibnitz.
That notion is of the totality of Being, a total functioning system of events
and processes within which we can determine both the structural elements
and their constitutive functions in determining the whole. The totality
24 EUGENE F. KAELIN
IV
Mme Tymieniecka gives three reasons why the Ingardenian ontology can-
not answer the problems of philosophy created by the contingency of real
individuals and the contextual world order. Ingarden's eidetic analysis of
the possibilities of real existents suffices to uncover the Ideas and their
dual function which bridges the gap between the intelligible and sensible
worlds, the "ideal qualities" forming the elements entering into higher
orders of structural units, even the purely intentional beings with respect
to which man may project different possible worlds in his creative fictions.
Yet no purely structural explanation seems possible for the following three
phenomena postulated in Mme Tymieniecka's contextual phenomenology:
first, the reasons for the actual emergence of any real individual; second,
the reasons for any real individual to establish its particular pattern of
existence; and last, the "initial spontaneity" of the living, human, real
individual.
The remainder of this section will be dedicated to an explanation of these
phenomena. Beginning with "the initial spontaneity," I shall consider in order
the "human cipher" deciphered from the context of a specifically human
action and then creativity as the "irreducibile element" of the human condi-
tion. In this way we should fmd the place of art and the artist within the
great chain of being.
MAN-THE-CREA TOR 25
Mme Tymieniecka maintains that the need for the postulation of an initial
emergent spontaneity in the development of men in the context of the real
world is subjacent to the transcendental genesis, and has been felt in phe-
nomenology since Husserl's Crisis. What was the exasperating blockage to the
further development of the European sciences, if not the consequence of an
over-optimistic rationality? To clear the way for a continued advance in
science itself it would be necessary to reconsider the foundations for our
claims to know anything at all. In the past, ontology and metaphysics were
derivative from an empiricist epistemology. Questioning the ground for that
epistemology - a theory of sensation and perception -led to a reinstauration
of the primacy of ontology in the works of both Ingarden and Heidegger.
And, as might be expected, a crisis in the sciences produced a concomitant
crisis in our concepts of culture and the human condition. Quite simply put,
the drive to rationality led to frustration and an accompanying pessimistic
view of the nature of man.
The shock was felt in literature as well as in the laboratory; in art, as well
as on the psychoanalyst's couch. The eighteenth century ideal of locating
man in a firm position within the great chain of being seemed to have been
blown apart. Man, an alienable if not alienated personality, began to search
his own inner depths, into the inner structures of the Self, for an understand-
ing of his condition, which perversely remained untouched by an objectivizing
science. The literature of a Kafka, a Joyce, a Sartre, a Beckett sought to
plumb the depths: to examine all actions, reactions and personal relations to
discover hidden motivations within given life situations; to locate the deeper
self hidden behind human virtualities, but which could be revealed in the
examination of extraordinary circumstances; and to layout the conditions for
achieving an "authentic self" that would explain an ultimate human allegiance
that would be founded on something other than a biological inheritance,
social convention, or cultural conditioning.
To what was man dedicated, to sheer animal survival? If so, he would still
be a reed blown about by the wind - or to a unique drive towards an active
self-creation? In which case, the greater the force of the winds, the more
sublime his effort to achieve a personal significance. What was needed was an
appeal to a primal human spontaneity, to the effects of a genuine human
freedom, as small as it might be, within the framework of man's determined
natural world.
The phenomenological efforts to reverse the trend of the natural and
26 EUGENE F. KAELIN
all other affections united within the concept of the "soul." But the real
concrete individual is neither body nor soul, but rather the Leib or lived-body
in whose experience there is traced a soul-body territory. Yet even he could
not establish the link between the lived soul-body territory and the human
body as an element of nature.
For this reason, Tymieniecka's contextual phenomenology will begin by
"postulating" the existence of an "initial spontaneity" at the onset of a
human life. This initial spontaneity - the antithesis of a pre-established order
- carries, by conjecture, all the germinal virtualities accruing to it by the
elemental forces of nature; and eventually works out its destiny by channeling
the blind, haphazard elements of the same source into significant patterns
of its own making. Such is the ground for the appearance of a real human
individual within the world context of actual experience. The basis of the
conjecture is now evident: for a man to be able to do what we know he does
he must have a beginning in the elemental forces of nature, and he must
possess an initial spontaneity for the self-determination of his own destiny.
By a kind of Gedankenexperiment Mme Tymieniecka suggests three possi-
ble modes of conceiving this process of development: either man's course
flows into its pre-arranged bed by the sheer force of things, or, possessing
an initial spontaneity, is canalized into the same kind of bed by the same
forces - both of these positions are deterministic -, or, again, man's initial
spontaneity is caused to flow, and continues to flow in a bed of its own
making. This latter is her preference. The first two possibilities would be
the causes of the cultural pessimism noted above. The latter of the three
alternatives does not guarantee a certain ground for optimism, but at least
opens up the possibility for human self-determination.
The initial spontaneity is by conjecture differentiated into distinct func-
tional modalities, and after "bringing forth the will to create", lifts the real
concrete human individual to its specifically human status. In this way, she
speculates, the necessary "initial spontaneity" is neither driven from behind
nor whimsically projected into the future.
In order to achieve its complete human form, the initial spontaneity will
traverse the following stages: (1) the dynamic, including all the nuances,
intensities, and degrees of vividness and dullness that "color" human tem-
porality; (2) the "enjoyment" of its own temporalization, horizontally as
being pleasant or painful, as well as vertically uplifting or degrading; and (3)
the axiological, which infuses the other spontaneities with their distinctive
affective value. The process is completed in the achievement of the highest
values of human experience, aesthetic, moral and "spiritual."
28 EUGENE F. KAELIN
Like the precedent, this second concept is the result of the postulation of an
entity representing the necessary condition for the possibility of human
communication through the use of symbols. It takes its inspiration from a
more recent, "hermeneutical" phase of phenomenology according to which
a written text is deciphered to uncover its deeper meanings. If human in-
telligence is required to decipher such meanings, then it is conjectured that a
similar, but asymmetrical and partly unconscious activity was necessary to
construct the text to be deciphered.
What Heidegger has called a personal or communal "forestructure" for
interpreting a text's significance in her procedure reveals a subjacent creative
mechanism at one with her notion of the creative function of man. On her
analysis, which differentiates drastically the reading and the writing of a text,
a reader in his conscious "reconstruction" of the text merely follows a pre-
delineated, intelligible pattern of the past modalities that have grown out of
the "initial spontaneity." To "decipher" a text means to discover, to dis-
cover, or to uncover the "ciphers" embodied within. The same process may
be applied to human conduct in general. Armed with the phenomenological
notion of a concrete individual which cannot exist except in relationship to
the context of his life-world, the hermeneut will seek to reconstruct his "fore-
conception" in terms of the universal constitutive system of the rational,
reflective consciousness in relation to the forces of Elemental Nature. But
these two determinants - Elemental Nature and the constitutive consciousness
- present the interpreter with the alien texture of an already constituted
world-context. What's missing is the "live center" of the initial spontaneity,
now called an "entelechial determinant" of an unc~arted, significant future.
To supply this missing determinant of human creative behavior it is
necessary to tum the process around, and to examine the manner in which
a significant text is constructed in the first place. If interpretive reading is the
deciphering of a text, writing is its "ciphering." "Ciphering a text" means
literally inventing ciphers: not the center of an onion which reveals itself as
a nothing by multiple removal of the layers of dgnificance of a text or action,
but a unit which is itself meaningless, yet which achieves a significance
ultimately by virtue of other such units with which it enters into relationship.
Like the hermeneutical reconstructive method of analysis, this basically
constructive method is applicable to human action. Only one caveat is in
order: declining the gambit to start with Ingarden's positing of the real
individual as one possible ontological structure that realizes itself with respect
MAN-THE-CREATOR 29
Having been led from the concept of an "initial spontaneity", through the
"ciphering process" by which that spontaneity gives itself expression, we
arrive at long last at the confluence of the two general themes announced in
30 EUGENE F. KAELIN
the title of this article. Man, the artist, through his expressive works of art is
not a passive link in the great chain of b~ing; in making himself through his
works he generates the active force that changes the elemental forces of
nature into culture. The unity of being arose as a problem in the first place
because of the supposed distinction between the ontological status of actually
existent entities, such as a man, and the world of ideal forms. To complete
the picture of the complete sequence of things (the cosmos in creation),
including the human ties to Elemental Nature and man's actual life-world,
the prototype of action must be described as both free and creative. How
can man be free when he is tied to Nature and the conditions of his own
life-world?
Mme Tymieniecka has exposited in two different places the reigning
"paradoxes" of human freedom. 32 First, since we feel determined or con-
strained by our relationship to others and our lived worlds, revolt seems to be
the only expression of our aspirations to be free. But this revolt is against our
very own natures, and should it succeed we should destroy the necessary
reactional field necessary to support our own actions. Secondly, freedom is
thought by some to be a right to remove oneself from all external constraints,
including any entangling relations with others. This, too, would be possible
only if the subject accepts the passive restraints of Nature. Third, there is the
dogma of social liberalism that maintains human freedom to be a right to
choose one's own personal destiny, while insisting on the necessity of civil
institutions, including the State, which inevitably produce demands of some
conformity amongst citizens. Lastly, the doctrine of moral freedom since Kant
and even before poses the opposition between man's empirical self, determined
by the course of Nature, and the freedom of man's will (a postulate to
the moral order, in Kant) as a faculty of a noumenal Self. Each of these
paradoxes, it seems, maintains the gap between an intelligible, universal and
immutable essence and the concrete, individual and mutable essence of a
single person -- the same separation that caused the initial conception, if
Lovejoy was right, of the great chain of being.
According to Mme Tymieniecka, the tradition up to and including Ingarden
has been misled in its attempts to fmd a "prototype" of free human action in
morality; the clearest such prototype is the creative act by which an artist
introduces a novel object and through it an original value into the texture of
his contextual world. The separation of intelligible and sensible worlds does,
however, indicate how the creative process is to be envisioned.
The traditional concepts of "mind", "soul" and "body" only indicate
abstractions; within a creative act these "functions" of the human developing
MAN-THE-CREATOR 31
... in order to invent, select and develop the appropriate style, the creative orchestration,
of which the creative agent is the center, has to transmute the natural, constitutive line
of the stereotyped human functioning into one appropriate for the purpose. 36
The "subliminal realm" of the creative spirit, in this way, must develop a
style, a distinctive manner of living its fleshy contact with the world in order
34 EUGENE F. KAELIN
The created movement of our hand, eyes, legs, arms, in order to have acquired the skill
prescribed by the style of the created work, holds tight to the virtualities of the mobility
of Nature, condition of every motion. 37
v
A brief evaluation of Mme Tyrnieniecka's "contextual phenomenology" as a
solution to the problem of the links in the great chain of being is now in
order. As that problem originally arose in the history of philosophy with the
Platonic distinction of the intelligible and sensible worlds, it would perhaps
be simple minded to suggest that the Ideas were initially postulated as the
necessary conditions guaranteeing the validity of human knowledge, and that
"participation" of particulars in ,the structures of the universal Ideas then
posed insurmountable problems for both ontology and cosmology. Ultimately
these problems created the crisis in the European sciences noted by Husserl.
Husserl's solution was yet strictly epistemological. By the transcendental-
phenomenological reduction the natural world is reduced to its phenomenal
appearances, within which essences (the equivalents of the Platonic Ideas) are
produced by the active variation of perceptual data by an act of imaginative
reconstruction. The real trees of a forest may be burned to the ground;
but the essence of a tree, the noematic nucleus of intentional meanings
corresponding to the noetic acts of consciousness, is immune from such a
contingency. Isolating the structures of such essences into a set of "formal"
and "material" regional ontologies would thus constitute a firm ground for a
renewed scientific activity. Unifying all the acts of consciousness is the "pure
Ego", the residue of the ultimate reduction, fulfilling all the functions of the
constitutive consciousness outlined in the Cartesian Meditations.
Ingarden entered the fray to charge Husserl with an unwarranted "ideal-
ism." We passed from the transcendental constitutive phase of phenomenology
to the eidetic-ontological. But this phase ended with a description of possible
kinds of being: "ideal", "real", and the "purely intentional." How each of
MAN-THE-CREATOR 35
these kinds of being related to the real structure of the natural world was left
as a task for metaphysics. Mme Tymieniecka has attempted to solve this
problem by bringing phenomenology into its "third phase", her "contextual
phenomenology", as described in the previous sections of this article.
Has she succeeded? Since her work remains in progress, and what I have
examined are mainly its fragments, and since her long promised treatise on
the phenomenology of creative experience has not yet appeared, this remains
to be seen.
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cobb-Stevens, Veda: 'Contextual-Phenomenology and the Problem of Creativity,'
Analecta Husserliana, VII (1978), 163-73.
Collingwood, R. G.: The Principles of Art, New York: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Gide, Andre: The Immoralist, Dorothy Bussy, trans. New York: Vintage Books, 1958.
Heidegger, Martin: Was ist Metaphysik? Sixth edition; Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann,
1960. Original, 1929.
Heidegger, Martin: Holzwege, Fourth edition; Frankfurt a.M.: Klosterman, 1963.
Ingarden, Roman: Der Streit um der Existenz der Welt, Tiibingen: Niemeyer Verlag,
1964. 3 vols.
Ingarden, Roman: 'What is New in Hussed's Crisis?' Analecta Husserliana, II (1972),
23-47.
Ingarden, Roman: 'The Letter to Husser! about the VI [Logical] Investigation and
"Idealism",' Analecta Husserliana, IV (1976), 419-38.
Ingarden, Roman: On the Motives which led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism, A.
Hannibalsson, trans., The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975.
Ingarden, Roman: The Literary Work of Art, G. G. Grabowicz, trans., Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1973.
MAN-THE-CREATOR 37
Lovejoy, Arthur 0.: The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1950.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'Eidos, Idea, and Participation: The Phenomenological
Approach,' Kant-studien, 52 (1960/61),59-87.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: Phenomenology and Science in Contemporary European
Thought, New York: The Noonday Press, 1962.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: Leibniz' Cosmological Syn thesis, Assen: Royan Van Gorcum,
1965.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: Why Is there Something rather than Nothing? Assen: Van
Gorcum, 1966.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: Eros et logos: esquisse de la phenomenologie de l'interiorite
creatrice, Paris and Louvain: Nauwelearts, 1972.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'Phenomenology Reflects upon Itself,' Analecta Husserliana,
II (1972), 3-17.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'Imaginatio Creatrix,' Analecta Husserliana, III (1974),
3-4l.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'Beyond Ingarden's Idealism/Realism Controversy with
Husser!,' Analecta Husserliana, IV (1976), 241-418.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'The Initial Spontaneity,' Analecta Husserliana, V (1976),
3-37.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'Liberta e Liberazione Creatrice,' Incontri Culturali, 1976,
152-60.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'The Creative Self and the Other in Man's Self-Interpreta-
tion,' Analecta Husserliana, VI (1977),151-86.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'The Prototype of Action: Ethical or Creative?' Analecta
Husserliana, VII (1978), 177 -211.
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa: 'Man the Creator and his Triple Telos,' Analecta Husserliana,
IX (1979),3-29.
B. UPSTREAM ENQUIRIES
ANGELA ALES BELLO
pas mystique en-soi, mais un en-soi qui re~oit lui-meme son sens de fa~on
purement subjective, et comme "sens" est inseparable de la constitution de
sens; aussi est-il lui-meme un mode de la simple subjectivite. 1 Pour cette
raison, l'etre presuppose l'experience, tout contenu conceptuel presuppose
l'etre objet d'experience, tout l'etre presuppose l'etre individuel, tout etre
individual presuppose la subjectivite. 2
Voila pourquoi il est important de comprendre Ie sens de cette regression
a la subjectivite, car, si elle est entendue dans son aspect apodictique, elle
represente Ie terrain dernier et indubitable au sens cartesien, et la mise entre
parentheses de la dimension mondaine-existentielle a une signification defmi-
tive. Toutefois, Husserl lui-meme se rend compte de ce danger quand il
distingue sa position de la position cartesienne dans la Krisis et quand il se
demande comment il est possible de reconquerir Ie monde apres l'avoir mis
entre parentheses. Le Beilage XX de la Erste Philosophie II est significatif a
cet egard; d'une part, en effet, on y met de cote Ie theme de la subjectivite
comme residu, et de l'autre, dans la tentative de depasser Ie soIipsisme, on
extend Ie monde comme "indice" d'une variMe infinie d'experiences "possi-
bles." La double reduction a l'''Erlebnis'' et au contenu est alors centrale,
permettant de comprendre a fond la dimension temporelle - conscience non
seulement de ce qui est actuel, mais "representation" de ce qui a deja e16
donne (contenu) - et de comprendre que ce contenu renvoie a ce qui n'est
pas reductible a soi.
Cela est la seule voie, non seulement pour justifier l'intersubjectivite, mais
aussi pour indiquer une ouverture realiste de la phenomenologie. Toutefois,
ce que l'on gagne est Ie depassement ou l'ouverture de la subjectivi16 vers
l'objet; ce mouvement horizontal est possible dans la mesure ou un appro-
fondissement bien plus important a ete effectue; l'authentique correlation
transcendantale sujet-objet n'est recuperable qu'au niveau pre-categorial, ce
qui fait que nous reconnaissons au-dela des sedimentations culturelles "que
Ie monde - lequel est pour nous, lequel, dans son sens et dans sonetre-tel,
est notre monde - puise sa significance d'etre, uniquement a notre vie in-
tentionnelle au moyen d'un ensemble d'operations cafacteristiques qui
peuvent etre observees a priori et non construites a travers des raisonnements
discutables et imaginees au moyen de processus mythiques de pensee." 3
Le passage du "categorial" au"pre-categorial" est ainsi realise; c'est la Ie
resultat Ie plus evident et Ie plus important d'une telle reduction. Tentative
de decouvrir comment on donne ce que l'on donne, et qu'est-ce que l'on
donne. Si Ie but de Ia connaissance est l'etre lui-meme, ce don est Ie don de
l'etre. Husserl ecrit: "Quel est Ie but de l'effort gnoseologique - sous Ie titre
44 ANGELA ALES BELLO
NOTES
1. Dans Ie monde des corps, les degres d'etre vont de bas en haut, selon un
ordre de determinations enrichissantes. Les degres inferieurs sont conserves
dans les degres superieurs, comme, selon Aristote, Ie triangle dans Ie qua-
drilatere (saint Thomas dit: comme Ie carre dans Ie pentagone, ce qui est
geometriquement bien dis cut able ... ). La base a partir de laquelle s'evaluent
les degres, c'est la matiere. Les degres s'eIevent, selon que cette "puissance"
re(:oit une "forme" qui l'actue plus compIetement. On aura ainsi, successive-
ment: les elements, les "mixtes" (parmi lesquels figurent les mineraux), les
51
etres selon la maniere dont ils realisent certaines formes ou certains aspects de
l'agir: hierarchie des spontaneites,l1 hierarchie des app6tits; 12 hierarchie des
modes de connaissance. 13 Mais, dans ce dernier cas, saint Thomas suit l'ordre
descendant, propre it l'etude du monde des esprits.
etres finis. Et c'est dire encore, comme nous l'annon9ions, que Ie processus
descendant que l'argument decouvre en remontant la pente, se situe a un
niveau plus profond que Ie processus ascendant, qu'il ne vaut pas seulement
pour les hautes regions de l'etre, qu'il enveloppe Ie processus mis en oeuvre
dans les regions inferieures. C'est qu'en effet les determinations enrichissantes
qui marquent les degres du monde materiel ne sont pas une surcharge mais un
progres vers l'unite.
Cependant, en posant Dieu comme Ie premier, saint Thomas n'oublie pas
que l'Ipsum Esse subsistens ne fait point partie de la serie des entia. 11 n'y a
pas de continuite entre eux et Lui. Les perfections dont les creatures nous
suggerent l'idee, non seulement se trouvent en Dieu sans limitation, mais
encore -et ceci explique cela- selon un tout autre mode d'etre. - identiques a
leur sujet et it son esse. 17 - 11 ne faut pas se laisser tromper par Ie schema
lineaire que semble parfois adopter saint Thomas: Dieu - les anges - les
hommes, etc. (la ou, par exemple, il expose la hierarchie des intelligences).18
Dieu est hors serie, puisqu'il cree la serie tout entiere et est present a chacun
de ses elements comme son eternite est presente a chaque moment du temps.
- Cette serie, du reste, n'est ni continue ni infmie. Le monde des existants
fmis est fmi et comporte des sauts. Saint Thomas, i1 est vrai, ne croit pas
pouvoir exclure a priori l'hypothese d'un monde cree ab aeterno et semble
avoir doute au moins une fois (dans Ie Contra munnurantes de aeternitate
mundi) que l'on puisse exclure absolument par la simple raison l'hypothese
d'un monde infini, c'est-a-dire compose d'une multitude infinie d'existants.
- Quant aux possibles, ils sont sans doute une multitude infmie, comme est
infmie la puissance creatrice qui les fonde et les contient. Vetre divin peut
etre participe par une infinite d'etants et une infinite de manieres. 19 Mais
la non plus on ne peut parler d'une vraie continuite. II y aura toujours un
ab1me entre l'etre sentant Ie plus parfait et l'etre pensant Ie plus fruste. A plus
forte raison ne saurait-il y avoir de continuite entre la creature, si elevee qu'on
la suppose, et Ie Createur. Encore une fois, les essences sont comme les
nombres ... La distinction entre existants et possibles est liee a l'affirmation
de la Liberte creatrice, fondamentalechez saint Thomas comme chez tout
penseur chretien. Pourtant Ie Docteur angelique semble admettre une certaine
necessite hypothetique. Si Dieu decide de creer, il faut que dans la creation
to us les degres d'etres soient representes. Non pas evidemment tous les
individus ni meme toutes les especes possibles, mais ces degres ou se manifeste
une difference fondamentale et irreductible: elements, mixtes, vegetaux
animaux, monde spirituel et, au milieu, l'homme. La perfection de l'univers
exige qu'il contienne des "substances intellectuelles".20 Un monde sans
LES DEGRES DE L'ETRE CHEZ SAINT THOMAS 55
pen see serait impensable et, pour saint Thomas, les "substances separees"
-les purs esprits- sont une piece essentielle de l'ensemble cosmique.
Insistons sur ce fait que, dans les degres ainsi entendus, les differences ne
sont pas simplement des variations sur un theme commun, mais apportent
quelque chose de nouveau, qui n'etait pas contenu, meme implieitement, dans
un genre superieur. "Raisonnable" n'est pas une determination intrinseque d'
"animal", comme rest "ruminant." De meme les differences des purs esprits
sont intrinseques it la "nature spirituelle", mais Ie fait d'etre "forme d'un
corps" ne rest pas: il y a lit du nouveau. 21 Ces remarques valent egalement
pour l'autre fayon de concevoir les degres d'etre, dont nous allons nous
occuper it present.
11 y a analogie entre les categories - les "grands genres" - parce que l'etre
-qui n'est pas un genre- s'attribue diversement it chacune d'elles. A parler
strictement, en donnqnt aux mots leur pleine portee metaphysique-mais
saint Thomas, it rna connaissance, ne dit rien sur ce point-, l'etre, avec ses
56 J. DE FINANCE
NOTES
Le but de cette note n'est pas d'aborder Ie probleme en toute son ampleur, it
supposer que "toute son ampleur" ait un sens assignable.! 11 n'est meme pas
de l'aborder dans "toute son ampleur" chez Leibniz, car comment l'isoler
dans un systeme ou tout s'entr'exprime? On serait entraIne it reprendre tout
Ie systeme (it supposer, ici encore, que ce tout ait un sens assignable). On se
bomera donc it quelques marques (notae) caracteristiques.
Un maillon ne constitue pas une chaIne. L'idee de chaine implique une
pluralite, denombrable ou non-denombrable, de maillons engages, sans
discontinuite, les uns dans les autres: une concatenatio physique ou ideale.
Insistons. Une telle pluralite se compose d'individus, dans la mesure ou les
maillons, detachables les uns des autres, peuvent chacun, it ce qu'il semble,
etre consideres isolement. Rien de plus aise en pratique. Mais logiquement un
maillon ne peut etre con~u que comme "maillon d'une chaIne." 11 faut done
que dans un univers preetabli selon une logique divine analogue a la notre
(Leibniz Ie professe), iI y ait des individus ou substances; que chacun de ces
individus ou substances n'y soit, en principe, pensable que comme "individu
ou substance de ce monde"; et qu'ils soient tous lies l'un it l'autre: «avjJ.1Tvoux
1TCxvroi», comme disait Hippocrate. 2 Mais nous voici bien loin d'avoir justifie,
et dans sa linearite et dans sa consistance. l'image de la chaIne.
Cette image ne nous interdit-elle pas de parler de la chaIne de l'Etre? Sans
doute. Si l'on voit dans cet etre un universel gene rique auquel, par extension
ou par comprehension, on rattacherait un multiple, serait-il autre chose
qu'une abstraction? En tout cas, ce ne serait pas l'Etre veritablement un, la
substance, ni, moins encore, fens realissimum, unique dans sa transcendance.
Prise en soi, la substance divine n'est enchaInee it rien; la trinite - Leibniz
emploie ici Ie terme 3 - de ses trois attributs, posse, scire, velte - ne se
confond pas avec la sainte trinite; la premiere s'exprime en notre conscience
retlexive ou Ie retlechi se distingue de l'acte meme de la retlexion;4 la se-
conde, qui renvoie, non it des attributs, mais it des substances - les trois
personnes en une - demeure un mystere, l'experience de la reflexion se
bomant, par comparaison, it montrer que ce mystere n'est pas contradictoire.
Quand bien meme on assujettirait it un ordre necessaire que Ie Pere engendre
Ie Fils, et, Ie Pere et Ie Fils ensemble, Ie saint Esprit, notre incapacite it
59
optimum de tous les mondes possibles, et, par suite, apres la Creation, sans la
force substantielle des monades ou, si l'on prefere, sans leur Appetio, dont
l'envers est la Perceptio, la chaine des etres manquerait de consistance. Avec
la force de l'appetitio perceptive nous revenons au principe me me de la
catena aurea, la pretention it l'existence it proportion de la quantite d'essence,
c'est-it-dire de realite, en d'autres termes a proportion de la perfection d'etre,
possible." 28
Mais sans doute allons-nous ici nous heurter a une des difficultes les plus
grandes que rencontre la philosophie. Nous traitons de la chaines des etres.
Or, Ie mot "etre" est plurivoque. Par excellence, il designe la substance et,
meme, faut-il preciser, la substance premiere, ovam npWTT/, l'individu, et non
Ie genre ou l'espece, ovallX oEvTEPex. C'est pourquoi Ie nominalisme ne recon-
naissait d'autre existence que l'individu; c'est pourquoi chez Leibniz - il
n'existe que des monades - Ie degre d'etre (ou de perfection) se me sure a
la quantite d'essence, c'est-a-dire au nombre de ses attributs, et cela parce que
semble-toil, ce nombre s'accroit jusqu'a devenir infmi, quand on procede de
l'universel it l'individuel. Spontanement nous croyons que seule la substance
existe (ou est) en soi, hors de nous, tandis que la relation est pensee. Kant en
temoigne, qui fait de la substance un noumime inconnaissable: la substance
pensee n'est pas chez lui une substance, elle est une categorie. Ainsi s'opere
une coupure radicale entre l'etre et son apparence, ou phenomene. Cette
coupure donne un sens nouveau aux categories d'Aristote, dont la premiere,
parce que les autres n'auraient pas lieu d'etre sans elle, est la substance et,
a n'en pas douter, la substance premiere (par exemple, Socrate). En Leibniz
intervient un Dieu createur, inconnu d' Aristote, et inaccessible it la raison
pure pour Kant. Createur par sa volonte qui n'a de signification de volonte,
et pas, seulement, de puissance, fut-elle la Toute-Puissance, qu'en se deter-
minant selon les motifs de son Entendement. Quels motifs? Ceux qui se
resument dans Ie principe: obtenir Ie maximum d'etre pour Ie minimum de
depense. II faut (moralement) choisir la meilleure entre toutes les combi-
naisons (necessaires d'une necessite brute celles-ci) des essences et, plus
exactement, puisqu'il ne peut y avoir rien de vague pour l'omniscience divine,
des notions completes. Ces notions completes, determinant, et pre determinant
si elles figurent dans un contexte de compossibles existentifiables, les notions
des individus, la primaute de la substance premiere se trouve respectee. Mais
la notion premiere n'est elle-meme determinable que par predication: "la
notion individuelle de chaque personne renferme une fois pour toutes ce qui
lui arrivera it jamais ... "29 Ainsi, Ie predicat est bien un etre, Ie constitutif de
l'essence qui consituera la substance. Sans cesser d'etre, il se distingue de
LEIBNIZ ET LA CHAINE DES ETRES 65
Universite de Paris
NOTES
1 En son temps, Arthur O. Lovejoy a essaye d'en dire quelque chose avec The Great
Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Harvard University Press, 1936.
Reprinted Harper Torchbook, N. Y. 1960.
2 P. V, p. 48.
3 T.139.
4 Ibid., 179.
5 Ak. VI, i, 402.
6 Trad. L. Meridier, les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1964.
7 Ak. I, ii, 295 n.
8 Ibid., p. 343.
9 Ibid., VI, ii, 246.
10 P. VII, 303.
11 Ibid., p. 303.
12 Ibid., II, 451.
68 YVON BELAV AL
13 P. VII, 303.
14 Ak. VI, i. 153.
15 Ibid., p. 543.
16 Ibid., p. 537.
17 T., 371,364; Couturat, Op. 430.
18 P. VI, 602.
19 Cf. Nos Etudes Leibniziennes, Paris, 1976, pp. 178-179.
20 P. V, 220. (Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais II, xxvii, § 9).
21 Ibid. p. 218-19.
22 P. V, 288.
23 Ibid., p. 289.
24 Ibid., p. 286.
25 Couturat, Op. 623.
26 P. IV, 469.
27 P. VII, 303.
28 P. VII, 303.
29 Disc. Met. § xiii.
30 T.,13.
31 Cf. Etudes Leibniziennes, p. 88.
32 Sur l'etre eategoriel et la valeur ontologique de la eopule, on eonsultera Pierre Auben
que, Le probteme de l'etre chez Aristote, Paris, 1972, en partie. p. 163, 170-172.
33 P. VII, 190 sq.
34 Ak.VI,ii,479.
35 Ibid., p. 496.
36 T. p. 263.
W. H. WERKMEISTER
At first glance it may seem that relating the philosophies of Immanuel Kant
and Nicolai Hartmann to Alexander Pope's conception of the Great Chain of
Being is arbitrary to the point of absurdity. However, a closer book at the
facts will soon show that it is by no means absurd or even arbitrary, for both
Kant and Hartmann are concerned with an interpretation of the Great Chain
of Being - albeit from radically different points of view. This difference
Nicolai Hartmann has stressed in his formidable Grundzuge einer Metaphysik
der Erkenntnis. 1 There he quotes Kant's "highest principle of all synthetic
judgments": "The conditions of the possibility of experience as such are at
the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience, and
therefore have objective validity in a synthetic judgment a priori." 2
Kant had argued, quite correctly, that synthetic judgments a priori could
not validly apply to objects if the conditions of the possibility of experience
were imposed upon the subject by the objects of experience. The failure of
empiricism in all its forms is proof of this fact. Not one of them can justify
the a priori employment of synthetic propositions. Kant had therefore
assigned to the subject the role of imposing the conditions of possible experi-
ence upon the object. But in doing so,he had overlooked a "third possibility",
namely, that the conditions of the possibility of experience are imposed
neither by the subject nor by the object; that they are simply metaphysical
conditions "this side of idealism and realism" which are equally binding for
subject and object.
It is Hartmann's contention that this "highest principle" is obvious to all
who understand it, and that it finds its validation in the actual analysis of
experience. In what sense, then, does it help us to understand Hartmann's
conception of the Great Chain of Being? And how does this differ from
Kant's commitment to Pope's idea?
If the grandeur of a planetary world in which the earth, as a grain of sand which is
scarcely perceived, fill the understanding with wonder, with what astonishment are we
transported when we behold the infinite multitude of worlds and systems which fill the
extension of the Milky Way! But how is this astonishment increased when we become
aware of the fact that all these immense orders of star-worlds again form but one of a
number whose boundary we do not know; ... when we become aware of the fact that
we live in a world of worlds; ... that our solar system is but the first member of a
progressive relationship of worlds and systems of worlds. 10
When, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant said that "two things fill
the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and
more steadily they are reflected on: the starry heaven above and the moral
law within me", 11 he no doubt had this system of worlds in mind. It is but
proof of the continuity of Kant's thinking.
But Kant now asked: Are we in a position to say, "give me matter, and I
will show you how a caterpillar can be produced?" And his answer is an
emphatic No! He adds:
It should not be regarded as strange if I dare to say that the formation of all heavenly
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 71
bodies, the causes of their movements and, in short, the origin of the whole present
structure of the universe will become intelligible before the production, by mechanical
causes, of a single plant or a caterpillar is clearly and completely understood. 12
among all creatures man is the one who attains least the purpose of his existence because
he exhausts his excellent abilities in the pursuit of such ends as all other creatures with
less ability attain much more surely and properly. And he would be the most despicable
among all, at least in the eyes of true wisdom, if not hope of the future elevated him,
and if he had not ahead of himself a period in which all powers latent within him could
be fully developed. 14
In this connection Kant might have quoted Pope again, for their thoughts
are essentially the same:
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
Like bubbles on a sea of matter born,
They rise, they break, and to the sea return. 24
And Kant did quote:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 25
Kant's A llgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theone desHimmels was published
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 73
Morals. The result was the conception of a realm of freedom under law where
man's autonomous will is the determining factor.
Although both realms are projections of reason - one of the "pure theore-
tical reason", the other of the "pure practical reason" - there is no viable
connection between them. As Kant put it: "No transition is possible from the
first to the second (by means of theoretical reason); ... still, the second is
meant to have an influence upon the first. ... There must, therefore, be a
ground of the unity" which makes possible the transition from one realm to
the other. 31
Kant provided the transition in the third Critique; and he did so in a
manner that clearly reflects Pope's influence. He centered his whole argument
on "the concept of nature as art" 32 - which is but Pope's thesis that "all
nature is but art, unknown to thee." 33 And Kant makes it clear that Pope's
phrase, "unknown to thee", is especially important. As he puts iti "We say of
nature and its power as this is manifest in organized products far too little
when we call it an analogon of art, for this suggests an artist (a rational being)
external to it, when actually nature organizes itself." 34 It has its own mode
of determination which can be identified neither with mechanical causation
nor with the causal efficacy of an autonomous will. The difficulty arises from
the apparent purposiveness in nature where there is no agent that projects
and pursues the purpose.
The problem is actually twofold. On the one hand, there is the prob-
lem of the development of the structurally and functionally integrated
individual organism. On the other hand, there is the problem of the individual
organism as a "purpose of nature." Both aspects involve "a kind of causality
for which we have absolutely no basis in the universal concept of nature in its
totality."3S That is to say, "the organization of nature has in it nothing
analogous to any causality we know." 36
Kant elaborates: "It is quite certain that, from mechanistic principles
alone, we cannot obtain an adequate knowledge of organisms and their
intrinsic possibility." We are also not helped in this respect if we assume that
"a highest architect has directly created the forms of nature", for "we know
nothing about the mode of action of such a Being." Finally, if we wish to
explain the apparent purposiveness in nature by appealing to "a cause working
in accordance with purposes" , we only "deceive reason with words" , for such
an "explanation" is but a tautology.37
There is nothing left for us to do but carry the mechanistic explanation
of events in nature as far as possible and use the idea of purposiveness as a
subjective principle that gives direction and guidance to our investigations. 38
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 75
Add to this the fact that the archaeologist can "trace the genesis of that
great family of living things" which now inhabits our earth, and can show
that living creatures "of less purposive form" "gave birth to others which
formed themselves with greater adaptation to their place of birth and their
relations to each other" until, "torpid and ossified", "Mother Earth" failed to
produce new forms.41
All the empirical evidence thus supports the conception of a development
that is susceptible to a teleological interpretation, and the Great Chain of
Being seems to be a fact. Still, neither "the mechanism of nature" by itself
nor the "merely teleological ground" by itself fully accounts for it all. What is
needed is a combination of the two such that the mechanism serves as a tool
for the teleological principle; but "the possibility of such unification of two
quite different kinds of causality ... our reason does not comprehend. It lies
in the supersensible ground of nature." 42 That is to say, the whole of nature
can be understood only as the effect of an "intelligent efficient cause." That
cause itself, however, we do not understand.
But since man is in obvious respects a part of nature, and in part also a
member of the moral realm, Kant now argues that "in man must be found
that which is to be furthered as a purpose by virtue of his connection with
nature", that he is actually the "fmal end of nature." 43
In Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte of 1786, Kant put it this
way: As a creature of nature man must at first have been "guided by instinct
alone."44 Or, as Alexander Pope put it: "To copy instinct then was reason's
part."45 However, in man's refusal to follow instinct blindly came "a first
hint at his development as a moral being."46 And as the fmal step in his
development, he "came to understand, however dimly, that he is the true
end and goal of nature." 47 This progress from "the tutelage of nature to the
state of freedom" is "nothing less than progress toward perfection"48 - a
perfection that can culminate only in the cultural development of a "civil
76 W. H. WERKMEISTER
community" encompassing all nations. 49 Only when this state is reached "can
the greatest development of man's natural capacities take place." 50 And only
then is the Great Chain of Being complete. "Moral teleology then augments
the deficiency of physical teleology." 51
We can now at least conceive "the supreme ground in the realm of ends."
That is to say, in order to be able to project a fmal purpose that is intrinsic
to the whole chain of being and is consistent with the moral law , "we must
assume a moral world cause, Le., we must admit that there is a God." 52 This
admission, however, is simply "a subjective point of view" for "the practical
or moral use of our reason." "It is not needed for the extension or correction
of our cognition of nature." S3 For the latter it is sufficient to recognize the
empirically determinable fact of the Great Chain of Being as subsumable
under the purely subjective principle of teleology.
The idea of the Great Chain of Being was in Kant's mind even when
he jotted down some of the fragments which we now know as his Opus
postumum. Thus he wrote:
Nature organizes matter in manifold ways not only as to species but also according to
levels. We need not consider the fact that in strata of the earth and rocky mountain
ranges specimens of animal and plant species, now extinct, are evidence of former and
now foreign products of our life-giving globe, but that the organizing force of them has
also organized the whole of the plant and animal species, which are created for one
another in such a way that they, man not excluded, form a circle as links of a chain not
only as far as their nominal character (of similarity) is concerned but also as far as
through their real character (as causality) they are in need of one another for their
existence, which points to a world organization (for unknown purposes) including even
the system of stars. 54
Enough has now been said about Kant's commitment to the conception of
the Great Chain of Being.
II
categories are predicates but, at the same time, they are also more than predicates. They
are principles but, at the same time, they are also less than principles. In them we seek to
apprehend the principles insofar as these are apprehensible. 61
The categories are inherent in the given and are independent of our opinion.
They are intrinsic to reality itself and occur in groups corresponding to the
levels of that reality, i.e., they correspond to the mechanical, the organismic,
the mental, the communal, the moral, and other strata. 62
Since the categores are "the constitutive principles of being" ,63 a system
of categories of the real world cannot be a system of forms only. It must also
account for the material or content side of the real. Where the various phi-
losophical "isms" - materialism, vitalism, idealism, etc. - go wrong is in their
selecting a single group of categories as the dominating one and then extending
it to encompass the whole of reality. 64 What we must avoid is metaphysics
"from above" as well as "from below." The one is as bad as is the other. The
real task is to determine the categories that are characteristic of each level of
the real, and then to clarify their interrelations. 65
It is evident from what has already been said that, for Hartmann, cate-
gories are not concepts - pure or otherwise. The concepts of categories
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 79
III
After these preliminary matters are understood, let us now tum to Hartmann's
categorial analysis itself.
The first fact which we must note is that the world has at least four dis-
tinct levels: the inorganic, the organic, the mental, and that of the common
spiritual life. To apprehend the unity of this world can mean only to com-
prehend the interrelations and interdependencies of the levels.
As we pass from level to level, we discover that a reciprocal relationship of
"supporting and resting upon" bridges the notable gaps between levels. That
is to say, the lower levels support the higher, and the higher "rest upon" the
lower, each level preserving its own categorial structure and its own laws; and
"this relationship constitutes the unity proper of the real world" - the unity
of an intrinsic stratification, a structure oflevels (ein Schichtenbau).67
Within this structure, each level is characterized by its own specific cate-
gories which differ from the specific categories of every other level. Each level
has a certain categorial independence but is also always dependent upon the
supporting lower level.
Seen in this perspective, the most fundamental categories - the common
foundation of all categorially distinct levels - are obviously those through
which the unity of the stratified structure of the world is determined. And
what is of significance here is that, although the strata of the real are dis-
continued downward at the level of the physico-material realm, the categories
as such extend further downward. 68
Most fundamental are the categories of mcdality; but they also extend
into the highest levels of spiritual being, pertaining to the ought, to cognitive
relations, and to the mysterious form of being of a work of art. Hartmann
deals with them in Mdglichkeit und Wirklichheit. 69
His basic theme is that each level of reality demands its own modal analysis
- as do the intermodal relations between the modi of one level and those of
80 W. H. WERKMEISTER
another. But we must realize that there is a crucial distinction between logical
possibility and real possibility, the former being but noncontradictoriness,
whereas the latter means that all the conditions have been fulfilled that make
the existence of a real thing or the occurrence of an event actually possible.
This entails, however, that all positive real modes involve one another so that
what is really possible is also actual, and what is actual is also necessary. 70
"In the realm of the real there is found no 'merely possible. '" 71 "Everything
real is completely determined through some other real." 72 But this "law"
of real determination must not be hastily identified with the principle of
causality; for every level has its own specific form of determination and its
own possibilities.
In addition to the categories of modality there are certain "elementary
categories" which also are encountered at every level of reality. They always
come in pairs and are specifically different at every level.
Lastly, there are "categoriallaws" which determine the coherence of the
categories within any particular level as well as the superposition of the strata
in the structure of the real world as a whole. 73
Of the structural elements of the real world the elementary categories are
the best known. Yet there is something mysterious even about them; for
there is at least the suspicion that behind them there may be still simpler
categories which we cannot discern. The known categories, for example,
always come in pairs and are inseparable. Their specific connections, however,
escape conceptual formulation. 74
Hartmann distinguished twelve pairs of elementary categories, including
(among others) form-matter, inner-outer, determination-dependence, quality-
quantity, unity-manifold, harmony-conflict, element-structure. 75
One member of the pair is always correlated with, and presupposes, the
other. Thus, there is no form without matter, and matter is only what it
is because of its form.76 But in addition to this correlation there is also a
transition from one member of the pair to the other. Actually, the transition
is of two types: (1) the simple relativization of the opposites with respect
to each other, and (2) one of the opposites remains stable while the other
changes in degrees.
An example of the first type is the relation of matter and form. Obviously,
all form can itself be matter of a higher form, and all matter can itself be
form of lower matter. The living cell is thus form with respect to the chemical
compounds that are its constituent parts; but, in turn, the cell is merely
matter relative to the form of the organism as a whole.
Other examples of the first type of transition are the relation of inner and
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 81
The mental is quite other than the organic but never occurs without it and
presupposes the validity of its laws. Still, "the law of the recurrence of cate-
gories does not assert that all lower categories recur in the higher levels, but
only that some of them do." 85
It is true, of course, that a minded being does not exist without organic
life; but from this fact it does not follow that the structure and laws of organ-
ismic existence must also determine the nature and function of mind. It is
also true that a spiritual being cannot exist without mental life. But this fact
does not entail that mental processes must recur in the context of what is
content of the spiritual life. The laws of logic are not reducible to laws of
mental processes.
But there are categories which recur in all levels of existence. They are the
"fundamental categories." 86 In order to understand what is here involved, it
will be necessary, first, to distinguish between Uberbau and Uberformung. 87
There are no strictly equivalent terms in English; but let me illustrate what is
meant.
Mental life is obviously a level of existence above the merely biological,
transcending the latter but remaining dependent upon it. In Hartmann's
terminology it is an Uberbau. The organic structure, however, contains many
substructures - such as cells, molecules, and atoms. Being built up out of
them, it imposes its own form upon them. Hartmann calls this Uberformung.
The distinction between Uberbau and Uberformung is crucial for Hartmann's
interpretation of the structure of the world and therefore for his conception
of the Great Chain of Being.
The importance of the distinction is at once clear when we see that above
the mental level there is Uberbau but no Uberformung. The mental acts, as
acts, are "bearers" of the spiritual level but are not elements of the content
of that level. The spiritual content is Uberbau but not lJberformung of the
level that supports it.
Even more striking within the spiritual level itself is the relation of objec-
tive spirit to subjective spirit. The basic elements of the latter are conscious-
ness, will, anticipation, freedom, purposive action. But these categories are
not carried over into objective spirit. There exists no general consciousness
beyond the consciousness of individuals; and decisions, initiatives, and purpo-
sive actions are manifestations of personal spirit only. 88
It is true, nevertheless, that the recurrence of categories at higher levels
plays a decisive role in the structure of the real world. Upon it depends noth-
ing less than the unity and the inner connectedness of the manifold that
constitutes the world.
84 W. H. WERKMEISTER
But even the categories unity and manifold are modified from level to
level. The unity of a thing is other than the unity of a process; and quite
different again is the unity of an organism within the particular manifold of
its forms and processes. Incomparable to all this is the unity of consciousness
within the manifold ness of its acts and experiences. And there are, of course,
the distinctive unities of the person, of a people, of a state, of science, of
positive law, of a work of art. The modifications of the category are astonish-
ingly manifold and are different for each category.
Consider, for example, the sequence and the modifications of dependen-
cies. In the purely physical realm, causality is the external determination of
what comes later by what precedes it. In the realm of organic realities, how-
ever, determination takes on a radically different form. It now is an unfolding,
a form-building and development. And again quite different is determination
within the mental realm. At the organismic level, the life of an organism is
passed on to the next generation through the continuity of DNA. But no one
can pass on his consciousness to the next generation.
Even more remarkable and certainly more complex is the aspect of con-
tinuity in history. It is a process involving many levels and one that is deter-
mined by the interaction of many different forms of determination.
Quite clearly, without the occurrence at every new level of a categorial
novum the richness of forms of the modifications can simply not be under-
stood. Hartmann expresses this in the form of a "law" - the "law of the
novum": "Because of recurrence, the higher categories contain a manifold
of lower elements but are not simply an aggregate of those elements but, in
their composition, are always conditioned by the occurrence of a cat ego rial
novum."89
This "law" does not imply a limitation of the recurrence of categories but
is a positive supplement to that recurrence. Without the occurrence of the
novum there would be no difference in the height of levels of the real world.
But be that as it may, the most important fact is that there exists a rela-
tionship of conditioning and being conditioned between the strata or levels
such that in their existence all the higher levels are dependent upon the lower
levels, but that, nevertheless, the higher levels reveal an undiminished inde-
pendence. They have freedom, not within, but above the lower levels. 90
This does not mean that the lower levels find their fulfillment in a higher
one. It is not true, for example, that all physico-material reality has a tendency
to become living organisms; or that everything living has a tendency to attain
consciousness; or that all consciousness pushes on toward spiritual reality.
The actual process linking all levels in a Great Chain of Being has no analogy
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 85
IV
Having analyzed the braod outlines of the categorial structure of the real
world as a whole, Hartmann now examines in detail two of the most im-
portant realms within that structure: the realm of nature and the realm of
spiritual Being. I tum first to his "philosophy of nature";94 but I shall be
brief.
The epistemological orientation is, of course, the very same which deter-
86 W. H. WERKMEISTER
combined into a structure. The same is true of effects. What is essential here
is that in every concrete situation there corresponds to every aspect of the
cause an aspect of the effect, and vice versa. Even a minimal change in the
status of the cause as a whole entails a corresponding change in the status of
the effect - either in its existence or in its character. This total determination
is what the law of causality expresses.
The merging of the cause into the effect and the emergence of the effect
out of the cause are one and the same ultimate and no further analyzable
aspect of nature. It is nature's eminently creative process.
Events which are not part of the causal process do not occur in nature. Nor
are there events which disrupt the causal sequence. Freedom, as this is involved
in moral decisions and actions, is not a disruption but an Uberformung of the
causal nexus. It is the addition of higher determining factors to the process of
causal determination.
However, despite such Uberformung of the causal nexus, the world-process
as a whole is but one; and everything that happens in it is unique. Many
partial processes may resemble one another, but all of them are unique and
are unique constituents of the one and only world-process as such. This fact
is basic to the very conception of the Great Chain of Being. 104
Since time and causal processes are closely interrelated, and since time
- real time - is encountered at all levels of nature, causally determined
processes are also encountered at all of them. But while the higher levels
depend for their existence upon the lower ones, they contain a categorial
novum that is superposed upon the lower (simpler) categorial textures and
modifies them.
At the organismic level the new form of determination - going from
the whole to its parts, determining the parts in their development, in their
structure and their function - reveals "an eminently constructive power in
the stratification of nature." It shows that, in its stratified levels, nature is
determined "from above" as well as "from below." lOS But let us note at once
also what Kant clearly understood: that the particular form of determination
which accounts for the development and functional unity of an organism
does not yet account for the existence of organisms in nature.
The organism is quite obviously a structure which in its form is a closed
unity of interrelated processes such that in the whole as well as in each
constituent part the form develops along with the function, and the function
with the form. And just as functions and form are inseparable, so also are the
functions inseparable from one another. In this sense, the life of an organism
is a specific form of process which cannot be understood in terms of the
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 89
some higher level; and the question is: Does there correspond to this useful-
ness a real purposive action?
Usefulness transcends the greatest heterogeneity of the species: plants
depend upon insects for the fertilization of their flowers, and insects depend
upon plants for their nourishment. Here we face the strongest temptation to
indulge in a teleological interpretation. Is this actual and mutual usefulness
the realization of a preconceived plan that gradually unfolded in evolutionary
development? 108
Kant had raised this question and had answered it in the negative. He had
argued that purposiveness is a "regulative principle" only - a principle which
aids our investigation of nature, but which must not be taken to be constitu-
tive of nature itslef. He had cut the ground from under any identification of
Zweckmiissigkeit and Zwecktiitigkeit, of suitableness and purposive action. 109
However, this did not prevent him from interpreting the "special laws" of
organic nature as the determinative element in all forms of life - of the life
and development of every species no less than that of the individual organisms.
This does not mean that in the Kantian perspective everything in organic
nature is or can be understood. In fact, so Hartmann points out, very little
is understood in the process of the ascension of life to ever higher levels. The
continuous appearance of new forms defies any explanation just as much as
does the original formation of living organisms on earth; and the conception
of the Great Chain of Being is descriptive rather than explanatory.
Within the highly complex process of morphogenesis purely causal deter-
minations occur, of course. But there occur also forms of determination
which look strikingly like purposive actions in the strict sense. It is therefore
impossible to insist upon the simple alternative of causal versus purposive
interpretation. The disjunction is complete.
To be sure, causal determinations are encountered everywhere; but they
are not the only type of determination in nature. However, purposive deter-
mination presupposes an agent who deliberately sets goals and selects means
for their realization; and despite all apparent purposiveness, no such agent is
found in nature. This means that the form of determination specific to the
organismic level of reality - the nexus organicus - is sui generis, a form
of determination all its own; and it must be recognized as such. We do not
understand it expect as Vberformung of the causal nexus which, rooted in
the DNA molecule, continuously superposes upon the merely causal processes
a form of determination that guides them in the development of the various
phases and stages of organismic existence and development, and is the deter-
mining factor within the Great Chain of Being. 110
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 91
However, the Great Chain of Being does not fmd its completion in the levels
of organismic existence but transcends the realm of nature at the level of
spiritual Being. Hartmann deals with it in a separate volume. 111
In the stratification of the world, this highest level is superposed upon the
lower levels, is supported by them, but has its own distinctive categorial
novum. And there is a notable stratification even within the level of the spirit.
Actually, there are three basic forms of spirit: (1) Personal spirit, which alone
has consciousness, can project goals and work toward their realization. It
alone can love and hate, is responsible for its actions, is subject to imputation,
and may be guilty or deserve praise. (2) Objective spirit, which alone is in the
strict and primary sense the agent of history. It encompasses individuals but
is above them as something they share, something they have in common. (3)
Objectified spirit, which alone has an aspect of timelessness, of the trans-
historical, the ideal. Its fate is that of ideas and of what is timeless within the
temporal process of history.
What Hartmann now gives us is a categorial analysis of all three forms of
spirit. I shall be brief in reporting his fmdings, concentrating exclusively on
their relevance to the conception of the Great Chain of Being.
At the level of personal existence, spirit can and does confront itself in
the form of self-awareness, of consciousness of himself. This awareness is not
hereditary - as organismic characteristics are - but is a categorial novum
for every individual; and every individual must make himself into what he
ultimately is.ll2 Only when consciousness constitutes itself as the subject
with respect to objects of experience does it separate itself inwardly from the
world and is no longer just another factor in that world. In this emergence of
personal spirit, the world itself is being transformed. It is no longer the world
to which nonspiritual consciousness directly responds - as is the case in
animal behavior - but is a world disclosed to man's efforts to understand and
to explain conceptually. It now is a world of a projected Weltanschauung.
To be sure, man never fully escapes his animality and his nonspiritual
consciousness; but in his mature attitudes toward the world he transcends
his own more primitive relationships to the world and his own lower levels of
existence. He is no longer merely a subject but is a person as well. In fact,
personality is the very essence, the categorially fundamental character of the
spiritual individual. And, as person, man is co-creator of the world. He is "a
being constantly forced into free decisions by every new situation" which
confronts him. And the world is modified in countless ways by his efforts.113
92 W. H. WERKMEISTER
In his transcendent acts the person enters into relation with the world in
ways which reveal a new dimension of his existence. He is no longer merely
a conscious being, nor merely the subject in a cognitive relation. He interacts
with other persons and, without losing his own identity, joins them in a larger
unit of spiritual existence. At this level he reaches his own existence as a
spiritual being. "Consciousness separates human beings, spirit binds them
together." 114
At the level of mere consciousness, actions are always reactions to stimuli
which are present in any given situation. Animal behavior illustrates this fact.
But at the level of spiritual existence, a person anticipates and projects goals,
and takes the initiative in actions that lead to the realization of those goals.
In all this, specific valuations and references to values and value scales are
involved; and the freedom and the valuations are basic to man's existence as a
moral being. liS
But this already implies that there is at the level of personal existence a
relationship of individuals in a spiritual community whose categorial structure
is superposed upon the level of personal spirit and surpasses it in its own
mode of being. Such superposition is possible because the spiritual contents
"of human experience are separable from persons, opinions, and individual
points of view." They can be transmitted from person to person and can
be shared as a kind of "common property" by an unlimited number of
individuals.
Concepts and judgments are perhaps the best known embodiments of
spiritual content and have the best claim to objectivity, the greatest stability
in being passed on from individual to individual. Their intersubjective signi-
ficance and validity is subject to laws - preeminently the laws of logic -
which transcend all subjectivity. There is no "private logic" of the individual.
Of equal intersubjective validity are the categories in terms of which we
understand reality - causality, process, magnitude, and so on.
It must be noted, however, that the phenomena of intersubjectivity at the
level of spiritual existence do not destroy individuality. Even in the midst
of all intersubjective relations each individual's own consciousness and
therefore his "private world" remains undiminished. But, then, spirit is not
the same as consciousness. It transcends the latter, and while "consciousness
separates, spirit unites." 116
Objective spirit is neither substance underlying the spiritual life of a human
community, nor is it a mere summation of the individuals. It is, rather,
"spiritual life in its totality" as it manifests itself at any given time in the
communal activities of interrelated human groupings, and as it develops
ON KANT AND NICOLAI HARTMANN 93
VI
NOTES
9 AA, I, 255.
10 AA, I, 256;
11 Translated by Lewis Beck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 258.
12 AA, I, 230.
13 AA, 1,353.
14 AA, I, 356.
15 AA, I, 359 f.
16 AA, I, 263.
17 AA, I, 259. Epistle lll, lines 9-13.
18 AA, I, 349. Epistle I, lines 23-28.
19 AA, 1,346.
20 AA, I, 365.
21 Epistle I, lines 237-41.
22 AA, I, 314.
23 AA, 1,316 f.
24 Epistle lll, lines 17 -20.
25 Epistle I, lines 87 -90.
26 Kant, Fragmente, in Hartenstein's edition of Kants siimtliche Werke in Chronologi·
scher Reihenfolge, Vlll, 630.
27 Immanuel Kant, Briefwechsel, edited by Otto Schtindtirfer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1972), p. 55.
28 Op. cit., p. 504.
29 See W. H. Werkmeister, Immanuel Kant: The Architectonic and Development of his
Philosophy (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1980).
30 W. H. Werkmeister, 'The Oitique of Pure Reason and Physics,' in Kant-Studien 69
(1977),33-45.
31 Kant, Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, AA, V, 176. Kant's title makes it emi-
nently clear that he is concerned here with a faculty of the mind, not with propositional
statements.
32 Kant's first draft of the Introduction to the third Critique, AA, XX, 204.
33 Epistle I, line 288.
34 AA, V, 374.
35 AA, V, 359 f.
36 AA, V, 375.
37 AA, V, 410.
38 AA, V,415.
39 AA, V, 418. This "common blueprint" or "common schema" (as Kant also calls it)
is, of course, well known from the skeletal structure of vertebrates but has found new
support in the findings of modem molecular biology.
40 AA, V, 418 f.
41 AA, V, 419.
42 AA, V, 412 f.
43 AA, V, 429.
44 AA, VIII, 111.
45 Epistle lll, line 170.
46 AA, Vlll, 113.
47 AA, VIII, 114.
96 W. H. WERKMEISTER
89 Ibid., p. 504.
90 Ibid., p. 520.
91 Ibid., p. 53!.
92 Ibid., p. 562.
93 Ibid., p. 569.
94 Nicolai Hartmann, Philosophie der Natur (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950).
95 Ibid., p. 12. Kant, A, 177.
96 Ibid., p. 25I.
97 Ibid., p. 251-51!.
98 Ibid., p. 254.
99 Ibid., pp. 259 ff.
100 Ibid., pp. 265 ff.
101 Ibid., pp. 180-294.
102 Ibid., p. 296. It may be remembered that Kant reduced matter to the interaction of
two forces: attraction and repulsion. See W. H. Werkmeister, 'Kant's Philosophy and
Modern Physics,' in Reflections on Kant's Philosophy, edited by W. H. Werkmeister,
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1975), pp. 109-33.
103 Hartmann,op. cit., pp. 297-314.
104 Ibid., pp. 319-52.
lOS Ibid., pp. 476-9I.
106 Ibid., pp. 517-50.
107 Ibid., p. 567.
108 Ibid., pp. 613-29.
109 Kant, Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, AA, pp. 359-6I.
110 Hartmann,op. cit., pp. 687 -704.
III Das Problem des Geistigen Seins (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1933).
112 Ibid., pp. 39-87.
113 Ibid., pp. 93-116.
114 Ibid., pp. 121-23.
115 Ibid., pp. 129-40.
116 Ibid., pp. 151-59.
117 Ibid., pp. 177-234.
118 Ibid., pp. 348-490.
119 Ibid., p. 391.
120 Posthumously published by Frida Hartmann (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1953).
121 See chapter 9 in Werkmeister, Immanuel Kant: The Architectonic and Development
of His Philosophy.
ROBERT D. SWEENEY
With due allowance made for the still considerable differences between
Husserl and Scheler in content and style, there is a clue in these quotations
to a horizontal component in Scheler's stratification, and even in a sense
that is not cognitive as usually understood (e.g., is "empathic"). This, if
applicable, would allow us to look beyond Scheler's claims of exclusively
intuitive grounding for his hierarchies. Or better, it would enable us to fmd a
more phenomenologically operative meaning of his claims of intuitions of
higher and lower if we extend the empty intention of his intuition to the
open-endedness and evidential richness of the horizon model. A passage that
seems to fit this suggestion is a crucial one in On the Eternal in Man in which
Scheler undertakes to specify the object of the religious act:
not only the things and facts experienced by the person, but also all things of a finite
and contingent kind, are gathered together in a single whole, which includes the subject's
own person, and are joined in the idea of "the world." ... The second thing proper to
the religious act is that in its intention this ''world'' is overlapped and transcended. 23
We are presented here with a process, it would seem, in which the summing
up and closing of one horizon - the world - permits the opening up - a
transcending to - another horizon. The scope of the new horizon is greater;
therefore, it is a "higher" level, we can infer; but is there a difference in
quality as well? It would seem that this higher level is oriented and colored
by the aspirations of the subject, but not arbitrarily. Another passage might
bring this out. In discussing types of love (another hierarchy) in Orda Amaris,
Scheler examines the difference between love and infatuation and fmds that
underlying love is "the infmite form of being" and that its "metaphysical
perspective" is an "empty field" or "outlook" toward "hope, presentiment
and faith ...." Infatuation, by contrast, involves a man's being "carried away
and enraptured by some finite good" and his being deluded as to the limita-
tions of the "concrete goods which exemplify the value-region to which that
subject has access."24 In effect, the infatuated subject has missed the "closure"
of horizon appropriate to one type of love (therefore lower) and has instead
invested in that same horizon - but inappropriately - his capacity for a love
with an unlimited horizon (therefore "higher").
Such passages, which are admittedly meager in detail and rare in occurrence,
only of course hint at what Scheler might have done with the horizontal
model as supplementing his intuitional claims. But that his general intention
was to give some such internal or intrinsic evidence for his stratifications is
indicated by the fact that when he gives "confirmatory data" for his hierarchy
of values, he uses the word "criteria" but puts it in warning quotes. 25 The
THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING AND SCHELER 105
"criteria" he utilizes are: durability (but not sheer length of time), indivisi-
bility (e.g., material goods must be divided to be shared; not so with spiritual
values); relative independence of one value from another (e.g., the useful
depends on the agreeable, the vital on the spiritual); depth of satisfaction in
the sense of inner fulfillment (satisfaction on the level of sensory pleasure is
possible only if we are also satisfied on a higher level); the fifth, and most
important for Scheler, is the degeee of relativity a value has with regard to an
absolute value (the third and fourth, or higher, modalities, plus moral values.)
But Scheler reiterates that none of these "criteria" substitute for intuitive
evidence; there is no deduction or induction of the hierarchy of values any
more than there is dependence of this hierarchy on individual acts of pre-
ferring or subordinating. 26
If these "stratification strategies" built around the concept of intentionality
are not self-evidently adequate to the claims made for their results, then the
presence of another explanatory principle is that much more important. This
principle - really a cluster of concepts - is "person" in Scheler's philosophy.
It is significant to note that the key defming characteristic of person is
derived from the concept of intentionality - viz., its "non-objectifiability."
It is this characteristic that enables us to distinguish the personal sphere of
being from the psychic, Le., whatever can be investigated or explored through
the objectifications of psychology, as well as the other sciences that deal with
life, since the psychic is basically a higher form of life. The person is found
not simply in this non-objectifiability of acts but in their unity: "Person is
the concrete self-essential unity of the being of acts of different nature,
which in itself preced,es all essential differences of acts."27 The unity involved
here is not that of an underlying unchangeable substance, nor even an inter-
penetration of acts, but a Sammiung, an "ingatheredness" that contrasts with
the dissociations of the lower orders. This unity is involved with and varies
in every act; in this way it is the correlate of world, just as every act correlates
with an object. 28
The concept of spirit, under which person is subsumed, reveals another
dimension of person which would seem to be properly metaphysical, even
though Scheler tries to handle it phenomenologically. The ultimate meta-
physical ground of the person is spirit, but in many uses it is coextensive with
the personal and the intentional: "[it includes] ... all things that possess the
nature of act, intentionality and fulfillment of meaning, wherever we may
fmd them. The person - not the ego, which belongs to the "outer world" -
is the "single and necessary existential form of mind (Geist) [spirit] insofar as
we are concerned with concrete mind [spirit] ."29 This necessarily includes,
106 ROBERT D. SWEENEY
for Scheler, the idea of God as personal (at least in his early writings), Le.,
as the correlate of '''the' concrete absolute world"; "although in thinking
simply about the essence of man, God is not presupposed as an extant and
positively determined reality", 30 but only'the quality of the divine or holy
is presupposed. The relation between human acts and divine acts is generally
described as one of participation: human intentionality is a participation
which is fmite, created and really distinct from God's acts, although the basis
for the difference is never clearly established. 31
In these concepts of person, spirit, God, etc., we have the framework for
the "higher" levels of value which are correlated generally with the holy, the
spiritual, etc. Correlated directly with the value modalities are a whole set
of further hierarchies (most of them just adumbrated by Scheler - not
developed): "person values" over "thing values"; "self-values" in relation to
"values of the other - although they have equal "height", the act of realizing
of a value of the other, Scheler claims, is superior to the act of realizing a
value of oneself; the values of acts, functions and reactions (in descending
order); the relative values of basic "moral tenor" (Gesinnungswerte), of deeds
and of success; values of intentions as superior to those of states; values of
terms of relations, forms of relations and relations themselves; self-values
(inherent) over "consecutive" values (instrumental, technical, etc.).32
It will have been readily noticed, however, that these correlations are not
always very strict, that the levels in one hierarchy do not always parallel
neatly those in another. Such "discrepancy" is particularly noticeable in the
"stratification of the emotion life", a very important hierarchy for Scheler
because it is the basis for his argument (substantially in agreement with Kant)
that eudaemonism ultimately reduces to hedonism: to pursue satisfication on
a "deeper" (Le., "higher") level of emotions, as in bliss, is to attempt to
manipulate what is non-manipulable and therefore is self-defeating. The
highest level here (on which bliss and despair are found) is referred to as
"spiritual" while the next level is called "psychical." In contrast to the lowest
level, the sensible feelings (pleasure and pain), the psychical feeling is properly
intentional (unlike the second level, the vital, which is only intentional in a
general sense of "indicating" vital concerns, as in shame, disgust, aversion,
etc.) as referring to value-qualities, as in joy and sadness. But it is experienced
essentially as an "ego-quality" as, e.g., in deep sorrow. In "spiritual feelings,
however, all ego-states are surrendered; they seem to "stream forth, as it
were, from the very source of spiritual acts." 33 Within this level, Scheler will
fmd examples that are spiritual in this sense and those that are related more
to "religious" experience; the religious act that is described in Vom Ewigen
THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING AND SCHELER 107
Man, then, is the place, for Scheler, where spirit and drive come together
and come gradually to interpenetrate, but only if man accepts his place, "the
only place where deification is accessible to us." Such acceptance requires
courage and self-transcendence:
I have heard it said that it is not possible for man to endure the idea of an unfmished
God, or a God in the process of becoming. My answer is that metaphysics is not an
insurance policy for those who are weak and in need of protection .... [The traditional)
relationship is both childlike and weak. It has detached man from God and it is expressed
in the objectifying and evasive relations of contemplation, worship and prayer. In place
of this relationship we put the elementary act of a personal commitment to the deity,
the self-identification of man with the active spiritual movement of the deity ....
for Heilswissen, for a metaphysical knowledge that will provide hope and
direction for life. With the analytic emphasis of contemporary philosophy,
we might think that the history of "The great chain of being" and therefore
of such knowledge is over. But the dialectical character of the alternating
positions that seem to succeed each other in that history might also suggest
a further extension of it - in different form - into the future, e.g., in some
form of convergence or synthesis of the levels of being and value along
Hegelian, Teilhardian, or even modified Marxist lines. Similarly, this dialectical
character might suggest the need to reach further back in history, back into
those pre-historical and non-western religious traditions that have, Scheler
occasionally reminds us, influenced our thinking about Being in unsuspected
ways. Such reminders might seem to subvert the putatively intuitive nature
of our knowledge of hierarchies, stratifications, etc. But we might see them
instead as indications that the "empty" intentions or meanings that initiate
our intuitions are in fact oriented horizons that are "fulfilled" by the "givens"
of present-day experience. This would mean, then, that what we are really
doing in reexamining Scheler's philosophizing in the light of "The great chain
of being" is not to reach a fmal intuition, but looking for the kind of under-
standing of world and self that produces a merging of present experience with
past traditions and future possibilities.
NOTES
What it [pure psychology) calls cognition of the world's cognition of the things of the
world, their genera and species, associations and disassociations, changes and perdurance,
the law of their ontological invariance in the flux of their transformations, their structure
and their all-embracing forms in the regularity of the latter, to which the "overall being
of things" [alles Sein von Dingen) is connected. 3
113
The world of essential being [wesenhaftes Sein] must be conceived as a stratified world
[Stufenreich]. The simple and the archetypal of the highest level are its essentialities. It
is to the latter that the essential traits of composed "formations" [Gebilde] , called by us
the essential quid [Wesenwas], conform [nachgebildet]. 6
Taken as an example this text asserts not only that the order of the time-
less world of essences is hierarchical, that it includes more or less universal
elements, but that the essences - understood in the most general sense of
"ideal forms" - are complex (Gebi/de) or simple. Furthermore, we perceive
that insofar as they are exemplified in things they involve a quid (Wesenwas)
distinct from the thing's (voiles Was), as well as an ideal determination called
Wesenheit (essenceness or essentiality).
The Wesen (Wesenwas and Wesenheit) is fundamentally characterized as
being-at-rest (ruhig, ruhend) and timeless. Though potential in relation to the
real, essences have an "inert" but necessary actuality relative to the unstable
and fluctuating possible contingent being.
These indications are of great value, for already at the level of the Gebilde,
STEIN AND THE CHAIN OF BEING 115
1) The image of the chain and chaining is just as applicable to the elements
of things or numbers as to a succession of events or to the order of logical
conclusions. Thus, for instance, Descartes' "long chains of reasoning." But,
more profoundly, that which is chained as opposed to that which is un-
chained brings to mind a necessary order, for instance, the Stoic logos.
Finally, this image recalls that of the ladder or the scale whose degrees make
it possible to return to the first step and to follow the course of its descending
effects.
Not every order, however, is a chain of connected elements. We know
Pascal's insistence on the discontinuity between the orders of the body,
the spirit, and the heart. Now, in certain respects Stein's conception of the
domains of being recalls Pascal's vision of the discontinuity of orders. Not
only is there an incommensurability between fmite and eternal being, but
the domain of forms, by its immutability and by the coherence of their
correlations, is properly distinct from the temporality and contingency of the
empirical real.
This discontinuity is not incompatible with a continuity that Stein willing-
ly expresses in terms of 'exemplarity' or 'conformity' (Vorbild, Nachbild)
a continuity that definitely assures the unity of sense which fmalizes all
existence. This contrasted rhythm of continuity and discontinuity is found at
the basis of the forms. Whereas, for example, things are inserted, incorporated
(eingegliedert) in the structured network of the real world, we read in Stein
about the ideal forms: "According to their essential being, the formations
[Gebilde] of different levels are separated [voneinander getrennt] and are
relative to one another only in the mode of supraposition [Uberordnung] ,
infraposition [Unterordnung] , and juxtaposition [Nebenordnung] ."9 But
considered as the possibles of real beings, these "formations" are staggered at
levels of decreaSing generality, the most general fmding their concretization
in the more particular, down to their fulfillment in singular things.
In this way the concept of "order" is diversified on a wide scale, even
though we are temporarily unable to perceive more than a quasi-spatial
distributive order - a quantitative order in the Kantian sense - proceeding
from the universal to the particular, the singular essence being the closest to
realization in a particular being. We then discover an order of the exemplary
118 PHILIBERT SECRET AN
Just as every "something" has a sense, there is in every being the being corresponding to
STEIN AND THE CHAIN OF BEING 119
the sense. IO In other words in every being (ens) which is something (a/iquid) there is
manifest a capacity for sense: either a capacity for becoming a part of 'the unified whole
of being, or an unfolding of what is contained in the unity of sense. 1,1
Let us take a retrospective glance at the transcendentals as they have been considered
up to this point. It will be seen that ens designates the being as a whole: "What is"
accentuates the being; res brings out the "what" [Was, quid), aliquid the "that" [Das) ;
unum is a formal property of the "that" [= object) as well as of the "what" and being.
If we prescind from the sense of being [italics mine P. S.), what is at question are the
formal elements of being as such and as it is in itself. Only then do we interpret aliquid
no longer as something [= object), but as "other something" [anderes Etwas) , and bring
it into relation with other beings: we posit it in the relation of non coincidence as an
object and according to being. "Another object" - this is now an empty form. Can a
purely formal sense be ascribed to "Objects such that each has a different being"? It is
only by starting from sense that an answer is at all possible. 12
120 PHILIBERT SECRETAN
Let us retain for the moment two decisive elements. So long as we prescind
from the sense of being, it is impossible to bring out in aliquid the relational
dimension which is constituted among beings as being irreducibly different.
This is the very foundation of the distinction between form and sense. But
this relation is not alien to the transcendentals. On the contrary, it is the
true, the good, and the beautiful which appeal as the fartheset reaching
determinations of being itself. It is worth meditating on the admirable analysis
of transcendental truth which, in a being, is its own relation to "eidos." 13
Being, relation, sense are henceforth solidary, as the following text makes
explicit.
Being as the unfolding of a quid [Was) does not signify only the externality and the
internality of what is contained in this quid, but also its open being - or its becoming,
respectively - or its intelligible being for a knowing spirit [i.e. every being is as such a
true being) ; to be signifies "to occupy a place in the universality of all being and to
thereby contribute to the perfection of this whole" [i.e. to be good); to be signifies
"to be ordered according to a certain law of construction and thus to be in harmony
[Einklang) with the spirit both as orderer and as knower in a corresponding order"
[i.e. to be both beautiful and reasonable). When it is a matter of the compenetration
and order of the parts in the whole, it is implied that unity is a property of being.
Unity, truth, goodness, beauty all belong to the state of sense [Sinnbestand) of being
itself. 14
very adequacy - are only parts of the entire Order that the divine Logos
embraces and unifies.
Here we should return to those considerations which complete what E.
Stein herself calls her Augustinian way, which is also the phenomenological
way. In discovering sense as Sinnzusammenhang, as the concatenation of
ideas or essences, she has no fear of clarifying it by recourse to the Christian
doctrine of divine Logos. 16
By insisting on the analogy - i.e. on resemblance in disemblance - between
logos and Logos, the essential order and the full order, she brings out together
with the Word of God the Stoic logic and Plato's "exemplary order."
The concatenation through which everything, (even the unreal objects of
reason) is contained in this logos is to be understood as the unity of a "totality
of sense." The logos sense is the One-Whole. But - and this is a point of
capital importance which precludes any similarity with an Hegelian type
philosophy - the Whole-One of sense draws its being neither from itself nor
from any of its parts. Only Creative Being whose eternal source it is, gives
being. It gives it in and through its logos (Urbild) the originary preform of
this total order of being.
In short, the world in its order and intelligibility, in its transcendental
determinations and essential forms, is open to the human spirit which is itself
created. But none of these aspects of being nor their ensemble exhaust the
totality of being: "The whole of the created world refers to the originary
eternal and uncreated archetypes of everything created, to the essentialities
or forms that we have conceived as the divine Ideas."17 Not only does the
entire formal and transcendental order have its Principle therein, but so any
essential possibility owes its real becoming to this primary Being, prate ousia,
Master of the being and sense: "The realization of the world is conceivable
starting from neither essential being [as the being of the fmite Sinngebilde]
nor real being [as the being of a fmite reality] ." 18 Act and Person call for
consideration in a perspective of analogy which transcends that of Logos.
III. CONCLUSION
We have tried to summarize the Steinian theory of the formal and transcen-
dental order in its dominant perspectives as unfolded in chapters 3 and 6 of
Finite Being and Eternal Being. Beyond this, the problematic is not properly
speaking that of order but of life, especially the life of spirit. Unconscious
in sub-human life, life attains a spiritual quality in the human person, who
is conscious and free, willing and loving, and discovering in his innermost
122 PHILIBERT SECRETAN
self-being that which grounds and transcends him. These investigations lead
to the problem of individuality, and the issues at stake are no longer those
of the one and the many, of the parts and the whole, but of the uniqueness of
man's relations to the Unique, relation of the living human I and the living
divine I. 19
It is also to be noted that order is not the last word in Stein's philosophy.
"To think", is to be lifted to the level of the spirit in Pascal's sense; it is to
pass from contingency toward necessity. But, if we adhere also to the formal
order, it is also to indulge in abstractions. And to accede to the transcendental
order would only come down to carrying the abstraction further, if the order
of sense which structures the living and the lived, real thought and the real
object which is thought, is not manifest therein.
As to the ultimate foundation of this order, Stein brings in inspirations
coming from a theology of creation which had already directed her attention
to act and potency. Ordered possibilities are realized only under the motion
of divine Ideas where pure formality and the richest activity come together
beyond the possible and the real. The pure formality is the terminus ad quem
of philosophical reflection; whereas this eternal activity is the terminus a quo
of the entire life process which reaches its conclusion only in the dazzling
dialogue of the creature and the Creator, the person and the Person.
TRANSLATED BY E. M. SWIDERSKI
NOTES
* The present paper is a brief outline of the key concepts and ideas contained in my
more extensive study, The Acting Person, recently published in English in Analecta
Husserliana Vol. X).
125
A. Ales Bello (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XI, 125-130.
Copyright © 1981 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
126 CARDINAL KAROL WOJTYLA
This experience enables us to state the fact that "man acts"; its particular
shape and starting point is the fact that "I act." It is quite a separate problem
how the facts of "I act" and "man acts" are given to us in experience. I
do not intend to treat it here (I have done so in my work The Acting Person.
The further thoughts which I intend to develop below refer in part to that
study).
The very fact that while verifying the concept of actus humanus as the
one that fully expresses what is most essential in human action we refer to
experience, proves that we do not intend to consider the problem on purely
systematic grounds. The whole force of a system (in this case, of Thomism,
and especially its conception of praxis in general and of actus in particular), is
this essential conformity to experience. This in tum permits us to see and
approach the whole specificity of human action, based on experience as the
proper source of cognition, in quite a new light.
It is not, of course, a question of merely exchanging old terminological
elements for new ones, but of essentially new perceptions (intuitions) of the
same object, considered not so much as "man's action" (perceived as it were
in a certain isolation), but as the "acting man" within the specificity of the
human operari sequitur esse proper to this dynamic whole.
The human act (or the action of man in its proper meaning) is constituted by
means of the specific transcendence of the person. We are not speaking here
of the transcendence proper to acts of cognition (consciousness), nor of
THE DEGREES OF BEING 127
PROGRAMMA
Sabato, 27 marzo:
ore 17.00 Conference de Mme. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Secretaire
Generale de la Societe Intemationale pour l'etude de Husserl
et de la Phenomenologie, sur: "Roman Ingarden. L'Ontologie
ou la metaphysique de la chaine de l'Etre?"
Domenica, 28 marzo:
ore 9.00 Discussione.
Introdurranno la discussione:
R. P. J. de Finance: "dal punto di vista della metafisica
tomista';
Prof. A. Ales Bello: "dal punto di vista della fenomenologia
husserliana."
Discussione fmo elle ore 12.00.
e
La conferenza di Sabato sera pubblica.
Alle discussioni di Domenica sono cordialrnente invitati tutti i professori delle
Universita e Facolta Romane, interessati al tema.
PART II
ITALIAN PHENOMENOLOGY
A. PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES
ANGELA ALES BELLO
that derive from points of view different from the phenomenological ones.
A third way of facing up to the theme of science within the framework of
phenomenological research in Italy is the one that was proposed, in the 1960s,
by such scholars as Scrimieri, Voltaggio, Bosio, and Raggiunti. Concerned to
a large extent with problems of logic within phenomenology, they made a
contribution toward clarifying Hussed's position vis-a.-vis scientific research
and, consequently, also toward tackling epistemological themes in a more
specific manner.
The researches carried out by Voltaggio and Scrimieri threw into clear
relief the historical aspects of the links between Hussed and the mathematical
and physical sciences of his day, and thus overcame the generic nature of the
concept of scientificity. In truth, Melandri had already highlighted 14 the
importance of the mathematical studies undertaken by Hussed in his later
work and in connection with a fundamental problem regarding the relation-
ship between the fmite and the infinite_ Very acutely indeed, Melandri had
pointed out that the discovery of the "figural moments", which Hussed
reports in Philosophie der Arithmetik, makes it possible to overcome the
radical polarity of these two mathematical terms by means of the joint
presence of the finite and the infinite that represents its horizon. Continuing
in this direction, Scrimieri 15 analyzed Hussed's research work carried out
under the guidance of Weierstrasse, and emphasized that the calculus of
variations, to which Hussed dedicated the thesis of his doctorate, has impor-
tant consequences not only because, through Weierstrasse, he traced matters
back to Riemann and his concept of an n-dimensional space, but also because
he extended the calculus of variations as a tool for the understanding of real-
ity in an eidetic sense_
Scrimieri characterized the fundamental stages of Hussed's formation in
the following manner: (1) study of the calculus of infinitesimal variations
(Beitriige zur Theorie der Variationsrechnung); (2) logical and psychological
analysis of the variations of the structural procedures of the consciousness
of number, of object, and of mathematical quantities (Philosophie der
Arithmetik); (3) space-time scheme of "the thing" as it appears in its varia-
tions. The "thing" is a space-time scheme whose variations become integrated
in the figural moments of the representation, in accordance with an analytical
rhythm that the integral and differential functions determine from the very
beginning of the inquiry _This is what justifies the Ding und Raum Vorlesungen
of 1907. 16 Hence, even though Scrimieri stressed the important effects that
derive for Hussed from his psychological studies, he was of the opinion that
the solution proposed by Hussed for the origin of numbers was not of the
142 ANGELA ALES BELLO
psychological type and, indeed, that it was Husserl's discovery of the figural
moments that paved the way to phenomenological inquiry.
Voltaggio,17 even though he makes no reference to the quasi-qualitative
moments, also did not think that Husserl's first work had been molded by
psychologism, and rather connected it with the thematics of the Logische
Untersuchungen. The collective Verbindung, which underlies the concept of
number, is founded on an operativity of the logico-mathematical type that
conditions the whole of Husserl's theory on intentionality. Voltaggio's objec-
tive, in fact, was that of gaining greater insight into the value of Husserl's
speculations about logic as the foundation for an epistemology. In this way
he explicitly faced up to the problem of Husserl's epistemology and identified
it with the ideal of formalization and of absolute completeness that is peculiar
to formal mathematics. At the foundation of Voltaggio's research we fmd
a shrewd and updated analysis of science that paves the way for a clearer
distinction between science and scientificity in phenomenological research.
With regard to those problems bearing on the justification of logic, Bosio, 18
following the interpretation proposed by Paci, sought to connect the logical,
categorial moment with the precategorial one. Raggiunti,19 even though he
noted the difficulty of obtaining strict accord between the level of the object
of sensitive perception and the level that represents the object of idealizing
abstraction, observed that Hussed's last analysis of this matter (contained
in Erfahrung und Urteil) show a greater continuity between the perceptive
determinations and the categorial ones. Zecchi,20 facing up to the theme of
science, examined a very important aspect of phenomenological research,
namely, the aspect of the Lebenswelt that can be found, with its structures and
peculiar categories, through the epoch/! of the objective sciences. D'Ippolito,21
on the other hand, noted a tension in the analysis of the Lebenswelt specifi-
cally with reference to the precategorial dimension. This tensiori consists in the
fact that whenever the Lebenswelt manifests itself as a system of fixed forms,
the historical self-foundation and the freedom of man is limited. On the
other hand, however, the precategorial cannot be eliminated, because in its
absence scientific constructions would rigidify and posit themselves as the
only reality.
A recently deceased philosopher, Filiasi Carcano, discussed the problem
of the relation between science and metaphysics and investigated their inter-
relations. He represented one of the few voices (subsequently to become
ever more numerous) that dissented from the unlimited confidence placed in
science. In his view, modem science, edified on teleological certainty, had
lost this erstwhile foundation and had proclaimed itself as the only valid
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SCIENCE 143
knowledge. The realization that science was unable to clarify the problems
of man led to a profound crisis to which Husserl had earlier drawn attention.
Metaphysics, on the other hand, had the pretense of giving rational support
to human problems but, as Filiasi Carcano went on to say, there are many
doubts that one can harbor regarding this pretense. Phenomenology has the
merit, he held, of rendering problematical our relationship with the world by
the suspension of our natural belief in that world, and thus explicating a
whole series of very grave and latent problems that are inherent in the human
condition. 22
In the positions of Pedroli, Filiasi Carcano, and D'Ippolito one can note an
element of revision of the relationship between phenomenology and science
that foreshadows with new sensitivity a turning point that is even now being
approached, but which has not yet been fully dermed. In these thinkers there
emerges the idea that phenomenology is a search that, in certain ways, is anti-
scientific. Paci, by insisting on the precategorial moment of the Lebenswelt,
had already opened an inquiry of this type, but he had still maintained the
identification of the precategorial moment with rationality.
The struggle against naturalism and objectivism undertaken by HusserI
is underscored and interpreted in our own day with overtones that are anti-
rationalist, but which are not for that reason necessarily irrationalistic.
Representative of this position is the insistence with which Neri 23 dwells on
the theme of HusserI's antiobjectivism, which presents itself as a philosophy
of the "rational", but not identified with reason in the techno-scientific
sense of the term. And it is interesting to note the distinction between the
rationality that is practiced in the objective sciences and the more profound
dimension (which is HusserI's concern) that is delineating itself with ever
increasing clarity. This appears from the attempt to give an authentic mean-
ing to the term "scientificity", and reflects a need that permeates Conci's
inquiry 24 about the precategorial and the Erlebnisse as the forgotten founda-
tion of the categorization peculiar to both science and traditional philosophy.
It is therefore an urgent task to make a distinction that also represents an
overturning of certain acquired positions: the "scientificity" that HusserI
talks about cannot be identified with science in its historical perspective. The
equivocation arises, at least in part, from the ambiguity that is present in
HusserI's research. In fact, it it quite essential to recognize hls "double soul."
Educated in and for science, HusserI saw science both as a model and as an
enigma to be solved. The assumption of the validity of scientific knowledge
that represented HusserI's starting point, becomes gradually decanted in the
course of his inquiries, which make it increasingly clear that the only valid
144 ANGELA ALES BELLO
NOTES
The distinction between the empirical sciences of nature and the theoretical
natural sciences discussed in the preceding section leads Husserl to highlight
the significance of the idea of nature, which we fmd characterized as follows
in the second volume of Ideen: the world of the natural sciences is the world
of possible experience (the world of the experiences that can be made); in
any case, the idea of nature, as far as the sciences that endeavor to ascertain
it are concerned, is a reality that is determined in space and in time. But this
reality is not the object of experience (experiment), being rather inherent in
consciousness itself.
From the point of view of consciousness, then, the attitude of the natural
scientist is to be understood as a doxic attitude of a theoretical nature.
The idea of nature, conceived of as the object of modern natural science,
is a set of things that have been determined on the basis of certain spatial
and temporal references. From the theoretical point of view, however, this
idea goes beyond merely empirical appearance; in the naturalist attitude it
becomes specified in a doxic orientation in which the sole evaluative intention
of the consciousness is polarized exclusively on knowledge.
The specific character of both material and animate nature derives from
the reference to spatial and temporal parameters that, first and foremost,
qualify the "thingliness" of the objects that belong to the so-called "first
level" of the natural world. The world of nature and the world of the spirit,
even though in some respects radically different, in certain other respects,
and specifically in those that concern the theoretical inquiry, bring out a
fundamental continuity of the cognitive process; from a phenomenological
point of view, this process orientates itself in a passage from one thematization
to another, eventually arriving at a series of truths forming part of a teleo-
logical hierarchy. 7
The reference achieved already highlight the phenomenological importance
of cognitive activity which, in any case, prevails over the cognitive content
itself. This is not only explained by characteristic care and attention that in
the Husserlian renewal is paid to methodology, but also throws into sharp
relief the phenomenological importance of subjective activity that involves,
above all, the transcendental world of consciousness.
Nevertheless, following the third volume of Ideen, we can trace the gnoseo-
logical itinerary, as it were, peculiar to physics as the exemplar of a natural
science, an exemplar in terms of which other sciences are modeled.
Thus Husserl holds that natural science (Le., physics) identifies its object
152 AURELIO RIZZACASA
in material things that are spatially and temporally determined and interrelated
by causal connections. This science is found on the material perception of the
objects and this perception, in turn - which derives from the perception of
one's own body - produces the intersubjectivity of knowledge. However,
such a natural science must not be confused with the pure and simple material
perception that constitutes its empirical foundation because, theoretically at
least, it is situated on a different plane. In any case, it is precisely on the basis
of the relationship between material perception and material natural science
that it becomes possible to make a distinction between empirico-descriptive
sciences of nature and exact natural sciences.
Considered in relation to psychology, physics (as a natural science) is
orientated toward the primary qualities of the objects and neglects their
secondary qualities; these latter, rather, are to be understood as apparitions
- inasmuch as physics proposes to go beyond a merely empirical description
and aims a model of theoretical objectivation founded on relationships of a
geometric and mathematical nature.
The realism of intuition orientates science toward the truth of things as
phenomenologically recovered, giving this truth precedence over that of the
essences. But scientific knowledge proceeds (through successive symboliza-
tions that tend to highlight the techniques of thought) toward a gradual or
step-by -step estrangement from a theoretical intention of knowledge. 8
From the point of view of the theory of knowledge, then, HusserI's
framework becomes enclosed in an apparatus of conceptualizations that
remains fundamentally similar throughout the period of development of
his thought; the problems change only by virtue of the introduction of
new questions, of new problems. Among the latter it may be useful for the
moment to recall the relationship between scientific objectivations and the
life-world.
Faced with the contemporary crisis of identity of the sciences traced back
to foundation of scientific knowledge, HusserI moves away from technical
reflections on epistemology toward a direct philosophical treatment of basic
issues. In this general framework there emerges the sense and the significance
of logic as the element that founds knowledge and makes it consistent.
At this level, then, we fmd HusserI's Formal and Transzendental Logic
particularly significant. Here Husserl notes that logic - when taken in a
HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SCIENCE 153
University of Siena
NOTES
I It may be mentioned that it contains works l>y Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and
Werner Heisenberg.
2 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, I, par. 53; and also Formale und Transzendentale
Logik, par. 62.
3 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, I, pars. 41, 45, 46,72.
4 E. Husserl, Die Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, pp. 1-10.
S E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer rein en Phdnomenologie und phiinomenologischen Philos·
ophie, I, pars. 1, 25-26.
6 Ibid., pars. 40, 52, 56, 72, 74.
7 Ibid., II, pars. 1,2,11-12.53.
8 Ibid., III, pars.
9 E. Husserl, Formale und Transzendentale Logik, pp. 1-7, 31-33.
IDE. Husser!, Cartesianische Meditationen, I, pars. 3-5.
11 E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale
Phiinomenologie. par. 9.
PAOLO VALORI
I INTRODUCTION
Were we to try to outline the main point we could advance two fundamen-
tal positions: (1) The first tends to stress the scientific ethics: for example,
some linguistic analyists reduce morals to their mere expression; some psy-
choanalysts reduce morals to the impulses of the individual or collective
unconsciousness; while some sociologists consider any moral attribute or
reality as a mere function of society, etc.
There are even some Catholic thinkers who tend to play down the impor-
tance of ethics and even theology.2 The serious and forthright professional,
whether doctor, lawyer, judge, etc., would not need well-pondered and
developed morals to adequately do his job. The fundamental moral values
would be easy to understand and accept for all, and the surfacing or solving
of problems would be due to the lesser or greater technical-scientific knowl-
edge available.
If they are truly Christians, these scholars do not deny the important
contribution of the faith. For them, however, this contribution remains
outside the sphere of the experimental sciences in a sort of fideism. In any
case, they would tend to see the professional moralist as tending to disappear
and to be replaced by the homo tecnicus and the man of faith in their own
separate compartments. Moral philosophy in the sense of the prime moment
of mediation between science and faith is overlooked and practically dis-
regarded.
In perfect coherence with their basic affirmations, the aforementioned
scholars generally consider the origin and development of moral ideas, as they
have surfaced in time, as the consequence or effect of given empirical factors:
sociological, psychological, psychoanalytic, economic, political, etc. The
value judgments as such are therefore submerged under the tidal wave of
empirical data.
In brief, according to this viewpoint culture suffocates morality, and moral
philosophies are considered merely as the expression of individual cultures.
(2) By way of reaction to this fundamental ethical relativism, others exalt
absolute and unchangeable values and steadfastly refuse to "accept success
as the prime criteria of value." 3 In much the same sense, they are afraid that
the expression "cultural assimilation" so often used today in a very ambiguous
way will pave the way for the adaptation and subsequent surrender of absolute
morals to culture or to transitory historical trends.
I feel that it is not at all a question of "accepting success as the criteria of
value" but rather of ascertaining whether certain "occurrences" or "events"
change not the value criteria as such but its concrete application. In substance,
we will try to demonstrate that the controversy, as is often the case, stresses
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SCIENCE 161
the two terms of the contrast which should harmoniously work together in an
interdisciplinary effort. The human sciences, moral philosophies (ideologies),
and moral ontology cannot be separated and compartmentalized. Each
contributes to the constitution and formation of a moral judgment, fIrst
on the level of spontaneous appreciation, and then on the level of studied
reflection.
We would first like to demonstrate that the "sciences of nature", the human
sciences, and philosophical ideologies collaborate both in the comprehension
of the ethical judgment as to the act performed and in the propensity of the
ethical judgment with respect to an act to be performed, with respect to the
"should be" or "ought to be" in the future.
This initial analysis clearly demonstrates that similar afftrmations not only
do not compromise the existence of an absolute moral law, but actually
reafftrm its existence and inevitability.
In order that the distinction between "moral philosophies" and "moral
philosophy" not strike the reader as something strange or uncommon, it is to
be noted that mention has been made more than once of a "philosophy of
the history of philosophy" or of the philosophical problem which inevitably
arises due to the existence of differing philosophical theories which succeed
one another through the course of history. In much the same fashion we
could speak about a philosophy of the various moral philosophies or of the
fundamental philosophical problem which discovers a moral experience which
is at the foundation of the various moral theories.
The question that arises here and with which we will begin may be stated as
follows: How can we pass from factual judgments to value judgments? Can
success be assumed as a norm of morality? From a moral point of view, what
is the importance of the past or present existence of murderers, thieves,
adulterers, etc? And what could be considered the economic, cultural, or
psychological causes for their condition or guilt?
With respect to the ethical judgment of historical events - wars, crimes,
revolutions, oppression, exploitation of the weak, abuses of power, etc. -
they can obviously be explained by the circumstances (political, social,
economic, psychological), but if they are free human acts can they always be
162 PAOLO VALORI
justified? Would not this lead us into a Crocian type of historicism whereby
"history is never the avenger, but always the justifier?"
We agree that morality has to do not with the "is" but with the "ought
to be", not with the Sein but with the Sol/en. The task of morals is not to
ascertain the facts but to assess them and often condemn them. This would
seem to receive further confirmation in contemporary philosophy and in
Moore's famous observation. For Moore, each and every passage from "is"
to "ought" implies a "naturalistic fallacy", in the sense that the improper
passage from a form of nonscientific consideration is explained by Anglo-
Saxon analytical philosophy in different ways - theories based on intuition,
emotiveness, prescripts, deSCriptions, etc. 4
In truth, things are not that simple. In order to fully understand the
profound complexity of the dialectic between fact and value, unchangeable
norms, and historical conditioning factors it is necessary to understand what
is meant by "moral act" and moral experience. Were this important element
to be absent even the pointed and refmed analysis of the language of morals
would remain circumscribed within formal and logical limits and would miss
the very heart of the question.
As we see it, a moral act can be defmed as the free and conscious act of
an individual which tends toward an ethical value or the opposite thereof,
toward the fulfillment or nonfulfillment of one's own personal dignity or that
of others.
I have previously stated and explained this defmition, s and if it is accepted,
it becomes quite clear that the cognitive aspect is essential in the moral life.
The value judgment therefore depends on the knowledge, scientific as well,
which the individual or society possess of the formal object toward which the
act of free will is directed. 6
There is certainly no passage from the fact to the value in the sense that
the scientific-empirical realm never provides me with criteria to distinguish
between moral good and evil. The two realms remain distinct even though
joined by certain links. In other words, the meaning or the value imply some
sort of experience which is different from what is normally considered
empirical, but is experience nonetheless.
The phenomenology advanced by Husser! and Scheler has had the merit
of trying to surpass the hiatus between empiricism and rationalism which is
the real drama of all modern and contemporary philosophy and which still
characterizes the majority of today's language analysts. Rather interesting
attempts have been made by some scholars who represent this school of
thought (e.g., F. Foot) to resolve that difference through descriptivism, which
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SCIENCE 163
holds that moral considerations 7 are not merely emotional or prescriptive but
describe the enrichment and the flourishing of man as such. 8 In referring to
Foot's expressed thought, Hudson writes: "a man who treats others as if they
were mere objects, to that same degree, ceases to be a man himself."9 It
follows, according to the same author, that "the criteria for the goodness
of any type of thing ... are always determining and are not the object of
decisions." 10
These affirmations would seem to qualify moral considerations on the
same objective level as anthropological considerations. Man is moral when he
acts according to his authentic personhood.
In my opinion, however, even these interesting efforts on the part of
analysts remain methodologically incomplete if they do not go beyond
the level of formal analysis and do not reach the dynamic substratum of all
language, the lived experience. In contrast, the phenomenological method is
the best way to integrate the value in the fact, even while it keeps fact and
value distinct.
A few examples could help to clarify the concept that the ethical evaluation
judgment may depend on diverse factual information. As Scheler points out,
a population may consider tobacco such a harmful poison that to smoke,
distribute, and sell tobacco are considered serious crimes and are severly
punished. Our own moral evaluation of the same reality is quite different due
to the chemical and pharmaceutical data at our disposal.
A civilization which thinks that certain women are witches who cast spells
on society may feel it both right and just to execute them as a mean of self-
protection. Those moralists of the past who were led by primitive biology to
consider spermatozoa as germs in potenza prossima of a new human being
held the dispersio seminis in masturbation to be a quasi homicidium. 11
In these case, it is quite evident that moral values do not change, but only
the scientific knowledge which conditions their direct perception. It still
holds true that society has the responsibility to defend itself from poisoners,
criminals, murderers, etc. and to condemn their actions, but the context of
the evaluation has changed. It would be of little help to add further examples
to confirm a thesis which is rather self-evident.
Much more important to recognize is the fact that moral knowledge does
not only concern notions of a scientific or objective nature which are the
direct realm of the sciences of nature, but also and above all an emotive and
perceptible intuition of values. By way of example, the value "fatherland" or
"family" or "religion" is known in all cultures even though in different ways.
In this case the act of knowing no longer has to do with the sciences of nature
164 PAOLO VALORI
(e.g., chemistry, biology, physiology, etc.) but with the human sciences (in
particular, sociology, psychology, cultural anthropology, etc.). In much the
same sense patriarchial societies tend to consider the slave (the serf in the
feudal period), the woman, the child, the adolescent, the foreigner, as inferior
beings who were not considered worthy of the full dignity of "person." The
situation is quite different in our industrial and democratic societies, at least
in theory.
In conclusion, the ethical assessment or evaluation of an act must take into
consideration the objective situation in which the act took place and the
knowledge of the act which can only be provided by the sciences, whether
they be natural or human. Further, if this is true for the objective value of the
act, a fortiori does it hold true for the subjective situation of the agent.
It is quite clear that before expressing a judgment with regard to a given
human act, I must understand what has taken place not only on the outside
- cultural, social, community conditioning factors, etc. - but also on the
inside, as it were - conditioning factors under the form of hereditary in-
fluences, impulses, educational background, psychic state, etc.
The above holds true for individual as well as social morality. Despite its
philosophical limits, psychoanalysis has helped us to understand better how
certain moral forms were merely pseudomorals, certain forms of asceticism
pseudoasceticism, and certain forms of mysticism merely pseudomysticism.
I feel, therefore, that it has been clearly demonstrated how the sociological
sciences on the external and objective level and the psychological disciplines
on the internal and subjective level do not methodologically interfere with
moral research.
Something similar could be said about present linguistic analysis which,
when applied to ethics, is in my opinion much closer to the sciences than
to philosophy. As we have already seen, it examines the logical and formal
development of ethical considerations.
Insofar as it is a human science, however, semantics does have an influence
on ethical evaluation. This evaluation is quite different according to whether
the expressive vehicle is only emotive, descriptive (i.e., sociology), exhortative,
parenthetical, politico-juridical, teleological, or de ontological in form. We are
well aware of the extent to which authentic moral considerations are often
confused with considerations of the aforementioned nature. In common
language the various types of considerations are often intertwined, confused,
contaminated, and therefore ambiguous, and in this area linguistic analysis
has accomplished a good deal. As recent controversies in the Christian and
non-Christian world would tend to confirm, it is of the utmost importance
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SCIENCE 165
What we have seen thus far with regard to acts performed (static morality) is
likewise true in my opinion in the case of acts to be performed (dynamic
morality).
It is important to stress the point that while many people accept the fact
that an historical judgment is conditioned by the external circumstances
examined by the sciences, when it is a question of planning a future action
they immediately envisage an implicit surrender to "fashionable ideas" or to
"the culture of the present." Here too, however, it appears quite clear that
our scientific knowledge defmitely modifies our evaluation of the planned or
proposed act.
A few examples will help to clarify our basic assumption. Let us imagine
that a new form of advanced scientific knowledge in the field of psycho-
analysis helps us to realize that certain ascetical practices which we earlier
considered as licit and even virtuous are actually dictated by the libido and
are to be rejected. What was considered a "good" motivation can become, as
a result of an increased awareness, a "bad" and therefore illicit motivation.
A second example: if, on the level of applied sociology, an accurate analysis
demonstrates that the process of plus-value capital accumulation implies, in
the case of labor contracts determined solely on the basis of the law of supply
and demand, heretofore inadvertent moral reservations, we are bound to
try and correct the situation. In other words, the circumstantiae can shed a
different light not only on acts performed but also on those to be performed;
166 PAOLO VALORI
and this holds true, since the moral ideal is something which each and every
one of us must pursue in the most perfect way possible, correcting whenever
possible defects, mistakes, deviations, mystifications, etc. whether they be
conscious or unconscious.
I do not feel that the aggiomamento of moral doctrine is by any means a
"giving in" to the passing trends of a given present. On the contrary, it must
be revived and renewed in a constant and continuing effort.
We are not trying to deny the fact that the discovery of new values, e.g.,
those of the authentic sexual life implied by love, can lead and has led to the
loss of other important values like common decency which is so slighted and
belittled today. On the contrary, an increased awareness of certain "social
sins", e.g., slavery, exploitation, segregation, etc., which were neglected in the
past for reasons of ignorance or egoism, helps us to bolster and sharpen our
respect for justice vis-it-vis individuals and society at large.
Together with the sciences, we have already seen how philosophies (or
ideologies) are to be included in the general understanding of "culture." In
effect, in the comprehension and evaluation of human acts, man have never
limited himself to the factual aspect of the events which are the object of
analysis on the part of history, social sciences, psychology, ethnology, etc.,
but has always given due regard to the axiological criteria which go beyond
the acts themselves. Whether as an individual or as part of the community,
man has always tried to give a meaning to his own existence and therefore to
the distinct actions which constitute the expression or manifestation of that
existence.
This has led to the birth of "ideologies" - conceptual structures destined
to guide a certain concrete praxis - and "moral philosophies" in the strict
sense, that is, ethics or theoretical systems of pondered judgment upon
human acts. These philosophical doctrines have developed down through
history and are an integral part of "culture", since they are at one and the
same time both the cause and the effect.
In the moral realm, it suffices to reflect briefly on the influence exercised
in culture and in practical ethos by the major philosophical currents such as
Platonism, Manichaeism, Aristotelism, Stoicism, Thomism, English empiricism,
illuminism, Kantianism, pragmatism, Freudian psychoanalysis, Marxism,
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SCIENCE 167
existentialism, etc. Further, we may recall that many of the sins cited by st.
Paul are inferred from Stoic authors. Again, in social ethics it is well known
that the concept of religious tolerance which was practically ignored prior
to illuminism has now become the common heritage of all mankind - at
least legally and theoretically - and has been sanctioned, even though with
excessive delay, by Vatican II. Much the same is true of the idea and reality
of "social justice" which ancient writers expanded upon and which has
become, also through the contribution of Marxism, a pillar in all societies
without distinction in political or religious hue.
I would consider this the proper framework to correctly position the
aforementioned problem of cultural assimilation and the controversies it has
generated.
The basic issue here can be expressed in the following fashion. If past
philosophical systems have had an effect, not always negative, on moral
evaluations, perhaps similar repercussions and effects should not be precluded
a priori for the positive features of present systems. In effect, with due regard
for the proper dose of prudence and caution, they should be taken into
consideration also in the planning of acts to be performed.
In much the same way as gold is purified of scum, it would be a ques-
tion of purifying or freeing the positive moments in these systems from
the frequently misleading metaphysical shell - immanenistic, positivistic,
pantheistic, skeptical, naturalistic Weltanschauungen - in which they are
concealed.
An example which clarifies this thought can be found in the distinction
in classical liberalism between two components or two "spirits" as it were.
The first is the illuminist-inspired secularized indifference which includes
the idolatry of divinized human reason and which is theologically and phi-
losophically unacceptable. The second is the respect for civil rights and
democratic freedoms by the state: freedom of thought, press, religion,
opinion, etc. The first is unacceptable, while the second is not only acceptable
but heartily pursued.
It is quite clear that this exercise of distinguishing the wheat from the
chaff, the true from the false, and the cultural from the metaphYSical is both
delicate and difficult. When working in the realm of ideologies which are
either momentarily fashionable or socially incumbent, there is always the
danger of accepting or rejecting everything as a whole.
This sorting operation is also indispensable if we want morals to remain
free of anachronistic immobilism and to avoid adoption of facile com-
promises.
168 PAOLO VALORI
What has been said thus far brings us back to the question which we posed
at the beginning. If the sciences and historical philosophies, as necessary
components in the expression of culture, condition ethical judgment to
such a great extent, what will be the destiny of moral philosophy as such -
classically defined as "scientia recti ordinis actuum humanorum secundum
ultima principia rationis" - that philosophy which is able to furnish an
absolute value criteria for judging the factual sciences and historical phi-
losophies? And if this normative reference does not exist, do we necessarily
fall into relativism and historicism?
In light of the gravity and complexity of the answer I will limit my con-
siderations to a few brief remarks.
(1) The very fact of being aware of the cultural conditioning factors
of ethics represents gnoseological and anthropological progress and not
regression. The man who is aware of the diversity between cultures and
consequently the diversity of ethos is less bound to his own specific culture
and therefore better able to discern its merits and defects.
The man, on the contrary, who is blocked within restricted cultural para-
meters possesses a critical sense which is much less perceptive and attentive.
In the case of today's society the increased awareness of that diversity has
undoubtedly led to the crisis of many traditional values, but could also
provide the occasion to make them more dynamic and authentic. At the
same time, a profound and critical knowledge of the history of philosophy
does not hinder but helps in any attempt to philosophize independently.
Moving from the theoretical to the ethical level, the awareness of condi-
tioning factors may, if properly utilized, provide a valid contribution to our
own spiritual liberty.
(2) The cultural conditioning factors of morals discovered by the human
sciences and by the history of moral philosophy not only do not exclude but
go so far as to imply, in my opinion, an absolute objective norm of morality.
As we have already seen, the human sciences pursue a moral value which
is the object of an axiological theory. In the same fashion the moral values
proposed by the various historical philosophies, no matter what concrete
formulation they may assume - nature, liberty, society, reason, humanity,
progress - presuppose, as a condition of possible viability, an a priori funda-
mental ethic. If we did not have a certain idea of morals we would be unable
to even speak about moral philosophies, moral ideas, or moral ideologies.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN SCIENCE 169
the past, judge them, and in planning the future try to improve them and
adapt them to the axiological Ideal which must never be neglected.
The human sciences, whether scientific or philosophical, cannot limit
themselves to the mere annotation of facts or ideologies and lose sight of
their realization of the humanum which is the very essence of their fmal and
essential meaning.
Between the two poles which we have examined - moral philosophy and
the human sciences - there is neither a permanent and inevitable state of
conflict nor a situation of conceptual identity, but a dynamic dialectic in an
attempt to achieve a harmonious synthesis destined to perennial renewal in
changing situations and in the ceaseless unfolding of the life and history of
man.
NOTES
I W. D. Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 1-12.
2 This position takes into account the work of J. G. Milhaven quoted by P. Valori,
'Significato e metodologia della ricerca morale oggi,' Gregorianum S8 (1977).
3 Cf. Augusto del Noce, 'Gramsci e la Religione,' Rassegna di Teologio, March-April
1977, p. 106.
4 Cf. Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy, for these distinctions.
5 Cf. P. Valori, L 'esperienza morale, 2d ed. (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1976), pp. 165-95.
6 Cf. P. Valori, Significato e metodologio della ricerca morale, p. 73.
7 On this development, cf. Hussed, Ethische Untersuchungen, ed. A. Roth (The Hague,
1960), pp. 36-50.
8 On this theory, cf. Hudson, Modern Moral Philosophy, pp. 281 ff.
9 Ibid., pp. 281, 301.
10 Cf. ibid.
II For documentation on this affirmation, cf. Valori, L 'esperienza morale.
12 On this question, cf. Valori, 'De ordine morali ut fundamento iuris positivi,' Periodica
de re morali (Pontifical Gregorian University), 59 (1970), 355-70.
B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
Quite apart from the configurations of the object world bound up with the
particular ages of man, as psychiatrists and in our encounters with our patients
we come face to face with a whole range of worlds that have been manipulated
by single presences, have already been prepared for a perceptive relationship,
and which - in a certain way - point to the quality of their psychopatholog-
ical degradation or, at least, provide a summary indication thereof. There
exist various ways in which the objects that constitute the background of the
being-in-the-world of particular presences disturbed in a psychopathological
sense may appear, ways or modes that make possible a first (but necessarily
peripheral) approach; this superficial approach, all the same, constitutes a
valuable aid in the attempt to penetrate and illumine the phenomenic in se
of these presences. Quite obviously, we are here concerned with nothing but a
stage that in itself may be of little or no pathognomonic value, but a stage
that, in the true Husserlian sense, endeavors to be a genuine return to things
and their possibility of providing faithful testimony about man.
In this sense, then, man is also in things, and not just behind them or after
them or before them.
We shall subdivide the analysis of the various psychopathologic modalities
of the life-world into two levels, i.e., a first level that limits itself to surveying
the configuration of the objects within the ambit of that particular mundane
horizon, and a second level that concentrates on the manner in which each
individual presence points back to the particular world that is and remains his
world.
The absence of sharp (pointed) objects in the home environment may already
178 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
If we now come back to our inquiry into the life-world of the phobic patient
such as he offers it to us, i.e., the world indicated and initialed by his own
presence, we have to stress the constitutive intentionality that led to its
foundation. At this level of our inquiry, indeed, the objects that we have
hitherto taken into consideration as mere elements of the constitutional plan
of the phobic world must be inserted into the ambit of the life-world as it is
offered to us and evidenced, both verbally and from the point of view of the
general attitude, by the being-in-the-world of the phobic patient.
First of all, we have to stress that the object significances of his world
become strongly and ubiquitously laden with physiognomic valences. This
process of physiognomization, i.e., a particular tendency to fmd some es-
sential qualities of the perceptwn, leads to a mundane configuration that
endeavors to promote a systematic movement of repulsion of objects or of
keeping oneself far away from the objects and from the specific situations that
unleash anxiety. This movement of repulsion is structured predominantly on
spatial parameters. We are here concerned with a spatialization that expresses
itself through the adoption of magico-ritualistic values that aim at avoiding
the encounter with the phobic object, or at least rendering it inoperative and
inoffensive (cf. Calvi). We thus have a defensive spatiaiization that either
withdraws and locks in or avoids and pushes away. From this there derives
a whole series of perspectives that are very different from the usual ones,
so that the proto-significances of far and near (for the sufferer from con-
tamination phobia), of wide and narrow, of high and low (for a space-phobic
patient), of light and dark, etc. (for the victims of corporeity phobia) asswne
qualities and specifications that are far removed from those attributed to
them in common denotative language. One may therefore maintain that in
the phobic patient there is a pregnant prevalence of connotative signification,
especially at the moment of the decodification, even though there may subsist
a considerable variety as regards the degree of "phobicity" of the object to
180 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
which this signification is attributed. little by little, as one passes from the
victims of space phobia to those that suffer from corporeity phobia and
eventually arrives at contamination-phobic patients, one can note a thematic
specification of the object that becomes more and more rigid and also more
and more compulsive, a specification, indeed, that makes the phobic thing
appear in all its rigidity. The object horizon of the phobic patient therefore
loses in obviousness, in simplicity, in naturalness, in availability, and becomes
enriched with perspectives that are not easy to defme and which can hide
dangers, menaces, contamination. And from this there springs the ever
compulsive urgency of seeing beyond the things themselves, of refming the
symbolic-metaphoric sensitivity for forcibly discovering the iconicity of
things, of never assuming them as they are in their phenomenal givenness or
in acceptations of empirico-pragmatic significance.
These considerations enable us to realize that the multiformity of the life-
worlds of phobic patients constitutes one of the most fertile fields for a
phenomenological survey. One need only think, for example, of the value
distortion that may occur in a rupophobic patient when some object, even
one that would otherwise be dear to him, falls to the ground; at that moment
it becomes completely refused, removed, rejected, and this to the point not
only of completely spoiling its personal value, but even of compromising
its very structure and its phenomenal properties. Such an object, indeed,
will not only cease to be dear and become estranged, but in this process of
negativization it may instantly assume evil properties, may become the vehicle
and the carrier of fearful "dirt." Thus, a ball of white wool, once it has fallen
to the ground, immediately loses its whiteness and even its spherical perfec-
tion, becomes permeable to dirt, impregnated by it or rather overwhelmed by
it, so much so that it can never be redeemed and has to be rejected with
horror. The tiny little city square, so intimate and protective, with its spaces
that almost invite you to walk, will suddenly assume terrifying and evanescent
proportions; these few square yards now hide insurmountable and mysterious
abysses of distance that are ready to destroy even the outer protective limits
of the body.
There exists a tendency toward the boundless extension of these negative
physiognomic qualities to environments of objects that were originally
excluded, their subsequent invasion resembling an ever-tightening circle that
deprives the patient of all possibility of standing at ease in front of the object.
The intention-filled life-world of the phobic becomes transformed into an
antiworld that chases and persecutes him, not because it is moved by the
hostile intentions of his fellows (as in the world of the paranoid) but rather
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE LIFE-WORLD 181
One of the aspects that a careful observer cannot but note almost before all
the others is constituted by the grey and subdued tonality with which the
patient dresses. Lively and contrasting colors are for the most part ignored or
avoided. Everything that is shrill or loud, rich in sensorial associations, is
carefully banished, almost as if its resonance, duly become monotonous,
could conform only to the tonalities of the flat and the faded.
Here one could truly say that it is the dress that gives the man away, in
the sense that all possibility of camouflage has been lost. The outer trappings
become wholly transparent and reveal what is inside, the patient is obliged
to show himself for what he is. Perhaps these are the very reasons why it has
been said that in melancholy there come to the fore those originary anxieties
that in the nonmelancholic, by striking contrast, are firmly cast over, the
surface covering being the more firm and successful the further the man is
removed from this tragic pole of existence. This existential quality manifests
itself not only in dressing, here understood as choice of clothes or preference
given to certain types of clothing, but rather in the manner in which clothes
are worn.
From the patient's clothing there transpires a carelessness that is far more
than mere neglect and ends up by pervading his entire style and bearing. A
depressed patient may be sober in the way he dresses, but he will never be
elegant, refmed, or affected, for the very reason that these characteristics
182 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
a vague state of indeterminacy, an effect that is not possible in the clear light
of day, which defines all things, delimiting them and making them stand out
sharply.
The things that animate the maniacal world show themselves to us with
a particular wealth of movement, and yet characterized by the complete
absence of perspective. It almost seems as if these objects were incapable
of arranging themselves at different levels and standing out in a univocally
defmed manner against the given background, which simply becomes their
uniform supporting structure. Here one can no longer discover a relationship,
always and necessarily dynamic, between the figure and the background;
there is a complete lack of points of collocation that could permit clear and
distinct references. Thus, for example, some old family trinket comes out of
a long-forgotten hiding place and fmds itself in the midst of banal things
of everyday use; or some old love letter may be placed side by side with a
reminder that the rent is overdue, thereby realizing, as it were, the dissolution
of a personal history into news items or reportage, the breakdown of a
sequence into merely contiguous snapshots that are wholly devoid of any
guiding thread. In the environment of the maniacal patient we can grasp,
exteriorized as it were, the whole of his self; and what is more, this self
consists of nothing other than this dissolving exteriorization.
Another characteristic that emerges from the observation of the world of
objects of the maniacal patient is provided by the theatrical, almost playful
aspect that pervades every manipulation of these objects. In other words, the
object is not used in a purposeful way and for pragmatic ends, but rather
appears in its most unequivocable connotation of a game. But here, very
differently from what happens in a child, one will fmd not so much a pro-
jection of the patient into the object of the game, as rather an incorporation
of the object, in which the patient exhausts himself. A world of objects of
this type is brought to life only as a result of the maniacal presence; but in
its absence it simply resolves itself into a disorder that is wholly devoid of
significance or points of reference.
The whole of this world is pervaded by color, but a color that is essentially
atmospheric and merges with the sound that fills the environment; the former
is as gaudy and showy as the latter is deafening, and both are superimposed
on the things rather than emanating from them, alive by virtue of an auton-
omous life of dissolving views that are devoid of any orderly form of sequence
and have neither precedents nor sequels.
This particular sensorial disorder can be found also, and perhaps in an even
more pregnant manner, in the way the patient dresses. In this context there
184 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
corporeity resolves itself into nothing but what is lived exteriorly, so that
being depressed and seeming depressed become one and the same thing. In
other words, the primary object of the world of the depressed, which is always
and precisely his own body, shows itself to be thoroughly compenetrated by
the depression and no longer permits even the slightest margin for camouflage.
The identification of the depressed patient with his own heavy body is abso-
lute and complete and does not permit him the expedients and subterfuges
that one can very often observe in the neurotic.
Side by side with this heaviness, we also have slowness as a phenomenal
characteristic; it is not the result of being prudent or of a cautions way of
doing things, but rather something that cannot be eliminated; it derives from
this selfsame heaviness, the feeling of being on one's last legs, the expression
of the fatigue and effort that accompany every movement and exude from
every gesture. But here we are not merely concerned with an overwhelming
weight that slows down each and every motion; there is also, very obviously,
a complete lack of drive to establish some relationship with the things around,
which in the last resort is equivalent to the incapacity for projecting oneself
into a spatial and temporal tissue that connects the ego with the surrounding
objects. When a young depressed patient fails to telephone a person that is
dear to him, for example, he deprives himself of this means of communica-
tion, and an important one at that, not because he is physically unable to use
it (as would be the case of a paralytic) or because his will is blocked (like a
catatonic), but rather for the simple reason that there is a perfect, absolute,
and radical collage or syntony between his hand that should reach for the
telephone and his frame of mind that should go out toward the other person.
It is as if the telephone had suddenly lost its character of an invitation, of
an object that is close at hand, something that can smooth his way to an
encounter. His own forthcomingness is no longer capable of evoking an
analogous property in the telephone in question, which thus becomes in-
accessible and dumb; what we are here witnessing is an authentic freezing
of the patient into his own body, which ever more compactly assumes the
characteristics of heaviness and slowness. These, in turn, prostrate it into a
static state from which there is no escape and which, in the fmal analysis,
reveals itself as the loss of one's own embodiment projected into the world.
Through these missed encounters with the objects around him (and we say
missed rather than refused, because this latter term implies a negative will
that always suggests a design or a project) the depressed patient provides us
with clear and unmistakeable testimony about what we called his coarctation.
Indeed, everything that may be recalled into the world by a suggestion of
186 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
ment in their fatal career and in the significance of the ineluctible end that
they bring in their wake. As regards the manner in which the other is lived
by the depressed, it seems to us that he is lived and experienced in the ambit
of death, here understood not only as death that brings about the death of
the other (enlarged suicide), but also as death of the other in which I am
inevitably involved.
excessively and in too many directions, once again ends up by not acceding
to any real encounter. Just as in the case of the depressed, however, his
temporality situates itself beyond all duration and is therefore, once again,
basically absent.
The temporalization in this case displays obvious analogies with a child's
absorption in his games. Just like a child, the maniac seems to achieve a
complete collage between time and momentaneous existence; but when one
really thinks about it, one realizes that in the case of the child this collage
between time and existence takes place in a dimension that, although ad-
mittedly fairytalelike, becomes increasingly impregnated with pragmatic
consistency, whereas the maniac really remains as precluded from access to
the world of phantasy as he is from that of the pragmatic manipulation of the
object; and his entire manner of establishing relations between himself and
others derives directly from this. There is no past experience that can resist
the impact of this temporal dissolution, and everything resolves itself into an
absolute momentization. The objects and the others (and here we cannot
speak of "fellows") do not constitute the terms of a dialogic constitution of
the presence, but assume the function of mere pretexts for the coming into
being of this radical excentrification.
The lack of alter-ego reality has its counterpart in another deficiency of
the ego pole. This is the very thing that leads to the disconcerting leveling of
the significances and the values of the world that reflects itself in the absolute
lack of regard, of distance. What one notes here is not so much a polyvalence
of significances, as we shall see to be the case of schizophrenics, but rather
their complete vanishing, without any alternative or substitutions. The fact
that everything seems "possible" (maniacal omnipotence) is precisely the
consequence of this vanishing of the other and of the world, a vanishing in
which the disappearance of the limits and the perspectives makes everything
seem to be within reach, while in reality everything slips away no matter how
frantically it may be gripped. The monotony and the aridity that undeniably
underlie the phantasmagoric joyfulness and the overrunning lucidity of the
maniac's manner of being constitute, at least in our opinion, the premise and
the condition for the distressing emergence of the depressive anxieties. The
maniac, even though he does not experience the dark brooding associated
with the anxiety of death or the all-pervading feeling of guilt, lives in a
dimension that is as radically estranged from being as it estranges the maniac's
experience. For him, therefore, there is no possibility whatsoever of recovering
a sense of having to be "something other" than whatever his immediate
instincts may happen to suggest to him. Many other connotations of the
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE LIFE-WORLD 189
One of the life-worlds that sets up more substantial obstacles as regards the
gaining of greater insight into its mundane configurations, both as they are
perceived by us and as they are intended by the presence, is the one that is
expressed by the vast area of psychopathology made up by the various forms
of schizophrenia.
Here we shall use the term "schizophrenic" because it is convenient
and notwithstanding our awareness of the doubts and difficulties that are
inherent in it and the misunderstandings to which it can give rise. If we here
make use of a distinction between lucid delusional forms and rigidified and
extremely autistic schizophrenic forms, it is not because we want to propose
again (albeit in other terms and with an even more pronounced taxonomic
confusion) a nosographic distinction, but only because it facilitates the
exposition of our subject matter and, above all, because it seems essential to
make a clear distinction between mundane configurations and modes of being
in the world that are seemingly unrelated to each other (and here, obviously,
we are thinking of the configurations and modes characteristic of these two
categories).
Just as we saw when considering the maniac-depressive patient, the manner
of dressing can once again acquire an altogether particular value on the level
of signs and also on the level of symptoms. It is not possible to discover a
uniform factor in the way these presences dress; the possibilities are so
incredibly multiform that one can even arrive at defming complete unforesee-
ability as the common characteristic.
The styles and fashions that may be brandished are extremely bizarre and
eye-catching, to the point where they manifest the patient's intention to hide
himself. By virtue of the fact that this hiding tends to be put into practice
with a truly singular constancy and rigidity, it can assume the unmistakable
significance of a message that will not fail to be received. Perhaps it is precisely
when the patient endeavors more strongly to eclipse himself that he becomes
most readily discovered and understood. In this connection, choosing from
numerous examples, we may mention the very typical wearing of a heavy
overcoat at the height of summer and retiring to a bench in a public park,
190 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
which - of course - obtains no other result than that of being observed with
curiosity and even pointed to. And also certain discrepancies between an
extreme neglect as regards the dress from the belt downward and the careful
check and adjustment of the tie, the collar, and the cuffs, such checks being
carried to the point where they become repetitive and often very complicated
rituals.
In these ambits we can fmd the taste for nakedness and the essential, as
also that for the baroque, the superabundant, and the exaggerated, and yet
without being able to deduce any consequences therefrom. Such tastes can
be expressions of both the unusual and the enigmatic, two aspects that can
interfere with and mutually falsify each other, the observer deriving at times
a feeling of surprise and at others a sense of perplexed astonishment. We feel
that we ought not to attempt a further analysis and diembowelment of this
compact overall appearance, which may be undecipherable by itself, but for
this very reason is also highly expressive of a style of existence; although this
style cannot be correlated on the psychological level, it can be illuminated on
the anthropological one as a normativity sui generis that pervades everything
and spares nothing.
Certain characterizations of the somatic attributes appear to be particularly
relevant for the very reason that they are in contrast with the usages of the
majority. For example, certain beards (at least until a few years ago) or
particular hair styles, refmed and strange at the same time, suggested a rigid
and bizarre manner of opposition and of being in the world. The same was
true as regards the two opposite poles "cleanliness" and "dirtiness", with
passages from one extreme to the other that are never uniform or foreseeable,
although a brusque turnaround is liable to occur at any moment.
In the ambit of the (intramundane) objects that are used by the patient we
witness an extreme quantitative and typological impoverishment, so much so
that the horizon of familiar "things" becomes restricted to the point where it
can be described as arid or even as a desert. Here we enter the reign of the
squalid, the monotonous, the uniform, the arid, the bleak, and the desolate.
When one looks more closely at the manner in which the residual objects are
exploited, however, one becomes aware of the fact that they are manipulated
and utilized more intensely, to the point where they come to bear the indelible
signs of a presence that has ruminated them, as it were, for the very reason
that it is precisely from and through these objects that the patient receives a
substantial integration at the level of satisfaction and realization. Side by side
with this, moreover, there also emerge aspects that reveal to us a diversity of
use, and a diversity that is put into practice with surprising modalities. Here
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE LIFE-WORLD 191
the patient's belongings. It is also probable that the fact that the patient no
longer succeeds in living the object prereflexively prevents this selfsame object
from becoming the center of those creative and inventive enjoyments of the
moment that, in the last resort, confer upon it a personal characteristic.
Vis-a-vis his fellows, on the other hand, the patient never succeeds in
avoiding a peculiar ambiguity of relations, so that the world of the objects
remains extraneous and impermeable to every relational position and thus
keeps its outer facade intact, a facade that is made up of altogether usual
significances and pointers. The world of the delusional patient comes into
being at the level of interhuman relationships and therefore ends up by leaving
the world of things lying by the wayside. On the other hand, however, things
may enter into the delusion not in the erstwhile and mundane manner in which
they offer themselves, but rather by virtue of the categorial significances that
the patient espies in them and which, in any case, leave completely intact
the mundane network with which they give themselves. It is the logico-
significative syntax that undergoes a radical transposition here and not the
pragmatic and ostensive semantics. It follows from this that it is practically
impossible for the lucid delusional patient to have any direct impact on the
world of things or, better, on the way in which these things are arranged,
collocated, and ordered; this remark seems to us to be fundamental as regards
a proper phenomenological appreciation of a life-world that cannot be
reduced to any of the others known to psychopathology.
The life-world of the lucid delusional patient is far more intimate than that
expressed by any other psychopathologic configuration. Here the things and
objects are no longer the spectrelike residues of a world that has crumbled,
but rather point and refer to an intimacy that will reveal itself to nothing and
nobody but itself.
First orall, one here has to face up to the difficult problem of the modalities
of the autistic life-world. Inherent in this term is a multitude of concepts, not
all of which can readily be reconciled with each other, made homologous as
it were. Nevertheless, a common base seems to be provided by the double
quality of withdrawal and refusal, although in saying this it is decidedly not
our intention to examine autism in an alternative manner that is as suggestive
and enticing as it is likely to lead to erroneous generalizations. However, it
would not be correct to attribute to this term a negative connotation of
194 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
value, and this not least because we cannot be a priori certain that unexpected
and surprising resources may not emerge in this very context.
An attempt to defme in a univocal manner a general configuration of
autism seems to us to be extremely risky and perhaps also devoid of any real
usefulness. Indeed, it seems far more important and fruitful to follow the
same methodological approach that we used in the case of the other life-
worlds, a line of approach that endeavors to come to grips with the psy-
chopathologic problematics by illuminating them from within, but without
either reducing them or using them as mere examples. Certainly, in autism
we are not concerned with a linear world or with one that unfolds itself
regularly in accordance with certain given directives or, in any case, that can
be readily foreseen. Rather, we are here concerned with a very complex
and often contorted world, characterized by contradiction, ambiguity, and
unforeseeableness, and this quite independently of an intentionality that
either wants to express itself in this way or is obliged so to manifest itself.
Outside this environment there is no other place where we can observe
with equal clarity the diversity of the spatial modalities, and this right through
from the simple adumbration of a metric space that is about to become
menacing to the most complex modes of spatializing one's existence, when
either all limits are passed or these limits are set in a particularly narrow
and rigidly coarctive manner. The spatialization of this life-world radically
ignores the various levels of being in it or, otherwise stated, it realizes itself in
a unidirectional manner and in this realization, quite inevitably, the presence
comes to lose its anthropological proportions; in this way there comes into
being what has frequently been described by the term "contorted."
On the other hand, this anthropological unbalancing of the presence easily
leads to an ascensional rigidification (Verstiegenheit) in a decisional pattern
that is chosen once and for all and then maintained with blind tenaciousness;
blind in the very sense that there come to lack the various points of reference
that could defme a precise orientation and, in case of need, correct any
deviations therefrom. This deformation of the spatial modalities of existence
must, so it seems to us, necessarily lead to existentive crystallizations that
leave no further room for reconsiderations or corrections and, rather, constrain
the whole of existence into a rigidly defined space in which it is no longer
possible to change direction. It is this aspect that, in our opinion, constitutes
the foundation of the so-called ascensional rigidification, which is nothing
other than an existentive modality that can be evoked and suggested, without
undue difficulty and not by any means artificially, by an analysis of the
autistic world conducted in this manner. By this we do not want to say that
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE LIFE-WORLD 195
to each and every autistic situation there must sooner or later correspond a
Verstiegenheit either on the ideological level or on the pragmatic one. Indeed,
we only want to point out that the lack of an intentional breaking of the
bounds may condemn the presence to a particular type of impoverishment in
the spatialization of the being-in-the-world, especially as regards the possibility
of regaining a here from any kind of there. Such a movement of verticality,
however, does not assume either the quality of an enrichment in ascent nor
that of a sequence of rises and falls, for the simple reason that it derives from
a series of refusals of fmitude. This latter is not assumed as such in order
to lift oneself up as soon as one has gone beyond it, but is rather set aside,
refused, and shunned in a planned manner. The life-world is therefore dis-
harmonic and tortuously dishomogeneous, notwithstanding its outward
appearance of the most rigid homogeneity.
An autistic situation opposite to the one we have just described, or at least
incapable of being related to it, is shown to us by all those autistic derivations
that involve a condition of bewilderment and dismay that the patient cannot
overcome, by his acting underhandedly (as it were) through the impoverish-
ment and the catatonic arrests, in which every project of spatialization is
condemned to failure. As regards the spatial aspect, our encounter with the
autistic world may bring us face to face with numerous other modes of
distortion that are always characterized by a desultoriness that is wholly
unforeseeable (like that of the maniac) and always well off the beaten path.
But this aspect cannot be further understood without taking due account also
of temporality and the process of temporalization.
When we come to consider this temporal category, we have to begin by
drawing attention to its substantial permanence and the patient's possibility
of realizing all three of the temporal orders; this is in marked contrast with
what happens in the case of the depressed or the maniac, for example, where
the temporal progression comes to a halt in and at the present and everything
is lived in function of this present.
As far as the past is concerned, one should note that it places itself in the
present and is communicated to us directly in the form of fragments and
traces, of residual vestiges that, even though they may no longer be situated
in a significant context, persist and remain valid witnesses of that past, almost
as if they were archeological or paleographical documentations, vestiges that
point to a far more complex context with a slgnificance that is easily over-
looked. This past is normally hidden, even intentionally so, in segments of
action or of behavior, segments that are at times abbreviated or foreshortened,
and at others are extremely well camouflaged. The outcome is very clearly
196 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
that needs no audience (and in that respect differs from the show of a hys-
teric) and, nourished by a fiction of the imagination, is "pro-tended" toward
a future. But here we are not concerned with a true perspective; through the
fantasmic present, rather, this future slips back into the past in an incessant
variation and interchange of these three parameters. Every sounding in a
vertical direction is destined to return to the surface, accompanied by a
phenomenal variation that is as ceaseless as it is inane. The temporality of
these impoverished schizophrenic forms .has utopia as its background and
foundation.
If, among the various expressive parameters, we now pass on to considering
the one that is connected with corp orality , we must first of all point out that
here we understand this term as referring not so much to the body that I am,
but rather to the body that I possess, that is to say, the most intimate of all
the mundane things. In this sense, then, the body and its expressivity form
part of the life-world; rather, this life-world cannot do without the corporeity
that underlies every part of it and which constitutes its first epiphany.
It is evident that, starting from the corporeal appearance as the most
fecund moment for the purposes of the discovery of the manner in which the
patient constructs his life-world, the analysis has to be directed toward the
two poles constituted, on the one hand, by withdrawing into oneself, by the
attempt to hide oneself and, on the other, by shameless protestation and
declared ostentation.
In the first case we have a whole series of old and well known signs,
including Gust to give a few examples) the sign of the hood, hiding beneath
the blanket, raising the collar of one's coat, always wearing a pair of dark
glasses, all characteristic of a series of acts and modes of behavior that indicate
in a more or less obvious manner the patient's intention of not wanting
to communicate and therefore a closure vis-it-vis the world of the others.
Although no precise conclusions can be drawn from this as regards the
specific manner in which this world of the others is lived, the aspect of
extraneousness, if not actually of hostility, stands out as occupying a pre-
eminent place.
Vice versa, as regards the pole that assumes the configuration of unre-
strained ostentation, one may observe an attempted intrusion into the world
of others, either in order to derive a sense of security therefrom or for the
simple pleasure of creating astonishment around oneself.
Even though this may give rise to the semblance of a recovery of the life-
world of others and the enlargement of one's own, it is yet clear that this
recovery takes place only in the impersonal dimension of the recital, a recital
198 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
performed amid the settings of a utopian stage and before an audience that
consists of the reified larvae of people.
It is at this very point that one becomes fully aware of the usefulness of
reconsidering the psychopathological phenomena on the basis of the elements
that indicate them and bear witness to them as objective correlates of their
subjectivity. In this way there is no need to have recourse to interpretations
that can or have to be deduced from apriorisms, indeed, it is sufficient to
interrogate with care and attention the concrete manner in which the in-
dividual phenomenal configurations manifest themselves.
The recurrence of these two extreme poles of behaving inevitably implies
that their presence is unconditionally controlled by patterns that do not
derive from a free choice, patterns that cannot be repeated or modified
according to the particular moment or situation. Rather, this behavior sug-
gests phenomenal configurations that can be inferred or deduced from
public experience, that is to say, from imitative models that one fmds in the
anonymity of Heidegger's "publicness" of the "it is said" type.
These are patterns of appearing (behaving) that are heterologous with
respect to the peculiar and more authentic potential being of that presence
as perfectly expressed and realized, but consonant with an extremely im-
poverished and artificial presence, a presence that cannot express itself other
than in this "mannerist" way. When all is said and done, it is this manner
of expressing itself of an existence that cannot but conform in accordance
with lines of behavior - that are reflections of external models - lines that
are characterized by little or no spontaneity and, indeed, are all the poorer
in spontaneity, the more they seem to be endowed with affectation and
extravagance. In this connection we also have to recall the aspect, often
very open and ostentatious, of the aesthetization of the body, of certain
effeminate and affected attitudes that are characteristic of certain forms of
parakinesia.
What we have been saying brings out the fact that mannerism, whether in
the facial expressions or in the gestures, in the way the patient dresses or in
the whole of his attitude, constitutes one of the most fertile aspects for the
study of the disturbances of the transition of the ego to the world. Inasmuch
as it is a mannerism, this way of being in the world and of projecting oneself
into a correlated life-world is as univocal and obvious as anything that one
may fmd among the possible mundane projects.
Even the encounter, whether that of the daily pointers or the more privi-
leged one offered by an authentic dialogue and a possibility of coexistence,
becomes twisted and eventually arrives at a state where it can realize itself
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE LIFE-WORLD 199
In the case of the lucid delusional patient, too, the constitutive aspects of the
life-world can be grasped only inasmuch as this world has significance for me
and through me, always with a noninterpretative attitude, and always on the
basis that it mayor may not evoke a community of objective instances.
Since the lucid delusional patient still moves very extensively in the world
of practice, the definition of a unitary and unmistakable gestalt, i.e., of a
univocaliy determined type, is almost impossible. In the situation of the
lucid delusional patient, indeed, the most important psychopathological
alteration affects the 10gico-categorial significances and those of a general
human importance (Mannheim would say that what is at stake here is not
a partial aspect of ideology, but rather its total aspect); consequently, the
expression of this life-world of the delusional patient is neither unitary nor
compact, by very virtue of the fact ·that the idea of a "life-world" implies
the overcoming of both extreme subjectivism and extreme objectivism and,
further, because our attempt at going toward the world encountered by
the delusional patient, toward his lived experience, comes up against the
200 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
NOTES
1 In 1932, after some twelve years of research, Schlitz published his basic work entitled
Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt: Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie.
2d ed. (Vienna: Springer Verlag, 1960); translated by G. Walsh and F. Lehnert as The
Phenomenology of the Social World (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967).
This work aimed at finding the origin of the categories peculiar to the social sciences
in the fundamental facts of the life of the consciousness; in this sense, therefore, it
provided a link between the comprehensive sociology of Weber and Husserl's tran-
scendental phenomenology.
Hussed, who had been sent a complimentary copy of the book, wrote the following
words to Schlitz on 3 May 1932:
"Ich bin begierig einen so ernsten und griindlichen Phenomenologen kennen zu lemen,
einen der ganz Wenigen, die bis zum tieftsen und leider so schwer zuganglichen Sinn
meiner Lebensarbeit vorgedrungen sind und die ich als hoffnungsvolle Fortsetzer der-
selben, als Reprasentanten der echten Philosophia perennis, der allein zukunftstrachtigen
Philosophie ansehen darf."
From 1939 onward, Schlitz continued his inquiries at the New School for Social
Research in New York, where he reencountered his ffiends and fellow disciples Dorin
Cairns and Aron Gurwitsch; even though the cultural horizon was now rather different,
he was still concerned with discovering the originary constitution of the fundamental
interconnections of the life·world, which are taken for granted in the natural attitude
but only very rarely thematicized by sociologists.
In the preface to Schlitz's Collected Papers (1962), van Breda says that Schlitz, after
having tried to derive intersubjectivity from the transcendental ego, seems to have
realized the limits of the egological approach while encountering intersubjectivity as a
kind of primordial facticity. L. Langrebe, a disciple and assistant of Husserl and author
of a number of works that are fundamental for modern phenomenology (Experience and
Judgment, for example, which was edited from Husserl's own manuscripts), was another
who insisted on the duplicity-identity of "absolute and mundane subjectivity"; in
Phiinomenologie und Metaphysik (Hamburg, 1948), p. 188, for example, he says: 'The
duplicity of absolute and mundane subjectivity must not be understood in the sense that
transcendence manifests itself in the 'empirical human ego,' that empirical and mundane
subjectivity is an 'apparition' beyond which there is the absolute, but rather in the sense
that the absolute is itself present."
202 B. CALLIERI AND A. CASTELLANI
R. Zaner, too, has touched upon this essential problem in The Problem of Em-
bodiment and, more recently, at the Vienna Philosophical Congress, where he spoke
about individuality and the private sphere (Eigensphiire) ("what belongs to me").
We may indeed ask ourselves, and in doing so put the question to the reader, whether
in this respect, too, Schiitz and Landgrebe may not, once again, come very close to
Hussed's latest thought.
2 Cf. The Phenomenology of the Social World.
3 Cf. L. Landgrebe, Phiinomenologie und Metaphysik.
4 Belgrade, 1936.
5 Alfred Schlitz, Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, in Collected Papers, vol. 1
(The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), p. 133.
6 Ibid., p. 135.
7 M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. xv.
8 Phenomenology and Intersubjectivity (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970).
9 Cf. E. Husser!, Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960), par. 42.
10 Cf. E. Pad, Tempo e verita nella [enomenologia di Husser! (Bari: Laterza, 1961),
pp.140-47.
11 A. Gurwitsch, 'A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,' Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research (1941),325.
12 'Awakening: Towards a Phenomenology of the Self,' in Phenomenology in Perspec-
tive, ed. F. J. Smith (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970), p. 177.
13Cf. the article in Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry 5, no. 3 (1964).
14 Cf. C. E. Moustakas, ed., Existential Child Therapy (New York: Basic Books, 1966);
and V. C. Morris, Existentialism in Education (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
15 Cf. Paci, 'Sui problema dell'intersoggettivita,' n Pensiero, 1960.
16 Social Research, 28, no. 1 (1961),71, and esp. 90-91.
17 Cf. Zaner, 'Awakening: Towards a Phenomenology of the Self,' p. 173.
18 D. von Hildebrand, Die Metaphysik ·der Gemeinschaft (Regensburg: Hebbel, 1954),
p.44.
19 J.-P. Sartre, 'Le conflit est Ie sens originel de l'etre-pour autrui,' in L -Etre et Ie
Neant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), p. 431.
20 Cf. Gabel, La [ausse coscience (paris: Editions de Minuit, 1962).
MAURIZIO DE NEGRI
In the clinical practice of child neuropsychiatry one observes from the day of
birth a process involving the development of the personality ,i.e., a progressive
integration and structuring of the ego in relation both to itself and to the
external world. In following this process and its possible distortions (con-
tingent and transitory or defmitive and irreversible, organic and/or psycho-
genetic) several different parameters are utilized. Among these are (1) neuro-
psychological studies which permit the understanding or, in some cases, the
relatively exact defmition of relations between the instrumental (gnostic-
praxis and relational) and the neurobiological substratum, with particular
attention to expressive functions (gesture, graphic, and verbal); (2) genetic
psychology (above all of Piaget) which defmes important deductive reference
points inherent in the progressive development of the appreciation of space
and time, the principle of causality, and the progressive modalities of the
development of thought in young children, under its representative and
symbolic aspects; (3) psychoanalytic approach with reference to the various
stages of emotional development, to the progressive topical and structural
organization of their needs and the dynamic modalities of their reciprocal
relations; (4) phenomenological analysis, which is certainly not the least
important but which has remained until now, the least explored.
It is precisely this last that I will try to synthesize even though, so far, this
synthesis can never be more than the demonstration of a precise modular
reference which is semiologically applicable. Systematic studies of child
psychiatry orientated according to the phenomenological approach are, in
fact, very rare, although one can already glimpse the potential for more
comprehensive (and even, perhaps, more comprehensible) analysis of the
process of the development of personality in its unfolding and opening or in
its distortion and contrariness.
It is useless to record here that general psychiatry is reasonably rich in
phenomenologically orientated studies which are already reference points
for further clinical analyses. But these are almost completely useless in
child psychiatry, in the same way that the nosographic patterns and psycho-
pathological analyses codified in general psychiatry are almost inapplicable to
child psychiatry. It is necessary, therefore, to gather our indications and
203
proposals directly from the basic works of phenomenology (or even better
perhaps, from phenomenological anthropology).
As far as I know, or, at least, as far as I can gather from my own personal
experience, until now ideas for proposals on phenomenologically orientated
clinical child psychiatry have had to be drawn principally from some essential
analyses contained in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty.
There are very few genuine clinical contributions.
One point should be made about the clinical field. Child psychiatry, by its
nature, is difficult to reduce to nosographic systems in that it is relatively
unsystematic. It can call upon certain syndromic patterns and determinate
psychodynamic configurations, but these represent satisfying patterns only
in a few cases. The general semiological forms set out in the above listed
parameters are, therefore, applied from one case to another and from one
moment to another, according to the psychodynamic modalities that meet
in the contingent, which may last a short or a long time dependent on the
different evolutional phases and different existential conditions.
Therefore, we will indicate in a very schematic way some general principles
which may serve as canons of approach to the child apart from his pathology,
and which could constitute the first foundations for a phenomenologically
orientated clinical child psychology.
Let us examine, one by one, some examples of their applicability in the
neuropsychiatric field. (1) We can begin with an assumption concerning the
modalities of appreciation of space or of inhabiting the surrounding world.
Living in the surrounding world can be articulated phenomenologically in
three ways, each different from the others but complementary and simul·
taneous, namely, the circumambient world (Umwe/t), the common world
(Mitwelt), and the private world (Eigenwe/t). But though these three are
simultaneous for the adult they are not so for the child.
We can, in fact, assume that the very young child is immersed in the
"naturalness" and "creatureness" of the circumambient world (Umwelt) in its
biological and drive connotations, in the world of feeding, of sleeping and
waking, of stress and calm, apart from every interpersonal relationship and
every form of cultural conditioning.
This is the monistic, unified world of incorporative receptive orality; and
in this context, neuropsychiatric pathology must remain a pathology of
deprivation: with reference to clinical patterns it is the modality of anaclitic
depression.
But this concept of "anaclitic depression" leads us to the second way of
living in the world, namely, the (Mitwelt) common world.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND CHILD PSYCHIATRY 205
comes later. This appears at the dawn of adolescence, and this is one of the
reasons that make psychiatric pathology, from this point on, so different
from that at a younger age. The pathology changes in its objective and in
its psychodynamic structures in relation to the different level of maturity
reached by the egological function and in relation to the different balances
of the drives. But the connotations are profoundly different also in relation
to the diversity of the areas which open, at this age, in existential space.
The clinical conditions which could be used as examples are many. The
most expressive of all is the depressive condition which has already been the
object of important phenomenological analyses in adult psychiatry. But this
is perhaps one of the infantile psychiatric conditions for the understanding of
which patterns taken from the adult are less adaptable. This can be explained
by reference to several parameters derivable from phenomenological analyses.
For example, we can refer to the primary parameter of temporality in a
morbid structure such as that of depression, in which abnormal temporal
experience is a component of primary importance.
For the child, temporal experience has different connotations than it has
for the adult. The dimensions of future and past in his time are still uncertain
and subjective, not yet historicized. The position of the consciousness is
mainly in the present moment , and the "consciousness of the moment"
dominates; the emotional fluctuations are still for the greater part reactive
to external references.
But depression in the child is different (from the phenomenological point
of view) above all because he articulates, up till now, his life-world, i.e., his
experienced world, in different regions. He does not yet venture out and tum
back on to himself in his private world, so the depressive anguish which is
above all guilt anguish cannot yet have the points of reference, the intimate
sensitivity, the depth and the endurance that will be possible only later in the
future opening and deepening of existential space.
In the child, the acquisition of the body (Le., the representation and
objective knowledge of "the body I have" in its distinct and denominable
parts), comes later. It is preceded by the bodily experience (''the body that I
am") closely involved with moving, hearing, and knowing; subject and instru-
ment of existence and relation from a very tender age. It is an experience that
parallels the formation and the unrolling of the coexistence opening and
which is acted before being known. Some examples, such as the formation
of the corporal schema, the phenomenon of the "phantom" limb, and the
question of child drawing, demonstrate this quite clearly.
The phenomenon of the plantom limb - which occurs following amputa-
tion - is exhibited only after the ages of six or seven. It is not possible before
because the perceptive-cognitive representative integration of the corporal
schema is not yet defmed. On the other hand, in children born with infantile
cerebral paralysis, who from birth have not functionally "experienced" the
plegic part, the corporal scheme structures itself in conformation with the
experience, that is, lacking the hypofunctional part. This is shown in the
drawings which they do of the human figure, reproducing their own asymetric
or mutilated corporal scheme rather than "a body" in its objectivity.
The connections between experience and representation in relation to flesh
(Leib) can be clearly shown even in normal children in the progression in the
drawing of the human figure. In every child, this process follows relatively
stereotyped stages in relation to certain fixed ages, and this is well known in
the field of descriptive or objective psychology; but it assumes a precise
significance and comprehensibility when considered from a phenomenological
point of view. The child draws, in progression, the various human limbs as
they are assimilated in his experience. The knowledge and objective repre-
sentation of the body come only at a relatively late stage.
One has, therefore, a reference, even a representative one, to the flesh
(Leib), and only later one gains the objective connotations of the body. This
fact also explains "projection" in child drawing, Le., the graphic expression of
his emotional and relational experiences.
The drawing, for example, of several human figures in relationship to each
other (above all the picture of the family) is conditioned more by experience
than by the cognite. The corporal dimensions are subjective and emotional.
Even the use of space is subjective and emotional; the faraw.ay and the near,
the united and the disunited, the big and the small, objects hovering near or
set at a distance, what is included and what is excluded correspond, up to
a certain age, to the fluid and "proto-significant" laws of experience rather
than to the rigid laws of the cognite.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND CHILD PSYCHIATRY 209
other hand, the experience of the body is not unitary, but dismembered,
fragmented, incapable of harmonious spacialization, composed of zones
experienced separately and in a relatively independent way. This drastic
failure represented by psychosis, in the process of the development of per-
sonality, is mirrored in its two essential perspectives in corporal experience.
On the one hand, there is a blockage against opening and unfolding, and a
sense of remaining bound to existentive primordial modalities; while, on the
other hand, there is disarticulation, fragmentation, and loss of the unitary
synthesis of the existive senses.
It is perhaps most particularly the phenomenological analyses of corp orality
which can constitute a primary clinical instrument in the deciphering of these
enigmatic conditions which we call psychotic.
Corp orality , insofar as it is a range of attitudes and gestures which remain
expressive, in existences that limit themselves, regress and seem to de structure
themselves and shut themselves off from communication.
(3) Finally, there is a third important reference point to which one can refer,
namely, the genesis and the progressive structuring of cognitive activity.
In its theoretic premises this theme has been the object of one of my own
personal studies (see Analecta Husserliana, no. VII); a brief review here will
therefore suffice. This reference point refers to the development of the
modalities of thought from the antipredicative toward the predicative, from
subjectiveness toward categoricality in experience of time, from spaciality
experienced toward that objectively placed. It also refers to the progressive
extension and specification of the horizons of cognition, internal and external,
of objects of knowledge, and to the progression of the capacity to differentiate
the experiences of imagination (or Jicta) from effective reality.
By using Husserl's approach, we can express the particular characteristics
of child thought as they have been empirically deduced in research into
genetic psychology: the projectivity, the animism, the artificialism, the
transductility, the syncretism, the so-called "realism", the magical and
desiderative modalities that underlie the principle of causality before this
takes on the formula of categorical predication.
In the psychopathological field, it is this parameter which tells us about
"how" (not about "why", which is mainly psychodynamic) certain symp-
tomatological expressions take on different degrees of realizability, different
degrees of meaning, impregnate to different levels the "experience" of the
child in relation to the adult, and therefore why (correlated with the different
ages) they require a different method and a different degree of pathology.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND CHILD PSYCHIATRY 211
The most typical and common examples of these expressions are repre-
sented by phobias and delusions in their psychodynamic affInity, but also in
the fact that they can be precisely differentiated phenomenologically as well
as conceptually and clinically.
This theme of phobias and delusions in their psychodynamic similarity,
as well as in their conceptual differentiation and their different degrees of
realizability and pathologicity in the different epochs of development, is one
that facilitates the documentation of the usefulness or indeed the indis-
pensability of this particular phenomenological parameter for the explanation
of many facts in psychopathology. I have made a personal study of this which
cannot be summarized here; it suffices, therefore, to have mentioned it as an
example; detailed treatment can be found in the original text in the Revue de
Neuropsychiatrie Infantile, 5, no. 2 (1974),333.
Istituto G. Gaslini,
University of Geneva
EUGENIO BORGNA
above his repeated and drastic assertion that, when all is said and done, the
whole of the naturalistic-scientific articulation of psychiatry is founded on a
hypothesis (Le., the assertion of its biological or somato-genetic raison d'etre)
that is, far removed from every possibility of demonstration, Kurt Schneider's
cutting and corrosive epistemological plane has completely overturned, and
deprived of significance, the semantic and conceptual connotation of what
constitutes a "symptom" in psychiatry, thus provoking dialectically the
shipwreck of all the commonplaces of clinical language and causing them to
sink out of sight.
The psychopathological manifestations with which psychiatry is concerned
are, in any case, nothing other than communications of lived experience
(Erlebnismitteilungen), and psychopathology, as Miiller-Suur has very acutely
pointed out, is nothing else than the interpretation, the decoding if you
will, of the experiences that are communicated to us. Let us not forget, and
this is yet another testimony of the infmite antinomies of psychiatry as a
science, that van Praag defines schizophrenia as "an impossible concept" (ein
unmoglicher Begri!f), because it is both unsurveyed and un surveyable in its
"impossible" raison d'etre; that is, an unattainable but infmitely sought
horizon, yet as Kisker has pointed out, it is in any case necessary to "live
with the impossible." The usual "symptoms" of a psychotic experience
cannot be defmed as such. As Kurt Schneider has insisted, the lived psycho-
pathological experiences (which include the delusional and hallucinatory
experiences as well as those of estrangement) not only cannot be "reduced"
to the unidimensional level of a "symptom" but, what is more, contain
nothing whatsoever that could constitute them as and on the level of an
abstract and reified clinical reality (as an "illness", that is to say, however
the term may be understood); they have rather to be understood in their
connotation as signs, as semantic allusions to the emergence of psychopatho-
logical forms (coherent and full of sense) that nevertheless cannot but be
defined as "aggregations" and "formations" (Bildungen) of lived experiences
with significations different from our own. The inexorable upheaval of the
epistemological and foundational approach of psychiatry is in the last resort
(and in all its radicality) represented by this dialectical movement that refuses
to recognize the existence of "symptoms" and, overturning this untenable
defmition, considers them as "signs." Consequently, a person who "is in the
world of schizophrenia" (the world of psychotic experience, that is to say)
must not be thought of as a carrier of "symptoms" (considered as expressions
of "illness") but rather as the bearer of "signs" that have to be anchored to a
hermeneutic and deciphering horizon. In other words, he has to be thought of
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SCHIZOPHRENIA 215
Let us now consider both the antepredicative immediateness and the life-
worldly evidence of that vertical laceration of the ego - which is completely
incapable of reasserting its unity in any shape or form - and going beyond
the mere phenomenon of the split, expresses itself in the terrifying counter-
experience of its "doubling" (Verdoppelung).
This counterexperience has been described by von Gebsattel, who quotes
the example of one of his female patients immersed in a desertlike atmosphere
and submerged by a duplicative metamorphosis of the ego that became
disarticulated into two forms (egos "A" and "B"), each drastically separate
from the other. "Each of these egos is further removed from the other than
the distance between the North and South Poles. I always feel this division
into two inside myself." Lastly, from the self-description of this particular
patient let us also quote the different modes of being-in-the-world of "A"
"B." '''i..' is the empty ego, the mere skin, an empty space, a void. The
authentic ego is in 'B'; it is sanity, spirit, fullness of communication of life."
The split in von Gebsattel's patient is profound and radical; and yet one
cannot grasp and discover in it a duplicative metamorphosis of the ego as
lacerating and as bareboned as the one that we have observed in one of our
own patients (Cecilia), in whom the "duplication" of the ego and of the
world reaches a point where two life-worlds are actually configured, each
having both a space-time constitution and an intersubjective constitution of
its own. The experience of the "duplication" (the shipwreck of one's own
identity, its disintegration into two egotic nuclei that are sealed and kept
apart by an experiential independence and also by an intentional autonomy)
reemerges in our patient with truly drastic phenomenological evidence.
Let us suspend, for a moment, both psychopathological and diagnostic
judgment; here we do not fmd ourselves face to face with a clinical "case"
but rather with a person (Cecilia), who is twenty-nine years old and has come
to manifest a profound transformation of her intentional life and of her
horizons of existential significance. The "sympathetic communication" with
the world (the term used here in the sense of Straus) has become radically
metamorphosed. There emerge the particular lived experiences (the modalities
of being-in-the·world) that clinical psychopathology refers to as delusional
and hallucinatory. The metamorphosis of the ego is accompanied by the
metamorphosis of the world; in this way a very own life-world (Eigenwelt)
thus comes to be constituted. The image of the mother - whose voluntary
death has put an end to her existence but has left untouched and unscathed
her image in the memory of our patient - seems fatally destined to drag
Cecilia in its wake, into two desperate attempts of suicide. From both of
218 EUGENIO BORGNA
them she is saved only by a hair's breadth. A state of permanent conflict can
be noted in her family situation: the husband's countertestimony of aridity
almost overwhelms the sympathetic testimony of her two sons. Over and
above the psychopathological manifestations, however, there is always the
figure of Cecilia to bear witness to her defenseless and desperate humanity,
to her infinite capacity for grasping the shadow line of reality, of the other
image (obscure and enigmatic) of reality: "Dying, and attempting to die, it
seemed to me to be born again. This thought kept me company." It is in this
phase of her life (tragically marked by the temptation to seek voluntary death
and immersed in the frozen irreality of her delusions and hallucinations) that
we witness the transformation of the unity (and of the identity) of her ego.
The duplicative metamorphosis of the ego and of the world constitutes itself
as an essential and emblematic moment of Cecilia's existence: "Two ways
of living and two worlds are to be found in my life." The ego has become
disarticulated into two forms (almost two images that, rmding themselves
face-to-face, turn to headlong flight from each other). Cecilia's personal
process of becoming (in the sense of von Gebsattel) becomes shattered into
pieces, becomes transformed (doubled) into "Maria Luisa" and "Lucia."
The psychopathological analysis of a human experience, so overwhelming
in its nature, inevitably becomes arid when attempted in a formal clinical
context, especially when it is centered on the constitutive (and also destruc-
turizing) aspects of the consciousness of the ego that has become transformed
in its raison d'etre. On the contrary, I believe I have shown that the phenome-
nological approach allows us, first, to grasp the actual lived experience, as
well as the modes of being-in-the-world, of our patient in their antepredicative
(and precategorial) immediacy. Second, it allows us also to situate the ex-
perience of the split and the duplicative metamorphosis of the ego in the
interpretative context of the Husserlian life-world. What seems to be a "re-
ductive" experience and wholly devoid of sense, when seen from a psycho-
pathological point of view, appears on the contrary to be the very thing that
permits a phenomenological return to the foundations by recuperating
Cecilia's "form of life" in its human significance.
Let us now reconsider the constitutive phenomenological moments of the
two life-worlds that characterize the metamorphosis of the ego and of the
world as it has manifested itself in the life of our patient.
The laceration of the consciousness of the ego, and the contraposition of
the two forms (and of the two worlds that are associated with them) that run
their course as strangers to each other or are at least different from each other
as far as their space-time and intersubjective constitution is concerned, do not
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SCHIZOPHRENIA 219
places itself out of reach in the desert of the soul. The form of "Lucia", with
its weak and slender line of hope and dialogic allusion, contains within it the
short-lived and futile inconsistency of something that is being inexorably
consumed and worn away (a flickering candle, to be precise); and yet in the
desert of her solitude, and in the devastating vortex of her interhuman
rupture, Cecilia finds in "Lucia" a dilemmatic and vaguely outlined illusion
of communication and of alterity.
Communication, being the supporting structure of the /ife-world, becomes
articulated in this latter within the context of a number of fundamental
space-time structures. The metamorphosis of the intersubjective structures of
the /ife-world is thus accompanied by the metamorphosis of the space-time
structures. Obviously, we are not here concerned either with an objective and
geometric space or an objective and measurable time. As Straus has shown in
his admirable phenomenological analyses, space and time in the life-world
are not abstract and reified categories, but are rather modes of mundanizing
oneself, of feeling the world.
In the psychotic /ife-world (and emblematically in Cecilia's /ife-world) the
metamorphosis of the space structures brings in its wake the radical negation
of every here and of every there, as well as the annihilation of every dialectic
articulation between here and there; one is simply besieged in the here-and-
now, and it is no longer possible to come out of the bounds of subjectivity,
just as it is no longer possible to reenter into them. The Copernican upheaval
(as Klaus Conrad defmes the possibility of coming out, transcending onself,
into the world that is common to ourselves and to the other), becomes
burned and annihilated in the context of an apophanic experience in which
every human and every thing no longer has any significance other than that
of becoming self-referred and overpowered. In a /ife-world deprived in this
manner of any and every sistolic-diastolic space articulation, we can observe
the leveling out and the liquefaction of the lived space, a space in which there
now comes to lack every distance, as also every separation, both devoured by
absence (in the sense of Blanchot). In the two forms ("Maria Luisa" and
"Lucia") which reemerge from the splitting laceration of Cecilia's conscious-
ness of her ego, there is no longer any defense (and there is no longer any
distance) vis-a-vis the other and vis-a-vis his alarming appearance. In "Lucia's"
life-world, indeed, this being-exposed to the other, this being handed over
to the inexorable human and thingly realities, assumes a configuration of
more drastic semantic pregnancy than in "Maria Luisa." And yet, neither the
one nor the other can completely deprive herself of every limit, of every
boundary between the "I" and the "world."
PHENOMENOLOGY AND SCHIZOPHRENIA 221
225
connection with this, of pure phenomenology of the lived experiences of thought and
of knowledge. 1
The ideality of the relation between expression and meaning, referring to both terms,
immediately reveals itself in the fact that, if we face the problem of the meaning of any
expression (e.g., quadratic rest), obviously by expression we do not mean the phonetic
formation pronounced hic et nunc, this fugitive sound, which is never repeated identi-
cally. We mean the expression in kind. The expression quadratic rest remains identical,
regardless of who pronounces it. And the same will be true if we talk about meaning, too:
in this case, obviously, we do not mean the lived experience which gives signification.
We should note that the expression referred to by the author which "remains
identical, regardless of who pronounces it" is quadratischer Rest, an expres-
sion belonging to the German language, which is a historically determined
language, and, like all languages, subject to historical transformations through
time. What Hussed says about the German expression is equally valid for the
Italian expression resta quadratica, which also belongs to a historically
determined language. It follows that what he now defmes as expression in
kind, which remains identical, appears as a relatively short-lived kind which
seems hard to conciliate with the character of necessity and immutability
of the kind as ideal essence. The author would certainly have an obvious
objection to make to our remark. What makes an object in its ideal state
remain identical is not the fact that a certain group of individuals continue
seeing it or thinking it in the same way but the fact that it maintains its
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 227
Here, too, we have another aspect of the defmition of the perceptible sign
which is equally important: not to consider the perceptible sign, or the
228 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
Usually in fact, in this case, we accept represented words in the place of real ones. In our
imagination we see a word - a pronounced or printed sign - a word which really does
not exist .... The nonexistence of the word does not bother us. Besides, it does not
interest us. It has no relevance to the function of the expression as expression. 6
the listener perceives that the speaker externaIises certain psychically lived experiences,
and to a certain extent he perceives them, but he does not live them himself, he does not
have an internal perception of them but only an external one.
but we must not forget that, for the author, solitary discourse - as purely
significative and in which expression is always and only used as expression
and never as a signal - represents the kind of speech most worthy of atten-
tion. In the phenomenological analysis of language, the main problem, the
fundamental one, is the problem of the recall from the linguistic sign to the
signification; this recall is always carried in the expressive act, which aims
purely at meaning, and the expressive act is fully realized "in the isolated
psychic life." Therefore, in solitary speech only the "informative function",
or the communication of the word, is lacking, but certainly not its expressive
or significative function, which, in the Logical Researches, is undoubtly the
most important one.
The word ceases to be word only when our interest is directed exclusively toward the
perceptible thing, to the word as a simple phonic complex. But when we live in its under-
standing, it expresses and always expresses the same thing, whether or not addressed to
someone. 9
other hand, this latter depends on the former. The author wants, first of
all, to distinguish clearly between the two moments and to make quite clear
that the process of the determination or fixing of the meaning is a purely
expressive process. They are fundamentally two different attitudes of the
thinking subject: one attitude in which the subject faces the world of his own
experiences, including the experiences of others as men and human beings,
and tries to obtain certain conceptions or meanings, along with their articula-
tions and connections; and another attitude, in which the thinking subject
looks for collaboration and exchange with others, in order to expand his
world of knowledge or perhaps to correct and modify it. The importance of
communication with others, on a practical plane, is beyond all question here.
Certainly, Husserl feels a deep need to keep the two attitudes distinct in his
theorization of expressive speech and of communicative speech. The linguistic
distinction springs directly from a phenomenological distinction between the
intentional act, whatever it may be, which is a psychically lived experience,
an Erlebnis, and what is given in it as objective content. The expression, or
rather, the expressive act, aims at the objective content, configured as signi-
fication. Communication, instead, has as its specific content the intentional
act in its empirical reality, the psychically lived experience, whatever it may
be, e.g., a judgment or a purely practical attitude, such as a desire or a will.
At the basis of Hussed's distinction there may be some gaps, some obscure
points, some difficulties. We pointed out only one of these, but we also
suggested a fairly easy way to overcome it. Nobody can deny, I think, the
legitimacy of the need for the distinction he gave in a form that is undoubtedly
singular and original. In any case, nobody will deny a problem concerning the
distinction. Anyone who only sees in speech the character of communication
runs the risk of not even understanding the meaning of speech as communica-
tion. This is the pitfall encountered by the linguistic theory contained in
Wittgenstein's Philosophische Untersuchungen. 11
It might be interesting to compare Husserl's position on this point with
that of two other scholars of quite different origin, namely, Saussure and
Croce.
In Saussure's general linguistics, in his reflections on the semiological
nature of language, we fmd nothing analogous to Hussed's distinction of
expression and communication. He directs his attention and his interest to
the essentially communicative character of speech. Every linguistic act
(parole), which is conditioned by language (in itself a social institution),
draws from language its property of being comprehensible and communica-
tive. It is true that Saussure gives ample space to the individual who, in the
240 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
linguistic act, can express his personal thought in the parole. The individuality
and personality of the linguistic act, according to Saussure, consists mainly
in the freedom given to each speaker to combine the signs of language in
various ways, making a unique use of the code. But this sphere of freedom
given to the individual in linguistics does not mean it can be compared to
what HusserI calls expression. Even though the Genevan linguist, referring to
that sphere, sometimes uses the term exprimer, as in "exprimer sa pensee
dans une phrase", 12 we have to remember the sphere he designates is only the
sphere of the parole, of the linguistic act, as opposed to the sphere of the
langue. Here the distinction, the opposition, is between parole and langue
and certainly not between expression and communication. To exclude any
possibility of a comparison between the free combination in the linguistic
act or Saussure's parole and HusserI's concept of expression, it is enough to
consider the fact that, within the linguistic act, Saussure feels absolutely no
need for a distinction between a purely expressive linguistic act and a com-
municative linguistic act. It does not even occur to him to devote much space
in his study of speech to the examination of that kind of discourse that
HusserI has called solitary or isolated. On the contrary, since HusserI was not
interested in the problem of language as a system, as a social institution,
nor in the distinction and opposition of langue and parole, he devoted a
considerable part of his inquiry above all to the distinction between merely
expressive or significative speech (solitary discourse) and communicative
discourse (dialogue) and thereafter, within the communicative discourse
where the two functions always intersect, to the distinction between the
word as expression and the word as a signal.
The reasons why Saussure felt no need to distinguish between expression
and communication have perhaps to be sought in the drastic way he interprets
the relation between thought and speech. We know that for him "the thOUght
in itself is a nebulous mass where nothing is necessarily defmed" and "nothing
is distinct before the appearance of language." 13 This clear position excludes
any possibility of considering the activity of thought as autonomous and
independent of the linguistic form, or of dealing with the activity of thought
and the linguistic forms as two different terms, entering in various ways into
a relationship of mutual conditioning, to which the activity of thought is not
always necessarily linked. Saussure's reflections left these problems totally to
one side. On general lines the linguist Hjelmslev confirmed in "Language and
Thought" (1936)14 Saussure's thesis about the necessary dependence of the
activity of thought on the linguistic form. He put the question of the relation
between them in a fairIy problematic form by seriously considering the
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 241
Every theoretical study, although in no way developed simply through acts of expression
or even assertions, leads, in the last analysis, to assertions. Only in this form does truth,
and particularly theory, become the permanent property of science, a property con-
stituted by a complete set of documents, always available, for the continuous progress
of knowledge and research. "
Whether or not for essential reasons the connection of the acts of thought and oflanguage
(in other words, the way of exhibiting the resolving judgment in the form of assertion)
is necessary, it is certain that judgments belonging to the upper sphere, above all to the
scientific sphere, cannot be made if they are not expressed in one language.
considering the fact that human thought usually takes place in language and that ab-
solutely all manifestations of reason are linked to speech, considering the fact that every
criticism from which the truth must appear in the rational sphere utilizes language, since
it is intersubjective criticism and always leads in the end to some assertions, then it is not
the simple acts of thought and the simple thought that come directly under discussion,
but above all the acts of assertion and the thoughts as assertion. 15
In the Researches it was stated that judgments belonging to the upper sphere
can be made only if they are expressed in a language, and here that thesis is
confirmed in substance, by the analogous statement that "absolutely all
manifestations of reason are linked to language." Whereas in the Researches
mention is made of the important problem of the essential necessity of the
connection of the acts of thought and of language, here the problem is not
even mentioned. But the discussion in the Logic is also deficient in respect of
another aspect of the linguistic problem; in all the analyses carried out with
a view to defining the concept of logic as formal logic which should have a
transcendental foundation, no explanation is given of the relationship linking
concrete or natural speech to the artificial and symbolic language of mathe-
maticallogic.
The need for a link between scientific thought, deductive thought, and
linguistic formations is confirmed in appendix 3 of Crisis, On the Origins of
Geometry. But along with this we also fmd in this work of 1936 a different
way of understanding the function of the linguistic sign related to the ideal
identity of meanings.
The main problem concerns the passage of the ideality of geometry - and
consequently of the other sciences too - from its initial phase, "originally
intrapersonal, for which reason it is a formation which belongs to the con-
scious space in the soul of the first inventor", to its ideal objectiveness. The
passage from the subjective character of the first act of knowledge - an act
celebrated inside the individual who is isolated in his cognitive experiences -
to the objective character of pieces of knowledge which are thus shown to be
differently based, is possible only through language, in which those pieces of
knowledge are incarnated.
Language can transform a purely intrasubjective formation into an objective
formation, by the sole fact that it makes a psychic, internal, and subjective
piece of knowledge become an intersubjective piece of knowledge, that is, an
246 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
The original presence itself in the actuality of the flrst productive act, that is, in the
original "evidence", does not lead to a permanent result, entitled to an objective
existence. 16
the articulated phonetic complex (the written sign, etc.) will change into a spoken word,
into a communicative discourse in general, for the simple reason that whoever is speaking
produces it intentionally "to pronounce on something", that is, he gives it, in certain
psychical acts, a sense he wants to communicate to the listener.
the link between thought and word or the expression of a definite judgment
in the form of an assertion, was necessary in essence. The question was raised
on that occasion, whether the essence of thought and of its intentional objects
was not necessarily connected with the linguistic element. A positive answer
was given to this question in the Fifth Research, where it was recognized that
its arguments were valid. While admitting that an utterance or an assertion is
a strictly unitary, lived experience, made up of one single act, in which we
perceive a bodily aspect (the perceptible sign) and a spiritual one (the content
or meaning given by the act of signification), the author nevertheless under-
lines the fact that in this unity the perceptible'sign, the phonetic complex, or
the physical expression has the value of a nonessential element. Among the
reasons for the nonessentiality of the perceptible sign he points to the fact
that its place could be taken by any other phonetic complex, having quite
the same function; but he develops a further, wider explanation by arguing
that the perceptible sign, the phonetic complex "could even be completely
eliminated." 17 The author seems convinced that, should the perceptible sign
be eliminated, the intentional content temporally belonging to it would
preserve its integrity even after separation from its linguistic form. This
nonessentiality of the perceptible sign of expression related to the content
expressed, leads HusserI to admit the extraessentiality of the very connection
between the former versus the latter, between the linguistic form and the
intentional content of the objectifying act. The extraessentiality of this con-
nection depends on the fact that the expression itself, that is, the perceptible
sign, be it phonetic or graphical, "has no value either as a constituting element
of the objective state of the intentional act as a whole, nor, in general, as
something belonging to it 'intrinsically' or in any way determining it."
Therefore, the linguistic form not only is not an element intrinsic to the
objective state intended by the act, but it is in no way able to determine it.
The author adopts a more moderate and cautious position in paragraph
26 of the Sixth Research, where he states that, in relation to its meaning,
the sign is "completely indifferent", in the sense that a meaning has only a
general need for a supporting content (the perceptible content of the sign)
but any content can represent it, since "no necessary connection can be
found between the specific peculiarity of such a content and the specific
peculiarity of the significative matter, the matter constituting meaning.
HusserI, however, admits that the meaning needs the perceptible sign "and
that it cannot, so to speak, be suspended in mid air." The perceptible sign,
the linguistic form, is something nonessential, something unable to determine
the objective content of the act of meaning, but the meaning seems, almost as
250 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
They form an ideally closed system of general objects, for which the fact that they are
thought or expressed is quite accidental. There are therefore countless meanings which
are, in the common sense of the term, merely possible meanings, whereas they never
come to be expressed and will never be able to be expressed owing to the limits of the
forces of knowledge of man.
Meanings which are never expressed are merely possible meanings. It might,
then, be appropriate to ask, are the meanings which the thinking subject
realizes in an act of knowledge always inevitably connected with expression,
with linguistic form?
Twelve years later,in the first book of the Ideas for a pure phenomenology
and, to be more precise, in the chapter dedicated to the problem of noetic-
noematic structures, HusserI considers whether it is better or, rather, necessary
to extend the terms "to mean" (bedeuten) and "meaning" (Bedeutung)
beyond the linguistic sphere, and to make certain distinctions within the
whole noetic-noematic sphere including all acts, between that which is not
connected and that which is connected with expression. While in the Logical
Researches the term Sinn ("sense") is used as a synonym of Bedeutung
("meaning") and is assumed in a general way in referring to all intentional
Erlebnisse, in the Ideas the term "meaning" (Bedeutung) is specifically
assigned to "expressive" or "logical" meaning, while the term "sense" (Sinn)
is adopted in the widest sense as before.
There is a perception of an object where an object is given with a defmite
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 251
Expression is not a kind of varnish that is painted on, or a dress put on, the expressed;
it produces a mental formation [FormungJ exercising new intentional functions on the
intentional sublayer, and it is correspondingly conditioned by the latter's intentional
functions.
From the compound of two intentional acts, the one at the basis of expres-
sion and the other at the basis of the expressed, something new arises which
did not exist before the expressive act took place.
This does not prevent Hussed from keeping both layers clearly distin-
guished as to "the method of clarification" (paragraph 125). Thus, he admits
that distinct comprehension of the word and of the proposition, that is, of
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 253
In whatever way it may be formulated, the thematic object, the object of the formula-
tion [its sense I is distinguished from the formulation itself, which, when it is formulated,
is never, and cannot be, thematic. Here merely ideal objective states are thematic, which
are quite different from those belonging to the concept of language. 18
The last lines of the quotation allude to the thesis that words as well as
propositions have, as linguistic entities, an ideality of their own. On this
point the author states that the word "Lowe" remains identical even when
pronounced by a large number of people. However, he adds that the ideality
254 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
There is no doubt that the sphere in which translation occurs is that of prose expression,
which works through symbols and signs. Those signs are changeable at will - not only in
mathematics, in physics, and in other sciences, but in philosophy and history too. 19
As for Hussed's position, it is certain that also his thesis of the perfect trans-
latability of geometrical concepts and theories satisfies the need for a dis-
tinction between objects or cognitive contents as such, and the linguistic
formulations referring to them. These appear as pure instruments of com-
munication, arbitrary insofar as they are changeable.
Here it seems to me that we must attribute to Hussed the thesis of a
priority of the thematic object with respect to its linguistic formulation. He
admits, as we see, a formation created in the psychical, interior dimension.
This formation, before acquiring a peculiar intersubjective objectivity through
linguistic mediation, is obviously considered a prelinguistic formation. This
"original presence itself", given in the actuality of the first productive act, is
not yet "a permament result having a right to an objective existence." Without
language, here fundamentally defmed as intersubjective communication, we
cannot bypass the limits of the subject, "not even if the activity of possible
rememorization occurs, through which the past-lived experience is renewed,
as it were, and is experienced again." The fact that the subject can relive his
own, lived experiences, rethink what he had already thought, have a second
intuition of past intuition, is not sufficient reason to state that he has reached
objectivity. However, Husser! admits, and we must emphasize it, that this
interior activity, which is carried out within an isolated subjectivity, not
only takes place, but has a well-determined function and importance, since
objectivity, which is reached through intersubjective linguistic exchange, has
its primary basis in this isolated subjective activity, which by defmition is a
form of pre linguistic cognitive intentionality. On the Origins of Geometry,
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 255
as well as the earlier works we have examined, from the point of view of
the linguistic problem, and specifically of the relationship between the
intentional activity of the cognitive subject and language, demonstrate clearly
that Hussed's position is very far from the thesis of such scholars, linguists,
and philosophers who lay at the basis of the linguistic problem an absolute
detailed identification of the operations of thought with the linguistic opera-
tions, and deny the possibility of any form of knowledge independently of
linguistic forms. We fmd, for example, such linguists as Saussure and Hjemslev,
and such philosophers as Cassirer, Wittgenstein, and Croce defending this
position. Hussed differs widely from them, since he is convinced we have to
make a distinction between cognitive intentional activity and purely linguistic
operations, even though there is a close relationship between them, so close
that it is difficult to pick out or distinguish the moments of independence of
the former from the latter.
There can be no doubt, however, that Hussed tends to consider the
intentional content of the linguistic sign as having priority over the sign and
as conditioning the sign itself. The linguistic sign would not have originated
if there was no intentional content to be established or expressed. The per-
ceptible sign of expression is defined in the Logical Researches 20 as "imprint"
(Gespriige) or the "mark" (Auspriigung) of the "meaning" (Bedeutung).
The meaning should ideally take precedence over its imprint and its mark. In
an essay21 in which he compares the position of Husserl and of Saussure,
Herman Parret observes that
In Saussure the sign is primary, that is, in the meming relationship, signifier (expression)
and signified (content) are formed. In Husser! the meaning is at the origin: it operates
the conditioning (reduction) of the sign.
change that something, determined in a certain kind of apparition, into the same some-
thing in a different kind of apparition. It aims at "producing" constantly new kinds of
apparition, which we can also define as "images" [Bi/der]. 22
We know that the objec.t to which the ego turns its attention in different
moments is the same; furthermore, every moment or determination of the
object evokes successive moments or determinations. All this constitutes the
concept of the perceptive horizon. At this level, the various modalizations
of perfect or immediate certainty are articulated. Negation, doubt, open
possibility, modified or derived certainty, before becoming characteristic of
predicative judgments, appear in their original form in the antepredicative
sphere of receptive experience. Thus we see that the lowest level of cognitive
activity, which does not appear to be linked to forms of verbal expression,
anticipates, and in some way, preconditions the more complex forms pro-
duced at the higher stage of predicative thought.
Explication, which is the authentic contemplation of the object in its
various apparitions, can take place either in the field of the internal horizon
of the object or in the field of the external horizon. In the latter case, the
interest of contemplation centers on the way the object relates to the other
objects in the same field of perception. In this way, perceptive contemplation
is developed in a higher sphere, to be precise, in that of the external horizon.
Thus in the object arise, by opposition between interior determinations and its explicata,
the relative determinations which explicate what it is in relation to other objects; for
example, the pencil lies beside the ink, it is longer than the pen, etc. (op. cit., p. 115)
... in the authentic interest in knowledge we have a new kind of voluntary participation
of the ego: the ego wishes to know the object and to establish what is known once and
for all. Every step of knowledge is guided by an active impulse of the will to keep what
is known unchanged, as a substratum of its determining notes in future life, and to place
it in relation to other things, etc. Knowledge is action of the ego; the aim of the will is
to take in the object in its identical determination and to fix "once and for all" the
result of contemplative perception. (op. cit., p. 233)
Thus the fact that the result of contemplative perception is fixed "once and
for all" seems to depend on the impulse of the will of the knowing subject,
as does the fact that the known object is kept unchanged, as a substratum of
its determinations.
But the thesis of a will that wishes to keep its object unchanged, that
wishes to fix the perceptive content, requires an explanation of how this will
operates in order to reach its objective. It must be possible to conserve the
known object, identically; it has to be possessed in a permanent way, even
when the corresponding intuition in which the object is given in its original
presence has disappeared. The conservation is entrusted to
"formations" [Gebilden], which, by indications that at first are empty [durch zuniicht
leere Indikationen 1, can bring us to the intuition of the identical, which can be obtained
either through presentifications or through renewed self-donation.
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 261
The indications, at first empty, then afterward full, are the linguistic
meanings and the formations mentioned here, the perceptible signs of lin-
guistic expression. Authentic possession of the known object is possible with
the mediation of linguistic formations. The contents of predicative thought
are incorporated, so to speak, in the linguistic expressions with which the dis-
tinction between empty and full intentionality takes on a pregnant meaning.
In fact, this distinction is to be found as early as the level of antepredicative
experience where there occur anticipations of perception and the corre-
sponding perception itself. Then, can we say that predicative thought is
essentially characterized by the linguistic expression? Is it the only thing that
allows us to fix and conserve in their identity the objectivities touched upon
in acts of knowledge? It is not possible to give a simple and unequivocal
answer to these questions.
Beginning with the Logical Researches Husserl takes a detached attitude
to the linguistic problem interpreted in a historically concrete sense. Even at
that time the object of attention and analysis was language in its general,
pure essence, not this or that language but the expression in its general, ideal
meaning. In Erfahrung und Urteil, this detachment is perhaps accentuated.
Predicative judgment is considered here as an objectivity articulated in
categorical terms (subject and predicate) which cannot be identified with any
linguistic term, even if, in fact, a predicative judgment is expressed in the
terms of a given language. The words of any given language do not constitute
the essential element of the so-called categorical objectivities. What con-
stitutes the determining quality of predicative knowledge, in opposition to
the receptivity of pure perception or explicative experience, is "creative
spontaneity, productive of the objects themselves."
Although Husserl grasps the importance of linguistic expression, mairJy
because it constitutes the basis for intersubjective communication of knowl-
edge, he nonetheless denies, in a peremptory way, that the problem of the
connection between language and predicative thought may be considered an
authentic problem of the phenomenological study of predicative knowledge:
The whole plane of expression, which is undoubtedly closely linked to predicative
operations, and all questions about the connection between language and predicative
thought, that is, if and how much each predicative thought is linked to words, and what
connection exists between the syntactical articulation of the expression and the arti-
culation of the thought - all this has to be left aside. Predicative operations will be
studied only as they are offered phenomenologically in the way of lived experience,
being subjective activities, independently of all these connections. 23
HusserI's position is in some ways analogous to Kant's: the latter also seems
262 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
Here too, as seems evident, these expressions do not primarily indicate anything linguistic
but the manner of categorical synthesis that gives meaning to linguistic expression;
and this manner of synthesis may but does not have to find expression in a linguistic
hypotasis, according to what the structure of a language allows.
We return to S, thus we identify it with itself, which simply means here that by "going
back" it "exists again" as S: in this new thematic taking in we enrich the sense of the
object as a mere protension, in connection with the retention of the stage already gone
through. (op. cit., p. 244)
An active intention aims at grasping what was only a passive coincidence before, then
at producing what S is increased by, in an originally active manner and in an active
passage.
264 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
In the first part of this quotation Husserl affirms, without doubt, that
the two forms of knowledge, explicative experience and predicative thought,
are inseparable. In this specific case, does "inseparable" mean that they
depend upon each other? Hence, does the explicative experience depend on
predicative thought, too? I think we have to reply in the negative to this
question. If it were otherwise, there would be no sense in the description
that Husserl gives of explicative experience. In fact, not a single line in the
pages dedicated to the analysis of this experience mentions the presence
of any factual link between the moments and operations of explicative
experience and linguistic expressions. Hence the inseparability of the two
forms of knowledge must be compatible with their independence. In that
case, the affirmation of their inseparability takes on - at least as far as
antepredicative knowledge is concerned - the sense of simple temporal
concomitance, as though to say that explicative experience is in some way
contemporaneous to predicative thought. In fact, when indicating their
relationship, Husserl observes that they are "interwoven" in concrete con-
sciousness. The interweaving of two experiences does not necessarily mean
that they are interdependent.
In the second part of the quotation, beginning with the word "rather",
this inseparability of predicative knowledge and explicative experience is
clearly shown to be the necessary dependence of the latter on the former,
where explicative experience appears as the founding experience and predica-
tive knowledge as the founded experience. Thus he states that "each step of
predication presupposes a step of receptive experience and of explication"
and that "only what is given, taken in, and explicated in an originally intuitive
way can be originally predicated."
266 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
All that Husserl has to say on the subject, in particular with regard to
the relation between knowledge and linguistic expression, implies the in-
dependence of explicative experience from predicative knowledge, and,
consequently, of the full autonomy of the former in relation to linguistic
operations. The first moment of knowledge, in its ideal and factual inde-
pendence, is not only conceived as an essentially necessary phase of the
cognitive process, but it is also conceived as a prepredicative and hence,
prelinguistic, phase where all aspects, articulations, and structures of the
successive phase of predicative thought are anticipated, in a preliminary,
imperfect form, from the simpler distinctions between subject and predicate
to the more complex forms of predicative judgment and judgment of relation-
ship, considering, too, their various modal manifestations.
The analyses contained in the Fourth Research bring us face to face with
another aspect of Husserl's position on the linguistic problem. He is intent
on defining "a pure morphology of meaning", that is, on building the basis of
a discipline that forms the first level in the construction oflogic. The task is
well-defined, and is intended to provide pure logic with the possible forms of
meaning, in other words, to defme the "a priori forms of complex meanings,
with unitary signification." The field of these complex meanings with unitary
signification is the same as the sphere of meanings that have a sense, as
opposed to the sphere of meanings without sense, that is, nonsense. The
desire to establish the validity, be it material (synthetic) or formal (analytic),
of these complex unitary meanings included in the sphere of meanings that
have a sense, does not belong to pure morphology, which, on the basis of
certain essential categories of meaning, has only to establish manifold a priori
laws of meaning, which abstract from the objective validity of meanings, that
is, from their real or formal truth. The task of establishing the logical laws
regulating the formal coherence of meaning and which thus prevent formal or
analytical countersense, belong to another level of logic, different from the
level of pure morphology. Thus, in this field, we have to consider as being
meanings with a sense even those complex unitary meanings which, materially
speaking, make nonsense ("a round square") or formal nonsense, such as a
complex contradictory proposition.
The pure morphology of meanings is a systematic search for all possible
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 267
forms of meaning and for their primitive structures. The author defmes the
basic idea in this way:
... all possible meanings are, in general, subject to a typology made up of categorical
structures, predelineated a priori in the general idea of meaning, and which, in the field
of meaning, dominates an a priori legaiity according to which all possible forms of
concrete configurations exist in systematic dependence on a small number of primitive
forms, from which they can be derived in a purely constructive way. (par. 13)
As far as the field of meaning in particular is concerned, even rapid reflection reveals
that when connecting meanings with meanings, we are not free and thus we cannot
arbitrarily exchange the elements inside a given unity of connection provided with sense.
Only in certain preliminarily determined ways are meanings reciprocally congruent
and constitute further unitary meanings with sense, whereas the remaining possible
combinations are excluded in accordance with a law: they produce only a plurality of
meanings instead of a single meaning. The impossibility of the connection is essential
and legal .... (par. 10)
This impossibility does not depend upon the particularity of the meanings
to be unified, but upon "essential kinds" to which they are subjected, that is,
upon the categories of meaning. And the same is true for possible meaningful
connections.
Given "the propositional form" "this S is p", if we try to materialize this
form by replacing the formal symbols, the variables, with concrete words, we
268 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
are not entirely free. The unity of sense is lost if we do not adhere to the
categories of meaningful matter (nouns, adjectives, relations, propositions).
These matters, within the sphere of sense, can be exchanged freely only
within their categories. This makes it impossible to formulate such proposi-
tions as "this green is tree", where a noun is replaced by an adjective and vice
versa, or "this 'the triangle is trilateral' is green", where the noun is replaced
by a proposition; but it makes it possible to formulate propositions such as
"this triangle is green" or "this tree is trilateral", where the symbol has been
replaced by the complete expression inside the same category of meaningful
matter. Thus every ideal structure of the type "this S is p" corresponds to
an a priori law of meaning:
It is a law for the constitution of unitary meanings starting from syntactical substances
which fall under flxed categories, belonging a priori to the fleld of meanings, and accord-
ing to syntactical forms which are also determined a priori and which, as can be seen at
once, are confluent in a flxed system of forms (par. 10).
Apart from these a priori laws regulating the construction of unitary mean-
ings, in which the syntactical substances (meaningful matters) in certain fixed
categories operate according to the normal connections of that category of
meaning (these connections form a basis), there are other a priori laws by
virtue of which the meanings change in various ways into new meanings,
maintaining an essential nucleus and taking on a categorical role not normally
thier own. Thus the adjective, which normally has a predicative function, can
become an attribute and, finally, a noun; in the same way, a proposition, by
going through a process of normalization, can take over the function of a
noun.
In conformity with this complex set of a priori laws, including those
concerning the deduction of the forms deriving from primitive forms through
the application of the laws of the primitive forms,24 it can be established that
within the sphere of sense, the connection "a round square", offering a
unitary meaning, has a place of its own in the "world" of ideal meanings,
whereas expressions like a "round or", "a man and is", which do not have a
unitary meaning, are nonsense, and do not have any kind of "existence" in
the "world" of ideal meanings.
Categories of meanings, syntactical forms, laws of connection and trans-
formation, make up the a priori structure of the meaning which, ideally, they
precede, and condition the structures and grammatical forms of historical
concrete languages as well as the linguistic operations carried out in those
languages.
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 269
For these reasons, Hussed, not unlike a linguist such as Chomsky, undoubt-
edly considers that the need, deeply felt by the rationalists of the seventeenth
270 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
In the sphere of grammar, too, there is a fixed criterion, an a priori norm which cannot
be bypassed. Just as in the sphere of logic, the field of a priori, "pure logic" is distinct
from the field of empirical and practical logic, so in the grammatical sphere we distin-
guish between the empirical sphere and the so-called "pure" field of grammar, that is,
the a priori (the "ideal form" of language, as was pertinently said) (par. 14).
the linguistic sphere, and the former is the foundation for the latter. There
is no doubt that HusserI's position is in complete contrast to a thesis that
attributes a single origin to thought and to language, denying, on the plane
of rational thought in particular, the possibility of, and necessity for, a dis-
tinction and of a possible sphere where the activity of thought is autonomous
from language strictu sensu. The distinction between a priori and empirical,
linked to HusserI's idea of grammar, may indicate a way out from the vicious
circle of the pure and simple identification of thought and language.
Herman Parret, in his essay 'Expression et articulation,' in which he com-
pares Saussure's linguistics with HusserI's linguistical conception, defmes the
grammar of the Fourth Research as "a general aprioristic grammar" when
compared with the factuality of linguistic unities, which are the concrete
verbal unities of a historically determined language. Whereas Saussure only
considers these latter and tries to defme the relationships of opposition
within the language system, HusserI directs his attention and speculative
interest not toward what is historically determined, an actual language defined
by space-time coordinates, but toward a universal grammar, made up of
categories; he forms a priori laws of connection and transformation, that is,
a purely logical grammar, which is an ideal system and is outside the historical
time in which Saussure places his language system. The fact remains, none-
theless, that HusserI places purely logical grammar at the basis of every
empirically and historically determined grammar. If the former, the pure,
logical grammar, did not have its "existence" in the ideal world of meanings,
the latter, the historically defmed grammars and languages, would never have
had their historical birth nor development. Thus the factuality of linguistic
unities, theorized by Saussure, is explained by the a priori categories and
structures of the meaning, and not vice versa. Parret is not entirely wrong
when he sees in the opposition of general aprioristic grammar and historically
determined grammar the reasons for the difficulty in explaining the rela-
tionship that has to be established between the two, since there must be a
relationship if the one is the basis of the other. To be more precise, according
to Parret there exists an insurmountable obstacle to the integration of the
linguistic unities, since they are historically determined, into Husserl's pure
morphology, because of their very "factuality." In other words, there is a
kind of incompatibleness between what is real, factual, and empirically
defined and what is ideal, universal, and a priori.
Parret attempts to define the sense of HusserI's purely logical grammar.
In his opinion, the object of this logical grammar is language as expression,
interpreting expression not as a purely linguistic factor, but as expression in
272 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
gestural substance in which they may appear is quite indifferent to the forms
of expression. 27 In HusserI's theory of the pure forms of meaning, meaning is
not considered in its detailed contents but in its general syntactical categories
and forms; from this point of view, a priori laws of the connection and
transformation of meanings can be discovered which have an equally general
and formal character. In Hjelmslev's linguistics too, both in the field of
expression and that of content, structures of abstract entities can be built
whose opposing relations play the past of "functions", such as determination
(simple implication), interdependence (double implication), and constellation
(mere compatibility). But, unlike HusserI, Hjelmslev does not offer certain,
exhaustive criteria for establishing the formal structures of the content,
except for the simple division of the content into meanings and figures, on
the basis of which the former can be analyzed in terms of the latter. Some
scholars have rightly observed,28 that this analysis of meanings in figures
creates notable difficulties on a strictly linguistic plane.
We also have to consider the different theoretical attitudes of the two
scholars. The formal structures that interest Hjelrnslev have an essentially
methodological meaning. They must possess an axiomatic-deductive character
that relates them in some way to the formal systems created by symbolic logic.
The formal structures at the basis of HusserI's phenomenological study, on
the other hand, are of a logical-gnoseologic nature. He does not detach formal
logic, which he calls pure logic, from the sphere of problems of problems of
knowledge, hence the formal structures of meaning dealt with in the Fourth
Research are structures of knowledge, necessary, a priori universal forms.
Let us now return to the conclusion reached in examining the Fourth
Research concerning the linguistic problem. The categories of meaning, the
forms of meaning, and the a priori laws of their combination appear more as
structures and articulations of the thinking, knowing subject than as purely
linguistic structures and articulations. From this stems the conviction of their
ideal priority over strictly linguistic forms. This thesis, which is basic to the
analysis contained in the Fourth Research, is indirectly confirmed by the
definition of the character of nonessentiality or extraessentiality, whether
of the perceptible sign of expression with respect to the significative content
in the overall unitary act of expression, or of the connection between the
former and the latter, since "the phonetic complex that appears has no value
as a constituting element of the objectivity of the complex act." In Erfahrung
und Urteil, in which are collected a number of works written over a period
of years fairIy distant in time from the publication of the Researches, the
theme of the categories and forms of meaning is taken up again through an
274 RENZO RAGGIUNTI
For the S (subject), being predicatively placed as such means being "ab-
solutely placed as identical." Hussed defmes all this in terms of activity,
spontaneity, and creation rather than in terms of linguistic expression.
Arguments of a linguistic kind are deliberately excluded from the explana-
tions and analyses of the categorical objectivities.
In paragraph 59, in dealing with articulation in principle and secondary
propositions and with the attributive form, he goes a little deeper into the
value to be attributed to the linguistic element, thereby providing further
confirmation of his conviction that the categorical objectivities such as subject,
predicate, attribute, predicative proposition, connection between main and
secondary proposition, do not indicate "primarily anything linguistic but
only the manner of categorical synthesis that gives meaning to linguistic
expression." Here too, just as many years before in the Fourth Research,
LANGUAGE, LOGIC AND HUSSERL 275
NOTES
9 Ibid., par. 9.
10 The term externalisation is not really Husserl's.
11 R. Raggiunti, Problemi di significato (Florence, 1973), pp. 171-213.
12 Cours de linguistique generale (Wiesbaden, 1968), II, 284.
13 Ibid., chap. 4, par. 1.
14 'Sprog og tanke', Sprog og Kultur 5 (1936), 24-36.
15 Formale und traszendentale Logik (Halle, 1929), pp. 17 -18.
16 Krisis (The Hague, 1954), III, 459.
17 Fifth Research, par. 19.
18 Op. cit., p. 457.
19 La Poesia (Bari, 1935), p. 103.
20 Fourth Research, par. 4.
21 'Expression et articulation; une confrontation des points de vue husserlien et sau-
ssurien concernant la langue etle discours', Rev. Phils. Louvain, no. 71 (1973),72-112.
22 Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg, 1948), p. 88.
23 Op. cit., p. 234. For a full analysis of the problems dealt with in 'Erfahrung und
Urteil', see R. Raggiunti, Husserl (Florence, 1967), pp. 259-322.
24 "If now, the primitive forms having been made clear, we replace every simple term
gradually and progressively by a connection of these same forms, applying the primitive,
existential law in each case, we obtain new forms whose validity is assured by deduction,
which grow together, in free combinations. For example, for the conjunctive connection
of propositions:
(M and N) and P
(M and N) and (P and Q)
[(M and N) and PI and Q etc.
The same holds good for disjunctive and hypothetical connections of propositions and
for other kinds of connection belonging to any category of meaning. It goes without
saying that the complications go on in infinitum in a manner that can be controlled by
combination, that each form produced remains tied to the same category of meaning,
being a sphere of the variability of its terms, and that all the combinations of meaning
created within the sphere must of necessity exist, that is, they must show a unitary
meaning. It is also evident that the respective existential propositions are obvious deduc-
tive consequences of the proposition in its primitive form. It is clear that, instead of
applying the same form of connection all the time, we can use different combinations of
connective forms in arbitrary variation within what is allowed by law, in order to obtain
these constructions, generating thus infinite complex forms" (par. 13).
25 Par. 4. Hjelmslev, in his article 'Sprog og Tanke', starts off from the opposite thesis,
namely, that thought has no moment of autonomy or priority over language, thus
denying validity to the statement, taken literally, that language is the expression of
thought.
26 L. Hjelmslev, 'Langue et parole', in Cahiers F. de Saussure (1943).
27 It is doubtful whether such a concept of "form of expression" is strictly a linguistic
concept, or, more plausibly, a semiological concept, defining the meaning of the sign
"in general."
28 Cf. R. Raggiunti, Problemi di significato, pp. 84-120.
FILIPPO COSTA
Hussed introduces his discussion of things and space with the following
declaration: "I can outline the subject of my lessons in a very few words: the
question concerns the fundamental parts of a future phenomenology of
overall experience." 1 By "phenomenology" Hussed refers to phenome-
nological reduction. We are concerned, then, about the differences between
two main conceptions of phenomenological reduction. According to the
first, the phenomenological reduction is carried out on "positing-the-being"
(Seinssetzungen) and is of a theoretical character. According to the second,
it is carried out on the Self, and is of a "life-experienced" character. Hussed
designates this as "transcendental" reduction.
The first conception can be expressed as follows:
We put out of action the general thesis attached to the "natural attitude." We place
between brackets everything this thesis embraces, i.e., the entire nature-world that is
for us constantly "here", "on hand", and will hold fast forever as consciousnesslike
"reality. ,, 2
This thought was expressed by Hussed in 1913 (Ideas I); but in 1907, a short
time before the Dingvorlesung (as Hussed called the lessons now edited as
Ding und Raum) were held, the author specified a first-level, or "Cartesian" ,
reduction designed to put out of action "all the transcendent positings" 3
viewed as the positings on which the sciences with their "natural attitude"
are based. This is followed by a second-level reduction, which neutralizes the
"ontic residue" of a consciousness in psychological understanding. There is,
finally, a third kind of reduction, leading from the self-giving obtained in
the second-level reduction to its "constitution."4 First-level reduction is not,
so to say, absorbed in the further ones, but remains as their presupposition.
In Ideas I, epoch/! is, as we have seen, conceived on the basis of positing-the-
being.
We are not concerned here with the modifications Hussed was to in-
troduce gradually into his theory of reduction. We need only observe his final
conception:
279
The theoretical epoche concerns the things and the world; the life-experi-
encing one concerns the Self and its being as "I will." The connection or the
"medium" between them is given in the Cartesian Meditations:
A universal inhibition from all "taking-up-positions" such that we may call it "phenome-
nological epoche" at once becomes the methodical means by which I catch myself as a
pure "I." ... Every mundane being and everything in space and time, is for me in so far
as I experience or perceive it. 6 .
The world divides up before us into physical and spiritual things, or rather into things
that are both physical and spiritual .... In this fashion the world presents itself to naive
grasping and before the sciences. Thereafter all science of experience refers to this
world. 7
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 281
What is criticized here is not the work of science, but what man wants to
do with science in aiming to satisfy his need for an unconditional or genuine
"knowing."
Science refers to experience as the source of all believed things. The world
is given in things. It is a proper task of phenomenology to explicate the sense-
constitution of the thing as such. We must now distinguish two stages in this
explication: (l) the comprehension of the mode-of-being of the thing, and (2)
the comprehension of its meaning. We may place our view of the mode-of-
being before that of meaning, in order to allow the first view to guide the
sense-constitution of thing-ness:
In general thing-ness has in its very essence the characteristic of an intentional unity
which constitutes itself in a multitude of appearances that may be real or possible. This
unity shows its being and its properties in a regulated and motivated connection of
appearances. The connected appearances harmonize with each other and satisfy each
other; they are therefore shot through by a sense of belief, or, if preferred, by a con-
sciousness of positing or also consciousness-of-there-being. 9
We need not illustrate further this view: it comes from the empiricist tradi-
tion as assimilated by Kant and drawn up by the neo-Kantians. Accordingly,
the very being of things is no more than a "function" whose "arguments" are
sense-data. But the novelty introduced by phenomenology is the resumption
282 FILIPPO COSTA
But what happens with the third modality? The situation now occurring can
be formulated as:
«I -)- Q) -)- (I .fr P)) .fr E
what "I f,. P" means, but " ... f,. E" is at least ambiguous. All negative
constitutions certainly say something about reality, by putting into action
the counterforces HusserI speaks about. It therefore has an indirect meaning-
value about reality, not an empty meaning at all. Must we then admit that a
growing process is applicable in the case of counterforces too? Does denial
have the same capacity to increase the positing-value as confirmation? The
phenomenological confirmation-modality is, of course, different from denial-
modality: a disappointment of a confirmation-intention is somehow inessen-
tial - if it is the case that "I f,. P" it may well be that "I -+ P"! For each I
one can fmd an indefmite number of formulas like this. In every case the
asymmetry between the two modalities is undeniable. And it is in virtue of
this asymmetry that Husserl can defeat epistemological skepsis. The principle
of a growing force does not hold for denial, Le., for negative constitutions.
But this fact does not prevent us from acknowledging the specificity and
phenomenological "positivity" of negative constitutions.
The modality of alteration is a principle for every adjustment and correc-
tion of scienfic hypotheses. We detect a hidden intention toward p' in the
constitution of I. What is the value of this process in Signifying reality? In
metaphysical terms, must we recognize a principle of "otherness" besides
"Being" and "non-Being"? And, from a phenomenological point of view, is
there a quasi-constitutive, typically "irregular" (regelwidrig) process, besides
the "regular" (regelmiissig) one and the "orderless" (regellos) one? In the
phenomenological structure of experience, processes that are "nomic",
"anomic", "heteronomic" appear. The question about the real correlatum
for these modalities is still unsettled.
Experience is performed according to immanent motivation-rules: the
elements that enter a context are perceptions endowed with intentionality
toward positing-the-being. At the perceptual level this intention is merely a
"pretension" which can never be warranted defmitively; but it has its rights
growing alongside experience itself. Following this growing process, phe-
nomenology overcomes the doubt about world-being, insofar as it represents
and reproduces the doubt itself in terms of motivational links. The phe-
nomenological constitutum is then revealed as a signification of world-reality.
"Every fantasy", Husserl writes,
has a possibility-value and conceals a possibility of perception. But this very possibility
is at first merely groundless. The situation as regards "real" or founded possibilities,
as implied in perception, is very different from that concerning those fantasy like or
ungrounded possibilities.... Any appearance is by itself compatible with any circum-
stance. Granted that one of these possibilities actually occurs, and that, for example,
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 285
From what has been said above it appears that the being of things has a con-
stant sense of "possibility" that takes shape in three constitution-modalities,
which we may call "nomic", "anomic", and "heteronomic." The next phe-
nomenological reflection presents us with the giving of the thing itself as
a "possible self-giving." If the natural givenness in which the thing is lived
out according to the naive attitude presupposed by science is to be brought
back to the possibility of self-giving-by-itself, this can only be achieved by
a phenomeological analysis of the sense possessed by the thing itself. If,
according to the tradition, we call the ground in which things are merely real
"empirical", we shall call the ground of "possible self·giving" "pre-empirical",
insofar as it constitutively precedes the empirical one.
The thing-phenomenology Husserl develops in Ding und Raum is based on
the notion of the "pre-empirical." What holds "prior to" (in a positively
phenomenological meaning still to be clarified) experience, also holds "prior
to" science. The problem of the pre-empirical is at the same time the problem
of science, which is about the foundations of science. In the notion of pre-
empirical which appears in Ding und Raum we note an early approach to the
problem of the foundations of science which is a subject central to Crisis of
the European Sciences.
286 FILIPPO COSTA
The notion of pre-empirical may be given two senses: (1) the sense of the
plenitude of "straightforward life-experience" in the naive attitude which
ignores all objectivity belonging to cognitive experience; or (2) the sense
of the first stage of sense-constitution under the heading "Experience",
i.e., as thought of from the starting point of experience through a kind of
phenomenological reduction sui generis. We can call this second stage a
structural, or dynamic, or functional one. The pre-empirical, therefore, has
no experiential status of its own; it is not concretely lived through. We cannot
exclude, of course, that Husserl admitted the first sense beside the second
one. There is clear evidence of his hesitancy in the oscillation between his use
of pre-empirical as an adjective and his use of the prefix "pre" only. To fully
respect Husserl's thought in Ding und Raum, one must normally maintain the
prefix form, instead of correcting it in every case, as Cleasges does in editing
the text, to the adjective "pre-empirical." The prefix has a sense of "not yet"
which affects the next term, whereas the adjective makes one suppose there
is a separate qualification. To say, for example, as Hussed does, "that the
depth-sensation or predepth is not in itself a thinglike depth" means that
the sensation of depth is not yet a perception of depth, i.e., that the depth-
quality is not properly "given" in sensation. But it also means that a tendency
to become a perception is inherent in the depth-sensation. But if, as in
Cleasges' edition, we talk about "pre-empirical" depth, this implies a distinc-
tion between two modes of appearance of depth, the first pre-empirical or
senselike, the other real-empirical or perceptual. A structural succession now
replaces tendency and intentionality. 14
The meaning of the prefix is essential to present phenomenology, whose
theme is, in fact, "the process in which the experience-objectivities constitute
themselves at the level of lower experience." 15 The pre-empirical only
contains straightforward presentations and immanent contents, and it knows
nothing at all about the attributive relation according to which a quality is
understood as belonging to a substance. Common language brings the dif-
ferences between this level and that of things into focus; a color-quality, for
instance, is attributed to a thing, but not to the sensation or perception
of it. Pre-empirical giveness is not only lacking in functional relations and
predicative reference, but it cannot even be said to be posited as an isolated
unity; it is not subject to the experience-category called "unity." Between
one pre-empirical datum and another the reflexive distinction by which
every datum stands as a self-giving unity no longer holds. The data are not
related, but they are not even relationless "monads." The pre-empirical is
not the merely ontic, for it contains, as an immediate datum, the "fact" of
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 287
intention that projects it toward the empirical thing. Perception contains the
transcendence-intention immanently in itself. 16
We now glimpse an immanent-temporal structure in the essence of the
pre-empirical. HusserI introduces his discourse about the pre-empirical by
dealing with inner time-consciousness. The inner-temporal stream is not a
"form" containing life-experience in succession, but a stream characteristic
inherent in every life-experience. For this reason, HusserI rejects the Kantian
theory of pure intuition: "'intuition-forms' is a thoroughly false expression
and it involves - even in Kant's view - a fatal mistake." 17 Phenomenological
"inner" time is not the "interior" time of consciousness - it is a phenome-
nological property of percepta:
This stream is not a stream of objective time such I can measure with a watch, it is not
the world-time, ... for this is an object to phenomenological reduction .... We, instead,
will call the inner stream "pre-empirical" or phenomenological time. IS
Time with its fullness is not given in any adequate way; we cannot take it to be a sensa-
tion. In the same way we cannot constitute the identity of a thing and its property in
any adequate way, i.e., in the way we constitute the identity of a sound in its sounding
or in its reechoing stream. 21
Self (its actus essendi) is not an activity but a passive happening, a perturbation
of Selfs extant being. This situation, at a higher level, is interpreted as doubt.
Phenomenology explains the dubito - in a Cartesian way connected with
the sum - as an original perturbation of presence-act, i.e., of mutual standing-
before of Thing and Self. My self-awareness is produced by that self-reflection
on myself that is reacting against a perturbation provoked (in a literal mean-
ing) by things acting on the perceptual stage. Therefore, primordial self-
consciousness is given by "I perceive." Happenings are parontological acts;
the "pre-being" of things is their pre-empirical status affecting the Self.
Thinglike being is not a sort of inertial staying (as lying like unsold stock
- cf. the Italian giacenza), but the wielding of a power that strikes our
senses. The sense of presence, by which I can say "I am", is a product of this
wielding.
Now, we may proceed to compare classical ontology with the version of
phenomenology which I have called parontology.
Classical ontology has no place for anything but Being and non-Being. The
self, therefore, either is or is not ("to be or not to be"). When it is, it is as an
ens a se, a substantia - fullness of being. It no longer has to be. Therefore,
man no longer has anything to do with things. Man's life is a mere property
thought of as an accidens. Before him there is no really living worId (or
world-of-life), because he has life as something "haveable", but he does not
have to live. As he fails to understand life, he also fails to understand death.
Therefore, he thinks of himself as being incapable of dying - as an immortal
soul.
By contrast, phenomenology knows nothing about pure Being or non-
Being. If we are to give these terms some meaning within the phenomenologi-
cal field, we must take them as merely ideal extremes of the segment made
up of real objects existing in the mode of "more or less being."
As a result, HusserI's thing-phenomenology remains under the heading
secundum essentiam, and ends up by missing the experienced presence of
things. In recovering this experience, however, we must take great care to
avoid reverting to ontological dualism. This may be done by explaining the
presence of things as their constitutive move from the background of dark
Being to the stage of clarifying consciousness.
From a parontological point of view, everything has its own presentation-
capacity, by virtue of which the Self can be said to be more or less authentic.
Both for the Thing and for the Self we must say that they are "more or less."
We understand this parontological principle at best by thinking about the fact
that whatever is present is so only in the mode of "more or less", i.e., every
296 FILIPPO COSTA
provenance things have lost. Creation holds for authentic things only. There
could be no God who creates things which are called artefacta, including the
ideal objects of culture, such as sciences or theories. But our age has replaced
creation by manufacturing, so endangering the existence-resources things have
in potentia.
Through parontological reflection we can recover the lost presence of
things by unfolding the memory of Being we keep inside ourselves. And we
can rename parontological constitutions "presyntheses", insofar as they
precede the constitutive syntheses Husserl performs by putting one sense-
stratum on the other. In fact, we cannot fmd out-and-out syntheses in the
field of the pre-empirical here; only the quasi-synthesis we have named
"configuration" holds.
In principle, we cannot separate Husserl's thing-analysis (secundum essen-
tiam) from our parontology (secundum existentiam), though no trace of the
latter can be found in his writings. But the intimate affmity between the two
conceptions can be traced in the theory of "inadequacy" Husserl places in
the center of his thing-phenomenology.
being. A specific content (for example, a colored surface) can appear beside
another, without giving rise to any synthesis. This fact does not prevent us
from regarding a particular surface as a "fullness" (a singled out fullness-
unity). HusserI speaks about a "form of pre phenomenal space-ness" meaning,
in fact, a preform. Shape-unity taking place in pre-empirical space is not such
that it contains its parts as a "stuff" within itself.
But a question now arises: how can a single shape-unity stand out from the
whole visual field it belongs to? Is the visual outline, from which a shape-
unity juts out, to be delimited from outside, i.e., from an entire visual field,
or from inside, i.e., from the place the shape covers?
A certain ambiguity is now produced concerning the notion of prespace:
on the one hand, a shape appears as a given unity in its immediate wholeness;
on the other, it stands out (without any synthesis) as a shaping in its space-
extension, at the completion of a "filling." It is very difficult to think of this
process without invading the empirical field which is characterized by a
proper constitution.
As to HusserI, he takes great care in keeping his attention on what we may
call a "neutral zone", where the pre-empirical, so to say, leans out toward
the empirical. As we will see, the real differentiating criterion between these
two realms is to be found in the dynamic point of view which constitute a
thing by filling its space in a "static" way. In doing so, HusserI dwells on the
neutral zone mentioned above. He therefore conceives the proper space a
thing takes up as the scope of the expansion of its fullness.
Accordingly, I would call this space an "inner" space. As the place where
the various thing-qualities converge, it no longer belongs to the pre-empirical
which allows no identity-synthesis.
But what a real thing is as a unity is foretold in the pre-empirical realm
where a splitting of perceptual shapes "referring" (in the mode of a linguistic
reference) to that thing takes place. With this situation in view, it is advisable,
at this stage, to speak about a "second-Qrder inadequacy", whereas the "first-
order inadequacy" would occur within the same perceptual genus.
The boundaries between the pre-empirical and empirical do not appear
to be very neat here. HusserI must introduce a "mixed" perception and a
"mixed" fullness, thereby indicating an unregulated perceptual association
rather than a single perception composed of elements belonging to either
genus." 29 Now, I ask whether this mixing belongs to the pre-empirical or
empirical. An answer could be supplied by appealing to the "neutral zone."
But, for the moment, we must leave the question open.
We will now consider the notion of adequacy in greater detail. As we
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 299
the first kind of improperness includes the aspects of a thing that do not belong to the
phenomena in a proper sense. The other includes what is seen and belongs to a proper
phenomenon but is not touched .... Moreover, we notice that the inadequacy con-
cerning a backside neither seen nor touched is essentially different from the inadequacy
concerning a foreside that is seen but not touched. The latter inadequacy refers directly
to tactile properties. 3o
HusserI does not say what creates the "essential difference" he speaks
about. In this paper, we can appeal to experience now described and state
that the more appearances become inadequate and inappropriate, the more
they tend to coalesce in mixed indirect perceptions, so that they can denote
the thing itself as being independent of any kind of perception. Tactile,
visual "not perceiveds" are deposited in consciousness, and so constitute the
presence-sense of a thing which is, therefore, "intended" as keeping at a
distance from the perceiving subject.
As HusserI notices, the stratification of objects does not belong to the
pre-empirical but to "apprehension" (Auffassung). According to our de-
scription it takes place on the base of "residues" left over by inadequate
and improper perceptions. This constitutive work can be labeled "secondary
constitution." 31 The thing in question is not perceived in a single sense, but
only seen, touched, and so on. In fact, as the main result of HusserI's analysis,
the notion of a perception as such is no longer justified. In its place we fmd
the following items: (1) many sense-strata of distinctive perpectual genera
(such as "seeing", "touching", "weighing up", "hearing", and so on); (2)
a mixing of different genera without a consequent perceptual genus; (3)
a syntheses of various kinds; (4) a "thing in itself" as a mere heading for
coalescing constitutions. Accordingly, what we call usually "perception" is
nothing but a term denoting a task for syntheses in progress.
As denoting thing-unity, "perception" turns out to be a mere co"elatum a
parte subjecti of the intended external reality. The very meaning of perception
itself can be grasped, therefore, in the tendency every perceptual genus
possesses to "lean out" toward another genus. In Husserl's words, "the pre-
extension belongs to the tactile component, but it also belongs to the "cold-
hot" component only by transferring its original "sphere of influence." The
same holds with respect to the feeling of pain."32
This transfer is not yet a synthesis, but is no longer a mere shaping be-
300 FILIPPO COSTA
longing to the pre-empirical. It has its place in the "neutral zone" we have
mentioned.
At the higher revel of things themselves, thing-unity is no longer a shape
outlined within the visual field, but consists in the superposition of sense
strata which goes beyond the pre-empirical and give rise to mixed perceptions,
transfers, alienness, and so on. Husser!, moreover, stresses the peculiar func-
tion the surrounding thing-world performs in giving the thing the world posi-
tion that constitutes its higher-level-reality.
The apprehension aiming at an isolated thing supplies itself with a second-
order apprehension aiming at the thinglike horizon a thing is endowed with.
The very act by which we point at a single thing thus prevents us from taking
it as a monad. We must try to recover a thing from the appearance-continuum
it is originally made of. But this same continuum, in its tum, is "charged"
with an intentionality-power which makes the thing in question able to func-
tion as a 'sign." A single thing becomes an "indication" of other things.
We can now resume discussion of Hussed's analysis: "The sensation-
contents of a thing fulfill their sense-function for that thing itself. But, on the
other hand, they are linked with other contents of the same kind, functioning
as representations of other thingS."33 In other words, no thing can get its
empirical unity without the second-order function, fulfilled by what goes
beyond its immanent contents and is thus intended as the "referent" of these.
In its tum, the complex so arising acquires its own sense as a subject of
inadequate representation. "The whole space and the perceptual thing-world
belong to the phenomenon, in its narrow sense, only partially and from one
side." 34
The inadequacy-structure, that is, the systematic difference between
immanence and transcendence, stands out as much as the perception which
intends a real unity varies to an increasing extent, in both quantity and
quality. "To represent" now takes on the sense of "to stand for" or "to
replace." The identifying power of "representative" perceptions keeps up
with their variations. The consciousness of the thing-identity is produced
by partial apprehensions superimposing upon each other:
We well know that all superpositions of this sort are essentially based on superposition-
phenomena. Letting the same object approach its appearance means only giving rise to
its identification according to the essence of phenomena related to it. 35
We can intend a thing as "itself and the same" insofar as it keeps a capacity
to be "otherwise." It owes this capacity to its spacelike constitution. Hussed
continues: "The back of a thing can always be thought of as being 'otherwise'
than its appearance from the front. This fact is not a mere chance at all." 38
The phenomenological analysis of spatial depth, as the third dimension
belonging to things, describes the possible "otherwise-being" which may
disappoint the expectations arising from perceptual object-intentions. The
identity of a thing goes through the sequence of the syntheses, where a cer-
tain identification takes place. But the really identical thing is never attained;
it shifts from one synthesis to another and becomes a mere end-in-view. In
Hussed's terms: "We may talk about superposed strata or sense-strata which
are unceasingly constituting an identity. But no real identification takes place
at all." 39
The end-in-view of this process is never a datum, it is its mere possibility.
It is essentially affected by the incompleteness that derives from constitutive
"improper appearance-moments."40 Things are, therefore, endowed with a
certain degree of perceptual fullness. Correspondingly, consciousness can
never get rid of the inadequacy of thing-perceptions:
Every thing-perception is inadequate, the static ones precisely because they are just
one-sided, the variable ones because they never reach the goal of absolute giveness. In the
case of the latter, the constitution can only proceed in a scattered fashion .... The
complete physical shape can never be attained by the intention which aims at an absolute
givenness. 41
We are particularly interested in kinaesthetic sensations. They are not essential to the
304 FILIPPO COSTA
III. J is a relation such that J (a, b) reads: a intentions b (is associated with -
in an irreflexive relation, aims to, attracts, and so on).
In our case, we constitute:
J(Si, Si+l)
on the basis of II. It is obvious that the intention by which an element aims
to another depends from the whole.
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 305
Before going on with our outline, we notice the decisive step HusserI takes
by setting up a relation between kinaestheses and other sense-fields. He thinks
of S as a sequence, so that we can write
IV. S =- S' -+ S" -+ ... -+ Sn
In this case the process is circular: the intention of S' comes back to S' itself.
HusserI does not fail to observe this important case, but he does not mean
to discover its subjective correlatum. This consists in the property of the
Self-Body, by which it can go back to its former starting point, or return
to its country. If we think of kinaesthesis as an original mode of being of
the Self-Body, we must assert that its actus essendi involves its kinaesthetic
capacity to return to its country. But I must now urge a further remark.
We could conceive of K function-act leading on the whole S. In this case
a kinaesthesis is produced only in relation to a passage from one shape to
another. There is no a single kinaesthesis corresponding to a single shape.
Now, HusserI's analysis demonstrates the functional link existing between K
and S as a one-to-one mapping in form. According to him we must recognize
something as:
V. (a) K = cpS
(b) Ki =cpSi
In my opinion, V.b is untenable and a danger to V.a, that is, to the synthetic
function of kinaesthesis.
Moreover, we contend that HusserI is wrong in maintaining that S is a
whole composed of parts, as the II above suggests. The link between II and
III is doubtful: if we perceived any si as a part, we would not have a real
sequence but a series:
VI. S = S' + S" + ... + Sn
But this is not the case, for in the sequence which constitutes an overall
shape-unity every si is in reality the same S from the particular point of view
306 FILIPPO COSTA
"i." The S obtained is thus of a logical higher order than any si. This dif-
ference in height comes from kinaestheses giving S itself a dynamic nature sui
generis.
Husserl's statement V.b gives rise to the following paradox: Any Ki turns
out to be a motionless sense of motion, i.e., a static fixing of the mapped Si.
Of course, motion in K is no motion in a thing, and vice versa. But what the
motion formula IV means is nevertheless neutralized in any punctual Ki!
The kinaesthesis which must guarantee "animation" in the shape-sequence
S melts away spliting up into a discontinuous set of K-dots.
Moreover S's nature is static, K's nature is dynamic. On principle, S admits
of many internal divisions, so that we may write:
By means of VII we can think of S itself, say lSI, as the class of all *-partitions
ofS.
Now, if we adopt V.b, we must necessarily allow something as IKI. But
this is made impossible by the dynamic nature of K. As to S, we must notice
that the height VII speaks about is not the same height VI speaks about.
At this point, it would be necessary to adopt Russell's theory of types, in
order to distinguish height of different kinds. But nothing of that holds of
K.
According to the set-theoretical description Husser! in fact proposes, we
could not smooth out the difficulties it gives rise to, unless we resorted to a
kinaesthesis of a new kind filling the function of connecting any K-moment
with the following one. These moments require a synthesis of a higher level,
while they had been require to fulfill a synthetic function for the given
sequence of shapes.
Granted the functional parallelism of K and S, Husser! can give a new
version of the two-fold transcendence:
Any two-fold sequence of shapes and K, which is now occurring, may be unified by
means of an apprehension-continuity possessing its own unity. It gives every (K, S)
of every time-phase its functional unity as a unity if apprehension; thus, it obtains a
phenomenon flowing with others in a phenomenal whole .... S-elements supply in-
tentions as "directed-to", and K-elements supply the motivations for such intentions. 48
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 307
The sequence of shapes is a mere passing from one shape to another, and the
sequence of kinaestheses is a motivation-sequence embracing the elements of
the total-shape S. The specific motivation inherent in K is then correlated to
the unity-sense inherent in S.
For this very reason I have preferred to talk about a whole motivating K
rather than about a motivation-sequence of Kj,s. These appear to me as the
inseparable aspects the whole K consists of.
As to Husserl, he needs a higher unity in order to give rise to the overall
synthesis referring to a single thing. This further unity is, however, no longer
of a bodily character, but announces itself as "consciousness." We will con-
clude that Husserl's reduction to pure consciousness - his detachment from
constitutive bodyness - is the logical consequence of his hypothesis about
the sequence-nature of K.
In fact, Husserl says:
to be a unitary apprehension which gives the shape an "animation" and so allows the
consciousness to create a sense of objective unity as a permanent fulfillment of object-
intention. 50
VI FINAL REMARKS
because S or else lSI is of higher logical level than any datum at all; (3) in the
place of Husserl's formula
K=¢S
we state
where the two functions are of different meaning and structure - they are
not merely reciprocal. This means that there is no partial shape foregoing
kinaestheses. (4) Kinaesthesis presupposes no intention given in a shape, but
is the same as intention at all. Thus, no Self-Body, no external things.
On another occasion I hope to explore the many questions Hussed's thing-
phenomenology leaves open. An exhaustive examination of the problem of
the thing in parontological terms will lead us from Hussed to Heidegger.
NOTES
1 Edmund Hussed, Ding und Raum, Husserliana, XVI, 4; hereafter cited as DR.
2 Husserliana, vol. 3, pt. 1 (1976), p. 65.
3 See F. Costa, Cos'e la fenomenologia (Milan, 1962), p. 74.
4 See ibid., p. 78.
5 Husserliana, VI, 472.
6 Husserliana, I, 8.
7 DR, p. 5.
8 DR, p. 6.
9 DR, p. 285.
10 DR, p. 287.
11 DR, p. 290.
12 DR, p. 290.
13 DR, p. 292.
14 DR.
15 DR, p. 8.
16 See, for example, DR, pp. 35-36.
17 DR, p. 43.
18 Husserliana, X, 124.
19 Ibid., p. 125.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p. 126.
22 DR, p. 17.
23 DR, p. 26.
24 DR, p. 36.
2S DR, p. 38.
26 DR, p. 41.
310 FILIPPO COSTA
In recent years what had been in the 1960s a typical theme of French neo-
phenomenology, that is to say, the coupling of the Husserlian problematic of
the e1roxil with the Freudian one of the antithesis between dream and wake-
fulness, has been gradually enriched by a more specific and not unimportant
element: that of the resistance to reawakening of the prephenomenological
consciousness. I am referring, in particular, to Jacques Derrida's 1971 essay
on Valery entitled "Qual queUe." It centers on the figure, which is at the same
time psychological and phenomenological, of the "implex", which means a
resistance to passing - to what Husserl calls the "awakened consciousness":
L'implexe, non-presence, non conscience, alterite repliee dans Ie sourdre de la source,
enveloppe Ie possible de ce qu'il n 'est pas encore, la virtuelle capacite de ce que presente-
ment il n 'est pas en acte. 1
Nothing prevents us from thinking that the interruption of the awakened consciousness
we are familiar with may extend infmitely. No essential capacity excludes the possibility
that the consciousness can be totally opaque. On the other hand, inherent in this con-
sciousness, as in any consciousness in general, is the essential and unconditioned possi-
bility of becoming a waking consciousness. 2
In his essay entitled "Thought and History of Madness" 7 - which takes as its
starting point some pages of Foucault's History of Madness 8 - Derrida
denies that, in the "First Meditation", Descartes pays more attention to the
phenomenon of madness than to that of dream as Foucault would maintain
when he asserts that "Descartes avoids the possibility of dream and error."
On the contrary, in Descartes, according to Derrida,
REAWAKENING AND RESISTANCE 313
anyone who sleeps, or who dreams, is madder than the madman; or, at any rate, anyone
who dreams, as far as the problem of knowledge which Descartes is concerned with here,
is further from true perception than the madman. 9
Dream, that is to say, and not madness, is for Descartes the most serious
and most paradoxical danger of the drowsiness of the consciousness; not
madness but dream preoccupies him philosophically: "But they are mad"
Descartes says with regard to madness, "and I should be no less extravagant
if I fell in line with their example." On the other hand, he immediately goes
on:
I must however consider that I am a man and that, as a consequence, I am in the habit of
sleeping and of representing in my dreams things that are the same and at times have even
less verisimilitude than the things of the irrational when they are in a waking state. to
I shall therefore take care not to accommodate in my mind any falsity .... But this is
a painful and wearisome design, and a certain laziness makes me drift imperceptibly into
the channel of my ordinary life. And, just as a slave enjoying in dream an imaginary
freedom, when he begins to suspect that freedom is no more than a dream, is afraid of
being awakened ... so I, too, fall inperceptibly into myoid opinions, and I am afraid
of awakening. t2
As can be seen from this passage, in Descartes there is not only the Heideg-
gerian conception of resistance to reawakening as a fear of it but also the
Husserlian one of resistance to reawakening as laziness. That HusserI depends
at this point on Descartes is only too evident: Descartes' Meditations was
among the works most deeply studied by HusserI and thus the coincidence
of their thought on this point can only be interpreted as a derivation.
To have chosen Hussed's dependence on Descartes with regard to the
connection between E1TOxii and reawakening and to the concept of erroxil as
314 ROSA MIGNOSI
In point of fact, at the origin of Stoic thought concerning this point lies the
polemic of Chrysippus against the followers of Pyrrho which is conserved in
the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria. Here Chrysippus confutes Pyrrho's
praxis of the €1TOXil with the typical antiskeptic argument according to which
skepticism destroys itself: if the €1ToXil maintains that there is nothing sure or
true, it must start by applying this criterion to itself: €i IJ.€V '?TIOLV 11 E1TOX11
/3€/3ll'LOV EiVO'L IJ.'T/O€v, oij'Aov on a4{!' EO'U7ije; c'xP~O'/J.€V'T/ 1TPWTOV cXKVPWO€L
eO'VTr/vY Once, however, this self-destruction of the €1TOXr1 which denies all
certainty is established, Chrysippus introduces a single exception in which
this self-destructive E1TOXr1 acquires instead the positive value of "revelation of
truth": When it coincides with reawakening from a dream, in particular from
the kind of dream in which it is the dream itself, personified, that tells us that
it is unreliable: (;/;1 <.;J rap 4{!€v017e; O€iKVVTO'L iI 6lVll'LpoiJoO' i:JrOXr1, ev TOVr'fJ Tex
cXVll'LpovlJ.€vO' 6l'A'T/~ O€iKVVTO'L, we; b OV€LpOe; b 'A€rwv 4{!€vo€ie; elOVL 1TC~VTO'e;
vove; ov€ipove;. That is to say, the "epochizing" of dream (in simple words,
"awakening") "epochizes" E1TOXr1 itself, inasmuch as it was the deceitful
dream that distracted us, with its t/J€vo€ie; OV€LPot. of the truth; in this case the
E1TOXr1 is no longer preclusive of the truth, as in the school of Pyrrho, but acts
as a homeopathic care against the truth's dropping off to sleep, to the extent
that Chrysippus can assert that such a reawakening a'A'T/iJij O€iKVVTll'L.
REAWAKENING AND RESISTANCE 315
How then can it sometimes happen that a man does not decide to wake up
from the deluding dream? At the end of the fragment, Chrysippus advances
two hypotheses on the possible causes of a failure to decide to reawaken to
truth: TirOL 7rapa ),VWIlT/<: datJI:V€WlV ... Ti 7rapa rwv AO)'WV iaoatJl:V€WlV
("either due to the weakness of thOUght ... or to its equivalent of the force
of the contrary arguments"). In both cases, the resistance to reawakening
comes from a sort of force of inertia or drowsiness that either robs decision
of any force or balances the force of decision with that of nondecision. This
solution of the datJl:v€La and of the iaoatJl:V€La is notoriously Stoic: such it
has been considered both in ancient times (see Cicero in De finibus: "quoniam,
inquit, omne peccatum imbecillitatis et incostantiae est"),14 and by modem
students of Stoicism such as Pohlenz:
for Chrysippus the causes of the acute disorder are, from the objective point of view, a
representation which imposes itself with violence, and from the subjective point of view
the aa"eveWi and the aTovic. of the soul. 15
... Deum esse qui potest omnia ... ita Au()t<; be <{)'rIot Xpvomrro<; 1<00t TOV ()eov
ego ut faJlar ... fingi potest? ... quo tjJevliei<; €/JrroLeiv <pOIVTOIOtOl<; '" fl/JO:<;
minus potentem originis meae authorem be <pOIVA-OV<; IlVTOI<;, vrr' ao()evel.a<<;
assignabunt, eo probabilius erit me tam OV-YI<OITOITt()eo()OIL TOIi<; TotaVTOIt<;
, 17
imperfectum esse ut semper faHar. <pCtVTCtoLOlL<; •
As can be seen, the two passages are in agreement not only on the hypothesis
of a God who provokes the delusion of the senses, but also on the cause of
resistance to reawakening, which in Descartes is attributed to the lack of
potentia and in Plutarch equally to a~€vet.a: which was then the only way of
justifying the persistence in error in a providentialist world such as the Stoic
and Cartesian ones. IS
The historical objection also falls by the same stroke: while Clement was
more or less unknown in seventeenth-century France, Plutarch's work had,
on the other hand, been compulsory reading for every French intellectual
since the second half of the sixteenth-century. The determining cause in this
widespread diffusion were the two famous and often quoted French transla-
tions by Fran90is Amyot: Parallel Lives (1559) and Opera Moralia (1572).19
These translations were so successful that Montaigne went as far as to write
in his Essays, with regard to Plutarch: " ... depuis qu'il est Fran~ais."20
There is therefore no doubt that Descartes had read with great care the Opera
Moralia in Amyot's translation.
It was therefore by means of Plutarch's text that Descartes must have came
to know that particular Stoic reevaluation of the e7roxil of the school of
Pyrrho which was enunciated with even greater precision by Chrysippus in
the passage quoted by Clement of Alexandria. However, there is an element
contained in Clement's text, and taken up by Descartes, that only partially
emerges from Plutarch's text: the commitment, not only of a moral nature
(plutarch's Mil (pcdi'A.ov~ elvcxL) but also strictly gnoseological of the reawaken-
ing: the aA'T]~ii oeU(VI)VCXL of the fragment quoted by Clement which is the
methodic kernel of the passage in Descartes: " ... and if in this way I cannot
attain the knowledge of any truth, I can at least always suspend my judg-
ment."21
To flIl this gap I feel that I may dare advance a further hypothesis.
REAWAKENING AND RESISTANCE 317
NOTES
Among the various religious sciences is in'cluded one that is now designated as
the "phenomenology of religion." Chantepie de la Saussaye, the first to speak
of phenomenology of religion in a scientific sense, held that, by means of
comparative history, an historian of religion could highlight the significance
of facts that would otherwise remain isolated. Van der ~euw, author of
the first important treatise in the field of the phenomenology of religion,
surveyed the typical structures in religious phenomena but tended to neglect
their historical contexts, which were subsequently examined by Eliade.
Pettazzoni conceived of phenomenology and history as two complementary
and essential aspects of a single religious science.
Di Nola has pointed out that van der Leeuw derives the concept of phe-
nomenology from Hussed, assigning to it the additional religious significances
that it had assumed in the works of Scheler; but, as Di Nola notes, van der
Leeuw's phenomenology refrains "by conviction, from identifying the
ultimate limit", because "as a science of phenomena it does not want to be
considered a form of metaphysics and proceeds as if behind the phenomena
there were nothing else." Di Nola also notes that, in actual practice, van der
Leeuw has not kept faith with some of his theoretical premises which "if
brought to their logical consequences, should have founded nothing but a
classificatory typology of religious facts." When all is said and done, however,
van der Leeuw ends up by treating religion "religiously" (Le., in a "religious"
manner).!
This comment by Di Nola provides a rough idea of how certain phenome-
nologies of religion are put forward as scientific phenomenologies, at least as
regards the orientation of their search. We may consider as phenomenologists
of religion both those who in this context are programmatically inspired
by Hussed's method, but without going beyond the bounds of the purely
historico-scientific, and the much larger group of scholars who, in analyzing
the religious phenomenon from a historical point of view, make use of
the comparative method. In Italy, therefore, the phenomenologists of re-
ligion in this scientific sense may be considered to include Pettazzoni, De
Martino, Di Nola, and, inasmuch as he teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian
University, Father Dhavamony. The latter prefers to speak of an "historical
321
could not possibly explain in the scientific sense (and here I mean erkliiren),
but whose mystery one can in some sense comprehend (verstehen), a being
that one can understand, above all, by immersing oneself in it by virtue of a
form of participative knowledge that we might call a "metaphysico-religious
experience." Such metaphysico-religious experience is made possible by a
"metaphysico-religious sensitivity", a quality that is not possessed to the
same degree by all, and many people, indeed, hardly have it at all; a sensitivity,
however, that one can develop in oneself by practice and in others by giving
them suitable stimuli and pointers. 9
Philosophical knowledge is a knowledge that interprets, that asks itself
the reason why, a knowledge that is profoundly different from the one that
is associated with the exact sciences. And yet, in the last resort, one can
say that even the adept of the exact sciences bases his conclusions on an
existential knowledge, on a pre- and extrascientific knowledge of what Husserl
calls the world-of-life (Lebenswelt). Even such recent critics of science as
Kuhn, Feyerabend, etc., are agreed in drawing attention to the very important
part that is played, particularly in scientific revolutions, by this pre scientific
aspect, this philosophical moment of interpretation, this moment when the
scientist asks himself the reasons why and when he elaborates interpretative
forms that at first sight may appear as extremely fanciful and arbitrary and
at the time practically impossible to verify.
In the concrete elaboration of the ever-new scientific formulations there is
thus, let us say, a more philosophico-existential interpretative moment and,
likewise, there is a more scientifico-abstractive moment in the elaboration of
new philosophical formulations; this latter is the moment when every new
philosophical interpretation has to be critically reexamined with a view to
seeing whether and to what extent it is coherent with itself and in keeping
with the observed phenomena.
In the wider sense, then, I would equate this philosophico-phenomenolog-
ical knowledge with any type of pre- and extrascientific knowledge, with any
type of existential knowledge that we can obtain, through living, of what
Hussed calls the life-world. Indeed, one can say that in each and every con-
scious act of our lives we always evaluate reality; we feel that there is some-
thing that attracts us and something that repels us, and we may even sense that
there is something that, although it repels us on a superficial level, attracts us
on a more profound level, something that seems to us to constitute a value to
be pursued notwithstanding the effort and the suffering that such a choice may
imply. Existential knowledge is an evaluative knowledge, the very opposite of
scientific knowledge which, by its very nature, is always nonevaluative.
326 FILIPPO LIVERZIANI
subjects, through an internal critique and within the ambit of the personal
and interior experience of each one of them, may succeed in transmuting
their present way of considering things. At this point, indeed, we could adopt
a kind of maieutic practice, a midwifery designed to induce these other
subjects to gradually modify their look, hoping that in due course they will
succeed in seeing something similar to what we already see. This complex
operation has to pass via the epoch/!. It is our customary manner oflooking
at things that prevents us from seeing them in a different and more adequate
way. Even though a rejection of this manner A of "looking at" things does
not yet appear to be sufficiently motivated, let us try at least to suspend
this manner of "looking at." Thereby we shall at least have neutralized the
inhibiting shackles. Once we have performed this negative operation, there
will inevitably come a time when we shall have to perform a positive one,
when we shall have to try to look at things in the manner B. And then, by
virtue of the fact that we continue to scrutinize things in this different way,
we may perhaps succeed in also seeing something different.
This "suspension of the looking at" in one way and this "looking in a
different manner" cannot be considered as two logico-scientific operations
(even though there is a rational element in them, an element of reasonableness
and a critical attitude that should be developed further as rapidly as possible);
rather, they are to be more properly considered as existential acts, they
represent two acts that the subject cannot perform without a considerable
effort and, I would add, a considerable ascesis. They involve the whole of the
personality of the subject, and not just his intellect. When it is understood
in this sense, the phenomenology of religion becomes an integral part of a
spiritual itinerary. Or, rather, of the cognitive aspect of this itinerary; and we
could even say that it becomes its cognitive but not intellectualistico-abstract
aspect, something that is vitally connected with the evolution of the entire
personality in all its aspects. Very briefly, almost in passing, let me mention
some examples.
Hussed's classical example is that of the suspension of the naturalistic
attitude. Such an epoch/! may enable us to make an important discovery:
nothing can exist if not in relation to a consciousness.
But here there lies the danger of slipping into a form of idealism that will
reduce all things to mere phenomena of this consciousness that I possess at
this moment, that in actual practice will reduce all things to phenomena
of this personal and empirical consciousness of mine. One must therefore
suspend the undue absolutization of my consciousness that I either assume or
am tempted to assume - in the same way as in the example of Hussed's
PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 329
reduction of the naturalistic attitude, where the problem really was to put
"in parentheses" or "out of play" the improper absolutization that we are
always tempted to attribute to the natural world, as if it were something that
had an absolute existence of its own. This putting out of play of both the
naturalistic attitude (to which Husserl refers) and of the idealist attitude will
enable us to gradually mature the awareness that everything that exists does
in fact exist in relation to a consciousness, but a consciousness that cannot be
merely my own empirical consciousness or even the sum of the conscious-
nesses of all men, but rather a consciousness that includes and transcends all
these empirical consciousness, that is to say (for want of a better term), an
absolute, divine consciousness. This is not the place for developing these
arguments further; here we can only very briefly adumbrate the possibility
that in a certain way they offer us of applying the epoche; but at this point
I must stress once again that this epoche, being a negative operation, must not
be separated from that positive adoption of a new manner of looking, which
is the only thing that can positively put us in condition to penetrate further
into reality and improve what we see.
Continuing, then, we may note that our adoption of an authentically
philosophical attitude may be inhibited by the survival within us of a praxis-
oriented attitude, of an undue absolutization of praxis, of everything that
constitutes 'practical life" , and also by the survival within us of a scientistic
attitude, of an undue absolutization of science as the only form of research
and of scientific knowledge as the only possible form of knowledge. These
undue absolutizing attitudes, too, must be put out of play, and we know just
how difficult this is for the so-called modern man.
Certain phenomenological reductions may smooth our way toward the
realization of a religious attitude. But we know how many religious truths
take shape in the human mind through myths. We also know that the fabula-
tory psychological mechanism that is responsible for the creation of myths
is something that is very similar to the process of the formation of dreams
and even of "dreams dreamed with open eyes." A myth is often the vehicle
of very profound truths. The problem is not really that of performing a
"demythification" in the manner of Bultmann (because this would truly
involve the risk of "throwing away not only the dirty water, but also the
baby in the bath tub"); the problem is rather one of "transmythifying", that
is to say, placing the myth in its proper light, making it perform its proper
function as a vehicle of revelation, because truly there are many myths that
can tell us spiritual truths in a manner that is far more profound and pregnant
than intellectual arguments and concepts. But if we are to do all this, we must
330 FILIPPO LlVERZIANI
fust put out of play or into parentheses any kind of mythifying attitude or
undue absolutization of myths, a frame of mind that could induce us to take
the myth literally and thus to confound it with the more profound truth
of which it is the vehicle, to confound it with the Being of which it is the
phenomenon. 12
Another undue absolutizing attitude within the religious realm that has to
be put out of play with the help of a far from easy ascetic operation may be
the attitude of creating for oneself other absolutes by the side or even in
place of the one and only absolute truth. In this connection let us recall the
recurring temptations of the ancient Jews, temptations that the prophets had
to fight against without cease; and also the analogous temptation that, albeit
in other forms, operates in the spirit of us moderns and creates for us new
idols and false absolutes; I am referring, of course, to the many isms of our
day and age, each with its core of truth elevated to an improper absolute.
Another temptation could be the one that many theologians, metaphysi-
cians, and ordinary believers have been unable to resist, the temptation of
enclosing God in an image or a concept (a temptation that is vigorously
opposed by, among others, apophatic theology).13
Yet another temptation could be the one, suffered by many religious
spirits, of attributing to God full and direct responsibility for each and every
one of their thoughts and actions, even of those thoughts and actions that
are particularly obviously the results of human conditioning and should be
explained, at least to a very considerable extent, with the help of the human
sciences (although carefully avoiding a slip back into the reductive attitudes
previously discussed).
A further temptation (and here I shall terminate these examples even
though it would be easy to continue) could be the one of looking for and
discovering the presence of God only in certain places and environments
(one's own intimate religious life, certain religious traditions, certain religious
manifestations), a priori excluding that this selfsame presence of God could
also manifest itself in other and different ambits, say (to mention just a few),
in other religions, in nature, and in history, and in the "signs of the times"
interpreted in a particular way, even in a humanist and political interpretation.
All these are temptations of unduly absolutizing a particular way of looking
at things, temptations that could prevent us from seeing things in a more
adequate way. They are temptations of which we must be conscious and
aware, which we must combat within us by means of a rigorous ascesis, and
which we must begin to subject to epoch!!, at least at the intellectual and
cognitive level, and thus to set ourselves the problem, at least at this level
PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 331
again, of beginning to look at things with different eyes, thereby enabling our
religious consciousness, and with it the whole of our spiritual and human life,
to develop and gain better insights.
I have endeavored to give some idea of what, in my opinion at least, a
philosophical phenomenology could be as a theoretical moment of a religious
itinerary that cannot but involve the whole of man. At this point it becomes
interesting to establish a relationship between a philosophical phenomenology
of religion and a scientific phenomenology of religion of the type proposed
by van der Leeuw, Eliade, Pettazzoni, and Di Nola. Certainly, a confrontation
with the religious testimonies of others is very important for the religious,
and the scientific phenomenology of religion offers him an ample and well
coordinated documentation of such testimonies that the phenomenologist-
philosopher of religion and the religious seeker can accept and consider
not only as material of psychological, historical, sociological, and cultural
interest, but also and above all as material that is of spiritual interest to
him and relevant to his personal religious ascent or development and, in-
deed, relevant to the religious realization of man. The concordance of these
testimonies can greatly strengthen a religious person in his convictions and
help him not to feel alone and isolated in many of his religious attitudes.
But what significance is he to attribute to the numerous discordancies that
he will fmd in religious phenomenology and, above all, how is he to explain
them? I believe that the religious person or, if you prefer, the phenome-
nologist-philosopher of religion, having made use of the material organized
by the scientific phenomenology of religion, may in tum extend a helping
hand to this scientific phenomenology by explaining not only why it is that
the religious agree in certain fundamental experiences, but also why they
diverge so profoundly from one individual to another and also from one
tradition to another. It may well be that all of them see the same things;
and if, in part, they see the same things - although there are other things that
they see in different ways - then this could be due precisely to the fact that
there are certain things that they are accustomed to looking at in the same
way and certain other things that they habitually look at in different ways.
It may well be that certain religious spirits stop at a vision A that is less
adequate than a vision B for the simple reason that they have not suspended
their manner A of looking at things and therefore have not yet overcome this
limitation that prevents them from adopting the manner B of looking that is
the condition, the sine qua non for acceding to the more adequate vision B.
The scientific phenomenology of religion, by definition (Le., by the very
fact of being scientific), does not formulate any value judgments; but the
332 FILIPPO LIVERZIANI
NOTES
1 See the presentation of the Italian edition of G. van der Leeuw's Phenomenology of
Religion published under the title Fenomenologia della religione (Turin: Boringhieri,
1975), pp. ix-xii.
2 Introduction to Phenomenology of Religion, Documenta Missionalia no. 7 (Rome:
PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 333
Gregorian University ~ress, 1973), pp. 3-27. See also R. Pettazzoni, "n metodo com-
parativo", Numen, 6 (1959), 1-14; C. J. Bleeker, ''The Phenomenological Method",
Numen, 6 (1959), 96-111 and "The Conception of Man in the Phenomenology of
Religion", Studia Missionalia, 19 (1970), 13-38; M. Dhavamony, "Phenomenology of
Religion; Appellation and Methodology", The Heythrop Journal, 17 (1976), 64-67,
and "Fenomenologia storica della religione", in Le scienze religipse oggi, ed. C. Cantone
(Rome: LAS, 1978), pp. 9-83; and A. Di Nola, "Fenomenologia della religione", in
Enciclopedia delle religioni (Florence: Vallecchi, 1970). Di Nola, in the aforementioned
article, gives the following definition of the phenomenology of religion: "Denomination
properly applied to the interpretative theory of religious facts developed by Gerardus
van der Leeuw (1890-1950) and his school. In a more general sense and, to a certain
extent, independently of the theoretical positions of van der Leeuw, P. o. R. indicates
the analysis and the definition of individual religious facts or phenomena in their ty-
pological characterization (for example, prayer, rite, sacrifice, offering, etc.) with the
help of the comparative method, but without examining their historical development"
(the italics are mine). Last, see also U. Bianchi, Problemi di storia delle religioni (Rome:
Studium, 1958), pp. 18-19.
3 Fenomenologia della religione, p. 542.
4 Phenomenology of Religion, p. 17.
5 Ibid., p. 9.
6 G. Morra, Dio senza Dio (Bologna: P:hron, 1970), p. xii.
7 "It is even more important to stress that Husserl's ideal of knowledge, although
originally elaborated on the model of the mathematical and positive methods, transcends
them in all essential respects, does not enclose itself in their rules and, without in any
way being contrary to its own nature, can therefore also embrace a superscience, philo-
sophy, superior to its realizations" (P. Valori, Il metoda fenomenologico e la fondazione
della filosofia [Rome: Descil!e, 1959); the question as a whole is then treated on pp.
85-90; the above is confirmed and documented by A. De Waelhens, Phenomenologie
et verite [Paris: PUF, 1953), pp. 13-14,28,32).
8 In this connection one should recall the well known premises postulated by Dilthey,
Boutroux, and Bergson.
9 W. Dilthey refuses metaphysics; for him, therefore, comprehension relates only to
historical realities (this, at least, is what he is saying at the more explicit level). M.
Heidegger, on the other hand, irrespective of the terminology that he uses and notwith-
standing the fact that he rejects the idea of intellectualistic metaphysics, is nevertheless
a metaphysician: as far as he is concerned, understanding is a metaphysical experience
and implies comprehension (lived in an "affective situation") of a reality that transcends
the existence of man, even though it reveals itself through that existence (an ontological
reality that the later Heidegger was to stress more strongly). In this connection P. Ricoeur
speaks of an "ontology of comprehension" of a "complete reversal of the relationship
between understanding and being" brought about by Heidegger. As regards this turning
upside down, one may say that "it also accomplishes the most profound desire under-
lying Dilthey's philosophy, this to the extent to which life was its primary concept; in
his work, indeed, historical understanding was not exactly the pendant of the theory of
nature; the relationship between life and its expressions was rather the common root of
the double relationship between man and nature and between man and history. If one
follows this suggestion, the problem is not one of strengthening historical knowledge as
334 FILIPPO LIVERZIANI
compared with physical knowledge, but rather one of digging below scientific knowledge
(here taken in its full generality) in order to establish a link between historical being and
the whole of being that would be more originary than the subject-object relationship of
the theory of knowledge" (Le conflit des interpretations [Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1969], pp. 11-12).
10 See M. Heidegger, Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, chap. 1; P. Prini, Discorso e situa·
zione (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 1969), chap. 5 ("11 discorso sull'essere").
11 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1927), p. 35. See also, more
generally, the introduction to this work, pp. 2-40.
12 P. Ricoeur defines two moments or aspects of demythification: a phase of de-
mystification, which can liberate us from the alienating aspect of the myth, and one of
demythologization, capable of bringing out the authentic sense and significance of the
myth. In this connection see his essay "Demythiser l'accusation", in Le conflit des
interpretations, pp. 330-46.
13 See Morra's Dio senza Dio, especially the chapters entitled "Teologia negativa e
teologia positiva" (pp. 219-47) and "Le 'prove' di Dio" (pp. 249-300).
ELiO COSTANTINI
Meine kurze Abhandlung wird einen historischen Charakter haben, ihr Argu-
ment bezieht sich auf ein Thema das schon in einigen der vorhergehenden
Vortragen aufgetaucht ist: es handelt sich urn die Theorie der Intersubjek-
tivitat wie sie von Husserl dargestellt worden ist. Es ist nun meine Ansicht,
dass a1s Fundament der intersubjektiven Beziehungen das Einftihlungs-
problem zu stell en ist, das bisher unverdienterweise in den Hintergrund
gedrangt wurde und das uns ausserdem noch die Gelegenheit verschafft
anschaulich darzustellen was flir ein Zusammenhang zwischen Psychologie
und Phanomenologie bestehen kann.
Ich mochte nun gem darauf hinweisen welche Beziehungen zwischen der
Theorie der Intersubjektivitat und der Einftihlungslehre bestehen und dabei
auf die unersetzliche und grundlegende Arbeit von Edith Stein, die das
Einftihlungsproblem in einer personlichen und erschopfenden Weise behandelt
hat, aufmerksam machen. 1 Das Verdienst das Einftihlungsproblem bis auf
den Grund ana1ysiert zu haben und es systematisch aufgearbeitet zu haben ist
ganz und gar Edith Stein zususchreiben.
Was die Beziehungen zwischen der Theorie der Intersubjektivitat und der
Einftihlungslehre anbetrifft ist folgendes zu bemerken: wenn die trans zen-
dentale Intersubjektivitat die Konstitution des fremden Ich voraussetzt (a1s Ich
das ausserha1b jeder Ichzugehorigkeiten besteht), so setzt diese Konstitution
ihrerseits ein Erfassen des fremden Bewusstseins vorraus, Erfassen das durch
einen Einftihlungsakt ermoglicht wird. Mit anderen Worten: Einftihlung
a1s Erfahrung fremden Bewusstseins ist Fundament flir das Phanomen der
Intersubjektivitat mit wessen Hilfe es moglich ist die objektive Welt in ihrer
Gesamtheit zu erleben.
Den Schriften Husserls kann man entnehmen dass er sich grundlegend mit
dem Problem der Intersubjektivitat beschaftigt und, unzufrieden mit den
von ihm erreichten Losungen, immer wieder auf das Problem zuriickkommt.
In der V. "Meditations cartesiennes" defmiert Husser! die Natur des
intersubjektiven Phanomens und stellt fest dass es sich auf dem Gebiet der
Transzendenta1itat entwickeit, wenn das konstituierende Ich, dank einer
besonderen Ausscha1tung, von der "immanenten Transzendenz" in die
"objektive Transzendenz" tibergeht, d.h; von der Intentiona1itat die sich auf
335
alles bezieht was fremd fUr das Ich ist, zur Intentionalitiit die sich auf die Welt
inneren Erlebens bezieht. Man kann aber auch feststellen, dass Husserl sich
wenig mit dem eigentlichen Einflihlungsproblem befasst, indem er vielleicht
annimmt, dass dieses Problem schon vorausgesetzt sei und in gewisser Weise
schon mit demselben Problem der Intersubjektivitiit verwachsen ist. - Ander-
erseits hat aber Edith Stein ausscWiesslich das Einflihlungsproblem behandelt
und es ist ihr gelungen zu einer wesenhaften Defmition desselben zu gelangen:
Einftihlung besteht wenn wir ein Erlebnis erleben dass einem fremden Be-
wusstsein angehort, d.h. wenn wir in originiirer Weise ein Erlebnis erleben dass
fUr uns nicht-originiir ist.
Wenn wir nun behaupten dass Edith Stein und nicht HusserI das Ein-
flihlungsproblem gelOst hat, bedeutet das nicht Husserl etwas abzustreiten,
denn niemand wird behaupten dass HusserI Edith Stein nicht den Anstoss
gegeben hat sich mit dem Problem zu beschiiftigen. In einigen Monographien
die Edith Stein gewidmet sind wird entweder nicht auf dieses Argument
eingegangen, oder es wird einfach damit abgetan: Edith Stein habe sich woW
mit dem Einflihlungsproblem beschiiftigt, hiitte aber weiter nichts getan als
in die Fusstapfen ihrer Mt:isters zu treten. Es ist woW ausser Frage dass die
Forschungen der Stein sich im Wirkungskreis der Phanomenologie Husserls
bewegten, es ist aber ebenso gewiss dass all das was die Stein im Bezug auf das
Einftihlungsproblem analysiert und geleistet hat, nicht HusserI zuzuschreiben
ist und es entspricht nicht der Wahrheit wenn behauptet wird, dass das
Werk Edith Steins weiter nichts wiire als eine Wiederholung dessen was
HusserI schon gesagt hatte. Wenn dem so wiire wiirde ihr auch das Verdienst
vorenthalten die in anderen Einflihlungstheorien enthaltenen negativen
Aspekte herausgestellt zu haben, besonders diejenigen von Theodor Lipps auf
psychologischem Gebiet und die von Max Scheler auf phiinomenologischem.
Dazu kommt noch ihre brillante Beweisflihrung gegen die Nachahmungs-
theorie, die Assoziationstheorie und die AnalogiescWusstheorie, die nicht
als genetische Theorien tiber das Erfassen von fremden Bewusstsein gel ten
k6nnen. 3
Wir mochten uns nun niiher mit dieser Frage beschiiftigen. Es ist bekannt
dass HusserI in seinen Schriften "Ideen I and II", in "Formale und transzen-
dentale Logik", in "Meditations cartesiennes" und in "Krisis der europiiischen
Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phiinomenologie" ausflihrliche
Forschungen zur Theorie der Intersubjektivitiit anstellt, und ihr Wesen
definiert, sich aber mit der "Einflihlung" nur im II. Buch der "Ideen"4 und in
der V. 'Meditation" beschiiftigt; besonders ausflihrlich in der zweitgenannten
Schrift.
ON EDITH STEIN AND HUSSERL 337
1m ersten Text erwiihnt Hussed die Einflihlung als ein Phanomen das das
Phanomen der Intersubjektivitat voraussetzt, d.h. die Einflihlung wird in
das Bereich der Intersubjektivitat eingeschlossen, wahrend in der zweiten
Schrift Husseds, in der V. Meditation, die Einfuhlung erwiihnt wird, aber ihre
eigentliche Natur und ihr Wesen nicht definiert werden. Bei Husserl werden
auch die verschiedenen Stu fen des Einflihlungsaktes nicht beriicksichtigt,
kurz: die Einflihlung wird nur in ihrer Wirkung dargestellt, oder besser, sie
wird nur von den Seiten angesenen die sich auf die Intersubjektivitat besiehen,
als Akt mit Hilfe dessen es erm6glicht wird die Welt der Objekte als Ganzes zu
erkennen.
Was Hussed nicht untemommen hat finden wir hingegen in Edith Steins
ausfuhdichem Werk vor, dass dem Problem der Einflihlung gewidmet ist. Es
ist interessant, dass Edith Stein nur einmal, am Ende ihrer Dissertation,S auf
das Problem der Intersubjektivitat hinweist; sie geht nicht auf das Problem
ein, lasst aber verstehen, dass ein Zusammenhang mit der Einflihlung besteht.
Es kommt fast vor, als ob der Meister und die Schillerin ausgemacht hatten
beide Probleme getrennt und jeder flir sich, zu behandeln.
Als Hussed 1913 an der Universitat Gottingen wahrend einer Vodesung
uber "Natur und Geist" sagte, dass die Erkenntnis der Welt als Ganzes nur
durch das Edeben fremden Bewusstseins moglich ist und dieses Erleben
"Einftihlung" nannte, ohne aber selbst festzulegen was Einflihlung in sich
selbst ist, wurde die Einflihlung als phanomenologisches Problem bekannt.
Es galt nun herauszustellen was Einflihlung selbst ist und diese Lucke "galt
es auszuftillen" wie Edith Stein selbst sagt. Und solange die Stein dieses
Problem nicht in ihrer Dissertation bearbeitet hatte und in all seinen Aspekten
untersucht hatte, blieb diese Lucke bestehen. 6 Dies tat sie mit Gutheissen
Husseris, der ihr den Auftrag gegeben hatte dieses Problem in ihrer Dissertation
zu bearbeiten.
Es ist ein allgemeiner falscher Glaube dass (wie man auch in einigen Mono-
graphien uber sie Ie sen kann), Edith Stein flir ihre Arbeit die Manuskripte
Husserls des zweiten Buches der "Ideen" benutzt hat, wo von Einflihlung die
Rede ist. 7 Es ist dem nicht so.
1m "Vorwort" zu ihrer Dissertation die im Jahre 1917 mit der Beflirwor-
tung Husserls gedruckt wurde, schreibt sie selbst: 8
Zudem haben besondere unstiinde mich verhindert, die Arbeit vor der Veriiffentlichung
noch einmal griindlich zu iiberarbeiten. Seit ich sie der Fakultiit einreichte, habe ich
niimlich in meinen Funktionen als Privatassistentin meines verehrten Lehrers, Herm
Professor Husser!, Einblick in die Manuskripte zum II. Teil seiner "Ideen" erhalten,
338 ELIO COSTANTINI
die zum Teil dieselben Fragen behandeln, und wiirde natiirlich bei einer neuen Beschiifti-
gung mit meinem Thema nicht umhin konnen, die empfangenen neuen Anregungen zu
verwerten.
Daraus kann man ersenen dass die Stein den Inhalt der Manuskripte der Ideen
II. weder vor noch wruuend der Niederschrift ihrer Arbeit kannte. Sie fahrt
dann fort: "Freilich sind Problemstellung und Methode meiner Arbeit ganz
aus Anregungen hervorgewachsen die ich von Herrn Professor Hussed empfing
... " und schliesst, "Indessen kann ich sagen, dass die Ergebnisse, die ich
jetzt vodege, in eigener Arbeit gewonnen sind, und das konnte ich nicht mehr
behaupten, wenn ich jetzt Anderungen vornahme." Edith Stein, wie man
sieht, scheidet selbst ihre eigene Arbeit von dem was Hussed zukommt und
besteht auf ihrem personlichen Beitrag zum Einflihlungsproblem.
Zum Schluss mochte ich noch die Worte Husserls selbst zitieren, die sich
auf Edith Steins Werk beziehen. 1m Sommer 1916 trafen sich Husserl, seine
Frau Malvine, Edith Stein und ihre Freundin Erika vor der universitat in
Freiburg i. Br. und gingen zusammen weiter. 9 Hussed sprach mit Edith Stein
tiber ihre Doktorarbeit und setzte unter anderem hinzu": leh habe nur
Bedenken, ob diese Arbeit neben den 'Ideen' im lahrbuch moglich sein
wird. leh habe den Eindruck, dass Sie manches aus dem II. Teil der 'Ideen'
vorweggenommen haben."
Es scheint mir von grundlegender Bedeutung, dass Hussed selbst die
personliche und von ihrn unabhangige Erarbeitung des Einflihlungsproblerns
von Seiten Edith Steins anerkannt hat und hoffe damit dass es mir gelungen
ist dies hier herausgestellt zu haben.
ANMERKUNGEN
der Fakultat in Freiburg i. Br. ein paar Tage nach Ostern 1916; am 3. August desselben
Jahres bestand sie ihre Doktorprufung und wurde Privatassistentin Husserls.
9 "Aus dem Leben einer Jiidischen Familie", Edith Steins Werke VII, Kapitel 7: "Von
den Studienjahren in Gottingen", p. 289 f. Ed. Nauwelaerts, Louvain 1965.
CENTRO IT ALIANO DI RICERCHE FENOMENOLOGICHE
PROGRAMME
11 a.m. Session 4
345
346 INDEX OF NAMES