Abstract
Normative notions are central to Husserl’s account of intentionality: intending an object is a normative achievement, essentially admitting of fulfillment or disappointment. So is teleology: intentional conscious life is inseparable from a horizontal orientation toward “ideas in the Kantian sense.” How are they related? Is teleology essential for intentionality as a normative achievement? Or, in Husserl’s way of putting it, do relative truths “demand” ideal truths? This article explores some reasons for agreeing with Husserl that this is indeed the case. In Sec. 2, I will identify a “normative turn” in Husserl’s account of the basic structure of perceptual intentionality and spell out the teleological character of this normative account. This sense of teleology is a minimal one. A more robust teleology, in the sense of an orientation toward infinite ideality, is then justified in Sec. 3 by virtue of its function in the constitution of genuine objectivity. In Sec. 4, I will turn to the noetic, especially the ego-oriented side of Husserl’s analysis, in order to clarify the normative force of infinite telos. All in all, I will argue that the normative and the teleological sides of the story are inextricably intertwined in Husserl’s account of intentional conscious life.
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Notes
There are many strands of teleological thinking in Husserl. His historical reflection, for example, is permeated by teleological conceptions, which also connects closely with his metaphysical (and theological) thought. There are reasons to think that his metaphysical, if not historical, reflections do not belong to phenomenology proper (Drummond 2018). In any case, I will focus on the more basic, intra-subjective variety of teleology in this paper. My claim will be that in this more basic sense Husserl’s phenomenology is inextricably teleological.
Am I not claiming too much here, since the “dilemma” from the Logical Investigations seems to concern intentionality in general, while the “resolution” given here applies apparently to perceptual consciousness alone? No, for although the “dilemma” implicates Husserl’s account of intentionality in Logical Investigations in general, it applies directly to the case of perceptual consciousness. It bears recalling here that Husserl’s critique of the image/sign theory of consciousness, which is his major argument in support of the (“semantic”) thesis of the immediate self-givenness of the intentional object, is also focused on the case of perceptual consciousness, though it bears upon intentionality in general. Why do arguments focused on the perceptual case have consequences for intentionality in general? Because of the fundamental status of perceptual consciousness. As the “originally giving experience” (Husserl 1976, 11) it is that on which categorial representation, presentification (memory, imagination, empathy…), emotional consciousness, etc. are founded. (And, even though this is less relevant for our purpose, perception includes not only external but also inner perception, and the latter is “nothing other than the time-constituting consciousness with its phases of flowing retentions and protentions”; Husserl 1966a, 127).
To use the term “contradiction” here is to appeal to “a makeshift (Notbehelf) of indirect description referring to the phenomenon itself” (Husserl 1985, 106). Certainly, we are not to think of formal-logical contradiction here. (In the quoted remark from Erfahrung und Urteil, Husserl is referring to the talk of generality in pre-predicative experience; it certainly applies to the talk of contradiction as well.).
“In der Leervorstellung spielt sich eigentlich nichts ab, konstituiert sich eigentlich nicht gegenständlicher Sinn” (Husserl 1966, 72).
Absolute time-consciousness and association are forms of synthesis on the level of pure passivity. It is hard to see how normativity could gain purchase here. In the case of time-consciousness, it is true that Husserl himself describes it in terms of fulfillment in the Bernau Manuscripts (see, e.g., Husserl 2001, 38). If, however, we bear in mind that this description is supposed to account for the flowing and directional character of the absolute time-consciousness, which is a rigid process not susceptible to disruption and disappointment (time flows, whatever comes), we must then distinguishe between the process of fulfillment in absolute time-consciousness and the normative sense of fulfillment (see, e.g., Husserl 1966, 235–239; cf. Lohmar 2002). Even at the more concrete level of associative synthesis, it is still very unclear whether the supposedly indicatory character of the self-organizing sensory fields could by itself give rise to anything normative, because association is, prima facie at least, “not the sort of thing that can be said to succeed or fail” (Crowell 2013, 124–146).
In this paper, I will use “ego” and “the I” interchangeably as translations of Husserl’s “das Ich”.
This anticipatory being-with is both practical and affective: it expresses itself in active coping-with (Ms. B III 9: 92a) and positive feeling (Husserl 1985, 91–2).
“Inter est – in der Tat, wenn im weitesten Sinn von Interessiertsein, von Interesse gesprochen wird, so drückt sich damit unter einiger Erweiterung des normalen Wortsinns das Grundwesen aller Akte aus” (Husserliana 1962, 412). In genetic phenomenology, “Akt” in the strict sense refers to egoic intentionality, from the receptive level upwards. See also the following passage from First Philosophy: “Akt des Interesses im prägnanten Sinn ist < nun > ein solcher Akt zu nennen, der ein Objekt hat, welches das Ich nicht nur überhaupt im Bewußtseinsblicke hat, dessen es irgendwie etwa nebenbei inne ist, sondern auf das es in einem prägnanten Sinn gerichtet ist, auf das es abgesehen hat, worauf < es > hin und hinaus will” (Husserl 1959, 102).
Doyon explains this by assigning them to different attitudes: the normativity (or the relative teleology) of perceptual consciousness is revealed “in the natural attitude in lifeworldly contexts,” while the “absolute” teleology is “disclosed in the phenomenological reduction” (Doyon 2018: 174). This is unconvincing. At least in Thing and Space, the relevant analysis is conducted on a transcendental level throughout, but the tension remains.
“Der Händler am Markt hat seine Marktwahrheit; ist sie in ihrer Relation nicht eine gute Wahrheit und die beste, die ihm nützen kann?” (Husserl 1974, 284).
“Wie wenn alle und jede reale Wahrheit, ob Alltagswahrheit des praktischen Lebens, ob Wahrheit noch so hoch entwickelter Wissenschaften wesensmaßig in Relativitäten verbleibt, normativ beziehbar auf ‘regulative Ideen’?” (Husserl 1974, 284; original emphasis).
Distinguishing between inner horizon and outer horizon, we should add that it is the outermost moment of the inner horizon of a given thing-perception.
For a sketch of the task of the ego-oriented analysis of intentionality, see Husserl (1976, 179–180).
This text, probably written between 1914–1916, will be published as Text No. 1of the “Thematische Ausarbeitungen” in the new edition of Ideas II. It has been partly incorporated by Stein/Landgrebe into §19 of Husserl 1952. I will refer to the Stein/Landgrebe version when possible.
“Es ist ein kontinuierliches Ja, wenn man das Wort noch gebrauchen will, eben das, was Übernahme, Hinnahme, Mitwollen sagt, wie unvollkommen die Ausdrücke auch sein mögen.” (Ms. F III 1/255b).
Husserl writes in a manuscript from 1920/21: "Ein Ich hat keine generelle sachhaltige Eigenart; es ist an solcher gänzlich leer.…Andererseits hat es eine Eigenart in seiner Freiheit” (Husserl 1973, 23). See also Husserl 1962, 212.
Cavallaro (2016) has proposed an interpretation of habituality along similar lines. Criticizing Funke’s “transcendental occasionalism”, according to which habituality is constituted automatically and necessarily at the occasion of every lived experience simply by retentional modification, Cavallaro notes that it “reduces the life of the I to something like a mechanical process” (Cavallaro 2016, 251). For Cavallaro, mere temporal constitution is not enough for habituality; rather, “a decisive element” must be added, which is the “teleological striving for self-preservation and self-consistency” (ibid., 239).
This formal perspective, which serves to distinguish self-preservation pertaining to the I from instinctive self-preservation, is not contradicted by Husserl’s claim that the true self of perfect self-consistency and self-loyalty has a genuine vocation (Beruf). Vocation in this sense is that to which I am “exclusively devoted in personal love,” a love that stems from “the innermost center of personality”; this vocation is thus marked as “mine, as that to which I, as who I am, inseparably belong” (Husserl 1988, 28). This material inseparability presupposes formal separability – a point I cannot further elaborate here.
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Huang, D. Normativity and Teleology in Husserl’s Genetic Phenomenology. Husserl Stud 38, 17–35 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-021-09297-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-021-09297-8