Cunningham S Language and The Phenomenological Reductions of Edmund Husserl PDF

Language and the Phenomenological Reductions
01 Edmund Busserl
PHAENOMENOLOGICA
COLLECTION FONDEE PAR H. L. VAN BREDA ET PUBLIEE SOUS
LE PATRONAGE DES CENTRES D'ARCHIVES-HUSSERL
70
SUZANNE CUNNINGHAM
Language and the Phenomenological Reductions

of Edmund Husserl
Comite de redaction de la collection:

President: S. IJsseling (Leuven);
Membres: M. Farber (Buffalo), E. Fink t (Freiburg i. Br.),
L. Landgrebe (Koln), W. Marx (Freiburg i. Br.),
J. N. Mohanty (New York), P. Ricoeur (Paris), E. Stroker (Koln),
J. Taminiaux (Louvain), K. H. Volkmann-Schluck (KOln);
Secretaire: J. Taminiaux.
SUZANNE CUNNINGHAM
Language and
the Phenomenological Reductions
of Edmund Husserl
•
MARTINUS NIjHOFF I THE HAGUE I .1976
© I976 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1976
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1823-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1389-5

DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-1389-5
PREFACE
It was while reading HusserI's Cartesian Meditations that the

subject of the present volume first occurred to me. And in a way
I am offering a somewhat oblique commentary on HusserI's
Meditations - "oblique" because it is not a systematic elucidation
of the entire text. Nonetheless, it is primarily with the task of the
Meditations that I am concerned. It is there that the antipathy
between natural ~anguage and HusserI's quest for certainty come
clearIy into focus. (Other texts are cited insofar as they shed light
on this central work or illustrate the fact that HusserI did not
significantly alter his position on the problem.) My purpose here
is to further sharpen that focus, showing that the consciousness
within the phenomenological reductions is essentially language-
using. Working with the Wittgensteinian insight regarding "pri-
vate languages," I attempt to show that a language-using con-
sciousness cannot effectively divorce itself from its social context
and is unable, therefore, to perform the radical phenomenological
reductions. Solipsism, then, is never a genuine problem, but nei-
ther is the elimination of all existential commitments a genuine
possibility. Finally, I conclude that language-use bridges the
distinction between essence and existence, the transcendental and
the transcendent, the ideal and the real- making the phenomeno-
logical method incapable of providing the apodictic foundations
on which all metaphysics and science will be rebuilt.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My indebtedness for helpful comments and warm encourage-

ment extends far beyond any reasonably brief list of acknow-
ledgments. Let me say a word of thanks, however, to some few
people who were most instrumental in helping me bring these
thoughts to print: the Woodrow Wilson Foundation which sup-
ported me during a year of research and writing, enabling me
among other things to visit the Husser! Archives at Louvain
University in Belgium; the late Herman Leo Van Breda and his
assistants who provided invaluable time and information during
my research at Louvain; Dr. Eugene Kaelin, Dr. David Gruender,
Dr. William Swain, Drs. Paul and Lieve Mercken, and Dr.
Francis Catania, for their careful reading of the manuscript at
various stages and for many insightful questions and suggestions.
SUZANNE CUNNINGHAM
Loyola University of Chicago
February, I975
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. .INTRODUCTION I
Presuppositions
CogUo
The Reductions
The Phenomenological Reduction
The Transcendental Reduction
The Eidetic Reduction
Problem of Language
II. LANGUAGE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION I4

Reduction of Transcendencies
Privacy
Private Languages
Consistency
Language of the Reduction
An Unambiguous Language
Conclusion
III. LANGUAGE AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION 35

Transcendental Ego
Intentionality and Constitution
Derivation of a Complete Theory of Constitution
Early Hylomorphism
Temporality in Constitution
Genetic Constitution
Conclusion
IV. LANGUAGE AND THE EIDETIC REDUCTION 58

Lebenswelt
Essences and Possibility
Facts and Meanings
Meanings and Essences
Essences in Language
Conclusion
X T ABLE OF CONTENTS
V. A LINGUISTIC ALTERNATIVE 76
Early Alternatives
Jean-Paul Sartre: Ontology
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Bodily Cogito
Linguistic Alternative
Essence and Existence
The Transcendental and the Transcendent
The Ideal and the Real
Evidence and Certainty
Conclusion
VI. CONCLUSION 92
Conclusion
INDEX roo
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Rene Descartes started modern Western philosophy on its

search for an absolutely certain foundation for knowledge. A
product of a faith-oriented culture, Descartes gradually realized
the paucity of guarantees he had for the many things he had
accepted as true, so he set himself the task of sorting out the
unquestionable from the uncertain and of finding a criterion by
which to judge the validity of those beliefs that were open to
doubt. Thus, his Meditations are a systematic attempt to put
aside every belief that had been accepted on some merely external
authority and which in itself was not beyond doubt, and to work
his way to what he considered to be the one absolutely indubitable
fact: cogito, "I think." On the foundation of this cogito, using as
criterion of validity the clearness and distinctness of ideas, he
meant to rebuild a realm of certain knowledge.
The problems associated with Descartes' attempt are numerous
and well-known. 1 shall concern myself with those pointed out by
the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl, who in our own
century pursued a similar ideal of epistemological certainty as the
foundation for all philosophic thought and ultimately for all
scientific knowledge.
While Husserl agreed with the general goals Descartes set for
himself, he argued that the latter had operated with some un-
questioned presuppositions that led him to unjustified conclu-
sions; and further, that Descartes had not fully analyzed the
notion of the cogito and so failed to exploit some of its essential
aspects. After briefly exploring Husserl's critique of Descartes
and his proposed remedies for the latter's weaknesses, I shall turn
my attention to Husserl's alternative and suggest that it too
2 INTRODUCTION
incorporates unjustified presuppositions and mIsses a crucial

element in the cogito.
But first, Descartes and the question of presuppositions.
PRES UPPOSITIONS
In the decision process regarding the acceptability of data or

its rejection as an unjustified presupposition, Husserl adopts as
his "methodological principle" an explicitation of the Cartesian
criterion of clear and distinct ideas .
. .. we must abide by the "principle of all principles," that complete
clearness is the measure of all truth, and that statements that give faithful
expression to their data need fear nothing from the finest arguments. 1
Or again,
I, ... must neither make nor go on accepting any judgment as scientific
that I have not derived from evidence, from "experiences" in which the
affairs arid affair-complexes in question are present to me as "they them-
selves." 2
It is important to note here that Husserl counted some things

as self-evident, unquestionably self-given, and on that account,
correspondingly clear. For Husserl the assumption of such things
could raise no question about unjustified presuppositions, for it
was merely the acceptance and use of what could not be doubted.
If one could not accept what presented itself as evident, there
could be no starting point at all and the move to skepticism
would become inevitable. As he showed clearly in the Prole-
gomena to the Logical Investigations, Husserl did not consider
skepticism as a viable alternative.
One's awareness of an idea that presents itself with self-evident
clarity Husserl termed "intuition." It was not meant to be any
sort of mystical insight, merely a recognition of the indubitable.
Clearly, for HusserI, the only legitimate starting point for his
investigations was with intuited data.
Herbert Spiegelberg suggests that Husserl's ideal of a philoso-
phy free from all presuppositions had been misunderstood when
1 Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. by

W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1967), p. 223.
2 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. by Dorion Cairns (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, I969), p. 13.
INTRODUCTION 3
interpreted in any absolute sense. He contends that Husserl wants
"to eliminate merely presuppositions that have not been thor-
oughly examined, or, at least in principle, been presented for such
examination." 3
Marvin Farber is more specific and claims that while Husserl
was not naive enough to suppose that he could establish an
epistemology without the use of any presuppositions whatsoever,
there were certain sorts of presuppositions which he felt vitiated
the inquiry, and these Farber calls the "metaphysical, natural
scientific, psychological presuppositions,"4 following Husserl's
own designation. 5
Husserl's critique of Descartes suggests that there were indeed
at least three sorts of presuppositions which he wanted to elimi-
nate; I would designate them as the metaphysical, the methodol-
ogical and the teleological.
The specific metaphysical presupposition which had been as-
sumed by Descartes and which Husserl sought to drop was the
existence of substance, particularly the res cogitans. Whether it
was claimed as a category of consciousness or as a reality under-
lying consciousness, Husserl felt that substance could not be
assumed since it lacked the requisite self-evidence without which
nothing could be accepted at the start. The nature of reality and
its possible categories must not be assumed. (It is for this reason
that I am reluctant to separate the psychological presuppositions
from the metaphysical, as Husserl has done. This very dichotomy
smackS:of a tacitly accepted metaphysical dualism.)
The second sort of Cartesian presupposition to which Husserl
attempted to deal the death-blow was the methodological; speci-
fically, the use of the deductive method of the sciences as the
model for rational thought and as the sure guide to truth. Since
the purpose of the investigation was to give a sure foundation to
any form of scientific knowledge, one must not assume the
validity of any scientific method until it had been justified. From
3 Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, (2 vols., The Hague:

Martinus Nijhoff, I960), I, p. 83.
4 Marvin Farber, "The Ideal of a Presuppositionless Philosophy," in Phenomenology
ed. by Joseph J. Kockelmans, Anchor Books (Garden City, New York: Doubleday &
Co., Inc., I967), p. 48.
5 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. by J. N. Findlay (2 vols., London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), I, p. 265.
4 INTRODUCTION
the start the method must be limited to the acceptance and use
of the self-evident. 6
Lastly, Husserl wanted to eliminate from the Cartesian in-
vestigation what I have called teleological presuppositions. By
that I mean that he wished to avoid aiming the inquiry at the
justification of any specific metaphysics or science. He was in
search of an absolutely certain foundation for knowledge upon
which any possible science or any possible metaphysics could be
built; he was not concerned with the justification of one that had
been preconceived. Hence, his was to be an investigation of
possibilities rather than of actualities. 7 I shall return later to this
important question of possibilities.
COGITO
Having uncovered and rejected these presuppositions, Husserl

turned to a careful analysis of the cogito. With Descartes he felt
that this was indeed the indubitable starting point. But this
method of elaborating the cogito would take Husserl in a very
different direction from that pursued by Descartes. Straight-
forward and obvious as the Cartesian cogito first appeared to be,
the subsequent history of philosophy has shown it to be a highly
problematic and indeed fuzzy-edged notion. One particularly
crucial question that has plagued philosophers arises in relation
to its scope. Precisely how much can be included in it? On the
sUbjective side can one incorporate a thinking substance, as
Descartes himself does, or must one limit oneself to the ego-less
act, cogitans, as both Hume and Sartre would have it? On the
objective side, does the cogito, by its very nature, already include
an object, as Husserl will maintain, or must one deduce the
existence of that object in the Cartesian fashion? Can the cogito
be isolated, even theoretically, from its everyday world, as both
Descartes and the earlier Husserl claimed, or is it irrevocably
immersed in the world, ala Merleau-Ponty? And finally, does the
cogito include within itself certain structural categories, like
6 It is not at all clear that Husserl's criticism of Descartes on this point (Cartesian
Meditations, p. 24) is quite fair. Norman Kemp-Smith points out that Descartes' view
of "deduction" is not syllogistic but is rather an extended series of intuitions. (Studies
in Cartesian PhilosoPhy, London: 1902, pp. 28-30.)
7 Husserl, Ideas, p. 13.
INTRODUCTION 5
Descartes' "substance," Kant's categories, or Chomsky's struc-
tures, or must these have a derived status if they are to merit any
status at all?
Considerations not unlike these undoubtedly led HusserI to
begin a radical analysis of the cogito in order to eliminate any
unjustified elements Descartes had included in virtue of his pre-
suppositions, and also to uncover the essential elements of which
Descartes had, unwittingly, failed to take note. His investigation,
made under the lingering influence of his former teacher, Franz
Bretano, revealed the intentional character of the cogito. That is
to say, for HusserI all consciousness was seen as directed, as
consciousness of something. While Descar1:es had never denied
this, he had by-passed its significance and concerned himself with
attempting to prove the existence of objects external to conscious-
ness rather than exploring the realm of the self-given intentional
objects; he made a lame jump to the metaphysical question
before he had finished exploring the epistemological. For HusserI,
the self-evidence of the cogito carried with it the self-evidence of
an intentional object for consciousness, a cogitatum, and as we
shall see later, of a non-substantial subjective pole of conscious-
ness, a transcendental ego.
It is important to recall here that HusserI had rejected all
metaphysical presuppositions and was, therefore, unable to make
any judgment concerning the nature of the cogitatum except that
it is an object for consciousness. His position was not intended in
any way as a denial of external reality; on the contrary, he was
attempting to lay apodictically certain epistemological founda-
tions on which some metaphysics might later be constructed. 8
For an elucidation of the intentional character of consciousness
and its place within the phenomenological method it will be help-
ful 1:0 move to a discussion of the structure of phenomenology,
specifically the "reductions." It will become evident, I think,
that there is a relationship between the reductions and the sorts
of presuppositions which HusserI meant to avoid.
8 Edmund HusserI, The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. by William P. Alston and

George Nakhnikian (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), p. 18.
6 INTRODUCTION
THE REDUCTIONS
Before the nature and function of the reductions can be made

clear, however, one needs to understand Husserl's division of
"objects" into those that are real and those that are ideal. 9 This
distinction is not congruent with that traditionally made between
transcendent and immanent "objects." (Hussed, like many others
before him, is obviously using the term "object" in its broadest
sense, to include anything which might be intended by conscious-
ness.) 10 Husserl's real objects include some that are transcendent,
external to consciousness, as well as some that are immanent,
consciousness-dependent. For him, an object is "real" if it is
temporally limited. The group of real objects would include not
only the chair on which I am now sitting (a transcendently real
object), but also the memory I have of that chair after I leave the
room (an immanently real object). The first is temporally and
spatially limited, the second only temporally limited, lasting only
as long as I keep it before my consciousness.
Ideal objects, on the other hand, are non-spatial and omni-
temporal or a-temporal. Hussed would include in this group the
laws of logic, the truths of geometry, and universals ofallsorts.
He posits this a-temporal realm in opposition to the psychologistic
position that claims the laws of logic, geometry, etc., to be gen-
erated by the psychological operations of the human mind. For
Husser! these ideal objects are in no way mind-dependent and
would be valid even if no mind had ever existed.l1
Since the realm of the real includes both objects that are mind-
dependent and objects that are not, it is clear that Hussed does
not mean by this distinction to oppose ideas to "reality," but
rather the a-temporal or omni-temporal to the temporal. Bearing
in mind this distinction between the real and the ideal, we can
now move on to a discussion of the reductions themselves. I shall
distinguish three of them: the phenomenological, the transcen-
dental, and the eidetic.
9 Husserl, Logical Investiga#ons, II, pp. 35I-352.

10 Ibid., I, p. 226.
11 Ibid., p. 333.
INTRODUCTION 7
Husserl's use of terminology is far from consistent throughout
his work. Thus he uses the term "phenomenological reduction"
to cover a variety of things at different times, and what I shall
call the phenomenological reduction he has called by a dozen
different names. Spiegelberg even notes that " . .. Husserl him-
self never succeeded in formulating the meaning and the function
of the phenomenological reduction in any unambiguous and
definitive fashion, not even in a way that satisfied him person-
ally." 12 My discussion is, therefore, necessarily interpretive to
some degree, but it remains faithful to Husserl's most frequent
and repeated expositions of the reductions and to my knowledge
is in no way contradictory to anything he said on the subject.
In spite of the ambiguity and evolution of his thought about
the reduction, it is fair to say that Husserl's most frequent use of
the notion of the phenomenological reduction is to designate an
activity with two overriding characteristics: first, it is the re-
ducing of a real transcendent object to a real immanent object
by bracketing out all considerations of its spatial existence, that
is, the reduction of transcendent reality to phenomenal reality; 13
secondly, it is the restricting of what is acceptable as true to
what is immediately self-evident. As Husserl makes clear in The
Idea of Phenomenology, 14 this second characteristicis really simply
a variation on the first because the only objects that carry with
them self-evidence are the immanent ones. It is in virtue of the
criterion of self-evidence and clarity that transcendent objects
must be bracketed out by the first reduction. At the same time,
the phenomenological reduction is the concretion of Husserl's
attempt to eliminate metaphysical and methodological presup-
positions.
In consequence of its metaphysical neutrality, Husserl's in-
quiry was to be about consciousness and not about the nature of
the objects of consciousness. The primary question to be answered
was not so much "What do I know?" but, rather, "What is it to
12 Spiegelberg, Phenomenological Movement, II, p. 690.

13 Edmund Husser!, The Crisis 01 European Sciences and Transcendental Phenome-
nology, trans. by David Carr (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press,
1970), pp. 152-153.
14 Husser!, Idea of Phenomenology, p. 3.
8 INTRODUCTION
know?" Hence, HusserI's concern in the phenomenological re-

duction was not so much with the objects of consciousness as with
the structures of conscious experience. These latter, like the
cogito itself, become accessible through reflection.
The primary mode of consciousness within the reduction, then,
is rejlection.1 5 I am reflecting, for example, on my act of perceiving
a chair (with whose metaphysical nature I am unconcerned). My
act of perceiving as well as its intentional object remain real,
individual, and self-given, but are considered apart from any
metaphysical commitment, merely as phenomenal objects for my
reflecting consciousness. Methodologically, this entails the re-
cognition and use of only that which is self-evident, of that which
relies on the fewest possible assumptions. That my consciousness
is aware of something is one of those claims that defies falsifica-
tion; the actual status of its object is frequently open to discus-
sion. In the first reduction, then, consciousness turns in on itself
in an extension of the cogito, and assumes only phenomenal objects
as part of the structure of experience.

I t is not altogether clear from his writings whether or not
HusserI intended this as a separate reduction or merely as an
elaboration of the phenomenological reduction. In the Crisis he
refers to the two as "first-level reflection" and "second-level
reflection." 16 One statement suggests that he did indeed consider
this as a second reduction, or at least as a second aspect of the
original reduction.
Accordingly, as against the first application of the epoch6, a second is
required, or rather a conscious reshaping of the epoch6 through a reduction
to the absolute ego as the ultimately unique center of function in all
constitution. 1 ?
In other places he refers to the two simply as the transcen-

dental-phenomenological reduction. Nonetheless, although the
goals of the two are not independent, they can be considered
separately, and since nothing is lost and a degree of clarity is
gained, I shall consider this as a second reduction. By so doing I
15 Husserl, Ideas, p. 215.

16 Husserl, Crisis, pp. 171-172 and p. 182.
17 Ibid., p. 186.
INTRODUCTION 9
do not in any way intend to suggest a temporal sequence in the
reductions. Bruzina, for example, treats the eidetic first and the
phenomenological second. IS The distinctions are logical rather
than temporal. In point of fact, one can say that there is one
reduction which has three distinguishable goals.
The bulk of the discussion of the phenomenological method,
until now, has centered on the acts of consciousness with their
intentional objects and, as Spiegelberg points out, has been
negative,19 a bracketing out and a limiting. The purpose of the
transcendental reduction is more positive, the uncovering of the
subjective pole of consciousness, the transcendental ego, as the
necessary correlate of the objective pole in every conscious act.
Once again, in a continued effort to avoid any metaphysical pre-
suppositions, Husserl was careful to shun any hint of a substantial
ego here, designating the ego as the sUbjective "pole" of cogita-
tiones, one end, so to speak, of a vector. The ego's only concretion
is in its acts and objects.2o Nevertheless, it is this subjective pole
which gives unity and direction to the various acts of conscious-
ness and which designates the objects of consciousness as being
and as being-thus-and-so. Hence, for Husserl the ego was termed
"transcendental," i.e., the meaning-giver for its entire universe
of consciousness. This function of the ego in bestowing unity
and meaning on all acts and objects of consciousness, as well as on
itself, is what Husserl calls "constitution," (meant in an epistem-
ological rather than a metaphysical sense).
The method of phenomenology, rather than being adopted from
the sciences, is simply to be the uncovering of the transcendental
ego with all its correlative meanings and structures. 21 Having
rejected the assumption of a substantial interpretation of the ego,
Husserl notes that within the reduction one can distinguish two
senses of the "ego." The first is simply the sUbjective pole of
consciousness which is at least theoretically accessible to some
analysis; the other he calls the" concrete ego" 22 and includes in it
18 Ronald Bruzina, Logos and Eidos, Janua Linguarum # 93 (The Hague: Mouton,
197 0 ).
19 Spiegelberg, Phenomenological Movement, I, p. 136.
20 Edmund Husseri, The Paris Lectures, trans. by Peter Koestenbaum (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), p. 26.
21 Husseri, Cartesian Meditations, p. 30.
22 Ibid., pp. 37-38.
10 INTRODUCTION
all the activities and objects with which the ego-pole constitutes
its world of meanings. It is with a full description of this triple-
faceted concrete ego that Husserl's phenomenology is primarily
concerned; consequently he refers to phenomenology as an "ego-
logical" study or a "transcendental" investigation. It is a study of
the total structures within which consciousness constitutes mean-
ing.

To remain with the phenomenological and transcendental re-
ductions would, however, limit consciousness to individual phe-
nomena and condemn it to a form of phenomenalism. This was
far from Husserl's intention. Hence, his next step, the eidetic
reduction. With this reduction consciousness moves toward gener-
ality both of act and of object. By reducing the object, the
cogitatum, to its absolutely essential elements, consciousness in-
troduces itself into the realm of ideal objects, i.e., the realm of the
a-temporal and non-spatial. This reduction of the object is ac-
complished by varying the modes of consciousness which appre-
hend the object - e.g. between perceiving and imagining - with
special concentration on the mode of imagination since it requires
the least amount of individuation and particularization.
This eidetic reduction is to be carried out not only with regard
to the objects of consciousness (cogitata) but likewise, and more
importantly, with regard to the acts of consciousness (cogita-
tiones). By varying the objects of perception, for example, and
noting the elements of the act of perceiving which remain constant
regardless of their object, or as Husserl tells us, by merely imag-
ining ourselves as perceiving, cutting all ties with actuality and
moving by fantasy into the realm of pure possibility, one arrives
at perception, of "the universal type," the "pure eidos." 23
As the act and object of consciousness have been raised to the
level of universal type, "pure eidos," so also is the subjective pole.
The transcendental ego is no longer my de facto ego, but becomes
any possible transcendental ego of which my own is merely one
actual exemplification.
As I shall argue later one uncovers, not some mysterious uni-
23 Ibid., p. 70.
INTRODUCTION II
versal entity, but a set of minimum necessary conditions for the

possibility of conscious experience of the sort under investigation.
At its highest level of generality this would become, of course, the
necessary conditions for the possibility of any conscious expe-
rience at all. The important point to be made here is that "es-
sences" are uncovered only within the intentional structure, the
concrete ego, i.e. as elements of conscious experience. To "intuit
an essence" is to have insight into the conditions necessary, not
for the independent thing, but for its being known, experienced.
More of this later.
By the eidetic reduction, then, the triple-faceted intentional
object of reflecting consciousness, namely, the subject pole in
conscious relation to its intentional object pole, is reduced com-
pletely to the status of a universal. The reflecting consciousness
of the investigator is, of course, itself a transcendental ego - a
giver of meaning and unity to its own world of consciousness, in
this case an eidetic world. While one might want to claim that the
ego and the conscious act (reflection) of the investigator might be
included in the phenomenological and transcendental reductions,
this is not the case with the third, the eidetic, reduction. The ideal
objects which appear in this final reduction are the objects of
consciousness for this particular ego in its particular state of
reflection. This is not to say that they are dependent for their
objectivity on this particular ego; rather, it is to say that the
inquiry itself must remain actual. The ego and act of the investi-
gator cannot be universalized because they are the meaning-
givers for the entire eidetic realm. Whether the eidetic objects are
taken separately or jointly as the tri-partite cogito, they remain
objects, cogitata, for the reflecting ego. Or, to put it differently,
the transcendental ego is the residuum of every conceivable
reduction because it is itself the reducing agent. This point will
prove important in later discussions. It is one whose significance
HusserI seems to have overlooked.
By the phenomenological reduction the spatial limitations and
existential commitments of the object are dropped and the total
conscious act is made an intentional object of reflection. But the
realm remains real and carries with it temporal limitations. It is
these which the eidetic reduction eliminates, making the ideal
realm accessible to consciousness, still maintaining the metaphys-
12 INTRODUCTION
ical neutrality of the phenomenological reduction and its ac-

companying requirement of complete self-evidence. Thus, even
in the ideal realm only those things can be admitted as true which
are indubitable and which require no sort of inference; they
simply present themselves as undeniable. HusserI's "intuition of
essences" is simply the awareness of what is presented to con-
sciousness as universally valid.
Husserl admits, nevertheless, that while essences are presented
to consciousness directly and non-inferentially, these presenta-
tions have varying degrees of clarity and exactness. Hence, the
phenomenologist does not rest with the simple intuition of es-
sences, but moves on to a description of them in order to elucidate
them and to increase their clarity, ultimately with the hope of
someday achieving total clarity and exactness. It is particUlarly
in relation to this activity of description that the problem of
language will arise.
With this third reduction, then, the whole of conscious life, the
ego-pole, its acts, and its object-poles, is reduced to the a-temporal
realm of pure possibilities. What is seen to be true here must
necessarily be true of every actualizable consciousness. The ideal
realm, reached by eidetic reduction, is the source of the apodictic
certainty which is to provide the foundations for all knowledge.
For Husserl this is the genuine realization of the Cartesian goal.
PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE
Having laid out the framework of Husserl's aims and method,

I shall turn now to consider a serious problem that arises in
relation to it, namely, the problem of the status and function of
language operative in the performance of the complete phenom-
enological reduction(s).
Attempting to separate consciousness from the de facto world,
as Husserl has done, suggests a belief that language can be made
to belong to one of these realms without belonging simultaneously
to the other. Reducing the world from a transcendent to a
phenomenal status raises a question regarding the circumstances
in which language can be treated exclusively as an immanent
reality. It poses all the difficulties relating to private languages.
With the reduction to the transcendental ego in particular, there
INTRODUCTION I3
arises the question of the role of language in the transcendental
constitution of meaning and, more importantly, the question of
the constitution of language itself. The eidetic reduction brings
with it a realm of ideal objects such as meanings, possibilities,
pure essences, leaving their relationship to natural language ob-
scure at best.
In the next three chapters I shall consider language as it
affects and is affected by each of the three reductions separately.
Having pointed out the difficulties which I think Husserl's view
of language creates, I shall substitute within the Husserlian
framework an alternate, and I think more viable, view of language
and shall trace its consequences for Husserl's phenomenology.
I shall point out that while Husserl was able to eliminate cer-
tain of Descartes' presuppositions by using the reductions, he
incorporated others which not only vitiate his conclusions but
also destroy his very method. Further, I shall take the position
that the cogito must be expanded even beyond the Husserlian
cogito to include not only Medeau-Ponty's bodily cogito but
equally important, the linguistic cogito of reflection. Finally, I
shall claim that because language bridges the three dichotomies
with which Husserl concerned himself, essence-existence, tran-
scendental-transcendent, ideal-real, and participates in the latter
aspect of each pair as truly as it does in the former, it is neces-
sarily limited. Language imposes these limits on one's view of the
"possibilities," placing beyond reach the foundations on which
every possible science or metaphysics must be constructed.
CHAPTER II
LANGUAGE AND THE

PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION
Discussion of the phenomenological reduction in the intro-

ductory chapter called attention to the two characteristics which
are an outcome of its attempt to suppress metaphysical presup-
positions. First, it reduces transcendent reality to phenomenal
status, and second, it will accept nothing as true that is not self-
evident and clear.
The question to be treated in this chapter is the effect on
language of this first reduction.
Language as a possible phenomenal object of investigation
offers no particular difficulties. Like any other "object," it can be
examined even when its external relations have been bracketed
out of consideration. That is to say, it can be taken as a cogitatum
or noema. (Whether such an investigation would yield an accurate
description of the essence of language is another question. The
fact is that the investigation is at least possible.) The important
question that must be dealt with is the status of language as it
functions in the acts of consciousness, cogitationes, its noetic role
in the investigation and description of all noema, including lan-
guage itself.
While it is surely true that for Husserl the noesis (act) and
noema (object) function as aspects of the total intentionality of
consciousness, it is also true that the two can be distinguished at
least logically. Where the noesis is, for example, an act of percep-
tion, its noema will be affected by the character of that act and
will be a perceived object (rather than an imagined or remembered
one). The relationship between the two is close and important.
Nonetheless, the qualities of the two may differ. The act of per-
ception may be brief, enlightening, etc., while its object may be
LANGUAGE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION IS
"colored," "moving," etc. l These sorts of qualities are not inter-
changeable. Thus, while noesis and noema form one intentional
unit, it is possible to note different qualities in each.
It will not do to suggest, then, that whatever is true of the
noematic language, language as intentional object of investiga-
tion, is likewise true of the noetically functioning language. Their
relationship is that of language to meta-language. The language
used in the act of analysis is different from that which is the
object of analysis. Hence, what is true of the one need not always
be true of the other.
Similarly, recourse to intuition will not resolve the difficulty.
While it is true that Husserl relies heavily on the role of intuition
in the inquiry, and one might make a reasonable attempt to show
that intuition or insight is not dependent on language, HusserI
himself is quick to admit that he will not limit himself to such
occasionally possible a-linguistic modes of consciousness. He is
aiming ultimately at the description of intuitive experience.
Furthermore, he freely admits the close relationship between
language and the acts of consciousness:
Now human thinking is normally done in language, and all the activities
of reason are as good as entirely bound up with speech. 2
Two points are clear: the discussion of the problem of language

in the first reduction is noetic, i.e., it concerns the status and
function of language as it operates in consciousness; secondly,
HusserI is aware that language is not expendable in these con-
scious acts, being necessary at least in order to make description
possible.
1 Husser! uses quotation marks around noematic qualities in order to distinguish

them from the qualities of an actual physical object. "The inverted commas are
clearly significant; they express that change of signature, the corresponding radical
modification of the meaning o~ the words. The tree plain and simple, the thing in
nature, is as different as it can be from this perceived tree as such, which as a perceptual
meaning belongs to the perception, and that inseparably. The tree plain and simple
can burn away, resolve itself into its chemical elements, and so forth. But the meaning
- the meaning of this perception, something that belongs necessarily to its essence -
cannot burn away; it has no chemical elements, no forces, no real [realen] properties."
Ideas, I, § 89.
2 Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. by Dorion Cairns (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, I969), p. I9.
16 LANGUAGE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION
REDUCTION OF TRANSCENDENCIES
In order that the phenomenological reduction be a radical

elimination of metaphysical commitments, Husserl demands that
consciousness be isolated from the de facto world. At this point in
the investigation one can only be certain about consciousness,
which is itself under investigation, and the objects of conscious-
ness reduced now to phenomenal status. All other realities must
be bracketed out temporarily and the bridges to them burned, to
be rebuilt only later on absolutely certain foundations.
Thus, in the Cartesian Meditations, he says,
Along with other Egos, naturally, I lose all the formations pertaining to
sociality and culture. In short, not just corporeal Nature but the whole
concrete surrounding life-world is for me, from now on, only a phenomenon
of being, instead of something that is. 3
The position is in keeping with the first characteristic of the

reduction. What are its implications for a functioning language?
While it may be possible to consider a language apart from its
connections with "sociality and culture," i.e. as a phenomenal
object, is it possible to use such a language in the description of
phenomena and still preserve the qualities of certainty and
universal validity in the results one obtains? I maintain that it is
not. Within the reduction there is no reliable criterion for con-
sistency in the use of the language - an objection raised by
Wittgenstein against private languages. 4
In fairness to Husserl it must be said that his writings show no
inclination to defend any notion of a private language. Neverthe-
less, his phenomenological reduction leaves behind it an isolated
ego, a series of "private" intentional objects, and a language that
has been stripped of all social context. Thus, the language of the
reduction is plagued by all the problems suggested by Wittgen-
stein in relation to private languages.
8 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 19.

4 One might argue that the notion of "privacy" which Wittgenstein had in mind
is a "mundane concept" and has no place in discussions about the content of "pure
reduced consciousness." But the crucial point here is consistency. Whether in the
mundane or in the phenomenologically reduced realm, if one hopes to achieve any
degree of certainty one needs some criterion for consistency in the investigation.
Where the social context of language has been bracketed out of consideration, this
criterion cannot be provided - a point which I shall elaborate in the subsequent
discussions.
LANGUAGE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION 17
In examining the problem of language as it operates within the
first reduction, I shall consider four related issues. First I shall
deal with the notion of "privacy," distinguishing between what
I call "privacy of ownership" and "privacy of inaccessibility";
secondly, I shall apply the notion of "privacy" to language;
thirdly, I shall consider the problem of maintaining consistency
in a private language; and lastly, I shall apply the conclusions
derived from the preceding discussions to language as it operates
within the reduction, showing that such a language cannot be
private if it is to be assured of consistency and that it, therefore,
cannot be subjected to the radical bracketing of the first reduc-
tion.
Privacy
To avoid clouding the issue, discussions of privacy ought to
distinguish between what I would call "privacy of ownership"
and "privacy of inaccessibility."
In the first case one speaks of such things as "private property,"
meaning that it belongs to one person or group and is not part of
what may freely be claimed by the general public. The property
can be sold to another "private" owner or turned over to public use,
but it remains the same piece of property. The relationship be-
tween owner and property is a contingent one.
According to Don Locke, such privacy may also be "logical,"
where it is part of the concept of the thing that it belong to this
particular person. Talk of transferring ownership in these cases
would be conceptually impossible, he says, for these sorts of
things are "individuated by reference to the person who owns
them." 5 He would include in this category such things as a
breath, a salute, a pain.
The difficulty with such a classification is that normally one
does not speak of "owning" such things at all. One doesn't "own"
his pains and salutes, one experiences them, performs them, etc.
One speaks of owning objects which are separate from oneself and
which always remain candidates for new ownership. In a word,
ownership is not a logical relationship at all, but a contingent
one; likewise, the privacy of ownership is contingent rather than
logical.
5 Don Locke, Myself and Others, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I968), p. 6.
This misconception about logically private ownership seems to

be at the bottom of much of the difficulty relating to discussions
of "private objects." Pains and salutes are sometimes spoken of
as if they were objects which can be possessed, with the slight
variation that the possession is seen as logically private. And
since these "objects" cannot be owned by anyone else, they are
thought to present a peculiar epistemological problem on the
assumption that being able to know them would involve being
able to possess them in some sense. The grammar is undoubtedly
misleading; because they are expressed in noun form, they are
imagined as having substantive referents which are "ownable" in
some fashion. In point of fact, they are activities or experiences,
and the real questions relating to them are not of ownership but
of accessibility. Furthermore, while ownership is not a necessary
condition for knowledge, accessibility is. I shall return to this
point later.
Privacy of inaccessibility 6 might be divided into cases of con-
tingent inaccessibility and of logical inaccessibility. The first case
would include all objects, experiences, etc., which happen to be
inaccessible to all but one person, but which would not undergo
essential changes if made accessible to others. This might include
objects that are privately owned, like the contents of one's locked
safe or one's diary. But it can also cover activities and experiences
for which there is no question of ownership. While it would be
difficult to make one's breathing inaccessible in any sense, one's
saluting might for some strange reason be temporarily hidden.
The interesting case arises with such things as pains. I would
contend that while these may be made contingently inaccessible
to others, they are never logically inaccessible.
The privacy of logical inaccessibility would include all those
things, activities, experiences whose very concept requires that
they remain inaccessible to all but one person. What can be in-
cluded in such a classification? Surely nothing that is separable
from one's body can be logically inaccessible to others. Neither
can any of one's bodily activities. The real question arises in
relation to what are usually termed "conscious processes." If
these are to be considered private in terms of logical inacces-
6 By "inaccessible" I mean "not able to be known, or to be understood, or to be
used by others."
LANGUAGE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION I9
sibility, it must involve a contradiction to say that they can be
made accessible to anyone else. But pain can be made accessible
to others through behavior or description. (Once again, pain is
not an object to be made visible, but rather a way of experiencing
one's body.) Sensations in general, as well as perceptions, can be
made accessible in this same way. What of after-images, dreams,
abstract thoughts, that aren't generally em-bodied in behavior?
They too remain accessible through description; if they were
logically inaccessible, it would involve a contradiction for the
physicalist to suggest that these will one day be accessible through
the laying open of the electro-chemical functions of the brain.
This claim by the physicalist may indeed be a difficult one to
prove, and one may want to disagree with it for the present. But
his claim, while it may eventually be shown on empirical grounds
to be false, does not involve a conceptual impossibility, and so
cannot be decided on purely logical grounds. 7
What sort of privacy can be attributed to language? Surely not
privacy of ownership; one doesn't "own" languages, one uses
them, constructs them, understands them. It is a question of the
privacy of inaccessibility. I shall next consider the privacy of
language in relation to both contingent and logical inaccessibility.
Private Languages
Discussions of the private language problem usually deal with
one or more of the following possibilities:
(i) a language of contingently private objects or experience; i.e.
a language which refers to objects or experience to which only
the speaker has actual access, but which are not logically in-
accessible to others;
(ii) a language referring to logically inaccessible objects or ex-
perience;
(iii) a contingently private language; i.e. one which is actually
known only to the speaker, but which is not logically inacces-
sible to others;
(iv) a logically private language; i.e. one which is logically in-
accessible to any other speaker/hearer.
The point has already been made that in each case the privacy
7 The fact that the terms "thought" and "brain function" have two different
senses does not logically entail that they have two different 'l'e/e'l'ences.
of the language itself is a privacy of inaccessibility. With regard

to the "objects" referred to in the first two cases, the contingently
private objects may be so classified because of ownership or
because of inaccessibility; logically private objects may be private
only be way of inaccessibility and not by ownership.
(i) The first case, then, includes two possibilities: a language
referring to objects which are contingently private by way of
ownership, and one referring to objects which are contingently
private by way of inaccessibility. There is no reason to suppose
that the language used by a person to describe the objects he
owns would be in any sense inaccessible to other people, unless, of
course, he creates a special language to refer to them. That possi-
bility is covered by the third case, a contingently private lan-
guage.
However, a language referring to objects or experiences which
are private because contingently inaccessible is another question.
Objects which are contingently inaccessible may include some
objects which are privately owned (e.g., one's diary which one
makes inaccessible by locking it away). But a more interesting
group is also included; namely, one's pains, sensations, after-
images, thoughts, and the like. It has already been noted that
such "inner" processes cannot be held to be logically inaccessible
because it does not involve conceptual nonsense to speak of
people "knowing my thoughts," "understanding my sensations,"
or "using my pains" (e.g., in the diagnosis of an illness). To say
that they can be made accessible, through description and be-
havior, is to say that they are not logically inaccessible.
To the objection that one's own experience of these processes
can never be had by anyone else, I would reply that one's own
experience of anything, "inner" or "outer" can never be had by
anyone else. Again, making it accessible does not imply any
transfer of ownership; ownership is not in question here at all. The
totality of one's experience is from one's unique point of view.
But that sort of objection doesn't touch the problem unless the
having of someone else's experience is made a condition for
knowing anything about it. And if that were the case, then
communication would be impossible since each of us would live
in the inaccessible realm of his own experience.
A language which refers to objects that can be made accessible
to other people has weak claim, if any, to the title "private

language." Some of the referents of the language may be ex-
perienced differently by the speaker and hearer, but it is quite
possible that all or many of the referents of ordinary language are
experienced somewhat differently by each user of the language.
That does not do anything to give the language a private status.
(ii) The second case is that of a language which refers to
logically private objects or experiences. It is difficult to conceive
of an experience which one human being is capable of having and
which would remain logically inaccessible to others. But allowing
for the possibility that there might be such an experience, or an
object such that one's experience of it would be logically private,
what can be said about the language which would be used to refer
to these objects or experiences?
First of all, it is not possible to construct a language in which
all the words designate private objects or experiences. 8 In order
to have a language of any sort, it must offer at least the possibility
of communication. This is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition
for a language. Such a stipulation might seem to make the very
notion of "private language" contradictory, but allowing "private
language" the limits of conceivability, let us assume that the
communication could be said to be with oneself as the speaker/
hearer. A language of orders, for example, might make some sense
in such a context.
But if the language were exclusively of private objects and ex-
periences, say S, E, and P, the situation becomes more problem-
atic. In order that one be able to communicate something in this
language there would have to be some additions, otherwise the
only thing one could say would be "S," "E," "P." Without
reference to publicly observable phenomena, these three desig-
nators cannot carry any meaning. By themselves they don't
carry any existential or experiential status. If by "S" what one
really means is, "I am now experiencing S," one has tacitly
introduced a public metalanguage or at least the concepts of
publicly observable phenomena. How could one possibly know
8 This is not to say that one can't have a language which consists of only one part
of speech. Wittgenstein, for example, constructs one exclusively from orders. (Philo-
sophical Investigations, trans. by G. E. M. Anscombe, 3rd ed., New York: Macmillan
Company, 195B, p. lB.)
that that is what one means unless he has a concept of "I" as

distinguished from "not-I," of "now" rather than "before" or
"later" and "experiencing" as opposed to "not-experiencing?" In
other words, there is a second language whose words I try to
refrain from pronouncing but whose meanings I am tacitly at-
taching to my private experiences. In such a case my language is
not, strictly speaking, one which refers exclusively to private
objects. To the very extent that these other concepts function in
my language, that language is not private.
Furthermore, this list of private objects contains no con-
nectives. Without them, it is difficult to see in what sense the
words can be called a language. Even a formally constructed
system requires connectives and negation. If these are added, the
language ceases to be private. Neither connectives nor negation
can refer to private objects (since they don't refer to objects at
all), and what sorts of reasons could be given to show their
meanings logically inaccessible to others?
Hence, a language of logically private objects is one in which
some words designate objects which are claimed as inaccessible to
others. The rest of the language is simply ordinary language
tacitly incorporated, or new terms created by the speaker, but
referring to publicly observable phenomena or carrying meanings
which could be publicly understood if the grammar of the new
language were explicated by its speaker.
In conclusion, it seems doubtful that a case can be made for the
existence of anything like logically private objects or experience;
even if such things were granted hypothetical existence, a lan-
guage used to refer to them would not be a logically private
language.
(iii) Also under consideration in some discussions of private
languages, is one that happens to be actually private, i.e. known
only to the speaker, but is not logically private. In other words, if
its vocabulary and grammar were publicized, it would be com-
prehensible.
This case presents no particular difficulties. It is on this basis
that most codes are formulated, whether for an individual's diary
or a military operation. The connection with public language is
through the metalanguage in which the code is constructed. The
meanings in this private code language are parasitic on the
metalanguage, ordinary language, and are therefore translatable

and understandable in terms of that public metalanguage. Lan-
guages such as these are easily constructed and are not private in
any significant way.
(iv) In the final case, the language in question is one which is
logically inaccessible to anyone other than the speaker. The
important thing to decide here is what sorts of characteristics
could make a language logically inaccessible to anyone else. One
could hardly claim that privacy hinges on syntactical character-
istics of the language. These, when set forth and explained, could
not be said to be logically inaccessible to anyone.
The significant characteristics must be semantic. The problem
must lie in the relationship between the words and their referents
or between the words and their meanings - or to put it in the
Fregean framework, the problem lies somewhere in the relation
between the terms and their references or between the terms
and their senses.
The first possibility, the relation between terms and references,
suggests the problem of logically private objects. (A logically
private language would hardly deal with actually, but not logi-
cally, private objects.) If one were to grant some sort of reality
to logically private objects, could other people understand my
words without having direct access to my objects or experiences?
Or, to keep it in the Fregean model, if the relationship between
my terms and their references were not accessible to someone else,
would the relationship between my terms and their sense neces-
sarily be inaccessible? To have "access to the sense of a term"
certainly does not always mean the same as to have "access to the
object which it names" - many words simply don't name objects,
and that doesn't affect their sense or one's access to it. Of the
many words which do designate objects, there are some whose
sense I understand although I have no direct access to their
references, e.g. the nucleus of an atom, a chromosome, V-I, etc.
I understand the sense of the words because I understand the
context they suggest, the function the referent is supposed to
fulfil, the results I can expect if the referent is present, etc. Thus,
there is no necessary connection between understanding the sense
of terms and having direct access to their references. Whether or
not the references of a language are accessible to one, there is no
way to make their sense logically inaccessible. The sense of words

is a function of their conventional role in a language; if the rules
of the game, the grammar of the language, are made explicit,
the sense of the words is made accessible. I conclude from this
that it is not possible to construct a language whose meaning is
logically inaccessible to anyone.
Consistency
Both a logically private language and a private language dealing
with logically private objects have been shown to be unactualiz-
able. But languages which are contingently private or happen to
deal with contingently private objects can be constructed without
much difficulty.
Viewing the construction of such a language first on an analogy
with the construction of any formal system; it becomes clear that
two things are necessary: a set of axioms (definitions) and a set
of transformation rules (a grammar by which the defined words
are to be conjoined, disjoined, negated, etc.). As with any formally
constructed system, these axioms and transformation rules are
necessarily in a metalanguage (before they are established, the
language itself is non-existent). This metalanguage for the private
language is ordinary public language, and thus the private lan-
guage cannot be considered private in any radical sense, for it is
dependent for its structure and meaning on a public language. It
is by reference to the axiom/definitions and transformation/
grammar rules that the speaker can check on the consistency
with which he is using his private language. That is, his check for
consistency is ultimately in a public language.
On the other hand, viewing a private language constructed on
a model that is not analogous to a formal system - constructed
perhaps on some intuitive basis without any recourse to a public
metalanguage - the problem of consistency is not so easily solved.
The defender of private languages would most probably put for-
ward memory, the memory of the speaker of that private language,
as the criterion for judging consistency in the use of the language.
When, in response to this, opponents of private language ob-
ject to the use of the speaker's memory here, they are not ex-
pressing a universal skepticism with regard to the general reli-
ability of memory. They merely point out that while memory is
often quite accurate, it is possible for it to be mistaken. In the
private language structure there is no way to test the memory
itself, there is no possibility of distinguishing between a correct
memory and an incorrect one. As Norman Malcolm put it,
memory becomes "a court from which there is no appeal." 9
In verifying an "inner experience" and the appropriateness of
applying a given term to it, one must consider the evidence with
which memory has to deal. In the framework of a private lan-
guage, one has at hand a given experience and the privately
associated term as well as a memory of another, previous and now
absent, experience and its privately associated term. That pre-
vious experience itself is no longer accessible to me except by
memory.
In the case of objects referred to by a public language this need
not be true. Through writing, tapes, films, etc., previous publicly
observable phenomena and their publicly associated terms can be
made present again for the purpose of verifying or disverifying
the memory of usage. Whether or not such checks are frequently
used is not the issue; the significant thing is that for a public
language they are available while for a private language they are
ruled out. Even in establishing the consistency of a public lan-
guage, memory surely plays a part, but it is not one isolated
memory whose reliability cannot itself be tested.
This might look as if there is merely a question of the amount
of evidence available - something in keeping with the suggestion
that "forty-thousand Frenchmen can't be wrong," whatever
merits that adage might have. But the question is not how much
evidence is available, setting some arbitrary minimum as the
condition of possibility. Rather, the point of contention is the
possibility of establishing consistency. In the case of a private
language, the only consistency that can be established is that
between the current situation and the memory of a previous one.
Both are present and need simply to be "compared." What
cannot conceivably be determined is the relationship between
that memory and the previous situation itself which it claims to
represent. Thus the consistency established is not between what
I am now doing and what I have done in the past, but merely
9 Norman Malcolm, Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., Ig63), p. IOO.
between what I am now doing and what I am now remembering.

The consistency is incapable of certifying itself beyond the pre-
sent moment, and thus is unable to guarantee anything with
regard to a speaker's use of a language other than for a moment
at a time.
While any given language may be used inconsistently at times
without destroying its status as a language, in a situation where
there is no conceivable way to test the consistency or inconsis-
tency with which a language is being used, it ceases to function as
a language.
Language of the Reduction

While one may agree that Husserl did not intend to establish
a private language as such, nevertheless, the language within the
first reduction has all the isolated, non-social characteristics of a
private language. In order to evaluate that claim, it will be helpful
to see if Husserl's language corresponds with anyone of the four
types generally discussed as private languages.
(i) A language referring to actually private but not logically private
experience. This is an accurate description of the language Husserl
has in mind. The intentional objects are immanent and are the
objects of consciousness for one isolated ego ;i.e. they are private,
but only contingently so. They will be shown to be exemplifica-
tions of ideal objects by the eidetic reduction and as such are
objects which could be present to any actualizable consciousness.
Their ideally universal accessibility prevents them from being
logically private objects.
(ii) A language referring to logically private experience. This is
not descriptive of Husserlian language precisely in virtue of the
possibility of the eidetic reduction.
(iii) A language which is actually known only to one speaker but is
not logically inaccessible to others. This, like the first, describes the
language of the reduction. While there are no others for whom the
language can be made accessible, that is a quality of the reduction
and not of the language itself. The language is accidentally pri-
vate.
(iv) A logically private language which is logically inaccessible to
any other speaker/hearer. There is no reason to suppose that
Husserl's language is a logically private one; on the contrary, the
descriptions of phenomena, made after the third reduction are
intended to clarify the essence of phenomena for any pos3ible
consciousness.
The language after the first reduction coincides, then, with the
first and third cases of private language and involves no notion
oflogical privacy, either of objects or oflanguage itself. A language
describing contingently private objects and one that is itself
contingently private present no particular difficulties with regard
to actualizability, as already noted. They do, however, raise two
other questions: the degree of their "privacy" and their ultimate
utilizability.
When seen as a language for dealing with contingently private
objects or experiences, the language of the reduction faces all the
difficulties already pointed out with regard to privacy. The lan-
guage requires connectives, terms of negation, etc., which cor-
respond in no way with private experience or objects. Hence, the
language is, at best, a hybrid of public and private terminology.
This participation in public ordinary language reinserts it into
a social context and vitiates the radical character of the first
reduction - at least insofar as HusserI had envisioned it.
If, on the other hand, the idea is extended to the third case of a
contingently private language, where the entire language happens
to be private (i.e., all its connectives, negations, etc., are not
taken from a public language but are created by the isolated
speaker himself), the privacy is established and the reduction not
violated. But the question becomes one of utilizability, and raises
all the difficulties of not being able to establish its consistency in
use. In the first case, it remained a language at the expense of its
privacy; and in this case, it remains private at the expense of its
character as a usable language.
The problem of consistency is further complicated in considering
the language of the reduction by the fact that memory itself is
under investigation (as is the whole of consciousness), and cannot,
therefore, be used as the only reliable measure of past events
until it has itself been shown to be reliable. To presuppose from
the start that memory is an infallible guide to the past is to beg
the question. In this context, the use of a contingently private
language (the third case) would defeat the very purpose of the
investigation either by presupposing, in part, the nature of
consciousness, at least as it operates in remembering, or by calling

into question the certainty and universality of its descriptions by
using a language whose consistency is untestable.
In conclusion, Hussed's language after the first reduction is
either not radically private or it is not usable as a language for the
universally valid descriptions he intends to give.
AN UNAMBIGUOUS LANGUAGE10
Early in this chapter it was noted that Hussed did, in fact,

intend that language would be operant within the reduction. He
even suggested that it would probably be a derivative of ordinary
language, but he was concerned that the language be cleansed of
its ambiguity:
Owing to the instability and ambiguity of common language and its
much too great complacency about completeness of expression, we require,
even where we use its means of expression, a new legitimation of signifi-
cations by orienting them according to accrued insights, and a fixing of
words as expressing the significations thus legitimated. l1
Hussed's requirement that there be an unambiguous and stable

language is in keeping with the characteristics of the phenomen-
ological reduction. The reduction, first of all, brackets out all
transcendent reality, and it would be important to have a lan-
guage which reflects this. Thus, the referents of the language
must be exclusively immanent; that is, ordinary language must
be made unambiguously non-commital on metaphysical questions.
In a few cases Hussed deliberately substitutes one word for
another to make the separation clear, as in the case where
"causality" is replaced by "motivation"; the former is "related
to the transcendent sphere of reality" while the latter is purely
"phenomenological." 12 In other cases no substitutions are made,
but a word of caution is offered:
10 The German word is eindeutig. Technically, it translates ordinarily as "clear,

plain, unequivocal" and one might argue that Husser! was constructing a clear rather
than a univocal language. However, Husser! generally used klar for "clear" and
deutlick for "distinct." Translators seem to agree that his use of eindeutig is stronger
than either of these. W. R. Boyce Gibson (Ideas) translates it as "unambiguous";
David Carr (Crisis) uses "univocal."
11 Husseri, Cartesian Meditations, pp. 13-:£4.
12 Husserl, Ideas, pp. 148-:£49.
To be sure, words taken from the sphere of the natural world, such as
"component" and "stratum," are dangerous, and the necessary trans-
formation of their sense must therefore be noticed. ls
This sort of "purification" of language offers no particular

difficulties at first glance. It merely stipulates that words that
are used in ordinary language to refer to transcendent objects will,
in the reduction, be considered only in relation to immanent
intentional objects.
But it is important to note that while language can be made to
have only immanent objects as its referents, nevertheless the use
of that language carries with it unavoidable metaphysical com-
mitments. The ability to establish the consistency of use of that
language requires the existence of something transcendent to
consciousness. It is not that the words of the language must give
any particular metaphysical status to their referents. Rather, the
consistent use of the whole language-game establishes a social
context, i.e. actually existing other speakers, which can serve for
the criterion of that consistency. A question that remains for
later consideration is whether this commitment, through language
to an existing community of speakers is a presupposition of the
sort that Husserl wanted to eliminate or whether it is in reality
a part of the self-evident that must be accepted and used, and
which cannot be touched by any sort of reduction.
Other comments by Husserl make it clear that in addition to
metaphysical neutrality there is a further transformation of
language intended, and this in keeping with the second character-
istic of the phenomenological reduction: only those things will be
accepted as true which are self-evidently clear. Once something is
intuited as self-given, Husserl notes that it must be "fixated"
either "conceptually or terminologically." That is to say, the
language must grasp in all its clarity and express univocally the
insight or intuition apprehended. The words must be absolutely
congruent with the intuition because they will be used to replace
the latter when it is no longer present, and they must be capable
of doing so adequately:
Everything indeed is not done when we have settled how the word is to
be applied so to fit faithfully the intuitively apprehended essence, even
supposing that in regard to this intuitive apprehension everything is
18 Husserl, Crisis, p. 174.
exactly as it should be. Science is possible only when the results of thought
can be preserved in the form of knowledge and remain available for
further thinking as a system of propositions distinctly stated in accordance
with logical requirements but lacking the clear support of presentations,
and so, understood without insight, or else actualized after the manner of
a judgment.14
Language, then, is to playa crucial role in re-presenting essences

in the absence of intuition. It is important for Husserl that it
acquire the unambiguous clarity that the intuited essences them-
selves possess. That this is so he makes clear, but how it is accomp-
lished is much less obvious. He says,
The words we use may be derived from common speech, they may be
ambiguous, and in respect of their shifting sense, also vague. In so far as
in the way of actual expression they are "congruent" with the intuitively-
given data, they take on a definite meaning as their hie et nunc actual and
clear meaning; and from this point they can be rendered scientifically
determinate.1 5
It is the notion of words being" 'congruent' with the intui-

tively-given data" that is problematic. Two different interpreta-
tations could be offered.
On the one hand it is possible that Husserl has been influenced
by the school of thought which Chomsky calls "Cartesian lin-
guistics." One position frequently held by this group was that
language is the best mirror of the patterns of thought, that
"linguistic and mental processes are virtually identical." 16
On the other hand, Husserl may not have intended the con-
gruence to be found in the situation but rather to be stipulated by
the ego. While there are numerous statements that could be
quoted in support of an active ego stipulating congruence, there
are others which attribute to the language itself a certain capacity
to adapt itself to intuitive data.17
His position is ambivalent and there are problems associated
with either of these possible views.
First, if there is some sort of essential relationship between
language and intuited data, if the linguistic and mental processes
are virtually identical, it becomes difficult to explain why certain
14 HusserI, Ideas, pp. 175-176.

15 Ibid., p. 175.
16 Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics, (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 31.
17 Both positions can be substantiated in HusserI's Ideas, p. 176.
LANGUAGE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION 3I
languages lack words for the intuited data that have been crys-
talized in other languages. Translators frequently run up against
this problem. Either the intuited data is somehow different for
varying language groups - a consequence which Husser! would
never accept - or there is no reason to suppose any necessary
connection between language and intuited data.
In the second case, if Husser! is suggesting that the congruence
be established by stipulation, several problems arise:
(i) Metalanguage. In order to stipulate that a given word or
group of words is congruent with a given piece of intuited data, one
needs to use a metalanguage. Without the use of such a metalan-
guage it would be impossible to distinguish a case of congruence
from a case of cancelling non-congruent meanings. The meta-
language itself would not necessarily be completely univocal, but
it would have to be univocal in its use of the terms which would
stipulate the words in the language itself as congruent, not-
congruent, etc. If the metalanguage were ambiguous at these
points, its whole function of stipulation would be affected and
likewise the status of the language as congruent. In order to avoid
ambiguity in the crucial parts of the metalanguage, a meta-
metalanguage would have to stipUlate its univocal terms. This
sort of process for establishing univocality easily leads to an
infinite series. That would involve not merely an inconvenience,
but more importantly, the inability ever to decide definitely
that univocality had been established, for it would be neces-
sary to complete the series before any univocality could be
justified.
(ii) Syncategorematic Expressions. Husserl is not at all specific
about which words, if not all, must be made univocal. Actually,
in the comments he makes on the subject it often seems that he
has in mind primarily the naming function of the language.
Nevertheless, verbs, adjectives and adverbs could be transformed,
along with nouns, from an ambiguous to a univocal status. The
difficulty arises with prepositions, conjunctions and certain
pronouns. These are, with a few exceptions, syncategorematic
terms, whose meaning is related not to any intuitive data but to
the rest of the words that form their context. It is difficult to see
in what way these terms could be made univocal. The only
possible way of accomplishing this would be to create an infinite
language, eliminating all syncategorematic terms and stipulating

every meaning in relation to a given intuition. While such a
suggestion seems impractical, Hussed's talk of the "requirement
that the same words and propositions shall be unambiguously
correlated with certain essences that can be intuitively appre-
hended and constitute their completed 'meaning'" 18 suggests
that he is concerned with the univocality of more than isolated
nouns. It is the description of the essence itself which must be
eindeutig, not merely the name by which it is called.
(iii) I nlinite Language. The reduction of language to univocal
meanings would involve both the denotations and the connota-
tions of terms and would lead unavoidably to a language of
infinite terms actually in use and not just theoretically possible.
The construction of an infinite language raises a problem dealt
with earlier: that of consistency. However, it alters the problem
in one significant respect. Where every word has a stipulated
univocal meaning, the reliability of one's isolated memory is
considerably lessened. What seemed to be a purely theoretical
uncertainty about relying on one's own memory now becomes a
practical reality.
Hussed himself was concerned about establishing consistency
of usage, but seems not to have been aware of the difficulties
involved:
... , it is a constant necessity in face of the existing ambiguities of
ordinary speech, to be cautious and frequently test whether a word fixed
for use in a previous context may be employed in some new context in a
sense which is really the same as before. 19
The demand that the language be univocal strengthens the
argument against any possibility of its being a private language.
In connection with the establishment of congruence, Hussed
remarks,
It requires, of course, special provisions, both subjective and objective,
for setting up at will (and on an intersubjective basis) the appropriate
grounds and the actual insight. 20
His suggestion that there is an intersubjectivity in operation
poses a question about how seriously Hussed took the phenom-
18 HusserI, Ideas, p. 176.

18 Ibid., pp. 175-I76.
20 Ibid., p. 176.
enological reduction to be a bracketing out of all social context.
Clearly he saw the importance of intersubjectivity; what is not
so clear is how he intended to include it in the reduction without
destroying either the reduction or the genuineness of the inter-
sUbjectivity. In his later writings he attempted to include a kind
of intersubjectivity within the reduced world through the Lebens-
welt, all of the surrounding everyday world. But even that was
included only as content of consciousness, bearing like everything
else, only phenomenal status. The sort of intersubjectivity intro-
duced with the Lebenswelt in no way solves the problem of consis-
tency, for the "others" are merely contents of my consciousness
and have no transcendence. To rely on them as a criterion of con-
sistency is "to buy several copies of the morning paper to assure
oneself that what it said was true." 21
One might wonder if HusserI supposed that the univocal lan-
guage would be set up on an intersubjective basis before the
reduction and then simply carried into the reduction by the
reflecting consciousness. This, however, would be in direct con-
flict with his statement quoted earlier that requires "a new legiti-
mation of significations by orienting them according to accrued
insights, and a fixing of words as expressing the significations
thus legitimated." The necessary insights are accrued after the
reduction, not before it.
The construction of an infinite language in order to eliminate
ambiguity merely intensifies the problems of consistent usage.
(iv) Vagueness. A final difficulty posed by HusserI's demand for
a univocal language is that the intuitions themselves are never
totally distinct in all their detail. Even he admits that absolute
clarity and distinctness are ideals not likely to be attained. In
consequence, each intuited essence includes an element of vague-
ness which can only be reflected accurately by correspondingly
vague or ambiguous language. This aspect of the complete essence
is as important to a faithful description of it as are the clear and
distinct elements. In addition, then, to the infinite language of
univocal terms, one would need a series of ambiguous words,
phrases, and propositions. It is not clear how the two could ever
be distinguished or what sort of relationship could be established
21 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 265.

between them. If the univocal terms and the ambiguous terms are
indistinguishable, the very purpose for which univocality was
established is defeated.
CONCLUSION
Husserl's description of the phenomenological reduction makes

it clear that it was intended to eliminate all existential commit-
ments, and to admit only that which is absolutely certain; at the
same time he allowed somehow for the operation of language
within the reduction. If all existential commitments are genuinely
cut, one is left with a private language and is unable to acquire
any assurance of its consistent use at different times. Such a
situation would make it impossible to know for certain whether or
not one's descriptions were universally valid. Language must
carry with it a context of existing intersubjectivity if its usage is
to be testable for consistency. Such a context, of course, neces-
sitates an existential commitment and thus vitiates the radical
nature of the first reduction.
Similarly, if only the absolutely certain is to be admitted, and
an unambiguous language is needed to record the intuitions of
that certainty, one is faced with an infinite language or an infinite
series of stipulatory metalanguages and the problem of consistent
usage is further compounded. Husserl's discussion of univocal
language and its importance takes its origin, I think, from his
concern with its function in logic and in science (particularly
geometry). He supposes, somehow, that what is an ideal for
them must likewise be an ideal for the science of essential being.
What he overlooks is that the realms of both logic and geometry
are limited and definable. They are formal systems that do not
attempt descriptions of the essences of all possible being, as does
his phenomenology.
A clarified language is a possibility; a univocal one is neither
practically useful, nor even desirable.
CHAPTER III
THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION

AND LANGUAGE
Let us turn now to HusserI's second, or "transcendental,"

reduction, and begin by clarifying the meaning of the transcen~
dental ego which the reduction uncovers. We shall then be in a
better position to turn to the key function of that ego, meaning-
constitution, and to examine the constitution both of meaningful
objects and of language. It will become apparent, I think, that a
more careful account of the genetic constitution of language
leads one directly to a context of intersubjectivity.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL EGO
Having placed in suspension the existential status of the ob-

jective pole of consciousness by means of the first reduction,
Husserl now moves to an elucidation of the subjective pole of
conscious acts. By means of a second reduction he uncovers what
he terms the "transcendental ego."
Under this term "transcendental" Husserl encompasses a
number of ideas, but the dominant sense emerges from comparison
with several of the other qualifiers he uses for the ego, as well as
from its contrast with the term "transcendent." He speaks, for
example, of the "factical" or "empirical" or "psychological" ego.
This is the ego in ordinary commerce with its concretely existing
universe. It is the ego of the everyday world upon which one turns
his eye in the attitude of natural reflection. This aspect of the
ego,! with its commitment to the factually existing worId is
bracketed out of consideration by the first reduction.
HusserI also speaks of the "pure" ego. This is the residuum
1 It need hardly be said that one is not dealing here with different egos, but with
differing aspects or functional operations of the same conscious ego.
36 LANGUAGE AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION
attained when the empirical ego has been bracketed out, when all
transcendent aspects have been eliminated from the ego:
... the empirical ego is as much a case of transcendence as the physical
thing. If the elimination of such transcendence, and the reduction to pure
phenomenological data, leaves us with no residual pure ego, there can be
no real (adequate) self-evidence attaching to the 'I am.' But if th~re is
really such an adequate self-evidence - who indeed could deny it? - how
can we a void assuming a pure ego? 2
This "pure" ego may be individual, before the third reduction

or eidetic, after it; it is "pure" in relation to the transcendent,
not in regard to its individuality. This is generally true of HusserI's
use of the term "pure," in connection with consciousness, ex-
perience, or the ego:
Die Reinheit im Sinne der Phanomenologie Husserls heisst vomehmlich
so viel wie: strenge Immanenz. 3
Hussed first mentions "pure" in Logical I nvestigations4 as

synonymous with "formal," as opposed to "material." It seems
clear that he means by it "the formal structures which govern the
possible actualization of ... ," "the ideal (a-temporal) conditions
governing the possibility of ... " All of this is simply the other
side of "lacking empirical status," or "without existential com-
mitment."
Finally, there is for Hussed the operations aspect of the pure
ego, the transcendental ego, so called to contrast it with its
transcendent world:
Just as the reduced Ego is not a piece of the world, i.e. its being is
absolute, not dependent on the known world for its being, while the world
as known has only relative being, dependent as it is on consciousness for
its meaning as "existing"; so, conversely, neither the world nor any
worldly object is a piece of my Ego, to be found in my conscious life as a
really inherent part of it, .,. This "transcendence" is part of the intrinsic
sense of anything wordly, despite the fact that anything wordly necessarily
acquires all the sense determining it, along with its existential status,
exclusively from my experiencing ... by way of contrast, the Ego himself,
who bears within him the world as an accepted sense and who, in tum, is
2 Husser!, Logical Investigations, II, p. 544.

a Jan M. Broekman, Phitnomenologie und Egologie, Phaenomenologica, # 12 (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), p. 188.
4 Husser!, Logical Investigations, I, p. 42.
LANGUAGE AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION 37
necessarily presupposed by this sense, is legitimately called transcenden-
tal, ... 5
The transcendental ego, then, is primarily the function of the

"reduced" consciousness that gives meaning to the whole universe
of objects of consciousness. "Existence" is among the meanings
that can be posited by the transcendental ego for a given object,
so the position of the Ego is "absolute" even with regard to being:
... - this world, with all its Objects, I said, derives its whole sense and
its existential status, which it has for me, from me myself, trom me as the
transcendental Ego, the Ego who comes to the fore only with the trans-
cendental-phenomenological epoche. 6
This absolute position of the transcendental Ego with regard to

being is problematic. Where both existence and non-existence are
"meanings" deriving from the transcendental Ego, the distinction
between the denotative and designative uses of language 7 collapses
and one remains locked within the transcendental realm. It will
become apparent as the investigation progresses that the constitu-
tion and use of language demands otherwise.
Each of the foregoing aspects and functions of the ego can be
universalized with the eidetic reduction. Nonetheless, each is
likewise instantiated in every given individual ego. Thus, the
term "transcendental" when applied to the ego does not auto-
matically mean that one is dealing with a universal ego. While
Husserl is interested in dealing with the essence of consciousness,
and will consequently move rapidly to the level of the eidos, the
term "transcendental" is not synonymous with the term "uni-
versal" :
... as an Ego in the natural attitude, I am likewise and at all times a
transcendental Ego, but '" I know about this only by executing phe-
nomenological reduction. 8
The investigating ego is, then, in its own right, a transcendental

ego or meaning-giver.

6 Ibid.
7 By "denotative" use of language I mean a use which means to give to the named
object the status "existing really"; by "designation" I mean a use of language which
implies no such status for the named object.
S Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 26.
INTENTION ALITY AND CONSTITUTION
The transcendental function of the ego, as bestower of meaning

on all the transcendencies in its universe, is one aspect of Husserl's
view of consciousness as intentionality. In the Introduction to
this study I noted that Husserl had adopted intentionality from
his former teacher, Franz Brentano. The latter had used it to
distinguish psychical phenomena from physical, psychical phe-
nomena belonging to the realm of psychology, physical phenom-
ena to the realm of the natural sciences. Husserl did not wish to
continue the distinction on this basis. By his first reduction he
merges both physical and psychic phenomena into the group
known as "intentional objects," suspending consideration of their
existence in any natural-scientific or psychological sense. For an
object to be "intentional" the only thing that need be said about
its status is that it is intended by consciousness. Whether that
object could, under other circumstances, be classified as physical
or psychical, immanent or transcendent, is irrelevant. All that
has been said by calling it "intentional" is that the object is
meant or intended by an act of consciousness. 9 Its status as
intentional does not emanate from any of its own qualities, but
rather from its relationship to an intending act. Thus, Husserl's
intentionality was equally the foundation for the natural sciences
and for psychology. The character of the act will, of course, shape
the intended objectlO - i.e. as presented, as judged, as imagined,
etc.
This emphasis on the role of the act of consciousness in shaping
its objects leads Husserl quite naturally to one of the crucial ideas
in his phenomenology: constitution. The act of consciousness which
intends an object necessarily colors the way in which that object
is intended or meant. An object is never simply present to con-
9 Husserl, Logical Investigations, II, p. 587.

10 The use of "object" in the phrase "intentional object" can be misleading. Husserl
is not dealing exclusively with individual things. For him, objects of an intending con-
sciousness may be individuals, possibilities, collections, universals, states'of'affairs,
etc. The intentional object of a judgment would, for example, be what the early
Russell caIled a "proposition" - the non-linguistic situation which consciousness in-
tends through a linguistic judgment. (Cf. Husser!, Logical Investigations, I, p. 324.)
"Objects" do not, however, usually include sensations, particularly in HusserI's
early work. Objects of certain sorts were constituted from passively received sensa-
tions. (Logical Investigations, I, p. 310.)
sciousness but is present as perceived, as imagined, or as re-

membered, etc. Thus, the very act of intending an object con-
stitutes its meaning at least to this degree. HusserI's analysis of
constitution takes us back one step to investigate the acts of
consciousness that make it possible to intend an object perceptu-
ally. He shows how certain foundational acts of consciousness
constitute as their object a noema - a perceivable, imaginable,
recallable intentional object.
"Noema," like so many other terms in Husserlian phenom-
enology assumes different shades of meaning in different contexts.
He uses it almost universally, however, to designate "meaning."
At the same time, HusserI does not want to claim that the noema
and the perceived object are two different objects - one a sort of
sense, and the other a reference. He is careful to specify in several
places that this is not the case. l l Rather the act of consciousness
intends the noema, which incorporates both the sense and the
reference, as these are usually differentiated - but the reference
has had all its existential status, if it had any, stripped from it by
the first reduction. That is to say, the noema is the actual object
of consciousness with its possible transcendent status bracketed
out. But it is not the naked object alone; it is the object as in-
tended, as meant by consciousness. Thus, it incorporates in itself
the notions of meaning and object; it is a meant object, constituted
as such by the intending consciousness.
It might be helpful here to return to the original project of
HusserI's phenomenology as it was discussed in the introductory
chapter and locate the importance of the problem of constitution
in the framework of HusserI's original goals.
In attempting to strengthen the Cartesian method, HusserI had
eliminated certain of Descartes' presuppositions and had tried to
separate the epistemological from the metaphysical question.
Thus, when Descartes was ready to move to a proof for the
existence of transcendent objects, a metaphysical step for Hus-
serI, the latter refused to follow. He made, instead, what he
called "the transcendental turn." 12 That is, HusserI turned back
upon the cogito to make a complete analysis of its structures. He
argued that one could say nothing about the objects of con-
11 Cf. Husser!, Logical Investigations, II, pp. 595-596.
12 Husser!, Cartesian Meditations, p. 23.
sciousness until one understood fully how consciousness itself

operates. This is the point at which the theory of intentionality is
inserted, and the investigation becomes intentional analysis. In
Husserl's view, what had been uncovered was that consciousness
was an intender, a synthesizer of meaning, a series of constitutive
acts. And thus,
... the great task he [Husserl] envisions for phenomenology: the clarifi-
cation, through description of their constitution, of all the regions of
human experience. 13
The turn to the transcendental ego is not just an interesting but
relatively unimportant "aside"; it is a turn to the heart of con-
sciousness and to the source of all meaning. The uncovering of
constitution and the description of its forms is the central work
of Husserlian phenomenology.
DERIVATION OF A COMPLETE THEORY OF CONSTITUTION
It has been suggested that Husserl's theory of constitution can

be divided into three stages of development. 14 In the first phase
Husserl tries to explain constitution in terms of matter and form;
this is found in his Logical Investigations and Ideas. Recognizing
the inadequacies of this approach, he tried, in The Phenomenology
of Internal Time-Consciousness, to supplement this explanation
by adding the temporal dimension of the constitutive process.
Even this proved insufficient, and the final phase of the develop-
ment, found in Formal and Transcendental Logic and Cartesian
Meditations, provided a genetic theory of constitution. Let us
explore each of these explanations of constitution separately as
they deal with meaningful objects and with language.
Early Hylomorphism
Following the Aristotelian tradition of hylomorphism, Husserl
first attempts to explain constitution in terms of matter and
form. In the Logical Investigations he begins with an application of
the model to language. He first distinguishes between linguistic
13 Robert Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution, Phaenom-

enologica, # IS (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), p. 165.
14 Ibid., p. 55.
LANGUAGE AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION 4I
signs and expressions. Expressions are linguistic signs which have

been informed with meaning. The matter, in this case, is the
phoneme or grapheme; the form is the meaning. The act by which
a sign is constituted as an expression is called a "meaning-
intention," essentially an act of intentionality, a directing of
consciousness toward meaning. By this act one "ensouls" the
sensuously perceivable sign with meaning, transforming it into an
expression.
Husserl is careful to distinguish between meaning-intention, an
act of consciousness (more appropriately called "meaning-in-
tending," I think), and meaning itself, an ideal unity found in the
a-temporal realm of eidetic objects. (Meaning itself bears strong
resemblance to what linguists call "deep structure"; it is the
constant meaning which can surface with various expressions,
even in different languages.) Husserl holds the difficult position,
at this time, of claiming that these ideal meanings belong to
the "eternal und uncreated." Our access to them is through
meaning-intending acts, but the meanings are themselves in no
way dependent on our intending. He even goes so far as to suggest
that there are meanings which we have not yet discovered and
which, due to the limitations of the human mind, we will never
be able to uncover. 15 In such a context it becomes difficult to see
in what sense (or for whom) they are meanings.
A consideration of Husserl's view of concepts throws some
light on the problem:
... by a concept he [Sigwart] expressly wants us to understand (if we
get him right) the 'general meaning of a word,' which is just what we
mean by it. 16
This statement can be misleading, for Husserl does not intend
by it to identify meaning and concept. He expressly states
elsewhere that the two are not identical. 17 Concepts are meanings
intended by consciousness. As such they belong to the real,
temporal realm of actual objects of consciousness. They are
generated from experience, most often from intuitions. And as the
latter can be empirical or eidetic, so too, the concepts abstracted
from them can be of real or of ideal objects. Meanings, on the
other hand, are a class of ideal objects, and as such are not
15 Husserl, Logical Investigations, I, p. 333.
16 Ibid., I, p. 293.
17 Ibid., I, p. 331.
constituted by abstraction nor do they cease to be what they are

even when they remain unactualized in concepts. In HusserI's
writings "meaning" seems to coincide most often with "essence"
- the significance which remains when actual existence is put
aside. Concepts are their more or less adequate representations in
consciousness.1 8 These concepts mayor may not be expressed;
when they are expressed, they are the meaning of language. But
even unexpressed, they are for HusserI the actualization for
consciousness of logical or ontological meanings.
In the case of perceptual objects, concepts mediate between
the a-temporal ideal meanings and the temporal, individuated
perceptual object. They are temporal, but with the temporality
of consciousness and not of objects; concepts are generalized
rather than individuated, and are thus able to represent universal
meanings.
If this is an accurate reading of HusserI, then an expression
refers to ideal meanings insofar as it points to the general con-
cepts we have abstracted from individual experiences. Language
"catches" the objects of experience without being limited by the
temporality of a perception. These concepts can be confirmed or
illustrated by new intuitive (or perceptual) experience, called
meaning-fulfilments.
It has been noted that while every expression will refer to a
meaning (by definition it is a sign which is used to intend a
meaning), it will likewise always refer to an object. In virtue of its
being intended by a conscious act that object is an intentional one.
Its existential status can be determined by what HusserI calls
a meaning-fulfilment, a direct awareness of the presence of the
object itself, an intuition.
An example may help to clarify the terms: One may formulate
the written or sounded signs "round" and "square" and may then
inform that matter by intending the ideal meanings, roundness
and squareness. 19 The intentional object of consciousness is a
18 Husser!, Ideas, p. 4II.
19 In order to illustrate the distinction between signs and expressions Husser!
pointed out the possibility of constituting each in separate acts. However, I think it
would be erroneous to suppose that he meant that the two must be constituted
separately. It would be unrealistic to suggest that every time one uses language one
mustfirst constitute the sound or shape of the word and then invest it with meaning;
however, it is not until later theories of constitutions that Husser! deals with the pos-
iting of what has already been previously constituted, e.g. meaningful words.
round square, but it carries with it the mode of impossibility,
because there is no meaning-fulfilment which could appear to
consciousness as the corroboration of the actual (or even possible)
existence of the object intended.
Working with a similar model, Husserl turns to the question of
non-linguistic constitution. He is clearly suggesting a parallel
between the constitution of language and the constitution of
objects, and he uses the former as the pattern for the latter:
We restrict our glance exclusively to "meaning" (Bedeutung) and
"meaning something" (Bedeuten). Originally these words relate only to
the sphere of speech, that of "expression." But it is almost inevitable, and
at the same time an important step for knowledge, to extend the meaning
of these words, and to modify them suitably so that they may be applied
in a certain way to the whole noetic-noematic sphere, to all acts, therefore,
whether these are interwoven with expressive acts or not. 20
Having asserted that meanings, as ideal unities, are what they
are whether or not they are ever expressed, Husserl then feels
free to link them with objects without the mediation of language. 21
In the constitution of objects, sensations become the matter in
the process. This matter is informed with meaning by acts of
consciousness which synthesize and interpret the sensory infor-
mation and form perceptions. Sensations are the scattered mate-
rials from which meaningful perceptions can be constituted.
While Husserl does not claim that language never functions in
the constitution of an object (he says nothing specific on the
subject), he does want to show that the noema can be constituted
directly, and does not always require the mediation of language.
He claims that one can do this, for example, in any given act of
perception in which the perceived meanings remain unexpressed.
The case in which one recognizes something which is perceived
but has forgotten the word for it would seem at first sight to be an
obvious example. The question that arises here is whether or not
20 Hussed, Ideas, p. 346.

21 Cf. also Hussed, LogicalInvestigations, II, p. 715. While this might suggest a way
by which Hussed could avoid the difficulty regarding the distinction between denota-
tion and designation mentioned above (see supra p. 37) It seems clear that the problem
lies less with the status of "being" (as an ideal meaning which might attach directly
to objects without the mediation of expressive acts) than it does with the function of
language itself. Given the expressive acts, there is no way to discover whether they
function denotatively or designatively in any genuine sense. Whether they attribute
being or non-being, it is at the instigation of the transcendental ego. The indications
of solipsistic idealism are unmistakable.
the very process of recognizing is a linguistic one; the name may

not be recalled, but qualities and relations most generally are and
are recalled in language.
Husserl's view on the matter emanates from his view on the
intuition of the ideal unities called meanings. If access to them
requires the mediation of language, they would not be intuitable.
Outside the Husserlian framework one would not need to claim
that meaningful constitution requires the mediation of a verbal
language. Gestural and behavioral signs can surely be constitutive
of meaning. But by the first reduction Husserl has eliminated all
natural bodies which might perform such constitutive acts. Quite
naturally, then, one turns to a phenomenon such as shame which
was characterized so perceptively by Sartre. 22 The claim might
then be put forward that shame posits meaning without language.
But Husserl would refuse to accept such a position because for
him experiences like shame are not among what he calls "objecti-
vating acts" at all. 23 They are not original positings but are,
rather, dependent on something else having already been con-
stituted as meaningful- in this case, a situation or presence of
some sort, which is itself an object. At bottom one must return to
the constitution of objects and the status of meanings.
To reject Husserl's position on the possible constitution of
meaningful objects without the mediation of language, one must,
first of all, modify his notion of meanings as ideal objects. I shall
deal with that problem in the next chapter.
Temporality in Constitution
The first stage of development in Hussed's theory of constitu-
tion offered the bare framework for an explanation of the process.
His second stage added one very important dimension, that of
temporality. The matter-form structure had concentrated on how
one could "inform" matter in order to direct oneself toward a-
temporal meanings; it overlooked the temporal aspect involved
in the act of informing. Husserl tried to remedy this oversight in
his Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness.
This time the order is reversed; Hussed begins with the con-
22 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel Barnes (New York:
Washington Square Press, Inc., 1966), pp. 351-353.
23 Cf. Husser!, Logical Investigations, I, (5), # .41; Ideas, # II6-II7.
stitution of objects and then treats language, represented by the
judgment, very briefly. The reason for this is, I think, that the
temporality view of constitution is not particularly helpful in
understanding the constitution of language until it is expanded
into the genetic theory. Husserl's treatment of judgments makes
this clear, hinting as it does at temporal genesis.
First, at a very obvious level, he speaks of the constitution of
objects in relation to their temporal horizon:
The complete apprehension of an object contains two components:
the one constitutes the Object according to its extra-temporal determi-
nations; the other creates the temporal position being-now, having-been,
and so on.24
Having noted this, he moves on to a clarification of the role of

temporality as it functions more fundamentally in the constitu-
tion of objects recognized as being-now. Careful attention at this
stage makes it evident that the temporality under consideration
is not that of the object itself, but rather that of the intending
consciousness. It is still the intentional act that is constitutive,
even from the point of view of temporality.
Husserl's position is seen most clearly in relation to an object
which has obvious temporal aspects, like a musical piece. The
listener can constitute a symphony only by constituting individu-
ally perceived notes into a unity. As soon as the first note has
been heard it passes, making way for the next. But while the
first note is no longer actually present, it is retained by conscious-
ness and linked with the one that follows. This holding of the
immediately passed in order to synthesize it with the present is
what Hussed calls "retention." He notes that it is a genuine
form of intentionality that carries its own self-evidence, and he
distinguishes it from "recollection," which involves the recalling
of something past whose link with the immediate present has
been severed. Analogously, "protention" is the capacity to
anticipate elements of perceptual experience in order to complete
the object.
What is true of auditory perception, Husser! wants to claim, is
24 Edmund HusserI, Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, ed. by Martin

Heidegger, trans. by James S. Churchill (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University
Press, I964-), p. 87.
true of perception in general. A temporal synthesis is required in

order to interpret sensations of any sort as meaningful.
Husserl makes no attempt to apply this theory of temporal
constitution directly to his earlier discussion of meaning-inten-
tions, meaning-fulfilments, and expression. He does, however,
briefly analyze its relation to jUdgment. In effect, he suggests that
judgment is a sort of second-level constitution. Consciousness, for
example, first posits the subject of a jUdgment. There is an
obvious temporal element involved in adding to this subject a
predicate, so as to complete the judgment form. There is also a
less obvious and more fundamental form of temporal constitution
involved. This is brought out by comparing the constitution of a
perceptual object with the constitution of the subject of a judg-
ment. Husserl says that while the former case deals with simple
and immediate elements of sensation, the latter case is the
spontaneous positing of an already complex object.25
One ought not to conclude from this that he felt that perception
begins with a passive phase (reception of sense information),
while the judgment begins immediately with an active phase
(positing). For Husserl, both have their start in passivity. In
perception one is passively receptive to the information provided
by sensation; in judgment one is passively receptive to the infor-
mation provided by memory:
One can also speak here of passive reception, and distinguish the passive
reception which gathers in the novel, strange, and originary and the passive
reception which merely brings back or presentifies [vergegenwartigtJ.26
The positing of the subject of the judgment is the sort of
passivity which recalls something previously constituted, and
therefore, already complex. Husserl does not trace the significance
of this until he reaches his genetic theory of constitution. The
important thing is that even here Husserl was aware that con-
stitution is not always new and fresh, particularly where language
is concerned, but relies heavily on previous acts of constitution,
which can be recalled and posited.
In the first phase of his theory he was anxious to draw detailed
parallels between the constitution of objects and that of language.
25 Ibid., p. 186.
26 Ibid., p. lI5.
At this stage, he has begun to hint at some possible and important
differences.
While it is true that Husserl himself did not apply the element
of temporality to the acts constitutive of expression as described
above, nevertheless he drew an analogy at that time which can
be instructive. He was speaking of games, treating chessmen as
analogous to expressions, and the bits of wood or ivory functioning
as signs might. He noted that one does not play the game with
the signs themselves but rather with that which they signify or
intend - kings, pawns, etc:
They [bits of wood or ivory] become chessmen, counters in the chess-
game, through the game rules which give them their fixed games-meaning. 27
The analogy sheds light on several facets of Husserl's view.

There is an unquestionable element of temporality involved in
the original constitution of the bits of wood or ivory; and one
could reasonably argue that the same is true for the constitution
of verbal sounds and shapes. But they need not be reconstituted
anew each time they are used; for the verbal signs can be merely
posited as already complex objects - the same process which
Husserl noted for the subject of a judgment.
The constitution ot the signs, wooden or verbal, as meaningful is
less clearly temporal. In both cases there is an act, a meaning-
intention, and any act requires a certain temporality. But in this
case the temporality is minimal. There are no perspectives to be
synthesized, no information to be collected by memory, simply a
direction to be set, a relationship to be posited. (One must keep in
mind here that Husserl has not yet arrived at his genetic theory of
meaning in which the full extent of temporality is accounted for
in the accumulated layers of meaning.)
The act of meaning-fulfilment, since it is nothing other than an
intuition, perceptual or otherwise, of the intended object, has
temporal aspects of constitution which coincide with those of any
object. While a meaning-fulfilment may illustrate or confirm
that the intended meaning is intended correctly, it bears no
necessary connection with language or language-constitution.
From this it becomes clear that Husserl did not treat his earlier
27 Husser!, Logical Investigations, I, p, 305.

elements of expression from the point of view of temporality for

two reasons: first, in some cases the theory of temporality added
nothing to the explanation that had already been offered;
secondly, in other cases this first version of temporality pointed
to a more complex form, genetic temporality, which he had not
yet worked out.
There is one further important comment to be made about the
game analogy. Husserl speaks of the rules of the game as giving
"fixed games-meanings." For chess it is true that the game
meanings are virtually fixed. Husserl would want to say that it is
likewise true in the case of language. Such a position is clearly
related to his claim that meanings are a-temporal ideal unities
and that the rules which govern language are part of an ideal
grammar - a point to which I shall return in the next chapter.
Talk of games and rules naturally brings to mind the later
work of Wittgenstein. 28 The difference in their general views of
language can be illustrated by their use of the game analogy.
Where Husser! chooses one rather well-defined game whose limits
can be cited and described, Wittgenstein selects the whole frame-
work of games with its attendant ambiguity, incompleteness and
unpredictability. Meaning, for Husserl, is established by a mental
act in accordance with a system of ideal rules, whereas the
Wittgensteinian framework of meaning is essentially social, mean-
ings being established by making moves in one of the language-
games according to socially generated rules.
Genetic Constitution
The first two phases of Husserl's theory of constitution leave a
significant aspect of the process untouched, and it is perhaps the
most enlightening with respect to language. This final develop-
ment, which Husserl calls "genetic" constitution, appears in his
Formal and Transcendental Logic and Cartesian Meditations.
Genetic constitution takes into account the two previous ex-
planations but also includes the levels of meaning that have ac-
cumulated from earlier constitutive processes. Husserl's matter-
form framework regarded the constitutive process as simple and
present, the addition of temporality placed special emphasis on
2S Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, # 567.

the moments immediately surrounding the present, grasped in
retention and protention. The genetic theory supplements all this
by giving serious consideration likewise to recollection, particular-
ly as it functions in relation to the constituted meanings that have
flowed from present to past. When one of those meanings is re-
called, it brings with it the remembered layers of significance that
have accrued from past experience.
Thus we begin to see serious consideration of both types of
constitution hinted at earIier - elementary synthesis of unin~er
preted data (e.g. perception) and complex positing of already
constituted objects (e.g. subject of a judgment). In genetic con-
stitution HusserI elaborates on the fact that one need not always
begin with the simple and new but may also start with previously
constituted, already complex, meanings. HusserI illustrates his
point by reference to Nature:
Nature "as it itself is," and simply is - an idea that then enters into the
idea of Nature as cognized currently by us and to such and such an
extent: relatively and as a partial installment, subject moreover to possible
correction. Evidently "Natu'Ye itself" thus acquires the value of a concept
that is being constituted synthetically throughout the course of such
partial installments (with their relative concepts of Nature), abandoned
determinations being excluded and corrective ones inserted during the
process: and, as so constituted, this concept is the categorial correlate of
the idea of a process of judgment that can be prolonged harmoniously ad
infinitum. 29
It is interesting to note that although this form of constitution

first became apparent as a possibility in connection with judg-
ments as they were dealt with in temporality, HusserI has little
more to say about the genetic constitution of language. I hope to
show that a genetic theory of constitution is important not only
as an explanation of the constitution of language itself, and as an
aid to understanding the relationship between language and the
constitution of meaningful objects, but also in uncovering the
fundamental context of intersubjectivity within which the tran-
scendental ego constitutes meanings.
At the outset it is important to distinguish between the in-
vestigation of the historical origins of language and the laying
out of its genetic constitution; the first is a matter for hypothesis,
2U Husser!, Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. II7.

the second derives from experience. Husserl is working with

experience, not with history, so all questions regarding the
origins of language will be temporarily bracketed out.
I shall first consider the function of language in the genetic
constitution of objects and shall then tum to the question of the
genetic constitution of language itself. The necessity and signi-
ficance of intersubjectivity will emerge primarily from the latter
discussion.
Husserl's later works speak in some detail of the two sets of
principles which govern genetic constitution, the principles of
active and those of passive genesis. The two are clearly parallel to
form and matter but have a broad dimension of temporality ad-
ded:
In active genesis the Ego functions as productively constitutive, by
means of subjective processes that are specifically acts of the Ego.
. .. anything built by activity necessarily presupposes, as the lowest

level, a passivity that gives something beforehand; and, when we trace
anything built actively, we run into constitution by passive generation. 30
In the constitution of perceptual objects, the implications of

active and passive principles of constitution are clear: one does
not simply "receive" the external object, neither does one actively
constitute it from nothing. Both naive realism and absolute
idealism are overruled. One is passively receptive to an object,
but actively synthesizes the data received from it and constitutes
it as a meaningful object.
It will be helpful to recall here the two forms of passive recep-
tion about which Husserl had spoken earlier - the receptivity
which is open to the new or originary, and that which merely
recalls something. The first of these is obviously linked with the
constitution of perceptual objects from sensations; the second, I
believe, calls for the use of language. Let me elaborate.
If the genetic theory of constitution is correct, one has a
whole store of previously constituted meanings that can be called
forth and posited or even reconstituted with new layers of mean-
ing. Each time one looks at a house, for example, one need not
synthesize the spatial and temporal perspectives again. One can
80 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, pp. 77-78.

LANGUAGE AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION 5I
posit the whole complex meaning immediately, and may then
alter that meaning to accord with the present context.
Even if one grants Husserl the possibility of constituting
perceptual objects originally without a necessary recourse to
language, one must still face the question about a vehicle by
which such a meaning can be recalled for future reference. Two
possible vehicles offer themselves for consideration: images and
signs. Several limitations attach to the former. First, an image
of a perceptual experience is unable to carry with it generality; it
remains individuated. Secondly, as Ogden and Richards point
out, " ... there is grave doubt whether in some minds they
[images] ever occur or ever have occurred." 31 So not only can
they not be counted on to achieve universality of meaning, they
cannot be counted on as occurring universally. This, of course, is
not to deny them any function at all. It is merely that their
inherent limitations point to the need of another channel of
recall that can provide the requisite generality.
The second option is the use of signs. Having already noted
that gestural and behavioral signs have. been bracketed out, we
are left with ordinary linguistic signs. When a meaning is syn-
thesized perceptually, one generally "fixes" that meaning for
future recall by concretizing it in language. Thus words, function-
ing as the concretions of experienced meanings, are sensible,
repeatable symbols which can be used to recall, as unities, the
layers of meaning which have been previously synthesized.
While someone may argue that language is not universally
available (as, for example, in the case of severe retardation), I
can only respond that in such cases the ability to recall meanings
is proportionately limited. More significant for phenomenology is
the capacity of language to concretize general meanings in a way
that is not open to image-making. As Merleau-Ponty has put it,
For to name a thing is to tear oneself away from its individual and unique
characteristics to see it as representative of an essence or a category, ... 32
The very generality so important in the third reduction is

concretized in language.
31 C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning 0/ Meaning (roth ed.; London:
Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1949), p. 60.
32 M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology 0/ Perception, trans. by Colin Smith
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1Q62), lJ. 17'6.
Language and meaning are not identical, but their relationship

lies in the fact that language expresses, and thereby records,
meanings which then become available for retrieval, comparison,
elucidation, etc. In a word, it makes meanings accessible to
analysis. To say that language has meaning is to say that it
intends it, grasps it, concretizes it for present or future use.
The relationship between language and the constitution of
objects, then, is found in the function of language as a concretion
of genetically constituted objects of meaning. Let us move now
to a consideration of the genetic constitution of language itself.
Early in Formal and Transcendental Logic Husserl makes a
distinction between "the uttered word" and "the word itself," 33
a distinction which is similar in some respects to the one made by
de Saussure between la parole and la langue. 34
Interestingly enough, both of them liken la langue, Husserl's
"word itself," to a musical piece and la parole, Husserl's "uttered
word," to any given performance of the musical composition. The
analogy works well enough to distinguish between the two aspects
of language, but it fails at precisely the point which is crucial for
an investigation of linguistic constitution.
The important difference between music and language for
phenomenological purposes is that a symphony, unlike la langue,
is a finished reality. The symphony is first composed and is then
available for performance. This is not true of language. La langue
is never completed. In fact, the constitution of language takes
place precisely in its use. La langue does not precede la parole,
but is rather the very accumulation of concretized meanings that
have been constituted genetically through la parole, and have
flowed to the past, remaining available for simple recall or for
reconstitution with new layers of meaning.
Unfortunately, as the games analogy suggested, Husserl treats
language as a relatively "finished" codification of meanings, at
least insofar as it participates in the ideal realm. The limits have
already been set, and language-use is merely a dipping into the
33 Husseri, Formal and Transcendental Logic, pp. 19-20.

34 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. by Charles Bally and
Albert Sechehaye, trans. by Wade Baskin (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc.,
I959), p. 13.
system, a reification of the ideaL Further discussion of the ideal
part of language will follow later.
The point to register here is that current language is never
"finished," and its developing constitution occurs in actual and
creative use, la parole. This constitution takes place both in the
coining of new words for freshly interpreted experience, and in
the expansion of the levels of meaning associated with previously
constituted words. Meaning-intention is not, then, a purely re-
ferential act as HusserI saw it in the Logical Investigations, but
is likewise at times a creative one; consciousness can both intend
already-constituted meanings and constitute new ones.
When HusserI views language apart from its ideality, he is not
opposed to the sort of position I am suggesting:
As a system of habitual signs, which, within an ethnic community, arises,
undergoes transformation, and persists in the manner characteristic of
tradition - a system of signs by means of which, in contrast to signs of other
sorts, an expressing of thoughts comes to pass -language presents alto-
gether its own problems. 35
But in the last analysis he considers this as an actualization of

an ideal structure. 36
As a prelude to my discussion of language-constitution in la
parole it will be helpful to recall the active and passive principles
which govern genetic constitution. While HusserI himself does
not apply the model to the constitution of language, its applica-
tion is, I think, as clear as it was in the case of perception. One
does not passively receive a language that is a complete codifica-
tion of sedimented meanings; neither does one create the language
for himself out of nothing. There is an interplay of passive recep-
tion and active constitution and reconstitution.
Language has two indispensable elements, surface (graphemes
and phonemes) and depth (denotative or connotative meanings).
Discussion of the constitution of language must take both into
account. The constitution of surface alone is the constitution of
sounds or shapes, but not of language; the constitution of depth
alone involves intentionality, but is not yet language. 37
35 Husseri, Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 20.
36 Ibid., p. 21.
37 This, incidentally, distinguishes language, as a concretion of meanings, from
art. Although the latter may in fact function as a concretion of meanings, its status
as art is not destroyed when the depth level is missing. It can operate purely at the
Husserl's first theory of constitution, on the matter-form

model, takes into consideration· both the surface and the depth
levels of language. The matter, or surface, is informed by an act
which directs it toward depth or meaning. The flaw in the theory
was that it failed to note temporality with its accumulation of
previously constituted meanings; each act of constitution was
treated as something new. But clearly, not every use of language
is an original constitution of this type. Where it is original, the
act may well be performed by a single individual, but as genetic
accretions of meaning develop, the intersubjective context like-
wise becomes apparent. Earlier discussions have shown that a
private language cannot be operant within the phenomenological
reduction. Another way of saying this is that not every act of
linguistic constitution is original and isolated. Some words are
not constituted actively by us, but are rather recalled (passive
reception) and posited as already complex. This sort of claim is
borne out by the experience of learning new words in a language,
native or foreign. The surface is "given" to one, and with it the
relationship it bears to certain depth meanings. One uses the
word by recalling what was given and applying it as the concretion
of currently intended meanings. Both the passive and active
principles of genesis will usually operate. The passive principles
govern one's reception from others of already-constituted lan-
guage; the active principles guide one's present reconstitution of
it to concretize currently experienced meanings.
This active side of constitution may take different forms. It
may simply involve a deliberate positing of what was passively
recalled; or it may involve the deletion of certain of the given
meanings that fail to correspond with the currently experienced
and intended meanings, as well as the addition of new shades of
meaning which are experienced and intended. When the desired
deletions and additions become so numerous that the original
meaning can hardly be recognized, a new surface will probably be
constituted as intending those accumulated meanings that deviate
too far from the original. At such a point one might make refer-
ence to the matter-form model of constitution, but the genesis of
surfac~ level and be expressive or surface values alone. This is not true of language.
If the depth, or meaning level, is eliminated, it reverts to a series of sounds or shapes
and ceases. to be "language."
meanings underlies any hylomorphic step and is crucial to an
adequate description of linguistic constitution.
Perceptual meanings need to be experienced in order to be
perceived meanings for a given consciousness. Thus, the layers of
meaning that accrue in perception could be constituted only by
the perceiving ego himself. What I am suggesting is that the
reduction of other egos to a phenomenal status by the first re-
duction need not inhibit the ability of consciousness to constitute
for itself perceptual meanings. This is not true in the case of
language. Unless one wants to argue for a private language, he
must agree that a portion of his language comes to him as already
constituted at some level of its genetic development. As one
learns the language and begins to use it, he participates actively
in the on-going genesis.
I concluded from the arguments against private language that
there is need for an intersubjective context within the reduction.
I conclude from an analysis of the genetic constitution of language
that there is an intersubjective context within the reduction. The
very use of language by the investigating ego presupposes the
passive reception of certain constituted words, and thus presup-
poses the "others" who have acted in that constitution. This un-
covering of "the other" by consideration of the constitution of
language makes it clear, I think, that the acceptance of an ex-
isting intersubjective community does not involve the incorpora-
tion of any unjustifiable presupposition. On the contrary, it is
merely the recognition of what is evidently the case.
Late in his Cartesian Meditations Husserl attempts an elaborate
(but not particularly convincing) explanation of the existence of
others.38 The principle difficulty attendant on his explanation is
that the other begins as, and must remain, a constituted meaning
for me. Thus the problem of solipsism is not really solved but
38 It might be objected that Hussed's project in the fifth Meditation was simply
to uncover the sense of an alter ego and not to establish the actually existing other.
This may be the case. The difficulty is that my ability to constitute the sense "other"
provides little or no solution to the problem of solipsism. This meaning must be
grounded in the reality of the "other's" existence if it is to contribute to the possibility
of a criterion for my consistent use of language. Otherwise, I find myself "checking
several copies of the morning paper to see if what it says is true" - that is, I am left
with only myself and my own constituted meanings. Surely Husser! was aware of this,
and I suspect that he hoped the fifth Meditation would provide grounds for assuming
the existence of more than some additional senses for me.
stipulated away. By approaching the problem of others through

language, one finds a certain "givenness" which is fundamental
to one's own acts of constitution and which cannot be explained
in terms of these acts alone. Thus, the existence of the other is not
dependent on my constitutive acts, but rather, my ability to
carry out certain constitutive acts is dependent on the existence
of others from whom I can receive already-constituted language
in the phase of a passive generation. As Husserl himself says,
" ... when we trace anything built actively, we run into constitu-
tion by passive generation." 39
CONCLUSION
By the second reduction the investigation uncovers the tran-

scendental ego and reveals its function to be the constitution of
its world of meanings. Husserl's discussion of this activity of
constitution has three stages in its historical development. The
first stage, a hylomorphic account, begins with a description of
the constitution of language, and on this model moves to describe
the constitution of perceptual objects. His middle stage, with its
addition of the temporal dimension, deals predominantly with
perceptual objects, and mentions the constitution oflanguage only
in passing. In his third and most fruitful explanation, that of
genetic constitution, Husserl viItually ignores the problem of
language constitution. I have attempted to supply what was
lacking by tracing the genetic constitution of language, uncovering
thereby "the other" from whom one receives in passive genesis a
language which has already been partially constituted.
Husserl realized that an adequate explanation of the constitu-
tion of perceptual objects could be realized only in a genetic
framework; likewise, an adequate explanation of the constitution
of language must be genetic. When it is, it takes into account not
only the material and formal aspects of language, but also its
constitution in temporality by both passive and active elements
in consciousness. Recognition of the passive aspect of the con-
stitution of language is recognition of its intersubjective constitu-
tion. Further, since constitution is genetic, or developmental, the
39 Husser!, Cartesian Meditations, p. 78.

notions of "constitution" and "use" frequently, if not always,
coincide. Finally, recalling that the agent of constitution is the
transcendental ego, and that the investigating ego is itself tran-
scendental (a meaning-giver and language-user), one is forced to
conclude once again that the first reduction cannot successfully
eliminate the intersubjective context, even temporarily. One need
not worry about constitu~ing the "the other" within the reduc-
tions; one's constitution of language presupposes that "other" as
the source of already constituted meanings passively received in
language.
CHAPTER IV
LANGUAGE AND THE EIDETIC REDUCTION
Perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of HusserI's

phenomenology is his discussion of "essences." Philosophers who
attempt to introduce any hint of an abstract entity usually meet
with a barrage of criticism accusing them of that unforgiveable
sin of "Platonism" (to which Plato himself would not plead
guilty!), or of creating an overpopulated Meinongian universe. It
is to this problem in HusserI that we now turn.
HusserI's eidetic reduction (or, reduction to essences) is a pro-
cess of "free variation" by which the individuating and contingent
characteristics of phenomena are bracketed out of consideration
and are replaced by necessity and generality. The generalized
correlate of consciousness HusserI calls an eidos or "essence," and
its merit is that it includes the essential structures that would
have to govern any of its instantiations.
With the first reduction any consideration of existential status
was bracketed out. Thus the first step was taken away from fact
toward meaning. The obvious question at this point concerned
the source of that meaning. Transcendental subjectivity was
uncovered by the second reduction as that source. Its function
was shown to be the constitution of meaning.
Constitution of an object as meaningful has already been shown
to involve a passive, pre-predicative experiential stage, and an
active, predicative, generalizing stage. In the latter phase one is
already beginning to move away from the purely individual
toward its relation with general classes. The eidetic reduction is
intended to be the final step toward generalization, toward the
pure eidos, or essence, which can be drawn out of the experience
of the individual.
The process of constituting generality is simultaneously a
LANGUAGE AND THE EIDETIC REDUCTION 59
process of constituting a spectrum of meanings that range from
the least general to the purely general, the eidos or essence from
which all individuality has been stripped. It is the purpose of
the eidetic reduction to propel the constitutive process as far
along the spectrum of generality, toward pure essence, as possible.
By so doing, it can uncover the essential relations that must
govern any actualization of the essence in experience. This, of
course, was the original project of Husserlian phenomenology.
Beginning with consciousness, specifically transcendental sub-
jectivity, Husserl hoped to layout the essential structures of
knowledge. On that sure foundation the sciences, including
philosophy, could be rebuilt. Anything less than pure generality
could yield no necessary conclusions. Thus, the ideal goal of
phenomenology is to push ever closer to pure essences:
Only if the apodictically general content, invariant through all con-
ceivable variation, of the spatio-temporal sphere of shapes is taken into
account in the idealization can an ideal construction arise which can be
understood for all future time and by all coming generations of men and
thus be capable of being handed down and reproduced with the identical
intersubjective meaning. This condition is valid far beyond geometry for
all spiritual structures which are to be unconditionally and generally
capable of being handed down. l
Like his theory of constitution, Husserl's theory of the eidetic

reduction underwent important transforma~ions between his
earlier and later works. Originally, he had thought that one could
make a reduction to pure consciousness and then merely "intend"
ideal objects or essences directly. Later it became clear to him
that such a pure consciousness would be empty of all content and
that a direct reduction to it would end in sterility.2 He realized
that science (for which he was trying to lay certain foundations)
is not constructed from pure consciousness but from experience
of the ordinary world.
LEBENSWELT
Hence, in his Crisis Husserl introduced the notion of the

Lebenswelt, or everyday lived-world. It had not been denied in his
earlier works; its impor~ant role had simply been overlooked. Its
1 Husser!, "Origin of Geometry" in Crisis, p. 377.
2 Hussed, Crisis, p. 155.
60 LANGUAGE AND THE EIDETIC REDUCTION
introduction into the inves~igation brings into focus the signifi-

cance of experience. By thus giving content to consciousness,
Hussed did not alter the existential bracketing of the first reduc-
tion, for the existence of transcendent objects still remained
beyond consideration. What he did alter was the structure of the
third reduction. Ins~ead of a direct intuiting of essences by a pure
consciousness stripped of all content, the eidetic reduction now
clearly begins in experience. The experienced Lebenswelt offers the
content for which consciousness will uncover essential structures.
In this later phase of his writings, Hussed places the Lebenswelt
in the central position from which consciousness can proceed
forward to construct its science and mathematics, or from which
it can move back in order to uncover the foundations which make
that very experience itself possible. The latter move is Hussed's
phenomenology. To put it another way, Hussed acknowledges
experience to be the foundation for all science; what he seeks now
is the foundation for experience. 3 What may seem paradoxicalis
that in this very investigation he must begin from experience
itself. However, it is the move from the level of individual ex-
perience to that of the essence of experience that gives the in-
vestigation its validity. This concern with the "how" of experience
is nothing other than Hussed's original "transcendental turn"
to uncover the structures of consciousness. Consciousness, how-
ever, is no longer empty of content.
As noted earlier, Hussed's acknowledgment of the Lebenswelt
did not bring any existing transcendent objects into the phenom-
enological reduction. It is the possibility of experiencing the
Lebenswelt itself that is under study now:
The life which affects world validity in natural world-life does not permit
of being studied from within the attitude of natural world-life. What is
required, then, is a total transformation of attitude, a completely unique,
universal epocM.4
And he continues later,
All natural interests are put out of play [by the universal epoche]. But
the world, exactly as it was for me earlier and still is, as my world, our
world, humanity's world, having validity in its various subjective ways,
has not disappeared; it is just that, during the consistently carried-out
8 Ibid., p. 146.
, Ibid., p. 148.
LANGUAGE AND THE EIDETIC REDUCTION 6r
epoche, it is under our gaze purely as the correlate of the subjectivity
which gives it ontic meaning, through whose validities the world "is" at
all.
This is not a "view," an "interpretation" bestowed upon the world.
Every view about ... , every opinion about "the" world, has its ground
in the pre-given world. It is from this very ground that I have freed my-
self through the epoche; I stand above the world, which has now become
for me, in a quite peculiar sense, a phenomenon. 5
It seems clear, then, that even in his later works Husserl is

using the reductions as radically as he had earlier. The content is
somewhat modified; the existential limitations are not. The world
(Lebenswelt) has become a phenomenon by the first reduction,
and it is revealed as the correlate of a transcendental sUbjectivity
that gives it all its validities and meanings. This point is crucial
because it is by the radical nature of the first reduction that
intersubjectivity, existing independently of my consciousness, is
bracketed out. Further, in the second reduction, Husserl uncovers
the transcendental ego as constitutive of all meanings and validi-
ties in its conscious world; that includes, of course, other egos:
Even more inaccessible to him [Descartes], and naturally so, was the
consideration that the ego as it is disclosed in the epoche, existing for
itself, is as yet not at all "an" ego which can have other or many fellow
egos outside itself. It remained hidden from Descartes that all such
distinctions as "I" and "you," "inside" and "outside," first "constitute"
themselves in the absolute ego. 6
Even in his late works, then, Husserl claims intersubjectivity

among the meanings which I must constitute for myself within
the reductions. The problem of solipsism remains on the horizon
to the end, for other egos remain products of my own constituting
consciousness.
Before returning to this problem of "others," I should like to
explore the character of essences, particularly as they relate to
possibilities, to meanings and to language.
ESSENCES AND POSSIBILITY
In introducing the process of uncovering essences (i.e., "eidetic

reduction") Husserl says, "Let us pick out no matter what type
5 Ibid., p. 152.
6 Ibid., p. 82.
of intentional processes ... " 7 (Italics mine.) For HusserI "in-

tentionality" is a quality of consciousness by which it is always
and necessarily conscious of something, an "intentional process"
one that takes equal account of both the activity of consciousness
and its object. This insistence on the intentional structure of all
conscious acts is important, especially for a proper understanding
of essences. The latter do not relate to simple isolated objects, but
rather operate always and necessarily in relation to the intentional
structure of consciousness - i.e., as part of the structure of
activities of consciousness in relation to objects of consciousness.
Thus he will begin his example with a perceived table. At any
point in the reduction either the activity or its object can be
reduced to any desired level of generality, for example the struc-
ture may become simply the perceiving of something where the
focus is on perception and the precise character of its object is
unimportant. What remains important is that essences be under-
stood in an intentional context - that the essential structures of
an act of consciousness always be understood in relation to some
object (however general), and that the essential structures of
objects be seen in rel?tion to possible intending acts. I take this
point to be crucial for HusserI's transcendental idealism.
HusserI's example of an eidetic reduction appears in the fourth
of his Cartesian Meditations. He begins with a table-perception,
and in order to arrive at the essence of the perception-of-some-
thing he freely varies the object, keeping only the perceiving act
identical. He says,
Abstaining from the acceptance of its being, we change the fact of this
perception into a pure possibility, one among other quite "optional"
possibilities - but possibilities that are possible perceptions. We, so to
speak, shift the actual perception into the realm of non-actualities, the
realm of the as-if, which supplies us with "pure" possibilities, pure of
everything that restricts to this fact or to any fact whatever .... Thus
removed from all factualness, it has become the pure "eidos" perception,
whose "ideal" extension is made up of all ideally possible perceptions, as
purely phant [a] siable processes. 8
The essence, then, belongs to the realm of pure possibility. And

pure possibility is, for HusserI, the realm of the "purely phan-
7 Husser!, Cartesian Meditations, pp. 69-70.
8 Ibid., p. 70.
tasiable," the purely imaginable or conceivable. 9 The reduction
to an essence is the reduction to conceivability, a reduction to
minimum requirements for a thing to be imaginable, to be an
element in conscious experience.
In removing from an object "everything that restricts to this
fact or to any fact whatever," one removes all spatio-temporal
determinations, all marks of individuation and is left with an
ideal object which can be described as the set of conditions gov-
erning the possibility of the object and ultimately any conceivable
actualization of it. (As early as the Logical Investigations Husserl
speaks of ". .. the 'ideal' as a condition for the possibility of
objective knowledge in general, ... ") 10 Essences are "objects"
insofar as they can be known by consciousness, but are clearly not
objects in any spatio-temporal sense; rather, an essence is a set of
conditions which are necessary for the possibility of an experience
of a given sort.
In modal logic one might symbolize it as:
Op ~ (q ·r·s)
In somewhat awkward English this reads, "that p is possible
strictly implies that certain conditions, q and rand s, are ful-
filled." This formulation states a set of necessary conditions but
makes no claims regarding their sufficiency. Or in Husserlian
terms, evidence can be inadequate and yet apodictic. l l Our in-
sight into essences may well be incomplete, that is, the set of
conditions which we uncover for a given structure may be partial;
this in no way destroys the possibility of our knowledge of this
partial set being certain knowledge.
The modal formulation of essences raises several important
questions. The first of these regards the status of "p," "q," "r,"
and "s." In the tradition of symbolic logic these are clearly
propositional variables and not variables for individuals. I want
to suggest that the same is true of Husserlian essences.
I have already noted the importance for Husserl of keeping in
mind the intentional structure of consciousness. Briefly, that
D Cf. also Husserl, Experience ana Judgment, ed. by Ludwig Landgrebe, trans. by
James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1973), p. 371.
10 Husserl, Logical Investigations, I, p. 338.
11 Husserl, Cartesian Meaitations, p. 15.
64 LANGUAGE AND THE EIDETIC REDUCTIO N
means that one must always keep in mind that the acts of con-
sciousness must be understood with respect to some object, and
conversely, objects must always be recognized as objects for some
possible act of consciousness. Placing essences squarely within
this framework, one can see them as sets of conditions which make
an intentional structure possible, and not merely conditions for
the possibility of an individual, spatio-temporal object. Husserl's
claims for the transcendental character of all knowledge must be
taken quite seriously: our access to the world is always and
necessarily by way of giving meaning to it in a variety of con-
scious acts. Therefore it is futile to attempt an investigation of
the essence of an object in isolation from the intentional structures
of consciousness
Hence, the modal formula, <)p -"5 (q 'r's), is indeed concerned
with propositional variables and translates more fully into some-
thing like this: "The possibility that consciousness perceives a
table strictly implies that a set of conditions, q and rand s, are
fulfilled." Clearly, the relationship between that possibility and
the fulfillment of theoretically specificable conditions is a neces-
saryone.
A second question to be considered here is how one arrives at
the set of conditions which must relate to the possibility of p. This
is done by what Husserl calls a process of "free variation." 12 In
reflection upon the total intentional structure (e.g., perceiving a
table), one chooses the level of specificity or generality desired,
and begins to vary the elements of the structure until one reaches
a point beyond which one can no longer freely vary elements
without destroying the structure one is investigating. And how
could one know that that point had been reached? The process
involves almost a reversal of the acts which synthesize meaningful
objects in the natural experience of the everyday world. When
consciousness synthesizes the meaning "perceived table" rather
than "imagined unicorn" it is because one certain set of conditions
has been met and another has not. The reduction to essences is an
attempt to make explicit through reflection the set of conditions
which were implicit in the unreflective situation and which moti-
vated a synthesis of one meaning rather than another. When one
12 Ibid., p. 71.
reaches that sine qua non which would make possible such a
synthesis, Husserl claims that it is evident to intuition, that is,
one simply sees it and need not argue one's way to it. I take it
that his defense for this sort of claim falls back on the fact that we
not only rely on this ability in our ordinary knowing of the world,
but that it would be impossible for us to recognize types of things
in our experience (impossible to re-cognize at all) if this intuitive
access to conditions-for-the-possibility-of-p were denied us. 13
One final word on the uncovering of the precise sets of con-
ditions required for the possibility of given experiences. Husserl
does offer some candidates for the variables "q," "r" and "s" as
they relate to the perceiving of something: "q" - the data pre-
sented to consciousness would lend itself to a "harmonious syn-
thesis" ; "r" - the data would present itself only perspectively and
never with total adequacy; "s" - the data would demand of
consciousness a certain receptivity and not simple active creation,
etc. 14
A third and final question which might well arise in connection
with the modal formulation of essences (or for that matter, in
relation to any formulation of them) is this: whence the necessity
which governs the relationship? The answer to that seems to be
two-fold, first from logic and then from reflection on experience.
If q, r, and s are the minimal conditions for the possibility of p,
it follows in a purely logical fashion that the absence of anyone
of them eliminates the possibility of p. Hence, each of the con-
ditions bears a necessary relation to the possibility of p.
Reflection on experience likewise reveals the necessary charac-
ter of the relationship. Reasons for this were suggested earlier.
We do order our experience with some consistency by sorting it
into types (and by communicating this order in a public language
with a finite set of terms). This ordering takes place with respect
to certain conditions. That we may be mistaken in this ordering
when it relates to spatio-temporal objects is always possible. That
13 The notion of "types" need not be taken as synonymous with Russell's "classes."
Once again it is important to note that the discussion concerns intentional structures
of consciousness. One might well claim that consciousness orders its experience ac-
cording to necessary laws without positing the existence of entities such as classes
or types. In this connection, I take Husserl's early use of the term "existence" in
relation to ideal objects (e.g., Logical Investigations, p. 352) to mean nothing more
than "having validity."
14 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, pp. 61-62 and p. 78.
we are not mistaken in taking certain conditions to be necessary

for our synthesis of a particular meaning within the intentional
structure of consciousness is clear.
The importance of the formulation of essences in terms of
necessary-conditions-for-the-possibility-of-P is that it calls atten-
tion to the fact that one is not dealing with a system of abstract
entities but that essences have the logical status of hypotheticals
or conditionals. Surely such conditionals ought not to be accused
of contributing to the problem of overpopulation. The certainty
of essences at the purely formal level is the certainty of the
hypothetical. If the antecedent be true, then the consequent must
follow. As the material level, the certainty is once again that
which attaches to the hypothetical: if what I am experiencing is
to be given the meaning "perceiving a table," then at least a
minimum set of conditions must be fulfilled.
FACTS AND MEANINGS
In much of his early work Husserl draws a sharp distinction

between facts and essences. The former, he says, belong to the
real, spatio-temporal worId and are individual and contingent,
while the latter are part of the ideal realm and have the character
of generality and necessity. The two are essentially related in that
facts are exemplifications of essences, and essences must be
actualizable in facts. Nonetheless, they remain quite distinguish-
able. Thus, meanings, as part of the realm of essences, are quite
distinct from facts in the early Husserlian schema.
In his later writings, however, HusserI has admitted that
meanings, like everything else in the field of transcendental sub-
jectivity, undergo genetic constitution. 15 Furthermore, he ac-
knowledges that this constitution begins in the experience of the
particular and moves, by a process of "free variation" to the more
general. This means that facts are the raw material, so to speak,
from which consciousness generates its meanings. Whereas the
early work sets a clear boundary between real (facts) and ideal
(pure essences) objects, HusserI's later writings seem to treat
them as limiting cases on a broad spectrum of generality.
15 Ibid., p. 85; also Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 315.

This shift of emphasis in the later Husserl toward the inclusion
of experience as a starting point, creates a corresponding shift in
the relationship between facts and meanings. l.A. Passmore
provides a schema which can be used fruitfully, I think, in
clarifying this new relationship (although Passmore himself never
attempted to apply it to Husserl's work).
Passmore argues, quite simply, that facts and meanings are
not separate sorts of things (as the earlier Husserl had believed),
but rather that questions about meaning are ultimately questions
of fact. " ... in a large range of cases to inquire into meanings is
to inquire into the part which something plays in a wider sys-
tem."16 The question of meaning is the question of role, of part
played, of relationship - all of which Passmore counts as facts.
Even the case involving the meaning of language is a question of
fact:
... to discover what a set of noises or a set of marks means is to discover
certain facts, facts about the part played by these marks in a system of
communication. To say that marks in different languages have the same
meaning is to say that they play the same part; they are used in similar
circumstances, as a way of achieving the same objective ... The shape
of the marks may be quite different; we cannot discover that the marks
have the same meaning simply by looking at them more carefully; we
have to look beyond into a wider context of facts; we do not look beyond
facts.17
According to Passmore, then, meanings are ultimately recog-

nized relationships among facts. 18 Applying this viewpoint to
Husserl's phenomenology helps to clarify the notion of meanings
in his later work. Meanings are no longer seen as ideal objects
16 J.A. Passmore, "Fact and Meaning," (reply to Gilbert Ryle's comment) in

Thinking and Meaning, Entretiens d'Oxford, organises par l'Institut International de
Philosophie (Oxford, 1962), p. 262.
17 Ibid., pp. 252-253.
18 For some reason Passmore limited his considerations to external relationships,
looking always to a broader context for the meaning of any given fact. This led him
to the inevitable conclusion that the universe must necessarily be without meaning
since no broader context could be provided. Such a conclusion, while perhaps true,
is not necessary; one need merely take into account internal relations as well as the
external. I do not mean to suggest by this an idealist conception of internal relations
but,rather, something very close to the distinction which Jean-Paul Sartre notes when
he writes: "In the world of perception every 'thing' has an infinite number of re-
lationships to other things [external relations]. And what is more, it is this infinity of
relationships- as well as the infinite number of relationships between the elements of
the thing [internal relations] - which constitute the very essence of a thing." (The
Psychology oj Imagination, New York: Philosophical Library, 1948, p. II.)
waiting to be intended by a pure consciousness; rather, they too

are genetically constituted. Using Passmore's framework this
would mean that consciousness has a developing recognition of
relationships among facts. When a relationship is recognized it is
simultaneously constituted as a meaning.
The first reduction brings to light an important distinction,
that between "relationships" and "recognized relationships."
While there may be factual relationships among objects (depen-
dency, causality, etc.), the first brackets put them out of con-
sideration and admit to the reduction only recognized relation-
ships. These are meanings. Relationships may be factual before
they are recognized as such, hence their validity is not dependent
on human constitution. But when a relationship is observed among
facts, it is constituted as a meaning for consciousness. Thus,
while relations themselves may not be dependent on conscious-
ness, recognition of them and constitution of them as meanings,
is dependent.
This sort of view would permit one to make sense of the ideal
character HusserI wants to attribute to meanings once they are
constituted. They are not created absolutely freely and at random
by consciousness. Rather, they arise out of experience, involve
the recognition of already existing relationships which may be
independent of consciousness. In the case of essential meaning,
those relationships are non-spatial and non-temporal and there-
fore ideal. This brings us to the question of the relationship be-
tween meanings and essences.
MEANINGS AND ESSENCES
In considering the eidos or "essence" of a possible object of

consciousness, there are four levels which can usually be dis-
tinguished.
(i) The first level, lowest on the scale of generality and thus
farthest removed from the eidos, is the transcendent object itself.
This object is simply an existing fact, and in my extension of
Passmore's schema, a relational system.
(ii) Secondly, there is the experience of such an object, trans-
forming it from a relational system to a recognized relational
system and thus to an intentional object. This can begin as pre-
predicative and purely passive experience before it move,;; to

active predication.
(iii) When consciousness begins to objectify its experience, to
objectify the recognized relationships, meaning has already begun
to take shape. With the pre-predicative experience of (ii) the
least general form of meaning arises, but with the predication it
assumes a character of generality. In this context it can be mis-
leading to speak of meaning as the third "level," for it operates as
a bridge between pre-predicative experience and eidetic intuition,
rather than as a level separating the two.
Pre-predicative experience may be of the individual and involve
no classification or predication whatsoever. Such might be the
case, for example, with the objects which form the background or
"horizon" in perception. Nothing at all is predicated of them but
they are tacitly recognized as forming a meaningful framework
for the object under attention. As predication begins, so also does
generalization. That is to say, each time one predicates something
of the object, one notes a class of things to which this object
belongs - one recognizes a relationship between this object and
others like it in some way. A series of predications is a series of
generalizations about the object. Paradoxically this list of general
relationships does not serve to generalize the object itself, but on
the contrary it makes it more determinate. It is, however, the
first and necessary step toward the generalization that will yield
the eidos or essence of the object. The second step is to take each
predicate in the series and to vary it freely in order to eliminate the
unessential, the individuating predicates, and to focus on the
general and essential ones, that is, to sift out the necessary ele-
ments which govern the possibility of that experience being of
a certain kind. At the early stages of predication one is working
with particular meanings; as free variation begins, the meanings
become eidetic.
One can, of course, objectify recognized relations apart from
verbal predication. Gestures and behavior are obvious alter-
natives. However, the significant thing about predication in a
verbal language (formal or natural) is that it alone is able to
objectify meanings which approach the limit of generality, or pure
essence. While behavior or gestures may be capable of expressing
a certain degree of generality, in the last analysis they are tied to
the situations in which they are expressed and to the person by

whom they are expressed.
An affirmative nod of the head, for example, does not signify
an absolutely general affirmation, or the essential meaning of
affirmation. It is, rather, an expression of agreement on the part
of the head-nodder with some aspect of the situation in which he
finds himself (a statement, a plan, an act, etc.). It is inextricably
individuated by him and by that to which it is a response. Re-
moved from such situations, it becomes merely a head exercise
and bears no particular relationship to meaning. The case is
analogous for similar expressive behavior, a handshake, trembling,
a kiss. Each is necessarily individuated at least by the body which
performs it.
Thus, even apart from consideration of the first reduction
(which bracketed out all bodies that might gesture or behave),
with the eidetic reduction all gestural or behavioral concretion of
meaning must give way to the generality of verbal languages.
(iv) The fourth and final level to be considered is that of the
eidos itself. The eidos or essence of an object is the absolutely
necessary relational system which governs the possibility for an
experience of a given sort. To put it another way, an eidos is a
meaning - an objectified relational system - which has been
reduced to its necessary relations. Since those relations are neces-
sary and general, they lack temporal limitation and are thus ideal.
One arrives at the eidos through free variation of the predicates
of an individual, and one can generate a series of predicates only
by applying language to the experience of individual objects;
thus, it becomes clear that at least two things are necessary in
order to achieve the eidetic level. One needs the experience of
individual objects ("objects" still understood in the broadest
sense), and one needs the objectification of that experience in
language. Before going on to a detailed discussion of this last
point, let me briefly illustrate the four levels of which I have been
speaking.
An obvious and pertinent example would be the simply ex-
isting relational system, language. A language can exist merely at
the first level, as a simple transcendent object, for a person who
has never spoken, heard, or read the language. At the second level
that language becomes a recognized relational system when the
person begins to use it. As that person begins to study the lan-
guage, he objectifies the relational system by talking about the
grammar of the language. Here, the language is no longer simply
a means for objectifying the experience of other thing'>; it has
itself become an objectified meaning. Finally, the person may
generate a series of predicates for the language, list its character-
istics, and then vary those predicates until he has sorted out the
group of necessary and general conditions requisite for language
itself. This final relational system, the eidos of language, is the set
of necessary conditions for the possibility of language as a re-
cognized relational system.
An essence, or eidos, is therefore a meaning which has been
reduced to its most general and necessary conditions. While
meanings arise out of the experience of individual objects, they
can be transformed into essences by pushing them as far as pos-
sible along the scale of generality.
Let us turn now to a more careful consideration of the function
of language in the generation of meaning and essences.
ESSENCES IN LANGUAGE
Early, in the Logical Investigations, language was expressive

of a conscious act which "intended" certain ideal objects called
"meanings." These meanings were unconstituted ideal objects
that simply were what they were. Even when discovered by
consciousness they remained fundamentally untouched and could
only be represented for consciousness by concepts. Such a position,
while it presented serious difficulties, was the natural outcome of
Husserl's early and static theory of constitution. Meanings simply
were, and were virtually independent of consciousness:
They [meanings] are an ideally closed set of general objects, to which
being thought or being expressed are alike contingent. There are therefore
countless meanings which, in the common, relational sense, are merely
possible 9nes, since they are never expressed, and since they can, owing to
the limits of man's cognitive powers, never be expressed. 19
Their "constitution" consisted in making meanings actual,

through concepts, for a given consciousness; their status as ideal
objects was not constituted.
18 Husseri, Logical Investigations, I, p. 333.
In his later writings it became clear to Husserl that a radically

transcendental philosophy had to recognize the centrality of
transcendental SUbjectivity in the constitution of all meaning. By
the time he wrote "The Origin of Geometry" (I936), his view is
not only that meanings are constituted genetically, but also that
their very objectivity or ideality is accounted for by their formu-
lation in language. 2o This position can be made clear only by
tracing the effect of Husserl's introduction of the Lebenswelt
(with its accompanying emphasis on experience) on the status of
meanings.
The foundation for all meaning is now the experienced lived-
world. One can arrive at ideal objects only by starting with ex-
perience of the individual. This fundamental "raw" experience
Husserl calls "pre-predicative." It is essentially the experience
of the individual object before any subsuming under general
classes takes place. 21 At this level it remains purely subjective,
non-shareable experience.
As one begins to generalize by classifying, one moves to predi-
cation and thus to language. That is, one moves from passive
experience of fact to the active predication of meaning (remem-
bering, of course, that within the reduction "fact" will become
"phenomenon"). Husserl illustrates the role of language in this
active phase of meaning-constitution in his discussion of geome-
try. He notes that awareness of geometry started with an original
experience on the part ot some consciousness:
A more primitive formation of meaning necessarily went before it [Le.
before the total meaning of geometry] as a preliminary stage, undoubtedly
in such a way that it appeared for the first time in the self-evidence of
successful realization .... Self-evidence means nothing more than grasping
an entity with the consciousness of its original being-itself-there [Selbst-
da].22
He moves then from this pre-predicative level to its objecti-

fication in language:
Our problem concerns precisely the ideal objects which are thematic in
geometry: how does geometrical ideality (just like that of all sciences)
proceed from its primary intrapersonal origin, where it is a structure
20 HusserI, "Origin of Geometry" in Crisis, pp. 356-358.

21 HusserI, Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 22I.
22 HusserI, "Origin of Geometry" in Crisis, p. 356.
within the conscious space of the first inventor's soul, to its ideal objec-
tivity? In advance we see that it occurs by means of language, through
which it receives, so to speak, its linguistic living body [SprachleibJ.23
His final step in procuring an ideal status for the meanings

of geometry is to set them in a written language so that they can
achieve a total independence from any given consciousnes;;. Here
they continue to exist whether or not they are being thought of by
anyone. 24 .
lt is language, then, that makes possible the generalization,

idealization, active constitution of experience as meaningful. lt is
written language that raises experience to an understanding in
fully ideal, non-temporal meanings.
Thus it would seem at first glance that toward the end of his
life Husserl might have agreed with the sorts of conclusions I
reached concerning the genetic constitution of language and its
relation to the intersubjective constitution of meaning. The
significant difference lies in our respective treatments of inter-
sUbjectivity. For Husserl, it is bracketed out as an existing
reality with the first reduction and seen as a constituted meaning
through the second. I want to claim that it simply cannot be
reduced to a constituted phenomenon at all if the ultimate pro-
ject of his phenomenology is to be carried out.
lt seems clear from the discussions in the two previous chapters
that it is not possible to hold that the phenomenological reduction
brackets out existing others. Their existence, independent of my
constituting acts, is required as a criterion for my consistent use
of language within the reduction and likewise as the source of
much of the language that comes to me already constituted in
passive genesis. If I am to predicate, to generalize, to idealize
my experience in order that I may uncover what is universal and
necessary in it, I must use language - and I must have some
criterion by which to evaluate the consistency of that use. That
criterion can only be found in an existing intersubjective context
which is not simply a product of my meaning-constituting but is
likewise one of the conditions for the possibility of that very
constitution.
In a word, if essences are to be accessible to me in any signifi-
23 Ibid., pp. 357-358.
24 Ibid., pp. 360-361.
cant and lasting way, solipsism is not even a theoretical possibil-

ity.
CONCLUSION
The eidos, or most generalized meaning of experienced con-

sciousness and its intentional objects will be objectified in verbal
language. Let us return now to consider the most important eidos
in the Husserlian project, the eidos of consciousness.
Every act of constituting essences or general meanings (ob-
jectifying recognized relations) is essentially a language-using
act. Even the act which constitutes the essential meaning of lan-
guage is itself a language-using act, making use in that case of the
metalanguage. 25 That is,language is one of the essential structures
of transcendental consciousness as it operates within the eidetic
reduction. It is language that operates as the instrument of
generalization and objectification of essential meanings. Or, to
put it another way, without an operating language (not merely
language as a possible intentional object), the eidetic reduction
would be impossible because essential generality could never be
objectified.
By uncovering the essence of language-as-object and then re-
flecting upon the operating consciousness which did the uncover-
ing - which constituted language as a general meaning - one un-
covers that operating consciousness as essentially language-using.
This discovery brings us full circle, to the beginning of the process
in the phenomenological reduction.
HusserI had said that the reduction was to eliminate "all the
formations pertaining to sociality and culture." 26 (I have been
careful to note that HusserI's introduction of the Lebenswelt did
not vitiate the existential limitations imposed by this first reduc-
tion.) The analysis of the eidetic reduction reveals language as the
objectification of all generalized meanings, and the consciousness
which arrived at that eidos as necessarily using language to do so.
Thus, it becomes clear that language cannot be among the
25 Unlike most objects, language shares with consciousness the sort of essence which
can be tully uncovered only through reflection. That is, the essence of language must
be seen both as act and as object.
26 Husseri, Cartesian Meditations, p. 19.
formations of sociality and culture that are to be bracketed out;
if it were, the eidetic reduction becomes impossible.
The conclusion must therefore be that it is part of the essential
structure of consciousness within the eidetic reduction that it be
language-using consciousness. My second chapter concluded that
language within the reductions could not be private - it needed to
arise from an intersubjective context. The third chapter showed
that Husserl's theory of genetic constitution, when applied to the
case of language, reveals language as indeed constituted and used
within an intersubjective context. Taken together, these three
conclusions make it clear that if the phenomenological reduction
is to achieve its goal, there are at least two aspects of culture and
sociality which cannot be bracketed out of consideration as
existing realities, namely, language and intersubjectivity.
I shall trace the ramifications of these conclusions for Husserl's
phenomenology in my next chapter.
CHAPTER V
A LINGUISTIC ALTERNATIVE
Language and intersubjectivity have been shown to operate

necessarily in each of the three aspects of Husserl's reduction.
Although Husserl himself would not have denied such a con-
clusion, he saw both language and "others" arising from the
absolute, transcendental ego as constituted meanings. For this
reason, he failed to realize the serious alterations which the con-
sideration of each of these forces upon his method.
Some of the early followers of Husserl saw certain difficulties
in his position, recognizing that his radical reduction was unable
to secure apodictically certain foundations for knowledge as it
had set out to do. In this chapter I shall deal briefly with alterna-
tives proposed by two of his followers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Mau-
rice Merleau-Ponty, and shall propose a third alternative, which
I shall call the "linguistic alternative." I shall point out the way
in which language is the bridge in each of three important
dichotomies in Husserl's work - essence and existence, the trans-
cendental and the transcendent, the real and the ideal. Because
of the role of language, Husserl's reduction to essences, or to
transcendental subjectivity, or to the realm of the ideal, can be
seen to be impossible since language immediately returns one to
the existent, to the transcendent, or to the real. I shall then turn to
reconsider the role oflanguage in the attempt to carry out Husserl's
original project of attaining certain foundations for knowledge.
EARLY ALTERNATIVES
Jean-Paul Sartre: Ontology

Husserl was seeking absolutely certain foundations for know-
ledge. He saw "being" as one of the meanings or validities con-
A LINGUISTIC ALTERNATIVE 77
stituted by consciousness and he bracketed it out of consideration.
Thus, his investigations were intended to be purely epistemologi-
cal.
Sartre, on the other hand, takes note of a crucial element by-
passed by Husserl. In every conscious act there is the existing
consciousness, the non-thematic, pre-reflective, being of con-
sciousness.! This being of consciousness is not constituted as a
meaning or validity by consciousness but is, rather, presupposed
by every conscious act, constitutive or otherwise. Even in reflec-
tion there is the reflecting consciousness which is not object but
act. Thus, the very pre-condition for any knowledge whatsoever,
even for that which predicates existence for all transcendent
objects, is the being of consciousness. His conclusion, quite nat-
urally, is that Hussed did not go far enough. The real foundations
for certainty in knowledge are not epistemological but rather
ontological. The being of consciousness is the basis on which all
knowledge rests.
For Sartre, the pre-condition for all experience is the being of
consciousness, and he moves from this certainty, by way of his" on-
tological proof," to the other necessary condition for experience,
namely, the being of the phenomena which appear to conscious-
ness. Thus, he argues that the essence of consciousness presup-
poses and flows from its existence; further, the essence of con-
sciousness, as intentional, requires phenomena. For Hussed con-
sciousness was "absolute" and the objects of consciousness were
"relative," i.e., deriving their meaning and validity (even as
existing) from consciousness in constitution. Sartre, on the con-
trary, sees consciousness as act, intentional thrust toward, and
hence, as essentially relative, dependent. Consciousness is not a
container or structure waiting to be filled. It is nothing until
called forth by being. The being, then, of phenomena is absolute,
and the being of consciousness, relative.
While Sartre's "proof" uncovers the being of consciousness and
the being of phenomena, giving an ontological basis to both
elements of experience, it fails in certain cases to distinguish the
being of the two. Transcendent being, in other words, does not
necessarily emerge. For example, in reflection, the intentional
1 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 17.

object of consciousness is consciousness; similarly, in the case of

after-images, hallucinations and the like, the being of the phenom-
ena coincides with the being of consciousness, and the trans-
cendent does not emerge. Even Sartre's detailed discussion of
various types of images in The Psychology of Imagination does
not handle the problem adequately. He argues persuasively that
an ordinary image, as a negation of perceived reality, is neces-
sarily founded on that reality and emerges from its context. The
case for hallucinations is quite different because consciousness is
positing them as real, as transcendent, when in fact they are
simple creations of consciousness whose being they share. Sartre
fails to see this and posits instead "a third type of existence," 2
a type of existence in which, as he explains, the distinction be-
tween subjective and objective (transcendental and transcendent)
collapses.
This "third type of existence" mayor may not be justifiable.
The important thing to consider is that within the framework of
Sartre's ontological proof, hallucinations are at least one sort of
phenomenon which does not carry one to the transcendent realm,
and thus the "being of the phenomena" does not always emerge
as separable from the being of consciousness. But if language and
its attendant intersubjectivity are given their due, existing
transcendent being can be posited even in these cases, as soon as
experience is objectified in language. This, of course, is not to
imply that the hallucinations, etc., are posited as transcendent.
Their being is coincident with that of consciousness. My point is
simply that every act of consciousness which is objectified as
knowledge in language carries with it a horizon of transcendence
in the form of language itself (a claim on which I shall elaborate
later) and of transcendently existing "others" with whom I share
language. The essence of consciousness, as revealed in its acts,
carries with it a transcendent field regardless of the existential
status of its intentional objects.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Bodily Cogito

The "absolute" foundation for Husserl was the transcendental
ego - meaning-conferring consciousness. Sartre pushes it back to
2 Sartre, Psychology of Imagination, p. 228.

the being of phenomena, calling forth consciousness, as the very
condition of meaning-conferring acts and thus as the "absolute."
Merleau-Ponty, on the other hand, accepts a much broader
"absolute," when he declares, "I am the absolute source ... " 3
That "I" is not a pure consciousness, either as act or as being,
rather it is the fully experienced concrete "I" in its world:
Truth does not 'inhabit' only the 'inner man,' or more accurately, there
is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does be know
himself.4
In one of his best known works, The Phenomenology of Percep-
tion, Merleau-Ponty proceeds in somewhat the same general
direction as Sartre did, grounding the act of reflection in the
unreflective life. But, unlike Sartre, he argues persuasively that
perception is the fundamental form of unreflective life on which
all the others are built. 5 This primacy of perception mends the
dichotomy between mind and body and re-inserts the body at
this most basic perceptual level. The clear-cut divisions between
pure consciousness and physical objects or between Sartre's pour-
soi and en-soi no longer seem tenable. Likewise untenable is the
phenomenological reduction by which one filters out pure con-
sciousness with no commitment to spatio-temporal existence.
The act of perception on which any cogito must ultimately be
founded is an act of spatio-temporal existence.
Within this bodily presence to the world one lives what Merleau-
Ponty calls a "tacit cogito" - "the presence of oneself to oneself. "6
It is not unlike Sartre's "pre-reflective cogito." From this basic
level of a bodily tacit cogito Merleau-Ponty moves, by way of
behavior, to the intersubjective.
From the depths of my SUbjectivity I see another SUbjectivity invested
with equal rights appear, because the behavior of the other takes place
within my perceptual field. I understand this behavior, the words of
another; I espouse his thought because this other, born in the midst of my
phenomena, appropriates them and treats them in accord with typical
behaviors which I myself have experienced. 7
3 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. ix.

4 Ibid., p. xi.
I; Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, ed. by James M. Edie
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964) p. 13.
6 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 404.
7 Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, pp. 17-18.
80 A LINGUISTIC ALTERNATIVE
In this early schema, speech is one of the "uses" of the body,

one of its ways of expressing itself, and is clearly derivative from
a bodily cogito. 8
While I am in full sympathy with the directions in which
Merleau-Ponty's philosophy moves, it strikes me that the stub-
born "rationalist" can argue that he has overlooked the serious-
ness of the doubt which Husserl was willing to entertain. While
Merleau-Ponty's contentions are very probably correct, says the
rationalist, they are not indubitable; while they are surely in
accord with common sense, everyone knows how deceitful that
resource can be. Husserl's "principle of principles" - to accept
nothing that is not evident to me - is more demanding than
Merleau-Ponty believes it to be.
Even to our stubborn defender of rationalism who insists that
Husserl is right in making the radical Cartesian beginning with
the reflective cogito, there is an answer to be given. For with that
cogito one finds language, and with language, intersubjectivity.
The intersubjective world is unavoidable whether one begins
with the unreflective world of shared perception or with the
indubitable reflective realm of the Cartesian cogito.
In his later writings Merleau-Ponty seems to have seen the
desirability of giving to language a more prominent role than he
had earlier allowed. In the notes for his unfinished work, The
Visible and the Invisible, he points out the inadequacy of his
"tacit cogito" and even speaks of introducing a "language cogi-
to."9 I take this move on his part to be an important one.
Just as reflection reveals at its foundation the pre-reflective
life, a bodily being-in-the-world, so second-level reflection reveals
the reflective cogito as essentially linguistic. As I reflect upon my
own conscious acts, there are no images or gestures which can
serve as signs for these acts; only linguistic signs can function in
reflection. And it was pointed out above (see supra, pp. 24-26),
that the consistent useof linguistic signs cannot be guaranteed by
an isolated memory. There must be at least the possibility of
checking the accuracy of the memory against evidence outside
8 Cf. Merieau-Ponty, Phenomenology 01 Perception, Part I, Ch. 6, "The Body as
Expression and Speech."
9 Cf. Merieau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. by Claude Lefort, trans. by
Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968) pp. 170-171, 175,
179·
A LINGUISTIC ALTERNATIVE 8r
that memory; the necessity for an intersubjective context thus
became apparent. Language, then, carries with it its own field of
the transcendent.
If one recognizes the reflective cogito as linguistic, the tran-
scendent is not cut off by reflection, as having been merely a pre-
condition for it, but sustains itself even through the reflective
cogito. (Descartes, it seems, could have found evidence for
"others" within the cogito itself without making his problematic
appeal to divine guarantees.) Further, a careful investigation of
language itself reveals it as something distinguishable from Mer-
leau-Ponty's "bodily presence." Having been spoken or written,
language assumes a being of its own, separable from the being of
the person in a way that the body can never be. I shall return to
this point.
The alternative which I am suggesting, in the form of a careful
consideration of the role of language in consciousness, is not
intended to contradict the positions of Sartre or Merleau-Ponty
but to supplement both. Let me tum now to a discussion of the
dichotomies that languages bridges.
LINGUISTIC ALTERNATIVE
Essence and Existence

In the Preface to his Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-
Ponty accuses Jean Wahl of being mistaken in saying that
"Husserl separates essences from existence":
The separated essences are those of language. It is the office of language
to cause essences to exist in a state of separation which is in fact merely
apparent, since through language they still rest upon the ante-predicative
life of consciousness. 10
If I read Merleau-Ponty correctly, he is suggesting that the

separation of essence and existence is merely an apparent one
because essences are distilled from existing experienced realities
by language; and the very process of distillation is so dependent
on the connection between essence and existence, experienced
pre-predicatively in the objects, that the latter tie cannot for a
moment be overlooked. That is, the only existence which he gives
to essences is qne which they had in pre-predicative experience.
I
10 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology 01 Perception, p. xv.
I would go further and claim that the only existence that es-
sences ever have is linguistic existence, i.e. their being is exclu-
sively in language. Thus, essence can never be separated from
existence - Merleau-Ponty is correct here - but the two cannot
even be "apparently" separated. The difference in our points of
view has its source in the nature of essences.
For Merleau-Ponty, it seems, essences are joined with existence
in actual individuals and are pre-predicatively experienced. It is
here that I would disagree. Individuals exist, and they are not
divisible - even logically - into essence and existence. I noted in
the last chapter that an essence, for Husserl, is generated out of
the free variation of a predicational series. Both the attributing of
predicates to the individual and the varying of the predicates in
order to sort out the" essential" ones are fundamentally linguistic
acts. The essence, or outcome of the linguistic acts, exists only
linguistically.
Further, when essences are looked at as "conditions for the
possibility of ... ," it seems clear that it makes no sense to speak
of individuals as some combination of those conditions plus
"existence." Essences are logical structures, i.e. they specify some
(or all) of the requisite conditions for an experience of a given
sort, not for an independent object's existence.
An ordinary object exists with spatio-temporal limitations.
Consciousness, through language, can objectify (make an object
of) the internal and external relationships recognized in it as an
element of an experience. The new "object" thus created is called
an "essence"; it has only linguistic existence from which it cannot
be separated and by which it can escape the spatio-temporal
limitations of the experience from which it derives linguistically.
Thus, any talk of separating essence from existence overlooks
two important things: first, essences do not exist in spatio-
temporal objects from which they are derived - thus, they can
not be separated from the existence of that object for it is an
existence which was never theirs; secondly, essences have a
linguistic existence from which they can in no way be separated.
It is in language, then, that essences have their full and only
existence. It is only in language that essence and existence can
meet, and in language it is impossible to separate an essence from
its linguistic existence.
Any discussion of separating essence from existence relates at

bottom to a separation of existing spatio-temporal objects from
generalized linguistic descriptions of them. Within the linguistic
framework what happens is that a pragmatical and syntactical
existence replaces the existence of the denotatum at the semanti-
cal level. (I shall discuss these three aspects of language more
fully in the next section.) The existence of this new object, this
essence, can be discussed only in the metalanguage since that
existence is exclusively linguistic.
It is at this point that we must examine what sense can be made
of the notion of "linguistic existence"; it will be shown in the
next section to be a transcendent-transcendental field of inten-
tional existence.
The Transcendental and the Transcendent

Charles Morris, in his essay entitled "Foundations of the Theory
of Signs," divides semiosis - the theory of signs - into three
parts: semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics. l l 1 shall use this
division in my discussion of language as the bridge between
transcendental consciousness and the transcendent, and of lin-
guistic existence as having the qualities of both the transcenden-
tal and the transcendent. 1 hope to show that while the semantic
aspect of language does not carry one necessarily to transcendent
reality, both the syntactic and pragmatic aspects do.
Any system of signs, such as language, has at least three
possible elements or relationships: the signs themselves and their
interrelationships (syntactics), the relationship between signs and
consciousness (pragmatics), and the relationship between signs
and that which is signified (semantics).
Early discussions of the relationship between consciousness and
its world took small note of linguistic signs and dealt largely
with ideas, images, impressions, etc. While language was not
always overlooked completely (Locke devoted the third book of
his Essay to it), it was not generally given a central role in the
problem. Later, with the logical atomists, language was placed in
the spotlight and was seen as providing consciousness with an
essential clue concerning the nature of reality. The early writings
11 Charles W. Morris, in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, NO.2
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938).
of Russell and Wittgenstein attempt to establish a clear relation-

ship between the structure of language and the structure of the
world to which it refers. Their positions grew less tenable as un-
resolved problems emerged. Finally, by the time he wrote his
Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein had abandoned his ef-
fort to establish a relationship of correspondence between lan-
guage and the world.
Philosophers who have attempted to insert language into the
problem of knowledge about the world have generally focused
either on the structure of language as somehow reflecting the
structure of the world or on the semantical aspect of language. In
this latter case there have been lengthy discussions of designation
and denotation, of the naming function in language and the
assertion of nonlinguistic existence. These discussions have shown,
I think, that the consideration of the semantic aspect of language
has not yet provided criteria which would allow one to make
conclusive statements about the existential status of the referents
of language. The case for the transcendent is different with the
other two aspects of language.
Morris describes the pragmatics of language in this way:
By 'pragmatics' is designated the science of the relation of signs to their
interpreters .... Since most, if not all, signs have as their interpreters
living organisms, it is a sufficiently accurate characterization of pragmatics
to say that it deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, that is, with all the
psychological, biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the
functioning of signS.12
Within the context of my discussion of Husserl, I shall include

in the pragmatical aspect of language both its relation to tran-
scendental SUbjectivity and its horizon of intersubjectivity. Mor-
ris' subsequent discussion of the pragmatical is in terms of inter-
preters as hearers of language; nevertheless, his description of it
as involving all the "psychological, biological, and sociological
phenomena which occur in the functioning of signs" allows one to
include with equal justification the speaker in his capacity as
constitutive-interpreter. In language-use consciousness is func-
tioning in a constitutive capacity, taking part in the genetic
constitution of language itself and bestowing meaning on its own
1l Ibid., p. 30.
experience as it objectifies it. This is what Husserl would call the

transcendental field. It is one side of the pragmatical aspect of
language.
Pragmatics further includes the relationship of language with
all other interpreters, that is with the intersubjective context
about which much has already been said. These other interpreters
are transcendent to consciousness. If they were part of the tran-
scendental, their being would reduce to the being of the original
constituting consciousness and would not be genuinely "other"
at all; the language would be private.
The relationship of the transcendental ego, as first interpreter,
to its constituted language opens the whole field of pragmatical
relationships with that language. The transcendental and the
transcendent are joined by language with which they share a
relation as interpreters.
There is no question of attempting to prove the intersubjective
context of language by an appeal to pragmatics. The latter pre-
supposes that context. At stake, rather, is simply the fact that
language provides the common ground on which the constitutive
interpreter (Husserl's transcendental subject) meets the inter-
pretation of the "other," the transcendent. But there is a still
more significant aspect of the transcendent which appears in
language. It presupposes at the start certain pragmatical re-
lationships, particularly that of the constitutive interpreter, or
transcendental subjectivity, and flows from them. This is the
transcendent as it appears in syntactical formations.
Syntactics is the science of the formal relations among lin-
guistic signs themselves. A sign is a sign only insofar as it is
constituted as such. Thus, the signs themselves bear a necessary
relation (at least at their commencement) to a constituting con-
sciousness, i.e. to transcendental sUbjectivity. However, lin-
guistic signs can be given both shape and sound. This brings them
immediately into the realm of the spatio-temporal, the tran-
scendent. Not only can they assume this transcendent form, but
when they do so they need no longer be dependent on conscious-
ness for their existence. They are "pinched off," so to speak,
and assume an existence of their own which is independent and
fully transcendent.
Experience gives rise to a sense of "me" and "not-me," "my
consciousness" and "not-my-consciousness," "my experience"

and "not-my-experience." But it is in language that what is
"inner" and "me" and "experienced" can be objectified to con-
stitute "outer" and "not me" and "object." In its linguistic
form, some of both aspects are retained; part of my conscious
life becomes shareable, part of my conscious life becomes an
object even for me.
It is in language that the transcendental shares being with the
transcendent and, in this case, is constitutive of it. It is linguistic
existence which is both transcendental and transcendent.
The Ideal and the Real

It will be recalled from earlier discussions that the distinction
between the real and ideal realms was based largely on temporali-
ty. The real, as temporally limited, included not only the transcen-
dent but even the immanent temporality associated with the
duration of mental acts, etc. On the other hand, HusserI's ideal
realm was free of temporal limitations, and so a-temporal.
Language obviously has part in the real realm, both in its
syntactical and pragmatical relationships. The former are largely
transcendent, the latter both transcendental and transcendent.
It is in semantics and syntactics that the ideal appears. Chomsky
speaks of the "deep structures" of language as they contrast with
the "surface structures." 13 These deep structures govern the
semantical aspect of the language and can be expressed in a vari-
ety of surface or phonological structures. Chomsky also speaks of a
"universal grammar" which would provide the universally valid
conditions making possible the creative use of language, the
ability to generate an indefinite number of linguistic responses
from a finite set of signs. 14
At a somewhat different level, de Saussure distinguishes la
langue from la parole. 15 And HusserI himself distinguishes "ideal
meaning" from the act of meaning. 16 What is common to all these
cases is the recognition that there is an aspect of language which
is not temporally limited to actual performance, and that tempo-
13 Noam Chomsky, Aspects ot the Theory ot Syntax (Cambridge: M.LT. Press,
1965), p. 16.
14 Ibid., p. 6.
15 De Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, p. 13.
16 Husser!, Logical Investigations, I, p. 333.
rally limited use is possible only as an exemplification of an

underlying structure or certain already-established relationships.
(I take it for granted that even a creative use of language takes
place within some framework of the already existing language. If
if were purely creative and absolutely unrelated, it is not clear
how it could be meaningful.)
Admission of an ideal aspect in language does not entail the
acknowledgement of some mysterious eternal quality in language.
It does not even necessitate the acceptance of Chomsky's innate
mental structures governing language capacity. Even the later
works of Husserl were less concerned to maintain an "eternal"
character for ideal objects than they were to hold them as in-
dependent of the current instantiation.
Thus language incorporates both temporally limited instantia-
tions, part of the real realm, as well as the ideal structures which
are not limited to temporalized instantiations and which govern
the latter.
If one attempts to bracket out the real realm and leave only the
ideal, language-use leads one back inevitably to the real, primarily
in its syntactical formations and its pragmatical relationships.
This sort of conclusion must emerge from careful examination of
each of the three sets of dichotomies: each side of the pair is found
in language. Any attempt to make a reduction to essences, to
transcendental subjectivity, or to the ideal realm, involves the
use of language, and language necessarily brings with it existence,
the transcendent, and the real.
Were one to suggest that the reduction ought simultaneously
to eliminate those aspects of language that dissolve the reduction,
the response would have to be that in such a case one is no longer
dealing with language. That which functions as a language neces-
sarily has these three aspects. One can hardly speak of a system
of signs without including the signs themselves, or without the
dual relationship of signs to consciousness and signs to designata
or denotata.
Therefore, in uncovering consciousness as essentially language-
using, one simultaneously bridges the three sets of dichotomies
which the three aspects ofthe reduction were intended to separate,
and thereby dissolves the three phases of the reduction itself. In
language consciousness finds an indubitable bridge to existents
(in spite of the phenomenological reduction), to the transcendent

(in spite of the reduction to transcendental subjectivity), and to
the real (in spite of the reduction to ideal essences).
EVIDENCE AND CERTAINTY
Let us turn now to a more careful consideration of the semantic

aspect of language.
The cogito carries with it necessarily my being and the being of
the" other." My expression of it presupposes my bodily being; its
consistent meaning presupposes the being of the "other." But
what can be said of the rest of the world of everyday experience?
The cogito necessarily brings with it some object, for one cannot
think without thinking something; hence, as Husserl noted, one
can be certain at least of intentional objects. Can one be equally
certain about their existential status? Not always. There are
the perennially problematic hallucinations, after-images, etc.,
whose existential status is coincidental with that of consciousness.
So one must admit at least the margin of dubitability which
started Descartes on his way. The question that remains to be
decided is how far one ought to follow Descartes in his doubt.
Husserl parted company with him at the turn toward transcen-
dental SUbjectivity. I would claim that that turn itself ought only
to be momentary, for it leads to a language-using consciousness,
and through language it leads directly back to the transcendent.
Recognition of the instrumental role of language in conscious acts
makes it clear that universal doubt about existence other than
my own is inappropriate. My language not only designates, it
denotes; the denotata include at least myself, the other, and the
syntactical formations of language.
Once it has been admitted that the cogito reveals more than an
isolated consciousness, the problem of the existence of specific
transcendent objects becomes a problem of evidence. Two words
come to me in language: "chair" and "unicorn." They are similar
in that each can function as a name for something. But the naming
function does not guarantee spatio-temporal existence to the
referent. Does anything about language guarantee the existence
of the objects to which it refers? Or to put it another way, does
language have any qualities that can guarantee that it is func-
tioning denotatively on a given occasion rather than designative-
ly? It seems not. It is here that evidence becomes important.
It must be remembered that, as Merleau-Ponty pointed out,
the cogito reveals a concretely existing "I" as well as a functioning
consciousness. That is, I exist as a bodily person in some given
situation. It is this bodily, situated, person working in conjunc-
tion with other bodily, situated persons, that provides evidence
for whether a word is functioning denotatively or designatively.
Chairs I can touch and see, and my experience of them can be
corroborated by others; hence, we can agree, on the basis of our
harmonious experience, that the word 'chair' denotes a spatio-
temporal object, that there are indeed chairs whose being is
different from ours and different from that of language. The case
for unicorns, while less definitive, is likewise less important.
Neither my bodily experience nor that of any other with whom I
share language, gives evidence of unicorns whose being is different
from that of consciousness or of language. They are not experi-
enced perceptually as having independent existence. While such
an animal may someday come into its own being, our communal
experience gives no evidence now that the word can be used to
denote a transcendently existing animal. In sum, we have agreed
that our use of language is sometimes denotative and sometimes
designative, and the evidence in any given case arises out of our
lived, shared, experience. Here, once again, the crucial role of
language comes to the fore; our experience is objectified and
shared primarily through language; evidence is made accessible
largely through language and through the rules we establish to
govern its use.
Whether language arises purely as an arbitrary convention or in
accord with innate mental structures that offer a guarantee for
its communal consistency seems irrelevant. The important thing
is that by using certain language to express or to refer to certain
kinds of experience, we are able to generate similar attitudes,
behavior, responses in others. When a piece of language fails to do
this, we generally recognize a short-circuit in the communications
system, either at the level of experience or of language-use.
Further talk or further experience can usually set the matter
straight, but even where this is not the outcome, the significant
thing is that we can recognize the disharmony. That is, we are
able to distinguish between shared experiences which corroborate

one another, thus providing evidence, and those which do not.
The question that needs to be raised now is whether or not the
evidence arising from shared experience provides any sort of
apodictic certainty about our knowledge of things. Clearly it does
not. If it did it would never be necessary to discard mistaken (but
commonly held) views, to adjust somewhat inaccurate views, or
to keep testing certain accepted views. The semantical relation of
denotation in no way establishes beyond question our knowledge
about the world. The question must remain open. What is
revealed as beyond doubt is that I exist as a meaning-giver, a
language-user and that my activities in this capacity are per-
formed in an intersubjective context.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of the reduction was to eliminate unquestioned

presuppositions and to uncover the universally valid foundations
for knowledge. Husserl undoubtedly succeeded in eliminating
certain of Descartes' presuppositions, such as the paradigmatic
status of deductive reasoning and the metaphysical assertion of
substantial existents. One he himself failed to notice, however,
and which became even more crucial after his turn to transcen-
dental SUbjectivity, was the presupposition that language could
operate in pure consciousness, divorced from the real, the tran-
scendent, and the context of existing intersubjectivity. Further-
more, while he undoubtedly realized that experience affects lan-
guage, he apparently overlooked the fact that the relationship is
reciprocal: language also shapes one's experience. His intuition,
for example, of consciousness as act and object would be quite
unintelligible to an Eskimo, whose language includes only the
passive form of verbs and fails to distinguish between "being"
and "action." 17 Because the German language (like the English)
is so frequently structured on a subject-object relationship medi-
ated by an action of some sort, it seems quite natural for us to
suppose that that is likewise the structure of consciousness (ego-
intending-object). For the Eskimo, the case is quite different; an
17 w. H. Werkmeister, A PhilosoPhy 0/ Science, A Bison Book (Lincoln, Nebraska:
University of Nebraska Press, I940) p. I36.
"object's-being-intended-by-consciousness-is." One can only sur-

mise the sort of epistemology that would seem "natural" in such
a case. It is not possible to overlook the role of language in
shaping one's views if one hopes to make universally valid state-
ments about consciousness.
The use of language within the reduction, then, is Husserl's
unquestioned presupposition. Had he examined it carefully he
would have seen that it not only vitiates his conclusions, it
destroys his very method. If he had taken full cognizance of
language and all its ramifications, Husserl would have uncovered
in his reduction as essentially language-using consciousness which
requires the existence of "the other" and which, far from being
locked in a transcendental realm, is capable of constituting and
knowing certain transcendent objects, namely, the syntactical
formations of its language. Having acknowledged the role of
language in the acts of consciousness in which it objectifies its
experience in knowledge, Husserl would then have noted the
certainty with which one can accept an existing intersubjectivity
and the accessibility of the transcendent. What would have to be
left open-ended is certain aspects of the semantical relationship
between language and the world. This is the point at which the
evidence of shared harmonious experience is the only guide to
whatever "certainty" is available to any ego.
In sum, while reflection is surely both possible and helpful in
an investigation of consciousness, radical reflection in the form of
a reduction to pure consciousness is neither possible nor necessary.
Merleau-Ponty says,
The most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the im-
possibility of a complete reduction ... radical reflection amounts to a
consciousness of its own dependence on an unreflective life which is its
initial situation, unchanging, given once and for all. 1s
I would add that the act of reflection, a linguistic act, apart

from consideration of its pre-conditions, is itself an act which
dissolves the reduction by its very use of language.
18 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology 0/ Perception, p. xiv.

CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
Edmund HusserI's phenomenology was an attempt to achieve

the Cartesian goal of absolutely certain foundations for knowledge
by providing a new methodology, the application of a triple-
faceted reduction. By this means he hoped to eliminate unjusti-
fiable presuppositions and uncover the basis for every possible
science and metaphysics. In the foregoing chapters it has been
shown that while HusserI succeeded in eliminating some un-
justifiable presuppositions, he himself was guilty of incorporating
others into his method. Further, his attempt to provide apodicti-
cally certain foundations for knowledge on epistemological
grounds alone has been shown to fail because language itself
incorporates an ontology. Finally, because language is operant
within the reductions and is formative of one's experience, HusserI
has not been able to provide the basis for every possible science or
metaphysics. A brief re-examination of the three aspects of the
complete phenomenological epocM will justify these conclusions.
THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION
It has been shown that by the first reduction HusserI has

bracketed out Descartes' metaphysical presupposition regarding
substances, as well as his methodological preference for deduction.
HusserI had, however, included another presupposition which
might more properly be called ontological, namely, that the being
of the objects of consciousness is a meaning or validity attributed
to them by consciousness. 1 Thus, what in our natural attitude is
called an "object" becomes in reduced consciousness a "meaning."

CONCLUSION 93
From this fundamental presupposition flowed others: that a
reduction to pure consciousness, with no existential commit-
ments, is possible; that the nature of language is such that it can
be divorced from the existent, the transcendent, or the real; and
that the being of "the other" is a constituted meaning for the
transcendental subject. I have claimed that these secondary
presuppositions are not possible within the reduction and, there-
fore, the presupposition from which they flow is unjustifiable.
Beginning with the operation of language within the reduction
(a fact which HusserI accepts), I have shown that its consistent
use within a pure consciousness cannot be guaranteed. Hence,
if any sort of certain and universal conclusions are to be reached,
one must avoid the possibility of a private language and accept
the existence of an intersubjective context. Thus the being of others
(as opposed to the mere "meaning" of the other) must be in-
serted as a pre-condition for carrying out the Husserlian project
with any consistency. Then, careful analysis of the syntactical
aspects of language made it clear that the being of language is
separable from the being of any particular consciousness through
its syntactical formations, its graphemes and phonemes; thus the
being of language emerges. Finally, the user of language is a being,
or ontological entity, which is distinguishable both from its
linguistic instrument and from the being of "the other." In a
variation of the Sartrian proof, the use of language presupposes
the being of the user. Being, then, is not a meaning constituted by
consciousness, but the very pre-condition for the three essential
elements in its acts of constitution, i.e. consciousness, language,
and "the other." The epistemologicalfoundations are not primary,
resting as they do on a three-fold on~ology: the being of the
conscious person, the being of language, and the being of others.
A rejection of HusserI's ontological presuppositions necessitates
the conclusion that the first reduction fails in its attempt to
isolate consciousness from any exis~ential commitment. Such a
conclusion leads inevitably to a re-examination of the realm of
transcendental SUbjectivity since, alone, it is incapable of pro-
viding apodictically certain foundations for knowledge.
94 CON CLUSION
THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION
The second reduction, like the first, excluded methodological

and metaphysical presuppositions. It avoided the Cartesian reli-
ance on deductive reasoning, limiting itself to uncovering what
was self-evidently given in the total structures of the transcen-
dental ego, i.e. a world of constituted meanings and the conscious
acts of constitution. Similarly, it claimed no substantial status
for the ego. What Husserl failed to uncover was the constitution
of language which is itself so crucial in the constitution of mean-
ings. He assumed that the investigating consciousness could un-
cover the structures of the transcendental ego without first ex-
amining the structures of language, through whose instrumental-
ity the uncovering was to be done.
The structure of the transcendental ego includes the use of
language in meaning-constitution; and it is self-evident - as self-
evident as any of Husserl's intuitions - that the ego does not
constitute its language autonomously, but rather always receives
it as already partially constituted for it by "the other." It is in
considering the constitution of its language that the transcen-
dental ego finds its guarantee of an intersubjective world; in the
passive genesis of language the problem of solipsism gives way to
assured intersubjectivity.
An analysis of the first reduction made it clear that language
requires an intersubjective context if its use is to have any
criterion of consistency and if, in consequence, the outcome of
the reduction is to have any claim to universal validity. Byex-
amining the constitution of language itself, in the framework of
the second reduction, it became clear that language comes to
consciousness already partially constituted and thus from "the
other." Apart from any requirement of universal validity, then a
simple analysis of the genetic constitution of language offers the
evidence for existing others.
Further, the careful analysis of the pragmatical and syntactical
aspects of language uncovers the transcendental-transcendent
quality of language. Language lends itself not only to the lived
experience but also to objectification. Any attempt to isolate the
lived transcendental aspect of it from its transcendent objectifi-
cation is destructive of the very essence of language (its valid
CONCLUSION 95
functioning) and thereby of the ability of consciousness to con-
stitute its meanings or to describe its intuitions.
Therefore, the foundations for knowledge must be expanded
not only beyond the Cartesian model but even beyond its Husserl-
ian improvement.
Descartes' method of radical reflection might be depicted as an
isolated mind examining its own "contents." The only certainty
that followed immediately from this act of reflection was that of
an isolated consciousness with its isolated acts of doubt and
reflection. It took a God to replace the rest.
In Husserl's interpretation of the same radical reflection,
consciousness was expanded explicitly to include not only the act
but also its phenomenal object. Hence, consciousness can be
certain not only of itself as acting but also of its intentional
objects. The transcendent presented no particular problem for
Husserl because the status of the transcendent, as really existing,
was seen as a meaning constituted by the transcendental ego.
Further, it seemed clear to him that anything known as certain
belonged necessarily to the realm of consciousness, the transcen-
dental.
It was Merleau-Ponty who suggested that the dichotomy
between knowing and being, between the transcendental and the
transcendent was a false one; one's knowing is precisely one's
being in the world. For Merleau-Ponty consciousness and body
are not separable parts of the person; bodily interaction with a
world and with others replaces the simple intentionality of con-
sciousness.
One's bodily being in the world is the necessary pre-condition
for one's reflecting upon oneself and upon one's knowing. In such
a schema the realm of certainty is not only broadened as compared
with that of both Descartes and Husserl, but the nature of con-
sciousness is different. No longer is consciousness something
which can be purified of the transcendent and reflected upon in
itself. One knows oneself, not directly in pure reflection upon pure
thought, but rather indirectly, as one deals with one's world.
There is no primacy for the transcendental, for it assumes all its
meaning from its immersion in the transcendent.
My own thesis is that the schema needs to be expanded still
further, making full allowance for what was only implicit in
96 CONCLUSION
Merleau-Ponty's schema. The purpose of the expansion is to give

language the full prominence which it requires in the total system.
Language must be seen as transcending mere bodily presence to
the world, for its being is separable from that of the person in a
way in which the body is not.
Thus, one's presence to a world can be fully uncovered in
reflection, but reflection - an essentially linguistic act - carries
one directly out of oneself as functional transcendence back to the
world where it finds its "embodiment." It is not merely the
temporary nature of reflection that brings one back to the world,
but more importantly, it is its linguistic nature that keeps one
from ever really leaving the world in reflection.
By a further expansion it becomes manifest that language is an
embodiment of the phenomenological mediation between naive
realism and pure idealism; where the former would have one
merely receptive to the world and the latter would make one
simply creative of it, phenomenology demands the interaction of
the two. In language one is both creative and receptive with
respect to meanings, and thus with respect to one's world. The
transcendental subject, then, transcends itself in part through
expressive language. In the expression it finds a new transcendent
object which it can know, and through which it can know itself.
The alteration of the schema is still more fundamental than
this. If reflection is essentially a linguistic act, and if language is
transcendent in its syntactical formations, it is precisely by
making one's knowing acts transcendent in reflection, through
language, that one comes to see the very processes of knowledge,
the foundational structures which make knowledge possible.
Further, the conscious person expresses himself in language and
can know himself fully only by knowing that self that is being
expressed linguistically as well as bodily. All these aspects of the
person are as certainly available to knowledge as are the inten-
tional objects of Husser!' Finally, it is in language that the self
uncovers that world of meanings, the linguistic world, of which
it is a partial creator.
Thus language fills a dual function in uncovering the structures
of knowledge: it is instrumental in the constitution and expression
of meanings in an experienced world and is simultaneously con-
stitutive and expressive of the meaning of the conscious person
who uses it.
CONCLUSION 97
This ambiguity of reference allows for the concomitant ambi-
guity of the ordinary English 'intention,' which may refer either
to an ideal or real object - to the beginning or the end of a con-
scious process of "meaning." The project, therefore, of laying bare
the sure foundations for knowledge must take language into
careful account, not only as the instrument of investigation but
also as an essential formative element in both the "subject" and
the "object" of traditional epistemological theory.
THE EIDETIC REDUCTION
In the third reduction Husserl hoped to eliminate what I have

called "teleological" presuppositions. The eidetic reduction was
to make available to consciousness the full realm of possibilities
that would govern every actuality. Thus, there was no question
of providing sure foundations for a pre-conceived science or
metaphysics, but rather the foundations were to be established
for every possible science or metaphysics by establishing them
for knowledge in general. Once again, however, Husserl operated
with an unexamined presupposition; namely, that the grasp and
description of essences is done in language and that language
somehow escapes "all the formations pertaining to sociality and
culture" which he had sought to eliminate. He tried by this final
reduction to restrict the investigation, at least temporarily, to the
ideal realm of essential possibilities, and overlooked the fact that
language, the very instrument by which essential possibilities are
generated, incorporates within itself the real as well as the ideal
and makes any restriction exclusively to the ideal an impossibility.
The realization of the essential function of language in Husserl's
phenomenology uncovers an interesting paradox; i.e. the very
certainty of linguistic functioning reveals at its core a fundamental
relativity. While one can say with assurance that language
functions in the reflective uncovering of the foundations of
knowledge, one can say with equal assurance that the relationship
between the signs of a language and their semantic "meanings" -
designata or denotata - is quite uncertain; language certainly
operates, but its semantic relationships with the world it
characterizes are far from certain. For an investigation of such
meanings, surely Wittgenstein was right in insisting upon an
98 CONCLUSION
empirical examination of the conditions for each particular use. 2

In addition, analysis has shown that any given linguistic
context imposes an unavoidable limitation upon one's view of
"possibilities," since we structure the possibilities of our mundane
situation in harmony with the structures of our language.
It has already been shown that the basic grounds for knowledge
are ontological rather than epistemological, but even the three-
fold ontology outlined above does not provide the grounds for
every possible metaphysics or science. The eidetic reduction to
the realm of pure possibilities is a reduction to language, and
language, in its actual use, has already limited the possibilities of
meaning through its very structures (as for example, the Eskimo
language eliminates pure activity from among its possibilities).
In a word, essences are linguistic entities, and cannot be found to
exist outside the limits imposed by language; the field of pos-
sibilities opened up by the eidetic reduction is coincidental with
the field of possibilities available within a given linguistic struc-
ture.
In more practical terms our conclusion must be that there is no
reason to suppose that a philosopher may assume a privileged
position with respect to science, metaphysics, or knowledge in
general. Both the philosopher and the scientist form themselves
and their meaning-world in linguistic behavior; to that extent,
their views are equally limited, equally relative. Even formal
languages and modal logics are unable to transcend in any absolute
way the limits imposed by natural languages, since each of these
formal systems is constructed through a natural metalanguage
and reflects the essential structures of that metalanguage.
CONCLUSION
Given the above analysis of Husserl's phenomenological meth-

odology, it is unlikely that the limitations imposed by language
on his phenomenology can be eliminated. The problem grew out
of the criterion of clarity Husserl borrowed from Descartes. At
the perceptual level the criterion presents no great difficulties: we
can always "look and see" what is intended when the context of
2 Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations, # I34-I35. I39-I40.

CONCLUSION 99
reference has been made sufficiently clear by reference to empiri-
cal conditions - the circumstances, as J. L. Austin put it,3 sur-
rounding a particular use. The heart of the difficulty stems from
the lack of clarity in the supposed universal or eidetic relation-
ship between language and its referents. In the context of a tran-
scendental philosophy we are concerned, of course, with the
elements of experience as the referents of language, and not
particularly with the establishment of an exact semantic corre-
lation between language and "reality." Nonetheless, the problems
are parallel. Any given language limits the possibilities for inter-
preting experience - let alone for describing its universal and
necessary structures for every possible consciousness. Since our
investigation of experience and of language itself is performed
with the aid of language, the relativity of the circle seems virtu-
ally unbreakable. This is, of course, not to end with total skepti-
cism; it is, rather, to note the inaccessibility of the sorts of
absolutes which Husserl, like Descartes, posited as the foundation
of all knowledge.
a J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p.

IlS·
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
(All numbers refer to pages; numbers in italics to footnotes on the

indicated page.)
Aristotle. 40 Studies in Cartesian Philosophy. 4

Austin, J. L., 99, 99 Locke. Don. I7. 17
Sense and Sensibilia, 99 Myself and Others, I7
Brentano, Franz, 5, 38 Locke. John, 83
Broekman, Jan, 36 Malcolm, Norman, 25. 25
Pktinomenologie und Egologie, 36 Knowledge and Certainty, 25
Bruzina, Ronald, 9. 9 Meinong, Alexis, 58
Logos and Eidos, 9 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 4.13, 5I. 51.
Chomsky, Noam, 5, 30, 30, 86, 86, 87 76, 78ff .• 79. 80. 8I. 89, 9 I • 91. 95,
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 86 96
Cartesian Linguistics, 30 Phenomenology of Perception. 5I, 79,
de Saussure, Ferdinand, 52, 52, 86,86 79. 80, 8I. 81. 9I
Course in General Linguistics 52, 86 Primacy 01 Perception. 79
Descartes, Rene, I, 4, 13, 39, 61, 80, Visible and the Invisible, 80, 80
81, 88, 90, 92, 94, 95, 98 Morris, Charles. 83. 83. 84. 84
Farber, Marvin, 3, 3 "Foundations of the Theory of
Frege, Gottlob, 23 Signs", 83
Hume, David, 4 Ogden, C. K., 5I. 51
Husserl, Edmund, Meaning of Meaning. 5I
Cartesian Meditations, 2, 4, 9, I6, 16, Passmore, J. A., 67. 67
28,37,39, 40 , 48, So, 55, 56, 62, Thinking and Meaning. 67
63. 64. 65. 74, 92 Plato. 58
Crisis of European Sciences and Richards. I. A., (see "Ogden. C. K.")
Transcendental Phenomenology, Russell, Bertrand, 38, 65, 84
7,8.8.28,29.59.59.72,73 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 4,43. 44. 67. 76ff.,
Experience and judgment, 63 77.78 .93
Formal and Transcendental Logic. Being and Nothingness. 43. 77
I5. 40 • 48, 49, 52. 52. 53, 66. 72 Psychology of the Imagination. 67.
Idea of Phenomenology. 5, 7. 7 78 ,78
Ideas, I. 2. 4,8. I5. 28,30.32. 40.42, Sokolowski, Robert, 40
43 Formation of Husserl's Concept of
Logical Investigations. 2. 3.6.36.36, Constitution. 40
38. 39. 40 • 4 I • 43, 44, 47. 53. 63. Spiegelberg. Herbert. 2,3.7.7.9.9
63. 65, 7I, 71.86 Phenomenological Movement, 3, 7, 9
"Origins of Geometry", 59, 60, 6I, Wahl, Jean, 81
72,72,73 Werkmeister, W. H., 90
Paris Lectures. 9 A Philosophy of Science, 90
Phenomenology of Internal Time- Wittgenstein, Ludwig. I6. 16, 2I. 33,
Consciousness. 40. 44. 45. 46 48, 4 8• 84. 97. 98
Kant. Immanuel, 5 Philosophical Investigations. 2I, 33.
Kemp-Smith. Norman, 4 48,84,98
GENERAL INDEX
(All numbers refer to pages; numbers in italics refer to footnotes

on the indicated page.)
abstract entities, 58, 65, 66 transcendental, 5, 9ff., 35ff., 43, 49,

abstraction, 42 56-57, 58- 61, 76, 78, 85, 94, 95
ambiguity, 28 egology,lo
art,53 eidos, 10, 37, 58ff., 68, 70-71, 74
behavior, 44, 51, 69, 70, 79, 89 epistemology, I, 3, 5,9, 18, 39, 77,91,
being, 43, 76, 88, 93 92, 93, 97, 98
of consciousness, 77, 78 epoche, 8, 37, 92 (see also "reduc-
of phenomena, 77, 78 tions")
categories, 3, 4, 5 essences, 11-13, IS, 27, 29-34, 37, 42,
causality, 28 51, 58ff., 68ff., 74, 76, 8Iff., 87-88,
certainty, I, 5, 12, I6, 16, 28, 34, 77, 97-98
88,90,91,92,93 evidence, 2, 63, 88 (see also "self-evi-
cogitationes. 9, 10, 14 dence")
cogitatum (-a), 5, 10, II, 14, 81 inadequate, 63
cogito, I, 2, 4, 5, 8, II, 13, 39, 79-81, apodictic, 63
88,89 existence, 65, 76, 8 Iff. , 87
bodily, 13, 78ff. as a meaning, 37
linguistic, 13, 80, 81 linguistic, 82
pre-reflective, 77, 79, 80 expressions (linguistic). 41, 42, 43, 43,
concept, 41, 42, 71 46,47,48
conditions (see also "possibility") fact, 58, 66ff., 67
necessary/sufficient, 63 "free variation", 58, 64, 66, 69, 70,
consistency, I6, 16, 17, 24ff., 27, 29, 82
32-34,73,80,88,89,93,94 games, 47, 48, 52
constitution, 9, 10, 13, 35, 38ff., 43-46, genesis, (see also "constitution")
58, 7lff., 76, 77, 91, 93, 94, 96 active, 50, 53, 56
genetic, 35, 40, 45, 46, 48ff., 66, 68, passive, 50, 53, 56, 73, 94
n 75, 84 geometry, 72, 73
oflanguage, 13, Hff., 52ff., 73, 75, 84 grammar, 71
deduction, 3, 4, 4, 90, 92,94 ideal,48
description, 12, 15, 19, 27, 28, 32, 34, universal, 86
40, 83, 95, 97, 99 hylomorphism, 40ff., 44, 48, 50, 54-56
ego ideal realm, 76, 86ff. (see also "ob-
absolute, 8, 61 jects")
concrete,9-II idealism
empirical, 35-36 absolute, 50, 96
pure, 35, 36 transcendental, 62
subjective pole of consciousness, 5, images, 51, 78, 80, 83
9, 10, 11,35 inaccessibility, I8, (see "privacy")
102 GENERAL INDEX
intentionality, 5, 8, II, 14-16,38, 38ff., presuppositions, I, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 14,
41,45, 53, 62-66, 68, 74, 77, 88, 95, 29, 39, 55, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97
96-97 privacy, I6, I6ff.
intersubjectivity, 32-34, 35, 49, 50, protention, 45, 49
54-57, 61, 73, 75, 76-81, 84, 85, 90, psychologism, 6
91, 93, 94 rationalism, 80
intuition, 2, 4, I I, 12, 15, 24, 29, 30, realism, 50, 96
3 2 , 33, 34, 4 1, 42, 44, 47, 65, 94, 95 recollection, 45, 49
judgments (constitution of), 45, 46, 49 reductions, 5, 6ff., 13, 88, 92
language, 12-13, 14ff., 44ff., 53,67,70, eidetic, 6, 9, Ioff .• 13, 26, 37, 51,
71-75, 74, 76, 78, 80, 81, 83, 87, 89, 58ff., 74, 75, 88, 97ft.
90, 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 99 phenomenological, 6, 7ft., II, 12,
criterion of consistency, 16, 17, 24, 14ff., 26, 34, 37, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60,
29, 33 73, 74, 75, 79, 88, 92ff.
metalanguage, 15, 21-24, 3 Iff., 34, transcendental, 6, 8ff., 35ff., 56, 58,
74,83,98 73,88,94
private,I2,I6,I9,54,55,75,85,93 reference (Fregean), I9, 23, 39
unambiguous, 28ff. reflection, 8, II, 13, 33, 35, 64, 65, 74,
Lebenswelt, 16, 33, 59ff., 72, 74 77, 79, 80, 81, 91, 95, 96
meaning, 9-13, IS, 23, 24, 32, 35ff., 48, relations, 67, 67ff.
58, 61, 66ff., 71, 77, 78, 84, 86, 90, retention, 45, 49
92, 93, 94, 96, 97 self-evidence, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 14, 29,
fulfilment, 42, 43, 46 , 47 36 , 45, 72, 94
intention, 41, 46, 47, 53 semantics, 23, 83ff., 97, 99
memory, 24, 25, 27, 32, 46, 47, 80, 81 semiosis, 83
metaphysics, 3, 4, 5, 7-9, II, 12, 13, 14, sense (Fregean), I9, 23, 39
16, 28, 29, 39, 90, 92, 97, 98 shame (Sartre), 44
methodological (principle), 2, 80 signs, 42, 47, 51, 53, 83ff.
motivation, 28 skepticism, 2, 24, 99
noema (noematic), 14, IS, 15, 39, 43 solipsism, 43, 55, 55, 74, 94
noesis (noetic), 14, 15, 43 speech,80
objects, 38 substance, 3, 4, 5, 9, 90, 94
ideal,6, 10, II, 13,26,41,42,43,44, syncategorematic, 31
63, 67, 71, 72, 73, 87, 97 syntactical, 23, 91, 93, 94, 96
immanent, 6, 7, 26, 29, 38 "syntactics", 83ff.
phenomenal, 7, 8, 12, 14, 16, 33 synthesis, 45, 46, 47, 49, 64, 65
real,6, 7, 8, 13, 41, 97 temporality, 6, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48,
transcendent, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14,29,38, 56,86,87
68 transcendental, 13, 35, 37, 76, 83 ff.,
ontology, 76ff., 92, 93, 98 9 1,94,95
perception, 10, 14, IS, 15, 42, 43, 49, constitution, 13
55, 62, 65, 79, 80 ego (see "ego")
phenomenalism, 10 idealism (see "idealism")
physicalism, 19 reduction (see' reduction")
possibility, 4,10,12,13, 6lff., 97, 98, 99 subjectivity, 58, 72, 84, 87, 88, 90,
conditions for the, II, 25, 36, 63ff., 93. 96
69, 71, 73, 82, 86 turn, 39, 60
"pragmatics" 83 ff., 94 truth, 2, 3, 79
pre-predicative, 58, 68-69, 72, 81 unambiguous, 28, 28ff.

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Language and the Phenomenological Reductions

Language and the Phenomenological Reductions

Comite de redaction de la collection:

ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1823-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1389-5

It was while reading HusserI's Cartesian Meditations that the

My indebtedness for helpful comments and warm encourage-

II. LANGUAGE AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION I4

III. LANGUAGE AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION 35

IV. LANGUAGE AND THE EIDETIC REDUCTION 58

Rene Descartes started modern Western philosophy on its

incorporates unjustified presuppositions and mIsses a crucial

In the decision process regarding the acceptability of data or

It is important to note here that Husserl counted some things

1 Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. by

3 Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, (2 vols., The Hague:

Having uncovered and rejected these presuppositions, Husserl

8 Edmund HusserI, The Idea of Phenomenology, trans. by William P. Alston and

Before the nature and function of the reductions can be made

9 Husserl, Logical Investiga#ons, II, pp. 35I-352.

12 Spiegelberg, Phenomenological Movement, II, p. 690.

know?" Hence, HusserI's concern in the phenomenological re-

The Transcendental Reduction

In other places he refers to the two simply as the transcen-

15 Husserl, Ideas, p. 215.

The Eidetic Reduction

versal entity, but a set of minimum necessary conditions for the

ical neutrality of the phenomenological reduction and its ac-

Having laid out the framework of Husserl's aims and method,

LANGUAGE AND THE

Discussion of the phenomenological reduction in the intro-

Two points are clear: the discussion of the problem of language

1 Husser! uses quotation marks around noematic qualities in order to distinguish

In order that the phenomenological reduction be a radical

The position is in keeping with the first characteristic of the

8 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 19.

This misconception about logically private ownership seems to

of the language itself is a privacy of inaccessibility. With regard

to other people has weak claim, if any, to the title "private

that that is what one means unless he has a concept of "I" as

metalanguage, ordinary language, and are therefore translatable

way to make their sense logically inaccessible. The sense of words

between what I am now doing and what I am now remembering.

Language of the Reduction

consciousness, at least as it operates in remembering, or by calling

Early in this chapter it was noted that Hussed did, in fact,

Hussed's requirement that there be an unambiguous and stable

10 The German word is eindeutig. Technically, it translates ordinarily as "clear,

This sort of "purification" of language offers no particular

Language, then, is to playa crucial role in re-presenting essences

It is the notion of words being" 'congruent' with the intui-

14 HusserI, Ideas, pp. 175-176.

language, eliminating all syncategorematic terms and stipulating

18 HusserI, Ideas, p. 176.

21 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 265.

Husserl's description of the phenomenological reduction makes

THE TRANSCENDENTAL REDUCTION

Let us turn now to HusserI's second, or "transcendental,"

THE TRANSCENDENTAL EGO

Having placed in suspension the existential status of the ob-

This "pure" ego may be individual, before the third reduction

Hussed first mentions "pure" in Logical I nvestigations4 as

2 Husser!, Logical Investigations, II, p. 544.

The transcendental ego, then, is primarily the function of the