Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology review

Introduction

The purpose of Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology is

to study the way in which phenomenology addresses the multiple connections
between normativity and meaning. The content of the book is based on a
fundamental presupposition, namely, that the structure of meaning is
normative. This thesis is grounded on the phenomenological studies started by
Husserl and in this spirit the book explores from different points of view the
structure of meaning and its conditions of possibility.
Since the authors of this book attribute this thesis directly to the views of
Steven Crowell, all the articles present themselves as an explicit dialogue with
Crowell’s work, to wit, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths
Toward Transcendental Phenomenology (2001), and Normativity and
Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger (2013). The book includes then an
afterword with Crowell’s with his comments and replies.
For this review, I focus on the direct objections to Crowell’s philosophical
positions and his attempts at answering them. For doing so, I follow the order
proposed by the editors of the book. The book is divided into five sections: (1)
“Normativity, Meaning and the Limits of Phenomenology”, (2) “Sources of
Normativity”, (3) “Normativity and Nature”, (4) “Attuned Agency”, and (5)
“Epistemic Normativity”. At the beginning of each section in this review, I
offer a brief summary of the main ideas in each section of the book and then a
brief commentary on each single chapter.

I. Normativity, Meaning, and the Limits of Phenomenology

This section is focused on the link between the question of normativity and that
of meaning as it is addressed in phenomenology. Thus, normativity of meaning
appears to be one of the main questions of phenomenology. However, several
questions remain open which the following articles try to solve. First of all, the
concept of norm can be understood in different ways and opens thus the
question to the possibility of different normative structures for different
meaningful experiences. This question is raised by Sara Heinämaa in her article
which opens this section. A second question is raised by Leslie MacAvoy
regarding the legitimacy of considering the structure of meaning as
fundamentally normative, arguing that this would go against Husserl’s virulent
critique of psychologism. She thus distinguishes the validity of meaning from
its eventual manifestation for us as an ought or as a claim. The third one is
raised by Zahavi, Cerbone, and Kavka. They challenge the idea in itself that
the normativity of meaning is one of the main concerns of phenomenology.
 Thus, some realms such as metaphysics (Zahavi), epistemology (Cerbone), or
philosophy of religion (Kavka) seem to be out of reach for the
phenomenological method understood as a “metaphysically-neutral reflective
analysis of the normative space of meaning” (Burch, Marsh & McMullin, 2).

1. Constitutive, Prescriptive, Technical, or Ideal? On the Ambiguity of the Term

“Norm”, Sara Heinämaa
The starting point of this article is the claim that all intentionality, from a
phenomenological point of view, has a normative structure, because all
intentionality can be fulfilled or disappointed. Thus, every intentional object is
a norm that can be fulfilled or disappointed. Heinämaa calls this type of norm
a “standard”. However, following Husserl’s distinction between interested
perception and thing-appearances, she shows that the intentional object as norm
can have a second meaning, which is an unachievable goal and thus also an
optimum. Indeed, thing-appearances can never be fully given to us in all their
richness.

This polysemy of the notion of norm leads Heinämaa to analyze its different
meanings by drawing on the work of the logician and philosopher Georg
Henrik von Wright Norm and Action: A Logical Enquiry (1963). Wright
himself takes over a distinction which he finds in the works of Max Scheler
and Nicolai Hartmann, namely that between norm as actuality, which is at stake
for what Husserl calls practical intentionality, and norm as ideality, which is
essential for axiological intentionality. This distinction corresponds to
Scheler’s distinctions between “Tunsollen” and “Seinsollen” and between
“normative ought” (normatives Sollen) and “ideal ought” (ideales Sollen). The
normativity of doing, which is a “normative ought”, is based on the concept of
rule-following while the normativity of being, which is a “ideal ought” is based
on the concept of seeking to achieve something. Both types of normativity
should be kept strictly distinguished. Thus, although both types of normativity
are goal-oriented, ideal norms “are not motivational causes for our actions but
are conditions that define ways of being” (Heinämaa, 20).
Heinämaa applies this distinction to the question of the normativity of
intentionality by arguing, against Crowell, that both Heidegger and Husserl,
share the idea that norms of actions but also of thinking are founded in ideal
norms. Thus, one of the roles of phenomenology is “to illuminate the
fundamental role that ideal principles of being have in both epistemic and
practical normativity” (Heinämaa, 23-24).
Steven Crowell insists, however, on the fact that the concept of ideales
Sollen is not a proper “ought” but a “should” in order to preserve the clear
distinction between normative and theoretical disciplines.
2. The Space of Meaning, Phenomenology, and the Normative Turn, Leslie
MacAvoy
The leading question of this article concerns the proper object of
phenomenology: is it meaning or normativity? First, Leslie MacAvoy shows
how phenomenology, in its concern with meaning, takes over the neo-Kantian
question of validity (Geltung). The neo-Kantians understand the validity of a
logical law in terms of normativity, contrary to Husserl and Heidegger, and this
explains the concern of this article.
Husserl argues in the Logical Investigations that logical laws are not normative
because they are not prescriptive, and consequently that they are not practical
rules but theoretical laws. Although these laws have normative power for our
thought, normativity is not part of their content. In that way, what is opposed
to the law of nature is not, contrary to what neo-Kantians thought, a normative
law, but an ideal law. Therefore, contrary to Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology
distinguishes validity from normativity. According to a phenomenological
criticism, “the phenomenological critique of the neo-Kantian notion of validity
as normativity transforms the space of validity into a space of meaning”
(MacAvoy, 41). What is thus at stake are not the laws that “hold” but the
intelligible structures of content. According to MacAvoy those structures are a
priori and it is due to them that sense or meaning presents to us as valid. Here
MacAvoy refers to Heidegger’s theory of the fore-structures of meaning as a
model to understand this a priori, but she concludes, nevertheless, that
phenomenology should investigate the sense of this a priori with more depth.
All in all, while MacAvoy agrees with Crowell’s claim that phenomenology
opens us the “space of meaning”, against Crowell’s Normativity and
Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger, she disagrees with the idea that this
space is normative.
3. Mind, Meaning, and Metaphysics, Another Look, Dan Zahavi
Zahavi’s concern in this article is the role of metaphysics in Husserl’s
transcendental (and not early) phenomenology. Is his transcendental
phenomenology metaphysically committed or does the epoché on the contrary
entail metaphysical neutrality? By developing his argument, Zahavi critically
assesses Crowell’s claim that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is
metaphysically neutral. Crowell’s argument is that phenomenology is not
interested into metaphysics but into “understanding the sense of reality and
objectivity” (Zahavi, 50).
To this argument Zahavi presents two counterarguments. First of all, the fact
that phenomenology is not primarily interested into metaphysics does not entail
the fact that it does not have metaphysically implications. Secondly, Zahavi
puts forward texts of Husserl where he explicitly claims the metaphysical
commitment of phenomenology. In the Cartesian Meditations Husserl states
that “phenomenology indeed excludes every naïve metaphysics that operates
with absurd things in themselves, but does not exclude metaphysics as such”
(Husserl 1950, 38-39). In order to understand the meaning of this metaphysical
commitment of phenomenology, Zahavi distinguishes between three
definitions of metaphysics: (1) “a theoretical investigation of the fundamental
building blocks, of the basic “stuff” of reality” (Zahavi, 51); (2) “a
philosophical engagement with question of facticity, birth, death, fate
immortality, the existence of God, etc.” (Zahavi, 52); (3) “a fundamental
reflection on and concern with the status and being of reality. Is reality mind-
dependent or not, and if yes, in what manner?” (ibid). Zahavi further argues,
that it is the second and most of all the third definition of metaphysics that is
of interest for Husserl’s phenomenology.
Zahavi’s argument, drawing on an argument presented already by Fink in an
article from 1939, “The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl”,
is that transcendental phenomenology does not investigate the structures and
meaning of a mental realm, but of the “real world” and of its modes of
givenness (Zahavi, 59). Similarly, Fink insists on the distinction between the
psychological noema and the transcendental noema, which is “being itself”
(Fink 1981, 117). The distinction between noema and the object itself is not
valid anymore within the transcendental attitude, but makes sense only within
the psychological one.

To Crowell’s argument that Husserl is not dealing with being or reality itself
but with its meaning for us, Zahavi answers that transcendental
phenomenology entails a metaphysical claim about the existence of
consciousness. However, the question remains open regarding the
metaphysical commitment to the existence of a being which is independent
from our consciousness, and this question is raised for example in Quentin
Meillassoux’ book After Finitude, in which the author claims that
phenomenology is unable to think being itself, independent from its correlation
to consciousness. Of course, one could argue that Husserl dismisses this
question, which he identifies as the Kantian question about things in
themselves, as being absurd. However, perhaps we should investigate more
why this question is considered being absurd by Husserl: is it not precisely
because, according to him, it makes no sense to consider a being without
presupposing a consciousness for whom this being has a meaning? There is,
according to me, something very intriguing about this argument, in that it
cannot be classified neither as metaphysical, since it does not claim that being
is ontologically dependent on our consciousness, nor as semantically
epistemic, since it does not claim that there is something as a neutral being
which is then given to us through meaning. It would be interesting to, first,
identify what type of argument Husserl actually uses here in order to deepen
the question regarding the metaphysical commitment of phenomenology.
Opposing Zahavi’s argument, Crowell maintains his position concerning the
metaphysical neutrality of phenomenology, which is guaranteed, following
him, by the distinction between the existence of some entities, which is mind-
independent, and the access to their reality, which is possible only for a
conscience. Accordingly, however, this distinction still leaves the question
unanswered concerning the metaphysical status of this reality to which we have
access, since it still does not say how far this reality, as we have access to it, is
mind-dependent.

4. Ground, Background, and Rough Ground, Dreyfus, Wittgenstein, and

Phenomenology, David R. Cerbone
The aim of this article is to challenge Dreyfus’ interpretation of Heidegger’s
concept of background as the understanding of being. According to Dreyfus,
there is something as a background for our understanding which is there and
that we can reach. Or, Cerbone argues for a deflationary sense of background
which entails that there is no something as an ultimate background for our
understanding, but always a changing and indeterminate background that we
can never reach as such. Every time we try to explicate this background we
always remain in his space. Thus, this background has an “illusory depth”
(Cerbone, 76), since we can never get at its bottom.

In order to argue this, the author is drawing on Wittgenstein’s concept of

explanation of the Philosophical Investigations. According to Wittgenstein,
there is no absolute explanation of the background of the understanding, for
example of the meaning of a word, but it is always relative to one specific
situation and to the specific knowledge of our interlocutor. In that sense,
explanations respond to a specific question or problem. They end when they
fulfill that purpose.
This reassessing of the concept of background opens according to Cerbone the
possibility to reassess the idea of phenomenology as infinite task. Indeed, the
infinite task of phenomenology is not that of explicating the background of
every understanding but that of addressing “the ongoing ethical challenge of
making sense of and to one another” (ibid).

Steven Crowell objects however that Cerbone’s argument “seems to conflate

the transcendental project of clarifying meaning with the mundane project
of explaining some meaning by making the background explicit” (Crowell,
336). Crowell further argues that this argument makes it impossible to
determine what is the world, since it is a category. Categories however are not
explicated by ““digging deeper” into some specific horizon … but by
phenomenological reflection on the eidetic structure of being-in-the-world”
(Crowell, 337).
5. Inauthentic Theologizing and Phenomenological Method, Martin Kavka
This article examines the possibility of an authentic phenomenology of
religion, which would be based on the authentic thinking of God. Martin Kavka
understands here the concept of authentic thinking in the Husserlian sense in
the way it is presented in the Logical Investigations, i.e. as the fulfillment of
claims made in statements through the intuition of states of affairs.
Drawing on Heidegger’s analysis of Husserl’s concept of categorial intuition,
from his 1963 essay “My Way to Phenomenology”, Kavka comes to the
conclusion that an authentic phenomenology of the ‘inapparent’ must be
possible, since categorial intuition is the intuition of an inapparent, i.e. a
senseless, being. However, Kavka does not consider that God could be the
object of such a phenomenology, as it is for instance in the case of Marion’s
phenomenology of revelation, since religious figures such as Jesus are not fully
dissimilar from the horizon of human expectations. The criterion of the
phenomenon of revelation according to Marion lies precisely in its radical
heterogeneity “to any conceptual scheme and horizon” (Kavka, 93); and since
we could argue here that Jesus cannot precisely be simply identified to God,
the question of Marion’s revelations is left open to possibility.
Following the question which Heidegger inquires in On Being and Time,
Kavka asks himself what is the ground of meaning, and implicitly, if this
ground can be considered as being God. He argues, following Hannah Arendt,
that in any case God cannot be considered as commanding to our consciousness
since this would “not lead Dasein back to itself and its own-most potentiality-
for-Being” (Kavka, 90). Indeed Dasein cannot be ruled by any predetermined
norm but can only respond to the call of normativity by responding for norms
and making them its own.
Finally Kavka endorses Crowell’s horizontal analysis of discourse[1] in order to
explain the primacy of alterity in Levinas’ sense, suggesting perhaps that such
an analysis could also be of use for an authentic phenomenology of God, but
most of all, for a critical philosophy of religion.
Steven Crowell argues however that a theological phenomenology would not
be a phenomenology anymore since it would go beyond the “askesis of
transcendental phenomenology” (Crowell, 352) due to which
phenomenological investigations cannot but remain the realm of the evidence.
Ending on a Kantian note, Crowell writes: “We are finite creatures, and so
 meaning is finite. We can grasp the world as it is, though never as a whole; and
if there is anything beyond that, it is a matter for faith, not philosophy” (ibid).
II. Sources of Normativity
This section explores the sources of normativity both from a phenomenological
and from an analytical point of view. John Drummond argues, from a
Husserlian perspective, that these sources lie in the teleological structure of
intentionality, whereas Inga Römer highlights, from a Levinasian approach the
role of the other. Finally, Irene McMullin is arguing for the plurality of these
sources (first-, second-, and third-personal) highlighting an unexpected feature
of normativity: gratitude.

1. Intentionality and (Moral) Normativity, John Drummond

In this article John Drummond argues against Crowell’s Heideggerian
approach of the sources of normativity as being pre-intentional, For John
Drummond, the intentionality is a “’basic’ notion” (Drummond, 102) which
can ground by itself normativity. First of all, against Crowell’s reading of
Husserl according to which the pre-intentional flow of consciousness
constitutes intentional acts, the author argues that this flow is also intentional
but is structured by a type of intentionality which Husserl calls in On the
Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time horizontal intentionality
(Langsintentionalität), which has the specificity of not being oriented towards
an object, contrary to the transverse intentionality (Querintentionalität). Thus,
“intentionality … belongs primarily to mind ‘as a whole’” (Drummond, 105),
whereby mind has first of all the meaning of a gerund: “mind is ‘minding’
things” (ibid).
Secondly, Drummond highlights the fact that mind pertains to a person, i.e. to
a concrete social, historical, embodied subject, which is for him equivalent, just
as for Crowell, to the transcendental ego. Thus normativity has to be
understood as the telos of the intentional experiences of a personal subject,
which is aiming to truthfulness. This truthfulness presupposes that the person
is responsible for acting and leading his/her life in the light of this telos.

The author concludes that this telos governs our lives as individuals and
communities. My question would be however: what allows the author to be so
sure about the universality of this telos? Could we thus say that truthfulness is
still the goal of a totalitarian society for instance?

Steven Crowell objects to Drummond’s argument that horizontal

intentionality, although it belongs to the ground of reason, is not however
“governed by a telos of reason” (Crowell, 338). He argues instead, along with
Heidegger, that what clarifies intentionality is the categorial structure of “care”.
Thus it is in this structure of care that normativity is ultimately grounded.

2. The Sources of Practical Normativity Reconsidered – With Kant and

Levinas, Inga Römer
Just as Steven Crowell showed that there is a “line of continuity” (Römer, 120)
between the phenomenology of Heidegger of Being and Time and the
philosophy of Kant, Inga Römer argues in this article that there exists such a
line of continuity between Levinas’ phenomenology and the thought of Kant.
First of all, she shows how Levinas’ reading of Kant evolves, from a very
critical one (until the 1960s) to a positive one, especially regarding the
second Critique, from the 1970s. Thus Levinas starts to consider Kantian
philosophy of pure practical reason as a “philosophy of the sense beyond being,
a sense that is essentially ethical” (Römer, 123). At the same time, Levinas
transforms Kant’s idea of pure practical reason by anchoring pure practical
reason in the desire for the infinite, by grounding the autonomy of the self in
the ethically signifying call of the Other and finally by reinterpreting Kant’s
idea of pure practical reason as an anarchic reason. This anarchic reason
involves a tension between the claim of the Other and the claim of the third,
and thus a “pure disturbance, confusion, restlessness, and refusal of synthesis.”
(Römer, 125)
Secondly, Römer considers in details and criticizes Korsgaard’s and Crowell’s
arguments for grounding ethics in a first-personal perspective, by arguing that
Levinas’ perspective is more convincing because “it is impossible to generate
ethical rationality within myself … without falling into a sort of ethical self-
conceit” (Römer, 132) which would make us unable to feel obliged towards the
Other. Perhaps it would have been interesting to develop this concept of “self-
conceit” since it is essential for the author’s argument.

Thirdly, Römer shows how Levinas’ thought is closer to the argument of the
second Critique than to that of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals,
because it is also based on the idea that ethical rationality, as a mere fact,
institutes my autonomy. Levinas and the later Kant thus agree on one essential
point: “it is impossible to generate ethical rationality by starting with my very
own freedom and then extending it towards others” (Römer, 134). An
important distinction remains however between these two thinkers, according
to the author: contrary to Kant, ethical significance remains, following Levinas,
threatened by nihilism, especially nowadays.
Steven Crowell answers to Römer’s critique by arguing that Levinas’s thought
encounters the same problem as that of Heidegger, namely that the identity of
the addresser of the call remains enigmatic and leads to metaphysics. On the
contrary, the concept of categorial answerability for reasons, does not require
metaphysics.

3. Resoluteness and Gratitude for the Good, Irene McMullin

In this article Irene McMullin’s aim is to understand deeper the original
Heideggerian concept of resoluteness, which allows the agent to
overcome Angst in order to act in a norm-responsive way. More precisely, she
studies the affective dimension of resoluteness by studying what Heidegger
calls “readiness for anxiety”. One of the main claims of this article is that this
readiness is not a merely negative experience, because it implies also gratitude,
which is “an essential affective component of resoluteness” (McMullin, 137).
First of all, McMullin nuances Heidegger’s idea according to which there are
mainly two sources of normativity: the public conventions of the das Man and
our private norms. She argues indeed that there is a third normativity source,
which are second-person claims. She, then, insists on the importance of
readiness for anxiety, which she interprets as a latent state of anxiety through
which the Dasein takes into account the plural sources of normativity. This
readiness is an affect and not a project, since the world matters to me through
it. Finally the author insists on the dimension of joy which is essential for this
readiness, since I experience gratitude when I consider the possibility of losing
everything (for example a child), but which has not yet realized itself. We
experience, thus, gratitude for the meaning of our life, because precisely we
become conscious, through readiness for anxiety, of the contingency of this
meaning. Thus, “gratitude is the orientation that responds to grace – meaning
a manifestation of goodness over which we have no power, but to which we
find ourselves gratefully indebted” (McMullin, 150). I remain however with
one pending question: is it still possible to experience this gratitude when all
meaning is lost, when we do not experience anymore the world as “overflowing
with meanings that we do not create or control”? (ibid). Or is the absolute loss
of meaning a necessary possibility following from the characterization of the
meaning of our lives as being precisely contingent? Steven Crowell deduces
from McMullin’s argument the interesting idea that “the phenomenological
focus on meaning prior to reason does not lead to nihilism, then, but
to fröhliche Wissenschaft” (Crowell, 342).
III. Normativity and Nature
This section investigates the relationship between phenomenology and
naturalism, reinterpreted respectively as the relationship between the “space of
meaning” and the “space of causes”, according to the expression used by
Steven Crowell in his work Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning:
Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology. All authors of this section aim
to bridge the gap between the natural and the normative realm whether by
 showing that there is no essential distinction between human and nonhuman
animal “selves”, by arguing for a “relaxed naturalism” or by showing that
human intentionality can be understood as a natural phenomenon.
1. On Being a Human Self, Mark Okrent
Mark Okrent investigates in this article what constitutes the human self. He
first examines the classical answers to this question, from Descartes to Kant,
by showing finally that Kantian answer is problematic for two reasons: it is not
able to explain why a human agent could have a specific reason to act; it has a
restricted view on rationality, reducing it to its deductive aspect. Korsgaard’s
concept of “practical identity” can offer a response to the second problem. One
of the essential dimensions of this practical identity is the overcoming of a
passive dimension that we share with other nonhuman agents, i.e. the goal of
self-maintenance.[2] Thus, being a human agent entails overcoming the passive
dimension that we share with nonhuman agents in order to become normative
agents. However, according to Okrent, Korsgaard is not able to explain for
which reasons one should adopt a certain practical identity.
Secondly, Okrent examines Heidegger’s idea according to which one does not
represent oneself a certain practical identity in order to act according to it, since
it could offer an answer to the problem mentioned above. However, this idea
is unable, according to Okrent, to make clear how a certain identity is one’s
own achievement. Crowell’s answer to this objection is that no practical
identity is merely given to us, even when we are not in the mood of anxiety,
but that we have on the contrary to strive constantly to achieve this identity.
Thus, if animals respond instinctively to their identity, human beings inhabit
an indefinite identity to whose norms they try to respond. However, as Okrent
mentions it, recent animal studies have shown, that animal identities are not
merely instinctive, but can evolve in function of environmental conditions.

Okrent attributes however another possible meaning to the concept of trying to

achieve an identity which Crowell uses: it does not mean to “alter” it “in the
direction of greater success”, but also to “justify” it with reasons (Okrent, 173).
However, this interpretation is confronted with the aporia of the
Wittgensteinian regress, which thus puts into question Crowell’s argument for
the radical difference between human and animal identity as agents.
Steven Crowell responds to Okrent’s argument by arguing that it involves a
deep pragmatic “reconstruction” of Heidegger’s text and that it would be thus
more “elegant” to leave aside pragmatism (Crowell 344).

2. Normativity with a Human Face: Placing Intentional Norms and Intentional

Agents Back in Nature, Glenda Satne and Bernardo Ainbinder
The aim of this article is to prolong McDowell’s attempt to replace norms in
nature in order to avoid Sellar’s and Davidson’s separation of the space of
causes from that of reasons, to which belongs, according to Sellar,
intentionality. Crowell considers however that McDowell lacks the necessary
phenomenological account of perception, in order to show that perception
belongs to the space of norms, without being conceptual, and thus in order to
achieve empiricism.

In order to achieve this project, Satne and Ainbinder argue that it is essential to
place intentional agents in nature, even if Crowell denies the possibility of an
account of rationality in natural terms. According to the authors, Husserlian
genetic phenomenology can provide us with a method in order to describe this,
because it can show how our normative capacities emerge from more basic
capacities that we share with children and animals, and thus with other nature
beings. They posit thus themselves against Crowell’s view according to which
there is a radical gap between human intentionality, which is the proper
intentionality and animal intentionality, or against Davidson’s view according
to which we lack the proper vocabulary in order to describe the mental states
of other animals. This is what allows them to give an evolutionary account for
human intentionality.

In order to achieve this project, Satne and Ainbinder criticize what they call the
uniformity thesis according to which intentionality is “the exclusive province
of semantic content” (Satne & Ainbinder, 188). This requires showing how a
phenomenological understanding of “life” allows to pluralize the “forms of
life” and thus to pluralize intentionality. For this aim, the authors broaden the
concept of nature so that it can include consciousness and so also intentionality.
However, one question remains open: how is it possible, according to the
authors’ projects, to reunite intentionality with the realm of nature understood
in its mere biological sense, and thus with the neurological part which could
correspond to intentionality?

Steven Crowell presents an objection to the argument presented in this article

by advancing that it presupposes the use of genetic phenomenology and thus
“a construction that transcends the kind of Evidenz to which transcendental
phenomenology is committed” (Crowell 346-347).
3. World-Articulating Animals, Joseph Rouse
The aim of this article is to reunite, against Crowell’s and Heidegger’s views,
our biological animality with our intentionality and normative accountability.
Both Crowell and Heidegger insist on the incommensurability between animal
environment and the openness to the world of the Dasein which creates a
 radical difference between animals and human beings. That is why it is not
possible according to Crowell to ground normativity nor intentionality on the
basis of “organismic teleology” (Rouse, 206). What allows us to attribute
intelligibility to other animal forms of life is precisely the “transcendentally
constituted space of meaning and reasons” (ibid).

In order to reject this argument, Rouse is arguing for a non-dualistic conception

of normativity and nature. He thus proposes an “ecological-developmental
conception of biological normativity” (Rouse, 207). which accounts for the
development of normativity through social practices inside of which human
beings grow up and live. These practices presuppose the essential
interdependence of human being’s actions that is based on a mutual
accountability of human being’s performances. Their normativity reside in this
accountability and not in specific norms which would govern these practices.

This normativity without norms of social practices constitutes the specificity

of human normativity, because it is two-dimensional: “whereas other
organisms develop and evolve in ways whose only measure is whether life and
lineage continue, our discursively articulated practices and their encompassing
way of life introduce tradeoffs between whether they continue and what they
‘are’” (Rouse, 210). A question remains however unanswered: on the basis of
which arguments can we be so sure that our normativity presupposes a
biological dimension which urges us to continue life and is thus two-
dimensional? What allows us to argue that the evolutionary development of
our normativity did not on the contrary suppress this dimension?

Crowell’s reply to Rouse’ criticism is that he does not take the dualism between
nature and normativity in a metaphysical but only in a methodological sense,
since phenomenology is metaphysically neutral. Further, Crowell’s argues that
we are led to deduce from Rouse’ account the problematic idea that
phenomenological categories are contingent.

IV. Attuned Agency

This section investigates the affective dimension of normativity. The first
article challenges the view that we are not responsible for our moods, while the
second one nuances from a phenomenological point of view the traditional
description of akrasia and its relationship to conscience. Finally, the third
article investigates how normativity is intricate in the experience of erotic love.

1. Moods as active, Joseph K. Schear

The aim of this article is to challenge the idea that moods are a mere expression
of our passivity, by arguing that they are on the contrary “an expression of
agency for which we are answerable” (Schear, 217). Here, Schear criticizes the
classical interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of Befindlichkeit (as that of
Dreyfus or Mulhall for example) as manifesting the “passive” dimension of our
being-in-the world.
The objective of Schear is radical, since he does not simply try to show that we
can act on our moods, but that the fact in itself of being in a mood is already an
expression of our agency, and thus of our responsibility. First of all, the author
elucidates the concept of being active as “being responsive to reasons” (Schear,
222). The fact that we can ask someone why he is in a certain mood displays
already a piece of evidence for the fact that moods are active. We are thus
expecting answerability for our moods.
The author distinguishes this answerability from moral responsibility.
Answerability means here rather the possible “demand for intelligibility”
(Schear, 225). Finally, this demand for intelligibility is not a demand for
rationality, since what is at stake, is not asking for a reason which justifies the
mood, but for “an account that makes manifest, that expresses, the shape or
tenor of one’s situation as it shows from one’s perspective” (Schear, 228).

The author seems however to presuppose that someone has enough self-
knowledge in order to answer this demand for intelligibility. However, it can
happen that someone does not know oneself why he/she feels in a special mood
(this can be the case for example when someone suffers from depression or
anxiety) or that he /she does not understand rightly what makes him /her feel
in a special mood. I can thus think that I am anxious because of my work
whereas what makes me actually anxious is a certain heavy perfume I wear.
Consequently, this understanding would not be immediately obvious to me, but
would require an exercise of critical self-reflection.

2. Against our Better Judgment, Matthew Burch

The scope of this article is to show that what is usually called akrasia, meaning
the fact of acting against our own judgment, regroups actually two distinct
phenomena that Burch describes from a phenomenological point of view. He
thus defines the first phenomenon as “intention-shift: action taken freely and
intentionally against my explicit plan (or future intention) and with a clear
conscience” (Burch, 233) and the second phenomenon as akrasia in its proper
sense, or more precisely: “action taken freely and intentionally against my
explicit plan (or future intention) and accompanied by some self-critical
emotion (e.g. guilt, shame, self-directed anger) or a mixture of such emotions”
(ibid). The fundamental difference between these two phenomena lies in the
negative, self-critical feeling that accompanies the second phenomena.
Remarkably, both phenomena presuppose the free and intentional action,
against the classical understanding of akrasia, which interprets it as a “conflict
between rational judgment and irrational desire” (Burch 240). Burch shows on
the contrary that what is at stake is a conflict between two interests, that he
understands as being self-reflexive and normative. This conflict is understood
by the author as a shift from a specific interest to another one, due to “affective
and circumstantial changes” (Burch 242). According to the author, our interests
are self-reflexive, because they concern ourselves. In the case of the intention-
shift there is no betrayal of ourselves but only of our “prior plan” (Burch, 243)
contrary to the akrasia in its proper sense. Thus, in this second case, shifting to
another interest means also betraying another interest (e.g. being faithful to my
partner), and thus betraying myself.
The author seems to presuppose that in the case of akrasia there is an
asymmetry between two interests, which presupposes that satisfying one
interest can lead to a feeling of self-betrayal (e.g. when I cheat on my partner),
while this is not the case for the another interest (e.g. meeting other erotic
partners than my wife/husband). Could we however think that this second type
of interest can also lead to a feeling of self-betrayal when it is not satisfied?

3. Everyday Eros: Toward a Phenomenology of Erotic Inception, Jack Marsh

This article focuses on the phenomenological account of the earliest stage of
erotic experience, that Marsh calls erotic inception. The author distinguishes
several moments inside of erotic inception. The first moment is what he calls
the standing-out-among, when the other catches suddenly our eye through a
particular detail. The second moment is the stepping-out-from, when I step out
toward this other who caught my eye. Through this second moment the other
as potential erotic partner steps into my world. According to the author, this
second moment is a modification of the Heideggerian concept of “world-entry”
(Welteingang).
The author deepens then the understanding of this concept as applied to erotic
inception, by deepening its Heideggerian description as upswing
(Überschwingende). Marsh characterizes this upswing as an “ ‘oscillation’
between my possibilities and my facticity, my abilities and limits, my possible
futures and actual past” (Marsh 260) and thus as an “excess of possibility”
(ibid) or as “an expansive opening upon the world that is empowering and
enriching” (Marsh, 261). This expansive opening upon the world leads finally
to a world-modification that characterizes the unfolding couple. However, the
excess of possibilities that characterize erotic inception contains also the
possibility of its own demise, or as the author puts it, of the “We-death” (Marsh,
264).
 One question remains however open for me: what place does the author
attribute to normativity inside the erotic inception? Could we thus say that the
experience of erotic inception is characterized by certain norms, like for
example the norm of what it is to be an erotic partner, and that each of us can
be called to transform these norms through one’s own experience?

V. Epistemic Normativity
This final section investigates the specific modality of normativity involved in
our epistemic practices. The first article challenges the view itself that
normativity is involved in knowledge acquisition, while the second article
analyzes how norms are intricate in our perceptual experience. Finally, the last
article investigates the link between the natural and the transcendental attitude
from a phenomenological point of view.

1. Normativity and Knowledge, Walter Hopp

In this article Walter Hopp deepens Crowell’s view according to which
intentionality can be exercised only inside of a “context of practices” (Hopp,
271). Thus, “the world is not the intentional correlate of a transcendental ego,
but the environment of the embodied and socialized human person” (ibid).
Hopp argues that this idea could have two possible interpretations: either
intentionality can be carried out only by persons who act conform to a context
of practices and thus of norms, or intentionality is constitutively normative.
Hopp is arguing for the first interpretation, by advancing that if intentionality
were constitutively normative, then this would be the case for knowledge as
well. He aims to show in this article that knowledge is not precisely
constitutively normative, and so nor intentionality.

Hopp’s argument is based on Husserl’s theory of normative science from

the Logical Investigations. A normative science according to Husserl is always
based on one or several non-normative, theoretical sciences, like for instance
medicine that is based on biology, chemistry, etc. Consequently, sciences that
do no rest on other non-normative disciplines, like for example logic, cannot
be normative. Non-normative scientific propositions can however endorse
the role of norms, without being normative in their content. Hopp applies this
argument to epistemology, by showing that its content does not indicate what
we ought to believe but what can be hold as being true; or, truth can endorse
the role of a norm but is not normative by its content. Here, Hopp specifies
Crowell’s characterization of truth as a “normative notion” (Crowell 2013,
239) which is, according to him, ambiguous. The author is thus arguing clearly
for a clear distinction between ethics and epistemology against Terence Cuneo
for example.[3]
Nevertheless, Husserl defines noetics as the “theory of norms of knowledge”
(Husserl 2008, 132) whereas evidence as self-givenness is characterized by him
as the “ultimate norm … that lends sense to knowledge” (Husserl 1999, 45).
Here however Hopp uses Husserl’s own criterion of normative science by
asking on which non-normative discipline Husserl’s most fundamental
concepts of his epistemology, i.e. truth and evidence do rest, in order to show
that these concepts do not have normative content. This allows Hopp to define
epistemology as an ideal science in the Husserlian sense.

Steven Crowell agrees with Hopp’s argument, but he points to the fact
Husserl’s analysis of truth cannot be reduced to the Logical Investigations,
which are essential for Hopp’s argument. According to Crowell, there is
however a sense of normativity in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology
which “eludes Husserl’s distinction between normative and theoretical
disciplines” (Crowell, 332) because transcendental phenomenology is not
considered as an explanatory theory but as a method of clarification.
2. Appearance, Judgment, and Norms, Charles Siewert
The aim of this paper is to argue, by using the phenomenological approach,
that our perceptual experiences are “subject to norms of its own” (Siewert 290).
In order to show this, Siewert starts by analyzing the case of visual agnosia, by
arguing that it does not involve a deficit of visual appearance but rather of
capacity of recognition. Visual appearance is thus conceptually distinct from
visual recognition, or recognitional appearance, which is on its turn distinct
from judgment. Indeed, I can withhold judgment when I recognize two persons
as looking the same, i.e. when I recognize that they look alike but in two
different tokens. Visual recognitions “take thing as” (Siewert, 299) whereas
judgments “represent things to be” (ibid). Contrary to Travis, Siewert does
distinguish however altogether visual experience from accuracy, and thus does
not attribute accuracy exclusively to judgment. Thus, I can accurately
recognize a sign as an arrow, while it actually represents an alligator. In this
case I made a “creative use of the appearance” (Siewert, 301). Siewert draws
here a parallel with the Kantian scheme, since just as the scheme makes both
theoretical judgment and aesthetic imagination possible, the recognitional
appearance can support both a judgment and a creative use.
On the basis of this distinction between visual recognitional experience and
judging experience, the author argues that these two types of experiences are
governed by two different kinds of normativity. He agrees on this point with
Susanna Siegel, but not on the specific form of normativity that characterizes
visual recognition. Indeed, Siewert identifies visual recognition with a
“looking-as-act” (Siewert, 303) which he understands as the active experience
of looking, contrary to the “looking-as-appearance”, and which thus can be
done well or badly, or which can be improved. Perceptual experiences can be
thus subject to normative assessment because visual recognitions can be an
activity.

3. Husserl’s and Heidegger’s Transcendental Projects, Dermot Moran

In this article Dermot Moran aims at understanding the meaning of
phenomenology as transcendental philosophy. Inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s
essay “The Philosopher and His Shadow”, he investigates how the
transcendental and the natural attitude are intertwined and how the idea of such
an intertwining relates to Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology.

Based on a very detailed studied of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s texts, Moran

shows first how Husserl’s view on the natural and transcendental attitude
evolves from the Ideas I until the Crisis, as well as how Heidegger criticizes
the Husserlian concept of natural attitude, which according to him is a
comportment (Verhalten) and not an attitude as such. At the same time, the
author points to ambiguous points in Husserl’s thought, like the relationship
between the natural attitude and naturalism, which leads to the reification of
the world. Despite this ambiguity, Husserl is clear on the distinction between
transcendental and natural attitude, which is relative to the first attitude as the
only absolute attitude, because of its “self-awareness and self-grounding
character” (Moran, 313). One can become aware of the natural attitude as such
only through a “shift in the ego’s mode of inspectio sui” (Moran, 314) which
is the transcendental reduction though which we can adopt the transcendental
attitude. Thus one of the key roles of transcendental phenomenology is that of
allowing us “to investigate attitudes” (ibid) such as the theoretical attitude
which masks the original position of the transcendental subject.
Moran further reflects on the meaning of transcendental phenomenology with
the aid of Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl’s texts according to which the
natural and the transcendental attitudes are deeply intertwined. This reading
could explain why Husserl calls in the § 49 of the Ideas II the transcendental
attitude as being natural.
Merleau-Ponty finds such an intertwining in Husserl’s idea of a passive
pregiveness of the world which underlies all intentional acts and which is not
the object of act intentionality but of what Husserl calls in Formal and
Transcendental Logic fungierende Intentionalität and that Merleau-Ponty
translates in the Phenomenology of Perception as operative intentionality
(intentionnalité opérante), a concept which is equivalent according to Merleau-
Ponty with the Heideggerian concept of transcendence.
Moran identifies this operative intentionality with what Husserl calls, also in §
94 of Formal and Transcendental Logic living intentionality. He further
reflects on this concept of living intentionality, by arguing, based on a thorough
study of Husserl’s texts, that the task of transcendental phenomenology is to
aim towards a living not in the world but within the life of consciousness, which
Moran interprets, following Husserl’s expression in Formal and
Transcendental Logic as the realm of our internality (Innerlichkeit), a concept
for which Moran discerns a Heideggerian resonance. Only transcendental
reduction, and the transcendental attitude it leads to, can give us access to this
internality, and not the natural reflection that is proper to the natural attitude.
Thus, “the aim of transcendental phenomenology” is “to uncover this life of
functioning consciousness underlying the natural attitude” (Crowell, 320).
In conclusion, this book allows us to have a renewed reading of one of the main
problems of phenomenology, i.e. the problem of meaning. Particularly, the
problem of meaning is treated in the light of the question of normativity. At the
same time it links in multiple ways the phenomenological question of meaning
with various contemporary compelling questions like that of naturalism. This
makes this book particularly interesting. Yet, the question of meaning is
unfortunately not always on the foreground, leaving sometimes the task of
making the explicit link between the problem of meaning and the content of
the articles to the reader. Perhaps however it is a mere consequence of the
richness of its various perspectives on this topic.

Bibliography:
Crowell, Steven. 2002. “Authentic Thinking and Phenomenological Method.”
In: The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological
Philosophy 2: 23-37
Crowell, Steven. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and
Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cuneo, Terence. 2007. The Normative Web. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fink, Eugen. 1981. “The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.”
Translated by R.M. Harlan. In: Apriori and World: European Contributions to
Husserlian Phenomenology, edited by W. McKenna, R.M. Harlan, and L.E.
Winters, 21-55. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. 1950. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge.
Edited by S. Strasser, Husserliana 1. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. 2008. Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge:
Lectures 1906/07. Translated by Claire Ortiz Hill. Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, Edmund. 1999. The Idea of Phenomenology. Translated by Lee
Hardy. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

[1]
Steven Crowell, 2002.
[2]
See Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996 and also Christine Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of
Ends, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[3] Cuneo 2007. Cuneo is arguing that just as there are no “moral facts”, there

are no “epistemic facts” either. (113)