Abstract

Many contemporary theoretical perspectives - whether internal to the phenomenological tradition or not - endorse, more o less explicitly, a realistic and anti-phenomenological stance. The issue at stake is, precisely, the question of “reality”. Many of these authors interpret the notion of intentionality, and therefore phenomenology, in an idealistic sense, in continuity with modern, and especially Kantian, philosophy. The heart of the matter lies in the topic of «constitution» and in the operative character of intentionality. Whether our object of inquiry is a transcendent thing , an ideality , a person , or an imaginary transcendence , their meaning of being «constitutes» itself within the syntheses of consciousness, in connection with an intentional operative life. Insofar as every being is significant, it is «constituted», that is, it manifests itself in its being and being-as-such , within passive and active syntheses. By means of a systematic analysis on constitutive intentionality, Husserl aimed at understanding the transcendence and the complex structure of the world: which intentional operations are necessarily implied in the manifestation of the different kinds of objects? Nevertheless, the intentional constitution has nothing to do with the ontological dependence of the world on subjective or intersubjective conceptual schemes: its constitution pertains to its manifestation, its appearance and significativity. Husserl conceived phenomenology not as an attempt to dismiss realism, but rather as an account of the realism of natural attitude. Phenomenology explores the meaning of being of the world, constantly given in our experience