Patocka - Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology, excertos por termos relevantes

ABANDON..............2
Now the situation is becoming clear. It turns out that Husserl did not abandon the Cartesian thesis of the self-evident givenness of consciousness for itself. He does not, however, believe that this self-evidence is simply given; rather, in his view, it must be reached by a purification of all objectifying conceptions which, in the naive view, confuse givenness and apprehension. Lived experiences thus purified can then be the object of an adequate intuition. The objects of this adequate intuition will not then be only acts but also, and no less so, all those sense contents as such which Brentano had qualified as physical phenomena, and these sense contents will be no less evidently guaranteed. It will then be not only so called "external" objects that will be intuited nonadequately but also we ourselves, as long as we are apperceived as a part of nature. Both outer objects and our own interiority will be nonadequately intuited insofar as they are things and objectival moments.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 4
By contrast, there are eidetic disciplines in which the opposite is the case, where eidetic intuition is nearly everything and where formal and deductive reasoning are limited to occasional controlling and generally ordering nature. That is especially the case when we are not dealing with exact eide which we could enclose by a simple procedure in appropriate definitions, eide which resist idealization and where there may be so many intuitions accessible through similarities and differences that with respect to the thing we have to abandon the idea of exhausting the entire region in a finite number of basic concepts added to primordial ideal intuitions. For example, Husserl believes that this is the case in all eidetic disciplines dealing with the eidetic structure of lived experience, for what is most important in this discipline is the lived intuition of all relevant differences, of new original relations and qualities (though we need to add that such a discipline does not yet exist in a systematic form).	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 5
ABLE.................4
Transcendence thus is not something that phenomenology can or need fear and avoid altogether, but rather only when it is not the transcendence of eidetic self-givenness. However, since in essential self-givenness we shall be able to grasp all lived experiences and their eide, the fundamental problem of phenomenology will also be within our reach, namely the nature of cognition, the eidos of the process of lived experience in which in mere opinion, in hints, in symbol, in representative perception, in analogy, the object itself is ultimately given. All relations, all mutual references, all conjunctions, all harmony, all purposiveness of cognitive processes in their mutuality, all these will not be ultimately beyond reach of phenomenological reflection but rather will become accessible to it. The meaning of experiential processes tracing the possibility of the thing itself presenting itself to our view can be thus immanently grasped. That will then resolve the problem posed: that of presenting a critical foundation of science and of cognition generally, clarifying the nature of transcendence and the meaning of objectivity. The example of eidetic intuition or perception thus shows that a certain objectivity belongs to the meaning of certain cognitive acts, an objectivity which itself is not a part of such acts as either a concrete or an abstract component, but which on the basis of them is nonetheless corporeally present to us in the original, not in mere representation only, and that in such a way that it evidently cannot be accessible in any other fuller or more adequate manner.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Without engaging in metaphysical speculations about the difference between spatial quantity and temporal qualitativeness, between spatial repetition and inner temporal fusion, Husserl, applying the epoche, grasps the difference between original and derivative time; a distinction similar in this respect to that at which Bergson and James were aiming with their conceptions of dureé and stream of consciousness. The difference between the perspective of the primary temporal consciousness in Husserl and in the two authors cited stems for the most part from the fact that Husserl here Consistently applies an intentional standpoint, that is, analyzes temporal consciousness as a lawlike form of object consciousness so that it is not for him a matter of an irrational, undistantiated fusion with the experiential stream within which we would not be able to distinguish content and form, but is rather itself the basis for all access to objectivity, a form without which the constitution of objects as such would be unthinkable.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 7
The fundamental role of kinesthesis shows, furthermore, that the localizing function of the body is inseparable from the willing body, the body as the "organ of volition." This does not mean that I can treat the body as a mere instrument I control precisely already with the help of the body. The body-as-own is the only object that can be spontaneously mobile, immediately available to the will of the pure I and is the "means for producing a mediate spontaneous movement in other things… . The subject, constituted as a counter-member of material nature, is (as far as we have seen up to now) an I, to which a body belongs as field of localization of its sensations. The I has the ability (‘I can’) to bring the body or its organs freely into motion and to perceive a world by means of such motions." The awareness that "I can" is essentially a bodily awareness. The body-subject is basically what it "can," is able to, and, of course, the body-subject might also be incapable. However, this inability is something different from the absence of all dynamis of poiein and paskhein, it is a privative mode based on a present potency. Should all ability to act disappear from the body, the body would cease to be a body: it would cease to be.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
All positive and objective disciplines thus presuppose a world which is in a certain sense already complete, functioning, ever valid for us, a world which is not the product of theoretical activity but precedes it; a world which not even scientific thinkers ultimately leave wholly behind, even though with the help of their abstractions, idealizations, and other operations yielding precise and effective concepts they move on a theoretical level, for they move also in that preexisting world as human beings and as the verificators of their conceptions. A description and an analysis of this original "natural world" or the world of our life are thus the common desiderata for the philosophical grounding of all science, both natural and social. Until this need has been met, we shall not be able to carry out either a genuine clarification of the foundations of the sciences or present the history of their meanings and ideas.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
ABSENCE..............2
The inability of psychologism to grasp the distinctiveness of the logical becomes evident in its explanation of logical principles, especially of the principle of contradiction. The psychologizers are so intensely devoted to their empiricistic prejudices that they do not hesitate to cite formulations – for instance concerning our inability simultaneously to believe and not to believe the same, or concerning the incompatibility of actual acts of judgment corresponding to contradictory propositions – so that it would be possible to formulate the principle of noncontradiction as "two contradictorily opposed acts of belief cannot coexist" – which not only is not a rigorous and evidently necessary law but even psychologically is at best doubtful, unproved, or erroneous: which, we need not add, refers to the exclusion of the coexistence of contradiction in the same subject at the same time, while the law of noncontradiction excludes with apodictic evidence the contradiction of two propositions and two facts corresponding to them, always and regardless of the subject. And is there not a real coexistence of contradictions, in a way even conscious, in the case of a person who is affected by ambivalent inclinations, attracted and repelled simultaneously by the same motive? Is not a person rendered unsure by skepticism simultaneously in a state of believing and not believing? – The empiricist explanation of the syllogistic process is no less perverse. It speaks of the "generation of evident givenness" in the case of the conjunction of certain premises and of the absence of evident givenness in the case of others, not sanctioned by logic. It is again as if we were dealing with real processes and as if evident givenness were a product analogous to the product of a chemical synthesis – which is not sanctioned by logic – with the difference that while in the case of a chemical reaction we can control the reagents and know their precise amounts and presence, in the case of mental processes the circumstances of the process remain vague and obscure.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 2
The fundamental role of kinesthesis shows, furthermore, that the localizing function of the body is inseparable from the willing body, the body as the "organ of volition." This does not mean that I can treat the body as a mere instrument I control precisely already with the help of the body. The body-as-own is the only object that can be spontaneously mobile, immediately available to the will of the pure I and is the "means for producing a mediate spontaneous movement in other things… . The subject, constituted as a counter-member of material nature, is (as far as we have seen up to now) an I, to which a body belongs as field of localization of its sensations. The I has the ability (‘I can’) to bring the body or its organs freely into motion and to perceive a world by means of such motions." The awareness that "I can" is essentially a bodily awareness. The body-subject is basically what it "can," is able to, and, of course, the body-subject might also be incapable. However, this inability is something different from the absence of all dynamis of poiein and paskhein, it is a privative mode based on a present potency. Should all ability to act disappear from the body, the body would cease to be a body: it would cease to be.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
ABSENT...............4
Subsequent thinkers posed the question of the world in a new way: as a matter of a revitalization of withered human relations, restoring them to an inward form in which the other, without ceasing to be other, loses its strangeness and externality and becomes no less an internal content of our lives than we of its. That gave rise to the problem of a concretely personal conception of the world which transcends the abstractly personal conception as no more than its starting point and as the ground that makes it possible, though it finds the overall meaning, otherwise absent from it, only in a community of mutual respect and mutually interchanging individualities.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 1
Among the rules of verbal usage some have the special significance of saving us the need to refer back to perception, to the realization of whatever a linguistic expression presupposes as its meaning correlate. The theory of linguistic meaning as a mere operation stems from this derivative, secondary phenomenon, from the rules governing meaning drained of intuition so that the intended correlate is almost wholly absent from them. It is as with the nominalist theory of arithmetical concepts worked out by Helmholtz and Kronecker; the operations have obscured the meaning of that with which we are operating.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 3
So it turns out that the philosophy which set out from the search for the absolute, apodictic (unchanging) evident givenness of things themselves, from a wish for the gaze in which they give themselves in themselves, finds itself, precisely where it uncovers the primordial origin of all givenness, among such "things" for which we lack terms and apperceptive schemata, where clear seeing ceases because distinguishability is absent – "we lack words for all that," Husserl tells us.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 7
Here the difference between visual and tactile data is remarkable. The doubling we have pointed out in the tactile region, where the given includes not only an object but simultaneously both a sensing and a sensitive body, does not hold in the visual realm. In the visual realm we do not see ourselves, not even with the help of a mirror, because even here we have only an object which is not connected to us but is rather always at a distance. A visual appearance of the one who sees is absent in the seeing. The eye as a seeing organ is given internally in a kinesthetic-tactile fashion. This duality of kinesthetic-tactile is at the same time an indissoluble, unitary bond that is the basis for the aesthesiological appearance of the body. The kinesthetic-tactile sphere plays the role of the self-sensing foundation even for the "higher," distantiating senses of seeing and hearing.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
ABSOLUTE.............53
Phenomenology will no longer revive the project of an all-embracing logic of being. Though it will not be blind to the problem of logic, it will take it for a purely objective doctrine of meaning, of meaning as expressed and formulated, while the activities in which meaning takes on its actual form in a lawlike manner remain outside its purview. It will turn, rather, to psychology, though profoundly transforming it into a doctrine concerning the constitution of a meaningful order of experience in things. Thus it will build on Descartes as well as on Kant, though in its own original manner which will gradually exclude all possibilities of slipping, in tracing the consequences of radical reflection, back into the all-exhaustive form and configurations of the absolute logos instead of that attention to the elements of streaming personal and living experience in which its reflection must move.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 1
Thus, Husserl insists, there is no marked noetic difference between outer and inner intuition – such that, as Brentano assures us, outer intuition would be devoid of evident givenness, dubitable, while inner intuition would guarantee, with absolute evident givenness, the existence of its object. The point Husserl wants to make with that is that external intuition is also certain – qua cogitatum. Inner intuition is also dubitable insofar as it contains an "apperception" or a "comprehension" of its cogitatum (as a thing integrated in the world as a causally produced component).	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 4
We might ask whether Husserl did not at this point succumb to the prejudice of the given derived from contemporary positivism: that whatever is to be, to be valid, must be capable of being "given" by some positive content. Perhaps that is why Husserl also insists that a difference is possible only on the basis of a common content, that is, that there is not something like an absolute, pure difference.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 5
What, then, of the pure positing of being in which the "this here" presents itself? Here there is undoubtedly no content which we could compare; being is not a real predicate; this thesis, however – not as a subjective act of acknowledgment but rather as an absolute actus essendi – can be described as different from all its contents, precisely different as other, not coextensive with a content.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 5
The first stage presents the idea of a critique of cognition and of philosophy as this critique. Thus philosophy is located on a wholly different level than objective cognition, which approaches things in a direct, objectival posture and includes all scientific disciplines, both empirical and a priori. Husserl builds up the distinction between the two on the Cartesian methodic doubt which suspends even those judgments which there is no practical need to doubt, as soon as they show they might be less than perfectly certain, even if only theoretically. Husserl, however, replaces the Cartesian skepticism with a mere critical suspension of judgment (epoche), a suspension of the validity of such judgments for the critique of cognition which may not derive from them any knowledge, any premises for its knowing, but must restrict itself to what is truly indubitable, evident, in the Cartesian cogito – the perception of lived experience in the course of such experience in simple awareness. Thus mere perception is to become the absolute, self-certifying source of cognition, drawing on nothing else, sustaining itself solely from itself, in pure immanence.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
On the other hand, however, transcendence also means an absolute and clear givenness, self-givenness in an absolute sense. This givenness, precluding any reasonable doubt, is a fully immediate perception and grasping of the intended objectivity as it itself is, the originary evident givenness as distinct from cognition which intends or posits a thing but does not perceive it; in this givenness we always go beyond the limits of what is given, strictly speaking, what can be directly perceived and grasped. Here transcendence and immanence in no sense exclude each other: what is transcendent, what is not before us in the full sense of the word, perceivable and graspable, might still be immanent in a sense (as the objectival meaning of a certain cognizing act).	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
On the other hand, however, transcendence also means an absolute and clear givenness, self-givenness in an absolute sense. This givenness, precluding any reasonable doubt, is a fully immediate perception and grasping of the intended objectivity as it itself is, the originary evident givenness as distinct from cognition which intends or posits a thing but does not perceive it; in this givenness we always go beyond the limits of what is given, strictly speaking, what can be directly perceived and grasped. Here transcendence and immanence in no sense exclude each other: what is transcendent, what is not before us in the full sense of the word, perceivable and graspable, might still be immanent in a sense (as the objectival meaning of a certain cognizing act).	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
The second stage of Husserl’s exposition of the concept of reduction can be described as a progression from the exclusion of real transcendence to the exclusion of transcendence altogether. // Here it is first of all necessary to carry out a modification of the Cartesian cogitatio. Descartes’ turn from dubitable transcendence to indubitable immanence is a turn to real immanence, to immanence within a finite mental substance linked to the things of the physical world by a real interaction in the same objective time. Descartes’ immanence thus became the starting point of modern psychology. But humans in the world, mental substance as the ultimate subjectum of all cogitationes, are not themselves cogitationes, are not absolute givens to which alone we wish to or need to restrict ourselves. That is what distinguishes psychological reflection from the reflection on pure phenomenon, from phenomenological reflection. Psychological reflection accepts the validity of the equation I = subject cogitatio = psychophysical reality. Pure reflection is a reflection on cogitatio purely as such. Psychological reflection passes from the object to the psychophysical subject, thus it is a transition from real transcendence to real immanence. Phenomenological reflection reduces even this real immanence, first to pure reell immanence, to whatever is simply and purely a component of the lived experience of cogitatio as such (Husserl here distinguishes pure and psychological reflection also by noting that the first is the awareness that there is cogitatio, the other the awareness that there is my cogitatio, that cogitans sum, thus positing a subject transcendent to various cogitationes; later he will distinguish sharply between the subject of cogitationes as a person, a thing in the world, and as an I, the phenomenon of "transcendence in immanence" which appertains to the meaning of every cogitatio). So it turns out that to every psychic lived experience there corresponds, after the phenomenological reduction, a pure phenomenon which is nothing other than an absolute givenness of the immanent eidos of the psychological phenomenon. This absolute givenness is precisely what manifests itself in the absolute self-certainty of perception, in pure intuition.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
The second stage of Husserl’s exposition of the concept of reduction can be described as a progression from the exclusion of real transcendence to the exclusion of transcendence altogether. // Here it is first of all necessary to carry out a modification of the Cartesian cogitatio. Descartes’ turn from dubitable transcendence to indubitable immanence is a turn to real immanence, to immanence within a finite mental substance linked to the things of the physical world by a real interaction in the same objective time. Descartes’ immanence thus became the starting point of modern psychology. But humans in the world, mental substance as the ultimate subjectum of all cogitationes, are not themselves cogitationes, are not absolute givens to which alone we wish to or need to restrict ourselves. That is what distinguishes psychological reflection from the reflection on pure phenomenon, from phenomenological reflection. Psychological reflection accepts the validity of the equation I = subject cogitatio = psychophysical reality. Pure reflection is a reflection on cogitatio purely as such. Psychological reflection passes from the object to the psychophysical subject, thus it is a transition from real transcendence to real immanence. Phenomenological reflection reduces even this real immanence, first to pure reell immanence, to whatever is simply and purely a component of the lived experience of cogitatio as such (Husserl here distinguishes pure and psychological reflection also by noting that the first is the awareness that there is cogitatio, the other the awareness that there is my cogitatio, that cogitans sum, thus positing a subject transcendent to various cogitationes; later he will distinguish sharply between the subject of cogitationes as a person, a thing in the world, and as an I, the phenomenon of "transcendence in immanence" which appertains to the meaning of every cogitatio). So it turns out that to every psychic lived experience there corresponds, after the phenomenological reduction, a pure phenomenon which is nothing other than an absolute givenness of the immanent eidos of the psychological phenomenon. This absolute givenness is precisely what manifests itself in the absolute self-certainty of perception, in pure intuition.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
The second stage of Husserl’s exposition of the concept of reduction can be described as a progression from the exclusion of real transcendence to the exclusion of transcendence altogether. // Here it is first of all necessary to carry out a modification of the Cartesian cogitatio. Descartes’ turn from dubitable transcendence to indubitable immanence is a turn to real immanence, to immanence within a finite mental substance linked to the things of the physical world by a real interaction in the same objective time. Descartes’ immanence thus became the starting point of modern psychology. But humans in the world, mental substance as the ultimate subjectum of all cogitationes, are not themselves cogitationes, are not absolute givens to which alone we wish to or need to restrict ourselves. That is what distinguishes psychological reflection from the reflection on pure phenomenon, from phenomenological reflection. Psychological reflection accepts the validity of the equation I = subject cogitatio = psychophysical reality. Pure reflection is a reflection on cogitatio purely as such. Psychological reflection passes from the object to the psychophysical subject, thus it is a transition from real transcendence to real immanence. Phenomenological reflection reduces even this real immanence, first to pure reell immanence, to whatever is simply and purely a component of the lived experience of cogitatio as such (Husserl here distinguishes pure and psychological reflection also by noting that the first is the awareness that there is cogitatio, the other the awareness that there is my cogitatio, that cogitans sum, thus positing a subject transcendent to various cogitationes; later he will distinguish sharply between the subject of cogitationes as a person, a thing in the world, and as an I, the phenomenon of "transcendence in immanence" which appertains to the meaning of every cogitatio). So it turns out that to every psychic lived experience there corresponds, after the phenomenological reduction, a pure phenomenon which is nothing other than an absolute givenness of the immanent eidos of the psychological phenomenon. This absolute givenness is precisely what manifests itself in the absolute self-certainty of perception, in pure intuition.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
The second stage of Husserl’s exposition of the concept of reduction can be described as a progression from the exclusion of real transcendence to the exclusion of transcendence altogether. // Here it is first of all necessary to carry out a modification of the Cartesian cogitatio. Descartes’ turn from dubitable transcendence to indubitable immanence is a turn to real immanence, to immanence within a finite mental substance linked to the things of the physical world by a real interaction in the same objective time. Descartes’ immanence thus became the starting point of modern psychology. But humans in the world, mental substance as the ultimate subjectum of all cogitationes, are not themselves cogitationes, are not absolute givens to which alone we wish to or need to restrict ourselves. That is what distinguishes psychological reflection from the reflection on pure phenomenon, from phenomenological reflection. Psychological reflection accepts the validity of the equation I = subject cogitatio = psychophysical reality. Pure reflection is a reflection on cogitatio purely as such. Psychological reflection passes from the object to the psychophysical subject, thus it is a transition from real transcendence to real immanence. Phenomenological reflection reduces even this real immanence, first to pure reell immanence, to whatever is simply and purely a component of the lived experience of cogitatio as such (Husserl here distinguishes pure and psychological reflection also by noting that the first is the awareness that there is cogitatio, the other the awareness that there is my cogitatio, that cogitans sum, thus positing a subject transcendent to various cogitationes; later he will distinguish sharply between the subject of cogitationes as a person, a thing in the world, and as an I, the phenomenon of "transcendence in immanence" which appertains to the meaning of every cogitatio). So it turns out that to every psychic lived experience there corresponds, after the phenomenological reduction, a pure phenomenon which is nothing other than an absolute givenness of the immanent eidos of the psychological phenomenon. This absolute givenness is precisely what manifests itself in the absolute self-certainty of perception, in pure intuition.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Now how can we make this absolute givenness an object of science? Is not givenness a Heraclitean flux from which we cannot step out, which changes at every moment so that while it is always absolutely given, it is given differently in each instance? Does not every science by contrast seek to posit an objectivity identical with itself, an objectivity identical for the various phases of the stream of various subjects, and so to transcendence? Then is not phenomenology as a science a contradiction? // The task of phenomenology is not to eliminate all objectivity but to ground objectivity itself in immanence, to demonstrate the birth of transcendence in immanence. There is surely a point in doubting a phenomenon which intends something not contained in itself; there is, however, no point in doubting what is contained with full evidence in a phenomenon, what I see as presently given in it. That is how a conscious lived experience is presently given in consciousness, as a part of awareness, reellly contained in it, both constituting a unity – if we are aware of our perception, then awareness seizes perception in the act, perception does not cease perceiving, only something more, something additional is present, namely, perception aware of itself. Thus the grasping of lived experience is itself an absolute cognition, an absolute givenness, and therewith also all that such grasping involves, that is, judging and comparing in purely present givenness – judgments about presently grasped lived experiences; however, if I observe an intuitive judgment reflexively, then I note also that it is based on intuitions and imaginings, and this recognition is again an evident, absolute recognition in pure intuition. Generally, then, a part of this intuitive grasping is a seeing of a universal eidetic nature in a singular experience in its singularity, seeing the difference of perception and conception, of a judgment and its moments, of fantasy, of mere intention, of the real and quasi-real, and so forth … But for this possibility, the phenomenologist would really drown in the Heraclitean stream. For what reaches intuition, absolute reflective self-givenness, is not merely some singular presence but correlatively also the eidetic nature, the eidos of lived experiencing as such.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Now how can we make this absolute givenness an object of science? Is not givenness a Heraclitean flux from which we cannot step out, which changes at every moment so that while it is always absolutely given, it is given differently in each instance? Does not every science by contrast seek to posit an objectivity identical with itself, an objectivity identical for the various phases of the stream of various subjects, and so to transcendence? Then is not phenomenology as a science a contradiction? // The task of phenomenology is not to eliminate all objectivity but to ground objectivity itself in immanence, to demonstrate the birth of transcendence in immanence. There is surely a point in doubting a phenomenon which intends something not contained in itself; there is, however, no point in doubting what is contained with full evidence in a phenomenon, what I see as presently given in it. That is how a conscious lived experience is presently given in consciousness, as a part of awareness, reellly contained in it, both constituting a unity – if we are aware of our perception, then awareness seizes perception in the act, perception does not cease perceiving, only something more, something additional is present, namely, perception aware of itself. Thus the grasping of lived experience is itself an absolute cognition, an absolute givenness, and therewith also all that such grasping involves, that is, judging and comparing in purely present givenness – judgments about presently grasped lived experiences; however, if I observe an intuitive judgment reflexively, then I note also that it is based on intuitions and imaginings, and this recognition is again an evident, absolute recognition in pure intuition. Generally, then, a part of this intuitive grasping is a seeing of a universal eidetic nature in a singular experience in its singularity, seeing the difference of perception and conception, of a judgment and its moments, of fantasy, of mere intention, of the real and quasi-real, and so forth … But for this possibility, the phenomenologist would really drown in the Heraclitean stream. For what reaches intuition, absolute reflective self-givenness, is not merely some singular presence but correlatively also the eidetic nature, the eidos of lived experiencing as such.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Now how can we make this absolute givenness an object of science? Is not givenness a Heraclitean flux from which we cannot step out, which changes at every moment so that while it is always absolutely given, it is given differently in each instance? Does not every science by contrast seek to posit an objectivity identical with itself, an objectivity identical for the various phases of the stream of various subjects, and so to transcendence? Then is not phenomenology as a science a contradiction? // The task of phenomenology is not to eliminate all objectivity but to ground objectivity itself in immanence, to demonstrate the birth of transcendence in immanence. There is surely a point in doubting a phenomenon which intends something not contained in itself; there is, however, no point in doubting what is contained with full evidence in a phenomenon, what I see as presently given in it. That is how a conscious lived experience is presently given in consciousness, as a part of awareness, reellly contained in it, both constituting a unity – if we are aware of our perception, then awareness seizes perception in the act, perception does not cease perceiving, only something more, something additional is present, namely, perception aware of itself. Thus the grasping of lived experience is itself an absolute cognition, an absolute givenness, and therewith also all that such grasping involves, that is, judging and comparing in purely present givenness – judgments about presently grasped lived experiences; however, if I observe an intuitive judgment reflexively, then I note also that it is based on intuitions and imaginings, and this recognition is again an evident, absolute recognition in pure intuition. Generally, then, a part of this intuitive grasping is a seeing of a universal eidetic nature in a singular experience in its singularity, seeing the difference of perception and conception, of a judgment and its moments, of fantasy, of mere intention, of the real and quasi-real, and so forth … But for this possibility, the phenomenologist would really drown in the Heraclitean stream. For what reaches intuition, absolute reflective self-givenness, is not merely some singular presence but correlatively also the eidetic nature, the eidos of lived experiencing as such.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Now how can we make this absolute givenness an object of science? Is not givenness a Heraclitean flux from which we cannot step out, which changes at every moment so that while it is always absolutely given, it is given differently in each instance? Does not every science by contrast seek to posit an objectivity identical with itself, an objectivity identical for the various phases of the stream of various subjects, and so to transcendence? Then is not phenomenology as a science a contradiction? // The task of phenomenology is not to eliminate all objectivity but to ground objectivity itself in immanence, to demonstrate the birth of transcendence in immanence. There is surely a point in doubting a phenomenon which intends something not contained in itself; there is, however, no point in doubting what is contained with full evidence in a phenomenon, what I see as presently given in it. That is how a conscious lived experience is presently given in consciousness, as a part of awareness, reellly contained in it, both constituting a unity – if we are aware of our perception, then awareness seizes perception in the act, perception does not cease perceiving, only something more, something additional is present, namely, perception aware of itself. Thus the grasping of lived experience is itself an absolute cognition, an absolute givenness, and therewith also all that such grasping involves, that is, judging and comparing in purely present givenness – judgments about presently grasped lived experiences; however, if I observe an intuitive judgment reflexively, then I note also that it is based on intuitions and imaginings, and this recognition is again an evident, absolute recognition in pure intuition. Generally, then, a part of this intuitive grasping is a seeing of a universal eidetic nature in a singular experience in its singularity, seeing the difference of perception and conception, of a judgment and its moments, of fantasy, of mere intention, of the real and quasi-real, and so forth … But for this possibility, the phenomenologist would really drown in the Heraclitean stream. For what reaches intuition, absolute reflective self-givenness, is not merely some singular presence but correlatively also the eidetic nature, the eidos of lived experiencing as such.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Now how can we make this absolute givenness an object of science? Is not givenness a Heraclitean flux from which we cannot step out, which changes at every moment so that while it is always absolutely given, it is given differently in each instance? Does not every science by contrast seek to posit an objectivity identical with itself, an objectivity identical for the various phases of the stream of various subjects, and so to transcendence? Then is not phenomenology as a science a contradiction? // The task of phenomenology is not to eliminate all objectivity but to ground objectivity itself in immanence, to demonstrate the birth of transcendence in immanence. There is surely a point in doubting a phenomenon which intends something not contained in itself; there is, however, no point in doubting what is contained with full evidence in a phenomenon, what I see as presently given in it. That is how a conscious lived experience is presently given in consciousness, as a part of awareness, reellly contained in it, both constituting a unity – if we are aware of our perception, then awareness seizes perception in the act, perception does not cease perceiving, only something more, something additional is present, namely, perception aware of itself. Thus the grasping of lived experience is itself an absolute cognition, an absolute givenness, and therewith also all that such grasping involves, that is, judging and comparing in purely present givenness – judgments about presently grasped lived experiences; however, if I observe an intuitive judgment reflexively, then I note also that it is based on intuitions and imaginings, and this recognition is again an evident, absolute recognition in pure intuition. Generally, then, a part of this intuitive grasping is a seeing of a universal eidetic nature in a singular experience in its singularity, seeing the difference of perception and conception, of a judgment and its moments, of fantasy, of mere intention, of the real and quasi-real, and so forth … But for this possibility, the phenomenologist would really drown in the Heraclitean stream. For what reaches intuition, absolute reflective self-givenness, is not merely some singular presence but correlatively also the eidetic nature, the eidos of lived experiencing as such.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Individual experiences do differ in their nature in their intentional eidetic nature, the intentional meaning they have, or, in other words, in what is immanent to them. Thus the intentionality of consciousness conjoined with eidetic intuition leads on beyond the mere givenness of the immanent. // Here the third stage begins, from absolute immanence to the discovery of transcendence in immanence.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Thus if it is to be shown that the absolute givenness of reflexive consciousness really entails the primacy of subjective being to the objective, then this primacy must be justified still more closely. The description of the reduction presented in Ideas I is devoted to this justification. Only from their standpoint can we also understand why Husserl devotes so much space to describing the idea of the world and of the dependence of this idea on the regional eidos of the material object, of material nature.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
While the eidetic nature of being given by means of appearances is such that none of them gives the thing as something absolute rather than in a one-sided presentation, the eidetic nature of immanent givenness is such that it presents precisely something absolute which simply cannot be presented from various sides and perspectives, something that proves itself something that cannot be canceled.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
While the eidetic nature of being given by means of appearances is such that none of them gives the thing as something absolute rather than in a one-sided presentation, the eidetic nature of immanent givenness is such that it presents precisely something absolute which simply cannot be presented from various sides and perspectives, something that proves itself something that cannot be canceled.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
It is clear, Husserl says, that the sense contents in which things appear are not themselves given perspectively and that, as experienced, they are beyond all doubt in an absolute sense, while the things in which they appear are not. The difference between the way a thing and a lived experience are given is not one of fullness and completeness, of temporal extension and temporal immediacy; it is, rather, a difference of the immediate (experiential) and of the mediate (objective), between what gives itself and what is given on the basis of something else.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
That leads to something else as well. For all its incompleteness, a lived experience as such is indubitable; it makes absolutely no sense to imagine that our I, in its lived experiencing, would have only fantasies about itself, constantly feigning its past, etc – for even if it were to feign the objects of its past, its lived experience of what it feigns will be real and can be grasped by an absolute reflection such as grasps what is (To be sure, our own physical corporeality does not belong to what is thus experientially, absolutely grasped: that is no less transcendent than every other thing). By contrast, objective existence is never an existence which givenness demands as necessary – givenness, bodily presence, never guarantees it, it is always possible that all that is present will prove to be an illusion, a hallucination, a continuous dream, etc	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Everything that exists for me at all in the world of things, the world of realities, is in principle only a presumptive reality; by contrast I myself … or, rather, my lived experiential actuality, is an absolute reality, given unconditionally in an absolutely incontrovertible positing.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
These unspoken assumptions, especially the second one, also explain why, in Ideas I, the theory of the eidos, as a necessary a priori structure which is the eidetic foundation of all knowledge of contingent facts, precedes the philosophical theory proper, the theory of the phenomenological reduction, the winning of pure immanence, of absolute being and of reason as such. For Husserl, this continuity was so self-evident that, in presenting the doctrine of eidos, he even forgot to call to attention that the basic concretely regional concept "thing" is a structure of a world or, better, of the world, doing it only as an afterthought in a critical supplement published in his Nachlaß. There he himself objects against himself that eidos as it is presented here ignores the fact that the world as a unitary universum (a universum of compossible possibilities) had not been explained earlier so that the regional concepts are not presented as universal structures of the world. As a result, it is not clear that all being must really fit within regional concepts as they are presented in the first chapter of Ideas I; in addition to regions known to us there might very well exist others, possibly ones wholly inaccessible to us.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
The difference between the relative, mediate, contingent, presumptive, reellly transcendent being of the world and the absolute, immediate, necessary, certain, reellly immanent being of lived experience is what Ideas I seeks to elaborate and what is not yet contained in the presentation of the reduction in The Idea of Phenomenology.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
Only this difference then fully justifies Husserl’s "phenomenological idealism": it is philosophically unthinkable to imagine an independent existence of things, that is, to think things absolutely, to think absolutely what by its eidetic nature is not and cannot be absolute, lived experience. In light of this difference, then, transcendence really becomes the product of immanence on which all that is transcendent depends by the very nature of its being. The constitution of objectivities becomes really a production of objects in consciousness.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
The theory of reduction, as it is presented in Ideas I, then inevitably leads to an immanentization of the object in spite of the transcendence of its self-givenness. If we reduce all conscious reality to absolute, pure phenomena, then, after the reduction, transcendence does not disappear; it is not crossed off and destroyed, but rather continues to belong to immanence, though no longer as real transcendence but as the phenomenon of transcendence, as the objective correlate of what is purely, reellly immanent, that is, of lived experience as such. This objective correlate remaining after the reduction, a correlate of which it no longer makes sense to ask about existence or nonexistence, is what Husserl calls noema, while the pure, reellly immanent lived experience with its components and moments he calls noesis, translating the problem of the eidetic correlation of experiential and objective eidetic structures into that of the eidetic relation of the noesis and the noema in absolute, nonrelative being itself.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
The theory of reduction, as it is presented in Ideas I, then inevitably leads to an immanentization of the object in spite of the transcendence of its self-givenness. If we reduce all conscious reality to absolute, pure phenomena, then, after the reduction, transcendence does not disappear; it is not crossed off and destroyed, but rather continues to belong to immanence, though no longer as real transcendence but as the phenomenon of transcendence, as the objective correlate of what is purely, reellly immanent, that is, of lived experience as such. This objective correlate remaining after the reduction, a correlate of which it no longer makes sense to ask about existence or nonexistence, is what Husserl calls noema, while the pure, reellly immanent lived experience with its components and moments he calls noesis, translating the problem of the eidetic correlation of experiential and objective eidetic structures into that of the eidetic relation of the noesis and the noema in absolute, nonrelative being itself.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
That is how Husserl seeks to demonstrate that the objectivity of the object is thinkable only if we start out from the subjectivity of the subject; it is possible to find the object in the subject but never the subject in the object (for instance, mind in nature). Here Husserl revives Fichte’s attempt at understanding the world from the mind and its own essential structure which brings it about that the mind identifies itself with its product, forgetting its own eidetic nature, its primacy or freedom, and makes itself an object, that is, alienates itself from itself. The phenomenological reduction is thus an act of absolute freedom in which the alienated mind/spirit returns to itself, discovering its absolute essence, its absolute being.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
That is how Husserl seeks to demonstrate that the objectivity of the object is thinkable only if we start out from the subjectivity of the subject; it is possible to find the object in the subject but never the subject in the object (for instance, mind in nature). Here Husserl revives Fichte’s attempt at understanding the world from the mind and its own essential structure which brings it about that the mind identifies itself with its product, forgetting its own eidetic nature, its primacy or freedom, and makes itself an object, that is, alienates itself from itself. The phenomenological reduction is thus an act of absolute freedom in which the alienated mind/spirit returns to itself, discovering its absolute essence, its absolute being.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
That is how Husserl seeks to demonstrate that the objectivity of the object is thinkable only if we start out from the subjectivity of the subject; it is possible to find the object in the subject but never the subject in the object (for instance, mind in nature). Here Husserl revives Fichte’s attempt at understanding the world from the mind and its own essential structure which brings it about that the mind identifies itself with its product, forgetting its own eidetic nature, its primacy or freedom, and makes itself an object, that is, alienates itself from itself. The phenomenological reduction is thus an act of absolute freedom in which the alienated mind/spirit returns to itself, discovering its absolute essence, its absolute being.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
To be sure, the method which Husserl follows in his attempt at uncovering the absolute being of the subject is fundamentally different from Fichte’s in that it does not construct the individual stages of alienation but rather studies various forms of objectivity in correlation with relevant subjective structures, empirically, in pure reflection. Husserl’s distrust of conceptual constructs, which led to the demand for a fully intuitive method, lies at the basis of the phenomenological conception of the absolute consciousness which cannot be studied as an object, eidos, idea, or an objective or structural regularity, however conceived.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
To be sure, the method which Husserl follows in his attempt at uncovering the absolute being of the subject is fundamentally different from Fichte’s in that it does not construct the individual stages of alienation but rather studies various forms of objectivity in correlation with relevant subjective structures, empirically, in pure reflection. Husserl’s distrust of conceptual constructs, which led to the demand for a fully intuitive method, lies at the basis of the phenomenological conception of the absolute consciousness which cannot be studied as an object, eidos, idea, or an objective or structural regularity, however conceived.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 6
(3) Thus the next task is to describe the progressive constitution of temporal formations. In On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, Husserl articulates it as follows (we are inverting his order): (a)the absolute flow or stream of consciousness which constitutes itself simultaneously with time; / (b)the constitutive phenomenal manifolds (Erscheinungsman-nifaltigkeiten; Ed) of various levels, immanent unities in pre-empirical time (that is, enduring but not yet integrated into a common objective temporal form); / (c)experiential entities in objective time, and those at various levels: the experiential thing of the individual subject, the intersubjectively identical thing, the thing of physics.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 7
Secondly, it is evident that the entire system of what is constituted, in whatever temporal structures, depends on what originally constitutes, and only this consciousness, originally constituting all objectivities (including its own), can be truly called absolute. Even the "stream of consciousness" on which we reflect and which is constituted in an entirely different orientation than that to the objective and to objectival unities, is already something constituted, for as a stream it surely goes beyond the sphere of presence and is not identical with its reflective moment. In this sense we need to pose further questions, examining especially this unity in which our own living is constituted, our simultaneously nonobjective, subjective, and yet always to some extent "objective" life stream, and this investigation will present phenomenology with its most difficult problems, placing in question the apparently most evident principles and givens on which phenomenology depended at its start.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 7
So it turns out that the philosophy which set out from the search for the absolute, apodictic (unchanging) evident givenness of things themselves, from a wish for the gaze in which they give themselves in themselves, finds itself, precisely where it uncovers the primordial origin of all givenness, among such "things" for which we lack terms and apperceptive schemata, where clear seeing ceases because distinguishability is absent – "we lack words for all that," Husserl tells us.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 7
The way that Husserl carries out these ideas in his systematics leads to an immanentization, that is, a subjectivization of being. Husserl’s striving for such an immanentization of being seems to culminate precisely in the reduction not only of all objective being to a constitutive stream of transcendental subjectivity but even of this flowing transcendental life to the antecedent I of the "absolute" nunc stans.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 7
On the other hand, however, this instance also shows us that dialectical relations cannot be understood simply as the almighty power of an absolute concept which penetrates even where finite mind cannot tread, to the synthesis of all that seems opposed. In the given instance, dialectics does not demonstrate the power of the mind to force a thing to manifest itself where it closes up before finite reflection – for it demonstrates the powerlessness of reflection before its own reality, the impossibility of objectifying a being which is always already ahead of itself and which thus eludes all efforts of the concept at embracing it. Dialectics is not only an overcoming of finite intuition but also a recognition of the dark moment in the structure of objectivity.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 7
However, in the case of a temporal subject such as we are, a subject of a living present which is in principle ever new as on the first day of creation and at the same time constantly passing, even ever already passed into objectivity of some order, subjective being is possible only as corporeal. Its subjectivity is freedom and freedom is always acting; acting, however, is possible only when I have the power, when I can, and I can only when I have a body at my disposal, a body that obeys me; when, that is, my I is the subject of corporeal habitualities. That in turn means that I cannot be only an absolute presence but must also be a substrate of what I have accumulated already; and since I can accumulate only on the basis of an already present definite ability to use a body, we can say that even innate dispositions are already here and in that sense past – I can be a free being only on the basis of a past, on the ground of a relation to it. Thus a free being, a free I, is corporeal in its entire substance; however, the primordial corporeity of a free being, capable of speaking of itself as "I," calling itself a subject, is a subjectival corporeity on whose basis and on the ground of an absolutely near objectivity perennially constituted in it, there first arises a relation to our own corporeity as fully equivalent with other objects in the world.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
However, the reduction to the sphere of what belongs to me personally, to purely private experience, reveals not only the difference between experiencing objects and experiencing the body-subject – it reveals also one other distinction, one so important that it contains the source of the entire extensive significative dimension which ultimately deeply modifies our experience of ourselves as corporeal beings. That is the dimension of the experience of the other as such, as the other I. In its significative implication, this experience is so deeply interwoven with and built into our individual experience that we cannot reach its primordial nature without radical abstractive operations. For we see even ourselves, in our most ordinary experiences, "through the eyes of others," that is, we are for ourselves roughly what others see of us and in us, what they do or can encounter in lived experience: we are, even for ourselves, a bodily object visible like other things, accessible in perspectives, placed, in principle, on the same level with other things. At the same time, all objects of my experience are given objects, accessible to all; neither my perspective nor anyone else’s is in any way privileged, objects are something absolute within the relativity of all private perspectives. If we now want to reach the originary experience of the other, we must reduce our own experience not only to the sphere of private experience but, within this private region, to the "primordial" sphere, that is, the region of what belongs to me, a region within the privacy of the originally given. Only then can we observe the specific experiences by which the experience of the other is built up in significative implications within this primordiality.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
However, we can find and trace yet another path to the absolute lived realm of subjectivity, one independent of objectivity. Husserl seeks to point out the distinctiveness of this way by analyzing the idea of interest, in turn placing the analysis of interest which he in turn places in the context of the recognition of the constant self-conflict that is a part of the nature of the life of our I. The "I" is always in some sense also someone other. The I acts; that means that all taking of position, all knowing, valuing, practically deciding standpoints belong to it; however, already this range of attitudes it can assume as the same I shows that it cannot live simultaneously in all of them and that assuming different attitudes represents its partitioning. This partitioning can be such that while the acting (and nonobjective, functioning) I might not be assuming a certain stance at this moment, neither does it distantiate itself from it already by not living in it; nonthematically, I can continue to agree with that I which I do not happen to be at the moment, whose role I am not exercising when I pass over from the attitude of cognition into one of valuation and vice versa. However, it is also possible that the I might assume two conflicting postures: in simple perception a skeptic assumes or practices a naive belief in the world which he does not share but rather rejects in a philosophically reflective attitude. Thus the I can even reject itself in various attitudes and live in opposition to itself and especially reflection, the great domain of self-division, is fecund in such situations. So, for instance, every memory is a self-objectification and a self-pluralization, for to remember something means to remember oneself (nonthematically) together with the thing, the self that lived that past event (for memory is a quasi-presence), if I thus hold in memory my past I, I can assume a critical view of myself as past, as the I of my past memory. – Therefore, however the subject is partitioned by standpoints and presentifications (here we see that our life becomes partitioned and pluralized the moment it steps over the bounds of living presence), it yet remains one with itself, it is ever the same I-as-own reflecting on itself, moving from latent to overt, criticizing or agreeing with itself. The normal case, to be sure, is that the reflecting I is not only subjectively the same as the reflected I, but also that the reflecting I is even drawn by the reflected I into its own attitudes, taking them over. But even when it does not accept but criticizes them, there remains through all the differences of attitude the identity of interest. Thus for instance the skeptics do not agree with the naive perceptual I in its belief in the world but rather deny it – yet that means that they are still interested in the positing of the world, that their criticism is guided by this interest. Interest means a unity of ends; intentional activity which has the same goal manifests a unitary interest, for instance an interest in knowing the world, in knowing things as they are in themselves, as distinct from a valuing or a practical, active interest.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
Now we can say that the inevitable internal division of the I in its various attitudes presents a certain philosophical possibility which we can use in service of the epoche and of its clarification from a new perspective. If we define the attitude in which naive consciousness lives in the world in terms of the interest in what there is, the world in which a worldly thinker and even a skeptic both live, then we can also define an attitude from which all interest in and focus on the knowing of such existing beings have been removed. It does not cease to be real for reflected consciousness, but for reflecting consciousness it has not the least significance, reflecting consciousness does not identify with it in the least but rather maintains an absolute abstaining distance with respect to its attitudes. By contrast, this reflecting consciousness in no sense loses all cognitive interest, though its interest does not concern knowing the objects in the world with which reflected consciousness is preoccupied: it has to do exclusively with the reflected consciousness which as such becomes its thema. The interest of a reflecting thinker concerns exclusively thematized consciousness so that, with respect to the interests of reflected consciousness, the thinker becomes a pure disinterested observer. With that we have reached a definition of the epoche in purely psychic, internal terms without involving the problems of evidence and transcendence. Now the intent is to elaborate an entirely new mode and region of a consciousness for which, in contrast with the worldly I, the world and all the theses connected with the thesis of the world have no validity; clearly, a realm of consciousness so understood is truly virgin ground on which no one has yet trod because the thinkers who devoted themselves to an empirical inquiry into consciousness did not know the epoche while philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who do suspend the thesis of the validity of the world (which they take not as something given and preexisting but as something constituted in absolute consciousness), do not engage in a reflective analysis and observation of the conscious process in a purified empirical experience.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
Now we can say that the inevitable internal division of the I in its various attitudes presents a certain philosophical possibility which we can use in service of the epoche and of its clarification from a new perspective. If we define the attitude in which naive consciousness lives in the world in terms of the interest in what there is, the world in which a worldly thinker and even a skeptic both live, then we can also define an attitude from which all interest in and focus on the knowing of such existing beings have been removed. It does not cease to be real for reflected consciousness, but for reflecting consciousness it has not the least significance, reflecting consciousness does not identify with it in the least but rather maintains an absolute abstaining distance with respect to its attitudes. By contrast, this reflecting consciousness in no sense loses all cognitive interest, though its interest does not concern knowing the objects in the world with which reflected consciousness is preoccupied: it has to do exclusively with the reflected consciousness which as such becomes its thema. The interest of a reflecting thinker concerns exclusively thematized consciousness so that, with respect to the interests of reflected consciousness, the thinker becomes a pure disinterested observer. With that we have reached a definition of the epoche in purely psychic, internal terms without involving the problems of evidence and transcendence. Now the intent is to elaborate an entirely new mode and region of a consciousness for which, in contrast with the worldly I, the world and all the theses connected with the thesis of the world have no validity; clearly, a realm of consciousness so understood is truly virgin ground on which no one has yet trod because the thinkers who devoted themselves to an empirical inquiry into consciousness did not know the epoche while philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who do suspend the thesis of the validity of the world (which they take not as something given and preexisting but as something constituted in absolute consciousness), do not engage in a reflective analysis and observation of the conscious process in a purified empirical experience.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
All that means further that truth, absolute truth, is not a finished thesis but rather a process placed under the perspective of idea. Husserl distinguishes several substantive phases in this process. The first has to do with human life as "generatively historical" ("ursprüngliche generative Historizität"; Ed), that it is a life of generations which take their successive turn, linked by the bond of biological origin and by shared activity in which all take part. This activity gives rise to the shared environment or surrounding world of a certain community – the world of cultural things which are passed on as the fruit of earlier achievements and of traditional forms as substantive cultural processes; together with this, however, persons, too, belong to the world with the entire personal horizon, the horizon of personal spirituality, the possibility of cultural activity constantly shaped by contact with the objective and personal world of others. All this is a meaningful unity, with meaning present as a preformed configuration, not as an end projected earlier by humans; humans neither are nor sense themselves to be executors in the service of a definite idea, but rather enter into a meaningful coherence as naturally as they breathe, taking part in the work at hand and carrying it on.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
And so we have now returned to the beginning, having attempted to answer, in the spirit of Husserl, the question of the meaning of Husserl’s effort to make philosophy scientific. It is nothing less than a striving for freedom and complete autonomy of humankind; a freedom and autonomy to which there belongs indissoluably an absolute responsibility for all meaning and significance which human thought and action can have.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
This subjectivism must inevitably lead to the question of whether the theme of meaning, of significance, which is the guiding theme of this philosophy, is not at the same time undercut by this subjectivism. For meaning constituted by subjectivity as a universum, as a world, is a rediscovered meaning; rediscovery presupposes a loss; why did the primordial absolute subjectivity lose or lack its own self? How can we explain this fact with which phenomenology begins and which we can only accept? For Hegel and his theological philosophy, the answer is given in the idea of the creation of the world out of the absolute freedom of the divine Being which is also an absolute necessity. For Husserl, who seeks to philosophize nontheologically, only a question mark remains.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
This subjectivism must inevitably lead to the question of whether the theme of meaning, of significance, which is the guiding theme of this philosophy, is not at the same time undercut by this subjectivism. For meaning constituted by subjectivity as a universum, as a world, is a rediscovered meaning; rediscovery presupposes a loss; why did the primordial absolute subjectivity lose or lack its own self? How can we explain this fact with which phenomenology begins and which we can only accept? For Hegel and his theological philosophy, the answer is given in the idea of the creation of the world out of the absolute freedom of the divine Being which is also an absolute necessity. For Husserl, who seeks to philosophize nontheologically, only a question mark remains.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
This subjectivism must inevitably lead to the question of whether the theme of meaning, of significance, which is the guiding theme of this philosophy, is not at the same time undercut by this subjectivism. For meaning constituted by subjectivity as a universum, as a world, is a rediscovered meaning; rediscovery presupposes a loss; why did the primordial absolute subjectivity lose or lack its own self? How can we explain this fact with which phenomenology begins and which we can only accept? For Hegel and his theological philosophy, the answer is given in the idea of the creation of the world out of the absolute freedom of the divine Being which is also an absolute necessity. For Husserl, who seeks to philosophize nontheologically, only a question mark remains.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
Husserl does see that the teleology of history is not a teleology of predetermined and predefined goals, that it is, rather, a reinterpretation of the preconstituted, but he seeks to proclaim such an absolute goal nonetheless; he transcends a short-range finite teleology, but then tries to sneak it back in under a different guise. The problem of a positive bestowal of meaning upon the stream of history, if it is not simply an elimination of what is meaningless and contradictory, if it is not a mere manifestation of what is purely given and its overcoming in the project of pure rationality, that is, of clarity and justice, is not clearly posed in Husserl’s thought because it is not clearly defined. Husserl restricts the possible global conceptions of life basically to science-philosophy; is this viewpoint really critically justified? Does it rest on sufficiently profound illumination, on a philosophy of human possibilities? What if we encounter, at the base of human potentiality, an inevitable plurality, which might entail a plurality of goals as well? What does that mean for the historical self-formation of humanity? To these questions we no longer find answers in Husserl’s work.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
In the foregoing we have attempted a certain criticism of Husserl’s basic speculatively analytic conception of the reduction to pure subjective immanence. According to our critical comments, this immanence, that is, the immanent going beyond what is directly given, itself presupposes a nonimmanent beyond, an awareness of the fact of a global and in that sense worldly givenness. This givenness is inseparable from the meaning of our experience, but we cannot say that it is throughout its achievement; it is nothing constituted but rather a presupposition of all constitution. Thus we cannot say that any meaning of the world is coextensive with meaning constituted by subjectivity. Meaning is the joint product of the world and the "subject." That the subject, the dependent, finite subject, can nonetheless carry out a transcendence, that is, constitute transcendence in immanence, appears to me as a justifiable claim, the positive aspect of Husserl’s analyses of subjectivity. Do these analyses, however, go far enough, as far as we need to go to understand historical being? Is not their meaning too conditioned by the speculative thesis that we are dealing with the absolute creation of meaning and not with creation of meaning dependent on an exterior and on a community, on others as such, on continuity, cooperation, and conflict with them? Did not Husserl become too fixated at the place of his breakthrough from a mathematical to a mentally historical ideal of scientific understanding? And do not his philosophical analyses (his profound probings of time, of living presence, of corporeality, of the Other, of generative sequence) for that reason remain fragmentary where they are concrete and too abstract where they are global, where they reach for an overview of the history of humankind? // Once we formulate these questions, others easily arise: if Husserl’s philosophy is, in its positive achievements, an incomplete philosophy, a philosophy in progress, what use can it be to us in our present-day tasks and difficulties? Is it not something dated, belonging basically to the past? // The answer lies in the question itself. Phenomenology helps not in spite of but precisely because of its not being a closed system. An incomplete philosophy means at the same time an open philosophy. It means a philosophy which in a sense begins anew at each step, at each problem. A philosophy which is far more a reflection about method, about the way of grasping a problem, than a finished product, and which therefore also teaches us to evaluate results according to what they are really worth: as only stages on the way. There is no absolute truth as a product.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
In the foregoing we have attempted a certain criticism of Husserl’s basic speculatively analytic conception of the reduction to pure subjective immanence. According to our critical comments, this immanence, that is, the immanent going beyond what is directly given, itself presupposes a nonimmanent beyond, an awareness of the fact of a global and in that sense worldly givenness. This givenness is inseparable from the meaning of our experience, but we cannot say that it is throughout its achievement; it is nothing constituted but rather a presupposition of all constitution. Thus we cannot say that any meaning of the world is coextensive with meaning constituted by subjectivity. Meaning is the joint product of the world and the "subject." That the subject, the dependent, finite subject, can nonetheless carry out a transcendence, that is, constitute transcendence in immanence, appears to me as a justifiable claim, the positive aspect of Husserl’s analyses of subjectivity. Do these analyses, however, go far enough, as far as we need to go to understand historical being? Is not their meaning too conditioned by the speculative thesis that we are dealing with the absolute creation of meaning and not with creation of meaning dependent on an exterior and on a community, on others as such, on continuity, cooperation, and conflict with them? Did not Husserl become too fixated at the place of his breakthrough from a mathematical to a mentally historical ideal of scientific understanding? And do not his philosophical analyses (his profound probings of time, of living presence, of corporeality, of the Other, of generative sequence) for that reason remain fragmentary where they are concrete and too abstract where they are global, where they reach for an overview of the history of humankind? // Once we formulate these questions, others easily arise: if Husserl’s philosophy is, in its positive achievements, an incomplete philosophy, a philosophy in progress, what use can it be to us in our present-day tasks and difficulties? Is it not something dated, belonging basically to the past? // The answer lies in the question itself. Phenomenology helps not in spite of but precisely because of its not being a closed system. An incomplete philosophy means at the same time an open philosophy. It means a philosophy which in a sense begins anew at each step, at each problem. A philosophy which is far more a reflection about method, about the way of grasping a problem, than a finished product, and which therefore also teaches us to evaluate results according to what they are really worth: as only stages on the way. There is no absolute truth as a product.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
Besides, Husserl’s phenomenology is the only great modern philosophy that carried out, in an exemplary fashion, the breakthrough from the modern mathematico-physicalist objectivism, attacking its basic conceptions not from without but rather by striving from the start for its consistent, absolute elaboration and justification. That enables it not to become bogged down in a specialized scientific positivism while at the same time not losing contact with the problems and methods of the special sciences.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8
Husserl contributed to the liberation from psychologism in the grounding of abstract science, especially logic; to its liberation from psychologism and so indirectly also to exorcising psychologism from other disciplines, especially the social scientific ones. He could resolve this problem thanks to his conception of the perception of universals, which at the same time opened up for him a new approach to the perennial problem of a priori knowledge: not an a priori which definitely closes up the subject to the world but rather one which builds a bridge between the two. The program of eidetic ontologies which he had projected became a signal for the rebirth of philosophy not merely as a formal methodological discipline but as one dealing with a content. An eidetic psychology, a conception he had adumbrated, rested on a new conception of intentionality (leaning towards but also in opposition to Brentano’s conception of intentional inexistence). Tracing out the problems of intentionality, along with the effort at a pure description of what is given in inner perception with the guarantee of evident givenness, led to the "phenomenological reduction": first to an "epoche" of all transcendent knowing and then to the reduction of transcendence to "pure phenomenon." Husserl may not have carried to completion this profound and extensive thought construct which was to be the definitive foundation of philosophy as a science, but along the way he discovered many of the themes of contemporary philosophy and so enriched it with highly interesting topics: the problems of time, of the awareness of time, of temporality, of the relation between time and the world; a new conception of the world as not only the sum of existing things but as the locus of the encounter of subject and object; the problem of the subject as corporeal, that is, as living in a body, understood not as a thing but as a perspective on things and as the possibility of affecting them directly (the difference between body-subject and body-object whose consequences lead beyond the original abstraction of a purely spiritual subject); the problems of intersubjectivity as the proper realm of reason which discovers itself and unfolds in history; the problem of the historically teleological continuity of subjects called not only to uncover but rather freely and out of freedom to deepen the world order, going beyond all that is merely given to what is universal and therein truly rational. Thus Husserl started out with the problem of the foundations of science and was led to the problems of history, of historical social being whose crises and vicissitudes are for him at the same time crises and vicissitudes of the European sciences. Thus if not in his systematic writings, then at least in practice Husserl transcended the scientific ideal of a mathematizing scientism with its quest for absolute certainty and showed the way to a new, more active and free conception of science and of being human; though perhaps the most important of all the prospects this philosophy opened is the perspective of the unity, of the mutual interlocking and interdependence of humans and the world, an interdependence which will not let us consider the world without taking humans into account, or humans without taking into account the world.	Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology 8