Husserl Studies 3:131-166 (1986)

© 1986 Martinus NijhoffPublishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands

Hyletic experience and the lived body

SHAUN GALLAGHER*
Canisius College, Buffalo, N Y

The theory of hyletic data has been criticized and dismissed a number
of times since Edmund Husserl proposed it early in this century. This
rejection of Husserl's theory has been part of a larger, wholesale cri-
tique of the traditional notion of sensation in which theories of sensa-
tion have been displaced by theories of perception.
Since the time Plato wrote the Theatetus the notion of sensation(s)
has been an issue in the history of philosophy. In modern thought
sensations were characterized as either mental events (Descartes,
Condillac) or physical modifications (Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke) or as
neutral elements that are both mind and matter (Mach, Russell). 1
Maine de Biran noted quite correctly that the term 'sensation' signi-
fied too many things: "If one, in fact, used the same term sensation to
express now a simply affective modification, now a product composed
of an impression, a movement, and operation, etc., is it not to be feared
that the identity of expression will often serve to confuse things quite
different and to confirm illusions to which we are already sufficiently
inclined? ''~ But despite the rejection of the traditional notion of sensa-
tions by Gestalt psychologists and contemporary philosophers the same
ambiguity and indecision noted by de Biran can be found in recent

I thank George L. Kline, Jos~ Ferrater-Mora, and Jacques Tafniniaux for reading and com-
menting on an earlier version of this paper included as part of my Ph.D. dissertation ("Lived
Body and Time: A Phenomenologically Based Account of Human Nature," Bryn Mawr
College, 1980). My original research was supported by a Whiting Foundation Fellowship
(1979-80). A Lowery Research Fellowship at Canisius College has enabled me to update and
revise this paper for publication. Early versions of Parts I-III were read at a Husserl Ar-
chives Colloquium, Louvain, Belgium (December 1979) and I thank the members of that
colloquium for their helpful comments.
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psychological and physiological studies: sensation is either some kind of

mental experience or a type of neurological impulse or it remains un-
defined, retaining its traditionally ambiguous significance. 3 It seems,
therefore, that the issue of sensation has not been entirely laid to rest.
While Merleau-Ponty contends that sensations are artifacts, abstract
"products of analysis" that correspond "to nothing in our experience,"
Koffka states that sensations "are certainly artificial products, but not
arbitrary ones. ''4 That they are not arbitrary would suggest that there
is some natural event, some ground of experience at the basis of percep-
tion from which the concept of sensation is abstracted. In order to dis-
cover and delineate this ground of experience that forms the basis of
the abstractions termed 'sensations', I intend to examine Husserl's
theory of hyletic data and the critique of his theory ventured by a num-
ber of philosophers in recent years. Building on clues uncovered in this
brief examination I propose an alternative theory that resolves the
problems involved in modern dualistic approachs, in Husserl's theory,
and in the various critiques of that theory. This alternative theory is
posed in terms of the concept of the lived body developed in the phe-
nomenological writings of both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.

1. Husserl's theory of hyletic data

Husserl chooses the word 'hyle' to avoid the historical ambiguities asso-
ciated with the word 'sensation' and to suggest the Kantian concept of
"being matter [i.e., content] for functions of consciousness. ''s The
Greek hyle is usually translated as 'matter' but it has the philosophical
significance of a content that is not directly observable. Among other
things hyle is said to be known only by analogy and is characterized as
potency. 6 For Husserl 'hyle' signifies (1) a formless content that has
the potential to receive form, and (2) something that is not directly per-
ceived in conscious acts. This concept does not signify matter in the
physical sense, nor should it be associated with a materialistic doctrine.
Husserl provides some examples of what he considers to be hyletic
data: they are "color-data, touch-data and tone-data, and the like ...
sensuous pleasure, pain, and tickle sensations, and so forth, and no
doubt also sensuous moments belonging to the sphere of 'drives'
(Triebe)" (Hua III/1, 192/203). In another listing he states: "Hyletic
data are data of color, data of tone, data of smell, data of pain, etc."
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(Hua IX, 166). Although these lists do not tell us precisely what hyletic
data are, they do indicate two general types of hyletic data: data that
are the result of externally oriented sensing, and data that are associ-
ated with bodily processes and experiences, e.g., touch, pressure,
warmth, cold, and pain sensations (see Hua IV, 151 ).
The basics of Husserrs account can be summarized as follows:
(1) Hyletic data are the contents in the schema: apprehension - con-
tent of apprehension (Auffassung - Auffassungsinhalt). The content of
apprehension is precisely the hyle that becomes informed or interpreted
by certain apprehensions having various act-characters. 7 Hyletic data
serve as "the analogical building-stuff" for the appearances of an object
to consciousness and are formed into appearances by the work of an act
of apprehension (Hua XIX/1, 80•310). Thus Husserl writes: "We find
such concrete data of experience (Erlebnisdaten) as components in
more comprehensive concrete experiences which as wholes are inten-
tional, and this in a way that these sensuous moments are overlaid by
an 'animating,' sense-bestowing stratum .... Sensuous data present them-
selves as material for intentional formings or sense-bestowings at dif-
ferent levels" (Hua III/1, 192f./203f.; see Hua XVI, 46). Although a
conscious act, such as perception, is based on this pre-reflective per-
formance of the apprehension-content schema, neither the hyletic data,
nor the animating acts themselves normally appear to consciousness
(Hua XIX/1, 387/559, 399/567; Hua XIX/2,767/864; Hua III/1,95ff./
98ff.; Hua IX, 166); they are the operative and necessary conditions
that constitute the appearance of an object for consciousness (Hua
XIX/1, 169/385,361/539). The performing schema is never itself per-
ceived but is precisely the hidden structure of perception.
(2) Hylectic data enter into the intentional structure of consciousness,
but are not themselves intentional. Husserl states that they are real
(reell) components, constituents, or moments of consciousness and are
in some manner "present" in consciousness (see Hua XIX/1,381/555,
406/572, 411-412/577; Hua XIX/2,763/861 ; H.ua III/1,225ff./236ff.,
75/74-75; Hua XVI, 42; Hua IX, 172). "For all lived e.xperiences divide
into these two fundamental classes: the one class of lived experiences
consists of acts which are 'consciousness of'. These are lived experiences
which have 'reference to something'. The other lived experiences do
not. The sensed color does not have a reference to anything. ''~ The
hyletic element of consciousness 'has in itself nothing pertaining to in-
tentionality" (Hua III/1, 192/203), but becomes part of and becomes
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informed by the intentionality of consciousness. Thus, in themselves,

hyletic data have no meaning. It is up to intentional noetic apprehen-
sions to bestow meaning on these data. Hyle, on its own, offers no
meaning since it is "irrational stuff without any sense, though, of
course, accessible to rationalization" (Hua III/1, 197/208; see Hua
XIX/1, 80/309).
(3) Hyletic data are pre-reflective lived experiences that can be
grasped only abstractly in reflection. They are, according to Husserl,
lived through Erlebnisse that belong to a unity of consciousness (Hua
XIX/2, 764-765/861-863). And as Erlebnisse they carry the same kind
of adequacy as all lived experience (see Hua XIX/2,767-768/865 ; Hua
III/1, 96ff./100ff.; Hua IX, 171). Hylectic data become known only
through a reflective act (Hua XIX/1, 80/309-310; Hua XIX/2, 768/
865). In Ideen I Husserl calls this a 'hyletic reflection' and claims that it
involves an abstraction of hyle from its role in the schema (Hua III/1,
349/360; also see Hua IX, 163). Thus, Husserl admits that hyletic data
are abstractions, and he issues a warning, with specific reference to
hyletic data. He notes that reflection "generates new phenomena" and
transforms its object. "Thus it is not meant, e.g., that the material con-
tents ... are present (vorhanden) in the perceptual experience (Wahr-
nehmungserlebnis) in just the same way in which they are present in the
analyzing [reflecting] experience .... Obviously this difference has an
essential bearing on phenomenologicat method" (Hua III/1,229/240;
see Hua X, 129; EJ 255n.1; Hua XIX/1, 441-412/577). Hyletic data,
qua Erlebnisse, have a non-objective being (see Hua IX, 163), but if
they are made thematic in reflection they lose this non-objective status
- they are abstracted and become objects for reflection.
(4) Hyletic data compose a constantly changing flux of sensed
material. Although the object as it appears in consciousness - the
noema - can in some cases remain unchanging and identical through
time, the hyletic sub-structure is constantly changing. For example, a
noematic color that remains unchanged throughout a changing percep-
tual consciousness "is adumbrated in a continuous multiplicity of color
sensations" (Hua III/1, 226/237; see Hua IV, 22; Hua IX, 172). Con-
tinuous hyletic "transformations" take place even as the object of con-
sciousness remains identically one (Hua III/1,226f./237f.). 9
(5) Husserl remarks in several texts that although hyletic material
is the sine qua non of appearances it does not need to be animated or
endowed with meaning by an apprehension (Hua III/1, 192/204; Hua
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IX, 163, 165; Hua XIX/1, 80/309-310). Thus it seems that there are
some hyletic data that are not in the apprehension-content schema.
(6) Hyletic data are always members of a sense-field or sense-Gestalt
(Hua XIX/1, 253/453; EJ 73). "Precisely considered, the visual data
belonging to the object and universally to any perceptual object, have a
hyletic unity of lived experience, the unity of a closed sensuous field-
form (Feldgestalt)" (Hua IX, 154). This would simply that any attempt
to reflectively abstract particular data would tend to disrupt the unity
of the hyletic Gestalt. This Gestalt of hyletic data is the product of
passive synthesis that takes place on the most basic levels of consti-
tuting consciousness (see EJ 73).
(7) Closely connected with this last point is Husserl's description of
various genera of hyletic data. "Now if we heed merely the data, which
are contents for such adumbrating functions [of appearance], but dis-
regard these functions, then we find that they belong to fundamentally
different genera" (Hua IX, 165). Hyletic data can be discriminated into
essentially different fields that "have no h3detic, no purely sensuous
unity with one another" (Hua IX, 154). A visual field is distinguished
from a tactile field, an acoustical field, etc. (Hua IX, 162-166). Note
that Husserl specifically denies a hyletic or sensuous unity between
genera. This does not exclude a different kind of unity that comes
about as hyletic data are animated by an apprehension. In the schema
the different genera of data "acquire intentional reference to the same
object" and thus are intentionally synthesized. Through this intentional
synthesis "the visual appearances come to synthetic connection with
one another, etc.; but also, all these series of appearances with one an-
other, whereby they become mere layers in an all-encompassing syn-
thesis" (Hua IX, 154; see 165, 173). Thus Husserl claims a hyletic unity
within any particular generic Gestalt; also an intentional unity within
any specific genus; but only an intentional unity between different
genera.
(8) Hyletic data are said to be already there and always available, i.e.,
pre-given for the conscious apprehension that animates them.

The apprehension is the "animation" of the datum of sensation.

We must still ask, however, whether it begins conjointly with the
datum or whether the latter - even if only during a time differen-
tial - must be constituted before the animating apprehension can
begin. It appears that this last idea is correct. For in the moment
136

in which the apprehension begins, a part of the datum of sensation

has already expired and is only retentionally retained (Hua X,
110/147; see Hua IV, 22-23; EJ 79).

(9) Finally, Husserl provides a developing and sometimes ambiguous

series of thoughts on the relationship between hyletic data and the
human body. Through the phenomenological reduction Husserl had dis-
counted any theory concerning an operative performance of the body
in perception or any kind of apprehension. In effect, the body had been
bracketed in the epoche. Thus, Husserl could write: "Hyletic data are
data of color, data of tone, data of smell, data of pain, etc., considered
purely subjectively, therefore here without thinking of the bodily or-
gans or of anything psychophysical" (Hua IX, 166-167; see Hua XIX/1,
363/541, 374/550). Husserl briefly considers the traditional tendency
to associate noetic apprehension with the psychical while "the sensuous
moments were predicated of the organism (Leib) and its sensuous
activities" (Hua III/I, 194/206). Husserl suggested that this tendency
"found its most recent expression in Brentano's differentiation of
'physical' and 'psychical' phenomena." After noting that Brentano did
not have the method of transcendental phenomenology (i.e., the
epoche) at his disposal, Husserl continues:

Brentano, indeed, still did not discover the concept of material-

moments [stofflichen M o m e n t e n ] - and this is because he did not
take into account the differentiation between the "physical phe-
nomena" as material-moments (sensation data) and "physical phe-
nomena" as objective moments (physical color, physical shape,
and the like) appearing in the noetic apprehension of the former
(Hua III/1,194f./206; see Hua XVI, 47-49; Hua XIX/1,408/574).

In other words, without a "hyletic phenomenology" (Hua III/1, 196/

207) Brentano's account could not discriminate hyletic data from the
noematic appearances of sense-qualities that belong to the objective
realm. Husserl specifically cautions against confusing hyletic data with
perceived objective properties, la Moreover it is precisely in the percep-
tion of one's own body that this distinction can be made clear. E.g., in
the case of a toothache, "the perceived object is not the pain as it is
experienced [lived through], but the pain in a transcendent reference as
connected with the tooth" (Hua XIX/2,770-771/866). It is clear that
 137

hyletic data do not belong to the body as it appears to consciousness,

but are real contents of consciousness necessary for the constitution of
the body as, e.g., painful.
For transcendental phenomenology questions concerning the rela-
tions between hyle and the body are difficult ones, although there is,
according to Husserl, a non-transcendental science that addresses them:
"Somatologie." Husserl suggests a possible "clarification of the 'ex-
ternal conditions' which govern the emergence of a datum of sensation"
that would be carried out precisely in a non-transcendental manner. 1~
This suggestion seems to leave open the possibility that outside of a
transcendental phenomenology there may be an important connection
between hyletic data and the body. I return to this possibility in a later
section of this paper.

2. The critique of Husserl's theory

Herbert Spiegelberg reports in his historical account of the phenomeno-

logical movement that "Husserl never seems to have felt satisfied about
the status of the hytetic data. ''12 A number of other~ also have ex-
pressed their dissatisfaction with Husserl's theory; they include Aron
Gurwitsch, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Quentin Smith. 13
The objections raised by Gurwitsch (in 1929)and Merleau-Ponty (in
1945) against the traditional theory of sensation also apply to Husserl's
notion of hyle. Hyletic data are abstractions, objectified by reflection,
and not truly found in experience. Both Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty
deny the existence of a schema: "There is no hyle, no sensation which
is not in communication with other sensations or the sensations of
other people, and for this very reason there is no morphe, no apprehen-
sion or apperception, the office of which is to give significance to a
matter that has none" (PhP 405; see SPP 256). According to Merleau-
Ponty, perception is primary and the hyle-morphe distinction is the
result of abstraction. "When I consider my perception itself, before any
objectifying reflection, at no moment am I aware of being shut up
within my own sensations" (PhP 405). Pre-reflective experience is a
unity that is already perceiving, a field that is already perceived (PhP
241,216; SPP 257).
Husserl anticipated these objections. He warned of the dangers of a
reflection that transforms and objectifies, and he is in agreement with
138

Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty that hyletic data are always members of a

sense-field and have an intentional, synaesthetic unity precisely in per-
ception. There are, however, two objections raised here that go ab-
solutely against and beyond Husserrs theory. First, Gurwitsch and
Merleau-Ponty reject the apprehension-content schema. Second, and
following from this, Merleau-Ponty states, in agreement with Gur-
witsch, that the "simplest sense-given available to us" is a sense-field
that is "already charged with a meaning" and is not dependent on Auf-
fassungen to bestow meaning on it (PhP 4; see SPP 257). This is precise-
ly what it means to be in a field - that there is a specific "belonging," a
particular significance that the field defines. This means that sense ex-
perience is intentional; "to sense is to have qualities" (PhP 4, see 213).
Such qualities are not sensations, "they are the sensed (sensibles), and
quality is not an element of consciousness, but a property of the ob-
ject" (PhP 4)' Thus, in Husserl's terms, Merleau-Ponty would say that
consciousness is entirely noetic and intentional. There are no hyletic
data to be found in consciousness. Despite his own warning, Husserl
had confused hyletic data with sense qualities that belong to the ob-
jective world and are only intentionally in consciousness rather than
really contained as components of mental processes. Husserl could
say that he would "no longer confuse [hyletic data] with appearing
moments of physical things - coloredness, roughness, etc." (Hua III/1,
192/203), only because he had reflectively abstracted hyletic data from
the perceptual process that is intentionally implicated in-the-world (PhP
226). Thus, what Husserl had referred to as hyle is genuinely transcen-
dent with respect to consciousness.
Jean-Paul Sartre levels similar criticisms at Husserl's theory. Accord-
ing to him, Husserl had attempted to bridge the Cartesian dualism of
consciousness as res cogitans and the world as res extensa by intro-
ducing into pure noetic consciousness the elements of hyletic data. For
Sartre, if hyle is anything, it is transcendent to consciousness and there-
fore complicates rather than resolves the dualism (BN lix). According to
Sartre, if hyle were to have the officium or duty of importing reality
into consciousness, it would need to possess the character of resistance.
But, such resistance is lacking because consciousness transcends hyle
without even being conscious of it. The result is that hyle fails to ex-
plain anything and itself becomes problematic. "In giving to the hyle
both the characteristics of a thing and the characteristics of conscious-
ness, Husserl believed that he facilitated the passage from the one to
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the other, but he succeeded only in creating a hybrid being which con-
sciousness rejects and which cannot be a part of the world" (BN lix).
Sartre concludes that the concept o f hyletic data is pure fiction that
"does not correspond to anything which I experience in myself or with
regard to the Other" (BN 314).
The same conclusions have been reached by Quentin Smith. He, how-
ever, has attacked Husserl on his own grounds. Smith shows that if one
takes Husserl at his word and follows his instructions concerning the
reflective grasp o f hyletic data, one is still unable to discover such data
in consciousness. According to Husserl, one can reflectively intuit
hyletic data by abstracting these contents from the schema of appre-
hension-content. Thus it follows, according to Smith, "that the dis-
tinguishing mark of these sensations which will enable them to be
recognized as such by a reflective intuition is the absence from them o f
all interpretation and meaning. For, as we have seen, it is exactly this
factor of interpretation and meaning-bestowal that differentiates the
objective properties from the sensations proper" (Smith 363). Smith
sets out to follow Husserl's instructions systematically in order to dis-
cover these hyletic data in themselves, that is, abstracted from any
interpretation that would translate the data into appearances of qual-
ities. But he finds that he is unable to do this. "In fact, I am confronted
with the destruction o f m y very project o f intuition itself. I learn that
the intuition of the hyle is an impossibility. For the sensation that I am
trying to intuit cannot be intuited as being anything, for if it were in-
tuited as a certain 'what', this 'what' would constitute an interpretation
of the sensation" (Smith 363). There is no way to reflectively grasp
" p u r e " uninterpreted hyletic data, even if a further operation of ab-
straction is involved. For even in abstraction hyle cannot be divorced
from the meaningfulness given to it by its being apprehended - even if
this is an abstract, reflective apprehension. If in fact one searches
Husserl's texts to find a description of pure hyletic data, only descrip-
tions of quality-appearances can be found (see, e.g., Hua X, 24-25).
What, then, happens in phenomenological reflection that so misleads
Husserl into thinking that he has grasped a pure hyletic datum? In order
to respond to this question, Smith again attempts to grasp a hyletic
datum in reflection; but this time he pays closer attention to the reflec-
tive process itself. He uses the example of the hyletic whiteness in-
volved in the perception of a white paper. "Since what is immediately
given to m y reflection is the color o f the paper, I must try to exclude
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the apprehension of the white as a property o f the paper. I must try to

see a 'raw white'. And to a degree it seems I can do this. I can hold the
white before my mind and consider it as a 'whiteness'" (Smith 365).
Has the phenomenologist reached the intuition of a hyletic datum? No.

All I am doing is intuiting the white color of the paper that was
given to my perception, but reflectively considering it in abstrac-
ion from its perceptual givenness. 1 have removed its objective
meaning, and replaced it with a new meaning, the meaning of "a
hyletic sensation," a meaning that is posited by my reflective con-
sciousness. All that I have done is to reinterpret the white color
that was given to the perceptual consciousness (Smith 365).

In other words, hyletic data turn out to be, as Merleau-Ponty, Gur-

witsch, Asemissen, and others had suggested, sense-qualities that belong
to the objective world and that appear intentionally in the noematic
correlates of noetic acts. What Husserl "was reflecting on was really a
'projection' of his reflecting consciousness, rather than something that
had an independent and real (reelles) existence" (Smith 366).
Smith presents a strong argument. But I have some reservations
about his conclusion, which he states as follows: "the existence of this
[sic] data has no true validity .... For us, the concept of hyle is invalid
because it cannot be fulfilled by a phenomenological intuition" (Smith
366-367). If Smith means to assert that hyletic data do not exist, then
his argument resembles an argumentum ad ignorantiam, i.e., since I
have not been able to phenomenologically intuit hyletic data, they do
not exist. One could argue in the same way that since I have not been
able to phenomenologically intuit my state of sleep, I do not sleep. If in
fact Smith is arguing in this way then he has overlooked the possibility
that hyletic data could exist but are simply not available to phenom-
enological intuition. On the other hand, his conclusion might also be
interpreted to mean that one cannot use the concept of hyletic data
for purposes of explanation if that explanation purports to be based on
phenomenological evidence alone, since there is no phenomenological
evidence for such data. Given Husserl's definition of phenomenological
evidence, this conclusion would be justified.
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3. Hyletic experience
In both Husserl's theory and the criticisms leveled against it something
most fundamental has been overlooked: the role played by the body
with respect to hyle. For Husserl, the body is suspended within the
epoche and remains transcendentally an obscure problem. It is precisely
because of this suspension that the concept of hyletic data seems to be
ficticious, and without phenomenological validity. 14 According to the
critics, hyletic data are the products of a misplaced abstraction and turn
out to be something other than what they are claimed to be, i.e., sense-
qualities that are really transcendent to consciousness. It is my conten-
tion, however, that if the relationship between hyle and the body can
be brought into focus then something that I term 'hyletic experience'
can be legitimately referred to.
The criticisms of Husserrs theory presented above are cogent up to a
point. I agree with them in so far as they point out that hyletic data are
abstractions and not to be found in experience as such. And I would
also agree that there is no hyle or sensation that is not in communica-
tion with other sensations. There is no isolated datum. Primarily, before
any reflection, there is always a field or Gestalt, and the field is always
a synaesthetic one. For this reason I propose the term 'hyletic experi-
ence' rather than 'hyletic data' or 'sensations' to signify this unitary and
synaesthetic field. The latter terms would signify only inauthentic ab-
stractions from this experience.
I disagree with the critics to the extent that they equate hyletic ex-
perience with objective or appearing sense-qualities, qualities that
belong to the objective field and that appear only intentionally in con-
sciousness. The critics are motivated to identify hyletic data with tran-
scendent sense-qualities because they cannot find hyletic data in con-
sciousness. In this regard they are correctly motivated, yet I do not
agree that simply because hyletic data are not to be found as real com-
ponents of consciousness hyletic experience must be placed in the ob-
jective or intentional order. Hyletic experience is transcendent to con-
sciousness, but the transcendence is, so to speak, located on the "near
side" of consciousness - hyletic experience is an experience that
belongs to the body.
The reason that the body has been overlooked is, I suggest, that
Husserl's epoche sends everyone looking in the wrong direction despite
several of Husserl's own suggestions. The body is bracketed in the
142

epoche (see Hua VIII, 73-74, 84, 173). Yet even within the phenom-
enologically reduced sphere there is evidence for the body as lived, i.e.,
hyletic experience of pain, tickling, etc., that Husserl himself listed in
his examples. Yet it is precisely these hyletic experiences associated
with lived bodily processes that Husserl and his critics overlook. They
deal strictly with what could be called 'exogenously originating hyletic
experience' associated with "external" perception. By ignoring the
examples of "somaesthetic" hyletic experience, Husserl presents, and
his critics address a theory of hyle that is one-sided and inadequate to
begin with. ~s Consider the number and variety of somaesthetic hyletic
experiences in the following incomplete inventory, x6

Pain, with various qualifications (284ff., 337ff.), burning (285,

290), prickling (285), itching (285), "crawling" of the skin (285),
giddiness or light-headedness (286), faintness (286), throbbing
(286), tightness (288, 292, 302), nausea, defined as "a sensation
felt at the back and lower part of the throat, not being usually
associated with pain," accompanied by "uneasiness in the pit of
the stomach" (289), "lump in throat" (289), fullness (290, 310),
distension (290), tension (329), heartburn (290), tingling (291),
"smothering" (294, 301), palpatation (296), "cardiospasm sensa-
tion" (297), "flutter" (300), hollowness or emptiness (300, 310),
pressure (300), heaviness (300, 302), soothing (300), sinking
(307), hunger (310), cramp (311), swelling (313), "turning" of the
stomach (313), erotic sensations such as orgasmic ejaculation and
genital sensations (321-324), bowel sensations (322), "quiver"
(326), sweating (326), limbs "asleep" (326), chills (330), pull
(330), "pins and needles" (333), numbness (333), weakness (334).
This list can be expanded to include dirtiness, sensations of
blocked openings, 1T dizziness, "thickness" or slowness in move-
ment, "flushing" (as in a blush), innumerable sensations associated
with pregnancy, and sensations of warmth, coldness, etc.

Can these examples of hyletic experience, overlooked or ignored by

Husserl and his critics, be relegated to the transcendent objective order?
Consider the experience of pain in the case of headache accompanying
eyestrain. This is precisely a hyletic experience and it is so even before
the headache is identified or felt as pain. TM Moreover, this original
hyletic experience does not disappear when it is consciously interpreted
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as headache; rather, this is precisely the time that it appears. When the
experience is made conscious I can then reflect on this pain and, follow-
ing Smith's method, try to isolate the hyletic painfulness. Do I thereby
intuit the noematic appearance of pain, abstracted from its perceptual
givenness, i.e., something twice removed from the living body that is
actually in pain? If this is the case then hyletic painfulness would be
merely a reinterpretation of the perceived pain. Does this mean that the
original painfulness - the original hyletic experience - does not exist?
A number of things would be wrong with such a conclusion. First,
the reflection that tries to grasp the hyletic experience tends to isolate
and abstract the experience. The result, then, would be to interpret the
experience in terms of an artificial datum isolated and abstracted from
an original G e s t a l t .
Second, the "object" that actually lives and experiences the original
pain is precisely not an o b j e c t - it is not the objective body that suf-
fers, but the lived body. More precisely, it is not the body as objectified
in consciousness that experiences the pain, it is the lived body that lives
through the hyletic experience. If in bringing the lived body to con-
sciousness, making it present along with the pain, I make it an inten-
tional object for consciousness, I do not abolish the original lived ex-
perience. The original hyletic experience belongs to the body as it is
lived and is neither an objective sense-quality nor a noematic appear-
ance.
Third, the phenomenologist looks in the wrong place for hyletic ex-
perience. He tries to discover the hyletic experience somewhere be-
tween the noetic act and the noematic correlate, i.e., in the place occu-
pied by Husserl's schema. Since this is where the critics look for hyle
but do not find it, they declare it to be non-existent. But seeking for
hyletic experience within this specific schema means that in the case of
somaethetic hyletic experience such as pain the phenomenologist tries
to find a hyletic experience upon which to build an appearance of
precisely the hyletic paih that he sets out to find, i.e., he tries to find
some "stuff" really immanent in consciousness that will allow him to
account for the original experience of pain by means of a noematic
appearance. Not able to find this "stuff" really immanent in conscious-
ness, but finding only something similar, i.e., the appearing sense-
quality in the intentionally immanent noema, he then concludes that
hyletic experience p e r s e does not exist, and that Husserl had mistaken
the sense-quality for the hyletic datum. But in the case of somaesthetic
144

lived pain this would be paramount to denying the original pain. It

would be equivalent to the claim that pain is really only the appearance
of pain, or that pain, rather than being something that the lived body
suffers, is a sense-quality of the objective body as it appears to con-
sciousness.
The analysis of hyletic experience supplied by both Husserl and his
critics is based on exogenously originating sense hyle. When this analysis
is applied to somaesthetic hyletic experience it leads to the absurd con-
clusion that pain is not lived but belongs to the objective realm as a
representation. But this is precisely the kind of psychologistic claim
that Husserl was trying to refute.
Hyletic experience is not really immanent in consciousness; but this
does not mean that it does not exist. Hyletic experience is originally a
somaesthetic experience - an experience belonging to the lived body. It
is really transcendent to consciousness; but this does not mean that it is
objectively, or noematically, or intentionally transcendent. Rather, it
turns out to be precisely the lived pain that I first intended to find
through reflection. It belongs pre-reflectively, pre-objectively to the
lived body. Thus, with respect to somaesthetic hyletic experience the
critics are correct to assert that (1)hyletic data are abstractions; and
that (2) if they are looked for in consciousness they are not to be
found; and that therefore (3) they are transcendent to consciousness.
But they are not correct in concluding that (4) hyletic experience is
nothing at all, i.e., non-existent; that (5) it is not experienced; or that
(6) it is a misinterpretation of appearing sense-qualities.

4. Hyletic experience as the body's lived experience

It would not be sufficient to simply displace Husserl's theory without

trying to provide a more positive account o f hyletic experience. The
following is an attempt to provide such an account. In order to solve
several of the problems involved in such an account I make use of sug-
gestions offered by both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. My remarks in
the remainder of this paper are focused on two issues: (a) hyletic ex-
perience as experience of the lived body and its relation to conscious-
ness; and (b) hyletic experience as operative in external perception.
Hyletic experience can be experienced or lived in three different
ways: (1) it can be isolated and consciously interpreted in abstract
 145

terms, in which case it involves the appearance of the body in con-

sciousness; (2) it can be translated into behavior determined anony-
mously by the lived body; (3) it can remain uninterpreted and non-
conscious. Each of these possibilities will be considered in turn, starting
with the first one.
In certain circumstances (including illnesses, fatigue, stress-situations,
medical examination, philosophical reflection, etc.) the body makes its
appearance in consciousness. It appears as something present. As one's
attention is directed towards one's body, moreover, there usually takes
place a discrimination or isolation of the outstanding feature defined by
the sometimes problematic circumstance. The body becomes objecti-
fied. Yet the objective body, present to consciousness, does not cease
to be lived. Even when one body area is isolated and emphasized as the
part that I am explicitly conscious of, this area and the body as a whole
remain lived. The body lives whether I am aware of it or not. Moreover,
it lives in a holistic way and for the most part this living takes place out-
side of my conscious awareness of it. For example, in normal situations
when I am involved in some project, such as writing or working, I am
not always conscious of my body; I do not always have a body image
present in my consciousness. And again, there are some bodily per-
formances on the neurological and physiological level that I never be-
come aware of(e.g., internal organ functions). In these two regards, in
the way the body lives its environment and in the way the body lives its
physiology, the body is "absently available," i.e., it is not entirely
present to consciousness although it can be made present as the objec-
tive body. 19 For the most part the lived body performs anonymously
and spontaneously.
In those instances when I do have a consciousness of my body, ab-
stracted hyletic experiences, "internal sensations," presented in con-
scious experience of the body are precisely features of the objective
body. They are features of " m y " body (i.e., the body that has lost its
anonymity), and they are expressed as, e.g., "I have a headache," or
"My back hurts," or "I feel tense." In so far as they are claimed as
"mine" they appear as subjective feelings.2° In conscious reflection
these abstracted feelings or sensations are easily taken for sense-qual-
ities presented in the noematic appearance of the body, precisely be-
cause they are made thematic. They are presented as part of the inten-
tional object of consciousness when that object is the body. Yet, al-
though hyletic experience is represented in consciousness in this man-
146

ner, it is more than mere representation, for there is a being of the pain,
for example, that is more than its mere percipi. An original experience
of pain is the basis for the interpretation that presents pain as a sense-
quality belonging to " m y " body. The original experience is precisely
the hyletic experience that belongs to the pre-personal, anonymous
lived body.
Hyletic experience can be lived in a different way: it can be lived as a
behavioral style determined by the lived body situated in its environ-
ment. In this case it may never reach consciousness, or, if it does, it is
presented in the form o f certain feelings.about the situation. For in-
stance, in the case of eyestrain, before there is a consciousness of the
pain as pain, the text that I am reading seems more difficult, or the
lighting seems duller, etc. 21 The hyletic experience of pain in this case
is not interpreted as a sense-quality of the body but is translated into
perceptual changes in the relevant environment. This in turn motivates
changes in bodily behavior: I move closer to the desk-top, I squint m y
eyes,+ I use my fingers to follow the lines of text, etc. All of this I do
without thinking, without a thematic consciousness of my actions,
without a representation of pain. More precisely, "the" eyes squint,
"the" fingers, which I do not see thematically, trace the lines of text.
As Merleau-Ponty writes: "The subject of sensation is neither a thinker
who takes note of a quality, nor an inert setting which is affected or
changed by it, it is a power which is born into, and simultaneously
with; a certain existential environment, or is synchronized with it" (PhP
211). The environment itself is lived by the body, and this living is con-
ditioned by the hyletic experience that belongs to the body. The per-
formance of the lived body in its environment is translated into pre-
reflective existential behavior. Experientially the individual may not be
able to discriminate various sensations o f pain, throbbing, hunger, etc.
- he may only feel " o u t of sorts" in general. Hyletic experience can
thus be translated into behavior without any consciousness of it as
hyletic experience.
Where exactly does this translation, this interpretation take place?
Precisely not in consciousness but in the lived body living its environ-
merit. The interpretation is not noetic - it is not performed by a know-
ing subject. It is performed in the pre-subjective, pre-objective, anony-
mous living of the body in its environment. A description of hyletic ex-
perience is precisely a description of how the lived body functions in its
environment. The lived body motivates and performs a translation of its
 147

lived physiology and its lived environmental transactions into a logos of

behavior and only sometimes into conscious expression.
Finally, there are some instances in which hyletic experience remains
uninterpreted, non-conscious, and relatively unexpressed in behavior.
However, such hyletic experience is not unefficacious with regard to
expressed behavior. It may have a negative or limiting influence on
behavior. For instance, certain lived but not consciously felt physio-
logical processes that take place in the body are hyletically experienced
- i.e., are lived by the body - but do not explicitly motivate behavior
or consciousness. Examples of this include the hyletic experiences of
kinaesthetic tensions, throbbings, and rhythms that accompany normal,
untroubled respiration, blood-flow, and heart-beat. Such physiological
functionings with their hyletic accompaniments are automatic, non-
conscious, and radically habitual. It is perhaps equally possible to say
that such hyletic experience accompanies and is expressed in every kind
of behavior and consciousness so that it defines what is possible for
them but in such a way that it is itself absent, anonymous, and normal.
Buytendijk , for example, points out that each environment calls forth
appropriately specified heart, kidney, stomach, (etc.) performances and
appropriately specified bodily regulations, adaptations and emotional
reactions.

In the working-body the "technique" of heart action, for instance,

is changed with respect to the automatic self-regulation of circula-
tion and respiration. This can be ascertained and analyzed. These
changes, however, are mutually connected with a pathic tuning of
the body to the lived interior and exterior sensations and with the
characteristic of availability which is brought forth in work from
its ground in the completely unconscious impersonal and preper-
sonal level. 22

Every bodily situation defines its specific Gestalt of hyletic experi-

ence. The body lives its physiology and its environment hyletically in
one or a combination of three ways: consciously, behaviorally, or non-
consciously. This means that hyletic experience is not some unique
kind of experience that can be abstracted out of experience in general.
All experience, insofar as it is conditioned by corporality, is hyletic ex-
perience.
If this theory of hyletic experience is correct, the following implica-
148

tions can be identified vis d vis Husserl's original theory.

First, the concept of the apprehension-content schema is displaced
by the concept of a lived body operating in its environment. Hyletic ex-
perience does not need to be formed into appearances by the work of
conscious apprehensions. Hyletic experience is already informed with
meaning for consciousness. There is no need to postulate an "ensoul-
ing" or animating conscious act since hyletic experience is already en-
souled or animated.
Second, hyletic experience is not a real component of consciousness.
It is transcendent to consciousness. It is lived experience, but not
necessarily conscious experience.
Third, hyletic experience is pre-reflective; if it is reflected on it can
be grasped only abstractly as broken into a plurality of endogenous
sensations.
Fourth, according to Husserl, hyletic data are not intentional, that is,
they do not have reference to an object. If hyletic experience is pre-
objective and pre-conscious it would seem likely that in Husserrs sense
of the term 'intentionality', this hyletic experience is non-intentional.
However, if a wider meaning is adopted for the term 'intentionality', in
the sense of a functioning or operative intentionality of the lived body
as defined by Merleau-Ponty, then hyletic experience could be said to
be operatively intentional. This means that all experience (non-con-
scious as well as conscious) is, or is conditioned by, the lived bodily
experience of its environment. Moreover, since hyletic experience is
already formed experience, relative to consciousness, it is not a mean-
ingless experience. Thus, pain has a specific meaning that defines the
situation of the lived body. This specific meaning may motivate be-
havior embodied with meaning. The kinaesthetic experience that ac-
companies normal heart-beat or the exaggerated respiration of a man
who is overworked are not meaningless, are not without reference to
the surrounding world. They are, in a general sense, symptoms of the
circumstances, signs of environmental pressures, and should be included
in the definition of the situation.
Fifth, Husserl correctly asserts that hyletic experience is a constantly
changing flux. Every alteration of hyletic experience changes the body
schema, and reciprocally every change, differentiation, or integration of
the body schema involves a change in the Gestalt of hyletic experience.
The body is constantly adapting to its environment; hyletic experience
is constantly undergoing modification.
 149

Sixth, Husserl was also correct to stress that hyletic experience need
not necessarily serve a presentational function within the apprehension-
content schema. In fact, with regard to somaesthetic experience, much
of it does not involve a conscious presentation.
Seventh, the concept of hyletic experience is a more adequate de-
scription of the hyletic field as a Gestalt than Husserl's concept of
hyletic data. There is already a hyletic unity not only within any
generic field but also among fields. This unity, rather than being dis-
covered by reflection, tends to be disintegrated by reflection.
Finally, Husserl, was correct to insist that hyletic experience is some-
thing that is always there or already available. This is most obvious
when the body with its hyletic experience is made an object of con-
sciousness; it is noted to be something that has been operating all along,
an on-going process of which I have just become conscious but one
which had been functioning in an anonymous and spontaneous per-
formance even before I turned my attention to it.
Two related issues that have not been dealt with in the above ac-
count now call for our attention: Husserrs discrimination of various
genera of sense-data and his suggestions concerning the relation be-
tween hyle Originating in externally orientated sensing and the body.
These issues are resolved only in the attempt to work out an answer to
the question of how hyletic experience - so far described only in terms
of somaesthetic experience - operates in perceptual consciousness.

5. Kinaesthesia and sense-perception in Husserl's phenomenology

Husserl's theory of hyle was designed to address problems concerning

the conscious perception of the surrounding world. Since Husserl's
theory has been rejected and a theory of hyletic experience has been
offered in its place, the problem of perception still requires resolution.
The precise question is this: how does hyletic experience enter into the
process of perception? In other terms the question can be asked in the
following way: how does hyletic experience enable the body to deal
with its environment so that this environment becomes perceived as a
meaningful world?
Not surprisingly it is Husserl himself who offers some assistance in
this direction. Husserl had focused several of his investigations on what
we have termed somaesthetic hyletic experience. More precisely he con-
150

cerned himself with a specific type of hyletic experience - kinaesthesis.

He defined kinaesthesis as the sensation o f bodily movement involved
with, e.g., eye movements, hand movements, and general body locomo-
tion. With the development of his philosophy the phenomenon of the
body took on increasing importance for Husserl. In 1925 he called for a
"novel intentional analysis, namely the sort in which the kinaesthetic
systems of hand movements, head movements, movements of walking,
etc., are constituted intentionally and are joined together in the unity
of one total ststem" (Hua IX, 151). In fact, however, he had already
started a series o f such analyses as early as 1907 (in Ding und Raum)
and was occupied with them as late as 1932 in the unpublished " D "
manuscripts. 23
In Ding und Raum Husserl distinguishes between kinaesthetic ex-
perience and the hyletic data that act as "representing content" (dar-
stellender Inhalt) for an apprehension (Hua XVI, 160-161; see Hua V,
11-12). Kinaesthetic experience is said to be "inset" or "inlaid" (einge-
legt) in the body. Husserl states that kinaesthetic sensations do not
work to bring an object to presence as do hyletic data but that in a
certain sense they do function to bring the body to presence in con-
sciousness (see Hua XVI, 161). Elsewhere he states: "the body is also
seen like any other thing, but for the body (Leib) it comes about only
through the insetting of sensations in touching, through the insetting
o f pain-sensations, etc., in short, through the localization o f sensations
as sensations" (Hua IV, 151). Husserl had adopted the position that the
body was always present in the perceptual field. 24 Yet Husserl dis-
tinguished the body as a living presence from the body as an objective
presence. "On the one hand the body is a thing, a physical thing like
any other .... It is a thing among other things, it has its changing posi-
tion among them, it is at rest or in motion like other things. On the
other hand, this thing is precisely a body, bearer of the I..." (Hua XVI,
161-162; also see 280; and Hua XIII, 21, 30-31, 42). The body is both
object and the "perceptual organ of the experiencing subject" (Hua IV,
144). And it is precisely to this latter "Ichleib," the body as a living
presence, that he attributes kinaesthetic sensations. "The I [which is
borne by the body] has sensations and these sensations are "localized"
in the body .... The touching hand 'appears' as having tactile sensa-
tions .... Likewise, the sensations of position and movement that have
their objectifying function are at the same time signifiers of the hand
and arm and are located in them. ''2s Here Husserl points to a corre-
 151

spondence between the hyletic data that present the body as objective
thing with its objective movements, and the kinaesthetic experience
that in a unique way constitutes the objective body as " m y " body.
Thus, the sensations of bodily movement are generally associated with
the sensations that have an objectifying function. 26
This correlation or association becomes important for the constitu-
tion of objective things and objective space. It seems that objective
things never appear without a corresponding appearance of the body
that bears the I. The constitution of things in objective space involves a
co-constitution of the body. The constitution of the body, as a con-
stantly present body, thus involves an appearance of a surrounding
world; the kinaesthetic sensations that help to account for the appear-
ance of the body are associated in a passive synthesis with the hyletic
data that help to bring the objective world to appearance. ~7 Thus, in
some way, as yet unspecified, somaesthetic hyletic experience is in-
volved in the perception of objective things. If abstractly one can dis-
tinguish between hyletic data having an objectifying function and
kinaesthetic data, in truth these data are really the same hyletic content
that takes on a double aspect v~ different apprehensions (see Hua XVI,
163; Hua V, 14-15).
This insight, containing the germ of an important revision of his
theory of hyle, is developed by Husserl in later texts. The double func-
tioning of hyletic experience is expressed in Ideen H by the terms
'Empfindungsdaten' (or later 'Aspektdaten' 28 ), i.e., the original concept
of hyletic data having an objectifying function, and 'Stellungsernpfin-
dungen', i.e., sensations of posture, kinaesthetic experience (Hua IV,
57). In this text the latter is newly emphasized and entails a widening
of the concept of hyle as found in Ideen/.29 The concept undergoes
further development in Husserl's later work.
The body, according to the later Husserl, has available to it a system
of possible kinaesthetic experiences corresponding to possible bodily
positions. But in any specific moment the body finds itself already in a
posture (Stellung), already experiencing a "kinaesthetic situation." More-
over, such a posture is always bound up with the spatial position that
the objective body has. 3° The correspondence of posture and kinaes-
thetic experience (Stellungsdaten) to aspect data, i.e., objectifying data
for the appearance of the body as thing as well as things in general, in-
volves a "kinaesthetic motivation." A change of posture and thus of
kinaesthetic experience motivates a change of aspect data. Husserl
152

writes: "The system (Systematik) of aspects is consciously referred to

the system of kinaesthetic movements and in the manner of an ontical
motivation. ''31 And since the kinaesthetic system of the body is always
copresent with and in the perceptual field, this means that every experi-
ence of a thing as objective is equally an experience of " m y " sensing
body (see Hua V, 124). For example, "a sensation of eye-posture (eine
Stellungsempfindung des Auges) corresponds to each place in the field
of sight" (Hua XVI, 170).
Kinaesthetic experience here seems to take on a more active role in
perception. Is there any need here for an animating noetic apprehension
if consciousness is already supplied with an aspect of the perceptual
field organized or mediated (see Hua XV, 567) by its association with
kinaesthetic experience? Perhaps this would go beyond Husserl's inten-
tions. Several questions, however, are as yet unanswered. How is kinaes-
thetic experience always bound up with objective body position? What
is the specific nature of the "motivation" between kinaesthetic and
perceptual aspects? How does kinaesthetic experience determine the
perceptual field? Husserl's answers to these questions are couched in
terms of his transcendental philosophy. Since he is dealing with tran-
scendentally reduced phenomena - the appearance of the body via
kinaesthetic hyle copresent with the appearance of the thing - he is
required to answer in terms of transcendental constitution. How does
the body get constituted? And how is the body as present involved with
thing-constitution?
First, according to Husserl, in the case of the objective body a con-
stitutive analysis reveals that along with the objective body there is also
given the Ichleib, a living presence that plays a part in all objective con-
stitution via its kinaesthesis (see Hua V, 121 ). Therefore it is of funda-
mental necessity to account for the constitution of this Ichleib. Here,
for Husserl, as for Aristotle, the sense o f touch is discriminating and
"intelligent." Husserl writes:

Now each organ is constituted on the one hand through tactile ex-
perience ... On the other hand, however, is self-constituted as
actual or possible modes of touching so that we always and neces-
sarily find in the original touch experience that results in the body
[Leib] as ob/ective body [K6rper] and as lived body [Leib], a
functional accompaniment of the touching and the touched organ,
with the possible reversal: that the touched can become the
touching. 32
 153

According to Husserl, the body is self-constituted in kinaesthetic ex-

perience. In other words, kinaesthetic experience is spontaneously or-
ganized into a living Gestalt, and organized precisely as a lived "organ-
ism." In this way the body is lived. But also the environment is per-
ceptually organized because a kinaesthetic experience is conscious only
if an aspect datum is given therein, a3 Thus the world is constituted
simultaneously with and through the body. "The body, 'organizing' the
possible mobility of the body, or of its 'organs', is bound up with
Perspektivierung. ''34 For example, every eye movement reorganizes
both the perceptual field and kinaesthetic experience and, vice versa, a
change in the perceptual field reorganizes eye reactions and their
kinaesthetic experience (see Hua XVI, 17 5-17 6).
The perceptual determination of the objective position of an object
requires that the body adopts a certain posture, a certain way of hold-
ing the head, etc. 3s Thus Husserl shows that the constitution of ob-
jective position and objective spatiality is possible only through the
self-constitution of the body via its kinaesthetic experience. Objective
space presupposes a lived space; objective position presupposes a lived
posture. The body organizes the environment around itself just insofar
as it organizes itself. This organizing activity is called by Husserl "a
hidden intentional if-then relation. ''36
Husserl's analysis, which reveals the body as organizer of the per-
ceptual field, entails one immediate consequence. Recall that the visual
field, the tactile field, the acoustical field, etc., counted as various
genera of hyletic fields. Husserl believed that these different fields had
"no hyletic, no purely sensuous unity with one another" (Hua IX,
154). The unity of these fields was to be found only within an actual
perception of a thing and such unity was supplied by an apprehension.
Following his later analysis, however, there is another possibility more
consistent with his emphasis on the body's kinaesthetic experience. The
different genera of hyle are united on the basis of a "motivating sys-
tem" of kinaesthetic organization. This organization is performed by
the lived body. In other words, the body schema, as organizer of kin-
aesthetic experience, spontaneously organizes, in a passive association,
the aspect-data, so that the different genera of hyle become united
hyletically, on the level of passive synthesis. "Each kinaesthetic sensa-
tion as a kinaesthetic 'location' within the system takes on the signifi-
cance of a member of the body placed in a certain way in the space of
haptic orientation. ''37 This passage suggests, in answer to a question
154

raised above, that at least in this respect noetic apprehension is no

longer needed as organizer of the perceptual field. Kinaesthetic organ-
ization operating through the body schema now provides for the or-
ganized unity of the synaesthetic field. The visual field, the tactile field,
etc., do not become united noetically or consciously; they are already
united for consciousness by the lived body, i.e., they have precisely the
hyletic unity that Husserl had earlier denied to them. Moreover, it is the
lived body in its holistic performance, rather than any conscious appre-
hension, that gives meaning to various kinaesthetic situations. If one
can still speak of a hylomorphic schema, the morphe must now be un-
derstood as the Gestalt or organization that is bestowed on the world
through the body's hyletic experience. Thus consciousness finds itself
already surrounded by a meaningful world, one that is organized by the
lived body.

6. Hyletic experience and perceptual organization

There is one essential limitation to Husserl's description of the body as

kinaesthetic organizer of the perceptual field - one that has rather
serious consequences for the theory as a whole. This limitation is found
in Husserl's claim that the body is always present in the perceptual
field. Perhaps this is a necessary consequence of his transcendental ap-
proach. If one begins with an abstraction or an exclusion of the body in
the phenomenological reduction, there remains only the appearance of
the body, body qua phenomenon. 3s This appearing body then becomes
central in the description of the lived body as organizer of the percep-
tual field. But if, as I have argued in detail elsewhere,39 the body is
lived primarily and for the most part in an absently available manner,
i.e., if the body functions for the most part in an anonymous way, ex-
perientially absent to consciousness, then there is no way to describe
the body in its anonymous performances in purely transcendental
terms. The lived body in its absently available performances must, of
necessity, escape Husserl's transcendental reflections. The following is
an attempt to translate Husserl's phenomenology of the body as or-
ganizer of the perceptual field into a theory that is consistent with the
idea that the absently available body schema is more fundamental than
the body image, the body as it appears to consciousness. The problem
to be resolved is how exactly hyletic experience can function to or-
ganize the perceptual field.
 155

Hyletic experience functions to organize perceptual experience be-

cause the lived body is never isolated nor totally distinct from its en-
vironment. Body and environment are not two separate entities that
enter irrto-external relations with each other. The body, as organizer of
the perceptual field, is not contained in the environment in an ob-
jectively spatial way but enters into a unified performance with its en-
vironment to create a circumstance or context. In the anonymous per-
formance of the lived body no distinction can be made between the
body and the environment. The environment is lived to the same extent
and in so far as the body is lived. 4° The environment is not conceived
here as a set of objects in the Kantian sense (see PhP 105), but as a "set
of manipulanda," the immediate circumstances that the lived body
takes under its hand, under its eyes, those things that are "up against"
the body and are lived as they enter into the "natural system" of the
body. 41 The experiential environment is an area that can potentially be
taken up and incorporated. The lived body incorporates and appropri-
ates certain items in the environment: the feather in the woman's hat,
the cane in the man's hand, the sportscar that maneuvers and hugs the
road, etc. (see e.g., PhP 91, 145), As organizer of perceptual contexts
the lived body is not bounded by the environment, is not other than
the environment; rather, in the measure that the environment can be
incorporated and lived, the body and the environment approach unity.
Experientially, the environment is an indefinite extension of the lived
body.
The body is involved in a dialogue with the environment: one side of
the dialogue is the appropriation and incorporation described above. On
the other side the environment directly and indirectly regulates the
lived body. The environment conditions the body so that the body not
only lives itself but also lives its environment. The environment calls
forth a specific body-style so that the body works with the environ-
ment and is included in it. The posture that the body adopts in a situa-
tion is its way of hearkening to the environment. The spontaneous ac-
tions of the body are never "thoughtfully" imposed upon the environ-
ment, but are rather elements of the environment itself. The body finds
itself already with feelings, drive-states, kinaesthetic sensation, etc.,
and they are partially defined by the environment in which it must
function.
The "internal" environment that functions homeostatically and auto-
matically, composed of the innumerable physiological and neurological
156

events that occur in the body, is simply an internalized translation and

continuation of the "external" environment. Changes in the external
environment are always accompanied by changes in the internal one.
For example, "changes induced in the blood by alterations in the [ex-
ternal] environment, such as increased carbon dioxide or decreased
oxygen tension in the inhaled air, and alterations in the temperature of
the environment are minimized by appropriate alterations in circula-
tion, respiration, and endocrine activity. ''42 All of these automatic
regulations take place and are lived hyletically in the body. It is also the
case that when there are changes in the internal environment the ex-
ternal environment can take on a different significance. The example of
eyestrain cited above is a case in point as is the phenomenon of hallu-
cination. 43 There can never be an alteration on one side of this dialogue
without an alteration on the other side. This means that changes in the
way the body is organized are accompanied by marked alterations in
the organization of the experiential environment, and vice versa. Mer-
leau-Ponty seems to strike at the heart of the matter: the environment
is that "living connection comparable, or rather identical, with that
existing between the parts of the body itself" (PhP 205).
The lived body organizes itself in its hyletic experiences, and in so
doing, it organizes its environment. With regard to somaesthetic hyletic
experience (including kinaesthetic, coenaesthetic, and peripheral sensa-
tion) some organizing relation to the environment is always implied.
Somaesthetic hyletic experience is not just experience of the body; it is
also experience of the environment as it is lived by the body. In short,
hyletic experience is a reflection of integrated bilateral (i.e., both
bodily and environmental) conditions and demands, processes and
stabilities, seductions and surrenderings. 44 Hyletic experience can be
treated as a symptom, a signifier that refers beyond localized bodily
conditions to environmental conditions in general (see PhP 237).
That hyletic experience plays a part in the organization of the per-
ceptual world can be shown in some examples. For instance, attending
first to what is normally called an "internal" set of circumstances, being
hungry entails a number of someasthetic experiences such as rhythmic
hunger pangs, disagreeable aches, a "sense of gnawing just below the tip
of the breast bone," "a general sensation of weakness and malaise in the
body as a whole, and a local sensation of emptiness in the abdomen,"
etc. *s But beyond these "internal" circumstaces the hyletic experiences
refer to a general set of conditions that can only be defined by the rela-
 157

tion between body and environment. Being hungry, behaviorally and/or

consciously, is a mode of being of the lived body-environment and
necessarily entails reference to the environmental conditions defined in
terms of habitual eating habits, increased bodily activity, variations in
metabolic needs, etc. 46 Since habit is to some extent conditioned by
the environment, since increased bodily activity, e.g., exercise, is a way
of dealing with the environment that sets up further environmental
demands, and since metabolism is defined not only as the result of
bodily conditions and rhythms, but also in terms of the purity of the
air breathed, environmental temperature, humidity, etc. all of which
must be lived or experienced by the body in some way, then all of these
conditions are environmental ones as well as bodily ones.
Not only does the environment help to define the hyletic experience
of being hungry, being hungry conditions the experiential environment.
Hyletic experience conditions the way that the environment is experi-
enced, behaviorally and/or consciously, and this means that it condi-
tions the way that the individual perceives the world. When hunger is an
overriding concern the environment becomes a world in which to find
food. As I walk along a city street I am attracted to pastry shop win-
dows by the smell of freshly baked bread; or I overlook banks, phar-
macies, and hardware stores in search of a restaurant that, in the maze
of flashing lights and moving traffic, usually remains hidden but which,
when I manage to find it, stands out with striking obviousness. As
psychologists point out, an apple appears larger to a person when he is
hungry than when he is satiated. Apples, pastry, restaurants all seem to
invade the environment and reorganize it when a person is hungry. At a
certain point hunger takes "precedence over sexual and social interests
and [produces] marked cognitive and perceptual alterations. ''47 The
environment is reorganized precisely in the reorganization of the hyletic
experience of the body. A gnawing emptiness localized in the stomach
and abdomen is generalized into a particular intentional style of living
the environment.
Buytendijk demonstrates similar interdependence between body and
environment in various "exemplary modes of being. ''48 For instance,
with regard to "being-labile" (i.e., loss of homeostasis, imbalance in
various physiological systems, etc.) he shows that a change in the ex-
perience of the environment will show itself clearly in "functional
disturbances of the heart and circulation." This condition "is properly
associated with the vague image which is conveyed by the word 'ner-
158

vousness'. Both [states] increase in negative affective situations, in

difficult tasks and decisions, while both decrease in a protected and
affective, positively appreciated milieu. ''49 Lability results in fainting
and blushing, accompanied by such hyletic experiences as palpitations,
trembling, rushing sensations, dizziness, fever or chills, etc. Lability has
reference to the environment. Buytendijk remarks that "a lability of
vegetative and. sensori-motor functions can easily occur on the basis
of a considerable unrest and repeated incidental disturbances by the
milieu. ''5° It is also apparent that a labile change of sensory-motor
functions will in turn affect perceptual experience. Certain aspects of
the environment might be unconsciously overlooked, as if repressed by
the organizing body; or perhaps they might be effectively dealt with by
a change in the lived style of the body-environment. This might involve
a change in visceral or muscular-skeletal reactivity, a change in motion
or posture, etc. that again would contribute to a modification of per-
ceptual experience, sl
Perception of things via the senses is directly bound up with hyletic
experience and the posture that the body takes towards its environ-
ment. In some cases perception determines hyletic experience and body
posture. For example, Merleau-Ponty notes that

diseases of the cerebellum or the frontal cortex clearly show what

effect sensory excitations would have on muscular tonicity, if they
were not integrated into a comprehensive situation, and if tonicity
were not, in the normal person adjusted to certain special tasks.
The gesture of raising the arm, which can be taken as an indicator
of motor disturbance, is differently modified in its sweep and its
direction according as the visual field is red, yellow, blue, or green.
Red and yellow are particularly productive of smooth rnovements,
blue and green of jerky ones; red applied to the right eye, for
example, favours a corresponding stretching of the arm outwards,
green the bending of the arm back towards the body. The privi-
leged position of the arm - the one in which the arm is felt to be
balanced and at rest - which is farther away from the body in the
patient than in the normal subject, is modified by the presentation
of colours: green brings it back nearer the body (PhP 209).

Perceptual experience can thus modify hyletic experience; the percep-

tion of colors has a marked effect on the way that the body lives itself
 159

and its environment. Reciprocally, hyletic experience and body posture

define perceptual experience. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which I
usually enjoy, seems too brash, sounds grating when I have a headache;
it seems too slow if I am occupying an uncomfortable seat. The sight of
food is sometimes pleasing and welcome, at other times nauseating and
repulsive, depending on the hyletic situation of the lived body in its en-
vironment.
It is due to this hyletic experience that some things never come to
consciousness whereas other things do; that some things take on a cer-
tain value for consciousness whereas others do not. In perception con-
sciousness always encounters an already organized matrix composed by
the lived body in its environment. Another example may help to clarify
this. On a lazy afternoon I am awakening from a short nap, refreshed in
spirit and removed from the business and trouble that concern me most
of the week. My eyes open and there, outside my window, I see a group
of trees dimly lit in the fading autumn sun. Some unseen birds are chat-
tering and their sounds combine with the vision of the forest to make a
completely pleasant experience for me. I feel relaxed and appreciative
of nature. My spirit dwells therein for a short while. But I have found
all of this already arranged for me. It was not necessary to direct my
attention toward the window and the trees outside. Things were pre-
arranged so that my consciousness, without having to survey in any
way, came to precisely this matrix. By this pre-arrangement I do not
refer to the fact that I had, several months before, positioned my bed in
such and such a way, or that several years ago the architect had
designed the room with a window precisely there, or that from eternity
a god had foreordained it that birds be present in the forest at that par-
ticular time. Rather, I mean that "things" were "agreed upon" between
the lived body and its environment and that without this agreement,
this "primordial contract" (PhP 216), without the body coming to
terms with the environment, I could very well have woken within a dif-
ferent situational matrix altogether, although from all appearances
everything would be objectively the same.
Consciously, upon awakening, I did not make a complete inventory
of all the physical characteristics of the room, for instance. I complete-
ly overlooked the fact that a lace curtain hung on the window posi-
tioned between the bed and the trees outside. I did not notice the
furniture that remained in the darkened margins of the room. I did not
attend to the humming noise of the central heating unit or the dripping
160

noises emanating from the radiator. Nor did I take note that my head
was pressing against a pillow or that my arm had "fallen asleep" due to
poor circulation. All of these remained experientially absent. But the
slightest change in either body or environment would upset this well-
balanced matrix. If I awoke cold, for instance, I would not see the sun-
lit trees outside, but rather I would focus on the closed window; I
would not hear the birds chatter, but rather the hum and drip of heat-
ing equipment. Nor would I see any of this if I awoke with stomach
cramps. I would not "see" but I would wake up "looking for" a par-
ticular bottle of medicine. And in this looking the whole environment
would be re-arranged to "hide" the medicine so that I would encounter
one object after another until I came upon what I was looking for. In
this case, regardless of my furniture arrangement, regardless of the
architect's design, or God's intentions, the organization of the lived
body-environment would have been completely different and I would
have perceived the world in a completely different manner.
The body schema has an active role to play in determining the
general and dynamic posture that the lived body assumes in its environ-
ment. In a non-conscious way it actively integrates the body's postures
in proportion to their value for specific perceptual contexts. Indeed,
the lived body is always in a give and take situation with its environ-
ment. The body constantly tries to appropriate its environment, the en-
vironment is constantly conditioning the body. Within this process, and
integrated with the way the b o d y lives its internal physiological pro-
cesses, hyletic experiences are generated. In its posture and in its lived
physiology the body lives through certain kinaesthetic and somaesthetic
experiences, and the world takes on a certain perceptual organization, s2
The perceptual organization of the surrounding world is delimited by
the changing hyletic experience of the lived body in its environment.
Hyletic experience originates in the relations between the body and its
environment, in the mutual incursion of body and environment that
takes place with every movement of the body and every shift of the en-
vironment. The ways that the body lives its environment, and corre-
latively, the ways that the environment conditions the body are trans-
lated into hyletic experiences that condition the perception of things
and events at hand. Thus, on the basis of these movements and shifts
that generate the changing hyletic experience a context will take on cer-
tain emotional coloration: a situation becomes difficult, dangerous,
frightening, pleasant, or can be termed 'love', 'anger', 'fear', etc. de-
 161

pending upon how the body lives it. This does not mean or imply that
conscious experiences of bodily states accompany all perceptions or
emotions, s3 rather the conscious experience of anything is conditioned
by the hyletic experience of the body which for the most part operates
non-consciously. No consciousness of hyletic experience is necessarily
involved, although in certain cases a consciousness of the body's hyletic
experience is present; e.g., a tense situation may be consciously experi-
enced as, e.g., "epigastric uneasiness"; or the feeling of being over-
whelmed and dejected may be experienced as a "sinking sensation" and
nausea, etc. s4
The organization or Gestalt of hyletic experience originates in the
Gestaltung of the body-environment. This organizing performance of
the body in its environment accounts for the sense experience that ac-
companies perception. Sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste are hyletic
experiences lived by the body. For example, as Merleau-Ponty points
out, in listening to a musical note, "the acoustic element disappears and
becomes the highly precise experience of a change permeating my
whole body" (PhP 227). In perception a focus on a particular interval
of music is merely "the final patterning" of a certain hyletic experience
lived "throughout the body" (see PhP 211 ). Perception, whether visual,
tactile, auditory, olfactive, or gustative requires, as a necessary condi-
tion, hyletic experience lived by the body.

The theory of hyletic experience presented here does not provide a

complete explanation or description of perception. It does suggest that
hyletic experience plays an essential role in organizing the perceptual
field. Husserl himself had suggested the connection between hyle, the
body, and perception. But for Husserl the body was something inten-
tionally present, or virtually present within the perceptual field; a body
perceived along with the world. I have tried to show, in contrast, that
fundamentally, the body operates anonymously in an absently available
performance, and in such a way that an already organized world is there
for consciousness.
Hyletic experience is experience lived by the body; it is the body's
non-conscious experience of itself and its environment. The accounts
provided by Husserl and his critics misconstrue hyletic experience
precisely because they try to locate it within consciousness. Hyletic
experience cannot be reduced to either material data for noetic inter-
pretation or objective qualities of the intentional object. It is rather a
162

bodily experience that conditions the conscious experience of the

meaningful world.

NOTES

1. See e.g., Spinoza, Ethics V, propositions 1 and 4; John Locke, An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding, Book II, Ch. I, 23; Condillac, Oeuvres Compldtes de Condillac,
Vol. III, l?ait~ des Sensations (Paris: Lecointe et Durey, 1921), pp. 32, 131. Also see the
notion of "sensory elements" in Ernst Mach, The Analysis o f Sensations and The Relation
o f the Physical to the Psychical, trans. C.M. Williams (New York: Dover, 1959), pp. 8ff.,
42; and Bertrand Russell, The Analysis o f Mind (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921),
pp. 137-144.
2. Main de Biran, The lnfluence o f Habit on the Faculty o f Thinking, trans. M.D. Boehm
(Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1929), p. 54.
3. For sensation as mental experience see, e.g., Karl Jaspers, GeneralPsychopathology, txans.
J. Hoenig and M.W. Hamilton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 109;
Vernon B. Mountcastle, "The Problems of Sensing and the Neural Coding of Sensory
Events," in The Neurosciences eds. Gardner C. Quarton, et al. (New York: Rockefeller
University Press, 1967), pp. 393-408; Ira Miller, "Confrontation, Conflict, and the Body
Image," American Journal o f the Psychoanalytic Association 11 (1963), 66-83. For sen-
sation as neurological impulse see, e.g., Erwjn Straus, Primary World o f Senses, trans. J.
Needleman (New York: Free Press, 1963), p. 45; Wilder Penfield, The Mystery o f the
Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 16; R. Jung, "Visual Perception
and Neurophysiology," Handbook o f Sensory Physiology VII, 3A (Berlin: Springer,
1973), p. 124. For sensation in its ambiguous significance see, e.g., Russell E. Mason,
Internal Perception and Bodily Functioning (New York: International Universities Press,
1961), pp. 276, 281, 283, 306, 335ff.; A.R. Luria, The Working Brain, trans. Basil Haigh
(New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 165-166.
4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology o f Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 3 and x; hereafter cited as 'PhP'. K. Koffka, Psy-
chologie, cited and trans, in PhP 10n4.
5. Hua IX, 167 (English translation: Phenomenological Psychology, trans. John Scanlon [T~e
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977] ); also see Hua III/1, 193/204 (English translation: Ideas
Pertaining to a Pure Phenoraenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. F.
Kersten [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982], cited with Hua/English pagination: I have
revised Kersten's translation where necessary).
6. See Aristotle, Physics, 190 b-191 a; Metaphysics, 1036 a; On Generation and Corruption,
328 b26-329 b2;DeAnima, 412 a.
7. See Hua XIX/1, 80/309-310, 395-399/565-567; Hua XIX/2, 705/812 (English translation:
Logical Investigations, trans. John Findlay (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970),
cited with Hua/English pagination. Also see Experience and Judgment, trans. J.S. Churchill
and K. Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 255; hereafter cited
as EJ. In the Logical Investigations Husserl had not yet adopted the hyle-terminology and
thus still spoke of 'Empfindungen' (e.g., Hua XIX/1, 80/309-310). This early Empfindung-
terminology continued to appear in his writings on time (Hua X) and later texts, including
Ideen I wh~re the term 'hyle' did not appear until section 85. The Empflndung-terminol-
ogy was never fully abandoned by Husserl. In some contexts Husserl abandoned the Auf-
fassung-Auffassungsinhalt schema. On this point see Eduard Marbach, "Einleitung" to
 163

Hua XXIII, pp. LXff.; Rudolf Boehm, Veto C,esichtspunkt der Ph~nomenologie (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), pp. 108-117; and John Brough, "The Emergence of an
Absolute Consciousness in Husserl's Early Writings on Time-Consciousness," Man and
World 5 (1972), 298-326.
8. Hua X, 89/116 (English translation of 1928 edition by James Churchill, The Phenomenol-
ogy o f Internal 7~me Consciousness [ Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964 ], cited
with Hua/English pagination).
9. For purposes of this paper we need not examine the complex issue of the relationship
between hyletic data and time-consciousness. See Hua X, 9 and 107; also Girard Granel,
Le Sens du temps et de la perception chez E. Husserl (Paris: GaUimard, 1968), pp. 29, 34.
10. Hua XIX/2, 763-765/861-863; Hua III/1, 192/203. There are some indications in the
Logical Investigations that in an ideal and totally adequate outer perception hyletic data
would coincide with objective properties (see Hua XIX/2, 613-614/734, 647ff./762ff.).
But Husserl corrects himself on this point in a second edition appendix (Hua XIX/2, 768-
769/865-866). See Theodorus de Boer, The Development o[Husserl's Thought, trans.
Theodore Plantinga (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), pp. 173-174 for discussion.
11. Hua X, 110/147. The reference to Somatologie is found in Hua V, 7ff. Max Scheler terms
these external conditions 'extraintentional' conditions and indicates what they might be:
"Every conceivable objective extraintentional condition foi the occurrence of the act -
e.g., that an 'ego' or 'subject' performs the act, that theesubject has 'sensory functions',
'sense organs', or a lived body (Leib) - these do not pertain to the question of the tran-
scendental givenness of hyletic data. They are precisely the things that are bracketed in the
epoche'" (Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non.Formal Ethics of Values, trans. M. Frings
and R. Funk [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973], p. 55).
12. Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1965), I, p. 148.
13. It should be noted here that the Munich Phenomenologists provided a very early critique
of Hussefl's theory of hyle. On this point see Karl Schuhmann, Husserl iiber Pfdnder,
Phaenomenologica 56 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), p. 153, n. 63 and 64; Wilhelm
Schapp, "Erinnerungen an Husserl," in Edmund Husserl 1859-1959 (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1959), p. 21; and Spiegelberg, p. 184. I will confine my remarks to the criticism
leveled against Husserl by Merleau-Ponty and the following thinkers: Aron Gurwitsch,
"Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Purge Ego: Studies of the Relation between
Gestalt Theory and Phenomenology," Psychologische Forschung 12 (1929), trans. F.
Kersten in Gurwitsch, Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston: North-
western University Press, 1966), pp. 175-286; hereafter cited as 'SSP'. Jean-Paul Sartre,
Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenologieal Ontology, trans. H.E. Barnes (New
York: Philosophical Library, 1956); hereafter cited as 'BN'. Quentin Smith, "A Phenom-
enologicai Examination of Husserl's Theory of Hyletic Data," Philosophy Today 21
(1977), 356-367; hereafter referred to as 'Smith'. Also see Harmon M. Chapman, Sensa-
tions and Phenomenology (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1966), pp. 148ff.;
and H.U. Asemissen, "Strukturanalytische Probleme der Walirnehmung in der PhLnomeno-
logie Husserl," Kantstudien, Erg~inzungsheft 73, K61n: 1957.
14. See Asemissen, p. 34 for a clear expression of this same point.
15. See Ulrich Claesges, Edmund Husserls Theorie der Raumkonstitution (The Hague: Marti-
nus Nijhoff, 1964), p. 67.
16. This list is based on the research of Russell Mason in the fields of medicine and psychology
(Internal Perception and Body Functioning, op.cit.), The page numbers in parentheses
refer to Mason's descriptions, definitions, or discussions of these various experiences.
M~son presents generalized physiological functions first, and then various "body-area
164

classifications" (see Mason, pp. 145,283),

17. See Seymour Fisher, "Body Perception upon Awakening," Perceptual and Motor Skills 43
(1976), 275-278.
18. In the example of eyestrain, I do not, at first, discriminate between the pain and the en-
vironmental circumstance of, e.g., reading a book. As Sartre notes: "pain in the eyes is
precisely my reading" (Bn 335). Before there is a consciousness of pain per se, the environ-
ment seems different and my behavior changes. My body lives the pain before I am con-
scious of it. See below, Section 4, for further discussion. In general, consciousness of pain
can be distinguished from a "lived pain," i.e., an experience which can be lived through
without being the object of a consciousness. For instance, autonomic reactions to a "lived
pain" can be observed "in situations in which conscious perception of the pain is anatomi-
cally impossible; e.g., the withdrawal ~eflex to a nociceptive stimulus after spinal cord
injury" (Peter Mansky, "Opiates: Human Psychopharmacology," in Handbook o f Psycho-
pharmacology, Vol. 12, eds. Ivanson, lvanson, and Snyder [New York: Plenum, 1978],
p. 118. Also see Sartre, BN 330o331). This would be an example of hyletic experience
lived by the body in a non-conscious manner.
19. For a detailed discussion of this concept see Shaun Gallagher, "Lived Body and Environ-
ment," Research in Phenomenoiogy 16 (1986), 139-170.
20. See Jaspers, op.cit., pp. 91,110, 225,228.
21. See J.F.J. Buytendijk, Prolegomena to an Anthropological Physiology, trans. A.I. Orr, et
al. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1974), p, 62; and Sartte, BN 335.
22. Buytendijk, pp. 46-47,
23. Specifically MMS. D 10 I (1932); D 10 II (1932); D 10 IV (1932); D 12 1 (1932); D 12 III
(1931); D 12 V (1931); as well as the earlier D 13 1V (1921). A good explanation of what
Husserl is concerned with in these MSS can be found in Claesges, Edmund Husserls Theorle
der Raumkonstitution. I have relied on Claesges' work to guide me through the unpub-
lished transcripts which I have consulted at the Centre d'Etudes Phdnomdnologiques, lnsti-
rut Supdrieur de Philosophie, L'Universit~ de Louvain and the Husserl-Archiv, Leuven,
Belgium.
24. Husserl contends that in our continuous perceiving, "the world of physical things and, in
it, our body, are perceptually there" (Hua III/1, 81/83); and "in all experience of spatial
and thinglike objects the body 'is there with them' as the perceptual organ of the experi-
encing subject" (Hua IV, 144); and again, the body is "in consciousness" or "constantly in
the perceptual field" (The Crisis o f European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenol.
ogy, trans. David Carr [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973], p. 106-107; here-
after cited as 'Crisis'). Also see Hua VIII, 61,140; and Hua XIII, 114.
25. Hua XVI, 162; also see Hua XVI, 282; Hua IV, 145; Hua V, 12; and Hua XIII, 43, where
in a text written in 1909 Husserl notes that the body is an "empflndender Leib" that
"has" sensations of movement and of joint motion, general sensations, sensations of pain
and pleasure.
26. See Hua XVI, 162; Hua XIV, 510ff.;Hua XV, 295ff.;and especially Hua XIII, 43-44, 332.
27. See Hua XI, 125ff.; Hua XVI, 162-163; and Hua XIX/1,406-407/572-573 where Husserl
states that bodily sensations fuse and conform with other sensations and are thus referred
to objects.
28. MS. D 13 I, p. 15 (1921).
29. Claesges states: "It is now easy to see that the concept of hyle introduced here [in Ideen
II refers in the first instance only to the data of sensation as such, the species of aspect
data, while the posture data are obviously left out of that schema. It will in fact become
obvious that the concept of kinaesthesis makes a new determination of the concept of
hyle necessary" (p. 67).
 165

30. See Crisis, 107.

31. MS. D 13 I, p. 15 (1921), cited in Claesges, p. 72n2. Also see Hua XVI, 280-281; and the
related discussion in the 1927 texts of Hua XIV, 520-557.
32. MS. D 12 III, p. 19 (1931), cited in Claesges, p. 109. Also see Hua XVI, 162; Hua XIII,
270-271,283-284, 324.
33. See Claesges, p. 106.
34. MS. D 10 III, p. 37 (1932); cited in Claesges, p. l10n3.
35. See MS. D 13 I, p. 49 (1921); cited in Claesges, pp. 113-114n3.
36. Crisis, 161; see Hua XIII, 30, 386; also see Husserl's discussion of the body as the organ of
perception, the organizing point of orientation in the perception of the world, e.g., in Hua
XIV, 58. In Hua IV, Husserl indicates that the objectification of spatial things can be
traced back to Empfindung (p. 24).
37. MS. D 13 I, p. 49 (1921); cited in Claesges, p. 114nl. Also see Hua XIII, 70 for an indica-
tion o f a hyletic unity existing in the body.
38. See de Boer, pp. 210-211.
39. See GaUagher, "Lived Body and Environment," op.cit., and "Body Image and Body
Schema: A Conceptual Clarification," Journal of Mind and Behavior, forthcoming.
40. Ibid.
41. See Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 123; and PhP 106.
42. Ernst Gellhom, Autonomic Regulations: Their Significance for Physiology, Psychology,
and Neuropsychiatry (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1943), p. 15.
43. See A.A. Pontius, "Somesthetic Hallucinations and Motility in Schizophrenia: Neurophys-
iological Views and Information Flow Model," Perceptual and Motor Skills 44 (1977),
79-95.
44. Hyletic experience is involved not only in the way that the body lives its own physiology,
but also in the way the body lives its environment. Evidence for this can be cited from the
study of physiology. For example, Mason notes: "It should be kept in mind that at each
level of the nervous system, regulation and integration of autonomic activity exists, the
complexity being generally proportionate to the phylogenetic level. Also, at each level the
autonomic system is intricately interrelated with the somatic (peripheral) nervous system.
Thus 'it is generally impossible to evoke a somatic reflex that does not have an autonomic
concomitant of central origin', and this 'makes for unification of reaction in the organism
as a whole'. Even the separation of motor and sensory processes has been considered 'to
be more a necessity of analytic research ... than an adequate description" (Mason, p. 141,
with reference to Fulton and to Gellhorn).
45. Mason, p. 395.
46. See Mason, p. 395.
47. Mason, p. 369.
48. Buytendijk, p. 91ft.
49. Buytendijk, p. 167.
50. Buytendijk, p. 168.
51. See H. Werner and S. Wapner, "A Sensory-tonic Field-Theory of Perception," Journal o f
Personality 18 (1949), p. 91.
52. Paul Schilder, in The Image and Appearance o f the Human Body: Studies in the Con-
structive Energies o f the Psyche (New York: International Universities Press, 1950),
suggests, e.g., "sensations get their final meaning only in connection with the postural
model of the body" (p. 297).
53. This would be de Biran's theory, see op. cit., p. 58. My account would also be distin-
guished from William James' theory of emotions - i.e~, that an emotion is the conscious-
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ness one has of one's bodily state. In general I agree with Jaspers' distinction between
feeling (emotion) and "sensation" or hyletic experience; see Jaspers, pp. 109-110.
54. Mason, p. 321. Mason conducted extensive psychological experiments on the relations
between how a person perceives a situation emotionally and the corresponding hyletic,
kinaesthetic experience: see Mason, pp. 270, 285,298ff., 312ff., 314ff., 323ff., 332ff.