Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations: Daniele de Santis (Ed.)

Phänomenologie | 34
Daniele De Santis [Ed.]
Edmund Husserl’s
Cartesian Meditations
Commentary, Interpretations,
Discussions
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https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495995556
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Phänomenologie
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https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495995556
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Daniele De Santis [Ed.]
Edmund Husserl’s
Commentary, Interpretations,
Discussions
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783495995556
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De Santis, Daniele
Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations
Commentary, Interpretations, Discussions
Daniele De Santis (Ed.)
521 pp.
Includes bibliographic references.
ISBN 978-3-495-99554-9 (Print) Onlineversion
978-3-495-99555-6 (ePDF) Nomos eLibrary
1st Edition 2023

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Table of Contents
Daniele De Santis
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Claudio Majolino
Introduction and First Cartesian Meditation: Husserl on the
Threefold Significance of Descartes’ Meditationes . . . . . 21
Aurélien Djian
Second Cartesian Meditation: »Horizon« as a Universal
Principle of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology . . . 63
Lilian Alweiss
Third Cartesian Meditation: Ontology after Kant . . . . . . 91
Daniele De Santis
Fourth Cartesian Meditation: Husserl’s Transcendental
Idealism and the Monad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Sara Heinämaa
Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 42–54): Analysis of Otherness
and Embodiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Alice Pugliese
Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 55–64): The Schema »Unity-
Multiplicity« as the (Not-So) Hidden Metaphysics in Husserl’s
Cartesian Meditations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Danilo Manca
Eugen Fink and the Hegelian Motifs Underlying Husserl’s
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Witold Płotka
Roman Ingarden’s Remarks on the Cartesian Meditations:
Context, Main Arguments and Developments . . . . . . . 215
Ignacio Quepons
Horizons of Self-Reflection: Remarks on Ludwig Landgrebe’s
Critique of Husserl’s Theory of Phenomenological Reflection 237
Stefano Bancalari
The Influence of the Cartesian Meditations on the Thought
of Emmanuel Levinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Jakub Čapek
Sharing and Exposure: Merleau-Ponty and The
Saulius Geniusas
Paul Ricoeur’s Husserlian Heresies: The Case of the Cartesian
Meditations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Hynek Janoušek, Wojciech Starzyński

Jan Patočka on Descartes and Husserl’s Cartesianism . . . . 329
Federico Lijoi
Meditations on Purity: Edmund Husserl and Hans Kelsen . . 353
Emanuela Carta
Remarks on Evidence and Truth in Husserl’s Theory of
Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Rosemary Jane Rizo–Patron de Lerner

First Philosophy and Ultimate Foundations: Revisiting
Husserl’s Cartesian Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Andreea Smaranda Aldea

Self-Othering, Self-Transformation, and Theoretical
Freedom: Self-Variation and Husserl’s Phenomenology as
Radical Immanent Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
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Table of Contents
Agustín Serrano de Haro

Jean-François Lavigne’s Objection to Phenomenological
Idealism: Critical Remarks with the Help of the
Sergio Pérez-Gatica
The Distinction between »First« and »Universal« Philosophy
in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations: On a Basic Precondition
for the Transformation of Philosophy into a Rigorous Science 481
Leonard Ip
From »Second Philosophy« to »Last Philosophy«: Husserl’s
Idea of Metaphysics as the Absolute Science of Factual
Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
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Introduction
The present volume is based on a conference on the legacy of Husserl’s

Cartesian Meditations that took place in Prague, October 17–19,
2019, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of Husserl’s Paris
Lectures of 1929. The structure of the present volume mirrors the
overall structure of the conference, but new chapters have been added,
while the original presentations have been rewritten or substantially
reworked. My deepest gratitude goes to those who participated in the
conference and—most importantly—to the two persons who helped
me navigate those three days, including (but not limited to) carrying
around the roll-up banner like an Olympic torch: Stela Chvojková
and Anna Schubertová. Without them and the beautiful poster created
by Anna herself, the event would never have turned out to be as
successful as it eventually did.
If the question were why would one organize and publish a full
volume on the Cartesian Meditations (the shortest book among those
published by Husserl himself during his lifetime) and their legacy
within the history of 20th century phenomenology, there would be
two answers. In the first place, after the first volume of Ideas published
in 1913, the text of the Cartesian Meditations offers the second great
attempt Husserl made at a systematic presentation of all his philo
sophical ambitions and aspirations (the third attempt is found in the
Crisis). But the Cartesian Meditations are not only Husserl’s second
attempt at systematizing his philosophy after the so-called »turn« to
a transcendental form of thought; in the Cartesian Meditations
Husserl speaks a language and resorts to a conceptuality that are far
from being a mere variation on the language and the conceptuality
introduced in the first volume of Ideas. In an even stronger tone, I
would go so far as to affirm that the conceptuality of the Mediations,
hence the very idea of phenomenology proposed therein, go beyond
the theoretical framework of the first volume of Ideas. More specifi
cally—and just to mention the most significant difference—while in
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the first volume of Ideas, phenomenology is famously presented as

the eidetic-material science of all the transcendentally purified phe
nomena belonging to the new material »region of being« called »pure
consciousness«, in the text of the Meditations the situation is radically
different. Here I am not only referring to the problem of the consti
tution of transcendental intersubjectivity (the lack of which in the
1913 book Husserl himself denounced in the Nachwort to Ideas—see
Husserl 1952, pp. 149–150 and ff.); I am mainly referring to the
account of the transcendental subject as a concrete ego or monad—
which, unfortunately, is only sketched in the Fourth Cartesian Medi
tation. What the new science called phenomenology is about is no
longer the region of being (a term that Husserl never uses in the Med
itations to characterize the »monad«) termed »pure consciousness«,
the individuals of which are lived experiences (Erlebnisse); phe
nomenology is now presented as the »explication« (Husserl 1950, pp.
102–103; Husserl 1960, p. 68) of a historically and ontologi
cally »concrete ego« for which the distinction between singularity
(i.e., essence of the lowest level) and individuality no longer holds.
In a famous conversation with Dorion Cairns, Husserl allegedly
explained this as follows:
Another matter of which Husserl spoke was the passage in the Ideen
where he speaks of the conceivability of such a chain of hyletic data
that there would be no constitution of an objective world. With Fink’s
help he tried to make clear to me that, whatever its value there, the
non-being of the world was really impossible. It is valid only, so
to speak, in the primordial sphere. But the primordial sphere is an
abstraction: within the allegedly primordial sphere appear necessarily
the motivations for the constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity.
But the world is the necessary form of intersubjectivity. Hence the
being of the self or the stream requires the being of a world. Ultimately
it is a matter of the interpretation of the monads. (Cairns 1976, p. 40)
The famous annihilation of the world—which in Ideas was the means
through which Husserl arrived at laying open the region »pure con
sciousness«—is now recognized as an »abstraction«, an »abstrac
tion« from within the concreteness of the monad and its relation to
the world. If this is the case, the framework of the Cartesian Medita
tions, hence its conception of phenomenology, does not simply
diverge from that of the first volume of Ideas. Instead, the latter is
included, so to speak, in the former. The monad designates a more
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Introduction
concrete form of subjectivity, of which pure consciousness as a region

is only an abstraction. But the perspectives of the two books also differ
with regard to the trajectory they follow and the corresponding strat
egy that Husserl adopts. The radical difference can be illustrated by
resorting to the symbolism introduced by Oskar Becker in a famous
1930 discussion of Husserl’s philosophy. In the first volume of Ideas,
Husserl first moves »vertically« from the natural attitude (N) to the
eidetic one (E), and then »horizontally« to the transcendental atti
tude (Φ), the sequence being NEΦ (Becker 1930, p. 140). In contrast,
in the Meditations Husserl first moves »horizontally« from the natural
attitude (N) to the »transcendental-factual« attitude (T), then »verti
cally« to the transcendental and eidetic dimension (Φ), the sequence
being NTΦ. At the end of § 62 of Ideas I, Husserl had pointed out
that »any attempt to begin naively with a phenomenological science
of facts in advance of the development of a phenomenological doctrine
of essences [is] nonsense«: the reason for this is that every question
of possibility »can only be decided on the basis of eidetic phenomenol
ogy« (Husserl 1976, p. 134; Husserl 2014, p. 114). In contrast, in the
Cartesian Meditations, the eidetic dimension is introduced only in
§ 34: »By the method of transcendental reduction each one of us, as a
Cartesian Meditator, was led back to his/her transcendental ego—
naturally with its concrete-monadic content as this factual ego (dieses
faktische), the one and only absolute one« (Husserl 1950, p. 103;
Husserl 1960, p. 69, translation modified). José Gaos rightly recog
nizes that here »la fenomenología trascendental es«, in the first place,
»una fenomenología empírica o fáctica« (Gaos 1996, p. 28). Whereas
in 1913 Husserl first lays claim to the possibility of eidetic knowledge
in general, and then invests all his energy in bringing to the fore that
new region of being which alone can grant the possibility of a new
eidetic-material science, in 1929–1931 he first accomplishes the tran
scendental reduction to describe the concrete life of my own transcen
dental, yet factual ego—and then makes the case for introducing the
method of self-variation.1 And it is only on the basis of such a method
that the eidos »concrete ego« can finally be fully investigated. Thus
there could not be greater discrepancy between the two modes of pro
ceeding (see also Franck 1981, pp. 66–67).
But Cartesian Meditations is also the one text in which Husserl
affirms apertis verbis that the ultimate ambition of phenomenology is
1 On this Husserlian methodological concept, see De Santis 2020.
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Daniele De Santis
to provide a new foundation for »metaphysics«: not only (in § 60 of

the Fifth Cartesian Meditations) for the Leibnizian problem concern
ing the existence of one factual world over above an infinite number
of possible other worlds (De Santis 2018), but also for what in the
1923 lectures he had once labeled »metaphysics in a new
sense« (Husserl 1956, p. 188; Husserl 2019, p. 194, note). Such a
metaphysics has to do with what Husserl usually calls »the supreme
and ultimate questions«: »contingent facticity« (zufällige Faktizi
tät); »fortune« or »destiny« (Schicksal); »the possibility of a ›gen
uine‹ human life as ›meaningful‹ in a particular sense«; »the sense of
history« (Husserl 1950, pp. 39, 182; Husserl 1960, p. 156). These are
all questions that—as Husserl himself writes to his lifelong friend
Gustav Albrecht—revolve around »the ultimate being of the ›Ego‹ and
the ›We‹ objectified as humanity (als Menschheit)« (Husserl 1994b,
p. 84). The point here is not finally to discover some kind of existential
dimension of Husserl’s thought (to be piled up on the many Husserls
with which we are already more or less familiar); rather, the point is
to admit that even the great questions that bear upon the irrationality
of our own human existence have their own place within the system
of philosophy (on this topic, see De Santis 2021, pp. 237–238 and ff.).2
Although it would be wrong, and to a certain extent also mis
leading, to affirm that the Cartesian Meditations have yet to receive
the attention they properly deserve, they have certainly not received
enough attention in comparison to other Husserlian texts such as
the late Crisis. One could rephrase what John Passmore once said
about Lotze and state that Cartesian Meditations is undoubtedly one
of »the most pillaged« Husserlian texts. If some of the concepts and
problems these studies tackle (e.g., the concept of passive syntheses
and the monad; the account of empathy and the problem of the
other; the notion of appresentation, as well as those of pairing and
association) have been used and abused over the course of 20th
century scholarship and philosophy, the book as a whole—namely,
the project it does present and the overall idea of philosophy it
builds upon—is yet to be seriously taken into account and explored.
The grandiose, seemingly »non-Cartesian« picture of phenomenol
ogy drawn by the Crisis of European Sciences has always been preferred
over the alleged »Cartesianism« of the Cartesian Meditations. In this
2 See also Altobrando’s preface to one of the new Italian translations of the Medita
tions (Altobrando 2017).
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Introduction
respect, it would suffice to recall the harsh comment made by Hei

degger in one of the few texts in which the Cartesian Meditations
are mentioned: »despite intentionality, Husserl remains trapped in
immanence—and the consequence of this position are the Méditations
cartésiennes« (Heidegger 1986, p. 282; Heidegger 2003, p. 70).
It is not my intention to rehearse here the many reasons why
Husserl kept reworking the book, and why in the end he never
published any German edition of it;3 however, it is important to
keep in mind the explanations Husserl gives to Roman Ingarden.
In a letter from March 19th, 1930, Husserl confesses to his former
Polish student that the German edition needs to be longer and more
systematic so as to include »the supreme ›metaphysical‹ problems
(breiterer Exposition und Weiterführung bis zur obersten ›metaphysi
schen‹ Problematik)« as well (Husserl 1968, p. 59). Later on, on
November 13th, 1931, Husserl will explain that the difficulty of the
book is such that an appropriate comprehension can be attained only
if, after the Fifth Meditation, one goes back once again to the First
Meditation (Husserl 1968, p. 73). It is not easy to tell concretely why
this should be the case, but what Husserl seems to have in mind
is some sort of circularity peculiar to the text; it is as though the
Cartesian reform of philosophy described by Husserl at the outset of
the book, hence the very new Cartesianism of phenomenology, could
be properly and appropriately comprehended only after the system
of philosophy has already been fully unfolded and the metaphysical
problems bearing on our existence finally included.
But the decision finally to offer a full volume dedicated to the
Cartesian Meditations and the many different aspects of their legacy4
is also due to another reason. As far as I know, the first reviews of
the text were all quite—if not extremely—critical of Husserl’s line of
thought in this work (with one specific, important exception yet to be
seriously considered).
For example, Jacques Maritain’s article »Notes sur la connais
sance«, published in the official organ of the Italian Neo-Scholastic
movement, is de facto an extremely harsh review of the French edition
of the Meditations and of the picture of phenomenology presented
therein. Husserl’s transcendental idealism is described in terms of a
3 See the monumental work by Bruzina 2004.

4 This is the main difference between the present volume and both Smith 2003 and
Lavigne 2016 (two excellent, though different, introductions to the text).
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Daniele De Santis
thought unable to think and relate to a being independent of the think

ing activity itself. It is a cogito able to think of the ens only as a cogi
tatum, and against which Maritain argues as follows: »On ne pense
du pensé qu’après avoir pensé du pensable ›bon pour exister‹ […], le
premier pensé c’est l’être indépendant de la pensée, le cogitatum du
premier cogito n’est pas cogitatum, mais ens. On me mange pas du
mangé, on mange du pain« (Maritain 1932, p. 20).5 In contrast to
the teaching of Alexander Pfänder, whose concept of phenomenology
Maritain famously praises at the beginning of his review (Maritain
1932, p. 13, note), Husserl’s »néo-idéalisme« or »nouvel idéalisme
transcendantal« falls prey to a crass confusion, the confusion between
ontology and logic—ens reale and ens rationis: »elle [Husserl’s own
phenomenology] risque de s’engager, en dépit de toutes ses protes
tations contre le constructivisme, dans l’›élucidation’ d’un univers
de fictions« (Maritain 1932, pp. 18–19). But no less critical is Alan
Stout’s discussion of the Méditations cartésiennes, which appeared
in Mind in the same year as Maritain’s essay. Husserl adopts a full-
fledged »Cartesian position«—the inevitable consequence of which is
that »the being primarily known is only being for thought« (Stout
1932, p. 514). Husserl ends up embracing volens nolens both a form
of radical »solipsism« and what Stout labels a »monadistic« view:
bodies exist only to the extent that they play a certain role »within the
experience« of minds (Stout 1932, p. 515). And yet for Stout, Husserl’s
overall methodological position can be detached from the idealistic
theses endorsed in the Cartesian Meditations, for »both truth and
falsity are relative to a real being which must be present to the judging
mind. [And] to ascertain the character of this real being, so far as it
is ascertainable, there seems to be no other method than that which
is actually used by Husserl« (see Stout 1932, pp. 515–516). Following
the same line pursued by Maritain, Marvin Farber will accuse the
Cartesian Meditations of a crass confusion, or better, of an unforgiv
able »fallacy«: »the constitutive fallacy.« Husserl confuses »existence
and meaning of existence« (Farber 1935, p. 384) based upon the »tacit
assumption« that »being depends upon thought« so that »what can
5 It is in connection to Maritain that Sartre’s famous Une idée fondamentale de
la phénoménologie. L’intentionnalité should be read. If the former accuses Husserl’s

phenomenology of digesting and swallowing up the transcendence of being, the latter
will reply by showing that Husserl’s theory of intentionality breaks once and for
with any and every kind of »philosophie digestive« and, in particular, with the idea
that »connaître, c’est manger« (Sartre 2003, p. 87).
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Introduction
not be thought cannot be« (Farber 1935, p. 385). In a way that is

far more radical than Maritain’s and Stout’s, Farber criticizes Husserl
for losing the »natural world«; if the »first being« is »transcendental
intersubjectivity, or the totality of monads,” then phenomenology
ends up »forget[ting] its own ›mother-earth‹«:
But if it forgets its own »mother-earth«, its own actual genetic foun
dation, it will never be able to constitute a world which will satisfy
experience. In that case the phenomenological quest for certainty
must rest content with the pale shadow of reality, depending upon a
hypostatized logos in an ethereal absolute consciousness. (Farber 1935,
p. 387)
It was Helmut Kuhn, a scholar specializing in Socrates and ancient
Greek philosophy, who published the one enthusiastic review of
the French edition of the Méditations cartésiennes in 1933 in Kant
Studien. Husserl’s words to Kuhn could not be more revealing of
what he thought of the text of the review: »In your incredible review
of my French Méditations cartésiennes, you have come close to a
comprehension of the sense of my phenomenology in a way that
had hardly happened in Germany before« (Husserl 1994a, p. 238).6
The review is a very accurate resume of the trajectory of the text,
and Kuhn pays a great deal of attention to the function of the »medi
tating ego« at the beginning of the Meditations (Kuhn 1933, p. 209).
The »person« who meditates dissolves (Auslöschen) his or her own
individual contingency (individuellen Zufälligkeit) in the »very sense
of the act of meditating«: »The concrete situation of self-reflection
and the expectation of co-accomplishment is subject to the ›practical
idea‹ of being—to the idea of an infinite work of theoretical determi
nation« (Kuhn 1933, p. 210).7 As far as I understand his reading
of Husserl’s philosophy in the Cartesian Meditations—notably, with
regard to the idea of a »meditating« ego—Kuhn is interested in the
specific conception of »being« that develops out of it. The Selbstbesin
nung of a subject that finds itself part of a harmony of monads
(Kuhn 1933, p. 214) results in the practical conception of »being« as
6 »In Ihrer überraschenden Rezension meiner französischen ›Méditations
Cartésiennes‹ haben Sie sich einem Verständnis des Sinnes meiner Phänomenologie
soweit angenähert, wie es bisher in Deutschland kaum geschehen war.«
7 »Die konkrete Situation der Selbstbesinnung und der Zumutung des Mitvollzugs
unterstellt sich der ›praktischen Idee‹ des Seins—der Idee einer unendlichen Arbeit
theoretischer Bestimmung.«
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Daniele De Santis
what is theoretically determinable in infinitum. Now that this is

Kuhn’s stance on the Meditations should not come as a surprise.
If the review came out in 1933, it is in 1934 that also his book
Sokrates was published.8 In this work, proceeding in a way similar
to what he had done in his Husserl review, Kuhn asks the question
of the idea of »being« that emerges out of Socrates’ Daseinsform
and the Delphic Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (Kuhn 1934, pp. 30–31). If in the
case of Husserl the expression »›practical idea‹ of being« had been
used, here Kuhn says that for Socrates, »being« means Zweckbes
timmtheit and Seinsvollendung (Kuhn 1934, p. 30). Rather than a
form of »idealism« in which »being« means the same as (and nothing
more than) being-thought (as both Maritain and Stout had affirmed)
—or in which existence is confused with its meaning (Farber)—for
Kuhn, Husserl’s phenomenology entails a form of teleological-practi
cal ontology, with »being« meaning what can be determined by our
(theoretical) practices.
***
I originally planned the present volume with the firm conviction that
the Cartesian Meditations is a text yet to be fully investigated in its
richness and complexity (beyond the importance to be attributed to
this or that specific and individual theme). This should also explain
the decision to divide the volume into three major sections. As was
already the case with the original conference, the first part (Ch. 1-6)
is dedicated to a close-up discussion of the Meditations. It could
therefore be regarded as a »commentary«—but only on the condition
that we give the term »commentary« a broad sense. In fact, no specific
protocol has been imposed on the authors—and each one of them has
been completely free to choose and determine the form that her or
his commentary and discussion would have. For example, whereas
some of these chapters textually follow, step by step, the way in
which Husserl himself de facto unfolds and presents his arguments,
there are also chapters in which this is not the case. They do not
so much focus on the factual structure of the relevant Meditations,
but rather tackle the concepts and the problems discussed in them
8 See Gaiser 1960 for a discussion of the historical context in which Kuhn’s book
appeared and of the differences between the two editions (1934 and 1959). That
Husserl highly appreciated Kuhn’s book on Socrates can be inferred from what he
writes to Ingarden; see Husserl 1968, pp. 89, 97.
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Introduction
directly and more systematically.9 However, the second part (Ch.

7-14) has a different structure, since it has a different goal. The
ambition here is to investigate the reception of the text, therefore of
the idea of phenomenology it contains, by paying particular attention
to some of the main protagonists of post-Husserlian phenomenology.
Here too, no specific protocol has been imposed upon the authors
due to the great variety of the philosophers covered (from Eugen
Fink to Emmanuel Levinas, from Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Hans
Kelsen and Ludwig Landgrebe, from Jan Patočka to Roman Ingarden
and Paul Ricoeur) and their very different modes of approaching
the Meditations in particular as well as Husserl’s philosophy in
general. Finally, the last part (Ch. 15-20) of the volume presents the
reader with an even broader ambition, i.e., the ambition to use the
Cartesian Meditations as a springboard in order to assess some more
general themes connected to Husserl’s overall phenomenology and
phenomenological philosophy, and their relevance for contemporary
discussions and debates. The unity of this last section should be
sought not so much in the content as instead in the very intention
that animates the contributions. In fact, if the chapters included in
first part of the volume are systematically united by the text itself
of the Cartesian Meditations they all comment upon (= systematic
unity), all the texts of the second section share the same ambition,
that of exploring the historical legacy of the Meditations and the
problems they address (= historical unity). Unlike the first two parts,
the chapters included in the third section may leave on the reader an
impression of inconsistency and lack of systematic unity. In truth,
not only are they all guided by the same (critical) ambition of (more
or less directly) employing the Meditations to address issues and
questions that move beyond their horizon (= critical unity); they are
all rooted in the text itself of the Meditations and in some of the main
problems and concepts contained therein: the problem of evidence
(Chapter 15) and the question of the phenomenological foundation
(Chapter 16) (corresponding to Meditations I, II and III); the method
9 The reason why Chapter 1 (Introduction and First Cartesian Meditation: Husserl on
the Threefold Significance of Descartes’ Meditationen) is longer than the others is that it
comments upon two different—yet connected texts: the Introduction to the Cartesian
Meditations and the First Cartesian Meditation, and in so doing it tackles the problem of
the general »Cartesianism« of Husserl’s phenomenology. The chapter is hence meant
to be an introduction to Husserl’s reading of Descartes’ own Meditationes and the sense
the latter have for the phenomenological project.
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Daniele De Santis
of self-variation (Chapter 17), and the overall problem of the sense

of Husserl’s own idealism (Chapter 18) (corresponding to Meditation
IV); the meaning of the expression »first philosophy« (Chapter 19)
and the thorny issue of the relation between first philosophy and
metaphysics (Chapter 20) (corresponding to Meditation V). The order
of the chapters follows and mirrors the formal structure of Husserl’s
text, and the overall result of the section is crucial in one specific
respect: albeit to different degrees, all the chapters show how rich the
conceptual toolbox forged and presented by Husserl in the Cartesian
Meditations still is. They all show the extent to which the importance
of this text (even of the too infamous doctrine of transcendental
idealism) cannot be reduced to the just the (too) famous problem of
the constitution of the transcendental inter-subjectivity (as was too
often the case during the last century and still nowadays).
Thus although the volume is dedicated to the Cartesian Medita
tions, it does not simply limit its focus to them: its aspiration is to
offer a multi-faceted perspective that takes the Cartesian Meditations
as a point of departure in order to inscribe them within a progressively
larger (phenomenological and philosophical) picture. In effect, this is
a single perspective, yet it is a not a unitary one. It is a perspective that
is made up of different perspectives, for each one of the chapters (in
particular those included in the first part) is a most direct expression of
a certain individual manner of understanding Husserl’s phenomenol
ogy; the problems around which it revolves; and the solutions it
provides for these problems. The present volume is accordingly a
choral enterprise in which many voices and tones intertwine, but do
not cover one another up.
***
I would like to conclude this brief introduction by first thanking all the
authors for their patience, since the preparation of the book eventually
took longer than expected: »Superbia, invidia e avarizia sono / le tre
faville c’hanno i cuori accesi« (Dante, Inferno, VI, 74–75).
A special thanks goes to Klára Choulíková, the librarian at
the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Charles
University, without whose constant help our work would never be
possible. I am also very grateful to Elizabeth (Betsy) Behnke for her
fantastic work of editing. I would like to also thank Claudia Serban
for how she took care of the review process, and the two reviewers for
the helpful comments, remarks and suggestions. Last but not least,
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Introduction
the present volume is dedicated to the memory of Ronald Bruzina

(1936–2019), who more than any other interpreter has contributed in
a profound way to the comprehension of the meaning of the project of
the Cartesian Meditations for Husserl’s philosophy as a whole. But the
reason for dedicating this book to him is also very personal: he was one
of the members of my Ph.D. defense committee back in Rome in 2013.
I still retain a fond memory of the time we spent together on that as
well as on many other occasions.10
Bibliography
Altobrando, Andrea (2017): »Prefazione.« In: Edmund Husserl, Meditazioni

cartesiane. Traduzione italiana di A. Altobrando. Napoli-Salerno: Orthotes, pp.
7–21.
Becker, Oskar (1930): »Die Philosophie Edmund Husserls.« In: Kant Studien 35,
pp. 119–150.
Bruzina, Ronald (2004): Edmund Husserl & Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in
Phenomenology, 1928–1938. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cairns, Dorion (1976): Conversations with Husserl and Fink. The Hague: Marti
nus Nijhoff.
De Santis, Daniele (2018): »›Metaphysische Ergebnisse‹: Phenomenology and
Metaphysics in Edmund Husserl’s Cartesianische Meditationen (§ 60).
Attempt at Commentary.« In: Husserl Studies 34, pp. 63–83.
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Phenomenology.« In: Husserl Studies 36, pp. 255–269.
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Gaiser, Konrad (1960): »Hans Kuhn, Sokrates. Versuch über den Ursprung der
Metaphysik.« In: Philosophische Rundschau 8, pp. 160–170.
Gaos, José (1996): »Historia y significado.« In: Edmund Husserl, Meditaciones
cartesianas. Mexico D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, pp. 11–34.
Heidegger, Martin (1986): Seminare, GA 15. Frankfurt am Main: Vitto
rio Klostermann.
10 This work was supported by the project »Intentionality and Person in Medieval
Philosophy and Phenomenology« (Gačr 21–08256S), and the European Regional

Development Fund-Project »Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success
of Europe in an Interrelated World« (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).
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Heidegger, Martin (2003): Four Seminars. Translated by Andrew Mitchell and

Francois Raffoul. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Husserl, Edmund (1950): Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Hua
I. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1952): Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomeno
logischen Philosophie. Drittes Band: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente
der Wissenschaften, Hua V. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1956): Erste Philosophie (1923/1924). Erster Teil: Kritische
Ideengeschichte, Hua VII. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1960): Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomeno
logy. Dorion Cairns (Trans.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1968): Briefe an Roman Ingarden. Den Haag: Marti
nus Nijhoff.
logischen Philosophie. Erstes Band: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phäno
menologie, Hua III/1. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1994a): Briefwechsel. Philosophenbriefe, Hua-Dok III/6. Dor
drecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, Edmund (1994b): Briefwechsel. Familienbriefe, Hua-Dok III/9. Dor
drecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, Edmund (2014): Ideas I. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Trans.). Indianapo
lis: Hackett.
Husserl, Edmund (2019): First Philosophy: Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts
from the Manuscripts (1920–1925). Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus
(Trans.). Dordrecht: Springer.
Lavigne, Jean-François (Ed.) (2016): Les Méditations Cartésiennes de Husserl.
Paris: Vrin.
Kuhn, Helmut (1933): »Edmund Husserl, Méditations Cartésiennes.« In: Kant
Studien 38, pp. 209–216.
Kuhn, Helmut (1959): Sokrates. Versuch über den Ursprung der Metaphysik.
München: Kösel Verlag.
Maritain, Jacques (1932): »Notes sur la connaissance.« In: Rivista di filosofia
neo-scolastica 24, pp. 13–23.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (2003): La transcendance de l’ego et autres textes phénoménolo
giques. Paris: Vrin.
Smith, Arthur David (2003): Guidebook to Husserl and the Cartesian Medita
tions. London: Routledge.
Stout, Alan Ker (1932): »Edmund Husserl, Méditations Cartésiennes.« In: Mind
41, pp. 513–516.
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Introduction and First Cartesian Meditation:

Husserl on the Threefold Significance of
Descartes’ Meditationes
1. Introduction
The present study is intended as a broad commentary on the Intro

duction and the 1st Cartesian Meditations (henceforth CM), and revol
ves around the Husserlian claim according to which Descartes’s Medi
tationes have a threefold significance: an everlasting significance
(Husserl 1973a, p. 44/2); a significance for the present (Husserl 1973a,
p. 47/5–6) a significance for phenomenology (Husserl 1973a, 43/1).
After a first section, introducing a preliminary set of key concepts and
distinctions (§ 2), I will examine the everlasting (§ 3), the present
(§ 4) and the phenomenological significance of the Meditationes (§ 5).
I will conclude with some remarks on a revealing analogy used by
Husserl to illustrate Descartes’s overall relationship to philosophy
(§ 6).
2. Preliminary distinctions
2.1. The »motif« and the »content«
Cartesian Meditations—the grammatical form of the title chosen by

Husserl bears already a felicitous ambiguity as it indicates, at the same
time, what the book intends to do, and what it is about. It suggests that
Husserl is planning to carry out some »meditations« in the wake of
the ones previously carried out by Descartes in his magnus opus. In
this first sense, the noun »meditations« indicates the kind or the genre
of intellectual exercise Husserl intends to realize, while the adjective
»Cartesian« specifies its difference or distinctive style with respect to
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Claudio Majolino
similar endeavours. But the title also implies Husserl’s willingness to

take the outcomes of Descartes’s meditations as an object of scrutiny.
The noun »meditations« now stands as the name of the book in
which such outcomes are delivered, i.e. the Meditationes de Prima
philosophia, while the adjective »Cartesian« simply relates the name
of its author.
The importance of this ambiguity should not to be overlooked.
In fact, the Introduction and 1st CM unfold in two different, yet tightly
related, directions.
(1) According to the first direction, the »Cartesian meditations« are
a »model« (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/2) of which Husserl provides a
repetition and a variation.
(2) According to the second, Descartes’s Meditationes expound a
»doctrine« of which Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology
spelled out in the Meditationen represents a critical transformation
and new formation (Husserl 1973a, p. 47–8/5–6).
Husserl is thus reiterating in a different way something that Descartes
did before him (= a meditaton according to a certain style) and, at
the same time, criticizing the theoretical consequences that Descartes
drew from such meditations and delivered in a rather influential book
(= the Meditationes). More specifically, CM aim at repeating and
varying certain »motifs« which appear in Descartes’s magnus opus,
while critically rejecting a great part of its »doctrinal content.« Trans
cendental phenomenology is thus a »new cartesianism« transformed
in its motifs and critically scrutinized in its contents (Husserl 1973a,
p. 43/1).
2.2. The repetition and variation of the »motif«
The first cartesian motif that Husserl intends to repeat and vary is that
of the »meditation of the beginning philosopher«. Husserl presents
himself as willing to do again what Descartes did already, and what
every genuine philosopher has always done and should always do, at
least once in his or her life. Such fundamental gesture rests on the
conjunction of the following traits:
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Introduction and First Cartesian Meditation
(a) he self-withdrawal, i.e. the return to the philosophizing subject;

(b) the preliminary rejection of all pre-given knowledge;
(c) the reliance on the sole authority of what strikes as evident
and insightful.
This is precisely what Descartes did: he »withdraws in himself,« »tears
down« all scientific pre-existing knowledge that he has been accepting
so far,« and tries to »build it anew« on the sole firm basis of the clare
et distincte percipere (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/2).
The Introduction to CM explains that Descartes’s distinctive
gesture occurs on »two significant layers« (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/2).
The first layer includes:
(a) iThe »return« to the philosophizing ego as a »personal ego«;
(b) iThe »destruction« of every given »scientific knowledge«;
(c) iThe »reliance« on what strikes me as »evident« and indisputably
true, considered as the starting point to re-establish what has

been preliminarily suspended.
With respect to this first layer, the novelty introduced by Descartes
is in the fact of having not only thematized a fundamental gesture
already accomplished by Socrates or Augustin, but also turned it into
the methodic process to be followed by »everyone who seriously want to
become a philosopher« (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/2). In Descartes’s hands
the general cluster (a) (b) (c) turns into the response to the following
question: how should one begin philosophizing? Is there a methodic way
by means of which I, as a personal ego, could become a mindful and
effective beginner in philosophy? Thanks to this preliminary variation,
Descartes turned philosophy into a »personal affair« of the beginning
philosopher. Stripped out from its original ethical context, the Socratic
»absolute poverty« of knowledge becomes a methodic step to reach that
»absolutely sure beginning« from which a personal subject can only
begin in order to hold a truly »insightful« and not merely »blind« grasp
of a transmitted set of truths (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/3).
But Husserl also identifies a second variation, occurring at a deeper
layer, consisting in:
(a) iiThe»return« to a philosophizing ego which is no longer a
personal subject but the »solipsistic« (Husserl 1973a, p. 45/3)
»pure ego of the pure cogitationes« (Husserl 1973a, p. 46/4);
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Claudio Majolino
(b) iiThe »destruction« is not limited to every given »scientific
knowledge« but extends to every given »natural knowledge«,

including the belief in the existence of the world itself;
(c) iiThe reliance on the absolute apodictic evidence of the ego cogito
as the starting point to re-establish the existence of the entire

world whose existence has been previously suspended because of
its lack of evidence (Husserl 1973a, p. 45/3).
This triple shift—from (a)i (b)i (c)i to (a)ii (b)ii (c)ii—shows a second
novelty of the Cartesian variation. The cluster (a) (b) (c) now appears
as the answer to a new and different question, i.e. how can philosophy
reach its ultimate goals? Is there a methodic way by means of which
philosophy could mindfully and effectively live up to its true ambitions?
Through his second deeper-layer variation Descartes is praised for
having endowed »genuine« philosophy with a »radical« method to
reach its ultimate »ends.« By way of a »methodical critique of the
certainty embedded in the natural life of experience and thought«
philosophy has to go as far as to destroy »the being of the world«
(Husserl 1973a, p. 45/3) and uncover that »reduced« ego whose
»existence is absolutely indubitable« and whose »pure inwardness can
include an objective outwardness« (Husserl 1973a, p. 45/3 modified).
2.3. The critique of the »doctrinal content«.
Such distinctive style of meditation, characterized by the repetition

and two-layers variation of the traditional motive of the »subjective
turn« of philosophy (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/2), has been factually
deliveredin a book called Meditationes de prima philosophia in qua dei
existentia et animae immortalitas demonstratur, originally published
in Latin in 1641 and translated into French in 1647 with the title
Méditations métaphysiques. In this book, a man, called René Descar
tes, had both displayed a philosophical gesture and argued in favour
of a philosophical theory (whose content could be critically examined,
accepted or rejected by future generations of philosophers).
The doctrinal content of the theory Husserl alludes to is entirely
related to the deeper layer of the cartesian motif and concerns the ways
in which the Meditationes explain:
(a) The status of the »ego cogito« (which emerges after the self-with
drawal) as
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a. A »substantia cogitans, the separate mens sive anima« (Hus

serl 1973a, p. 63/24);
b. A »solipsistic« ego (Husserl 1973a, p. 45/3);
c. A »psychological ego« with its »mental phenomena in the
sense of psychology« (Husserl 1973a, p. 64–55/25–26);
d. A »piece of the world« and, more specifically, the only »piece
of the world of which one cannot doubt« (Husserl 1973a,
p. 64/25);
(b) The status of the »cogitatum« and the nature of the »inclusion«
of the exteriority of the world within the interiority of the
»cogitationes« (which remain after the destruction of the natural
belief), i.e. as
a. »[M]ental components of the psycho-physical man«;
b. »[P]iece[s] of my ego to be found in my conscious life as a
really inherent part of it« (Husserl 1973a, p. 65/26);
(c) The outward path to »secure« the external world out of the
apodictic evidence of the »ego cogito cogitata« (which brings us
back to the »reconstruction« of that which has been previously
destroyed), i.e. as,
a. The deductive path moving, more geometrico, from an apo
dictic axiom (the »pure ego«) to a demonstrated theorem
(the »the rest of the world«);
b. The causal path leading from the existence of the pure ego to
the existence of the world (Husserl 1973a, p. 63/24).
This doctrine provides a distinctive interpretation of the deeper-layer
of the Cartesian motif: it »begins« with the ego cogito, and methodi
cally proceeds as if such being were the first and necessary premise
of a scientific syllogism, i.e. following a deductive-causal path which,
drawing from the ego cogito’s immanent principles, leads immediately
»to God’s existence and veracity« and mediately »to the Objective
Nature, to the duality of finite substances, i.e. to the objective field
of metaphysics and positive sciences, and finally to these disciplines
themselves« (Husserl 1973a, p. 45/3, modified).
2.4. Insightfulness and tradition
The fact that the Meditationes are a book—the only philosophical book
ever explicitly discussed qua book by Husserl—is all but irrelevant. As
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Claudio Majolino
Husserl explains in the Origin of geometry, it is only insofar as they

are delivered in a written form that the intentional achievements of a
truth-oriented conscious activity are set to be historically transmitted,
handed over from one generation to another, replicated, discussed,
used as a basis for further demonstrations or meditations and give
rise to a »tradition« (Husserl 1976, pp. 365–386/353–378). The
same applies to Descartes’s Meditationes which appear as the factual
inscription in the history of humanity of, both, a distinctive variety of
meditation and the theory it gives rise to.
In the Origin of geometry Husserl also explains that all tradi
tion complies to the passive laws of historical transmission and
sedimentation—and this also holds for the »Cartesian tradition.«
The »Cartesian« motifs and the »Cartesian« doctrines can thus be
historically transmitted in various ways. They can be:
a) Followed insightfully, i.e. repeated or varied, accepted or rejected,
developed and even modified, always in keeping with the full
awareness of their original meaning and theoretical goals;
b) Followed blindly, i.e. reiterated or addressed mechanically, as it
were, in a way such that neither repetition nor critical assessment
are accompanied with the awareness of their original meaning; or
c) Left unfollowed, i.e. either forgotten or turned into something
utterly ineffective.
It is Husserl’s contention that, at the end of the 1920s, in the very
moment in which he is writing CM, the motifs of the Meditationes are
either blindly repeated or simply forgotten; the same holds for their
doctrinal contents, which are either uncritically accepted or rejected, or
merely ignored. In 1929, the new Cartesian beginning is already part of
an almost three century old tradition, taken for granted and somehow
limited to its factual-historical value.
Now, if transcendental phenomenology is a »new Cartesianism«
it is not because it somehow follows what Descartes did or said in
his magnus opus, but rather because it does so insightfully. And it is
precisely because of his trust to have insightfully repeated and varied
both layers of the Cartesian motif shown in the Meditationes that
Husserl also believes to be entitled to »reject nearly everything of their
well-known doctrinal content« and discard most of what this book
says (Husserl 1973a, p. 43/1). Husserl’s Descartes strives to realize
a certain idea of philosophy, and he strives to do so by performing
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a two layers transformation of a traditional conceptual cluster of the

subjective turn of philosophy—an idea shared by Husserl too.
2.5. The »motif« and the »motive«
The careful readers of CM have certainly noticed the somehow ambi

guous way in which Husserl employs the German word »Motive«,
which means both »motif« (i.e., distinctive theme, trait, pattern) and
»motive« (i.e., aim, intention, reason). In the Introduction and the
1st CM the two meanings often merge. For instance, the first-layer
motif of the »return to the philosophizing ego« (to repeat and variate)
depends on the motives (to pursue) which drive the beginner in
philosophy into the activity of philosophizing. In fact, it is precisely
because the beginner aims at becoming a »genuine« philosopher that
he or she decides to destroy every pre-given scientific knowledge
and turn towards his or her own personal ego. And it is also because
philosophy has a »guiding goal idea« (Husserl 1973a, p. 50/9) and
a »final end« that it ends up being committed by the deeper-layer
motif to the »radical« destruction of the pre-given world and the self-
withdrawal to the pure ego cogito (Husserl 1973a, p. 48/7). Finally, if
in his doctrine Descartes interprets the ego cogito as a psychological
substance and reconstructs the world in a deductive-causal way, it is
always because he still believes—wrongly—to be following the same
»leading idea.«
The »motive« or »the guiding idea« lurking behind all these
achievements is nothing but the idea of science aiming at:
1) »[T]he realization of a science that should be grounded in radi
cal genuineness«;
2) The realization of »a universal science« (Husserl 1973a, p.
48/7 modified).
It is indeed Husserl’s claim that, according to its own teleological idea,
every »genuine philosophy«—not just Descartes’s—ultimately aims
at being as firmly grounded as possible in its principles (and therefore
necessary in its claims) and as comprehensive as possible in its scope
(and therefore universal in its extension). It is only in this way that
philosophy could finally provide a »radical foundation« for each and
every particular science; and turn itself into a self-grounded and
all-encompassing science, bringing together all particular sciences.
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Claudio Majolino
2.6. The »idea« of science and the »factual« sciences
Since the radical foundation of a universal science is only an »idea,«

its presence cannot be established, let alone verified or disproved, on
a merely factual basis (Husserl 1973a, p. 50/9). Husserl is indeed
adamant to admit that philosophy has never factually achieved the
goal of turning itself into an absolutely self-grounded science; that
one should not self-confidently assume that such goal will be factually
reached one day (Husserl 1973a, p. 49/8). Thus, by stating that abso
lute foundation is the »goal-idea« of every science, of every genuine
philosophy and, ultimately, of Descartes’s Meditationes, Husserl is not
making a factual claim about science as a cultural fact (Husserl 1973a,
p. 50/9) but a normative claim about what belongs to the very idea of
science (Husserl 1973a, p. 49/8).
This normative claim could be unpacked by singling out the three
intentional components—two theoretical and one practical-axiologi
cal—proper to each and every »scientific striving or doing« (Husserl
1973a, p. 50/9). The first theoretical component consists in the mere
activity of judging. Noetically speaking, a judgment is a categorial act
by way of which one »means« or »claims« that something »is such
and such.« Correlatively, that which is judged is nothing but a state
of affair which is meant or claimed to be such and such—under the
assumption that the judgment at stake is true or correct. The second
theoretical component consists in the activity of grounding, which
leads to the concept of evidence. Grounding a judgment is tantamount
to accounting for (Ausweisung) the truth of its claims. In some cases,
the truth of a judgment is accounted for only mediately, i.e. by tracing
it back to the truth of some other judgments. In other cases, the
grounding is immediate, since the judgments show themselves as
»adjusted to« their correlative states of affairs only because the latter
are present in themselves, and, correlatively, the judging subject has
the innermost awareness of such evident self-showing. The third
practical-axiological component consists in the striving for grounded
judgments (Husserl 1973a, p. 50/10). And here lies precisely the
distinctive »intention« (Intention) of the scientific striving«:
The scientist intends, not merely to judge, but to ground his judgments.
Stated more precisely: He intends to let no judgment be accepted by
himself or others as scientific knowledge, unless he has grounded it
perfectly and can therefore justify it completely at any time by a freely
actualizable return to his repeatable act of grounding. De facto that
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may never go beyond being a mere pretension; at all events, the claim
involves an ideal goal. (Husserl 1973a, p. 51/11, modified)
The intention to go all the way through in the process of »genuine
grounding« and at least the tendency to look for the best and most
perfect way to account for/manifest the truth of a judgment, are
embedded in the normative structure of every scientific doing. Hus
serl can thus finally conclude that
the Cartesian idea of a science and ultimately of a universal science
which is absolutely grounded and justified, is none other than the idea
that constantly furnishes guidance in all sciences and in their striving
toward universality, whatever may be the situation with respect to its
factual realization. (Husserl 1973a, p. 2/11 modified)
The crucial point is that the normative force of such idea of science is
not drawn »from without«, as it were, i.e. from the success of this or
that given science. Genuine and radical philosophy is not »scientific«
because it borrows the protocols of positive sciences, but rather
because it shares with the latter, »from within«, the inner teleology of
judgment itself, which is an essentially necessary component of every
scientific endeavour. Conflating this subjectively grounded idea of sci
entific philosophy with the objective view of a philosophy mimicking
mathematics or physics entails, at the same time, the end of philosophy
and the misery of sciences. The »critical« assessment of the doctrinal
content of the Meditationes is meant to establish if and to what extent
Descartes stayed clear from such conflation (see § 5.7).
3. The »everlasting significance.« Descartes and the

beginning of philosophy
3.1. On the manifold beginnings of philosophy
CM present the »new beginning« of the Meditationes as a series of

»transformations and novel formations« of traditional concepts and
methods of philosophy. Thus, if one wants to know more about the
»everlasting significance« of such ground-breaking event, one has
to refer to Husserl’s lectures on the history of philosophy and its
manifold beginnings to which the CM implicitly refer.
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Claudio Majolino
3.2. The »first beginning«: the Pre-Socratics
In the 1919/20 lectures Introduction to Philosophy, the first beginning

of philosophy is illustrated by the joint examples of Solon and
Thales. The lectures report a passage from Herodotus’s Histories
in which king Croesus attributes to Solon a somehow »philosoph
ical« (φιλοσοφέων) attitude (Book I, XXX, 2). Solon had indeed
travelled around the world not for practical purposes but only for
the sake of seeing, learning and knowing (Husserl 2012, p. 6). But
Solon is not a philosopher in the strict sense, since encountering
a wide array of »facts«, comparing and contrasting customs, laws,
people and events of the world as it is, could only lead to a vast »wis
dom« of the what, not to the proper »knowledge« of the why. A true
philosophical attitude, by contrast, is that of Thales, who aims at
embracing the »whole of the world« by knowing its »principles«. Such
principles cannot be discovered by merely wandering through the
world with the eyes wide open and learning about facts, but only
through a more complex form of conceptual thinking (Husserl 2012,
p. 7). This shift of the theoretical interest towards the Weltall from
wisdom to knowledge, from facts to principles »the Greeks called it
philosophy«, i.e. »universal science, science of the whole of the world,
of the all-encompassing unity of all that is (Husserl 1976, p. 321/276).
The philosophical approach of Thales, Husserl continues, was
shared by the so-called Pre-Socratics. More specifically, every philo
sopher of the »first beginning« shared the following descriptive and
normative features: 1) the theoretical interest towards the whole of
the world; 2) the attempt to not only observe and compare facts in
their irreducible diversity, but also trace them back to universal laws
governed by some fundamental principles (ἀρχαί); 3) the understand
ing of such principles as distinctively conceptual objects, rather than
objects of factual experience; 4) the introduction of the distinction
between the world as it appears prima facie and how it is in its
true being; 5) the noetic contrast between scattered opinion (δόξα)
and unity of science (ἐπιστήμη). Based on these shared features
each Pre-Socratic philosopher will eventually develop his own spe
cific »view« (Ahnung) (Husserl 2021, p. 10).
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3.3. Towards the »second beginning«: the Sophists
The philosophy of the first beginning, however, will be literally des

troyed by the Sophistic scepticism—and not without reason. Three of
its limits were indeed responsible for such ruinous downfall. The first
limit consists in its inability to fill the gap between the extreme gener
ality of the principles invoked (the Pythagorean ἀριθμός, Heraclitus’s
λόγος, etc.) and the great variety of worldly particular phenomena
to account for. The second concerns the lack of a consistent and
binding method to establish such principles and account for the truth
of their philosophical claims (why should one prefer Pythagoras’s
particular »views« over Heraclitus’s?) (Husserl 2012, p. 11; emphasis
added). The third has to do with their straightforward account of the
world, and lack of interest with respect to the experience through
which such world is given (Husserl 1956, p. 58/60). Husserl has
indeed the utmost consideration for the »wonderful phenomenon of
sophistry« and Gorgias’s and Protagoras’s unparalleled contribution
to philosophy (Husserl 2012, p. 11).
Though the Sophist is literally indistinguishable from the philo
sopher, the driving motives of the former have nothing to do with
the genuinely theoretical interests of the latter. Sophistry’s playful
attitude literally turns philosophy into a »game.« And yet, such game
is extremely revealing, for it ultimately shows that if philosophy
boils down to (1) the sheer coexistence and conceptual juxtaposition
of extremely general and apparently arbitrary allegations about the
unifying principles of the whole of the world; (2) the elaboration
of world views conceptually conquered »in one blow«, i.e. (2.1)
incapables of specifying the diversity of particular laws governing
the being and becoming of particular phenomena and (2.2) lacking of
any method to justify their doings; (3) the oblivion of the fact that
the whole of the world is always given to subjective experience and
thinking—then philosophy is literally impossible (Husserl 2012, pp.
11–12).
Hence the following paradox: philosophers attempt to wrest
world from chaos, order from disorder, but they do so in a relatively
chaotic and disordered manner; they struggle to account for the deep
unity of the world-order, yet they do it in a manner that is neither
internally nor externally unified or ordered; they reject merely subjec
tive and relative »opinions« in the name of »truth« and »science«,
but they end up conceiving narratives having the merely subjective
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and relative status of »views«. The »fundamental significance« of the

Sophistic skepsis and »the ineradicably of scepticism« (Husserl 1956,
pp. 58/60) put the philosopher in front of a brutal alternative: renewal
or disappearance. And the renewal can only take the form of a serious
appraisal of the »essence« of scepticism, i.e. subjectivism: the idea
that »everything objective appears subjectively in some way, in these
or those modes of appearance« (Husserl 1956, p. 58/60). Thanks to
the Sophist, for the first times in the history of humanity, »the naïve
pre-givenness of the world becomes problematic« (Husserl 1956,
p. 59/62).
3.4. The »second beginning«: Socrates and Plato
The new »beginning of a genuine and radical philosophy« occurs with

Socrates and, more specifically, with Plato (Husserl 1956, p. 8/8).
By following the pattern of the self-withdrawal in its Socratic form,
Plato takes up the challenge of the Sophists and rejects the paradoxical
outcomes of their destructive critique, freeing philosophy from the
limits of its first beginning and establishes a new set of descriptive and
normative features.
Against the first limit, what the Pre-Socratics imagined to be strai
ghtforwardly graspable »in one blow« as an unarticulated whole, is
now understood as the progressive and dialectical discovery of the
correlation between »being in itself« and »true in itself« (Husserl 1986,
p. 130;). Accordingly, philosophy becomes a universal a priori science
which is articulated into particular a priori sciences, whose particular
concepts, i.e. the »ideas«, can be (i) theoretically investigated as such
and in their mutual relations and (ii) grounding the various empirical
truths pertaining to the manifold and apparently scattered facts of the
world, providing them with a structural unity (Husserl 1956, p. 13/14).
Against the second limit, Plato follows the Socratic lead and introduces
an entirely novel line of research which includes the self-examination
of the activity of philosophy itself. It is thanks to Plato that philosophy
develops for the first time a rigorous »doctrine of the method« (Husserl
1956, pp. 4/4, 7–8/7–8; Husserl 2002, p. 53).
With Plato, philosophy is no longer simply directed towards the whole
of the world and its unifying principles. It is also turned towards the
intrinsic articulation and mutual relations among the principles them
selves. And it is equally turned towards itself and its own principles,
the correlation between knowledge and known, truth and being. It
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is only after these radical transformations made possible thanks to

Plato’s second beginning that philosophy finally becomes »genuine«
and »radical.« It is »genuine« because it genuinely does what the phi
losophy of the first beginning only intended to do. It is »radical« with
respect to both its method and goal. Methodologically »deep-rooted«
it has also the means to reach the »roots of everything« (ῥιζώματα
πάντων) (= the ultimate a priori principles of all that is, multiple and
yet unified). The Platonic second beginning represents the birth of a
new epoch, in which logic and ontology, a priori and factual sciences,
first and second philosophies will proceed hand in hand (Husserl
1956, pp. 13/14–15). But it leaves the third challenge of the Sophist
unmet: the pre-givennes of the world is still not problematic, the
constitutive role of subjectivity is still underplayed.
3.5. The »third beginning«: Descartes
This brings us to the »everlasting significance« of the Meditationes

referred to in the CM. The explicit connection between the second
(Socratic-Platonic) and the third (Cartesian) beginning of philosophy
is made explicit already in the lectures on First Philosophy (1923–24):
If today I were asked to look back upon the entire history of European
philosophy and say, on the basis of the convictions that I have come
to hold over the course of decades, which philosophers shine brightest
of all, I would name two, or better three. First, I would mention Plato,
or rather the incomparable double-star Socrates-Plato. The creation of
the idea of true and genuine science, or of philosophy […]. Secondly, I
would name Descartes. His Meditationes de prima philosophia represent
a completely new beginning in the history of philosophy in their
attempt to discover, with a radicalism unheard of up to then, the
absolutely necessary beginning of philosophy, while deriving this
beginning from absolute and entirely pure self-knowledge (Husserl
1956, pp. 7–8/7–8).
Plato and Descartes are thus the initiators of two nested »tendencies«
within the history of philosophy, the latter being a radicalization of
the former, which was already a radicalization of a previous tendency,
i.e. that of the Pre-Socratics. In light of this claim, it makes no doubt
that Husserl sees Descartes first and foremost as a Platonist. Indeed,
as we have seen from the 1st CM, Descartes’s »guiding idea« is nothing
but the »idea of genuine and radical scientific philosophy« which turns
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out to be nothing but the platonic »idea« of science turn into a philo
sophical »motive« (see § 2.5). More specifically, (1) Descartes is
»motivated« by that very specific idea of philosophy fostered by Plato
in the second beginning. (2) Such idea is meant to be a response not
only to the Sophists but to all sceptical challenge with respect to the
actual possibility of philosophy itself. (3) The Platonic idea of philo
sophy joins universality with accountability (the theoretical interest
towards the correlation between being and truth, truth and know
ledge, knowledge and method—inherited by Socrates). But (4) just as
Plato’s second beginning radicalizes the approach of the Pre-Socratics
by addressing (facing the sophistic skepsis) the »holistic« limits of
every philosophy as one ones of the first beginning, Descartes’s third
beginning radicalizes the Platonic approach by addressing (thanks to
a sceptical use of the doubt) the »dogmatic« limits of every form of
objectivism.
Such dogmatic limits have, unsurprisingly, the two main forms
that Sophistry had already pointed out but Plato could not address
(Husserl 1956, p. 112):
1) »The presupposition, in epistemological investigations, of an
objective world and psychophysical causalities«;
2) The »blindness with respect to the peculiar essence of conscious
ness.«
By challenging these two limits, Descartes »displays an altogether
new line of development compared to the post-Platonic philo
sophy« and »steers the current of the history of philosophy in an
entirely new direction« (Husserl 1956, p. 60). A direction within
which »subjectivity becomes by necessity a fundamental theoretical
theme« (Husserl 1956, p. 62, emphasis added) and the »radical
ism« of philosophy is no longer to be found in the »dogmatic logical-
ontological« research, but all the way down into a »theory and critique
of reason,« ultimately leading to transcendental philosophy.
3.6. Descartes and the Sophist
It is precisely with respect to these points that the Meditationes

introduce the transformations of philosophy which are responsible for
their »everlasting significance.«
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In the name of the ideal of a genuine and radical scientific

philosophy, the Platonic tendency fosters the inquiry towards the
correlations between theory of being and theory of method, doctrine
of ideas and theory of intellectual knowledge. In the name of this
very same ideal, the »Cartesian tendency« thematizes the conscious
life of the ego and the cogitations in which truth in itself and being
in itself disclose themselves in their essential correlation. By using
a somehow Kantian lexicon, Husserl summarizes this fact by saying
that the Platonic tendency is still »dogmatic« while the Cartesian
is already »critical« (Husserl 1956, pp. 95–96/98). But what does
»critical« exactly mean?
The novelty of the Cartesian philosophy, and with it of the entire
modern philosophy, consists in the way it takes up anew and in an
entirely new spirit the battle against skepticism […]. What guides this
philosophy internally is the conviction that such an overcoming does
not simply have the job of ridding the world of merely troublesome
negations, which a successfully creative objective science should after
all not concern itself with anyway, but that instead, themes of a
fateful significance for [the future possibility of] an objective science
and a universal philosophy reside in these skeptical arguments. It is
guided, more precisely, by the conviction that in these arguments,
radical obscurities and methodological imperfections in the objective
sciences make themselves felt, and that the purification and theoretical
unfolding of the valuable kernel of these arguments must necessarily
lead to the securing of previous science and, at the same time, to its
fulfillment with a new spirit, by raising it to clarity and self-justification
in a new manner. (Husserl 1956, pp. 60–61/63, my emphasis)
Every new beginning in philosophy is thus triggered by an increas
ingly radicalized form of skepticism. In the Meditationes, Descartes
transformed philosophy by turning himself into his own Sophist, as it
were, (a) inventing arguments about dreams indistinguishable from
reality, bodies of glass, deceiving Gods and evil geniuses going as far as
to doubt of the existence of the world and (b) taking seriously the idea
that the roots of the objective world are in subjective experiences. He
has thus ultimately embedded the skepsis within the innermost core of
genuine and radical philosophy itself. As Husserl emphatically puts it:
Already the oldest skeptical arguments, those of the ancient Sophists,
contained a kernel of truth which philosophy could never take hold
of. Already in these oldest sophistries, highly significant philosophical
motives were knocking at the door, but no one answered. When this
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did happen, a new domain of cognition was opened up, and along
with it that from whence all knowledge must finally demonstrate its
dignity. For us now it is thus indispensable to acquaint ourselves
with the profound truth of the Sophistic arguments. (Husserl 1956, p.
58/60 modified)
Philosophy no longer faces skeptical criticism—it becomes critical.
Descartes understood that skeptical arguments are not dialectical
weapons to be used against the idea of genuine and radical philosophy,
but part of the arsenal to realize it. They do not dismiss the possibility
of philosophy on behalf of the inescapable role played by subjectivity
in the ambitious quest for the principles of the Weltall; they rather
prove that it is precisely on behalf of such inescapable role that
philosophy is possible.
If the first layer of the cartesian motif (doubt of every pre-given
knowledge) can be traced back to Socrates, the second, the »deeper«
one (doubt of everything of which one could possibly doubt, even
the existence of the world), can only be understood by highlighting
the greatness of sophistry and scepticism. Descartes understood that
Socrates, and Gorgias were divided by the idea of philosophy, but
united in their willingness to vindicate the constitutive role of subjec
tivity.
4. The »present significance.« Descartes and the crisis

of philosophy
4.1. Splinters
It is time to look closely to the largely critical terms in which, in

the Introduction to the CM, Husserl describes the state of contem
porary philosophy. Present-day philosophy, he says, is »splintered,«
»cluelessly splintered« (Husserl 1973a, pp. 46/6, 188), spinning in a
»clueless hustle and bustle« (Husserl 1973a, p. 46/4, modified). Such
state of decay begins in the second half of the 19th century (Husserl
1973a, p. 188) and affects the very unity of philosophy itself. More
specifically, it affects the goals, the constitutive problems and the
method of genuine philosophy (Husserl 1973a, p. 46/4).
According to Husserl’s diagnosis, in present-days the unity of
philosophy is not only factually unachieved or ultimately deemed as
de facto unachievable (which is far from being a problem)—it is plainly
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and simply an ideal towards which no one intends to strive anymore.

Many contemporary philosophers have indeed lost the ambition to
develop a philosophy in the genuine and radical sense; to provide
any grounding for the factual truths of empirical sciences, which
thus remain just as splintered as philosophy itself; to explicitly lift
absolute self-justification, which is a structural component of every
scientific endeavour, as a guiding idea whose norm has to guide the
philosophical research. As a result, philosophy in the strict sense,
either 1) tends to collapse into philosophy in the broad sense (as in
Solon’s collection of facts), or 2) remains stuck within the limits of the
first beginning (as in the Pre-Socratic elaboration of holistic »world
views«). And, given this state of the facts, the stage is finally set for 3)
the rise of new forms of sophistry, voiding philosophy from inside and
ultimately showing its futility.
Instead of a unitary living philosophy we have a philosophical literature
growing beyond all bounds and almost without coherence. Instead
of a serious discussion among conflicting theories that, in their very
conflict, show the intimacy with which they belong together, the
commonness of their underlying convictions, and an unswerving
belief in a genuine philosophy, we only have only pseudo-reports and
pseudo-criticisms, the mere appearance of true philosophizing with
others and others. (Husserl 1973a, p. 46/5).
4.2. Unity and pseudo-unity
In the passage just quoted, by opposing the pseudo-criticisms among

different but undecidable viewpoints to the genuine critique among
different philosophical positions sharing the same end-goals and
methodical commitments, Husserl is making a very specific point.
The formula »Miteinander und Füreinanderphilosophieren« translates
in fact the Greek expression »συμφιλοσοφεῖν«1, which is traditionally
used to describe the collective intellectual life of Plato’s Academy.
Husserl is not saying that genuine philosophy is gone and present-
days philosophies are just pseudo-philosophies; nor is he claiming
that every contemporary philosopher is somehow a Sophist. Husserl’s
point is quite subtler and could be spelled out as follows:
1 Aristotle, Eth. Nic. IX 12, 1172a 1–8.
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1. The unity of philosophy is not something factual;

2. It is the unity of an idea (striving to account the whole of the
factual word in its diversity);
3. De facto competing philosophical views are thus united by their
common reference to such idea;
4. Present-day philosophy is no longer guided by the idea of
genuine and radical philosophy;
5. Its manifold competing views have no factual unity (because
of 1.);
6. But they have no ideal unity either (because of 4);
7. They nevertheless appear to be unified;
8. Hence, the unity of present-day philosophy is only apparent.
The assessment of the present significance of the Meditationes thus
depends on a specific diagnosis of the present state of philosophy.
A diagnosis according to which contemporary philosophy can only
pretend to be a collective endeavor, while it only results in the
institutionally staged encounter of idiosyncratic and self-entertaining
world-views. As Husserl points out in a quite overemphatic passage of
the Introduction:
But how would actual study and actual collaboration be possible
where there are as many philosophies as philosophers? To be sure,
we still have philosophical congresses. The philosophers meet but,
unfortunately, not the philosophies. The philosophies lack the unity of
a spiritual space in which they might exist for and act on one another.
(Husserl 1973a, p. 47/5, modified)
Though roughly similar to that of the first beginning, this gloomy
state of affairs differs from the latter on at least two distinctive
aspects. As a matter of fact, the pre-Socratics had indeed a distinctively
theoretical ambition, a unique idea of philosophy in the strict sense
to be guided by, and therefore a common spiritual space to share
(although in a twofold limited way). Even if not sufficiently »genuine«
and »radical,« the unity of philosophy in the first beginning was
substantial, not apparent. As a result of their willingness to challenge
the ambition of philosophy by insightfully »playing the game« of
philosophy itself, the Sophists too belonged to such unitary space
(although ex negativo).
Husserl’s present-day philosophy displays none of these features.
By merging Pre-Socratic holism and Sophistic mimicry, it reproduces
the appearance of each and every philosophical gesture and comes
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up with variously conflicting world views. Yet unlike the former, its
holistic views are not radically opposed but merely juxtaposed; unlike
the latter, the imitation of philosophy is blind, and its goals is not
to prove the impossibility of philosophy but to stage its liveliness.
Philosophy is a play, and the Academia is its stage.
4.3. The Sophist within
But why should one attribute to the Meditationes the power to have an
impact on contemporary philosophy in a state of crisis? It is manifest
that the clues to understand the singular and irreducible »present
significance« of the Meditationes are not to be found in the general
features of the second beginning, but in the distinctive features of the
third. More specifically, they could be found:
a) Either among the Cartesian transformations which are also
responsible for their »everlasting significance«,
b) Or in some of the aspects related to the doctrinal content.
Let us begin with point a). Descartes integrated the sophist within
the philosopher, accepted the latter’s critical and skeptical game
and »internalized« it, so to speak, turning its treacherous devices into
sharp philosophical tools and critically thematized the constitutive
function of the subject. At this point, not even the existence of the
world was left untouched.
But Descartes also opposed face-to-face another way of »internal
izing« the Sophistic devices. According to this second way, philosophy
is indeed allowed to doubt of everything, indulge in dialectical moves
by wildly multiplying qualms, figuring paradoxical arguments and
introducing sophisticated critical distinctions. Such abundance of
critical gestures, however, is nothing but a blind exercise of philo
sophical techniques following an ideal which is no longer felt as
vital. Accordingly, their radicality would never truly go as far as to
question what claims to be unquestionably fundamental, guided by
the »idea« of science only. It will only show the empty possibility to
question everything.
What Husserl has in mind here is the hardly flattering picture
of Late Scholasticism drawn by Descartes in some of his writings and
to which he ultimately opposes his own »genuine« and »scientific«
approach. In the 17th century, the philosopher has thus »internal
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ized« the sophist in two different ways, as an insightful mean towards

an end, and as a blind rule-following practice, and it is precisely because
of this double internalization that, as Husserl suggests, the situation
of our unhappy present time—i.e. from the second half of the 19th
century to the first quarter of the 20th—appears as »similar« to the one
encountered by Descartes in his youth (Husserl 1973a, p. 47/5).
To some extent, one could say that, once »internalized,« the game
of the sophist is either mastered by the philosopher or not. In the first
case, the »sophist within the philosopher« doubts in view of evidence,
performs a critique of reason for the sake of reason. And since, as we
have seen, »striving for evidence« is a structural component of all sci
entific search of groundings, the quest for the ultimate evidence
requires the deployment of the ultimate doubt (see above § 2.5). In
sum, the escalation of doubt, is anchored on the radicality of the task.
Accordingly, Descartes’s philosophical doubt becomes increasingly
far-reaching and even hyperbolic not because one could question
indiscriminately everything that is, but rather because the more some
thing claims to be fundamental, the more fundamentally it has to be
questioned, in order to evidently substantiate such claim. It is because
of the »sophist within« that Descartes’s »deep« motif destroyed the
world.
In the second case, if the »sophist within the philosopher« pre
vails, philosophy runs the risk of imperceptibly veering into pseudo-
philosophy. Doubt is now a mere arbitrary fact, or a repeatable
technique. As for the »motives« of such endeavor, one could either
doubt for the sake of doubting and perform a critique of reason which
is a goal in itself; or submit both doubt and critique of reason to
extra-theoretical and practical goals. In both cases, however, doubt
and critique turn out to be merely technical and heteronomous
exercises. And it is precisely for this reason that doubt is now
both »mechanic« and »subjective«, since it either stops arbitrarily or
continues indefinitely. Even if the »sophist within« is not mastered by
the philosopher, the doubt could go as far as to challenge the truths
of mathematics or the existence of the world—but always blindly.
Accordingly, it would lead not to subjectivity, but to subjectivism as a
rule-governed form of relativism.
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4.4. The scientist without
If we now turn to point b) we bump already into one of the critical

arguments that Husserl opposes to the doctrinal content of the Medi
tationes to which we shall return later. The fist layer of the Cartesian
motif was meant to destroy the validity of every pre-existing scientific
knowledge—no matter if empirical or mathematical—and reconstruct
its truths on the sole basis of inner evidence. By introjecting the
Sophist’s radicality, the second deeper layer should have done the
same with the pre-existing world as a whole—and reconstruct its
existence on the sole basis of the ego cogito. Both »destructions« are
performed in the name of a certain »scientific« ideal of philosophy.
But having suspended the validity of all pre-given sciences and, at the
same time, striving to realize philosophy as a universal science, where
does Descartes draw such ideal of scientificity?
In agreement with his own principles Descartes should have
drawn his guiding »idea of science« from within, i.e. from the evidence
of the ego cogito itself, certainly not from the methods and protocols
of some already existing scientific discipline. And, as we have already
pointed out, Husserl’s own meditations show that such immanent
»idea« of science is nothing but the teleological idea of the judgment
itself (see § 2.6). But instead of drawing the ideal of scientificity right
from the immanent teleology of judgment, Descartes takes its from
without, i.e. from the mathematical sciences of nature of his time
turned into normative paradigms. He thus ends up surreptitiously
identifying the idea of philosophy as a universal science with the
model of a deductive system unfolding more geometrico (Husserl
1973a, p. 63/24).
This tacit identification leads to the paradox of a philosophy
whose goal is to unify positive sciences by providing a foundation for
their most general concepts and methods, but whose unity is founded
on the general concepts and methods of one particularly successful
positive science, mathematical physics.
There are thus quite compelling reasons explaining why, in
the Introduction to CM, Husserl maintains that »the only fruitful
renaissance has to be the one that reawakens the impulse of the
Cartesian Meditationes« (Husserl 1973a, p. 47/6). Such reason refers
to the paradox of Modernity itself, brought together by an unmastered
internalized skeptical sophistry and an overinflated externalized idea
of science. If the second aspect is rather spelled out in the Krisis,
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the first one lies at the center of the opening sections of CM. For
the true danger of late Modernity is not merely in the fact that the
Platonic idea of genuine and radical, i.e. scientific philosophy has lost
its motivating force. If this were the case, reawakening the impulse
of the Platonic dialogues should be enough to kick-start Husserl’s
much wished »renaissance.« But the danger of Modernity is also and
more importantly in the fact that the Cartesian genuinely and radical
philosophical use of sophistic and skeptical devices has lost its force,
leading to the perversion of the idea of a »genuine« and »radical« cri
tique of reason.
It is precisely for this reason that, in Husserl’s view, the
inward path of the Meditationes ends up having an unparalleled
unique »present significance.« Such significance is neither estab
lished by what they have been in the history of philosophy, nor by what
they have represented and still represent. It rather depends on what they
can do for philosophy now by being repeated, varied and criticized.
And this is precisely what Husserl’s transcendental phenomenol
ogy intends to do. Having as a »motive« the same »goal idea« as
Descartes (and Plato), it aims at insightfully transforming and radical
izing the »motifs« of the Meditationes, while clarifying and correcting
their »contents« (Husserl 1973a, pp. 47–48/6–7). All this in order
to promote an infinite συμφιλοσοφεῖν, a true Miteinander- und Für
einanderphilosphieren, in which the differences between philosophies
are neither erased, nor merely accepted as matters of fact, but asymp
totically integrated in a »serious collective work« (Husserl 1973a, p.
46/5) built out of »mutual critique« (Husserl 1973a, p. 47/5)—a work
that is »scientific« without borrowing its ideal of scientificity to any
given science, and »universal and necessary« without being mathe
matical.
Descartes’s Meditationes have thus not only set off, in the past, a
new beginning of philosophy; they have also the capacity to bring out,
in the present, the »need for a radical new beginning in philosophy«
(Husserl 1973a, p. 45/4).
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5. The »phenomenological significance.« Descartes and

the future of philosophy
5.1. Biographical and structural dependency
In the opening lines of the Introduction to CM Husserl explicitly sug

gests that his own philosophical path towards transcendental pheno
menology has been somehow influenced, motivated or inspired by a
critical reading of Descartes’s book (Husserl 1973a, p. 43/1). Given
this fact, one might be tempted to take this simple biographical claim
as the answer to the question of the phenomenological significance of
the Meditationes. But as we have shown (see § 2.5), the true »moti
vational« source of a serious philosopher is to be found in a distinctive
»guiding idea.« Accordingly, in the remaining parts of the Introduction
and the entire 1st CM, the biographical clue leaves its place to a more
structural approach, and the Meditationes appear not as the factual
source of inspiration for an individual man (Husserl), but as the basis
for a series of »Umbildungen und Neubildungen« carried out within a
philosophical project driven by the same »idea« of philosophy which
has motivated Descartes’s transformations (transcendental phenome
nology) (Husserl 1973a, p. 43/1; 48/6).
If this is correct, the Meditationes are not a book to be psycholo
gically inspired by, but a cluster of motifs and contents to be acted upon,
repeated, variated, modified, criticized, disassembled and reassembled
by a »beginning philosopher« who, in turn, is normatively motivated
by their very same guiding-idea of philosophy. The main »phenome
nological significance« of the Meditationes is thus not biographical
but structural, and is solely defined by the phenomenological-trans
cendental transformations they give rise to.
5.2. The variation of the first layer: from »private« to

»personal ego«
Husserl’s transformation of the first layer of the cartesian motif—the

one related to the question of the beginner in philosophy (§ 2.1)—
occurs already in the Introduction to CM, as Husserl affirms that Des
cartes has turned philosophy into a »completely personal affair of the
philosopher« but not into a »private affair« (Husserl 1973a, p. Hua I,
44/3).
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As established in Ideas II, a »person« or a »personal ego« — as

distinguished from a »pure ego«—is part of a spiritual world of inter
subjective validity, grounded on the fundamental law of motivation;
its life in the community is constituted right from the outset through
certain acts of communication by means of which shared spiritual
values and goal-ideas are mutually acknowledged (Husserl 1952, pp.
212–236/223–247). Moreover, the possibilities of a personal ego (the
»I can«) are structurally bound to the knowledge of the shared Umwelt
but also to »knowledge of one’s own person« as well to of others
persons, which always remain within the near or far scope of his or her
horizon (Husserl 1952, pp. 265–270/277–282, modified). But more
than anything else,
Above all, it is with respect to the empirical subject in its generality
and unity, that the »person« is to be delimited in its specific sense as the
subject of acts which are to be judged from the standpoint of reason, the
subject that is »self-responsible«, the subject that is free or in bondage,
unfree. (Husserl 1952, p. 257/269, modified)
The concept of »person« thus includes the idea of self-responsibility
understood in the intersubjective terms of freedom and rationality.
Saying that philosophy is a »personal affair« of the philosopher is
tantamount as affirming that the philosopher is a member of a philoso
phical community, that he or she is a person committed to the guiding
idea of philosophy and it is precisely because of such commitment that
he or she performs the self-withdrawal, the destruction of every given
knowledge and the exclusive acceptance of what appears to him or
her as evident only. It is only because the philosophical ego is a
»personal ego« that the self-withdrawal counts as a methodical step,
and the subjective evidence becomes the starting point from which the
philosopher begins to rationally rebuild the path towards a truth which
can be intersubjectively validated as evident by every other rational
subject (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/3). In some sense, a »solipsistic person«
is a contradiction in terms — just as a »solipsistic philosopher.«
The concept of »private affair,« by contrast, has an entirely
different structure. To begin with, private affairs are always part and
parcel of the unity of a »personal« ego, which they constantly presup
pose.2 More specifically, a »personal« deed is defined by Husserl as
2 »My life in the community, my private and social life, has as its ego-pole the ego,
which is constantly engaged with respect to its sense, that has its personal sense, the
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»private« if and only if, given a common social world, everybody

could be agreed upon by everybody (jedermann einverstehen kann)—at
least in principle—though it is not there for everybody ([nicht] für
jedermann daseiende) (Husserl 1973c, pp. 5, 57). Thus, a »private
affair« has not the positive meaning of »secret« or »intimate« and
not even of »solipsistic« but the rather negative sense of being
»spiritually disconnected« or »isolated« (Husserl 1973d, p. 403), and
therefore intersubjectively ineffective from a practical, axiological or a
theoretical standpoint.3 As for the specific case of philosophy, a belief
or a judgment counts as a »private affair« of the philosopher if and
only if: it is or can be accomplished despite the fact that it is rationally
disconnected with respect to the rest of the personal commitments
and theoretical achievements of the philosophical life of a personal
ego; and therefore it is spiritually ineffective with respect of the perso
nal commitments and theoretical achievements of the interpersonal
philosophical community in which the philosopher participates. As
an example of philosophical »private affairs« (Husserl 1963b, p. 154)
Husserl mentions the beliefs and disbeliefs of a dogmatist or a sceptic
after having performed the phenomenological reduction.
Thus, if as a phenomenologist, I switch off all empirical judgments in
the ordinary sense, my phenomenological statements would remain
untouched if, as a naturally thinking human being, I were to make
empirical judgments again, trust natural science etc. But they would
also remain untouched if, acting as a stubborn sceptic, I ware to doubt
the truth of the empirical judgments, even reject them, whether rightly
and meaningfully or not. From the standpoint of phenomenology,
these are private affairs, which do not affect phenomenology, precisely
because they have been switched off (Hua XIII, 154).
Thus, a philosophical judgment is a »private affair« as long as it has
no bearings on the dominant interests of the philosophical research,
synthetic unity of its habitualities and the unity of sense motivated thereby, of its
striving towards »life goals« (Husserl 1973b, p. 34)
3 Husserl calls non-communicative acts »private«, because they can be performed
without being addressed to the others, i.e. without having a social function (Husserl
1973c, p. 56). »Cultural objects« can be private if enjoyed by some individuals of
a given community, without implying the others (Husserl 1973c, p. 57). Private
»individual goals« can be pursued without engaging the goals of the community
(Husserl 1973c, p. 181). Husserl also talks of the »private« Umwelt which is the
correlate of my proper experiential life which constitutes the concept of »normality«
without intersubjective contribution (Husserl 1973c, pp. 156–158) etc.
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which is essentially carried out in an intersubjective and interpersonal

dimension, and, accordingly, does not entail any form of personal
self-responsibility. As long as they are »spiritually one« with respect
to their shared theoretical interest towards the reduced phenomena,
the sceptic and the dogmatic are not required to provide any rational
account for their respective beliefs, which thus remain ineffective.
In sum, meditations carried out in a Cartesian style are »perso
nal« insofar as they promote the withdrawal to an empirical and
rational ego, in which the principle of evidence and the principle of
self-responsibility are structurally joined. But they are not »private,«
since the junction of these two leading principles connects with and
affects every other aspect of the philosophical life of the personal ego,
whose judgments and beliefs are, in turn, spiritually connected with
the open-ended horizon of the philosophical interpersonal commu
nity in which he or she takes part. And this also explains why the
meditations carried out by one single man, René Descartes, are at the
same time the »prototype« (Husserl 1973a, p. 44/2) or the »model«
(Husserl 1973a, p. 187) for every beginning philosopher—not despite
their »personal« nature, but precisely because of it (Husserl 1973a, p.
44/2, modified).
5.3. The variation of the first layer and its way to the
»deeper« layer
Husserl’s transformed path of the »serious« beginner in philosophy is

thus spelled out by the following traits:
(a) iiiThe return to the philosophizing ego as a »personal ego in a
phenomenological sense«: as a self-responsible both empirical and

rational subject whose judgments are spiritually connected with
those of an interpersonal community of philosopher (empirically
transnational and transgenerational);
(b) iiiThe suspension of the validity (destruction) of every given »sci
entific knowledge« is made in the name of that very guiding idea of

scientific philosophy which guides and unifies such community;
(c) iiiThe reliance on what strikes me as evident but would also strike
as evident to every other rational being is the starting point to

methodically re-establish (»reconstruction«) the validity of that
which has been preliminarily suspended.
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With respect to this first set of variations three points need to

be stressed.
To begin with, it is worth reminding that the personal ego of
the »self-withdrawal« mentioned in (a)iii is clearly not the transcen
dental-constitutive ego but rather the constituted ego of the beginning
philosopher. Accordingly, the intersubjective dimension suggested by
its »personal« thoughts should not be conflated with the inter-mona
dic intersubjectivity discussed later in the 5th CM. It rather appears as
the concrete horizon of any factual philosophical research.
As for the »destruction« of every given knowledge mentioned
in (b)iii, it certainly bears some similarity with the »philosophical
ἐποχή« of Ideas I (Husserl 1977, pp. 39–40/33). One should hasten
to add, however, that the two gestures have different scopes. In fact,
in the »destruction« of this 1st CM the theoretical principle of evidence
is complemented with the axiological principle of self-responsibility
(you alone are personally responsible for the truth of your claims,
since the evident source of such truth lies in yourself).
Finally, the methodological »reliance on evidence« mentioned in
(c)iii does not assign any priority to apodictic evidence yet, and does not
require, as methodological standpoint the certainty that something
is and could not be otherwise. By contrast, it only recommends the
beginner in philosophy to move from evidence, through evidence,
to evidence.
Though this first phenomenological variation unfolds on a layer
which is not yet transcendental, it already provides some clues to
address in a Cartesian modified way, the late Modern crisis of philo
sophy. And it does so by grounding the personal engagement of the
beginning philosopher, which leads to the structural necessity of the
συμφιλοσοφεῖν, on the immanent normativity of the idea of science,
which leads to an insightful »destruction« and »reconstruction« of
scientific knowledge as such—preventing sciences to become mere
blind theoretical techniques.
The second layer, by contrast, no longer concerns the problem of
the beginner in philosophy but that of the beginnings in philosophy, in
the twofold sense of:
(1) The ultimate principles of the Weltall, these roots of everything
that is and can be known which philosophy has been searching
since its Pre-Socratic first beginning; and
(2) The most secure points of departure from which philosophy as a
universal science should firmly proceed.
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After having shown the way to the beginning philosopher, Husserl’s

phenomenological meditation has to go all the way through and
explain how to realize »in a Cartesian way« the Platonic ideal of an
absolutely grounded and unifying scientific philosophy (first philoso
phy) playing a foundational role with respect to the manifold positive
sciences (second philosophies).
5.4. The variation of the deeper layer: from »doubt«

to »bracketing«
Husserl’s first and more relevant transformation of the deeper layer

affects the trait (b)ii and, more generally, the cartesian way to »inter
nalize« the Sophist. In the Meditationes the »sophist within« had
the function to unveil the apodictic evidence from which universal
philosophy should firmly proceed by extending the scope of the
doubt to whatever offers the slightest motive to be doubted about with
respect of its existence and, more precisely, of the possibility of its
being otherwise as it appears to be. The Sophistic device of the evil
genius had thus to complete the basic sceptical arguments against the
reliability of experience and contribute to fulfil this task. Husserl’s
variation begins by replacing the »doubt about the existence of the
world« with an entirely different operation, i.e. that of »putting the
existence of the world out of play« (Husserl 1973a, p. 45/4), turning
an »obvious matter of fact« into a »phenomenon of validity« (Husserl
1973a, p. 58/18).
As we know from §§ 106–114 of Ideas I, »doubting« is a distinc
tive modification in the »belief character« of an act, correlated to the
appearance of an object whose »modality of being« is that of »being
doubtful« (Husserl 1977, pp. 239/276–277). Husserl explains that,
according to the structural features of such »belief modification,« if
one shifts from certainty to doubt it is because of some conflict in the
appearance of the object motivating the belief that something
appearing »as being« or »as being such-and-such« might end up being
otherwise as it appears to be or turn out to be nothing at all, »a mere
appearance« (Husserl 1977, pp. 239/276–277). »Putting something
out of play,« by contrast, or »suspending the validity of something«,
does not require any intrinsic conflict between being and appearance,
does not entail any positional stance with respect of the being or non-
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being of that which is »suspended« or »bracketed,« and can freely be

performed even if nothing motivates its correlative change of attitude.
According to (b)ii, if the world is not apodictically evident, if its
outward evidence could not work as the genuine and radical beginning
of a universal science, it is because it is doubtful. And it is doubtful
because the ad hoc fiction of a deceitful God-like genius modifies
the philosopher’s prima facie belief in its existence. The fiction is a
sceptical device whose function is to produce a conflict and trigger a
»positional modification,« providing the philosopher with a reason or
a motive to doubt. A sceptical motive, indeed, which applies to the
existence of the external world, but not to the existence of his or her
own ego—hence the apodicticity of the latter and not of the former. In
this Cartesian »destruction« two motives clearly merge:
(i) The motivating force of the idea of science which sets the »ends«
and drives the philosopher toward the search of an apodictic
beginning, and
(ii) The motivating force of the sceptical devices which pick the
»means« to discover such apodictic beginning.
In the Husserlian variation, by contrast, one does not need to become
sceptical to learn from the sceptics. Being guided by the idea of
genuine and radical philosophy is certainly not enough to doubt
of the existence of world, but it is more than enough to put the
existence of the world out of play, to »deprive the world of its naïve
acceptance« (Husserl 1973a, p. 58/18). If the existence of the world
is not »doubted« but »suspended,« if the »evidence of the experience
of the world« is not »disputed« but submitted to a »critique with
regard to its validity and range« (Husserl 1973a, p. 57/17), then the
motivating force of the idea of science does not need any additional
sceptical device to discover whether such evidence is apodictic or
not. By contrast, if the world as it appears to be could be otherwise
or even nothing at all—and Descartes is indeed correct in saying
that the world is not apodictically evident (Husserl 1973a, pp. 57–
58/17–18)—it is not because it fails to resist the daunting tricks of the
Sophistic skepsis, but because of its infinitely open-ended structure
as a »phenomenon« unveiled by the ἐποχή. A phenomenon whose
validity relies on experiences »with unfulfilled components, with
expectant and attendant meanings«, where perfection »takes place
as a synthetic course of further harmonious experiences in which
these attendant meanings become fulfilled in actual experience«, and
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whose »corresponding idea of perfection would be that of an ›adequate

evidence‹« which, as Husserl suggest, may »necessarily lie at infinity«
(Husserl 1973a, p. 55/15).
This first transformation of the Cartesian deeper layer brings us
already on the way of transcendental phenomenology. The »destruc
tion« of the existing world and the discovery of its essential contin
gency are not the outcomes of a methodically extended doubt, but
the results of a »phenomenological ἐποχή« or a »bracketing« (Husserl
1973a, p. 60/20). It is only in this way that—as a new Cartesianism—
Husserl’s phenomenology could take seriously the sophistic-sceptical
challenge against the uncritically assumed objectivity of being and
knowledge, without turning itself into a form scepticism.
5.5. The variation of the deeper layer: from »pure« to

»transcendental« ego
This brings us to a further transformation, now related to trait (a)ii.

The replacement of the Cartesian »doubt« with the neo-Cartesian
ἐποχή does not leave the genuine and radical philosopher with nothing
but him or herself, but rather with the whole world turned into a
»phenomenon,« appearing to his or her »pure conscious life, in and
by which the entire objective wold exists for me as it is for me«
(Husserl 1973a, p. 60/20). The »phenomenal universe« opened up
by the ἐποχή, as a variation of (b)ii, is thus one step away from
»transcendental field« of the pure transcendental ego which reveals
itself as a variation of (a)ii:
If I put myself above all this life and refrain from doing any believing
that takes »the« world straightforwardly as existing, if I direct my
regard exclusively to this life itself, as consciousness of »the« world,
I thereby acquire myself as the pure ego, with the pure stream of my
cogitations. (Husserl 1973a, p. 61/21)
By phenomenological ἐποχή I reduce my natural human Ego and
my psychic life the realm of my psychological self-experience to my
transcendental-phenomenological Ego, the realm of transcendental-
phenomenological self-experience (Husserl 1973a, p. 65/26).
Two points need to be stressed: 1) the apodictically evident »pure
ego« which, thanks to the ἐποχή, reveals itself as the firm beginning
of a genuine and radical philosophy, is not and cannot be me, i.e. a
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psychological subject, but a »transcendental subject« (Husserl 1973a,

p. 58/18). It is a »reduced self,« as Husserl puts it, »ground of validity
of every objective value and ground« (Husserl 1973a, p. 65/26, modi
fied), beyond existence and non-existence. The pure transcendental
ego is not a necessarily existing being, but, as we will see shortly, an
infinite field out of which everything draws its principles of being and
intelligibility. Accordingly, 2) the self-withdrawal does not go from
(doubtful) being to (undoubtful) being, from »world« to »ego,« but
from one pole of an apodictic phenomenon (the »reduced world«)
to another (the »reduced consciousness of the world« with its pure
stream of cogitationes) (Husserl 1973a, p. 61/21).
5.6. The variation of the deeper layer: from »sheer« to

»inadequate« apodicticity
A third and final transformation concerns trait (c)ii. The transcenden

tal ego is the apodictic beginning of a radical and genuine philosophy,
but since the latter’s task is to clarify the »roots« from which the Weltall
draws its being and intelligibility, the next step is not to go back to
the world but deeper within transcendental subjectivity, i.e. to lay open
the »field of transcendental experience with respect to its universal
structures« (Husserl 1973a, p. 31/69; see also p. 27/66). And this is
precisely what the 2nd CM is all about.
The 1st CM, however, sets the stage for this further move and
explains already that the critique of natural experience and the trans
cendental reduction do not remove anything from the world, which
should be eventually returned to it, but rather add to the experience
of the world the thematic awareness of its phenomenal nature. To
be more specific, the »phenomenon of the world« is nothing but the
actual world whose »existential claim« (Seinsanspruch) is explicitly
thematized and phenomenologically spelled out with respect to its
transcendental constitution. By expounding the world’s transcenden
tal constitution, Husserl’s new cartesianism explains why the natural
experience has no doubt, and rightly so, about the fact that the world
is and is such-and-such, while, at the same time, according to its
essence, given its structure as an open horizon of empty intentions to
be infinitely fulfilled, it could be indeed otherwise as it is, or even turn
out to be nothing at all.
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Thus, the world’s lack of apodictic evidence is not something to

be fixed, but something to be clarified—by turning to the apodictic
evidence of its »phenomenon« and its correlated form of transcen
dental-constitutive performances of the ego; it is something not to
be amended and hooked to the apodictic evidence of its subjective
fundament, i.e. the ego cogito, but to be accounted for according to its
infinite and horizontal constitution within the field of transcendental
life. A transcendental life, whose apodictic evidence is still the best
candidate to fill the role of »first beginning« for a genuine and radical
philosophy—in a strange turn of events, it is the »phenomenon« that
now is undibitable.
But despite their difference in terms of apodicticity, the evidence
of the world and that of the pure transcendental ego have still some
thing in common: they both lack of adequacy (Husserl 1973a, p.
61/22). In the opening sections of the 1st CM Husserl’s meditation had
already shown that the »idea« of science, from which philosophy has
to be guided, is ultimately grounded in the inner teleology of judg
ment and its structural-normative tendency towards evidence (see
§ 2.6). But this very same meditation also explains that evidence is
said in many ways and apodictic and adequate evidence »do not need
to go hand in hand« (Husserl 1973a, p. 62/22).
For sake of brevity, Husserl’s path could be illustrated by the
following diagram,
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Fig. 1: The judgment and its evidence
The truth claim embedded in every judgment (A) is ether empty

or filled. An empty judgment (B) means that which is shown by
the corresponding filled judgment which, broadly speaking, is called
»evident« insofar as it provides an »experience of being« (C). Such
evidence, however, is relative (D) if it depends on the circumstances of
the judgment; if the empty intentions are only partially filled and the
tension towards further fulfilments is carried out only up to a certain
point (which could nevertheless be sufficient for practical purposes);
if it is potentially susceptible to be corrected by further experiences
which are not actually carried out. By contrast, an evidence is absolute
(E) if it does not depend on the circumstances of the judgment; if it
strives towards completeness and follows the chain of partial fulfill
ments all the way through (which is completely purposeless beyond
the theoretical sphere), even though its empty intentions are still
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partially fulfilled; if it actually unfolds in a continuous self-correcting

mode in a process of infinite approximation. In the »ideal« case in
which all empty intentions were fulfilled, one would have an adequate
evidence (F), though it appears that every evidence is inadequate and
the approximation remains an infinite task (G). This holds for both
non-apodictic (H) and apodictic evidence (I). In the latter case critical
reflection shows that a state of affairs whose being has been not only
emptily meant but intuitively shown by an experience which follows all
the way through the ideal of its infinite approximation is not a mere
appearance and could not be otherwise as it actually appears to be.
Husserl hastens to add that if the natural experience of the
world necessarily involves »an indeterminately general presumptive
horizon of empty intentions« and includes »intentions that are not-
experienced in a genuine sense but necessarily co-intended,« the
same holds for the transcendental experience of the pure ego (Husserl
1973a, p. 62/23). Not unlike the unity of the world, of which it is
the constitutive correlate, the unity of the »living present« of the
ego cogito has its own horizon of indeterminacy. A horizon which
includes the ego’s »own past, mostly fully obscure,« but also its
»related transcendental powers and respective habitual peculiarities«
(Husserl 1973a, p. 62/23 modified). The baffling consequence of this
fact is that, though certainly apodictic in its actual being and being-so
and therefore worth being assumed as a firm beginning by a genuine
and radical philosophy, the ego cogito is not immune to critique with
respect to the presumption to extend such apodicticity beyond the
limited scope of the living present.
This presumption implicit in the apodictic evidence is subject therefore
to criticism, regarding the possibilities of its fulfilment and their
range (which may be apodictically determinable). How far can the
transcendental ego be deceived about himself? And how far do those
components extend that are absolutely indubitable, in spite of such
possible deception? (Husserl 1973a, p. 23/62).
Husserl’s grammar of evidence thus leads to a further variation which
was utterly alien to the original cartesian motif, i.e. that of the limits
to the apodicticity of the ego cogito.
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5.6. The variation of the second layer and its way to the
doctrinal critique
If we now bring together the three variations, we finally see the

deeper layer of the cartesian motif as it is transformed by Husserl. The
methodological path of genuine and radical philosophy has now the
following traits:
(a) ivThe return to the transcendental constitutive ego cogito with
its pure cogitationes is the manifestation of the original field of
every appearance and the fundament of validity of that distinctive
appearance which is phenomenon of the world;
(a) ivThe suspension of the validity of the world made in the name
of the guiding idea of scientific philosophy, is not a »doubt« but a
methodological bracketing of its existence (which is free)—hence
the world remains as a phenomenon in order to be questioned
with respect to its »pretention to be«;
(a) ivThe reliance on what shows itself as apodictically evident is not
the starting point to re-establish (»reconstruction«) the world

as it is, but the occasion to dwell into the principles of whatever
appears as being.
As it is readily apparent, this whole new conceptual cluster sets the
agenda for the entire project of the CM. Yet, as already pointed out,
in the 1st CM the variations of the cartesian motif should still be
completed by a critique of the Cartesian doctrine.
5.7. The critique of the doctrine: »substances« and »axioms«
At least in some sense, it is safe to say that, from Husserl’s standpoint,

all the doctrinal shortcomings of the Meditationes are nothing but
varieties of the same fault. And the fundamental fault which obstructs
Descartes’s »radicality« consists in the conflation of the guiding idea of
science—which should be immanently and evidently drawn from the
inner teleology of judgment itself—with some of its factual-historical
realizations. Despite his efforts to »avoid all prejudice« (Husserl
1973a, p. 63/23) Descartes had indeed blindly employed concepts
drawn from the past philosophical tradition and methods drawn
from his present-days science. And it is through the lenses of such
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concepts that he has interpreted and reasoned about what he saw. More
specifically, if Descartes »made the greatest of all discoveries« but
could not »grasp its proper sense« (Husserl 1973a, p. 64/24) it is
because that which he discovered was clouded by that which he blindly
took for granted from 1) the conceptuality of the Scholastic tradition;
2) the deductive methods of mathematical sciences of nature.
To begin with, the status of the »ego cogito cogitata« emerging
from the self-withdrawal, is interpreted along the following lines: the
»ego« is a substance; the »cogito« is its only essential property (and
substantial difference with respect to the extended substance); the
»cogitationes« are »really present parts« of such substantial whole
(Husserl 1973a, p. 65/26).
As the substantial bearer of »mental phenomena in the sense of
psychology« (Husserl 1973a, p. 65/26) the »ego« is thus understood
along the lines of that which the Scholastic tradition called »mind« or
»soul« (mens, anima) and the »cogitationes« as the »affections of the
soul« having an objective content. Yet, according to the Aristotelian
trends of Scholastic psychology, the soul is not a full substance but a
form and, more precisely, the substantial form of a body having life
in potency4—a definition which also implies the existence of and a
certain intertwinement with a material physiological basis. Now, by
»destroying« the world, the Cartesian doubt also destroys the unity
of the »psycho-physical man« (Husserl 1973a, p. 65/26), unties the
bond between the physical and the mental, shows the self-subsistence
of the latter and, at the same time, reveals its apodictic evidence.
What follows is thus an interpretation of the thinking substance as
that entity whose appearance does not offer any possible motive to be
doubted about. In this way, the ego cogito is a substance in the strong
sense of something that does not need anything else to exist and is
indubitable with respect to its existence as well as its inner nature and
essential components. It is an entity that, though finite, appears as
first, certain, and necessary. This is what Descartes blindly receives
from the Scholastic tradition.
The past meets the present as soon as such distinctive features
of the ego cogito — interpreted in terms of substance and accidents,
essence and existence—overlap with the apodictic requirements pro
per to the axioms of a scientific syllogism. Axioms too are indeed
first, true, certain, necessary and more intelligible than theorems.
4 De An. II, 412 a 27.
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Thus, by overlapping the metaphysical-psychological priority of the

»substance« with the logical-methodological priority of one »axiom«,
the Meditationes do not see the self-showing ego cogito as »a field,«
i.e. as a theoretical domain that could and should be explored in its
own right. They rather take it as the first chain of a deductive process
whose principles are immanent (innate) to the ego itself and therefore
evident (see Husserl 1956, p. 65/68):
1. There is the pure ego (ego cogito): it is a finite substance;
2. There are its thoughts (ego cogito cogitata): the attributes of
a substance;
3. Among the contents of these thoughts there are three types
of ideas (innate, adventitious, fictional): the modes of the sub
stance;
4. Among innate ideas, there is the idea of God: the idea of an
infinite substance;
5. The idea of God includes truthfulness;
6. God’s truthfulness grants for
6.1: The objective validity of mathematics and natural sci
ence and
6.2: The existence of the true being of objective nature (which is
cognized by 6.1);
6.3: The objective validity of metaphysics (which grounds and
unifies 6.1) and
6.4: The dualism of the substances: the existence of a true
objective world consisting of material bodies and spiritual
entities causally connected to them.
It makes no doubt that, in Husserl’s view, this overall deduction is a
praiseworthy example of Descartes’s genuine commitment to the Pla
tonic ideal of scientific philosophy. But the Cartesian foundation and
unification of sciences is inferred by assuming the existence of an infi
nitely truthful substance whose idea is necessarily found in me as a finite
substance. None of this, Husserl says, really strikes as manifest if one
only sticks to the »radicality of self-reflection and, at the same time,
to the principle of pure intuition or evidence« (Husserl 1973a, p.
64/24). It could only strike as manifest if one presupposes the validity
of the philosophical concepts involved and the paradigmatic nature of
the scientific methods employed. Such philosophical concepts
(= »soul« or »psycho-physical man«) and scientific methods (= the
demonstrations more geometrico), however, were precisely what the
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Claudio Majolino
»serious« beginner in philosophy had learned to destroy, and the

»radical and genuine« philosophy had the task to ultimately clarify on
the basis of an apodictic beginning (see § 2.2). But once the »ego
cogito« is interpreted right from the outset as a »soul« or as a »mind«;
once the validity of the deductive methods employed in the mathe
matical sciences of nature, which should also be grounded, is used to
build the foundational path which leads to the objective existence of
nature itself—one cannot but have the countersensical consequences
which Husserl intends to reject.
5.8. The critique of the doctrine: »solipsism«
Among the critical tenets belonging to the doctrinal content of the

Meditationes Husserl also highlights the question of »solipsism.«
Since the focus of this study is on the 1st CM, I will not pause on this
point, which will play a massive role in the remaining of the CM. I
would nevertheless remind here the following.
»Solipsism« maintains that the only thing that certainly exists is
me, as long as I think (and it is from the principles I find in myself that
the existence of the world can be deduced). This claim has been already
transformed on the first layer by the principle of self-responsibility
(I am personally responsible for the truth of the philosophical claims
I make). It will be further and definitively rejected by a profound
transcendental and intersubjective transformation of the deeper layer
in the 4th and especially the 5th CM. But already in the 2nd CM
Husserl makes clear that solipsism can only be a mere preliminary
methodological step:,
»in a certain manner, a transcendental solipsism is only a subordinate
stage philosophically; though, as such, it must first be delimited for
purposes of method, in order that the problems of transcendental
intersubjectivity, as problems belonging to a higher level, may be
correctly stated and attacked. (Husserl 1973a, pp. 69/30–31).
6. Concluding remark. Columbus above the Tartarus—

an analogy
In his lectures on First Philosophy (Husserl 1956, p. 63/64) Husserl

suggests a curious analogy between Descartes’s Meditationes and
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Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America. Columbus left the old

world heading towards India, a place well-known by and already
familiar to many European traders, geographers and learned people.
As he suddenly came across an unexplored, unknown and unnamed
continent, he believed to have reached not a nameless new region
of the world, worth being explored and known in its own right, but
only a new way to an old one. A way whose unfamiliar paths should
have led, sooner or later, to the familiar landscapes of India—or so
he thought. Mutatis mutandis, Descartes left the actually existing
world of experience, with all its diversity and richness, in search of its
unifying principles of being and intelligibility, those principles which
are the »first« in the ontological order and the »clearest« in the order of
knowledge. But as he finally reached the apodictic evidence of the ego
cogito, instead of charting this freshly discovered new region as such
— unexplored, unknown and unnamed—Descartes took it as a new
way to grant a safe access to the actually existing world as he knew
it. Subjectivity was thus construed as a harbour to secure a pathway
to the world of experience itself. Not unlike Columbus, Descartes
mistook a new region to delve into for a new way to reach an already
familiar old one.
We now know that the Cartesian journey Husserl is referring to
was nothing but the journey of philosophy itself, inaugurated by Tha
les with a makeshift boat; continued by Plato on a more robust vessel
entirely designed for this purpose, with the aid of a logical compass
and an ontological map; and constantly shook by the stormy winds of
Sophistry and Scepticism, whose gusts of subjectivity pushed the ship
towards the reefs of relativism. If the Meditationes have an »everlas
ting significance,« it is because they have showed that the journey of
philosophy could only reach its end thanks to the blow of such scep
tical winds, not against them: subjectivity is not the problem, it is the
answer (see § 3). And if they still have a »present significance,« it is
because post-cartesian philosophy has still not learned how to tame
such turbulent winds, ending up either stuck in dead calm scientist
seas, or shipwrecked on relativistic shores (see § 4). But if in order to
fully appreciate the nature of their »phenomenological significance«
Husserl’s analogy has to undergo a twist.
At first sight, both Columbus and Descartes seem to move across
a somehow homogeneous and horizontal surface: from Spain to India;
from one appearance (dubitable) to another (indubitable), from one
substance (spiritual, thinking and unextended) to another substance
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Claudio Majolino
(sensible, material and extended)—and back. But Descartes’s journey

also has a vertical dimension and only a one-way direction. At a
certain point, Husserl says, the cartesian ship actually sinks from
the sea of the factual world into the »great and dark depths« (allzu
große und dunkle Tiefen) of the given world and its transcendental life
(Husserl 1956, p. 63/64). Thus, everything happens as if Columbus’s
sails, instead of cruising the caravels to the new world, finally led them
to the end of the world, on the verge of that deep place of »murky
darkness« (ζόφῳ ἠερόεντι) that Hesiod’s Theogony (729) called »the
Tartarus.« A place which lies, both, at the far edge of (730–1) and way
below the world (720–725); an immense abyss (χάσμα μέγ᾽) (740) in
which, one next to the another, lie the deep sources and the ends of
everything (ἑξείης πάντων πηγαὶ καὶ πείρατ᾽) (738): of the earth, the
sea and even the sky (736–739).
Descartes significance for transcendental phenomenology is thus
better illustrated, as Husserl does, by blending the story of Columbus’s
»way out« of the old world and fortuitous discovery of the new one,
with this Greek myth of the Tartarus, whose »way down« (κατάβασις)
led to a soil which stands even below the roots (ῥίζαι) of the earth
and the depths of the sea (728). And it is precisely deep down to
such place that the winds of Scepticism, that Descartes did not tame
»in the right way« (Husserl 1956, p. 63/64), ultimately lead. Since
the absolute apodictic and yet not adequate first evidence of the ego
cogito with its pure cogitationes has nothing of a familiar place or a
safe pathway. For, as we have seen, this deeper layer of the ego is
not my human self with its mental life; it is not a piece of reality
subtracted to the doubt; not an entity or a substance provided with
certain essential properties — it is rather, first and foremost, a field,
Husserl says, an »infinite field« (Husserl 1973a, p. 31/69). It is that
infinite field of phenomenality in me—which is not me, and is not the
idea of God either. Descartes found indeed the »infinite in the finite
ego«, but was he saw was not the innate idea of an entity provided
with infinite perfections, but the constantly flowing phenomenal field
of self-experience, infinite of contents. A field that the remaining of
CM have the task to explore—not to bring the world back, but to learn
about the soil from which the latter receives its vital nourishment
and strength.
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Bibliography
Becker, Oskar (1936–37): »Husserl und Descartes, im Anschluß an Husserls

›Meditations cartesiennes‹«. Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, 30, pp.
616–621.
Husserl, Edmund (1952): Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomeno
logischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch. The Hague: M. Nijhoff (Husserliana IV;
Engl. tr. Husserl collected works III. Dordrecht: Springer, 1989).
Husserl, Edmund (1956): Erste Philosophie. Erste Teil. Kritische Ideengeschichte.
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Husserl, Edmund (1973a): Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. The
Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1973 (Husserliana I; Engl. tr. Cartesian Meditations. The
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Husserl, Edmund (1973b): Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Erster Teil.
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Husserl, Edmund (1973c): Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Dritter Teil.
The Hague: M. Nijhoff, (Husserliana XV).
Husserl, Edmund (1973d): Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Zweiter
Teil. The Hague: M. Nijhoff (Husserliana XIV).
Husserl, Edmund (1976): Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die
transzendentale Phänomenologie. The Hague: M. Nijhoff (Husserliana VI; Engl
tr. The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Evanston:
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Engl. tr. Husserl collected works II. Dordrecht: Springer, 1980).
Husserl, Edmund (1986): Aufsätze und Vorträge. 1911–1921. The Hague: M.
Nijhoff (Husserliana XXV).
Husserl, Edmund (2002): Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23.
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers (Husserliana XXXV).
Husserl, Edmund (2012): Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1916–1919.
Dordrecht: Springer, (Husserliana Materialien IX).
Kittstein, Lothar (1995): »Die res cogitans bei Descartes und das transzendentale
Bewußtsein bei Husserl. Ein Vergleich mit Blick auf die Entwicklung von
Husserls Spätphilosophie«. Prima philosophia, 8, pp. 35–67.
Lavigne, Jean-François (2008): Les Méditations cartésiennes de Husserl (ed.).
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Von Hermann, Friedrich-Wilhelm: Husserl und die Meditationen des Descartes.
Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann.
Wüstenberg, Klaus (1985): Kritische Analyse zu den Grundproblemen der trans
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Aurélien Djian
Second Cartesian Meditation: »Horizon«

as a Universal Principle of Husserl’s
Transcendental Phenomenology
Introduction
Derrida. Then would you dissociate what you call phenomenology

from the authority of the as such? If you do that, it would be the first
heresy in phenomenology. Phenomenology without as such!
Marion. Not my first, no! I said to Levinas some years ago
that in fact the last step for a real phenomenology would be to
give up the concept of horizon. Levinas answered me immediately:
»Without horizon there is no phenomenology.« And I boldly assume
he was wrong.
Derrida. I am also for the suspension of the horizon, but, for that
very reason, by saying so, I am not a phenomenologist anymore. I
am very true to phenomenology, but when I agree on the necessity
of suspending the horizon, then I am no longer a phenomenologist.
(Caputo and Scanlon 1999, p. 66)
In the past few years, the fundamental significance of the Hus
serlian concept of horizon within Husserl’s own phenomenology has
been strongly emphasized by commentators.1 Not only that, its role in
the phenomenological tradition—even in the philosophical tradition
as a whole—has also been particularly recognized by some of the most
famous of Husserl’s offspring. Even before Michel Henry, Emmanuel
Levinas, and Jean-Luc Marion addressed this issue, Heidegger had
already inaugurated the pattern of abandoning or overcoming the
notion of horizon, tying the destiny of phenomenology itself to such
1 For such a claim, see in particular Geniusas 2012, pp. 6–10; Romano 2010, pp.
657–672; and Blumenberg 2010, pp. 89ff.
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Aurélien Djian
a conceptual movement.2 Seen from this vantage point, the passage

quoted in the epigraph of this paper, taken from a 1999 debate at the
University of Villanova between Marion and Derrida on the notion of
the gift, is only the most recent and spectacularly dramatized moment
in this history. For some, the presence or absence of the horizon is a
matter of life or death for phenomenology—»without horizon there
is no phenomenology« (Levinas), »when I agree on the necessity of
suspending the horizon, then I am no longer a phenomenologist«
(Derrida). For others, to abandon the horizon is »the last step for a real
phenomenology« (Marion), i.e., the last »heresy« with regard to what
might be called the orthodox, Husserl-inspired phenomenology.
Now all of these elements refer to a common problem, historical
as well as philosophical: in what sense, if any, is the horizon a central
piece of the Husserlian conceptual machinery? And why is it so
crucial that some of the most significant attempts of post-Husserlian
philosophies to radicalize or overcome his phenomenology have been
grounded on a decision concerning the acceptance or abandonment of
the notion of the horizon?
If we begin by focusing on the first of these questions, the
Second Cartesian Meditation appears as one of the key witnesses to
interrogate in order to solve the problem, since in the pages of this
short text, Husserl identifies and clarifies the main contributions the
horizon is meant to provide to his own phenomenology. First, he
fleshes out and accounts for the scope of the concept of horizon qua
universal structure, or principle, of phenomenology, as the science of
»the universe of ›phenomena‹ in the (particular and also the wider)
phenomenological sense« (Husserl 1960, p. 21). Second, given that
each and every intentional consciousness carries out its own synthetic
performance through a suitable kind of horizonal structure, Husserl
emphasizes how the concept of horizon prescribes a full-fledged
method proper to phenomenology: intentional analysis. Finally, since
the horizon is an essential structure proper to consciousness, it raises
the question of the range of the apodictic evidence of phenomeno
2 For Heidegger’s rejection of the horizon, see Heidegger 1959, p. 36. Regarding
Henry’s, Levinas’s, and Marion’s position with regard to this notion, see Levinas 1990,
p. 35; Henry 2011, p. 51; Marion 2013, pp. 304ff. For a more detailed analysis of this
stage in the history of phenomenology, see Djian 2018.
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Second Cartesian Meditation
logical reflection qua phenomenological method.3 Thus what the

Second Meditation strikingly uncovers is how the horizon lies at the
heart of both the domain and the method of Husserl’s transcendental
phenomenology. And if we can show that this is indeed the core of
Husserl’s claim in the Second Meditation, it would provide irrefutable
testimony with regard to the role this notion plays within his work.
In this paper, we will proceed in three parts. First, we will dwell
on the sense of a »broadening of the Cartesian Meditations« (Husserl
1960, p. 29), leading to »a fundamentally essential deviation from
the Cartesian course« (Husserl 1960, p. 31) introduced by the Second
Meditation. This deviation is required in order to bring to light the
phenomena that the conceptual network of the horizon refers to.
Second, we will see how tightly Husserl connects the key notions
pertaining to this network—intentionality, synthesis, horizon—and
how this connection allows him to regard the horizon as a principle
of transcendental phenomenology. Hence whereas the paper seems
to be a simple reconstruction of the Second Meditation, in fact, it is
not. For the only way to single out the specificity and significance
of the concept of horizon is by making a detour (which, again, in
fact, is not a detour) through some too-well-known concepts that
Husserl carefully introduces in the course of the text, and that one
has to be able to grasp before turning to the concept of horizon and
understanding why it is so crucial. Third, we will concentrate on one of
the most crucial ways in which this claim impacts the theoretical deve
lopment of Husserl’s phenomenology: once the universal nature of the
concept of horizon is recognized, it turns out to be the catalyst for a
conceptual innovation prescribing the full-fledged phenomenological
method of intentional analysis.4 Finally, in the conclusion, we will
3 As Husserl puts it in Ideas I, reflection has a »universal methodological function«
for phenomenology: »the phenomenological method operates exclusively in acts of

reflection« (Husserl 1983, p. 174).
4 The fact that already in Ideas I, Husserl’s recognition of the universal scope of the
horizon led him to a conceptual articulation of the method of intentional analysis

becomes ever clearer as soon as one takes a historical stance toward this concept
itself. Indeed, while Ideas I is not the place of birth of the horizon—Husserl already
fleshes out the role the horizon-structure plays within the external perception of a
thing in Thing and Space—it is the first text where he both considers it as a universal
principle and conceives of the method of intentional analysis. And there the former is
understood as the methodological tool meant to cope with the eidetic state of affaire
that every intentional process is carried out as a horizonally-structured synthesis. As
a consequence, one can rightfully claim that Husserl’s full-fledged development of
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Aurélien Djian
briefly delineate the way in which the inclusion of the horizon among
the universal principles of phenomenology further functions as a
catalyst bringing the problem of the range of the apodictic evidence
of transcendental reflection to light. This problem will indeed trigger
new phenomenological developments that are dealt with only in
subsequent Meditations, yet are directly related to Husserl’s account of
the horizon in the Second Meditation.
1. A broadening of, and deviation from, the Cartesian

doctrinal content: The theoretical background of the
conceptual network of the horizon
The broadening and deviation patterns, which will prove to be

necessary preconditions for the emergence of any interest in the
horizon and its family of concepts, are embedded in an overall
multi-layered argumentative strategy meant to express the relation
ship between Husserl’s own transcendental phenomenology and the
philosophy of Descartes. This strategy is based in turn upon a crucial
distinction sharply underlined in the first lines of the introduction to
the Cartesian Meditations: there Husserl distinguishes between the
»doctrinal content [Lehrgehalt] of the Cartesian philosophy« and the
»Cartesian motifs [Cartesianische Motive]« (Husserl 1960, p. 1). In
the latter lies the »eternal significance« of Descartes’s Meditationes
de prima philosophia, namely, its »guiding idea« of a »complete
reforming of philosophy into a science grounded on an absolute
foundation« (Husserl 1960, p. 1). More precisely, this reform aims
at a »radical rebuilding« of the sciences »that satisfies the idea of
philosophy as the all-inclusive unity of the sciences, within the
unity of such an absolutely rational grounding«—a radical rebuilding
that with Descartes »gives rise to a philosophy turned toward the
subject himself« (Husserl 1960, p. 2), namely, a »transcendental
intentional analysis in Ideas I goes hand in hand with his recognition of the horizon
qua principle. Seen from this vantage point, the Second Cartesian Meditation limits
itself to stating this claim more clearly by outlining the method of intentional analysis
immediately after having introduced the universal structure of the horizon, and by
presenting it as a methodological consequence of this universality, while in Ideas I,
the thematic discussion of these concepts occurs in chapters remote from each other
(Husserl 1983, Part Three, Chapter 1, and Part Four, Chapter 3). More details on all of
this are to be found in Djian 2021.
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philosophy« (Husserl 1960, p. 1). And since Husserl’s transcendental

phenomenology also strives to fulfill this motif, »one might almost
call [it] a neo-Cartesianism« (Husserl 1960, p. 1).
Now as Husserl states, the doctrinal content of Descartes’s
philosophy does not seem to match such a task. This is why the Car
tesian motifs will be subjected to a »radical development« generating
»transformations« and »novel formations« (Husserl 1960, p. 1). And
since in order to fulfill its eternal motifs, Husserl’s phenomenology
will have to »reject nearly all the well-known doctrinal content of
the Cartesian philosophy« (Husserl 1960, p. 1), it is only »almost«
a neo-Cartesianism.
As the course of the First Meditation shows, this radical deve
lopment first amounts to correcting the already existing doctrinal
content of Descartes’s philosophy. Indeed, in order to be fulfilled, the
eternal Cartesian task of a transcendental philosophy grounded on
absolute evidence implies a suitable transcendental turn that the
transcendental epochē is meant to carry out. Yet although Descartes
had the idea of such a method—i.e., he »had the serious will to free
himself radically from prejudice« (Husserl 1960, p. 23), and for this
purpose established the »principle for building genuine science: the
principle of absolute indubitability, by which every imaginable doubt
(even though it were in fact groundless) was to be excluded« (Husserl
1960, p. 16)—he was not able to clarify its »pure sense.«5 And this
is because he was driven by a prejudice »arising from admiration of
mathematical natural science«:
the prejudice that, under the name ego cogito, one is dealing with
an apodictic »axiom,« which, in conjunction with other axioms and,
perhaps, inductively grounded hypotheses, is to serve as the founda
tion for a deductively »explanatory« world-science, a »nomological«
science, a science ordine geometrico, similar indeed to mathematical
natural science. (Husserl 1960, 24)
In other words, Descartes was led, on the one hand, to conflate
transcendental philosophy with a world-science operating more geo
metrico, and consequently, on the other hand, to conflate the trans
cendental ego with »a substantia cogitans, a separate human ›mens sive
animus‹,« »a little tag-end of the world« that would be »the point of
5 »The Cartesian evidence—the evidence of the proposition, ego cogito, ego sum—
remained barren because Descartes neglected, not only to clarify the pure sense of the
method of transcendental epoché, […]« (Husserl 1960, p. 31).
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Aurélien Djian
departure for inferences according to the principle of causality« (Hus

serl 1960, 24)—a tag-end of the world that (as § 7 and § 11 strive to
demonstrate) should fall within the bracketing of the world.
Hence there is a need for a first correction, which resolves itself
into a clarification of what the transcendental epochē requires: namely,
to bracket the existence of the world as a whole, along with the
scientific knowledge focusing on it, including geometrical knowledge.
Thus »the turn to the ego cogito as the ultimate and apodictically
certain basis for judgments, the basis on which any radical philosophy
must be grounded« (Husserl 1960, p. 18), is not to be conceived
as a turn toward »the psychic life [das Seelenleben] that psychology
talks about [which] has in fact always been, and still is, meant as
psychic life in the world« (Husserl 1960, p. 25). Quite on the contrary,
the transcendental ego qua non-worldly entity is not only not to
be conflated with the psychological ego, but also represents both a
full-fledged domain—»unique and separate, since it indeed relates
likewise to all the world and all the Objective sciences, yet does
not presuppose acceptance of their existence« (Husserl 1960, p. 31)
—and a domain »prior in itself, [which] is antecedent to the natural
being of the world,« since the latter »gets its whole sense, universal
and specific, and its acceptance as existing, exclusively from [my]
cogitationes« (Husserl 1960, p. 21).
Yet since this correction enables one to discover the realm
of the transcendental ego, it leads to further radical developments
concerning aspects and tasks of transcendental philosophy that were
unknown to Descartes. Indeed, once the unique, separate, and prior
domain of the transcendental ego has been secured, it is time for
the phenomenologist to ask herself the question Husserl poses in
the beginning of the Second Meditation: »as one who is meditating
in the Cartesian manner, what can I do with the transcendental ego
philosophically?« (Husserl 1960, p. 27). As we have seen, Descartes
conceived the ego cogito as an axiom. He did not direct his attention
to the »concrete transcendental subjectivity« (Husserl 1960, p. 30),
»existing with an individual content made up of subjective processes
[Erlebnissen], abilities [Vermögen], and dispositions [Dispositionen]
—horizonally predelineated as an experienceable object, accessible
to a possible self-experience that can be perfected, and perhaps
enriched, without limit« (Husserl 1960, p. 29). And therefore he did
not consider this concrete transcendental subjectivity as the right
candidate for the role of the »knowledge-basis on which all Objective
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knowledge is grounded« (Husserl 1960, p. 27). Thus by heading in

that direction, Husserl is necessarily led to a »broadening of the
Cartesian meditations« (Husserl 1960, p. 29), which in fact creates
»a fundamentally essential deviation from the Cartesian course«
(Husserl 1960, p. 31).
This broadening and deviation is twofold. First, Descartes
»neglected […] to direct his attention to the fact that the ego can
explicate himself ad infinitum and systematically, […] and therefore
lies ready as a possible field of work« (Husserl 1960, p. 31), as a
»sphere of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience,«
which discloses, in opposition to the idea of a »knowledge-basis«
»in the usual sense«—as Descartes’s own theory of knowledge illustra
tes—»a new idea of the grounding of knowledge […]: the idea of it as a
transcendental grounding« (Husserl 1960, p. 27).
Second, the very fact that the ego cogito must be seen as a concrete
transcendental subjectivity, and even as an »infinite realm of being of
a new kind« (Husserl 1960, p. 27), raises the question of the »range
covered by apodictic evidence of the ›I am‹« (Husserl 1960, p. 22). As
Husserl puts it: »For example: Does not transcendental subjectivity
at any given moment include its past as an inseparable part, which
is accessible only by way of memory? But can apodictic evidence be
claimed for memory?« (Husserl 1960, p. 22).
Hence there are »two stages« of »the scientific efforts for which
we found the collective name, transcendental phenomenology« (Hus
serl 1960, p. 29). On the one hand, it is an investigation of con
sciousness based on transcendental experience;6 on the other, it is
a »criticism of transcendental experience and then the criticism of all
transcendental cognition« (Husserl 1960, p. 29).
As we will see at length in the following, in both stages, the
horizon plays a crucial role. But before we move on and focus on
the first stage of transcendental philosophy, let us add to the various
Husserlian claims we previously pointed out an additional one that
will secure the transition to the concept of horizon. Indeed, there is
a structuration proper to consciousness qua field of work that allows
for a full-fledged scientific exploration. This is where transcendental
phenomenology qua scientific activity really begins. And concepts like
6 »In this stage accordingly […], we proceed like the natural scientist in his devotion
to the evidence in which Nature is experienced, while for him, as an investigator of

Nature, questions pertaining to a radical criticism of experience remain altogether
outside the field of inquiry« (Husserl 1960, p. 29).
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intentionality, synthesis, and horizon are introduced precisely in the

course of the attempt to fulfill this scientific task. But since Descartes
immediately grasps transcendental subjectivity as a premise rather
than as a field of work, then not only did he not possess such concepts,
but he would not have had any use for them.
2. The transcendental ego as a field of work: Intentionality,

synthesis, horizon
Transcendental phenomenology is a science. Yet since it is not a

worldly science, the exploration of transcendental subjectivity (hence
forth: TS) implies a preliminary clarification of the main problems,
concepts, and methods of transcendental phenomenology in order to
distinguish them sharply from those of any »natural« science—i.e., of
sciences carried out within the natural attitude.7
First, since TS is a field of work, the question arises of how the
work is supposed to be done. Now as we have seen, Husserl’s TS, in
contrast to Kant’s, is a field we experience. Yet the term has to be
understood in a technical and general sense that is brought out in
§ 24: it means »not aiming confusedly at something, with an empty
expectant intention, but being with it itself, viewing, seeing, having
insight into, it itself« (Husserl 1960, p. 57) (experience vs. empty
intention). And since this domain of objects is laid open through the
transcendental epochē, one can call it transcendental experience (tran
scendental experience vs. natural experience).
But what exactly do we experience? Since experiencing TS means
viewing, seeing, having insight into it itself, the phenomenologist
deals not with an abstract dimension of the transcendental ego—i.e.,
»the bare identity of the ›I am‹ [die leere Identität des ›Ich bin‹]« (Hus
serl 1960, p. 28)—but with »concrete transcendental subjectivity«
(Husserl 1960, p. 30) and its subjective processes [Erlebnissen],
abilities [Vermögen], and dispositions [Dispositionen] (Husserl 1960,
p. 29). If to begin with we set aside the question of abilities and dispo
sitions,8 examples of individual subjective processes in which each and
7 For more on this concept of »attitude« and its different variations, see Majo
lino 2020.
8 Abilities and dispositions are indeed structures belonging to the ego, but they will
become a theme of research only in the Fourth Meditation; see Husserl 1960, p. 31.
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every concrete ego lives are »perception, retention, recollection, etc.«

(Husserl 1960, p. 27) (empty identity of the I vs. concrete subjectivity
with its individual content).
Now as Husserl explicitly emphasizes, consciousness qua field of
work is an »experienceable object, accessible to a possible self-expe
rience that can be perfected, and perhaps enriched, without limit«
(Husserl 1960, p. 29). In other words, one of its essential traits is its
infinity: to explore TS means to »plunge into the task of laying open the
infinite field of transcendental experience« (Husserl 1960, p. 31). Here
infinity does not imply any metaphysical claim—as when, for instance,
one asks oneself whether or not the existing world is infinite, or
whether existing space is infinitely divisible. Quite on the contrary, it is
an eidetic, ontological claim, concerning any possible (actually existing
or merely possible) TS. Indeed, since TS is essentially characterized
as implying the »immanent temporal form belonging to the stream
of subjective processes« (Husserl 1960, p. 28), an infinite number of
possible subjective processes belongs to it.
Yet is it not the case that the temporality and the infinity of the
individual content belonging to TS prevent any scientific inquiry into
it? This would be the case if the temporal consciousness boiled down
to »the realm of a Heraclitean flux« (Husserl 1960, p. 49),9 and infinite
subjectivity to »a chaos of intentional processes« (Husserl 1960, p.
54). Fortunately, this is not the case. First, any individual content of
TS, though temporal, can be considered as an arbitrary example of an
eidos prescribing rules to any actual or possible case of this content.10
Thus as Husserl explains in § 12,
for each kind of actual experience and for each of its universal
variant modes (perception, retention, recollection, etc.), there is a
corresponding pure phantasy, an »as-if experience« with parallel
modes (as-if perception, as-if retention, as-if recollection, etc.), we
surmise that there is also an apriori science, which confines itself to
the realm of pure possibility (pure imaginableness) and, instead of
judging about actualities of transcendental being, judges about <its >
apriori possibilities and thus at the same time prescribes rules a priori
for actualities. (Husserl 1960, pp. 27–28)
And second, although the multiplicity of subjective processes
are infinite, they are in fact united in consciousness in some way or
9 On this objection, see also Husserl 1999, p. 36.

10 On this point, see Husserl 1999, p. 36. For a general overview of Husserl’s
ontological territory, see also De Santis 2021.
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another, both via particular »structural types [Strukturtypik]« (Husserl

1960, p. 51) or »types of constitution« (Husserl 1960, p. 54)—for
instance, perception, recollection, expectation of a thing, imagination
of a quasi-thing, reading of a book, etc.—and via what Husserl calls
TS’s »universal apodictically experienceable structure [eine universale
apodiktische Erfahrungsstruktur],« with one example of such a struc
ture being »the immanent temporal form belonging to the stream of
subjective processes« (Husserl 1960, p. 28).
These two latter claims account not only for the scientific dimen
sion of phenomenology, but also for the fact that it is a »science
whose peculiar nature is unprecedented« (Husserl 1960, p. 29). Indeed,
phenomenology is both an eidetic science—just like, for instance,
formal ontology, geometry, ontology of nature, etc.11— and a constitu
tive-transcendental one. In other words, it strives to flesh out the eidē
of particular as well as universal »unity in a multiplicity«–structures
proper to consciousness qua a unique, separate, and prior realm
of being.
But more on this later. For now, let us turn to the universal struc
tures of consciousness, beginning with intentionality and reflection.
Here Husserl’s choice to begin with these two structures is quite clear.
Both concepts are indeed meant to tackle the first problem that we, as
phenomenologists, should raise once we have a field of work, and once
its structured dimension has been recognized: namely, the problem of
»the beginning and the direction in which our tasks lie [den Anfang
und die Aufgabenrichtung]« (Husserl 1960, p. 39).
a. Intentionality and reflection
If we temporarily set aside the question of the ego (which will be

explicitly taken up in the Fourth Meditation) in order to focus on »the
manifold cogitationes, the flowing conscious life in which the identical
Ego (mine, the meditator’s) lives […]—for example, his sensuously
perceiving and imagining life, or his asserting, valuing, or willing
life« (Husserl 1960, 31), three claims related to intentionality need to
be stressed.
11 For more on this, see the chapter on »Fact and Essence« in Ideas I (Husserl 1983,
Part One, Chapter 1).
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First, any phenomenological description begins with cogitationes.

As Husserl points out:
Its beginning is the pure—and, so to speak, still mute—expe
rience, which now must be made to utter its own sense with no
adulteration. The truly first utterance, however, is the Cartesian
utterance of the ego cogito—for example: »I perceive—this house« or
»I remember—a certain commotion in the street.« (Husserl 1960, pp.
38–39, translation modified)
Now this claim should be understood in a very specific, non-
trivial way. It means that the beginning of any phenomenological
description—and, additionally, of any »purely inner psychology,« since
it too starts with the ego cogito—cannot be »a theory of sensation«
(Husserl 1960, p. 38). For what the phenomenologist—and the psy
chologist—has under his or her eyes when he or she directs his or her
attention toward his or her own subjective processes are intentional
subjective processes (perception of a thing, imagination of a quasi-
thing, etc.). Only from there can one raise the question regarding »in
what cases, and in what different significations of the phrase, data of
sensation can […] perhaps be tendered legitimately as components«
(Husserl 1960, p. 39). Any answer to this question then turns out
to be »a special result, to be produced by a work of uncovering and
describing«—and being a special result, it is dependent on the more
general and encompassing »tremendous theme of describing cogitata
qua cogitata« (Husserl 1960, p. 39).
The second claim is that although transcendental phenomeno
logy and purely inner psychology both begin with cogitationes, TS
should not be conflated with the psychological ego: while the latter
is thematized via an operation of abstraction—since the soul is neces
sarily grounded on a body, the psychologist must put the latter aside
in order to focus on what is specific to the former (Husserl 1960, p.
32)12—TS can only be grasped via the epochē. This implies a »precise
parallel« between »pure psychology of consciousness« and TP, even
if it is the case that »the contents to be described on the one hand
and on the other can correspond«—yet there is still an »immeasurably
profound« difference between the sense »of a psychological, and that
12 »It must be continually borne in mind that all transcendental-phenomenological
research is inseparable from undeviating observance of the transcendental reduction,

which must not be confounded with the abstractive restricting of anthropological
research to purely psychic life« (Husserl 1960, p. 32).
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of a transcendental-phenomenological, exploration of consciousness«

(Husserl 1960, p. 32).
And this leads us to the third and last claim: to put the world into
brackets does not imply that the latter disappears from consideration
altogether. As Husserl puts it,
epoché with respect to all worldly being does not at all change
the fact that the manifold cogitationes relating to what is worldly
bear this relation within themselves, that, e.g., the perception of
this table still is, as it was before, precisely a perception of this
table. In this manner, without exception, every conscious process
is, in itself, consciousness of such and such, regardless of what the
rightful actuality-status of this objective such-and-such may be, and
regardless of the circumstance that I, as standing in the transcendental
attitude, abstain from acceptance of this object as well as from all my
other natural acceptances. (Husserl 1960, pp. 32–33)
Hence the cogitatum is not the object that I perceive, remember,
imagine, judge about, etc., per se, but the object as it is perceived,
remembered, imagined, judged upon, etc. Or to put it in other, more
technical, terms: the cogitatum is the object qua sense (Sinn)—»objec
tive sense« (Husserl 1960, p. 42). And it has to be included in the field
of work of the phenomenologist, since »each cogito, each conscious
process […] ›means‹ something or other and bears in itself, in this
manner peculiar to the meant, its particular cogitatum« (Husserl 1960,
p. 33). This »correlation« (more on this below) then guarantees the
unity of the phenomenological domain.
Now each and every intentional Erlebnis can be carried out in a
twofold mode and attitude: it can be »›straightforwardly‹ executed«
(Husserl 1960, p. 33), or it can be reflexive; the reflexive accomplish
ment, in turn, can be carried out within the natural or the phenome
nological attitude, and it is within the reflexive phenomenological
attitude that the idea of a »universal description« (Husserl 1960, p. 36)
dealing with both sides of the cogito-cogitatum correlation13 appears.
We can now tackle the aforementioned problem of the beginning
(Anfang) and direction (Aufgabenrichtung) in which phenomenolo
gical work lies: on the one hand, the beginning of transcendental
phenomenology is nothing other than the transcendental reflection
on the »openly infinite multiplicity of particular concrete subjective
processes« (Husserl 1960, p. 37), understood as »correlated« to a
13 See below for more on this »correlation.«
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cogitatum. And the direction in which our tasks lie amounts to »the
uncovering and descriptive apprehension« (Husserl 1960, p. 37) of
this multiplicity. Now given that this correlated domain is universal,
TP matches »the Cartesian idea of a science that shall be established
as radically genuine, ultimately an all-embracing science [letzlich einer
universalen Wissenschaft]« (Husserl 1960, p. 7).
Yet as Husserl puts it, »if the beginning and the direction in which
our tasks lie are clear from the first, they provide us, in our transcen
dental attitude, with important thoughts to guide the attack on further
problems« (Husserl 1960, p. 39). And these are not small problems,
since they concern the meaning of the talk of a »cogito-cogitatum
correlation.« Indeed, as we are about to see, the specific correlation
between the cogito and its sense amounts to a synthetic relation. And
this is where the horizon will enter the scene.
b. Synthesis.
Husserl brings in the concept of synthesis in order to deepen his

conception of intentionality:
Inquiry into consciousness concerns two sides (for the present we
are leaving out of consideration the question of the identical Ego); they
can be characterized descriptively as belonging together inseparably.
The sort of combination uniting consciousness with consciousness
can be characterized as synthesis, a mode of combination exclusively
peculiar to the region »consciousness.« (Husserl 1960, p. 39, transla
tion modified)
From this, we can flesh out the following claims.
(1) This inseparable belonging together of entities is what Hus
serl identifies with the concept of »correlation.« More precisely, it
amounts to a relation between objects that are not conceivable without
being in relation with one another. Thus »correlation« is a special kind
of relation. And this means that not every relation is a correlation: the
spatial relation between me and my computer is not a correlation; on
the contrary, examples of correlation are »father-child,« »necessity-
contingence« (Husserl 1983, p. 7), or »meaning-object« (cf. Husserl
2008, pp. 52–53).
(2) Synthesis is the kind of correlation existing between a cogito
and its cogitatum. These latter two represent the only two »sides« of
consciousness insofar as for the time being we leave »out of conside
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ration« a third element, namely, »the identical Ego«; Husserl charac

terizes them »descriptively as belonging together inseparably.« This is
explicitly stated by the very title of § 17: »the two-sidedness of inquiry
into consciousness as an investigation of correlatives.« In other words:
cogitato and cogitatum are the two sides of consciousness; they belong
together inseparably, namely, they are correlatives; this is the »sort of
combination uniting consciousness with consciousness« that Husserl
specifically calls synthesis. Hence the synthesis must be regarded as a
kind of correlation.
(3) From this last claim the consequence can be drawn that
synthesis qua phenomenological concept refers to a structure proper
to consciousness, i.e., the synthesis is a principle specific to what
Husserl calls the »region ›consciousness‹ [Bewusstseinsregion].« And
this means two things: on the one hand, that not every correlation is
a synthetic correlation; on the other, that no relation can be labeled
»synthetic« in the technical (phenomenological) sense of the term
except for the cogito-cogitatum relation.
(4) Synthesis qua the correlation proper to consciousness is
»the sort of combination uniting consciousness with consciousness«
(Husserl 1960, p. 39). And this implies that a synthetic correlation, or
a cogitato-cogitatum correlation, constitutes a »one-in-many« struc
ture. As Husserl explicitly states,
one most general trait […] is always present in any consciousness of
any sort, as consciousness of something: This something, the particular
»intentional object qua intentional« in any consciousness, is there
[bewusst] as an identical unity belonging to noetically-noematically
changing modes of consciousness, whether intuitive or non-intuitive.
(Husserl 1960, pp. 40–41)
Hence, for example, »if I take the perceiving of this die as the theme
for my description, I see in pure reflection that ›this‹ die is given
continuously as an objective unity in a multiform and changeable
multiplicity of manners of appearing, which belong determinately
to it« (Husserl 1960, p. 39). In other words, this »die« is a unity
synthesized in the multiplicity of »changing modes of consciousness«
that Husserl explicitly calls cogitationes (Husserl 1960, p. 39). And
what holds good for the die also applies to its properties:
Then, if we pay particular heed to any of the die’s features that
shows itself in the die-perception (for example: the die’s shape or color,
or one of its faces in particular, or the square shape or particular color
of that face), the same is again the case. Always we find the feature
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in question as a unity belonging to a passing flow of »multiplicities.«

(Husserl 1960, p. 40)
Yet these are examples of a more general feature. Indeed, since
synthesis is a trait that »is always present in any consciousness of any
sort, as consciousness of something« (Husserl 1960, p. 41), then the
»one-in-many« structure should be present throughout any correla
tion. In other words, not only must things, fictions, or essences, as
cogitata, be considered as synthetic unities of a multiplicity, but as
Husserl points out, the same must apply to subjective processes, since
their »temporal form« should be seen as a unity, and »the modes of its
temporal appearance, as the corresponding ›multiplicities‹« (Husserl
1960, p. 43). This is a claim that leads to the question of the synthetic
constitution of these ultimate multiplicities, those of inner time-con
sciousness, as well as to the famous problem of infinite regress that
Husserl refers to in the final lines of § 18. This problem, as Husserl
indicates, finds its solution in the self-constitution of inner time-con
sciousness: »The task of clarifying this fact [… is] one aspect of the
ego’s marvelous being-for-himself: here, in the first place, the being
of his conscious life in the form of reflexive intentional relatedness to
itself [in Form des Auf-sich-selbst-intentionalzurückbezogen-Seins]«
(Husserl 1960, p. 43).
(5) Now since the multiplicity of consciousness from which the
unity of sense proceeds is a synthetic multiplicity, it necessarily has
a special status. Undoubtedly, it is not »an incoherent sequence of
subjective processes« (Husserl 1960, p. 30), hence not a matter of
chaos. Yet it is not »merely a continuous connectedness of cogitationes
(as it were, a being stuck to one another externally [ein äusserliches
Aneinandergeklebtsein])« either (Husserl 1960, p. 41), hence not a
matter of external connectedness. In fact, as Husserl puts it, it is »a
connectedness that makes the unity of one consciousness, in which the
unity of an intentional objectivity, as ›the same‹ objectivity belonging
to multiple modes of appearance, becomes ›constituted‹« (Husserl
1960, pp. 41–42). In other words, just like two things, a pen and a
computer, put side by side do not make one entity, a multiplicity of
»side-by-side« subjective process does not make one consciousness
(of one entity). They need to be inwardly, i.e., synthetically, connected;
or to put it simply, they need to be unified in the strong sense of
the term.
Yet the question of exactly how a multiplicity of consciousness is
synthesized is more complex than it looks. For as it turns out, any such
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multiplicity is a multi-layered synthetic structure. This means that if

identification, as Husserl claims, amounts to »the fundamental form of
synthesis« (Husserl 1960, p. 41),14 any identification is universal-tem
poral, before being particular-intentional. Indeed, »if we consider the
fundamental form of synthesis, namely identification, we encounter it
first of all as an all-ruling, passively flowing synthesis, in the form of
the continuous consciousness of internal time« (Husserl 1960, p. 41).
What exactly does this claim mean?
To begin with, we encounter identification first of all in that
form because the temporal synthesis »makes all other syntheses
of consciousness possible« (Husserl 1960, p. 43). In other words,
inner time-consciousness is a fundamental form of synthesis—a
claim implying that although every synthesis is grounded on the
form of inner time-consciousness, not every synthesis resolves itself
into a temporal synthesis. It is nevertheless fundamental, since only
subjective processes belonging to one and the same consciousness
can be intentionally synthesized. And time—more precisely, inner
time-consciousness—is what makes one consciousness out of a mul
tiplicity of subjective processes. Conversely, each subjective process
is one as soon as it belongs to one and the same temporally ordered
consciousness: as Husserl puts it in Experience and Judgment, all
the lived experiences of an ego have their temporal unity; they
are constituted in the absolute flow of internal time-consciousness
and in it have their absolute position and uniqueness, their unique
appearance in an absolute now, after which they retentionally fade
away and sink back into the past. (Husserl 1973, p. 175)
This leads us to our second claim: inner time-consciousness is
a universal form of synthesis, since it provides the infinite sequence
of subjective processes with a temporal order: »the correlate of this
consciousness is immanent temporality itself, in conformity with
which all the life-processes belonging to the ego that can ever be
found reflectively must present themselves as temporally ordered,
temporally beginning and ending, simultaneous or successive, within
the constant infinite horizon: immanent time« (Husserl 1960, p. 43).
Finally, inner time-consciousness qua fundamental as well as
universal synthesis amounts to a form of identification: consciousness
14 Indeed, »every consciousness in which the non-identical is intended unitarily

(every consciousness of a plurality, a relational complex, or the like)« (Husserl 1960,
p. 42) is not only synthetically grasped as one entity (a plurality, a relation, etc.), but is
also based on the identification of each of its forming »elements.«
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as well as its individual contents are intended as one and the same in
their flowing, temporal modes of givenness. Temporal identification is
then the fundamental form of synthesis.
Yet if it is true that the fundamental layer of synthesis is tem
poral—so that from the perspective of inner time-consciousness, all
subjective processes are inwardly related, synthesized into one and
the same consciousness—one should also recognize that from the
perspective of the transcendent sense that is intended, they also gather
in various, particular synthetic groups, sometimes maintaining more
complex forms of synthesis, sometimes only external relations with
these other groups. Here we leave the fundamental and universal
layer of temporal synthesis and enter that of the »structural types
[Strukturtypik]« (Husserl 1960, p. 51) or »types of constitution«
(Husserl 1960, p. 54). Hence, for example, my imagination of a dragon
and my perception of a die belong to two different, particular structural
types (imagination of a quasi-thing vs. external perception of a thing),15
which—since they cannot synthesize into one consciousness of the
same objective sense—maintain only external relations with one
another. On the contrary, while the external perception of a die and
its recollection form different structural types (external perception of a
thing vs. recollection of a thing), they can nevertheless unite into a more
complex form of synthesis, namely, the experience of my die.
Now—and more importantly—the idea of structural types or
types of constitution leads to an even more significant claim, namely,
that the cogitatum is a synthetic unity of a multiplicity that belongs
»determinately to it« (Husserl 1960, p. 39). And this means that one
objective sense (a thing, a book, a person, a community, an essence,
a state of affair, etc.) is not synthesized in the same exact way as the
other. But to each there pertains a unique and suitable law-governed
synthetic structure, which represents the way—and the only way—a
consciousness can make sense of one and the same object qua thing,
state of affairs, cultural object, etc. Thus the synthetic structure of
external perception, imagination, recollection of a thing, judgment of
a state of affair, evaluation of a cultural object, etc., are names for such
full-fledged, law-governed types of constitution.
15 It would be more correct here to speak of the perceptive evaluation of a value, rather
than of the external perception of a thing. Indeed, a die, though grounded on a physical
layer, does not resolve into a thing, since it has a value (it is a cube with dots for a game).
We will, however, leave this issue aside for now. More on this topic will be found in
Ideas II (Husserl 1989, Sections One and Three).
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Undoubtedly, such an account of synthesis is highly significant

with regard to the interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenological
theory of constitution.
First, it means that constitution is not creation, nor reconstruc
tion, but amounts to a »one-in-many« synthesis, in which a unity of
objective sense is made out of a suitable law-governed synthetic mul
tiplicity of consciousness. And this explains Husserl’s opposition to
any conception of consciousness as a bag or an »empty sack,« as he
says in The Idea of Phenomenology (Husserl 1999, p. 55): »each pas
sing cogito intends its cogitatum, not with an undifferentiated blan
kness, but as a cogito with a describable structure of multiplicities«
(Husserl 1960, p. 40). And later on, in § 18, he adds:
The »object« of consciousness, the object as having identity
»with itself« during the flowing subjective process, does not come
into the process from outside [kommt nicht von aussen her in dasselbe
hinein]; on the contrary, it is included as a sense in the subjective
process itself—and thus as an »intentional effect« produced by the
synthesis of consciousness. (Husserl 1960, p. 42)
Thus as Husserl explicitly claims in § 41, his theory of intentio
nality deviates from the Kantian model of the »phenomenon–Ding
an sich.«
Second, as long as the concept of »synthesis« is meant to deepen
the Husserlian conception of intentionality, it also defines the objec
tual domain of phenomenology: what Husserl calls in § 8 »the uni
verse of ›phenomena‹ in the (particular and also the wider) pheno
menological sense« (Husserl 1960, pp. 20–21) is precisely the whole
of synthetic, »one-in-many« correlations of consciousness.
Finally, and more importantly with regard to the task of our
paper, this account of synthesis enables one to assess the role of the
concept of horizon in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.
c. Horizon
The fact that the notion of horizon is a core concept of phenomenology

is obvious from the outset, since Husserl ranks it among the few uni
versal structures of consciousness that he lays out in the Second Med
itation. But Husserl also explicitly states at the end of § 19 that
as consciousness of something, every consciousness has the
essential property, not just of being somehow able to change into
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continually new modes of consciousness of the same object (which,

throughout the unity of synthesis, is inherent in them as an identical
objective sense), but of being able to do so according to—indeed, only
according to those horizon intentionalities. (Husserl 1960, p. 45)
One could sum up Husserl’s claim in the following way: (1)
the transcendental field amounts to the transcendental correlations;
(2) these transcendental correlations are structured in a certain way,
i.e., as »one-in-many,« specifically law-governed syntheses; (3) any
synthesis proceeds via horizon intentionalities; and (4) in conclusion,
synthesis and horizon together form the key concepts defining the
realm of transcendental phenomenology, the phenomena of pheno
menology.
Now in order to account for (3), one must dive into the nature of
the »horizon.« As the title of § 19 points out, the horizon designates
a structure of potentiality of intentional life, as opposed to actuality
(actuality vs. potentiality). It can be characterized as follows.
First, while an actual subjective process is explicitly intending
something (I actually, explicitly see this side of the table in front of
me), a horizonal subjective process is only implicitly intending it.
And by »implicit,« Husserl means a possibility that has the character
of being »actualizable by the Ego« (Husserl 1960, p. 44). Thus the
horizon-structure covers the temporal protentions and retentions qua
necessary structures of any temporal-intentional synthesis as well as
of any intentional acts implying free perception—namely, the »I can«
structure.16 Here let us take the example of external perception:
there belongs to every external perception its reference from the
»genuinely perceived« sides of the object of perception to the sides
»also meant«—not yet perceived, but only anticipated [or remembe
red, in the case of retention] and, at first, with a non-intuitional
emptiness (as the sides that are »coming« now perceptually): a
continuous protention, which, with each phase of the perception, has a
new sense. Furthermore, the perception has horizons made up of other
16 These two structures must be sharply distinguished. As Husserl illustrates with
the case of external perception in Thing and Space, there would be no perception of
a thing at all without retention and protention, since no temporal synthesis would
occur, i.e., inner temporal connectedness. A perception could indeed occur without the
consciousness of other possible perceptions than the actual one (Husserl 1997, pp.
164–165)—but then the thing perceived could not be identified and re-identified as
the same (the same that I saw yesterday, and that I could have seen as I see it now) in
different perceptions.
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possibilities of perception, as perceptions that we could have, if we

actively directed the course of perception otherwise: if, for example, we
turned our eyes that way instead of this, or if we were to step forward
or to one side, and so forth. (Husserl 1960, p. 44)
Second, the horizon is not an empty possibility, but constitu
tes »possibilities intentionally predelineated in respect of content—
namely, in the actual subjective process itself« (Husserl 1960, p.
44) (empty vs. predelineated possibility). Here, however, the pair
of opposites »empty vs. predelineated« should not be conflated with
another pair, »empty vs. fulfilled.« On the one hand, this is because
not every horizonal subjective process is empty, as the example of
background perception illustrates: I don’t see the other side of this
table, but I intuitively see the tables that surround it, even when I
don’t turn my attention to them. On the other hand, this is because
here Husserl is not using the term »empty« in the technical sense
of an unfulfilled intention. Quite on the contrary, he is referring to
the idea of a logical, i.e., non-contradictory possibility, in contrast
with possibilities motivated by actual and previous experience. For
instance, the existence of Martians is a non-contradictory idea, but no
actual experience (e.g., the experience of the existence of footprints
left on the surface of Mars) motivates any predetermined experience
of such creatures as really existing, as being such and such, having
such and such properties, and so on. Or to take Husserl’s own example:
the die leaves open a great variety of things pertaining to the
unseen faces; yet it is already »construed« in advance as a die,
in particular as colored, rough, and the like, though each of these
determinations always leaves further particulars open. This leaving
open, prior to further determinings (which perhaps never take place),
is a moment included in the given consciousness itself; it is precisely
what makes up the »horizon.« (Husserl 1960, p. 45)
In this sense it is true to say that horizon intentionalities are
»predelineated in respect of content« (Husserl 1960, p. 44).
These predelineated, to-be-actually-determined horizonal inten
tionalities are then actually determined in the process of their »unco
vering« or »explication.« To take the case of external perception once
again, if I want to learn more about this chair in front of me, I
need to uncover the horizonal intentionalities in which it is already
predelineated for me as having such and such color, form, etc.. Such
an uncovering includes both the possibility of a further determination
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of the chair and of its determination as otherwise: I thought it was

entirely red, but it is partly blue, etc.
This leads us to the last trait of the horizon: there would be no
consciousness of one and the same object if there were no horizon.
First, without retention and protention, there would not even be
one perception of the thing, since from the temporal point of view,
subjective processes would not be synthesized in the strong sense of
the term. In that case, they would be simply stuck to one another
externally [ein äusserliches Aneinandergeklebtsein]. Second, without
free horizons, one would not be able to identity and re-identify a
thing as one and the same in different acts of consciousness. In other
words, taking the example of thing-perception, different perceptions
could not be synthesized as perceptions of the same thing, and would
once again be stuck to one another externally. Thus to perceive one
and the same object necessarily implies that I am conscious of more
than what I actually perceive—and this holds for any correlation,
although in accordance with the various eidetic laws governing the
constitution of each cogitatum. From this we can then conclude that
synthesis and horizon together define the phenomena of Husserl’s
transcendental phenomenology.
3. Intentional analysis
Yet this is not the end of the story. Indeed, since the horizon is a
structure of predetermined possibilities included in any actual expe
rience; since synthetic constitution is possible only according to these
horizon-intentionalities, which are uncovered or explicated in the
process of determining the object; and since transcendental pheno
menology aims at describing the specific laws belonging to each pecu
liar synthetic, constitutive structure, then the universal structure of
horizon prescribes a specific method to phenomenology: intentional
analysis. This is a crucial claim that Husserl explicitly brings to the
fore in § 20:
The horizon structure belonging to every intentionality […]
prescribes for phenomenological analysis and description a method of
a totally new kind, which come into action wherever consciousness and
object, wherever intending and sense, real and ideal actuality, possi
bility, necessity, illusion, truth, and, on the other hand, experience,
judgment, evidence, and so forth, present themselves as names for
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transcendental problems, to be taken in hand as genuine problems

concerning »subjective origins.« (Husserl 1960, pp. 48–49)
To begin with, what does this intentional analysis consist in?
First, it »is totally different from analysis in the usual and
natural sense« (Husserl 1960, p. 46), which pertains to the sensualist
theory of consciousness and proceeds by the decomposition of a
whole into its different elements. Quite on the contrary: intentional
analysis is »an uncovering of the potentialities ›implicit‹ in actualities
of consciousness« (Husserl 1960, p. 46). And now it is easy to
understand why such an uncovering is so important. Indeed, the
phenomenologist aims to make »understandable to himself how,
within the immanency of conscious life and in thus and so determined
modes of consciousness belonging to this incessant flux, anything
like fixed and abiding objective unities can become intended and, in
particular, how this marvelous work of ›constituting‹ identical objects
is done in the case of each category of objects« (Husserl 1960, p.
48). Yet the synthetic constitution proceeds through a horizon of
predelineated intentionalities, which makes a consciousness of one
object possible. There is thus no other way to understand how such
and such peculiar object is constituted as a one-in-many entity than
to uncover, in an eidetic way, the horizon of an arbitrary example of
external perception, recollection, imagination, judging, etc.
Now such an uncovering
(1) is not a straightforward explication of the features (Merk
male), parts (Teile), and properties (Eigenschaften) of the object, since
in that case, the phenomenologist would not offer any insight into how
we come to constitute such things as features, parts and properties.
(2) Nor does the phenomenologist simply describe the object »as
somehow related back to the corresponding Ego and the ego cogito of
which it is the cogitatum« (Husserl 1960, p. 47). For it is not only
related to the ego and his or her cogitationes; it is constituted on
the basis of the synthetic activity of the ego who lives in his or her
cogitationes, be they actual or potential. In other words, if one sticks to
the procedures sketched in (1) and (2), the intentional, synthetic life
responsible for the constitution of the cogitatum qua cogitatum would
remain anonymous.
(3) In other words, the phenomenologist needs to reflect on his or
her conscious life:
with his reflective regard, [the phenomenologist] penetrates
the anonymous »cogitative« life, he uncovers the definite synthetic
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courses of the manifold modes of consciousness and, further back, the

modes of Ego-comportment, which make understandable the objec
tive affair’s simple meantness for the Ego, its intuitive or non-intuitive
meantness. (Husserl 1960, p. 47)
Now that we know what intentional analysis is (and what it is
not), we can focus on how it is carried out.
As Husserl underlines in § 21, the phenomenologist who intends
to carry out intentional analysis is confronted with »the most univer
sal type—within which, as a form,17 everything particular [alles Beson
dere] is included,« namely, the »universal scheme: ego—cogito—cogi
tatum« (Husserl 1960, p. 50). Then any intentional analysis wants to
particularize this type (Besonderung der allgemeinster Typik) by taking
the intentional object, i.e., the cogitatum, as the »›transcendental clue‹
to the typical infinite multiplicities of possible cogitationes that, in a
possible synthesis, bear the intentional object within them (in the
manner peculiar to consciousness) as the same meant object« (Hus
serl 1960, p. 50). Husserl puts it this way:
Necessarily the point of departure is the object given »straight
forwardly [geradehin]« at the particular time. From it reflection goes
back to the mode of consciousness at that time and to the potential
modes of consciousness included horizonally in that mode, then to
those in which the object might be otherwise intended as the same,
within the unity (ultimately) of a possible conscious life, all the
possibilities of which are included in the »ego.« (Husserl 1960, p. 50)
Here Husserl stresses a crucial part of intentional analysis:
taking the cogitatum as a starting point, the phenomenologist must
reflect on the multiplicities of consciousness in which the former is
constituted as a »one-in-many« object. This implies uncovering the
predelineated horizonal intentionalities: first the factual ones and
then arbitrary ones, namely, any potential intentionalities that lead to
the constitution of one and the same specific kind of object (a physical
thing, a person, a book, etc.).
Now what about the particularization of this most universal
type? Let us limit ourselves here to the following hints.
(1) As the ego-cogito-cogitatum scheme is formal, we can »con
tinue to limit ourselves […] to formal universality« and carry out
17 More on the Husserlian concept of »form« and its derivatives, as well as on its
conceptual counterpart, »matter,« will be found in Ideas I (Husserl 1983, Part One,
Chapter 1), as well as in Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge (Husserl 2001,
Chapters 2 and 3).
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a formal particularization. Thus we start with the object in general

(Etwas überhaupt), whose correlates are any act of consciousness—for
instance, »possible perception, retention, recollection, expectation,
intending as something symbolized, intuitive representation by ana
logy«; then we move to its various modes (Modi des Etwas): »single
object, and ultimately individual object, universal, plurality, whole,
predicatively formed state (or complex) of affairs, relational complex,
and so forth« (Husserl 1960, pp. 50–51).
(2) There are »material-ontological particularizations, starting
from the concept of the real concrete individual, which is differentiated
into its real regions—for example: (mere) spatial thing, animate being,
and so forth« (Husserl 1960, p. 51).
(3) Formal and material particularizations include both universal
and special problems. With regard to formal objects, there is »the
formally universal constitutional theory of any object whatever or of
an open horizon of possible objects of any sort, as objects of possible
consciousness« (Husserl 1960, p. 52). With regard to material objects,
the universal problem is that of the constitution of the world itself, as
composed of its different regions (material thing, animal being, per
son).
Now the combination of these universal transcendental problems
raises the fundamental question of »the universal unity comprising
all objects« (Husserl 1960, p. 53), formal and material, real and
ideal—a question Husserl hints at in the last paragraph of the Second
Meditation. Admittedly, »transcendental phenomenology as a whole«
(Husserl 1960, p. 54) is supposed to provide an answer to this ques
tion. But it would require bringing in a new aspect of transcendental
phenomenology. For the subjective correlate of »the universal unity
comprising all objects« (Husserl 1960, p. 53) is not simply »a universal
constitutive synthesis,« but a universal synthesis »in which all synthe
ses function together in a definitely ordered manner«; it would imply
a »level by level« approach, leading to »the unity of a systematic and
all-embracing order« (Husserl 1960, p. 54). This is a task that genetic
phenomenology is meant to carry out. And as it turns out, the concept
of horizon is not irrelevant to this task. For as Husserl claims, this
»enormous task […] which is that of transcendental phenomenology
as a whole« (Husserl 1960, p. 54) implies »an incessant uncovering
of horizons—not only those belonging to objects of consciousness
internally [innerlich eigenen Horizonten], but also those having an
external reference [nach aussen […] verweisenden Horizonte], namely,
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to essential forms of interconnexions« (Husserl 1960, p. 54). To trace

the role of the notion of horizon for genetic analysis, however, would
be the topic of another paper.
Conclusion
»The horizon is a universal principle of Husserl’s transcendental

phenomenology, since any synthetic correlation operates, and opera
tes only, horizonally; therefore it also prescribes to phenomenology a
suitable method, that of intentional analysis«—this is how a reader of
the Second Cartesian Meditation could summarize his or her answer to
the first question we asked in the introduction to this paper: in what
sense does the horizon constitute a central piece of the Husserlian
conceptual machinery?
Yet the reader of the entire book could still consider this answer
as incomplete, and quite rightly so. For the recognition of the univer
sality of the horizon does not only act as a catalyst for conceptual
innovations (intentional analysis being one of them); it also triggers
theoretical disruptions and reshufflings that the Cartesian Meditations
echo. This is the case, for example, with the question of the range of the
apodictic evidence of transcendental reflection.18 After all, one could
say, consciousness, just like the thing, is given with a horizon—and
just as this eidetic state of affairs ruins the world’s claim to be the
apodictic ground on which the philosophical edifice is built, is this not
also the case for consciousness as well?
In fact, in § 9 Husserl himself draws this parallel between the
perception of the thing and the reflection on transcendental con
sciousness:
External perception too (though not apodictic) is an experiencing
of something itself, the physical thing itself: »it itself is there.« But, in
being there itself, the physical thing has for the experiencer an open,
infinite, indeterminately general horizon, comprising what is itself
not strictly perceived—a horizon (this is implicit as a presumption)
that can be opened up by possible experiences. Something similar is
true about the apodictic certainty characterizing transcendental expe
rience of my transcendental I-am, with the indeterminate generality of
18 For more on the disruptions and reshufflings that Husserl’s recognition of the
horizon qua principle sets in motion, see Djian 2021.
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Aurélien Djian
the latter as having an open horizon. Accordingly the actual being of

the intrinsically first field of knowledge is indeed assured absolutely,
though not as yet what determines its being more particularly and is
still not itself given, but only presumed, during the living evidence
of the I-am. This presumption implicit in the apodictic evidence
is subject therefore to criticism, regarding the possibilities of its
fulfillment and their range (which may be apodictically determinable).
How far can the transcendental ego be deceived about himself? And
how far do those components extend that are absolutely indubitable,
in spite of such possible deception? (Husserl 1960, p. 23)
Therefore to rank the horizon among the universal principles
of phenomenology paves the way to new problems as well, which
the introduction of a new stage in transcendental phenomenology
is meant to cope with—namely, a »criticism of all transcendental
cognition« (Husserl 1960, p. 29).
How is this problem, directly resulting from the promotion of the
horizon to the rank of a principle, solved by Husserl in his Cartesian
Meditations? That is a question the reader of the Second Meditation
cannot answer, though he or she can see why and how it is raised. It
is, in fact, one horizon among others that are irrevocably opened by
this Meditation.
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Sommer. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Derrida, Jacques, and Marion, Jean-Luc (1999): »On the Gift:
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De Santis, Daniele (2021): Husserl and the A Priori. Cham: Sprin
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Djian, Aurélien (2018): »L’horizon et le destin de la phénoméno
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Djian, Aurélien (2021): Husserl et l’horizon comme problème. Une
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Geniusas, Saulius (2012): The Origin of the Horizon in Husserl’s
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Heidegger, Martin (1959): Gelassenheit. Pfullingen: Gün

ther Neske
Henry, Michel (2011): L’essence de la manifestation. Paris: PUF.
Husserl, Edmund (1960): Cartesian Meditations: An Introduc
tion to Phenomenology. Dorion Cairns (Trans.). The Hague: Marti
nus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1973): Experience and Judgment: Investiga
tions in a Genealogy of Logic. Ludwig Landgrebe (Ed.), James S.
Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Trans.). Evanston IL: Northwestern
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Husserl, Edmund (1983): Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenol
ogy and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Intro
duction to a Pure Phenomenology. Fred Kersten (Trans.). The Hague:
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Husserl, Edmund (1989): Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenol
ogy and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in
the Phenomenology of Constitution. Richard Rojcewicz and André
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Husserl, Edmund (1997): Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907.
Richard Rojcewicz (Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, Edmund (1999): The Idea of Phenomenology. Lee Hardy
(Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, Edmund (2008): Introduction to Logic and Theory
of Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07. Claire Ortiz Hill (Trans.). Dor
drecht: Springer.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1990): Totalité et infini. Essai sur l’extério
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Majolino, Claudio (2020): »Husserl and the Reach of Attitude.«
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Marion, Jean-Luc (2013): Étant donné. Essai d’une phénoménolo
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Third Cartesian Meditation:

Ontology after Kant
1. Introduction
The Third Meditation is the shortest of the five Meditations. Although

it covers only eight pages, it is central to the Meditations as it paves
the transition from bracketing the question of existence to raising the
problem of existence. It may appear strange, to say the least, first to
bracket a question and then to return to it. Why bracket the question
of existence, if it will end up becoming »an all-embracing theme for
phenomenology« (Husserl 1950, § 23, p. 91; Husserl 1960, p. 56)?
The Third Meditation provides an answer to this question. It shows
how the reduction provides a propaedeutic to address epistemic ques
tions about existence. To make sense of this, I shall draw parallels with
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter: CPR). The comparison is
fitting as Husserl in many ways echoes Kant’s insight that ontology
needs to be limited to our vantage-point. However, contrary to Kant,
the Meditation succeed in showing that we can make sense of the limit
without needing to contrast our vantage-point with a viewpoint that
is not available to us. This is what it means to do ontology after Kant.
2. The Bracketing of the Natural Attitude
Before addressing how the reduction provides the route for epistemic
questions about existence, it is necessary first to recall what the reduc
tion is about. The reduction requires us to bracket the question of
existence. we should no longer naively »accept [the world, L.A.] as it
presents itself to [us, L.A.] as factually existing« (Husserl 1982, § 30,
p. 53) but we should suspend our judgement with regard to ›the
positing of its actual being‹ (Husserl 1982, § 88, p. 182). We are told
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that such a suspension of judgment is necessary because our belief in

it is unfounded.
Husserl’s target is realism. The problem is that in the »natural
attitude« all of us, without exception, laypersons and scientists alike,
are realists and believe that we are continually confronted with a spa
tio-temporal actuality to which I and all other human beings and ani
mals belong (cf. Husserl 1982, § 30, p. 53). It is experienced as being
»there,” factually existing. This belief seems unshakable. While we
may well doubt the existence of certain objects, as it is in the case of
illusions and hallucinations, this does not affect our general belief in
its existence.
Husserl, like Kant before him, questions this »common but fal
lacious presupposition« (CPR A536/B564). We are told that the
natural attitude is »absurd« (Husserl 1950, § 41, p. 116; Husserl 1960,
p. 83) as it rests on a theoretical presupposition which remains
unfounded. We realise as much when we ask: »how is cognition of
such a mind-independent world possible?«1 It is then that we
recognise an impasse: we have no way of accounting for it. The prob
lem is that we take the world and its objects to be »external« to the
mind and treat our mind like an inner theatre. The natural attitude
thus gives rise to skepticism: If the mind is like an inner theatre, then
it is as if there is a veil between us and reality and we can only know
our representations or ideas in the mind but have no way of knowing
whether they correspond to the reality that lies outside of it, precisely
because such a reality is meant to be beyond our reach.
But Husserl asks what exactly justifies our belief that there is a
world beyond that veil? We take it as an unquestionable given that our
mind is like an inner theatre and that we can only see representations,
but such claims are vitiated by a fundamental flaw: It supposes that
there is an external world but at the same time acknowledges that
no proof can be given of the existence of that world. Our natural
attitude thus rests on a theoretical presupposition. We suppose that
there is an external world that lies beyond that veil and it is only on the
basis of this assumption that we can claim that we can only know our
representations in the mind as a result.
Husserl questions the logic of such an argument. If nothing justi
fies our belief that there is a world beyond that veil, then talk about
1 Cf. Husserl 1964, Lecture II, p. 26.
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Third Cartesian Meditation: Ontology after Kant
representations or ideas is not justified either.2 This is why we need

to perform an »epistemological reduction«: our starting point of
investigation cannot be an epistemic one. We can neither »accept [the
world, L.A.] as it presents itself to me as factually existing« (Husserl
1982, § 30, p. 53) nor assume that what presents itself are only rep
resentations or ideas in the mind.
When Husserl thus argues that we need to perform a reduction
or epoche and no longer naively ›accept [the world, L.A.] as it presents
itself to me as factually existing‹ (Husserl 1982, § 30, p. 53) and that
we should suspend our judgement with regard to ›the positing of its
actual being‹ (Husserl 1982, § 88, p. 182), the claim is not that we
should not be concerned about the question of existence tout court but
that we can only provide a genuine account of existence after perfor
ming the reduction. In a word, the reduction provides a propaedeutic
to epistemic questions.
3. An Inquiry into Existence and Non-Existence
We can now understand the significance of the topic of the Third

Meditation. It asks »how is then an inquiry into being possible?.« As
the title indicates, it addresses the »constitutional problems of truth
and actuality« (Husserl 1950, § 23, p. 91; Husserl 1960, p. 56) Ano
ther way of putting it, the question is how do truth and actuality show
themselves (i.e., constitute themselves) after having performed the
reuction. What is striking is that from the outset Husserl extends the
inquiry to non-being. We learn that an inquiry into truth and actuality
necessarily requires also an inquiry into non-being. As a result, non-
being also needs to be within our reach if it has any genuine sense for
us.
2 Kant, in turn believes as soon as we limit ourselves to the language of appearances

we have committed ourselves to the view that there is something that lies outside
the realm of appearances. Kant arrives at this claim via analytic judgments about the
concept »appearance«: For Kant, an appearance is a representation of something. It is
an inherently relational representation. This implies that the concept of the thing as it
is in itself is contained within the concept of appearance (see CPR A251–252/Bxxvi)
and can thus be thought, even if not known.
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Husserl indicates as much in the following passage:

By the epoche we effect a reduction to our pure meaning (cogito) and
to the meant, purely as meant. The predicates being and non-being,
and their modal variants, relate to the latter accordingly, not to objects
simpliciter but to the objective sense. (Husserl 1950, § 23, p. 91; Husserl
1960, p. 56)
The transcendental reduction thus provides a propaedeutic not only to
being but also to non-being. Both predicates being and non-being do
not refer to objects simpliciter, i.e., objects that are beyond our reach
but need to be understood in relation to what shows itself.
The topic of the Third Meditation is thus to show how the ques
tion of being is interlaced with the question of non-being. The first
thing we learn is that we need to understand »non-being« as a modi
fication of »being« (cf. Husserl 1950, § 24, p. 93; Husserl 1960, p. 58),
We can only account for non-being if we already operate with an
understanding of being. Non-being must be understood privately. It
refers to a negation of being: to what is not yet actual (i.e., possible),
a priori never actual (i.e., impossible objects), no-longer (e.g., remem
bered), or not actual (e.g. illusory). Without an understanding of
being there is thus no non-being.
The claim is that both being (its actuality) and non-being thus
need to be understood in relation to what shows itself; the possibiliity
of being. This is why Husserl claims that »reason and unreason are
correlative titles for being and non-being« (Husserl 1950, § 23, p. 92;
Husserl 1960, p. 56). Reason »refers to possibilities of verification:
[…] namely to making evident and having as evident« (Husserl 1950,
§ 23, p. 92; Husserl 1960, p. 57) and non-being refers to what cannot
be verified or made evident. Whatever »is« or »exists« manifests itself
and can be verified. It is given in an originary intuition. It refers to
what shows itself and can be made evident Non-being, in turn, refers
to what cannot be made evident, not because it is not accessible from
our human vantage-point, but because it cannot be verified, as an ori
ginary intuition is lacking.
Husserl distinguishes between different modes of non-beings.
Initially he refers to two forms of non-being. One refers to what is not
yet actual, the other to the annulment of possibilities. The first form
of non-being is always in place when we have object perception. Take
this box in front of me as an example. The Second Meditation esta
blished that it belongs to transcendental experience, that the box
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(independently whether it is imagined or actual) manifests itself outs

ide of the mind but not outside of experience. Indeed, there is a
necessary structure that pertains to object perception: independently
of whether it is actual, possible or impossible, it manifests itself in a
lawful way. Objects necessarily shows themselves as three-dimen
sional. We do not see a flat surface but I necessarily perceive the box
from a particular perspective. I see it from the front, side or back. By
its very nature, a perspective permits of alternatives. I can only per
ceive the box from a particular angle because I am aware that there
are other possible perspectives of the same box that are currently not
present. Here we have an initial account of non-being. We are aware
of perspectives which are not actually given (non-being). The non-
being is of a peculiar kind. It does not refer to complete nothingness,
but it refers to a non-being that pre-delineates what can be given; its
possibility of being. We are »not aiming confusedly at something«
(Husserl 1950, § 23, p. 93; Husserl 1960, p. 57) rather my perceptual
experience of the box is pre-delineated from the start. I see the front
of the box in relation to other possible perspectives which are not yet
determined (its back or top) and I see all these perspectives in relation
to one and the same box. So as soon as I am aware that I am seeing a
perspective of the box, I see it in relation to possible (not-yet) other
perspectives of one and the same box. The other sides of the box are
not actually given and have not yet been thematised, but they inform
my perceptual experience in an indeterminate way. My present per
spective is thus necessarily infused with past and possible perceptions
of one and the same object. Moreover, talk about perspectives only
makes sense when we refer to different points of access to one and the
same object/world. A perspective is necessarily a perspective of
something unitary.3 Thus, I necessarily see all possible perspectives
in relation to one unitary object, in this case the box. This leads Hus
serl to argue that all perceptual experience necessarily strives for syn
thesis (unity).
As the Second Meditation has shown this to be true for all object
perception, be it imagined or actual. I can only find out about the
»existence« of the box when I come to see other sides of the box and
3 And moreover, but this is not the topic of this paper, all these perspectives must
also be for one and the same subject. »it is a synthesis that, as a unitary consciousness
embracing these separated processes, gives rise to the consciousness of identity and
thereby makes any knowing of identity possible« (Husserl 1950, § 18, p. 81; Husserl
1960, p. 43). Cf. Alweiss 1999a, and 1999b.
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realise that what I indeterminately anticipated is confirmed, i.e., when

I realise that other sides of the box exist. Its actuality is thus verified
through intuitive fulfilment. But clearly this process can run afoul.
The box may turn out to be a hologram. It is then that »verification
[…] turns into its negative; instead of the meant itself, a ›different‹
can come to the fore, and do so in the mode ›it itself‹ a different that
wrecks the positing of what was meant, so that the previously meant,
for its part, assumes the character: nullity« (Husserl 1950, § 24, p. 93;
Husserl 1960, p. 58). Here we arrive at the second from of non-being.
When I realise that I was mistaken, I recognise the annulment of
being. I become aware of the non-being of the box; its nullity. Yet I
only recognise its nullity because I first believed it to be a box. This
illustrates how non-being has to be understood as a modification of
the possibility of being. The box, as Husserl puts it, remains as crossed
out, i.e., annulled what is annulled is the structure of possibility.
This description brings to light that we operate with two different
ways of referring to non-being. One that is linked to possibilities
which have not yet been fulfilled, the other to possibilities which have
been dashed. When we initially looked at the box and said that there
are alternative perspectives of one and the same box which are not yet
available to me, we were describing the former. We argued, though
absent, these other possible perspectives delineate my perceptual
experience. What is absent from my vantage point are the other sides
of the box, but not the possibility that there are other sides pertaining
to it. But when I realise that the box is a hologram my expectations
(i.e., the structure of possibilities) have been annulled. It is an absence
which is no longer understood in terms of possibility (not-yet) but as
a nullity. The denial is of both, the possibility and actuality of being a
box. Non-being thus refers to the annulment of possibilities.
Husserl realises that the affirmation of being is never apodictic.
When it comes to object perception, evidence is necessarily haunted
by absence. To return to the example of the box: even once I have
verified the other sides of the box, I can still only see the box from
one particular angle. It is never the case that all the perspectives (the
front, back, bottom, sides and top of the box) that I may have been able
to verify in the past (while turning the box) are actually present. At
each instance only one particular perspective is actually given to me.
This must be the case, as it is the defining feature of three-dimensional
objects, that they can only be seen from one particular vantage-point.
If all vantage-points were actually given to me (once verified) I would
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see a flat surface, and no longer a box. But this means that when it
comes to object perception, we can never see all the sides of the object
at the very same time. Absence (the sides that are not actual) here
does not point to a limitation on our part but is an essential feature
of objects.4
Yet this makes it questionable whether we can actually ever know
whether an object exists. As the evidence in question can never be an
apodictic one. With respect to object perception, evidence will always
carry within itself absence and thus with it the possibility of disap
pointment. Evidences necessarily refer to »infinities of evidences rela
ting to the same object, wherever they make their object itself-given
with an essentially necessary one-sidedness« (Husserl 1950, § 28, p.
96; Husserl 1960, p. 61).
Although the evidences we obtain are never complete, Husserl
believes that I do become more confident that that the box exists when
my experience is repeatedly verified. The regularity of my experience
sediments my expectations. Alluding to Hume, Husserl refers here to
habit and argues that the particular evidence »does not as yet produce
for us any abiding being« only the regularity in that experience does.
To regard something as existing (i.e. objective) we need to be able to
reidentify it after an interval in which there has been no observation
of it (cf. Hume 1978, p. 188). This is why habit is central to the affir
mation of being. Only a thing that is correctly reidentified after a gap
in the observation of it is not a thing whose esse is percipi but an abi
ding one (cf. Husserl 1950, § 27, pp. 95–96; Husserl 1960, pp. 60–
61). To this extent »imperfect evidence becomes more nearly perfect
in the actualizing synthetic transitions from evidence to evidence«
(Husserl 1950, § 28, p. 96; Husserl 1960, p. 61).5
Husserl thus realises that we can never show that things are
necessarily thus and so. However accumulative our evidences may be,
there is always a possibility that things could be otherwise. We cannot
rule out that we will be disappointed in the future. It »remains the
open possibility that the belief in being, which extends into the anti
4 This is why Husserl says elsewhere that even God or an omniscient being would
only perceive an object from one particular perspective at each time (see Husserl 1982,
§ 149, p. 362).
5 Here Husserl alludes to Hume’s view that we can only regard something as
mind-independent if we are able to reidentify it after an interval in which there has

been no observation of it (see Hume 1978, p. 188). Plainly, a thing that is correctly
reidentified after a gap in the observation of it is not a thing whose esse is percipi.
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cipation, will not be fulfilled, that what is appearing in the mode ›it
itself‹ nevertheless does not exist or is different« (Husserl 1950, § 28,
p. 97; Husserl 1960, p. 62). The evidence we gain is thus never apo
dictic. It is through habit that we become better in establishing and
solidifying our expectations, however we can never arrive at complete
certainty. »No imaginable synthesis of this kind is completed as an
adequate evidence: any such synthesis just always involve unfulfilled,
expectant and accompanying meanings« (Husserl 1950, § 28, p. 96;
Husserl 1960, p. 62).
So when it comes to actuality Husserl admits that we can never
know with certainty that objects exist as every being is haunted by
absence. From this we may conclude that Husserl repeats Hume’s
claim that our belief in existence is be based on habit and can never
be certain. This would suggest we can never answer the question the
Third Meditation has set out to address: namely, how we can reliably
give an account of being and non-being. However, a closer look at the
Third Meditation reveals that Husserl’s position with respect to Hume
is analogous with Kant’s response to Hume. He, just like Kant before
him, wishes to show that it is only because know the fundamental
structure of reality that we can provide an adequate account of being
and non-being.
4. Kant’s response to Hume’s circle
Indeed, what is striking is that Kant, just like Husserl, is in agreement

with Hume. We can never gain certainty about the existence of
empirical relations. But contrary to Hume (and as I shall show below
in agreement with Husserl), he believes that we can arrive at this
insight only because we can study the fundamental structure of reality.
Kant thus detects a certain shortcoming in Hume’s position.
Let us look at Hume’s position first. Hume claims that we cannot
establish the necessary relation between items of experience because
experience is necessarily unrelated. We only experience separate
events (impressions) and never their relation or cause. So, when we
put our finger into the flame, we have two separate experiences: fire
and pain. We cannot deduce from pain that the fire has caused it. The
connection between both events »flame« and »pain« thus cannot be
known a priori but can only be inferred through experience. This leads
Hume to conclude that it is matter of »custom« or »habit« to describe
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the relationship between experience and the perception of causation.

We are accustomed to experiencing pain when we touch a flame. This
custom or habit of experience forms a »causal connection« between
the two separate ideas, flame and pain. However, as the relations
of matters of fact are inductive, they are a posteriori, and reliant
on empirical evidence for their proof, we cannot refer to necessary
connections (cf. Hume 1975, Sec. IV).
Kant agrees but nonetheless detects a problem with Hume’s
account. Kant realises that we can only make sense of Hume’s position
if we assume that the universe is uniform (i.e., rule governed). It is
because we believe in the regularity of nature that we presuppose
that similar causes will naturally result in similar effects. But Hume
critique of metaphysics rests on the claim that we cannot know that
the universe is uniform. Hume presents us with a circular argument:
belief in the principle of causation rests upon the uniformity of nature,
and belief in the uniformity of nature rests upon the principle of
causation. Yet neither belief can be verified.
Kant questions the coherence of Hume’s position. He is in agree
ment with Hume: we do not experience the necessary connection
between events. But, contrary to Hume he argues that the subjective
conditions of thinking have objective validity. In the Second Analogy
Kant takes the ship moving along the horizon as an example. Kant
believes that Hume cannot be right when he argues that this experi
ence is purely subjective because we necessarily perceive an objective
order. We cannot but perceive the ship as sailing from west to east.
The order of perception is experienced as irreversible. This leads Kant
to argue that we do differentiate between a subjective and objective
order. Nonetheless, Kant agrees with Hume, we cannot refer to a
necessary order. The ship did not have to sail from west to east. It
could have broken down or a gust of wind could have made it sail
a different direction. This particular event did not necessarily have
to happen. But, contrary to Hume, Kant believes that we can only
experience the objective order, namely, that the ship moves from
west to east because we have the capacity to make the judgement
that every event has a cause. The schema of causality provides the
rule through which we think an order of perception as irreversible
and thereby take them as successive states of an object. This shows
that there are necessary a priori connections that inform experience.
These are the categories of the understanding. This leads Kant to
argue that the belief that everything must follow »in accordance with
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a rule« (CPR A193/B238) or that the universe is uniform (Hume) is

a necessary one which allows us to make inferences about particular
events. The belief is necessary while the particular event (though
objective) is contingent.
Kant thereby draws an important distinction between transcen
dental necessity and empirical events. The schema of causality is
necessary for the thought of an event as such. It allows us to think
of relations and to seek them, but it cannot show us the necessity
of particular causal laws. This leads Kant to observe that Hume
failed to distinguish between two different senses of a priori that of
»going beyond possible experience« and that of »underlying possible
experience.« »Hume was in error in inferring from the contingency
of our determinations in accordance with the law [of causality] to
the contingency of the law itself« (CPR A766/B794). Hume is right:
»That sunlight should melt wax but also harden clay« can never be
known a priori but »we know a priori that something must have
preceded [that something being for instance in this case the heat
of the sun] upon which the melting has followed according to a
fixed law, although a priori, independently of experience, I could
not determine, in any specific manner, either the cause from effect,
or the effect from the cause« (CPR A766/B794). The categories of
understanding thus inform our experience. The principle of causality
is presupposed by perception of an event and not derived from it.
It allows us to experience the relation between perceptions. The
principle of causation is a transcendental condition of possibility for
experience of events and thus necessary and not contingent.6
6 It is important to note that Kant the Second Analogy does not provide a proof of the
regularity or uniformity of nature. Kant realises that »Appearances could very well be
so constituted, that the understanding could not find them to be in accordance with the
conditions of its unity; and everything might lie in such confusion that, for example,
in the series of appearances nothing should present itself which might yield a rule of
synthesis and thus correspond to the concept of cause and effect, so that this concept
would be wholly empty, nugatory and meaningless« (A90/B123). To establish this
something else needs to be in place. Namely, it needs to be shown that the intuitions
and categories are structured in such a way that they necessarily conform to each
other. This is the task he addresses in the transcendental deduction which I will leave
unaddressed here. This problem does not arise for Husserl as intuitions are already
categorial in form.
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5. Husserl’s response to Hume’s circle
I believe we can find a parallel argument in the Third Meditation with

the important difference that what for Kant is a purely transcendental
necessity is an ontological one for Husserl. As we have shown Husserl
is in agreement with Hume and for that matter with Kant: we can
never ascertain with certainty the existence of particular objects as
object perception is haunted by absence. However, this observation
leads him to side with Kant and not Hume. In agreement with Kant,
Husserl argues that the affirmation of being or non-being is possible
only because we necessarily experience the uniformity (i.e., regularity)
of nature. Everything that appears, i.e., both being and non-being
is subject to this uniformity. Its uniformity must be the condition
of possibility of experience of both being and non-being. It is not
accidental but it is a transcendental necessity.
Take being as an example: Husserl argues we only arrive at evi
dence through a process of verification. If there is a need for verifica
tion, we acknowledge that there is »something« outstanding (such as
the other sides of the box) that needs to find intuitive fulfilment.
Experience (what is given) is thus not chaotic but a certain lawfulness
pertains to it. We have a pre-determinate, that is, a not yet thematised
understanding for what we are looking. Verification, indeed, is of
something that we recognise. We can only recognise it because it has
been implicitly anticipated. If there were no implicit expectations,
there would be nothing that could be verified. Another way of putting
it, there is no search for »evidence,« »truth« and »actuality,« if we do
not already have a pre-determinate or pre-theoretical understanding
of what we are looking for.7 Our search or striving for evidence (being)
in other words, is necessarily defined in advance by the structure of
conscious life. Evidence, needs »conformity to laws of structure on the
part of conscious life, a regularity by virtue of which alone truth and
actuality have, and are able to have, sense for us« (Husserl 1950,
7 Nietzsche mocks this when he observes: »When someone hides something behind
and bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not
much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding
seeking and finding ›truth‹ within the realm of reason« (Nietzsche 1989, § 1). However
Nietzsche does not distinguish between a pre-determined understanding and a know
ledge that has been determined (found intuitive fulfilment). Heidegger illustrates this
necessary circularity that defines any search or well in in Being and Time when he
discusses the formal structure of the question of Being (cf. Heidegger 1962, § 2).
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§ 26, p. 94; Husserl 1960, p. 59). When we are thus studying the con
stitution of truth and actuality, we are referring to a structure (uni
formity) that makes the manifestation of truth and actuality possible.
It is important to note that Husserl does not claim that we »know«
in advance what »is.« Without doubt we can be taken by surprise and
discover truths we never had expected. But that we can be surprised,
is due to the fact that things turn out to be otherwise to the way
we had expected them to be. Anything that »is« or »could be« can
therefore only be understood in relation to the intentional structure
of consciousness which itself is lawfully structured. Husserl thus
repeats Kant’s argument: we can only make sense of both existence and
non-existence because we believe in the uniformity of the world.
Husserl has indicated as much already in the Second Meditation.
There Husserl has shown that experience is not chaotic but appearan
ces manifest themselves in a lawful manner against the backdrop of a
unitary world. The aim of the Second Meditation is to show how all
our experience strives for unity. On the level of object perception, the
claim is that in whatever mode I perceive an object (cogitationes), I
always perceive one and the same object (cogitatum) (cf. Husserl 1950,
§ 14, pp. 70–72; Husserl 1960, pp. 31–33). This is true, whether I
imagine, remember or actually perceive it and indeed, whether I see
it from the side or front, or in relation to other objects.8 The unitary
object in the first instance, is thus ideal. It refers to the principle of
unity that makes it possible for us to see different perspectives in
relation to one another. Husserl now argues that I do not only intend
one and the same object, but I necessarily co-intend the possibility of
other objects and, indeed, the unity of the world as such. »For indeed
their particularity is particularity within a unitary universe, which,
even when we are directed to and grasping the particular, goes on
›appearing‹ unitarily. […] This consciousness is awareness of the
world-whole in its own peculiar form, that of spatiotemporal end
lessness« (Husserl 1950, § 15, p. 75; Husserl 1960, p. 37). Husserl
thereby describes a striving for synthesis (unity) which underlies all
our perceptual experience. We regard all our experience in relation to
one another as being part of one and the same unitary world. All
experiences are united and belong functionally to one and the same
world. The all-embracing world thus turns out to be part of Ego con
sciousness (cf. the Second Meditation).
8 On the relation between unity and diversity see Alweiss 2007.
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Husserl’s response to Hume is thus both analogous to Kant and

at the same time different. Kant argues that we confer the necessary
structures that make the experience of objects possible. This is because
he operates with the assumption that whatever is given in experience
is impoverished or for that matter »blind« and needs to be structured
by the categories of the understanding. Although Kant maintains that
whatever is given is temporally formed (and mostly also spatially)—
it conforms to our forms of sensible intuitions (inner and outer sense),
he nonetheless claims that it is the subject that brings about the rela
tions within time. Husserl, in turn, argues that whatever is given is
not only temporal in form but also temporally structured. This is why
all objects »conform« to us, the laws of structure on the part of con
scious life, a regularity by virtue of which alone truth and actuality
have, and are able to have, sense for us (Husserl 1950, § 26, p. 94;
Husserl 1960, p. 59).
Husserl’s response to Hume is thus both similar and different to
Kant. Just like Kant, Husserl draws a distinction between transcen
dental necessity and empirical beings. The lawful structure of con
scious experience is necessary for both being and non-being. It allows
us to seek for evidence. But it cannot provide us with the apodictic
certainty of particular beings (their actuality). Indeed, like Kant, Hus
serl refers to a necessary structure. While my expectations can be
disappointed by annulling certain possibilities, what can never be
annulled is the structure of possibility as such which makes both being
and non-being possible. What lies beyond doubt is the ultimate hori
zon within which beings can appear. This horizon can neither be con
firmed nor annulled as it makes both affirmation and negation pos
sible. In his later writings Husserl refers to an Urdoxa and original
belief that lies beyond confirmation and negation. It provides the
necessary structure, i.e., the conditions of possibility for being and
non-being. Yet contrary to Kant, Husserl argues that these conditions
are experienced as given and are not conferred onto experience. This is
why Husserl does not refer to the conditions of possibility of experi
ence, but to a »field of transcendental experience« (Husserl 1950,
§ 12, p. 66; Husserl 1960, p. 27). The transcendental conditions are
experienced as given. They underlie all possible experience and mani
fest themselves as soon as we experience particular objects.
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We are referring to a ground of all being and non-being; i.e., the

transcendental experience that makes being and non-being possible.
The following passage illustrates well what is at issue:
Yet, as a matter of essential necessity, external experience alone can
verify objects of external experience, though, to be sure, it does so only
as long as the (passively or actively) continuing experience has the
form of a harmonious synthesis. That the being of the world »trans
cends« consciousness in this fashion (even with respect to the evidence
in which the world presents itself), and that it necessarily remains
transcendent, in no wise alters the fact that it is conscious life alone,
wherein everything transcendent becomes constituted, as something
inseparable from consciousness, and which specifically, as world-con
sciousness, bears within itself inseparably the sense: world and indeed:
»this actually existing« world. (Husserl 1950, § 28, p. 97; Husserl 1960,
p. 62)
Something peculiar thereby has come to light. Phenomenology begins
with bracketing the world. In the natural attitude »being of the world
may be ›transcendent‹ but it is in conscious life alone where every
thing transcendent is constituted as something inseparable from con
sciousness.« In other words, as long as we understand the world as
being in a strong sense mind-independent, it is unknowable. But once
we account for the way it manifests itself (after having performed the
reduction), we learn that the world is a necessary correlate of con
scious life as it provides us with the condition of possibility for all
experience (being and non-being). This condition can never be veri
fied—to this extent the world »transcends« consciousness but at the
same time it is experienced as existing. Its existence lies beyond doubt.
It provides us with the ground for possibility of doubt and verification.
»Only an uncovering of the horizon of experience ultimately clarifies
the ›actuality‹ and the ›transcendency‹ of the world, at the same time
showing the world to be inseparable from transcendental subjectivity,
which constitutes the actuality of being and sense« (Husserl 1950, § 28,
p. 97; Husserl 1960, p. 62, my italics). We return to the world con
sciousness as the horizon of all horizons whose existence can never
be doubted or affirmed. Husserl here echoes Wittgenstein: Once we
recognise that being (actuality) and non-being are grounded in the
horizon of experience ›the ground is not true, nor yet false‹ (Wittgen
stein 1975, §205: p. 202). The reduction thus returns us to an ontology
that lies beyond the actuality of being and non-being, beyond confir
mation and annulment, beyond evidence. The being of the world
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makes both beings (i.e, their actuality) and non-beings possible. We

here come close to the distinction that Heidegger later draws between
Being (Sein) and beings (Seiendes). Indeed, it can be argued that Hus
serl is here doing what Heidegger calls fundamental ontology: our
understanding of the being of the world defines and makes possible
existence and non-existence. As Husserl observes:
When we go back to the ego, we can explicate the founding and founded
strata with which that sense is built up (den Fundierungsaufbau), we
can reach the absolute being and process in which the being of the world
shows its ultimate truth and in which the ultimate problems of being
reveal themselves bringing into the thematic field all the disguises that
unphilosophical naiveté cannot penetrate. (Husserl 1950, § 28, p. 241;
Husserl 1960, p. 52 footnote)
We return to the being of the world as the fundamental datum and
correlate of conscious life that cannot be undone (cf Alweiss 2010).
This is the novelty of Husserl’s account. Kant’s transcendental
arguments which are about the conditions of possibility of experience
have become ontological. We can refer to a transcendental ontology or
a »transcendental experience« that lies beyond empirical ontologies;
beings. When we argued that we should understand the reduction as a
propaedeutic for epistemology, it turns out what we are really saying
is that ontology is more primitive as it makes epistemology possible.
6. The limit of ontology
It may be worth returning to Kant once more to understand the final

section of the Third Meditation. Here Husserl in many ways repeats
Kant’s Copernican Turn by claiming that whatever is, needs to show
itself, or in Kant’s term needs to conform to cognition (see CPR XVI)
which for Kant means conforming to the forms of intuition, space and
time. But this leads Kant to argue that our investigation of being is
limited to the small island of cognition – the realm of appearances –
and does not extend to objects that do not conform to these conditions
– the noumena (see CPR B307). Husserl, in turn has shown that any
appeal to a world that does not show itself, even if it is understood
only negatively is illegitimate. ›The attempt to conceive the universe
of true being as something lying outside the universe of possible
consciousness, possible knowledge, possible evidence, the two being
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related to one another merely externally by a rigid law, is nonsensical‹

(Husserl 1950, p. 117; Husserl 1960, p. 84).
At first sight it thus appears that while for Kant ontology is
bounded; i.e. it is limited to the realm of appearances, it is unbounded
for Husserl as it refers to the infinite horizon world. However, this is
not quite correct. Husserl also arrives at the conclusion that ontology
is bounded. But contrary to Kant, the claim is not that it is bounded by
a noumenon (a viewpoint that is not available to us) but the argument
is that the boundary is experienced from within (our viewpoint).
There is a non-being that manifests itself in opposition to the world.
Husserl’s account is thus both structurally similar and distinct
from Kant. Let us look at the similarity first. Both Kant and Husserl
understand the non-being in opposition to what is possible. Kant
arrives at the view that ontology is bounded because he contrasts the
world we can cognise with the noumenal one. In short, the argument
is: the world we can experience is bounded because finite sensible
beings like us can only have cognition of objects that conform to our
human form of sensibility (the forms of intuition: space and time).
Because we are finite beings restricted by our form of sensibility,
we do not have access to the noumenal world that is not bounded
by this restriction. The noumenon is thus understood negatively
(CPR B307). It can never be considered as an object of the senses.
Kant thus understands the noumenon not as a modification of being
but in opposition to being. It stands in contradistinction to empirical
objects we can cognise. This allows Kant to draw a distinction between
empirical objects that can be cognised and intelligible ones that can
only be thought (nous) and cannot be perceived by the senses. As a
result, he is able to argue that we know that our cognition is bounded.
We can consistently think of class of objects that finite sensible beings
like us cannot cognise (see CPR B146).
As we know Husserl does not wish to make room for a class of
objects that can only be cognised by beings that are not bounded by
their human vantage-point. It is non-sensical to refer to a viewpoint
that is not available to us. But nonetheless he also believes that we
can think of objects that make us aware of the fact that our cognition
is bounded. So far we have argued the that reduction makes possible
a genuine account of both non-being and being. The non-being we
have described was in relation to our striving for evidence. We referred
to two different ways in which non-being shows itself. Either as
possibilities which are not yet fulfilled or as possibilities which have
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been dashed.9 But this is not where Husserl’s account ends. Rather he
wishes to show that there is third form of non-being that prescribes
the limits of what can be. Like Kant he argues that this is a non-being
that manifest itself not as a modification of being but in opposition to
being. Moreover, similarly to Kant it leads Husserl to arrive at the
view that ontology is bounded. But contrary to Kant, the claim is that
this non-being manifests itself, it refers to our viewpoint and not a
viewpoint that lies beyond our grasp.
To account for this non-being, Husserl thus does not allude to a
noumenon or a viewpoint that is not available to us, but he appeals
to the imagination instead. It is the imagination or phantasy that
allows us to refer to non-being that is not understood as a modification
of being but in opposition to being. What distinguishes phantasy
from hallucination and illusions is that we are referring to objects of
thought which we know from the start cannot find fulfilment. They do
not belong to, or ›fit‹ the structure of possibilities of being.
We are referring to impossible objects which we know can never
be actual and, more importantly, objects we do not expect to be actual.
Through phantasy we are able to create our own world in opposition
to the world we live in. The phantasied world is in many ways a mirror
image of the real world. It has its own modes of consciousness which
»are likewise divided into those of ›positionality‹ and those of ›quasi-
positionality‹” (Husserl 1950, § 25, p. 94; Husserl 1960, p. 59). »It
repeats them as modes belonging to purely phantasied ›non-actuali
ties‹” however they are, »in contrast to the modes belonging to ›actua
lity‹ (actual being, actual being probable or doubtful, actual being
not)« (Husserl 1950, § 25, p. 94; Husserl 1960, p. 59, my italics).
When I imagine a box it has the same structure as a real box, and can
9 This account of non-being in no way departs from Kant. Kant also refers to a
universal structure of experience which is thoroughly law like (even though it is

brought about by the spontaneity of the understanding): »There is only one experience,
in which all perceptions are represented as in thoroughgoing and lawlike connection
[…]. If one speaks of different experiences, they are only so many perceptions insofar
as they belong to one and the same universal experience« (CPR A110, my italics).
Kant, just like Husserl, regards hallucinations as a violation of causal laws structure
our experience: »In space and time, however, the empirical truth of appearances is
satisfactorily secured, and sufficiently distinguished from its kinship with dreams, if
both are correctly and thoroughly connected up according to empirical laws in one
experience« (CPR A493/B521). Hallucinations thus do not cohere with our universal
experience. So Kant would agree with Husserl: illusions and hallucinations are a
modification of being.
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have its own mode of evidence insofar as I can try to clarify what our
phantasied objects look like. But from the outset I know it is not actual.
There are no expectations that have not yet found fulfilment or have
been dashed as we know in advance that such phantasised objects
belong to a phantasised world that lies in opposition to our (actual)
world. I cannot be disappointed but if at all only surprised, if it turns
out to be actual after all.
Husserl argues that there is a certain species of objects, which
we know a priori could never find verification. These are impossible
objects such as Pegasus or golden mountains. Such objects do not fit or
conform to our structure of expectation. We know they are impossilce
since all previous actual experience is opposed to the possibility of
their existence. This is precisely what renders them into impossible
objects. They are impossible insofar as they are necessarily opposed to,
or in conflict with the actual world.
Although Husserl does not draw this distinction, he seems to
differentiate between what Kant has calls a boundary and limit.10 Our
empirical experience is limited insofar as it is in constant need of
further determination. The limit is not absolute because whatever is
indeterminate is open to further determination. But when we refer
to impossible objects, we are referring to objects that lie outside of
the realm of possibilities of being. They are in conflict with the real
world and the laws that define it. Impossible objects thus play the
same role as the noumenon does for Kant. They define the boundary
of the world of possibilities as they refer to objects which need to be
understood in opposition to the actual (objective) world. Unlike with
Kant, the boundary itself is never fixed. We cannot a priori exclude the
possibility that impossible objects may become part of the real world
at some time in the future (or indeed were so at some time in the past).
The limit of the possibility of experience is thus not absolute, as is
the case with Kant, but tensed and protean in character. Yet at each
particular time it is experienced as fixed.
When we think about impossible objects, we are inevitably aware
of the limits of possible experience; we know that these objects are
in contradiction to the real world. Thinking about the impossibility
of existence makes us aware of what circumscribes the possibility of
10 Cf. Kant 1997, Sections 50, 56, 57; and CPR A 759/B787 (Kant 1933).
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existence as such.11 We are not far away from Heidegger’s insight that
it is precisely the impossibility of existence which allows us to grasp
possibilities as possibilities. By pointing to real impossibilities we
understand the limit of what can be, i.e., being? As Heidegger once
observed, we come to understand our limit in the sense of the Greek
word paras not ›that at which something stops but […] that from
which something begins its presencing (Heidegger 1971, p. 154).12
Something important thereby has come to light. Both Husserl
and Kant regard ontology as limited. Both, indeed, understand the
limit by referring to something that is not a modification of being but
in opposition to being. But where Husserl differs from Kant is that we
can understand this limit without postulating a viewpoint that is not
available to us. Doing ontology after Kant, for Husserl, thus means
accounting for an ontology that only takes into consideration what
shows itself. Moreover, it is an ontology that no longer needs to appeal
to viewpoints that are not available to us to prescribe its limits. It is a
transcendental ontology whose limits can be staked out from within.
The Third Meditation thus shows us what it means to do ontology
after Kant.
Bibliography
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Society for Phenomenology, 30, pp. 59–75.
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schungen, 4 (3), pp. 150–203.
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Philosophy, 80 (313), pp. 395–411.
11 As Husserl himself once acknowledged with respect to illusions and hallucinations:
»for a phenomenology of ›true actuality‹ the phenomenology of ›nullifying illusion‹ is

also quite indispensible« (Husserl 1982, § 151, p. 364). However, he had more illusions
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12 An important distinction remains. Contrary to Heidegger, for Husserl it would not
be the impossibility of existence that grounds possibilities (cf. Alweiss 2002) since, as
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448–469.
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Dieter/Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Eds.): Metaphysik nach Kant?, Stuttgart: Klett-
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Heidegger, Martin (1962): Being and Time. Translation by John Macquarrie and
Edward Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Heidegger, Marting (1971): »Building Dwelling Thinking.« In: Poetry Language
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Hume, David (1975): Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Con
cerning the Principles of Morals, 3rd and revised ed. by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford:
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Hume, David (1978): A Treatise of Human Nature edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and
revised by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press
I. Den Haag: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1960): Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomeno
logy. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1964): The Idea of Phenomenology. Translated by William P.
Alston and George Nakhnikian. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1982): Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to
a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure
Phenomenology. Translated by F. Kersten. The Hague: M. Nijhoff
Kant, Immanuel (1933): Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by
Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan Press.
Kant, Immanuel (1997): Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Edited by G.
Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1989): »On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense.« In:
Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language. ed. and trans. by Gilman, Blair
and Parent, David. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 246–257.
Strawson, Peter Frederick (1959): Individuals. London: Methuen.
Strawson, Peter Frederick (1966): The Bounds of Sense. London: Methuen
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1981): Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translation by C.
K. Ogden. London: Routledge.
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Wittgenstein, L. (1975) On Certainty, Über Gewissheit, bilingual ed., eds. G. E. M.

Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe,
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Fourth Cartesian Meditation: Husserl’s

Transcendental Idealism and the Monad
1. Introduction
»Let every man be master of his time,« exclaims Macbeth in his

farewell to Banquo (3, I). Now, by rephrasing his words, one might
say: »Let every man be master of his words.« If this were to hold
as our hermeneutical criterion, then the Fourth Cartesian Meditation
(hereafter: CM IV) would turn out to be a real turning point both at the
micro-level of the specific trajectory of CM and at the macro-level of
the development of Husserl’s thought.
For what concerns the former aspect, CM IV represents the very
moment in which the analyses so far developed by Husserl finally
acquire their own »scientific« value and significance. This happens in
two different steps. First, by more precisely determining the subject-
matter of phenomenology as a »concrete subjectiv
ity« or »monad« (§§ 30–33) in such a manner that »phenomenology
in general« coincides with that of the self-constitution of such sub
jectivity (Husserl 1950, p. 103). Second, by obtaining in § 34 the eidos
ego in general by self-variation of »the transcendental-factual ego,
« i.e., »my monad« (Husserl 1950, p. 28). Accordingly, the descrip
tions worked out in §§ 35–39, which aim at mapping out the struc
tures of the monad, follow from the combination of these two aspects.
It is with §§ 40–41, however, that CM IV reveals all its novelty
with respect to the development of Husserl’s thought as a whole.
Indeed, and no matter how strange this may sound, the last part of
the meditation is the only text ever published by Husserl where:
(i) »phenomenology« is systematically characterized and presented
as »transcendental idealism« (henceforth: TI), and in which (ii) the
latter’s thesis and aspiration are explicitly discussed. Thus, no exegesis
of CM IV should be deemed complete unless the conjunction between
these two sides of the meditation is firmly tackled.
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2. Preliminary remarks on transcendental idealism
Toward the end of his life, in a letter written to Baudin in 1934,

Husserl confesses that the »word« idealist is one »which […] I no
longer use« (Husserl 1994a, p. 16). A few months later, in effect,
during his presentation at the 8th World Congress of Philosophy
in Prague, Husserl affirms that the word idealism has a »bad reputa
tion« (übelbeleumundetes) (Husserl 1989, p. 195). Now, if it is not easy
to tell when exactly Husserl stopped using it, the term »idealism« is
nowhere to be found in the late Crisis to characterize transcendental
phenomenology, and Husserl’s account of phenomenology in his
Phenomenology and Anthropology of 1931 dispenses with it entirely.
As could be assumed, by the time of his letter to Baudin, Husserl had
already been avoiding speaking of »idealism« to publicly present his
phenomenology for at least three years.1
Now, in order not to misunderstand our point regarding Husserl’s
way of characterizing his own phenomenology as TI, hence the
manner in which the latter should be correctly understood, a firm
distinction between the following four different types of texts needs
to be drawn. First of all, (A) there is the esoteric dimension of Husserl’s
discourse, which includes his research manuscripts; or, more gener
ally: the texts not meant to be published. (B) We can speak of the
semi-public dimension of his thought, by which we mean in particular
his correspondence (as is the case with the letter to Baudin mentioned
above). (C) A third, public dimension would be that of his lectures,
seminars and speeches (e.g., the Paris lectures). Finally, (D) there is
the exoteric dimension of his philosophy in the strict sense—by which
we would refer to the texts which were actually published, as well as to
those meant for publication (e.g., the many drafts of the Encyclopedia
Britannica article).
What interests us in the present context is the question of how
TI should be understood based on how Husserl publicly and explicitly
presents it or would present it (C and D). In light of his letter to
Baudin, the characterization of phenomenology as TI can be found in
the following texts:
1 We say publicly because, in a 1932 letter to Ingarden, Husserl still uses the
term »idealism« (in brackets) (Husserl 1994b, p. 287).
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Fourth Cartesian Meditation
● 1931: Méditations Cartésiennes (D)

● 1930: The Nachwort to Ideas I (§ 5) (D)
● 1929: The Paris Lectures (C); the draft of the Fifth Cartesian
Meditation (D);2 and Formal and Transcendental Logic (§ 66) (D)
● September 1927: The »first draft« of the Encyclopedia Britannica
article (D)
● October 1926: Texts for the so-called systematic work (Husserl
2002a, p. 16) (D)
When it comes to the lectures,3 the term »transcendental ideal
ism« seems to first appear in the 1913 lectures on Nature and Spirit
(Husserl 2003, p. 73; see also pp. 208–209), then again in 1915
(Husserl 2003, p. 130). After that, it will be evoked during the 1919
lectures on Nature and Spirit (Husserl 2002c, p. 196), and the 1922–23
lectures Introduction to Philosophy, in the manuscripts for the London
lectures (Husserl 2002b, pp. 199, 336), and in the 1923–24 lectures
on First Philosophy II (Husserl 1956, p. 181). Yet, it is nowhere to be
found in Phenomenological Psychology of 1925, nor in the 1927 Nature
and Spirit.
If we keep in mind that Formal and Transcendental Logic does not
say anything on how to rightly understand »transcendental idealism,”
and that in the Nachwort Husserl is mostly relying on what the
Meditations will say (and whose publication he announces: »Ein [...]
zu Anfang des nächsten Jahres erscheinendes Buch« (Husserl 1971,
p. 140)), then it is evident why we say that the account offered in
the Cartesian Meditations is the only exoteric systematic presentation
of the doctrine of »transcendental idealism.« Moreover, since the
Méditations Cartésiennes were of course published only in French, and
that the Encyclopedia Britannica article was meant to be published
in English, then the conclusion follows that Husserl never provided
the German public with any presentation of the most infamous and
disputed aspect of his philosophy. Accordingly, not only does the
text of the Fourth Meditation offer the only exoteric and systematic
discussion of TI, but it is probably the last text (falling under D) in
which such a phrase appears altogether.
2 Husserl 1973, p. 20.

3 The term »phenomenological idealism« seems to first appear around 1908 in two
research manuscripts (A) (Husserl 2003, p. 27, 60). It should be kept in mind,
however, that here Husserl speaks of Beweis of transcendental idealism; and one thing
is the description of the actual »content« of the doctrine to be demonstrated; quite
another its »demonstration« (to which these Husserlian pages are committed).
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If this preliminary account is on the right track, then it is

also worth noting that, chronologically speaking—and given the
material at our disposal—, the public (= C and D) presentation of
phenomenology as »transcendental idealism« characterizes almost
exclusively what usually goes by the name of »genetic« phase (or,
more specifically: after Ideas I). In particular, when it comes to D
alone, it seems to almost coincide with what is usually called the »con
frontation with Heidegger.« De facto—after disappearing in 1924—
the phrase »transcendental idealism« is massively employed after the
first reading of Being and Time (August 1927), and is systematically
adopted right before, during and immediately after Husserl’s close
reading of Heidegger’s works (Summer 1929) and his lecture What is
Metaphysics? (July 1929). The expression will sink once again into the
abyss (for it will still be used in texts falling under B, for instance) as
Husserl brings his personal confrontation with Heidegger to an ideal
conclusion in 1931 (Phenomenology and Anthropology).
Let us now approach CM IV.
3. The essence of the monad
In order to grasp of the concept of monad, we should always bear in

mind what Husserl mentions at the end of § 30, namely, that the
ego’s »essential property« is that of »constantly having systems of
intentionality« in such a way that every object »is only as a correlate
of this system« (Husserl 1950, p. 100). Since the nature of such a
system, thus that of the corresponding object, changes depending on
the specific ego under scrutiny, the sequence represented by §§ 31, 32,
33—going from the most abstract to the most concrete determination
of the ego—must be understood as follows.
The Ego as an Identical Pole. With the ego as a pole of the flow, the
system of intentionalities is that of the syntheses between the many
cogitationes which bring about the »relation« between (an empty) ego
and (an empty) cogitatum (Husserl 1950, p. 100).
The Ego as a Substrate of Habitualities. The second level of con
creteness is characterized by »the law of transcendental genesis,« and
the system of intentionality is what makes possible the phenom
ena of cancellation, modalization and confirmation of the ego’s »deci
sions.« Thus, the ego acquires a personal character whose correlate is
a system of convictions (Husserl 1950, p. 101).
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The Monad. Based on the double polarization and the personal

character of the ego, the highest level of concreteness is obtained
by bringing in the surrounding world or Umwelt as a correlate: »As
ego, I have a surrounding world that is-for-me (für-mich-seiende
Umwelt); in it, also the objects are for me already with the abiding
distinction (Gliederung) between those with which I am acquainted,
and those anticipated as objects of possible acquaintance« (Husserl
1950, p. 102).4
The notion of a für-mich-seiende Umwelt and its Gliederung as
the correlate of myself as a monad is of the uttermost importance and
should not be underestimated. For, if Husserl avoids speaking of the
world as an »objective« one, it is because the latter’s objectivity cannot
be phenomenologically accounted for until the inter-subjective
dimension is brought in (see § 60). Since the only »monad« whose
existence is accepted at this stage of the meditations is »my monad,”
the world is or appears (aussehende Welt) only based upon »what I
know of the world« (Husserl 2008, p. 681), that is, only as a correlate
of my personal character (sedimentations + habitualities): »Such
abiding acquisitions constitute my surrounding world as is known
precisely to me.«
The Umwelt means the Welt as it is for me (für-mich-seiende)
or even appears (aussehende) to me (Um-) as the only exist
ing »monad.« To provide an intuitive example, I could imagine myself
and my personal character as including a perfect knowledge of the
constellations, in such a manner that the starry night would be for me
or would appear to me not simply as a chaotic bunch of shiny dots,
but rather as a recognizable and articulated chart. If we are on the
right track, the monad is to be better characterized as a subjectivity
constituted by the correlation between the surrounding world (or the
world as it appears to me) and the »personal character.«
4 As Ricoeur points out, »Le moi complet, la ›concrétion de l’ego‹ comme dit Husserl,
c’est: moi comme pôle identique, plus: mes habitus, plus: mon monde« (Ricoeur 1954,
p. 102).
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Fig. 1: Structure of the monad
Before we move on, let us remark that although Husserl does not say
it out loud, the monad is to be deemed a »psycho-physical« subject,
namely, one endowed with both a body and a mind (Seele), on
whose unity alone one can speak of sedimentations, habitualities and
appearing world (as a world that appears to me in a certain way and
from a certain angle).
Now, if by performing the reduction »each of us, as a Cartesian
meditator was led back to her/his transcendental ego with its con
crete-monadic content as this factual and unique absolute
ego« (Husserl 1950, p. 103), the task of the phenomenologist in § 34
is to obtain the eidos transcendental ego in general: »After transcen
dental reduction, my true interest is directed to my pure ego, to the
uncovering of this factual ego. But the uncovering can become a prop
erly scientific one only if I go back to the apodictic principles that
pertain to the ego as an ego in general« (Husserl 1950, p. 106).
Without getting into any detailed discussion of the method used
by Husserl here (the so-called »self-variation,« which is not to be
confused with the eidetic variation sic et simpliciter5), attention should
be paid to how Husserl characterizes the eidos ego in general and, in
particular, the relation between such eidos and its (factual) realizations
so as to gain better insight into the nature of the monad.
As Husserl remarked in his 1922 lectures, and then similarly
again in a 1931 manuscript, »the ego has the incredible property
that, in it, there obtains coincidence between the absolute concretum
5 This is a point overlooked by Housset 2016, pp. 115–116. On the difference between
variation and self-variation, see De Santis 2021.
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and the individuum; for, in this case, the lowest concrete universal
ity individualizes itself« (see Husserl 2002b, p. 262). If in 1922
Husserl went as far as to maintain that the ego has no »lowest
universal« (dass es einen niedersten Allgemeinbegriff […] nicht hat),
in 1931 he recognizes, more moderately, that each eidetic singularity
of the eidos ego »brings about« (ergibt) »an individual transcendental
ego« (Husserl 1973, p. 383).
In contrast to any non-monadic eidos, in the case of the
eidos »transcendental ego« one cannot talk of a universal of the
lowest level, i.e., of a singularity whose identical content could be
indifferently realized hic et nunc. While a singularity such as »ruby
red« can be repeated in a multiplicity of hic et nunc’s without its content
being altered, the concrete ego’s singularities are their own immediate
individualization. Accordingly, the difference between two individ
ual monads does not correspond to that of two »individual realiza
tions« of the one identical singularity »ruby red,« but rather to the
difference between, say, the two singularities »ruby red« and »rose
red.« The discrepancy between singularity (Singularität) and individ
uality (Individualität) does not apply to the monad.
Now, in order to better understand the peculiarity of the monad
just described, it would be helpful to dwell on some of the formal-
ontological concepts developed by Husserl in the years immediately
prior to Ideas I, and which received therein their systematic presenta
tion. Let us start off with the notion of »essence« (Wesen). For the sake
of our problems, four meanings can be distinguished:
Essence.1. The first and non-technical meaning of the
term »essence« is used by Husserl to refer to the what of an individual
object as is given to an individual and experiencing intuition (Husserl
1976, p. 13). By resorting to an expression by Jean Heing, one could
also label it empirical essence (Hering 1926, p. 111). In this respect,
this individual object has an essence that is different from the one of
that individual object, even if they are both red roses (Hering 1921, pp.
496–500).
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Essence.2. What Husserl refers to as full essence (das volle Wesen).

It is Essence.1 freed from the individualization, and which can be
more technically labeled the »sum-total« of an individual object in its
singularity (Husserl 2005, p. 87). To put it another way, and by means
of the terminology of Ideas I: the full essence is the totality of the
eidetic singularities (in the sense of a concretum) that pertain to an
individual object in abstraction from its individualization hic et nunc,
and which, as such, can be indifferently repeated in countless other
individual objects (Essence.1) (Husserl 2005, pp. 87–88).
Essence.3. Since the universalities of the lowest level are what
make up the extent of the universal essence, the latter is the sum-total
of those »species« whose eidetic singularities make up the full essence
of a relevant individual object. While the sum-total of eidetic singu
larities constitutes the individual objects’ »full essence« (Essence.2),
the sum-total of the species under which the eidetic singularities fall
makes up its universal essence instead.
Essence.4. What Husserl labels »region« or also regional essence
(Husserl 1976, p. 23), whose definition is »the unitary-essential
connection of all the supreme genera that pertain to the ultimate
differences within the concretum« (Husserl 1976, p. 36).
Based on what Husserl says, what collapses in the case
of the »monad« is precisely the distinction between Essence.1
and Essence.2: as a consequence of what could be called the
monad’s »intrinsic individualization,« there are in this case as many
singularities as there are individualities.
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Were we to represent Husserl’s concepts of »essence,« the fol

lowing diagram could be proposed:
Fig. 2: The concept of essence
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It is important to understand that from the standpoint of Husserl’s

formal-ontology, the monad or concrete subject does not fit in any
of the categories presented at the outset of Ideas I. As a matter of
fact, next to the distinction between abstractum (or »non-indepen
dent« essence) and concretum (»independent« essence), the notion of
an absolute concretum is to be recognized (Husserl 2002b, p. 262).
And if Husserl can define the individuum as a tode it whose »material
essence« is a concretum (Husserl 1976, p. 35), then the notion of an
absolute individuum is to be acknowledged as a tode it whose »material
essence« is an absolute concretum (Husserl 1973, pp. 374–377).
This being pointed out, and before we resume our commentary
on CM IV, an additional remark is necessary. The reference to Ideas
I is crucial for us in the present context also for another reason. As
a matter of fact, the argument is quite often heard to the effect that
already in Ideas I Husserl is arguing for TI (even if, as Spiegelberg
for example would say, the »label« is not there (Spiegelberg 1982, p.
14)). In order to address this issue, while avoiding any sort of »paral
ogism,« the distinction between the following two questions is to be
sharply drawn.
(a) Has Husserl already embraced toto corde TI by the time he sets out
to write Ideas I?
(b) Does Husserl ever present TI’s core-claim in Ideas I?
Whereas we believe that a should be answered in the affirmative,
b—on the contrary—is to be dismissed altogether. It is in order to
explain this claim, and thereby also to strengthen our reading of TI
and, more generally, of CM IV, that a quick detour through Ideas I
imposes itself.
Intermezzo on Ideas I
Although it is completely pointless to look in Ideas I for something

corresponding to the »monad« as Husserl understands it in the genetic
framework, there is a concept that shares some of its features, namely,
what goes by the Latin sounding terms Animal, Animalia, or, from the
standpoint of Husserl’s material ontologies, the »psycho-physical uni
ties« (§§ 39, 53). The Animal shares with the monad not only
the »psycho-physical« constitution but, most importantly, the
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account of its correlate in terms of »surrounding world« (Umwelt)

(Husserl 1976, p. 117).
Now, how are we to understand the Animal’s structure against
the backdrop of Husserl’s »formal-ontological« distinctions and, in
particular, in light of his fourfold conception of the essence? In § 39
Husserl is pretty clear: the Animal is the result of an »intertwin
ing« (Verflechtung) between what he calls two »heteroge
neous« essences, namely, consciousness and world. Or, more specifi
cally: an individual Erlebnis and an individual thing (i.e., a material
body) (Husserl 1976, p. 80). In addition to the language employed in
the Third Logical Investigation, where a sharp distinction was made
between Verknüpfung (synthesis between species) and Verbindung
(synthesis between moments) (Husserl 1984, p. 254), Verflechtung is
introduced here to refer to something that was ruled out in principle
by the framework of the Investigations, namely, the unique case in
which the connection between two »heterogeneous« essences brings
about a unitary whole: »Can the unity of a whole be united other than
through the essence proper to its parts, which hence have some kind
of essential commonality instead of intrinsic heterogeneity?« (Husserl
1976, p. 80). Verflechtung is the name for the only possible »ontolog
ical« connection between the regions of »conscious
ness« and »world.«
Now, whoever is familiar with Husserl’s train of thought in Ideas
I, namely, with that series of arguments that will lead him to the
famous or infamous »annihilation of the world« of § 49 should also
know that Husserl’s main concern in these paragraphs is to show that
the psycho-physical unity of the Animal (here, the human »psycho-
physical unity«) can be—metaphorically speaking—broken down and
dismantled in such a manner that consciousness can be brought to the
fore as the subject-matter of a new science called phenomenology:
it is clear that in spite of all the talk […] of a real being of the
human I and its conscious experiences in the world, as well as that of
anything that in any way belongs to it in relation to the psycho-physical
connections—in spite of all of this, consciousness, taken in its »purity,«
has to hold as a closed interconnection of being. (Husserl 1976, p. 105)
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Daniele De Santis
In sum, if the unity of the Animal could not be broken down and if
the psycho-physical unity were the only possible subjectivity, then the
essence of lived-experiences could not be scientifically investigated
per se and phenomenology would not be possible as a new eidetic
science with a field of research of its own: such being Husserl’s sole
preoccupation in Ideas I.6
Were we to further develop the essence-diagram sketched above,
the following new diagram could be provided to better illustrate
our point7:
6 In § 35 Husserl recognizes that if we switch back to the natural consideration of the

world, what corresponds to the concrete transcendental subject is »the human ego, the
mind concretely and purely taken for it itself, with the psychic polarization: I as a pole
of my habitualities, the properties included in my character« (Husserl 1950, p. 107).
7 In a more accurate diagram the Animal would fall fully under the region of world.
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Fig. 3: The Animal
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Daniele De Santis
Now, if our reconstruction thus far is a sound one; and if we are right
in emphasizing the role of the monad as a concrete subjectivity in TI,
then the idea of coupling together CM IV and Ideas I, and thereby
maintaining that in the latter, too, Husserl is arguing for TI (e.g.,
Millán-Puelles 1990, pp. 53–65; Smith 2003, pp. 179–188; Lavigne
2005, pp. 15–52), is to be deemed misleading—if not incorrect.
On the one hand, a »concrete« form of subjectivity (including the
psycho-physical unity) lies at the basis of TI (CM); on the other hand,
the psycho-physical unity is regarded as an obstacle to be overcome
to establish phenomenology as a new »eidetic science« (Ideas I). No
matter how loud the reader of Ideas I might want to cry out, along with
Edgar: »World, world, O world!« (King Lear, 4, I, 10), such a lament
would have no immediate connection to TI as Husserl understands it.8
This being recognized, an objection may arise that needs to
be addressed. As a matter of fact—the counter-argument would
propose—the case could be made for distinguishing different versions
of TI: if the more systematic account of CM relies on the monad as a
concrete form of subjectivity, in Ideas I a different conception under
lies the relation between »consciousness« and »world« construed as
two »regions.«
Now, if this were the objection, then it would have to be dismissed
in toto. Indeed, since his first attempts at injecting TI, Husserl speaks
of »actual« consciousness (Husserl 2003, p. 28), namely, of a deter
mined ego with a determined stream of consciousness (Husserl 2003,
p. 119), which he will identify with an experiencing subject endowed
with a body (Husserl 2003, p. 133).9 Of course, this does not rule
out that in Ideas I statements could be found that—de facto—point
in the direction of TI.10 For example, in her autobiography E. Stein
8 In this respect, Philipse offers the most misleading reconstruction of TI. For, not
only does he group together texts that should not be so hastily associated; he also
employs »consciousness« and »mind« indifferently during his discussion of Ideas I
(Philipse 1995, pp. 250; 256–259).
9 See De Santis 2017. Were the reader to compare the latter paper with the present
analyses, he or she would realize that TI hinges upon the »embodied« subjectivity
from the outset, and is hence not to be connected to »pure consciousness« as a region
(as done, for example, by Meixner 2010). Equally misleading is the talk of »idealism
of absolute consciousness« (Scheler 1927, p. 283), for TI does not hinge on absolute
consciousness as a region of being.
10 The point for us is to avoid any homeomeric interpretation of Husserl’s texts,
namely, that species of interpretation based on the assumption that »everything is in

everything« according to sameness or homogeneity of structure.
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describes the early reactions to Ideas I as follows: »The Ideas included

some expressions (Wendungen) that sounded pretty much as if their
Master wished to return to idealism. […] It was the beginning of that
development which led Husserl to see more and more in what he
called ›transcendental idealism‹ the actual core of his philosophy (our
emphasis).« (Stein 2010, p. 200) Which specific »expressions« she
actually means is not clear.11
4. The structure of the monad
Once we obtain the eidos »transcendental ego in general« (§ 34), the

question becomes: what are its universal and a priori structures? This
is Husserl’s concern in §§ 36–39.
The central notion of Husserl’s account of »the universal a pri
ori« of the transcendental ego is that of com-possibility:
The universal a priori pertaining to a transcendental ego is an eidetic
form, which contains an infinity of forms, an infinity of a priori types
of actualities and potentialities of life, along with the objects to be
constituted in it as actually being. But in a unitarily possible ego not all
singly possible types are com-possible, and they are not com-possible in
just any order, at no matter what position in the ego’s own temporality.
(Husserl 1950, p. 108)
11 The »ominous statement« that according to Stein testifies to the beginning of such
a development, i.e., »Streichen wir das Bewußtsein, so streichen wir die Welt« (Stein
2014, p. 89) is nowhere to be found in Ideas I. According to Ingarden (1964, p. 149),
this is an expression often employed by Husserl in his Vorlesungen: we must confess
that we have not been able to find it yet in any of the Göttingen lectures so far
available to us. One option could be the lectures on Natur und Geist of 1913 (Husserl
2003, pp. 73–79), in which the claim is advanced that every individual object that we
posit as »existent« requires the »actual existence of a consciousness« (p. 74). A second
option could be the lectures of 1925 Selected Phenomenological Problems: »Streich
ich die ganze Welt durch mit allen animalischen Realitäten, so ist doch auch alles
Bewusstsein durchgestrichen« (Husserl 2003, p. 125). See De Santis 2017.
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Daniele De Santis
Since Husserl talks here of the universal a priori of the most con
crete form of subjectivity (what from the early 20s on he labels »the
region concrete ego« (Husserl 2002b, p. 261)), the meaning of the
phrase »com-possibility« is not to be confined to the presence of
individual Erlebnisse alone or of a multiplicity thereof in conscious
ness; rather, it points to the concrete-monadic content of the ego
(= personal character + surrounding world). This is why Husserl can
speak of the forms of such an ego as »types« (Typen) that are or are not
com-possible with one another.
In order to fully appreciate what Husserl is striving to achieve
in these paragraphs, which consists in the possibility of establishing
phenomenology as a »science« of the concrete subject, while also
keeping in mind that the distinction between the different levels
of »universality« does not coincide, yet only intertwines with that
between the different levels of concreteness (1. ego as a pole; 2. ego
as a personal character; 3. ego as a monad) then a third diagram can
be proposed:
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Fig. 4: The monad’s individuation
Although Husserl’s example here is not very fine-grained, it is never

theless clear enough to gain insight into his discourse: »If I form some
scientific theory or other, my complex rational activity […] belongs
to an essential type, which is possible not in every possible ego, but
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Daniele De Santis
only in one that is rational in a particular sense,« namely, in the

sense of the essential type: animal rationale (Husserl 1950, p. 108).
As one could also frame it: the highest genus-type animal rationale,
the genus-type theory-forming animal rationale, the species-type
philosophy-theory-forming animal rationale, the sub-species-type
philosophy-theory-φ-forming animal rationale, and hence a mul
tiplicity of singularities, each of which is a different individuality.
Now, the most universal essential laws that rule over the rela
tions of com-possibility or in-com-possibility—within the concrete
subject—between the different types and sub-types are the laws of
temporal »co-existence« and »succession.« E.g., if the species-type
philosophy-theory-forming is not possible as a specification of the
non-rational animal, it is however possible as temporally follow
ing the sub-type »childhood« (which falls under the type animal
rationale): »Eidetic apprehension of my […] childhood life and its
possibilities of constitution produces a type, such that in its further
development, but not in its own connections, the type ›scientifically
theorizing‹ can occur.«
The name for the unity of the concrete subject understood as a
system of temporal coexistence and succession between types is »his
tory« (Geschichte): »The ego constitutes itself and for itself in the
unity of a history« (Husserl 1950, p. 109). If »succession« and »co-
existence« can be called the two most universal laws ruling over
the concrete ego as such, in such a way that the latter is deter
mined by them as a »formal unity,« the laws ruling over its »specific
ontological content« are the two laws of »motivation« and »associa
tion« (Husserl 1950, pp. 109–110; 113–115).
In sum, the unity of a concrete subjectivity is nothing but
its »history,« here construed as a system of com-possibilities, that
is, of temporal co-existence and succession between types—each of
which corresponds to a specific system of possible motivations and
associations. In contrast to »history,” which refers to the formal unity
of co-existence and succession between types, the term »genesis« is
used to refer to the layer of the »specific ontological content« (Husserl
1950, pp. 111–112).
The traditional term that Husserl retrieves in order to label such a
system, which is nothing but the structure of any concrete subjectivity
or monad in general, is that of »innate a priori« (eingeborenes Apriori)
(Husserl 1950, p. 114)—innate in that it designates that without
which there cannot be any monad or, better, that without which
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the notion of concrete subject cannot even be conceived. It is the

overall system of types and their com-possibility (based on the laws
of temporal co-existence and succession) which includes the many
com-possible ontological contents (based on the laws of motivation
and association). A concrete ego without genesis and history is a
priori impossible.
In contrast to the term »innate a priori,« the quite paradoxical
turn of phrase »contingent a priori« (kontingentes Apriori) is also
embraced by Husserl in a quite similar framework (Husserl 1974, p.
33) to designate the specific ontological content taken up by such
and such a type particularized and then individualized by a monadic
singularity: if contingent means that no specific content is per se
necessary to the structure of the monad, the phrase a priori refers to
the necessity of some content being nevertheless there, as well as to
the laws that necessarily obtain once such and such a content occurs
within the monad.
Such is the concept of subjectivity upon which the account of TI
hinges.12 We should never forget in fact that, as the title of § 41
says, »transcendental idealism« is the expression introduced here to
designate »The correct phenomenological ex-plication (Auslegung)
« of the ego, namely, of such a unity of history and genesis, innate and
contingent a priori—what Husserl more technically labels »concrete a
priori« (Husserl 1950, p. 114). Let us note that Husserl writes correct
as if there could also be a non-correct phenomenological Auslegung of
the ego (see the conclusion of this chapter)!
5. Systematic remarks on transcendental idealism
As if there were no apparent and immediate connection between what

has been said so far and TI, a transition section would seem to be
required: such is the role of § 40 (Transition to the Question of Tran
scendental Idealism). The issue of how to understand it is of the great
est importance, since it is often assumed that the decision to espouse
TI in § 41 is connected to the traditional gnoseological problem
of »transcendence« (Philipse 1995, pp. 267–272).
12 »[…] der transzendental-phänomenologische Idealismus ist nicht eine philosophi
sche Sonderthese und Theorie unter anderen, sondern die transzendentale Phänome
nologie als konkrete Wissenschaft ist« (Husserl 1971, p. 152). As a concrete science, that
is, as a science of the concrete subjectivity.
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Daniele De Santis
In order to grasp Husserl’s strategy here, his line of thought can

be broken down as follows.
Husserl first presents in § 40 the problem of transcendence as it
arises from within the Cartesian framework;13 however, rather than
be accepted as a genuine problem, the problem of transcendence is
directly dismissed as »counter-sensical« (Widersinn) at the begin
ning of § 41. It is important to realize that the argument upon whose
basis the question of transcendence is dismissed as a problem is not
TI, but rather the theory of »constitution« presented in § 29: Material
and Formal-Ontological Regions as Indexes for Transcendental Systems
of Evidence (Husserl 1950, pp. 97–99). Here is how Husserl explains
in what sense the issue of transcendence was never a problem for
phenomenology:
As soon as […] one sets out to work out […] this ego’s whole field
of consciousness, one recognizes that all that exists for the pure
ego becomes constituted in it; that every mode of being, including
every kind characterized as »transcendent« in any sense, has its own
particular constitution. Transcendence in every form is an immanent
character of being (Seinscharakter) constituted within the ego. (Husserl
1950, pp. 115–117)
That the issue of transcendence—if it were a problem—does not even
concern the monad is shown by the phrase »field of consciousness,”
this being the concept with which Husserl works in both the Second
and the Third Meditation (prior to the introduction of the concrete sub
ject).14
The step into TI is taken as soon as the issue of the relation
between the »universe of true being« and »the universe of possible
13 »Therein lies the great problem, according to the traditional view. That I attain
certainties, even compelling evidences, in my own domain of consciousness, in the

connection of motivation determining me, is understandable. But how can all of this,
going on wholly within the immanence of conscious life, acquire objective meaning?
« (Husserl 1950, p. 116).
14 We do not mean to claim that the concept of constitution, hence the correlation
between consciousness and different types of objects, plays no role in TI. For, in
the texts published in Hua XXXVI, the very concept of »correlation« is used by
Husserl »to prove« (Beweis) TI; yet, the argument used to prove TI should not be
conflated with TI itself. This by contrast is what Zahavi (2017, pp. 118–119) seems to
believe to the extent that for him TI revolves around the problem of transcendence. As
we believe, there is no need to mobilize TI to overcome the internalism-externalism
divide: this is an issue to be addressed simply based upon the idea of correlation. See
the overall discussion by Loidolt 2015.
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consciousness« is regarded as belonging to the transcendental sub

ject »in its unique absolute concretion« (in der einzigen absoluten
Konkretion) (Husserl 1950, p. 117)—what Husserl also calls »the
universe of possible sense.« Here is TI’s core thesis:
Every thinkable sense, every thinkable being […] falls within the
domain of transcendental subjectivity as the one that constitutes sense
and being (Sinn und Sein). The attempt at conceiving the universe
of true being as something lying outside the universe of possible
consciousness, possible knowledge, possible evidence, hence as related
to one another merely externally by a rigid law, is nonsensical (unsin
nig). For, they belong together essentially (beides zusammen); and in
this essential co-belongingness they are also concretely one (konkret
eins), one in the only absolute concretion (absoluten Konkretion):
transcendental subjectivity. If this is the universe of possible sense,
then an outside is precisely non-sense (Unsinn). But even non-sense is
always a mode of sense and has its non-sensicalness (Unsinnigkeit) as
a mode of evidence. (Husserl 1950, p. 117)
Let us pause for a second to make a few remarks:
● In contrast to the Paris Lectures version, where the hypothesis of
an »outside of the universe of possible consciousness« is said to
be first a Widersinn, then a Nonsens, and finally a form of Unsinn
(Husserl 1950, pp. 32–33), here Husserl speaks of Unsinn only.15
● In contrast to Ideas I, where Nonsens refers to the idea of a
transcendence (res) outside of the realm of possible perception
(Husserl 1976, p. 96), here the Nonsens or Unsinn describes the
more general idea of any possible domain outside of the realm of
sense, i.e., of the »absolute concretion.«
● As is evident, TI does not bear on the one-sided dependence
of the world on consciousness, but rather upon the mutual
belongingness — within the »absolute concretion« — between
the »universe of possible consciousness« and the »universe of
being« (= »universe of possible sense«).16
15 Non-sense in the French translation (Husserl 1953, p. 71), sin sentido (Husserl 1986,
16 [(UpC + UB) ∈ AC] = UpS. In short, the universe of possible sense (UpS) is the result
p. 141) or nesmyslem (Husserl 1968, p. 82).
of the unity of the universe of possible consciousness (UpC) with the universe of being
(UB) as belonging together to an individual monad (AC). This is the structure that
sustains TI, and which should be more deeply analyzed.
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Daniele De Santis
Let us also pay careful attention to Husserl’s terminology. For, Unsinn,

Widersinn and Sinn cannot but remind us of some of the most crucial
distinctions first discussed in § 12 of the Fourth Logical Investigation,
where »non-sensical« (unsinnige) expressions (e.g., »a man and is«)
are distinguished from »counter-sensical« ones (widersinnige)
(e.g., »all squares have five angles«) (Husserl 1984, pp. 334–336). It
is also worth adding that if, in the context of Husserl’s early theory of
meaning, the non-sense stands completely outside the domain of
sense (it is das Sinnlose), CM IV affirms that »the non-sense is always
a mode of sense.« Moreover, in Formal and Transcendental Logic,
where Husserl offers a re-elaboration of the idea of pure grammar
(Husserl 1974, pp. 53–60), the notion of Unsinn is nowhere to be
found: as if in 1929 the very concept of non-sense had left once and
for all the domain of logic to become part of Husserl’s transcendental
toolbox.
It could be tempting to understand the idea of an »outside« of
the universe of sense as a materially counter-sensical or contradictory
one (were the use of the term Wider-Sinn in the Paris Lectures to be
analogically read based on Logical Investigation IV). But the Cartesian
Meditations version of the same page is clear: it is Unsinn. Unless the
thesis were to be proposed that the idea of an outside is comparable,
say, to »a circle or,” thereby being deprived of sense and semantically
unintelligible (which cannot be the case, primarily because the frame
works are different), then a (transcendental) framework of reference,
only in relation to which Husserl’s discourse here can be made sense
of, needs to be pinpointed.
This can be done only on condition that the commentary now
makes way for the interpretation, i.e., for the following possible path
that the present investigation could take.
As far as we know, and without making the case for any depen
dence-relation, before CM IV there is only one text—and within this,
one section in particular—in which the differentiation between sense,
counter-sense and non-sense, as is first introduced by Husserl in the
Logical Investigations, undergoes a transcendental transformation:
Being and Time, § 32 (Verstehen und Auslegung). And it is the term
Auslegung that must have caught Husserl’s attention (as is shown by
his notes on the first page of this paragraph, where the word is indeed
emphasized (Husserl 1997, p. 344)).
For the sake of our discourse, and without getting into any
detailed discussion of this text (where Heidegger’s concern is to lay
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out the fundamental structure of »understanding« (Heidegger 1967,

p. 149)), the following long excerpt could be quoted.
When with the being of Dasein inner-wordily entities are discovered,
that is, have come to be understood, we say that they have sense
(Sinn). But strictly speaking, what is understood is not the sense,
but the entity, that is, being. Sense is that wherein the intelligibility
of something maintains itself. […] The concept of sense embraces
the formal framework of what necessarily belongs to what is articu
lated by the understanding explication. […] Sense is an existential of
Dasein, rather than a property that pertains to the entities, which
lies »behind« them or floats somewhere as an »in-between realm.
« Only Dasein »has« sense in that the disclosedness of being-in-the-
world can be »fulfilled« through the entities that are discoverable
in it. Hence, only Dasein can be full of sense or deprived of sense
(sinvoll oder sinnlos sein). […] If we adhere to this fundamentally
ontological-existential interpretation of the concept of »sense,« then
all entities (alles Seiende) whose mode of being (Seinsart) is other
than Dasein’s must be nonsensical (unsinniges), essentially bare of
sense in general. »Nonsensical« (Unsinnige) does not mean here a
value judgment, but it expresses an ontological determination. And
only the non-sensical can be counter-sensical (Und nur das Unsinnige
kann widersinnig sein). What is merely present and is encountered by
Dasein can, so to speak, run against the latter’s being (gegen dessen Sein
gleichsam laufen), for example natural events which break in on us and
destroy us. (Heidegger 1967, pp. 151–152)
Just like in Husserl’s idealism, where »sense« is a transcendental
structure, namely, as the universe of all possible sense it points to
the unity of the concrete subject, here too it is not an ontological
determination, but an »existential.« If in TI entities have sense only
insofar as they are part of the concretion, in Heidegger they can be said
to have sense only to the extent that they belong to »the disclosedness
of being-in-the-world,« and are hence encountered by Dasein. More
radically than in TI, however, where only the idea of a being »lying
outside the universe of possible consciousness« is non-sensical, here
entities in general are to be called non-sensical to the extent that their
mode of being is of a kind other than Dasein’s.
Of course, when it comes to Heidegger the sense no longer
designates the overall domain of the constitution (in such a way that
each mode of being or ontological category corresponds to a mode
of the sense within the concretion). It is now understood in a much
more »circumscribed« manner, as it were, namely, as bearing exclu
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sively on that fundamental existential called »understanding.« One

could state that for Husserl »sense« is primarily constituted; and for
Heidegger it is always understood. To be more precise, however, for the
former it signifies that wherein the constitution of being takes place, for
the latter it means that wherein its comprehension occurs (and which
for Husserl would only correspond, on the contrary, to a mode of the
constitution among others).
Is such a series of structural similarities enough to argue that
TI and—more generally—CM IV should be regarded as a sort of
response to Heidegger upon the part of Husserl? It would in fact
be quite surprising to claim that it is in the most Cartesian of all
of Husserl’s writings, so to speak, that the Master decided to meet
the former (purported) pupil on his own ground; or, to go the
other way around, that Heidegger’s own analytics of Dasein could be
critically, and eventually successfully, tackled against the backdrop of
a radical »Cartesianism.«17
Now, although such a complex issue cannot be addressed here,
and needs therefore to be held in abeyance, some remarks can be
made to both pave the way for future investigations and bring the
present »commentary« to conclusion.
We should not forget that between 1927 and 1929 (these being
the years in which Husserl actively sought a confrontation with Hei
degger), the latter’s overall project could be described as an attempt at
providing a new foundation not only for the »problem of
being« (whatever this may mean), but—most importantly—for meta
physics (this being particularly evident in the Kantbuch18) based on
the analytics of Dasein (Severino 1994). Husserl, too, in the 20s and
the 30s tries to constantly rethink the system of sciences based on the
new foundation laid out by phenomenology (or monadological phe
nomenology) as a »first philosophy.« And both the problem of being
and the question of a new possible metaphysics are mentioned by
Husserl at the end of § 41 in light of his own conception of phe
17 In Phenomenology and Anthropology Husserl shows that the issue is that of the
correct understanding of Descartes’ legacy, notably, the articulation between the

transcendental and the anthropological or psychological determination of the subject.
18 Heidegger 1991, p. 1.
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nomenology as transcendental idealism (Husserl 1950, pp. 120–

121).19
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Sara Heinämaa
Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 42–54): Analysis

of Otherness and Embodiment
1. Introduction
Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian meditation is notoriously well-known. Sev

eral influential early commentators, most importantly Heidegger,
Levinas and Schütz, claimed that the meditation fails in its self-
assigned task of providing a phenomenological account of the consti
tution of other selves and intersubjectivity (e.g., Heidegger [1927]
1993, p. 124–125/162–164; Levinas [1947] 1994, p. 63–64/75–
76, 75–76/83–84; [1961] 1988, p. 63/67–68, 127–128/122–123,
231/200; Schütz 1962, p. 119–139; 1966, p. 51–91). The bankruptcy
of the meditation has since been declared repeatedly and on various
grounds. Some forms of critique are thematic and reject Husserl’s
descriptions of our experiences of other persons or other human
beings, while other lines of critique are methodological and question
the adequacy of the conceptual tools used in the analysis. Some
proceed immanently and look for inconsistencies and circularities in
the argumentation (e.g., Smith 2003; Lohmar 2017), while others
resort to principles that are far from Husserl’s phenomenological work
(e.g., Carman 2008; Stawarska 2009).1
Since 1990s, new generations of Husserl scholars started to chal
lenge these ossified notions. By comparing the arguments of Medita
tions with extensive clarifications given in lectures and manuscripts,
several contributors argued that what Husserl is actually offering is a
robust and many-sided philosophy of intersubjectivity which entails
important insights into several crucial topics, most importantly, the
foundations of objectivity, various forms of human communality
and different senses of normality (e.g., Harth 1992; Depraz 1995;
Steinbock 1995; Zahavi 1996; Sakakibara 1997; Mensch 1988; Kern
1 For the most important forms of critique, see Zahavi 1996.
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2019; 2021; Jardine 2021). Moreover, Husserl’s account was shown to

be relevant to epistemological and ontological as well as ethical and
moral philosophical debates (cf. Heinämaa, Carr and Aldea 2022).
The Fifth Meditation had a central place in these arguments.
Despite these new openings, Heideggerian and Levinasian read
ings still prevail and overshadow contemporary discussions concern
ing the philosophical results of Husserl’s Meditations. Several differ
ent lines of critique cohere here.
Heideggerian authors contend that the task of accounting for the
plurality of selves forced Husserl to violate his own methodological
principles of pure description and lead him to resort to theoretical
constructions. Rather than illuminating the experiential structures
of the self-other relation or intersubjectivity, the Fifth Meditation
is taken to display a crucial methodological limitation in Husserl’s
philosophical system (e.g., Crowell 2013, p. 32–33, 54–55, 61; cf.
Heidegger [1927] 1993, p. 28/50; Ricœur 1969, 140–142). A related
form of suspicion contends that Husserl’s discussion of embodiment
is viciously ambiguous and equivocal or, worse, self-contradictory
because it secretly draws from the traditional discourses of philosoph
ical personalism (e.g., Derrida [1962] 1974, p. 98/98; [1990] 2003, p.
82ff.; Crowell 2012; Merten 2012, p. 175–176; cf. Heidegger 1979, p.
170–175/123–125).
Heideggerian and Levinasian authors argue that Husserl’s
account of otherness was motivated – and seriously restricted – by his
epistemological interest. The guiding aim was to develop a theory of
knowledge and the sciences, and this theoretical interest led Husserl
to neglect and/or misrepresent the existential, practical and ethical
aspects of our mutual relations as human beings. Husserl is taken
to base his analyses of our experiences of other selves simply on
the models of cognitive objects and perceptual things (e.g., Guenther
2011; Rosen 2021; cf. Levinas [1961] 1988, p. 63/67–69; Carr 1973).2
Both parties agree that Husserl’s methods merely allow him to
distinguish between different senses of alienness and otherness, all
established within the conscious life of one solitary self, but that
these methods necessarily fail when the inquiry is supposed to reach
radical otherness and concrete relations between human persons. If
this would hold, then Husserl’s Fifth Meditation would not proceed
2 Levinas’ interpretation of Husserl’s discussion of other selves has been questioned
by several authors, for example, Birnbaum 1989, Overgaard 2003, Friedman 2014.
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Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 42–54): Analysis of Otherness and Embodiment
beyond the egology that was sketched out in the Fourth Meditation
and that operates by the methods of eidetic reduction and imaginary
self-variation (Husserl 1950, p. 105–106/71–72, cf. 69–70/30–31,
98–99/62–64, 181/155; see also 1974, p. 238/269–270).
The consequences of such a failure would be global to Husserl’s
whole phenomenological enterprise. This is because the Fifth Medita
tion contends that the given account of the constitution of the sense
of the other self provides the foundation for the phenomenology of
intersubjectivity and objectivity, that is, the objective world and the
objective nature and everything entailed in them. We read:
Thus the problem is stated at first as a special one, namely / that of
the »thereness-for-me« of others, and accordingly as the theme of a
transcendental theory of experiencing someone else, a transcendental
theory of the so-called »empathy«. But it soon becomes evident that
the range of such a theory is much greater than at first it seems, that it
contributes to the founding of a transcendental theory of the objective
world and, indeed, to the founding of such a theory in every respect,
notably as regards objective nature. The existence-sense [Seinssinn] of
the world and of nature in particular, as objective nature, includes after
all, as we have already mentioned, thereness-for-everyone. This is
always co-intended wherever we speak of objective actuality [Wirk
lichkeit] (Husserl 1950, § 43, p. 123–124/92, cf. 118–121/85–88; see
also Ricœur 1967, p. 115–118).
And a few paragraphs further:
In the first place [zunächst] the question concerns no matter what alter
egos [irgendwelche]; then however it concerns everything that acquires
sense-determinations from them – in short, an objective world in the
proper and full signification [Bedeutung] of the phrase (Husserl 1950,
§ 44, p. 126/94).
With the supposed failure of Fifth Meditation then, with the failure
of its account of the constitution of the sense of another self, much,
if not all, of Husserl’s phenomenological project would collapse.
The philosophy that was introduced as a universal philosophy of
all experiencing and all knowing, including all scientific forms of
knowing but also all practical and ethical forms of experiencing,
would turn out to be yet another mode of traditional introspection
ism or philosophical self-observation. At least, it is contended, the
epistemological Cartesian way of approaching, outlined in Husserl’s
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Sara Heinämaa
Meditations, would have to be abandoned by all those who aim to

account for the radicality of otherness in our experience.
Further, it is also suggested in secondary literature that Husserl
himself realized the unworkability of the approach that he sketched
in the Fifth Meditation, and that he abandoned the account and ulti
mately began to develop a new, alternative account of intersubjectivity
and objectivity on the basis of the concepts of Ineinander, anonymity,
and/or the lifeworld (e.g., Levinas [1974] 1998, 163–165; Waldenfels
1990, p. 28–31; Moran 2011, p. 157ff.).3
In order to remove some of these suspicions and charges, I will
revisit Husserl’s Fifth Meditation in this chapter, focusing on para
graphs § 42–§ 54. More precisely, I want to discuss the role of embod
iment and Husserl’s concepts of the living body (der Leib) and the psy
chophysical being (das psychophysische Wesen/Objekt) in his
argument about sense transferral.4 I will do this by shedding light on
the systematic aims of the Fifth Meditation and the methods that
Husserl introduces to achieve his goals. Three experiential topics
combine here: our experiences of other selves, our experiences our
own bodies and our experiences of objectivity. I will argue that the
Fifth Meditation provides two important result that concern relations
of constitutive dependency between these three forms of experienc
ing: first, the meditation shows that the sense of another self depends
on the sense of one’s own embodiment, and second, it also demon
strates that sense of the objective world and everything objective
entailed in it – objective nature, objective bodies and our own objec
tive being – depends on the logically prior sense of intersubjectivity.
3 This idea is also often also attributed to Merleau-Ponty, more precisely to his late
work The Visible and the Invisible (Le visible et l’invisible 1964) (e.g., Waldenfels 1990,
p. 29; Tengelyi [1998] 2004, p. 101–104.
4 A terminological remark is needed here: I use the English term »living body« sys
tematically as the translation of the German term »Leib« that Husserl uses here and
in all his discussions of intersubjectivity. I do this in order to avoid the following prob
lematic implications of alternative translations: The commonly used term »the lived
body« wrongly suggest that life or living primarily belongs to a purely mental subject
who then lends or imposes this function on a material entity. The term »animate
organism« that Dorion Cairns uses in his translation in Cartesian Meditations wrongly
suggests either a naturalistic idea of a biological organism or else Aristotele’s hylomor
phic notion of the ensouled body with its well-known problems (e.g., Williams [1986]
2006). Finally, the terms »phenomenological body« and »phenomenal body« both
suggest that what is at issue is in the Leib/Körper distinction would merely be the
presence/absence of some »qualia« or »qualitative feels«. A more detailed argument
for this translation, is given in Heinämaa 2021.
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In other words, in light of the Fifth Meditation, the constitutive order

is the following: the constitution of the senses of the ownness and
own embodiment precede that of intersubjectivity, and the constitu
tion of the sense of intersubjectivity precedes that of objectivity. Thus,
Husserl is able to claim at the same time that the self is the ultimate
source of all sense of worldly being (e.g., Husserl 1950, 116–118/83–
85; cf. 1954, p. 220/217, 109–110/108), and that the objective world
is a collectively constituted achievement of all transcendental selves
or transcendental inter-subjectivity (e.g., Husserl 1950, p. 137/107,
158/130, 167/140; 1968, 344; 1973b, p. 277; 1973c, p. 220, 560–561;
1993, p. 120).
Whereas Husserl’s claims about the ultimate dependency rela
tion between objectivity and intersubjectivity is broadly accepted in
research literature and taken to be part of his classical phenomenolog
ical account of being, the former dependency relation – that between
the sense of another self and my own embodiment – is often identified
as a weak point of his Meditations and the source of much trouble
(e.g., Reynaert 2001; Crowell 2012). I will therefore focus on the
latter and make conceptual distinctions between different senses
of »embodiment« which allow us to gain a more refined view of
how our experiences of otherness and intersubjectivity depend, in
Husserl’s account, on our experiences of our own being in the world.
Before proceeding to discuss the topics of embodiment and alien
selfhood, it is crucial to clarify the type of philosophical investigation
that Husserl designs and conducts. So, I will start with a short
overview of the philosophical problem and the analytic task that
Husserl assigns to himself.
2. The Problem
Husserl begins the Fifth Meditation by pointing out that a grave

objection seems to apply to his phenomenology: since the enterprise
depends in whole on the decision to study all worldly beings as
pure phenomena given to the meditating self, it may seem that
this philosophy is unable to account for any form of transcendence
or mind-independent objectivity. Other selves, like nature and the
world itself, are all reduced to phenomena which are mere units of
sense-making and verification in the immanence of the meditator’s
own conscious life. How can transcendence be reached or even meant?
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Sara Heinämaa
Husserl’s solution to such perplexities and objections is consis

tently phenomenological. He does not abandon his manner of treating
philosophical problems but, on the contrary, resorts to the methods
of intentional clarification of experiences and constitutional analysis
of sense. What is needed then first, he argues, is a concrete phe
nomenological explication of what it means to intend other selves or
alter egos (Husserl 1950, § 42, p. 122/90). Such intentions are,
namely, presupposed by all of those who argue that phenomenology
cannot account for our experiences of »others«.
This means that the Fifth Meditation is neither an ontological nor
an epistemological treatise in the traditional senses of the terms. The
meditation has, or may have, both ontological and epistemological
implications, but these implications, Husserl contends, can properly
be explicated only after a radically critical reflection (Besinnung) on the
goals and tasks of ontology and epistemology themselves as existing
philosophical disciplines (Husserl 1950, p. 50/9, 119–220/87–88,
164–165/137–138, 180–183/154–157; cf. Husserl 1974, p. 5–/8–14;
1952b, p. 139–161/406–428; 2020, p. 611–632).5
Accordingly, Husserl’s philosophical interest in the Fifth Medita
tion is not to secure our access to other minds or to the mental contents
of our fellow beings, so that we could confidently know, grasp,
understand or guess what they think and decide and how they feel and
deliberate.6 Nor does he aim to prove the existence of others or verify
our beliefs in their reality or justify our convictions about their being.
The terms that he uses to conduct his intentional explication and
constitutive analysis, such as »verification« (Bewährung), »analog
ical apperception« (analogische Apperzäption) and »empathy« (Ein
fühlung), may suggest such notions, since they resonate with tradi
tional debates and doctrines concerning our relations to other selves.
However, the Fifth Meditation follows the conceptual strategy that
Husserl explicated already in the first volume of Ideas: he utilizes
5 Since the philosophical disciplines of epistemology and ontology – as all disciplines

and all sciences – are fundamentally intersubjective endeavors, they are dependent on
the sense of other selves and cannot deliver this sense without radically self-critical
investigations (Husserl 1950, p. 53/12–13).
6 In this respect Husserl’s main interest in inquiring into the transcendental condi
tions of all forms of intersubjectivity differs from the social philosophical interests
of Edith Stein and Max Scheler who focus on the phenomena of fellow feeling,
compassion and sympathy, emotional sharing and emotional contagion (Stein 1917;
Scheler 1913–1916; cf. Zahavi 2014, p. 112–137; Jardine 2014).
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traditional philosophical and special scientific terms very open-mind

edly but without accepting their earlier usages or standard meanings;
instead, he defines the terms in manners that cohere with his own
principles and methods and contributes to his phenomenological
goals (Husserl 1950, p. 54/13–14; cf. 1976, p. 8-9/xii–xxiii, 138–
140/151–152; Smith 2003, p. 212–213).
What we have then is a phenomenological-transcendental
account of the constitution of the sense of another conscious self,
another self with conscious experiences and therefore also constitu
tional potentialities in her own right. The aim of the meditation, in
Husserl’s own words, is the following:
We must (...) obtain for ourselves insight [Einblick] into the explicit
and implicit intentionality wherein, on the basis of our transcendental
ego, the alter ego expresses or manifests [sich bekundet] and demon
strates itself [sich bewährt]; we must discover how, in what intention
alities, in what syntheses, in what motivations the sense »other ego« is
formed [sich gestaltet] in me (Husserl 1950, § 42, p. 122/90, translation
modified).7
As is well known, the analysis proceeds by three steps: first, Husserl
performs an abstractive thematic epoché to what he calls »the sphere
of ownness« (Eigenheitssphäre) by suspending all sense of other selves
and everything that constitutionally depends on such sense; second,
he offers an account of passive associative pairing of certain kinds
of percepts on the basis of their partial likenesses; and finally, he
provides an account of empathetic transfer of sense that operates on
the motivational basis of pairing.
The first step is a new kind of epoché but unlike the universal
transcendental suspension of ontic positing, it is thematically specific
and abstractive. It is performed within the field of the transcendentally
purified experiences, and it is introduced in order to bracket all sense
of alien subjectivity and what depends on such subjectivity within
7 Dorion Cairns translated the paragraph as follows: »We must (...) obtain for our
selves insight into the explicit and implicit intentionality wherein, on the basis of our
transcendental ego, the alter ego becomes evinced and verified; we must discover how,
in what intentionalities, in what syntheses, in what motivations the sense ›other
ego‹ becomes fashioned in me« (Husserl 1950, § 42, p. 122/90). The English trans
lation informs that the term rendered as »belonging to me« (in mir) is crossed out in
the manuscript, and that the following marginal comment is added: »The dangerous
first person singular! This should be expanded terminologically« (Husserl 1960, p.
90).
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Sara Heinämaa
this field. Thus, it inhibits all references to the psychic states and
processes of other subjects, and to the intentional accomplishments of
such states and processes, explicit and implicit, focal and horizontal.
This entails that also all egoic perceptions and sensations that belong
to other experiencing selves must be suspended from the field of
our study, including their tactile and kinesthetic sensations. As a
result, the epoché to the sphere of ownness leaves us with only one
sensing-moving body: our own.
Among the originarily grasped bodies [eigentlich gefassten Körpern]
belonging to this nature [of my sphere of ownness], I then find my own
living body [Leib] as uniquely singled out, namely as the only one that
is not mere material body [blosser Körper] but precisely living body
[Leib] (Husserl 1950, § 44, p. 128/97, translation modified).
The problem is thus specified. We move from the original question
that concerns the constitution of the sense of another self or alter ego
to the question that concerns the constitution of the sense of another
living body. This new sense is constituted for and by the meditating
ego who is able to experience her own living body. The question then
becomes: How can I, as a perceiving bodily ego, come to apperceive
another living body that is not just my own second body (Husserl
1950, § 51, p. 143/113)?
The task is now to demonstrate how, on what constitutive and
motivational grounds, the senses of living body and self, originarily
established in one’s own case, can be transferred to a percept which
gives itself as a mere material body in our environing space. In order
to do this, we need to have some account of the constitution of
the sense of the living body but also an understanding of the new
epoché that Husserl introduces. I will proceed by first discussing the
methodological step that needs to be taken. I then illuminate the
sense of living bodiliness that Husserl largely takes for granted in the
Meditations but analyzes thoroughly in earlier works and research
manuscripts. Finally, I end with an account of the transfer of sense,
which is the decisive act in the constitution of the sense of another self.
3. The Sphere of Ownness
As already pointed out above, the most important result of the Fifth
Meditation is an account of the constitutive order and the dependence
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relations that hold between three intentional senses central to all

our worldly experiencing. These are the senses of embodiment,
other selves, and the objective world. Effectively, Husserl argues
that the constitution of the objective world and objective nature
essentially depends on the constitution of intersubjectivity and other
selves, and the latter further depend on the constitution of one’s own
embodiment. Thus, he distinguishes the sense of the environing world
(Umwelt) from that of the objective world, given to and shared by
all subjects equally. The latter is a constitutive achievement by a
community of transcendental selves, but the other transcendental
selves are constituted by my own transcendental self in acts of
empathetic transfer of sense.
In order to argue for this insight and to illuminate the constitutive
underpinnings of the sense of other selves, Husserl introduces a
thematically specific abstractive reduction which he calls »the reduc
tion to the sphere of ownness« (Husserl 1950, p. 125ff./93ff.). He
emphasizes that this methodic move must be carried out within the
field of transcendentally purified experiences. Its task is to artificially
isolate one of the layers of sense constantly operative within this
field (cf. Ströker 2012, p. xvi; Schnell 2010, p. 13ff.). So, whereas the
transcendental-phenomenological reduction discloses a whole new
area of investigation – the realm of pure experiences –, the subsequent
abstractive reduction allows us to focus, within this sphere, on specific
structures by setting them apart from others.
The main idea is to set aside all sense of other selves and
everything that constitutionally depends on such sense. Thus, we
disregard all possible others, human as well as animal, personal
as well as collective. We also disregard all that depends on such
others: their living bodies and the common cultural products that
we share with them, from practical utensils and tools to linguistic
signs, artworks, religious symbols and scientific objects, including the
objects of the life sciences and biosciences. Moreover, all theoretical
conceptualizations of such selves need to be bracketed. We do not
intend others as persons nor as psyches, souls, spirits, minds or neural
networks. Finally, we remove from consideration the senses objective
thing and objective world in so far as these objectivities are shared by
several experiencing selves. The abstractive reduction thus shuts out
all sense of otherness and prevents us from using such senses in our
descriptions and analyses of whatever is left to study (Husserl 1950,
p. 125–127/96; 1952a, p. 144/151; cf. [1939] 1985, p. 57–58/57–58).
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The point is not that we could live in such a reduced »world« but that
we must think its possibility in order to understand the constitutional
structures of own world, the world given to all.
As pointed out, this covers both our explicit intendings of others
and our implicit – horizontal or marginal – reliance on the sense
of alien selfhood. Thus, the so-called »open intersubjectivity«, that
is, the implicit givenness of others in our everyday perceptions of
things and in our practical dealings with tools and utensils, has to
be bracketed, along with our explicit cognitions, volitions, emotions
and desires directed at other selves. In other words, the reduction to
the sphere of ownness that Husserl designs does not just concern
focally thematized others but also applies to the horizontally meant
otherness, built in our everyday manners of experiencing the world
and ourselves as parts of the world. This entails our own intersubjec
tive being in the world, that is, our appearance in shareable fields
of experience, be they generally public, social and communal or
intimately dialogical and dual. So, we are now also devoid of our own
body, person and soul as intersubjective realities co-constituted with
other subjects.
What is left is not a world in any usual sense of the term: all other
egos are gone and everything that carries traces of their alterity. We
find ourselves in an artificial field of perceptually appearing material
things without historical, cultural or humanly valid significations.
Moreover, things present themselves to us in a peculiar manner
within this field: they cannot be given from different viewpoints
at the same time since there are no others in our environment,
actual or possible, who could occupy alternative positions and open
complementary perspectives on things. The material objects that now
appear to us disclose themselves by adumbrations but merely in a
serial fashion, not simultaneously from different viewpoints.
The next step in Husserl’s argumentation is decisive for the
understanding of his account of the constitution of the sense of other
selves. He points out that in this artificially reduced experiential
environment, one thing – and only one – immediately sets itself
apart from all the other things. This is our own living body. It stands
out exactly as living, that is, as having sensations of different sorts,
most crucially, sensations of touch and movement, and being freely
and directly movable by us. No other thing can have this sense of
living within this artificially isolated environment since all other
conscious selves are temporarily reduced, including those that can
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sense (Husserl 1950, p. 128/97, cf. 58–59/18–19). The paragraph

that explicates this insight is worth quoting in length:
Among the actually grasped bodies belonging to this nature [of my
sphere of ownness], I then find my own living body as uniquely singled
out, namely as the only one of them that is not mere material body but
precisely living body, the only/sole object within my abstract[ive]
world-stratum to which I, in accordance with experience, attribute/
ascribe fields of sensations [Empfindungsfelder], belonging to it, how
ever, in different manners (field of tactual sensations, warmth-coldness
field, and so forth), the only one ›in‹ which I ›rule and govern‹ imme
diately, governing particularly in each of its ›organs‹. Touching kines
thetically ›with‹ hands, seeing equally with eyes etc., I perceive and can
at any time perceive (...); further, by putting these kinesthesia in play
(...) I can ›act‹ bodily (...) As perceptively active, I experience (or can
experience) all nature, including my own lived bodiliness [Leib
lichkeit], which thereby is reflexively related to itself. That becomes
possible because I ›can‹ perceive one hand ›by means of‹ the other, an
eye by means of a hand, and so forth – a procedure in which the oper
ating organ must become an object and the object an operating organ
(Husserl 1950, § 44, p. 128/97).
A crucial feature of Husserl’s reasoning here is often bypassed.
Namely, his account immediately implies that not all sense of our
conscious embodiment is dependent on the constitution of the sense
of other selves. In so far as we still, after the reduction to the sphere
of ownness, can identify one environing object as our living body
– on the basis of sensibility and kinesthesis, and their interplay – our
embodiment is an independent sense formation that does not build on
the givenness of other selves. In other words, Husserl argues that a
core sense of consciously living embodiment is established first in our
own case, independently of all other selves, and that it is secondarily
instituted for others on this primary constitutional basis. The insight
is repeated in related manuscripts as well as later publications. In the
second of the so-called »intersubjectivity manuscripts«, compiled in
Husserliana XIV, we read:
The original [unsprüngliche] givenness of a living body [Leib] can
only be the original givenness of my living body and no other. The
apperception »my living body« is essentially first and the only original
one. It is only when I have constituted my living body that I can
apperceive living bodies as such« (Husserl 1973b, p. 7, cf. 9–10).
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In The Crisis, Husserl summarizes the same insight as follows:

What properly and essentially makes up the character of a living body
[Leib] I experience only in my own living body, namely, in my constant
and immediate holding-sway [over my surroundings] through this
material body [Körper] alone. Only it is given to me originally and
meaningfully as ›organ‹ and as articulated into particular organs (...).
Obviously it is only in this way [i.e. by having sense-organs] that I have
perceptions and, beyond this, other experiences of objects in the world.
All other types of holding-sway, and in general all relatedness of the ego
to the world, is mediated through this« (Husserl 1954, p. 220/217; cf.
109–110/108).
4. Living Bodiliness (Leiblichkeit)
The characterization of the living body that we find in Cartesian

Meditations and related manuscripts draws from the earlier account
that Husserl developed in the second volume of Ideas. The main
result of the analysis persists: our own living body (Leib) is originarily
given to us as a peculiar kind of sensing moving thing and primitive
spatial object (Husserl 1952a, p. 144–146/152–154, 157/165–169,
175–177/185–186; 2020, p. 49–55). To be sure, its spatiality differs
from the spatiality of all other things. I cannot go around my body or
turn it upside down in order to study its hidden sides; I cannot distance
from it or leave it behind, nor can I go nearer to it in order to perceive it
better. These perceptual restrictions do not imply that the living body
would lack all spatiality and materiality and would merely have the
sense of an inner formation. On the contrary, my own living body
gives itself to me as a spatial thing, but as a »remarkably imperfectly
constituted thing« (Husserl 1952, p. 167; cf. Husserl 1973b, p. 6–9, 57,
60–63; 1973c, 268; Stein 1917, p. 44/41).
In Ideas II, Husserl famously argues that both kinesthetic sen
sations and touch sensations are necessary for the constitution of
my living body as well as a motivational interplay between them.
However, he also proclaims that none of these factors are sufficient,
separately or together. What is needed in addition to such sensory
systems is the formation of double-sensation (Husserl 1952a, p. 145–
147/153–154; 2020, p. 364–366; cf. Luo 2017, pp. 51ff.).
In double sensation, two motivationally related systems of kines
thetic and tactile sensation, both given to the same self, operate at
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the same time but are localized as apart from one another.8 When I
grip my left wrist with my right-hand fingers, then both the gripping
fingers and the gripped wrist entertain tactile as well as kinesthetic
sensations. The main motor difference is that the kinesthesia of the
gripping fingers are those of active movement while the kinesthesia of
the gripped wrist are those of rest.
However, it is also essential to the constitution of the phe
nomenon of double sensation that the touch sensations involved
can be apprehended in two alternative ways. One and the very same
sensations can be apprehended either as my own lived-through
sensings, or, alternatively, as presenting qualities or features external
to the sensing (Husserl 1952a, p. 147/155; cf. 1976, p. 85–86/88;
1952b, p. 14). When I hold a full cup of hot tea in my hand, I can focus
either on the warmness of the cup or else pay attention to the warm
sensation that spreads in my fingers. When I touch my own feverish
forehead, instead, then my apprehensive possibilities are doubled. I
can alternate between two attentive foci in two separate locations,
one in the touching hand and the other in the touched forehead. I
can either attend to (1) the feverish heat of the forehead registered by
the fingers or else focus on (2) the warmth that is conveyed to and
spread in the fingers, or I can pay attention to (3) the coolness of the
fingers that meet the forehead and focus on (4) their calming, soothing
effect in the head. Double sensation is thus double in the sense that
it involves two different complexes of two kinds of sensations and,
in addition to this, also two ways of apprehending these sensations.
Four apprehensive options in toto structure the phenomenon (Husserl
1952a, p. 145–146/153–154).9
In the classical Husserlian analysis, the doubling of sensation is
indispensable to the establishment of sense of own living bodiliness.
8 Sensations are primarily not localized in the homogenous space of intersubjective or

objective reality but merely relatively to one another in the primitive space constituted
together with movement.
9 The two hands touching, famously pictured by Husserl in the second volume of
Ideas, epitomize the intentional structure of double-sensation which, in his analysis,

is necessary for the constitution of all forms of living bodiliness, both own and alien,
human or animal. In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty introduces another
example, the two lips of the human (or mammal) mouth constantly touching one
another (1964b, 177/136). By this example, he draws attention to the experiential fact
that no differentiation in terms of grasping-grasped is needed for the formation of the
structure of double-sensation.
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The living body is originally constituted as an intertwinement of

sensing and the sensed, internality and externality, subjectivity and
objectivity (cf. 1973b, p. 336, cf. 9–10, 1973c, 15, 85). The constitution
of such a phenomenon requires kinesthetic sensations and touch
sensations but, in addition to these, also a double way of apprehending
sensations. Sensations have to be grasped as thingly qualities while, at
the same time, remaining given as subjective sensings (e.g., Husserl
1952a, p. 145/153). Thus constituted, the living body is a two-fold
dynamic structure in which the sensing and the sensed are systemat
ically intertwined or interlaced.10
The living body in this sense must be kept separate from two
other phenomena: the expressively structured gestural body and the
two-layered psychophysical thing, discussed widely by contemporary
phenomenologists (e.g., Crowell 2012; Lohmar 2017). Both latter
phenomena depend in their senses on the constitution of other selves
and their bodies and thus they also depend on the primary sense of my
own living body as a system of sensing-sensed (e.g., Husserl 1952a,
347/358). Let me shortly discuss the distinctness of both phenomena
from the phenomenon of living bodiliness, first constituted in one’s
own case and then transferred onto other bodies.
The primary sense of my living bodiliness displayed by the
reduction to the sphere of ownness is not the same as that of the
expressive gestural body. This is because my own body cannot operate
as an expressive means for me if all others are constitutively absent
from my field of experiencing. I may be able to arrange my fingers
in the manner that is characteristic of a gestural sign of anger, for
example, but in so far as all others are lacking in my experience, this
digital formation cannot express anything to anyone. There are no
10 My account of Husserl’s conceptualization of living bodies thus differs crucially

from the widely influential account provided by Klaus Held in his »Das Problem
der Intersubjektivität und die Idee einer phänomenologischen Transzendentalphilo
sophie« (1972). In Held’s early account, my own living body (Leib) is one of the two
manners or attitudes in which my »spatial presence« (raumliche Anwesenheit) in the
world is given to me. More precisely, Held argues that each of us can grasp her spatial
presence in the world either purely internally or else purely externally and that »the
living body« (Leib) is a term that Husserl uses for the inner appearance of this presence
and »the material thing« (Körper) is the name that he uses for the corresponding
outer one (Held 1972, 31–32; cf. Schütz 1966, 64–65). In contrast to this, I have here
argued that my own living body (Leib) is not an inner appearance or purely spiritual
formation for me but is originally an intertwining of internality and externality, a
spiritual articulation of sensible materiality.
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others to whom the gesture could convey a message, and for myself
the sign would be redundant since, when I start arranging my fingers,
the content (anger) is already given to me and does not need to be
conveyed (Husserl [1901] 1984a, p. 31/187–188; cf. 1973b, 327).
Similarly, I may twist my nose to relieve itching, but I cannot do the
same to express disgust or contempt; and I may bend my head down
to release muscular tension, but I cannot express respect or humble
ness, unless I am able to intend others.
The sense of the body as a two-layered psychophysical thing
or organism also depends on the givenness of others. However,
its dependence relations are more complicated than those of the
expressively structured gestural body. Whereas the givenness of the
gestural body merely depends on the givenness of some empathetic
and communicative others – any such others –, the givenness of
the psychophysical thing or organism also depends on highly spe
cialized theoretical activities and practices (Husserl [1939] 1985,
p. 155–159/135–138; cf. 1954, p. 52/51–52). In other words, the
psychophysical thing is not an experienceable object given in (ap)per
ception but is a scientific object that is constituted by the activities
of abstraction, idealization and formalization (Husserl 1952a, p. 239–
241/251–253; 2020, p. 549). In such compounds, the psychic is an
epiphenomenon: it depends and is founded on the physical, without
any autonomous powers of reciprocal founding. Living bodies, in
contrast, are originally given to us in straightforward experience,
independently of all scientific reasoning, and they give themselves,
not as two-layered psychophysical objects, but as unified beings
thoroughly articulated by sense (Husserl 1952a, p. 239/251; 1973a, p.
86–88; 1973b, p. 55–63; cf. Heinämaa 2018).
This means that these core sense of living embodiment disclosed
by the reduction to the sphere of ownness, and integral to the
constitution of other egos, is the sense of the sensing-sensed thing
constituted in systems of double sensation. It is neither the body that
operates in expressive gestures nor the physical thing that founds
psychophysical unities.
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5. Transfer of Sense
Husserl’s solution to the problem of other living bodies rests on two

grounds: the primary constitution of the sense of my own living body
and the process of sense-transferral. He argues that the primitive
sense of living as sensing-sensed is transferred over from one’s own
body to other bodies in environing space (Husserl 1950, p. 142–
143/112–13; cf. 1952a, p. 164–166/172–174; 2020, p. 355; 1973b, p.
97). The transfer is motivated by the similarity of perceived bodily
movements. Some things that I detect at different distances in space
resemble the self-perceived movements of my living body and its
organs (Husserl 1950, p. 141–144/112–114; cf. 1973b, p. 3–4, 284;
1973c, p. 183). A body over there reacts to external stimulation in
the same manner as my own fingers and feet (cf. Husserl 1973b, p.
118), and when it bumps into another thing, it does not halt or bounce
back but restores its balance and circumvents the obstacle in a similar
manner as my own body.11 Moreover, without any detectable causal
influence by other material objects, certain things in my environment
spontaneously turn to this or that direction (Husserl 2020, p. 41–42).
And finally: some things also manifest the types of reflexive and
recursive movements that are familiar to us from our own case.
Such similarities of perceived movements motivate a complex of
synthetizing experiences that terminates in an act in which the sense
of sensing-sensed is transferred over to a body perceived at distance.
This is not an inferential step that would result in a new proposition
but is a perceptual reorganization based on passive associations. More
precisely, the two bodies are synthetized into a pair on the basis
of the perceived similarities that hold between them. The pairing
(Paarung) results from passive associative synthesis of perceptual
similars. The pair operates as a »channel« by which sense can be
transferred between the paired percepts.
Moreover, Husserl argues that the sense-transfer operates on
both directions. The sense of the sensed-sensing thing is transferred
over to a merely material body perceived at a distance, and the sense
an object among other objects is transferred onto one’s own body. As a
11 For various interpretations of what such bodily similarity necessarily entails,
see, De Preester 2008; Lohmar 2017; Luo 2017; Jardine 2021. For discussions
of the non-perceptual elements of such experiences, see, Taipale 2015; Luo 2018;
Jardine 2021.
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result, that body over there is constituted as a material thing with its
own systems of sensations and appearance-systems, sensations that I
cannot have or live through but that are expressed and indicated to me
by the thing’s movements and behaviors; and my own body is given to
me in an analogous fashion as the body of the other: one among many.
Husserl calls »empathetic apperception« the overall result of
this process of associative pairing. We do not anymore see a mere
body over there, nor do we conceive a body with some psychic or
spiritual attachments. Rather what we now experience is a body
thoroughly infused with selfhood: a bodily self or an animated
body, one that belongs to a person. Such experiences are »ap-per
ceptive« in the sense that their main intent – the other self – is not
given directly or originarily but with and via a perceived body. The
term »empathy« captures the basic idea that our basic connection to
others is passive and pathic,12 but Husserl does not use this term to
suggest that we »feel with« or »feel in« the life of the other, unlike
like Stein and Scheler (cf. Jardine 2014; Zahavi 2010; 2015; Szanto
and Moran 2020). In his account, other kinds of acts are needed
for such more sophisticated experiences, most importantly, social
acts of communication, targeted address and intuitive understanding
but also comparative acts of reflection and evaluative acts of care
(Husserl 1950, p. 159–160/131–132; 1952, p. 273ff./286ff.; 1973a, p.
455–456; cf. Heinämaa 2019; 2020; Jardine 2021).
So, the living thing does not appear in perception as an amalgam
or compound of two separate realities, one psychic and the other
physical, neither as a two-layered psycho-physical reality. As pointed
out above, such conceptualizations belong to the psychological and
life sciences, not to straightforward perception, and they depend on
the one hand on the pregivenness of the other self in perception and on
the other hand on the goals, methods and techniques of these sciences.
Instead of manifesting itself a compounded or layered structure, the
living being appears as a uniform whole saturated with governed
movements, meaningful gestures and significant behaviors. The Fifth
Meditation states:
12 The German term »Einfühlung« was introduced by Rudolf Lotze as a transla
tion of the Greek term »empatheia« that combines the prefix »en« (in) and the
noun »pathos« (feeling). For Husserl, this term was useful and appropriate in the
description of the constitution of other selves, not because it would suggest that we can
enter into their consciousness or conscious states, but rather because it captures the
idea that in order to relate to other persons we ourselves have to fall into bodily states.
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If we stick to the factical, i.e. to the experience of someone else as it

comes to pass at any time, we find that actually the sensuous seen body
[Körper] is experienced forthwith as the body of someone else and not
as merely an indication of someone else [für den Anderen] (…) What
I actually see is not a sign (…); on the contrary, it is someone else
(Husserl 1950, p. 150–153/121–124; cf. 1952a, p. 234–241/245-253;
2020, p. 564).
Husserl repeatedly also stresses that the empathetic transfer of sense
that he identifies and analyses is not any sort of reasoning, inference
or interpretation (e.g., Husserl 1950, p. 141/111). The sense living is
not derived, deduced or induced in any manner from the behavior
perceived in one’s environment. Rather it is constituted, first, in one’s
own case and then transferred, not onto another self already given in
some other manner, but onto an environing body that behaves in a
particular manner. The result is still a percept – a body – but is now
rearticulated according to the transferred sense. On the basis of this
rearticulation, we now see, not a mere body, but a body of another
ego (Husserl 1952b, p. 235/257; 2020, p. 209). No mental contents
need to be simulated or projected onto or introjected in to the other (cf.
Zahavi 2008; 2014, p. 99–111, 153–158). Instead of grounding some
intellectual operation or set of operations, perception of similarity
motivates a new type of apprehension, one that operates by the sense
of living, which is already familiar to us from our experience of our
own bodies, but which we now – on the basis of the transfer –, are able
to extend to all bodies that move, behave and relate to themselves in
analogous manners as our own body.
In addition to the mere sense of sensings-sensed, we also transfer
other types of consciousness to perceivable bodies, depending on the
complexity of their behaviors and their relations to the environment.
Thus, the class of living things is not assimilated with that of sensing
things, but also includes feeling things as well as desiring and willing
things (Husserl 1952a, p. 164/172, 235/246–247, cf. 166/174–175;
2020, p. 209).
The validity of the sense transferred to the alien body is verified
by the experience of harmony in the behavior of the body, or the
bodies, perceived. Husserl writes:
The lived body [Leib] of another continues to prove itself as actually a
lived body, solely in its changing but incessantly harmonious behavior
[einstimmig Gebaren]. Such harmonious behavior (…) must present
itself fulfillingly in originary experience and do so throughout the
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continuous change in behavior from phase to phase. The organism

becomes experienced as a pseudo-organism precisely if there is some
thing discordant about its behavior. (Husserl 1950, p. 144/114, trans
lation modified)
Husserl’s Logical Investigations (1900–1901) offers an illuminative
example of how the anticipations implicated by such experiences
may be disappointed. Husserl reports an experience of meeting an
unknown woman on the stairs when entering the Panopticum Wax
works in Hamburg: When he first enters the gallery, he notices a
woman standing on the stairs; he approaches the woman and prepares
to greet her while passing, but when he come closer to the figure, he
realizes that he has been tricked by a wax sculpture. As long as he
was tricked, Husserl argues, he experienced a perfectly good percept: a
person momentarily resting on the stairs. When the illusion vanishes,
he saw a statue, instead, one that only represents a human person,
a woman (Husserl [1901] 1984b, p. 458–459/137–138; cf. 1966, p.
33/72, 350–351/431–432; 1973b, p. 124).
The experience proceeds in stages and in accordance with the
bodily movements of the perceiving subject: When he approaches
the figure, new sensory materials »come in« and are »typified«. He
associates the perceived object with other similar ones and ultimately
with his own living body. Its visual shape and posture remind of the
gestalt that is familiar to him from his own case. The association
generates anticipations that the percept will move and comport itself
toward the environment in certain ways. When he comes closer
to the figure, however, his anticipations are disappointed, as new
sensory material does not confirm the association but, on the contrary,
conflicts with it. The figure stays motionless; more particularly, what
remains absent are the vital movements that characterize living beings
and the spontaneity, responsiveness and reflexivity that belongs to
human and animal bodies. He sees now that the object resembles
humans only in visual form but not in movement or comportment,
and so the associative synthesis fails, and he sees a dummy.
Three points must be emphasized concerning the associative
passive synthesis and the pairing of the two percepts central to
this synthesis:
First, Husserl argues that the pairing that makes possible the
transfer of sense needed for the experience of another conscious living
being does not only involve the body over there perceived by me
and my own body in its double form of givenness as both sensed
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and sensing. The transfer of sense living from my own body to the
body perceived is mediated by a spatial variant of my own body.
Husserl explains:
I do not apperceive him as having (…) the spatial modes of appearance
that are mine from here; rather, as we find in closer examination, I
apperceive him as having the spatial modes of appearance like those I
should have if I should go over there and be where he is. (Husserl 1950,
p. 120/117, cf. 148–149/117–119; 1973a, p. 456; 1973b, p. 83, 96–97)
So, the transfer of sense necessary for the experience of another bodily
subject or conscious body happens between my own body as I live
it here and the other’s body as I see it over there but it is, as it
were, »assisted« by an imaginative and counterfactual variant of my
own body: my body as I would experience it if I stood where the other
stands and would orient myself as it orients itself.
The second thing that needs to be stressed is that the experience
that motivates the transfer does not need to entail any consciousness
of similarities between bodily shapes but can entail mere conscious
ness of similarities between manners of moving and behaving. Thus,
we are able to relate empathetically to a highly variant set of entities,
from other human beings to primates and mammals of all kinds
and, further, to birds and fish. Since empathy is not based on the
biological constitution of the entities at issue but on their perceptual
– visible and tangible – manners of moving, we are also able to
relate empathetically to invertebrates. This is a category which is
biologically far from our own and includes many different kinds of
beings, from butterflies and spiders to squids and octopuses. These
unfamiliar sentients are not incomprehensible to us, and are not
introduced to us first by the biosciences, but draw our attention by
their behaviors already on the level of straightforward perception.
Even simple shaped snails, worms and caterpillars stand out in our
perceptual environments by their manners of moving. Also robots,
simple mechanical dolls and animated figures are able to launch
empathetic transfer of sense in us, even though their behaviors may
not verify the transferred sense in the long run.
The third thing to be emphasized is that the resemblance between
the two bodies does not have to be total or comprehensive but can
be partial and limited. Husserl calls »dismantling« (Abbau) the partial
disregard of some of our own dimensions of embodiment and selfhood
(e.g., Husserl 1973b, p. 115–119), and argues that our possibilities of
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extending the domains of our empathy depend on our readiness for

dismantling. We can, for example, disregard our highest intellectual
and verbal capacities and performances and, on the basis of our
sensory, affective and emotive lives, form empathetic relations to
young infants and patients suffering from severe dementia. Or we
can disregard our bodily shapes and form empathetic relations to
creatures that look very different from ourselves. As an example,
Husserl refers to the talking horses described by Jonathan Swift in
Gulliver’s Travels (Husserl 1973c, p. 623), but if we want to study
the moral or ethical possibilities opened by dismantling, then a more
challenging case would be the one presented by Franz Kafka in The
Metamorphosis which pictures a human person who unexpectedly
turns into a »a monstrous vermin«. The point of such imaginary
exercises is not merely to extend or stretch our empathetic habits
so that they would cover larger areas of the animal kingdom but,
rather, to draw attention to the fact that our habits fall short already
in our dealings with fellow human beings. We easily disregard and
neglect other reflective and communicating selves on the basis of
some contingent features and our own egoistic, racist, ethnocentric,
sexist or ageistic preferences. So, the importance of the possibility of
dismantling is not just theoretical but more crucially ethical.
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Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 55–64): The

Schema »Unity-Multiplicity« as the (Not-So)
Hidden Metaphysics in Husserl’s Cartesian
Meditations
1. Introduction
In §§ 55–64 of the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, Husserl seems to make

a plain and irritating rhetorical mistake. At the very end of a complex
and many-sided speculation, which certainly already seriously chal
lenged his audience, he proceeds by introducing a completely new set
of problems that strengthen and extend the range of the previous
arguments. This unexpected broadening of the investigation goes in
two opposite directions. It touches upon problems connected to the
relationship of phenomenology with 1) the Western metaphysical
tradition and 2) contemporary empirical, psychological research. The
tension between these two fields of research is jarring. Thus in order
fully to understand the meaning of this last part of the Fifth Medita
tion, we need to overcome the misleading impression that the topics
addressed in these pages are extraneous. In this way, we will be able
to see that what really happens in these last paragraphs is a kind of
Aufhebung. The whole problematic of intersubjective experience and
the recognition of others discussed so far is taken even further, and
the argumentation experiences an authentic transformative reitera
tion.
Husserl reprises his entire argument in almost every detail
to demonstrate the availability of other subjects to our experience,
but addresses the issue on a different level. The problem of inter
subjectivity is thereby transformed into the problem of community
(Gemeinschaft); the question of the functions of the transcendental
ego evolves into the question of the definition and functioning of
monads; the problem of nature develops into the problem of the world
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as a lifeworld. These cannot be reduced to mere updates of singular

terms. They all indicate developments of paramount importance
for the future of phenomenology and will deeply influence the late
reception of Husserl’s philosophy.
At the beginning of § 55, we already face the inseparable con
nection between the question of community and the constitution of
the world as nature. Not only does it appear clear that in idealistic
terms, subjective shared performances have to guarantee the stability
of the meaning of the world, but it also makes the problem provided
by metaphysical weight more evident: the validity of nature as some
thing that we have in common (»the commonness of Nature«) relies
on and is the first result of constitution carried out »in the form of
community« (Husserl 1960, p. 120). In this context, the issue of the
relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics is revealed as
a problem internal to phenomenology. If metaphysics is intended
(from Aristotle to Kant) as the reflection on the unperceivable pre
conditions of reality, here the metaphysical questioning intersects
with and intrudes upon the phenomenological investigation of con
stitution. The metaphysical question can accordingly be unpacked as
the question of the relationship of phenomenology with itself, and
finally, as the problem of the inner limits and extended possibilities
of phenomenology per se. The problem with the appearance of
another subject in my world (and the modalities of this experience)
provides not a new specific and delimited field of investigation, but
rather a turning point intended to start a process of evolution (and
revolution) of phenomenological research as a whole. The problem of
empathy offers a basis from which to explore the hidden potential of
phenomenology in two directions that can be figuratively described
as follows: »upward,« the phenomenological inquiry develops toward
the assessment of higher metaphysical problems that had been left
out of consideration for a large part of Husserl’s thinking; »downward,
« phenomenology goes back to its foundations and considers once
again the basic psychological mechanisms that support our conscious
life in the world.
The interaction between phenomenology and psychology had
been a constant trait of Husserl’s analysis since his critique of psycho
logism in the Logical Investigations (cf. Peucker 2002; Brudzinska
2018). The actual innovation in the pages under discussion, however,
lies in the question of metaphysics. For this reason, I suggest reading
the whole text using one of the most consistent and ancient questions
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Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 55–64)
of metaphysics as a hermeneutical key: the dialectic of unity and

multiplicity.1 Clearly, this approach implies a bit of a stretch, but it
can help toward finding consistency in a text that otherwise seems to
proceed tentatively. My hypothesis is that in these final paragraphs
of the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl displays the entire argument
of the Fifth Meditation anew, but does so by implementing the
metaphysical scheme of unity and multiplicity and thereby testing
the compatibility of previous phenomenological analyses with a dis
tinct metaphysical point of view. In this context, metaphysics is not
intended as a particular doctrine, but as an operative concept in the
sense famously outlined by Eugen Fink in »Operative Begriffe in
Husserls Phänomenologie.«
The starting point for this experiment consists of a rather classic
phenomenological issue, namely, an observation regarding the struc
ture and function of experience. Husserl observes that the problem of
empathy arises when in my common encounter with others, I expect
to achieve, in one and the same experience and at the same time, two
almost opposite things: 1) to experience the other as other, i.e., as
different and separated from me; and at the same time and in the same
experience, 2) to identify the nature that I have constituted in me
though my perceptions and other conscious performances with nature
as it is constituted by and in the other (Husserl 1960, § 55, p. 126).
Barely glancing through the window, I recognize my neighbor water
ing her plants on the balcony, and I am relatively sure that 1) she is
neither myself nor my projection and that 2) she is perceiving the
same street that separates us from a different perspective, but char
acterized by solid shared orientational references.
In logical terms and as underlined by the expression »in one and
the same experience and at the same time,« this violates the classical
1 The problem of the paradoxical incompatibility of unity and multiplicity in the

consideration of being is passed down from Parmenides to Plato and spreads through
neo-Platonic philosophy up to modernity (Leibniz) and idealism. A classic source
on this all-encompassing philosophical issue is Beierwaltes 1972. Claudio Majolino
has thoughtfully reconstructed the intricate path of Platonism, middle Platonism,
neo-Platonism, and Aristotelianism in his highly original and detailed essay, »The
Infinite Academy« (Majolino 2017). Here he describes at length the old Academy
and middle-Platonic resonance of the idea that »if transcendental consciousness is
the origin ›of being and truth‹ (Husserl 1956, p. 29), such origin has undoubtedly a
one/many structure« (Majolino 2017, p. 210). Claudio Majolino also clearly indicates
the »operative« connection between constitution and Mannigfaltigkeit as a Leitmotiv
of Husserl’s phenomenology (Majolino 2012).
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principle of non-contradiction. In the same act of consciousness and

at the same time, we claim to unify (our views of the world) and
separate (our persons, which are nevertheless part of this world); we
claim to grasp the unity of the nature we hold in common and simul
taneously to separate the individual subjects, which are important
elements of this nature. This paradoxical situation motivates the
investigation into how unity and multiplicity can be held together—
without incurring contradiction— in the peculiar experience of alter
ity.
2. Unity as a nucleus of presentation (§ 55)
Following the trail provided by the connection between unifying and

separating processes, in these pages we can identify two different fig
ures of unity. The first emerges in the analysis of the structure and
elements of Fremderfahrung. At the beginning of § 55, Husserl once
again illustrates the necessary relationship and interaction
between »presentation« (Präsentation or eigentliche Wahrnehmung)
and »appresentation« (Vergegenwärtigung or Mit-Wahrnehmung) in
order to provide access to the other. Here he states that a »nucleus
(Kern) of presentation« (Husserl 1960, p. 122, trans. altered) is neces
sarily presupposed by the experience of others. Husserl’s claim is clear
and refers to phenomenology’s »principle of all principles« (Husserl
1976, § 24): experience is the givenness of something, i.e., it always
refers in some way to something that is given as itself in a conscious
act. Thus each experience entails a concentrated reference, a core in
which the thing is presented. This structure is valid for all kinds of
experience. Husserl’s expression, however, should be more closely
considered. If taken in its proper context, the term nucleus (Kern)
reveals itself as something more significant than a mere metaphorical
image. Instead, the designation »nucleus« can be better understood if
it is contrasted with the definition of alterity that occurs a few lines
above in the same passage. Husserl observes that if taken merely as
a physical body (Körper) in nature, the other appears as a »Bestim
mungsstück,« a piece of my own determination, a piece of the puzzle
that constitutes the appearance of nature for me. In the end, the other
as a mere body remains a piece of myself, of my own intuition of the
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surrounding world.2 On the contrary, however, if I take the other as a

whole, as a functioning unity, if I take its alterity seriously, the per
ceptive elements of its givenness are no longer a Stück, a piece of the
picture, static and lacking any inner relation with the active aspects of
subjectivity exceeding it, but a nucleus (Kern), i.e., a generative core,
a concentrated unity that works as a motivation and source of multiple
experiences. As a static piece of the picture, the other body is only
accidentally one. Logically, it implies a multiplicity of other pieces,
and its unity dissolves in the indifference of multiple occurrences. In
contrast, as the generative core of an alien identity, the nucleus of its
presentation is essentially one and unique. The suggested opposition
between the Kern of manifestation and the Stück of determination
mirrors the radically different status of persons and things.3
Furthermore, Husserl also notes that the genesis that brings
about the entire givenness of the other (with its Leib and Körper and its
separated original sphere) is not a temporal genesis (Husserl 1960, p.
121). The generative character of the presenting nucleus, i.e., the capa
city of the perceptive unity to generate an apperceptive multiplicity—or
as he also writes, an Überschuss, a surplus of givenness4—is not simply
articulated in time as a succession of moments. Instead, this genesis is
subject to the law of motivation (Husserl 1960, p. 122).5 The perceptive
2 The notion of Stück (piece, fraction) is an object of consideration in Husserl’s Third
Logical investigation (Husserl 1984, § 17). Here it is defined as a part in the proper
sense as distinguished from moments, which can be considered parts only through
abstraction from the whole that includes them. The main characteristic of the Stück is
therefore its separability and independence from the whole. Robert Sokolowski
stresses how this quite disregarded analysis in Husserl’s first phenomenological work
provides a structure that emerges in strategic moments of his later thinking (Soko
lowski 1977). More recently, scholars have focused on and explored the topic of mere
ology in the late Husserl (Smith and Mulligan 1982; Simons 1982).
3 I do not intend to state the opposition between Stück and Kern as part of a
determinate and coherent mereological theory, since the two terms can clearly be
traced back to different phases of the phenomenological method, the static and genetic
phase. In this passage, my attempt is to account for Husserl’s choice to use both terms in
the same description of otherness. I believe that not only is Husserl aware of the radical
difference between the two descriptions of the other in terms of Kern or Stück, but here
he is attempting to highlight an irreconcilable discrepancy in our experience of others.
4 Cairns’s translation of the German Überschuss as »the rest« (Husserl 1960, p.
122) hardly conveys the meaning of a surplus whose significance exceeds what is
directly given, of a mere perceptual appearance brimming with references to active and
conscious life, which is the proper givenness of others in the world.
5 On the concept of motivation, see Rinofner 2010; Pugliese 2018; Walsh 2013.
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unity of the other is a generative nucleus, and not a simple piece

of a picture, because it entails implicit, contracted motivations. It
concentrates in a unique core a manifold of motivational rays that will
support and lead my exploration toward the other, its expressions and
gestures, its behaviors and reactions. This also helps make sense of
Husserl’s insistence on the description of the Funktionsgemeinschaft,
the functioning community (Husserl 1960, p. 122, trans. altered)
that holds together presentation and appresentation. Presentation
and appresentation take place »zugleich« (together and at the same
time). However, this term implies not only a temporal indication,
but also a motivational one. Presentation and appresentation happen
ing »together« not only means that they occur at the same moment,
but that they are realized as the two ends of the same motivational
chain. They generate each other, thereby producing a twofold motiva
tion: they motivate us to expand the unity of the present vision into the
multiplicity of the other’s reality, and at the same time, they induce us
to collect the multiplicity of appearances of the other into the unique
grasp of it as a subject. By looking at my neighbor on her balcony, I can
immediately and unmistakably grasp her as an individuated person,
not despite the fact, but exactly because of the fact that at the same
time, I grasp the unseen multiplicity of her individual life of which I
know nothing, but which makes her her own person.
This motivational and generative view of Fremderfahrung in
terms of nuclear unity helps us rule out the puzzling hypothesis of an
Abgrund (abyss) separating the subjects that had been the starting
point of § 55. Moreover, we can dismiss at once not only the enigma
(Rätsel) of the complete separation of self and others, but the mis
leading interpretations of the other in terms of a signal (Zeichen),6 a
mere analogy, or an image or copy (Abbild) (Husserl 1960, p. 124). I
see the other in its originality. Of course, what is given in originality
is not the other as a whole. Such complete originality would dismiss
the otherness of the other. But I still have an original intuition of his
or her »Walten,« of his or her peculiar holding sway in a body—I
recognize his or her style. The concept of style as a pre-predicative
individuality that is expressed in the movements and gestures of a
living being was first widely discussed by Merleau-Ponty in Phe
nomenology of Perception in the chapter dedicated to the lived body,
and has been taken up in subsequent debates on embodiment. Here
6 On the notion of Zeichen, see D’Angelo 2019.
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we can simply resort to an example in order to summarize the fun

damental intuition that supports the idea of a peculiar identification
between the person and its own body: while the perfect body of
Michelangelo’s David cannot be treated as a fellow human being, des
pite its ideal resemblance to the human form and its beauty, I can
immediately recognize and relate to a severely injured or handicapped
subject, despite even radical deviations from bodily »normality.«
This can also be considered the Husserlian answer to the
Cartesian dualistic metaphysics of body and soul. To verify the
possibility of a phenomenological metaphysics, however, it is also
necessary to define the position of phenomenology toward classical
metaphysical theories. To this end, Husserl confronts Descartes and
Leibniz as unavoidable forerunners of a monadic theory of subjectiv
ity.7 In his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), approaching the
problem of the recognition of other subjects, Descartes resorts to
an image that can also be found in Husserlian research manuscripts
on this topic (Husserl 1973, p. 377). Descartes describes looking
through the window and seeing people going by.8 But struggling with
his encompassing doubts, he wonders whether they couldn’t just be
automatons, robots, self-moving machines hidden under these hats
and coats. This resembles the Menschen-Puppe (mannequin) example
Husserl introduces in his analyses, but with a relevant difference. For
Descartes, the moving bodies actually are machines. In The Passions
of the Soul (1649), he states that the difference between a living body
and a corpse is best exemplified by the difference between a ticking
and a broken watch (Descartes 1649, art. 6). From an ontological and
experiential point of view, it is simply the same thing, a body, which
merely changes its functional level from full to zero functioning. This
does not apply to the soul, which remains consistently separated from
the body, whether the latter is alive or dead.9
7 In Husserl, the term Seele (soul) seldom has a metaphysical connotation. In most
contexts, it refers to the psychic life of the ego.

8 »Human beings passing on in the street below, as observed from a window. In this
case I do not fail to say that I see the men themselves, just as I say that I see the wax;
and yet what do I see from the window beyond hats and cloaks that might cover arti
ficial machines, whose motions might be determined by springs?« (Descartes 1641,
§ 13).
9 »And the soul is of such a nature that it has no relation to extension, or to the
dimensions or other properties of the matter of which the body is composed: it is

related solely to the whole assemblage of the body’s organs. This is obvious from our
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To this dualistic metaphysics Husserl opposes a deeply unitary

vision of the body and the self as simultaneously expressed by and
concentrated into a recognizable Walten, a unique way of moving
and acting. He thereby dismisses the idea of the separation of the
body as a »manifestly unthinkable motivation« (offenbar undenkbare
Motivation) (Husserl 1960, p. 122, trans. altered). Once again, it is
the motivational efficacy that grounds and guarantees the unity of
the experience and finally induces and supports a kind of connection
between us.
Nevertheless, the heuristic schema we are following in order
to interpret Husserl’s final recapitulation of his intersubjectivity argu
ment is twofold. Hence the insistence on the motivational unity of
the Fremderfahrung is not meant to exclude separation. Unity and
multiplicity, coincidence and estrangement belong together and are
parts of the same dialectic. By grasping the perceptual unity of the
other, I face (vorfinden) the separation of our primordial spheres
(Husserl 1950, p. 153; Husserl 1960, p. 124). What converges into the
unitary core of perception splits once again in the intentional work of
constituting the world.
Such a separation is not of a metaphysical nature and consistency.
Instead, it is secondary and derived, and is legitimized through
its function: namely, to guarantee the transcendence of the world
through the incompatibility of our points of view on it. Separation
is justified if it allows us to refrain from believing that the world is
a simple projection of our views and wishes, precisely by pointing
out all of the discrepancies and conflicts that constantly require
intersubjective readjustment.
Husserl also mentions some meaningful and specific forms of
separation, such as the difference between normal subjects and anom
alies represented by blind or deaf people or the difference between
humans and animals as variations of my own humanity (Husserl
1960, p. 125). These observations open an independent field of inquiry
that has been investigated in Husserl’s research manuscripts as well as
inability to conceive of a half or a third of a soul, or of the extension which a soul

occupies. Nor does the soul become any smaller if we cut off some part of the body, but
it becomes completely separate from the body when we break up the assemblage of the
body’s organs« (Descartes 1649, p. 339). The difference between the body as a machine
and the soul as an indivisible principle is the foundation of the ontological difference
between res extensa and res cogitans.
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by phenomenological scholars, but cannot be further explored in the

present text.10
The contraposition presented above between the notions of Stück
and Kern has given us a first sense of how the concept of unity can be
expressed differently, as well as what theoretical and descriptive con
sequences this may have. However, at the end of the crucial and
scattered § 55, Husserl outlines a further figure that holds together
unity and multiplicity: »synthetic identification« (Husserl 1960, p.
126). This structure of synthesis, widely described in the Lectures on
Passive Synthesis (Husserl 1966, Section III), indicates a process of
unification that takes place and makes some crucial moments of con
scious life possible. Husserl mentions three examples in this regard:
the synthesis provided by temporal experience that arises by synthes
izing the constantly flowing temporal forms and contents (Zeitgestalt
and Zeitinhalt) (Husserl 1960, p. 126); the shaping of ideal objects in
which I synthesize different acts of thinking (Husserl 1960, p. 127);
and finally, the »temporal community of [...] monads« (Husserl 1960,
p. 128). With the introduction of the community of monads, we have
reached the most important figure of unity that is present and operates
in these pages: the monadic form of subjectivity.
4. The unity of the monad
The monad is defined in § 56 as the »concrete ego« (Husserl 1960, p.

128), i.e., as a subjectivity rich in content, including the manifold of
the givenness and data that constitute life.11 Husserl already intro
duces the term in 1908 (Husserl 1973, Beilage III, p. 5) by inquiring
into the meaning of consciousness as absolute.12 However, from the
beginning he takes the notion of absoluteness not primarily in the
sense of separation and independence, but rather in the sense of
inclusiveness. The absolute stream of consciousness holds (birgt in
10 See Husserl 1973, p. 134; Canguilhem 1991; Ciocan 2017; Heinämaa and Taipale
2018; Taipale 2012; Wehrle 2018.

11 An in-depth consideration of the notion of monad exceeds the limits of the present
contribution. This notion has been widely studied by several phenomenological

scholars: Altobrando 2010; Cristin 1990; Kaehler 1995; Mertens 2000; Paci 1978;
Strasser 1989; Shim 2013; Tieszen 2012.
12 »Also Bewusstsein ist das Absolute. Mein Bewusstsein ist absolutes Sein« (Husserl
1973, p. 6).
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sich) all experiences—not only real experiential occurrences, but also

merely possible appearances (Husserl 1973, p. 5). Due to this encom
passing character, absolute consciousness constitutes the whole of the
world (even in its unseen aspects). This presents us with the problem
of individuation.13 How can the consciousness entrusted with the
constitution of the whole world coincide with »my« partial and finite
consciousness? Merely empirical and contingent elements (such as
the empirical body that localizes us in space and time) do not seem
sufficient to explain the absolute individuation of a stream of con
sciousness whose constitutive functions reach far beyond individual
actual perception. The introduction of the notion of monad, with an
explicit reference to the Leibnizian tradition, represents Husserl’s
attempt to address this issue (Husserl 1973, p. 7). The monad is the
encompassing subjectivity that is not extrinsically individuated, but
experiences its individuation from the inside, by virtue of its own
multifaceted and uniquely intricate content.
The monad is a unity that includes multiplicity. Since it is such
a unique structure, and since it brings the dialectic between unity
and multiplicity into the heart of subjectivity, the monad is certainly
the decisive element of Husserl’s argumentation in these pages. Here
Husserl relies on two key terms to intend the meaning of such a »con
centrated« multiplicity: Sinn (sense) and Geltung (validity) (Husserl
1960, p. 128). The monad is »something« (or better, »someone«) that
has sense and validity for itself. The monad is an autarchic subjectivity
that does not draw its contents, meanings, and legitimation from outer
experience, from objective reality. Instead, it has singular, individu
ated meaningfulness and manifold concrete meanings in itself and
for itself.
With such a characterization, Husserl seems to converge with
the philosophical tradition that puts the monad under the sign of
separation.14 However, he proceeds to complicate the issue by distin
guishing two senses of separation. First, monads are separated in
space, due to their individual bodies. This is the most visible separ
ation, one that Husserl defines as »real« (Husserl 1960, pp. 128f.).
Monads coincide with separate bodies in space and separate realities
or identities, each one with its own name, race, gender, personal
13 »Bewusstseinsstrom, in dem sich alle Welt konstituiert. Aber das Bewusstseins
strom ist zunächst doch mein Strom« (Husserl 1973, p. 5).

14 Sakai 2002.
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history, social position, tax number. But second, monads are also
separated »reell« (Husserl 1960, pp. 128f.), i.e., under the perspective
of their inner intentional reality. In this sense, the separation implies
that their experiential flows are not really connected and that they
do not entertain any exchange. The radical anti-empiricism of the
phenomenological theory of experience implies that monads do not
receive their content from outer inputs or stimuli, but constitute
reality intentionally through their own synthetic activity emanating
from the individual ego.15 To this extent, each conscious stream is
unique and isolated from the others.
Separation therefore seems encompassing and definitive. It
becomes the actual condition of possibility of monadic singular unity.
Each monad can only preserve its unity if it remains separated,
psychically and physically, from the others, since it is only in this way
that monads can accomplish their constitutive function, which has to
emanate from their inner subjective structure.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of § 56 this metaphysical narra
tion already encounters an obstacle. The ultimate character of the
separation of the monads stumbles over something that cannot be
reabsorbed, something that resists separation. Husserl observes: »On
the other hand, this original communion [the communion of mon
ads] is not just nothing« (Husserl 1960, p. 129).
The separation is real in many senses (reell and real, psychisch
and physisch), but this does not make the unity unreal. Instead, we
will have to find a new sense of reality that will put into question the
apparently definitive character of separation.
But first we should better understand what this pretended com
munion of the monads might be. Husserl’s remark—»it is not just
nothing«—seems unsatisfying, to say the least. Nevertheless, such an
apparently casual and undetermined expression does provide a trail
for investigation. In research manuscripts from the 1930s included in
the volume Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, Husserl has recourse
to the same expression to describe the unconscious: »Versuch, als
Möglichkeit durchzudenken den Abschluss wirklich retentionaler
Wandlung mit einem Null der Wandlung—das doch nicht nichts sein
soll, sondern Sedimentiertsein in starrer Ruhe« (Husserl 2014, p. 62,
emphasis added). The unconscious is approached here not as a sub
15 This claim remains valid even in the wake of the controversial relationship of
phenomenology with empiricism (see Lohmar 1998; De Palma 2012).
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stantial fundament, but as a dimension that remains underneath con

sciousness, out of the reach of consciousness, but not as an inert thing,
not as a hidden object. It is instead a low-level, persistent activity, the
zero-grade activity, and the first imperceptible form of the activity of
consciousness.16 The expression »not just nothing« accordingly seems
to be reserved to designate a reality that is unreachable through per
ception, but can nevertheless be powerfully experienced through its
effects. My claim is that Husserl’s description of the peculiar reality of
the monad’s commonality requires a similar understanding. He char
acterizes the impalpable activity of the connecting monads as fol
lows: »Whereas, really inherently, each monad is an absolutely sep
arate unity, the ›irreal‹ intentional reaching of the other into my
primordiality is not irreal in the sense of being dreamt into it or being
present to consciousness after the fashion of a mere phantasy. Some
thing that exists is in intentional communion with something else that
exists. It is an essentially unique connectedness, an actual com
munity« (Husserl 1960, p. 129). Usually, social community is repres
ented as a higher-level product of our intentional life. Further on in
this text (§ 58), Husserl will describe community with the famous
expression »personalities of a higher order« (Husserl 1960, p. 132),
thereby implying that the constitution of societies, structured cul
tures, groups, and associations requires higher-level cognitive skills,
refined verbal articulation, and a complex web of acts and exchanges.
All of these are objects of political sciences, sociology, and other social
sciences. Still, the phenomenological analysis sheds light on a pre-
level of monadic communication, a dimension of intersubjective con
nection that is non-objectified, pre-predicative, but highly effective in
shaping the shared world. At this level of description, the community
of the monads appears as the »unconscious« level of our individual,
monadic life.17 As the unconscious, monadic commonality is not just
nothing, yet it cannot be articulated and described in the form of social
16 The question of the Husserlian interpretation of the unconscious as part of his
theory of consciousness and the consequences for a possible relationship between

phenomenology and psychoanalysis have been deeply studied by Rudolf Bernet
(Bernet 1997, 2013) and Jagna Brudzinska (Brudzinska 2020a, 2020b). These authors
have shown that while Husserl himself seems to identify the unconscious with
the pre-egological and pre-predicative levels of consciousness, there are reasons
to compare the phenomenological unconscious with the results of psychoanalysis.
However, such an intent clearly exceeds the limits of the present paper.
17 Enzo Paci, who was already working on Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts on
intersubjectivity in the 1950s (the first in Italy to do so), describes the monads as
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structures, institutions, or rituals; instead, it is a form of co-belonging

that works within us and shapes both our access to the world and our
self-consciousness without us noticing it. In § 58, referring to cultural
life, Husserl goes on to provide a more concrete content to this intu
ition: a functioning community, connected to and acting in a specific
world, is the necessary presupposition for each person to develop a
cultural world, to grasp its specific predicates, to understand its mean
ing, and to transform oneself and the environment. »A presupposition
for the origin of such predicates [cultural predicates] in the particular
subjects […] is, consequently, that a community of men […] is already
constituted. With this continual change in the human life-world,
manifestly the men themselves also change as persons« (Husserl 1960,
p. 135). Personal, individual transformation is rooted in and dependent
on the constant transformation of the lifeworld, and the latter can only
be the constitutive product of a community. This explains the often
tragic character of social innovation, which is rarely a simple and
peaceful intuition of new possibilities of life and far more often a scary
personal struggle to defeat the shaping authority of established tra
ditions that are active, first of all, within ourselves. The community
of monads constitutes us and works seamlessly, leading us toward
certain possibilities and blocking others. And the unconscious pul
sions involved do not imply determinism, but characterize human life
as a conflictual and laborious undertaking.
This is also the meaning of the characterization of the monadic
community as an »actual (wirkliche) community« (Husserl 1960, p.
129). Immediately after insisting that the separation of the monads is
substantial in the sense both of reell and real, Husserl introduces the
notion of wirklich to indicate the community of the monads. We are
witnessing here the return of the initial thesis of the originality of
separation. As he has stated at the beginning of this explanation, the
monad has its sense and validity in itself and for itself, but in order to
grasp the sense and validity of its own lifeworld, of the concrete, real
horizon of its life (which not only includes, but essentially relies on
cultural and historical meanings), the monad must refer back to an
encompassing community. The community is therefore real in a rein
forced sense: it is effective, and its effect consists in making the world
and the concrete, historical, human life in it transcendentally possible.
single islands and the monadic commonality as the common underwater ground that
invisibly connects, grounds, and nourishes the islands themselves (Paci 1961, p. 250).
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Husserl therefore concludes (§ 60) that to conceive »separate plural

ities of monads, i.e. pluralities not in communion« (Husserl 1960, p.
140) is pointless: »pure absurdity« (Husserl 1960, p. 140). Separation
is not final. This can be considered his response to Leibniz, who is
explicitly mentioned shortly after with regard to the possibility or
compossibility of infinite monadic worlds (Husserl 1960, p. 140).
However, Husserl actually agrees with Leibniz on a fundamental
aspect of monadology.18 By describing the peculiar reciprocity that
grounds monads’ communality, he implicitly returns to the Leibnizian
theory of implication, i.e., the idea that truth is characterized by
the predicate’s being included in the subject. In Leibniz’s ontological
terms, this implies that every individual substance contains in its
complete notion the entire universe and everything that exists in
it—»past, present, and future« (Leibniz 1989, First Truths, art. 6).19
Implementing this line of thought, Husserl observes that by investig
ating the inner world of the other, exploring his or her »horizon of
ownness […] I shall soon run into« myself (Husserl 1960, p. 130). My
bodily appearance is included in the other’s perceptual horizon, just
as his or hers is included in mine. We are reciprocally included. Our
monads are reciprocally implied. As Leibniz insists, inherence is the
only principle of truth.
The key to such implication—one that offers the possibility of
understanding this surprising kind of unity—lies in what Husserl
calls »a mediatedness that may be conceived as reiterable« (Husserl
1960, p. 130). The unity represented by the monads’ communality
is not static and not fusional. It includes mediation, i.e., structured,
complex relationships, that constantly grow, repeat, and transform
themselves. The monads’ community is thus not a unity of perfect and
complete actuality, but includes shadows, opaqueness, imperfections,
18 In his lectures on Leibniz and Husserl, Enzo Paci, commenting on this passage of
the Cartesian Meditations, emphasizes that Husserl refers not simply to Leibniz, but
to Leibniz as he would have been today, in the wake of the results of modern science
(Paci 1978, p. 8).
19 In the C 2 manuscripts, Husserl attempts to study the ego by explicitly referring
to a structure of implication: »Ich in meiner Urmodalität und den nachmodalen

Implikationen« (Husserl 2006, p. 20). This investigation finds its climax in the
monadological approach: »Implikation der Totalität des Universums der Monaden mit
ihren Ichpolen, jede als identische in allen Implikationen, in allen intersubjektiven
Akten in ihrer universalen inneren Implikation. Ich fungiere als Pol der Akte und
Habitualitäten und in Gemeinschaft, aktuell und potentiell—das Miteinander der
personalen Ich« (Husserl 2006, p. 20).
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conflicts, and unexpressed potentiality. For this reason, not only

the »open community of monads, which we designate as transcend
ental intersubjectivity« (Husserl 1960, p. 130), but even the single
other that I face arises as a realm of »endless« accessibility (Husserl
1960, p. 131). The other can be infinitely explored. He is, at the same
time, accessible (i.e., knowable, understandable) and an unfathomable
mystery.
Here Husserl outlines this paradox with an apparently simple
colloquial expression that can, however, be further interrogated. He
writes that the other can be accessed »badly and well, although mostly
badly« (schlecht und recht, wenn auch zumeist eben schlecht) (Husserl
1950, § 56, p. 159). In our empirical life, i.e., in the natural attitude in
which we live and to which we cling most of the time, our access to
others is in reality bad, confused, partial, and biased. Nevertheless, on
the transcendental level—the level that we seldom reach, the dimen
sion that we achieve only when we exercise the epochē and stay within
the limits of the reduction—we have a potentially unrestricted access
to the other monad. There are no contents that are in principle inac
cessible to one another. We can improve our knowledge of the others
by extended exchange, common experience, sharing projects, and liv
ing together in general. This access relies not only on reiteration, but
in a more subtle way on the intertwining of, and the continual shift
between, the »realm of actuality« and the »realm of possibil
ity« (Husserl 1960, p. 130). We learn to know each other not only in
the repetition of actual experiences, but in the exploration of possib
ilities by means of imagination, phantasy, creativity, challenges, and
conflict. We then draw from the hidden, anonymous performances of
consciousness (»verborgene Leistungen«) (Husserl 1960, p. 153)
through which our commonality is constantly constituted.
5. Conclusions: Phenomenology and metaphysics
The distinction between the real and the transcendental dimension of

subjective and intersubjective life leads to a final consideration of the
relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics.20 In § 60,
20 The problem of a phenomenological metaphysics has been intensely investigated.
A classic reference for this debate is Zahavi’s discussion of the thesis of the metaphys
ical neutrality of phenomenology in Zahavi 2003 and more recently in Zahavi 2017.
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Husserl explicitly claims the feasibility of a phenomenological meta

physics as opposed to »historically degenerate metaphysics« (Husserl
1960, p. 139).21 At the same time, he opposes phenomenology as »first
philosophy« to all »›metaphysical adventure,‹ all speculative
excesses« (Husserl 1960, p. 139). Phenomenology aspires to be an
intuitive, concrete, and apodictic philosophy, as opposed to other
philosophies that are abstract and merely conceptual theories. But
how shall such a first philosophy be realized?
In § 59, it was already stated that radical philosophy should elu
cidate the world »by virtue of the ultimate and most concrete essential
necessities« (Husserl 1960, p. 137). To this end, phenomenology
traces the world back to its roots, i.e., to the subjective performances
of constitution. Hence the question about the world is transformed
into the question about the sense of the world, and the question about
ontology develops into the question of constitution. We thereby over
come the »one-sided« task of formulating an »apriori ontology of the
real world« (Husserl 1960, p. 137), and consequently, we maintain a
distance from traditional questioning about the essence or the reality
of the given world. These finally appear as interrogatives that are »not
philosophical in the final sense« (Husserl 1960, p. 137). Ontology can
clarify some fundamental regions of ontic reality such as nature,
animality, or sociality, but it cannot reach any ultimate clarity or total
truth because it misses the transcendental revolution. Ontology
focuses on distinct regions of being and on the layers that compose
the world. But in this way, it ignores the unitary origin of the sense of
being that lies in the constituting transcendental subjectivity.22
Referring back to the heuristic hypothesis centered on unity
and multiplicity, we can say that ontology remains on the level of
multiplicity, i.e., on the level of plural facts and things, and does not
reach the intuition of the authentic unity of all constituted objects and
appearances concentrated within the constituting monadic subjectiv
ity.
With specific regard to Husserl’s position in the Cartesian Meditations, we refer to

Daniele De Santis’s in-depth analysis of § 60 in De Santis 2018. And in the »Preface« to
his recent Italian translation of the Cartesian Meditations, Altobrando claims that the
metaphysical interest in teleology, meant as the question about »the sense of life,
« should be taken as the fil rouge of the Meditations (Altobrando 2017).
21 It is plausible that Husserl is here echoing Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology in
Sein und Zeit (1927).

22 On the relationship between phenomenology and ontology, see Benoist 1997.
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In § 60, Husserl formulates the first principle of the phenomen

ological metaphysics he announces. In this formulation, he finally
sides with Descartes against Leibniz. As Husserl recognizes, Leibniz
provides the most radical representation of plurality, introducing the
idea of the incompossibility of different monadic worlds. This idea
challenges us with a disturbing image of plurality and dispersion as
constituting structures of the universe. By virtue of their monadic
character, all thinkable different worlds are not simply divided into
real and merely possible worlds. They are not merely separated by the
distinction between reality and possibility, but are radically incom
possible, and can only exist in a regime of reciprocal exclusion, even
on the level of pure possibility.
However, for Husserl, plurality and separation is not the last
word. After recognizing Leibniz’s genius, he finally implicitly sides
with Descartes. It is the fundamentally unitary fact that »I am« that
makes the endless plurality of monadic worlds intelligible: »the fact, ›I
am,’ prescribes whether other monads are others for me and what
they are for me« (Husserl 1960, p. 141). The primal fact of the
constituting subjectivity provides the criterion that rules over both
the separation of the monads (whether they are differentiable) and
their compossibility (whether they are others for me). It is the unity
of the ego functioning as a center that initiates the original distinction
between me and others. The Cartesian root of this metaphysical
vision is manifest. In the Second Metaphysical Meditation, before
developing his metaphysical constructs concerning the existence and
function of God, the soul-body dualism, and non-empirical science,
Descartes grasps an intuition that is expressed beyond any further
reasoning in the primal and almost astonished revelation: »I am, I
exist«23 (Descartes 1641, Meditation II). Descartes’s original formula
tion shows no trace of a syllogism. The ego is given in an intuition, and
everything else is given to me in the horizon of my thinking, within
the scope of this original intuition.
Husserl’s metaphysics finally hinges upon the same original
intuition of the constituting subjectivity as primary unity, pluripotent
core, universal point of implication. The monadic life gathers within
itself the endless multiplicity of the real and possible worlds. As
23 »So that after having reflected well and carefully examined all things, we must come
to the definite conclusion that this proposition: I am, I exist, is necessarily true each
time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it« (Descartes 1641, Meditation II).
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Alice Pugliese
explained in § 61, the work of constitution consists in disclosing the

ego, explicating the plurality entailed, and expounding the manifold
aspects of the world implied in the monad. This operation grounds
the »transcendental ›metaphysics‹« (Husserl 1960, p. 144), which
finally appears as nothing other than the ultimate defeat of psycho
logism. Hence Husserl claims a full continuity of his philosophical
enterprise from the Logical Investigations up to the Cartesian Medit
ations and insists that psychologism is not overcome by giving up and
obscuring subjectivity, but on the contrary by individuating a more
sound foundation, i.e., by grounding the sense of the empirical psyche
on the more radical idea of the monadic ego.
Nevertheless, Husserl’s first philosophy cannot be reduced to a
repetition of a rationalist view of subjectivity (either in the Cartesian
or in the Leibnizian sense). His philosophical work relies on a further
intuition that moves phenomenology away from classical modern
philosophy. In his concluding remarks, Husserl goes back to the
essentially Cartesian goal of finding a solid ground (Boden) for science
in evidence (Husserl 1950, § 63, p. 151).24 However, in his attempt
radically to pursue apodictic knowledge, he is forced to put into ques
tion the basis of his enterprise, the principle of evidence. In this way,
he comes to recognize that evidence is not singular. In 1929 Husserl
had published Formale und transzendentale Logik as volume X of the
Jahrbuch. Here what is broadly explored is not only the differentiation
of evidence, its stratification and meaning with respect to intentional
experience, but also the theory of multiplicity.25 We can draw upon
these analyses to understand how the significance of the primal rev
elation of the I can only be made operative by translating it back into
plurality, i.e., by describing the different modes and degrees of plural
and differentiated evidence.
The full scientific effort thereby emerges in a dual direction. The
core of the egological and monadic intuition leads us to unity, while
the daily work of science and knowledge brings us back to the multi
plicity of determinations. In order to recognize the necessity of both
lines of work and to hold them together, phenomenology, as first
24 For a very detailed reconstruction of Husserl’s critique of Descartes’s conception of
evidence, see Heffernan 1997. De Warren too finds that the key to Husserl’s long-last
ing dialogue with Descartes lies in the »critique of the immanence of evidence« (De
Warren 2015).
25 Bachelard 1968; Hartimo 2018; Lohmar 2000.
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philosophy, not only has to be critical of natural knowledge and its

prejudices, but has to reach the further level of a second-level critique
(Husserl 1960, § 63, p. 152).26 The strong idealist position defended
from the beginning of the Meditations, as well as the underlying con
frontation with modern philosophy that characterizes these pages,
suggest that the notion of critique in this context should be understood
in a Kantian way.27 As a higher-order critique, then, phenomenology
is a philosophical undertaking that aims to unfold the preconditions
of the constitution of the world. As Fink will point out in his Sixth
Cartesian Meditation (1930–32), phenomenology, which is based on
the peculiar attitude of questioning back (Rückfrage), is meant to reit
erate itself. Its encompassing character is dynamic in nature: it implies
a constant effort of self-comprehension (Selbst-Verständigung) and
simultaneously self-explication (Selbst-Auslegung). Phenomenology
lives off a pulsating movement that first lets it unfold in detailed
description and then lets it concentrate again on the clarity of the ego.
Following this inexhaustible movement, it appears that the way up—
toward the unity of the monad—and the way down—toward the irre
ducible multiplicity of the qualitatively different evidences in which
the monad explicates itself and constitutes the world—are one and the
same.28 Phenomenology as a transcendental metaphysics begins by
taking this intuition seriously and engaging in the meticulous work
that this primal intuition demands.
26 In his Sixth Meditation, unpublished during his lifetime (though shared with
others), Fink develops this intuition into the idea of »phenomenology of phenomeno
logy,« i.e., a meta-critical phenomenology that must constantly rediscover its presup
positions (Fink 1988, p. 9). Sebastian Luft has explored the idea of the »phenomeno
logy of phenomenology« in Luft 2002.
27 There are many important studies on the relationship of Husserl’s phenomenology
with Kantian critical philosophy: Jansen 2016; Kern 1964; Lohmar 1998. Recently,
Aldea has explored the possibility of a more substantial understanding of phenome
nology as transcendental-historical critique (Aldea 2016).
28 The Heraclitean resonance of such concluding remarks can rely on Husserl’s
awareness of the closeness of his philosophy to the ancient thinker, as is testified by

manuscript C 2, in which Husserl explicitly refers to Heraclitus to explain his intuition
of consciousness as a flux (Husserl 2006, p. 2).
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Danilo Manca
Eugen Fink and the Hegelian Motifs Underlying

Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations1
In a letter to Daniel Feuling dated March 30, 1933, Husserl rejects the
idea that Fink can be considered a »Hegelian« who influenced him to
such an extent as to introduce into phenomenology »new intellectual
motifs« originally »alien to the consistent thrust« of the development
of his thought. Rather, Husserl firmly emphasizes that they have
thought and worked together for five years »like two communicating
vessels« (Husserl 1994, vol. III/7, p. 89).
Most likely, a psychoanalyst would be able to demonstrate that
Husserl is here affirming what he apparently denies. However, I
would like to take his words seriously, for in this contribution, I will
not be looking for Hegelian motifs that Fink may have introduced into
Husserlian phenomenology from the outside. More radically, I will
show to what extent such Hegelian motifs were already underlying
some crucial unresolved problems of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations,
and Fink’s merit was that of bringing them to light. In particular, I
will focus on three aspects. In the first section, I will address the issue
of the transition from the natural to the transcendental attitude. In
the second, I will turn my attention to the splitting of the ego that
follows the actualization of the phenomenological epochē. Finally,
I will deal with the unconscious dimension of constituting life and
the way in which phenomenology arrives at the thematization of its
own method.
To strengthen my claim, let me preliminarily observe that Fink
risks appearing not only as a Hegelian, but also as a Kantian (in light
of the architectonic vision of phenomenology that leads him to distin
guish a doctrine of method from that of elements); as a Fichtean (due
1 To Ronald Bruzina (1936–2019), who some years ago generously spoke about Fink,
Hegel, and Husserl with a very unwary MA student during a dinner after a Ph.D.
dissertation discussion.
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to his emphasis upon the problem of the I’s motivation); and possibly
even as a Schellingean (insofar as he advocates a description of the
Absolute as a substance). This is further evidence that his interest
in German classical philosophy does not amount to a systematic
appropriation either of Hegel’s philosophy or of the perspectives of
the other representatives of that flourishing epoch of the history of
philosophy that is classical German philosophy—as Husserl himself
longingly described it in a letter to Rickert, after reading Windelband’s
historiographical reconstruction (see Husserl 1994, vol. III/5, p. 179).
Fink only uses Hegel’s vocabulary, arguments, and methods in aiming
to bring to light issues that operate in Husserl’s Cartesian Mediations
without being made adequately thematic.2
1. The sublation of the natural attitude
Beginning with his dissertation on Presentification and Image, Fink

repeatedly raises the problem of the beginnings of phenomenology
(see Fink 1966, pp. 1–18). In terms of the Sixth Meditation, what is at
issue is »not only how phenomenologizing comes about as the per
formance of the reduction, but why it takes place at all« (Fink 1988a,
§ 5, p. 33/30).3
As Hegel explains in an introductory chapter of his Science of
Logic entitled »With what must science begin?,« a condition for test
ing the scientific starting point of philosophical cognition is to ensure
that the beginning »remains immanent« in the science’s development
and thus »to consider, or rather, setting aside every reflection, simply
to take up, what is there before us« (Hegel 1985, p. 55/47). In other
words, philosophical investigation should be presuppositionless. For
Hegel, the path he took in his Phenomenology of Spirit is a warranty
2 Here I will set aside the issue of Heidegger’s influence on Fink’s reading of Hegel,
but we should take into account that as Husserl himself recalls in his letter to
Feuling, Fink attended various courses with Heidegger, and in particular one on Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit (1930/31). On this and for a general introduction to Fink’s
phenomenology, see Bruzina 2009. For an accurate reconstruction of the dialogue
between Fink and Husserl on how to modify the Cartesian Meditations, see van
Kerckhoven 2003.
3 Hereafter in references to works by Fink, Hegel, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricœur,
and Derrida, the page number of the English translation follows the corresponding
page number of the original edition after a slash.
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Eugen Fink and the Hegelian Motifs Underlying Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations
for that. Indeed, here Hegel starts from the natural representation of
the world, a representation on which consciousness straightforwardly
relies every day without ever making it thematic.
Hegel’s depiction of natural consciousness is quite similar to
Husserl’s. Both thinkers hold that consciousness is so compulsive and
rushed that it is scarcely able to transform its ordinary habits and
beliefs.4 The point of divergence lies in the fact that in the Phenomen
ology of Spirit, Hegel attempts to demonstrate how the motivation to
progress from love of wisdom to wisdom itself, and thereby to philo
sophical science, arises from within the natural representation by
means of a self-generating scepticism directed towards the main
assumptions of ordinary life (see Hegel 1980, p. 56/52). In contrast,
in the phenomenological perspective, the absence of presuppositions
seems to be strictly linked to the capability of performing the epochē.
In Husserl’s many introductions to his phenomenology, the phe
nomenological epochē always seems to be pregiven as already per
formed by the author. Husserl explains what the epochē consists in,
but it is more difficult to comprehend how and why mundane sub
jectivity decides to perform it. This is the problem that Fink highlights
when wondering whether the grounds for the phenomenologist’s
motivation »already lie within the natural attitude«. With the aim of
answering this, Fink claims that »the human being’s self-reflection
first becomes a way into the transcendental attitude when it is ›rad
icalized‹ in such a way that is precisely not possible in the natural
attitude, namely, in such a way that the sublation (Aufhebung) of the
natural attitude occurs« (Fink 1988a, § 5, pp. 35–36/32).5
Here unlike Husserl, who in §§ 12–15 of the Cartesian Medita
tions insists on the difference between the natural reflection of the
mundane ego and the transcendental reflection of the phenomenolo
gist, Fink highlights the continuity. The motivation for performing the
epochē arises from a modification of the natural human need for self-
4 See Hegel 1970, § 3. I compare Hegel’s and Husserl’s accounts of natural conscious
ness in Manca 2016.

5 Bruzina employs various terms in order to translate »Aufhebung« or »auf
heben,« such as »annulment« (Fink 1988a, pp. 35–36/32), »to nullify« (p. 44/40),
or »to annul« (p. 117/106), and he only occasionally uses »sublation« (p. 129/118).
However, I have opted for »sublation« or »to sublate,« as is traditionally used in
Hegel studies, and have silently substituted the latter term in quotations from the VI.
Cartesianische Meditation. On Hegel’s concept of ›Aufhebung,‹ see Houlgate 2006,
pp. 301–303.
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comprehension. Such a modification consists in an inhibition of

humans’ practical interests and in a neutralization of any position
regarding the existence of objects and states of affairs that the phe
nomenologist describes. This is why Fink is so interested in the exper
iences of presentification, imagination, and image-consciousness.
While perception nourishes our beliefs because it requires the
acknowledgement of the actuality of the perceived object, these other
experiences lead us into the sphere of as-if actuality.6 In this way they
already surreptitiously train our capacity of neutralizing our practical
interests within the horizon of the lifeworld itself. Hence the decision
to perform the epochē emerges out of the correspondence between the
desire for self-comprehension and the impulse to emancipate
ourselves from the way we routinely live. This explains what Fink
means when he speaks of a radicalization.
In a conversation with Dorion Cairns dated November 4, 1931,
Fink points out that the phenomenological epochē has to be regarded
as a catastrophic event in the history of the world. Cairns reports that
at this point Fink quoted Hegel’s expression »philosophy is Zugrunde
gehen« (Cairns 1976, p. 50). Literally, the expression has a twofold
meaning: to go to ruin, but also to go to the foundation of something.
Hegel employs it in the Science of Logic with the aim of explicating
a twofold movement of logical thinking: as it seeks the ground for
being, it finds out that there is no concealed substrate underlying what
appears; in other words, the truth about what is at the basis of being
is that there is no ground for it. In this way logical thinking brings
about the ruin of its own assumptions, but it does so by delving deeply
into them.7 This is a profoundly phenomenological view that Fink
wittily appropriates. And when Fink refers to the radicalization that
humans’ self-comprehension would have to undergo in order to adopt
the transcendental attitude, he most likely means that, on the one
hand, philosophical reflection brings about the ruin of the lifeworld
because it breaks with the way we routinely live, but on the other hand,
it simultaneously points to the roots of the world-constitution that we
are unconsciously carrying out with our natural behaviour.
6 On the peculiarity of imagination with respect to perception in Husserl’s perspective
(in comparison and contrast with Hegel), see Ferrarin 2019b.

7 The reference is to Hegel 1978, pp. 291–309/386–404. On this issue see
Guzzoni 1982.
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This is strictly connected to the meaning of the term »Auf

hebung.« As is widely known, the reason why Hegel takes »to sub
late« (Aufheben) as one of the most representative speculative terms
at the disposal of philosophical thinking is that it means »to preserve
(aufbewahren), to maintain (erhalten), and equally it also means to
cause to cease (aufhören lassen), to put an end to (ein Ende machen)
« (Hegel 1985, pp. 94/81, trans. slightly modified). In other words,
the term refers to a process of mediation in which something gets lost
and something else is conversely preserved. In employing this notion,
Fink evidently thinks that the radicalization of humans’ self-compre
hension that effects the transcendental shift is a case of such a process.8
What is dissolved through it? What is to be preserved? And how?
What is to be dissolved in the transition from the natural to the
transcendental attitude is the captivation of the world that character
izes the ordinary way of living (see Fink 1988a, § 5, pp. 37–47/34–
42). Fink describes the situation of mundane subjectivity as a sort of
enchantment. We dwell in our lifeworld without being able to them
atize the horizon of all being. This prevents us from understanding
that any comportment we routinely adopt, any position we take, and
all the beliefs that determine our choices can be included in a unitary
way of living that both Husserl and Fink define as the world-thesis
(Weltthesis). The captivation in which natural consciousness routinely
lives leads Fink to compare the lifeworld with Plato’s cave (see the
essay »Was will die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls?« in Fink
1966, pp. 161–162). But in contrast to the latter, the situation in which
mundane subjects live is not so uncomfortable; thus it is quite difficult
for a desire to free oneself to emerge. On the other hand, by digging
latently in one’s consciousness like a mole (to use a Hegelian meta
phor),9 a desire as such is inevitably what motivates that painful
upheaval for a captivated subjectivity that is nevertheless able to pen
etrate to the roots of world-constitution.
8 In Fink’s preparatory manuscripts we find evidence that he carefully studied the

first paragraphs of Hegel’s Science of Logic, where the remark on the meaning of the
term »Aufhebung« appears; see Fink 2006, pp. 313–314; Fink 2008, pp. 147, 269–
270, 283–285, 308–309. For an interpretation of Fink’s reading of these paragraphs,
see Finetti 2015.
9 By quoting a passage from Hamlet’s invocation of his father’s ghost at the end
of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel likens spirit to a mole working
inwardly in history (see Hegel 1971, p. 456/546). On this metaphor, see Bodei 2014. In
Manca 2019, I compare Hegel’s thesis of spirit’s unconscious operation in history with
Husserl’s view of the way in which reason unfolds itself over the history of philosophy.
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Regarding what is preserved in the transition from the natural to

the transcendental attitude, Fink is less clear. He stresses that after the
actualization of the epochē, the natural attitude is seen as a moment
of constituting life, thereby becoming a concept within the transcend
ental framework. More specifically, the phenomenologist recognizes
that the natural attitude is the »fundamental mode« (Grundmodus)
in which world-constituting life operates (Fink 1988b, p. 104). This
has to be called »fundamental« for at least two reasons. First of all,
most of one’s life is spent in this naive situation, a situation that
leaves us in self-concealment regarding our status as constituting
agents. Second, as the ego takes up the transcendental attitude, its
natural constituting activity is integrated with the descriptive and
self-clarifying perspective.
In light of this, we might claim that after performing the epochē,
what is preserved is the ego’s history. In § 32 of the Cartesian Medit
ations, Husserl describes the ego as a substrate of habitualities. Each
behaviour of the ego somehow remains sedimented in one’s life; if the
ego abandons a position, it is still a part of the ego’s personal history,
although now bearing the stamp of that which was rejected. Thus in
order to say that the upheaval generated by the exercise of the epochē
was successful, we need to recognize ourselves after this transforma
tion; our previous behaviour and beliefs must still be recognizable as
assuming the general thesis of the world, now tagged as sublated. In
Hegel’s terms, we might claim that the transcendental attitude has to
become second nature for the phenomenologist. This suggests that
with its adoption, the phenomenologist transforms what he or she
knows about his or her life, but this does not affect the way in which
a subject in general integrates new knowledge in its life. What the
phenomenologist acquires with the epochē is one habit among others,
with its limits and potentialities, even if such a habit is radical and
difficult to gain.10
10 In Manca 2017, I explore Husserl’s appropriation of Aristotle’s notion of hexis
for defending his conception of subjectivity as a substrate of habitualities. See

Ferrarin 2017, for a comparison between Hegel’s and Husserl’s notions of the ego that
considers both Hegel’s theory of the emergence of the I out of a natural and habitual
sphere and Husserl’s insistence on a passive and anonymous ego-less subjectivity. In
general, regarding the relation between ego and subjectivity in Hegel’s thought, see
Ferrarin 2019a.
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2. The sublation of the disinterested onlooker
As the phenomenological approach to life becomes second nature—

that is, »an altered, continually maintained attitude«—a »splitting of
the ego« occurs (Husserl 1950, § 15, p. 73/35). But unlike Husserl,
who in the latter passage explicitly distinguishes only »the naively
interested ego« from the »disinterested onlooker« generated by the
epochē, Fink emphasizes the peculiarity of constituting life as a third
component: »The phenomenologizing I of reflection stands in stronger
contrast to the transcendental life it thematizes in its movement of
world-constitution than an I of reflection in the natural attitude ever
does to the egoic life that is reflectively grasped« (Fink 1988a, § 2, p.
12/12). As I have already pointed out, in ordinary life, natural con
sciousness takes an active part in the process of world-constitution.
However, it is not aware of this. This entails that even once natural
consciousness reflects on itself, it remains in the naive horizon of the
lifeworld. In contrast, once consciousness performs the epochē, it
takes a new distance from its own life. This allows consciousness to
thematize the transcendental constituting life of which it is regularly
part, but this consequently contributes to generating the impression
that the product of the phenomenological epochē is an artificial con
sciousness, uprooted from the natural soil it arises out of (as Merleau-
Ponty reproaches Husserl, referring to Ideas II, § 49d11). Fink is trying
to avoid this appearance.
11 In § 49d of Ideas II, Husserl clarifies on the one hand that the new attitude arising
out of the actualization of the epochē remains »natural« (natürlich), albeit it cannot
be said to be »natural« (natural) in the sense of the natural sciences. In other words,
it is spontaneous and not naturalistic. On the other hand, Husserl acknowledges that
the attitude directed towards the pure consciousness is »artificial« (künstlich) (Husserl
1952, p. 180/189). This leads Merleau-Ponty (1960, p. 163/164) to observe that »there
is a preparation for phenomenology in the natural attitude. It is the natural attitude
which, by reiterating its own procedures, seesaws in phenomenology. It is the natural
attitude itself which goes beyond itself in phenomenology – and so it does not go
beyond itself. Reciprocally, the transcendental attitude is still and in spite of
everything ›natural‹ (natürlich).« Merleau-Ponty too sees a dialectical process at stake
in the transition from the natural to the transcendental attitude. However, instead of
insisting on the link between the transcendental and the human subjectivity, he takes
Husserl’s reference to the naturality (or spontaneity) of the transcendental attitude as
an unconscious discovery of the organic origin of phenomenological subjectivity. This
would lead us to study another perspective. However, Fink’s and Merleau-Ponty’s dif
ferent (but not necessarily conflicting) ways of conceiving the unconscious functioning
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First of all, Fink notices that »in the universal epochē, in the dis
connection of all belief-positings, the phenomenological onlooker
produces himself« (Fink 1988a, § 5, p. 43/39). How could this be
possible? Indeed, before performing the epochē, there would be no
disinterested subject at work. Fink explains that effectively »man un-
humanizes himself in performing the epochē,« but this has to be
regarded as a disposition that human beings potentially have at their
disposal from the onset – it just needs to be activated. »The tran
scendental tendency that awakens in man and drives him to inhibit
all acceptedness sublates man himself« (Fink 1988a, p. 44/39–40).
However, this onlooker into which the human being passes »does not
first come to be by the epochē, but is only freed of the shrouding cover
of human being (Menschsein)« (Fink 1988a, 44/40). In other words,
the phenomenological epochē should more accurately be compared to
the moment of the phenomenologizing disinterested I’s maturity
rather than to that of its birth. This not only explains why the phe
nomenological onlooker produces himself or herself, but also leads
Fink to argue as follows:
But the coming-to-itself of the phenomenological onlooker only makes
possible a more fundamental coming-to-oneself: in the cognitive life
of the phenomenologizing I transcendental subjectivity comes to itself
as constituting. In other words, the onlooker is only the functional
exponent of transcendentally constituting life, an exponent that of
course does not itself in turn perform a constituting action but pre
cisely through its transcendental differentness makes self-conscious
ness (becoming-for-oneself) possible for constituting subjectivity.
(Fink 1988a, p. 44/40)
Here Fink attempts to keep Husserl’s distinction between the naively
interested ego and the disinterested onlooker from an assumption that
seems to evoke Schopenhauer’s conviction that contemplation is the
opposite of agency and the will to live. In the Phenomenology of
Spirit, Hegel describes the job of the philosopher as aiming to recollect
the different steps of humankind’s development over the course of
history without adding anything of his or her own; he accordingly
states that the task that remains to the philosopher is »purely to look
on« (reines Zusehen) (Hegel 1980, p. 59/56). This seems quite close
of constituting life deserve to be integrated in a more articulated view of phenomen

ology, which would facilitate the dialogue with Hegel. See Bruzina 2002, for an initial
attempt to investigate the influence of Fink’s work on Merleau-Ponty’s thought.
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to Husserl’s depiction of the activity of the disinterested onlooker as

the one whose sole interest is »to see and to describe adequately what
he sees, purely as seen, as what is seen and seen in such and such a
manner« (Husserl 1950, § 15, p. 73/35). Hegel emphasizes that »pure
looking at« is the hardest and highest activity of thinking. Indeed, no
action is more difficult than that of restraining oneself from taking
part in a process one knows oneself to be inevitably a part of. This is
exactly the way in which we have to understand Fink’s explanation:
the onlooker is the only function exponent of the transcendental con
stituting life. It is one with the process of world-constitution. And yet
the onlooker distances himself or herself from such a process in order
to gain an overview of it. Thus in a perfect Hegelian fashion, when the
new experience makes the previous one thematic, the onlooker’s aim
is to produce a transcendental experience of the ordinary experience
in which the constituting life conceals itself.
Moreover, this is not Fink’s last word. Given that in spite of him
self or herself, the disinterested onlooker is part of the very process
he or she is attempting purely to observe, he or she cannot be regarded
as the final aim of the phenomenologizing activity. The phenomeno
logist serves constituting life by allowing it to gain self-consciousness.
In this way the adoption of the transcendental attitude is a historical
conquest: it is one with the moment in which humankind acquires
self-awareness of the meaning of its history, and thereby it is decisive
for world-constitution. To Fink, this entails that »before the phe
nomenological reduction transcendental world-constitution […] is
the ›Absolute‹ in phenomenological understanding,« but »after the
reduction« world-constitution »can no longer alone be designated as
the Absolute.« This is rather, and more precisely, »the unity of tran
scendental constitution and the transcendental process of phenomen
ologizing.« That is, »the Absolute is the overarching total unity of
transcendental life as a whole, which in itself is articulated into oppos
ite«, namely, on one side the constituting life, on the other side the
phenomenologizing life: »the Absolute is the synthetic unity of anti
thetic moments« (Fink 1988a, § 11c, p. 157/142).
Hegel’s influence is obviously very pervasive in these speculative
arguments. Fink’s definition of the Absolute seems to be a carbon
copy of what Hegel proposes in an essay on the difference between
Fichte’s and Schelling’s systems of philosophy (following Schelling, to
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be sure, for the last time).12 Here Hegel (1968, p. 64/156) describes
the Absolute as »the identity of the identity and non-identity, being
opposed and being one are both together in it.« That is, insofar as
the activity of philosophical reflection consists in separating, this
cannot be done without then positing the opposites within a unifying
principle; philosophical reason searches for a synthesis between what
appears as unified in effective reality and what conversely emerges out
of it as separated.
A crucial outcome of Fink’s depiction of the phenomenologizing
life as one of two moments belonging to a unique process is that the
position of the disinterested onlooker has to be sublated in its turn.
This is a product of a process of mediation, and it has to go through
another process of the same nature: »if the basic central problem of the
transcendental theory of method […] consists in the transcendental
antithesis in being between the phenomenologizing onlooker and the
transcendental constituting I, then it seems that by taking up the
problem of the ›scientificity‹ (objectivation) of phenomenologizing
we have in a way sublated that antithesis in being« (Fink 1988a,
p. 117/106).
In the sublation of the disinterested onlooker, what is preserved
is clearly the capacity of exploring world-constitution. This capacity
consists in grasping essences through eidetic variation; in describing
the structures of the ego’s various experiences; and in exploring the
genesis of the different layers of transcendental life, including that
in which the two poles of the ego and the object take the shape
we recognize at the level of the lifeworld. Yet after the opposition
between the phenomenologizing and the constituting agency is taken
up in the sublation, the ego does not lose the ability to activate the
capability it has acquired by performing the epochē (and previously
by unconsciously training itself in natural life). What is dissolved is
not only the assumption that pure observation takes no part in the
process of constitution, but also the conviction that the objectification
required by a scientific method necessarily involves an alteration of
12 On Hegel’s use of the term »absolute« as an adjective and on his critique of the
hypostatization of the Absolute, see Nuzzo 2003. Furthermore, notice that Fink
accurately read Hegel’s Differenzschrift, and along these lines projected a study on »The
Difference between the Husserlian and the Heideggerian systems of philosophy.« See
Fink 2006, pp. 271–272; Fink 2008, pp. 121–126, 252. Cf. Bruzina 2009, pp. 66–67,
131–133.
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what is made thematic, and thus an opposition between the human

and the transcendental subjectivity.
According to Fink, »beyond all ›antithesis in being,‹ neverthe
less, the phenomenologizing I stands in a transcendental unity of life
with the constituting I«; the onlooker is revealed to be only »an I of
reflection that is projected out from the life of constitution« (Fink
1988a, § 11b, p. 119/108). A consequence of this explanation is that
the phenomenologizing I is to be seen as »passively participant in
world-constitution insofar as […] it is encompassed by the self-
enworlding of the constituting I, carried off by it and made
mundane« (Fink 1988a, p. 119/108). In other words, while refraining
from taking part in world-constitution, the phenomenologizing I nev
ertheless plays a passive role in the development of constituting activ
ity. Indeed, it brings the constituting life that overwhelmingly guides
human agency from within to a new level—namely, to the stage of
self-clarification. Fink spells this out by arguing that in the transcend
ental self-explication that the phenomenologizing I carries out, the
truths endorsed at the »dogmatic« stage of the naive ordinary life are
not only negated, but also »preserved, insofar as they are not them
selves ›crossed out‹ but illuminated in their transcendental constitu
tion« (Fink 1988a, p. 129/118).
Second, for Fink, insofar as natural life is effectively the funda
mental mode of the constitutive process, it is accordingly the result of
the transcendental life’s self-objectification. Indeed, an opposite pro
cess balances, and amounts to, the process of distancing originated by
the phenomenological epochē. Fink calls it »enworlding« (Verwelt
lichung) and individuates two kinds of it. One is enworlding in the
proper sense, which he considers primary; this coincides with the
process of the transcendental life’s self-objectification in the general
product that is the lifeworld: in fact, »the constitutive process termin
ates in the world as the sum of all constituted end-products« (Fink
1988a, § 10, p. 108/99). The secondary kind of enworlding consists
in the process through which the phenomenologizing I rediscovers its
unity with the very process of world-constitution that it is exploring,
and above all, rediscovers its unity with the human subjectivity where
it found the initial motivation to actualize itself by means of the
epochē: »The path of phenomenological cognition thus not only
moves out from the natural attitude into its reductive overcoming, but
leads back into the natural attitude because of the enworlding of phe
nomenologizing, which rests upon transcendental acts of sense-
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bestowal. The natural attitude is not only the wherefrom (Wo-von-

aus) but also the wither (Wo-für) of philosophizing« (Fink 1988a, p.
109/99). In this way the individual takes charge of the task of fol
lowing the path of pure knowledge by performing »from the outset
the service of a functionary« (Fink 1988a, p. 109/99, trans. slightly
modified). On the one hand, enacting the epochē places the phe
nomenologizing I »out of all humanly mundane communities […] and
places him in the monstrous solitude of transcendental existence as
ego« (Fink 1988a, p. 109/99–100). On the other hand, the need for
sharing and communicating the results of its own investigation brings
the phenomenologizing I to take part in the scientific community. The
phenomenologist reconsiders his or her own steps more self-critically
in order to ensure that they can be ordered systematically, assuming
the shape of an intersubjective science with a rigorous method, iden
tifiable and sharable with others.
It is quite evident to what extent arguments like these bore on
some of the most decisive, and in some cases obscure, of Husserl’s
descriptions in the Crisis of European Sciences. As is widely known,
Husserl insists that the scientific form ascribable to phenomenology,
and in particular to the ontology of the lifeworld that phenomenology
makes possible, cannot be totally identified with the features pertain
ing to science as they stem from modern scientific revolution (see
Husserl 1976, §§ 34–36). More specifically, Husserl’s main problem
is that modern science entails a difference between the subject and the
object in such a way that the former is never completely one with the
latter. There is always an alteration that consigns some aspects of what
we define as subjective to the sphere of contingency and semblance.
In contrast, what Husserl is trying to do is to elaborate a scientific view
of subjectivity wherein the key concept is that each contingent aspect
leads back to an invariant and each semblance is a manifestation of
being.
Having said that, we might conclude that the sublation of the
disinterested onlooker involves the identification of the phenomen
ologist with the figure of the functionary of humankind. As is widely
known, Husserl employs this expression in the Crisis in order to high
light that once one takes up the phenomenological attitude, and thus
makes a decision for a life devoted to theoretical investigation, the
phenomenologist is accepting a responsibility for humankind as a
whole (Husserl 1976, § 73, pp. 260–276/335–341). He or she is out
lining a model for the human being and reinterpreting the entire his
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torical becoming of humankind in light of this model. This is the pro

cess that Fink defines as the »humanization« (Vermenschung) of
the »reductive unhumanization« (Entmenschung) accomplished by
the epochē (see Fink 1988a, § 11b, p. 120/110).
3. Unconscious life and the method of phenomenology
In a famous passage of § 13 of the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl holds

that the scientific efforts comprised under »the collective name, tran
scendental phenomenology, must proceed in two stages« (Husserl
1950, p. 68/29).
In the first stage, »the realm accessible to transcendental self-
experience [...] must be explored […] with simple devotion to the
evidence inherent in the harmonious flow of such experience« (Husserl
1950, p. 68/29). Husserl compares the way in which the phenomen
ologist operates at this stage with that of the natural scientist when
he or she is completely focused on the object of the investigation,
leaving questions pertaining to a critique of his or her experience
(and thus of the method he or she is adopting) outside the field of
inquiry, whereas the latter is indeed the issue of the second stage of
phenomenological research.
However, here we run the risk of interpreting Husserl’s division
of phenomenology into two stages in light of the famous separation
between the static and the genetic method of phenomenology. In
the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Fink provides a reading of phenomen
ological investigation as multi-layered that helps us avoid this risk.
By recasting the general structure of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
Fink differentiates a transcendental theory of elements from a tran
scendental theory of method. The constant theme of the former
is world-constitution, for it focuses both on a static description of
intentional experiences and their correlative objects and on a dynamic
analysis of the process through which the two poles of the static
view emerge and take shape. Continuing to draw an analogy with
Kant’s systematization in the first Critique, Fink further recognizes in
the phenomenological theory of elements a transcendental aesthetic
focused on »the explication of the ›phenomenon of the world,‹« and
thus aimed at describing both cogitationes and cogitata as cogitata;
then he identifies the transcendental analytic with »regressive phe
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nomenology« – that is, »inquiry back from the living unities of the
transcendental experience of the world, from acts, into the deeper con
stituting strata of transcendental life;« and finally, he differentiates
the transcendental dialectic from both the aesthetics and the analytic,
identifying it with a constructive phenomenology. Whereas regressive
phenomenology has the constitutive genesis of the world as its theme,
constructive phenomenology »has to pose and answer, among other
matters, transcendental questions about the ›beginning‹ and ›end‹ of
world-constitution, both egological and intersubjective« (Fink 1988a,
p. 12/11).13
From all this internally articulated apparatus Fink further distin
guishes a theory focused on the method of phenomenology, which
he also call »phenomenology of phenomenology« (Fink 1988a, p.
13/12). If the general object of the transcendental theory of elements
is world-constitution, and the subject that carries out such an explor
ation is the disinterested onlooker or the phenomenologizing I, in
the theory of method the object and the subject conversely coincide.
The theme in the theory of method is exactly what remains out
of consideration in the first stage of phenomenological research:
the phenomenologizing I, which at this stage we recognize as the
functional exponent of world-constitution.14
A first, quite surprising consequence of this is that the main part
of the phenomenological investigation (consisting in the three differ
ently focused levels of static, regressive, and constructive phenomen
13 It must be clear that here the reference to the structure of Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason is merely an analogy. In particular, in Kant’s view, a consideration of the world

as phenomenon should be the theme of a transcendental dialectic where the world is
a concept of reason, and not the theme of a transcendental aesthetic, which in Kant’s
perspective is conversely limited to the examination of space and time as conditions
for the sensible experience of the objects of experience. Behind the explicit allusion
to Kant it seems to me that what is at issue here is Fink’s appropriation, revision,
and integration of Husserl’s attempt to systematize transcendental cognition in the
conclusion to his Formal and Transcendental Logic, where by re-elaborating Kant’s
division of transcendental cognition in his turn, Husserl (1974, p. 297/292) divides
his »world-logic« into a transcendental aesthetics, dealing with »the eidetic problem
of any possible world as a world given in ›pure experience,‹« and an »idealizing-logiciz
ing science,« having to do with »the logos of Objective worldly being.«
14 On Fink’s phenomenology of phenomenology, see Finetti 2013, and Luft 2002.
With regard to the latter, see in particular ch. 1 for the transition from the natural
to the transcendental attitude and the integration of the natural attitude in the
transcendental view; ch. 2 on the splitting of the ego; and ch. 3 on the architectonic view
of phenomenology.
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ology) unfolds itself naively. Indeed, it is only after the sublation of the
disinterested onlooker, understood as the final self-representation,
that the phenomenologist is able to turn his or her attention on
himself or herself by elaborating a criticism of his or her method, and
thus a self-clarification.
Husserl agrees with Fink on such an architectonic account of
phenomenology. In a manuscript from 1930, Husserl explicitly dif
ferentiates the phenomenology naively directed to the description
of flowing life (naiv-gerade Phänomenologie) from the »phenomeno
logy of phenomenology« (Phänomenologie der Phänomenologie) (see
Husserl 2002, pp. 176–178).
Having said this, a question must be raised concerning the
meaning of transcendental naiveté. What is the element of continuity
with, and that of divergence from, the naiveté characterizing the
natural attitude?
An answer could be found by paying more attention to the
unconscious dimension of constituting life. I have already pointed
out that for Fink, the main part of world-constitution occurs while
the subject is in the natural attitude. Immediately after performing
the epochē, the lifeworld where we straightforwardly live appears
us as the dogmatic cave that must be ongoingly inhibited in order
to carry out phenomenological investigation without any kind of
presupposition. However, as we self-critically reconsider our path, we
realize that the natural dimension of human subjectivity coincides
with the moment in which the constituting life is outside itself. At
the natural level, constituting life is unconsciously at work through
the system of syntheses; it is in a state of self-forgetfulness and
self-concealment. But the phenomenologizing tendency is equally at
work here as well. The latter latently operates behind the beliefs and
position-takings of the natural I in order to generate the conditions for
a transcendental shift.
This helps us to catch the difference between the two kinds of
naiveté that characterizes the ego before and after the actualization
of the epochē. The naiveté of the natural ego is that of one who
lives in total unawareness of itself. In contrast, the naiveté of the
phenomenologizing I is that of one who has not yet delved deeply
into the features of its own way of operating, but can do so potentially
whenever it wants.
When scholars attempt to compare Husserl with Freud, they
often identify Husserl’s unconscious dimension of life not with the
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sphere Freud calls the unconscious, but with the preconscious.15 All
sedimented experiences are gathered within it, but the possibility
of recalling them is still alive, without any form of repression. In
contrast, for Freud, we should reserve the term »unconscious« for
those instincts and desires having no possibility of becoming con
scious without going through a metamorphosis in which they are
replaced with a symbolic representation that eludes the filter of moral
consciousness (or superego, as Freud defines the element of mind that
intercedes against the desires of the id).16
However, Fink’s reconstruction of the way in which the consti
tuting life operates suggests that in phenomenology too there is
an unconscious dimension going through a process of repression,
or at least inhibition. The peculiarity of the natural ego’s naiveté is
precisely to obstruct the emancipation of subjectivity from its state of
self-forgetfulness. As we have already argued, the phenomenologiz
ing tendency makes its own way in natural life with great difficulty,
and constantly risks being misunderstood. We noticed that some
experiences like imagination facilitate the emergence of the desire
for living differently and thinking more profoundly than our usual
way. However, this does not happen voluntarily. This is exclusively
due to the fact that imagination breaks with objective reality, with
the status quo, thus helping us to generate a conflict and to search
for an alternative. But this means that imagination contributes to the
15 Notwithstanding his wide and acute comparison between Freud and Husserl,
Ricœur (1965, p. 382/390) states that »the unconscious of phenomenology is the

preconscious of psychoanalysis, that is to say, an unconscious that is descriptive
and not yet topographic.« Derrida (1997, p. 21/20) holds that the alterity of Freud’s
unconscious is exempt from the process of presentation that phenomenology implies.
Most recently, even Bernet (1996, 2003) maintains that in phenomenology, the
difference between the unconscious and the preconscious can be preserved only
with difficulty. In contrast, in Manca 2018, I argue for the presence in Husserl’s
phenomenology of a difference between a psychological unconscious comparable to
Freud’s preconscious and a transcendental unconscious that cannot be grasped before
performing the epochē. See also Ferrarin 2019a, pp. 26–28, on the contrast between
Hegel’s, Freud’s, and Husserl’s conception of the unconscious, as facilitating both the
separation of consciousness from the ego and a conception of spontaneity in passivity.
16 Let me recall that Fink himself sketches a way to integrate the psychoanalytical
treatment of the unconscious into the phenomenological framework; this is now pub
lished as an appendix to Husserl’s Crisis (see Husserl 1976, pp. 473–474/385–387).
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actualization of the transcendental shift only incidentally (en parergoi,

Aristotle would say).17
In § 38 of the Crisis, Husserl presents the natural and the tran
scendental attitude as two different kinds of waking life, and two dif
ferent manners of making the lifeworld thematic. In fact, in straight
forward living, where consciousness is focused on objects with
practical interests, the lifeworld appears in the form of »the horizon
which includes all our goals, all our ends,« even though we are not
able to bring this pregiven world to conscious awareness as that which
latently sustains all of our behaviour. As the actualization of the
epochē modifies our conscious way of relating to the world, waking
life consists in »a transformation of the thematic consciousness of the
world which breaks through the normality of straightforward liv
ing« (Husserl 1976, § 38, p. 147/144).
Conversely, in a manuscript from 1931, Husserl notices that what
is called »wakeful world-life« is so transformed through the tran
scendental epochē that it must subsequently be denoted by »opposite
concepts« such as sleep, and thus we gain knowledge of the »uncon
scious dispositions« of a personal, persisting I (Husserl 2002, p. 296).
And for his part, Fink employs the term »anonymity« to designate the
world-constitution proceeding in the mode of self-concealment and
self-forgetfulness, arguing that »in the phenomenological reduction
there occurs the ›awakening‹ of the transcendental constitution of the
world, and the process of coming to transcendental self-consciousness
is accomplished« (Fink 1988a, § 3, p. 15/14).
The insistence on the unconscious dimension of both constitut
ing life and the phenomenologizing activity allows Fink to demon
strate that in the theory of the phenomenological method, the divi
sion of the phenomenological research into two stages has to be
considered not merely as strategic, but as profoundly connected with
the process of the transcendental subjectivity coming-to-itself and
thereby becoming itself. Fink reinterprets the two stages in terms
17 Outlining an Aristotelian model for Husserl’s concept of subjectivity, I discuss
this significant role of imagination in connection with the problem of the self-con
sciousness of the phenomenologizing subject in the last chapter of Manca (2017; see
especially pp. 261–266).
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Danilo Manca
of two tendencies conflicting within constituting life: the first is the

teleological tendency, the second is the archaeological.18
The teleological tendency of constituting life has world-constitu
tion as its own final goal. It is a tendency aimed at being; therefore it
would find satisfaction in a full actualization of the inquiries belonging
to the first stage (the static description of the phenomenon of the
world, the regressive reconstruction of the genesis of the two poles,
and finally the construction of the system of constitution with an
explanation of the egological and the intersubjective dimensions).
While in natural life such a teleological tendency is overwhelm
ing, with the actualization of the epochē »a countertendency is formed
in transcendental life« (Fink 1988a, § 4, p. 26/24), albeit anonym
ously. This is the archaeological, which Fink describes as »a movement
back against the direction of life, a breaking up of the tendency of life
toward the world as its finality« (Fink 1988a, p. 26/24). It would seem
that such a depiction could be considered in contrast to Fink’s claim
that it is the phenomenologizing I that latently produces itself as
operating in natural life. In fact, if the teleological tendency represents
the impulse of the constituting life to unfold itself fully, then we know
that this goal can be accomplished only with the transition from the
natural to the transcendental attitude. Consequently, in natural life,
the constituting life and the phenomenologizing I work together, and
both unconsciously, in order to satisfy the teleological tendency. In
contrast, once the epochē generates the splitting of the ego, and there
fore the differentiation between constituting life and the phenomen
ologizing subject, then we witness a conflict between the two tend
encies: on the one hand, there is the teleological tendency that
prompts the constituting subjectivity to unfold itself fully, thus actu
alizing itself in an investigation focused on the system of syntheses
governing world-constitution; on the other hand, there is the archae
ological tendency that interrupts the first movement in order to satisfy
the need for self-clarification, thus actualizing itself in an investiga
tion aimed at reconsidering the steps of the constitutive process, hav
ing its end in clarifying the process of the phenomenologizing I’s
formation instead of world-constitution. Nonetheless, in Fink’s view,
the conflict between these two tendencies has a dialectical nature. It
18 As Fink remarks in the 1939 essay on »The Problem of Husserl’s Phenomeno
logy,« Husserl considered the expression »archaeology« a fitting description of the

essence of philosophizing, and consequently he often regretted that such an expression
already designated a positive science (see Fink 1966, p. 199).
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is intrinsically aimed at exhausting itself in an architectonic view. In

fact, these tendencies intersect in at least three different stages: 1) the
stage at the level of natural life where the archaeological tendency is
silent and the teleological tendency facilitates the formation of the
phenomenologizing I; 2) the stage of transcendental naiveté in which
the teleological tendency remains predominant but is pressured by
the need for self-clarification; 3) and finally, the stage of self-criticism,
undoubtedly characterized by a primacy of the archaeological over the
teleological tendency, but with the final goal of reunifying each sep
aration in an all-comprehensive, architectonic view of self-constitut
ing life as the expression of a synthetic unity of antithetic moments.
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Roman Ingarden’s Remarks on the Cartesian

Meditations: Context, Main Arguments
and Developments
1. Introduction
In The Other Husserl, Donn Welton (2000, p. 119) notices that »

[t]he story surrounding Husserl’s ›Cartesian Meditations‹ […] is
one with countless twists and turns, and ultimately one of deep
frustration.« Indeed, at the end of the 1920s and later in the 1930s
— partly after an invitation to Paris to give a lecture there; partly
in response to Martin Heidegger’s account of phenomenology —
Husserl attempted to write a new systematic introduction to his
transcendental phenomenology. In terms of a thorough elaboration of
the basics of phenomenology, his efforts seem to be incomparable to
earlier philosophical projects. Yet, as shown by Welton, Husserl was
permanently dissatisfied with the final result, and after the publication
of a French translation of the book he wanted to rework it and publish
an enlarged German edition. As he put it on a few occasions in
his epistolary exchange,1 it was planned as his »Hauptwerk,« which
was supposed to present the systematic foundations of his life-long
philosophical enterprise. To do this, he asked Roman Ingarden,
his student from Göttingen, to make comments on the text. At
that time, Husserl valued Ingarden’s work greatly. For instance, he
described Ingarden’s »Remarks about the ›Idealism-Realism‹ Prob
lem« (Bemerkung zum Problem »Idealismus-Relismus«), published
in 1929 in the Festschrift, as »the most important« chapter in the
entire volume and an ›extraordinarily worked‹ text« (Husserl 1994b,
1 See Husserl’s (1994b, pp. 253, 262) letters to Ingarden from December 2, 1929 and
March 19, 1930, the letter to Grimme from March 5, 1931 (Husserl 1994b, p. 90), or
the letter to Landgrebe from March 13, 1931 (Husserl 1994c, p. 257).
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Witold Płotka
p. 253). In general, he comprehended Ingarden as »one of the most

talented of his students« and as »the dearest and most faithful of his
older disciples.«2 Although, for many years, Ingarden was skeptical
about Husserl’s »transcendental turn,« following Danuta Gierulanka
(1989, p. 1), »none of Husserl’s disciples remained as faithful as
Ingarden in conceiving the sense of philosophy as an ›exact [or
rigorous] science‹ and in pursuing the phenomenological method.« In
1931, Ingarden sent Husserl detailed comments on the French text
of the Méditations Cartésiennes; subsequently, he also commented
on the original German text. A selection of these commentaries was
published in 1950 in the first volume of the »Husserliana« series
(Husserl 1950, pp. 203–218), and almost all of them were published
in the fifth volume of Ingarden’s »Gesammelte Werke« (Ingarden
1998, pp. 55–111). This chapter presents and discusses the context of
Ingarden’s remarks on the Cartesian Meditations (hereafter: CM), the
main arguments formulated there and, equally important, Ingarden’s
further developments of them. But, one may ask, why are Ingarden’s
remarks important for today’s reader at all?
First of all, Ingarden’s remarks are seemingly one of the first
systematic explorations of Husserl’s CM. As such, they are a valuable
historical document of the phenomenological movement. Moreover,
they show in a nutshell the critical assessment of Husserl’s »tran
scendental turn« that was formulated by the Göttingen circle of his
students, who promoted the eidetic line of phenomenology (e.g.,
Spiegelberg 1994, pp. 167–168). More importantly, it can be argued
that analysis of Ingarden’s remarks on CM could contribute to the
famous or infamous Ingarden-Husserl controversy over realism-ide
alism. Of course, this controversy can be studied from different points
of view,3 yet a reference to Ingarden’s remarks on CM could reveal
the main arguments formulated by both philosophers. In short, the
remarks could contribute to both historical and systematic studies
on phenomenology. To analyze Ingarden’s remarks, in Sect. 2 I will
present the historical background of the discussion on CM with
Husserl. This will be helpful to understand why Ingarden formulated
his charges against CM. In this regard, I will focus on two connected
2 Both phrases were used by Husserl in his letters (from December 26, 1927 and
December 2, 1929) to Ingarden. See Husserl 1994b, pp. 235, 253.
3 See, for instance, Waller 1987, pp. 3–43; Bostar 1993, pp. 211–236; Mitscherling
1997, pp. 41–65; Mohanty 1997, pp. 43–45, Chrudzimski 1999; Płotka 2020, pp.
33–54.
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Roman Ingarden’s Remarks on the Cartesian Meditations
groups of problems: the realism-idealism problem and the question

of the beginning of philosophy. In Sect. 3, I will focus on the first group
of problems by contextualizing the Ingarden-Husserl discussion
within the ontological controversy. As we will see, Ingarden refers to
some results from his 1929 text that was published in Husserl-
Festschrift. In Sect. 4, I will discuss Ingarden’s comments on the begin
ning of philosophy. This, however, will require a reference to Ingar
den’s idea of the intuition of ›living thought‹ (Intuition des
Durchlebens). Finally, in Sect. 5, I will present Ingarden further devel
opments of his reading of CM in other writings. Against this back
ground, in »Conclusion« I will address the question of the possible
adequacy of Ingarden’s criticism.
2. On the historical context of Ingarden’s reading of CM
When Husserl was doing research for his Hauptwerk in the 1920s and
at the beginning of the 1930s, Ingarden was also working intensively.
After his return to Poland in 1918, Ingarden worked in high schools in
Lublin, Warsaw and Toruń. At the same time, he attempted to publish
texts in both German and Polish.4 He stayed in touch with Kazimierz
Twardowski, his teacher from Lvov, to keep him up to date about
his ongoing studies in philosophy and to complete his habilitation
thesis at Jan Kazimierz University in Lvov.5 Finally he received his
habilitation degree in 1925 on the basis of a treatise in German on
the »Essential Questions« (Essentiale Fragen) (Ingarden 1925) and a
talk in Polish »On the Place of the Theory of Knowledge within the
System of Philosophical Disciplines« (Stanowisko teorii poznania w
systemie nauk filozoficznych) (Ingarden 1971) (later published also
in German (Ingarden 1926)6). In the same year he moved to Lvov,
where he found jobs as a docent at the university and in a secondary
school. He did not receive a chair at the university, even after Husserl’s
intervention in 1928.7 During this period, Husserl was already work
4 For an overview see Głombik 2011; Płotka 2017a, pp. 84–87.

5 Ingarden asked Twardowski for a help to organize his habilitation colloquium in
Lvov in the letter from February 2, 1922. See Ingarden, Twardowski 2016, p. 202.
6 See also the reprint in Ingarden 1994, pp. 277–309.
7 See Husserl’s letter to Twardowski from July 13, 1928. Husserl 1994a, p. 181. More
on Ingarden’s attempts to get a professorship in Lvov, see Ingarden 1999, pp. 183–201.
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Witold Płotka
ing on the basics of transcendental phenomenology and its relation

to psychology.
Ingarden was well informed about Husserl’s research. In Autumn
1927, he even went to Freiburg i. Br. for 6 weeks. He received a fel
lowship to do research on The Literary Work of Art. In Freiburg he dis
cussed the Britannica article on phenomenology with his teacher and
read a series of texts, including the 1922 London lecture on the phe
nomenological method, Stein’s edition of Ideas II, and lectures on the
phenomenology of inner time-consciousness.8 Ingarden deliberated
with Husserl concerning his view on Heidegger and Being and Time
(Sein und Zeit). Curiously enough, after leaving Freiburg, in Novem
ber Ingarden went to Marburg to hear Heidegger’s lectures on Kant,
yet he was dissatisfied with how Heidegger elaborated the main topics
(Kuliniak, Pandura 2019, pp. 526–532). Later, Ingarden arrived in
Paris, where he spent a few months working on the first version of The
Literary Work of Art (Das literarische Kunstwerk), published in 1931.
The book already contained a series of ontological considerations that
were later used by Ingarden in his analysis of the realism-idealism
problem.9 In March 1928, during his trip back to Lvov, Ingarden vis
ited Husserl once again. During his stay he gave Husserl a manuscript
of The Literary Work of Art and they had an exchange on how to
understand idealism (Ingarden 1968, pp. 158–160). In Lvov, Ingarden
attempted to continue his research on idealism. Meanwhile, in April
Husserl gave a talk in Amsterdam on the phenomenological method
and psychology; the talk connected topics discussed in the Britannica
article on phenomenology with CM (Kockelmans 1987, pp. 6–7). In
his letter to Ingarden (July 13), Husserl (1994b, p. 241) referred to this
lecture and mentioned the invitation to Paris to give a talk at the Sor
bonne. Starting from this date, Husserl informed Ingarden about his
work on CM. In turn, Ingarden studied Scheler’s (1927) treatise on the
realism-idealism problem, published in the Philosophischer Anzeiger
8 For a detailed description of Ingarden stay, see Ingarden 1968, pp. 152–158. For
an overview, see Ingarden’s letter to Twardowski from September 7, 1927. Ingarden,

Twardowski 2016, pp. 348–351.
9 In the »Preface to the first German edition« to Das literarische Kunstwerk, Ingarden
declared as follows: »Although the main subject of my investigations in the literary

work, of the literary work of art, the ultimate motives for my work on this subject
are of a general philosophical nature, and they far transcend this particular subject.
They are closely connected to the problem of idealism-realism, with which I have been
concerning myself for many years« (Ingarden 1931, p. vi; Ingarden 1973, p. lxxii). See
also Gniazdowski 2010, pp. 167–170.
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in 1927, and on this basis he wrote the aforementioned »Remarks

about the ›Idealism-Realism‹ Problem,« published later in 1929 in
Husserl-Festschrift. The work presented Ingarden’s main arguments,
which he later adopted in the discussion of Husserl’s CM and his
philosophy in general. In April 1929, Ingarden participated with
Stein, Hering, Koyré, Pos and Heidegger (among others) in Husserl’s
seventieth birthday (Kuliniak, Pandura 2019, pp. 562–563). After
Ingarden’s return to Lvov, Husserl (1994b, p. 248) informed him (May
26) about new studies on CM and the theory of intersubjectivity
that is developed in it. Husserl had also read Ingarden’s »Remarks
about the ›Idealism-Realism‹ Problem« and emphasized in another
letter (December 2) that the text was well written, solid and precise
(Husserl 1994b, p. 253). Yet, he commented that he disagreed with
Ingarden’s attempt to interpret intentional phenomenology as a form
of »idealism,« and in this context he referred to CM, which exposed
the phenomenological method in a clearer way. Husserl added that
Gabrielle Peiffer had almost finished her translation and he suggested
that he would send a copy to Ingarden. Finally, he noted that he
planned to develop CM in order to publish an enlarged German
edition as his »Hauptwerk« and as a response to Heidegger’s Being
and Time. Against this background, Ingarden (1968, p. 163) claimed
that Husserl’s letter showed that although he rejected part of the text,
he did not reject the main point of it, namely the ontological theory
examined there. In response, Ingarden wrote to Husserl (December
18) that it would be better to publish (together with CM) some
concrete studies which applied the method described in CM (Husserl
1994b, p. 258). In 1930, Ingarden was focused on preparing The
Literary Work of Art for publication, but he was informed about
Husserl’s further work on CM. Finally, on April 19, 1931, Husserl
(1994b, p. 274) asked Ingarden about his impression of the French
translation of CM. This question was later repeated (May 15) by
Malvine Husserl, who asked Ingarden to send his remarks in June
(Husserl 1994b, pp. 274–275).
Husserl’s request was formulated when Ingarden had finally
received a professorship at the university (yet the official decision
was made by the ministry no earlier than in 1933), so he had many
teaching and research duties. Nonetheless, between May 5 and July 8,
Ingarden worked on the French text of CM (Półtawski 1982, p. xii). All
in all, Ingarden prepared 94 remarks, of which 15 concerned linguistic
ambiguities that in his opinion had arisen during the translation of
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Witold Płotka
the German text. When he later received the original German text, he
realized that all criticisms concerning the French translation did not
hold since the original text was clear.10 Consequently, all remarks on
the French translation were subsequently not recommended by Ingar
den for publication in the »Husserliana« edition. Many of Ingarden’s
remarks were rooted in his original explorations, e.g., in his ontolog
ical phenomenology or in his view of epistemological problems (e.g.,
the status of perception and sensations). In this regard and in order to
elucidate some details of his argumentations, he referred, for instance,
to The Literary Work of Art (e.g., Ingarden 1998, pp. 76, 87, 93),
to his early text on the petitio principii fallacy (e.g., Ingarden 1998,
pp. 67–68),11 or to »Essential Questions« (Ingarden 1998, p. 90). In
addition, he juxtaposed CM with Ideas I (e.g., Ingarden 1998, pp.
71–72, 86) or with the Logical Investigations (Ingarden 1998, pp. 72,
94). I will subsequently discuss Ingarden’s arguments in Sect. 3 and
4. For now, let us note that Ingarden sent only some of his remarks to
Husserl; he omitted remarks on the Fifth CM since, as he argued, it
was impossible for him to figure out which fragments were present in
the original German text, but he did realize that the text of the Fifth
CM was important for Husserl (Ingarden 1968, p. 174, footnote, and p.
175). In any case, Ingarden sent his remarks, probably at the beginning
of July 1931.
Husserl’s first reaction to Ingarden’s remarks can be found in his
letter from July 8, when Husserl emphasized that he was very happy
to read them. In this regard, he sent to Ingarden, as he put it, »only a
few words«:
It is very important to me to find out how such a clear, serious reader
and a loyal student read my writing and what he was struggling
10 For instance, while commenting the translation of the following fragment of the
First CM: »Diese Überführung trägt in sich den Charakter der Erfüllung der bloßen
Meinung, den einer Synthesis der stimmenden Deckung, sie ist evidentes Innesein
der Richtigkeit jener vordem sachfernen Meinung« (Husserl 1950, p. 51) as »par la
recouvrement exact de l’intuition et de l’évidence correspondante,” Ingarden notices
that one does not have any clue how to understand »intuition« here; he suggests
that maybe the word should be replaced by »intention« (Ingarden 1998, p. 101). The
ambiguity, however, does not arise in the German text. Furthermore, he is skeptical
about the fact that the French translation of the Fourth CM does not have any title
(Ingarden 1998, p. 109), whereas the German text is entitled. See also comments (no.
51–55) on the translation of a few fragments of the Third CM: Ingarden 1998, pp.
76–79.
11 See Ingarden 1921, reprint in: Ingarden 1994, pp. 201–275.
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with. Although I have considered everything countless times myself,

including all objections, I worked through all the ambiguities by
myself. Now, when my distance from the readers has become too large,
it is extremely important for the presentation to have all the difficulties
and possible objections in mind. You are the only one who did me this
great favor—me and the topic (der Sache). (Husserl 1994b, p. 276)
Andrzej Wajs (1982, p. xxx) noticed that Husserl had included Ingar
den’s remarks in his own copy of the text, yet only as references.
Later he kept Ingarden informed about his further research on CM.
After few months (November 13), he asked Ingarden to also send his
comments on the Fifth CM (Ingarden 1994b, p. 280), but Ingarden
(1968, p. 175) had too many teaching duties to write a thorough
analysis of the text. In any case, the history of Ingarden’s remarks
on CM did not end in 1931: it can be argued that his reading of
it influenced not only his view of phenomenology, but also—and
importantly—his own students in Lvov and later in Kraków. Radosław
Kuliniak and Mariusz Pandura (2019, p. 629) noted that Ingarden had
read CM with his students and other Lvov scholars as late as 1933.
Indeed, a note that Ingarden added to his original commentary on
CM is dated March 26, 1933 (Ingarden 1998, p. 55, footnote 1). I will
attempt to track the developments of Ingarden’s reading in Sect. 5.
3. Ingarden on CM and the realism-idealism controversy
In the preface to the Polish edition of CM, which includes Ingar

den’s critical remarks, Andrzej Półtawski (1982, pp. xxv-vi) rightly
notices that this criticism is an »important and interesting« part of
the Husserl-Ingarden controversy over the idealistic tendency of
phenomenology. Generally speaking, the polemics between them are
rooted in the question of the ontological status of the real world. In
Ingarden’s view, Husserl comprehends the world as somehow depen
dent12 on the subject or, more precisely, as created by subjectivity.
This idea follows from Husserl’s transcendentalism, since the world is
12 »In order to argue his case against Husserl, which he was most concerned to do,
Ingarden needed to analyse and clarify the notion of dependence. If the real world
is independent of minds we need to know what this means« (Simons 2005, p. 39).
On Ingarden’s notion of dependance and independence, see Piwowarczyk 2020, pp.
532–551.
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Witold Płotka
characterized here as »constituted« in relevant acts of consciousness.

In short, it is reduced to a mere intentional object, i.e., a noema. Con
sequently, Ingarden labeled Husserl »idealist.« By contrast, Ingarden
described the world as independent of the subject and for this reason
he seems to occupy the »realist« standpoint. This short description,
of course, does not account for the detailed arguments, thorough
interpretations, or (mis-)readings formulated by both Husserl and
Ingarden. After all, these polemics date back to 1918, when Ingarden
explicitly formulated some charges against Husserl in one of his
letters;13 they continued later, even after Husserl’s death, and were
developed in Ingarden’s magnum opus, the Controversy over the Exis
tence of the World (Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt). In this regard,
Jeff Mitscherling (1997, p. 6) made an important note: »Ingarden’s
interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental idealism may or may not
have been entirely accurate […] but what he understood to be the
foundations and the consequences of Husserl’s position led him to
clarify and examine the debate between realism and idealism in a more
thorough manner than had ever been attempted previously or has
ever been attempted since.« If this is the case, it is justified to read
Ingarden’s remarks on CM not so much as an attempt to interpret
Husserl, but rather as a part of the realism-idealism controversy.
It seems clear that in his remarks on CM, Ingarden used
the ontological vocabulary known from »Remarks about the ›Ideal
ism-Realism‹ Problem« and The Literary Work of Art. For instance,
in his comment on Husserl’s (1950, p. 75; 1960, p. 37) differen
tiation (formulated in the Second CM) between natural and tran
scendental ego, Ingarden (1998, p. 71) claims that the division
between the »absolute being« (absolute Sein) of the transcendental
I and the »non-autonomous being« of the natural I is misleading
since these existential moments cannot be inherent to one object
(»eine« Gegenständlichkeit); however, the mutual relations between
different existential moments were analyzed not in the note but
in »Remarks about the ›Idealism-Realism‹ Problem« (Ingarden 1929,
pp. 159–190; Ingarden 1998, pp. 21–54). Also, in a comment on the
fragment of the Fourth CM in which Husserl (1950, p. 111; 1960,
p. 77) describes ego as an active subject that constitutes its objects,
Ingarden (1998, pp. 92–93) clearly limits this claim since, as he
13 Cf. Husserl 1994b, pp. 183–200. On Ingarden’s early view on Husserl’s phe
nomenology, see Byrne 2020, pp. 513–531.
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puts it, ideal objects cannot be »produced« since they are character
ized by »existential originality« (Seinsurprünglichkeit); however, this
claim is discussed in detail in The Literary Work of Art (Ingarden
1931, esp. pp. 100–108; Ingarden 1973, pp. 100–106). Paradoxically,
the ontological framework of Ingarden’s notes is much clearer not in
the Fourth CM, where Husserl explicitly declares his »transcendental
idealism,«14 but in the Third CM. Before analyzing these notes,
however, a few comments on Ingarden’s »Remarks about the ›Ideal
ism-Realism‹ Problem« are necessary.
According to Ingarden, the realism-idealism problem is hard to
solve since it actually contains different yet intertwined topics. More
over, scholars who attempted to address this problem used ambiguous
terms, just as Scheler’s idea of existential dependence or independence
(Ingarden 1929, p. 161; Ingarden 1998, p. 23). In this regard, the main
task of a preliminary ontological consideration is to analyze the con
tent of the »object« idea. Ingarden’s key insight is that an object can
be characterized by certain modes or ways of being (Seinsweisen or
Seins-modi), which in turn build the necessary formal structure of the
object. As he writes, »[t]he way of being of an object (Gegenstän
dlichkeit) remains in a necessary relation with its formal and material
structure (Aufbau)« (Ingarden 1931, p. 170; Ingarden 1998, p. 32). In
his remarks on CM, Ingarden mainly refers to formal modes or ways
of existence. In § 4 of the »Remarks about the ›Idealism-Real
ism‹ Problem,« Ingarden (1931, pp. 165–168; Ingarden 1998, pp. 26–
30) discusses four basic existential-ontological relations: an object
can be (i) autonomous or heteronomous, (ii) original or derivative, (iii)
self-sufficient or non-self-sufficient, (iv) dependent or independent. And
thus, the object is (i) existentially autonomous if it has an existential
foundation (Seinsfundament) in itself, otherwise it is existentially
heteronomous; (ii) the object is existentially original if it cannot be
produced (geschaffen) or destroyed (vernichtet) by any other object,
otherwise it is existentially derivative; (iii) the object is existentially
self-sufficient if it requires for its being the being of no other object
which would have to coexist with it in one whole, otherwise it is exis
tentially non-self-sufficient; lastly, (iv) the object is existentially
dependent if it is possible for it to be self-sufficient, yet it still requires
the existence of some other self-sufficient object, otherwise it is exis
14See Daniele De Santis’s chapter in this book for the discussion of Husserl’s
understanding of »transcedental idealism.«
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tentially self-dependent.15 Ingarden claims that an object can be char

acterized by every moment; however, (i) it cannot bind contradictory
moments from every pair and (ii) all moments stay in necessary or
essential relations. For example, an object cannot be existentially
autonomous and dependent at the same time. In the end, for Ingarden,
existential ontology aims to define the necessary characteristics of
some types of objects. Therefore, a purely intentional object (e.g., a
literary work of art, a philosophical theory) is existentially heterony
mous, derivative, self-sufficient and dependent. In turn, an individual
real object (e.g., a tree, a book) is existentially autonomous, deriva
tive, self-sufficient and independent. With this in mind, let me look
closer at Ingarden’s remarks on the Third CM, which concerns the
problem of constitution.
Husserl (1950, pp. 91–92; 1960, p. 56) begins § 23 of the Third
CM with an attempt to specify how to understand constitution. He
states that in the process of constitution one ascribes »being« (Sein)
or »non-being« (Nicht-sein) predicates to intentional objects. In this
regard, Ingarden (1998, p. 76) states that these predicates cannot be
ascribed to intentional objects »as such« (als solche) since they can be
ascribed to the »objective sense« (objective Sinn), i.e., to the sense of
the object which is the correlate of the relevant act. Yet, according to
Ingarden, all intentional objects exist in the same way; namely, they
are characterized by existential heteronomy. So, if Husserl writes
about »being« or »non-being,« he refers to the sense of the object
rather than to our common understanding of what it means to exist
in a natural way. An analogical argument can be found in Ingarden’s
detailed comments on § 26 of the Third CM. In this fragment Husserl
(1950, pp. 94–95; 1960, pp. 59–60) describes actuality (Wirk
lichkeit) as the correlate of evident verification and he states that:
[…] objects in the broadest sense (real physical things, subjective
processes, numbers, states of affairs, laws, theories and the rest) exist
for me in a statement that says nothing immediately about evidence; it
says only that objects are accepted by me — are, in other words, there
for me as cogitate intended in the positional mode: certain believing.
[…] It is clear that truth or the true actuality of objects is to be obtained
only from evidence, and that it is evidence alone by virtue of whatever
an »actually« existing, true, rightly accepted object of whatever form or
has sense for us — and with all the determinations that for us belong to
15 See also Mitscherling, 1997, pp. 90–99.
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it under the title of its true nature. (Husserl 1950, p. 95; Husserl 1960,
pp. 59–60)
Here, Ingarden (1998, p. 79) accuses Husserl of omitting existential-
and formal-ontological characteristics of reality (Realität) and defin
ing it instead in epistemological terms, i.e., as a correlate of the process
of verification. As a result, reality is to be understood as a correlate of
organized evidence. In turn, Ingarden (1998, p. 80) postulates
describing reality in a purely ontological way, but he is aware that
Husserl would reply that this equals an unjustified presupposition of
reality »as being in itself« (an sich Sein) (Ingarden 1998, p. 81). For
Ingarden, however, Husserl’s possible reply is misleading since Ingar
den (1998, p. 82) postulates investigating a defined essence (ein bes
timmtes Wesen) of reality rather than the existence (Existenz) of reality
itself. In this vein (and, as already shown, in accordance with
his »Remarks about the ›Idealism-Realism‹ Problem«), Ingarden
holds that reality — according to its essence — transcends every evi
dence. As he writes, »[i]f by evidence one understands a positive orig
inal self-manifestation of whatsoever, then evidence of reality does
not reach reality itself« (Ingarden 1998, p. 82). All in all, in Ingarden’s
view, Husserl comprehends reality as »produced« (geschaffen) in rel
evant intentional acts; but reality, according to its sense, cannot be
produced by intentional acts. If so, reality would be a mere het
eronomous, derivative, self-sufficient and dependent object; in other
words, »[…] if it is such a plain correlate, then it is anything but not
real« (Ingarden 1998, p. 82). Thus, contrary to Husserl, Ingarden
holds that reality in its essence cannot exist as a mere correlate of any
intentional act. For this very reason, in his comment on § 27 of
Husserl’s CM, in which existence »in itself« is defined in terms of the
synthesis of evidence (Husserl 1950, p. 96; Husserl 1960, pp. 60–61),
Ingarden (1998, p. 84) once again states that reality is comprehended
in CM as »produced« and holds that Husserl takes the position of
idealism, i.e., the position that reality does not exist as an autonomous
and independent being.
4. The problem of the beginning
As presented in Sect. 3, Ingarden’s criticism of transcendental phe

nomenology was classified by Husserl as a form of »ontolo
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Witold Płotka
gism« (Ontologismus).16 While Husserl holds that transcendental

consideration goes before any ontology (which is reestablished later
in a »more fundamental sense« (in einem vertieften Sinn)), Ingarden
sees it the other way round.17 Ingarden holds that Husserl formulated
the charge of »ontologism« against his philosophy on several occa
sions (Ingarden 1968, pp. 165–166) by claiming that ontology seems
to be the fundamental discipline for Ingarden. In reply, Ingarden
(1968, p. 166) suggests that in his »Remarks about the ›Idealism-
Realism‹ Problem,« he was clear that ontology is not the absolute
authority in solving philosophical problems, but ontological results
have to be confirmed or verified by further epistemological inquiries.
In any case, the question of whether ontology or transcendental phe
nomenology should be the basis or the beginning for a philosopher
in his meditations is also present in Ingarden’s remarks on CM. In this
regard, Dallas Laskey (1972, pp. 48–49) lists the problem of the
beginning among other central problems discussed by Ingarden in his
remarks on CM. Indeed, Ingarden already formulates the problem of
the »beginning« (das Problem des »Anfangs«) in his comment on § 3
of the First CM. More precisely, Ingarden refers to the fragment in
which Husserl (1950, p. 49; 1960, p. 8) states that »[a]s beginning
philosophers we do not as yet accept any normative ideal of science
[…]. But—he adds—this does not imply that we [should] renounce
the general aim of grounding science absolutely. This aim shall indeed
continually motivate the course of our meditations.« Yet, contra
Husserl, Ingarden (1998, p. 56) accuses his teacher of taking too many
unjustified presuppositions. For instance, Husserl takes it for granted
that the aim of philosophy is to ground science absolutely. But Ingar
den asks two questions: Does a philosopher already have the idea of
science, or does it require further clarification? Shall one be justified
in claiming that cognition of this idea is absolutely certain? If Husserl
holds that this idea motivates a philosopher in his meditations, both
claims seem to be accepted, as Ingarden (1998, p. 56) writes, either as
a »quite naïve« (ganz naiv) and »uncritical« (unkritisch) dogma, or as
a result of reduction. Husserl would opt for the latter. In both cases,
however, the problem of how to begin a philosophical reflection comes
to the fore.
16 See Husserl’s letter to Ingarden from December 21, 1930 (Husserl 1994b, p. 270).
17 See Ingarden’s letter to Husserl from December 18, 1929 (Husserl 1994b, pp.
256–257).
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The problem of the beginning is, of course, central in the First

CM; in the very first words of this part of CM, Husserl (1950, p.
48; 1960, p. 7) states: »[a]nd we make a new beginning, each for
himself and in himself, with the decision of philosophers who begin
radically: that at first we shall put out of action all the convictions
we have been accepting up to now, including all our sciences.« It
seems that Ingarden’s comment adequately connects the problem
of the beginning to the question of reduction and its motivations.
All these topics were discussed by Husserl in the 1920s, and it is
arguably justified that his considerations culminate in CM. In the
First Philosophy (Erste Philosophie) lecture series (given in 1923/24),
Husserl (1958, p. 98; 2013, p. 301) emphasizes that the beginning
of philosophy requires a »special motivation« (besondere Motivation)
as the philosopher should start by freeing himself of his interest in
the world and suspending his judgment of it. In this regard, Husserl
(1959, p. 98; 2019, p. 302) asks: »But what could be the motive for
this?« This question can be considered from different viewpoints,18
yet in CM Husserl mainly explores a mundane motive, i.e., the idea
of grounding science absolutely, which comes from the heritage of
Descartes’s philosophy. However, an additional note seems to be nec
essary. Since motivation comes from the history of human thought,
reduction itself is not so much a simple repetition of the Cartesian
way as a radicalization of it. For this very reason, according to Husserl
(1950, p. 43; 1960, p. 1), the philosopher must »[…] reject nearly all
the well-known doctrinal content of Cartesian philosophy« (Husserl
1960, p. 1). Paradoxically, the Cartesianism of phenomenology leads
to the rejection of Cartesianism (Luft 2004, pp. 205–208).
Ingarden’s reading of CM — of course, in the context of the prob
lem of the beginning — focuses on the emphasis Husserl put on sub
jectivity, which in his opinion comes from the Cartesian heritage.
While commenting on § 8 of the First CM, in which Husserl (1950,
18 Cf. Mohanty (1997) who held that in Husserl’s phenomenology one can indicate
at least three types of motivations for doing reduction: first, reduction understood
as unmotivated and as an exercise in freedom; second, reduction as guided by some
mundane motives; third, reduction as motivated and unmotivated at once since,
following Mohanty (1997, p. 57), »[…] in the natural attitude, reduction appears
completely unmotivated, in a philosophical attitude which seeks to understand the
natural attitude, it finds sustenance in the historically available ideas of first science
and foundational cognition, but the true sense of reduction emerges only at the end and
not at the beginning.«
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Witold Płotka
pp. 60–61; 1960, p. 20–21) tracks how epoché enables one to reach
the pure ego, Ingarden pinpoints the metaphysical thesis formulated
there, namely the thesis that the existential status of ego is prior in
itself, whereas the status of the world is secondary. In Ingarden’s
(1998, pp. 62–63) view, however, this claim should instead be for
mulated as a result of meditations, yet in the First CM this seems to
be unjustified and, as he puts it, »non-Cartesian.« In addition, in his
remark on § 13 of the Second CM, Ingarden (1998, p. 67) states that
the restriction of inquiries to pure ego seems to contradict the claims
of the First CM since Husserl still allows doubting here; in turn, a
philosopher would require apodictic evidence. This criticism is asso
ciated with Ingarden’s more general remark on § 26 of the Third CM,
in which he holds that epoché restricts research to »my« (the medi
tating phenomenologist’s) cogitationes (Ingarden 1998, p. 80). This
means, however, that the philosopher begins his meditations with
random or accidental cogitationes which, more importantly, are only
tokens of lived experiences. In Ingarden’s opinion, eidetic considera
tion cannot exceed »randomness of choice« (Zufälligkeit der
Auswahl) here.19
It is clear that Ingarden’s criticism of Husserl’s view on the prob
lem of the beginning follows from the recognition of a twofold diffi
culty. First, Husserl (in his opinion) accepts unjustified metaphysical
presuppositions; second, these presuppositions make it impossible to
reach the level of eidetic and apodictic knowledge. To avoid these
problems, in his remarks on § 32 of the Fourth CM, Ingarden (1998,
p. 87) suggests that it would be more promising to accept the intuition
of living-through (Intuition des Durchlebens), which he discussed in
his 1921 text on the petitio principii fallacy, as the basis for meditations.
Why, one might ask, would acceptance be helpful here? In the short
text »On the Danger of a Petitio Principii in the Theory of Knowl
edge« (Über die Gefahr einer Petitio Principii in der Erkenntnistheorie),
Ingarden discusses the problem of the possibility of direct knowledge
about lived experiences. He shows that if knowledge originates from
reflection, which consists in focusing on an act, the very act of reflec
tion has to be founded on another, i.e., on the act which is considered
in reflection. To phrase it differently, knowledge based on reflection
19 Ingarden’s reading of Husserl’s eidetic method seems to be inadequate here as
eidetic variation enables one to vary a single phenomenon in order to comprehend its
essence as a manifold of possibilities. See, e.g., De Santis 2020, pp. 255–269.
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would imply the petitio principii fallacy. Responding to this difficulty,

Ingarden writes about intuition, which is not so much an act (in the
proper phenomenological sense of the word) as a way of experiencing
itself. Ingarden’s point is that one acquires knowledge about one’s
consciousness since one »lives through« its contents in an immediate
way which seems to be direct and infallible.20 By adapting this idea to
CM, Ingarden suggests that eidetic cognition in Husserl’s philosophy
has a false metaphysical presupposition and thus is not absolutely
justified, whereas the intuition of »living through« is an epistemo
logical tool which grounds knowledge about consciousness in a more
adequate way. As such, for Ingarden (1998, p. 67–68) this tool guar
antees the authentic beginning of a phenomenological meditation
since it allows one to avoid the repressus in infinitum problem.
5. Developments of Ingarden’s reading of CM
In Sect. 2, I suggested that Ingarden worked on his remarks on CM

even after sending a copy to Husserl in 1931. Indeed, the views or ideas
presented in the remarks also resonated in his later writings. Further
more, as we will see in the following, after 1931 Ingarden developed
a clear Cartesian motive which, in turn, was absent in his earlier works,
e.g., in »Essential Questions« or in »Remarks about the ›Idealism-
Realism‹ Problem.« Of course, I do not claim that Ingarden’s reading
of CM changed his view of phenomenology fundamentally. The main
disagreement between Husserl and Ingarden after 1931 still concerned
the realism-idealism controversy (e.g., Ingarden 1998, pp. 177–208).
The point is that Ingarden seemingly found topics in CM which con
firmed his early criticism. Given this, Ingarden referred in his later
works to CM to make his arguments sharper. For instance, in the paper
that was presented in 1956 in Krefeld, »On Husserl’s Transcendental
Idealism« (Über den transzendentalen Idealismus bei E. Husserl],
Ingarden (1998, p. 209) referred to § 41 of CM as an explicit declara
tion of the idealistic character of phenomenology. In this regard, he
quoted the thesis he formulated in 1931 when working on his remarks
on CM, namely that the world was comprehended by Husserl as »pro
duced« by consciousness, but this claim cannot be a presupposition of
20 Ingarden 1921, p. 562; Ingarden 1994, p. 211. On the discussion of Ingarden’s

theory, see Chrudzimski 1999, pp. 37–71.
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any philosophical meditation: it must be its result (Ingarden 1998, p.

212, footnote 4, and p. 216). Also, in his Oslo lectures on phenomenol
ogy of 1967, Ingarden tracked Cartesian topics in Husserl. First, he
derived the theory of epoché from the First and Second CM, yet it was
rephrased in ontological terms as an attempt to establish a domain of
a transcendental being (Ingarden 1976, pp. 14–15). Second, Ingarden
(1976, p. 26) still defined the process of constitution as comprehended
in CM as the process of »production« of transcendent objects. How
ever, as is equally important, he noticed the change in Husserl’s theory
of intersubjectivity as presented in the Fifth CM (Ingarden 1976, p.
70). This remark is important for another reason.
In Sect. 2, I noted that Ingarden did not send his remarks on
the Fifth CM to Husserl. However, in the later edition, published
in Ingarden’s »Gesammelte Werke,« one finds a few remarks on this
text. The criticism he formulated there mirrored the charges already
reconstructed above in Sect. 3 and 4: Ingarden (1998, pp. 97–98)
noticed that the existence of alter ego cannot be »produced« by the
pure ego since it is existentially autonomous. In addition, he observed
an ambiguity in the idea that alter ego is »alien« for the pure ego, since
even sensations are »alien« in someone’s experience (Ingarden 1998,
pp. 99–100). In what sense, then, is alter ego »alien«? Does this equate
to the thesis that alter ego is a bundle of sensations? This reading
of Husserl was later developed by Ingarden (1939) on the occasion
of the paper that was presented at the meeting of Lvov Scientific
Society in 1939. This paper concerned the theory of cognition of other
psychic states and Husserl was presented there as a proponent of
the theory of empathy (Einfühlung). In Ingarden’s opinion, Husserl’s
theory comprehended other subjects as copies of ego and for this
reason it failed to define cognition of other psychic states as direct and
intuitive. Against this background, Ingarden discussed the basics of
his original theory of social cognition. This topic, however, exceeds the
limits of the present chapter.
In his comment on Ingarden’s reading of CM, Półtawski (1982,
p. xxvi) noticed that the reading also resonated in a different context:
in 1937, Ingarden (1983, pp. 33–52) participated in the Congrès
Descartes, where he presented a paper (later published in an enlarged
version) entitled the »Man and Time.« Półtawski suggested that the
text developed the Cartesian theme which is rooted in Ingarden’s
remarks on CM. This suggestion has been elaborated recently by
Wojciech Starzyński (2022, pp. 189–211), for whom Ingarden’s des
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criptions of the two forms of time experience that are formulated

in »Man and Value« can be interpreted from a Cartesian viewpoint.
More precisely, Ingarden (1983, pp. 48–50) analyzes there first-per
son experiences as the basis for defining what it means to exist as
oneself. In this regard, he describes two fundamental attitudes toward
time: either one becomes aware of the destructive role of time, or one
is convinced that one transcends time. Curiously enough, according
to Starzyński, Ingarden developed this approach in »Chapter XVI« of
Part II/2 of the Controversy over the Existence of the World, which
addressed the problem of the form of pure consciousness and which
examined, among others, the question of the relationship between the
soul and the body.
6. Conclusion
The aim of this chapter was to present the context, main arguments
and developments of Ingarden’s reading of CM. In Sect. 2, I presented
the historical context of Husserl’s request to comment on the French
version of CM by showing the main topics discussed by Ingarden
in the 1920s and early 1930s. In the light of these considerations,
it should come as no surprise that the context for this commentary
on CM was defined by the realism-idealism controversy. In Sect.
3, I explored the context by tracking Ingarden’s main ontological
arguments against Husserl’s CM. As we have seen, Ingarden held
that the world in CM is comprehended as dependent on the pure
ego, which »produces« intentional objects. Next, in Sect. 4, I discussed
the question of the beginning of a philosophical meditation. In this
regard, following Ingarden, I argued that Husserl seemed to accept
unjustified (ontological or even metaphysical) presuppositions. By
contrast, the genuine beginning of philosophy lay in the intuition
of »living through,« which is an infallible basis of knowledge. Finally,
in Sect. 5, I discussed selected developments of Ingarden’s reading of
CM. As I have shown, this reading was used in later arguments against
Husserl’s alleged idealism, but it was developed in the interesting
direction of exploring first-person experiences. In conclusion, it can
be argued that Ingarden’s view (also present in his other texts) of CM
popularized a Cartesian way of reading Husserl in Poland; more pre
cisely, this reading was consolidated by three main topics: (i) idealism,
(ii) absolutism in theory of knowledge and (iii) the postulation that
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Witold Płotka
philosophy should be understood as a science (see Płotka 2017b). The

Cartesian theme was developed later by other scholars, not only by
Ingarden’s students. The question of these developments, however,
does not concern me in the present study. Instead, let me address the
question of the relevance of Ingarden’s reading.
In Husserl’s (1994b, p. 280) opinion, which he formulated after
receiving Ingarden’s remarks, Ingarden adopted a different method
and for this reason his comments presented different approaches
toward phenomenology. Indeed, as noted above, one can argue that
Ingarden in fact misread CM since Husserl’s position in this work
cannot be understood as idealism in a traditional sense. To go a step
further, following, e.g., Dan Zahavi (2017, p. 73), one can even argue
that Husserl’s aim corresponded with Ingarden: they both wanted
to defend the transcendence and reality of the world. To show this,
one can track Ingarden’s misinterpretations of Husserl’s reduction,
which should be understood as a metaphysically neutral tool rather
than as a method rooted in metaphysical claims. Yet, I think that
this counterargument is only partial. It is equally justified to hold
that Ingarden’s criticism was also misunderstood by Husserl. If this is
the case, one can hold that Husserl cannot reject the thesis that the
world is ontologically defined on its own, despite the sense constituted
by consciousness. Of course, this moderate reading of the Husserl-
Ingarden controversy does not reject the idea that phenomenology is
excluded by ontology. Instead, ontological considerations should be
treated as a necessary background of phenomenological research. I
think that the fact that Ingarden decided to comment on Husserl’s CM
shows that he wanted to bridge the gap between these domains.
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Horizons of Self-Reflection: Remarks on Ludwig

Landgrebe’s Critique of Husserl’s Theory of
Phenomenological Reflection
1. Landgrebe and the reception of Husserl’s Cartesianism

after World War II
Ludwig Landgrebe’s paper »Husserl’s Departure from Cartesian

ism« appeared in the 1961–1962 volume of the Philosophische Rund
schau,1 shortly after the 1959 publication of volume VIII of Husser
liana with the edition of the second part of Husserl’s 1923/24 lecture
course on First Philosophy; for a while, this article remained one of the
most influential papers in the reception of Husserl during the second
half of the 20th century. However, Landgrebe’s aim was not to write
a review of the book, but to offer a particular interpretation having in
view Heidegger’s criticisms of Husserl’s subjectivism and the idea of an
overcoming of metaphysics.
Landgrebe acknowledges that Husserl’s own self-interpretation
of transcendental phenomenology characterizes it as the science that
makes possible the idea of an ultimate foundation of all knowledge
based on apodictic evidence. However, in this essay he wants to
suggest that in Husserl’s lectures of the twenties, it is possible to
find an alternative orientation toward the method of transcendental
reduction than the one presented in Ideas I—one that according to
Landgrebe’s claim presupposes a departure from the Cartesian idea
of philosophy.
1 The Rundschau was founded by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Helmut Kuhn in 1953.
Dieter Henrich’s review of First Philosophy, quoted by Landgrebe in his own text
(Landgrebe 1981, p. 66 footnote 1) also appeared in this journal, as well as two previous
papers by Hans Wagner that illustrate the reception of Husserl’s philosophy in Ger
many after the war (Luft 2019, p. lxv and f.).
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Ignacio Quepons
Among Husserl’s students, Landgrebe remained the most faith

ful to a Husserlian perspective in transcendental phenomenology.
Yet from his earliest essays, Landgrebe attempted to ground an under
standing of transcendental phenomenology beyond what would later
be known as the »traditional« or »standard« presentation of Husserl’s
philosophy (Welton 2000; San Martín 2015), which was grounded
in an overemphasis on subjectivism and ahistorical dimensions of
experience. However, after serious criticisms provided by scholars like
Hopkins (1993), Held (1996), San Martín (1997), and more recently,
Geniusas (2012), Perkins (2014), and Luft (2019)—just to mention
a few who have criticized Landgrebe’s account of Husserl’s Cartesian
ism—the horizon of its reception is different nowadays. Nevertheless,
most of these criticisms focus on the way Landgrebe interpreted
Husserl and do not consider the full context of Landgrebe’s motiva
tions for his position with regard to his own philosophical project.
As I will try to show in the following pages, Landgrebe points out
certain contradictions between the project attempted by Husserl and
the consequences of his own phenomenological path, consequences
that went far beyond the self-interpretation of his writings—particu
larly regarding the Cartesian idea of the possibility of a reflective
account of the ultimate foundations of knowledge based on apodictic
evidence. And he takes Husserl’s emphasis on the horizonal dimen
sion of experience as his point of departure. According to Landgrebe,
the fundamental problem of phenomenology is not the constitution
of a science of subjectivity, but the possibility of a new metaphysics of
experience able to give an account of the problem of the world beyond
the subjectivistic interpretation of the modern heritage. Moreover, for
Landgrebe, from the beginning of his career such a possibility relies on
reconstructing the points of commonality between the founder of the
phenomenological tradition and the fundamental ontology of Martin
Heidegger, particularly with regard to the problem of the world.
Certainly, Landgrebe was aware that Husserl did not pursue an
explicit departure from metaphysics; on the contrary, in the view of
his master, the commitment to the ultimate foundations of science
remained the final goal of his intellectual enterprise. Nevertheless,
Landgrebe’s aim in this essay was to suggest how the explorations
Husserl undertakes in his lectures lead to a contradiction of the goal
of understanding phenomenology in terms of the classical idea of
first philosophy, particularly the one presented by Descartes in his
Meditations on First Philosophy.
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Horizons of Self-Reflection
Thus, my assessment of Landgrebe’s interpretation of Husserl

aims to recover some themes of his main argument concerning
the transcendental field of experience, especially the theme of the
centrality of the notion of horizon with regard to the problem of
phenomenological reflection. But I will also consider other motiva
tions for Landgrebe’s position in order to evaluate his critical position
toward and reception of Husserl’s works in the context of his own
understanding of phenomenology. Certainly, Landgrebe is not wrong
when he characterizes the notion of subjectivity at stake in transcen
dental phenomenology as something that in a way goes beyond the
sharp dualism inherited from the Cartesian metaphysical heritage,
because Husserl’s notion of subjectivity does not correspond either to
Cartesian rationalism or to the Kantian formalistic account of subjec
tive experience. Actually, in his Cartesian Meditations Husserl himself
offers explicit criticisms against Descartes’ metaphysical assumptions
regarding his notion of the ego cogito, and indirectly against the
formalistic account of Kant by stressing that the transcendental ego
is not a form, but a concrete monad, the faktische Ego (Husserl
1950, pp. 102, 103/68f). Nevertheless, Landgrebe suspects Husserl’s
emphasis on the apodicticity of reflection overshadows the concrete
dynamic of the ongoing constitution of sense that belongs to the
transcendental correlation and lends undue weight to the subjective
side of the constitution, presenting the ego as an object-like entity able
to be grasped in its entirety in a single glance, in a particular type of
intuition—namely, self-reflection. Additionally, in his view, Husserl’s
characterization of phenomenology as a science capable of providing
the ultimate foundations of all knowledge through reflection fails to
recognize the accomplishments of his own discoveries, as if there
were a prejudice that does not allow Husserl to realize how his own
descriptions lead to a departure of metaphysics occurring »behind his
back.«
However, Husserl’s doctrine of transcendental subjectivity and
his characterization of transcendental reduction as a reflective method
in his Cartesian Meditations allow a response to Landgrebe’s account
of subjectivity and is consistent with Husserl’s claims in other later
works regarding the so-called »Cartesian way,« such as in the Crisis
(Husserl 1954, p. 194 and ff.), thereby countering Landgrebe’s claim
that Husserl’s project of building up a rigorous science is a »ship
wreck« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 67). As I will try to suggest, the problem
with Landgrebe’s interpretation is that he conflates two issues related
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Ignacio Quepons
to the meaning of the notion of horizon and underestimates the

importance of the distinction in the Cartesian Meditations between
apodictic and adequate evidence—even though he was aware of it
(Landgrebe 1981, p. 76)—for both the concrete understanding of sub
jectivity and the performance of the phenomenological reflection as
such. And as Luis Villoro suggested in his early and almost unnoticed
review of First Philosophy (perhaps the first ever published, in con
tradistinction to the reception of the book in Germany), »Husserl’s
concern with attempting different ways rather than the Cartesian way
indicates that he considered this as unsatisfactory, or at least insuffi
cient. Nevertheless, the other ways do not reject the first one, but
complete it by revealing other possibilities.«2
2. Landgrebe’s argument in Husserl’s departure

from Cartesianism
Landgrebe’s entire argument rests on the idea that it is possible to

read Husserl’s own words in a way that surpasses the aims of his
own theoretical purposes to such an extent that he was not even
aware of the consequences of his own radicalism. »It is the path
of an experimenting adventurer in thought whose successes are
constantly thrown into question in the reflections which accompany
2 Villoro 1960, p. 235. In his introduction to the English translation of Husserl’s First
Philosophy, Sebastian Luft claims that a »sustained reception« of the book »took place
in German-language scholarship alone and has no precedent in other languages« (Luft
2019, p. lxiv). Unfortunately, this is wrong. Villoro’s review appeared, in Spanish,
just one year after the publication of the book in Germany and just three years
before meeting Landgrebe in Mexico during the International Congress of Philosophy
organized by José Gaos at UNAM in a symposium on the Husserlian notion of
Lebenswelt. Landgrebe’s article on Husserl’s Cartesianism was translated into Spanish
in 1968—probably for the first time in a foreign language (the English translation
was initially published in 1970)—by Mario A. Presas, a former and close student of
Landgrebe, who also translated the version of the Cartesian Meditations from the
Husserliana edition in 1979. There was an early Spanish translation of this book by José
Gaos, based on a manuscript of Husserl (Gaos 1986, p. 31), just as with the English and
the French editions (Husserl 1950, pp. 221–228); this information is not mentioned in
the 1950 Husserliana volume, but the essentially unaltered second edition does take
into account the manuscript Dorion Cairns used for the English translation, and this
case is similar to that of the Gaos translation. Moreover, there is textual evidence about
this fact in the letter of Husserl to Ingarden of November 24, 1934 (Husserl 1994a,
p. 298).
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the lectures and whose goal is not fixed from the start so that it
actually leads elsewhere than initially foreseen« (Landgrebe 1981, p.
67). According to Landgrebe, Husserl’s purpose in these lectures was
to take into account the advances made in his methods since Ideas
I; however, according to Landgrebe, »it is the paradoxical result of
this attempt (the full significance of which was only gradually seen
by Husserl himself) that this way and this foundation is in general
not workable, with the result that in the later work of the Crisis an
entirely different way will finally be taken« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 67).
In presenting these reflections, Landgrebe takes for granted that the
way to the phenomenological reduction presented in the Crisis results
in an overcoming of the former explanations of phenomenology,
setting aside the fact that Husserl does return to the method of
the epoché in the Cartesian Meditations. Landgrebe compares the
shift in Husserl’s intellectual development to that of Hegel, whose
Science of Logic follows a different perspective than the one in the
Phenomenology of Spirit. These references to Hegel are important
for understanding Landgrebe’s aim in the text: his entire argument
consists in overcoming the Cartesian notion of apodictic evidence
given in a single intuition, following a Hegelian reorientation of
what we should understand by »experience,” namely, something that
entails the mediation of horizons exceeding what is immediately given
in every intuition. In his view the path followed by Husserl ends in
a »shipwreck«; however, »this shipwreck—and this could be clear to
neither Husserl himself nor to those who heard the lectures at that
time—is more than an author’s accidental misfortune. It is not the
sign of a failing systematic creativity; it is rather the case that in no
other of his writings is Husserl’s radicalism concerning the continually
new ›presuppositionless‹ beginning and the questioning of all that
had so far been achieved so visibly confirmed« (Landgrebe 1981, p.
67). For Landgrebe, what Husserl achieved at the end was to bring
the tradition toward its limits and against his own understanding
of his project, so that what he made at the end »served to break up
this tradition« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 68). Thus, in concordance with
Heidegger’s idea of the »end of metaphysics,« Landgrebe adds: »We
shall first properly understand the sense of such language if we follow
closely how, in this work, metaphysics takes its departure behind
Husserl’s back« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 68).
What Landgrebe seems to presuppose in his statements is 1) a
notion of metaphysics as the ultimate foundation of all knowledge,
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Ignacio Quepons
beginning with the identification of the absolute substance and the

primordial evidence of the ego cogito; and 2) the idea of a first
philosophy grounded in the apodicticity of the ego cogito in terms
of a single intuitive act of reflection resulting in an understanding
of truth in the context of a nonhistorical apriorism. In this regard,
Landgrebe is emphatically claiming that »one can state quite frankly
that this work is the end of metaphysics in the sense that after it any
further advance along the concepts and paths of thought from which
metaphysics seeks forcefully to extract the most extreme possibilities
is no longer possible« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 68). Nevertheless, he
insists on the point that even Husserl was unaware of it: »neither
Husserl nor those who were his students at the time were explicitly
aware of this, and it will still require a long and intensive struggle
of interpretation and continuing thoughtful deliberation until we
have experienced everything that here comes to an end« (Landgrebe
1981, p. 68f.). This mention is particularly interesting because it
seems that for Landgrebe the proper understanding of Husserl’s
contribution to philosophy goes far beyond the latter’s interpretation
of his own work due to structural reasons that belong to the underlying
historicist assumptions in Landgrebe’s own understanding of truth:
the »truth« of Husserl’s writings is something that seems to emerge
after a long term »temporal distance,« and it is only with regard
to what happened with the phenomenological tradition, especially
after the war, that we may realize how the very origin of the end of
metaphysics began with Husserl’s shipwreck.
Moreover, Landgrebe suggests that we should see the switch
of direction in Husserl’s path as something that either influenced
Heidegger directly, or perhaps provided an impetus he took into
consideration for his own purposes. »From his first stay at Freiburg
and from his many conversations with Husserl, Heidegger knew the
thoughts affecting Husserl at this time and had therefore also experi
enced the shipwreck of this attempt through his own observations and
had drawn the proper consequences in attempting, from that point on,
to take his leave of the language of metaphysics which Husserl himself
still employed« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 69).3
3 Here is not the place to give a full account of Heidegger’s influence on Landgrebe,
detectable very early in his dissertation on Dilthey and in Der Begriff des Erlebens
(Landgrebe 2010), an influence that Husserl himself was aware of (Husserl 1994a,
p. 305). However, we shouldn’t forget the fact that Landgrebe attended Heidegger’s
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Nevertheless, it is plausible to think that on the contrary,

Landgrebe was the one who was influenced by and committed to
Heidegger’s early criticisms of Cartesian metaphysics precisely in
those years when he was working on the transcription of the lectures
on First Philosophy.4
Additionally, Landgrebe mentions that »one must also refer to
this introduction with respect to the occurrence of the title First Phi
losophy, and the meaning its employment has in the development of
Husserl’s thought. Here we need only remark that after the completion
of these lectures this title recedes more and more into the background
and appears only in passing in the Cartesian Meditations, and only
once again in quotation marks in the Crisis« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 70).
Yet not only the expression »first philosophy,« but Husserl’s emphasis
on presenting phenomenology as first philosophy still appears in
important writings after these lectures such as the Encyclopaedia
Britannica Article (Husserl 1962, p. 298). However, Landgrebe seems
confident in stating that »Husserl saw that he was compelled to aban
don the subject matter itself, and that means that the guiding thought
of the basic discipline of phenomenology designated by the title First
Philosophy is to be abandoned as incapable of realization« (Landgrebe
1981, p. 70).
lectures in 1926 (Xolocotzi 2011, pp. 90–91); note also the way he suggested the
relation between Heidegger’s work with regard to Dilthey and Husserl in his doctoral
dissertation (see Landgrebe 1928, pp. 258, 326, 361, 364; Spiegelberg 1982, p. 242),
anticipating to a certain extent Georg Misch’s famous work on Dilthey, Husserl, and
Heidegger (Misch 1930), which allows us to recognize an early and strong influence
of Heidegger in Landgrebe’s thought.
4 From 1924 to 1930 Landgrebe was Husserl’s assistant (Spiegelberg 1982, p. 241;
Schuhmann 1977, p. 273) and worked intensively transcribing and editing several of
Husserl’s writings, beginning with First Philosophy (Husserl 1959, p. xi); The Basic
Problems of Phenomenology (Husserl 1972, pp. xxxiv, 500, 510); Studies Regarding the
Structure of Consciousness (Husserl 2020, pp. li, liii); and Ideas II (Husserl 1952, p.
xviii). After he moved to Prague, he kept working on Husserl’s manuscripts from the
lectures on transcendental logic (Analysis of Passive Synthesis) and on a group of
manuscripts on the problem of the lifeworld, most of which are now published in
Husserliana (Husserl 2008, pp. lvii-lviii). Finally, perhaps his most important work
in this regard is the editing and literary formulation of Experience and Judgment
(Spiegelberg 1982, p. 242; Husserl 1994b, pp. 338, 360, 362 f., 366 f., 373). Landgrebe
not only wrote the Introduction (§§ 1–14), but also added some parts of the text (see
Lohmar 1996, p. 34). Note also that in a letter to Husserl of October 22, 1927 (Husserl
1994b, p. 145), Heidegger reports having read Landgrebe’s transcription of the Studies
Regarding the Structure of Consciousness.
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In his review of the lectures, Landgrebe points out that the notion
of first philosophy encompasses the »exemplary Cartesian quest for
the fundamentum absolutum et inconcussum which is to be found in the
indubitable evidence of the ego cogito. It is the idea of a first science
which issues from a firm, indubitable, and in this sense, apodictic,
evidence and whose every additional step is built upon it in a similar
manner and is derived from and justified by it« (Landgrebe 1981, p.
71). In this regard, Landgrebe focuses on the centrality of the notion
of experience in Husserl’s attempt to find the ultimate foundations of
science: »In fact, Husserl, in all essentials, had already left behind the
Cartesian way of establishing a foundation insofar as he conceived
the Cartesian ›apodictic‹ evidence of the ›I am‹ together with all of
the content included within it as an absolute experience, indeed, as
an entire realm of experience« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 79). Nevertheless,
this does not imply that Husserl followed either the path opened
by Descartes with regard to the doctrine of innate ideas along with
the deductive guarantee of God, or the way provided by Kant con
cerning the fact of the I think and its experience as conditions of
possibility »which cannot in turn become the ›object‹ of an experience
because it first makes all experience possible« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 79).
With regard to the question concerning the ways into phe
nomenology, Landgrebe presents the core of his analysis by raising
three interconnected questions that could be summarized as a funda
mental concern regarding the nature of transcendental experience:
1) in what sense does phenomenology speak of experience? 2) How
does phenomenology characterize the subject of this experience?
And 3) how does phenomenology describe the field of experience?
(Landgrebe 1981, p. 82). For the first two questions, the answer is
guided by the performance of the transcendental reduction.
(1) Experience is not to be taken in a mundane sense in which it
is »always understood as the experience of beings in the world, and
as the experience of the world itself as the totality of everything that
can be experienced« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 82). Since such a notion of
experience »cannot measure up to the criterion of apodicticity: it is
always presumptive, correcting itself as its course develops,« then »in
general there is no apodictic certainty that it will proceed further in
a continuous way as the experience of the world« (Landgrebe 1981,
pp. 82f.). Thus the experience that the phenomenologist is concerned
with is not the experience of another, but »the reflective self-expe
rience of the ›I am.‹ The proposition ›I am‹ is ›the true principle of
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all principles.‹ Hence this ›first‹ way to the dimension of absolute

experience we are seeking passes through the ›critique of mundane
experience’ […]. It signifies the attempt to develop the Cartesian point
of departure without Descartes’ metaphysical substructures and is
therefore also termed the ›Cartesian way‹ « (Landgrebe 1981, p. 83).
(2) Thus, and regarding the second question, the subject of this
experience is not the mundane, but the transcendental ego.
The sphere of experience which is apodictically certain is the sphere
of the »I am« which is thought of as the solus ipse. Transcendental
phenomenology can therefore only begin as egology: one’s own life
has the privilege of being a first and original givenness. […] This
reflective self-experience of the transcendental ego, the »primordial
ego« (Ur-ich), is to be distinguished fundamentally from the psycho
logical reflective experience which never discards the character of being
mundane. (Landgrebe 1981, pp. 84, 86)
(3) Finally, according to Landgrebe, the Cartesian way »does not
provide an adequate answer to this question«—namely, the question
regarding how phenomenology describes the field of experience:
It only establishes a reference to the sought-after dimension of the
absolute foundation (which remains entirely empty) by leading back to
the indubitable evidence of the »I am« through the critique of mundane
experience and the overthrow of the belief in the world’s existence.
This way does not grant us insight into everything that has been
overthrown with the discarding of this belief, nor does it grant us
insight into what still remains with this evidence of the »I am,” that
is, how this momentary point of certitude with respect to my own
existence as the indubitable ego already includes further evidences
which are equally assured, evidences with which a »transcendental field
of experience« can be disclosed. (Landgrebe 1981, p. 90)
According to Landgrebe, with the description of experience Husserl
that designates a “›second way‹ into phenomenology«—which is to
be understood as »entirely apart from the previous ›Cartesian way‹ of
disconnecting the belief in the world« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 90)—the
performance of the phenomenological reduction is exemplified in
terms of individual acts, showing how the transcendental field of
experience is disclosed with regard to the intentional implications
among these acts. »These acts reveal how the entire transcendental
field of experience is already implied in all actual moments of the ›I
am‹ and its performance of this or that act. Hence it presents this text’s
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development of the theory of intentional implications« (Landgrebe

1981, p. 90).
Thus for Landgrebe, this doctrine of intentional implica
tions »shows that, as the locus of ultimate foundations, transcen
dental subjectivity is not exhausted by the ›present actuality‹ of con
sciousness and that all constituted ›sense‹ and ›meaning‹ cannot be
traced back to this aspect of consciousness« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 90).
As worldly beings, our perception is not only this specific per
ception, but is always experienced as a moment within the stream
of perceiving experience. »It is both consciousness of what has just
been perceived and the anticipation of what is immediately to come
—a connection which was first presented in detail in the lectures
concerning the consciousness of time« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 91). Addi
tionally, »upon this re-presentifying mode of consciousness rests the
fact that the evidence of the ›I am‹ is not limited to the momentary
now-presentifying consciousness, but that it continually includes
consciousness of an experiential bond extended into the past and into
the future, so that there is consciousness of a presumably experienced
real world in this extendedness« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 92, translation
modified in accordance with the original 1970 version).
Therefore if the reductive analysis of an individual act-conscious
ness does not remain with each individual act, but by its own sense
leads to the consciousness of the horizons of implications of other
lived experiences already implied by every consciousness of acts, then
if »the true phenomenological reduction is to be performed (in which
all presupposed objectivity is set out of action), it cannot limit itself
to the individual acts but must include that consciousness of horizons
implied in every consciousness of acts, a consciousness which is ulti
mately consciousness of the world as the total horizon« (Landgrebe
1981, p. 93f.).
Moreover, the horizonal structure of consciousness allows Land
grebe to highlight a very important aspect for evaluating the relation
between phenomenology and Kantian transcendental philosophy. As
Landgrebe states,
experience is not only the »discursive« apperceiving which runs
through individual elements and gathers them together and reaches a
totality of experience only as a limiting concept of reason. Experience
is already involved with the whole of experience as the horizon of
the world before all discursiveness in individual experiences, a hori
zon which not only accompanies every act of consciousness as the
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potentiality of being able to advance further and to go back further

into the past through memory, but which also directs every act of
consciousness. (Landgrebe 1981, p. 95)
Such horizons of implication are not limited to perceptual experience,
but relate to the historical implications that in a way make the
continuity of the present experience possible and are already implied
by this experience. This is the point where Landgrebe thinks that any
attempt to find an apodictic foundation by addressing one’s own self as
the object of fulfillment of an empty intention is problematic.
Finally, the horizon-structure illustrates not only that the »I
am« obtained as the result of the reduction concerns more than »the
momentary evidence of the act just performed by the ego but that
along with this act a field of transcendental experience was also
won. This means that the requirement of extending the reductive
bracketing to include the consciousness of the world implied in the
horizon of every single act signifies not only retaining the momentary
now of the ›I am,’ but also retaining the world which is co-given
in the horizon-consciousness as something which is also intended.
What remains is the ›I am‹ together with its consciousness of the
intended world, this stream of its intended world-experience—no
matter how it might stand with respect to the true being of the
intended world« (Landgrebe 1981, p. 100).
Landgrebe insists upon pointing out that the disclosure of the
field of phenomenological experience is not to be understood in terms
of »a field of absolute being. Rather is this thesis rooted in Husserl’s
interpretation of the essence and achievement of phenomenological
reflection. If it can be shown that this interpretation cannot stand
up to criticism, it seems to me that the thesis affirming absolute
being of transcendental subjectivity becomes untenable« (Landgrebe
1981, p.104).
3. Behind Husserl’s back: Contexts and motivations of

Landgrebe’s position
Leaving aside for a moment the assessment of Landgrebe’s criticisms

of Husserl, it is worthwhile pointing out some underlying motivations
we may find in other texts written by Landgrebe, motivations that
may offer a wider scope for evaluating his position. As we will see,
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Landgrebe’s insight arose very early in his intellectual development,

and Husserl himself was aware of (and perhaps disappointed by)
his positions.
In a letter of February 5, 1933, Husserl expresses his disagree
ment with Landgrebe’s attempt to connect the notion of horizon,
present in Husserl’s writings from the time Landgrebe started working
with him, with Heidegger’s philosophy: »According to what I’m hear
ing, you are still always trying to transform my theory of horizons in
a Heideggerian way, and thus to establish a connection between us.
I am quite certain that this is not possible« (Husserl 1994b, p. 305).
Landgrebe drafted an answer to this letter defending his point:
It is not my intention to transform your theory of horizons in a
Heideggerian direction; on the contrary, I would like to attempt to show
that what Heidegger characterizes as horizon-formation concerns
genuine constitutive problems—problems that certainly come into
view as long as one remains in a mundane attitude. To be able to
speak of horizon-formation in this sense always already presupposes
a subjectivity already in possession of typical predelineations for the
further course of its experiences, predelineations whose origin lies in
the subjectivity’s mundane community with others. (Husserl 1994b,
p. 307)
In his letter, what Husserl is referring to is the book Der Begriff des
Erlebens that Landgrebe wrote between 1929 and 1933, a work that
remained unpublished until 2010. In this text, Landgrebe attempts,
following Husserl’s lectures on the analysis of passive synthesis, to
describe the horizons of passivity and affectivity as constituting a
pre-given dimension of experience, ultimately unreachable by sub
jective reflection. This position also appears—years after Husserl
passed away—in other texts such as »The Problem of Passive Con
stitution« (Landgrebe 1982, pp. 71–87), where he adds to his inter
pretation the understanding of transcendental life as a corporeal
kinaesthetic field where the centrality of the development of capabil
ities (Ich-kann structures) is rooted in the capability of self-motivated
movement. »The lived-body (Leiblichkeit) shouldn’t be understood
only as constituted, but also as constituting, as a system of capabilities
(System von Vermöglichkeiten) that we become aware of because of
the ›I can‹ (Ich-kann), which is a practical consciousness of ›being-
able-to-rule‹ over my body (›Walten-können‹ im Leibe)« (Landgrebe
1982, p. 82). All this comes before the institution of the »I,” and
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is therefore already functioning before I reflectively realize such

a dimension.
For Landgrebe, a transcendental account of life should start not
from the point of view of the reflective »I think,« but from a most
primitive dimension of »I can,« and particularly »I move.« In this
regard Landgrebe follows an alternative similar to the one provided by
Fichte in his account of the transcendental deduction, which empha
sizes the primacy of the practical dimension of subjectivity as the
very transcendental synthesis; what Landgrebe adds is a connection
between the primacy of the practical dimension of transcendental
life and the notion of the self-motivated movement of the body,
following an interpretation of Husserl’s account of corporeality in
Ideen II: »The consciousness of possibilities finds its origins and
roots in such consciousness of the I can. Therefore, according to
Husserl the consciousness of ›I can‹ is prior, genetically, to the explicit
consciousness of the ›I am‹ « (Landgrebe 1982, p. 67).
Moreover, Landgrebe was also convinced about the limits of
reflection because of the irreducibility of the dimension of facticity.
For Landgrebe, the starting point of the phenomenological enterprise
is not apodictic evidence, but the realization of the facticity of being
thrown into the world and the fact that such an event concerns the
individual life in an existential way. However, in contradistinction
to Heidegger, Landgrebe continues to use Husserlian terminology,
referring to intentionality, subjective performances, and particularly
the primacy of the lived body in understanding the concreteness of
subjectivity and even the problem of facticity (Landgrebe 1982, p.
102). One of the main insights Landgrebe takes from Heidegger in
his own reflections can therefore actually be traced back to its origin
in Husserl’s late writings (Landgrebe 1982, p. 38). In this regard,
Landgrebe seems to understand Husserlian passivity as a form of
limitation of the active capabilities of the self-constitution of the ego;
such limitations are nevertheless grounded in a primitive dimension
of practical potentialities rooted in sensibility on the one hand and in
the irreducible dimension of facticity on the other (Landgrebe 1982,
p. 78).
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4. Critical assessment of Landgrebe’s interpretation of the

role of horizons in his critique of Husserl’s Cartesianism
As Geniusas correctly points out, the problematic of horizons with

regard to phenomenological reflection does not originate in First
Philosophy: »We already encounter Husserl’s analysis of this theme in
Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, a set of lectures that Husserl had
delivered in 1910—1911 and which was one of the important sources
for Ideas I« (Geniusas 2012, p. 132). Thus, it is relevant to remark
that Landgrebe worked intensively on both of these works around the
period from 1923 to 1924. In the case of Grundprobleme we should
not forget that it was Landgrebe who elaborated the typescript of the
lecture in 1924 (Husserl 1973, p. xxxiv), and in the case of Ideas I,
he even organized a thematic index from a previous work of Gerda
Walther—including, of course, the expression »horizon« (Husserl
1976, p. xli).
In my opinion, however, Landgrebe conflates two problems
related to the absolute evidence of the »I am« with regard to the topic
of horizons. First, we have the mode of givenness of one’s own self,
which it is possible to describe following Husserl’s indications in the
Cartesian Meditations. Such indications, I would say, are consistent
with Landgrebe’s remarks on the relevance of horizons with regard
to self-reflection. However, Landgrebe does not consider the role
of the progressive explication of noematic correlates, which is the
result of the analysis of horizons, as this topic is explained in the
Cartesian Meditations, nor does he consider how the evident correlate
of self-experience is, as a matter of fact, a case of this progressive
explication. Thus, on the one hand, we have the problem of the
universal validity of the proposition »I am,” which Husserl claims
to be the »true principle of all principles and the first proposition of
all true philosophy« (Husserl 1959, p. 42), and on the other hand,
we have the progressive explication of the correlate of self-reflection
as a noematic correlate. My point here is that the emergence of
the structure of horizons does not, as Landgrebe claims, contradict
the apodicticity of the statement »I am«; instead, the dynamics of
horizons is the field where it is possible to demonstrate the very
concretion of such evidence.
In the First Cartesian Meditation Husserl introduces the topic
of access to the transcendental sphere through the clarification and
critique of the notion of evidence. The way toward the absolute
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justification of sciences cannot take for granted, as Descartes does,

the validity of any science, not even mathematics. On the contrary,
Husserl proceeds to point out the need to clarify the teleological sense
underlying the idea of the sciences from the point of view of the
analysis of the activity of cognition: the judgment. Thus, the first step
toward the clarification of science is understanding the idea of science
as a noematic correlate. In this way, very early in the text Husserl not
only anticipates the concept of the noema (which is not made explicit
in its specific context until several sections later), but also includes the
implicit presupposition of one of the senses of the notion of horizons
in the distinction between mediated and immediate judgments. The
activity of cognition expressed in judgment presupposes more basic
forms of judging than those present in upper-level judicative activi
ties. This distinction makes room for another one concerning the form
of horizon as the field of a genetic ground that is already in play prior
to the performance of the acts of judgment, correlative to two forms of
evidence – predicative and pre-predicative:
We must distinguish the judgment in the broadest sense (something
meant as being) and evidence in the broadest sense from pre-predica
tive judgment and from pre-predicative evidence respectively. Pred
icative includes pre-predicative evidence. That which is meant or,
perchance, evidently viewed receives predicative expression; and sci
ence always intends to judge expressly and keep the judgment or the
truth fixed, as an express judgment or as an express truth. But the
expression as such has its own comparatively good or bad way of fitting
what is meant or itself given; and therefore it has its own evidence
or non-evidence which also goes into the predicating. Consequently
evidence of the expression is also a determining part of the idea of
scientific truth, as predicative complexes that are, or can be, grounded
absolutely. (Husserl 1950, p. 52/11)
In this passage it is important that on the one hand, with the reference
to what in another context we may call the »pre-predicative hori
zon« of all predicative judgment, predicative judgments presuppose
or imply forms of pre-predicative judgment with their own modes of
evidence that contribute, in this case, to forming the idea of scientific
truth with regard to the way it serves as the underlying ground for
predicative judgments. In other contexts, such a procedure is termed
a »Rückfrage« that inquires into what is presupposed; in this case,
predicative judgment as the form of scientific judgment becomes a
leading clue for the task of making implicit potentialities explicit.
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Thus, every act of judgment presupposes the form of »what is to

be judged« in the judgment, and this recalls or implies a form or
pre-predicative form of its reference, along with the way it might
become evident through reflection. This progressive return is lived
in the form of a co-meaning (mit-Meinung) or implicit potentiality
involved in the act of judgment, and in this way we may say that it
belongs to the potential horizon of all predicative evidence.
On the other hand, predicative judgments and their correlative
evidences are not isolated facts, but are connected in a progressive
way through consistent sequences of lived experiences, a way that
is grounded in the very structure of the experience, yielding as a
result the configuration of what is to be understood as evidence. In
this context Husserl defines evidence as follows: »Evidence is in an
extremely broad sense, an ’experiencing’ of something that is, and is
thus: it is precisely a mental seeing of something itself« (Husserl
1950, p. 52/12), and later in the text he adds: »Evidence, which in
fact includes all experiencing in the usual and narrower sense, can be
more or less perfect. Perfect evidence and its correlate, pure and genuine
truth, are given as ideas lodged in the striving for knowledge, for
fulfilment of one's meaning intention« (Husserl 1950, p. 52/12). In
the context of daily life, what is taken as evident is of course relative to
the context of its purpose, and the practical effects are enough for their
confirmation (Husserl 1950, p. 52/12). »But science looks for truths
that are valid, and remain so, once for all and for everyone; accordingly
it seeks verifications of a new kind, verifications carried through
to the end« (Husserl 1950, p. 52/12). Here the notion of horizon
explicitly appears for the first time in the Cartesian Meditations:
science »reconciles itself to an infinite horizon of approximations,
tending toward that idea« (Husserl 1950, p. 53/12). The notion of
an »infinite horizon of approximations« and the very concept of idea
are significant here: the idea of science, which guides scientific activity
as striving for the confirmation of a system of truths (or at least this
is its aspiration), goes through a horizon of approximations, which is
a field of progressive exhibitions where each evidence does not end in
itself, but implies further evidence as part of the progressive exhibition
of the system of evidences.
For Husserl, the main point here is that there are apodictic
evidences in the context of non-adequate evidences, and this is not
a contradiction (Husserl 1950, p. 56/16). Apodicticity is the result
of a »critical reflection« (Husserl 1950, p. 56/15) in which what is
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given as evident is evaluated in a critique regarding the possibility of

calling into doubt what is given as evident. Then Husserl raises the
question regarding the world: »But what if the world were, in the end,
not at all the absolutely first basis for judgments and a being that is
intrinsically prior to the world were the already presupposed basis
for the existence of the world?« (Husserl 1950, p. 58/18). Husserl’s
answer to this question is precisely the apodictic evidence of the ego
cogito, as the underlying and ever-present, though not necessarily
explicit, evidence of every experience.
Thus the fact that critical reflections demonstrate that the apod
ictic evidence of the ego cogito is simultaneously a matter of some
thing given in inadequate evidence implies, as Husserl points out in
§ 9 with regard to transcendental self-experience, that self-reflection
involves horizons.5
In such experience the ego is accessible to himself originaliter. But
at any particular time this experience offers only a core that is experi
enced »with strict adequacy,« namely the ego's living present (which
the grammatical sense of the sentence, ego cogito, expresses); while,
beyond that, only an indeterminately general presumptive horizon
extends, comprising what is strictly non-experienced but necessarily
also-meant. To it belongs not only the ego's past, most of which
is completely obscure, but also his transcendental abilities and his
habitual peculiarities at the time. External perception too (though
not apodictic) is an experiencing of something itself, the physical
thing itself: »it itself is there.« But, in being there itself, the physical
thing has for the experiencer an open, infinite, indeterminately general
horizon, comprising what is itself not strictly perceived—a horizon
(this is implicit as a presumption) that can be opened up by possible
experiences. Something similar is true about the apodictic certainty
characterizing transcendental experience of my transcendental I-am,
with the indeterminate generality of the latter as having an open
horizon. (Husserl 1950, p. 62/22f.)
Husserl himself seems to recognize, agreeing with Landgrebe, that
transcendental self-experience involves horizons pointing toward a
field of open possibilities of experiencing one’s own self beyond the
limited and isolated experience given in reflection; however, the fact
that he refers to the nucleus (Kern) of authentic adequate experience
5 This doctrine is certainly a modification of the doctrine we find in the lectures on

First Philosophy (Husserl 1959, p. 35), where apodicticity and adequation of evidence
are understood as one and the same thing.
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suggests that the very function of those intentional horizons of reflec

tion is precisely the progressive—and even why not, following Land
grebe, historical—concretion of the ego. In § 19 of the Cartesian Med
itations, Husserl explains how the dynamics of horizons functions
with regard to the explication of the noematic core (noematische Kern):
The horizons are »predelineated« potentialities. We say also: We
can ask any horizon what »lies in it,” we can explicate or unfold it,
and »uncover« the potentialities of conscious life at a particular time.
Precisely thereby we uncover the objective sense meant implicitly in
the actual cogito, though never with more than a certain degree of
foreshadowing. This sense, the cogitatum qua cogitatum, is never
present to actual consciousness (vorstellig) as a finished datum; it
becomes »clarified« only through explication of the given horizon and
the new horizons continuously awakened (der stetig neu geweckten
Horizonte). (Husserl 1950, p. 82/45)
As Husserl mentions, each lived experience has its horizon; is it not
therefore the case that concerning self-experience, even self-reflection
has its own horizon of explication such that the »gegenständlichen
Sinn« revealed as result of the progressive explication of such a
horizon is nothing but one’s own self, given each time in apodictic evi
dence?
The horizons of implications of experience are not necessarily
contradictory to the apodictic evidence of the ego cogito as Landgrebe
suggests. Furthermore, the way Husserl explains apodicticity in the
First Meditation suggests that it does not come from a single reflective
act, but from a »critical examination« that in practice may stem from
the evaluation of the analysis of implications of different horizons
until we come to the point that we confirm the impossibility of calling
into doubt what is given as evident. On the other hand, in § 41 there
appears the following reflection that in a certain way offers another
perspective on the relation between the epoché and the transcendental
reduction as it was presented in Ideas I:
But as soon as—instead of transiently exercising a phenomenological
epoché—one sets to work, attempting in a systematic self-investigation
and as the pure ego to uncover this ego's whole field of consciousness,
one recognizes that all that exists for the pure ego becomes constituted
in him himself; furthermore, that every kind of being—including
every kind characterized as, in any sense, »transcendent«—has its own
particular constitution. (Husserl 1950, p. 116/83)
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So instead of a »phenomenological epoché« performed »tran

siently« (flüchtig), as it might be understood in the context Landgrebe
is criticizing, Husserl points out in the Cartesian Meditations that
the discovery of the transcendental field is the result of a »system
atic self-reflection.« This observation resounds in the Crisis, where
Husserl revises the way followed in Ideas I as coming into the
transcendental sphere »in one leap« (Husserl 1954, p. 158). Given the
centrality of the consideration of horizons that appears from the very
beginning of the Cartesian Meditations, we may observe that Husserl
already incorporated into his meditations the »new method« that was
developed precisely in the lectures where, according to Landgrebe,
Husserl departed from Cartesianism. The transcendental reduction
understood as systematic self-reflection »leads back« (zurückleitet)
(Husserl 1950, p. 61/21), tracing all sense back to its origin in
transcendental consciousness and thereby disclosing the horizons
of intentional implication that are implicitly operating not only in
the constitution of all sense, but in the very self-constitution of the
transcendental subjectivity as a monad in an intersubjective context
with her surrounding world.
And Husserl returns to the problem of horizons of self-reflection
in § 46:
When I am effecting transcendental reduction and reflecting on myself,
the transcendental ego, I am given to myself perceptually as this ego—in
a grasping perception. Furthermore I become aware that, although not
grasped before this perception, I was »already given,” already there for
myself continually as an object of original intuition (as perceived in
the broader sense). But I am given, in any case, with an open infinite
horizon of still undiscovered internal features of my own. My own too is
discovered by explication and gets its original sense by virtue thereof.
It becomes uncovered originaliter when my experiencing-explicating
regard is directed to myself, to my perceptually and even apodictically
given »I am« and its abiding identity with itself in the continuous
unitary synthesis of original self-experience. Whatever is included
in this identical being’s own essence is characterized as its actual or
possible explicatum, as a respect in which I merely unfold my own
identical being as what it, as identical, is in particular: it in itself.
(Husserl 1950, p. 132/101)
In this regard we may observe the true significance of the discovery of
horizons for Husserl: far from representing an internal contradiction
in his account of experience, the discovery plays a decisive role in
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Ignacio Quepons
the transversal and connective functions of the intentional synthesis

essential to the self-revelation of the constitutive transcendental
system and to the reflective method of intentional analysis as such.
Thus, Husserl never abandoned his aim of grounding a universal
science, and the incorporation of the thematic of horizons does not
necessarily result in a contradiction of his methods. On the contrary, it
is through this doctrine that he was able to reconcile the co-primacy of
the apodictic evidence of the ego and the open horizons of the inade
quacy of every lived experience, even in the case of self-reflection.
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The Influence of the Cartesian Meditations on

the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas1
The aim of this essay is to highlight how the Cartesian Meditations—

and particularly (but not only) the Fifth Meditation—left an indelible
imprint on the thought of Levinas, decisively contributing to its
genesis and structure.
The relationship of Levinas with the Meditations is hardly redu
cible to his contribution to the French translation of the work,2
which, despite Husserl’s reservations,3 represents at the very least an
incontrovertible affirmation of a serious engagement with the text.
The profundity of this engagement can be examined on two closely
interrelated levels, one exegetical, the other theoretical.
On the exegetical level, Levinas quickly detects several proble
matic junctures in the work that will provoke rivers of ink being spilled
at the hands of later interpreters. He devotes particular attention to
several ambiguities in the Fifth Meditation, ambiguities that can be
formulated as questions that are as simple as they are radical: what is
the real problem that Husserl is engaged with in the Fifth Meditation?
Is solipsism a real threat for phenomenology? Before the constitution
of the alter ego takes place, is the transcendental ego truly alone? Or
is the trajectory described by Husserl in the Fifth Meditation nothing
1 English translation by Marco D. Dozzi.

2 As is well known, Levinas was entrusted with the Fifth Meditation in particular,
while the first four were translated by Gabrielle Peiffer (Lescourret 1994, p. 72).
3 Lamenting that the translators evince a general incomprehension of important
passages of the text, Husserl claims to be particularly dissatisfied with the translation
of the Fifth Meditation, in which »entire passages are often replaced by a single, vague
sentence that does not say anything« (Husserl 1994, p. 278). As Kobayashi justly
observes, it is difficult fully to assess the validity of Husserl’s critique, given that
the original German version of the text is unavailable, and it is also unclear to what
extent Husserl’s proficiency with French qualified him to evaluate the translators’ work
(Kobayashi 2002, p. 149).
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Stefano Bancalari
but the phenomenological clarification of an intersubjectivity within

which the ego is always already immersed, prior to and independent
of that clarification? And is the primordial reduction—the point of
departure and cornerstone of the entire sequence of operations (Leis
tungen) in virtue of which Fremderfahrung finally becomes possible—
only an »abstraction,« designed exclusively for an analysis that plays
out entirely on the static level (quaestio iuris)? Or does it instead
describe an experience with its own phenomenal concreteness, invol
ving a genetic element and a real lapse of time (quaestio facti)? In
response to this series of questions, Levinas takes a clear stance that
is extremely illuminating, whether or not one chooses to follow him.
On the theoretical level, the Cartesian Meditations provide
Levinas not only with the specific problem that is fundamental for his
own work (in simplified terms, the problem of »intersubjectivity«),
but also the theoretical and conceptual framework within which it can
be elaborated, despite whatever critical distance he takes from Hus
serl.
The theses just enunciated are anything but obvious if one can
claim with authority that in 1928—that is, one year prior to Husserl’s
lectures in Paris and Strasbourg—Levinas’s stance toward Husserlian
phenomenology was already well defined in its fundamental dimen
sions and remained essentially unchanged from that point on.4 In
reality, as we will soon see, the consequences of the Meditations for
Levinas’s philosophical output appear strongly and clearly from an
early date.
1. Between objectivity and intersubjectivity: Levinas on the

place of the Meditations in Husserl’s work
Levinas’s continually increasing preoccupation with the problem of

intersubjectivity can be ascertained even by simply comparing the
4 Cf. Lavigne 2000, p. 60: »It can thus be concluded that the interpretive stance that
the young Levinas had adopted toward transcendental phenomenology owes nothing
to the changes in phenomenology in 1929: neither Davos, nor Husserl’s lectures
in France represented a revolution for him. The fact is, at that date, his conception
of Husserlian phenomenology was already defined—at least in its fundamental con
tours—and beyond the teaching he received in Freiburg from June 1928 to February
1929, he had no source other than his own further study of the texts.«
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The Influence of the Cartesian Meditations on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas
texts that lead up to the translation of the Meditations (i.e., his

1929 essay »On Ideas« and the 1930 dissertation on the theory of
intuition5) with the essay he wrote ten years later on »The Work of
Edmund Husserl« (1940).6 Although Levinas recognized the problem
of intersubjectivity as decisive from the very beginning, a close
confrontation with the line of thought of the Fifth Meditation allows
him in this latter text to achieve a far more precise articulation of the
issues at stake
All three texts share the goal of offering an introduction to
phenomenology, one that not only imparts the content of the works
that they examine, but also—and especially—conveys the spirit of
Husserlian method. The lesson that this spirit teaches is that know
ledge is not a theoretical and essentially superfluous activity; instead,
it represents our means of access to »sense« or »meaning« (Sinn),
without which humanity could not exist. In essence, Levinas intends
to show that Husserl’s phenomenology represents an authentic revo
lution concerning the ways in which the fundamental problems of
philosophy are defined.
Significantly, each of the first two texts mentioned above conclu
des by affirming the need to overcome the egological perspective—
that is, the perspective from which Husserl had presented all of the
content of phenomenology in his works published up to that time—by
integrating the intersubjective dimension into phenomenology. Just
prior to the conclusion of The Theory of Intuition, Levinas informs his
readers that Husserl had been working on this problem for a long time,
and in addition, he briefly outlines the fundamental components of
the constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity. In so doing, he
shows how aware he already is of some important later developments
in Husserl’s thought (clearly, those of the Fifth Meditation), yet also
declares himself »not authorized to use them [the unpublished works]
prior to their publication.«7
With a gesture to which he will remain faithful across the entire
course of his career, Levinas baptizes this extension of Husserl’s
perspective the »intersubjective reduction.« However, the expression
5 Levinas 1998a, 1995. Levinas texts are cited in the English translation, followed by
the reference to the original edition in parentheses.

6 Levinas 1998b.
7 Levinas 1995, p. 151 (p. 215). Here and in the following citations, the page numbers
in parentheses refer to the French edition (full information for the latter follows the
entry in the reference list for the English edition).
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Stefano Bancalari
could easily be misunderstood. For this reason, it should immediately

be clarified that Levinas is not referring to a reduction that would
be an »alternative« to the transcendental reduction in some way,
one that, unlike the latter, would already include intersubjectivity
as a constitutive dimension of the ego »d’emblée,« i.e., from the
beginning. On the contrary, he is referring to a step distinct from—and
subsequent to—the first reduction, on the basis of which one can
demonstrate the access that one’s own ego has to an alter ego. To
defend this, it will be necessary to clarify the reasons that this further
methodological step is introduced, and more specifically, why he
regards the egological perspective as being insufficient.
In »On Ideas,« Levinas explains that the reduction does not
eliminate the irreducible, individual character of the ego, which
entails that transcendental consciousness does not have a logical and
universal character. Accordingly, he accuses the reduction of being
a »quasi-solipsistic attitude« that is unable to »exhaust the meaning
of the objectivity of reality.«8 Even more radically, in The Theory of
Intuition Levinas argues that insofar as the transcendental reduction
discovers an ego that is not yet integrated into an intersubjective
dimension, it cannot grant access to »concrete life« and to the »mea
ning that objects have for concrete life.«9 Consequently, he describes
the ego before the intersubjective reduction as »the solipsist’s life of a
consciousness closed upon itself,«10 which cannot really encounter a
»concrete« object placed before it, but is »only an abstraction.«11
Clearly, Levinas’s way of presenting the opening up of pheno
menology to the problem of intersubjectivity shows that he does not
consider the issue of consciousness’s receptivity to the intersubjective
dimension to be a harmless methodological question. Instead, it has
evident consequences for how one should understand the very idea of
intentionality, as well as its claim to confront us with »transcendence.«
This is immediately apparent to Jean Hering, whose review of The
Theory of Intuition detects »oscillations« on Levinas’s part concerning
»the essentially intentional character of conscious acts.«12 Such oscil
lations prevent Levinas from unequivocally denouncing the intrinsi
8 Levinas 1998a, p. 30 (p. 77).

9 Levinas 1995, p. 150 (p. 214).
10 Levinas 1995, p. 150 (p. 214).
11 Levinas 1995, p. 150 (p. 215).
12 Hering 1932, p. 480.
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cally contradictory character of certain Husserlian assertions, along

with the problematic understanding of intentionality that they pre
suppose, e.g., the claim made in the famous § 49 of Ideas that »con
sciousness could exist without the world.«13 What Hering does not
seem to grasp, however, is that the idea of a »worldless« consciousness
is neither contradictory nor foreign to Levinas’s own thought here.
This is because from the very beginnings of Levinas’s philosophical
career—that is, starting out with these texts that are clearly intended
to be more exegetical than philosophically autonomous in nature—he
does not see the constitution of intersubjectivity as an application of
intentionality to a specific case (or »object«), but rather as the condi
tion for the possibility of intentionality itself. Accordingly, it is only
by exhibiting the phenomenological possibility of a transcendental
intersubjectivity that intentionality can reach the concreteness of the
object to which it aspires—which is precisely the position advocated
by Husserl in the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Meditation.
This leads to a curious situation in which Hering feels the need to refer
to the Cartesian Meditations14 and to their clear reliance on the trans
cendental reduction as a way of contesting an ostensibly excessive and
cumbersome presence of Heidegger in The Theory of Intuition. And
this is despite the fact that upon close consideration (and as the last
lines of the work clearly reveal), Levinas’s adherence to transcenden
talism and to the perspective of the Meditations derives from some
thing far more profound than any adherence to Heidegger. While the
influence of Heidegger in The Theory of Intuition may be more appa
rent, it is nonetheless also more superficial.
This tendency is wholly confirmed by the decisive development
that occurs in »The Work of Edmund Husserl,« the first text in which
Levinas explicitly engages with the Meditations. First, it is significant
that Levinas decides to conclude his exploration of Husserl’s texts
with an analysis of precisely this work rather than of the Crisis. The
Meditations, in fact, were published first. Moreover, his intention is
to show that the line of thought pursued in the Meditations ends up
13 Levinas 1995, p. 150 (p. 214).

14 Hering 1932, p. 478: »It seems to us that Husserl’s most recent publication, which
bears the significant title Cartesian Meditations, completely validates our view on this
point. Here once again Husserl articulates philosophy’s need for a new beginning via
an appreciation of the value of Descartes’ discovery of the ›cogito,’ which is extolled as
a point of departure that does not presuppose any ontological thesis.«
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with the discovery of freedom. For Levinas, freedom is the beating

heart of phenomenology, and it is fundamentally connected with the
radicalization of the egological perspective that one obtains by means
of the transcendental reduction. It is not by chance that for the section
dedicated to the Meditations, Levinas chooses the title »The Mind is
a Monad,« since it is precisely the concept of »monad« that embodies
the most fundamental meaning of Husserlian idealism: namely, that
»in its inner recesses, the subject can account for the universe.
Every relation with another thing is established in self-evidence, and
consequently has its origin in the subject.«15 It is for precisely this
reason that this subject is absolute and free, i.e., absolutely free.
Although Levinas does not explicitly refer to the primordial
reduction, it is clear from his definition of the monad as the »domain
which is rigorously ›mine‹«16—understood as the place from which
the constitution of intersubjectivity begins—that Levinas is thinking
of what Husserl understands as the primordial ego reduced to the
»sphere of ownness« (§ 44). At first glance, the lack of an explicit
reference to this reduction within a reduction—which clearly repres
ents a theoretical and methodological cornerstone of the Fifth Medi
tation—might appear to indicate that Levinas is diminishing its role,
or even intends to find a means of access to intersubjectivity within
Husserl’s thought that differs from the »hyper-transcendental« one
presented in the Meditations. But in fact, precisely the opposite is the
case. The point is that in a certain sense, the primordial reduction has
always already taken place. Perfectly consistent with the approach
prefigured in the first two essays we have analyzed, Levinas maintains
that the two reductions—the »transcendental« and the »primordial«
—effectively coincide. Already following the first reduction, the ego
finds itself in a position of solitude, which confronts it with the
urgency of opening itself up to an intersubjective dimension that is
not originally given. Accordingly, Levinas is not here describing a
pregiven intersubjectivity that must be bracketed, as though he were
only concerned with methodologically clarifying what is already avail
able on the phenomenal level. He expresses this in no uncertain terms:
»Husserl shows how intersubjectivity is constituted starting from the
monad’s solipsism. This solipsism does not deny the existence of
others, but it does describe an existence that in principle can be con
15 Levinas 1998b, p. 82 (p. 47).

16 Levinas 1998b, p. 83 (p. 48).
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sidered as if it were alone.«17 Solipsism is a dimension that involves

the I in a genuine and concrete manner, and it cannot be contradicted
at all by the exhibition of the factual existence of other individuals
(moreover, factual existence does not pertain to the phenomenological
constitution of meaning). Taking a position that will prove to be defi
nitive, and that will unequivocally situate his thought within the
domain of Husserl’s problem instead of the domain of Heidegger’s
(overly simplistic) solution, Levinas writes: »There is in me a possi
bility of solitude, despite my actual sociality and the world’s presence
for me. It is precisely insofar as I think that I am a monad, a monad
which is continually possible by means of a continually possible
abstraction from my engagements.«18
It is precisely this theoretical precision that allows Levinas to
develop his own understanding of intentionality and to dispense with
what appeared to Hering as an oscillation. Surely, if one adopts the
monadological interpretation of the transcendental reduction, one
cannot quickly and easily attribute »objectivity« to intentionality.
However, this does not at all mean that objects lose their concreteness
and are reduced to subjective reveries; instead, it signifies the neces
sity of recognizing that »[t]he notion of objectivity is intrinsically
vague and has no precise meaning.«19 Accordingly, not only can
Levinas easily recognize the object’s complete solidity as well as its
autonomy vis-à-vis consciousness, he can go so far as to correct a
formulation that he himself had presented in The Theory of Intuition20:
»The object refers to consciousness […] through its objectivity.
Phenomenological idealism thus is not the result of the fact that the
subject is enclosed within itself.«21 This does not, however, change
the heart of the matter, that is, that the object, in all of its exteriority
and solidity (which is not at all put in doubt), is unable to draw
consciousness out of its monadological enclosure. In fact, everything
depends on what is here meant by »objectivity«—and it is in this
respect that Levinas demonstrates to what extent he has already
assimilated and thereby also radicalized the Cartesianism of Husserl’s
Meditations, since he clearly affirms that the vague and imprecise
17 Levinas 1998b, p. 83 (p. 48).

18 Levinas 1998b, p. 84 (p. 48), translation modified.
19 Levinas 1998b, p. 56 (p. 18), translation modified.
20 Cf. above, n. 9.
21 Levinas 1998b, p. 69 (p. 33).
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notion of »objectivity« must be understood in the technical sense

that Descartes attributes to it: »The world that Husserl rejoins after
authenticating the cogito does not exceed this ›objective‹ existence.«22
What this entails, in true Cartesian fashion, is that the world does not
have a merely formal reality.
This point is delicate and should not be misunderstood. As is
well known, Descartes attributes objective existence to represented
content—or to put it in Husserl’s terminology, intentional meaning.
Formal existence, however, is identified with existence that is »in
act«—that is, reality independent of its being thought as an idea (i.e.,
as »intended« by a consciousness). Now when Levinas affirms that the
world to which intentionality gives access »does not exceed« objective
existence, he is not thinking of objective existence in terms of a »limit«
that would have to be superseded in order to arrive in the end at the
level of formal existence. For to think in such terms is precisely the
mistake of Descartes, who hopes he can guarantee the possibility of
such a transition by resorting to the idea of God. Clearly, this is not
Husserl’s intention. Phenomenology cannot follow Descartes into the
Third Mediation, which Levinas considers to be a deviation. Instead,
he considers the »natural continuation« of the first two Meditations
to be »the phenomenology that pursues the constitution of the
world as an ›objective‹ existence.«23 For Levinas, anyone who would
object to this by saying that this position condemns phenomenology
to uncertainty about the (formal) existence of the world has not
understood the meaning of the transcendental reduction, which leaves
that problem and that type of existence behind.
This position gives us the proper perspective from which to con
sider both the issue of intentionality’s »objectivity« and the problem
of intersubjectivity. By recognizing that phenomenology’s domain is
objective existence, one can see that what the monadological I lacks
is not a vague »objectivity« of the object, but rather the »complete«
sense of objectivity. Without the latter, the object is not »completely«
transcendent to that ego and cannot bring it beyond the limits of
its monadological confines: »[…] in the fifth chapter of the work
Husserl devotes to Descartes’s Meditations, he specifically outlines
the constitution of complete objectivity starting from the monad’s
domain, which is rigorously ›mine.‹ Since the objective is that which
22 Levinas 1998b, p. 81 (pp. 45–46).

23 Levinas 1998b, p. 81 (p. 46).
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has an intersubjective meaning, Husserl shows how intersubjectivity

is constituted starting from the monad’s solipsism.«24
2. Deduction and dissimulation: The interpretation of the

Fifth Meditation
The interpretive framework that Levinas develops between 1929 and

1940 remains definitive for his subsequent work: what will occur in
the latter is a progressive unfolding of the implications of the problem
posed by the Meditations. Although the Meditations give Levinas
an orientation that will become completely autonomous over time,
he will never cease to derive inspiration and theoretical resources
from them.
First, Levinas re-elaborates the idea of »completeness« with
far greater precision. As we have seen, in »The Work of Edmund
Husserl,« this notion defined the relation between the incomplete
objectivity of the object and its complete objective existence, that
is, the objectivity attained once it is inserted into the dimension
opened by transcendental intersubjectivity. In the essay »The Ruin
of Representation«25—published two years before Totality and Infinity
—Levinas replaces the risky metaphor of »part« (objectivity of the
object) versus »whole« (objectivity of the object plus intersubjectivity)
with a distinction derived from Husserl himself, one capable of
showing that the issue is embedded within the very heart of intentio
nality: namely, the distinction between »implicit« and »explicit.«
According to Levinas, it would be a fatal misunderstanding to
conceive of intentionality as a »subject-object correlation,«26 because
in that case the object to which this correlation gives access would be
a mere »abstraction.«27 In truth, intentionality is animated by »ano
ther dynamism,«28 a life operating at a deeper level than what emerges
in the object taken as the intentional target of consciousness. This life
is mostly hidden to a consciousness that is fixed upon its object, since
the objectual intention tends to impose itself on the scene as though
24 Levinas 1998b, p. 83 (pp. 47–48).

25 Levinas 1998c.
26 Levinas 1998c, p. 115 (p. 129).
27 Levinas 1998c, p. 115 (p. 129).
28 Levinas 1998c, p. 115 (p. 129).
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it were the only truly relevant element of the conscious relation. This
reflects »an inevitable misunderstanding«29— one that can, however,
be exposed by recognizing such a layer of depth as proper to the
intentional relation, this being Husserl’s true discovery. Significantly,
Levinas introduces it by once again appealing to the Cartesian Medi
tations—notably, § 20, where a notion that is decisive for him is intro
duced: namely, the »horizon« that »exceed[s] the intention in the inten
tion itself.«30 This is why the distinction between implicit and explicit
turns out to be decisive: »Intentionality thus designates a relation with
the object, but a relation essentially bearing within itself an implicit
meaning. Presence to things implies another presence that is unaware
of itself, other horizons correlative to these implicit intentions, which
the most attentive and scrupulous consideration of the given object in
the naïve attitude cannot discover.«31
From the perspective of a philosophy that claims to be founded
upon a consciousness absolutely transparent to itself and perfectly
aware of everything that happens to it (as Husserlian philosophy
is, at least in its intentions), such an implicit element structurally
inherent to intentionality represents a »monstrosity or a marvel.«32
In this regard, this is the aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology that
most demands reflection, yet is its most important theoretical and
methodological contribution. For Levinas, the discovery of this »imp
licit« life is significantly more radical than any and every post-Hus
serlian attempt to give »concreteness« to transcendental conscious
ness by tempering its theoretical character, namely, in the form of
an insistence on its pathic dimension or its being thrown into a
world (the targets of Levinas’s critique here are clearly Scheler and
Heidegger). The »horizon«-structure does not merely indicate a layer
of potentiality that consciousness can actualize at whim; instead, it
is »absolutely imperceptible to the subject directed toward an object«
and is »produced without my knowledge.«33 This means that it is not
simply the logical counterpart to what is explicit and what is able to be
made explicit in its turn; rather, it represents a paradoxical dislocation
29 Levinas 1998c, p. 115 (p. 129).

30 Levinas 1998c, p. 115 (p. 130). This citation is based on Levinas’s own translation
of the Cartesianische Meditationen (Husserl 1953, p. 40), which diverges from the
English translation offered by Cairns (cf. Husserl 1982, p. 46).
31 Levinas 1998c, p. 115 (p. 130).
32 Levinas 1998c, p. 116 (p. 130).
33 Levinas 1998c, p. 116 (p. 131), translation modified.
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of the deepest life of consciousness outside of consciousness itself.

If we wanted to retain the idea and the lexicon of objectivity, we
could say that consciousness is a »›subjective‹ field ›more objective
than all objectivity‹«34 because it lives its subjectivity on the basis of
something that is absolutely external to it and that is more objective
—that is, not subjective—than any so-called »object.«
Significantly, this is the point that for Levinas indicates the
properly phenomenological character of Totality and Infinity. In an
important passage from the »Preface«—which is so concentrated that
it risks going unnoticed—Levinas returns to the preceding analysis:
The presentation and the development of the notions employed owe
everything to the phenomenological method. Intentional analysis is
the search for the concrete. Notions held under the direct gaze of
the thought that defines them are nevertheless, unbeknownst to this
naïve thought, revealed to be implanted in horizons unsuspected by
this thought; these horizons endow them with a meaning—such is the
essential teaching of Husserl. […] The break-up of the formal structure
of thought (the noema of a noesis) into events which this structure
dissimulates (dissimule), but which sustain it and restore its concrete
significance, constitutes a deduction— necessary and yet non-analyti
cal.35
Although here the reference to the Cartesian Meditations is implicit,
in § 20 of this very same text Levinas will say precisely that Husserl’s
»essential teaching« consists in the revelation to consciousness of the
»concreteness« of its intentional life. This life is not accessible to a
»direct gaze« because the latter always aims at a particular object and
is therefore unable to take account of the horizon that confers »mea
ning« on that very same object, since by definition, such a horizon is
outside of the domain of what is, or can be, intended. But the rela
tionship of this passage with the Meditations is even tighter than this.
The methodological operation that Levinas is proposing here
appears to consist in both a repetition and a radicalization of the
transcendental reduction, evidenced by the fact that the goal is to
overcome naiveté. This time, however, the »naive thought« under
consideration is the intentional correlation itself, the very structure
discovered by the transcendental reduction. The reduction within the
reduction that Levinas is attempting here consists in a non-analytical
34 Levinas 1998c, p. 117 (p. 131).

35 Levinas, 1979, p. 28 (p. 14), translation modified.
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»deduction« that ascends from the surface (and formal) level to

the level of concreteness that makes the former possible and is
»dissimulated« in it. Levinas’s use of this latter term is surprising,
given its negative connotation. Dissimulation does not mean purely
and simply hiding from view; rather, it is the art of disguise—a
complex game of showing oneself, but incompletely and in a way that
is dissimilar to what one really is. In essence, it is the behavior of
a hypocrite. With this in mind, it cannot be a coincidence that just
prior to the above citation, Levinas had stipulated that our culture is
»essentially hypocritical«36because it is the result of a tension between
the Good and the True, war and peace, totality and infinity. However,
this hypocrisy is by no means a trivially negative quality from a moral
point of view. Instead, in a certain sense, it is precisely the way in which
morality announces itself in a world that is ontologically foreign to it:
»It is perhaps time to see in hypocrisy not only a contingent defect
which is inherent in man, but the deep rift of a world which is attached
both to philosophers and to prophets.«37
Hypocrisy and dissimulation have a fundamental theoretical
significance, since they express the paradoxical relation between
two orders that are heterogenous yet closely intertwined. Although
one might think here of the relation between cause and effect, a
more accurate (but not entirely perfect) comparison would be to the
transcendental relation between the condition and the conditioned.
The act of ascending from what dissimulates to what is dissimulated,
from the True to the Good, from the explicit to the implicit—what, in
sum, Levinas defines as »deduction«—is the real operation in which
Totality and Infinity consists. Being now fully aware of itself and its
methodological significance, such an act expresses the passage from
the object to the meaning implicitly understood as being within it.
Yet this passage is now reconfigured as a passage from the objectivity
of the object to intersubjectivity, which is precisely the problem that
Levinas inherits from Husserl by way of the Meditations.
It is not by chance that it is this theoretical framework that sets
the stage for the concise—but also quite dense—passage in which
Levinas proceeds to a direct confrontation with the Fifth Meditation.
This is found in Section I of the work (»The Same and the Other«),
second sub-section (»Separation and Discourse«), third paragraph
36 Levinas, 1979, p. 24 (p. 9).

37 Levinas, 1979, p. 24 (p. 9), translation modified.
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(»Discourse«). Here Levinas is engaged in an analysis concerning

the possibility of what he defines as an »absolute experience«: an
experience in which access to what shows itself is not filtered by any
»subjective horizon« or conditioned by any »point of view.«38The
possibility of this »revelation« (as distinct from »disclosure«) is found
in language, in which what reveals and what is revealed coincide. On
closer consideration, this is precisely what the theory of knowledge
has always aspired to with its ideal of »objectivity,« yet without
ever realizing that in so doing, it frames the issue incorrectly: »The
›objectivity‹ sought by the knowledge that is fully knowledge is
realized beyond the objectivity of the object.«39 Here we are back to
Husserl’s problem—with the difference, however, that Levinas now
clearly understands how inadequate it is to express that problem in
terms of completeness and incompleteness, since such terms conceal
the qualitative shift that occurs in the passage from objectivity to
intersubjectivity. The latter designates the genuine transcendence of
the object, as is clearly indicated by Levinas’s use of the preposition
»beyond« (au-delà). From this perspective, the most valuable lesson
that can be obtained from the Fifth Meditation consists precisely in its
difficulty. The passage is decisive and merits being cited in full:
But the relationship with this »thing in itself« does not lie at the limit
of a cognition that begins as a constitution of a »living body«—such
as what we find in the celebrated analysis in the fifth of Husserl’s
Cartesian Meditations. The constitution of the Other’s body in what
Husserl’s calls »the primordial sphere,« the transcendental »coupling«
of the object thus constituted with my own body itself experienced from
within as an »I can,« the comprehension of this body of the Other as an
alter ego—every step of this analysis, which professes to be a descrip
tion of constitution, dissimulates mutations of object-constitution into
a relation with the Other. The latter relation is as primordial as the
constitution from which it is supposed to be derived.40
Levinas’s reasoning is clear. The entire process of the constitution of
the alter ego rests on the presupposition—never made fully explicit—
that there is no qualitative discontinuity between »object« (i.e., any
object) and the »other.« Naturally, Husserl is aware that there are
radical differences between the two, but he treats these differences
38 Cfr. Levinas 1979, p. 67 (pp. 62–63).

39 Levinas 1979, p. 67 (p. 63).
40 Levinas 1979, p. 67 (p. 63), translation modified.
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as if they could be mitigated by a step-by-step movement occurring

in stages that are in perfect continuity with one another; in this
manner the object is progressively transformed into the other I. All
of the elements that Husserl considers are ultimately assignable to
the same formal category of »object«—not just the Other’s Körper,
but also his/her Leib, which is the result of the pairing between the
Other’s Körper and one’s own living body experienced from within. For
this reason, one must also designate as an object that which results
from the analogical transfer of egological properties that are similar
to mine to a Leib that is not my own. For Levinas, this explains
the difficulty—known to Husserl’s interpreters41—that each of the
passages of Husserl’s description risk being accused of circularity: how
could I recognize the resemblance between two objects as diverse as
the Körper of another and my own Leib if I had not already learned how
to view my Leib »from the outside,« as if it were a Körper? Yet does
not this in turn presuppose that I have already internalized the gaze of
others? And how could I attribute experiences to a Leib that is not my
own if I did not already know how to distinguish between what is mine
and what belongs to the other? Would I not already have to possess the
idea that experiences can exist as relative to a perspective which is not
my own?
The most interesting aspect of Levinas’s interpretation is that he
does not regard this circularity as a mere aporia; instead, it is treated
as a phenomenon in its own right—one that, moreover, exhibits the
act in which the phenomenological method consists. After what has
been said above, the reader will not fail to notice Levinas’s recourse
to the notion of »dissimulation.« Husserl’s analysis »dissimulates« a
continuous »mutation« of the intentional relation to an object to the
relationship to the Other. What is interesting is not the error itself, but
the fact that this mutation allows us to see firsthand that the relation
with the Other is always already presupposed before an intentional
relationship can take place—just as the totality presupposes the
infinite, truth presupposes the good, and ontology presupposes ethics.
Indeed, the recognition of the dissimulation of ethics in ontology and
of the good in truth is the decisive gesture that Levinas learns from
41 Recognition of this problem begins at least as early as the analysis of Alfred Schütz
(Schütz 1957), which may have been known to Levinas—who, moreover, considered
Schütz »one of Husserl’s disciples and most fervent admirers« (Levinas 1998d, p. 125
[p. 140]).
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Husserl. This is the reason why Levinas embraces Husserl’s aporia

without hesitation and does not seek any easy escape from it, unlike
Heidegger’s attempt, which consists in abruptly opening the ego to
the Other, thereby rooting the relationship in a »we prior to the I
and the other, a neutral intersubjectivity.«42 This is also the reason
why Levinas regards Husserl’s radicalization of the transcendental
reduction into the primordial reduction not as a mere methodological
fiction, but—completely on the contrary—as a specification of the
highly concrete solitude of the ego, and as the starting point for
a phenomenological description suited to the inevitably egological
curvature of experience: »The primordial sphere, which corresponds
to what we call the Same, turns to the absolutely other only on the
Other’s call.«43 As can be seen, Levinas does not cease declaring his
decisive debt to Husserl: the notion of the »same« on which Totality
and Infinity hinges finds its theoretical origin in the Husserlian
primordial sphere.44
3. Apodicticity and intersubjective reduction:

Extending the Cartesian Meditations beyond
Husserl’s phenomenology
The 1974 text »From Consciousness to Wakefulness« signals a further

definitive step in Levinas’s engagement with the Meditations.45 Here,
in fact, there is a true »incorporation« of Husserl’s text, and Levinas
proceeds by »superimposing« another text on it. In terms of its
basic orientation, the text in question is not at all unfaithful to the
Meditations, but the concepts and arguments that Husserl employs
42 Levinas 1979, p. 68 (p. 63).

43 Levinas 1979, p. 67 (p. 63), translation modified.
44 This heritage could be further clarified and studied in light of Levinas’s analyses
in the 1940s dedicated to the notion of »hypostasis«—which, moreover, would be

difficult to understand without taking Husserl’s analysis of the primordial in the Fifth
Meditation into account. On this point, see Bancalari 2015, pp. 213ff.
45 Vergani appropriately emphasizes the »extraordinary continuity« that is evident in
Levinas’s view when comparing this text to his previous works on Husserl (Vergani
2011, p. 39). It seems to us, however, that the consonance between Levinas and
Husserl that emerges from this text—as well as Levinas’s assessment of the Meditati
ons—are far more important than the »severity of [Levinas’s] judgment concerning the
limits« of Husserl’s phenomenology that Vergani identifies.
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in the former are here used in another register, one that is new
and different. This text is clearly Husserlian, but it is no longer
merely Husserl’s own—indeed, it is as if Husserl’s writing dissimulated
another sense.
Once again, it is essential that one begins by understanding the
role that Levinas attributes to the Meditations in the overall trajectory
of Husserl’s thought, which is described as the very movement of cri
tical reason. Critical reason is as aware of being the origin of meaning
and the foundation of the truth of consciousness as it is aware of the
ever-present risk of being the victim of self-delusion. Accordingly,
the transition from the Logical Investigations to the Ideas is described
by Levinas as a consistent development in comprehending the mea
ning of evidence. In continuity with the Western tradition, evidence
represents the ideal of knowledge that phenomenology pursues;
nonetheless, it is not the ultimate level that is able to guarantee truth.
On the contrary, evidence itself is intrinsically dangerous, because it
tends to absorb the entirety of consciousness’s attention, passing itself
off as though it were all that consciousness needs. For this reason, if
evidence is consubstantial with rationality, a »surplus of rationality«
is needed in order that a »subject absorbed in full lucidity by its object«
can awaken, such that a »life that self-evidence absorbed and caused
to be forgotten« can emerge.46 In other words, what is needed is the
transcendental reduction.
According to Levinas, this awakening is still marked by a structu
ral ambiguity in the Ideas. In the latter work, in fact, Husserl remains
suspended between two possible interpretations of the act of the
reduction as well as of the end toward which it is performed. The
first, more traditional interpretation claims that the transcendental
subject is the ground upon which the aspiration to certainty finds its
full and definitive satisfaction. Unlike all evidence that is relative to
objects of the world—and that is always subject to refutation—the
evidence of the ego is indubitable in a Cartesian sense. It is apodictic:
it offers the guarantees sought by naive consciousness. The result is
that from this perspective, there is no real discontinuity between naive
consciousness and that which is achieved by means of the reduction,
since both share the same ideal of knowledge and the same adherence
to a notion of evidence understood essentially as adequation—that is,
as the adequation to what is real and thus cannot deceive. The diffe
46 Levinas 1998e, p. 156 (p. 39).
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rence between consciousness »before« the transcendental reduction

and consciousness »after« it is thus essentially a distinction between,
respectively, a »less perfect« and a »more perfect« consciousness.
However, a second interpretation is possible, one according to
which the rupture with naive consciousness would be significantly
more radical and would take the form of a liberation, that is, a libera
tion from the need for indubitable certainty and adequate evidence
understood as the ultimate norm of all knowledge. In this case,
both the nature of the reduction and the meaning of the awakening
that it stimulates would change in a decisive way: »If it is this
liberation which is essential, the reduction would not be a discovery
of uncertainties that compromise certainty, but an awakening of the
spirit beyond certainty or uncertainty, which are modalities of the
knowledge of being.«47
If the first option prevails in the Ideas, the less expected and more
fruitful possibility is adopted in the Meditations. It is here, in fact, that
Husserl discovers a duplicity internal to the notion of evidence, which
in the Ideas had acted in an unconscious way—and this explains the
ambiguity mentioned above: »[…] in the Cartesian Meditations this
apodictic rationality is interpreted differently.«48 What is decisive for
Levinas is the discovery of the non-coincidence between adequate
evidence—which is given by an intuition that »fills« (Erfüllung) an
empty intention— and apodictic evidence. More precisely, what is
significant is the scope of this non-coincidence. Not only is there ade
quate evidence that (naturally) does not guarantee the indubitability
that apodictic evidence requires, there is apodictic evidence that is not
adequate. The latter is more interesting for Levinas, because it signi
fies a consistent depotentiation of the role of intuition—even of inner
intuition, given that the majority of the life of the ego (the entire
horizon of the past, for example) is excluded from apodicticity. Levinas
sees §§ 6–9 of the Meditations as »strained pages«49 in which a posi
tive definition of apodictic evidence is lacking. However, once again,
what seems like a difficulty is actually the sign of a decisive advance.
The virtually infinite need for a critique of what is given in experience
—however adequate or inadequate it might be—in order to discern
how experience fares in light of the criterion of apodicticity attests to
47 Levinas 1998e, p. 158 (p. 43).

48 Levinas 1998e, p. 159 (p. 44).
49 Levinas 1998e, p. 159 (p. 45), translation modified.
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a »change of level, where, from the evidence that illuminates it, the
subject awakens as from a ›dogmatic slumber.‹«50 The ego can no
longer rest satisfied with its own experience, which continually offers
content that tempts it to seek satisfaction. No content satisfies the
demand for apodicticity—not even the content belonging to the ego
itself, which it encounters every time that it experiences itself. Levinas
maintains, moreover, that it would be mistaken to interpret the »living
present« that Husserl discusses in § 9 of the Meditations as indicating
the possibility of such satisfaction. The »change of level« in question
is not a passage from exterior to interior, but something considerably
more radical: an awakening of the ego to its own life. This awakening
is not to be understood in terms of an immanent intentionality in
which subject and object coincide in a privileged experience elevated
above all others, but is instead the ego’s discovery that in fact, inten
tionality and self-coincidence are not essential. The critical impulse
thus turns back upon the ego, and produces a non-coincidence in
which »its center of gravity« is placed »outside« of it and it becomes
»an-ego-that-stands-at-a-distance-from-itself.«51
If this is the case, however, »must not the analysis then be pushed
beyond the letter of Husserl’s text?«52 Levinas naturally sees within
this internal fracture of the identity of the I the announcement of an
alterity that insinuates itself into the heart of the Same in a way that
is much more profound than what occurs in relation to an external
object: the latter is not capable of disturbing the ego, and only keeps
it awake for the amount of time it takes to be reabsorbed into the
ego’s sphere of immanence. What is interesting, however, is that the
passage beyond the letter of Husserl’s text is once again carried out
in such a way that the text is not abandoned—and once again, this
occurs thanks to a movement that Husserl himself carries out: namely,
a movement in the Meditations. Levinas wants to demonstrate that
the possibility of juxtaposing the fissure internal to the ego (which is
produced by an inquiry into the notion of evidence) to the problem
of the alter ego is not an idea that enters Husserl’s thought arbitrarily
and by means of force: »It is in any case on the basis of the Other that
Husserl describes transcendental subjectivity wresting the Ego from
50 Levinas 1998e, p. 160 (p. 46).

51 Levinas 1998e, p. 160 (p. 46).
52 Levinas 1998e, p. 162 (p. 50).
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its isolation in itself.«53 And it is Husserl himself who, after having

introduced the transcendental reduction—as a first form of awakening
of the ego that slumbers in its object—considers it necessary to
proceed to a second reduction: »The intersubjective reduction, based
on the Other, wrests the ego from its coincidence with itself and with
the center of the world.«54
We have already seen the peculiar use to which Levinas puts the
expression »intersubjective reduction«; in the context of the essay we
are examining, one can see how Levinas intentionally goes against the
standard interpretation—in a certain sense, suggested even by Husserl
himself in the Crisis—according to which the intersubjective reduction
would consist in the softening of an excessively Cartesian and potenti
ally solipsistic version of the transcendental reduction. In fact, Levinas
explicitly remarks that »if we are to believe the Crisis,«55 a method
passing through phenomenological psychology would be »better«
than the Cartesian stance of the Ideas and the Meditations. It is clear,
however, that for Levinas, this apparent »improvement« consisting in
the opening of the subject to the world actually represents a form of
enclosure: the result is a loss of the richness and the potentiality of the
reflection on apodicticity developed in the most Cartesian of Husserl’s
works (evident even in its title). The absoluteness of consciousness is
not an excess that must be softened or an error that must be corrected;
it is a form of »ab-solution,«56 i.e., a release from the grip of the world
that anaesthetizes our conscious life. And when this subject discovers
that its awakening is caused by a disturbance from the Other, what
takes place is what Levinas aptly calls an intersubjective reduction.
As Levinas writes in a text in which he briefly returns to the essay
we are examining here, the intersubjective reduction is more radical
than the transcendental reduction, not because it »softens« the latter,
but rather because it unveils »[its] true meaning« and constitutes »its
final phase.«57
Let us return to »From Consciousness to Wakefulness.« The
essential meaning of the intersubjective reduction—and consequently
(by way of derivation), of the transcendental reduction—is nothing
53 Levinas 1998e, p. 163 (p. 52).

54 Levinas 1998e, p. 163 (p. 52).
55 Levinas 1998e, p. 163 (p. 53).
56 Levinas 1998e, p. 164 (p. 54).
57 Levinas 1998f, p. 176 (p. 95).
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other than a liberation: »Husserl’s theory of intersubjective reduction

describes the surprising possibility of a sobering in which the ego
frees itself from itself.«58 Now taking the critical analysis deployed
in Totality and Infinity for granted, Levinas prefers in these pages
to highlight the importance of what is dissimulated by Husserl’s
description of the assimilation of the primordial »here« to the »there«
of the Other. According to the letter of the text, the interchangeability
of the two locations produces the homogeneity of space, which is
the horizon necessary for the objectivity to which phenomenology—
like every other science—aspires. Yet what in fact resonates from
Husserl’s analyses is much more profound: it is the possibility—not
given to the primordial ego as such—of moving away from the place
to which it is confined. For as much as the primordial ego frets
and stirs from place to place, it does not move an inch from the
»null-point« that it is and that accompanies it everywhere it goes: the
primordial ego is condemned to be »the center of the world.«59 There
is nothing pleasant about this centeredness, because it signifies being
perpetually constrained to drag along the weight of one’s own »egoism
and egotism.«60
In contrast, »[t]hrough the interchangeability of the here and
the there, the Ego, despite its being so obviously primordial and hege
monic in its hic et nunc and in its identification, becomes secondary;
sees itself as other, exposes itself to the Other.«61 The association
between the »here« and the »there« finally frees the ego from its
self-coincidence. It pulls the ego away from the gravitational force
that confines it to its own center, rendering it »secondary« vis-à-vis
an Other that precedes it and to which it is exposed. With this, we
suddenly find ourselves thrown into the heart of Levinas’s thought.
There is no more convincing proof of the mark that the Meditations
left on him than this seamless transition from the Husserlian lexicon
to his own—notably, from his analysis of Husserl’s texts to his own
philosophy—and from the primordial ego to the exposure to others.
58 Levinas 1998e, p. 165 (p. 55).

59 Levinas 1998e, p. 164 (p. 54).
60 Levinas 1998e, p. 165 (p. 55).
61 Levinas 1998e, p. 164 (p. 54), translation modified.
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.
Bibliography
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Lescourret, Marie-Anne (1994): Emmanuel Lévinas. Paris: Flammarion.
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and Michael B. Smith (Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press:
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b: »The Work of Edmund Husserl,« pp. 47–87 (»L’oeuvre d’Edmond Husserl«
[1940]. In: En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris: Vrin,
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tion« [1959]. In: En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris:
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physique« [1959]. In: En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger.
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veille« [1974]. In: De Dieu qui vient à l’idée. Paris: Vrin, 1992, pp. 34–61).
f: »Philosophy and Awakening,« pp. 169–179 (»La philosophie et
l’éveil« [1977]. In: Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre. Paris: Librairie
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Schütz, Alfred (1957): »Das Problem der transzendentale Intersubjektivität bei
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Vergani, Mario (2011): Levinas fenomenologo. Umano senza condizioni. Bre

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Sharing and Exposure: Merleau-Ponty and The

What experiences count as paradigmatic for a philosophical descrip

tion of interpersonal encounters? Is it the experience of our sharing
a similar view, such as when two people contemplate the same coun
tryside? Or the experience of our ultimate difference, such as when I
realize that I cannot feel the pain of the other and die his or her death?
Merleau-Ponty often embraces the first possibility, while Husserl,
who understood his philosophy as an »egology,” goes in the second
direction – when, for instance, he delimits the »sphere of my own« as
something which is not shared by others. Nevertheless, as much as
Merleau-Ponty draws on experiences of sharing, he does not intend to
lose the irreducible perspective of the individual self as being different
from the other. To avoid the dissolution of the individual perspective
into an undifferentiated commonality, he goes back to several sources,
Husserl’s 5th Cartesian Meditation being one of them. The first aim
of this chapter is to demonstrate just this. The chapter’s second aim is
also connected to the primacy of sharing in Merleau-Ponty: sharing
does not preclude a possible exposure of the individual. Or, to put
it differently, sharing and exposure are interconnected. This again is
related to the concept of experience that Merleau-Ponty takes from the
phenomenological (Husserlian) philosophy or, more precisely, from
its appropriation of the Cartesian cogito.
The second claim of this chapter is more systematic and is chiefly
developed, to the extent that it is, in the concluding part. The first, his
torical claim concerning the presence of Husserl in Merleau-Ponty’s
account of intersubjectivity constitutes the central preoccupation
of this text. An important and growing number of contributions
(Toadvine and Embree 2002; Moran 2010; Smith 2007; Barbaras
1998, chap. III and IV; Taipale 2007; Zahavi 2002; Zahavi 2001, pp.
149–159) uncover how multiple and enduring were the presence of
Husserl’s ideas in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Even if we narrow our
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scope to Merleau-Ponty’s reading of The Cartesian Meditations, we

find several topics which turned out to have a long-term relevance for
Merleau-Ponty, such as the phenomenological concepts of experience,
body, intersubjectivity and ego, all of them creatively taken up or
criticized by Merleau-Ponty in the context of his own philosophy.
To start with criticism: Merleau-Ponty’s comments on Husserl’s
idea of philosophy as »egology« or »self-examination« begin with
an abrupt dismissal. Merleau-Ponty associates The Cartesian Medita
tions with a concept of ego which he himself tries to avoid, because it
endows the ego with interiority which can only distort the analysis of
our being in the world. Husserl closes his Meditations with reference
to St. Augustine:
Positive science is a science lost in the world. I must lose the world by
epoché, in order to regain it by a universal self-examination. »Noli foras
ire,« says Augustine, »in te redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas.«
(Husserl 1960, p. 157).
It is in an obvious allusion to this final sentence of The Cartesian Med
itations that Merleau-Ponty says in the Preface to his Phenomenology
of Perception:
there is no »inner man,« man is in and toward the world [l’homme est
au monde], and it is in the world that he knows himself. When I return
to myself from the dogmatism of common sense or of science, I do not
find a source of intrinsic truth, but rather a subject destined to the world
[le sujet voué au monde]. (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. lxxiv).
This expression is but a short formula of the whole chapter dedicated
to the »cogito« in which Merleau-Ponty repeatedly claims that there
is nothing to be found by the return to the »ego« of the »cogito,” if
not its world-relatedness. And yet, when dealing with the problem of
intersubjectivity, Merleau-Ponty repeatedly comes back to Husserl’s
account of intersubjectivity in the 5th Cartesian Meditation. What is
more, in Phenomenology of Perception he even claims that »we must
return to the cogito« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 382). Still, the »cog
ito« which we are to return to has been, according to him, »deeply
transformed« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 367). Now, what does this
transformation consist in? How does it relate to the analysis of
intersubjectivity? And how does it situate Merleau-Ponty in relation
to Husserl?
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Sharing and Exposure: Merleau-Ponty and The Cartesian Meditations
***
The subsequent exposition of Merleau-Ponty’s theory or intersub
jectivity and of its relation to Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations will
focus especially on the most »Cartesian« phase of Merleau-Ponty’s
thinking, i.e. on Phenomenology of Perception and some related works
and documents from the years 1945 to 1952.1 The exposition is
developed in four steps: (1) the critical move addressed against
philosophies of »cogito« that make the very existence of the other
inconceivable, (2) the positive account of what Merleau-Ponty says
on intersubjectivity, focused especially on the experience of the lived
body and of the cultural world, both of which enable us to highlight
the shared character of our experience, (3) the discussion of objections
that can be raised against such an account, and (4) the »return to the
cogito.«
Edmund Husserl is a philosopher who does not appear in only
one stage of this reconstruction, but in all stages. Firstly, he is one
of the key philosophers of the »cogito« who turned the experience
of the other into a problem that has no viable solution. Secondly,
Husserl’s philosophy is a great resource which helps to articulate
the experience of the lived body and of the cultural world in a way
that shows our experience as one of sharing a common world and
corporeity. Thirdly, Merleau-Ponty is bound to face the objection that
his theory makes individual perspectives vanish into a monism of
a supra-individual corporeity. When responding to this objection,
Merleau-Ponty comes back to the Husserlian idea of appresentation
which preserves the irrevocable distance between myself and the
other. It is this distance that makes it precisely impossible for different
selves to become one or to be dissolved in a common non-self. And
finally, Merleau-Ponty himself suggests in his Phenomenology of
Perception that we should »return to the cogito.«
1 Apart from his Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 2014), the relevant

texts are thus, especially, the following: The Sorbonne Lectures from 1949–1952
(Merleau-Ponty 2001), Prose of the World (Merleau-Ponty 1973), On the Phenomenol
ogy of Language (1964a), Primacy of Perception (1964e), The Child’s Relations with
Others (1964d), Phenomenology and the Sciences of the Man (1964c); Titres et travaux:
Projet d’enseignement (Merleau-Ponty 2000, p. 10–35). Even though I will also
draw on some texts from the later period, especially on The Philosopher and His
Shadow (1964b), I cannot tackle here the question as to whether Merleau-Ponty’s later
ontology of the flesh constitutes a substantial discontinuity in his thought and what
consequences this has for our topic.
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1. Criticism: Husserl made the problem of the

other unsolvable
According to Merleau-Ponty, our knowledge of other people should

not be conceived of as an act by which we take what we know from
ourselves and transpose this into the bodies we encounter in our
environment. The hidden assumption of such an approach is that
self-knowledge is immediate, or that it is at least easier to acquire than
knowledge of others (Merleau-Ponty 1964d, pp. 114–117). Merleau-
Ponty does not want to deny that we are able to relate to ourselves,
to reflect on what we do and to acquire knowledge of ourselves.
At the moment we make such an attempt at self-knowledge, there
are indeed things to be known: we already are in possession of all
sorts of capacities (e.g. we can move our body, we can speak), we
carry the burdens and benefits of social commitments (as members
of a family, of a gender or a social group), and a certain part of our
lives have already elapsed. None of this is explicitly known to us.
Self-knowledge does not seem to consist in a primordial acquaintance
with ourselves. It is, moreover, a practical task yet to be accomplished.
A being which is involved in many activities and relations before
it even realizes it is, as Merleau-Ponty phrases it, »given to himself
as something to be understood« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 362, see
also p. lxxiii). Consequently, we discover or find ourselves in a way
which is not much different from the way we find others: »We find
the other the same way we find our body« (Merleau-Ponty, 1973,
p. 138). It is our opacity for ourselves and not our self-knowledge
that constitutes the starting point of our relations with other people.2
Or—in the words of Merleau-Ponty—»the initial sympathy rests
on the ignorance of oneself« (1964d, p. 120). On the other hand,
others are not complete strangers. To give but one example: from
a very early age, children understand facial expression, e.g. the
smile on the face of an adult (1964d, p. 115). In this critical move,
2 In this respect, Merleau-Ponty is rather close to come contemporary theories which

take the original self-ignorance as the precondition of any interpersonal encounter.
See, in a more normative context, e.g. J. Butler: »If the subject is opaque to itself, not
fully translucent and knowable to itself, it is not thereby licensed to do what it wants or
to ignore its obligations to others. The contrary is surely true. The opacity of the subject
may be a consequence of its being conceived as a relational being.« (Butler 2005, pp.
19–20).
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Merleau-Ponty is inspired by Max Scheler who explicitly refuses

the »tendency to under-estimate the difficulty of self-knowledge
[Selbstwahrnehmung], just as … [to] over-estimate the difficulty of
knowing other people [Fremdwahrnehmung]« (Scheler 2017, p. 244
and 251; 1973, p. 238 and 245).3
Merleau-Ponty turns this double refusal—we start neither from
a safe self-knowledge, nor from a complete alterity of others—into a
criticism of the philosophy of »cogito.« He directs it against Decartes
or against certain influential French readers of Descartes (Lachelier,
Lachièze-Rey), but often against Husserl as well. In his 1949 Sor
bonne lectures he says, for instance, that Husserl seems to be unable
to account for the experience of the other because he does not want
to abandon one particular primordial condition. And »this condition
is the Cartesian conception of ›cogito‹: consciousness is essentially
self-consciousness.« (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 28). Merleau-Ponty
describes Husserl as an ambiguous thinker who vacillates between
two options: between the idea that the self–other distinction derives
only gradually from the primordial experience of our non-distinction,
and the idea that the experience of the other is made possible by
the primordial experience which is my own only, my »sphere of
ownness.« In Merleau-Ponty’s rather brief and cursory presentation,
Husserl in his major works inclined towards the second option, i.e.
he intended »to gain access to others from the ›cogito,’” to pose the
problem »in terms of consciousness,« and—as Merleau-Ponty states
—this is why »it was made unsolvable« (Merleau-Ponty 2010, pp.
29–31; see also Merleau-Ponty 1964a, pp. 93–94).
As he makes clear in Phenomenology of Perception, what he finds
unconvincing is not the idea that the self can be given to itself, but
that such a givenness of oneself for oneself can be sufficiently
described by referring to one’s own »mental processes« (Erlebnisse).
The position Merleau-Ponty refuses is one Husserl held in The Carte
sian Meditations and Ideas I, where Husserl for instance says that
the »cogitatio,« the »mental process« (Erlebnis), »can be perceived in
an immanent perception« (Ideas I, 89, § 42). Against this, Merleau-
Ponty states—in his description of the experience of other people—
that both myself, and the other »are not cogitationes enclosed in their
immanence.« If I am to be given, even to myself, it is always in relation
3 Merleau-Ponty also refers to Scheler’s criticism of the idea that the existence of the
other can be based on an analogical inference (2014, pp. 367–368).
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to the world: »I am only given to myself as a certain hold upon the

world« (Merlau-Ponty 2014, pp. 369–370). Furthermore, Merleau-
Ponty mistrusts the very possibility of the reduction to the »sphere of
ownness« (Merleau-Ponty 2001, p. 29). Taken together, this seems
to be a blunt refusal of Husserl’s approach. Nevertheless, when we
focus on the next steps of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis, we realize how
much he owes to Husserl.
2. Encountering others: Sharing of the same corporeity

and culture
If we move forward in the description of the way we encounter

other embodied beings, what is that which we encounter? And who
is the one who makes such an encounter? For Merleau-Ponty, the
key phenomenon is the bodily movement that has an expressive
meaning: a gesture of a hand or a facial expression (I see »a living
body performing an action«; 2014, 369; 1964b, p. 170). A movement
of a hand by which someone protects his or her sight from the sun
is not the outer expression of an inner intention (whose analogy I
know from myself), the facial expression of pain is not an exterior
expression of an inner feeling (which I can imagine by myself). And
still, these bodily changes are not merely physical events, but precisely
bodily movements that have a meaning. Movements, gestures, facial
expressions are understandable immediately. Merleau-Ponty points
to examples of the early transitivism: a child asks his mother »to
console him for the pains she is suffering« (1964b, p. 174; see also
2014, p. 368; 1964d, p. 148). An adult expressive movement can be
analyzed as well along similar lines: a man who fell asleep in the sun,
wakes up and extends his hand in the direction of a hat to protect
himself from the sun:
The moment the man wakes up in the sun and reaches for his hat,
between the sun which burns me and makes my eyes squint and the
gesture which from a distance over there brings relief to my fatigue,
between this sweating forehead and the protective gesture which it calls
forth on my part, a bond is tied without my needing to decide anything.
(Merleau-Ponty 1973, p. 137).
To properly understand this »bond,« Merleau-Ponty suggests that we
completely change our perspective. He invites us to stop considering
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this situation as one in which two separate human beings estab

lish a »bond« (say by projecting one’s own mental process—»Erleb
nis«—into the other). Instead, we should consider it as a situation in
which one singular type of movement or experience (a particular gesture,
or the experience of the burning sun) finds different instantiations.
The fact that bodily movements can be immediately understandable
implies that »the other’s body and my own are a single whole, two
sides of a single phenomenon« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 370). When
considered from this perspective, experiences of anger or grief are
but »variations of being in the world« that can »settle upon« the
behavior of the other as well as upon my own behavior (Merleau-
Ponty 2014, p. 372). Our intersubjective encounters are inconceivable
without this experience, which Merleau-Ponty characterizes as inde
pendent of our will (»without my needing to decide anything«), as
anonymous and general or universal (Merleau-Ponty 1973, p. 137).
Anyone able to follow the above description has an experience of the
heat of the sun. Such an experience, which is potentially anyone’s
experience, is not limited to bodily behavior, but comprises our
handling of cultural objects such as hats as well. Or, to give another
example, when I grasp the banister while climbing the staircase, I do
so as more or less anyone else who did this before me. The behavior
of others, as well as our own behavior, is not individual, but general,
not personal, but anonymous.
To better explain these experiences in which the difference of
individual perspectives does not stand in the foreground (»this world
can remain undivided between my perception and his«; Merleau-
Ponty 2014, p. 369), Merleau-Ponty draws on several sources. He
refers to the concept of the body schema as that which enables the
correspondence between the movements we see and the movements
we are able to execute ourselves (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 370). But
Husserl is one of the important sources as well. In many places, Mer
leau-Ponty comes back to the Husserlian concept of the Lifeworld
understood as a world in which we intersubjectively share a certain
understanding of both natural and cultural objects. In the Sorbonne
lectures, Merleau-Ponty hints at Husserl’s and his own concept of
style: »because the style of my gestures and the other’s gestures is the
same, it amounts to the fact that what is true for me is also true for
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others.«4 Nevertheless, to perceive another human being is more than

just to share a similar grasp of object or to recognize a behavior of a
certain style. It is here that the concept of »pairing,« a key concept of
the 5th Cartesian Meditation, intervenes. For Husserl, pairing is a form
of a passive synthesis on the basis of which we are able to grasp certain
data as being both similar and distinct: two objects, two bodies, two
situations as being alike and yet numerically different (Husserl 1960,
§ 51, pp. 112–113). What is more: if we grasp ourselves as alike, yet
distinct, bodies, there is—as Husserl says—another process going on:
the »intentional overreaching« (»intentionales Übergreifen«): »a liv
ing mutual awakening and an overlaying of each with the objective
sense of the other« (Husserl 1960, p. 113). This is for Merleau-Ponty
one of the key findings of the 5th Cartesian Meditation: the »intentional
transfer« (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 28; »transgression intentionnelle,”
2001, p. 40; 1964c, p. 83; 1964d, p. 118; see on this point Toadvine,
2002, pp. 249–250). Merleau-Ponty reads the »intentional trans
fer« as referring to a situation in which I realize the other’s intentions
in my own body, and see my intentions to be carried out in his body
(Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 40, also in Merleau-Ponty 2014, 368; Mer
leau-Ponty 1964a, p. 94). The man in the sun puts his hat on to protect
me from the heat which he experiences, and he does so by carrying
out my intention. This is not just a simultaneous presence of two
organisms who are alike and distinct, but a situation in which the two
organisms actively »intertwine,” as Merleau-Ponty says as early as in
his Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 374).5
And finally, Merleau-Ponty repeatedly refers to Husserl’s analy
sis of the double touch, and especially to the short half-phrase from the
5th Cartesian Meditation, according to which the body, when touching
itself, outlines »a sort of reflection« (Husserl 1960, p. 97; Merleau-
4 The full context of the quotations is the following: »When I originally witness
the other’s behavior, my body becomes the way of understanding it; my corporality
becomes the power of understanding the other’s corporality. I regain the final sense
(the ›Zwecksinn‹) of the other’s behavior because my body is capable of the same goals.
Hence, the notion of style intervenes: because the style of my gestures and the other’s
gestures is the same, it amounts to the fact that what is true for me is also true for
others.« (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 28).
5 See also R. Barbaras: »loin de soumettre cet accouplement à la tension du propre
et de l’étranger, il ressaisit la chair, qui pour Husserl était synonyme d’appartenance,

depuis le fait de la transgression, c’est-à-dire comme identité effective d’une possession
et d’une dépossession, d’une clôture et d’une ouverture.« (Barbaras 2001, p. 48).
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Ponty 2014, p. 95; also 1964c, p. 166).6 This became a favorite

expression of Merleau-Ponty’s, used by him in different contexts.
In Phenomenology of Perception, it serves to single out the unique
character of the lived body (»this would be enough to distinguish it
from objects,« 2014, p. 95). In his late texts, the role of the double
touch is different. In The Visible and the Invisible it is mobilized in
order to »blur« the subject-object distinction (Merleau-Ponty 1968,
p. 166), to underline the inherence of my body in the world, and
to pave the way for a different ontology, the ontology of the flesh.
And in the late extensive text on Husserl, The Philosopher and His
Shadow, Merleau-Ponty repeatedly draws on the analyzes of the
double touch in order to grasp the way our bodily behavior founds and
makes possible our mutual understanding as animated, living beings.
When touching the hand of another living being, I can sense its being
touched, i.e. I extend my own corporeity beyond the spatial limits of
my own body and »this articulation of a different corporeality in my
world is itself effected without introjection« (Merleau-Ponty 1964b,
p. 170).
In all these developments of Husserl’s concepts of Lifeworld,
style, pairing, intentional transgression and double touch, the prob
lem of understanding the other disappears because we are one (»two
sides of a single phenomenon«), because we are the same (the style
of our gestures »is the same«), and because we experience that the
other’s intentions are carried out by my body and vice versa. There
is no need to look for the way we connect with the other, as the con
nection has already been established. The underlying phenomenon
of intersubjectivity is thus commonality, sharing of the same cultural
world and of the same corporeity in an intertwined experience.
3. Undifferentiated generality vs. appresentation
Against this approach to intersubjectivity, an objection was raised

according to which Merleau-Ponty solves the problem of the other by
dissolving both the self and the other in an undifferentiated generality.
6 Husserl, nevertheless, does not seem to attribute to the body the possibility to reflect
upon itself. In his phrasing, the body is only related to itself (»Leiblichkeit […] die
auf sich selbst zurückbezogen ist«, see Husserl 1963, p. 128). Merleau-Ponty’s favorite
attribution of the reflection (»une sorte de réflexion«) to the body itself draws on the
first French translation of the Cartesian Meditations by E. Levinas (Husserl 1931, p. 81).
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As Renaud Barbaras claims: »Merleau-Ponty … dissolves the

harmony in generality, in which no one encounters anyone, since
no one is able to recognize oneself« (Barbaras 1989, 43). Levinas
criticizes Merleau-Ponty for this »anti-humanist or non-humanist
tendency which relates humanity to the ontology of the anony
mous being,« a tendency which is »indifferent towards the personal
drama« (»indifférente au drame des personnes,” Levinas 1987, p. 149;
see also Lefort 1992). It is fair to add that Merleau-Ponty’s wording
sometimes supports such an interpretation, for instance when he talks
about »an anonymous collectivity, an undifferentiated group life« as
the bottom layer of intersubjectivity (1964d, p. 120).
Interestingly enough, Merleau-Ponty himself articulates this
worry, as early as in his Phenomenology of Perception. By the emphasis
on the sharing of an experience, he says, »we introduce the impersonal
into the center of subjectivity, and we erase the individuality of
perspectives«; as a result, both the alter Ego and the Ego disappear.
Merleau-Ponty mentions Scheler as an example of such a flawed the
ory, more precisely his idea that on a certain level, the flow of our expe
rience is at first undivided into my experience and somebody else’s
experience. Scheler gives such examples as »genuine tradition« which
makes us hold thoughts of our teachers and parents to be our own
thoughts. He then adds some findings from the child-psychology
similar to the ones mentioned by Merleau-Ponty, and he mentions the
research on primitive peoples according to which, e.g. a vengeance for
an injury or insult to the member of a family or a tribe is felt as directly
affecting every individual member him- or herself. It is only subse
quently that we learn to separate the »own« and the »other« »within
an as yet undifferentiated whole« (Scheler 2017, pp. 245–250; 1973,
pp. 240–244). Merleau-Ponty is very clear in refusing this part of
Scheler’s theory. He states for instance that »Scheler's conception rubs
elbows with a kind of panpsychism; at the heart of his conception
there is not individuation of consciousnesses« (Merleau-Ponty 2010,
p. 32).
Merleau-Ponty was aware that his own descriptions can be
subject to a similar objection. He replies by saying, roughly speaking,
that a reliable account of the experience of the other has to include
both the impersonal dimension, in which we do not differ, and the
individual dimension, according to which we can never be the same.
More precisely, he shows that, for instance, an experience of anger
or grief of another person lends itself to a double interpretation: (1.)
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we can share the experience of anger or grief; (2.) and yet they are
individual experiences no one else can have. Let us quote the key
passage in extenso:
I perceive the other’s grief or anger in his behavior, on his face and in his
hands, without any borrowing from an ›inner‹ experience of suffering
or of anger and because grief and anger are variations of being in the
world, undivided between my body and consciousness, which settle
upon the other’s behavior and are visible in his phenomenal body,
as well as upon my own behavior such as it is presented to me. But
ultimately, the other’s behavior and even the other’s words are not the
other himself. The other’s grief or anger never has precisely the same
sense for him and for me. For him, these are lived situations; for me,
they are appresented. (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 372).
Both descriptions are valid. The first emphasizes the generality of
the body that enables us to share emotions, the second introduces
the individual character of my experience. Anything that I experi
ence is experienced by myself. To underline that this is a general
feature of experience as well, Merleau-Ponty calls it the »generality of
my inalienable subjectivity«: each of us is an »indeclinable ›I‹« (Mer
leau-Ponty 2014, p. 375). There are, consequently, two generalities:
the »generality of the body« and the »generality of my inalienable
subjectivity.«7 The second emphasis—that my emotion cannot be
shared by anyone—does not nevertheless mean that it cannot be
understood by another: if I suffer because a friend of mine has
suffered a personal loss, we relate to each other, yet our experience is
not identical.
It is on this level that Husserl’s concept of »appresentation« finds
its use in Merleau-Ponty, as well as the concept of solipsism, and even
the Sartrean idea of intersubjectivity as a struggle. For Merleau-Ponty,
none of this refutes the primordial acquaintance with others. Plurality
of perspectives, solipsism, and struggle do not exclude others, they
presuppose others: solipsism is a »lived solipsism« (»a solipsism
shared-by-many,« Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 376), the Sartrean strug
gle and objectifying gaze is a refusal to communicate and as such,
7 The »concrete« or »real« self can be, in Merleau-Ponty, equated with none of the
two generalities (or »anonymities«), they are so to say extreme positions which, if
attained, would make the self disappear. Thus we have not only opposition of the two
types of generality (or anonymity), but also the opposition of the general and the
concrete (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 474: »Our being in the world is the concrete bearer
of this double anonymity«).
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it »is still a mode of communication« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 378).

The fact that we have experiences which cannot be shared by others
does not make the existence of others a real problem. As Taylor
Carman nicely puts this, »Others are not a problem, but they are
trouble« (Carman 2008, p. 150).
It is important to note, in our context, that when defending his
account against the suspicion of »panpsychism,«8 of an »ontology
of anonymous being« (Levinas) or of a dissolution of both self and
the other in an undifferentiated generality (Barbaras), Merleau-Ponty
explicitly alludes to two important concepts of the Cartesian Medita
tions: the appresentation and the cogito.
Even though Merleau-Ponty refers to the concept of appresenta
tion only once, the context in which he does so is of importance.
When I see somebody frown, I perceive—according to Husserl—this
facial expression of another person »as having a physical side that
indicates something psychic appresentatively« (Husserl 1960, p. 114).
What is appresented—according to Husserl—are certain »psychic
determinations« that I make co-present to the perceived body. The
concept of appresentation highlights this interplay of presence and
absence: I can literally see that there is someone inaccessible to
me »in person.« The experience of the other is a real experience of
absence. It is, as Husserl nicely puts this, an experience of a »ver
ifiable accessibility of what is not originally accessible« (Husserl
1960, p. 114). Since in Merleau-Ponty the need to prove that we
share a common world and corporeality falls off, his emphasis lies
consequently on appresentation as marking an absence. For him,
appresentation is de-presentation. According to the already quoted
phrase: »The other’s grief or anger never has precisely the same sense
for him and for me. For him, these are lived situations; for me,
they are appresented« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 372). In his Sorbonne
lectures, Merleau-Ponty refers to Husserl as someone who underlines
that the other is for me always a »lacuna,« a »forbidden zone for
my experience« (Merleau-Ponty 2001, p. 39: »zone interdite à notre
expérience«). But it is precisely as absent (forbidden to me), that the
8 For a well documented defense of a panpsychic reading of Merleau-Ponty, based
especially on his later philosophy, see McWeeny 2019.
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others are really perceived by myself, that I have an »incontestable

experience« of others »in person« (Merleau-Ponty 2001, p. 39).9
Thus, Husserl is seen by Merleau-Ponty as someone who was
able to articulate the experience of the other precisely as an experi
ence of an absence. This is a somewhat paradoxical situation which
Merlau-Ponty does not intend to abandon. On the contrary, he
understands it as an »existential relation,« as a »lived experience« that
should be rendered »more profoundly« (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 32;
2001, p. 45).10 The emphasis on sharing—be it of a similar view
when contemplating a countryside together, of the same type of
emotion such as anger, or of the same physical condition such as
the heat we are exposed to—is by far not the last word of Merleau-
Ponty’s description of intersubjective encounters. On the contrary,
the presence of others is lived by us as a contradictory experience of
sharing and distance. To live with others is—as Merleau-Ponty states
in a 1951 article—»to live that contradiction as the very definition
of the presence of others« (Merleau-Ponty 1964a, p. 94; »a fecund
contradiction,« 1964e, p. 27). Still, how are we to articulate this lived
contradiction »more profoundly«? We cannot do it, unless we refer
to some concept of the self. Even though Merleau-Ponty started his
account of intersubjectivity with a clear rejection of the »Cartesian
cogito,« he repeatedly comes back to the concept of the cogito. In his
Phenomenology of Perception he does so in a move which he himself
terms as a »return to the cogito« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, 382; see also
1964a, p. 95; 2000, pp. 12 and 22).
4. »We must return to the cogito«
According to many authors, such as Renaud Barbaras, by returning to

the cogito, Merleau-Ponty simply failed to overcome the Husserlian
theory of intersubjectivity. This is, for Barbaras, but a Cartesian
relic. What is more, if we remove this »return to the cogito« from
9 See also the phrasing from The Philosopher and His Shadow: others – both humans
and animal beings – are »absolutely present beings who have a wake of the negative.
A perceiving body that I see is also a certain absence. But absence is itself rooted
in presence; it is through his body that the other person’s soul is soul in my eyes.
« (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, p. 172).
10 See also Barbaras (2001, p. 47): »vivre cette contradiction comme la définition
même de la présence d’autrui.«
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Merleau-Ponty’s description of inter-personal encounters (and in his

later work Merleau-Ponty himself sometimes invites us to do so), his
own contribution to the problem of intersubjectivity boils down to
a double negation: neither Husserl and his »Cartesian cogito,« nor
Scheler and his panpsychist account. This amounts to a somewhat
harsh verdict, voiced by Barbaras: there is nothing that goes beyond
this double refusal (Barbaras 2001, pp. 52–57).
Merleau-Ponty states nevertheless that the cogito or the con
cept of the consciousness he intends to return to has been »deeply
transformed,« together with the concept of the body (Merleau-Ponty
2014, p. 367). The cogito »deeply transformed« is understood by
Merleau-Ponty as implying a (1) processual concept of experience, (2)
transformative concept of the »real« self and (3) exposure (or being
exposed) to others as a fundamental feature of such a self.
First of all, the deeply transformed »cogito« has to abandon
the Cartesian assumption according to which our »cogito,« i.e. our
experiencing, is certain, while its object is exposed to doubts. On
the contrary, our experience is to be seen as an adventure with
no certainty guaranteed. If I see an object, say a flat stone lying
on the ground, I am confident that the object seen is real. If its
presence turns out to be uncertain, so will my own act of seeing
(Merleau-Ponty 2014, pp. 393–394; 2000, p. 21); it will appear that it
has been just a perceptual illusion, a patch of sunlight (Merleau-Ponty
2014, p. 310). Merleau-Ponty sometimes takes perception—both
perception of objects and perception of other people—to be a »violent
act« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 379): each experience makes part of
an anticipation which can be shattered, but it is only as this »active
transcendence« (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 395) that our experience
encounters the real. The »cogito«—i.e. »I experience something,« »I
see something« or »I love someone«—is an adventure with no cer
tainty guaranteed in advance (Merleau-Ponty 1964e, p. 27). Cogito
refers to the experiential process which has a temporal span11 and
which can encounter the real only if ready to run the risk of a
possible error.
Secondly, the deeply transformed »cogito« remains subjective.
For an experience to take place, there has to be someone who has
this experience. Even though Merleau-Ponty sometimes emphasizes
11 As Merleau-Ponty phrases this, »we are restoring a temporal thickness to the
Cogito« (2014, p. 420).
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self-less experiences, for instance the perception of the blue sky

which bears no reference to the one who makes this experience
(»I would have to say that one perceives in me, and not that I
perceive,” Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 223), he does not take them to be
an exhaustive account of our experience. They name one generality
of my experiencing. The fact that there is always a »self« who makes
an experience is for Merleau-Ponty another general feature: while
experiencing, I have a non-thematic awareness of myself. Neither
the »one« who perceives in me, nor the »I« which makes this particu
lar experience (the »indeclinable ›I‹,« p. 375; the »universal subject,
« p. 376), can exist on their own. They are but formal, abstract, »gen
eral« or »anonymous« structures (Merleau-Ponty 2014, p. 474; see
also Taipale 2007, p. 745). Neither do they exist or live, nor do they
specify anything that would tell us who the real individual is. The
real human subject is to be described through its involvement, its
being-related to a particular object, person or situation. Or, to quote
Merleau-Ponty, »we must tie even the notion of ipseity to that of
situations« (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 32; 2001, p. 45; see also 1964a,
p. 95). A real subject is a person with his or her own history, capacities,
and is involved in many interpersonal relations. If a situation makes
part of our »cogito,” we are defined and transformed by situations we
go through. The encounter of the other can thus translate into my own
disorientation: »if the other person is really another, at a certain stage
I must be surprised, disoriented.« Otherness of the other manifests
itself in a de-stabilizing encounter and in the »transformation of
myself and of the other as well« (1973, p. 142). This is, nevertheless,
a general trait. Not only the face-to-face encounter, but experiencing
in general brings about my becoming other in relation to myself.
Thirdly, the »real« self is external to itself and can gradually
discover itself by assuming its own exteriority. Often, we act even
before we explicitly know about it. The encounter of the other, i.e.
my spontaneous reactions to his or her movements, gestures and
facial expressions is precisely one example of this »instructive spon
taneity«: »I inevitably grasp my body as a spontaneity which teaches
me what I could not know in any other way except through it« (1964a,
p. 93). Merleau-Ponty phrases this also in terms of expressivity:
our movements are expressive. They do not consist in an external
execution of an internal »cogito,« but the bodily movement is an
integral part of the respective type of consciousness at work. Our
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behavior—be it in perceiving or loving—is essentially expressive.12

In yet another phrasing, our subjectivity is a revealed subjectivity: it
is a behavior, an expression, a movement, a speech which is located
and visible or audible. A subject, a self, cannot exist without acting,
moving, self-expressing. This is why others sometimes may know
us better than we do. For Merleau-Ponty, even our language as
expression is constitutive of consciousness.13 Thus, the cogito we
return to is our active, visible and often self-ignorant involvement
in the world. As he explicitly states: »The Cogito is both indubitable,
and opaque.«14 In sum, the deeply transformed cogito remains sub
jective, but the subject of this cogito is involved in experiences with
ambiguous meaning and uncertain outcomes, and being subject to
these experiences, he or she is subject to change and exposure.
Conclusion: Sharing and exposure
In his account of intersubjectivity, Merleau-Ponty retains much from

Husserl’s approach. He is Husserlian in his sustained emphasis on
the fact that it is in the sensible world that the other can appear, both
as present and as distant. Merleau-Ponty develops observations on
how this experience of the other as the one who is never completely
accessible develops in our interpersonal exchanges. For there to be
another human or animal being, there has to be a phenomenal or
sensible manifestation of the otherness of this »other.« This manifes
tation can take different forms which I will rather roughly summarize
and conclude. My point is that even though in Merleau-Ponty many
interpersonal encounters are analyzed as forms of sharing, and all of
them are made possible by a fundamental sharing, they never conceal
the other side of sharing which is exposure. The emphasis he places on
sharing does not, as a result, lead to the obliteration of the individual
character of the other or of myself.
12 Merleau-Ponty sometimes articulates his claims that consciousness (cogito) is

always expressive with the help of Scheler: »Scheler's essential contribution is the
notion of expression; there is no consciousness behind manifestations; they are
inherent to consciousness; they are consciousness.« (2010, pp. 30–31).
13 »Language, as an expressive phenomenon, is constitutive of consciousness« (2010,
p. 33). Also 1964a, p. 90: »For the speaking subject, to express is to become aware of;
he does not express just for others, but also to know himself what he intends.«
14 »Le cogito est à la fois indubitable et opaque« (Merleau-Ponty 2000, p. 22).
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As examples of the first and most fundamental level of intersub

jectivity in Merleau-Ponty, the one of sharing of the same experience,
we can think of situations in which two people contemplate the same
countryside, feel the radiation of the same sun or are immersed in a
dialogue in which they forget about their differences, participate in the
same process and enjoy the dialogue »being-shared-by-two« (2014,
p. 370). Here, we do not encounter the other face to face, but »later
ally« (2010, p. 27). We are, says Merleau-Ponty, like two »nearly
co-centric circles« (1973, p. 134). It seems at times that the difference
of myself and the other in such experiences does not come to the
fore and that it is, consequently, downplayed by Merleau-Ponty.
Nevertheless, the most fundamental structure of sharing is what Mer
leau-Ponty translates as »intentional transgression« (»intentionales
Übergreifen«). This experiential structure does not have the form of
a unity, but more of a mutual encroachment or dual transcendence.
If it is possible to have the experience of feeling the intentions of
the other in my own body, and of his or her body executing my own
intentions, such an experience should not be identified with the two
of us having the same experience. Joel Krueger emphasizes the role
of experiences which are, as he says, »jointly owned,« i.e. »they are
numerically single experiences that are nevertheless given to more
than one subject« (Krueger 2013, p. 510). This may hold true for
many experiences Merleau-Ponty refers to, such as when two people
contemplate the same countryside. And yet the question remains as
to whether the fact of sharing such an experience implies that we
become a »joint subject,« as Krueger suggests. Merleau-Ponty often
follows Husserl for whom the »intentional transfer« presupposes
the »pairing,« i.e. the capacity to grasp both myself and the other as
distinct, as a »pair,« and precisely not as a »joint subject.« True, this
experience is by its very nature pre-reflective or spontaneous and
can take place without our explicit attention. But this does not make
our differences or the distinctness of the two individuals who are
bound by the »intentional transgression« vanish. I believe that the
criticism of Merleau-Ponty mentioned earlier (Levinas, Barbaras or
Lefort) mistakes the spontaneity of our intersubjective and mutual
understanding for a unity in which the self-other differences are
lost. The fact that these differences do not stand in the foreground,
that they are at certain early age only »virtual« or not yet discovered
(Merleau-Ponty 1964d, p. 118), does not mean they are absent.
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Sharing is by far not the only interpersonal experience. There are

important experiences in which I transcend the other explicitly and
he or she transcends me. I can experience solitude or loneliness; I can
refuse to communicate with others and prefer struggle to cooperation;
I can »live« my solipsism. Nevertheless, a complete transcending of
others is impossible. A being which is always necessarily involved
in situations and exposed to others can never completely withdraw
from intersubjective encounters as long as it exists (2014, p. 378).
Thus my transcending others—which is but another designation of
my individual freedom—is always just a partial »escape,« but never an
unconditional freedom (2014, p. 174).
In the reverse case, the one in which the other transcends me, I
experience the absence behind his or her movement, gesture or facial
expression not only in the sense that he or she is not myself, but
also in the sense that I do not understand the expression, I do not
fully grasp its meaning. As far as the transcendence of the other in
relation to myself is concerned, Merleau-Ponty has been criticized
for not having sufficiently enough separated the transcendence of the
other from other types of transcendence (e.g. Zahavi 2001, p. 155),
or more radically, that he missed the »radical alterity« of the Other
(Tengelyi, 2004, pp. 92–98). It is true that in Merleau-Ponty, different
forms of alterity or transcendence are dealt with in a parallel way:
the transcendence of my body, of the world, of my past, of my birth
and death. If certain phenomena »transcend me,« they »nevertheless,
only exist, to the extent that I take them up and live them« (2014,
p. 381; 1964a, p. 27). For Merleau-Ponty, the transcendence of the
other is not radically different from the transcendence of my own
death: I am open to both, they color my experience and the world I
live in, and yet they transcend me. Merleau-Ponty would definitely
agree that the structure of experience of these different forms of
transcendence is in each case specific (birth, death, past, world, others,
body), but he would not see a reason to introduce the concept of radical
transcendence restricted to but one of them.
Merleau-Ponty’s account of intersubjectivity combines sharing
with mutual transcendence. Sharing does not suppress intersubjective
difference, i.e. the fact that we mutually transcend each other and
our mutual transcendence is never an absolute one. Such an account
has been criticized for dissolving individuality, for not respecting the
asymmetric character of some interpersonal relations and for not
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taking the transcendence of the other radically enough, i.e. as an

absolute transcendence.
Even though the lack of radicality has often been seen as a flaw,
it has at least one advantage. Precisely because it does not subscribe
to the concept of absolute otherness, Merleau-Ponty’s account of
experiencing (of cogito) enables us to think of sharing and exposure
as two interconnected phenomena. Exposure is the other side of
sharing. We never completely transcend others. Not only because we
often share common experiences, but also because we are exposed
to others, visible to them and vulnerable to their actions. This is the
result of the deep transformation of the »cogito«: we are external to
ourselves, we expose our intimacy, our souls are visible in our bodily
movements and our speech. Only gradually and only to a degree
can we extricate ourselves from this mutual understandability, our
escape from others can never completely succeed. And conversely,
others do not completely or once and for all transcend our grasp,
since they are not only accessible to our sympathy but also exposed to
our intrusions.
Interestingly enough, the bottom layer of intersubjectivity—the
intentional transgression—is not necessarily for Merleau-Ponty a
form of a communal harmony but possibly also a form of alien
ation: »It is this transfer of my intentions to the other's body and of
his intentions to my own, my alienation of the other and his alienation
of me, that makes possible the perception of others« (1964d, p. 118).
Here, Merleau-Ponty’s favorite mutual transgression has upsetting
undertones: we are mutual intruders, and this is how we initially per
ceive each other. The »initial sympathy« is also a mutual alienation.
The experience of sharing or understanding each other does not just by
itself constitute a harmonious coexistence. Merleau-Ponty does not,
nevertheless, develop this point into a philosophy of the dark side of
sharing, say by showing a possible manipulation which makes use of
our own spontaneity, but into a philosophy of creativity. The other
can alienate my world, thus far shared with him or her, for instance
through a creative speech which is at first difficult to understand,
but which can »open us to another meaning« (Merleau-Ponty 1973,
p. 143). Such a creative alienation is inconceivable without a prior
sharing or mutual understanding.
If we move to more explicit forms of exposure and take, for
example, the situation of a confrontation and struggle, we seem to be
far from any type of sharing. For Sartre, the extreme form of struggle
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is one in which we become an object for the other or make the other
an object for ourselves. Now, according to the claim that sharing and
exposure are connected, the Sartrean objectification is impossible.
Firstly, because the other who tries to objectify me gets him or
herself exposed and revealed and never fully escapes our interaction.15
Secondly, because that which is visible, exposed or revealed is never an
object but our expressive movement, anxious gesture or speech that
contributes to the constitution of what we ourselves think. Thus, when
exposed to the gaze of the other, what is visible is our love, our anger or
our »project« offered to be shared by the other. The fact that the other
can objectify me, i.e. that he or she can grasp my visible love, anger
or project from a detached and indifferent perspective, does not prove
that his or her gaze is necessarily objectifying, but only that a gaze can
refuse to understand. Objectification is far from being the prototype of
interpersonal relations, it is but a denied sharing. Only beings capable
of sharing can objectify other beings, objectification being precisely
the refused sharing. Objectification is such a potent power that people
can have over other people precisely because it is a denied sharing.
This is yet another confirmation of the fact that sharing and exposure
are interconnected. The advantage of Merleau-Ponty’s description of
intersubjectivity lies in its capacity to reflect upon diverse forms in
which sharing and exposure go together.16
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Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2002): Parcours deux. 1951–1961. Lagrasse: Verdier.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2001). Psychologie et pédagogie de l’enfant. Cours de
Sorbonne 1949–1952. Lagrasse: Verdier.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2010) : Child Psychology and Pedagogy. The Sorbonne
Lectures 1949–1952. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2014): Phenomenology of Perception. London/New
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Moran, Dermot (2010): »Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on Embodied Experi

ence.« In: Nenon, Thomas; Blosser, Philip (eds.), Advancing Phenomenology.
Essays in Honor of Lester Embree. Springer, pp. 179–195.
Scheler, Max (1973): Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Bern: Francke.
Scheler, Max (2017): The Nature of Sympathy. London/New York: Routledge.
Smith, Arthur David (2007): »The Flesh of Perception. Merleau-Ponty and
Husserl.« In: Baldwin, Thomas (ed.), Reading Merleau-Ponty. On Phe
nomenology of Perception. London – New York: Routledge, pp. 1–22.
Taipale, Joona (2007): »Perceiving the Other: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on the
Genesis of Intersubjectivity.« In: Sepp, Hans Reiner; Copoeru, Ion (eds.), Phe
nomenology 2005. Volume IV: Selected Essays from Northern Europe. Bucharest:
Zeta Books, pp. 735–763.
Tengelyi, László (2004): The Wild Region in Life-History. Evanston: Northwest
ern University Press.
Toadvine, Ted; Embree, Lester (2002): Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of
Husserl. Springer.
Zahavi, Dan (2001): Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity. Athens: Ohio
University Press.
Zahavi, Dan (2002): »Merleau-Ponty on Husserl. A Reappraisal.« In: Toadvine,
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3–30.
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Paul Ricoeur’s Husserlian Heresies: The Case of

the Cartesian Meditations
1. Introduction
In 1954, thus only four years after the publication of Cartesian

ische Meditationen in the Husserliana series, Paul Ricoeur pub
lished »Etudes sur les ›Méditations Cartésiennes‹ de Husserl« in
Revue philosophique de Louvain, where he provided a commentary
on the first four of the Cartesian Meditations (hereafter CM).1 In
1967, an English translation of this text was published in Husserl: An
Analysis of His Phenomenology (Ricoeur 1967, pp. 82–114) and it was
accompanied with a separate text that Ricoeur had prepared for the
English volume under the title »Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation«
(Ricoeur 1967, pp. 115–142).2 Besides these two texts, in the Tenth
Study of Soi-même comme un autre, originally published in 1990 (the
English translation appeared two years later under the title Oneself
as Another), Ricoeur offered a creative reinterpretation of the Fifth
Cartesian Meditation, which establishes the hermeneutical potential
of Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity within the framework of a
hermeneutically-oriented philosophical ethics (see Ricoeur 1992, pp.
322–341). These three texts constitute the most important resources
1 CM was the first book by Husserl to be translated into French. Its translation relied
on the version of the text that was sent out to the French translators on May 17, 1929.
Gabrielle Peiffer and Emmanuel Levinas undertook the translation with advice from
Alexandre Koyré. Their translation was published in 1931. For almost twenty years,
Méditations cartésiennes remained the only book by Husserl available in French. This
changed in 1950, when Paul Ricoeur’s translation of and commentary on Husserl’s
Ideen I appeared in print.
2 This text was published in French in 1986, as part of Ricoeur’s A l'école de la
phénoménologie, a book that comprised Ricoeur’s main studies of Husserl.
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that show us how Ricoeur interpreted Husserl’s CM.3 Otherwise,

shorter references to CM are scattered throughout many other of
Ricoeur’s texts.
In the overall framework of Ricoeur’s analyses of Husserl’s works,
CM occupies a special place. At the outbreak of World War II, Ricoeur
enlisted in the French army and after he was captured on June 7,
1940, he was sent to the prisoner of war camp in Pomerania, where
he spent almost five years in captivity. In 1943, he received a copy of
the German edition of Husserl’s Ideen I and began translating it into
French. Not having separate sheets of paper to write on, he inserted
his translation into the margins of the German book in tiny letters.
The publication of Ricoeur’s translation of and commentary on Ideas
I in 1950 established his reputation in France as a leading expert
on phenomenology. However, as Edward Ballard remarks in the
Translator’s Foreword to Husserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology,
Ricoeur’s analysis of other works, including Ideen I, is situated »within
the perspective defined by the Cartesian Meditations« (Ricoeur 1967,
p. xv).
We can single out three central reasons why CM is especially
important in the framework of Ricoeur’s interpretation of Husserlian
phenomenology. First, according to Ricoeur, in no other of Husserl’s
own texts is the tension between the realistic character of phenome
nological description and the idealistic requirement of constitution
as palpable as in this work. Second, CM presents us both with
the culmination and the breakdown of phenomenological egology,
conceived as transcendental idealism. Third, it provides us with the
most important resources for the development of a philosophical
alternative, which would rely on Husserl’s own phenomenological
descriptions, although resist absorbing them within the egological
interpretation that they were subjugated to in CM. My goal here is to
clarify these three characteristic features that are central to Ricoeur’s
interpretation of CM and thereby bring to light what I consider to
be the most philosophically important aspects of Ricoeur’s confron
tation with Husserl’s phenomenology. I will proceed by addressing
3 To this list one could also add Ricoeur’s Parcours de la reconnaissance, which was
originally published in 2004 (an English translation, under the title The Course of
Recognition, appeared a year later) (see Ricoeur 2005, esp. pp. 153–157). In this study,
we also come across Ricoeur’s analysis of the Fifth Cartesian Meditation. However,
while the first three works significantly complement each other, this cannot be said
about the fourth one, which by and large reiterates Ricoeur’s earlier analysis of CM.
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Paul Ricoeur’s Husserlian Heresies: The Case of the Cartesian Meditations
three questions: 1) How Cartesian are Husserl’s CM? 2) How descrip

tive is Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology? 3) How egological is
Husserl’s egology?
2. How Cartesian are the Cartesian Meditations?
While commenting on Husserl’s First Cartesian Meditation in

his »Etudes sur les ›Méditations Cartésiennes‹ de Husserl,« Ricoeur
juxtaposes Husserl’s Descartes to those interpretations of Descartes’
thought that were prevalent at the time in France (Ricoeur refers to
Étienne Gilson’s, Jean Laporte’s, and Ferdinand Alquié’s readings of
Descartes). Ricoeur claims that in Husserl’s CM we face a Neo-Kan
tian Descartes, whose greatness lies in having initiated the project
of a philosophy conceived as the ground of all science within the
system of all sciences. In contrast to the French Descartes of Ricoeur’s
contemporaries, the Neo-Kantian Descartes endorsed by Husserl
is stripped of the polarity between the cogito and God. While in
Descartes’ Meditations, the subordination of the world to the cogito
is followed by »the second Copernican revolution,« i.e., the subordi
nation of both the world and the cogito to God, nothing of the kind
is to be found in CM. In a Neo-Kantian fashion, Husserl secularizes
Descartes and interprets the Cartesian cogito as the transcendental
subject, conceived of as the ultimate origin of all meaning. Although
there might be good philosophical reasons to contest a dualistic
philosophy that relies on the polarity of the human and the divine,
nonetheless, Ricoeur contends that »to fail to recognize this structure
of Cartesianism is to produce a philosophy other than Descartes’s and
not to radicalize Cartesianism« (Ricoeur 1967, pp. 83–84).
Thus, according to Ricoeur, Husserl’s CM are not stricto sensu
Cartesian: they do not radicalize Cartesianism but develop a philo
sophical alternative to Descartes’ philosophical project. Ricoeur
emphasizes this point when he claims that »this destruction of
the original sense of Cartesianism« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 84) is prob
ably the best introduction to Husserl’s CM. In sharp contrast to
Descartes, Husserl’s phenomenology is an epistemology purified of
ontology, which omits the polarity of being and nothingness and
which ascribes to the transcendental ego all the tasks that were
assigned to God in Descartes’ Meditations. Most importantly, it is a
philosophy that replaces divine veracity with transcendental intersub
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jectivity: »whereas Descartes transcends the cogito by means of God,

Husserl transcends the ego by the alter ego« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 84).
Ricoeur invites us to read CM as a project of purifying epis
temology of all pre-critical ontology, as a »progressive ascension
towards a certain critical point—which is almost a breakdown—viz.,
the solus ipse of an egology without ontology« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 84).
Just as Descartes’ meditating ego discovers God at the critical point
of analysis, so analogously, in Husserl’s Meditations, at the point
of a possible breakdown one discovers the alter ego, which in its
own turn assures the ego of the objective validity of its judgments
and presentations.
However, even though Husserl’s phenomenology is Cartesian
ism by name only, it nonetheless inherits some of its deepest prob
lems. Most importantly, »one may wonder whether Husserl escaped
what might be called the ›Husserlian circle‹ any better than Descartes
escaped his own famous ›circle‹« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 85). According to
the circularity charge, Descartes’ meditating ego assures itself of the
reliability of clara et distincta perceptio on the basis of divine veracity
while it assents to divine veracity because it perceives clearly and
distinctly that God exists and cannot be a deceiver. So also, writes
Ricoeur, »there is room for wonder whether Husserl […] succeeded
in accounting for the otherness of the Other and the otherness of
the whole of nature« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 85). For Ricoeur, Husserl’s
unsuccessful attempt to account for the constitution of the alter ego
ultimately marks the limits of transcendental idealism and calls for
phenomenology’s absorption within a new philosophical framework.
Thus, Husserl’s »Cartesianism« is a Cartesianism purified of all
ontological pretension, concerned only with epistemological issues,
and especially those of the ultimate point of departure. Yet even
though the question concerning the origins of philosophical thought is
addressed more radically by Husserl than by Descartes, nonetheless,
Husserl’s radical point of departure is not free from difficulties. When
Husserl identifies the ego cogito as the actual beginning of philosophy
at the end of the First Meditation, he does so, claims Ricoeur, while
presupposing the guiding idea of universal science. The actual starting
point of beginning philosophy (see Husserl 1950, p. 56; Husserl
1960, p. 16) is conceived as the absolute foundation of the sciences.
Ricoeur takes this to mean that a decision has been made from the
start: »phenomenology must reach its point of departure by initially
situating itself as a secondary activity in relation to the primary
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activity of the sciences« (see Ricoeur 1967, p. 85). Phenomenology’s

point of departure in CM appears to be post-theoretical rather than
pre-theoretical.4 On this basis, Ricoeur contrasts Husserl’s radical
ization of Cartesian epistemology in CM both with Heidegger’s point
of departure in Being and Time as well as with Husserl’s own procedure
in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
(see Ricoeur 1967, pp. 85–86).
While addressing the epoche in the First Cartesian Meditation,
Ricoeur emphasizes that despite its brevity, Husserl’s analysis of this
methodological procedure avoids the shortcomings of its treatment
in Ideas I. In the work from 1913, the analysis of the epoche led to
the recognition that consciousness is the unaffected residue and the
field of phenomenological analyses. As Husserl himself was later
to observe in the Crisis, his »Cartesian way« to the epoche has a
serious shortcoming: »while it leads to the transcendental ego in one
leap, as it were, it brings this ego into view as apparently empty
of content« (Husserl 1976, pp. 157–158; Husserl 1970, p. 155). One
is therefore »at a loss, at first, to know what has been gained by
it« (Husserl 1976, p. 158; Husserl 1970, p. 155). Ricoeur’s analysis
suggests, however, that this shortcoming characterizes the way to the
transcendental epoche in Ideas I, although not in CM, where Husserl
emphasizes the positive character of this operation. In CM, »the
epoche is not a placing between parentheses, as Ideas I has it, for
there is nothing in the parentheses. The world is retained with all
of its modalities […] but it is transformed into a ›phenomenon of
being‹« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 87). The Cartesian path to the reduction has
its own resources to alleviate the shortcomings that afflict Husserl’s
account of the epoche in Ideas I.
4 Reflecting further on Husserl’s point of departure, Ricoeur writes: »the beginning

philosophy is preceded not by a presence but (1) by a principle: the obligation to accept
the Idea of truth, and (2) by a definition: the definition of truth by evidence« (Ricoeur
1967, p. 86). Thus, in order to begin, the beginning philosopher must both know what
primary evidence (which, Husserl argues, must be apodictic, although it cannot be
adequate) is and accept the requirement to search for such evidence.
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3. How descriptive is Husserl’s

descriptive phenomenology?
Such a methodologically-motivated transformation of the world into

a phenomenon is a necessary outcome of the transcendental epoche.
In virtue of this method, Husserl’s phenomenology becomes a phi
losophy of sense. It is a philosophy that transforms all correlates
of consciousness, which are naturally apperceived as independent
entities existing in the external world, into pure sense configurations.
The concept of sense configurations must be understood in the broad
est possible extension: it includes »perceived sense, imagined sense,
willed sense, sense affectively experienced, sense judged and told,
and logical sense« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 89). The philosophical wonder of
Husserlian phenomenology is the wonder that there can be sense at
all, and this, Ricoeur maintains, is what fundamentally distinguishes
Husserlian phenomenology from existentialism, conceived as a philo
sophical reflection on an existential project (see Ricoeur 1967, p. 99).
The fundamental task of phenomenology is that of describing various
sense-configurations in terms of their givenness. Instead of requiring
that the meditating ego folds itself up into philosophical solitude cut
off from the world, phenomenology invites the ego to reflect upon
the cogitatum of the cogito, upon the noemata that unfold within
the world, although conceived as nothing more than intentional
sense configurations. Opposing constructivist tendencies of all kinds,
phenomenology conceives of its own task as being that of describing
phenomena just as they are given to intuition.5
Husserl contends that phenomenological description, insofar as
it follows the transcendental epoche, must unfold within the bound
aries of transcendental experience. Although in his commentary on the
First Cartesian Meditation Ricoeur stressed repeatedly that Husserl’s
phenomenology is Cartesianism purified of all ontological preten
tions, in his account of the Second Cartesian Meditation Ricoeur sug
gests that the field of transcendental experience »is for itself a ›sphere
5 As Husserl famously maintains in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, »phenomenolog
ical explication is nothing like ›metaphysical construction‹« (Husserl 1950, p. 77;

Husserl 1960, p. 150). Standing in sharpest contrast to any kind of metaphysical con
structivism, phenomenology »proceeds within the limits of pure ›intuition,‹ or rather
of pure sense-explication based on a fulfilling givenness of the sense itself« (Husserl
1950, p. 77; Husserl 1960, pp. 150–151).
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of being‹ (ein Seinssphäre)« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 91). Ricoeur himself

does not comment on the obvious tension that arises at this point
in his analysis. Four points deserve special emphasis. First, Ricoeur’s
claim that Husserl’s epistemology is purified of all ontological dimen
sions calls for a further qualification, since questions concerning
transcendental reality do play an important role in CM. Second, this
apparent tension is not a contradiction, since in Husserl’s analysis, the
bracketing of mundane reality that is given within the natural attitude
leads to the establishment of transcendental reality. More precisely,
while within the natural attitude intentionally given configurations
of sense are granted the status of absolute and independent reality,
with the performance of the epoche, transcendental consciousness,
conceived as a phenomenological residuum, take over such a status.
Third, to a significant extent it remains unclear how Husserl’s analysis
of transcendental reality is to be understood. Is the transcendental
ego and the mundane ego one and the same, or are they different?
Is the transcendental field of experience and the mundane field of
experience two separate fields, or is one of them just an intentional
correlate of actual consciousness whose merely phenomenal being
arises from the activities within the other, genuine, field of being?6
Fourth, Husserl’s identification of transcendental experience as a field
of being is the conceptual basis of Husserlian idealism, which in its
own turn constitutes the central target of Ricoeur’s criticism.
Anticipating a Kantian and Neo-Kantian critique, Ricoeur
emphasizes that Husserl’s qualification of the phenomenological
residuum as transcendental experience should not be misunderstood
as some kind of »transcendental empiricism.«7 Ricoeur therefore
stresses that in Husserl, the transcendental reduction entails the
6 This ambiguity is of great importance for Ricoeur’s own original development of
phenomenology. Starting with Freedom and Nature, Ricoeur has always been critical of
the concept of the transcendental ego in Husserl’s phenomenology. As Dermot Moran
has recently put it, »Ricoeur thinks of the subject as always embedded in a social,
historical, and linguistic context. His key question is, as Richard Kearney has recalled:
›d’ou parlez vous?‹—›where are you speaking from?‹; ›Where are you coming from?‹«
(Moran 2017, p. 191).
7 Needless to say, in Ricoeur’s commentary this expression has an entirely different
sense from the one that Natalie Depraz gave it in her recent studies. In Ricoeur’s
analysis, this turn of phrase expresses the (Neo)Kantian misunderstanding of Husser
lian phenomenology. In this regard, Ricoeur’s approach echoes the one that Eugen
Fink presented in detail in his famous study, »The Phenomenological Philosophy of
Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism.«
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eidetic reduction.8 While the transcendental reduction leads to the

realization that transcendental consciousness is a field of being to be
investigated in phenomenology, the eidetic reduction further signifies
that this field is to be analyzed in terms of its essential structures.
»If the transcendental can be looked at, seen, and described, then this
intuiting must grasp the transcendental fact in essence, unless it is to
founder in a description of contingencies« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 91).
Such an eidetically-oriented descriptive explication of the struc
tures of transcendental experience leads Husserl to the further rea
lization that phenomena are not just given to consciousness, but in
truth, constituted by it. The whole problematic of constitution is trig
gered by Husserl’s analysis of the temporal structures of transcen
dental experience that we come across in the Second Meditation.9 In
CM, Husserl initiates the discussion of constitution in § 18, where he
writes that any kind of objective unity (say, of a cube) is constituted
as a unity in a temporal synthesis. Here we see how the descriptive
and the constitutive dimensions overlap in Husserl’s analysis: to
describe the temporal givenness of any unity of sense is already to
show how this unity is constituted in transcendental experience.10
While the goal of Husserl’s analysis in CM is that of demon
strating that phenomenology is fundamentally an egology, the fore
going discussion of the importance of sense, its description, and
8 In Freedom and Nature, which was published in 1950 and which represents Ricoeur’s
first attempt to articulate his own views systematically, Ricoeur emphasizes that,
methodologically, his own approach will be descriptive and it will be »akin to
what Husserl calls eidetic reduction« (Ricoeur 1966, p. 3). However, as he further
notes, such a descriptive eidetics »will drive us away from the famous and obscure
transcendental reduction which, we believe, is an obstacle to genuine understanding of
personal body« (Ricoeur 1966, p. 4). Ricoeur maintains in this work that Husserlian
phenomenology »never takes my existence as a body really seriously, not even in
the Fifth Cartesian Meditation. My body is neither constituted in an objective sense,
nor constitutive as a transcendental subject—it eludes this pair of opposites. It is the
existing I« (Ricoeur 1966, p. 16).
9 While recognizing the fundamental importance of temporality in Husserl’s phe
nomenology, Ricoeur emphasizes repeatedly that the transition in the Second Medi
tation from the temporality of intentional acts to the temporality of »all-embracing
life« (Husserl 1950, p. 81; Husserl 1960, p. 43) is too quick and remains unprepared
(see Ricoeur 1967, pp. 96–98).
10 As Ricoeur perceptively remarks, Husserl’s notion of constitution entails: »(1)
inherence in consciousness or intentional inclusion (2) of an identifiable sense (3)

issuing from the synthesis of a manifold of modes of appearing and (4) flowing
passively within the unifying form of time« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 96).
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its constitution brings to light that egology can only be established

through a detour that leads towards a theory of the cogitatum.11
The philosophical wonder that consciousness can intend configura
tions of sense presents »the true problems of subjectivity« (Ricoeur
1967, p. 100). In general, the pregivenness of the world serves as a
transcendental guide for phenomenological egology: it provides the
assurance that the life of the transcendental ego has its own necessary
structure and development, and it is this life, considered in terms of
lawful regularities, that is the terminus ad quem of phenomenological
egology. Insofar as Husserlian phenomenology uncovers the laws that
guide over transcendental experience, it can be rightly described as a
form of rationalism, yet as Ricoeur remarks, Husserlian rationalism
stretches beyond the narrow boundaries of intellectualism: the life of
consciousness is guided by a hidden teleology, which renders possible
the world’s constitution.
In the Third Meditation, Husserl further develops the concept of
constitution by integrating it into the analysis of reason and evidence.
Through evidence certain cogitata obtain the status of actuality, while
the cogito is said to reaches the dimension of truth. Ricoeur maintains
that Husserl’s deepening of the concept of constitution in the Third
Meditation »marks both the culmination and the disintegration of
this idealism« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 101). The view that Ricoeur briefly
presents here comes close to the one that ten years later Robert
Sokolowski will defend in great detail in his prominent study of
constitution in Husserl’s phenomenology (see Sokolowski 1964, pp.
191–193). On the one hand, to claim that every justification proceeds
from evidence is to maintain that every claim has its source in tran
scendental subjectivity, i.e., that »something is actual only by virtue
of a synthesis of evident verification« (Husserl 1950, p. 95; Husserl
1960, p. 60). On the other hand, »idealism would be established
if, in effect, one could show that the philosophy of ›sense‹ omits
no question concerning being« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 101). With this in
mind, Husserl in the Third Meditation reintegrates the ontological
distinction between being and non-being within the field of transcen
11 This should not be overlooked: Ricoeur, who often has been described as the
philosopher of detours, presents the development of CM precisely in such terms. Only

the Fourth Cartesian Meditation is truly egological, he claims (see Ricoeur 1967, p. 93),
while the Second and Third Meditations take the necessary detours, without which the
true sense of phenomenological egology could not be established.
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dental experience, reconceptualizing it as the correlate of reason: the

in-itself is thereby reinterpreted as the correlate of an »I can return
to it« (see Husserl 1950, p. 95; Husserl 1960, p. 60). If this radical
phenomenological reduction of being (conceived naturalistically) into
meaning (conceived phenomenologically) is carried through success
fully, then one can indeed maintain that phenomenology gives an
account not only of the existence of the world, but also of its fullness.
Such a reduction takes the form of a gliding from the »for me« (für
mich) into the »from me« (aus mir) and ultimately leads to Husserl’s
transcendental idealism.12 According to Ricoeur, Husserl’s progressive
attempt to demonstrate that phenomenology recovers all being at
the level of transcendental experience leads towards the destruction
of the alterity of things as well as robs them of their richness.
Phenomenology untangles the inanity of the alleged »seeing the thing
itself« into an operation of consciousness composed of a variety of
syntheses and verifications: besides giving the presence that fulfills
the anticipations of empty consciousness, consciousness dresses this
presence up in a superabundance of sense, i.e., the Mehrmeinung that
springs from horizontal consciousness. Yet ultimately, this amounts
to the transformation of a thing into an Idea that refers to potential
evidences that are repeatable to infinity. Understandably, Ricoeur
asks: »Has not the idealistic interpretation of ›sense‹ destroyed the
possibility of there being a ›Selbst‹ of the thing?« (Ricoeur 1967,
p. 102).13
Thus, Ricoeur’s commentary highlights the deeply ambiguous
nature of Husserl’s concept of constitution. This concept can be under
stood both idealistically and intuitionistically (see Ricoeur 1967, p.
12 As Jakub Čapek insightfully observes, »Ricoeur resolutely refuses to read this ›in
me‹ as referring to my ›sphere of consciousness.‹ Instead, for him it refers to my

existence« (Čapek 2017, p. 397).
13 In a similar spirit, Robert Sokolowski criticizes a certain formalism in Husserl’s
phenomenology: »He does not explain the content exhaustively; the content is not
explained totaliter as a product of subjectivity. For instance, his genetic analyses
do not tell us why we encounter men, animals, plants, and matter with all the
characteristics proper to them, nor does it explain why human beings have acts of
perception, desire, evaluation, hatred, and so on. These actual developments of the
transcendental ego are given as facticity.« (Sokolowski 1964, p. 191). One must note,
however, that in the framework of Sokolowski’s analysis, the concept of facticity
remains largely unclarified. For Husserl’s own attempts to integrate those issues
into phenomenological research that seem to lie beyond its reach, see especially the
manuscripts collected in Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie (Hua XLII).
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102). Ricoeur emphasizes that besides distinguishing these senses of

constitution from each other, Husserl also subordinates the intuition
istic interpretation to the idealistic one. The idealistic interpretation
relies on the view that the »for me« (für mich) is, in truth, a »from
me« (aus mir). By contrast, Ricoeur himself wishes to develop a
moderate interpretation, which ultimately interjects between descrip
tion and construction the hermeneutical Auslegung.14 Relying on
the explication of what is given, »this moderate interpretation of
Husserian phenomenology is possible, though in fact it sacrifices
the radical idealism of the Cartesian Meditations« (Ricoeur 1967, p.
103). Surprisingly, Ricoeur contends that such a moderate interpre
tation »secretly institutes a bipolar interpretation of truth« (Ricoeur
1967, p. 103) that is to be found in Descartes’ Meditations. Does
Ricoeur invite us to return to Descartes’ »second Copernican revolu
tion,« to which I briefly referred earlier? Would such a return not
signal a return to precritical metaphysics? For the moment, let us leave
these questions unanswered, noting that in the commentary on CM,
Ricoeur does not develop such a moderate alternative to Husserl’s
idealism in any detail. We will still return to this issue below.
In Ricoeur’s account of the Third Meditation, the tension between
the descriptive and the idealistic tendencies obtains central impor
tance. Ricoeur contends that Husserl’s descriptive analyses leads to
the realization that the selbst da of the thing »is what consciousness
finally does not make« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 104). By contrast, according
14 In his commentary on Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation Ricoeur suggests that
the phenomenological Auslegung (explication or interpretation) overcomes the ten

sion between description and construction that otherwise continues to haunt Husserl’s
phenomenology (see Ricoeur 1967, p. 141). In his later programmatic essay, »Phe
nomenology and Hermeneutics,« Ricoeur further suggests that phenomenology
involves a hermeneutical presupposition, which necessitates »phenomenology to
conceive of its method as Auslegung, an exegesis, an explication, an interpreta
tion« (Ricoeur 1975, p. 100). In »On Interpretation,« which was originally published
in English in 1983, Ricoeur makes clear that by the method of explication he means the
method of regressive analysis that makes up the core of Husserl’s genetic phenomenol
ogy. Here he contends very forcefully that such a replacement of phenomenological
description with phenomenological explication necessitates that phenomenology
rethink its fundamental ambition: »phenomenology is thus caught up in an infinite
movement of ›backward questioning‹ in which its project of radical self-grounding
fades away« (Ricoeur 1991, pp. 13–14). The very fact that such backward questioning is
in principle endless ultimately means that »phenomenology has undermined its own
guiding idea in the very attempt to realize it. It is this that gives to Husserl’s work its
tragic grandeur« (Ricoeur 1991, p. 14).
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to the idealistic tendency, the in-itself refers to evidence, i.e., to

the »infinity of intendings of every kind that relate to something
as identical« and »are repeatable in infinitum« (Husserl 1950, p. 96;
Husserl 1960, p. 61). Thus, for Ricoeur, the descriptive tendency
places consciousness in the presence of things that are given »in flesh
and blood,« while the idealistic tendency transforms the givenness of
things into an Idea whose actuality status depends on the infinitely
repeatable verifyings.15 By contrast, for Husserl, the descriptive ten
dency is inseparably tied to constitution and it therefore itself is a
moment of Husserlian idealism.
With this contrast in mind, we can turn to the question
posed in the title of this section. According to Ricoeur, Husserl’s
descriptive phenomenology is not sufficiently descriptive precisely
because Husserl’s Cartesianism is not sufficiently Cartesian. That is,
according to Ricoeur, Husserl cannot resist absorbing descriptive
phenomenology within transcendental idealism precisely because
his »secularized« transcendental Cartesianism is purified of all onto
logical dimensions. According to Ricoeur’s hypothesis, which in his
commentary is not carried through in detail, by implementing a bipo
lar interpretation of truth one can resist the absorption of descriptive
phenomenology within the transcendental. According to Ricoeur,
such a supplementation can obtain phenomenological justification: it
relies on the acknowledgment that things are given with a surplus of
sense, which cannot be fully clarified through conscious verifications.
Husserl’s idealistic interpretation of phenomenology reaches its
culmination in the Fourth Meditation (see especially § 40-§ 41). The
notion of the monad that is worked out in this meditation (see § 33)
signals that the complete ego is the I, conceived as the identical pole
of intentional experiences, plus my habitus, plus my world. After
commenting on some essential features of Husserlian idealism, as
presented in the Fourth Meditation, Ricoeur concludes that Husserlian
15 According to Ricoeur, this tension is specific to CM, but characterizes Husserl’s
phenomenology as a whole. Thus, in a short text on Husserl that he had contributed

to Émile Bréhier’s Historie de la philosophie Allemande, Ricoeur contends that »the
idealistic interpretation of the method does not necessarily coincide with its actual
practice« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 7). So also, in another essay, in which he critically engages
in Tran-Duc Thao’s Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism, Ricoeur remarks
that »for my part, the more I read Husserl, the more I become convinced that the
method as practiced draws the philosopher in a direction that is less and less compatible
with the method as philosophically interpreted« (Ricoeur 1974, p. 155).
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phenomenology is characterized by the fundamental tension between

two tendencies, viz., the descriptive tendency, which bespeaks »a gen
erous effort to respect the diversity of appearing and to restore to each
its modes […] its quota of strangeness, and, if I may say so, of other
ness« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 113), and the idealistic tendency, which is
characterized by the aim to »reduce all otherness to the monadic life
of the ego, to ipseity« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 114). No contemporary
thinker, claims Ricoeur in 1954, has contributed as much as Husserl
to giving an account of the full presence of reality. Yet at the same
time, no thinker has pushed the reduction of all otherness to egoic
presence as much as he has. While for Husserl, the great effort of CM
was to show that these two tendencies imply each other, for Ricoeur,
they are in principle incompatible.
We can thus say that for Ricoeur, Husserl’s phenomenology
is not sufficiently descriptive because it does not constrain its own
descriptions from gliding into transcendental idealism. To be descrip
tive, phenomenology must protect phenomena not just from one, but
from two dangers: precritical naturalism, on the one hand, dogmatic
idealism, on the other hand. Does this mean that Ricoeur endorses the
phenomenological epoche but rejects the transcendental reduction?
The answer is not quite clear, since in the text from 1954, Ricoeur
does not employ the terms very carefully. Here the transcendental
reduction is confused with the epoche (see Ricoeur 1967, p. 91). It
would be more accurate to maintain that in Ricoeur’s reading, we
come across an implicit distinction between two different senses of
constitution, and that Ricoeur implicitly endorses one of them while
rejecting the other. Ricoeur endorses constitution insofar as it covers
those procedures through which unities of sense originate. According
to such a standpoint, constitution is a matter of recognizing that the
identifiable sense issues from the manifold modes of appearing that
flow passively within the unifying form of time. It is a mistake to think
that the endorsement of such a view necessitates one to recognize
transcendental subjectivity as the source of all sense. Rather, sense
itself originates in the interplay between consciousness, on the one
hand, and something other than consciousness, on the other hand.
According to Ricoeur, the view that constitution is a constitution not
only of sense but also of being, cannot find phenomenological legiti
macy.
For Ricoeur, Husserl’s phenomenology is not sufficiently descrip
tive because through the idealistic interpretation it becomes a type
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of phenomenological constructionism. Such a rejection of Husserlian

idealism is not unique to Ricoeur’s interpretation of Husserl’s works.
In general, the qualification of Husserlian phenomenology as con
structionism and solipsistic idealism is a common critique of Husserl’s
works, against which various new interpretations have positioned
themselves more recently. However, in contrast to many other earlier
French interpreters of Husserlian phenomenology, Ricoeur was much
more cautious about what the qualification of Husserl’s phenomenol
ogy as idealistic actually means.16 »One should disengage in the work
of Husserl a methodological idealism from the dogmatic idealism in
which he philosophically reflects his method« (Ricoeur 1974, p. 167).
The methodological idealism enables the phenomenologist to focus
on reality within the boundaries of its givenness without pronouncing
any judgment on whether or not reality is exhausted in its givenness.
The confusion arises when one reduces reality to its givenness and
when one further interprets this givenness in terms of its egoic con
stitution. Here we see in which sense Ricoeur remained a Kantian,17
and especially in his relation to Husserl: ultimately, something must
limit the pretentions of the phenomenon; most importantly, the
respect for persons qua value and existence must practically limit the
pretensions of our sensibility and limit the phenomenological enter
prise by proscribing the possibility of reducing persons to their man
ner of appearing (see Ricoeur 1974, p. 168). »Perhaps phenomenology
can be founded only on that which limits it. Wherefore it would not
be a philosophy but only the ›threshold‹ of philosophy« (Ricoeur
1974, p. 168).18
16 As Scott Davidson has remarked, Ricoeur carefully distinguishes Husserl’s phe
nomenology from Berkeleyan, Kantian, Hegelian versions of Idealism« (Davidson

2013, p. 218).
17 For Ricoeur’s own account of the relation between Husserl and Kant, see Ricoeur
1967, pp. 175–201. For Ricoeur’s account of the difference between Kantian and
Husserlian phenomenologies, see Ricoeur 1974.
18 Here we can recall Spiegelberg’s observation: Ricoeur’s »adherence to phenomenol
ogy is not unqualified, and the problem of the limits and limitations of phenomenology
is one of his constant concerns« (Spiegelberg, p. 564).
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4. How egological is Husserl’s egology?
The uneasy tension between the idealistic and the descriptive tenden
cies that we have seen developing throughout Husserl’s first four
meditations reaches its culmination in the fifth one. Just as Husserl’s
Fifth Cartesian Meditation is nearly as long as first four meditations
combined, so Ricoeur’s commentary on it is just as long as his
commentary on the first four. The problem of the Other that this
meditation addresses at length is »the touchstone of transcendental
philosophy« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 115). How can transcendental idealism,
which accounts for all meaning egologically, account for that which
exceeds the boundaries of any egology? How can the transcendental
ego, interpreted as the origin of all meaning configurations, constitute
an alter ego, which would, per definitionem, be also the source of all
meaning configurations?19 The problem of the Other plays the same
role in Husserl as the problem of divine veracity in Descartes, »for
it grounds every truth and reality which goes beyond the simple
reflection of the subject on itself« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 115). The viability
of Husserl’s transcendental idealism largely depends on the answer it
gives to these questions.
Solipsism has always been the objection against idealistic phi
losophy, and understandably so, since Others are not reducible to
the representations that one has of them. In a phenomenological
context, the challenge of solipsism amounts to the recognition that
the phenomenological analysis Husserl has been tracing in CM lands
us to a paradox: the Other must be constituted in me, yet constituted
as Other. This paradox has been latent in the previous meditations:
it is implicated in the tension between the »for me« and the »from
me,« i.e., in the tension between description and constitution. Ricoeur
suggests that this fundamental paradox takes three forms: as the para
19 In Ricoeur’s reading, we come across a clear recognition that a proper understand
ing of the Fifth Meditation requires that one contextualize it within the overall project
of CM. The problem that the Fifth Meditation addresses is the one that it inherits from
the earlier ones: »As the logical consequence of the reduction, more precisely of the
reduction as understood in the Fourth Meditation, not only is all being reduced to
being-sense, but all sense is furthermore incorporated into the intentional life of the
concrete ego. The consequence in the Fourth Meditation is that the sense of the world is
only the explication of the ego. […] This is the monadism which makes of solipsism an
internal difficulty to the extent that monadism absorbs all differences« (Ricoeur 1967,
p. 116).
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dox of the ego, the paradox of the world, and the paradox of cultural
objectivities. More precisely: 1) Although the reduction encourages
the view that, transcendentally, I am the only ego that there is, the alter
ego is also given as an ego and by the same right can maintain that
it is the only ego that there is. 2) Although the world-phenomenon
is a configuration of meaning that the transcendental ego intends, it
is not reducible to a »private theater« but retains a sense of a »public
property.« 3) Although cultural objects must be constituted by the
transcendental ego, their configurations of sense refer back to the
active constitution on the part of alien egos: they are objects for
particular cultural communities (see Ricoeur 1967, p. 118).
While it is obviously not possible to cover all the details of
Ricoeur subtle analysis of the constitution of the alter ego in Husserl’s
phenomenology,20 I would nonetheless wish to stress the following
aspects: 1) Ricoeur clearly recognizes that Husserl wants to transform
solipsism into a genuinely transcendental challenge and to respond to
it at the transcendental level of analysis. Therefore, Husserl’s intro
duction of a new reduction in § 44 of CM, viz., the reduction to the
sphere of ownness,21 is to be understood as Husserl’s attempt to
sharpen the challenge of solipsism to the extreme. 2) Ricoeur recog
nizes the distinctive role that the body plays in Husserl’s account of
the constitution of the alter ego. If the transcendental ego were not
embodied, the constitution of the alter ego would not be possible. 3)
Ricoeur maintains that the constitution of the alter ego requires both
perception and imagination. Arguably, the emphasis on the imagina
tion is one of the aspects that makes Ricoeur’s interpretation of
20 Schematically, one could reconstruct the logic of Ricoeur’s interpretation by
singling out the following stages in his analysis: 1) the recognition of the Other as
Other, which relies on the following three moments: (a) pre-reflective, anticipatory
pairing of one’s own and the Other’s body; b) the recognition that the apperceived
Other is one with his or her presented body; c) the work of imagination that fills in the
appresented domain); 2) the constitution of a common nature; 3) the constitution of
the cultural world.
21 According to Ricoeur, the sphere of ownness does not lend itself to a simple
description, and one can wonder in which sense such a sphere could be said to
exist. Ricoeur recognizes that it is not a stage in child development, but a result of
abstraction. It is fundamentally pre-given, or rather, given as never given, given at
the limit of purification. Ricoeur therefore contends that even though it entails an
intuitive core, Husserl’s account of the sphere of ownness can only be an interpretation,
or rather, an explication (Auslegung).
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Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation a unique contribution (see

Ricoeur 1967, 128–129).
Does Husserl succeed in overcoming the challenge of solipsism
and giving us a trustworthy account of the constitution of the Other?
This question is to be answered negatively, claims Ricoeur, because
the gap cannot be closed between the Other per se and my imaginative
projection of sense upon the Other (I am here, the Other is there, but
I could be there if I were to move, and from over there I would see the
world from a different perspective). Ricoeur maintains that to the very
end of Husserl’s analysis the descriptive and idealistic tendencies do
not blend into each other, »for according to the idealistic requirement
of constitution, the Other must be a modification of my ego and
according to the realistic character of description, the Other never
ceases to exclude himself form the sphere of ›my monad‹« (Ricoeur
1967, p. 130).
So far, I have commented only on the first of the three paradoxes
mentioned above. However, the constitution of the alter ego lays the
ground of the constitution of the common world, which in its own
turn is the foundation for the constitution of the plurality of cultural
worlds. In the present context, I have to limit myself to the observation
that, according to Ricoeur, the deficiency encountered at the basic level
of the constitution of the alter ego affects all the other founded levels
of intersubjective constitution.22
At this point in my analysis, I wish to turn to the Tenth Study
of Oneself as Another, which Ricoeur wrote more than two decades
after the publication of the commentary on the Fifth Meditation. Here
Ricoeur turns back to CM in the framework of his account of the
relation between selfhood and otherness. Ricoeur’s goal here is to
offer a via media between two extremes, which he identifies as the
philosophy of the cogito and the philosophy of the anti-cogito. While
Husserl represents the first alternative in that he accounts for the
relation by »exalting the self« and grounding all otherness in the
ego, Emmanuel Levinas is the greatest spokesperson of the second
alternative, which »humiliates the self« by grounding it in otherness.
Ricoeur positions his own approach as a third way, which strives to
avoid both extremes while relying on the insight that the relation
22 The same paradoxical tension that Ricoeur locates in Husserl’s account of the
constitution of the alter ego, also resurfaces in the account of the constitution of the
common world (i.e., nature) and the plurality of cultural worlds (see Ricoeur 1967, pp.
131 and 136).
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between the self and the Other is dialectical. Ricoeur’s maintains

that philosophies of the Other have not been sufficiently attentive to
the polysemic nature of otherness and to counteract this deficiency,
Ricoeur speaks of a »triad of otherness«: the otherness of one’s own
body, the otherness of the Other, and finally, the otherness of the self
to itself (Ricoeur 1992, p. 318). In the framework of his analysis of the
otherness of one’s own body, Ricoeur turn back to CM.
Ricoeur’s new interpretation of CM does not question the validity
of his previous approach. Much like in his earlier studies, here also
Ricoeur maintains that the Fifth Cartesian Meditation »fails to account
for the constitution of the otherness of the foreign« (Ricoeur 1992,
p. 323). Nonetheless, according to Ricoeur, Husserl’s analysis of
the duality of Leib and Körper within the sphere of ownness in
the Fifth Cartesian Meditation provides »the most promising sketch
of the ontology of the flesh,« which in its own turn enables »the
inscription of hermeneutical phenomenology in an ontology of other
ness« (Ricoeur 1992, p. 322). Drawing on the Leib and Körper duality,
Ricoeur maintains that Husserlian egology provides much-needed
resources for any future alterology, for Husserl in effect demonstrates
that the otherness of my own body is the paradigm of otherness.
On the one hand, my own lived-body is most originally mine, which
makes it possible for my lived-body to be the organ of my will and
seat of free movement. Yet precisely because the ego is embodied, it is
also part of its primordial world, and this is its primordial otherness.
With this in mind, Ricoeur maintains that »selfhood implies its
own ›proper‹ otherness, so to speak, for which the flesh [i.e., Leib, or
lived-body—SG] is the support« (Ricoeur 1992, p. 324).
The fundamental tension between the idealistic and the descrip
tive tendencies in Husserl’s phenomenology that Ricoeur had
addressed in his commentaries from 1954 and 1967, resurfaces in
Oneself as Another. Here Ricoeur wonders whether Husserl’s »great
discovery« of the otherness of one’s own body can be dissociated
from its strategic function within Husserl’s transcendental idealism.
Ricoeur believes that this can be done without too much hermeneu
tical violence, since in Husserl’s own unpublished manuscripts, the
distinction between Leib and Körper is not so seldom addressed
beyond the conceptual framework that we encounter in CM, where
this distinction is subjected to the problematic of the intersubjective
constitution of common nature. Ricoeur’s own goal in the Tenth
Study of Oneself as Another is to free the duality of Leib and Körper
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from the confines of transcendental egology and reabsorb it within

the ontology of the flesh. Within such a framework we encounter
Ricoeur’s inversion of the Husserlian project. On the one hand,
along with Husserl, Ricoeur contends that the lived-body (Leib) must
become part of the world if it is to become a body among bodies. On
the other, in contrast to Husserl, Ricoeur further writes: »It is here
that the otherness of others as foreign, other than me seems to have
to be, not only interconnected with the otherness of the flesh that I
am, but held in its way to be prior to the reduction to ownness. For
my flesh appears as a body among bodies only to the extent that I am
myself an other among all the others« (Ricoeur 1992, p. 326). While
from Husserl’s transcendental standpoint, intersubjectivity is itself
founded in transcendental subjectivity, from Ricoeur’s ontological
point of view, selfhood is founded in intersubjectivity.23 In such a way,
the otherness of my own body, which from the standpoint of trans
cendental idealism was judged to be the primary form of otherness,
turns out to be secondary within the framework of the ontology of the
flesh. »All the arguments that are intended to ›constitute‹ the other
in and on the basis of the sphere of ownness are circular« (Ricoeur
1992, p. 332): they presuppose that the Other is not just a thing,
but a subject of thought, just as they also presuppose that my body
is a body among other bodies. For Ricoeur, the pregivennes of the
alter ego disrupts transcendental egology and points to the unclarified
ontological presuppositions.
It would, however, be a misunderstanding of Ricoeur’s own
project if we conceived of it as an ontological alternative to Husserl’s
transcendental egology. As mentioned above, Ricoeur’s goal is to
develop a dialectical alternative both to transcendental egology and
to ethical alterology. With this in mind, Ricoeur maintains that the
movement coming from the Other toward the self has priority in
the ethical dimension, while the reverse »movement from the ego to
the alter ego maintains a priority in the gnoseological dimension«
23 Such an ontology need not necessarily contradict the transcendental framework
of Husserl’s analysis. Insofar as the self of whom Ricoeur speaks can be identified
as a mundane ego, Ricoeur’s proposal can be integrated into the transcendental
framework of Husserlian phenomenology. However, Ricoeur himself explicitly rejects
such a framework and considers the ontology of the flesh an alternative to Husserl’s
transcendental idealism. We can take such a rejection to mean that the Husserlian
distinction between the transcendental and the mundane ego is out of place in Ricoeur’s
hermeneutical phenomenology.
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(Ricoeur 1992, p. 335). Within the parameters of such a distinction,

Ricoeur can maintain that the true meaning of appresentation, analo
gical apprehension and pairing does not lie in the constitution of the
alter ego, but rather in bridging the gap between the self and the Other.
The transcendental ego does not create the alter ego, but »confers
upon it a specific meaning, namely the admission that the other is not
condemned to remain a stranger but can become my counterpart, that
is, someone who, like me, says ›I‹« (Ricoeur 1992, p. 335). In Ricoeur’s
analysis, while Husserl provides us with the most robust resources
to clarify the movement from the ego to the alter ego, nobody else
has clarified the reverse movement from the Other to the self as
forcefully as Levinas. A careful analysis of this reverse movement,
however, lies beyond this paper. Suffice it to note that Ricoeur’s aim
in Oneself as Another is to show how the Husserlian and Levinasian
approaches can be seen as dialectically complementary, when the first
one is interpreted as covering the epistemological dimension, while
the second one unfolding in the ethical domain.
Here we might recall Ricoeur’s cryptic remark in his commentary
on Husserl’s Cartesianism, which in the text from 1954 remained
underdeveloped. Juxtaposing intuition to constitution, Ricoeur notes
that a moderate interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology, which
would sacrifice the radical idealism of CM, is possible. As he further
notes, such a moderate interpretation »secretly institutes a bipolar
interpretation of truth« (Ricoeur 1967, p. 103), which takes us back to
Descartes and »his duality of being and the thinkable« (Ricoeur 1967,
p. 103). Arguably, in the Tenth Study of Oneself as Another we come
across a detailed articulation of this insight. Here Ricoeur sacrifices
the radical idealism of CM, although not by abandoning Husserl, but
by developing a moderate interpretation, which institutes a bipolar
interpretation of truth that relies on the distinction between ontology
and epistemology, thereby taking us back to the duality of being and
the thinkable.24
24 We come across Ricoeur’s further analysis of CM in The Course of Recognition

(see Ricoeur 2005, esp. pp. 153–157). Just like in Oneself as Another, so also here,
Ricoeur focuses on Husserl’s Fifth Meditation alongside Levinas’ Totality and Infinity
and Otherwise than Being. Ricoeur qualifies Husserl’s approach as theoretical and
Levinas’ as ethical and anti-ontological. Much like in his earlier study, here also
Ricoeur maintains that »both approaches have their legitimacy, and my argument here
does not require us to decide in favor of one or the other of them« (Ricoeur 2005, p.
154). In the present context, I only wish to note that just as in Oneself as Another, so
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5. Conclusion: Ricoeur and the Husserlian Heresies
Ricoeur never strove to be Husserl’s orthodox disciple. Characterizing

orthodox Husserlianism as a contradiction in terms (see Ricoeur 1974,
p. 165), he maintained that »all of phenomenology is not Husserl,
even though he is more or less its center. […] Phenomenology is
a vast project whose expression is not restricted to one work or
to any specific group of works. It is less a doctrine than a method
capable of many exemplifications of which Husserl exploited only
a few…. In a broad sense phenomenology is the sum of Husserl’s
work and the heresies issuing from it« (Ricoeur 1967, pp. 3–4). The
heretical dimension of phenomenology was of central importance in
Ricoeur’s understanding of Husserlian phenomenology, so much so
that, as he put it elsewhere, »phenomenology is to a great extent
the history of Husserlian heresies« (Ricoeur 1974, p. 165). While
this provocative claim is often quoted in phenomenological studies,
its meaning is rarely clarified in detail. Building on the basis of the
foregoing analysis, we can say that this claim entails four dimensions
of sense: formal, regulative, descriptive, and normative. First, the very
fact that Husserl, more so than any other philosopher, was relentlessly
revising his own manuscripts, indicates that for formal reasons alone,
there is no way out: to follow Husserl is to argue against him.
Second, Ricoeur consistently stresses that phenomenology should be
conceived as a regulative idea that guides methodologically-oriented
research. This commitment to the phenomenological Idea led Husserl
to progressively radicalize his own investigations. Ricoeur’s provoca
tive claim suggests that the faithfulness to the Idea of phenomenology
can only lead to a further radicalization of the phenomenological
insights, which in their own turn would signal an ever-widening
break with the Husserlian doctrines. Third, as a descriptive claim,
Ricoeur’s characterization of phenomenology is especially fitting the
French scene. Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida, Michel Henry and,
one might add, Ricoeur himself—all of them, in different ways, read
Husserl against Husserl. They neither wanted to subscribe to the
Husserlian program, nor did they want to leave Husserl behind.
in The Course of Recognition, too, we come across Ricoeur’s moderate interpretation

of Husserlian phenomenology, which, as announced in the commentary from 1954,
institutes a bipolar interpretation of truth.
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Rather, for all of them, Husserl represented what is to be rejected in

the framework of developing those insights that we come across in
Husserl’s own writings. Finally, Ricoeur’s claim further intimates that
post-Husserlian phenomenology must liberate itself from certain ten
dencies characteristic of Husserl’s thought. As the foregoing analysis
shows, Ricoeur places a demand on post-Husserlian phenomenology
to free itself from the solipsistic idealism which, Ricoeur maintains,
is the philosophical interpretation that Husserl himself cast upon
his work.
Initially, one might suspect that Ricoeur advocates a heretical
approach to Husserl because he subscribes to the philosophical stand
point that was defended by some other post-Husserlian thinker. How
ever, a closer analysis of Ricoeur’s relation to other phenomenologists,
such as Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger, would show that Ricoeur
is just as critical of them. While always willing to incorporate the
achievements of other phenomenologists, Ricoeur clearly advocates a
phenomenology of his own.
Despite all his criticisms of Husserlian and post-Husserlian
phenomenology, Ricoeur never aimed to abandon phenomenology,25
even though, as Spiegelberg had already rightly observed, »he is
more than a phenomenologist« (Spiegelberg 1971, p. 578). Neverthe
less, Ricoeur always situated himself within the school of phenome
nology, and therefore, while dealing with the differences between
Ricoeur and Husserl, we are confronted with what Angela Ales
Bello has appropriately called »a family quarrel« (Bello 1991, p. 3).26
Ricoeur’s analysis of Husserlian phenomenology was always driven
by profound admiration and commitment to the view that Husserl
should not be surpassed, but rather integrated into a new kind of
philosophical framework that more directly addresses the concerns of
25 Along with Domenico Jervolino, we can single out three fundamental principles of
phenomenology to which Ricoeur fully subscribed: 1) all phenomenological analyses
are geared toward the analysis of meaning (Sinn); 2) the subject is the bearer of
meaning; 3) the methods of the phenomenological epoche and the eidetic reduction
make possible the phenomenological discovery of the field of meaning (see Jervolino
1991, p. 25).
26 In »On Interpretation,« Ricoeur suggests that the philosophical tradition he him
self belongs to is characterized by three features: »it stands in the line of reflexive
philosophy; it remains within the sphere of Husserlian phenomenology; it strives to be
a hermeneutical variation of this phenomenology« (Ricoeur 1991, p. 12).
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a new generation of thinkers.27 Ultimately, Ricoeur identified this new

framework with phenomenological hermeneutics, of which he himself
became the best-known spokesperson in France. Thus, in his famous
programmatic essay, »Phenomenology and Hermeneutics,« Ricoeur
maintained that hermeneutics must be grafted onto phenomenology
and that »whatever may be the dependence of the present meditation
on Heidegger and moreover on Gadamer, what is at stake is the
possibility of continuing to do philosophy with them and after them—
without forgetting Husserl« (Ricoeur 1975, p. 85).28
We might recall that when phenomenology made its way into
France in the late 1920s, »Husserl appeared on the whole less as
the central figure of the Phenomenological Movement than as its
outdated founder« (Spiegelberg 1971, p. 404). From the very start he
was identified as a somewhat outdated idealist, who has been already
surpassed by a new generation of thinkers in Germany; it was the
rigor of the phenomenological method that his French readers found
appealing, although not necessarily the philosophical conclusions that
27 For an alternative view, see Million 1991, who maintains that the very concept of
hermeneutic phenomenology is contradictory, »since the phenomenological method
poses the ego as the ultimate instance of Meaning […] whereas the hermeneutical
approach sees in the life-world the ultimate origin« (Million 1991, p. 62). The funda
mental difference between these two philosophical traditions concerns the radically
different role that Auslegung plays in these philosophies. On the phenomenological
side, we find interpretation understood as elicitation; on the hermeneutical side, we
encounter interpretation, conceived as unveiling. In its own turn, Million contends,
this difference relies upon two fundamentally different approaches to Reason (see
especially Million 1991, p. 70).
28 Husserl shouldn’t be forgotten first and foremost because »phenomenology remains
the indispensable presupposition of hermeneutics« (Ricoeur 1975, pp. 85 and 95). This
claim is to be understood in four fundamental ways. First, one should not overlook
that the phenomenological analyses of meaning made possible the hermeneutical
realization that all questions of being are in truth questions of the meaning of
being. This means that Husserlian phenomenology has opened up the space of
meaning within which all subsequent hermeneutical analyses can unfold. Second, the
phenomenological epoche made possible what Ricoeur has called the hermeneutical
distantiation, which, taken along with belonging-to, makes up the methodological
basis of Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutics. Third, hermeneutics has learned
from phenomenology to recognize the methodological primacy of pre-linguistic mea
ning, i.e., »the derived character of merely linguistic meanings« (Ricoeur 1975, p. 98). All
experience is in principle sayable, which points to the need of hermeneutics. Fourth,
Husserl phenomenology has pushed the analysis of pre-predicative experience in the
direction of the hermeneutic of historic experience—in this sense, also, hermeneutics
continues to rest on a phenomenological foundation.
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Saulius Geniusas
Husserl himself drew from his own descriptions. Why, then, would
Herbert Spiegelberg, who in his landmark study, The Phenomenolog
ical Movement (first published in 1960), had dedicated many pages
to the analysis of the reception of Husserlian phenomenology in
France, describe Ricoeur as »the best-informed French historian of
phenomenology« (Spiegelberg 1971, p. 563) and »clearly the best
interpreter of Husserl« (Spiegelberg 1971, p. 565)? Clearly, it is
not because of Ricoeur’s central claim that the actual practice of
the phenomenological method and its idealistic interpretation that
Husserl had given it are irreconcilable, which one could characterize
as a dominant view in France already in the 1920s and 30s. What is it,
then, that we find in Ricoeur’s reading that was missing in the works of
his predecessors? Arguably, Ricoeur offered a much more considerate
and generous interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology than any
of his French predecessors, an interpretation that was characterized
by genuine admiration, hermeneutical generosity, and careful critical
attention to various aspects of Husserl’s thought that we come across
in his published and unpublished manuscripts.
Bibliography
Bello, Angela Ales (1991): »Phenomenology as Archeology vs. Contemporary

Hermeneutics.« In: Tymnieniecka, Anna-Teresa (Ed.), The Yearbook of Pheno
menological Research, Vol. XXXVI: Husserl’s Legacy in Phenomenological Phi
losophies. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 3–16.
Čapek, Jakub (2017): »Oneself Through Another: Ricoeur and Patočka on
Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation. Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phe
nomenology, and Practical Philosophy XI/2, pp. 387–415.
Davidson, Scott (2013): »The Husserl Heretics: Levinas, Ricoeur, and the French
Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology.« Studia Phaenomenologica XIII, pp.
209–230.
Husserl, Edmund (1950): Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Hua
I. Ed. by Stephan Strasser. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1960): Cartesian Meditations. Trans. by Dorion Cairns. The
Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1970): The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. D. Carr
(trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press.
Philosophie. Hua VI. Ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
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Jervolino, Domenico (1991): »Ricoeur and Husserl: Towards a Hermeneutic

Phenomenology.« In: Tymnieniecka, Anna-Teresa (Ed.), The Yearbook of
Phenomenological Research, Vol. XXXVI: Husserl’s Legacy in Phenomenological
Philosophies. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 23–30.
Moran, Dermot (2017): »Husserl and Ricoeur: The Influence of Phenomenology
on the Formation of Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of the ›Capable Human.‹« Journal
of the French and Francophone Philosophy XXV/1, pp. 182–199.
Million, Pierre (1991): »Can Hermeneutics Respond to the Predicament of
Reason? From Husserl to Ricoeur.« In: Tymnieniecka, Anna-Teresa (Ed.),
The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, Vol. XXXVI: Husserl’s Legacy in
Phenomenological Philosophies. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 53–72.
Ricoeur, Paul (1966): Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary.
Trans. by Erazim V. Kohak. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press.
Ricoeur, Paul (1967): Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Trans. by
Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern Univer
sity Press.
Ricoeur, Paul (1974): »Phenomenology.« Trans. by Daniel J. Herman and Donald
V. Morano. The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5/3, pp. 149–168.
Ricoeur, Paul (1975): »Phenomenology and Hermeneutics.« Nous 9/1, pp.
85–102.
Ricoeur, Paul (1991): From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Trans.
by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern
University Press.
Ricoeur, Paul (1992): Oneself as Another. Trans. by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, Paul (2005): The Course of Recognition. Trans. by David Pellauer.
Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press.
Sokolowski, Robert (1970): The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution.
Introduction. Vol. 2. Second Edition. Dordrecht: Springer.
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Jan Patočka on Descartes and

Husserl’s Cartesianism
1. Introduction
1.1. Patočka’s stay in Paris and his first encounter with Husserl
Jan Patočka (1907–1977) is often referred to as the greatest Czech

philosopher and phenomenologist of the 20th century. He is also
regarded as an outstanding disciple of Husserl. However, it seems
that the special character of Patočka’s Husserlianism derives not only
from the inspiration of works such as the Crisis, but also from his
own philosophical background. When Patočka began studying on a
scholarship in Paris in 1929 and listened in person to Husserl’s Paris
Lectures at the Sorbonne, which he reportedly attended by accident
(Patočka and Zumr 1967, pp. 587–588), his reception of the lectures
themselves must have been rather different from that of most of the
listeners there. Although Patočka was only a young student when he
attended the lectures, he was already adequately prepared for them.
When he arrived in Paris, he was convinced of the need to transform
philosophy, to go beyond its positivistic version, and as he said, to
transform philosophy into a field of study with spiritual content, a
field that would have something in common not only with science, but
also with religion or art. France impressed Patočka by its continuity
of academic education, still steeped in the classical period of the 17th
century. The French approached the study of classic philosophical
texts in a careful and detailed way that was new to him. He was
impressed by the works and lectures of historians of philosophy such
as Étienne Gilson (1884–1978), Jean Laporte (1886–1948), Émile
Bréhier (1876–1952), and Léon Brunschvicg (1869–1944). Patočka
had already acquired preliminary knowledge of Husserl’s texts during
his studies in Prague, but in Paris he met »the first phenomenologist
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in France to prepare the way for the next generation« (Patočka and
Zumr 1967, p. 587)—Alexandre Koyré (1892–1964), whose seminars
he attended at the École des Hautes Etudes. According to Patočka, these
seminars were the harbingers of new tendencies in the history of phi
losophy. In the case of Cartesianism, this study took place not only in
the context of scholastic philosophy, as was already the case in the
work of Gilson, but also in the broader dimension of the history of
metaphysics, science, and related intellectual endeavours, and ulti
mately, in the perspective of rethinking the modern turn in its many
dimensions.1
1.2. Deepening the Cartesian theme
When Patočka attended the Paris Lectures, he met Husserl for the first
time. As he recalled, he was deeply moved by the lectures themselves,
and especially by the suggestive importance of the Cartesian program,
which Husserl understood as the exercise and development of a philo
sophical meditation capable of making a philosophical breakthrough.
While Patočka was certainly impressed by Husserl and his philosophy,
and quickly made a decision to become Husserl’s disciple, he was
sufficiently independent, as he later proved, to pursue his own goals
within the context of phenomenology.
One of the points of the Cartesian Meditations that Patočka
undoubtedly took up and repeatedly polemically examined was Hus
serl’s signature enterprise, the Cartesian motif of the cogito. This
theme is still debated today and remains problematic and complex.2
Patočka was well aware of the problems in this respect, since he was
convinced of the need to understand the historical background of
Descartes’ thought better and thus to gain a better understanding
of the Cartesian influence on the philosophy of his day, including
Husserl’s. As a consequence, Patočka must have been aware of the
superficiality and ambiguity of Husserl’s Cartesianism, in which,
1 It is worth recalling that in 1929, Koyré held a seminar on Jan Hus and Comenius,
and also defended his doctoral thesis on Jacob Boehme, which, incidentally, was the
direct reason for Husserl’s visit to Paris: it was in fact in order to attend the thesis
defense that Husserl visited the French capital. On the complex relation between Koyré
and Husserl, see Parker 2018.
2 For some recent contributions on this matter, see Pradelle and Riquier 2018.
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Jan Patočka on Descartes and Husserl’s Cartesianism
first of all, one can distinguish a strongly rhetorically tinged, almost

Hegelian, »historical« reference to Descartes that treats him as the
»father of modernity,« or more broadly as a radical reformer of
philosophy; second, Descartes interestingly becomes an object of
Husserl’s growing and even radical critique, which, however, remains
a matter of slogans and allusions, devoid of more serious historical
investigation.3 Third, Patočka was convinced that in Husserl’s pheno
menology there is indeed some assimilation and continuation of
the Cartesian tradition, carried out by addressing such fundamental
themes as subjectivity/ego, doubt, or evidence.
In the present text, we will (a) attempt to examine the many
and important aspects of Patočka’s critique of Cartesianism, which we
believe he began to develop during his stay in Paris. These aspects are
present throughout his work and appear in many different contexts,
consisting of reflections inspired by Husserl’s Cartesianism, especially
as this is present in the Cartesian Meditations. As we will see, based
upon these aspects, Patočka (b) develops a specific critical tool that he
uses to evaluate Husserl’s own thought.
2. Patočka’s Interpretation of Descartes
2.1. Descartes as the thinker of the total system of the

scientific revolution
Already in his 1931 doctoral dissertation The Concept of Evidence

and its Significance for Epistemology [Pojem evidence a jeho význam
pro noetiku] (Patočka 2008 [1931]), Patočka takes up the Cartesian
motif as a critical clue that helps him to reformulate the problem
of evidence and to expand its scope radically. This problem—clas
sic for Cartesianism, but also linking together the philosophies of
Brentano and Husserl—is placed in the traditional context of the
problem of truth. According to Patočka, this in turn, in connection
with the corresponding ontology, demands a grasp of the dynamic
process of its origin. Let us recall that Husserl’s interpretation of
Descartes was saturated with rhetoric and used a recurring theme
of the brilliant discovery of transcendental subjectivity, a discovery
that was immediately abandoned or at least went unrecognized (in
3 On Husserl’s anti-Cartesianism, see Marion 2018.
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Erste Philosophie, the suggestive metaphor of Christopher Columbus

discovering America is quoted in this context; see Husserl 1956,
pp. 63–64). Patočka, on the other hand, approaches the problem of
evidence from a historical-functional perspective similar to that of
Alexandre Koyré—or even closer to Émile Meyerson (1859–1933)
or to Édouard Le Roy (1870–1954), whose article on the logic of
invention Patočka quotes (see Patočka 2008 [1931], pp. 23–24, notes
21, 25). The very moment of a scientific breakthrough can be charac
terized as a moment of discovery, as Husserl wished. However, this
discovery then demands a systematic demarcation of the total area
of the validity of the concept in question. And it is precisely in this
second way that Descartes’ undertaking should be understood when,
relying on mathematics as a model of self-evidence, he attempts to
transfer and adapt this paradigm to the emerging natural sciences. In
the historical moment of the turn of the modern era, Galileo Galilei
should nevertheless be credited with the genuine discovery, while the
role of Descartes, who did not discover anything in physics himself,
was to provide a prototype of a mechanistic system that Galileo
himself would not have dared to introduce (Patočka 2008 [1931], p.
25). Descartes focuses his interest on the idea of totality as a function
of evidence, and in this sense he must be considered the first modern
theorist of evidence. The distinction between the role of the discoverer
and that of the systematizer in the scientific breakthrough makes it
possible to contrast a certain realist attitude that characterizes the
discoverer on the one hand and a certain tendency toward idealism
inherent to the systematizer on the other hand. For the young Patočka,
Descartes, the systematizer, tends to regard the system as reality
(Patočka 2008 [1931], p. 26).
Patočka also stresses the importance of the dualism of internal
and external perception, which is crucial for Cartesianism (and also
for Brentano).4 The two types of perception allow Descartes to achieve
far-reaching goals: in the case of internal perception, to put forward a
theory of self-evidence, effectively defending himself against skepti
cism, while in the case of external perception, to give a general idea of
a mathematized space that from now on will be able to embrace any
individual physical body within it.
It is in this light that we should understand the problems of
dream, illusion, or hallucination (problems that Descartes introduces
4 For more on Patočka’s critique of Brentanian Cartesianism, see Mezei 1994.
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in the Meditations on First Philosophy) only as the delimitation of an

extraterritorial field in which the internal methodological discipline is
left behind.
2.2. Descartes as a cunning destroyer of ancient metaphysics
In 1933, Patočka wrote the afterword for the Czech translation of

the Discourse on Method, which is one of only two texts that he
devoted exclusively to Descartes. Here Patočka refers to the rhetoric
of the breakthrough, and repeats sentences about the indestructible
significance of Descartes’ thought. According to him, the scientific
and philosophical revolution carried out by Galileo and Descartes
was historically necessary. It was a reaction against the exhausting
influence of Aristotle’s philosophy in its ossified scholastic version. In
its place, Descartes successfully introduced the ideal of the evidence
of the absolute certainty of knowledge as a clear and distinct idea.
This new model was created by extending mathematical deduction
and the geometrical method, which he managed to graft onto all
branches of knowledge, thus raising an ordered and unified edifice
of mathesis universalis. We can speak here of a simplification of the
structure of the field of research and of its transformation into a
constructive scheme, which can be followed in individual disciplines—
in mathematics through the introduction of the coordinate system, in
physics through the geometrization of space, in physiology through
the treatment of the organism as a whole, sustained by the beating of
the heart (Patočka 1992 [1933], p. 65).
This new deductive method builds on an intuition that is more
primitive and carries within it an original reading of the motifs of
medieval ontology. The purpose of introducing the ontological motif
—the motif in which the originality of Descartes and his philosophy
is supposed to be rooted—was to base physics on metaphysics. This
consisted in the discovery of a self-contained subject, characterized
by self-knowledge with a higher degree of certainty with respect to
the objectivity of the world. Moreover, the ascertained finitude of this
self-knowing subject is founded on the infinity of God. The originality
of the use of these classical motifs of medieval metaphysics lies in the
fact that in a new setting, they overcome traditional scholasticism, and
their aim is to establish the homogeneous system described above.
According to Patočka, Descartes’ metaphysics abandons once and for
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all a reflective-questioning attitude toward being. Descartes searches

only for the origin that is needed to indicate what gives unity to the
method. Descartes’ revolution thus marks the mathematization of all
knowledge, and as a consequence, the inevitable separation of the
world into a spiritual world and a physical one. Descartes’ genius is
founded on a constructivist combination of elements, the decisive
element consisting in giving privileged and universal status to the
deductive method—and for Patočka, the greatness of Descartes’ phi
losophy is its skillful cunning, which must be deconstructed and over
come.
2.3. Descartes as the founder of psychologized subjectivity
In his habilitation thesis of 1936, written after his studies in Berlin

and Freiburg, Patočka addresses the problem of the natural world
by reconstructing the classical problem of subjectivity, with critical
attention to Descartes as its founder. According to Patočka, Descartes
ignores the duality of the cogito as thinking (cogitans) and thought
(cogitatum) by freely moving from one to the other. In the cogito
cogitans, thinking immediately discovers being (existence) in the
form of its certainty, on which Descartes reflects by establishing a
threefold structure of mutual reference of »one’s thinking, certainty,
and existence« (Patočka 2008 [1936], p. 152). This structure, giving
the cogito a legitimate ontological dimension, is immediately overlaid,
however, by a theory coming directly from mathematics, namely,
by the theory of absolute and relative terms.5 The absolute (simple)
terms, characterized by their evidence, not only allow the relative
terms to be related to them, but also establish an order to which the
latter terms can be juxtaposed. Consequently, it is not a coincidence
that in Rule XII Descartes ties logical and mathematical truths and
the self-evident existence of the ego cogito together.6 Such a procedure
allows for two things. On the one hand, it strengthens the ontological
concept, where the cogito is »the generator of certainty of being«
(Patočka 2008 [1936], p. 153). On the other hand, it privileges the
first-person mode, in which existence is directly experienced, over
the third-person mode, which through its pre-constituted character
5 See Descartes 1996, AT X, p. 381.

6 Descartes 1996, AT X, pp. 421–422.
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of »innate ideas« provides a possible framework for the function

of the whole. Thanks to the simplicity of the model, this structure,
identified above all with a set of established logical-mathematical laws
providing a means for the development of a methodical procedure, can
be transferred to the experience of the existence of the cogito, which
then ceases to count as such and can be set aside and ignored.
Because Descartes immediately covers up the experience of
subjectivity with »methodical mathematism,« he blocks any access to
the field of transcendental subjectivity itself and transforms it into a
reality devoid of depth, a merely psychological reality. By establishing
the ego cogito as the phenomenological absolute, Descartes simulta
neously makes its proper investigation impossible and cedes the field
of its investigation to the objective method, which refers to the already
constituted order of ideas that de facto becomes a dogmatically accep
ted absolute. Consequently, the primordial region of the subjective
experience of being becomes the object of psychological study. In this
spirit, successive modi cogitandi and then certain states of the soul
are derived from an ego about which some general laws or properties
are ascertained. However, they irrevocably lose the character of the
original experience, being demoted to the rank of mere objects.
2.4. Descartes and the end of metaphysics through

its instrumentalization
It is the 1937 article »Descartes and Metaphysics,« published on the

centenary of the publication of the Discourse on Method (Patočka
1937), that provides the most systematic exposition of the initial
objective of a better historical understanding of Descartes’ philosophy.
It can be regarded as a kind of deconstruction of Cartesianism corre
sponding to the remark made by Husserl in the Cartesian Meditations
(as well as in the Paris Lectures) that »we know from [...] the fine and
profound researches of Mr. Gilson and Mr. Koyré how much scholas
ticism lies hidden, as unclarified prejudice, in Descartes’ Meditations«
(Husserl 1960, 23–24; cf. Husserl 1964, 8–9). Husserl’s remark was
so ambiguous that it covered two very different interpretations. While
Gilson refers to Descartes’ profound transformation and break with
the scholastic tradition, Koyré, in 1922, expresses surprise at the
continuity of Descartes’ spiritual and metaphysical formation with that
tradition. What is Patočka’s position? To answer the question »What is
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metaphysics for Descartes?« Patočka refers to the introduction to the

Principles the Philosophy, where Descartes, following tradition, claims
that philosophy first deals with the principles of knowledge, and
presents these principles with the image of a tree, the roots of which
are metaphysics and the trunk of which is physics, from which bran
ches of other sciences grow. Descartes achieves the transformation
of the notion of metaphysics not only by modifying and abandoning
Thomist metaphysics, as Gilson states, but also by shifting the
emphasis to the cognitive and methodical aspect. Although Descartes
maintains the duality of the principles of knowledge and being, we
must bear in mind that in scholasticism, knowledge is subordinated
to the principle of being, and the first principle remains the principle
of non-contradiction. In Descartes, metaphysics is developed on the
basis of principles of human cognition, which are interpreted tradi
tionally as immaterial metaphysical things concerning God and the
soul. Patočka notes that in this seemingly traditional interpretation
of metaphysics, the question of being as being is abandoned and
replaced by the cogito, by a methodical procedure based on evidence.
Evidence replaces the notion of being and the principle of non-contra
diction, in the sense that the notions of being or existence are to be
accepted without proof as intrinsically intelligible a priori. According
to Descartes, all further considerations or attempts to define them,
typical of scholasticism, obscure these originally intelligible notions.
Thinking based on self-evidence consists in moving from clarity to
clarity provided that a certain methodological attitude is maintained.
Patočka’s reading of self-evidence is based on Descartes’ early texts,
juxtaposing texts from Cogitationes privatae and Rules for the Direction
of the Mind, where Descartes speaks of a discipline called mathesis
universalis that will be able to subject all possible thought to a
clarification based on the model of mathematical procedures known
from arithmetic and geometry. This is made possible by the »seeds of
knowledge« within us, an inner cognitive disposition that Descartes
later describes as lumen naturale. Thanks to this »natural light,«
Descartes methodically distinguishes basic ontological categories,
which he calls simple natures and which become tools that allow
insight into every sphere of reality.
As Patočka argues, it is in constructing his theory of perfectly
self-evident principles that Descartes comes into conflict with histo
rical metaphysics, which aims at grasping the first principles of being
and the essential laws governing them. For Descartes’ metaphysics,
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the theory of self-evidence in terms of clear and distinct ideas is

crucial, but there is also a theological motif that leads directly to the
theory of ideas, a motif that plays a dual role. By using quasi-mathe
matical proofs, it replaces the traditional proof of God’s existence. But
the new metaphysics also has the function of providing a foundation
for physics. It should be noted, however, that the Cartesian doctrine
is not entirely different from scholasticism, especially when it comes
to the emphasis placed on proving the existence of God. As Patočka
holds, scholastic and Cartesian metaphysics is permeated with the
distinctions of uncreated and created being, as well as the combination
of metaphysica specialis with metaphysica generalis, where the problem
of the analogy of being is also posed. In Descartes, however, meta
physics focuses on the self-evident existence of God in a simplified
and elegant formulation of which Descartes was particularly proud.
Descartes’ metaphysics also marks a far-reaching departure from
Aristotelianism, which is expressed by the absence of reference to the
world. Although Descartes’ construction is based on the principle of
causality, which is understandable only from the perspective of the
scholastic ontological hierarchy of entities, with Descartes this hierar
chy is in large measure lost and becomes secondary. The situation is
similar in the case of reflections on the idea of God and his attributes.
The long arguments typical of scholasticism are replaced by short
statements, as if the idea of God were self-explanatory. In this way,
the new metaphysics can concentrate on its proper task of founding
physics, which it does by providing support for several of its general
theses, such as the absence of a vacuum or of the limits of the world,
as well as by formulating the principle of the conservation of motion.
In this way, Cartesian metaphysics no longer has anything in
common with the metaphysical problematic delineated by the Aristo
telian tradition. While retaining certain scholastic motifs, Descartes
replaces metaphysical thinking with a coherent and non-aporetic
knowledge, thus completing the long process of its various transfor
mations.
***
Summing up the first part of this study, we may ask if Patočka achieved
his goal of deepening the critical understanding of the Cartesian
motif. As we have ascertained, in the period before the Second World
War he certainly showed great ingenuity, brilliantly referring to
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a number of contemporary and often antagonistic interpretations

of Cartesianism. He offered his own interpretation of Descartes’
oeuvre, with the key being the early texts (guided by the Rules),
revealing the original intentions of the »father of modernity« to
establish a universal science, while subsequent works (guided by
the Meditations) are treated as their perfect realization. This point
seems to be at the same time a weakness of this interpretation,
since Patočka assumes a certain understanding of Descartes’ work in
advance, thus making it impossible even to consider the validity of
the objections raised by Husserl, or to consider an evolution of the
Cartesian position. Moreover, Patočka seems very quick to juxtapose
Descartes’ philosophy with contemporary currents such as positivism,
neo-Kantianism, or Brentanism. It is also interesting that despite
his radical rejection of Cartesian philosophy, Patočka continues to
revise the traditional categories of subjectivity and evidence during
this period. Although after the war Patočka continued to explore the
turn to the modern era—directing his attention, for example, to the
thought of Comenius—his approach would change insofar as he would
primarily engage in a critical examination of the Cartesian remnants
in Husserl’s thought.
3. Patočka’s Critique of Husserl’s Cartesianism
3.1. The Brentanian roots of Husserl’s Cartesianism
Patočka’s critique of Husserl’s Cartesianism is at the heart of his own

idea of phenomenology. Thus it is not surprising that most of his
direct discussions of Husserl’s Cartesianism form part of the texts
written after the Second World War, in the late 1960s and 1970s.
During this time Patočka presented his ideas concerning (asubjective)
phenomenology in a series of shorter works (Patočka 1996 [1965],
1970a, 1970b, 1971, 1975, 1976a, 1976b).
However, the goal of Patočka’s critique was not to refute Husserl’s
phenomenology; instead, he wanted to correct its oversights in order
to find a new, more universal grounding of phenomenological analy
sis. This points to Patočka’s conviction that while Heidegger, Fink,
and other thinkers were right in many points of their critique of
Husserl, Husserl’s view of phenomenology as a science of appearing
is not simply finished. The critique of Husserl’s Cartesianism, if
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carefully evaluated, can push phenomenology in a new direction while

retaining a wealth of Husserl’s descriptive insights.
Let us take a more detailed look at Patočka’s late critique of
Husserl. As Patočka sees it, Husserl’s Cartesianism has its roots in
the Cartesian heritage of Brentano’s descriptive psychology (Patočka
1970b, p. 384; 1971, pp. 407–408). Now since Brentano himself fur
ther develops some of the main features of Cartesianism, in one of his
studies devoted to this problem, Patočka considers those ontological
and psychological ideas of Descartes’ philosophy that either explicitly
or implicitly entered Brentano’s philosophy (Patočka 1970b). He then
briefly describes how Brentano transformed these ideas and passed
them on to Husserl. We should take note that what is analyzed here by
Patočka is not the historical Descartes (or Brentano, for that matter),
but a series of shifts in the understanding of subjectivity that lead to
the problem of »Cartesianism« in Husserl’s phenomenology (see, e.g.,
Patočka 1976a, pp. 453ff.).
This history begins with Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. For Patočka,
Descartes was the first philosopher who stated a fundamental prin
ciple of philosophy in the first person. Descartes thus introduces a
personal being, an ego as a principal point of philosophical inquiry
(Patočka 1970b, p. 382). Ego sum, when exposed to skeptical doubts,
is characterized by absolute certainty. However, Patočka holds that
Descartes immediately interprets this starting point in terms of
the traditional ontological difference between essence and existence
used in scholastic philosophy. This results in a de-personalization of
the ego:
[…] from the beginning, existence—expressed by the sum, existo—
must be understood here as an act of positing, of realization of an
essence. Thus the personal character of the sum is lost. (Patočka 1970b,
p. 383)
The consequences of this step—namely, that the sum has a thing-
essence that needs to be further determined—are severe.
Due to this metaphysical starting point, which for Descartes is obvious,
from the very beginning the certainty guarantees a thing, an enduring
substrate of persisting and changing determinations. (Patočka 1970b,
p. 383)
For Patočka, as for others, the problem is not so much that Descartes
treated the ego as a real thing, a little piece of the world saved from
universal doubt, but that he treated it as a thing.
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Now Descartes famously found the guaranteed determination

of the essence in question in its thinking. For Descartes, my ego is
a thinking substance. Patočka thus turns to the phenomenological
interpretation of the cogito to see how Descartes and the subsequent
tradition (mis)understand it. Here his interpretation comes into its
own, since for Patočka, the cogito is that »in which what appears
is appearing, namely the phenomenal field« (Patočka 1970b, p.
383). The phenomenal field interpreted as a field of cogitationes
thus becomes an essential attribute of »a thing that I am« (Patočka
1970b, p. 383), an »objective,« real structure of a subject that can be
fully explicated as ego—cogito—cogitatum. Descartes further describes
this structure by splitting thinking into the acts that represent their
objects for the ego (e.g., acts as conceptions) and the stances the ego
takes toward those objects (acts as affirmations, negations, volitions).
Since for Descartes reflective certainty defines subjectivity, Cartesian
subjectivity is characterized by reflective self-apprehension (Patočka
1970b, p. 384).
In the next step, Patočka offers a short summary of Brentano’s
Cartesianism. As is well known, Brentano differentiates between
physical and psychic phenomena. While inner perception—which
is for Brentano a kind of self-perception belonging to each psychic
phenomenon—guarantees the existence of psychic phenomena with
absolute certainty, physical phenomena need not exist. Furthermore,
psychic phenomena distinguish themselves by intentionality or by
a quasi-relation to an in-existent object. This relation is, on the
fundamental level, mediated by presentations that form the basis
for the subsequent position-taking toward the objects presented.
The position-taking is realized in our judgments (affirmations and
negations) and in the phenomena of interest (phenomena of love and
hate). As we can see, Brentano’s classification is explicitly Cartesian.
However, there are important differences in other, more ontological
aspects of Brentano’s Cartesianism.
Having a solid knowledge of Brentano’s philosophy, Patočka
quite rightly adds that there is a metaphysics of substance lurking in
Brentano’s philosophy behind the »neutral« terminology of psychic
phenomena. Not only does Brentano reconstitute the absolutely
certain givenness of the Cartesian cogito in the context of his theory
of inner perception, but in his late theory of categories he also treats
psychic phenomena as accidents of a substance. As Brentano had
already argued in his Psychology, the simultaneous multiplicity of
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psychic phenomena is not a multiplicity of a group of things, but

a multiplicity of merely differentiable parts (divisiva) forming one
single psychic phenomenon. However, according to the later theory,
substance is grasped in inner perception as a part included in, and
common to, all the partial acts at every given moment.
From the standpoint of knowledge, a part can be recognized as
being included in a whole on a scale of distinctness. In one of its
extremes, we know the part explicitly and with all its determinations;
in the other extreme we know it only implicitly and without grasping
its features in full detail. In most respects, the soul as a substance
stands much closer to the latter case, and in some respects even
coincides with it. According to Brentano, we are often unaware of the
»substance-part« of the act.
If a person feels pain, then he is aware of himself as one that feels the
pain. But perhaps he does not distinguish the substance, which here
feels pain, from the accident by means of which the substance appears
to him. (Brentano 1981, p. 117)
Even when we are aware of the substance-part of an intentional
act, Brentano holds that we remain completely oblivious to the
individualizing element of our self-consciousness: therefore, we don’t
know what differentiates our consciousness as ours from other con
sciousnesses.
Patočka shows that this depersonalizes the Cartesian structure of
ego—cogito—cogitatum even more than Descartes’ original views.
[According to Brentano,] [t]he guaranteed existence concerns merely
depersonalized, generally grasped structures such as presentations and
their objects, positings, etc. The soul itself as a thing-substrate is
something that is never given in its individuality and therefore never
given in its original being. (Patočka 1970b, 386).
Brentano gave Husserl the idea of intentionality as the main feature
of consciousness. This approach clearly separated thinking from what
is thought, while at the same time it interpreted thinking as an
ontological determination of a substance. For Patočka, this means
that the phenomenal field became the ontological determination of
subjectivity. Husserl dropped Brentano’s ontology of the ego as a
substance, but his starting point with respect to the unified stream
of consciousness, as described in the Logical Investigations, is a
version of Brentano’s depersonalized stance toward consciousness.
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The substance-part vanished into thin air. What remains is the

mere individuality of the stream of consciousness.7 However, this
individuality can become a solipsistic trap once it is attributed to
absolute consciousness.8
Let us discuss how, according to Patočka, Husserl’s development
of the idea of intentionality led to the further subjectivization of
the phenomenal field. To understand this, however, we first need to
discuss what Patočka considers to be Husserl’s great contribution to
philosophy—the method of epochē.
3.2 Epochē and reduction
The epochē was inspired by Descartes’ methodical doubt—from which

it nevertheless differs, since Husserl tells us that we should not con
sider all uncertain knowledge as false, but rather suspend its use in our
elucidation of »knowledge« (Husserl 1983, pp. 113–114). As Husserl
points out, the »bracketed« objects do not lose their determinations.
Even the modal characters of objects—their being real, problematic,
possible, non-existent, etc.—remain untouched (Husserl 1960, p.
20). What has changed, however, is our attitude toward objects. The
philosopher needs to treat all objects as phenomena, as something
merely appearing to our consciousness. Now since all real things
can differ from what they are believed to be, and since the universal
context of real things is the real world, the epochē in its most universal
form brackets our belief in the real world. The entire real world is
thus phenomenalized along with the real person of the observer. For
Patočka, this raises the question of where the phenomenalization
induced by the epochē stops (Patočka 1975, pp. 448–449).
Husserl answers with his fundamental principle of all princi
ples—we are to make use of »everything originarily (so to speak, in
7 Husserl’s Logical Investigations describe the subject as an individual flow of »expe
riences.« Later Husserl expanded this cogito—cogitatum structure to an ego—cogito—

cogitatum structure. But even here, Husserl inherits from Brentano the difficult
problem of the individualization of the ego.
8 »The fact that every stream of experiences is individual, that it is a being for itself, is
a modest remnant of the [Cartesian] ›sum.‹ In any case, it is a remnant that stands in
the way, for how is a different self, which is both constituted and constituting, possible,
if it is to be constituting originally and not merely problematically« (Patočka 1970b,
p. 392).
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its ›personal‹ actuality) offered to us in ›intuition‹« (Husserl 1983, p.

44) and to accept it »as what it is presented as being« (Husserl 1983,
p. 44). In other words, we should only accept those judgments that
are derived »from evidence, from ›experiences‹ in which the affairs and
affair‐complexes in question are present to me as ›they themselves‹«
(Husserl 1960, p. 13). Now what is given in »personal actuality« once
we have performed the epochē is, for Husserl, purified consciousness.
The main feature of this consciousness is its intentionality:
if I direct my regard exclusively to this life itself, as consciousness of
»the« world [...] I thereby acquire myself as the pure ego, with the pure
stream of my cogitationes. (Husserl 1960, p. 21).
Moreover, Husserl claims that pure consciousness gives meaning and
validity to its intentional objects. All worldly objectivity, everything
that »claims« to be real, appears to us as what it is and as valid only
through the synthetic activity of our consciousness. Since in a sense
the being of this constituting consciousness »precedes the natural
being of the world« (Husserl 1960, p. 21, translation modified), and
since, as Husserl claims, it does not depend on the being of the real
world, Husserl calls this consciousness transcendental and its being
absolute. And since this consciousness eludes natural reflection and is
accessible only through the epochē, it is describable only by a special
phenomenological reflection.
However, it is telling that we are not able to »gaze« directly at
transcendental consciousness. Instead, we need to take its »achieve
ments«—namely, its constituted objects—as clues for the constituting
activity of the transcendental subject.
Necessarily the point of departure is the object given »straightfor
wardly« at the particular time. From it reflection goes back to the mode
of consciousness at that time […]. (Husserl 1960, p. 50)
Thus we can direct the phenomenological reflection only by tracing
appearing objects in their modes of appearing back to the correlative
constituting activity of the transcendental ego. Yet regardless of
this fact, the transcendental subject is given an absolute priority
by Husserl. The epochē leads to the discovery of transcendental
consciousness, and its activity forms an a priori for any appearing
objectivity as such:
Transcendency in every form is an immanent existential characteristic,
constituted within the ego. Every imaginable sense, every imaginable
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being, whether the latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls

within the domain of transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity
that constitutes sense and being. (Husserl 1960, pp. 83–84)
The epochē thereby leads us to the reduction of the natural world
and its objects to the phenomena of transcendental consciousness.
This brings Husserl to the idea of viewing all objects as having
meaning and validity only through the constituting activity of the
transcendental subject. Patočka accepts Husserl’s method of epochē as
a major breakthrough in modern philosophy, but he rejects Husserl’s
idea of reduction as leading to the unwarranted subjectivization of the
phenomenal field of appearances. For Patočka, this result is directly
tied to Husserl’s Cartesianism.
3.3. Aspects of Husserl’s Cartesianism
What are the motives behind Husserl’s subjectivization of the pheno

menal field? According to Patočka, the main motives are tied to
Husserl’s ingenious development of the idea of intentionality. We will
briefly discuss four interrelated problems: (1) the subjectivization of
horizons; (2) the doubling of the phenomenal field in Husserl’s theory
of sensory perception; (3) Husserl’s Cartesian view of reflection and of
the ego; and (4) the subjectivization of the world.
(1) As Patočka remarks, Husserl built his early theory of intentionality

on his theory of meaning and meaningful language. The intentionality
of linguistic signs is merely signitive (Patočka 1968, p. 543). We use
signs to refer to objects that need not be immediately present in
our sensory perception. When the objects we are talking about are
intuitively present in the most original way, they are identified with
how they were signitively meant in a meaningful language. Husserl
calls this kind of verificational synthesis »intuition«.
Husserl, as Patočka adds, quickly expands this view of intui
tion to cover intentionality as such. In all kinds of intentional acts,
empty intentionality can be fulfilled by intuitive acts (by perceptions,
recollections, imaginative presentations, or eidetic insights). More
over, for Husserl, intuition is the main example of how one and the
same object can be meant and identified in different ways or modes of
its appearing.
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The empty intention and its fulfillment is not only the primordial
phenomenon of language, it is the primordial phenomenon of con
sciousness as such—it documents its synthetic character, the real nature
of intuition, namely, its essential relation to non-intuitive empty
intention. Without it, however, it would have been hardly possible to
discover the whole nature of consciousness as synthesis. (Patočka 1968,
p. 546)
But taking clues from the linguistic kind of signitive intentionality
in order to build a theory of consciousness is dangerous in that it
aids and abets the subjectivization of the phenomenal field opened
by the epochē. In his comments on Husserl’s Logical Investigations,
Patočka writes:
What does the empty consciousness consist in, especially the empty
consciousness of a linguistic expression of a word heard in a conversa
tion without imagining the object named, even though we still know
what the word is about? (Patočka 1970b, p. 388)
According to Patočka, Husserl gives the following answer: this
consciousness consists in specific apprehensions of non-intentional
experiences (Patočka 1970b, p. 388) as signs. However, these non-
intentional experiences and their apprehensions do not themselves
appear objectively—we live through them while we are intentionally
directed to their objects. It seems clear that our empty or signitive
consciousness of objects is a subjective achievement of this conscious
ness—after all, objects of empty intentions are absent. Only the
subjective experiences and apprehensions are given. As Patočka points
out, for Husserl,
[…] non-intuitive, non-original, deficient modes of givenness stand
out as an index of subjectivity. (Patočka 1970b, p. 388)
If a mere empty intention is a subjective achievement, then its
synthetic fulfillment must be a subjective achievement too. This view
has severe consequences for the understanding of the objectivity
appearing in the phenomenal field. Husserl famously claims that in
perceiving an object, only a part of it is perceptually given while the
remaining parts are hidden. These parts form the inner horizon of the
appearing object. Since hidden parts forming the horizons of things
are signitively or emptily co-intended through apprehension of its
appearing parts, Husserl interprets the »openness« of inner horizons
and its potential intuitive explication as a constitutive achievement of
(pure) consciousness. The same view is repeated with regard to the
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openness and explication of the outer horizon of an object in which the

object stands in relations to other co-intended but absent objects.
As is well known, Husserl later expanded the noetic view
of intentionality presented in the Logical Investigations to include
the noematic (object-oriented) view of consciousness. However, as
Patočka argues, this development does not change his description of
»noematic« horizons as being constituted by the synthetic activity
of consciousness (Patočka 1970b, pp. 388–389). Husserl thus takes
the phenomenal field, the point of contact with the world, to be the
essential feature of consciousness in a more radical way, since now the
whole world as the ultimate horizon is tied to and grounded in the
productive activity of transcendental consciousness.
(2) While the subjectivization of the phenomenal field outlined above

is related to Husserl’s Cartesianism indirectly, the critique of Husserl’s
Cartesianism leading to the doubling of the phenomenal field is more
straightforward. This doubling originates in the Cartesian elements of
Husserl’s theory of subjectivity and sensory perception.
As we know, Husserl rejects Brentano’s theory of inner percep
tion, according to which all psychic phenomena are conscious of
themselves. However, he accepts Brentano’s Cartesian view that the
evidence of psychic phenomena or the apodictic certainty of their
existence is their defining feature. Even though our experiences are
not constantly objectified in inner perception, they can always become
objects of subsequent reflection—and in reflection their existence
is guaranteed with apodictic certainty. In contrast, the existence
of appearing material objects is never guaranteed, but is merely
presumptive. Husserl explains this difference by his theory of adum
brations. A physical thing is given as one in a continuous flow of
adumbrations or perspectives. Since a new perspective can always
reveal features of the object that clash with our anticipation, the
objective determinations of the object and its very existence are
always necessarily presumptive. For Husserl, cogitationes do not have
such perspectival givenness.
Patočka reminds us that while this contrast was originally meant
as a distinction relating to our knowledge and access to the phenomena,
Husserl’s analysis allowed him to interpret this difference ontologi
cally:
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Husserl [in Ideas I and later] goes beyond the immanence of self-given
ness and differentiates self-givenness further, looks for access through
it to two kinds of being. [With its] accessibility in principle in reflection,
the possibility of being perceived in reflection becomes the mode of
being of experience. In contrast, the mode of being of reality, even in
the mode of being present »originally here«—in fact, especially in this
mode—consists in its being constantly presented only from one side
and incompletely, via a certain layer of experiences […]. (Patočka 1975,
p. 447)9
This tendency to interpret the non-mediated givenness of an intuited
particular »content« as a mark of subjective experiences seriously
misleads Husserl’s treatment of sensations.
Husserl does not differentiate, and therefore identifies, the immediacy
of givenness and immanence, and also the immanence of presence
and subjective immanence. The immediacy of givenness is for Husserl
simultaneously immanence and furthermore a reel immanence, an
immanence of a subject. On account of that, immediacy is for him the
same as certainty. Immediate givenness is for him certain as a part of
the cogito, as being really present in the reflection of the cogito directed
to itself. (Patočka 1965, p. 107)
This may sound overly abstract, but it is not that difficult to decipher.
For Husserl, the immediate immanent givenness of something means
that it is given completely in its respective field of givenness without
any of its parts hiding from our view. Its existence is therefore grasped
with certainty. For Husserl, such immanent presence, if belonging to
a »matter of fact,« is a mark of subjectivity. The immanent »entity« is
therefore interpreted as being fully given in our stream of conscious
experiences, and must be subjective itself. Husserl thus interprets
sensuous aspects of appearing material things, which have the charac
ter of immediate givenness, as non-intentional sensory experiences.
These experiences then appear as aspects of a thing’s qualities only by
virtue of their apprehension. This results in a split of the phenomenal
field into the layer of subjective sensuous experiences and the layer
of appearing objective aspects of things. However, as Patočka points
out, there are no such subjective sensuous contents in our experiences.
Instead, by interpreting certainty as a feature of the cogito, Husserl
9 Of course, for Husserl essences or categorial forms are also given in a way that is not
mediated by perspectives. However, what we are presupposing in our discussions is a
dimension of particular »matters of fact.«
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subjectivized immanent aspects of the phenomenal field made avail

able for our description by the application of the epochē.
Patočka also treats these aspects as certain:
The sphere of phenomena, the field of what shows itself and in
this showing also shows itself as itself, cannot have a problematic
character, which belongs to a self-exhibiting object. Such an object
always depends on new experiences and can never be fully proved. The
dependence of what is real is something that plays out in the sphere of
phenomena, the clarity of which is a presupposition of the problematic
character of the object […]. (Patočka 1970b, p. 390)
To be sure, the aspects that are given with certainty still need a
synthesizing activity of the subject to be meaningfully organized;
however, we cannot interpret them as subjective experiences.
Whenever things appear with their objective and other—for example,
thetic—characters, there is a difference between those that I attribute to
the »thing itself« as its marks and others that are also here, but not as
characters belonging to the thing. The thing is appearing with the help
of the latter, so to speak, or on account of these latter characters, but
characters of both kinds are appearing in the world, in the phenomenal
field »before me.« In no way are they here as experiences, as something
subjective. (Patočka 1971, p. 410)
(3) The same Cartesian identification of certainty and subjective

immanence determines Husserl’s talk of reflection. Because Husserl
sees the above discussed aspects as something subjective, he tends
to describe our experiences with non-mediated characters of the
phenomenal field as reflective experiences. This yet again results in
the subjectivization of the phenomenal field.
If we interpret our inquiry into the sphere of phenomena as subjective
reflection, then reflection originally grasps subjective being, which,
in the moment of its being grasped, never behaves as an objective
real being does; it is not adumbrated, it simply shows itself as it is
[…]. Subjectivity, the phantom that was spawned from the doubling
consideration of the modes of givenness, devoured the problem of
appearance as such and let it disappear. What disappeared along with it
is the problem of a peculiar layer of phenomena in which a being of the
ego-character as well as a being of the non-ego character shows itself in
what it is and in which both can meet. (Patočka 1970b, pp. 390–391)
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Husserl, Patočka continues, is a victim of the traditional view of

reflection as an inward theoretical regard:
Husserl goes beyond reality by suspending the general thesis of the
natural attitude and steps into a broader and philosophically more fun
damental attitude. This attitude cannot be developed without a ground
that it can master. This is the ground of subjectivity, especially one’s
own subjectivity. Such a ground is not the ground of a psychological
subject with which, as we can say, Descartes was left at a standstill. It is
the ground of transcendental subjectivity. But it is, just as in Descartes’
case, the domain of a particular »being« to which there is an inner
access, a capturing in reflection, in inner experience […] However, is
a subject that is an object of perception captured in what it really is?
(Patočka 1976a, p. 468)
Patočka’s answer is »no.« »Perception of our cogitationes with the help
of ›an inward regard‹ is a mere myth« (Patočka 1975, p. 450):
[…] subjectivity and its immanence to which we appeal in the end was
made possible merely by splitting the phenomenal field as such. This
splitting took place because Husserl could not see how it would be
possible to consider the sphere of phenomena as something original.
Therefore he was forced to accept some underlying reality (»apprehen
ding,« »identical acts,« etc.) as necessary. This initially very modest
reality later achieved an amazing career; it turned from a being [a thing]
in the world into the substance of the very constitution of the world.
(1970b, p. 392)
(4) It should be clear by now that for Patočka, there is no absolute
»primordial being« of transcendental subjectivity somehow preceding
the sphere of appearances. Instead, he puts the ego back into the
phenomenal field and views it as an essentially bodily existing sub
jectivity. As such, the ego, in its existential movement, becomes
a structuring and meaning-constituting principle within this field.
However, the openness of the field cannot be treated as a determina
tion of subjectivity. In line with Husserl’s insights, Patočka views the
horizon-structure of the field as essential for any appearing of beings
irrespective of their kind. However, Patočka interprets the world, the
horizon of all horizons, as the a priori of the self-appearing of a subject.
Just as the self is a condition of the appearing of the things of this
world, the world as the horizon of horizons (and not as the whole of real
objects) is a condition of the appearing of the self. (Patočka 1975, p. 449)
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According to Patočka, Husserl came close to this view in the Crisis,

but his Cartesianism prevented him from developing it. As Patočka
claims, to see this we need to differentiate the world in which we
believe and the world through which we believe (Patočka 1976a, p.
476). The former world is the whole of the objects of the positing
consciousness (Patočka 1976a, p. 478). Here »the givenness of the
world« is identified »with the givenness of objects in the world«
(Patočka 1996 [1965], p. 104). The belief concerning the world can be
suspended in the epochē. Its existence can be meaningfully doubted.
However, the world as a horizon that, so to speak, makes possible
any givenness of worldly objects, and therefore any verification of
truth, is »no empty intention which could be translated into an
adequate perception, which we could anticipate as a thing and verify
[…]« (Patočka 1996 [1965], p. 104). There is »no reason that could
shake this givenness if, as a horizon, the world itself is unverifiable and
yet the condition of all verification« (Patočka 1996 [1965], p. 105). But
what if all verification of objects in the world were constantly falsified?
Patočka answers by pointing out that
an ordered world, could dissolve in chaos. A chaos, though, is some
thing different than no world at all; it is precisely an un-ordered world
[…]. I can »exclude« this thesis [of the world] as well, but only by not
being interested in it […]. That, however, in no way relativizes the
being to which the thesis refers because, as soon as I begin to analyze
particular beings in the structure of their givenness, I must again take
this thesis as a basis. (Patočka 1996 [1965], p. 105)
For Patočka, the world as a horizon is always containing but never
contained, and any attempt to reduce it to the constituting activity of
consciousness or to a mere thesis without an objective correlate does
not »arrive from any philosophically grounded argumentation but
rather from the prejudice about the primacy of subjective being« (Patočka
1996 [1965], p. 107). This primacy is something that Husserl took
from Descartes and Brentano and turned into the main ontological
feature of the transcendental subject.
4. Conclusion
In the first part, we followed how in the 1930s, inspired by Hus

serl, Patočka makes an effort to deepen the critique of Descartes’
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philosophy in its two aspects of method and metaphysics, reducing

the rhetorical emphasis present in Husserl. In this light, Descartes
appears not so much as a discoverer, but rather as a skillful syste
matizer providing an adequate methodological basis for the various
sciences from physics to medicine and psychology. Second, although
Descartes introduced motifs of medieval ontology into his philosophy,
he de-problematized and instrumentalized them, thus completing the
long process of the transformation of Aristotelian metaphysics.
In the second part, we described Patočka’s critique of Husserl’s
Cartesianism, a Cartesianism that originally stems from Brentano’s
philosophy. For Brentano, guaranteed existence concerns merely
depersonalized, generally grasped structures of the cogito, whose
individuation is hidden from our sight, and which is treated as a thing
(res). Husserl followed the general lines of Brentano’s philosophy,
but worked out a considerably different view of intentionality and
introduced the method of the epochē. While Patočka considered the
epochē to be a major philosophical breakthrough, he rejected Husserl’s
idea of constitution. The constitution of the world as the achievement
of the transcendental subject is a Cartesian construct that turns the
openness of the phenomenal field into an ontological feature of the
subject. For Patočka, this results from: (1) the subjectivization of
horizons; (2) the doubling of the phenomenal field in Husserl’s theory
of sensory perception; (3) Husserl’s Cartesian view of reflection and of
the ego; and (4) the subjectivization of the world in which we believe.
Bibliography
Brentano, Franz (1981): The Theory of Categories. R. Chisholm and N. Guterman

(Trans.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Descartes, René (1996): Oeuvres de Descartes. 11 vols. Charles Adam and Paul
Tannery (Eds.), new ed. Paris: Vrin.
Husserl, Edmund (1956): Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideen
geschichte. Hua VII. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1964): The Paris Lectures. Peter Koestenbaum (Trans.). The
Phenomenology. Fred Kersten (Trans.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
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Marion, Jean-Luc (2018): »En quel sens la phénoménologie peut-elle ou non se

réclamer de Descartes?« In: D. Pradelle and C. Riquier (Eds.), Descartes et la
phénoménologie. Paris: Hermann, pp. 339–361.
Mezei, Balazs M. (1994): »Brentano, Cartesianism and Jan Patočka.« In: Brentano
Studien 5, pp. 69–87.
Parker, Rodney (2018): »The History Between Koyré and Husserl.« In: R. Pisano
et al. (Eds.), Hypotheses and Perspectives in the History and Philosophy of
Science. Cham: Springer, pp. 243–275.
Patočka, Jan (2008 [1931]): Pojem evidence a jeho význam pro noetiku. In: Jan
Patočka (2008), pp. 13–125.
Patočka, Jan (1992 [1933]): »Doslov.« In: R. Descartes, Rozprava o metodě, jak
správně vésti svůj rozum a hledati pravdu ve vědách. Praha: Svoboda: pp. 65–68.
Patočka, Jan (2008 [1936]): Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém. In: Jan Patočka
(2008), pp. 127–262.
Patočka, Jan (1937): »Descartes a metafysika.« In: Česká mysl 33, pp. 143–156.
Patočka, Jan, and Zumr, Josef (1967): »K filosofovým šedesátinám. S Janem
Patočkou o filosofii a filosofech.« In: Filosofický časopis 15, pp. 585–598.
Patočka, Jan (1965): »Nepublikovaný původní závěr VI. Kapitoly z autorského
strojopisu.« In: Jan Patočka (2009), pp. 106–113.
Patočka, Jan (1968): »Husserlův pojem názoru a prafenomén jazyka.« In: Jan
Patočka (2009), pp. 542–549.
Patočka, Jan (1970a): »›Přirozený svět‹ v meditaci svého autora po třiatřiceti
letech.« In: Jan Patočka (2009), pp. 265–334.
Patočka, Jan (1970b): »Subjektivismus Husserlovy fenomenologie a možnost
›asubjektivní‹ fenomenologie.« In: Jan Patočka (2009), pp. 379–396.
Patočka, Jan (1971): »Subjektivismus Husserlovy fenomenologie a požadavek
fenomenologie asubjektivní.« In: Jan Patočka (2009), pp. 397–418.
Patočka, Jan (1975): »Epoché a redukce. Několik poznámek.« In: Jan Patočka
(2009), pp. 442–452.
Patočka, Jan (1976a): »Karteziánství a fenomenologie.« In: Jan Patočka (2009),
pp. 453–496.
Patočka, Jan (1976b): »Autorův doslov k francouzskému vydání díla ›Přirozený
svět jako filosofický problém.‹« In: Jan Patočka (2009), pp. 367–378.
Patočka, Jan (1996 [1965]): Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Erazim
Kohák (Trans.), James Dodd (Ed.). Chicago: Open Court.
Patočka, Jan (2008): Fenomenologické spisy I. Texty z let 1931–1949. Přirozený svět.
Praha: Oikoymenh.
Patočka, Jan (2009): Fenomenologické spisy II. Co je existence. Publikované texty
z let 1967–1977. Praha: Oikoymenh.
Pradelle, Dominique, and Riquier, Camille (Eds.) (2018): Descartes et la phéno
ménologie. Paris: Hermann.
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Meditations on Purity: Edmund Husserl and

Hans Kelsen
1. Where and when
I believe that the best way to illustrate the fundamental influence

that Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology had on Hans Kelsen is to read
the tribute paid by Gerhart Husserl to his illustrious father in the
preface to Rechtskraft und Rechtsgeltung (1925). Here Gerhart gives
him credit for having introduced a scientific approach to the analysis
of law:
The fact that this text bears a dedication to my father is more than
just a sign of filial gratitude. I owe him my understanding of the basic
necessity of every authentic science, notably of a jurisprudence that is
adequate to the ultimate requirements of scientificity. Both task and
method derived from this knowledge. The phenomenological model of
research has had a persistent influence on this. (G. Husserl 1925, p. vii)
A few years earlier, in the preface to the second edition of the Haupt
probleme der Staatsrechtslehre (1923), Kelsen himself had clearly
emphasized the same need to construct a genuinely scientific form of
jurisprudence, just as Husserl had done for logic by purifying it from
any trace of psychology:
The ought of the norm as a specific content of meaning (Sinngehalt) is
clearly separated from the psychic act of will, and in particular, from the
psychic act of intending the norm. Thus already in the Hauptprobleme,
the contrast between the pure theory of law and psychological-socio
logical speculation makes its appearance in parallel with the contrast
between logicism and psychologism as it was classically exposed in
Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen. (Kelsen 1923, p. ix)
It would not be entirely wrong, though rather unusual (Stella 1990,
1997, 2016), to consider the first edition of the Hauptprobleme, which
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was published in 1911, as the authentic inauguration of a phenomeno

logical reflection on law.1 As a matter of fact, Adolf Reinach’s most
important work on phenomenology of law, namely, Die apriorischen
Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes, was not published until 1913.2
However, it is not just a question of temporal priority. To appreciate
Husserl’s influence on Kelsen properly, it is necessary to go beyond
mere chronology or the number of references that the Austrian jurist
made to the German philosopher. In fact, in the first edition of the
Hauptprobleme (twelve years before the explicit acknowledgment in
the preface to the second edition), he mentions Husserl only once in a
footnote (Kelsen 1923, p. 67). Nevertheless, Kelsen would claim that
he had also »continued the trend« (Kelsen 1923, pp. ix–x) of Husserl
in his later writings, particularly in the 1916 essay »Die Rechtswis
senschaft als Norm- oder als Kulturwissenschaft« (in which, however,
Husserl’s name is nowhere to be found).
Nonetheless, it should be noted that even when he recognizes
the philosophical sources of his own pure theory in autobiographical
reflections originally written in 1927 and 1947, Kelsen never mentions
Husserl. Instead, he claims that the main sources of inspiration for
his Reine Rechtslehre—namely, the need for methodological purity
as the ultimate criterion of scientific validity—were Kant and the
neo-Kantian philosophers (particularly Windelband and Cohen).
[F]rom the very beginning, Kant’s philosophy was my guiding star.
I first encountered it in the form that had been handed down by
the philosophers of the southwestern German school, especially by
Windelband. Only thanks to a review of my Hauptprobleme published
in Kant-Studien did I realize the remarkable parallelism between my
treatment of the problem of the will in law (particularly the will of the
state) and Cohen’s philosophy of pure will. (Kelsen 2006, p. 23)
In Kelsen’s autobiographical reflections of 1947, his preference for
Kant’s subjective idealism is even more evident, together with a
decisive rejection of materialism:
1 Amselek 1964, p. 45, considers the postulate of the »purity« of the pure doctrine of
law as the »précurseur« of a phenomenological theory of law. For a discussion of this

idea, see Kelsen 1965a.
2 This was then followed by Kaufmann 1922, 1924; Schreier 1924; and G. Husserl
1925, 1929.
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Meditations on Purity: Edmund Husserl and Hans Kelsen
The materialistic conception […] seduced me for only a short time

[…]. On the other hand, the impression that idealistic philosophy
left on me was much more lasting. Even today the memory is still
alive in me of the spiritual passion I felt when for the first time […]
I realized that the reality of the external world can be problematic.
[…] The core of his [Kant’s] philosophy seemed to me to be, rightly
or wrongly, the idea of the subject who in the process of acquiring his
knowledge produces his object. My self-awareness [...] evidently found
an adequate philosophical expression in this subjectivist interpretation
on the part of Kant, that is, in the idea of the ego as the center of the
universe.3 (Kelsen 2006, pp. 33–34)
As far as I am aware, apart from the footnote in the first edition
of the Hauptprobleme and Kelsen’s reference to the »classic« Husser
lian contrast between logicism and psychologism in the preface to
the second edition of the Hauptprobleme (1923), the only other
relevant direct reference to the German philosopher before the second
edition of the Reine Rechtslehre (1960) is in the 1922 essay Der
soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff.4 Here Kelsen accuses
Husserl of not having adhered to a »completely unambiguous« termi
nology: despite having brilliantly exposed the contrast between ideal-
normative-logical knowledge and real-psychological knowledge, he
seems to maintain, on the one hand, that »pure« logic is not norma
tive—»if ›pure‹ logic can no longer be ›normative‹ logic,« as Husserl
points out, »it is a point that is not for me to decide« (Kelsen 1928, pp.
81–82)—and on the other hand, that norms have a double meaning,
one that is »purely ideal« and another that is empirical.
References to Husserl become more frequent and wide-ranging
only after the publication of the second edition of the Reine Rechtslehre
(1960), following the critical reflections Kelsen devotes to the strict
separation between Geltung and Wirksamkeit, and therefore between
Sein and Sollen—thereby inaugurating what has been defined, rightly
or wrongly, as the »irrationalistic« period of his legal theory. In
Kelsen’s posthumous Allgemeine Theorie der Normen (published in
3 In Métall’s biography of Kelsen (1969), Husserl is never mentioned; similarly, in the

recent monumental study by Olechowski (2020), he is only mentioned fleetingly in
reference to Fritz Schreier, Felix Kaufmann, Carlos Cossio, and Eric Voegelin, but never
as an inspiration for, or a relevant influence on, Kelsen’s theory.
4 An important reference to the relationship between Kelsen and Husserl can also
be found in Alexander Hold-Ferneck’s polemical essay on Kelsen 1926, pp. 22–24.

However, in his reply (Kelsen 1926a), Kelsen does not refer to Husserl at all.
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1979, six years after his death), there is not only a series of long
footnotes, but also an entire, though rather short, chapter dedicated
to the German philosopher, entitled »Husserl’s Theory of the ›Theo
retical Content‹ of the Norm.« Furthermore, Kelsen no longer only
cites Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen; he also refers to Erfahrung
und Urteil (1939).
The most interesting aspect is how Kelsen changes the way he
considers Husserl. In the »logicist« phase of the Reine Rechstlehre,
which lasted until 1960, Kelsen saw Husserl’s phenomenology, par
ticularly his Logische Untersuchungen, as the supreme example of a
struggle against the unwarranted combination of Sein and Sollen—one
that favored the construction of a pure and critical science, free from
the obvious and unreflective way of knowing typical of the natural
attitude. Instead, in his so-called »irrationalist« phase—starting with
a series of essays published from 1962 to 1967 on the problem of
the applicability of logic to legal norms5—Husserl’s position becomes
a target for a polemic that also seems to include Husserl’s previous
conception, i.e., the one formulated in the Logische Untersuchungen.
An effective and concise expression of this new attitude appears in a
passage dating from 1965 in which Kelsen addresses the Husserlian
conception of norms in the context of a discussion of Paul Amselek’s
phenomenological theory of law:
[...] in his work Logische Untersuchungen, Edmund Husserl, whom
Amselek rightly considers the decisive authority in the field of phe
nomenological philosophy, affirms that norms contain a »theoretical
content.« If this were correct, there would in fact be no reason to
exclude the application of logical principles to norms. But this is not
right. In fact, the supposition that an imperative or an imperative
norm that is neither true nor false may contain an indicative factor
or a theoretical content that can be true or false, and that imperatives
or norms are therefore neither true nor false and at the same time
5 Kelsen 1962, 1965b, 1965c, 1966, 1967, 1968. See also Kelsen and Klug 1981, a
fundamental correspondence in which Kelsen discusses with Klug the results of the
latter’s Juristische Logik (1951, p. 9), the central question of which he summarizes as
follows: »In your opinion, are logical rules applicable to law, understood as norms,
or to legal science, understood as knowledge of this object, or to both?« Regarding
this point Kelsen and Klug would adopt diametrically opposed positions, since for
Klug—unlike Kelsen, the last »irrationalist«—the rules of logic are applicable to law
just as much as to the science of law.
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both true and false, is itself a logical and therefore unsustainable con
tradiction.6 (Kelsen 1965a, p. 405)
2. »Kantian« meditations: A dispute about science
Between 1870 and 1920, positivism, as an all-pervasive European

intellectual movement, influenced all the human sciences (Geisteswis
senschaften) (Rothacker 1930, pp. 190ff.). It chiefly aspired to banish
any kind of metaphysical attitude from science by strictly limiting
it to the »facts« and their conformity with laws, which had to be
empirically analyzed. The origin of the positivistic reaction against
metaphysics dates from the publication of Auguste Comte’s six vol
umes of the Cours de philosophie positive between 1830 and 1842, and
above all, his 1844 Discours sur l’esprit positif.
Several different interpretations arose as regards the concept of
positivity, that is to say, the opposition of facts, abstract concepts,
or transcendental forms to the maladie chronique of metaphysics. In
the legal sphere, the sociology of law replaced causes with the faits of
metaphysics,7 arguing—to use the words of Eugen Ehrlich from his
preface to the Grundlegung der Soziologie des Rechts (1913)—that »the
center of gravity of legal development lies not in legislation, nor in
juristic science, nor in judicial decision, but in society itself« (Ehrlich
1913, Vorrede).8 This conception was contradicted by an anti-formal
conception of Begriffsjurisprudenz, which asserted the primacy of
form and logic, replacing the pure »science of facts« with the ordering
function of general and abstract concepts. Its aim was to present
law as a system, an autonomous and complete logical organism
in which gaps were impossible, since »the legal system integrates
6 In his criticism of Cossio’s egological theory of law (Kelsen 1953), which was clearly
inspired by Husserlian phenomenology (as pointed out by Oleschowski 2020, p. 806),
Kelsen never mentions Husserl.
7 On this point, Larenz 1975, p. 69, has stated that »more than anywhere else, the
influence of the positivist conception of science is affirmed here. Ehrlich conceives

sociology quite naturally as a pure science of facts.«
8 At around the same time, Philipp Heck’s Interessenjurisprudenz (1912, 1914a, 1914b)
and Hermann Kantorowicz’s Freirechtsbewegung (1906) also agreed with Ehrlich’s

doctrine. None of these authors attributed an ultimate role to logic or to the idea that
formal rules (and therefore the legal system) can contain within themselves, without
gaps or exceptions, all the multifaceted richness of social life and real situations. In this
sense they were all anti-formalists.
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Federico Lijoi
itself through a logical process that is totally fulfilled internally,

without ›heterointegrations‹ such as the recourse to natural law or
to ›meta-juridical‹ principles, as legal positivists would say« (Fassò
2003, p. 183).
Kelsen developed his Rechtslehre in the context of this opposition
between formalism and anti-formalism in the heart of positivism. The
Rechtslehre is distinct from formalism because it does not share its
formal logic, i.e., the idea that the juristische Grundbegriffe are the
result of an abstraction made upon positive norms. At the same time,
it diverges from anti-formalism because of its very conception of the
norm, which is not understood as a mere act of will governed by the
law of the Sein, but rather as the meaning (Sinngehalt) of this act. We
could say that formalism is excessively abstract, while anti-formalism
leans too far towards naive empiricism.
The reason why Kelsen refers to Kant’s transcendental method
can therefore be found in his ambition to distance himself from these
two extremes. He does so by proposing a conception of the legal
norm that brings together positivity (the norm as an act of will) and
ideality (the norm as the content of meaning). He therefore has a triple
objective: (a) to understand the law scientifically; (b) to distinguish it
in this way from the Naturwissenschaften, in order to comprehend it as
a specific spiritual phenomenon (the late 19th century Methodenstreit
was also concerned with this issue); and (c) to describe the relation
ship between legal science and its object, something that Emanuel
Winternitz defined as the Gegenstandsproblem of the theory of law
(Winternitz 1922–1923).
An initial important comparison between Kelsen and Husserl is
possible in this context, starting from the fact that they both refer to
Kant’s transcendental idealism as a critique of science.9 We can begin
with a brief exposition of Kelsen’s doctrine. Its point of departure is
the distinction between causal science and normative science. Natural
laws belong to the first category, since they describe a necessary con
nection between events, while juridical laws—the function of which
is to prescribe a certain behavior—belong to the second category. The
natural law can become false if the facts do not correspond to it, while
the legal law remains valid even if those who are supposed to abide
by it actually violate it. If the obligation established by the norm is
9 See Husserl 1924, p. 230, who speaks of an »offenbare Wesenver
wandtschaft« between Kant’s phenomenology and transcendental philosophy.
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transgressed, Kelsen writes, »the existence of the norm [...] is not

affected at all« (Kelsen, 1926b, § 1). The »specific existence of the nor
mative order« (Kelsen, 1926b, § 1) therefore consists in validity (Gel
tung).
In the Hauptprobleme, the structure of the legal norm
(Rechtssatz) is expressed as the connection between the delict (con
dition) and the sanction (consequence). Kelsen specifies that this
structure is similar to that of a natural law, but while in the latter case
the connection between cause and effect is real, in the former case the
association between delict and sanction is ideal. For example, in the
case of a natural law, if a metal is heated up, it must (muss) expand,
whereas in the case of the legal norm, the sanction ought to (soll)
follow the delict, although in reality this does not always happen.10
The ideal nature of the connection between delict and sanction
implies that its actual occurrence is only the result of an effective
representation of the rule, i.e., of a process that Kelsen defines as »psy
chological«:
It is not really the norm or the legal system, in its specific existence of
validity, that becomes effective. It is the fact that men represent to
themselves the norm or order, and it is therefore this representation
that becomes effective, which induces men to behave in a way that
corresponds to their representation. (Kelsen 1926b, § 4)
Therefore for Kelsen the legal norm has the form of a hypothetical
judgment—if A (the delict or unlawful act) is committed, then B (the
sanction or coercive action of the state) ought to (soll) be—and it per
forms the function of a scheme of interpretation (Deutungsschema).
By means of the legal norm, namely, by assigning a sanction to a class
of facts (Tatbestand), certain actions are defined as prohibited (mala
quia prohibita).
In this doctrine of the legal proposition elaborated by Kelsen
there are at least two points of connection with Husserl’s reflection
on pure logic. The first concerns the idea that the validity of a rule
(its objectivity, as we might say) is independent both from the will
of the person who sets up the norm and from the will of the person
who is subjected to it. In the Hauptprobleme, Kelsen refers to Husserl
10 See Kelsen 1928, p. 84: »The punishment must in no way follow the empirical
fact of theft as a necessary effect. Often it doesn’t follow at all. Only the specifically
juridical link between theft and punishment has an absolute legality, albeit not a causal
legality.«
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when he points out that the moment of production (»niemand da ist,

der fordert«) and that of normative application (»auch niemand, der
aufgefordert ist«) are meta-juridical issues.
The starting point of this observation by Kelsen is § 14 of the
Logische Untersuchungen, in which Husserl distinguishes »an original
sense of ›shall‹ or ›should,‹« which he considers »plainly too narrow,
« from an evidently more authentic »wider sense,« which means that
the norm that requires a soldier to be brave (»a soldier should be
brave«) does not have the sense of a desire or a request, but of a value
judgment:
»A soldier should be brave« rather means that only a brave
soldier is a »good« soldier, which implies (since the predi
cates »good« and »bad« divide up the extension of the concept »sol
dier«) that a soldier who is not brave is a »bad« soldier. Since this
value-judgement holds, everyone is entitled to demand of a soldier
that he should be brave, the same ground ensures that it is desirable,
praiseworthy etc., that he should be brave. (Husserl 1968, p. 41/34).11
The decisive point is therefore that for Husserl, every normative
proposition presupposes an evaluative assumption (Werthaltung) by
virtue of which »objects divide into good and bad ones« (bona et
mala) (Husserl 1968, p. 43/35). In much the same way, for Kelsen
the norm is a scheme that makes it possible to qualify an action
as desirable (when its violation is not connected to a sanction) or
undesirable (in the opposite case). Just as in the case of the connection
between »good« and »brave« for the soldier, the fact that the rule
might not be effective (or: brave soldiers do not exist) does not affect
the ideal (i.e., not psychological) nature of the connection.
It is therefore no coincidence that the question of the norm as a
value judgment was discussed in 1916 in the essay (»Die Rechtswis
senschaft als Norm- oder als Kulturwissenschaft«) in which Kelsen
would later claim (in 1923) that he had continued the Husserlian
trend. This is a particularly interesting essay, because during the
analysis of the positions of Windelband and Rickert, Kelsen seems
indirectly to debate an ambiguous point in Husserl’s doctrine.
11 Where two page numbers separated by a slash are given for Husserl 1950 or
1968, the first refers to the German and the second to the English translation (full
information for the latter follows the entry in the reference list for the German edition).
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The beginning of Kelsen’s examination is to be found in the

distinction between natural sciences and cultural sciences proposed
by Rickert (1913), but already elaborated by Windelband in Normen
und Naturgesetze (1882). The cultural sciences form their own object
by making reality commensurate with a value (»the method of the
relation to values« [Wertbeziehung]), and therefore by selecting those
facts that will either be relevant or irrelevant to the value adopted
(Werthaltung) in each specific instance.12 Since I will deal with Kelsen’s
objections to Rickert in the next section, here I will confine myself to
discussing Kelsen’s critique of Windelband’s reflections on pure logic,
which are also particularly significant for Husserl.
What is at stake here is the distinction, first formulated in »Die
Prinzipien der Logik,« between validity in itself and validity for us.
In fact, logical laws have a twofold nature because »on the one hand
they are rules for the empirical conscience, according to which every
thought directed toward the truth must be realized; yet on the other
hand, their […] meaning is completely independent of whether
actual processes of representation take place that conform to them
or not« (Windelband 1912, pp. 17–18). Although Windelband formu
lates this distinction correctly, Kelsen questions the understanding
of Sollen solely in terms of subjective validity (for us), that is to
say, in its relation to the empirical (or in Kelsen’s language, to its
efficacy): »[…] this Sollen must have its foundation in something
whose validity resides in itself, and which is transformed into a norm
or a duty only through its relationship to a conscience that is capable of
making mistakes« (Windelband 1912, pp. 17–18).13 Kelsen insinuates
that Windelband, along with Husserl,14 ends up separating Sollen
from its pure foundation (validity in itself), while for the Austrian
jurist »Sollen represents [precisely] the corresponding expression for
12 For example, if the value of reference is political history, Frederick William IV’s
rejection of the German imperial crown is more relevant, while the tailor who made
his clothes is relatively unimportant. The latter fact acquires relevance, however, when
another value is adopted—for example, the history of fashion and costume.
13 The examination of Windelband’s essay, which I compare here with Kelsen’s con
siderations on Husserl in the footnote in § 12 of Der soziologische und der juristische

Staatsbegriff, can be found in an essay published by Kelsen a few months ear
lier: »Rechtswissenschaft und Recht« (1922).
14 Here I refer to Kelsen 1928, p. 81: »If ›pure‹ logic can no longer be ›norma
tive‹ logic, as Husserl explains, it is not up to me to decide.« A little further on, Kelsen
writes that Husserl wants »to allow ›pure‹ logic to be valid as a system of theoretical
propositions and not as a system of norms.«
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the objective validity of logical law, which is validity in itself« insofar as

it »realizes purity« (Kelsen 1922, p. 384).15 For Kelsen, therefore, the
logic of norms can only be a pure logic (and vice versa):
Just as »pure« logic, insofar as it is normative, and insofar as it is the
logic of Sollen, was born fighting for its autonomy against psychology
[…], so I make use of Sollen to represent the specific legality of law, to
protect it from the constant attempts of the sociological-psychological
method to break in: a method that is essentially oriented toward natural
science. (Kelsen 1922, p. 385)
The question of the relation between pure logic and normative science
leads to a second point of Kelsen’s disagreement with Husserl. Kelsen
claims that legal science (reine Rechtslehre) is a logic of law (Sollen),
and by virtue of its anti-psychologist nature, a pure logic. While a dog
matic legal approach (allgemeine Rechtslehre) had constructed legal
institutions solely with the use of formal logic, or through a procedure
of mere abstraction of the (empty) forms from the facts of positive
law, the reine Rechtslehre derives the basic form of the law (Rechtssatz)
from legal norms (Rechtsnormen), the latter understood as intellectual
syntheses (hypothetical judgments) of delict and sanction.
In Kelsen, the function performed by legal science is identical
to that of Kant’s transcendental logic. Just as the latter determines—
or abstracts by means of an analytic procedure—the constitutive
elements of all our knowledge, so the former identifies in the legal
proposition (Rechtssatz) the a priori condition of law understood as a
complex of Rechtsnormen, or objective judgments of value (Geltung).
According to Kelsen, only if the law is considered as just such a
complex of logical judgments (i.e., knowledge) can legal science fulfill
the reflexive function that consists in deriving the Grundform from it
(Kelsen, 1923, p. vi).
This does not mean that the law is a product of the science of
law (Lehre), thereby being deprived of its authoritative origin (Sander
1922, 1923). Rather, it means that the law as such is a function of
knowledge, since the legal norm is, properly speaking, the meaning
of the act of will (validity) and not this very same act of will. Kelsen
therefore believes that legal science, as a (pure) doctrine of law, has
a purely analytical rather than constitutive function. Thus it does
not set up the norms (which are instead produced by the organs of
15 Kelsen (1922, p. 384) believes that this is due to Kant: »It is precisely in Kant’s Sollen
that the relation to empirical being is cut off.«
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the state), but only seeks to abstract their basic form from the law,
with the latter understood as a complex of synthetic judgments. The
synthetic function of the value judgments that constitute the law
should accordingly not be confused with the analytical function that
pertains to the judgments of legal science.
At this point, the ambiguity that Kelsen detected in Husserl’s
reasoning becomes clear. In § 14 of the Prolegomena zu reinen Logik,
Husserl writes that
every normative and likewise every practical discipline rests on one
or more theoretical disciplines, inasmuch as its rules must have
a theoretical content separable from the notion of normativity (of
the »shall« or »should«), whose scientific investigation is the duty of
these theoretical disciplines. (Husserl 1968, p. 40/33)
Hence Husserl’s pure logic, as a theoretical discipline, cannot be
equated with Kelsen’s legal science (as normative logic). The reason
is that for Husserl, the normative function is separate in principle
from its theoretical content (while for Kelsen it is not); moreover, no
normative discipline is able to autonomously constitute its own object
(because it is founded on a theoretical discipline).16 In short, Kelsen
reproaches Husserl (and Windelband) for having misunderstood
normativity in terms of efficacy (its validity for us), and thus for not
having really broken free from psychologism, as well as for having
subordinated the normative function (in the broadest practical sense)
to the theoretical function. Finally, he also reproaches them for not
having assigned to Sollen the status of an autonomous Betrachtung
weise, that is to say, of a peculiar mode (wie) of knowledge.
16 See Husserl 1968, p. 47/38: »It is now easy to see that each normative, and, a
fortiori, each practical discipline, presupposes one or more theoretical disciplines as its
foundations, in the sense, namely, that it must have a theoretical content free from
all normativity, which as such has its natural location in certain theoretical sciences,
whether these are already marked off or yet to be constituted.« This ranking of logical
reason above practical and axiological reason is also evident in Husserl 1988, pp.
63–64.
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3. »Cartesian« (and »neo-Kantian«) meditations:

Grundnorm and intersubjectivity
In his essay »Kant und die Idee der Transzendentalphiloso

phie« (1924), Husserl states:
[I]n the history of philosophical modernity […] Descartes must be
honored as a precursor of transcendental philosophy. It was he, with his
Meditationes, who founded modernity, and who imprinted upon it the
tendency that distinguishes it to develop toward a transcendental phi
losophy. The ego cogito, understood in its deepest sense, can certainly
be seen as the first form of discovery of transcendental subjectivity.
(Husserl 1924, pp. 240–241)
I believe that Husserl’s interpretation of the Cartesian ego cogito as
a »radical turning point«—which Kant would then examine more
thoroughly, and which leads »from naive objectivism to a transcen
dental subjectivism« (Husserl 1973a, p. 46; see also § 8 and § 41), as
Husserl states at the beginning of his Cartesian Meditations—has a
connection to Kelsen’s reference, in the construction of his nomody
namics, to the Cohenian idea that the method itself constitutes the
object of knowledge. With some (important) differences, the (Husser
lian) thesis according to which the assumption of a transcendental and
constituent subjectivity allows for the decisive switch from a naive
(natural) conception to a pure conception (of law) is also valid for
Kelsen.
Kelsen made this reference to the »logic of the origin« of Mar
burg’s neo-Kantism in 1923, when he affirmed that Cohen’s episte
mological position, according to which »the object of knowledge is
logically produced starting from an origin«17 (Kelsen 1923, p. xvii),
had led him to an understanding that »the state, insofar as it is
an object of legal knowledge, can only be law, because knowing
17 In Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (Cohen 1987, p. 36), we read: »[the] origin is not only
the necessary beginning of thinking; it must also assert itself as the driving principle
of all its progress. All pure forms of knowledge must be variations of the principle of
origin.« See also Husserl (1908, p. 386): »Kant does not go as far as the true sense of
the correlation between knowledge and cognitive objectivity, and therefore not even
as far as the sense of the specifically transcendental problem of ›constitution.‹« On
the role played by Natorp and his essay Über objektive und subjektive Begründung
der Erkenntnis (1887) in forming Husserl’s idea of pure logic, see Kern 1964 and
Natorp 1901.
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legally […] means nothing other than understanding something as

law« (Kelsen 1923, p. 30).
In reality, this is a principle that Kelsen had already elaborated in
connection with the idea of a »constitution« that does not presuppose
anything already given. Quite the opposite: to employ Husserl’s
expression, one could say that it »suspends any naively understood
objectivity,« thereby going back to the source of its meaning and
givenness. This crucial connection clearly emerges in Kelsen’s 1916
critique of Rickert. The »method of the relationship to values« showed
the serious flaw (syncretism of methods) of considering the concept of
culture as the result of an adherence of values to reality, whereas reality
(Sein) and value (Sollen) are only different forms of representation of a
single »modally indifferent« substratum (see Rickert 1915, pp. 18–28;
Kelsen 1916, pp. 1190, 1210).
This hypothesis was then enriched and radicalized18 thanks
to Cohen’s concept of production. According to Kelsen, Cohen had
profitably replaced the Kantian principle of »synthesis,« which always
presupposes a sensory given, with that of »production,« which instead
alludes to a pure form of knowledge that has its origin in itself
without any contact with sensation or representation. In this way,
the synthesis made by the judgment can be understood in a dynamic
sense, i.e., no longer statically as something that simply stretches
between terms that have already been laid down.19
The idea of a productive, spontaneous, and creative function
of knowledge (dynamic idealism) is perfectly realized in Kelsen’s
concept of the Grundnorm. As regards the latter, it can be noticed
that in his Logische Untersuchungen, Husserl had already spoken of
a »fundamentale Werthaltung,« i.e., of a basic criterion (Grundmaß,
Grundwert) according to which every normative operation must be
carried out (Husserl 1968, p. 45/36).20 In much the same way as
for Husserl, it is also the case for Kelsen—who, however, officially
borrows the theory of the legal order as a dynamic totality from
18 Nevertheless, Kelsen would retain this formulation until his last work (see Kelsen
1979, pp. 44–48).
19 On this point, see Kelsen and Treves 1992, pp. 7–87, and Treves 1993. Husserl
himself (1924, p. 235) had criticized Kant’s system of transcendental philosophy

as »halb-mythisch.«
20 The first scholar who recognized the relationship between Husserl and Kelsen on
this point was Krawietz (1974).
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Federico Lijoi
Adolf Merkl’s Stufenbaulehre (1918)21—that the Grundnorm »does not

represent a normative proposition in the proper sense« (Husserl 1968,
p. 45/36–37).
According to Kelsen, then, the basic norm is not posited (issued
or laid down), but presupposed. It is the meaning of an act of reason
(not of an act of will), thereby representing the functional substrate
(hypothesis) of the positive legal order. In fact, it designates »the basic
rule according to which the norms of the legal system are cre
ated« (Kelsen 1994, p. 64). It prescribes that »coercion is to be applied
in the conditions and in the manner determined by the framers of the
first constitution or by the authorities to whom they have delegated
appropriate powers« (Kelsen 1994, pp. 65–66). Inasmuch as it estab
lishes a productive organ of law, the basic norm is the »constitution in
the logical-juridical sense,« that is to say, the presupposition that
everything that the historical and original constituent organ has man
ifested as its own will must be valid as a norm: »And at the moment
when the legislator thus designated establishes norms that them
selves regulate the legislation—that is to say the production of general
norms—the constitution in a positive-juridical sense […] arises, i.e.,
the constitution that is decreed and that must be distinguished from
the presupposed one, that is to say from the basic norm« (Kelsen
1926b, § 52). The function of the basic norm is therefore to qualify the
act of will of the constituent body as a legal act (objectively valid).
With the introduction of the Grundnorm, Kelsen intended to safe
guard the normative character of the Rechtsordnung, which cannot be
based on a fact, and therefore even less so on a mere act of will (Sein).22
Let me now deal with one final connection between Husserl and
Kelsen. We have seen how the reference to Descartes allowed Husserl
to find the source of the constitution of objectivity, and therefore of the
transcendence of the world, in subjectivity.23 Nevertheless, this pure
subjective consciousness is also a pure intersubjective consciousness:
Husserl addressed this theme in his Fifth Cartesian Meditation in order
21 An anticipation of the concept of the Grundnorm can already be found in
Kelsen 1914.
22 On the Grundnorm in Kelsen, see Walter 1992; Bindreiter 2002; and Paulson 1993.
23 This is the (modern) problem of phenomenology: »what it could mean for a
being to be known in itself and yet be known in knowledge« (Husserl 1950, p.

29/23). However, »for Husserl, by contrast, the matter does not at all depend upon
a ›demonstration‹ […] of transcendence or objectivity« (Bernet, Kern, and Marbach
1993, p. 68).
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to dispel the suspicion of »transcendental solipsism« that his radical

reference to the ego cogito had created. In his 1924 essay on Kant,
Husserl had already noted:
A possible transcendental subjectivity in general should not be under
stood only as a possible singular subjectivity, but also as a possible
communicative subjectivity, and in the first instance as a subjectivity
that unites a multiplicity of single transcendental subjects in a possible
totality […]. (Husserl 1924, p. 257)
In Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (1929–1935), he was
even more specific:
Taken concretely, each ego, each monad, is likewise a substance, but
only a relative concretion: it is what it is only as a socius of a sociality,
as a »community member« within a total community. (Husserl 1973b,
p. 193)
This intersubjective and »social« outcome of Husserl’s Cartesianism
seems to be akin to the »eminently practical meaning« that Kelsen
believes »a purified doctrine can have« (Kelsen 2010, p. 1471). I
believe that it is the anti-naturalistic and therefore pure character of
the Rechtslehre that makes a »democratic« interpretation of the legal
form possible, and that the identification of an eidos of the law func
tions as a criticism of ideology, that is to say, as a means for unmasking
the political abuses perpetuated by any unscientific doctrine.24
In this regard, one should bear in mind Kelsen’s critique of natural
law. If the state, as the main object of legal knowledge, cannot be other
than law, then no (public) will can be valid outside the hypothetical
judgment (the Sollen as a principle of legality) that characterizes this
knowledge. This implies, first, that the state cannot act legibus solutus
(as the conservative theory of the Mehrwert of public power would
have had it), because its will must always be the content of a legal
norm, and second, that pre-juridical subjective rights cannot be valid
(as the progressive theory of liberalism would have had it).25
In both cases it would be a question of illegitimately immunizing
(i.e., naturalizing) a value from the possibility of being discussed
24 Here there is a decisive difference between Husserl and Kelsen: for Husserl, the
natural attitude should be suspended not because it is »ideological,« but because it
is »obvious,« which makes it possible to reach a »thematic« and »evident« (einsichtig)
understanding of natural life itself. See Husserl 1924, p. 246.
25 On Kelsen’s concept of the identity of the state and the legal system, and on the
dualisms of private-public law and subjective-objective law, see Lijoi 2020.
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and compared. For this reason, normative knowledge is intrinsically

democratic: for Kelsen, the production of the law requires that no sub
ject (bearer of value and interests) can be exempt (due to superiority
or inferiority) from participating in the formation of the public will.
According to the legal science elaborated by Kelsen, the state is essen
tially a sum of rules of imputation (Sollen): its will constitutes the
terminal point of the imputation, and is no longer a collective will,
psychologically conceived as the cause (Sein) of law.
Since it is identical to the legal system, the state is the circumfer
ence on the perimeter of which subjects and contents exist, all of them
equidistant from the center. The form of juridical knowledge (Sollen)
thus becomes the formal law of parliament, that is to say, a method of
(dynamic) production that identifies the »communicative« (intersub
jective) character of political life in the discussion between socii—in
Husserl’s words, »as ›community member[s]‹ within a total commu
nity.«
4. Kelsen versus Husserl?
In the Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, Kelsen took the ambiguity

that he saw in Husserl’s conception of the norm to its extreme conse
quences. In this last, »irrationalist« period of his scientific activity,
Kelsen rejected the applicability of logical principles to norms, and
therefore rejected the very possibility of a normative logic. As we
have seen, his critical observations had concentrated on this point
in his previous works as well. He had accused Husserl of a certain
oscillation when, while speaking of »purely logical norms« (Kelsen
1928, p. 81) in the Logische Untersuchungen, he had distinguished
between theoretical (founding) assertions and (founded) norms. To
this Kelsen had objected that in their most exact meaning (i.e., as
Sinngehalte), norms were just judgments, or—to be more precise—
qualifying hypothetical judgments.
In Chapter 52 of the Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, Kelsen
comes back to this very same passage from the Logische Untersuchun
gen. Yet he now seems to interpret Husserl’s ambiguity in the opposite
sense. This time, the point is not the failure to identify the norm with
the judgment—more precisely, the fact that according to Husserl, »the
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norm ›includes‹ [a] theoretical proposition« (Kelsen 1979, p. 158)26—

but rather the failure clearly to separate them:
If the proposition »A soldier should be brave« is a norm, it cannot
be »equal« or »equivalent« to the judgment »Only a brave soldier is a
good soldier,« since a norm and a judgment, that is to say an assertion,
have two completely different meanings: the norm has a prescriptive
meaning, while the judgment or assertion has a descriptive meaning.
(Kelsen 1979, p. 158)
And yet just as he had done in his 1922 essay, here too Kelsen searches
for evidence in favor of his new thesis within the ambiguity:
If, as Husserl maintains, the proposition »An A should be
B« »includes« within itself the proposition »Only an A that is B has
the quality of being good,« then we are not dealing with a single
proposition, but with two propositions, one of which is a prescriptive
norm, while the other is a descriptive statement. Husserl himself says
that the theoretical proposition is a new proposition that no longer
contains any traces of the idea of »normativity.«27 (Kelsen 1979, p. 158,
emphasis added)
This point is particularly complex and cannot be explored in more
detail here. In conclusion, however, it is important to note at least
three fundamental aspects.
(1) Although Kelsen sticks with his definition of the norm as the
meaning of an act of will, thereby reiterating the difference between
Geltung (validity) and Wirksamkeit (efficacy), he specifies that »the
truth of an assertion is independent of the act of thought of which it
is the meaning, while the validity of a positive norm is conditioned
by the act of will of which it is the meaning« (Kelsen 1965a p. 404,
emphasis added).
(2) The distinction between Soll-norm (prescription of the law)
and Soll-satz (description of legal science) is radicalized, because even
if the norm is still understood as a hypothetical connection between
a condition and a consequence, and therefore as a judgment (Kelsen
1979, pp. 17–18), logic is no longer applicable to norms, but only to the
descriptive propositions of legal science.
(3) This does not imply, however, that with the disappearance
of the possibility of a normative logic (or to be more precise, a legal
26 See Opalek 1980; Vida 2007.

27 See Kelsen 1979, pp. 250, 288–290.
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Federico Lijoi
logic), the ideal (i.e., pure) character of legal norms is also bound to
collapse. Instead, insofar as they are the Sinngehalte of acts of will,
legal norms will remain irreducible to the facts (and to the actions that
produce them).
It seems to me that through the question of the applicability
of logic to norms, Kelsen wanted to re-state the different and irrec
oncilable types of ideality (Sollen and Müssen) pertaining to value
judgments and judgments of fact (as »zwei Betrachtungsweisen«)
respectively. In so doing he proposes an irreducible dualism within
knowledge, which perhaps neither the neo-Kantian logic of origin
nor the immanent monism of Husserl’s phenomenology could easily
have accepted:
I am not a monist. However unsatisfactory I too feel that a dualistic
construction of the image of the world may be, in my thought I see
no way that leads beyond the unbearable inner conflict between me
and the world, soul and body, subject and object, form and content,
or in whatever other words this eternal conflict might be concealed.28
(Kelsen 1911, p. vi).
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Roversi (Eds.), A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence, vol. 12,
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Lijoi, Federico (2020): »The Democratic Value of Law: Hans Kelsen on the The
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pp. 393–411.
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Remarks on Evidence and Truth in Husserl’s

Theory of Justification
0. Introduction
In the Cartesian Meditations, Edmund Husserl famously renews René

Descartes’s demand for a philosophy free from prejudice and, as such,
capable of grounding all other sciences. As he explicitly writes, such
enterprise requires of the philosopher that they only hold those beliefs
that are directly seen in evidence (Husserl 1960, p. 13). Understanding
Husserl’s views on evidence and its place in his epistemology is
thereby crucial to understanding the philosophical project of his
Cartesian Meditations.
Whereas scholars focused in the recent past on the centrality of
the notion of evidence for the advancement of a new theory of truth
(Dupré 1964; Patzig 1977), they have become increasingly interested
in its epistemological significance. Already by the end of the 1970s,
Henry Pietersma (1977, p. 39) stated that »Husserl’s views on the
evident are to be understood in the context of a theory of justification«;
and, over the last ten years, more work has been done on the topic.
Even though their interpretations differ with respect to some of
the details, scholars agree that Husserl’s notion of evidence lies at
the core of his theory of justified belief. On their view, his theory
is an internalist account that unpacks justification in terms of evi
dence. Further, most, if not all, scholars share the view that Husserl’s
account features two theses. One thesis is that justification depends
only on evidence; the other is that justification does not guarantee
truth. Due to its widespread endorsement in the scholarship, I call
this interpretation of Husserl’s theory of justification »The Standard
View« (Berghofer 2018, 2019; Hardy 2013; Hopp 2011, 2016; Kidd
2014; Piazza 2013; Pietersma 1977; Wiltsche 2015).
The general aim of this paper is to challenge The Standard View.
The overall plan is as follows. In Section 1 of this paper, I present The
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Standard View. In Section 2, I criticize some of its parts and advance

an alternative story that rests on a careful examination of Husserl’s
claims about the connection between evidence and truth. In Section
3, I expand on the alternative story. As I note, my interpretation of
these claims also explains why, on Husserl’s view, evidence justifies
belief.
1. Husserl’s theory of justification: The Standard View
This section is about the core thesis of The Standard View and one
of its corollaries. In Subsection 1.1, I focus on this core thesis and
on the ways in which scholars have understood what evidence is on
Husserl’s account. In Subsection 1.2, I focus on the corollary thesis and
the arguments scholars have given in its support.
1.1 The core thesis
The core thesis of The Standard View is that evident givenness is the
necessary and sufficient condition for the epistemic justification of
belief. More precisely:
The Core Thesis: One has justification to believe some proposi
tion, p, if and only if it is evidently given to one that p (or one’s
belief that p rests on what is evidently given to one).
Arguably, The Core Thesis finds support in many of Husserl’s texts.
Scholars have interpreted the second part of the principle of all princi
ples as one of Husserl’s clearest endorsements of this thesis (Berghofer
2018, 2019; Hardy 2013; Hopp 2011, 2016; Pietersma 1977; Wiltsche
2015, 2021). The relevant part of the principle of all principles reads
as follows:
[W]hatever presents itself to us in »intuition« in an originary way (so
to speak, in its actuality in person) is to be taken simply as what it
affords itself as, but only within the limitations in which it affords itself
there. (Husserl 2014, p. 43)
Although the term evidence does not appear in Husserl’s statement of
the principle of all principles, scholars have understood what presents
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Remarks on Evidence and Truth in Husserl’s Theory of Justification
itself to one in an originary intuition as identical to what is evidently

given to one. As such, they have argued that, by the principle of all
principles, we are required to believe only what is evidently given to
us. Further support for this interpretation comes from the principle
of pure evidence of the second part of First Philosophy and the first
methodological principle of the Cartesian Meditations, as, plausibly,
they are elaborations of the principle of all principles (Husserl 1960, p.
13, 2019, p. 236; Ströker 1997, p. 45).1
We find other endorsements of The Core Thesis throughout
Husserl’s work.2 One of the clearest is right in the Cartesian Medita
tions; where Husserl (1960, p. 60) writes that ‘»[e]very rightness
comes from evidence, therefore from our transcendental subjectivity
itself.« Drawing on the plausible thesis that epistemic rightness is
equivalent to or entails epistemic justification, we may interpret this
statement as an endorsement of the thesis that justification depends
only on evidence.
Scholars however disagree on what exactly counts as evidence
on Husserl’s view. In order to understand the positions that they
have taken on this issue, it is helpful to start from a distinction
by Lee Hardy (2013, pp. 85–87); that is, the distinction between
monothetic evidence and synthetic evidence.3 Monothetic evidence
consists of every originary presentive intuition, where this kind of act
is an intentional act that gives its objects in some originary way; that
is, as bodily present (Leibhaftig).4 Synthetic evidence instead consists
of every complex act that combines an empty meaning intention with
an originary presentive intuition in such a way that the object of
the meaning intention is seen as in agreement with the object of
the presentive intuition.5 In a more technical terminology, synthetic
evidence is the synthesis of identification resulting from the fulfillment
1 It is noteworthy that, in First Philosophy, Husserl describes the principle of pure

evidence as »the most general principle of justification.«
2 See Berghofer (2019) for a survey of the most representative endorsements of The
Core Thesis.
3 Hardy’s distinction is explictly inspired by Tugendhat (1967).
4 Originary presentive intuitions constitute a special kind of intuitive acts, inas
much as not all intuitive acts give their intentional object as bodily present. Impor
tantly, in Husserl’s work, »originary presentive intuition« is a synonym for »percep
tion« or »perceptual act,” in the broadest sense of the term (Husserl 2014, p. 9).
5 Not all scholars hold the view that monothetic evidence is a genuine notion of
evidence (Hopp 2011, ch. 7; Ströker 1997). For example, Ströker (1997, p. 54) states
that »evidence can only be established in […] acts of synthesis.« In contrast, some
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of an empty meaning intention with an originary presentive intuition

(Husserl 2001c, pp. 207–208).6
With this distinction in mind, we can easily present the existing
positions scholars hold about what Husserl takes evidence to be.
According to Philipp Berghofer (2018, 2019) and Hardy (2013, Ch.
3), on Husserl’s view, monothetic evidence is genuine evidence and, as
such, it justifies belief. In contrast, according to Walter Hopp (2016),
no originary presentive intuition is, by itself, evidence and, so, no
such act is sufficient for justification.7 As Hopp (2016, p. 185) argues,
although Husserl is imprecise in some of his texts, it is fulfillment
(or, in Hardy’s terminology, synthetic evidence) that justifies belief.
Hopp accordingly interprets the relevant part of the principle of all
principles as stating that one has justification to believe a proposition,
p, if and only if an originary presentive intuition fulfills one’s thought
or meaning intention that p.
The differences between these two positions are not trivial; and
that is especially clear when we consider individual cases. Whether
we describe one as having or lacking justification for one’s belief
will in some cases depend on whether we side with Berghofer and
Hardy and thereby contend that all originary presentive intuitions
provide evidence regardless of whether they fulfill a thought, or we
side with Hopp, instead, and thereby hold that only fulfilled thoughts
can be evident and justified. However, as Berghofer (2018, p. 150)
has argued, the differences between his and Hardy’s position and
Hopp’s position are reconcilable. We may reconcile their positions if
we understand the former as a theory of propositional justification and
the latter as a theory of doxastic justification; that is, if we understand
them as a theory about what one has justification to believe and as
scholars have raised doubts against the notion of synthetic evidence (Hardy 2013, p.
89; Tugendhat 1967, p. 94).
6 For recent and clear presentations of Husserl’s notion of fulfilment, see Hopp (2011,
ch. 7) and Zuidervaart (2016).

7 See also Hopp (2011, pp. 192–201). Similarly, Piazza (2013, p. 182) claims that,
according to Husserl, »perception justifies [...] belief by providing the element of a

synthesis of fulfillment«.
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a theory about well-founded belief, respectively.8,9 Further, on both

interpretations of Husserl’s view, we can say that originary presentive
intuitions have at least justificatory force and that thoughts fulfilled by
these acts are always justified.10
1.2 The corollary thesis
The Core Thesis of The Standard View is accompanied by a corollary

thesis. That thesis is, in a slogan, that justification does not guarantee
truth. More precisely:
The Corollary Thesis: It is possible for one to have justification to
believe a false proposition.
Scholars have defended the view that Husserl endorses The Corollary
Thesis on the basis of a further thesis; that is, the fallibility of evidence.
More precisely:
The Fallibilist Thesis: What is evidently given to one can be false.
To be exact, Husserl never uses the expression »fallible« to describe
evidence. Yet scholars have used the notion of fallibility to characterize
at least one kind of evidence that Husserl introduces in his work. In
order to better understand why, it is crucial to start from Husserl’s
distinction between two kinds of evidence: adequate evidence and
inadequate evidence. Let us present each of them, one after the other.
Adequate evidence is the ideal of perfect evidence (Husserl 1960,
p. 14; Husserl 2019, p. 237).11 Husserl introduces this notion to speak
8 The distinction between propositional justification and doxastic justification is a
familiar distinction in epistemology. See Silva and Oliveira (forthcoming) for a clear
presentation of the distinction and an excellent survey of the issues examined in the
relevant literature.
9 In his presentation of Husserl’s theory of fulfillment, Piazza (2013, p. 176) character
izes it as a theory of doxastic justification; and his interpretation thereby lends support
to Berghofer’s conciliatory position.
10 We find textual evidence for this claim in many of Husserl’s works, for example,
in the lecture courses Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge and Nature and
Spirit. Husserl (2008, p. 341) writes in the former that »it is evident that perception
justifies.« Similarly, he (Husserl 2001d, p. 135) states in the latter that perception is
right giving (Recht gebend) in the most originary way.
11 For precision, let us specify that, by the time of the Cartesian Meditations, adequate
evidence is not the only ideal of perfect evidence that Husserl discusses in his work. In
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about a kind of evidence that is not open to correction or improvement.

As he (2014, p. 276) puts it, if evidence is adequate, it is »intrinsically
incapable of being »strengthened« or »weakened« anymore and thus
devoid of any gradations of weight.« As such, adequate evidence
gives its object in fullness and with perfect clarity (Husserl 1969,
p. 287). Husserl also specifies that this kind of evidence can only
be a regulative idea in perceptual experience (Husserl 1960, p. 12,
14; Husserl 2001a, p. 539; Husserl 2019, p. 237). This is due to
the essentially perspectival nature of perceptual experience. More to
the point, perceptual experience makes it impossible to adequately
apprehend any of its possible objects because it never gives any such
object from all of its sides at one time (Husserl 2014, p. 298).
In contrast, inadequate evidence is imperfect evidence, or, as
Husserl (2014, p. 274) puts it, »impure« evidence. Again, as he writes,
even though it gives its object as bodily present, inadequate evidence
only gives it in an incomplete way (Husserl 1960, p. 15; Husserl
2014, p. 274). Because of its nature, inadequate evidence can be
corrected, improved, or even annulled by some future evidence in
the course of experience. In presenting this point, Husserl also
sometimes claims that current evidence may become disclosed as
deceptive experience at some future time (Husserl 1969, p. 156).12
Crucially, these and analogous claims are widely interpreted as an
admission that at least inadequate evidence is possibly false or fallible.
And, so, »fallibility« has become an accepted label for the kind of
imperfection that Husserl attributes to inadequate evidence.
It is undisputed that Husserl holds at least a weak reading of
The Fallibilist Thesis, according to which what is inadequately given in
cases of evidence can be false. As I have explained, most scholars have
defended this interpretation by referencing Husserl’s claims about the
fact, by that time, Husserl (1960, pp. 14–16) starts to distinguish between two ideals
of perfect evidence: adequate evidence and apodictic evidence. Before that, he instead
considered apodicticity as just one feature of adequate evidence, which was thereby
understood as necessarily apodictic. For an informative reconstruction of the relation
between adequate evidence and apodictic evidence, see Heffernan (1998, pp. 30–55).
12 Specifically, as Husserl writes in his (1969, p. 156): »The possibility of decep
tion is inherent in the evidence of experience and does not annul either its fun
damental character or its effect, though becoming evidentially aware of <actual>
deception ›annuls‹ the deceptive experience or evidence itself. The evidence of a
new experience is what makes the previously uncontested experience undergo that
modification of believing called ›annulment‹ or ›cancellation‹; and it alone can do
so.« See also Husserl (1996, p. 398) for a lesser-known passage along the same lines.
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nature of inadequate evidence. Some scholars have given a further

argument in support of this interpretation. Their argument relies
on the thought that cases of illusion and hallucination are genuine
evidence or sources of evidence. As such, we can call this type of
argument »the argument from illusion and hallucination.« We find
versions of this argument in Berghofer (2018, 2019) and Hopp (2011).
Let us consider each of these versions in turn.
As Berghofer argues, on Husserl’s view, illusion and hallucina
tion provide evidence and justify belief, exactly like genuine percep
tion does. That is the case because, according to Berghofer’s interpreta
tion of Husserl’s work, illusion and hallucination are types of originary
presentive intuitions and originary presentive intuitions are evidence
(Berghofer 2018, p. 147; Berghofer 2019, p. 102). Berghofer (2019, p.
114) infers that what is inadequately given in some cases of evidence
can be false. After all, cases of illusion and hallucination are typically
cases of non-veridical perceptual experience.
Hopp (2011, pp. 214–215) gives an analogous argument,
although his argument relies on his interpretation of Husserl’s view,
according to which only fulfillment provides evidence and, as such,
justifies belief. As he argues, fulfillment can occur even when the
fulfilling perceptual experience is illusory.13 This means that it is
possible to have evidence even in the unfortunate case that a non-
veridical perceptual experience fulfills an empty intention. In this
case, what is evidently given is false, but it nevertheless justifies the
corresponding belief.14
Setting these differences aside, it is clear that The Fallibilist Thesis
immediately leads to The Corollary Thesis, namely, the thesis that
what is evidently given can be false immediately leads to the thesis
13 As Hopp (2011, p. 215) writes, »[i]f I have an experience that presents a wall W as
being blue, when it is in fact green, the experience nevertheless epistemically fulfills
the thought that W is blue. The experience’s object in this case is W’s being blue, as is
the thought’s, and the two are synthesized in the right way. So, epistemic fulfillment
can occur even when the perceptual experience involved is illusory. Fulfillment, then,
does not guarantee truth.«
14 Some scholars have also defended an interpretation on which Husserl also holds
a stronger reading of The Fallibilist Thesis, according to which all evidence is fallible.
These scholars have defended their interpretation mostly on the basis of a passage
from Formal and Transcendental Logic, where Husserl (1969, p. 157) writes that »even
an ostensibly apodictic evidence can become disclosed as deception and, in that event,
presupposes a similar evidence by which it is »shattered.« See, in particular, Berghofer
(2019, pp. 107–108).
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that justification does not guarantee truth. Indeed, if what is evidently

given justifies belief while possibly being false, then one can have
justification for false beliefs.
We should however note that The Fallibilist Thesis does not
square well with some of Husserl’s claims about the connection
between evidence and truth or between evidence and true being (or
actuality).15 In his Logical Investigations, Husserl identifies evidence
with »the experience of truth« (Husserl 2001b, p. 121). In this text,
he also writes that »[the] objective correlate [of evidence] is called
being in the sense of truth, or simply truth« (Husserl 2001c, p. 263).
Arguably, these claims give at least some support to an interpretation
of Husserl’s view of evidence according to which, in no possible case
of evidence, what is evidently given to one is false. This interpretation
obviously runs counter to The Fallibilist Thesis and, so, in general
counter to The Standard View. As such, it creates a challenge for
its advocates.
Advocates of The Standard View have addressed this point.
But, while otherwise in general agreement, they have attempted to
accommodate Husserl’s claims within their view in different ways.
We may indeed distinguish between three general strategies that they
have resorted to in an attempt to explain how we should interpret these
claims. I present one exemplification of each of these general strategies
in the rest of this section.
Let us start from what we will call »the deflationist strategy,”
which we find, for example, in Berghofer (2018, p. 102). Berghofer
simply rejects Husserl’s statement that evidence is the experience of
truth as misleading. At best, as he contends, this statement belongs
to an early stage of Husserl’s philosophy and no such claim appears
in his mature writings. We are then invited to disregard this and
analogous claims.
Pietersma (1977) adopts another strategy. According to him,
when Husserl states that truth or true being is the correlate of
evidence, his claims exclusively concern adequate evidence. As such,
they describe an optimal, but impossible epistemic situation in per
ceptual experience. In fact, on Pietersma’s interpretation, there is no
necessary connection between inadequate evidence, truth, and true
being: having inadequate evidence does not eliminate the possibility
15 Note that, for ease of reading, I do not dwell on the distinction between truth and
true being in this paper.
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that what is given to us will turn out to be false. Yet, on his (1977, p.
43–45) interpretation, inadequate evidence is trustworthy: although it
never warrants ending one’s inquiry into what is the case, inadequate
evidence gives one the epistemic right to believe that things are as they
are evident to one, at least in the absence of sufficient positive reasons
to doubt that they are as such. We should come to this conclusion,
as Pietersma argues, because, if that were not the case, Husserl
would then be forced to embrace a radical version of skepticism about
perceptual experience. But this is not Husserl’s view; in fact, Husserl
strongly opposes it. Pietersma therefore concludes that evidence
justifies belief without guaranteeing its truth.
Lastly, let us present Hardy’s interpretation of Husserl’s claims
about the connection between evidence and truth. According to Hardy
(2013, p. 81), these claims do not pertain to Husserl’s theory of
truth. So, Hardy holds that, when Husserl states that truth is the
correlate of evidence, he cannot possibly be advancing an epistemic
theory of truth, a theory on which what is true depends only on the
available evidence. As Hardy argues, interpreting Husserl in this
way amounts to attributing him the view that truth depends on
acts of consciousness alone. But, as Hardy (2013, p. 82) writes, this
interpretation is »crude,« for it entails that a proposition cannot be
true when its truth-maker is not evident to someone. Further, given
that, plausibly, an object does not exist unless it is true that it exists,
this interpretation also commits Husserl to a radical form of idealism,
according to which what is evident to someone determines what
exists (Hardy 2013, p. 82). To avoid these untenable results, Hardy
offers an alternative interpretation of Husserl’s claims; and this is
why Hardy’s interpretation exemplifies what I will call »the argument
from anti-idealism.« On his (2013, p. 91) interpretation, these claims
only indicate that truth is only connected with the ideal possibility of
evidence. That is, what is true is possibly evident, or given as such via
some act of consciousness. Crucially, as Hardy contends, this is part of
the explanation as to why evidence provides justification on Husserl’s
view: since truth is necessarily connected with the ideal possibility
of evidence, evidence is the only indicator that one can have that a
proposition is true. Therefore, as Hardy (2013, pp. 97–98) concludes,
even though evidence does not guarantee truth, evidence justifies
believing that what is evident is true.
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2. Against The Standard View
According to The Standard View, The Corollary Thesis is part of

Husserl’s theory of justification. That is, on The Standard View,
Husserl holds that it is possible to have justified false beliefs. As I have
explained in Section 1, advocates of this view have argued in favor of
this point by arguing that Husserl holds The Fallibilist Thesis. That is,
they have defended this point by arguing that Husserl has an account
of evidence according to which what is evidently given to one can
be false.
We should note that this interpretation has important conse
quences. One of them is that, if it were correct, Husserl would be one
of the first philosophers, if not the first, to allow for justified, but false
beliefs. While most contemporary epistemologists share the intuition
that one can have justified false beliefs, arguably, no philosopher
before the mid-twentieth century holds that position (Dutant 2015).
As such, this feature of Husserl’s theory of justification would make
it, at once, attractive to contemporary epistemologists and of great
historical significance.
On reflection, however, the arguments scholars have given in
support of the view that Husserl endorses The Fallibilist Thesis are
not immune to criticism. In fact, they face at least two criticisms.
One concerns a crucial assumption of the most explicit arguments
to this conclusion. The other concerns the general strategies scholars
have adopted to account for Husserl’s claims about the connection
between evidence and truth. I present these criticisms in the next two
subsections, beginning with the latter.
2.1 Evidence and the truth-connection
A first criticism of the interpretations on which Husserl endorses The

Fallibilist Thesis concerns the ways in which their advocates attempt
to account for his claims about the connection between evidence and
truth. Given that the claim that truth is the correlate of evidence
appears incompatible with The Fallibilist Thesis, we have seen that
advocates of The Standard View either label those passages in which
Husserl appears to endorse this claim as misleading and, at best, as
belonging to an early stage of Husserl’s philosophy, or they interpret
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them as describing the relation between truth and the ideal possibility
of evidence or as restricted to adequate evidence alone.
We should note that, contrary to what defenders of the defla
tionist strategy state, claims about the correlation between evidence
and truth are not confined to the Logical Investigations. We can find
statements to this effect throughout Husserl’s work, including in his
later texts; and these statements are not few and far between (Husserl
1960, p. 10, 60; Husserl 1969, p. 156, 279; Husserl 2002, p. 259;
Husserl 2008, pp. 12–13, 152–153; Husserl 2014, p. 278, 283; Husserl
2019, p. 249, 385, 545). In addition, most of these statements are
concurrent with Husserl’s admission that present inadequate evidence
can be corrected or annulled by future evidence.16
Husserl explicitly connects evidence with truth and true being
right in the Cartesian Meditations. In this text, Husserl (1960, p. 60)
writes that true being has its origin in »[the] synthesis of evident
verification, which presents rightful or true actuality itself«. As he
then immediately continues:
It is clear that truth or the true actuality of objects is to be obtained
only from evidence, and that it is evidence alone by virtue of which
an »actually« existing, true, rightly accepted object of whatever form
or kind has sense for us—and with all the determinations that for us
belong to it under the title of its true nature.
As Husserl explains in this passage, one can meaningfully speak of
objects as being true or as having true being only in virtue of evidence.
In summary, on his view, evidence bears a necessary relation to truth.
These statements provide a strong case against the deflationist
strategy. Since they unambiguously show that Husserl does not only
connect truth and evidence in his earlier texts and then changes his
mind about this, should we conclude that the connection between
truth and evidence only concerns the relation between truth and the
ideal possibility of evidence, as Hardy contends, or that it is restricted
to adequate evidence alone, as Pietersma maintains? Although there
is a grain of truth in what these scholars have written about the
topic, the answer to this question is negative. Pietersma is correct
that, at least in his later texts, Husserl takes some kind of truth and
true being as the correlate of adequate evidence. Husserl also holds
that adequate evidence is never attainable in perceptual experience,
16 See, in particular, what Husserl writes in 1969, p. 156.
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and that some kind of truth and true being serve as ideal norms
regulating our epistemic endeavors (Husserl 2001, p. 539; Husserl
1960, p. 12; Husserl 2019, pp. 237–238, 446). But this is not the whole
story. Contrary to what Hardy and Pietersma argue, textual evidence
indicates that, at the time when Husserl insists on the unattainability
of adequate evidence in perceptual experience, he continues to connect
cases of inadequate evidence with truths of some other kind.
We find one of the clearest passages that illustrate Husserl’s
distinction between these two kinds of truth in First Philosophy.
More precisely, in this text, Husserl claims that to each moment of
the course of perceptual experience corresponds a relative truth. In
his words,
Though the possibility be perpetually present that what counted for us
as existing reality could turn out to be mere semblance, yet with this
semblance the matter is not simply at an end, and our continuously
advancing experience brings to the fore, in a continuously advancing
correction, a relative truth (relative Wahrheit), one that, moreover,
cannot in principle claim final validity because in principle there
belongs to it an open possibility of further correction. But as a relative
truth it can be placed into a graded series of relative truths; it can count
as an approximation and an ever-better approximation of a finally
valid but itself unattainable truth. (Husserl 2019, pp. 251–252/Husserl
1996, pp. 47–48)17
As the quoted passage indicates, there are at least two kinds of truths
according to Husserl. One of these kinds is a truth whose validity is
final; that is, closed to future correction and improvement. As Husserl
explains in the passage, this kind of truth is, however, unattainable
in perceptual experience. Following Husserl, let us call this kind of
truth »absolute truth.« At the same time, Husserl introduces another
kind of truth in the passage; that is, relative truth. In contrast to
absolute truth, relative truth is a truth whose validity is never final
and, as such, it is always open to future correction and improvement.
Indeed, as Husserl explains, each relative truth has a certain horizon;
and it can undergo extreme revisions as a consequence of the expan
sion of its horizon.18 As he (1973, p. 311) writes in Experience and
17 We can find analogous statements in other texts, including Husserl 1960, p. 12;
1996, p. 386, 398; 2002, p. 104.

18 One of earliest texts in which Husserl distinguishes between absolute truth and
relative truth is the text of revision of the 6th Logical Investigation (Husserl 2002,
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Judgment, »actuality and truth do not need to be conclusive since new

horizons can open up.«19 The quoted passage from First Philosophy
also makes clear that Husserl takes each relative truth to succeed to
another in each moment of the course of perceptual experience, and
that he considers each relative truth as an approximation and even as
an ever-better approximation of absolute truth. Absolute truth is then
the idea regulating such continuous progression of approximations.20
It is because each approximation of absolute truth counts as a truth,
although only as one of a relative kind, that the latter governs the
former; or, more exactly, that absolute truth serves as a norm of truth.
Now, Husserl’s characterization of absolute truth comes very
close to that of adequate evidence and his characterization of relative
truth comes very close to that of inadequate evidence. Further, as
I have extensively explained in this subsection, Husserl holds that
evidence bears some necessary relation to truth. These three points
give support to a rather straightforward interpretation of Husserl’s
view about the connection between evidence and truth, according to
which each kind of truth is the correlate of some kind of evidence.
More precisely, on this interpretation, absolute truth is the correlate of
adequate evidence, and relative truth is the correlate of inadequate evi
dence.
What should we then make of The Fallibilist Thesis? If the
above-outlined interpretation persuades us, we should think that it
is misleading, if not misguided, to say that Husserl endorses it. On
his view, what is evidently given never fails to be true, at least in
a relative sense. How can we then read those statements that have
been taken to support The Fallibilist Thesis? As I have argued, each
relative truth is valid only respective to some moment in the course
of experience and, so, always open to correction by future better
approximations to absolute truth.21 This makes clear that the relation
between inadequate evidence and truth is compatible with those
par. 60). In it, he describes absolute truths as ›ideal‹ and ›irrevocable‹ and he calls
relative truths »empirical,” »occasional,” »contingent,” »factual,” and »revocable.« See
also Heffernan (2020) for an informative discussion about the distinction.
19 For the claim that truth may have a horizon see Husserl 1960, p. 279: »We have the
truth then, not as falsely absolutized, but rather, in each case, as within its horizons.«
20 More precisely, absolute truth is what Husserl calls an »idea in the Kantian sense.
« For a recent examination of this notion, see Carta (2022).

21 In support of this point, see also Husserl (2019, p. 251), where he writes that »[t]he
world experienced after a given correction counts as the true world. This truth is and
constantly remains on the march. It too is provisional; it too must perhaps again be
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statements that scholars have put under the label of the fallibility
of evidence. Every case of inadequate evidence always leaves open
the possibility of it being corrected or annulled by some other future
evidence, exactly as every relative truth is open to correction or even
annulment by a future relative truth.
In an appendix to First Philosophy, Husserl not only confirms that
to each moment of the course of experience corresponds an approx
imation to absolute truth, but he also specifies that the process of
justification is precisely the process that guides us toward ever-better
approximations of absolute truth. In his words,
Every actual course that is self-given in the form of a consistent
approximation yields an empirically indubitable truth that is originally
grounded and that is valid as long as no originary motives for doubt
arise. […] And this consistent approximating is the method of justifi
cation (Rechtfertigung). I thus have a practical goal that is a rational
one in the practical sense. Every progress towards approximation
bears within itself—this is something that needs to be emphasized
more sharply—a necessary horizon of future indubitability, a necessary
future expectation that things will remain this way and will bring us
ever closer to the true self. (Husserl 2019, p. 545/Husserl 1996, p. 399)
In the same vein, Husserl (1996, p. 400) characterizes justification
as a process of progressive »verification« (Bewährung); a term that
he uses to indicate the synthetic act »which presents rightful or true
actuality (wahre Wirklichkeit) itself« (Husserl 1960, p. 60/Husserl
1950, p. 95).22 Given that, as scholars have noted, Husserl holds that
justification depends only on evidence, these passages further support
the proposed alternative interpretation.
The thought that cases of inadequate evidence are connected
to relative truths can not only account for all of those passages in
which Husserl states that truth is the correlate of evidence, but, as
I will further argue in the next subsection, it also accounts for all of
those passages in which Husserl states that evidence can turn out
to be deceptive experience. Moreover, as we will see in Section 3,
overcome, but in every case it can be overcome (and this is how it has always been up
to now) in the form of a new correction and of a newly experienced world that is in
concordance with itself. [….] A world is there in a perpetually relative truth, but yet in
relative truth it is knowable.«
22 As Breyer (2010, p. 44) notes, the opposite of »Bewährung« is »Entwährung«; that
is, the synthetic act that qualifies previously held intentions concerning objectual
determinations as false.
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this thought explains why, on Husserl’s view, evidence is necessary

and sufficient for the justification of belief. Thus, the alternative
to The Standard View that I advance in this section has all of the
advantages and faces none of the problems of its rival. For this reason,
if defenders of The Standard View prefer to reject the thesis that
there is a connection between truth and evidence or restrict their
correlation in some way, then they should explain why this alternative
interpretation fails, despite its greater explanatory power.
2.2 The incompatibility of metaphysical realism and the

phenomenological perspective
In this subsection, I level another criticism against The Standard View.

This criticism concerns the argument from illusion and hallucination,
which, as we have seen, is a popular argument in support of the
interpretations on which Husserl endorses The Fallibilist Thesis. As
I explain in this subsection, the criticism is that the argument rests
on metaphysical realist assumptions that are incompatible with a
phenomenological perspective.
For simplicity, I will focus on Berghofer’s version of the argument
from illusion and hallucination. However, what I write about his
version of the argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to Hopp’s version,
as well. We can articulate Berghofer’s version as follows. For starters,
on Husserl’s view:
P1. All originary presentive intuitions are evidence.
P2. Illusions and hallucinations are originary presentive intuitions.
It follows from (P1) and (P2) that:
C1. Illusions and hallucinations are evidence.
At the same time, Berghofer seems to think that a further claim holds
true; that is:
P3. At least some illusions and hallucinations are non-veridical
perceptual experiences.
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Therefore, by (C1) and (P3):

C2. At least some non-veridical perceptual experiences are evidence.
This conclusion supports The Fallibilist Thesis: if it is the case that
non-veridical perceptual experience is a source of evidence, then what
is evidently given in perceptual experience can be false. So, Husserl
should embrace The Fallibilist Thesis if the argument is sound.
It is clear that the argument is valid: if its premises are true, then
its conclusion must also be true. Further, the argument’s premises
are in line with our pre-theoretical intuitions and today’s dominant
philosophical sensibility. The problem with the argument is (P3):
while highly intuitive, the thought that illusion and hallucination are
types of non-veridical experience presupposes a realist metaphysics,
which appears not to square well with Husserl’s phenomenology.
Let us consider an illustrative example to make this point.
Imagine that, as I look outside of a window, I undergo the perceptual
experience of a man standing inside the shop in front of my house.
Imagine that the experience I undergo fulfills my empty intention that
a man is standing inside there. On Husserl’s theory of justification, my
experience provides evidence and, thereby, justifies my belief that a
man is standing inside there. Suppose, however, that my experience
is illusory: the figure I have an experience of is not a person, but a
mannequin instead. I however lack access to this fact about how the
world is; it is a fact that, at this time, is beyond my grasp.
In this example, we can accurately describe my perceptual experi
ence as a non-veridical experience only if we presuppose a metaphys
ical realist notion of truth on which what is true can depend on facts
beyond one’s grasp; or, more precisely, only if we assume that truth-
makers can be mind-independent; that is, independent from one’s acts
of consciousness. Only on this assumption we can characterize the
content of my perceptual experience as false and, so, my experience
as non-veridical. Crucially, however, metaphysical realism is one of
the views that Husserl explicitly wants phenomenology to overcome.
This should not come as a surprise. In the current debate about
whether Husserl espouses a conjunctivist or disjunctivist theory of
perception, scholars have explicitly argued that Husserl rejects this
view (Doyon 2021).23
23 See also Zahavi (2010, 2017) for a defense the view that why metaphysical realism
is incompatible with the phenomenological perspective.
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Then, if we bracket our pre-theoretical intuitions about what is

true and real, we can see that it is a stretch to say that my perceptual
experience of the man is non-veridical at the time it justifies my belief
that a man is standing there. In fact, when considering the example
from a phenomenological rather than a realist perspective, there is no
basis on which to describe my experience of the man as non-veridical;
at least not starting from the access to the world that my acts of
consciousness afford to me. Likewise, there is no basis on which to
characterize the fulfillment of my thought that a man is standing
there as a pseudo-fulfillment. At the time my experience fulfills my
thought, it is a fulfillment like any other.
More generally, from a phenomenological perspective, truth and
falsity are constituted through experience itself. Truth is constituted
through the experience of evident fulfillment; falsity through the
experience of evident contrast (Husserl 1969, p 159). According to
Husserl, however, neither my perceptual experience alone nor the
experience of evident fulfillment is sufficient for guaranteeing a stable
truth or a stable true being. My perceptual experience of the man
standing in the shop in front of my house or the experience of
evident fulfillment of my thought that a man is standing there can,
at some later time, be challenged and become disclosed as deceptive
experience. But as long as this kind of truth or true being remains
unchallenged, it constitutes a relative truth or relative true being.
Crucially, the acknowledgment of the existence of relative truths
hinges on the rejection of the metaphysical realist notion, as truths of
this kind exclusively depend on what is evidently given to one in acts
of consciousness.
Let us note a further, but related point. As we have seen, in
his argument from anti-idealism, Hardy explicitly adopts a realist
interpretation to avoid what he considers the untenable results of a
more literal interpretation of Husserl’s claims about the connection
between evidence and truth. As Hardy contends, we should reject
the interpretation on which evidence bears a necessary connection to
truth insofar as it leads to what he characterizes as a crude form of
idealism, according to which nothing whatsoever is true or exist unless
it is evident to someone.24
24 For a criticism of Hardy’s interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology as an account
of what is true and real that is compatible with metaphysical realist assumptions, see
also Zahavi 2017, pp. 70–76.
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What I have argued in this subsection makes of Husserl’s phe

nomenology a form of idealism. But, whether one likes it or not,
Husserl himself famously characterizes phenomenology as an ideal
ism; specifically, as transcendental idealism (Husserl 1952, p. 151;
Husserl 1960, p. 86).25
Phenomenology is an idealism, but not one of a crude form. A
crucial reason as to why is that, even though perceptual evidence
can at best afford relative truths, Husserl indicates that there are
ways in which we can achieve greater objectivity and stabler truths
even through the evidence that perceptual experience affords to us.
More to the point, Husserl distinguishes between the evidence of an
individual moment in the course of perceptual experience and what
we may call »weighted evidence«; that is, a weightier kind of evidence
confirmed through the course of one’s experience and by other sub
jects (Husserl 2008, p. 343; Husserl 2014, p. 276). Although, on his
view, both kinds of evidence appear sufficient for the justification of
belief, Husserl states that the latter has greater justificatory power
(Husserl 1997, p. 251; Husserl 2014, p. 276).26 Weighted evidence
then provides a higher degree of justification than the evidence of an
individual moment. It remains inadequate evidence and, as such, is
open to annulment. But it can reach a threshold where the possibility
of being annulled becomes almost empty. Once evidence reaches that
threshold, the degree of support it gives to our thoughts is such that it
cannot be disclosed as a possible deceptive experience.27
Relatedly, Husserl also states that while the former kind can
suffice for ordinary endeavors, it is the latter, weightier kind of
evidence that we require in philosophy and other more rigorous types
25 In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl (1960, p. 86) famously writes that »[c]arried
out with this systematic concreteness, phenomenology is eo ipso ›transcendental
idealism,’ though in a fundamentally and essentially new sense […] The proof of this
idealism is therefore phenomenology itself. Only someone who misunderstands either
the deepest sense of intentional method, or that of transcendental reduction, or per
haps both, can attempt to separate phenomenology from transcendental idealism.« For
clear examinations of Husserl’s transcendental idealism, see Bernet 2004 and Zahavi
2010, 2017.
26 Zahavi makes an analogous point. As he (2017, p. 75) writes, »[u]ltimately, mere
intuitive givenness doesn’t settle questions of existence and reality. We also need to
consider the issue of rational coherence and intersubjective confirmation.«
27 Zahavi also agrees with me on this point. As he (2017, p. 75) writes, »for Husserl
it would make no sense to suppose that an object meeting the strong condition of
ultimate, intersubjective confirmation could still prove to be unreal.«
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of inquiry, such as scientific inquiry (Husserl 1960, p. 12). As Husserl

puts it in the Cartesian Meditations, in our everyday activities, we
can rest content, even if the evidence and truths we possess are only
relative; that is, those afforded to us by an individual moment in
the course of perceptual experience. But rigorous scientific inquiry
demands weighted evidence. Weighted fulfillment is then the kind
of fulfillment we strive for when we are reflectively oriented toward
confirming our thoughts, or when we launch an inquiry into how
things stand.
2.3 An alternative to The Standard View
In Subsection 2.1, I have argued that the existing defenses of The

Standard View largely neglect Husserl’s distinction between absolute
truth and relative truth and, as a consequence, fail to offer adequate
accounts of Husserl’s claims about the connection between evidence
and truth. I have then advanced an alternative interpretation of these
claims. On my view, Husserl espouses a straightforward account
about the connection between evidence and truth, according to which
absolute truth is the correlate of adequate evidence, and relative
truth is the correlate of inadequate evidence. I have argued on this
basis that, contrary to what defenders of The Standard View hold, it
is misleading to say that Husserl endorses The Fallibilist Thesis. In
Subsection 2.2, I have also leveled a criticism toward the most explicit
arguments for the thought that Husserl endorses The Fallibilist Thesis.
As I have argued, these arguments fail as they rest on a metaphysical
realist notion of truth that is ultimately incompatible with Husserl’s
For these reasons, I submit that we should not agree with, or
even acquiesce to, those interpretations on which Husserl endorses
The Fallibilist Thesis. If even inadequate evidence bears a necessary
connection to relative truth, then The Fallibilist Thesis is at least
misleading. Surely, what is evidently given to one can at some later
time be corrected or annulled. But this does not mean that what is
given to one in cases of evidence can be false at the time when it is
evidently given. Like the counterpart notion of truth, the notion of
falsity featuring in The Fallibilist Thesis does not square well with the
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For the same reasons, Husserl does not hold The Corollary Thesis.
If evidence guarantees the attainment of a relative truth and evidence
alone justifies belief, then justification also guarantees some kind of
truth; neither an absolute truth, nor some truth beyond one’s reach,
but a relative truth.
On this basis, we should conclude that Husserl is far from
thinking that evidence justifies belief despite its fallibility. Rather, we
can at most say that, on Husserl’s view, evidence justifies belief even
though it only affords a relative truth, a truth that is open to correction
and annulment in the course of experience. The crucial distinction
within Husserl theory of justification is then that between relative
truth and absolute truth and, thereby, between relative justification
and absolute justification.
3. Why evidence justifies belief
Advocates of The Standard View have argued that, on Husserl’s view,

evidence justifies belief, despite lacking a connection to truth. As we
have seen in Subsection 1.2, Pietersma argues that inadequate evidence
is trustworthy even if what it gives to one can be false. Pietersma does
not give us a positive argument as to why that is the case. Instead,
he offers a negative argument to that conclusion based on Husserl’s
rejection of skepticism. Pietersma’s reasoning is, roughly, that Husserl
must hold that inadequate evidence suffices to justify belief despite its
fallibility; for, if he did not, he would then be forced to embrace some
form of skepticism about perceptual experience, which is a view he
in fact strongly opposes. Similarly, Hardy contends that, on Husserl’s
view, evidence justifies belief even if it is fallible. Hardy comes to this
conclusion because, as he argues, evidence justifies belief in virtue of
the necessary connection between truth and the ideal possibility of
evidence. Somewhat more precisely, his argument runs as follows:
given that every truth can be evidently given to one, evidence is an
indication that what it gives to one is true. Therefore, evidence suffices
to provide justification for the corresponding belief.
The interpretation that I have advanced in Section 2 supports an
alternative positive explanation as to why evidence justifies belief on
Husserl’s view. On this interpretation, evidence justifies belief not
because it provides a vague indication of what can be true in one’s
circumstances, but as it successfully puts one in contact with what is
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true, even if only imperfectly so. That is, even inadequate evidence
provides justification, for even such evidence affords one a truth, at
least in a relative sense.
Textual evidence from Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic
gives strong support to this interpretation. The following is one of the
clearest relevant passages:
Only in seeing can I bring out what is truly present in a seeing; I must
make a seeing explication of the proper essence of seeing. Precisely
because it gives its objective affair as the affair itself, any consciousness
that gives something-itself can establish rightness, correctness, for
another consciousness (for a mental meaning process that is merely
unclear or even one that is confused, or for one that is indeed intuitive
but merely prefigurative, or that in some other manner fails to give
the object itself)—and it does so, as we had occasion to describe,
in the form of synthetic adequation to the »affairs themselves«; or
else it establishes incorrectness, in the form of inadequation, as the
evidentness of nullity. Thus the givings of things themselves are the
acts producing evident legitimacy or rightness; they are creative primal
institutings of rightness, of truth as correctness—precisely because, for
the objectivities themselves as existing for us, they are the originally
constitutive acts, originally institutive of sense and being. In like
fashion, original inadequations, as givings of nullity itself, are primal
instituting of falsity, of wrongness as incorrectness (positio changed: of
the trueness of the nullity or incorrectness). (Husserl 1969, p. 159)
The lengthy passage indicates that, on Husserl’s view, evidence
justifies belief because it establishes a truth. In his words, »con
sciousness that gives something-itself can establish rightness, cor
rectness, for another [act of] consciousness, for a mental meaning
process« »[p]recisely because it gives its objective affair as the affair
itself.« As Husserl puts this point in the second half of the passage,
originary presentive intuitions are »creative primal institutings of
rightness, of truth as correctness.« This means that every originary
presentive intuition establishes whether a meaning intention is cor
rect and, as such, determines whether one has a right to hold the
corresponding thought because every such act gives its object as true
being. As I have explained in Section 1, scholars hold either that
originary presentive intuitions are evidence or that they contribute
to the syntheses of fulfillment that ultimately provide evidence.
So, on Husserl’s view, evidence justifies belief because it, or one of
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its essential parts, establishes what is true, even if only relative to

one’s horizon.
4. Conclusion
I have argued in this paper that, on Husserl’s view, evidence bears a

necessary connection to truth and it justifies belief in virtue of this
connection. More precisely, I have noted that Husserl distinguishes
between absolute truth and relative truth; I have argued that he
understands the former as the correlate of adequate evidence and the
latter as the correlate of inadequate evidence; and I have showed why,
on his view, evidence justifies belief because it establishes what is true,
even if provisionally so. In this way, I have advanced a story alternative
to the widely endorsed Standard View; a story that has started from an
extensive criticism of the interpretations on which Husserl’s evidence
is fallible.
Husserl’s theory of justification is nevertheless compatible with
at least some of the intuitions we commonly take to motivate a
fallibilist picture. Even more, although Husserl holds that evidence
always affords some kind of truth, his account arguably integrates
fallibilist elements, and it may even be considered as a fallibilist
account. More to the point, if by the term ›fallibilism‹ we refer to
the view that at least some kinds of beliefs can never be conclusively
justified, then Husserl’s theory of justification is clearly a fallibilist
account. The beliefs we acquire through perceptual experience never
afford an absolute truth; they never afford a truth whose validity
is final. So, regardless of how good our evidence is in support of
some perceptual belief, that evidence is never so good as to provide
conclusive justification. Such evidence remains inadequate evidence
and, as such, is open to annulment, even when the evidence is as
weighty as possible.
Acknowledgements. I would like to warmly thank Philip Berghofer,

Gregor Bös, Maxime Doyon, Walter Hopp, and Andrea Marchesi
for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper. Its final version
benefitted greatly from their help. A special thanks goes to Francesco
Praolini for arousing my interests in epistemology and our stimu
lating discussions on the topic, as well as for his feedback on the
manuscript. Lastly but not leastly, I would like to thank Daniele de
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Santis for his careful and attentive editorial work. My work on this
chapter was supported, first, by the University of Fribourg and, then,
by KU Leuven and the FWO (Research Foundation Flanders).
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ples.« In: Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology. Daniel Dahlstrom, Andrea
Elpidorou and Walter Hopp (Eds.). New York: Routledge, pp. 180–202.
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logischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente
der Wissenschaften, Hua V. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1960): Cartesian Meditations. Trans. by Dorion Cairns. The
Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1966): Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und
Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926, Hua XI. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1969): Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. by Dorion
Cairns. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund (1973): Experience and Judgment Investigations in a Genealogy
of Logic. Trans. by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Husserl, Edmund (1996): Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil, Hua VIII.
Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publisher.
Husserl, Edmund (1997): Thing and Space. Lectures of 1907. Trans. by Richard
Rojcewicz. Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, Edmund (2001a): Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis.
Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans. by Anthony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publisher.
Husserl, Edmund (2001b): Logical Investigation. Volume I. Trans. by. John N.
Findlay. London and New York, NY: Routledge.
Husserl, Edmund (2001c): Logical Investigation. Volume II. Trans. by. John N.
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Husserl, Edmund (2001d): Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1927,
Hua XXXII. Boston, Dordrecht, London: Kluwer Academic Publisher.
Husserl, Edmund (2002): Logische Untersuchungen. Ergänzungsband. Erster
Teil. Entwürfe zur Umarbeitung der VI. Untersuchung und zur Vorrede für
die Neuauflage der Logischen Untersuchungen (Sommer 1913), Hua XX/1.
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Husserl, Edmund (2008): Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge. Lectures
1906/07. Trans. by Claire Ortiz Hill. Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, Edmund (2014): Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological
Philosophy First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. by
Daniel Dahlstrom. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
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from the Manuscripts (1920–1925). Trans. by Sebastian Luft and Thane M.
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Rational Intuition. Linda Osbeck and Barbara Held (Eds.). Cambridge: Cam
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Pietersma, Henry (1977): »Husserl’s Views on the Evident and the True.
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De Gruyter.
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Jacobs and Filip Mettens (Eds.). Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 71–92.
Zahavi, Dan (2017): Husserl’s Legacy. Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Tran
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Teorema: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 34 (3), pp. 57–78.
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Rosemary Jane Rizo–Patron de Lerner1
First Philosophy and Ultimate Foundations:

Revisiting Husserl’s Cartesian Way
The idea of foundation that is at work in Husserl’s philosophy […] is

primarily understood out of the pathos of phenomenology. […] This
pathos is no other than the universal storm of the passion of thinking
[…]. (Fink 1966, pp. 162–163 [11])
The question of whether philosophical cognition is grounded in
concepts (logic) or intuitions (evidence) remains a crucial point of
contention between phenomenological and neo-Kantian modes of
thought (Crowell 2001, p. 33)
[…] the systematically strict grounding and working out of this first
of all genuine philosophies is the incessant precondition for every meta
physics and other philosophy »that will be able to make its appearance
as a science« (Husserl 1976, p. 8 [xxii])2
It is indeed worthwhile to highlight the continuous effectiveness of
Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in shedding light on current
epistemological and ontological problems. It is also very helpful to
insert its approach within more familiar philosophical arguments
and debates. However, this advantage should not induce Husserlian
scholars to lose sight of the temporal and historical horizons of the
problems that accounted for the genesis of both its method and idea
of philosophy. The advantage of hindsight is not to be slighted; it may
prevent sedimented yet forgotten assumptions from the risk of sliding
into possible anachronistic interpretations. Hence in what follows I
will exhume some of the former debates that surround the question
regarding Husserl’s »Cartesian way« (Kern 1977, pp. 126–134). Next,
1 https://ORCID.ORG/0000-0001-6634-4437.
2 The italics are mine. When available, the page numbers of English translations of
Husserl’s works are given between square brackets. When necessary, I have altered
the published translations without notice; this is also the case with other references.
Unless otherwise noted, all other translations are mine.
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I will highlight two terms—with different meanings and goals—that

Husserl uses to refer to the problem of »foundation« (Begründung and
Fundierung) in his overarching idea of a universal philosophy, and
reiterate the special site that »transcendental phenomenology« occu
pies within it as first philosophy. I will then contrast the Cartesian
Meditation’s train of thought with that of Descartes’ Meditationes
(1960), and conclude by briefly addressing Husserl’s stand on »first
philosophy« and »ultimate foundations«—especially with regard to
the mostly misunderstood roles he assigns to Begründung and
Fundierung, to their differences, and to their necessary connection.
1. An »ancient staging of an ancient theater«
Just as throughout his work, Husserl considered himself the heir

and restorer of the classical Greeks’ (and notably Plato’s) »histori
cal« decision in favor of a rational life—a decision that gives birth
to Western philosophy and science—he also continually returned to
Descartes, who at the dawn of the modern era gave new momentum to
the »philosophical form of existence« known to the ancients, »freely
giving […] one’s whole life its rule through pure reason or through
philosophy« (Husserl 1954, p. 5 [8]). However, even before his
death in 1938 and during most of the 20th century, an estrange
ment between his transcendental phenomenology and mainstream
philosophical debates emerged (Boehm 1982, pp. 13–20). Indeed,
Husserl’s project was disparaged as an alleged »rejuvenation« of
the so-called »obsolete« foundational and totalizing philosophical
discourse inaugurated in the 17th century by René Descartes (Lerner
2010, pp. 19–30). The bankruptcy of the modern theoretical ideal
of a prima philosophia associated with the concept of ultimate
foundations was decried as an »ancient staging of an ancient the
ater« (Granel 1976, pp. v–vii). Different traditions coincided in dis
missing the »Cartesian-Husserlian philosophy of subjectivity« for
its »solipsistic and incommunicable« evidences and/or for its »logo
centric foundationalism« (Lyotard 1989, pp. 738–750).
Regarding the concept of ultimate foundations, Husserl’s views
were assimilated to Descartes’ method laid out in his 1628 Regulae
ad directionem ingenii (Descartes 1966). The ultimate ground, which
was to be reached by an analytic-regressive (»reductive,« »reflex
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First Philosophy and Ultimate Foundations: Revisiting Husserl’s Cartesian Way
ive,« »resolving«) process, was held to be an immediate, »absolutely

simple« region, transparent to an intuitus mentis, providing the guar
antee of its own validity. Additionally, it was conceived as lending
support to all that could be derived thereof by means of a synthetic-
progressive (»constructive,« »compositive«) process toward »total
ization.« This model fell into crisis during the 20th century (Angern
1986, pp. 169–179; Waldenfels 1982, pp. 21–38; Lerner 1992, pp.
193–216) and was definitely discarded. In different fields—speculative
and scientific—it was convincingly shown that there is no way of
determining an axiomatic, irreducible, autarchic, and ultimate domain
of elementary cognitions. No definitive closures on both sides of the
foundational process (»reducibility« and »integrality«) were found,
but rather only open infinities. Notwithstanding, the legitimacy
of foundational undertakings was not abandoned, only modified
and replaced, so to speak, by provisional zones of »detention« in
ever-renewed rational processes (Ladrière 1976, pp. 171–191). Indeed,
philosophy’s »ancient« rational character has never been abandoned
since Socrates (Husserl 2002b, pp. 50ff.). As an articulated discourse
it has always aimed at establishing causes or providing reasons
(founding, grounding) for cognitions in general,3 albeit alternatively
emphasizing different procedures or strategies.
Likewise, first philosophy had its birth certificate in Aristotle’s
Metaphysics as the highest theoretical science whereby Wisdom
(σοφία) was held to be the knowledge of the primary causes and first
principles of all branches of being (Aristotle 1975, I, 2, 982a4–
983a25).4 Husserl retrieved its Cartesian renewal as a radically
founded »rigorous science« (on apodictic and evident grounds), also
responsible for universally founding the entire spectrum of what is
knowable. He assigned transcendental phenomenology, as first phi
losophy, the task of providing the nascent idea of universal philosophy
with its »ultimate grounding« (see § 3, below). He forged its rudi
ments early on with his logical essentialism and correlative »eide
tic« and »categorial« intuitions. These tools helped him demolish both
the positivist interpretation of logic and the exact sciences on the one
3 According to Aristotle, cause is reason (λόγος), for it renders intelligible the factual
occurrence of things as well as their rational necessity (1937, I, 1, 639b, 15–25; 1975, I,
2, 71b 10–15).
4 Aristotle deemed that Wisdom consisted in the most universal, difficult, accurate,
desirable, and superior knowledge.
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hand (Husserl 1975) and the naturalistic reification of consciousness,

ideas, and reason on the other (Husserl 1987, pp. 8–41 [71–147]).5
Next ensued his so–called »transcendental turn«—whereby Kant’s
influence was felt in his search for the »promised land« of rational
clarity by means of a »critique of reason, a critique of logical and prac
tical reason, of any valuing reason whatsoever« (Husserl 2002b, p.
493 [445]). From then on, Husserl identified Descartes as being
responsible for a renewed »Platonism« that inspired him to craft his
first philosophy as an Arbeitsphilosophie (and as an »elementary gram
mar«) for his idea of a universal philosophy. Later on, especially since
his genetic period, both Plato and Descartes appeared side by side in
his texts. He considered both to be the promoters of an absolutely
founded and founding knowledge with the practical goal of an ethical
existence capable of revolutionizing the way of life of a new, authen
tically spiritual humanity (Husserl 1964, p. 329 [283]). Husserl was
convinced that this agreed with their Socratic impulse against sophis
tic skepticism (Husserl 2002b, p. 313). In his view, both thinkers rep
resented the »ethical-cognitive« motive behind first philosophy. Yet
as he explained, »[t]he specifically ethical side of Plato’s philosophical
ethos« was indeed lost with Descartes’ theoretical philosophy. How
ever, Husserl believed that the latter’s radical ethical-cognitive turn
toward the subject—as a regulative archetype for the »beginner
philosopher« (Husserl 2002b, p. 58)—could still »truly be interpreted
ethically, or (as) […] ethically grounded« (Husserl 2002b, p. 314). It
indicated the »point of entry« (Eingangspforte) for one to choose and
undertake a radical »revolution« (Umsturz), overturning everything
not justified by itself.
Hence additional reproaches were leveled at Husserl’s transcen
dental phenomenology—i.e., at its claims as first philosophy. Since
modern empiricism, Kant, and 19th century positivism, all references
to ideas, essences, evidence, intellectual intuition (νοεῖν, ἰδεῖν, νοῦς,
etc.), or »material a priori« (Schlick 1969, pp. 20–30), were rejected
with hostility and sarcasm. The »ocean of endless criticism« he
endured (Husserl 2002a, p. 273 [17]) after the »shock aroused by
5 Husserl recognized this ideal sphere »in a truly Platonic sense« (Husserl 2002a, p.
277 [20]) when he saw the distinction between what a Vorstellung »means« and »what
is contained in it.« Both elements belong to each other, yet neo-Kantians and psy
chologists attacked him both for his »Platonic« or »metaphysical hypostatizations« of
ideas as objects as well as for his »scholastic realism« (Husserl 2002a, p. 282 [25]).
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the ›Platonism‹ advocated« in his Logical Investigations, was only the

fruit of confusions regarding his use of certain terms (such as essences
or »ideas as objects«), which, however, were universally common in
scientific language and logic.6 The interpretation of evidence as »abso
lute or irrelative givenness,« and of a priori essences as having »ulti
mate and permanent validity,« added to his depiction as a dogmatic
intuitionist—a characterization that allegedly contradicted his own
recognition of temporal, historical, and embodied experiences.
His »foundationalism« was even characterized as »fundamental
ism« (Mertens 1996, pp. 19–36 passim). Additionally, the subject as
the site of first philosophy’s »ultimate foundations« was also dispar
aged as »mysticism.« If the need for rational foundation was still felt
by some philosophers (i.e., by Jürgen Habermas or Karl–Otto Apel),
they still required »not having recourse to the Cartesian-Husserlian
philosophy of subjectivity, which can provide as a foundation only
evidences that are suspect since they are ultimately solipsistic, iso
lated« (Lyotard 1989, p. 740).
2. Two directions: Begründung and Fundierung
Husserl put forward two main meanings of philosophical »founda

tions«7 that, broadly speaking, corresponded to two different notions
6 Husserl did not invent »the universal concept of object,« but only »restored« its
logical use: »In this sense the tone-quality c, which is a numerically unique member
of the tonal scale, the number two, in the series of cardinal numbers, the figure in the
ideal world of geometrical constructs […] many different ideal affairs—are ›objects‹.
« »Blindness to ideas« motivated the charges laid at his door: that of »intuitionistic
prejudices« that reintroduced in philosophy Scholastic entities, metaphysical spectres,
etc., »however much, as ›mathematical,’ they owe their high scientific level to the
laying of eidetic foundations« (Husserl 1976, pp. 47–48, 40 [41, 34]).
7 They are grosso modo traceable since his 1891 Philosophy of Arithmetic, and more
conspicuously in the two differently oriented volumes of his 1900–1901 Logical

Investigations. He neither abandoned nor conflated them, but rather differentiated
them into further higher (or deeper) levels and types. This is particularly true
of Husserl’s intricate and pervasive concept of Fundierung—related to a mereologi
cal »theory of objects« in his third logical investigation (Husserl 1984a, 227–300 [II.
1–46]; Correia 2004; Hopp 2008, etc.). As such, Fundierung has been discussed in a
variety of contexts and directions—among others, regarding the epistemic meanings
of »absolute foundations« and »foundationalism« (Drummond 1990; Hopp 2008,
etc.); the use of Husserl’s Fundierungsmodell for a theory of values or the human
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of »scientific philosophy.« The first, Begründung, inspired by the

objective turn since the scientific revolution and Galileo’s mathema
tizing of physics, develops in a theoretical third-person perspective
and employs deductive-explanatory methods.8 In a non-deprecating
sense, it is positive and dogmatic, and it should be so. Most of 20th
and 21st century cognitive-epistemological endeavors are not only
developed within this view, but assert that this is the only valid
sense of any scientific discourse whatsoever. The second, Fundierung,
already developed in 1894 in the context of his development of a
mereological theory of objects,9 is mostly used by Husserl in his phe
nomenological investigations, later related to Descartes’ subjective
turn and to Kant’s Copernican revolution. It develops within a first-
person perspective and employs descriptive-comprehensive—even
interpretive—methods. Both the objectively and subjectively oriented
methods, in Husserl’s sense, share the demand to acknowledge an
sciences (Rinofner-Kreidl 2013; Cavallaro 2013); or the contentious ways in which

two differing notions of Fundierung (ontological and epistemological) in the third and
sixth logical investigations’ are applied to various phenomena (Nenon 2008), etc.
But more work on the impact of Husserl’s mereological analyses on his specifically
phenomenological investigations, such as that of P. Posada (2014), would be desirable;
the same can be said regarding the distinction between Begründung and Fundierung.
8 Since the Prolegomena to Pure Logic (Husserl 1975), Husserl’s use of Begründung
is related to theoretical inferential procedures grounded on ideal, primary, concepts

and axioms that serve as unmediated premises; but it is also considered insufficient
for an account of the »ultimate foundations« of science. The Geltungsproblem that
these procedures set out can only be solved by bringing them to »epistemological
clarity« (to evidence) through a »phenomenological analysis« of their intuitive sources
(Husserl 1984a, 9 [I, 168]). Husserl holds this view mutatis mutandis until Experience
and Judgment (1939). Yet occasionally he uses Begründung loosely, due to its being
synonymous with terms such as Grundlegung, Fundierung, etc.
9 »See my first review (Jahresbericht über Schriften zur Logik von 1894) Archiv III, p.
225, where I show that I have already fully proven the concept of Fundierung« (Hua
1984a, p. 852; see Husserl 1979, pp. 133–133 [178–179]). In this marginal note to
the third logical investigation of his Handexemplar, Husserl refers to the review of
his »Psychologische Studien zur elementaren Logik,« the first part of which »seeks to
trace the distinction between abstract and concrete contents back to the distinction
between independent and dependent contents, which was previously noticed by
Stumpf,« and the second part to analyze the distinction between »Intuitions and
Repräsentationen« (Husserl 1979, pp. 92–124 [139–170]). Husserl’s mereological
theory is pervasive in his analyses of language (fourth logical investigation), and in
his phenomenological analyses of the structure and intentional functions and modes
of consciousness (from the fifth and sixth logical investigations to his work after the
transcendental turn).
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eidetic dimension of description and an enlarged notion of intuition

(sensible and intellectual, with their respective modalizations).10
Descartes did not distinguish these two different meanings, as
his 1637 Discourse and 1641 Meditationes show. Since his 1628
Regulae he already believed that if philosophy wished to pursue
the path of science, its method had to follow closely certain clear
and distinct rules that had proved fruitful since ancient times by
arithmetic and geometry: »[…] if the method perfectly explains the
usage of intellectual intuition so as not to incur in an error contrary
to what is true, and the means to find deductions to reach the knowl
edge of everything, I believe nothing else is demanded for it to be
complete« (Descartes 1966, pp. 19–20).11 Descartes’ four precepts—
extracted from »true universal mathematics«12—concerned the iden
tification of a unity of »measure,« and a necessary »order.« The first
two coincided with the aforementioned »resolving-analytic« side of
his method toward the clear and distinct intellectual intuition of
philosophical principles,13 the highest of which was the cogito sum.14
The last two, which coincided with the »synthetic-deductive« side
of his philosophical method, purported to lay the firm grounds for
all sciences. 15 The first two precepts’ analytic-reductive process con
10 Sensible intuitions—either originarily presentive as perceptions (Gegenwärtigun
gen) or as their modalizations in memory, expectation, image-consciousness, phan

tasy, and empathy (Vergegenwärtigungen)—are all intuitions of something individual.
Intellectual intuitions, eidetic or categorial, are also presentive of generalia or of higher-
order objectivities (collectiva, disjunctiva, etc.), but founded upon the former (Husserl
1984a, 657–709 [II, 271–294]; Husserl 1976, §§ 1–17).
11 The procedures of »logic, and among mathematics, geometrical analysis and
algebra« were to contribute to his designs (Descartes 1966, pp. 5–10; Descartes 1956,
pp. 11–13), not to the study of the particular branches of mathematics or the premises
of traditional syllogisms.
12 The method’s precepts are: 1) only to accept what is evidently recognized as such,
such that no doubt is possible; 2) to divide difficulties into the simplest parts; 3) to
begin with the simplest and rigorously order them gradually and by degrees toward
more complex knowledge; 4) to enumerate them exhaustively, without omitting
anything (Descartes 1956, p. 12).
13 »By intuition I understand […] the concept formed by pure attentive intelligence,
without any possible doubt, that sprouts from the sole light of reason« (Descartes
1966, p. 14).
14 The cogito sum reflected the mathematical identity between subjective certainty and
objective truth.
15 »[…] I had observed that all the basic principles of the sciences were taken from
philosophy, which itself had no certain ones. It therefore seemed that I should first
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sisted, like Aristotle’s induction (ἐπαγογή), in a dismembering directed

toward the highest principles. But for Descartes, as for Aristotle, its
final target was immediately grasped in intuition (νοῦς) (Aristotle
1960, II, xix, 100b, 5–18), not mediately inferred, or founded. As a
first principle, the cogito sum was posited as unfounded yet founding,
not as a radically subjective achievement, but as a res, »a thing which
thinks« (Descartes 1960, p. 26)—grasped in the third-person perspec
tive as a substantial »little tag-end of the world« (Husserl 1976, p. 63
[24]). The last two precepts matched the Regulae’s deductive process
toward »the knowledge of everything«—toward founded knowledge—
whereby »totality, integrality« was to be restored.16 His method was
thus a metaphysical-mathematical one, serving an epistemological-
ontological project. The first-person perspective was abandoned.
Hence Descartes failed »to make the transcendental turn« (Husserl
1976, p. 63 [23]) by conflating two very distinct foundational pro
cedures—one objectively oriented, the other subjectively oriented.
Regardless, »the Cartesian overthrow and the guiding final idea of an
absolute grounding of science« inspired Husserl’s notion of a radically
subjective Geltungsfundierung.17
In contrast, Kant’s »transcendental critique of experience« first
introduced the distinction between an objectively oriented and a
subjectively oriented foundation, divorcing metaphysics from math
ematics, and marrying it to morals. Indeed, his Critique of Pure Reason
condemned the disastrous influence of mathematics in philosophy,
attempt to establish philosophic principles, […] since this was the most important
thing in the world and the place where precipitation and prejudgment were most
to be feared.« (Descartes 1956, p. 14) This is Descartes’ true method, not the more
celebrated »doubt,« for »he who doubts of many things is not wiser than he who
has never thought about them« (Descartes 1966, p. 5). But his method did require
that he »free his mind« from the »false opinions« that he had previously acquired
(Descartes 1956, p. 14).
16 By deduction, »we understand every necessary conclusion drawn from other
known things with certainty. We had to do that, for we know most things with certainty
but without evidence, provided only that they be deduced from true and known
principles by means of a continuous movement and without interruption. […] In
addition, deduction does not require as intuition an actual evidence, but it borrows
somehow its certainty from memory. Thus, […] propositions that are immediate
consequence of first principles are sometimes known by intuition, sometimes by
deduction; regarding the first principles themselves, they are only known by intuition,
and on the contrary their distant conclusions only by deduction« (Descartes 1966, pp.
16–17).
17 We will return to this notion below.
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whereby the latter attempted to imitate the former’s method (Kant

1974, p. A713/B741–A738–B766 [pp. 630–643]). Philosophy and
mathematics were essentially opposed in his view. Not having recog
nized this caused modern rationalism to degenerate into philosophical
dogmatism. In his view, philosophy was conceptual and discursive,
whereas mathematics was intuitive and exact—apt to be expounded in
axioms, definitions, and demonstrations. They differed in that »Philo
sophical cognition is rational cognition from concepts, mathematical
cognition that from the construction of concepts. But to construct
a concept means to exhibit a priori the intuition corresponding to
it« (Kant 1974, A713/B741). Furthermore, »Philosophical cognition
[…] considers the particular only in the universal, but mathematical
cognition considers the universal in the particular, indeed even in the
individual, yet nonetheless a priori and by means of reason« (Kant
1974, A714/B742). This essential distinction inspired Husserl’s differ
entiated—subjectively and objectively oriented—notions of scientific
philosophy and rational grounding.18
Husserl’s idea of philosophy and his notions of first philosophy
and ultimate foundations were thus both inspired by Descartes and
Kant, yet he drew elements from Descartes’ project to criticize Kant,
and vice versa. Kant’s transcendental critique presupposed a merely
formal conception of understanding and reason, and reduced intuition
to its purely sensible form, albeit recognizing in it a purely formal,
a priori structure. He displaced Descartes’ ontological mind-body
dualism toward that of the untenable phenomena-noumena dualism,
and fell into a μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος by assuming formulae and
hypotheses drawn from Newton’s mathematical physics to be the
a priori constitutive (transcendental) structures and functions of sci
entific experiences, serving as their »conditions of possibility.« But
Kant’s transcendental critique, and his distinction between philosophy
and mathematics, helped Husserl to abandon Descartes’ conflation
and objectification of the concept of »ultimate foundations.« Kant’s
18 »It is only a misleading prejudice to believe that the methods of the historically
given a priori sciences, all of which are exclusively exact sciences of ideal objects,
must serve forthwith as models for every new science particularly for our transcen
dental phenomenology—as though there could be eidetic sciences of but one single
methodical type, that of ›exactness.‹ Transcendental phenomenology, as a descriptive
science of essence, belongs however to a fundamental class of eidetic sciences totally
different from the one to which the mathematical sciences belong« (Husserl 1976, p.
141 [169–170]).
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Transcendental Theory of Method (A708/B736–A831/B859) inspired

Husserl’s own conviction that first philosophy had to examine itself
and submit itself to a »critique of transcendental experience« in order
to examine its foundational claims regarding the scope and reach of its
apodictic evidences.19
Since his 1891 Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl expresses his
dissatisfaction regarding 18th and 19th centuries attempts to »under
stand« and carry out a unified foundation of mathematics, which
was at odds with its wondrous development of »operative tech
niques« (Husserl 1970, pp. 289–295 [305–311]). Two antithetical
rational demands were involved: it had to clarify the logical nature
of its essential principles and concepts; and it had to return to
the ground where the concept of number first emerges. He first
endeavored to derive the former from the latter, but the psychological
foundation of the arithmetica universalis was impracticable idealiter
(Husserl 1970, p. 221 [233]). He quickly understood that both types
of foundation were radically distinct, and yet they had to be connected
somehow. He thus delimited the region of pure mathesis universalis,
dissociated from psychologism, and proceeded to demarcate the
material from the formal a priori. Entirely on the other side, he
also struggled to clarify the relationship between »the subjectivity
of knowing« and »the objectivity of the known« (Husserl 1975, p.
Avii [2]); Husserl 1984a, p. A9 [169]), the result of which was
the »breakthrough of phenomenology« (Husserl 1975, p. Bviii [3]).
Husserl’s two types of foundations were accordingly born from his
attempt to demarcate clearly and yet articulate successfully a double
rational demand.
3. Husserl’s two antithetical rational demands
The first rational demand, inspired by Bolzano’s 1837 Wissenschaft

slehre,20 was to develop a »theory of science« devoted to the universal
foundation (Begründung) of all sciences in an a priori analytic domain,
from which they would draw their order, lawfulness, and ultimate
19 See below, § 3.
20 Many other influences were of course involved, from Leibniz, Herbart, and Kant,
to Lotze, etc.. Husserl also acknowledges Aristotle’s Organon (Husserl 1975, §§ 58–
60).
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systematic connections. It was supposed to have a »mathematical

form.« Among its specific tasks (Husserl 1975, §§ 67–69) it had to
establish the formal categories of meaning and formal objects, the laws
and theories founded upon these categories, and finally, a »theory of
the formation of all possible formal theories,« the practical realization
of which already existed as the mathematical »theory of mani
folds« (Husserl 1975, §§ 69–70). Regarding such a »formal theory of
science« (with its »analytic laws«), Husserl held that it had to be com
plemented by a »material theory of science« (and its »synthetic laws«)
constituted by regional ontologies that grouped the categories of dif
ferent types of objectivities (nature, spirit, etc.). As »epistemological
clues,« these pointed to the second type of foundation, which he later
connected with the »ontology of the life-world« (Husserl 1954).
A cursory view of Husserl’s phenomenology and his mathemat
ical interests may explain why it was so quickly assimilated to
Descartes’ conflation of two distinct foundational endeavors. Yet
Husserl’s pure logic, as a »theory of theories,« was only a positive
science resembling mathematics or natural sciences (Husserl 2002a,
§ 5). Operating with concepts and laws, or building systems and the
ories, it was not able to clarify how ideal and objective contents »in
themselves« can be thought, expressed, in subjective experiences
(becoming »for us«) without thereby losing their objective validity.
Although both orientations were considered complementary, the task
that Husserl gradually assigned to transcendental phenomenology as
first philosophy was acknowledged as the proper task of the »radical
philosopher«: the one in charge of »ultimately founding« (justifying)
the validity of our cognitions (Husserl 1975, pp. 255–256 [I, 159–
160]; Husserl 1984a, pp. 11–12 [I, 169–170]).21
21 Husserl’s project was meant to combine both the objectively and the subjectively
oriented approaches, as in his Göttingen lectures on logic, theory of knowledge,

and theory of science (1910/11, 1912/13, 1913/14, 1917/18), which took a genetic
turn in his 1920/21, 1923 and 1925/26 lectures on transcendental logic (known
as the Lectures on Passive and Active Synthesis). The latter explored formal logic’s
Fundierung by referring it back to intellectual (constitutive) activities, and deeper
still to sensible (pre-constitutive) passive associative processes. Thus in his view the
grounding »evidences« of logic as an objective, validating discipline of inferential
procedures (Begründungen) have to be ultimately founded (fundiert) by referring them
to a transcendental logic, and the latter to a transcendental aesthetics. His 1929
Formal Logic and Transcendental Logic (1974) is an introduction to the development of
both objectives, whereas his 1939 Experience and Judgment, edited and posthumously
published by L. Landgrebe, offers the »genealogy« of logic in experience. Besides its
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The second, subjectively-oriented sense of foundation

(Fundierung) began to be reshaped around 1902–1903, after Husserl’s
decision to undertake a radical »critique of reason,« which led to his
transcendental turn and to his nascent »idea of philosophy.« In 1906
he clearly stated that such a critique must embrace every sphere of
reason, including the theoretical, practical, and evaluative in general
(Husserl 1984b, pp. 442–447 [490–497]). This critique was to have a
central role in shaping philosophy as a »universal and ›rigorous‹ sci
ence in a radical sense« (Husserl 1987, pp. 6–8 [78–79]; Husserl
1952b, p. 139 [406]).22 In 1913, he already viewed »transcendental
eidetic phenomenology« as having to »claim to be ›first‹ philosophy
and to offer the means for carrying out every possible critique of
reason« (Husserl 1976, p. 136 [148]).23
Thus »transcendental phenomenology,« subjectively oriented, is
for Husserl first philosophy. As an »elementary grammar« developed
in the manner of a radical »self–meditation« (Selbstbesinnung)
(Husserl 1959, pp. 3–4 [207–208]), it is called to lay bare the
apodictic »ultimate foundations« upon which such an »idea of philos
ophy« has to be built (Husserl 1952b, p. 139 [406])—an idea compris
ing the entire universe of what is humanly cognizable or experienced.24
However, Husserl realized what was at risk with the regressive
inquiry to the first-person perspective. It led him to delve deeper, to
abandon the naïve standpoint, and to »show the way to the mysterious
solitudes in which one day the sphinx of knowledge must unveil its
application in the realm of logic, transcendental phenomenology’s notion of »ultimate

foundations« (and Fundierung) is overall basically the same: to take the constituted
world and its intentional objects as »transcendental clues« for regressive (subjective)
intentional analyses.
22 Husserl was initially inspired by the Leibnizian ideal of a »genuine universal ontol
ogy« as the systematic unity of all conceivable a priori sciences (formal and material),
called upon to provide all positive and factual sciences with their positive (objective)
foundations (Husserl 1994c, p. 206; Husserl 1968, pp. 296–297 [175–176]). But since
1906, his idea of philosophy transcended the scope of mere positive sciences.
23 The introduction to Ideas I had announced that the aim of a third volume, which he
did not write in the same year as the first two (1912), was to present »transcendental
phenomenology« as first philosophy (Husserl 1976, 8 [xxii]). This task was not
dropped. Husserl’s 1922/23 lectures on Introduction to Philosophy—which include
the London Lectures (Husserl 2002b)—and the 1923/24 lectures on First Philosophy
(Husserl 1956; Husserl 1959) follow the same path that leads to the 1929 Paris
Lectures, and the 1931 Cartesian Meditations (Husserl 1950).
24 See note 27 below.
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riddles […] the way to the mothers of knowledge, […] in terms of its
ultimate origins« (Husserl 1995 p. 335 [352]).25 For philoso
phy’s »ultimate foundations« were not to be found in a psychological
subject as a »real object within the world,« but rather in its »tran
scendental« experiences as a »subject for this world,« intentionally cor
related with it thanks to its constitutive meaning-giving and validating
functions (Leistungen) (Husserl 1952b, pp. 146, 139 [413, 406]).
Indeed, subjects not only experience the world, but also grasp them
selves as human beings, »rational animals,« »persons« among other
inner-worldly entities. The basic experiential function is expressed as
the »general thesis of the natural attitude« (Husserl 1976, § 30)—the
basic positing of the »world as always there« (immer daseiende Welt),
and of us as entities within it. It is the underlying conviction of every
other theoretical, practical, or valuing »position-taking« (Stellung
nahme). However, the ἐποχή strips subjectivity of its entitative char
acter and unveils its underlying »universal a priori of correlation,
« namely, intentionality (Husserl 1976, §§ 31–32; Husserl 1954,
§ 46). Transcendental reduction—the »method of retrospective inter
rogation«—allows the »ascent from mundane subjectivity […]
to ›transcendental subjectivity‹« (Husserl 1952b, p. 140 [407]),
namely, to purely lived first-person experiences. This method leads to
intuitive descriptions of the eidetic structures, functions, and modes
of transcendental experiences, descriptions that are undertaken to
ensure the universality of this new philosophical enterprise conceived
as »first philosophy«: the »indispensable precondition for any meta
physics and other sort of philosophy—›that will be able to come for
ward as science‹« (Husserl 1976, p. 8 [xxii]).
He reiterated this idea until his 1931 Cartesian Meditations. But
to be complete, first philosophy had to include a critique of »tran
scendental self-experience« to be carried out in two stages. By the
end of the text, he acknowledged that he had only developed the
first stage, since it was »still infected by a certain naïveté (the naïveté
of apodicticity).« He also admitted that he had not carried out the
25 Husserl uses the words of Goethe’s Mephistopheles to describe these

depths: »Enthroned sublime in solitude are goddesses. Around them is no place,
still less any time. […] To speak of them is embarrassment. […] Nothing will you see
in interminably empty farness, the step you take, you will not hear, nothing firm find
where you rest.« Faust’s answers depict Husserl’s resolve: »Just keep on, we want to
fathom it. In your nothing, I hope to find the universe« (Husserl 1995, p. 335 [352]).
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second stage—referring to the »further and ultimate problems of phe

nomenology: those pertaining to its self-criticism, which aims at deter
mining not only the range and limits but also the modes of apodictic
ity« (Husserl 1950, pp. 68, 177–178 [29, 151–152])—but noted that
he had by no means dropped this task.26 It is true that regarding
this »criticism of knowledge« that »leads back ultimately to criticism of
transcendental-phenomenological knowledge (namely, of transcenden
tal experience),« the second stage of Husserl’s program is not devoid
of difficulties. In Husserl’s mind, however, it consisted in an open-
ended task characterized by an asymptotical approach, and in no way
amounted to the absurdities of »endless regresses […] despite the
evident possibility of reiterative transcendental reflections and criti
cisms« (Husserl 1950, p.178 [152]).
4. The Cartesian Meditations and the so-called

»Cartesian way«
As already mentioned, the central role that transcendental phe

nomenology (as first philosophy) has in Husserl’s nascent »idea of
philosophy« (Hua VIII: 3–4 [2019: 207–208]) is to lay bare the
firm evidentiary bases of all sense-giving and validating experiences.
The Cartesian Meditations—in a renewed attempt to provide sciences
with »absolute foundations,«27 in the manner of a radical »self-med
itation« (Selbstbesinnung)—undertake this task as the universal Gel
tungsfundierung of sciences’ rational endeavors, especially in its first
three meditations.
26 Indeed, it had already been developed in his 1922/23 lecture course Introduction to
Philosophy (Husserl 2002b), as is also mentioned in a footnote of his 1929 Formal and
Transcendental Logic (Husserl 1974, p. 295n.1 [289n.1]), and was thus not postponed
ad calendas graecas, as Kern once claimed (1964, p. 202), nor did it fail »to fulfill the
requirement of an apodictic critique« (Landgrebe 1963, p. 187 [284]).
27 In his view, this claim is »by no means extravagant« for he conceives it as realizable
in an »infinite historical process« (Husserl 1952b, pp. 138–139, 160 [405–406,

427]) by »generations of philosophers« acting as »humble workers« (Husserl 1968, p.
301 [179]) in an intersubjective »spiritual community« (Husserl 1954, pp. 274–275
[339–340]).
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However, the title of this work is perplexing, for it evokes

Husserl’s so-called »Cartesian Way« to carry out the reduction.28
It also intimates a certain indebtedness to »Cartesianism.« Indeed,
limiting oneself to a cursory reading of the text, it could in fact be
argued that Husserl’s first two meditations de facto proceed in an
analytical direction toward the founding, absolutely simple evidence
of the solus ipse,29 whereas the third, fourth, and fifth meditations
address constitutive problems—hence that they proceed according
to a constitutive (constructive) recovery of the alter ego and the
objective, transcendent world.30 Additionally, like Descartes, Husserl
recognizes a situation of spiritual emergency in his time, and strives
to reestablish the unity of culture; he also owes two inspiring ideas
to Descartes: 1) the exemplary nature of the subjective turn; and 2)
the idea of reforming philosophy in the direction of an autonomous
universal science based on ultimate foundations.
Around the time he introduced his reduction and was setting
off in the direction of his »transcendental turn,« Husserl flirted with
the possibility of attaining adequate evidences in immediate given
nesses (Husserl 1973a, pp. 159–162 [53–56]). However, as early as
1906/07, he warned that the Cartesian project should not be con
flated with his own.31 Already in 1910/11, he began to confront »the
possibility of deception« and inadequacy of his early claims, for his
28 The different »ways« show Husserl’s indebtedness to modern philosophy. Besides
the »ontological way« inspired by Kant’s »Copernican revolution,« and the »psycho
logical way« inspired by English empiricism, the »Cartesian way« has erroneously
been considered the oldest and most pervasive. Husserl critically values the first two
of Descartes’ Meditationes de prima philosophia (Kern 1977, pp. 126–134). Since 1907,
he seemed to associate his reduction with Descartes’ methodical doubt (Husserl 1973d,
p. 27 [22]), generating misinterpretations. But his reduction presupposes the ἐποχή, a
universal »neutralization« of every positing (thesis), including that of doubt (Husserl
1984b, p. 214 [209]; Husserl 1976, p. 56 [61]).
29 »First Meditation: The Way to the Transcendental Ego« (Husserl 1950, p. 48
[7]); »Second Meditation: The Field of Transcendental Experience laid open in respect
of its Universal Structures« (Husserl 1950, p. 66 [27]).
30 »Third Meditation: Constitutional Problems. Truth and Actuality« (Husserl 1950,
p. 91 [56]); »Fourth Meditation: Development of the Constitutional Problems Pertain

ing to the Transcendental Ego Itself« (Husserl 1950, p. 99 [65]); »Fifth Meditation:
Uncovering of the Sphere of Transcendental Being as Monadological Intersubjectiv
ity« (Husserl 1950, p. 121 [89]).
31 »For critique of knowledge is not about theorizing. What it is about does not lie upon
any path of mathematics, or natural science, even psychology. It is about ›elucidating.‹ It

is not about deducing anything, not explaining anything by laws as explanatory
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further analyses of intentionality and temporality were unveiling the

intricacy of the unlimited flow of experiences. He then widened his
initial concept of »immanence« (Husserl 1973a, pp. 169–171 [63–
65]) to include within it the potential surrounding horizons beyond
what is actually self-given, namely, the temporal horizons of »reten
tions« and »protentions,« which he viewed as synthetized with the
effectively present (Husserl 1973a, pp. 159–179, esp. 167–169 [53–74,
esp. 61–63]). He addressed further problems related to the »Cartesian
way« in his 1923/24 lectures on first philosophy.32
The Cartesian Meditations maintains its critical viewpoint of
Descartes’ Meditationen. Unlike Descartes, the original meaning of all
objectivity is born for Husserl from a certain project or experience of the
subject. Unlike Descartes, he differentiates between the psychological
ego (which may be viewed as a res or substance) and the transcen
dental ego. Unlike Descartes, his ideal of a universal science of »ulti
mate foundations« is not modeled after the exact sciences, such as
mathematics. Unlike Descartes’ ego, Husserl’s subjectivity cannot be
accessed by an analytic-reductive procedure, nor can the ego be posited
as an axiom from which to deduce the knowledge of the world.
Unlike Descartes’ res cogitans, the »infinite field of transcendental
experience« (Husserl 1950, p. 69 [31]) is irreducible to an immediate
intuitus mentis or a mediate deduction, for the temporal horizons
surrounding the »first evidence« stand in the way of any claim to a
total, immediate or mediate, possession of the transcendental realm.
And unlike Descartes, only Husserl sees the need for the »task of a
critique of transcendental self–experience« (Husserl 1950, p. 67 [29]) to
legitimize the extension of the (apodictic) evidence of certain minimal
indubitable experiences to the rest of the transcendental experience.
Hence as Husserl states in his second meditation, his first phi
losophy is a »fundamentally essential deviation from the Cartesian
course« (Husserl 1950, p. 69 [31]).
grounds, but simply understanding what is implied in the meaning of knowledge and
its objectivity« (Husserl 1984b, p. 190 [187]).
32 Such problems include, for example, that the Cartesian reduction gave the impres
sion of a »world-annihilation,« of leaving subjectivity as a »residue« (a »part and

parcel« of the world), of a relapse into solipsism (intersubjective experience did not fit
into its equation), of phenomenology’s disinterest in the world, or of its inability to
regain the world (Husserl 1959, p. 432–433 [567–568]). In reality, Husserl explained,
it is merely a fictitious hypothesis that only makes sense if it is seen from »within« the
phenomenological approach—the goal of which is solely to understand how our belief
in the world and its meaning are forged.
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Thus—using Fink’s words, approved by Husserl— if one still

wishes to call »Cartesian« his »Idea of <a> prejudice-free, ultimately
grounded science,« it is only in the sense of »a radical self-meditation,
« or as the way »to start out from the idea of a radical, ultimately
founded science« (Husserl 1988, pp. 3, 35–36 [3, 32–33]).
5. Geltungsfundierung and Genesisfundierung in the

A closer and more detailed analysis of Husserl’s five meditations

shows that they do not resemble the analytic-reductive and syn
thetic-integrative movement of Descartes’ foundational project either
in their form or in their content. Descartes is an inspiring motif
only for Husserl’s first two meditations. Husserl definitely abandons
Descartes’ line of thought in his third meditation, which he character
izes as skeptical and scholastic.
Instead of grouping together the first two meditations in a
reductive direction that runs contrary to constitutive direction of
the last three,33 a closer examination shows that Husserl’s first three
meditations deal with the notion of ultimate foundations related to
the problem of evidence, namely, to »validity foundation« (Geltungs
fundierung)—a term used in certain unpublished manuscripts of the
time (Husserl 1973b, p. 40; Husserl 1973c, pp. 615–616; Husserl
1954, p. 191 [187]). The starting point (i.e., transcendental clue) of
the Geltungsproblem—object of Husserl’s first philosophy—as stated
in the first meditation is the »judicative« validity and grounding pro
cedure (Begründung) put forth by positive sciences, finally leading to
elementary judgments that claim to »agree« with the »judged state of
affairs.« Since this »scientific doing […] may never go beyond being
a mere claim,« Husserl’s Geltungsfundierung demands that noematic
judgments exhibit their »evidence« in acts of judging (noesis)—which
are, »in an extremely broad sense, an ›experiencing‹ of something that
is, and is thus; […] a mental seeing of something itself.« The radicality
of the Geltungsfundierung demands that these predicative experiences
ultimately refer to plenary, intuitive, pre-predicative experiences from
33 Alternatively, one can group them structurally in two hemispheres of three
meditations each, where a quaestio facti triumphs over an exceptio juris, as in Martial
Guéroult’s interpretation of Descartes Meditationen (1953).
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which their validity originarily stems (Husserl 1950, pp. 50–52

[9–12]).34
The second and third meditations set the phenomenological con
ditions for a radical Geltungsfundierung. Perhaps the most difficult of
these conditions is reflection (»reduction«), for various reasons:
its »unnatural direction«; the flowing, temporal character of inten
tional-lived experiences vs. the need to identify in apodictic evidences
their eidetic structures, and fix them in linguistic expressions (Husserl
1950, §§ 20, 34); or the fact that phenomenology’s method is essen
tially connected (if not identical) with its subject-matter (»transcen
dental experiences,« i.e., »transcendental subjectivity«). Connected
with reflection is a bigger challenge: the need to bracket the natural
tendency to »reify« (objectify) everything that we deal with. Prior to
reflection (transcendental reduction), subjectivity and its psychic pro
cesses must be stripped of their entitative (third-person) character
(Husserl 1950, § 7). Only thus is the »universal a priori of correla
tion« (Husserl 1954, §§ 46–47) revealed, and only thereby can inten
tional analyses of »the infinite field of transcendental experience« be
undertaken (Husserl 1950, pp. 69–72, 75 [31–33, 36]). Hence the task
of first philosophy as a Geltungsfundierung reveals humanity’s »uni
versal subjective being and life« as »the primordial locus of all mean
ing-giving and validation of being.« This task presupposes that »rea
son is not an accidental de facto ability,« but spirit’s highest
manifestation (Husserl 1952b, pp. 139–141 [406–408]) without
which no »objective reality« can be posited. Indeed, »reason refers to
possibilities of verification; and verification refers ultimately to mak
ing evident and having as evident.« In that sense, »reason and unrea
son« are »correlative titles for […] being and non-being, and their
modal variants,« with the caveat that here »being« does not refer
to »objects simpliciter but to the objective sense,« to which »the pred
icates truth (correctness) and falsity, albeit in a most extremely broad
sense« are related (Husserl 1950, § 23). But Husserl’s view in these
34 The second meditation subsequently engages in a discussion on whether the »ulti
mate foundations« demanded by first philosophy have to coincide with the ideal goal
(τέλος) of perfect and adequate evidences (correlative to the genuine notion of truth).
Husserl concludes that as such, they are in principle unattainable, with the exception
of a very limited core of experiences (i.e., the empty »cogito sum,« and other incon
trovertible facts related to the temporal form or structure of transcendental experi
ences). He thus concedes that apodictic evidences—which also contain inadequate
elements-—suffice as »first evidences« (Husserl 1950, §§ 5–7, esp. § 6).
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first three meditations is that what counts as the »ultimate« Geltungs

fundierung of »objective beings« is not an immutable ground that
lies »behind« us supporting our reflection, but an open-ended, his
torical, and intersubjective achievement of self-elucidation and ever-
renewed partial and provisional validations that lies »before« us as
an ideal τέλος of reason.
The final two meditations do not forsake the task of first philoso
phy, albeit the fact that—beyond the stratum of evidence and Geltungs
fundierung—they delve deeper by inquiring after their ultimate genesis
or ultimate origin (Uranfang). From the fourth meditation onward, a
further task (Genesisfundierung) at a deeper level is unveiled: one that
grounds as well as absorbs all questions regarding validity.
Specifically, the fourth meditation attempts to show in which
sense the universal constitution of objective meanings and their val
idations, is coincidental with the ego’s temporal self-constitution or
self-genesis.35 In other words, this meditation describes how the ego’s
active, interconnected experiences (rational and perceptual), ulti
mately stem from deeper—passive, associative—sensuous temporal
processes (Husserl 1950, §§ 37–38). Hence it shows that the self-
constitution of the ego’s transcendental, spiritual life has its genesis
(constitution) in passivity, in embodied minds that onto- and phylo
genetically (Husserl 1973c, pp. 595–596; Husserl 2008, pp. 653–
666) develop in their organic bodies and interact with the surrounding
world.
Finally, the fifth meditation attempts to address the passive and
active constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity and its role in the
general task assigned to first philosophy, albeit in a form not entirely
satisfactory for Husserl. Briefly put, transcendental, spiritual egos,
inter-intentionally connected both synchronically and diachronically
with other transcendental co-subjects, gradually configure in »com
munal activities« (Husserl 1952a, §§ 49ff.) a surrounding human
world and cultural traditions (Husserl 1950, §§ 30–33; Husserl
35 As a centralized subject (an active Ausstrahlungszentrum and a passive Ein
strahlungszentrum), »according to the law of ›transcendental generation‹,« it consti

tutes itself as a substratum of possessions, as bearer of a personal history and a unique
style, whereby »with each act […] he acquires a new abiding property« (convictions,
habitualities). Further, its self-constitution as a monad, in Husserl’s view, means that
its intentional correlates, and its familiar and social surroundings are dependent
moments or parts of its own concrete self (Husserl 1950, §§ 30–33).
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1952a, §§ 22–29, 50) that are transmitted throughout the generations

(Husserl 1954, pp. 365–386 [353–378]).
To sum up, the last two meditations lay open the extraordinary
fact that Husserl’s Genesisfundierung not only precedes, but also
absorbs and grounds the foundational problems of validity—hence
the universal problem of evidence, which is the main concern of
first philosophy. Once this pre-reflective genetic level abandons
its anonymity, it appears that a new light is shed onto the vast
realm of facticity that Husserl placed under the labels of »meta
physics« and »second philosophy« (Husserl 1950, pp. 181–183 [154–
157]; Husserl 1968, pp. 298–299 [177]). Accordingly, phenomeno
logical analyses that delve into Genesisfundierung teach us that for
Husserl, the Geltungsproblem must be understood within the frame
work of reason as essentially rooted in experience, the Uranfang of
which is to be searched for in the depths of passive, pre–reflective,
pre–egological, pre–objectivating, associative, and instinctive inten
tionality. Paraphrasing Heraclitus, Husserl pondered the immensity
of this discovery:
You will never find the boundaries of the soul, even if you follow every
road; so deep is its ground (Husserl 1954, p. 173 [170])36
5. Concluding remarks
Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as first philosophy is only

the »elementary grammar« of his »idea of philosophy.« As an Arbeit
sphilosophie, it claims to be the »indispensable precondition for any
metaphysics and other sort of philosophy ›that will be able to come
forward as science‹« (Husserl 1976, p. 8 [82]). Its task is laid out
as providing a scientific »step-by-step formulation and solution«—as
well as an »ultimate foundation«—for »all conceivable problems of
philosophy« (Husserl 1952b, p. 138 [405]). Hence if its claims have
merited an unjustified disparagement and critical reception as »dog
36 »Der Seele Grenzen wirst du nie ausfinden, und ob du auch jegliche Strasse
abschrittest: so tiefen Grund hat sie.« David Carr adds in footnote to his translation of
the Crisis: »Husserl slightly misquotes Diels’s version of Fragment 45: the last phrase
reads ›so tiefen Sinn hat sie‹ (rather than Grund). See Kranz and Diels 1966, p. 170.
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matic« and »foundationalist« (Lerner 2004; Mertens 1996),37 it is

perhaps due to the pervasive conflation of two foundational tasks
—with different meanings and goals—to which Husserl generally
referred with the terms Begründung and Fundierung. Despite their
essential differences—one developing in the natural, objectifying
(third-person), attitude and the other in the transcendental phe
nomenological (first-person) attitude—both procedures are neces
sarily connected. This connection is the task of transcendental
phenomenology as first philosophy: it begins by identifying the
Geltungsproblem that appears in the context of a scientific, positive
Begründung, and using it as a »transcendental clue,« proceeds by a
regressive inquiry into its evidence (its phenomenological clarifica
tion) in transcendental experiences. This last procedure is a Geltungs
fundierung—which is ultimate absorbed by a Genesisfundierung.
Finally, I could add that in the context of current epistemo
logical debates, Berghofer contends that Husserl’s transcendental
phenomenology puts forth a foundational project, albeit a »moder
ate« one (2017). In his view, Husserl was neither an anti-founda
tionalist nor a coherentist, as some prominent commentators have
recently argued, in spite of acknowledging the »fallibility of our
justified beliefs.«38 His conclusion seems consistent with the histori
cal-critical interpretation provided above:
[…] intuitions are not only a source of immediate justification, they
are the ultimate source of justification. All we justifiably believe evi
dentially depends on our originally presentive intuitions. This makes
him a foundationalist. As he acknowledges the fallibility of immediate,
37 Mertens, for example, critically confronts Husserl’s problem of »ultimate founda
tions« with skepticism, underplaying the role of intuition and making use of »argu
ments« that originate in contemporary philosophical discussions in the context of
analytic philosophy and transcendental pragmatism (in my view, arguments with a
neo-Kantian tone). The target of his attacks is the alleged Endgültigkeit of phenomenol
ogy’s intuitively established »ultimate foundations.« He claims instead to legitimize
Husserl’s theory of evidence through conceptual arguments, thus by a demonstrative
reconstruction (internal and external) of its arguments, yet outside of the context of
transcendental phenomenology. He therefore believes he is in a better position to
reconcile a priori truths with the open-ended and historical variability laid open by
intentional analyses.
38 Berghofer’s paper contests both the »fundamentally opposed basic epistemological
views about the structure of justification«—coherentism (i.e., as defined by Pryor

[2005]) and anti-foundationalism (such as that of Drummond [1990] and others)—as
interpretations of Husserl’s position.
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intuitive justification, he is a moderate foundationalist (Berghofer

2017, 21).
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Self-Othering, Self-Transformation, and

Theoretical Freedom: Self-Variation and
Husserl’s Phenomenology as Radical
Immanent Critique1
We have trusted transcendental experience because of its originarily

lived-through evidence; and similarly we have trusted the evidence of
predicative description and all the other modes of evidence belonging to
transcendental science. Meanwhile we have lost sight of the demand, so
seriously made at the beginning—namely that an apodictic knowledge,
as the only »genuinely scientific« knowledge, be achieved; but we
have by no means dropped it. Only we preferred to sketch in outline
the tremendous wealth of problems belonging to the first stage of
phenomenology—a stage which in its own manner is itself still infected
with a certain naivete (the naivete of apodicticity) but contains the
great and most characteristic accomplishment of phenomenology, as
a refashioning of science on a higher level—instead of entering into
the further and ultimate problems of phenomenology: those pertaining
to its self-criticism, which aims at determining not only the range and
limits but also the modes of apodicticity. At least a preliminary idea of
the kind of criticism of transcendental-phenomenological knowledge
required here is given by our earlier indications of how, for example,
1 I would like to thank, first and foremost, Daniele de Santis for organizing the
welcoming and most stimulating Cartesian Meditations conference at the Charles

University, Prague in fall 2019. The range and depth of conversations the conference
made possible were groundbreaking and undoubtedly are reflected in this rich volume,
which Daniele has likewise put together. I would also like to thank Sara Heinämaa,
David Carr, Julia Jansen, Fredrik Westerlund, Mirja Hartimo, and the participants of
the Helsinki Phenomenology Research Seminar for valuable feedback on this work
over the past 3 years. Last but not least, I would like to thank the Kone Foundation
Finland and the Kent State University Research Council for funding this research
during my 2019–2020 visiting year as senior research scholar in Professor Heinämaa’s
Academy of Finland project.
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a criticism of transcendental recollection discovers in it an apodictic

content. (Husserl 1950, pp. 177–178/151–152; Husserl’s italics)
Husserl’s call to a radical form of critique in the Conclusion to his
Cartesian Meditations gives pause and raises questions on multiple
levels. How are we to understand this »self-critique«—a higher order
critique part and parcel of phenomenological inquiry itself—incisive
and resilient enough to tackle core methodological commitments,
such as phenomenology’s commitment to apodicticity? What would
it mean to examine these commitments as theoretical naivetes in the
attempt to avoid theoretical illusion (Schein; Husserl, 1959, p. 169;
Husserl 1974, p 254)? What would make possible this critical reflec
tion in its quest for mapping the »ranges,« »limits,« and »modes« of
apodicticity itself? What might grant it its incisiveness, its depths-
penetrating gaze? Wherein lies its resilience, its holding itself in ten
sion, without presupposition yet resolutely oriented toward a radical
self-examination through and through? In a manner that foreshadows
his Crisis method of teleological-historical reflection as historical cri
tique (see esp. Husserl 1954, §§ 7, 9, 15), Husserl gives us some clues
in his concluding Cartesian Meditations remarks:
All transcendental-philosophical theory of knowledge, as »criticism of
knowledge,« leads back ultimately to criticism of transcendental-pheno
menological knowledge (in the first place, criticism of transcendental
experience); and, owing to the essential reflexive relation of pheno
menology to itself, this criticism also demands a criticism. In this
connexion, however, there exist no endless regresses that are infected
with difficulties of any kind (to say nothing of absurdities), despite
the evident possibility of reiterable transcendental reflections and
criticisms. (Husserl 1950, pp. 177–178/151–152; Husserl’s italics;
emphases mine)
Two clues stand out here: the self-reflexivity of this mode of critical
reflection and its iterability. Both of these dimensions flag a distinctive
kind of dynamism at work in this radical form of critique. Husserl
makes similar claims about radical reflection (Besinnung) understood
as »self-examination« elsewhere in the late 1920s. In his Formal
and Transcendental Logic, he explicates the iterability of this radical
reflection through an inquiring back (Rückfragen) squarely oriented
toward clarifying any and all presuppositions, especially its own.
These are the results of systematic sense-investigations concerning
the world, which, as a »phenomenon,« lies within me myself and gets
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Self-Othering, Self-Transformation, and Theoretical Freedom
its being-sense from me; results of a systematic inquiring back for

the genuine, unclouded, sense of my own sense-bestowing and for all
the presuppositions appertaining inseparably to that sense and lying
within me, beginning with the absolute pre-positing [Voraus-Setzung],
which gives sense to all presuppositions [Voraussetzungen]: the ante
cedent positing of my transcendental ego. Actually, then, it is only
self-examination – self-examination, however, that does not break off
too quickly and turn into naïve positivity, but remains, with absolute
consistency, just what it was at the beginning: self-examination. (Hus
serl 1974, p. 244/276; emphases mine)
This interest in a radical form of critique is not unique to the
Cartesian Meditations or the late 1920s. It is also at work in the
early and mid-1920s, in his First Philosophy (Husserl 1959) and
Introduction into Philosophy lectures (Husserl 2002). My contention
here is that Husserl’s notion of self-critique at work in the Cartesian
Meditations anticipates, precisely through Husserl’s discussion of
transcendental self-variation in the Fourth Meditation, his later Crisis
development of critical reflection as radical self-reflection (radikale
Selbsbesinnung).2 The Cartesian Meditations are uniquely positioned
to grant us precious insight into what this radical self-reflection might
amount to as well as what makes it possible. While there are other
places where Husserl explicates self-variation (more on this below),
nowhere does he so explicitly locate it in a programmatic context,
alongside his better-known method of eidetic variation. Inevitably,
questions surrounding the methodological role of transcendental
self-variation emerge, especially given Husserl’s boldly overt claim
that phenomenology of self-constitution »coincides« with phenome
nology as a whole (Husserl 1950, p. 103). What this entails is that
if transcendental self-variation plays a role in the former, it likewise
plays a role in the latter. Moreover, if we are to clarify Husserl’s
mature understanding of the phenomenological method—a method
that requires a radical self-reflection capable of holding its own
methodological commitments accountable—, understanding where
transcendental self-variation might fit in this mature methodological
picture is of the essence. The nature of the role of transcendental
self-variation for phenomenology as a whole remains nebulous. It
is my hope to shed further light on this matter, by arguing that
2 I have unpacked elsewhere the relationship between these earlier accounts of »apo
dictic critique« and Husserl’s mature Crisis historical-eidetic method (see Aldea 2022).
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self-variation does indeed play a key role in all phenomenological

inquiry and that this role is multi-valent in a rich critical sense. Thus,
the Cartesian Meditations, in its call for a higher order reflection and
in its focus on self-variation, anticipates the robust critical method
of Crisis.3 At the end of the chapter, we will come back full circle to
Husserl’s Crisis notion of Besinnung, stressing especially its dynamic
self-referentiality and how this latter self-referentiality might relate to
the distinctive reflexivity at work in self-variation as a distinctive kind
of self-imagining.
Before we can show the critical import of transcendental self-
variation and begin to unpack the implications of this insight, we must
seek to clarify, at least to some extent, the structure of self-variation
as imagining process, its structure as it pertains to phenomenological
inquiry (i.e., as transcendental self-variation), and its relation to
Husserl’s well-established method of transcendental eidetic variation.
1. Husserl on self-variation and eidetic variation
As transcendental-eidetic method, self-variation is at once similar to

and different from transcendental eidetic variation. If the latter is,
broadly construed, the eidetic explication of the structures of specific
meaning-constituting processes, such as perception or image con
sciousness and their respective correlates, the former’s domain of
inquiry consists in the constitutive structures of the self. Thus, Hus
serl’s insistence that self-variation is oriented toward an eidetic ego
logy—an eidetic explication of the various levels of the self’s consti
tutive structures—comes as no surprise (Husserl 1950, §§ 13, 34).
This eidetic explication is hierarchical, just like eidetic variation is
(Husserl 1948, § 92): it maps ideal structures whose instantiation
span entire fields of both real and irreal possibilities with an eye for
the species-genera relations among these structural levels themsel
ves. Thus, self-variation, appears to track, like transcendental eidetic
variation, the hierarchically related structures of consciousness
understood as ideal possibilities (through their potential instantiati
ons). A »maximal eidetic egology,« as Husserl puts it in the Fourth
3 For an in-depth explication of Husserl Crisis method as a form of radical immanent

critique, see Aldea 2022.
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Cartesian Meditation, would capture the overarching, least »consti

tutively thick« structures of the self (Husserl 1950, pp. 110–111).
Additional (apparent) similarities between self-variation and
eidetic variation transpire here. We learn that, like eidetic variation,
self-variation begins with the phenomenologist’s own lived experi
ence (here the concrete, historically sedimented self; see Husserl
1950, p. 110), which, once transcendentally engaged, is the ground
for our generating an exemplar able to function as a model (Vorbild)
for the variation process (Husserl 1950, p. 106). The process itself
is a »free imaginative variation« based on this model—an arbitrary
process whose optionalness (Beliebigkeit) allows it to engage »any
possibilities whatsoever,« in principle und so weiter, irrespective of
and in a manner disinterested in the epistemic and normative commit
ments in play at the positional starting point. The process gradually
zeroes in, through a grasping of the variants as each other’s other, on
that which is necessary or invariant, that is, on that which gives itself,
through a coincidence in conflict (Deckung im Widerstreit), as resisting
the attempt to vary it away. Husserl’s account of self-variation in the
Fourth Cartesian Meditation is very much in line with his accounts
of eidetic variation in other 1920s texts, most notably Formal and
Transcendental Logic (Husserl 1974), Phenomenological Pyschology
(Husserl 1962), and Experience and Judgment (Husserl 1948).
There are significant concerns, stemming especially from Hus
serl’s own later historical approach, surrounding claims regarding the
purity, freedom, optionalness, and arbitrariness of the possibilities
engaged in eidetic variation, which I have sought to address elsewhere
(see Aldea 2016, 2017). For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus
on the gist of these concerns. As Merleau-Ponty (2012) repeatedly
points out, ours is an opaque, ambiguous, anonymous experience. The
»unreflected« (i.e., the given as pregiven)—precisely what phenome
nology must investigate if it is to be a »radical reflection«—does not
yield itself to us by merely adopting the phenomenological-transcen
dental attitude. We must, as Merleau-Ponty stresses in the Preface of
Phenomenology of Perception, »work through the eidetic« precisely in
order to shed light on the contingent and the historical. It appears, on
Merleau-Ponty’s account, that phenomenological work does not begin
in contingency and terminate with the grasp of necessity. The method
is more of a two-way street, one in which the eidetic commitment
to transcendental necessity is always already at work from the begin
ning, but in a precarious (i.e., self-critical) rather than self-assured
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manner. What the reductions allow is a radically distinct vantage point

regarding experience, but the hard work of »loosening the threads«
(to use Merleau-Ponty’s language once more) of our being moored
in the opaque thickness of everyday self- and world-constitution
is an ongoing affair. It is my contention here that it is precisely
in Husserl’s explication of self-variation that the need for a radical
historical and self-critical approach (of the kind we see him advocate
for in the Crisis) clearly announces itself. In order to make this case,
we must first understand the key differences between transcenden
tal self-variation—in its self-reflective potential—and transcendental
eidetic variation.
The major difference lies in Husserl’s realization that unlike eide
tic variation, self-variation, which begins with taking my own concrete
self as starting point, cannot generate an optional, arbitrary exemplar
—a model »any whatsoever« to guide and orient the variation process.
In eidetic variation, according to Husserl, through the supposed epis
temic and normative neutrality and negative freedom of the imagi
nation, I am able to conceive a model for a noetic-noematic correlation
detached from the initial lived experience. This model then guides my
free and arbitrary engagement of irreal possibilities culminating with
my eidetic intuition of necessary structures pertaining to the kind of
correlation under investigation (see Husserl 1950, pp. 104–105; also
Husserl 1974, § 98; Husserl 1948, § 87; Husserl 1962, § 9).
In transcendental self-variation, however, the only exemplar
available as model for my process of imagining variation is my
concrete self:
The beginning phenomenologist is bound involuntarily by the circum
stance that he takes himself as his initial example. Transcendentally he
finds himself as the ego, then as generically an ego, who already has
(in consciousness fashion) a world—a world of our universally familiar
ontological type, with Nature, with culture […], with personalities of
higher order (state, church) and the rest […] Questions of universal
genesis and the genetic structure of the ego in his universality, so far
as that structure is more than temporal formation, are still far away;
and, indeed, they belong to a higher level. But even when they are
raised, it is with a restriction. At first, even eidetic observation will
consider an ego as such with the restriction that a constituted world
already exists for him. This, moreover, is a necessary level; only by
laying open the law-forms of the genesis pertaining to this level can one
see the possibilities of a maximally universal eidetic phenomenology.
In the latter, the ego varies himself so freely that he does not keep even
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the ideal restrictive presupposition that a world having the ontological

structure accepted by us as obvious is essentially constituted for him.
(Husserl 1950, pp. 110–111/76–77; emphasis mine).
How are we to understand this unavoidable starting point, namely,
the concrete self, not as that which helps us generate an exemplar for
the sake of arbitrary variation (as in the case of eidetic variation),
but as the exemplar for the variation process itself? As concrete
exemplar, it is that which both guides and restricts the process in
non-arbitrary manners—even if there is (some) »free play« invol
ved. Exemplars function as guiding models in orientational ways,
without (necessarily) pre-determining the specific predicates of the
variants themselves.4 Explicating how the concrete self as exemplar
both guides and »restricts« (to use Husserl’s own word here) the
process of transcendental self-variation can shed light not only on
the structure of the process itself, but also on its potential role in
phenomenology understood as radical critique (i.e., a critique that is at
once a self-critique – a critique of core methodological commitments
and accomplishments, including transcendental necessity itself as
that which phenomenology strives toward). Moreover, as Husserl
points out in the quote above, it is initially in and through this
›restrictive‹ level that we open up the possibility of a higher order
eidetic egology—one in which the mapping out of necessary structures
of self-constitution happens »so freely that he [the inquirer] does
not keep even the ideal restrictive presupposition that a world having
the ontological structure accepted by us as obvious is essentially
constituted for him« (Husserl 1950, p. 110/76).5 Thus, clarifying both
the restriction in play at the initial (lower eidetic) level of the process
of self-variation and how in and through this process this restriction is
overcome will likewise be key in uncovering the at once historical and
eidetic dimensions of phenomenology understood as radical critique.
4 For an interesting discussion of this orientational feature of exemplars as models,

see Summa 2022.
5 Thus, according to Husserl, despite my anchored starting point (my concrete self
as exemplar), my interest as a phenomenologist remains scientific-eidetic: »After

transcendental reduction, my true interest is directed to my pure ego, to the uncovering
of this de facto ego. But the uncovering can become genuinely scientific, only if I go
back to the apodictic principles that pertain to this ego as exemplifying the eidos ego:
the essential universalities and necessities by means of which the fact is to be related
to its rational grounds (those of its pure possibility) and thus made scientific (logical)«
(Husserl 1950, p. 106/72).
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Before we can tease out the exemplary power of the concrete

self—a note on what this »self« might amount to. As the quote above
stresses, the concrete self is one whose correlate is the lifeworld in all
of its sedimented, historicized richness. The concrete self is a personal,
communalized self along the lines of what Husserl explicates both in
his Fifth Cartesian Meditation and in the Crisis through his discussion
of transcendental intersubjectivity. Sections 31–33 of the Fourth
Cartesian Meditation give us a sense of this »concreteness«—the ego
or self at work as exemplar in the process of transcendental self-varia
tion entails habitualities, systems of capacities, accomplishments,
sedimented commitments, in short, a self whose correlate is the world
understood as system of actualities and (realizable) possibilities.
Thus, what Husserl claims about self-variation in the Fourth Cartesian
Meditation should not be seen as an artificial process somehow »pre
ceding« and »separate from« the robust notion of a communalized and
historicized self at work in his Fifth Meditation. Whatever he claims
about the process here, along with its methodological implications,
holds in toto as far as the Meditations are concerned.
The implication of this claim, namely, that my concrete self—as
inquiring phenomenologist—is at once starting point and exemplar in
the process of self-variation, is that, at least initially, I am not free to
detach myself from the thickness of my deeply habituated, co-consti
tuted historicity and concreteness. How could I accomplish such a feat
in a sweeping way? An opaqueness, as Merleau-Ponty rightly flagged,
is at work here. As a phenomenologizing ego, I am not transparent to
myself. I function, as a theoretician, both within the confines of my
evidence (my experience of myself and of the lifeworld), my living
present, my situatedness, the very traditionality of my own thought
and so on. It is for these reasons that Husserl called for, including here,
in the Cartesian Meditations, a radical critique understood as a higher
order critique able to mitigate theoretical naiveties and illusions
(Husserl 1950, p. 169; also Husserl 1974, p. 254). Teasing out how
we might »work through« this sedimented and historicized ›crust‹
(Husserl 1954, p. 16) as we orient ourselves toward a higher order
eidetic egology would thus necessarily involve clarifying, at least to
some extent, how we can overcome the opaque confines of our own
contingency and what this »overcoming« amounts to in the context
of Husserl’s mature critical project. In what follows, I will attempt this
clarificatory task by explicating, in a synthetic-genetic and generative
manner, the process of self-variation as a type of self-imagining.
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Before we turn to this explication of self-variation as self-ima

gining, Husserl’s poignant way of describing the process of transcen
dental self-variation requires a closer look. Immediately after using
here the same language of ideal possibilities governing systems of
possible instantiations at the heart of all eidetic variation, Husserl
continues: »It should be noted that, in the transition from my ego
to an ego as such, neither the actuality nor the possibility of other
egos is presupposed. I phantasy myself only myself as if I were
otherwise; I do not phantasy others. »In itself, then, the science of
pure possibilities precedes the science of actualities and alone makes
it possible, as science« (Husserl 1950, p. 106/72; emphasis mine). It
is difficult not to pause at Husserl’s »I phantasy myself only myself
as if I were otherwise.«6 This, I contend, is not a mere matter of
methodological choice. It is structurally necessary. In my attempt to
engage myself »as if I were otherwise,« I remain anchored in the thick
intersubjective, constitutive bedrock of my habituated, historical,
sedimented accomplishments and commitments, which are not solely
epistemic, but normative, axiological, and praxiological also.7 Not
only must I take my concrete self as exemplar, but in so doing, I
carry forward sedimented, co-constituted and constituting layers of
shared meanings, values, and possibilities. And while I can assume a
different stance toward my concrete self (that’s what the reductions
afford me), I remain tethered, in ways that are not fully transparent to
me, to the constituting forces that have shaped me in the manner that
they have—forces such as habituation, normalization, sedimentation,
communalization, the traditionality of all projects, be they everyday
or theoretical. The field of conceivable possibilities I engage in this
process of self-variation are exactly that—conceivable (denkbar)—for
me as concrete self, for me as the phenomenologist trained in and
committed to a certain tradition of philosophical inquiry.
6 One way of interpreting this claim is to say that the kind of self-modification we
might see at work in empathy does not condition self-variation. Self-variation is not an
experience of alterity in the positional mode nor is it founded on it. It is an imaginative
»othering« oriented toward grasping the necessary structures of self-constitution.
7 While Husserl discusses the method of self-variation in the Fourth Cartesian Medi
tation, »before« his explication of transcendental intersubjectivity and the personal,

communalized self in the Fifth Meditation, the »concrete self« understood as the only
possible starting point for the process of self-variation is not an artificial, methodo
logically »reduced« self (see, for example, Husserl 1950, § 41), but precisely this full-
fledged personal self, in all of its synthetic-genetic and generative thickness.
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Therefore, even though, according to Husserl, in the process of

transcendental self-variation, »I do not phantasy others« but »only
myself as if I were otherwise« (Husserl 1950, p. 106), any analyses of
self-variation as a process of self-imagining must account for the co-
constitutive dynamics at the core of self- and lifeworld-constitution.
For this, a departure from Husserl’s imagination understood as non-
positional presentification (Vergegenwärtigung) is necessary. His sta
tic explications of the imagination as non-positional act, whose cor
relates are optional »quasi« individuals, detached from all sense of self
and world and thus lacking all traction »in the concrete,« cannot clarify
Husserl’s method of self-variation as he describes it in the Cartesian
Meditations.8 If we are to understand what role, if any, self-variation
plays in Husserl’s radical critique—especially the qualitatively dis
tinctive iterability and self-referentiality at work in this critique
understood as self-critique (Husserl 1950, §§ 13, 63), we must look
beyond what Husserl’s model of the imagination offers. Only if the
imagination has traction with this »thick,« deeply sedimented, con
crete sense of self and world can it play an eidetically relevant role, a
role that entails the qualitative »self-distancing« requisite for my
engaging of myself »as if I were otherwise« in a manner that uncovers
transcendentally necessary structures of self- and world-constitution.
Without such traction, not only would the process of self-variation
not »get off the ground,« so to speak, it would likewise rely on an
artificial sense of arbitrariness entirely dependent on a minimal sense
of neutrality as negative freedom, ill-equipped to sustain both the
»varying« process and the dynamism Husserl’s radical self-reflection
exhibits. In what follows, I will turn to an analysis of self-variation as
a type of self-imagining and contend that as such, it has the resources
to both do justice to the situated concreteness of the self as starting
point of the process and go beyond the restrictions this starting point
initially sets on the process.
8 I have argued elsewhere that while Husserl was right to deem the imagination a
necessary condition for the possibility of phenomenological inquiry (Husserl 1976,
§ 70), his static model of imagination is woefully out of step with the development of
his mature historical-eidetic method, which it cannot sustain (see Aldea 2020, 2022;
see also Aldea & Jansen 2020).
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2. Reflexion, Ichspaltung, Wiedererfahrung—self-

imagining reconsidered
In his First Philosophy lectures, Husserl captured not only the flow and
the intertwinement (Verflechtung; Husserl 1959, p. 124) of different
acts of consciousness, but also the constant splitting of egoic life
in iterative ways: »I see that egoic life in activity is nothing but
a constantly-splitting-itself-in-active-comportment and that at all
times anew an all-overlooking I can establish itself which identifies
all ⟨of those acts and act subjects⟩ or rather, and said in a more
originary manner: I see that I can establish myself as an I that gains
an overview over myself in higher reflection« (Husserl 1959, pp. 90–
91/293–294; emphases mine). Paying close attention to this egoic
splitting (Ichspaltung) as it relates to the reflexive referentiality of
consciousness and reflection (Reflexion) understood as experiencing
acts in the »again« mode (wiedererfahren; Husserl 1959, pp. 387–
388) will help tease out the qualitatively distinctive structures of
self-imagining and shed light on its critical methodological import.
The possibility of a reflection of higher order whose intentional
correlates are, patently, acts themselves along with their correlates,
rests with this egoic splitting. What comes into relief through this
experiencing in the »again« mode (weidererfahren) are not only the
previous experiences themselves, but, importantly, a holistic sense of
self: the very tracing of a past self back into the present: »This form
of ›experiencing again‹ is »a putting ourselves in the past via leap –
retracing ourselves back up till now« (Husserl 1980, p. 258/313).9
Not surprisingly, memory stands out in Husserl’s analyses as an
emblematic case of experiencing oneself ›again.‹ Here Husserl turns
not only to memory but also to the possibility of reflection in memory.
The ›doubling of the I‹ (Ichspaltung) at work in Wieder-erinnerung not
only entails making present the absent (past) experience, but also the
past self, which the present self traces back to itself:
It is not by accident that our [German] language expresses remem
brance reflexively: »I remember [myself].« In each memory lies in a
certain sense a doubling of the I, insofar as what I remember directly
is not only in general conscious as something past, but as something
past as perceived by me […] The experience transforms itself into a
9 Elsewhere (Aldea 2022), I go into further depth unpacking the relationship between
Besinnung and self-referentiality.
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type of explicit I-reflection, when I direct my seizing gaze, looking back,

also at the past I and its past egoic actus. (Husserl 1959, 93–94/297;
emphases mine)
What is of interest here is the self’s tracing itself back to itself that seems
to pertain distinctively to presentifying acts (Vergegenwärtigungen),
such as memory or expectation (see Bernet 2002). The self ›traced‹
here is a holistic sense of self—not merely an ego pole, but a full-
fledged sense of self whose correlate is the ›past‹ lifeworld. However,
since for Husserl, the imagination (Phantasie) is a neutral, dis-inte
rested kind of presentification (see Husserl 1980, pp. 253–254, 379,
443, 461ff., 513–514, 534, 548–551, 561–563, 578–579, 585, 590),
no such tracing ›back‹ and ›again‹ seems to be at work in imagining
consciousness. Furthermore, according to Husserl, the split between
the experiencing and experienced (implied) self is more radical in the
case of the imagination, since the imagination is a direct (unmediated)
non-positional presentification, without any commitment to the con
crete (e.g., Husserl 1976, §§ 109–114; also, Husserl 1980, pp. 114, 178,
338, 363, 433, 505–506, 521–522, 534ff., 571, 575–579).10 This
radicalness amounts to a negative freedom or freedom from any and
all commitments.
The imagined self that emerges on this model is arbitrary,
disinterested, and detached (Husserl 1959, p. 208; Husserl 1980,
p. 258)—a self without bond to my concrete sense of (imagining)
self. Unlike the »again« of Wiedererinnerung, which is seamlessly
(positionally) bound to my concrete sense of self, there is no genuine
»again« for reflection in imagination, since it is a reflection on an
arbitrary (imagined) self (Husserl 1980, p. 561), whose correlate is
not the lifeworld, but some »aloof« world(s) instead (Husserl 1980,
pp. 498ff., 523ff., 533ff.). I have argued elsewhere against Husserl’s
non-positional model of the imagination (see Aldea 2019, 2020) and
have sought to show its inadequacy as necessary condition for his
mature method (see Aldea 2022). What I wish to stress here is that
like Wiedererinnerung, imagining consciousness opens the possibility
of reflecting on the imagined self along with its correlate world.11 In
fact, there is very much a »tracing« of the self here in a distinctive
10 For Husserl’s discussion of iteration or nesting in imagining consciousness, see
Husserl 1976, § 112; also, Husserl 1980, pp. 184, 193, 229–232.
11 Like Husserl, I understand by Reflexion here the self-reflexivity and self-referentia
lity structurally pertaining to experiences of »tracing of oneself back to oneself,« which

can be memorial and anticipatory, as Husserl shows, but also imagining on my model
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mode of »again,« not »past,« but »modally anew.« This ›tracing‹

can help shed light on the self-distancing power of the imagination,
which could very well be the key to understanding how it is that
transcendental self-variation, as a process of self-imagining and as
Husserl describes it in the Fourth Cartesian Meditation, can overcome
the restrictions imposed by its inevitable starting point (i.e., the
concrete self) and thus lead to higher order eidetic investigations.
For now, let us note, that we are here talking about processes of
self-imagining in the natural attitude. Once we explicate some of
the key features of self-imagining, we can turn to self-variation as a
distinctive kind of self-imagining, which will in turn allow us to return
to some of our initial methodological questions.
In remembering as experiencing »again« (Wiedererinnerung),
beyond the specific act-focused intentional implication, there is like
wise the implication of a »whole former self« (Husserl 1980, p. 196).
This amounts to a latency that could become patent, awakened and
recovered in the »total consciousness of the now« (Husserl 1980, p.
232). In the case of the imagination, however, Husserl’s staunch com
mitment to non-positionality, renders a similar robust »recovering«
of one’s concrete self moot. At most, reflection in imagination would
amount to »mere (neutral) thought« (Husserl 1980, p. 590). Whereas
for Husserl, the egoic split at work in the imagination unfolds in
the ›as-if‹ mode or as neutral consciousness (Husserl 1959, pp. 115–
116), it is my contention here that upon closer inspection, imagining
Spaltung necessarily brings into relief my concrete senses of self and
world. Elsewhere I develop in more detail an alternative model of the
imagination, one not built on the assumption of non-positionality
(see Aldea 2020, 2022). I will not repeat my case here, instead, I will
focus more specifically on the Ichspaltung at work in self-imagining
and on what it uncovers about self-imagining as reflexive (i.e., self-
referential) reflection in imagination.12
Let’s say I am reading Woolf’s Orlando (already an imagining
consciousness) and, in so doing, I am engaging her account of
shifting gendered and sexual experiences beyond the standard binary,
here. As such, this self-referentiality is not co-extensive with Husserl’s Besinnung but,
as I shall stress below, a necessary condition for the possibility of the latter.
12 For a discussion of Phantasie Ichspaltung through the lens of Husserl’s framework
of neutrality modification, see Cavallaro 2017. Cavallaro makes room on this model for
a robust sense of »positive freedom« also.
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either/or confines (Orlando, the protagonist and in many ways a

paragon of masculinity, physical male beauty, and sexual prowess,
wakes up quite unexpectedly at age 30 as a woman and embraces
this transformation in deeply erotic ways that go beyond established
gender and sexuality norms and expectations). This is undoubtedly
an imagining experience whose patent focus is Orlando and Orlando’s
exploits—a process that latently (already) explores whatever limits
(i.e., lived impossibilities) these exploits expose, some of which may
be given as seemingly necessary to me as imagining self. My imagi
ning stance here (and in all imagining experiences) is an exploratory
one. My lines of exploratory interest, the range and flexibility of
my modal mapping (i.e., my mapping of the gendered and sexual
possibilities at work here as potentially realizable for me), the limits I
hit as »inconceivable« for me, the discomfort I might experience when
I court those limits—all of these say more about me, the imagining
self, than they say about Orlando (or Woolf arguably). All imagining
is self-imagining, latently so, both insofar as what I am able to sustain
as my modal range draws on my concrete sense of self and world and
insofar as the implied correlate of the imagined system of possibilities
is my imagined self. In my example, Orlando is a thus a seamless
fold of a correlate, readily replaceable by my imagined self.13 In
imagining other ways of being, doing, and knowing (here, specifically,
in the context of gender and sexuality), I am imagining myself
as a coherent, holistic self navigating systems of possibilities with
some kind of interest in play. The Spaltung at work here—between
my imagining self and my imagined self—does not amount to an
abyss of indifference, such that the imagined self is detached, free,
unmoored, somehow untouched by my concrete sense of self and
world. Whatever modal range I sustain or resist as an imagined self
is anchored in my situated imagining self, gendered and sexually
constituted through normalizing and naturalizing socio-cultural and
institutional practices, norms, and values (veritable Stiftungen all).14
13 We may deem this »reading« experience an indirect latent self-imagining, different
from, say my daydreaming about fields of marguerites as I bundle up by the fireplace

in the dead of winter. That may be so, but it is a self-imagining nonetheless, both latent
and, in this case, indirect.
14 On an interesting related take on imagining fictional possibilities and their
anchorage in a concrete sense of self as well as self- and world-revelatory potential,

here is Kundera: »The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities.
That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one
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Modal flexibility and modal resistance—my senses of »I can«

and »I cannot« entertain various sexual possibilities, for example—
are revelatory here. They point beyond any arbitrary playfulness
and bring into relief my concrete senses of lived possibilities and
impossibilities. They do so precisely in and through a tension between
my imagining self (concrete and grounded in the here and now)
and my imagined self (supposedly aloof, yet uncomfortably »close
to home,« say, when I hit a modal wall, that I may or may be
able to negotiate). Whatever limits I, the imagining self, experience
as pertaining to my imagined self (limits such as lost, foreclosed,
forgotten, or simply assumed as irrelevant possibilities for me) come
to the fore through this tension as anchored in my concrete sense
of self and world. Not only that. There is a potential of genuine
fissure here: I may no longer assume these possibilities’ givenness as
impossibilities for me; what used to seem an insurmountable finality
(i.e., a necessary limit, what could not be otherwise) comes to the fore
as now potentially under question. Could things be otherwise for this,
here, now me? The exploratory stance that qualitatively distinguishes
imagining experiences can turn critical, evaluative, and, as a result,
self- and world-transforming. Switching from a latent self-imagining
to a patent one—a self-imagining whose aware and explicit focus is
not only on the imagined self and its respective modal system, but on
the very tension between the imagined and imagined selves and their
respective systems of correlates—takes less than one might imagine.
Husserl was right, the Spaltung at work in imagining experiences
is indeed more radical, but not for the »non-positional« reason he
assumed. The radicalness of the imagination lies not in its negative
freedom (a freedom from all doxic, normative, axiological, and praxio
logical commitments), but in its exploratory orientation instead, an
orientation that allows for experiencing possibilities in a provisional
manner motivated toward openness rather than toward folding the
unfamiliar, the strange, the unexpected back into the familiar (see
has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the
border beyond which my own ›I‹ ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border
begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author's confession; it is
an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become. But enough. Let us
return to Tomas« (Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)—I am thankful
to Jakub Čapek for pointing out this passage to me.
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Aldea 2020).15 In fissuring the patina of finality of naturalized contin

gencies (i.e., seeming necessities), the imagination puts my senses of
self and world into question, potentially transformatively so.16 For the
most part, self-imagining as I have described it above unfolds latently,
in all imagining processes, regardless of attitude (natural or theoreti
cal). Thus, even higher order theoretical imagining experiences (say
hypothetical thought in scientific inquiry) are latently self-imagining
insofar as they draw on the scientist’s concrete as well as theoretical
»modal ranges« so to speak. Importantly, for our purposes here,
the imagined self, intentionally implied in this exploratory stance,
can become patent at any moment, its »just beneath the surface«
latency awakened. Following my example of reading Woolf’s Orlando,
this »awakening« ensues precisely in and through what emerges
as the thinly veiled tension—one I can scarce deny—between my
sense of the realizable system of gendered and sexual possibilities
and impossibilities pertaining to the imagining self and the modal
system pertaining to an imagined self (Orlando) or to my imagined
self motivated by my reading of Woolf’s Orlando.17 Elsewhere I
have argued that the shift from the exploratory to the evaluative
imagining renders the process explicitly critical (see Aldea 2022). In
this critical mode, self-imagining is no longer latent but patent. To
better grasp the methodologically important critical potential of this
15 See Husserl on the positional orientation toward harmony, concordance, confir
mation, and the familiar (Husserl 1948, § 67; also, Husserl 1966, § 20).
16 The Spaltung at work in imagining experiences is very much motivated and
oriented by interests. The passive and active interests of the imagining self anchor and
ground the imagined self, normatively and teleologically, which conditions the modal
range of the imagined self as well as the latter’s attitude and orientation toward its
corresponding system of possibilities.
17 Many different kinds of experiences can motivate and trigger processes of self-ima
gining, engaging with art and literature, not surprisingly chief among them. Whether
or not we respond to their self-critical call is likewise a matter of interests. In other
words, what shocks me, surprises me, invites me to any reorientation and reevaluation
is relevant to and anchored in my concrete sense of self, along with the latter’s
motivations, interests, projects, commitments, etc. An exploration of the dynamism
between the imagining and imagined selves through the lens of narrativity, though
beyond the confines of this chapter, seems necessary here. It would be of particular
interest to explore to what extent, if any, debates surrounding narrativity as either a
higher order story-telling structure or as a structure of experiencing itself (see Carr
1986, Ricoeur 1990, also Altobrando et al. 2018) could shed further light on questions
surrounding self-imagining and the latter’s methodological role in Husserl’s mature
method of Besinnung.
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mode of self-imagining, let us return to Husserl’s Wiedererfahrung—

experiencing »again.« I will note, once more, that my unpacking of this
critical mode of imagining/self-imagining cuts across the natural and
theoretical attitudes. It remains to be seen what this process translates
to in the phenomenological attitude.
The critical imagination is patently a self-imagining: an experi
encing of the self »again« in a distinctive way. According to Husserl,
Wiedererinnerung entails a renewal of the self, which we could expli
cate as re-activation (Husserl 1959, p. 152) or re-awakening. The past,
absorbed or immersed self re-emerges.18 This likewise occurs in the
critical imagining stance. Here, the »awakened« self is both my past
self, traced back to its present, and a modally charged self that does
not orient itself toward the future along familiar lines; this modally
charged self provisionally engages possibilities in exploratory, evalua
tive, and innovative manners instead. To »awaken« the self in this
(critical) reflection in imagination is to dis-entangle the sedimented,
concrete self from what binds and structures its sense of world as
system of possibilities and impossibilities. Critical self-imagining
is a »loosening of the threads« conditioning my sense of self and
world, to harken back to Merleau-Ponty. Its self-referentiality is thus
a distancing of the concrete self from itself, a rendering strange of
oneself to oneself (Verfremdung), in and through a re-mapping and
re-articulation of one’s system of (realizable) possibilities. The process
is thus also a de-distancing, insofar as it entails a return to oneself
»again« and modally »anew,« that is, in a possibility-opening, trans
formative manner very much anchored (relevant) and yet potentially
radically distanced from the initial, »given« modal articulations. The
imagination not only tracks the concrete, leaving traces in it, but is
also constitutive of it. Put differently, imagining, especially patent
self-imagining, is both self- and lifeworld-constituting (see Aldea
2020, 2022).
It is in this modal manner that self-imagining or patent self-
reflection in imagination overcomes the initial »restrictions« that
anchored it in a certain articulation of the concrete. The tension
between the imagining and imagined selves and their respective
18 As I also discuss elsewhere (Aldea 2022), my notion of »absorption« or »immer
sion« here differs from Husserl’s concept of unconscious consciousness (e.g., dream
less sleep). By »absorbed« here I mean sedimented, habituated, communalized, and
historicized. For a discussion of Reflexion as it relates to Husserl’s notion of absorption
see Geniusas 2020.
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systems of possibilities motivates and sustains this »overcoming,«

which, though it does not amount to a shift in attitude (we’re still
dealing here with realizable possibilities of everyday being, doing,
and knowing, say the re-articulation of the field of my lived gende
red possibilities, motivated and initially sustained by my reading
of Woolf’s Orlando), nevertheless is »critical« in a broad sense of
being »transformative.« Self-imagining as patent self-reflection in
imagination exhibits precisely the dynamism Husserl sees at work
in his mature conception of Besinnung as radikale Selbstbesinnung.
The dynamism of self-imagining is due to its inherent performativity:
in and through its unfolding, the process brings into relief not only
possible re-articulations of systems of possibilities, whose limits
themselves are not taken as insurmountable givens, but also the
very commitments or ›institutions‹ undergirding them (in Husserl’s
Stiftungen sense of the term), thus making possible deeply transfor
mative re-mappings of entire systems of lived possibilities for the
imagining self. The revelatory power of self-imagining is thus not
only »diagnostic« but also »prescriptive« or forward-looking in an
»open« exploratory rather than anticipatory manner. Importantly,
for our methodological purposes here, the process is performative
at a higher order (meta-level) also: given its evaluative orientation,
it holds itself in tension by likewise generating new possibilities for
itself as a modality mapping process, thus re-generating itself as
deeply evaluative as it unfolds (see Aldea 2022). This is especially true
of self-variation as patent type of self-imagining.
Unlike self-imagining broadly construed, whose modal mapping
process happens by default, self-variation is motivated toward modal
mapping in a systemic manner. As a process of patent reflection in
imagination, self-variation explicitly orients itself toward »tracing«
the limits and boundaries of the system of possibilities in question
(say gendered possibilities of doing). To do so, the process is neces
sarily »interested« in what sustains—what articulates—the modal
system itself. The exemplar it relies upon orients the process toward
these very undergirding conditions. They are what motivates the
process much more so than any exploratory or even evaluative possi
bility-constitution. This is not to say that all self-variation is patent
and systemically oriented through and through— playful (yet still
anchored) varying processes are possible. However, what structurally
distinguishes a patent, full-fledged process of self-variation, even
in the natural attitude, is this systemic orientation. The distancing
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at work here is one that can not only generate new possibilities but
one that can also uncover the naturalized contingency (i.e., seeming
necessity) of that which conditions these systems of lived possibilities
themselves.
Let us return to Husserl’s unpacking of self-variation as a trans
cendental method in the phenomenology of self-constitution (and
arguably beyond). What might we uncover about this method if we
are to follow the clues self-variation and self-imagining in the natural
attitude afford us?
3. Self-variation anew … Radikale

Selbstbesinnung revisited
If we take Husserl’s call for a radical, higher order critique seriously

here, as his emphasis on the need for just such a critique in the conclu
sion of the Cartesian Meditations encourages us to do, then we must
locate our explication of transcendental self-variation precisely in this
context of radical reflection. What role, if any, might self-variation
play in this infinite task (Husserl 1954, pp. 19, 122, 319) of critique, a
task, which, undoubtedly, given the dynamism Husserl attributes to it,
is inherently performative and self-referential?
As a transcendental-eidetic process, self-variation is oriented
toward mapping out necessary structures of self-constitution, ulti
mately with an eye for making possible a higher order egology whose
correlate is the eidos ego (Husserl 1950, pp. 106, 110). The process
is bound to begin with the phenomenologist’s concrete ego as its
starting point. Moreover, rather than relying on an (initial) actuality
(now taken as a possible instantiation of an ideal possibility in order
to generate an exemplar to guide the process, as eidetic variation
does), transcendental self-variation must rely on the concrete self as
exemplar (Husserl 1950, p. 110). The process is thus »restricted« such
that »I phantasy myself only myself as if I were otherwise« (Husserl
1950, p. 106/72). This »restriction« is nothing short of an anchorage
of this self-imagining process in the concreteness of the imagining
(here phenomenologizing) ego. The anchorage is twofold: both in my
concrete sense of self and world and in my traditionalized sense of
method and accomplishments (hence the need for a radical self-criti
que).
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The patent focus of this process of »imagining myself as if I were

otherwise« is indeed my imagined self. Like self-imagining in the
nature attitude, this is a modal process—it is a mapping of possibili
ties of being, doing, knowing. And yet, as transcendental process,
self-variation is not primarily practically and existentially oriented. Its
orientation is squarely, as Husserl oft reminds us, an eidetic one (Hus
serl 1950, p. 106). Given its eidetic motivation, the modal mapping
at work here is qualitatively different; the possibilities it deals in are
always already ›distanced‹ from the interests of the natural attitude.
What does it mean to say, then, given this transcendental ›distance by
way of interest,’ that the concrete self as exemplar guides the process,
which, though not practically interested, is nevertheless ›anchored‹ in
my concrete sense of self and world? We saw above how the imagining
self, through its sedimented accomplishments and commitments, its
interests, its lived possibilities and impossibilities, guides the process
of self-imagining in the natural attitude and what the performative
unfolding of the process brings into relief (i.e., systems of possibilities
and their limits, no longer taken for granted). The same »anchored«
exploratory orientation is at work in transcendental self-variation,
only here, the openness is not toward specific possibilities of being,
doing, and knowing and their potential re-articulation, but toward the
necessary conditions for such possibilities in the first place. The focus
of self-variation in the phenomenological attitude is on that which
conditions possibility constitution. As such, the question becomes:
which of these conditions are necessary and which are only seemingly
so? Moreover, if necessary, which structures are ahistorical and which
potentially historically volatile yet conditioning nonetheless?19 The
mapping process at work in transcendental self-variation is systemic,
yet its grounding of the correlate systems of possibilities is transcen
dentally eidetic rather than primarily de-naturalizing, as in the case of
self-variation in the natural attitude.
Whereas self-variation in the natural attitude has the ability
to expose the mere patina of necessity of sedimented naturalized
contingencies, as we saw above (e.g., gender norms stemming from
sexual binary commitments), transcendental self-variation can do
19 Elsewhere I argue for the need to decouple transcendental necessity and ahistoricity
(Aldea 2020). We can identify transcendentally necessary structures, such as the

co-constituting dynamism between body image and gendered schemas, which are
meaning-constituting in wide-reaching ways yet they themselves are historically con
ditioned.
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the same; it can expose naturalized contingencies, only it does so obli

quely, in its otherwise resolute pursuit of transcendental necessities.
And though this bringing into relief is indeed oblique, it is no less
radical than a patently focused process of exposing these naturalized
contingencies. Even when not primarily interested in opening up
possibilities for social justice, phenomenological inquiries can bring
to light such possibilities in virtue of their very eidetic orientation and
flow (Heinämaa, Carr, Aldea, 2022). The eidetic focus of phenomeno
logy does not entail its inability to do justice to the contingent (i.e., the
conceptually-laden, the socio-culturally and politically sedimented
power dynamics that condition our senses of self and world) as some
have recently argued (Davis 2020, also Guenther 2020), nor does
the obliqueness I refer to above entail a less-than-radical exposure
of oppressive and marginalizing structures. Quite the contrary. It
is precisely in virtue of the qualitatively different modal standard,
namely transcendental necessity, that phenomenological inquiries
(including, and, I would argue, especially those unfolding through
self-variation) hold themselves to that they can systemically map
systems of possibilities, their limits, and what grounds them in a way
inquiries committed to »contingency all the way down« never could.
The »as if otherwise« at play in contingency-focused self-variation
can at most generate potentially realizable alternatives. The »as if
otherwise« at play in transcendentally-focused self-variation can
both generate potentially realizable alternatives and explicate their
grounding in both historically and ahistorically necessary structures
of constitution.
In order to make this very point about the privileged status of
the exemplarity at work in transcendental self-variation, Husserl put
forth a most puzzling claim, one which »I phantasy only myself as if
I were otherwise« (Husserl 1950, p. 106/72) captures: the concrete,
individual self (my unavoidable starting point as phenomenologist
embarking on a process of self-variation) coincides with its eidetic sin
gularity, which, unlike other eidetic singularities, does not instantiate
across different individuals. I can only »vary« myself, since I am bound
to work with my eidetic singularity.
We should recall here, following Mohanty (1999, pp. 156–7),
Husserl’s distinction between abstract essences (pure possibilities,
Husserl 1976, p. 35), which govern multiple possible individuations,
and concrete essences, which allow for many versions of one indivi
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dual (the individual may or may not be real).20 My concrete self, the
self I am bound to take as an exemplar in the process of self-variation,
is both an individual reality and a concrete essence —an eidetic singu
larity which, according to Husserl, is a possible instantiation of the
eidos ego (see also Lobo, 2013). As such, my concrete self necessarily
points beyond itself as it grounds me as a phenomenologist and as ego
understood as concrete essence (concretum) or eidetic singularity. In
orienting myself toward the eidos ego, I necessarily remain guided by
my concrete self (and concretum) taken as exemplar.
To go back to what »the otherwise« might amount to in transcen
dental self-variation, besides straightforwardly understanding them
as the imaginative variants of a concretum (the way Mohanty sug
gests), I would contend that in a narrower and methodologically
more potent sense, the otherwise refers here to conceivable imagining
possibilities that reveal—through our potentially uneasy, surprising,
unexpected manners of experiencing them—the grounds and limits
articulating and delineating our systems of possibilities. Some of
these grounds and limits are normalized and naturalized contingen
cies (e.g., naturalized concepts and norms), hence surpassable once
revealed as such. Others are transcendentally necessary in manners
that may or may not resist transformation (they are either historical
or ahistorical structures of self- and world-constitution). What is
potentially self-transformative here, at both personal and transcen
dental-phenomenological levels, is precisely this process’ critical work
of exposing, in virtue of its being anchored in my exemplarity, the
limits of my conceivable systems of possibilities. Thus, self-variation
not only sheds light on the normalized styles of my self-constitution
as well as the transcendentally necessary moments of my eidetic
singularity (thus fulfilling its task as critique of present systems of
knowledge and power), but in so doing, it also works toward the
regulative ideal of adequately mapping the limits of conceivability for
20 »A variation in phantasy of a real individual (or of my own ego) would result in
an individual which could have been real. Socrates six feet tall and without a snub
nose but a straight one, would be such an individual with real possibility; he is capable
of existing. This is what Husserl often calls phantasy-possibility. When therefore
[Husserl] says […] ›individual Being of every kind…could have been other than it
is‹ [Hua III/1, 12], he means: Take any individual reality, imagine variations in its
concretum, i.e., in its essential properties – properties which make him this individual
– and you come up with another individual which very well might have been real«
(Mohanty 1999, pp. 155–6; emphasis mine).
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one—i.e., the structures of the eidos ego in all of their hierarchical

complexity. Its distancing from its given starting point and hence its
›overcoming‹ of the initial »restriction« this starting point imposes
on it is thus twofold, given what the process is capable of bringing
systemically into relief.
In a recently published paper, Daniele de Santis carefully exp
licates not only Husserl’s claim regarding the coincidence of the
concrete (individual) self and its eidetic singularity, but also traces
some important implications of this claim for Husserl’s method of
self-variation, and, importantly, for understanding the centrality of
this method in Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole.21 Following
some of Husserl’s other references to this coincidence (for e.g., Husserl
1973a, p. 383; Husserl 1973b, p. 385f., Husserl 2012, p. 372, Husserl
2014, p. 122 among others), de Santis emphasizes several important
points about self-variation: 1) I vary myself and in so doing, I vary
my experiences and their correlate, i.e., the world understood as my
surrounding world (de Santis 2020, p. 265); 2) in varying myself and
my Umwelt, I am oriented toward »any« self and »any« Umwelt as
the corresponding a priori of correlation here (ibid.); 3) the variants
are ›anchored‹ in »myself as fact« (de Santis 2020, 266, quoting
Husserl 1993, p. 85); 4) my concrete (individual) self is not a mere
instantiation »among others,« since my eidetic singularity coincides
with its individualization (something Mohanty, too, captures above;
see de Santis 2020, p. 266); and 5) since I am both the varying self and
the self that is varied, there is an inherent performativity at work in
transcendental self-variation (de Santis 2020, p. 267).
All of these points further nuance my explication of self-variation
here, but it is especially the final (5th) point I wish to briefly focus on,
since it harkens back to my analysis of self-variation as a type of self-
imagining that is self-referential in a qualitatively distinct way modally
21 De Santis understands this same »phantasizing myself only myself as if I were

otherwise« through a sophisticated explication of »myself«—the individual – as
coinciding with the ego understood as eidetic singularity. Following Husserl, de
Santis stresses that the »peculiarity« of the ego as eidetic singularity consists in the
latter’s being its own individualization (see de Santis 2020, 261–262). Thus, when
following Husserl’s discussions of the »concrete ego« in the Fourth Meditation, one
must keep this coincidence in mind—a coincidence that does not entail collapsing
the two (de Santis 2020, 262). Thus, according to de Santis, Husserl has to claim
»that I only phantasy myself only myself,« since the exemplar I’m working with
does not sustain individuation the way other eidetic singularities would (i.e., across
different individuals).
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speaking: as the mapping of self and world systemically-motivated

in a dynamic way, both anchored in and distanced from the given as
pre-given and oriented toward self- and world-clarification as well as
transformation. The performative aspect of self-variation is transfor
mative across the natural-phenomenological attitude divide. In the
case of the former, transformation is practically and existentially ori
ented. In the case of the latter, transformation through performativity
is twofold: both domain-related, by shifting systemic gear, so to speak,
toward the mapping of the transcendentally necessary rather than
merely possible, and reflexive or self-examining, i.e., pertaining to
the phenomenologizing ego itself. The implications of this last point,
especially for understanding the development of Husserl’s mature
understanding of phenomenology as radical self-reflection (radikale
Selbstbesinnung), are telling.
We can see now how self-variation is always already latently at
work in all transcendental eidetic variation. When I study perception,
for example, and I rely on the method of eidetic variation as Husserl
conceives it (see above), the »just beneath the surface« latency of self-
referentiality is always already in play. It can surface precisely in and
through experiences of modal tension and conflict. When that hap
pens, we may very well ›pause‹ our initial eidetic work and re-orient
ourselves, evaluatively, in a manner guided by the insight that tension
holds, toward a full-fledged self-variation whose goal is to clarify pre
cisely the grounds leading to the methodological experience of the
tension in question. These grounds are therefore not fixed or given,
but self-grounding, as Husserl himself reminds us in the Crisis (Hus
serl 1954, p. 181). This performative clarification is ipso facto self-
transformative. It does not leave me unchanged. Even if my metho
dological commitments end up not shifting, they are now, for me, not
given as pre-given. As a critically self-referential process, self-varia
tion does not leave the phenomenologist, the method, and arguably
the field as a communalized and traditionalized endeavor, unchanged.
Self-imagining, regardless of attitude, leaves traces in the concrete.
Alternando, the concrete, anchored sense of lifeworld and traditionally
situated self delineates what the process of self-variation can accom
plish eidetically. This may seem like a messy limitation, especially
given Husserl’s goal of a higher eidetic egology. Yet, doesn’t this anti
cipate precisely the historical and self-referential dynamism (ad infi
nitum) of his mature, Crisis method (see esp. Husserl 1954, §§ 7, 9,
15)?
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Let us briefly revisit the distinctive self-referentiality of self-

variation as self-imagining and its critically »clarifying« as well as
»transformative« potential. As an experience of myself in the imagi
ning »again« mode we explored above, transcendental self-variation
carries with it the potential for tension between my varying self (i.e.,
phenomenologizing ego) and my varied self (my anchored starting
point and the variants it can sustain). And while my patent focus
as phenomenologist is on the varied self, namely its structures and
its correlate world, should a modal tension arise between these two
senses of self—say, due to what heretofore I might have experienced
as necessary limit (i.e., transcendental inconceivability) as an inquirer
but now I find that its necessity was a sedimented product of my trai
ning or previous theoretical accomplishments —, the »just beneath the
surface« or »thinly veiled« latency of this tension and of the »other
wise« it portends for the phenomenologizing ego shifts the focus to
my inquiring self. I have not abandoned my other patent focus, my
orientation toward the structures of self-constitution remains in place,
but I am now tracing myself back to myself »again« and »anew« in
the process of self-variation in a manner that is revelatory both of
my subject matter and of myself as theoretical ego. This two-tiered
performativity, reflexive and self-referential, is, in my view, the key
to rendering all transcendental eidetic inquiries radically critical in a
manner capable of dispelling transcendental naiveties and illusions,
assumptions we take for granted as inquiring selves. Yes, as the eidetic
process at the core of phenomenological studies of self-constitution,
self-variation appears to be a project-specific methodological tool.
However, this is not all that it is. As performative, it is both clarifying
and self-clarifying, and, as such, it is a process that historicizes itself
by generating and re-generating new possibilities of inquiry for itself.
The zig-zag movement of »reflection back« tracing itself into the
present that Husserl’s Besinnung exhibits is made possible precisely
in and through transcendental self-variation, this time understood as
methodological tool central to phenomenology as a whole.
I began by pointing to Husserl’s emphatic call for a higher-order
critique in the Cartesian Meditations as anticipating his Crisis call
for radical self-reflection and resonating with his other, late 1920s
calls to radical critique, for example, in his Formal and Transcendental
Logic (Husserl 1974). One of my contentions at the beginning of
the chapter was that what Husserl has to say about self-variation
in the Fourth Meditation anticipates this Crisis call and points to its
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dynamism and self-referentiality. As critical method, Besinnung is

a historical-teleological reflection (Husserl 1954, p. xiv/3fn.)22 into
depth spheres (Tiefensphäre) (Husserl 1954, p. 122), that is, into the
historical conditions for the possibility of current articulations of
meanings across all registers (axiological, praxiological, normative,
etc.). As such, Besinnung is a historical inquiring back (Rückfragen),
a reflection back (Rückbesinnung) (Husserl 1954, pp. 16, 48, 72–
73) through layers of sedimented senses and meanings that takes
aim at the ›crust‹ (Husserl 1954, 16) of historical accomplishments
of different types (concepts, styles, norms, values, interests). As a
method, it aims to bring the given as pre-given to transcendental
clarity (Husserl 1974, p. 6). It both unearths »original grounds«
and reclaims, through a possibility-opening kind of re-collection
(Wiederholung), the evidence of experience anew (Husserl 1974, pp.
8–9). The looking back is thus, at the same time, also a looking
forward. A »zig-zag« movement (Husserl 1954, p. 59) and infinite
task, inter-personal and generational (Husserl 1974, pp. 6, 8; see also
Husserl 1954, p. 4), a radical reflection about what is possible in
principle (Husserl 1954, p. 39). Through its re-orientation (Husserl
1954, p. xiv, 3fn.) toward grounding Stiftungen, present situatedness,
and ever new possibilities of inquiry, Besinnung is also inherently
normative: it questions determining principles and goals (Husserl
1954, pp. 15, 16; Husserl 1974, p. 147) and likewise examines the very
grounds of the validities (Geltungsfundierungen, Husserl 1954, p. 143)
sustaining them.
As radical reflection into grounds and goals, Besinnung as self-
reflection (Husserl 1974, p. 6) and radical self-understanding (Husserl
1954, p. 16) carries with it a robust sense of self-responsibility (Selbst
verantwortung), theoretical as well as historical-cultural and personal.
As such, it entails a sustained commitment to self-investigation
reliant upon possibilities and necessities understood as orientational
guides for action, values, praxis, and judgment (Husserl 1974, pp.
5–7; Husserl 1954, pp. 15, 73). To radically self-reflect is therefore
also to self-justify (Selbstrechtfertigung, Husserl 1974, p. 2) through
an un-prejudiced grounding, which includes both the clarification
of our own interests (Husserl 1954, p. 57) and of the traditionality
of our own thought as phenomenologists (Husserl 1954, pp. 72–
22 For a discussion of the teleological dimension of Besinnung, see Hartimo (forth
coming).
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73): »Only by virtue of a fundamental clarification, penetrating the

depths of the inwardness that produces cognition and theory, the
transcendental inwardness, does what is produced as genuine theory
and genuine science become understandable« (Husserl 1974, pp.
14/15–16). Besinnung is thus also existential (Husserl 1954, p. 60):
a reflection both personal, inter-personal, and historical (Husserl
1954, pp. 70–71)—one very much anchored in the concreteness of
the radically inquiring self. To closely follow Husserl’s explication of
Besinnung here is to see that transcendental self-variation understood
not solely as a method for inquiries into self-constitution but as a
central method at the core of phenomenology itself functions as a
necessary condition for the possibility of this radical self-critique.
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Jean-François Lavigne’s Objection to

Phenomenological Idealism: Critical Remarks
with the Help of the Cartesian Meditations
1. The powerful work of Jean-François Lavigne
Jean-François Lavigne’s work Husserl et la naissance de la

phénoménologie (1900–1913), published in 2005, constitutes a
landmark in the historical-philosophical research regarding the
emergence of transcendental phenomenology. The subtitle of the
monumental work, »Des Recherches logiques aux Ideen: La genèse
de l’idéalisme transcendantal phénoménologique,« undoubtedly estab
lishes Husserl’s transcendental idealism as the decisive theoretical
question serving as the leading clue for this exhaustive inquiry into the
history of philosophy. Lavigne analyzes the philosopher’s intellectual
development from 1900 to 1913 in a systematic approach, which
nonetheless unfolds year by year, semester by semester, occasionally
month by month, with the invaluable help of Husserl’s scientific
correspondence—perhaps the most significant theoretical use of this
correspondence to date. However, the first statement of the text—the
initial claim of the book’s nearly eight hundred pages—shakes the
reader with an unequivocal reminder that no history of philosophy
is possible without philosophical tension in the present, that only a
concern for truth nourishes authentic interest in the philosophical
past. This opening statement reads as follows: »Today there is a
problem of transcendental phenomenology« (Lavigne 2005, p. 15).1
The historical-philosophical scope of Lavigne’s research is made
clear by his capacity to question the two main dominant models
1 All the translations from Lavigne’s work are mine. I am highly indebted to Clara
Bafaluy and Elizabeth Behnke for their contribution to the English version of my text.
This paper has been prepared in the Research Project »Fenomenología del cuerpo y
experiencias de gozo«, PID 2021–123252NB-I00 (Government of Spain).
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for understanding the crucial transformation of phenomenology in

the work of 1913. The first is in fact the one assumed by Husserl
himself, who always tended to describe his philosophical evolution in
terms of a basic theoretical continuity such that a coherent process
of deepening would link the descriptive psychology of 1900/01 with
the later transcendental phenomenology. In the most solemn place,
in the very Introduction to Ideas I, pure phenomenology is declared
to be »the same phenomenology that made a first break-through
in the Logische Untersuchungen« (Husserl 1976, p. 4; Husserl 1982,
p. xvii). In contrast to Husserl’s self-interpretation of a progressive
and cohesive unfolding of his thought, the first phenomenological
school, which brought together the enthusiastic readers of the Logical
Investigations in the city of Göttingen, almost unanimously shared
the opposite interpretation: they conceived the master’s philosophical
trajectory in terms of a decisive theoretical discontinuity. For them,
the acknowledgment of eidetic laws in every realm of being and the
requirement of their description freed from all subjectivism would
have undergone a deep upheaval when Husserl reinterpreted inten
tionality as the constitution of objectivity in and by subjectivity. The
very term »intentional constitution,« of neo-Kantian stamp, would
already indicate the incompatibility of this perspective with the initial
one. That Husserl’s transcendental turn represented a reorientation
of both the spirit and the letter of phenomenology, now under Kant’s
decisive influence, is the thesis that Heidegger would later defend as
well, and which was consolidated as the second model of understand
ing.
With a historian’s precision and a philosopher’s passion, Lavigne
sheds new light on this theoretical problem and proposes an original
solution to the uncomfortable alternative of either a single Husserlian
phenomenology or two mutually exclusive Husserlian phenomenolo
gies struggling for supremacy. In his view, transcendental phenomen
ology cannot be considered the same philosophy as the descriptive
psychology of 1900. The absence of the phenomenological epochē
and the transcendental reduction in the Logical Investigations cannot
be relativized, for the complete absence of both is not a question of the
correctness of the exposition, but on the contrary is the consequence of
the fact that the initial book adopts the natural attitude toward the all-
encompassing existence of the world. It was consequently assumed
that conscious lived experiences were factual realities belonging to
empirical beings, to psychophysical beings who are an integral part
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Jean-François Lavigne’s Objection to Phenomenological Idealism
of that same real world: »The Logical Investigations are built on a pre-
conception of the sense of being of intentional lived experiences. In
this sense, they are not metaphysically neutral. This sense of being is
empirical reality. […] The fundamental ontological position of Logical
Investigations is, therefore, the natural attitude« (Lavigne 2005, p.
128). Thus the frequent interpretations, from Heidegger (1963, pp.
96–99) to Zahavi (2017, pp. 30–50), of the Logical Investigations
as adopting a kind of ontological neutrality in the realism-idealism
debate are here completely called into question. But even more
important and significant than this rejection is the claim that the
transcendental-phenomenological perspective would not be another
philosophy either—one that could have arisen apart from the initial
work, that could have been formed out of approaches and problematics
not present in the groundbreaking work, and that could perhaps refer
to outside sources, fundamentally those of Kant or neo-Kantianism.
Further in the book (chronologically, in the winter of 1905–06),
Lavigne examines the textual and documentary basis that supposedly
supported Kant’s positive influence on Husserl’s transcendentalism.
With real strength of conviction, Lavigne shows that rather than
Husserl’s interest in Kant and in the renewed readings of his works
preceding and supporting the theoretical discoveries that Husserl was
making, the engagement with Kant actually occurred after Husserl’s
progress regarding his own problematic, in which he was entirely
immersed. The French scholar closes this aspect of his argument with
resounding brilliance: »Husserl is not a neo-Kantian. It is Kant who is
a pre-Husserlian« (Lavigne 2005, p. 537).
In this vein, Lavigne is able to link the two mutually exclusive
models—continuity or rupture—by claiming a rupture within con
tinuity. Husserl’s evolution takes place »along the lines of« and at
the same time »against« the psychological determination of cognitive
life and the realist understanding of the known world. The title of
the book thus delays the unique birth of Husserlian phenomenology
to 1913, and its long pregnancy points back to the arduous process
of self-critical maturation that Lavigne places at its core. The »break
through« of 1900/01 of which Husserl spoke is only a »vegetal
metaphor«: a »germinal« irruption, which resulted in an organism
distinctly different from the original (Lavigne 2005, p. 105).
However, as I have already indicated, for Lavigne the decisive
problem remains transcendental-phenomenological idealism, which
from the very beginning of his work is considered a »metaphysical
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thesis.« It is »the universal metaphysical claim« that defines Husser

lian phenomenology from Ideas I onward and that became an uncom
fortable question for the entire phenomenological movement of the
20th century, in dispute generation after generation with most great
figures of phenomenological philosophy in disagreement with it.
Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie (1900–1913) does not
merely aim to be a landmark contribution to the foundational history
of the phenomenological movement, but also attempts to clarify
this enormous philosophical debate, and incidentally, to direct the
phenomenology of the 21st century toward a realist rather than an
idealist-transcendentalist approach.
In the framework of the present collective volume devoted to the
Cartesian Meditations, it makes full sense to consider Lavigne’s his
torical-structural approach and to outline some conceptual discrep
ancies. The immediate question posed by his 2005 work concerns
what is to be understood, strictly speaking, by transcendental-phe
nomenological idealism (§§ 1–2), and the author provides an
answer (§§ 4–5) precisely through the Cartesian Meditations. As is
well known, it was not until the 1931 publication that Husserl would
publicly and explicitly place the philosophical novelty of his phe
nomenology under that label, so loaded with history, so surrounded
by associations and misunderstandings. Shortly afterward, the text of
The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology
once again avoids the countless connotations of such a label and omits
any claim to it. In the following pages, I will venture to point out a
number of ambiguities and obscurities that I see in Lavigne’s argu
ment, and I will attempt to formulate some of these doubts with the
help of material from the First, Second, and Fourth Meditations.
However, I will confine myself to Lavigne’s 2005 work and will not
take into account his later book, Accéder au transcendantal?, which
follows only the thread of Ideas I and puts forward the same inter
pretation of phenomenological idealism. Let us proceed, then, with a
provisional attempt—born out of a sincere appreciation for the French
philosopher’s work—toclarify the issues at stake here.
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2. The so-called »ontological psychologism« of the

Logical Investigations
My commentary can begin with the groundbreaking work of phe

nomenology as well. Lavigne considers that the »fundamental onto
logical position« of the Logical Investigations is »a psychological
realism of conscious events.« This assessment is put forward in the
first chapter of the first section, and it is reaffirmed in the book’s useful
concluding summary (Lavigne 2005, pp. 118–128, 719). As I have
already mentioned, Husserl’s fundamental stance in the 1900/01
work is thus a version or mode of the natural attitude: intentional
lived experiences are, in principle, empirical events within factual
reality. Whatever their claim to knowledge, whatever the object they
are directed to or the relationship they objectify, even if it concerns the
most evident thought about the most basic logical law, the mode of
being of the lived experiences is the same as that which corresponds
to any worldly temporal reality—to the white paper I perceive on
this table, to the noise coming from the street, to the falling rain,
etc. From this premise follows the essential principle that things are
external to the purely psychic perceptual intention that objectifies
them; they are transcendent not only to the empirical lived experience
of signifying or judging them, but also to the lived experiences of
intuition and evidence concerning their reality. With extraordinary
clarity, Lavigne brings to the forefront Husserl’s thesis that »in phe
nomenological treatment, objectivity counts as nothing: in general,
it transcends the act« (Husserl 1984, p. 427; Husserl 1970, p. 587,
translation modified according to the first edition). This principle,
formulated in the Fifth Investigation and relevant throughout the
entire work, states that any requirement for the object or entity to
be in relation to or to stay in correlation with the conscious act is
extraneous to the psychic appearance, to the phenomenalization as
the real-psychic event that phenomenology examines: »The perceived
thing is pointed-at-as entity, that is all Logical Investigations is able
to establish and elucidate. Of course, this also means that such a
psychology refuses any statement concerning this entity in absolute
terms« (Lavigne 2005, p. 142).
According to Lavigne, what would correspond to this ontological
position on the methodological level is an »ontological psycholo
gism,« described in similar terms. The latter requires the analysis of
intentional lived experiences, and particularly of sensory perception,
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to be conducted in terms of the psychic contents really intrinsic

to the acts (reelle Inhalte) (Lavigne 2005, pp. 118–119, 720). The
phenomenologist will thus take on the task of systematically showing
how a lived experience’s claim to truth, or to accessing the reality of
a perception, depends on moments, links, and parts that only exist
within individual consciousness and in the instant of time in which
the intentional event takes place. The essential moments of intuition
that the Fifth Investigation brings to light (intentional matter, inten
tional quality, primary contents, attentional factor), which the Sixth
Investigation completes with the concept of functional representation,
are the effective fulfilment of this phenomenological analysis of really
intrinsic moments, which Lavigne calls »ontological psychologism.«
For Lavigne, then, by virtue of that psychological realism and of
this methodology, the Husserlian phenomenology that took shape
in 1900 would already harbor an inchoate idealism at its deepest
core, that is, a tendency toward an idealist interpretation of sensory
perception and of the perceived object. For the moment I will not focus
on this issue; I only note that it is highly significant for understanding
why Lavigne thinks of Husserl’s intellectual evolution as a continuity
that slowly and with difficulty becomes aware of its assumptions
without ever questioning them entirely. It is on the basis of this
deep-rooted tendency, hidden to the German philosopher himself,
that Lavigne can argue that »historically, the idealism of intentionality
(particularly perceptual intentionality) preceded the elaboration of the
method of reduction, and a fortiori the theory of transcendental consti
tution« (Lavigne 2005, p. 720).
In my opinion, there is no doubt regarding the enormous relev
ance that the »psychological realism of lived experiences« had for
early phenomenology, and perhaps no one before Lavigne has ever
emphasized it as vigorously as he does in this work. However, what
remains unclear, what is surprising to the reader, is the treatment of
such realism as the »fundamental ontological position« of the Logical
Investigations. The empirical-psychological condition of lived experi
ences is so perfectly coherently integrated into the general ontological
framework of the latter work and so entirely dependent on it that
its intended »fundamentality« is in a way derivative, dependent. Cer
tainly, such psychological realism could not relegate the quintessential
theoretical novelty of the 1900/01 work to the background—the
ontological discovery that would make possible the refutation of
psychologism and the rejection of all nominalism, including phenom
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enalism: namely, the claim that »there is a fundamental categorial

split in our unified conception of being (or, what is the same, in our
conception of an object as such); we take account of this split when we
distinguish between ideal being and real being, between being as Spe
cies and being as what is individual« (Husserl 1984, p. 130; Husserl
1970, p. 353). In the 1900/01 work, this boundary within being was
an insurmountable abyss of sense, given that both physical reality and
psychic reality were defined by temporality, while ideality was defined
by an absolute atemporality, not even a sort of eternity. »Should
we wish, however, to keep all metaphysics out, we may simply
define ›reality‹ in terms of temporality. For the only point of import
ance is to oppose it to the timeless ›being‹ of the ideal« (Husserl 1984,
p. 129; Husserl 1970, p. 352). Moreover, this realm of ideal being
presents a defining plurality consisting of at least two heterogeneous
domains: on the one hand, the order of meanings, which comprises
every unity of meaning in specie, including false and even absurd
propositions; and on the other hand, the realm of ideal objects in
a more proper sense—not propositional unities, but some objective
correlates of the corresponding truths, »entities« likewise referred
to without the slightest connection to time: numbers, geometrical
figures, exact ratios and proportions, and, of course, also the genera
and species of real properties such as color, extension, and shape
(i.e., the universals of the corresponding individual-real moments).
Especially crucial for the ontological delimitation of psychic reality
is the fact that meanings in individuo are rooted in consciousness
and occur in it; the real individuals that exemplify ideal meanings
like »7 is a prime number« or »the brown living room armchair« exist
in the person’s consciousness every time he/she once again utters
the statement or once again perceives the piece of furniture at a new
moment of time.
Certainly, this general ontological framework of the Logical
Investigations is the one that became the hallmark of early phenomen
ology, allowing us to describe its philosophical orientation as »eidetic
intuitionism« (Lavigne 2005, p. 31). Lavigne is well aware that it
is »the general opposition between the ideal and the real on which
the problems of Logical Investigations rest« (Lavigne 2005, p. 195).
It is therefore strange that he could see a form of psychologism in
the thesis of the reality or temporality—which in the present context
amount to the same thing—of lived experiences. Without any textual
support in Prolegomena to a Pure Logic, Lavigne introduces a distinc
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tion between »a causalist or genetic psychologism, characteristic of

empirical naturalism, which the Prolegomena firmly criticized, but
which does not exclude the possibility of another psychologism, one
that is built on the apprehension of the lived experience as a real
event of the world, as a subjective fact highlighted in a positive yet
not explanatory science: psychology« (Lavigne 2005, p. 118). If the
mere understanding of lived experiences as real events belonging to
an inner-worldly being amounts to psychologism, then a truly curious
circumstance would follow: all of the Göttingen disciples would have
been as psychologistic as the master himself was supposed to be at
this early moment. Furthermore, we would come to an astonishing
paradox, namely, that only the idealist Husserl could detect that mere
eidetic intuitionism would be incapable of escaping psychologism.
That is, it was only the philosophy that the Göttingen disciples and
Lavigne himself equally reject that was able to establish that by
itself, intuitive knowledge of the ideal also fails to go beyond Hume’s
relations of ideas (Husserl 1984, pp. 456–457; Husserl 1970, pp.
607–608, second edition addition).
With this in view, this part of Lavigne’s book might be lacking
some attention to the Third Investigation and to the way in which
Husserl thematizes synthetic a priori laws, an example of which
are the essential statements of this initial descriptive psychology.
Such »material« yet necessary laws express the non-formalizable
connections of dependence between the parts of a whole: the color
and extension in need of each other—de re necessity—in a chromatic
phenomenon; the pitch, tone color, and volume in an acoustic one;
etc. But within any possible perceptual intention, intentional matter,
intentional quality, and sensations also require each other in any case
whatever regarding a conceivable subject in a possible world. The
contents involved in these necessary connections are, in effect, really
intrinsic contents (reelle Inhalte), and their ontological dependence on
other contents of specific genera yields or determines the correspond
ing whole: the chromatic or acoustic phenomenon, the intentional
lived experience. Consequently, to maintain that all real intentionality
requires a moment of apprehension, an objectifying quality, and an
attentional factor implies as much psychologism as there would be
physicalism or naturalism in the assertion that individual colors are
essentially extended and give rise to Gestalt qualities.
Given that Lavigne does not consider that the structural rift
that threatens the fundamental theoretical framework of the Logical
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Investigations from within is precisely the ontological-phenomenolo

gical distinction between ideal meanings in specie and the correspond
ing real meanings in individuo—the intentional matter of objectifying
acts—I will leave this crucial issue out of my paper as well.2 The entire
agenda of Husserl’s initial phenomenology falls apart if this nexus of
exemplification or instantiation that links the ideal with the psychic
cannot be recognized; it crumples if the claim that the ideality of
meaning is the same as its universality turns out to be a prejudice, and
would therefore impact the co-prejudice that any intentional reference
includes within its really intrinsic contents a case of ideal meaning. In a
way, we will find traces of this same problem in Lavigne’s questioning
of transcendental phenomenology.
3. The metaphysical postulates of

transcendental phenomenology
It is in the long thematic introduction preceding his historical-philo

sophical study that Lavigne makes use of the Cartesian Meditations in
order to underline the fact that the transcendental idealism of phe
nomenology was, to the founder of the new philosophy, an inevitable
rational requirement. The idealist thesis, which is solemnly and expli
citly proclaimed for the first time in § 41 of the 1931 introduction to
phenomenology, was neither a hermeneutic option nor a complement
to a »worldview,« but mandatory for every ultimately coherent phe
nomenologist. It consists, on the other hand, in the affirmation that
intentional constitution is of universal scope—or in the words of the
Cartesian Meditations that Lavigne cites, »Transcendency in every
form is an immanent existential characteristic, constituted within the
ego. Every imaginable sense, every imaginable being, whether the
latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls within the domain of
transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity that constitutes sense
and being« (Husserl 1950, p. 7; Husserl 1960, pp. 83–84). The French
philosopher’s sharp critique then seeks to bring to light two meta
physical postulates that function »in the background« to sustain the
agenda and unfolding of transcendental phenomenology, condition
2 For decades the work of Miguel García-Baró (1993, 2008) has proved with
incomparable rigor how the ontology and methodology of the Logical Investigations
are built, with enormous difficulty, on this precarious doctrine.
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ing the intuitive purity of intentional analysis, determining the

method of phenomenological reduction, and generating the disputes,
already one century old, that have marked the history of the phe
nomenological movement.
The first postulate Lavigne reports and denounces is the meta
physical thesis according to which »being is, in and for itself, reducible
to sense« (Lavigne 2005, p. 72). The being of sensory things and
of the world, the esse of space, of time, of non-living and living
beings—which in itself seems prior to sense and indifferent to it, and
which seems to possess »ontological autonomy« with regard to mean
ing—becomes completely identified with sense: »›being‹ designates a
mode of sense, whereby no difference whatever between being and
that which Husserl calls ›sense of being‹ could be established« (Lav
igne 2005, p. 72). This first presupposition would depend on the
new understanding of intentionality, no longer as a psychological
event, but as a process of the »dynamic constitution of being« (Lavigne
2005, p. 39). Given that phenomenology was born out of the scientific
pursuit of an exhaustive clarification of knowledge, and given that
Husserl claimed that only in his maturity did he achieve such an end,
Lavigne emphasizes that transcendental phenomenology consists
of »an ontological idealism and not an idealism of knowledge like
Kant’s, because here constitution, in addition to its gnoseological
transcendental function, acquires the weight of an original foundation
of being, in the universality of its sense« (Lavigne 2005, pp. 39–40).
The second metaphysical assumption that Lavigne brings to
light, which he refers to as the »fundamental postulate of the ontolo
gical validity of the reduction,« consists of the fact that »being as sense
founds itself on a more original mode of being—properly immediate—
that is primordial appearance, or phenomenality« (Lavigne 2005, p.
72). Following this second principle, the sense to which transcendent
and meta-phenomenal existence had already been reduced is in turn
related or referred to an absolute and unconditional being whose
occurrence or appearance coincides entirely with its esse. For the
idealist Husserl, »original phenomenality« would exclusively involve
conscious lived experiences, the life of the pure ego, which does
not depend on any other being. From the perspective of intentional
constitution, this second postulate would not only imply the »onto
logical asymmetry« by which conscious lived experiences are on
the active side (constituens) and the real world is, according to a
unilateral dynamic, on the constituted side (constitutum), but would
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also amount to »the interpretation of the self-givenness of conscious

ness to itself, in the phenomenality of the self-evident immediate
apprehension characteristic of the pure ego, as being (namely, as
absolute being)« (Lavigne 2005, p. 87).
These two presuppositions would be operative principles, in a
sense that can perhaps evoke the sense Fink assigned to certain key
concepts of Husserlian philosophy that had an influence on his the
oretical articulation from a »non-thematic,« »sub-thematic« plane.
According to Lavigne, both the identification of sense with being
and the self-givenness of conscious life as absolute appearance-being
are core conditions of the phenomenological method itself. They are
thereby not the theoretical outcome of a descriptive reduction to
phenomena, but on the contrary, they are the semi-obscure stances
that allow the method of phenomenological reduction to unfold.
Thus, for example, in documenting several key moments of Husserl’s
evolution between 1900 and 1913, Lavigne refers to a very early
moment, drawing upon a letter from Husserl to Anton Marty in the
summer of 1901—a moment that is in fact so early that it inevitably
strikes the reader’s attention:
It is not the phenomenological reduction that would have led Husserl
to the »discovery« of transcendental constitution and, through this, to
an idealism of absolute subjectivity; on the contrary, it would have been
the necessity of an idealistic-subjectivist ontological interpretation
of the real world that would require a radically idealistic theory of
the effectivity of the object (theory of »constitution«), and this itself
would have implied the adoption of a new point of view on the object
and the intentional act: that of the future »phenomenological attitude.
« (Lavigne 2005, pp. 223–224)
Regarding the first postulate, Lavigne draws upon the fact that there
is an ontological difference between sense and being, a difference that
the transcendental Husserl seeks to diffuse and intends to erase. From
the very beginning, if the phenomenological approach that links them
is to bring about unexpected knowledge, the defining properties of
sense (its generic nature, its mode of being)must be distinguished
from the »effectiveness« that characterizes real being. In a strategic
moment of the book—the analysis of the »General Theory of Know
ledge: Lecture 1902/03« (Husserl 2001), a lecture course in which
Husserl formulated the basic postulate and, in its service, its corres
ponding method of reduction—Lavigne proposes an example that will
allow him to specify the ontological differentiation that according to
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him is thereby cancelled: while an armchair is a material reality on

which human beings sit, the sense »armchair« is not something any
one has ever sat on, and no one ever will; while the actual armchair is
made of wood and cloth, the sense »armchair« is only the »means by
which« consciousness accesses that spatial being and recognizes its
existence (Lavigne 2005, p. 346): the apprehensional sense is there
fore not the actual being, but »is exhausted in merely pointing-at
being« (Lavigne 2005, p. 347). Ultimately, Lavigne understands sense
as an entity belonging to the conceptual realm, if not as an outright
concept, a nominal meaning. »Concept of entity,« »thought of entity,
« and »thought entity« are some of the equivalents he uses in §§ 40–
41. And given that he unequivocally rejects any conversion of actual
being into something conceptual, he objects to Husserl that the reduc
tion of reality to a sense-unity incurs an undesirable identifica
tion: »For the most characteristic trait of being is precisely to exceed
the concept, and more radically, to exceed all forms of sense in gen
eral« (Lavigne 2005, p. 347).
Yet what Lavigne does not distance himself from is the fact
that his interpretation of sense as merely the means in order to
point at being situates his first postulate regarding transcendental
phenomenology in close proximity to the so-called Fregean theories of
the noema. It is of little importance that the expression noema is still
far from appearing in Husserlian texts, for the discussion is already
focused on the ontological status of the correlate of intentionality—in
particular, on the status of the perceptual correlate, which is given
in person and verifies knowledge. In this regard, just as Føllesdal
decades before him, Lavigne inserts an abstract entity from the family
of concepts that would allow the lived experience of perception to
access the perceived object. His original emphasis revolves around the
fact that for Husserl, this ideal sense, internal to the act of perception,
would be the condition not only of knowledge, but simultaneously
that of transcendent being such that the gnoseological reduction to
lived experience would bring about the metaphysical consequence
of idealism.
However, the opposite interpretation of what the noematic
dimension of perception, the noema, is and why it receives such a
designation is very relevant here. In the decades-long controversy
involving the Fregean understanding, the theoretical alternative will
claim that an »armchair« that no one can sit on cannot be the imman
ent correlate of the perceptual apprehension, of its noetic transitivity,
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and of the kinaesthetic dynamics inherent to perception. The abstract

entity »armchair« cannot then be the cogitatum of the perceiving sub
ject who walks into the living room, sees it at first glance, continues
to see it in shifting perspectival adumbrations while coming closer to
it, and finally turns around the axis of his/her own body and sits down
comfortably. His/her locomotor kinaesthetic system is then at rest,
and the embodied subjectivity settles into the piece of furniture as the
intentional term of his/her apprehension and perceptual actions. In
this intentional lived experience, disclosed as intentional correlation,
the identity of the object goes hand in hand with its intentional iden
tification: this identity is the sense-unity that internally corresponds
to the constant noetic process through which intentional lived exper
ience bestows sense, that is, individualizes the piece of furniture in its
surroundings, typifies it, is spatially oriented with regard to it, exper
iences its properties, etc. Such is without doubt the basic and singu
larly clear and emphatic description from § 17 of the Cartesian Med
itations: I draw nearer to a cube that from the very beginning I have
already seen, individualized, recognized; in successive glances I see
its square sides, I touch it, perhaps even throw it if it is one of a pair
of dice, yet all of this is possible insofar as it consists of the immanent
cogitatum of my identifying seeing and objectifying actions. There is
no heterogeneous, non-spatial, mediating entity that could be only
thought of; instead, the »armchair« or the cube—here Husserl no
longer uses quotation marks—operate as sense-unities of the con
tinuum of noetic experiences that synthetically approach the object
and perceive it as a noematic unity. In contrast with the intentional
matter of the Fifth Investigation, »the object in the how of its appear
ing«—the noema—is not a meaning, whether specific or individual; it
is not a concept, but the thing itself, »the object in the how of its
properties,« which, however, has not penetrated from the outside,
through force, into the intentional correlation; rather, it inhabits the
correlation as the immanent term of the noesis that bestows and ful
fills such sense.
The formidable asymmetry that Lavigne denounces between the
constituting and the constituted refers back, in the first instance,
to this descriptive disparity by which only the stream of lived
experiences (cogitationes) identifies and reveals correlates, which
appear to perception in their full identity with all of their ontic
and ontological properties intact (cogitata). Certainly, it consists of
a »unidirectional« constitution, given that by eidetic necessity, only
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conscious life can experience phenomena; only in conscious life can

there occur the appearance of something, of the thing and space,
which are phenomena not in and of themselves, but for intentional
lived experience.
Interestingly, Lavigne’s incomparable sensitivity toward the
exclusion of the intentional object in the descriptive psychology of
1900/01 does not lead him to consider that this thematic inclusion
of »what appears« in the phenomenological analysis of appearance,
of knowing, of living, is a decisive achievement. Moreover, there
is room for doubt as to whether the Fregean or semi-Fregean under
standing of the noema he endorses is conditioned by a neglect of the
phenomenological theory of wholes and parts inasmuch as that notion
of moments, of essentially dependent parts, functions as a »lever« for
phenomenological analysis (Husserl 1984, p. 228; Husserl 1970, p.
435) once, in the accurate words of John Drummond, »both kinds of
contents (real and intentional) are now moments within the whole that
is the intending act along with its object. The intentional relation of
consciousness to the world is now recognized as a whole comprising
non-independent parts, some of which are real and some of which
are intentional« (Drummond 2003, p. 66). The bilateral dependence
among moments—particularly between the sense-bestowing noesis
and the noematic sense-unity—requires understanding the encom
passing whole as a single concretum integrating the heterogeneous
abstract parts, thereby counteracting Lavigne’s tendency to interpret
intentional correlation in terms of a metaphysical anteriority of a
being or order of being (the substantial one) vis-à-vis another being
or order of being (the accidental or subsidiary one).3
Within this context, it is worth noticing how the Cartesian
Meditations highlights the fact that the »asymmetrical« correlation
of appearance is at work with regard to the stream of conscious
life as well. Lived experiences that stretch over time—and they all
do—come to be given in the impressional-retentional-protentional
continua, which are in constant change. Thus the synthetic structure
of time-consciousness presents all intentional experiences and hyletic
data as existing, flowing unities. The life of the pure ego, which
Lavigne’s second postulate elevates to the condition of a metaphysical
absolute, accordingly also exists only in correlation to the mode of
3 For further examination of this issue, let me refer to my essay »Husserl’s Mereolo
gical Argument for Intentional Constitution« (Serrano de Haro 2010).
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givenness proper to it: the distinctive »phenomenality« that the syn

thesis of the »all-embracing consciousness of internal time« (Husserl
1950, p. 81; Husserl 1960, p. 43) provides for the intentional lived
experiences. The Second Cartesian Meditation therefore analyzes, in
necessary simultaneity and cooperation, the appearance of the cube
as a sense-unity and the appearance of the perception of the cube,
flowing in inner time with all of its hyletic and noetic moments.
Whereas the physical entity acquires irreducible sense and existence
in a sensory-kinaesthetic-perceptual synthesis, it is in the underlying
synthesis of time-consciousness that the experience of the physical
entity acquires its own sense and existence. This situation makes
it especially difficult to observe the unilateral foundations invoked
by Lavigne’s postulates, i.e., from transcendent being to sense, and
from sense to the absolute phenomenality of the lived experience.
Rather, phenomenological lawfulness always uncovers »appearance-
being« structures, which concern both the being of the cube and
the being of the perception, and phenomenality consists of bilateral
correlations operating at different and integrated levels.
Certainly, the phenomenological treatment of time assumes a
strategic importance in Lavigne’s intense exploration. His meticulous
study of the February 1905 lectures on the consciousness of time,
and of the Seefeld manuscripts from that summer, leads him to
conclude that neither the discovery of the transcendental reduction
nor the recognition of the immanence of the cogitatum took place
during those dates. In defiance of Husserl’s later claims, in defiance
of the views of distinguished scholars, only the reduction limited
to the cogito, characteristic of the period he refers to as »immanent
phenomenology,« would be operative in 1905. I am not so bold
as to question Lavigne’s chronological reconstruction. However, I
wonder how to assess his own accurate exposition of the main result
of the Seefeld manuscripts, namely, »to highlight the need for an
intra-noetic identifying synthesis to unify, across the immanent flow,
the successively current time-moments of consciousness« (Lavigne
2005, p. 421). Is this not a correlational discovery shaking the very
evidence of the cogito, whose really intrinsic actuality becomes linked
to the really intrinsic intentional givenness of its temporality? Does
this not imply that the identity of what has just elapsed and of the
very fact of elapsing, that is, the past as such, takes form in correlation
to the retentional synthesis, the only one that bestows and fulfills
such sense? Is it not to be expected that such an astounding descript
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ive achievement would be among the immediate motivations for a

radicalized methodological reflection in which the cogito-cogitatum
structure might gain a universal scope?
4. Absolute affection and transcendence
A precise issue, very circumscribed and basically descriptive in nature,

may now be called upon in this discussion about the metaphysical pre
suppositions of Husserlian phenomenology. It concerns the themat
ization of the sensations involved in the perception of things and of the
world; more specifically, it deals with the intrinsic difference between
the sensory data of perception and those of memory, imagination,
phantasy, etc. Regarding this issue, Lavigne claims that there exists
a viable phenomenological solution contrary to Husserl’s position,
which was supposedly conditioned by his persistent idealist tendency.
In the Logical Investigations, Husserl claimed that there were no
internal differences between the sensory contents given in perception,
sensations in the specific sense, and the sensory contents given in the
other modes of intuition, sometimes known as phantasma (Husserl
1984, p. 399; Husserl 1970, pp. 567–568; Husserl 1984, pp. 599–610;
Husserl 1970, pp. 722–731). Thus the hyletic contents of a vivid
memory of my childhood living room can possess the same liveliness,
richness, and impact as the inattentive view of a similar living room
that now stands before me; similarly, a writer’s mere phantasy of a
room, for example, could possess the same sensory qualities (color,
sound, etc.) as those of the perceptual impression. Hyletic qualities are
not to be distinguished or differentiated into species according to the
modes of intuition, and Husserl would be able quite normally to admit
what for Hume was only an exceptional or rare case, that is, that a
memory or a phantasy (a Humean idea) can be richer and more intense
than a present perception (a Humean impression).
In his study of the aforementioned course of the 1904/05 winter
semester, Lavigne rightly emphasizes the persistence of this Husser
lian doctrine, but ventures to outline a phenomenological description
that would be incompatible with transcendental idealism. For him,
the alternative implies recognizing the radical specificity of perceptual
hyletic data, and he then links this peculiarity to a transcendent
givenness of the corresponding being. In fidelity to the phenomena, an
eidetic analysis of perception should have to admit that »the absolute
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trauma of a sensorial shock, before which consciousness is irreducibly

passive, always arriving with an immediate delay« (Lavigne 2005, p.
498). If the hyletic layer is not pre-reduced to a simple qualitative con
tent, as Husserl would inevitably do, if the dimension of affectivity and
of affected subjectivity are not eliminated, the phenomenologist’s gaze
should recognize that »perceptual intentionality can never consist of
more than the character and structure of a response to a shock and to
an occurrence that arrives from beyond appearance« (Lavigne 2005,
p. 498). Lavigne insists that the sensory occurrence in perception is
a traumatic event and that this phenomenological fact would require
the recognition of the fact that the absolute transcendence of the
entity makes its way into the immanence of the perceptual act on its
own initiative, from the outside. Husserl, of course, claims the exact
opposite. Let me recall a quotation that Lavigne does not mention,
but that speaks precisely to this point: »Neither a world nor any other
existent of any conceivable sort comes ›from outdoors (θύραθεν)‹ into
my ego, my life of consciousness« (Husserl 1974, p. 257; Husserl
1969, p. 250).
The fact that what Lavigne chooses as an epigraph for his book
is a quotation from Edith Stein rejecting the transcendental reduction
on the basis of such a meditation on that which is foreign to the ego,
and is imposed upon it in intentional lived experience, sheds light on
the relevance of this discussion with regard to the sensory matter of
perception. In fact, in Lavigne’s 2009 monograph dedicated to Ideas
I, the very same meditation serves to rehabilitate the natural attitude
and its status as the insurmountable condition of all experience.
However, Lavigne’s critique raises a series of questions. The first
concerns his forgetfulness and omission of precisely the Husserlian
category of impression. By becoming the individual-effective now,
each new present is impressionally experienced in inner time-con
sciousness. In other words, the present now occurs in an absolute
and primitive immediacy that cannot be deduced from or prepared
by anything else and is ceaselessly renewed. The consciousness of
the now and of that which fills the now—whatever the latter is,
whether act or hyle, sensation or phantasma—is »impressional,« and
therefore the advent of every now can and must be described as a rad
ical event: »Consciousness is nothing without impression« (Husserl
1966, p. 100; Husserl 1991, p. 106), or as the outstanding formulation
of the Cartesian Meditations puts it, what »the grammatical sense
of the sentence, ego cogito, expresses« is the original self-experience
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of »the ego’s living present« (Husserl 1950, p. 62; Husserl 1960, pp.
22–23). It thus seems as though Husserl went further than his French
critic in recognizing that a primordial passivity is the basis for the most
fundamental structure of consciousness.4
A second question concerns the Husserlian understanding of
sensibility, which—without risking the lack of internal differentiation
between sensations and phantasma—does make room for the cent
ral category of affection. Sensory data of any order are integrated
in »fields of affection,« unfolding an incitement that affects the living
subject, that draws the ego’s attention toward them. According to
this approach, already detectable in Ideas I, the ray of attentive
intentionality, which is centrifugal on principle, running from the ego
to the object, coexists with the centripetal structure of non-attentional
motions and background lived experiences that respond to the affect
ive forms; the latter move from the object to the ego that experiences
them, or that literally suffers them as if they were a »trauma,« in Lav
igne’s words, or an »Ich-leide« in Husserl’s own terms (e.g., Husserl
1976, pp. 179, 189, 214; Husserl 1982, pp.191, 201, 226).5 For Husserl,
explicit attention in any form—including attention in memory, as well
as imaginative, valuative, and practical attention—is conceived, with
growing resolution, as a response to what is already affecting the ego.
So once again, it seems that Husserl went further than his French critic
in conceiving the data of the »fields of sensation« as genetically prior
not only to perception, of course, but also to every thinkable act.
We then come to the issue of the specific differentiation of
perceptual sensations. In my opinion, the problems with Lavigne’s
argument do not diminish if one follows his proposal that only percep
tual affection is »absolute affection,« that is, »where it is the affecting
(the transcendent) that has the initiative, which occurs, by definition,
from beyond the appearance (Erscheinung), since the structuring of
the appearance is already the first degree of the subjective response.
4 According to Lavigne’s exact words (although they appear later on and he does
not take them into account in the discussion on perceptual hyle), »Husserl identifies
the impressionality of the sensible impression as the foremost condition that gives
the ›This‹ its foremost point of anchorage for an eventual identification. An imman
ent ›This‹ must first impose itself on consciousness as an actuality. Impressionality is
the primary foundation of individuality.« (Lavigne 2005, pp. 570–571).
5 The very first introduction of the ego-pole in the intentional correlation, in Ideas I,
already acknowledges the structure »I-suffer« (Ich-leide). Let me refer on this point to
Serrano de Haro (2021).
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Now it is the very transcendence of the perceptual affect, and its way of
affecting consciousness, that makes the essential difference between
the characteristic and unmistakable effectivity of the perceived and the
fictitious objectuality, merely ›representative-of‹ and phantasmatic,
of the imagined and the remembered« (Lavigne 2005, p. 498). This
defence of an intrinsic difference between sensations and phantasma
raises the question of whether it leads instead to a necessary rupture
of the phenomenological distinction between sensations and appre
hension, between the hyletic stratum and the noetic, sense-bestow
ing stratum. Lavigne does not take perceptual affection as absolute
due to its qualitative content, but due to its having originated in
transcendence and due to its having this origin inscribed in it. This
structural inscription, this affecting from »beyond appearance,« does
not require the noetic identification that for Lavigne would only
be—or so it seems—the initial response, so the trauma of sensation
already »knows« that it comes from transcendence. However, what
this θύραθεν explanation, this outline akin to a causal theory of
perception, rests on is the data of sensory properties. The trauma of
sensory affection does not account for the typification of the object as
an armchair or as a cube, for the understanding of its surroundings
as a living room, for the spatial relations among the things and
their relation to me (near, far, to my right, to my left, etc.), or for
the past and future they possess as temporal objects and as worldly
things. Such noematic dimensions would still require sense-bestow
ing apprehensions that make the correlate appear »as«—let us say—
an armchair at the far end of the living room to my right. On the
contrary, for Lavigne it is only the immanent shock of the primary
content that is at the same time both consciousness »of« color and
trauma caused by color, both consciousness »of« noise or cold and the
effect of the actual noise and cold, etc. It is the sensation stricto sensu
that traumatizes the ego. And only the sensory hyletic core—the more
or less continuous brown patch in its contrast with the visual field, or
the noise, or the cold—identifies transcendence without needing any
identifying synthesis.
In sum, the fact that the trauma of affection »knows« that its
origin is absolute transcendence means that the sensation recog
nizes the objective origin of what it is sensing and that it does
so without apprehension, without a perceptual intention, without
sense-bestowing. The sensation is not intentional: the identification
and overwhelming positing of reality does not require, as far the
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sensory core is concerned, the noetic traits of sense-bestowing and

of the doxic thesis. Therefore the distinction between sensibility and
apprehension, between the hyletic and the noetic, fractures at the
very center of perception, even though in another section of the same
perceptual structure—that is, in typification, in bodily orientation, and
in positing the past, the environment, and the world—the distinction
must be preserved, albeit in a truly precarious equilibrium. In my
opinion, this renders the descriptive or conceptual gain achieved from
Lavigne’s new distinction between sensations and phantasma even
less clear. An intense memory of a terrible episode that took place in
that same living room, around the brown armchair, in the cold room,
would be »traumatic« only in the biographical, personal sense, for it
would have lost all internal parallelism with the perceptual intuition to
which the memory refers. Here any trace of the hyletic-transcendent
articulation of affection would disappear even if the colors, the cold,
the noise, still occurred directly and affectively in the remembering,
and if its intuition was integrated into the noetic-noematic correlation
of the lived experience. What is split apart in perception (the traumatic
sensation »of« reality vis-à-vis apprehension) now becomes properly
integrated (phantasma and apprehension »of« reality), and it seems
impossible to pinpoint what is left in Lavigne’s theory to sustain
the hyletic unity of sensations and phantasma and its qualitative
species—color, sound, texture, etc.
The phenomenological doctrine of sensations has little presence
in the Cartesian Meditations. The work explicitly encourages philo
sophical and psychological analysis to begin with the ego cogito
cogitatum rather than with the sensory datum, as modern theoretical
attempts usually do (Husserl 1950, pp. 76–77; Husserl 1960, pp. 38–
39). However, in the presentation of genetic phenomenology in the
Fourth Meditation, Husserl puts forward the following thesis: »With
good reason it is said that in infancy we had to learn to see physical
things, and that such modes of consciousness of them had to precede
all others genetically. In ›early infancy,’ then, the field of perception
that gives beforehand does not as yet contain anything that, in a mere
look, might be explicated as a physical thing« (Husserl 1950, p. 112;
Husserl 1960, p. 79). It is behind the back of the adult ego, as it were,
that we find this non-accidental history in which one has learned
to recognize things, to move in space, to experience the real world.
In drawing nearer to and moving farther away from sensory shapes,
the ego has fixed the first identities of sense and built typifications
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around them, learned how to recognize causality, etc. It would be not

only unjustifiable but also unfair to ask Lavigne’s great work to have
made some reference to the foundations of genetic phenomenology
as well. Nonetheless, my critical recognition of his work can conclude
by claiming that his conceptualization of absolute affection seems
to anticipatorily eliminate the possibility of any genetic phenomen
ology. His understanding of perception makes the nexus between
absolute affection and transcendence so structural and primitive that
it cannot admit a genesis of sense, which would need to be an
intentional constitution: from the very first affection, the living being
must know itself in absolute transcendence as revealed by absolute
transcendence. In contrast, the impressional-retentional-protentional
understanding of time as the »universal form of genesis« and the
understanding of sensory fields as an affective network, as a pre-
intentional concern of the ego, would then seem to be in a better
position to describe that past of our early infancy as an absolute event.
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Lavigne, Jean-François (2005): Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie
(1900–1913). Des Recherches logiques aux Ideen: La genèse de l’idéalisme
transcendantal phénoménologique. Paris: PUF.
Lavigne, Jean-François (2009): Accéder au transcendantal? Réduction et idéalisme
transcendantal dans les Idées I de Husserl. Paris: Vrin.
Serrano de Haro, Agustín (2010): »Husserl’s Mereological Argument for Inten
tional Constitution.« In: Carlo Ierna, Hanne Jacobs, Filip Mattens (Eds.):
Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund
Husserl. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 543–559.
Serrano de Haro, Agustín (2021): »The Development of Husserl`s Analysis of
Physical Pain.« In: Phenomenology in the Hispanic World, Antonio Zirión Q.,
Jethro Bravo, Noé Expósito, and Jonathan Guereca (Eds.): The New Yearbook
for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 19, pp. forthcoming.
Zahavi, Dan (2017): Husserl’s Legacy: Phenomenology, Metaphysics, Transcend
ental Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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The Distinction between »First« and

»Universal« Philosophy in Husserl’s Cartesian
Meditations: On a Basic Precondition for
the Transformation of Philosophy into a
Rigorous Science1
Throughout the whole history of Husserl scholarship, philosophy,

universal philosophy, and first philosophy have been repeatedly iden
tified with one another (cf. Berghofer 2020, pp. 285–286; Fabbianelli
2017, p. 135; Mertens 1996, pp. 26, 29; Biemel 1954, p. xx; Kern
1962, p. 334). I will show that this identification implies a confusion
that makes it impossible to properly understand the idea of pheno
menology according to its field of work, its methods, and its goals.
While it is true that Husserl considered »philosophy« and »universal
philosophy« to be synonymous expressions, he by no means used
the term »first philosophy« in the same sense. What he refers to
as »philosophy«, »universal philosophy«, or also »philosophy in the
oldest sense of the word« (Husserl 2002a, p. 312) is »the Platonic and
Cartesian idea of a universal science resting on absolute justification«
(Husserl 1959, p. 5; Husserl 2019, p. 209). This idea is in no way
the same thing as Husserl’s project of a radically beginning first
philosophy. In Husserl’s eyes, this project should be carried out as a
concrete and methodologically controlled inquiry directed exclusively
to first principles of knowledge. Meanwhile, »universal philosophy«
means rather the regulative ideal of the »highest purposive idea of
knowledge« (Husserl 1956a, p. 36; Husserl 2019, p. 38), that is, the
ideal of a »science directed at the absolute sense of the world and
1 This paper was written within the framework of the research project »Functionaries
of Humanity: Husserlian Phenomenology, the UNESCO, and the Problem of Univer

salism in Science and Culture«, based at the Husserl Archives, Institute of Philosophy,
KU Leuven (project FWO-3H200726).
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everything that can be cognized whatsoever« (Husserl 1959, p. 28;

Husserl 2019, p. 232. See also Husserl 1952, p. 138; Husserl 1989b,
p. 405, Husserl 1989a, p. 169). To formulate this ideal no method is
required, and no field of work needs to be specified. For such an ideal
does not bear in itself concrete scientific intentions that would make
it possible (or necessary) to specify a research program: it is only a
regulative thought. How could philosophy ever become a rigorous
science, as Husserl wanted, if it were to limit itself to formulating
a general ideal without specific research intentions? In contrast, an
investigation into first principles of knowledge requires specificity
in terms of methods, goals, guiding problems, and the field of work
in question.
In the following pages, as in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, the
distinction between universal and first philosophy aims at narrowing
down the philosophical field of work from the all-encompassing
scope of the ideal »universal philosophy« to the limited field of first
philosophy as a cognitive aim focused on a certain kind of principles.
This will amount to sketching out the sense of the basic philosophical
problems whose solution phenomenological methodology strives
for. As we shall see, these are the age-old philosophical problems
of the psycho-logical-ontological correlations »between cognizing
achievement, cognitive sense, and cognized being« (Husserl 1959,
p. 28; Husserl 2019, p. 233). The paper is divided into four parts,
in which: 1) the Cartesian path is first analyzed; 2) then the basic
distinction is assessed; 3) first philosophy is then discussed as such;
and 4) some closing remarks will be finally made that bear on the
relation between first philosophy and phenomenology.
1. The Cartesian path
Cartesian Meditations (from now on: CM) is the title of Husserl’s most
systematic attempt to formulate a »method of the beginning« for phi
losophy as science. It aims at the programmatic draft of a fundamental
epistemology, which could be considered first philosophy insofar as
it sets out to research principles of knowledge with regard to their
ultimate sources of validity.
A crucial motivation for both the programmatic character and
the »Cartesian« design of CM can be recognized in the way Husserl
conceived of the state of the art in the academic philosophy of his
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time. He describes it as the »splintering« of a »perplexed activity«

that lacks scientific self-sufficiency to such an extent that it produces
a literature »growing out of all proportion« and »almost without
coherence« in its own »aims, problems and methods« (Husserl 1950a,
p. 46; Husserl 1960, pp. 4–5, trans. modified). This conception is not
exclusive of CM. Already in Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (1910),
Husserl claimed that academic philosophy lacks basic scientific unity
and especially »logical harmony« (Husserl 1956b, p. 335) between
guiding problems, objectives, field of work, and methodology. In
view of this, he thought that the first task of a philosophy that could
eventually become a science would consist above all in »not [resting]
until it has attained its absolutely clear beginnings, i.e. its absolutely
clear problems, the methods preindicated in the proper sense of these
problems« and its »most basic field of work« (Husserl 1956b, p. 344,
emphasis in the original).
Just as much as in Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, Husserl
aims in CM at a methodological renewal of first philosophy as a
possible science which, in absolute self-responsibility, has to elucidate
the essence of authentic knowledge of being. Now, this includes
sounding out the possibility of cognitions whose general objective
validity is independent from the fluctuations of subjective opinions
relative to particular points of view. Any claim to such general validity,
however, may only be made on the basis of experience, which cannot
be comprehended other than as subjective in the sense that it consists
of individual acts of consciousness. The question therefore arises:
how can the claim to general objective validity be reconciled with
the individuality and subjective relativity of the experiences in which
alone such a claim can be made and fulfilled? Put in another way:
how can the subject of consciousness be sure that her cognitions
truly reach the realm of the objective, that is, go beyond her own
subjective experiences and meet what is-in-itself? This is the basic
question of epistemology. It is the ancient puzzle that awakened
Husserl’s amazement (θαυμάζειν), the original motivational source of
his lifelong quest for philosophical radicality.
Ever since the time of the Logical Investigations (1900–01) Hus
serl researched the subjective ways in which objective being is given
to consciousness. Throughout the years, his epistemological efforts
developed to become a theory of experience that deals with types
of consciousness, types of evidence, and types of objects. But over
time, as the research manuscripts grew by the piles, the desideratum
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for a systematization of this theory also emerged. It is with this

desideratum in mind that in his Paris Lectures from 1929 Husserl
puts forward the »Cartesian path« as »the prototype of philosophical
reflection« (Husserl 1950a, p. 43; p. Husserl 1960, p. 1).2
This path inherently points to the idea of first philosophy, for it
refers directly to Descartes’s Meditationes de prima philosophia, which
in Husserl’s eyes are the expression of a universal theory of science.
On the other hand, the term first philosophy is known to have been
coined by Aristotle to denote the science of the first principles of
being and of proof as such. Husserl’s CM represent the outline of
a methodologically regulated new beginning for a first philosophy
that explicitly refers to the Cartesian paradigm and implicitly to the
Aristotelian one.3 These references are limited, however, to a vague
notion of philosophy as the most general guiding idea of a universal
science aiming at researching »a presupposed all-embracing unity of
whatever exists« (Husserl 1950a, p. 12; p. Husserl 1960, p. 53). In
the following section, it will become clear that in Husserl’s eyes this
idea is only a regulative horizon, which, despite any terminological
back and forth throughout his complete works, is not to be confused
with the concrete research intentions of a foundational project that
is to be radically begun, methodically structured, and actually carried
out. The latter is called by Husserl consequently and univocally
first philosophy.
2. The basic distinction
The distinction between universal and first philosophy is conceptually

and systematically necessary because it is precisely in view of the
guiding ideal of a total science based on absolute justification (»uni
versal philosophy«) that Husserl understands first philosophy as a
»partial« discipline to be really founded and practiced; a discipline in
2 The once widely held idea that this path would imply a »loss of the world« has
been thoroughly criticized in Pérez-Gatica 2021, pp. 276–277; 2020 pp. 101–106.
On the aspects of Descartes’s philosophy that Husserl himself sharply criticizes, see
Husserl 1976b, pp. 80–84; Husserl 1950a, pp. 63–64. On the equivocacy of the
term »Cartesianism« in the Husserl scholarship see Perkins 2017; Geniusas 2012, pp.
132–134.
3 On Husserl’s perspective on Aristotle see Husserl 2002c, pp. 264–267; Husserl
1956a, pp. 3–11. On the relations Husserl-Plato-Aristotle see Fonfara 2016.
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charge of laying down the epistemological foundation of all science by

sounding out the possibility and limits of justified cognition. As much
as first philosophy is thus thought of as part of the ideally represented
universal philosophy (cf. Husserl 2002a, p. 311; Husserl 2005, p.
92), it is not itself intended to be a mere ideal formulation, but rather
to constitute an actual inquiry into first principles of knowledge, an
inquiry that is methodologically designed to be begun and carried out
without theoretical presuppositions. Husserl writes:
The name »First Philosophy« would then point towards a scientific
discipline of beginnings. We would expect that, for the beginning,
or for a closed domain of beginnings, philosophy’s highest purposive
idea would demand a proper, self-contained discipline, with its own
problematic of beginnings developed in accordance with spiritual
preparation, an exact framing of the problem, and then a scientific
solution. (Husserl 1956a, p. 5; Husserl 2019, pp. 4–5)
According to this, first philosophy should first and foremost syste
matically investigate the most elementary presuppositions of all
cognition as such and »subsequently […] teach us how, from out of
this primordial source of all […] validity, any cognition whatsoever
can be brought into supreme and final rational form, that of absolute
founding and absolute justification« (Husserl 1959, pp. 29–30; Hus
serl 2019, p. 234, emphasis added).4
In the whole of an ideally represented universal science as the
»absolute purposive idea of a total science and total truth« (Husserl
1959, pp. 196–197; Husserl 2019, p. 445),5 first philosophy is thus
to constitute only one moment—namely, that of an epistemological
foundational discipline that has to investigate the possibility of the
justification, and indeed, the ultimate justification of our cognitions.
»Subsequently«, as Husserl says, this foundational discipline should
become the ultimate justifying authority for that ideally represented
universal science, that is, it should embody its epistemological basic
layer. First philosophy is thus not meant to be a »universal« philoso
phy, but only a »first« philosophy (cf. Husserl 1956a, p. 4; Husserl
2019, p. 4), i.e., only a first moment of what Husserl will later call
a »universal and concrete theory of science« (Husserl 1950a, p. 181;
Husserl 1960, p. 155). Consequently, Husserl calls this theory of
4 On the »highest conceivable form of rationality«, see Husserl 1950a, p. 118; Husserl
1960, p. 85.
5 See also Husserl 1956a, pp. 36–37; Husserl 2019, p. 38; Husserl 2008, pp. 165, 167.
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science, which would only be possible on the basis of a fully developed

first philosophy, not »first philosophy«, but rather »universal concrete
ontology« and »concrete logic of being« (Husserl 1950a, p. 181;
Husserl 1960, p. 155, emphasis in the original).
This means, on the other hand, that the »universality« of what
Husserl calls »universal philosophy« does not mean »general vali
dity«, even though a claim to validity is presupposed in all this, but
rather the unity of a »scientific universe« in which all individual
knowledge would have its place as a more or less, indirectly or directly,
eidetically or empirically founded one. This ideal unity, which Husserl
characterizes as »universalis sapientia« (Husserl 2002a, p. 315), rep
resents, again, only the purposive idea of the most perfect possible
justification of all knowledge about everything knowable whatsoever
(cf. Husserl 1959, p. 5; Husserl 2019, p. 209). First philosophy, for
its part, should »constitute the necessary first beginning« (Husserl
1959, p. 7; Husserl 2019, p. 211) on the path to that philosophical
ideal by systematically investigating the concrete possibility of the
radical justification of knowledge. Moreover, a fully developed first
philosophy should give us »the site of the method« in hand »from
whose exercise philosophy itself is subsequently meant to grow
in content—as a system of absolutely justified theories« (Husserl
1959, p. 7; Husserl 2019, p. 211). A fully developed first philosophy
should thus give us the basic method to be applied for any ultimate
justification that may be attempted of any knowledge, theory, or
system of theories. In other words, first philosophy is »called on to be
the [epistemological] foundation for a radical and universal criticism«
(Husserl 1950a, p. 74; Husserl 1960, p. 36), but not to provide the
entire criticism itself. As an ideally imagined purposive idea, universal
philosophy is meant to strive toward complete and universal criticism,
but this does not apply to first philosophy, which is directed only to
first principles in an epistemological sense (cf. Husserl 1959, pp. 4–5;
Husserl 2019, pp. 208–209).
In a nutshell, first philosophy and universal philosophy are not
one and the same thing; instead, the former is a function of the latter,
i.e., a part of it that plays a systematic role: as a function of universal
philosophy, first philosophy, i.e., the investigation into the possibility
of ultimate legitimation of knowledge out of primal sources of validity,
should serve to bring the »radicalism of ultimate grounding« (Husserl
1956a, p. 375; Husserl 2019, p. 439) in which Husserl sees the
essence of the philosophical vocation to a methodically regulated
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beginning. First philosophy should thus be a »means of realizing the

[…] philosophical will« to radicality (cf. Husserl 1959, p. 7; Husserl
2019, p. 211).
As is well known, Husserl was concerned with »a radical reflec
tion on the method of ultimate grounding«, i.e., with »the genuine
radicalism that signifies ultimate self-responsibility growing out of
ultimate self-reflection and self-clarification« (Husserl 1956a, p. 160;
Husserl 2019, p. 165). As far as first philosophy can fulfill this
function, it certainly belongs »to the systematic content of philosophy
itself« (Husserl 1959, p. 5; Husserl 2019, p. 209), namely, as its basic
epistemological discipline.
Finally, it can be stated that the whole of a philosophy as universal
science (Husserl 1954, p. 201; Husserl 1970, p. 197) is an ideal to
which no concrete research program, one to be really and systema
tically carried out, can correspond, because it is only a regulative
horizon, that is to say, a »limit idea lying in infinity« (Husserl 1959,
p. 13; Husserl 2019, p. 217).6 On the contrary, the project of a
radically beginning first philosophy constitutes a research intention
that must really be carried out. While it is true that this concrete
intention is guided by that abstract-regulative idea, it itself requires
a methodical beginning that can take place only at the other end of
what the regulative idea sets as an ideal goal. This goal is cognition
»brought into supreme and final rational form, that of absolute […]
justification« (Husserl 1959, pp. 29–30; Husserl 2019, p. 234).7 First
philosophy, for its part, must in fact, and precisely in view of that ideal
goal, begin in »absolute poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge«
(Husserl 1950a, p. 44; Husserl 1960, p. 2). That here the initial state
(absolute poverty of knowledge) and the aspired goal (absolutely
justified knowledge) must stand as the most distant poles to each
other, lies in the essence of a radically beginning meditation on first
principles of knowledge, which, striving for radical self-responsibility,
6 It should be noted that this limit idea implies thematic guidelines, from which
Husserl draws a classification scheme in the sense of the so-called regional ontologies
and the difference between eidetic and empirical sciences (cf. Husserl 1952, pp. 94–
105; Husserl 1980, pp. 80–90; Husserl 1994, p. 269). This scheme of regions of being
and types of science, however, does not yet constitute a concrete research program,
but only suggests that it is possible in principle and desirable that all real and possible
sciences would be ultimately grounded.
7 See above, note 4.
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must not presuppose any claims to validity that cannot be justified

within the beginning meditation itself.8
3. First philosophy as such
According to Husserl, philosophy is essentially a »science of the true

beginnings, of the origins, of the ῥιζώματα πάντων« (Husserl 1987,
p. 61). In view of the conceptual clarifications made in the previous
section, however, the idea of philosophy as a »science of origins«
must be restricted to the idea of first philosophy. For philosophy as
universal science is supposed to be systematic knowledge not only
of origins, but also of »everything that can be cognized whatsoever«,
and since not only origins are cognizable, this means that it will be as
much the science of origins as of everything that actually springs and
may possibly spring from them. Now the concept of »origins« in the
context of first philosophy has a double meaning, epistemological on
the one hand and formal-ontological on the other. Epistemologically
speaking, this concept refers to intuition as the primal source of
cognition in terms of subjective experience.9 Formal-ontologically,
however, the concept of »origins« refers mainly to being as being,
and thus to identity, unity, multiplicity, relation, etc.—i.e., to the most
general categories of the objective as such. These meanings—lived
experience on the side of epistemology and being on the side of
formal ontology—are essentially inseparable from each other, and this
inseparability constitutes the integral unity of the subject matter with
which first philosophy has dealt ever since Aristotle.10 To the integrity
of this research topic corresponds the unity of first philosophy as a
science. This means that the scientific unity of first philosophy is
required by the complexity of the phenomenon it investigates, and
not, say, by an idiosyncratic decision to build a speculative system.
For scientifically dealing with the research subject of first philosophy
requires a systematic approach, that is, an integrative interplay of
diverse research directions. Husserl refers to this interplay in Formal
and Transcendental Logic as the »two-sidedness« (Husserl 1974, p.
8 On the meaning and limits of Husserl’s call for a presuppositionless beginning, see
Pérez-Gatica 2020, pp. 25–41.
9 On Husserl’s concept of intuition, see Lohmar 2016, pp. 25–32.
10 See below, note 14.
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110; Husserl 1969, p. 105) of formal logic (as the science of scientific
judgment) and formal ontology (as the science of the objective as
such). By formal logic in the broadest sense Husserl understands a
science of the possibility of scientific cognition (Wissenschaftslehre).
Correlatively, he considers formal ontology as a science of the objec
tive in general. According to this, what formal ontology deals with
is »Being in general in the most universal universality [...]. Being
(Seiend) in the broadest sense, in that of [...] formal ontology, is each
and every thing that can figure as the subject of a statement, each
and every thing about which we in truth speak« (Husserl 1984a, p.
100).11 Formal logic and formal ontology, thus understood, stand
»in continuous correlation even down to the last detail, and they
must therefore be held to be a single science« (Husserl 1974, p. 116;
Husserl 1969, p. 111, translation modified). They are »like two sides
of one and the same coin« (Lohmar 2000, p. 94). An example of this
correlation lies precisely in the insight that »object and predicable
subject [...] are equivalents« (Husserl 2002b, p. 282). Other examples
can easily be found. The concept of universality, for instance, is
not only a formal-logical but also a formal-ontological one, because
the formal-logical and the formal-ontological sense of universality
cannot be separated from each other, since one cannot describe or
comprehend formal universality in the sense of a universal judgment
without formal-ontological determinations. This type of judgment,
also called »universally quantified proposition« (e.g., »all A are B«),
predicates something of a totality of real and/or possible cases.12
Without the formal ontological notion of »totality« defining the kind
of object meant by this kind of judgment, one could not even begin
to understand what »universally quantified proposition« might mean
in formal logic, for it can only be defined in formal-ontological terms,
namely, as a judgment directed, on the side of its meant object(s),
to the totality (as all-embracing unity) of a certain multiplicity. The
same applies mutatis mutandis to concepts such as conjunction and
disjunction, insofar as one cannot properly define such terms without
taking into account the kinds of objects that they refer to. In short,
the meaning of the formal-logical notion of »conjunction« cannot
be grasped without formal-ontological notions such as »unity«, »mul
tiplicity«, and »set«. Furthermore, the double-sidedness of formal
11 See also Husserl 2002b, pp. 282–283; Husserl 1975, p. 231; Husserl 2001, p. 145.
12 Cf. the keyword »Allaussage« in Bußmann 2008.
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logic and ontology can be clearly seen in the principle of non-contra

diction: without formal-ontological terms, the justification of this
principle in formal logic would be fully incomprehensible because
its very meaning essentially presupposes not only formal-logical
notions such as »conjunction«, »negation«, and »univocity«, but also
formal-ontological notions such as »object«, »identity«, and »set«
(cf. Husserl 1974, pp. 196–198; Husserl 1969, pp. 189–191; Lohmar
2000, pp. 134–35, 145–46). For this reason, Husserl says in Formal
and Transcendental Logic not only that the formal theory of judgment
(as a formal-analytical theory of science) is ontologically oriented, but
that it itself »is formal ontology« (Husserl 1974, p. 125; Husserl 1969,
p. 120, emphasis in the original).
The correlation between formal logic and formal ontology now
also exists between formal ontology and descriptive psychology for
the following reason:
A concrete description of conscious lived experiences (Bewusstseinser
lebnisse), those of perception, memory, predicative judgment, love,
action, etc. also requires by necessity the description of the objects
»as such«, the »intentional« objects, that one is conscious of in the
respective lived experiences, i.e., a description of the objects as they
belong inseparably to the lived experience in question as its »objec
tively meant« (its objective sense). (Husserl 1952, p. 157; Husserl
1989b, p. 424)
This means that any analysis of lived experiences—like all formal-
logical analyses of possible forms of judgments—necessarily implies
a formal-ontological orientation. Thus the two-sidedness of formal
logic and formal ontology now unfolds a third side: the psychological
side of the life of consciousness (Bewusstseinsleben) that underlies all
real and possible building up of propositions as judgmental constructs.
But here it is necessary to be precise: the research topic of formal
logic is the nature of ideal meaning expressed in propositions, not the
nature of real psychological facts. Clearly distinguishing the one from
the other is very important because confusing them can have fate
ful consequences for the proper understanding of the philosophical
grounding of logic (cf. Husserl 1975). Notwithstanding, the research
field of first philosophy is not and can never be restricted either
to the field of propositional logic or to any kind of psychology. In
order to see the entire picture of the research field of first philosophy
as such, one cannot ignore the fact that grammatically built-up
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propositions are judgmental constructs that are formed, have been

formed, could have been formed, or could possibly be formed by a real
or possible subject of consciousness. Thus every predicative judgment
(i.e., proposition) is, on the one hand, signifyingly directed to the
objectively appearing phenomena that it itself judges, and on the other
hand, it presupposes the pre-predicative consciousness that underlies
the process of its logical formation. Put another way, every proposi
tion that signifyingly means something objective presupposes the sub
jective experiences of the judging life of consciousness performing the
act of building up the proposition itself as a logical construct. Now
since first philosophy is concerned with phenomena that hold in
themselves these indissoluble correlations between judgment con
struct (e.g., proposition, argument, etc.), judging consciousness, and
judged object, it must in some sense take the form of a science of
judgment (logic), of being (ontology), and of psychic phenomena
(psychology in the etymological sense of the word). It must therefore
investigate these research areas as correlative, mutually demanding,
and mutually complementary aspects of one and the same overreaching
phenomenon, namely, cognition as such of being as such. As Husserl
tells us, the »correlation between lived cognitive experience (Erkennt
niserlebnis), meaning, and object«, brought to light here by »contras
ting the psychology of knowledge with pure logic and ontology«,
»represents the source of the deepest and most difficult problems,
which, taken together, comprise the problem of the possibility of
knowledge« (Husserl 1950b, p. 19; Husserl 1999, p. 17, translation
modified).13
4. Closing remarks: first philosophy and phenomenology
The topics presented here are the age-old philosophical problems that
Husserl faced. They are the problems for whose clear formulation
and eventual solution he developed the phenomenological method.
However, the fact that these problems run through the entire history
of Western philosophy raises certain questions.14 Where does pheno
13 See also Husserl 2002c, p. 134.

14 The issue of the aforementioned correlation between lived cognitive experience,
meaning, and object is clearly prefigured in the conceptual framework of Aristotle’s
psychological, logical, and ontological writings. Cf. Aristotle 1990, pp. 49, 53, 154
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menology begin? What is its factual origin and what is its methodical
starting point? The historical origin of phenomenology, as it was
founded by Husserl, is in his early work on the »new foundation
of pure logic and epistemology« (Husserl 1975, p. 7; Husserl 2001,
p. 2). According to Husserl’s late work, its methodical beginning
must time and time again be »a self-interrogation of one’s own
consciousness« (Husserl 1952, p. 158; Husserl 1989b, p. 426).15 The
methodological nature of this self-interrogation, which Husserl sees
as »the necessary beginning« (Husserl 1952, p. 158; Husserl 1989b,
p. 426) of a strictly scientific and methodologically regulated first
philosophy as described above (i.e., as a form of research into first
principles of knowledge that implies a complex of psychological,
logical, and ontological investigations), is determined by the so-called
»epochē and reduction« as a method for opening, securing, and
delimiting the field of work of phenomenological first philosophy
from neighboring disciplines.16
The fundamental leitmotif of this work can now finally be addres
sed in a conclusive way: in order to be able to understand the nature
of Husserl’s phenomenological method as a means of transforming
philosophy into a rigorous science, one must first understand the
problems that compelled Husserl to develop that method. They are
the deepest problems of first philosophy. In view of this, it should
once again be emphasized that »the task of transcendental phenome
nology« is to »clarify the connections (Zusammenhänge) between true
being and cognition, and thus to investigate the correlations between
act, meaning, and object« (Husserl 1984a, p. 427). Even though
Husserl himself linked the phenomenological method to a wide range
(= Metaphysics, 995b5f., 996b27f., 1027b26f.); Aristotle 1966, pp. 52, 58, 62 (= On

the Soul, 426b10f., 429b10f., 431b20f.); Aristotle 1922, pp. 104–107 (= Posterior
Analytics, 99b15–100b15). On the reception history of these aspects of Aristotle’s
philosophy in the German metaphysics of the 18th century (especially with reference
to the division of metaphysics into metaphysica generalis and metaphysica specialis),
see Folger-Fonfara 2008, p. 18; Vollrath 1962. Although this reception history is
largely foreign to Husserl’s philosophy, it is worth mentioning because it shows a
historical continuity of philosophical problems of which Husserl was aware, although
he did not approach these problems in terms of the history of philosophy.
15 See also Husserl’s letter to Winthrop Pickard Bell (Husserl 1994, p. 43).
16 Neighboring disciplines of phenomenological first philosophy are those sciences
that deal with phenomena of consciousness and cognition from one perspective or
another, such as empirical psychology, cognitive neurology, psychiatry, philosophy of
mind, and the like.
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of research projects that belong to the humanities, especially to what

he called a »purely intentional psychology« (Husserl 1950a, p. 107;
Husserl 1960, p. 73), it is still true that all the basic aspects of
the phenomenological method mentioned in his Cartesian Meditati
ons, including eidetic variation and intentional analysis (both static
and genetic, subjective and intersubjective, purely immanent and
lifeworld-related), were originally developed in view of the specific
research horizon of first philosophy.
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Pérez-Gatica, Sergio (2021): »Die Diskussion zwischen José Gaos und Luis
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From »Second Philosophy« to »Last

Philosophy«: Husserl’s Idea of Metaphysics as
the Absolute Science of Factual Reality
This paper contributes to the ongoing investigation of Husserl’s pos

itive conception of metaphysics1. As researchers have long recognized,
Husserl did not content himself with a merely negative critique of
traditional metaphysics. From the beginning of his philosophical life,
Husserl aimed to address traditional metaphysical problems with
the help of the scientificity of the phenomenological method. This
resulted not only in the enterprise eventually called »transcendental
phenomenology«, which to some extent replaces certain traditional
metaphysical theories, but equally in the idea of a »transcendental-
phenomenologically founded metaphysics.« (Husserl 2013, p. 160)
A precise understanding of this idea nonetheless faces difficulties.
Textually speaking, Husserl’s own idea of metaphysics remain frag
mentary and any unified understanding of this subject matter depends
heavily on reconstructive interpretation. Theoretically, as will be
shown below, the idea contains ambiguities which can only be dis
cerned with a view of Husserl’s philosophy as a whole.
With these difficulties in mind, this paper attempts to reconstruct
the development of Husserl’s idea of metaphysics up to the point
where it is presented fragmentarily in the 1929 Cartesian Meditations.
1 Boehm, 1956, 1968, Kern 1964, 1975, Held 1966, 2010, Landgrebe 1976, 1982, Lem
beck 1987, Schuhmann 1988, Bernet/Kern/Marbach 1993, Lee 1993, 2017, Micali
2008, Lo 2008, Chernavin 2012, Sowa/Vongehr 2013, Tengelyi 2014, Luft 2015,
Marosan 2016, Trizio 2017, Römer 2017a, 2017b, De Santis 2018, 2021, Arnold/
D’Angelo 2020, Breuer 2020. This list does not represent the existing literature on
the connection between Husserl’s phenomenology and »metaphysics« understood in
all possible senses of the term, but exclusively those contributions which thematize
Husserl’s own (and positive) concept of metaphysics, even if the interpretations of this
concept presented therein differ among themselves. Zahavi 2003, 2017 are not, for
example, to be included in such a list.
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As the title suggests, the approach it takes is twofold. On the one

hand, it appeals to Husserl’s nominal determination of metaphysics
as »the absolute science of factual reality« (Husserl 1988, p. 182,
229f). It seeks to understand this idea as the unifying core of Husserl’s
conception of metaphysics, which nonetheless undergoes internal
transformations and therefore is accordingly ambiguous. On the
other, by freely borrowing two concepts from Husserl himself, the
proposal is made to designate this transformation in terms of that
from »second philosophy« (Husserl 1956a, p. 13) to »last philoso
phy« (Husserl 1956a, p. 385).
The paper is accordingly divided into three sections: first,
the notion of »second philosophy« is established with reference to
Husserl’s idea of philosophy as such. Under this idea, the division
of philosophy into »first and second philosophy« corresponds in a
general way to the systematic relationship between phenomenology
and metaphysics. This gives rise to the general determination of
metaphysics as »the absolute science of factual reality«. Second, this
determination is shown to contain two sets of ambiguities. The
concept of »factual reality« can be understood, on the one hand,
both from a theoretical and a practical perspective, and on the other
hand, both from a natural and a transcendental perspective. It will be
shown that these two sets of ambiguities motivate the development
of Husserl’s idea of metaphysics beyond the boundary of a »second
philosophy« and towards a certain notion of »last philosophy«. Third,
in conclusion, Husserl’s intriguing but unsystematic remarks about
metaphysics in the Cartesian Meditations are re-examined in the
light of the foregoing clarifications. These remarks do not add up
to a comprehensive account of what that notion can mean, but they
display, when read under sufficient knowledge of their background,
some elements from which Husserl’s »last philosophy« can be sys
tematically reconstructed.
1. From »First Philosophy« to »Second Philosophy«
Husserl’s conception of metaphysics can be considered at the outset

from two perspectives: first, negatively, with regard to his critique
of traditional forms of metaphysics which he often labels as »dog
matic« or »naïve«, and second, with regard to his own positive
conception of a »good« or »true« metaphysics (Lee 2007, p. 443).
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From »Second Philosophy« to »Last Philosophy«
According to a well-known view, metaphysical consequences of

Husserl’s phenomenology only came into effect after Husserl began
to understand his phenomenology as »transcendental« in the 1910s,
and that his earlier philosophy, including the Logical Investigations,
is »metaphysically neutral« (Zahavi 2003, p. 13ff, Zahavi 2017, p.
32ff). Others have nonetheless shown convincingly that a positive
conception of metaphysics was already present in Husserl’s earliest
pre-transcendental philosophy (Lee 2007, Trizio 2017). It is worth
noting in this connection that Husserl’s Antrittsvorlesung in Halle,
given in 1887 when he took up his first teaching position, was titled Die
Ziele und Aufgaben der Metaphysik (Schuhmann 1977, p. 22). The text
of this lecture was not preserved. But it is clear that Husserl’s ambition
in what he calls metaphysics persists from the earliest to the latest
phase of his philosophical life. A more difficult task is to understand
precisely what he calls metaphysics.
Husserl’s explicit construal of a positive concept of metaphysics
belongs essentially together with his reflections on the systematicity
of philosophy as a whole. This was the case even before Husserl
interpreted the idea of philosophy itself with the concept of phe
nomenology. In a lecture course from 1898/99, the idea that the
theory of knowledge and metaphysics form the two fundamental areas
of philosophy is already present (Husserl 2001, pp. 223–256). In
this framework, the theory of knowledge takes the place of Aristotle’s
conception of metaphysics as first philosophy by justifying the »first
principles of being in general« (Trizio 2017, p. 48). Metaphysics, in
contrast, assumes the task of clarifying and completing all existing
empirical sciences on the basis of the theory of knowledge. Both Kern
and Schuhman refer pertinently to texts written between 1907–1911
in support of the idea that metaphysics »presupposes the sciences
of reality [Realitätswissenschaften], emerges as a critique of these sci
ences, and offers their ultimately valid interpretation.« (Schuhmann
1988, p. 241. See also Kern 1975, p. 330ff.)
The theoretical foundation of these ideas finds its clearest expres
sion in Husserl’s 1911 lecture course on ethics and value-theory.
In the introduction to the course, Husserl gives a detailed account
of »the idea of philosophy« itself. At the highest and most general
level, philosophy is »the science of the absolute« (Husserl 1988, p.
182). The absolute, however, can be considered either in terms of
its a priori »idea« (Idee), or of its a posteriori »existence« (Dasein).
The science of the absolute must accordingly be divided into two
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parts: »pure philosophy or a priori philosophy« on the one hand,

and »metaphysics as absolute science of factual reality [absolute Wis
senschaft der faktischen Wirklichkeit]« on the other (Husserl 1988, p.
182, 229). The tasks of these two parts of philosophy are distinguished
in the following way. Pure philosophy or a priori philosophy estab
lishes all possible principles, essences and norms of being (Husserl
1988, p. 177); with the help of the principles established in pure phi
losophy, metaphysics elucidates all actual cognition of being delivered
by the factual sciences, and, in so doing, achieves the »philosophiza
tion« of all factual knowledge of being (Husserl 1988, p. 182). The
posing of metaphysics’ unique task thus needs to be understood under
the framework, in Husserl’s formulation, of »the cardinal division
between pure philosophy – we can also say pure theory of ideas –
and the philosophy of reality [Wirklichkeitsphilosophie] as the absolute
science of reality in the full comprehensive sense.« (Husserl 1988,
p. 230)
Although Husserl does not deploy the concept of phenomenol
ogy in the 1911 lectures, in other texts from the same period he
consistently understands the relation between phenomenology and
metaphysics in the same manner in which he relates the idea of »a
priori philosophy« to »the absolute science of factual reality«. In the
1907 The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserl distinguishes between
three concepts: »phenomenology in general«, »a phenomenology of
knowledge and known objectivity«, and »a science of beings in an
absolute sense […] which we call metaphysics.« The first concept is an
umbrella term under which the latter two fall. The phenomenology of
knowledge »forms the first and fundamental part of phenomenology
in general« and is understood as a »general critique of knowledge« in
its essential and a priori correlative structure. In contrast, metaphysics
results from the application of this critique in the individual sciences
and is thereby conceived as an a posteriori science, which together
with phenomenology in the narrower sense forms an integral part of
phenomenology »in general« (Husserl 1973a, p. 23)2.
These considerations give rise to the opportunity to clarify the
often misunderstood full title of the 1913 Ideas: »Ideas for a Pure Phe
nomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy«. What distinguishes
pure phenomenology from phenomenological philosophy? Pure phe
2 The translations of The Idea of Phenomenology in this paragraph are modified on the
basis of Husserl 1999, p. 19.
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nomenology, as is well-known, refers to phenomenology understood

as a purely a priori science – concretely, as the eidetic science of
transcendental subjectivity. This corresponds without difficulty to
the 1907 idea of »phenomenology of knowledge and known objectiv
ity« as well as to the 1911 idea of »a priori philosophy«. At the same
time, the idea of »phenomenological philosophy« stands in a clear
connection with the 1907 idea of »phenomenology in general« and
the 1911 idea of »philosophy« as such. Thus the latter idea does not
limit itself to a purely a priori science, but embraces the entire range
of a posteriori reality that is only at first accessible by means of the
positive sciences. The manner in which phenomenological philoso
phy »embraces« factual reality, accordingly, is encapsulated in the
task of metaphysics: a final philosophical explanation of factual knowl
edge on the basis of pure phenomenology. The idea of a phenomeno
logical philosophy cannot be satisfied by pure phenomenology alone;
its fulfilment requires the indispensable function of metaphysics3.
In this way, although the notion of metaphysics only appears
sparsely throughout the First Book of the Ideas (Husserl 1976a, p.7f,
184, 188), it is firmly anchored in the systematic distinction which
opens the work itself, namely, the distinction between the »science of
essence« and the »science of facts«. Whereas in Ideas I this distinction
categorizes the positive sciences, it applies in fact more fundamentally
to the very relation between transcendental phenomenology and
metaphysics. Transcendental phenomenology is the most radical
science of essence that establishes the absolute foundation for all other
possible sciences, and thereby encompasses the totality of all sciences
of essence. The absolute science of factual reality, metaphysics, too,
must be founded on transcendental phenomenology. But its scope
exceeds that of transcendental phenomenology by considering those
areas of scientific knowledge that result not from a priori forms of
reasoning, but from empirical investigations. Its task is to make these
3 In a 1914 letter to Karl Joël, Husserl speaks of »a scientific metaphysics which
no longer has to deal with merely ideal possibilities, but with reality«. He writes
further: »Metaphysics is the genuine science of reality. So I too want a metaphysics,
and a scientific one in the most serious sense, only that, in order to keep within the
boundaries of rigorous science, I am still modest in my publications and concentrate
my energies on the eidetic foundations.« (Husserl 1994, p. 205f) More instances from
Husserl’s letters in which he speaks positively of metaphysics and its philosophical
necessity are summarized in the Editors’ Introduction to Hua XLII: Sowa/Vongehr
2013, pp. LXI-LXVI.
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results truly intelligible by placing them back on their rightful foun

dation, i.e. transcendental phenomenology. It is because metaphysics
is itself justified on the ground of transcendental phenomenology
that it is capable of providing justifications for the totality of factual
sciences. Metaphysics in this sense thus means »transcendental-phe
nomenologically founded metaphysics« (Husserl 2013, p. 160), an idea
Husserl already formulated in 1908.
In this period, Husserl’s vision of phenomenological philoso
phy and its internal division into »pure phenomenology« and »meta
physics« can be considered to be established in principle. The explicit
construal of this division in the framework of »first and second philos
ophy« occurs more than a decade later in the 1923/24 lectures First
Philosophy. The basic substance of that construal, however, remains
essentially unchanged since the early 1910s. This is confirmed clearly
in the following passage in First Philosophy:
»Herein lies [...] the idea, so important for the future, of a necessary
grounding and systematic ordering of philosophy in two stages –
a »first« and a »second« philosophy, so to speak. Leading the way there
is, as First Philosophy [...] a science of the totality of the pure (a
priori) principles of all possible knowledge and of the totality of a
priori truths contained systematically within (i.e., purely deducible
from) these principles. [...] In the second stage there is the totality
of »genuine« factual sciences, i.e., of »explanatory« sciences employ
ing a rational method. [...] They are the disciplines of a »Second
Philosophy« whose correlate and region are the unity of factual reality.
« (Husserl 1956a, p. 13f)4
Here, together with the maturation of Husserl’s idea of »first phi
losophy«, his idea of metaphysics becomes inseparable from the
title »second philosophy«. Together, these two »stages« exhaust the
ideal development of philosophy – first philosophy is where philoso
phy begins, and second philosophy is where it ends, expressing both its
purpose and completion5.
4 Translation from Husserl 2019, p. 13f. Nota bene: in this passage Husserl appears
to be merely commenting on the Platonic idea of philosophy. But insofar as these
comments correspond substantially to Husserl’s own idea of philosophy, it is clear
that Husserl appropriates the Platonic idea of philosophy on a fundamental level. The
extent to which this is the case has been investigated by Arnold 2017, pp. 63–72.
5 Clear expressions of this idea are also to be found in Husserl 1956b, p. 429 (1920)
and Husserl 2002b, pp. 304–307 (1922/23), pp. 481–483 (1923).
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However, if the systematic core of the division between first

and second philosophy is basically understandable, the motivation
for Husserl’s allocation of the title »metaphysics« to second, rather
than first philosophy, is by no means apparent6. Schuhmann offers
a relevant clue regarding Husserl’s peculiar use of the term »meta
physics« by pointing out its connection to that of Meinong (Schuh
mann 1988, p. 254), and De Santis reconstructs in substantially
greater details its connection to Lotze’s concept of metaphysics (De
Santis 2021, p. 487f). However, while the philological sources of
Husserl’s concept of metaphysics pertain necessarily to a reconstruc
tion of its historical genesis, a clearer view of its basic philosophical
intention is arguably delivered by the systematic perspective from
which Kern interprets Husserl’s idea of philosophy.
Kern concludes from a wide overview of the history of philosophy
that the framework of ›first and second philosophy‹ places Husserl’s
idea of philosophy in an eminent tradition, that is, together with
Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Schelling. According to these philosophers,
the foundation of philosophy is necessarily twofold. This is because
reason, as the principle of philosophy, must first establish itself
independently of all factual experience (»a priori« in the adverbial
sense), but remains incomplete if it does not thereafter apply itself
to the interpretation of factual experience (likewise: »a posteriori«)
(Kern 1975, pp. 320–333). For Husserl, this means that »philosophy
gains access to reality in the following manner: first established as a
pure universal science of essence, through its retroactive application
on empirical reality, it grounds reality absolutely in its rationality. As
second philosophy or ›metaphysics‹, philosophy appears to be noth
ing other than an ultimate grounding or clarification of all sciences of
facts on the a priori principles of reason.« (Kern 1975, p. 336)7 Thus
the differentiation as well as interdependence between phenomenol
ogy (and under phenomenology, »universal ontology« as an a priori
science and hence as an essential part of first philosophy) and meta
6 Husserl himself once remarked that the title »metaphysics« is inappropriate but
unavoidable for that which it designates: »Die Bezeichnung Metaphysik für all diese
Wirklichkeitswissenschaften ist freilich nicht ganz passend, aber über einen anderen
Namen verfügen wir leider nicht, es sei denn über den Namen Philosophie.« (Husserl
1988, p. 230)
7 The paragraph on Husserl in Kern 1975 (pp. 333–341) is later reprinted, in a
significantly abridged version, as the last chapter of Bernet/Kern/Marbach 1993, pp.

229–234.
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physics in Husserl’s idea of philosophy are to be understood precisely

according to this broad determination of philosophy as such8. In this
sense, a paraphrase of Kant seems to be well-justified: metaphysics
without phenomenology would be »blind« (i.e. not scientific), but
phenomenology without metaphysics would be »empty« (i.e. not
philosophical in the full sense).
2. From »Second Philosophy« to »Last Philosophy«
Metaphysics for Husserl thus appears to be given a unified task: to

provide a philosophical, i.e. maximally and ultimately intelligible,
explanation of facts, factual experience and factual reality – in other
words, that which initially appears to be extra-philosophical and
only intelligible in a limited and relative sense. This interpretation is
possible on the basis of a science which establishes all principles of
intelligibility by itself, and which, for that reason, must come before
any other sciences: the eidetic science of transcendental subjectivity
and the universal field of its intentional correlates, namely, transcen
dental phenomenology and universal ontology. The application of this
science on the totality of factual reality yields the science which comes
after all sciences: metaphysics as second philosophy. This science
completes the idea of philosophy because it finally reveals everything
which seems to fall outside of the scope of philosophy as really
and inherently penetrable by philosophical reason. In the Cartesian
Meditations, Husserl thus writes: “›fact‹ and its ›irrationality‹ is itself
a structural concept in the system of the concrete Apriori« (Husserl
1950, p. 114); »All the rationality of the fact lies in the Apriori.
« (Husserl 1950, p. 181)
This determination of metaphysics implies that, despite being
itself a science of fact, it is a unique science of fact that distinguishes
itself from all others in two ways. First, it is the only science of
8 Since the brief sketch of Husserl’s concepts of first and second philosophy offered
here aims mainly to illustrate the concept of second philosophy, important details in
Husserl’s concept of first philosophy and of philosophy as such have to be omitted. For
an overview of Husserl’s concept of philosophy see Schuhmann 1988. Regarding the
function of ontology as a part of Husserl’s first philosophy see Majolino 2015. Pérez
Gatica’s contribution in this volume (Chapter 19) provides a helpful clarification of the
relation between Husserl’s »first philosophy« and »universal philosophy«, the latter
of which corresponds to the idea of philosophy as such.
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fact that is from the beginning supported by the a priori foundation

provided by transcendental phenomenology. It eliminates, therefore,
those interpretations of factual reality which contradict the findings of
transcendental phenomenology9. Second, its ›region and correlate‹ is
not just any particular fact, but ›the unity of factual reality‹ (Husserl
1956a, p. 14). This is so because it is tasked with the completion of
the idea of philosophy itself: the science of the absolute. Factual reality
must be submitted to philosophical understanding in its totality, unity
and to the greatest degree of perfection (Husserl 1988, p. 171). This
is the sense in which metaphysics is the absolute science of factual
reality. All these apply to the conception of metaphysics as second
philosophy that has been outlined above.
One may nonetheless question whether this conception lives
up to the task it sets itself. If metaphysics functions exclusively
as an interpretation – surely, a transcendental-phenomenologically
grounded interpretation – of all existing sciences of facts, it thereby
misses all aspects of factual reality which lie outside of the boundaries
of these sciences. Granted, the sciences of facts are conceived by
Husserl to be structured in an exhaustive way, that is, according
to the material-ontological distinction between nature and spirit,
thereby accounting for all strata of real physical-natural, animal
istic-natural and spiritual phenomena10. Accordingly, metaphysics
would be »nothing other than the continuation of all current natural
sciences and spiritual sciences« as their »completion« and »philoso
phization« (Husserl 1988, p. 182). Still, the range of factual reality
goes beyond what is describable through the scientific investigation
of these factual phenomena. Justifying metaphysics’ claim to being
the absolute science of factual reality requires an understanding of
factual reality that is truly absolute; yet, as Husserl sees clearly, a
truly absolute understanding of factual reality exceeds what can be
9 Zahavi’s claim that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is not metaphysically

neutral because it proves false a naturalistic understanding of reality is therefore
justified in this limited sense (2003, p. 13ff, 2017, p. 32ff). However, the concept
of metaphysics involved in that discussion clearly does not correspond to Husserl’s
own concept of metaphysics, and indeed, Zahavi explicitly casts doubt on whether
the latter concept actually coheres with Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology
(2017, p. 205-6). In contrast, the analyses presented here show that transcendental
phenomenology calls for a phenomenological metaphysics in the precise Husserlian
sense of the word for intrinsic reasons.
10 This is precisely the project of the regional ontologies outlined in Ideas II
(Husserl 1952).
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found in the total content of the factual sciences. This means, however,
that the concept of »factual reality« must itself be clarified. In the
following, it will be shown that it is ambiguous in at least two ways.
Further, these two sets of ambiguities are to be understood as the
motivating factors behind Husserl’s re-conception of metaphysics in
a way which points beyond the notion of »second philosophy« to that
of »last philosophy«.
The first set of ambiguity in the concept of factual reality
is brought into play by Husserl’s principal division of philosophy
into theoretical and practical philosophy. This twofold division is
accompanied by the threefold division of reason into its »cognizing,
evaluating, and willing« dimensions (Husserl 1956a, p. 6, Husserl
1988, p. 183)11. Both of these divisions derive their fundamental phe
nomenological legitimacy from the intentional analyses of conscious
life in general, but in particular from that of the structures of »atti
tudes« (Husserl 1952, p. 173ff, Husserl 1976b, p. 326). It is essential to
the nature of scientific knowledge as such that it be formed in what can
be called the »theoretical attitude« of consciousness (Husserl 1976b,
p. 321ff). This applies as much to the Naturwissenschaften as to the
Geisteswissenschaften, despite the possibility of further distinguishing
the attitudes proper to them by means of intentional analysis12. In this
sense, the scientific understanding of factual reality is equivalent to an
understanding of factual reality in the theoretical attitude and directed
by the norms of theoretical reason. As such, however, it cannot be
considered as an absolute understanding of factual reality, since, as
merely theoretical, it lays no claim to the axiological and ethical ways
of understanding factual reality, that is, an understanding of factual
reality with respect to the actualization of all sorts of values, including
but not limited to the ethical.
For more than once, Husserl rehearses exactly this chain of
reasoning in his reflections on the idea of philosophy as well as
on the idea of metaphysics. In the aforementioned 1911 lectures,
11 This division is reflected in the corresponding division of the philosophy of reason
into three basic departments: (1) logic, (2) axiology or »value-theory«, (3) ethics
or »practical philosophy« (Husserl 1976a, p. 269, 339). As Schuhman points out,
this threefold division of philosophy corresponds without conflict with the twofold
division of theoretical and practical philosophy, since »practical philosophy« in a
broader sense includes both axiology and ethics (Schuhmann 1988, p. 243).
12 For the most systematic analysis of Husserl’s theory of attitudes to date see
Majolino 2020.
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he recognizes that the idea of philosophy remains »one-sided« as

long as it is guided exclusively by the »idea of absolute knowledge«,
since »knowledge is only one individual function of [human] psychic
life among others« (Husserl 1988, p. 183). If »the intertwinement of
all acts of reason and their ideals« – that is, the ultimate unity of the
oretical, axiological and practical reason – is to be taken seriously, the
idea of philosophy cannot be oriented exclusively towards the »idea
of the most perfect knowledge«, but it must be more fundamentally
oriented towards the »idea of the most perfect life of reason in
general« (Husserl 1988, p. 183). Under such an idea of philosophy,
metaphysics cannot merely be an interpretation of all factual sciences,
but must extend its domain to those areas of factual reality which
pertain to values and action and which, so to speak, lie »higher« than
those accessible to the factual sciences. Husserl claims here that the
pre-philosophical representations of these areas of reality are present
in »empirical teleology and theology«, which is why metaphysics
must at last occupy itself with the philosophical re-foundation of
these forms of thought (Husserl 1988, p. 230). In another manuscript
from 1910–11, the need for a phenomenological metaphysics with
axiological and practical elements is clearly expressed, in connection
with the idea that being is not just cognized, but also evaluated
and willed:
»Science of being, of truthful being in the ultimate sense, and indeed,
of truthful being in the sense of reality, of truthful being in the sense of
value, of truthful or rightful praxis in the sense of the good. All that is
inseparable from and leads back to the phenomenological view of the
world and metaphysics.« (Husserl 1956a, 306)
Thus, with the expansion of the idea of philosophy, the idea of
metaphysics takes on motives and goals which are broadly speak
ing »practical« rather than merely theoretical. Husserl will later bring
the notion of a phenomenological view of the world yet again into
connection with the idea of metaphysics (Husserl 1966, p. 343).
But for our purpose it suffices to conclude here that the concept of
factual reality is ambiguous in the first sense in that it includes both
theoretical and practical dimensions in itself. This allows us to turn
now to address the second set of ambiguity.
The perspective from which this second set of ambiguity becomes
visible depends on the transcendental status of phenomenology. The
path of reflection that ultimately led Husserl to view the subject
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matter of metaphysics (i.e. factual reality) through a transcendental

perspective is a long and complicated one. We will propose here to
understand this path of reflection in two steps, which we shall first
conceptually reconstruct before substantiating it by drawing from
from Husserl’s texts.
At the outset, the definition of the task of metaphysics as the
final philosophical clarification of the factual sciences presupposed.
The first step of reflection takes place when this clarification no longer
concerns itself exclusively with the contents of these sciences, but with
the very existence of scientific knowledge as such. The question is
no longer, for instance, whether a certain factual claim put forth in
physics or psychology can be philosophically justified, but whether
there is a philosophical explanation for the fact that there exists
something like the sciences in general. Again, the latter question
applies, in slightly different ways, both to the Naturwissenschaften
and the Geisteswissenschaften. This step signifies a form of reflexive
self-questioning of scientific reason: the task is not only to know
what exists, but to know the position occupied by knowers of what
exists. Now, it can certainly be said that the question concerning the
knowers of reality is one to which transcendental phenomenology
as such constitutes an answer. The sciences themselves, eidetic or
factual, cannot account for their own ultimate epistemic foundation,
because they remain within the natural attitude and are thereby
blind to the universal correlation of transcendental (inter)subjectivity
and the world. Thus according Husserl’s famous thesis in the Crisis,
to carry through the self-questioning of scientific reason simply
means to achieve the breakthrough to transcendental phenomenology
(Husserl 1976b). From this perspective, the fact that there exists
something like the sciences in the world is essentially explained by
the community of world-constituting subjectivities and their various
intentional functions. This precise explanation regarding the factual
existence of the sciences falls no less within the territory of a transcen
dental-phenomenologically founded metaphysics than the elucidation
of the contents of these sciences.
This explanation, however, immediately turns back upon itself.
This brings the second step of reflection into play. Is transcendental
phenomenology itself not also a science which obviously and factually
exists? In order to explain the factual existence of the sciences, must
we not presuppose the factual existence – i.e. not merely the ideal
possibility – of transcendental intersubjectivity? The knowers of
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factual reality cannot be merely possible knowers, but must be factual

knowers. This means that it is necessary to inquire in the same
manner after the status of factual transcendental (inter)subjectivity.
If, in the first step, the fact which confronts metaphysics is the factual
existence of the (mundane) factual sciences, in the second step, it
is the factual existence of transcendental phenomenology that is
at stake. What occurs in this second step is therefore the reflexive
self-questioning of transcendental reason, not merely that of mundane
scientific reason. The fact, in this sense, is no longer a mundane
fact, but a transcendental fact, namely, the factual occurrence of
world-constitution by transcendental intersubjectivity. It is only easy
to see from this perspective that the first fact of the mundane existence
of factual sciences is enveloped in this second transcendental fact,
since the formation of the sciences in the world must be implied in
the total achievement of world-constitution as an essential possibility.
Following the self-questioning of transcendental phenomenology,
metaphysics acquires an entirely new subject matter: the fact of the
existence of transcendental reason, simultaneously world-constitut
ing and self-reflexive.
Thus reconstructed, these two steps of reflection encapsulate
a long process of thought which, as a matter of fact, Husserl went
through beginning from the 1900s until well into the 1920s. Its
beginning can be observed in a group of texts which, incidentally, all
originate from 1908:
»From the standpoint of pure phenomenology [...] one cannot say
that there must be something like natural science, history, politics etc.,
namely in a de facto way [...] That there is something like theory
in general, which is accomplished in these or those areas, that one
can project the idea of a physical nature in general or that of a
knowledge of nature [...] that one can say that ›there is a physical nature
which is thoroughly subject to theory and thoroughly theoretically
controllable‹ – all that, from the standpoint of the eidetic theory of
cognition, is a fact [Faktum].« (Husserl 2013, p. 161f)
»Spirit in nature, the adaptation of spirit to its nature, the development
of cognitive spirits, the development of the sciences and forms of
human culture in general – all that too has its philosophical aspects,
but they do not belong to the theory of knowledge, thus not to first
philosophy; not to first, but to ›last philosophy‹, I would say.« (Husserl
1956a, p. 385)
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»Logical laws are certainly absolutely valid, their Apriori can be phe
nomenologically demonstrated. [...] But logical laws alone are not
sufficient [to constitute an actual nature]. They allow a nature to be
methodically cognized factually, in the factual flow of consciousness,
a nature which behaves completely in a rational way; but why must
logical laws have a field of application? In a factual nature? Transcen
dental logic [...] contains the grounds of a possible nature, but not of a
factual one. This facticity [Faktizität] is not the field of phenomenology
and logic, but of metaphysics. The wonder here is the rationality, which
shows itself in absolute consciousness in such a way that not only
anything in general is constituted in consciousness, but a nature, which
is the correlate of an exact natural science.« (Husserl 1956a, p. 394)
These provoking passages can be interpreted in a number of ways.
However, according to the two-step path of reflection reconstructed
above, both steps of reflection are exemplified in these passages.
The first passage rehearses the first step of reflection, through which
factual reality as subject matter of metaphysics no longer refers merely
to the specific contents of the factual sciences, but to the factual
existence of the sciences per se. Certainly, this passage addresses
only the existence of a physical natural science, but that it applies
equally to that of the Geisteswissenschaften can be seen in the second
passage, where the factual development of spirit from out of nature
and that of the whole range of human culture, including all scientific
knowledge, are recognized as the subject matter of metaphysics. At
first sight, the third passage seems to refer again to the fact of a natural
science, but under closer examination, it actually refers to the fact
of the transcendental constitution of a rationally penetrable nature
(»in the factual flow of consciousness«), which then makes possible
the establishment of the natural sciences in the usual sense. In this
way, it exercises the second step of reflection, through which factual
reality is expanded from a mundane (»natural« or »worldly«) to a
transcendental level. The »wonder of rationality« as a »facticity« –
explicitly designated here as the subject matter of metaphysics – does
not refer primarily to the rationality of the natural sciences in the
world, but to the rationality of the consciousness which constitutes the
world in which there is a nature.
At this point, the title of this paper, taken from the second passage
quoted above, can be justified. In its proper historical context, the title
of »last philosophy« refers to the idea of a philosophical interpretation
of the factual sciences which Husserl appropriated from Lotze (De
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Santis 2021, p. 487f). However, it is a term that Husserl never used

more than once in his corpus, whereas the title of »second philoso
phy« belongs among the central concepts of Husserl’s philosophy. It
therefore appears to be permissible, with a view to the transformation
in Husserl’s concept of metaphysics outlined in this paper, to give
the title of »last philosophy« a meaning which does not correspond
to its original context in Husserl’s earlier thought, but very well to
Husserl’s later conception of metaphysics, which can be understood as
a result of the development of Husserl’s thought sketched out above.
If the transcendental-phenomenological interpretation of the factual
sciences should be called »second philosophy« because it comes after
the primary, i.e. transcendental-eidetic foundation of philosophy,
the dimension in phenomenological metaphysics which goes beyond
such an interpretation would merit no less than the title of »last phi
losophy«, precisely because it comes even after this »final« scientific
interpretation of factual reality. To illustrate this purely interpretative
distinction between second and last philosophy, there is no better
place to turn than to a famous footnote from the 1923/4 First Philos
ophy lectures:
»Through the final interpretation of the objective being that is explored
in them [the ultimately scientific factual sciences] as fact, which
accrues to them through the application of eidetic phenomenology,
and through a universal consideration of all regions of objectivity
in relation to the universal community of transcendental subjects,
the universe, the universal theme of the positive sciences, takes on
a ›metaphysical‹ interpretation, which means nothing other than an
interpretation behind which it makes no scientific sense to search for
another. But behind this interpretation, a new problematic opens up on
phenomenological ground, one that cannot be further interpreted: that
of the irrationality of the transcendental fact, which expresses itself in
the constitution of the factual world and of factual spiritual life – that
is, metaphysics in a new sense.« (Husserl 1956a, p. 188)13
The claim in this passage of a »metaphysics in a new sense« has con
tinually provoked interpretations in which it is hailed as the ground
breaking moment in Husserl’s conception of metaphysics, to the effect
that a revolutionary metaphysics of »primal facticity« (Urfaktizität)
revokes the primacy of transcendental phenomenology as first phi
13 Translation modified from Husserl 2019, p. 193f.
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losophy14. But in what precise sense here is metaphysics »new«?

Following our previous reasoning, what this claim pronounces is
nothing other than the transition from the metaphysical interpreta
tion of the factual sciences to the self-questioning of transcendental
phenomenology, i.e. what is articulated above as the second step of
reflection. In fact, it should be clear by now that the two long sentences
making up this passage refer respectively and precisely to metaphysics
conceived as »second philosophy« and as »last philosophy« in the
above established sense. The transcendental-phenomenologically
grounded interpretation of factual reality, directed towards the totality
of factual sciences, is indeed a »final« interpretation »behind which
it makes no scientific sense to search for another«, because there
is no other ultimate source of scientificity than transcendental phe
nomenology. Husserl here nonetheless claims that this final interpre
tation is not really final, and that a new problematic concerning »the
irrationality of the transcendental fact« opens up at this point. The
two-step path of reflection reconstructed above can now be under
stood as the proof of why this new problematic must open up as a
matter of necessity: the metaphysical interpretation of factual reality
leads back to the self-questioning of scientific reason, which in turn
leads back to the self-questioning of transcendental reason. Yet insofar
as this kind of irrationality can only be disclosed and understood
precisely on the basis of the self-reflection of transcendental phe
nomenology, the claim that it is displaces the foundational status of
transcendental phenomenology is unavoidably problematic.
To return now to the point of departure from which we began
to explore the transcendental problematic, it should be said that the
concept of factual reality is ambiguous in the second sense in that it
can be understood both on a natural and on a transcendental level.
14 The notion of a metaphysics of primal facticity is first suggested in Held 1966, Kern
1975, Landgrebe 1982, and further developed in Micali 2008 and Chernavin 2012. The
programmatical claim that such a form of metaphysics should contradict the status of
transcendental phenomenology as first philosophy is in fact only later put forth by
Tengelyi 2014, an interpretation which Römer 2017b and Breuer 2020 follow. Despite
its independent philosophical interest, this claim appears, from the perspective offered
by this paper, to rest on a flawed understanding of Husserl’s conception of metaphysics
and of its relation with transcendental phenomenology. How and to what extent
such an independent interest, which draws from from the original phenomenological
project of Marc Richir (1992, 2004), can be related back to Husserl’s phenomenological
philosophy as a whole, remains therefore to be seen.
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With this conclusion, two sets of ambiguities in the concept of factual

reality are clarified: factual reality can be understood, on the one
hand, both from a theoretical and a practical perspective, and on the
other hand, both from a natural and a transcendental perspective. This
means that a truly absolute understanding of factual reality would
need to be both theoretical and practical, as well as both natural and
transcendental. Since metaphysics as »second philosophy« concerns
itself with the theoretical knowledge about factual reality gained in the
natural attitude, metaphysics as »last philosophy« would be directed
towards exclusively transcendental subject matters in both theoretical
and practical dimensions. If »last philosophy« could still be said to be
a form of theory, it would be the transcendental theory of theory as
well as the transcendental theory of praxis15.
That being said, what is clarified up to this point are only the
theoretical motivations for developing something like a »last philos
ophy«, and some preliminary indications of what it would look like.
The comprehensive reconstruction and assessment of Husserl’s »last
philosophy« will have to take into account a much larger portion of
Husserl’s manuscripts – not least the texts published in the third part
of Hua XLII (Husserl 2013) – and eventually the collaboration of Fink
with Husserl along similar lines of thought (Husserl 1973b, p. xxxix).
In the last part of this paper, only some thoughts can be cast in this
direction with the help of the Cartesian Meditations, in the hope of
clarifying, in return, that text itself.
15 In this sense, the threefold distinction between (1) first, (2) second and (3) last
philosophy corresponds to the threefold distinction between (1) »phenomenology as

universal ontology«, (2) »empirical phenomenology« and (3) the »highest and ulti
mate« problems, which Husserl also calls the »metaphysical« problems, in his fourth
draft of the 1927 »Britannica-Article« (Husserl 1968, p. 296–299). Nevertheless, this
correspondence holds only under the condition that »empirical phenomenology« is
not understood as a »pre-transcendental« or »mundane« phenomenology – which
is certainly also a legitimate project – but as the »transcendental interpretation of
empirical facts«, namely, phenomenological metaphysics as »second philosophy«. At
the same time, Husserl’s consistent designation of the »metaphysical problems« as
the »highest and ultimate« (die höchsten und letzten Probleme) offers an additional
argument for understanding the »metaphysics in a new sense« spoken of in the First
Philosophy footnote as »last philosophy« (see the last paragraph of the present paper).
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3. »Last Philosophy« in the Cartesian Meditations
The Cartesian Meditations is »An Introduction to Phenomenology«,

i.e. neither an introduction to phenomenological metaphysics nor
to phenomenological philosophy. Thus the problematic contained in
Husserl’s idea of metaphysics does not occupy a significant place with
regard to the whole structure of the text. However, when read with
this problematic in mind, it can prove surprisingly instructive. The
concept »metaphysics« appears in the text in many instances in which
it is used in the pejorative sense (Husserl 1950, p. 122, 138, 177),
mostly with reference to traditional forms of metaphysics and espe
cially Leibniz’s (Husserl 1950, p. 174, 176). There are, however, also
instances in which the word has an unambiguous positive meaning,
where Husserl never fails to stress the unprecedented nature of this
transcendental-phenomenologically grounded metaphysics in the
history of philosophy (Husserl 1950, p. 166ff, 171, 182). This positive
meaning is formulated succinctly in Husserl’s own Inhaltsübersicht
of the original text. Referring back to the end of the Schlusswort,
Husserl writes: »The genuine metaphysical problems as problems of
the highest level within phenomenology« (Husserl 1950, p. 193). This
indicates the general context in which metaphysics or metaphysical
problems are conceived not just in the Cartesian Meditations, but also
in Husserl’s philosophy in general.
Before turning to address the topic of »last philosophy« in the
Cartesian Meditations, it should be noted that the conception of
metaphysics as »second philosophy« is in no way discarded here.
Although it is not explicitly mentioned at any point in the text, it
is implied whenever Husserl speaks of the idea of philosophy (e.g.
Husserl 1950, p. 181). Theoretically speaking, there are no conflicts
between second and last philosophy. The sole reason for which we
speak of last philosophy instead of second philosophy in the Cartesian
Meditations is the fact that here Husserl has chosen to present certain
aspects of his metaphysics which are better represented by the notion
of last than second philosophy.
There are specifically three instances in which the positive use of
the concept of metaphysics occurs in the Cartesian Meditations. The
first occurs in § 60, »Metaphysische Ergebnisse unserer Auslegung der
Fremderfahrung« (Husserl 1950, p. 166); the second in a passing
remark on the transcendental-phenomenological re-foundation of
psychology, which purportedly »gives it a place within a transcen
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dental ›metaphysics‹” (Husserl 1950, p. 171); the third in the famous

passage in the Schlusswort, which declares that phenomenology
excludes countersensical forms of metaphysics, but does not exclude
metaphysics as such (Husserl 1950, p. 182). The remark about psy
chology refers clearly to the notion of second philosophy, i.e.
the »metaphysical« interpretation of the factual sciences, of which
psychology is obviously a member. The first and third passages, on
the other hand, are much more interesting. It will be shown in the
following that the conception of metaphysics which lies behind both
of these passages corresponds to the notion of »last philosophy«, but
they each exemplify a different aspect of the latter notion, namely, the
theoretical and the practical.
In these two passages, Husserl speaks of metaphysics in explicit
connection to a certain type of factual reality that constitutes its sub
ject matter. The commonality between these two passages becomes
visible as soon as one examines which type of factual reality they
respectively concern. In the Schlusswort, this is immediately clear: the
problems of »contingent facticity« are problems that emerge »within
the factual monadic sphere« (Husserl 1950, p. 182), that is, within the
sphere of the life of the factual concrete transcendental subjectivity.
These facts are therefore »transcendental facts«. In § 60, the starting
point for laying out the »metaphysical outcomes« is the ego as »my
ego, given to me apodictically, the only thing to be posited by me as
existent in absolute apodicticity« (Husserl 1950, p. 166). As the argu
ment continues, it becomes clear that this ego can only be the factual
transcendental ego that is uniquely myself, prior to the possibility of
obtaining the eidos of ›a transcendental ego‹ through the method of
self-variation: »myself, this apodictic-factual ego«, »the ego that I
actually am«, »the factum ›I am‹” (Husserl 1950, p. 167–8). As far as
it is the factual reality within the transcendental sphere that these two
passages refer to, they both belong to the domain of »last philosophy«,
or, »metaphysics in a new sense«.
In the First Philosophy footnote, Husserl nevertheless says that
it is with the »irrationality of the transcendental fact« that this new
metaphysics deals, and this problematic, once it is opened up, »cannot
be further interpreted«. In what sense can there be a science of
these transcendental facts, which seem to stand behind transcendental
reason in virtue of being implicated by its existence? It is possible to
respond to this question in at least two ways, respectively displayed in
the two passages to be examined here.
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The unified train of thought in and leading up to § 60 in the Fifth

Cartesian Meditation cannot, of course, be reconstructed here. A
reconstruction provided by De Santis nonetheless accurately sum
marizes the main metaphysical thesis presented in this paragraph in
the following way: ›I am, therefore only this world really is.‹ (De Santis
2018, p. 80) This outcome is the conclusion of several premises, each
of which is justified separately in or before this paragraph. Yet the most
fundamental of these premises, without which it would be impossible
to arrive at this conclusion even with all the other premises, is das
Faktum »Ich bin«, the factual existence of my transcendental ego. This
cannot be anything else than a fact. In the sense that this fact is the
presupposition of all possible transcendental-phenomenological cog
nition, eidetic or factual, this is a necessary fact whose necessity is
more basic than any eidetic necessity. But as a fact, it is also utterly
contingent and stands outside the efficacy of any possible eidetics:
there are no eidetic laws which prescribe my existence16. In this respect
my transcendental existence has within itself »a core of ›primal con
tingency‹ [einen Kern von ›Urzufälligem‹]«, Husserl 1973b, p. 386).
Husserl gives this unique type of fact many names: Urtatsache
(Husserl 1973b, p. 385), Urfaktum (Husserl 1973b, p. 386), absolute
Tatsache (Husserl 1973b, p. 403), absolute Faktum (Husserl 2002b,
p. 225). Once the Urfaktizität (Husserl 1973b, p. 385) of my tran
scendental ego is recognized, then, by means of the explication of an
infinitely spreading network of intentional implications, the factual
existence of all those transcendental egos con-compossible with mine
can be deduced (Husserl 1950, p. 167f, Husserl 1973b, p. 366, 382ff).
Further, since the actual world is constituted by this transcendental
intersubjectivity which is uniquely con-compossible with my tran
scendental ego, the existence of precisely this and no other world is
in the same sense a transcendental fact that is unhintergehbar.
No attempt is made by this short discussion to clarify the concept
of Urfaktum or the question whether it can be regarded as a unified
concept. Its purpose is solely to show that at least one kind of
philosophical reflection is possible in the face of »the irrationality of
the transcendental fact«, namely, the kind which articulates precisely
its irrationality as irrationality. Insofar as this articulation results in
the »ultimate cognitions of being [letzte Seinserkenntnisse]« (Husserl
16 Detailed reconstructions of this fundamental insight can be found in Held 1966, p.

146–150 and Micali 2008, p. 79–90.
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1950, p. 166), it is not a task that phenomenological metaphysics can

responsibly forgo.
The passage in the Schlusswort indicates that there is another
kind of philosophical reflection which approaches the transcendental
fact(s) in a meaningful way:
»[...] phenomenology indeed excludes every naïve metaphysics, but
does not exclude metaphysics as such [...] it by no means professes
to stop short of the ›highest and ultimate‹ questions. [...] within the
factual monadic sphere, and, as an ideal possibility, within every con
ceivable monadic sphere, there appear all the problems of contingent
facticity, of death, of fate, of the possibility of a ›genuine‹ human
life demanded as ›meaningful‹ in a particular sense – among them,
therefore, the problem of the ›meaning‹ of history –, and all the further
and still higher problems. We can say that they are the ethico-religious
problems, but stated in the realm where everything that can have a
possible sense for us must be stated.« (Husserl 1950, p. 182)
In this passage Husserl does no more than listing »the problems
of contingent facticity«, even in a quite arbitrary manner. But it is
clear that these »ethico-religious« problems can only be posed in a
practical attitude, that is, not in a purely theoretical attitude. Instead
of being oriented towards the theoretical ideal of disinterestedness,
the posing of these problems is invested with an overwhelming
interest: the interest of living a genuinely rational life. Of course,
their true sense also surfaces only within the transcendental sphere.
What can ever result from reflecting on these phenomena, death,
fate, the meaning of a genuine human life, the meaning of history?
In other of Husserl’s manuscripts dealing with these phenomena
in the context of phenomenological metaphysics, it becomes clear
that metaphysics can be nothing other than a teleological form of
reflection (Husserl 2013, p. 183, 201, 250, Husserl 2006, p. 18f,
260), both as the retroactive bestowal of meaning to what appears to
be contingent, meaningless, »in vain«, and as the futural projection
of a final redemption of all human suffering and sin in the hands
of God (Husserl 2002a, p. 27f, Husserl 2013, p. 242, 254 etc.). At
times it was for Husserl a matter of deciding whether the living of a
life is still tolerable: »What must be believed so that the world can
have a meaning after all, so that human life can remain rationally in
it?« (Husserl 2013, p. 238) »I can only take upon myself a life marked
by sin, error and the absence of real and absolute value, if I believe
that everything ultimately serves the Good.« (Husserl 2013, p. 254).
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Leonard Ip
There is thus no other type of reflection that is capable of reconciling

the ideal of living a free, rational and responsible life and whatever as
a matter of fact happens to be the reality than the teleological, which
redeems the past and places faith in the future, thereby preserving the
last possibility of acting meaningfully in the present. The desire to
achieve this kind of reconciliation is, in this sense, not an expression
of hubris or confidence in the human intellect, but in reverse, an
expression of desperation and of the fear of living a life no longer
dignified enough to be called human.
This then sketches a second way of philosophically reflecting on
the irrationality of the fact, a kind of irrationality that cannot be con
fronted at last but by philosophical, indeed, metaphysical reflection.
For it is always »the highest and ultimate questions« which Husserl
calls the »metaphysical« (Husserl 1950, p. 165, 182, Husserl 1956b, p.
506, Husserl 1968, p. 299, Husserl 1976b, p. 6 etc.). These too are not
questions from which philosophy can retreat. »The world must have
a ›meaning‹. In all human individual and collective fate, there must be
a unified and understandable meaning – philosophy must construct
meaning in relation to the irrationality of the fact.« (Husserl 2013, p.
238) The absolute science of factual reality merits its own name only
if it takes on this responsibility.17
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Phänomenologie | 34

Daniele De Santis [Ed.]

All volumes in this series undergo a peer review process

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1st Edition 2023

Hynek Janoušek, Wojciech Starzyński

Rosemary Jane Rizo–Patron de Lerner

Andreea Smaranda Aldea

Agustín Serrano de Haro

The present volume is based on a conference on the legacy of Husserl’s

the first volume of Ideas, phenomenology is famously presented as

concrete form of subjectivity, of which pure consciousness as a region

1 On this Husserlian methodological concept, see De Santis 2020.

to provide a new foundation for »metaphysics«: not only (in § 60 of

tions (Altobrando 2017).

respect, it would suffice to recall the harsh comment made by Hei­

3 See the monumental work by Bruzina 2004.

thought unable to think and relate to a being independent of the think­

5 It is in connection to Maritain that Sartre’s famous Une idée fondamentale de

la phénoménologie. L’intentionnalité should be read. If the former accuses Husserl’s

not be thought cannot be« (Farber 1935, p. 385). In a way that is

6 »In Ihrer überraschenden Rezension meiner französischen ›Méditations

what is theoretically determinable in infinitum. Now that this is

directly and more systematically.9 However, the second part (Ch.

of self-variation (Chapter 17), and the overall problem of the sense

the present volume is dedicated to the memory of Ronald Bruzina

Altobrando, Andrea (2017): »Prefazione.« In: Edmund Husserl, Meditazioni

Philosophy and Phenomenology« (Gačr 21–08256S), and the European Regional

Heidegger, Martin (2003): Four Seminars. Translated by Andrew Mitchell and

Introduction and First Cartesian Meditation:

The present study is intended as a broad commentary on the Intro­

2.1. The »motif« and the »content«

Cartesian Meditations—the grammatical form of the title chosen by

similar endeavours. But the title also implies Husserl’s willingness to

2.2. The repetition and variation of the »motif«

(a) he self-withdrawal, i.e. the return to the philosophizing subject;

true, considered as the starting point to re-establish what has

(b) iiThe »destruction« is not limited to every given »scientific

knowledge« but extends to every given »natural knowledge«,

as the starting point to re-establish the existence of the entire

2.3. The critique of the »doctrinal content«.

Such distinctive style of meditation, characterized by the repetition

a. A »substantia cogitans, the separate mens sive anima« (Hus­

2.4. Insightfulness and tradition

Husserl explains in the Origin of geometry, it is only insofar as they

a two layers transformation of a traditional conceptual cluster of the

2.5. The »motif« and the »motive«

The careful readers of CM have certainly noticed the somehow ambi­

2.6. The »idea« of science and the »factual« sciences

Since the radical foundation of a universal science is only an »idea,«

3. The »everlasting significance.« Descartes and the

3.1. On the manifold beginnings of philosophy

CM present the »new beginning« of the Meditationes as a series of

3.2. The »first beginning«: the Pre-Socratics

In the 1919/20 lectures Introduction to Philosophy, the first beginning

3.3. Towards the »second beginning«: the Sophists

The philosophy of the first beginning, however, will be literally des­

and relative status of »views«. The »fundamental significance« of the

3.4. The »second beginning«: Socrates and Plato

The new »beginning of a genuine and radical philosophy« occurs with

is only after these radical transformations made possible thanks to

respect, it would suffice to recall the harsh comment made by Hei

thought unable to think and relate to a being independent of the think

The present study is intended as a broad commentary on the Intro

a. A »substantia cogitans, the separate mens sive anima« (Hus

The careful readers of CM have certainly noticed the somehow ambi

The philosophy of the first beginning, however, will be literally des

In the opening lines of the Introduction to CM Husserl explicitly sug

A third and final transformation concerns trait (c)ii. The transcenden

departure for inferences according to the principle of causality« (Hus