EDMUND HUSSERL

Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers

Edited by Rudolf Bernet,

Donn Welton and Gina Zavota

Volume III

The Nexus of Phenomena: Intentionality, Perception

and Temporality

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LONDON AND NEW YORK
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First published 2005 VOLUME ill THE NEXUS OF PHENOMENA: INTENTIONALITY,

by Routledge
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Editorial matter and selection © 2005 Rudolf Bernet, Donn Welton
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or J. N. MOHANTY
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photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or 36 The structure of intentionality 31
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. JOHN J . DRUMMOND
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data DIETER LOHMAR
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ISBN 0-415-28956-4 (Set) 38 How to intuit an essence 84
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ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI
Publisher's Note
References within each chapter are as they appeared in the original
complete work 39 Objektivierende und nicht-objektivierende Akte 108
ULLRICH MELLE

., PARTS
\·-U;\;~rsi:J.ts- \. Space, Perception and Imagination 123
BibnOl hek
reiburg i. sr.
40 Reprasentation und Selbstgegebenheit: die Aporie der
Phanomenologie der Wahruehmung in den Friihschriften
Husserls 125
BERNHARD RANG
 CONTENT S

41 The problem of sense data in Husserl's theory of perception 145

WILLIAM R . M C KENNA

42 Perception as a teleological process of cognition 159

RUDOLF BERNET
ACKN OWLE DGE ME NTS
43 Soft, smooth hands: Husserl's phenomenology of the lived-body 172
DONN WELTON

44 On seeing a material thing in space: the role of kinaesthesis in

visual perception 192
JOHN J . DRUMMOND Volume III
The publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reprint
45 Phantasy, picture-consciousness, memory 205
their material:
RUDOLF BERNET , ISO KERN AND EDUARD MARBACH
Kluwer Academic Publishers for permission to reprint J. N. Mohanty,
46 Phantasy's systematic place in Husserl's work: on the "Husserl's concept of intentionality", Analecta Husserliana 1 (1970):
condition of possibility for a phenomenology of experience 221 100-132. With kind permission of Kluwer A cademic Publishers.
JULIA JANSEN
Indiana University Press for permission to reprint John J. D rummond,
"The structure of intentionality", in Donn Welton (ed.), The New Husser/:
PART 6 A Critical Reader, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 65- 92.
Temporality 245 Kluwer Academic Publishers for permission to reprint Dieter Lohmar,
"Husserl's concept of categorial intuition", in Dan Z ahavi and Frederik
47 The emergence of an absolute consciousness in Husserl's early Stjernfelt (eds), One Hundred Years of Phenomenology: H usserl's Logical
writings on time-consciousness 247 Investigations Revisited, Phaenomenologica, Vol. 164, Dordrecht: Kluwer,
JOHN BROUGH 2002, pp. 125-145. With kind permission of Kluwer A cademic Publishers.
Northwestern University Press for permission to reprint R obert
48 Is the present ever present? Phenomenology and the
Sokolowski, "How to Intuit an Essence," in Robert Sokolowski, Husser/ian
metaphysics of presence 273
Meditations: How Words Present Things , Evanston: Northwestern Univer-
R U DOLF BERNET sity Press, 1974, pp. 57-85. Copyright © 1974 by R obert Sokolowski.

49 Inner time-consciousness and pre-retlective self-awareness 299 Kluwer Academic Publishers for permission to reprint Ullrich Melle,
DAN Z AHAVI "Objektivierende und nicht-objektivierende Akte", in Samuel Ijsseling
(ed.), Husserl-Ausgabe und Husserl-Forschung, Phaenomenoiogica, Vol.
115, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990, pp. 35-49. With kind permission of Kluwer
50 Husserl on memory 325
Academic Publishers.
JOHN B. BROUGH
Karl Alber Verlag for permission to reprint Bernhard R ang, "Reprasenta-
51 La chair et Ie probleme de la constitution tempore lie 347 tion und Selbstgegebenheit: Die Aporie der Phanomenologie der
DIDI ER FRAN C K Wahrnehrnung in den Friihschriften H usserls", in E rnst Wolfgang Orth
(ed.), Phiinomenologie Heute: Grundlagen- und Methodenprobleme,
Phiinomenologische Forschungen, 1, Freiburg: K. A lber, 1977, pp. 105-137.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
University Press of America for permission to reprint William R.
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McKenna, "The problem of sense data in H usserl's theory of perception",
in Lester Embree (ed.), Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch, Washing- The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright
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and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies
"Perception as a teleological process of cognition", Analecta H usserliana 9
whom we have been unable to trace.
(1979): 119- 132. With kind permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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smooth hands: H usserl's phenomenology of the lived-body", in D onn
Welton (ed.), The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1999, pp. 38-56.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research for permission to reprint
John J. Drummond, "On seeing a material thing in space: the role of
kinaesthesis in visual perception", Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 40(1) (1979): 19- 32.
Felix Meiner Verlag for permission to reprint Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern and
Eduard Marbach, "Phantasy, picture-consciousness, memory", in An
Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology, E vanston: Northwestern Uni-
versity Press, 1993, pp. 141-154.
Kluwer A cademic Publishers for permission to reprint John Brough, "The
emergence of an absolute consciousness in Husserl's early writings on
time-consciousness", Man and World 5(3) (1972): 298-326. With kind per-
mission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Brill Academic Publishers for permission to reprint Rudolf Bernet, "Is the
present ever present? Phenomenology and the metaphysics of presence",
Research in Phenomenology 12 (1982): 85-112.
Indiana University Press for permission to reprint Dan Zahavi, "Inner
time-consciousness and pre-reflective self-awareness", in Donn Welton
(ed.), The New Husser!: A Critical Reader, Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 2003, pp. 157-180.
The Monist for permission to reprint John B. Brough, "Husserl on
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"La chair et Ie probleme de la constitution temporelle", in Jean-Luc
Marion and Guy Planty-Bonjour (eds), Phenomenologie et metaphysique,
Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1984, pp. 125-156. © PUF, 1984.
 INTENTIONALITY , PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY l
10 Ibid. , p. 170.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
45
13 Husser! gives numerous brief accounts of the functional, motivational connec-
tion between kinaesthetic processes and determined series of appearances.
Some of the most important examples are Ideen II, pp. 20, 56-58, 128-29, PHANTASY, PICTURE-
216-21; APS, pp. 13-15, 107 and Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil:
Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (hereafter EU), revised and ed. by CONSCIOUSNESS, MEMORY
Ludwig Landgrebe with an Afterword by Lothar Eley (Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag, 1972), pp. 88-91, 113 [English translation: Experience and Judgment,
trans. by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern Uni- Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern and Eduard Marbach
versity Press, 1973), pp. 83-85, 104]. The most detailed of Husserl's analyses,
some of which we shall explicate here, are in DR, pp. 154-284.
14 DR, p.170. Source: Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern and Eduard Marbach, An Introduction to Husser/ian
15 Cf. ibid., p. 292; cf. also Ideen II, pp. 57-58,216; APS, pp. 13-14 and EU, p. 89 Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993, pp. 141- 154.
[Eng. trans., p. 84] .
16 DR, p. 176.
17 Ibid., p. 177.
18 Ibid. Since the 1890s, and particularly in connection with the preparation of his
19 Ibid., p. 180. Logical Investigations (1900/01), Husserl was occupied with the domain of
20 Ibid. intuitive acts. He contrasted the latter with the conceptual presentations
21 Ibid., p. 206. belonging to the domain of significations, which received primary atten-
22 Ibid., p. 235.
23 Ibid., p. 232. tion in the six investigations published as part two of the Logical Investiga-
24 Ibid., p. 235. tions (cf. below, chap. 6). As early as texts dating from the 1890s, Husserl
25 Ibid., p. 238. had discussed the distinction between "intuitional and conceptual presen-
26 Cf. ibid., pp. 236, 238; cf. also APS, p. 298. tations." Among the intuitional presentations he counted "the perceptual
27 DR, p. 228.
presentations, the physical-pictorial presentations, the phantasy presenta-
28 Ibid., p. 249.
29 Ibid., p. 251. tions (presentations of memory and expectation)." In contrast with the
30 Ibid., p. 249. consciousness of signification, in which an object or a state of affairs is sig-
31 Ibid. , p. 250. nified, it is generally characteristic of intuitional presentations that in them
32 Ibid. "an object appears, and this is either the presented object itself or a picture
33 Cf. ibid., pp. 250, 253.
[Bild] of the latter" (cf. Ms. F 119,174 [probably written in 1894).1
34 Cf. ibid. , pp. 257,261.
35 Ibid. , p. 255. As is well known, the subtitle of part two of the Logical Investigations is
"Investigations Concerning the Phenomenology and Theory of Cogni-
tion." It is Husserl's view that the higher-level, conceptual and categorial
acts of intending [Bedeuten], in which cognition comes to pregnant expres-
sion, are founded in the sensuous, intuitive acts of perception and their
modifications. The phenomenological clarification of the consciousness of
signification, of conceptual thinking and knowing, must therefore also
determine the forms of intuitional consciousness in respect of their cogni-
tive achievement. Since one is dealing with the "lowest stratum of intellec-
tive acts," in the case of the various kinds of intuitional consciousness,
Husserl sees their analysis as fundamental for the phenomenological clari-
fication of cognition, or, as Husserl preferred to say some years after the
publication of the Logical Investigations, for the "phenomenology of
reason" in the strict sense. 2
One of the chief tasks for the analysis of the domain of intuitive acts
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
consists in setting off the diverse forms of presentiation [V ergegenwiirti-
gung] from the basic form of intuitional consciousness, namely, perception
(cf. above, chap. 4) by bringing into relief the intentional characteristics of
these various forms. The at first rather special-looking task to whose solu-
tion H usserl devoted his efforts again and again for many years, allowed
him at last to catch sight of unsuspected depths and interconnections in the
intentional life of consciousness, matters whose importance for his later
doctrine of the constituting, transcendental subjectivity can scarcely be
overestimated.
H usserl was first inspired to concern himself with intuitive acts by
Brentano. 3 H e mentions more than once the latter's "unforgettable course
of lectures on 'Selected Psychological and A esthetical Questions'" in
which Brentano "strove nearly exclusively after an analytical clarification
of phantasy presentations in comparison with perceptual presentations."4
In those lectures, after detailed discussion of the philosophical tradition
from Aristotle on down to his own day, Brentano arrived at the following
determination: "Phantasy presentations are nonintuitional or inauthentic
[uneigentlich] presentations which approximate to intuitional presenta-
tions .... The border is admittedly blurred."s According to Brentano, the
approximation to the intuitional presentations of perception is based on
the fact that "the phantasy presentations contain, as it were, an intuitional
nucleus" (Brentano, 84), albeit most phantasy presentations are in fact not
intuitions but concepts with an intuitional nucleus (cf. 83). Brentano had
exhibited the importance of the inauthenticity of phantasial presentations,
as well as of the presentations of others' psychical phenomena and of one's
own past and future psychical phenomena (cf. 83f.), as over against the
authenticity of perceptual presentations. At the time of the conception of
the Logical Investigations, H usserl defined this same contrast by distin-
guishing the act-character of pictoriality [Bildlichkeit] or "picturing [ver-
bildlichend] apprehension" from the act-character of the self-giving of the
object in perception. 6
Regarded purely from the viewpoint of consciousness, an object of
phantasy, memory, or expectation would be characterized in contrast with
an object of perception in its givenness, by the fact that it does not appear
as being "present itself," "bodily [leibhaft]" or, as it were, "in its own
person," but rather merely hovers before me, merely is as if it were there,
appears to me "in a picture" (a mental image, a memory-image) . Husserl
will always preserve the pair of opposites "bodily," and so on, and "as if,"
in respect of the modes of appearance of perceptual as over against pre-
sentational consciousness. However, after the Logical Investigations, the
path of his thinking led him from the incipient theory of the pictoriality of
intuitional presentation - by way of a concretely executed analysis of the
deep-seated distinctions between picture-consciousness and pure phan-
tasy, or memory, and by way of the inclusion of internal time-
PHANTASY, PICTURE-CONSCIOUSNESS, MEMORY
consciousness (1904/05) - to the doctrine of the reproduction of acts, that
is, to an insight into the essence of the intentional implication of another
consciousness (one's own and then also another's in the actually per-
formed consciousness).
H usserl usually proceeded in his concrete analysis in such a way as, by
means of initial observations of diverse but related kinds of consciousness,
and guided for the most part by ordinary linguistic usage, to create an
"horizon of comparison which we must have at our disposal from the
outset in order to be able step by step to submit each of these kinds of
intuition [perception, phantasy, picture-consciousness, memory] (each of
which unveils its peculiar eidetic characteristics only in contrast with the
parallel kinds) to an eidetic cognition" (Ms. A VI 11 I , 67b [1911/1912]).
Without being able in the framework of this study to enter into the indi-
vidual steps of thought and their frequent aporiai, we shall attempt to
bring together some of the essential results, often situated years apart, as
links in a phenomenological theory of intuitional presentiation. 7
Regarding the matter quite generally, one must distinguish in this
analysis between the moment of the intuitiveness (with its possible degrees
of vividness, adequacy, clarity, obscurity, emptiness) and the moment of
the positing (that is, of the doxical modalities) of the acts here in question. 8
What became decisive for Husserl's doctrine was the "intimate connection
between intuitive acts and time-consciousness," a connection which he had
recognized since the time of his lectures in the winter semester of 1904/05
(cf. PITe, 394). For only with the return to the fundamental, temporally
interpreted distinction between impression (presentation [Gegen-
wiirtigung]) and reproduction (presentiation [V ergegenwiirtigung]), did
H usserl succeed in making intelligible the distinction between the imme-
diate intuitability of what is bodily present [leibhaft] (in perception) and
what is not bodily present (in phantasy, memory, expectation) (cf. Ms. A
VI 11 I , 61- 95; PBE, nos. 12, 13, 14 and passim). On the side of positing,
one must distinguish between actuality (positionality) and inactuality
(neutrality) . Husserl defines both pairs of distinctions, presentation and
presentiation, as well as actuality and inactuality, as intersectional (cf.
PBE, no. 13 [1910], and no. 16 [1912]). Thus, in respect of the domain of
intuitional presentiation which interests us here, he speaks of a positing
presentiation (memory, co-presentiation, expectation) and a nonpositing
presentiation (pure phantasy) (cf. no. 12 [probably from 1910]).9 The
distinction that presented so many difficulties at the time of the
Logical Investigations, that between pure phantasy and normal picture-
consciousness, is finally universalized terminologically as the distinction
between reproductive phantasy (or presentiation) and perceptive phan-
tasy, that is, presentiation [V ergegenwiirtigung] in a picture, in pictorial
representation [Darstellung] (cf., e.g., nos. 16 and 18a [1918]).
Let us now attempt to gain a somewhat more precise idea, successively,
 INTENTIONALITY , PER C EPTION AND TEMPORALITY
(a) of the distinction, founded in internal time-consciousness, between
impression and reproduction, that is, of the reproductive modification; (b)
of the aspect of positing and neutralizing, that is, of the qualitative modifi-
cation; and (c) of the peculiarity of picture-consciousness in contrast with
reproductive presentiation.
(a) In his lectures of 1904/05 H usserl arrived at the conclusion that pure
phantasy and memory, as pure, simple presentiational consciousness, must
be sharply distinguished from perception, as presentational consciousness,
but also from ordinary picture-consciousness which requires the mediation
of something appearing perceptually in the present. For the purpose of
more deeply clarifying this pair of opposites, presentation and presentia-
tion, Husserl began an analysis of internal time-consciousness in the final
portion of his lectures. In connection with the intuitive acts, it is a question
of forming a concept of the fundamental distinction between "time-
perception" as the originary time-consciousness constitutive for "being-
present," and "time-phantasy" which is constitutive for "not-being-
present" (being-past, being-in-the-future, and in general, being presenti-
ated) (PITC, 161 C, 36f.; d. above, chap. 3, § 2) .
In the years following his lectures from the winter semester of 1904/05,
Husserl elaborated ever more clearly the more complex - in comparison
with impressional presentation - intentional structure of presentiation. He
recognized that presentiations "have a second, differently structured
intentionality, one which is proper to them alone and not to all immanent
experiences" (PITC, 52 1 C, 75). This concerns the fact that a presentiation
is not merely consciousness of an object but is in itself, in "inner conscious-
ness" or time-consciousness, also reproductive consciousness of the corre-
sponding impression, of the corresponding originary course in which
consciousness of the now presentiated object is primordially constituted
(in the past, in the future, or as pure possibility in phantasy). In a note
probably written in 1911/12, Husserl sums up the terms of this universal
structure or "eidetic law" of intentional modification or implication among
intuitional presentiations, casting it in a perspicuous "formula." It is the
case that "R(Pa) = Va. For example, the presentiation of a house [Va] and
the reproduction of the perception of this house [R(Pa)] exhibit the same
phenomena" (1281 C, 177f.; d. PEE, 311). Normally, that is, whenever I
do not perform a "reflection in phantasy or memory," my intentionality is
directed toward the presentiated object. However, it is not a matter here
of a "simple" intentionality but of a "peculiar mediacy" (EP II, 116) that is
no longer interpreted as pictoriality but points to the fact that for me, for
example, the past can not "directly" attain to givenness again but can do
so only upon being mediated by a reproductive consciousness of that past
experience of mine which was constitutive for the remembered event.
The insight into this structure of the intentional implication of another
consciousness in the presently actual consciousness may have been deci-
PHANTASY , PICTURE - CONSCIOUSN E SS , M E MORY
sive for H usserl's revision of the original content-apprehension- schema,
with the help of which he had previously wanted to establish the distinc-
tion between perception and phantasy (presentiation). A bout 1909 he was
able to write the following:
I had the schema "content-of-apprehension and apprehension"
and that certainly makes good sense. But, first of all in the case of
perception as concrete, immanent experience, we do not have a
color as a content of apprehension and then the character of the
apprehension which creates the appearance. A nd similarly in the
case of phantasy we do not again have a color as a content of
apprehension and then an altered apprehension, the one which
creates the phantasy appearance. Rather: "consciousness" consists
through and through of consciousness, and a sensation as well as a
phantasm is "consciousness." There we have in the first instance
perception as impressional (originary) consciousness of the
present, consciousness of what is itself there, and the like; and [we
have] phantasy (in the sense in which perception is the opposite!)
as the reproductively modified consciousness of the present, con-
sciousness of what is as if it were itself there, of what is as if it
were present, [consciousness of our] phantasy of the present.
[PEE, 265 f. ]
We may say in general that Husserl understood the reproductive structure
of presentiation in such a way that a "presentiated present," with all its
modes of the flow of consciousness, was taken by him to be intentionally
implied in this structure at all times, be it a past, future , possible, merely
phantasized, or alien present.
(b) In order more concretely to clarify these diverse kinds of intuitional
presentiation, the aspect of positing, the "qualitative modification," must
be drawn into the analysis. Within the domain of reproductive modifica-
tion Husserl arrived at the distinction between a positing presentiation and
a nonpositing, inactual or neutralized presentiation (in pure phantasy) . In
section 111 of Ideas I (1913) we may read the following, concise character-
ization of phantasy: "Stated more precisely, phantasizing is, as such, the
neutralizing modification of [a] 'positing' presentiation, that is, of memory
in the broadest possible sense" (Id I, 224). In order adequately to under-
stand this relation among phantasy, memory, and neutralizing modifica-
tion, it must be kept in mind that phantasy had been defined as an act of
presentiation, that is, as a reproduction of consciousness in the actually
performed phantasial consciousness.
The doctrine of the neutralizing modification forms a universalization
of the doctrine of "qualitative modification" fo und in the Logical Investi-
gations (d. L I IIII [V], §§ 39f.). Qualitative modification is introduced in
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
the Logical Investigations with respect to the class of objectifying acts, that
is, as a modification taking place inside the acts of the "quality" "presenta-
tion [Vorstellung]."l0 In relation to these objectifying acts, H usserl sets
forth the possibility of the transition from the positing act of presentation
to an act of mere presentation of the same material, and the reverse (ct. L I
IIII [V], 435, 448). It is thus not a matter of a transition from one act-
quality (class) to another, for example, the transition from a perceptual
presentation to the complex act of joy which belongs to a new, founded
act-quality (class). It is a matter of a "qualitative modification," that is,
precisely, a possible modification of the quality "presentation," inside of
the same act-quality. Instead of performing a presentation primordially,
actually, as a positing, believing act, it is possible to perform it as a mere
presentation, as a nonpositing act, leaving the issue of belief undecided.
This qualitative modification is not able to be iterated. "If the 'believing'
has been transformed into [a] 'mere presenting,' then we can at best return
to the believing; but there is no modification which repeats itself and con-
tinues in the same sense" (452).
Ideas I introduces the neutralizing modification as a universal modifica-
tion of consciousness as such. At the lowest level is the primordial doxa,
the primordial belief of the perceiving consciousness, to which all modifi-
cations of belief (deeming possible, presumption, doubt, question, and so
on) are referred precisely as doxic modalities of the primordial belief. The
non-doxic acts (the non-objectifying acts in the sense understood by the
Logical Investigations, for example, wishing, desiring, rejoicing, and so on)
also refer intentionally to the primordial doxa. The universalization con-
sists in Husserl's understanding all acts as positing (thetic) acts (among
which the doxic acts form the special class of acts which posit being)
having their possible counterpart in neutral acts as counterparts to all
"achieving [Leisten]" (ct. § § 109, 117).11
Now Husserl understood pure phantasy as a neutralizing modification
of a special kind of positing, namely, the positing presentations. The term
"memory [Erinnerung]" serves him in the manuscripts (ct., e.g., PBE, 246,
396), as well as in section 111 of Ideas I, as a designation for the positing
presentiations, namely, pre-presentiation, co-presentiation, and re-presen-
tiation, in their reproductive structure. In Husserl's view, memories of the
immanent experience, as possible parallels to it, correspond to every
immanent experiencing as originary consciousness of the immanent
experience (Id I, 225). This being so, the phantasy modification, as a neu-
tralizing modification of memory, also shows itself to be of universal
significance (224). Stated quite generally, it is accordingly the case in phan-
tasizing that I do not actually experience all the immanent experiences,
whichever they may be, but only presentiate them to myself (in imagina-
tion [einbildend]), perform them only inactually [inaktuell] in a neutraliz-
ing manner, that is, without a positing of belief, on the condition of
PHANTASY, PICTURE-CONSCIOUSNESS , MEMORY
bracketing or leaving undecided every achievement of consciousness. I
phantasize myself into an experiencing (whether I thereby draw myself
into the phantasy-world or not); I feel as if I were experiencing, seeing,
hearing, speaking, doubting, questioning, willing, desiring, and so on. The
whole affair, be it a coherent phantasy-world, be it an incoherent sequence
of individual phantasy situations, is given - in the modification of the as-if,
without a performance of the believing or positing consciousness - as
unreality (ct., e.g., PBE, nos. 15, 18a).
In contrast with this, it is essential for the positing presentations, that I
perform them in the consciousness of the actuality of belief. In the case of
a memory, for example, it is not simply so, that an imagined sequence of
immanent experiences is presentiated free of all positing. Rather, the
reproductively performed immanent experiences are given in the con-
sciousness of the "again," which is a "believing consciousness" (ct. nos. 11,
12, 13). Above all, this also means that forward-pointing and backward-
pointing intentions adhere inseparably to these experiences, and the inten-
tions serve to arrange them in the total nexus of the stream of my past
consciousness (ct., e.g., app. XXIX [probably written in 1910]). Analogous
relationships would hold for presentations relative to future experience
(ct. e.g., no. 13 [1910]). This positing, believing consciousness does not
imply, of course, that I cannot be deceived or err in relation to presenti-
ated situations. On the contrary, deception is generally speaking possible
in two respects, either in relation to the reproduced act (I had not read it,
rather it was told to me), or in relation to the presentiated object (it was
not x, but y). It is characteristic, however, for the positing presentiations,
that I play one positing off against the other, as it were; that I move on the
terrain of doxa and all the possible doxic modalities; and, as long as I do
not become aware of the deception which memory has suffered, that I
believe or posit that it was so or, doubting it, that I ask myself whether it
was so or whether it was not rather so (ct. no. 15, and esp. app. XXXVII
[1912]). Ideally, it would be possible to reproduce the sequence of imma-
nent experiences from the remembered past or from the anticipated future
down to the presently actual now. In the case of pure phantasy, however,
that is, phantasy free of the consciousness of being mixed with now or
once actual experience, such a continuity makes no sense. For the world of
phantasy is thoroughly a world of the as-if, without an absolute spatial and
temporal position in objective space and time (ct., e.g., app. LVI; no. 19a;
EJ, §§ 38-42).
We now have to point out a phenomenon bearing on all reproductive,
intuitional presentiations and submitted to detailed considerations by
Husserl beginning with his lectures on "Phantasy and Picture-Conscious-
ness" in the winter semester of 1904/05 (ct. PBE, no. 1, §§ 24, 32; chap. 7;
apps. IX [1905], XLIV [probably 1908], Land LI [probably 1912 or some-
what later]) . This is the phenomenon of the overlapping [Verdeckung] or
 INTENTIONALITY , PER C EPTION AND TEMPORALITY
1
I PHA N TASY , PICTURE- C ONS C IOUSN E SS , MEMORY
the conflict of intuitions, which is connected with the fact that in the stream
of consciousness nothing is thinkable in isolation from the rest of the
stream. Husserl speaks of the "stream of presently actual positing,"
"presently actual apprehensional intentions which organize themselves
again and again into new [intentions], impart a force of coherence to
everything which is inserted into them, and, to be sure, leave nothing
outside of themselves." Whatever then is given in isolation, such as a
phantasy, "yet in truth covers up [verdeckt] something in actuality" (485).
Husserl brings out the point that "space is only intuitable once." "Spatial
intuition 'covers up' spatial intuition." In the example of phantasy, I am
turned toward a phantasy object, I look at a spatial world within a definite
orientation.
At the same time, however, I can direct my glance at the per-
ceived spatial world with its orientation. If I do that, the other
[world] vanishes: And this vanishing is not a mere darkening, but
a being pressed down to an "empty" presentation.
[ibid.]
An intuitable "at the same time " of present [Gegenwart] and nonpresent
[Nichtgegenwart] (a nonpresent posited in the past or the future or merely
phantasized) is impossible. Attention to the one clashes with a simultane-
ous attention to the other (cf. no. 1, § 32; app. IX). My actual point of view
in the here and now, which opens up the visual field of perception to me,
cannot at the same time be the point of view of the nonpresent. Rather, the
latter is a past, a future, or a merely imagined point of view reproduced in
presentiation, a point of view that opens up to me a pres entia ted visual
field which in turn covers up the actually present visual field precisely to
the extent that my attention is devoted to the non present. It is very
important to notice that in these relationships, "however much it may lose
its 'actuality,' 'withdraw from me,' " the perceptual world does not vanish
from my consciousness when I perform a presentiation. "It is always there
perceptually" (EI, 205 / C & A, 175f.). If in performing a presentiation I
were completely to lose consciousness of the perceptual world, then I
would no longer be presentiating but presenting by way of dreaming, hal-
lucinating, suffering a trance or a vision; and what were thus intuited
would then have the character of the "itself-there," of bodily present actu-
ality, such as is the case in perception; it would "also [be] fitted out with
the character of 'belief,' " and no longer merely that of the "as if again" or
the "as if" within the consciousness of semblance [Schein] (cf. PBE, no. 1,
§ 20; 150f.). A unity of simultaneous intuition in relation to perceived and
remembered or phantasized objects is thus not possible. In intuition I am
turned either toward the present or toward the nonpresent. However,
there exists "among all immanent experiences of one I, a temporal unity,"
and so, "on the basis of being constituted together in the flow of one inner
time-consciousness, the possibility exists of producing an intuitable con-
nection among all the objects constituted therein" (EI, 206f.). This unify-
ing I-relation, elaborated by Husserl in connection with his analysis of
intuitional presentiations, will be discussed in somewhat greater detail in
chapter 8, "The 'I' and the Person." It belongs thoroughly to the analysis
of the essential moments of intuitional presentiations.
(c) The "permeation [Durchsetzung]" or "interpenetration [D urch-
dringung]" of intuitions "with conflict [Widerstreit]" is H usserl's name for
a phenomenon differing in kind from overlapping [V erdeckung] and yet
somehow akin to it. H e finds this phenomenon actualized in ordinary
picture-consciousness, that is, in presentiation which is no longer purely
reproductive but is rather perceptually founded (cf. PBE, nos. 1, 16, 17;
apps. IX, L; as well as most of the texts in this volume which have to do
with picture-consciousness). Inasmuch as he himself wavers a great deal, it
is not an easy matter briefly to summarize H usserl 's doctrine of picture-
consciousness. An essential point forms the demarcation of picture-
consciousness from fiction-consciousness (illusion), from which Husserl's
early analysis of picture-consciousness, with its accent on conflicting inten-
tions, was probably too little clearly differentiated. H usserl also oriented
his analysis at first too much in respect of the idea of depictability
[Abbildlichkeit], such as would be found in a portrait. Later, however, in
discussing aesthetic-artistic representation [Darstellung], he sought to
understand "pictoriality [Bildlichkeit] in the sense of perceptual phantasy
as immediate imagination" apart from the function of depict ability (514,
no. 18b [1918]).
Just what is presentiating in a picture, understood initially as conscious-
ness of a depiction [Abbildbewuf3tsein] (photographs, portrait and land-
scape paintings, sculptures)? Husserl distinguishes the following three
types of objects [Objekte] which are implicit in picture-consciousness
[Bildbewuf3tsein]: (1) The picture as a physical thing on the wall; the
canvas, or the photograph printed on paper, which hangs there, can be
torn, and so on, just like any physical object, and which is given perceptu-
ally; (2) the mental picture-object [Bildobjekt] , which appears "perceptu-
ally," thus and so in its colors and forms , and yet is not apprehended as
reality. Insofar as I live within the picture-consciousness, this picture-
object is given to me in intuition. In it I apprehend the assimilating
[verahnlichend] traits as such, that is, as representing [darstellend] ; (3) the
picture-subject [Bildsujet]; for example, the living person or the landscape
itself. Fundamental is the relation of similarity between that which appears
and that which is depicted.
The nonpresent subject does not thereby appear yet a second time in
addition to the appearance of the picture-object (except when the subject
chances still to be present outside of the pictorial space as well!). R ather, it
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
appears, it is depicted [bildet sich ab] or represented [stelit sich dar], in the
"present" picture-object itself. In the appearing picture-object I "view" the
subject immanently; in the photographic picture I "see" my friend. Thus,
this double objectivity, consisting of the appearing picture and the
depicted thing, does not stem within the picture-consciousness from two
separated apprehensions making their appearance merely comparatively in
a relation of similarity. Rather, according to H usserl, two apprehensions
penetrate one another in a foundational relationship within the pictorial
presentation. They do so in such a way that the objectifying apprehension
constitutive of the picture-object simultaneously furnishes the foundation
for the presentation which, by means of the picture-object, constitutes the
other, nonpresent object (the subject), that is, the foundation for the
inherently dependent or founded representation of similarity [Ahnlichkeits-
repriisentation] which produces the relation to the subject (ct. no. 1, esp. §
14). The conscious relation to the subject is consciousness of the presentia-
tion of something which does not appear, within that which does appear, a
consciousness which arises on the basis of similarity (ibid.).
In his lectures of 1904/05, Husserl primarily analyzed the relationship of
conflict between the appearance of the picture-object and the physical
picture-thing [Bildding]. On the terrain of the schema "content and appre-
hension," he sets forth the fact that the sensuous contents seem to be the
same for the picture-thing as for the appearance of the picture-object,
whereas it is excluded that two appearances could come forth simultan-
eously on the basis of the same contents. Because the world, constituted in
perception during the waking life of picture-consciousness, is continuously,
co-present for consciousness, and because the picture-thing, as a physical
thing, belongs itself in this uniform perceptual nexus, there now emerges a
conflict between the picture-thing and the picture-object, insofar as the
sensuous contents get robbed, as it were, from the picture-thing by the pic-
torial apprehension, that is, insofar as they are claimed for the constitution
of the picture-object. With its presentiating relation to the subject, the
appearance of the picture-object "triumphs" in this conflict but does so at
the cost of reality. The picture-object has the character of irreality , of mere
semblance in the midst of the perceptually appearing surroundings of the
picture (ct. no. 1, esp. the summarizing account in §§ 14,25). On the other
hand, H usserl also strongly emphasizes in these lectures the relationship of
conflict "between the appearance of the picture-object and the presenta-
tion of the subject which gets intertwined with it or rather thrust over into
it" (§ 25), a conflict which rests precisely upon the relationship of greater
or lesser similarity between the representation [Darstellung] and what is
represented [Dargestelltes]. In other texts, Husserl also points to the
"empirical conflict" between that which appears and that which is required
by empirical experience ("human beings in photographic colors do not
exist") (ct., e.g., app. I, § 13; apps. VII, VIII).
PHANTASY, PICTURE- C ONSCIOUSNESS , MEMORY
Husserl makes clear in numerous texts that, in the case of a picture, the
consciousness of semblance or irreality cannot be a matter of fiction-
consciousness in the sense of an illusion. The decisive factor is the follow-
ing: The fictum proper to an illusion appears directly within the unity of a
reality (for example, a waxen figure which I perceive as this or that
person). It is an appearance with a positional character that now comes
into conflict with other positings such that in this conflict of positings the
fictum is exposed as an illusion, as a mere semblance: "It was not this or
that person but only a waxen doll." By contrast, the character of irreality
in the case of the picture is not the result of a conflict of diverse tendencies
of belief, but rests upon my phantasizing into a perceptual appearance
something which is not immediately present at all. Properly speaking, the
picture does not "appear" within the unity of reality, "but within a space
of its own which in itself has no direct relation to real space. "
With the normal picture, ... [indeed,] already with the picture-
object, where this stands out decidedly from the picture-subject, I
have no consciousness of reality whatsoever, not even an "unin-
hibited" [consciousness of reality]. I have no inclination whatso-
ever to take it for real. I take it much as [I would take] a
reproductive mental image, which I might rather vividly phanta-
size into reality, whereby it [scI. the mental image] also covers up
real things, albeit in a peculiar manner. It also "appears," then,
among the things and in the same space, and yet not in the
manner of a reality. It is in this way that the fictum appears in the
case of picture-consciousness, without having the character of a
reality [and] without laying "claim" upon reality, a claim which
would first have to be annulled.
[480 f.; ct. also no. 17]
Picture-consciousness is presentiation, but not purely reproductive like
phantasy. Rather, it is a perceptual presentiation, penetrating a founding
perceptual consciousness "very much as in the case of the signing [sig-
nierend] or symbolizing function: The symbol appears for itself but is the
bearer of a relation to something else [which is] designated therein. Sim-
ilarly, in the case of the authentic pictorial function, the 'picture' is consti-
tuted in its own objective apprehension [and is the] bearer of a relation to
that which has been depicted" (82).
An essential phenomenon remains to be mentioned. A ll the intuitional
presentiations that we have discussed can be iterated. They can be impli-
cated in one another in manifold ways, for example, as the memory of a
phantasy of a picture or, to take the example Husserl was fond of citing, as
more complicated pictorial presentations (ct., e.g., app. XVIII [probably
1898]; Id I, § 101 and passim; ct. also § 112).
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
He who is practiced in conscious reflection (and [who] has already
learned at all to see the data of intentionality), will without further
ado see the stages of consciousness which are present in the cases
of phantasies within phantasies, or memories within memories or
within phantasies.
[Id I, § 112]
In the Ideas, Husserl writes thus especially in connection with his critique
of the "Empiricist" conception of consciousness which he himself had not
completely avoided in earlier years.
Our assertion of the possibility of iterated, reproductive (as well
as depictive) modifications, might knock up against rather general
opposition. That [situation] will be altered only when practice in
genuine phenomenological analysis has become more widespread
... As long as one treats immanent experiences as [if they were]
"contents" or physical "elements" which ... are viewed as some
kind of "little things" [Siichelchen]; as long as one believes accord-
ingly that the distinction between "sensational contents" and cor-
responding "phantasial contents" can be found in the objective
characteristics of "intensity," "fullness," and the like; [for just so
long the situation] ... cannot get better.
[ibid.]
In closing, we may say that Husserl's insight into the intentional modifi- ,
cations or implications of consciousness within consciousness, which con-
front us in his analyses of intuitional presentiations, came to be of quite
fundamental importance for his concrete theory of the intentionally per-
forming, world-constituting subjectivity. It acquired this importance
because in every type of such acts it is possible "to exhibit the wondrously
interlaced intentionality and thus at the same time to render initially intel-
ligible . . . the peculiarity of its subjective being and its subjective perform-
ance" (EP II, 128). "Yet let us take notice," Husserl says in the same text
from the course of lectures of 1923/24, "how transcendental subjectivity in
general is given in stages of relative immediacy and mediacy, and exists [at
all] only insofar as it is given in such stages, stages of an intentional impli-
cation" (175).
Notes
1 Cf. also, e.g., "Psychological Studies Concerning Elementary Logic" (1894) ,
newly edited by B. Rang in Hu XXII, 92ff.; in the same volume can be found
texts from the 1890s stemming from the literary remains, especially "Intuition
and Representation, Intention and Fulfillment" (1893), 269ff.
PHANTASY , PICTURE-CONSCIOUSNESS , MEMORY
2 Concerning these matters, cf., e.g., the introduction to the sixth of the Logical
Investigations; the beginning of his lectures from 1904-5 bearing the title, remi-
niscent of the Logical Investigations, "Principle Matters of Concern [Haupt-
stUcke] [Drawn] from Phenomenology and [the] Theory of Cognition," cited in
the editor's introduction by R. Boehm, Hu X, xv; further, the diary entry of
September 1906, also cited in the aforementioned editor's introduction, Hu X,
xiii f.
3 For historical information, cf. the editor's introduction by E. Marbach, Hu
XXIII, xliii ft.
4 Cf. the citations in Hu X, xv f. and Hu XXIII, xliv; cf. also, e.g., E. Husserl,
"Reminiscences on Franz Brentano" (Munich, 1919), 153 and 157. Large por-
tions of Franz Brentano's lectures, "Ausgewahlte Fragen aus Psychologie und
Asthetik," have been edited by Frau F. Mayer-Hillebrand and incorporated as
the first part of the volume, F. Brentano, Grundzuge der Asthetik (Bern, 1959);
cf. the editor's remarks on 225, as well as her foreword, esp. xiv.
5 See F. Brentano, Grundzuge der Asthetik, 86; cited hereafter as "Brentano."
6 Cf., e.g., LI 1111 (V), § 14. This early doctrine of Husser!'s is seated in an
empiricistically influenced theory of consciousness. This theory assumes
present, experienced contents - sensations and phantasms - within conscious-
ness (however they may have arisen). According to the character of the act or
the "mode of consciousness," these contents experience diverse sorts of appre-
hension, interpretation, apperception, corresponding with which we have a per-
ceptual appearance, a phantasial appearance, a pictorial appearance, and so on
(cf. LI 1111 (V), § 14). In the present setting, an adequate discussion of this
content-apprehension-schema would lead us too far afield. (For a discussion of
this matter, cf. Hu X, editor's introduction; and R. Sokolowski, The Formation
of Husserl's Concept of Constitution [The Hague, 1970].) We shall merely
remark that, by way of his deepened analysis of the consciousness of intuitive
presentiation, Husserl broke through to a decisive revision of this doctrine of
apperception. The results of this revision will come into play in our further por-
trayal (cf. Hu XXIII, Einl. d. Hrsg., and esp. nos. 8 and 9).
7 The frequent terminological vacillations in Husser!'s manuscripts must also be
left out of the present discussion. As far as possible, we try to employ the desig-
nations which Husser! himself ultimately preferred.
8 Moreover, these two moments also come more or less expressly into play in
ordinary usage. On the one hand, the English word "imagination" contains the
moment of intuitiveness in the sense of "picturing by means of an image"
(imagination, image). On the other hand, the expressions "mere imagination"
and "mere semblance" indicate that we have a consciousness of unreality in
respect of what is presented in consciousness; that is, we "imagine" to ourselves
that it is so, do not posit it as reality, do not "believe" in it (cf. PBE, e.g. , no. 1,
§ 8).
9 Besides the positing presentation (perception) Husser! attempts now and again
to speak of nonpositing presentation. As an ostensible example of this he
brings forward consciousness of the picture-object [Bildobjektbewuf3tsein] (cf.,
e.g. , Id I, § 111; PBE, e.g. , no. 13 and passim).
10 Other act-qualities would be, for example, the wish, the will, the feeling, and so
on. The entire problem coheres extremely closely with Brentano's classification
of "psychical phenomena." Concerning this discussion, see, e.g. , E. Tugendhat
(1967), 4lf.; and chap. 3, § 1 above.
11 A critical discussion of this universalization of neutralization can be found in I.
Kern (1975) , 146ft. Notably, Husser! himself seems at times to have thought
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
neutralization impossible in the case of perception or primordial doxa. Cf.
PBE, e.g., no. 15j. (1912); cf. also ~I, 455~. . . . " .. . the work in question; (2) if translated, the abbreviation employed to refer
12 With the "extensIOn of the reductIOn to mtersubJectIVlty a certam mtentlOnal-
analytical understanding of our experience of the oth~r is a!ready presupposed.
On the other hand, according to H usser!, an actual mtentIonal understandmg
of our experience of the other can no doubt only be obtained on the methodo-
logical basis of the phenomenological reduction.
13 Husserl employs the terms "primordinal" and "primordial" interchangeably to
characterize the sphere of ownness [Eigenheitssphiire]. We shall render both
words by the contrived word "primordinal" .in o~der t~, distingu.ish"them fro~
"ursprunglich," which we have translated prImarily as prImordial, though m
some instances as "original." The latter word, however, we reserve for the most
part in order to render Husser!'s term "original." . not published in the H usserliana series have been placed toward the end of
14 Appresentation="a co-presentation [Mitgegenwiirtigung] of that which can not
be presented primordially [ursprunglich nicht zu Gegenwiirtigendes] " (PI II,
5~. . Gesammelte Werke. Auf Grund des Nachlasses verbffentlicht in Gemeinschaft mit
15 In a number of texts Husser! makes this similarity problematical. Cf. PI I, no. 9;
PI II, no. 33; apps. LXX, LXXI, LXXII, etc.
16 The corresponding passage in the Cartesian Medit~tions s~ems t? me to be
corrupt (144, lines 13-20). Husserl's original manuscrIpt ?f. thiS text IS no longer
extant. There remains only a transcript and a partial reVISIOn from the hand of
Husserl's assistant at that time, Eugen Fink.
S upplem entary readings
For § 1:
Conrad, T. Zur Wesenslehre des psychischen Lebens und Erlebens. Den Haag,
1968.
Fink, E. "Vergegenwartigung und Bild: Beitrage zur Phanomenologie der Unwirk- .
lichkeit" (1930). Studien zur Phiinomenologie, 1930-1939. Den Haag, 1966.
Kunz, H . Die anthropologische Bedeutung der Phantasie. Erster Teil: Die psycholo-
gische Analyse und Theorie der Phantasie. Basel, 1946.
Sokolowski, R. Presence and Absence. A Philosophical Investigation oj Language
and Being. Bloomington, 1978.
For § 2:
Franck, D. Chair et Corps. Sur la phenomenologie de Husser!' Paris, 1981.
Schiitz, A. "Das Problem der transzendentalen Intersubjektivitat bei Husserl." In
Gesammelte AuJsiitze III, Studien zur phiinomenologischen Philosophie. Den
Haag, 1971.
Theunissen, M. Der Andere. Studien z ur Sozialontologie der Gegenwart. Berlin,
1965.
Waldenfels, B. Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs. Sozialphilosophische Untersuchun-
gen in Anschluss an Edmund Husser!. Den Haag, 1971.
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N.B. The following list includes only the published works of Edmund
Husserl referred to within the present study. Each listing is followed by a
PHANTASY, PICTURE-CONSCIOUSNE S S , ME M O R Y
bracketed notation indicating (1) the abbreviation employed to refer to
to the translator of that work; (3) if published in the H usserliana series, a
Roman numeral designating the corresponding H usserliana volume; (4)
where appropriate, either the sign "g.p. " indicating that the pagination of
the German edition being cited is noted in the margins of the E nglish
translation (where this information is not provided in the E nglish transla-
tion, we shall make no notation at all), or the sign "n.t.," indicating that
the work has not been translated. The order of the works listed is deter-
mined by the sequence of the corresponding H usserliana editions. Works
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Bande XXI-XXVIII.
Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by D .
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The Paris Lectures. Translated by P. Koestenbaum. The H ague, 1967. [PL / K / Hu
1/ g.p.].
The Idea oj Phenomenology. Translated by W. P. Alston and G . Nakhnikian. The
Hague, 1964. [IP / A&G / Hu II / g.p.].
Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W.R.B.
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Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy
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Kersten. The Hague and Boston, 1982. [Id I / Hu III / g.p. All references to
Ideen I cite the pagination of the Gibson translation; however, the Kersten trans-
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Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy.
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The Crisis oj the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Intro-
duction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by D. Carr. Evanston,
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First Philosophy [Erste Philosophie]. 2 vols. [EP I, II / Hu VII, VIII / n.t.] .
Phenomenological Psychology. Translated by J. Scanlon. The H ague, 1977. [PP / S
/ Hu IX / g.p.].
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Translated by J. S. Churchill.
Bloomington, 1964. [PITC / C / Hu X. All references to PlTC cite the pagination
of Hu X].
Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis [Analysen zur passiven Synthesis]. [APS /
Hu XI / n.t.].
Philosophy of Arithmetic [Philosophie der Arithmetik]. [PA / Hu XII / n.t.].
Concerning the Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity [Zur Phanomenologie der
Intersubjektivitat]. 3 vols. [PII, II, III / Hu XIII, XIV, XV / n.t.].
Thing and Space [Ding und Raum]. [DR / Hu XVI/ n.t.].
Formal and Transcendental Logic. Translated by D. Cairns. The Hague, 1969.
[FTL / C / Hu XVII / g.p.].
Prolegomena to Pure Logic. In Vol. I of Logical Investigations. Translated by J. N.
Findlay. London and New York, 1977. [PPL or LI I / F / Hu XVIII (LU I; see
below)].
Essays and Reviews [Aufsatze und Rezensionen]. [AR / Hu XXII / n.t.].
Phantasy, Picture-Consciousness, Memory [Phantasie, Bildbewuj3tsein, Erin-
nerung] . [PBE / Hu XXIII / n.t.].
Introduction to Logic and the Theory of Knowledge [Einleitung in die Logik und
Erkenntnistheorie]. [LE / Hu XXIV / n.t.].
Lectures on the Theory of Meaning [Vorlesungen ilber Bedeutungslehre]. [VBL /
Hu XXVI/ n.t.].
Essays and Lectures [Aufsatze und Vortrage] (1922-1937). [A V / Hu XXVII / n.t.].
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Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft. Herausgegeben von W. Szilasi. Frankfurt am
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Philosophy as a Strict Science. Translated by Q. Lauer, in Phenomenology and the
Crisis of Philosophy. New York, 1965. [PSS / L / PSW].
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46
PHANTASY'S SYSTEMATIC
PLACE IN HUSSERL'S WORK
On the condition of possibility for a
phenomenology of experience
Julia Jansen
Introduction
Although HusserI took phantasy [PhantasieF to be one of the stepping
stones for his project of a "critique of reason" and although he famously
declared fiction the "vital element" [Lebenselement] of phenomenology2,
he never formulated a comprehensive and coherent account. Until his
manuscripts on "Phantasy, picture-consciousness, memory" were pub-
lished in 19803 we were left with scattered passages which, though present
in almost all his investigations, did not allow for a coherent reconstruction
of HusserI's account. What initially was only a textual difficulty has at
times led to hasty philosophical judgments4 about the unsatisfactory status
of Husserl's notion of phantasy. This paper intends to readdress the issue
of phantasy by uncovering and reconstructing its development and func-
tion in the context of HusserI's work as a whole. Before I begin, however,
I will first sketch out a few general features of the phenomenon that
HusserI investigates under the name of "phantasy."
By phantasy HusserI refers both to the act of intuitively [anschaulich]
presenting [vorstellen] a non-present object and to the in this manner pre-
sented object itself. In both cases, the intuitive character of phantasy is
crucial. Thereby, phantasy is distinguished, for example, from a mere
assuming or a "thinking of" that would involve an abstract intellectual act.
It is also distinguished from hallucination since - unlike phantasy - halluci-
nation is experienced as perception. Finally, it is important to note that
HusserI's notion of phantasy deliberately sets itself apart from imagination
[Einbildungskraft] understood as psychological capacity or Kantian
faculty. In line with the phenomenological method, H usserl in principle
rejects the notion of imagination because such a faculty can only be
inferred or constructed but never phenomenologically described.
 INTENTIONALITY , PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
Crucial for my concerns here is the distinction between two phases of
H usserl's treatment of phantasy. The first one (section I) can be drawn
from the L ogical Investigations and other early works and is - unfortu-
nately - often taken to be the H usserlian account. It is the theory that -
legitimately, in my view - evokes the common criticisms of the primacy of
perception and the empiricist heritage in H usserl's work. H owever, as will
be shown, Husserl himself was aware of these difficulties and therefore
substantially revised his theory (section II).5 The consequences of this revi-
sion are fundamental indeed; for H usserl was forced to modify not only his
account of phantasy but his theory of consciousness in general. My recon-
struction of this significant shift leads into an investigation of phantasy's
systematic place in H usserlian phenomenology (section III). It will
become clear how intimately the analysis of phantasy is involved with the
phenomenological project as a whole. Thus, phantasy - far from being a
mere side issue - turns out to be one of the driving forces of H usserl's
work. The critical importance of a clarification of phantasy lies in the phe-
nomenologically shown parallelism between phantasy and perception,
which in turn constitutes the condition of possibility for a phenomenology
of experience. For only on the basis of such parallelism is H usserl in the
position to phenomenologically justify the use of what is brought to evid-
ence in phantasy for a description of intuitive experience in general.
I. Early considerations: phantasy and picture-
consciousness in the manuscripts of 1895- 1905 and in the
Logical Investigations
Two major concerns of the Logical Investigations can serve as a guiding
thread for an exposition of Husserl's early theory of phantasy. First,
Husserl wants to develop a new account of presentation [Vorstellung].
Presentation was not only the burning issue of psychological and philo-
sophical debates at the time 6 but, in particular, a central term for Husserl's
mentor Brentano. 7 Second, Husserl wants to provide a convincing refuta-
tion of the so-called image-theory [B ildertheorie] , which uses the "crude
talk of internal images (as opposed to external objects)."8 H ence, H usserl
sets out to clarify what kind of presentation phantasy is and then to estab-
lish the ramification of this clarification for an assessment of image-theory.
Husserl takes up Brentano's axiom that any intentional act is either a
presentation [Vorstellung] or is founded in one. 9 In the course of criticizing
and modifying Brentano's position, H usserl identifies some intentional
acts which provide otherwise empty thought-presentations with an intu-
itive object. In order to avoid any ambiguities caused by the common term
"presentation" [V orsteUung], H usserl introduces the new term "objectify-
ing act" [objektivierender Akrpo and classifies phantasy as an intuitively
objectifying act. As such, it is stipulated to share some general features
PHANTASY ' S SYSTEMATI C PLACE IN HUSS E RL ' S WORK
with perceptual acts and acts of remembering. Phantasy - like perception
and memory - intends objects and brings them to appearance. Moreover,
H usserl at this stage assumes that phantasies - like all objectifying acts -
show besides their quality (of doubt, of supposition, of belief, etc.) the
following three moments: the form of apprehension, which decides
whether an object is for example intuitively or signitively given, the matter
of apprehension, or the "sense" in which the object is apprehended, and
the apprehended contentsY This notion of objectifying acts implies the
view that consciousness consists of contents that need to be apprehended
in order to constitute intentional acts and is called the content-apprehen-
sian-schema.
A ccording to the content-apprehension-schema, H usserl distinguishes
perceptual contents (sensations [Empfindungen]) from contents of phan-
tasy or memory acts (phantasms [Phantasmen])Y These contents show
sensual plenitude or fullness [Fulle] and thereby provide the act with dif-
ferent degrees of richness or completeness [R eich tum, V ollstandigkeit],
vivacity [Lebendigkeit] , and reality [R ealitat],u In all these respects,
H usserl finds gradual differences in intensity between phantasial, percep-
tual and other acts.14 But the difference between phantasy and perception
cannot be simply one of different degrees of intensity;15 for, as Husserl
points out, this would imply that we would only have to phantasize some-
thing more and more clearly until we would be able to perceive it. Besides,
our phantasies are sometimes clearer and more vivacious than our percep-
tions, especially when compared to perceptions made under less than ideal
conditions. H ence, the essential difference between imaginative and per-
ceptual acts cannot be decided by recourse to different contents but
instead by reference to a difference in the form of apprehension. 16
A ccording to H usserl, all intentional acts are divided into positing [set-
zende] and non-positing [nicht-setzende] ones.
The former are, so to speak, intentions of existence; they still
intend - be they sensual perception, ... be they other acts, which,
even without intending to grasp the object "itself" (bodily or intu-
itively in general) - the object as existing. Non-positing acts, to the
contrary, leave the existence of the object open. It might, objec-
tively speaking, exist, but it is not intended as such or it is not
taken as an actual object; rather, it is "merely presented" [bloB
vorgestellt] Y
Whereas both perception and memory refer to something real (present or
past), phantasy "lacks any consciousness of reality regarding the phanta-
sized object" and explicitly implies "inactuality" [Unwirklichkeit] or "mere
semblance" [blof3en Schein].18 Perception, therefore, is a presentiation
[Gegen wartigung] , "in which the object appears to us, so to speak, 'in
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
person,' as itself present. "19 Phantasy, conversely, is a presentification [Verge-
genwiirtigung], in which the object appears but does so not as present, rather
as merely presentified [vergegenwiirtigt). "It appears as if it was there, but
only as if; it appears to us in an image."2o Hence, phantasy is a non-positing,
presentifying act. When I phantasize an object, it appears to me without me
believing that it is or was actually there, even without me being interested in
whether it is or wasY Phantasy shares this non-positing character with
picture-consciousness [Bildbewuf3tseinJ22, that is, the act of grasping some-
thing as a picture of something else. For when I recognize something as a
picture I do not posit what appears "in it" as existing either. Consequently,
early on he often treats picture-consciousness and phantasy like two kinds of
the more general imagination [Imagination].23 Husserl's account of picture-
consciousness runs along the following lines. 24
When I look at a picture and see something represented "in it," I can
distinguish what is represented (depicted) from its representation
(picture). Husserl notices that in this context we speak of a picture in two
senses:
1 the picture as physical thing, as this canvas painted on and framed, as
this paper printed on, etc.
2 the picture as picture-object, i.e., what appears through a certain distri-
bution of colors and shapes and must be distinguished from what is
depicted by it, that is, the picture-subject. 25
I intend the depicted subject through the appearing picture-object awa~­
ened in the physical picture. Yet, in order for me to "see" the picture-
subject, I need to refrain from positing the picture-object and to be
entirely disinterested in it. Only the physical picture is perceived and as
such posited as existing. The picture-object is, "however much it appears,
'a nothing' [ein Nichts]."26 Conversely, the depicted picture-subject,
although intended, does not genuinely appear itself; it appears in or
through the picture-object. 27 When we see the subject in the picture-object,
a twofold intentionality is involved. Picture-consciousness is founded in
the perception of the physical picture. The "new apprehension permeates
the old one and has incorporated it. ... In the familiar traits something of
the consciousness of the intended object is alive. We look the intended
object into the picture, or out of the picture it looks at US."28
Even though he rejects the talk of mental images or "pictures" as
immanent entities, Husserl still maintains the position he articulated in his
first essay on phantasy from 1898 in the Logical Investigations and in the
Hauptstilck. 29 Hence, he understands phantasy as a kind of pictorial
presentation [BildlichkeitsvorsteliungpO to the effect that he supposes it to
involve the same kind of twofold objectivity as picture-consciousness. In
1898 Husserl writes:
PHANTASY'S SYSTEMATIC PLACE IN HUSSERL'S WORK
It is very important to realize that a double objectivity [doppelte
GegensUindlichkeit] is to be considered as the phantasy presenta-
tion itself, as the lived experience it is; and that it is not a matter
of terminology, which only emerges in retrospect through a reflec-
tion on the relation of this lived experience to reality. It is not a
difference of the kind we make in perception between the appear-
ing thing ... and the thing itself, where after all in the appearance
appear not two [things] ... but only the one thingY
Surprisingly, especially in the light of Husserl's insistence on the difference
between perception and picture-consciousness, Husserl thus fails to draw a
clear distinction between phantasy and picture-consciousness. Although
already in the Logical Investigations he identifies the conflation between
perception and picture-consciousness as one of the "fundamental and
inexterminable errors" of philosophy32 and therefore rejects the "image-
theory" [Bildertheorie] of perception, he continues to speak of an analogy
between phantasy and picture-consciousness. Obvious differences
between these two acts Husserl considers negligible; they are "less signific-
ant differences within the broad sphere of imaginative acts.'m Thus,
although Husserl is able to establish as an absolutely irreducible phenome-
nological fact the act character of imagination [Imagination] - the general
term he uses in order to refer to both phantasy and picture-consciousness
- he fails, at least in his earliest writings, to develop his account far enough
to bring to light the differences between these two acts.
Husserl's neglect of the distinction between picture-consciousness and
imagination causes major problems. For example, it suggests a correspon-
dence between picture-object and phantasy appearance. However, the
picture-object needs the physical picture as the carrier of its sensual
content; the phantasy appearance quite obviously does not. In phantasy,
there is no such carrier to be distinguished from the phantasy appearance
itself. Further, it is problematic to assume that phantasmatic contents are
present to us in the same way as sensations. If they were, it would be diffi-
cult to see how phantasmatic contents could ever be apprehended as
something that is not present, that is precisely absent, namely the phanta-
sized presentified object. Moreover, it is not clear what moment in phan-
tasy would correspond to the picture-subject in picture-consciousness.
Does phantasy really intend an object that is "depicted" by a mental
image, as Husserl at some point claims?34 And finally, and most import-
antly for my concerns here, if phantasy was to be understood in analogy
to picture-consciousness, that is, if phantasy and picture-consciousness
were both considered instances of imagination in so far as they both
display a "double objectivity," then phantasy would be essentially different
from perception in the same way in which picture-consciousness is differ-
ent from perception.
 INTE N TIONALITY , PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
1I
Regardless of these pressing questions H usserl is at this time still
convinced: "Whether we take the phantasy appearance as a presentifica-
tion [Vergegenwartigung] of an actual object or as mere fancy does not
change the fact that it is a pictorial presentation [Bildvorstellung] .. .. "35
U ltimately, and herein might lie at least one reason for H usserl's early
stubbornness on this matter, the problem concerns much more than just
the distinction between picture-consciousness and phantasy. This early
conception leads H usserl into the fundamental problem of how to account
at all for different apprehensions. Why is it that I apprehend this present
content as a sensation and that next one as a phantasma? A t the time of
the Logical Investigations, H usserl's response to this question comes close
to an avoidance of an answer. The difference between different forms of
apprehension, he remarks, "probably is a phenomenologically irreducible
difference. ,,36 We must conclude that H usserl - at this time - cannot
provide any phenomenological evidence for a parallelism between p ercep-
tion and phantasy. This means, however, that he is not yet phenomenologi-
cally justified to use findings that are revealed in a reflection on phantasy
for a clarification of experience in general.
II. Revisions: Husserl's intensive work on phantasy in his
writings of 1905- 1912
The time between the Logical Investigations and Ideas I may have been,
despite the lack of publications, H usserl's most innovative period. D uring
these years, he gives his lectures on time-consciousness and thing-constitu-
tion and develops the crucial phenomenological concepts of the transcen-
dental reduction and the noesis-noema correlation. These developments
necessarily have an important influence on H usserl's engagement in phan-
tasy. Already within the Hauptstiick one can observe dramatic changes in
his thought. At the end of the lecture course he expresses serious doubts
concerning his pictoriality thesis of phantasy. These doubts become a
matter of intensive work, especially in the years between 1908 and 1912.
Eventually, they lead not only to a fundamental revision of H usserl's
theory of phantasy in particular, but also to a significant modification of
his theory of consciousness in general.
While Husserl is still entertaining the view that phantasy must be
explained in analogy to picture-consciousness, he nonetheless foresees
that his position entails fundamental problems37, some of which he
addresses in his concluding remarks to the Haupstiick. There he explicitly
separates "imagination [Imagination] properly speaking, i.e. presentation
by means of a picture", and "imagination as phantasy."38 H e now distin-
guishes phantasy from picture-consciousness precisely by the lack of a
counterpart to the picture-object in phantasy and directly contradicts his
own findings of 1898 when he says:
PHANTASY ' S SYST E MATI C PLA C E IN HU S S E RL ' S WORK
When our phantasy playfully deals with angels and devils, with
I dwarfs and mermaids ... , then the appearing objects are not taken
as picture-objects, as mere representatives, analogues, pictures of
others .... We should let the word "imagination," the talk about
phantasy-images and the like, deceive us as little as the talk of
perceptive images. These phrases stem from reflection, which
opposes the appearance of phantasies to the possible perceptions
of the same object, and in turn these perceptions to the perceptu-
ally not given "things in themselves".39
The mistake which Husserl realizes is the hindrance to an adequate under-
standing of phantasms is to conceive of them as something present, as "a
kind of thingy [eine A rt Sachelchen]."40 It is not the case that phantasms
are something present in which we presentify something else that is absent.
What is intended in phantasy is precisely not intended as an image of
something else. Just as the perceived object itself appears in perception,
the phantasized object itself appears in phantasy. "One does not regard
the image as an object constituted in its own right, which one grasps as
such and takes as an image. R ather, through this peculiarly volatile some-
thing the intention is directed to the object. In a similar way one does not
take an unclear perception in the twilight for itself, then turn it into a
picture, but one grasps the object in it.,,41
Phantasms, in fact , are themselves nothing more than presentified
[vergegenwartigte] sensations. 42 In fact , even to speak of un-apprehended
phantasms is a mere abstraction. When I live in phantasy, the content I
live through is always already apprehended as a presentification [Verge-
genwartigung].43 Phantasy apprehensions are as immediate as perceptual
apprehensions. Phantasy consciousness is directly and thoroughly modified
consciousness; it is presentifying consciousness [vergegenwartigendes
Bewuj3tsein]. Thus, Husserl has to concede that it
.. . seems, after all, most appropriate to speak of "pictoriality," of
"pictorial apprehension" only when a picture actually appears that
in turn functions as a representing object for what is depicted. In
simple phantasy, where this is not the case (however great the
temptation might be to suppose the same state of affairs), one is
well advised to use a different term.44
Yet, although it becomes increasingly questionable to speak of phantasms
at all, H usserl is reluctant to give up his pictoriality thesis altogether. His
reluctance is understandable. For without it the content-apprehension-
schema cannot be upheld in the case of phantasy. Yet, if the content-
apprehension-schema fails to apply to phantasy presentations, then it
might lose its explanatory force as a description of the structure of
 INT E NTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
consciousness in general. This, however, would mean that H usserl would
have to fundamentally revise his conception of consciousness. The
inevitability of such a revision becomes clear to H usserl when he gives his
lectures on inner time-consciousness as the fourth and last part of the
Hauptstucke.45
The problem of the relation between time and phantasy goes back to
Brentano who, as Husserl reports in his lectures, claims to have found the
origin of time in original associations [urspriingliche Assoziationen], them-
selves a matter of phantasy.46 Following Brentano's concept of original
association, Husserl develops his notion of retention as the starting point
for a comprehensive theory of internal time-consciousness. During the
course of these investigations Husserl realizes, on the one hand, that
retention needs to be distinguished from presentification [Vergegenwiirti-
gung] proper, like memory and phantasy.47 On the other hand, H usserl
finds that phantasy shows the same temporal adumbrations [Abschattun-
gen ] as perceptual consciousness, from which it follows that it cannot itself
be the origin of temporality.48
Although the discovery of internal time-consciousness already modifies
Husserl's static description of presentations [V orstellungen] in the Logical
Investigations , he still holds on to the content-apprehension-schema. E ven
in the time-lectures, he rigidly separates, as he did in the Hauptstuck,
intentional experiences from non-intentional contents. 49 However, the
analysis of internal time-consciousness reveals the a-temporality
[Unzeitlichkeit] of absolute consciousness qua flux of lived experiences. 5o
Strictly speaking, this means that no supposition of present contents, i.e.
contents that, in a robust sense of the word, are now, can be made. It is
impossible for an absolute, a-temporal consciousness to "contain" present
sensations or phantasms. 51 This insight receives further support when
Husserl applies the transcendental reduction to time-consciousness. Con-
sequently, in a text from 1909, Husserl is forced to come to the following
realization:
At any rate, here lie the objections against my original view, my
theory of representation [meine Repriisentationstheorie] , which
operated ... with lived-through "contents" and regarded them as
being apprehended in one or the other way. [As if they were] all
nothing but differences in apprehension, which is only connected
to the otherwise unexperienced content that exists in conscious-
ness and which "ensouls" it [ihn "beseelend"]. But such an inter-
pretation should prove to be completely untenable; and it is the
specific task [of our analysis] to achieve full clarity on this pointY
This shift is clearly reflected in Husserl's work on phantasy of the same
time. In a text from the same year he finally decides to reject the content-
PHANTASY ' S SYSTEMATI C PLACE IN HUSSERL ' S WORK
apprehension-schema and thereby reaches a fundamental turning point in
his theory of consciousness.
I had the schema "apprehended content and apprehension" and
that certainly made good sense. But we do not have, first in the
case of perception, in the concrete lived experience a color as the
content of apprehension and then the character of the apprehen-
sion, which makes for the appearance. Equally we do not, in the
case of phantasy, have again a color as content and then a modi-
fied apprehension, which makes for the phantasy appearance.
Rather: "Consciousness" consists of consciousness through and
through, and even sensation as well as phantasma is "conscious-
ness".53
There is nothing in consciousness that is not already intentional; there are
no mere contents that could be viewed in separation from their apprehen-
sions. Phantasy, then, does not consist of a present content presentifying an
absent object. Rather, phantasy intends its object as directly as perception
intends the perceptual object. Thereby, phantasy indeed corresponds to
perception. Both intentional acts constitute an object and let it appear;
they both have the same intentional structure and are subject to the same
temporal synthesis. In both acts I am also bodily present and thereby have
a certain perspective on the intended object, which in turn shows the same
horizonal structures in both phantasy and perception. 54 Phantasy is quasi-
perception, presentifying something in a quasi-here-and-now;55 I do not
have phantasms, just as in perception I do not have sensations. Nonethe-
less, phantasy, by virtue of being an intuitive act, still brings to bear the
phenomenal aspects of its object. Only that, what has been mistakenly
called "phantasma" really is phantasized perceptual apprehension.56 In
other words, phantasy consciousness is as if-consciousness, or quasi-
presentiating consciousness [gleichsamgegenwiirtigendes Bewuj3tsein].57
"Phantasy is modification through and through, and it cannot contain any-
thing but modification."58
This is the ultimate breakthrough for Husserl. In the time following his
revision of the content-apprehension-schema until 1912 he produces an
astonishing number of texts - as if freed from a burden. And, although he
treats phantasy in a number of different contexts until his latest writings,
he probably reaches a definite understanding of phantasy presentations in
1910. H usserl's final response to the problem of presentification [V erge-
genwiirtigung] lies in his conception of "inner consciousness" [inneres
Bewuj3tsein].59 He is now in the position to distinguish between the noetic
and the noematic aspects of intentional acts, and it is useful to apply this
distinction to phantasy.
Noetically speaking, phantasy acts are in fact present insofar as they are
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
lived through in inner consciousness. Noematically speaking, however,
what is presentified is precisely absent. A ccordingly, H usserl now separ-
ates reproduction from presentification [Vergegenwartigung] strictly
speaking. In a presentification [V ergegenwartigung] , lived experiences are
reproduced, whereas the intentional objects are presentified.
"R eproduction" is the presentification [Vergegenwartigung] of
inner consciousness, which is opposed to the original course of
impressions. The presentification of an objective process cannot
be called reproduction. The event in nature is not re-produced; ...
it stands before consciousness with the character of presentifica-
tion. 60
The relation between reproduction and presentification [V ergegenwarti-
gung] can be described by an eidetic law [Wesensgesetz] of intentional
implications. Each reproduction (R ) of a perception (W) of an object (a)
equals the presentification (V) of the same object: R (Wa)=Va.61 The law
expresses that there is no double intentionality in phantasy; we do not
intend two objects, the mental image and the phantasized object.
H owever, there is a "peculiar mediacy"62 involved. "Apparently, in phan-
tasy ... a fictum is presentified as simply as a perceptual object [is presenti-
ated] in perception. H owever, this is not the case.,,63 Presentification
[Vergegenwartigung] is only possible through a reproduction of an original
impressional consciousness. 64 To be more precise, this reproduction is an
implication. What is implicated in consciousness is neither contained in it
nor connected to it. To speak of an implication of perceptual consciousness
in phantasy is not to deny that phantasy is experienced as a unity of con-
sciousness. In phenomenological reflection, however, it becomes evident
that when I refer to some phantasized object, I am at the same time pre-
sentifying the perceptual act through which the object would be given as
present if it was perceived. Thus phantasy involves a possible perception
that is not actually performed; it is merely implied. 65 Moreover, phantasy
depends on perceptual consciousness in the sense that we only speak of
phantasy (and not, for example, of dreams) when, at the same time, we
still have a perceptual of awareness of our actual surroundings. 66
Furthermore, the introduction of the noesis-noema-distinction renders
it possible to explain the fact that I experience my phantasies as my phan-
tasies, the same I who is also perceiving and was remembering earlier. This
is anything but trivial, since the world of phantasy is neither subject to "the
legislation of reason" [Rechtsprechung der V ernunft]67, nor bound to objec-
tive time or space. 68 N oematically , phantasy is entirely independent from
my actual world of experience. I can phantasize myself as somebody
entirely different doing entirely different things at entirely different places.
Thus , there is no noematic interconnection between what we perceive and
PHANTASY ' S SYSTEMATIC PLACE IN HUSSERL'S WORK
what we phantasize. 69 Noetically, however, phantasies, perceptions, and
memories are connected among each other (and with all other acts) as
lived through [erlebt] in internal time-consciousness. Thus, "there is a pos-
sibility that an intuitive connection is achieved on the basis of the fact that
[the lived experiences] are constituted together in the flux of inner time-
consciousness,,,7o thereby generating a temporal unity among all lived
experiences of an I.
Phantasy is a non-positing, inactual, and in this sense "neutralized" pre-
sentification [Vergegenwartigung]. As such, it is the counterpart of
memory as the positing, actual presentification [V ergegenwartigung] with
belief. 71 In Ideas I, therefore, H usserl identifies phantasy as one kind of
"neutrality-modification." The neutrality-modification as such means that
I refrain from performing an act; I "bracket" the act and refuse to be
involved in it. Phantasy is a neutralized presentification [V ergegenwarti-
gung], i.e. I presentify an object without positing it; but I do perform an act
that brings the object to appearance. The neutrality-modification as such is
universal, i.e. all positing acts are complemented by possible neutral acts.
Whereas positing acts constitute objectivities, neutral acts do not accom-
plish anything72 ; they are nothing but the as if-performance of such acts.73
Phantasy in particular is the neutralizing modification of a positing pres en-
tification [V ergegenwartigung], i.e. of memory and expectation. 74 "We are
conscious of what we phantasize not as 'actually' present, past, or future; it
just 'hovers' in front of us merely as what lacks the actuality of a
positing.,,75 H owever, phantasy, too, is applicable to all lived experiences
and is in this sense universal, and H usserl himself recognizes that this dis-
tinction is "confusing and really not very easily to be disentangled,,76 It lies
in the fact that both modifications are universal and thus can modify all
possible acts. I can perceive, judge, believe, etc. without being involved; I
can also phantasize to be perceiving, judging, believing, etc. Whereas in
the first case the neutrality-modification is a "weak mirroring"77 of all
positing acts; phantasy is the neutralized counterpart of intuitive pres en-
tification [V ergegenwartigung] and is itself intuitive.78 In short, phantasy
presentifies perception and both types of acts are in all respects structurally
parallel.
III. The systematic place of phantasy in Husserl's thought
The most common criticism of H usserl's account of phantasy is that
H usserl, although he rejects the empiricist view of imagination as a "faint
copy" of sensation, still degrades phantasy to a poor imitation of percep-
tion by describing it as quasi-perception. 79 In this light, H usserl appears to
be "yet one more in the tradition of writers whose words do not match his
deeds in the affairs of the imagination.,,80 Further, while H usserl is cred-
ited for recognizing phantasy's methodological merits, these "merits" are
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
often perceived as questionable since they involve some of the most dis-
puted aspects of the phenomenological enterprise, e.g. eidetic variation.
However, the enigma of phantasy as the Lebenselement of phenom-
enology remains. Husserl discusses phantasy in almost all his philosophical
works spanning from the Logical Investigations (1900/01) to the posthu-
mously published Experience and Judgment (1939). This puzzling circum-
stance, however, might provide us with a possible point of entry to the
problem. It strongly suggests that only if one takes the whole range of
investigations into account, can the question of the value of phantasy for
Husserlian phenomenology be adequately addressed. In the light of this
comprehensive analysis it becomes clear that phantasy indeed serves a
vital function for phenomenology. In fact, in my view phantasy occupies a
critical systematic place that can be consistently traced throughout
Husserl's work. A nd although it is appropriate to distinguish between two
stages of his description of phantasy, this distinction does not hold for
phantasy's systematic status, which remains to be of the same crucial
significance throughout. One must be careful, then, not to let such a cate-
gorization obscure the view on the coherent systematic significance of
phantasy for the phenomenological project as a whole. In the following, I
will provide what can here be no more than a sketch of the most important
aspects of phantasy's systematic function. Consequently, in what follows,
my main concern is the exposition of the general phenomenological issues
depending on Husserl's account of phantasy, rather than a detailed discus-
sion of specific problems of his theory.
Once again, the leading systematic idea, which Husserl has already
established at the time of the Logical Investigations and which he uses
throughout his work,8! is the parallelism between perception and phantasy.
It is on the basis of this parallelism that Husserl can legitimately extend
the concept of experience so that it then includes perception as well as
quasi-perception. This enlargement of the term "experience" to include
phantasy, in turn, makes a phenomenological analysis of experience first of
all possible. For it can hardly be demanded of the phenomenologist she
actually performs all the acts that she intends to describe, or actually per-
ceives all the objects whose essences she intends to grasp. Like the geome-
trician, Husserl explains, the phenomenologist needs to use models. 82
Phenomenology investigates, to put it simply, acts of consciousness and
the appearance of their correlative objects. Therefore, the "model" to be
used by phenomenologists must be a model for intentional acts and the
appearance of their objects. It must be quasi act and quasi thing appear-
ance, like experience in all essential respects but only as if experience; in
other words, the model for experience appropriate to phenomenological
analysis is phantasy.83
It might be objected that what is here presented as Husserl's insight can
hardly be called revolutionary because, without doubt, the parallelism
PHANTASY'S SYSTEMATIC PLACE IN HUSSERL ' S WORK
between phantasy and perception places Husserl in a fairly long tradition
of writers who claim, and did so long before him, that the actual existence
of a thing does not add any predicates to it. However, when, for example,
Kant says that with respect to a particular object its possible and actual
predicates are co-extensive84 and thereby postulates a similar parallelism,
then the conditions under which he is justified to make such a claim differ
from the conditions Husserl has to meet. For H usserl, who criticizes Kant
for his allegedly "constructive" method, must meet his own criteria of
what it means to demonstrate the truth of a claim. A ccording to his phe-
nomenological method, if there is a parallelism between perception and
phantasy so that, for the purpose of phenomenological analysis, they can
both equally be taken as experience, then phantasy and perception must
show themselves to be parallel; it must be evident that they are.85 Thus, the
parallelism between perception and phantasy is only phenomenologically
demonstrated if it is revealed by a phenomenological description of both
perception and phantasy, which might be at least one reason for Husserl's
intense preoccupation with this issue.
For, when in the Logical Investigations he declares the "necessary par-
allelism between perception and imagination" and boldly claims to have
thereby secured the "extended notion of intuition"86, his confidence seems
to have been caused by an underestimation rather than a mastery of phan-
tasy. What he is able to show is that "being in its attributive and predica-
tive function, is not fulfilled .. . in any perception. H ere we are reminded
of Kant's sentence: Being is not a real predicate. ,,87 H owever, from the fact
that "being is absolutely imperceptible,,88 it does not yet follow that acts
constituting existing objects (perceptual acts) and acts constituting objects
that might or might not exist (phantasy acts) are structured in an analogu-
ous way, which hence must be shown in an independent analysis. As I
explained above, Husserl's initial, pictorial conception of phantasy from
the time of the Logical Investigations leads to serious difficulties, not the
least of which is the problem of double intentionality. Husserl is at that
point not yet able to support his claim of the parallelism between percep-
tion and phantasy. This means that Husserl is not justified in using a
fundamental element of his method until his revision of the content-
apprehension-schema. From then on, however, he can rightfully speak of
the parallelism and uses it still in Experience and Judgment when he says
of experience that it is "to be taken so broadly that we do not only under-
stand it as the self-giving of individual existence in general, that is, the self-
giving of existential certainty, but also as the modification of this certainty
... ; and not only that, but also the experience in the mode of the 'as if,' the
giving of an individual in phantasy. ,,89
Yet a second methodological problem remains unresolved until H usserl
finally establishes phantasy as the neutralization of positing presentifica-
tion [Vergegenwiirtigung]; for the concept of epoche also depends on a
 INTENTIONALITY , PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
clarification of phantasy. The distinction between positing and non-posit-
ing acts, which H usserl introduces in the Logical Investigations, cannot
account for the difference between the deliberate suspension of belief in
the epoche and the lived-through lack of belief in phantasy. The exact
correspondence between positing and non-positing acts - in the L ogical
Investigations described as a law - then is both unjustified and unclear,
which is why H usserl speaks there vaguely of "mere presentations" [blosse
V orstellungen] of the actual acts.90 H owever, as was shown above, at the
time of Ideas I H usserl has finally come to an understanding of phantasy
that specifies phantasy acts as intuitive neutralizations of intuitive presen-
tification [V ergegenwdrtigung] , which clearly sets them apart from the
general suspension of belief characteristic for the epoche. H ence he can
there present a detailed account of the distinction between neutrality-
modifications as such and phantasy-modifications in particular. 91 This, in
turn, opens up the possibility for a rigorous investigation of phantasy
under the phenomenological reduction through which we can discover the
"peculiar specialities phantasy accomplishes as phantasy.,,92 For phantasy
can actually provide us with something that perception is unable to offer;
it constitutes possibilities.
When we phantasize something without reflecting on our act, we do not
posit what appears. Phantasy is the "voluntary refrain from any position,"
a "mental activity that does not serve the purpose of making any decision
for the conscious world .. . . Phantasy is the realm of purposelessness, of
play. "93 As such, phantasy is in fact characterized as that which is not
capable of a constitutive accomplishment. 94 However, by means of a
change in attitude I can take what is quasi-given to me as the actual
appearance of a possibility.95 When I, for example, phantasize a unicorn,
the intended object is a unicorn not posited as actual. But I can shift my
attention and take the object as an actual fictum of a unicorn and posit it
as a possible object. In this sense, phantasy can give us objects as originally
as perception does, only it gives them as possibilities. 96
The reduction that enables us to grasp these possibilities is itself made
possible by the fact that phantasy, in the sense explained above, implies
perception. Instead of taking the phantasy as an as if-perception, I can
within that phantasy perform an epoche on the possible perception
implied. I am then presentiating a possibility rather than presentifying an
actuality.97 "Therefore, we have two realms of pure consciousness: the
realm of actualities of consciousness [Bewuf3tseinswirklichkeiten] and the
realm of possibilities of consciousness [Bewuf3tseinsmoglichkeiten]. ,,98 This
insight is central to a phenomenological justification of a priori judgments.
If phantasy accomplished nothing but the neutralization of positing acts, it
would be difficult to base any eidetic, let alone a priori, knowledge on it. 99
If, however, phantasy can be said to posit possibilities, then we can phe-
nomenologically demonstrate even a priori judgments like geometric
PHANTASY ' S SYSTEMATIC PLACE IN HUSSERL ' S WORK
judgements about "any triangle," i.e. any possible triangle. For such possi-
bilities are not mere possibilities referring to "what can possibly be
thought" [reines Denkbarsein], but are themselves something that can be
demonstrated. 1°O
The parallelism between perception and phantasy turns out to imply a
parallelism between actuality and possibility.WI A nd it is only for that
reason that a priori judgments can be phenomenologically justified, rather
than "constructed" in what H usserl would say is the Kantian way. Just as
the geometrician takes the particular triangle in front of her as an example
of "any triangle", the phenomenologist can take a particular perceived or
phantasized object as an example of "any object" and thereby she is able
to make a priori judgments about objects in general. For what could only
be assumed on the basis of H usserl's early account of phantasy is now
evident: "From every concrete actuality and every single feature that is
actually experienced [i.e. perceived or phantasized-JJ] and can be experi-
enced in it the way is open to a realm of ideal or pure possibility and,
thereby, to a priori thought. "102 Thus, understood in this context, fiction is
the source, "from which the cognition of 'eternal truths' takes its nourish-
ment.,,103
V. Conclusion
It is now time to return to the initial question and to ask once again
whether H usserl manages to defend himself against the accusation that he
ultimately succumbs to empiricism. What exactly is the difference between
the claim that the ideas of imagination are "faint images" of our percep-
tions 104 and that phantasy is nothing but quasi-perception? Is it true that
H usserl "falls behind his own proper method and introduces into phenom-
enology remainders of empiricist positivism, which he criticizes and from
which he sought to free himself throughout his career,,?105 With respect to
H usserl's early conception of phantasy, the latter question clearly must be
answered positively. As was shown above, the very fact that H usserl
himself agrees with the criticism drives him to further analyses and eventu-
ally leads to the fundamental revision of his earlier theory. With respect to
this revised theory, however, the question must be answered negatively.
The justification for this response also includes the answer to the first
question of the difference between phantasy as a "faint copy" of percep-
tion and phantasy as quasi-perception.
The difference between H usserl's account and the empiricist theory
does not lie in a denial of sensual contents on Husserl'S side. H usserl even
agrees with the empiricist point that the objects of our phantasies are in
terms of content mainly recombinations and rearrangements of what we
experience in perception. H owever, this is not the subject of phenomeno-
logical analysis but rather of psychology. The merit of a phenomenological
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
l PHANTASY ' S SYSTEMATIC PLACE IN HUSSERL ' S WORK
investigation is precisely that it can disregard these contents, again without
denying them, in order to structurally decribe the acts of phantasizing and
their correlative objects. According to Husserl, it is precisely this disregard
of empirical contents apart from their role as moments in intentional acts
that charcterizes phenomenology as a transcendental enterprise. 106
In its purely eidetic attitude, which "brackets" all transcendence,
phenomenology necessarily reaches on its own ground of pure
consicousness this entire complex of transcendental problems in
the specific [phenomenological] sense and therefore deserves the
name transcendental phenomenology. On its own ground it must
arrive not at regarding the lived experiences as arbitrary dead
entities, like "complexes of contents" ... but at seizing the essen-
tially genuine problem which they pose as intentional experiences
and do so purely by means of their eidetic essence as "conscious-
ness 0["107
By means of such analysis Husserl discovers that the acts of perceiving and
of phantasizing are essentially different while being structurally parallel.
This precisely refutes the empiricist convictions of the supremacy of per-
ception and the derivitive character of phantasy. To say that phantasy and
perception are parallel acts of consciousness means to acknowledge each
act with its own evidential force. Whereas perception provides us with
evidence in the realm of transcendent experience of actual objects, phan-
tasy provides us with possibilities and likewise does so with evidence. lOB
Thus, this parallelism does not imply, as is so often claimed, that Husserl
moulds his notion of phantasy on his notion of perception and that there-
fore perception serves as a model for phantasy. The opposite holds true:
by being able to phenomenologically demonstrate this parallelism in his
later analyses of phantasy, Husserl is in the position to justify what other
sciences and other philosophical schools have taken for granted, namely
that we can take what we see in phantasy as possible experience, in other
words, that we can use phantasy as a model for experience in general.
Admittedly, if we are interested in phantasy as a free and creative
human capacity or as the point of entry to investigations concerning aes-
thetics, then we might be disappointed by Husserl's account. 109 Although
he engages in investigations of the aesthetic and artistic aspects of picture-
consciousness and phantasy in some manuscripts 110, it is obvious that his
principal interest lies elsewhere. Husserl first focuses on a description of
phantasy acts in distinction from acts of perceiving in order to then investi-
gate phantasy's merits for phenomenology as a science [Wissenschaft). The
crucial question is how what we "see" in phantasy applies to our
experience in general and thus can be more than a mere construction of
the mind. In this sense, we might want to state the obvious and say that
Husserl is more of a geometrician than an artist. H owever, unlike the geo-
metrician, he cannot take the analogy between phantasy and perception
for granted and is therefore forced to work through precisely the issues
that I outlined in this paper until phenomenological evidence confirms his
initial stipulation.
Analogies, which force themselves upon us, may suggest, before
actual intuition, speculations about essential connections, and
from them we can draw further conclusions: but eventually [our]
actual "seeing" [Schauen] of essential connections must redeem
our speculations. As long as this is not the case, we do not have a
phenomenological result. 11l
Notes
1 Despite the fact that "phantasy" is not commonly used in English, I chose it as
a technical term that is clearly distinguished from the multitude of meanings
and connotations more cornmon terms (such as "fantasy", "fancy" or "imagi-
nation") tend to evoke.
2 Hua III, 148.1.
3 E. Husserl, Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung, E. Marbach (ed.), The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980 (=Hua XXIII).
4 As an honorable exception should be noted Paolo Volonte, Husserls Phiinom-
enologie der Imagination, Freiburg: Alber, 1997 - Volonte also notes the dif-
ference between two phases in Husserl's account and stresses the crucial
function of phantasy. However, his focus is slightly different and thus he does
not draw the systematic conclusions I draw in the third section.
5 Although I will in my paper speak of the "earlier" and the "later" version of
Husserl's account it is important to keep in mind that these are in no way sym-
metrical, since Husser! begins his revisions as early as 1905.
6 Cf. Hua XIX/I , 529.-All translations in this paper are my own.
7 Brentano notes, for example, that all different uses of the term "phantasy"
have only that in common that phantasy is some kind of presentation [Vorstel-
lung]. (Cf. F. Brentano, Grundzuge der Asthetik, ed. from the Nachlass by
Franziska Mayer-Hildebrand, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988, pp. 45
and 69.) For a detailed exposition of Brentano's influence on Husserl see R.
D. Rollinger, "Husserl and Brentano on imagination," in Archiv f Gesch. d.
Philosophie, vol. 75, 195-210.
8 Hua XIXll, 437.
9 Cf. Hua XIXll, 434.
10 Cf. Hua XIXll , 500.
11 Cf. Hua XIXl2, 620-624.
12 Cf. Hua XIX/2, 610.
13 Cf. Hua XIXl2, 614.
14 According to Husserl, imagination falls behind perception in all these regards
(ct. Hua XIXl2, 608).
15 Husserl thereby rejects the empiricist view of imagination as "faint copy" of
perception. Cf. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Understanding, (ed) D. F.
Norton and M. J. Norton, Oxford University Press, 2000, 1,1.
 INTENTIONALITY , PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
16 Cf. Hua XIXl2, 624. The act-matter cannot be considered as a possible crite-
rion because it would imply that we distinguish phantasies and perception by
distinguishing "objects" that we perceive from "objects" that we phantasize.
Given that we can, at least in principle, phantasize everything that we can per-
ceive, this is clearly not the case.
17 Cf. Hua XIXIl, 499. - In the three different cases of perceiving a house, imag-
ining a house, or seeing a house in a picture we apprehend the contents differ-
ently. We can even apprehend one and the same content in different ways, for
example, when we realize that what we first took to be woman is really a wax
doll and change our apprehension accordingly (ct. LU 1111, 458-460) .
18 Cf. Hua XXIII, text 1 (1904/05) , 4.
19 Hua XXIII, text 1 (1904/05), 16; my emphasis.
20 Ibid; my emphasis.
21 This distinguishes non-positing presentations from positing presentations in
the mode of doubt.
22 I take into consideration that the English words "image" and "picture" trans-
late the single German word "Bild. " Therefore, whenever the mental "Bild" is
meant, I decided to use "image, " whereas I use "picture" whenever the exter-
nal "Bild" is referred to. Of course, the fact that the German uses "Bild" in
both cases, makes the tendency to think of images as pictures, though internal
ones, even more obvious. For H usserl, therefore, the "image-theory" might
just as well be called "picture-theory."
23 For the same reason, H usserl at times uses the term "perceptual phantasy" for
picture-consciousness.
24 In this paper I can only allude to the aspects of picture-consciousness that are
directly relevant to this distinction. For detailed discussions see John Brough,
"Some Husserlian comments on depiction and art," American Catholic Philo-
sophical Quarterly (1982) 241-259; E. Marbach, Mental Representation and
Consciousness. Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Representation and
Reference, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993, esp. ch. 5; P. Volonte, Husserls Phanome-
nologie der Imagination, Munchen: Verlag Kar! Alber, 1995, esp. § 39.
25 For example, when we look at a picture and say "this looks just like her! " we
do not mean the physical picture (which looks like other physical pictures
rather than like a real person) , but we mean the picture object, i.e., the figure
that appears in the picture. On the other hand, the picture object clearly is not
the depicted real "her" who is probably of a different size and color, three-
dimensional, moving, etc. (Cf. H ua XXIII, Beilage 1 [1898],112). Of course, I
can shift my attention to the physical picture, which thereby ceases to be a
picture for me. It is then apprehended like any other perceptual object. (Cf.
Guido Kung, "Husserl on pictures and intentional objects," in Review of Meta-
physics 26 (1973): 670-680, esp. 671)
26 Hua XXIII, text 1 (1904/05), 46. See also: "The picture-object truly does not
exist, which means not only that it has no existence outside my consciousness
but also that it has no existence inside my consciousness; it has no existence at
all " (Hua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05] , 22). To assume that the picture object exists
as mental image is precisely the mistake of "image theory. " Husser! ridicules
the "naive" thinker who "conceives this in a more simple way. The image is
stuck in the 'mind' and 'outside' is the object. If this object does not exist, if I
for example phantasize a dragon, then we just have the mental image, and
there is nothing left to explain. Nothing except of the trivial matter of how the
mind manages to present an object by means of an image that is different from
it. ( .. .) If I put a picture into a drawer, does the drawer now present the
PHANTASY ' S SYSTEMATIC PLA CE I N H USSERL 'S WORK
[depicted] object?" (Hua XXIII, Beilage 1 [1898] , 110). Unlike the picture-
object, the picture-subject may exist (my friend in this picture) , it may have
existed (like Mona Lisa) in the past, but it may also be impossible to exist (like
Dali's landscapes).
27 The difference between symbolic and pictorial representation is clarified at
this point. Both apprehensions point in a certain sense "outside of them-
selves" [aus sich hinaus]. However, whereas symbolic apprehension points
outside of itself to an object that is internally foreign to the appearing object,
pictorial apprehension points through itself [durch sich hindurch] to the
intended object, which is presentified in the representing picture object. The
connection between picture object and picture subject is internal and neces-
sary in the sense that we are not free to just see anything in it. The external
connection between the symbol and what it points to is external and merely
conventional. This is why symbolic representation is not intuitive; in it the
represented does not appear at all. (Cf. Hua XXIII, text 1 (1904/05)§15)
28 Hua XXIII, text 1 (1904/05) , p. 30.
29 By "Haupsttick" I am here and hereafter referring to text 1 in H ua XXIII
which is the third of four lecture courses called "Hauptstucke aus der
Phiinomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis" given in the winter semester
1904/05.
30 Cf. Hua XXIII, text 1 (1904/05) 16.
31 Hua XXIII, Beilage 1 (1898) 112.
32 Hua XI X /1 , 436.
33 Hua XIXl2, 588.
34 "When we phantasize we intend some other thing than the appearing one,
which can be felt to be distinct from it and which pictorially represents it"
(Hua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05] 29) .
35 Hua XIX/2 , 621.
36 Hua XIXl2, 623. In the Hauptsuck Husserl points out the conflict between the
perceptual field and the imaginative field . The field of picture-consciousness
co-exists with the perceptual field, since we actually have to see the physical
picture in order to grasp what is depicted in it. It is precisely this conflictual co-
existence that establishes picture-consciousness in the first place. The fields of
perception and phantasy, however, can never be viewed together and must
therefore "exclude the possiblity of a unity of appearance" (H ua XXIII, text 1
[1904/05] 77). Hence we do not mistake phantasmata for sensations because
we notice that what is phantasized does not fit into the perceptual nexus.
Obviously, this explanation is highly unsatisfactory. After all , it can hardly be
the case that we compare our sensual contents with our environment before
we decide to apprehend them in a certain way. Rather, we must first appre-
hend them in order to then be able to compare the apprehended content, i.e. ,
the then constituted object, to anything at all.
37 In a footnote to section 8 of his phantasy lecture from the Hauptstucke he
explains: "We intend to try to carry through as far as possible the aspect of
imagination and the opinion that phantasy presentation can be interpreted as
pictorial presentation. Although there is no lack of doubt .. . [later he adds]
which will prove to be correct in retrospect" (H ua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05] 16).
38 Hua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05] 83.
39 Hua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05] 85. See also Hua XXIII, Beilage IX [probably
1905] 150: "Is the talk of pictoriality not imported into phantasy on the basis
of the knowledge of the difference between appearance and 'reality'?"
40 H ua III, 253.
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
41 Hua XXIII, Beilage X [probably 1905] 161. See also ibid, text 1 [1904/05] 83;
ibid. Beilage IX [probably 1905] 150; Hua III, 90; Hua VIII, 112-113; Hua X,
183.
42 Cf. Hua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05] 77.
43 "To the phantasms belong imaginative apprehensions. These imaginative
apprehensions are not founded in direct perceptual apprehensions, which first
posit the sensual content as present and then as an image of something else;
but .. . they immediately found an immanent consciousness of presentification
[Vergegenwiirtigkeitsbewufitsein] ... " (Hua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05], 78). See
also Hua XXIII, Beilage IX (probably 1905), 150: "When I live in phantasy I
notice nothing of a representative consciousness, I do not see the appearance
in front of me and grasp it as a representative of something else, but I see the '
thing, the processes etc."
44 Hua XXIII, text 1 [1904/05] 87.
45 These lectures are the ones that were published in 1928 by Martin Heidegger
as the Lectures on a Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness: E. Husserl,
Vorlesungen zur Phiinomenologie des inneren Zeitbewufitseins, M. Heidegger
(ed.), Tlibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1928.
46 Hua X, 10. It is not surprising, therefore, that Husserl thinks that the analysis
of internal time-consciousness and the analysis of phantasy presuppose each
other (cf. E . Marbach, introd to Hua XXIII, p. xxviii). However, as Husserl
clarifies, phantasy, in this context, comprises all presentifications [Vergegen-
wiirtigungen], including memory and expectation - a generalization that
Husserl problematizes only later. This generalization is the result of Husserl's
initial conviction that all presentifications are founded in mere phantasies.
"Jede anschauliche Vergegenwartigung von einem Gegenstandlichen stellt
dasselber phantasiemaBig vor. Sie 'enthalt' eine Phantasieerscheinung ... Es
bleibt liberall als gemeinsamer Kern die 'bloBe Phantasieerscheinung' " (Hua
X, Beilage II, 102).
47 The main difference between retention and phantasy is the continuous trans-
ition from impression to retention. There is no such transition between phan-
tasy and impression (cf. Hua X, 47) .
48 "In mere phantasy each individual is also somehow temporally extended; it
has its now, its earlier and later, but the now, the earlier and later are merely
imagined like the entire object" (Hua X, 41) .
49 Hua X, 89 This is the same distinction Husserl uses in the Logical Investiga-
tions: "For we can distinguish these two fundamental classes of experience: the
ones that are acts, 'consciousness of,' experiences that 'relate to something,'
the others are not. The sensed color does not relate to anything, neither do
phantasy contents, e.g., a phantasma 'red' ... " (Hua XIX/I , 387).
50 Cf. Hua X, § § 35, 36.
51 Cf. R. Bernet in the introduction to his edition of E. Husserl, Texte zur
Phiinomenologie des inneren Zeitbewufitseins (1893-/917) pp . XLVII-XLIX.
52 Bernet, Nr. 49, 319. - Husserl obviously agrees with Kling who claims that
Husserl's theory is still a kind of representationalism as long as he uses the
analogy to picture-consciousness. However, this is precisely the kernel of
Husserl's revisions (cf. Kling, 672). - See also Hua X, Beilage 9, 119: "It is
simply nonsense to speak of an 'unconscious' content which would become
conscious only later. Consciousness necessarily is consciousness in all its
phases."
53 Hua XXIII, text 8 [1909] , 265 .
54 It should be noted that this also implies Husserl's rejection of a merely visual
PHANTASY'S SYSTEMATIC PLACE IN HU S SERL'S WORK
understanding of phantasy. Phantasy can simulate the same bodily experi-
ences as we have in perception and always involves a certain stand-point (cf.
Marbach, Mental Representation, 77). Phantasy is in fact as little reduced to
visual experience as is perception.
55 E . Husserl, Erfahru.ng und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik,
Hamburg: FelIx Merner Verlag, 1999 [Experience and Judgment] 196-197.
56 Hua XXIII, text 9 [1909] , 275; text 10 [1909] , 276. See also Ideas I: "One would
have to first of all learn to see that we are dealing with a different conscious-
?-ess, namely that the phantasma is not merely a pale datum of sensation, but
IS es~entlally p~antasy" (Hua III, 253) . However, Husserl's account of phan-
tasy rn Ideas I IS bound. to c~eate conf~sion. For it has at this point already
undergone all the modificatIOns descnbed here and nonetheless still uses
probably in order to avoid great technical detail, the terms "sensation" and
"phantasma. " Hence commentators have noticed that the account in Ideas I
differs from the account in the Logical Investigations before the publication of
Hua XXIII, though without being able to fully elaborate the distinctions (for
example, R. Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations , E vanston, Ill: Northwestern
University Press, 1974, p. 124).
57 Hua XXIII, text 13 [1910],299.
58 Hua XXIII, text 8 [1909], 268. Again, Husserl directly contradicts his earlier
statements. "It would certainly be a fundamental error to speak of an imma-
nent 'red' in a phantasy presentation, that is, to speak of apprehension with
regard to the phantasma 'red' as if one mode of apprehension of a content
'red' caused a perception of red ... and a different mode of the same content
caused a phantasy apprehension" (Hua XXIII, text 9 [1909],275).
59 Cf. Marbach, intro to Hua XXIII, p. lxvi.
60 Hua X, Beilage XII, 128.
61 Cf. Hua XXIII, text 14 [1911 or 1912], 311; Hua X, 128.
62 "And then I find that intentionality is nothing quite as simple as the act of
phantasizing and in it the centaur-scene as its simple intentional object in the
mode of the 'as if.' Rather, in a peculiar mediacy [in einer eigentumlichen Mit-
~elbarkeit] I find myself conscious of this intentional object [finde ich dieses
rntentIonale ObJ~kt bewuBt], namely first as intentional object of my perceiv-
mg. However, It IS no~ the object of my actual perceiving but of my necessarily
co-phantaslzed perceIVIng as whose subject I thus necessarily belong to the
phantasy world as well" (Hua VIII, 116).
63 Hua VIII, 130.
64 Husserl still admits imprecision, since we do not literally reproduce lived
experien.ces "the way they were"or ." the way they would be. " When we repro-
duce a lIved expenence [Erlebllls] m thiS specific sense we are aware of the
fact that it is not original. However, we do not implicate a former actual lived
experience but only a possible one which might have or might not have been
an actual lived experience in the past. In fact, this is precisely what it means to
presentify (cf. Hua XIII, text 14 [1911 or 1912], 310).
65 Cf. Marbach, Mental Representation, 6lf. The fact that a possible perception is
Impl~e?~as Importa~t consequences for phantasy in its capacity of constituting
pOSSibilIties (see sectIOn IV of this paper).
66 Cf. Experience and Judgment, §42; Marbach, Mental Representation, 83-85.
67 Hua III, 249.
68 "Time-consciousness is always implied . ... Even when I do not phantasize the
process into the past or into the present surroundings, I sill phantasize a dura-
tion, a process. I 'phantasize myself into the perception ' of these things and
 INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION AND TEMPORALITY
phantasize their now, their temporal presence, although I do not pay attention
to it. These things do not exist in 'objective time,' i.e., in the time of actual
objects and processes, because they do not exist at all. They are fictions and so
is their time" (Hua XXIII, text 2 a [probably 1904], 178).
69 Cf. Experience and Judgment, 206.
70 Ibid. 206f.
71 Cf. Hua XXIII, texts 11-13 [probably 1910].
72 Hua III, 247f.
73 Cf. Hua XXIII, texts 15 [1912] and 18a [1818].
74 Hua III, 250.
75 Hua III, 256f.
76 Hua III, 250. Brann, for example, fails to acknowledge the distinction
altogether. Thus she incorrectly identifies phantasy with the "mere refraining
or 'suspension' from affirmation of existence [which] is just that epoche which
lies at the heart of the phenomenological method", Eva Brann, The World of
the Imagination, Boston: Rowman and Littlefied, 1991, 126f.).
77 Hua III, 260.
78 Cf. Hua III, §112. Further evidence for the difference between the neutrality-
modification and the phantasy-modification is gained from the insight that we
can iterate the latter but not the former. In other words, we can phantasize
that we phantasize that we phantasize, ... that we perceive something.
However, it is impossible not to be involved in not being involved in perceiv-
ing. Later Husserl characterizes phantasy as "reproductive neutrality" in
opposition to "neutrality as such. "
79 Cf. M. Saraiva, L'imagination selon Husser!, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970,
251; Mark Drost, "The primacy of perception in Husserl's theory of imagining,"
in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 1, no. 3 (1990); J. Sallis,
"Spacing imagination. Husserl, and the phenomenology of imagination," in P.
van Tongeren et al. (eds), Eros and Eris, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992,201-215.
80 Brann, 122.
81 Cf. Hua XIXl2, 679f.; Hua X, 128; Hua VIII, 115 and 119; Experience and
Judgment, 21£.
82 Cf. Hua III, 147f.
83 The use of phantasy as a model is what E.S. Casey calls "hypothetical possibil-
ity" in Imagining, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976, 114. Casey
takes this from G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind, New York: Barnes & Noble,
1949.
84 Cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 286-287/A 233.
85 For a similar view see Volonte, 107.
86 "In virtue of the necessary parallelism between perception and imagination,
whereby a possible imagination of the same essence corresponds to every per-
ception . .. there is also a simple imagination for every simple perception,
which means at the same time that the extended concept of intuition is
secured. That we can therefore define sensual objects as the possible object of
sensual imagination and of sensual intuition in general does of course not
mean an essential generalization of our previous theory" (Hua XIXl2, 679f.).
87 Hua XIXl2, 665.
88 Hua XIXl2, 666.
89 Experience and Judgment, 21£.
90 Cf. Hua XIX/I, 499.
91 Cf. Hua III, § 111.
92 Hua VIII, 134.
PHANTASY ' S SY S T E MATIC PLACE IN H U S SERL'S WORK
93 Hua XXIII, text 20 [1921/24], 577. See also Hua XXXI, §3: "Playful and posi-
tional consciousness" (10-14).
94 Hua, XXIII, text 19 [probably 1922/23], 558.
95 Cf. H ua XXIII, text 18 [1918], 507, Beilage LVI [probably 1918], 529, text 19
[probably 1922/23]547f.; H ua I 66, 94; H ua XXV, 170.
96 Cf. H ua XXV, 170.
97 Cf. Hua VIII, 116-119.
98 Hua XXV, 171. The connection between phantasy and possibility is already
treated in the Logical Investigations and in the lectures on Thing and Space
(1907). Again, with this early conception of phantasy H usserl cannot grasp the
constitutive aspect of phantasy. He then understands phantasy as a presentifi-
cation of a possible fulfillment of an empty intuition. A s such, it is a merely
arbitrary, unmotivated possibility without epistemological relevance. (Cf. Hua
XIX/I, 120; Hua XVI, 285-293). For a detailed account on possibility in
Husserl, see for example J. N. Mohanty, "Husserl on possibility," in Husserl
Studies 1 (1984): 13-29 and Volonte, esp. § 53.
99 This concern is voiced for example by D . B. Kuspit, "Fiction and phenom-
enology," in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29 (1968): 16-33.
100 Experience and Judgment, 450f.
101 Husserl mentions the particular relation between possibility and phantasy
already in the Logical Investigation, again without being able to explain it.
"We take that to be possible which - objectively speaking - can be realized in
the manner of an appropriate phantasy image .... In virtue of the ideal connec-
tion between perception and imagination [Einbildung], whereby to every per-
ception corresponds a priori a possible imagination, ... the restriction of the
notion [of possibility] to imagination is irrelevant" (H ua XIXl2, 645f.; my
emphasis).
102 Experience and Judgment, 428.
103 Hua III, 148.
104 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Understanding, I, 1.
105 Saraiva, 249: Husserl "retarde sur as propre methode et introduit en
phenomenologie des restes du positivisme empiriste qui'il critique et dont il a
cherche, pendant toute sa carriere, a se degager." Saraiva speaks here of
Husserl's earlier conception of phantasy, since she is not aware of the dra-
matic shift in Husserl's thought. However, it is still appropriate to ask this
question with regard to Husserl's final notion of phantasy; only that the
answer is different in the two cases.
106 For my view on the relevance and implications of Husserl's mature transcen-
dental account of phantasy see my "Husserl's first philosophy of phantasy: a
transcendental phenomenology of imagination," in Phenomenology and the
Cognitive Sciences (forthcoming 2004).
107 Hua III, 198.
108 On this point I agree with Volonte who develops this claim in detail (cf. Ch. 3:
"Phantasie und Erkenntnis").
109 This is the point of departure for J. -Po Sartre, L'imaginaire, Paris: Gallimard,
1948, M. Dufrenne, Phenomenologie de l'experience esthetique, Paris:
Epimethee, P.D.F, 1953 and E. S. Casey, Imagining, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1976.
110 Relevant are mainly the following texts in Hua XXIII: Beilage VI, Beilage IX,
text 15h, text 17, text 18b, Beilagen LVII-LX, text 20d. For a short summary
see Marbach, introd. to Hua XXIII, p. lxxvi-lxxxi.
111 Hua III, 158.