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Husserl’s Break from Brentano Reconsidered: Abstraction and the Structure of Consciousness

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Abstract

The paper contends that abstraction lies at the core of the philosophical and methodological rupture that occurred between Husserl and his mentor Franz Brentano. To accomplish this, it explores the notion of abstraction at work in these two thinkers’ methodological discussions through their respective claims regarding the structure of consciousness, and shows that how Husserl and Brentano analyze the structure of consciousness conditions and strictly delineates the nature and reach of their methods of inquiry. The paper pays close attention to intentionality, founding (Fundierung), and qualitative modification (qualitative Modifikation) understood as principles of consciousness. While intentionality has been the topic of numerous discussions surrounding these two thinkers’ work, founding and qualitative modification have slipped under the radar despite the fact that they hold—as I intend to show—the key to shedding new light on their respective methods of inquiry. More specifically, the paper explicates the ways in which Brentano’s notion of founding (understood as a relationship between whole acts) and his failure to identify radical-qualitative modification as a principle of consciousness preclude him from offering a successful model for philosophical universalizing thought. It is my hope to show that Husserl’s rethinking of founding as a relationship between certain structural moments of acts along with his novel notion of qualitative modification ground his attempt to carve a new method of philosophical inquiry—albeit jejune and ambiguous at the time of the Investigations, yet nevertheless able to successfully negotiate the problems faced by his predecessor.

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Notes

  1. For a discussion of Husserl relation to the Brentano School, see (Rollinger 1999, 2008 and Ierna 2006). For a discussion of Husserl’s earlier mathematical thought and the beginning of his philosophical thought during the 1880s and 1890s, see Ierna (2005).

  2. This is the reason behind, what many at the time considered the paradoxical turn to consciousness in the Fifth and Sixth Investigations.

  3. I will focus primarily on Husserl’s account from the Logical Investigations. This account will be complemented by references to his subsequent work on imagining consciousness in lecture courses beginning the winter of 1904/1905 and continuing well into the 1920s. The first, 1904/1905 lecture on this topic introduces new analyses but also shows interesting continuity with Husserl’s 1900/1901 work.

  4. I will discuss Founding and qualitative Modifikation as ‘principles of consciousness’—laws that govern its organization and functioning as a whole. For Husserl, another major such principle is time-consciousness.

  5. The main texts that fall in this category are Experience and Judgment, Phenomenological Psychology, and Formal and Transcendental Logic. The recently published research manuscripts on eidetic variation Husserliana XLI (Hua XLI hereafter; I will use Hua to refer to all of the Husserliana volumes) complement these more classical accounts.

  6. Even Husserl’s mature attempts to explicate the reductions and eidetic variation exhibit substantial lacunae in need of further clarification. Furthermore, in his 1930s discussions of historical reflection, questions regarding the very possibility of a historical phenomenological eidetic arise.

  7. Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, initially published in 1874, went through subsequent revisions (1911, 1924), and as a whole the text exhibits the development of Brentano’s thought with respect to the structure of consciousness. The formulation of his claims and arguments becomes gradually clearer. For instance by 1911 Brentano emphatically dismisses the conception of intentionality as relation between two real entities and rejects the inclusion of the object as structural element of the act (Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt, 133–138; Psy. hereafter).

  8. This view of inclusion, also manifested in Brentano’s interchangeable usage of ‘content’ and ‘object’, is directly tied to the Scholastic notion of mental inexistence (Brentano employs the equivalent notion intentional inexistence), which is meant to capture the ontological status of the intended object in its relation to the act—i.e., as not really existing in consciousness but somehow given in and through consciousness. Intentional inexistence is, in Brentano’s view, nothing other than the direction and reference toward an object exhibited by mental phenomena (cf., Psy., 124–128, 136–137).

    Brentano uses the language of ‘content’ and ‘inclusion’ to refer to the intended objects of mental phenomena. He does little in 1874 to dismiss the inevitable consequence of viewing objects as parts of mental phenomena or acts. Husserl criticizes Brentano for this in the Investigations (cf., Husserliana XIX/1, LU V, §§11; Hua XIX/1 hereafter. In the appendices to the 1911 and 1924 editions to the Psychology Brentano argues explicitly against viewing the intended object as part of the act or consciousness. Thus, Husserl’s critique in the Logical Investigations must be viewed in the context of the 1874 edition. Nevertheless, Husserl’s point is well taken—even if objects are not part of consciousness, Brentano’s failure to clearly distinguish among act, content (as reell), and the object remains.

  9. Cf., Psy., Book II, Ch. 6, §3. For a more detailed discussion of emotion or feeling and its relation to judgment, see Book II, Ch. 8.

  10. Cf., Psy., Book II, Ch.7, §§2–8. Both of these criteria were extensively employed in the empiricist tradition from Locke onward. Both of these fail, in Brentano’s view, to secure a qualitative difference between the three types of acts. In his discussion of presentation and judgment as fundamentally distinct, he claims: “So viel also steht fest, dass der Unterschied zwischen Vorstellen und Urteilen ein innerer Unterschied des einen Denkens vom anderen sein muss” (Psy., Book II, Ch.7, §3, 42 (Band II)).

  11. “Wir dürfen es demnach al seine unzweifelhaft richtige Bestimmung der pscychischen Phänomene betrachten, dass sie entweder Vorstellungen sind, oder […] auf Vorstellungen als ihrer Grundlage beruhen” (Psy., p. 120).

  12. “Alle Umstände sind hier under dort analog; alle zeigen, dass, wenn in dem einen, auch in dem anderen Falle eine zweite, grundverschiedene Weise des Bewusstseins zu der ersten hinzugekommen ist” (Psy., Book II, Ch. 7, 65 (Band II)).

  13. Like Brentano himself, I will focus primarily on the act side of founding. It is important to note, however, that the process also correspondingly affects the acts’ intended objects.

  14. The same additive process also occurs with respect to the laws governing these three types of acts (cf., Psy., Book II, Ch.8, §7).

  15. Cf., Psy., Book II, Ch.4, §§1–2; see also F. Brentano, Vom Sinnlichen und Noetischen Bewusstsein, ed. Oskar Kraus (Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag 1928), Part I, §3 (SNB hereafter). He also seeks to avoid a Cartesian model of consciousness—one that makes an explicit substance ontology claim.

  16. “Es bleibt die Frage, ob es auch bei einem solchen grösseren Reichtume psychischer Erscheinungen immer noch eine reale Einheit sei, die alle umfasse, ob auch sie alle als Teilphänomene zu einem reell einheitlichen Ganzen gehören, oder ob wir es hier mit einer Vielheit von Dingen zu tun haben, so dass die Gesamtheit des Sellenzustandes als ein Kollektiv, al seine Gruppe von Phänomenen zu betrachten sei, deren jedes Ding für sich ist oder einem besonderen Dinge zugehört” (emphasis mine) (Psy., Book II, Ch. 4, 222). I would like to note here that Brentano uses reell and real interchangeably to refer to the structures of consciousness. We shall soon see what real or etwas Reales signifies for Brentano and to what extent the situation is radically different in Husserl’s case.

  17. In this paper I focus solely on Brentano’s mereology as it applies to his analyses of consciousness and mental phenomena. For substantial discussions of this topic in other contexts, such as physical, logical, or metaphysical, see Baumgartner and Simons (1994). For Brentano’s mereological discussions of substance and accident, see Chisholm (Chisholm 1994).

  18. Brentano (1982) Deskriptive Psychologie, ed. R.M. Chisholm and W. Baumgartner. Meiner, Hamburg (DP hereafter).

  19. While the language of ‘realization’, typical of Husserl’s later works (approx. early 1920s and onward), is something we can only superpose on the earlier model of act-structure, the language of positionality and non-positionality, which gains a deeper more refined sense from 1904/1905 onward through Husserl’s analyses of the imagination, is already present in the Investigations. I am here employing ‘eidetic’ in the broad understanding of ‘ideal’ or essential necessary universality.

  20. Husserl thus claims that the elements of consciousness are reell (XIX/1, LU V, §2), which is a status he defines not in terms of existence but of structure. Act-character, hyletic content, and interpretation are all reell structures of consciousness and of its acts. This claim is meant to radically distinguish them from anything not (structurally) a part of consciousness—i.e., the object (ibid.).

  21. The opposite of what Brentano did when he labeled physical phenomena as having intentional existence and mental phenomena as having actual (wirklich) existence.

  22. Cf., Hua XXIII, esp. lectures from 1909 and onward; see also Hua XI.

  23. My current research seeks to expand this model beyond Husserl’s suggestions (made in various lectures courses and research manuscripts over the course of his career). While Husserl himself did not offer an exhaustive and holistic account of what I refer to as ‘nexic-horizonal consciousness’, his important work lays the foundation for such an account—the methodological importance of which will soon come to light.

  24. The latter, as reell structure of consciousness, is the outcome of the interaction between content (hyletic content, such as sensation) and interpretation (Auffassung).

  25. Husserl’s terminological choice ‘hyle’ to refer to the reell content of acts ought not to be viewed as suggesting the inclusion of qualities of external objects in consciousness (an empiricist mistake where objective quality was equated with the qualities of mental processes). Husserl’s choice is contextual; he questions the lack of the distinction between the form of acts and their reell contents in his predecessors’ analyses (Brentano included). He thus is most eager to embrace a form versus. matter (hyle) type of distinction in his description of acts. His terminology here is driven by his project.

  26. He employs this in referring to what later in Ideas I will become his distinction between noesis and noema, which are both descriptive (cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, §16).

  27. Materie is different from Husserl’s notion of hyle or hyletic content, sometimes also referred to as Stoff. The former is the determinate reference to one object rather than any other; the latter is the reell content that is taken up and interpreted in Auffassung.

  28. Cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, Appendix to §§11 and 20.

  29. Perception, memory, and expectation are all types of intuitive presentation (anschauliche Vorstellung).

  30. Hua XIII.

  31. Memory and expectation fall in the former category, Phantasie in the latter.

  32. Cf., Hua XXIII (esp. Husserl’s lecture courses on Phantasie 1912 and onward). Thus, perception and imagination are the two simplest intuitive presentations. The former gives direct access to objects as real, the latter direct access to objects as irreal. As simple presentations, they are the founding cores for the realizing-positional and the non-positional attitudes respectively. Thus, for Husserl, imagination comes to refer both to a simple presentation and to an entire level/attitude of consciousness.

  33. Along with it, the hyle or hyletic content (i.e., sensation, which Brentano equated with external perception) also plays a role in founding in so far as it provides other acts, like judgments and memories, with a ‘hyle’ or content of their own, which becomes interpreted through their specific act-characters.

  34. The hyle and Materie are taken up by a new intentional act-character.

  35. Cf., Hua XIX/1, LU III, §§4, 21–22. Objective unities can be ideal, real, or irreal. Subjective structures of consciousness are reell in so far as they are ‘parts’ of consciousness; they are ideal with respect to their apodictic lawfulness and structure.

  36. Cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, §§38, 42. For instance, in external perception as whole, quality could not function without matter (Materie) (cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, §20) and together, they rely on sensation as hyletic content, which in its turn requires interpretation (Auffassung) through act-character in order to become (as moment) intentional (cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, §18). Similarly, the synthesis of identity between intuition and intention exhibits the same part-part, part-whole relation. This lawfulness of objective and subjective wholes is, for Husserl, apodictic; they are governed by ideal necessity (Hua XIX/1, LU III, §§10–11). This model of part-part, part-whole relation is likely something he borrowed from mathematics, esp. Georg Cantor’s set theory. Husserl was Cantor’s colleague in Halle during the decade preceding the Investigations. For the Husserl-Cantor intellectual exchange, see Ortiz Hill (2004).

  37. For Husserl’s extensive discussions of memorial modification see his lectures courses on passive synthesis published in Husserliana XI.

  38. Qualitative Modifikation, as Husserl discusses in the Investigations, is not a full-fledged notion. Much phenomenological work has yet to occur before Husserl is able to offer a transparent and clear description of modification. Most of this work was comprised of his analyses of imagination, imaging consciousness, and perception during the period immediately following the Investigations and continuing well into the 1920s. And yet, Husserl’s sporadic remarks with regard to modification in 1900/1901 already suggest the significance of this process for a thorough understanding of the dynamic structures of consciousness. Thus, despite the jejune character of his analyses of modification in the Investigations, we ought to seriously consider what they propose—especially in light of Husserl’s later discoveries with respect to this process, which we are already familiar with.

  39. Modifikation as I discuss in this paper refers to shift in quality understood as attitude. Phantasiemodifikation is the shift from realizing positional consciousness to non-positional consciousness. In his later main programmatic works on method, Husserl employs at times the language of radical modification to refer to the shift from the non-positional attitude to the eidetic one. This, however, is something we ourselves need to clearly unpack and is the topic of my current monograph project. Husserl also employs the term ‘Modifikation’ to refer to non-qualitative shifts—such as those of modality: from engaging an object as certain to engaging it as doubtful. This is not the sense in which I am using the term in this paper.

  40. I am currently working on a study that explores Husserl’s later Phantasiemodifikation as the equivalent of the principle of qualitative modification we encounter in the Investigations. The article also discusses the relationship between Phantasiemodifikation and the phenomenological reductions.

  41. For discussions of: Husserl’s intentionality (Gurwitsch 1970 and Drummond 1990), intentionality in Husserl and Brentano (Morrison 1970 Moran 1996), Husserl’s critique of Brentano’s intentionality (Moran 2000), and a Brentano’s intentionality (Prechtl 1989 and Tãnãsescu 2008).

  42. Brentano too stresses the importance of the first insight—for him consciousness is really existent, but its object (e.g., a centaur) need not exist. While Husserl and Brentano’s positions agree on this point, they differ radically on the second.

  43. Husserl uses Bedeutung and Sinn interchangeably in 1900/1901. He comes to clearly distinguish them in his Ideas I (1913)—the former referring specifically to expressed meaning.

  44. Cf., Hua XIX/1, LU I, §2 (see also Hua XIX/2, LU VI). Later in Ideas I, Husserl employs the language of intentional act, object as it is intended, and object which is intended to gesture toward the same threefold structure of intentionality.

  45. Husserl discusses this in more detail later in the manuscripts collected by Langrebe in Erfahrung und Urteil (EU hereafter; cf., esp., EU §87).

  46. Meaning as idea exhibits unity apart from all the structural elements of subjective experience—its being-given is such a reell structural element.

  47. Including these acts’ psychological content such as sensuous contents.

  48. At the time when Sartre wrote his Imaginary (cf., Sartre 2004) he had had access to Husserl Ideas I and his Logical Investigations, but not the material subsequently published in Hua XXIII). Sartre’s accusation that Husserl falls prey to the ‘illusion of immanence’ (Sartre 2004, 59) is not however justified despite his lack of access to this material. There is plenty of evidence in both Ideas I (cf., Hua III/1, §90) and in the Logical Investigations (cf., Hua XIX/1, 436ff.) that Husserl dismissed the position that claimed the inclusion of mental images in consciousness; for Husserl consciousness is not a box or a container and the above mentioned texts, available to Sartre during the 1930s, make that perfectly clear. There is further evidence for this in Die Idee der Phänomenologie (Hua II, 11, 29–39). For an elaboration of immanence and transcendence in see Brough (2008). For discussions of the imagination in Husserl and Sartre, see (Wiesing 1996 and Flynn 2006). Elsewhere I have argued against Husserl’s reliance on mental images in his analyses of imaging and imagining, see Aldea (2013).

  49. Hua XIX/1, LU I, §§30–33. This view of intentionality and the threefold distinction between act, meaning, and object constituted the foundation for Husserl’s criticism of empiricist abstraction.

  50. In his early theory of knowledge, Brentano qualifies both real and irreal objects as entities, with one proviso—‘being’ in the proper sense of ‘existence’ was used to refer specifically to real objects (Realia), ‘being’ in the qualified sense of ‘being-intended’ was applied to irreal objects (Irrealia) (cf., Brentano, Wahrheit und Evidenz, ed. Oskar Kraus (Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag 1930), Part 1; WE hereafter). Gradually Brentano came to realize the problems stemming from this equivocation and began to question whether Irrealia should be qualified as ‘entities’ at all and whether they ought to be considered possible objects of thought (cf., WE, Part 2). The later mature view eventually dismisses Irrealia as entities and claims that Realia alone as individual things are the only objects of thought. Abstract concepts seem here to attain a similar epistemological status as abstracta held in the earlier view. They are now both excluded as possible objects of thought. Irrealia become labeled ‘abstract concepts’ that cannot be the objects of thought (cf., WE, Parts 3–4). On this later model, acts do not intend universals—be they empirical concepts (e.g., ‘red’) or modalities or states of affairs (e.g., ‘possibility’ and ‘being’ or ‘non-being’). Acts solely and univocally intend things (Realia qua individuals) (cf., WE, Part 3; cf., also Psy., Appx. 9 (1911), p. 162 (Band II), and Appx. 10 (1911), Appx. 13 (dictated March 1917)).

  51. In his discussion of inner perception conceived as self-consciousness Brentano rejects the unconscious as the sole option other than a regression ad infinitum. Brentano employs his distinction between physical and mental phenomena in his discussion of inner perception and in the attempt to dismiss a reduction ad infinitum. While a sound (physical phenomenon) and the hearing of a sound (mental phenomenon) are simultaneous they are not identical (cf., Psy., Suppl. III (1911); cf., also SNB, Part I, §4 (1914)). The inner perception or self-consciousness of this act of hearing is a structural element of the mental phenomenon. This, in Brentano’s view, resolves the problem of regression ad infinitum. Nevertheless, Brentano must concede that while self-consciousness is a structural part of the mental phenomenon, its unfolding cannot occur while we are involved in the act. We become aware of it retrospectively (cf., Psy., Suppl. III (1911); cf., also SNB, Part I, §4 (1914)). For a discussion of Brentano’s notions of consciousness and the unconscious, see Thomasson (2000).

  52. The physical phenomenon as the object of external perception (as mental act) is not doubly presented in the inner perception whose object is the external perception itself (cf., Psy., Book II, Ch. 1, §8). Brentano employs here a model of direct and indirect reference to disentangle the ambiguity of intentionality: mental phenomena intend their objects directly (in recto) and themselves (potentially) indirectly (in obliquo); they may also indirectly intend other secondary objects or backgrounds (in obliquo) (In this context there may be a chain of in obliquo references as well (cf., SNB, Part I, §5)). Inner perception as secondary consciousness, itself involves a twofold reference—it intends the act or the thinking subject in recto; it intends the object of the mental act indirectly (in obliquo) (cf., SNB, Part I, §5). Thus in any unfolding act the in obliquo reference to itself is already structurally included (cf., Psy., Suppl. III (1911); cf., also SNB, Part I, §4 (1914)). The in recto reference to the thinking subject that occurs in inner perception is what grants certainty with respect to its existence as certain. External perception through its direct reference to the object and its pertaining inner perception (with its indirect reference to the object) are not able to verify with certainty its ontological status. Because of this, Brentano chose to employ intentional existence rather than actual (wirklich) existence in his discussion of the intended object. Only mental phenomena and the subject as such have certain actual existence and reality.

  53. Brentano employs the language of fusion (Verschmelzung) to signal an even tighter structural unity than the part-whole unity we observed among different acts (cf., Psy., Book II, Ch. 1, §10, 183).

  54. Cf., Psy., Suppl. II (1911); cf., also SNB, Part I, §§2–3. This is so because for Brentano (unlike for Descartes) clarity has to do with attention, which does not affect the evidence of inner perception (cf., SNB, Part I, §3).

  55. As his above-mentioned notion of distinguishable parts also suggests (cf., DP, 13).

  56. One could easily point out that Brentano’s argument entails vicious circularity: the act and its self-consciousness are structurally one, because of this inner perception is evident, which in its turn guarantees the truth of the initially posited structural unity of mental acts and self-consciousness. While Brentano might escape a regression ad infinitum, his argument for inner perception and its evidence appear to fall prey to a circular infinity. He seems to realize this himself when he leaves any attempt to prove the evidence of inner perception behind. Brentano’s foundationalism becomes conspicuous through his claim that the evidence of inner perception is immediate and in no need of demonstration (cf., Psy., Book II, Ch. 3, §2, p. 198). Husserl comes to dismiss the infallibility of inner perception for this reason among others (cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, §§5, p. 27).

  57. Cf., Psy., Book II, Ch.3, §2. By emphasizing the affirmation of truth and falsity as one of the core characteristic of judgments as acts, Brentano aligns himself with the 19th c. revolution in logic, which entailed a thorough questioning of the Aristotelian subject-predicate structure as essential for judgments. His reductionism in his theory of judgment—the claim that predicative judgments of the form ‘A is B’ are reducible to non-predicative judgments of the form ‘A is’—and his emphasis on non-predicative judgment are positions that locate him in the context of the 19th c. reform in logic. For more on the affinities between Brentano and 19th c. philosophy of logic, see Poli (1998).

  58. This however does not entail the multiple givenness of the act as object, rather self-consciousness (as multifaceted) involves a unified and singular relation to the act in question with the sole distinction of how the act is intended. These two types of inner consciousness are non-independent moments of the mental phenomenon as a whole (cf., Psy., Book II, Ch. 2, §§4–5).

  59. For a discussion of judgment and truth in Husserl (in the context of Brentano as well as Bolzano’s claims regarding these issues), see Benoist (2000).

  60. In his later work (1914–1916) Brentano qualifies the concept of ‘something individual’ as synthetic and relative—the outcome of a process of abstraction. It is relative in so far as it does not represent the highest level of generality, which Brentano reserves for the concept of a ‘thing’ (cf., SNB, Part II, §1).

  61. For a historical discussion of the development of Brentano’s thought, see Kraus’ introduction to the Psychology. While Kraus’ detailed account is helpful, one must remember that Kraus was committed to defending Brentano’s descriptive psychology at all cost, sometimes dismissing important objections—some of which came from Husserl. Kraus’s agenda thus colors what he has to say about his mentor’s philosophical stance.

  62. For an insightful discussion of Brentano’s claim regarding this indeterminacy or generality (as something stemming from his engagement with Aristotelian epistemology), see Smith (1994, 35 ff.).

  63. Cf., Psy., Appx. 9 (1911).

  64. This type of abstraction, i.e., judgment, plays a crucial role in the reflective analysis of consciousness descriptive psychology engages in (cf., Psy., Book 1, Ch. 2).

  65. He argues against this charge in his mature texts and claims that his theory of truth does not entail any form of subjectivism (cf., Psy., Appx. 11 (1911)). He claims that his argument for universal validity stands as a successful answer to the charge of psychologism. And yet his theory of evident judgment undermines the independence of this universal validity from subjective processes.

  66. This would qualify as a form of psychologism in Husserl’s view.

  67. For Husserl’s early theory of abstraction, esp. in his critique of British empiricism as well as fellow Brentano students, see Rollinger (1993).

  68. Cf., Hua XIX/1, LU II, §§25–27. What must also be emphasized here is that all representations are individual not universal.

  69. For Husserl’s crique of British empiricism see, Hua XIX/1, LU II, §§7, 9–12, 28–30, 32–36).

  70. For a discussion of the early Husserlian theory of abstraction in the context of mathematical idealism, see Ortiz Hill (2004).

  71. I here use idealizing abstraction, idealization, and ideation interchangeably to refer to eidetic inquiry broadly construed.

  72. Cf., Hua XVIII, §§24, 39; cf., also, Hua XIX/1, LU V, Einleitung.

  73. This position does not undermine his previous claim regarding the reell status of these structures. This latter qualification is employed by Husserl to clearly distinguish what structurally pertains to consciousness as opposed to what does not belong to it, i.e., its object as real, irreal, or ideal.

  74. I.e., their being bound by a set of laws and principles that parallel the objective eidetic laws of logic and mathematics.

  75. In the Fifth Investigation, Husserl identifies two types of subjective ideals: the ideal principles or laws governing the dynamic of consciousness and of its acts, and the structures of consciousness proper—i.e., the structures of acts. The Sixth Investigation imports most of the features of objective ideals in the structural context of subjective ideals. While this move is valuable in so far as there is overlap between subjective and objective ideals, the danger here lies in concluding that the overlap is complete. We learn that subjective ideals are invariant unities of validity (Hua XIX/2, LU VI, Einleitung and §§55, 57) and wholes with non-independent parts (Hua XIX/2, LU VI, §§61–62); they are not to be discussed in ontological terms (Hua XIX/2, LU VI, §53) and as ideal possibilities they govern the dynamic of the real—here reell manifestations of these ideal structures (Hua XIX/2, LU VI, §57).

  76. Cf., Hua XVIII, §§24, 39; cf., also, Hua XIX/1, LU V, Einleitung.

  77. Let us stress here that at this point in time Husserl does not think that these two types of ideals necessitate two distinct types of idealization. The process culminating with the intuition of the ideal is the same regardless of whether the ideal is objective or subjective. His view changes drastically by 1909/1910 when he comes to see that objective ideation and subjective ideation, while they may share some aspects in common, also exhibit distinct features and must be distinguished accordingly.

  78. For a discussion of categorial intuition as process of grasping universal objects, see D. Lohmar, Kategoriale Anschauung. VI. Logische Untersuchung. In Edmund Husserl Logische Untersuchungen, Klassiker Auslege, ed. V. Meyer, 35 (Berlin: Academie Verlag, 2008): 209–237.

  79. Husserl also discusses abstraction as both special abstraction and as categorial intuition. The scope of this paper does not allow for an in-depth discussion of these two acts.

  80. It should be noted here that he employed this term already in 1900/1901 and not in the 1913 edition of the Investigations; this type of abstraction mirrors the process he later describes in Ideas I as eidetic variation or ideation (Ideation), also understood as a type of idealization and further qualified as dealing solely with subjective ideal structures. For a discussion of eidetic variation as process of grasping ideals, see D. Lohmar, “Die phänomenologische Methode der Wesensschau und ihre Präzisierung als eidetische Variation,” Phänomenologische Forschungen (2005): 65–91.

  81. This ‘belief’ is what Husserl later will refer to as protodoxa. For Husserl’s analyses of the protodoxa, see Hua III/1, Hua XI, and Erfahrung und Urteil, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Hamburg: Claassen & Goverts, 1948).

  82. Understood as ideal possibilities (invariant and exhibiting universal validity, able to guide all manifestations and variations at the level of reality and irreality; cf., Hua XIX/1, LU IV, §16).

  83. Cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, §27. While the language of variation and eidetic intuition pertains to Ideas I, I am employing these terms here to refer to the phenomenological focus on ideals and to the dynamic process through which it seeks to grasp them. These are both aspects already prevalent in Husserl’s early work. I am not importing here the terminology of Ideas I in an unwarranted fashion—I am simply instead suggesting that ideation as eidetic thought, i.e., thought intending ideals, was from the beginning the process that constituted phenomenological inquiry. I am also claiming here that at different stages in his thought ideation meant different things and entailed more or less distinct methodological tools. In 1900/1901 ideation was idealizing abstraction; in 1913 it was eidetic variation, a process specifically focused on subjective ideals and exhibiting specific stages not encountered in mathematical or logical thought.

  84. Brentano became a full-fledged nominalist because he could not conceive our ability to engage ideals other than through the concept of ‘being’. Husserl’s eidetic horizonal consciousness brackets any claims regarding the existence and actuality of ideals and explores them solely in terms of their independent validity.

  85. This is also a problem with his mature/1920s account of eidetic variation.

  86. C.f., 1905 Seefelder Manuskripte in Hua X.

  87. The eidetic positional attitude is necessarily artificial since it requires a theoretical program, method, and motivation.

  88. Later, in the Crisis, Husserl discusses the ways in which this freedom to ‘bracket’ is complicated by a blurring of distinctions between what counts as natural, scientific, or eidetic.

  89. We must also avoid the illusion of immanence and clearly distinguish between the real and the reell (cf., Hua XIX/1, LU V, §7).

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    Andreea Smaranda Aldea

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Aldea, A.S. Husserl’s Break from Brentano Reconsidered: Abstraction and the Structure of Consciousness. Axiomathes 24, 395–426 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-014-9230-2

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