penultimate draft
Essential Laws.
On Ideal Objects and their Properties in Early Phenomenology
Guillaume Fréchette (University of Salzburg)
to appear in
D. Seron, B. Leclercq and S. Richard (eds.) Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological
Deserts and Jungle from Brentano to Carnap (2013).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
A Bit of History
Synthetic A priori
Metaphysical Realism
Grounding and Essences
Laws of Essence
Essences, Ideas, Eide, Morphes
Anumericity
Final Remarks
§1. A Bit of History
It is still not widely known that shortly after their publication in 1900–01, and
thanks to their early discovery by Johannes Daubert, 1 Husserl’s Logical
Investigations (LI) received a particularly enthusiastic reception among the
students of Theodor Lipps in Munich. Through their discussion of Husserl’s
work in the Akademischer Verein für Psychologie, an academic circle for
psychology founded by Lipps, the Munich students were soon led to form their
own phenomenological circle, trying at the same time to find a position
liberated from what they recognized, thanks to Husserl, as Lipps’
psychologism, but also to contrast their own position with Husserl’s conception
of phenomenology.
This position is interesting and important at least for two reasons: first
of all, it is the first natural and direct descendant of the phenomenology
developed in the Logical Investigations. Indeed, the Munich phenomenologists
expanded Husserl’s analyses to vast domains of philosophy in general and
ontology in particular: emotion theory, social ontology, action theory,
aesthetics, the philosophy of perception, self-consciousness, intentionality.
This expansion was made possible by the central role attributed by them to
essences in phenomenological analysis. Correlatively, the position defended by
the Munich phenomenologists also shows that the transcendental reduction is
not a real part of phenomenological analysis, a fact that, if not forgotten, still
remains highly debated today.2
1
2
See, for instance, Schuhmann (1977, 72).
I discuss this point in Fréchette (2013).
1
Who were the Munich and Göttingen phenomenologists? Since the first
discussions of Husserl’s LI in the Akademischer Verein, many different
orientations had come to be represented among the Munich phenomenologists.
At the time of the “Munich Invasion of Göttingen”3 in 1905, at least two
different groups must be distinguished: on the one hand, those who to a large
extent remained relatively faithful to Lipps, such as August Gallinger, Aloys
Fischer, Fritz Weinmann and Max Ettlinger.4 On the other hand, another group
of philosophers from the Akademischer Verein was showing more than a mere
interest in phenomenology already in 1905 and progressively abandoned most
of the Lippsean conceptions after 1906. Among the members of this group
were Theodor Conrad, Johannes Daubert, Adolf Reinach and Moritz Geiger.5
Again, these two groups shouldn’t be confused with a third group, namely
Husserl’s own students in Göttingen, who found their domain invaded by the
Munich phenomenologists in the summer of 1905: among them, we find
Wilhelm Schapp, Karl Neuhaus, Alfred von Sybel, Alexander Rosenblum,
Dietrich Mahnke, Heinrich Hofmann, David Katz and Erich Heinrich. 6
Remembering the encounter between the members of these three groups in the
summer semester of 1905, Wilhelm Schapp sketches an interesting picture of
the “Munich Invasion”:
One day, it must have been in 1907, the Munich people were there, the Munich invasion of
Göttingen. I think it was a summer semester. They were Reinach, Conrad and the young
Hildebrand. Geiger appeared occasionally. We used every opportunity, day and night, to
engage in philosophical discussions with the Munichers. In our opinion, they were much ahead
of us in every aspect. They did not have the devoutness that we had. Reinach blamed Husserl
for his turn to the Marburg School, a turn that was already noticed in Munich.... We formed at
that time a phenomenological association, which met every week and which was led for a
while by Conrad. I remember that he tried to get more clarity about things by investigating the
“meaning” of words, certainly in connection with the Munich investigations. Again and again,
we were investigating word complexes, such as red wine, a wine being red, the wine is red. We
looked for the relationship between word and meaning, concept and object. Sometimes, a word
was said about the Munich standpoint, about the way they focused on the platonic doctrine of
metexein, the doctrine of participation in concepts, about the way they boldly advanced the
3
See Spiegelberg (1959, 157).
On August Gallinger (1871–1959), see Schorcht (1990,134ff.); on Aloys Fischer (1880–
1937), see Kreitmair (1950); on Fritz Weinmann (1878–1905), see Schuhmann (1973, 130); on
Max Ettlinger (1877–1929), see Smid, (1982, 115).
5
Theodor Conrad (1881–1969) was one of the first of the Munich phenomenologists to go to
Göttingen. He published very few articles. Among them, see Conrad (1911), which was well
received in the Munich circle. On Conrad, see Scaramuzza, (1998). Johannes Daubert (1877–
1947) was definitely considered as the Husserl-man in Munich (see the letter of Otto Schultze
to Aloys Fischer from 17 July 1903, quoted in C. Leijenhorst and P. Steenbakker, (2004, 291).
On Adolf Reinach, see Mulligan (1987). On Geiger, see, among others, Zeltner (1960). I leave
aside here the case of Max Scheler, which would need a treatment of its own.
6
For recent works on Wilhelm Schapp (1884–1965), see Joisten (2010). Karl Neuhaus was
Husserl’s first doctoral student. He completed his degree in 1908. According to Theodor
Conrad, he was the Leiter of the Philosophische Gesellschaft in Göttingen from 1910 to 1912,
but very little is known about him. See Eberhard Avé-Lallemant and Karl Schuhmann, (1992).
On David Katz, see Spiegelberg, (1972, 42-52). Dietrich Mahnke was an early follower of
Husserl, but got his PhD only later in the twenties. On Mahnke’s later works, see Biller (1987,
691-2). On von Sybel, Rosenblum, Hofmann and Heinrich, see Schuhmann (1977).
4
2
doctrine, in continuation of Husserl, that there is not only the “two” as ideal object, as Husserl
taught at that time, but that there must be many, infinitely many twos.
The Munich people did not believe anymore in the sensation as constituent of perception
and declared all such statements as constructions; they still believed in acts and psychology,
those weren’t called into question.7
Schapp underlines here three important aspects of Munich phenomenology: its
specific manner of philosophical investigation, wherein the analysis of
meaning, of what we mean (meinen) by an expression, is put at the forefront8;
its particular conception of ideal objects and, finally, its conception of
perception, in which sensations are considered irrelevant to phenomenological
analysis.
Kevin Mulligan has discussed the first aspect in numerous papers.9 In
Fréchette (2013), I deal with the third aspect of Munich phenomenology
according to Schapp. In the present paper, I will try to shed some light on the
second aspect pointed out by Schapp, namely the Munich-Göttingen
7
Schapp (1959, 21): “Eines Tages, es muß wohl 1907 gewesen sein, waren die Münchener da,
die Invasion aus München. Ich meine, es wäre ein Sommersemester gewesen. Es waren
Reinach, Conrad und der junge Hildebrand. Geiger tauchte gelegentlich auf. Wir benutzten
jede Gelegenheit, um mit den Münchnern Tag und Nacht philosophische Gespräche zu führen.
Sie waren uns nach unserer Meinung in jeder Beziehung weit voraus. Sie hatten nicht die
Gläubigkeit, die wir hatten. Reinach warf Husserl seine Wendung zur Marburger Schule vor,
die damals in München schon bemerkt war.... Wir hatten damals einen phänomenologischen
Verein gegründet, der wohl wöchentlich zusammenkam und in dem Conrad zeitweise die
Leitung der Diskussion übernahm. Ich entsinne mich, daß er wohl im Anschluß an Münchener
Untersuchungen versuchte, über die « Bedeutung » eines Wortes zu größerer Klarheit zu
kommen. Wir prüften immer von neuem Wortgefüge, wie roter Wein, rotseiender Wein, der
Wein ist rot. Wir suchten nach dem Zusammenhang von Wort und Bedeutung, Begriff und
Gegenstand. Zuweilen fiel dann auch ein Wort über den Standpunkt der Münchner, wie diese
die Platonische Lehre vom metexein, die Lehre von der Teilhabe an den Begriffen in den
Mittelpunkt stellten, wie sie ferner im Anschluß und in Fortführung von Husserl kühn die Lehre
aufstellten, es gäbe nicht nur als idealen Gegenstand die ‘zwei,’ wie Husserl damals wohl
lehrte, sondern es müßte viele, unendlich viele Zweien geben.
Die Münchner glaubten nicht mehr an die Empfindung als constituens der Wahrnehmung und
erklärten alle entsprechenden Aussagen als Konstruktion; sie glaubten aber noch an Akte und
an Psychologie, diese waren noch nicht in Zweifel gezogen.”
8
Compare Schapp’s report with Daubert’s notes on phenomenological and critical
investigation (Phänomenologische und kritische Fragestellung) from December 1905 in MS A
I 1/34: “in der phänomenologischen Fragestellung kehrt immer wieder die Frage: ‘Was
meinen wir damit’ oder ‘Was meinen wir, wenn wir sagen....” The importance of MS A I 1/34
was already shown by Smid (1982, 140). Besides his reflections on the topic in his published
words, Reinach’s focus on the Meinen is also apparent in a letter to Conrad on 14 April 1904,
quoted here in Schuhmann and Smith’s translation: “[t]he question: how does the child know
that grown-up people ‘mean’ something by their words, is answered by Lipps thus: it sees how
they point to something and simultaneously hears a complex of sound.... [But] the problem
was: how does the child come to understand an expression, and more specifically the
expression of words? To this one surely cannot give an answer which involves appeal to
another form of expression, to ‘pointing.’ For then of course the question still remains: How
does the child know that by moving the arms etc. something is meant?” See Schuhmann and
Smith (1987, 7). Another good example can be found in August Gallinger’s study on objective
possibility, which begins with the following question: ‘What does it mean, something is
possible, what do we mean, what is the meaning of this, when we describe an object as
possible? [Was heißt es, etwas ist möglich, was meinen wir, was bedeutet es, wenn wir einen
Gegenstand als möglich bezeichnen?]’ See Gallinger (1912, 18).
9
Some of them are available in French in Mulligan (2012).
3
conception of essences, laws of essence, and ideal objects. I will first start with
a preliminary account of their conception of the synthetic a priori at the basis
of their conception of essence (§2); I will then offer a first characterization of
this conception, which I will label as metaphysical realism (§3), highlighting
its key concept: foundation (§4). In the last four sections (§§5-8), I discuss
different outcomes of this conception of essences: the nature of laws of
essences (§5), different categories of essences (§6) and anumericity (§7). Since
the accounts dealt with in the present paper are barely known, even to
phenomenological circles, the aim of the this paper is merely descriptive. The
point here is to grasp the ‘essence’ of the Munich and Göttingen account of
essences in phenomenology.
§2. Synthetic A priori
Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact is often
understood as an ancestor of the distinction between the necessary connections
between meanings or concepts and the absence of such connection between the
elements of the world. However, this is not exactly what Hume had in mind,
when we look for instance at his account of the interrelations among our ideas
of color:
It is evident, that even different simple ideas may have similarity or resemblance to each other;
nor is it necessary that the point or circumstance of resemblance should be distinct or separable
from that in which they differ. Blue and green are different simple ideas, but are more
resembling than blue and scarlet; though their perfect simplicity excludes all possibility of
separation or distinction. Hume (1978, 675).
In other words, the truth of a proposition about the relations between our ideas
of colors cannot be established on the basis of an analysis of ideas, since our
ideas of colors are simple ideas and hence cannot be analyzed. Following
Reinach’s reading of Hume, “no point of view is conceivable from which one
could say that two colors and their dissimilarity contradict each other in the
logical sense.”10 Such propositions, as Smith puts it, are seen by Hume as
“reflecting objectively existing interrelations among the phenomena
themselves.”11 Hume does leave room for necessary truths that are not analytic,
but contrary to Kant, these necessary truths which are not analytic are not
exclusively propositions about our knowledge. Rather, they stand somewhere
in between epistemological and ontological propositions.
This understanding of Hume’s synthetic a priori particularly
championed by Adolf Reinach, who criticizes Kant for having erroneously
taken Hume’s standpoint on the analyticity of mathematical judgments to be
concerning Kant’s own concept of analyticity, is a central element in the
Munich-Göttingen conception of the a priori. The root of this error, according
10
11
See Reinach (1976, 176).
See Smith (1986, 7).
4
to Reinach, was Kant’s assimilation of Hume’s ‘ideas’ to his ‘concepts’,
thereby missing the real sense of the a priori developed by Hume.
tis from the idea of a triangle, that we discover the relation of equality, which is three angles
bear to two right ones; and this relation is invariable, as long as our idea remains the same
(Hume 1875 (first volume), 372).
In other words, we know about relations of ideas without matter of facts. How
does Reinach interpret this claim by Hume?
In our vocabulary, this means that he knows essential structures. He thereby knows what we
found to be the basis of the a priori (Reinach 1911, 176).
What is the specific sense of the Humean synthetic a priori which Reinach
tries to disclose? In his interpretation of Hume, Kant saw Hume’s inquiry into
the necessary connections as an inquiry into modal necessity. Reinach shows
that this wasn’t Hume’s object.
The main distinction which is made here by Reinach is between what he
calls material and modal necessity. According to Kant, Hume inquired
exclusively into modal necessity, while Reinach believes that Hume was
interested solely in material necessity. Following his reading of Hume, Reinach
means that when I feel heat and conclude that there must be fire, the inference I
am making is not grounded on modal necessity, but on material necessity, that
is on the necessary connection “of such a sort that heat always requires fire.”
(1911, 184). The material necessity characterizes the succession from fire to
heat as causal and is a grounding relation. In other terms, the state of affairs
that the oven is hot holds in virtue of the state of affairs that there is some fire
in it. Following Hume and Reinach, the necessary connection involved here is
determined exclusively by the essence of the terms of the connection exactly in
the same sense as similarity between colors is determined by the essence of
colors. But Kant missed that point:
According to Kant, Hume saw only two possibilities. Either the foundation of the causal
judgment in pure reason, or the explanation of it from experience, i.e. from the mechanism of
association and the ‘subjective necessity arising from it’, which is falsely taken to be objective.
That for Hume there is a third possibility – the immediate grounding of necessity through
experience – is overlooked by Kant and, from Kant’s standpoint, must be overlooked. Reinach
(1911, 186).
The distinction between the so-called modal and material necessity and the
concomitant focus made on the latter kind of necessity are inherited by Reinach
from Husserl’s Logical Investigations, where the concept of necessity which is
relevant for Husserl is an “ideal or a priori necessity grounded in the essences
of things.”12
12
See Husserl (1913/2001, 240/12). English translation modified.
5
What is the kind of necessity involved here and why doesn’t it have the
epistemological implications of the Kantian synthetic a priori? As for the
second question, the answer is relatively simple: Kant postulates an
undeterminable X which is the ground on which pure reason identifies a
judgment as synthetic a priori. A law such as “Every event has a cause” is a
true synthetic a priori judgment in virtue of our ability to construct the world
according to those laws. Reflection on the conditions of possibility of our
experiences furthermore gives us a way of identifying these true synthetic a
priori judgments: for instance, it would be impossible for us to experience a
world in which some events would fail to have a cause. Following that line, the
question of the grounds for our true synthetic a priori judgments is transformed
into a question on the conditions of possibility of our experiences.
The focus made by Reinach on material necessity is precisely going
against Kant’s idea of grounding true synthetic a priori judgments in modal
necessity. The distinction is central: while Kant thinks of necessity as a feature
conditioning the structure of our experiences, Reinach and the Munich
phenomenologists see necessity as grounded directly in the essences of things.
The concept of necessity central to Husserl, Reinach and the Munich
phenomenologists is sometimes called “metaphysical necessity” nowadays, and
the strong distinction advocated today by Kit Fine between essence and
modality clearly belongs to the early phenomenological tradition.
What does it mean for a conception of material (or metaphysical)
necessity to be ‘grounded in the essence of things’? First, it means to identify
the most basic relations concerning objects. In this respect, the Munich
phenomenologists are continuing the tradition inaugurated by Brentano’s
metaphysics: they identify these relations as the ones between the whole and its
parts. Every object is a (real or possible) part, i.e. there are (real or possible)
wholes, which include it. 13 Such relations hold for any kind of object
whatsoever: take for instance the blue color of that book on my desk: it doesn’t
exist without some extension or shape of which it is the color. In that sense, not
only that specific shade of blue wouldn’t exist without being the color of that
specific book, but any color wouldn’t exist without being extended. The
relation here expressed is a relation of ontological necessitation between
dependent species, but these relations between dependent species can hold as
one-sided or mutual dependence relations. According to the Munich
phenomenologists, we find many such relations not only in the field of
perception (for example between color hue and brightness, or between a tone
and its height, which are relations of mutual dependence), but also in the field
of social institutions (every promise brings an obligation with it, which is a
relation of one-sided dependence: you might have an obligation without
promising anything, but you can’t promise anything without being in the
obligation of fulfilling your promise) and in many other fields. As a matter of
fact, most, if not all, Munich phenomenologists and Husserl’s Göttingen
13
See Husserl (1913, 226).
6
students acquainted with them conceived their contribution to phenomenology
as investigations into the sphere of material necessity: this is the case for
instance in the field of emotion theory with Scheler, Kolnai, Voigtländer,
Geiger, in the field of aesthetics with Waldemar Conrad, Geiger, Schapp and
Ingarden, in the field of social philosophy with Stein, Walther and ConradMartius; in psychology with Pfänder, Conrad and Beck, or in logic and
ontology proper with Reinach, Pfänder, Héring, Ingarden and Spiegelberg.
Another important characteristic of the conception of the synthetic a
priori defended by Munich phenomenologists is the specific status they give to
the synthetic a priori. Between 1901 and 1908, Husserl still seemed hesitant as
to whether the proposition judged or the state of affairs was to be regarded as
the bearer of the truth and necessity. In 1906, he considered this question as a
matter of perspective: from the perspective of judgment, equivalent
propositions denote different states of affairs, but from an ontological
perspective, taking states of affairs to be objective complexes which are
independent from the acts, equivalent proposition do express the same state of
affairs.14 This ambivalence was strongly criticized by Reinach.15 For him, and
for most of the Munich and Göttingen phenomenologists, the bearers of
necessity, possibility, subsistence, etc. are always – and only – states of affairs.
Therefore, synthetic a priori judgments like ‘every promise entails an
obligation’ are true in virtue of the laws of essence concerning promises and
obligations. These laws being nothing but “general principles expressing
relations between states of affairs” (Reinach 1982, 339), the ultimate bearers of
the material necessity expressed in such judgments are states of affairs.
§3. Metaphysical Realism
An obvious objection against the kind of account of logic championed
by Reinach and other Munich and Göttingen phenomenologists would be to
say that the position advocated here is merely a nominal variation on the
position defended by logical realists like Bolzano for instance. After all, both
Bolzano and Munich phenomenologists agree that propositional attitudes like
‘Anne thinks that the door is closed’ have an objectual correlate as object,
namely the ‘proposition’ or ‘state of affairs’ expressed in the that-clause.16
Propositions (or states of affairs) are also said to be standing in relation of
ground and consequence17, they are conceived of as bearer of modalities,18 they
14
See Fréchette (2003) on this question. In A I 10/69, Daubert gives an account of a discussion
with Husserl from August 15th 1906 where he defends the perspective account of states of
affairs. The account developed two years later in 1908 (Husserl 1987, 28f) seems to be based
on that earlier account.
15
See Reinach (1989, 116 and 526).
16
On the side of logical realists, see for example Bolzano (1837/I, 154) for the conception of
objective propositions as content (Stoff) of judgments. On the side of metaphysical realists, see
Reinach (1982), 336.
17
On the side of logical realists, see Bolzano (1837/I, §§168, 177). On the side of metaphysical
realists, see Reinach (1982), 338.
18
On the side of logical realists, see for example Bolzano (1837/563). On the side of
metaphysical realists, see Reinach (1982), 339.
7
(and not judgments) stand in relation of contradiction. While truth and falsity
and typically properties of propositions, metaphysical realists like Reinach like
to think that a judgment like ‘the door is closed’ is not correct because it
expresses a true proposition, but because the state of affairs corresponding to it
subsists:
A judgment is correct if the state of affairs corresponding to it subsists; and two contradictory
judgments cannot both be correct because two contradictory states of affairs cannot both
subsist. The law relating to judgments thus obtains its foundation from the corresponding law
relating to states of affairs. Reinach (1982, 376)
Does that mean that Reinach would agree to say, with Meinong, that truth and
falsity are nothing but subsistence and non-subsistence, i.e. properties of states
of affairs? Reinach doesn’t agree with Meinong in that respect:
We acknowledge freely the difference between judgment and ‘proposition in itself’; but just as
the proposition must be separated from the judgment, so also must it be separated from the
state of affairs. A proposition is true when the state of affairs which is correlated with it
subsists. And two contradictory propositions cannot both be true because two contradictory
states of affairs cannot both subsist. Reinach (1982, 376).
Still, the reason for this disagreement is unclear: which conceptual role is left
to propositions? Because of his untimely death, Reinach didn’t have the
opportunity to offer a detailed account of the conceptual role of propositions.
In his Logic from 1921, Pfänder offers a more detailed account of the relation
between propositions – which he calls judgments19 – and states of affairs:
To each particular judgment there corresponds a state of affairs. To the judgment, ‘Sulfur is
yellow’, there corresponds a state of affairs that consists of the material species, sulfur, and its
being-yellow. The judgment projects this state of affairs out of itself…It is also true that no
judgment can be formulated without projecting a state of affairs. But the projected state of
affairs is not for that reason identical with the formulated judgment. Rather, the state of affairs
is the counterpart, the ‘intentional correlate’ of the judgment that projects it. Pfänder (2009,
35).
In his lectures on logic and theory of knowledge, Pfänder presents the
distinction in the following way: (lecture of 18 November 1912).
The proposition is made up of words, and words are made up of letters... the judgment is not
made up of words or letters... the judgment may be true or false [while] the proposition can
only be true or false in a metaphorical sense, or in another sense... One can make a judgment
without constructing a proposition... In the proposition, the judgment comes to expression... the
19
Pfänder distinguishes between proposition (Satz) and judgment (Urteil) in a different way
than Husserl, Bolzano, and Reinach himself. For Pfänder, propositions (Sätze) are purely
linguistic entities, they are composed of words and they are not the bearer of truth or falsity.
The real bearers of truth and falsity are judgments.
8
expression relation is not a mere association. The judgment is the sense (Sinn) of the
proposition, the thought construction (Gedankengebilde) inserted in it.20
In other words, propositions express judgments which project states of affairs,
which are the intentional correlates of judgments. But judgments are not
ontologically independent of their bearers: the judgers. They are ‘thought
constructions’ (Gedankengebilde). On the other hand, if the state of affairs is
the intentional correlate of the judgment, you can’t have a state of affairs
without having a judgment. The projection metaphor also supports this mutual
dependence.
We find in Pfänder a sensibly different setting than the one found in the
Bolzanian model, according to which propositions in themselves are
independent of actual thoughts, sentences etc. about them. Contrary to
Bolzano, Pfänder and Reinach see the truth-bearers as dependent on actual
judgers. Bolzano doesn’t use the term ‘truth-making’ to describe the relation
between the world (objects and their properties) and the propositions.21 A
proposition is true, according to him, if the object designated by the subjectidea (Subjektvorstellung) has the property that the proposition ascribes to him.
Propositions, concepts (Vorstellungen), objects and properties are necessary for
this account, but states of affairs are not. In other words, Bolzano, Pfänder and
Reinach attribute very different ontological properties to truth-bearers.
Furthermore, according to Pfänder, the analogy between propositions and
states of affairs would not do since the state of affairs is the intentional
correlate of the judgment. An analogous statement concerning propositions
would be unacceptable for Bolzano.
The features highlighted here might certainly help putting some flesh on
the label of ‘metaphysical realism’ as a characterization of the orientation
defended by Munich and Göttingen phenomenologists, but there is more to say
in this respect. Mulligan (2006) stressed another particular aspect that plays a
central role in the Bavarian metaphysical realism: the concept of foundation.22
This aspect is discussed extensively in Pfänder’s Logik of 1921:
It lies in the essence of every judgement to make a claim to truth. Truth, as we have seen, is,
according to its very essence, something which cannot attach to a judgement all by itself but
only in a certain relation to something else, namely in the relation of agreement with the
objects dealt with by the judgement. Only if this relation obtains can the judgement be true. But
this relation requires necessarily in order to obtain two foundations, namely the judgement on
20
“Der Satz besteht aus Wörter, die Wörter aus Buchstaben…das Urteil besteht nicht aus
Wörter oder Buchstaben…Das Urteil kann wahr oder falsch sein, der Satz kann nur in
übertragenem Sinne, oder in einem anderen Sinne wahr oder falsch sein…Man kann Urteile
fällen, ohne Sätze zu bilden…Im Satz kommt das Urteil zum Ausdruck…Die
Ausdrucksbeziehung ist keine bloße Association. Das Urteil ist der Sinn des Satzes, das ihm
eingelegte Gedankengebilde.” (Pfänder 1912/13: 18 November 1912)
21
Interestingly, Bolzano holds that the variation of ideas (Vorstellungen) contained in
propositions make given propositions true relative to specified variables. But here, the truth
making relation holds between ideas and propositions. This is the only use of ‘wahrmachen’
found in Bolzano. See Bolzano (1837/II, §155, 114, 122 and §156, 133).
22
See also Mulligan (2008).
9
the one hand and the behaviour of the objects the judgement deals with on the other hand ...
Thus if a judgement is not only to lay claim to truth but also to have truth then the
corresponding behaviour of the objects is absolutely necessary as a ground. The truth of a
judgement, according to its essence, only obtains...if this reason is a sufficient reason. It
follows that every judgement, in order to be true, stands necessarily in need of a sufficient
reason. Pfänder (2009, 231-2)
Not only is truth not to be confused with subsistence, but the different relations
of foundation show that in order for the judgment to be true, there must be a
bearer of the judgment on the one hand – as we already said, no judgment
without judgers – and, on the other hand, the subsistence of a state of affairs.
This difference might be illustrated and contrasted with a Bolzanian example:
according to Bolzano, there is a true proposition stating the number of grapes
that grew on the Italian soil in 1837, although there is no record of any sort
giving the right number. The truth of that proposition is not dependent on any
knowledge or piece of evidence concerning that number. Pfänder and Reinach
would interpret this example in a different way. Although, for some contingent
reasons, there is no true judgment about the number of grapes which grew on
the Italian soil in 1837, there are (there were) grapes and a relation between
them, in short: there could have been a state of affairs that could have
grounded a true judgment about these grapes. A judgment is true, according to
Pfänder, if the “relation of agreement with the object dealt with by the
judgment obtains”. Since there is no relation of agreement in that context, there
is no true judgment. In fact, there couldn’t be any true judgment about the
number of such grapes since these grapes were never counted and don’t exist
anymore.
The important concept here at play is the concept of grounding or
foundation. That a truth ‘attaches’ to a judgment thanks to a ‘relation of
agreement with the objects dealt with by the judgment’ is what Pfänder and
many other Munich and Göttingen phenomenologists call a law of essence.
What this law expresses is a grounding relation: the judger (and his judgment)
and the state of affairs judged both ground the true judgment.
§4. Grounding and Essences: Logic and the Theory of Object
Bolzano offers a semantic account of grounding, understood as a relation
between true propositions.23 The Munich phenomenologists have a different
take on this issue.
We have seen in the last section that the state of affairs that p and the
judging that p are both grounding the true judgment p. If that true judgment
exists, “there must necessarily be a sufficient reason for its existence” (Pfänder
2009, 260). What is then the ground for the principle of sufficient reason? This
is where essences and grounding are brought into close connection:
23
But as Mulligan pointed out, Bolzano uses the terminology of “folget, herleiten, ableiten,
vermöge des bloßen Begriffes, etc.” not exclusively for relations between true propositions. In
fact, in §502, he Bolzano appeals to the relation between ground and consequence to account
for the concept of essence. See Mulligan (2004, 414f.).
10
its own sufficient reason lies, accordingly, in the nature of the judgment and the nature of truth.
The truth of the principle of sufficient reason follows not from concepts (therefore, not from
the concept of the judgment and the concept of truth), but from the characteristic essence of the
judgment and of truth itself. Pfänder (2009, 260).
In this respect, Pfänder departs significantly from the Bolzanian account
already discussed: According to Bolzano, and as it is stressed by Mulligan
(2004, 413):
As far as our knowledge is concerned, an object is no more than what we represent in our
minds, whenever we believe we represent it. Thus in logic its idea constitutes its essence
(Bolzano 1837/I, §111)
In other words, what Bolzano calls ‘essences’ are nothing but the concepts of
objects, a position that Pfänder rejects. The reason for his rejection of
foundation through concepts is similar to the one behind his conception of
judgments as bound to real judgers. The same kind of relation holds between
concepts and objects as between judgments and states of affairs: the latter is the
intentional correlate of the former (Pfänder 2009, 144). Analogously to states
of affairs that are projected by judgments, objects are projected by concepts.
Such objects are called by Pfänder formal objects, while the objects in
themselves are called material objects.
Interestingly, Pfänder traces the line between logic and ontology
precisely to that distinction: the objects dealt with in logic are purely formal
objects, which one also could call intentional correlates, while ontology deals
with material objects.
Also, formal (or intentional) objects are defective by nature:
If, for example, the concept ‘quadrilateral’ means nothing but a plane figure described by four
intersecting lines, then it does not belong to the intentional correlate of the concept
‘quadrilateral’ to have four interior angles. (Pfänder 2009, 144)
This point is interesting because it shows that the nature of concepts is to mean
something in a particular way. Not only are concepts necessarily linked to
thinkers, but they also are linked with defective objects: in a similar way,
Pfänder should be bound to say that the concept expressed by ‘creature with a
heart’ has neither human nor any animal whatsoever as its formal object (and
doesn’t have the same extension as the concept expressed by ‘creature with a
kidney’) but only some of the following defective objects having only these
two properties: having a heart and being a creature.
This is of course an important departure from the more standard theory
of concepts found in Bolzano for instance, according to which the objects of
concepts are their extension. The difference is so important that one wonders if
Pfänder is not thinking of the formal object of concepts simply as another term
for their intension. This is not the case: one shouldn’t confuse the content of a
11
concept with the sum of the characteristics of the object (Pfänder 2009: 147).
This distinction is basically an ontological distinction, in the sense that one
shouldn’t confuse what belongs to the content or intension of a concept with
what is the formal object. According to his view, the intension of the concept
expressed by ‘triangle’ is ‘object with three angles’ and it is a semantic
category, while the formal object is an object with three angles: it is an
ontological category.
Of course, there are many objects with three angles that are not
triangles, but this doesn’t represent a problem for Pfänder’s account, since the
formal object, as we said, is thoroughly determined by the concept.
Another point should be added here: Pfänder distinguishes between
implicitly and explicitly compound concepts. For instance, the concept
expressed by ‘gold’ has implicitly the parts ‘shiny, yellow metal’. These parts
have correlates in the formal object. But what tells us that they belong to the
formal object and not simply to the material object? Pfänder answers:
Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that only those partial concepts can be implicitly contained
in an object-concept that are really found there; only those, therefore, that posit their objective
correlate in the corresponding formal object – and not those concepts that posit something that
is found only in the material object, but is not at all co-intended by the object-concept. (Pfänder
2009, 150)
But then, how to draw the line between partial concepts that are implicitly
contained in an object concept and simply different concepts that don’t belong
to it? The line is also difficult to trace since Pfänder is advocating for a
conception of extension qua formal object. In the case of the concepts
expressed by ‘equiangular triangle’ and ‘equilateral triangle’, for example,
these can’t be said to be equivalent since they have different formal objects.
Here, it seems that relations of identity of extension between concepts depend
only on their material object, and not on their formal objects. Even the absence
of an extension (as in the case of the concept expressed by ‘round square’), it
seems that the formal object just depicts the structure of the content of the
concept, while the being or non-being of a material object in this case is simply
left aside.
The distinction between the formal and the material object is a central
distinction. It is on the basis of this distinction that Pfänder dissociates logic (as
a theory of the formal object) from phenomenology understood as a theory of
the material object:
If it is certain…that the being S of an object, according to its essence, cannot exist without
involving the being P of the object, then all objects that are really S are necessarily also P, and
the universal judgment is an assertoric-categorial one. The epistemological question of how it
is possible to recognize whether or not the being S of an object necessarily, or according to its
essence, involves the being P of the same object, lies outside the circle of logical problems.
(Pfänder 2009, 399)
12
Logic investigates thought-structures not only in themselves, but also purely for their own
sake; while phenomenology considers thoughts only as the ideal content of certain acts of
thinking, directing itself to the essential relationship of the act of thinking to other acts of
thinking, to object-consciousness and to intentional objects. (Pfänder 2009, 28).
Logic is therefore to be distinguished from a theory of essences. As a matter of
fact, Pfänder holds that even the law of identity is itself not a real logical law:
[T]his principle is not at all a genuine logical principle. It tells us nothing directly about any
logical object – except, of course, that, insofar as logical entities are objects, they are as such
(according to this principle) identical with themselves. This is because the principle of identity
as given above refers to objects in general, and no logical investigation is needed to recognize
it as true (Pfänder 2009, 207).24
In that sense, there is no co-extensivity between logic and object theory.
Moreover, the law of identity is a law of object theory that is deprived of
logical content: “[a]ll that is required for its validity is the universal and formal
nature of objects in general, not the specific nature of logical objects.” (ibid.).
The law of identity is a law of formal ontology and not a law of logic.
The principle of identity is, therefore, neither “immediately evident,” nor shown to be true
through either psychological insights or on the basis of an inductive generalization from the
study of individual examples. Its truth must rather be made apparent in another way. (Pfänder
2009, 215)25
That every object is identical with itself is, of course, immediately evident; for its self-identity
is grounded immediately and finally in the nature of the object in general. The principle that
declares this, however, is not a logical principle but, as already noted, a principle from the
general theory of objects or formal ontology. Nevertheless, the state of affairs it posits forms
the ultimate basis for the truth of the logical principle of identity. For only if this state of affairs
obtains is the logical principle also correct. To this state of affairs one must necessarily return
if the truth of the logical principle is to become evident. Because of this relationship of
grounding between the formal-ontological state of affairs and the logical principle, it is
understandable that traditional logic usually only refers to the ontological principle and forgets
to formulate the genuine logical principle expressly. (Pfänder 2009, 216).26
24
“Er besagt nämlich direkt nichts über irgendeinen logischen Gegenstand, außer insofern auch
die logischen Gebilde überhaupt Gegenstände sind und als solche natürlich, wie es der Satz
behauptet, mit sich selbst identisch sind. Denn der obige Satz der Identität bezieht sich auf
Gegenstände überhaupt, und er bedarf, um als wahr erkannt zu werden, keinerlei logischer
Betrachtung und Untersuchung” (Pfänder 1921, 182).
25
“Der Satz von der Identität ist also weder ‘unmittelbar evident’ noch durch psychologischen
Erkenntnisse noch durch inductive Verallgemeinerung aus untersuchten einzelnen
Beispielsurteilen als wahr zu erweisen. Seine Wahrheit muß vielmehr in anderer Weise
ersichtlich gemacht werden” (Pfänder 1921, 190).
26
German original in Pfänder (1921, 191): “Der Satz (der Identität) ist freilich kein logischer
Satz, sondern wie schon bemerkt, ein Satz der allgemeinen Gegenstandstheorie oder der
formalen Ontologie. Aber der Sachverhalt, den er setzt, bildet doch die letzte Grundlage für die
Wahrheit des logischen Satzes von der Identität. Denn nur, wenn dieser Sachverhalt besteht, ist
auch der logische Satz berechtigt. Zu diesem Sachverhalt muß man zurückgehen, wenn die
Wahrheit des logischen Satzes ersichtlich werden soll. Aus diesem Begründungsverhältnis
zwischen dem formal-ontologischen Sachverhalt und dem logischen Satz wird verständlich,
13
Spiegelberg, a student of Pfänder, also disapproves of Husserl conception of
the relation between ontology and logic. Ontology, he holds, is not a ‘pure
logic’: “logic is based on ontology and is basically impossible without it”
(Spiegelberg 1930, 6).27
§5. Laws of essence
What do realist phenomenologists understand as laws of essences? Essences
are at the core of what Reinach calls an ‘axiom of phenomenology’:
To every objectual domain is assigned a sphere of aprioric content, an a priori regularity of
essence. This sphere must be investigated prior to any empirical observations. (Reinach, 1989:
440)28
At least in Reinach’s works, the expression ‘regularities of essence’
(Wesensgesetzlichkeit) is often used and is more often used than the expression
‘law of essence’ (Wesensgesetz). There is one obvious reason for this: laws are
propositions. If the way essences relate to one another is regulated by
propositions, then propositions are more fundamental than essences, and this
would of course go against the point made by the realist phenomenologists.
The term ‘regularity of essence’ designates here not a proposition but a state of
affairs that has essences as parts and which can be expressed by a law of
essence. States of affairs being, according to the realist phenomenologists,
more fundamental than propositions, the ‘laws of essence’ formulate relations
between essences. The expression of these ‘laws’ gives us a way to grasp the
relations between essences.
Regularities of essence are based on a grounding relation between the
predicate and the subject expressed in the proposition designating this
regularity (Reinach 1989, 363). Red and blue are different. According to
Reinach, the sentence ‘red and blue are different’ expresses an essential law,
which has the form ‘being-b grounded in A and C is ascribed to it’ (where b is
the predicate ‘different’, A is the essence and C is “red and blue”). In other
terms, if properties are the ontological pendant of predicates, these are not the
essence of the object. The essence is what grounds (gründet) the property of
being different, or being a color, etc.
Interestingly, the importance of laws of essence for Munich and
Göttingen phenomenology comes from Husserl’s Logical Investigations,
especially from his explanation of the relation of dependence: Hue, saturation
and brightness are for instance properties that every color necessary has. There
daß die überlieferte Logik letzten Endes auf einer formal-ontologischen Tatsache basiert, so ist
sie doch nicht mit der allgemeinen Gegenstandstheorie oder formalen Ontologie identisch.”
27
“Logik basiert aber auf Ontologie und ist im Grunde nicht ohne sie möglich”. (Spiegelberg:
1930, 6).
28
German original: “Jedem gegenständlichen Gebiet ist eine Sphäre von apriorischem Gehalt,
eine Apriori-Wesensgesetzlichkeit zugeordnet, und diese Sphäre ist vor aller empirischen
Feststellung zu untersuchen.”
14
is no specific blue color which hasn’t a specific hue, a degree of saturation and
of brightness. As Husserl writes in the third Logical Investigation:
The inability-to-exist-by-itself of a non-independent part points therefore to a law of essence,
according to which the existence of a content belonging to the parts’s pure species (e.g. the
species of color, form etc.) presupposes the existence of contents of certain pertinent pure
species…. Non independent objects are objects belonging to such pure species as are governed
by a law of essence to the effect that they only exist (if at all) as parts of more inclusive wholes
of a certain appropriate species (LI III, §7: See Husserl 2001, 12).
The relation of dependence illustrated here by Husserl is what Brentano calls
the metaphysical parts of a whole. Metaphysical parts like the hue, brightness
and saturation of a color (here the whole) were called by Brentano the essences
(Essenzen) already at the end of the 1860s.29
Do synthetic a priori law necessitates instantiation? According to Reinach,
these laws don’t need a single instantiation. A single example suffices to
illustrate a law of essence:
It is intuitively graspable, from one example (of conviction), that every judgment can only have
one state of affairs, one being-such, as correlate, according to its essence. Similarly, it belongs
to the essence of moods that they don’t need an intentional correlate; it belongs to the essence
of genuine questions that they don’t have their source in certitude, but that they are rather
grounded in incertitude. 30
§6. Essences, Ideas, Eide, Morphes.
Jean Héring (1890-1966), an Alsatian student of Husserl in Göttingen,
developed an account of essences that has been very influential on the later
developments of the Munich and Göttingen phenomenology, particularly in
Ingarden (1925; 1928; 1965) Edith Stein (1950), Conrad-Martius (1957) and
Spiegelberg (1930).
29
See Brentano, Metaphysik-Vorlesung (M96, 137). Husserl had a transcription of these
lectures. The importance of the influence of Stumpf’s concept of partial contents (Teilinhalte)
in Stumpf (1873, 109) is certainly undeniable, but since Stumpf himself was influenced by
Brentano’s 1867 lecture on metaphysics, it just seems more to the point to link Husserl directly
to Brentano in this respect. In his Descriptive Psychology, Berntano will change the name of
these parts for sich durchwohnenden Teile but the concept remains quite the same. See
Brentano (1982/1995).
30
Reinach (1989, 439). German original: “An einem Beispiel (von Überzeugung) ist intuitiv zu
erfassen, daß jedes Urteil wesensmäßig nur ein Sosein, einen Sachverhalt, zum Korrelat haben
kann und muß. Ebenso liegt es im Wesen von Stimmungen, daß sie intentionaler Korrelate
nicht bedürfen; im Wesen von echten Fragen, daß sie nicht aus Gewißheit entspringen, sondern
in Ungewißheit fundiert sind.”
Here, Reinach’s use of ‚example’ could be misleading, since laws of essence are instantiated
but not exemplified. Reinach doesn’t consider instantiation to be dependent upon actual
perception of an individual case. In fact, we even don’t need to perceive a single case to gain
access to a law of essence, that a simple variation in imagination would do: Reinach 1989: 543:
“Nicht nur darum handelt es sich – wie man so oft sagt – daß man nur einen einzigen Fall
wahrzunehmen braucht, um an ihm die a priorische Gesetzmäßigkeit zu erfassen; man braucht
in Wahrheit auch den einzelnen Fall nicht wahrzunehmen, nicht ‚zu erfahren’, man braucht
überhaupt nichts wahrzunehmen, die reine Imaginierung genügt.”
15
Héring (1921) distinguishes between five central categories: the
individual object, its essence (Wesen), the essentiality (Wesenheit, eidos), the
quiddity (Washaftigkeit, Morphe) and the idea (Idee). According to him, every
individual object has only one essence, which it doesn’t share with any other
individual object. The set of two white coffee cups on my table is composed of
two objects and, belonging to them, two different essences. Héring says that
the essence of the individual object is its Sosein. It belongs to the essence of a
feather to be able to write finely, but it doesn’t belong to this essence to be a
feather that lies on my table. Such essences are also individual in themselves.
Héring distinguishes further two relations:
x belongs to the essence of y (rel1)
x follows from the essence of y (rel2)
Rel1 is involved in the case of the capability for a feather to write. In that
sense, it seems that even dispositions would be categorized as essences. What
belongs to the essence of something is its essence kernel (Wesenskern).
Rel2 is involved in cases like the one of a sphere of one meter of
circumference. It follows from the essence of that sphere that it is smaller than
the blue coffee cup on my table. In the case of rel2, X seems to be a state of
affairs, while in the case of rel1, it might be a state of affairs, but it also may be
a disposition.31 Therefore, necessary properties of an object are not parts of its
essence: a 50m2 apartment is necessarily smaller than a 100m2 apartment, but it
only follows from the essence of the 50m2 apartment, it doesn’t belong to
essence of it to be smaller.
According to Héring, not only general objects (like kinds or sorts) have
essence, but individual objects as well. And both general and individual objects
can be ideated, or put into ideas.
Another feature of Héring’s concept of essence (Wesen, which he
sometimes calls the Sosein of objects) is that it belongs to its object in such a
way that it ceases to exist when the object ceases to exist. This is of course not
the case with the idea. The Wesen has to be distinguished from the
Washaftigkeit, or its quiddity. If this wine stain has an essence (to which for
instance it belongs to be a stain on some surface that absorbs liquid to a
minimal extent), it also has its morphe, something like ‘wine-stainness’, which
makes the wine stain what it is. The morphe is the morphe of a specific object,
the object’s morphe. In that sense, Héring’s morphes are quite similar to what
it usually called today a trope.
But it also makes sense to speak, according to Héring, of the ‘winestainness’ not of a specific stain, but ‘an und für sich genommen’, or of ‘the
winestainness as such’. In such cases,
31
See here also Ingarden (2007, 50f.).
16
we then mean something which is in itself completely free of any relation to objects, something
which ‘is what it is’, independently of the existence or not of real or ideal worlds of objects.
We can think them [=the essentialities] without the world...they are autonomous and rest in
themselves. Héring (1921, 510).32
This is what Héring calls the essentiality (Wesenheit, eidos). Finally, the fifth
category in Héring’s ontology is called the idea. I may have bought twice a
specific lamp sold by Ikea, once for the bedroom, the other for the living room:
but there is only one idea of the lamp, its model so to speak. This is what
Héring calls an idea.
Héring’s ontology of essences could be schematized in the following
way:
Eide (Wesenheiten) are realized in morphes thanks to the object (here the red
stain 1), which is also called its realizator (Héring 1921, 510). It is of course
problematic to have a distinction between ideas and eide, at least from a strictly
terminological point of view. But there are fundamental distinctions to be made
here: ideas have what Ingarden (2007, 56) calls variables (Veränderliche) in
their content. For instance, the idea of a red stain may be subject to different
variations, such as “red stain of wine”, “red stain on the carpet”, etc. This is not
the case with the eidos: eide are in contrast with ideas completely determined.
Furthermore, morphes are realizations of eide on the basis of the object which
is then said to be the realizator (Héring 1921, 510). Also, ideas are conceivable
32
“Wir meinen dann etwas, was in sich völlig frei ist von einer Beziehung auf Gegenstände,
etwas was ‘ist was es ist’, mag es überhaupt reale und ideale Welten von Gegenstände geben
oder nicht. Wir können sie denken ohne die Welt….sie sind selbstständig und in sich ruhend”.
(Héring 1921, 510)
17
from two different points of view: from the point of view of their ideal mode of
being, but also from the point of view of the objects they exemplify.33
It is also important to stress here that ideas are not concepts (Héring
1921, 533). Concepts are unintuitively intented meaning units, while ideas can
at least in principle be intuited. Another difference between idea and concepts
is for Ingarden (2007, 63) that there are ‘contradictory concepts’, or as Bolzano
would call them, ‘objectless notions’ (gegenstandlose Vorstellungen). But there
are no “objectless ideas” in Ingarden’s and Héring’s understanding of the term.
The distinction between object, essence (and essence kernel), morphes,
eide, and idea is a relatively complex one. The relation between the morph and
the eidos corresponds, in Husserl’s terminology, to the relation between the
moment and the species. So what is the role played by Héring’s essences
(Wesen), if this role is not precisely played by morphs? Morphs are moments
(or instanciations, or tropes) of eide, or in other terms, one could say that they
are particularized properties, in the sense that they are realizations (as Héring
puts it) of properties qua universals (redness as such, for example). As such,
one single object can participate in different eide, which are then instantiated
by different morphs. In the case of essences, it is different. Essences are
individuals of a slightly different kind: they attach directly to objects, they are
not instantiations of universals and are in no relations with universals. As a
matter of fact, they are Unikate, insofar as there is for each individual object
one single individual essence.
Interestingly, Héring calls essences also the Sosein of objects, in a sense
that might remind us of Meinong. Indeed, Meinong proposed to distinguish
between the being (Sein) and the being-so (Sosein) of objects, the first being
correlative to acts of judgments, while the second being correlative to
assumptions. In 1904, Meinong formulated the principle of independence of
being-so from being, according to which the being-so of an object is not
affected by its non-being.34 Héring would obviously reject that principle since
essences are correlates of objects and cease to exist when their object cease to
exist. Furthermore, Meinong’s talk of the Sosein in the sense of ‘an object’s
having properties’ goes in another direction than Héring’s account of essence.
Essences are not properties (even not particularized properties) of objects but
rather seem to be some kind of set of traits (Züge) belonging to the object. As
the result of a glass of wine accidentally falling on the carpet, the red stain has
an essential trait (Wesenszug) of being caused by the falling of the glass. This
trait might or might not be an essence kernel of the red stain.35 But the
existence of the set of these traits (as of each of them individually), though
dependent upon the existence of the object, is not to be understood exactly as a
trope, in the sense of morphes. In that sense, essences are not tropes of the red
of the stain, but a trope of the object tout court. Essences seem more to be like
33
See Héring (1921, 530).
See Meinong (1904, 8).
35
Hering’s point on essence kernels is not clear, since his examples are using only ideal
objects, and not concrete objects. See Hering (1921, 499).
34
18
some kind of perspectival or subjective objects, which adapt to our knowledge
of the objects they are the essence of, while these objects themselves are as
they are independently of our perspective on them. Phenomenological analysis
understood as a Wesenschau, or intuition of essences, would simply mean here
that what we describe is the essence of the object, which is in itself variable. In
that sense, the empirical discovery of Metis and Thebe, the two moons of
Jupiter discovered by Voyager 1 in the 1970s, changes nothing about the
system of Jupiter as an object, but it completes, or add more traits to its set of
essential traits, or its essence.
§7. Anumericity
Héring’s article influenced many early phenomenologists to go against
Husserl’s use of ‘Wesen’ (essence) and ‘Idee’ (idea) as synonyms.36 One of the
outputs of these criticisms is that Husserl comes to the knowledge of ideas by
making abstraction of the individuality of the object’s essence. 37 But
Spiegelberg is not satisfied with this conclusion. He asks the question of the
foundation of the character of idea. In other words: what is then the principle of
ideality? Abstracting from the essence of individual objects will only give us
individual parts. And to say simply that an idea has no reality is not enough,
since not only ideas don’t have reality – illusions, fictions, etc. do as well. Even
numbers, which have no individuality, cannot be considered as ideas.
According to Héring, as we have seen, ideas are general in the sense
that they are undetermined. That ideas allow variation in their content is
precisely a sign of this generality. In his 1930 dissertation, Spiegelberg also
focuses on this distinction, insisting not only that ideas are undetermined, but
also that they in fact are anumerical:
The difference between idea and essence in the sense of an essence kernel doesn’t really need a
further specification of its own. The essence kernel is an exceptional group of inner elements
which are distinguishable similarly in the idea and in the exemplars. The essence kernel of an
individual is individual, the essence kernel of an idea is materially anumerical. The essence
kernel of an individual can’t be an anumerical idea. This is completely excluded by both
essences.38
Comparing ideas with essences, or even with objects, Spiegelberg notes
Regarding such a question [whether they are numerically one or many], ideas behave with a
complete indifference, because they are numerically without any quantity, anumerical, without
36
See for example Spiegelberg (1930, 2199; Pöll (1936, 31).
See Spiegelberg (1930, 214f.).
38
“Der Unterschied von Idee und Wesen im Sinne des Wesenskerns braucht kaum noch eigens
herausgestellt zu werden. Der Wesenskern ist eine ausgezeichnete Gruppe von inneren
Elementen, die sich gleichmäßig in der Idee wie in den Exemplaren unterscheiden lassen. Der
Wesenskern eines Individuums ist individuell, der der Idee stofflich anumerisch. Niemals kann
der Wesenskern eines Individuums eine anumerische Idee sein. Das ist durch beiden Wesen
völlig ausgeschlossen.” (Spiegelberg 1930, 222).
37
19
any number... Two-in-general is [not] numerically determined, in contrast with the individual
twos.39
We find here the point addressed by Schapp in his remarks about the “infinitely
many twos”: there are infinitely many twos: as a matter of fact, the essence of
being two comes to every set of two objects which is considered as a composed
object. Since essences are individual, the object composed by the reunion of
the table and the coffee cup has the essence of being two. When this object will
cease to exist, the essence of being two (as the essence of this specific object)
will cease to exist as well. On the other hand, the idea of the two (die Zweiüberhaupt) has no quantitative property. As Hering and Ingarden underlined
first, ideas are undetermined and have variation places in their content, what
Spiegelberg, Pöll and Beck call anumericity.40 According to Spiegelberg, it is
precisely because ideas are undetermined that they are multiply realizable.
Therefore, the standard platonic conception of ideas is not optimal:
There is nothing in principle to prevent replacing a ‘model’ (paradeigma) with a whole group
that is formed by it in the same way. Only in this way can multipliability be ruled out if the
foundation of all multiplication, the numerical one-hood, is absent ... [The idea] is the one
object in whose case it remains undetermined whether it is internally structured like one or
however many exemplars. Only the qualitative aspect is fully developed in it as in the case of
other numerical objects, whereas the numerical aspect is altogether absent in it. 41
Ideas are what Spiegelberg calls “unidividuelles und anumerisches Quale”. In
this sense, Schapp is right when he says that there are “infinitely many twos”
according to the Munich phenomenologists. But this is possible only on the
basis that ideas are purely qualitative objects and by definition (or rather by
essence) deprived of numericality.42
§8. Final remarks
The early phenomenologists attributed a central importance to the notion of
essence and its related family members: laws and regularities of essences and
ideal objects. I showed first that this importance was directly dependent upon
39
“Die Ideen verhalten sich einer solchen Frage [ob sie numerisch eins oder viele seien]
gegenüber gänzlich indifferent, weil sie überhaupt numerisch quantitätslos, anumerisch,
anzahllos sind....[D]ie Zwei-überhaupt [ist ebensowenig] numerisch bestimmt, im Gegensatz
zu den einzelnen Zweien.” Spiegelberg (1930, 99).
40
See Beck (1929). Beck thinks also that ideas are behind all numbers. The idea is not
multipliable, but can exist in different synthesis.
41
Spiegelberg (1930, 100). German original: “es besteht kein prinzipielles Hindernis, an Stelle
des einen ‘Musterbildes’ (paradeigma) eine ganze Reihe von ihm gleichgeformten anzusetzen.
Nur dann kann Vervielfältigbarkeit ausgeschlossen sein, wenn die Grundlage aller
Vervielfältigung, die numerische Einsheit, fehlt…[die Idee] ist der eine Gegenstand, bei dem
es wesensmäßig in der Schwebe bleibt, ob er innerlich wie ein oder wie viele Exemplare
gebaut ist. Nur die qualitative Seite ist bei ihm voll entwickelt wie bei den numerischen
Gegenständen, die numerische fehlt ihm vollständig.”
42
Pöll, a student of Geyser and Pfänder in Munich, followed Spiegelberg’s insight according to
which the lack of numericality should count as the principle of ideity (Ideitätsprinzip) (see Pöll
1936, 94). The idea is, according to its essence, external to the order of numbers.
20
their conception of the synthetic a priori. According to them, material necessity
is at the basis of the synthetic a priori, and not the modal necessity, as Kant
understood it. Causal connections are in this sense not grounded in pure reason
or in subjective necessity, but in the essence of things. Therefore, synthetic a
priori judgments like “every promise entails an obligation” are true in virtue of
the laws of essence concerning promises and obligations, and not in virtue of
modal necessity. These laws are nothing but “general principles expressing
relations between states of affairs.”43
I also distinguished this position, which I labeled a ‘metaphysical realism’,
from the logical realism championed by philosophers like Bolzano, according
to which propositions are the bearer of truth, modalities, and are standing in
relation of ground and consequence. This distinction presupposes that
propositions and states of affairs are to be distinguished, as proposed by
Munich and Göttingen phenomenologists. For them, while truth and falsity are
genuinely properties of propositions (they agree with logical realists on that
respect), the ground for the correctness of propositions is to be found in the
subsistence of states of affairs. Therefore, subsisting states of affairs are the
foundation of true propositions. This position, according to which ontology is
the foundation of logics, was particularly defended by Pfänder, as we have
shown.
In the last four sections of the paper, I discussed different elements of the
metaphysical realism exposited in the first part. The first element is the relation
of foundation advocated by the early phenomenologists between ontology and
logics: Ontology provides the ground for logics. The second element is the
distinction between essence (Wesen) and idea (Idee). On this point, early
phenomenologists are in disagreement with Husserl. Finally, the last aspect
was the property of anumericity, a property possessed exclusively by ideas.
This is the reason why there are ‘infinitely many twos’ according to the
Munich phenomenologists, as Schapp pointed out: the two white cups
participates in the essence of being two white cups, but they exemplify the two
‘in general’ which, in its turn, is said to be anumerical.
Acknowledgement: This paper was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF),
project M1403-G15.
43
Reinach 1982, 339.
21
References
Avé-Lallemant, Eberhard and Karl Schuhmann. 1992. ‘Ein Zeitzeuge über die Anfänge der
phänomenologischen Bewegung: Theodor Conrads Bericht aus dem Jahre 1954’ in Husserl
Studies 9: 77–90.
Beck, Maximilian. 1929. ‘Ideelle Existenz’ in Philosophische Hefte 3: 151–196.
Biller, Gerhard. 1987. ‘Mahnke, Dietrich’ in Neue deutsche Biographie, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Brentano, Franz. 1867. Metaphysik-Vorlesung (M96). Available at the Houghton Library, Harvard
University, Cambridge MA.
—— 1982. Deskriptive Psychologie, Hamburg: Meiner. Trans.: Descriptive Psychology, London
1995: Routledge (trans. B. Mueller).
Bolzano, Bernard. 1837. Wissenschaftslehre (in four volumes). Sulzbach: Seidelsche Buchhandlung.
Conrad, Theodor. 1911. ‘Über Wahrnehmung und Vorstellung’ in Münchener Philosophische
Abhandlungen. Leipzig, Barth, 51–76.
Conrad-Martius, Hedwig. 1957. Das Sein. Munich: Kösel.
Daubert, Johannes. MS. Manuscripts reposited at the Bavarian State Library, Munich.
Fréchette, Guillaume. 2003. ‘Husserl et Daubert sur les états de choses’ in D. Fisette et S. Lapointe
(eds.), Origines et postérité de la phenomenology, Paris/Québec, Vrin/PUL, 205–220.
—— 2013. ‘Searching for the Self. Early Phenomenological Accounts of Self-Consciousness from
Lotze to Scheler’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies (forthcoming).
Gallinger, August. 1912. Das Problem der objektiven Möglichkeit. Eine Bedeutungsanalyse. Leipzig:
Barth.
Grassl, Wolfgang and Barry Smith eds. 1986. Austrian Economics. Historical and Philosophical
Background. Croom Helm Ltd.
Héring, Jean. 1921. ‘Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee’ in E. Husserl et al.
(eds.), Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 4: 495–568.
Hume, David. 1875. A Treatse of Human Nature. London: Longmans.
—— 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Husserl, Edmund. 1913. Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Untersuchungen zur
Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, I. Teil. Zweite, umgearbeitete Auflage, Halle:
Max Niemeyer.
—— 1987. Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre. Sommersemester 1908 [Husserliana XXVI] The
Hague, Nijhoff.
—— 2001. Logical Investigations, Volume 2. London: Routledge. (Eng. translation of Husserl 1913).
Ingarden, Roman. 1925. ‘Essentiale Fragen. Ein Beitrag zu dem Wesensproblem’ in E. Husserl et al.
(eds.), Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 7: 125–304. Reedited in
Ingarden 2007.
—— 1928. ‘Vom formalen Aufbau des individuellen Gegenstandes’ in Studia philosophica 1: 30-106.
Reedited in Ingarden 2007, 227–301.
—— 1965. Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt II/1. Fundamentalontologie. Tübingen:
Niemeyer.
—— 2007. Über das Wesen. Heidelberg: Winter.
Joisten, Karen ed. 2010. Das Denken Wilhelm Schapps. Perspektiven für unsere Zeit. Freiburg: Verlag
Karl Alber, 2010).
Kreitmair, Karl. 1950. Aloys Fischer. Leben und Werk. Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuch-Verlag.
Leijenhorst, C. and P. Steenbakker, eds. 2004. Karl Schuhmann. Selected Papers on Phenomenology.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Meinong, A. 1904. ‘Über Gegenstandstheorie’ in Meinong, A. (ed.) Untersuchungen zur
Gegesntandstheorie und Psychologie. Leipzig: Barth, 1-50.
Mulligan, Kevin ed. 1987. Speech Act and Sachverhalt. Reinach and the Foundations of Realist
Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.
—— 2004. ‘Essence and Modality. The Quintessence of Husserl’s Theory’ in M. Siebel and M.
Textor (eds.), Semantik und Ontologie. Frankfurt, Ontos, 387-418.
22
—— 2006. ‘Wahrheit und das Wahrmacher-Prinzip im Jahre 1921’ in G. Imaguire and C. Schneider
(eds.) Untersuchungen zur Ontologie, Munich: Philosophia, 55-77.
—— 2008. ‘Truth and the Truth-Maker Principle in 1921’ in E.J. Lowe and A. Rami (eds), Truth and
Truth-Making, Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing, 39-58.
—— 2012. Wittgenstein et la philosophie austro-allemande. Paris: Vrin.
Pfänder, Alexander. 1912/13. Logik und Erkenntnistheorie. Vorlesungen Wintersemester 1912/13.
Reposited in the Bavarian State Library, Munich.
—— 1921. ‘Logic’ in E. Husserl et al. (eds.), Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische
Forschung 4: 137–499.
—— 2009. Logic. Frankfurt. Ontos. (Eng. Translation of Pfänder 1921).
Pöll, Wilhelm. 1936. Wesen und Wesenserkenntnis. Munich: Ernst Reinhardt.
Reinach, Adolf. 1911. ‘Kants Auffassung des Humeschen Problems’ in Zeitschrift für Philosophie
und philosophische Kritik 141: 176–209.
—— 1911b. ‘Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils’ in Alexander Pfänder (ed.): Münchener
Philosophische Abhandlungen. Festschrift für Theodor Lipps. Leipzig, Barth:196–254.
—— 1976. ‘Kant’s Interpretation of Hume’s Problem’ in Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 7: 161–
188 (Eng. translation of Reinach 1911).
—— 1982. ‘On the theory of Negative Judgment’ in B. Smith (ed.), Parts and Moments. Studies in
Logic and Ontology, Munich: Philosophia, 315–377 (Eng. translation of Reinach 1911b).
—— 1989. Sämtliche Werke (in two volumes). Munich: Philosophia.
Scaramuzza, Gabriele. 1998. ‘Theodor Conrad and Phenomenological Aesthetics,’ in
Axiomathes 9: 93–103.
Schapp, Wilhelm. 1959. ‘Erinnerungen an Edmund Husserl’ in Edmund Husserl 1859-1959. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Schorcht, Claudia. 1990. Philosophie an den bayerischen Universitäten 1933–1945. Erlangen.
Schuhmann, Karl. 1973. Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie. Husserl über Pfänder. Dordrecht:
Martinus Nijhoff.
—— 1977. Husserl-Chronik. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Schuhmann, Karl and Barry Smith. 1987. ‘Adolf Reinach: An Intellectual Biography’ in
Mulligan (1987).
Smid, Reinhold. 1982. ‘“Münchener Phänomenologie” – Zur Frühgeschichte des Begriffs,’ in
Pfänder-Studien, (ed.) H. Spiegelberg and E. Avé-Lallemant. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
109–150.
Smith, Barry. 1986. ‘Austrian Economics and Austrian Philosophy’ in Grassl and Smith (1986), 245–
272.
Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1930. ‘Über das Wesen der Idee’ in E. Husserl et al. (eds.), Jahrbuch für
Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 11: 1–238.
—— 1959. The Phenomenological Movement. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
—— 1972. Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Stein, Edith. 1950. Endliches und ewiges Sein. Freiburg: Herder.
Stumpf, Carl. 1873. Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung, Leipzig: Hirzel.
Zeltner, Robert. 1960. ‘Moritz Geiger zum Gedächtnis’ in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung
14: 452–66.
23
Guillaume Fréchette