20126420

Intentionality and Language in Husserl's Phenomenology
Author(s): Donn Welton

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Dec., 1973), pp. 260-297
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
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INTENTIONALITY AND LANGUAGE IN
HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY
DONN WELTON
In the philosophical tradition, the problem of language does not
pertain to "first philosophy,'' and that is just why Husserl ap
proaches it more freely than the problems of perception or knowledge.
He moves it into a central position, and what little he says about it is
both original and enigmatic. Consequently, this problem provides us
with our best basis for questioning phenomenology and recommencing
Husserl's efforts instead of simply repeating what he said. It allows
us to resume, instead of his theses, the very movement of his thought.
?Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1l On the Phenomenology of Language ''
In one of his many essays William James suggests that all philos
ophy is caught in an irresolvable tension : on the one hand, it must
retain multiplicity in its terms and analyses lest we end up with a
gray and barren cosmos ; and yet, on the other hand, it must elimi
nate multiplicity lest it fail to get us out of "the empirical sand
heap world." This essay is caught in a similar dilemma. We
must find our roots in a specific problem and give it a thorough
examination lest we go wafting off into the sublime and find our
selves empty-handed at the end of the paper. But yet we also
want to capture something of the vitality and life which the prob
lem of language has for Husserl's phenomenology lest we lose
ourselves in a myriad of logical Spitzfindigkeiten and hard-hewn
distinctions.
This essay situates itself on the ground of a very powerful but
as yet unanswered critique of Husserl's theory of intentionality
and language proposed by Ernst Tugendhat. After suggesting
the necessity of a dialogue between linguistic analysis and phenom
enology, Tugendhat turns a critical eye toward Husserl. In the
first section we reproduce his attack. Then in the second section
we attempt to give a response to his critique from within the
boundaries he has superimposed upon the discussion. In the third
and fourth sections, however, we attempt to enliven the problem
by introducing several historical considerations which have been
overlooked by Tugendhat and by taking the first steps toward re
claiming the productivity of language for genetic analysis. It is
INTENTIONALITY 261
only when one makes this turn that Husserl's notion of intentional
ity finds its solvency.
I
Perhaps the thing which makes Tugendhat 's essay, (
enologie und Sprachanalyse,"1 important is that he, fir
understands the centrality of the problem of meaning fo
and sees that the uniqueness of his method is to enclose
lem of meaning in an analysis of the intentional act and
analysis of the intension or extension of terms.2 From
tage point Tugendhat opens the attack on Husserl's not
tentionality from two sides : Husserl's starting point in
of the act fails not only because it leaves meaning (Be
unintelligible but also because it cannot even explain our
to objects. Since Husserl understands the essence of int
ity to consist of a reference by consciousness to the obje
st?ndlichkeit) and since he sees this as mediated by mean
can be no doubt that a critique which argues that Hu
explained neither has certainly driven to the heart of th
Let us turn to the first suggestion that Husserl's att
introduce phenomenology by a clarification of the inten
shipwrecks when one carries through an analysis of me
the Logical Investigations Husserl begins his explicati
nomenology with a concern first introduced into conte
thought by Bolzano and Frege: namely, the clarification
meaning of a linguistic expression. That which distin
1 In Hermeneutik und Dialektik: Hcms-Georg Gadamer z

Geburtstag, ed. by B?diger Bubner et al., 2 Vols. (T?bingen : J. C
1970), II, 3-23. Tugendhat has also written what is probably th
on Husserl's theory of truth. See his Der Wahrheitsbegriff b
und Heidegger (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967), pp. 1-255.
2 "For Husserl the 'intentional' act which 'refers to' [me
object is the primary unity of consciousness. . . . For linguist
on the contrary, the understanding of the meaning of a sent
primary unity of our openness to the world [Erschlossenhe
Husserl attempted to somehow build the understanding of me
the intentional relationship to objects, linguistic analysis sees ref
[meinen] objects as a factor in the understanding of the mean
tences." Ibid., p. 4.
262 DONN WELTON
linguistic sign 3 from a mark4 is that it is grasped as something

which has a "meaning," i.e., a meaning is "loaned" to the expres
sion. But the problem arises when one reads on: that which
"endows" the expression with a meaning is not merely under
standing the expression, but rather it is an "act," a "meaning
bestowing" act.5 This lies close to saying that meaning is an ob
ject of consciousness and that it is the theme of our act. But
Husserl is clear at this point: "Each expression not only has a
meaning, but it also refers to certain objects. The object and the
meaning never coincide." 6 In the next section of the First Inves
tigation this is further clarified: "The expression denotes (names)
the object through its meaning."7 But how does the expression
name an object? Tugendhat recognizes that expressions which
denote the object through its meaning operate syntactically as
logical subjects,8 and he does concede that it is precisely the func
tion of the logical subject to name an object. But he wants to
criticize Husserl for extending the naming function of the logical
subject to the significative function of all expressions, and this he
roots in Husserl's intentional model:
Because, generally speaking, ''meaning-bestowing" consciousness is

an act for Husserl, he is forced, by virtue of his starting point, to
extend this peculiar characteristic of the name ... to all expres
sions: "each expression . . . also refers to certain objects." This is
the scheme which results for Husserl's theory of meaning from start
ing with intentionality. Given this starting point it cannot be avoided :
nominal expressions become paradigmatic for all expressions.9
3 Peirce would speak of Husserl's sign as a degenerate index or a

symbol.
4 Peirce would call Husserl 's mark an icon, or a genuine index.
5 Tugendhat, "Ph?nomenologie und Sprachanalyse," p. 5. "Act,"
in turn, is understood as a synonym for ((intentional Erlebnis,'9 "inten
tional enlived-experience. ' '
6 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, part 1 : Unter
suchungen zur Ph?nomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, 2nd rev. ed.
(Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1913), p. 46; (hereafter cited as Logische Unter
suchungen [2nd ed.], II/l) ; Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations,
trans, by J. N. Findlay, 2 Vols. (New York: The Humanities Press, 1970),
I, 287 (hereafter cited only in connection with Logische Untersuchungen
as Eng. trans.).
7 Ibid., p. 49 (Eng. trans., I, 289).
8 Ibid., p. 463 (Eng. trans., II, 625).
9 Tugendhat,<(Ph?nomenologie und Sprachanalyse " pp. 6-7.
INTENTIONALITY 263
There is a further complication. Not only does Husserl's in

troduction of meaning into intentional consciousness reduce all
expressions to names, but it also creates considerable ambiguity
as to the ontological status of meaning itself. In contrast to the
identical object which can have a variety of meanings, meaning is
seen as the determinate manner in which we refer to [meinen] the
object.10 And in contrast to the possible variety of acts which can
bestow the same meaning, meaning is interpreted as the "species"
of the act. This means that Husserl incorrectly equates nominal
meaning and the "essence" of the intentional act. However,
Husserl does modify this analysis in Ideas I and introduces the
correlation of noesis and noema in its place. Tugendhat takes
this to mean that now there corresponds to each differentiation on
the side of the act (of the noesis) a correlative differentiation on
the side of the object as one of its "modes of givenness." The
object with its modes is then labeled "noema." lx But Husserl's
mistake is to think he can actually make meaning into an object
and then break it into two correlative parts. Not only is Husserl
misled by his insistence on universalizing the nominal meaning and
applying it to all meanings, it is also the case that he misconstrues
the meaning of a nominal expression. While it seems obvious that
an object can present itself to us in different modes and thus have
different meanings (evening star vs morning star), it is doubtful
that one should say that the meaning of the expression is the man
ner of the givenness of the object. In fact this seems to relinquish
the universality of meaning. Tugendhat 's alternative rejects see
ing meaning as an object which can be thematized in reflection.
Rather, the meaning of the nominal expression is a rule of the
use of the expression to identify the object to which we refer.12
If we see meaning in this way, then we can say that the possibility
of speaking (noematically) about a determinative mode of given
ness by means of the rule of identification as well as the possibility
of speaking (noetically) about a corresponding act of referring
is grounded in meaning seen as a rule. Tugendhat goes on to say :
10 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/1, 49 (Eng. trans.,

1,289).
11 Tugendhat, "Ph?nomenologie und Sprachanalyse," p. 7.
12 Ibid., p. 8.
264 DONN WELTON
Thus it is quite questionable if, as is usual in the phenomenological
literature, one should evaluate Husserl's later introduction of the
"noema" as a step forward. Rather, it seems that it is an extreme
attempt to interpret that which is not an object as nevertheless quasi
objective and thereby to make immune everything which does not fit
into the intentional subject-object schema. The term is really an
expression of an embarrassment as is the talk in the Logical Investi
gations about "objectivities" which are nevertheless not "objects in
the pregnant sense. ' '13
But even if the noematic interpretation of the meaning of nominal

expressions is intelligible, it is certainly untenable for the meaning
of an expression which does not name. For how could an expres
sion denote an object if there is no object there whose manner of
givenness is thematized by the meaning of the expression?
When we set aside the isolated expressions and turn to entire
propositions which incorporate expressions, the problems continue
to multiply for Husserl's theory of meaning and intentionality.
Here we find a double meaning to the term "object." On the one
hand, an object is that which is named by the subject of the sen
tence. On the other hand, the object is the " state-of-affairs "
(Sachverhalt) which is thematized when we nominalize a sentence.
In the first case, however, the object is only what is named by the
subject; and thus no object would correspond to the meaning of
the entire sentence.14 In the second case the object is first formed
in the subsequent nominalization of the meaning of the sentence ;
and, therefore, we cannot understand the meaning of the sentence
which is not nominalized as something through which we refer to
the object.15
When we take up the predicate of the sentence, we find yet a
further complication for the analysis of meaning. In view of the
analysis of the logical subject and the process of nominalization,
Husserl must feel that an expression functioning as a predicate
does not name an object "through" its meaning as does the logical
subject. But his analysis of the categorical synthesis requires
that the logical predicate name an object. Otherwise we have no
synthesis. To establish his thesis Tugendhat turns to section
18 Ibid.
" Ibid., p. 9.
15 Ibid., p. 10.
INTENTIONALITY 265
forty-eight of the Sixth Investigation.16 In the sentences "A is

(has) b" and its converse, "b is in A," the "b" is said to be a
non-independent moment of A. But, according to Tugendhat, the
Third Investigation17 sees (all) predicates as "non-independent"
parts of an object. He then complains that this presupposes that
the predicate is grasped in its nominalized form and that Husserl
has simply projected this subsequent form back into the primary
use of the predicate. To trace predicative propositions back to
propositions about relations of parts simply leads to a regress.
Thus "to understand a predicative proposition cannot mean to
bring two objects into synthesis."18 This, then, is the coup de
gr?ce to Husserl's theory of meaning: "The function of the pred
icate is not to be the expression of an intentional act and to make
something 'presented' [vorstellig']. Bather, it is to characterize
something in the sense in which it has been delimited."19 How
are we to understand the meaning of predicates ? "To understand
the meaning of the predicate does not mean to see something but
rather to master the rule which determines the application of the
predicate. The universality of the predicate is a universality of
the rule, not a 'universal object'." 20 In place of Husserl's notion
of intentionality Tugendhat wants to substitute, at least for pred
icates, our intercourse with the sign guided by rules.21
One could expect in the confrontation between phenomenology
and linguistic analysis over the question of meaning that linguistic
analysis would fare better. However, when we take our point of
departure from our intentional reference to objects, it would seem
that phenomenology would have an upper hand. Significantly,
Tugendhat argues that Husserl's analysis not only renders an ex
plication of meaning impossible, but it also frustrates any explana
tion of how we take up objects as our intentional projects. This
16 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, part 2 :

Elemente einer ph?nomenologischen Aufkl?rung der Erkenntnis, 2nd rev.
ed. (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1921), pp. 128ff. (hereafter cited as Logische
Untersuchungen [2nd ed.], H/2) (Eng. trans., II, 773ff.).
17 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/1, 228ff. (Eng.
trans., II, 437ff.).
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., v. 15.
21 Ibid., p, 16,
266 DONN WELTON
roots in two conflicting descriptions of the object. On the one

hand, Husserl's introduction of the object from the side of seman
tics and syntax suggests that it is anything which functions as the
subject of true predication.22 On the other hand, his commence
ment with the intentional Erlebnis sees the object as that which is
actually presented in a presentation (das jeweilige Vorgestellte
eines Vorstellens).23 These two divergent approaches simply can
not be unified. Nor can we choose one over against the other, for
each is shot through with problems.
What is the difficulty with Husserl's thesis that an object is
that named by the logical subject? Husserl does not see that the
mere referring to, or naming of, an object is essentially incomplete
by itself (erg?nzungsbed?rftig) and that all intentional references
to the object emerge in the context of our understanding of mean
ings. The primary unit of consciousness is our understanding of
sentences and not our pointing to objects ; and, therefore, Husserl
is mistaken.24
From this Tugendhat turns to a difficulty with Husserl's thesis
that the Erlebnis always has a directedness toward the object if
one already understands this object as a secondary objectification
(i.e., nominalization) of a sentence. At least this does not result
from a strict phenomenological analysis of the Erlebnis. An ex
ample makes this clear. When we speak of naming and of hating,
we are directly confronted with an object. Likewise, the acts of
believing and wishing are object-directed. But when we have an
act of coveting, then we see that we are situated before a certain
kind of action in conjunction with the object (possessing the object
or consuming the object) and not the object per se. Thus, Tugend
hat argues, a large part of what Husserl calls intentional modes of
consciousness only have a direction toward an object because they
express themselves in sentences which can be nominalized. He
continues: "This does not hold true for all examples, i.e., for
22 Cf. Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), II/l, 125 (Eng. trans., I,

353) and Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Ph?nomenologie und
ph?nomenologischen Philosophie, Book I: Allgemeine Einfuhrung in die
reine Ph?nomenologie, ed. and expanded by Walter Biemel, Husserliana,
Vol. Ill (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), p. 15.
24 Ibid., p. 19. This comes very close to begging the question.
INTENTIONALITY 267
'naming' or 'hating'. But this is enough in order to make this

psychological criterion (which, for its part, is oriented toward
language usage) unusable in our efforts to give a consistent ren
dering of what we should understand by the object." 25
One final problem in this connection will suffice. Because the
real objects are constituted exclusively in sensuous intuition (vs
categorical intuition), they are logically "formless." But this
contradicts Husserl's thesis that an object is essentially that which
is denoted by an expression operating as subject. For to each
expression qua subject there belongs a specific logical-linguistic
form which allows it to appear in a definite position in the sentence
and none other.
As an alternative to Husserl's theory of intentionality, Tu
gendhat suggests the following :
For Husserl consciousness is so essentially thetic?in some one of its
modalities, even if it is that of the neutralization which brackets?that
there is for him no act without thetic quality. Now, however, one
must doubt that the thetic qualities characterize our intention
[meinen] of object. On the contrary, they seem to designate the
various manners in which we are related to a state-of-affairs in the
act of expressing a sentence. The current English term for this is
"propositional attitude." Had Husserl taken his point of departure
from the thetic qualities in his analysis of the "intentional Erleb
nisse" then the "intentional Erlebnisse" would have been seen as
the manner of affirming sentences.26
Thus it seems that in the dialogue between phenomenology and

linguistic analysis, phenomenology fares about as well as the Sioux
in their first confrontation with the cavalry at Wounded Knee.
But before we dispossess phenomenology and herd it onto a barren
reservation in the wastelands of South Dakota, let us examine
Tugendhat 's arguments and evaluate his claims.
II
This very sweeping and powerful criticism of Husserl g
us occasion to take up an analysis of intentionality and int
several moments and distinctions usually glossed over in the
global analyses of Husserl's phenomenology. To do this,
ever, we must begin by sorting out several mistakes made i
25 Ibid., p. 20.
26 Ibid., p. 22.
268 DONN WELTON
nection with Husserl's logical grammar. Tugendhat 's failure to

pick up the elaborations of the problematic of the Logical Investi
gations which Husserl gives in Experience and Judgment and in
Formal and Transcendental Logic leads to several confusions.
Generally speaking, Tugendhat does not give sufficient attention to
the differences between core-forms and transformations, on the
one hand, and syntactic forms and transformations, on the other.
According to Husserl, names and propositions function in essen
tially different ways; and the former cannot be reduced to the
latter without changing "its semantical essence and therewith the
meaning itself. ' '2T The fact that the name as well as the entire
sentence has a deictic function28 should not be confused with the
thesis that all the parts of the sentence maintain a naming function
nor with the fact that some kinds of logical sentences, those with
the syntactic form logical subject + has + object term, do consist
of two moments which, analytically seen, name objects. When
Husserl says in the First Investigation that every expression re
fers to certain objects, he is considering the expression before it
takes on syntactic form(s). If one is to say that in the sentence
logical subject + is + predicate term a subsumptive or attributive
universal with the syntactic form predicate term "names," then
one would have to say that it names the logical subject and that it
acquires this function by virtue of its syntactic form.
Tugendhat seems to say that all predicates are "non-inde
pendent" parts of the object for Husserl. Even though he recog
nizes that such an assimulation requires the nominalized form of
the predicate, he chides Husserl for projecting this form back into
his initial clarification of the sentence as a synthesis of "two ob
jects." But the movement from subsumption or characterization
to part-whole relationships is itself monitored by syntactic as well
as semantic transformations. Subsumptive universals or attribu
tive universals can indeed function as "names," but only if they
are an object term. An attributive universal functioning in the
sentence LS + is + P as a predicate term, to use Tugendhat 's ex
ample, becomes thematized as a part of the logical subject only by
27Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/1, 475 (Eng. trans., II,

632).
28 Tugendhat also recognizes that the sentence refers.
INTENTIONALITY 269
the introduction of core-form transformations and by the introduc

tion of the syntactic form LS + has + O.29 Thus it is only for
sentences of the latter form that we can begin to speak of the
predicate "presenting" an "object" (whole or part). To gloss
over the generation of this form and simply state that all predica
tive propositions are reducible to sentences about relations of
nominal presentations is hardly fair to Husserl.
There is some difficulty created for this interpretation by
Husserl's first introduction of the relationship between presenta
tions and judgments in the Fifth Investigation. When we read
that
a judgment has at least one presentation as its fundament, just as
each fully expressed proposition contains at least one "name." If
the interpretation is correct which gives to the simple judgment the
normal form S is p, then we would have to assume two presentations
or two names as minimum.30
This would suggest that judgments actually conjoin two names or

that they are the sum of two presentations. But this talk of pre
sentation as the fundament of a judgment should not be confused
with the actual relationship between the syntactic parts of the
judgment. Nominal acts and completed judgments are essentially
different for Husserl.31 In the sentence S is p the nominal presen
tation is restricted to the logical subject which, in turn, always
points to its determination by the logical predicate.32 The pred
29 Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur

Genealogie der Logik, prepared and ed. by Ludwig Landgrebe, 2nd un
changed ed. (Hamburg: Ciaassen Verlag, 1954), pp. 261-70; Edmund
Husserl, "Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der
logischen Vernunft," Jahrbuch f?r Philosophie und ph?nomenologische
Forschung, X (1929), pp. 259-74; Edmund Husserl, Formal and Tran
scendental Logic, trans, by Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1969), pp. 294-312 (hereafter cited only in connection with "Formale und
transzendentale Logik" as Eng. trans.). A full discussion of this would
require more than we can introduce here. I attempt to sort out and dis
tinguish Husserl's various core-form and syntactic form transformations in
the first chapter of my dissertation ' ' The Temporality of Meaning : A Crit
ical Study of the Structure of Meaning and Temporality in Husserl's Phe
nomenology" (Southern Illinois University, 1973).
30 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/1, 461 (Eng.
trans., II, 624).
270 DONN WELTON
icate, in turn, is not the result of an isolated act of presentation

which somehow fuses with the presentative act subtending the
logical subject.
Words or word-groupings which should be considered names only
express a self-contained act when they stand for either a complete
simple subject of a proposition ... or, to disregard the syntactic
formations, they could fill the simple subject-function in a proposition
without changing their intentional essence.33
The only case when the logical predicate could fill the simple sub
ject-function in a proposition without changing its essence is when
it functions as an object term in the sentence LS + has + 0. But
to say that the sentence LS + is + P has at least two names is only
to say that the sentence can be reduced and undergo a semantic
clarification which would thematize both its logical subject and its
logical predicate. The function of such predications is not to
present a second nominal presentation demanding to be considered
independently beside the logical subject. Rather, "their function
consists in situating the attribution enriching the name before our
eyes."34
Actually this confusion on Tugendhat 's part seems to root in
a deeper misunderstanding which is betrayed by his query as to
how syntactically "formless" objects must nevertheless be those
which are denoted by the logical subject. This would suggest that
the subject-form for Husserl is necessary for the constitution of
the object as object, a thesis which would contradict his analysis
of the pre-predicative formation of objects. By arguing in this
way, Tugendhat has falsely juxtaposed syntactic forms and core
forms. That which is necessary for the circumscription of the
Individuum is the core-form of substantivity. The fact that this
+ subsumptive universal is the irreducible core-form for any logi

34Ibid., p. 468 (Eng. trans., II, 629). The point is also seen in the
lectures on "Thing and Space" (1907) where Husserl picks up the distinc
tion in the Investigations between independent and non-independent parts
and speaks of parts ' ' in the narrower sense, ' ' on the one hand, and the inner
features which the subject has, on the other. The subject possesses these
inner features "in the manner of its determination, of the predicate: prop
erties [sic]." Edmund Husserl, Ding und Baum: Vorlesungen 1907, ed.
by Ulrich Claesges, Husserliana, Vol. XVI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1973), p. 34.
INTENTIONALITY 271
cal subject should not be taken to mean that the syntactic subject
form is "indispensable" for the constitution of the object. As
Husserl's analysis of relations shows, this + subsumptive univer
sal operating as a logical predicate still maintains its "direct"
naming function.35 Perhaps the more interesting and difficult
question here is whether we can have objects presented in naming
without a necessary core-form.36 Because static analysis main
tains a rather strict symmetry between language and experience,
the question requires the turn to genetic analysis for its final
answer.
It is also clear that Tugendhat 's treatment of nominalization

is greatly exaggerated. Nominalized predicates (e.g., the noun
red) always point back to the original predication (e.g., the adjec
tive red), and this also applies to sentences.37
Tugendhat 's misappropriation of the role and function of
nominalization leads to a confused interpretation of "states-of
affairs." Tugendhat juxtaposed Husserl's usage of Sachverhalt
(and its subsequent objedification in nominalization as a theme)
with Husserl's notion of the object or Gegenst?ndlichkeit and has
argued that the sentence per se cannot refer to an object through
its meaning precisely because the object of the sentence is formed
only in a subsequent objectification (i.e., nominalization) of its
meaning. If Husserl does say that the object first formed in the
subsequent nominalization of the meaning of the sentence is, in
fact, that which is intended by the meaning of the sentence, this
would be a curious position indeed, much like saying that the mean
ing of a sentence refers to its meaning. But even the Logical
Investigations distinguish between the meaning of a sentence and
its affair-complex.38 Husserl does not maintain that the sentence
denotes a state-of-affairs?even though one does thematize the
86 Erfahrung und Urteil, p. 267.

86 Husserl did not work out the difference between proper names and
definite descriptions.
37 Cf. Husserl, "Formale und transzendentale Logik," p. 184 (Eng.
trans., p. 207).
I, 288f.). Tugendhat does recognize this but attempts to undercut Husserl's
position by a recourse to Frege's suggestion that it is a truth value which
is denoted by the sentence.
272 DONN WELTON
state-of-affairs in nominalization?but rather a Sachlage, an af

fair-complex. To argue, as Tugendhat has, that we should restrict
the term object to that which is named by the logical subject, fails
to account for the fact that we also thematize internal relations of
"comprising and being comprised" or of coincidence, as well as
external relations of similarity, equality, position, etc., in our
geradehin usage of the sentence.39 Husserl does seem to speak of
the affair-complex as an object, but only in the sense that it is
thematized by the sentence :
Thus the simple objectivities are the sources of different pred
icative states-of-affairs. They are this because of their formations
of unity w7hich are passively constituted and which we call rela
tions [Verh?ltnisse, not Relationen] or affair-complexes, identical
affair-complexes which explicate themselves in many different predica
tive states-of-affairs. We did speak of the affair-complexes as them
selves founded objectivities. To be more precise we have to say that
in receptivity we do not yet have the affcar-complexes as objects, i.e.,
they are not thematic as founded objectivities. What we have here is
nothing other than the objectivities simply apprehended which "in
state" themselves and the shifting of our gaze here and there between
the substrate and its parts or between those moments related to each
other and brought into relief as larger or smaller (always on the basis
of their sensuous unity). What we call an "affair-complex" merely
appears as the passively pre-constituted fundament, the property-fun
dament or relation-fundament of all of these states-of-affairs. How
ever, when states-of-affairs are constituted and objectified in original
predication, this fundament can be objectively apprehended (subse
quently) as the identical affair-complex serving as their basis.40
We would elaborate Husserl's insights in this way. That which
is presented in the sentence is not merely the individual but also
the internal and external relations of the individual (affair-com
plex) which make possible its thematization in a particular mode
or manner (state-of-affair). Were there not this mediating mo
ment, were there not a movement from the object to its manner of
givenness through its horizons, it would be impossible to under
stand the coherence of states-of-affairs belonging to the same
89 Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, p. 287. Cf. Husserl, Ding und

Baum, pp. 34-35. If Husserl does say that the "state-of-affairs," is an
"objectivity," then he means by state-of-affairs the "identification" be
tween parts and whole or subject and its determinations ; and he does not
explicitly contrast state-of-affairs and affair-complex. Cf. ibid., p. 36. A
fuller elaboration of this point would have to treat the use of these two
terms in Formal and Transcendental Logic.
40 Erfahrung und Urteil, pp. 287-88,
INTENTIONALITY 273
family or theme.41 And if one wants to argue that that which is

denoted by the sentence is a truth-value, then one has the devilish
problem of trying to recover the dynamic relationship between
language and world and the sense in which that is present even for
static analysis.42
Perhaps the most difficult problem to handle is Tugendhat 's
criticism that meaning is not an object which can be thematized in
reflection. The meaning of a nominal expression is not its ideal
presence in reflection but rather the rule(s) of its use to identify an
object. This criticism implies that Husserl would insist upon a
strict opposition between meaning qua "rules" and meaning qua
object of intuition or reflection and that he would consistently opt
for the latter as the only legitimate way of thematizing meaning.
But this kind of interpretation is quite out of keeping with the
project that Husserl outlines in the Logical Investigations. There
Husserl is primarily concerned with the sense in which language
transcends itself and loses itself in the object and not with our
understanding of the use of language per se. In the first three
Investigations Husserl is absorbed in ontological considerations,
and the rules which he does introduce yield ontic distinctions.
The productivity of language remains suppressed in this view
point. "Meaning is synonymous with sense for us."43 But par
agraph twenty of the First Investigation does insert a break
between the word and the object which it "overlays," and it
briefly turns to the sign in terms of its "surrogative" or "rep
resentative" functions (stellvertretende Funktion).** The sign
stands as proxy for the object ; and it is significant, not by virtue
of its concrete linguistic realization, but because it is given a
"game-meaning" through "game-rules" much like the figures in
41 Were it not for this mediation of individual and aspect, relations,

as well as the modes of objects, would result, in fact, from consciousness
superimposing a synthesis between "objects" or nominal presentations; and
likewise all predications would consist of relating names.
42 Even if one admires Frege for avoiding Husserl's difficulties with
the ideal object, it may be that he has achieved this precisely because the
world which comes to articulation in his logic is already ideal.
I, 292). This equivocation is relinquished when Husserl turns to the Fifth
and Sixth Investigations.
"Ibid., p. 68 (Eng. trans., I, 304).
274 DONN WELTON
a game of chess. Thus it is possible to speak of this "game-mean

ing" in addition to its "original meaning," i.e., in addition to its
normal function of "refracting" our attention to the object of
consciousness. Later Husserl even applies this to individual as
well as ideal objects. The "meaning" of Bismark is a "presenta
tion" which in this case would be the greatest German statesman,
the meaning of the number four is the second number in the num
ber series, and so on.45 In each case we can speak of the meaning
asa" rule ' ' of identification if we like, and in each case we would
specify when it is legitimate to use the terms Bismark or four.*6
The fact that Husserl was not primarily interested in this side of
language usage should not be taken to mean that he is unable to
introduce such a clarification.
Does Tugendhat really want to say that the meaning of thing
is the rule of its usage in a sentence ? If he is speaking of a word
and wants to clarify the way in which words function, then we have
no objections. But this is not Husserl's interest, and he does not
open this line of inquiry when he speaks of thing because it would
seem trivial and unproductive to him. When he turns to the ques
tion of the meaning of thing, he is primarily interested in working
out an analysis of the lived-body and its relation to the perception
of spatial objects. The "rules" which he gives are rules which
explain, for example, the relation between kinaesthetic sensation,
the eye, and visual configurations.47 For static analysis proposi
tions merely express "what is situated before us," and we are not
interested in them per se.48
45 Cf. ibid., pp. 102-03 (Eng. trans., I, 331-32).

46 Actually the situation is much more complicated than this. Tu
gendhat does make the distinction between rules of normal usage and rules
of usage in a verification situation. "Ph?nomenologie und Sprachanalyse,"
p. 18. Furthermore, if we follow Peirce, Kussell, Wittgenstein, and Loren
zen, we would have to introduce hypothetical statements and the problem
of generating them from universal statements and definite description.
47 Cf. Husserl, Ding und Baum, pp. 176-84.
48 Ibid., p. 35. At the beginning of these lectures he makes this clear :
"The main thing here is that in our study of the thing qua objectivity?
and, as we will see, of any objectivity at all?we are from the very outset
directed back to the study of acts giving unity, to the study of identifica
tion, difference, and the various differentiations which express themselves
(auspr?gen) in the a priori forms of possible propositions, in their purely
grammatical categories."
INTENTIONALITY 275
When Husserl does turn his attention to a discussion of gram

matical categories and the relationship between core and syntactic
forms, he does not work this out in great detail. Evidently Tu
gendhat has taken this to mean that Husserl's insistence upon
categorical intuition is reducible to a kind of inner seeing, and to
this he wants to contrast the rules of usage within verification.
But even though this remains programmatic in Husserl's writings,
he still has a very clear distinction between an analysis of "the
apriori forms of possible propositions" or "grammatical forms"
and "purely logical laws" which arise when we turn to "the ques
tion of validity." 49 Concerning the latter he says that "the clari
fication of the logical is one and the same thing with the clarifica
tion of the possibility of the objective validity of cognition." 50
Thus it seems that Tugendhat 's efforts to "save" Husserl's op
position between signification and fulfillment by contrasting two
kinds of rule-systems have been spent in vain.
It is unfortunate that Tugendhat did not consider Husserl's
discussion of materially countersensical statements in this connec
tion. One of the main points of their discussion in the Fourth
Investigation is to show that they are meaningful and that they
"present" even though there could never be a fulfillment of the
statement. "A round square" is a Vorstellung for Husserl.51 To
speak of it as being a mental image would be absurd. When
Husserl speaks of meaning-intention as symbolic,52 this should not
be read to mean that meaning-intention resembles or mirrors that
which will provide its fulfillment. Presenting is not so much a
mental duplication of an object or an affair-complex as it is a
moment of the act, or what James calls a "function," by which we
identify or characterize the theme. This moment is not defined by
recourse to a mental picture but by recourse to the thematization
of that horizon (inner or outer) of the object bringing it to ac
49 Ibid., p. 35. Cf. "Formale und transzendentale Logik," pp. 108f.

(Eng. trans., p. 122).
50 Husserl, Ding und Baum, p. 35.
51 Cf. Edmund Husserl, "Vorlesung ?ber Urteil und Bedeutung,
1908," F I 5 (1908), p. 32a, and Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.),
II/l, 326 (Eng. trans., II, 516).
52 Esp. in the 1st ed. of the Logische Untersuchungen.
276 DONN WELTON
tuality.53 Thus the reflection, moreover, does not yield us an

image of the thing but that classificatory or attributive concept
decisive in marking off This from That.54 There clearly is such
a thing as a picture-presentation for Husserl, but it comes about
only as an intention fulfilled in phantasy or sometimes in recollec
tion.55 Even expectation is pictorial only as one "paints out"
(fulfills) the sense of the protention.
Tugendhat would surely respond that this cannot apply to
categorical objects and their intuition. But the idea that there is
an intuition and a corresponding adequate selfgivenness of ideal
objects is something which Husserl clearly gave up. Not only are
categorical objects, but even axioms are thought of as "limits." 56
Moreover, the "objects" of categorical intuition are grasped as a
product,57 which includes precisely what Tugendhat says it does
not: namely, the recourse to individual objects in terms of their
similarities and differences. It has been forcibly argued by Buck
that Husserl does have a theory of induction, and so we need not
labor the point here.58
There are other problems which could be mentioned. The
word can be "understood" without actually naming anything for
Husserl.59 To suggest that its meaning is reducible to the rule we
use to name the object is somewhat problematic. Moreover, there
is a clear difference between verstehen and meinen, a point which
Tugendhat does not seem to realize.60 But to properly argue these
points would take us too far afield. Our direct reply to Tugend
hat 's analysis suggests that he has misconstrued the nature of the
53 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: Aus Vor

lesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918-1926, ed. by Margot Fleischer,
Husserliana, Vol. XI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 242.
54 Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, (2nd ed.), II/l, 136 (Eng.
trans., I, 361).
11,689).
56 Cf. esp. Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, p. 431.
57 "All universals are constructs [Gebilde] of spontaneous activity."
Ibid., p. 291.
68 G?nther Buck, Lernen und Erfahrung. Zum Begriff der didak
tischen Induktion, second, corrected ed. (Stuttgart : W. Kohlhammer, 1969).
69 Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/2, 29 (Eng. trans., II, 692).
60 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), II/l, 466 (Eng.
trans., II, 627).
INTENTIONALITY 277
predicative synthesis and, in particular, the role of the logical

predicate ; that he has overplayed the function and importance of
nominalization by not distinguishing the affair-complex from the
state-of-affairs ; and that he has confused the Vorstellung with a
picture or mental image, a suggestion made senseless by Husserl's
consideration of countersensical words and sentences.
Ill
There is probably a deeper lying problem to Tugendhat
presentation, but it is one which he does not accurately sort ou
Although it is the case that Husserl's analysis of passive synth
led to a modification of the notion of sense, still it seems that
guage exhausts its function in repeating what is already p
formed at the level of "mute" intuition. Language remains "
productive" and it seems to be simply a device for "lifting" th
noematic sense (or core) into the domain of "logos"61 or f
stabilizing ideas that would otherwise be forgotten. The probl
which Tugendhat points to is that for Husserl there seems to
no way in which predication and experience give birth to e
other. But even the Husserl of the Logical Investigations is we
aware of the fact that static analysis introduces central meth
logical considerations which i i force language ' '62 and situate
above the strata of perceptual objects. The role of this crit
language is precisely to mirror the positivities and relations wh
structures are articulated in a formal ontology. Husserl is a
well aware, I would suggest, that this is a usage of language ali
to ordinary usage ; for it is one which "pares out" (heraussch?l
a cognitive import from the heritage of "normal talk" and th
fixes its result terminologically.63 It is the case that Husse
initial treatment of the topic is fragmentary. But I would sugg
that Tugendhat's reluctance to go beyond Ideas I neglects H
serl's explicit reworking of this problem and thus obfuscates
program which Husserl envisions.
Shortly after Husserl bemoans to Ingarden in 1918 that th
61 Husserl, Ideen, I, 305.

62 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, II/l, 30 (Eng. trans., I, 275).
63 Ibid.
278 DONN WELTON
fundamental mistake of the Logical Investigations was its analysis

of "sense" and "posited-sense" (in the judgment and its predica
tive counterpart) as " 'idea' in the sense of essence (species)," 64
he turns to the "colossal problem of individuation" 65 and a ge
netic analysis of the formation of sense in the context of its hori
zons. The result of this new approach to the problem of sense is
startling. Even those senses emerging from within are intersub
jective in their significance precisely because they precipitate from
a Leistung which takes its bearing from the object. Whereas sense
is understood as the manner in which the object perpetuates itself,
the object is now grasped as the mode in which the life-world comes
to perspective. The object is not an isolated event which we de
limit and freely denominate; but rather, it is now seen as shot
through with those horizons whose intersection give it its config
uration and kinaesthetic sense. But all this is familiar territory
and it need not be labored here. What is not so well known, how
ever, is that there is an analogous modification within Husserl's
conception of language. After the collapse of apodicticity under
stood as an adequate coincidence between intended meaning and
fulfillment, after presentation (Gegeniv?rtigung) is seen as inter
woven with presentification (Vergegenw?rtigung) and after
Husserl captured the constitutive role of the temporal horizon for
the specification of sense, sense, so to speak, implodes into tran
scendental subjectivity and momentarily loses its transcendence to
the Erlebnis.61 It is only after Husserl realizes that thinking is, at
the very outset, linguistic and that language is necessarily inter
subjective that the ideality of meaning fully reemerges and the
dynamics of intentionality gather increased significance.
In these final two sections we will restrict ourselves to a brief
historical consideration of the status of language after Husserl
64 Briefe an Boman Ingarden mit Erl?uterungen und Erinnerungen

an Husserl, edited by Roman Ingarden, Phaenomenologica, Vol. XXV (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), p. 10. He continues: "The fact that the
sense of a posited-sense [perhaps: of a sentence] is independent from the
accidental judgment and judging does not mean that the ideal-identical is
a specific. ' '
65 Ibid.
66 The individual ceases to be mere example and is analyzed qua
individual.
67 Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, pp. 334f. ; Ideen, I, 412.
INTENTIONALITY 279
gains his first distinction between static and genetic phenomenol

ogy, and then we will take the first step in the direction of a genetic
analysis of language in the light of the problem of intentional ref
erence. There can be no doubt that anyone who has carefully read
Husserl will immediately object to my talk of language in connec
tion with a genetic analysis of passivity. It is clear that the word
gives expression to what has been intuited and brought to evidence
by reason ; but surely, it will be said, both Ideas I and Formal and
Transcendental Logic forbid mixing these two; for even in the
coincidence of language and thinking we are still left with "two
parallel realms corresponding to one another as the domain of
possible linguistic expressions (speaking) and the domain of pos
sible senses, of possibly expressable intentions [Meinungen]."**
Certainly language is external to the constitution of conceptual
formations. And if it is the case that Husserl insists upon a dis
tinction between language and "active" intention (thinking), how
much more would he insist upon a radical separation between lan
guage and the constitution of sense in pre-predicative passive syn
thesis? Moreover, even Husserl's discussion of passivity in his
Analysis of Passive Synthesis speaks of a "fundamental stratifi
cation" between passivity and receptivity, on the one hand, and
that spontaneous activity of the ego typified by judgments, on the
other. If we are to remain faithful to Husserl's texts, must we
not say that sense emerges as fully constituted in passivity before
it encounters the spoken word? The arguments are formidable,
and their answer has usually meant setting aside Husserl's phe
nomenology and looking elsewhere.
What I want to suggest and briefly document is the thesis that
the parallelization of language and thinking and of language and
experience is itself the result of a specific interest and a specific
model undergirding Husserl's analysis and that Husserl is ex
pressly aware of this. I would want to say that his sharp distinc
tion between different moments and his neglect of several of them
has as much to do with a conscientious division of his labors as it
does with oversights or naivetes. Let us raise the question of
68 Husserl, "Formale und transzendentale Logik," p. 22 (Eng. trans.,

p. 24) = Edmund Husserl, "Vorlesung, Transzendentale Logik 1920/21"
F 137 (1920-26), p. 18a.
280 DONN WELTON
precisely why Husserl took the path he did and what methodologi
cal considerations make this a possibility.
In one of the working manuscripts for Formal and Transcen
dental Logic Husserl takes up the question of the various methods
of approaching his study of logic.69 All formations of cognition,
he says, are carried out in the "solipsistic attitude." 70 The ques
tion of an intersubjective thinking and of inter subjective verifica
tion or truth does not come into question here any more than it
would for formal mathematics. Husserl does go on to suggest
that "a mono-subjective mathematics is eo ipso intersubjective,
and vice versa, no intersubjective mathematics is possible which
is not already grounded completely and entirely as mono-subjec
tive."71 Because Husserl is modeling his research on that of
mathematics or, as he also says, "the methods of the exact sci
ence (s) of nature,"72 the question of intersubjectivity is not
thematized. But Husserl does recognize that in both cases he is
already situated on "the methodologically na?ve [ground] of
mathematics or science(s) of nature?and this presupposes taking
intersubjectivity into consideration." 73 He then attacks the prob
lem in another way asking whether it is possible to construct a
correlation of "a purely unlinguistic or language-free logic of
doxic intentions," on the one hand, and a propositional logic, on
the other.74 But he recognizes that because a real objectification
of the structures of truth is necessary, language and communica
69 Edmund Husserl, "Weg der formalen und transzendentalen Logik,"

BIV8 (1926).
70 Ibid., p. 4a.
71 ". . . dass eine einzelsubjektive Mathematik eo ipso int er subjektiv
sei und umgekehrt keine int er subjektiv m?glich ist, die nicht schon voll und
ganz als einzelsubjektiv begr?ndet ist." Ibid., pp. 4a-b. Dr. H. L. Van
Breda, whose kind permission has allowed me to quote from Husserl's un
published manuscripts, has informed me that the sections quoted from
B IV 8 and F I 37 will appear as Erg?nzender Text HI and IV respectively
in Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, ed. by Paul
Janssen, Husserliana, Vol. XVII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, forth
coming probably this year).
72 "die Methode der exakten Naturerkenntnis." Ibid., p. 4a.
73 ". . . auf dem methodisch naiven [Boden] der Mathematik bzw.
der Naturwissenschaft?und dieses setzt B?chsicht auf Intersubjektivit?t
voraus." Ibid., p. 4b.
74 ". . . eine rein unsprachliche oder sprachlos betractete Logik der
doxischen Meinungen. ..." Ibid., p. 8a.
INTENTIONALITY 281
tions are mandatory.75 This already situates us within intersub

jectivity.
Nevertheless, I had first thought, to a certain extent, of an ego-logical
logic, i.e., a foundation of the analytic without drawing in the prob
lems of intersubjectivity.
But that requires a careful consideration of its sense. Language is
from the very outset intersubjective, and the sense of the existing world
is already from the very beginning intersubjective. But in this [ana
lytic] I do not consider the inter subjective validity of language. . . .
But after I have spoken as though I wanted to acquire knowledge
only for myself, it is now necessary that I ground the intersubjective
validity of this analytic first constructed in abstraction. . . ,76
Thus it would seem that Formal and Transcendental Logic is, first
and foremost, a work which has "abstracted" from the question
of intersubjectivity and which is situated on a turf already carved
out from a much larger field.77
This suggestion can be further clarified by turning to the
introduction of Husserl's 1920-21 lectures on "Transcendental
Logic," 78 (catalogued as F I 37, 38, and 39). There the ideality
75 Ibid., p. 8b.
76 "Ich hatte doch als erstes gedacht, eine gewissermassen egologische
Logik, d.h. eine Begr?ndung der Analytik ohne die Probleme der Int er Sub
jektivit?t mit heranzuziehen.
Aber auch das erfordert eine sorgsame ?berlegung seines Sinnes. Die
Sprache ist ja von vornherein int er subjektiv und der Sinn von seiender
Welt ist vorweg schon int er subjektiv. Indessen auf die int er subjektive
Geltung der Sprache nehme ich eben keine B?cksicht. . . .
Es bedarf dann aber, nachdem ich so getan, als ob ich nur f?r mich
selbst Erkenntnis gewinnen wollte, der Begr?ndung der intersubjektiven
Geltung der in Abstraktion erst ausgebildeten Analytik, . . ." Ibid., p.
8b-9a.
77 The manuscript in footnote 76 continues : "When I, questioning back
from the possibility of the sciences I am interrogating, come to logic, to
formal logic and the theory of knowledge ; this logic, although formal, is in
this operation nevertheless world-logic. And if I continue to question back,
then I come to the pre-given world as the field of judgement-substrates and
the field of the scientific as well as pre-scientific propositional intentions and
truths; to the world as world of experience and thereby to aesthetic and
'transcendental aesthetic'." "Wenn ich so, von der in Frage gestellten
M?glichkeit der Wissenschaft zur?ckfragend, auf die Logik, formale Logik
und Erkenntnislehre komme, so ist es, obschon formale, doch in diesen
Gang Weltlogik. In st?ndig weiterer B?ckfrage komme ich dann doch auf
die vorgegeben Welt als Feld der Urteilssubstrate und der wissenschaft
lichen wie vorwissenschaftlichen Aussagenmeinungen und -Wahrheiten,
dadurch auf Welt als Welt der Erfahrung, damit auf ?sthetik und 'trans
zendentale ?sthetik'." Ibid., p. 9b.
78 These lectures were repeated in 1923 and 1925/26.
282 DONN WELTON
of language is not explained by recourse to an ideal intuition which

precedes the word, as it was in the Investigations, but by contrast
ing the word or the sentence with its repeated acoustic or textual
reproductions and repetitions. The ideality of the word consists
of its "selfsameness" throughout its multifarious temporal in
stantiations. Once this is established, Husserl goes on to intro
duce several considerations. We will only mention three.
Language is, first of all, enfolded into the life of the commu
nity. As a system of signs it has an objective existence. Its
Objektivit?t, however, is that of the "so called spiritual or cultural
world and not merely that of physical nature." 79 Moreover, the
ideality of language is not merely confined to that which is
expressed, to the bestowal of meaning and to "sense-fulfilled
speech," but it is also extended to its "linguistic body [Leib]." 80
This would suggest that the linguistic heritage of the Lebensivelt
is not only one of possible intentions wThich we choose or do not
choose to engage, but it is also one of positive content which we
either integrate or criticize. Moreover, this heritage has an ideal
ity and life independent of the positivities which it reflects.
It is significant that these points were incorporated verbatim
into the second paragraph of Formal and Transcendental Logic
only to be excluded from its problematic and any direct analysis
in that work. Bather than entering into this kind of study, Hus
serl wants to take language as an ideal unity and explicate it only
as it "coincides" with thinking. For the further development of
Formal and Transcendental Logic, language and thinking "desig
nate two parallel realms corresponding to one another;"81 and
then within this division language is only taken into consideration
"secondarily," i.e., we are interested only in "a suitable scientific
language" which mirrors the positivities constituted within judg
ment.82 The treatment "of the sense and constitution of objectiv
79 F I 37 (1920-26), p. 13a = "Formale und transzendentale Logik,"

p. 18 (Eng. trans., p. 20).
80 F I 37 (1920-26), p. 13a = "Formale und transzendentale Logik,"
p. 19 (Eng. trans., p. 21).
81 P. 22 (Eng. trans., p. 24) = F I 37 (1920-26), p. 22a.
82 P. 24 (Eng. trans., p. 27). What is of further interest in this
paragraph is that Husserl seems to recognize that even this language under
goes "documentation" which, in turn, is situated in "the objective cultural
world."
INTENTIONALITY 283
ities belonging to the cultural world, . . . including language,

makes up a realm by itself," Husserl concludes.83 What is of
interest to us is that directly before this latter statement in F I 37
Husserl includes yet a second point. We quote the three para
graphs which Husserl did not include in Formal and Transcen
dental Logic:
The one expressing himself lives in the emerging practical intention
to express this and that intention. This must not be taken to mean
that he has explicitly formed the intention from the outset and then
seeks after appropriate words to express it. We distinguish the cases
where one speaks to the other in communication and those where one
speaks to no one, where one thinks in solitude and expresses himself
monologically. In the first case the understanding and co-thinking
from the side of the one addressed correspond to the speaking ; in the
other case it does not.
In that thinking expressing itself in solitude it is certainly not the
case that we first have the conceptual formation and then seek after
appropriate words. Thinking is performed at the very outset as lin
guistic. What lies in our practical horizon as that which is to take
on structure is the still indeterminate presentation of a formation
that is already a linguistic formation. The thought that floats before
us and that we inwardly bring to expression is already double-sided
but yet completely indeterminate.
All sense-fulfilled assertions as concrete unities of linguistic body
and linguistic sense are "spiritual formations." 84
88 Ibid., p. 19 (Eng. trans., p. 21). Cf. F I 37, (1920-26), p. 14a.

84 <<i)er sich Aussprechende lebt in der sich auswirkenden praktischen
Intention, die und die Meinung auszusprechen. Bas muss nicht so ver
standen werden, als ob er die Meinung von vornherein explicite gebildet
h?tte und dann erst nach passenden Worten suchen w?rde, sie auszu
dr?cken. Wir unterscheiden die F?lle, wo man zu den andern spricht,
mitteilend, und die F?lle, wo man zu i; iemand spricht, einsam denkend und
sich monologisch aussprechend. Im ersten Fall entspricht dem Beden das
Verstehen und Mitdenken von seifen des Angeredeten; im andern Fall nicht.
Im einsamen sich aussprechenden Denken ist es sicher nicht so, dass
wir erst die Gedankenbildung h?tten und dann nach passenden Worten
suchen. Das Denken vollzieht sich von vornherein als sprachliches. Was
in unserem praktischen Horizont liegt, als das zu Gestaltende, ist die noch
unbestimmte Vorstellung eines Gebildes, das schon sprachliches Gebilde ist.
Der Gedanke, der uns vorschwebt und den wir innerlich zur Aussprache
bringen, ist schon doppelseitig, aber noch unvollkommen bestimmt.
Alle sinnerf?llten Beden sind als konkrete Einheiten von sprachlichem
Leib und sprachlichem Sinn 'geistige Gebilde9." F I 37 (1920-26), p. 14a.
It could be that these paragraphs were excluded because the end of the
second paragraph is vague, because they introduce more than Husserl wants
to consider in his Preliminary Considerations, and because he already in
cludes an earlier section of F I 37 in the first paragraph of "Formale und
transzendentale Logik" which reads as follows: "Human thinking is usu
ally accomplished linguistically and all confirmations of reason are as good
284 DONN WELTON
In this passage Husserl sees that all "thinking," even thinking

carried out in solitude, is linguistic. Moreover, language does not
merely "translate" preformed thoughts; but rather, our thoughts
and projects take on configuration as they are solicited by lan
guage. Finally, Husserl must recognize that even monological
talk as the unity of linguistic body and linguistic sense is a " spir
itual formation. ' ' It has a life for me which is derived from the
cultural world of intersubjective experience.85
These suggestions find clarification when Husserl briefly intro
duces an analysis of "that 'thinking' belonging to speech."86
This gives us yet a third consideration introduced by F I 37.
Words in word-consciousness have the character of signs; and that
means, Husserl says, that they are arrested in pointing or a ten
dency to point, that they reach out to the intended and terminate
in the content which is meant.87 This interp?n?tration of the word
and deixis belongs to the unity of speech-consciousness; and it is
this which guarantees "that expression and expressed, that word
consciousness and sense-consciousness do not lie disconnected be
side one another but rather form a unity of consciousness in which
the double unity of word and sense is constituted. ' '88 When we
cancel this indicating tendency, we only have "signs that denote
nothing."89 This analysis, which operates a step below that of
Formal and Transcendental Logic, would suggest not only that a
pre-predicative thinking is an abstraction90 but also that primary
intending is normally bound to the speech act. Husserl clearly
as entirely bound up with speech. Furthermore, so far as it is intersub

jective, all critique from which the rationally true is to emerge uses lan
guage and its results always lead to propositions." From F I 37 (1920-26),
p. 10b.
85 It should be noted that Husserl had clearly acquired the notions of
an intersubjective linguistic community and the life-world before he read
Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (T?bingen: Max Niemeyer, 1927).
86 "dieses zum Beden geh?rige 'Denken'." Ibid., p. 25a.
87 Ibid., p. 26a.
88 ". . . dass Ausdruck und Ausgedr?cktes, dass Wortbewusstsein
und Sinnbewusstsein nicht nebeneinander zusammenhangslos liegen, son
dern eine Einheit des Bewusstseins ausmachen, in der die doppelte Einheit
von Wort und Sinn sich konstituiert." Ibid., p. 26a.
89 "Zeichen, die nichts bezeichnen." Ibid., p. 26a. Cf. Logische
Untersuchungen, pp. 32-36 (Eng. trans., II, 694-97) in this connection.
90 Cf. ibid., II/2, 60 (Eng. trans., II, 715).
INTENTIONALITY 285
argues in this manuscript that the peculiar task of Redebewusst

sein is pointing. "In normal speech the completely expressed
word points away from itself to its sense ; that means that it directs
our interest."91 The fact that Husserl did not incorporate this
into Formal and Transcendental Logic and that he only pauses
there briefly to "exclude any consideration of the pointing tend
encies belonging to words " 92 is all the more significant in view of
his claim in Experience and Judgment that it is "the phenomenon
of indicating" first touched on in the Investigations which forms
' ' the seed of genetic phenomenology. ' '93 We will return to this
shortly.
There is yet another interesting consequence which needs to
be drawn from our study of F I 37. Both textually and systemat
ically it can be argued that the genetic analysis of passive synthe
sis, at least as it is explicated in the second part of F I 37 and in
F I 38 (printed in Analysis of Passive Synthesis), is situated in
the Preliminary Considerations between paragraphs four and five
of Formal and Transcendental Logic. The only kind of genetic
analysis which the methodology of the Logic permits is a "sense
genesis of judgments." But the uncovering of the "intentional
implications" of the judgment and its "sense-history" is basically
an analysis of "syntactic implications," and Husserl contrasts this
to the "deeper lying genesis pertaining to the ultimate 'cores' and
pointing back to their origination from experiences."94 Thus it
would seem that Formal and Transcendental Logic gives us a
sense-history of the judgment which is only incidentally temporal.
Furthermore, it would seem that it can do no more than presup
pose a harmonious unity of possible experience (syntactic stuff)
"prior" to all judging and that it cannot enter into a genetic anal
ysis of this level.95 The result is that while we have a powerful
explication of the correlation between critical language and its
sense-formations arising out of experience, we do not have any
91 "Das Wort weist vollst?ndig ausgedr?ckt in der normalen Bede von

sich weg und auf den Sinn hin, das heisst, es dirigiert das Interesse."
F 137 (1920-26), p. 29a.
92 "Formale und transzendentale Logik," p. 20 (Eng. trans., p. 23).
93 P. 78.
94 "Formale und transzendentale Logik," p. 185 (Eng, trans., p. 208).
1,5 Ibid., p. 194 (Eng. trans., p. 218).
286 DONN WELTON
clarification of the way in which "pre-scientific" language 96 itself

gives birth to these formations.
When we turn to Husserl's analysis of passive synthesis, we
also encounter some rather surprising results. Not only does the
analysis of active synthesis situate itself within the stratification
of thought and language, but also the analysis of passive synthesis
is located within this same abstraction. After the clarification of
the deictic functions of the sign and its role in directing our inten
tional interest,97 Husserl wants to step beyond his clarification of
"thinking as the sense-bestowing function of propositions" and
wants to introduce a broader analysis of sense-bestowal "which
does not treat words and propositions"98 and which "frees the
concept of sense from a relationship to expression." 99 Once this
distinction is introduced, then Husserl is free to do a genetic anal
ysis of sense and its constitution in passivity as though the word
in the primary speech-act made no contribution to its formation.
The result is what we have in the volume Analysis of Passive Syn
thesis.100 With these distinctions brought to light it is obvious that
Experience and Judgment with its seeming opposition between the
sphere of pre-predicative experience (passivity in the broadest
sense) and predicative judging (activity) takes on a new com
plexion.101 Without exhausting the issue, let me briefly suggest
that Husserl does see that the field of purely passive experience is
acquired by introducing an "abstraction"102 and that if we take
this field before all predication and all "sense-bestowing accom
plishments" of the active ego, then "in the strict sense there is
still no field of objectivities."103 He also recognizes that "each
96 Cf. ibid., p. 24 (Eng. trans., p. 27).

97 F I 37 (1920-26), pp. 25a-29a.
98 Ibid., p. 30a.
99 Ibid., p. 33b.
100 It can only be regretted that the editor of Analysen zur passiven
Synthesis did not include these texts (at least as a Beilage) for without
them the entire volume remains unsituated in the larger context of Hus
serl's logic.
101 It is worth noting that the entire manuscript F I 39 entitled "akti
vit?t, Thema, thematische Aktion, Urteil" was used by Landgrebe in the
second and third ( 1) parts of Erfahrung und Urteil.
102 Erfahrung und Urteil, pp. 74 and 81.
103 Ibid., p. 75. Husserl uses this "abstraction" to trace the "precip
itation of sense," a motif lost by considering the isolated expression, back
to the life-world and engaged subjectivity. Cf. p. 47.
INTENTIONALITY 287
step of predication presupposes a step of receptive experience and

explication" and that "each object given in receptivity is there
for us, from the outset, as an object of some particular type." 104
But because the entire matrix of referential implications (Ver
iv eisung s Zusammenhang) elapses without the intervention of the
word105 and because Husserl excludes the "co-existence of the
other" and inserts his analysis into the domain of "being-only
for-me,"106 he does not and cannot deal with the way in which
each step of receptive experience presupposes predication.107 The
elimination of the other is especially significant, for it shows that
Husserl is not interested in analyzing the sense in which language
precedes me and is thereby essential to the constitution of meaning
for me. At the same time the emphasis upon judgment as an
"active" synthesis neglects the manner in which parole secondaire
functions passively.
Initially Husserl felt he could side-step the necessity of con
structing the transition from ordinary language and its intersub
jective life to its normalization through the introduction of seman
tic and syntactic functions by a recourse to the monologue. To a
certain extent Husserl was correct ; for when the speech-act is one
of self-expression and when the self is regarded as complete and
self-contained, then content and form (language) fall apart. That
in which a self-expression is clothed appears to be external to the
thing expressed,108 and we feel that its garment is accidental to its
substance. But when Husserl sees that even thought expressing
itself in solitude is linguistic and that all signs necessarily have an
intersubjective cultural existence, and when he sees that there is
a necessary reciprocity between predication and experience with
out which the world emerging in passivity collapses into a mani
fold, then the methodological value of the monologue is seriously
limited and Husserl is thrust into a r??valuation of the role of
language. In principle this r??valuation is formulated in the lec
tures and working manuscripts of the 1920's. The predicates of
104 Ibid., p. 240.

105 Ibid., pp. 112-15. Cf. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, p. 5.
106 Erfahrung und Urteil, p. 71.
lo- Perhaps the dosest he comes to this is ibid., pp. 239-40 and 258-59.
108 Cf. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Capricorn Books,
1958), p. 107.
288 DONN WELTON
the objective world are "intersubjective predicates."109 "These

predicates," Husserl says, "have their manner of existence and
verification, but it is one which presupposes the objective experi
ence of alien subjects and their corporal-spiritual functionings
[sic]."110 But in the 1920's the problems are only raised and
delimited. It is only "The Origin of Geometry," a text from
1935,111 which amplifies these insights by reclaiming the passivity
of language and thereby the sense in which the horizon of the
world is linguistic.
In "The Origin of Geometry" the awakening of meaning by
a sentence which is heard and understood is purely "passive" and
"receptive." The sign comes to us interwoven with sedimented
meanings which find their subsistence in the life and language of
the community.112 That ideality which the exclusion of the other
bound to the interiority of subjectivity is now seen as a product
which has identity precisely in that it has become objective in the
linguistic life of the society. In na?ve consciousness I simply take
up this acquisition and live in its residual sense, for it is a heritage
which claims to rid the world of its opacity for me. Genetically
seen, the meanings which become part of my intentional references
are already defined by that web of significations which the culture
has superimposed on me. The horizon of human existence is the
world. Language is a "function" of this horizon. The life-world
is not directly grasped but only articulates itself in perspectives
which, genetically seen, are linguistic. Language now becomes the
possibility of the presence of the life-world for man in community.
The crisis of modern science, according to Husserl, precipitates
109 A V 5 (1922) forthcoming in Edmund Husserl, Zur Ph?nom

enologie der Int er Subjektivit?t: Text aus dem Nachlass, Part II: 1921-28,
ed. by Iso Kern, Husserliana, Vol. XIV (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1973).
110 Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, p. 435.
111 Printed in Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europ?ischen Wissen
schaften und die transzendentale Ph?nomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die
ph?nomenologische Philosophie, ed. by Walter Biemel, Husserliana, Vol. VI
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), pp. 365-86; Edmund Husserl, The
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology : An Intro
duction to Phenomenological Philosophy, translated by David Carr (Evans
ton, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 353-78 (herein
after cited only in connection with the Krisis as Eng. trans.).
112 Husserl, Krisis, p. 371 (Eng. trans., p. 361).
INTENTIONALITY 289
not only from its forgetting the constituting-reflecting ego but also
from its loss of roots in the life-world, in the prescientific Sinnes
fundament, with an intersubjective constitution mediated by lan
guage. In so doing it has lost the true ideality of sense. This
obfuscation is overturned by a relocation of truth in a third region,
in the space between the community and me that can be opened by
the interrogation which I carry out. Thus Husserl's earlier in
sistence on insight and intuition give way to a process of clarifica
tion and explication. The genius of this text resides in the fact
that Husserl now sees this clarification as a movement of language
within language.
Husserl does not attempt to establish an ideal language de
rived from axioms by means of mathematical procedures ; rather,
his strategy is to "pare out" a critical language from the heart of
normal talk. The analysis of elementary core-transformations and
syntactic transformations attempts to define the core of language
by designating those semantic and syntactic elements which are
inherent in all language competence. Let us return to Tugendhat
once again. What remains unclear in his critique is the level at
which he is operating. He is primarily concerned with the rules
defining the way in which we use terms, but he does not distinguish
between performance and competence. His starting point in an
existing language and his reading of the rules of usage from its
surface structure (subject, predicate) would suggest that he is
primarily interested in a semantical clarification of the way in
which words are used within language performance. If this is
true, then the fundamental problem of Tugendhat 's critique is that
he has confused two different levels of analysis. Husserl's "uni
versal grammar" operates on a different plane, for his project
would be to analyze language competence based upon our inten
tional comportment toward objects. Critical language is one
whose performance would ideally mirror those core and syntactic
forms implicit in all language usage, and it is one whose content
has been brought to self-evidence. A verstehen based on word
usage and articulated in rules should not be confused with an anal
ysis of our ability to immediately and mediately intend a partic
ular theme as a practical or theoretical project in the field of our
Handlung.
What I am suggesting is that while Husserl does not work out
290 DONN WELTON
a genetic phenomenology of language in any systematic way, it is

the case that he does provide the boundaries and several stones in
the foundation of such a consideration. A genetic analysis of lan
guage would involve not only the very complicated problem of the
relationship between synchronie and diachronic analysis and the
relationship between time and semantic structures, but it would
also entail a study of language disturbances, the interrelation of
kinaesthetic body and sign, the sociality of language, and so on.
In the last part of this paper, however, we will restrict ourselves
to a genetic analysis of the "indicating tendencies" of the word,
for it is this which enables us to return to the question of inten
tionality.
IV
Tugendhat complains with some legitimacy that the
"meaning" is equivocal. Meaning is the determinacy of th
operating with objects, and yet at the same time it is the ma
of the presence of the object taken up by the act. What Tuge
does not recognize, however, is that Husserl overturns this e
cation by seeing that it is one which is possible only for a s
analysis which already operates at the level of critical lan
and then only given certain conditions.
In the Logical Investigations as well as in Ideas I Husserl
draw a distinction between meaning (Bedeutung) and sense (
and in so doing recognizes that the former is bound to the lingu
sphere and the latter not.113 According to Ideas I, sense is a
used in relation to the entire Erlebnis. It is a moment of all
regardless of whether they are interwoven with expressing
or not. Meaning is used only in relation to the sphere of lang
to the sphere of "expressing." From the side of language
intentions without words are mere potentialities. An inte
brought to word is the emergence or "realization" of a
whose pr?tentions, in turn, can be fulfilled or not. The actu
sense is called meaning and the actualized or "in-tempora
(verzeitlicht)114c expression is called speech or discourse.
113 Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/2,18-21, 60ff. (Eng. tra

II, 683-85, 715ff.) and Ideen, I, 304.
114 Edmund Husserl, Ph?nomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesu
INTENTIONALITY 291
The interconnection is important. From the side of language

we do not have a sense and a meaning which must then be coordi
nated or combined or unified. Bather, the realization or fulfill
ment of sense in an expression is the meaning of the expression.
The difference between meaning and sense for static analysis can
also be explained in terms of the analysis of noema and noesis.115
In the perception of an Individuum we have a This-here in its per
spectivity. In the reflection we would see that the perspectivity
of the This-here is its determined sense (as the unity of the posited
and the given). We carry out an explication of the given and a
thematization of the part or moment we want to emphasize. This
would give us a scheme. But according to Husserl, the thematiza
tion of a moment or aspect of an object "does not require the least
from 'expression'."116 It can be thematized by the gaze inde
pendent of the spoken word. But if we think or say this is a
foundry, for example, there is a new stratum there in unity with
the pure perceptual scheme. Each meant as such?what we at the
level of reflection would call the noematic sense or core?can be
surfaced through an expression. The sense of the Erlebnis is ex
pressible through the logical meaning of the expression. As Hus
serl says :
Expression is a remarkable form which allows itself to fit to all
"sense" (to the noematic "core") and lift sense into the realm of the
"logos," of the conceptual, and wTith this, of the "universal." 11T
There is also a noetic side of this clarification of the relation
between meaning and sense.118 With the term "expression" we
label "an especial act-level to which all remaining acts uniquely fit
and with which they fuse in a remarkable way." 119 It is not the
case that the act of expression is an act that can be classified as a
certain kind of doxic act along side others. Bather, it loans "ex
pression" to all other kinds of intentional acts.120 It fuses with
Sommersemester 1925, ed. by Walter Biemel, Husserliana, Vol. IX (The

Hague: Martinus Nijhof?, 1962), p. 398.
us rp]le f0nownlg is gleaned from Ideen, I, 303-07.
116 Ibid., p. 204.
117 Ibid., p. 305.
118 Ibid.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid., p. 306.
292 DONN WELTON
all other act-levels in such a way that the sense of the act and its
indwelling relationship to an objectivity is "conceptually" marked
off (sich begrifflich auspr?gt). In fulfillment the noetic side of the
act of expressing is thus depleted in its coincidence with the pre
expressive act. And the noematic side of the act of expressing
submerges into the noematic sense and exhausts its productivity in
lifting sense to the ' ' conceptual, ' '121 in lifting sense to meaning.
This is the picture which Ideas I gives. It should be noted
that Husserl has argued for the symmetry of meaning and sense
(noematic core) here; and it is because of this that he can shift
between one and the other and can see them, generally speaking,
as synonyms. And yet even in Ideas I Husserl recognizes that
this picture is somewhat falsified. Meaning does not, in fact,
simply mirror sense : ' ' the level of meaning [Bedeuten] is not?
and in principle is not?a kind of reduplication of the under
stratum." 122 Attentional modifications and modifications of rela
tive clarity do not find coinage in expressing. And a few pages
later it becomes clear that such modifications are an integral part
of the full noema, i.e., of the full sense.123 Thus the expression can
exert ' ' new intentional functions on the intentional under stratum
and, in turn, undergo intentional functions from it. ' '124 The sym
metry between the manner in which the object is meant and the
manner in which it is given is shaken when we turn to the indi
viduum precisely because they mutually determine each other and
in so doing initiate a progression of exchanges which can never
end. As Husserl realizes in Ideas III, "concepts change." 125 It
is also clear that the reclamations of occasionality and vagueness
which take place after Ideas I tie the constitutive role of "posi
tionality" 126 and fulfillment to the sense of the thing. Meaning
and sense diverge. It is the collapse of the symmetry between
meaning and sense-core which initiates genetic analysis.
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid., p. 310.
123 Ibid., p. 323.
124 Ibid., p. 307.
125 Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Ph?nomenologie und ph?
nomenologischen Philosophie, Book III : Die Ph?nomenologie und die Fun
damente der Wissenschaften, ed. by Marly Biemel, Husserliana, Vol. V
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), p. 26.
126 Cf. Husserl, Ideen, I, 323.
INTENTIONALITY 293
Does this turn negate the distinction Husserl draws between

ordinary and critical language? This interpretation resists the
collapse of phenomenology into an analysis of "normal talk."
Moreover it does not see the genetic turn as the movement from
the "cognitive" to the "emotional" or "existential" essence of
language.127 What this means is that critical language, language
which thematizes the world of Gedanken, is not an arbitrary label
of an already carved-out sense but rather it is the possibility of the
reiteration of sense and its sedimentation into that cognitive her
itage always at our disposal. The reiteration of sense is temporal.
Sense in and of itself reiterates itself retentionally, i.e., the bound
aries of the present are limited to the context of the past. As such
sense does not expand but repeats itself. The possibility of sense
transcending itself and the possibility of the present transcending
the past is language. Sense reiterates itself in meaning proten
tionally, i.e., the autonomy of the past is now a contingency of the
future. On the other hand, language, as the possibility of the
reiteration of sense, takes the determination of its meaning from
the pulse of experience. Thus a double insight gives genetic anal
ysis its mandate. In the light of the word sense is a product. And
yet it is the passivity of language engaged and solicited by sense
which reveals the anteriority of meaning as a result.
What genetic analysis shows is that the distinction between
the object and the manner in which it is present (Gegenstand im
Wie) is itself mediated. That which mediates them is the sen
tence, or, to express it from within the reflection, the meaning of
the sentence. One does not construct sentences and then ask if
they are usable or fulfillable in a given situation. Nor does one
simply remember previous utterances associated with a previous
object analogous to, or even identical with, the object now under
consideration. Rather, in the expressing of the object its manner
of givenness is itself demarcated by the meaning of the utterance.
Language according to this analysis is not a translation of a prod
uct but rather the system within which appropriations and cogni
tive activity find their life. It is the temporal structure of the
127 Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans,

by Colin Smith (London: Boutledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 182, 187
and 193 for this distinction.
294 DONN WELTON
speech-act which grounds language as a Handlungsschema, as

praxis-scheme. The speech-act in a language context allows itself
to be taken apart into a number of functions. For our purposes
the three most important are reference, indication, and announce
ment.128 Because language remains unthematized, i.e., is anon
ymous in the geradehin directedness toward fulfillment, the ques
tion about the coincidence of meaning and sense is itself transcen
dental.129 And because this analysis does not exclude occasionality
but rather grasps the interp?n?tration of word, object, and context
in the progressive (temporal) constitution of meaning, this anal
ysis is genetic.
The utterance of a sentence may occur in a present, its acous
tic sounds may be grasped in a present, and the awareness of what
it denotes may take place in a present. But as intentional the
sentence is directed toward a state-of-affairs which is not yet pres
ent, which has not yet appeared, which is coming. The temporal
structure of the sentence as referring is protentional. As proten
tional the meaning intention precedes the determinability of the
object, i.e., it is that which calls forth the mode in which the object
gives itself (present). When we speak of the utterance as proten
128 rpne Q.erman words would be verweisen, hinweisen and anzeigen,

although all of them could be translated as "to indicate" or "to point."
Husserl himself did not elaborate these distinctions. In the First Investi
gation he focuses on the simple contrast between the pointing and the mean
ing functions of the sign and then goes on to exclude the former from his
analysis. Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), II/l, 23-24, 30-31 (Eng.
trans., I, 269, 275). This also happens in F I 5 (1908) although he does
mention in passing that the pointing functions include a pointing-there, a
pointing-back and a pointing-forward {hinweisen, zur?ckweisen, and vor
weisen). See p. 9a. In both places, however, Husserl recognizes that
words functioning in communicative speech necessarily operate as pointers.
Analysen zur passiven Synthesis does discuss indication and reference, but
in abstraction from the word (pp. 20-22, 83-87, and 337) for reasons given
in the third part of this essay. Thus I am explicating three different
operations of what Husserl spoke of generally as the indicating or announc
ing function of the sign. In our discussion we are taking a clue from
Lothar Eiey's important Metakritik der Formalen Logik: Sinnliche Gewiss
heit als Horizont der Aussagenlogik und elementare Pr?dikatenlogik, Phae
nomenologica, Vol. XXXI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. 270
76, although it should be noted that my specification of the interrelationship
between meaning and sense as well as the temporal structure of announce
ment is essentially different.
129 Cf. ibid., p. 264. Husserl's initial characterizations of this coinci
dence are descriptive (i.e., phenomenological) without being transcendental.
INTENTIONALITY 295
tional, we are not speaking of the sign-meaning correlation; for

this can be uncovered in recollection. We mean, rather, that the
sentence as itself deictic points to a future to be determined (ful
fillment or disappointment) in terms of a context to be specified
(horizon).
In the relaxing (Entspannung) of the intention into that which
it denotes, referring becomes indicating, i.e., the sign ceases to
point into a future and merges into it the fulfilling object (pres
ent). According to Husserl, fulfillment does not take place in an
other sentence but in the "bodily" presence of the object. As
such, fulfillment is intuition. The corrective introduced by genetic
analysis is found in the thesis that intuitive acts are at the same
time referential and thus shot through with an emptiness demand
ing new articulation.
According to Husserl, "objectivity" can mean (1) theme or
(2) aspect. The fulfillment of the sentence is, first of all, the trans
formation of referring into indicating. That which is indicated is
theme. Speaking from within the reflection, one can say that the
meaning of the sentence is confirmed or saturated in the objectiv
ity. But in the moment of fulfillment the theme is relativized into
aspect. Fulfillment is not only simply the resolution of reference
into indication, for reference becomes indication (fulfills itself)
only in view of a new referring which it engages. Fulfillment be
comes fulfillment only in sight of a new intention which is to be
fulfilled. As Hegel has said, a This is a This only in terms of a
That which is not a This.130 The reflection shows that this process
elapses through the mediating of language. But how can this be
established?
The meaning of the sentence is the manner in which the (com
ing) object is articulated in terms of its horizon. The contrast
presupposed in fulfillment between object and aspect is itself
thematized in the sentence qua intention, and this means that the
difference between the manner in which the object is given (sense)
and the object itself remains indeterminate until brought to speech.
While the sentence (qua fulfilled) is lost in its theme, the reflection
reveals that the meaning of the sentence is itself constitutive for
130 G. W. F. Hegel, Ph?nomenologie des Geistes, ed. by Johannes Hoff

meister (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952), pp. 80-82.
296 DONN WELTON
the border between figure and ground. The border between figure
and ground is the sense of the object. The sense of the object is
determined only in terms of a sense-horizon that unfolds itself in
fulfillment within a system of meanings (language). Because the
object is determined only in terms of the thematization of its hori
zon and because the thematization of the horizon takes place in
sight of the sentence qua referring, meaning precedes sense.
In fulfillment the theme becomes present as theme only in
terms of (coming) aspects. The fulfillment relativizes itself in
terms of a new articulation which it presupposes. In the spilling
over of one sentence into another we are thrust along a sequence
of referential implications (Verweisungszusammenhang). The
movement from referring to indicating and then to referring pre
supposes a system within which this progression takes place. This
system is announced by the sign.131 That which is announced is
the system of the particular senses of the object as speech context,
i.e., it is the possibility of specific meaning intentions and the sys
tem within which meaning is actualized in sense. The system does
not prescribe the next feature which is to appear, but rather it
prescribes the "continuation of the process which always has the
intentional characteristic of an open process." 132
The system of referential implications is affective. As such
it is a system of motivations which means that the intention of the
coming object is solicited by its horizon. Husserl notes that "one
cannot say that a sign 'motivates' if it is not an announcer."133
Because articulation takes place in sight of a fulfillment which has
become aspect and because the sequence of statements constitutive
for the progressive differentiation between figure and ground is
itself solicited by the sense-horizon of the object, sense precedes
meaning.
In the articulation of sense the word brings more to the con
text than is allowed by the raw appearance of the aspect. It ex
ceeds the demands of the abstract presence of the individual by
introducing cognitive functions which deny that this or any other
131 So as to avoid misunderstanding, we note that our use of announce

ment has nothing to do with Heidegger's concept of Offenbarung.
132 Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, p. 258.
133 Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, p. 337.
INTENTIONALITY 297
individual could exhaust its meaning. On the other hand, the

sense of the object exceeds the projects suggested by the sentence
by being much more than what the word suggests, by having both
inner and outer horizons whose articulation would trail off into
infinity. The meaning of the sentence mediates the difference be
tween figure and ground. The sense of the object mediates the
movement from meaning to meaning. In the interplay between
meaning and sense the very introduction of a coincidence is its
dissipation. Because meaning overflows sense and sense over
flows meaning, the mutual determination of each is dialectical.
For Husserl's phenomenology intentionality is grounded in
the movement of sense beyond itself into sense. What I have tried
to suggest is that a phenomenology which has recaptured the pro
ductivity of language sees that the movement of sense beyond itself
into sense is a genesis which is mediated by a horizon which is
linguistic.
State University of New York, Stony Brook.

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Intentionality and Language in Husserl's Phenomenology

Author(s): Donn Welton

1 In Hermeneutik und Dialektik: Hcms-Georg Gadamer z

linguistic sign 3 from a mark4 is that it is grasped as something

Because, generally speaking, ''meaning-bestowing" consciousness is

3 Peirce would speak of Husserl's sign as a degenerate index or a

There is a further complication. Not only does Husserl's in

10 Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/1, 49 (Eng. trans.,

But even if the noematic interpretation of the meaning of nominal

forty-eight of the Sixth Investigation.16 In the sentences "A is

16 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, part 2 :

roots in two conflicting descriptions of the object. On the one

22 Cf. Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), II/l, 125 (Eng. trans., I,

'naming' or 'hating'. But this is enough in order to make this

Thus it seems that in the dialogue between phenomenology and

nection with Husserl's logical grammar. Tugendhat 's failure to

27Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/1, 475 (Eng. trans., II,

the introduction of core-form transformations and by the introduc

This would suggest that judgments actually conjoin two names or

29 Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur

icate, in turn, is not the result of an isolated act of presentation

33 Ibid., p. 463 (Eng. trans., II, 625).

It is also clear that Tugendhat 's treatment of nominalization

86 Erfahrung und Urteil, p. 267.

state-of-affairs in nominalization?but rather a Sachlage, an af

89 Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, p. 287. Cf. Husserl, Ding und

family or theme.41 And if one wants to argue that that which is

41 Were it not for this mediation of individual and aspect, relations,

a game of chess. Thus it is possible to speak of this "game-mean

45 Cf. ibid., pp. 102-03 (Eng. trans., I, 331-32).

When Husserl does turn his attention to a discussion of gram

49 Ibid., p. 35. Cf. "Formale und transzendentale Logik," pp. 108f.

tuality.53 Thus the reflection, moreover, does not yield us an

53 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: Aus Vor

predicative synthesis and, in particular, the role of the logical

61 Husserl, Ideen, I, 305.

fundamental mistake of the Logical Investigations was its analysis

64 Briefe an Boman Ingarden mit Erl?uterungen und Erinnerungen

gains his first distinction between static and genetic phenomenol

68 Husserl, "Formale und transzendentale Logik," p. 22 (Eng. trans.,

69 Edmund Husserl, "Weg der formalen und transzendentalen Logik,"

tions are mandatory.75 This already situates us within intersub

of language is not explained by recourse to an ideal intuition which

79 F I 37 (1920-26), p. 13a = "Formale und transzendentale Logik,"

ities belonging to the cultural world, . . . including language,

88 Ibid., p. 19 (Eng. trans., p. 21). Cf. F I 37, (1920-26), p. 14a.

In this passage Husserl sees that all "thinking," even thinking

as entirely bound up with speech. Furthermore, so far as it is intersub

argues in this manuscript that the peculiar task of Redebewusst

91 "Das Wort weist vollst?ndig ausgedr?ckt in der normalen Bede von

clarification of the way in which "pre-scientific" language 96 itself

96 Cf. ibid., p. 24 (Eng. trans., p. 27).

step of predication presupposes a step of receptive experience and

104 Ibid., p. 240.

the objective world are "intersubjective predicates."109 "These

109 A V 5 (1922) forthcoming in Edmund Husserl, Zur Ph?nom

a genetic phenomenology of language in any systematic way, it is

113 Logische Untersuchungen (2nd ed.), H/2,18-21, 60ff. (Eng. tra

The interconnection is important. From the side of language

Sommersemester 1925, ed. by Walter Biemel, Husserliana, Vol. IX (The

Does this turn negate the distinction Husserl draws between

127 Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans,

speech-act which grounds language as a Handlungsschema, as

128 rpne Q.erman words would be verweisen, hinweisen and anzeigen,