Abstract
In this paper, I explore Husserl’s view on the normativity of intentionality and its neutralization. Husserl reaches his mature, normative-transcendental conception of intentionality by way of critical engagement with Brentano’s position. As opposed to Brentano, Husserl does not conceive of the normativity of intentionality as deriving from the more basic character of polar opposition. Normativity comes first and it is an original, though not universal determination of intentionality which is expressed in the identificatory achievement of constitution. Even where it is absent, this absence makes itself felt since neutrality is never the simple omission of normativity but essentially its neutralizing modification. The discussion of neutrality-modification in Ideas I is, however, problematic, as I will argue by drawing upon Husserl’s research manuscripts. I aim to show that neutralization is not a single but a group of closely related intentional modifications and that ways of neutralization are best conceptualized as changes of attitude. I will then examine phantasy and aesthetic consciousness as involving two such neutralizing attitudes. What they have in common is a spirit of playfulness in contrast to the serious commitment to truth that characterizes original intentionality. The neutralization of normativity takes place in play.
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Notes
Whether constitutive norms are themselves regulative (that is, whether constitutive norms are a special case of regulative norms) is a debated issue. See MacFarlane (2002, 35–38) for a discussion of this issue in relation to Frege and logical norms. Haugeland (1998, 321–322, 331–338) addresses this question in connection with his concept of “the excluded zone.”
See Heinamaa (2019, 22). Carta seems to disagree, claiming that Husserl “neglects what we would call ‘constitutive norms’” (2021, 135). Carta is certainly right that Husserl does not quite have this concept and never discusses intentionality and meaning in exactly these terms. To interpret Husserl’s thoughts about intentionality in normative terms is certainly a contemporary import, and the real issue is, as Crowell nicely puts it, “whether the import belongs there” (Crowell 2016, 239).
See Crowell (2019, 333). Crowell talks about ideal normativity in connection with logical thought, but if we take account of the connection between normativity and (formal) teleology in Husserl’s thinking, especially the role of “ideas in the Kantian sense,” Crowell’s remarks could be applied to intentionality in general. Huang (2022) develops a reading of Husserl’s teleology in this direction. On this point, Carta (again) takes the opposite position. Though well aware of passages where Husserl describes eidetic (or ideal) laws in normative terms, she decides that such passages are “misguided” and that Husserl “should regard eidetic laws simply as laws and never as norms” (2021, 136).
I will call it “the constitutive thesis” henceforth.
The challenge is due to Hopp (2019, 271–289). See Crowell (2019, 330–334) for a brief response.
On the as-structure of intentionality, see Doyon (2016b).
Crowell’s (2016, 243–244) suggestive remark on imagination being parasitical on practical intentionality points in this direction. This paper can be seen as an elaboration of this insightful remark. Crowell himself, however, adopts neither of the two options outlined in the main text and prefers instead to affirm—against apparent evidence to the contrary—the genuine normativity of imagination.
For my purpose in this paper, I am leaving out Brentano’s characterization of mental phenomena in terms of inner awareness and his complicated account of the relation between intentionality and inner awareness.
Barry Smith insists on taking Brentano’s immanentistic view of intentionality literally and discusses the connection of this view to Brentano’s Aristotelian ontology (Smith, 1994, 40, 35–39). Crane shares this view (insofar as the first edition of Brentano’s Psychologie is concerned) and emphasizes the connection between Brentano’s immanentistic view and his “methodological phenomenalism” (Crane, 2006, 24–30). As Crane notes, however, Brentano changes his position on this issue in the second edition of Psychologie. Antonelli’s (2022) recent interpretation is based on this later position. In his interpretation, the later Brentano comes close to the phenomenological conception of intentionality in terms of transcendence. My discussion here draws upon Brentano’s position only as a foil to Husserl’s view and focuses exclusively on Brentano’s view in the first edition of Psychologie.
I cite Husserl’s works by referring to the volume and page number of the critical edition (Husserliana), followed (when needed) by the page number of the English translation. Translations are modified where needed, without further indicating that a change has been made.
See Brough’s (2008) excellent exposition of this theme in connection with the “bag”-metaphor.
For an overall analysis of these (often neglected) three chapters, see Mayer and Erhard (2019).
Husserl is much less successful in his definition of quality than matter in Logical Investigations. Objectifying and non-objectifying act-qualities, doxic modifications, and neutralizing modifications are simply lumped together under the title of quality. Their unity seems to merely negatively (i.e., over against matter and fulness) circumscribed. This is an insufficiency that he becomes aware of by the time of the second edition (Husserl, 1984, 473, 508), and undertakes to remedy in Ideas I (Husserl, 1976, 298, 305).
According to Husserl’s own (mature) view, the wax illusion would not count as a case of neutralized intentionality. Here, however, Husserl’s goal is to rebut the “Brentano thesis” rather than expounding his own view. He is working under the assumption that the exposed wax illusion is a typical instance of mere presentation in Brentano’s sense. As long as this assumption is justified, his choice of example is acceptable.
This is only one of the interpretations Husserl considers in Chap. 3 of the 5th Logical Investigation. He considers another interpretation in Chap. 4, which is not our concern.
In fact, polar opposition in act-quality and the opposition between nominal and propositional acts stand side by side as parallel possibilities for the further differentiation of the class of objectifying acts in §§ 37–38 (Husserl, 1984, 501/1970, 160). Husserl does not propose anything close to a definition here. For that one has to wait until the 6th Logical Investigation. See note 21, below.
It would be “similar” but not “same,” because in Brentano’s account, the bi-polarity is composed by the pair positive-negative, whereas in Husserl’s case, it would be formed by positionality-neutrality.
“There are (to ignore certain exceptions) not two things present in experience, we do not experience the object and beside it the intentional experience directed upon it, there are not even two things present in the sense of a part and a whole which contains it: only one thing is present, the intentional experience, whose essential descriptive character is the intention in question” (Husserl, 1984, 386/1970, 98).
Another—more explicitly normative = = translation would be “being measured against something.” Husserl uses “sich-richten-auf-etwas” (Husserl, 1988, 340).
It is noteworthy that it is only here, but not in §§ 37–38 of the 5th Logical Investigation, that Husserl speaks of a “definition” of objectifying act.
As far as I can tell, this question has not received due attention in the literature.
If my suggestion for how the relation should be conceived is right, this obscurity would be unsurprising, for the theme of normativity is not made explicit until after Husserl’s transcendental turn.
It is worth recalling Husserl’s remarks on his own major advance over Brentano’s conception of intentionality: as he sees it, it consists in the elucidation of the structure of synthesis—and by implication, identification (Husserl, 1950a, 79).
See, e.g., Husserl 1980, 356, 361 (dated in March-April 1912). This text—historically important in the genesis of Ideas I (see the editor’s remarks in Husserl 1980, 675–676 and Husserl, 1976, xxvii-xxviii)—testifies not only to Husserl’s experimentation with different terminology but also to his indecision regarding the essence and and variations of this modification.
For the following, compare Brainard’s (2002, 163–165, 291–292) take on the relation between phantasy and neutrality-modification. For my critique of his interpretation, see note 35.
This is a theory that Husserl once considered and then rejected (see, e.g., Husserl 1980, 249–251).
Brough translates “unterbinden” as “neutralize” here. This is problematic, for it is clear from the context that Husserl does not straightforwardly identify “Unterbindung” with the kind of “position-free-ness” that will be called neutrality in Ideas I. He is exploring their relation, and finally distinguishes the two (see Husserl 1980, 360).
This is another word for “neutralized.” Brough’s translation mistakenly omits the negative prefix and renders “axiontic.”
Husserl asks: “Can position-taking here perhaps be abandoned, remain unaccomplished?” The answer is negative: “In the case of simple perceptual believing there is no suspending and no thinking-of” (Husserl, 1980, 306/438).
It takes Husserl no small amount of phenomenological work to arrive at this conception of phantasy as modification. In his 1904/05 lectures, his conception of the relation between recollection and phantasy is the reverse of the first account we considered. Phantasy is conceived as the more basic act, and recollection is phantasy plus something more. More specifically, recollection is analyzed in terms of a double intentionality. There is, on the one hand, the reproduction of a certain filled duration, and, on the other hand, “the intentions directed towards the insertion” (Einordnungsintention; Husserl 1966, 55). The first intentionality—that of reproduction—has the character of phantasy-appearance. “Every intuitive presentification of something objective represents in the manner peculiar to phantasy. It ‘contains’ a phantasy-appearance of the object” (Husserl, 1966, 102). “Everywhere the ‘mere phantasy-appearance’ remains as the common core” (ibid.). Thus, remembering is based on phantasy-appearances “by means of the addition of new moments” (Husserl, 1980, 294), i.e., the second intentionality of insertion, which is attached to the first and inserts the reproduced phantasy-appearance in a nexus of memories. The detailed discussion and critique of this account cannot be examined here (see Husserl 1980, 262–264, 295–296). It suffices to point out that it bears some resemblance to Brentano’s thesis. Just as Brentano’s thesis takes neutral presentation to be an underlying component of every positing act, so this early account bases recollection (as positing presentification) on phantasy-appearance. Husserl’s criticism of this theory is also in line with the spirit of his rejection of the Brentano thesis: the original mode of our relatedness to the past is not a positing founded on a neutralized appearance. Instead, presentification is by default positing, and pure phantasy is its neutralizing modification (Husserl, 1980, 297). In other words, remembering is unmodified reproduction, and pure phantasy involves a re-configuration (Umbilden) of the simply (schlechthin) reproduced (Husserl, 1980, 504).
Following some passages in Husserl’s later manuscripts (e.g., Husserl 1980, 591), Bernet (2006, 417) suggests that we dissociate pure phantasy from neutrality-modification. By this proposal, Bernet is emphasizing the high degree of freedom that characterizes pure phantasy. We are fully in agreement with Bernet on this, but we insist that the original status of normative positionality should also be given its due. The two sides must be considered together. Overall, retaining Husserl’s original terminology seems to be the better choice—and other late texts can be cited in support of this option (e.g., Husserl 1980, 577–578).
As noted in the main text, the account of neutralization in terms of change(s) of attitude is a late-comer in Husserl’s constantly evolving analyses. As far as I can tell, it is only in texts after 1918 (e.g., No. 18, No. 20, and Beilage LXIV from Husserl 1980, No. 22 from Husserl 2020) that Husserl introduces this vocabulary and this account. Unfortunately, it has not received due attention in the secondary literature. An important reason for its omission is the insufficient distinction between two senses of phantasy. More on this omission, see below, note 37.
We say “a moment of” aesthetic consciousness because aesthetic consciousness can also involve aesthetic judgment, which is a position-taking founded on neutralized intentionality.
With this insight, we must disagree with Brainard’s (2002) stark opposition between neutrality modification and phantasy (and reduction). Neutrality modification is not, as Brainard believes, the mythical figure that constitutes “a low point,” “a potential impasse” (158) or a “danger” to the phenomenological enterprise, whose confusion with phantasy “endangers the whole of humanity” (164). As we will see, neutralization is a playful attitude, and play does not have to be a danger.
As with the general account of neutralization in terms of attitude, a clear distinction between phantasy and aesthetic consciousness as two distinct attitudes (and thus two distinct forms of neutralization) appears in Husserl’s manuscript only after 1918.
“The terms ‘phantasy’ and ‘fiction’ therefore have two significational directions: 1) One is directed toward reproduction (and re-presentation of whatever kind) … 2) The other is directed toward the mode of enactment” (Husserl, 1980, 575). This clarity (from a late manuscript, dated in 1921–1924) is missing in many earlier texts, where the alleged phenomenological analysis of “phantasy” is in fact directed at presentfication in general, to the neglect of its peculiar mode of enactment. One influential line of interpretation (Jansen 2005, Bernet 2006, Bernet 2020, Shum 2015), according to which phantasy is constituted by a specific kind of intentional implication in inner (time-)consciousness, is affected by this one-sidedness. What is structured in this way is in fact presentification in general, but not phantasy in the sense of a mode of enactment. The peculiarity of phantasy as an attitude is thus eclipsed in this interpretation. In this paper, on the contrary, I focus exclusively on this aspect of phantasy and refrain from discussing the aspect of presentification (which has been ably treated in the works cited above). A full interpretation needs to take account of both at the same time.
Again, this conceptual and terminological innovation comes late, perhaps no earlier than 1918; see especially text nr. 18 of Husserl (1980).
In another text where Husserl clearly distinguishes the two senses of phantasy (as an attitude and as presentification in general), he states that the second sense of phantasy constitutes the character of “as it were” (gleichsam) and the first gives rise to the character of “as if” (als-ob; Husserl 1980, 505/2005, 606).
This is why all the modalities of belief are repeated in the mode of the as-if in the imaginary attitude. Thus, one can doubt, hesitate, negate, assume, etc. in phantasy.
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewer for their valuable suggestions, and also Rudolf Bernet and Julia Jansen, whose comments on a very early version of this paper help me to think further.
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This research is supported by funding from China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.
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Huang, D. Husserl on the Normativity of Intentionality and Its Neutralization. Husserl Stud 39, 121–142 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-022-09321-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-022-09321-5