On the Relationship Between Husserl's Phenomenology and Psychological Insight

Author(s): Ludwig Binswanger

Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , Dec., 1941, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Dec., 1941),
pp. 199-210
Published by: International Phenomenological Society

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 ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUSSERL'S
PHENOMENOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL
INSIGHT 1

The following discourse concerning the relationship between Hus-

serl's phenomenology and psychological insight has been taken from an
unpublished book of the author, entitled: The Anthropological Basis,
and the Essence, of Psychological Insight. The anthropological basis
which is there elaborated on a large scale in accordance with phenom-
enological and ontological principles, has revealed itself to be, in the
first instance, love, that is, loving communion in the "home" or the
"eternal"; and secondly, discursive relationship, or mere coexistence
and cooperation in the realm of space and time. Based on these founda-
tions, and on "existence," psychological insight has been shown to be
the adventure of trying to overcome this seeming contradiction between
"love" and "care," or, in other words, between "being-in-the-world"
and "being-beyond-it." The being of man is not understood, when it
is described as mere "care" or "being-in-the-world," which, as is well
known, is the doctrine of Heidegger. Rather must it be conceived as
"being-in-" as well as "being-beyond-the-world," namely as a kind of
longing and striving after the infinite (the home), or as love's eternal
moment (eternity) within the finite world of care. At the same time it
has been made plain that and how far love (i. e., the "dual" mode of
man's being) is ontologically prior to care (both with regard to the
self-preservation of the individual and the problems arising out of social
relations).
We do not wish to insist here on the very important divergences
between phenomenology as conceived by Goethe or H~usserl except in
so far as they are connected with the problem of psychological insight
and where they may be said to have far-reaching consequences. The
difference is briefly the following. On the one hand, we have to deal
with an understanding of "metamorphosis" or of the change of essen-
tial features, an understanding which proceeds from the interrelation-
ship between the knowing subject and reality, and which is, so to speak,
constantly "on the move." On the other hand, we find "intentionality,'
or the subject's single-handed attempt to understand the world of
"objects" while remaining, as it were, in a position of aloofness.
For Kant, the Neo-Kantians, and Professor J-Jnigswald it is a

1. The translation has been made by Dr. Gauss of Basle University. As a verbatim
rendering of the original German text would have led to unidiomatic turns of phrases, I
thought it proper to give him a free hand in his translating work. His translation, however,
has my full approbation.

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200 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

truism that there is just as much (or as little) knowledge as there are
given objects. The same, however, applies to a certain extent to Hus-
serl. For him the object is the ultimate standard of all statements that
can be made about it, and knowledge, in the widest sense of the word,
is declared to be possible only as knowledge of objects.* However
much he may stress the uninterrupted correlation between the violoG;
and the vo6ka, even to the minutest differentiations and details, in
which, as we would say, consists the great superiority of his Ideas to
his earlier Logical Investigatiopns; there still remains the fact that with
him intentionality, that is, the dialectical relationship between vqoaL-
and vo6tua, is representing, so to speak, the sphere of all true being.
Being for him means still being an object, or, to speak more cautiously,
the fundamental hypothesis of Husserl's phenomenology is the doctrine
that the way to true being is to be found in original consciousness as
experienced in the various forms of intention. The problem of being is
thus reduced to an analysis of intention, and phenomenology becomes
a science of consciousness. In the theory, therefore, of a possible self-
revelation of all being to an analysis of intention may appear the par-
ticular conception of Husserl's phenomenology which distinguishes it
from all other philosophical endeavors to interpret being within the
horizon of truth.2

It was Joseph Kdnig,3 as far as I am aware, who first made the

clear statement that Husserl's essence meant a "living being of pure
insight." "It is," he adds, "and it is insight; but it is only in so far as
it knows and it knows only in so far as it is." And "intentionality," he
concludes, "the basic problem of all phenomenology, is but another
name for this correlation between knowledge and being, which is also
the first characteristic of consciousness"
There is no doubt that Scheler was the first who gave phenomen-
ology this peculiar ontological turn; but the formulation of Kbnig
seems to us clearer, although we cannot give our full approbation to all

* Editorial note 1: It should be noted, however, that the constitution of intermonad

communities as described in the fifth of Husserl's Meditations Cartesiennes introduces and
acknowledges in the Alter Ego a being that "in itself" is not merely an object of knowledge.
Husserl's recognition of transcendental intersubjectivity goes far to allow for Dr. Binswan-
ger's concept of a loving community of life. As a matter of fact, the very issue which is at
stake in the following discussion does not seem so much the object-character of being (this
problem is partly due to some ambiguity of procedure) nor intentionality simply as the
distinctive character of consciousness (intentionality can be understood in so broad a sense
as to cover the main functions in question); the real issue at stake is the idealistic thesis
that experience means objectifying synthesis, and that the unity and unities of being are
constituted by the unity of meaning in transcendental consciousness. Following Heidegger,
Binswanger points to experiences which dlo not perform any task of proper objectification.-
Fr. K.
2. Cf. Eugen Fink, "Das Problem der Phinomenologie Edmund Husserls," Revue
international de philosophie, vol. 1, p. 248. The whole paper should be read.
3. Der Begribf der Intuition, Halle, 1926, p. 293.

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 RELATIONSHIP: PHENOMENOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT 20I

he says.4 That the idea of being is not wholly coincident with the idea
of being an object, or, in other words, that being and being an object
cannot be used as interchangeable terms-to adopt this negative turn
of expression-this is at any rate the fundamental thesis of Heidegger's
ontology, as well as of ours. Positively, IHeidegger tries to show the
inadequacy of Husserl's conception of ontology by proving that inten-
tionality is only a derivative term, that it is a mere mode of "care" or
of the essence of human existence as "being-in-the-world." He further
shows that anxiety, the other all important concept in his philosophy,
must ontologically be described as an anxiety in the face of abysmal
nothingness, and not merely as the fear of something, viz., of a certain
fact or event in the realm of space and time. In addition to that he
urges that anxiety, rightly understood, does not perform any intentional
"work" and that, correspondingly, it never can be reasonably expected
to lie within the grasp of a mere analysis of intention. For Husserl,
man's perception concerning himself, his discovery that he is this or
that particular human being with his own particular position within the
world, is actually still regarded as a result produced by intentional con-
sciousness, from which, by the method of retrogression, he believes its
constitutional elements may be investigated and inquired into. But such
a view would not lead us yet beyond the orbit of Kantian and Neo-
Kantian philosophy, as it must become clear at once when we call to
our remembrance Natorp's famous Ailgemeine Psychologie and his
attempt to "reconstruct" consciousness from the constructive work
which it performs. It is true that Husserl never loses sight of man to
such an extent as Natorp; but the fact still remains that he conceives
of man (that is, of each particular human being) in just the same man-
ner as of every other empirical subject matter in the universe; namely
by regarding him as an exemplary starting-point for a phenomenological
analysis that in the end should lead us to the insight into what humanity
as such actually is.5 It is, moreover, in a state of absolute unconcern-
edness with regard to our own existence that Husserl would have us
adopt his phenomenological method for the investigation of man's be-
ing, or, to use his own terms, for the investigation of human subjec-
tivity and its powers to create in space and time.* Admittedly, this

4. That this problem concerning the development of phenomenology has recently come
much to the fore may be gathered from the contribution of Fink. to which allusion has
already been made, as well as from that of Landgrebe in Revue international de philosopher,
vol. I, Jan. 1939, which is wholly dedicated to the memory of Husserl.
5. Cf. My essay "Ueber Phanomenologie," Zeitschr. f d. ges. Neur. u. Psychiatrie, vol.
LXXXII, 1923, pp. 10-45.
* Editorial note 2: This complete disinterestedness of the phenomenological at
is, however, according to Husserl, both the supreme proof and the purest source of free
responsible rationality. Hence it is considered to represent and achieve a truly revolution
action. It has the productive function of creating a new self-consciousness, and that means

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202 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

subjectivity, to repeat it, can, according to Husserl, only be inquired

into by the way of retrogression, by asking backward from a result of
intentional consciousness which is taken for granted as to the way in
which it has been produced or is being produced continuously by inten-
tional consciousness. Nevertheless, the results or facts of consciousness
would still be used as a kind of "guiding principle" in this phenomen-
ological analysis; or can we not say that Husserl's method of analyzing
intention may be described as just the method of using such "guiding
principles" (which, in their turn, would have to be regarded as deriving
from given facts) ?
In the sense given it by Heidegger, however, man's being as a fact
must never be confounded with the fact of the existence of each partic-
ular human being. For that former fact is found exactly by those fea-
tures of being which cannot be reached by the method of analyzing
intentions in the way adopted by Husserl, viz., by such features as, e. g.,
the "being" of "conscience," or "guilt," and, above all, of "anxiety."
In all these instances we cannot point to objects which are aimed at and
from which by the method of retrogression we might ask how their
mode of being is to be understood. And yet, these just-mentioned in-
stances, "conscience," "guilt," and "anxiety," are the modes of "being-
in-the-world" which most aptly reveal to us the essence of existence,
that is, existence in its truly real form, though not as a unity of inten-
tional constitution. In all these instances, therefore, the analysis of
intentions must be replaced by an analysis of existentialls" to use this
expression, and this latter must be given precedence over the former.6
Whereas, accordingly, we are confronted in Husserl's philosophy
by the single-handed proceeding of intentional consciousness, in so far
as he asks us to inquire as calm spectators into "pure subjectivity" from
the works produced by it; and whereas we are confronted in the doc-
trine of Goethe by the conception of a twofold and mutually dependent
infiniteness-mutually dependent in so far as not only every contem-
plated object of a new type requires a new organ in order to be seen,
experienced, and understood, but also, as every new organ or form of
prehension will give us another type of object, and finally as both these
movements implement and further each other-: we have in the analysis
of existentiall" again to deal with a single movement, although of an
entirely different kind from that found in the analysis of intentions,

of laying the foundation of a new state of our being. Cf. Husserl, Die Krisis der europaischen
Wzssenschaften, pp. 93 f.: " . . . in our philosophizing we are functionaries of mankind-
how could we abstract from that? The full personal responsibility for our own true being
as philosophers who have a proper personal calling implies the responsibilities for the true
being of humanity." (Italics are Husserl's.)-Fr. K.
6. Cf. Landgrebe, "Husserl's Phinomenologie," in Revue international de philosophie,
vol. I, pp. 277-316.

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 RELATIONSHIP: PHENOMENOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT 203

namely with a movement that leads us away from the more or less
indifferent ways of "coming-into-being" to the very core of existence,
at least as far as its tendency is concerned. Its ultimate goal may be
said to be "faithfulness to one's own self" over against the constant
danger of getting entangled in the affairs of the world by accepting
impersonal conventions. Instead of being concerned in a theoretical
investigation as to how the "way into being" has to be conceived of,
and instead of the passive attitude of contemplating how this "way into
being" can be construed by an analysis of intention from the data of
consciousness, we are, in the analysis of existentialls" plunged at once
in a vortex of problems regarding the very foundations of existence; an
investigation, moreover, which is a most "personal" affair and which
affects most passionately (to use a phrase of Kierkegaard's) our very
being and innermost life.
In out own teaching, again, the correlative movement of a double
set of infinites is insisted upon, but not as a correlation between man
and world (nor between men and their several surroundings), nor as
between the knowing subject and its objects (even if these latter should
be understood personally) or vice versa, but as a correlation of an en-
tirely different kind; namely as one, so to speak, between "me" and
"thee." We believe that this conception was hidden already behind
Goethe's double set of infinite. But while with Goethe this correlative
movement was still thought of as being essentially a sort of "perform-
ance" or "work" proceeding from nature, as from a being endowed
with a certain kind of spontaneity, and from an activity on the part of
inquiring and contemplating man which was to "recreate" that which
nature "created," while, in other words, it was still a "construction" or
spiritual participation in the productions of nature, and so must be
regarded as a kind of penetration by human ingeniousness into the
ingenious workmanship of nature; in short, while it still was an "Ad-
venture of Reason": it is in psychological insight, as conceived by us,
essentially an "Adventure of Love" although with the cooperation of
reason, to wit, a movement founded on grace, free gift, or favor as
the conditio sinie qua noti of the possibility of any reasonable activity
and the results that follow from it-these latter being possible only as
a consequence flowing from that favor or grace.
It is for this reason that we venture to go far beyond a mere
analysis of intention by aiming at what may be called an analysis of
"being"; but what we propose to do is no longer an analysis of exist-
ence that starts from and aims at individual human existence in its very
self-concern as with Heidegger, but rather an analysis which has as its
starting-point and as its goal the "dual" or "erotic" form of being.
From this point of view, any individual human existence can be under-

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204 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

stood only as a "deficient" mode of being. "Continuity in duration,"

therefore, which man is so much concerned with in Heidegger's phil-
osophy, is for us only an extreme instance of being, a kind of "becoming
into being" a l'outrance, over against an eternity that stands in the way
of any becoming whatsoever. Individual human existence as an exem-
plary instance and starting point for the investigation of man's being,
be it looked upon in serene contemplation as with Husserl, or felt as
passionate perturbance when it tries to lose itself in God as with Kierke-
gaard, or experienced as primeval anxiety when faced with the danger
of being lost in the ultimate nothingness or vanity of being as with
Heidegger, is thus replaced by love as a constant "overflowing into
eternity" which takes place in a universe of inexhaustible, eternal, and
absolute meaning through unhindered loving communion. The starting
point for the search of the absolute is according to our teaching no
more intentionality (consciousness) or existentiality (the existence of
an individual human being), and accordingly no longer the problem as
to how a knowing subject can reach its objects, or the questions con-
cerning more or less essential "coming into being," but rather, in the
widest sense of the term, the problem of "dual being" or the problem
as to how loving communion can be anthropologically vindicated.
We should like to stress here that, ontologically as well as an-
thropologically, absolute precedence must be accorded to love, in so far
as love can never be understood or derived from either anxiety or
intentionality: whereas, on the contrary, anxiety may well be under-
stood as the result of man's being cast out of absolute security as pro-
vided by love and loving communion into a kind of existence which is
full of pain and constantly implies the danger of becoming isolated;
and intentionality a, the result of a lapse from absolute meaningfulness
which is beyond the realm of objects into a world of separate objects
and conflicting meanings which all may allure an individual human
being's desire.
Thus we would suggest that only by this threefold approach to
being, through its intentional, its "existential," and its "dual" mode,
can we reasonably hope to deal with the anthropological problem, or
the problem of man as such. For this problem has revealed itself, as
we have tried to show in the book mentioned, as the problem of "eter-
nalization" and "coming into being," of a state of transcendence which
is purely "beyond" (although at the same time including this world)
and an action of transcendence which is felt simultaneously as leading
"yonder" and again as withdrawing itself, of absolute indetermination
founded on grace and determination caused by objects and our inten-
tions toward them, of love and care, of a "dual" and a self-centered life,
of home and world, of communion and mere outward coexistence.

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 RELATIONSHIP: PHENOMENOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT 205

It is only from this point of view, we would further submit, that

the problem of psychological insight can be reasonably put and judg-
ment given about it; and it is only from such a judgment on the essence
of psychological insight that the various conceptions of it can be
arranged in a certain order, so that their position with regard to the
whole problem and their mutual relationship may become clear.
Let us briefly examine some such conceptions of psychological
insight. Then the following will appear: On the one end of the scale
we shall find the dogmatic Christian conception of psychological insight,
according to which, to speak with Malebranche and Maine de Biran (at
least in his later writings), we "see all things in God." The main repre-
sentatives of this conception may be said to be St. Augustine, Male-
branche, Pascal, B6hme, and Baader. In spite of their indulging in
speculative assertions-we may point in this connection to their several
attempts to elaborate the meaning of Holy Trinity-we are deeply in-
debted to their endeavors. For since they not only "quietly adored" the
inscrutable and impenetrable "secret" or "mystery" of being, but by the
help of the Christian doctrine of salvation were successful in digging
deep into psychological matters, they could from the very beginning use
some "guiding principles" from which by way of regression they were
enabled to make some highly valuable contributions to the understand-
ing of the essence of psychological insight with regard to its ultimate
presuppositions as well as to its intentional and "existential" aspect.
On the other end of the scale, or rather already beyond it, we find
experimental psychology. It not only restricts its research work to an
inquiry into natural objects and tries to "include" the being of man
within the realm of existing things in one form or other, as for instance
in the form of "event" or "potential activity"; but it fails entirely to
see the very M6yoq of Vnvj, because it adopts its "guiding principles,"
its methods, and its terms exclusively from the natural sciences. By
doing this, however, it not only bars the way to its own real problems
and to its very subject matter, but places itself at the cross-roads of
innumerable illusory problems. At its best, its aim and its method will
be a reconstruction of everything psychological out of its construction
and intention by consciousness, as it has been done, e. g., in Natorp's
stimulating Allgemeine Psychologie. Yet, in spite of these discrimina-
tions, it should not be overlooked that we owe a great deal to experi-
mental psychology for the understanding of psychological insight,
namely through its painstaking pioneering work and its efforts to put
things in order, although this work, as we would remark, has been car-
ried out rather in a pre-psychological than a psychological sense.7

7. Cf. my address entitled "Freuds Auffassung des Menschen," delivered in Vienna on

the occasion of Freud's eightieth birthday. Nederl. Tijdschrift voor Psychologie, vol. IV,
pp. 266-301.

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206 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The method followed by Goethe might be rightfully place

where in the middle of these two extremes. On the one hand,
nized the "absolute fullness of being" by borrowing from Sp
idea of a "Deus sive Natura" and by regarding all things as e
from this divine source; on the other hand, he laid stress also on
ence and on giving a strict account of every theory advanced, be it in
the realm of experiment or concerning a phenomenological scale of
values. Where he may, perhaps, be said to have failed is in his attempt
to construe a system of psychological categories. Here it would seem
that Dilthey was more successful, and this, probably, because he did not
start from "deified" nature, but rather from the life of the spirit as re-
vealed in historical activity. But to discuss this topic any further would
lead us beyond the scope of the present discourse.
To return to Husserl's phenomenology, we would affirm that it is
in no way a special kind of psychological insight or even a part of it-
an error which it is still necessary to warn against-but that the phenom-
enological method as adopted by him is and remains of outstanding
importance for psychological insight in so far as it is the most elaborate
and purest form of all those philosophical methods that do not aim at
mere facts or scientific hypotheses, but like Goethe's and, to a certain
extent, Dilthey's, are most careful in "respecting the phenomena" whose
essential features they primarily want to discover. There is in Husserl's
philosophy no forming of abstract concepts from linguistical expres-
sions or logical terms, in order to pass on from them to the making of
statements, which, in their turn, might lead to the drawing of inferences
and the building up of so-called scientific theories; nor are phenomena
understood by him as separate genera and species, which all could be of
use, but in a theoretical debate. What he wants to achieve is rather, by
viewing all phenomena as exemplary instances, to deepen and purify
our understanding of their true meaning which is somehow contained
in and suggested by their names, until in the end we may discern their
essential being, their very signification, or the sum of all possible state-
ments that might be made concerning them. And from these "essential
beings" he would thereafter have us try to find out the "essential vari-
ation" of their features and thence finally to investigate the "essential
law" of that variation.

Since Husserl conceives of phenomena as phenomena of con-

sciousness (consciousness being taken by him not to denote the con-
sciousness of any real individual person, but consciousness as such),8
and since he would have us regard his phenomenology as a purely de-

8. Cf. my Einfiihrung in die 411gemeine Psychologie, Berlin, 1922, pp. 135-156.

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 RELATIONSHIP: PHENOMENOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT 207

scriptive science of all features within consciousness, he should reason-

ably have set a limit to his phenomenological analysis of intention, where
we are met by those phenomena that can no longer be explained as an
object of, or a goal intended by, consciousness-we mean, by anxiety,
and by its ontological and anthropological counterpart, love.
Anxiety, as a mode of being which, in the fullest meaning of the
term, is without an object, since it is not concerned with any particular
subject-matter or with anything that could be possibly aimed at, is the
true negative of intentionality, or, better still, its absolute negation or
annihilaion. Its essence can never be made known, and yet, it somehow
must be confessed to be! Accordingly it cannot be subjected to an
analysis of intention, but only to an analysis of existentialls" By
this last-named contradistinction, of course, we do not mean the trite
difference between a conscious and an unconscious action within the
field of experimental psychology; for, to speak with Husserl, conscious-
ness does not denote essentially the fact of becoming aware of a certain
thing, but rather the intention towards any possible object whatsoever.9
Therefore anxiety, in the language of experimental psychology, is
conscious; but it certainly is not a constitutional factor of intentional
consciousness. And since the latter is sometimes called by Husserl a
"coming into being" (Weltlichung) or a "coming into the universe"
(Mundanisierung), so the former, viz. anxiety, would be, according to
his terminology, a certain "going out of the world" or "abnegation" of
the world, or, to use a positive expression, a sort of "being handed over
to the ultimate nothingness and vanity of being." From which it appears
that, psychologically, anxiety can be understood only as a mode of being
that lies, as it were, on the very border line of a particular human
being's consciousness.

The strictest contrary to this "going out of the world" is, as we

have already remarked, the "growing above this world," which is found
in love or in the "dual" mode of man's being. In it the "coming into
the world" is not excluded, but only lifted up into a higher mode of
being and thus "aufgehoben" in the double sense of the Hegelian term,
that is, "destroyed" in its onesidedness and yet "preserved" in a higher
order. "Being-in-the-world," being a part of it, and being an object in
it, all these three are taken back by love into the plenitude of the "home"
or the "eternal."

9. This conception of consciousness has of course nothing to do with the difference

between a "conscious" and an "unconscious" act which plays so important a part in experi-
mental psychology. Nevertheless it has been adopted, although surreptitiously, by almost
all psychoanalysts when they ask the question how far certain performances and results of
the "unconscious" are to be distinguished from the performances and results of conscious-
ness, i. e., from the fully realized connection between an experience and its object.

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208 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Intentional consciousness and the method of its investigation, the

analysis of intention, lies accordingly somewhere in between these two
poles. We have defined and described it as the field of cooperation and
coexistence of individuals, or, in other words, as the field of human
personality in its discursive mode of being.
It would however be erroneous to believe that, for this reason, the
method of phenomenology should be abandoned as soon as we come
to deal with such modes of being as anxiety and love. Here we cannot
agree with Landgrebe's doubts. For the analysis of existentiall" and
the analysis of the "dual" mode of being is carried out phenomenologi-
cally also in so far as it does not proceed by forming abstract concepts
from linguistical expressions, in order to pass on from them to state-
ments which, in their turn, would allow us to draw inferences accord-
ing to the laws of syllogistic reasoning; but rather does it aim at putting
forward systematically the meaning of the modes inquired into, irre-
spective of the recognized fact that they do not arise from intentional
performances, but are above or below them. It does so, because there
would be no hope to communicate to others our discoveries if we did
not seek to find out systematically these essential features of being by
the help of exemplary instances, i. e., if we did not try to see them in
their true being.
But apart from this, love and phenomenology are still connected
in another especially close and unique way. Let us briefly indicate
what we mean by this allusion.
While it was the "guiding principle" of St. Augustine's anthro-
pology to discover by the help of the human image what there was to
be seen in the divine archetype, so it is the "guiding principle" of phe-
nomenology to find out with the help of facts what there is to be seen
in the realm of pure essences. And likewise as there the features of the
image revealed the features of the archetype, so here the facts or events
prove themselves indispensable for a vision of true being, because the
fact or event is just that exemplary instance which may grant us an
insight into its essence. For it is only through an exemplary analysis
that we can reasonably expect to see true being, just as it is on the
other hand only through the elhog, or the strictly transcendent prototype
that the fact qua fact can get for us any meaning at all. As is well
known, this etbos, according to Husserl, is neither "divine," nor must
it be confounded with Plato's idea or with reality or (needless to say)
with anything within the range of natural objects; it is for him simply
a transcendental standard for a transcendental consciousness. There-
fore he was right when he claimed that his philosophy was but a con-

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 RELATIONSHIP: PHENOMENOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHT 209

tinuation of the thought of Descartes and Kant.'0 We do not believe,

however, that this conception of the dI6og is all-comprehensive.
loving communion, to speak in the Christian language, archetype and
image, or, to use phenomenological terms, slbog and fact, or the e
of "thee" and "thou" as a particular exemplary instance, are coinciding
and no longer distinguished from each other. Instead of &'C8(, there-
fore, following the example of Goethe and Hegel, we prefer to speak
of concrete universals, or, with Husserl, of essential features; and in-
stead of a fact, of concrete particular, or, more accurately, of a par-
ticular concrete "thee." Moreover, in this imaginative vision of true
being, as it is granted to love and to love alone, we are no longer mere
lookers-on, but are actively taking part in reality. For by love we do
not only see the essential "thee" through its exemplary instance, but
realize the coincidence of the essential "thee" with its exemplary in-
stance. "Thou," this particular "thou," art only the loved "thou";
"thou" art not in so far as I see the essentially "thee," but in so far as
I love it; just as on the other hand I can love "thee" only when I find
in "thee" the embodiment and visible expression of the essence of all
that I can call "thee." "Yet still my heart goes to thee . . . ponder how
. . . not as to a single good, but all my good." '1 In these words of the
poetess the fundamental unity of a particular "thee" with its essence
finds perhaps the nearest and most eloquent expression.

With regard to psychological insight, finally, love, although its

necessary presupposition, must not be confounded with psychological
insight as such. Psychological insight I can get only when I consider
"thee" like any other object, when, in other words, I am also intended
towards something about "thee," no matter to what kind of being that
intended "something" may belong. Or have we not intimated at the
outset of this discourse that psychological insight was the adventure of
trying to overcome the apparent contradiction between love (loving
communion) and care, i. e., the discursive attitude or endeavor to get
in touch with the inexhaustible riches of experience? Where there is
only "blind" love for "thee," there is just as little psychological insight
as where I only discover "something" about "thee."
After all this it will be hardly necessary to stress that there are
several degrees of psychological insight. From its highest attainment
there are innumerable intermediate positions until we reach that limit
where "thou" art in danger of being lost sight of altogether, where I
see but the abstract essence of "thee," and where this essence no longer

10. Cf. Meditations Cartesiennes, Paris, 1931; or the very detailed account of this
work in Kantstudien) vol. XXXVIII, 1933, pp. 209 ff.
11. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, XXXIV.

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210 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

coincides with its embodiment in a particular "thou." For it must not

be forgotten that I am unable to love everybody and everything. If,
finally, I disregard even the essence of "thee," then I cease to think
psychologically and am relapsing into the sphere of mere objects. In
short, psychological insight stops there where an intended "thou" is
replaced by an intended "object."
LUDWIG BINSWANGER.
KREUZLINGEN, THURGAU, SWITZERLAND.

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