Abstract
Edmund Husserl often characterizes essences and eidetic laws in normative terms. Many of his statements to this effect are however highly puzzling as they appear at odds with Husserl’s general understanding of normativity. In this paper I focus on this puzzle and I argue that we can reconcile most of the apparent tensions between these two dimensions of Husserl’s philosophical thought. In the first part of the paper, drawing on the contemporary literature on kinds of norms, I focus on Husserl’s work on the varieties of normativity. I submit that, on his view, essences and eidetic laws are never intrinsically normative, and that not all essences and not all corresponding eidetic laws can function as norms for their instances. Crucially, however, I argue that, according to Husserl, essences and eidetic laws can function as norms for a range of the subject’s acts. In the second part of the paper I further examine this thesis, thus explaining in what sense Husserl thinks that essences and eidetic laws can have this function. I show that formal eidetic laws can engender deontic and evaluative norms for correct or rational judgments, evaluations, desires, and acts of the will. I also contend that material essences and material eidetic laws also have a normative function for judgments. I conclude that this shows how Husserl’s view makes room for norms that are not context-dependent or subjectively grounded.
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1 Introduction
Edmund Husserl’s eidetic phenomenology is throughout imbued with normative terminology. However, Husserl’s normative characterization of essences and eidetic laws appears in tension with his understanding of normativity.Footnote 1 We may readily illustrate this tension.
On the one hand, Husserl explicitly puts essences and eidetic laws in close relation with norms and rules.Footnote 2 Indeed, Husserl not only states that essences prescribe or ground laws for the individuals that insatiate them, as we would at first expect, but he also occasionally writes that essences prescribe rules (Regeln) for these instances (Hua III/1, p. 330/1982, p. 341).Footnote 3 Further, in some passages, Husserl also state that eidetic laws prescribe norms for the sense of these objectivities (Hua V, p. 28/1989, p. 25) or for possible sense completions (Hua III/1, p. 330/1982, p. 341–342).Footnote 4 And, in some other passages, he even explicitly refers to essences and eidetic laws as norms; for example, when he writes that the eidos (that is, the pure essence) “functions as an absolutely insurmountable norm for the fact” (Hua III/1, p. 335/1982, p. 346).Footnote 5 In general, we may say that these statements are endorsements of the thesis that essences and eidetic laws prescribe or function as norms for objectivities or the sense of phenomena. For convenience, let us call this thesis ‘the First Thesis’.
On the other hand, it is well-known that, on Husserl's view, eidetic laws should not be conflated with norms. For eidetic laws are ideal laws, and, on his view, we should sharply distinguish between ideal laws and norms.Footnote 6 Whereas ideal laws purely tell us “what it is” and cannot be otherwise, norms tell us “what shall or should be” (Hua XVIII, p. 53/1970, pp. 33–34).Footnote 7 Indeed, norms and only norms “are intrinsically and essentially prescriptive” (Hua XVIII, p. 168/1970, p. 106).
An additional reason as to why we should not conflate eidetic laws with norms is that, as Husserl holds, while no agent or thing can ever fail to adhere to the eidetic laws grounded in their respective essences, it is always possible, for agents and things alike, to fall short of norms (Hua XXXVII p. 141 and p. 142).Footnote 8
Let us call the thesis that eidetic laws are not norms ‘the Second Thesis’; and let us call the thesis that it is always possible to fall short of norms ‘the Third Thesis’.
It is clear that we have a puzzle. Although neither the Second Thesis nor the Third Thesis outright contradicts the First Thesis, each of them appears to contradict some of the statements of which it is an expression. The Second Thesis seems to be at odds with those passages in which Husserl treats eidetic laws as norms. The Third Thesis seems to at odds with the passages in which Husserl claims that essences and eidetic laws can always prescribe norms, or function as norms, for the instances of the relevant essences. Thus, the Second Thesis and the Third Thesis jeopardize the First Thesis.
In this paper, I address this puzzle. In particular, I argue that, even though the First Thesis contains a kernel of truth, it is incompatible with Husserl’s understanding of normativity, and we should therefore reject it. As I will explain, we may say that norms relate to essences and eidetic laws, but only as long as we make some important clarifications. In fact, in this paper, I show that Husserl endorses a revised version of the First Thesis.
The overall plan for the paper is as follows. In Sect. 2, I will distinguish between the kinds of norms that have been identified in the specialized literature (Sect. 2.1), and, then, I will rely on these distinctions to understand Husserl’s conception of the varieties of normativity (Sect. 2.2). In Sect. 3, I will start to put together the pieces of the puzzle. In particular, I will show that the Second Thesis and the Third Thesis leave open the possibility that essences and eidetic laws function as norms for the subject’s acts. This explains why some of the passages that I have regarded as endorsements of the First Thesis are misleading, if not outright mistaken; and why some other passages are instead compatible with Husserl’s general views on the matter. In Sect. 4, I will ground the thesis that eidetic laws function as norms for the subject through the examination of some concrete examples. More precisely, I will first focus on the clearest examples of normative transformations of eidetic laws that Husserl himself illustrates. These are the normative transformations of the laws of logic and of the laws of formal axiology and formal practice (Sect. 4.1). As I will argue, the transformation of eidetic laws into norms engenders both deontic norms as well as evaluative norms. Then, I will investigate whether other eidetic laws such as ‘Perception is perspectival’ as well as essences themselves can serve as norms, too (Sect. 4.2). In Sect. 5, I summarize the conclusions of this paper.
2 The Varieties of Normativity
This section aims to present Husserl’s views on norms. In Sect. 2.1, I will briefly illustrate the received distinctions introduced in the contemporary specialized literature on normativity. These distinctions provide a useful background to understand Husserl’s work, as well as a shared framework that makes his thought accessible to the broader philosophical community. In Sect. 2.2, I will thus rely on these distinctions to illustrate Husserl’s views.
2.1 Deontic, Constitutive, and Evaluative Norms
The philosophers who have contributed to shaping the contemporary literature on normativity distinguish between different kinds of norms.
For a start, virtually all agree that there are deontic norms. Deontic norms are those norms that we refer to with deontic ought-statements or instances of ‘ought to do’. They engender obligations or place demands on agents to act or behave in certain ways. This kind of norm includes explicit commands, such as ‘Do not step on the grass’, and self-imposed obligations, such as ‘I ought to exercise patience’, as well as traditional moral principles. According to the received view in the extant literature, agents who fail to comply with any of these norms are blameworthy for their actions or behavior—at least, in the absence of a sound excuse.
Besides deontic norms, many philosophers also consider other kinds of norms as being genuinely normative. These other kinds are constitutive and evaluative norms.
Contrary to deontic norms, constitutive norms do not engender obligations or place demands on agents to act or behave in certain ways. Rather, they define what actions count as taking part in a certain practice or activity. As such, they do not regulate a preexisting practice or activity, but create the practices and activities of which they are rules. Thus, constitutive norms do not tell us what agents ought to do, but they tell us what counts as taking part in some practice or activity (Glüer and Pagin 1999, p. 215).Footnote 9 Rules of games are clear examples of constitutive norms, with the rules of chess, such as ‘The king moves exactly one square horizontally, vertically, or diagonally’ and ‘A bishop shall move any number of vacant squares diagonally’, as the most popular example of those.
In virtue of their nature, we may then ask whether there can be genuine violations of constitutive norms. This has indeed been the subject of an ongoing debate in the contemporary specialized literature. Recently, most philosophers agree that we should answer this question negatively: agents can never violate constitutive norms; their divergence from any of these norms always implies suspending their participation in the practice or activity it defines.Footnote 10 Thus, if players do not comply with the rules of chess, for example, if they move the bishop one square horizontally or vertically, they thereby stop playing chess.
A further related issue concerns the prescriptive force of constitutive norms. While some constitutive norms may appear to have some prescriptive force, the philosophers who have addressed this issue in particular have concluded that constitutive norms have no prescriptive force. Appearances are sometimes misleading because constitutive norms are often intertwined with deontic norms and can be divided from them only in virtue of a theoretical analysis.Footnote 11
Evaluative norms differ from both deontic norms and constitutive norms. They neither tell us what an agent ought to do, nor what counts as taking part in a certain practice or activity. But they tell us what counts as good, valuable, preferable, desirable, etc.Footnote 12 More precisely, evaluative norms set standards of goodness and provide ideals against which we can evaluate or compare things. The philosophers who agree on the existence of evaluative norms widely hold that these are the norms we refer to with instances of ‘ought to be’ or instances of an evaluative sense of ‘ought’ (Schroeder 2011). Popular examples of ought-statements featuring those instances of ‘ought’ include ‘A knife ought to be sharp’, as well as Husserl’s own famous example ‘A soldier ought to be brave’.Footnote 13
We should also stress that, evaluative norms can never have addressees; that is, agents whom these norms address or direct to act or behave in certain ways. Unlike deontic norms, evaluative norms do not oblige or place demands on any individual agent or group to act or behave in one way or another.Footnote 14
Given that evaluative norms bind no agent’s actions or behavior on their own, they also do not imply blameworthiness for the agents who fail to adhere to them. So, we might legitimately say that cowardly soldiers are bad, because soldiers are under the evaluative norm expressed by the ought-statement ‘Soldiers ought to be brave’. But in the absence of a genuine deontic norm that addresses a certain soldier or a certain group of soldiers, such as ‘That soldier should be brave’ or ‘Those soldiers ought to exercise their courage’, no soldier will merit blame for not being brave. But, analogously to constitutive norms, evaluative norms may also concern derivatively what agents ought to do (McHugh 2012, p. 10)—for example, when these evaluative norms further engender deontic norms. This as well as other explanations can account for our intuition that cowardly soldiers merit our criticism.
Lastly, some philosophers hold that standards of correctness belong to the domain of normativity as well. These are norms that state that something counts as being correct if and only if some conditions obtain. One of the recently debated examples of standards of correctness is ‘A belief ought to be true’, or ‘A belief is correct if and only if it is true’.
There is no agreement, however, on whether standards of correctness attribute deontic properties to possible states or actions (such as obligations, permissions, etc.), evaluative properties (such as good, bad, etc.), or neither of those. In other words, there is no agreement on whether standards of correctness can be reduced to deontic norms (that is, instances of ‘ought to do’) or evaluative norms (that is, instances of ‘ought to be’), or whether they are of neither of these kinds of norms. Defenders of the latter view consider standards of correctness as belonging to a kind of norm irreducible to deontic, constitutive, or evaluative norms.Footnote 15 A few other philosophers have argued that standards of correctness express either deontic or evaluative norms, and that we should examine each standard of correctness on a case-by-case basis to identify which kind of norm each of these is. According to this view, indeed, standards of correctness sometimes have “action-guiding, prescriptive force over the agent”, while some other times they “concern a specific kind of evaluation” (Fassio 2011, p. 480). Obviously, unless standards of correctness are reduced to deontic norms, they do not presuppose blameworthiness for the agents who fail to adhere to them.
2.2 Husserl on the Varieties of Normativity
Edmund Husserl’s philosophical thought is by no means foreign to distinctions between different kinds of norm. In accordance with the tradition, Husserl identifies the term ‘ought’ (Sollen) as the term that expresses the fundamental normative notion.Footnote 16 But, crucially, he does not conceive the normative ‘ought’ narrowly, so as to only include instances of ‘ought to do’ (Tunsollen). In fact, he takes the normative ‘ought’ to encompass instances of ‘ought to be’ (Seinsollen) too. So he distinguishes between two senses of ‘ought’: the ‘ought to do’ and the ‘ought to be’.Footnote 17 As I explain in this subsection, his distinction between these two senses of ‘ought’ corresponds to a familiar distinction between two kinds of norm: respectively, those that we would call ‘deontic norms’ and ‘evaluative norms’.
The following passage from Section 14 of the Prolegomena clearly elucidates this point:
The original sense of ‘shall’ or ‘should’, which relates to a certain wish or will, a certain demand or command, is plainly too narrow, e.g. ‘You shall listen to me’, ‘X shall come to me’. As we speak in a wider sense of a demand, where there is no one who demands, and perhaps no one on whom demand is made, so we frequently speak of a ‘shall’ or a ‘should’ which is independent of anyone’s wishing or willing. If we say ‘A soldier should be brave’, this does not mean that we or anyone else are wishing or willing, commanding or requiring this. […]. ‘A soldier should be brave’ rather means that only a brave soldier is a ‘good’ soldier, which implies (since the predicates ‘good’ and ‘bad’ divide up the extension of the concept ‘soldier’) 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. The same holds in other instances. ‘A man should practice neighbourly love’, i.e. one who omits this is no longer a ‘good’ man, and therefore eo ipso is (in this respect) a ‘bad’ man. ‘A drama should not break up into episodes’—otherwise it is not a ‘good’ drama, not a ‘true’ work of art. In all these cases we make our positive evaluation, the attribution of a positive value-predicate, depend on a condition to be fulfilled, whose non-fulfilment entails the corresponding negative predicate. (Hua XVIII, pp. 53–54/1970 p. 34)
The lengthy passage unambiguously shows that Husserl acknowledges the existence of what we would call ‘deontic norms’. First, as I have explained in Sect. 2.1, deontic norms are those norms that place demands or issue commands on agents to act or behave in certain ways; and Husserl writes that instances of one sense of ‘ought’ express a kind of norm that “relates to […] a certain demand or command” addressed to a certain agent or group. Second, he takes ‘You shall listen to me’ and ‘X shall come to me’ to exemplify this kind of norm, and we would naturally categorize these two as deontic norms.
At the same time, the passage leaves no doubt that Husserl endorses a theory of normativity that does not construe the normative sense of ‘ought’ so as to include only this sense of ‘ought’. In fact, Husserl argues that the interpretation of ‘Sollen’ that confines it to demands or commands on agents is “too narrow”: as he claims, there are statements such as ‘A soldier ought to be brave’, ‘A man ought to practice neighborly love’, and ‘A drama ought not to break up into episodes’ in which the term ‘ought’ expresses no demands or commands. Moreover, these ought-statements also have no clear addressee: as Husserl writes, in these ought-statements, “there is […] no one on whom [a] demand is made”. Therefore, on Husserl’s view there are ought-statements that do not embody any deontic norm, yet in these statements the term ‘ought’ expresses a genuine normative relation.
As Husserl explains, in these statements the ‘ought’ indicates the criteria that someone or something—in his examples, a soldier, a neighbor, and a drama—ought to satisfy for it to be good, or to count as a good token of its type.Footnote 18 These statements are thereby expressions of a kind of norm that regulates our acts of valuing. As Husserl claims, we attribute positive value-predicates to the things that satisfy the criteria that these statements set, and we attribute negative value-predicates to the things that do not. Therefore, next to deontic norms, Husserl acknowledges the existence of norms that encapsulate the criteria for the attribution or denial of absolute value-predicates, such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and of relative value-predicates, such as ‘better’ and ‘worse’ (Hua XVIII, p. 57/1970 p. 36).Footnote 19 Following the currently popular terminology, we will call these norms ‘evaluative norms’.
Husserl further claims that, if these ought-statements hold true, then, on their basis, we can issue commands or demands on certain relevant agents. As he states, since the ought-statement ‘A soldier ought to be brave’ holds true, we can place demands on a certain soldier or group of soldiers to be brave. This seems to imply that, on Husserl’s view, evaluative norms can ground genuine deontic norms.Footnote 20
We should add to this that Husserl characterizes correctness and its contrary, incorrectness, as normative notions, too. In support of this thesis, he writes: “All the questions, evaluations and decisions directed at correctness or incorrectness, at value or disvalue, are called ‘normative’” (Hua XXXVIII, p. 6; my translation).
On Husserl’s view, those norms we would call ‘standards of correctness’ do not constitute a distinct kind of norm, contrary to what some contemporary philosophers would contend. In fact, Husserl appears to consider standards of correctness as part of evaluative norms.Footnote 21 He often lumps together the criteria relevant to measure the goodness and the correctness of things as expressions of instances of ‘ought to be’. So, on his view, exactly as other evaluative norms state the criteria for the attribution (or denial) of value-predicates, standards of correctness regulate the appraisal of something as correct (or incorrect) and, thereby, state the criteria for the attribution (or denial) of correctness-predicates.Footnote 22 We should thus understand Husserl’s notion of evaluative norm to comprise both the criteria relevant for determining the value of things as well as the criteria for determining whether a certain thing is correct. In support of this view, we may even say that correctness is a species of goodness in the eyes of Husserl, for he himself writes in his Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory (1908–1914) that “every correct act is axiologically good” (Hua XXVIII, p. 127; my translation).Footnote 23
Let us also note that Husserl holds that some non-propositional objects can serve as norms; and, thereby, non-propositional objects can be norms—at least in a broad sense of the notion. Specifically, Husserl states that ideas can serve as a normative measurement (normierendes Maß) on the basis of which to measure up, and, thereby, to assess the appropriateness of judgments and other acts of consciousness (Hua XXXVIII, p. 360). So, according to Husserl, norms in the broader sense of the notion need not be propositionally structured.Footnote 24 Any non-propositional object that can serve as a measure may thus be a norm in this sense.
In summary, Husserl explicitly acknowledges that there are two genuinely normative senses of ‘ought’ and, accordingly, two kinds of norms. One of these two senses of ‘ought’ is the deontic sense of ‘ought’, which expresses that kind of norm that we would call a ‘deontic norms’. The other is the evaluative sense of ‘ought’ which concerns either the criteria for the estimation of the value of someone or something or the criteria for determining whether something is correct.
We should note that Husserl neglects the existence of what we would call ‘constitutive norms’. To my knowledge, he never explicitly thematizes any normative notion that is analogous to the contemporary notion of constitutive norm, and he never construes the normative ‘ought’ as to have a sense akin to the ‘ought’ that we associate with constitutive norms.
3 Addressing the Puzzle: On Essences and Eidetic Laws as Norms
With these preliminary, yet crucial, clarifications, we are now in the position to address our initial puzzle.
As I have stated in the introduction, Husserl sharply distinguishes between ideal laws and norms. On his view, norms concern what ought to be, while ideal laws concern what is or what must be.
Further, I have noted that this distinction seems to cast a shadow of doubt over those passages in which Husserl describes eidetic laws in normative terms. Indeed, if he is to remain faithful to the distinction between ideal laws and norms, then he should regard eidetic laws simply as laws and never as norms. This reading of Husserl’s point would leave no room for doubt. And if it persuaded us, then, plausibly, we would have to consider those passages in which Husserl treats eidetic laws as norms as misguided.
However, things are not as simple as they may appear. On reflection, the distinction between ideal laws and norms only implies that eidetic laws are not intrinsically normative. That is, it only implies that no eidetic law has a genuinely normative character. Thus, it only prevents the identification of eidetic laws with norms. But it is not sufficient to sever the relation between eidetic laws and norms altogether. In fact, it does not imply that there can never be indirect relations between eidetic laws and at least one of the normative senses of ‘ought’.
Crucially, this is exactly the view that Husserl takes on this issue. As he explains in many of his writings, even though ideal laws do not feature a normative sense of ‘ought’ in their thought-content, they can serve as norms as a result of a “normative transformation” (Normative Wendung) (Hua XVIII, p. 163/1970 p. 103; Hua XXVIII, p. 6).
In this way, Husserl suggests that we should distinguish between the notions of being a norm and of functioning or serving as a norm.Footnote 25 And once this distinction is in place, we can rehabilitate those statements in which Husserl refers to eidetic laws in normative terms, on the condition that we remind ourselves that, at most, eidetic laws can derivatively serve as norms and that we understand these statements as endorsements of this general point.
We also have good reasons to think that an analogous point is true of essences, although Husserl is not nearly as clear in relation to these as he is with respect to eidetic laws. More precisely, we have good reasons to think that essences can function as norms, too: as eidetic laws are ideal laws that can function as norms, so essences are ideal objects that we can regard as norms. Husserl’s view that ideas can hold as a measurement of assessment for other objects or for the contents of one’s mental acts naturally lends support to this interpretation. I will return to this issue in Sect. 4 and further expand on it then.
Now, given that eidetic laws can serve as norms even if they are not themselves norms, we can maintain the distinction between eidetic laws and norms without the need to consider Husserl’s use of normative terms in his eidetic phenomenology as misleading or mistaken. That is, since eidetic laws can function as norms, there is no real contradiction between the First Thesis and the Second Thesis. On the contrary, these two theses are compatible. At best, one may criticize Husserl for being careless or unclear, or for failing to specify what he exactly means in those passages in which he states that essences and eidetic laws can prescribe norms or function as norms.
However, as I have stated in the introduction, the distinction between ideal laws and norms is not the only reason we have to consider some of these statements as highly puzzling. Indeed, I have also noted that some of the statements of which the First Thesis is an expression are at odds with another aspect of Husserl’s understanding of norms—specifically, the Third Thesis; that is, the thesis that it is always possible to fall short of a norm.
The Third Thesis complicates the picture I have presented because it clashes with those passages in which Husserl seems to suggest that all essences and all eidetic laws, including material essences and the corresponding eidetic laws, can function as norms for their instances.
First, it is clear that material essences, such as the essence of color and the essence of perception, and the corresponding eidetic laws, such as ‘All colors are extended’ and ‘Perception is always perspectival’, cannot ever function as deontic norms for their instances. It is hard to imagine what demands or commands on colors and perceptual acts would look like, and it is even harder to imagine what it would take for colors or perceptual acts to violate those.
Second, on the assumption that things can be defective with regard to the standards evaluative norms set, it is rather unclear how material essences and material eidetic laws could ever function as evaluative norms for their instances. These essences and these eidetic laws do not provide any of the criteria that things should satisfy to be good or to count as good instances of the relevant essences. These essences and these eidetic laws cannot provide more than the properties that things must have in order to be instances of the kind(s) they are part of. Thus, for example, colors and perceptual acts can never fail to adhere to their respective essences or the eidetic laws grounded in their respective essences. If a certain thing has no extension, then that thing will not be a bad instance of color; it will simply not be an instance of color. Analogously, if we grasp the essence of perception, then we can tell whether a certain act of consciousness is an instance of perception. But we need to know more and take in consideration other aspects of a perceptual act in order to tell whether that act is good or bad, or correct or incorrect.
Therefore, material essences and the corresponding eidetic laws can function neither as deontic norms nor as evaluative norms for their instances. Since Husserl never acknowledges the existence of other kinds of norms, we can then conclude those essences and laws can never function as norms for their instances.Footnote 26
In light of this, we should consider as metaphorical or imprecise, if not outright mistaken, some of the passages of which the First Thesis is an expression—specifically, those passages in which Husserl conveys the idea that material essences as well as the corresponding eidetic laws prescribe norms for their instances.
It is nevertheless important to stress that the other passages that we have regarded as endorsements of the First Thesis remain unscathed. Despite appearances, the Second Thesis and the Third Thesis are not truly inconsistent with them. Consider, for example, those passages in which Husserl states that essences or eidetic laws function as norms for the sense of phenomena, for sense-completions, or for the subject’s judgments. It is thus evident that not all of the passages I have cited in support of the First Thesis are on a par. While we must reject a few of these, most of them are compatible with Husserl’s understanding of the nature of norms.
4 Dissolving the Puzzle: The Normative Transformations of Essences and Eidetic Laws
I have argued in the previous section that the idea that essences and eidetic laws can function as norms for the subject is not, in principle, at odds with Husserl’s view of normativity. As I have noted, in Husserl’s work, we find explicit confirmation that eidetic laws can serve as norms as a result of normative transformations. And, as I have also noted, we have good reasons to think that an analogous point is true of essences.
In Sect. 4.1, I will provide examples of eidetic laws that, according to Husserl, give rise to norms as a result of normative transformations, and I will attempt to determine which kind of norms these are. Then, in Sect. 4.2, I will ask whether it makes sense to claim that every essence and every eidetic law can function as a norm, at least in some way.
4.1 Eidetic Norms for Correct Judging, Valuing, Desiring, and Willing
A decisive help to understanding Husserl’s view on what normative transformations are comes from his examination of logical laws. Indeed, the clearest example we may take to illustrate his view on this issue is certainly that of the normative transformations of logical laws.
Husserl holds that logical laws can undergo normative transformations, and that the resulting transformations concern acts of judgment: the norms that arise from the normative transformations of logical laws are indeed norms or rules for judgment (Urteilsnorm or Urteilsregel). More precisely, Husserl claims that these norms state how the subject ought to judge if he or she is to judge correctly or rationally (Hua XXVIII, p. 49).
In these passages, Husserl never explicitly mentions whether the normative transformation of a logical law engenders a deontic norm or an evaluative norm. However, the examples to which he resorts strongly support that we should interpret the normative transformations of logical laws as giving rise to evaluative norms.Footnote 27
Husserl’s discussion of the normative transformation of the law of non-contradiction well illustrates this point. As Husserl writes, we can transform the ideal law expressed by the statement ‘Either A is B or A is not B, tertium non datur’ into the norm expressed by the following statement: “‘One should not [man darf nicht] give assent at the same time to contradictory propositions; if one affirms the former, then one has to [muss man] deny the other’” (Hua XXVIII, p. 6; my translation). It is clear that, if this ought-statement expresses a norm or rule for judgment, then it expresses an evaluative norm. First, this ought-statement does not directly address an individual subject; and, so, it cannot express a deontic norm. Second, the norm expressed by this ought-statement sets a standard of correctness for a subject’s judgment; and, as I have argued in Sect. 2.2, Husserl considers standards of correctness as expressions of instances of ‘ought to be’, and, thereby, as part of evaluative norms.
It is also important to stress that the standard that this ought-statement sets is a norm for correct judging only according to formal standards of correctness. So, it does not concern the content of a subject’s judgment.
Given that logical laws are nothing but a species of formal eidetic laws or “eidetic laws of reason”, it is highly plausible that what Husserl states with regard to logical laws is also true, in general, for any norm that arises from the normative transformation of a formal eidetic law.Footnote 28 And Husserl himself confirms this point when he states that logical laws are not special in this respect (Hua XVIII, p. 161/1970, p. 102).Footnote 29
However, it is much less obvious that what Husserl claims in relation to formal eidetic laws also holds true for material eidetic laws. Indeed, it is not easy to account for the normative transformations of eidetic laws such as ‘Every perception is perspectival’ into evaluative norms for a subject’s act. But let us now set this issue aside, as I will return to this point in the next subsection.
What is certain is that logical laws are surely not the only eidetic laws that give rise to evaluative norms as a consequence of normative transformations. Indeed, Husserl states that, next to norms for correct judging, there are analogous norms regulating other provinces of reason.
In the province of practical reason, these analogous norms are norms for correct or rational valuing, wishing, and willing (Hua XXVIII, p. 49). Exactly as the norms for correct or rational judging arise from the normative transformations of logical laws, the norms for correct or rational valuing, wishing, and willing arise from the normative transformations of the eidetic laws of formal axiology and formal praxis, which Husserl thematizes in his Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory (1908–1914). That is, they arise from the normative transformations of eidetic laws grounded on the essence of value, on the essence of wish, and on the essence of the will (Hua XXVIII, p. 45, pp. 49–50 and pp. 138–139). This large class of laws includes the laws of the sum of values and the laws of deduction of values, as well as the laws that concern the vivacity of our evaluations. Further, this class also comprises laws such as the laws of practical preference, the laws of choice, and the categorical imperative.
As logical norms are norms for correct judging only according to formal standards of correctness, norms for correct valuing, wishing, and willing concern how to value things, to wish, and to will only according to formal standards of correctness (Hua XXVIII, p. 45). It is clear, for example, that the normative conversion of the law expressed by the statement ‘A value that endures for a longer time is better than an equal value which endures for a shorter time’ does not say anything of use for an individual subject unless he or she recognizes at least two things as having some value or as having equal value. And the same holds true for the normative transformation of the eidetic law expressed by the statement ‘If a state of affairs has a value, then every state of affairs which is not compatible with it is a disvalue’. This statement leaves entirely undetermined, for example, whether what a certain subject takes as having a value has indeed that value.Footnote 30 This point holds true for the eidetic laws grounded in the essence of the will, too. Every act of will—and so, perhaps, every action based on such act of will—violating the norms engendered by the essence of the will is formally incorrect or irrational.
Thus, to summarize, we have seen that the normative transformations of formal eidetic laws always engender evaluative norms. However, before moving to the question concerning whether the same holds true for material eidetic laws, we should examine one further question concerning formal eidetic laws and their normative transformations. Specifically, we should ask whether these laws, or the essences in which they are grounded, give rise to deontic norms as well. I will address this question in the remaining part of this subsection.
In the Logical Investigations as well as other writings, Husserl seems to claim that evaluative norms can ground deontic norms—or, at least, that we can place demands or issue commands on certain agents or groups on the basis of true ought-statements that feature an evaluative sense of ‘ought’. For example, in the passage that I have quoted and examined in Sect. 2.2, we have seen that Husserl writes that the evaluative norm expressed by the ought-statement ‘A soldier ought to be brave’ can further ground and motivate the demand that soldiers be brave (Hua XVIII, p. 54/1970 p. 34). This means that the evaluative norms engendered from the transformations of formal eidetic laws can further engender deontic norms. These deontic norms are the norms that we refer to with ought-statements such as ‘I ought not to pass contradictory judgments’ and ‘You should prefer what you know to have a greater value to what you know to have a lesser value’. Unlike the evaluative norms engendered from the transformations of formal eidetic laws, these deontic norms address a certain subject or certain subjects and demand that that subject or those subjects judge, value, wish, and will in certain ways.
Then, on Husserl’s view, not only formal eidetic laws can serve as evaluative norms for a subject’s judging, valuing, wishing, and willing but these evaluative norms can engender deontic norms, too. It is therefore clear that we may sensibly talk about norms in the framework of Husserl’s eidetic phenomenology.
4.2 Can Material Essences and Eidetic Laws Function as Norms?
As I have explained in the previous subsection, formal eidetic laws give rise to evaluative and deontic norms. Let us then address the following question: can material eidetic laws such as ‘All colors are extended’ and ‘Perception is always perspectival’ also engender norms, as formal eidetic laws do?
There is no clear answer to this question, given that Husserl does not take an explicit stance on this issue. However, I am, for a series of reasons, inclined to say that at least some material eidetic laws can engender norms. I will present these reasons in this subsection. As I have argued in Sect. 3, these norms cannot be norms for the instances of the relevant material essences. Indeed, as I will argue, if material eidetic laws can engender norms, these norms will be norms for the subject who judges.
Let us start by considering whether material eidetic laws can engender evaluative norms. If we could transform eidetic laws such as ‘All colors are extended’ and ‘Perception is always perspectival’ into evaluative norms, as we can transform the law of non-contradiction into an evaluative norm, then we would express the resulting norms with statements along the following lines: ‘One ought to give assent to the proposition that all colors are extended’, ‘One should give assent to the proposition that perception is always perspectival’, or ‘If a subject ought to pass judgments about perception, he or she should give assent to the proposition that perception is always perspectival’.
At first glance, we might think that these statements are rather odd. But, in fact, there is nothing obviously wrong with them, provided that the eidetic laws on which they depend are true. First, in his Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory, Husserl states that if some principle has validity, it would be irrational not to accept it as a norm for judgment (Hua XXXVIII, p. 29). Thus, mutatis mutandis, we may say that if the eidetic law ‘Perception is always perspectival’ has validity, it would be irrational not to accept its normative transformation as a norm for the subject’s judgment in general.Footnote 31 Second, nothing prevents us from thinking that material eidetic laws may provide us with criteria for assessing the correctness of judgments about the instances of the relevant essence—in the examples under consideration, colors or perceptual acts.Footnote 32 We may even advance the hypothesis that subjects are under norms of this kind when they assess the validity of a judgment about objects of experience as meaningful or meaningless.
In addition to these reasons, several passages appear to support the view that eidetic laws, including material eidetic laws, can engender evaluative norms for the assessment of judgments. For example, in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl strongly hints that we should consider every eidetic law as a measurement of assessment for the correctness of a judgment; and not only with regard to its form, but also with regard to its content or sense. Indeed, he writes that eidetic laws “prescribe for every factual statement about something transcendental the possible sense (as opposed to the absurdity or inconsistency) of that statement” (Hua I, p. 106/1960 p. 72). Although neither the term ‘norm’ nor its cognates appear in the quoted passage, it is no stretch to consider those eidetic laws that prescribe the possible sense of statements or judgments as norms for their assessment, and, so, as what we would call ‘evaluative norms’ for them.
We can find exactly the same idea, but packaged in explicitly normative terminology, in a text from 1911. In this text, Husserl claims that, by uncovering essences and the eidetic laws grounded in them, phenomenology will at the same time gain the fundamental norms for judgments concerning the individuals that instantiate those essences. The relevant passage is as follows:
Ich sehe eine Hauptaufgabe darin, alle Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen, die das Wesen nach seinem eigenen Gehalt auseinanderlegen. Damit gewinne ich Grundnormen für alle Urteile über gegenständliche Vereinzelungen dieses Wesens. Ferner: Weitere Normen sind die Wesensrelationen, -urteile, die Wesensgesetze, die in dem Wesen mitgründen (Hua XLI, p. 48).
This passage seems to leave no doubt that there is an intimate connection between material essences or the corresponding eidetic laws and the judgments about the instances of those essences; and that we should interpret that connection as normative.Footnote 33
In Sect. 3, I have also stated that, on Husserl’s view, the essences in which eidetic laws are grounded may themselves engender evaluative norms of this kind. If this is right, then we may take some material essence, such as the essence of color itself or the essence of perception itself, as a norm for the assessment of the correctness of a judgment. But, again, as I have already explained in the previous section, there is an indissoluble connection between an essence and the eidetic laws it grounds. Thus, for example, that the property of being perspectival belongs to the essence of perception is intrinsically connected to the eidetic law expressed by the statement ‘Perception is always perspectival’. So, it is unnecessary to consider these two interpretative hypotheses separately.Footnote 34
Lastly, if we accept that material essences or material eidetic laws can engender evaluative norms for the subject’s judgment analogously to how some formal eidetic laws engender evaluative norms for the subject’s judgment, then we should also agree that these evaluative norms can also ground deontic norms; especially since we have seen that, in general, on Husserl’s view, evaluative norms can ground deontic norms. These norms would be the norms we refer to with statements such as ‘You ought to give assent to the proposition that all colors are extended’, and ‘She should know that perception is always perspectival’.
5 Conclusion
Despite being highly puzzling at first, Husserl’s use of a normative terminology in his eidetic phenomenology is not entirely at odds with his views on norms. As I have explained, Husserl’s understanding of normativity is, indeed, compatible with the thesis that, after normative transformations, essences and eidetic laws can serve as norms for the subject who judges, values things, wishes, or wills.
Husserl’s view is instead at odds with the thesis that essences and eidetic laws are themselves norms or that they function as norms for all objects or all phenomena. Thus, we should consider misleading, if not outright mistaken, those passages of Husserl’s corpus that appear to imply this; or, at least, we should not assume their normative terminology to have a literal meaning, and, so, seriously question the most literal meanings of those passages.
Therefore, we should revise Husserl’s First Thesis (which I have first stated in the introduction) as follows: essences and eidetic laws can function as or engender norms for judging, valuing, wishing, or willing. As I have explained in Sects. 3 and 4, Husserl does hold this revised version of the First Thesis. In arguing that this is the case, I have also showed that, on Husserl’s view, at least some eidetic laws can ground both deontic norms and evaluative norms.
This conclusion has a crucial upshot. Husserl’s view makes room for norms that are not subjective or otherwise context-dependent, but objective and objectively grounded. To underline this point, we could even call these norms ‘eidetic norms’ if such phrase was not as ambiguous as it is. Of course, these norms also admit the possibility of being violated or ignored. They would not be norms, otherwise. But, crucially, they are not subjective or context-dependent norms. Thereby, Husserl places himself outside of the philosophical tradition that sees norms exclusively as subjective or context-dependent constructs.
Notes
On Husserl’s view, an essence is an ideal object consisting of the properties that all of the individuals of a certain kind necessarily have; and an eidetic law is a synthetic a priori truth grounded in some essential property or properties. Due to space limitations, I cannot elaborate on the nature of these in full. For insightful examinations of essences, eidetic laws, and eidetic phenomenology in general, see Jansen (2017), Majolino (2015) and Sowa (2007).
Note that in this paper I will use the terms ‘norm’ and ‘rule’ as synonymous, unless otherwise indicated.
For further textual evidence, see Husserl (1985, p. 429/1973 p. 354): “Pure generalities […] have reference to empirical actuality as far as they “prescribe rules to every actual thing”. See also (Hua III/1, p. 177/1989 p. 189), where Husserl writes: “Every description of essence […] expresses an unconditionally valid norm for possible empirical existence”.
Specifically, Husserl writes in (Hua V, p. 28/1980, p. 25): “[A]ny pure eidetic truth having its ground in these essences prescribes in general an unconditionally valid norm [eine unbedingt gültige Norm] for possible objectivities of such a sense.”
For further textual evidence, see (Hua III/1, p. 333/1989, p. 344), where Husserl writes: “It is itself a phenomenological fact that […] positing consciousness is ruled by norms in every genus; the norms are nothing else than eidetic laws.” In (Hua V, p. 60/1980 p. 52) Husserl even uses the expression ‘normative essences’ (normierenden Wesen). Analogously, in (Hua XLI, p. 333), we find the term ‘Wesensnorm’.
Specifically, as Husserl writes in the Prolegomena, ideal laws are laws “based purely on concepts (ideas, pure conceptual essences [begrifflichen Wesen])” (Hua XVIII, p. 168/1970, p. 106, translation modified).
See also (Hua XXIV, p. 2 and p. 27/2008, p. 4 and p. 27). For example, as Husserl writes in (Hua XXIV, p. 2/2008, p. 4): “Norms, however, do not say ‘universally it is so’, but rather ‘so it should be’”.
Specifically, in (Hua XXXVII, p. 141), Husserl writes: “Denn Wesensgesetze der Sachen kann niemand durch sein Handeln verletzen, er kann nur urteilend sich über sie tauschen. Normgesetze aber können verletzt werden durch unser Handeln und werden es beständig.” In (Hua XXXVII, p. 142), he writes: “Niemand kann gegen ein Sachengesetz praktisch verstoßen […]. Andererseits, gegen Vernunftgesetze kann man sehr wohl verstoßen, obschon man auch hier die Wesenheiten nicht ändern kann, die in sie eingehen.”
Relatedly, let us note that Husserl holds that norms can only regulate the province of the spirit [Geisteswelt]; that is, subjective operations, cultural objects, or cultural phenomena. Specifically, in (Hua XXXVII, p. 145), Husserl writes: “Die Geisteswelt allein ist und ist überall normierbar. Die Natur ist das Reich des Ungeistigen und daher nicht Normierbaren”. In support of this thesis, see also (Hua XXXVII, p. 314) and (Hua Mat. III, p. 193). The thesis that norms only concern the province of this spirit obviously implies that essences or eidetic norms concerning nature can never be norms, and so it also appears at odds with some of the statements that I consider as endorsements of the First Thesis.
For a seminal discussion of the notion of constitutive norm, see Searle (1964, esp. p. 131). See also Conte (1988) and Zelaniec (2013). As Glüer and Pagin (1999) and Fassio (2013, p. 204) have noted, there is another notion of constitutive norm in the literature, which is discussed by Ralph Wedgwood and Timothy Williamson. In this paper I will not take the latter notion into consideration.
See Zelaniec (2013) for a deep dive into issues concerning the nature of constitutive norms.
Note that, despite its current popularity, the phrase ‘evaluative norm’ is of recent introduction in the literature. Indeed, von Wright (1963) uses the term ‘ideal rules’ to refer to evaluative norms. In this paper I rely on the contemporary terminological distinctions. For a comparison of von Wright’s terminological distinctions with Husserl’s understanding of normativity see Heinämaa (2019).
Philosophers often distinguish between at least two species of evaluative norms. Each of these two species relates to one of two senses of ‘good’: the attributive sense and the predicative sense. We may thus distinguish between evaluative norms that relate to attributive goodness and evaluative norms that relate to predicative goodness. Norms of the first species define the conditions that a token of a type ought to satisfy for it to be a good token of its type. One of the paradigm examples is ‘A knife ought to be sharp’. Evaluative norms of the second species state instead that a certain state of affairs ought to obtain, or that something is valuable or good in a certain sense (but not as a token of its type). Consider, for example, ‘There ought to be world peace’.
For a deeper dive into this issue, see Fassio (2013, pp. 202–204).
Others who think that standards of correctness are neither deontic nor evaluative conclude from this that they are not normative. Here I am only concerned with the position held by those who consider standards of correctness to be genuine norms.
For the identification of the term ‘Sollen’ with the fundamental normative notion, see, for example (Hua XVIII, p. 53/1970 p. 33) and (Hua Mat. III, p. 11).
We may even consider Husserl to be one of the first to pioneer the distinction between these two senses of ‘ought’.
For further textual evidence, see (Hua XXIV, pp. 27/2008 p. 27), where Husserl writes: “The normative discipline has, as it were, a basic standard, a basic set of requirements to measure up to. Its propositions, therefore, state the qualities something must have in order to satisfy these basic requirements, for example, the qualities a work of art must have in order to be able to be considered to be aesthetically beautiful, to be a work of beautiful art in the genuine sense, the qualities an act must have to be able to be considered moral, etc.”
Specifically, in (Hua XVIII, p. 57/1970 p. 36), Husserl writes: “In relation to a general underlying valuation, and the content of the corresponding pair of value-predicates determined by it, every proposition is said to be ‘normative’ that states a necessary, or sufficient, or a necessary and sufficient condition for having such a predicate.”
In support of this point, see also Husserl’s lectures entitled ‘Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge’ (1906–1907), where he states that “a normative discipline becomes practical when it does not merely aim at criteria for setting standards, but also at rules of practical realization, namely at producing or furthering models conformable to these normative criteria” (Hua XXIV, pp. 27/2008 p. 27). This claim suggests that normative disciplines have priority over practical disciplines, and so that evaluative norms come first and in turn ground deontic norms. For further evidence in favor of this point, see (Hua Mat. III, p. 11).
The following passage illustrates well Husserl’s view on the relation between value-predicates, correctness, and instances of ‘ought to be’: “Im Gegensatz dazu sagen die Gesetze, auf welche die Endabsicht der normativen und praktischen Disziplinen gerichtet ist, statt eines Seins ein Seinsollen aus; sie sagen: So soll es sein, so muss es sein, wenn es ‚richtig‘ sein soll, näher: wenn es den in der Idee der betreffenden normativen Disziplin maßgebenden Anforderungen gerecht werden soll. Die normativen Gesetze sprechen also Regeln der Abmessung an ein festgesetztes normatives Grundmaß aus, z.B. an die Idee der Wahrheit, der Güte, der Schönheit, an die Idee eines guten Staatswesens, an die Idee eines guten Soldaten usw.” (Hua Mat. III, p. 11).
More precisely, in (Hua XXVIII, p. 127) Husserl writes as follows: “Der Vorsatz, der sich ein Gutes vorsetzt, hat (an und für sich betrachtet) seine Richtigkeit. Und da jeder richtige Akt als richtig selbst ein axiologisches Gut ist (nach einem allgemeinen axiologischen Gesetz), so kann man auch sagen, ein Vorsetzen und Tun, das auf Gutes geht, ist selbst axiologisch betrachtet gut, ein Wollen des Guten ist gut, ebenso Wollen des Schlechten ist schlecht, des Gleichgültigen gleichgültig”.
In support of this point see (Hua XLIII/2, p. 538), where Husserl claims that it is possible to normatively assess something (normieren) not only on the basis of a general rule or proposition (Satz), but also on the basis of a general measurement (allgemeinen Maß). This does not imply, however, that non-propositional norms are not amenable to being converted into more traditional normative statements.
In the Prolegomena Husserl claims that “one must always distinguish between laws that serve as norms for our knowledge activities, and laws which include normativity in their thought-content, and assert its universal obligatoriness” (Hua XVIII, p. 159/1970 p. 101). On Husserl’s view, norms have a genuinely normative character, while ideal laws—and so eidetic laws—can only function normatively (Hua XVIII, p. 162/1970, p. 102). Husserl expresses this idea in other terms, too. For example, when he states that ideal laws frequently appear in normative clothing (in normativem Gewand) (Hua XXVIII, p. 6). Further, he also claims that ideal laws very often take (annehmen) the meaning of norms (Hua Mat. III, p. 194).
One could argue that Husserl espouses an outdated conception of normativity, and that, if he had endorsed a more modern view, he could have considered eidetic laws, including material eidetic laws, as akin to or as functioning as constitutive norms for the instances of the relevant essences; and so that, in a sense of the term ‘norm’, all eidetic laws could be or function as norms for the instances of the relevant essences.
I think, however, that that would be very hard to argue. First, we should consider no eidetic law, let alone material eidetic laws, as akin to a constitutive norm. Even if Husserl theorized a notion of norm akin to that of constitutive norm, he would never concede that eidetic laws are part of that kind of norms, because, if he did, he would admit that at least some ideal laws are akin to norms, and so he would undermine his distinction between ideal laws and norms. In other words, the constitutive sense of ‘ought’ would be a genuine normative sense of ‘ought’, but, at the same time, it would be the expression of a law-like relation, and that is simply impossible given that the distinction between ideal laws and norms is a cornerstone of Husserl’s understanding of normativity. Second, it is unclear how material eidetic laws could function as constitutive norms. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the norms engendered from the normative transformation of material eidetic laws could ever be constitutive norms for the relevant essences. How could they define what counts as taking part in a certain practice or activity?
Similarly, Rudolf Bernet interprets the norms that arise from the normative transformations of logical laws as evaluative norms. As he (2002, p. 26) writes: “the purely logical law […] becomes a basic norm of value estimation”.
Logical laws are eidetic laws inasmuch as they are grounded in the essences of logical objects. Interestingly, in a letter to Lipps dated January 1904, Husserl states that logical norms are nothing but the normative version of certain eidetic laws. Specifically, as he writes in this letter: “Diese normativen Wendungen der genannten Wesensgesetze (die in sich nichts von Norm enthalten) sind die gewöhnlichen ‘logischen Normen’” (Hua Dok. III/2, p. 127).
Specifically, Husserl writes in (Hua XVIII, p. 161/1970, p. 102): “It is clear that any theoretical truth belonging to any field of theory, can be used in a like manner as the foundation for a universal norm of correct judgment. The laws of logic are not at all peculiar in this respect. In their proper nature, they are not normative but theoretical truths, and as such we can employ them, as we can the truths of all other disciplines, as norms for our judgment.”
I have taken the two statements that I use as examples from (Hua XXVIII, p. 98) and (Hua XXVIII, p. 78), respectively.
One may worry that an ought-statement such as ‘One should think of perception as perspectival’ cannot express a deontic norm because deontic norms are such that we can always violate them, but, if perception is essentially perspectival, we could never fail to comply with this rule. This worry is, however, misplaced. On the assumption that perception is essentially perspectival, it will never fail to be perspectival. But, at the same time, it would be clearly possible for one to entertain the thought that perception is not perspectival or to mistakenly think of perception as not perspectival, exactly as we can entertain the thought of a round square or mistakenly think that a square is round.
For further textual evidence in support of this point, see (Hua XXIV, pp. 234–235/2008, pp. 230–231), where Husserl writes: “If sounds are, if they exist as individuals, in whatever manner, in whatever connection, then these individually existing sounds cannot deviate from that without which sounds would just no longer be sounds. If I, therefore, have a right to empirical judgments, I have a right to assume nature, or to assume a heaven with angels, and to consider the thoughts of possible living beings other than natural ones, then I can say that wherever living beings, beings with minds, may be found, whether on earth or in heaven, whether in empirical reality or in a make-believe, possible reality, they can only judge correctly if they judge sounds the way I judge. Sounds cannot occur to them that do not exhibit that without which sounds would just not be sounds. What holds for these trivial laws of sounds holds for all laws of essences.”
For another passage in this spirit see (Hua XLI, p. 108). In this passage Husserl writes as follows: “Und […] kann ich auch reine Begriffe von dem Verworrenen als Verworrenen bilden in jeder Sphäre und kann alles Denken und alle Gedanken durch reine Wesensbegriffe normieren.” See also (Husserl 1985, pp. 426–427/1973 pp. 352–353), for yet another passage in support of the view that material essences ground laws for their instances, and norms for the subject who judges. In it, Husserl writes: “What can be varied, one into another, in the arbitrariness of imagination […] bears in itself a necessary structure, an eidos, and therewith necessary laws which determine what must necessarily belong to an object in order that it can be an object of this kind. This necessity then also holds for everything factual: we can see that everything which belongs inseparably to the pure eidos color, e.g., the moment of brightness, must likewise belong to every actual color. […] Every actuality given in experience, and judged by the thinking founded on experience, is subject, insofar as the correctness of such judgments is concerned, to the unconditional norm that it must first comply with all the a priori ‘conditions of possible experience’ […].”
As far as I see, it is of crucial importance to underline the possibility that essences themselves can function as evaluative norms as a consequence of normative transformations in relation to one species of assessment—that is, in relation to the assessment of concepts. Elaborating on this issue in full, however, greatly exceeds the scope of this paper. I hope to delve into this topic in another paper.
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Acknowledgements
I presented the first draft of this paper at the Phenomenology of Action and Volition conference at Czech Academy of Sciences in May 2018. Thanks to all of those who participated on that occasion for their feedback including the organizers Guillaume Fréchette and Hynek Janoušek. Thanks also to Francesco Praolini for his generous help and to an anonymous referee of this journal for their excellent and detailed comments on the paper manuscript. Work on the material of this paper was supported by a research grant from the Österreichischer Austauschdienst (OeAD), which allowed me to carry out a research stay at the University of Graz. I am grateful to Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl and the other members of the phenomenology unit at the Institute of Philosophy for hosting me and for our invaluable discussions on many of the issues presented in this paper.
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Carta, E. Husserl on Eidetic Norms. Husserl Stud 37, 127–146 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-020-09284-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-020-09284-5