Identity in Manifolds:

Commentary on Sokolowski's Interpretation

PINA C. MONETA
University of Vermont

Professor Sokolowski's presentation of the identity-manifold relation as

a recurrent pattern in Husserl's thought bears ample evidence of the fact
that in phenomenology "the singular is always the Apeiron."l By way of
comment on Professor Sokolowski's paper, I shall present what appears to
be a parallel pattern of thought in Husserl's phenomenology of reason: the
object of knowledge as an idea in the Kantian sense. Whereas in Formal
and Transcendental Logic and in Experience and Judgment the object of
knowledge as an idea in the Kantian sense provides the foundational
framework for the judgment's form of reiterational "infinity" (the ideality
of the "and so forth"),' in the Ideas, Volume I, the theme is developed
within the context of object of perceptual experience as the continuum of
its actual and possible presentations.3 3
The development of this theme is guided by Husserl's fundamental

1E.
Husserl,Phüosophie als strenge Wissenschaft(Frankfurt am Main: V. Kloster-
mann, 1965), p. 43, "Nur die Individuation risst die Phanomenologie fallen," E.
Husserl,Ideen zu einer reinen Phdnomenologieund phanomenologischenPhilosophie,
HusserlianaBand III (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), p. 172.
E. Husserl, Experience and Judgement, Trans. J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks,
Northwestern UniversityPress, 1973, Para. 8, Para. 87.
2 E. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, Trans. D. Cairns (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), Para. 58, Para. 73, Para. 74. Experience and Judgement,
Para. 55, Para. 56.
'Ideen, "Phänomenologie der Vernunft," Paras. 136-144. It is of interest to
notice how the treatment of this topic is to some extent anticipated by Husserlin the
Logical Investigations, VI, Chapter V, Para. 38. (Trans. J. N. Findlay, Routledge &
KeganPaul, London, 1970).
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conviction that phenomenology, as a theory of knowledge, consists of the
constantly renewed effort to show that our discourse about things can
coincide with the Logos of the things themselves and therefore that the
problem of the object of perceptual experience is coextensive with the
problem of reason.
The fundamental law of perceptual reality is its inadequacy. Husserl's
account of this is unambiguous; the object of perceptual consciousness is
congenitally inadequate, its perceivability inexhaustible in principle. Each
presentation of the object refers beyond itself by pointing towards a
completion never to be attained. While experience of the object as self-
given claims absolute priority with respect to other modes of experience,
plenitude of the object's self-givenness is inhibited by the double indeter-
minacy of the object's inner and outer horizons. Both of these horizons,
however, constitute the necessary realm of possibilities within which the
object must appear in order to be an object of perception at all. In
Professor Sokolowski's words, "The field of possibilities is an essential
moment in the experience of identity in manifold and thus has to be
grasped phenomenologically and not to be reduced to a pseudo-reality."
Apprehension of perceptual reality as an identity within a manifold
therefore involves a necessary distinction between two modes of self-given-
ness : the perceived and the perceivable, the actual and the possible, the
immediately given and the potentially given, the finite and the infinite. It
is "in sensing this distinction," as Professor Sokolowski says, "that we are
aware of the object's transcendence ... there is transcendence when there
is a difference between an identity and the profiles in which [the object]
is presented. The transcendence of the given object means that the object
itself is more than this presentation of it, and that it can be itself again in
another appearance." Expressed in the most concise form, we may say
that "transcendence" signifies simultaneity (or co-givenness) of actuality
and possibility, of perceived and perceivable. As Professor Sokolowski also
said, the object "is transcendent to the whole manifold; it is not their sum.
It is the identity within the manifold."
Furthermore, in transcending the actual presentation through which it
becomes disclosed, as well as the open-ended continuum of the possible
presentations through which it can become further disclosed, the object
persists in its unity, that is to say, it persists as the same object. In this
connection, it is important to keep in focus a fundamental phenomenolog-
ical feature of perceptual experience. The sense in which the object
persists as the same object within the changing perceptions of that object
is inseparable from its primordial self-givenness. Indeed, the primacy of

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 perceptual experience rests on the privileged status of the self-given and
the act of evidence bearing witness to it. That the object is given and that
it is given as it itself are not two distinct facts but one and the same thing.
However, while the appearing of the object as the same object is the
originary datum of perceptual experience, consciousness of identity of
that object occurs at a higher level of the constituting process. It occurs as
the correlate of a founded act: an identifying synthesis. It is precisely at
this point that some difficulties arise.
If the object is inadequate in principle, because of its inexhaustible
perceivability, and if the continuum of its possible presentations is open-
ended, that is to say, an ad infinitum process through which the object is
progressively determined, how can this perceptual infinity (or ad infinitum
perceivability) give rise to, or provide, the foundation for a consciousness
of identity?
In the Logical Investigations Husserl indicates the path that will lead to
a phenomenological elucidation of identity in the following terms:

The object meant in the differing acts of the continuous

perceptual series is indeed always the same ... but what is
perceived in the series, what is rendered objective in it, is
solely the sensible object, never its identity with self. Only
when we use the perceptual series to found a novel act ...
does the unity of continuity holding among these individual
percepts-the unity of fusion through their coinciding inten-
4 .
tions-provide a point d'appui for a consciousness of identity.

Althought many points in the foregoing passage require extensive elabora-

tion, here we shall concern ourselves only with what Husserl calls the
"unity of continuity" or the "unity of fusion" as the necessary ground for
the consciousness of identity. What is central to the entire passage is that
unity is the necessary condition for identity. But what sort of unity? What
kind of unity can there be attained in a process within which the object
remains at an ad infinitum distance from the poorest as well as the richest
of its possible presentations? The sequence of these possible appearances-
if we take for a moment the noetic standpoint-is not only ad infinitum
but these appearances are also discrete since "adumbration and adum-
brated belong to fundamentally different genera."'
The solution to this difficulty, it seems to me, is offered by Husserl

4Logical Investigations,VI, pp. 790-791.

5 Ideen,pp. 94-95. ,

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with the notion of the object as an idea in the Kantian sense. This notion
exemplifies the juncture between the perceived and the thought or, to
express it differently, between phenomenology of perception and phenom-
enology of reason. The object as it presents itself under one aspect of its
possible presentations performs a normative function. This function con-
sists in supplying the index or rule in virtue of which the horizon of
possibilities within which the object itself appears is unified and whereby
the ad infinitum continuum of the object's possible presentations reaches
an ideal closure. Although there is no adequacy of the object given as it
itself and as it is perceived, there is, nevertheless, an adequate apprehension
of the object as an idea. Originary self-givenness, in other words, as
one-sided presentation of the object, is the norm which institutes the
horizon of determinability of the object according to a style predelineated
by necessity.
Simultaneous to this general style in which the possible aspects of the
object will announce themselves there is also given the possible unity of its
presentations. Their manifold, in other words, is unified into the idea of
the object. What is directly perceived in anticipating the style in which the
manifold of possibilities can be expected to proceed also prescribes the
ideal unity within which each possible presentation of the object is
gathered into a unified whole. The object in its one-sided, hence inade-
quate, presentation is at the same time the index for the realization of its
adequacy. The latter belongs, however, not to the perceived but rather to
the perceivable. In short, the object is its own ruler in providing the norm
for the fulfillment of its self-givenness, a fulfillment which is attainable
only under the form of an idea:

every imperfect givenness (every inadequately presentive

Noema) conceals in itself the rule for the ideal possibility of its
perfection.6

Under the perspective just outlined it is possible to distinguish three

simultaneous phases constitutive of the perceived object: the actually
given (or the perceived), the horizon of its possibilities (or the perceiv-
able), and the object's ideal unity and totality. The first is the rule for the
attainment of the third. The manifold of possible perceptions is indeed an
open process and as such never completable. The gulf between the per-
ceived and the perceivable is indeed unbridgeable. Nevertheless, the mani-

6Ideen, p. 366; BeilageXXVIII to Para. 143.

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fold affords an ideal completion, thus providing the necessary foundation
for the identifying synthesis owing to which the object is an identity
within a manifold.
Can we say, then, that the inadequacy of perceptual reality is thereby
removed? The answer must be negative. If adequacy is excluded in princi-
ple, its recovery cannot certainly occur at the level from which it has been
excluded. It is through the intervening rational element that perception-
always and necessarily inadequate-reaches its fulfillment.
The norm which makes adequacy possible is the object itself perceived
under one of its possible presentations. In this presentation the complete
givenness of the object is itself prescribed under the form of idea. The
perceptual manifold, in other words, affords unification as an idea and as
such its mode of givenness is also adequate, that is to say, adequate to the
particular mode in which it presents itself. The idea, as Husserl says,

is the idea of complete givenness thereby prefigured as it

presents itself in insight-in insight as only an "idea" can do,
7
characterizing by its essence a type of insight proper to

The actual or the finite presents itself in such a way as to include the rule
or norm for the completion of the continuum of possibilities thereby
instituted. What is therefore inadequate in principle is at the same time a
measure of adequacy or, to put it differently, the rule which permits the
fulfillment of that inadequacy under the form of idea. As idea, adequacy is
the ideal unity of possible perceptions within which the thing appears and
the necessary constitutive ground for its being perceived as an identity
within a manifold.
In declaring perception inadequate in principle what Husserl does is to
make a distinction between two modes of self-givenness: the perceived and
the perceivable. While totality is excluded from the first, it is attainable
through the second. However, as pertaining to the perceivable, adequacy
no longer belongs to perception but to reason "grafted" onto perception.
The object of knowledge as an idea in the Kantian sense exemplifies this
transition. It does so by bringing to the fore a further distinction between
the inadequate and the adequate whereby the first is the lawgiver for the
second.
The object, as an idea in the Kantian sense, thus indicates the move-
ment of reason from the perceived object to "its" idea. This idea is itself

7Ideen, p. 351 (Para. 143).

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the limit towards which the continuum of anticipated possibilities unfolds
in the mode of a fulfillment in accordance with its "increasing rational
force."8
Consciousness lives perceptually, but that which is lived perceptually is
motivated rationally.

8Ideen, p. 339 (Para. 138).

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